Welcome to Radical Personal Finance, a show dedicated to providing you with the knowledge, skills, insight, and encouragement you need to live a rich and meaningful life now while building a plan for financial freedom in 10 years or less. My name is Joshua, I'm your host, and today I'm going to share with you one of my heroes, one of my career heroes specifically, and share with you a little bit about his life and his story in hopes that it may also inspire you.

I believe that it's important to have heroes, people that you look up to. These can be heroes writ large, people that you would like to be like in most things, or it can be people that you admire for something specific. But I believe one of the healthiest personal habits that we can develop is to go through life looking to find things that we admire and look up to about other people, the way that other people behave, the way that other people live their lives, the kind of person they are.

And even if those specific things that we can find to appreciate about somebody, even if they're quite small and there's maybe more things that we would not like about somebody rather than appreciate, rather than the things that we do, I believe that this practice is one of the healthiest things that we can possibly do.

It's healthy for you and for me as individuals because it helps us to develop a positive outlook on life. We go through life being a good finder rather than a fault finder. We go through life treating people well, treating them as human beings who have something that we can learn from them, something that we can appreciate about them.

And that allows us to see the world in a vastly different way than people who go through life seeking to be critical of others, trying to find things that they don't like about others. And I think it also has the wonderful effect of kind of a ripple effect in society that as we go out looking for the good in people, looking for the things that we can admire, the common ground that we can have, it leads to a more positive relationship with somebody and it leads to other people feeling more appreciated, feeling more admired, feeling more respected.

And these are all things that will boost their self-esteem, their self-confidence when they sense that from us and generally make the world a better place. But I think it's also just a really good selfish habit to get into because when you go around looking for things that you admire in other people, you wind up systematically building a clearer and clearer vision of the things that you want to be able to admire about yourself.

And this gives you, at its core, goals. It gives you aspirations, ambition. It gives you something to want to be. And even if you and I are imperfect in actually achieving our goals, the fact that we have goals, the fact that we're working towards something, and especially the fact that we're working towards being the very best version of ourselves that we're capable of being, is, I believe, a positive aspect that can affect us in a very positive way.

And so I try to make note of things that I admire about other people. And as I said, sometimes I can admire another person quite broadly, right? I admire my father and I would very much like to be like my father in many, many ways. But not all. And I think that's fine.

There may be other people that I would find vastly more things that I don't admire about them, but I can still find a few things that I appreciate about them. I don't have to agree with them. I don't have to... I just focus on the good, right? I focus on the things that I do admire about them.

And since people are often the easiest for us to observe, because we see them as humans, as creatures like us, especially if we can learn to facilitate our brains admiring relatively normal people, not just airbrushed figures on the big screen, but admiring people that we know, right? Our family members, our neighbors, our co-workers, just ordinary people like us, then it helps us to see real lives.

And by the way, it's important that we do that because these are the people that we actually know. These are the people that we can actually understand who they are, their character, their way of living, etc. But today I'm going to share with you a little bit of one of my heroes.

I have many again, but I was just inspired to talk about this hero today because of, frankly, his music. And this particular hero is Bill Gaither. I'll explain in a moment who Bill Gaither is and why I admire him, because I think that in Bill Gaither's career, you and I can find some very important lessons to integrate into our own lives.

If you've listened to more than a handful of episodes of Radical Personal Finance, you know that virtually every episode I open with that little statement, how to live a rich and meaningful life now while also building a plan for financial freedom in 10 years or less. And you'll notice that there is a dual mandate.

There is a goal of living a rich life now in every sense of the meaning of the word "rich." And there's also the goal or the mandate of building financial freedom. Now you'll notice I don't use the term "financial independence." And it's not that I don't appreciate financial independence.

I'm very grateful for all of the significant measures of financial independence that I have been able to achieve. It's not that I don't want financial independence for more people, even in its fullest sense, the sense where you have more money than you need or will ever want to spend the rest of your life.

Thus, you can truly live your life without regard to generating money for need. I want those things, but I'm not so keen on certain aspects of the financial independence movement. It's not that I wish to tear it apart. It's that I feel like certain people fixate too much on financial independence.

I saw a post on Reddit, in one of the Reddit financial independence groups this past week, and it was written by an 18-year-old. And the 18-year-old, to summarize what he was saying, was basically saying, "I've decided I want to be financially independent. I've saved $10,000. I think, actually, sorry, it was something like $5,000.

I've saved $5,000. Can someone tell me what to invest in so I can be financially independent as quickly as possible?" And it struck me because I recognized myself in that Reddit commentator. I realized that if somebody had come to me at 18 years old or at 20 years old and laid out financial independence as a goal, I would have been asking the similar question.

In fact, I was asking similar questions in various message boards, not at 18, but more at 21, 22, etc., because I was working a job I didn't like, and I wanted to get rich quick so I could get out of it. That was my goal. Today, I look at it, and I, my heart, it's too hard, I just, I look at it and I think that 18-year-old, I feel bad for him, right, because I think that's a fundamentally horrible way to approach life.

And again, it's something that I did. But the concept that at 18 years old you would be looking to get out of work, I see as a fundamentally flawed concept. It's a horrible way to approach life, to think that here I am at 18 years old, presumably I'm debt-free, I've got $5,000 in the bank, literally the world is open to me and all I can think about is getting out of work.

All I can think about is how do I save enough money so that I don't have to work. When I'm at the very dawn of my life and I've got decades, God willing, that lie in front of me in which I can accomplish great things, I can live a great life.

But I think what happens is it all comes down to what heroes does that 18-year-old have. When I was 21 and I was asking those questions in online message boards, I was choosing certain heroes but without thinking about all of the options that were available to me. And I think that if you recognize that there are many paths open to you, then, and you choose a different hero who's walked a different path, it can give you a different model, a different way of living.

So to wrap up my comments on financial independence, I see financial independence as a valuable step along the way, a valuable goal that expresses a measure of achievement, but not as something that should be the top goal or a primary goal of life. I think there are other goals that will give more lasting satisfaction than simply achieving financial independence.

And I think that if you can recognize and develop a career hero, whoever that happens to be for you, it'll give you an idea of how not that you can get out of work, but rather you can lean into work. Let me tell you a little bit about Bill Gaither.

And for context, these are just things that I know from listening to a lot of his music over the years. I've never met him. I've been to one Gaither concert, which I thoroughly enjoyed, but I have no intimate connection to him. This is publicly available data. Bill Gaither is well known in the evangelical Christian culture in the United States as a singer, songwriter, producer, band coordinator, band leader, etc.

And he's simply well known due to his age. Yes, his chronological age. He's currently about 86 years old. But more important, due to his age in the industry. According to his Wikipedia entry, he started performing in the mid 1950s, which would have put him as a teenager, was when he started singing and performing.

And that means that he's had a career of basically over 50 years actively performing and actively being involved in Christian music in the United States. And so he's quite well known for that. He's also well known because at various times in his career, he did a lot of television and he would run a lot of advertisements for concerts and things, selling DVDs on television on Christian channels and other channels.

So people came across him and so his name would be well known. But if it's been a while since you've thought of Bill Gaither, he's probably extraordinarily different today than you think he was, than the image you have of his 1980s television commercials or his 1990s music. So let me share with you some things that I really admire about Bill.

First I admire his longevity in the arts. I admire the fact that he's been working diligently for 50 years, more than 50 years. Sorry, it's actually, sorry, I did my math wrong. Forgive me. More than 70 years. From the 1950s was when he first started performing as a musician until now in 2022.

It's over 70 years he's been working actively in his career. And while I don't know anything specifically about his personal tour schedule, I don't know how many months of the year he works, I do know that he does still work a lot. His band tours, they are continually producing new albums, new music.

He's very active in his YouTube channel, etc. He is still working hard. He's still producing music and still generating new fans today. And he's done that for an exceedingly long period of time. And I believe that a major secret to financial abundance, as well as a secret to high quality life is to try to choose a career that you can have for a very long time.

If you can imagine yourself working for 70 years, think of yourself getting a job and starting to work at 18 years old. Add 70 years to that, and Bill is almost, again, he's 86 now, so you do the math. But 60 or 70 years and you just work. Think about the money that you can earn and the money that you can accumulate over that period of time.

One of the great errors that we make is we often cut off our earnings too soon to actually accumulate significant amounts of money. But if you imagine that Bill is working at 86, still earning excellent money, increasing his family's fortunes at a time when many other people would have quit 20 years previous at 66.

Even if he was broke at 66, there's no reason for him to be broke at 86. You say, "Well, Joshua, yeah, I get that, but why would I want to do that?" Well, I think the key is find a job that you don't want to retire from. And here, when I look at the arts, I often find examples of the kinds of career lifestyles that you don't want to retire from.

If you think about the job of a performing artist, to me there's something exceedingly attractive about the job of a performing artist. First, we know that it's hard work. Anybody who's been on the road or worked, we know that it's hard work. But I think one benefit of the kind of work that an artist has, when an artist goes on the road and does a tour, is that it's a form of seasonal work.

You may have a three-month tour through 30 states or 10 countries or wherever you're traveling, and during that period of time you're working hard, but that's not 365 days a year. It's not 50 weeks a year. There's a seasonality to it. And over the years, I've admired, I've expressed my admiration for seasonal work again and again and again.

But in the modern age, when we're not connected so much in our work to the flow of the seasons, we miss the benefits of seasonality. We miss the idea of having a rest during the wintertime. And then when the weather gets well and we can go out and we can break the ground, we're just thrilled to be outside in an agrarian society.

Well, not having that, we just work all the time. We sit in offices that are climate-controlled. We sit in houses that are climate-controlled. And so we work without regard to the weather outside, without regard to the elements. We plan our work with very little regard to the seasons. And most of us don't have work that is seasonal in small chunks.

Most of us have work that can be done all year long. But when I think about the idea of having a career where, say, I go on the road for three months at a time, and then I go home for three months on the time, and then maybe I go on the road again for three months at a time.

That fills me with a sense of desire. It's like, yes, I want to do that. I want to work hard for three months, and then I want to rest for three months. It feels more attractive to me than work 50 weeks a year. I think there are many careers in which you can have this.

It's not just musical artists. It might be a sports player. A football player might have the games of the season, you have preseason, et cetera, but you have significant periods of rest. A teacher might have this, with an extended summer vacation. There are many jobs, many businesses that can have this.

You might be an accountant, and you filter your work based upon your seasons of tax seasons and tax filing deadlines, et cetera. You might be a snowboard instructor. There's so many ways you can do it. But if you could have some sense of seasonality in work, I think that's really attractive.

I think that the seasonality allows you to really work hard during that season. I find that when I'm working and when I'm in work mode, working long hours is a joy because my creativity is flowing, but then I need to make sure that I flip that for a serious season of rest.

But I don't want to rest all the time. I need to get back to work. I admire the seasonality of a singing career, a touring career. Another thing I think is worth noting about somebody who is a musical performer is their job is varied, but their most important results come from their area of core genius, meaning we know that if you are the leader of a band like Bill Gaither is, or if you're a producer, et cetera, there are many responsibilities that he has.

But a singer's most important results come from his ability to create wonderful music. And for a singer to build his career upon singing, he's going to need to feel confident that he has something really good to offer, and the marketplace is recognizing that. And so when you do something that you're good at and you feel like you're good at, and you know that you're good at it because the audience responds and says, "Here's our money.

Take our money. We want to listen to you," and you have good proof of it, it allows your work life to be far more joyful. And when you know that you're operating an area of skill, an area of genius, an area where people appreciate your work, it dramatically transforms how you feel about your work.

It's not to say you're always going to be enthusiastic about it. A performer will frequently feel tired. A performer will frequently not look forward to a performance. But a performer knows when he goes on stage, he's doing something that he's good at, and he's doing something that people appreciate.

Even if it's on a big scale or a little scale, he knows that he's doing something that people appreciate. And if you continue in the career, there's lots of people who've tried to have bands and it hasn't worked out for a few years, but if you can build a career in something where you have longevity because there's desire there, I think you can get a tremendous sense of satisfaction out of your work.

That's one thing I admire about singers and other performers. But you don't have to be a singer or performer in order to do that. You can just be really competent and skilled and be working in an area of your core skill. It might be creating a podcast. It might be being a coach.

It might be being an accountant. It might be any number of things, being a teacher. But knowing that you are in an area where you are effective and where you are good brings a great deal of satisfaction. If most of your time or your most important results are related to something that you're skilled at, it gives you the ability to deal with the rest of the stuff.

I'm sure Gaither has many days where he has to go to the office and have meetings and look over the books, etc. We all have that. But that should be a minor component of your time. So if you imagine a career in which, let's say 80% of your time and your most important 80% of results are based upon things that you're skilled at and you're good at, I think those are some things that are really, really valuable and really, really important.

The next thing that is, I think, important about Gaither's career is that he has been able to grow with his career. So I mentioned that I was inspired to do this based upon his music. He's actually been on my list for a long time and I've had this list of show ideas.

This is the first in the series that I've done. But I was playing for my children at bedtime some of my favorite songs, some of my favorite Gaither songs related to Easter. Every night when I put my children to bed, I sing to them. Usually we sing, we do a hymn study so I sing a certain set of hymns.

I sing throughout the month so they can learn them. We sing some other songs as well. So we do that. But when there's a special event, if it's Christmas or Easter or some other holiday, then I'll bring in some other music. So my brother sent me a playlist of some of his favorite songs related to Easter.

My brother and I share a significant amount of musical taste and most of them are by the Gaither vocal band. So I was playing those for my children, just realizing how much I like the music. But the music is very different than what you might have seen on TV in the 1990s.

The music is phenomenally built music, but it's all sacred Christian music. But the performers are world class. David Phelps, who has sung with Gaither and solo as well for many years, is world class. So many other singers are world class. And what Gaither has done over the years is he has been able to change his sound.

He's been able to change with the times. And so in 2022, I'm still a relatively young man, I can without fear say my favorite band is the Gaither vocal band and not have the fear that, well, I guess it's a little bit of a fear, but just know that it's not the same thing as it was in the 1980s.

I enjoyed the 1980s music, but I wouldn't go around saying I'm a fan of that. And so you see that they've been able to grow as musicians and change and adapt with the times. And for me, at least for my musical taste, they found a really wonderful balance of bringing things that I appreciate about classic music, meaning really phenomenal musicianship, really phenomenal singing, really wonderful harmonies, etc., but with a modern sound and in a really quality way.

And so I think that this is a key thing to look for in a career. Do you have a career or can you develop a career that will allow you to grow and to adapt? And I see this as having multiple benefits. The first benefit is it keeps you relevant in the marketplace.

Imagine that you were a computer technician in the 1990s, but you didn't keep your skills current. You'd be out of luck, out of a job. Virtually all of us will be completely, we will have to completely reinvent ourselves a couple of decades from now. And so the key is can we find ways to choose a career that will allow us to take our core skills and competencies and then adapt them as our industry changes so that we will maintain relevance and will continue to have customers.

I'm a professional speaker. Professional speaking is going to have relevance 20 years from now, even if I'm doing it in a currently unimagined way. And I'm a financial planner. Financial planning is going to have extreme relevance 20 years from now, even if the deliverables are totally different, the products are totally different.

It's a fundamental part of life. You may be a doctor. Well, people are going to need a doctor just as much 20 years from now as they do today. And so you want to make sure that you have a career that's going to stay relevant and a career that you can change and adapt to so that you can stay relevant in the marketplace.

Bill Gaither has been able to stay relevant as a musician for almost 70 years. But his relevancy is based upon his changing in the marketplace. He has a core competency of singing, musicianship, et cetera. We'll get to his songwriting in a moment. But he has a core competency, but that core competency can change on the edges in order to stay relevant.

And that means that he can continue bringing offerings to the marketplace and stay current. If he were singing the same songs, the same style today in 2022 as he was in 1990 or in 1960, then nobody would be interested in him. His career would be dead. But because he's adapted and changed over time, his career is very much alive.

Then the flip side is that the individual also benefits. Gaither himself benefits by staying relevant in the music industry because it keeps him challenged. At its core, no doubt he loves music. Clearly he loves music. Musicians love music. And yet music has an infinite number of ways that it can be expressed.

And so for a musician, one of the biggest benefits of staying in the career is that you can change and you can try different styles. You can adapt to different things. You can adjust as time goes on. And you can keep that sense of challenge. As humans, we need challenge.

When you feel like you've conquered everything, what, am I able to die now? But if you feel like, no, I can get better, I can adjust, and you have a new skill that you're working on, a new way that you're seeking to improve, that helps you to feel alive.

It helps you to feel young. It helps you to feel engaged. So you want to be thoughtful to have a career that will keep that sense of engagement with you. The next thing that I admire about Bill Gaither is that his career is one that has allowed him to really grow into an elder statesman.

And I think it's so valuable for you and I to think forward 20 years, 50 years, 80 years, and ask ourselves, how can I be relevant 20, 40, 50, 80 years from now? And what you will need to do if you're going to be successful in that is you'll need to grow into the role of some form of elder statesman where you now bring a sense of, now you bring genuine wisdom, you bring character, you bring experience to the marketplace.

And then as your previous qualities fade, you replace those qualities with a new quality. And here I want to juxtapose Bill Gaither versus Madonna. I was really surprised with the video that Madonna released recently on her social media feeds. And I don't follow pop music. I literally couldn't without Googling, excuse me, without asking the duck, I slipped out.

Without doing a web search for Madonna's songs, I could not list a single Madonna song. But I know who she is. I know she's a performer. And it's my impression of her career from a great distance that she built her career off of her music and a significant component of her music and the attraction of her music was based upon her youth, her beauty, her sex appeal.

But then I saw this video that she released of what seemed to me, I got to look up how old Madonna is. All right, found it. Madonna is 63 years old. And so here was this video of her at 63 years old, basically trying to do this like sexy kiss thing at her phone.

And I found the whole thing utterly repulsive. And I don't use that word lightly. In fact, one of the opinions that I have, a little speech that I frequently find myself saying to women, is that I think that one of the worst things about American culture is the idolization of youth, physical beauty, and sex appeal.

Because what happens is, I think it's a really destructive thing in our culture where we say that your value in society for young women is 80% driven by your physical attractiveness. And that our definition of physical attractiveness is a definition that is usually most idolized. Ideally created by those who are between about 18 and 22, where their body is well-toned, their breasts are fully developed, their skin is perfect and clear, etc.

And I think this is such a destructive tendency in society, because what it means is that once a woman passes the height of her youthful sex appeal, then it's just all downhill from there. And you get these stupid things like, you're not supposed to ask a woman how old she is, and all these ridiculous things like, well, I'm turning 30 years old, minus 20, or whatever the dumb ways that women say it.

And I think this is really destructive in a society, it's really bad for the mindset and self-confidence of many women. Because instead of having an aspiration of something to grow into, where I admire cultures that have a cultural sense of honor for the aged, there are many cultures where people look forward to growing older because they will receive higher and higher levels of honor from the society around them.

And I think that's really healthy and right, and that's how it should be. We should honor the aged, we should respect the aged in many, many ways. And yet our American society, we've very much lost that. And we disrespect the aged, we make jokes about age. None of the jokes are positive, they're all hurtful, they're all cutting, and is it any wonder why people don't want to grow old?

And so, sorry for the comment, but for me to say that I was repulsed by Madonna because she's 63 is not a comment on saying that age is bad. It's a comment on saying that the 63-year-old should not be trying to reach out to the world in the same way that an 18-year-old is.

Set aside whether an 18-year-old should be trying to create a sexy video on whatever social media platform is in vogue, the point is that it's deeply hideous for a 63-year-old to be doing that. A 63-year-old should be embracing wisdom, a 63-year-old should be embracing the role of, in Madonna's case, a mother, a grandmother, an advisor, a mentor.

And there are so many performers and actresses who do this, and they're beautiful. They're beautiful outside, but they're outside their external beauty flows from them being a beautiful person, a beautiful soul. And then when we see them aging, we admire how graceful and how beautiful they are in their aging process.

And it doesn't matter the number of wrinkles that they have or the amount of fat on their thighs or anything like that. We admire them because they have a sense of decorum, a sense of gravitas, a sense of wisdom and age and just respect for themselves. So back to Bill Gaither, right?

I was thinking about Madonna in comparison to Bill Gaither, and I was thinking, Bill Gaither, he is not the same musician that he was many years ago. There was a time when Bill Gaither was a singer, right? He is a singer. He sings constantly. But there was a time in which his voice was a fundamental part of the performance.

Bill Gaither today has a reasonable voice where he can stay on tune, but he's never... And when he sings and when he solos, you are drawn to him, but you wouldn't listen to him and say, "Oh, he's got this world-class voice." He's not David Phelps. He's not Josh Groban.

He's not that kind of voice. It's a perfectly reasonable, attractive, fine male voice, but it's not anything distinguished. And yet it doesn't matter. So similarly, Madonna is not in any way attractive, in the sense that she's not distinguished. She's not ugly, but she's not distinguished by her voice, sorry, her looks.

But if she chose to say that, "I'm going to embrace my looks for what they are and develop these other attributes of my life," she would be, in my opinion, much more attractive. Just like Bill Gaither, he's a very attractive person, even though his voice is no longer the star voice.

So what has he developed? Well, he's developed those other qualities. He's developed those other skills, those other things. So one of the things that he's really good at over the years has been finding young talent and then developing and launching that young talent. Let me read a few names, and if you are familiar with evangelical Christian music in the US, then some of these names will be quite recognizable to you.

If not, they're many of them well-known performers. But here's from his Wikipedia article. "Gaither has been a father figure and career booster to many younger performers in the Christian music industry, while helping to prolong the careers of those who came before him, for example by producing homecoming recordings and tours.

The following are all CCM artists who either got their start or became popular while touring with the Gaithers. Mark Lowry, Michael W. Smith, Carmen, Sandy Patty, Steve Green, Don Francisco, Amy Grant, Michael English, Jonathan Pierce, Carla Worley, and Cynthia Clausen. He has maintained the Gaither vocal band with a variety of singers through the years, including Gary McSpadden, Steve Green, Lee Young, John Moore, Larnell Harris, Michael English, Lemuel Miller, Jim Murray, Mark Lowry, Terry Franklin, Buddy Mullins, Jonathan Pierce, Guy Penrod, David Phelps, Russ Taff, Marshall Hall, Wes Hampton, Adam Crabb, Todd Suttles, and Reggie Smith.

Penrod, Lowry, and Hampton were the members of the Gaither vocal band with the longest tenure besides Bill Gaither himself." So what you can see is that he has built skills of finding young voices, young talent, and then I would assume coaching those young voices and young talent. I'm sure that he's coaching musically, being influenced by the younger voices and talent, and then also coaching the younger voices and talent, coaching in terms of everything related to a music career.

And so here he is at 86 years old and he is leading the performances of some of the most phenomenal vocalists in the world in that particular niche. And so he's just as relevant at 86 as he was at 26. And yet it's because he's adjusted and adapted to the changes and he's developed more skills around the edge.

He understands. And I think this is really important to recognize, that many of us have talents or things that will fade with time. If you make a living performing delicate surgery with your hands, you're not going to be able to do that with the same level of confidence 80 years after you begin.

But that doesn't mean you can't be just as relevant in your industry. You have to simply think and begin with the fact that, "Hey, I'm going to change. This is going to develop." If you're earning your living based upon your physical beauty, your physical beauty is going to change as the years go by.

And so what other things can you bring in addition to physical beauty or your voice or anything? And so I just find it so inspiring to watch a current Gaither video of a wonderful song and see Bill Gaither singing there. I can't pick him out in the music. I can't hear his voice because he knows that he's playing a backup role.

But he's hosting the event. It's his name on it. He's hosting the event. He's making the jokes. He's leading, but he's profiling the stars. And that keeps him relevant. And I think it also keeps him exceedingly young. When you look at him, he's blessed with a wonderful head of hair.

I assume he colors it. I don't know. It's great brown. He doesn't allow his hair to go gray. But he just is a very young 86-year-old. He's a very young 86-year-old. And I think that part of that must come from being around young people. I think that this is also something that we need to watch out for is don't allow yourself to be segregated with old people when you're old.

I don't think we should segregate young people exclusively with young people when they're young. And I also don't think we should segregate old people when they're old. We need that cross-pollination. Old people need to be around young people so that they maintain that sense of energy and optimism and enthusiasm.

And so they maintain the young, fresh ideas. And you can see this even in Gaither's performances. He's adapted. They have a huge YouTube channel. He's adapted himself to the world of YouTube, to the modern expressions of music. They figured out ways to continue to make it as a musician, even as the music industry has utterly transformed itself.

And I admire how they've been able to stay current. I think it's really wonderful. And I think that it must provide him with so much satisfaction to recognize the role that he's played in so many careers. I've always been inspired by people who can help launch other people. I've always wanted to do that myself.

How can I use what I have to launch other people? And I love that Gaither has accomplished that. What else do I admire about Gaither? I don't know much about his family life, but I do know that he's married. His wife's name is Gloria, and they have been married for a very long time.

And they have worked together in their career. This is another thing that I think is really wonderful. Gloria is an incredible songwriter. They say that they write their songs together. I don't know what their creative process is, but they're wonderful songwriters and have written more than 700 songs together.

Many of those songs are really part of the modern Christian core. I'll share a few titles right here from his Wikipedia profile. Gaither and his wife Gloria have written many songs, including "The Longer I Serve Him," "Because He Lives," "The King is Coming," "Sinner Saved by Grace," "Something Beautiful," "He Touched Me," "It Is Finished," "Jesus, There's Something About That Name," "I'm Gonna Sing," and "Let's Just Praise the Lord." His songs have been performed by Christian artists—David Crowder Band, Carmen, the Imperials, Sandy Patty, the Cathedral Quartet, the Spears, and Heritage Singers; country singers, the Statler Brothers; and pop artists—Elvis Presley.

So there's just wonderful impact, and those songs will live on. I will sing for the rest of my life, "Because He Lives." I will sing for the rest of my life, "Jesus, There's Something About That Name." It's a song that my parents sang to me every single night of my childhood, and it's a song that I sing to my children regularly.

And so those songs are part of my life, and songs are the kind of thing that will continue throughout generations. And I think that's something worth admiring. Can you create something that has some chance of continuing to influence people in a positive way? It's not to say that they're going to know your name, right?

We all have songs that we love that we don't know who wrote them, and even if we did, it's just a name. But I think that when you think about being on your deathbed, right, the idea that you could create something, that you could do work and create some kind of work that could continue to help your fellow man, continue to minister to your fellow man in some way.

Right here I see on the Wikipedia, it says, "A video of a man surreptitiously recorded playing 'Jesus, There's Something About That Name' on a piano in his destroyed house was shared by many people following the tornado outbreak of December 10 and 11, 2021." I haven't seen that video, but I can imagine what it is, because it's the kind of situation that so many of us have been in or are in, right?

We're in a situation where everything is hopeless, and if you're a Christian, right, you fall on your knees and you say, "Lord, help me." And music is often a way of communing in your spirit with God, and it allows you to express something that you often don't know another way to express.

And so a song is a powerful thing. And you know, Gaither, again, I don't know Gaither, he doesn't know me, but when you recognize, right, and you imagine, you know, last summer I was together with all my family members, and when my family members get together, we get together and often we sing.

Growing up, my dad doesn't play any instruments, but he sings, my mom would play the piano, but then all my siblings and I all learn some kind of instrument. And so frequently we would get together and we would have family song night at our house. And so over the years we've sung together a lot.

So now we're a little bit more dispersed when we get together, we still enjoy singing together. And it's something that blesses my parents, it blesses us, and it's part of our family culture that I really like and admire. And so we were together and we sang Jesus, Jesus, or something about that name, it's a classic Christian song that we sang when we were children.

And my sister actually asked and said, "Do you guys all sing that to your children? All of us sing it to our children." And so I think about that testimony multiplied by about a bazillion times with many, many other people, that's something to be proud of, right? When you're 86 years old and you think, "I was able to create something that helped people.

I was able to create something that served people. I was able to create something that created times of closeness with parents and children. I created something that was pure, that was good, that was powerful." And a song is one of those things that can leave a legacy. And then when there's a story with that song, it goes so far, right?

Here I, like one of my favorite of, I met, there's one of my favorite singers is a man named Wently Phipps. And I met him, quote unquote, through finding him on the Gay Through YouTube channel. And Wently Phipps does this amazing version of Amazing Grace. And the reason it's amazing is because he tells the story of Amazing Grace and how the words and the tune were created.

And Eric Carnegie Hall and Wently Phipps is singing the song. And he's just an amazing guy, big, huge black guy. He's got this wonderful voice. And he's telling the story of the origin of the song. If you're unfamiliar with the song, the well-known Christian hymn, Amazing Grace, it was penned, the words were penned by John Newton, who was in, early in his life, was a slave trader.

And so he was a captain of a slave ship, bringing slaves from West Africa to the United States until he was born again. And then he renounced that and he became very active in working to abolish the slave trade. But the, I shouldn't ruin it for you, I should list the video.

In fact, I will list the video and you can go and watch it. But the, no one knows where the tune of Amazing Grace comes from. And Phipps performs it in his version of where the tune comes from. I won't spoil it for you. But it's just the most touching thing.

And so you think about a song like Amazing Grace, that was the work of one man's hand. Sat down and wrote a poem and created a song that is now known as the quintessential Christian song. It's the song that everybody knows. And there have been times, I remember when my grandmother was in the hospital, she was in, and we went in and we would go in and sing to her.

And we would go and sing to her in the hospital and we'd sing loud for the people around to be able to enjoy as well. And there'd be all these old people that come up and just say, it touched my heart, right, to listen to that song. So the point here is that if you can create some kind of work that might have some enduring value, I think that can provide you with tremendous satisfaction.

Whether it's to create a sculpture or to influence an industry or to just simply love the people who are unloved. Whatever it is, having that sense of purpose in your work and having something that goes beyond the money, beyond the time to a sense of impact is, I think, important for you.

I don't think you should be under any illusion that anyone's really going to remember your name. They're not, right? We're not. Once we're dead, maybe our family members will remember our name for a generation or two, but they're not going to remember your name. But it's for you to know that something that you've created has impacted and helped other people is, I think, a wonderful thing.

And when I think about Bill Gaither and his wife Gloria writing those songs and creating them and performing them, it's just, to me, a powerful expression of how you can do work that matters. Speaking of Bill and Gloria, I think another thing that I admire about Bill is that, to my knowledge, he's lived a straight life.

A good Christian man with a clear testimony. In fact, I wanted to make sure I went and did a web search and I searched for "Bill Gaither scandal." There was one article that popped up that was written from a hyper-Puritan Christian guy talking about how Bill Gaither has sacrificed and been too ecumenical in his work.

Which whatever. But the point is that I couldn't find any, there was nothing about any scandal in his life. And I think that's also something that's really important. He and Gloria have been married for a very long time. Evidently, they have three grown children. I know nothing about the testimony of his children, but when you look at and you reflect on that, I think you see that even in Bill's face, right?

Or in Gloria's face. They have a sense of settledness in their life, right? The healthiest lifestyle you can possibly have is simply good, upright, Christian living. It removes so much stress from your life. It removes so much pain from your life. Here I was thinking of, I was watching Will Smith at the, whatever the show was that he decked Chris Rock at.

And I was just comparing, like, here's Will Smith. Here's this guy that has an amazing repertoire of movies that he's done. We've all enjoyed so many movies. Here's a guy who's got it all, right? Who has, who's got it all, right? From an outside perspective. And yet, look at his son, look at his wife, look at his marriage relationship, and his life is in shambles.

It's an absolute shambles to the point where he, as a, what, 60-year-old man, something like that? He walks up on stage at an award show and clocks a guy in the face. It just expresses a fundamental cry for help. And so I compare Bill Gaither, who of course has not even a fraction of the wealth that Will Smith has, not a fraction of the notoriety and fame that Will Smith has, and yet the difference in lifestyle is night and day.

And there are plenty of actors in Hollywood who have very big names who you can admire. But having a spouse by your side and having that marriage relationship over decades and loving each other and growing old together, having no scandal, no infidelity, no anything, then that's something to be proud of.

Which brings me to the next thing that I admire. I admire that Bill and Gloria have been able to work together over the years. Gloria, again, is a remarkable musician and she's such a great songwriter. She has this amazing repertoire of songs that she has written for other people.

And they've worked together for years. They don't always perform together. Most of the time she doesn't perform on the road. And so I have the impression that she doesn't go on the road for months and months like Bill does. But they always perform together at some of the special events, right?

They host their events together. And I think that's another thing that's really wonderful to aspire to is can you have something where you can be together with your spouse and have some expression where both of you can shine in different ways and yet those ways be compatible, collaborative, where they're productive.

You're not competing with one another, not trying to one-up one another, but where you can have unique roles and yet have the opportunity to work together and appreciate the good things and the hard times that come from a business. I don't know that's always the best, but I admire it when I see that.

And when I see it in Bill and Gloria Gaither, it really is just something that I take note of and I say, "That's really wonderful. I'd like to have that as the years go by. I'd like to have some kind of business where my spouse is not separate, where it's not something where it's just my thing, but rather something where we're in it together." And again, that looks different in different relationships depending on what the business is, what the skills of the people are.

But when I see it, I admire it. In conclusion, when I think about all these things that I have said and you basically put the whole package together, it gives me some things to which I aspire. I don't know how necessarily I'm going to achieve them all. I may not.

It doesn't matter. The point is that these are things that I think are worth thinking about and worth aspiring to. And when I compare that against that 18-year-old's post on Reddit about how can I be financially independent and quit my work quicker, I want to cry out to the 18-year-old and say, "Take the money you have right now and just find a different job, find a different career." Because if you're in a situation like Bill Gaither, why would you retire?

Why would you quit? Why would you not want to keep doing something that you're skilled at, that people love and appreciate, people pay you money because they want you to do it? Why would you do it? So that you could have more free time? Well, that makes sense if you're working 80 hours a week at a dead-end job that has no personal rewards and you get two weeks of paid vacation a year.

Well, yeah, I get it then. But you can develop something where you work three months on, two months off, or where you do some kind of seasonality to your work, to your lifestyle. Now it changes things. And I think that it provides kind of the perfect antidote to boredom.

You go to work so that you escape from the boredom of not working. You go to work, you experience the stress, you experience the invigoration of working, of providing something, of solving those things, of doing something that you're good at, and then you have your times of rest, times of relaxation.

Then you go back to work, etc. And then you have the opportunity to build something that can last. And then when you're working in an area where you're genuinely skilled, an area of core genius, then you can make a contribution to the world. And I, for one, am thrilled that Bill Gaither didn't quit his work 30 years ago.

If he had quit, you know, he made some money performing and decided, "Okay, I'm financially independent and stop singing," I couldn't introduce my children to his music, to his band, to the performers. And it was a joy to me. I played this Easter playlist to my children, and it was a joy to me to introduce them to that and give them really good music with really great performers that they can enjoy.

And when you think about that, it's like, "Why wouldn't you want that?" I have other heroes, right? Clint Eastwood. I probably won't do a standalone show on it. But Clint Eastwood, I could have done this whole show about Clint Eastwood. Would you really have wanted Clint Eastwood to quit working 30 years ago because he was rich?

Think about all the incredible movies that we wouldn't have if Eastwood had hung up his spurs 30 years ago when he was rich enough to retire. Can you imagine Clint Eastwood retiring? Why would you want him to retire? The only reason you would want him to retire is if he couldn't do the work.

Here I think of Bruce Willis recently announced his retirement because he's experienced a degenerative condition that is causing him to not be able to do his work with his normal level of excellence. That's understandable, and I think retiring is the right move in that situation. But if you can avoid that, you want to avoid it.

And if you can't avoid it, then you want to keep working. I hope that Eastwood makes movies for another 20 years, and I hope that he dies literally on set. Wouldn't that be a great way to go? Find your own heroes. Find heroes that you admire. Find things that you admire about them.

And then think creatively of how you may be able to put some of that into your own life. I said in conclusion, I'm always nervous to say that, let me make one more point. Even if you don't know how to achieve it, having an aspiration of something that you admire, something you think would be cool to achieve is enough.

Because you don't need to know how to achieve something in order for it to start working its magic. Your brain is a computer, and it will notice what you tell it to notice. The fact that you've listened now to me expound on one particular man's career, talk about the things that I admire about him.

Tomorrow, when you see someone else, you're going to notice some of those things that you admire, or you're going to notice the exact opposite of them. Your brain is clued into them. And so if you just simply recognize, you know what, those are some things that I also admire.

I'd like to be like Clint Eastwood, or I'd like to be like Bill Gaither, or I'd like to be like Tom Brady, or I'd like to be like whomever. Then you'll start to see over the years the moves you can make. It may have been my comments on becoming an elder statesman.

You may recognize, you know what, my voice is probably not, at 86, my voice may not fill the seats. So how can I become a mentor, and how can I figure out how to use what I do have? Gaither had a platform, had a name. How can I attract really high quality musicians and bring them together, knowing that I can launch their careers, and they'll be better off being with me, even if it's for a time.

We'll do great work together, and then they'll go on their way. There's some version of that in your career, in my career, for all of us to pay attention to. So I hope that these ideas have been helpful to you, and I hope that you'll be able to consider them and think of how you can apply them in the days to come.

If you want to get rich, one of the best ways you can do that is never retire. And I'm not joking. If you want to get rich, one of the best ways you can do that is never retire. Keep working, and pay off your debts, save some money, pay for your kids' expenses, etc.

And then keep working. And you can get very, very rich just simply by keeping working. But I think more importantly, if you can build a career that you don't want to retire from, then you can live rich and still enjoy your financial freedom at every step along the way.

As we go, I want to remind you that I have a brand new course written four times like these. It's called theinternationalescapeplan.com. If you'd like more information about that course, go to internationalscapeplan.com. Remember also that I am currently providing personal consulting, so if you want to consult with me on career changes, adjustments, etc., I tell you, I would say probably, well, a significant percentage of my clients are wealthy, successful people who want to talk about personalized applications to things like these.

So if that's you, go to radicalpersonalfinance.com/consult. Radicalpersonalfinance.com/consult, and you can book a call with me there. Thank you. Hey, Cricut customers. Max with ads is included with your Cricut $60 unlimited plan at no additional cost. Max is the streaming platform where you can watch Scoob, Meg 2 The Trench, The Nightmare on Elm Street Collection, and so much more.

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