Peer Effect
Best way to scale? Your peers have the answers.
This is the podcast for scaleup founders looking for insightful, actionable wisdom from some of the best operators around. Each week we’ll explore one secret that other founders and experts are using right now and how to implement it.
It’s practical wisdom to build the company AND life you want. Hosted by renowned founder coach and advisor James Johnson.
You’ve survived to £1m, now let’s scale to £10m+.
Peer Effect
Achieving Work-Life Balance - with Dustin Serviss of Serviss Wealth Management
Dustin is the Founder of Serviss Wealth, a company that provides innovative financial and business advice. But Dustin found himself in a situation where he managed his business better than his life.
Today he takes us back to 2014.
At the time, he was a firm believer that you couldn’t have a work-life balance, and something had to be given up.
Dustin was freshly married and soon after that, he became a father.
He increasingly became busier with work and had less time to spend with his family, which triggered a tense atmosphere at home.
Attempting to change the situation, he tried to surprise his wife with a gym session where they would reconnect like old times.
The only issue was that the day came, and he forgot.
And that’s when he knew something had to change.
In this episode, we discuss,
- What needs to be given up to achieve work-life balance
- A new perspective on what wealth can consist of
- How we can split the 168 hours we have in a week for work, sleep, and family
As today’s episode wraps up, it leaves you with a question to ponder: How can you redefine wealth and work-life balance in your own lives?
Tune in to this inspiring episode and be prepared to shift your vision by listening to the incredible advice on the most important things in life that Dustin shares with us today.
More from James:
Connect with James on LinkedIn or at peer-effect.com
So I'm delighted to welcome for shows day Dustin. Dustin is the founder of Service Wealth. Dustin manages over 200 million in client net worth. Welcome, dustin.
Speaker 2:James, thanks for having me on the show. I'm equally as excited as you.
Speaker 1:Well, things are going really well today, but the whole idea of the show is jumping to my coaching time machine. When are we going back to?
Speaker 2:We're going to go back to what would be 2000, probably 14, 13.
Speaker 1:What's happening for you then?
Speaker 2:So in this sort of era of time it was not an overly fun time, it was. I've been married for a little while. I was working hard, always thought, in whatever sort of experience or family history I'd had, that you could either be a successful entrepreneur or be a great husband and dad. So you could either be the rock star he's always there for me type husband and we live a great life but we don't have a big income or you could be successful business person and just sort of be okay at the other stuff. And that was how I'd always entrenched in my brain.
Speaker 2:And so I was working a lot and at that particular time we were a number of years into a fertility journey. It was a struggle to get pregnant and at that point I was really just working to avoid the reality of when I went home and using that as sort of the excuse that hey, well, if I don't work, our family won't have means to do the things we want and so this is super important, that I work really hard. So that's kind of sets a stage and what it's.
Speaker 1:It sounds like a traditional thought pattern that's kind of either or setting. Was there a moment when it came to a head then?
Speaker 2:Yeah, it actually what it came to a head after we'd actually naturally gotten pregnant. So after seven and vitro's and a lot of money, we naturally got pregnant and ironically it was I'd send an email to all of our close friends and family and said don't ask when we're having kids. Like we've had this journey. It's not been very fun, but you know people do it and if listener, you're listening and you're going through a journey where people are asking and totally empathize with you because at the end of the day it's freaking annoying and people go, oh, five years you've been together. Like, why aren't you having a kid? It's like, hey, we're going through something and it's not very fun, but then you ask me about it.
Speaker 2:Pisses me off even more so not you know, being aware of that and being able to say and have the courage to say, hey, don't ask. I think for us that in our journey it was like a huge relief and it's I think it. You know I'm stereotyping, maybe, and this is just my own sort of observation. As a guy, it might be easier to sort of say well, and an optimist life. Let's lay out what life would look like if we didn't have kids. We'd have a great life. It. You know we have money and time and travel, and you know it will be great. And to a woman, that can be, and maybe it's the same. For some guys it's like that, that isn't an option, and for my wife that was. It was not an option. It was like we're having kids and we're going to figure out how, and this is, you know, part of my. My purpose here is to have kids, and so setting that email was huge relief. And then, near after that, we we did find out we were pregnant. So you know, fast forward to my oldest son now. So he would have been like eight months old maybe. Hence this is 2016, because he was born in 2015.
Speaker 2:My wife and I were kind of just not not seeing eye to eye and I was still working lots, coming home a little bit late, saying I'd be home at five, come home at 545 oops, sorry, you know I had one more email and, just oblivious to the fact that you know, she had, you know, expectations and I wasn't really being aware of that and we used to work out together or we had worked out previous to kids together. That was like our at the end of the day, me at the gym at four, and we'd have a great workout and kind of connect, and we were definitely not connected and so one day I thought I gotta like really start taking action. I need to be better. I'm extremely good at, you know, investing in courses to, for sales and for financial planning and I hadn't really invested anything into being better. And it was actually a psychologist that I'd seen after having a kid and it being sort of like well, this is crazy.
Speaker 2:For the first few months seeing her, obviously everything settles, except her. Four or five months the kids start sleeping. And then I started asking her about would you meet me and talk about business as a form of like investing in my brain or my own psyche? And for a lot of entrepreneurs, we're quick to spend on business things that could make the business better. And how much spending have we spent on ourselves, when the bulk of our life is spent outside the business?
Speaker 2:So, that led to this action I was going to take and I was driving to work, you know, seven, 45. And I thought, you know I'm I'm going to phone the gym, I'm going to get babysitting lined up and because you had to pay and you had to organize it all on, and so I did that, I got babysitter lined up for 430 at the gym and I phoned my wife right after. I was excited. I said, hey, listen, like I phoned the gym, I got organized, we're good to go. Um, I'll meet you there at 430. It's going to be awesome. And she was like I can't believe you did this, Like this is great, like I'm excited, you know love, you See, ya.
Speaker 2:And so at about 445, I was in the office and the phone rang and all my staff. I got home and I could see the call display and it was my wife's number and I answered the phone, all kind of like sexy, and it was like service wealth management and she goes all right, you're still at the office. And it was like immediately, like, just like this dread. And I was like, oh my God, yeah, I just, I totally forgot I'll be there, I'll, she goes, don't bother. And just hung up. And so, anyways, that I I'm not a big crier, but at the same time I drove home and was like almost in tears driving home and when I got home she was already home and by that time, you know, she was just like arms up like this, this is not going to work. And I did start to have a little bit of a tear and I cry out of a couple of things. You know disappointment in myself that I had lined that up. Uh, a bit of a scared cause. I thought I was getting fricking dementia or something like dementia or Alzheimer's cause. I had forgotten like it. It did not cross my mind one bit at work.
Speaker 2:I was so into emails, phone calls, people talking, organize this staff it didn't even like 430 roll by it. I was nowhere near remembering that. I just lined it up in the morning and so that next day was when serious action had to, had to be, and I I laid out a spreadsheet and I thought, okay, I do all this work for high net worth clients is great. And I organized their thing and I wouldn't say that we were the the plumber with the leaky pipes we had. You know, I was pretty good with my own situation but at the same time, I was missing how I could be both how could I be a successful entrepreneur and be great at home and something that that we now call the spending accelerator was something that I built and it was basically a way to say, if we're doing all these responsible things and maybe we'll get into the the finite things, but it's like if we're doing all these responsible things throughout a month, a year with our finances and with my business, then what would happen if I spent more than I currently spend now, and not in a sense of what you can spend more on?
Speaker 2:Well, I'm doing all these responsible things, I'm going to buy a new iPhone for myself, I'm going to buy a Harley, I'm going to buy you know that that those things for most successful, successful entrepreneurs could happen anyway. But the piece that I was missing was what if I spent more on a staff member, so I saved less, but that freed up time? What if I spent more in the form of like, I'm not going to work Fridays, so likely my revenue of my business is is could go down, but then that Friday would be a way that I could have an extra day for half day with the family half day. Go do whatever I want, maybe spend the whole day with the family every week, and so again, the spending accelerator philosophy is something that we train everyone on, because it is a way to give yourself permission to do things that you might not think are available to you right now.
Speaker 1:So it really costs out these things that we might want to do but feel reluctant to do because they're investing in ourselves or then a business expense, but it's just really like almost adding it to the PNL.
Speaker 2:If you've grown up knowing that to be successful you need to work hard, how hard do you need to work and how long do you need to work like that? And if you go back to when you're say 1819 or I was eight and a half nine when I had a paper route and it was like gotta get one more person on my route and you know, like if that's how you've been wired, you develop goals really early in life and at 1819 you become, you know, you get into the workforce, you get into business, it becomes you're an adult and you create goals and beliefs. If those beliefs are still the same and you're 40 or 50 likely, you need to, you need a James, you need somebody to kind of connect with and revisit that old, what we call belief gristle hmm, and so for you, these changes.
Speaker 1:That sounds like you're kind of on this path, where it was kind of the self-justification was I'm working hard to provide a life for my family and just really lays a focus on what that looked like, to the extent that you had this kind of crisis moment with your wife where you serve by she's in the gym and you weren't. What changes did you then Make and how's that played out for you?
Speaker 2:Yeah, there's. There's a hundred and sixty eight hours in a week. So, if you break that up, a perfectly balanced life, but 56 hours for sleep, 56 hours for work and 56 hours for you. So the you bucket, though, also includes your family. So if you're single, you got 56 hours a week to golf, snowmobile and West Canada snowmobile, or in the UK like Windsurf, whatever you know out there guys probably in UK.
Speaker 1:So I go to pub 56 hours a week.
Speaker 2:Okay. So if there's 56 hours for the work and 56 hours for the sleep and 56, you know that's seven hours a night of sleep and 56 hours for you, and that includes a family Then when you actually like break that down, you say like wow, like that's eight hours a day, so two hours in the morning when you get up with the family, so that's you know, 14 hours in a week, you know, and it's like you start working back.
Speaker 2:You go, holy crap, like if I'm gonna work 56 hours and I want more time for myself. Because what weekends as a you know, when I was a single guy always had motorsports, toys hanging out with the buds. That that was my upbringing and and it's still is. But it's taken a significant amount of design and work with my wife to say, okay, I, I want to be with my family. That's important. I think it's important, so it's gonna come out of work. I can't work 56 hours, so can I get it down to 40? So, you know, a few years ago I went to a four-day work week. So, yeah, thursdays are pretty friggin, hair straight back and getting stuff done. But remarkably I Haven't seen production go down because I'm taking Fridays off. But now, all sudden, in a week I've bought, you know, seven hours of no more work. So now I can do three with the family.
Speaker 2:Or one of my favorite Friday things is actually going to a coffee shop. Again, I've been to a million coffee shops for a million meetings with clients, potential clients, and never taking my kids out for coffee Friday morning. Go work out in the morning I get that's a me bucket. Come back to the house that like 10, 10, 30. Go for coffee with my two sons and sit there and like, talk, and like talk you know they're already six and eight talk to them like I talked to adults and it's like what's up, what's going on? You know that is some of my most favorite time in the week and so again it's.
Speaker 2:Everyone has a different journey, but it is Something that's like where could you find that time? Maybe it's an hour of sleep. Start setting your alarm earlier. Get six hours of sleep.
Speaker 1:Because I think there's this, this conceptual idea of like work life balance, which I think is a flawed concept anyway, because I think it applies. It's kind of like it's an either either or, and so you you are. You are the same persons sitting behind the work and the personal, and it's interesting that you say that you've had that, you bought this day back, you spent this time with your family, but you're also still as productive, if not more so. Do you think that's because you feel more, more centered and and happy?
Speaker 2:potentially, what I am finding now, especially as my kids are in school now for six, seven hours. I do have, as Pang, as an entrepreneur of like am I feeling purposeful in the success of my business? So I've gone through this sort of journey to keep my revenue. My revenue has basically marginally gone up for the last three, four years but I've had four day work weeks, lots of time with the family, time off, still working tight with the clients, not adding as many clients, which feels weird.
Speaker 1:I do find being quite disciplined about this. Time split really forces you to focus on stuff that is important at work, because you could. You could fill your diary up with 100 times over if you as a founder, quite easily. But it's almost feels so ingrained, this idea that if you're not straining and struggling and not competing for this big goal, is there something wrong. Are you, are you trying hard enough? It is hard to know, like, is that? Is that an echo of an unhealthy old mindset? Or is that a time of life where actually there is a time as a parent where you really want to be there for your kids and really be there and as they get older, actually maybe you get some of your time back and maybe that is the opportunity to to push harder again.
Speaker 1:Did Tiffany that you had before, when you had this, my own to go? Okay, we need to look at this of wealth accelerated differently, which is how do I buy things that are going to make my life better? Maybe now, rather than wait? It feels. It feels quite simple in terms of, like this is a personal epiphany again around. I'm feeling this tension. How can I share this journey with my clients as well in quite a structured way. So it feels like deepening a path that you've already, that you've already started to walk. It feels unusual for financial advisors to be sort of advising like spend on taking day off. But if you're taking the long term view, which is clear, your approach is kind of like if I can build long term relationships with my clients and they're going to enjoy the journey and they're going to be happy.
Speaker 2:Yeah, 100%, and from from experience. You have two founders you know, and I call them Harvard, maria, and again their names have been changed. But you know, harvard builds his business you know age 60, builds it up, invests everything back into the business, successful work, weekends, work, nights, sacrifice everything. At age 60 sells his business for 3 million. And Maria, on the other hand, is you know, age 60, built a successful business, successful mindset, but very intentional, with time off and spending money on learning. She builds her business up and sells at age 60 for 1.5 million and at age 63, they both pass away with money in the bank. So it didn't matter if you were a Harvard and had three or Maria with 1.5, you're still gone. And so when I ask wealthy clients about that and say, hey, like, could you have worked a little less harm, like and only had, you know, 2 million. And so you take that step further to like the kids of these parents and say, hey, guys, let's lay out a plan now where I still want you to be uber successful, but let's get optics on, like how successful you need to be to actually to live a life.
Speaker 2:And what I find with wealthy people is they don't spend nearly en masse. They don't spend nearly as much as they think or what they spent in their. You know, from 40 to 60, you're buying stuff you don't need your. You're buying stuff for your kids because they're at a crucial age. All that stuff, and that's like the kids are age 30 or older, they're fine. And so, yeah, you, you know you bought the million dollar boat and you bought this, and it's like you get to 60, you go. I've already kind of proven myself. They go. Yeah, we did a Renault on our house. It was 250,000. It's just perfect for us. You know, we're going to stay in this house for as long as they're not upgrading, they're not changing.
Speaker 2:And so you know, if you only spend 150 to 20 a year and you have 4 million, you can run the numbers and go. Well, if you had no risk in a portfolio, you're going to still have 25 years of spending. And so then you go okay, well, how much do I really need? And I guess we got two kinds of conversations running.
Speaker 2:You have the extreme go-getters where you know, I'll hear a guy say it for you know, 28, my number's, 44 million. I believe that that's my number to do these certain things, and they've laid it all out and they want to give to charity and they want to have their own building at the university and all this stuff, and say, okay, that's an, you know, that's a one 1% or less than a 1%er, then you have successful, above average sort of achiever. And in those, that's the zone where, if not regulated or if not made aware of it for yourself, you can burn yourself out. You can get to age 60 with lots of money, have a shitty relationship with your kids, have a bad relationship with yourself, be on your second divorce and your mental health is questionable. And that, to me, isn't wealth and I think this is what's really come down to that.
Speaker 1:What is wealth? But it's not just money. I need to use money. Being wealthy yourself on that journey is gonna pay dividends, Like there's a dividend. There's much like sort of the power of accumulated interest just from in a bank. I really think there's a power of accumulated interest on just investing in self.
Speaker 2:Think about the five richest people you know in your circle and then think about the five wealthiest people you know, and is it the same list? If it's not the same list, then what qualities do the wealthiest people have and are you living by those values now, or what values do you wanna use from that list of people going forward?
Speaker 1:I think it's been fascinating. I'm gonna leave the last word to your wife. Do you think she would go through that gym experience again in order to have triggered this change, to get to the life you have now?
Speaker 2:Tough to say. I'm not her, but I definitely know that I'm a little more aware now. Not perfect, definitely need a lot more improvement. But yeah, if you would ask me what my priorities were 70 years ago, they would be very different than they are now.
Speaker 1:It sounds a bit like breaking bad. I mean sure I hope everyone has seen breaking bad by this stage, but it's kind of like the whole way through. He's kind of like doing this for you, I'm doing this for you, I'm doing this for you. And then that amazing scene he goes okay, I was doing it for myself.
Speaker 1:Yeah amazing what does, and that has been very interesting and I really like this, this redefining what wealth really means and then actually providing practically the tools to capture it and improve it. So thank you for sharing. As you heard today, coaching opens up a whole range of insights and areas to explore. If you have a potential moment to revisit on the podcast or just want to learn more about coaching, book in for a 30 minute chat with me at peer-effectcom.
