Why Men Struggle After Retirement (And How To Fix It Today) | Aggressive Life

The average age of retirement is 64 64 64 average age of Death is 82 you have 18 years There are some daunting statistics out there that would just Make you sit up when you start hearing about what real retirement is like for the majority of Americans, right? The average retiree this is real statistic average retiree watches seven hours of TV a day Okay, think about that 50% of the boomers are depressed when they go into the retirement years Most men who retire have 1.5 friends, you know, theoretically you should have Seven and the highest rate of suicides in the u.s. Is men over 70. It's almost double teen suicides People and why you know, why is that's a powerful statement? And I think it's more for the lack of community and loneliness and not having a purpose Not finding out what are the gifts God gave you and how are you gonna use them, right? So find them but go do something about it. All right, don't sit around and wait for it to come to you You Man we we talked a lot of good stuff, but we even relive all the old stories You know, I've been down some paths together over the last 30 years Like you're probably Other than Denny Patton who was on years and years ago and then die You're the you're the longest-running friend that I've ever had on the podcast right dirt, by the way Do you remember do you remember when we really kind of first? connected with each other Playing squash it wasn't it was not it was close. We were in a we were in a small group We were in a couple small group And we started and then I had you out to the tennis tournament and then you and I played racquetball and you We we did a whole First thing squash wasn't the first thing I wasn't because that was back when I was Borderline poverty actually probably would have been in poverty Look at how much our house household made and how many people were in it and I was the only income earner and and you bought Me a squash racket to use and it was the most that at that point. That was the most extravagant Gift I'd ever given really it honestly was in my life. It was most extravagant and it wasn't for my birthday

It wasn't for it was just like yeah I'd like to I'd like to play squash with you and you could afford whatever that was back when 120 bucks I don't know what it was you could afford it or maybe say I don't know what it was It was a nice one had the exact one you had. Yeah, you gave it to me I thought couldn't give you a man. I mean, it's just a power of of generosity those kind of simple acts and When you did that you basically bought my friendship. Oh, man, you know everybody listening up that racket That was the first time in my life Someone gave me something nice that Wasn't warranted and actually in terms of what I've been given by my parents for birth. It was the best brother ever got Wow Yeah, well, I'm honored but you know, I was just buying your time. I wasn't just buying your friend Yeah, I find your time so that we can spend time together and smart Welcome to the aggressive life always excited when I have people with me who are long long-term Friends this guy I've been friends with him for at least 29 years Something like that a good long time. His name is Dale Tesman Dale I used to call him the action adventure hero because he was a Exploring all those kinds of guy. Gosh, you freaking do all these things. Where do you get the time? Well, he was making time because he want to enjoy his life and you had a big impact yourself you actually Tell me more about him. How are you? Freaking do all these things, what do you get the time we do well he was making time because he wanted to enjoy his life and You had a big impact on me way back when and still has a big impact to me but Dale's big thing that he's always been great at is Telling a story he has been a brand manager fortune 100 company at Procter & Gamble talking about brands He worked with Jack Rouse and Associates was all about Getting Legoland to understand their story and other amazing recalogues and Nike and other brands like that to to understand their story and make basically make Welcoming centers over it and stuff like that and then he's been with another experience where he's been CEO

of it for the last, well, he got out of it a couple years ago, I guess, but he's just been thriving on story and I thought it would be amazing to have him in at the Aggressive Life. Welcome to the Aggressive Life, Dale Tesman! Brian, I am truly honored. Who is that person you were just talking about? You, man. I don't know. I don't know. Did I get your background right? I was talking and I thought, wait a minute, I thought it was Nike. You work at Nike, right? Or no? Yeah. This is one of our clients way back. I didn't work with him, but, you know, when I think back on it, you know, I was at Procter for 10 years and then on a lunch invitation met a guy named Jack Rouse and that day left Procter & Gamble, went in my boss's office and said, I'm going to go join Jack in creating Jack Rouse Associates and did it with Jack for 16 years until we found another opportunity. And as I think back on inflection points in my life. You went to this lunch. Like, were you planning on this is going to be a thing that got you to leave? I didn't know Jack. You didn't know Jack? I didn't know Jack. And on the moment you decide to leave. So he looks at me and he said, I have just done a meeting, created and produced a meeting in Las Vegas for 5,000 dealers of shell oil, you know, and got, got paid for it. And he did the stage design. He did the choreography.

He did the music, he did the speeches. And I had actually worked on a brand where I was really doing a lot of work and trying to see how people face to face would walk around an aisle, look at a, look at a, you know, a promotion of some and see if I could emotionally move them. He just did that for 5,000 people in an audience. And he said, you know, I'm going to leave Taft, you know, will you leave Proctor? And I, I literally said, I'll never get another opportunity like that. Although, you know, I really, really did want to start my own company at some point that just put it, I think it was one of those things that God throws out, throws opportunity and you got to go get them. You got to go chase it down. And when he had mentioned that, I went back and said, went in my boss's office and said, there's nothing here that you can provide to me that would give me this opportunity and to build something brand new and to be totally responsible and accountable to it. You know, it's you and three other people. Jack brought two from his company and there we were off and running. But it was, it was, you know, it was first shot at taking a massive risk. And you were how old at that point? You know, I was 10 years out. I was like 30, 32. You know, but, but, but, you know, I think back on the, the opportunities that kept kind of coming because after that we had a big, I remember we did a big event for Michael Dell in Austin, Texas, and we brought that to life. And at that moment, Brian, I looked, I looked in the mirror and said, I'm doing this for the rest of my life. I am going to bring stories to life. And that kind of became, I literally got the rights to the word story building because I wanted to own it. I wanted to own that because that's exactly what I was doing. So you were with Jack, you guys did Legoland with Jack as well?

Yeah, yeah, yeah. We did. I was, I actually spent more time on the corporate side working with big companies like Hewlett Packard and Dell. And Jack, when Jack, when he was before we, before he left Taft, he had designed and produced Kings Island, Kings Dominion, Carowinds, all these theme parks. So Jack brought this ability to do theme parks. We ended up buying a company that designed museums. So all of a sudden we had a company that could do theme parks, museums, and big corporate events. I stayed in my lane primarily around the whole corporate event side. I love that side. I love the brand, love being able to bring it to life. While at the same time, when we started working with Lego, we had to understand the Lego brand, understand those bricks, you know, and the power that those things had. And we built, did a theme park in London, outside of London, which was the first one. Then the second one was Carlsbad, which is the monster out on the West Coast. They are, they are a machine, aren't they? Machine. They just keep a simple, stupid little toy. They keep innovating on and, you know, not losing their core competency, but putting new flavors and twists there. They're an impressive company. And look, I'm a grandfather now. Guess what? I buy my grandson. And guess where? We spend hours together building Lego sets. It's still, it's still a big part of life. I've not done that with anyone.

My grandkids, I probably should start. Oh, you've got to start. It was the first and only time I think I sat down with my grandson, Brooks, for four hours. He sat to my right-hand side. I let him do the big parts. I would do the smaller parts. But we worked together to build this giant medic plane. He loved the plane. It was very cool. But Brian, I got to tell you, just to be able to connect with him and to work with him and finally actually try to build something was fascinating. Now, I don't even know this. But when you're doing, back in my day, Legos were, they were in a crappy box that was beat up. And there was just hundreds of square little things in there. And you go, oh, figure it out. Make it up. And you would. You'd make whatever you want to make. You're talking about four hours doing the medic. Is there a picture that you're trying to match the picture? Is there steps like put these? You now have the most easily understandable book that comes with it. And it's so well done. I was shocked. The book tells you how to put it together.

There's a book you take. But isn't that part of the not fun? Don't you want to create yourself? No? When you're working with this, just understanding how to be able to put it together by looking at how they've laid it out in this book, they've just done a phenomenal job of making it easy to then put this together. Yeah, you know when it's all over and all the parts fall apart? Then you start playing with it and start making stuff up. That seems to be. But that first time you get it, the book that they have to give it to you to show you how to make something that takes 1,000 pieces is really, really helpful. Interesting. And I'm watching his eyes go out on the page. It's become a phenomenal opportunity to connect with him. So shout out. So when you left Legoland and all that, and then you start your own own company, were you doing the same thing that you were doing before, just your own company? No, when I started the brand experience was in 2004. I'd been with Jack for about 16 years, 14, 16 years. And they wanted to get out of the corporate work. I took some of the people that had been working with me on the corporate work, and we started our own company.

But immediately, another guy who knew what I was doing, he was president of a company called Aegis Media out of London, a $2 billion media company. And he said, come into our company. Start what you want to do in here because we need that capability. And that would be a great way to be able to win accounts. And all of a sudden, I'm part of this $2 billion media company. And that lasts, I don't know, maybe four, five, six years. And I realized being part of a big media company in London was not something that I wanted to do. And as we approach the tough financial times of 2008, 2009 is when I went and bought the entire brand experience, lock, stock, and barrel clients and everything, brought my people, and we started our own thing right here, doing the same thing. We were still building customer experiences for companies. This time around the world, I had connected. I actually had an office in Dubai. At the time, we were doing a lot of work in the Middle East. We were doing work in China. This is a six, seven-person firm here in Cincinnati, Ohio in a tiny little office. And we're creating these experiences around the world. And it was fun. It was fun. My favorite, my favorite, I'll tell you this because you're probably going to ask me that anyways, my favorite, Lockheed Martin in Washington, DC. Actually, it was in Crystal City right across the river.

And when I was interviewing the executives, there was a brand new executive vice president who had been a four-star general in the Air Force, just joined the company. And I was trying to get the storyline of what does this space have to be? What is it? What's the story going to be? And he's looking. We're going through. I said, what's so unique about Lockheed Martin? Oh, we got the best people in the world now. We're the most innovative. I said, look, you could have worked for any company as a four-star general. Why did you pick Lockheed Martin? He said, because we do the hard stuff. I said, oh, and he's got the big eyebrows. And we're having an official briefing, right? So I'm having this meeting with him. And he said, yeah, we keep the world safe by doing the hard stuff. And only we do the hard stuff. Says there's a lot of stuff that you don't know that we're doing. He said, you know, I've got an office down the hall that are probably a couple of people in there writing constitutions for new countries. You think they write them? We write them.

They fill in the blanks. And I'm, oh, my gosh. Oh, my gosh. So so all of a sudden it's he said, you know what I want you to do something I'm gonna send you tomorrow. What are you doing tomorrow? I said, what do you want me to do? He said I'm gonna send you down to Alpharetta, Georgia I don't want you to see where they're making the f-22s. You asked somebody on the line. Why are they working for Lockheed Martin? Okay down I go Interview the first guy I see jeans under I'm underneath the wing of an f-22. Are you kidding? I'm going out of my brains Coolest thing I've ever done Sir, why do you work for Lockheed Martin with a twinkle in his eye? He looks at me and he said, you know I'd work 24-7 to keep the world safe and only we can do it and it was the same story. That's same Feeling of what it was like to do and that was the story We had to bring to life in their giant Center the Lockheed Martin Global Vision Center where everything came together You know and for that audience and I didn't know this later But in this really I think it's gonna get more into our conversation when they wanted to tell their story on the second floor we put and thought up ourselves our writers put up on the wall a Legacy is a gift brought forward and it was just like everything that they had done as far as a company Was what is legacy legacy is a gift brought forward it's what you did all the talents that you had What are you gonna do with it going forward and that really stuck with me for a long time? Even after you know, I ended up selling the company in Big big big ship big opportunity is so happy to be able to do that. But now I'm looking down the gun barrel of My next 30 and I always called it my next 30. I never used the word retirement I was not gonna retire. It was always gonna be what's my next 30 gonna be? Yeah, so you're you're constantly Doing new things you're building things or some through lines some entrepreneurial activity. There's some story stuff Which actually fits right in line with what your newest thing is you're helping people Get ready for the last run of their life. Is that how you describe it? Tell us about it So, let me tell you the kind of the story behind what we call the redirect podcast Okay, you know I was I won't like I said, I was looking down the gun barrel the next 30 and you know

I was doing all the right things I'd read a lot of things about hey in your 60s or before you're gonna retire in your pre retirement phase I'm gonna throw this back on you Brian, but in your pre retirement phase, you know, what is you know? Start practicing what you want to do in your next 30, you know So if you want to teach over at the university start doing it start doing this stuff in your pre retirement phase You know, I I had kind of started that I taught a couple classes over at Xavier I couldn't wait to be a grandfather. You know, I was I was looking at Gosh I was looking at doing, you know Working at CityLink or possibly working at Crossroads. Who knows, you know, I was really getting excited about hey Let's let's start getting into this stuff. And then as God would have it. I met a guy named Kurt Brewer Kurt one and a half years retired and just moved to Cincinnati He had he I met him at I met him at a Mighty Man meeting I met him at a men's group meeting and we connected and for some reason you just I felt a connection with Kurt and Kurt had put together this massive retirement plan pictures drivers charts Everything and I said, you know, I'd love to talk to you about that because I'm in I'm looking I'm looking at my next 30 here and he said that'd be great and You know and Kurt had met another guy named Adam Columba. He came over to Both of them came over to my house We sat on the back deck and started talking about Kurt's plan and all of a sudden we're talking about Quote-unquote retirement, but there's a lot of financial stuff out there. There's a lot of health care stuff But what about the person what about the man or woman who is just retired and all of a sudden they show up Monday morning? And there's nothing on their calendar. There's no meetings That's got to be kind of disorienting and we started digging into the whole kind of next 30 or what we call redirection and the redirection kind of came from actually Kurt's wife had kind of brought out the names as Kurt. You're not, you know, you're putting all these plans together. You're just redirecting what you had done before and Using it for your own personal life and we found out that you know, man so much identify themselves as their career. Oh, I was a pastor.

I was an architect. I was this. You talk to some women who do this much better and say, well, you know what? I was a mom, I'm a mom, I do this and that. Men had a really hard time separating themselves from their career. And all of a sudden we see this is identity crisis. You know, this is a big time in life. Who's having, nobody's having the conversation. We're having this spirited conversation on my back deck about the person and what are they going through? What happens to them, you know, when they retire? And right in the middle of it, I said, this is a podcast. It just came out. This conversation has gotta be a podcast. We're not experts by any means. There are some daunting statistics out there that would just make you sit up when you start hearing about what real retirement is like for the majority of Americans, you know? And we were having that conversation and we're going, what about, you know, what about the fact that you're not relevant anymore? What about the fact that, you know, we had some statistics that, you know, let's see. The typical, first off, you're, the average age of retirement is 64. 64. Average age of death is 82.

You have 18 years. Theoretically, just by the statistics, you got 18 years, right? Okay, what are you gonna do? So now we start looking up. No, no, no. 64 is retirement, 64- Average retirement. Is that people will say, I'm done, or people get right-sized or laid off and they can't get work again? Could be any or all of that, Brian. This is a broad scale. 64. And yeah, and- What age were you when you sold your company? 62. Okay, so you were- So, but you know, it's two more years, 64, thinking it ended up being seven more years. I did my own plan of going, well, I'm gonna only work three days a week. I'm only gonna work two days a week. I'm only gonna work one day a week. And all of a sudden, it wasn't until I hit 70, which was last year in 2025, you know, that I said, I've got to cut these cords. I've got to kind of move on from there. You know, but we were, going back to that conversation on the deck

in the start of the podcast was, we're having a conversation that is really, really powerful that men just generally don't have, you know? And, you know, pre-retirement, we identified the retirement or redirection in five steps. Well, first step is pre-retirement, which you're in. And Dirt, I think you're in. I don't know. Dirt's on pre-retirement. Dirt's on pre-soaking. He's pre-soaking here. Why is Dirt pre-retirement? He's like 22. You're not thinking about it. All right. I'm 40. I mean, should I be? No. Yeah, should he be? You should definitely be thinking about, I mean, at least the financial side of it. Sure. 401k, something like that. Good. You're starting that direction. But for anybody who's kind of in that pre-retirement, which is, I'd say 10 years before thinking about leaving your work, you know, you got to start thinking about, hey, I got to start practicing what I want to do

and start asking the question, what's my purpose? What is, you've got to identify your purpose. And we started having that conversation of saying, look, unless you figure out kind of what your purpose is or what God's plan is for you, whatever that is, you know, you're going to kind of be lost, you know, and you're going to hit this period. Well, actually the second, there's five stages I mentioned. The first stage was pre-retirement. Second stage is honeymoon. Yahoo. You see the pictures, you see everybody in the cars and the convertibles going down highway one. Oh, that's great. That's the honeymoon phase. That doesn't last very long. Brian, you're going to go shoot some elk. I don't know how many tags you can shoot. I don't know how many elk you're going to shoot. I got two this last year, pretty rare. Okay. So if you all of a sudden retire and said, I'm going to go hunt. I don't know, how long does that, how long does that keep you mentally challenged, growing? Yada, yada. That's a good word. Well, the problem is if I retire at eight,

or excuse me, at 70, the question will be, can I do the kind of hunting that I want to do? Now, my seven-year-old body. Do we talk about that book, Dying with Zero? Do we talk about that book? I don't think so. Have you read it? You heard about it? No. Oh, Dying. I die, die with zero, just completely emptying out. Yeah, so you have read it? Yeah, but it's been forever. Yeah, the base of the book, it's a fantastic book. We might want to try to get him on the podcast. If you haven't heard, the base of the book is, we're all told like dirt probably feels bad right now, these not saving, I don't know how much you're saving dirt, but like there's a very strong story to your point, the story, save for retirement, put your money away, get there, go save, save, save, save. And the book is written by a guy who's very wealthy, and so take that with a grain of salt or throw out the book contents if you don't respect that quote, or sort of talk him for somebody who's already got scads of money. But he didn't always have scads of money, and he'd managed his life this way all along.

It is, while you can enjoy your life, you should be spending your money. And if you get the end of your life and you're leaving a massive inheritance to people, you have wasted your life and wasted your money. If you're going to leave it and inherit somebody, then give them the money now. Just give it to them now. If you're gonna leave it to a nonprofit, every nonprofit would say, we want it now, we want it now. If you're gonna leave your kids a, inheritance when you're dead, which means they're probably gonna be at 60 years old, maybe, they've got life financially figured out by age 60. They don't, when they needed it, it's like they were 25 or 30, something like that, but yet we don't give and bless our kids. So for the hunting one, for me, Dale, when I'm 70, back to your question, will I be doing that? I don't, I'll be able to sit in a deer blind until I'm 90 and 300 pounds, but hunting elk, if you're not staying on top of physical, you can't do it. So I hope I can do it at 70. So I would love to. Anyway, that was a long answer to your rhetorical question. But I think, but I really, I think, you know, and I've had this conversation with my sons. I said, dudes, we're spending all the money now.

You will have nothing. We've told them flat out. We, best we can tell, you know, one of the, you know, I was talking about, we started this podcast called the Redirect Podcast. One of the topics was mortality. You could have a year, you could have a day, you could have a week, you could have 30. I tend to think it's 30. But in reality, keep in the back of your mind that, you know, the reality is, is that you're, you're not, you know, it's not up to you. It could happen at any time. So if you're along that plan of making sure that you're spending it, and Fran and I have, like I said, told the boys, we are paying all the vacations and we're giving you the money you need to get what you want. We want to see you. We want to see it. So it is, it is a really important thing to think about, you know, but if we go back to, so I'm sitting on the back deck. We decided we're going to do this podcast, Adam, Kurt and I, and we, God just starts working. I started thinking about how God worked when the church started way back 30 years ago. And, you know, and all of a sudden I found myself doing a project at the 1819 Innovation Lab

over at the University of Cincinnati. And they give me a tour while we're doing this project of the e-sports lab. And in the e-sports lab is this beautiful broadcast studio. And I said, what are you guys doing with that? And they said, well, you know, you need to use it for, I said, I think we're going to start a podcast. And he said, you want to use it? I said, yeah, I would love to. All of a sudden we have a place with all this equipment to do our podcasts. So now we're starting to talk about, okay, we've got a podcast. We want to have conversations with people who are going through a redirection in life. We want to talk, we want to bring their stories to life so that people can hear about, some people are doing it well, some people are not doing it well, you know, but bring them all to the table so we can have this conversation about the reality of what happens to the person. Because we had, I mean, we've had a couple, we've had a couple podcasts on where we've had, we had two women come on, one lost her husband after an 18 year battle. And all of a sudden she's on her own. We had another woman come on who lost her husband in an immediate accident, same thing. You know, we had the author of the book,

how to parent your adult kids. You know, when you're in this stage, that's a really, really important thing to be able to consider. And we had him come on, you know, and talk. We've had so many different types of conversations. And again, going back to the. The power of story. These stories are so great that all of a sudden, you know, we found ourselves, you know, we're now 40, 50, 55 episodes in, you know, and we find that what we do best is to bring people's redirect stories, you know, to our audience. So what's the counsel for somebody who is maybe not going to retire right now, but getting ready for it? Because it's the redirect thing. What's what's some of the repeatable patterns you're seeing showing up to people's stories? I think one of the things is people do try to practice what they might want to do. They, you know, just start getting involved. One of the biggest things is community. You know, I mean loneliness and community, that's all part of the redirect years. It's all of a sudden, what kind of community are you going to have? Who are you going to be hanging out with? You know, most men who retire have 1.5 friends. You know, theoretically, you should have seven because you got to have different ages and you're going to get older and a lot of them are going to die off. What are you doing about building that network, that group of friends? You know, there's the other side. Obviously, we kind of talk about, yeah, the finance, there's so much information out there on the finance and healthcare stuff. We're trying to get people to start considering, look, you know, how are you going to succeed? What's your plan going to be? But find your purpose. Start working on your purpose. Who are you other than what your career is? And because that's a powerful thought when you start thinking about people are coming out going, okay, well, I'm not that anymore. Who am I? And man, the work that you can start doing on that to say, you know, what do I love doing? Because you're going to get a chance to do it. You're going to get a chance to do it. And that's, you know, and I think to be able to get conversations out there and getting people talking about, we just had John Pepper on, you know, he's 87, still going at it. Former CEO of P&G, board chair of Disney. things to start thinking about, you know, or start, you know, start doing, you know, and that's been the power of the podcast so far. Do you find people go into those retirement years equipped or ill-equipped? How many are surprised and how many have been planning for it? I brought a number for you. I brought, I brought a number that I think you'll find kind of fascinating. I will find it fascinating. That's why I asked the question. All right. So we talked about the fact that you had 18 years, right? Right. Okay. Wait, that I had 18 years? That anybody on average is going to have 18 years from 164 until you die, right? The average retiree, this is real statistic, average retiree watches seven hours of TV a day. Okay. Think about that. 50% of the boomers are depressed when they go into the retirement years. Only 27% of retirees do community service. Only 35% have a plan written for future finances. 35%. Meaning a will? Meaning a plan for having enough money to make it as long as you want to make it. So it's having a retirement. And the highest rate of suicides in the U.S. is men over 70. It's almost double teen suicides. And why is that? It's a powerful statement and I think it's more for the lack of community and loneliness and not having a purpose. Not finding out what are the gifts God gave you and how are you going to use them?

Go find them, but go do something about it. Don't sit around and wait for it to come to you. You know, one of the hardest things, you know, and this is something to practice doing in your, let's say, in your pre-retirement years, is stepping out and making stuff happen. All of a sudden, people who have had these careers. and meetings come to them and people come to them, that doesn't happen anymore. All of a sudden you've got to be the one to make that big step forward and you better start getting used to doing it, you know? And don't take it personally if, you know, they're not coming and knocking on your door to do things. You've got to make it happen yourself. And I think that's critical for, and that's just something really good to get used to. But some of those things that we got very used to in our working years aren't there. Like what? Well, just like having, you know, social activities. And if you, yeah, I mean, you've got kids at school, you've got parents around. There's so many things that are happening. Yeah, well, you go to work, you go for beer afterwards, the people at work, you're celebrating a project or something like that. Yeah, there's some stuff there. So here's an eye-opener, that last day of work, I mean, all those people that you've had relationships with, I feasted on a million relationships because I was traveling everywhere, Brian. And all of a sudden, if you've got two or three people

or four people from work that you stay in contact with, you're doing pretty darn well. All those relationships are gone. Yeah, because you're not important. You're not bringing anything to the party anymore. You're not, Brian, they have to have to, we have to maximize our relationships, try to double dip. This has got to be productive. And I got a friendship and sorry, you can't, no, done. Yeah, so that's why we think of this time period of, you've got the pre-retirement, then you're going to have this honeymoon, you're going to golf every day, you're going to go out and hunt every day. People get this in their mind that this is what, but all of a sudden it's like two or three weeks or two or three months or even a year or so of this. And then you hit this kind of disenchantment phase where it's like, oh, like, am I giving back? What is my worth? All of a sudden there's a lot of things that are coming up and that's a really hard, hard time. And that's real. Okay, so people who golf every day or hunt every day, some activity they look forward to every day, you're saying those people are never happy with that after several months? I can't say that for everybody. What I can say is that generally, based on all the stories we've heard,

that doesn't last that long. You know, it just doesn't last that long. But because you're not growing, really, I mean, you're really not growing, you're not mentally challenging yourself, you're just not, you know, you're not giving back. You know, you start wondering, because look, I got 18 years. You know, you're going to start to in those later years too. All of a sudden it's like, you know, is this what God wants me to do? You know, is this his plan? You know, and people will start wondering about, am I relevant? Am I not relevant anymore? So people want to be relevant. They want to be, right. So golf, hunting, I would just think more about, could I hunt every day? I gave a long-winded answer about physical fitness, but no, I definitely could not hunt every day because it's an excursion, it's an escape from what I do right now. If all of a sudden I could just do it whenever I wanted and I didn't have anything else, no, it would lose its luster really, really fast. So we have to have something that, what is it? Something that sparks our creativity? Something that induces an appropriate level of stress in our lives?

Because that's, I think it's part of it, right? I mean, an average guy, average guy's like a pickup truck, I've heard it said. Unless you've got a little bit of a weight in the bed, he gets squirrely. You know, we need an appropriate level of stress. Yep. But I think it's more about, are you curious? You know, what is it that's inside of you? Do you want to grow? Do you want to be, are you curious? You know, are you going to be able to, you know, really enjoy the things that you want to do while knowing that you're bringing still value to people and to the world? Right, right. So is this a message of get yourself ready? Is it a message of have a transcendent purpose that you're not going to get paycheck for? Is this a message of make sure you have tight relationships going into? Like, I'm just trying to think, for me it's 60, or even someone at 50 and 40, just looking forward here. What are the things that we should just kind of land on now that tells us, all right, I need to be thinking of this over the next couple of weeks. decades. Yeah. What's your purpose? What's my purpose? This is, I think it all boils down to, my purpose is to, I get up in the morning and I take a look and think about everything that I'm going to do. You know, my purpose is serve God, serve my family, serve my community. Everything's got a line to that. If you, if you, my, my message, I think, and what's been coming

out of, um, the podcasts that we've had are people telling stories of their purpose. We had a guy named Nick Francis on the other day, who was a headmaster over at Seven Hills School. And he's just a guy, his purpose beyond his work was I hate waste. And so all of a sudden he's driving by a construction site and sees a pile of lumber. What are you going to do with that? And we're thrown in a dumpster. All of a sudden he gets it, puts it in his truck, brings it back. And he starts a business where he's making tables to give away to people, you know, with scrap wood from construction sites or now lumber companies that give them what they're not going to use here. He has, he is using, he has found his purpose and it's a family thing. And they, they counted some costs. You know, all of a sudden it was like, you know, you think about taking risks and doing things that, you know, this is my purpose. I'm going to go do, you know, be willing to, to count the cost and take the risk and do it. You know, I think of when I started the business, um, you know, and this is something I went back. I, when I started the business back in 2009, 2010, when I bought the brand experience, Fran wasn't working. And it all, all of a sudden it was like, here's this risky business. That's it's risky business. You know, we, we, you know, you never know in an agency, you know, projects come and go, these are one builds only, you know, but you know what, in, in order to, in order to do, and I, and I remember having a meeting with actually Jerry rushing that morning when I was making a decision to buy that business. And he said, do you trust God? I said, yeah, I trust God. He's given me these gifts that this is what I got to go do while I'm doing it again. Now, you know, I'm trusting that the things that God's put in front of us, take advantage of that opportunity. Go out and take risks. Don't quit. Don't give up. Don't sit in your, you know, your couch. There's just, there's so much more to be done out here, you know? And I think it's, that's a call. That's what this call is, is for us to bring stories like Nick Francis's story or John Pepper's story, or, you know, we've had, you know, so many different people on that, that just said, you know, kind of, I made sure that I was open to the opportunities and to take them and to act and to act and to realize that, you know, you're a human and realize that don't set your identity to your job. You have your own personal identity. Go find out what that is, find your purpose, and then go do it. What have you learned from doing the redirect podcast that's made you think, I wish I would have heard and thought about that 10 or 20 years ago? That's a great, great question. I really thought-

All my questions are great questions. Great questions, yeah. Just yet another one here. You're just great at whatever you say, just say that. Gosh, I think something that I wish I had, I wish I had done more, you know, around my own purpose. You know, I mean, I really think that I understood and knew that it was about stories, but how was that, how were my stories going to come to life outside of my work? Right, right. You know, it's finding that purpose, you know, in what you're, you know, really good at and what you want to do. But then I think I would have looked for ways to, you know, I had the opportunity, I got to do it a little bit when we first started the church, you know, when we were designing the space. And I got to weigh in on, hey, you're going to have this type of person come in and make sure you have, you know, that was a nice little small thing that you could do and that I did early on where it was, you know, it wasn't about work, it was about something completely different. And I think it's starting to practice. 10 years ago, it'd been really fun to start playing with, hey, what can I do with this story building thing that I, you know, that I really put my own identity around? Yeah, that's a good point. Purpose piece, yeah, it's hard for me to separate my purpose from the thing that I've built. But I think my purpose, I'm not sure if I would say this, my purpose, but or just the core competency I have to always use is being a builder. That's why I'm just a builder. Build a church, build a nonprofit, build a 78 Jeep CJ7, build a 52 Power Wagon, build a podcast as we've done, Dirt and I've done. So I'm going to have to build something. Shoot, I might build my retirement home the day I retire, like build with my own hands.

That is exactly what I think we're trying to bring out, are stories of people that have found what they love to do, what they're really good at, but go do it. I mean, I'm sorry, I keep coming back to the act part. You got to go do it. We made this podcast happen. Kurt, Adam, and I have given it. I didn't know this was not on my radar. This happened when I retired. And how long is this gonna, we're committed for another year. And we're starting to think, and my part, I'm a little bit like you, I like to grow stuff. It's like, okay, so how do we grow this thing? And all of a sudden it's like, how do I keep this from being my full-time job? I still want to be a great grandfather. I still want to cycle. I still, I'm learning golf again. And I've got these other things that you've got to figure out the balance. But this is a passion thing. This is a purpose thing. And I can see that if we can, we've had over 8,000 listens since February. Oh, we're getting close to a year, I guess. But any one person, to get them to say, wow, I've got to worry about myself. I got to worry about the person. It's not just about the finances.

It's not just about healthcare. And one thing that I'm starting to see too is I'm running into people who are really staying physically active. I think there's gonna be a big push out as to how long we're gonna be around and how much time we're gonna have. Do you think? I do think. I feel, although they say 60s is go-go, 70s is slow-go, 80s is no-go. Well, I think that's gonna start sliding. I'm really curious to know that. I was in a conversation with somebody about this today. I was listening to one of the podcasts I listen to off and on is Huberman. I go, is a Huberman experiment? Huberman experience? Have you ever heard? Is a Stanford researcher. He kind of gives a preeminent podcast on health and stuff. He's a good guy. And he's on the kick, which a lot of people are about alcohol being just a no-go. He said, yeah, if you wanna have one or two drinks a week, that's probably okay. Not a day like it used to be. And it came up in the context of the one I'm listening to right now, which is on energy, managing your energy.

I always thought managing your energy was kind of like a new agey concept, but it's related to the mitochondria and you're at the cellular level and all that. And his point and others is when you have alcohol, it's a toxic substance that your body has to burn off and figure out how to deal with. And so do you want your energy going to that? You want your energy going to other things? I thought that's a pretty compelling argument. And I would also say for a lot of us, it is a key thing to building relationships. It's a social lubricant. It creates bonding with people. It does create a different set of health effects. If it's bunk that two glass of wine helps your heart, like they used to say, which is wonderful when you said that. For sure, for sure. It does enable you to connect with people and hang with people. All that to say, I don't even know what else to say. What did you say that just made me reminded of that? What did you say? You said something interesting. Yeah, I always say something interesting. Come on, help me out. I was talking about living longer. Oh, thank you. Thank you.

Yeah, thank you. My point is we are so geeked out. There is a whole industry on supplements and taking testosterone and what your blood type is and how you should eat and now don't take alcohol and having whoops on your wrists or on your fingers and tracking them. It is big, big, big, big. We are obsessed, or at least a percentage of us, are obsessed with it, and here's what we don't know yet. We don't know if any of these dudes are gonna live to 100 and have a good life, you know? Or if they live to 100, are they 100 and they're active until they get to 100? Like, it's all theory right now for me. You know what I mean? Well, I think the thing that I'm seeing, and I see this, actually, in my friends, everybody realizes I'm not gonna make myself live longer. I mean, it's gonna happen. Whatever's gonna happen's gonna happen, right? I wanna live as healthy as I can while I'm in those years. So make your own choices. Keep everything in balance. I think, I still think the best Doc's advice is, you know, everything in moderation. Don't go overboard, but there's some real, you know, statistics coming out about some things that we probably need to or should do to help ourselves be as healthy as we can be,

as long as we can be. I got a mother who's 93 now. My dad died at 92. My mom's up to 93. She was four years behind him. And, you know, and so mom, you know, what is, she still has kind of a drink a day. I just hope I haven't killed those genes, Brian. Drink a day? How old is she? She's 93. Yeah, there you go. There you go, that's, yeah, right. You know, but I could probably make a point that said she probably ate more unprocessed food in her lifetime than I ever did, so who knows? Yeah, there was a lot of stuff going on. Well, he had this one researcher on, and he said, hey, we found that, you know, for some people, a meat eater only diet works really well. Other people, it's vegetarian. Other people, it's, oh, what's the anti-gluten thing or the Pisces, the piece that, what is, you know, it was all the rage before, whatever. You have to know your body. And something's gonna work for your body different from somebody else. And I think that's what I like about your podcast and what you're doing here is I don't hear you as much as I'm trying to get from you prescriptive answers.

Do this, don't do that. What I'm hearing you say is you really have to know you and you have to know who God has created you to be, and you have to craft a plan that works for you. I'll tell you right now, yesterday I didn't have any alcohol, no problem, whatever. Who cares? But it ain't gonna work for me to have a beer a week. If that's moderation, a beer a week, and not because I'm getting buzzed every time, but just the people I'm hanging out with and we're having conversations over drinks, we're not gonna have conversation over Legos. And that brings a massive, massive health benefit. But that's me, that's me. There's other people, that's not true at all for them. But I, so I'm hearing you say, figure out who you are and start working that plan. Exactly, and it's so good to hear other people talk about what they did, because we do learn from everybody else's stories. The power of story is an emotional connection. Come on, I mean, give it a chance, listen to, and get out of it what you can. It's not just for you, but what we're finding is, the interesting thing was when we first came out with our podcast, it was all about redirection, not retirement, and yada, yada, yada. And all of a sudden, the first call we get is from a 38-year-old creative director

from my old company going, dude, this isn't about retirement, this is about identity crisis. I had one, I had an identity crisis, and I had to go through, who am I? What's my purpose? You know, and completely changed my, completely changed my profession around. I mean, he was in something that he, you know, wasn't really excited about. Well, it's a lot like when you enter that, you know, first decade of your retirement, you're gonna run into the same thing. You gotta kind of know who you are, you know, and what you love to do, and make sure you're doing it. William Vanderblom does the, he's the premier executive search firm for churches, basically a Christian headhunter, can't call himself a headhunter, so it's a search firm. And his vernacular for what you're talking about is the reason why senior pastors don't retire earlier or have a horrible transition to somebody else is because there's two things they haven't figured out. One, they haven't figured out their finances, because they maybe haven't made as much money as other peers have, and they've also been through multiple campaigns, they've had to been a lead giver, so they don't have the financial wherewithal to be done, and they need that paycheck.

And then secondly, as you just said, it's an identity crisis. They're not sure how they would function without being Reverend so-and-so or Pastor so-and-so, or they're not sure what it'd be like just to be a normal guy. in a room and not be when the pastor opens his mouth on an issue, he gets to be the defining voice in the thing. It's just, what do I do? Where do I go? But that's for everybody. I realize we're talking to you. That's not pastors. That's everybody, these two things. Totally. Totally agree. And I do want to mention something more that I was thinking about because we're talking about everybody's got something going on. Getting rid of your stuff is really important, really critical. You go through a whole period of life where you're accumulating, accumulating, accumulating. All of a sudden, you've got to let go. You've got to free yourself up from all stuff. Collections. You start thinking about, and I'm in this, you're not yet probably, but I'm looking at everything that I have around the house. It's just like, do my kids care about this? No. They don't. Relieve them of the problem of having to dig through all your stuff and start emptying out.

You're going to be home with Lib. When you hit 70, Brian, you're going to be home with Lib. You guys are going to have to figure out how to be spending a lot more time together. In this, we find we have a couple of our episodes were about how to be home all the time. You traveled your whole life. I traveled a ton. All of a sudden, thankfully, Fran and I ended up working together, so we kind of learned how to live together because she was my COO and I was running the company. We got a chance to really see how well each ... We see a lot of challenges with all of a sudden the person who's been working and traveling is now home and it's in their kingdom. You got to start figuring out how you're going to work. How are you going to make that happen? There's so many of those transitions. I think finding purpose and then learning how to manage those transitions are critical at any time. Our creative director said, this happened to me when I was 38. It really is a ... I hate to use the word for the podcast. I'm not saying just kind of make the bridge, but it really is an aggressive thing to think about retirement because retirement or whatever happens when we're 70, 80, 90, 60, 55, whatever it is for people. Some people don't want to use the word retirement. They want to use refirement. I'm refiring. Yeah, yeah, yeah. But whatever it is, wherever you are right now, there is something else that's going to come. There's really nothing many of us put any time into other than how's the money going to work. We're not spending a lot of time talking about that, which is really a passive move. We just assume it's going to be okay and if I have the money, I'll be fine.

I think you're pushing us into some deeper, deeper waters that whether we like it or not, we're going to be thrown into those waters at some point. Like it or not, it's coming at you. It's coming at you. It's better to be able to have the opportunity now to learn from others that have gone through it. We call it redirection. Redirection happens throughout your whole life. We're now thinking, you know what? Maybe this isn't so much about retirement. Maybe the redirect podcast is about broadening the audience and let's talk about just redirection. How do you find purpose in redirection? Because it happens a lot in your life. You're redirecting a ton and I think with considering God in the middle of it and you bringing him into the equation, you know, gets you on a path what puts you kind of ahead of the game where you might have been before. Yes. Dale, is there anything else that we should be talking about or you want to talk about that we haven't talked about? I don't think so. You know, listen to the redirect podcast or join us at, I'm going to throw this out here, redirect-u.com and we have a website, but find us on Spotify, find us on Apple, find us on YouTube. It's a storytelling mechanism to bring what can be the joy of redirection to life for you through powerful stories that others have told. Redirect-u.com. Redirect-u.com is the website, but the podcast is the redirect podcast. Perfect. Man, we talked a lot of good stuff, but we didn't even relive all the old stories. You know, I've been down some paths together over the last 30-ish years.

Like you're probably, other than Denny Patton, who was on years and years ago, and then Dai, that you're the longest running friend that I've ever had on the podcast, right Dirt? By the way, do you remember when we really kind of first connected with each other? Playing squash? It was not, it was close. We were in a small group. We were in a couple small group that we started and then I had you out to the tennis tournament and then you and I played racquetball and we did a whole, we did a video on anger. I thought squash was the first thing. No, it wasn't. Because that was back when I was borderline poverty. I actually probably would have been in poverty if you look at how much our household made and how many people were in it and I was the only income earner and you bought me a squash racquet to use and it was the most, at that point, that was the most extravagant gift I'd ever been given. Really, it honestly was. In my life, it was the most extravagant and it wasn't for my birthday. It wasn't for, it was just like, I'd like to play squash with you and you could afford whatever that was. Back when, 120 bucks, I don't know what it was. You could afford it or maybe it was,

I don't know what it was. It was a nice one. Had the exact one you had and you gave it to me. I thought, man. I mean, that's the power of generosity. Those kind of simple acts and when you did that, you basically bought my friendship. Oh, man. You know what I mean? Everybody listening up. I mean, really. I mean, Jesus talks about that, right? He talks about the, quote unquote, unjust manager who goes around and he marks people's bill down so they'll like him afterwards. And he says, at least the people of this world knows how money works, you know? And you can buy your friends, but not all of them are cheap. But your money can influence people. It can bless people in a way that bonds them to you relationally. And that racket, that was the first time in my life someone gave me something nice that wasn't warranted. And actually, in terms of what I've been given by my parents for birth, it was the best present I ever got. Wow, wow, wow. I'm honored, but you know, I was just buying your time. I wasn't just buying your friendship. I was buying your time so that we could spend time together. But it was smart.

And you know, and I thought if we went out to the, yeah, we went out to the ATP. I remember bringing you out to the ATP. Oh, that's right, yeah. We did that all the same year, 1996. Didn't even know what an ATP was, right? Yeah, right, right. Well, you were from Pittsburgh, so. Well, unfortunately, I was not a racket sport guy, so I really wasn't any fun to play squash with at all because you just spanked me left and right, which may be why you did it. I need to get somebody a squash racket here so I can just make myself feel better about myself. Oh, man, it's fun, it's fun. You know, there's part of me that wants to bring all of this to life again, you know? I mean, somewhere in this church, you know, the moments from the beginning, you know, I know we've done something like that, but man, it would be really fun to look back at some of those redirections that the church went through and to be able to share that with people that are coming in, so. Well, our first building thing that we did, first building we built, the first version of the first building we did, we hired you, I can't remember if we paid you or your firm was volunteer, whatever way it was worth it,

and you helped us program in subliminally the sacred pathways into our atrium, you know? Yep, yep. So it's been fun. Mark Schoeller and myself. What's Mark doing right now, by the way? He went up north to Sandusky. He was part of, went to the theme park company up there a long time ago and raises family up there and seems to be doing well. He was a good dude. But good guy, yeah, a lot of good people back then, so. So man, thanks for being generous with your time and thank you for pouring into us. I love you, I love what you're doing, and for all of us at The Aggressive Life, hey, hey, hey, hey, this isn't the interesting thoughts life, it's The Aggressive Life. So, so, why don't you put some time in thinking what you're on this planet for, your purpose? Why don't you put some time into thinking and looking at the numbers going, hmm, what's my finances look like when I retire? Instead of evading that painful topic and not feeling depressed about it, then it's gonna come on you, whether you like it or not. You may as well at least know what you're in for and start planning for it. Maybe that's what it is. Maybe it's, here's an idea.

Maybe you gotta give something to somebody you wanna be a friend to. Maybe you gotta buy a friend, buy some time. I don't know what it is, but there's something here probably for you to do, so why don't you go do that and we'll see you next time on The Aggressive Life. Thanks for joining us on this journey toward aggressive living. Find more resources, articles, past episodes, and more at BrianTome.com. My new book, a 60-day devotional called The Five Marks for Man, 60 Days to a Powerful Life along with all the other books in the Five Marks Library are open right now on Amazon. Be sure to leave us a rating and review wherever you listen to your podcasts. And send an email to DIRT, that's DIRT, at BrianTome.com to get a free Aggressive Life sticker. Find more on Instagram at Brian Tome. The Aggressive Life is a production of Crossroads Church, Cincinnati, Ohio.