OoM 055： Finding the Work You Love with Dan Miller
Episode Stats
Words per Minute
202.81364
Summary
Dan Miller is the President of 48 Days LLC and specializes in creative thinking for increased personal and business success. He believes that meaningful work blends our natural skills and our abilities, and our unique personality traits and passions. Dan is active in helping individuals redirect careers, evaluate new income sources, and achieve balanced living. He's been a guest on CBS's The Early Show, MSNBC's Hardball with Chris Matthews, and Fox Business News with Dave Ramsey. He also hosts a weekly podcast that is consistently ranked No. 1 in careers on iTunes. And he also has an online community with over 15,000 active, what he refers to as Eaglepreneurs.
Transcript
00:00:00.000
Finding your passion. It's a buzzword we hear all the time, but it's also something I know is on a
00:00:04.000
lot of your minds. You want to find the work you love. In fact, I'm surprised at how many men feel
00:00:08.600
trapped with the work they're currently doing. I can tell you from experience that when you do
00:00:12.580
start to follow the work that you're excited about, it opens up a world of opportunity.
00:00:17.740
But how do you do it? My guest today, Dan Miller, joins me to show us how.
00:00:22.340
You're a man of action. You live life to the fullest. Embrace your fears and boldly
00:00:26.840
charts your own path. When life knocks you down, you get back up one more time. Every time. You
00:00:32.720
are not easily deterred or defeated. Rugged. Resilient. Strong. This is your life. This is
00:00:39.200
who you are. This is who you will become. At the end of the day, and after all is said and done,
00:00:44.920
you can call yourself a man. Men, what's going on today? My name is Ryan
00:00:49.260
Mickler. I am the host and founder of Order of Man. I'm glad you're here tuning in with us today.
00:00:53.160
Now, if you haven't heard this podcast yet, I'm surprised, but nonetheless, we're glad you're
00:00:57.780
here. We talk about all things manly when it comes to your relationships with your family and
00:01:01.800
community, your health and fitness, your wealth and business, and most importantly, how to take
00:01:06.440
care of yourself. This is going to be a great show today. So while I'm telling you about a few things,
00:01:11.380
here's what I want you to do. Get out your notepad, get out your pen, whatever you need to do so you
00:01:15.880
can take notes, especially if you're feeling stuck in the work that you're currently doing. Now,
00:01:20.600
I've got an amazing guest for you today and a man that needs no introduction. But before I get into
00:01:24.220
that, let me tell you about our elite mastermind, the Iron Council. Now, this is a mastermind designed
00:01:29.200
to stretch you. It's designed to test you. It's designed to help you grow in the relationships
00:01:33.140
you have, your health, your money and wealth, and again, most importantly, yourself. So if you're sick
00:01:37.620
of all the talk, sick of the rhetoric, sick of the conversation, and what you're really looking for
00:01:41.940
is the ability to take some big time action in your life, join me and the 63 other men who are fully
00:01:48.680
vested and committed to taking their lives to the next level. If that's you, if you're one of those
00:01:53.540
few men of action, I invite you to join me and the rest of the men in the Iron Council and go to
00:01:57.700
orderofman.com slash ironcouncil to get all the details and you can join us there. Now let's get
00:02:01.920
into the show today. Remember, you can find all the links and the resources that we talk about during
00:02:05.480
the show at orderofman.com slash 055. And as always, join us in the conversation we're having with over
00:02:11.100
2,800 men now on our Facebook group at facebook.com slash groups slash order of man. Now,
00:02:17.200
my guest today is Dan Miller, and he is the president of 48 Days LLC and specializes in
00:02:21.800
creative thinking for increased personal and business success. He believes that meaningful
00:02:26.120
work blends our natural skills and our abilities and our unique personality traits and our dreams
00:02:31.340
and passions. Dan is active in helping individuals redirect careers, evaluate new income sources,
00:02:36.260
and achieve balanced living. He is the author of 48 Days to the Work You Love and No More Mondays.
00:02:41.380
He's been a guest on CBS's The Early Show, MSNBC's Hardball with Chris Matthews,
00:02:46.020
and Fox Business News with Dave Ramsey's show, just to highlight a few. He also hosts a weekly
00:02:51.100
podcast himself that is consistently ranked number one in careers on iTunes. He's a frequent speaker
00:02:55.900
at conferences, including Social Media Marketing World, Podcast Movement, New Media Europe,
00:03:00.280
Launching Coaching with Excellence. And he also has an online community with over 15,000 active,
00:03:10.600
Dan, thank you for joining on the show. I'm so glad you're here today.
00:03:13.060
Ah, thanks. I'm honored to be your guest, Ryan.
00:03:16.180
I have been following your work for some time now. I told you a little bit about that before
00:03:19.700
we hit record on the episode today. So it's quite an honor to have you on the show. I didn't really
00:03:23.880
think I'd be, quite honestly, ever have the chance to chat with you, but I'm really impacted by your
00:03:28.320
work. And I know a lot of the guys that are going to be listening to this will be as well. So thank you
00:03:32.160
for joining us. Well, absolutely. You know how we were connected, mutual friends, connectedness.
00:03:37.740
And although I have a lot of blind inquiries and requests, it means something a whole lot
00:03:43.880
different when a friend says, you need to talk to this guy, Ryan. So we have mutual friends that
00:03:49.840
introduce us that puts you at the top of the pack real quickly. Well, and that's a testament in the
00:03:54.240
power of networking and your ability to relate with other men and build deep and meaningful
00:03:58.800
relationships as well, which is something we talk a lot about here on the show.
00:04:03.300
The first question I want to ask you is, obviously, I'm familiar with your work. I think a lot of the
00:04:08.020
guys listening will be familiar with the work. But why is it that finding your passion and your
00:04:12.840
calling and all of the things that you're doing is such an important message? And why is it resonating
00:04:17.360
so well with people that are tuning in to what you're doing?
00:04:21.600
I think it resonates because so many people recognize they're a little off course. But if you're not
00:04:27.580
really on track with or wondering, I mean, clarifying what your purpose, your passion, your mission,
00:04:34.840
your calling, whatever you want to call it, if you're not really clear on what that is,
00:04:39.360
it's just hard to feel like you're putting your time in the most valuable place. It's hard to feel like
00:04:45.980
you're really your best. So my goal is to help people clarify what that is and not just to have some
00:04:53.600
kind of elusive, ethereal, philosophical, theological understanding of what their purpose
00:04:58.560
is, but to know what that means on Monday morning when they hit the streets. What does that look like
00:05:04.180
in our work life? So that's where I've spent a lot of my time and will continue as long as I'm around.
00:05:10.560
How do guys get off course? Because I know for me, I can tell you a little bit with me,
00:05:15.180
it would just be, and this happened over the past several years where I looked up and I just
00:05:19.020
realized at some point in my life, I wasn't where I wanted to be. Is it just something that kind of
00:05:23.000
happens over time or is there something more to getting off course, like you mentioned?
00:05:27.660
It can happen over time, but here's what happens too. Let's take it all the way back to
00:05:32.200
deciding on a major in college. Usually a major in college is determined with less forethought
00:05:38.900
than deciding where you're going to spend spring break.
00:05:43.180
You know, it's like, oh my gosh, I got two semesters to go. I better choose something.
00:05:46.860
And I've literally had people say they just closed their eyes and pointed to a piece of paper and
00:05:51.980
get a degree in, you know, business or communication or criminal justice or something just to get out
00:05:57.880
the door. But usually that then kind of charts the course and sometimes sets the trajectory for the
00:06:05.300
next 30 years. And all of a sudden, 20 years later, somebody looks up and says, golly, you know,
00:06:10.400
this has nothing to do with my passions. This is just something I kind of chose arbitrarily.
00:06:14.260
And yet it's determined the course of my life. So there's that. Another thing that's real common
00:06:20.060
is that people make those early decisions based on the expectations of other people.
00:06:26.000
So the mom who's a teacher, you know, expects her daughter to do the same. You know, the dad who's
00:06:31.380
an engineer, Hey son, you need to do this. So there's a lot of that. And I find that I'm working
00:06:37.180
with a lot of people who are in their mid forties who look up one day and say, you know what,
00:06:41.160
I'm living somebody else's dream, not my own. Sure. Now there's a third thing that happens
00:06:46.260
commonly. And that is that even success can take us off course because what happens if somebody
00:06:55.440
goes to work for a bank as an example, and they're really great as a teller, people ask for them by
00:07:01.020
name when they come in, how do we reward that person? We reward them by moving them away from
00:07:06.640
that into something else. So now we make them a loan manager. So they, you know, struggle along
00:07:11.920
with that for a couple of years. I don't really like it. They don't like being in the back office,
00:07:15.980
but they kind of make it work. So we reward them again by making them a branch manager.
00:07:20.740
Now it's, I don't care how great you are at relating to people. You better get your butt out
00:07:24.900
there and put together 13 new commercial clients this month or your job is on the line.
00:07:30.420
Right. So we forced them by rewarding them. Supposedly, we moved them further and further
00:07:36.940
away from what they really do best. I've seen that played out a thousand times.
00:07:41.920
This almost sounds like the premise of the book E-Myth as well, where you have different positions.
00:07:47.020
And just because you think you're good in one area, all of a sudden you move into this other area and
00:07:51.060
you realize this isn't something that was meant for me, but most guys will just continue down that
00:07:55.500
track and not be deliberate about getting back on course. It sounds like.
00:07:58.600
That's right. And you're, you're exactly right. It's very much like Michael Gerber's E-Myth,
00:08:02.540
but what happens then all of a sudden, you know, you're 42 years old and you got a mortgage and
00:08:07.780
two kids, you know, a car payment. And you're thinking, wow, I don't have the margin in my life
00:08:14.200
to make new decisions. I need, I'm stuck. And that's where a lot of people end up, you know,
00:08:20.080
living 20 years, the most productive years of their life, feeling like they're stuck.
00:08:24.800
So what needs to happen then? I mean, I think we can take this conversation two different ways because
00:08:28.500
you say, Hey, these guys making decisions in college about what their major is, but then you
00:08:31.860
have this other group of guys who has been doing the same thing in a career that could be successful.
00:08:36.480
Like you mentioned for 20 years, what needs to happen then? And what needs to happen now?
00:08:42.600
If you catch yourself not being on course, a couple of things, the first thing is to recognize nobody's
00:08:48.500
stuck. I mean, people say, well, I don't have any choice. Well, sure you do. I mean, when it comes down,
00:08:54.080
right down to it, you know, on Monday morning, you can choose to walk out that door,
00:08:58.240
go back to the job, or you can sit on the couch. So we know we have a choice. So we have to just,
00:09:02.680
just recognizing we do have a choice is a way to put ourselves back in the driver's seat.
00:09:08.940
Nothing is forcing you to do what you're doing, but in recognizing that you have a choice and I'm
00:09:13.760
not one to burn the bridges. I'm not saying just don't show up for work and we'll figure something
00:09:17.160
out. But when you recognize you do have choices, then you can start to identify what would the ideal
00:09:22.820
look like. So then you can create a transition plan to say, all right, what if I made a plan and
00:09:29.060
in six months I was able to move into that, but here's what happens. Here's what needs to happen.
00:09:34.980
We don't just look at the papers and see who's hiring. We don't just look on the news and see
00:09:40.000
what the hottest new business opportunities are, franchises or whatever trends. No, 85% of the
00:09:46.940
process of having confidence about that next move comes from drawing in the sand and look inward.
00:09:53.520
Look at what you already know about yourself. You know, how has God wired you? What are you most
00:09:58.300
drawn to? What are your passions? What are your talents? What are the things that you find yourself
00:10:02.220
wanting to do? Even if money is not an object looking inward is the real key that a lot of people miss.
00:10:07.300
We're too externally focused and we're too easily attracted to the next greatest thing. Jeez,
00:10:14.100
I heard about somebody who's got an eBay business and they're making $10,000 a month. I'll do that.
00:10:18.420
Well, that may not be a good choice. There's a whole lot of things you can do, but the real key
00:10:23.320
is, does it fit? See what we want, right? We want that beautiful, beautiful convergence
00:10:29.140
of your unique passion, talent, and money. Baby, when those three come together, you got it wired.
00:10:38.920
Right. Yeah. And you know what's really interesting about that? I've made a transition over the past year
00:10:43.080
into what I'm doing now with Order of Man. And just what you said, it's amazing how things begin
00:10:48.340
to fall in place. But not only that, just the amount of power and excitement, enthusiasm and
00:10:53.740
engagement you have when you get out of bed and the work that you're actually doing. So I can attest
00:10:57.600
to the power of what you're saying. Well, good. So what's the first step? I want to talk about one
00:11:02.440
of the things that I know you talk a lot about is finding out who it is you want to be, or even
00:11:08.200
identifying, I guess, is the better word of who you want to be. What's that process actually look
00:11:12.560
like? That process of knowing yourself so well that you have a clear sense of what it is that you
00:11:22.560
have what we call the unfair advantage. You know, there's a whole lot of cookie cutter programs out
00:11:28.720
there and even occupational things are like that. You know, you look at the occupational titles and you
00:11:33.820
do a personality survey or an aptitude survey when you're in college or high school and it shows that
00:11:39.260
you could be an accountant, an actuary, a banker, an architect, you know, a school teacher, physician,
00:11:44.700
attorney, whatever. Those are real cookie cutter applications. What I go for is, wow, if you're
00:11:52.460
talented in sculpting wood, you could do these beautiful wood sculptures like I have here in my
00:11:58.580
property and make extraordinary money, have control of your own time and be doing something that you
00:12:04.300
absolutely love doing every second of the day. But the only way you can really get a sense of
00:12:09.660
clearly of what that is, is to identify your unique skills and abilities, your personality tendencies.
00:12:15.900
How do you relate to other people? What kind of environment are you most comfortable in? How do you
00:12:19.340
manage? How do you persuade? How do you sell? And what are those recurring dreams, passions,
00:12:23.880
and values of yours? That's a very individualized process. See, I would rather help somebody
00:12:30.780
grow dandelions if that is their passion. Let's figure out a creative way to do that and knock it
00:12:36.740
out of the park rather than trying to talk you into being a computer programmer because we know there are
00:12:41.500
a lot of jobs there. But a lot of people do use the latter form. They look at, gee, where are the job
00:12:46.560
trends? You know, I have to have something with security and a paycheck. Boy, that is a recipe for
00:12:51.260
frustration and ultimate burnout. And we live in such an amazing time that we have the opportunity
00:12:56.760
to, like you said, make money growing and selling dandelions, if that's your thing. And I'm always
00:13:01.540
blown away at some of the things that I've seen and the creativity that guys have when it comes to
00:13:05.740
not only following their passion, but then creating a sustainable living, raising a family and all the
00:13:10.820
things they want to do, doing and following that passion. Absolutely. My gosh, the opportunities today.
00:13:16.800
I mean, there has never been a time, I don't think, when we've had so few obstacles to doing
00:13:23.420
something so individualistic. I mean, when you think about it, how the workplace has changed,
00:13:29.220
it used to be that if you lived in Paducah, Kentucky, boy, you better hope that when you
00:13:35.680
got out of high school, they'd hire you down at the local plant, the big plant that 80% of the
00:13:41.500
guys work at. Without that, you know, your options are going to be pretty limited. That's not true
00:13:46.000
today. You can live in the middle of the desert and you can have an online eBay business or Amazon
00:13:52.460
business or create a course that you do online or have a site like yours and do a podcast,
00:13:58.120
you know, and make $100,000. It doesn't matter where you live at all, but it opens the door to,
00:14:04.380
it levels the playing field for so many of us to really find that unique path, that path that ought to
00:14:11.100
be identified by just exactly what we bring to the table. So is there a series of, I don't want
00:14:17.500
to oversimplify or not do justice to the work that I know you do, but is there a handful of questions
00:14:23.100
or a starter question or two that we can ask ourselves to actually find that passion, to find out what
00:14:29.000
it is that's actually valuable to us? Identifying those three areas, skills and abilities, personality,
00:14:34.920
tendencies, values, dreams and passions should be something that somebody can do pretty readily
00:14:39.800
on their own. And I'm not talking about, you know, going to the desert for three weeks. I'm talking
00:14:44.760
about two hours where you really think about those things. Look back at what you've done. What have been
00:14:49.600
the high points in work that you've done and what have been the low points? What do other people say
00:14:54.820
that you do well? In looking at your personality, how do you relate to other people? Are you really
00:15:00.560
energized when you're in a room full of people or is that emotionally draining for you and you're really
00:15:04.760
more in your zone when you're by yourself or when you're working on ideas or outside rather than
00:15:11.260
inside the cubicle? I mean, those are all things you ought to know about yourself. And if not, you
00:15:15.700
can certainly get the input of other people who know you well to help you clarify that. But that's
00:15:20.540
a short term process, but so significant in helping us define what's this going to look like moving
00:15:26.760
forward then and only then. See, I don't care if you've got a, you know, a DDS behind your name
00:15:32.440
because you went to dental school at Harvard. Once we draw that line in the sand, we want to figure
00:15:37.500
out what it is that's unique about you. Then we can create what is the clear focus. Then that 15%,
00:15:44.540
which is the application, is pretty easy. And if that takes you in a new direction that is not
00:15:49.200
predetermined by your previous experience and even academic degrees, that's fine. There's a lot of
00:15:56.060
people that are making those kind of pretty dramatic changes in what they do. Doesn't mean that we
00:16:01.000
don't validate what they've already done. Usually there's a lot of carryover from that,
00:16:06.720
but you can certainly change the day to day application. So there are lots of teachers,
00:16:12.800
professors, dentists, attorneys, pastors. I mean, one of the biggest groups that I work with
00:16:16.920
are pastors who, gee, granddaddy was a pastor, daddy was a pastor. So they are, and they realize,
00:16:22.540
man, this sucks. This is not what it ought to be at all. Get me out of this where people think I'm on
00:16:28.980
call 24-7. They have unrealistic demands and don't pay me. Get me out of this. No problem.
00:16:35.400
Let's get you out of that. I don't care if you've got a seminary degree. Let's move you into the new
00:16:40.280
season of your life where there really is a fit. And that fit comes from looking inward and clarifying
00:16:45.260
what that positions you for. And I want to bring the guys that are listening to this attention to
00:16:50.340
something you just said, because it would be really easy to overlook the simplicity of what you
00:16:54.720
just said, which is stop, pause, reflect, take a couple hours, which is not very long in the grand
00:17:00.580
scheme of things, and really just spend some time thinking about. So it's very simple, but not
00:17:06.660
necessarily easy. So my question is, how do you open your mind or how do you expand your horizons?
00:17:12.960
Let's say you're stuck in a corporate job that you know you're not happy in, but the reality is that
00:17:16.620
you're in this box. You're almost the box itself. How do you begin to expand your horizons and see what
00:17:22.840
else is out there and see what else is available? You have to get excited about the possibilities.
00:17:28.800
You know, we know the old adage, and it's very, very true. Good is the enemy of the best. Sometimes
00:17:34.960
having things that are good work to our detriment in that we settle for that and without moving on to
00:17:42.320
the best. Now, we don't encourage people to sabotage where they are. We certainly don't wish for people
00:17:49.120
to get fired. But you know what? A lot of times those things that appear to be disasters are the
00:17:55.380
very thing needed to motivate us to open the door for what's next. I talk to people every day who just
00:18:01.880
got fired. I mean, you know, $400,000 CEOs who just got fired. The first thing they think is lack.
00:18:09.140
I'm going to have less. We need to turn the car back in. We aren't going to go on vacation this year.
00:18:14.140
We need to pull the kids out of private school, and I need to give up my golf membership. And I'm
00:18:18.980
like, why? Why are you thinking that the next thing is going to reward you less than what you have now
00:18:26.280
that you already knew you didn't like? How could you not imagine that moving into the next season
00:18:31.360
of your life is going to release a sense of fulfillment, joy, and peace that you've never had
00:18:35.840
and finances that you've never experienced? Because here's the irony. Now, I live in Nashville,
00:18:42.320
Tennessee. So we have a whole lot of creative people here and a whole lot of people who just
00:18:46.820
assume, well, gee, if I really did what I'm passionate about, you know, that's playing music,
00:18:50.540
you know, I'll have to learn to live on beans and rice. Are you kidding me? If that's really where
00:18:56.140
your gift is, then, I mean, I can introduce you to my next door neighbor, you know, Luke Bryan.
00:19:01.700
He's not eating beans and rice. Right, right. We could go drive up and see Taylor Swift.
00:19:06.240
I mean, look at the people who obviously know that's their area of passion. I'm not saying
00:19:12.340
that's easy to duplicate what they've done, but I'm saying that moving into where you're most
00:19:16.460
passionate, where you really are gifted is likely to release rewards and all levels, including
00:19:22.040
financially that you've never experienced before. It's a whole lot easier to make money doing
00:19:26.600
something, you know, as a perfect fit for you than trying to be responsible, doing something
00:19:31.420
you really don't give a crap about. Guys, just taking a quick time out to introduce you to my
00:19:37.260
friends and sponsor of the show, The Art of Charm. Now, I'm sure you guys know this by now because
00:19:41.060
I've been talking about it for a couple of months, but The Art of Charm podcast is packed with wisdom
00:19:45.340
that every man will want to incorporate in his life. They cover topics I know are important to you,
00:19:51.460
like how to build confidence and trust, how to keep things fresh in a relationship,
00:19:54.940
how to end a relationship, and of course, all of your productivity, time management,
00:19:58.520
biohacking tips, but their goal is to help you upgrade your brain so you can become a high
00:20:02.640
performer both at home and at work. Now, these guys aren't just winging it like so many podcasters
00:20:07.640
are these days. They have field tested the information they share with special forces,
00:20:12.000
Navy SEALs, world-class intelligence officers. Then what they do is they reverse engineer the
00:20:16.360
strategies and they help you apply them in your own life. So go check them out after you listen
00:20:20.820
to this show at theartofcharm.com slash podcast, or you can find them in iTunes or Stitcher,
00:20:25.240
wherever it is you get your fix of podcasts. This is a show about leveling up your life,
00:20:29.160
your relationships, your wealth, your fitness, your business, and you'll walk away with a ton
00:20:32.700
of great information that you can actually use. You deserve an extraordinary life. Go to theartofcharm.com
00:20:37.720
slash podcast, or find The Art of Charm in iTunes or Stitcher and start taking your life
00:20:42.280
to the next level. We really enjoy this show and we think you will as well. Now back to my interview
00:20:47.500
with Dan. So Dan, I'm hearing what you say and I know guys, I know my audience, I know how I used
00:20:55.580
to be. And the next statement out of their mouth will probably be something to the effect of, yeah,
00:21:01.760
but, or that might work for them, but it doesn't work for me. What are some of the common excuses
00:21:06.360
that you run against? And more importantly, how do we overcome the excuses that we start playing in our
00:21:11.820
minds? Well, you're, you're exactly right. You know, there's going to be people. Yeah, but you
00:21:17.160
know, I've got a mortgage. Yeah, but my wife would never support me. Yeah, but I don't have the academic
00:21:21.340
degrees to back that up. Yeah, but I'm not really that talented. Well, the, what we tell ourselves
00:21:28.300
tend to become our reality. So if in fact you tell yourself that that's exactly the way it's going to
00:21:35.280
play out. So I don't, there's no magic pill for talking somebody into believing there's something
00:21:43.000
better. If you're content with where you are and you think that's the best there is, that's exactly
00:21:49.800
what's going to be true. But what I've found in my own personal experience in these areas is
00:21:55.040
there's probably something out there that's even better than what I'm experiencing now.
00:22:00.540
I'm constantly, and I mean every day on the hunt, but what is it that I could try? What is it that I
00:22:09.260
could look at? You know, I listened just this week. I heard my buddy, John Lee Dumas, entrepreneur
00:22:16.360
on fire interview, Brian. Well, Brian's been around a long time. I mean, Brian had a cassette series
00:22:22.800
back when I was getting started in this game that I listened to probably 18 or 20 times. I was coming
00:22:29.160
out of a really tough financial hole that I had created for myself. And I listened to his cassette
00:22:35.320
program, six cassettes, getting rich in America over and over and over again. But he reminded me
00:22:43.280
just this week, listening to him on John Lee's entrepreneur on fire, the same principles he's
00:22:49.060
talking, talked about 25 years ago, three ways people become millionaires and release the best that
00:22:54.920
they can be in their lives. Number one, have clear goals. Number two, continuous learning.
00:23:01.640
Number three, willingness to take risk. Now, when I talk about risk and a lot of what you've referred
00:23:07.180
to there in your questions set up to me as well, somebody's not willing to take a risk. I'm not
00:23:11.460
talking about, you know, just risk is when we are not in control. So if you and I go to Las Vegas and
00:23:19.360
we put the titles to our cars down on a roll of the dice, yeah, that's risk. We really don't have
00:23:23.820
control. We're just hoping on luck to turn up something good. That's not what serious entrepreneurs
00:23:30.340
or business people do at all. I'm talking about identifying what it is you do well, creating a
00:23:36.160
clear plan of action. When you move into that, that's not what I see as risky. What I see as risky
00:23:41.420
is staying in something, you know, is not a fit where you're going to sacrifice your soul,
00:23:46.200
your emotional well-being, deterioration of your relationships and less financially than
00:23:52.860
you're probably capable of. Wow. That's more than risky. That's really a tough situation to talk
00:23:59.000
yourself into. So I don't see it as risky to identify clearly what I'm going to move to having
00:24:04.300
created a plan that I'm going to walk out. Man, I'll do that any day of the week. I love it. Yeah.
00:24:10.300
And now along these same lines, why is it that we wait till the disaster? I mean, you said you talk
00:24:15.180
with guys all the time that who have just got fired and now maybe that frees them up to follow
00:24:20.320
their passion a little bit more easily than it was before. Why do we wait till we get laid off or we
00:24:26.420
get fired or there's a downturn in the market or our wife leaves us to actually make change when in
00:24:31.420
all reality, we could do it before it gets bad and isolate or at least protect ourselves to some
00:24:37.040
degree from some of those things having as big an impact on us. Yeah. It's just that old thing that
00:24:42.320
the status quo is pretty appealing. Yeah. You know, it wears me out. I'm burnout, but at least
00:24:49.980
I'm going to get a paycheck. I've got a 401k contribution coming in. If I just, I mean,
00:24:54.700
I used to talk to people. We used to have the Saturn plant just South of where I live here.
00:24:59.460
So general motors, you know, big hoopla open to Saturn plant. It was going to be the end all
00:25:03.600
in the car business for everybody. And I had guys there and guys who absolutely hated going to work in
00:25:09.780
the morning. But man, if I just put in 13 more years, I'll have a fully vested retirement plan.
00:25:16.440
Right. You got to be kidding me. You're going to beat yourself up every morning for the next 13
00:25:23.260
years to go to a job that's sucking the life out of you. I mean, I couldn't tolerate that for 13 days,
00:25:29.620
let alone 13 years. I'm out of there. If that's really the way I feel about it, let's move on out
00:25:34.860
of there. And I've seen that happen again and again, but that it's, it's that old thing, you
00:25:39.840
know, good is the enemy of the best. And if some things are, are just okay, sometimes that's a real
00:25:44.640
appealing trap to stay in rather than moving to things that are better. Now I want to be careful,
00:25:50.620
Ryan, in talking about this, because I don't think that everybody ought to change what they're doing.
00:25:55.060
I think there are people who can take that draw a line in the sand, look inward at themselves,
00:26:00.000
do that 85% introspection and get a lot of confirmation that they've made a lot of right
00:26:04.660
decisions. They really are in something that is great. And I want that to be the end result
00:26:11.020
for a whole lot of people. So I'm not saying that everybody out there needs to change what they're
00:26:15.540
doing, but we already know right now we're told that 81% of people intend to change jobs before the
00:26:22.980
end of this year. Wow. Yeah. That's a lot. Now that doesn't mean that we got to be 81% unemployment,
00:26:29.780
obviously we don't, we're only at about a 5%, which is really a healthy number, but that means
00:26:34.240
a lot of people that are going to work every morning are looking for an escape. They're really
00:26:39.500
trying to get out of that. Yeah. I mean, I imagine this is very similar to marriage. Now I know you
00:26:45.340
have a big benchmark coming up in your marriage. I'm not quite there. We're going to be at 12 years
00:26:49.880
this year. And I know that a lot of guys, based on the conversations I'm having,
00:26:54.320
lose some of that passion and lose some of the spark, but through a lot of turning it inward and
00:27:01.860
just doing some things on their end, they're able to reignite the passion. So we're not saying that
00:27:06.680
you need to step out on your wife or quit your job. What you're saying is there may be opportunities
00:27:11.020
to find some newfound passion in what it is you're doing. Oh, absolutely. Yeah, absolutely. And a lot of
00:27:17.440
times what happens too, I mean, I worked with a gentleman not too long ago who was a executive,
00:27:22.760
a really respected executive at an organization and moved up. He had tremendous responsibilities, but
00:27:28.120
because of that, he was no longer playing the shallow. He was no longer involved in the bookstore
00:27:33.720
at his church that he used to run. He was no longer involved in his son's soccer plan. He was no longer
00:27:40.340
involved in his own musical and physical enhancement. All those things had gotten weeded out because his
00:27:47.140
work responsibilities, they expanded so much. He was paid extraordinarily well.
00:27:52.760
And he came to me convinced he needed to quit his job and just figure something out. And I said,
00:27:57.760
no, wait a minute. You really enjoy the work that you're doing. There's a lot of reasons for people
00:28:03.220
respecting you as they do in your current position. Yeah. I said, you've allowed yourself to take on all
00:28:10.000
these other responsibilities, not with them requiring it. You're just that nice a guy.
00:28:15.940
I kind of acknowledged that. I said, you need to start saying, no, we need to go through and identify
00:28:21.240
the essential things that you do in your position that only you can do that nobody else can do.
00:28:26.500
We need to delegate. You need to get a couple of assistants. You need to say no to about 80%.
00:28:31.220
He's like, wow, are they going to still allow me to stay there? I said, we're going to find out.
00:28:36.500
He did exactly that. And everybody was like, wow, I wondered when you'd wake up.
00:28:40.940
Well, sure. You know, we want you because you do that so well. He scaled back. He really scaled
00:28:47.000
back to doing about a third of what he was doing. His income continued to rise. People absolutely
00:28:53.340
adored him. And he went back to bicycling on the weekends. He started playing a cello again in a
00:29:00.560
local orchestra. He took over the bookstore, started seeing his kids' ball games. So it was just a matter
00:29:07.020
of clarifying. And there's a new book out there called Essentialism by Greg McKellen. But it really
00:29:13.820
is in that process of clarifying what is really important. And a lot of people can do that in
00:29:19.420
what they're doing currently where they need to. It's like, geez, it's like flushing a radiator in
00:29:24.800
your car. You know, you just need a reboot in your computer. Maybe it would be a bit. Sure. Right.
00:29:29.920
Or you just need to do that. You need to take a fresh look at how can I clean up my life?
00:29:34.100
So I really do restore the joy of what got me into this work initially.
00:29:39.260
Well, let's switch gears here a little bit. I want to talk about your brand a little bit and
00:29:44.200
more specifically and along those same lines of the anniversary that I know is coming up. And I
00:29:48.700
want to congratulate you on that. Let's talk about this number 48 and why this is so powerful. Why not
00:29:58.100
Ah, great question. You know, I'd love to say that there was some real scientific process by which we
00:30:03.760
came up with that number. And this is a proven number based on all these studies. It was nothing
00:30:08.120
like that at all. Man, I'm an entrepreneur from the top of my head to the tip of my toes, Ryan. And
00:30:12.980
back years ago when the material that I'm doing now that really became 48 Days to the Work You Love
00:30:19.600
was a Sunday school class. Joanna and I were teaching that. No thought of that having anything to do with
00:30:25.540
income. We're just being part of community service. And we were teaching a class called Career Life
00:30:31.060
Planning. And then I changed it to Career Life Planning 101 to make it sound more like an academic
00:30:36.300
course. And then we did find the job you want in 30 days. You know, we found that some people didn't
00:30:41.580
want a J-O-B. They wanted more freedom, more control. So we changed that very strategically to work
00:30:47.460
rather than job. Well, then 30 days, that doesn't really get your attention. It's just a,
00:30:52.800
it's just a normal month. So we know that a week, a month, even a year, they're just generic terms.
00:30:58.120
This was when 48 Hours was becoming popular as a TV show. And I thought, you know, being a
00:31:03.960
marketing guy, I thought, I'll bet I could get some brand recognition if we used 48. Now it's
00:31:08.520
not going to be 48 hours, 48 days, 48 days. We brought that to the forefront. At first it was
00:31:14.740
find the work you love in 48 days. But when I started using 48 days, it was like somebody threw
00:31:19.220
gasoline on my business. Really? Oh my gosh. People were, you, people were immediately asking us,
00:31:25.900
can I really change my life in 48 days? Yes, you can. If you create a plan and act on it,
00:31:31.320
it was so powerful. We moved it to the front 48 days to the work you love and ultimately changed
00:31:38.360
our entire name. My, my company name was the business source. We changed the name to 48 days
00:31:44.380
because it was that powerful as a brand. Now here's, you know, and I, I love that. And, and 48 days is
00:31:50.880
enough time to identify where you are currently. Get the advice and opinion of other people who you
00:31:57.240
trust. Identify three or four best options for you. Do a little bit more research, choose the
00:32:04.360
best one and act. That is enough time. And that's enough time to make a decision on what kind of car
00:32:09.540
you're going to buy, where you're going to send your son to college, what church you're going to go
00:32:14.480
to, what business you're going to start, what job you're going to get. I don't care what it is. 48 days
00:32:18.500
is a reasonable timeframe. And it eliminates that old persistent thing called procrastination.
00:32:25.200
Mm-hmm. I mean, that short enough timeframe to do some work. That's right. I mean, procrastination
00:32:30.120
is the biggest thief of opportunity. People are going to, yeah, make a new decision when this
00:32:36.520
happens. You know, when the kids get out of school, when I get another degree, when I get out of debt
00:32:40.620
or whatever, and all of a sudden, not only weeks or months, but years roll by. I worked with a guy
00:32:46.360
one time who had been out of job in between. So somebody offered him a temp job at the bank.
00:32:53.140
Now he knew it was just temp, you know, but he thought, well, he can do that for a couple months
00:32:56.680
till he really figures out what he wants to do. That was 14 years ago. Oh man. It was just enough,
00:33:04.460
just okay enough. He stayed there. That's why I am so adamant about 48 days. And when I coach with
00:33:10.520
somebody, we work on a 48 days plan, that timeline, if we hit day 49 and they're still doing what they
00:33:17.620
were back at the beginning, that's fine. I'll still be your friend, still love you, man. I'm
00:33:22.280
moving on. I work with people who make decisions that lead them to new results and it can be done
00:33:27.060
in that period of time. It's that powerful. Well, let's talk about this transition a little
00:33:31.340
bit. What are some of the common pitfalls as let's say somebody recognizes what it is they want
00:33:36.480
to do and they start pursuing and they go through this 48 days. What are some mishaps or some pitfalls
00:33:42.220
that men should be aware of as they're transitioning into the work they love?
00:33:45.840
With the kind of things that are so appealing today, they often don't have the characteristics
00:33:51.060
of a regular job or a regular business. That meaning, you know, if somebody's working a corporate
00:33:56.320
job and they think, well, I really want to start a construction company or a landscaping company.
00:34:01.200
Well, that's very time and labor intensive. So you would almost have to quit what you're doing
00:34:06.820
now and then just ramp that up to make it work. We're talking about a lot of people that move into
00:34:12.340
kind of the space that you and I are in where it's more information. So could you write an ebook
00:34:17.740
on 10 tips for transitioning dads, whatever. So you put that out there and all of a sudden,
00:34:24.340
you know, you have, you sell it for 17 bucks and you have a thousand people to buy that.
00:34:29.500
Ooh, that's 17,000 bucks. And that may have come in while you were sleeping. It may have taken you
00:34:34.440
five hours to create the original document, but all of a sudden you see the impact, the powerful
00:34:39.040
impact of residual passive income. So you open the door to that. So most of the things, the people that
00:34:45.780
I work with, we do things that don't jeopardize what they're currently doing. We just start to find
00:34:50.340
those eight to 10 hour critical hours during the week where they focus on building something new
00:34:56.280
and we wait until it duplicates our current income and they make a very soft transition and go on from
00:35:01.360
there. Yeah, it makes total sense. You know, I'm in a weird boat right now where I just went full
00:35:05.880
time with this business and my wife the other day asked me, how's it going? How are you feeling
00:35:11.520
about things? And it's really strange because I'm used to going out there and trading my time for money
00:35:15.720
and making the sale and having that rush of the income. And now I might be in writing
00:35:20.320
a blog post or doing a podcast like I'm doing now, which doesn't directly translate to a paycheck.
00:35:25.780
So it's a really interesting process as I'm doing this. Well, in this space, I encourage people to
00:35:31.320
have, we develop a Venn diagram. It's three interlocking circles, but that allows us seven
00:35:36.240
distinct different areas. So if somebody wants to coach, yeah, okay, let's do that. But what if we
00:35:43.300
included speaking, developing products, having affiliate programs, having a membership site, we can start to
00:35:48.600
build other things around the same thing where activity in any one area fuels activity in the
00:35:53.420
others. And all of a sudden it takes the pressure off any one area for generating our total income.
00:35:57.960
But the combination can get real interesting real quickly.
00:36:01.900
Right, right. Yeah. I can see how that's actually applying in my business and in my life. Now I've got
00:36:06.620
a question I want to ask you that is, somebody asked me this today, in fact, and it's timely that
00:36:11.980
we're having this conversation. And the question is, how do you manage your current position when you
00:36:19.100
know you're trying to transition to something else and it becomes just painstakingly difficult to be
00:36:24.700
engaged with your current work? There ought to be a timeline. You can't continue that indefinitely.
00:36:30.660
If somebody is doing something part time and after two years, you know, the generating $500 a month
00:36:36.000
in their sideline, I'm thinking, you know, I will tell them, I don't think this is realistic.
00:36:41.220
You know, does this really have even the potential to grow into something full time?
00:36:44.820
If somebody knows they want to transition. Now, a lot of people are doing, you know,
00:36:49.320
side hustle things, which is fine. They want to continue that. So they may make a thousand bucks
00:36:53.280
on the side every month and that's fine. But if somebody really wants to move into a new endeavor
00:37:00.640
totally, then I want to see a 90 to 180 day transition. That's three to six months. I want
00:37:08.620
to see a transition. So I want to see them be able to swing that, duplicate their current income in
00:37:15.540
that time. And I think if it's a reasonable new endeavor, you ought to be able to do that pretty
00:37:21.400
much regardless of what your previous income was. So I look for that timeline so that it doesn't just
00:37:26.540
drag on. So, you know, your wife isn't saying, geez, you know, where are we ever going to see
00:37:31.520
you again? You know, why does this make sense when you're spending 80 hours a week? No, that ought to
00:37:36.580
be a short burst of intensive activity to make the transition totally. Right. And I'm sure it makes
00:37:43.440
it easier to wake up and do that nine to five job, for example, when, you know, I've got this hard
00:37:49.480
deadline and I have a plan in order to get me to where I'm not doing this anymore.
00:37:57.700
Well, Dan, we're winding down on time. I really appreciate all the insights that you've shared
00:38:01.100
with us. I want to ask you a couple of questions as we wind down. And the first question that I ask
00:38:06.240
all of my guests, and I'm excited to hear your answer is what does it mean to be a man?
00:38:11.600
Wow. Golly, I got chills just hearing you say that. What does it mean to be a man?
00:38:16.540
Golly, you know, my perspective on that is probably somewhat different because I tend to be more
00:38:23.820
theoretical, more intellectual, more conceptual. I'm not a man's man in terms of getting out there
00:38:30.980
and crushing something or, you know, scaling a mountain or having a fast boat, you know,
00:38:37.400
and I like fast cars. That's an exception, but I'm not, I'm not into sports. I really don't spend any
00:38:43.700
time involved in that at all. But I want to be remembered as a great neighbor. I want to be
00:38:50.840
remembered by my kids when they describe their daddy who had time for them and helping them learn
00:38:56.420
how to ride a bicycle and helping them, you know, take the lawnmower engine apart and understand how
00:39:02.340
it works. I want to have my grandkids say that the best place in the world they know to be is at
00:39:08.980
their granddaddy and grandma's house. They want to, I've got a little granddaughter here at our house
00:39:13.720
today. We were talking about her birthday, which is coming up in about a month. She, I mean, there's
00:39:19.780
no question she wants to have it here. She, all our grandkids want to have their most significant
00:39:25.660
experiences here at our place. Very cool. Boy, to me, that's all the affirmation of being a man that I
00:39:30.840
need. Excellent insight. So if someone wants to learn more about what you're doing, Dan, your work,
00:39:35.760
obviously it's out there. I'm familiar with it. So I can attest to the importance of the work you're
00:39:39.440
doing. How do we learn more about you and connect with the work you're doing?
00:39:42.980
Absolutely. I appreciate that. Well, I've been pretty fortunate in branding the 48 days. So you put
00:39:48.420
48 days in any kind of a search and you're going to find us all over the place there. We've got a
00:39:53.180
networking community of about 16,000 people at 48days.net that is just that. There's no charge, but
00:40:00.500
there's a lot of people that are sharing ideas and resources there. Got a resource that would
00:40:05.540
probably be helpful to, uh, to your audience. Joanne and I, my wife and I have had a mission
00:40:12.660
statement forever. What does it mean to have a successful family? And if people go to 48days.com
00:40:18.960
slash safe, just S-A-F-E because it's titled a safe place. It really conveys what I think being a man
00:40:27.960
is all about being ahead of a family is all about what I want our home to really be all about.
00:40:33.160
And Ryan, I know we talked just a few minutes before we started recording here and you know
00:40:38.680
that real soon I've got coming up here a real significant wedding anniversary. Yes, you do.
00:40:45.720
I'm, I'm four times ahead of you with you. That's right. But with 48 days being such a
00:40:51.940
significant branding thing that has just, uh, done amazing things for us for a very long time,
00:40:57.540
we're going to be celebrating our 48th wedding anniversary. And that's an extremely exciting time
00:41:03.460
for us. We've got a lot of our friends. We're getting together. We've reserved the country club
00:41:07.460
locally here for a big party. We're going to have and just get together with friends just to celebrate
00:41:12.260
that. Uh, we we've had a amazing run together, my wife and I, and hope to continue that for a whole
00:41:19.000
lot of more years. Well, congratulations. If I knew nothing else about you, that would tell me what
00:41:24.060
kind of man you are. Cause I know marriage can be difficult, but it can be an amazing thing as well.
00:41:28.220
Oh, it can indeed. I it's, it's a foundation for a whole lot of things that I've had the freedom to
00:41:33.820
do. A lot of the things we've talked about here, I would not have had the freedom to do it. I would
00:41:37.840
have felt trapped, but I had the unconditional support of my wife to go ahead and try it. She knows
00:41:43.120
how I'm wired. She would have been content if I had just gotten a job and we got married and worked
00:41:47.380
there for 35 years and got a gold watch, but she recognized very quickly that would suck the life out of me.
00:41:53.520
That's not how I was wired. And as much terrified the crap out of her times, she, she knew I had to go
00:41:59.540
for it. And she's always been supportive of that. Sounds like you've got a keeper. Well, Dan, I
00:42:03.800
appreciate you. I really appreciate your time. I know you're a busy man and you have a lot going on.
00:42:08.080
Thank you for the resource and imparting those words of wisdom. I appreciate you being on the show
00:42:13.520
today. Absolutely. My pleasure, Ryan. Thank you. There you have it guys. Mr. Dan Miller sharing his
00:42:20.440
insights into how to start exploring your passion and get out of the work that you do not enjoy doing
00:42:26.380
again. If you're one of those few men who are action takers, I personally invite you to join me
00:42:30.540
and the men in the iron council. You are going to get a ton out of this and actually start seeing the
00:42:35.680
results. The results will speak for themselves and your relationships, your health, your wealth,
00:42:39.400
and again, most importantly yourself. So head to order of men.com slash iron council to get started
00:42:43.680
right away. Also, all the details of the show can be found at order of man.com slash zero five five.
00:42:49.100
And you can join in the conversation we're having about masculinity or Facebook group at
00:42:52.920
facebook.com slash groups slash order of man. Guys, I look forward to talking with you next week,
00:42:57.960
but until then take action and become the man you were meant to be. Thank you for listening to the
00:43:03.040
order of man podcast. You're ready to take charge of your life and be more of the man you were meant to
00:43:08.220
be. We invite you to join the order at order of man.com.