Flipping the Life Switch and Redefining Success with Joel Steele

Tim Melanson: [00:00:00] Hello and welcome to today’s episode of the Work at Home Rockstar podcast I am talking to with an author of Life Switch. He’s also the co-founder and co-owner of Steele Financial Solutions. And what he does, uh, through his book is he entertains and inspires people with the messages and lessons from it.

And also as a financial advisor, he helps people with their finances and helps them prepare for retirement. So I’m super excited to be rocking out today with Joel Steele. Hey, Joel, you ready to rock?

Joel Steele: Ready to rock. Let’s do it.

Tim Melanson: to rock. Yeah. So we always start off here on a good note. So tell me a story of success that we can be inspired by.

Joel Steele: Yeah. Well for me, you know, my, the story and I, the book is, you know, the main platform for this, but I had a restaurant business I had a passion for, for fitness and, and having people eat healthy. And I tried to bring it to the world. And this restaurant started off very successful. I opened up several stores.

I had a small chain at 24 years old, and ultimately it crashed and burned. And, uh, I got unplugged and [00:01:00] the music was turned off and I did not have a chair to sit in. And that was the worst time in my life. And I felt like my life was over at 24. And I realized that, well, chronologically, I’ve got a lot more life left to go.

And so the good part of that story is that business failure is what led to me finding success in a different industry, the financial services industry. Where I co-founded my company back 22 years ago, and this has led to the life I live today. It’s been the hand that feeds everything. The sports teams that I own a part of.

It’s allowed me to be at every single sporting event or choir event for my kids. I mean, my kids are 17 and 15 and I’ve missed nothing. There’s not one event that I’ve ever missed that I look back and have regret about. Instead, I, I’m happy and I’m proud that I’ve been able to be present. While building my business over the years.

Tim Melanson: Wow, that is a huge success. I love to hear stuff like that because I mean, I, you know, you hear [00:02:00] people talking about success in terms of financial abundance and all that stuff, which is definitely success. But there’s also the success of being there for, and, and, and, you know, going through life and actually being prison for all the events that happen and not being at the end of it and going like, oh, I missed all the firsts.

Right. Um, I mean, that’s, that’s amazing. And, you know, to be able to have the ability to do it and also to have some financial successes, a big success, right?

Joel Steele: Absolutely. You know, I, I always talk to people, my clients, especially about the word rich. Rich means an abundance. It doesn’t necessarily mean of money, but that’s what everyone thinks about when they think of rich. And I have an abundance of love and memories and experiences. ’cause life, I think, is all about experiences.

Not how much money you have, but how much experience you’ve got out of this one life that you live. Uh, but it has been absolutely amazing to be able to have that time and the ability to do these things. And it’s interesting for, for me, and maybe anyone listening today, when I was younger, I was super ambitious and I still am, but I had this goal, like Isaac, like, I [00:03:00] don’t want to just make a million dollars.

I wanna make $10 million. I just had like, you know, my eyes were turning green. I just wanted to go out and kill it and crush the corporate world and start a business and, and make a ton of money. And you know, I didn’t know I was ignorant. I thought that meant success. I thought that was living a rich life.

And as I met my wife and eventually had kids, I realized that that was not at all what I wanted. Now sure, I wanted to be able to have enough, uh, financial means to be able to live, uh, and have a great life, but to go try to be filthy rich, you know, just to run up the score was completely empty and probably would’ve really destroyed all the things that were important to me.

I think some people. They keep scoring life based on money, and that’s not just the main scorecard. It’s like the only one, and that’s, that’s a losing game because you’re never gonna have the most money. Sorry to break it to you

Tim Melanson: Yeah. Now that’s, that’s a good point too. You’re never gonna have the, you’re always gonna be fighting with somebody else. I mean, even if you look at the leaderboards of the richest people in the world, they’re, they’re flipping around all the time. So, I mean, that’s a, that’s a [00:04:00] tough game to be playing, right?

Joel Steele: That’s right. Yeah. So people need to really understand what game they are playing. How do you win, right? What are the rules of the game, and and how do you keep track of that score? I, I say like in baseball, you can keep track of the number of hits all you want, but at the end of the day, what wins games are runs on the board.

You know, usually hits translate, hit translate to more runs, but not necessarily. And so you could have one big error. And that could blow the game. And in your life you could have an error. You can fumble or drop the ball with your family or something that’s important to you at least You said it was important.

But if you don’t actually live out and are, are not present and see or priorities in front of your face every day, then they might go in the back burner. And the back burner can be a dangerous, scary place to be.

Tim Melanson: Yeah, what you just said there, what you said was important is, is an important distinction. ’cause I think a lot of times people will say something and then not do it, and then have these excuses on why they didn’t do it. Which I, I mean, bottom line is you just [00:05:00] didn’t do it right. If you said you were gonna do it and you didn’t do it, then okay, fine.

Maybe there was some circumstances that came in the way, but then the next question I would have would be, okay, that’s fine. You know, sometimes things do happen, but what did you do to stop that from happening the next time? ’cause these things tend to repeat themselves over and over. Right?

Joel Steele: Oh, a hundred percent. Yeah. If you don’t, you know, hit the brakes, do a 180 or whatever you need to do a K turn, uh, yeah, you’re gonna keep going down the same path. It’s the same beginning. You picture being in your car. If you’re on a hill and you’re not hitting the brake, you’re gonna roll whichever way.

The hill is slanting. You have to take physical action. If you want a different result. And so I always say that if you want different results, you have to start thinking differently before you even start doing differently. Understand what you’re trying to do, what you’re trying to avoid. And I, I have a simple two step formula for success in, in all things personal and professional.

It’s step one, figure out what needs to be done. Step two is go out and do it. And most things in life I think are like that. They’re [00:06:00] simple. To, to say and comprehend, but they’re hard to actually do. But you need to physically apply that pressure and, and do the things that you know you need to do to get the results that you want to have.

Tim Melanson: Wow. So we already touched on the, on the bad note a little bit. I think, uh, there might be a few bad notes right along the way. Uh, but that’s, I mean, that tends to be the main fear of most people is that they don’t want to make a mistake. What happens if I fail? What happens if it doesn’t work out? Right?

All that kind of stuff. And I’m wondering like, what’s your, I mean, you know, having been there, what you know, was that the bad, the biggest bad note? I mean, is there another one you can share with us? But also, you know, what, what did you learn outta that?

Joel Steele: Yeah, well, you know that, I mean, I learned, I learned a ton out of, out of my restaurant business failing. But I’ll give you a couple other things and we’ll circle back, I’m sure to the restaurant later. ’cause that was the, you know, the most major turning point in my life. But there was other ones, you know, younger, uh, being younger as a young adult and a kid, I got caught up in the wrong crowd and I.[00:07:00]

Started to do some things, some petty crimes. I didn’t get arrested, but I was literally staring at a jail cell and the cop told me to pick which one I wanted to be in, and I just turned white. And, you know, thinking about my life was reduced to a choice of, you know, this jail cell or that jail cell, I’m thinking what, like, where did I go wrong?

But I had an opportunity to reform and change without getting a, you know, permanent smear on my record, fortunately. And it got me to understand a lot of things. That there’s a lot of good people out there that have gotten caught up in bad things, that if people are giving, given a second chance or an opportunity, they can excel and and give back to the world.

But it also got me to realize how much I not just enjoy helping people, but I need to do it. If I’m not helping people in some way, shape, or form, I feel almost like empty, like, like the life is getting sucked out of me. And I was able to take that, that love to help people, that passion and apply it to different things.

I, again, I tried to do it. I did it as a personal trainer, which went uh, [00:08:00] really poorly. Then I turned that around. Then it went well real well. Then I did it in the restaurant business for a while and that didn’t work out, but I just. Redirected that passion to help people to then helping them with their finance, helping them become financially independent and be able to retire to have the money, and more importantly, the time to do the things that they are passionate about and want to do in their life before the sand runs out of the hourglass.

So learning in that low moment at a younger age that I need to help people really transformed my professional career to make sure that I wasn’t just making money for me. But I was doing things to help people, and in the process of helping them become successful, I became successful.

Tim Melanson: Yeah. And I, I think that that mindset is very important too. ’cause I mean, business is all about solving problems. It’s all about helping people. And as long as you have that idea of, okay, my, my. Job here is to help people. I think people get caught up in what they do, right? And, and they end up like, I mean, imagine if you had just said, oh, you [00:09:00] know what?

This business failed in, in the restaurant business. I just need to push harder, or I need to open it up another business, like another restaurant. Like, and people will stick to it thinking that that’s their identity. But really what you want it to do is you want it to help people and so you can kind of flow into whatever the next thing is that’s gonna help people.

Right.

Joel Steele: Yeah, totally. And it’s funny you say that because I actually had a lease in my hand for a fourth store when the, the first three were kind of crumbling on a rocky foundation. I was, I was burning money. I mean, $20,000 a month. You are right outta the gate. Uh, and this was back in 2004, so that’s probably, you know, closer to $30,000 today.

But I just was so focused on this is gonna work. Uh, you know, I’m gonna be the next Howard Schultz, Ray Crock, you know, uh, Colonel Sanders. You know, Tim, Tim Morton’s. Right? Whatever. Uh, but I, I was thinking like that. I wasn’t thinking what could go wrong. I was thinking, what if this goes all right? And I would, my score I was keeping track of was not [00:10:00] profit and loss.

That was, that looked like Christmas, but mostly red. Not, not a lot of green. Um, but, but some days were good, but mostly it was red and I wasn’t keeping track of that score as much as I was keeping track of the number of scores I had. That to me was like, okay, that’s success. That’s what I’m focusing on.

But after a while I realized that, you know what? This is getting to a point where it’s, it’s just not gonna work. You know, it’s like digging for oil and, you know, you get, you know, a thousand feet in the ground. It’s like, do you really keep going at this point? Uh, and so I, I had to really take off my blinders and stop.

But then. It was looking at, well, what’s the big picture goal for me? And the big picture was always to, to have a good life, to enjoy it, to be a family man, to have a successful business. And just ’cause that business failed. Didn’t mean that I was a failure. It didn’t mean that I couldn’t find success in something else.

And that’s why I tell people, don’t be afraid of failure. Don’t be afraid of experiences. Start saying yes to things. There’s a funny movie with Jim Carrey from a number [00:11:00] of years ago called Yes Man, and after saying no to everything for years and living a sheltered life where it felt like the walls were closing in, he feared everything.

He started to say yes to everything, and he ended up creating an amazing life. Some things didn’t work out well, some did. Some were. Things you laugh about, but that’s what creates, you know, an interesting person. That’s what creates a, a rich life, is having things to talk about, to laugh about. You go out to the bar with your buddies to have a beer, you know, it’s, well, I went to work today and I went home.

Okay, how was your commute? Like, who cares? You know? It’s like, tell me something interesting that happened today. I asked my kids that, what was the funniest thing that happened today? You know, was anything, anything different happened in school this week? You know? We, we don’t like to do the same monotonous thing.

We like to mix it up. Our brains need to be stimulated. We have all this amazing wiring in here, and it wasn’t meant to be stuck living in a cubicle, going through the same hamster reel every single day. It, it leads to rot, you know, just completely like rotting away and wasting. I, I [00:12:00] say all the capabilities that we were blessed with the day we were born.

Tim Melanson: Agreed. Yeah, I agree. Well, and I, I mean, you and I are very similar in, in, in our outlook, right? Not looking at the bad, mostly looking at the good, very optimistic. And I think a lot of entrepreneurs are in that boat where we’re not really, we don’t, we just don’t even, I wanna look at the bad, right.

Especially early on in the career. Right. I’m wondering though, because. Eventually that does catch up. Okay. He caught up to me too. So eventually you do have to look at that. Now, I’m wondering if you were speaking to like your 20-year-old self and going like, Hey, trying to give him advice, what would you say to that might actually get through to him to make him look at that, you know, bad side right of it?

Joel Steele: Yeah. You know, it’s, it’s such a. Tough question because I can honestly say if I would’ve known the challenges I would’ve had to go through for the restaurant business, I probably wouldn’t have done it. And it’s the same thing with my book. Everyone said like, I wrote the book, like I [00:13:00] just did it. You know?

I just kind of got everything off my chest and put it out there. And it ended up being like 310 pages of Microsoft Word, which is a mammoth document. I actually had to cut out about 25% of that, but reading books about how to write a book later on after that was saying, well, you need to do an outline. You have to do this, you have to do that.

I’m thinking like, oh, like, that’s not me. I don’t like to, you know, sort of sit down and, and put out my fork and my knife here and spread out my napkin. I just like started chowing down, you know, and so look at the book. I just started letting it rip. With a restaurant, it was kind of the same thing. It’s almost like, how do I deal with the negative and that kind of stuff, and, and the reality, sometimes I just don’t, because that’s the best way to go flying through those obstacles, is to just view them as like thin glass.

I’m just gonna bust through this. You know, like if you’re punching through an object, you don’t punch the object, you punch through it. And I guess I kind of view things like that. I was like, you know, whatever the challenges are, I don’t care. I’m gonna do that. I’m like, I, here’s my end goal and I’ll see you there and I’ll just figure [00:14:00] out a way to get through everything else.

So that’s, maybe it’s not unique, but I know not everybody thinks like that, but that’s led to all the success I’ve had in every different industry. When I, you know, people tell me, well, I sit down, I plan out the month, the day of the year. That’s great. But that’s not me. You know, I like with my financial company, especially in the first 10 years, I just.

Put in as much activ as I could possibly put in each day. I didn’t plan it. It was just every day let’s freestyle and have a jam session and go crazy and see how much activity I could generate. So I was kind of like, you know, some people might not do well with that, you know, ’cause it’s not structured.

But for me, I was like, I don’t wanna put a ceiling on my output, my activity. I want to see what I can do. So I wasn’t thinking about minimums or maximums. I was just trying to get out there and make it happen, you know, not waste any time in my mind.

Tim Melanson: Yeah. Wow. Yeah, and, and I mean, when you do push through those things too, like you find out on the other side of it that you make the mistake, okay, I made the mistake, I learned a lesson from that one. And then you move on to the next one. Especially [00:15:00] with the edit, with that kind of attitude, you’re, you’re always just gonna move to the next thing, so you might as well just get going.

Right.

Joel Steele: Yeah. And I like to say too, you know, I tell people when I, I do, uh, some keynote speaking, uh, to different financial companies and other organizations, but, uh, whether it’s sales or financial companies, when I’m explaining to ’em, I say that. Bad activity is better than no activity because you never know.

Like, I’ve had some like award-winning terrible, like razzy style, like, uh, conversations on the phone where I’m like, like in my, in my head I’m like punching myself in the face. I mean, this is so bad. Like, what are you doing? And, and it’s, it still had success at times because I was able to at least satisfy some minimum requirements for the prospective clients, like presenting investment solutions, talking about retirement.

Even though I’m thinking to myself, you know, like, this is a terrible performance. You know what? Sometimes it was okay. It still, it still worked. And so bad activity is better than no activity. And think about this. If you’re a musician and you’re on your guitar or piano and you’re just messing [00:16:00] around hitting notes, like you might hit a note or put together a melody that you didn’t plan to do, and it might be like, well, hang on, wait, do that again, and boom, all of a sudden, there you go.

I mean, sometimes the best products, songs, thoughts, uh, come from accidents come from trying things, experimenting.

Tim Melanson: That is absolutely true. Right? And, uh, it’s, it is, it is interesting that when you speak to some, uh, some artists that, I mean, they, they do all often say that it just came outta nowhere. And, you know, sometimes, uh, when you, like you say, if you, you know, put your. Fork and spoon out, and you, you put everything out like out there and you try to do everything in a box.

It ends up not really being very creative, it’s just this cookie cutter sort of thing. And I think the same thing happens in business as well. I mean, if you, if you try to plan and plan and plan and plan, you’re just never gonna get out of the gate. You might as well get going because. Uh, I know with, uh, with music, especially, like so many things [00:17:00] can happen on a stage.

So many things, like someone could fall into you while you’re playing. Like literally if you’re in these little bars, like you can’t plan for that. Like, did you have that figured out what you were gonna do when someone falls on you so that you don’t mess up? Like, like, it’s just, there’s so much stuff that can happen.

You’re, you’re better off to just get out there instead of like overthinking everything. Right.

Joel Steele: Yeah. Yeah. And, and something happens. Again, it’s something you can laugh at, you can talk about later. You know, you see some of these shows, you see the, the clips online, you know, a musician fell on stage and you know, quite frankly, that gets more attention than if the show went on as planned. And that’s why you wanna embrace the good, bad, and the ugly, because sometimes.

The, these things are blessings in disguise, but very few things in life go according to script, and that’s not necessarily a bad thing.

Tim Melanson: No, and people like to do business with people too, and the more human you appear through, you know, just being human and making mistakes. Sometimes the better that is. I mean, there are certain things. I mean, [00:18:00] you don’t want your doctor to be making a bunch of mistakes. But on the other hand, you know, in, in regular business, if you’re on a sales call with somebody and he’s sort of like, you know, dealing with, with his kid coming in, in the ho in the room, or there’s like weird things going on that you don’t think is professional, that might not necessarily hurt you, that might actually help you.

They might think, okay, well this guy’s just like me. He’s just got a lot more experience in this area that I’m looking to get into, and I like to talk to people that are normal, real people with more experience in that area. That’s what I’m looking for.

Joel Steele: Totally. Yeah. And like you said, people like to be with other people, especially today when everything’s, you know, technology based and AI and you know, 1-800-NUMBERS and, you know, virtual assistants answer the phone, Hey, no, I can help you. No, you can’t. And, uh, not only people like, you know, to work with people, but people like to work with interesting people, you know, that have, that are seasoned, that have been out there, that have interesting things to talk about, but also that are relatable.

You know, that the thing about my book that I think stands out versus other [00:19:00] personal growth. Or inspiring self-help books is, it’s super relatable. I’m not saying, well, I did this and, you know, when I climbed Mount Everest and, you know, after I got, you know, struck by lightning this happened. It’s, no, it’s all relatable stuff that anybody can really do when you view it the right way.

But that, I think people want that more than ever before and we’ll continue to find value in spending time with real people. Interesting, relatable people.

Tim Melanson: Yeah, I agree. I agree. E especially the real people on the phone, like when you’re talking to a business and you know the robot answers, I, I imagine that we’re gonna get to a point probably very soon if we’re not already there, where there’ll be a lot. Lot of extra value if you are actually on the phone and talking to this person, rather than them having to go through, you know, the robot sequence to get to you.

Right?

Joel Steele: Yeah. Yeah, for sure.

Tim Melanson: Yeah. So, and, and those are the things that kind of like, it makes it, uh, a better playing field for the small guy, for the people just [00:20:00] getting started out. ’cause in the beginning, you’re probably not gonna have this mammoth organization, you’re just gonna be you. And that’ll actually give you a bit of an up of a leg up because you do have tools.

Now we do have lots of tools right now that can make us way more productive as individuals in business. And we can actually, you know, compete with some of the bigger businesses in a lot of ways as solopreneurs or as small businesses more than we could 20 years ago or, or, or longer than that. So, you know, that to me is exciting that that means that there’s a lot of room for new businesses to come on board right now because of this productivity that we have.

Yep.

Joel Steele: Yeah, I agree with you. You know, with the fact that what we just talked about, the human touch, you can utilize that to your advantage, but you can use technology to make you appear as if there’s more than one of you. And that can be some great technology to be able to hit people up, you know, through the phone, through email, uh, [00:21:00] through different kinds of, uh, media where it looks like there’s four or five of you when there’s really only one.

But again, you’re still giving that, that human touch and, you know, for, and knowing your, you know, business and everyone’s gonna be different. But for my financial company, I give my clients my cell phone. I tell ’em, call me anytime. But you know what they, they barely do it, but it’s like, they like to know that they can do it.

So I’m giving them my personal cell phone. I don’t give them my assistance phone number. Say, call me if you need anything. Anytime of day. If it’s a reasonable time of day, my phone will be on. And most people don’t do that because they don’t want ’em intrude, but they appreciate it. So even when you’re not actually there, you’re sort of there in the background.

And again, I think a lot of people like to know that you’re there because we talked about people. Don’t just like to be with other people, but they like to know that that person cares that they’re accessible and available. And again, that that is not only never going out of style, but I think it’s very stylish right now to be able to be accessible.

Someone calls you to not have a phone [00:22:00] prompt system that has, you know, 10 different options and it’s usually the, the one that the person’s calling for is not one of those options. Retaining clients happens when that client feels cared about. And um, and that’s just how you have to set it up. But again, there’s never been an easier time with technology to sort of wrap your arms around your clients to make sure they know that not only do you care and you’re there, but you can support them through the tools that you have.

Tim Melanson: I love that. Right on. So now you’ve been working from home for quite a while now, and I’m wondering, I mean there, there’s a lot of distractions at home. How do you set up your jam room, your home office, to a point where you. You, you’re, you’re actually productive.

Joel Steele: Yeah, it’s funny. My wife tells me that, she goes, you are oblivious. You know, you, you sit down and. She calls it, I have an island location, uh, but you might think Caribbean Islands or something like that, but it’s just the island in the middle of my kitchen. Uh, that’s my island location. And I’ll sit there surrounded by, you know, everyone’s glasses, you know, like, like drinking [00:23:00] glasses, you know, crumbs and you know, like pots and pans.

Like, I don’t care. I don’t even see that. Like I just see in my computer. What I’m working on, so I can work from anywhere. You know, I’ve worked, you know, in the car, you know, I’ve worked on planes like I’m sure a lot of people that are tuning in today have as well. But I have an office. Ironically, it gets the worst, uh, internet connection in the house.

So it’s sort of like for show purposes only. I do meet with some clients in there that’s a good physical space to meet with people. And it’s right when you come in the door, there’s a bathroom there and all that, which works well from a home office deductibility standpoint. Uh, you, you know, you, you can’t have a, you know, a sort of your dining room table and say, Hey, here’s my home office, Mr.

IRS auditor. I mean, you can try it, but it’s probably not gonna pass the smell test. Um, but I work in all different parts of the house. My favorite thing to do, working from home though. Is to be out around the neighborhood walking and talking. You know, I, I just more and more after 20 plus years, can’t [00:24:00] stand sitting here looking at a wall on the phone, just sitting here stationary.

You know, I like to move. I feel like I have a lot of energy. I need to get it out, but I’m not gonna just go for a, an hour walk in the middle of the day. There’s too many things to do, but I can walk and talk. I do a lot of client calls in the car. I call a lot of clients walking around the neighborhood.

And, uh, and they don’t know that. They don’t really need to know that. It doesn’t matter where I am, what matters is that I’m present to make sure that their needs are taken care of.

Tim Melanson: Yeah. Awesome. Yeah, I, I am the same way. I could work, I could work in a huge mess, no problem at all. But, uh, but some people need to have a very clean desk in order to work right.

Joel Steele: Yeah. Yeah, some people do, and that’s the thing, there’s nothing wrong with any of this stuff being stationary, having a set time. Some people, they work from home. If they’re not structured, they’re, they’re gonna be all over the place. They might be watching the prices, right? I assume that show’s still on.

You know, they’re probably gonna take the, the pets out for a walk. They might do personal calls. They might realize they need to organize their [00:25:00] closet and wrap their Christmas gifts or whatever time of year that it is. Uh, but you’re right. You have to know yourself. You have to really be honest with yourself.

How am I gonna make the most out of this day? And one of the things that I personally love to do. Is get my workout done first thing in the morning so the kids go off to school. I have a, a gym in my basement. It’s one of three gyms I’m, I’m a part of. I have two gyms outside. Uh, the house, one is close to my house, one is close to my office, but I like to mix it up.

But when I don’t have a lot of time in a day, I’ll run down and I’ll be like halfway done my workout before I even am awake and realize what I’m doing to myself. But then I get that done and it’s just like, check, I got something positive and productive off my list. Gives me more energy. I don’t have to think about if I’ll do my workout later ’cause it’s already done.

And then it lets me lock in and focus on all the other things that I have to do because each day goes quickly. So if you lay it out right and don’t procrastinate and, and don’t just kind of kick things around [00:26:00] until, oh, it’s four o’clock, I need to get work done till five. You know, when you do it the right way and you know yourself, you can be super productive.

Tim Melanson: Yeah. Yeah. And knowing yourself is the important part. Um, now another thing might be just also recognizing that if you don’t work, you don’t get paid. So. You know, eventually that will catch up to you if you are doing a lot of like procrastinating. I wonder why people do procrastinate though, in their businesses.

Joel Steele: I, I think there’s a sense of two things, maybe. One is that there’s a sense of like, unlimited time. Like, I’ve got time, I’ll do it later, I’ll do it tomorrow. Uh, but at some point you, you know, I don’t think that’s the most productive way to live. I, I, I am a fan of get it while it’s hot, there’s a wave. Ride it while you can.

You never know if there’s another wave coming or not. But just get it done, get it off your list because you have your list of things that you have to do. Then you have your list of things that you want to do and the more you can sort of incinerate your to-do list, you can work on your, you know, you want to do list and, and that’s what I was [00:27:00] able to do with my financial business.

I would do all the things I had to do. Then I would sort of turn my hat around and become, be an author and then work on my book. So I would work on my book at night and weekends. I’d work on my book in the morning. I would, you know, put my hat back to becoming a financial advisor and work on that all day.

Squeeze time in and, and I made it work. So you have to think about that. It’s almost like putting hats on at different times of day, but if you don’t get done these things you have to do to pay the bills and put food on the table, your day job, then you can’t really start to get into the passion projects and the other things that you really want to do.

So it’s like I said before, figure out what you need to do and then get it done. And then once you get that done, now you’re onto the bonus lightning round where you can do whatever you want to do.

Tim Melanson: Yeah. Yeah, exactly. And then I guess maybe another thing is if the thing that you have to do is really that bad, then are you actually in the right business? Right. Because I mean, as you mentioned earlier, you’re in this business to help people and if it, if, if you [00:28:00] are helping people, then there’s some sort of satisfaction coming out of that.

There has to be like, I, okay, I get it. Not every part of my business is fun, right? It’s not all the stuff that I want to do, but there is sort of this urgency to do it because I, I, I want to get that result of helping people. Right. Do you, do you think maybe that might be it, maybe they’re just in the wrong business.

Maybe they should figure out how to make that want a business now?

Joel Steele: Yeah, that’s such a deep conversation and so when I talk about the life switch and being on or living on versus living off, living on is. You know, seeing clearly what you want to do and, and knowing your why, why do you want to do it? You know, your why is sort of like the premium octane fuel in your gas tank.

You know, if you have a why to do something, you’re gonna do it. If you don’t have a why, a real reason to get out of bed and go to work and you fire up the computer, you’re gonna struggle. You’re gonna procrastinate. But it’s, you know, this world, it’s like we grew up, went to school, it was like, okay, there’s business, there’s, you can be a doctor, you can be an accountant, you can be a lawyer.[00:29:00]

But there’s so many different areas within those spaces and around it that you wanna really take inventory of what you love doing, right, what your, what your passions are and what you’re really good at. But if you can spend your day doing things that you really enjoy doing and things you’re really good at, you are gonna have a great existence and you’ll probably make a lot of money.

But if you are doing something you’re great at, but you hate doing it, that’s not gonna work that well If you are doing something that you’re not that good at, but you love it. Again, you’re not gonna get paid that well. So you wanna marry those things together. And, and a big part of this, the starting point is to sort of shut out all the distractions and the noise.

You know, whether it’s in the car, shower, going to bed, waking up, going for a walk, really think about and tune in. What activities have you done in your life? And it can be back to when you were a kid, but what activities made you excited to wake up that next morning where you almost wanted to sleep on your clothes?

’cause you just were so excited to jump out of bed. And start to think about how can these things be applied [00:30:00] professionally, whether it’s your current job, industry, company, you name it. Because you know, they talk about getting on the right bus. You know you’re on the right bus or the right train. You know, but then are you in the right seat?

You know, you might be in the right company, wrong job. You might be in the right industry, wrong company. And so you have to be really honest with these things to ascertain am I where I, where I should be? Is there a a big change or a small change I need to make, and how can I maybe do that by trial to make sure?

Because you know, when you’re in your thirties, forties, and beyond, you can’t just quit your job because you feel it’s lacking passion. You do have to pay the bills, like you said, but. You. You really don’t want to cheat yourself by just, well, I’m doing this to get paid and one day when I retire, I’ll do the things I want to do.

I mean, that is taking years of your life and basically flushing it down the toilet. You know, you don’t wanna do that. Yes, you need to make money, but you can find a balance or at least a plan of, okay, I’m gonna do this job, but I’m gonna start to interject. Passion, I’m gonna start a business from home or, or [00:31:00] on, on the side.

But don’t just fast forward time and say, well, when I get to this point, I’ll do this, I’ll do that. And I can tell you, Tim, from experience I’ve had, so many of my clients retire and they have no idea what they wanna do because they forgot. It’s like Peter Pan who forgot, you know, when he was a a kid, right?

It’s like a lot of kids become hardened adults and they forget. What they said they were gonna do one day when they had all the time and the money in the world, they get to 65, 70 and they just, they wanna sit home. They wanna do things that are comfortable. They’ve forgotten how to have fun. They’ve forgotten what passions are and who they are, and they become defined by their name tag, which, which is sad.

You don’t want that to happen to you.

Tim Melanson: Yeah. And I mean, I mean, just when you’re 65, it, it is just a different time. Like you can’t do all the same things at the same level as you could in your twenties, thirties, forties, fifties. Right. It’s just is, is what it is. Um, but that’s, I mean, that’s extremely deep. And, and I think a lot of people probably fall into the category of they’re good at what they [00:32:00] do, but they don’t like it.

And you know, that that probably ends up being that they’re very well paid, they’re stuck in a lifestyle that now is dependent on that high pay. That is the thing that they love. Sorry, that they’re really, really good at. And, uh, but, but there are ways, I mean, you know, there are people out there, there’s lots of help that can help you figure out, because most people.

Have quite a bit of transferable skills, like especially if they’re very, very good at something, there’s a good chance that there’s some fundamentals that you’re, they’re applying that make them good at that. That could be applied at something else that might be a little bit more fun, a little bit more like alive for them.

Right?

Joel Steele: Yeah, totally. I think if you are a, you know, a musician or a dancer or you know, you’re, you, you are, or were an athlete, you j you know, at some point or another, you’re gonna reach the end of the road in that, right? If you’re in like a, a gymnast or a dancer. You know, I see all these [00:33:00] kids with like, these casts on, like, your body can only take so much of that, but it’s not, it’s not the skill, right?

It’s, I’m a huge basketball fan. You know, people like Steph Curry. Uh, it’s not that he is a great three point shooter. It’s the tendencies and things within him that made him a great three point shooter that helped him transcend and change the game of basketball. He, he didn’t come out of the womb able to shoot threes.

He had this burning desire. Uh, and his, his ability to work hard and be dedicated and determined and to think that, I don’t care how, you know, short, I might be, or small I am in stature. Like, here’s what I’m gonna do. I’m gonna set the world on fire, you know, by changing the game because that’s how I think I can do it.

And it should be. But you know, when Steph Curry retires someday. He’ll find success in other things if he can take those traits within him and apply them to other places. That’s something Kobe Bryant did. Kobe Bryant became a very successful. Film producer when he retired [00:34:00] because he was creative and great at telling stories.

You know, he wrote his own story at a BA as a basketball player. He was hero the the young teenager. Then he became a hated villain, and then he turns it around, became a beloved superstar. You know, he was in control of writing this story that he was aware. He was very good at writing stories. And so everyone’s got these traits and these talents and skills, and if you can think about how you can apply them again around your day job, if you can’t do it within there, that’s huge.

And I’ll give you a personal story. You know, I, I mentioned before I’ve been doing, uh, retirement planning for 22 years. I’ve gotta tell you, it, it’s very redundant and repetitive and, and I don’t like to do and say the same thing yet. I’m, I’m in a career where I do that all the time. You know, if I have a choice, I take different, uh, route in the car to get to different places, even if it takes me longer because I can’t stand doing the same thing again and again.

I’m not a guy who can do like an hour, two hour commute in the car and not even think [00:35:00] about it. I know some people that do that, like, that’s not me. My brain’s too active. I can’t sit still. But what I did was I started writing the books. I wanted to help people more than a one-on-one basis. I wanted to help people around the world, you know, uh, understand how much value they have, that everyone’s wired for success and fulfillment and they need to flip the power switch on.

So that’s why I started writing the book and I was able to do it around the financial business. But the interesting thing, and this is a really key takeaway, is. I spent so much time on that around my business, it actually re-energized me for the financial services business. It, it, I felt appre more appreciative of it because it put food on the table.

I’m, I’m good at it, right? I wasn’t loving it at times, but I, I actually appreciated it more because said, Hey, this is a really good business. I am helping a lot of people. People do find a lot of value. And, and what I say and what I do. So doing something else, diversifying my time and using my abilities actually [00:36:00] helped me appreciate and not mind keeping going with the financial business because at one point I thought Maybe I’ll retire, I’ll quit, sell the business, and then become an author.

But instead, it’s been much better to, to inject passion around it. And like I said, it’s got me reenergized for everything I’m doing.

Tim Melanson: Uh, love it. Uh, it’s the same strategy I use. I’ve got, uh, my businesses, I, I build websites, I do tech support. I’ve got that kind of it thing. But music is always there. I’m always playing multiple times in a week. And it you, you’re a hundred percent right. You’ve got this like energizer that just. Keeps your spirit happy, right?

And then, and then on the other hand, like you say, I mean, if your main business is helping people, and it really is, I mean it really is helping people, then there’s always that that payoff at the end of it, right? You might have to do some little monotonous work to get to that point, but you’re always happy when they come out of the call going like, wow, thank you so much.

Okay, I feel better now. Right? [00:37:00] So you’ve got that going, right? Yep.

Joel Steele: Yeah. Yeah. I mean, if you’re in a job where people say, Hey, thank you so much, I couldn’t do this without you, like, don’t take that for granted. That’s, it’s a big deal, you know, to be able to actually help people in whatever you help people with, that’s awesome. But if you have a job where you don’t get that, it’s a thankless job and you’re somebody who needs and wants that kind of gratification, then again, maybe that is the wrong position.

E everybody has experience, you know, even if it’s just not even, uh, professional something you went through personally, right? You can either say, well, that was terrible. I, I don’t want to ever go through that or yet an experience that went well, you can take that and apply it and there’s so many different kinds of counseling and consulting you can do.

You like, I find myself doing more counseling and consulting, consulting. Than managing money some days, because that’s just what it requires. And I have such a large bank of knowledge and experience helping so many people over years and years that that sharing that information is not, let me tell you about me or tell you what I know.

It’s, [00:38:00] let me share some information that I think might be helpful for you. So everybody has this bank of experience and knowledge. The question is, can you monetize it? Can you extract value from it? Going through a terrible experience. Doesn’t have to be all bad. There’s, there’s almost always value that can be extracted from anything.

And that’s even to this day, you know, it’s like 20 plus years later, I dug up the, the horror and trauma of my restaurant business, and I’m getting significant value out of it because I’m sharing it with other people. Things that I learned, things that worked, things that didn’t. And so now it’s becoming way more valuable than just being a, a dead business in the past.

Tim Melanson: Wow. Joel, I’m excited to hear about your solo. So tell me what’s exciting in your business right now.

Joel Steele: The most exciting thing is, is the book, which is called Life Switch. Uh, it, it, it’s exactly that idea it’s living on. As you can tell, I’m a high energy guy and I feel like much of the population in the world, they’re walking around off, they’re almost like zombies. Everyone’s glued with their phone. The [00:39:00] people have the, the earbuds in, like everybody is tuned out, uh, into other things.

And people aren’t tuning into themselves, and that’s where all the answers people are looking for are at. So I’m trying to like yank out the earbud, you know, turn off the reels and the Snapchat and all this other stuff and look in the mirror, tune into yourself just 15 minutes a day. And if you do that and you really understand how you’re wired.

You can get the most out of yourself, and the only way you’re gonna get the most out of the world around you is if you can get the most out of yourself. So I’m on this mission to help people do what I’ve done. That’s to flip the switch, live on thrive, not just survive, and realize that your potential. Is unlimited and you can do anything that you really focus on.

Figure out what you need to do. Go out and do it. Understand what your passions are, which is really interesting because everybody has different passions. And then purpose. We all should be working to define our purpose. And if you do that, like forget about your [00:40:00] job title. You know, and all that. Think about your purpose.

Like if you had a personal name badge on, what would it say? I like to help people like what it, whatever it is. There’s no wrong answer, but if people have a purpose and a why, people are gonna be happier, more fulfilled, they’re gonna be more successful, they’re gonna be rich in every sense of the world.

And I just think. This world would be such a happier, more amazing place if more people were living on and not just drifting around, living off. So that’s what’s going on for me. And so far the feedback’s been really positive. It’s been doing exactly what I’ve been hoping it would do, and that’s flip switches around the world to get people to live on and live for today and be excited about whatever could happen in each day.

Tim Melanson: Wow, that is an incredible mission. That’s very spiritual too, isn’t it?

Joel Steele: Yeah. You know, it is because it’s, it’s really like who you are. And for some people that’s, I mean, that’s deep. People haven’t looked in the mirror. They haven’t really been super honest with themselves. And if you’re, if you aren’t honest with yourself. At some point, like you can’t [00:41:00] outrun yourself. And this is why some people retire and they still don’t know what they wanna do because they never dealt with it.

I’ve got a friend, real quick story. I’ve got a friend, he is in my same industry. Uh, he’s got a huge book of business. He’s, he manages over a billion dollars. And he makes millions of dollars a year, and he’s been offered to sell his business for more money than he ever would need in his lifetime. And he keeps saying no because he doesn’t know what he’s gonna do with himself.

He doesn’t know who he is besides a financial advisor. And so some people, and I like to ask this question, if you had all the money in the world that you ever needed, what would you do with your day? And a lot of people they don’t know, but my next question is, well. Why can’t you do any of that today? If you don’t plan for it and know who you are, what you want to do, what makes you feel alive, you’re, you’re probably not gonna do any of this stuff.

So you’ve got to learn how you’re wired, what makes you excited, what gets you pumped up to get bed? And start to try to live a little bit each day with that passion, with that excitement, and you’ll [00:42:00] find yourself feeling almost like electrified, like just excited to be yourself. And that that is the ultimate destination, right?

They say life’s a journey, not a destination. But ultimately the destination that you’re trying to get to is that when you wake up and go to bed, that you don’t wanna live anyone else’s life. You just wanna live your own. You want to be the best version of yourself. And if and when you get to that point, it is the ultimate high.

And that’s the goal of living, is to get the most out of this life.

Tim Melanson: I agree with you a hundred percent. How do we find out more?

Joel Steele: You can go to my website, real simple. It’s book joel steele.com. You can also Google me. You can Google Joel Steele Life Switch. You’ll see other podcasts. I’ve done interviews and articles. You’ll see my, uh, financial website. You’ll see about the book. And also my speaking career. And again, this is all newer, you know, the book only came out, uh, a couple months ago, not even.

And I’ve been giving, uh, speeches and keynotes about it. All [00:43:00] these things we’re talking about today, like, I’m really trying to like, you know, almost like shock people into, like waking up to and tuning into themselves. Uh, but my, my website is probably the best place to go. You can get the book at Amazon, Barnes and Noble.

Most places where books are sold, it’s ebook, audiobook, and of course. Hard cover, uh, but book Joel Steel is the best place to go. And one final note is if Life Switch sells 1 million copies, I’m going to personally be donating $1 million to charities, and the readers are the ones who are going to pick the charities.

So at the website, my website, you can vote for your charity by the book. But that, that is something that I have in my mind as far as the destination, like I want to be sitting down. On camera live writing out these checks to charities because I just, like I said, love helping people and together we can help out a lot more people.

Tim Melanson: Wow. I can see you doing that too.

Joel Steele: Yeah.

Tim Melanson: Right on. Well, thank you so. Much for rocking out with me today. Now I’ve got one more question. It’s probably the hardest [00:44:00] one though. Who’s your favorite rockstar?

Joel Steele: Favorite rockstar has gotta be Kurt Cobain. Uh, he, he just, you know, took something that wasn’t there and bought it to the world, and I remember it clearly. I remember watching MTV the first time ever. That smells like Teen Spirit was aired and I was just sitting there casually watching it and I was like, wow.

Like I wasn’t even like, really, you know, that into like hard, you know, metal or anything like that. And it just blew me away. And even to this day when I hear that the guitar riff in the beginning of that and just then the, the drums come in and still gets me fired up. So that, that’s, that’s my answer.

Tim Melanson: Love that. Right on. So thanks again for rocking out with you today. This has been a lot of fun. Thanks a lot, Joel.

Joel Steele: Thank you.

Tim Melanson: To listeners, make sure you go to workathomerockstar.com for more information and we’ll see you next time on the Work At Home Rockstar Podcast. Rock Out.