Most of us struggle at some level with work/life balance. International bestselling author Travis Parry has a proven process to help. In this interview Jason explodes some of the myths we are told, shares how he has structured his life (working only 30 hours per week), and reveals that you CAN have it all (but you don't have to DO it all). You're going to love this interview.
You can listen to it here: https://experts-speak.sounder.fm/episode/achieving-balance-in-life-and-work
Transcription:
00:00:01 - 00:03:00 Welcome to the experts speak podcast with Michael de Lan. Each episode features a leading expert who shares helpful insights, practical tips and memorable stories that will inspire you, educate you and help you enjoy more success, freedom and purpose in your life. For the next few minutes, enjoy listening to experts speak with Michael Delan. And welcome to another episode of experts speak on Michael D Lan. And today I am talking with a Travis Perry, and Travis is going to rock your world, because he did mine on work life balance. Travis, thanks for US squeezing me into your really busy schedule. Thanks for having me appreciate my Coel well, you're welcome. So. So, Travis is the international best selling author of the Book Achieving Balance and he's he's founded the what's called the maketime institute. So you know, normally we are talking about marketing and business growth and we're talking about that today from a different angle, about work life balance. And I know, I know Travis. I want to tell you, I want you to tell a little bit about your story of how you got into this and what you've seen happen in in the world. You know you do you work with a lot of financial advisors, as as do I, but, as we were talking just a minute ago, what you have to share is applicable really to any industry, any person, because we all struggle with this stuff. You just kind of figured it out in your own way and I want to talk today about how do we achieve balance. So, Travis, tell us a little bit about you. How do you get to doing this, and then let's unpack what you have to share. Yeah, I appreciate that. Yeah, the book is definitely written for Financial Advisors, but you know, it's applicable to business owners because of their principles. There are principles founded on what I've learned. How I got into this as a financial advisor myself, I was struggling with work life balance. I felt myself overweight, I was not spend enough time with my family. I was pulled in just about every different direction, volunteering at my church and in the community and found that, Gee, I'm running my own business as a financial advisor and it's running me into the ground. And you know, part of that is the industry. Part of that is the industry of work nights and weekends until you make it. But again, that's not too different from most business owners that get told that as they building their startup business from scratch, right. So here you are marketing and advertising and doing all that and then all of a sudden you get clients. You like, well, now I've got to service the clients. I'm gonna help them. And wait a minute, what about all this marketing, advertising, time and and how do you manage it? And so I was really into time management and focusing and how to be productive, so much that I eventually got trained by a coach who wanted to have me be a trainer because I was so good at it. He's like, you know, have you thought about being certified as like no, but that could be a really good blend for helping business owners, because they struggle. Holy and so I kind of transition from advisor...
00:03:00 - 00:06:04 ...to coach because I love doing that even more than advising, and now I primarily help advisors and business owners with their time management. That's that's awesome and one of the things that really resonated with me, Travis, as I was reading more about your background and things, is how you saw a lot of marriages in trouble and and how our work life so many times does not benefit our our family life and and how do you mitigate that? Because when you do that you can actually have both. You can be successful in work and in family when you do it the right way. Talk at a high level. Let's talk about achieving balance and and what have you learned about? What are some of the real struggles? I guess that. And let's just talk financial advisors. Everybody listening knows this is applicable to everybody. But let's just dive into financial advisors. What are those struggles that they're dealing with in and what are they, I guess, missing in a sense. What? Well, how are they not thinking right when you meet with them first and what's your process about? How? What is that magic sauce that you figured out that you share with people so that they can achieve balance? So most are working more than fifty five hours a week, which doesn't seem like a lot, but if you're in an industry. So this is where I think is exacerbated for more for a financial visors. They're in an industry where they're trying to help wealthy clients most of the time to have better balance in their own life. Yet they're the ones who are working way more than they should. Does that make sense? Also, there is there is this cognitive distance when two competing ideas happen at the exact same time, which causes a ton of stress. Yes, and then they bring that stress home from work, you know, to their place of home and refuge, and then they may have some conflict at home because there's problems there, and then that conflict comes back to work and it's just a constant flow of stress. And I found that through sad experience. My father passed away at forty nine and I want to say that that was complication. Maybe a little bit of genetics, but probably a whole lot of stress. The more I researched it and studied it was yeah, there's probably a lot of stress here, and it came from relationship, that came from business, it came from trying to do everything for everyone, which he was that. There's a thousand people standing room only at his funeral and when I spoke as the last speaker for that funeral, I remember just having the sense of all where my father really touched everyone like so in it. In a way it motivated me. My father's death motivated me to be a much better person. But it also motivated me to figure out why did stress take him so early? Does that make sense? Oh, makes total sense. So so here's what I came up with. After all my research and and time spent a graduate school and testing these theories, I found that the maketime method, is really what I call it, really works, and that is you first get super productive at work and then you build around...
00:06:04 - 00:09:01 ...your time frame where you're so much more productive all of the time to do your personal goals, your health goals, your relationship goals, your own personal financial goals, your own fun and recreation goals, your goals with the community, all these other nine areas that are super important to you. That you had those and make those so important and fun and accomplishing to do that you don't want to go back to that work aholic life. Does that make sense? It totally does, and I love the way you said that. It's because we'd did, did many times, to a workaholic life. We've been fed a lie that says I have to work fifty five, sixty hours a week and if I don't do that, I'm a failure and and there's no way, by the way, there is no way to be successful in business if you don't do that, I call that a lie. You bought the lie right. There are other ways to do it and finding balance in life and, like you said, you get these other nine areas. Let's unpack that, because you've got to be productive at work, but that doesn't mean you've got to be the only guy doing I'm a big Fan of systems and hiring people in Delhi gating. You know, I'm only good at for things, Travis. I'm really good at those four things. Outside of that I'm pretty mediocre. I've learned to delegate the other things so that I can focus and be more productive. I think a lot of people need to do that. But let's talk about that. Being productive at work is great. I think a lot of people get that. Let's talk about the rest of the the balance. How do you how do they go about that? So I think this is one of the big misnomers is that, oh, you know, in order to be balanced, we have to have everything at the same time. You can have it all, like you mentioned, you can have it all, but you don't have to do it all, and that's the big key that I found to myth one in my book achieving balance. The first myth is that balance is doing it all the same time. No, it's not. Balance is not having some type of fancy equilibrium. Balance what I found after interviewing over a hundred and fifty advisors and business owners. Balance is actually living your highest priorities, when you know what your highest parties are and you're spending and making the time to be there on those priorities. It doesn't necessarily have to be first, it just means that they got to be there in your calendar, that those are priority, then the rest of it will take care of itself. For me, business is like my number six priority out of ten. Okay, well, what Travis that you need a business to have finance is to have the time. Well, of course you do, and of course I spend time doing it, but it's not my number one. My number one is my physical health, and I can tell you I'm a little bit under the weather this week and I'm feeling a whole lot better today, but I was under the weather earlier this week and when my physical health is gone like I have no balance. I'm I'm tanked, I'm done, I've got to put everything off. I can't work very well.
00:09:01 - 00:12:01 You know, there's all these other things and, quite honestly, that's why we need to rest, that's why we need to relax, because our body saying you've overdone it, pal and you've got to take a step back now. That's really simplistic, but it's so true. When you keep your highest priorities in ordering, you make time for those things and the other seven or eight other, you know, important things in your life, those will actually be helped because you're focusing on those top three, and typically those are physical health, spiritual health and relationships. Those are the things that people really say. Never have I had a married business owner tell me, travis, my career is number one. Never, never, has that happened and it's pretty amazing. So that's that's kind of how I, you know, tout balancing. Quite honestly, I thought about the marketing of this book. I thought about writing the myth of balance, because it, quite honestly, is a myth. And I get on stage and people like, well, what's balance? You know, and that's kind of how I started off as what is balance? Yeah, that's kind of where relieve that. That's really cool. I I talked to when I talk to people about balance, I I've had this phrase for years. You find balance by losing it, and I always go back to teaching your kids how to ride a bike. Right, they're all over the place and then they finally get it right and then they look but they find it. And in life's the same thing. We've got this center line that work. That's balance, right, but we're always zigzagging back and forth and in the the deal, I think, is not to zig zag really far away from that center line of what we would think about, but but to realize it's always going to be a zigzag. You're always going to be out of balance at some level. That's okay, but I love how you put that. It's living your highest priorities. Are you exercising every day? Fifteen Nas a day, every day? It's great. How are you having dates with your wife and kids? Great? Are you going to church? Reading the book? Great, right, all of that. That's spot on. That's how you achieve balance. Right. It's it's almost a misnomer, right, because it's almost like you never achieve it. That's right. Yeah, so that's and that's that's the funny part of the book title is like I put achieving balance on it because it's like, is it this ever, something that you know is is achieved? Yeah, really, like it's always working progress, even that book Title I've got. You know, this equilibrium that's unequal, with this balance image, and you're right, like you're always working on it always. But the second the second myth that I think most people get hung up on is, okay, well, just get productive, I'll get super productive and you like, well, Travis, that's part of your make time method. Yeah, yeah, it is, but if all you do is become super productive at work, then you're likely to just become a more productive work hoolic. Yeah, if there's no boundaries. So you can be productive, but you have to set boundaries and you have to create what I call protectors of your time, because if you don't do it, no one else will. So I like to think of your...
00:12:01 - 00:15:03 ...work as a castle and you have to have a wall, a drawbridge, a mote, soldiers, you know, infantry like there to protect your time, because if you don't do that, everyone else is going to attack you, your clients, even your family might like interrupt. Hey, I've got a really important thing to talk to you about in a text. Right now, I am on a call with Michael Like I'm not going to take that. You know, I turn everything off and do not disturb and have all my boundary set up so that I can focus. Otherwise, we multitask throughout our day and we get nothing done. I got they done. Yes, the multidasking meth man. That's gonna be my next book, the multidasking method. It is so not worth it, right, and nothings. Nothing. Yeah, can I say nothing? Nothing is urgent right right in busy it really isn't. And you've got to protect yourself. Again, I met with this financial guy this morning and he's like, I'll get tired of all these client calls on weekends. I said, so, don't take them, find somebody to get them, hier a call center. I mean real it as I take that stress out of your life and and any really the eyeballs went on when I said, you know, I'm call me selfish. I've set my business up to serve me and my lifestyle, right, and that's okay. And he was like that can, you can do that, that's okay, that's ethical and, my guess, totally ethical, because otherwise I'm sacrificing I'm out of balance with my family. Oh I got to leave the dinner table because I got a client who really but you know, and some of that I found, Michael, is some of that is at the beginning you're being told you have to do all this. So you get into this habit and then they tell you, well, I five ten years, then you can, you know, change your your you know, calendar and you don't have to do that anymore. The problem is most people, when they get stuck at a habit, they're just going to keep going. It's so I noticed that early on and I said no tonight calls, no two weekends, and I just figured I'm gonna have to be a ton more productive to keep up with everybody else. So that was a little bit of a driver, a little bit of a push to get me there. But then, you know, if you don't have those boundaries and you don't have time off, it also doesn't allow you to relax, rejuvenate and feel like work is a great place to be, because you show up Monday and you got no break on Saturday. You did work on Sunday to prepare for Monday. Yeah, what's the point? Like you didn't have any time off to really rejuvenate and relax so that you can, you know, again feel like that was a reward. So I you know, I wrote this book Achieving Balance. I didn't spend more than thirty hours a week working and I basically wrote the book by transcribing it. You know, I know a lot of the same methods that I know you suggest. I transcribe it. I had an editor right most of it and I finished and polished it up and, did you know, a bunch of the May last editing myself. But I didn't spend more than thirty hours writing the book. That would have been contradictory to what I'm...
00:15:03 - 00:18:02 ...teaching other people to do balance, and I got way out of balance writing it. But it's exactly yeah, and I think advisors get stuck in other business owners get stuck when I think, well, I've got to be there for my clients all the time. It's impossible, you cannot do that. That's right. You have to say no. You have to learn to say no, and that means you're saying yes to hire important. You know priorities in life when you say no. Yeah, told it. One of the so I've got lots of coaches that build into me in my life right and one of them talks about focus time, you know, and it's a twohour period of time every week where I'm working on a project, a high priority project. But the other thing that he's brought in my life is not checking email all the time. He's like, shut up, just turn it off, check it once a day, maybe twice, and he's in it. He's just put an auto responder on there. Then with some my emails today, you want, I'm in the middle of a project. I will check my email at one o'clock and four o'clock today. I'll get back to you. You set the expectations, because every emails or gent it's not. And you know how fast I can blow through twenty, five or thirty emails in my inbox at that fat do you know the different? That's part of being productive is is not being multitasking throughout your day. You know, half specific times where you check email, then has specific times where you clear it all out. That's one of the big things I've learned and I teach is a system of processing. You clear email, you clear your task is here, to clear your voice emailire to do list all these things out, because then then you're not constantly going to. Where is that information? Where is that's but but then I don't get the badge, Travis. I don't. Actually I get three hundred emails a day and I've got eight emails in my but yeah, right, isn't that? It's that self gratification, that EGO. Feel like, look how important I am. I got five hundred email this weekend. Seriously parted. Half of those were junk. Right, we know, totally, totally now I tell you, I go home every night, my my objective is to go home with my inbox at zero, nothing in my box. They are going, yeah, I couldn't do that. I get five hundre emails away. I'm like, well, the you're you're not going stood right, that's right. But it's that is just weeding out the junk. Some of that is just spending time to process your emails every day and all the other collection points. Most business owners have about thirty of them. I teach them how to get down to six, because if you're down between four and six you're super productive. I've been that way for a long time and it's very helpful. But again then it comes down to those boundaries and I think myth number three in the book that I write about is is the well, who's the best person to help you keep those boundaries your it's your spouse. If you're married, it's your spouse. If you're not, maybe it's a business partner, maybe it is another relative of family, your friend or somebody a mentor of yours for a while. But I've been in the coaching history long enough to know that those who get into a coaching program by themselves, a lot of times they kind of you know, they get up, they get see some progress and then they kind of go back to where they came from as far as learning curve and they end up back in...
00:18:02 - 00:21:00 ...some of those same habits and problems when they're done with the coaching of them with an education program that's very standard adult learning. I've seen it in all the research I've done. So how can you help this? Well, the number one thing I found is internal accountability. And your spouse is the one who knows your schedule. Who should know who your schedule, who should know when you're you're going to be there when you're not, and they can help you to not be that work a hall lock anymore. And addition to that, when couples work together on their goals, they are more likely to achieve them financially, healthwise and relationally. So it's a not just a buffer for being a productive work pollock, but it's it for it's a great internal accountability source of someone. They can help you to achieve all of your goals in life and go from just being that person you'll you like and love to an incredible teammate, absolutely absolute and what better way? I mean how many times you say, well, I'm working really hard to provide for my family. is like, but there's a disconnect there, which when you can involve them at some level. My wife is my bookkeeper in our business. Right. She's not involved in day to day marketing decisions and everything, but she has a clue what's going on, she knows my schedule, she travels with me many times, but she's there to just help me to go. Are you okay? Is that? Is that the right thing to do? And in just that that wise ear right. How many? How many times, as God spoken to me through my wife, right, it's like, Oh yeah, I hadn't thought about that. Deer. Bringing them in and integrating them so that we're doing life together. I mean, good Gali we're married, right. So it's not exclude them, it's bring them in and make them your key influencer. And you're in a centire board of Advisors. Part of your board of advisors should be your spouse if you're married. Absolutely absolutely, and so I suggest once a week or at least, go over your calendar. You find out what your schedules like, what you're doing, what your goals are, and then being able to work together on that. Now, it's not going to be perfect every week, it's not going to be perfect, you know, most times, but it's going to be a whole lot better than if you never had that conversation and you involve your spouse what I call a couple development instead of personal development. If you just personally developed the rest of life, you know, that's great, but actually we've actually showed research to see that. A research has shown that when couples, you know individuals, just develop personally, they can actually develop away from each other totally instead of together, and that's the point of the marriage in the first place. I mean, look at people like Bill Gates and others who, Oh, they just announced are getting divorced. They have everything, they have literally anything that a person on this planet could imagine they couldn't figure out how to keep their marriage together. There's a reason. The reason is very clear to me that I've seen over and over and over again, is that people develop alone, they develop separately, they don't develop together. And I don't know all the variables, and I'm not just saying Bill Gates, the bad guy's...
00:21:00 - 00:24:00 ...wife is a bad person. No, no, no, I'm not judging them at all. I'm just simply saying this is an example of that. People don't develop together throughout life. Yeah, and I love that you said that, because there are there are two myths that that I've fought against four years and I've heard in business. Okay, the two myths, and typically they're not stated, but their underline, right, is successful people have a gone bankrupt and most of the time they've been divorced at least once, usually twice. I heard those early on. You all a follower of Christ. I'm like, well, right, ain't going to do that, so I guess I'm not going to be successful. And then I created this whole new paradigm of like no, I want to do it this way. Then I found good role models of good Godly Christian people, successful in business, giving to the community, great marriages for thirty, forty, fifty years, awesome family. I'm like, those are my models, right, but it's the myth that we hear, that we start believing that you and your book start to explode and go no, no, it's principles. Here's what's going to work, because principles never change. Yeah, one hundred percent agree. And this, this myth of personal development, has created a fifty six billion dollar industry, and I'm not poohooing person development, but Travis, you coach and you have a book, and that is that person development? Yes, but the reality is even a book that you read is not personal. Somebody else has come up with something. Therefore you have a relationship with that author, you have a relationship with the coach. Against very much a relational component of life. We need that accountability. We need other people to help us develop individually. I mean we could talk all day about spiritual development and sometimes this person development pulls us away from our spiritual development and some people, well, I'm not spiritual, I don't believe in God. Yeah, well, you probably just call it something else or you have a different form of it. In reality, you know, whether that's the universe, your own energy, you know there is a source to which you turn for knowledge, and I think that sometimes that actually pulls us away. And I at the root of marriage, what keeps people married the majority of the time is their shared beliefs. It's their shared religion, it's their shared private religion, it's what they do in their homes, in their own periods, when they pray and read and study and go to church and do all those things together. That actually enriches their marriage. So pulling them away from religion, pulling them away from God, pulling the way in this guise of personal development, can be destructed. I'm not saying it is. It can be, but it also has been shown that, you know, it's kind of addictive. Well, I need the next Tony Robbins, I need the next you know, Bill Backer, I will whoever it is that they create, and it just kind of becomes like a diet where I need the next diet, I need the next thing, instead of focusing on principles and what we already have, which is our relationship. Now where people struggle as well, Travis, I love my...
00:24:00 - 00:27:03 ...wife or I love my spouse, but you know, I don't ever think that we can get on that page, we can keep each other accountable. That's a totally different you know, that's a that's I understand that. That's a totally different thing. But that's why you need to learn the skills, and we can teach those skills to communicate, to trust, to have intimacy in every area and really work together. And and I found that when people, couples, go through this part of the program with me, it helps to improve relationship. In fact, we're in quick story at a couple that came to me who they wanted to get out of debt and they wanted to, you know, save up for their dream home, and so I was helping them do that. They managed to pay off close to sixtyzero dollars of debt and saved up and purchase their dream home and a very short period of time. These weren't these weren't super, you know, wealthy individuals, very normal standard living, one income household. And what was interesting, by the time we were done and I brought him through this couple devellopment process, they said, they both said, I didn't realize how much help this would be for our relationship and how much. This helped us to be better parents, especially to our child who suffers with some special needs issues. And they went on about their relationships. Yes, they achieved their financial goals, but it was because they improved their relationship. Yes, yeah, and that's so that is so key, and it just hit me here is I want to encourage people to get your book, Achieving Balance, and you got it. You got a special website, no being the shown us, but it's achieving Balance Bookcom and I think you told me through this month, through May, it's free book plus Shipping Right now. So it's grab a copy. But what if, what if you got a copy of travises book and You and your spouse read it together over the next month or two months, one chapter a week maybe, and just talk about what's going on in York, because, you know, want as busy as we are as business owners, Travis, my wife is probably busier than mean. She's a homeschooling mom, she manages the House, she runs my books, she does taxes for about six other people because she's great. I can go on and on on. Your wife probably in the same way. Yep, we all need balance. What if you did that? Start Your own couple development process using Travis's book achieving balance. How about that? Could that? If people would just do that, there would be so much better balance because they're on the same team, ahead of the same direction. Yeah, I love to see that. And you know, grab the book. It's free right now. Just pay the shipping costs. Will send that out to you to paperback copy. That everyone best selling, you know. Addition, and in addition to that, you know, I've got a whole bunch of worksheets at guide book. That's included. That's free. I've got a ten minute video training about how to clear out your inbox every day like Michael Does. Okay, so he's doing awesome. Plus I have three hours of productivity trainer called a time management mastery program that I throw in for free just for ordering the book on AchievingBalanceBook.com.
00:27:03 - 00:30:00 That's awesome, all right, so do that. Yeah, I mean this is one of those, Travis, we could go on and on and on the other aspect and I want to. I want to go back to this eat. You said we chase. I call it the Shiny Object Syndrome. Right, in marketing we're doing it, but in personal development we're doing I need the next Tony Robins book. I need the next one book. And I always tell people stop by and I asked them. I care less, Travis, about how many books you read a year. I want to know how many books have you reread? Yeah, so I've got two or three books that I reread on a regular basis because I need I had. I obviously haven't mastered them yet. Right, let's simplify life and go back down and go okay, I need to re read this book if because it's it saves me from running after the next thing that's going to change my life. Yeah, and you know, one of those books I mentioned early on in the book that I wrote, She can bounced, is Victor Frankl's man search for meaning. And the reason is, and most people, most people don't see it this way. They see victors struggle in a concentration camp and how he was psychologically strong enough to survive, but they don't, if they're not careful, they don't catch the whole reason why. It's all about that why, and that why is that his wife was in another concentration camp and his entire focus was he wanted to be there in case she made it out that he could be there for her, and that, I think, is is crucial for everyone to understand, is that he, his whole motivation was to be there so that when she got out of the concentration camp, he could be there for her. You're back. Yeah, we stop for just a second. I got you on Victor Frank and his wife and another concentrating about to pick up there. Sorry about that. Yeah, no, it's okay. Internet just say a lot of people will pick up on Victor Franco's book. You know, it wasn't just about him being psychologically strong enough to make it through, but the reason why he was. His real why was because, in the back of his mind, he knew he needed to be there when his wife got out of her concentration camp, he could be there to support her and welcome her back to society. He watched a lot of friends and a lot of really, you know, important people in that camp die, the ones that he thought would make it, because they simply cracked, basically gave up on their why. But he kept his why close. And when we keep those principles, that are values, you know, are really...
00:30:00 - 00:33:00 ...important to us, close and we keep that as our why, then we won't lose it. We won't lose out on what our most important priorities are, regardless of how successful we are, regardless of how much money we make or not, really all matters is those most important things, as we can't take any of this with us, regardless of you know what religion you are. Most believe that when we leave this existence, it's done right. You know, the Pharaoh's tried to keep and take all their money with them. To really work out for them. It does. We benefit from that right. So it's but it's those relationships right, and that's so key and that's the gold right there. It really is. And the one thing you haven't mentioned that I love, and especially now, honestly, the pandemic is helped drive more people to working from home. I love the fact that I work what I call on property but out of the house. So I've got an addict in my garage, attict that we built or office. My wife's gone right now, so just left. I'm here. My girls are in the house doing their home school stuff. I'm spending time with them. I get to relieve my wife of her burdened of saying, how can I go serve somebody and be with the girls well, I can take care of that. So I'm loving my wife now because of an opportunity to work remotely. Financial advisors can do that, business owners can do that. Maybe not everybody, but you can structure your life to find that balance as partners and as building that relationship on our marriage through principles and how I've structured my business so that I can achieve balance in my life. That's that's why your book, Travis is, is so dear to my heart as far as your message, and I think it needs to be proclaimed, and that's one reason I wanted to have you on, because I knew it would it would be helpful for me. I'm a little selfish in that, but I know that. I know that my audience is going to love it too, and I just want if you're listening to this, go to achieving Balance Bookcom, grab a copy of it, read it for yourself, but read it with your spouse and and start moving and understanding what is balance look like for you, because it doesn't have to be a rat race. It really doesn't. Life's life too short for it not to be enjoyed. Life is meant to be enjoyed. I've heard that from leader of Mine, mentor of mine for many years. Life is meant to be enjoyed. Yes, it might be difficult, there there are challenges, yeah, but you might as well pick up the best person that you want to in this life and make the best of it and continue on, you know, staying in that balance, keeping your priorities high, so that you can still fulfilled. At the end of our life. Will all look back and be able to say, Gee, I really blew it, or I really did an excellent job. Try my hardest to keep those priorities in order. Why I had to do everything else? Yes, absolutely. And I'm going to end on a what may feel like a downer,...
00:33:00 - 00:35:53 ...but I think it's really going to be an upper and it comes out of your story and my story and the one I just lived this month. Is If you're confused about priorities in life, if you really want to get a clear picture, I'm going to recommend you go to somebody's funeral and you sit through that and then you take a day or two after that and you start writing out your funeral, your you look, what are people going to say about you? Becau Stephen Covey rode about this in his book years ago. Right, seven habits. Go to the funeral, go to the end of life and realize in a few years that's you. What do you want people to say about you? From your family perspective, from Your Community Perspective, from Your Church, from your that really is is resonating with me. I just buried a dear friend of mine recently who died of a heart attack. Sixty three, boom gone. Wow. What do I want? That can be me at any moment. Right. Why do I want set up my funeral? What impact do I really want and what balance do I want my family to to have them what memories funerals? I appreciate sharing. Funerals are are a time to reflect and it's a time to think about my own, you know, our own lives. My father in law recently passed away. He was sixty two, have a heart attack and and you know I'm big into that research into heart health, and that's one of the biggest reasons why I wrote this, right, because my own father. But you're right, it's that reflection period and so in the beginning of the book, the way that I help people figure out what their values are, as I have them right, a mini obituary yeah, it's kind of this coveys type of idea. But from then I've learned how to pull values that then become your lifelong goals. So I take it into a different direction, a little bit more logical direction of looking backwards. So I appreciate, you know, what cubby has has begun a great mentor of mine. Read most of his books and even listen to read. Listen to one on a trip on the way home right like it's classic stuff, like, man, this is like thirty years old, but it's classic and and I think that's such a great you know, word of wisdom. And then take this mini obituary and use it as your motivation. Don't write about how you died, but write about the different areas of life that you don't necessarily want to achieve some goal, but want to become something, and I think that's that's the crucial piece that I found. So I appreciate that as a great way to end the segment. Great, Travis Perry. Thank you so much, man, thanks for being on my podcast. Thanks for writing the Book Achieving Balance, and it'll be in the show notes. Achieving Balance Bookcom go get it, read it, apply it and make a difference in your life and in that of those around you. Travis, thank you for being here. Man. Thanks Michael. Thanks for listening to expert speed with Michael Dulan. If what you've heard today was helpful to you, reach out to our expert guest and see how they can serve you to bring you more success, freedom and purpose in your life.