Dave Houser calls himself “The Finance Nomad,” and he helps people create a life of fulfillment on their terms. He’s a proponent of taking time away from work, also known as sabbaticals. We discuss how stepping away from work and focusing less on business can actually attract more business opportunities, finding purpose in the things you do every day, and finding the clarity you need to figure out what it is you want to do. He also shares how even the most skeptical workaholics can find the time, money, and motivation to take a sabbatical themselves.

Guest’s hype song is Highway to Hell by AC/DC

Connect with Dave on LinkedIn: linkedin.com/in/dave-houser-1247451bb or Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/dave.houser.5/ 

Today’s episode is sponsored by Zen Rabbit. If you’d like to find peace of mind amidst the chaos and no matter what’s going on around you - or if you’re curious about how you might stop working so hard and achieve more success at the same time - get a copy of The Five Easy Ways to Start Living a Sabbatical Life. It’s a short guide to working less and living better. Find it at ZenRabbit.com. You’ll also find a whole bunch of other free resources there as well, like meditations and articles.

Hey, my friend. Welcome to Fine is a four letter word.

My name is Lori Sites.

I'm an entrepreneur, mentor, founder of Zen Rabbit, and your instigator in saying fuck

being fine. This show is for those of you who are done living with the dumpster fire

and are ready to find the tools and courage to transform to step into more success and

fulfillment in both your personal and business life.

You're in the right place for stories of self discovery, gratitude and connection, and

to help you strengthen that connection to your own inner guidance, you'll find each

episode has an accompanying meditation.

Now let's get into it.

Dave Hauser is an inspiration in embodying what it means to leave a fine life behind.

After a long career as a strength and conditioning coach, Dave was done living a

fine life and followed his beliefs to build something new.

He quit his coaching job and transitioned out of some relationships that weren't

growing along with him.

The process wasn't easy, but it led to some important breakthroughs.

Now Dave is in the financial services industry where he helps people build a life

of self reliance and financial freedom on their terms.

One of the topics we'll be navigating in season three of the podcast is the idea of

sabbaticals, and Dave couldn't be in a better position to speak on this topic as

he's in the middle of one at this very moment.

We discuss how stepping away from work and focusing less on business can actually

attract more business opportunities.

Finding purpose in the things you do every day and finding the clarity you need to

figure out what it is you want to do.

He also shares how even the most skeptical workaholics can find the time, money and

motivation to take a sabbatical for themselves.

So don't count yourself out.

This is one episode everyone needs to hear.

Today's episode is sponsored by Zen Rabbit.

If you'd like to find peace of mind amidst the chaos, and no matter what's going on

around you, or if you're curious about how you might stop working so hard and achieve

more success at the same time, get a copy of the five Easy ways to Start Living a

Sabbatical life.

It's a short guide to working less and living better.

Find it at Zen Rabbit dot com.

You'll also find a whole bunch of other free resources there as well, like meditations and

articles. Hello and welcome to Fine is a four letter word.

Wow, It's been a long time since I've recorded a new episode and I am super excited

to be starting season three.

My guest today is Dave Hauser.

Welcome to the show.

Oh, thanks for having me, Laurie.

My pleasure. I am super excited to get into your story because one of the themes that we

are going to be talking about in season three is sabbaticals and taking sabbaticals.

And how do you do that?

And I know part of your story involves a sabbatical story rolling out still as we're

speaking, so.

That's right. I'm eager to hear it.

But first, let me ask you, what were the the beliefs and values that you were raised with

that contributed to making you who you are today?

Oh, that's a that's a great question.

The one thing my parents instilled in me first and foremost probably was you got to

work for it for everything you you get in life, nothing's given to you.

You know, when you're a kid, you don't really think about that.

As I've gotten older, that's like 100% true.

And what I talked to when I was coaching, I was a college coach for 20 years.

I would always talk to kids.

You have to put forth the effort and get it.

What you get out of it, you're going to get out or what you put into it, you're going to

get out of it. And same thing I do with now.

I work in personal finances and I talk to clients the same way I was like, You're going

to get out of this. Whatever you put into it, right?

There's there's work you have to do.

It's not just me telling you what to do.

So it's that's, that's really become really important to me.

To me be honest with people, too.

That's, that's the second one.

Be honest. Right.

Because if you're not honest with people, you're just creating a whole nother problem

down the road. Right?

And most importantly, most importantly, be honest with yourself.

Right? That's what I've come to learn over time, is be honest with yourself.

And if you say if you say you're going to do something, do it.

And if you don't, if you don't think you're going to do it, don't don't commit to

something.

Right? Yeah. Yeah, That's a hard one to to keep being honest with yourself.

Like, that's harder a lot of times than being honest with other people.

Yeah, And I'll never forget.

Go ahead.

It's kind of backwards, though, right?

Right. If you can't be honest and keep commitments to yourself, how on earth can you

be committed to somebody else?

Right?

Because.

Yeah, exactly.

And I always think about the the phrase I heard somewhere about that.

If you can't keep commitments to yourself, then you're training yourself not to trust

yourself.

That's right. Yeah, exactly.

Because there's a funny there's kind of a funny joke between my friends and I.

It's like if I say I'm going to.

This is years ago.

If I said I was going to do something, everybody knew that I wasn't going to show

up. And it wasn't until like three or four years ago that I was like, wait a second,

that's not actually funny.

It's not funny. That's not funny at all.

Right.

Because it made me think about how good of a friend I was to those people.

And. I just wasn't committed to it to anything.

Really? Yeah. So caused me costumes.

Some serious reflection, to say the least.

How did you get to that point where you said, Wait a minute, this isn't this isn't funny

anymore? And I and then stepping into that reflection like it did something specific

happen?

Well, I left coaching and it changed my careers.

And part of that was due to I was I wasn't really doing something that I really enjoyed

doing anymore.

I was just collecting a paycheck.

Right. And I felt like I was stealing.

From my employer.

So I was like, I just started having all these internal conversations and that was one

of them. It's like, Oh.

If I like my buddy Ryan, he is he would be one of those people that we always laugh

about. It's like it's not really that funny to me anymore because it made me think about.

My what my values were like.

I could say I'm being honest.

I'm going to show up and do. But I wasn't doing it.

Yeah, right. So, so there was a lot of incongruence in my life and it's like, okay,

well, we got to get we got to get aligned with what my principles are or my beliefs,

and we're going to really put those at work and get the most out of my life instead of

just kind of like I was never getting anywhere, you know?

It was always like. Up and down or stuck in the mud.

And it just became like, why is this happening?

And I came to the conclusion it was because I wasn't being committed to myself.

So it was the frustration of not getting where you wanted to be that made you stop and

go. All right, wait, this isn't working.

What do I need to do to make things work?

Or I don't even like that phrase anymore.

Make things work. We're always talking about.

I'm going to make things happen as if we.

Have.

Total control over the universe.

Well, it was.

It's like I had to rethink how I was thinking and.

And just I started reading a lot of stoicism, too, so that that had a big input

or impact on the way I started thinking, Yeah.

And it's like I really it just I resonated with it.

Because a lot of the messages, it's like, you don't have to be perfect.

Right. But we want to work towards an ideal life, Right?

How how we want to represent ourselves is how we should be acting and how we should be

talking about ourselves, too, to other people and representing ourselves.

Maybe that's a better way to say it.

Yeah. I just wrote a LinkedIn post earlier this week about finding clarity and that you

have to start anything from a place of clarity.

People are always talking about that, but how do you find clarity if you don't have it

and how One of the the first step when you're looking to figure out to get clarity

around something is to figure out not what you need to do, but who you need to be or who

you would like to be.

Right.

And that's really where the starting point for any kind of change.

So if you are not being the person that you would like to be and being who you are right

now isn't getting you the results that you'd like to get, who would you need to be?

What characteristics, What traits?

What skills do you need to incorporate?

To become that person who would have what you would like to have.

Yeah, no question about that.

And so when when I start looking back at that, it throws you into a funk, right?

Because you're like, Oh my God, man.

That's why so many people don't want to do it or aren't willing to do it.

Yeah, and the negative self-talk became really strong and.

There's like a two, two month period, maybe a little bit more rude, just like, really

down on me.

Um. I went for it.

This was during COVID too, so it was like that didn't help the situation.

But one day I just ended up I was like, I'm going out.

I need to go for a drive. And I went for a drive and.

All of a sudden things were like just kind of falling in the place.

Like because I'm in a new situation, there's different things going on around me and I'm

just like. I don't want to live this way anymore.

I mean, that's literally what I said.

It's like, I don't want to live this way anymore. There's more to life that I want to

experience. And how do I do that?

How do I get out there and do the things that I want to do?

I'm just kind of started working towards that.

You know, slowly. One thing at a time.

Why did you have to untangle yourself from.

Yes. So one was a relationship.

The relationship I was in at the time.

Yeah. I'm in a new field.

I'm in a completely different career.

And I was alone, and I didn't.

I didn't have the support from the person I wanted.

I craved support from the most.

And, you know, your parents are always going to love you and they're always going to

support you. But nobody really knew what I was going through.

As far as being becoming a business owner for the first time in my whole life.

It's like. I don't know how to fucking be in business.

I don't know anything about running.

Did your parents run businesses or employees?

No. I grew up in a in a blue collar.

What is it? Suburbia, family.

And had the greatest parents in the world.

Gave me everything I could ever ask for.

But we never really understood money.

Right. But we never had those conversations.

And so I never really understood my own financial situation until I was undergoing

this whole this all this all this stuff started at roughly the same time because I'm

just looking at every aspect of my life, and finances was just one of them.

So I decided to make the change to a different career.

Away for the time was just she couldn't understand it.

Right, because I didn't have this cool job anymore.

Right. I wasn't working in athletics, and that's exciting.

But I wasn't excited about it.

And I hated sports.

But she kept telling everybody that's what I did.

Even though I wasn't in the field.

As if that's who you were.

Like, That was your identity.

Yeah. And it was to her.

And. You know, when things we finally finally formalized everything at the end.

And I was like, you know what?

I did change.

Like, she would say that all the time.

You changed after you left coaching.

I was like, I did a 100% did.

Because I'm a better person.

Yeah, I have more, more interests.

Right? I want to take up photography.

I'd like to take some type of painting class, you know, all sorts of things.

Like to take more cooking classes.

And, you know, we talked before when I saw you earlier this year that I'm planning on

driving around the country.

Yeah, I love this.

This is what I want to get into talking about, too, because this is because I took my

sabbatical. And, you know, it's interesting, as I was talking to somebody at a networking

event earlier this week to about sabbatical, and he was saying that he attributes that

word to academia, whereas I don't I know that that is a thing in academia, in people.

Professors take sabbaticals, but I also see it as a much bigger and I like using the word

to describe any like taking a break from whatever it is you're doing to go do

something, to travel, to experience some new things.

And I love that you're doing this.

So tell me more. Tell us, tell, tell my audience more about what you're doing.

Yeah, well, when I think of sabbatical, I think of pilgrimage.

For whatever reason.

I always, always tie it to like, it always sounds like a religious connotation to me.

But for in this scenario that just kind of hit me as you were talking, it's like it's

more of a pilgrimage for me or an adventure I like.

I like to tell everybody I'm on this great adventure.

And so I packed up all my stuff into five crates, two dogs into a forerunner, and I

came down to Georgia to just there's a community down here of people that are ultra

supportive of me, helping me build, helping me build what I want to build, which is the

lifestyle that I really want to work wherever I, wherever I'm at.

Yeah, right. It doesn't have to be doesn't have to be in a particular area.

But I'm on the road.

I still want to be able to work.

So I got this crazy idea.

That I have an American bulldog and he loves swimming and he's getting older.

Um, so I came up this idea that I want to drive Hank around the country and take

pictures of him or videos of him swimming all over the all over the place.

And that morphed into.

Well, it's not just for Hank.

It's. No, I've said I've said for at least five or six years that I wanted to explore

more of this country.

And there's a whole section of the country that I've never been to.

So I don't.

I'm not. Not that I have to really answer anybody, but I don't.

I'm not. I'm not answering anybody.

Yeah, I'm just going out and living the life that I want to live and I want to meet more

people. Eat interesting foods across the country, like I'm a little bit of a foodie

and just find more like remote spots to camp or to eat or.

Meet people with and learn their stories, because the more the more I'm out, the more.

People are really interested.

They absolutely are like.

Really interesting.

And there are so many amazing people out here.

I was at a veterans event last week.

Some of the stories that I was hearing were just.

I mean, there were. Put me a sense of awe.

I was like, Man, these people are these people are doing it, man.

They're doing what they want to do and they love it.

And I'd like to just meet more people like that.

Yeah. And to your point of people are have these amazing stories.

People are amazing.

It it's right into that thing of you will always find exactly what you're looking for.

You're looking for awesome people and incredible stories and you're finding them.

If you were instead looking for people to be angry and resentful and mean, you'd probably

find that too. But that's not what you're looking for.

They are everywhere.

But when you're not, when you're looking for the good you, that's what you come across.

That's why you get invited to these events and.

Come across these these amazing, you know, like interesting things to eat and all of

that good stuff. Yeah. That's what you're that's what you're attracting to you.

One of the one of the things that really stood out for the last time we talked was.

The more I'm away from trying to focus just on business.

The more business will come my way.

That really it sounds backwards.

But like I spend, I'll say half of my week out in the woods with my dogs.

Um. And the other half working on towards a business or working on like getting to know

people in the area. And.

But I'm going to close out this year in a really strong bang just because I'm not

focusing just on one thing.

It's like I'm focusing on enjoying the hell out in my life.

Yeah. And that's when these things start coming to you.

That's what I found when I was on my sabbatical of not doing I wasn't doing any

work that month really, that the biggest opportunities came to me when I was just

enjoying. Enjoying being and doing and doing fun things instead of chasing business.

Right.

Yeah.

Yeah, Because chasing business sucks.

It totally sucks. But back to the thing you said at the very beginning of our

conversation today, which was that your parents taught you about hard work.

And that hard work was the key to success.

Yeah, we're not saying don't don't do anything.

Sit. And money comes to you.

That's not. But we most of us have been taught that hard work is the way that you

make money and and achieve success and be productive.

And that's the key.

And now you and I and hopefully some of my listeners are getting this idea that's that's

a lie. It's a big, fat fucking lie.

That's not how it works.

The thing that I've kind of adopted as like a mantra is I want to live.

Or I want to work so I can live.

I don't want to live to work.

And when I work, I work really hard.

And I focus on I have to because I'm.

I'm working with other people and and their lives, their financial lives and their

futures and generations beyond that.

So I take that I take that shit really seriously.

And I want to do his best of a job for them to make sure they have the most information

possible so that they can make the decisions that are best for them.

And then I just help them make that make all that shit happen.

Did you feel like before you set out on this adventure that you you couldn't not do it?

Like you had to do this thing.

There was no way you could say no to it, even if you didn't know.

I mean, you're in financial services.

So one of the things that I hear people say a lot of times is, Oh my God, Well, I could

never do that because I couldn't I couldn't afford it.

That's always the first thing.

I couldn't afford it. And then.

Well, but I have a family.

But I have, like, all of these other reasons why they can't do it.

Are you talking are you talking about the travel part?

Yeah. Or just.

Or or switching careers?

What's your response to that?

Yeah. So the switching careers, nobody ever understood that because they asked me like I

had this conversation with my dad because don't you ever miss it.

Don't you? I was like, Nope.

Do you do you ever want to go back?

I was like, Fuck no.

Why would I ever want to go back?

I was I was always, always at somebody else's beck and call.

At the SAC and sacrificing my life.

And the second half of my life.

I don't. I want the exact opposite of that.

I only want to be around people that I really enjoy being around.

And some of that will be business.

But a lot of it is going to be just having a shitload of fun for me, you know, and enjoy

the people I'm around.

So and then it kind of ties in to both things, though, right?

So nobody still understands what I do.

And that's a common thing with financial industry.

And my whole take on the financial financial world is very different from everybody else.

So it's it's even weirder to some people.

And it's just how much control over you want over your time and your money.

I want I want as much control as possible over both of those things.

And that's how I talk to my clients.

I talked to anybody that wants to talk business.

I want to be up. Like I said, I want to go.

I can't wait to go to Glacier Park.

I can't wait to go to Moab.

Can't go like Tahoe.

Like these are all places I'm going in the spring.

Yeah. And I'm going to take a month to drive around and do.

Do whatever the hell I want.

Right?

And, like, tonight, sort of.

While I've been in Georgia, I've just taken every weekend, gone off and done something.

Tonight, I'm going up to a place called Blue Ridge.

Just all these cool little places up in the mountains.

They can either camp out or rent a cabin or do whatever.

It's like, I would never have done this stuff.

20 years ago. Right.

Because you were a different person like that.

Yeah, people. So when going back to talking about what your former wife was saying about

you've changed, we have all changed, hopefully in the past 20 years, it's you're

either growing or dying, so change is inevitable.

Yeah.

And I never wanted to be the same person.

Right. Even even as a coach or even 20 years ago when I first got into coaching.

It's way different the first year after coaching.

Then ten years and 20 years I'm different person.

Completely because I'm way more confident one in my in myself and my abilities in that

part of my life.

But then you start getting into other things that interest you.

Yeah.

Or things that once interests you like.

Sports don't really interest me that much anymore.

I'd rather be doing some other things.

Not that I can watch sports now.

But there was a time where I couldn't couldn't stand watching because.

You were just so burned out of it.

Yeah. Yeah.

It just wasn't a healthy situation to stay there anymore.

And. I just one day up and quit and then jumped into a completely different field.

And the mistake I made was I didn't take a break.

I should have been taking the sabbatical at that time, not six years later.

No. And. Because I thought that I had just had to jump in and start working as hard as

possible.

Right.

Right. To the point you were making earlier.

Put it in putting the time you do the grind, you do all this other bull crap and it's

like, that's a way.

That's the that's the way to be as unhealthy and unhappy as possible.

Right. Right.

But yes, and it's easy to say, just stop doing that.

But our brains are wired to believe that that's the truth and our brains are wired to

work that way. So what have been some of the things that you've done?

Tools maybe that you've used or courses, books, whatever.

How have you started rewiring your brain to allow you to do this?

One of the biggest changes was I read a book called The Comfort Crisis, and it was like a

smack to my face that, Hey, man, you haven't been physically challenging yourself.

And that was what got me through a lot of the coaching.

I love the challenge, but it made me think clearer.

And so when I wasn't being as physically active and I certainly wasn't challenging

myself, I put on a lot of extra weight that I was like, Oh my gosh.

Like, who is this?

Right. Right. Where did this guy come from?

Yeah. So I just started training for 10 minutes a day.

And that led to.

Up to 2 hours at a time, for sometimes I would go off on hikes and first thing in the

morning I would do it in the first thing in the morning and next thing you know, I'm down

£20. I have all this energy I'm super excited to about my business.

Yeah, again.

And I feel really good about me right inside my own skin.

He knows I wasn't wasn't sore all the time, even though I was training for longer periods

of time. And then I ran a 25 K Trail race and never have done anything like that in my

life. And I'm like, This is cool.

I can do almost anything if I'm putting the time into taking care of myself first and not

putting other people ahead of me.

Cool. So what I hear you saying is that you you read this book that inspired you to start

taking action and, like, just doing things.

You didn't even start with that much time.

10 minutes.

It's like when I talk to people about meditation and they're like, Well, I don't

have an hour. You don't need an hour.

Start with 5 minutes, 10 minutes.

To share a funny story with you, because at the same time, I was making a commitment to

drink more water because that because I would put take water bottles and I'd put them

strategically all around the house like, this is it, man.

This is how I'm going to form this habit.

And how many of those water bottles did I drink through the day?

One zero.

Okay.

I wasn't drinking any of them.

So what I started doing was first thing before I drank any coffee or did anything

before I fed my dogs was I would drink 24 ounces of water.

And then I'd feed my dogs and then I would go.

Train for 10 minutes.

And and I was like, I'm going to do this every day.

And I've done it every day since May 21st.

May 21. Every day I've done some type of physical training, not not really hard stuff,

but just active, active.

And all of a sudden it was like just things just started clicking.

Like my business picked up my the way I felt about myself, picked up my relationships with

friends, picked up my relationships with my parents and my sister.

We're enhanced and it's like, this is really cool.

We're going we're going to keep doing this.

Small steps leading to.

Enormous changes or enormous benefits.

Yeah, it's, you know, those small things really made a huge difference.

And I do them every day.

Religious. That's really the key.

I, I believe, is the consistency.

Yeah.

It's not how hard or how long you do them.

It's the consistency in doing them.

Because it comes back to what we were talking about earlier.

That's the commitment I made to myself.

And you kept.

It, right? I told myself, I told myself I was going to do it and I will do it every day.

10 minutes is all I'm really looking for.

Yeah, right. And to drink and get that first thing of water in my system every day because

I'll end up drinking more water.

But just to get yourself kicked off on the right foot.

Yeah. Yep, yep.

And if I do that every day.

I'm going on the right path.

Awesome. So back to the question of.

But I can't afford this.

That's something.

When we met up earlier this year, we were talking about how this is part of your

journey as. Your your desire to help people figure out.

So if you say you can't afford it, talk to Dave.

He'll help you figure out how you can afford it, right?

Yeah, well, it comes down.

It came down to I heard a great way to describe it the other day.

You have to do an autopsy on your finances, right?

Or you can do do an audit or whatever you want to call it, but it's like, look at your

habits. Look at what you're doing right now.

Figure out what's that, what that looks like.

And like when we when I go through with clients, there's actually a picture that we

create for them, a snapshot of what their finances look like when we first start.

Then as we start making changes over time, it's you start seeing dramatic changes and

it's all color coded with red, green and yellow.

So. It's those are easy things for all of us to understand.

Reds, danger, yellow.

Hey, we should probably look at this green.

Yeah, you're good to go.

So it gives us markers to look at things.

So if you have $50,000 in debt.

This is probably what I'm doing is probably not be the best thing.

For you at the moment.

Right at the moment it's get these things under control, figure out how to do it right.

So we set up a system.

So each we set up different accounts and each account has a specific job and serves a

purpose for you, right?

One savings, one's wealth accumulation, one's pay down your debts.

Right? And then if there's extra left over, you can just spend that because we've

committed money to these other accounts and these are the accounts that are really going

to help you out most, right?

Because we don't want to live in poverty.

We don't have to live on rice and beans all our lives.

We want to enjoy ourselves, too.

So we built we build in like a little bit of a cushion for that.

And eventually a person's going to come to the point where like, okay, I have this

amount of money saved up.

I think I can take a week.

Go. Go away for a week.

So just like the water thing.

Take. Take a small step.

You don't have to go buy an RV or anything.

Go rent an RV.

Go camping.

Yeah.

You know, because you may not even like it, right?

Right. Well, yeah.

And so it's just.

It's just one of those things where it's like, go try it.

Go experience it first, and you may realize that's not what you want.

So while we keep building your money in the habits for your money.

You can go and experience all sorts of other things that you want to enjoy and you find

something that you really get excited about.

Dig into that more like if you if the person I talked to, a lot of people wanted to start

a business. So if you want to start a business here, we're going to help you start

we're going to help you set up this a business, this entity, and then help you be

as efficient with it as possible.

But. You know, it's just it's all part of that's just part of a tax strategy for

people. But. Nobody ever told me about any of that stuff.

So I feel like it's my obligation of just giving that that back to people.

Because if somebody would've told me, told me about this ten years earlier.

I may or may not have done something, but it.

But eventually that something clicked in my head and I'm like, No, what?

I want to go do more stuff for me.

I want to go see. I want to go do I want to travel more?

Right? So, yeah, well, everything happens in the time that it is supposed to.

That's right. I feel like the I feel like the theme of this episode is that.

Small things matter like doing taking even the small steps are going to create big

waves. So that you don't have to go off on a year long sabbatical or six months.

You were just take a week, whatever you can manage.

I did a month. You're doing longer than that and.

But you can start living this sabbatical life.

Even. You know, without taking long term sabbatical adventures.

And. And what did you say?

Pilgrimages.

Without adding. Without adding.

Yeah. Without adding a whole lot of risk either because they're like there's smaller,

manageable things that anybody can do, Right?

Start somewhere.

Yeah. And then it's.

I think it's really important to start with the purpose of why you want to do it.

What's the purpose? What's the reason you're doing these things?

Not just go out there and blindly throw throw ideas because that's what I used to do.

Now it's like there's a purpose behind this.

Like, I'm.

I'm seeking knowledge of something, right?

Purpose could be as simple, though, as I would like to enjoy my life more.

Yeah. It doesn't have to be some grand purpose.

Like, I want to save the world, right?

Yeah, right. But.

But you. You can save your own.

Absolutely. That's really the only thing you can do.

We only have control over ourselves.

The. The steps that we take.

Who we become.

That's all we have control over.

We have no control over anybody else, right?

Right, Right.

And it's once you once you really come to once you come to really understand that.

It's like freeing.

100%.

Because. Because you're answering to yourself more than more than anybody else, right?

Oh, my gosh. I love that we're answering to our self.

Which is. What we tend to not do, but is the most important, that that's a great place to

finish this conversation.

However, we're not quite done yet because the last question always is What's your hype

song, Dave? What do you listen to when you're needing an extra boost of energy?

That's a really great question because I don't really listen to music that much

anymore.

Okay?

But I used to wake up to Highway to Hell.

By AC DC.

That's still one. That's still one of my favorite AC DC songs, so I'll go with that

one.

So when that comes on, you're like.

I'm like, Oh.

Shit, you guys okay?

Awesome. Well, thank you so much for joining me today on Fine is a four letter word.

Thanks, Lori. I appreciate it.

A lot of fun.

Here are the five key takeaways from today's conversation.

Number one.

Be honest with yourself and with others.

If you're not being honest with others, you're going to create problems down the

road. And when you can't keep commitments to yourself, you're training yourself not to be

trusted. How we want to represent ourselves needs to be congruent with our actions.

Number two.

Hard work is not always the key to success.

Sometimes taking a step away from working and giving yourself the space is the key to

your biggest opportunities.

Number three, you don't have to live to work.

You can work to live.

That means crafting your career to support the life you want to live, not devoting your

whole life to the hustle and grind just to make a little extra cash.

Number four, the small things you do every day add up to more than hard work and effort.

We think of making changes as requiring monumental effort, but really it matters most

that we stay consistent.

Number five.

Don't say something is impossible until you've run the numbers yourself.

Sometimes everything we'd like to have is just a few small changes away.

That's what Dave proves to his clients every day.

So give your life a look.

Think about what matters most to you and find a way to fit it in.

Thanks for being here and subscribing to Fine is a four letter word.

Please share this show with a friend or a colleague.

If you're feeling especially generous, leave a review so other people like you can

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It's on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Google Podcasts, Amazon Music, Stitcher, and all the

major podcast directories.

You can join me on social too.

On Instagram, its Zen underscore rabbit.

You can find links to the other platforms at Zen Rabbit dot com.

Before you go, remember to take a moment to think about what you're grateful for today.

Lastly, you can find this week's meditation cued up right after this episode.

And if no one's told you this week, I'm proud of you.