Achieving Simplicity in All Areas of Your Life

Financial and retirement planning – most important issues in our lives, in fact – are often made too complicated. The best plans… the best ideas… are actually the simplest, says Steve Harvill, founder of Creative Ventures.

You can also take an active role by using easy-to-use tools to work towards your most important goals one step at a time.

Steve shares some strategies for injecting simplicity in the key areas of your life. You’ll discover…

• Having “more” of something doesn’t mean you have more value

• The “old school” method for achieving key objectives

• Why you should be thinking inside the box

• The OCT method for focusing on tasks with the most impact

• And more

Listen now…

Episode Transcript: 

John: Hi. This is John Kerry. Welcome to another episode of Secure Retirement Podcast. Today I'm sitting with a gentleman who's going to blow your mind. His name is Stephen Harvill. I've heard him speak before. Stephen is the creator of a company called Creative Ventures.

Steve, it's good to see you again. 

Steve Harville: Thanks so much for having me and a chance to do the Podcast. It was great to see you here in New Haven. 

John: Well, I learn something new every time I'm around you. 

Steve Harvill: That's quite an honor. 

John: Would you please take a moment and tell our listeners a little bit about your background. I think it's fascinating that at age 25 you were hired to do a big project with Disney and still do it. 

Steve Harvill: My company is 32 years old. It's a strategic consulting firm. Our offices are in Dallas, Texas, but I live in Austin. When I was very young I had an idea for a real estate company that I was working with. We were planning ski resorts. And they implemented the idea and it became really effective. And the CEO of the company came and said, "Steve, I want you to go to Houston and introduce this idea to the Urban Land Institute." 

And I said, "I'm not going to Houston and stand up and talk about something I made up. I'm a 25-year-old scientist right out of college." And he said, "I understand you thought I was asking you to go. I'm telling you to go." 

So I got on the plane and went to Houston. After I introduced the idea a number of people came up to me afterwards and asked me if I could come and help their company do it. One of those companies was Disney. I said, "I could absolutely do that. It's not that hard to do." And they said, "How much do you charge for that?" And I went, "You can charge for that? Are you kidding me?" 

And that started the company that 32 years later is still actively working on strategy with companies all over the world. 

John: Well, let me explain to our listeners where we are. We are in Hew Haven, Connecticut. We are at a Park Avenue Securities conference on retirement planning. And yesterday we had the pleasure of going over to Yale University and listening to some folks. And you told the group earlier that you're a scientist. You actually have a degree, I think you said in astrophysics. 

Steve Harvill: In physics, yes, and in marine biology. 

John: And marine biology. So tell me how in the world does a scientist, because I have a lot of friends that are scientists at Florida State University. So how do you go from being a scientist to become a very successful entrepreneur in your world? 

Steve Harvill: You know, I think to say that I'm a scientist is probably an exaggeration, because a scientist is a practicing person. I never practiced what I learned or what I got out of my college education. So, I was always driven at an early age by story. Stories fascinated me. I was a comic book kid. I'm a comic book adult. I've gone to the movies every Saturday since I was nine years old. 

That idea of story fascinated me, and I was always thinking that there would be a way to structure ideas around story to create some type of an impact around it. And that was really the idea that launched everything that we did, was this idea that we could present, in a really unique format, our ideas so that they would be dynamic, have an impact, people would remember them. They'd be simple. They'd never exceed three parts. 

And that's what we've kind of built the company around. And we have seven strategic platforms, seven different ideas that we work with companies on all the time. 

And so it was really more based on the idea that you look at things like a scientist does, right? In parts and pieces. You look at them as having a connected element to them so that they reach an outcome. And from that moment on it was just about using that stuff to implement our ideas, and our ideas just happened to hit home. 

John: Today in your workshop you talked about elegant simplicity. I find that in our world of financial advising, it's too complicated. It's too complex. And I know it's complex for me, and I have to work at it to find ways to present ideas in a simple way where clients feel comfortable with either the advice I'm giving or the products themselves. 

Would you take a little bit of time, please, and explain why it's so important to go from that complex down to the simple and why it's so dag gum difficult to do so? 

Steve Harvill: We live in a world that believes that complexity creates value. That more is better. So we're always thinking that if we can get more, we get more value, we have more impact. And that's wrong. 

Instead what we're looking for is the right thing, not moral something, but the right thing. And the right thing is almost always a much more simple product, a much more simple presentation, a much more simple story than we ever think it is. And so we have to fight against this prejudice we have thinking that more is always better. 

If your brain can overcome that, then you create this idea of restricting what you can do. You build ... Actually, people talk about thinking outside the box, simplicity is about building boxes, because what you do is you limit your input. You say to yourself, "I only have this much space. What can I do in that much space?" It's called creative restriction. 

And so what we look at is helping people say, "We'll create the box for you. You can do whatever you want within the box. You can't go outside the box." And it forces people to think differently about their content, Right? 

If I told you you only had three pieces to the story you could tell a client, you would figure out how to tell the most compelling and impactful story in three pieces. 

John: Absolutely. 

Steve Harvill: And that kind of restriction is what simplicity is really about. It's about training your brain to think that way. 

John: I love it. In my office we have a philosophy, my team and I, three full-time people that support me, April, Amanda and Jay. We want to keep everything as simple as we can, but we still battle this thing about making it too complicated. And our clients love it, because they'll say, "Look. I don't understand annuities. I don't understand investments. I don't understand the life insurance, but I do know that you understand me and what I'm trying to get." 

And that was my big take away today. I'm here. I'm glad that I come for these conferences. I learn. But the challenge, as you pointed out, when you get back home there is a whirlwind of activity, and narrow it down to the few things that you want to do. Maybe the one thing that you said. 

Steve Harville: The one critical thing. We call it the OCT. And it's really hard to do. It's a staggering amount of discipline. You're already doing that. You already recognize that really what the story about is your clients tomorrow, right? 

John: Right. 

Steve Harvill: You're in the tomorrow business. You're protecting their tomorrows. And that idea then creates the opportunity to weave stories around that one aspect, right? All stories have three parts, a beginning, a middle and an end. And so a good story is structured around those kinds of pieces. And so what you're really looking is, "What are the stories I tell my clients?" Right? "What are the stories that I can connect the value of my knowledge to the value of their output, of what they need at the end of their journey, at the end of the journey of doing work with me."

And you and I have met each other on a number of conferences before. This isn't the first one. And I think that the way your company positions that is the right way to look at simplicity. But you're right, it's always a battle. 

John: Yes. 

Steve Harville: You're always battling against, "Oh, it's this. It needs to be that. It needs to be this." When it really doesn't. And it takes this staggering amount of ... You know, Bob Dylan, the singer/songwriter, great singer/songwriter Nobel Prize winner Bob Dylan said, "It's only about three chords and the truth." 

John: Yes. 

Steve Harville: And if you can build something around something as simple as that and you can do the stuff that he's done, that shows you the value of simplicity. 

John: I don't play guitar much anymore, but when I first started, the guy who was teaching me said, "All you need is three chords."

Steve Harvill: Yeah, that's it. And most rock and roll songs are based on that simple pattern, right? And they build things in between the chords, but it's just the three chords. It doesn't have to be that complicated. And you know what, people will flock to simplicity. 

John: Yes. 

Steve Harville: They'll see you as different. They'll understand the connection faster than anyone else will that's in a complicated situation. It's just trying to fit it properly, and that's the challenge. And I thank God for the challenge, because it keeps my company in business. 

John: Yes. Talk a little bit about how people listening to this can apply some of your concepts in their day to day lives? They're not running a big business necessarily. My clients are people who are members of the Florida retirement system. They could be a government employee. They could be a business owner. They could be a doctor, a lawyer, an accountant. A big, broad spectrum. 

So from a personal planning standpoint, whether it be their money, their time, their energy, their life, what advice would you offer them? 

Steve Harvill: Let me give them a couple of tools. 

John: Okay. 

Steve Harvill: One, and you may be surprised, but simplicity evolves around very simple tools, which is great for that. One of the tools that people overlook the use of is what is called, "The Checklist." We call it, "The checklist format." And that is creating a very simple form that allows you to make sure that every single time you do something you're doing the right pieces of it. 

Because what will happen is, you'll repeat it, repetition will create a little laziness in the outcome, and you'll miss important things. So the creation of these checklist ideas, surgeons use them in surgery. We talked about it a little today, about the five elements that stop an infection and that how every surgeon has to check off those five things to be sure that they're done every single time that they go into surgery. 

Those checklists are really important. So think about creating very simple checklists around your ideas. If it's a planning ideas what are the three most important parts about that idea to make it happen? What are the three most important things you have to get done in a day? Not the five things, not the ten things. What are the three most important things? 

Make sure they're visual, in front of you all the time. And if you can create just even the use of a checklist, you'll simplify a lot of the things that are going right in your head and they're not. 

John: Correct. When you were sharing that story about the physician, I'll tell you what I thought about. And I use this every day. I have on my wall a picture of a B52 bomber, because when I was in the Air Force I was a crew chief on the B52. And we had to use a laminated checklist pre-flight and post-flight that you had to check everything off with a grease pencil. And it was imperative you do that because you had eight crew member's lives in your hand every time that plane took off or landed. 

Steve Harvill: It's a great example of using that. And people think of it as being a silly, an old-fashioned, silly thing. It is one of the most important simple tools you can use. And we have checklists in my company for every task that happens almost every day. So that I am sure that everybody in Dallas is doing the right stuff all the time. 

We utilize a thing called the OCT, the one critical thing, every day. And we want to be sure we get that one most important thing done. And then everything else on the checklist is gravy. 

John: I think anyone listening to this, if you just took the idea that Steve just shared of, "What are the three things I want to get done?" And possibly maybe it's four if you count your OCT, because how many times do we get up, "Oh, I've got all these things to do," and you've got this big list. But if you forced yourself, the restraint you said earlier ... 

Steve Harvill: Yeah, creative restriction. 

John: Creative restriction. Move it down to three and maybe four counting your Number 1 thing. So how do you apply that in your personal life? Do you do the same thing in your personal life? 

Steve Harvill: I do. And I wouldn't let you use that fourth item on your checklist. 

John: Oh, you would not? 

Steve Harvill: I would say the OCT is one and you get two other ones. 

John: Oh, got it. 

Steve Harville: Yeah. 

John: So it has to be one of the three. 

Steve Harvill: It has to be one of the three. And people will do that. We call it, "The bleed." People will say, "Here are my three things, and here are the three parts of the first thing." And I will say, "No. No. No. That's six parts already. You only get one thing to do, the elements of the discipline around that idea of three." So I use it constantly in my life. 

So I'll have the list of the next three books that I'm going to read. I already have them written down and then the order that I'm going to read them. I'll keep that list active all the time. I'll hear something or I'll see something that will catch my eye, and I carry my notebook with me all the time. That will get in the notebook so that I never let it escape. 

One of the problems in complexity is things escape. They're ethereal, right? 

John: Yes. 

Steve Harvill: They're like fog. They're here in a moment and then they're gone. But the more simple things that you can do and a more simple perspective allows you to capture them. 

So all of the stuff we do, we capture. We never let it go.

John: I agree with that. And today you made a comment, "If you're taking notes, and how could you not be taking notes?" I keep journals. One entire bookcase in my home is just nothing but leather bound journals. 

And friends will be critical and say, "Why do you pay $20 for a leather journal when you can just buy a legal pad?" I said, "Because a legal pad I will lose it. I will lose those sheets. Those leather journals will be there." 

Steve Harville: Yeah, it's amazing how when someone uses an artistic form of note taking, that the notebook, the paper, the pen and pencil are very important to that process. 

John: Yes. 

Steve Harvill: They select a specific thing to use. They use it all the time. It's part of that kind of the criteria of the habit of doing, right? Is they select a specific one. We used to do ... and I've got idea notebooks like you fill a wall. But I used to have trouble going back and finding the ideas in the notebook. So when I was writing my latest book, I went to a five by eight index card system. So all my notes were on five by eight index cards and then I filed them by the idea. And I thought, "Oh my God, all those journals that I did. If I had been doing the cards, I would have found everything." 

John: Yes. 

Steve Harvill: So I made a big shift. One of the things about simplicity is you need to be flexible to new ideas, right? And so that was a huge shift for us to go to the five by eight cards that we started probably a year and a half ago. 

John: I like using four by six cards to keep notes for articles I'm working on, so I'll have them alphabetical.

Steve Harvill: Really good idea. 

John: If I get an idea of something for our newsletter, I may not be ready to write that article, but I can write it down and file it. 

Steve Harvill: We have a huge thing for newsletter. We have a 30,000 circulation newsletter that goes out every month, and I have the newsletter file and I have the Blog file and I have the Over Coffee, which is our video series, the three-minute video you can watch while you're having your coffee in the morning, called, "Over Coffee."

I have those categories, and those are topics that I'll go back and I'll write on, I'll think about. I'm doing one on the relation of simplicity in the universe, and I have all the notes on that. That's the magazine commissioned us to write that. And so that's how I keep my notes also. Very simple and elegant methodology. 

John: I love it. Would you take a few minutes and talk about the importance of narrowing it down to the three things, though. Because you talked about that like the traffic light. You showed that. I believe we do think in threes. I don't know where I've learned that over the years, but I think we do think in threes. 

Steve Harvill: There's a process of simplicity called, "Thoughtful reduction." And that's that capability of taking something that's large and making it smaller. And to do that, in order to thoughtfully reduce something, you have to think. That's what the thoughtful portion is. It's not just reduction. So that large lists of large things can be made smaller if you think about them. 

And so you have to be able to place them in the right order, be able to see them is really important, scale. And so we make sure we see everything in order to be able to know what to do. So we use Post-its a lot. So we'll use large Post-its to build maps of the idea. We'll move the pieces around on it. We'll storyboard them on large sketch pads so that we can see the idea.

John: You'll hear some noise in the background, folks, because we're at a conference and things ... 

Steve Harvill: Yeah, broken down. 

John: ... are being done. So bear with us just a moment. 

But Steve, let's go back to ... the last few minutes we have let's talk a little bit about why it is so important to narrow it down to those things. I think intuitively most of us know that our lives have become more and more complex. Supposedly technology is supposed to make our lives better. 

You were sharing with one of my colleagues earlier chastising him in a nice way about checking his e-mails too much and allowing him to disrupt his family time. 

So why is it that we have all these tools that are supposed to make our lives better but it's made our lives more complex? 

Steve Harvill: That's because we think any time we get any free time, it has to be filled with productivity. 

John: Yes. 

Steve Harvill: That's wrong. Free time isn't meant to be filled with productivity. It's meant to be free time. 

John: And allow your brain to rest. 

Steve Harville: Exactly right. So here, I'll give you a quick exercise to show you how to do that. 

John: Okay. 

Steve Harvill: Take six Post-its. Two each of the same color. Right? So let's say there's two red ones, two yellow ones, two blue ones. 

On the two red ones write the two most important things you have to do tomorrow, one and two. 

And the next one, the next color, write the two secondary most important things you have to do.

On the last one write the third things that you have to do that are third most important. 

So now you have two of the most important, two of the second most important, two of the third most important. Okay? 

John: Yes. 

Steve Harvill: Now take one of the most important ones and throw it out. You don't get to do it. Take one of the second ones and throw it out. You don't get to do it. Take one of the third ones and throw it out. You don't get to do it. And you will be shocked at how fast you'll make that decision. And it will show you exactly which of those was the most important. 

John: Because now you have a visual representation. 

Steve Harville: We use poker chips and we'll tell people, "Here are your poker chips. Here are the reds, the blues, the grays. You get to do your most important, second most and third. Now, immediately throw out one of your most important. You don't get to do that one." They'll look. They'll move it off. That's how fast they're able to figure out what's important. 

John: Just that quickly. 

Steve Harvill: Just that quickly because they see it.

John: That is a great exercise. And I would think that the sooner we teach our children and our grandchildren how to do this, the better their lives will be. 

Steve Harvill: Yeah, they're fighting it all the time. You know, we're teaching our children the same way we taught our children in the 1800s. We're teaching them for jobs that won't even exist. That's an entire different Podcast on the problems with the way we're doing things. We're stifling stuff. We're forcing pegs into the wrong holes and we're producing students that are very good at rote. They can win contests but they can't independently think. They can enter a math contest and win a math contest, but if given that problem out of the context of the contest they can't solve it. 

John: Yeah. 

Steve Harvill: It's a big issue. 

John: It's a big issue. And people are not paying attention. I love what you shared earlier, because it's a pet peeve of mine is when I'm going to the store to give someone my money and they're not looking me in the face. They're ignoring me like I'm a headache. 

Would you share just a little bit about that story, about the coffee? 

Steve Harvill: Yeah. It was in the coffee shop this morning. And they opened ten minutes late. Even though they committed on their sign to open at 6:00 a.m. it was ten after. I went in and I said, "Are you ready to go? Are you open?" She had opened the door. No answer, just nodded her head. I said, "Okay." And I ordered coffee for my wife and I. And as she was making it she never looked at me. As she rang me up, she never looked at me. She said, "Put your room number." And she handed the thing. 

And I bent over and stuck my head down on the counter so she'd look at me in the face. And I said, "Follow my head up," and she followed my head up. And I said, "You know, your tip is not based on your product. It's based on your personality. So why don't you smile just a little and look someone in the eye, and you'll be surprised at how much money you'll take home tonight." She just looked at me and went, "Hm." Obviously not that effective. 

John: I do that all the time, and my wife gets angry with me. 

Steve Harvill: Mine does too. 

John: But I will say, "Look. If I'm giving you my money ..." I will put the bill out there and somebody will hold onto it. They will take it and I will hold it ... 

Steve Harvill: Until they look up at you. 

John: ... until they look me in the eye. And it's a pet peeve, because in my world I don't get paid nor should I get paid until I create value. If you're my client and I bring value, then we should do business. If I don't bring value, we should not do business.

Steve Harvill: It's the idea that people think the transactional business is not important. Right? Even though it's not a relationship building business, it's straight transactional, they'll think it's not important. It is. 

John: It is important. 

Steve Harvill: It touches another person, so it's important. And I would spend more money training my transactional employees than I would spend training my relationship employees, because every phone call, every exchange of money, every question asked and answered is part of the deal. 

John: Yes. I agree totally. Well, I know we have other things to do. We're still at this conference. Steve, I just want to thank you so much for taking the time to share this with the listeners, and we bring value by sharing things outside of the financial planning world that I'm in, and I just thank you so much for doing this. 

Steve Harvill: John, I'd do anything for you. Just ask. 

John: Thank you so much. 

Steve Harvill: Thank you so much. 

John: If somebody wanted to receive information about your book ... 

Steve Harville: Sure. 

John: ... or just about your company, tell them how to get in touch with you. 

Steve Harvill: Yeah. The newsletter is free. It goes out every month. The blog is posted every two weeks. You just have to go to CreativeVentures.com So CreativeVentures.com And you can sign up for it there. You have access to all the past newsletters. You can order the books. You can do anything you want from there. See all the videos, everything on the website. And we'd love to have you as a visitor and a subscriber. 

John: And I would encourage you to do that. You'll find great information that will help you grow and be more creative in your own world. Again, Steve, thank you so much. 

Steve Harvill: I'm honored. Thank you for having me. 

If you would like to know more about John Curry’s services, you can request a

complimentary information package by visiting JohnHCurry.com/podcast. Again, that is

JohnHCurry.com/podcast. Or you can call his office at 850-562-3000.

Again, that is 850-562-3000.

John H. Curry, CLU, ChFC, AEP, MSFS, CLTC, registered representative and financial advisor of Park Avenue Securities, LLC (PAS). Securities products and services and advisory services are offered through PAS, a registered broker dealer and investment advisor. Financial representative of the Guardian Life Insurance company of America, New York, New York. PAS is an indirect wholly owned subsidiary of Guardian. North Florida Financial Corporation is not an affiliate or subsidiary of PAS. PAS is a member of FINRA and SIPC. This material is intended for general public use. By providing this material, we are not undertaking to provide investment advice for any specific individual or situation, or to otherwise act in a fiduciary capacity. Please contact one of our financial professionals for guidance and information specific to your individual situation. All investments contain risk and may lose value. Past performance is not a guarantee of future results. Guardian nor any of its subsidiaries offer Long Term Care Insurance and Guardian, its subsidiaries, agents or employees do not provide legal, tax, or accounting advice. Please consult with your attorney, accountant, and/or tax advisor for advice concerning your particular circumstances. Not affiliated with The Florida Retirement System. 

The Living Balance Sheet® (LBS) and the LBS Logo are registered service marks of The Guardian Life Insurance Company of America (Guardian), New York, NY. © Copyright 2005-2018

This podcast is for informational purposes only. Guest speakers and their firms are not affiliated with or endorsed by PAS or Guardian and opinions stated are their own. 

#2018-61407 Exp 6/20

The Importance of Self-Care

When is the best time to start eating right, exercising, and working on reducing the impact of stress in your life? Right now, says Ellen Berkowitz. 

As a doctor specializing in psychiatry, Ellen has seen the impact of a lack of proper “self-care” in herself and her patients. She shares some simple techniques and practices you can use for your own self-care plan at home.

The result is a better quality of life – and health – now and as you get older. And that’s just as important to your retirement as the financial side of things. It’s never too late and you’re never too old to starting take care of yourself

We go into detail on self-care strategies, including…

• The right way to meditate… even you don’t think you can do it at all

• Easy stress reducers you can start today

• The importance of rest and sleep to your brain function and physical well-being

• How to combat the sometimes “self-imposed” physical limitations that come with age

• And more

Listen now…

#2018-61406 Exp 6/20

Staying Flexible in Education, Your Career, and Life

When it comes to retirement planning, what you want can be very different than what you really need. The same goes for many things in life, says Dr. Jim Murdaugh. We get into the nitty-gritty of that philosophy.

Since this week’s guest is president of Tallahassee Community College, we also cover his first-hand experiences in how the college experience is changing.

Jim came to that role after a long career in local and state law enforcement, where he had a variety of roles. As he likes to tell those just starting out… life isn’t a straight line. He has some tips for embracing that fact.

We also cover…

• Applying a results-driven approach to financial planning… and life

• The benefits of making a job your mission

• Why you should never view your competition as an “enemy”

• The “disruptions” that are impacting higher education and Florida’s job market

• The value of lifelong learning

Listen now…

#2018-61403 Exp 6/20

A Secure Retirement Method to Deal with Financial Threats

Many people think they are taking all the right steps toward a long retirement full of time with family, travel, and relaxation. Unfortunately, there are many financial threats to your retirement plans – some you can see, some that are invisible until they take away income and assets. To make matters worse, too many folks have assumptions about their current retirement plan that are just plain false.

But you can plan and prepare for these threats, even the unexpected ones, to protect your retirement funds. And you can cut through the misinformation out there. There’s no one-size-fits-all approach here, and the solution is not to simply buy more financial products.

It takes a personalized plan, and you must take action ASAP.

Listen now to discover…

• The 4 biggest threats to your retirement right now

• How taxes can impact your retirement plans in ways you didn’t know

• Why you need to go through a “retirement rehearsal” right now

• A 4-part plan for creating an effective retirement plan (or fixing your current one)

• And much more

Listen now…

Gordon: Hi, everyone. This is Steve Gordon. I’m here with John Curry.

John, I want to pick your brain a little bit, selfishly honestly. You and I have known each other for a long time and we’ve worked together on many, many different things, and I’m holding here in my hand a little pamphlet that you’ve created called “John Curry’s Secure Retirement Method” up at the top. And at the top of this, there are four boxes and I’m really curious about these boxes. I’d like to learn more.

You’ve got one that says “The Vision Session,” another that says “The Discovery Session,” a third that says “The Strategy Session,” and then a fourth that says, “The Implementation Session.” And I would love for you to walk us through what each of those is and how you use those to really fulfill your mission.

Curry: Okay. Well, let’s start with the mission. Steve, I reached a point after being in business almost forty-two years… I’m in my forty-second year actually… that I’m frustrated with the financial services industry in the sense that it’s all about profit. “Hey, let me come and sell you a life insurance policy or a long-term care policy or an annuity or a mutual fund, whatever.” And my philosophy is it should start with planning first. So here’s my mission, real short and sweet.

My mission is to help as many people as possible prepare for a secure retirement. My team and I do that by helping you identify what the financial threats are to your income both now while working and ultimately when you retire. Then we help you, the client, and your other advisors prepare for those threats, either by eliminating or at least reducing those threats to your income now and your income in retirement.

Gordon: Let me interrupt you.

Curry: All right.

Gordon: You’ve talked about financial threats. What in the world do you mean by financial threats?

Curry: Well, it’s funny you ask the question that way because a lot of people are totally oblivious to the threats that are around them, totally oblivious. For example, the four biggest threats… three are involuntary; one is voluntary. The voluntary one is retirement. So, if you retire, you have no more income, at least earned income. Agreed?

Gordon: That’s interesting. I never thought about that as a financial threat.

Curry: Most people don’t. However, going back to 2000, 2001, 2002, people who went into retirement in 1999, at the end of ’99, they got smacked in the face with a bucket of cold ice water called the stock market being down 20-something percent. Everybody said don’t worry about it; it’ll come back. It didn’t. In 2001, down again 20%-plus. In 2002, the same thing. So they got hurt. So this thing called retirement… they had no more income coming in; therefore, they had to retire on their financial assets. But that’s a voluntary loss of income.

Let’s talk about the three that are involuntary. How about job loss? You lose your job. You’re either laid off or just flat out fired because the company went belly up. We saw a lot of that in 2008; didn’t we?

Gordon: Tons.

Curry: A lot of people still not at work. So job loss. Next would be disability. What if you get sick or have an accident and you’re totally disabled and can’t work and earn income? Not only does your present situation suffer, but now you can’t save or invest money for this thing called retirement.

And then the fourth one, which is the ultimate loss of income threat, is dying. And we talk about dying too soon. I don’t know about you, but whenever I die, it’s too soon, you know. I don’t care when it is. I could be a hundred years old and it’s still too soon.

So, if you recap, you think about, okay, retirement. I lose my income. If I lose my job, I lose my income. If I become disabled, I’ll lose my income. If I die, my family loses my income. So we look at those, but there are other threats other than the financial side as far as losing income.

Think about stock market losses. Now we’re not worried about income so much because you’re working and have a paycheck. But what if you were depending upon, say, half a million dollar IRA to give you an income stream in retirement and you’ve been told to use a 4-percent withdrawal rate and now you’re account is only worth three hundred thousand because the stock market took away $200,000? Your income just suffered, didn’t it. So it wasn’t just the value of the asset going down. When you start converting the asset to income, your income is clobbered. I teach that to people.

Gordon: Well, we’ve seen that. I mean, we’ve seen people who would have retired, probably wanted to retire several years ago, but because the markets were down, they were sort of forced to continue working, continue producing income because the asset that they had accumulated is now worth less than it was. So it effectively reduced the number of years of income stream that they had from it if I’m understanding you correctly.

Curry: You’re correct. And what’s happening is survey after survey by universities like Boston College, their retirement section, division, their retirement conference survey that’s done every year for the past twenty years, indicates that people are doing just that. They’re working longer, not because they want to but because they have to, because they have to. So all that being said, that led to me coming up with a process, a method, if you will, to help people prepare for secure retirement. And I’ve been using this all my career but I got really serious about it in 2003 after what we just described happened.

So the first thing is in those boxes as you referred to it in the vision session. We begin to explore somebody’s current situation, and we look for possibilities for their future. I like to call it thinking about the realm of possibility. Where are you today? What do you have? And what is possible for you?

Gordon: So this is kind of a big deal because I know just with the people in my world who have recently retired or are looking to retire soon, a lot of times they kind of have this preconceived thought in their mind of what’s possible and sometimes it’s not a real good picture. But because they don’t know what they don’t know, they’re not really able to see clearly what all the possibilities are. So as you’re meeting with people in one of these vision sessions, how do you kind of help expand their thinking to really be able to see a bigger possibility?

Curry: Sometimes by asking a lot of very sharp, detailed questions that they’ve never explored, sometimes frankly a shock effect. I’ll just give you an example that happened yesterday. The guy was kind of smug about his money. He says, “Look, you can’t help me. I’ve got a million dollars. Everything’s going to be just fine.”

I said, “Okay, why are you here?”

He says, “Oh, wow, good question.” He said, “Well, I’d like to think I’m okay.”

“Do you want to test that? I have a way of testing that. Would you like to test, do a retirement rehearsal and see what could impact your future?”

Gordon: That’s really interesting. I’ve never heard that term before, “retirement rehearsal.” What is that?

Curry: Because I created that. I hope nobody’s ever heard it.

Gordon: What is that?

Curry: It’s taking what you have, and this is where we get down to the discovery session, number two, taking what you have and putting it in a model of where I can show you what the impact of inflation, taxation, market upticks and downturns will do to your money. So, for this gentleman, he assumed a 4% payout rate on his million bucks. Okay? That’s forty grand a year. And I said, “That’s great, but that’s as far as you’ve gone. What if we have just a 2% inflation factor? Because I have no idea what it would do. Would you like to see it?”

He said, “Yes, please.” So I showed him and it went from green to red. He said, “Wait a minute. Does the red mean I’m out of money?”

I said, “The red means you are totally broke. All the money’s gone.”

He said, “That’s only twenty-one years of retirement. What if I live longer?”

“You’re still broke.”

And he says, “Thank you for being so direct.”

I said, “Now, can we back up into the way I like to do it?”

He said, “Please.”

So then, we showed the impact of not only inflation but taxation. “So now you’ve got inflation taking away your money. And what about taxes?”

He said, “John, I didn’t even think about paying taxes.”

I said, “Most people don’t. See, you’re thinking that when you go into retirement, all of a sudden the government is going to forgive the taxes.” I said, “They let you accumulate all this money in your IRA, 401k, profit-sharing plan, state deferred comp, whatever you have, and they defer the taxes for you. You didn’t save any taxes. You simply deferred it into the future, so when you take it out, now they want the tax.”

But somehow people forget that. So when I showed him the tax impact, he goes, “Holy cow! I won’t have any income.”

And I said, “That’s assuming everything stays the same.”

Gordon: So, really, the way… your process, and that’s really what it is… you’ve got four parts to a process, the vision; let’s look at what’s possible in the future beginning with where you are now working forward. The discovery session where you sort of… you gain a deeper understanding of their current situation, and then once you kind of marry where they’d like to go with where they are now, you can begin to put together a strategy to get there. But until you’re able to do all that… I mean, what’s just occurred to me… I mean, I haven’t thought really deeply about this before, John, and I think this is important. What’s just occurred to me is that so many people are approaching retirement with these assumptions that are probably incomplete.

Curry: Yes.

Gordon: At worst, or excuse me, at best incomplete and at worst completely wrong based on bad information.

Curry: Absolutely. And misinformation.

Gordon: So really, what you’re beginning to describe, and I know there are a couple more parts to this, but what you’re beginning to describe is a process where you are able to take the assumptions that they have and actually put them into a model that will show them and take all these other things into account that you know exist because you’ve been doing thousands and thousands of these plans throughout your career.

Curry: You’re correct. And here’s the key. Instead of sitting there and telling you what you need to do when you come sit with me, part of the vision session is asking questions. I’ll probably ask you thirty or forty questions. I have nothing to tell you. I’m learning you who are, what you want, what you don’t want, and then we discover every piece you’ve got. We look at everything you have, everything from something as mundane as car insurance all the way over to your life insurance, your savings, your investments, everything. And somebody listening may be wondering, “Why in the world would this guy care about my car insurance?”

I care very much, because what if you have an accident and you injure or, worse, kill somebody? That sucking sound you hear is a cashectomy of the attorney taking away your assets. So I want to make sure that you’re properly insured with car insurance and homeowner’s insurance. I don’t sell either one of those, so I would refer you back to your property and casualty agent and say, “Please get this fixed.” Because I don’t want all of my work that we do together to be lost because something bad happens. In my world we call that unplanned life events.

I want to go back to something you said a moment ago. It’s not me coming up with the strategies. You and I as a client/advisor relationship, we co-create a plan, because whose plan is this? It’s not my plan; it’s yours. So we have to make sure that we co-create it and it’s very important. Not everybody out there is a client for me. They have to have the mindset that they want to grow, that they want to improve. If their attitude is that everything is just fine like it is; “I don’t care about learning anything new,” I’m not the advisor for them. Just got to be honest about it, Steve.

Gordon: So, coming back to your process, we talked about the vision session. We talked a little bit about the discovery session. I think you’ve just touched on the strategy session a little bit. Is there more to that that we need to talk about?

Curry: Yes, because in the strategy session, here’s where most people get in trouble. They go to someone who says, “You know, Steve, everything you have is no good. Let’s throw it out and buy new products.” No, no, no, no. That’s not accurate. Let’s work with what you’ve got. Whatever you have today, let’s see if we can make that work. Now, if you’ve got a product that’s not working, we will know. You know, Ronald Reagan would always say, “Trust but verify.” I believe in verifying. I need to verify to your satisfaction that the strategy I’m showing you works. If it does not work and I can’t verify that, you should not do it.

Likewise, if you say, “John, I’ve got $200,000 dollars in a mutual fund,” I’ll say, “Great, let’s look at the statements. Let’s verify that.” Not because you may be lying to me, but every day when I see clients, they’ll say something and they’ll look at the statement and go, “Oh, it’s not as much as I thought,” or maybe it’s more than they thought.

So I believe that, when you get into the strategy session, it’s: What do you have? What can we use? Don’t throw everything out and try to buy new products. That costs you too much money and, frankly, a lot of times it’s recommended just so somebody gets paid a new commission. Don’t waste your money. I’m not going to waste mine, and you’re not going to waste yours if I’m working with you.

Gordon: So then you take people through the strategy session, and then you get to the implementation part.

Curry: Correct.

Gordon: How does that work?

Curry: Well, once we agree on a strategy, you have to then follow through to take action. To give you an example, a client yesterday, a medical doctor, he’s been talking about getting his will updated for the last two sessions that we met over the last six months. So I said, “You have not followed up on that. You have to implement. This has to be done. Your wills are so outdated and trust provisions.” So I picked up my phone; I called the attorney that we agreed to use. This is after hours, 6:30 last night, and he answered the phone. “I’m sitting here with Dr. So-and-so. He’s going to be giving you a call. I’m calling you to put him on the spot, with his permission, to have accountability. Either he or his wife will call you tomorrow.” This morning at 10:15 I got a text saying they called and booked the appointment.

So that’s implementation. That is, instead of talking about it, it’s acting on it. That’s implementation. If you need life insurance, buy it. If you need long-term care insurance, buy it. If you need to transfer money from something aggressive to more conservative, transfer it. And my job is to say, “Steve, you as a client said you wanted this; correct? We have to take this action.”

And if you reach a point of where you don’t do it, I simply say, “Steve, do we need to cross this off the list?” Because, see, if I have to keep badgering you about this, you’re going to get frustrated and it’s a waste of my time and energy. So let’s either do it or let’s agree not to do it, and it’s okay either way. People don’t get mad at me. See, the thing is, we together determine what’s important for you, and if it’s no longer important, it’s okay. It’s okay.

Gordon: So let me just make sure I understand. So together with the client you co-create the strategy. Take the client’s vision of what they want financially in the future through retirement or maybe even before retirement and into retirement, and then maybe even beyond the time that they’re on the planet, what legacy they want to leave. You take all of that into account. Okay, that’s the vision.

Curry: Correct.

Gordon: And then you figure out what they’ve got and what you can still use, and maybe to reach the vision, there are some changes that need to be made. If there are, that’s the strategy that you sort of map out, almost like a prescription.

Curry: Well said. So we agree on what needs to be done and now what is the best way to do it. So strategy, the way I describe it, would be what is the best way to get what you want done? Because really, is it just one way? I’ll give you a quick example that’s very controversial out there. Which life insurance plan is better? Term insurance, universal life, variable universal life, or whole life?

Gordon: I don’t have any idea.

Curry: It depends on the client. If I’m working with a young couple in their thirties because their parents asked them to work with me, I’m going to say, “Buy all the term insurance you can get. Protect your future insurability. We’ll argue about whole life and universal life in the future.” If someone is my age, sixty-four, term insurance is a waste of my money. Why would I have term insurance? Only one reason, to allow me to have protection until I upgrade it later. So it depends upon the client’s needs.

And I get so frustrated with my industry because somebody will say, “The only way to do your insurance is X, Y, and Z.” That’s wrong. That’s not accurate. Maybe we have a blend of different products. For a long time, I had whole life and term insurance. Why? Because I didn’t have enough cash flow to justify having all whole life insurance. I had to pay some bills. I had to educate some kids and grandkids. So that’s a good example.

So now the strategy might be we blend products. We have this product, another product, yet a third product, and that’s the part where I love what I do because my clients are not under pressure to buy anything, because right up front the first meeting there’s no charge, but then we’ll agree on a fee. They pay the fee, I present the information to them.

There’s only four things they can do with it, Steve. They can ignore it, do nothing, throw it in the trashcan; implement it all by themselves; go to another advisor, a competitor; or work with the Curry team, which is me and my team of advisors around me and a support team. So I have zero pressure to sell anything and my client has zero pressure to buy anything because of the process we use, the secure retirement method.

If I’m just pedaling products, then I’ve got to make a sale to, quote, justify my time with you. You don’t like that as a consumer. I don’t like it. I don’t like the implied or the outright pressure, “Hey, you have to buy from me because I gave you something of value.” No, no, no, no. Let’s agree upfront that there’s a value. Put a dollar value on it, write a check for the planning fee, and then do what you want with it. A different approach, isn’t it.

Gordon: It’s a very different approach. And so what I see here is that you’ve really… you have a process to guide someone through so that they can get to the point where you’ve co-created a plan, and once you’ve co-created the plan and you get into the implementation phase, there are things that the client will have to do, and you’re there almost as a coach to guide them through that piece. Because, I mean, all plans are great, but if you don’t implement the plan it really at the end of the day hadn’t had any impact. So you’re guiding them and helping them and some of these things are difficult to do.

You mentioned the doctor that needed to get a will. We don’t all want to go sit with an attorney and get a will done, but having that extra bit of accountability sometimes is very, very valuable to get the things done that we don’t necessarily want to do, but we know that we need to do.

Curry: Absolutely. And it’s not just me helping with that. I have a team around me, so sometimes it will be me. Sometimes it will be one of my teammates that would help with that process. Sometimes it’s another associate. Heck, sometimes it’s a competitor. I’m in situations where sometimes some of my competitors, a friendly competitor will call me and say, “Would you please help me with this case. I don’t understand the Social Security; I don’t understand the retirement planning side.” Because that’s my specialty. Now, when I first started September 1975, I just sold life insurance and I got tired of that. I wanted to do the planning. I wanted to be more creative. How do we take the pieces of the puzzle, dump them on the floor, and build something together?

Gordon: That’s really exciting, John. Now, coming back to this pamphlet that I’ve got that you’ve created. Inside there are a couple of pieces here that I think are very powerful. You’ve got one that’s titled, “The Secure Retirement Scorecard,” and on it, you’ve got a whole series of… There are ten statements and it gives you an opportunity to sort of rate where, you know, as an individual you might stand on each of those. And I’m just going to read a couple of them and maybe you can tell me why you think this is important and the impact that it has, the clarity that it brings for people.

So on here, there are statements like: “I have a clear well-defined vision of my future.” You say, you know, another statement is, “I have a step-by-step action plan to achieve my retirement goals,” or, “I have a trusted team of advisors helping me to achieve my goals.” So you’ve got some statements on here and there are ten all together. Those are just kind of a sampling, but as I look down the entire list and I’ve gone through this as a client, at the end of it I’m able to get a really clear picture of what’s… just in my opinion what’s working well and where maybe I have some holes. And that, in and of itself, is valuable.

Curry: I think there’s tremendous value there because what it does, it allows you in the privacy of your home or your office to do your own assessment. And I do a lot of telephone appointments, see, where they’re twenty minutes, thirty minutes long. People will complete this ahead of time, call my office, schedule a telephone appointment, and we’ll go through it together.

Now, one of two things will happen… actually, one of three things, but the two bookends are somebody will say, “Wow, I really need your help. I’m struggling with this.” The other end is somebody says, “I don’t need anyone’s help. This is letting me know everything is just fine.” Maybe they’ll zoom in and say, which is in the middle, “I need help in one particular area.”

I think people come to me and say, “Well, I don’t want to do the planning process at all. Frankly, I just want to buy a long-term care insurance policy. Will you help me get it?” Of course. So now when I do the planning, now you’ve hired me by offering your business to me, I get paid whatever commission they pay me for selling that product. I will do that if it’s appropriate.

Gordon: Really what you’re doing is you’re empowering an individual to understand where they may need help and where they may not need help. Or maybe it’s everywhere or maybe it’s nowhere or maybe it’s one or two or five things, but you’re empowering them to know that before they ever get on the telephone with you or anybody else.

Curry: “Empower” is a great word because, instead of me taking the power away from the client and now I’m this big shot, know-it-all advisor who has all these designations after his name, I’m giving you a tool where you could go through and assess what’s most important to you and your family. It gives us a place to start when we have the conversation and that’s all it is. It’s what I call the retirement conversation. We’re sitting there and talking about where you are today and where you want to be.

Gordon: Now, in a few minutes, we’ll share with people how they can request a copy of the scorecard so they can experience this for themselves, but before we get there, John, I want to move on to the next piece of this pamphlet, which I think is really powerful. And it’s called “Your Retirement Vision.” And if it’s okay with you, I’d like to actually just read the four questions that you have there. I think they’re powerful questions.

Curry: Okay.

Gordon: The first question starts with a statement: “Think ahead to the day of your retirement. Looking back from that day, what has to have happened along the way for you to feel happy about your retirement?” How does that impact people when you ask it?

Curry: It’s shocking. When I first did this back in 2000… well, the first copyright back in 2003… I did it before… all of a sudden people would look at me and they go, “Wow. I don’t know.”

And I always said and still do, “I know you don’t know, but if you did know, what would the answer be?”

And they’ll start telling me. They’ll say, “Well, you know, I’m healthy. I have a great relationship with my spouse and my kids. I have money in the bank. I have an adequate income.” So all of a sudden, they start building their future. And then once we have that vision of what it looks like, then we can measure to see if what they have will get us close or is it way off? And then that’s the starting point.

Gordon: The second question on here, and I love that you then begin to break this down. You ask: “What obstacles and concerns stand in your way to achieving your vision of retirement?”

Curry: Yes, because there are obstacles. There are things that get in your way. For example, ___________ (audio time 26:22) to come in and he said, “Well, I’m the biggest obstacle.”

I say, “I don’t understand.”

He said, “The truth is my wife and I fight about money because, you know, I watch all the talking heads on TV and I thought I knew all of it and I’ve been investing our money and for the past ten years we’re flat out even. I’ve made no money and overall lost no money but have had no growth. Zero growth.”

I say, “Wait a minute. With all of the bull market we’ve had, how could you not have some growth?”

He said, “Because every time something changed, I moved my money around. So the biggest obstacle is me.”

For others, they’ll say, “Well, the biggest obstacle is we’re not able to save enough money. We have too much debt. The biggest obstacle is I’ve got two adult children that moved back in, so I’m spending my money that I planned to save for retirement taking care of them.”

I hear all kinds of things. Stuff that, if I wrote a book about it, nobody would believe it. They’d say there’s no way that that’s occurring. But you have to remember, I see… the days that I choose to see clients, I see four to six clients a day, and I see all kind of stories, good stories, sad stories, but there’s a lot of obstacles. Maybe it’s paying taxes. “Yeah, I’m in a higher tax bracket. After I pay my taxes I don’t have enough money.”

Another obstacle could be someone’s health. “Hey, I would love to work. I can’t. I have medical problems. I can’t work. I’ve become disabled.” There are a lot of issues here.

Gordon: Let’s go to the third question. The third question here is: “What are the most important actions you must take to overcome these obstacles and concerns?”

Curry: That question took a while to work on, because I wanted a question that would let you the client determine what you feel like the steps are, and that’s why I came up with that question, because I don’t like it when someone points their finger and says, “You know, John, you’ve got to do this, this, and this.”

My standard answer is, “I don’t gotta do nothing.” I have the right to die broke. I have the right to go to jail because I didn’t pay my taxes. I don’t have to do anything, so I resent it when somebody’s like poking their finger at me saying I’ve got to do something. So I say, “Okay. Let’s take that finger away and give you the client the opportunity to tell me what you think the actions are.”

Now, I may not agree with you. I have the right to disagree if we have a good, healthy relationship, but I want you to be thinking about what steps need to be taken. And I’ll tell you what I hear most of the time, almost every time. They need to spend less and save more. “I’m spending too much money today, enjoying life, and it’s going to hurt me later in life.” That’s what I hear most of the time.

Gordon: I love… and this fits with the theme of everything that we’ve talked about and, really, coming back to that word “empower.” All the way through here, you’re empowering the people that you work with to own their financial future, to create their financial future. And I think that’s so different and refreshing from what happens most of the time.

Curry: Thank you. I think that’s the way it should be, because it is your future. It’s not my future. Hey look, my plan’s in place. I know if I drop dead today my family is taken care of. If I become disabled, I get money tax free to pay my bills. If I want to retire today, I could. I could literally walk out this door today and retire. I choose not to. I’m on a mission, Steve. I’m going to help as many people as possible with my books, my CDs, my DVDs, my webinars, my live events. All they have to do is say, “I want the help.” They don’t have to buy a product. There’s ways they can learn. So my view is, help as many people as I can. You know? I don’t want to retire. I hope that I’m like George Burns. One hundred years old when I die and they have to cancel engagements because I died.

Gordon: What is it about that mission? Why? Why do you…

Curry: Do you want the truth?

Gordon: I want the truth. Why are you so passionate about this?

Curry: My grandfather and my father. My grandfather retired from the State of Florida Department of Transportation out of Defuniak Springs, Florida. Doesn’t matter if you’re in the corporate world or in the state government. Doesn’t matter where you work, the concept is the same. My grandfather retired healthy as a horse. He lived… flat lived for four years in retirement. Because of the lousy advice he got, the day he died his pension died with him, and my grandmother got squat for the rest of her life. She lived to be one week shy of ninety-five years old. Died at age ninety-four. She lost all that money for almost thirty years, twenty-seven years. So he took a pension option that when he died it died also. So she suffered.

My father worked at the same place my grandfather did. He saw what my grandfather did, and he chose a different option. So he chose an option to take care of him and my mother for the rest of their lives, but he gave up tens of thousands of dollars every year in retirement income. He retired at sixty-two. He died August 15 of 2015 at age eighty-five. So for twenty-three years… twenty-three years my dad settled for less income than he could have had for him and my mom. Now Mom’s taken care of now, but they could’ve used so much more of that income to do things during their lives together in post-retirement. That’s why.

I have the passion for it. I’ll stand the ground. People say take a stand. Hell no. I am the stand when it comes to retirement income planning. I’ll fight for you, and I’ll fight with you if it’s important to you. And if it’s not important, we’ll say goodbye and part ways on a friendly basis. But that’s why.

And sitting with my father over the years, begging him and pleading with him to let me help him with stuff, but his attitude was, “Hey, I’ve got it taken care of. Don’t worry about it.” It wasn’t taken care of. It wasn’t.

And one day I told him, I said, “You know, Dad, I help total strangers with this stuff and you won’t let me help you.” But it was pride, and it was a individualist attitude that my grandfather and my father both had, and frankly, they were a little scared. They didn’t want anybody to know about their poor decisions and not taking action. So that’s why.

And frankly, I’ve worked with, oh, maybe thousands of people. I went to a funeral yesterday of a gentleman who’s been a client for thirty-five years, and most of what we did for him was on the insurance side and the retirement planning side, you know. Eighty-something years old. The work that we did together will endure for the rest of his wife’s life and the rest of his two daughters’ lives. How can you not want to do that? How can you not have the passion to want to share that with people when you know you’re making a difference in someone’s lives?

Now, when I was younger, it was about money. I needed the money. Now it’s about how many people can I help. And if I never meet whoever listened to this recording, if I never meet you, if something that we have said today will help you get action in your life to improve what is done, God bless you. If I can help you, pick up the phone, call my office, book an appointment, come and see me, attend one of my webinars, whatever. And there’s no cost or obligation. If you want to work with me, great. If not, it’s okay.

Gordon: Wow. That’s powerful. So I want to come back to the last question here in this retirement vision and the last and fourth question is: What progress have you already made towards achieving your retirement vision?

Curry: I have that question there, Steve, because most people beat themselves up. They come in with “I don’t have this. I haven’t done that. I gotta do this. I gotta do this. I gotta do that.”

And I go, “Whoa, stop. Stop, stop, stop, stop. That’s all negative. That’s energy draining. Let’s focus on what you’ve done. Let’s give you credit for the actions you’ve already taken. Maybe you have X amount of money in your IRA. It didn’t get there by itself. So you’ve already saved some money in your IRA. You’ve reduced some spending. You’ve reduced your debt. You’ve taken action. Let’s make sure that you take a few minutes and give yourself credit for what you’ve already done. Focus on the positive.”

And I think about the word “team” all the time when I’m working with people. Time, energy, attitude, mission. Time, energy, attitude, mission. What’s your mission? Prepare for a secure retirement. What’s your attitude about it? Attitude will drive your action. If you have a great attitude and you want to improve it, you’ll do better. So that question helps you get in the right frame of attitude. It raises your energy level, and now you make the most productive use of your time and my time.

Gordon: It’s powerful stuff, John. Thank you for sharing what you’ve shared today. Now, I know people listening to this are probably really curious about this pamphlet that I keep referring to and then maybe they want a copy of it so that they can go through the secure retirement scorecard and the retirement vision and experience this for themselves. How can they get a copy of this?

Curry: Well, they can do a couple of things. Number one, they can send us an email. You can send it to john_curry@glic.com. I’ll repeat that: John underscore Curry, C-U-R-R-Y, at GLIC, G-L-I-C, dot com. Or you can go to my Website, John H Curry dot com. Remember the H… JohnHCurry.com, or they can call my office, 850-562-3000. You can call and request it. We can mail it to you, email it, whichever you prefer.

Gordon: Very good. John, thanks for spending some time today and talking with me. And for everybody listening, thank you so much for your time and we’ll talk real soon.

If you'd like to know more about John Curry's services, you can request a complimentary information package by visiting johnhcurry.com/podcast. Again, that is johnhcurry.com/podcast. Or you can call his office at 850-562-3000. Again, that is 850-562-3000. John H. Curry chartered life underwriter, chartered financial consultant, accredited estate planner, masters in science and financial services, certified in long-term care, registered representative and financial advisor at Park Avenue Securities LLC.
Securities products and services and advisory services are offered through Park Avenue Securities, a registered broker-dealer and investment advisor. Park Avenue Securities is a wholly-owned subsidiary of Guardian. North Florida Financial Corporation is not an affiliate or subsidiary of Park Avenue Securities. Park Avenue Securities is a member of FINRA and SIPC. This material is intended for general public use.
By providing this material we are not undertaking to provide investment advice for any specific individual or situation or to otherwise act in a fiduciary capacity. Please contact one of our financial professionals for guidance and information specific to your individual situation. All investments contain risk and may lose value. Past performance is not a guarantee of future results. Guardian, its subsidiaries, agents or employees do not provide legal tax or accounting advice. Please consult with your attorney, accountant and or tax advisor for advice concerning your particular circumstances.
Not affiliated with the Florida Retirement System. The Living Balance Sheet and the Living Balance Sheet logo are registered service marks of The Guardian Life Insurance Company of America, New York, New York copyright 2005-2020. This podcast is for informational purposes only. Guest speakers and their firms are not affiliated with or endorsed by Park Avenue Securities or Guardian and opinions stated are their own.
2020-97990 Expires 4/2022

Easy Ways to Improve Your Health for a Better Retirement

Retirement is not just about money. Physical fitness is also key.

My personal trainer Jason Harville shares easy ways you can stay fit, no matter how old you are… especially if you have any issues, conditions, or injuries.

This is not about becoming a bodybuilder. Rather it’s achieving a standard of fitness that incorporates flexibility, cardio and strength for better overall body function. That’s key to truly enjoying a long and healthy retirement.

Find out…

• The most important benefit of having a personal trainer

• The 3 elements of any successful fitness plan

• Exercises you can do right now to improve health

• A diet plan that makes sense in the real world

• The simple exercise you should do if you sit a lot at work or at home

Listen now…

2018-54345 Exp 3/20

Preparing for Life’s Unplanned Events

Trial lawyer Gary Anton had a tough – but rewarding and very accomplished – career in the legal profession. It taxed his personal life, but he had some good times along the way.

At the height of his career a serious but unexpected near-death medical emergency changed Gary’s outlook on life and how he did his job. Not to mention it compelled some serious action with end of life planning.

Gary shares how he adapted professionally and financially to his new reality.

Listen in to find out…

• The retirement planning you need that you don’t know about

• How health can impact your career and life – and how to make needed changes

• Financial planning you need for potential tough times

• Ways to take care of your surviving loved ones

• And more

Listen now…

GARY ANTON INTERVIEW 3/15/2018


John: Hey, folks, this is John Curry. I have the pleasure today of sitting across the table with my friend Gary Anton. Thank you for being here today.

Gary: You say it’s a pleasure. If you say it is, that’s correct.

John: Well, some people you encountered along the way because of your past life, they may not want to be around you even today.

Gary: Well, most of them, my wife included.

John: Inside joke, folks. Gary, for most of his career, was an attorney, a litigator, but more on that later. Today, we’re continuing a theme about planning for life’s unplanned events as much as you can, but also the concept of health and wealth. You can have a lot of money, Gary, and just be loaded to the gills with money, but if your health is bad, the money is not as important. And also, you said earlier that, if you have health problems, you could end up spending all of your money and have no wealth. So, we’ll touch on that also, but let’s start off about how we first met. In 1978, tell the folks where you were at that time, what you were doing.

Gary: You know, I don’t remember if I had just graduated undergraduate or was just starting law school, but it was ’78 and that’s when I graduated from undergraduate and started law school, so it was somewhere right around that time. And I think you gave me a cold contact, and I figured, Wait a second. I’m graduating from law school… I mean, I’m graduating from undergrad, going into law school. Maybe I need some insurance.

John: Right, back then, it was you replied to a mailing I did regarding mortgage protection, so you bought some life insurance to take care of the mortgage on your home.

Gary: That’s right.

John: That was our first step working together. It was a long time ago.

Gary: That was.

John: Long time ago.

Gary: That mortgage is long since paid off.

John: Yes, isn’t that a great thing?

Gary: Yes.

John: That is a good thing. So, tell us a little bit about what type of career did you have in law?

Gary: I had a good career. I actually enjoyed what I was doing. It was all civil law. Graduated law school and entered the Bar in 1981. When I got admitted to the Bar, I was 6-2, blond hair, blue eyes. Thirty-six, -eight years later I’m six-foot under, bald, and blind. So, I think I had a successful career, but I had a very good career, a very rewarding career in law, very trying so to speak and very pressure-packed, but very challenging, and I was always up to the challenge. I liked it.

John: Was the majority of your work trial work?

Gary: Yes, that’s why I say I was 6-2, blond…

John: Got beat up a lot.

Gary: … oh yeah, when I started trying cases. Now look at me. Yeah, most of my work was trial work and very, very demanding, extremely demanding timewise away from home, away from vacations, having to cancel vacations, having to cancel bowl games. And those are the types of things, when you don’t control your calendar, somebody else dictates, particularly judges, when you need to be somewhere and what time. So that was a big issue, not being in control of my calendar and it was stressful, but it was very enjoyable.

John: Very rewarding, I would think, too.

Gary: Yes, oh, very personally rewarding. I don’t want to blow my own horn, but I did real well. I was an expert in what I did. I’m still certified in certain areas of the law as an expert by the Florida Bar, and I rose to the top at what I was doing. I was representing major companies. I’ve had cases decided by the United States Supreme Court. I’ve appeared in courts all over the country. I’ve taught law for ten years. I’ve lectured all over the country. I focused on a topic throughout my career, and I enjoyed what I was doing so I excelled at it.

John: That’s great.

Gary: And then health.

John: Let’s break down what you just said though before we move on to that next about health. You made a comment about control of your time, and what went through my mind is time freedom and money freedom. We see so many clients who… they hate their jobs, so they can’t wait till they get able to retire, and then all of a sudden, they’ve got all this time, but they haven’t planned for the time. “Well, what do I do?” They have no hobbies, no interests, so what you’re talking about is controlling your time to the extent that you can, but you also made a comment about pressure. Pretty much everything we do nowadays as far as work puts some type of pressure on us. In our world it’s regulators. And we have to be very careful what we say and do because people, state, federal… they’re taking a look at everything we do. So, you don’t dare do anything improper… unless you’re stupid.

So, let’s go back to what you said about time, especially judges. Without revealing a name of anyone, share with our audience what you shared with me about the vacation you had to cancel. Because I remember early on in our relationship, you were mad as hell because you had to cancel a trip.

Gary: Yeah, we will leave the name of the judge anonymous. We had planned a Christmas vacation with family in South Carolina, and we were going to conclude that vacation with a bowl game, the Gator Bowl on January 1st and then, oh, a couple of weeks maybe in December… I knew we had planned this long before except for the bowl game, of course. We found out about the bowl game and were able to set it up. But after that, the judge decided he was going to set a trial because w couldn’t settle a case, and he set the trial date the day after January 1st. January 2nd I was to report to trial. Well, what did that do? That messed up my vacation because I’m trying to have fun with my family, relax, and in the meantime, my whole stomach is in knots getting ready for this trial and wondering what was going to happen. And sure enough, we had to cut the vacation, the Christmas vacation short, drove right past the Gator Bowl, waived my tickets out the window on the way past, and I still have those tickets. Never made it.

John: As a memento.

Gary: Yes. That is frame worthy.

John: You should frame those and put them on the wall.

Gary: I have my Woodstock tickets framed, because that was a very favorable memory. That memory of going by the Gator Bowl when the ’Noles are playing… It was a major game at the time. It was back in the ’80s and the ’Noles were doing okay. Yeah. No, I still have those tickets.

John: All right, and you just said Woodstock. Did you go to Woodstock?

Gary: Yes.

John: I never knew this about you. So tell us that story. I want to hear this.

Gary: Well, I had graduated from high school in late May of 1969 and the day after graduation a bunch of us jumped in a Volkswagen van. I had a guitar that served as a suitcase. I had a duffel bag that had some clothes and we just took off to New York. And then I decided I wanted to go visit some friends up in Boston. I had $20 in my pocket and it was a $10 trip, a $10 ticket to fly from New York to Boston. Well, I got to Boston with $10 in my pocket, and I couldn’t find my friend, so I hung around there for a while. And it was 1969. It was in the middle of the heyday of long hairs and the hippies and there was music everywhere and Boston was great. It had 30-something colleges and universities. I was having the time of my life. And I got wind of this concert that was going to happen in New York, and I sent away and bought my tickets ahead of time, $5 each day, so $15 for three days’ worth of music. And they ended up having to change the location at the last moment because the City of Woodstock said no, and then they did it in Bethel.

John: On the farm.

Gary: Yeah, on Max Yasgur’s farm. Though I remember about 8:00 in the morning, I stuck my thumb out on the interstate hiking to New York. Go across Massachusetts into upstate New York and didn’t bring anything with me. I had my clothes on my back, I had my tickets, I had a wine flask. I figured I’d run out of wine; I could put water in it anyway, and that’s about all I went with. I didn’t have a change of clothes. I didn’t have any knapsacks or no blankets, no sleeping bags, and as we got closer, the traffic just started backing up. Now, I was early. I got there on Friday morning basically, Friday afternoon, but the traffic was so backed up. The traffic was stopped and I was hitchhiking so I just got out of the car and would walk. When traffic would start moving again, everybody would jump on the back of the car they were next to until the traffic stopped again, Then you’d drop off and walk a little bit more. And I got there just as they were taking down the fences, and I walked over that hill. I never saw so many people… that many people in my life. Still haven’t seen that many people in my life.

John: I was going to say you probably haven’t since.

Gary: I mean, that was just an awe-inspiring sight and for three days. It actually went into Monday morning and it was just a great time. Lots of good people. The conditions were terrible, the food; the toilets were overflowing; and it rained; it was muddy, and everybody was just enjoying themselves. The music turned out to be a soundtrack because there was so much going on around. I didn’t sit down much and just sit there and listen to the music. I did, but a lot of the time I got up and wandered around and made friends. I didn’t go with anybody so I was just exploring. I ended up behind the stage at one point somehow. I don’t know how I got there, and there were a bunch of musicians that had been playing and were jamming behind the stage. I had no idea who they were. About 3:00 in the morning and there were people just sitting there jamming. I spent an evening working in what they call the trip tent where people were having bad LSD trips. And all I had to do was sit there and talk to people and it worked out great because it was raining and I was in a dry spot.

John: And you were dry.

Gary: I was dry. So I made the most of it. The music was phenomenal. The people were just absolutely great. It’s the most influential time of my life, the most influential three days… four or five days actually, because I got there early and stayed late. Really had a big impact on me.

John: That’s an awesome story.

Gary: And I have the poster hanging up in the club, as well as my tickets from Woodstock, because I went with hardly anything, but the only thing I came back with was a shirt on my back and the tickets, which were in my pocket. I had a military-style shirt on, long sleeves, button-down pocket, so I was able to keep the tickets. I lost everything else that I had come with. I went back with the tickets and still have them.

John: That’s awesome. You mentioned club. Tell them what club you’re referring to and we’ll circle back and tell them more about your club later.

Gary: Oh, yeah, the Bradfordville Blues Club. That’s what I’ve done to redeem myself for everything I did these 36 years as a lawyer, and I’m redeeming my karma. And Kim and I have run the club for about 16 years. It’s a blues club internationally recognized. Got an international award again this year, named one of the top music vendors in the world for six years in a row.

John: Very nice.

Gary: Doesn’t make any money. It’s an unintentional nonprofit, but I’m having the time of my life.

John: So, rebuilding that karma, as you put it.

Gary: Rebuilding that karma and reenergizing and taking advantage of my retirement.

John: That’s a good segue into why you retired. Talk a little bit about why you got out of the litigation world. You’re still a licensed attorney. You still do some legal work, I think.

Gary: Yes.

John: But tell us what happened. What caused you to take an early retirement?

Gary: I was in good health other than small minor things, blood pressure, stuff like that, but otherwise I was in pretty good health and Kim and I had gone to the first Bowden Bowl in Clemson. We came back that Sunday. We usually take all the back roads because we like to see the back country, but this time, it was late and we decided to take the interstate. And within 15 minutes of the time that we made it to the house, all of a sudden, I was just in excruciating pain. I have never felt pain that bad in my life. And Kim immediately took me to the hospital, and it turned out I had what was called acute pancreatitis. Gallstones traveled out of my gallbladder into the common bile duct and lodged in the bile duct and shut down many of my internal organs. And that put me in the hospital for a month, intensive care for a couple of weeks and two weeks of induced coma.

And that took a lot out of me, physically, emotionally, mentally. I mean it was a heck of a rehabilitation period because I was in the hospital for so long, and it made me realize that life is fleeting. I mean, I was coming back from a football game. I was just having a great time, and the next thing I know, I’m in the emergency room. They didn’t think I was going to make it. They summoned my family, and that’s how quickly things can turn, and it did turn for me.

Fortunately, I was able to recover from it and able to resume my life, but I wasn’t quite able to resume the rigors of the practice that I had before. But that also caused me to change my focus, my life focus, doing more of the things that I wanted to do, spending more time with my family, spending less time practicing law, not worrying about billing 15 hours a day, weaning myself from the litigation practice that had taken up so much of my time and doing more of the things that I wanted to do.

John: How old were you about this time?

Gary: Forty-eight.

John: Forty-eight. Young man.

Gary: Yeah. At the pinnacle of my career at the time.

John: So many times in my career, 43 years now of doing this, I hear stories very similar. For me, it was my heart surgery July 10, 2008, open heart surgery, three blocked arteries. For others it’s being diagnosed with diabetes or something like that or heart trouble. And I hear people say, “You know what? I’ve got to slow down. I’ve got to get some redirection in my life.” It’s not just about going to work and making money and, you know, have the big status symbol and all that stuff. And sadly, some people never get that. But what was your transition? Once you recovered, did you just cold turkey say, “I’m done with this?”

Gary: No, I weaned myself into mediating cases. I quit handling major litigation. I was handling class actions, which had me very, very busy traveling all over the country, very, very stressful, time-consuming. I couldn’t practice for a few months during the rehabilitation period, so my rehab period actually made a lot of the decisions for me. And so, when I was finally able to get back to the point where I could practice, I had decided I was not going to continue on on the same path. And I found something much more amenable to my style and that was becoming a mediator, where I was mediating cases and not being in the middle of the ring duking it out with an opponent but actually as the referee in the ring, trying to help people settle things. And that was much more suitable to my desires at the time to get away from the extreme rigors of practicing law and litigating and trying to spend a little bit more time doing what I wanted to do. And in fact, Kim and I… that was 1999 and Kim and took over the Bradfordville Blues Club in January 2002. So it kind of led into my next life venture.

John: I remember us having an appointment one time to talk about your business stuff, and I had suggested we have an early meeting, like breakfast or maybe 8:30 or 9:00. Back in those days, I was seeing five, six people every day, started at 7 or 7:30 breakfast, and I remember you saying to me, “John, I can do lunch, but I’m not going to do breakfast. I’m not going to do 9, probably nothing until after 10.” And you’re nodding your head. Do you remember that?

Gary: Oh, absolutely.

John: Tell everybody who’s listening some of what your attitude and philosophy was back then, because I loved it, because you took a stand and you did the things you wanted to do. So share that.

Gary: I did. I mean, once I got control of my calendar where it wasn’t being dictated by deadlines and rules and courts…

John: And judges.

Gary: … I decided I would go to work when I woke up, and it was rare that I got up before 10:00. I’d show up in the office around noon. If I had a mediation, they started at 10:00. I already decided that I was going to relax a lot more and not be in the rat race of having to wake up every morning and get to the office and shave and shower and wear a coat and tie. I came in the office in very, very casual clothes. Still do when I do go out except when I mediate. I will put on a tie and a coat, but nowadays, I’ve got a pair of clean jeans and a pair of dirty jeans. I wash the dirty ones and wear the clean ones and then wash the other pair.

John: You’re like a cowboy. Two pair of jeans, one you wear and one you’ve got for backup.

Gary: Yeah.

John: You know, I’m just thinking about that. I don’t think I’ve seen you wearing a tie in probably 20 years.

Gary: Yeah.

John: I bet it’s been 20 years.

Gary: It has. I won’t wear a tie. When I had a court appearance, I would wear a tie. When I mediate, I would dress appropriately, but other than that, I’ve given away most of my suits and ties. In fact, I had so many ties, I gave a lot of them to this one woman who comes out to the club, Peggy Adair. And she made a comforter out of them.

John: Wow.

Gary: And I use that to cover my sound board at the club. So I’ve got a neat blanket that’s made out of my old ties that I see every day at the club.

John: Next time I’m in the club I want to see that. I want to see that because I bet that’s cool. So, talk a little bit about the transition. So you became… you did more work as a mediator, the referee. I can see that. So instead of having to duke it out, you’re trying to get people to resolve their problems instead of fighting. So how was your health at that point and how did it progress?

Gary: The health was okay. I mean, I never really returned to the pre-pancreatitis state. I mean, physically I was… they had to remove some of my organs and I had rehab that I had to do, and I just was tired. So that was part of me slowing down and not exerting myself as much. So I kind of slowed down what I was doing and slowly but surely moved out into advising clients instead of litigating. I made a conscious decision I was not accepting any more cases that required me to go to court. I referred those out. I had clients that I had built up over my 30-something years of practice that I continued to maintain and did a little bit of advice and consulting work. I did mediations and then March 9, 2016, I had a liver transplant and that really changed everything, because I knew at that point… I didn’t know when the transplant was going to occur but I knew it was going to occur sometime soon, because I was way up on the list. So I had to make the decision to close my office because I knew I was not going to be able to afford running the office. I was not going to be able to practice, and there was going to be quite a downtime with the liver transplant. So at that point I decided, There goes my law practice. I will focus on mediations once I get back on my feet. And that’s what I did. So, essentially, my health in 1999 dictated my career path, and then the liver transplant further dictated a change in my career path. And that’s when it was almost entirely mediations, nothing but mediations and my club.

John: When you came in the door and Jay asked you a question about how’s your day going or something, you made a comment about it’s a good day. You woke up this morning and you’re looking down at the grass, not up at the roots.

Gary: Yeah, my New Year’s resolution is to wake up every day, and so far, from 2017, 2018, I’ve kept that resolution.

John: That’s a good thing.

Gary: Yes, it’s a good thing. It’s good to be seen. I’m not being viewed. Life is good.

John: Something I’ve always admired about you, Gary, since I met you is you’ve always got this upbeat mindset. Some people hearing this and some people thinking about this would say, “Wow, how do you deal with something like that?” And the truth is you just deal with it. But over the years, you’ve never had this woe-is-me attitude. You’ve always just said, “Hey, this is life. I’m going to deal with it,” and you’ve adjusted. Talk about that.

Gary: Stuff happens in life, and there’s things that you can’t control. And I’ve just realized the things that I can control. Those things I can’t control sometimes throw curve balls my way, and I just have to overcome them and just have to adapt, though I’ve always kind of had a flexible attitude. It doesn’t do any good to wallow. I know I have my physical limitations now based upon my health conditions. I have some cognitive limitations based upon my health conditions. I realize what they are and I just have to adapt to them, and I’ve always had a pretty good attitude. It’s just that… one thing I’ve always learned is there are certain things in life that are going to occur that you have no idea what they’re going to… what’s going to happen, when it’s going to happen, how it’s going to change your life. And when it does, then it’s a matter of adjusting and living with that condition and accepting it. I wish I didn’t have to have the liver transplant. I wish I didn’t have that pancreatitis, but it’s all had silver linings. I have a much better quality of life now, and I don’t have the income I did, but Kim and I have done a good job of tightening our belts and living within our means and enjoying the time that we have. And I thoroughly enjoyed spending the day yesterday with my granddaughter.

John: Great.

Gary: You know, here I was in the middle of the afternoon spending time with my granddaughter and my daughter. That’s what life is all about. It’s the good things, the small things in life.

John: Well, you know, over the years, what you and Kim have done is you’ve been good stewards of what you have. Even when you had the higher income, you never were, that I know of, frivolous with your money. You were always serious and took good care of that.

Gary: So, yes, Kim and I did some traveling. Yeah, we enjoyed ourselves. I have not been cheated. If I die at the end of this interview, I can say that I’ve not been cheated in life. I’ve enjoyed life, and it’s a little bit different than it was. I don’t have the security that I wish I would have had, because I’ve had to use most of my retirement, but that’s part of what happens. We planned for it, the unexpected occurred, and it was there.

John: Very good. And you made some tough decisions along the way, you and Kim, from the standpoint of you set money aside to save in the 401k. I helped to a point, but let’s be honest about it. You had to take action and follow through. You can have the best plan in the world, but if you don’t take action, what good is it? So the two of you took action.

Gary: Automatic withdrawal from my paychecks, my salaries. I mean, it was money I never saw.

John: Yeah.

Gary: That was the way to do it. I just figured out how much did I need to live on and everything after that went into the 401k.

John: Right. Right. What advice would you offer people who might be listening to this and they’re on the edge about something, either their health or they’ve not done a good job of saving money or planning for retirement? What advice would you offer anyone who’s listening?

Gary: Yeah. Why spend money on insurance? And then, boom! I remember one day you called me and said, “You’ve been denied for life insurance. You better go talk to your doctor.” And I found out that I had a virus that made me uninsurable, and so, from that point forward, I had to live with what I had. And, you know, that happened totally unexpected. That was something that I had no inkling of, and I was fortunate while I was young to plan ahead and purchase life insurance that I still have for the most part. You know, I suggest to anybody who is waffling on health or life insurance, that’s something you need to take care of when you’re in good health, because you don’t know when that health is going to disappear, that good health is going to disappear and you become uninsurable.

John: I remember sitting there and the doctor tells me, “We don’t need a stent today because we’ll be doing triple bypass.” It changes your health real quick. And I’m just thinking I’m out of breath because I had gotten overweight and not been exercising. The only thing I know, I’m in there and they’re doing a little triple bypass open heart surgery. So the health status can change just like that.

Gary: Just like that.

John: It changes. It changes that quickly.

Gary: And without any warning. You know, sometimes you do have warnings but many times you don’t have that warning, so you can’t rely on, “I’m going to wake up the next morning,” or, “I’m going to be insurable and I’ll pick up that extra hundred thousand dollars in life insurance,” or “Maybe I’ll get a better health insurance policy.” The thing to do is, while you’re young, while you’re healthy, to take care of those things. I used to moan and groan and complain about how much I was paying in insurance premiums, and I still do, but had I not, I mean, I now, at least, if I pass, my wife and my daughter and my granddaughter are in good shape.

John: Right.

Gary: If my wife passes, I’m in good shape though, you know, we’ve planned for the, you know, the future and nobody gets out of this alive. I don’t know who’s going to go first, but at least, we’re able, when we were able to plan ahead, to buy the insurance that we needed, including the health insurance.

John: In our world, we talk about protect your days first. So many people say, “Well, I’ll get around to the insurance side later.” So we believe in the philosophy, protect your days first, and that’s what you did way back when you were a young guy and I was young. We’re not so young anymore, but that’s what you did.

Gary: Just because we’re bald and blind and gray and….

John: Well, you’ve got more hair than I do. Yours is longer, too. But definitely bald on top here though. But that’s what you guys did. You and Kim did the right thing early on, and you planned for your future. And now, you still have a good lifestyle.

Gary: Yeah, and when we planned for it, when we bought it, I didn’t think, you know, I didn’t think anything of it. I’m not going to need life insurance any time soon. I’m not going to need that health insurance. You know, it was… I got good advice and I took the advice I was given, you know, to the extent that I could. So, I mean it’s… and you give good advice. You’ve given me… we’ve been working together 40 years now.

John: That’s right.

Gary: Forty years.

John: And I’ve been doing it… You know, I just had a thought. It wasn’t just about you could die. You benefitted by the living benefits of your insurance, too.

Gary: Yes, I did.

John: You’ve been able to use money and do things, then put it back, so it’s been a good journey. Talk a little bit about what the future holds. Tell us a little bit about what you do with the Bradfordville Blues Club. When you bought that thing, I thought, You’re doing what? So tell us how that happened. Take the last few minutes and share that and tell your story, because I think that’s your future.

Gary: I had been a music fan. In fact, I played guitar. Well, wait a second. I thought I could play guitar.

John: Yeah, same here. I thought I could.

Gary: Yeah, I even went to the Berklee College of Music in Boston, one of the most prestigious music schools in the country and still thought I could play guitar. But then when I went to law school, it kind of pulled me away from my passion and I started living it vicariously by going out to what was called Dave’s C.C. Club at the time. And Kim and I were there just about any time the club was open. We helped Dave out. I loved the music. I loved the blues. Now, the club itself is just a phenomenal location and very unique character and history behind it, and we found ourselves in a situation where Dave had to close it because they had to move. And I just so happened to come into a little bit of money at the time. I can’t remember what it was. I sold an asset or something, and Dave said, “I’m closing.” I said, “Okay, I’ll buy your assets.” And Kim and I talked about it and said okay. We had no idea what we were getting into. Never at all.

John: You were a lawyer. You weren’t a manager of a club.

Gary: I was a lawyer and I was still practicing law and I was wondering, you know, okay, it might be fun for a year or two. You know, we’ll try it out and see what happens. And 16 years later, I haven’t worked a day yet. It’s allowed me in my retirement to actually have fun. It’s something I do. I have less time now in my retirement than I did when I was practicing. I thought practicing was too time-consuming. The club is very time-consuming, but it’s so enjoyable I love what I do, and it allows me to not have to worry about… You know, I’m set with my Social Security and other income sources. The club doesn’t make any money. It’s an unintentional nonprofit. But again, it’s a quality of life issue. I’m enjoying the heck out of being able… every weekend I’ve got to listen to that stuff, some of the best music in the world. And the customers that come by there are such great people and it’s the community that helps keep us alive. So it’s just a lot of fun to do that. And as long as my health holds out and if people keep coming through the doors, you know, we’ll continue to have fun out there.

John: See, you’re doing something you enjoy doing, you’re benefitting from it because you get to hear the music, and you’re opening those doors to other people to come share your passion.

Gary: Yes, yes, and we developed a very, very good reputation. I don’t have to look for bands. I get five to ten requests a week for bands that want to play there, so we have our pick of the litter. And given the location where we are right on I-10, if you’re going into South Florida, Tampa, Miami, Jacksonville, you got to go through I-10. So the bands stop off on their way here or if they’re going up the East Coast. Or if they’re coming from Chicago going in this neck of the woods, they want to stop and play. So we get our pick of the litter, and that’s what’s made it so nice.

John: For people who don’t know where the club is, tell them where your physical location is and then tell them some of the bands that have played and what’s on the drawing board for the future.

Gary: Well, it’s the Bradfordville Blues Club. It’s off of Bradfordville Road. It’s off a dirt road called Moses Lane and then you crawl up a goat trail called… actually, you go down the dirt road, Sam’s Lane. The goat trail is Moses Lane, and you have to look for it. It’s off the beaten path. You just don’t drive by it and say, “Oh, let’s stop.” You’ve got to know where it is, and….

John: You’ve got to be intentional about finding it. The time I went I thought I was in the wrong place.

Gary: Oh, we get calls all the time. “I’m on some dirt road. I can’t be in the right place.” In fact, one of the musicians from San Francisco came and we had a bonfire out there, and when she showed up, a black musician, she saw a bunch of white guys hanging around the bonfire and she would not get out of the van. She thought she came up on a Klan rally she was so far back in the woods. But that’s the best asset and sometimes it’s the worst asset, because it’s so far out. Some people say it’s too far out, but I think people now have gotten used to it, but the first number of years, I mean, people say, “Oh, that’s too far to go.” But Tallahassee’s built up around us.

John: So they keep coming, too.

Gary: Oh, they keep coming. We have the same… we have a large group of people. We see a lot of the same people, lot of new people. It’s Friday and Saturday only so I don’t have to keep those hours all week long. Every now and then we might do something on a Sunday. We have a bluegrass event on Sundays and we have other events on a Thursday or…. It’s just a weekend-type of thing unless a special event is going to go on. And beer and wine is all it is. We have a lady who fries some of the best catfish this side of the Pacific, Ms. Ernestine. I mean, her catfish is world-renowned. People write about it. We have a lot of travel writers come out, a lot of travel writers. We probably have three dozen articles about the place and almost all of them talk about Ms. Ernestine’s catfish.

John: Nice. I haven’t had the catfish. I’ll have to check that out.

Gary: Well, the mullet’s not bad either. Mullet around here just ain’t a bad haircut. It’s a good-eating fish.

John: Very good fish. That’s right. Tell people how to go about getting tickets. If somebody wants to check it out and buy tickets, how do they do it?

Gary: Well, the Bradfordville Blues Club, we’re back in the woods down that goat trail, but we actually have electricity, running water, indoor plumbing, and a Website, bradfordvilleblues.com, and that has a calendar of events and you can link to the bands to see who’s showing up to see what they sound like. You can buy your tickets there and get reservations and discounts by buying online. And then it’s a matter of finding the place. A lot of people will come out there during the day, you know, because they don’t know where it is, so they come out during the day to find their way.

And we also got an award from the State of Mississippi Blues Commission. It’s called the Mississippi Blues Trail marker. It’s the only Blues Trail marker in the State of Florida. There’s about a dozen of them or so outside the State of Mississippi, but the award, the plaque, a big marker, was awarded because of the historical significance of the club to the blues and what was called the “chitlin’ circuit.” The musicians back in the ’30s, ’40s, ’50s, and ’60s, particularly the black musicians, weren’t very welcome in many places. And there were a circuit of clubs that they traveled, the black jazz musicians, blues musicians, the soul and R&B musicians, and they would stop by there. And we ended up getting a plaque from the State of Mississippi because of the historical significance because that place was there for people to stop by and play when they’re going from Mississippi to somewhere else. So, it’s a…. And I did not realize how significant that Blues Trail Marker was.

People drive up all the time. People plan vacations around the Blues Trail markers to visit them all. So we get people from all over the world. We’ve had people fly in from Italy just to come to the club. From Germany, we’ve had bands from Japan and all over the world, Israel. It’s a really neat club. It’s very, very unique. It’s out in the woods. It’s very rustic, but it is bona fide juke joint. Now, we’ve done nothing to change it. It looks like it did when it was first built. The paint’s still the same color. We dust it once a year whether it needs it or not. We change the lightbulbs every now and then.

John: That’s funny. You have fun. You’re having fun. Let’s circle back to this thing about karma you made a comment earlier about. A way of redeeming yourself for all the stuff you did as an attorney. I think you’re doing it; don’t you? You’re helping a lot of people have fun and you’re having fun.

Gary: Yes. That’s, you know, probably the most rewarding thing about the club are the comments that people give us, you know, how unique it is and thanks for doing that. And we get a lot of recognition from the arts community, the international arts community because of the cultural aspect of the club. And it’s just so rewarding to know that people enjoy going out there. Now, it’s not for everybody, but by and large, we’ve got a very dedicated group of followers, supporters, bands, agents. It’s just a lot of fun. I mean, we have a lot of special events. I’ll be conducting a wedding out there in a couple of weeks. I’ve conducted probably six, seven, eight weddings. Almost all of them, people who had met out there. One of the people actually got engaged. The man got down on his knees on the stage during the set break and proposed. So, it’s… yes, it’s very rewarding, personally rewarding.

John: I’m just looking at your face as you describe this, and every time you talk about the club, it’s always the same. Your eyes are bright, big ol’ smile, relaxed. You’re just like… as my grandfather would say, you’re in hog heaven.

Gary: I am. I’m having the time of my life. Sixteen years and I haven’t worked a day. I put in some blood, sweat, and tears. You know, there’s a lot of effort going into it, but it’s just so much fun. It’s the most enjoyable thing I’ve ever done in my life next to being married and being a grandparent and a parent. No, no, no, I wouldn’t say that. If I had my druthers, I would have started as a grandparent and skipped the parenting part. A lot more fun being a grandparent.

John: A friend of mine likes to say that having grandchildren is the reward for not killing your children.

Gary: Exactly, exactly. And now my daughter is, you know… revenge has set upon her. She’s dealing with the same stuff we had to deal with.

John: Well, let’s wrap up here, Gary, and let’s end by circling back and talking about how over the years what you’ve done is by training as an attorney. There were certain things you had to prepare for. You understood the importance of preparing for trial. You had to do your homework. Then you had to take action. And that applies in all areas of our lives. How would you respond to someone who says, “Yeah, I get that. That’s easy for you because you had the training as an attorney.” But how do you respond to someone who says that? And what advice would you have as far as how to get started and how to stay on track when all these things come at you and they can knock you off track?

Gary: One word… preparation. I mean, when I was an engineering inspector back in the ’70s for the State of Florida and Broward County, I didn’t have any real background in it, but I was hired in that capacity. I took some classes, but I prepared. I mean, I read a lot. I did whatever I could to educate myself. When I became a lawyer, I was up against some of the best lawyers in the state, in the city, and they were far more experienced than I was. I prepared and my preparation got me over the lack of experience. Preparing for the club, I have to prepare every week for the shows. It’s just a matter of focusing on something, knowing you’ve got to do something. You’ve got to recognize what you need to do, and then that is preparing. The preparation is the key to anything you do. When you’re cooking, you’ve got to have prep first, you know. When you’re getting ready to go out somewhere, you’ve got to prepare. Where are we going? What time do we need to be there? Preparation is the key to my life. That’s gotten me over a lot of hurdles.

And having somebody like yourself, and I’ve had many, many mentors in law who helped me prepare and helped me get to where I am. And would I have recognized a lot of the things that I needed to know without the mentoring, without the advice? No. And a lot of that’s listening to what people have to say and getting the right type of advice… and listening to it. Don’t just let it go in one ear and out the other but listen to it. I mean, we had a meeting a few weeks ago and I’ve gone back and I’ve reread through all the notes and the emails, and, you know, it’s a matter of following up, not just preparing but following up. But preparing is the key and then following up.

John: And that’s the thing I look at is the… I have always said I’ll outwork other people when I started early in my career. Work hard, work hard, work hard.

Gary: That’s right.

John: And always take care of your clients. Nothing, nothing is allowed to disrupt your client relationship. You always take care of your flock. Always.

Gary: Correct. Um-hum.

John: Gary Anton, thank you so much for taking the time today.

Gary: It’s been a pleasure for 40 years.

John: Thank you, my friend.

Gary: May we do another 40 years?

John: I hope we do. I hope we do.

Folks, I hope you enjoyed this presentation. Please, go out and check out the music at Bradfordville Blues Club. I know you’ll enjoy it. I will tell you though, take some earplugs, and if you forget yours, Gary has some available. But it’s a lot of fun.

Voiceover: If you'd like to know more about John Curry's services, you can request a complimentary information package by visiting johnhcurry.com/podcast. Again, that is johnhcurry.com/podcast. Or you can call his office at 850-562-3000. Again, that is 850-562-3000. John H. Curry chartered life underwriter, chartered financial consultant, accredited estate planner, masters in science and financial services, certified in long-term care, registered representative and financial advisor at Park Avenue Securities LLC.
Securities products and services and advisory services are offered through Park Avenue Securities, a registered broker-dealer and investment advisor. Park Avenue Securities is a wholly-owned subsidiary of Guardian. North Florida Financial Corporation is not an affiliate or subsidiary of Park Avenue Securities. Park Avenue Securities is a member of FINRA and SIPC. This material is intended for general public use.
By providing this material we are not undertaking to provide investment advice for any specific individual or situation or to otherwise act in a fiduciary capacity. Please contact one of our financial professionals for guidance and information specific to your individual situation. All investments contain risk and may lose value. Past performance is not a guarantee of future results. Guardian, its subsidiaries, agents or employees do not provide legal tax or accounting advice. Please consult with your attorney, accountant and or tax advisor for advice concerning your particular circumstances.
Not affiliated with the Florida Retirement System. The Living Balance Sheet and the Living Balance Sheet logo are registered service marks of The Guardian Life Insurance Company of America, New York, New York copyright 2005-2020. This podcast is for informational purposes only. Guest speakers and their firms are not affiliated with or endorsed by Park Avenue Securities or Guardian and opinions stated are their own.
2020-98149 Expires 4/2022
 

Creating an Effective End of Life Plan

Marylin Stallworth’s husband, Bill, died unexpectedly in October 2014.

The couple, married 50 years, had been enjoying a comfortable and secure retirement thanks to following through on sound financial planning.

But they had left a few key parts out of their plan that made a traumatic time for Marylin even worse.

In this episode, she shares what she would have done differently, what she’s doing to improve her end of life planning to help her son, and what actions she says you should take right now to make your loved ones’ lives easier when you pass away.

Listen to discover…

• The power of the Living Balance Sheet

• How to make sure your financial accounts are up-to-date (they might not be)

• The questions a funeral home will ask that your loved ones should know

• The 4 elements you must keep in mind for end of life planning

• And more…

Listen now…

2020-93791 Expires 1/2022

How A Life Coach Can Help You

You’re stuck. Perhaps in your job or business. Or you can’t seem to stay on track with your weight loss goals. Maybe your finances are a mess.

Modern life throws a lot at us. But whatever is holding you back… you don’t have to go it alone.

Connie Clark, of Striving Forward Coaching, is a life coach. And she shares how professionals like her help clients get from wherever they are now to where they want to be in their lives.

Tune in to find out…

• The crucial differences between a life coach and mentor

• Why your goals must be measurable, reasonable, and achievable

• The key to success in any coach-client relationship

• How to determine if you need a coach… and how to find the right one

• And more

Listen now…

 Transcript:

Curry: Hello. This is John Curry. I have sitting with me today my friend Connie Clark, and I’m excited about interviewing Connie, because she is a life and wellness coach. Her Website is StrivingForwardCoaching.com. You’ll hear more about that later. But, Connie, thank you for joining me today. I’m looking forward to learning more about your coaching.

Clark: Oh, thank you so much for having me.

Curry: My pleasure. Let’s start off with the very first question, which is obvious. How about explaining to me and our listeners what a life coach is. What is it you actually do?

Clark: Okay. That could be a long answer, but I’ll give you the short version. So a life coach forms a partnership with a client, and basically we help people get from where they are right now to where they want to be. And that may sound like a simple process, but with working with many different people we see, you know, a lot of people just get stuck in areas of their lives. And sometimes they don’t really know that they are stuck or how they got stuck or how they get unstuck especially. So we just sort of help them break it down a little bit, going to their thoughts. Like, how did… what’s going on in their mind. And we talked about this earlier. A lot of people want to go right to the action. Like, show me what to do and how. You know, show me how to get there. Show me what I need to do.

Curry: That’s probably most of the men, right? They want to do it now.

Clark: Exactly. A few women are like that, as well. And what we try to do is, you know, actions are important. We hear Nike: “Just do it.” But it’s not that simple so we really need to back up. It starts in the thought process and that helps us figure out where we got there and then helps us to build some track and we pull out some tools. Mostly, it’s just asking a lot of questions and helping people really get to the part where they want to be and to have sustainable results, to be able to continue. And it’s not a quick fix.

Curry: You mentioned earlier that when you’re sitting with someone that you have tools to help them evaluate where they are today.

Clark: Right.

Curry: Would you take just a moment to kind of explain how that works?

Clark: Uh, yeah, there’s many different things, and after I work with somebody or a brief introduction, we’ll figure out, you know, what it is that I can best help them with during our time. A tool that I use often is called the wheel of life, and it takes just a few minutes. I especially use this in retreats. It’s great for groups or it’s great with individuals, and it has eight basic areas of our life. And by looking at each area, rating your satisfaction level with each one, it causes people again to get back to that part that says think. Let’s think about this part. For instance, one of the spokes of the wheel is personal development. Another one is your personal finance. Health and aging. So that’s just a few of them.

So there’s eight of these. And ranking that, people really think about it. And then we look at it and we see this wheel and we see where things are off balance and we see if these spokes are even or if there’s dips, there’s highs, and it really helps us to assess and it helps the client to look at this wheel and actually see where some areas are where they can make some improvement. So that’s kind of a beginning.

Curry: I like the metaphor of the wheel, because if any one spoke is loose or broken, the wheel is not going to go straight.

Clark: Exactly, exactly.

Curry: I keep listening to you and I’m thinking about in my work I let people do an assessment values in a secure retirement scorecard.

Clark: Right.

Curry: And what it does, it lets people determine for themselves where they are and what their priorities are without me lecturing to them. “Well, you got to do this. You got to do that.” I don’t think any of us like to be told what to do.

Clark: Right, right. It’s interesting. Some people do come to me and they want me to tell them how to fix something. And as a life coach, I’m not here to find the problem for you. You’re going to… in our talking we’ll discover that and discover solutions so we’re moving towards a positive part of that.

Curry: Very good. I’ll bet there are times when somebody will come to you with a, quote, problem and because of your interviewing process they discover, “Gosh, that’s really not the problem. It’s something else.” That might be the root; it might be the result of the problem. Is that right?

Clark: That’s very true, very intuitive. And a lot of this… you know, I’ll just back up. In our world today we’re so quick. We have so much technology. We’re so efficient. We just want to get to the answer quickly, okay?

Curry: So true.

Clark: We’re all guilty of that; however, in this process it does help. It helps us to just slow down and by focusing on that, and as we talk a little bit and take the time to talk, it’s a discovery time, much like your security retirement program. It’s pulling that out.

Curry: And I find… and I bet you do, too… it’s hard to get people just to slow down and be present. They’re thinking about the future, worrying about something, or they’re dwelling on the past. If I can just get them to sit and have a conversation like we’re doing now, then they forget about time and they have a conversation. And many times, I bet they’re telling you, “Here’s what I need to do,” and then once you work through it, they’re able to get going.

Clark: Exactly, exactly. And one of the other tools that I use is also Aim-SMART and it’s used in a lot of different ways in many areas of business, with different names but it’s basically a goal worksheet. It helps us to really break things down and that’s an important part of coaching, too. Again, to just take the time, break it down. We look at an issue and it can seem overwhelming. So we help people break it down so that they have manageable goals. And we always pick, like, you know, what’s your acceptable goal? What’s your ideal goal? And what would you settle for? What would be the middle? And then get very specific, you know. What’s the first step? And they’re like, “I’m going to save $100 this week.” Or, “I’m going to put away $1,000 this month.” Okay, let’s break it down a little bit more. How is that going to happen? And so you make sure it’s measurable. You make sure it’s achievable. Make sure it’s reasonable. It may not be reasonable. I have this with some people that have come to me with help for weight loss. And they say, “I’ve got this big reunion coming up.” Sound familiar?

Curry: Tomorrow. I need to lose 50 pounds.

Clark: Well, you know, “I want to lose 20, 30 pounds in two weeks.” And so, as a coach, I cannot judge. I’m not going to look at you, John, and say, “John, that’s crazy. You’re not going to do it.” Because you could do it. Maybe you could. But I just ask the questions, you know. “So how would that look? So what does that mean for this week?” So we work through this and I say, “Is that your ideal goal?” Or “What would be your minimal goal?” And so we work through it, and then, you know, I get to the point, “Is this reasonable?” And it’s like no. Sometimes we back up and go back through it.

And so I had this with a client one time so she got down to that. That was her goal and she said, “You know, if I could get into this size pants by three months, I’d be happy.” And it was a much more attainable goal. And I didn’t tell her that. I didn’t say she couldn’t do it. I didn’t say, “This is what you can do.”

Curry: She discovered for herself.

Clark: She discovered for herself.

Curry: What does the “T” stand for?

Clark: The “T”?

Curry: You said specific, measurable, achievable, reasonable, and then I didn’t catch the “T.”

Clark: Time oriented. I’m sorry.

Curry: So it’s got a timeline on it.

Clark: Exactly. And again, breaking it down. Not, “When are you going to lose that 30 pounds.” Or not, “When are you going to get into that size six pant?” “When are you going to complete that first step?” So we’ve already… so this is also helping us with that action plan. You know, what is it going to take to get there, you know? “I think I’ll stop eating that hamburger for lunch.” Okay.

Curry: Or butter pecan ice cream at night.

Clark: Or, “I think I won’t…” Yes, exactly. So, when you’re going to complete the first step and, again, we’re breaking it down. And the last part of this is, “Who will you be accountable to?” We are human beings. We are meant for relationships. So we connect and we need to be accountable. And a lot of times it’s someone in their family, someone that they work with that they can be accountable to, and I’m always that person they can be accountable to, and I will ask them, “How do you want me to hold you accountable?” So whatever, I mean, some people want, you know… I will text them at six o’clock tomorrow if they want me to. Or I will be as strong as they want me to be. I will be as passive as they want me to be, but I want you the client to tell me how to do that.

Curry: See, you’re a lot nicer than some of the coaches I’ve…

Clark: (Laughter)

Curry: I’ve been doing this for 42 years and I’ve used various coaches.

Clark: Okay.

Curry: And I have two guys… or three that are named Steve actually, but one in particular, his style is like a drill sergeant in the military. He is judgmental. He’ll say what he thinks in his world. But people love that about him because people who come to him have more of a military background. They have a lawyer background, and some say, “I want to get this done. I want to get it done now. Don’t waste any time.” But then, there are other people who he turns off because they say, “Whoa, too strong for me.”

Clark: Right, right.

Curry: “Too strong for me.” Connie, tell us the difference between a life coach and a therapist or a mentor. What’s the difference?

Clark: Okay, that’s a very good question. So a therapist usually deals with problems and there’s usually a lot of things in the past. If someone’s coming to a therapist or a counselor, there are probably some issues that aren’t just day to day, but there may be some things from the past. And a lot of times it could include mental illness. So those are not things that a coach deals with. We are working with helping clients find solutions. In our discussion there may be some things that come up in the past and we may address that, but if it’s deep-rooted things, that gets into the psychological and that’s not something I was trained in. I’m trained in the skills to work with you where you’re at right now. Again, understanding that these things come in.

So… and I think the main emphasis would be on solution-based, and usually it’s a shorter-term relationship with a coach. I’ve had clients that I’ve had for a long time, but it’s not around the same issue, where in counseling and therapy it may be the same issue. So that’s one of the differences.

A mentor is usually someone that is in your same line of business or in a very similar field that you’re in or life place that you’re at, kind of someone who’s been there, done thatm and can help advise someone who’s usually a little younger or less experienced in that field. So they’re somebody that walks alongside.

And so, again, we differ because I may have similar experiences to a client and that might be one of the attractions that pulls us together while we’re working together; yet, I don’t bring my personal into our coaching sessions. The session is about you, the client; it’s not about me. I have clients that will ask me something and say, “Do you mind if I ask you how you did this or how you handled this?” So I will answer that in the best way. But, again, I’m always mindful that it’s about the client so I’m not bringing my personal into that, where a mentor is going to bring in a lot of their life relationships.

Curry: You pretty much have to in a case like that.

Clark: Absolutely.

Curry: Would you share… just briefly share the story you told me before we turned the recorder on about when you were a teacher helping the child about the dinosaur.

Clark: Oh, yes, yes, yes. Thank you.

Curry: I think it emphasizes very much what you’re saying because it is about the client.

Clark: Right, right.

Curry: It’s the client that you want to help. It’s not all about how important you are or how important I am working with a client. It’s all about the client. And if we can deliver that, then the client has a better result.

Clark: Absolutely, yeah.

Curry: Take a moment and share that.

Clark: So I told John that beside my desk or phone I actually have several little pieces of Legos in different places where I, you know, I’m working with a client or talking with them on the phone. Several years ago I was a substitute teacher and I was in a kindergarten classroom and working with little Johnny and he came up to me all excited. “Miss Clark, I want to build a dinosaur.”

“Oh, great! Here’s the Legos.” So I pointed to the Legos. He pulls them out. And then I think, “Oh, wow! Here’s some books on dinosaurs. Let’s find a really cool dinosaur.” So I’m flipping through the book and I find some cool ones. So I’m helping him. I’m cheering him on, but I’m also giving suggestions of where some of the Legos might go to make it look like a dinosaur. So at the very end he’s still excited and he finally finishes and I’m thinking, “Oh, you’re finished?”

He goes, “I’m finished.” He goes, “What do you think?”

I just stopped and I looked at it and it’s like, what? It looked nothing like a dinosaur, but I’m like, “Oh, Johnny, that’s great! That’s a great dinosaur. Good job.” And so that was just, like, my aha. You know? A lot of times we can see people going down that track and we think we know more. We think we know how to pull them back in, but it’s… you know, we don’t know everything about everybody. We don’t know where they’re coming from. We don’t know, you know, where they’re going to end up. We do know that it is their journey. And I’m just….

Curry: It’s his dinosaur.

Clark: It’s his dinosaur. So, when I’m talking to a client, I’m just mindful to ask the questions and let them answer and not bring any judgment into it, not bring advice into it. I am that sounding board and I’m trying to listen very carefully so that I can ask the next question that’s going to draw them out a little bit more. I’m not leading them. I’m just helping them to continue to think through the issue that we’re talking about and to help them pull that out.

Curry: I like that. So what you’re doing is you’re giving people a safe space to be in to discuss things that are causing them pain perhaps, or they’re stuck and not quite sure where to go. So you’re giving them a safe environment to have a conversation with someone who’s trained to unlock the stuff, and from what you’re saying, it sounds to me like that you’re answering questions that would allow me to figure out some of the problems myself or the solutions.

Clark: And that’s really key. Thanks for saying that, because really the answer lies with the client. And we always say the agenda; it’s the client’s agenda. I go in with notes. I go in with some tools I want to use, but it really is led by the client. They could decide they want to go off in a different way, and I’m going to go with them.

Curry: Well, the reality is you don’t really care where they go because you have no set agenda yourself. So you’re there to serve your client. I think that if you’re truly serving your client wherever they go, even if they veer off and come back on the topic, it’s okay.

Clark: Right, right.

Curry: Tell me this. How did you become a life coach? What caused you to do this?

Clark: Well, I’ve always been interested in how the mind works and I actually have a minor in psychology, which is probably just a little dangerous, but, you know, we’ve all read self-help books and I was just intrigued by that. And I happened to see that there was an intro to life coaching course. It was at the Center for Biblical Studies. I thought, hmmm, that sounds interesting. So it was a six-week course and I learned a lot, and what I really learned was, like, this is really cool. This is foundational stuff. It’s not all woohoo kind of thing stuff. It’s good, you know, good basics.

So, from there, I started researching companies, and I knew that I wanted to… I didn’t want to just do an online class. I work better with different modules and I wanted to be in a classroom. I wanted to do actual coaching with people face to face. So I did choose IPEC. That’s the company that I went with and so I had to go out of town for my training, long weekends three times during the year. In-between, of course, there were some community calls. There was a lot of course work that I had to do. I had to do peer coaching. I had to do a lot of complimentary coaching sessions of everybody in my family and their friends. I mean, they are coached up.

But I learned that, wow, I’ve really enjoyed it. I enjoyed learning this process, and I shared with you that halfway through this process I got diagnosed with cancer and I am and was before this a very positive person. But the coaching really did help me kind of dig in, because when you are faced with a lot of decisions and, you know, things with health, it really does cause you to pause and, like, okay, what do I do now? How do I carry it? How do I handle this and how do I carry on?

So the coaching just really helped me get through that. I had coaches in my life. I continue to self-coach. I continued to, you know, just be positive through this and got through it very well. And, let’s see, from there… what else from there?

Curry: I like your story from the standpoint, so you didn’t give up.

Clark: Did not give up.

Curry: You didn’t go, “Woe is me. Poor little me.” You got involved and you turned its spotlight on others, and that is one of the things that I love about you in the sense that it’s not all about Connie. It’s how can I help other people. That’s why I was excited about doing this recording because there were so many people out there that I believe would benefit so much from just having a… if they only had one session, they would benefit. The people that choose to sit with you and have three or four or five conversations are going to do much better because you can’t solve issues in a one-shot deal.

Clark: No, no.

Curry: You can’t do that. And thanks for sharing your personal story there about the cancer. Let’s talk about this. So let’s say I’m listening to this and I’m asking this question. Okay, how would I know if I need a coach and how would I go about determining who to hire as a coach?

Clark: Okay. Fair question. You can go on the Website, you know, pull up life coaching, find different sites. My site is on there. I’m Striving Forward Coaching so you could check out what I do a little bit and see if it’s a good fit. But we all have a lot of different specialties. I do life and wellness coaching, but in my wellness, I believe in the whole body, you know, not just the physical… the mental, spiritual, mental, as well. So bringing all those parts in I think makes us healthy. So that’s what I’m interested in, in helping people, so it’s not all about… some people think it’s just about, you know, personal training or weight loss or whatever. It could be, but it really is bringing the right fit. Am I the right fit for this person?

So, and one of the things I like to do, John, is I offer complimentary sessions. So, if you’re interested and you feel like, “Yeah, I don’t want to commit. I don’t really, still don’t understand it,” I’ll do a comp session for about 20 minutes and it’ll give you a few of the basics, tell you a little bit about coaching. And then we’ll just kind of jump in and say, “Do you have something that you want to talk about today? You feel a little stuck?” If you just, “No, not really, I’m okay.”

Curry: That’s funny.

Clark: Then I’m going to ask you some questions and draw it out. And I’ll tell you, sometimes I do this sometimes on the phone, face to face like we are now. A lot of times we’ll go for a walk, and, you know, I’ve got people who want to walk, so, you know, we can meet for a walk. And I love to meet and walk sometimes because that person… I like eye contact. Yet some people, it’s just more comfortable. If you’re walking, you’ll not have to look at each other. So I’ve done coaching sessions when the client wants to do it on a walk. I’m good, and I’ve learned to take notes. I’ve learned to remember things. So that works. So I would say try it out. Any coach should offer a comp session or be able to answer some questions.

Curry: I like it. So try before you buy.

Clark: Exactly, exactly, right.

Curry: I’m especially intrigued by the idea of doing the walking. I like walking in the woods. I never thought about having… but as I think it through, the truth is, going back to the role of a mentor, I remember many times with taking a walk with some friends in New York City and we’re talking business the whole time we’re walking.

Clark: Right.

Curry: And that was a form of mentoring or coaching even then while walking. And I didn’t think about it until you just said that.

Clark: Absolutely, and, you know, us busy people and productive people like to get a lot done.

Curry: Oh, absolutely. Don’t we ever. And so let’s talk a little bit about what are some of the key factors for a successful coaching relationship. Tell me a little bit about, if I’m hiring you to be my coach, what are some of the ways we’ll know if it’s a successful relationship.

Clark: Okay. Yeah, very good question. So some of the… a coaching relationship is first of all a partnership and it’s built on honesty. So you’ve got to be able to trust me and as a client you need to be honest with me.

Curry: Right, because you can’t help me if I don’t give you the facts.

Clark: Absolutely, absolutely, or where you want to go. Yeah, so definitely confidentiality is key. The client’s got to know that, you know, everything they say is confidential, of course. Accountability is key to know that you can hold me as a coach or you can come to me for accountability, that I’m allowed… you’re allowing me to hold you accountable. So, you know, it’s establishing that relationship so it gets back to the relationship. So that really is the key, is do you trust me enough; you’re going to let me help you by helping to hold you accountable.

I mean, I’ve had clients that say, “I’m going to do this. I’m going to do this.” And, you know, I’ll check with them and they haven’t done that. So the next session I’ll have to say… and another important part is no judgment. I’m not going to judge you if you didn’t do XYZ. I mean, I don’t know what happened in your life that day, something. So I can’t judge that. However, I can come back to you in the next session and say, “John, so, in our last…” I’ll recap our last session… “you agreed to do XYZ. And tell me what happened that week.” So, again, I’m not going to say, “Why didn’t you do it?” or, “Bad boy.” It’s like, “So tell me what happened,” you know. So you’re going to tell me why or tell me your story, and then you may end up with, “Yeah, I know I should’ve done that.”

“So let’s back up. So you want me to send this text to you or you texted me. So how can I better hold you accountable?” So we’ll kind of back up. You know, we’ll kind of make it a little stronger, but again, you’ve got to tell me, “How hard can I push?”

Curry: What’s going through my mind is you might be too nice at times.

Clark: And I’ve learned. I’ve learned. And I will push. You just learn. And that’s, again, that’s part of the relationship, the honesty, figuring each other out…

Curry: I’ve used some coaches…

Clark: … how to make it work.

Curry: … in 42 years of business and some of them will say, “If you’re not going to do the homework assignment as we agreed to, I don’t want to be your coach.” They’re pretty tough.

Clark: Well, there is that saying, “I cannot work harder than the client.” And I have tried. In my early years I tried to do a lot of work for them. And if you’re not willing to do the work, it’s not going to work.

Curry: My way of saying that is, when you give up as a client, I give up.

Clark: That’s very, very good.

Curry: If you’re not willing to put in the work and the effort, then why should I? I have other people who need to occupy those chairs. Take care of the ones who want help. “You can come back and get in line, but you’re in the back of the line now and I’ve got to help the people that are committed.”

Clark: Absolutely.

Curry: Love it. What are some of the challenges that you help clients with?

Clark: We’ve addressed some of these. I think as we said, you know, a lot of my clients are around their fifties and we know that things change. We’re not in our twenties any more. There are more challenges around health. It could be a diagnosis. I mean, I do help some people who are going through, you know, disease challenges, but a lot of it is just realizing that, you know, I’ve had some on too many medications. You know, they’ll say, “I don’t want to be on all of these meds, and I know if I lost weight this would help. I know if I did this,” you know, so we kind of break it down. And so I help meet them there with the help.

Career changes, a lot of people, you know, our age are changing jobs, scaling back, or reassessing. And that’s why they come to you to get some of the, you know, “What do we do with our money at this point?” But just helping them to figure out what they really want to be doing at this point.

Getting unstuck, we talked about that a little bit. There’s just a lot of times people don’t use that word “stuck,” but…

Curry: What do they use? What do they use?

Clark: “Yeah, you know, I just can’t seem to focus on something.” Or, “I’m trying to decide if I want to go back to school or do this.” So a lot of times it’s a decision between two or three things. A lot of times it’s just they can’t really pinpoint it. But, again, “focus” might be one of the words they say. “I just can’t quite focus.” Or it’s being in a rut, it’s kind of being in a rut.

Curry: So they know something’s wrong but they can’t identify it?

Clark: Yes, yes. Or, you know, with weight, it’s like, you know, “I just can’t seem to stick to a plan. I joined the gym but I don’t go.” So a lot of, you know, those are stuck, those are ruts. I’ve got this saying that I think I shared with you, one of my favorite sayings. It’s by L.J. Peter. It says, “In spite of warnings nothing much happens until the status quo becomes more painful than the change.” So a lot of times, sometimes, people have to almost, like, hit that wall. And usually, in our day-to-day life, there aren’t that many big walls that we’re hitting, but they’re smaller walls, that thing that’s, you know, pushing up against and we’re like, aww. And then one day we may just realize, like, being here and not being able to move past this way, I mean, this is hard, you know. Maybe it’s going to be easier to figure out some ways to get around it, so….

Curry: I like that analogy. That’s good. So maybe it’s not a huge wall but it’s enough that it’s deterring the person, making them hesitate and not take action.

Clark: Exactly. And that wall could be causing a lot of problems. Maybe it’s causing problems in their family. They get, you know, just a lot of… they can’t go other places.

Curry: Let’s go a little deeper with that. What are some of the main ways you see people getting stuck?

Clark: We have a few things that we see in coaching, one thing we’ll call the gremlins. Now, the gremlin is that ugly little guy that might jump on your….

Curry: I remember the movie, “The Gremlins.” Remember that?

Clark: Think of that little guy, think about him jumping on your shoulder and just, you know, once in a while he just sneaks up there and it’s like, “You’re not good enough. You can’t do that.” Or “Why do you think you can do that?” So it’s like we call it the gremlin because it’s always something negative and they’re just kind of eating at you. It may be self-doubt. It may be someone that says, “I’m not smart enough. I’m not thin enough. I’m not…” you know, it’s usually that “I’m not enough.”

Curry: I’m too old. I’m too young.

Clark: Exactly, there’s that. So it’s really you kind of help people with awareness of that, you know. And that is going to creep up. This is human nature, you know. There are going to be those things because we’ve gone through a lot of things in our lives, so there’s going to be those things. And it helps them to be aware of it as soon as we name it and, you know, say, “Well, you’re leaving. I’m not listening to you today.” So….

Curry: I like that. Lock him up in a corner.

Clark: Exactly. Assumptions, a lot of people think, you know, maybe because it’s happened before in their life that it’s going to happen again. Like, “Oh, I can’t. There’s no need to apply for another job because, you know, I got turned down last year for this job.” And just because it happened once, you know, or “I can’t lose the weight. I tried last year,” and just because it happened once it doesn’t mean the same thing is going to happen again, because you can make some changes around that. So, assumptions.

Interpretations, we see things, you know, the way we’ve been brought up, the way our circumstances are. We may see things one way, and we help people look at things a different way. With my cancer, from the beginning, actually, there were so many people that had cancer and a lot of my friends when I was diagnosed said, “You’re wanting to help these people we know.” I’m a marathoner, I eat well, I do… and it’s like, you know, look around us. I mean, it’s everywhere, and it’s like my mantra was always not why me but why not me. You know? What’s so special about me? You know, why not me? So again, our interpretations of things.

And then, limiting beliefs. How true is this statement now? How true is this? Just because it was true back then or just because it happened then, really how true is it now? So we just come into this world with a lot of baggage. And people come into our sessions with a lot of baggage, so it’s just kind of helping them. And it seems like, well, we know that; we know that. And most of my clients are smart people. They’ve been through a lot, but it’s, you know, we all benefit from someone helping us break it down and asking those important questions so that they can actually see it and then begin to make those changes that are going to be sustainable in their life.

Curry: I heard a speaker say one time that the three most dangerous words in the English language are “I know that,” because the minute you say, “I know that,” you shut down all receptors to learn something new. So, “I know that, Connie, I have this problem, but I don’t really want to do what it takes to solve the problem.”

Clark: Right, right.

Curry: Let’s talk a little bit about how you work with clients. I know you do one-on-one sessions. Do you do group sessions? Do you do retreats? Talk a little bit about that.

Clark: Oh, yeah. Yes. I love doing it all, and I’ll tell you that, with one-on-one, I prefer to meet with people in person, but I’ve done coaching sessions with people, you know, out of town so we do phone sessions. That works very well.

Group coaching, I’ve had people come to me who had a common interest so that helps me. And I develop an individual plan. I find out how long they want to meet, what they want to meet around and so I’ll pull together things that we need together as a group, addressing things that are in common, but I always make sure that we’ve got some one-on-one time so that everybody has chances to just meet privately and away from the group and have that one-on-one time with me, so we build that in, as well.

Day retreats done at the beach, which are wonderful. We have wonderful beaches just an hour from here, so it’s nice to just drive and they get a little bit of just letting-go time, and we’ve had retreats again with certain…. One of the last ones I did was on abundance, you know, how to have the abundant life. And just bringing in maybe some brainstorming. We’ve done some vision boards to help them really kind of just let go. And I love retreats because it really is time that they are spending just on themselves. We don’t have other interruptions, and at the end of the day, I mean, most of my clients, you know, say they are relaxed. They’ve got some tools to take home with them. They’ve got some things to think about. We haven’t solved everything, but it gets them thinking and then they have the opportunity to work with me later. And I always follow up with anyone from a retreat to see, you know, if they’ve got any questions.

Curry: I like it. Is that something where you could help me create a client event where at our training center you could teach say an hour, an hour and a half?

Clark: Oh, absolutely. I’ve done many retreats where I speak, you know. That’s a great length of time and through that we can do some things. And it just depends on, you know, again, who’s coming. You know, kind of figure out what might be the best… some of the best tools to use, but a lot of times we do something called the wheel of life, which I explained earlier, just to help people. They don’t know what they really want to work on, how to look at their life as a whole and find the part they might want to zero in on. And I’ve done luncheons, as well, so people can bring their lunch and in an hour we can do some goal setting. And I’ve done that before, too.

Curry: We can talk some more later offline but I think there’s a tremendous opportunity for you to be a guest speaker at some of my seminars or even webinars, because what you’re doing is so important. You’re digging into a lot more depth today than I thought we would so I thank you for that.

Let’s talk a little bit about how a typical coaching session would go with you. So I meet with you; I’ve done my complimentary one, and we’re now sitting together and I walk in and I say I’ve got this problem or an issue where I’m stuck. Walk me through a little bit about the mechanics of how this coaching session might go.

Clark: Oh, okay, okay. We have touched on some of this so I’m going to kind of just start you from the beginning. So we’ve had the complimentary session, like you said, so you know a little bit about me, a little bit about what it is. So you would come to me. You know, I would find out if there’s something specific that you want to work on, and maybe that was determined in the complimentary session. And if not, and a lot of times in the complimentary session I may ask you, if I were a genie and could grant you three wishes today, right not, what would you want? Anything, anything at all. Ask me for anything. And so that just gets the brain fired up and really thinking about, “What is it I want?” And that’s, again, it sounds like an easy question, but it’s not always easy, you know, and it may be, if someone says, “I’d love to have, you know, a hundred million dollars right now. I’d never have to work again and have all this money.” Well, that’s not feasible, but, you know, if they came to you with that, then you could help them figure out financially….

Curry: I can’t give them a hundred million dollars though.

Clark: Not that much, but you could break it down. Well, okay, so, yeah. So anyway, so we know that stability, you know. We know some things that are important to them. If they come up with that. If they want to go on this fabulous trip, you know. Maybe they’re on a fixed income and so maybe, you know, I help them. So if that’s an important thing, help them figure out how to live their life so that they can put aside that money and make priorities or whatever.

So, again, it’s really establishing that relationship. That is key in the first session, because in the complimentary, you’re not trusting me yet. You’re just finding out about me. Session one, we’re building that trust, learning. I’m learning how you want to be coached and you’re, you know, asking me the questions. So we may expand on the wheel of life if you need a little more direction, and then, we’ll continue to work through, again, through a lot of questions, you know. There may be some things that you’re stuck in and we’ll address that. Again, we’ll kind of come up with a game plan.

Curry: I like it.

Clark: Yes.

Curry: I like it. All right. I know we need to wind down here in a minute, but let’s talk a little bit about how would I… if I’m listening to this, how would I determine if coaching is right for me? You’ve already said that you do some over the phone, so if somebody is listening to this and they’re in Miami, Florida, or they’re in Cleveland, Ohio, they can call you. We’ll give the contact information so they can have that conversation, but what are some the things that will happen for me to realize that coaching is right for me? Or how do I know coaching’s not right for me, whichever way you want to approach it.

Clark: Okay, okay. You know that the beauty of coaching is it’s, when I sign on a client, I don’t make you sign a contract to say you’re going to meet with me for a year or you’re going to meet me for a certain amount of time. Sometimes it doesn’t take very long to work through issues, and sometimes it is a longer term. So I say that because as a coach we will work with a client how ever they want to be worked with. So the main thing is to reach out.

You can check out my Website, Striving Forward Coaching, and learn a little more about coaching and learn a little bit more about me, if there’s a connection with me. And, again, by letting me do a 20-minute comp session with you and I’ll ask that question, you know, if you really don’t know, like, “I feel like there’s something missing in my life or something could be better.” And I’ll say this to most of my clients, it’s not like they have these huge issues or huge problems or they’re like, “Woe is me.” Most of them have a good life and they’re enjoying life, but they know it could be better. So that’s where… that’s probably the key with a lot of people around our age.

You know, we’re not going to solve these deep, deep problems that started in childhood through coaching probably. I can help with some, but a lot of people want life to be better. They want to live their best life so that’s really the exciting part. We talk about fear based and value based. If you know you have to do something, how much energy are you going to have around that? You know, there’s not going to be as much. If there’s something you want to do, you’re going to have a lot more energy towards that and working towards that.

Curry: Absolutely.

Clark: So that’s where I really try to meet people, is at the way they think they want to do and there’s more energy and much better success.

Curry: You struck a nerve with me awhile ago. You talked about abundance, because I teach the concept all the time of abundance thinking versus scarcity thinking.

Clark: Right.

Curry: Love thinking versus fear.

Clark: Right.

Curry: And I’m listening to the things you’re saying, and the truth is all of us can benefit from coaching in one degree or another.

Clark: Right.

Curry: And I know I think back to times in my life. I had different coaches. I had a business coach, a physical fitness coach. When I had my heart surgery back in 2008, I made a commitment that I was going to work on my fitness and wellness, eat, sleep better, work out, and it’s made a huge, huge impact on my life.

Clark: Right.

Curry: A huge impact, so I’m glad you’re doing the wellness side, too. Connie, I want you to explain something. On your business card I see the letters “CPC” after your name. What is that?

Clark: It’s certified professional coach.

Curry: Okay, so you have certification. So talk just a little bit about… because you were telling me offline some ridiculous amount of time, like 250 hours of training you had just to become a coach. So talk a little bit about that, because, if I’m listening to this, I may be saying, “Well, how do I know that you’re qualified to be giving me advice or coaching me or guiding me?” So talk a little bit about your training and then I want us to wrap up by giving people your contact information, but tell us a little bit about what that coaching training means.

Clark: Oh, okay, okay. So the coach training, as I said before, I didn’t want to just do an online class and do the minimum. I knew I wanted to do an intensive course, and IPEC delivered that with three three-day weekends away. It was a very intensive time of away and getting lots of instruction and one-on-one and time to be in front of and present and all of that kind of stuff under the classroom. In-between it was the textbook work. It was the coaching work. It was a lot of things, but that encompassed 250 hours of time. So….

Curry: That’s a lot, it’s a big commitment.

Clark: That is. That is a big commitment.

Curry: Big commitment.

Clark: And then I went on to get another certification, energy leadership, so that’s another thing that I can bring to the table.

Curry: Very good, very good.

Clark: So I will tell you my name again is Connie Clark. I can be reached by email, which is cdclark54@gmail.com, and my information can also be found on my Website, which is StrivingForwardCoaching.com.

Curry: Connie, thank you for sharing your information. It’s obvious from talking with you today that you believe in creating value for people and you help pull information out of people to help them get where they want to go. Thank you so much for the time.

Clark: Thank you so much, John. I appreciate the time.

Curry: My pleasure.


If you'd like to know more about John Curry's services, you can request a complimentary information package by visiting johnhcurry.com/podcast. Again, that is johnhcurry.com/podcast. Or you can call his office at 850-562-3000. Again, that is 850-562-3000. John H. Curry chartered life underwriter, chartered financial consultant, accredited estate planner, masters in science and financial services, certified in long-term care, registered representative and financial advisor at Park Avenue Securities LLC.
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