Episode 130 - Jim Degaetano - Leaders On Leadership
Why is leadership important? What makes a great leader? There might be as many ideas about this concept as there are people thinking about them, but this one is certainly worth your while. Dr. Tracey Jones is joined by the President of Diamond Wealth Advisors, author, and speaker, Jim DeGaetano who shares his unique insights on what makes a great leader and how you can identify them. Jim discusses how great leaders affect the world and how you can develop leadership skills. Jim also talks about financial independence, retirement and the value of integrity.
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Jim Degaetano - Leaders On Leadership
My very special guest is my friend and a local Central Pennsylvania resident, Jim DeGaetano. Welcome, Jim. It's great to have you here.
Thanks for having me, Tracey.
You're welcome. Jim is the President of Diamond Wealth Advisors. His passion is helping his clients receive a better return on life through strategic planning. Jim has committed to guiding others to gain emotional and financial clarity for life's transitions. Amen, Jim. It's nice to have you here.
It's excellent to be here.
Thank you. I connected with Jim when I moved back to South Central PA. Jim also worked with the tremendous Mr. Mike Wheeler, my betrothed. Jim, do you want to tell us about the previous life where you worked with Mike and how you ended up back here?
I met Mike early on in my career with a prior firm. Mike was the Vice President of Fieldforce and I was a young up-and-comer that he put time into. He thought he saw some potential. He was a mentor for me as I worked through the firm and became one of the top advisors for a little over a decade there. I always felt like he had my six. He was always there to be an ear that if you need to talk to. You knew that your words coming out of your mouth were going in his ear and not out the other ear. You knew that they were being taken to heart. Oddly enough, to connect the dots, when I was talking to Mike, this was after your wedding and I heard the word tremendous many times. I was talking to Mike about potential books. He said, "Why don't you talk to Tracey?" I was thinking, "Why don't I talk to Tracey? Why am I not talking to Tracey?" The rest is history.
I love that you help people to look at what is. I call them previously unrecognized assumptions. You were like, "It didn't even dawn on me." Jim, have you always had a passion and an interest in all things financial? What did you notice, a gifting or anybody in your family in it? What drove you to that particular field of work?
Interestingly enough, my mom dropped off. She kept everything from my kindergarten through high school and college years that she deemed important. I have a daughter who's in first grade. It's one of the reasons why I wrote Larry the Bunny Saves His Money book we'll talk about at some point. I said, "I'm going to go through and look at what I was doing at first grade and see how it looks and not compete with my daughter." One of the things I noticed was the standard assessment tests that they did. I came up with 99.9% consistently on the math.
Ironically, in second grade, they said, "What profession should you do?" The teacher was like, "Something in accounting." That was what I ended up going in. It was so interesting to me that they understood what your inclinations were and what your gifts from God were as early as that age. I seem to naturally do very well at math and that fits well with finances. Most importantly, I love people. I get energy from others. We're all here to make a difference in our own way and I feel we do that here. That was what led me into my profession. We'll probably get into some of that other stuff later.
It's a beautiful field. My dad was in the insurance agency. A lot of people know that. He loved that because, "I'm not a math guy but a people guy." He loved financial freedom. You even talked about in your book what insurance does for people that it's, "We've got God. We plan everything but it's a beautiful thing to take care of those that are going to be around when you're not." Speaking of Charlie "Tremendous" Jones, he wrote a little booklet called The Price of Leadership. This was based on a speech that he gave over and over again. He was so passionate about leadership but he was pragmatic about it. He was funny but he was real. You could tell he had been in the trenches.
In this, he talks about what you're going to need to pay price-wise in order to truly become a leader. A lot of people think it's the title, cult of personality or whatever but they're not true leaderships. He outlines four different points. I love talking to accomplished people like yourself about the moments in life where they experienced each of these prices because you're all going to pay this price. It doesn't mean you're doing it wrong. It means you're doing it right. The first one he talked about was loneliness. Sometimes we think about being a leader and we're like, "Everybody loves us. They're throwing us parties like Michael Scott on The Office." There's a certain element of loneliness that the leader has to carry. It's not a bad thing. It is a thing, though. Can you share with our readers some examples of where you experienced this and a word for some of them who are in a season of loneliness?
The word loneliness is interesting to me because I don't view myself as lonely in society's definition of lonely. Lonely to me is sadness or maybe a depressed state of emotion because you're with yourself or without any company. Loneliness depends on how you look at the definition because I would view myself more as isolated at times than lonely. The reason for that is probably simple math since we talked about math before. Not everyone is a leader. Not everyone should be a leader. I'm not talking about fathers, mothers, good spouses or whatever. You could define leadership in that way. I'm talking to a greater extent.
It's like we can't have everyone being a chef at the restaurant because then there's no one to serve the meal. You do need to have some function in society and leaders provide a certain function. Personally, going back to what you said about your husband Mike and where I met him, it reminds me of one of the roles that I played as a successful advisor there. It was training advisors across the country. I still have calls with advisors to help them. Young, old or new in the business for a while are at points where they need some guidance and help. What I found through that was those top advisors were different. You could change the word advisor to leader in our conversation.
They come to work differently. They show up differently. Their heart is in it. It is not a job. It is who they are. They are here to make an impact. They don't just guide their clients in financial strategies. They help them by giving them time to create a life purpose. They have different meanings to what they do. Not only that but then they create processes around that. They're diligent with it. They create mission statements and vision statements, which are two different things. They do them and articulate those in a way that everyone understands. They do sell in a way that's simplistic because, to me, there's brilliance in simplicity. Leaders can take complex situations and topics. The leadership in them makes them simple so everyone can understand and follow.
We do that in the financial world. I used to print out 120-page plans that no one would read. It's like what Dwight Eisenhower said, "Plans are worthless but planning is everything." The advisors that I helped across the country, the top ones clearly were different. It's why there is a 1%. It's why there is an 80/20. It's why we have these certain rules. Your readers are leaders. The one thing I would have to say that was the biggest thing I noticed of those top advisors that they had was they had empathy. I don't know if it was learned or how they have it.
Great Leaders: Leaders come to work differently. They show up differently. Their heart is in it. It is not a job. It is who they are. They are here to make an impact.
There are two gifts to being a leader. Those are certain gifts that you have from God. Not everyone is, "You're using your gifts. I'm using my gifts." It's a different kind of leadership. There are all different personality types in leadership but then it's utilizing those gifts and skills. This is how I circle into loneliness. When I think about this because there's nothing wrong with not being a leader but if you're going to do that, you needed to utilize your skillset. I'll think about it this way. If all of us in the world had the same level of athletic talent to be a professional athlete, would everyone be a professional athlete?
No, it would be the norm. It's like if you gave everybody $1 million, what would that do? Everybody has $1 million. Nobody has to work but then who does stuff? It's a stupid thing. When people say that, I'm like, "That doesn't even make sense."
The idea is because there's a certain discipline, diligence and patience that goes involved to do the dedication and work that's necessary with those gifts. When I hear loneliness, personally, I think, "Someone is sad." I feel isolated at times because that's a path. It's like the Choose Your Own Adventure book that I used to read as a kid. We have all these paths. Leaders take that one route and that path is the road less traveled. Whether you say, "Many are called. Few are chosen," you're religious or in the military, to me, it's the truth. You have to figure out how you handle that path.
You can become sad and depressed if you travel that path and you don't have any supporting energy, which is why executives have retreats. It's why people love conferences. It's why your wonderful audience is reading your blog. It's because we have a forum in which to express ourselves to not be depressed, sad or lonely from isolation. It's important for me to say that being alone is not lonely. There is a clear difference between them. To go on that thought, I love watching my big screen TV downstairs. It's nice. I would love for my wife to watch a show with me but sometimes she wants to stay upstairs and watch her Lifetime movies during the season.
I may not want to enjoy them with her and I have a different kind of movie I watch downstairs that has more action-packed stuff in it. I love it and I'm completely fine alone watching that movie but if I were to walk into a movie theater on my own, I would feel different. I would not be as mature. I would not have as much self-confidence to be able to walk in and own it. It took me years to feel that level of self-confidence to be me. We all go through that at different rates. It's like one of those things. It's silly now where it's like, "If I don't want to spend time with me, why would anyone else want to?"
We talked about loneliness and it makes me think that it is. Especially for leaders, we need time in solitude to contemplate and get the noise out of our lives to be able to clear our minds and provide clarity in making decisions. I try to do that every day through meditation, prayer, quietness, etc. My wife calls it alone time, "Mommy and daddy need alone time from the kids." It's great and very helpful. That's what I think of loneliness and the price of leadership. It can go down that route but good leaders don't let that happen because they surround themselves with other people who are filled with that same level of energy.
There is a time when you need to be alone as a leader. Think about Jesus. Jim and I are both believers. Jesus before he accepted what was coming to him, what did he do? He went out into the wilderness for 40 days and nights alone. Your point about that is the road less traveled. The harvest is plenty. The laborers are few. That means leaders and followers, "Where are they?" There are not that many of them. It's life because I don't know why. I wish it weren't so. Don't bemoan the 1% because that's as old as time.
Your part about that leaders look at things and they are involved in a different way. I tell people, "You should be in the minority, unfortunately. Don't feel like you're the only one in here because good leaders are unicorns out there." There's not that many of them and I don't bemoan it. I just try and find the good ones and connect them with the good followers. You beautifully unpacked that. For our readers, you do outgrow it. When you're younger, you're just, "I've got to be around people to show my worth," and then you're like, "This is me. Take it all in."
I love space. The older I get, the more spacious and comfortable in our own skin we have to be. That's part of the journey.
Let's talk too because I know you're a big healthy guy. I love and respect that and so do Mike and me. The next thing he talks about is weariness. As we talked about if only 1% is doing or the 80/20, it's tough. My dad would say, "Tracey, don't bemoan people who aren't carrying their weight. It's the way it is. Right or wrong, don't complain about it. Life is not fair. Find the people who are going to contribute and move on." It is draining as a leader because you have to go through that process of doing it. Also, we need to stay in top fighting form to run the race. We're the leader of the pack. How do you combat weariness? How do you stay at your best physically and mentally? I know you talked about spiritually. How do you stay at top peak form so you can be the best for your customers and family?
There are two components to weariness, the physical and mental. Within each, there would be subsets. When I decided to start my registered investment advisory firm, Diamond Wealth Advisors, it was draining when you're working 12 to 14 hours a day, 7 days a week. You have a family and kids. They're young. They want to see you and want to play with you. The wonderful support structure that I have with not just my wife supporting me, my parents and everything, there's no branch that bears fruit alone is what I like to say. Keeping your energy up is very important.
The thing about weariness as a leader is to be mindful of the energy that you need to possess and manage because there's a lot of negative energy out there. In fact, I read a report one time, "For every seventeen bad news stories, there's one good one." There's so much negative energy whether it's social media or just a conversation. The next time you talk with someone casually, think about how negative they may be. It permeates your body. We have to protect ourselves from that. Physically, it means that we need to eat well. We were talking about earlier beforehand about the elimination diet that my wife and I were going on for a short period to make sure that we're putting in our bodies great nutritious food so that we can have quality output.
I've always been the thought that it's not necessarily the output that we need to be concerned with as leaders. It's the input. If you do the input, you do the activity. This is what we do with clients. Focus on the input. The output will be there. That's important. You need to put the energy and the input. If you're working so much time on that and focus on what could be, what will be or whatever, you're not putting all your energy into what it should be. Physical is extremely important. Those hours that everyone is going to put in to be successful are there. You're going to have to do it.
I would suggest the mental could be much more important because the ability to be successful as a leader in my world is to be successful financially. What we're trying to do for people is help them along that path is you want them walking out of the door feeling better about themselves than when they came in so they can make choices that align appropriately with their purpose in life. We talked a lot about this in my book, The Fruitful Retirement, which is providing emotional clarity. To translate that into leaders, providing emotional clarity and thinking of weariness, who would you rather have you lead? Someone who's inspiring or someone who's tired? Even if you are fasting on Fridays as we're in Lent, don't show it. Don't let people know it. Act as if you've already had enough to eat during the day.
I heard something. I was talking to someone and they made a comment about a prior boss. Their prior boss mentioned to them and would go in their office as an employee and say, "You don't understand how lonely it is to be the boss." I thought about that and we talked about loneliness. I said, "In my view, a true leader would not tell their employees how lonely it is to be a boss. They wouldn't do that." That shows weariness. What happens on this road if you take that path that is the isolated path as a leader, weariness would be the first step in my mind before you get to loneliness. That loneliness now is that sadness or depression, which that first step would be weariness. We get it. We all get weary mentally and physically. It's, "How do we turn around from that?"
Great Leaders: Leaders can take complex situations and topics. The leadership in them makes them simple so everyone can understand and follow.
There's always a pain. There's always what they say, "Sales is the problem you don't want and the solution you don't have." We all have these problems we don't want but it's how you process pain. The pain can be for your bitterment or betterment. Those are the two things. Your thing about worry and weariness, what I love about your book is so many people stress about finances and they haven't done anything about it. Many people stress about their job and they're not putting everything into it. Many people stress about their health and they eat like crap.
It's like, "Why do you worry the minute you look at it, take action and go through the steps of all that, you eradicate that?" I think if leaders are getting into the worry or the weary zone, they're focusing on the right thing because there's good tired and bad tired. Worry will kill you. It will not only exhaust you but your body can catch a disease of the mind. There are times as a leader and I'm sure Jim you've been to where you're not feeling it. You're not feeling very tremendous. You got to go home, suck your thumb for a little and wonder why you show up. "Nobody likes me. Everybody hates me. I'm going to go out and eat worms." It's done, a three-second pity party because you have to.
Leaders have a tremendous amount of responsibility. In a prior life, I worked for a CPA firm in Philly and they dealt with bankruptcies. The managing partner was 1 of 4 bankruptcy trustees in the State of Delaware. Most companies at that time filed their incorporated status in Delaware before other states have opened up. We dealt with cases. I was beginning my career, a young CPA and seeing poor decision-making at the top that resulted in hundreds and millions of dollars of investors losing their hard-earned assets. Employees losing their job due to poor mistakes at the top and poor leadership because it makes a huge difference. I wouldn't say that it isn't on my mind when I show up every day that I have hundreds of millions of dollars of investable assets that are important that we make the right choices. We have to maintain it. It's my responsibility and obligation as a president to make sure that my mind is sharp and my body can handle that. If I can't then I got to step down.
I read that Alamo Drafthouse filed for bankruptcy in Delaware. Is that why they do it in Delaware? They're in Texas, Alamo Drafthouse Cinema.
They were incorporated in Delaware. That was what happened. Wherever they incorporate, that's where they would file bankruptcy. I probably know the firm that's handling the case then.
I saw that on LinkedIn and everybody was like, "Why Delaware? Why not Texas?" I was like, "Why Delaware?" Jim DeGaetano is a wealth of knowledge. When you said that, I was like, "Okay. Now I know."
Talk about a very interesting job. I was young. I was 24 or 25 years old. I was being sent out across the country to run firms because they would either be filing Chapter 7 or Chapter 11. If they're re-organizing then most of the executives would leave or they would be paid some bonus to stay and I would be flown out. I remember the guy running the managing partner. I didn't know what I was doing at that time. He said, "Go get information. Figure it out." His belief was trial by fire. Personally, it was a wonderful experience at such a young age to figure things out like that.
As a student of leadership, do you think most leaders at the top, how does that happen? Do they understand the numbers? Are they asleep at the wheel? Are there ethical character malformations? Are they not that smart? How do you not see the end coming?
Most are very smart. They know what they're doing. It's called greed. Usually, when you look at it, I could tell you stories. That's another show. It's behavior. The reason people are successful financially is their behavior. The reason that they would not be successful financially would be their behavior. It's why I wrote Larry the Bunny Saves His Money and The Fruitful Retirement. Those are on two spectrums but as leaders, it's behavior. Most of that comes to fear and greed. What I found was that most of those at the top who made those decisions got caught up and lost in it. To use a phrase probably for your next transition, they abandoned who they are when they originally started out their firm and entrepreneurial spirit of what they wanted to be. I think that sometimes people get lost.
Alamo Drafthouse was in the movie industry. Who could have prevented this? There are certain industries like cruise ships and movies that were shut down for a year. How do you make a contingency plan for that? I live in Austin. I love Alamo Drafthouse. I'm not critiquing on that but it was more, "Why Delaware?" You answered that. The other ones, if all things considered, you should have seen it coming or prevented it.
I see what you mean by that. I was coming down the route of actual misleading information at the top, fraudulent activities or conveyances. That's what I was thinking. Tactical maneuvering and pivoting are parts of the overall strategy. I think of, "I have wonderful memories of going into Blockbuster when I was a kid looking to movies." They didn't see it coming of how to change their method of delivering content. That's how it goes. You could use examples from Sears to JCPenney and Kmart a whole way up now, "What's going to be the next Amazon?" We'll look back in history and say, "We should have all known that." Very few visionary leaders possess that kind of capability to understand that. It isn't a fault sometimes of leadership.
We talked about loneliness and weariness. The next price he said was abandonment. I'm in pet rescue. Abandonment is a bad term. He used the term abandonment as almost a hyperfocus. You need to stop thinking about what you like and want to think about in favor of what you ought and need to think about. As you're going to all these places and juggling all these things, how do you stay singularly focused on all the things responsible that you have on your plate?
I think of abandonment in two ways. How you stay on track means you need a very clear strategy of what that vision is that people can follow. We had a rotary meeting for the Rotary Club of Carlisle here. It made me think of when I was the President. My motto was, "Be all-in." If you're going to do it, be all-in. With that being said, that doesn't mean you don't pivot. We talked about what Blockbuster should have done or whatever. It means you do get to own it and be responsible for it. Breathe and live it. That is you. If you have to pivot, you have to pivot. People will abandon that strategy. This might be a weird analogy but think of it like a bicyclist who is going on a race. They have all the appropriate equipment to change their gears as they're going up and down the hills but their main focus is the finish line. If you abandon the race, it's probably because you haven't prepared appropriately. You don't have the right equipment to change gears when you're going up and down the hills.
Part of what we're talking about is adaptation and that is a clear essential thing for leadership. A good friend of mine, retired Lieutenant General David Barno, wrote a book called Adaptation Under Fire. It has to do with how the military reacts and what kind of framework they have to handle the changing of wartimes that we're in. Adaptation is much different than abandonment. How you stick to it is you have to make sure you're prepared. I'm a firm believer in athletics growing up with kids because it shows you how to win and lose and how to prepare to win. I have kids at home. I want them to get involved. My son got involved in karate just because of the discipline. He didn't learn how to beat anyone up. He has learned to stay away from fights and learn about self-discipline and control, which are very important. Control is an important element to not abandon who you are and what you're doing.
I would have to say probably a whole other thing if I'm going down a lot on abandonment. As entrepreneurs creating a business, you're going to be told no a lot. Whether it's seed money, Angel investors or I as an advisor getting started in my career, people said no. I remember the noes. It hurts because it's like someone rejecting you and who you are like, "Tracey. I don't want to be on your podcast. Jim, I don't want to buy your book." "Why? I put my hard work and love into this thing." We emotionally get so tied in that we have to move forward. We have to be aware that we're going to be told no. Good leaders somehow find a way to get past it. It doesn't mean we don't remember it. We recognize it. It's a part of our DNA. In fact, it can be a very good motivator for many people. If you're the wounded child like I may be, you're told that you're not good enough. You're going to be good enough. The way to stick with not abandoning your strategy is to understand it, be prepared and be able to adapt.
The Fruitful Retirement: A Financial Framework for Your Life’s Greatest Chapter
It's the old Serenity Prayer, "Let me attack what I can attack." The haters, you can't change that. That's a biblical thing. I pray, "God, let me not fixate on it. Let me abandon my self-pity, wallowing and dwelling and move on." A lot of times, you have to abandon that negative self-talk, pity party and victim attack. We're always exchanging in life one thing for another. You constantly have to be put down like you got to fill your mind with something. The negative creeps in. You have to abandon that but then you have to replace it with something else positive.
In The Fruitful Retirement, we talked about controlling the three things that you can control and putting your focus and energy into that. That's a part of what we're talking about with weariness. It all ties together. It is all connected. That comes with focusing your energy on what is most important. When I started my firm, there were headwinds. There are not complete agreements. There are people who are going to say things that may not be true. If I focus my energy on things that people are saying that are untrue, I'm wasting my time. I needed to focus on the inputs so that the outcome would happen.
The last thing he talked about was the vision. Sometimes we think of Steve Jobs or Warren Buffett and we're like, "Nostradamus from on high." My dad always said, "Vision is seeing what needs to be done and then doing it." There's this execution. He was very pragmatic. Jim, you sound very much like him in the vein of, "I see it and I'm going to execute it because otherwise, you're in theory land." Applied knowledge is where it becomes wisdom, knowledge to wisdom through the application. As you said, input. I do something about it and then I deal with this one. What do you do to clarify your vision? You talked about pivoting. Did you ever have your vision change on you?
I definitely have. Leaders have power. Power is intangible. There's a difference between a mission and a vision. A mission would be, "What do we want to be?" I would have to say vision would be, "What do we do that makes a difference?" We want to focus on what we're doing that makes a difference. The lady who spoke at Rotary that we had because it's fresh in my mind. She's a retired Rear Admiral and the CEO of Girl Scouts in the Heart of PA. Let me read to you what their mission and vision statement is. "The mission is to build girls of courage, confidence and character to make the world a better place. The vision is the work of today is the history of tomorrow and we are its makers." I love that. It's well said.
It has a clear vision of where you're going. I created and trademarked this thing called the Path to Clarity Map that I use with clients. We don't talk about it in my book but it's part of our onboarding and discussion when beginning with conversations in engendering trust with clients and how that is. It's like where you are now and where you want to be. If you're thinking of any vision and trying to execute, "I am a clear executer. I like to execute. Sometimes I know that so I have to step back and be aware to not move too fast. You dealt with this with the publication of my book. You dealt with it by the way in such a wonderful manner."
Here's the way I think of vision. Let's take a car, a map and gasoline. One can have a car and a map but without gasoline, the destination can't be reached. The car represents those that follow the path set forth by the map. To me, basic leaders are going to create the map but leaders with vision create the gas, too. I feel like we got to create the gas. That's positive energy and what it's all about. Maybe distill some of these prices of leadership that your dad has talked about. That's where I see a vision.
You hit on two things. I was talking to another gentleman. He said he can help you distill your purpose, which is a vision, in two words, a verb and a noun. I was like, "Two words, how could it be?" Where you talked about that creating gas, the Girl Scouts making history and that's beautiful. What is the verb to the noun that you do? That's a great way to keep you oriented towards the top-level, "What's my North Star?" We're down here scrapping and diverting in-flight emergencies, crashing, getting up and winning. I love that you talked about that. That is truly what leadership is. It fuels other people. We covered loneliness, weariness, abandonment and vision. Jim, what else do you want to share with our leaders? You're quite accomplished. Any other main themes or points you want to leave them with?
Maybe I'll just say that despite the world's reliance on judgment as a source of strength, wisdom is not judgment. It's the relinquishment of it. As leaders, we need to let our minds be guided by our hearts. Let's use our words to heal. We have the power to do so. We don't need to use force to do it. We can do so from our words and actions. We can lead from the top to do so. What people want is to be recognized for the good that they have within themselves that's provided by God by birth. All we need to do as leaders is use that leadership to inspire others, look within, act in alignment and connect with that purpose that they have and that purpose of whatever organization that you are leading. That would be my last thought on that.
Judgment is not a source of strength. I don't know what else to say. That was beautifully put. Wisdom was there when God spoke it all into existence. What a beautiful way to hit on. What I think is missing in leadership now and what is shredding the fabric of humanity are too much judgment and not enough wisdom and recognition. I want to talk about something else. To our readers out there, Jim has talked about two of his books, The Fruitful Retirement and Larry the Bunny Saves His Money. If you think this is cute, you wait until you get about this and Jim will tell you where you can get them. You know how I feel about animals teaching life lessons. There's no greater teacher.
Jim goes into this. He has an incredible framework in there. He's not just a financial, brilliant mind but an advisor. He's an advocate. His whole book is how he advocates for people to eradicate their fear with this incredible construct he has. I love that he says, "It's a little bit self-help and it's a little bit financial freedom." Money is not magic but we're all squirrely about how we think about it. Jim, could you talk a little bit about this and where people can get copies of this?
The reason I wrote the book was having thousands of appointments over the years, helping people with this transition into retirement. You hear their hopes, dreams and concerns. You have an idea of what that roadmap looks like. One of the things that I've found that is missing out there in the marketplace is the emotional component. You cannot expect to do your life's work and have your identity. All of a sudden, you get handed the key and you're a different person. That's ludicrous. It's laughable and silly, yet millions of Americans every year go through this transition and they don't want to necessarily talk about it. I don't want to be gender-biased here. I tend to see more men because they're from that particular time that you didn't want to talk about your feelings. It's not manly or masculine to do so.
I wrote the book so that there could be a shared understanding that we are not alone. There are other people going through the same transition. Here's what I found and I have some wonderful exercises that can help people. One of which is to talk to three different people who retired over the last year or two. Ask them. I give questions to ask. I'm an advisor. I'm not retired. Here I am giving guidance on people retired. Ask someone who's retired. We use fruits because what I found was everyone can be categorized into 1 of 3 different classifications financially when they enter their retirement. I have linked each to a fruit why our brains are visual. You will remember very quickly, once you find out what fruit you are, how you should plan financially and the risks that you need to focus on mitigating.
The book uses that. Also, fruitful as we talked about earlier has another connotation, which is the art of being fruitful is not about creating money for possessions. It's about creating the life you want to live and your purpose. There are so many things. We have 101 things to do in retirement and top 25 places to live. We have some cool things in the book that would be very helpful for you if you're thinking of retiring, recently retired or you know someone who's retiring. They will benefit from this. If you are and you're in that stage of life, there's a good chance you might be a grandparent. That's where Larry the Bunny Saves His Money comes in as well as a potential gift.
Larry is a cute little bunny. Larry gets paid in carrots. He remembers the wise words his dad taught him. "Every time you work and get your pay, save two carrots for another day." He gets paid ten a month. Larry goes through life's activities, buying a car, a house and groceries. He even has an Uncle Sam that keeps the town clean and sound and it costs three carrots to do so. They learn basic math. They have to count the carrots but they also learn the value of dollar and integrity because Larry does share. He saves first, shares and then he spends. That allows Larry to have a wonderful life. The connotation for young kids is, who learn by cause and effect, this means that saving is good and positive. It can be fun. That's a whole other thing we could unwrap on another conversation. Those are the book I've written.
What are the ages for Larry the Bunny Saves His Money?
Probably 3 to 8 would be the ages for Larry the Bunny Saves His Money. I have received letters from 10, 11, 12-year-olds who have told me what they've learned from it, which is cool. We've received some wonderful attention, became a bestseller on Amazon and have been on some very large TV media coverage for Larry the Bunny Saves His Money. The Fruitful Retirement came out that Tremendous Leadership had published and done a wonderful job doing so. I would like to hope you read the book and call it tremendous. If you get one bit of information that can help you along your way, that's the point.
Great Leaders: Leaders should use their leadership to inspire others, look within, act in alignment and connect with the purpose that they have and the purpose of the organization they are leading.
They can get both of those books on Amazon. Jim, where can people get in touch with you and Diamond Wealth?
If you're interested in learning more about Larry the Bunny Saves His Money or The Fruitful Retirement, we do have newsletters, blogs and articles that I'm writing. That would be on JimDeGaetano.com. If someone was interested in learning more about Diamond Wealth Advisors, they could go to DiamondWealthAdvisors.com. We have videos that I have to talk about what we do and how we do it.
Jim, I want to thank you so much. It's such a pleasure to meet you, get the honor of working with you to publish and listen to your leadership insights. You gave me a lot of great things. There's no wonder you're tremendous, successful and such a blessing to many people. Keep up the good work, friend.
You're too kind. Thank you, Tracey. Thank you so much for having me.
It's my pleasure. To our tremendous readers out there, leave us a review or a rating. Share it with some of your friends who would love to know some of Jim's tremendous wisdom on what it takes to pay the price of leadership. Thanks. Be sure and go over to Tremendous Leadership where you can download a free copy of my father's speech, The Price of Leadership. You can know all about the four components of paying the price of leadership. Have a tremendous rest of the day.
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About Jim DeGaetano, CFP®, CPA, MBA
Author of The Fruitful Retirement, President of Diamond Wealth Advisors, Keynote Speaker on strategic planning, retirement, and social capital.
Jim DeGaetano, CFP®, CPA, MBA is the President of Diamond Wealth Advisors, Creator of The Fruitful Retirement™ method, and Author of The Fruitful Retirement. Jim’s commitment to helping his clients pursue their financial goals and lifetime dreams by bringing sound financial knowledge and trustworthy advice to a lasting relationship with each individual and family he serves was the impetus to the development of The Financial Path to Clarity methodology, which he created for other firms to be able to achieve the same results: building trust and lasting relationships with clients.
Jim is also a sought after speaker on the topics of strategic planning, retirement, and relationship capital.
He resides in Carlisle, PA with his wife Jen and his two kids Anna and Garrett, who have both given their seal of approval to his new children’s book that teaches kids how to save titled ‘Larry the Bunny Saves his Money’, to be released in late 2020.