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When you hear the word retirement, you probably don't imagine yourself scrambling to pay your bills in your golden years. But for too many Americans, that's the fate that awaits unless they take steps now to plan for the future. Whether you’re twenty-five and starting your first job or fifty-five and watching the career clock start to wind down, today is the day to get serious about your retirement. On this episode, Dave recaps episodes 386-389 where Chris Hogan shares some financial and retirement advice from his book, “Retire Inspired: It's Not an Age, It's a Financial Number”

Chris Hogan says, when you start to realize the importance of your financial future, you begin to understand who’s an ally and what’s an enemy. Debt is not an ally. Debt takes away from your income. It demands a payment each and every month. Chris wants us to see debt for what it is, and be smart by intentionally getting rid of debt and keeping it out of your life.

Chris Hogan talks about how obstacles are not stopping points; rather they are proving grounds. It’s important to acknowledge that the obstacle is there, but you can overcome it if you have a plan on how you are going to defeat it. What are you going to do to overcome those obstacles so you can move forward for yourself and your family?

Chris Hogan wants us to understand one key fact: retirement has nothing to do with your age, it has everything to do with a financial number. So it’s not about 65, 62, 70, it’s more about how much money we’re going to need to be able to live the lifestyle we want to live in the future.

Chris Hogan says it’s important for all of us to understand the power of our dreams. We all have things we want to do, and it’s important to tap into them because dreams are a better motivator than fear. Fear will motivate you for a little while, but it doesn’t last. Why? Because it’s a negative drag on us. But our dreams are an encouraging kind of motivation, so we’re willing to strive and sacrifice for them because we know deep inside what we want to do.

Have you ever admired those successful, confident, motivated, and charismatic people who seem to have it all? They've climbed the corporate ladder quickly or started a great business. Their love life is amazing and they have fantastic friends. They've made all the right connections. They've mastered networking and how to build relationships. On this episode, Dave recaps episodes 381-384 where Jason Treu shares practical lessons from his book, “Social Wealth: How to Build Extraordinary Relationships By Transforming the Way We Live, Love, Lead and Network”

Author Jason Treu talks about how going to the right places is the key to building the relationships you want, both personally and professionally. Use Google and Facebook or Meetup.com to find events in your local community. You can also volunteer to help work the event you are going to attend. Keep asking people where they’re going and what they’re doing, because then you can build a list for yourself.

Author Jason Treu says you can build relationships much faster than you think if you connect with people emotionally. People have had tons of bad interactions, and typically those interactions have consisted of the same old boring questions. If you meet someone in a professional setting people always ask you, “What do you do?” and it’s boring. Instead, ask people about what they love and what they are emotionally connected to, because everyone is emotional. Lead with emotional questions because when you get down to what someone cares about, you get to know them a lot better than you normally would.

Author Jason Treu says the fear of failure, rejection, and uncertainty are often significant problems for entrepreneurs, especially when we’re treading into new territory. Successful entrepreneurs fall on their face at least once, often many times, when doing anything new. But when we embrace the fear and let it guide us, fear can be the compass that gets us to our destination.

Author Jason Treu says understanding that connection is why we’re here, and belonging is in our DNA. We all need to focus on how do we build extraordinary relationships both in our professional and personal lives. You can’t get there by yourself. We all need people to help us, from marketing to customers, to being an advocate for you and your business. Plus, we all want to create profound and lasting connections with people in our lives. On today’s show, Jason will teach us how to go about the process of building extraordinary relationships.

Your success might come down to a simple word…NO. Do you hear it enough? Do you realize the number of times you hear NO is directly related to how many times you hear YES? On today’s Dave is joined by author Andrea Waltz as we recap our conversations based on her book, “Go for No. Yes is the Destination, No is How You Get There.”

Author Andrea Waltz talks about staying persistent in embracing and even pursuing “no.” Successful people fail eagerly while failures avoid failing. There seems to be a stigma about failure that makes us feel bad and even want to quit. We think, “I’m probably going to fail, so why even try?” That attitude holds us back from some amazing opportunities because being willing to fail is what creates the chance for success.

Author Andrea Waltz encourages us to track our failure rate. She wants us to be aware of how many times we get a “no,” and even set goals and celebrate how many times we will hear “no.” Tracking your frequency of “no” gives you an awareness of how you are doing and enables you to make adjustments in your message. And celebrating them is a way to make it fun. Remember, the more times you hear “no,” the more times you’ll hear “yes.”

Author Andrea Waltz encourages us to intentionally increase our failure rate, go out and hear “no” more often. When we overcome our fear of hearing “no,” things happen, and opportunities fall into our lap that might never have happened otherwise. Establishing “no goals” tends to drive our activity up, which creates more opportunities for us to hear a “yes.”

Andrea Waltz encourages us to give ourselves permission to fail. When you change your mental model of how you view failure, seeing it as a stepping stone between you and success, it changes what is possible. Usually, we equate hearing the word “no” with a failure, so it’s about seeing the word “no” as a space between you and the “yes.” Instead of giving up when you hear “no,” just increase your “no’s,” and when you do the “yes’” will come.

Your brain is like a computer. It’s like the central processing unit for your body, mind, emotions…everything you are and do. And just like a computer, sometimes we need to change the programming to get the results we’re looking for. On today’s show, Dave recaps episodes 371-374 where Sir John Hargrave shares proven hacks that can help you change the way you think and make you more productive, positive, and happier.

Sir John Hargrave walks us through the process of setting and achieving compelling goals. It’s about imagining what you want to do with your life. Think about how important it is to figure out for yourself where you want to end up. It’s amazing how little time we all spend doing that. Instead, we just float wherever the tides of life take us. But when you start to become the master of your ship there’s no limit to what you can do.

Sir John Hargrave says we have what he calls “loops,” or ongoing, habitual messages we tell ourselves. Usually, they’re just below the level of conscious awareness, embedded in our operating system. He shares a trick to help us develop more awareness of those loops, helping us find the ones that are preventing us from getting where we want to go. We can then reprogram those loops with their more positive alternative.

There’s no end to the digital distractions that surround us. And research shows that the more distracted you are and the more you try to multitask, the less you get done. If you want to be effective and live up to your full potential, get rid of those distractions. Turn it all off and you’ll be more focused and happier.

Studies show that meditation makes you healthier, makes your relationships better, and makes you calmer and more focused. Sir John Hargrave teaches a concentration hack to strengthen that “top-down” attention to make ourselves better able to stay focused on the things we want, like our tasks at work. It also helps us resist those “bottom-up” interruptions like random thoughts and text messages that jump out at us constantly.