Mentorship And Grooming The Next Generation With Peter Merrick | E006
Looking At Life After Your Business.
Summary:
In this 6th episode of Financial Planning for Canadian Business Owners, Jason Pereira, award-winning financial planner, university lecturer, writer, and host interviews Peter Merrick, Financial Expert that has been in the industry a very long time and is the author of the book The King of Main Street. His book discusses business owners at different stages of life and the value of mentorship between them. Peter Merrick talks about life beyond working on and at your own business.
Episode Highlights:
● 01:09 – Peter Merrick has been in the financial service industry since 1991.
● 01:48 – Peter discusses his book The King of Main Street and why it is important to business owners.
● 03:45 – What was the catalyst for writing this book?
● 14:40 – Jason and Peter discuss the increasing retirement age and the life expectancy age increasing.
● 16:53 – What are the best practices for moving into retirement age?
● 19:29 – Why is divorce with retired couples increasing?
● 25:00 – Why shouldn’t you have kids if you want to be super wealthy?
● 27:33 – Usually after three generations a family’s inherited money is gone.
● 32:04: – How should you address the second half of your life’s story?
● 39:45: – Jason talks about advanced life planning.
● 41:19: – We need much more mentorship in our society.
● 45:14: – Focus on your legacy and address what you are doing to make that happen.
3 Key Points
1. Peter Merrick has written three textbooks and 800 published articles.
2. A true mentor is aware of recognizing the person that needs help and to know what we know, and they can see beyond their physical existence and cares about the future.
3. By 2030 it is being predicted that there will be 1.5 billion people over the age of 65.
Tweetable Quotes:
● “I don’t call it The King of Bay Street or The King of Wall Street. It is the average person. It is the millionaire next door. The person who has an idea, gets the capital, organizes it and makes it happen.” – Peter Merrick
● “There is a saying, the difference between the eater and the eaten is time.” – Peter Merrick
● “There is no ransom you can pay to God. So, it is really about the relationships you have and what you have given.” – Peter Merrick
Resources Mentioned:
● Facebook – Jason Pereira’s
● LinkedIn – Jason Pereira’s
● FintechImpact.co – Website
● jasonpereira.ca – Website
● Linkedin – Peter Merrick’s
● Thekingofmainstreet.com–The King of Main St. book
Full Transcript:
Speaker 1: Welcome to The Financial Planning for Canadian Business Owners podcast. You will hear about industry insights with award-winning financial planner and entrepreneur Jason Pereira. Through the interviews with different experts with their stories and advice, you will learn how you can navigate the challenges of being an entrepreneur, plan for success, and make the most of your business and life. And now, your host, Jason Pereira.
Jason Pereira: Hello. Welcome to The Financial Planning for Canadian Business Owners podcast. I'm your host Jason Pereira. Today on the show, I have financial expert Peter Merrick. Peter's been in the industry for a very long time and more recently has written a book called The King of Main Street which is all about business owners at different stages in life and the mentorship in camaraderie that can be built between them. I brought him on to discuss transition to that next stage of life for business owners, which is the life beyond working your own business. And with that, here's my interview with Peter.
Jason Pereira: Hello, Peter.
Peter Merrick: How are you doing, Jason?
Jason Pereira: I'm great. Thanks for taking the time to come in.
Peter Merrick: It's a pleasure being here.
Jason Pereira: So, Peter Merrick, tell us about you. What is it you do?
Peter Merrick: Well, I've been in the financial service industry since the end of 1991. So in September, it will be my 29th year and it's scary, Jason, that I actually say 29 years. I shave my head close and my face because I want to hide the grays.
Jason Pereira: Fair enough. I think, I haven't been counting how many years I've been, it's not that far off your number. Anyway, Peter, you worked in the financial services industry, you've been an author, you've done a lot of things in this industry specifically around high net worth planning but really today is meant to talk about the core lesson of your book. So tell us about your book first and let's talk about what the core lesson is and get into why it's important to people who are business owners.
Peter Merrick: Well, let's talk about the title. I call it The King of Main Street. I don't call it The King of Bay Street or The King of Wall Street because most people who-
Jason Pereira: It's not about guys like me and you, it's about people who have the average business, right?
Peter Merrick: It's the average person, it's the millionaire next door, the person who has an idea, gets the capital, organizes it, and makes it happen and they've got so much against them. But against all odds, they've raised great families and built great businesses, employed people, paid taxes, and now they're at another stage in their life and it's the average person. So it's the kings of Main Street, it's the people who make our economy work, not the people who buy, sell, and trade. And I thought that was really important because I felt that our society is hyped up, someone on Wall Street who makes money or some big executive and it ignores the average person. It's the average person who has an idea, sets out and pays taxes, and provides services-
Jason Pereira: Employs people.
Peter Merrick: And those are the people I wanted to focus on, what was important for them and how to transition to the next stage where they're now going to be contributing to our society in a much more important way, I believe, and that's as our societal elders because these are people who walk the path and now can guide the next generation. And this is something that's been important in our culture for centuries for millenniums since probably humans started communicating and unfortunately our society has forgotten that.
Jason Pereira: Yeah, very true. So the book is a narrative that basically talks about a young business owner meeting a gentleman who doesn't realize what he is but is a very successful older business owner who's [inaudible 00:03:27]. And there's a lot of financial learnings in this book but I think the more important message that we talked about is more so just that entire experience that these two people are going through and how it is basically purposeful to both of them or lends purpose to both of them creates that. So let's talk about that entire dynamic and why that's important.
Peter Merrick: Before we do that, Jason, I just want to share with you what was the catalyst for me writing this-
Jason Pereira: Yeah, go for it. Tell me why the book was made.
Peter Merrick: I was very fortunate that the financial industry gave me an opportunity to find out we each have skills and I discovered writing. And writing was something which was really important to me because it allowed me to articulate things that were floating in my head. And I guess over the course of my career, I wrote three textbooks and 800 published articles. And my last textbook that I wrote, I was very fortunate to get a gentleman who ran a very large foundation for one of the wealthiest people on this planet. The book was on philanthropy and how to approach that subject with wealthy people similar to the person he worked with. So the individual he worked for was in Toronto and I got myself invited to a group that he was speaking to and I wanted to give him my textbook. Now I didn't write my textbooks myself, these were huge, I wouldn't read them myself unless I had to. They were like 12 hundred pages.
Peter Merrick: So I approached this gentleman and I tried to give him my book and he politely says to me, "Peter, you keep it." And I'm like a little in shock because I'm saying this person who's giving away a billion dollars of your money, he's in this book. Like don't you want it? Then he says something very revealing to me, Jason, he said he spent his whole life paying people like you and I to read books like that so he didn't have to. And I thought about it-
Jason Pereira: That sounds like my life, I delegate as much as possible except for stuff I want to learn. But continue.
Peter Merrick: So I thought about it and I says, "He's right." And at that point I said, "You know, I'm going to go and write a book of everything that I've written but I'm going to write it in a narrative that works." I started reading everything I could on story. I realized very early on, I read about Joseph Campbell who he wrote a book in 1948 called The Hero with a Thousand Faces and Star Wars is based on his book. And I said-
Jason Pereira: That and The Hidden Fortress by, oh God what's his name? The Japanese producer? It'll come back to me. Kurosawa, there we go.
Peter Merrick: Well, The Hero with a Thousand Faces is a story of everybody. It's about a [inaudible 00:05:53], it's like you enter one stage of life as another stage dies. And it's got an ark in it. And I said, "You know, I'm going to go and take everything that you and I have experienced, observed because I'm not going to say that I'm the first person to observe these things." I'm sure like thousands and maybe millions of people right now walking observing these things but I'm going to find a way to communicate this. And I got really fascinated. I read over 200 books on aging, it got very depressing for me because you know what the difference between me and the so-called older person I was reading about?
Jason Pereira: How many years.
Peter Merrick: Yeah, it was time.
Jason Pereira: Yeah, it's just time. It comes for all of us.
Peter Merrick: And there's a saying the difference between the eater and eaten is time.
Jason Pereira: Yes.
Peter Merrick: And I still wanted to communicate this because you were a university prof, I was a university prof teaching financial planning, and one of the issues was it was very little talking beyond the accumulation stage. There was very little talk about how you have a healthy life after you've done that.
Jason Pereira: Yeah.
Peter Merrick: And again, it was for me, I was young and I was projecting where I was, what I would enjoy doing. And I thought it was going on a cruise on the Yangtze River and the all-inclusives.
Jason Pereira: Yeah, you're right. We focus so much on the accumulation stage and then once you get it what you do with the money but the reality, and I've seen this with countless business owners and executives and it's man's hierarchy of needs. You've taken care of all the base needs you have and you get to the self- actualization piece which is like how do you define yourself and your existence going forward. And most of that ends up going backwards and being solely through the business in itself or their identities surrounding their job. But what happens when that life transition stage hits where that's going to change to, it has to change to something else because of aging.
Peter Merrick: That's right. I don't know anybody who's taking it with them. One of my favorite psalms is Psalms 49 and it basically says the rich man, the beast, the fool, we all go back to where we came from and there's no ransom you can pay to God. So it's really about the relationships you have and what you've given. And what I focused on in the book is I looked at a younger person who was starting out and an older person who had done it. And the younger person seeks out the mentor and the mentor's open to the younger person, that's really key. The breakdown right now is younger people don't know how to find the right mentors and older people have this need to mentor, it's almost like a biological need because they, I think a person becomes a true mentor when they can see beyond their physical existence. They know that the sun was here before them and it will be after them and what's going to be left behind that they leave.
Jason Pereira: That's speaking for someone who mentors several young advisors, there's a bit of an ego stroke there of course, which basically gives you fulfillment that maybe I have done what I thought I had but more so I think we all recognize the person across the table from us. We recognize the person who doesn't know where to turn, who doesn't know where to start, who the things you take for granted because you've been there for so long that you just know the answer to or you know how to execute on it. It's something that never contemplated and being able to give back in that regard ... I think to myself every time I do that I'm basically doing it for someone who's just like me 20, 30 years ago. Not 30 years ago, I'm not that old, but 20 years ago.
Peter Merrick: Well, it's interesting that you say that because I remember I had a life-changing situation where an individual called me up and I had just written my first book and I knew that I was going to blow it. It was too big for me. And I had a moment of clarity knowing that I had to go to someone who had actually walked the path before and I brought a senior advisor in. And I still work with this individual today, he's my partner. This is like 15 years ago. Because I knew, I could tell the difference between me and someone who was seasoned and I knew I was going to blow it. I was able to rely on that person. I was able to lean on them emotionally and it able to come to reality. One thing happened recently, I was asked to be part of a financial planning case and I knew that it didn't make sense to me. And there was this younger advisor who was involved and I had real satisfaction to say, "Don't get too excited. Don't count your chickens," because I'd been there before.
Jason Pereira: Yeah.
Peter Merrick: And that's something, now sometimes people have to do it.
Jason Pereira: They start doing the math on how much they're going to make off the case and they get overly excited and it starts to ... You can't even go there.
Peter Merrick: Oh yeah. I actually, like when I look at when I get brought into a really big case, I think about how much work it's requiring. I don't think about the dollars because really what money-
Jason Pereira: Because you learned.
Peter Merrick: Well, on top of that, people don't realize what is money, it's what you traded your life energy for.
Jason Pereira: That hopefully you will then in fact one day trade for what you want to fulfill in your life.
Peter Merrick: Right. But when people are young, they focus too much on doing and later on in life they have to focus on being.
Jason Pereira: Exactly.
Peter Merrick: I only have so much time. Who do I want to spend that time with? The reason I wrote The King of Main Street is I love entrepreneurs, first-generation entrepreneurs, and people can't tell the difference between a first-generation and someone who's inherited. A first-generation entrepreneur when you see their success, what you're not seeing is their ability to overcome complexity, different levels of complexity.
Jason Pereira: Or lack of resources-
Peter Merrick: Emotional intelligence too because they've survived it. There's a lot of people have lots of smarts but emotionally they're not able to deal with it. And I just look at someone I say it's like the tip of the iceberg, what I see in the physical world the three percent that supposedly we can see, there's the 97% which I don't see and that's really the emotion, the character, and everything of that person. And I felt that it was really important to talk about that because you and I are at a very unique situation. We get to visit people in their areas, we're almost the bumblebees within society.
Jason Pereira: Yeah, that's very true.
Peter Merrick: We see real people in different environment and different successes and they have all sorts of different ways that they became successful but we probably come to the conclusion that they all have the same thing. A lot of them started doing whatever they did because they were looking for survival then they saw an opportunity, they also wanted to be self-actualized. And I truly believe that the people in our society have the greatest ability to self-actualize are entrepreneurs because they're rubbing up against the environment and they have to come to terms this is what I'm strong at, this is what I'm not.
Jason Pereira: They can't scale without doing that and to be successful. If you're going to be successful, you have to scale what you're doing.
Peter Merrick: And one of the issues is sometimes they don't know how to stop.
Jason Pereira: That is ... So I always say there's two financial plans. There's a financial one that we worked on and what are you going to do with all your time and that energy once you're done because there's the old joke that the leading cause of death is retirement.
Peter Merrick: It is.
Jason Pereira: There's a direct correlation between those two. You retire, you're going to die after that, that's just math or common sense. But the reality is is that the number, you can see it, we can see it every plan developing where clients getting close to retirement age, we tell them they have the option of retirement whatever date, maybe that date's already passed. And you tell them that and with this thing that they've been racing towards they've hit it but if they haven't thought about what they're going to do after or how they're going to feel validation for their existence afterwards, they just never stop. They just keep going. And what we often talk to them about is what comes next? What are your hobbies? What do you plan to do? Do you plan to travel? How long do you think it's going to last? Where are you going to find fulfillment in your days?
Jason Pereira: We've talked to them about getting involved in mentorship now versus later, getting involved in boards now versus later, shareable considerations that they may want to make, things that'll give them fulfillment in life which frankly, conventionally we just never ... We're so busy working on our normal lives do we ever stop to think about that necessarily.
Peter Merrick: Well, it's not anybody's fault because one of the things I've found very interesting is the demographics of aging. In the last two generations, we've had people living well beyond 65 but before the last two generations, and that's only been in the west. That's only been in like western Europe and that's been in Japan and that's been in North America. Before then, no one ever really lived beyond let's say 60 years old. And when Bismarck made old age at 65, life expectancy was 40.
Jason Pereira: Exactly.
Peter Merrick: So it'd be like life expectancy now being 95.
Jason Pereira: This is something I teach in my class also is the entire [inaudible 00:14:46] retirement age came from and it came from, the closest we can tell is the first person who pegged retirement age was Bismarck, Otto von Bismarck, when he produced the first government pension and really when you look at the definition of it, it was, "Hey, you're so old and broken down," because everything was manual labor back in the day, "there's just no chance you can earn a living so we should step in." And you're right, life expectancy was in the 40s. But now, life expectancy and our quality of life expanded so far beyond that to the point where now we're looking at 80 plus with a couple having a 10% chance of someone being over 95 in western society that 65 unfortunately never budged mentally. Those things became sticky and if we had changed it for life expectancy then that number would be, you wouldn't get a pension until age 95.
Peter Merrick: When I started looking, I got fascinated with studying demographics. In demographics, they believe that about 108 billion people have lived on this planet and only about 600 million people out of those 108 billion people who have lived have lived over 65 and two-thirds of those people are alive today. And by 2050, they're expecting it to be 1.5 billion people over the age of 65. Now you know what's scary about that? It's more people than were alive at the turn of the 20th century. And we don't know what it means to have a whole group of people like this but what we do have, and getting back to the book, is there are sources out there, people who've studied it but it hasn't been brought to the public. And I thought it was very important to talk about how do you transition from the first path of life, which Carl Young called it the morning where you're accumulating. It's all about getting things and acquiring things whether it's your ego, designations, education, houses. And the second half is getting rid of it and deconstruction.
Jason Pereira: So talk to me about that stage. Let's focus in now because we've talked around it for a while. So from your viewpoint, your learning, what's the purposeful way or the best practices ways or considerations for people to take when transitioning into that stage of life?
Peter Merrick: Well, as we transition, I just want to break it down into what six questions that people ask in their life. And you're hitting on the last two questions.
Jason Pereira: Okay. So let's start, I'm jumping the gun. Let's go one through four.
Peter Merrick: The first question that a human being asks when they show up on this planet and they're a sponge is like, "Who am I? Am I a boy? Am I Canadian? Am I American? Am I Catholic? Am I Muslim? Am I Jewish? What am I?"
Jason Pereira: Checking out their tribes.
Peter Merrick: They're trying to figure out where I am, who I am. And then around teenage years, the second question that's asked is, "How do I fit in?" You know that uncomfortable high school age? "How do I fit into this group?" Around 20 years old the question is, "What will I do?" It's not an identity question, it's about like am I a financial planner? Am I an entrepreneur? And that's the stage where we start-
Jason Pereira: You move from the nurtured stage to the needing to walk on your own two legs.
Peter Merrick: And we're trying to figure, it's not identity, but it's sort of like I'm going to choose my profession, I'm going to choose my mate, I'm going to choose where I'm going in my life. And then the third question happens around middle age. So you're 40 years old, right?
Jason Pereira: Way to give that away. Yes, I am. This might not survive editing.
Peter Merrick: You're 50.
Jason Pereira: No.
Peter Merrick: No. I'm 50. So the third question which is a very important question is, sorry it's the fourth question, and what the fourth question is, "Who have I become? I'm no longer planning my life. I am in my life. So I had these dreams about being a great entrepreneur and to have a great family and all sorts of things. And then reality hits, this is what my life is." And some people transition very gracefully and some people don't. And this is what they call, what do they call that?
Jason Pereira: Midlife crisis.
Peter Merrick: Midlife crisis because the image they had when they were a kid is not the image that they had of themselves at that age. Something else happens at that stage which is very important. What happens is you're still rooted in life like the physical reality and at the same time you're starting to see life beyond yourself. So it's sort of gets a little scary because people become really serious in financial planning at that point because they say, "Oh my God, you know that academic exercise that one day I won't be here and I'll be old? It's real."
Jason Pereira: Yeah. Once I stop working, what am I going to do? I can't keep going at the same pace I was at when I was 40.
Peter Merrick: And we start seeing things around us we can't deny anymore. Our parent's generation is dying, our parents might've died, getting sick, all sorts of things. Things that we knew academically were real but now we're facing it. There's an African saying this is not real until it's in my muscles. So the fourth question we ask is, "Who have I become?" Around the late 50s, and this is where succession planning and real planning starts is around 55 and it's before the end of like middle age, it's late middle age, and it's like, "What have I accomplished?" And there's more days behind you than forward. And this is where people make choices. And you were talking about retirement and next death.
Peter Merrick: I was very fortunate in the late 1990s to do a lot of outplacement with police officers over at [inaudible 00:20:22]. And I kept on asking, "Why are you retiring in your early 50's?" And they would tell me, "Well, Bob he was a lifer," a lifer meant he worked until he was 65 and it was mandatory retirement, "and he was following his spouse around shopping, whatever, and six months later I was at his funeral. And then there was Bob and he was a lifer and he did X and then six months later I was at his funeral," because they lost their sense of purpose and they were-
Jason Pereira: They hit the brick wall.
Peter Merrick: They were too old to believe that they could do something else.
Jason Pereira: Yeah. And it's interesting because I always tell people, again, that second retirement plan because in life working you're driving at 100 miles an hour and you're thinking that at 65 suddenly you hit the brakes. Well, what happens when you hit the brick wall and stop dead at 65? Well, you literally stopped dead. If you can't come up with that routine, that habit, you're in trouble. And this is also why gray divorce is one of the biggest inclines or biggest growth rates in divorce rate is people over 65 because you know what? Maybe both members of the couple come into the identity crisis at that stage and they can't work it out.
Peter Merrick: Yeah because now they have to relate to each other differently than they did before.
Jason Pereira: They're not busy nine to five anymore.
Peter Merrick: Another conversation I had is I was talking to someone he merged his firm with one of the large four accounting firms and I asked him because at his firm he didn't have retirement, he had a special deal. And I said, "What do you think now that mandatory retirement amongst partners is at 64?" And he said, "You know, most partners here they leave in their mid to late 50s." And I asked him why and his response was, "They think they have another kick at the can. They're at the point where they believe they can actually now do what they want to do." Now, one thing that I think is important and I address this in my book and I call it the layaway plan. And layaway plan is this, I am going to do what I don't want to do that one day I will switch and do what I really want to do.
Peter Merrick: There's two problems, and most people live that delusion in life. I take this job, I'm doing what I need to do, I'm raising my family and whatever. The problem is there's two flawed assumptions there. One is that you'll know when the time comes and unfortunately when the time usually comes, you don't have any choices. So for example, you have a heart attack, you have a stroke, game over. Your choices are limited. And so that's one problem with that assumption. The second major problem with that assumption is you think you're going to live forever. And I don't know anybody who's lived forever. And when it comes to looking at planning, and I try to address this, you can look to wise people who've been in the past and find out what they've done.
Peter Merrick: And I'll share with you one of the most fascinating stories I ever read about and I would recommend anybody who listens to this podcast to go online and get this free essay. It was written by Andrew Carnegie. He wrote called The Gospel of Wealth in 1898. Now at this point, no one knew how rich he was. He had given 10 million dollars away and back then that's probably like a billion dollars. However, he decided to sell his company in 1901 and he was, at that point, he was-
Jason Pereira: Timing wasn't bad, but go on.
Peter Merrick: He was crowned the wealthiest man who had lived, was alive. His net worth at that point was equivalent to 398 billion dollars in today's dollars that's 2019.
Jason Pereira: So richer than everybody but Vladimir Putin. Continue.
Peter Merrick: Yes. One of the richest men. But what did he do? He sat down and he wrote this essay what the responsibility of wealth was.
Jason Pereira: Oh yes, I remember hearing about this. Continue.
Peter Merrick: And it is worthwhile. And he says that the difference between a wealthy miser and a dead steer only have value when they're dead. It's not a cow making milk. He said somebody donates their money when their dead, not when they're alive, he said that if they could've taken it with them, they would've. He also talks about giving it all to the children and he says it's vanity, it's thinking they're going to live on and what it is it's an entrapment and it's actually tying these children.
Jason Pereira: Yeah. Warren Buffet wrote something similar about how he basically called leaving it all to the kids. First of all, his advice was leave enough that they can do anything but not so much that they can't choose to do nothing because he basically said they won the lottery of the womb and you have two choices. You can enable them or you can basically cripple them, giving them enough that they can do nothing with the rest of their lives is crippling.
Peter Merrick: And it's unfortunate because I've seen that again and again.
Jason Pereira: Oh yeah.
Peter Merrick: I actually have come to a conclusion. If you aim to be super, super, super wealthy and successful, don't have kids.
Jason Pereira: They do cost a lot of money.
Peter Merrick: No. But the reason why I say that is you want your children to aspire to more than they have but if they have everything it's an issue.
Jason Pereira: It's amazing how many times I've seen that happen where the individuals who basically they come up and they spoil their kids because they didn't have anything and they don't want the kids ever have to struggle the way they did failing to realize the struggles who made them the successful person they are and then the kids turn around and show no gratitude and basically just continue to live off the dual for the rest of their lives.
Peter Merrick: Well, Mary Antoinette when she said, "Let them eat cake."
Jason Pereira: Misquoted, but continue.
Peter Merrick: Okay. But what does that mean?
Jason Pereira: She meant brioche, but go on.
Peter Merrick: But let's look at that. Let them eat cake. What does that mean? Well in their world, if you don't have bread because they were saying, "We want bread," eat cake meant if you don't have bread, there's cake.
Jason Pereira: Yep.
Peter Merrick: Because in her world, she had it. I had a client who I called them out on this about 15 years, no, about 10 years ago. His kids, they went into his business very successful. He came to Canada with 300 bucks. We're talking he's worth probably a quarter billion now. And he says his kids just don't have it, they just don't have it. And this is the basis of a book I'm working right now. And I look at his kids, the first job they took was at his factory and they're executives already. They're not working in the back, they're the boss and he says his kids just don't have it. And I look out at the parking lot and I see the kids' cars and I don't have these cars and this guy doesn't have those cars. And I asked him why they have these cars, he says, "Oh, they're good cars." They're BMWs and Mercedes and Jaguars, right, and I'm saying, "Why do they have these cars?' 'Oh, these are good cars. They don't break down.'"
Peter Merrick: And I looked and I called him on it. I said, I'm not going to say this on the podcast, but I called him on it and I said, "You bought those cars for your kids not because they're safe and they're good and they don't break down. You wish when you were that age you could have that car." But these kids never had to work, they don't have the appreciation that you have for them having that car because for them they always had the cake and the bread and everything else that they ever needed and they had the job and they didn't have to struggle and they didn't have any of that appreciation.
Jason Pereira: And it's interesting because it doesn't have to be that way because one of the wealthiest people I've ever met, wealthiest families I ever met in my life, and I'm not going to name names because they're known, having a conversation with the next generation, not one but multiple generations down about intergenerational wealth transfer saying, "Look, I respect what your family's done because typically, as you know, three generations the money's gone. That's the normal statistic and all I see is an incredible amount of hustle from all of you. You keep this ambition going. How do you do that?" And the simple response was simple, "You think I got anything in life and it was handed to me?" And I'm thinking to myself, doing the math on how much the family's worth like, "Really?" He's like, "No. Yeah, they took care of me. They sheltered me. I've lived a privileged life but at the end of the day, if I wanted anything I had to work for it. I didn't take jobs with them to start."
Jason Pereira: Went out and proved himself fully before got brought into the company. So the ambition, the need to work hard, yeah, you know what? We're going to give you every opportunity to basically get all the skillsets you need in order to be successful but we're not going to give you that success. And I was just like, "Bravo," I'm clapping my hands. That's exactly how to handle them. But it's difficult because it does mean, for a lot of people, it means they're living that struggle themselves in their mind and they want to spare their children that. But it's so important that they let their children struggle because that struggle defines who they are going forward and then why they're going to be successful.
Peter Merrick: It's interesting. I was talking to a very successful gentleman and like American Canadian dream. And you would not want to be in business, like be on the other side of the table with him because you'd leave without fingers. And lucky in our business, we're not in that type of business dealing with them, we're helping them manage their money. So I looked at him once because his kids were at the top private schools and they had ... This guy lived in Russia in filth and he's now living the dream and he's worked for every cent of it. So I asked him, "So, what would happen if your son met a guy like you in business?" And you know what his response was, Jason?
Jason Pereira: Take every penny.
Peter Merrick: I don't want to think about it because he knew what he did.
Jason Pereira: Yeah.
Peter Merrick: He knew because he said, "I do not want my kids," there were like six of us in a room the size of this room here and that's where we're living and it's a very nice sized boardroom however it's not meant for six people to live in.
Jason Pereira: No. Okay. So have we answered all six questions yet? I think we're pretty close.
Peter Merrick: Well, the last question is important. So just to address what number five, let me recap what they are.
Jason Pereira: Yeah.
Peter Merrick: Who am I?
Jason Pereira: Yep.
Peter Merrick: How do I fit in?
Jason Pereira: Mm-hmm (affirmative).
Peter Merrick: What will I do? Who have I become? What have I accomplished? And now the last one is the most important question. What will my legacy be?
Jason Pereira: Yes.
Peter Merrick: And I truly believe from my studying, of reading about successful people who I admire, the one to ask that question earliest are the ones who leave the biggest mark. These are the people who are thinking beyond themselves, beyond this time. They're thinking of the future. And if they have the means to do things, for example, Bill Gates he's worth billions of dollars, he decides that he wants malaria to be canceled out of human history. Boom. He has the resources act, he doesn't have to go to the committee. These are people who make major changes and you don't have to be super successful because just before we were talking, and what I mean by that successful financially to do this, because we talked about before this podcast about Mother Teresa. She ends up in Calcutta. She's a nun in the middle of nowhere. It's not like the center of the Catholic empire-
Jason Pereira: Nope. It's the fringe.
Peter Merrick: And she makes the best of it and we all talk and marvel what she did.
Jason Pereira: Yep.
Peter Merrick: Everybody, there's not a person who doesn't hear her story, who does not marvel. It does not matter what religion they're from or where they're from she did incredible stuff. So legacy, how will I be remembered? And what can I do to do that? And the more we have a purpose what we want to be remembered for. One of the things I started doing with a number of my really successful clients, I introduced them to a biographer. They're not a writer, I introduced them to a biographer.
Jason Pereira: Oh, that's interesting because that's got to be a bit of a nerve racker because you're like, "Okay. Let's talk about all the success I've had to date." And you're just like, "What's the back half look like?" To me, that would be almost a little bit nerveracking. If I was in the stage of 50, 60, I think, "Okay, that's everything there but what's the next part of the story going to be?"
Peter Merrick: But let's tell a story.
Jason Pereira: Yeah.
Peter Merrick: Because the thing is the kids don't know the story.
Jason Pereira: That's very true.
Peter Merrick: And be revealing, maybe you can't write it so I have, in my role at X I write for the things that I find passionate. But I know people who are able to help people put their stories together, interview people. And their stories are incredible and in essence after they're gone, who's going to tell the story? And I'll share with you where it came to me. A number of years ago I was in Palm Springs and I was talking to a friend, very successful man and works for a company that everybody knows about. And he said he doesn't want to write anymore. He wrote two books and they were not bad and he does speaking and the problem is the company he worked for everybody wanted to talk about that company that he worked for and what it was like to grow it.
Peter Merrick: And he told me he doesn't want to write anymore and he's getting tired of that and I said to him, "I'm from Toronto and I remember when we won the World Series and I couldn't imagine what my life would be like that every time I met somebody and I played, let's say for the Toronto Bluejays, and say, 'What was it like playing in the World Series and playing with Mookie Wilson or Joe Carter or'-
Jason Pereira: Was Mookie on the team back then?
Peter Merrick: He was in the second one, he was '93.
Jason Pereira: Okay. Fair enough.
Peter Merrick: So what was it like playing with these guys? And everyone talking about it and I said, "You know what I'd be interested in and what your kids would be interested? I would be interested in reading about your family story and how you took that opportunity or that luck or whatever came in and actually seeing that narrative tie in." And at that point, he's working on his autobiography. However, some people don't have that skill. They don't have the power of the word but their kids don't know and going on the future that will be one of the greatest gifts that a really successful entrepreneur can give their children. And I actually, we're talking it's not cheap, it's like $40,000 or something like that to hire a professional biographer. But it's definitely worth it if you want to leave something that's going to be lasting because we're in this building right now, it's beautiful, Jason. I love it. It's rustic, it's beautiful.
Jason Pereira: It's the old Genron building which eventually became CCM, it's the old bicycle factory back when bicycles were still made of wood.
Peter Merrick: One of the things I think about is you and I don't know who built it.
Jason Pereira: Not a clue.
Peter Merrick: We don't know who this person is. It's beautiful, we're enjoying it but we don't know who built it. And I'm thinking this person here must've been a significant person in the time and we don't know even who that person is.
Jason Pereira: Yeah.
Peter Merrick: This is something which I think is very powerful and it's also very powerful when someone starts working on something because if you don't know where you've been and your family doesn't know where you've been, how will you know where you are? And then comes the most important thing, where are you going? If you don't know where you've been or where you were, you will not know where you're going and this is so important for key people who are entrepreneurs who've been running a race for so long to get perspective. And by taking that perspective then they're able to say, "What do I do now at the end of the story? What do I want at the end of the story?" Because Carnegie was not exactly light like the first part of his life.
Jason Pereira: Obviously.
Peter Merrick: He broke unions, he did everything. However, right now there's over two thousand public libraries with his name.
Jason Pereira: Same story with Alfred Nobel, right? When they ran his obituary accidentally, they called him the dealer of death and basically nothing positive was said. And he realized that wasn't what he wanted his legacy to be.
Peter Merrick: Yeah.
Jason Pereira: So let's talk about the actualization of legacy. So we talked about sharing the story, first and foremost. That is the book, the idea of the biography. It doesn't have to be anything so grandiose, it can be simple mentorship, right?
Peter Merrick: It's a lessons learned, it's being able to communicate it. This is where it's really important to put when you're looking at where I've been and where I am, this is where and you come to terms with death because in essence you can't plan without coming ... If you look at the historical record, when you look at [inaudible 00:36:28] whatever happened 40,000 years ago with humans is they started burying their dead. And why was that? They came to the conclusion that they were going to die. So you have to come to a conclusion that you're going to come to the end. So at that point, you now take stock. If you don't have the skillset, you need to go and seek someone like Jason out who's got certain skills because you've developed certain skills for yourself to go into business.
Jason Pereira: It's starting to sound like Taken. I don't have Liam Neeson skills but I've got different ones for helping people with money, yes.
Peter Merrick: Right. Helping them take stock of what they can do with their resources.
Jason Pereira: Yep.
Peter Merrick: And how they can deplore them. I want to go and make sure my kids are taken care of, my grandkids are taken care of. I also want to make sure that I'm not a burden on anybody so I'm planning for old age, I'm planning for my income, I'm planning if I become sick. I might even be planning for how I'm going to be buried. I would recommend that as well. And I'm also looking beyond that and am saying, "How can I help the next generation? More than just my family because none of us are [inaudible 00:37:34] upon ourselves. We are part of a community. We are part of a society and we can't ignore it." You and I have been highly influenced because we're Canadians and we benefited because of people who came before us and there's lots of parts and there's lots of buildings and monuments named after people who've contributed to society who saw their responsibility to society.
Peter Merrick: And by going to a financial planner who has the skillset to help you take your assets and help you realize that, realize your own goals, your family's goals, health, and also continuing our society that will give them the opportunity, your family and give other people in our society opportunity to meet their success. And getting back to Carnegie, when he came from Scotland when he came to the United States, there was a wealthy person who had a library that was just open to him. And he felt the world was open to this individual, to himself because of that and he wanted to offer that to other people.
Peter Merrick: So he made public libraries because he wanted some immigrant kid, someone who wanted a better life, who saw a better life but had no idea what that life was to be introduced to what that better life can be or how to achieve that life. And that's where mentorship comes in to actually not just give dollars but to give time, to actually help someone when they're going down a path sharing with them how you went down that path and how it wasn't bad going down that path with some smart ... Unfortunately, you have to learn. However, once they hit a wall, they'll remember it. They'll say, "Jason told me. Now I know. Before, it was theoretical, it was academic but now I know."
Jason Pereira: It's interesting because society's such a poor job of creating those opportunities especially once you're done working. A lot of the professional associations you basically, "Oh, you're retired? Guess what? You're dropping your CPA. Guess what? You're dropping this designation, you're dropping that," and you become disconnected from that community. As a couple, the financial planning association should help launch the IFP, which is also one I serve on the board of, there's an emeritus category for planners.
Peter Merrick: What age?
Jason Pereira: Retirement. You retire you're no longer practicing, there's a category for you. And I think that is an incredibly valuable thing that I want to over time build in the association to a larger degree because I looked at that and said, "There's no way I want to lose the people who knew so much just because they're transitioning." And one of the gentlemen who helped me out in starting this thing is a man named John Paige who this guy, I don't know if you ever ... Did you meet him?
Peter Merrick: I think so.
Jason Pereira: Yeah. So this guy was doing fielding and advanced planning back in the '80s so one of the pioneers in this space and written best practices manuals and all kinds of stuff and knows more about this than anyone and I said, "Are you going to apply to join?" And he's like, "Oh, I didn't think I could. I didn't know that that would be a category for me." I said, "Do you really think for one second that I would not engage you in the community and let you contribute? That would be insane to me." But that's unfortunate with so many organizations do. Those of us who are affiliated-
Peter Merrick: Can I add to that?
Jason Pereira: Yeah, by all means.
Peter Merrick: I think that's not just the organization, that's our society. In societies for millennia-
Jason Pereira: Where's the conduit? We have a conduit because we have an association. But where's the conduit for the average business owner? Maybe if you get involved in a YPO or young entrepreneurs organization or something like that, they may have those facilities. But unless you get out there and network with other people in some positions, you're not going to have the conduit to open up to create that kind of mentorship ability.
Peter Merrick: And unfortunately it's been lost. There's two things that I look at. One, in the past, human societies spent a lot of resources on mentorship.
Jason Pereira: Yep.
Peter Merrick: Especially male mentorship because women mature, boys need to be beaten up, knocked on the head, become adults and contributing members of society.
Jason Pereira: In fairness, we need more female mentorship because, again, part of the entire not having women in positions of authority to some degrees lack of-
Peter Merrick: I would agree with that. [crosstalk 00:41:47] address that issue, it happens to be women are more mature than men and boys need to be hit on the head. They literally need to be hit on the head. But if our society, our past generation spent so much resources on mentorship and we don't now and it's like it's pseudo mentorship. If they spent so much resources, there was a utility, there was a value to initiation into the community which we've lost, it's been lost and there's people floundering. And what used to happen is you would have, if you did live to where we are you would have three generations in a home.
Jason Pereira: Yep.
Peter Merrick: And right now-
Jason Pereira: You don't have that.
Peter Merrick: Older people are separated, they go off to Florida, they go to-
Jason Pereira: If they move into the home of their kids, it's because of a financial or physical need. It's not a choice, right?
Peter Merrick: Right. Because our society gives a stigma to, but in the past that was really helpful.
Jason Pereira: Still common in many European countries and other countries around the world.
Peter Merrick: And then there's one thing to keep in mind why that's so important. We are the only ape that male apes live beyond like reproductive than a female ape.
Jason Pereira: [crosstalk 00:42:58].
Peter Merrick: There's got to be a biological reason for that and that's because that special relationship of an older person who lived their life sharing and caring for a younger person. Because when you're young and you have a young family, you're busy trying to put food on the table and you're dealing with your ego. But later on, that's so important. What has to happen is that there's got to be more focus on getting older people who have been successful to get involved with younger people. And I was told a story by one of the greatest planners that I know, Joe Marceau, he started MD Management and he was a purist, a [inaudible 00:43:43] and he tells me a story how he was brought into this very large company and they had great retirement plans and nobody was taking it.
Peter Merrick: And the president brought him in and said, "No one's taking it. So tell me about your culture." And he started telling him how great the culture was, everyone did everything together, it was so wonderful. I said, "Do you have a retirement club?" And he said, "No." And he said, "You do now." And as soon as they create that retirement club, all these people they took their packages. But one of the major issues in our society, you were talking about like you invited John Paige. Here's someone who is a library of experience that you just can't get. You go into these large multinational companies, especially ones that had like traditional pensions. What they would do is they would, you'd start looking at a company that had let's say 30,000 employees and you'd see that what happened to all these people over 50? The companies got rid of them. You can't institutionalize that wisdom, that wisdom that comes from experience.
Jason Pereira: Knowledge management is contained within our heads typically.
Peter Merrick: And people don't, and this is so important, and again young entrepreneurs want to go to someone that's been successful. Because if I want advice on a marriage, I want to go to someone who's been married 50 years.
Jason Pereira: If you think you know everything, start a business and find out just how quickly you don't. So any parting thoughts before we go?
Peter Merrick: My parting thought is this, I think what you're doing, Jason, is great.
Jason Pereira: Thank you.
Peter Merrick: I think having a podcast sharing valuable information is great and the most important thing that I want to leave with people is we all want to focus on our legacy and I would like to think that this conversation is helping people thinking, "What am I going to be remembered for?" And once you start thinking about that, then the question come, "What am I doing right now to make that happen? What am I doing with my financial planning? What am I doing with my time? What am I doing with my family? What am I doing with my community to make that a reality?"
Jason Pereira: Great. Fantastic. Well, I hope this starts people working on the second financial plan I always talk about or second retirement plan, that is. Thank you very much for taking the time, Peter.
Peter Merrick: Thank you so much.
Jason Pereira: So that was my interview with Peter Merrick, I hope you enjoyed that. It was not the conventional financial planning conversation but it was one that people need to spend a lot more time contemplating because as I said in the podcast, if you go a hundred miles an hour and suddenly stop, you're going to die, for lack of a better term. Hopefully you don't, hopefully you work on the second retirement plan as I suggested, and hopefully you are ready for that day when it comes and do so happily. As always, I'm Jason Pereira and this has been The Financial Planning for Canadian Business Owners podcast. Until next time, take care.
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