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The Renegade Lawyer Podcast
I am more convinced than ever that nothing that traditional bar organizations are doing is going to move the needle on the sad stats on lawyer happiness ...
The root cause of all lawyers' problems is financial stress. Financial stress holds you back from getting the right people on the bus, running the right systems, and being able to only do work for clients you want to work with. Financial stress keeps you in the office on nights and weekends, often doing work you hate for people you don't like, and doing that work alone.
(Yes, you have permission to do only work you like doing and doing it with people you like working with.)
The money stress is not because the lawyers are bad lawyers or bad people. In fact, most lawyers are good at the lawyering part and they are good people.
The money stress is caused by the general lack of both business skills and an entrepreneurial mindset.
Thus, good lawyers who are good people get caught up and slowed down in bringing their gifts to the world. Their families, teams, clients, and communities are not well-served because you can't serve others at your top level when you are constantly worrying about money.
We can blame the law schools and the elites of the profession who are running bar organizations, but to blame anyone else for your own woes is a loser's game. It is, in itself, a restrictive, narrow, mindset that will keep you from ever seeing, let alone experiencing, a better future.
Lawyers need to be in rooms with other entrepreneurs. They need to hang with people who won't tell you that your dreams are too big or that "they" or "the system "won't allow you to achieve them. They need to be in rooms where people will be in their ear telling them that their dreams are too small.
Get in better rooms. That would be the first step.
Second step, ignore every piece of advice any general organized bar is giving about how to make your firm or your life better.
The Renegade Lawyer Podcast
Ep. 179 – The Art of Subtraction: Creating a Life You Actually Want to Live with Dr. Jordan Grumet
What if your most meaningful life lesson came from the bedside of the dying?
In this powerful episode of the Renegade Lawyer Podcast, Ben Glass is joined by Dr. Jordan Grumet—hospice physician, author of The Purpose Code, and one of the most thoughtful voices at the intersection of medicine, meaning, and money.
Together, they dive deep into:
- What Dr. Grumet learned about money and happiness from patients at the end of life
- Why “finding purpose” might be the wrong goal—and what to do instead
- The art of subtraction—a practical framework for redesigning your life around what actually lights you up
- Retirement redefined: why it’s not about stopping work, but about building a life you don’t need to escape from
- His journey from burnout to a second career that includes hospice work, writing, podcasting, and financial education
Whether you’re a lawyer, doctor, or other professional wondering what’s next, this conversation is your reminder that you don’t have to wait for a crisis to start living intentionally.
Dr. Grumet and Ben will both be speaking at the White Coat Investor Conference in March 2026—this episode is a preview worth sharing.
Listen now on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you get your podcasts.
Ben Glass is a nationally recognized personal injury and long-term disability insurance attorney in Fairfax, VA. Since 2005, Ben Glass and Great Legal Marketing have been helping solo and small firm lawyers make more money, get more clients and still get home in time for dinner. We call this TheGLMTribe.com
What Makes The GLM Tribe Special?
In short, we are the only organization within the "business builder for lawyers" space that is led by two practicing lawyers.
One thing we're sure you've noticed is that despite the variety of options within our space, no one else is mixing
the actual practice of law with business building in the way that we are.
There are no other organizations who understand the highs and lows of running a small law firm and are engaged in talking to real clients. That is what sets GLM apart from every other organization, and it is why we have had loyal members that have been with us for two-decades.
What does winning the game or happiness looks like? Well, here's what I think Time is not a commodity and it cannot be commoditized. What does that mean? It means you can't buy it, you can't sell it, you can't trade it. We all get an allotment of time and we have very little control over it. Yes, you can exercise a little more, eat a little better or wear your seatbelt. Those things may give you slightly more time, but ultimately we Ultimately we have a set amount of time. We have no idea how much that's going to be, and all we have a bit of control over. Because you can't buy time, save time, trade time. You can't do any of that. Time passes no matter what. So the only thing you can do is try to have a modicum of control over what activities you're involved in as time passes.
Speaker 2:Welcome to the Renegade Lawyer Podcast, the show that challenges the way lawyers and professionals think about life, business and success. Hosted by Ben Glass, attorney, entrepreneur, coach and father of nine, this show is about more than just practicing law. For over 40 years, ben has built a law firm that stands for something bigger. He's helped thousands of lawyers create practices that make good money, do meaningful work and still make it home for dinner. Each week, ben brings you real conversations with guests who are challenging the status quo Lawyers, doctors, entrepreneurs, thinkers and builders. These are people creating bold careers and meaningful lives without burning out or selling out. If you're ready to stop playing small and start thinking like a renegade, you're in the right place. Let's dive in.
Speaker 3:Hey everyone, this is Ben. Welcome back to the Renegade Lawyer Podcast where most every episode I'm interviewing someone inside or outside of legal who's dinging the world. And today I have a great guest, dr Jordan Grumet. I met Dr Grumet because he and I will both be speaking at the White Coat Investor Summit or Conference in March of 2026 out in Las Vegas, although, as my son tells me, Dad, it's not the Las Vegas downtown, it's actually a resort out of town.
Speaker 3:Dr Grumet will actually be speaking at the conference really on how we speak he's a hospice doctor and how we speak to people who are dying, and that's interesting for many who are in my age cohort in our groups. But he's also done a ton of work in what I think we'll spend most of our time today is talking about purpose in life, because we make it sound so easy Just figure out what you want and then let's build a business that supports that and boom, here we go. And it's not that easy. And he's done a lot of work sort of in the financial space as well and in large part as I understand your background doctor in talking to people who are dying and asking questions about finance and what they're thinking about in their you know their final time. So thanks for carving out some time for us today. It's going to be fun.
Speaker 1:Thank you for having me. You know, the greatest thing about pulling away from my general internal medicine medical practice and going into hospice and palliative care as well as talking about things like finances and purpose, is that I'm much more happy to talk to lawyers. You see, in that old career I didn't like ever talking to lawyers if I could avoid it, but now most of my interactions are really good ones.
Speaker 3:So you'd be interested in this. So we do a lot of work in the personal injury and the disability space and when we are talking to doctors most of whom, or many of whom, have this feeling of crap a lawyer's on the phone. We're like we're going to make this the best experience ever for you. Whatever issues you have with lawyers, like, just tell us what they are, because we are going to make this experience great, low stress, low key for you, and that now we have a new friend, because most of the time they're like oh my gosh, you guys are a breath of fresh air, so that's a relationship tip for folks.
Speaker 1:And for doctors too, because, as if doctors, if we kind of came in with that same attitude, I think our patients would like us much more.
Speaker 3:So bless you for doing the work. Tell us a little bit about your background, because I know that you have an interesting early stage of life event. And then I am curious about this transition from it's all healthcare but transition into the hospice space.
Speaker 1:Sure. So at the age of seven, my father died. Suddenly he was 40. I was 70. He had a brain aneurysm. He was a doctor, went to round at the hospital, literally got a headache, collapsed and died right there in the hospital.
Speaker 1:Being a seven-year-old, I thought that everything happened because of me, right? What seven-year-old doesn't look at the world through somewhat of a selfish lens? And so I assumed he must have died because I wasn't enough, I wasn't good enough, I wasn't special enough, I wasn't lovable enough. And as I worked through this idea, through the months and years, I came to the conclusion that the way to cosmically fix this tragedy was I was going to become a doctor, like my father, like I, was going to step into his footsteps, and that was going to erase all this pain, this tragedy, this trauma, and not only that, but I was going to save the world. And so that belief really carried me.
Speaker 1:I mean, I had a learning disability when I was little. I couldn't read like my peers. It took me all the way to about middle school to catch up with my peers. It carried me through. My mom got remarried and we moved to a high school where I didn't know anyone. I didn't have any friends. I went to the University of Michigan and every Saturday all my friends would go to the football game and I would be sitting in the law library studying. It carried me through all the trials and tribulations of being a lifelong student and I came out at the other end as a doctor.
Speaker 1:But something funny happened. I was out there practicing and at some point I realized guess what? Becoming a doctor didn't tragically fix the death of my father, didn't cosmically make everything better, and I couldn't save and help everyone. There are tons of patients I couldn't help, and the massive paperwork and other things we do as doctors, which aren't so fun, started to catch up with me and I simply burnt out and started looking for a way out. I started saying to myself I cannot continue doing this for the rest of my life. I assumed I didn't have any other skills but being a doctor. So the answer became how do I make enough money so that I can live off that money and never practice again?
Speaker 3:And that's where I was in the middle of my career and as you went through this burnout period, did you have people in your life that you could talk to, to therapists or coaches, to help give you structure to the way you are going to think about escaping from burnout?
Speaker 1:So there's a long answer to that question, but I'd first answer it by saying that I believe there's a difference between meaning and purpose. Meaning, I think, is our cognitive way of thinking about our past. It's all about thoughts and it's the stories we tell ourselves about ourselves, whereas purpose, in my definition, are the things we do in the present and future that are action-based. It's the things we do to light ourselves up, and so I think they're very different things, and so let's talk about me and my sense of meaning, the story I told myself about myself. So, when my father died, the story I told myself about myself was that, in order to make up for this, I was going to become a doctor. But there was another story too. You see, my mom didn't have a complete nervous breakdown, but she didn't manage it very well. My older brother was having issues.
Speaker 1:The story I started also telling myself about myself is I could manage anything Like. I had to be a good kid and I had to tuck it all the way inside and I had to not make a ruckus because we were already on the head of a pin, and this balance was so careful, and so my sense of meaning was that I could manage just about everything, and I wasn't going to make a fuss. And why do I bring this up? Well, when I started facing burnout in my own life as an adult physician, my first thought is you don't burden everyone else with this. Like it's your job to just take it and take it and take it and manage, and so I didn't actually express it to my wife or to my family. I kept most of it inside.
Speaker 1:I will say, though, at the time, I was also running my practice, and I did hire a coach, an executive coach, to help me, because, a I was running my own practice and, b I had also really started to enjoy writing and I wanted to take my writing to the next level and maybe publish a book or do some other things, and so, maybe even I would say quite by accident I ended up getting some therapy through coaching, which was very, very beneficial and helped me learn how to start expressing some of these things. Interestingly enough, I didn't feel like I could go to my family and tell my problems, but I was very good at expressing how it felt through writing what being a doctor was like, about the burnout, about the pain, about the hardship, and so I was out there actually writing in public about it, but I wasn't having conversations with my family member and friends about these things. That was my outlet.
Speaker 3:It's very interesting because what you just described I believed it was I should take it and take it, and take it is unfortunately in our profession. There's many lawyers that score high on that scale and when they turn back to the profession and ask help, the profession says in large part this is the way it's supposed to be. Didn't you know it was going to be like this when you high achieved to get into law school, when you high achieved in law school to get the cool job, and now you have really two jobs because it's guess what 90 hours a week that you're spending, and didn't you know that this is what it was going to be? So you should take it. And in part, the work that I do in this space is to say, no, that's not the way it's supposed to be.
Speaker 1:A lot of it in my mind also gets back to that difference between meaning and purpose. A lot of us have a meaning problem, so I call this the achiever's paradox or the achievement treadmill. A lot of us are burning from trauma of childhood. I call it the rosebud. If you've ever seen Citizen Kane, there's the rosebud phenomenon, this idea that we have a trauma of childhood that drives us to achieve in an attempt to make up for that trauma and make us happy. And a lot of times we don't end up happy, no matter how much we achieve. And so when highly functioning, achievement oriented people achieve and it doesn't make them happy, they double down and try to achieve more because deep down inside, based on that trauma, they don't feel like they're enough.
Speaker 1:Meaning is the journey to enoughness, and when you don't feel like you're enough because you have this burning trauma from your childhood, you can try to purpose your way there, but it doesn't work. And what does that mean purposing your way there? It means becoming a partner in the law firm and then becoming the best partner in the law firm and then bringing the law firm to be the best law firm in the city. You can keep trying to achieve your way to enough, achieve your way to a sense of happiness, purpose your way to enough. You can create all these things that you call purpose, but if you're not dealing with that rosebud, that sentinel trauma that makes you not feel enough no matter how much you achieve, it doesn't work. And so lots of doctors and lawyers find themselves in this place where they burn out because they keep achieving and doubling down but they're not addressing their trauma. They're not addressing their sense of not feeling enough and it kind of blows up in our faces.
Speaker 3:It sounds like and I don't know how many executive coaches you may have gone through Maybe it was one and I found the guy or gal right, or maybe it was 10. But it sounds like you were fortunate to find someone who didn't have MD or PhD psychologist after their name, counselor, but who understood what you just said about trauma. Does that sound right?
Speaker 1:I think my journey to my beliefs about meaning, purpose and trauma came later, and the person actually who did coach me was a physician.
Speaker 1:Her name is Heather Fork and she left her practice to become a physician coach. But she intuitively knew how to listen and how to empathize. And this is always the biggest problem with overachievers is we don't know how to self-empathize. We're very bad at that and me, of course, thinking I was going to make up for my father's death by becoming a doctor and being a high achiever, there wasn't a lot of room for patting myself on the back and saying, hey, you're doing a great job, you don't have to keep on producing, you don't have to keep on achieving. And so I think she was very empathetic to that and helped me see that I could slow it down and really listen to what was the purpose of all this work I was doing and was it doing for me what I was hoping it would? And the answer often was no, like becoming a doctor didn't fix my stress or trauma that my father died. That was a whole different journey I had to take. It was a separate journey.
Speaker 3:When you made that move from, you were a general internist. Is that what your field of practice was? To hospice care, did you? I assume that you found that purpose.
Speaker 1:So I always tell people you don't find purpose, right, I think you build or create it. When you say you find purpose, it's kind of like this really passive thing, and there are a lot of people who have what's called purpose anxiety out there because they've been searching forever to find purpose and they can't find it. I like to take a more active role where I say you build or create it. But it is true, you have to understand some inklings, some whisperings, some things that kind of light you up so that you can build a life of purpose around it. I was a practicing internist. I was thinking about trying to find my way out, and one of the ways I was going to find my way out is I was going to make a heck of a lot of money and invest it wisely, and so I was making money in my practice. But I'm like, well, they're kind of side hustles and they're ways that as a physician, you can make even extra money.
Speaker 1:And I was mostly a geriatrician and I had a hospice company come up to me and said you know what you refer to us, all these patients and by the time we get there, you've already put them on all the right meds and you're really good at this. We need hospice medical directors, why don't you come work with us? And I was kind of like, ok, great I can make is going to get me where I want to go faster and it's not particularly hard for me. And so I started working with this hospice and sometime a few years in, as I was running an incredibly busy practice, I was a medical director of a bunch of nursing homes. I was a medical director of a hospice also when I had the epiphany that maybe financially I was okay. Jim Dolley, the guy who puts on the white coat vestor, sent me his book and I read it and it gave me all the financial vocabulary and knowledge to look at my own finances and I looked at him and I said holy gosh, you are probably already financially independent.
Speaker 1:You can leave work right now. I didn't have it in me to come to completely walk away from the only identity and purpose I had never, ever known in my life. So I started subtracting out what I didn't like in my workspace. I got rid of owning my own practice, I got rid of nights, I got rid of weekends, I got rid of being on call, and as I got rid of more and more that I didn't like, there was one thing that I never wanted to get rid of, and that was hospice.
Speaker 1:I love doing hospice work and at some point I realized I'll probably want to do this even if I'm not making any money for it. So remember, I said you don't find purpose, you build or create it, but you need these anchors, these whisperings, these beckonings. Hospice was a whispering to me. I'm like I would do this even if I wasn't making money. This is a great use of my time. Even if I was retired, I'd keep doing this, and so I can start building a life of purpose around it. And that's what I did.
Speaker 1:I got rid of all the things I didn't like. I used something called the art of subtraction to find a purpose anchor, which was hospice work. And then I started building a life of purpose around it and because I financially had a good framework, I could get rid of higher paying things that I didn't like doing, like running my own practice outside of hospice. And that was kind of how hospice started, as something on the side but slowly became more and more central. But I also realized I didn't want to do hospice 40 hours a week, and so I was lucky enough that I could do it 10 or 15 hours a week and still be financially feasible to leave everything else.
Speaker 1:And then I use the same process over again. Well, hospice lights me up. What are some other things that light me up? And I realized that writing and podcasting and talking about finances and eventually writing books and public speaking, along with other things like taking long walks and exercising and reading fiction and all those kinds of things, also light me up, and so I started building more of those purposeful things in my life and getting rid of the stuff I didn't like this is awesome I want to talk about.
Speaker 3:I want to come back in a moment to the art of subtraction, which you have written and spoken about. One of the things I have learned in consulting with and giving advice to physicians all across the country is that many times a physician in one practice area or specialty doesn't really know what a physician in a different practice area or specialty does. And now I'm not a physician and I have an idea of what doing hospice or doing hospice care is, and I have an idea of what doing hospice or doing hospice care is. Both my parents and my wife's parents lived to an old, old age and died naturally in hospice care. But when you talk about doing hospice and that lighting you up, tell me what that looks like. If I followed you around for a week.
Speaker 2:We've got more coming up, but first a quick break. Here's something we think you'll want to hear.
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Speaker 2:All right, let's get back to the conversation.
Speaker 1:So it can mean different things and it has even meant different things at different parts of my career. But what I love about hospice is this idea that every other doctor and health care practitioner has told people that there's nothing we can do, and then we as the hospice team come in and say no, no, no, there's tons of things we can do. We can help manage your pain, we can get you back home if that's where you want to die, we can provide all sorts of other services. So it's very uplifting, as opposed to a lot of medicine, which is just sad and difficult, especially as you get to geriatrics. So when I started my career, the daily activities, what you would have seen me doing week in, week out, was very different than what I do now. So back then I started building what are called palliative care programs in nursing homes.
Speaker 1:I was doing inpatient hospice consults, where someone would have a need for a hospice and I'd go see the patient in the hospital and assess them. I was doing what are called palliative care consults, when someone doesn't need hospice yet, but they're 12 to 18 months out from needing hospice. We provide palliation, meaning we treat pain and other symptoms, as well as helping run teams of hospice patients. So every hospice team needs a medical director, someone to help the nurses and provide counseling for the patients, as well as do the Medicare documentation. So I was doing all that in the beginning.
Speaker 1:So if you had followed me around back then you'd see me do a hodgepodge of different things. As the years have passed, I spend more and more time running teams. So, for instance, right now I'm covering two teams. They each have between 80 and 100 patients and those teams are my responsibility. I see patients a lot less. It's much more the nurses, social workers and chaplains. They're seeing patients, they're calling me, they're asking me for changes in pain meds. If there are bigger ethical conversations or problems, we do family meetings and those kind of things and then I spend a decent amount of time doing the Medicare documentation that is necessary to provide proof that these patients belong in hospice.
Speaker 3:Now let's talk about the art of subtraction. Belong in hospice. Now let's talk about the art of subtraction. My vision of that is making a list things I do. One side of the list I love would do it for free, would do it because it's interesting. The other side is like oh my gosh, if I could only get rid of this. Is that what you're describing in essence, or is it? That's probably something deeper, because you sound like a very deep and thoughtful person.
Speaker 1:I think it's as simple as that, but let me give you a framework that makes more sense of it.
Speaker 1:Because a lot of people say well, that sounds really nice, you're a wealthy doctor. Of course, you can choose what you want to do and not want to do, but I'm 25 years old. I'm working every moment just to put food on my table. I don't have that privilege of that option. So let me kind of give you the broader frame. I like to talk to people about what I consider winning the game and you could say this is also happiness, like what is winning the game, or happiness looks like.
Speaker 1:Well, here's what I think Time is not a commodity and it cannot be commoditized. What does that mean? It means you can't buy it, you can't sell it, you can't trade it. We all get an allotment of time and we have very little control over it. Yes, you know, you can exercise a little more, eat a little better or wear your seatbelt. Those things may give you slightly more time, but ultimately we have a set amount of time. We have no idea how much that's going to be and all we have a bit of control over, because you can't buy time, save time, trade time. You can't do any of that. Time passes no matter what. So the only thing you can do is try to have a modicum of control over what activities you're involved in as time passes.
Speaker 1:So if we look at that framework, what is winning the game? What is happiness? Well, in my opinion, winning the game is filling that time as much as possible with things that light you up, things that feel purposeful, and getting rid of as many things as you loathe, and that's it. That's what happiness looks like. When we're at the beginning of our careers, it's more likely that we're going to have to do a lot of things we might not want to do, a lot more things that we loathe and a lot less things that we love. But hopefully, if you build a strong financial framework and if you build your career correctly, hopefully, if you build a strong financial framework and if you build your career correctly, you'll slowly add in more things you love and get rid of things you loathe. This is what winning the game looks like.
Speaker 1:And what are our tools and what are our levers when it comes to winning the game? We have a few big levers. One is the joy of addition. So, even if you're working a nine to five and you hate it, but you happen to be 25 years old and you have a lot of energy and you don't have kids yet, you don't own a house yet, and so your weekends are not going to be spent mowing the lawn or driving the kids to football practice. You're going to have more time than I have at 52 with two kids and all sorts of things on my plate, so you can add in things you love. You want to join that basketball league that plays a game every Saturday morning. That is the joy of addition. You are winning the game because you're adding in more things you love, even if you haven't changed the things you love. So the joy of addition is a great lever. What's another great lever?
Speaker 1:Well, the art of subtraction, getting rid of things you don't like. And as you progress in your career and as your finances get better, you hopefully will be in a position to be able to list out all the roles and responsibilities of your job and slowly transition to doing more of the ones you love and less of the ones you loathe. So I let's say I was not financially independent. There was a point in my life where I could have said OK, I'm making this much as an internist and to be be a full-time hospice doctor, I'm going to make less, but if I decide to be a full-time hospice doctor, I can get rid of 30 hours a week of stuff I don't like and replace it with 30 new hours a week of things I do like.
Speaker 1:This is a trade-off. I might not be able to retire as early as I could have if I kept on being a general internist, but if I make this trade-off all of a sudden I'm kind of winning the game, because I subtracted out 30 hours a week of things I didn't like. I put in 30 hours a week of things I did like, and so that's what it looks like Slowly using those levers, slowly using the tools we have. Like money's a great tool and if you have a lot of it you can do a bunch of things. But a lot of people don't have a lot of money, so they have to use other tools like their youth or their community or their connections, their passions or their skills. We have all sorts of tools besides money. We got to start using those to win the game. Do more you love, less you loathe I speak to attorneys.
Speaker 3:You must be speaking to doctors. I know you presented at the White Coat Investor Conference last year, when you were talking to these young professionals, what not grow up in households where these topics are discussed at the dinner table. I believe personal opinion it's not taught in high school and it's not taught in college. It's probably not taught in medical school. I know it's not taught in law school. Where do you send these young people to learn to think like this and to perhaps hang out with others who think like this?
Speaker 1:So one of the problems I set out to solve was that I don't think people talk about purpose in general in a way that we can hold on to and that we can grasp, that doesn't feel overly ephemeral or difficult to connect with. And so the purpose code talking about purpose came after I started talking about finances. So my first book, taking Stock, was about what the dying could teach us about money and life, and a huge part of that book were two main premises. The first premise is that we should think about purpose, identity and connection first before we think about our financial framework. That was the first premise. And then the second premise is then we should build a path to financial independence, and in that book I talk all about how you do that.
Speaker 1:When I went to go talk about my book taking stock with audiences and gave speeches and went to conferences, I kept getting the same reaction over and over again. They'd say something like well, I totally understand the financial part, but you keep telling me to find my purpose and I don't know how to find my purpose. I mean, in fact, I've been trying to do it forever. It's making me anxious and I don't think there even is a purpose in life. Stop telling me to do this. So when people came up to me and said that, I got really, really curious, especially when multiple people said the same thing, and so I went to the literature and, after looking up a bunch of studies about purpose in life and happiness, I found two things that totally contradict each other. The first is very clear Having a sense of purpose in life leads to health, happiness and longevity. Tons of studies that show this, but then I also found other studies one specifically by Larissa Rainey that showed that trying to find your sense of purpose is associated with something called purpose anxiety, and up to 91% of individuals at some point in their life. This idea that trying to find your purpose actually makes you depressed, anxious and feel frustrated, and so the big question was how can purpose be both the most important thing out there but also be extremely frustrating? And what I came up with is we get purpose wrong A lot of times. We think it's one thing, but it's actually two things, and one of those versions of purpose is actually associated with all that anxiety. It's what I call big P purpose. It's that kind of big, audacious purpose that's very goal oriented, and I also think purpose can be something else, what I call little P purpose, which I think is more associated with the health, happiness and longevity, which is much more process oriented. It's doing the things that light you up, regardless of the goal.
Speaker 1:And so where do people go to talk about such things? Well, up until this point, I don't think anyone's really taught really well about how to achieve some sense of purpose in your life. So I hate to plug myself, but I really think my book, the Purpose Code the whole reason I wrote it was to make it reachable. One thing I learned about personal finance when I was thinking about financial independence. It seemed like the most complicated, difficult thing in the world. And then Jim Dally sent me his book and I read a bunch of blogs and listened to a bunch of podcasts and I'm like, oh, this is like so simple. Financial independence is incredibly simple. Investing is incredibly simple, all is incredibly simple. All these things that I thought were incomprehensible. The problem was no one laid it out so clearly that I understood it. So that's what I wanted to do with purpose.
Speaker 1:So where do you go to learn about purpose? A place like the Purpose Code, or you really want to find someone who's talking about, in my opinion, process-oriented purpose as opposed to goal-oriented purpose. Anyone who says purpose is your why in life is setting you up to be frustrated, because then there has to be one big purpose and you have to find it, and if you don't find it, all is lost, Whereas, in my opinion, you're looking for people who talk about purpose as the things we do on a daily basis that light us up, regardless of outcome. So that's where you go to find out about purpose. Now, the other piece of that, the second premise, is how do you find a way to financial independence?
Speaker 1:We're talking about my first book, taking Stock. Well, there are tons of great resources If you're a physician. Jim Dolley, the White Coat Investor, is a great place to go. If you're not a physician but just want to understand how to manage finances, my friend JL Collins wrote a book called the Simple Path to Wealth. It's a New York Times bestseller, one of the clearest elucidations of how we start with nothing and end up with financial independence. It's a great book. I think those are the really two good places to go, one for purpose one for finances, I think.
Speaker 3:I saw that you run mastermind groups or a mastermind group?
Speaker 1:Tell me what yours looks like, yeah, so I run a group called Wealth with Purpose. It's mainly made up of my podcast listeners. So I run a podcast called Wealth With Purpose. It's mainly made up of my podcast listeners. So I run a podcast called Earn and Invest, and these are people like me who started the financial independence movement and they figured out their finances. Remember, I said it's easy if you learn the steps. It's hard work, but it's the concepts are easy.
Speaker 1:And so I have a lot of people who are like is this all there is? They spent years trying to get their finances in order, finally figured it out, and they had this big realization that now my finances are in order, that I could retire and I can live however I want to live. A lot of them are scratching their head and saying, well, but how do I want to live and what does happiness look like? And a lot of them are realizing that money didn't solve any of the problems they had that they thought it would solve. Like, if you have a bad relationship with your husband or wife, money isn't going to fix that per se. If you feel incapable or if you feel like you're not good for whatever reason, having a lot of money is not going to all of a sudden make you feel good about yourself. You're going to still have all the same problems you had before, just a few less of the specific money problems.
Speaker 1:And so I have this group of people who are at that stage with, like, I've kind of figured money out, but what now? How do we translate this into living a better life? A lot of people forget the whole point of money is to live a better, more purposeful, more joyful life. It has no meaning other than that you don't win by being the richest guy in the cemetery. You win by using that tool. Money is a great tool to then build a life you want to live. And a lot of people don't realize that and only realize it either on their deathbeds, and so I saw this a lot in hospice or in the financial independence movement. A lot of them realize it when they finally make enough money and realize that they're still upset and miserable.
Speaker 3:If you have time, I really have two more topics, one I do want to end with what have we learned from? What have we learned about money and finances from people who are dying? But I'm also curious about, you know, retirement and I ask this personally because I like to interview people and ask them questions that I would like to ask and what retirement really means or really could mean, because traditionally it's like okay, I stop. But people like us have a very hard time stopping, especially when, if you followed me around for a week, you would have a hard time figuring out what's work and what's play. It just is right. And so I'm curious about your insights on how 67-year-olds great practice, got a son who's going to take it over great family life, lots of kids and grandkids, a framework for thinking about what happens on day one after he buys the remainder of the shares. And I really don't have to come. But I love the work. I love the stuff I get to do.
Speaker 1:Here's what I think. If you remember, my definition of winning the game is doing as much as we can, that we loathe and get it, or, excuse me, that we love and getting rid of as much as we loathe. You'll notice I didn't mention work or no work, I didn't mention retirement or no work, I didn't mention retirement or no retirement, and I didn't say a thing about money. So let me give you a controversial hot take on retirement, and I've gotten a lot of flack for this opinion. In my opinion, retirement is when you have enough money to go from accumulation to decumulation, that simple Meaning. You have enough money saved up, invested, socked away, that if you decided never to make another cent again, you'd be fine.
Speaker 1:Now, the reason why I get a lot of flack is people say, yeah, but I kept working my job. Well, you did, but you decided then that was a decision. You knew that winning the game was filling up your life with as much joyful time as possible and getting rid of things you loathe. Well, now you have the luxury of using the wonderful tool of money to make sure all you do is fill that time up with things you like and get rid of as much as you loathe. If you decide not to, that's on you. You're still retired, my opinion. You're just a retired person who decides to work during their free time, and if you love work, then hey, that sounds great. If you don't love work, well, that's on you. And so I think for most people, when you start winning the game, it becomes indecipherable. Because guess what, when you do things you love that light you up, people often want to pay you for it.
Speaker 3:Yes, yes, yes. And you know I say, look, I'm fortunate there's not much that I have to do, that I don't enjoy doing All right. Last thing and maybe this whole conversation has been about this, but really the learnings from the dying about finances and frameworks for thinking about a financial life.
Speaker 1:Well. So I have been at the bedside with lots and lots of people who are in the dying process and they talk, and let me tell you first what they don't say. No one ever says I wish I accumulated more millions, like I made it to one million but my goal net worth was two million and I'm really upset I never got there. I wish I worked more nights. No one ever says I wish I worked more weekends. People say some version of I really regret that I never had the energy, courage or time to, and then it's fill in the blank because it's all about you and, uniquely, what's interesting to you. So to some people that's like I never wrote the great American novel because I was too afraid, or I never put away the time to do it, or I never reconnected with that group of friends that was really important to me. Or I never took up pickleball because it looked really fun and I used to love playing tennis when I was little and I bet pickleball would have really filled me up in those later years. Whatever it is could be starting a business, it could be anything. It's that I didn't have the energy, courage or time to do something that lit me up. That would have been more representative of me, that was important, and I kept on putting it off. And so I would call those purpose anchors right. I would turn that around If you could imagine yourself lying in your deathbed. But you're not, you're me, or you were in our 50s or 60s or 40s or 30s. We have lots of life to live. But if you could put yourself in the position of some of my hospice patients and ask yourself that question and get the answer, what would I really regret never having the energy, courage or time to do? And then flip that around and say, aha, that is something. I could start building some purpose around. Remember, you have to build purpose, but now you have a purpose anchor and you can start working on it.
Speaker 1:So the dying are begging us, in a sense, to not waste that precious time. That isn't a commodity, because we can't buy, sell or trade it. And if you don't have the energy, courage or time and let me tell you, most people do have the energy when they really look at it and most people do have the time the do have the energy when they really look at it and most people do have the time the Bureau of Labor Statistics does the American Time Survey and shows that people in general have about five hours of free time a day, regardless of their socioeconomic status. So most people do have the energy, most people do have the time. And you could say, well, I don't have enough money to do the things I want to do, but a lot of times you have other tools in your toolkit besides money, like we talked about your youth, your energy, your free time, all those kind of things, and so there's really no excuse.
Speaker 1:It comes down to courage. So what the dying are telling us is have the courage to do the deeply important hard things in your life and structure your finances around those things. To give you that space and time. Your finances don't have to be complicated. You don't have to hit financial independence right away, but you do have to be knowledgeable enough about your finances to create a framework that allows you to do some of those important things now, because you don't how to Unlock Meaning, maximize Happiness and Leave a Lasting Legacy.
Speaker 3:Sir, in March I will be in your room, front and center, to hear your talk, and I can't wait to meet you in person. This has really, really, really been a fun time. I want to thank you for your time.
Speaker 1:Thank you for having me. It's been a pleasure time.
Speaker 2:Thank you for having me. It's been a pleasure. That's it for today's episode of the Renegade Lawyer Podcast, where we're rewriting the rules of what it means to build a great law practice and a great life. If something sparked a new idea or gave you clarity, pass it on, subscribe, leave a review and share this with someone who's ready to think bigger. Want more tools, strategies and stories from the trenches? Visit greatlegalmarketingcom or connect with Ben Glass and the team on LinkedIn. Keep building boldly. We'll see you next time.
