The Moment He Knew Something Was Wrong
The house was finished.
Interior remodeled. Exterior redone. New fence. The market had run up, the mortgage was under control, and for the first time in years, there was nothing left on the list. Sean Kirby had even hired a kid to mow the yard, because he was too busy to do it himself.
By every reasonable measure, this was the win. This was the thing he had been working toward since he was a broke 22-year-old asking for two months of commissions in advance so he could afford to propose.
So he turned to his wife and said, “I think it’s time to move.”
She asked why. He said, “This is just too good.”
Most people hear that story and assume it is a story about restlessness. It is not. It is a story about what happens when you finally get quiet enough to notice where your time is actually going, and you do not like the answer.
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The Sacrifice Nobody Talks About
There is a line in this episode that reframes the entire conversation about work and family, and it is worth sitting with:
“You’re always sacrificing something. So you’re either going to sacrifice time with family, or you’re going to sacrifice work. That’s just the way it works.”
That is not a motivational quote. That is an accounting statement.
Most business owners operate as if the goal is to eliminate the trade-off. Grow enough, hire enough, systematize enough, and eventually you get everything. But the trade-off never disappears. It only moves. Every hire you make to buy back your time creates a payroll obligation that costs you time. Every expansion that was supposed to create freedom adds a layer of responsibility that has to be managed.
Sean learned this the hard way, and he learned it from the person best positioned to teach him.
What His Dad Left on the Table
In 2004, Mike Kirby was traveling fifty weeks a year. He retired, moved to a small town in Indiana, bought the downtown laundromat, and opened a financial practice next door.
Sean was eight years old.
The financial cost of that decision was not small. As Sean puts it, his dad left millions on the table. If he had stayed on that trajectory, Sean says plainly, he would be living a very different life today.
Here is what he got instead. He never missed a baseball game. He came to everything. He built diversified revenue streams specifically so he was never beholden to a calendar somebody else controlled.
That is the part most people skip when they tell this kind of story. Mike Kirby did not just decide to spend more time with his kids. He restructured his income so that the decision was possible. Time freedom that is not funded is just a wish.
Why the Trade-Off Feels Invisible
The reason business owners get this wrong is not that they do not care. It is that the cost is delayed and the reward is immediate.
Revenue shows up this quarter. Regret shows up in fifteen years, when your kid is grown and you are trying to remember what their fourth-grade year looked like.
Sean describes watching clients get pulled in every direction, and every one of them says the same thing. They are doing it for the family. But the time is not being redirected toward the family. It is being redirected toward the thing that is supposed to eventually benefit the family, which is a very different sentence when you say it out loud.
That gap is where most people lose a decade.
The Reframe That Actually Works
Here is the part of the episode that will surprise people who expect a financial advisor to hand them a system.
Sean’s position is that investing your time wisely is not primarily about optimization. It is not about micro-dosing your calendar down to the minute, even though he acknowledges that with four kids you sometimes have to.
His actual claim is smaller and much harder:
“It’s not that you’re not doing it wisely now. It’s that all it is is the consciousness to know where your time is being spent, and allocating that to where you want it to be most.”
Consciousness first. Allocation second.
Most people try to reverse that order. They buy the planner, they build the system, they block the calendar, and they never once ask whether the thing they are optimizing toward is the thing they actually want. Then they wake up having achieved it and feel nothing.
Three Practical Moves From This Episode
- Audit before you optimize.
Before you restructure anything, spend two weeks writing down where your hours actually went. Not where you planned them. Where they went. Most people are shocked by the gap, and the gap is the whole insight.
- Fund the freedom before you claim it.
Mike Kirby did not walk away from a career and hope it worked out. He built revenue streams that made him non-beholden. If your version of time freedom depends on you personally showing up every day, you do not have time freedom. You have a job with a nicer title.
- Build one non-negotiable reset.
For the Kirby house, it is a seven o’clock bedtime. That is not a parenting hack. It is a structural decision that guarantees Sean and his wife get a window every single day to check whether they are still pointed in the same direction. Without a reset, drift compounds silently.
The Mistake Worth Making
Sean is honest about the fact that selling the finished house and moving his family into a camper next to a block garage did not create the peaceful life he imagined. He calls it the biggest mistake of his life, laughing, because the work never stopped. He was still doing chickens and mowing until almost ten o’clock the night before this recording.
But he would do it again, because the point was never comfort. The point was that his kids would see what it takes.
An object in motion tends to stay in motion. Kids model what they see. If the only thing they see is a father who is exhausted from work he never talks about, that is the model they inherit.
Where This Leaves You
If you are a business owner reading this and quietly recognizing yourself, the question is not whether you are working too much. That question has no useful answer.
The question is whether you have ever consciously chosen the trade you are currently making.
Because you are making one. Everybody is. The only variable is whether it was a decision or a default.
Ready to look at your own numbers with someone who has actually done this? The team at Performance Financial works with business owners on tax, accounting, insurance, and financial planning, with one goal. Take enough off your plate that you can spend your time on the things you would not trade. Book a conversation at performance.financial.
Transcript
Cold Open
Sean: What I tell people is we got engaged, and then four weeks later we found out we were five weeks pregnant.
Darren: Oh, whoopsie.
Sean: Immediately realizing that I had no idea how to take care of a kid. I was not in a financial position to have a kid. I needed to figure it out.
He did amazing things, but he never sacrificed family again. So he left millions on the table. If he rode that wave, I would have a very different life.
I remember I looked at Casey and I go, hey. She goes, what? I said, I think it’s time to move. And she goes, why? I said, this is just too good.
Darren: Now you’re in the hot seat, buddy. This is my podcast now, dude.
Episode
Sean: Welcome back to the Invest Your Time Wisely podcast. My name is Sean Kirby. Today I’m joined with my buddy, my producer, Darren Cooper. I drug him out from behind the computer out here because today we’re going to do a special episode.
The reason I think this is special is I kind of want to give you guys a look behind the curtain about who I am, where this background thought process behind Invest Your Time Wisely comes from, and then tell you about where we’re going to take this podcast and take this content over the next couple of years. So, Darren, I appreciate you, brother.
Darren: Dude, it’s so good to be here, sitting across the table from you. I’ve been back, like you said, behind the cameras for a while. It’s been cool to see these episodes come together, and I’m honored to sit here and be the audience-like voice for you, to bring out some of the gold that’s inside of you. So it’s going to be totally fun. Now you’re in the hot seat, buddy. This is my podcast now, dude.
Sean: It’s easy asking questions, isn’t it?
Darren: Yeah, man, I get the fun part. So to get us started, tell us a little bit about what you said there. Who you are, and why this content and this podcast are so important to you. How did we get here?
Sean: Yeah. So I’ll take you back. We’ll back it up a couple of years.
So in 2019, I was a 22-year-old kid. I had just got engaged to a wonderful, amazing mother, wife, woman.
Darren: She’s watching, buddy.
Sean: Yeah, she is. In the living room again.
So we got engaged in New York City, November 3rd of 2018. We flew out there, and I took an advance on my commissions because I had no money. I had to ask for two months of commissions up front so I could take her on this trip. I proposed to her the way she wanted to be proposed to, which was pretty much in the middle of nowhere with no one watching, in the most populated small city in the world.
Darren: Wait, wait, wait. In New York City? She wanted nobody around?
Sean: She was getting proposed to.
Darren: All right, so her nightmare. How did you pull that off then?
Sean: Well, there is like, they took this old abandoned sky track and they turned it into a walking park. So one morning we grabbed coffee and then we went on this big walking track. There’s other people walking, and then I found this little alcove, like an alley, and I was like, look over there. And when she was looking, I got on one knee. We kissed. Amazing experience.
Then we went up to the World One building, highest point you can. I spent $200 on a bottle of champagne, went to a Broadway show. Again, this is all future money that I didn’t have that I was spending.
Darren: We’re spending that advance, man.
Sean: I spent my advance. So we finally get home, we tell everybody, we’re so excited. And what I tell people is we got engaged, and then four weeks later we found out we were five weeks pregnant.
Darren: Oh, whoopsie.
Sean: We’d already decided a wedding, and how many people we were going to invite, and all this stuff. And fortunately, unfortunately, we kind of had to pivot some of our plans.
I can tell you, when I was growing up, I always thought the right way to do it was get engaged, get married, have a couple of babies when you’re 30, when you’re finally financially sound, and then go through the kid’s life. Unfortunately, but so fortunately to us, we got thrusted into adulthood so quickly.
Darren: So you’re how old at this point?
Sean: 22. I was a kid.
Darren: Wow, man. 22.
Sean: But again, I remember immediately realizing that I had no idea how to take care of a kid. I was not in a financial position to have a kid, and I needed to figure it out.
So all I knew is I needed to sell more. I was in a commission-based business, and at that point I was a glorified customer service rep who had never really learned how to sell. That force of action really put me in a position where I learned what I had to learn so that we could buckle up. We could do it. My wife is a nurse. She was making great money. I was making 11 bucks an hour.
The podcast, the original iteration, at the time was called the Performance Group Podcast, and it came out of that manic stage of my life.
So I knew at 22, I didn’t have a network. Everybody I knew was still in school, or they were just coming out of school. They weren’t buying insurance. Most of them were still on their parents’ insurance. That’s just where I was in life.
My dad’s always said you sell five years up and five years down, usually in a traditional setting. That tends to be your peer group. So five years down, nobody had anything. Five years up, we still didn’t have anything.
Darren: Five years down from you, they were still in high school.
Sean: Correct. I had to figure out a way to build trust quick.
My dad had run his business for a long time. He had a lot of trust with his clients. At that point, I was just a punk kid, nepo baby. I had an office next to my dad’s, listening to him talk every day. God bless him for it, because I’ve learned a lot of lessons through the window listening to him speak with clients. A lot of those you hear me say now, like in the earlier episodes, I always say my dad always said, mama said, like the Waterboy. But we’ve learned so much about how to build trust.
So I start this small podcast. I started finding small business owners, because at that point nobody knew Sean.
Long story short, my dad retired as president and CEO of two $10 billion insurance companies back in 2004, moved to a small town called Pendleton, Indiana. He bought the downtown laundromat and opened his financial practice next door, and immediately stirred the pot in this small town and said, here I am.
I was eight, and we were used to a different lifestyle in Iowa. Then dad buys these businesses and fires all the employees. Not because they deserved to be fired, but he put in cameras and most of them quit. It was a cash business.
Darren: I gotcha.
Sean: Then he didn’t have anybody to watch the laundromats on Saturdays. So what it turned into is child labor laws. He would drop off my sister and I, and he would just leave us at the laundromat. Most of the time, our job was just to make sure nothing bad happened. We had a little box TV, the old phone.
Darren: Living your best life. No cell phones.
Sean: They just left us there. We would get dropped off every Saturday. This was my first chance of having a job. We would do other people’s laundry, pay per pound or whatever it was back in the day. Or we’d fix equipment, or if somebody lost a quarter, if the change machine went out, we were just those people for them. But I’m not sure I ever got paid.
Darren: Are you just realizing this now as you’re talking about it?
Sean: I’m sure there were checks cut and put into an account, but no one ever gave me the validation that you made $30 today.
We also didn’t have any food there. So I would take the quarters and I would call the bar across the street. Back then it was called Donnie’s. And I would say, can I have a hamburger? And they would say, yeah, it’s X amount. And I’d take $10 in quarters, because that was all the money I had, and I would go across the street to the bar, and they would come outside, and I’d hand them quarters, and they would hand me my sandwich. And I would go back and eat my food and wait for my parents to eventually come pick me back up.
Darren: Oh, that’s amazing. What I love about this story though is you said something that is interesting. You said, nepo baby. And yet everything that I’ve heard you say, and I’ve even heard you talk about stories off camera, I don’t think your dad treated you that way at all. He instilled some really good work ethic and almost put you in positions to figure it out, where nepotism really wasn’t a part of that. Did you feel that, or did somebody say that to you?
Sean: I think now, where we are in our business today, I’ve always had this like, we just had Cody on earlier talking about that chip on your shoulder. I’ve always had the chip that I’m not a silver spoon. I’ve lived an amazing life. My dad’s a great provider. We’ve had all these amazing things. I stand on the shoulders of giants is what I tell people. Where we’re at today couldn’t have happened without as much blood, sweat, tears and capital that dad’s put into it.
But I think anybody who grows up with an astounding father, which I’m sure you can relate to, it’s a lot to live up to.
So fast forward, that cute little lesson of showing up to work and doing the doggone thing, but also, you got to eat. Dad had built so much trust in that community over time that I needed to figure out a way to reinstill myself into it. And the only way I knew how to do it was based off the medium I liked most.
I was in this learning, not earning year of my life. Ruby was born in July of 2019, so the end of 2018 and early 2019, one, you’re getting ready for a baby room. Two, when you have no kids, you have a lot of time on your hands. So I needed to consume as much knowledge as possible. Learning, not earning. Podcasts were a huge format, as you’re painting a bedroom, or as you’re putting together furniture, or organizing baby clothes.
So I really took that to heart. I like this medium. I think that no one else is doing it in a small community. And more importantly, I can get people on that I care about or don’t know at all and ask them as many questions. It’s really hard for them to say no. They may not have answered my phone call if I called and asked for their business, but if I say, hey, you want to come on for an hour and talk about yourself, and they go, what’s a podcast? Well, I can explain it to you. Who listens to it? Nobody. But come on in.
Darren: Even then, a lot of people don’t necessarily think of it that way. They’re like, man, somebody asked me to be a part of their show. And that’s super interesting, right? It takes a little bit of courage to put a microphone and a camera up and to have those conversations. But what you did was you said, hey, come on and let me talk about you. And you used it as a little bit of a lead gen, if you will, to get to know people, to build trust, to have conversations.
Sean: And I learned a lot. I met some really amazing people who were already in my community doing awesome small business things.
Then in 2020, obviously the world shifted pretty quick. That turned into a cool outlet for us to get information out to the community, because so many things were changing so fast, especially for small business owners. PPP funds, EIDL.
Darren: I didn’t even think of that, the fact that you could educate through kind of a crazy time.
Sean: We were blessed and it was perfect timing. A buddy of mine, we’re in the same industry, we didn’t talk a whole lot during that time period, but he goes, dude, I’m pretty sure you made me 20 grand. I said, what did I do? He goes, when you were coming out with those episodes, I had a subsidiary business that qualified for PPP that I didn’t realize would have.
So now, as a 30-year-old, six years later, I can see the Kevin Bacon effect of it. Have you heard of that? Degrees of Kevin Bacon.
Darren: We could get to him. We need to get him on the pod. Come on, Mr. Bacon.
Sean: But then I was just trying to figure out how many people could I connect with, what can I learn from them, who do they know. I really focused all my energy. I was learning how to connect and communicate, and then selling came naturally after that, because then you’d built the trust. So I was in this big trust exercise at the time, but it all stemmed from this incredibly manic boy who would just be like, how can I pay the bills? I need to do something.
And the nice thing about podcasts at that time is it did not cost a lot of money. I was bootstrapped and I wasn’t doing ad spend or anything like that. It gave me a good opportunity to learn the chops of everything.
Darren: You were practicing on camera, connecting with clients, having conversations, positioning things, asking good questions. You got to learn as you built something.
Sean: It really allowed me to learn how to communicate at a high level. Not that I wasn’t an adult at 22, but we all know 22-year-olds. I was not an adult at 22. So I’m so grateful for that time.
That’s the original podcast. That’s where it came from. I did over 150 episodes by the time our life eventually got so busy.
So this is the next piece that I want to tell people. Then it was so easy to grind through life. Just one baby. Even that part was a huge transition, learning how to live life with little sleep.
Darren: Dude, at 22 though, bro, that’s tough. That’s tough at 22. I mean, I know it’s an adjustment no matter what age you are, but at 22, man, I’m still hanging out with friends on weekends and doing things.
Sean: I grew up quick. My wife’s four years older than I am, so our age group just leveled up to the age above, which I think pulled me out of an immaturity stage quickly, which I’m super grateful for now. Not that I was immature when I was. I was. But I’m still immature now in certain aspects. My wife would tell you that.
Darren: She just said amen.
Sean: She put her hand in the air. Exactly.
So we got to grow up really quick. In the moment, I think you kind of get frustrated. But now I’m so grateful, because each one of those was such a big pivot in our lives. Like I told you, you kind of go like this, and then you go like this.
And then we find out we’re having number two. We’re so excited. That was the easiest part of my life, number two. I don’t know why, but number two is easy.
At the time, we got all this COVID money. This is PPP days. This is EIDL days. This is recovery rebate, when they did all the stimulus checks. So I took that and we redid the exterior of our house, put a fence up, and we finally got our house exactly the way we wanted it. We’re finally making some headway. We’re starting to make some money. We’re in this perfect little life homeostasis. It was so good.
And I was too busy to mow my yard anymore. So I paid a kid to start mowing my yard. We had completely redone the inside of the house, the exterior, all this stuff was done. I had a kid mowing the grass.
I remember I looked at Casey and I go, hey. She goes, what? I said, I think it’s time to move. And she goes, why? I said, this is just too good. There’s no more projects. We’ve always had projects. We’ve always had the next thing. Next goalpost is really what it was, mentally. We’ve always had these little things. We’ve always kind of said these are what we want to do.
And at this point, I bought my house in 2017. It’s 2023. Post-COVID, the market had changed significantly. A house in our neighborhood goes up for sale for more than any house had ever gone for sale in our neighborhood. It was a flip. Our house was nicer than that one. And I looked at Casey and I said, hey, this could be an opportunity where we may not get a comp, because rates were starting to tick back up.
Next thing you know, we had a tenant in a house that my wife had lived in when we had first got together. It was on two acres, still in Pendleton, beautiful barns, old house. He had been paying us rent for four years.
So I said, why don’t we go on this trip to Scottsdale, and we’ll think about it. The tenant called the same week, said, hey, I’m not going to be able to make May’s payment. He said, I’m going to have to get out of the house. He said, I’m moving out already. And I said, oh, okay.
So at the same time, this property we already own, that also had appreciated value, is going to be empty. Our house has hit value, probably still the peak of what it was then. And I looked at Casey and I said, when we come home, let’s talk about it.
So we finally come home. And my biggest thing was I just wanted the girls to have chores. Mind you, Ruby was three. But I grew up with horses, I grew up doing stuff.
Darren: So you grew up with some land.
Sean: I grew up with this level of work ethic that I thought, at that point in my life, was instilled, whether I wanted it or not, and that had made me kind of the way I am today. So I go, I don’t want life to be too easy for our kids.
I just didn’t. And Casey goes, are you sure? And I was like, yeah.
So we eventually make the decision. We come back and we’re going to move into a camper in a block garage next to the house, sell our primary home, and then we’re just going to figure it out and remodel.
Darren: Two kids at this point?
Sean: Two kids. Yeah.
So June of 2023, this is when I really felt myself pulled back on time out of the podcast world, and I got back into family homeostasis. We moved out to the middle of nowhere with a crappy house with a sunken tub, a little camper that we slept in, and then we had a little block garage that we eventually turned into a little home base.
And while we were going through this transition, I remember being out there, especially when nothing was nice and the house wasn’t torn up yet, and it was just quiet and peaceful. You’re chasing kids and you’re just living life, and there’s always something to do.
Biggest mistake of my life. That’s all we’ve done since. We haven’t stopped working. I told you I didn’t get done doing chickens and mowing last night until almost 10 o’clock.
But I think by putting this work ethic in place that I’ve seen from my dad, it builds a resiliency in your kids, in yourself. And then on the exterior, it builds another form of trust with the people who can see what it takes to do it. Having a 2,400 square foot garden sounds good. Having four kids sounds good. But until you do it, you don’t realize that it’s all waking hours.
Darren: Oh, it’s all the time.
Sean: And it’s the ultimate blessing.
Darren: Is that where some of this comes from? All right, we have this podcast now, Invest Your Time Wisely. It’s having conversations with those that are in that place you’re just talking about, of, oh, we’re building something, we’re doing something. It’s not just get lost in work, make billions of dollars and ride off into the sunset. It’s the work ethic that we can train our kids in, that we can then help our communities with. Is that where some of this passion stems from, you think?
Sean: A hundred percent. So last year we went through a big brand change. When we were going through this brand change, we went from two kids to three. The third one was born not in the camper, but she came home to the camper. And then we had Benny this last year, our fourth.
As you add to your plate, it’s a lot easier to take things off. Or is it easier to just keep adding until the plate breaks? I’ve gotten to the point now where I’m trying to remove things, to try to make the plate the way I want.
So we’re going through this brand transition, and it’s always been the clock in the logo. What does it mean? Time’s the only asset you can never buy more of. And as my plate has gotten more and more full, that’s when I go, oh, that’s the thing.
We talked about it with the goal sheet. I sent it to you the other day. I put that I just want to achieve peace. And I realized that peace is only found in how you spend your time. It’s not the quiet moments where you’re like, oh, that’s peaceful. It’s when you don’t have your kids at home and you’re sitting around and you’re like, this isn’t peaceful. But when your kids are home, you’re like, wow, this is crazy, but I can find peace in it.
So as I’ve worked with more and more business owners in what we do, I can see these men and women getting pulled from every different direction. But they’re doing it all for their family, they say, and they’re not redirecting that time towards them.
So all this is, this whole podcast, this whole premise, is to give people the whole picture. And I think a lot of that’s been through our walk with faith in 2025. Both my wife and I were baptized in 2025. We go to Traders Point, which is the same church as you. Aaron Brockett, please come on the pod.
As we’ve gone through this journey, it’s opened up my eyes, I think personally, that I just want to live a life worth living. And a well-lived life to me does have, you know, money is a resource, but it can’t be the idol of it. We have to be able to split that atom and look at where we want to spend our time.
Having Cody on and talking about efficiency, you can micro-dose it down to the minute if you really want to. And with four kids, you kind of have to, and that’s just the sprint you’re in.
Now I’m just in this whole big reframe of be where your feet are, spend time with the people you love, read the word every single day, and then just try to bring that to everyone else. This is my great commission. How do we help people live better lives, more fulfilled lives, and not feel so stressed out by worldly things?
Darren: Yeah, man, it speaks to the idea of, I even think of this in my own life, where it’s like my task list that I have every day, to either do business stuff or personal stuff. I almost try to get the task list done where I miss the tasks that I’m actually doing. And I almost hear that in this sense of, hey, you can go build something really beautiful for your family and miss the family in the midst of it all. And you’re going, man, no, we’ve got to level this playing ground. We’ve got to get to a place where we’re showing people that reality, that they can’t just go invest their time in these places and miss the whole goal of what they’re trying to do.
I mean, dude, that speaks to me. Because I’m sitting here going, how many times have I done that? Where it’s just like, I’ve missed it. And so I think you’re just highlighting that for folks, just going, hey, don’t miss it. Be where your feet are. Invest that time in there.
Where does that stem from for you? Is that upbringing? Is there a story that comes up?
Sean: Yeah. Right now it’s so interpersonal to where we’re at in our lives. But I could say right now, you look at my dad’s story that he told the other day. The thing about kids is they don’t realize it. They don’t understand the sacrifice side. You’re always sacrificing something. So you’re either going to sacrifice time with family, or you’re going to sacrifice work. That’s just the way it works.
In 2004, my dad retired. He was traveling 50 weeks out of the year. And if you were to ask me how my one-to-eight-year-old life was, I’d tell you it was great. I couldn’t tell you a bad thing about it. I couldn’t tell you a whole lot about it. You know what I mean? Because we were kids.
And then the life we had after, even with as many entrepreneurial visions and dreams that he had, he did amazing things, but he never sacrificed family again. So he left millions on the table. Back in 2004, they weren’t getting paid like they pay CEOs today. If he rode that wave, I would have a very different life.
Darren: You’d be that nepo baby.
Sean: I would have been living a very different life. But I think that he made the conscious decision, as an old farm kid, that he wanted to be with his kids. I think he made that original time decision. Never missed a baseball game, came to everything.
He diversified his portfolio into a lot of things so that he could have revenue streams, so that way he wasn’t beholden to, I have to go do this today. He was never put in that position, which is great, because then he was able to invest all that capital that he did have and then redeploy what was most valuable to him, which was time.
And again, until you and I sit down and I hear his story for the fifth time, it’s so late that you can look and be like, I’m grateful for that. Because we did, we went to baseball games, we went to all the sporting events. He never missed anything. We did the lake all the time. I think that modeled how I want to be able to control time.
The problem with that is I come in immediately, I need more income, so I keep starting to break stuff, hire people, we need more revenue, and he’s like, man, you’re kind of screwing up a good thing for me.
So he’ll tell you the same thing. I’ve challenged him a lot on how do you grow, build, expand, because again, I’m coming in standing on shoulders of giants where I go, we need to grow because we can grow. We have all this great stuff to put out there. And then he’s starting to show me, you add that, you add responsibilities, you add people, you add all these extra costs. They’re great things, because you’re buying your time back. But now you’re going to still have to work harder to get back to homeostasis.
So you’re always kind of in that balance of, what does that mean to invest your time wisely? Sometimes it means growth. Sometimes it means pulling back. And it’s finding that balance.
Darren: How do you find that in the midst of you trying to secure yourself in this thing, grow this thing to be something that’s sustainable for you and what you envision, but then you’re also watching your dad go, hey, you’ve got that balancing card. How do you find that balance in the midst of it all?
Sean: I think it’s hard at this stage of life. You know it too, especially with where the kids’ ages are, because it’s a firefight. Every day is a firefight with little people with new emotions and different nap schedules and all this stuff.
So the best way to do it for us has been structured bedtime. We’re seven o’clock bedtime people, have been from the start. Our elders are just getting past that, but it allows me and Casey to reset where we are.
And she is a very honest, open Enneagram eight. You can Google that. That means that she’ll tell you how it is and she doesn’t want to wait. She’ll tell you right now.
By having such an amazing partner who, we don’t agree on everything, which I think is healthy. I think it’s tough to be in relationships where you agree on every single thing, because I love to be challenged as much as I hate constructive criticism. But her ability to challenge where I’m at, because I say the word manic, but I get very steadfast on where I’m going. If she doesn’t redirect me quickly, she knows she’ll lose me for a couple of months.
But it’s been this constant, when I was coaching, when I was doing all these other things, my time was always invested elsewhere. And then as you just keep adding to that plate, sometimes you’re just going to have to pull off some of the things that no longer serve you and serve your family. And it’s just this continual pursuit.
By adding faith to the plate, I think by just adding that one single piece, and that’s the center dish, it has allowed everything else to just make more sense, because you’re able to put that into all the things you do. And then by putting that as your main frame, or your lens, if you’re looking through that lens, then it changes the way that you interact with everything.
Darren: It changes your perspective on that front.
Sean: Yeah. So that’s been a huge piece for us.
Darren: That’s really good. I know that everybody’s life who’s listening to this will be at different stages. Obviously little kids at home is a different stage than if you’re empty nesters, or if you don’t have any kids at all. So everybody’s quote unquote balance is different. I don’t know if you ever really achieve balance. Do you think?
Sean: No. And I’m at the age now where I don’t think I’d want it anyways. That sounds boring. It’s kind of like when we decided to move from that house because it just got too easy.
I think humans were put on this earth to work. And work is a relative term. You can go to work and do a job, but if you come home and you don’t continue to work either on yourself spiritually, mentally, physically, or work on your relationship with your spouse every single day, or work on how to make your kids better every single day, and if you don’t work on the reason that we have this pride of ownership and property, it’s because I think we’re designed to want to make things better. And that’s what pushes all of human society.
I don’t have to mow my yard at 10 o’clock at night, but I don’t have any other opportunities with the time. We’re getting ready for 4th of July, so I need to get this done. It’s going to be hot the next four days. I don’t want to mow when it’s hot. So let’s just get it knocked out. You just got to do what you got to do. We keep putting challenges in front of us and we just keep working towards them.
Darren: That’s really beautiful. My brother always says he thinks about what he calls Looney Tunes theology, which is like, when we die and go to heaven, we just sit on clouds with angel wings and don’t do anything. And he really pushes back against that theology. And I think we see that in the work that we do here now, that we have this ability to work and create things and make the world a better place through whatever the work of our hands is.
And so that’s where I almost hear you saying that a little bit. You’re like, I don’t want to just become lazy and sit on the cloud and phone it in. I want to build something, I want to do something, I want to be with my kids, help them be good people as they’re raised.
Sean: A hundred percent. They’re like my mini little project files. At the end of the day, I’m put on this earth to hopefully perpetuate whatever goodness I can into the world, whether that’s with my kids, or my spouse, or the people I get to sit across the table from. I just want to be able to put good in, because I think good perpetuates to all the other things. That’s another compounding factor in life.
So that’s kind of where we’re at. The Invest Your Time Wisely framework, the book, all this stuff. Again, every kid I’ve had, I’ve hit this manic stage of, here we go again. That’s part of the reason I like having kids. That’s why we have four. Every time I get this big next level up into my life.
So I wrote the book probably the month before Benny was born, because I was going through this big introspective thing. We were doing the brand change. We were really harping on this Invest Your Time Wisely. And I was like, I don’t want it just to be another logo.
I want it to be the thing that we tell people we do, and it embodies who you are. So I wanted it to be more than a clock. I wanted it to be this mental framework.
Over the years, my dad’s had a gym in our house since I was a kid. And the reason he’s had a gym is because I think your kids model after what they see. An object in motion tends to stay in motion. If your kids can see that, then your kids are going to be more apt, more into that form of peace.
I’ve had a gym in my house since I was, I don’t know, 23. And having the ability to go and open the garage door and let your kids see and grab weights, those little pieces. I’ve gotten better about this recently. The kids always want to watch TV, but I’m always on my phone. So now I’m grabbing a book and I’m sitting down and I’m reading when we’ve got a minute, to hopefully lead my family towards that.
I’m going to grab Junie B. Jones, or Poppy is reading a book upside down because she can’t read yet. She’s just looking. But she’s at least trying.
I just want to model those things, because control the controllables, be where your feet are. I just want to start to do that in all things. And it is this constant battle. There is no perfect. Your kids will scream and cry in the car, and you will raise your voice and tell yourself you won’t do that again. And then you will pray that away, and then you’ll be at a Culver’s and it will happen all over again.
Darren: Were you in my car yesterday?
Sean: It’s tough. So it’s these things, whether it’s the people we work with now, you see a younger version of yourself where you’re like, I think you can be anything you want to be. Here’s where you can go. That’s my favorite part of where we’re at right now.
Darren: This is just a fly on the wall conversation. I feel like this is the mission that you get to be involved in, being that megaphone to help other people see this now, even though you’re still working on it. And in the next phase of life, you’ll still have to work on it. But you’re continually calling out to those around you and those underneath you to say, hey, let’s think of this now.
And I think a little bit of that is because you had to grow up at 22 so quickly, and you had to step in and walk through that journey and grow up and become a dad and a husband very, very fast. And now you’re going, hey, at 30, I’ve learned some things, and I just want to call out to those around me, like, invest your time wisely, learn how to do this now. It will be a lifelong journey, but it’s a journey worth walking. That’s kind of what I’m seeing from this side of the table.
Sean: Yeah, a hundred percent. We’re all doing it together. And I think if you’ve ever been on a sports team, I coach wrestling, which is a very singular individual sport, but being able to walk with others and do something together and be on that pursuit of a common mission, that’s the best thing in the world.
The books, the frameworks, the mantra, the podcast, all this is meant as just a tool in the tool belt, so that when you run into these moments where you’re going, I need to pull back, or I need to push forward, we can be a little bit of help. We can be that guy that you probably should have texted that you’re too embarrassed to text. It’s an open forum. We’re all rooting for the same people. We’re all rooting for you.
And I think especially as men, it’s such an isolating feeling a lot of the time, that you’ve got to hold it down. You can put your arm on a brother and he will take you forward. So I just want people to know that they don’t have to be alone on this journey. And I wasn’t. The small bits and pieces that I have learned along the way, I’d be happy to share and help people get where they want to go.
Darren: Yeah. Life worth living. Man, that’s so beautiful. And I think that embodies exactly what I’ve heard you talk about, this whole Invest Your Time Wisely mission, if you will. We’re not alone in this and we’re walking this together. And because of your experience, you can speak into the lives of those around you.
So talk to me a little bit then about what’s next. What are you seeing? Where are you driving towards?
Sean: So when it comes to what’s next, at this point we’ve decided that the podcast is the foundation, it’s the grounding of this, that we’re going to be doing this for a long time. This isn’t something that we’re going to pull back on.
My dad, if you guys liked episodes three and four, he’s made the decision that he’s got so much wisdom to share, even if it makes him uncomfortable to do it on camera. So we’re going to come out with a lot more Mike content and share some of the lessons that he has.
We’re reworking the book more towards some workbook-style stuff. And the reason we’re doing that is because I want people to know that this is not something you read and sit on a coffee table. This is something you work through. It’s an active piece. And I think you and I both know that when you write something down, it means a little bit more. So we’re finishing publishing of that, because we really want it to be this workbook style, something you can really rely on, something that you can send to a buddy if you know they’re going through a tough time.
And then we’re going to bring on some amazing guests. People that have run their businesses, people who have had huge families, small families, and every family in between. And then we’re just going to try to show people that this is a community.
It’s not just a couple episodes and some clips that I’m putting on my Facebook and my Instagram and TikTok. Those things are important to get people to like the mission, but we’re trying to build a crew. And then through that crew, we’re trying to connect people, let them know that they have other like-minded individuals that they can rely on. And then we can all grow on this journey together.
Darren: Sean, I love that mission. I love that heart. I’ve obviously just been behind the camera for the last four episodes, watching this start to unfold. And I do think it’s the foundation of all of that. It’s so cool to see.
Even your dad, I love the fact that you said he’s going to have to punch fear in the face a little bit and get in front of the camera. But he’s lived a life worthy of sharing ideas and his perspective. And I love the fact that he’s going to get a little bit uncomfortable, almost like what you said, we’re too comfortable in this house, we’ve got to do something else. And he’s at that place going, this is a little bit uncomfortable, but I’ve got to share these things. And he’s going to help a lot of people that way. Same with you in these conversations that we’re having.
So my last question to you, before I let you wrap this up, because you’re the host and I’m not, is there anything else you want to share about this idea, this perspective, this mission, that maybe we haven’t touched on yet?
Sean: Great question, Darren. I would say this.
I’ve laid out my story. I’ve laid out a lot of opportunities for where our clients are in this. I think the most important part to know about saying you need to invest your time wisely is not that you’re not doing it wisely now. It’s that all it is is the consciousness to know where your time is being spent, and allocating that to where you want it to be most.
So we’re just trying to open people’s eyes to where they’re already spending their time, and then helping them focus on what they want to do most. Our job is to help people get to where they want to be. Most people say they want this, but I don’t want them to wake up and realize it was not the thing they really wanted most.
Darren: So let me do this, because you won’t do it. Performance Financial. How do people get connected? What’s the next step?
Sean: Yeah, you can go to https://performance.financial/ You’ve got all sorts of information on there. We’ve got blog posts. We’ve got ways to connect with our team there. We do tax accounting, financial advisory, property and casualty insurance. We own two laundromats. All sorts of stuff. We could do your laundry for you.
Darren: We have no attendants anymore.
Sean: My dad will do one more pair of farmer’s underwear.
Darren: You heard it here. Clip that. Send it to him.
Sean: We do a lot of things. But most of all, we help entrepreneurs and business owners who are trying to invest their time wisely by taking things off their plate that maybe don’t always make sense, rely on professionals, and try to help people get where they want to go.
Darren: It’s so good. And the mission you’re on is needed and beautiful in the world. So from my seat at the table, this tiny little round table, thanks for what you guys are doing.
Sean: I appreciate you, brother.
All right, guys, feel free to check us out online, keep watching these episodes. Like, subscribe, share with your friends. One of those is just as good as anything else, even if you guys don’t decide to book a call. We appreciate you, we love you, and God bless you.