Transcript 

Ben Smith:

Hello, everybody. Welcome to The Retirement Success in Maine Podcast. My name is Ben Smith. I am joined by my two colleagues, as usual, Curtis Worcester and Abby Doody, the Doc Rivers and Pat Summitt to my Brad Stevens. How are you guys doing today?

Curtis Worcester:

Feeling good, Ben.

Abby Doody:

Hey, Ben. How are you?

Ben Smith:

Doing well. With the intro, the analogies here, we're talking coaches. It was the theme, and we have a coach with us today, and really the thinking being is we've been talking a little about this concept of retirement and really this definition of what it is to lots of different people, right? Part of my conversations with our guest today and kind of this pre-chat is, maybe what if we're thinking all about retirement all wrong, right? What if really retirement isn't exchanging a binge on working for 40 years for a binge of not working for 20, 30 years after that?

Ben Smith:

Really, many of the clients we talked to is they are in this mid to late stage of their career, and they really may have already achieved a certain level of success, especially in their career, and they're really searching for what is next. But that's kind of that question. But what is next for us? So this inflection point really leads us to start asking questions in our lives, such as, is this the right time to invest in myself and grow? Or is it time to exit something? Or is it time to change in our focus?

Ben Smith:

So really, a lot of times we come to those points, and we have those questions, and we're really talking about this kind of change moment. But we really have a lot of trouble really articulating these questions. Sometimes it's really hard to share those feelings with our work colleagues or even family members, because they're not sitting in our shoes and really much less work to find the answers after articulating the questions. So really do that structural issue. We find enough of our clients, really become stuck, right? They know they need to change. They don't know what they want to change to. They don't know what they want to do and how they want to change. They don't know who to talk to.

Ben Smith:

So it feels like a very kind of solid prison that's happening there. So really, this concept that we're talking about today really is that life is a series of pivots, where really, after each transformation, we've created the next version of ourself, right? So I think when we start thinking about transforming and in creating a new version, it's a different thing. Then retirement is a hard stop of career life. We've got to change into leisure, and that's the only kind of transition you can ever have, and that's the possibility.

Ben Smith:

So we want to kind of talk about this idea of pivoting of one version of yourself to another. So our next guest on today's show, she's an executive life coach and creator of the YOU PIVOT program, and her clients have ranged from CEOs and C-suite executives for Inc. 500 companies, Crain's Fast 50, Chicago Tribune's Top 100 Workplaces, and Crain's largest privately held companies. She's experienced herself as a Fortune 500 company executive with Northern Trust, and she's also coupled her own successful pivot from the corporate world into entrepreneurship. That has really shaped that unique perspective that she's bringing to us today.

Ben Smith:

Every Sunday, you can also read some of her writing. She publishes stories about transitions of people that she's met and she's talked to, including sharing their life lessons from storytellers along the way. So you can read and subscribe to these Sunday stories on her website. So I'd like to welcome at this time to The Retirement Success in Maine Podcast, Elisa K. Spain. Elisa, thanks for coming.

Elisa Spain:

Thank you for having me. Looking forward to our conversation.

Ben Smith:

Well, Elisa, we want to all get to lots of things with you today. But of course, with all of our guests, what we'd like to do is just dig into you a little bit and understand your background and your bio. Love to just hear about your kind of growing up story, right? Just kind of, where are you from and kind of getting into kind of these formative years as you were kind of being born and going through school.

Elisa Spain:

I grew up in Miami Beach, Florida of all places. I actually went to camp in Maine.

Curtis Worcester:

All right.

Abby Doody:

Oh, nice.

Elisa Spain:

So in Naples, Maine. So I have an affinity to Maine.

Ben Smith:

Did you go to camp in Maine? What were the years that you came here?

Elisa Spain:

A very long time ago. I would have to do the math to figure out years.

Ben Smith:

But I mean, in regards to like when I was seven or when I was eight, or what was

Elisa Spain:

Oh, my age?

Ben Smith:

Yes, yeah.

Elisa Spain:

I thought you meant the-

Ben Smith:

No, no, no. I want to check. No.

Elisa Spain:

Probably, I went between eight and 11 or something like that.

Abby Doody:

Nice.

Ben Smith:

Were these day camps? Were these overnight camps?

Elisa Spain:

Overnight.

Ben Smith:

Okay. And-

Elisa Spain:

in Naples, Maine.

Ben Smith:

How long was the stay there? Was it a week? Was it a month?

Elisa Spain:

Eight weeks.

Abby Doody:

Wow.

Elisa Spain:

So my parents were happy to send us away.

Ben Smith:

So you had an immersive Maine experience?

Elisa Spain:

Yes, it was.

Ben Smith:

Excellent.

Elisa Spain:

Beautiful, beautiful place.

Ben Smith:

Well, I appreciate that you're bringing that up, because it's always good where people have sometimes this idea of what Maine is. But until you really have been here, it can be a little bit different than I think what people romanticize in their mind of the clean air, clean water, a lot of nature, which is all true, but there's lots of other sides to it as well. But Elisa, so in terms of obviously growing up in Florida, you live in Chicago. Kind of what was that path like?

Elisa Spain:

I moved here 40-ish years ago with my first husband. He took a job here. I always wanted to live in a big city. So I was very excited to move here, and we lived in the suburbs. We compromised. He wanted to live in the country, and I wanted to live in the city. So neither of us got what we want. We lived in the suburbs. Then when we got divorced, I lived Downtown Chicago for many, many years, and now I live in a close-in suburb called Evanston, which is just right over the border

Ben Smith:

Excellent.

Elisa Spain:

... with my second husband, who I've been with for 30 years.

Ben Smith:

Excellent. That's great. I'd also love to hear a little bit about your path toward becoming a business and life coach, because what was pretty funny and when we were doing our chat off air in terms of our pre-podcast chat was we're talking about... You actually had a corporate career at Northern Trust and then kind of pivoting over to the business and life coach. I'd love to hear about your experience at Northern Trust, what that pivot moment was for you around saying, "This isn't right for me, and what's next?"

Elisa Spain:

I'm actually going to start further back-

Ben Smith:

Please, yeah.

Elisa Spain:

... because I actually started coaching when I was a teenager. I was sort of like that Lucy cartoon. I had a friend that lived down the block, and he used to come to my window like at night, and we would have these chats. I realized retrospectively, that was my first coaching.

Ben Smith:

That's great.

Elisa Spain:

I did do the corporate thing. You mentioned when we talked this idea that you've observed that people that start left brain go right brain, and I kind of thought a little bit about that, and I think you're onto something there. So I'm ambitious and competitive. So that the corporate path wasn't natural for me until it wasn't. I reached a point where I... Really, what I enjoyed most about management was the coaching part, and I realized that if I was going to progress in my career, I would get further and further away from that becoming part of the C-suite myself, and that just wasn't for me.

Elisa Spain:

So I pivoted to entrepreneurship in my early 40s and still stayed left brain. I was a consultant at that point. Then I discovered that I really had a gift for asking people the right questions to help them identify their genius and tell their story. So I pivoted from consultant to coach when I started working with business owners. So I had been working with more public companies initially, and then I started working with privately held companies, and I discovered with business owners that consulting and coaching kind of went together because their business and their personal lives were intertwined.

Elisa Spain:

That's kind of how I got into the coaching world. Then I've always done a little bit of private coaching, and then I've been affiliated with Vistage International, which is a CEO here group organization for the last 15 years. Then about two years ago, I created the YOU PIVOT program, again, because I discovered that when people were at the point, as you talked about in your introduction of wanting a change, nobody wants to go from the treadmill to the couch. A lot of people really struggle with... The three questions that you asked are the three questions that I asked my clients to try and start with.

Elisa Spain:

What I've found is that they need some help in figuring out how to get from there, and there really isn't much of this kind of coaching specialization. So I kind of fell into it working with the clients that I had initially as an executive coaching. I inserted the executive life coach, because it's really helping them figure out how to live full lives, which often involves a transition.

Ben Smith:

I think that's what was kind of a eureka moment when we were chatting was... Here's your just kind of stated goal is again, helping people live their full lives and letting them realize that. One of the terms you said was identifying their own genius, right? Well, what sort of things really make you who you are and makes you the best of what, who you are? We really like that too, because I think from the traditional financial advisor lens, I think where a lot of financial advisors just spend their time on just working on money and finding one path to survive with money and what we've been coming to on, our conversation with our clients has been, "Well, geez, it feels very empty. It feels very..." Well, if I'm just showing you the survivability money, there so much more we could be doing to show you the path of spending money that helps you realize your fullest potential and live your fullest life.

Ben Smith:

If we're not asking these questions ourselves or pushing our clients to those resources to do that, then maybe we're doing a disservice ourselves in terms of the work we're doing with our clients. So what I think we kind of saw that more, Elisa, was this, hey, I think there's a lot of really great overlap of the questions we want to be exploring, the work we want our clients to be doing and how we want to push them towards that place, right, is there's that goal that we want them to get to, and which is why I think we started this show was reaching out to folks like yourself and saying, "Let's have these conversations about how we can push people to live their fullest life."

Ben Smith:

It doesn't mean they need to go all the way that every minute of every second of every day, that they got to be living that life. But if they're experiencing more things all the time, they're going to be happier people. Their family is going want to be around them more. They're going to be more active in their friendships. They're going to fight a lot of these kinds of things that we see as people go to the couch, and they get lonely as their relationships dwindle.

Ben Smith:

They start fighting things because they're sedentary and lots of things kind of kick in. So I think that's where we were going with it. It was like, "Hey, let's kind of get that." So I liked that there was a good kind of a Venn diagram overlap that's happening with our practices here. So I'd love to just hear a little bit more about your practice overall, because you kind of talked about going from public to private. But who are your clients today? Who do you work with? We talked about those three questions that you start asking them. Can you just walk us through the person that comes to you, what they're facing and how you help them?

Elisa Spain:

Sure. Well, let me start by kind of building on what you were saying, that there is a natural affinity between what you do and what I do because you help them with the financial side of what they do, and I help them prepare themselves. You help them prepare finances for what's next, and I help them prepare themselves. Often that preparing yourself part is left out.

Elisa Spain:

One of the things that inspired me to do this is a client that I met when he had this second business. He told me a story which really stayed with me. When he sold his first business, he went into a depression because he said the day they closed on the deal, he went home and he sat down in front of the television and didn't know what to do with themselves. Then I talked to someone else who told me a story who's in Chicago, whose life became the Chicago Cubs. He went to every single game, and he was in his 50s, and he woke up one day, and he said, "They lost a game, and he was depressed."

Elisa Spain:

He's like, "This is not working. I got to do something." So there is an opportunity, as you said. You can't often do it yourself. I think the biggest reason why there's more demand for what I do is frankly just because people are living longer. So-

Ben Smith:

Yeah, sure.

Elisa Spain:

Those are two stories of people selling businesses when they're a bit younger. We're talking about people who... When you and I first talked, we used to talk about retiring. I think today, because that second part is so long, people are saying that they want to do something with that time. It's the figuring out of what that is. Because the people I work with are achievement-driven people, often CEOs and business owners, when they're working on themselves, they're just as driven as they are with their companies. They want to get started right away.

Elisa Spain:

Actually, I just got a message from a friend who was retiring of the literally eight things he's now signed up to do. What I do with my clients is I say, "Whoa, let's just start from the beginning and think about where you, who you are, where you've been." They all want to go, like I say, because they're ambitious, driven people to the actions, and that's why I created this YOU PIVOT workbook. So it walks them through a process of questions for them to answer, and typically, each of the pages in the workbook is one of our sessions. So they'll prepare it for the session, and they'll answer questions like, "Tell me your story." Kind of like what you asked me, but in more depth, how you got to where you are. What drives you? What's your style? Those sorts of questions.

Elisa Spain:

Then what I asked them to do in that next phase, and we spend usually quite a bit of time on this one is, what is, and what matters. I used a wheel of life as the starting point for that. So I asked them to draw it, and then as it is, and then what matters. Sometimes there's just tweaks between the two, but sometimes the differences are significant. So we will spend some time both on the size of the spokes or slices as well as on the content of the spokes or slices. Then the third piece is the investment. So they may want the slice to be this size, but they're not spending this sort of effort to make it fully this size. Their effort is more here. So we spent a lot of time on that. If they have a significant other, I asked them to have them do the same exercise and then create a Venn diagram.

Ben Smith:

I like what you just did there, because what you've essentially done is created a gap analysis, right, and saying, "Hey, here's your stated where you are today. Here's where you want to be, and there's the gaps of those differences." But also now with your spouse, and you can also start to identify relationship, I don't want to say issues, but maybe there's differences that may happen in those two wheels, and especially if we're saying we're pivoting to a new part of life, and we now have different visions of what those pivots look like. You could see where people could also be growing apart as well. They're not kind of reconciling those things.

Elisa Spain:

Yes. In addition, sometimes what they will leave their significant other wants or expects isn't. I mean, we talked a bit, and I know we'll talk later about this idea of an unreliable narrator. It comes in, in all parts of our lives. One of the clients that I have been working with, the story he told me, I say to him all the time, "The wife in your head and the real wife don't sound to me like it was the person."

Ben Smith:

Yeah. I don't want to get to that a whole lot, right? Because I think that's a really... First of all, it's a really important piece that I think we hadn't heard from any of our guests so far, and I want to really dig into it. But I want to really go into this idea of life pivot here for a second, Elisa, is a really thinking about, because the topic of the show really is this whole thinking about retirement as a life pivot, because you were saying to me the other day about you really challenging me on the label, challenging in a good way that, "Hey, you're using this label of retirement." For a lot of people, this whole thing and this label of retirement really doesn't make a whole lot of sense. So instead you were using language like career 2.0 or career 3.0.

Elisa Spain:

Or life.

Ben Smith:

Or life 2.0 or life 3.0. So there's new versions, right, and almost like a new version of software or something that's coming out that you're kind of have this, I don't want to say upgrade. It's just different, right? It's just a different change. So can you just talk a little bit about why do you refer to this part of life this way, and rather than this kind of traditional language of retirement?

Elisa Spain:

I think it's because, like I said, partly because that timeline is longer. One of the questions I ask people in the first part is, how much time do you feel like you have left? That's a very interesting question because how different it's answered by people of the same age. You asked that question also for financial planning.

Ben Smith:

All the time. Yeah.

Elisa Spain:

I don't think most people stop and think about it in terms of how they want to spend their time. So the reason I came up with the versions is probably partly frankly because I'm into technology. So I kind of think that way and partly because of my own experience. So when I think back on my own wife, I think about the early phase of my life and career as the version 1.0, not starting with the career phase, not the childhood part. So that would probably be whatever, point something.

Elisa Spain:

So the first career is the 1.0, and then when I made my own pivot from the corporate world to entrepreneurship, that for me was 2.0, and there were releases in between the 1.0 and the 2.0 promotions, the promotions and those sorts of things. So changes within where you are. Then the 2.0, again, there were changes from within where I was, so moving from consulting to coaching and the evolution of coaching. So that's the way I look at it is that the increments much like with software within where you are still within the same range.

Elisa Spain:

But when you hit the point oh, that's really more of a full transition of some sort. For me, it just works as a language, and I find the same with my clients because all my clients come from the business world. They just resonate with thinking that way. It was actually one of my clients that gave me the idea for approaching it that way. Then when I started telling you the process, once we get through the what matters, then they were looking at each of their versions to ask them to kind of think about what's worked and what hasn't and then start working on the vision for the next phase and ultimately their tomorrow story and then get to action.

Elisa Spain:

So really slowing down the process to prevent what my friend is doing, because I know what's going to happen with him, because I've seen it happen with others. Right? So what I try and do is prevent that.

Abby Doody:

So you touched on this just a minute ago, about the importance of telling your story, right, and what is working, what isn't working, where you've come from and how that really flows into your future vision of yourself. So can you tell us a little bit more about how you help people do that, how they get started, and where they may be tripped up in that process?

Elisa Spain:

So the how really comes back to the sections that they fill out that we then talk about. So what happens is, as people start to tell me their story of who they are, that helps me than when we get to the what matters, because they may say X, Y, Z matters, and then I'll say, "Well, wait a minute. I heard you say this about yourself. Tell me how that fits in and those sorts of things." So like any other coaching, it's a questioning process to keep asking the better questions so that they can reflect and think about how it impacts them. So there's structure in the sense of this workbook, and each person is different. Like with any other executive coaching, it's a process of asking a lot of questions to help people get to the better answers.

Ben Smith:

Elisa, one thing I really like at the structure that you're kind of talking about here is this concept of a today's story, is that... Who are you? Where are you today? What is working, what isn't working today? That's where I think where a lot of the people were going to is, or we see them in these pivot moments that we know they're approaching that point oh, that they're getting to that point. But they're struggling, right? There are things in their life that is working, they're very happy with. There's also other parts of life that isn't working, and it's the solving of the isn't working part is kind of what gets them to that point oh. But what you're saying is you can't create a future vision if you really don't even know what is and is not working today, right?

Elisa Spain:

Well, it is and is not working today. Also, who you are, what your characteristics are, what your personality style is, most people have taken some sort of personality profile. I'll offer one to them. Then I also ask people to read three books somewhere in the process. A couple of them, I ask them to read first, which is necessary endings by Henry Cloud, which is a wonderful book that is very helpful in making decisions about endings, of which this is one.

Elisa Spain:

Then there's another one called Transitions by William Bridges. Those are the two I ask them to read upfront so that we can talk about it as a language. What Henry Cloud talks about in his book is this idea of pruning, that in order... He uses the rose bush metaphor, and in order for a rose bush to grow, you obviously have to prune deadwood. But you also have to prune good bugs and roses because, I didn't know this, that was before I had a rose bush, if you just let it go, they don't grow. So that's the whole point that he's made is this idea of pruning and having endings so that you can have beginning.

Elisa Spain:

That's one thing I think is really important about this idea of transitions is so many people think of a transition as an end. I remember a friend of mine when I first started this practice a couple of years ago, and I think I wrote my first blog about it. He said to me, "Well, how can you work with these people?" They're unemployed. I'm like, "Not always, and it's a beginning. It's not an end." Whether it's 3.0 or 4.0, for the people that I work with that are mid career, it's obvious that it's the beginning. For the 3.0 and 4.0, it's also a beginning, again, because as you pointed out, your retirement life might be as long as your work life.

Ben Smith:

Sure. Sure.

Elisa Spain:

Then another book that I asked them to read kind of midway is one called positive intelligence by Shirzad Chamine. I've worked with his program of mental fitness. The whole premise of that one is that we all have these seven chores, things like control and stickler, and there's nine of them altogether and the ultimate one being our judge is what causes the stuck is what I've discovered what gets in the way of moving forward. So helping people, once they understand kind of where they are and what they want, then to understand, what's getting in their way of forward motion? Henry Cloud has a great quote that I liked for this. We changed our behavior when the pain of staying the same becomes greater than the pain of changing.

Curtis Worcester:

I like that. That's really good.

Elisa Spain:

Consequences give us the pain and motivates us to change, and the challenge is with this, there may not be consequences. So how do you then understand where you're blocking yourself with your saboteurs?

Curtis Worcester:

So I want to take a second and circle back to something we teased a few minutes ago, and that's the unreliable narrators. That was a great job. We teed it up a few minutes ago. It's great. So I guess I'll start with, can you just kind of talk about the idea of an unreliable narrator kind of define it, what it is, how you've seen it present itself with your clients. I know you've shared a small story a few minutes ago. Then kind of the flip side there is how do we work as individuals to find the more reliable narrator inside us?

Curtis Worcester:

I'm assuming this is part of your process with your clients is you identify that unreliable narrator, but then how do you kind of get through it, get past it and kind of create this more reliable narrative?

Elisa Spain:

It's a discovery process. So I learned about unreliable narrator when I was in a book club years ago. It's a literary technique, and we've all read books like that, where you're reading through the book, and you're believing, believing, believing, and then you get three-quarters of the way through it, and you realize it's all a lie. Right? I mean, that's what makes it exciting, often the case with mysteries and that sort of thing.

Elisa Spain:

So that just kind of stayed in my head because I had not heard that term either, and I just begun to discover that's something we do with our stories, and it's a discovery process. I had a client recently that I actually wrote a blog about him. He sent me an email blog. He said like, "I showed it to my brother, and they both laughed."

Curtis Worcester:

That's good.

Elisa Spain:

When I first met him, and I said this to him. When I first met him, I thought, "I don't know how I'm going to help this guy because you will lose him." Then I started asking more questions and learning about him, and it's just the story he was telling himself, because he wasn't the image of a CEO that he thought he should be, despite how successful he's been and how successful he was in preparing this business for sale.

Elisa Spain:

Similarly, with my client who the wife and the head and the wife in reality are two different people. So it's a discovery process, and I don't know how we can discover it ourselves, frankly. I think we need somebody else to ask us questions to help us realize it, because that's why he laughed when he read it. That was a switch for him, because as soon as he realized that he was lying to himself and his saboteurs were telling him these lies, then he could then start crafting as tomorrow's story.

Elisa Spain:

Even though he was really anxious to do that sooner, he really couldn't until he realized the lie. So we could talk about his genius and what his talents and skills are so that he has now identified what he uniquely brings to the world, and it took this iterative process to get there. So while it works in fiction, it worked so well in our lives.

Ben Smith:

Elisa, I'll say I'll kind of follow up there too is I think we even just kind of noticing amongst our team and just showing a little vulnerability here for a second is even just kind of looking at this and going, "Hey." We do this podcast and go, "Well hey, I just do this piece of it." When you say, "I just do this piece of it," you start minimizing something, all right? You start minimizing a role you play and your importance of a team and all that. So I think that's where even just from that conversation that you and I had the other day of you going, "Oh man, I do that to myself all the time."

Ben Smith:

I just say, "Oh, I just do this." Or, "Oh, we only work with these types of people." When you start kind of creating your own barriers and your language, you express the people. Man, I just go, "I do that all the time," and go... Instead of kind of going more affirmation of, "Hey, this is who I am. I'm really good at doing these things, and I really enjoy working with these sorts of situations, or I really enjoy that I'm one of three people that does a podcast where we highlight these sorts of things to our audience and really get to meet great guests."

Ben Smith:

Just flipping those things around, all of a sudden you go, "If I was just telling that story to myself all the time." But that story I tell myself is then what I expressed to others is what I was realizing from our conversation. So I really, really love that discovery that you're kind of saying about helping people find the unreliable narrator, because I think we all do that a lot. I feel like I'm not worthy of something, and I know AmyK Hutchens was talking about that in one of our previous shows was we don't communicate things because sometimes we don't feel we're worthy.

Ben Smith:

When we don't feel we're worthy, then that's what we say too, is we're not worthy of love or attention or to get the next job, or I'm too old, or all of those things kind of creep in. So I thought that was a really... You gave it a really great as what it was sort of like.

Elisa Spain:

Thank you. Again, these saboteurs that I talk about or build on each other to continue to perpetuate that lie.

Ben Smith:

So Elisa, what I want to get to as well is obviously you've kind of helped us identify a little bit of your process in the today's story, right, is kind of what that's like. But also I think then the next part of once we identify the today's story, the unreliable narrator, what we're telling ourselves, but then also getting to the tomorrow story. I know you just said, "Hey, a lot of the clients we work with really just want to work on the tomorrow story. That's really it." But this is really the purpose of our show, right? It's to kind of get into this shining a light on possibilities.

Ben Smith:

I think in maybe the whole purpose of our show really is that we all have an unreliable narrator when we get to be 60 and older saying we're not worthy, we're not able to do things. So our show wants to kind of fight that a little bit. So can you talk a little bit about the tomorrow's story? Because I think what kind of hits some times in our clients is that the tomorrow story they're telling themselves of what's able is they think that their finances don't match that a lot, and they use whatever reason, maybe it's finances, maybe it's, I'm old, maybe it's, I'm... They're telling themselves something which is blocking that tomorrow's story from happening. Can you talk about how you've helped people write their tomorrow stories, where you see them get tripped up.

Elisa Spain:

I'm hearing a little bit of a different thing in what you said, and that's kind of still back to the lies and the unreliable narrator, like you said. I think that's still in the earlier phases, kind of getting a sense of where I am and what matters. Once I get people to kind of get clarity on what matters, then what I ask them to do is kind of write their vision for the next version of themselves, starting with what version they think they're in, because much like the, how long is your life, the version number is different for different people, even at the same age.

Elisa Spain:

I have a client who is 65 who thinks he has eight years low. I'm 65, and I think I have 30. A lot of it's based on the longevity of our families, right?

Ben Smith:

That's right.

Elisa Spain:

So we don't necessarily. My mother thought she was going to die at 69. My father died at 69, and she lived to 96. I kept explaining to her that they weren't related, at least. So part of it is getting that clarity with your number of years and what version you think you're on. Then to kind of talk with them a bit about what paths they think are available to them, which ones they're considering, everybody who is at this stage has a network. So figuring out what is available in your network, who's in your network, what opportunities might be there, what constraints you have, whether they be location or your perceptions to your point of your marketability today, what impact COVID might have? What are your non-negotiables? So things like, I always want to be available on weekends and evenings or those sorts of things, things that you're not willing to give up to get whatever you're going to choose and income requirements, if any. Then I ask them to talk about what they're afraid of.

Elisa Spain:

I do all that stuff, and we talk through all of that stuff. I think the hardest thing is kind of writing the tomorrow's story. So I asked them to start by just making notes as they think of things, and then we will talk through it a few times before we get to the actions. Like I said, to me, the biggest difference between going through this process and the typical process is the pause of doing this in a structured and not jumping right to the actions so that you have a better choice and a more focused approach to figuring out what the next version is going to be.

Ben Smith:

I think it'd be helpful for me anyway, is a hear a little bit of an example of that tomorrow story, because I think it would be helpful to just go, "Here's an example of somebody that says, 'Here's what the outcome here is.'" What have they drafted for themselves once they've gone through all the paths, the constraints, all of your process to go, "Here's a story that they've written for themselves."

Elisa Spain:

So here's a good example. I have a client who... So he was not the owner of the business. He had a small entrance, but he was a hired CEO. I don't know. Sold that business, and in the beginning, we spent a lot of time talking about some of the emotional side of Andy. What do you put on your business? People ask you, "What do you do? What do you say?" All that kind of stuff.

Elisa Spain:

Then he then started thinking about going through the process of what matters and what was important to him, and what he decided was that his wife has stage IV breast cancer, which she's doing fine. She's not fine long enough that they would call it remission, but she does seem to be doing fine. So spending time with her is a very high priority because they don't know how much time they have together.

Elisa Spain:

He is very passionate about the value of the fraternity system at universities, and in particular, the university that he went to. He's done some volunteer work for them, but it was really important to him to get involved with that because he expects that that's going to go away because of all the terrible things that have been happening. He believes that he can make a difference. So that's something that he cares about. He wants to stay connected to the business world. So he was trying to think about how we can do that in a way that doesn't interfere with the time with his wife and the time he wanted to spend in a more philanthropic way.

Elisa Spain:

So he decided he wanted to become an investor in startup companies and then offer both funding as well as expertise to these companies. So that was the tomorrow story that he ultimately wrote, and it was all based on how he designed these folks.

Ben Smith:

I like it. Because again, and then I can see where from a coaching perspective is now we're trying to realize that tomorrow's story. Of course, there's always some things that we envision in our head that maybe is not practical or realistic as we go to an which probably requires more coaching in terms of adapting some of that story, seen to adapt the stories we go.

Elisa Spain:

Right? That last part of what's available to you, what are your opportunities is important? A lot of executives, when they retire, want to get on boards. There's a lot more executives that want to get on boards, and there a lot boards. The boards mostly don't have terms. So people are 80 years old. They're still on the boards. For a lot of reasons, that is just not realistic for most. So that would be an example of what you're talking about.

Abby Doody:

So recently, you shared a story about a gentleman who said he flunked retirement twice. So we really liked this. So can you share with us that story, why it's meaningful, and do you think it is actually possible to flunk retirement?

Elisa Spain:

I thought it was a very interesting choice of words, which is why I think that the title of the blog. Briefly tell you the story, and then I'll give you my thoughts on. So he had a very impressive career. Most of my stories that I write... My Sunday stories are pseudonyms. So this is actually. He was perfectly comfortable with disclosing who he is. Marsh Carter is his name, and he was in the military, was in the Marines. Then when he got out, he couldn't find a job at all out of 85 letters.

Elisa Spain:

Then somebody just did him a favor and got him a job at Chase Bank in New York. He went to work there. He sort of the classic story take the job nobody wanted, and that job happened to give him exposure to the chairman of the bank, which gave him all kinds of opportunities. He rose pretty well, which is when I met him to this new business that we both worked in called global custody. He was tapped from that. I mean, he was the senior vice president, which is a fairly high-level position, but in a money center bank, there's a zillion senior vice presidents, and it's pretty far from the top.

Elisa Spain:

He was tapped from there to become the CEO of State Street Bank and Trust because of circumstances. So he into that knowing he was going to retire in 10 years, because the reason he got that opportunity was because of the retiring chairman and CEO is grooming somebody for his position in six months before he retired said they didn't think it was the right person. So the board was left with finding, and he didn't say he was going to stay on. I'm still leaving in six months, but he's not your guy. So I had to find somebody in six months, and they found Marsh, and fortunately, they made a good choice.

Elisa Spain:

So he went in knowing that he had 10 years, because the board asked him, they said, "We're not let this happen again. So we need to decide upfront when you're going." He said, "Well, I think eight to 10 years is about the right time." So we agreed. Four years before that time was up, they started looking for his replacement and ultimately found him, and he passed at the time when he was 61. So he retired. He always thought he wanted to teach, and he became I'm guessing an adjunct professor at the Kennedy School at Harvard and then when he went into a secondary discovered he didn't really like teaching because he didn't want to teach the same class second time. So-

Abby Doody:

Sure.

Elisa Spain:

... it was about that time that the leadership of the New York Stock Exchange kind of imploded because the then CEO was involved with a scandal. So they just wanted to change everything. So they wanted to bring in people who were of utmost regard. So he was invited to be on that board, as was Madeleine Albright and other people of that caliber, all of whom I think were retired. Then they asked Marsh to become the chairman and CEO, which he did for 10 years. At 65 is when he took that job, and then he finally retired for real, and he's sort of at 75. But he still teaches a bit, and he's still a consultant.

Elisa Spain:

So I have a similar story from my uncle who was always a role model for me. He got fired when he... I think he was 75 or 80. He had been consulting with a company similar to this man I was talking about earlier, who we invested in and was providing advice to. I forgot what circumstance was, where they needed his office. So he really was quite distraught about getting fired as he put it, even though he long had been in an advisory role.

Elisa Spain:

So back to the Marsh story. So I think that if Marsh had gone right from State Street to the New York Stock Exchange, I think that wouldn't have worked. He needed that pause. This is my read. The teaching opportunity was a perfect interim. At the time, he didn't know it was interim. But because it was small enough, but it could control it and is something he walk away from any time, I mean, obviously not the middle of the school term, but it's only a one year.

Elisa Spain:

So I think his story is a really good example of the importance of pausing and not jumping into some large new commitment right away. There's been some quite a bit written on this topic too. A friend of mine is an author of a book called What Happens When You Get What You Want? Rick Eigenbrod is his name. He's also wrote an article with Yale on this same topic, and all of us advocate take some time. I don't believe you necessarily have to... William Bridges in transitions, he talks about that the ideal is to be in transition, which means you stop one thing, pause before you start the next.

Elisa Spain:

I think that's appropriate for some people. I don't feel like it needs to be quite that black and white. I think for some people, having something in the interim is a good idea, just as long as that something isn't the next big thing so that you don't take the time to really figure out what you want, because the worst possible scenario is you wake up at 80 and say, "Oh my God."

Ben Smith:

Absolutely.

Curtis Worcester:

So I want to kind of keep going here. Kind of a flip side, it's clearly, I think in coaching and what you do. You have the, and I'll use air quotes here, "the easy cases and the challenging cases". Can you just kind of talk about some of the difficult coaching situations that you experienced in those clients and if there's anything... I kind of think everyone's different, every situation's different. But is there kind of any overlying commonalities there, and then kind of, what's been the biggest challenge to getting people to kind of break through this pivot into the next 2.0, 3.0 that you've seen?

Elisa Spain:

I think the biggest challenge is back to that quote from Henry Cloud. Well, the pain of staying the same isn't painful enough. I also think it's when people should on themselves. So I should be doing something more. I should be getting paid more. I should be in this sort of role. I shouldn't be on a board. I should be this, whatever the shoulds may be that may not be able to realize. Perhaps it's still back to the unreliable narrator of the not good enough has been talked about earlier.

Elisa Spain:

Those are the people that have the biggest challenge. I found it in all the different types of coaching that I've done is the people who are able to take it in, digest it, whatever it is, and then make changes other people that are able to move forward. So that's the people that have the difficulty. The reality is that not everybody is able to pivot and get on stuff. I'm working with a client now that I'm not sure frankly, where I usually work with people for an initial six months segment, and then they decide if they want to continue on a month-to-month basis.

Elisa Spain:

Usually, at the end of that six months, like the story I told you about the guy that was laughing about what I wrote, he's open to being vulnerable. He's open to becoming more self-aware. So we could laugh about it, and that triggered him to get real clarity on what he wants to do. This other gentleman I'm working with, I don't know, we're at the same stage with less progress. I think we've made progress in the self-awareness. I frankly don't think it's time for him to pivot. I think it's part of the story he's John himself that he should.

Elisa Spain:

So what I've been trying to work with him on is recognizing and accepting what's good about where he is, and he's very interested in adventure and encouraging him. When he drew his pie, the career one got smaller, not bigger, and yet he feels like he needs to focus on his career, and I keep reminding him of that-

Curtis Worcester:

Yeah, interesting.

Elisa Spain:

... and encouraging him to do some of the adventure things he wants to do, even if they start with a little one on a weekend or something like that. So he's had the weekend assignment the last two times we've met. I'm hoping by the next time I see him, we'll done one of them. So yeah. It's not a hundred percent.

Ben Smith:

Elisa, I'm going to ask, because I think you've covered a lot of my next question, which I wanted to go, but I'm going to just frame it a little bit differently. One of the things that as we're going, we're reading a lot of your blog, and one of things that you shared on your blog was a Chinese proverb that said, "The wise adapt themselves to circumstances as water molds itself to the pitcher." We really liked that, and for the reason being that a consistent theme we're seeing across a lot of our episodes was that in lots of different areas of our lives, as we age, it doesn't matter if you're going from two years old to five years old, or it's the middle or late stages of life is that adaptability and flexibility are very important traits to have that not getting set and just digging your heels in on where we are today just leads to kind of this... Again, kind of it makes, I think change harder. It can make life harder at times.

Ben Smith:

What you were just kind of talking about was kind of helping people work through that and some of the factors you're seeing in terms of that resistance. So one thing I wanted to... because I think you just covered that really well, but I want to ask it a different way is, so sometimes it feels like you said the should on ourselves. But at sometimes, it feels like some people are should on us is that sometimes you might feel that your family is saying, "You know, Ben, you're getting older, and it's time you should be moving into a different house, or you should be kind of connecting with these sorts of people."

Ben Smith:

Our network can start creating pressure of the things that they feel like we should be doing and from their eyes that we're being resistant to change. But maybe for us, we don't need to change. How would you kind of help people coach through that, right? Because first of all, it's identifying them, but also these externalities creating these things of maybe I'm being forced to be something I don't want to be or do something I don't want to do because people tell me I should.

Elisa Spain:

Well, right. Or we think people are telling us, back to the wife in his head and the wife in the reality. I think there's two parts to this. One is the self-awareness and self-confidence, becoming aware of our saboteurs and our judgments of ourselves and getting real clarity on ourselves. That's the first part. Then if we can get there, then it's something we coaches encourage people to say is, "Thank you for the feedback."

Ben Smith:

Oh, that's really good. Because we're the masters of our destiny, right?

Elisa Spain:

Right.

Ben Smith:

This is our lives, and we're in charge of that. Sometimes it's, again, being able to be self-competent enough to say, "Hey, no, this is what I want, and this is what I want to be. I understand why you're concerned for me, but this is what I'm going to do." Again, maybe we're just not always kind of competent enough to be able to express that to each other.

Elisa Spain:

Well, and that's why the first part comes in and getting clarity on who we are and what our strengths are and figuring out what our genius is so that we can build that competence. Because really, all of this comes down to that. That comes from within. A coach can help us get in front of us, what our strengths and our ultimate genius contributions are. But that comes from within. All we can do as a coach is ask the better questions so that people can come to their own answers and challenge people on it.

Elisa Spain:

So again, my guy who was lying to himself about his accomplishments, we've now started talking about what his key offering and differentiators are, and I've challenged him to make sure that it's available to him as well. So identify where he thinks his strengths are. Some of his strengths might fit better in the public company world, but he wants to work in privately held. So how does he now narrow that down, or they board example that I gave you earlier?

Elisa Spain:

So the role of the coach is to help people bring it out of themselves. The difference between coaching and teaching, I think is an important point here, which is the teacher teaches me something I don't know, where a coach, our job is to bring out what's within me. Then this sort of conversation and circumstance, it's about coaching. I can't teach you to feel confident about yourself. I can coach you to identify where you bring value to the world, but you have to believe it and then act on it. Then when others say you should or shouldn't be doing this or that, thank you for the feedback. Thank you.

Ben Smith:

I like it.

Elisa Spain:

I appreciate the feedback.

Curtis Worcester:

I like that. So Elisa, we have-

Elisa Spain:

So I wish I'd had the maturity to do when I got those sorts of things in my mother when I was, "when are you going to have kids? Or when are you going to get married? Or when are you going to do all these things you're supposed to do?" I wasn't as polite.

Ben Smith:

But that's really tough to do, right? In any one of our realms is because the people that we put on pedestals and that we really value their opinion sometimes more than our own. It's tough to then equalize your own opinion to them of, "No, this is what I want." Even though I'm used to getting steering guidance of what I should be and what I should do in my life, now again, I think for me, as a parent of a seven-year-old, well, that's kinda what you want them to be is independent in their thinking and where they want to go and actualize their own dreams and not the dreams that I impose on him type thing. So I think those are important things to delineate, and I think that's an important thing to say.

Elisa Spain:

Well, that's another self-awareness too, because what's commonly happens in these sorts of situations is people who have the pleaser saboteur, which all of our saboteurs come from our strengths.

Elisa Spain:

Those of us in the service world, often who are successful in the service world have had that characteristic. I was talking to a client about that yesterday. I was kind of comparing CEOs in the service industry of financial, whatever services to manufacturing. So knowing that about yourself and when it's time to start pleasing yourself, versus always trying to please others.

Ben Smith:

Gotcha.

Curtis Worcester:

So here we are at the end of our conversation, Elisa. A lot of this conversation, we've been talking about all the great work you do for other people and helping them achieve success in whatever pivot, whether it's 2.0, 3.0, 1.0. So I want to kind of flip the switch and focus on you for a second. The title of our podcast is The Retirement Success in Maine Podcast. I know you're not in Maine, but you have been to Maine. So you fall into this category here. So I really just want to ask you, how would you define retirement success for yourself?

Elisa Spain:

So for me, like many executives, my vocation and advocation is been work, right? My husband has hobbies that he can't wait to do when he retires. But for me, it's my work. So I've thought about that a lot, and I think my approach is similar to that client. Perhaps that's why that story was fresh that I was telling you about. I want a blend of a bit of structure working with a handful of clients at any given time, executives who I feel like for whom I can make an so be selective about who I work with.

Elisa Spain:

Then the rest of the time, enjoying traveling with my husband and enjoying each day being outdoors hiking and biking as much as I can, which I know something I could do in Maine.

Curtis Worcester:

That's right.

Ben Smith:

That's right.

Elisa Spain:

As soon as COVID is over, I want to take a bike trip there.

Ben Smith:

That's awesome. So you're going to ride your bike-

Elisa Spain:

... whole time.

Ben Smith:

Are you going to ride your bike to Maine, or you're going to get to Maine and then ride a bike?

Elisa Spain:

I think I'm going to get on an airplane. I feel comfortable doing that and then go with a bike company.

Ben Smith:

Nice. Awesome. Nice.

Elisa Spain:

It's been on my list for a while.

Ben Smith:

Well, Elisa, appreciate your sharing that story, but also all of your expertise with us today. It was a treat to have you here to talk a little bit about what you do, but also some of the insights you have in terms of coaching and things that I think our populations, oh, I don't want to say struggles with, but they work through all the time. I think getting a little bit more of here's a service that's out there and what you do specifically I think helps them with that. So giving them a resource to go to.

Ben Smith:

We will, of course, give a lot more resources to our audience of yours in our blog post. We'll give you a little more insight into that in a couple of minutes, but appreciate you coming on and hope to talk to you next time.

Elisa Spain:

Well, thank you. I really appreciate the opportunity to do this, and your questions are very thoughtful. I think this is a wonderful thing you're doing for your clients.

Ben Smith:

All right. Well, Elisa, thank you so much. We'll talk to you.

Elisa Spain:

Okay. Bye.

Ben Smith:

So really good to talk to Elisa Spain today. Again, thinking about retirement really is a life pivot. So that was a really interesting angle we took today. So again, that as a theme was thinking of it a little differently, not just retirement, but pivoting and kind of the process you kind of can go through to help identify a lot of that there. So again, we always like to wrap up a lot of our shows with lessons that we've learned from our guest. Love to have Curtis maybe start off with what you took away from today.

Curtis Worcester:

Yeah. A piece of the conversation with Elisa that really stuck out to me was she brought it up when she brought up the analogy of a rose bush when she was talking to a client and the idea of every ending being also a new beginning or an opportunity for a new beginning and that the rose bush came into play with, not only trimming or pruning the deadwood of the rose bush, but also trimming some of the roses as well and that ability to keep growing and I guess not honing in on the ending so much, but honing in on the idea that it's an opportunity for a new beginning. So that piece really stuck out to me.

Ben Smith:

Yeah. Again, I really liked that too, is because again, at the end of the day, to get a really full rosebush is sometimes you're going to have to cut off some of the healthy parts of it. Again, because sometimes things just don't fit. I think that was a really apt analogy that she kind of went to that kind of helped describe some of the process we're kind of all going through to then kind of get to the next stage. Abby, in regards to your kind of outtakes from today, what was something that stuck out to you?

Abby Doody:

I thought it was interesting how she talked about how we should own ourselves, so expectations that others put on us or we put on themselves that feel like we need to be at a certain point in our lives by a certain age or stuff like that. I know I personally do that, and I found it very interesting kind of her perspective on the whole thing and how she coaches clients through that?

Ben Smith:

We hear that every day, right? It's even like in our own lives, the judgments we maybe sometimes give to others in our lives of, "Well, you're this age, you should be this." You kind of have that as that kind of a running thought kind of coming through is like, "You should be this, and you should be that." I thought it was a kind of a neat way to put it, honestly. Some way, I had never heard it kind of struck that way, and I thought that was a good way to frame it.

Ben Smith:

My own side, again, I really liked the concept of the unreliable narrator. I think that's something where from something that we see a lot of, that maybe you have a lot of skill, and you've done really well, but really, the first thing you point out is maybe the things you've not done well. By kind of displaying those things, look, that's the thing you tell yourself, but that's also what you tell others and how people think of you is sometimes the narrative that you give out.

Ben Smith:

Also, I'll share it too is I've actually received kind of professional coaching on that side. One of the things that was kind of an outtake of that was the question I was asked from the process was that today's story of how much of your day do you like doing in terms of your workday, and how much do you think you should be enjoying of your workday? When you start auditing kind of your life that way, and you start thinking about it and framing things a certain way, you start getting to positive places.

Ben Smith:

One of the things that was like, "Well, I've always wanted to do a podcast. I always wanted to do these sorts of things." Then you look at the things you don't enjoy doing are really not additive to the work you're doing. Now you create space, and now it frees up things to get done. So progress. I kind of like that as an unreliable narrator of, "Well, we're not going to be good enough." Or, "No one will listen to us." Or, "This isn't something people we'll kind of find note in."

Ben Smith:

So we all struggle that. Doesn't matter who you are. That's something that's coming out. But realizing it's there and that discovery is pretty cool. That was something that she pointed out. So Elisa, kind of gave us some really good resources, some books there. She's got some really good blog posts. So we will be highlighting that in our own blog post highlighting this show, again, calling it Thinking About Retirement as a Life Pivot. If you go to our website, blog.guidancepointllc.com/36, you can find more resources about this show. If you have any questions or want to drop us a line, love to hear your feedback. Shoot any one of us an email, give us a call, love to hear from you, and until then, we'll catch you next time.