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Nathan Merrill shares with Karl Frank how he is struggling to set up professional boundaries. The two discuss solutions and practical ideas to help each other. Men rarely share their feelings with others, and sometimes do not even know what they are feeling themselves. But a few practical and actionable ideas can make all the difference, especially in stressful times.
As always, it is good to have an expert on your side.
Welcome to the expert network team podcast.
Welcome to today's podcast. I'm Karl Frank with A& I Wealth Management. It's a pleasure to have you here today. It's just Nathan Merrill with Good Speed and Merrill and myself, and we've got a great topic. I think you're going to really enjoy it. We're just going to open the kimono here and talk about our feelings.
What is wrong with us, Nate? How are you doing my friend? Other than everything we're going to talk about, how are you? Yeah that's exactly right. And It's that time of year planning for a tax strategy person. This is as I was mentioning to you in the, the debrief beforehand, it's overwhelming on top of all the other stuff that we have going on this time of year.
Overwhelming, holding lots of directions, excited, anticipating, but worried. And like with Jeff, the occasional illness creeps in, Yeah, Jeff couldn't make it. So he got sick just this afternoon. So there's just a lot going on this time of year, I'm grateful. And I always look forward to these conversations and hopefully what we've zeroed in on today will be a value to some folks.
And I hope it's a value to you and me as well. Just selfishly I think it's just good to have somebody to talk to every now and then the pod's certainly been that For me over the past few years and i've heard rumor. It's good for you, too. So here we are So thanks for making time in this crazy time of year what's going on that's got you so busy this is the time of year where so as everyone knows, the tax year is an artificial 12 month cycle where once 1231 hits, it's the end.
I guess you need to draw a line somewhere to determine what your annual income is. But because of the nature, human nature is to always procrastinate and put off. Till tomorrow, what you could accomplish today. So now we are actually in that crunch time where everything everybody wants to accomplish is running out of tomorrow's running out of tomorrow's January one will come and I will breathe again.
But yeah, it's just, and it's the challenges of. Deals want to close by year and planning has to be done by year. And everybody's got this or that event or holiday or family gathering. So it makes scheduling everything really hard and it can get overwhelming and then add on top of that.
And I think this is the first thing we're going to talk about is. Especially when you enter in those social events and expectations, social expectations to be at this party and be at that gathering and do that sort of thing. And on top of that, if you're like me, you have all the work expectations, the work demands, the quarterly meetings, the this, that, the other.
You can get Piled on pretty quickly to the point of being overwhelmed. And so the topic with you, and I think this is a generational epidemic. I don't see this always manifesting outside of the Gen X. And maybe that our little small demographic is carrying the weight of the older ones and the younger ones.
How'd that happen? We, and I think we were raised to one of the analyses and what we're talking about here is basically drawing boundaries or having boundaries to what you say yes to the gen X generation is more than inclined to take every opportunity that comes before them and try to prove themselves.
And the analysis that I've heard on this, the cycle analysis, as it were, I don't know if it's truly Freudian cycle analysis is. We grew up in the shadow of the boomers. And so we had to compete for every opportunity because there was such a big generation that preceded us that as we slot in behind it, if we were going to get any opportunity up until now, we really had to take every opportunity that presented itself.
We had to be so hard. Yeah. There were so many people to compete against. Exactly. But now that is declining, not declining in the sense that they're dying off, but they're retiring, they're leaving the workforce, all that opportunity and all that inclination to say yes to everything, where we're just snapping everything up, doesn't necessarily make sense anymore.
And, we had a recent. Conversation with a business coach that I work with John Gerringer. And one of the things I'm frequently personally talking about with him is like figuring out where my highest and best use is and trying to stay in that. He called it the three G's. If you remember on our podcast, yeah.
What do they stand for? God giving gifts, give you energy. You're effective. There's coming to my, yeah. Yeah. If you stay in your God, giving gifts. then you are more effective, you're more energized you're you're just better. And that's where I'm trying to keep myself, but I have this just really bad tendency to want to help everybody.
Is it, Nate, and I feel the same way often, and I often feel like, especially with turnover in the staff and just Or changes in the world that you know, I pick up a lot of things and just get them all done You know, and it's good to know that my generation our generation, i'm not alone.
Thank you for sharing with that Nate, do you think that if you stop doing something it won't it'll Hurt you do you think that if you say no, you'll miss out? What do you think that the FOMO? Yeah, is that what it is? What is the fear that's making you work harder? I don't I would like to think it's not fear.
Again, I like to think that it's I guess the fear is that I've let someone down because these are opportunities to help people to improve their situation. Again, I think you feel a lot the same way. I'm not. I have ample for my needs. I make a nice living. I don't need more work. And I like helping people.
I like solving problems. I'm addicted to solving problems. You could say, and I, and the, fortunately I don't feel as a competing draw, to bring in. Some of the other realities that other people might face who feel this way is I don't have a strong social draw, so I don't feel the inclination to always be going out and being with people and doing things, so at least I have 18 hours a day to spend because I'm not drawn to be with other people.
You have no social life by choice, is that what you're saying Nate? I like, but see, but that's the point is. So let's say I do have those 18 hours to spend with myself. That's actually too many because you're supposed to get eight hours of sleep. So let's call it 16 hours of time that I have to spend discretionary, discretionary, I commit certain amount of that to work, but if I'm really working that whole available time.
I'm still spending all my time working for other people, even though I'm doing what I like and that sort of thing. I, this is where I say there needs to be boundaries and we need to draw a line so that I can have some renewal times that you can have some renewal time and doing things that really, truly can charge up our batteries and give us crazy.
Give us meaning in our day. We can't just, all work and no play makes Jack a dull boy. I think that's the shining quote before he becomes a suicidal maniac. Going back to your question about what am I afraid of? I truly don't believe I have a scarcity issue where I'm afraid that if I say no, it'll drive when we were first starting the firm.
And I think any entrepreneur feels this way when they start up is they're like, You want to do everything you can't make it without it. You need to go get business and you got opportunity business and it's not exactly what you think you want, but it's going to pay the rent. And so you get it and you do the next one.
And then you're at the stage that you're at now where you guys have grown a lot and are still growing. You've got a growing staff. You're like busting out of the seams of our beautiful building that we share. And yet you say to yourself, man, why am I picking up new business? So it's not a fear thing.
What is it then if it's not if it's not a worry here, like I say, going back to if there is a fear component, because I have I live by this. I don't know if it's a universal adage, but for me, I had this epiphany. When I was in my early twenties, that a concept I call the fear doctrine, which is if you make a decision based on fear, you will ultimately cause what you fear, whether it's an expressed fear or not.
If it's an, if it's an innate or inherent fear that is impacting your decision making process, you can bet that you're gonna cause what you fear. So if. If I trying to be honest again for a podcast with who knows how many untold people I don't know. So I'm just, I'm laying it all out here for you.
Yeah. My fear is anything. It's the fear of letting people down. And the problem is. Using my fear doctrine and carrying that through. If I don't say no to people, I am undoubtedly going to find myself in a position being overwhelmed and stretched too thin where I let people down. So my fear of the truth of saying no, because I don't want to let people down puts me in a position where It becomes harder and harder not to because I've taken too much stuff on.
No kidding. If you're spread out, you can't deliver on all the promises that you made, Nate, do you think that this desire to help everybody can be solved or is that, is it not really a problem? It's a strength in that. If you have enough time, you can set back and say, okay, next year I can help more people if I do something different, or if I get some more help, or can you see an answer to that?
That's a good question. The way, and this is, you made reference to the fact that our firm is growing. And this is a message that we've discussed, especially at the top tier partnership level, because all of us have these types of demands on us. I'm not alone in the firm in terms of, having a lot of opportunity and a lot of opportunity exists going back to this idea that the boomers are retiring and there's just more and more flooding in every day.
So the way we help more people, as I see it. is to hire and train and develop good people to magnify, as it were, leverage our experience and our ability. So our growth is not for the sake of growth alone, necessarily. Our growth truly is to try to increase our capacity to serve and help people to bring better solutions to marketplace that don't simply rely on me as an individual.
But if I can train four people to at degrees do what I do for folks, we now can help four times as many people or we can at least keep me in that highest and best use, whereby I'm in my, to use the big leap of concept. I'm in my genius working not working genius. What does he call it?
Zone of genius. So I'm a genius. Yeah, your zone of competence was which is where a lot of people get stuck because they aren't willing to say No to things he talks a lot about this in the book big leap Gay hendrix if you've ever read that book The zone of competence is where everybody feels comfortable because you can do all that stuff but being able to do it Is not necessarily justification for doing it.
If it's not where you, and then he distinguishes zone of competence from zone of genius, where you're truly unique, where you truly are set apart from others in your sphere, that's where you want to be spending your time because there's other people. Who can certainly do the stuff that's within your zone of competence.
And Dan Sullivan addresses this in a totally different way and who not how. But it's making sure that just because you can do it, that's not a justification for doing it. And this is where we find ourselves getting overloaded a lot of the times. Because we use that rationale for taking things on.
I can do it. I can do a lot of things. I can, and a lot of the things I learned out of necessity growing up, I can do plumbing, I can do, sprinklers, I can repair patches and walls. And some of that's good. But if you insist on being the everything in your own life, you're going to never get anything done and it spread yourself too thin to really focus on where you're going to find joy, fulfillment.
Peace and develop relationships with people because that takes time that takes being present, it really does. I love that. I love that analogy. How did you know I had plumbing problems over Thanksgiving? That was perfect for me. That was exactly the time of year. I think it's one of those things.
I got done with my plumbing problems in early November with my lucky you. That's hilarious. Yeah. Fortunately, no active plumbing problems at the new house. Knock on wood, man. I hope not because you probably got contractors who can help you fix it if they've made a mistake and you probably have that new type of flexible pipe that is supposed to last a little better than copper, which is unbelievable to me because I thought copper was the best.
Technology changes. Yeah, I can't remember, but with copper, the nice thing now, and this is the type, anyway we're digressing. The whole shark bite thing is a godsend when it comes to copper. I actually know how to sweat pipes, which is back to the point. Me too. Not well. It takes me a lot of practice to sweat a pipe, but there are some places where you can't use a shark bite.
We're stressed. We've got it too here at ANI. It's the end of year. We're doing a lot of great tax planning. We call it being able to choose how you want to be taxed. And so it's a promise that we make in our tagline on our business cards and in what I talk to people and to do that, we've got to take time with our clients to talk to them about their options, show them how they can do that.
And then we got to act on it as well. And so our deadline to act on it with a hundred percent confidence. So we can hit the deadline is next Friday, the 13th. So we're really working on that right now. By the time this podcast comes out, we'll have already hit that deadline. We'll have already delivered on our promises.
And anything after that date was just an act of good faith. And so sometimes a deadline is like magic and you can use that in your world I don't know if that helps you say no or not, but yeah that's exactly the type of tool that I need to learn to use better is and having an assistant like I do, I lean on her a lot to set those boundaries for folks and tell them, no, he can't do it that day.
That way I'm not put in the position she does, but she is protective of me and wants to preserve my ability to perform. And that's how she's serving. She's serving you and serving all the rest of your clients, her clients as well. By being able to help you say no and schedule you and make sure you've got enough time to get delivered, to deliver on the promises you've made.
Yeah, that's a great that's a great tool. I don't know I you know another tool that we're going to develop here Is just when I take over another role when I look at Something that broke in the firm or when somebody leaves or when somebody moves positions and the old work wasn't getting done one, and this is what I've been doing these past few weeks has just been thinking about what really needs to be done?
How could we make that process simpler? What do we really need to sign this extra document? Does it really need to slow down this way? Can we change the way we do things and make it easier? It can be. Totally refreshing and energizing when I'm burnt out to think about well, let's just do it in a different way All right, let's just throw out the old and do it in a new way And I believe this is an elon musk concept I haven't I have his book in my queue to read but i've heard this come from him In terms of how he runs SpaceX and Tesla, which is you, every time you look at something, you cut 10 percent out.
Have you heard that concept of just always cutting stuff out? And that's something that I think we're looking at as a business. Is and we just, I think, we just brought back our old CEO, new CEO, and he's got some very good ideas, but he acknowledged in terms of looking at the growth we've made since he was with us last, he's like the things that got you here will not be the things that take you forward.
So you always have to be willing to cut out stuff that isn't working, that doesn't support your vision, your goals. The realities of what it means to be a growing business. And I think a tendency for businesses as well as individuals is to evaluate how you're going to approach the future by what you've done in the past, and that may not always be a good approach using the Elon Musk idea of cutting 10 percent every time you picked up a process or a task or something like that, really distilling it down, like you were saying to the What gets this done the fastest the most reliable with at least amount of slippage in the process Yeah, highest quality lowest effort.
That's what we're after, and elon's I think an awesome example So both for the worst and the best right? So I love ideas like that tesla are amazing products spacex might be the best run company in the world. They're just Brilliant. I mean they're working miracles Amazing with a great a great CEO other than Elon.
Who's in her name, I'm forgetting right now. She's just at Shotwell. It's just amazing. Gwyneth Shotwell. And Elon's the worst because he doesn't say no enough. He's got Twitter. And now he's working for the government. Are you kidding me? Like how does a guy have enough time in the day?
You think you and I are stressed? No, that's a gen xer. He's almost exactly our age. You can't say no that guy Holy cow, what could he accomplish if he did stay focused on any one of these companies? Who knows? What an amazing contrast. And you bring up that statement there is somewhat revealing too, which is the focus piece.
And this is, we still hope to get the guys from Culture Index to come in and talk with us, but some people don't do well with focus. Elon Musk may end up being terrible at trying to sit him down and actually have him focus on something. It might be the worst thing you could do because he may be just inclined and predisposed to need to have a lot of balls up in the air, but what he will need if that's his type is someone he can rely on to focus and maybe.
And so this is where, again, we have to understand who we are, what our triple G's are and put ourselves in that position because. You and I, we would look at Elon Musk and say, yeah, that's ridiculous, but you can't argue with his results. He's definitely in his triple G. And when I'm in my triple G, I am in a three hour block working on a spreadsheet in isolation with nobody around me.
And he might look at that and say, what an unproductive fool. But we're built differently. Yeah, we sure are. That's a great, that's a great point, Nate. Thanks for pointing that out. So focus isn't always the answer. And, but is generation X always the answer? What are we going to do for this next generation?
How are they going to pick up the slack when we are the boomer age and ready to slow it down? That's a good question, right? What are we going to do? And you and I were talking earlier about a book that you read recently called Bad Therapy and how It's revealing, I think, what do you think about this book about the next generation and what can we do to help that next generation not make the mistakes that, that we've seen made by other people our age and older?
Yeah, there's a lot in the book and some of it is it can incite a lot of thought and opinion a lot of different ways, but I think one of the most useful or revealing concepts that came out of it is the modern trend to really want to focus on your feelings, and it was interesting to hear the individual say that even the idea of asking people how they're feeling.
Is generally a bad idea because, think of, if someone comes up to you and say, how are you doing? Are you really thinking about how you're doing? Or are you Because if you really got into it, you'd be like people aren't happy all the time. So chances are when you ask someone, how are you doing?
They're not always doing all that great. And so then you're forcing them to think about how they're not doing all that great. We want people to, happy as a transitory thing, but we engage with people like we expect. Almost the social expectation for people to be happy all the time. But what's worse than just asking people how they're feeling and pointing out that you generally don't feel great all the time is when we.
When people don't feel great is to have them talk about their feelings all the time. Talk about how it's not great. Tell me about that. What the studies ultimately show is that this concept of rumination on your problems actually makes your problems worse. But you can get into books like Think and Grow Rich where the things you think about are the things you attract to you.
So if you're always thinking about your problems, if you're always thinking about what's wrong, if you're always thinking about how you don't feel good, Chances are you're going to feel more of that. And the flip side of that coin, this gets to the other thing we're talking about is when you start to feel that way, or you find yourself doing that, thinking about your problems, thinking about your challenges, I opened up my conversation with you, which is it's busy.
I'm overwhelmed. Finding an opportunity to turn yourself outward and be, find gratitude, find an opportunity to serve other people helps make your problems feel less significant. So there's real strategies to overcoming rumination or finding yourself in a situation where you're just feeling like you can't do it.
That's when you need good people around you, but look for an opportunity to serve someone else. I love it. I think service is a huge opportunity for all of us. And it's something that. As leaders of companies and our listeners are leaders of their organizations, their families their companies can benefit from too.
Just helping inspire service by being a servant leader is is really revealing and powerful. One of the things, we had a great podcast not long ago that I enjoyed about health tips from a yogi. And we joked about. I had just suffered through three weeks of intense yoga training to become an instructor and learned a lot from that.
So I think physical activity is a huge part of happiness and connecting with your body is huge. But one of the philosophies that came out of that I think is really unique to you and I and Jeff because of our Christian beliefs and background. Was a Hindu belief that fits perfectly with our beliefs as Christians, and that is contentment.
And it's more or less what you just talked about that it's not, happiness is transitory and misery can be transitory and is naturally transitory, but contentment is right down the middle. And finding that, right? Knowing that the, the obstacle is the path, it's not in the way of the path, that the stress is what we endure to feel better on the other side of it.
Without it we're lost in that, that philosophy, I think is just really powerful and sometimes, when you're stuck in traffic in Denver, To go, 11 miles might take you an hour in Denver these days, right? It can be really frustrating. On the West Slope, you might be stuck in the canyon for a day or more.
They could shut down, your path out. That's the path, right? The stress is the way. The contentment is the goal. That you can say, this is where I am. This is okay. I am good December 13th is the deadline in our firm for when past that deadline where it's a best efforts There's no guarantees if you get it to us before that we're gonna promise you will deliver the same with you right and you're content and our clients will be content.
It's a real level set it's just a way to say, Hey, this is where we're at. Yeah. And the other thing that, and this kind of ties into that yogi and awareness of the journey. And I, this is, I might not get this a hundred percent but it speaks to me is it's not so much.
The destination, the success or the, the achievements you have, it's who you become along the way that matters more. So the struggles, the, and we've talked about this somewhat with raising children and creating legacy and exactly how much do we work to enable or facilitate the ease of lifestyle for, generations that are following us it's always important to remember that.
You can help a generation, a child someone that you're concerned with, an employee reach destination faster, they can become a partner in three years, but if they haven't become the partner that they need to be by going through that process of trial, tribulation and struggle, they're not going to be a great partner.
I do. I do. That's very wise. So it's come along the way and that's i'm becoming worn out right now it's a path right and you're on it and it's by your own volition and it does have a deadline. You know that 1231 or sooner, it'll all be, it'll all be gone. And you raised this question earlier and I want to acknowledge it.
The experience, every year end experience helps me decide to do something different the next year. And it's just incremental change that gets us to our ideal kind of process and lifestyle. Honestly, from outside looking in man, you've made a huge number of changes since our friendship began a decade or more more than a decade, closer to 12, 15 years.
Now you've made a lot of changes and outside looking in man, you're, you've just, you look like the picture of success. And so happy for you guys, man. It's not that much longer before this deadline crosses. And then, and you'll be with your family before the 31st too. We're rooting for you, man.
It's all good. Awesome. I love this any closing thoughts for our listeners today just reverting back to the the idea of boundaries it may get overused in today's lexicon But I think it's there's a truth there that you need to know when you are at your limit And be good to yourself be good to yourself And you'll be able to be better to others.
That's great Could hardly say it any better, right? Everybody create a other beautiful day. Bye. Bye. Thanks. Bye. Thank you for joining us today. I hope you enjoyed the discussion and the information we shared. We hope you enjoy the information contained in today's podcast and find it useful. We hope you'll join us again next time as we explore new areas of interest to our listeners.
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