Kerry Hannon, author of In Control at 50+ shares her tips for all grownups on getting ahead by keeping up no matter what grownup life stage you are in. 

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Full Transcript:

Bobbi Rebell:
Kerry Hannon, you're a financial grownup. Welcome to the podcast.

Kerry Hannon:
Great to be here. Thanks for the invitation, Bobbi.

Bobbi Rebell:
And congratulations on your latest book. It's 14 books you've done. The latest book is In Control at 50+: How to Succeed in the New World of Work. And by the way, you also wrote the book right before this, which is very important, was Great Jobs for Everyone 50+. So this is an emerging category I think that we need to be talking more about. Tell us a little bit about the book, but I also want to hear about the pivot that you made because many people take a pivot into solo careers around the age of 50, sometime in midlife. You just did the opposite and you're now also senior columnist at Yahoo Finance.

Kerry Hannon:
I know. I know it is crazy. I am walking the walk for the older worker, or I should say experienced worker over 50. Bobbi, I was in house for 20 years. I ran my own business for 20 years. And then out of the blue, I got this opportunity at Yahoo Finance earlier this year to come on as a senior columnist. It was just unexpected. I wasn't looking for it, but I was open to new opportunities. And that's what is really magical because it's what I've been telling workers over 50 for years now that they need to be willing to step it up, try new ways of doing things, work with younger bosses, learn new technology. Yep, I got to do all of them in the last couple of months and I'm having a blast. It is absolutely fabulous. But I've done my time in the trenches with Forbes and Money and U.S. News and USA Today. So it's just fun to add this one to my quiver, you know? Yahoo Finance. Woo-hoo!

Bobbi Rebell:
It's great. I'm a huge fan of Yahoo and Yahoo Finance in particular. I have many friends there. It's very interesting because that came so well with this new book, because you are effectively living what you are teaching people to do. And I want to go over some of the tips that you have in the book. And a lot of them, they almost sound obvious but they're not at all obvious. They're things that I never would think to do. And they're so easy and actionable. So for example, and I wonder if you did these things because... Well, you weren't proactively looking. They kind of found you.

Kerry Hannon:
Yeah.

Bobbi Rebell:
But if you were proactively looking. One tip you had was to read LinkedIn profiles of people that have the jobs you want. I love that. Tell us more about that and how that plays out and how people would do that. What to search for?

Kerry Hannon:
Yeah, I mean, you're so right, Bobbi. I mean, that is an easy thing we can all do. If you're sort of in that stage where you're looking for something new, you have an idea of the kind of work you want to do, or the company you want to work with, the most important thing is that you have the right skills, right? That you've upskilled, that you've sharpened your skills, added new things. So go to the LinkedIn profiles of people who have jobs that interest you and say, "Huh, what experience do they have? What skills do they have? Do I have those? How can I put those? How do I get that?" Because online virtual education has exploded since the pandemic. You don't have to spend a fortune to pick up new skills. You don't need a master's degree. Just dip in and you can add some new things quite easily these days.

Kerry Hannon:
And so I think that LinkedIn is... I'm a big fan of LinkedIn, if you're a white collar worker particularly. So we got to be clear there. But you can find out who you know at companies where you're interested in working. It's really a great source of research on those kinds of things. But the really simple thing is you look at what those people who have jobs that you're interested, what they have in their summary on LinkedIn, you go, "Oh, that's how they describe what they do. I think maybe I'll go change mine." And you just shift it up, you know? So it's really kind of fun because with LinkedIn, it's so simple to go in and just edit your profile anytime you want to.

Bobbi Rebell:
That said, you also emphasize that you might actually be asked for an old school resume, but you have to really focus on keywords. And this is a time when it's kind of okay to plagiarize in a way to kind of lift exact words. So tell us more about that and why people have to bother, because people might think, "Well, can't they just look at my LinkedIn resume?" I mean, that's what you thought.

Kerry Hannon:
Right.

Bobbi Rebell:
And it might be true, but it's not always true.

Kerry Hannon:
No. There's bureaucratic process that goes into this hiring stuff. So with HR, you've got to play the game. And the game today is these artificial intelligence platforms that filter out different things because it's one way employers can weed down the number of applications they get. They know they're missing out on good people, but this is the way they do it. So you have to be really game the system the best that you can. And the simplest way, to start at least, is to actually replicate the exact word that was in that job posting. So you may call yourself a project manager, but they're looking for a project director. I don't know. I'm just making that up. But change it to director and go with whatever that word is that they use. And so you have your basic resume already and to go, and you jump into the document and you just create a new one and throw in these new terms that apply to this... Customize it. Bespoke it so to speak.

Bobbi Rebell:
You also advise people to kind of take a different perspective on social media, which many people feel is something that's fun, maybe it's optional and something social, but it also can factor into whether or not you get that job.

Kerry Hannon:
Yeah. Yeah. I mean, you have to be very strategic. Someone's going to Google you. You Googled the company, you found out about the job. You hopefully did your research on the person who's going to interview you and found out some little tidbit about them that's helpful. They're doing the same for you. They're going to go see everything that's out there about you. So if you can, go clean some stuff up, get rid of kooky things on Facebook, or on Twitter you can delete tweets that maybe are political. Just try to stay in your lane.

Kerry Hannon:
And also one thing I found super helpful about social media is it's a great way when you're searching for a job to support other people. It's just not all about you. Look at stories you think are interesting that other people have written or research. Highlight that, share it with your people and tag that person. And they feel like, "Oh wow. They noticed that I did this." It builds a network for you, and a very easy way to do it.

Bobbi Rebell:
I completely agree. And another thing that is not obvious to most people but very easy to do and obvious once we're going to say it, is to pay attention to the photo and other ways that you present yourself visually.

Kerry Hannon:
Yeah, especially as you push 60 or whatever, people go, "Oh, I don't really want to show that photo with me with gray hair or whatever." Get over it. They're going to figure out how old you are. And put a really great energetic picture of yourself up there. And I mean, energetic. Don't be a boring old headshot. Yeah, it can be a headshot, but try to show some personality. I do think it's important. They're going to find a picture of you somewhere, but also hopefully they're going to meet you.

Bobbi Rebell:
Absolutely. They are going to meet you. But at the same time, just because you're not going to hide who you are, doesn't mean you have to include everything you've ever done. We don't want the four page resume. I mean, you have some advice about sort of being deliberate in how you present your resume.

Kerry Hannon:
Oh, without question. And you know what's funny, Bobbi, I always say, "It's not your obituary. It's an advertisement." So get over it. This is your song and dance time. So let's keep it down to the last 10 years of working, maybe 15, and just a little box saying additional stuff, but highlight the stuff that applies to that job that you're interviewing for. That's, again, why each job has a special resume going that direction, but you need to really customize it for that employer. One great way is just shrink it down, tell stories. We call these CAR stories, challenge, action, result. People love to read narratives. I did this. I brought in a project three months ahead of time. Whatever it is, try to quantify. People love numbers. Hiring managers love numbers. They love little stories. They do not understand titles usually or boring job descriptions.

Bobbi Rebell:
A lot of people may reach their midlife stage, even frankly it can happen even at the quarter-life stage, let's be honest, and they sort of don't know where they want to go in terms of their life structure and their career because it's all blending together. You have something called the You Bet Your Life exercise where you can kind of figure out where you have the most potential. Tell us about You Bet Your Life.

Kerry Hannon:
Yeah. I got to say I have to give a hat tip to Steve Dalton at Duke University's Fuqua School of Business for that one. Steve is awesome. He shared that with me and I'm owning it too. It's just a quick hit, like what is your best skill? If you have one or two or 10 seconds of maximum, just write it down, what do you think you're very best at in the whole world and maybe you're better than most anybody you know? And that kind of gives you a clue to start figuring out what it is you're really good at and what you like to do. I think these are kind of trying to put the breadcrumbs together. There's a lot of different steps, but one of the first things you need to do is, what are you really good at? And what do you really like to do? And truthfully, most of us are a little oblivious to what we're really good at because we take it for granted. We do actually know what we like to do. So how do you put those two together?

Bobbi Rebell:
And what someone will pay you to do.

Kerry Hannon:
Yeah.

Bobbi Rebell:
So we had this pandemic and it impacted all of us in different ways, but many ways were sort of universal. Many people have been frustrated with where they were in their jobs and made big changes. But for people, especially midlife and older, you really stress the idea that they should not necessarily be part of the great resignation. Talk a little bit about that.

Kerry Hannon:
Well, I actually call it the great reimagination. A lot of people may have stepped away from the workplace during the pandemic for a lot of reasons. I mean, caregiving is a big one and it's not just for kids. I mean, for me, I had my 91-year old mom living with me and she had dementia. My sister and I traded her back and forth, but it was really hard. I was hanging by a shoestring. If I had been working full time for an employer, I would've probably had to step away. So there were many reasons people stepped away. But what it did is it provided an opportunity to rethink work. It's not like they never want to work again or they never want to work even for that particular company where they were working, but they need flexibility. They need to find ways that they can balance.

Kerry Hannon:
We all, in the pandemic, did that in our MRI. We're like, "What are our priorities? What matters to us? Is it our family? Is it time that we spend doing hobbies or volunteering, giving back?" There's lots of things that go into our life. And we started to... Some of us, at the later stages of some of my readers, is you realize you have more yesterdays than tomorrows. And so this is where you, "Let's put pedal to the metal and make life matter."

Bobbi Rebell:
How do you know whether it's time to retire, resign, whatever, or to kickstart a new phase of your career or a different kind of career? How can you sort of figure out the balance there?

Kerry Hannon:
Yeah, Bobbi, that's a real tough one, because retiring, I hate that word altogether because that's like stepping away and you're... Ugh. At this stage of life, everyone should be eager to step forward to do new things. And so I think this is really a gut check, but the most important piece of it is something that you know all about is financial fitness. And if you're financially secure... And I write my book about how that is a big part of my fitness program is financial fitness, and if you are financially secure, you can make these kinds of decisions. You can choose to step off the rabbit... My brother calls it the pony at the state fair going around in circles. You can stop doing that, but you can move to do something else that might not pay as much as that primary career did, but it's something that you're using your skills that matters to you.

Kerry Hannon:
I do think debt is the biggest dream killer and the biggest stumbling block to starting your own business. People at this age, I mean, entrepreneurship is hot. I mean, it lit up for the over 50 set after the pandemic. It had already started. But self-employment and entrepreneurship is just booming for this category because people say, "Guess what? I want to be my own boss. I want to be in control. And this is what I've always wanted to do." But in order to do that, they had to be financially fit, because otherwise it's a recipe for disaster.

Bobbi Rebell:
And I just want to add the other two parts of that. You really have a three part fitness plan, financially fit, physically fit, and spiritually fit. People can read that in the book. Because we're going to wrap up, I want to give people a teaser so they can read it. It's on page 47, everyone.

Kerry Hannon:
Thank you.

Bobbi Rebell:
All right. In control at 50+. Kerry Hannon, where can people find out more about you and the book?

Kerry Hannon:
Oh, thanks Bobbi. My website is the best. It's kerryhannon.com. K-E-R-R-Y-H-A-N-N-O-N.com. I'm on Twitter at @kerryhannon and on LinkedIn, so check in.

Bobbi Rebell:
Thank you so much.

Kerry Hannon:
Thank you.

Bobbi Rebell:
I think my favorite thing about Kerry's tips is that they're always so easy to do once we are made aware of them, just like copying those keywords so the computer picks up your resume, and making sure your picture is on point. So what were your top tips from Kerry? What did you like the best? I'd love to know. Please DM me on instagram, @bobbirebell1, or on Twitter, @bobbirebell, and be sure to go to my website, @bobbirebell.com for the transcript and show notes from this and every episode and to sign up for the newsletter.

Bobbi Rebell:
My latest book Launching Financial Grownups is out. If you do choose to buy it, which I would love if you did, buy it for yourself, buy it for your friend, great graduation present, for the parents. If you do, please leave a review on Amazon. I truly appreciate it. I love doing this and your support doing things as simple as leaving a review on Amazon, it's free. That is what makes this all worth it for me. Big thanks to Kerry Hannon for making us all financial grownups.

Bobbi Rebell:
Money Tips for Financial Grownups is a production of BRK media, LLC. Editing and production by Steve Stewart. Guest coordination, content creation, social media support and show notes by Ashley Wall. You can find the podcast show notes, which include links to resources mentioned in the show as well as show transcripts by going to my website, @bobbirebell.com.

Bobbi Rebell:
You can also find an incredible library of hundreds of previous episodes to help you on your journey as a financial grownup. The podcast and tons of complimentary resources associated with the podcast is brought to you for free, but I need to have your support in return. Here's how you can do that. First, connect with me on social media, @bobbirebell1 one on Instagram, and @bobbirebell on both Twitter and on Clubhouse, where you can join my Money tips for Grownups club. Second, share this podcast on social media and tag me so I can thank you. You can also leave a review on Apple Podcasts. Reading each one means the world to me. And you know what? It really motivates others to subscribe.

Bobbi Rebell:
You can also support our merch shop, grownupgear.com, by picking up fun gifts for your grownup friends and treating yourself as well. And most of all, help your friends on their journey to being financial grownups by encouraging them to subscribe to the podcast. Together, we got this.

Bobbi Rebell:
Thank you for your time and for the kind words so many of you send my way. See you next time and thank you for supporting Money Tips for Financial Grownups.

 

Whitney Johnson, author of "Disrupt Yourself” and her new book “Build an A Team” finds out from her financial planner that her overspending is impacting her ability to tithe 10 percent and support her church. She and her family plan a self-disruption, downsizing their life so they can deploy their money in a more intentional way. 

 

In Whitney’s story you will learn

-How a phone call from Whitney’s financial planner got Whitney’s attention about her finances

-Why Whitney was not going to be able to reach her financial goals, despite a relatively high income

-The shifts that Whitney made in terms of her spending and savings habits

-How her ties to her church and her belief in God inspire her financial planning

-How she spends differently as an entrepreneur compared to her previous career working on Wall Street

-Her belief that money is meant to be a servant, not a master

-How she uses money to support her values

 

In Whitney’s lesson you will learn:

-Every tie you spend money you are voting on the kind of world you want

-The importance of modeling financial spending for your children

 

In Whitney’s money tip you will learn:

-Ways to teach kids about investing

-How to buy fractions of a share of stock

-Whitney recommends an app called Stockpile

-How Whitney looks to the theories of Peter Lynch and advocates buying what you know and use and value, and to couple your investing behavior with your consumer behavior. 

 

In my take you will learn:

-How allowing your values to guide your financial life can be rewarding

-Why disrupting your life to better align it with your financial values is something people at any income level should consider

-How you can be pro-active in taking down barriers for your bosses, to create better odds of them giving a green light to your goals

-How I got my bosses to allow me to work a 4-day week for years, by removing barriers and creating solutions before I approached them. 

Episode Links

Twitter - @johnsonwhitney

Facebook - facebook.com/johnsonwhitneyauthor

LinkedIn - https://www.linkedin.com/in/whitneyjohnson/

Get Whitney’s new book: Build an A Team: Play to Their Strengths and Lead Them Up the Learning Curve. Free chapter download available at https://whitneyjohnson.com/ateam

Stockpile

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Transcription

Bobbi Rebell:
Support for Financial Grownup with Bobbi Rebell and the following message come from TransferWise, the cheaper way to send money internationally. TransferWise takes a machete to the hefty fees that come with sending money abroad. Test it out for free at transferwise.com/podcast, or download the app.

Whitney Johnson:
"I tithe, I pay 10% of our gross income to God, to our church," and he was just like, "Okay, you've got a problem here because this isn't going to happen in addition to some of your other financial goals that you have." That was a really important wake-up call for me.

Bobbi Rebell:
You're listening to Financial Grownup with me, certified financial planner Bobbi Rebell, author of How to Be a Financial Grownup, but you know what? Being a grownup is really hard, especially when it comes to money, but it's okay. We're going to get there together. I'm going to bring you one money story from a financial grownup, one lesson, and then my take on how you can make it your own. We got this.

Bobbi Rebell:
Hey, friends. Well, despite the clip you heard at the top of this episode, today's podcast is not about religion, but it is about values, and leveraging your money and your financial resources to support what you and your family believe in. Whitney Johnson's new book is called Build an A-Team: Play to Their Strengths and Lead Them Up the Learning Curve. She is also the author of the bestseller Disrupt Yourself: Putting the Power of Disruptive Innovation to Work, and she hosts, you get the theme here, the Disrupt Yourself Podcast.

Bobbi Rebell:
In this case, the story that she's going to share, Whitney disrupted her entire family life, downsizing everything to get to her financial goals and to have the financial resources to support what she and her family value. She lives what she preaches. Here is Whitney Johnson. Whitney Johnson, you are a financial grownup. Welcome to the podcast.

Whitney Johnson:
Thank you for having me, Bobbi.

Bobbi Rebell:
First of all, I do want to congratulate you on your new book. It is Build an A-Team and we're going to talk more about that going forward, but just high level, what's it about?

Whitney Johnson:
Build an A-Team is about helping you as a manager build a team that can manage through change, that can be innovative and high performing, and the key is to let your people learn. When you allow them to learn, leap, and repeat, they are engaged and therefore happy, they love coming to work, they're more productive, and they love working for you, so you become a great place to work and a boss people love.

Bobbi Rebell:
That's great. For your money story, though, we're going talk about you and your team, which includes your husband and includes your financial planner, and an incident that happened when you got a call from your financial planner. You weren't achieving a goal that was really important to you. Tell us your money story.

Whitney Johnson:
Yeah. This happened about 15 years ago. I got a call from my financial planner and he said to me, "You are spending way too much money." It was really a wake-up call for me, because I was having the conversation with him of like, "I tithe, I pay 10% of our gross income to God, to our church," and he was just like, "Okay, you've got a problem here because this isn't going to happen in addition to some of your other financial goals that you have." That was a really important wake-up call for me, that I really needed to think about, "Okay, it's really great that you can earn lots of money, but you have to also basically manage your money and not just think about what you're earning. You have to also think about what you're spending and spend less than you're actually earning." That was a really important lesson for me and really started to shift how I was thinking about money, not only what I was earning, but also what I was saving.

Bobbi Rebell:
What was important to you was that 10%. I want to pick up on that, because in your heart one of the things that you really prioritize is giving to causes that you believe in, to religious causes, to God, as you say. That was really your priority and you weren't able to accomplish that, or you would not have been able to continue to accomplish that if you didn't change your ways.

Whitney Johnson:
Absolutely. It's such a great point because when I was thinking about the fact that I wasn't managing my money, a lot of times it was exactly to causes or people or things that I cared about, so it's not like I was being profligate, and yet if I didn't manage my money, those things that were deeply important to me, education for my children, et cetera, were not going to be a possibility, and that was a very important wake-up call for me.

Bobbi Rebell:
Were there things that you could pull out that you were able to change? What did you do to pivot from there?

Whitney Johnson:
I had become an entrepreneur at this point and I was still spending like I wasn't an entrepreneur. I was still working on Wall Street, and so one of the things that we did is we made some really tough decisions. Over the next year, we decided to downsize and to sell our house, and to really pare back on how we were spending our money in that interim so that we could still buy the things that mattered to us, but then also undertake these entrepreneurial ventures that were also important to us.

Bobbi Rebell:
And maintain a culture and a family life and setting an example, for the rest of your family, of giving.

Whitney Johnson:
Absolutely, 100%, because that is a high, high priority for me and for my husband and for our entire family, is to be able to give to others.

Bobbi Rebell:
So what is the lesson for our listeners from that?

Whitney Johnson:
Most of us have a pretty ... not most, many, probably including myself, have a fairly froth relationship with money. We're like, "Is it good? Is it bad?" And it's not either, and so a couple of lessons that I've learned is that money is meant to be a servant, not a master, and that I, and this is a gradual lesson that I've been learning throughout my life, is to remember that that's the case. And that also the more money we're able to not only earn, but the more we extend our ability to do good beyond our physical presence, and so those are becoming mantras for me, but really guiding principles in terms of how I think about money saving tactically day-to-day, and spending, I should say, as well.

Bobbi Rebell:
And the importance of not only thinking about growing your business and buying things, but also the values that money can help you support.

Whitney Johnson:
Absolutely. I mean, one of the things, there was a quote that I remember reading probably about seven or eight years ago now, which is really, again, a bit of a watchword for me. It was Anna Lappé and she said that every time you spend money, you're voting on the kind of world that you want. That has been a really powerful thing for me. One, a dollar, $10, what kind of world am I saying I want with this money that I've just spent or allocated to whatever I allocated it to? That's just a really important thing to me and something that we're trying to instill in our children as well.

Bobbi Rebell:
You also have a wonderful money tip, and this is great especially when you talk about children. It's always hard to teach children to invest because sometimes stocks are really expensive and you can't always buy. I can think of Berkshire Hathaway, obviously as the most extreme example perhaps, but a lot of stocks, they don't split and they're very expensive to buy individual stocks. They just start buying 100 shares of a stock, so talk to me about your money tip, because it has to do with investing. It's something that is often applicable when children want to start learning about investing.

Whitney Johnson:
Yeah. One of the really wonderful boons of the last couple of years is you can buy fractional shares. You don't have to buy 100 shares. You don't even have to buy 10 shares. You can buy a half a share. There's something called Stockpile, stockpile.com, that you can go on there and say, "Okay, I want to spend $300," and so you can spend $300 on Apple or $300 on Tesla. Or just to other day for my son, for his birthday, he wanted to buy Spotify, and so I was like, "Okay, $300. We'll buy some Spotify stock." I don't actually know how much it costs, but you can buy a half a share, a quarter of a share, a tenth of a share, but it's just based on how much money you want to spend.

Whitney Johnson:
So it's a great way to start investing in the stock market and really building on an idea that Peter Lynch pioneered 20, 30 years ago now, which is to buy what it is you know and use and value, and couple your investing behavior with your consumer behavior, and fractional shares, and Stockpile specifically, allows you to do that.

Bobbi Rebell:
Wonderful. All right. Let's talk about your new book because it is coming out pretty much now. It's called Build an A-Team. It's a follow up to Disrupt Yourself, which was a huge, huge hit and relatable to so many people, especially myself, having disrupted myself in the last few years professionally. Tell me more about Build an A-Team.

Whitney Johnson:
Well, Build an A-Team came about because people had read Disrupt Yourself and said, "Okay. I get it. I got it. I'm willing to disrupt myself, but what about the people around me? How do I create an ecosystem that makes that possible?" So in Build an A-Team I make it possible for you to think about, "Okay, how do I create a workplace or an environment, a team where personal disruption is possible?" Then I flip it on its head and say, "Okay, so to you, the manager, you don't want just your people to be disputing themselves willy-nilly. What's in it for you?"

Whitney Johnson:
So I make the case that every single person is on a learning curve, including you, the manager, and you build that team that can innovate, that can manage through change by managing your team as a collection of S curves or learning curves, and optimize by having about 70% of your people in the middle at any given time, 15% at the low end, and 15% of your people at the high end. And when they get to the high of their learning curve, you allow them to disrupt themselves because by doing that, they start over that cycle of learn, leap, and repeat, and whenever people are learning, they're able to be innovative. When they're learning, they're innovative, and so you as a company can stay competitive, and because they're so happy at work, they love working for you as a boss, and so you become a talent magnet.

Bobbi Rebell:
Let me just ask you, if you are the employee, because a lot of our listeners are younger and starting out in their careers, if you are on the curve and you recognize that you're at the top of your curve, do you approach your manager and say, "I basically want a different job within the organization"? I mean, what do you do?

Whitney Johnson:
Obviously there are going to be risks in doing that. You've got to really suss out your boss. I think one of the ways that you can do that is, "Does it make sense for me to have this conversation with my boss?" What's that boss' track record? Do they have a history of people who have worked for them in the past, it's been possible for them to move on to other opportunities for which the boss advocated, that they've sponsored them into those opportunities? Then you can be pretty comfortable that having that conversation with them is a safe thing to do. You also, before you have that conversation, want to make sure that in fact you are ready to ... sometimes we overestimate our abilities. We all do it. We think we really want it, and so therefore it's time for us to have it.

Whitney Johnson:
So in having that conversation, what I would encourage you to do is go to your boss and say, "I've been in this role for about three years. It feels like I'm starting to peak and I've really hit my stride, and it's time for me to try something new, so here's what I would propose and here's the business case for why it makes sense for me to do it, because it's not just about me. It's going to help our organization be more innovative, and in the process I've identified this person over here that I think can really step into this role nicely, so you will not be left in the lurch. I will help train that successor so that they're able to continue to grow and develop. And at the same time I'm able to grow and develop as well as help our organization and our team be more innovative, and so that would be my suggestion to you."

Bobbi Rebell:
Anticipate what's going to go wrong and make sure you have a solution for every possible iteration. All right. Whitney Johnson, where can people find you?

Whitney Johnson:
You can find me at whitneyjohnson.com. If you want to email me, it's wj@whitneyjohnson.com. I would love to hear from you.

Bobbi Rebell:
And you have, by the way, a million, I heard a million LinkedIn followers.

Whitney Johnson:
I do, 1.2 million, actually, but I'm not counting.

Bobbi Rebell:
Oh my gosh. You are our hero, Whitney Johnson. I will leave all of your social media links in the show notes, but just so we have them here, Twitter, Instagram, all that stuff?

Whitney Johnson:
Yeah. Johnson Whitney, actually. It's Johnson Whitney.

Bobbi Rebell:
Okay. Good to know. Exactly. That's why we ask. All right. You're wonderful. Thank you so much, and congratulations on the new book.

Whitney Johnson:
Thank you, Bobbi, for having me.

Bobbi Rebell:
Hey, friends. Don't you feel so motivated by Whitney, like anything is possible if you know think it through and get really intentional?

Bobbi Rebell:
Financial grownup tip number one, let your values be a guide to how you want to not just spend your money, but spend your life. Whitney literally disrupted her entire life, her family downsized, and I don't have Whitney's personal financial info, but I'm guessing she does pretty well, so this is not really about income level. It's about allocation of your resources, whatever they are, to support the way you want to live your life and the role model you want to be for your family. In Whitney's case, it was about tithing to her church and other things that her family valued, like education and financial security and financial freedom.

Bobbi Rebell:
Financial grownup tip number two, get intentional about your career goals. You probably think you are, but be honest. Are you proactively doing something to remove barriers? Put yourself in your bosses' position and think about what they need to get you what you want. If you own a business, your clients are basically your bosses. Yeah, sorry, but kind of. Right? So come with solutions.

Bobbi Rebell:
When I wanted to work, for example, four days a week after having my son, I presented my bosses with the solution. My colleague, who was, fun fact, Manoush Zomorodi that many of you may know as the host of the Note to Self podcast, was also having her son. We gave birth, in fact, two days apart in the same hospital. Manoush agreed to be my Friday fill in. We presented a complete solution, and it was tough for the bosses to turn down something that was already good to go, especially with someone as wonderful as Manoush.

Bobbi Rebell:
Now Whitney is giving us the first chapter of her new book Build an A-Team: Play to Their Strengths and Lead Them Up the Learning Curve for free to download. Just go to whitneyjohnson.com/ateam and you can get that download, so start there for free and then go pick up a copy of the whole book ASAP. Build an A-Team has tons of specific examples in it that will give you a lot of aha moments of how bosses think and need to think, and it is well worth the time you will invest in reading it.

Bobbi Rebell:
Just a reminder, we are excited to start our once a month listener episode, so if you want to be a guest on Financial Grownup, email us with your money story and your money tip to info@financialgrownup.com. Make sure you are on our mailing list. Go to our website, bobbirebell.com/financialgrownuppodcast. You'll get a pop up and you can sign up. Be in touch on Twitter, @bobbirebell, and on Instagram, at bobbirebell1. Whitney Johnson gave us so much to think about. Here is to us all getting one step closer to being financial grownups.

Bobbi Rebell:
Financial Grownup with Bobbi Rebell is edited and produced by Steve Stewart and is a BRK Media production.