Dive into the inspiring story of Peter Konrad, a man whose journey from a small auto body shop in Auburn, California, to a successful career in insurance and investment embodies resilience and the spirit of giving back.
Alongside his son Garrett, Peter shares the transformation of their family business and bond, emphasizing innovation and mutual respect.
The episode also ventures to Tanzania, where Peter's sustainable development projects showcase the impact of thoughtful leadership.
Join us for a concise exploration of living with intention, the importance of community service, and the power of resilience.
Connect with Peter though his website.
Dive into the inspiring story of Peter Konrad, a man whose journey from a small auto body shop in Auburn, California, to a successful career in insurance and investment embodies resilience and the spirit of giving back.
Alongside his son Garrett, Peter shares the transformation of their family business and bond, emphasizing innovation and mutual respect.
The episode also ventures to Tanzania, where Peter's sustainable development projects showcase the impact of thoughtful leadership.
Join us for a concise exploration of living with intention, the importance of community service, and the power of resilience.
Connect with Peter though his website.
From the time we are born. Our lives are crafted with stories stories we hear, read and stories we tell ourselves. These stories shape our lives, our future and our potential. Sometimes, a single story can pivot us from a downward spiral to a transformative paradigm shift. Our struggles in life are rooted in the stories we choose to believe. It's a delicate balance between being realistic and maintaining hope for a brighter future, but unfortunately, many people end up abandoning their dreams, all because of self-imposed beliefs and a limiting mindset. The Greatest Story podcast exists to bring to light the untold stories that inspire, empower and urge you to discover your purpose, so that you can craft your own success story. Welcome to the Greatest Story.
Speaker 1:Today we're talking to Peter Conrad. He is a local Auburn, california entrepreneur and a business owner. He's the president and founder of IFC, which stands for Integrated Financial Concepts. It's a financial services company in Auburn, california. He's also a family man, married with three children, five grandchildren, fellow Rotarian. He's also involved in multiple charities and community work. He just came back from Vietnam and soon is going to Africa. Peter, welcome to the Greatest Story podcast. How are you? I'm good. Thank you very much. It's an honor to have you on.
Speaker 2:It's a pleasure and an honor to be here. Thank you.
Speaker 1:I appreciate that. So let's start with, if you can, please tell us a little bit of your background, your story, what you do for a living, where you grew up, and let's go from there so.
Speaker 2:I'll try to make it brief, but I want to bring in some broad background because perspective, of course, my parents met waiting to get on a boat after World War II as displaced persons out of Germany, and so we're both people I, because of that I end up to be kind of outspoken about immigration and those types of things Because they came, they learned the language, they passed all the history tests, got their citizenship and assimilated. They were part of the group that came here and wanted to raise all ships, got involved, worked hard. They were minimalists, they just they left with whatever they could carry out of the country, always saved everything, scrimped, made something out of nothing, and I think that helped me be creative. So what year was that? That would have been in 45, 46.
Speaker 1:Okay.
Speaker 2:I actually went back to New York, ellis Island and got photocopies of the ship manuscript where they signed in and off the boat.
Speaker 1:Oh, wow, they have those.
Speaker 2:Yeah, that's so awesome you can look them up in the archives.
Speaker 1:That's amazing.
Speaker 2:And then they, you know, finally got together and settled down in LA for a job. My dad raised seven kids on next to no salary. The highest paying job my dad ever had in his life was $2,500. And he's the only person I knew that could live comfortably on his $950 a month. Social security Is he just saved, paid for things. Never had that and that was success for him.
Speaker 1:Well, yeah, that's very common with my, with my parents, Same thing. My parents came, well, we came with our parents in 1993. And I remember at first they didn't know the language but they had to figure out how to feed their 10 kids and pay rent. And then, after like two months of us living in America, we started seeing them buy up some boxes and canned stuff, dry salami and package it to ship it to Ukraine, send back home to their relatives, and and still had enough money to save up for eventually we had to buy a van so that all of us could fit in to go, say, to church or any other trip. So I don't know, like that's something that is so for me so hard to understand. I mean, you really had to account for like every dollar and yet you still had the. You found an opportunity to give back.
Speaker 2:That's that's interesting. It is incredible to watch and it's just a matter of priorities and making tough choices. People don't understand delayed gratification today. I think that's a big killer of a lot of dreams.
Speaker 1:Yeah, that's so true. Okay, so tell us a little bit about what do you do right now. How's your after that happened? After your parents moved here, they raised you. Where were you raised and how was that upbringing?
Speaker 2:So one of the best kept secrets is I was actually born in Hollywood. I don't tell many people, that is just unfit the narrative, but we grew up in Torrance, south LAX airport and moved up to Auburn when I was 15. I was a it was between my freshman and sophomore year in high school and it was pretty hard at 15 to go from concrete and asphalt to a 27 acre per orchard. It was like culture shock. I was ready kind of a motorhead and getting interested in cars, and so that actually allowed me at 15. I got my first car, even though I couldn't drive, and started working on it. And then I also got my motorcycle license and rode from Kool to Placer High School across the canyon. Every day I'm in a motorcycle school.
Speaker 1:When you were 15?.
Speaker 2:When I was 15. Wow, I don't think I'd let my kid do that, or my grand kid now?
Speaker 1:Oh, no way, no, things have changed dramatically, wow, okay.
Speaker 2:So then, going to Placer High School, I was real involved in two areas the Ag department, because that was intriguing to me as a city kid, and also the automotive. And I ended up starting my first business when I was 17, small auto body shop.
Speaker 1:Oh, wow.
Speaker 2:And then I ran that while I went to Sierra College and went after an AA degree in automotive technology. That soon became a hobby business after I got in the insurance and investment world.
Speaker 1:So how did you get in the insurance and investment business?
Speaker 2:It started out on the insurance side. I had a race partner when I was 18 and we were racing at that time up in Grass Valley Stock Cars and he was a city or a state manager for an insurance company and he had stopped me and said look around and see how many old people are in the auto body business. And there weren't any, because you wear out. Back then we were spraying cars with lacquer and didn't even wear a mask. We'd wash our hands with lacquer thinner stuff that people would cringe at today with chemical use and so I got into the insurance business, eventually the securities business and now I have our firm.
Speaker 1:So why did you decide to have your own firm, compared to working for one of the bigger?
Speaker 2:firms. The first half of my career I was a corporate executive and moved up. My last position was a regional vice president for a company and on the board of this life insurance company. In the whole time in the corporate world I was a square peg in a round hole. But I've always told myself I can do anything for a period of time. If it gets me to my end, I can do anything for a period of time. So about 18 years I spent in the corporate side and was a recruiter, trainer, supporter of financial advisors, excuse me. And then in 2000, march of 2000, actually, we're coming up on our anniversary I went independent. I got tired of putting the glass slipper on everybody's foot or trying to make that one glass slipper.
Speaker 2:And so I formed an independent marketing organization and went out on my own and been doing that since.
Speaker 1:Wow, that's interesting. I know, like in our business, in the real estate business, working with people, every family, every individual is different and sometimes it's challenging, but at the same time you'll really learn really quickly how to work with different people, how to listen to their needs, to their desires, and all that Do you in your line of business. Do you have to deal with a lot of just regular folks, people in business? Are you dealing mainly with just regular people who have jobs, who are you wanted to save some money and not just put it in the bank but invested for a better return?
Speaker 2:So we have a broad array of clientele because one of the things we have not done is created minimums. Garrett had a high school teacher that brought us 15 year old son to Garrett and he wanted to start saving $15 a month.
Speaker 1:Oh, wow.
Speaker 2:And Garrett opened an account for him and that kid is doing well today and Garrett calculated it. He said at the time the guy's a 65 year old. If he does nothing else in $15 a month for that 45 years, 50 years, he's going to be a millionaire, just compound interest and sticking the course and it's evolved into he got family members, he's got an aunt and an uncle. So I like the idea of not having minimums, not worried about the bottom line. So to that end, garrett works a lot with individuals. I primarily work with business owners because that's been my whole career the advanced marketplace, deep person, estate planning, retirement planning, that type of thing.
Speaker 1:Okay, awesome.
Speaker 2:And it's also given me a great edge. Like you mentioned Vietnam and we went around all these places problem solving issues they were having at the orphanages and all of these places we visited. And a few people took me aside and said how do you know about this, how do you know about that? And I told them I'm just blessed because I work with business owners every day, so I get a broad perspective of problem solving in all kinds of industries.
Speaker 1:Oh yeah, yeah, that's great. So you work with your son. Yes, how is that?
Speaker 2:It's interesting. That's a fun little story Because at 15, he got tired of me coming home to the dinner table complaining about staff and problems at work and he said why don't you hire me I can type like 10 times faster than they can type because he was playing these online games.
Speaker 2:I think, it was RuneScape at the time or whatever it was and every day I'd come home and give him a rebuttal, say no, it won't work because of this. Or in two days later he'd have a rebuttal and he'd tell me how he can make that work. And one thing I've committed in my life I'll never tell anybody no, and you've seen a lot of people ask me for a lot of favors. I never tell anybody no. What I may tell you is why I don't think it'll work. And let you try to work around that. You try to find the fix to make it work within those parameters.
Speaker 2:And it might work or it might not. And so Garrett, for six months, did this and he finally wore me down. He said do this, let me just take your calendar, I'll just be in charge of your calendar. Give me that little piece and let's see where it goes.
Speaker 1:And what was his motivation, though, to be so persistent and want to work with his dad? I know many families where kids don't want to have anything to do with their parents, so I traveled all the time I was gone.
Speaker 2:I never thought one of my kids would want to go and do what I do, although because they were homeschooled they always went on the road. I took my whole family all over the country, all over the world, and that was fun, and so I guess he got a little flavor of travel. He got intrigued because he's a musician at heart. He was in a band. He's mastered a CD in post-hardcore genre. He was such a reserved individual but then in fifth grade he had green long hair and he was banging on his drums. It was funny, it was fun to watch. So he started getting interested in the financial world and started pursuing that. And then what was really funny is after his first paycheck came he thought a good friend of mine that's been with me for 24 years now is my bookkeeper. He grew up next door to her and so she's Aunt Dini and she does all the bookkeeping. And then he goes.
Speaker 2:Aunt Dini made a mistake on my track. Here he is. He's one week after his 16th birthday is when he started for me and it was minimum wage, whatever. It was eight and a quarter, and he said well, what was so-and-so making when she left and I said 1550. And he said well, I thought I'd start there and I go do you know everything she knew? Because I was raised with tough love and we earned everything. We are never given anything. I've never given anything to my kids. They've earned everything.
Speaker 2:And so I said when you can do everything that she could do, I'll pay you 15, 15 or whatever the number was. Back then and he came back to me with a Word document, spreadsheet of all those things and we put a 25 cent, 50 cent, whatever value, and put together what we thought was like a three year timeframe of learning. He did it in six months. Wow. And my bookkeeper came back to me and says you can't give him a raise every other week. Or I said, if he's doing the job, I can't, yeah, can't afford not to.
Speaker 1:Wow.
Speaker 2:And ever since then he took hold. I invited him to start buying shares when in the fifth year. We're coming up on the 15th year and it's been the best thing I've ever done.
Speaker 1:Wow, what do you think could have happened if, let's say, in most cases, how usually fathers do it they would say you know what, son, this is not for you. One you know, go get that education, go to college, go to university, whatever, and just not do what you did, where you kind of you know, you said, you didn't say no, but you kind of like, basically you were delaying that or having him come up with ways to really convince you to come on the board. What if you didn't do that? What if you just said no, son, this is not for you. How do you think things would have turned out?
Speaker 2:I hate to think of how those would have turned out for me, because he would have missed, I would have missed his calling and because of that I wouldn't be anywhere close to where I am today.
Speaker 1:You enjoy working with him.
Speaker 2:I love it and he I should go back. This is funny because this will become an interview about Garrett I've got to share. We do a strategic plan every year where we go out of town for a few days. We throw everything on the table, see what we can improve, what we ought to stop doing, what opportunities we're missing and we're driving out of town.
Speaker 2:This was back then, 2014, I think, at that point where I was gonna start offering him to buy stock with his bonus and he goes. You know what? I don't think I want to inherit this business. And I, instead of panicking, I kept a poker face and I said tell me about that. And he goes you're getting older, mind you. This is like.
Speaker 2:This is like 10 years ago. He said you're getting older, you're getting relaxed, slowing down. Everybody you work with is slowing down, either dying or retiring, and it's not a sustainable model. And I go well, let's look at that and see what we can do. And we literally threw away everything I brought to the table for that meeting and he and I he brainstormed creating the RIA firm and pursuing that in addition to everything we were doing, and just totally revitalized. And I work harder today for what he will eventually run on his own. And I'm kind of, I'm wired weird that way. I don't know if martyrdom is a gift, but I find it hard to work for myself. I find it very easy to help other people reach their dreams.
Speaker 1:Well, that's awesome. That kind of brings us to the next question I wanted to ask. You know, I've lived in Auburn for almost four years now and here I've met some of the coolest people, especially with the values that really align with our values. Can you talk a little bit about the Auburn community and how your business, what you do and how it impacts this community?
Speaker 2:It's interesting because I've been in this community for all these years 47 years, whatever it's been and I never spent time downtown, really until we got that office downtown seven years ago. I mean downtown Auburn, Downtown Auburn. Okay, I've been here in Auburn living. I built my house 32 years ago out there and raised my kids here and everything, but I was always traveling and I plugged in not long before you came to town. I guess it's been nine years ago. I've been in part of Rotary nine years now, went through leadership Auburn in 2015 and that's when I plugged in.
Speaker 1:Okay, so how long now, how long have you been in business?
Speaker 2:So we're coming up on our 24th anniversary of IFC as an independent, and I've been doing this job on both sides of the house, as an executive and independent as 42 years. Wow, it's a lifetime?
Speaker 1:Yeah, what would you say? Some of your core values and principles, which you operate on, whether it's in your business, in life, in the community that you're involved in, do you have a certain set of principles and values?
Speaker 2:Yeah, I was fortunate to go through a leadership institute in 2000 that I then, for a national industry association, I was part of and then moderated it for six years after that, oh, and so it really ingrained some fun things that I always knew, but it brought it to the forefront and really made me think about it and I have sitting on my desk guiding principles that I wrote back then. I also went through a fun project that was profound. As part of that, you've heard of the book Seven Habits of Highly Effective People. Yes, and Stephen Covey talks about beginning with the end of mine and he talks about going to a memorial service and you see friends and family members and stuff. Then you find out that it's your memorial, that you get to go witness and four people are gonna speak One represents friends, one represents family members, one represents community members and one philanthropic.
Speaker 2:And think about what you want to hear those people say about you. So I went through that exercise and I wrote my obituary in 2000. I wrote what I want those four people to say about me Wow, and I want to become that, in that everything I do in my life will lead to them having to say that about me Wow. And I've lived this. I don't want it to sound more, but I've lived every day since that as if it's my last day on earth. So I have no regrets, can you?
Speaker 1:share some of those Make for busy days. Can you share some of those things?
Speaker 2:So some of the principles that I wrote then out of that to help me get there are that which you share multiplies, that which you withhold diminishes, and you're gonna recognize some of these coming out of the greatest old history book ever written in the world. And that's the other thing I committed. It was a challenge. What could you do for 15 minutes every day of the rest of your life? That could have a great impact. And what I did I had before that I'd read the Bible cover to cover and never made much sense of it.
Speaker 2:But what I did is made a commitment in January 1st of 2000 to go through a chronological Bible in a year and journal. I used to acronym SOAP S is scripture, o is observation, a is application, p is prayer, and I journaled every single day and I still. I haven't been journaling but I'm still, to this day 24, there's a 24th time. I'm going through that every single day to extract something out of it that I can improve my life with. Wow, all these principles. Now, this is a long end run, but all these come out of that, I found, which is amazing, you get what you want by giving other people what they want.
Speaker 1:Yes.
Speaker 2:It's so simple but it's so hard for people to do.
Speaker 1:It is.
Speaker 2:You and I know amazing people in rotary that do so much. And then you and I also know people that always have an excuse I'm too busy to do that for this committee. I'm too busy, I can't afford to do that. And I look at those people and they spend more money on their shoes than I do. They buy more expensive cups of coffee. The only difference is they work less hours. I don't care how much you make, you just work more hours and you'll make more money. I've always worked 90 or 100 hours a week. I still do. When I'm in town, I'm not traveling, mm-hmm. And now I get to do some for fun and some for work.
Speaker 1:Wow. So it sounds like I mean, you've done a lot already in your life. Do you have sort of vision for the next phase of your life? Were you things that you still wanna accomplish?
Speaker 2:Yeah, and to that end, my mentor in life has always been Paul of Tarsus, because I didn't want everything that I do philanthropically to be funded by somebody else and have somebody else controlling whether I could be effective or not. Mm-hmm and I watched so good and I think that's why he had such an effective ministry and wrote most of the New Testament is because nobody controlled what he could do. He could say whatever he want without worrying about who was offended. Obviously, the best at that was Jesus and the white flesh tuned those stones. But my goal in life was not to give 10% of my income or 10% of my time. I would like to get to the point before I die, if I live long enough, where I'm living on 10% of my income and spending 10% of my time in my job and philanthropically spending 90% of my income in my time. Last year, danelle and I took a trip every month and I'm scheduled this year to have a trip every month.
Speaker 1:Can you talk a little bit about your next trip? Where are you going and what is that trip about?
Speaker 2:I'm going to Tanzania, africa. I'm going to spend all my time in Mwanza. That's where I've done most of my work. We actually have a in Arusha, not far from there. In Tanzania we have the tree project that's going on MetaFriend through all these travels to Africa, I started going in 2004 to Tanzania. This will be my 13th trip there. We have about 175,000 trees in the ground around Mount Kilimanjaro through a Rotary International. It didn't become international, it was a Rotary District project. We had a greenhouse there and started planting trees. That's an ongoing sustainable project. In Mwanza. I went there the first time with a team building. We went back every year building duplexes or churches. I met a guy that graduated and then started his first outdoor church. Then the year later, I took my whole family back and we bought a piece of ground and hired locals to build his first church. He now has 15 satellite churches out of that church that he started.
Speaker 1:How did you choose that specific location? What was the decision process?
Speaker 2:What I've done, what's interesting. I think it's more valuable to know your weaknesses than your strengths. I'm not an organization as my worst weakness I want to fly high and fast. Another weakness is I don't have tolerance for excuses or non-production. When I go somewhere, what happens is I find people that are doers, I find positive people that are getting things done, and I invest in those people.
Speaker 2:He was the first one. Then we bought a 14-hectare farm to help create sustainability there. Then we met this lovely lady, mama Minja. We were staying at her house. The whole family was on one of her trips back there. She shared with us that she wanted to start this school. We helped her build this little school.
Speaker 2:She goes around at 5.30 in the morning, collects all these kids that can't afford to go to school, makes those uniforms for them and brings her to the school, educates them and then takes them home. This lady was phenomenal. She started selling. She got old bottles, purified them, purified water and sold bottles of water. Then bought a juicer and started selling juice. Then she bought a field. Then she planted hardwood. Today she's operating. It's crazy to say we've funded it or that it's ours, but just supporting her. She runs an orphanage. She runs that school. She has a sewing college. We're graduating the third class from a sewing college. She has a hog ranch. The model was to give bread sows to unwed mothers and keep breeding them back so they have sustainable income selling the babies. I can't even think of everything that she's known. I'm going back a quick trip. It's 10 days. I'm going around checking up on all these things, making sure they're still working good, see what else they need help with.
Speaker 1:That's awesome, that's great. This podcast is called the Greatest Story. The thought behind this name was one time I was thinking how stories impact our lives. Since we are very young, there are people in our lives that tell us stories. Then we, when we begin to read, learn to read. We read about stories. Then there are stories that we tell ourselves, sometimes subconsciously, about ourselves. Very often there can be one story that can change the trajectory of our life, whether it's in the positive or in the negative. Can you recall a story in your life that really had an impact on you and your life?
Speaker 2:Wow, I really have to think about that. That exercise in 2000, writing my obituary, was probably the biggest impact. It's kind of awkward because, my dad being a minimalist, I grew up my whole life my parents didn't know what out of the seven kids. They didn't know what to do with me. They literally would sit down and pray that evil spirits came out of me. They just thought I was so far out there because I was always trying something In my dad my whole life.
Speaker 2:My motivation was to prove my dad wrong. It wasn't that he was a bad guy, it was just I had to prove that I could do what he said couldn't be done, and that was with starting my business, with running that successful business. Then I got into racing and part of the reason with that negative evil bent is they felt like if you got injured you were doing something wrong. Right and seven kids nobody had broken any bones by 19,. I had 13 screws my left ankle and five pins my right hand and I was racing motorcycles and cars and doing all this crazy stuff that seemed so frivolous to that conservative couple from Germany.
Speaker 1:Wow, and this is something that you still do, right.
Speaker 2:Right, it's a terrible thing to be addicted to a drumbling. Last year, I got to go skiing in Chaminique, france, which is amazing.
Speaker 1:That was with Don Whitaker, yes.
Speaker 2:Bridget Powers birthday party. Don Whitaker yeah, and two years ago we were supporting Fast Fridays here locally and my daughter told me it was a bucket list of riders, a passenger, and I told her she was crazy and she said I'd only do it if you drove. I said that's even crazier. And then we did it and then it was fun and we were successful. So I bought one. So the last two years I've been racing the sidecars out there. How fast did those things go? Like 70. It's a short track, it's like an eighth of mile and it's dirt. They'll do 65, 70. It's a 1000cc, nitrous injected, but they don't have brakes in your dirt. So if what could go wrong?
Speaker 1:Oh, wow, and your daughter agreed. She did it. Wow. And I know I have heard your son run the same.
Speaker 2:So now I do kind of a celebrity of the month. We run once a month during the season and the chief of police, ryan Garrett, ran once. My brother from Spokane flew down for the national finals. That was my first place he raced, that was fun.
Speaker 1:Wow, that sounds like a lot of fun, Peter. So if young people who are wanting to get in business, if they're going to be watching this and maybe they're thinking about starting a business, being an entrepreneur, what would be your recommendation? Someone thinking about potentially starting their own business?
Speaker 2:I would say if you're passionate about it, do it. If you saw somebody else making money doing something, don't even think of it. I'm amazed how many people just see somebody doing something and think, oh, that's neat and I can make good money, I can drive a nice car. Whatever the case is, like my kids, I told them you follow your passion. I'll back you, not support you, not give you anything, but I'll show you how to make it work. If you're passionate about something, you can get out of bed every morning and put in the commitment it needs, because that's what it needs.
Speaker 1:How do you find that passion?
Speaker 2:Boy that you stumped me with that. I think a passion has to find you. Okay, I'm thinking as you go through life, I guess you have to be open and put yourself out there to expose yourself to things like Garrett in third grade started music and I have pictures of Jordan, my oldest son, when we were building our house he was born right as I started building the house, but it was an ongoing project and we have pictures of him at one and two picking up sticks that were pointed on one end and big on the other and he's using it as a gun right, just playing, and now he's a scout sniper in the Marines and on the SWAT team and Roseville police department.
Speaker 1:You know, I think that right now, the kind of time we live in I believe this is just my observation that it's become a little overwhelming and more difficult to find that passion or allow that passion to find you, because, you know, back in the day when, let's say, when you were growing up, or even when I was growing up, we had options that we could kind of count, you know, with with our hand. Right, like, you either go to school, you go, you become a doctor, you go into business, whatever, like there was like a few things, or you just kind of follow what your dad does and just kind of follow his footsteps. Right now, with people being introduced and exposed to so much things on social media, through internet, right, there's all these flashy things that come our way. So, for someone who is on Instagram, tiktok, you know, internet, google, youtube, right, it's like oh, you can make money in real estate. No, you can make money doing this, you can make money with Bitcoin, you can make money selling shoes and all of these different things kind of come at you and I think it's kind of difficult to really choose. What is it that you're going to focus on? Because, whatever it is, whatever you choose. The only way that you can you will succeed in that is you really choose that and focus on it. And you got to be patient at times because it's not like overnight things will change and then, boom, you find success right, right.
Speaker 1:It takes, it takes time, it takes right now with instant gratification. People are not patient enough. They want things right now, right, instantly. Everything's instantly right now. The DoorDash, right. I mean almost like Amazon. You want something, you go, you click, boom, it's at your doorstep in a few hours. So I think that that part, that discipline, I think that that's something that I think it's so important for people to to learn and just really stick to that principle that you got to take some time to really find what is it that you will, you enjoy doing something that you find yourself that you're going to actually be committed and will find that discipline in you to pursue. And it's a long term game. It's not instant, it's not quick. I mean, how long did it take you to like in your business? How long did it take you to kind of realize that, hey, this business is sustainable, it's making me good income. Now I can do this full time and expand and grow. How long did it take? I'm sure it wasn't overnight.
Speaker 2:Long time, probably five to 10 year period. Wow yeah, Because you're a feast or famine. So what amazes me along those lines is I guess every generation had a goal of making it a little easier on their kits and I think the pendulum is swung too far because it's painful with the travel that I'm doing now. You know, we're in Sicily the end of last year and I couldn't believe the graffiti, the litter, the fact that not a single city fountain in town square was functional. They're all overgrown with weeds and they were complaining about overpopulation.
Speaker 2:Going to Vietnam, we got a good view of about two thirds of the country over that three weeks and I heard the same thing in every place the young people don't want to work in the rice fields, they don't want to work in the rubber plantations, they don't want to do, and 80% of that country is very backwards. And then we spent the last three days in Saigon, and Saigon, a city that was designed to hold a million people, houses 12 million people and there's the Lamborghini dealership, there's the Royals Royce dealership and everywhere I went everybody would say all the kids want to go to Saigon and have a plus life. We kind of suffer from that here. You know US, but they extreme. There's a hundred million people in Vietnam and 12% of them live in one city and the rest is spread out.
Speaker 2:And I always think back to this little story about the little girl in the backyard who was asking about these worms and her mom explained those herca coons. They are going to transform from a worm into a butterfly, and so the girl would go out there and check them every day and, sure enough, one day one started to crack open and she watched and watched and watched and it took about six hours for this thing to work its way out and then fly away. And so two or three days later, when the next one started, she thought I can't, I can't stand the pain, I want to help it. So she ran inside and got her mom's sewing scissors and carefully snipped open the cocoon and that butterfly sat there all day and her mom called her for dinner and she came back from dinner and it was laying there dead and it ends up.
Speaker 2:The process of coming out of the cocoon is what squeezes all the blood out of the wings so they can dry and it can fly away, and by making the process easier it killed the thing. And I think how profound is that to what we have done with our kids by giving them $150 sneakers and $700 smartphones and just there's nothing. They've had to try to do on their own or create or build. Wow, that's such an amazing story. There's nothing to draw from.
Speaker 1:Man, wow, yeah, I just recently was thinking about this. How you know, I'm a parent, I have two children, and I noticed how, sometimes, like we want to make it easier for them easier how it was for us, and in the process we're actually not helping or we are harming. And sometimes it's tough to like just shift the mindset and just realize that no, like, let them figure this out on their own. Yes, it's going to be maybe painful to watch, but it's okay. So, peter, what does success mean to you?
Speaker 1:There's so many different definitions out there. For some, success is becoming a millionaire, billionaire. For others, success is family. The way I was raised, my parents always told me that they said, paul, we don't really care too much if you become a millionaire, if you become super rich or not. We just want to make sure that in life, you walk with the Lord and you value family relationships. But the most important thing for them, they said, as long as we know that you live, you're living, you're walking with the Lord, we're going to be at peace here. What does success mean to you?
Speaker 2:That's good. I was fortunate to hear a definition of success that really resonated with me early on, and that is success is the progressive realization of a worthwhile dream or goal. It's not a thing, and for me it's definitely family and relationships I have always promised myself. There's a lot of people who don't want to be friends or talk to friends about personal things. I love it that all my clients are my best friends and we travel the world together.
Speaker 2:I love that they can come to me for anything and I can help them figure it out. I love more than anything that we still and I'm so blessed for this all the kids live within 15, 20 minutes of us and once a week we have family dinner night where the kids and grids come over once a week and there's always going to be something that comes up, wow. And then the opportunities like having them all go to Mexico with us for our anniversary in November. That's just so rich, that is awesome.
Speaker 1:Any final thoughts? Can you tell people how they can find you, how they can connect with you?
Speaker 2:Absolutely Okay, ifcinscom, or come downtown, everybody knows me.
Speaker 1:Thank you, peter, thank you so much, absolutely Thank you. I appreciate it.