228 | Retirement, Longevity & Lifestyle Design with Mike Drak
Our guest on the pod this week is Mike Drak. Mike is an Author, Public Speaker, and Retirement Lifestyle Designer. He is the author of 2 best selling books, Victory Lap Retirement and the newly released Retirement Heaven or Hell. And he failed miserably at retirement.
Links mentioned in this episode:
Retirement, Lifestyle Design & Logevity: Interview with Mike Drak
Transcription by Otter.ai
SPEAKERS
Paul Zelizer, Mike Drak
Paul Zelizer 00:02
Hi, this is Paul Zelizer, and welcome to another episode of the Awarepreneurs podcast. This podcast is all about the intersection of three things, conscious business, social impact, and awareness practice. Each episode I do a deep dive interview with a thought leader in this interview, someone who has market tested experience and is already transforming many mine. Before I introduce our guests and our topic today, I have one request, you could go over to Apple podcasts or whatever app you're listening to this show on, hit the subscribe button to rating and review. It helps tremendously. Thanks for considering it. Today, I am thrilled to introduce you to Mike track. And our topic today is retirement, blonder, tivity and lifestyle design. Mike is an author, public speaker, and retirement lifestyle designer. He's the author of two best selling books, victory lap retirement, and the newly released retirement heaven in hell. He likes to remind me that he failed miserably at his first efforts in retirement. Mike, welcome to the show
Mike Drak 01:06
Paul, my pleasure to be here.
Paul Zelizer 01:10
I'm thrilled to have you and you are doing us a huge favor my friend. By the time this goes live, we’ll be up in the mid-220s in terms of episodes. So something like episode 226 or 228. And we have literally never done an episode on retirement. So obviously we're we were missing the boat a little bit. So thanks for helping us to fix that.
Mike Drak 01:35
Well, my pleasure. We'll break some new ground today, Paul. So, Mike,
Paul Zelizer 01:40
We’re called Awarepreneurs. And one of the ways we like to get to know somebody is to ask you about a wellness or resiliency practice that you use to resource yourself for this important work.
Mike Drak 01:51
Well, the one I use and it's it's almost like, necessity is fundamental to me, my my well being really is I need to get away to my fortress of solitude. And my fortress of solitude is way, way, way up north of the treeline and Canada. It's a place where you can go and you know, your cell phone doesn't work. There's no computers, TVs, radios, nothing like that. And it's where I do my deep thinking, My introspection and I, you know, I really think about things, what am I doing right? What am I doing wrong? How can I prove things. And because you're in the wilderness, and I'm near water, and I'm near mountains, it's feels like I'm connected to everything. And it's almost like I'm closer to God up there. And it really rejuvenates and recharges me and when I come back to the city, I can hit the ground running. But I need to do that on an annual basis or I'm going to be in trouble.
Paul Zelizer 02:50
Love that Mike. And you and I one of the ways we connected with on some lifestyle design things which we're going to talk about in this episode. But I'm the same way, like get me into nature for some extended period pretty regularly or I am not as happy or productive human. So I totally hear you and love that one. So this whole theme of retirement lifestyle design and teaching people to be something you call a retirement rebel, like how did you get passionate about retirement? How did you fail miserably about retirement? How did retirement lifestyle design become such a big focus in your life?
Mike Drak 03:29
Well, let me give you a little bit of my story then I was I spent all my career working in a bank, the same bank as a matter of fact, for 36 years. And when they decide to package me off, I was really happy. Because I was planning on leaving anyways, the stress was getting to me and our values, you know, were on different pages at that point. I didn't like working there anymore. And when they packaged me off, I thought like I had hit the lottery because I was gonna leave. And they gave me a severance check. And I like was really gonna turn around, it was going to be wonderful. And all the stress would go away. And it was like that for a couple of days until the first Monday morning hit. And I found myself studying at home. My wife was still working. So she was gone. I was all by myself. And I missed the familiar, you know, pings of emails coming in and people phoning me up and asking for helpful over some issue. And it was starting to get to me because I'm sitting there in front of a TV. I have like 500 stations I think Do you think I could find anything interesting to watch? And I was just sitting there moaning I didn't know what to do with myself. Now I couldn't even hang out with my friends because they were all still working too. And what really got to me was that no one could understand what I was going through because every Do you want to automatically automatically thought, Hey, Mike doesn't have to work anymore. So why is he not happy? He's got to be out of his mind. And they didn't understand the reason I was unhappy was because I couldn't work anymore. I didn't have purpose in my life. And that made me miserable for the longest time. But what woke me up, I call it the awakening is one day, I got a phone call for one of my friends, five star Joe. He was a former customer of mine in the bank. And he called me up and he said, Would you like to go fishing? Because one of the regulars I went on a trip with him couldn't make it that year. And he said, you know, we'd love to have you go up. Suffering from retirement shock, I didn't want to go because I didn't want to do anything to be honest. Like, I just want to sit there and be miserable and moan about things. But my wife, she said, you don't want you should go a five star because he only goes to the best places. And it's going to be wonderful. And it's something that you need, maybe have come out of it feeling better about things. So I took her advice, even though I didn't want to go, I said, Okay, Joe, I'll go with you. And I paid my money. And I never even looked at where we were going Joe said he would loan me all the equipment. In one morning, we got we got a play. Other we got because I didn't know where I was going. We got on one plane, then we got off somewhere up north, and we got on another plane went further north, and then get off that plane and got on the float plane, and one another hour and a half further up north. So we finally got to the lodge. And so meanwhile, in my head, I thought, well, Joe's gonna go to one of these famous lodges where you know, one of these expensive places that have been around for 100 years, the one with the, you know, roast beef carving stations, and the people serve your fine wines and hot tubs and whatnot. But when we got to this place, and I got on shore, and I was wearing shorts, because Toronto Dino in Toronto was 85 degrees at that point. And when I got on shore, it was freezing cold. And I asked one of the guys there I said, Where's the lodge and he goes here. It was was broken down Trapper shack in the middle of nowhere. And I, you know, I, you know, I felt so miserable. I almost felt like crying I think I cried my myself asleep for a couple days. And then finally, I started to feel a little bit better. It was almost like a cleansing with the, you know, the environment being harsh like that. And it was raining, it was hailing at night, it was snowing. And that's, you know, I'm the guy that travel light because I thought it was gonna be warm wherever we were going. And for some reason, I started to feel a little bit better about things. And I started talking to the other fishermen that were in the group. And there were a total of seven fishermen. In the amazing thing is when I went around, I talked to everyone, I found out that they were still working. And these were people that were north of 60. I was the youngest person on a group, I was 59. And these people were in their 70s. And the oldest one was 83. He was a dermatologist from Little Rock, Arkansas. And he was still working three days a week. And I looked at all these people and I said, Well, wait, these guys are all still working. They don't have to because they have a lot of money. But they're having a great time working part time. And they're living like almost like kids, they're having so much fun. And every day they were joking and doing all these things. And I went wow, there's, there's kind of be a reason that they're doing this, there's got to be a lifestyle reason because they're having an awful lot of fun in it went against that whole notion of you know, you have to stop, you have to retire and just take it easy. And they weren't doing that at all at all. And they were having the most fun. And that's what where I came up with the term retirement rebels because they were living life differently. And they were having a great time doing it. And that changed my whole opinion and outlook on retirement. And when I got back to the city, I started looking for other retirement rebels. And I found them all over the place. But it's I found them because I was looking for them. And they had all these different lifestyles, in working a little was a part of that kind of lifestyle. So it really opened my eyes to new possibilities. So
Paul Zelizer 09:42
what are the things I'm hearing like is like the kind of traditional narrative is you kind of go to the red line you work as hard as you can and make as like this is what we're supposed to do. Supposed to work as hard as we can make as much money as we can for however many decades and then we just Like collapse into doing nothing, right and put your feet up, maybe play around a golf, right? If we're staying with a certain narrative, right?
Mike Drak 10:08
And, and that's not healthy for you at all, and it's the wrong narrative in the game changer is increased longevity to, you know, it might have worked at one point where you would live five years after retirement. And you could take it easy like that. But if you're looking at 2030 plus years in retirement, that's not gonna work for you, you can't just live on the life of leisure. And that's what made these people so interesting, because they created a lifestyle that had a work component, leisure component, adventure component, and they were doing all these these crazy and wonderful things. And these are the people that were really living, and that really kind of woke me up to the possibilities, right. And these are people that that own your own businesses. But instead of selling it, they just pulled back and they worked last hours, or maybe they sold it to their employees, and they can use to work in like a consulting capacity, or they sold it to their kids. And they went into the office a couple days a week, just to be involved in it to give them a good reason to get out of bed in the morning. And then work for them.
Paul Zelizer 11:20
One of the ways we connected Mike is I have been sharing mostly as a prompt from clients and community members, I've been pretty public about, you know, doing some lifestyle design changes. And in my own journey, and the most, the one that gets people's attention the most is I work. My goal is to work about 100 110 hours a month. So let's call it about 33 hours a week. And then every fourth, fifth, maybe six weeks, I take a week off and go do a big adventure I was planning on last night with my adventure buddy who was here for pizza. We made homemade pizza and we are looking at you know, what are some of the water stops or our next fast packing or backcountry trail running adventure? Right? And and you are among the peoples that while you're doing something different? You should talk about that more, I guess. All right. So I've gotten to know you through those conversations. And one of the things I've come to know about you, Mike is that you're you're an advocate of not waiting until you retire to think about your lifestyle. Is that fair to say? Oh, for sure, for sure. Talk to us about that. Like when? When do we start thinking about lifestyle? And how does lifestyle? In your mind? What are some of the things that can help us design for quality of life and longevity before we're in retirement age in air quotes, and after we're at retirement age and air quotes, because I know you don't retire, you know, advocate for the same kind of retirement that a more traditional resource person would
Mike Drak 12:54
know what I've been toying around with is a new life model. Because the old one was, like you said, you work for like 40 years, you work hard, save up as much as you can then retire full stop. And I really believe that's not healthy for you, mentally or physically. So what we're trying to do is, is come up with a model where we work hard still, but for a shorter period. So maybe for 20 years, until we reach a certain level of financial independence, where we've accumulated enough in the way of assets that will generate enough passive income to to cover our survival expenses, those expenses, like putting food on the table, or paying for the rent or things like that, and buying clothes. And once we were at that point, we know we're going to survive, we can get by no matter why. And then we you know, that gives us all kinds of options, which is the exciting part, then we can say to ourselves, okay, I don't want to work hard like that anymore. Maybe even I want to do something different, where I can generate a little fun money to support my adventures that I want to go on. And in some new hobbies and interest or you know, or traveling or things like that. So really the, the the new job, the additional job at the end is going to fund all the fun stuff. And you really have it right when you can find work that you really love to do. That's fun to do that puts you in a state of flow, and use that to fund us adventures just like those people were doing up north that I met. That's exactly how they were living. And you can do that for as long as you want. Because if you love the work you do, and it gives you the flexibility and autonomy you crave. Why would you ever retire from something like that? And we see examples of this all the time like Warren Buffett. He's nine years old, and his sidekick is 97 years old. And they're still going strong because they love doing the work they do Rolling Stones Back on tour, I think they're, I think they're just all pushing on TV years old. And they're still going strong, because they love doing that stuff that drives them it, you know, they love getting in front of an audience and playing their music and enjoying that, and it keeps them going in. So that's what we're trying to do is find these different combinations where we're having a lot of fun. Plus, we have time and the flexibility to do these other things that we that we enjoy doing, and keep doing that for as long as we can. So it's a hybrid form of retirement in works, you know, part of that hybrid,
Paul Zelizer 15:39
we'll unpack that a little bit more in just a sec. Before we do that, like, one of the things I know you've thought a lot about is your journey, your career journey is not typical these days, I think you said 36 or 38 years at the same bank. And then they like gave you a nice check when it was time to go. I imagine you know, as a banker, you thought about optimizing your retirement, you know, options in terms of what was there for you in terms of building a retirement fund, etc, etc. Our listeners are social entrepreneurs, many with nonlinear career paths. And we've talked about this, again, offline, before we hit recording, you're very cognizant of that, that there are some real disruptions going on in the workforce, as well as a lot of inequalities, for instance, you talk quite a bit about women and how, you know, just the trajectory of of one's career as a woman in a system that has so many inequalities baked into it, you know, not everybody has the same option. So what would you say to somebody who's had either had to deal with some inequalities, and or has had a less traditional path than Mike track with 36 years in the banking industry, and leverage, you know, when it came time to retire?
Mike Drak 16:59
Well, you know, really, Paul, I take the word retirement right out of the picture, and I replace it with a term I refer to it as Second Life. So I'm saying, okay, my first life, I pay my dues, I have to work hard, I have to take care of my family, you know, do all that stuff. But then at some point where I reached that, that, you know, basic level of financial independence, that's where I entered my second life is my turn again, and I'm saying, Okay, I'm doing it my way this time. In basically what you said was, I said, Alright, I don't find the banking job interesting anymore, I find it highly stressful. I don't like some of the things they're doing, I have this strong need to help others. It's, it's a need, I have to satisfy our, I'm not going to be very happy. I used to be able to do that in the bank. And I needed to find a new way of doing it. And basically, that's why I did, I formed my own small business, where I help people, because I know a lot of people are going to struggle with retirement transition, because the old model doesn't work anymore. And I help people through, you know, reading my books, to educate them on new ways to approach retirement. And I do it through public speaking. And I do it through retirement coaching. And it really makes me feel good. But I'm the boss of my own domain. So I can work like you is many hours that I like to, if I have a large adventure, I want to go on. Well, I tried to sell some more books, I do some more speaking gigs. But if I don't have anything big I want to do I just pull back, and I do more of the adventure side. So I create this lifestyle. That's just wonderful. And it's very flexible to depending on what my need is. But it's generating just discretionary funds for me to cover my entertainment expenses, really, if you think about it, right. So it really takes the pressure off. And I'm only doing things that I love to do. And I'm hanging out with great people. I'm helping great people are meeting people like you that think the same way, which is really exciting. And I'm connecting with others like that. And life is really good. And there's so many different ways of doing this. And I love small business. But what I'm saying is at some point, it's okay to pull back. It's okay to to, you know, earn less money. We don't have to pursue money all the time like we used to, because at some point we have enough. But I think the problem is a lot of people don't know when that point is when they have enough. And these are things that we need to talk about and figure out.
Paul Zelizer 19:48
One of the things we talked about again before we hit the record button, Mike is the idea of a business is something we can scale up or scale down as the field of life and our needs, maybe there's a surprise, maybe I want to go on a big adventure. Maybe I've been working hard. And I want to, like, you know, scale it down a little bit. When we own our own businesses, we have the opportunity to scale up or scale down. And if we're paying attention to being of service and making sure we're baking our values into the business, it's not like something like, oh my gosh, I can't wait to get out of here. For me, I know, it's like, oh, cool, I get to talk to Mike. Today, we're gonna do a podcast on retirement. And in 223, plus episodes, we've literally never done anything in retirement. It's something I've personally been thinking a lot more about and is more cognitive, it's more like front in my mind, and some of the things I'm really working on up leveling. And this is a fascinating topic. And I want to spark this conversation in the social entrepreneur world where sometimes we think less about retirement and can easily find ourselves in a different kind of retirement, hell, where our resources are very limited. And that makes it that we have to keep working hard, or we have to make some really challenging choices of not being able to do the adventures not want that for the social entrepreneur. So I can't wait to get on this podcast. It's not like I can't wait to not work, I can't wait to work as long as I'm having the rhythms and also get to adventure and have time to spend with the people I love and garden, etc. I love what I do, as long as I'm being mindful of how many hours I'm doing it. Yeah,
Mike Drak 21:34
you don't want is it really worth Paul, if you love what you're doing, though, you see there's a line a very thin line between work and play. In many times, it can be one in the same. The danger that I have is that it can become all consuming because I enjoy it so much. So I do too much work that I love to do. And I ignored the adventures and all the other things that I wanted to. And I have to be careful about that. So I have to, you know, create balance for myself. And that's why when I heard the model that you created for yourself, I thought, hey, that's really good. As long as you have the discipline to take that week off, in you make sure you go on that adventure. It's so important.
Paul Zelizer 22:21
Leaving for the Arizona Trail, a big adventure, I don't know, probably 130 miles in two weeks or three weeks. So anyway, yeah, I'm pretty excited. Pretty good about it.
Mike Drak 22:31
So well, you're really living, right? You're a great role model for people.
Paul Zelizer 22:37
So talk to us a little bit about this idea of retirement lifestyle design, if we start to chunk it down. So I think our listeners are like, Okay, this makes sense on a top level now start to give me like, What if I want to be somebody who's intentionally designing a life in retirement, either before I'm of that age, something I can do before I get to the age where I'm like now in a more consciously designed retirement life, whatever that means for me, and what can I do when I hit that threshold? And I'm like, Okay, I have the resources for survival. And I want to design something that works for me, it sounds great, Mike, but I don't really know where to start. What would you say, for people in those two different life scenarios?
Mike Drak 23:21
Let me start with a little bit of a warning. I think this is important because my banking job, I worked in commercial banking. So I dealt with a lot of calm small business owners, but it was really businesses, any size up to 100 million revenue. And what I found is, is that, you know, more than a few successful people retired with a lot of money. And yet they lived miserable lives after that, in the reason that happened is they couldn't come up with another good source of purpose for themselves, before retiring their work, their business was their purpose. And they never figured out another good source of purpose for after they retired. And that was a big problem. So the first thing in the design process is we identify sources of purpose, good sources of purpose that will make you happy for after you retire. And it's funny if you ask people, what their vision of retirement is before they retired and Gun Club. And they'll just say all we're going to travel some and we're going to spend more time with the grandkids. Well, guess why? You know, that's not going to occupy all the free time you have in retirement. And grandkids grow older too. So you really have to put some thought into it and say, Okay, what's going to get me excited? What's going to give me that, that excitement to get out of bed in the morning and do something and you have to really figure it out. You have to come up with a couple of different sources and test them out. and find out the best one for you. And then once you do that, we can build a lifestyle around that. But really, the central part, the foundation is your sources of purpose. And everyone's different.
Paul Zelizer 25:16
I love that idea. It's very much the same as what we might suggest to a social entrepreneur, before you start selling products or services, let's talk about your core values and sense of purpose and make sure that you sync up your, you know, core values with any products or services, otherwise, you're gonna just be making more stuff in the world or just more noise trying to sell services. But if you're,
Mike Drak 25:39
you have no passion for one of the align with your values, right. And your values are so important. The problem with people, you know, I get back to me is when I was working in the corporate bank, you lose yourself. You don't you forget who you really are, and what your values are, because you know, you, you know, you're trying to do well, so you get a promotion. So you start talking like them and acting like them. And in doing things, you know, what they want, and you lose yourself and you don't know what your values are, you don't know what really makes you happy. Because you don't have a chance to do those things. You're too busy working really. And that's where you have to spend the time to sit back and say, Okay, what really makes me happy, what's important to me. And a lot, you know, we all struggle with that because we never really spent the time to do that. And so we sit down, and we try to figure it out. And what I discovered was helping people is a big value of mine. And when I could do that, I felt good in money was a byproduct. It wasn't the money I was after, it was the feeling of satisfaction, you don't know how good I feel, when a reader sends me an email and tells me about how my book to help them in some fashion. I feel like I made a million bucks. And it just that's the feeling that you want. And you want to get that on a regular basis. And then life is really good.
Paul Zelizer 27:12
Beautiful. So in a moment, what I want to do, Mike is unpack a little more about what your lifestyle looks like and how these different things you're doing, like writing books, and coaching and speaking all kind of sync up for a life that feels really good to you. Before we do that, I just want to take a quick break in here a word from our sponsor. Do you have a business that's about making the world a better place, and you want it to grow both in terms of your positive impact and your income? If so, I want to talk to you a little bit about some research that scientists have told us that what contributes to that happening in any human endeavor, whether it's getting in shape, or stop smoking, or growing a business. What scientists tell us is that when we're growing into new behaviors, the single biggest predictor about whether those things happen or not, is something called social support. But Alcoholics Anonymous is built on for instance, people who are understand the journey we're on and share the ups and downs and resources about being on that journey. well aware printers has a community like that for Social Entrepreneurs called the AWARE printers community. But you need a website designed by somebody who understands our kind of a business, a lawyer who can help advise you about trademark and intellectual property, you need a new logo, you need somebody to do Facebook ads, all done by people who understand what social entrepreneurship is. In addition to those concrete needs, also the emotional and spiritual needs the ups and downs of being an entrepreneur. As we all know, it's can be quite a ride sometimes. You were printers, communities affordable starting at $25 a month, we have hundreds of members around the world. And it's an incredibly generous place. You can find out more at aware printers.com forward slash community. And thank you to everybody in the community who sponsors this podcast. In the second part of the show, Mike we like to talk or we like to joke about putting on our entrepreneur classes and really getting more granular about revenue streams how people find you the specifics of the lifestyle you've designed etc. So let's start with that lifestyle design question. So like about how many hours are you working now in these various things you do that you love and how much is it recreation? How much family time like if you were to give us the you know, design of a week, what would we see in a week in Mike's life?
Mike Drak 29:46
We can make life while I'm working towards something I'm not there yet in terms of lifestyle, but I'll tell you what it looks like right now. I work four to three hours in the morning I get up around 430 And that's where I do my writing, I'm writing a third and last book. And after that I put in a couple hours of working out, because I'm training for Ironman Cozumel in November of next year. So in and that those workout hours will go up as the closer I get. And in the afternoon, I always like to do a long walk with my wife to get her 10,000 steps in. So that gives us a chance to, you know, get together and talk about things and whatnot connect. And after that, in the evenings, I might do a seminar. So I love doing virtual seminars, it's so much easier, I can do it in the comfort of my own home. And I'm doing a lot of those right now. As far as revenue goes, I've changed because I don't charge for everything anymore, I feel a need to give back and help people because I know a lot of people are struggling in retirement, I know a lot of people don't have much in the way of money. So what I do is probably half my seminars are free. And I give away a lot of books to people in need. And I sell them at a discount to two people just to so they can get spread and help as many people as we can. I have a new mission statement I came up with, I want to help 5 million retirees before this is all said and done. So that's my goal. And I can track that really is through book sales on Amazon and whatnot. So we have a little bit of a way to go. But I'm working on a new top secret project, which I'll tell you about probably in the summer. And I think it's really going to help me to hit those numbers. I'm very, very excited about it. But of course, it's going to be all for free, too.
Paul Zelizer 31:59
Nice. So tell us about the two bucks. You started with victory lap retirement like what sparked that book? What were you hoping to accomplish? who's written for etc.
Mike Drak 32:12
That book was I wrote that after I was let go by the bank. And I was trying to figure things out. And I'm the kind of person that I need to put things on paper and kind of you don't make notes and do I like to doodle and do drawings on that and say, Okay, I got to figure this out. Because this isn't working out for me, the silver retirement model doesn't work anymore. And I need to come up with something that makes sense to me. So really, it's it was my thoughts on the process. And it outlined my struggles. And what I felt was bad about retirement. And, you know, I talked about Blue Zones, I talk about geeky guy, finding purpose and a good reason to get out of bed in the morning because I retired without purpose. And that was one of the main reasons I failed at retirement. And I also learned that just because you have a lot of money doesn't mean you're going to have a great retirement. And I also learned that if you think all your problems are going to go away, just because you're retired, you're going to be surprised because they won't go away, you're going to have the same problems that they after you retire. And so I learned a lot from it. And then I said, Okay, here's the trap. How can we fix it. And then I wanted to come up with solutions. And that led to the writing of the second book, retirement heaven or hell, where I really tried to educate people about the non financial challenges they are going to be facing in retirement, I spent a lot of time doing that on that book. And the purpose of the book was to again, help people transition to a successful retirement. And also I wanted to create change in the financial services industry. I wanted advisors and and to wake up and say, Hey, we need to help our clients more with respect to retirement transition in not just focus on the money, but focus on the lifestyle element of retirement. And it's something that they don't do right now. But there's a big need for that. And I'm hoping I can kind of push them in that direction.
Paul Zelizer 34:29
So those are the two bucks and listeners, we'll put a link to both of them in the show notes. So you can go check those out. And then you also do speaking so talk to us a little bit about you're talking about seminars and speaking like talk to us like what does that part of Mike's like
Mike Drak 34:45
speaking with this fairly funny, Paul? Because when I was in the bank, I couldn't do public speaking I had a terrible case of stage fright. It was brutal. Do you know that
Paul Zelizer 34:59
More people are afraid of speaking than they are dying speaking, I believe in front of a group of our peers humans are the only thing that is more scary to the, you know, just humans in general are snakes. Well, you know, why are public speaking then dying?
Mike Drak 35:17
There one two in my book, like, I don't know which one's worse, but I beat the speaking one. But it was so bad. I turned down promotions because of it if I knew public speaking was involved, and when I was at in the office when there was a meeting, and there would be a bunch of people and they would go around the room say, tell us a little bit about yourself and whatnot. Before they got to be, I would run out of the office and go to the washroom, because I I don't know why I just couldn't do it. It was it was terrible thing. But what after I wrote the book, I said, Well, geez, I got to be able to do public speaking, because I need to get in front of people and talk about the buck. So I said, Okay, I gotta conquer this big fear of mine. That's where I decided to join Toastmasters. It. I remember the first couple of meetings, they were on Thursday nights. First night, I went, I was sitting in the parking lot. I said, I can't go in. I bailed on it. Second Thursday, same thing bailed on it. And the third one there. I rehearse in the parking lot. I said, Oh, wow. It's now or never either I go in or I'll never go. So I mustered up the courage I walked in, and it was Toastmasters. Beautiful, because people are so supportive, everywhere. And this lady walked up to me, and she knows you're a newbie, and she knows you're nervous. And she started trying to talk to me to calm me down. And I said, Will you do me a favor? And she said, Sure. I said, Well, you locked up to over there, because at some point. And I don't want to leave it. She lived said, Sure. Don't worry, we will let you go. And I stayed the whole night. It was hard. Paul, it was so hard for me. But I stayed. And I showed up the next Thursday, and it was hard again. And I showed up again and again. And then finally it turned in the fun for me. And now I enjoy doing it. But it was one of the hardest things everyday next to writing a book because I did not write a book either.
Paul Zelizer 37:19
So what are the like formats of speaking you're doing seminars? How often are you doing them? What kind of topics are you doing them on?
Mike Drak 37:27
I basically have two seminars I do so I'm, I offer them free to libraries and nonprofit groups, that that could benefit from it. Some groups that deal with Medicare issues, credit unions, even pilots, you know, groups of pilots that all deal with sudden retirement and things like that, I offered them for free, because I know it's tough. I know people are suffering, right. And then anyone in the banking industry I charge. And you'll corporations, I'll charge for the service unless I feel for them for some reason, I'll do it for free. But it's very easy. Now I don't have to travel because it's all virtual, right?
Paul Zelizer 38:13
Nice. And then the coaching, talk to us about the coaching you do.
Mike Drak 38:18
The coaching, again, is my wife's a an advisor. So I coach her clients for free, I enjoy doing it. And I do that for two reasons. Number one is to help her clients. And the second one is I'm hoping other advisors see how important it is and how satisfied her clients are in the value the they see in the coaching. So maybe they will catch on. And that will spread. So there's two reasons why I'm doing it. And people are starting to pick up on it because it's they know that their clients need coaching. You know, not maybe not full coaching, but at least some guidance and someone to talk to someone to hold their hand if they're struggling, a lot of people are going to struggle with it. So that's the reason I do that is I'm trying to spread it. And I'm also teaching courses for free to advisors where they earn their continuing education credits. And again, I'm educating them on the important non financial aspects of retirement transition. So they're aware of it because they're not aware of it either. They tend to just focus on the money side of retirement. And they need to be aware that so they can educate their clients and preparing for it.
Paul Zelizer 39:35
One of the other things you do quite prolifically ugly Mike is you write articles. I was doing my research on it. Oh my god, you're writing like a lot of them and showing up in some very prestigious publications. And one of the things that you've been writing quite a bit out about lately is something you call the difference between return on time invested and return on money invested. So They're both plays on the ROI frame, right? But one case, it's like, do we invest our time, and another case, we invest our money. And you're advocating that we pay attention to both these things. Tell us a little bit about that?
Mike Drak 40:12
Well, I think it's from my bad banking background again, but I really look at it carefully now. Because, you know, I only have so much money, and I don't want to waste it, buying things I don't need. I love investing my money in experiences. So instead of buying, you know, some fancy couch for the house, I'd rather take that trip to Hawaii, with my wife, in the creating great memory out of it, because that's the thing I'll remember, I'll remember the trip, I won't remember the couch or the fancy car or whatnot. But the trip was stick in my mind. So those things are important to me, in times very precious to because there's only so much time left. And I don't want to wasted doing you know, boring things like you know, watching TV or going to some parties I don't want to be at and things like that. I just want to invest my time and things that make me happy. So those are relationships with my friends and family. And, you know, things that I'm passionate about, like I love fly fishing, I love going up to the George. So I get that break. I need once once a year, I love going to different countries and and do research on retirement. So I was in Sardinia spent some time there talking to a lot of people, I like visiting some of the Blue Zones and get a feel for what's going on there in terms of how can we increase longevity. So it's like doing research, but it's traveling and meeting all kinds of people. These are the things that really make me happy. So yeah, that those are the places I invest both my time and money. And I get a high return from it in terms of personal happiness. So I'm very cognizant of it, I will not waste time and I will not waste money
Paul Zelizer 42:02
must be really hard to have to go places like, you know, Greece or Oakland now, Japan, right? That's a rough life. You've got there, Mike, you gotta sell books. So when you look ahead in terms of retirement, and, you know, you're trying to help clients kind of find their way, what do you think are some of the emerging trends as it relates to retirement? Now, what would you be encouraging our listeners who, again, are business owners and don't have some of the infrastructure that somebody who's had a corporate career to help them, you know, navigate retirement? What would you say to that particular audience, given some of the trends you're seeing?
Mike Drak 42:48
Well, really, what I'm trying to wake them up to is the impact of increasing longevity on what we do. Because a lot of people, they, you know, I guess that's been grinded into us by the advertisers that you've reached age 60, or 65, you got to stop and you, you have to rest and take it easy enjoy a life of leisure. And life doesn't work that way. And we're opening people's eyes to say, Wait, this second life, this new life that, you know, we're entering, could last, you know, 30 plus years. And we're saying, in, you're going to continue to change in the grow, you're not going to be the same person you are today. In it's your choice, who you want to grow into what experiences you want to have. And, you know, there's so much opportunity, and there's so much upside there. And we want them to see that and take advantage of that. Because that's a long time when you think about and there's so many wonderful things that you can do and experience during that period of time. So I can see people working to age 90, provided it's at a pace they they can handle his work they love doing so why wouldn't you do that. And then using the proceeds from that work, to fund these other fun things. So you create this wonderful lifestyle for yourself, that goes on and on and on. But you know, it takes planning, it takes a lot of thought to do that properly. And that's what we're trying to tell people is five, five years before you're going to take it like say normal retirement. Let's start thinking about these things. Let's start working on creating this lifestyle. Let's start testing it out. Maybe we could go to a lower cost country like Mexico, maybe that makes sense for us, right? Maybe we could, you know spend you know six months here in Canada and six months somewhere warmer in take our work with us because we can work over the internet now. Anywhere. There's an internet connection you can work from. So there's all these different combinations and printing mutations that we can take advantage of. But it takes some thought.
Paul Zelizer 45:04
Yeah. And I'll share a personal story on that. When my daughter went off to college, about two and a half years ago, three years ago, I had a pause, and I'm not a retirement age. I'm 53. I'll be 54 in February, but I was thinking like, Okay, I had wound up in Santa Fe, New Mexico, where I loved living, and I'd been there for 13 years. But it was kind of an accident, I got divorced from my daughter's mom, they were up in the house, I didn't want to move like out of state, but house was a tiny little place. And when I was starting my business, it just didn't feel right. And I knew a few people who had similar businesses in Santa Fe, and was close enough, I could get to my daughter and see her more. So I wound up in Santa Fe, live there for 13 years. And after 13 years, I'm like, do I still want to be here. And what I realized is an hour down the road in Albuquerque, the cost of living is half it's a bigger city, there's a lot more going on in the social entrepreneur space. It's funny, because one of the reasons I like but don't want to live in Santa Fe is it's a very large retirement community, I'm not retired, and the average population in Albuquerque is 15 years younger, to sell more dynamic and a better fit for where I am now. And the cost of living is half, I literally bought a place a mile an hour down the road. for half the price gas is cheaper, food is cheaper, entertainment cheaper, and housing is like more, you know, at least half off it for a really nice place. And when I looked at where I was and how I want to live, I was like, that just makes life so easy. And if I want to see my friends in Santa Fe, I get in the car and drive an hour. I don't see him any less, right. So we see a more five ad but they have to come through there's there's a very very, very, very small airport in Santa Fe, but mostly anybody who needs to come to the airport or a big box store, like a Costco they come to Albuquerque, so they're like, Hey, I have a town. So I don't see them any last, maybe I see more. Right? So anyway, just tell that story as an example, you know, I didn't have to move to Mexico, I can move an hour away and the cost of living, imagine if I could work less and invest much more in my retirement because my cost of living got, you know, drastically reduced. And I it's a really good fit. If I had just stayed with what was would have been committing me to a certain, you know, need to have income at a certain level for a really long time. And just cut that in half by moving an hour down the road. So anyway, that's a that's a real life example from my world thinking about lifestyle design. No, but that's
Mike Drak 47:37
how you have to think yeah, you have to say, okay, you know, and that's one of the big questions is where do I want to live? And why do I want to live there? Like I know one gentleman I wrote this story, and I like talking about it so much is that he decided that he was going to move up and live at the cottage. And then in the winter time he was going to winter in Costa Rica, down with his wife, and he was going to work in the summer up in cottage country doing cottage renovations. He loved doing. It's funny, he was a banker. He does cottage renovation. But he loves it right. And that was his stress reliever when he was working in the bank. At night he would go down and work at random in his business, I guess paying banging nails in a two by four, the stress reliever. But he created this lifestyle where he's working in the summers, he sold the house in Toronto. And what he did was he pocketed a good amount for his retirement savings. But then he ended up buying a bigger house with his daughter who lived in Toronto that had a walkout basement, he renovated that and that's where he and his wife hanging their hat when they visit the city. And then they spend all summer at the cottage, the kids come up and visit them they're in in winter to go to Costa Rica and the kids visit them there too and their friends so that he's created this wonderful lifestyle. And basically it was through downsizing and relocating. But he's still has a foot in Toronto, because he can visit that walkout basement anytime he wants, right. So yeah, I like I like combinations like that very creative, and they they work well for people.
Paul Zelizer 49:29
Like I can hang out and talk with you all day. I love your stories. And I love that you've been thinking about this so long, and you're a busy guy and our listeners are busy too. If there was something you were hoping we were going to get to on this topic, and we haven't gotten to it yet. Or there's something you want to leave our listeners with as we start to say goodbye. What would that be?
Mike Drak 49:51
What I would suggest to them is is that you know, I guess the challenge is that we're so busy trying to get through day to day pressures and challenges and things like that, where we don't take the time to reflect on the big picture. And above the possibilities. And we need to make time for that that's where you need to get away, somewhere quiet. And you can start thinking about these things. In you, all you do is you take a piece of paper in, you sit down, and you start drawing and making notes about the possibilities for future lifestyle for yourself. And it takes time. And it takes a lot of deep thinking, but you'd be surprised of some of the solutions, you can come up with very creative solutions. And then you test these prototypes out and find the best solution for yourself for down the road. I think it's always good to have an alternative plan in case of need, I think we all need that. And it gives you something to look forward to something to build towards, you know, something that will make you excited when one day you can finally execute on and launch. So I think those are things that we need to, to sit in, you know, and work on instead of, you know, just veg out in front of the TV at night after another hard day at the office.
Paul Zelizer 51:16
Mike, thanks so much for being on the show today.
Mike Drak 51:18
My pleasure, Paul.
Paul Zelizer 51:20
So we'll put a link to the books, Mike seminars to the coaching, everything's in the show notes, listeners. Before you go just one more thing we love listener suggested topics and guests. So if you have an idea for a show, or for a guest for show, please go to our website and go to the contact page. And it has our three basic criteria. We try to be really transparent who we choose and why it's right there. And if you take a look at those and you say wow, I got a great idea, please share your great idea. So for now, I want to thank you for listening. Please take really good care in these turbulent times. And thank you for all the positive impacts that you're working for in our world.