Coming up, I'm gonna give you a tried and true plan to retire a millionaire with a little extra. And then signs that your boss is faking productivity more than you. What is happening? We'll break it down next. I'm here to help you get better so that you have every opportunity to make that paycheck bigger. I'm Ken. This is the Ken Coleman Show. Question for all of us.
What are you doing now? To guarantee that you live well in the future. What are you doing now? That will set you up to live well in the future. We're going to talk about money on this particular question that we could go down the physical path there, the relationship path on that. We're going to keep that question focused on money. Now,
full disclosure, I have a different view on retirement than I think most people. I think retirement in the traditional sense, and I'm gonna say that this is what I believe the traditional definition for retirement is for most people, that retirement that involves you not working, a little bit of volunteering, a little bit of golf or pickleball or whatever your deal is,
some consistent traveling, basically just unplugged from work. I think that that's overrated. I really do. I like all those things in that description. I plan to do all those things, but I just believe to my core that we were created to work.
And so even at 80, or 85, let's say I'm this 85 year old guy and I'm shuffling around in my orthopedic friendly shoes. And I'm wearing the Sansvel pants. I wanna be doing something. Now, am I gonna go as hard as I'm going now? No. But I think that we humans need to wake up and do something that looks like work.
If you're volunteering and you're not making a dime, great. But do something that looks and feels like work. In other words, I'm going to expend intentional effort and I'm going to create an intentional result. That's what I would say we could define work as. Okay. But.
The traditional view of retirement, I understand it is. I want to stop working for the man. I don't want to work anymore. I just want to play shuffleboard or whatever. I get it. I don't want to have to work to live. I get it. Totally get it. So.
According to CBS News, the average American, this is, this is startling information. The average American today only has about $90,000 saved in retirement. Okay.
My buddy George Campbell, he's a fellow Ramsey personality. He's been on this show. We recently did a deep dive interview and in that last conversation, we have a George and you can watch it on my YouTube channel. He mentioned that he believes based on his research and he's coached a lot of people. He knows what he's talking about. He thinks the number that we should all be targeting for retirement is $2 million. Okay.
And by the way, Georgia's recommendation holds up with what the majority of Americans say is a number they kind of want to have. It's $2 million. So in order to have that kind of money set aside, you got to have a plan. And the reason that the average American only has $90,000 safe for retirement is because they're living in the now.
Trying to soak the marrow out of life. I love it. I love it. It's one of my favorite lines from one of my favorite movies, Dead Poets Society. Sucking the marrow, not soaking rather. I need to correct myself. I'll be fact checked on that one quickly. Sucking the marrow out of life is the, is the phrase that Professor Keating played by Robin Williams says, and he challenged these young men. I love that, right? But, but that doesn't mean that we spend everything we have.
to consume everything we can. It's not what that means. But that's what we Americans on average do. We want to keep up with everybody else. We want to have everything in the now and we are sacrificing the next. I can't think of anything more sad and tragic than being in your 70s and 80s and barely making it.
How horrible is that? Like, let's just be honest. First of all, we all kind of want to make it to that old person team, don't we? You know? I was recently with an uncle and he just turned eight and he was like, man, getting old sucks. And I was like, I know, but we kind of want to all be on your club. I do. I'm not the guy that goes, hey, I kind of want to go at 60. That's it for me. I'm out. Done. I mean, come on. So aging well,
has a huge, huge, huge component of investing well and saving well. Because if I'm gonna age well, that means that I'm not struggling. So I wanna walk through the guts of an article that we have at ramsysolutions.com, and you can search this if you wanna get the whole article, the secret to retiring a millionaire. And I'm gonna walk through
some just basic habits. But before I do, I want you to understand it, this is not rocket science. This is simply one clear action. And I'm going to tell you what it is after I go through the list. But understand that whether I give you this, if you get this, this, this focused action, this way of living, which I'll reveal at the end, then you're going to be fine.
This is where most people, they never figure this out. Let's look at what millionaires do. Millionaires are avid readers. They read. They're not on their phone. No. Scrolling and scrolling and scrolling. You know what millionaires do? They read. Do you know why millionaires read? Thank you for asking because they want to learn. They want to read. They want to learn.
I think you ought to take a specific habit of this. I've done this many years of my life. I'm not on pace to do it this year, but I've done it multiple years recently. I read one biography a month. I'm on pace to do 10 this year and I feel like I'm a slacker, but one biography a month read about successful people. You won't believe what you'll learn millionaires, delay gratification.
They're not walking around like dopamine zombies. Where's the next hit, right? Where's the next dopamine hit? No, they live in prolonged seasons. Listen to me folks, prolonged seasons of denying their gratification. They will sacrifice for years.
This is not the method that you're taught. You don't see this on TikTok. You're not gonna see some TikToker today go bananas with this one. Hey, learn how to sacrifice and say no to yourself for decades. That'll get two views on TikTok right there, two. Millionaires.
Hang around impressive people. They just hang around, go getters. Show me a millionaire and I'll show you the people they hang out with. There's not many losers in there. Millionaires live below their means. They live below their means. They are investing, saving. They are thinking long term all the time. Long term all the time.
They look for multiple streams of revenue. They don't have all their eggs in one basket. They want their money to make money, of course, through investing, but they're also looking for other opportunities. And then lastly, and this is not, this is not the exhaustive list. It's just me kind of hitting some highlights from the article, but these are the, these are the things that I see. Millionaires are givers. They're givers.
They give, they give, they give. Now, I told you that I was gonna give you the secret. If I was gonna give you one action or one philosophy, if you wanna look at it this way, that sums up how to be successful financially and at the end of your journey and you get to be older to have more than enough.
You ready? I wrote down two words cause I was studying this and I was looking at it this morning it came to me and I took my pencil out and I wrote down these two words. This is the secret. Intentional discipline. Not situational discipline. Let me tell you the difference. Situational discipline was this morning in the personality suite or my desk is somebody put out some donuts. I love a donut. I deeply love donuts.
Donuts though are not good for me nutritionally. And so when I walk by that donut, I had a moment to decide, am I going to eat that donut? Cause I really want to eat that donut. That donut looks really good. That donut feels like it should be in my belly. I want that donut, right? And in that moment, I kept walking. I'm not trying to pat myself on the back. I'm just saying that was situational discipline. Okay.
I'm not talking about situational discipline where good people end up doing good things in moments of temptation or whatever. I'm talking about intentional discipline. You're making decisions early in life. I will love my wife and kids. I will be faithful. I will honor the Lord. I will eat clean. I will whatever, make the big decisions early.
I will invest. I will live on less than I make. I will find multiple streams of revenue. I will give generously. These are big decisions that successful people make early. They make the big decision. It's super intentional. These are my disciplines. I'm going to set them out early and now watch this. Then they spend the rest of their life managing that decision.
That's the difference between a situational discipline and intentional discipline. You cannot put yourself in this roller coaster of life and go, I hope I make the right decision. I hope I do this. I hope, no, make those decisions early and mark them in your life and then live in those decisions. And what happens is discipline yields tremendous, tremendous results.
It's simple young people. It's simple middle-aged person. Intentional discipline. That's how we finish well.
This show is sponsored by BetterHelp. Hey, this is the time of year when it gets a little colder and it might already be dark by the time you leave work. Even if you love your job, that's hard. So sometimes I think we just try to stay in and get cozy. I know that for me it's a fire and a really good movie this time of year that just makes me feel super, super relaxed. Whatever your perfect night at home looks like therapy can be a bit like that.
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Productivity is the name of the game. If you want to win, you want to win personally, you want to win professionally productivity. Am I a productive person? In other words, am I getting the right things done the right way? That's productivity. The right thing's done the right way. Well, this got my attention and this is, this is embarrassing. This is
This is embarrassing for leaders and we're gonna focus on leaders in the next two segments because as my mentor and former boss, John Maxwell, who said many times, everything rises and falls on leadership. And leaders have got to get it right. And what I'm about to share with you in this article is absolutely bananas.
Here we go. I was talking about productivity, right? Productivity is, is everything is the secret sauce to winning, personally and professionally get the right things done the right way. Now we have a new phrase. And this kind of stuff gets on my nerves, but this is the world I'm in. And, and so here we go. It's called faux ductivity as in faux, faux furniture. It ain't faux real.
It's faux. It's fake. So faux ductivity is fake productivity. And this is the world in which we live. This is a real thing. Why does it exist? Let's first look at this. We've seen since the pandemic, we've seen since everybody for a season.
went home. So we go from normal work rhythm, pandemic comes along and everybody goes home and it completely disrupts the way we work. So then it gets extended. Some companies want you back in. Some companies are okay with a hybrid. Some companies are still kicking the can down the road. Okay, we'll let our people stay remote, remote, remote. So what happened?
When that happened, watch this folks, you had low trust organizations already. The organization was known for low trust.
Leaders didn't trust their people. The people didn't trust their leaders. Then you throw it into a remote situation and it extends. Actually, the better word here is it exacerbates. It makes it worse. It takes a low trust organization and it pours gasoline on it. That's what I believe remote work did. I'm not anti-remote work, so spare me the comments. Some of you folks, every time I mention remote work, you people get triggered.
And honestly, I'm tired of it. I'm going to mention you folks right now. Since I've already triggered you, let's stay triggered for a moment. I'm not anti-remote work. How many times I have to say it? Oh, he's the anti-remote work. Why is he eight-remote work so much? I don't, you big baby. All right. Feel so much better now. Listen, if it works for your company, great. So can we stop? All right.
What I am saying is, is that if you have a low trust organization and you remove everybody and we go out this way and nobody trusts each other when we're in the building, do we think we're gonna trust each other when we can't see each other? The answer is a big fat common sense. No, that's what I'm saying. Now back to the article. So when we have low trust and managers don't trust their people and the people out there, guess what the managers started doing?
They started doing tracking software where they could spy on you through your computer. I've talked about this on this show. They can monitor your keystrokes, how many times your mouse moved. So it became a nanny state. The nanny gets paid to watch the kids and make sure the kids don't do anything wrong. It became a nanny state. And so,
This leads to what this article is calling. This is a Forbes article is calling productivity theater. Productivity theater. People are acting productive. They're not productive. They're just acting like it. Visier surveyed US based employees to better understand their need to play productive.
And they found that when businesses pressure employees to perform, workers react by prioritizing tasks that make them appear productive and visible to management instead of impactful work. So you leaders who think that micromanaging is how you cover your, you know what it does? It makes your team start to focus on stuff that gets you off their back.
Instead of doing the work you hired them to do. Oh my gosh, is anybody else out there getting this? This is so nonsensical. I'm going to micromanage because I don't trust you. And I don't want to get my butt chewed. So when I micromanage you, you start doing stuff that just gets me to leave you alone instead of the right stuff. This, it's a six, six cycle. It's crazy. So employees are pressured to look busy instead of do the right thing.
So obviously, if all this energy is on a peering productive, but not being productive, why are we even showing up to be a business? Another study by Bamboo HR in June of this year.
Show that visibility is the driver for most employees. They're not trying to be productive. They just need to be visible. So the boss thinks that they're doing a good job. More on that in a minute. 79% of in-office employees and 88% of remote workers say they must use performative tactics to show they're working. But my head's going to spin off. This means that managers are so clueless
and they themselves not focused on the right things, that employees can do this kind of stuff and get away with it. Did you catch what's under this? They're saying, we spend most of our time doing things that look busy instead of the things that are actually productive. So begs the question, leaders, managers, what are you measuring? Are you measuring actual effective metrics?
Are you measuring? I saw Bob today and Bob sent me two emails. I liked that Bob guy. I'm going to start harassing Larry. Oh, okay. So then Bob tells Larry, Hey, here's what you got to do. What you got to do is this. So now Bob and Larry are huddling on how to dupe the manager. This is this folks. This is real stuff. This is happy. It's unbelievable. If that's not shocking enough, here's some more.
A new study from Work Human and covers that this faux ductivity is coming from the top down, all the way from the top down. So as I said, start the segment, everything rises and falls on leadership. That's a John Maxwell quote. He's right. This is what's happening and it gets worse.
37% of managers, listen to this folks, and 38% of C-suite executives admit to faking activity themselves. These are the leaders. These are the people getting paid the big bucks. This is mind numbing. By the way, not that it matters, we could stop right there, but when you look at the amount of employees that are doing this photoactivity,
The number is only 33%. And it's 37% for managers, 38% from the fricking big wigs in the top of the tower. They're faking it. Everybody's faking it. There's your work slogan of the day. Everybody's faking their work. We're not doing it. We're just counting, you know, all right. So why? What's why? What are the reasons? Why are people faking productivity, including executives? Better work, life balance.
appeasing management and burnout so again We've got a workflow problem. We've got a culture problem That's why you know what's happening here underneath all this I'm gonna tell you what it is I'm not gonna call it laziness Because I don't think that's the actual source of this I think This is a survival tactic See laziness
I think it's the cop out and it would be to blame the human spirit and go, we all just want to be lazy. But see, that's not what humans are. That's not what humans long for. I've had wives call this show over the years saying, Ken, help me, help my husband. He's lazy. And I've told these women every time, your husband's not lazy. He's lost. He's lost. And I think this is a survival technique.
I'm not saying it's okay. It's wrong. It's awful. But we've got to fix the culture and fix the workflow and fix the way we do work and the way we communicate. And it will take care of all this stuff. So we've got a leadership problem. And when the leaders are leading the way with fake productivity, it's time to burn it down and start over. But will we do that? Probably not.
I'm seeing it in the news. I'm seeing it in the data. The reality is companies and hiring managers want to work with people who have strong technology skills, but they also want those same people to have the right soft skills.
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Welcome back to the Ken Coleman show. So we're just talking about this leadership crisis in the workplace. And so I want to now switch gears and I, I want to coach leaders. I want to simplify leadership because when we talk about productivity and we talk about profitability underneath all of this is an engaged workforce. So the last article I just shared, it's a non issue for people are engaged. People aren't walking around.
Faking productivity if they're engaged leaders by the way aren't creating an environment Where someone feels like they've got to act busy so if you're new to this program I Love sports. I think sports is a great classroom for life and so I'm gonna use the sports metaphor But I don't want you to check out But I want to talk to leaders and managers right now who you feel like you're stuck in this this hamster wheel that we've been discussing this show So how do you?
Lead in such a way that the team becomes a high performing team. That's the question. I'm going to answer it. The short answer is lead like a coach. Lead like a coach.
You don't have to be a sports fan to get what I'm about to say. So don't check out if you've never watched sports because you know enough about sports to get what I'm about to say. But if you want to be an effective leader where you are in charge of a high performing team, you must actually lead like a coach. So what does a coach do? I have coached my kids in multiple sports.
I have consulted with and I still privately encourage a lot of Division I and and and pro coaches that I've become friends with and they reach out to me and I'm kind of their friend and coach coach them so I have Learned from coaching myself and I am friends with a lot of big-time coaches So I want to give you a little framework
You say, can I get it? How can I lead like a coach? You got to act like a coach in your leadership role. Here's what a coach does. First thing a coach does is the coach explains this is how we play.
So I want to actually take you back to the first time I coached my oldest child in soccer. Now I grew up playing soccer. I knew the sport well. So it was not a new sport to me. So I'm coming to this with some knowledge of how to play the game. And so the very first practice, I got a bunch of five and six year olds and coaching five and six year olds is like the most
Difficult coaching job you could ever take. In fact, you want to be a good leader, be good coach. Learn how to coach five and six year olds effectively. Now here's the deal. They're five and six. So you're not going to turn them into great soccer players, but I want to teach you the fundamentals. Here's what a coach does. Here's what I did. First practice. This is how we play soccer.
This is what we do in the game of soccer. A lot of these kids, first time playing. This is what we do. So what did I do? First couple of practices, all fundamentals. So now I am showing them what to do. So as a leader who wants to lead like a coach, you gotta show your people what you want them to do. Tell them, but show them. So what would I do?
get them in a circle and they would kick the ball at the side of their foot, which is the way you pass the ball in soccer. It's the most control. And so I would kick the ball with my side of my foot to them. They would stop it with the side of their foot. That's how we control the ball. And they would kick it back to me over and over and over. Why? Because a true coach doesn't just tell
a true coach shows. So what does a coach do? This is what we do. This is Nick Saban, right? This is our system of playing football, okay? And then they show them. And so they show them in practice. Here's how you tackle. Here's how you cover receivers to the flat, whatever the situation is. They show them, so they tell them this is how we're gonna play and then we're gonna show you. Now watch this.
That's the practice piece. So in a leadership capacity, it's the training piece. You bring somebody on, train them. If you come onto a team and you're a new coach and you want to do something different, retrain them. You tell them, this is how we play. And then you show them and you watch the next step, you observe them. Then you correct them. I watch these football games all the time.
We're talking about quarterbacks in the NFL, folks. They're making 50 million a year. They come off the sideline on an unsuccessful series and a successful series, whether it's a touchdown or a punt. They come off the sideline and you watch their coaches over there with them with all those Microsoft blue pads. And what are they doing? The coach is showing them that last series on tape. Here's what happened. You missed this throw because of this or whatever.
So the coach explains, shows them how, observes, and corrects what needs to be corrected. And then watch this. Then the coach encourages. Hey, get back out there. Listen, I want to keep your leadership and your management to this simple thing. You tell people this is how we work. This is how we work.
This is what I expect. This is how we do business here. This is our team culture. It's got to be clear. You think a kid goes up when, when Nick Saban was coaching Alabama, you think a kid went to Alabama and didn't know within the first two hours how things were going to roll? I'll guarantee you they did.
And then by the way, they were shown, this is what we're gonna do. We're gonna tell you what we're doing in our first team meeting, and then we're gonna show you the schedule. This is how we practice, and during practice, we're gonna show you how we want you to play. We're gonna correct you when you mess it up. Until we observe, we correct, and we encourage. This is leadership 101.
This is Leadership 101. And leaders, if you do that, because the coach isn't successful unless the player executes on the field. It's not about you, coach. It's about them. This is the Ken Coleman Show. Thanks for listening to the Ken Coleman Show. For more, you can find the show on demand wherever you listen to podcasts and watch the show on YouTube. You can also find Ken across all social media by following at Ken Coleman.
