jarring,

you know, and I actually equate it to emptiness syndrome.

You know, if you have someone that's been a caretaker, you know, whether it's a husband or a wife in your home with the kids, if the kids leave the nest, suddenly your identity as mom or dad is kind of, it's not irrelevant, but you relied on that because that gave you your purpose.

So, you know, whether it's a bank manager, whether it's a police officer, anyone who really identified with who it is, you're going to have an identity crisis on your hands if you don't find a meaningful way to figure out who you are.

Because for 30 years when somebody said, you know, who are you or what do you do? Generally speaking, the answer that we gave them was whatever our job was.

So, you know, a lot of men can become restless, withdrawal, you know, and they can become really irritable without fully understanding why that is, right? Now we're less visible.

Now we're searching for relevance in our lives.

What can I do? Are there kind of, I know there's no quick fix, but what can people start to do or think about?

Have you seen that to kind of be the case?

Yeah.

Yeah.

And I think you're what your dad's kind of done is very typical and also really healthy for a lot of people from a financial standpoint, from a mental standpoint, whether it's reshaping it to work on your own terms and, you know, to have the ability to either say no or to create your own schedule and just have the flexibility to find balance in life is an amazing step.

And for some people, that is their dream retirement where they go, all right, well, maybe I'm mentoring someone or maybe I'm consulting or whatever it is, or they open up a different kind of business that doesn't have to be about income so much or I shouldn't say income.

It's not you're measuring success in a different way.

Right.

I think the underlying thing that we've talked about that you've kind of come back to a couple of times is their purpose, having all those three things or four things intact when retirement actually does show up.

Have you seen that to kind of be the case?

Yeah.

Yeah.

And I think what your dad's kind of done is very typical and also really healthy for a lot of people from a financial standpoint, from a mental standpoint, whether it's reshaping it to work on your own terms and, you know, to have the ability to either say no or to create your own schedule and just have the flexibility to find balance in life is an amazing step.

And for some people, that is their dream retirement where they go, all right, well, maybe I'm mentoring someone or maybe I'm consulting or whatever it is, or they open up a different kind of business that doesn't have to be about income so much or I shouldn't say income.

It's not, you're measuring success in a different way.

right? And it's filling you up and you're excited to do whatever it is that you're doing.

Having all those three things or four things intact when retirement actually does show up.

not another child.

We had our fourth child in 2017.

And It's just, it's amazing the way, like the overlap.

So my first marriage had a daughter, then had a son.

Your daughter and a son.

My first marriage was very much the, it was the breadwinner.

It was working and a lot of identity and purpose was wrapped up in that.

So do this first off, Chris, between your birth and today, is there anything we missed in your journey before we move forward? And again, I'm sure we missed a lot, but significant that you want to discuss with the world right now.

Um, So what are some of the big financial pitfalls you see business owners maybe fall into when they're preparing for an exit or they're preparing for their retirement?

It's really about the five years before you retire and the first five years of retiring.

I think those are, I call it the retirement red zone, right? Those are the most critical areas.

periods to get right um when we're accumulating wealth you have time on your side right so i'm 47 years old largely what happens in the stock market today isn't going to impact my retirement because i have time if i was going to start uh you know decumulating or spending down my assets tomorrow that's going to look really different right because now we no longer have time now we the money out.

And if you have a negative shock in the first five years of your retirement, the chances of running out of money increase by 40%.

Most of us haven't over-saved to a point where we can handle multiple economic collapses here.

So getting those five years right and making sure that we know where the money's coming from, making sure that it's safe.

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