A $7 Trillion Problem: The Retirement Crisis No One Wants to Talk About

Welcome to the show. Tired of the hype about living a dream? It's time for truth.This is the place for tools, power and real talk so you can create the life you dream and deserve your ultimate life. Subscribe, share, create. You have infinite power. Hey there.Welcome to this episode of your ultimate life, the podcast crew created to help you create a life of purpose, prosperity and joy. Today I have a special guest, Dr. Matt Markle, who is ultra cool. Matt, welcome to the show.

Kellen, it's my pleasure to be here. Great to be on your show.

You know, you said something in our little green room ahead of time. You said we've got to do something in this country about money. What do you mean?

When we look at where we are as a country again related to money, and there's several different aspects of this, but I'm going to throw out a few figures here. Number one, we have a 7 trillion dollar shortfall in retirement savings in our country today. $7 trillion.Now that sounds like a big number and it is a big number. But to put that in perspective, that is more than the United States federal government spent in 2024.So if we were to take an entire year of government spending and do nothing with it but shore up retirement savings, it would still be a little bit short. It'd be close, but still a little bit short. It'd be about $200 billion short. So we have to do something.When we look at the, when we look at some other numbers, we look at things like what's the net worth for people? So people in the 55 to 64 year old class, you know that that range, their net worth, median number is $365,000. $365,000.That means half of the people that are aged between 55 and 64 have less total savings, total net worth than 365 grand. How are you going to, supposed to stop, supposed to retire on 365 grand?You know, how are you going to, if you, any sort of number you look at, whether it's a 3% per year, 4% per year, whatever the amount to draw down, you know, you, there's no way that you're going to be able to deal with that, you know. And by the way, if you go up the next decade from 65 to 74, it only goes up by about 35 grand, is about a little over 400,000.So we have to do something different with money and we have to do something different with how we think about money. Because right now we're Basically, a couple myths that we're operating under.Number one, you either have to make money and be wealthy, you have to quit your job and start your own business, which is just blatantly a lie. You know, the numbers don't support that and I'll talk about those in a second.But the other thing is that we're told that, like, well, just put your money in a 401k and you'll be fine. You just put, put your 5% or whatever into your 401k and you'll be fine. Don't worry about it. Just keep putting the money in.Don't look at the balance too often. If it does go down, somehow that's in your best interest because of dollar cost averaging. I never like to see my balances go down.So I don't, I don't know who really does. But to be able to capitalize on that just doesn't seem.Yes, I know how dollar cost averaging works, but that seems something odd with that, that we've created through this payroll deduction. We've created an abdication mindset. So, yeah, so we have to do something different here in our country.

So I get that and I have. I've heard you talk about this other times before and I respect your deep knowledge about this. I do.I don't do introductions in the show, and I didn't today, and I don't normally do that.But what I want you to do right now is you've made a statement with several parts about what's wrong with our retirement savings with the myth of how to get ready for, quote, retirement. You know, I don't even know personally, I don't know what the word retirement means because that's not something where I even imagine doing.Not because I can't, but I don't want to. But the idea of I don't have to go to work every day and do what I always did is sort of the notion of retirement, and I'll be okay doing that.Tell us, what is your personal mission around this problem? Like you've identified a real problem, a shortfall here and a silly myth there.And you alluded to another myth, which is, gee, start a business and you'll be your own boss and make a lot of money, all that crap. And having run several businesses myself, I can tell you that that's harder. Way harder.Starting a business is way harder than, than being an employee. So tell us what your mission is. What do you want to change in the world?

So when we think about retirement, by the way I just want to circle back on something then, then we'll get into what we're, what we're trying to do with our program. But the idea of not having to work, you know, is, is alluring. Right. I love to work. I'm so excited about what I'm doing now. I'm so excited.When I was in the, in the corporate world, I've been everything from entry level engineer up to CEO of 9 and you know, in C suite and 9 and 10 figure businesses. And I loved it. I love, I'd work on the weekends as well. I love adding value.That's part of what I believe my, my mission is, my purpose here is to, I can add value through, through businesses like that. So I love it. But I might not be able to. My brother in law a few years back had this medical situation called an aortic dissection.And they call it the Kellen, they call it the widowmaker. And he barely survived.If the paramedics had not shown up and they had not prepped the operating room, we're talking minutes, he would have basically not made it. And he didn't make it. But right now he had strokes because of the lack of blood and the lack of blood moving. So he's not able to work right now.So, so. And he's probably never going to be able to work a job like he had before.So just because we want to doesn't mean that we're always going to be able to. And that's really important for us to think about also from a right way to discuss it from a risk management standpoint.But it's a, but just from a life management standpoint. I want to work up until the day I am no longer breathing or my heart is beating because I love it so much, but I might not be able to.So what are we trying to do? We are trying to break some of these myths through education and through instruction.What I have found over the 35 years I've been in business is that there is no playbook for professionals for real wealth creation and optimizing your career to validate what you really love doing, but also use it as an engine to create wealth. There are plenty of people that talk about motivational confidence and they're very, very good people at that.You know there's, there's people that are very, very motivational speakers. Brendan Burchard. Love the guy. Super awesome in terms of like how to, how to figure out how to optimize your day.Doesn't talk about wealth it doesn't talk anything about your career or address the fact that for many of us, our careers are one of the big things that we identify with. That's the driving force behind us.So we have to validate that and amplify that, but also be a lot smarter about our wealth creation and be a lot more deliberate about our wealth creation. We can't abdicate the results or the financial responsibility because it won't give us the results that we want.And we've seen that in the data with our country today.

Well, you know, it's interesting.The people that say, you know, retirement plan for work or retirement plus 401k or some other vehicle, the company doesn't actually give a crap what happens to you after you leave.You know, they, they can say, well, we've got all this stuff and we care and you'll continue to get medical benefits or whatever and make it all sound good, but at the end of the day, if it doesn't work or the stocks crash or this doesn't happen or that doesn't happen, or inflation does, whatever it's going to do, nobody cares. Nobody really cares. And so, and nobody will talk about that either. And so I hear one of the things I hear you saying is either because you.Because your body broke or something else happens and you can't or because you didn't really like it that much anyway and you want to do something else or whatever we aren't prepared to take, to take care of ourselves, our needs, either emotionally or physically or financially or whatever. When the current structure.And there's no, what I'm hearing you say is there's no real instruction about how to get that done, how to work with whatever the tools and levers there are to make that happen. And what I'm also hearing is you didn't say this directly, but implicitly you're here to change that.

Exactly, exactly. And there's a couple things that we can do. Number one, we can, we can work through education one by one. Right? We can.I wrote a book on this last summer. Five step program Inside. That book tells you basically how to get started. And it gets you, gets you going on that. That book's called Anti Preneur.It's looks like this, it's easy to read. It is Anti Anti Dashpreneur available on Amazon.And I, and I wrote this and originally it was about four times the size, but I just kept whittling it down because I've got, I've read a lot of books. I'm A, I'm a very, very avid reader, but not everybody else is.And if we look at where we are today in our, in how we consume information, we read short sentences and, you know, quick LinkedIn posts and so we can't write a book that's like 45,000 words. People aren't going to finish it. They might buy it, should be good financially, but they're not going to finish it. And that's not the point.The point is to finish it. So I kept cutting it down and cutting it down. I worked with a really great editor.We just kept whittling this down, got it down to about 10,000 words, which you should be able to read in. Even a very slow reader should be able to knock this out in about an hour and a half. So, and most people finish in about 37 minutes or so.So number one is you can get the book Antipreneur. The second thing, and that's, that's easy right now and it's, it's pretty cheap and as far as books go, it's pretty cheap.So the, the other thing we can do is you can sign up on my website, antidashpreneur.com and I'll keep things going with you by sending you a theory digital magazine once a week with a couple of key focus tips that's very much written in the short LinkedIn post style, but they're, they're, they're well researched tips to help you can thrive in your career and achieve financial success. But as we go bigger, right, Kellen, what we need to do is we need to change how we discuss money in the workplace.When I started work back in 1900 and in the year of our Lord 1990, as a bright 22 year old, you know, fresh out of college, fresh out of undergrad, we couldn't talk about mental health or depression or gender identity or any of these things. You know, we, we just couldn't talk about it. And now we can.And I believe that that's made the workplace better and made the workplace stronger because we can talk about real things that real people are going through in their real lives. But what do we can't, what can't we talk about?

Money.

Money. It's the final taboo.

You can't talk about it. You can't tell, tell anybody how much you make. Everybody might know the salary brackets or pay grades or whatever.And even though everybody knows it, you still don't talk about it. Nobody can talk about what their raises were or what their bonuses were or any of that stuff.And I haven't been in the workplace for Ah, since 2007, so 18 years. But it's feel. It certainly was that way then and it still feels that way now.

But it has to go beyond that. It's not. There's yeah.Salary and raises, you know, those are, and there's understandable reasons why maybe those should be a little bit more sensitive. But how do we talk about wealth? How do we. How does a company structure a plan for teaching people about wealth?

They don't care.

They don't care.

They don't care.And so they don't spend any energy or money or class instruction time or optional training things that companies offer very much at least seriously preparing you with how the economy works, how money works, where to put it, how to manage it and stuff you can do besides save some and put it in your 401k.

Yeah. And I think that I want to circle back. I think that they do care. Their caring stops at a certain point but I think they do care. Right. I've seen.Because it's in their best interest to care for this. Right. The why do companies switch out and not offer as much bad for you stuff like sodas and bad and potato chips and things like that.It's because it's. But healthy employees are better employees.

Right.

Right. If you're, if you're. And so they, they care because they have a vested interest in you. They've.They're investing a lot of money in you and they want you to be just like a pro athlete. They want you to be operating at peak performance. When I worked at Waymo, we were. Waymo is the Google self driving car company.The we we were on Google campuses and Google campuses are well known for just you know, free everything, just about everything.But they had the, in the soft drink section they had the, like the, the flavored waters and the good for you stuff in a, in a, in these big clear refrigerator, big glass front refrigerators and that part was clear.So you could see that they had all the, the sodas like the Pepsis and Cokes and things like that on a different shelf and they had frosted over the glass so you couldn't see it. So it wasn't there drawing you in.So that's just a subtle thing to basically say like ah, I think I'll grab a water and, or I'll grab something better for you. So they care about that.And if they, if they want to be better at business, they can do a lot by taking a more active role in employees financial situation and here's why. Numerous studies have shown that when employees are under financial stress, we see increases in distraction, absenteeism and turnover.And all those are horrible for our company. We spend so much recruiting somebody.If we're not getting everything out of them because they're distracted or they're not showing up for work, that's, that's horrible for the company's investment.Or if they leave and quit to your company to go to work for the competitor for 15 grand more a year because they're making poor short term decisions because they're under financial stress, well that's bad for you as a business also. So it's actually in business's best interest to take a more active role in financial education for their employees.

I agree with you and my saying not care was in a larger sense meaning they care as long as it affects them. And maybe some of the people actually do care about their employees. That's changing somewhat. But let's assume that that's true.And I have to agree with you 100%. If you as a company take the view of my, my employees are not only educated about their health, they have a place to go to talk about mental health.They know enough about money in the future and how, how money works and planning for their next step, whether it's retirement or to go do a new thing or whatever it is.And they know enough about how to do that, they're going to be more relaxed, they're going to feel, going to have a different experience with the company. You know, their experience with this company is crap. They're giving me all this stuff. This is a good place.And they're going to have that kind of feeling.

Remember when like we first heard of the Googles and stuff, giving away all the free lunches, free breakfast, free dinners, you know, all this sort of stuff. We were like, that's so new. That's, you know, and then it was a big attraction. Now there's several attractions for working for a Google type company.One you're working with often the very best of the best and we're drawn to that. We want to be part of a, we want to be playing on the team that wins the super bowl, right? The we.So that, that's one of the draws they offered very, very competitive salaries as well. That's another one of the draws. But also this is this concept of, you know, taking care of the whole, the whole you.So the first companies that start actually working on financial education and for their employees, not just here's bringing in the. Bringing in the guy from Schwab or from Fidelity to come talk about. Here are the five products that we have.You know, choose aggressive or choose Target Date, you know, whatever. But really talking about wealth, that'll be a huge draw.Could you imagine if you're talking to your peers and you're like, hey, man, I was, you know, you're out having beers or whatever after, after work on a Friday and you're talking to people from another company, it's like, man, you know, we took a couple hours out this afternoon and, and I blew my mind because we talked about tax strategies and we talked about all this stuff. And the company really, for them to teach us this, they're really cares about that.And all the, all the folks around the table that don't work for that company, they're going to be like, holy smokes, I want that. Why does my company not do that? Why. Why do. They must. They must consider me like freaking cattle, you know, because. Because they're not.They're not sharing this information with me.

So, so I want to know personally, what drove, what brought you here?So it's clear that you have a mission, you have a vision of what it looks like of companies who begin to do this education and do it because it's the right thing to do as well as. Because it makes better employees and all that kind of stuff, and hopefully they can get to doing it just because it's right.But what happened in your career, your growth, your 35 years that brought you to this point where you not only solve this for yourself, but you have now become an evangelist for others?

So my career has been this weird journey of transformation. When I grew up, we valued two things, basically working hard and being smart. And in kind of baked into everything was.We were like, you know, middle class, you know, maybe, you know, middle, middle class or so baked into everything was kind of like this scarcity mindset. And that, that kind of drove me to. That's what. So working hard, being smart, and kind of the scarcity mindset, that's what pushed me in engineering.Engineering was the hardest discipline, or at least many people said it was. So that's what I, what I went into. And the. And it provided the most security. Right.You know, if you're going into art major or something like that, oh, I don't know, how are you going to make money that engineers. You made money. Made money from the first, you know, that you showed up for work.And so as, as I went on in time, I realized a couple different transformations. One was that being smart is important, but it's not everything. Vision, influence, leadership, those are the skills that are really more scalable.And that, that transcended throughout my career as I moved from through engineering into working as the chief engineer of a portfolio programs in the Air Force Research Lab, to being the director of special programs throughout working group to, you know, being an engineering fellow and then a principal engineering fellow at Raytheon. So learned that, you know, I, I did this stuff on the smart side, but it transitioned into being more of on the leadership and the vision side.But nothing had changed the scarcity mindset. As a matter of fact, that was amplified even when I got divorced.I, I was in my mid-30s and I lost basically half of everything and I had to basic I wanted to stay in the house that we were in, so I had to buy my ex wife out of that, which left me in like a really, really tight cash flow situation. So I was just. This scarcity mindset was amplified even more.Kellen I will admit during that time I had many things in my house that were made out of milk crates that were left over from when I was an undergrad. No one should be making six figures and having milk crate furniture. But, but I did because I didn't have any money.And, and then, and then basically what happened was I got invited to this mastermind group and it changed my view on everything. Based in a.Make a long story shorter basically how they talked about smart strategic use of credit investing in private equity and real estate and strategic joint ventures and arbitrage and tax optimization. So for that changed and the fluency which was they talked about everything and I was like man, I, I'm thinking about things wrong.But also this group was actually kind of weird because they. I remember one person during my onboarding into this group and it's a private group, you have to be vetted to get in and so forth.

They.

This one guy says like, he's like what would you do? He's like well I'm the, at that point I was the VP of, of a division for a, for a company.And he's like, ah, you can never make any money if you're working for somebody else. And I was like well okay, let's, let's think about that.But that mindset that almost like kind of dismissive look like oh, you actually work in a company that's kind of pretty pervasive throughout this group. And here's the thing, they're wrong. They are just absolutely wrong. Bless their Heart. Love them. Yeah, love that group.I'm still with the group, but they're wrong on that. So to answer your point about what changed.So I had, I had been working all along about this, you know, as I learned from them and realized like I'm in this, I'm this corporate guy, but I'm also thinking like an entrepreneur and there's no, there's no playbook for that. So I started writing the playbook. That's what's in the entrepreneur book. Coined the dorky phrase anti preneur.And, and I kind of been doing some talking about it on social and doing some, some speeches with that and I actually did a TEDx talk this last summer on that. And, and then on July 31st of this year, my mom passed away. And, and it was tough.You know, I'm, and not only do I miss my mom, incredibly, she was a fantastic woman who was one of the, you know, it was to be coming from rural Missouri and getting an undergrad as a woman in the 1960s was pretty rare.But she did it and you know, just, just several other things in her life that, that are basically pretty, that make a very, very humble person that she was really someone to take note of. But she passed away and so now I'm like the oldest one in my bloodline.And, and you, when that happens, Kelly, you start thinking about impact and legacy and what are you really doing here. And that, that changed me.And I realized like if I'm going to make this entrepreneur thing something that really touches the 93 million professionals in the United States today, it can't be as a part time job, it can't be as a hobby. So I resigned from my corporate world.I left, I was the CTO of a, you know, 10 figure defense company, left that to basically take this brand, take this idea, take this mission and really run hard with it.

So right now that's what you do. You have a company. What's the name of your company?

It's all done under the, under our broader LLC which handles a lot of investing and strategic advising and so forth. But basically the company is Red Advantage Management is the holding company for things.And then this is a division called Antipreneur Worldwide under that Anti Preneur Worldwide.

And so lest somebody misunderstand or make stuff up about the meaning of the word anti preneur, because as you've explained to me other times you're not saying you're against entrepreneurship, but you use that very intentionally. So talk a little bit about the meaning of that word and well, just tell us what that means. Explain. Anti. Preneur.

Sure, absolutely. So, you know, right off the bat, I have nothing against entrepreneurs.Some of my very, very deepest friends are entrepreneurs and I love them and I am thankful for them. Every company that gets started was started by an entrepreneur. Right. So, and I, and that's just, that's just great and fantastic.The name actually came about, I was talking to some, some folks last, I think summer of, summer of 24 and you know, they were like saying, hey Matt, you should lean in. I'd left one company and was getting ready to go to another. Like you shouldn't do that.You should go basically just lean in hard into this coaching and strategic advising things and really be an entrepreneur. And I was like, ah, no, that's not, that's not what I, that's not. Doesn't give me the joy and doesn't give me the validation.You know, I love being in business. I love being in the game and really helping people that way. That's what I'm good at as like.And so I'm, and I'm kind of a little bit sick of all the stuff on, about entrepreneurs on social media.You know, if you're going like, whether it's LinkedIn or Facebook or Insta or whatever, you know, basically all these things about how great it is to be an entrepreneur.And I was a little bit ticked at that, you know, cause like look, you can make basically buy my course and I'll teach you how to do, blah, blah blah, I'll get you all these leads, blah, blah, blah, whatever these things. There's everybody selling stuff out there. And you know, some of it's good, a lot of it's not.

I would say probably 80, 20.

Yeah. Or worse.

Okay.

There's a lot of fluff, a lot of AI generated just crap out there. Yeah. But, but anyway, so these guys are saying like you should be an entrepreneur. I was like, no, I want to be in the game.I'm more of like an entrepreneur. And that's how the term got coined. But really it wasn't meant as being against entrepreneurs.It's more like if you think of like in a, in a movie, there's, there's the hero. But some movies are basically centered around what they call the anti hero. Right.Which is the, that's still the protagonist of the movie, but he's a little bit different, he's a little bit quirky, he doesn't do things exactly right. He's may not be the best looking guy in the room, he may be the guy, he may have, you know, tragic flaws or whatever.So it's like, it's like, it's, it's, it's like anti hero in that sense. It's a different way of being successful financially.

So your mission is to help everybody understand that even in any kind of corporate thing, you can take control of your finances, wake up, quit going with the cattle and sheep and just doing this or that, but wake up, get educated, learn what you can do, and then take ownership of your finances with this education and the goal of creating whatever level of wealth you are either desire or able to do.

Absolutely. And a key part of that is, and this is, I'm sure you guys talk about this in, in, I think we're episode 1061 here on the show.So I, I'll, I'll be honest, I have not listened to all 1060 before me, but I know I've listened to many of them. And you talk about success and you talk about what does success mean to you.And that's a, that's a portion of what we talk about in our, in our program as well, is like really defining success for you. And I have a great resource on this that we use in the, in the program as well. And it's basically paint. It's called paint the life you want to live.And if you imagine really describing the life that you want to have not, and not in kind of like broad brush terms of like, I want to be happy or I want to be, you know, successful or things like that, but really think of like, I want to not wake up to an alarm clock. I want to have my day 80% planned. I want to be able to do these sorts of things throughout my day.I want to have this group of friends, not a thousand friends, not three, but I want to have about 12 good friends that I really, that I really like and can call friends and I can call, call any time of the night and they'll help me and you define those sorts of things. What do you want to eat? You want to eat more salads? Do you not want to ever eat a salad again? You know, whatever it is for you.Do you want to have more wine? Do you want to have less wine? Do you want to have better wine? Do you want to have, do you want to be working out?Do you want to have a BMI of, you know, 18? Do you. What do you really want? And then this is the key to it all, is you have to answer, why is that important to you?Because that's what prevents you from living somebody else's dream, right? If you say, I want to have a Ferrari, okay, I could say I want to have a Ferrari. I don't really like to drive, okay?And I, that's why I worked in self driving car industry, because I wanted basically cars come pick me up and take me anywhere. Because that way I don't have to be worrying about driving. I can be doing something else during that time.But for me to buy a Ferrari because it seems like what people that have a lot of money should do is a horrible idea. Because I don't even like to drive in the first place.I mean, I might, I like looking at the Ferrari and sitting in it, but that's a heck of an expense to just go sit in a car that you don't even want to drive. So you have to ask, why is this important to you? And that's one of the things we cover in this as well.Because when we have that, then we can really, really hone in on like how to paint this picture and then you start moving yourself into it. And I'll tell you, I know you're a big fan of things like psycho cybernetics and think and grow rich and visualizing what you want.I did this a couple years ago and I just happened to think about things recently and I was like, the amount I have moved into that painting over the last two years is amazing. And I wouldn't have done it if I hadn't made that painting in my mind.

How hard is it? One of the things I see often on the show or as a coach or whatever is I ask people that question, what do you want?And I find that other than the broad brush stuff or stuff that sounds good or they're supposed to, this, that and the other, it's really difficult to start with for people to do that.Do you find the same thing and how do you help people get into the truth of what they want instead of what they think sounds good or they're supposed to want or you know, all the rather other sort of caveats. What do you do with that?

So I kind of walk through different six or so different facets of it. You know, you can't just say, just describe what you want. And then because that's a very complex thing and there's different dimensions of it.So we walk through different, different aspects of it. We talk about things like faith and things like impact and things like and career and so forth in there.So you basically break the problem down kind of like standard engineering stuff. Break the problem down and, and then show your work. No, break the problem down then, and then kind of work through those.But also realize that this is, this is an iterative process and it's not going to change overnight because these are things that you have to think about for a while. I did just as an example, the, There's a guy named Darren Hardy, former CEO of like Success magazine.He's got a bunch of motivational confidence stuff out there. Now I listen to a lot of his stuff and I've actually done one of his year long classes which is actually really solid.But the guy's, the guy's a solid guy, but he's got this, this, this goal setting. Basically it's called living your best year ever.And the first portion of it is basically really a deep evaluation of where you are and what you want to be and where you are today and what you want to be. And that's supposed to be a relatively quick thing. And then you jump into the, into the, you know, planning for your year.And that took me like two months to get through.Two months to get through that because it really, really forced me to think deeply on things and I had to go back and like, while I write something, I was like, no, that's not it. I want to do this. It should be this or it should be this. So it's, it's iterative, it takes a while.But you, but the, like the famous proverb like there's the two best times to plant a tree are 30 years ago and that's the best time. And the second best time is today. So just getting started on it today is the, is the first step.

Do you, do you find it difficult for people to learn to tell the truth when they're going through that exercise?

People have different levels of how truthful they are with themselves.

Yeah.

And that's one of the things that you, I don't think there's an absolute scale of it, but it's a relative scale. So as each day, if you're more and more truthful with yourself, then that's the, that's the right path to be on.

So when someone comes to you and, and is intrigued by your book or the TEDx that they, you know, they see or listening to you in person or hearing about you or whatever. And maybe they come because they've been indoctrinated with all this other stuff, so they're skeptical.Where do you start with someone to open the window of possibility?

What we usually start with are Some of the key myths and really, really looking at those now. We've talked about a few of the key myths already. The things about the only way to be successful is to quit your job and start your own company.Right? And the numbers on that are pretty daunting. If somebody really looks at the numbers, they're like, oh, wait, that's a horrible idea.That must be a myth. Because the. If it's your first time starting a business, your success rate, 18%, right? Okay. If it's your second business and you've been in, you.Your first one was successful, but you've learned everything now. You've, you know, all what not to do. You've been, you know, you know, you've gone through the fire of it. This next one's going to be awesome.Your success rate goes all the way from 18% up to 20%, right. Not a huge increase. And even if you've had a successful business before, it's only goes up to about 30%.So the, so that's one of the misses we help really zero in and break that. The other myth about the just putting 5% in your 4 or 8%, whatever, in your 401k and you'll be fine. You know why that's not a good idea?From liquidity, from earnings, from fees, from just all the different aspects of that. And then the third thing we talk about is that.When we think about our career, and this is something that I've learned myself, that hard work by itself will get you the career that you want. So we look a lot at your career and we look a lot at what you're doing and how you are you adding value in the areas that others find valuable. Right.I had one person that, you know, was like, I'm working all these extra hours, I'm working all these extra weekends. And. And basically he was working on things that really weren't valued by the company.You know, I've been on many boards of directors, and I don't know of any company that really tracks as one of its metrics, you know, how many hours Bill worked over the weekend, right? That's not a metric we use.You know, no NYSE company, you know, when they're giving their quarterly statements, they say like, okay, our, our EPS is this. And the number of weekend hours Bill worked is this. They don't do that.So you have to identify things and, and highlight the areas where you're adding value to things that matter to the company. Hours worked doesn't matter. Successes, product shipped, money saved, those are things that matter. So we really focus in on that as well.And then we also, and this is one of the really important things. So my people are not entrepreneurs. My people are not commodity workers. They're professionals.And we highlight the fact that what you're doing is very, very important. And the joy, the validation, the excitement, the autonomy and mastery and purpose that you get out of that career that is to be celebrated.That's very, very important. Don't think of it like I'm just doing this because I'm not ready to be an entrepreneur yet. Absolutely not. Kellen.Everything single thing that we experience as consumers doesn't come from entrepreneurs. It comes from the professionals that have made it happen. Once the entrepreneur starts the company and gets the idea right.I'm a big fan of Levi's, Levi jeans, Levi Strauss and dead for over 100 years. Big fan of Apple products. Steve Jobs dead. We get a lot of stuff shipped from Amazon.Everybody gets a lot of stuff shipped on Amazon, you know, during the Christmas season and then using your Christmas money to buy a bunch of stuff in January as well. Jeff Bezos no longer with Amazon. So all the companies that we think about, the founder isn't even there anymore.So it's just the professionals running it soon.

So what's your goal for 2026? Like in 2006? Matt does what, what does Matt create or bring into the world in 26?

We'll have the online community going.We'll have the, we'll be bringing scores of people through our program and setting the program up to scale in a way that, that can bring many, many more as well as we'll be launching our outreach with, with corporations to basically not only work with them to get them reduced rate or you know, basically very, very cheap copies of the book as well as, you know, ways to help start them on the concept of education for their employees for the right things. So corporate work starting and, and, and really taking off. Community launched.You know, I don't know the exact numbers that we have that the team has on like the metrics for where we are quarter by quarter on that, but and then pushing multiple, multiple people through this program so that they can help evangelize this as well.

You know, one of the things you could do, and maybe you've already thought of this, is companies that already exhibit the tendencies to do forward thinking and care for the employees. You could license content and have them do stuff instead of trying to do it all yourself.And you may not want to because you may think you need to have either you or someone that you have trained or certified or approved do this stuff. But that kind of licensing allows you to make a larger leverage, impact and money. If it works in terms of the integrity of the stuff that you have.

Absolutely. And really with our online community, the.So step one, you know, the book is like I think 10 bucks for digital and 15 bucks or something like that for the paperback. So you can get the book for 15 bucks. You know, the community will launch, it'll be somewhere around a dollar a day, something like that.And then all the stuff will be there in more detail on the community. The thing. So basically that'll be out there for, you know, really, really cheap.The, and then companies will basically we can give like discounted rates on that even as well. But then the, the concept of what I'm doing is pushing people through the program, helping them through the program is, is basically it's a.Done with you. Right? You know, not everybody has the financial means to do the program so they can do it yourself.And that's, that's what I wanted to offer also is like if you don't, if you, you may not have the, enough, you know, reserve cash to afford this, the, the done with you program so you can choose to do it yourself program and all the stuff's there, all the videos, all, everything will be there as well. So that's the, that's the thing also because it's really, you know, it's not about trying to make money with.This is really, really low on the, on the priority list. Yes, it's a business. Yes. It has to, has to survive as a business. Really. It's this, it's, it's a mission first.

What didn't you say that I didn't. What didn't I ask you? What are you burning to say that you want to say?And then also please tell us where to find this, the community, the books obviously on Amazon, the antipreneur. Your name is Dr. Matt Markle. And so that's clear.But what did you not say that I, you know what didn't I ask you or, and, or how do people find you to learn more?

So the two actions you can take right now, number one for free number sign up@antidashpreneur.com and you'll get on the newsletter list. Plus if you're on that, then you're first to know about things.When the community launches, you're first to know everything else that goes on in the program. So everybody listening to this should sign up@anti-preneur.com right now. It's free, it's easy. I don't bombard you with a bunch of stuff.I don't sell any emails or anything like that.It's basically just I'll send you a digital magazine or newsletter, whatever you want to call it once a week and you know, and in, in the, in the upcoming announcements of that, you'll find out about everything that we've got going. That's easy. That's cost zero dollars. You want to buy the book. It's, it's small amounts of dollars on Amazon.If you want to see other things I'm talking about, you can follow me on LinkedIn.I'm the guy on, on LinkedIn that's named Matt Markle and looks like me and, and writes about stuff that sounds like what we've been talking about on this show. So there should be.There's actually several other Matt Markle's out there, but there's, but I'm the one that, that looks like me and talks like me and talks about the stuff. I'm talking about the, I've got an interesting story about the other Matt Markels here in a second.And then if you have any, anything else you want to get me, just you know, you can, you can direct email me at drmatnti-preneur.com but the best thing if that we haven't talked about so far is like, is like follow me on LinkedIn because I put a lot of stuff out there and it's a lot of really, really great insights and content as well. Back when I was living in Florida, I think this is around 2010 time frame.My fiance who became my wife now she and I were together on, we were watching I think sports on the college football on New Year's Day is what it was.All the college games are on New Year's Day and we had both had our laptops up because we were workaholic type people and we're doing stuff on our laptops and I just started to think about, it's like, and I was on, I wasn't even on LinkedIn, I don't think at the time I was on Facebook I found, because I kept getting these friend requests from this other Matt Markle and so I was like, I had friended him, I was like, let's find all the other Matt Markle's out there. So I found every Matt Markle that was on Facebook and friended them and so now some of them kind of dropped off the clock platform.And stuff since then. But there's still a couple, like, there's one up in, I think, Michigan somewhere.And we, we still see stuff and we comment on each other's things and, and that's, you know, that he's, he's been, he's very successful as well. He's so, it's kind of cool. So.But on LinkedIn, I'm the Matt Marel that looks like me and talks about the stuff that we've been talking about on the show.

Matt, thanks for being here with me today.I appreciate your perspective, your passion, your desire to help those 93 million professionals reframe the concept about money, about wealth, about retirement, about satisfaction, about defining meaning in life and purpose. So appreciate that.

It's been my absolute pleasure. Kellen, as, as always, a great discussion with you. I love what you're doing. I love this show. Keep up the good work, my friend. Really keep it up.

I have every intention, so I want all of you listeners to listen. You know, this is one perspective. We talk about your ultimate life. You know, I've got Ultimate Life University launching in January.And the goal here is to both own the idea that you can create the life you want. I call it the ultimate life purpose, prosperity and joy. And you can use whatever words you want to describe it, but you can have that.And I can promise you that if you follow Dr. Matt, friend him, talk to him, understand the stuff that he's teaching you because it's real and it will help you move forward to create your ultimate life. Open your heart.

And this time around, right here, right.

Now, your opportunity for massive growth is right now front of you. Every episode gives you practical tips and practices that will change everything.If you want to know more, go to kellenfluermedia.com if you want more free tools, go here. Your ultimate life ca subscribe Share.

On the ground.