#26 – The Biggest Risk Of All With George Jerjian

George Jerjian [00:01:09]:
Delighted. Ryan. Good to be on your show.

Ryan Doolittle [00:01:11]:
I want to start out just on the basics. What is your definition of retirement?

George Jerjian [00:01:17]:
Oh, wow. Retirement, I think, is a word that’s past its sell by date. It’s a ghost of the past that people have invested in, and therefore it’s there. You know, you’ve got the savings, you’ve got the money, you’ve got the whole plan, but I mean the financial plan, but you have no idea where you’re going with it. So I almost think that you have to take the word retirement out of your language and talk about what are you going to do in this next chapter of your life. And that way you pivot your mind to doing something new, something creative. I even go as far as to say that you might even need a new identity. I don’t say identity lightly here, because who we were in our work space, once we leave that work, I mean, one of the things I say is that didn’t finish that sentence.

George Jerjian [00:02:16]:
But what I’m trying to get at is we all know the first casualty in war is the truth, right?

Ryan Doolittle [00:02:24]:
Interesting.

George Jerjian [00:02:25]:
We’ve seen it time and time again. We’ve seen it with the Ukraine, Russia, war now. But the first casualty in retirement is identity. Who am I now? What we don’t realize is that if we don’t create a new identity, right. And purpose comes right next to it as well. But if you don’t have an identity, your internal system starts to break down, mental health issues, emotional health issues, etcetera. Why? Because when you don’t have an identity, the question is, who am I? And if I can’t answer that, who am I? My whole social standing is compromised.

Ryan Doolittle [00:03:10]:
Absolutely.

George Jerjian [00:03:11]:
Including within our own families. The power dynamics change. But if you create a new Persona, a new identity, a better identity, a better suited identity for who you really are. That’s why it’s important to go into an inner journey. But we can unpack that later. So my definition of retirement is. It’s an obsolete word. I’d rather see words like rewirement or refirement.

Ryan Doolittle [00:03:44]:
Yeah.

George Jerjian [00:03:45]:
Tell me that answers your question.

Ryan Doolittle [00:03:46]:
Oh, yeah, absolutely. And I had seen you use some of those words. So you think just because you’re, like, gonna refire your engines and your rewire, like, who you think you are type of thing.

George Jerjian [00:03:57]:
Yeah. I think the plan that we are offered is a financial plan.

Ryan Doolittle [00:04:03]:
Yeah.

George Jerjian [00:04:04]:
And we all, our generation, we all saved. Well, not all of us, but some of us saved a. In the hope that we would have a good retirement. Had no idea what that retirement would look like. The advertising world painted some wonderful sailing boats, some good martinis, some beaches, some great locations. But that’s a vacation. That’s not retirement.

Ryan Doolittle [00:04:33]:
Right. Yeah.

George Jerjian [00:04:34]:
And Einstein said, if you want solutions to problems, look at nature. And in nature, I looked at it. In nature, nothing retires. It’s either growing or dying.

Ryan Doolittle [00:04:48]:
Oh, my gosh. Yeah.

George Jerjian [00:04:50]:
So once you start to realize that if you choose the way of retirement, the traditional retirement, you’re tiptoeing to a quiet death.

Ryan Doolittle [00:04:59]:
Right.

George Jerjian [00:04:59]:
Effectively, everything starts to shut down slowly but surely. I mean, how many vacations can you go on? How many golf sessions can you have a week? You come to the point once the honeymoon period’s gone, you’re now in a trap.

Ryan Doolittle [00:05:17]:
Yeah. You know, it’s interesting because it’s still hard to sometimes not get tricked into thinking, no, if I just didn’t have a job, I’d be on the beach, and that’s all I need. But it’s like, that’s a great place.

George Jerjian [00:05:33]:
To be, isn’t it? It is a mirage. I want to be in love every single minute of my life. But it doesn’t work that way, does it? It’s like. It’s nice, but it doesn’t work that way.

Ryan Doolittle [00:05:47]:
Right. I guess I have.

George Jerjian [00:05:49]:
I say we shouldn’t try.

Ryan Doolittle [00:05:51]:
Okay. I’m willing to give it a shot. Yeah.

George Jerjian [00:05:53]:
Yeah. Right.

Ryan Doolittle [00:05:54]:
So in your mind, is retirement isn’t really, like, a binary thing where it’s like I’m this and now I’m this. It’s more like you’re growing and you’re changing and you’re reinventing.

George Jerjian [00:06:06]:
Yeah. Now, it’s not all. It’s not all bad news. In fact, there’s a good news. There’s great news. Not good news. Great news, I think, at the other end of it. So let me just explain.

George Jerjian [00:06:20]:
Let me unpack this for you. If you go from your work to retirement and do the traditional route, okay, your brain starts to get foggy because you’re not using it anymore. You’ve stopped, and we live in an ocean of motion. Nothing retires in life. So if you choose that to slow down, you may get to the point where you can’t come back from once your cognitive abilities start to disappear. Right. You’re not going to find new employment.

Ryan Doolittle [00:06:55]:
Right. And is it like your brain atrophies or something, or what? What do you think?

George Jerjian [00:07:00]:
Sure. It’s like a muscle. I mean, it’s not. The brain is not a muscle, but as a sort of a storyline, if you like. Yeah. If you don’t use it, you lose it.

Ryan Doolittle [00:07:09]:
Yeah.

George Jerjian [00:07:10]:
Now it’s a question of pivoting. Instead of going in a linear fashion from working life to retirement. You know, it’s a walk in the park. Just nothing changes. You’re just going to continue doing less. But that’s a linear thing. And really what I’m suggesting is that old age is the crown of life. It should be the best part of our lives.

George Jerjian [00:07:34]:
That’s what I’m fighting for. That’s what I want to do with my life. Okay? And I’m slowly working towards that. So I’ve got a. I have a purpose, I have a new identity. I’m not the same person I was when I was in my working life.

Ryan Doolittle [00:07:51]:
Yeah.

George Jerjian [00:07:52]:
I was a very different person. I’ve been on an internal journey to discover more of me. Right. My little identity, my ego, my Persona is just one that I happen to have chiseled with great care over the years. But I’ve had to jettison that. I’ve had to check. And we don’t like to throw things that we’ve worked on for years, but this one, if you stick with it, it’s going to take you down.

Ryan Doolittle [00:08:23]:
Yeah.

George Jerjian [00:08:24]:
So you need to release it and you need to have a new beginning, and nobody wants to start new, especially when you’ve got years of experience. And now you’re a big honcho. Wherever business you were in.

Ryan Doolittle [00:08:37]:
Thank you. Oh, you don’t mean me.

George Jerjian [00:08:40]:
No, what I mean is that, and also, I think people who are very high in the hierarchy in terms of how much they’re earning, who they are, you know, the c level board people, they will struggle with this because you. Not necessarily all of them, but a good many of them will struggle because you almost need to go through an ego death to create yourself. And so what I tell my clients is to make this journey effective and worthwhile because it’s a rite of passage. Right. Retirement is a rite of passage. Just like adolescence into adulthood. Your working life comes to a close. You’re now into this next stage.

George Jerjian [00:09:33]:
We don’t, in our culture, we don’t have anything pointing us, showing us how to do this, but it’s a rite of passage. And so we have to almost recreate that rite of passage and create a part of us that hasn’t been expressed for years. There’s a. I think it was Dick Schwartz, a California psychologist, talks about no bad parts, meaning that there’s different parts of us that have been, if you like, loggerheads, for years because one part of us is now reigning supreme. And maybe the soft side or the light side has been crushed over years, and it’s not, you know, and he effectively has this internal family system where you almost have to bring in this other parts of you that you’ve been ignoring for most of your life.

Ryan Doolittle [00:10:26]:
Yeah.

George Jerjian [00:10:27]:
And incorporating it in your life, and therefore, you know, and the sum is bigger than the whole, you know, it just makes you a bigger, better person because you’re now using parts of yourself that you were kind of ignoring.

Ryan Doolittle [00:10:44]:
Yeah.

George Jerjian [00:10:45]:
And another thing I talk about is that retirement is a crisis. In the true sense of the word. Crisis doesn’t mean, oh, my God, the world is collapsing. We got to run for the hills. No, that’s not what crisis means. Crisis means simply a turning point.

Ryan Doolittle [00:11:02]:
Ah.

George Jerjian [00:11:03]:
That’s all it means. It’s a turning point. It allows us to rethink how we want to live our lives in this last part of our lives. And what I tell clients is, don’t wait for your deathbed to start thinking, oh, my God, I should do that. Too late, right? Retirement is the bell ringing, saying, last orders. Last orders for drinks. Right? This is the time to reinvent yourself. And so I tell my clients, take a gap year.

George Jerjian [00:11:34]:
And in that vein, I decided that I had not taken a gap year. So I took a gap year a couple of months ago and went around the world in 80 days.

Ryan Doolittle [00:11:46]:
Oh, my gosh, that’s where you were, I think, when I was talking to you recently, right?

George Jerjian [00:11:51]:
That’s correct, yes.

Ryan Doolittle [00:11:52]:
I want to hear more about that. How did that come about? And where did you go? I guess around the world.

George Jerjian [00:11:58]:
Well, yeah. I mean, I’d always. I mean, first of all, I loved that book. When I was a young man. I read it and I fell in love with it. And that’s the kind of travel I wanted to do. But as you sort of grow up and you sort of learn about money, you suddenly realize all these things cannot be done.

Ryan Doolittle [00:12:17]:
Right.

George Jerjian [00:12:17]:
Right. More important things that must be done. Right.

Ryan Doolittle [00:12:20]:
Right.

George Jerjian [00:12:21]:
And so we kill our dreams slowly but surely.

Ryan Doolittle [00:12:25]:
Yeah.

George Jerjian [00:12:26]:
And we become upstanding citizens and we do the right thing, even if we hate it or whatever. And now I’m trying to test stuff that I didn’t dare do when I was much younger, but actually, I was not meant to do it until now, because now is the right time. So I have no regrets about my past. So I decided I’m going to take a gap year, and I wanted to make it epic. Epic not just for my business, but also for myself, but primarily for myself. And that’s why I didn’t use social media while I was on my around the world in 80 days.

Ryan Doolittle [00:13:10]:
Not at all now.

George Jerjian [00:13:11]:
No. Because my business hat would have said, damn it, you gotta monetize this.

Ryan Doolittle [00:13:16]:
Yeah. Yeah. This is great footage.

George Jerjian [00:13:20]:
Exactly. But you know what would have happened? It would have been all show and no substance. And I needed substance.

Ryan Doolittle [00:13:30]:
Yeah.

George Jerjian [00:13:30]:
And so I journaled every day. I have 2300 photographs of my journey and countless number of videos. And I’m looking at a book and five videos for each country that I visited when I was circumnavigating the world.

Ryan Doolittle [00:13:51]:
Amazing. It’s like by being disciplined, you hit pay dirt, you got what you needed, and now you could use social media.

George Jerjian [00:13:59]:
Exactly.

Ryan Doolittle [00:14:00]:
Yeah.

George Jerjian [00:14:01]:
Now I have material I can use, but primarily, it was my journey, and I wanted to make this my journey for me, primarily. And then, second, to use it as material to help others through this. And so I went to South Africa. Well, this is going to end up being a travel interview. I think you may want to rejig.

Ryan Doolittle [00:14:23]:
That’s a question.

George Jerjian [00:14:25]:
I’m throwing it back to you, Brian.

Ryan Doolittle [00:14:27]:
Yeah. We don’t have to go through everything if you want to, but if South Africa was the highlight, I’d like to hear a little bit about it.

George Jerjian [00:14:34]:
Okay. I’ll give you highlights very quickly. Of all of them, South Africa was a highlight because, first of all, I ended up doing a five day safari, which was glorious. And I have images in my mind, not just videos and photos, that I hope to remember when I’m deep in Alzheimer’s or dementia, I want to have these visuals in my head. So even if I’m Gaga, I’m still got screen time in my head. Right?

Ryan Doolittle [00:15:04]:
Yeah.

George Jerjian [00:15:05]:
So South Africa was. The safari was a huge highlight. I saw visited Robben Island, Mandela’s jail.

Ryan Doolittle [00:15:12]:
Really?

George Jerjian [00:15:13]:
For 26 years. Yeah. For me, it was the kind of lesson that I wanted to learn from there is that, you know, people bitch about their lives when they still have it really good. They have no idea what a bad time is. And here’s a guy who went to jail for political reasons, not criminal reasons, technically spent 26 years, and he comes out and he’s not bitter, he’s not resentful, he’s not angry. So my thing there was, what can I learn from this?

Ryan Doolittle [00:15:46]:
Yeah.

George Jerjian [00:15:47]:
So that was South Africa. I went to Australia, I went to Sydney, I went to five countries I’d never been to before. South Africa, Australia, New Zealand, Japan and Canada.

Ryan Doolittle [00:15:59]:
Okay.

George Jerjian [00:16:00]:
Australia, I wanted to see, obviously, Sydney and Melbourne, but I also wanted to see the great Barrier Reef. I wanted to see awesome nature.

Ryan Doolittle [00:16:09]:
Yeah, right.

George Jerjian [00:16:10]:
Nature that I’m not likely to see again. Potentially. I’d like to, but cost time, etcetera.

Ryan Doolittle [00:16:17]:
Yeah.

George Jerjian [00:16:18]:
Right. So I went to New Zealand again, an amazingly beautiful landscape. Flew over in a small plane, flew over the glaciers in the southern alps. It was just absolutely mind blowing. And then Japan, I visited, obviously, Osaka, the food capital. Amazing food. Tokyo, I went Mount Fuji, I went to Kanazawa. Got into the samurai history and all.

George Jerjian [00:16:50]:
And you know how they thought and did things. And I went to Hiroshima for a reason as well. Not just because of the a bomb, but because Hiroshima is a new city.

Ryan Doolittle [00:17:02]:
Oh, really?

George Jerjian [00:17:03]:
You know, it completely. It was incinerated by the a bomb. And so that, for me, was an amazing kind of resurrection. It’s a phoenix like resurrection. Right. And in Canada, obviously, from Tokyo, I went to Vancouver. In Canada, what took my breath away was the Rocky Mountains. Absolutely stunning.

George Jerjian [00:17:30]:
Particularly the Icefields parkway from Jasper to Lake Louise. Oh, my God. Three and a half hours a coach tour. Right. It felt like ten minutes. Those mountains. I was, like, fixed on them. Mountains, trees, lakes.

George Jerjian [00:17:49]:
The lakes. The color. Definitely photoshopped by God. Yeah.

Ryan Doolittle [00:17:56]:
Hey, there’s a title for your photo book. Photoshopped by God or something.

George Jerjian [00:18:02]:
It was just amazing. And then finishing it off in Quebec City with good french food and wine, it was amazing. Yeah. So, yeah, that, in a nutshell, that was my trip.

Ryan Doolittle [00:18:13]:
So you mentioned one of your stops was Japan. Did that, did you take another look at. Because I know that the concept of ikigai, if I’m saying that correctly, it has a big hold on your life and you use it with your clients. Were you able to kind of explore that while you were there?

George Jerjian [00:18:30]:
Interestingly, yes and no. The original place for Ikigai is Okinawa. I did not go to Okinawa.

Ryan Doolittle [00:18:38]:
That’s an island.

George Jerjian [00:18:40]:
It’s not.

Ryan Doolittle [00:18:40]:
Because 100 miles away or something. Right.

George Jerjian [00:18:43]:
It’s like, it’s very south, and it would have. I only had three weeks there. I mean, three weeks is a long time, but Japan is a big place, right? I mean, there’s a lot to see in Japan. And I had to be very selective. So I had to drop Okinawa. I had to drop Tasmania in Australia. With two weeks there, there’s only so much you can do, and you have to be very selective. And so I didn’t choose Okinawa.

George Jerjian [00:19:08]:
But interestingly enough, I learned about the samurai, and there’s a lot of good stuff with the samurai and with ikigai as well. And interestingly enough, I think even the japanese struggle with that. Oh, we’re not alone. They too struggle with that. Right.

Ryan Doolittle [00:19:25]:
I mean, not good, but yeah, yeah.

George Jerjian [00:19:28]:
Because they’re also. Everybody’s running after the buck.

Ryan Doolittle [00:19:31]:
Yeah.

George Jerjian [00:19:32]:
Everybody’s trying to make a living. Everybody, you know, and so a lot of these good things fall by the wayside because people think, well, it’s not really that important. You know, the money is more important. Well, you know, in your working life, maybe when, you know, you’re putting food on the table, etc. Etcetera. But I think when you kind of move into elderhood, you need to take distance to see things. For me, this adventure of going around the world in 80 days was not just an adventure, it was an inventure. I did a lot of journaling.

Ryan Doolittle [00:20:08]:
Yeah.

George Jerjian [00:20:09]:
Right. I observed in Japan, and that’s why I chose Japan, because I don’t speak Japanese. And when you’re out in the countryside, right, they don’t speak English. Now. Thank God for Google Translate. Oh, my God. Well, Google Maps and Google Translate, I was up the creek without a paddle. Without, I mean, without them, I was in trouble.

George Jerjian [00:20:36]:
But the point is that you suddenly realize what it feels like to be an immigrant, what it feels like not to be able to speak the language. That doesn’t make you stupid, right.

Ryan Doolittle [00:20:50]:
Right.

George Jerjian [00:20:50]:
So our perception, when we see immigrants who can’t speak English, right. The automatic perception is, well, they’re not smart. Right.

Ryan Doolittle [00:20:59]:
And five minutes in another country, when you’re the one in that position and you’re. You get it.

George Jerjian [00:21:05]:
You know, it’s a wake up call, and you really recognize. Okay. And it also. It’s very humbling because I was watching James May, who’s an english travel guy, and, you know, he’s from that driving program, the british driving program. I don’t know if you ever watched it. You know, he travels in Japan. He does some crazy things. But he said, I was watching his stuff before I went to Japan.

George Jerjian [00:21:31]:
And he said, if you want to get through in Japan, if you want people to help you, the one word that opens the gates for everything is the word sumimasen, which is. Pardon me. Excuse me. I’m sorry. And then you ask what you’re gonna ask.

Ryan Doolittle [00:21:50]:
Really? That’ll set the right tone or something. Or.

George Jerjian [00:21:53]:
Well, it’s like, take yourself on a street of your hometown. If somebody stops you and says, I’m sorry, could you help me? You can’t really help yourself, but to try and help them, whatever it is that they’ve got, right.

Ryan Doolittle [00:22:09]:
Completely.

George Jerjian [00:22:10]:
So going to a foreign country where you can’t speak the language is useful because it makes you humble, and it’s actually not such a bad thing to be. It opens your eyes.

Ryan Doolittle [00:22:23]:
Well, first of all, there’s that great Mark twain quote. Travel is fatal to prejudice, bigotry, and narrow mindedness, which I think is kind.

George Jerjian [00:22:31]:
Of what you totally. I have to say, it did that for me to a great extent, because obviously, I haven’t done such an epic travel as this one. But even in places like South Africa and Australia, New Zealand and even Canada, I found myself not being biased and not comparing. And when you stop comparing, you actually get to enjoy where you are. It’s magic. And so I’ve got this crazy idea. I don’t know if it’s going to work, but I’m going to try it, is to create travel with education at this stage in life with about 20 people.

Ryan Doolittle [00:23:13]:
Okay?

George Jerjian [00:23:14]:
So you can have, you know, there’ll be obviously wonderful bonding between 20 people going on a journey of this epic proportion, you know, instead of five countries, maybe, I don’t know, four or eight countries, and do singular things, you know, specific and kind of do. Do my dare method in the process just once a week for half a day and then try to implement that. Oh, that week.

Ryan Doolittle [00:23:41]:
We’re gonna have to check back in. I want to see how this goes.

George Jerjian [00:23:44]:
I have no idea where it’s going. I’m flying blind here.

Ryan Doolittle [00:23:48]:
You’re right.

George Jerjian [00:23:49]:
Yeah.

Ryan Doolittle [00:23:49]:
Hey, that isn’t that part of. But taking chances is probably a part of staying alive. Right?

George Jerjian [00:23:55]:
It’s about. Exactly. And here’s the thing, you know, when we retiree, because the money spigot is off, money becomes a big issue. So we start to cancel anything that’s not essential.

Ryan Doolittle [00:24:08]:
Yeah.

George Jerjian [00:24:08]:
Subscriptions, all sorts of things start to stop. Our sandbox starts to get smaller and smaller and smaller, and we’ve got another 25 years to go.

Ryan Doolittle [00:24:20]:
Yeah.

George Jerjian [00:24:21]:
All right. I mean, from the financial standpoint alone, the traditional route for financial planning is that after you retire, you need to start moving into liquid assets out of equities and high risk. Youve got another 25 years to go. You cannot leave equities. And high risk life is a risk. Right. And taking no risk is the biggest risk of all.

Ryan Doolittle [00:24:49]:
Right. Thats what people dont understand, I think.

George Jerjian [00:24:51]:
Well, that’s so in other words, the landscape has changed because of longevity. So it’s not just your life that has to be reshaped, but even your financial planning has to reflect that. So instead of getting the financial plan done and then trying to work your life, you actually should be working on your life first and then making sure your financial plan is mirroring what you’re trying to do.

Ryan Doolittle [00:25:18]:
Yeah. Right. God, that’s a hard one to read.

George Jerjian [00:25:23]:
It’s hard because even financial advisors are stuck in a cubicle because of legislation and because of, they need to be compliant. Yeah, but the people who are running the compliance have no idea. You know, they’re not with it. The whole system is still working on an old map, and there’s a new map out here. And these changes because it’s money, because there’s concept of litigation, and the insurance and financial services industry, it’s all about COVID my ass litigation. Everybody is worried about what’s going to happen. So everybody waits for the big bang, something to go really bad, so then everybody at the top will think, okay, now we need to reconfigure.

Ryan Doolittle [00:26:20]:
Right.

George Jerjian [00:26:20]:
But nobody takes the initiative because nobody wants to take the risk.

Ryan Doolittle [00:26:24]:
Right.

George Jerjian [00:26:25]:
Does that remotely make sense?

Ryan Doolittle [00:26:27]:
Oh, yeah. And I think it, it sort of transitions us into. Because I did want to get into a little bit. You mentioned your dare method, and kind of what you’re talking about right now was the discover part. So dare is discover, assimilate, rewire, and expand.

George Jerjian [00:26:45]:
Yeah.

Ryan Doolittle [00:26:46]:
So how did you come to that? And how do you help others become happier using that?

George Jerjian [00:26:53]:
I went on my personal journey of discovery when I discovered after a long time of semi retirement, that this is not fun. This sucks. I hate it. I feel overlooked. I don’t feel I’m engaged mentally or socially. It wasn’t a good place. So I went on a 30 day silent retreat. I think we may have covered that at some point.

George Jerjian [00:27:21]:
And on the back of that, I realized that I’m not who I think I am.

Ryan Doolittle [00:27:26]:
Yeah.

George Jerjian [00:27:27]:
You know we have this scary moment, right? Well, the thing is, is that you. There are many parts to us. We’re not sort of fixed. We like to think we’re fixed because we need to look strong, we need to look good, we need to look solid. But we’re not. We’re none of those. But it’s an image that gives us comfort, gives us security, and it gives the people around us the security they require. Because we need to be like, rocks, especially guys.

George Jerjian [00:28:02]:
We need to be rocks, right? It’s bull. We’re not rocks. In fact, we’re actually really nice guys when you take the masks off. Okay? So that led me to learning about mindset change with Bob Proctor, the late Bob proctor in Canada. I worked with him and with his method for about 18 months, and then I realized that I have a niche market, which is retired people, people like me, older people. I can’t serve everyone. So I had to narrow down the people that I serve, and I chose retired people. They were not my first choice.

George Jerjian [00:28:49]:
Let me. I promise you, they were not.

Ryan Doolittle [00:28:51]:
Interesting. Okay.

George Jerjian [00:28:52]:
My idea of retired people were grumpy old sods. Not for me.

Ryan Doolittle [00:28:58]:
You were still thinking of it that way at the time. Yeah, yeah. Okay.

George Jerjian [00:29:03]:
Absolutely. You don’t know what you don’t know until you know, right? And so it’s an evolution. And so I decided that, okay, this is what I want to do. This is what I’m going to figure out. And so I was working with my marketing team, and we were talking about, how do we. We get these components together? And one of the advertising people was a young woman, really bright, turned around and I said, what’s the methodology here? How can I encapsulate this to make it easy to understand and remember what I’m doing? And she said, it’s the dare, dare, D a r e. It’s the four step process. You’ve got discover, assimilate, rewire, expand.

George Jerjian [00:29:50]:
It’s a mindset change. That’s all it is. Now, other people, you have retirement coaches who teach you about coaching you and keeping you accountable. And there are hundreds of retirement coaches, and some of them have their own methodologies, right? This is a huge elephant. This market is so big. People are coming in from different angles. There are people who are transition coaches. They help you make that transition.

George Jerjian [00:30:23]:
That’s an emotional journey. It’s about creating new stories. Again, partly mindset, too.

Ryan Doolittle [00:30:29]:
Right.

George Jerjian [00:30:31]:
Interestingly enough, dare is another word for courage.

Ryan Doolittle [00:30:35]:
Yeah.

George Jerjian [00:30:36]:
And you need courageous in order to move from this comfortable place that will eventually lead you to oblivion or go through some challenging times to recreate yourself. Right. Either way, it’s not easy, but this way, to have a new beginning. There’s a lot of upside for you.

Ryan Doolittle [00:31:05]:
Yeah.

George Jerjian [00:31:07]:
From the get go, even though there are challenges. Right. And I like to tell clients that you got to think of this as a sea voyage. Ships were not meant to be in harbor.

Ryan Doolittle [00:31:19]:
Right.

George Jerjian [00:31:20]:
They rot. Ships are meant to be out in the ocean, but when we’re in the ocean, we’ve lost sight of land, and there’s no new land out there. Right. We’ve got challenges. There are storms that are going to test us. They’re going to bring fear, terror, make us feel things that we’ve never felt before, potentially.

Ryan Doolittle [00:31:45]:
Right.

George Jerjian [00:31:46]:
We’ll be stuck, perhaps in the doldrums in the southern Atlantic Ocean, and we’re stuck there for days and weeks, and we can’t get out, and we’re having to. It’s doing our head in. We want to move, but there’s no wind. We’ll experience that, too.

Ryan Doolittle [00:32:07]:
Yeah.

George Jerjian [00:32:07]:
But ultimately, if you hold on, if you don’t freak out and throw yourself overboard, you know, or, you know, take your life or, you know, just chuck it in, you will come to land.

Ryan Doolittle [00:32:22]:
Isn’t that it? Isn’t that interesting? Because, like, that ship metaphor is perfect because while you’re out there doing kind of what you’re meant to do, you’re thinking about, if I could just get back to port, I’d be happy.

George Jerjian [00:32:36]:
Absolutely.

Ryan Doolittle [00:32:38]:
Yeah.

George Jerjian [00:32:38]:
Oh, my God, that burger was so good.

Ryan Doolittle [00:32:42]:
Yeah.

George Jerjian [00:32:42]:
You know, the wine.

Ryan Doolittle [00:32:45]:
Yeah.

George Jerjian [00:32:46]:
Whatever it is that you miss, which you don’t have now, will be eating away at you. And you need to be mentally and emotionally strong to just say, this will pass. This will pass. Right. And in a sense, when you look back, your future self will thank you for taking the. For having the courage to have pushed out. Right. And to use that shipping analogy, the ship analogy, it’s also same with the rudder.

George Jerjian [00:33:21]:
If you want to go right, you’ve got to press it left. You almost have to do the opposite, the counterintuitive thing, in order to move forward. And it’s okay to make mistakes. Right. That’s another thing when we get older, we don’t want to make mistakes because our ego and, you know, we’ve got this far. We don’t want to risk. Bye. Looking like a fool.

George Jerjian [00:33:43]:
Yeah, but even in the tarot cards, the fool is the new beginning.

Ryan Doolittle [00:33:49]:
Oh, really? I didn’t know that.

George Jerjian [00:33:50]:
Yeah. So what I’m saying is that we need to risk. We need to risk who we thought we were, because who we thought we were is gone anyway. We’re not risking it. Actually, that’s just in your head. Who you were is gone. You’re never going to get that back. It’s over.

George Jerjian [00:34:10]:
So why not start a new beginning? Take that risk. Start a new beginning. Because this isn’t about not failing. This is about. You don’t want to get to your deathbed and find out I haven’t lived.

Ryan Doolittle [00:34:25]:
Exactly.

George Jerjian [00:34:27]:
And the best is yet to come is what I would say, if you can believe it.

Ryan Doolittle [00:34:33]:
We think about the risk of starting a new beginning, but we don’t really think about the risk of not starting a new beginning. That risk is almost higher.

George Jerjian [00:34:42]:
It is higher and it’s much worse. Yeah, we don’t know that. And if you don’t, you know what it is. You don’t know what you don’t know. But once you know and you realize the risks involved and you have the courage to actually look at it truthfully, because we are very good at lying to ourselves.

Ryan Doolittle [00:35:03]:
Yeah.

George Jerjian [00:35:04]:
When it’s inconvenient. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I know. You’re right. But not just yet. You know, when my, when my kids are grandparents, then. Yeah, sure thing. Yeah.

George Jerjian [00:35:19]:
Nobody likes taking risks, but life is a risk, and the biggest risk is not taking a risk.

Ryan Doolittle [00:35:27]:
Yeah.

George Jerjian [00:35:28]:
Having that job, that is, you know, you don’t really enjoy in retirement, but it’s supplementing your income. But you hate the job, you’re unhappy, you’re stuck, but you still don’t want to take a risk.

Ryan Doolittle [00:35:41]:
Yeah.

George Jerjian [00:35:42]:
Because the unhappiness, you know, is far better than the happiness that out there, that might be there. Believe me, I know. Cause I’ve been there. I’ve been through all that. All that emotional rollercoaster. I totally get it. Yeah, I totally get it.

Ryan Doolittle [00:35:59]:
I imagine as you’re someone who helps other people become a happier person as they age, but just like with your 80 day trip, every once in a while you realize, wait a minute, I’m not doing the things that I know are the things to do. So what are some other examples of things you’ve done for yourself? Like, maybe it could be something even simple, like, I started playing tennis or. What kind of things do you do for yourself to be this new person, this happy person?

George Jerjian [00:36:33]:
That’s a really good question, Ryan. Over my 80 day trip, I started to take. I started to say to myself, I’ve got to do things that I would not normally do. Not bungee jumping or doing crazy things. No, I’m talking about small things. Right. Small things. It’s the small things.

George Jerjian [00:36:51]:
For example, our minds start to slowly shrink as we age. We don’t want to take risks.

Ryan Doolittle [00:36:59]:
Yeah.

George Jerjian [00:36:59]:
Even with the food we eat. We want to eat food that we. That we’ve always been accustomed to. How can you grow? So when I was in South Africa, I tried kudu, which is a large antelope. I tried ostrich steak, which was cooked really well. I mean, I would not have been able if I hadn’t been told it was ostrich because it had been cooked so well. I was in ostrich country in South Africa, in this particular place. It was an ostrich farm.

George Jerjian [00:37:33]:
Here’s. Oh, you’re gonna love this one. I was at an ostrich farm and they served me this ostrich steak, you know, with two vegetables and potatoes. It was delicious, but it tasted like filet mignon.

Ryan Doolittle [00:37:47]:
Really?

George Jerjian [00:37:48]:
It was li. Yeah, because it was really well cooked. Lots of butter, lots of wine. Hey, you put me in there, I’d taste good, too. The point is that if I cooked it, it would be like rubber chicken. But it was delicious. But here’s the thing. I spoke with the fourth generation ostrich farmer and I asked him, I said, yeah.

George Jerjian [00:38:10]:
He was talking about how, you know, the males, I believe, have dark feathers and the females have gray feathers, something like that. Or vice versa, I can’t remember. But the long shot of it is I’ve then said to him, you know, I’ve always heard about these ostriches putting their heads in the sand.

Ryan Doolittle [00:38:27]:
Yeah. Yeah.

George Jerjian [00:38:28]:
Do they do that? And he said, that is a load of cobblers. He said, in 40 years. In 40 years that I have been an ostrich farmer, not a single time have I ever seen an ostrich put their head in the sand. He said, the only people who do that are politicians. And I went, okay, here’s another story that’s become a myth and everybody uses it. Don’t be an ostrich. Right.

Ryan Doolittle [00:38:58]:
Yeah, yeah.

George Jerjian [00:39:00]:
Don’t be an ostrich. Well, they’re not the smartest animals and their brains are smaller than their eyes, so. But to use Mark Twain again, the man that you quoted, he said, never let the facts get in the way of a good story. This is a perfect example of that. So I started questioning, what other things have we been taught that’s just been made up? It does make you stop and think, does it not?

Ryan Doolittle [00:39:30]:
It does. I’m just thinking about how even by eating the ostrich, you were not being the ostrich with its head in the sand because you were trying something new.

George Jerjian [00:39:40]:
I was trying new things. Here’s an example. In a thousand years, I would never cycle in the rain, okay? But I was in Vancouver and they have a huge park called Stanley Park. I mean, it is enormous in the middle of the city. And my travel agent thought it was a good idea that I do cycling for 3 hours with this group. Vancouver is known for its rain. I mean, it’s not. I mean, it’s rain coover, right? It’s just rain.

Ryan Doolittle [00:40:10]:
Yeah.

George Jerjian [00:40:10]:
So on that particular day, it was a Sunday, it was raining cats and dogs. And I thought, oh, shit, I don’t really want to do this. I do not want to do this. I go, George, you have to do it. Come on. Come on. You know you can do it. Come on.

George Jerjian [00:40:26]:
So I got myself out, went to the cycle shop. We were supposed to meet. We got ponchos and everything else so we could be covered. And we went to Stanley park and we cycled. It was a glorious three hour ride. Really entertaining. But it pissed down the whole 3 hours.

Ryan Doolittle [00:40:46]:
Oh my God.

George Jerjian [00:40:48]:
And you know what? I changed my mindset. I was going, this is fun. You almost have to bring that childlike enthusiasm within you that it doesn’t really care. Okay, so what, my jeans are soaked. My ass is soaked. You know, I’ve got this poncho and I’m comfortable. I’m not wet, you know? But you’re having fun.

Ryan Doolittle [00:41:09]:
Yeah.

George Jerjian [00:41:09]:
And we were learning things about the forest, the trees, the history of the place. And it was engaging. It was wonderful. So again, it’s about pushing out of your comfort zone. And here’s the thing. If you look at security and adventure, they’re on the opposite side. If you. The more security you want, the less fun you’re going to have in life.

George Jerjian [00:41:34]:
And culturally, we’ve been pushed to, you know, the fear buttons on everything have been pressed. So everybody now is security. Security, yeah. And everybody’s lost that sense of adventure and fun, which is part of life, right? I mean, what’s the point of living in a fortified fortress, right? Because you’re afraid of everything. Germs, people and you go into this sort of. You’re in a prison of your own making. Life is a risk. Shit will happen, and it’s okay.

Ryan Doolittle [00:42:13]:
Yeah. What are you gonna live? You might be safe, but safe and miserable, you know? There’s gotta be some balance there, right?

George Jerjian [00:42:20]:
There has to be a balance. Listen, I’m security conscious like anybody else.

Ryan Doolittle [00:42:25]:
Yeah.

George Jerjian [00:42:26]:
But there are limits when security is trumping your life and your freedom and your joy. That is not security. That is jail.

Ryan Doolittle [00:42:36]:
Exactly. Yeah.

George Jerjian [00:42:37]:
You’re doing jail time.

Ryan Doolittle [00:42:39]:
Yeah.

George Jerjian [00:42:40]:
For committing the sin of being an idiot. Do you see where I’m coming from?

Ryan Doolittle [00:42:47]:
Yes. Without possibility of parole. Yeah.

George Jerjian [00:42:51]:
Yeah. Guess what? Because you’re the warden. You’re the prison warden.

Ryan Doolittle [00:42:56]:
Yeah.

George Jerjian [00:42:57]:
You just sentenced yourself to jail time. I mean, it’s crazy.

Ryan Doolittle [00:43:02]:
Yeah. George. What? So you do so many amazing things that I’m sure you can’t do every day. So, like, what. What’s a typical day for you? I mean, how do you stay happy when you’re not eating ostrich meat on some far flung country, you know?

George Jerjian [00:43:21]:
Yeah. I do zoom meetings regularly, a lot. Either interviews or client meetings or meetings with the people around me that work with me. I subcontract all my work. I have no employees. Everybody’s. Yeah, that’s where I am. Where is this going to lead? I don’t know, but I’ve always imagined or visualized that I’m going to be working with a financial institution that’s going to revamp how they look after their clients.

George Jerjian [00:43:55]:
Not portfolio so much, but the incorporation of the non financial aspects of post retirement life. With the financial. I think it’s almost like this is a bird with two wings, and so far it’s been flying on one wing, if that makes sense. And for me, the joy is going to come into training the trainers.

Ryan Doolittle [00:44:22]:
Oh, so you get the joy in addition to helping people get joy, that brings you joy.

George Jerjian [00:44:28]:
I love the idea of making this much bigger, but I’m 69. I ain’t taking this with me. And I don’t want to kill myself, either.

Ryan Doolittle [00:44:39]:
Yeah.

George Jerjian [00:44:39]:
I want to have fun. I want to have fun, and I want to work with an organization. Okay. This is my long term plan is to find an organization, a financial organization of some sort, with whom I resonate.

Ryan Doolittle [00:44:54]:
Okay.

George Jerjian [00:44:55]:
And to create a plan for how they can become leaders in this space by somersaulting above all their competitors.

Ryan Doolittle [00:45:05]:
Okay, so you live in London, right?

George Jerjian [00:45:09]:
Yeah, but I’m now a global citizen. After my around the world native days, I am, you know, I’m gonna have a kind of a residence wherever that might be. I don’t know yet.

Ryan Doolittle [00:45:20]:
Oh, okay.

George Jerjian [00:45:20]:
And I will happily travel. That’s how I would like. I mean, this is what this journey has done for me. It’s pushed the envelope before the journey. I would have been skeptical of overdoing things, but, you know, flying around the world four times in flights over 12 hours and coming out of those flights totally fresh, really? In the past ten years ago, I would have, would have done my head in.

Ryan Doolittle [00:45:50]:
You’ve cured jet lag.

George Jerjian [00:45:52]:
I tell you something a, I don’t believe I had jet lag at all on any of my flights. It’s bizarre. I can’t explain it. Don’t ask me to break it down. I don’t understand. But I think my enthusiasm and joy of going on this journey. Oh, I’m going to throw something else in here.

Ryan Doolittle [00:46:13]:
Oh, okay.

George Jerjian [00:46:14]:
On those long flights, I was put in the middle seat. I haven’t been in the middle seat since I was four. Okay.

Ryan Doolittle [00:46:22]:
Yeah.

George Jerjian [00:46:23]:
Believe me, I have not ever been in a middle seat. For me, that’s kind of like it’s a suicide job.

Ryan Doolittle [00:46:29]:
Yeah, yeah.

George Jerjian [00:46:30]:
And somehow on the first flight I was at because I got a global ticket and I chose economy. I didn’t go first class, I didn’t go to five star hotels, right?

Ryan Doolittle [00:46:40]:
Yeah.

George Jerjian [00:46:41]:
I went economy. I stayed in three star, four star hotels, Airbnbs, japanese ryokans. So I try to keep costs down because, you know, I don’t want to go nuts.

Ryan Doolittle [00:46:52]:
Yeah.

George Jerjian [00:46:53]:
And so I was sitting down on my first flight. It’s a twelve hour flight from London to Cape Town, middle seat. I was not happy. Bastards. Bastards. Putting me in a middle seat. And I go, George, you can’t do this to yourself. You’re here in the middle seat for a reason.

George Jerjian [00:47:10]:
You’re on a journey to experience. I changed the narrative.

Ryan Doolittle [00:47:15]:
Yeah.

George Jerjian [00:47:15]:
I got chatting to the people next to me. Before I knew it, the plane was landing in Cape Town.

Ryan Doolittle [00:47:20]:
Oh, my gosh.

George Jerjian [00:47:22]:
So, you know, I’m just sort of giving. It’s a mindset thing if we pivot changes the whole equation. And there’s what therapists would call headroom. You know, when you’re stressed, the smallest.

Ryan Doolittle [00:47:36]:
Thing, it’s just like, oh, it feels like dramatic.

George Jerjian [00:47:40]:
Everything is inflated, everything is, you know, it’s the end of the world. But when you got headroom, you’re chilled, you’re Zen, and things look very different. And every time on my journey when things went wrong, I’d go, this was meant to be something better. Is going to come. And invariably, it did. I kid you not.

Ryan Doolittle [00:48:04]:
If you’ve solved the middle seat problem. First of all, you deserve a billion dollars. And I think you found the. The secret to life. As we wrap up, is there any other advice you want to give before we go? Like, to help people just take the leap and be happy as they head into this older period of their life?

George Jerjian [00:48:26]:
Yeah. I tell you, one of my favorite ones right now is out of a poem by the american poet laureate, Mary Oliver, who said, what will you do with your one wild and precious life? What will you do with your one wild and precious life? Everybody thinks tomorrow, next year is guaranteed. Nothing’s guaranteed. None of us are guaranteed that we will wake up tomorrow morning. Each day is a lifetime. Why are you wasting it?

Ryan Doolittle [00:49:01]:
And, George, where can people find you if they want to get some more of these gems?

George Jerjian [00:49:08]:
George.

Ryan Doolittle [00:49:11]:
George. And that’s George. J e r j I a n?

George Jerjian [00:49:16]:
Correct. Yes.

Ryan Doolittle [00:49:17]:
All right, well, thank you so much for being on the Happiest Retirees podcast. I can’t thank you enough for coming on. I mean, most people have not lived as much as you, even if they’ve lived longer. So just to absorb some of your amazing travels and experiences, I know it’s gonna change my life.

George Jerjian [00:49:39]:
Brian, really, it’s been great fun being on this show. Thank you so much.