E67: Why Following Your Passion Might be the Worst Advice Today with Ed Mccarthy

Most people spend their careers trading time for money — until a near-death snowmobile accident forced Ed McCarthy to rewrite his entire life approach. In this powerful episode, Ed reveals how one life-altering experience shifted his focus from being an overworked tech CEO to designing a life rooted in purpose, ownership, and freedom. Discover the pivotal moments that led him to embrace a new mindset—one that can help you escape the grind, leverage AI, and build passive income streams, regardless of your current job or industry.

Connect with Ed:

https://thelifeletters.com/

Transcript

SPEAKER_01 0:12

A near-death experience changed his life. His work has now been to find the people that saved him. Let's roll right in. All right, welcome to the Work Sucks But I Like It podcast. Today we have Ed McCarthy. He's a best-selling author, he's a seasoned technology CEO, entrepreneur, and real estate investor. His near-death experience inspired him to be an intentional father confronting what truly mattered. Ed, welcome to the show.

SPEAKER_00 0:38

Thank you, Tony. Appreciate it.

SPEAKER_01 0:40

So, Ed, I usually ask, you know, how people define work, but I guess I really want to jump into something different today and ask talk to us about that near-death experience. What was it? What was this near-death experience?

SPEAKER_00 0:52

Yeah. Yeah. So a friend of mine uh called up uh uh myself and two other friends, the four of us. He borrowed uh high-performance snowmobiles from his boss, uh, from his boss on a beautiful uh really nice sleds. Uh we had this in uh so I live, I should call five, I live currently live in uh Denver, Colorado, and we spent a lot of time in the Rocky Mountains. So we get a call from a friend, the four of us, good buddies, head up to the mountains, and on this glorious day, and we just happened to get hammered with snow. You know, three feet of snow fell over the previous, you know, three or four days. And uh it was just an epic day, four friends on trail, you know, flying through the powdered, you know, the snow flying over our sleds and our heads and having just a ball. And we're 10 miles in, you know, several hours uh backcountry, don't see a soul out there. Uh we finally made a fateful decision and said, Hey, I got a good idea. Uh, but the lead sled said uh is uh let's go off trail, which is usually a bad idea. Let's go off trail and let's go have some fun in this uh open meadow, and then we'll come back and head back to the truck and then head back home again. Everyone agreed, and all four sleds went off trail. We were racing across this meadow, and uh next thing you know, the first sled fell out of sight, second sled fell out of sight. I was the third sled, and the fourth s we all fell into a crevasse uh and into uh that that open-looking pleasant uh meadow was actually uh uh covered with all the recent snow, but it was avalanche runoff from the peaks that are all around us. So it was on, you know, we don't even know how deep it was, 15 plus feet of snow. But we were here we were with our 500-pound sleds with the taillights facing up down into a 10-foot hole. Um uh we got banged up a little bit, but no one was seriously hurt. And uh we spent uh the next, well, the rest of the day, 14 hours really, the end trip spent the night out there, it was subbelow. We left, it was already below zero. Now it's you know, 10, 20 below zero. Late stage hyperthermic, had a miraculous uh savior uh that came in and saved us at 4 a.m. Uh we ended up getting back, and that wasn't that was a wake-up call, and that's the first story in the book uh about the details. I get a lot more detail than that. But it's uh uh but the first story in the book is exactly how this miracle happened and how it played out. And uh I think your readers will uh would enjoy it. Uh so that's that's how this all started. And at the time, my uh my wife was home um and she uh we had an 18-month-old son and a newborn daughter. Uh so only thing that was on my mind the entire time was not self-absorbed regrets about dying young. It was really how incredibly difficult I put my wife and my my young children in if I didn't come home that day. So, what morphed out of that was what we now know is the Life Letters book series. And here's a kind of a quick snapshot for for those who can see it. It's uh uh Life Letters, five decisions to wealth, wisdom, and happiness. And you can find it on Amazon, Barnes and Noble, or any other major retailer. Uh, but ultimately that was a wake-up call. Uh and it changed my life. It changed my life for the better in so many different ways. I see the world differently, changed my career, changed my um my view on life and my priorities. And overall, my happiness, as I talk about it, it's five decisions to wealth, wisdom, and happiness. And ultimately, I was able to share my experiences of growing up in in Boston, uh, not far from you, and um uh and how I got here and how I was able to design my optimal lifestyle uh and ultimately reach my highest self. So that's that's the that's the kickoff story of the book. Awesome.

SPEAKER_01 4:54

Well, what a kickoff for us for sure. So, Ed, from when you got rescued out of that crevasse, I guess my first question is how did they, how did you call someone? Do you had your cell phone? How did that, how did they even know you were missing? I guess I'm just curious from a story standpoint.

SPEAKER_00 5:08

No, this that that's the miracle part is uh uh truly miracles. The only semblance of life out there, as you can imagine, there's three feet or or more of snow. No one's going into the his back. So at the trail when we left that morning, you know, earlier that morning, there was only one vehicle. It was a white Ford pickup with a trailer on it that was in that at the trailhead. And there was no other sign of life at all in this uh backcountry. Well, just that's the miracle part is at 4 a.m. after we've already spent out there for you know over 12 hours freezing, late stage hypothermic, I come to find out that that truck was owned by a father and son team who are out hunting in backcountry. And they had all the gear, the wood burning stove and the outdoor tent, and they did it right. And ultimately, that uh son happened to be, what are the odds? A uh uh the son was a competitive snowmobiler. Uh, and and ultimately they happened to come at 4 a.m. when we were late stage hypothermic, it's 20 below. We were able to flag them down. He ultimately um uh got on the sleds and showed us a better way to get out of that situation, and he saved our lives. So uh and the it's not only a miracle that they came in at 4 a.m., uh, but also the the fact that he was a he was a competitive snowmobiler and knew how to get us out of there. So uh the interesting part of all that is we still, I still struggle with uh was it divine or was it uh was it human? Because we made an agreement to meet back at the trailhead. And by the time we got on our sleds and got back to the trailhead, the father and son were gone. We never got their names. We never don't know what they look like because they were just completely covered in, you know, mask and you know, like winter gear. And uh don't know what they look like, don't know their names. We're supposed to meet at the trailhead and give them their just reward. We were gonna take them out for the night and um or another night and go best steak dinner, best. So we were so grateful they saved our lives. But uh by the time we got there, poof, they were gone. So I I write in the book, which is true, is I'm looking for another miracle, uh, a second miracle, and I'm hoping my book finds them and they reach out to me and get their reward.

SPEAKER_01 7:24

I love that, Ed. I love that. Wow, I that is kind of like the divine almost. That's crazy. I love it. So, Ed, now I want to circle back to how do you define work from that experience? It sort of opened up your mind, your life, your the reality as it stood. How do you define work today?

SPEAKER_00 7:44

Yeah. Well, what I let me let me take a step back. The way I used to work is is the way most people still work, right? And that is I used to trade time for money, right? So uh I would, and I don't do that anymore. So I learned I reinvented myself in many different ways. So ultimately, my my career at the time, uh, I spent almost almost three decades in uh high-tech sales, right? I started off as an engineer, systems engineer, that morphed into a sales position, and then ultimately it's like a VP of sales, and I've been the CEO of several uh software companies throughout that over that three, those three decades. And ultimately, I didn't realize it, but I was just trading time for money. I would show up and I'd work very hard and you know, and had a great teams and this and that. But ultimately, we were just grinding every, every single day. And um, I basically stopped doing that. I learned uh to to get into to instead of just trying to be an earner and earn someone who earns money, I learned and tried taught myself how to be an owner, right? To be an owner of businesses uh that ultimately scale. Because when you're trading time for money, it does not scale, right? What scales is value. So if you can bring value to the table, that scales infinitely. But time doesn't. We all only have 24 hours in a day, we only have eight or to 10 hours a day to trade time for money. I don't care if you're getting paid 20 or 200 or $400 an hour, it doesn't scale, right? But learning to bring value to the table and bring value through owning a business. Um, now that scales, and that was a pivotal change in my career. And going full circle back to that awakening uh after that near death experience, I said, I don't want to be away from my family. I used to travel all the time. I was I lived on the road. I was a high-tech sales guy, global sales, uh sales uh uh VP. I would live on the road and I kind of you know, kind of just justified it, like, oh, I'm making a bunch of money for the benefit of my wife and kids, which is true fundamentally, right? But again, it didn't scale. I was missing out on my kids, uh, you know, they're growing up since they were babies. I was missing out on a lot in life. So I had to reinvent myself and I was able to successfully do that through several different business ventures. But I will tell the listeners that I failed at more businesses than I succeeded at. Uh, and the nice thing I want to emphasize to your listeners is you only have to get it right once, you know, you know, to really hit it when you're looking to convert from an earner to an owner. Uh, there's uh tremendous value in entrepreneurship. But even if you don't, and I coach a lot of people on this too, some people just don't have the they either don't have the desire or they just have a fear associated with starting their own business. I mean, let's call it. It is, it's not for everyone, and it is scary. So within the letters uh of the book, so this life letters, and it's 26 letters uh A through Z. So I make it very simple for everyone. It starts with accountability to boredom to career, all the way to the zone, getting in the zone, and that's creating systems, which I can elaborate on. Um, but ultimately A through Z. But that C letter, C equals career letter, I talk in great detail about how to make that transition into from earner to owner. And one of those uh transition points is not only transition into, say, an entrepreneurship, well, uh a word that I created out of the blue is uh was called intrapreneurship. And intrapreneurship is to have an entrepreneurial mindset internally within a company, right? So you can be an entrepreneur running your own business, but not everyone uh is comfortable with that. Or an entrepreneur, but again, it's still based on bringing value to the table. You're not trading time for money, you're trading value for money, which ultimately gives you the freedom of time.

SPEAKER_01 11:47

I love that, Ed. So especially for listeners that are nine to five or the entrepreneur, because we have both of those on the show. You can be an entrepreneur, if you will, as a nine to fiver. And then the entrepreneur, of course, is the entrepreneur. I'm just curious, Ed, and I love how you talked about this sort of transformation of trading time from money to ownership. Have you come across Robert Kiyosaki's work on cash flow quadrant? I know what well Sir Derived Perfect. Can you explain for the audience, please, what that is? I love this. Please go rock and roll.

SPEAKER_00 12:14

Absolutely. So for those aren't familiar with it, highly recommend. It's been, man, probably close, probably close to 30 years now, since Robert Kiyosaki released the uh Rich Dad Poor Dad series. And ultimately what he has is the four quadrants. And on, and go oversimplify it. On one side, you have your uh either an employee or you're self-employed. On the other side, you're either a business owner or you're an investor, right? And in the long story short, you want to be on the business owner and the investor side. And he uh Robert does a fantastic job of telling a story. I go into way more detail and way more granular, but Robert uh Kiyosaki did a phenomenal job with that Rich Dad uh Poor Dad series. And it helps, it helps the reader, if you really are open-minded to embracing it, it helps to change your mindset from an employee mindset into more of a business owner mindset. And I think that's really important, more so than, and that was 30 years ago when Robert was as uh wisely advising that. But uh, you know, I take it to a completely different level because fast forward 30 years later, we are uh in the midst of unprecedented change. Like that's never happened in human history. And and if you were, you know, to tie it's it's really a technology advancement. And the most common would be AI, robotics, to a lesser degree, nanotechnology, quantum computing. And again, I spent three decades in high-tech, so I know this subject better than most. But there is absolutely an AI tsunami barreling at every one of us right now. And it will, it's not, it's not an if, it's a it's a certainty that it will displace lots of jobs and if in fact will make certain careers completely obsolete. So if you're in any form of position right now where you are doing any semblance of a redundant process, uh, you know, the kind of redundant process throughout, that that ties to legal, accounting, um, uh customer service, you know, of any form, right? Uh and go down the line and if any semblance of the humanities, that is changing, uh, it's going to change everything that we know it. In five years, I don't know that you'll barely even recognize the the economy because that big a change. So I spent a lot of time with my three decades of technology experience elaborating on the value of uh of pivoting from that earner to an owner mindset. And ultimately another way of saying that is, you know, most people today are really like consumers, right? Uh that's all they do is consume. And they need to pivot into being more of a creator, right? Like, you know, Tony, to your credit, you are creating something now with this podcast, right? You're you're a creator, right? Uh, most people don't. They just want to consume social media, they want to consume um gaming, they want to consume, you know, products and material out there, and they're not creating anything. And AI effectively will is gonna force a lot of hands and people to look at things differently. So I encourage you to take a look at my book, Life Letters, Five Decisions to Wealth, Wisdom, and Happiness. And uh within those 26 letters, they're all broken down into one of three topics, and that's wealth, wisdom, or happiness. And the wealth uh out of the 26, we have seven on wealth. One of them is career. That's the only one I addressed so far, right? Um, but then the there's 11 on wisdom, and that has to do with the philosophy uh um and the psychology associated with life and in and success. And then finally, the happiness has eight letters uh out of the out of the 26. So combined seven, eleven, and eight uh is 26 letters. So it's a little, it's something for everyone, depending on where what state of what age and stage you're in right now. Uh, but ultimately the whole goal is this book is transformational. It's a transformational master plan to help anyone at any age or stage reach their highest self through optimal lifestyle design. So I highly encourage you folks to take a look at it in the AI era that we're it's not even just coming, it's here, right? It's already here, but it's gonna be coming, barreling at us. That tsunami is just gonna be hammering us even more and more. And if you don't pivot, uh uh in in today's world, you're uh uh you're gonna have some challenges ahead of you, depending on your career path.

SPEAKER_01 16:42

Awesome. Well, first off, Ed, thank you for kind of recapping Kiyosaki's work. I'm also a fan of him as well, moving from the left side to the right side of the quadrant. So thank you for that. So one of the things we talk about on the show, Ed, is that success is not a matter of good luck, but good skills. And you've talked about sort of making this transition and sort of, you know, excerpts from your book and lessons. What is one skill you can tell the audience today to work on to be more successful? What's this one skill that you think is important today?

SPEAKER_00 17:09

Oh man. Uh, if I had to pick that one skill, I'd say creative, you know, uh creative thinking, you know, you know, you know, you know, just uh um you got to think differently. You have to think and and uh uh more critical thinking or creative thinking, depending on how you want to define that. But uh, but ultimately, again, within the uh the C uh career chapter, I talk about the C eight principle. And the C eight principles is eight eight principles, I'll start with C. And the first one is really critical thinking. So I think that's very important. But to it's also challenging for people to go to reinvent themselves. So within the book, I highly recommend people to take a look at the X letter. Again, A through Z chapters, letter X is your X factor. So in there, I prove, you know, I prove that every one of us out there has at least three, sometimes five, sometimes seven, but a minimum of three uh uh uh uh X factors or such uh natural skills that um that we do, they're so natural that I don't even barely pay attention to them. Most people find their energy, spend their energy focusing on what they do wrong, right? Like, well, I'm terrible at this. I I need to, I'm terrible at these three things, so I'm gonna focus all my energy and getting better at those three, right? Versus what I encourage people to do is go to the X factor uh uh uh chapter and ultimately identify the top three minimum things that you do right that are so natural to you, don't even really think twice about it, right? It's where you get compliments from everyone that, oh, you're so good at this, and why you're so such a natural speaker, or you're such a natural writer, or you're you're so creative with this and that. And combine those skills, find the three plus skills that you have and combine them into a potent formula that is your X factor, right? So ultimately, I think that's uh that would be a great next step for your listeners is use this coaching uh within the book uh to be able to identify your strengths uh and uh and ultimately find that potent formula for success because it's right there. And I I'll show you, I I walk you right through the roadmap on how to do it.

SPEAKER_01 19:24

So I hear a lot, you've probably come across as well in your travels and your lessons and reading books and whatnot, that they say to find your passion. When you talk about an X factor, right? How do you equate that to your passion to this? I guess, is it a dream job? What do you think of the two? Your X factor and the sense of passion with work.

SPEAKER_00 19:42

Yeah, so well, what uh what other respect? I don't subscribe to the to the notion of uh follow your passion. Uh and again, I'll revert back to the C the C career letter. Now, there's some exceptions. I'm gonna say, I'm gonna pick a, you know, no one really knows, but maybe 1% of us out there that you know was passionate about a particular, you know, uh area. Doctors come to mind, right? A doctor is like, I want to be a doctor, right? And I'm gonna go through the 12 years of education and all the residency, and I'm gonna do this, and I wanna be a doctor for the rest of my life, right? Um, I know a lot of doctors, a lot of friends of mine are doctors, and they they were that passionate about it when they were 20, and maybe to a lesser degree when they were 30, but now they're pushing 50, right? And they're a lot, they don't know passionate about it anymore, right? But the difficult thing of being a doctor or those medical skills, that it's really difficult, almost impossible to repurpose those skills into a different trade, right? So you know what you know, and that's what you know. So it's very dangerous in following your passion, because will that passion last for decades? Right. You know, will that will that give you meaning uh for decades? Probably not. What I found more effective is go to your X factors, you know, find your strengths, find what you're great at, because if you're great at something, and you can turn that not only into something that you're interested in, but also you can make money at it, right? Well where you find your passion is, you know, uh if you have a desire to be married with children, but you know, you're you're you're you're paying for your family's optimal lifestyle, right? You're paying for your optimal lifestyle, you're vacationing well, you're not stressed over money. You you've you took that potent formula of your X Factor and you brought that into a field that wasn't your passion, but it becomes your passion because it enables your optimal lifestyle. So I think I just warned people to being very careful because this follow your passion advice is splayed all over commencement speech, every high school commencement speech or college commencement speech, or every counselor and teacher and even parent, follow your passion, follow your passions of prosperity. I mean, it's cute, it's warm, it's fuzzy, but it's also very misleading. Uh, and I Think ultimately people need to reevaluate. And this has never been more relevant in the AI age because the AI is just going to completely eliminate many of the professions that we know of today. So find your X factors, find what you're great at, be great at it. And I use an analogy even in the book is uh, you know, you you could be a pig farmer, right? And are you is anyone passionate about being a pig farmer? No. But if you fly in private and you're, you know, you're you're you're you know paid for your kids' college and you're financially free for life and live in your optimal design, all of a sudden you're passionate about pigs. You're passionate about pigs. It's all relevant to uh to where it is. And that was mine. I was never passionate about IT. I was never passionate about pivoting and getting in deep into a uh a big uh real estate career, right? Um, those weren't passions, they were means to an end, and they served me very well. Now, what is a passion is this book series. You know, this life letters book series has become a passion. But I'm beyond financially free. I've been retired for I could have retired two decades ago. Uh I'm just just too high energy and I can't, I can't retire. I try to retire twice. It didn't work, I wasn't happy. And uh, but ultimately now I have the financial means, I have the luxuries of doing something that I'm passionate about. But when you're young, focus on that optimal lifestyle design and doing what's necessary to be successful at that.

SPEAKER_01 23:31

So Ed, I know some of the listeners are like very intrigued with all of this in the sense that they're stuck at their job, right? They're catching on that they got to identify their X factors. I agree with you. I'm not a fan of the woo-woo self-help with all the passion bullshit. But I guess like what I don't know, that's how I feel too. That's why I was laughing. I'm like, man, this guy's perfect. Well, help the listener here when they're stuck in their job and that sucks, right? What can they do to start working towards these things? Right? Their job blows, their boss sucks, workplace is terrible. What do they do? Do they make a drastic pivot? Do they what what do you recommend?

SPEAKER_00 24:08

I I think if if you're that person that's listening, I think there's an unprecedented opportunity in front of you right now, and it is AI induced, right? Because when I was the CEO of several software companies, I had to hire, you know, software developers, I had teams of software developers, I had sales teams, I had marketing teams, I had legal teams, I had a, I had all the, you know, HR, I had all these people, right? And it was very difficult, very expensive to, and I had to raise money for venture capitalist money and be able to get this business, these businesses off the running. That those were all all those headwinds are effectively eliminated with AI, right? You can be a one-man shop, a one-person shop, and build a thriving business with the existing technology that's today. There's never been an easier time to be an entrepreneur. There's never been a better time to be able to break out on your own, right? So for those people that are struggling within a company, maybe they see the writing on the wall, like, oh, I am in a process-oriented role. The probability of AI, you know, stealing my job is high or at least displacing me to a certain degree. Um, the time is now to make that change. And go again, go back to the X factors, find out what you're great at, pull that, pull that together, and then ultimately build a plan by leveraging AI technology to start your own business. It's just, it's as much damages AI. AI is gonna both, you know, uh give it and take out of the way, right? It'll give it and so many different options for people that that really just not only embrace AI, but just bathe yourself in it. I mean, completely immerse yourself in AI technology. There's loads of classes that are out there on how to leverage the technology today. Take the classes while you're employed. Do it at nights and weekends, right? Start nights and weekends, right? Uh learn to how to be a real estate investor, right? That goes back to Robert Kiyosaki, but also uh his Rich Dad-Poor Dad book, which is phenomenal. Um, and in my book as well, we talk about in detail, right? Learn to be a real estate investor. Why do you want to be a real estate investor? Well, you want to build passive income streams, right? So that you're buying a property, it's keep simple, like maybe in my deal scenario, buy a four-plex property, live in one of those units, rent out the other three units. Those three units, if you bought that bought it well, will more than cover the entire expenses. So you're living for free, right? And maybe you're if you do it well, you're actually making money every month, but you eliminated all your expenses for uh for living. So that's one hack, one life hack that you can do while you're employed. In fact, it's better to do it while you're employed because the banks will be more apt to give you a loan because you have a W-2 income, right? So that's one pivot you can make uh into real estate. Another pivot is just taking those classes online online and even tell your company, hey, company, I want to be an intrapreneur, right? Uh, I don't know, I want to be, I want to bring value to this company. Will you pay for these classes? And I'm going to implement this AI technology to the best of my ability, and I'm going to be an intrapreneur, an entrepreneur, an internal entrepreneur, right? So that's a way of uh avoiding, potentially avoiding not getting laid off when AI takes your potential job. So pivoting and immersing yourself in AI um is is is the path to go at this point and uh in your career.

SPEAKER_01 27:39

No, that's great advice, Ed. So this is the work sucks, but I like it podcasts. What is one thing that sucks about your work, Ed? And what are you doing to make it not suck? One thing that sucks about mine.

SPEAKER_00 27:50

Yes, about your work. Oh man. Um, well, I I uh I love what I do. I I would you know, so what I refer to is again with the book, is you know, here's a snapshot of it, is following the steps to your highest self. So I can honestly say uh that I have reached my highest self, my highest, but what's what's the definition of my highest self? Would be very different than Tony's definition or anyone that's listening. Uh, but my definition is I I want financial freedom. Got that. I I only spend time with the people I want to spend time with. I only do the things that I want to do, right? Um, I'm financially free, have been for a long time. And so I've designed my optimal lifestyle uh to be able to reach my highest self. So there, I can't say there's anything that sucks about my career. Um, and if there's something stuff that I don't like, like really I have a you know small teams that run my businesses day to day, and they do a lot of stuff that I don't want to do, right? Uh to be able to run the business, but ultimately I hire I outsource that to other people. But that's in an enviable uh position. I think most people want to get there, but I I give you the roadmap, uh, the master plan on how to reach your highest self through optimal lifestyle design.

SPEAKER_01 29:06

I love that, Ed. So you've talked a lot about your book. So if the listeners want to pick up your book and learn more about this, where's a good place for them to land?

SPEAKER_00 29:14

Yeah, uh well, Amazon.com. Uh again, it's Life Letters by Ed McCarthy. Uh, and uh Life Letters are five decisions to wealth, wisdom, and happiness. So Amazon, uh Barnes and Noble, um, every major retailer in the world now has this book. Uh, it's been a tremendous success. We only released it a little over 100 days ago, and we're already it's already a best-selling book, uh, which is amazing. Uh, we have sales in 11 countries where we're just rocking. We're rocking across the board. We have global distribution. It's self-published. You know, I self-publish, so which is a rarity to have that kind of success so early. So, but it's been a lot of fun. Or the simple way of finding us is just go to our website. It's uh uh thhelifeletters.com, t-h e lifeletters.com. And uh you can buy the book there. Um, that'll give you just a direct link to Amazon. But we also bring a lot of added value and then kind of I practice what I preach. It's not just trading time for money, as I alluded to, you got to bring value for money. So we bring, we offer, uh, I entirely encourage your listeners to go to thelifeletters.com and you can sign up for our free newsletter. So every other uh uh uh era twice a month, we send out a newsletter that enhances the messaging within the book. And that's also a newsletters A through Z. And uh so every other week, uh second and fourth um Wednesday of every month, uh, we uh release a newsletter. Well, I release a newsletter. Uh we also have what ultimately this book is is called Wisdom Transfer. So this is my best ability. That's my best effort and ability to be able to transfer my wisdom, my experiences, uh to the reader, right? Originally was written for my kids, and then ultimately that morphed into sharing with the world. Uh, but I'm I'm only one guy with one life experience. So I created the with my IT background, I created the first of its kind, Wisdom Transfer Platform. And as the name implies, it's kind of think of Reddit. It's like a very much like Reddit, um, where it's an open forum of sharing your wisdom on all aspects of topics around wealth, wisdom, and happiness. So I encourage people to join the newsletter. That's free. I enjoyed, uh, participate in the wisdom transfer platform. You'll learn a lot, but also it's kind of give to get. We're hoping you can give. And if you don't have any specific wisdom to share, share your favorite quote, share your favorite book, share your favorite poem, share something, uh, give, you know, pay it forward by giving to the community uh through the wisdom transfer platform. So it's free. Well, you just register and you're on. And uh, and then we have other book two is coming out in October, book three in the following October. So we have a lot of added value that we've brought, and that all can be found at thelifeletters.com.

SPEAKER_01 32:03

Awesome, Ed. Well, thanks for being on the show today. I appreciate your time. Thank you.

SPEAKER_00 32:07

Have a good day.

SPEAKER_01 32:09

Ed talks about trading time for money, and we dive into one of my favorite views on money from the author Robert Kiyosaki in his book Rich Dad, Poor Dad. He puts an interesting spin on this too and talks about putting value on what you do. And as you know, I love the word value. He talks about the meaning beyond what something is worth. If you don't want to be an entrepreneur, Ed states that you can be an entrepreneur. It's about value, not trading time for money, trading value for money. Ed says the skill is creative thinking. So today, success is not a matter of good luck, it's good skills. How do you get creative? It isn't about passion, and no, it doesn't mean you need to be an artist. It starts with recognizing what your strengths are and working on those. Get creative on how you can use your strengths, and that's the skill. We'll see you next time.