Tessa West has seen lots of people in the wrong careers. Either the job has drifted from what they’d initially thought, or maybe they’re a leader at work, but they’re passed over for promotions or raises. There are many reasons why people feel the malaise of a job that doesn’t work anymore, but the effect is nearly always the same. Either you stagger through the work, wasting your life, or you dream about early retirement. What if there was another answer? What if the job that lights you up is actually out there? You need to know the tools to go find it. That’s what Tessa Woods gifts us on today’s show. You’ll learn how to throw off the ennui and find meaning at work by either rebooting your current career or finding a new job elsewhere. We’ll talk about how to engage in effective networking, how to assert yourself as a leader in your field, and why changing fields isn’t a bad idea–even if you’re an older worker. While many of us think that we wouldn’t qualify for jobs against seasoned pros who’ve already had experience in the given area, Tessa shares how and why employers often want someone with a fresh perspective. You have to know how to sell your strengths, and we’ll share some keys today.
In our headline segment, we’ll review how Mark Cuban saved his fortune from disaster when everyone else lost money in the 2000-2002 tech wreck. We’ll share the tools he used and how it all went down. Plus we’ll answer the question: should YOU also use this strategy to avoid losses? It’s a great question, and we tackle it head-on! We’ll cover options, market declines, and the financial planning reasons Cuban executed this strategy.
Deeper dives with curated links, topics, and discussions are in our newsletter, The 201, available at https://www.stackingbenjamins.com/201
Enjoy!
Our Headlines
Dr. Tessa West
Big thanks to Dr. Tessa West for joining us today. To learn more about Tessa, visit Tessa West’s Official Website Homepage – author of Jerks at Work. Grab yourself a copy of the book Job Therapy: Finding Work That Works for You.
Doug’s Trivia
- What is considered by USA Today to be the most horrible job because of the low pay and lack of flexibility?
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Written by: Kevin Bailey
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Episode transcript
[00:00:00] Joe: It’s Monday morning in [00:00:00] OG: America. You know what that means, og? Happy. Happy Monday. America happy. Oh God. What’s wrong with your coffee mug? [00:00:07] Joe: Oh, it’s got this beautiful Spartan on it. It is. Football season is very soon. It’s coming back. It’s closing [00:00:13] OG: in on it. [00:00:14] Joe: NCAA football’s out. That’s right. We have a new coach. [00:00:17] We have a new hope for at least the first two games this year. [00:00:20] OG: You’re laughing. Everybody’s undefeated. Everybody’s got a chance at the Natty. [00:00:24] Joe: It can’t be worse than last year, og. It can’t be. Tell me it can’t be. Maybe it can be worse for your team. [00:00:30] OG: Yeah, yeah. We’ll see. [00:00:32] Joe: Could be a lot worse. But you know who it’s always better for. [00:00:35] It’s better for all of us because we’ve got the men and women in our armed forces protecting us. Yep. So we begin our week by saluting our troops on behalf of the Men and Women Making Podcast in mom’s basement and the men and women at Navy Federal Credit Union. Thank you for all you do. Let’s go stack some ments together. [00:00:52] Doug: Hoorah. Fuck. This is Hot Ray Symmetrical book Stacking. [00:00:59] caller: Just like the Philadelphia man’s turbulence of 1947. [00:01:03] Doug: You’re right. No human [00:01:04] caller: being would stack books like this. Listen, [00:01:08] Doug: you smell something. [00:01:16] Live from Joe’s mom’s basement. It’s the Stacking Benjamin Show. [00:01:30] I am Joe’s mom’s neighbor,, Doug, and welcome you big time stacker. You wanna really shine at work. Today we talk about why people fall out of love with their jobs with psychologist and NYU Professor Tessa West. Plus. In a recent story, mark Cuban was able to keep from losing money while others took it on the chin. [00:01:51] Will a strategy like Cubans work for you? We’ll ask the question and answer it, plus we’ll answer a question from one stacker who thought, you know, I’d better call Saul CI and og. And then I’ll share some amazing, incredible na epic trivia. And now two guys who are the Abbott and Costello of this financial circus. [00:02:13] It’s Joe and o. [00:02:21] Joe: How old do you think you gotta be to get a Abbot Costello reference? [00:02:24] OG: Uh, I’m gonna say older than 46 years. Seven months. What day is it? Six months and 28 days, whatever. It’s [00:02:34] Joe: one out of the three of us knows what the hell that means. Hey everybody, welcome to the obscure entertainers from the past podcast. [00:02:41] I’m Joe Sci High average Joe Money on Twitter across the cart table from me as always. Mr. OG is here. Good morning my friend. Or good, what’s up? I shouldn’t say non-specific time of day because we have no idea when people are are listening. [00:02:52] OG: Oh, it’s definitely morning. Nobody listens to podcasts anytime other than mornings, right? [00:02:56] No. [00:02:56] Joe: Duh. It’s all, it’s all [00:02:58] OG: you. It’s always morning somewhere. [00:02:59] Joe: It’s [00:02:59] OG: five o’clock somewhere. Yeah. [00:03:00] Joe: We got Tessa Woods here. Uh, have you ever tried to find work that works for you? Uh, I don’t know what that [00:03:07] OG: means. So [00:03:09] Joe: does your job work for you og being on a podcast three days a week, does that work for you? [00:03:13] Does [00:03:13] OG: it work for me? Is it working? Uh, you know, it’s something to do to hang out with you. Doug mostly You, [00:03:21] Joe: Tessa told me she had a therapy session and she was gonna do an interview, so I was just maybe assuming that the, that the session might be with you. I don’t, I don’t know. [00:03:30] OG: Uh, maybe I can’t, I can’t disclose confidentiality. [00:03:33] Joe: Lots of people, uh, very seriously. Lots of people in the fire movement, OG are like, you know what? I hate my job, so I’m just gonna. Bug out. And yet, uh, what Tess is all about is maybe it’s more fulfilling to find out work that really fits who you really are. We’re gonna talk to her in a little bit. We have a great headline, but before all that, we have some sponsors that make the show go and make it free. [00:03:57] Let’s, uh, hear from one right now. Tessa West, waiting in the wings. But first, mark Cuban in the headlines. Let’s, uh, chat about him. [00:04:08] bit: Hello Darlings. And now it’s time for your favorite part of the show, our Stacking Benjamin’s headlines. [00:04:15] OG: Do you read Flipboard? It’s on my phone. It seems to work every so often. [00:04:20] It seems like sometimes I’ll log in and it’ll be like, you’ve read everything. I’m like, I feel like there’s some stuff I haven’t read yet on the internet, but maybe I’m good. Maybe I’m all caught up at this point. [00:04:30] Joe: You’re high fiving yourself. Guess what I did, Mrs. oog? Apparently I read everything. [00:04:34] OG: I’ve read the internet, I’ve done this with my boys. [00:04:37] Like I’ll say, oh, I found this funny video and I’ll start it and my son will go, yeah, I already saw it. I have yet to find a video that my son has not already seen. I watched a clip. There’s a section in office space where they’re talking about getting caught and how they’re gonna go. Now they’re not gonna white collar prison, they’re going to a different kind kind of prison. [00:04:56] I dunno if you remember the line, but they’ve decided that they were gonna get caught and they’re all frustrated about it. And I was like, oh, hey, watch this. ’cause it was appropriate to the discussion we were having. We got halfway into it. My son goes, yeah, I already saw this. I’m like, you watched office space? [00:05:08] He goes, I don’t know what that is. I. But he had already seen the clip of that. I was, you know, like, [00:05:12] Joe: dang it. Have you ever had a discussion with these kids about screen time? [00:05:19] OG: No. What’s that? Yeah, they’re excelling at it. I can tell you that much. [00:05:23] Joe: The reason I ask, I found this on Flipboard, and what I really don’t like is that 90% of their financial content lately, that at least comes to me, gets served to me, is from a website called Moneywise. Yes. And so often these moneywise articles make me just roll my eyes. [00:05:39] But this one I found really interesting. The whole market cratered and I was protected, said Mark Cuban, who revealed how he kept his $1.4 billion fortune safe from a two thousand.com crash. And then it says three ways to prep for a US economic downturn. Okay. I’m listening. Obviously, if I’m the average person, I’m like, Hey, if I got my money and everything goes down and I don’t go down, this sounds like a great idea. [00:06:04] So let’s dive into what Cuban did, by the way, any, um, guesses on what Mark did? Gold? [00:06:11] OG: No, I don’t have any idea. [00:06:12] Joe: Yeah. What he did was during the 2000 stock market crash, it went from 2000 to 2002. He had just made a bunch of money selling his company broadcast.com to Yahoo for $5.7 billion. So he went from regular dude to bababa billionaire overnight. [00:06:32] Oh, [00:06:33] OG: well, he had, I mean, he had some money before then. [00:06:36] Joe: Good point. Not [00:06:37] OG: 5 billion, but No, you know, [00:06:40] Joe: he went from maybe above average guy to [00:06:42] OG: Yeah, a billion. He was definitely upper middle class. [00:06:46] Joe: The Yahoo stock that he owned was worth 1.4 billion. ’cause if you some people, again, maybe old guy story, but when Cuban sold his company, he got Yahoo stock for [00:06:56] OG: it. [00:06:56] Well that happens in almost all transactions. Very few do you hear are cash deal. Sometimes you’ll hear that, right? They’ll say such and such a company, he is buying such and such a company for $16 in cash. But a lot of times it’s a cash and stock deal. Even if you’re a small business owner and you’re selling your business to another small business owner, you’re not getting actual stock like you would on the stock market, but you’re getting, you know, an ownership of the new, new Coke basically. [00:07:21] And that’s basically representative of what Cuban did. He, he owned a proportionate share of Yahoo. Now. [00:07:29] Joe: And during that time, in 1999, early 2000 like this was Yahoo was the thing. [00:07:34] OG: Yahoo was the Nvidia of 1999. Totally was. Yeah. [00:07:39] Joe: I mean those Yahoo commercials and everybody was so excited. Yahoo. If you didn’t use Yahoo is your portal to get to the internet. [00:07:46] OG: Yeah. We didn’t have a Yahoo email [00:07:48] Joe: it. It’s funny is I still have two of them. [00:07:50] OG: Yeah. I get emails on my Google email about my Yahoo account like, Hey, we’re seriously gonna shut this down if you don’t come look at it. I’m like, no, that’s cool man. Go ahead. And then like five years later, they’re like, for real, this time if you do not log in, we are totally deleting all your email. [00:08:05] Like, oh, I still have that. [00:08:07] Joe: Cuban sees all this craziness around him. Okay. And does the opposite. You know what the average person does? They go and they buy into it. Right. We saw tons of people in 2000 buy into it. We saw tons of people buying real estate in 2006, 2007. We see people going out of international stocks right now, right? [00:08:27] Everybody just goes to the hot thing. Mm-Hmm. So Cuban told Howard Stern, he did a hedge. He sold calls, he bought puts to protect his stock. It went up in value some more and went up to where his hedge was and that automatically cashed him out. And as everybody else was going down Cuban, sitting in cash with his $1.4 billion. [00:08:50] bit: Mm-Hmm. [00:08:51] Joe: I think there’s a lot of people og that, that, that read this and they go, Ooh, a hedge selling calls, buying puts. Let’s do it. Why wouldn’t I do that? I mean, we’re, we’re seeing this thing now where the market’s up. It’s up, it’s up. Hey, it’s at, uh, all time highs market’s, all time highs. Why don’t I go sell some calls and buy some puts and put a little color on this thing so I don’t lose any money? [00:09:11] What could go wrong with this strategy? oog. [00:09:14] OG: Well, ultimately it is a protective thing, but there’s a pretty big downside, and I’ll give you a, a very perfect example of this, which is we had a client who acquired through somewhat of an inheritance, a substantial position in a really popular, big name stock. [00:09:31] And we knew it was coming. There was some foreshadowing there of what was gonna happen. And so we were talking about it at the beginning of the year, and this stock had a really big run in 23. And you know, at the beginning of January, it’s like, all right, this stock is up a hundred some odd percent a year. [00:09:47] This is now 20% of your net worth, your investible net worth. What do you wanna do about it? This is a big thing. Now, it could continue to go right? And obviously if you’re concentrated in a position and it’s, and the momentum is carrying it forward, that’s gonna help, that’s gonna pull the rest of your portfolio up, you know, in terms of value because it’s so concentrated. [00:10:07] But the other thing can happen too, stocks up a hundred and some odd percent a year. I mean, seriously could go down by 50% and you’re still up 50, but nobody remembers that, right? No. Everybody remembers I’m down 50. So we talked about the different ways to protect it. One way is to do that. You can say, I wanna buy insurance on my stock. [00:10:24] My stock is worth a hundred dollars a share. I’m okay with it bouncing around, it’s gonna do its thing. But if it gets to 80, I want, I want some protection there. I want some insurance that it’s not gonna go from a hundred to 80 to 50. I’ll, I’ll take the minus 20, but I don’t want the minus 50, if that makes sense. [00:10:40] And so you can do that. You can buy insurance on, it costs some money. And that’s really [00:10:43] Joe: what these options are for people that don’t understand the options. Game options equals insurance in this, in this, uh, yeah, [00:10:51] OG: usage. In this case, you’re having the option to sell the stock at a specific price. And in this case, the price is below what it is right now. [00:10:59] So you’re saying I’m gonna, I’m insuring it for this lower amount. Basically. You can insure it for a higher amount if you want. And that’s gonna cost way more money. Just like if you go, you know you got your house and it’s worth a million dollars, you go, I wanna insure it for 3 million. The insurance company’s gonna be like, how am I gonna, all right, but just gonna cost you way more. [00:11:15] Most time they wouldn’t even let you do that. But you know what I mean? Like it would be a, yeah, a ton more. [00:11:19] Joe: And while we’re paused here for a second on this, if it’s a hundred and you’re buying it for that low 20% below, so you’re saying, I’m going to sell this stock to you at 80, if it gets two 80, that doesn’t cost you very much. [00:11:33] ’cause that’s a 20% decrease. So that insurance is pretty cheap. The cool thing for somebody on the other side, so on the other side of this is a gambler, and the gambler goes, Hey, I can pay pennies on the dollar to pick up Yahoo stock for next to nothing. [00:11:47] OG: Yeah. If it goes down 20, I’m gonna get it for this. [00:11:51] I’m basically getting it. Well, and the person who’s buying it on that side is actually making money while they wait. [00:11:56] Joe: Right? [00:11:57] OG: It’s just kind of a weird scenario. But anyway, so you buy the insurance on the stock that it goes down. And the way to offset that, if you don’t wanna pay the cash to insure it, you’re looking at Mark Cuban, how much does it cost to insure a billion dollar portfolio portfolio? [00:12:09] You know, it’s gonna cost us several million dollars. And these contracts have expiration dates. So you can say, well, I want this to expire on Friday. I want it to expire next Friday. I want it to expire at the end of the quarter. I want it to expire at the end of the year. And the longer out you buy the insurance, the higher the price is, right? [00:12:25] And so either are turning it over frequently at a lower price, or you buy one big one for the next three years and it costs a ton. The way to offset the cost on that is then you also say, I will give you my stock at a certain price on the upside. So I will also promise to sell it. You know, it’s, it’s at a hundred, I think it’s gonna go to 1 0 5. [00:12:46] But hey, look, if it goes to one 20. You can have it at one 20, I’m good with another 20% upside if it hits that between now, you know, and so if you do that 20% upside number, the market, the other participant in this transaction is gonna give you cash today, you are getting the insurance premium, if that makes sense. [00:13:06] Joe: Yeah. [00:13:07] OG: In that case, you’re the insurance company. One time you’re the insurance customer. One time you’re the insurance company. So you can take that, those $2 together, and that’s out to zero. You’ve effectively said as long as it trades between, in this case one 20 and 80, I’m net even the market’s gonna do what the market’s gonna do. [00:13:23] I’m totally okay with it. If it’s skyrockets to one 50, I’m out at one 20. If it bottoms out to 50, I’m out at 80. That’s the transaction that he did. The problem that happens here is exactly what happened to Mark Cuban. Only imagine it was 1998 instead of 2000. The thing that he got right was being lucky on timing. [00:13:45] Back to this example that I was giving you before about a client. The stock had done amazingly. In 23. We were like, look, maybe there’s some protection we want to think about here. Since then, the stock is up another 50%. If we would’ve capped our earnings, you know, by doing this trade, basically we would’ve been out of the stock, you know, up, up, up 20, 23 numbers plus a little bit into 24. [00:14:12] And here we are in July and the stock is up another 50% since, since the beginning of the year. The one downside of doing this is you really, in a rising market, you’re gonna get moved to cash maybe earlier than you thought. The other problem with that then is now what are you gonna do with the cash? It works. [00:14:32] It looks really great on paper, when the market goes down and you’re out, you know, minus 10, minus 15, and you’re like, woo-hoo, and then the market keeps going down 50. You’re like, look at all this great money I saved. Now you have this billion dollars or a hundred thousand or whatever your number is, and now you have to get back in. [00:14:49] And more often than not, since the market goes up, more times than not, you’re gonna be rebuying back into a higher market than one you sold. [00:14:59] Joe: I like that. We’ve been talking about that a lot the last few weeks about that piece right there, because with the market hitting all time highs, that’s what the market’s supposed to do. [00:15:07] So I’m glad we talked about that. I’ll tell you what I’ll tell you. The piece of this that’s interesting to me is the fact og, that if you start with trying to cap your downside. There. There is no free lunch. He had to be willing to give up the upside. So what’s cool about this that’s different than most of our stackers is his intent truly was different. [00:15:29] And this is what frustrates me about this piece. This piece talks about protecting market downside. That wasn’t what Cuban was trying to do. I personally don’t think knowing how smart Mark Cuban is, he wasn’t worried about whether the market goes up or down, right? He had just gotten a huge effing windfall of $1.4 billion. [00:15:44] He didn’t wanna see it deteriorate, and he knew that good financial planning means he had to diversify it. So what’s the best way to make sure that he diversifies it? Well, he puts this collar on it and hey, if it goes up, he’ll make a little more money before he diversifies. If it goes down, he doesn’t lose his ass. [00:16:01] He doesn’t lose all of it. Mm-Hmm. So he lets the market do what it’s gonna do. He got lucky it went up, but then he did what he intended at the beginning, I believe, which was to get the hell outta Yahoo. Uh, you know, maybe he left some of his money there, but now he probably had 99% of his money in one stock and it was enough to last him forever. [00:16:20] Right. So I think if you begin with what, what’s my intention? If your intention is to avoid market losses, I think you gotta go back to all those episodes we’ve had the last few weeks talking about that. ’cause you’re just gonna get your ass kicked. [00:16:32] OG: Well, I think that when you look at your investment, this has come up. [00:16:36] I think people are talking about it. Maybe in the fall we can do kind of like a lifeboat drill. I call ’em lifeboat drills. Maybe we’ll do a lifeboat drill about investment planning and kind of where things are. But I think we hear these stories of the market’s at an all time high market’s at an all time high and juxtapose that against maybe what’s going on in our personal economies. [00:16:55] And that’s not always exactly the same, but you know, main Street, wall Street, you can see some correlation to that. Oh my, you know, inflation still feels pretty high. You know, is this being supported by some other metric that I can’t really see? Like why? Why does it seem the stock market seems to think that everything’s going great, yet in my personal account, you know, accounting, not necessarily your brokerage account, but you know what I mean, like in my personal life, it doesn’t feel as good, right? [00:17:20] Groceries cost more gas costs more insurance costs more so and so forth. Sometimes those things are just a microcosm and sometimes it’s a foreshadowing. But I think if you look at the purpose of the money that you have invested, and if you’re looking at your brokerage account, you’re looking at your retirement account, you’re going, dude, all time. [00:17:38] I mean, I’m so happy that this is at an all time high. You know, this is great, right? Our, our account values are growing. They’re going up a whole bunch year over year, but I had planned on using a hundred thousand of this for a down payment on a house next year, and I’m really concerned about the market going. [00:17:53] You should be concerned about that. This is not the right timeframe for that money. If you’re, if you need this money in six months from now, or you need the money in a year from now, you are playing with fire, you are gambling a hundred percent. You’re going, Hey, let’s see if I can catch another 10%. I think that’s really foolish. [00:18:12] But if you’re looking at your investment portfolio, you’re looking at your retirement plan and you’re saying, I’m at an all time high. This is guy rocketing, and I’m feeling concerned about the market going down, and I’m 45, and this money’s for when I’m 65. You should pray for a market decline, especially, I’m not there yet. [00:18:26] Yeah. You should pray for a market decline. How great would it be to be able to go back to the beginning of 2023 and buy it 2023? Knowing what you know today, knowing that you know where the stock market went in 23 and 24, somebody gives you a time machine and goes, yeah, you can go back to 2023. How much do you want? [00:18:45] What would you do differently? A lot of people will go back the truck up. Yeah. Right. Your favorite phrase. Yeah. My point is, is that if you’ve got a lot of time and the money is timed out correctly for what that timeline is, you shouldn’t worry about market fluctuations plus 20 minus 20. It’s gonna happen. [00:19:03] That’s part of the deal. That’s what you signed up for. But if the money is supposed to be there for tomorrow and you got it invested, you should be concerned and you should have that money in some place, a little bit more secure like cash and not have to worry about it. [00:19:18] Joe: That is, uh, this garbage piece gives three recommendations on ways to weather a down market. [00:19:25] First one is doing exactly what you’re saying. Keep cash and stay invested. Keep cash for the, for the, okay, that’s pretty good for the short term, that’s great. But listen to the other two bonds. Bonds do the exact same thing we don’t wanna do, which is it decreases your chance for upside. If you’re a long-term investor and you’ve got a bunch of money in bonds, what are you, what are you thinking? [00:19:44] You’re safely, you know, people worried about safety, you’re safely going to do nothing [00:19:49] OG: very, [00:19:49] Joe: very [00:19:50] OG: safely. Well, and as we, as we found out, I mean, the whole idea of fixed income is that it zigzags differently, right? That it’s a tempering of the volatility. But in 2022, I think everybody learned that that doesn’t always work that way. [00:20:04] And in 2022, fixed income was down 15% and the market was down 20 going, wait a second. I thought this was supposed to be better. It was better. It was 5% better. It wasn’t the other way. Now fixed income today because of interest rates where they are. That becomes a little bit more of an investing gamble, I think. [00:20:20] But if it’s long-term money, your money should be invested for long-term things. The only place is inequities. [00:20:25] Joe: Oh, no, no, no. Nay, nay, nay. Oh gee. Because the third recommendation here, I think, think is, oh, the way better. Gold. [00:20:32] OG: No, forgot not lot. Funny story about that. I got an email from a client in a beach community in Florida. [00:20:40] I’m not gonna dox the community nor the person, but let me read it to you. Hey og, I had to share this with you. So in our city, you names it here. Our city council just had an online meeting this morning during which the city administrator is pushing for the city’s excess revenue to be invested in gold. [00:20:59] Joe: Oh God, [00:20:59] OG: I thought you’d get a kick out of this. Might be a good show topic. Hope you’re having a good summer. [00:21:07] Joe: What a train wreck. [00:21:09] OG: Yeah, yeah. Now this is a beach community that was just destroyed with the last major hurricane in Florida. Thankfully they’re getting everything back together again, which is good. So I’m glad to hear that the city for the community has excess city revenue. That’s fantastic. They can invest that into, uh, I dunno, sea walls or something, you know, to kind of help assuage any issues in the future. [00:21:30] But I don’t know that I would invest it in gold. That seems pretty stupid. [00:21:33] Joe: I love OG when Peter Malu was on the show recently and people can go back and listen to his interview. That guy makes so much sense. But gold is a great store of value. If I’m looking a thousand years into the future and I get to go on a time machine, and this is just. [00:21:48] I’m, I’m just channeling Peter Lucas is exactly what he said. I’m going to take gold ’cause I don’t know what currencies a thousand years from now are going to be the ones. And gold would buy you a nice suit in a hundred BC if there were suits and it buys about the same stuff now. But if you need your money to grow. [00:22:06] So it’s a great store of value, [00:22:09] OG: not a good transportation vehicle. ’cause going into the future with a bunch of gold would be right. You have to have a, you have a big backpack. [00:22:17] Joe: But I get his point. It buys the same thing now as it did in 17 hundreds, as it did in the 14 hundreds. It’s a great store of value, but it is not a grower of value. [00:22:27] It’s a show unless you’re gonna try to save. Imagine trying to save 30 years worth of money. That was awesome. In gold. Not gonna happen. Did I? Did I forget to do a ha o? There is that? Yeah. Maybe This piece is interesting at the top and like a lot of these money-wise pieces devolves into garbage at the bottom. [00:22:44] Uh, I will link to it so people can see the show themselves. One frustration I’ve had over the decade plus that we’ve been doing this OG is hearing people’s work stories about why they’re unhappy at work and how they just checked out. [00:22:58] OG: I do complain a lot. Oh, you weren’t talking now. President Company included. [00:23:04] Joe: Yes. Stop bitching about your work. Tessa West is someone who I wanted to have on the show because she believes there’s probably something deeper going on and there’s so much more satisfaction and work that you love versus just dropping out. I know a few people that have dropped out og still miserable. [00:23:23] They’re miserable because instead of finding work that they love, they went to nothing. She is a professor of psychology at NYU. You’ve seen her as a regular contributor to the Wall Street Journal, and of course she’s been covered everywhere. Scientific American, New York Times Financial Times. Guardian, C-N-N-C-N-B-C, and now. [00:23:41] Stacking Benjamins, of course, Tessa West up next, helping you find work that works for you. But before that, Doug, let’s transition over to you, man. You’ve got today’s trivia question. [00:23:56] Doug: Hey there, stackers. I’m Joe’s mom’s neighbor, Doug, and checking this crazy holiday calendar that Joe’s mom got me. It turns out we should be celebrating National Hammock day. In fact, I’ve been laying here talking this entire episode and you haven’t even noticed, ha, I’m a true professional. How can you tell a true professional because he’s the guy who can seamlessly transition between hammocks And the fact that it’s also the day back in 2016 that the last VCR was made. [00:24:25] See that ninja? You didn’t even see it coming. Making the last VCR would’ve been a horrible job. You know that your job is done. I mean, why stick around and you know, let’s make that today’s question. People speaking of horrible jobs. What is considered by USA today to be the most horrible job because of the low pay and lack of flexibility. [00:24:48] I’ll be back with your answer after I, uh, maybe doze off here in the hammock for a moment. [00:25:02] Hey there, stackers. I’m expert topic changer and the guy connecting fruit with hammocks Joe’s mom’s neighbor, Doug. I mentioned that because during the break, Joe’s mom just mentioned the idea of bananas having hammocks. Like I’ve never even understood why people think that their fruit needs a rest. I mean, really, maybe that one banana who can’t stand being in the bunch needs a break, but to baby it through with a hammock, it’s just, I’m baffled. [00:25:28] But today’s trivia question wasn’t about that topic. It was the one I stealthily transitioned to without really over-emphasizing the fact that I did. On today’s date in 2016, the last VCR was made, which to me truly seems like a bad job. Who wants to come to work crying on the last day because they can’t be kind and rewind any longer. [00:25:51] The question was, what’s the worst job according to USA today because of the lack of flexibility and overall low pay? The answer while logger came in at number two, it was taxi driver that scored the top spot, or wouldn’t that be the bottom spot? Hey, but don’t worry taxi drivers, we still love you. We never say bad stuff about you. [00:26:13] And now to hopefully help you find work that is meaningful, it’s NYU Professor of Psychology, Tessa West, [00:26:23] Joe: and I’m so happy she’s here with us. Uh, Tessa West is here. How are you? [00:26:27] Tessa: I’m good. Thank you for having me on the show. I’m super excited. [00:26:30] Joe: Well, I’m so happy you could be here because. So many of our stackers are dealing with the fact I don’t like my job. [00:26:39] I’m sick of it. The reason I listen to Stacking Benjamins, Tessa in the first place is I’m trying to figure out how to get the hell out and just retire to drop out and get done. You must know a statistic. How many people do you think, what percentage of us just dislike our jobs now? [00:26:52] Tessa: It’s high. It’s like around 70% of us at any given day. [00:26:55] Um, I’d say it depends on what hour you ask people. Most people have a super ambivalent relationship with their career. They love it and they hate it often, kind of at the same time. So I guess it depends on what side of their personality you’re asking, but it’s, most of us right now are pretty unhappy at work. [00:27:10] Joe: That’s funny. ’cause I have my days. I love it 90% of the time. But I think we all have our, have our days and times. We have a lot of people that listen though, that think, you know, I’m just gonna grind it out and retire. But you talk more about finding meaningful work and I, and I think the overall message of this project is that there probably is meaningful work for you if you do a little bit of introspection. [00:27:34] Tessa: Yeah, I think that we often focus on the structural components of work. You know, where we wanna work, what our compensation packages are, but we don’t sit and think about our career, our job as a relationship partner that we’re kind of stuck with for our whole life. And my book is really about. Treating your career like you would a marital partner or someone that you are kind of in it for the long haul with. [00:27:55] And, and that takes some digging into the psychological sources of why you’re miserable. What is it about this that is no longer working? And for some people, they’re in love with a career that doesn’t love ’em back. For others, they’ve committed their whole lives to some path, path, and now they’re second guessing that, but they’re super embedded in, in their job and in their career and they cannot see a way out. [00:28:14] So lots of emotions, lots of feels going on for folks out there. Um, when you think about your career through that perspective, [00:28:20] Joe: Ben, you tell a story early on that totally embodies this. The guy’s name is Timothy. You write that Timothy’s telling you, no, no, no, no, no, I’m not going through any of this stuff. [00:28:30] And you say that the longer you talk to Timothy, the more he was totally going for it. Can you tell us the Timothy story? [00:28:35] Tessa: Yeah, so Timothy, um, is good at his job. He works in it, and I think for him, he would do this really interesting thing that we see with marriages, this ambivalence language. Like, I, I really love this job. [00:28:46] I’m super committed. I wish everyone else around me was, you know, I’m gonna move to Hawaii and I’m actually gonna become a fourth grade teacher. But, but just to remind you, I love this job. So he’s talking outta both sides of his mouth a little bit in the sense that he fantasizes about this other thing. [00:29:02] And then he would kind of see the look on my face because I told him I wanted to interview him for this identity crisis chapter. And he’s like, I’m not having that. That’s not me, that’s someone else. So he would correct his identity crisis statements with statements of commitment and love towards this thing. [00:29:16] And I love that ambivalence in him. And I think that embodies what a lot of us feel. And in marriages. That ambivalence is the thing that happens usually right before you break up with someone. It’s not this kind of nail in the coff and secure aha moment. It’s up, down, up, down. Love it, hate it, love it, hate it. [00:29:31] Fantasize, engage, fantasize, engage back and forth and so forth. [00:29:37] Joe: Why is it though, I mean that Timothy stays partly committed to the job? ’cause I feel like that is, like, I read that and I remember when I was working for American Express, I felt that until when I turned 40, I had a mentor tell me that he was leaving this job because it was 90% right? [00:29:52] But the other 10% he didn’t know and he didn’t wanna live a life of 90%. I basically, Tess, I felt like I had your book slapped across my head at at age 40 and goes, no, there’s gotta be a hundred percent out there. But is it guilt? Is it this feeling of that? Dammit, if I just work harder, I can make this be a fit or what is it? [00:30:12] Tessa: Yes. So some of it is coming from inside. It’s guilt. It is, uh, it’s a sense of shame that you have a lot of status here and deep down you don’t wanna let go of that because you know, if you go somewhere else, you’re gonna lose that status. And you might be the oldest person in the room right now and you’re gonna all of a sudden kind of like lose all that social capital that comes along with that. [00:30:32] So emotion also, there’s also a really basic. Behavioral explanation for what’s going on here. And that’s just intermittent reinforcement. A lot of these workplaces that we strongly identify with, they reward us on these kind of reinforcement schedules and aren’t regular, and they’re hard to predict. So one moment your boss loves you, the next moment your boss is a little bit distant from you. [00:30:54] And that kind of uncertainty based reinforcement is what makes rats push a lever. It’s what makes us stay in marriages, and it’s what makes us commit to jobs that are part of our identities that are not loving us back. And I think if you step back and realize, oh, I’m actually just part of this really basic behavioral pattern that like rats and monkeys also fall victim to, it’s not that special, but it is the biggest predictor of engagement to things that we don’t actually get much pleasure from. [00:31:20] And I think a lot of people are actually going through that, but they haven’t really kind of recognized that that’s part of this process. [00:31:25] Joe: It’s so wild, and you mentioned this earlier, that we all, you know, we all look at the structural, do I wanna work from home? But we truly don’t go internal and go, what do I need to fulfill me more in a job? [00:31:36] You have five reasons people are feeling disconnected at work. And before we dive into those and I want to dive into maybe the first one and a half in depth. ’cause I think those, well I think they all affect a lot of people, but we’re not gonna keep you here all day Tess. So, so we’ll go through maybe the first one, but before that you have two tips for people who are looking at possibly getting a new job. [00:32:00] And I think these are even great for people that aren’t there yet. The first one you say, and this by the way, is anathema for all of our introverts. I play an extrovert, but I truly am an introvert And I read this and I was already feeling my stomach tighten up networking. Like we have to do better networking. [00:32:16] How do you frame this idea, which I hate of talking to strangers when you’re looking for new work. [00:32:23] Tessa: You know, I have to be honest. Networking’s cringey. Nobody likes it. And I had to do it to write this book. I had to like figure out who hiring managers were and who professional recruiters were and set up those meetings and I think I learned a few things. [00:32:38] So first off, most people love to talk about themselves. So don’t be afraid to set up a networking call with someone you don’t know. And there’s kind of a, a science of how you do that without looking cringey and so forth. When you get on a call with someone for 15 minutes, you can ask them about what their path looked like and follow these specific instructions. [00:32:57] And I was shocked at how many people were happy just to talk about themselves with me. And I think most of these networking conversations aren’t about you selling yourself, trying to convince someone you’re great. It’s just about information gathering. So if you kind of, if you’re an introvert, and I’m also a positive introvert. [00:33:12] This isn’t impression management mode for you. This isn’t about you looking great and trying to explain to someone why you’re hireable. That comes much later on in the process. This is just about learning different things, and I think we have an instinct to network with people who are connected to each other, who have overlapping social information, but that actually can damage your exploration of a new career because people are gonna have experiences in common simply because they have other similarities in common, like where they grew up or the boss that they have. [00:33:39] In psychology, we call this snowball sampling. You don’t want a bunch of SY people in your experiment in psychology, just like you don’t want that when you’re networking because you want diverse perspectives. So then you can look for the signal and the noise. You can see what are the consistencies across all of these people that are telling me something about a new career. [00:33:56] But I feel the pain and you know, I was sort of pleasantly surprised at how comfortable people were in opening up and people were just let to talk about themselves. So just remind yourself of that when you have to do the networking. [00:34:06] Joe: Well, one of the ideas that I really liked was this idea that you put forward that, um, being more intentional about not just, you know, most of us, I think that your number was 70 something percent of people only network with the people that are at their own work or do their exact same job. [00:34:23] Like purposefully thinking about getting out of that and realizing how important it’s to get outta that, you know, maybe puts enough leverage on our introvert friends like me that, we’ll, we’ll be more excited about it. [00:34:34] Tessa: I think the reason why we do this is because we’re told that the best way to move ahead in your career is through social networks and people hire through recommendations. [00:34:42] And so those kind of insular networks, those connections, those, you know what we call central nodes in a network, are important for career opportunities for hiring. And it’s true that most organizations, when they ultimately hire, especially higher up, they go with people they know. And I think we internalize that message so much that we then really don’t explore people who are not in our immediate vicinity. [00:35:05] But I mean, I can tell you from experience, my friends in physics and chemistry and biology are way more interesting to talk to now for me than the people that I’ve been stuck with for 30 years. You know, I think it’s, you learn a lot and I think just reminding yourself, this isn’t about just getting the next job, it’s not about impressing people, it’s about learning new information. [00:35:25] Then you’re, you’re much better positioned to kind of break that, that mold of Yeah, it’s 70% of our connections are in office. Actually. It’s even more than just within a company in office. Oh, wow. [00:35:35] Joe: Like just right here, like Petri dish. [00:35:37] Tessa: Mm-Hmm. Yep. [00:35:38] Joe: The second tip you have before we get started here is you need to be strategic. [00:35:44] About applying for jobs. And I know it depends on which area of these five people are the strategy we use, but is there some overarching strategy we should think about differently? Break this idea of, uh, that we all have in our heads about how we, you know, carpet bombing for jobs. [00:36:01] Tessa: Yeah. You know, people come to me and they say, are, you see these LinkedIn posts? [00:36:05] I applied for 600 jobs this month and I got zero. And I say That’s because you applied for 600 jobs this month. Come back to me when you’ve applied for five and then those numbers will look really bad. So there’s kind of this irony of, um, thinking that more is more. When you do that, when you hit easy apply and you just upload your resume to these AI based algorithms that sort through your keywords, you are not strategic about how you’re making the parts of your resume talk to each other in the way that that organization wants. [00:36:35] You haven’t done the work to figure out from a hiring manager whether the job ad is accurately reflecting what they actually want versus something that they just cut and pasted from. Indeed, there’s a lot of work that goes into actually creating bespoke materials, you know, resumes and cover letters that if you don’t do it and you’re just uploading, you’re not gonna get those jobs. [00:36:55] You know, I talk to a lot of people who hire, and there’s a pretty mundane explanation for it, which is a lot of recruiters get paid based on the size of the funnel. They want a really wide funnel in the beginning that has 50,000 applicants and they wanna winnow it down to five. Now, if they started with 100 and winnow it down to the same five, they don’t get comped in the same way. [00:37:13] And so they actually benefit by having, by taking an ad down, putting it back up, getting a new batch, and you know, not actually taking most of those applications forward to the next step. And so thinking about that made me really cynical about this process. You really need to tailor those materials. And you cannot be applying for 600 jobs if you’re actually tailoring materials and you know anything about the orgs in which you’re applying. [00:37:38] Joe: I love an idea that you put forward, which is you’re also interviewing these people when you show up at the interview. It’s not just them interviewing you. You know, we’re all trying to pretend we’re a rockstar and we’re trying to impress them. Mm-Hmm. But by the same token, you’re interviewing them to make sure that it’s a good fit. [00:37:51] As a guy who interviews people, you know, I, I’ll interview a few people, well, I interview a lot of people for the podcast, but when I interview people to come work in our organization. A few other people don’t ask enough questions. Do you find that’s the case across the board? [00:38:06] Tessa: Yeah, there’s a huge gap between what people think they should be doing in interview and what interviewers want them to do. [00:38:12] And the biggest mistake they make is smile and nod and answer the questions. They’re in impression formation mode. They don’t ask tough questions, they don’t ask specific questions. Like, I noticed that most people who work in this company based on your website or LinkedIn page have been here for 15 years. [00:38:28] That’s great. Can you tell me about, you know, the trajectory for leadership? They don’t ask those things because they’re afraid it’s gonna make them look fussy, difficult, not interested, but the opposite is true. In fact. Tough questions and questions like, I don’t wanna just know what it looks like to succeed here, but what it looks like to fail and tell me about what that path is. [00:38:47] Those are actually the questions that the interviewers wanna hear because it means you’re taking this pretty seriously, and this isn’t your questions of the day. I love, I love them. They’re tough. They’re tough, but they’re meaty. And it shows that the person’s really invested in this job in a serious way. [00:39:01] But people are afraid to ask them because there’s this culture of niceness around you better not say the wrong thing, or they’re not gonna wanna hire you. You know, there’s even these apps now you can kind of put on your face to make your smile look more smiley, your eye contact, more eye contact, so bad. [00:39:16] It’s like so messed up. But people are like, yeah, I’m not smiley enough. Make me smile. And I’m like, we’re catfishing each other in these interviews. Like, what is the point? You’re gonna like, get in bed together and be like a, you know, not really. Yeah, the metaphors got too far, but there’s no point in doing that on a date. [00:39:32] There’s no point in doing it in a job interview, so, [00:39:34] Joe: yeah. No. Well, you know, the thing I always think about is that. If you are lying or just trying to impress me as a boss. And it turns out that six months from now you hate that job because we didn’t come together. Like, this is just like your last job and we’re hoping this is cool, the last job. [00:39:50] And I think you have to get kind of tough with each other early on to get there. [00:39:53] Tessa: Oh, you absolutely have to. And don’t lie about the things that like jack up your blood pressure and stress you out. You know, if, if the person says, look, we put out a lot of fires here. This is kind of an uncertainty based career. [00:40:06] Are you cool with that? And you’re like, I love putting out fires. I, I, I am like, I’m the greatest one. I’m the most stressed in reality, you die if you can’t, you know, have a hundred percent certainty at work. Do not take that job. But we’re like, yeah, yeah, that’s great. That’s great. I’m gonna learn how to deal. [00:40:21] You know? And I think, so we lie about what stresses us out. We lie about what our triggers that turn us into jerks are. And I think if we are just a little bit more honest, both sides need to just keep it real a little bit more then nobody, we would reduce this revolving door of talent by quite a bit. [00:40:36] But yes. [00:40:37] Joe: People are afraid. I have found so many times if we have these very much deeper conversations, I think that people expect, like we end up working together a lot longer, which is, you know, as an employer, that’s what I’m looking for. Yeah. Let’s start to go through these five, and as I mentioned, we’ll spend a lot of time just on number one because I think if we can dig deeper into one, we’ll help a lot more people than if we try to gloss over five. [00:40:59] Number one on your list is career is no longer a part of who you are. People have this crisis of identity. And my question is, I guess to kick off this topic, Tessa, is it, is it bad for me to say I’m Joe Salsi high money expert? Like when I say I’m Joe Cel Sea high money expert, I put money expert beside my name. [00:41:20] Mm-Hmm. And that becomes my identity. Is that wrong to do in the first place? [00:41:25] Tessa: No, as long as, well, now you’re kind of going into the territory of the star. Oh yeah, good point. As long you’re indeed an expert, you know, so assuming that that is an accurate reflection, which obviously in your case it is, I think that when you have an identity at work and it’s central to who you are. [00:41:41] That is a perfectly acceptable place to be. Where it gets dangerous is if you’re a money expert and you hate being a money expert. Mm. So you have what we call high identity centrality. Your money. Expertness is a core to who you are as a person, but you’re not satisfied with that identity. You know? But I hate it. [00:41:58] Um, we see this a lot in healthcare among doctors. You know, this is who I am. I’m an emergency department doctor, and it makes me absolutely miserable. I can’t stand a single moment of it. That’s when you get in that danger zone. Or I’d say if you’re a money expert, but you work for an organization that wants you to have some distance from that, or you personally want some distance from your workplace identity, but the company wants you to be like a little bit culty about it. [00:42:20] There’s a mismatch between who you see as yourself and what that identity is. Most people who are really struggling with their identities have that centrality, it’s core to who they are, but they’re not happy about it. You can be dissatisfied with the thing that defines you, and I think that’s where the real struggle is. [00:42:36] Joe: How do we then, if I’m feeling that, if somebody’s driving down the road listening to us, Tessa, and they’re like, oh, that’s totally me. You know, almost Timothy, right? Timothy talked about Mm-Hmm. He’s in it. He talks about how great this is, but I wanna move to Hawaii and become a fourth grade teacher. I love that. [00:42:51] Like I got this whole other identity I wanna have. [00:42:54] Tessa: He’s clearly a fantasize about it for years, you know? Right, [00:42:57] Joe: right. Thought about it slightly. How do we begin to work through that? That difference between who I am at work and who I truly wanna be? What’s our first step? [00:43:07] Tessa: First step is look for consistency in how stable your identity is. [00:43:11] So we will have good identity days and bad identity days. There are days when people are mean to you or your boss disrespects you and you feel your identity waning a little bit. I, I no longer think that being a professor is core to who I am, and that’s a self-protective mechanism we all have. So before you start exploring new things, you want to actually be stably kind of de-identifying with that career a little bit. [00:43:33] The next step I would tell people is do not wait for that aha magical moment where you’re gonna wake up and not feel identified. You actually need to kind of start exploring new career identities and go through that process of learning what a day in the life looks like for other potential careers before you make any moves at work. [00:43:51] You know, in relationships, one of the biggest predictors of getting into an on, again, off again marriage, a relationship, is you break up. Without having anything to fill that hole in your heart of where that identity used to live. And we sort of panic, you know, who am I now? I don’t know who I am and unless I can get a new job that I identify within in six weeks, I’m gonna go back to that old thing. [00:44:11] And so you almost have to kind of off board that identity slowly and build new ones in. And I give you the steps it takes to do that. But there’s definitely not this kind of light switch that’s gonna go off in your mind where you’re gonna all of a sudden no longer feel that. So ambivalence ups and down emotional rollercoaster, that’s gonna be all part of the process. [00:44:29] But look for that stability and start exploring these new things. And it’s okay to kind of date other career identities before you commit to something. I think exploring them and networking and learning about them is really important before you break up with your job. [00:44:43] Joe: As I’m listening to you, and I definitely felt this while I was reading. [00:44:46] I think even for our stackers who feel comfortable in their career right now, this is a good activity to, to, to, to dive into a little bit like, yeah, how does my identity identify with this job? And is it the same as it was six months ago or a year ago, or even yesterday? Is that true? I. [00:45:01] Tessa: Absolutely. I feel like we wait until we’re miserable before we start doing any exploring at work. [00:45:06] But misery is just around the corner, folks. It can happen with any merge, layoff, whatever, you know? And for most of us, our real happiness at work comes from our relationships. In fact, the the people I talk about who drift apart and don’t really know why, it’s often because their team members have changed, their best friend at work has left, and we don’t have control over those things. [00:45:27] You know, people leave work all the time and we don’t realize how much of our identification or happiness is yoked to that. And so this, this happiness, it feels stable and secure is actually much more tenuous. And I do think it’s good to always kind of be exploring these things, um, and to always network with people outside of your immediate circle. [00:45:44] You’re gonna learn new information. Even if they can’t land you a new job, you’re gonna learn lots of things that could be useful. So I absolutely agree with that advice. [00:45:52] Joe: It’s funny because when I was a financial planner. I got that note from my mentor that he was leaving the company and at age 40 I decided to sell my business and change. [00:46:03] I had fantasized like Timothy becoming a teacher. My wife and I met as middle school track coaches and I was gonna become a, a teacher and a track coach. And Tessa, I completely fantasized about it to the point that this was, the grass was clearly gonna be greener as a teacher. I mean, and all my teachers I know are nodding their head right now. [00:46:21] Oh yeah. It’s great. Every day. Yeah. Talking day. Yes. Is this a spot, let’s go back to networking. Is this a spot then where Timothy, instead of fantasizing about it, starts going to lunch with some of his teacher friends and really quizzing them about what life as a teacher really looks like? [00:46:36] Tessa: Yeah, you need that reality check for sure. [00:46:38] And we all have grasses, greener problems. You know, we tend to focus on the ways in which our lives will improve if we change, not get worse. Most of us have this, things are gonna get better in the future kind of bias. It’s pretty universal for humans. We think we get smarter and more attractive and in more interesting over time, but we get less. [00:46:55] Look at me, I’m like, how is that possible? You know? Yes. Need to explore your day in the life, and I think you. Understanding two things. One, collecting some data on you, on what stresses you out. You know, what you think is gonna stress you out at the beginning of the day, what actually does. And then when you talk to people in these other careers, ask them not about stress, but about the triggers that that stress you out. [00:47:18] And I think one place where people misstep with this grass is greener thing is they forget about the weird, idiosyncratic things that rise their own blood pressure. And they don’t ask if those things happen in that new career. Um, they also don’t think about their skills as fungible. So they don’t think about, okay, I have a really, I have a skill of say. [00:47:37] This is really dated, but I’ll say it anyway. I’m really good at Microsoft Excel. How could I use that in my new job? And instead they think they have to reinvent themselves. It’s like getting a really bad breakup tattoo. Like, I’m gonna get this Phoenix on my back and it’s gonna be super hot and awesome and a haircut. [00:47:53] And now I’m a new person. And we try to do that at work too. I’m gonna scrap it all. But most skills are fungible. And if you are career professional and you’ve been working for a while, you probably have more skills than you realize. But you have to ask about how those skills transfer to new careers in a very strategic way about, you know, the task people execute when they do those skills where they do it and collect that data so you can actually see just how tangible those skills would be in a new career. [00:48:19] Joe: Here’s another dated term, throwing out the baby with the bath water. I don’t know where mom came up with that one, but because throwing the baby at all just doesn’t sound great. But I think everybody knows the point of that term. And you talk about that when you’re transitioning. You have this idea called keeper skills. [00:48:34] Mm-Hmm. Which I found very valuable as a rubric. Tell me about keeper skills. [00:48:38] Tessa: When we think about what we wanna do at work, we often think about what I wanna leave behind. You know what I wanna start anew, but I, I try to force people into this mindset of think about what you can build on that you actually like doing. [00:48:51] And you might not love the context in which you’re doing it. You might not love how that skill sort of gets translated, but you need to anchor your job, search on the things that you actually are already good at. You don’t want to pick a career that has nothing in common and so it to school. What do those things have in common? [00:49:10] You need to take, I. Some time to figure out, all right, I’m really good at computers troubleshooting, taking a ticket written in, in, you know, BLE and translating it well, that’s a skill that fourth grade teachers also have. You know, and figuring out how those skills translate. And that will just not only help you figure out how you could become a newcomer in this career, but also how to rewrite your resume using the right language, highlighting what you already have. [00:49:34] And it sounds very simple. Of course we all have keeper skills, but a lot of us do wanna throw the baby out with bath water and completely start over. And I really advise people against that. [00:49:43] Joe: No, ’cause they’re keeper skills. ’cause they light you up. I mean, that’s the part that really lights you up. I’m thinking. [00:49:49] So Timothy goes to interview to become a high school teacher, you know, way better than I do. Tessa, what Timothy’s thinking when he goes into the interview. Why should they hire me as an IT guy, brand new teacher versus somebody who maybe got downsized from some other school district? They already have all of these, they already have all this experience that I don’t have. [00:50:08] They already have all these skills. I don’t have. How does Timothy work through his own brain to overcome what he sees as these deficiencies when he walks into the interview? [00:50:18] Tessa: Yeah, people like Timothy forget that if they’ve gotten to an interview it’s because somebody is excited that they’re interviewing someone who had a different path and they are seeing skills in you that they think will be a real value added that maybe you don’t even see in yourself. [00:50:34] And I think we’re so busy trying to convince people that we are hireable, that we don’t ask those tough questions and we don’t ask about things like knowledge transfer. This kind of complex concept of like, I know a thing. How am I gonna make sure that knowledge then gets utilized in the way I want in this new job? [00:50:51] And so don’t feel like you have to cost play as a fourth grade teacher. Don’t pretend you are a person who don’t get a new outfit that looks fourth grade teachery. Wear your clothes. Own your old identity and talk about how that identity is now gonna be useful for you being a teacher. I, I see a lot of psychology professors try to move to business schools and they’re like, I’m gonna put some business school slides into my talk. [00:51:14] I’m like, what does that even mean? They know you come from a psych department, just like Timothy’s school district knows he comes from an IT background. So don’t try to cover, to use the language that we see in the diversity inclusion world by pretending you’re something that you’re not own what you are. [00:51:32] Just do the hard work to figure out how to transfer your knowledge over and ask the questions about how that’s gonna happen. Don’t assume that they’ve even kind of thought about it. [00:51:40] Joe: Yeah, because I think again, is the guy who’s hired. A lot of times, and I love your point that you might not see this, we’d love a fresh perspective. [00:51:46] Like if I get somebody into a role, I’ve had people go into roles where they had almost no quote experience in that area, but they had so much linear experience in other fields. They brought this whole new lens that I never saw and totally helped us change our game because they were able to be the first person in our organization who looked at things differently in a really cool outside way. [00:52:08] Tessa: Yeah, and a lot of these skills that are actually sampled in the interview that people care about are things like skills can be taught, but the ability to take feedback and not get defensive is a skill that is, is difficult to teach if someone doesn’t have it coming in. I mean, I would debate that a little bit, but the people who I talk to that interview kind of non-traditional candidates, say things like, we’re looking at their ability to take feedback. [00:52:29] We’re looking at their ability to sort of reflect on what they could have done differently and better. We’re not looking at their ability to learn software. We can teach them that. If they don’t know that, who cares? They clearly learned 15 parallel things in the past. So don’t focus so much on that metaphorical software knowledge. [00:52:45] Focus on those innate kind of hard learned skills that come with experience, like feedback giving and getting right. And I think that’s where people sort of don’t realize they have a lot more to bring to the table than they, than maybe they even advertise in the interview. [00:52:59] Joe: I heard this joke a couple weeks ago about a woman who goes in for an interview and the interviewer says. [00:53:04] What’s the worst trait that you have? And the interviewee says, well, I’ve been told that I don’t take feedback very well. And the interviewer goes, well, I don’t think, I don’t care what you think, so, sorry. [00:53:19] Tessa: That’s like 90% of people. They’re like, I love you. Definitely do. You do. No one loves feedback. That’s a lie. [00:53:27] You can learn to take it, but don’t be like, I love, I love negative feedback. It, it really helps me go, no, you don’t. I don’t, no, [00:53:35] Joe: no. None of us. Number two on your list. And, and I felt seen and number one, with crisis of identity, but also number, well, hell, I felt seen on all these number two working in a job that changed so much. [00:53:46] It isn’t recognizable. There’s this drift apart. I mean, when, when we started this podcast, you know, I would fire up the microphone and now like I told you Tessa, before we started, like now we do Instagram reels, we do Instagram lives and YouTube, and we’re doing all this video stuff that we didn’t do at all when we started. [00:54:03] Like sometimes the job, well in almost every career you’re there long enough. I think the job changes. [00:54:09] Tessa: And this is a great point. So most people, they make two mistakes. One, they think that job is entirely changed, not them. You know? And we know this in a marriage, you look at your spouse, you’re like, who are you? [00:54:19] You know? Used to be fun and cool, and now you’re just kind of miserable and grumpy. I haven’t changed. You are the miserable, grumpy one. And we do this to our jobs. We assume that each change in ways beyond recognition. And then we’re also too local in how we think about that. We think it’s just organization and often it’s the whole industry. [00:54:35] So podcasting. You know, clearly I go industry back to school and learn how to do video editing. Yeah. Because everyone has a YouTube channel now with, with their pod. It’s, it’s just not like voice only anymore. And I think people don’t realize how widespread certain changes are. And one of the people I talk about in my book, Trish really had to figure out, okay, this whole career has changed beyond recognition. [00:54:58] And a lot of people are feeling that. And there’s a huge group of people who are close to retirement that have an identity crisis slash drifted apart. And they’re like, I don’t, I don’t know what this Slack channel thing is that I’m supposed to use. Where’s my martini and my steak lunch? Like, that’s how I do business. [00:55:12] And so, you know, there is this kind of often these industrywide changes that take us a while to kind of actually process this happening. That happens to a lot of people. [00:55:22] Joe: Obviously we’re not gonna be able to get to the a hundred percent solution today, but where do we begin? Because it seems to me. On one hand you could say, well, you need to keep up with the news and changes in your industry more. [00:55:33] And then you, you see the change coming ahead of time. Yeah. You’re shrugging at that one, not, not really gonna help. [00:55:38] Tessa: You know, it’s funny because people will ask me like, how is AI changing the workplace? And what I feel now, every conference I go [00:55:45] Joe: to, by the way, [00:55:46] Tessa: yes. And now I’ve been offered AI guru ship. [00:55:49] You know, you, there’s personal trainers, there’s chefs, and there’s your AI guru, you know, when did this a gig gig? Sure you could try to keep up with all the industry wide changes, but chances are the way those things are actually affecting your day-to-Day, you’re gonna start making up those connections. [00:56:07] You’re gonna see that your company now uses Chat Bot and you’re gonna see that you no longer feel heard, and you’re going to assume it’s because your company uses Chat bot. And I think one thing I learned when I was writing this drifted apart chapter is that like even the leaders who are making these organizational level changes don’t see how they trickle down to affect People’s Day-today lives. [00:56:26] Mm-Hmm. They don’t even see those connections. In fact, I asked them to draw lines between day-to-Day changes people feel and structural organizational changes. And they’re just like, I don’t, I have no idea why someone’s manager is rude. And whether it’s because they have more direct reports or roles were absorbed. [00:56:41] It’s just too messy. And I think the mistake we make is assuming that two things that are correlated are causally associated. And we do this all the time. And the drifted apart really falls victim to that. [00:56:52] Joe: The other three I wanna mention briefly, number three is taking on too much at work and feeling overwhelmed and helpless. [00:56:58] The stretch too thin. I know a lot of us as downsizing have happened. Feel that number four, struggling to gain status at work to the point where promotions and race weren’t being given. I’ve seen that happen to people around me when I was at American Express. People that were clearly star players, but the boss didn’t think so and so they were just overlooked. [00:57:14] And number five, having power and status at work, but not getting recognized or compensated for us that it’s the underappreciated star. Your book on this topic, which comes out tomorrow is called Job Therapy, and I know that you chose those words very carefully, like you chose for your last project Jerks at Work. [00:57:33] Like we know exactly everybody. Everybody knows who the jerk is that they were working next to, but the word therapy there I think has a lot of weight that people Tessa might not recognize. Tell me about job therapy. Why that title of therapy? [00:57:47] Tessa: You know, I’ve been teaching close relationships at New York University for years now, and the same issues that people were bringing up to me about their close relationships for the same things they were talking about with jobs. [00:58:00] Once we break free from, I need to make an emotion free judgment, I need to be structural about this and just embrace the fact that we’re gonna have messy, ugly emotions around these things, then I think we’re better suited to actually explore these things and just be much more strategic about it. And so I think therapy is something that a lot of us will say, I don’t have time for, especially job therapy. [00:58:22] I’m too busy. But the kind of therapy I suggest you do takes, you know, five minutes a day to start. Simple self-assessments, a lot of which is just about learning about yourself. Um, you know, not even digging into a new job, but learning why you are self interrupting so much or what stresses you out, or what keeper skills you wanna keep. [00:58:41] And therapy often just kind of starts with that. It’s about like, let’s learn what turns you on and off. What learn, let figure out what triggers you to freak out at your kid. And the same thing with your career. And I just want people to kind of feel comfortable with that notion and to slow down and take a deep breath and to make this kind of a more long-term experience. [00:59:00] Joe: Well, ’cause if you don’t do the therapy, I think it’s gonna come out one way or another. And maybe not such a helpful way. [00:59:06] Tessa: Yeah. You know, you end up fighting about the dishes and it’s not really about the dishes. And I think we do the same thing. Our relationship, Cheryl and I have [00:59:11] Joe: never done that. We’ve never done that. [00:59:13] Yeah. [00:59:14] Tessa: The War of the Roses with your career until you’re dead. Like you wanna stop that. Right. Go to therapy. [00:59:20] Joe: Yes. One of my favorite lines is from Sun Sue. The Art of War, the best battles, the one that’s never fought, and maybe a little job therapy will help us avoid some of these. You know, we talk about people get to 50 or you know, 40, we get to whatever age we see some of our fire people at age 30 going, is this it? [00:59:35] Is this what it’s all about? And maybe a little therapy now will go a long way. The book’s called Job Therapy, finding Work That Works for You. It’s out tomorrow, everywhere, I think. Right? [00:59:43] Tessa: Yes. [00:59:44] Joe: Tessa, thank you so much for mentoring our stackers today. I super appreciate it. [00:59:49] Tessa: Thanks so much for having me on. [00:59:51] bit: I’m Rocky Loni, the Profit Answer man. And when I’m not helping small businesses stack Benjamins for themselves, I’m Stacking Benjamins for myself. [01:00:03] Joe: It’s so frustrating og seeing people sometimes stick with a career. They know that’s going nowhere. I mean, sometimes, you know, they’ll share with you where they’re headed and you’re like, yeah, I don’t think that’s going anywhere either. [01:00:14] But, but, but I think at the very least, time is finite. There’s nothing wrong with setting off on this journey to go find the right thing. [01:00:23] OG: Well, I mean, tomorrow’s not promised to everybody, right? So why not? Why not just be as happy and content as you possibly can in all the different areas of your life? [01:00:33] You know, you spend a bunch of time at work, you spend a bunch of time around work, people doing work things. [01:00:39] Joe: Have you ever had a time where you’re like, you know, I wish I waited. I wish I waited to make that change. We talked about this on a Friday show with Alyssa Maes, but [01:00:48] bit: yeah. [01:00:49] Joe: Have you ever had a time in your life where like, wow, I wish I would’ve stayed in that dead end job. [01:00:53] Few more days, [01:00:55] OG: few more show. Oh, um, this sitting close to home now? Yeah. I’m much more of a ready, fire, aim type of person anyways, so that’s never been something that I’ve had to worry about because I’m like, woo-hoo. Let’s go this way. See what happens, you know, on the adventure, you know, you get kind of trapped in that comfortability of, you know, I know what’s gonna happen. [01:01:15] I know what my pay is, I know what my bonus is gonna be. I know, da, da, da, da, da. And it’s not, it’s not exciting. That doesn’t mean that you have to pick the exciting thing. It doesn’t mean that you can’t be fulfilled, and that has to be your only thing. ’cause I think there’s some amount of responsibility that goes into this, right? [01:01:33] It’s like I would rather play golf a lot more than I do, and I would rather do my other hobbies more than I do. But I also know from a responsibility standpoint, I have to put kids in college and I have to pay a mortgage payment still. And you know, and those other things aren’t generally gonna, I’m not gonna magically start making enough money in those other hobbies or other interests of mine to do that. [01:01:53] So you gotta kind of balance that out. But I think if you have the opportunity to focus on the things that really do find the stuff that gets you going, I don’t know why people don’t think of that more. [01:02:05] Joe: I think our friend Scott Galloway, I saw him recently saying that it’s often OG the boring stuff that makes us wealthy. [01:02:13] OG: Well, I mean, you know, all the shows that are on, uh, HGTV or the Mike Rose, you know, the Dirty Jobs or the Undercover Boss things, it’s like a trash compactor company or a moving company, you know, landscaping firm and like those sorts of things that are, although honestly, I wouldn’t mind riding a mowing tractor for the whole day. [01:02:32] That seems like a fun. That does sound like fun. That’s my retirement job. It’s gonna be, I’m mowing grass, I’m gonna be forest gum. That’s my, I’ve talked about wanting to, here’s my spirit animal, [01:02:43] Joe: wanting to be a cross country trucker, pop ins, a podcast, say [01:02:48] OG: Cross country coach. I’m like, okay. I can see cross country coach. [01:02:51] Cross country trucker. Yes. It escalated quickly. [01:02:53] Joe: Every time I’ve said that on the show, I get our trucker friends, you people who [01:02:57] OG: are cross country truckers going, no, you don’t. [01:02:59] Joe: Yeah. They, they totally do. Every time they’re like, yeah, it sounds, sounds cool. Uh, you don’t wanna do this job. I got a lot of respect for our truckers out in the audience. [01:03:09] OG: Ah, that’s what my, that’s what my dad and my grandfather did. My grandfather was the Michigan trucker of the year. One year. [01:03:14] Joe: Oh, I didn’t, there’s a thing for everything, isn’t there? [01:03:17] OG: Well, this was a big thing, as I recall. I was young, but I remember it was the governor had a thing for it, and he had 43 seasons, 43 years with no incidences. [01:03:27] Wow. And that was kind of unheard of at the time. And I bet he saw [01:03:30] Joe: stuff around him a lot. [01:03:32] OG: Over 43 [01:03:33] Joe: years. You saw some Yeah. You avoided some accidents. [01:03:36] OG: Yeah. That’s what he got. [01:03:38] Joe: Thanks to Tessa for, for helping us. And I hope that today we help some of our stackers find work that that is more meaningful. [01:03:44] ’cause um, there’s a lot there. And I hate seeing people just drop out for no reason when Mm-Hmm. They’re maybe leaving some of their best stuff on the table. Hey, uh, let’s not leave this next segment on the table. This is the part of the show where we reach out to a stacker who said, you know, what a better call Saul. [01:04:03] See hi in og. We’re helping a stacker in need. You guys did a great job last Wednesday, man. Just knocking ’em down. [01:04:10] bit: Bang, bang, [01:04:11] Joe: bang, man. Yep. Great questions from a lot of stackers. I I love listening to that show. Today we’re going back to just one. We’re gonna say hello to Blake. Blake, what you got for us man? [01:04:22] caller: Hi, Joe OG and Doug. I have a question for you. I originally emailed my question in because I was a little too nervous to ask my question in front of the other two listeners. Um, however, Joe asked me to go ahead and call it in. So figured I would go ahead and do that. My question is, I listened to the show the other day where there was a discussion about Yoda and their recent troubles. [01:04:46] It made me think about my situation. I started using Acorns about nine years ago with investing my roundups, setting up a recurring investment and not taking any money out. I have a decent amount saved there. I have wondered if I should move it to a more reputable broker, such as Vanguard, fidelity, or Schwab, rather than continuing to invest through an app. [01:05:06] If I transfer the assets, I believe there may be a transfer fee charged by Acorns. If I liquidate, then reinvest the cash, I will have capital gains taxes. I do like the fact that Acorns does the investing automatically. I have truly just said it and let it go. Am I overthinking this and should I just continue with Acorns or maybe make the switch to the other brokers? [01:05:27] I really enjoy the show sincerely. Blake. [01:05:31] Joe: Blake, nice job, Blake. As, uh, Blake said so eloquently, man, he did write that to me. Yes, og. And I said, man, call it in. Get the free swag and we, we’d love to hear you. So Blake, great job. Thanks for the question. This is a question I think a lot of people have. You invest into one of these online apps like Acorns with a cool Roundup thing. [01:05:52] I’d love, love me some Acorns, but do you leave the money there? [01:05:56] OG: You know, I think that all these things have a time and a place depending on where you are in your financial journey. I was, I keep on getting these emails from Stockpile, so that was a app that you and I have used and, and recommended for a while. [01:06:10] They changed their fee structure, so we kind of stopped recommending it, but, but I kept on getting a email from them and finally I had logged back in and, you know, there’s 68 cents in the account or something. That’s why they’re sending it to me. But I think there’s a time and a place for these different apps as you build the consistency around investing and as you build the predictability into your life, and then there becomes a time where the acorns, literally the roundups aren’t making that big of a difference anymore. [01:06:40] This was a question we had a couple of weeks ago. That Doug and I did, and I don’t remember if it was last Wednesday or if it was one of the other shows, but you know, it was like, how much should I get involved in the day-to-Day management of my money relative to other things, while you’re investing a hundred dollars a month and it’s doing its thing, you wanna make that as simple as possible, make it really easy, and as you’re building out your getting started in your financial journey, all the little tricks of, you know, hey, I can round this up and I’ll get an extra 82 cents, and that’s fantastic. [01:07:14] But there comes a point where your money starts making as much money as you’re putting in, right? So you’re saving a thousand dollars a month and you have a thousand dollars in your account. Well, heck, just focus on the thousand dollars a month. Try to make that $1,500 a month, that’s gonna make a bigger impact over the next year than you fiddle in with which app to use, or fee structures or any of the other sort of stuff. [01:07:36] But all of a sudden your portfolio is a hundred thousand dollars. And this year so far, your a hundred thousand dollars account’s grown, 10,000 and you’ve put in five or you’ve put in six. It’s like, well, wait a second. My money is starting to make more money than I’m contributing to it. You know, and it gets to 200,000, or it gets to 500,000. [01:07:55] You know, you can see the point where all of a sudden your money is making a ton of money. I was having a discussion with a client about retirement. She was talking about being more conservative around retirement, and I said, they’re retiring with a good sum, a nice seven figure sum. I’m like, look, in a normal year, your portfolio is gonna make as much money in retirement as you made before retirement. [01:08:15] You can’t just forget about that. That’s not like chump change. You know, two, $300,000 of, of portfolio growth needs to be taken care of. You need to be thinking about making sure you’re doing that the right way. That’s a lot of cash. So I think when it comes to like Acorn or Stockpile or different types of getting started apps, they’re fantastic for doing that. [01:08:37] But once you’ve built a regularity into your life of, you know, I save $200 a month in my brokerage account, I save, you know, I max out my Roth using this feature or something like that. I think it probably makes sense to make that a little bit more cost effective. Make it a little bit more brand name if you want, because of the fact that sometimes these apps go away or they change their structure or whatever the case may be, because you don’t need to do the roundup thing to save anymore. [01:09:03] If you’ve been doing Acorns for a while. The Roundup thing is just, it’s a nice to have, right? Yeah. So just make your, just look at how much you save every month and just put that as your a CH into your brokerage account. Like you’ve, you’ve demonstrated that you can do it, is my point. And that’s what Acorns and all these FinTech apps are generally about is, well, I see if it equals 75 bucks a month, then just save 75 bucks a month. [01:09:26] Just save 75 bucks a month. You’ve demonstrated to yourself that you can do it. And that’s the point is to like, get you into the habit of doing that thing. And now you’re at the point where you’re like, I’m saving 500 a month. Okay, just, just save 500 a month. It doesn’t have to be in Acorns at that point. [01:09:42] You know what I mean? A couple of things that I wanna point out about what he said about transferring and paying taxes and that sort of thing. There’s probably a transfer fee because the low, low cost of products, they have to, you know, they gotta have some money somewhere. And that’s sometimes where they put it is, you can have the account, but if you wanna move it out, we’re gonna charge you a hundred bucks or something like that. [01:10:00] The taxes may not be as bad as you think if you’ve been investing over a long period of time. Every time you’re investing, you’re buying new shares at today’s price, because the market’s been going up. You have some shares that you bought a long time ago. You have some shares that you bought yesterday, and so you can look and see what that cost basis is. [01:10:16] If they report that and then do the math. If you make a certain amount or less, then the capital gains rate’s zero. So, you know, you might find that you’re under that depending on your income, your household income, or you can structure it such that it’s a low amount this year and you know, over, over a year or two of trading. [01:10:33] The second thing to be aware of in transferring positions from these accounts to another is that they will generally only let you transfer whole shares. So part of the feature of the FinTech apps is it allows you to buy fractional shares, right? So you’re, you’re diversifying, you’re buying, you know, whatever ETFs or you’re buying stocks, but you’re buying 0.002 shares of Amazon Point oh oh three shares of Apple, you know, with your 11 cents of. [01:10:57] Of contributions today. And that’s totally great. You know, that’s a fantastic way that they do that now as opposed to all shares. But when you transfer it, they’re not gonna let you transfer the point, whatever shares, generally speaking. So look at your account statement and you see, you know that you have 1.682 shares of Amazon, you’re probably gonna sell the 0.682 anyway. [01:11:16] They’re gonna force that to transfer it in cash. So there’s always gonna be some sort of, you know, ruffles, some sort of ripples I guess, of, of changes that happen. And then the only other thing that I would say about this is kind of fast forward into the future, so think about the next 10 years. Do you think that acorns, and I’m not throwing shaded acorns, but do you think that they’re a custodian that you wanna have hundreds of thousands of dollars with in the future? [01:11:43] Or would you envision having a custodian that is a Vanguard, a Schwab, a Fidelity, one of these other big companies that you mentioned as being the primary place for your portfolio? Once you’ve demonstrated to yourself that you can save and address the taxability and that sort of thing of changing it, I think most people land on because the products are all ubiquitous and you can buy Vanguard stuff at Schwab. [01:12:09] You can buy Schwab stuff at, at Fidelity. You know, like everybody’s got all the products. You just have to find the custodian that works best for you and that’s probably where you’re gonna end up. So once you’ve gotten to the point where that behavior’s good, you can probably, it served its purpose. [01:12:27] Joe: Disengage. Yeah. I think my initial answer to that goes right along parallel with everything that you said, og, which is that if this becomes a significant part of your portfolio, it’s a significant part of your, your growth, I think it makes sense to have your portfolio diversified appropriately. It’s easier to do that in one place. [01:12:45] It’s easier to just have the portfolio in one spot. We always talk about that when people leave jobs, have an IRA on the side so that you just have this one spot where as you change from company to company, all your money goes into this same pot. And if the company a gets cheap that you used to work at and decides to jack up the fees on the 401k, or for some reason they make bad choices, they decide they want everything in gold. [01:13:13] And that’s gonna be the only, the only option you have if you’re in that old 401k. Even though you don’t work there anymore, you still have to go along with what the new, the new rules are. I mean, the 401k committee creates these rules in an ira. You create the rules. So the flexibility, the freedom to keep your portfolio in one place and just having that one dashboard I think is so much, so much. [01:13:36] OG: Well, some people say, I’ve heard this a couple of times lately, it’s like, well, don’t I wanna diversify place? I don’t wanna have my money all in the same place for safety. And it’s like, okay, I get that. From a banking standpoint, if you’re somebody that has a million dollars of cash and you’re going, I got a million bucks of cash, it doesn’t make sense to have one bank that has a million bucks. [01:13:54] I should have four banks that have two 50 for the FDIC protection. Frankly, there’s ways around that too. We have a solution, a banking solution, that you can do 12 million of FDIC insurance between business and personal accounts, and it’s all high yield savings. So there’s a, there’s ways around that too. [01:14:10] But when it comes to an investment account, there is no protection for ups and downs, right? So if you make a bad investment and it goes down, you don’t get to go back to Fidelity and go, you guys let me do that. I want my money back. Like that’s Whoa, whoa, whoa. Yeah, that doesn’t happen. There was a time, Joe, when you and I started where it did make sense to have an account at American Funds, and it made sense to have an account at Franklin and an account at American Century and an account at Ameriprise because Oppenheimer. [01:14:35] Oh yeah, Oppenheimer Global. Remember that? God, yeah. O-P-P-G-X-I think was the ticker that was, that was ooh, gimme all, gimme all in the fields. But because all of those places had products and you know, different specialties that they were good at, you had an account of Fidelity ’cause you wanted Fidelity stuff and they had good stuff. [01:14:51] They had Fidelity Magellan, you want a Fidelity Magellan, you had to buy at Fidelity. But now all of the products are virtually all transaction free. All of the stocks you can buy at every single company. You can buy Vanguard stuff at Schwab. You can buy Fidelity stuff at, well, maybe most Fidelity stuff at Schwab, you know what I mean? [01:15:09] Like there’s no benefit to having 13 different accounts. And to your point, for simplicity’s sake, you can be a lot more specific. Make sure there’s not overlap. Make sure you’re not missing anything. If you’ve got one place that you’re looking at all of your money, it makes a lot more sense to have as few places as possible where you have to manage it from. [01:15:29] So I’m a big fan of consolidation. [01:15:32] Joe: I do wanna go back though. Acorn’s a pretty cool app for people just starting out. I love it. Like you’re just trying to get this motor running. Go open yourself up an Acorn app. ’cause it’s just another way to get that savings muscle started and, and you realize sometimes fairly quickly, sometimes it takes a while that you can do this. [01:15:50] You think you can’t, you think, oh, I gotta have that money available. No, you don’t. And Acorns kind of proves to you that this power of automating it and getting it outta your hand is 90% of the battle. [01:16:01] OG: It’s like starting out in your 401k at 5% and then in June, flipping it to six and then seven in December and then eight in June. [01:16:10] Again, it feels impossible. If you were to say to somebody, you can max out your 401k, they go, dude, that’s 23 grand. I don’t have 23,000. It’s like, but I bet you I can get you there in five years because it’s just a little bit, you know, you just make that little change if you make a big drastic change. I. [01:16:26] Yeah, you’re gonna notice it, but you’re not gonna notice 20 bucks, probably, probably not gonna notice 20 bucks a month and you make that little change over the course of four or five years, you find 3, 6, 12 months increments. You get there, you get there. It’s not about doing all of the things all at one time. [01:16:44] When we work through with clients, we kinda go through this process of, of all the different areas of financial planning. CFP Board says there’s six, they say seven now with behavioral finance, but six client facing areas and everybody wants to do everything. It’s like, we’ll get there. Let’s address the major things right now. [01:17:01] As exciting as your estate plan is, I’m sure there’s a, we’ll get to it. Just do a little bit. It’s progress every single time period that you can do, and compounding is profound. [01:17:14] Joe: Blake, great job. Again, thank you so much for calling in. We’re sending Blake, uh, over to our shirt shop where he can pick out his favorite, uh, stacky Benjamin swag that he can show off to everybody. [01:17:25] He got it done. If you’re not here because you’re wondering about your Acorn account or you’re wondering about one account, you’re thinking, man, I just need all my stuff to dovetail. How do I get my financial plan in order? Well, OG and his team are taking clients, so head to Stacking Benjamins dot com slash og. [01:17:42] That’s the link that gets you to OGs team’s calendar. Then a first meeting with them to see how they can interface with you to make better financial decisions in the future. We are already getting close to August, did July, huh? I can’t believe it. One more month. Unofficially of summer. I can’t believe we’re turning the corner fairly soon. [01:18:05] Uh, well, heck, we started this off. We talk about football season like crazy. Let’s go out to my favorite spot, which, uh, we call the back porch. Oh, gee, you’ve had some fun around the house, huh? [01:18:17] OG: Oh, kinda love it. When, uh, when, when, when you go on vacation for a few days and you come back and. You go, why did they put a water heater in the attic again? [01:18:28] It’s always a risk. You know? You hope that house doesn’t burn down. You know, you don’t live in Houston and it’s full of water when you come back. That happens to some people. Surprise, yeah, [01:18:36] Joe: hurricane, you have a bathtub in your [01:18:38] OG: kitchen. You’ve always wanted it in ground pool in your house. Now it’s in your living room. [01:18:45] So, I don’t know. I can’t, I don’t know how your, I think your stuff is not like this, but in our house, our water heaters and our furnaces are in the attic. Which to me seems like about the stupidest place to put those things. [01:18:59] Joe: What could go wrong? What could go wrong? [01:19:02] OG: I’m no expert at water and physics, but it seems to me that if you’re gonna put a hundred gallons of water somewhere in a, in a, in a real thin metal container somewhere in your house, the least likely, why not start with over [01:19:18] Joe: my head? [01:19:19] OG: The least successful place if something goes wrong, would be the place directly above everything. [01:19:24] Joe: There’s gotta be, by the way, there’s gotta be somebody in that business who’s a stacker that can explain that to me. There’s gotta be like somebody listening who can tell us the efficacy to [01:19:34] OG: the million dollar. [01:19:35] I think that’s just where they put it, because I have neighbors in our subdivision, theirs are in their garage, which makes more lives much on basements, right? Like in, in the north, all that stuff’s in the basement, you know? Yeah. HVAC and whatever. But, um, uh, anyway, so we’ve, we’ve avoided the water heater issues. [01:19:52] However, the furnace in the attic. You know, it runs AC and then there’s the, the drain line and you know, whatever, if it gets clogged up, which happens often, uh, down here, ’cause the AC runs all the time. And then there’s a drain pan that’s underneath the, the furnace, which by the way is suspended from the ceiling. [01:20:09] It’s not even like on the ground in the attic or like on the floor. It’s hung from the raptor side. Apparently that’s better. But anyways, there’s this drain pan and then the drain pan drains outside. And I’ve always told my kids and my wife, if you ever see water dripping from the roof and it’s sunny out in the summertime and it’s not raining, like someone say something, we [01:20:32] Joe: may have a problem. [01:20:33] OG: Well, lo and behold, my neighbor text me while we’re up in Michigan a couple weeks ago and he goes, Hey man, I don’t think something’s going right with your. With your attic or something. I can go over there and take a look. So he takes a picture. We have this one flat spot on our roof that’s really just above like a hallway and it’s all yellow. [01:20:50] Like, all like it’s all rusty. No, it’s like this, all the roof like, looks like it’s concave. And I’m like, oh crap. So we call our neighbor, he goes over, he goes, yeah, the drain pan was full. I vacuumed it all up. You know, with the wet vac, whatever. I, I think you wanna get a guy out there to look at him like, yeah, I know, I know what’s going on. [01:21:07] Right? The, the thing’s clogged and it’s over. It’s doing what it’s supposed to be doing right. It’s clogged, it’s draining into the drain pan. And then the drain pan is draining outside so you know, it doesn’t ruin the attic or everything else. So we get that all squared away and I call a roofing company and I said, could you come out and take a look at this? [01:21:23] I’m curious to make sure that there’s, obviously the shingles are damaged, but I’m also wanna make sure there’s nothing below that because this thing’s are dripping in the same spot for Yeah. You know, it’s like, you know, water torture to my roof for like, god knows how long. Anyway, so they send a guy out that takes a pictures, like, is this, yep, that’s it. [01:21:40] Fix it, fix it, fix it. Okay, fine. They fix it. I haven’t got a bill. They sent an email yesterday and they’re like, Hey, your project’s complete. Here’s all the pictures. Uh, we’re happy to have been able to service, you know, your house, whatever, blah, blah, blah. And uh, and so I’m looking, they’re, I’m going, why are they taking all these pictures of all the, like all the roof, like every peak and valley and corner And, and I’m going, all right, well great, whatever. [01:22:04] And I have never been outside yet to actually just look back. ’cause you have to walk like half a block away. ’cause the angle to be able to see it. And they take a picture of that and I go, that doesn’t look like they did much of a job there, but whatever, you know, if it’s fixed. So I wrote back, I’m guessing there was no structural damage underneath the shingles. [01:22:20] ’cause that was the one communication piece that I had with the roofing company was if you see something else you have to tell me so that I can address that too. ’cause you’re the only one that’s going on the roof to take off all the shingles and if you see other things Oh no, like, let me know. And, and the guy writes back and he goes. [01:22:36] Yeah, so there was a problem. Oh, we didn’t actually fix those shingles. We fixed all the other shingles that were broken on your roof. And I’m like, huh? He’s like, yeah, you had like a whole pallet of shingles, you know, in different spots that were all damaged. So our guys went out and fixed all those, and I’m like, okay, but the big spot that had the hole in the roof, we just, we just went, that’s all right. [01:23:03] Like, like you randomly found picture found of, took pictures of it, we’re done. The one with the one shingle, you know, over on side seven of the roof line. You’re like, well that one’s damaged, bill. Get up there and get that one. Like, we can see it from here. It’s like each shimmied up there and they’re like, what about this whole section right here? [01:23:18] That would be like, it all looks damn. No, no, that’s, that’s, that’s all squared away anyways. So they’re coming back. Um, so far nothing, but I can tell. So the place, this is Joe, as you’ve been at my house, the place that this is, is where the coffee maker is in the wine. Both two very important things, but, but you know, there’s nothing above that. [01:23:38] Right? There’s just a hallway, right? You kinda like a little pantry thing and, and the ceiling, there’s a little crack and it looks to be a little discoloration. Could be my eyes playing tricks on me. But it looks like, it looks like water dripped through. It just kind of dripped, you know? It’s that pouring through. [01:23:53] It’s not a big giant, but I can tell there’s something there. And so I’m waiting with bated breath this week as the roofing people coming back. He goes, well, you don’t have to pay for the first stuff we did. And I’m like, no, I’ll pay for it. I’m glad that you went up there. I didn’t know that there was a bunch of other stuff broken. [01:24:08] Yeah. Thank you for fixing it. [01:24:09] Joe: Yes. [01:24:09] OG: Send me a bill. Just could you also, do I have more consternation [01:24:13] Joe: that you didn’t tell me that you didn’t fix the problem I called you about until [01:24:18] OG: I brought it up, but you maybe also do the thing that is the most obvious thing. It would’ve made more sense to me for them to fix the thing and then go, oh hey, by the way, there’s a bunch of other crap up there that’s broken. [01:24:29] And then I could have been like, well dude, why didn’t you fix that? While you didn’t tell us to fix that, but we wanted to Like that makes more. A little bit more sense. It’s not, still doesn’t make any sense. Honestly, you know, if you’re in the customer service business, maybe just fix it. And [01:24:43] Joe: I’m finally home. [01:24:44] I, uh, for, uh, on, on on Wednesday, I’ll go into, I was away and I have a, I have a story about that, but, um, we’ll save that because instead I’ll talk about, I’ve scheduled all these people to come to my house and I scheduled Oxyclean, who I really like to do carpets. I’ve always had great success with them. I get a guy who admits to me powder [01:25:04] OG: that you, uh. [01:25:06] Put in your wash. [01:25:07] Joe: Yeah. Same, same stuff. But they will do your, is it Oxy? Freshs. Oxyclean, I dunno. But they do carpets and it’s just oxy, it’s sofa, oxy. It’s a whole different thing. [01:25:16] OG: Yes. This guy comes over, just gives me a bunch of oxy and everything looks clean all of a sudden. I don’t even [01:25:23] Joe: think about the carpets after that. [01:25:24] I don’t think about [01:25:25] OG: anything anymore. It’s, I’m just, it’s like a rave. I’m really zoned out, like very [01:25:30] Joe: mellow. He worked on the carpets and I get kind of excited when I’m playing video games and I have spilled some coffee. I’ve spilled some wine and so there’s these discolorations there and in the past it, it, it’s amazing how well they do getting rid of that stuff. [01:25:47] But I walked into my room where. This sofa is, and there is a big discoloration on the three different discolorations on the floor. And I think what the new guy did was he just took the stuff off the sofa, which he cleaned and put it on the carpet that was also cleaned. And so he is got all this product pushing into each other. [01:26:11] And now I got these huge brown stains that need to come out. [01:26:14] OG: Nice. Good news is nice way to cover the brown stains on the carpet. Joe with the, the other guy did it. [01:26:21] Joe: Do you, do you like how I made up this huge story about the, about [01:26:25] OG: the, the dude, Cheryl, you won’t believe this. So the carpet guy was here and he stacked a whole bunch of stuff up and that’s why it looks like a poop brown stain on the carpet. [01:26:36] Joe: I’m having my security alarm people come out. ’cause we’ve had all kinds of, Hey, this, uh, this, this code is [01:26:41] OG: 1, 2, 3, 4 pound [01:26:43] Joe: right? This cover. The password is password. The, the cover is, uh. The cover’s loose. The cover’s loose on like 10 different things. So having that guy come out and, um, you know, we had a drain that wasn’t draining, right when I was on the road a lot, and we actually got a, I got a nice call from Chanel about, uh, about my drain issue. [01:27:05] caller: Hey Joe, this is a little tip that I have for you. Um, but I’ve been using over the last 20 plus years to unclog, sinks, drains, showers, and I have two daughters and myself. We all have long hair. It starts with first get a pot of boiling water going. So get a, a pot of water going, start boiling it. Then make sure, of course, that you remove the stopper in the drain or shower, what have you. [01:27:34] Take one cup of salt in this order, one cup of salt, one cup of baking soda, one cup of white vinegar, so in that order down the drain and let it sit. For about 20 minutes, it’s gonna percolate. It’s gonna, you may need to mix it up a little bit to get the vinegar down through the baking soda and into the salt. [01:27:57] You shouldn’t have to, but you can. Sometimes I’ll use an old chopstick to kind of make a hole and to allow it to seep down. So again, give it that time. Then what you do as the water is now boiling, take it off carefully. Take it up to the sink or the drain, and run it down the drain a little bit slowly. [01:28:18] And then [01:28:22] Joe: that’s it. Thanks, Chanel for that. You know what I used, I used to was waiting [01:28:26] OG: for and then call the plumber because it’s all backed up even more. [01:28:29] Joe: I used a diff, I used a different option. Chanel called my credit card and a plumber, that’s the one solved it. I actually got it. So it was, it would slowly drain, but I will try that next time before I call. [01:28:41] That’s a good, [01:28:42] OG: yeah. Yeah, I mean Draino, all that stuff, although some of that’s bad for the plumbing I guess. I dunno. [01:28:47] Joe: How about we flush this episode down, the Draino g Doug. What, uh, should be on our to-do list today. [01:28:55] Doug: So what’s stacked up on our to-do list for today? First, take some advice from TE West instead of looking to drop outta the workforce, work towards making life meaningful. [01:29:05] What lights you up? Let’s find a path towards that work. Or one that lets you spend more time in your happy place. Second, while Mark Cuban’s solution to market downturns could be good. It’s partly because he was easily financially independent afterwards. It’s a better strategy to stay invested and ignore to the best of your ability, or maybe cope with is a better term. [01:29:28] Market downturns. But the big lesson, that’s what a banana hammock is, but it’s got nothing to do with bananas or hammocks. Huh? That that clears up a lot actually. [01:29:45] Thanks to Tessa West for joining us today. You’ll find her talking about meaningful work in her new book, job Therapy, finding work that works for you wherever books are sold and just ’cause I’m a great guy who’s about to go buy some banana hammocks. I’m a giver. I’ll also include links in our show notes at Stacking Benjamins dot com. [01:30:08] This show is the Property of SB podcasts LLC, copyright 2024, and is created by Joe Saul-Sehy. Joe gets help from a few of our neighborhood friends. You’ll find out about our awesome team at Stacking Benjamins dot com, along with the show notes and how you can find us on YouTube and all the usual social media spots. [01:30:28] Come say hello. Oh yeah, and before I go, not only should you not take advice from these nerds, don’t take advice from people you don’t know. This show is for entertainment purposes only. Before making any financial decisions, speak with a real financial advisor. I’m Joe’s Mom’s Neighbor, Duggan. We’ll see you next time back here at the Stacking Benjamin Show.
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