Tell Your Story With A Book, Here’s How | Azul Terronez | 164 - Catching Up to FI: Financial Independence for Late Starters

Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
(00:02):
authorship is about owning the factthat you're gonna be doing it terrified.
Can you accept that?
You wanna know, how do I getrid of all these feelings?
Those feelings are what motivate you.
they were put on this earth for a reason.
And it isn't just be FIyou're put on this earth to do
something that only you can do.
And most people don't investigate.

(00:23):
Well, what is that thing?

(07:05):
Hello and welcome backto Catching Up to FI.
I am so excited for today's conversation,Jackie, because it's different
and this gentleman has not beenintroduced as much to the FI space.
We met him at Econome.
It was a refreshing breath of fresh airin a world that's often focused on numbers
and how to get the financial freedom.

(07:26):
But then what do we dowhen we become free?
And that's one of the questionswe're gonna ask today, right, Jackie?
That's right.
Azul did an amazing job at economy andthen he had this great TEDx and I feel
like a lot of our audience may havethat secret desire to write a book,
but it always sounded overwhelming.
Well, Azul is gonna debunksome of those myths today.

(07:49):
And I, being someone that has writtena book, it's not easy, but boy, it
is so invigorating to be able to putwhat you have in your head in writing.
Yeah, and before we introduce 'em,we want Azul as what we do always
on shows is to promote a charitythat's near and dear to their hearts.
And today the charity is GrayBears, G-R-E-Y-B-E-A-R s.org.

(08:12):
Azul, what is this charity to you?
Well, it's a community basedorganization whose job is to create
community through food, healthy foodproviding groceries that you wouldn't
normally get to seniors and reallyanyone, they won't turn you away.
And meals and food and communityservice, like classes for seniors.

(08:33):
And they support that through,their thrift store, through their
other organizational parts that helpserve the community by providing
resources like thrifted items.
it's a place for community to go.
You don't have to be a senior to go there,but I really love the fact that they're
taking care of a part of the population.
We usually just push aside.
And what's neat about it youtold us is that it's an impact.

(08:54):
Local charity.
People get lost in these massive charitiesthat are trying to save the world.
I mean, they're taking care of asmall element of your community in
California, and I really like that.
Yeah.
It isn't intended to scale.
It's intended just for thatcommunity, and it's been around for
50 years, which says a lot abouttheir commitment to the community.
All right, Jackie, let's introducethis phenomenal human being who's

(09:17):
all about I inspiring us to find ourgift and we'll talk about that first.
Azul Terronez is a Wall StreetJournal and USAA today bestselling
author who has coached hundredsof people for over a decade.
He is co-founder and lead coach atauthors who lead a platform dedicated to
empowering authors to share their stories.

(09:39):
Azo went from being an unknownschool teacher to a bestselling
author, but he wasn't always thatconfident that he could do it.
He didn't know that he wasdyslexic until he flunked English.
When he was at UCLA.
That discovery explained whywriting and reading were such a
struggle and it motivated him.
He went on to graduate with amaster's degree and became a

(10:00):
teacher, and the subject he taught.
Guess what?
It was English.
That path led 'em to guide hundredsof students to write and become
their own published authors.
Azul's extensive knowledge and experiencehas helped leaders, entrepreneurs,
and CEOs build brands and messageswith their books in including Pat

(10:20):
Flynn of Smart Passive Income.
Yeah.
Well, Azul has also been a keynotespeaker at international conferences,
including Economy, the conference we talkabout all the time, and his TED Talk.
What makes a good teacher great hasbeen viewed over 4 million times.
He is author of the book, the Art ofApprenticeship, how to Hack Your Way

(10:43):
into Any Industry, land a Kick AssMentor, and Make a Killing, doing
What you Love on the show today, heanswers the questions, is writing a
book worth it and why is there, quote,no greater agony than an untold story?
A quote by Maya Angel.
So Azu, welcome to Catching Up to FI.

(11:04):
Thank you so much for having me.
He, what an otter.
I, need to cut that bio down.
It's kind of embarrassing.
It's so long.
Look, we gorged it a little bit becausewe love to scour the internet and really
dig into our guest and all of thatwas so deserving, and we want to know.
that we're talking tosomeone very special.
We want our audience to know that.

(11:25):
you.
Well, we wanna go back in timebecause you wrote this book and
we're gonna tell the story abouthow you came to this book in 2014.
We find the content to be evergreen.
And then chapter one is reallysort of the genesis of finding
yourself, finding your gift.
And you quote at the beginning ofthis chapter, the best way to find

(11:48):
yourself is to lose yourself inthe service to others by Gandhi.
And, and that's what we're abouthere, and that's what being FI is
all about, whether we know it or not.
You also quote SethGodin, one of my faves.
And our gift creates meaning in ameaningful way to connect to the
world, to be a part of the tribe.

(12:09):
Of givers.
Okay.
Azul, what you do as the honor ofmaybe reading the first two or three
paragraphs of the gift, and then we'lltalk about finding your own inner gift.
Sure.
That's great.
Here's the book is, just Art ofApprenticeship and the chapter
one is called What is Your Gift?
Our Humanity, like our Natural Desireto Discover Play and Create is also

(12:33):
built around the nature of giving andit seems innate to love our children,
our family, or significant other.
And our friends.
But what doesn't seem naturalis loving the larger world.
I don't mean the world thatrequires world peace at times.
I mean, loving theworld known as humanity.
We contribute to humanity positivelyor negatively depending on how

(12:53):
conscious we are of the giving we do.
to the world makes you part of it.
Holding onto your gift was intendedto be a part of the world leaves
us depressed, feeling incomplete,unloved, and unappreciated.
Gratitude comes from bothgiving and receiving.
someone accepts our gift, we feelvalued, appreciated, and honored.

(13:14):
One reason is that we to be valuedat a work or for our work is one
of the top needs we have as humans.
There you go.
That's awesome.
I mean,
and, the rest of the book builds onthis, but what people need to realize,
and when you talk about the gift, youtalk about, we all have a book inside
of us too, and that may be the gift.
The gift of our story, the gift of our.

(13:37):
Skills that allow us to helpmentor the next generation.
and that is , where we have sort of thatrobust retirement and people talk about
the four phases of retirement and peopledon't realize that phase four, which Fritz
Gilbert, , elucidates in a blog, he writesabout it is entitled Reinvent and Rewire.

(13:58):
And we all want to get there.
And Today's show is aboutgetting to phase four of life.
Maybe be well before you retire even.
Right.
Right.
I think so many of us hope thatsomeday we can be someone that
can be generous instead of takingaction to be generous in the moment.
And that doesn't requireyou to be FI at all.

(14:20):
It requires you to be present, right?
And realizing that your giftof existence isn't a mistake or
shouldn't have been done differently.
You have exactly what you need to showup in the world and share your gift.
But most of us think, whoam I to share anything?
Yeah, I believe that too.
I wrote a self-published book a longtime ago and I enjoy writing and it,

(14:42):
it really is cathartic to be ableto do that and everyone can do it.
I think that's your point.
We're gonna dive into when you were ateacher, but, you influenced a whole class
of students to write their own book, andI remember that from your talk at Econome.
Do you remember that Bill?
Yeah, I do.
And Azul talks about, and one ofthe quotes he has is, how many
days are you willing to give up?

(15:02):
For the sake of someday.
He talks about being present.
He talks about being in the moment.
He talks about not necessarily waitingto retirement, retire before you retire.
Embrace the world of your gift so thatyou can bring others along with you.
This podcast has been that for us.
I never thought I'd re exercisethe right side of my brain.

(15:24):
I was lost in being a doctor.
I was lost in the industrialeducational complex and following
sort of a predetermined path.
This is about getting off that pathand creating your own path, right?
Jackie?
that's right.
so you arrived at writing a bookyou discovered you were dyslexic.

(15:46):
I can never say that word, butthat is even more interesting.
Than anything else that now yourfocus is the written word when
you had trouble reading it before.
So I guess I'm curious how youdiscovered that you were dyslectic.
Can you tell us that, that story?

(16:07):
I.
Yeah.
It's ironic.
I was probably my junior year of collegeI had never even heard that word before.
was in a class.
It was like an early classfor people who were wanting to
know what education was like.
And I, I didn't want to be a teacher.
Honestly, I did not.
It was not in my goal path.
It wasn't what I wanted to do.
But he mentioned this idea thathe as a professor was dyslexic,

(16:28):
and reading was hard for him.
I was like a professorwhere reading is hard.
Wait, what is that?
So I got really interested and I startedasking him questions, what does it mean?
And as he started describing everythingthat he experienced, I was like.
that's what's wrong with me in my mind.
it made so much sensewhy I had to read things.
It took me three or four times longerthan my peers and writing was difficult.

(16:51):
what also revealed itself to me was whyI had a special gift that others didn't
have, because most of my peers, collegepeers included, would read a word, read
a passage, look at the words, and thenmake a decision about what this means.
Because when I read something,words move around, they disappear.
It's a really weird, bizarre phenomenon.
words don't have thesame meaning in that way.

(17:14):
So I had to look for the meaningthat the words were trying to
communicate, not what the meaningwas of the words, which is different.
So I'm looking for the,truth underneath the words.
So you're saying something,but what are those words?
Trying to communicate is differentthan, these words mean this.
So that's how the gift started toevolve, is that I started to see
things that people were talking aboutthat the words hadn't arrived to yet.

(17:37):
And the professors like, that's right.
How do you know that?
And I was like, I don'tknow how I know that.
That just seemed likewhat you're talking about.
He's like, that's right.
That's what happens in the next.
So it was an interesting shift thatwas happening within me, but it wasn't
because I could hang onto the words.
It's 'cause I could hangaround onto meaning.
So when people come to me helpthem with books, I'm trying to
teach them that books aren't words.

(17:57):
And that's really difficult for peoplethey're, they're saying things like,
well, what do you mean a book isn't words?
Isn't that all a book is is words Isaid, no words are just the message or
Hmm.
holding onto the messageso that you can hear it.
But that's not the message.
The message is something simpler,something peaceful, something easy to
carry around, like with your two fingers.
Because think about abook that you care about.

(18:19):
You could talk about it.
You could talk about whatit did for you, what it
Right.
So it's not the words.
You're not quoting chapter six,paragraph three, line three.
You're quoting the message, andthat's different than the words.
So my job became infinitely easier whenI realized my gift had nothing to do
with words in the way traditionally itwas thought of and everything to do with
finding the message behind the word.
So that's, kind of where myshift happened in college.

(18:41):
And why dyslexia became a gift insteadof the curse that it was going up.
You stumbled into becoming a teacher.
That wasn't your original path,but then it became your passion.
Now your teaching evolved too.
You were involved in teachingand being a principal and

(19:01):
leading teachers for 20 years.
Tell us a little bit about yourevolution as a teacher, because you may
have started out by teaching English,but then all of a sudden as things
evolved, your students were publishingbooks and I want to hear that story.
Yeah.
You know what was amazing 2006ish when maybe 2005 when KDP

(19:23):
or the Amazon Self-Publishing
Yeah.
was opening up, it used to be calledCreate Space, and then they merged
it to Amazon, but you could publisha book and I thought to, I thought,
wow, well, we could publish our kids.
Like, wouldn't it be cool if everyone of our kids became published?
Like, what would that be like for themif they no longer thought about someday?
Like we tell them you'regonna need this geometry when.

(19:45):
Someday and you never need it.
That kind of thing.
Well, that's kind ofwhat we do with all kids.
We tell them they're gonna needit someday, but it's not true.
It's a lie.
So if you're a teacher, I hopeyou hear this, it's a lie.
They don't need all that stuff.
Someday if they, if they don't needit now, they don't need it someday.
So my thinking was, whatif they need it now?
What would it look like?
I'd said, then I would treatthem like authors and they
would write books that matter.

(20:06):
And so I made that shift around 2006 andI started to teach kids about authorship.
I no longer taught writing.
authorship.
That looks like is when youcome into work or to school.
You have projects you're workingon and they mean something to you.
And you live the life of an author.
You sit down, you're either editing,refining, starting a new story abandoning

(20:27):
a piece, coming back to a piece, butyou're prolific, you're producing work.
And our kids in my classroom would produce10,000 typed pages of material, even if
all of it wouldn't get published becausethey were used to living like an author.
so when people started to come into read these books of other kids,
they're like, kids wrote this.
I'm like,
yeah,
how?
My kids won't evenfinish a two page essay.

(20:48):
How are they writing allthese volumes of books?
I go, because I'm stopped making it.
It's not a class.
This is their role in life.
They choose to be authors.
And that changed everything for them.
And those kids became nottheoretically someday able to write.
They were publishing ahead ofpeople who were teaching them.
I mean, one of the things you taught too,which was interesting, I mean these are

(21:09):
sort of seventh, eighth, ninth gradersI think who have the written word,
Yeah.
you went into classrooms with teacherswhere kids didn't have the written
word, and there was an example ofone kid that, well, tell us the
story of the ant and the elephant.
Okay, great.
Yeah, so I became a teacher andthen a master teacher, and I would

(21:31):
instruct, new teachers in theirclassroom about writing or teaching.
And it was a kindergarten classand I went in there to show
teachers how to teach writing.
And the teacher's like, well, Isaid, well, we're gonna write today.
And I had all the markers and big jumbopencils, those ones with the, big eraser.
And I said, we're gonna write today.
And the teacher pulled meand said, you know what?

(21:52):
They don't know how to write yet.
Some of them can write their name,but they're really emergent writers.
None of 'em know how to write.
I said, oh, it's okay.
They'll be okay.
So I, told them we're gonna write stories,and I gave 'em a little time and there'll
be a bell and they'd write, and thenthey'd stop and then we'd read them.
I just said, go and off these kids wit.
Writing without any, they didn'tknow what they were doing.
Some kids were mimicking writing, writingwhat they thought, what cursive was.

(22:15):
Some kids were actually writingletters 'cause they had maybe had
preschool and other kids were drawingand pretending that they knew what
writing looked like and felt like.
I came to this one kid, hisname was Johnny, and this is
the one you're talking about.
And I said, Johnny, tellme what your story is.
And he said, And it, was scribbles.
It didn't look like anything.
There was not a single word on this page.
I don't even know if hecould write his name.

(22:35):
I said, tell me the story.
And he told this beautiful story.
He said, I'm telling thestories about an ant.
I said, oh.
He's like, yeah, andthe ant gets in trouble.
I said, oh, is that right Johnny?
He goes, yeah, well tell me.
And he told me about this aunt whowas supposed to go straight home
but didn't go home from school.
And so his mother thought he was lost.
So his mother went looking for him.
And his mother was an elephant, of course.

(22:55):
Logical.
Why wouldn't an aunt hadan elephant as a parent?
So he went out and the mother was lookingfor him and went into a tree thinking
Johnny, the little aunt was there.
And then, then the mothergot stuck in the tree.
so Johnny went on to tell thisbeautiful story about the moral
of trusting your kid, right?
Think about what, how deepthat is for that student.
Why he was saying heshould be trusted by what?

(23:16):
A parent, a bigger parentfrom an aunt to an elephant.
He was deep.
It was very deep.
And he told this whole story andhow the aunt had to get rescue his
mom and had a beautiful conclusion.
And I looked at the teacher,I said, storytelling is
innate in our human design.
You don't need to teach this.
You just need to let them do it.
And that's, true for you all.
Writing a book isn't somethingyou need to be taught.

(23:38):
It's something you need togive yourself permission to do.
And when he had permission, Johnny wrote abeautiful story without the efforting of a
teacher or rules, or grammar or spelling.
That's the story.
Wow.
I love that.
I love that.
And, I like that you gave them free reignand not every teacher teaches that way.

(23:59):
but to be able to kind of have thewhiteboard and let the students just roam
as they wanted to, and there's the story.
right there in their head.
They just needed to come out.
I love that.
was really interesting, as you talkedabout my evolution as a teacher,
I did what I was told, right?
I, I
Right,

(24:19):
from other teachers and they say, do this
right.
like Don't smile until December.
And I was like, why?
They're like, 'cause they'll knowwho's in charge if you don't.
Just
Stuff that they keep passing down.
And eventually I let go of all thatstuff and I realized that kids had
more answers than we were letting them.
And writing was one of them.
I didn't need to teach them writing.
I need to give them time.

(24:40):
one year towards the end of my teachingcareer I told my principal, even
though I had been a principal manyyears, was working under a lot of
principals who were their first time.
So we had a confidant relationship.
So they would do a littlenice things for me.
And I said, I don't want you to giveme any decks or chairs this year.
She's like, what?
yeah, take them all out.
Don't move them.
Donate them, hide them.
Don't, I don't want them back.

(25:00):
She's like, why?
I go, I'm gonna do an experiment tosee if I can change the way I teach.
And she's like, oh.
And what I did was the first day ofclass, all the kids came in the classroom
with, there was no desks or tables.
They're like, where do we sit?
I said, wherever you like onthe, they sat on near the sink.
They, can I lay on the floor?
Absolutely.
Our first project was, how do we designa classroom where people do work?

(25:23):
They're like, but what do you mean?
I go, that's what we'regonna learn to find out.
Where do we do work?
Where's meaningful?
How do we know it's the place for work?
What would it feel like?
kind of work would you be doing?
And so for six weeks theyinvestigated this idea.
They interviewed secondgraders and, and adults.
They just couldn't interviewpeople in their own grade.
They're like, why?
I go, because you're gonna have a bias.

(25:44):
You need to find
Right.
why do people do work?
Second graders have a differentopinion than they wanted to go
to Starbucks and ask adults.
I said, go ask them.
You can ask anybody.
then they need to get in teamsand model out what would an
ideal learning space look like.
And they would pitch their idea.
They shared models.
They iterated back what the originalperson, I taught them design thinking.
'cause I'd gone to Stanford DSchool about design thinking

(26:04):
and they were really good at it.
The winning design at the end of it.
All we presented at the end of sixweeks was that it should be a flexible
space that felt more like a Starbuckslibrary that you can lay down, sit up,
have a stage, and they built it on theweekends at nights with volunteers.
They built this beautiful classroomspace, but at the end of it, there
was no place for a teacher desk.
There was no front of the room anymore.

(26:26):
So my experiment worked becauseI was like, I'm gonna have
to learn how to teach again.
'cause they didn't even give me a desk.
So I ended up sitting on the floor nextto them and wherever they were, like it
was an amazing thing that kids taught meif I just let go of the idea that they
needed to wait to someday to be able to beeffective to the life that they have now.
That is fantastic because whatI find interesting is they

(26:47):
almost swapped out the stage.
For a teacher's desk.
'cause it's important to probablypresent your work or act out
your work, play with your work.
You talk about play as anintegral part of education.
One of the things in becoming adult isin some ways lose the ability to play.
And we have to reach back to this eraof freedom of thought and expression

(27:10):
to find our passion, our little ppurpose, to find our story or our gift.
What was it like tolive in that classroom?
It sounds a lot to me, like aMontessori classroom a little bit.
You're following the child.
You're allowing them to create as opposedto be a part of our traditional industrial
educational complex, which was createdfor mass production or compliance.

(27:34):
You're breaking this mold.
yeah.
it was my effort to break the mold.
It's challenging 'cause otherteachers don't appreciate it.
I was in a very innovative schoolwhere we didn't have textbooks
already, so it was already innovative.
But when I was starting doingstuff like that, they're like,
wait a second, what are you doing?
I was like, I'm just curious.
I have a, an insane curiosity.
What happens if you give kidspermission to do stuff that
you don't think they can do?

(27:55):
it started to shift when kidsstarted to become my teacher.
I was like, oh, I thoughtI was your teacher.
It's the opposite.
You're here compulsory,I'm learning from you all.
So like, when the shift started tohappen, it just started to crumble.
For example, I never was allowed towrite on their papers like I could.
That was the worst thing for me when Igot back my papers with those red marks.

(28:16):
It just made me feel defeated,like I wasn't any good.
And yes, school isn't aboutpandering to my feelings.
However, it never inspired me that Icould be a writer 'cause every paper
I turned in looked like a war zone.
so I was never allowed to writeon their paper, nor was their
parents, nor were their peers.
I took away all the things you expect thatwe didn't have rules for the classroom.
We had things they neededto tell me I needed to do.

(28:38):
I'm the one working there.
They're guests.
So what they said I should do, I would do.
Those are just turning theteacher classroom on its head.
And one of the things wasis I can't grade your paper.
I'm grading not yourworth of your writing.
I'm grading.
Did you follow the process of writing?
Did you have an idea?
Brainstorm?
Did you edit?
Did you rewrite?
Did you get feedback?
Did you incorporate that fee?

(28:59):
Like the process of being an author?
So one kid said, Hey look, Mr. T, theycall me Mr. T 'cause my mouth could
be a, my name could be a mouthful.
So you're saying there's no lengthrequirement for our writing,
like our essays or papers,we can just turn in whatever.
I said, oh no, you can'tjust turn in whatever.
Remember there's a process.
They're like, but like if it's a sentencelong, we could just turn it in and we
could get an A if we follow the process.

(29:20):
I said, if it's worth an A, of course.
They're like, Hmm, well that's allI'm gonna do is write sentences.
I said, stop everyone.
Stop.
Everyone is writing.
Bill wants to write a one sentencestory and doesn't wanna write more,
so we're gonna, for 40 minutes,we're gonna write one sentence
stories and then turn them in.
And Bill went to go work on it.
And it was extremely difficult towrite a one sentence story, but when

(29:44):
they started to do it, it startedto shift the classroom because
they started to use their mind.
I gave them the example of thisbaby shoes for sale, never worn.
That was my example ofa one sentence story.
said, do you get it?
They're like, wow.
Yeah, because of this and that.
They're like, Uhhuh.
So they took off and startedworking on it and they started

(30:06):
bringing it back and rereading it.
And we realized how infinitelyharder it was to write a one
sentence story than a several pages.
So that kid goes, okay, nevermind.
I get it.
Yeah.
And, And you know what I'm thinkingAzul, so this you, you're doing this
teaching, but this is still inside of an
a structured organization.
So how did that play with the schoolitself, the district and all of that?

(30:30):
How did that play?
It didn't always playwell, I gotta be honest.
Okay.
semester I told my seventh gradestudents I told their parents
in a parent meeting that things.
I showed a slide, it was 2007, I thinkI showed a slide of a picture of the
iPhone and they're like, was new.
It was so new that not everybody had it.
Like I said, this is the thing that'sgonna change your kid's life and

(30:51):
makes what I teach here meaningless.
Oh
their jobs they have they get outtacollege haven't yet been invented.
like, I go, so I'm not gonna teachthem anything that you are taught.
Anything that's said to be taught,because those things won't matter by
the time they get there, they rebelledand I said, we're not doing grades.
They hated that.

(31:11):
They were really like pushing back,what do you mean I want grades?
I
yeah.
I'm doing.
I said, if you don't knowhow you're doing, that's what
I should be teaching you.
Not what grade I give you.
That doesn't matter what grade I give you.
Doesn't matter what you believe.
You're doing matters.
I got a lot of pushback when Iwould try these things in these
Yeah.
I would have them reading college levelbooks because they were capable of
reading Maya Angelou at seventh grade.
Right.

(31:32):
time.
They needed to slow down.
so I wrestled some parents to the groundwho were just like not happy, wanting to
pull their kid out of my classroom becauseI would do things that didn't make sense.
Like one day they came in and therewas just paper clips on the, floor.
'cause I didn't have a desk room.
They're like, paper clips,what do we do with that?
I said, everyone get one.
Oh, okay, whatever.
Mr. T is doing weird things.
I said, you now have 45 minutes totrade that paperclip for anything else.

(31:58):
What do you mean?
I said, you have 45 minutes totrade that for something else.
They're like, this is stupid.
One kid got the thingand ran out the door.
Another kid looked around andthe other kid ran on two kids.
The other kid's like, wait,what do you want us to do?
Before I could finish thatsentence, the kid came back, goes,
I got a pen from the secretary.
The other kid came back.
I got a notebook.
kept happening.

(32:18):
Someone goes, I got this desk.
He rolled this desk in.
Yeah.
Mr. G traded this from a desk.
The last kid came in, he said, keys.
He goes, I got theprincipal keys to their car.
I was like, wow.
So we then we sat down andtalked about it, like the value
of something is perceived.
You all traded the samevalue thing for other things.

(32:39):
Why did that happen?
How did it feel?
What were you doing?
What did you say?
Right.
Did that have anything to dowith language arts or history?
No.
Had everything to do with understandingdeeply what value is in the world.
Well, what you're teachingthem is stuff like negotiation.
You're teaching them collaboration,and you refer to people call it
cheating, but it's really collaboration.

(33:00):
You are turning everything on itshead, putting it into the inverse,
and, and telling us that our schoolingneeds to change with the times.
It doesn't seem, I mean, based on myexperience with my kids, it doesn't
seem to have to, why are we notembracing philosophies like yours
of turning everything on its head?
Mainly if, if you ask my opinion,it's because teachers don't want to

(33:23):
accept the fact that they're alwaysoutnumbered and they're never in control.
They never are.
I used to be a principal of aschool, a grade level principal
for school with 4,000 kids.
There is no way we couldcontrol that school.
It was all facade At any moment.
They could take over anymoment that they chose.
always true in your classroom.

(33:44):
You're outnumbered every time.
So stop pretending that and, creatingcontrol to put kids in their place.
Right?
Play for young people is inclusive.
Play for adults is to win rulesfor young people is inclusion.
Rules for adults is control.
Lemme give you an example.
If you come in late or you'retardy, there's a rule is to penalize

(34:05):
you for not being compliant.
You don't have a pencil, you getpunished, you don't, all these
things are punishment and control.
I got rid of rules.
We don't need rules in this classroom.
What are we gonna know what to do?
I'm like, you don't know what to do.
You don't know.
You shouldn't come here on timeor be if you don't come prepared.
Am I supposed to punishyou or, get you to work.
Like what?
Let's be honest.
And so when I startedto shift things around.

(34:26):
It started to change the way kidssaw themselves, but teachers are
afraid, and that's the biggest fearis they're afraid to give up control.
But they don't have it.
Kids are gonna figure it out pretty soon.
They're just gonna get up and walkout one day and never come back.
So Azul, you've lived this verycreative life with you and your
husband, but you had kids andyour kids are now grown adults.

(34:48):
I'm interested because growing upwith you guys as parents is different
than, say, my parents, which was avery traditional boomer upbringing.
What was it like for your kids toexperience this and can you give us a
brief snippet of what their journey wasthat led them to where they are now?
I grew up traditionally too, myparents, my were uh,, children of

(35:12):
farm workers and didn't have a lot.
I was the first person to go tocollege in my family, to be educated.
So there was a strong sense ofeducation, but I wasn't necessarily.
Telling my kids education is the way.
I didn't have an expectationthat they needed to go to school.
I just had an expectationthey needed to go do something

(35:32):
when they left high school.
Like what?
our son who, who?
It always hated school.
I mean, hate is a strong word.
He's dyslexic as well.
So you could imagine school'shard, but he was the kid.
As a principal we would call a runner.
A runner is the kid that boltsout of the school and just runs.
He was a second grade.
He was a runner and that means hehated school much, so much that when

(35:55):
it got too stressful, he would run.
And one day I had to drive back from thistown I was principal of to his town and
bring him back to class, watching him kickand scream, not wanting to go to school.
And that broke my heart 'cause I'mlike, kids should want to go to school.
My own kid.
So that's when I made the decision.
I wanted to shift and go to a schoolthat was more less traditional.
So we were living in Austin, Texas.

(36:15):
We moved to San Diego and I started,I left my career as a principal to
become a teacher again because I wantedto have like innovative way to show
him that he didn't have to do school.
He loved making movies, drawinghe could draw on per perspective,
even as a. 4-year-old.
I don't know how, I didn't teach him.
Right.
No one taught him.
He ended up going to college on apartial scholarship to art school.

(36:36):
Even though he had never taken art class.
He had a really beautiful portfolioand got accepted into art school.
But in the first week it was probably fiveweeks in, but the first time he told me,
it was about six weeks after he was there.
He is like, I hate school.
I wanna die.
I'm like, oh my gosh.
That does not soundlike a good, he's like.
wanna drop out.
And I said, well, ofcourse you should drop out.

(36:57):
Of course you should.
He's like, it's okay.
I go, oh, absolutely.
Remember, this is justan experiment in life.
And it's what I hope allparents would be willing to do.
So we are like, oh, thatseems terrible advice.
I'm like, he knew what he wanted.
knew he didn't want to do it.
He knew that this wasn't the path for him.
Doesn't mean it's gonna be easy.
He's gonna have to workhard at the new path.

(37:18):
He's not gonna be handed a job, but I'mnot sure kids going to college these
days get handed a job anymore, so.
he dropped out of art school and startedtaking a, a gap year and traveled and
lived in Brazil in a small village outsideof Sao Paulo teaching photography to kids,
and he had never traveled there by himselfbefore he started learning how to make.

(37:38):
Designs for record labels and posters.
And he was always creative in that way.
And he, he made his way making a jobat a coffee shop, designing for their
brand, even though he was serving coffee.
So he just finds his wayeven though he's not perfect.
And some days, like last night I wastalking to him, he was having a hard time
about something and towards the end whenhe got through what he was working on, he
asked me, well, how's your writing dad?

(37:58):
'cause he knows I'm working on thescreenplay that I've been working on.
He's like, I was hemming hawing.
Like, well, you know :::whatthe solution to that is.
And I said, he.
Go.
Right.
I was like, dang it.
You're right.
it's shifted, like his perspectiveis he's reflecting back the
things I think I've taught him.
And the same thing with their daughter.
She, worked for a university.

(38:19):
She was the, at a young person whowas the assistant to the dean of
the McCombs Business School at ut.She, she had already got this very
quickly she goes, but everyone there,you look in their eyes, who've been
there 10 years, look miserable.
He goes.
I don't want to be here in10 years looking like that.
I don't care if I havehealthcare in a 401k.
she started a quit and she started a veganbakery online, which was a total risk.

(38:43):
Some months was great and some shegotta get another job to supplement.
But I know that they'll just experimentuntil they find what's right for them.
what they would say about this.
I don't know.
Yeah.
dad driving Lyft at night?
I don't know.
It's 'cause I, I'mtrying to figure it out.
But yeah, they, they have a differentperspective, but I do hope they believe
that they can do anything they want
And Azula, you know what I'm gettingout of this story and, and kudos to

(39:05):
your kids is that even though you was abit of a late starter when it comes to
the entrepreneurial side, the authorswho lead and all of that, your kids.
Had a strong takeaway of entrepreneurshipand sort of the free flowing approach
that you took, so our audience could takeaway as well that whatever they're do that

(39:27):
whatever they do, even if it's later onin life, that the kids, the grandkids,
anybody around your community, see whatyou're doing they will feed off of you.
Yeah,
Well, you follow your, your parentingstyle follows your teaching style.
They're one and the same.
I mean, you give your kids permissionto live their life and create, and

(39:49):
don't try and necessarily box theminto the traditional educational style
or the traditional American dream.
It's their dream.
It's their individual life,and the strength you have is
to, be willing to support.
That as opposed to question it.
And I think that is, we've learned notonly about authorship and financial

(40:11):
independence, these lessons all apply tothings even like parenting, which is why
I wanted to get this story out there.
They're watching what we do andthey wanna forge their own path.
And our jobs as parents is tosupport them and help them achieve
their dreams and not box them in.
So thank you for those stories.
Yeah, you're welcome.

(40:32):
It's the same thing when my kids, Irealized I couldn't be hypocrites to
my own children like I was doing tomy teaching students is that I can't
tell them anything's possible if I'mnot willing to try . I believe in FI
, but I also don't thinkthat I had to have done it.
Any other, any other way.
The, the year I made more, three timesthe amount of money of my principal

(40:52):
salary when I, was like, what happened?
I don't know.
What's happening is I realized,wow, you could make is just
an energetic shift of things.
I'm not being paid to show up likeI used to, but money comes and goes
like a flow of life and I just learnedto appreciate that and I think.
have too.
They know that sometimes they'll havea little, and sometimes they'll have

(41:14):
a lot, but it doesn't mean that itchanges the worth of who they are on
the inside, and that's what I want.
Happiness was more important to methan even what they thought they
should be doing with their life.
Well, Azo or Mr. T, you would'vebeen my favorite teacher.
Okay.
I love all of this, but obviouslyat some point made the shift

(41:36):
from a teacher as your career.
To being an entrepreneur, a storyteller,and you moved into that direction.
Talk to us a little bitabout that transition.
Yeah.
I had been thinking about it fora while, mainly because I was no
longer fitting into the squarethat the round peg was supposed to.

(41:58):
Right.
I didn't fit, I was struggling.
I was starting to struggle with thisidea of education indoctrination, and
I, I started to get inspired becauseI always wanted to be a writer.
But I, didn't have any evidence.
I was good at it.
That was the problem, right?
In past schooling.
Of my students when we're havinga book fair came up to me.

(42:18):
They were putting out all their booksthat were published and having other
classes come read them and be inspired.
And for my book and I didn't have one.
And I was so embarrassed.
And he just said,where's your book, Mr. T?
I said, I thought aboutlying and making it.
It's about you.
It's not about me.
But the truth was, I just didn't have oneand said, I don't, I don't have a book.
They're like, well, why not?
I said, because I don't, Idon't think I'll have anything

(42:41):
to say that's worth saying.
And he really scoldedme in a beautiful way.
He said, well, you alwaystell us, it doesn't matter.
Just write, so you should write.
And then he walked off and Iwas like, you Little Turkey
called my bluff, which was true.
I was being a hypocrite, right?
Saying it was right forthem, but not for me.
I couldn't do that either.
I had to do write the bookor I had to actually get out

(43:02):
'cause it would be a lie if I,
Hmm.
good reason why I didn'twrite a book after that.
So I did, I wrote that book, theHeart of Apprenticeship, the 30
days after that conversation.
when it shifted for me.
'cause I did have something to say.
I did have meaningful things toshare and just didn't know it.
And I think that's why writinga book is so important to me.

(43:23):
It's not because you need to make aliving as a writer, but everyone has
something to say and your opinion matters.
Your voice and your point of view matters.
And so that's, that'sthe shift that happened.
And I started to looking forways for me to change my life.
And people started asking me, well, howdid you write this book in such a short
What did you do?
I said, oh, short, it took me 24years and 30 days, 24 years to

(43:44):
yeah.
haw.
And finally the 30 days to actuallydo it was more of a, act of
contrition than it was an effort.
I.
Well, you, talked about being taughtby your students and you learned
that you can't be a hypocrite.
You can't teach what you aren't willingto learn, and you were schooled by
your student and you learned, orone of the questions you asked over

(44:07):
and over again of your studentswas what makes a great teacher?
And you got a plethora of answers.
You did almost a research project on this.
What were some of the answersand what did they mean?
at first I didn't know what they meant.
In fact, I thought it was actuallya very stupid exercise that I
learned from my master teacherwhen I was a first year teacher.
they hand you worksheets atthe beginning, the first week

(44:29):
of class, and you fill it in.
It kind of felt like that A goodteacher's nice, a good teacher's
friendly, a good teacher, blah, blah blah.
Seemed very unimportant to me.
But I kept doing it 'cause my teachersaid, this is a good first of the
year thing to get to know your kids.
I was like, okay.
But when she was doing it, I realizedthey were cheating off each other.
What did you put for number eight?
I need another one.
And I started thinking.
why don't they know whatmakes a good teacher great.

(44:52):
So I just kept doing this activityyear after year after year, hundreds
and hundreds, and then thousands,and then tens of thousands of
responses, 26,000 responses.
And it took me a long time,but I started asking myself,
well, what is it they're saying?
And the first thing I had to changeis she had put my master teacher,
a good teacher is, and she hadthe kids finish the sentence.

(45:13):
But I realized that was controllingbecause she was in control of the verb.
That's why they didn't like it,is that you had, I said, what
if I made the verb, the choice?
So I said, a great teacher,and I left it blank.
Kids then had a lot of things to say.
A good teacher doesn't suck.
A good teacher wants more for their kids.
A good teacher has a sense of humor.
A good teacher eats applesand, and things like this.

(45:36):
I'm like, wait a second.
Now this, this is not what I expected.
So I had to start tolisten to what they said.
'cause I didn't know, I didn'ttotally understand what they were
saying at first, to be honest.
So I started doing what theysaid and that's when things
started to shift for me.
I started realizing, oh, thatthis is a teaching moment.
This, this is something I haveto accept and learn except for

(45:58):
the teachers or my students.
It's not me.
and then things started to reallyshift for me maybe a little late
'cause I was already 20 somethingyears in, but I started to realize
that kids had a lot more to say thanwe were giving them permission to.
Well, you look for thedepth of what they said.
There were brief sentences,but it contained a whole story.
It for you.
Why does a teacher eat apples?

(46:19):
And what did that really mean?
Well, I didn't know 'cause Ithought it was a cliche, right?
You go to
All right.
teacher store, there's apple,this, apple that I thought
just, they're just being stupid.
They're being silly.
Until one day I said I got it again.
It wasn't just once.
It said it often.
I was like, this doesn't make sense.
Why multiple gears, differentclasses, different locations?

(46:39):
Are they saying this?
So I just got a big bag of apples oneday and I just started eating apples
all the time before class, at school,at lunch, just trying to figure out
why, what a great teacher eat apples.
Like what does that mean?
And I still had no idea.
So I didn't try to, figure it out first.
I just did what they said and wouldstop me and go, you're eating apples.

(46:59):
I was like, yes, kid,you're eating apples.
They started bringing me applesand I was like, what is going on?
What does this mean?
Why?
Why does a great teacher eat apples and.
I think the long and shorter it wasthat they wanted me to know that
what they're giving me was just asvaluable as what I was giving them.
Because I would eat something they touchedwith their hands that wasn't wrapped in

(47:22):
cellophane, that wasn't, in a candy wrap.
They touched this and theygave it to me and I ate it.
And there was some reciprocation thatwas happening in that moment, and I
think they started to trust me morebecause I was trusting them more.
So I think that's the lesson Istarted to learn from these things.
It was, not the words that's, this isthe other thing I was telling you, right?
The words that doesn't mean much.

(47:42):
It was underneath the words that meanta lot that I had missed the whole time.
Yeah, I definitely picked up some lessons.
Back when you were talking earlier about,when you found out that you were dyslexic?
Because I haven't been diagnosed oranything, but it is difficult for me
to read because I do try to read forcomprehension and it takes me forever.
And I always tell Bill, I'mlike, wow, that's a big book.

(48:04):
I can't read that book, but I still,I wanna know the story, I wanna know
the essence of the book, and I'mbetter off like listening, whether
it's the, audio book version or ona podcast or something like that.
So you help me kind of diagnose myselfjust a little bit to say that it's
more valuable for me to know the storyunderneath than to read the actual words.

(48:27):
And you taught that to yourkids, and now you are a coach.
You're head of authors wholead and now you've got a whole
new set of students, right.
Yeah, I do.
what caused you to exit the building?
Because there are other creativeteachers out there, and I want
to give a shout out to Dan Thne.
I had never heard of this.
And you can do this with English, butyou can do it with other subjects.

(48:50):
I mean, how do you do this with math?
So I had a professor from MIT reachout to me after I gave my Ted talk.
I wanna come back to thisdyslexic thing too, but
Okay.
back here to ask me could he use someof my, his assistant asked me could he
use one of my slides in his TED talk.
He was giving, pardon me, waslike, that seems kinda strange.

(49:13):
I mean, I don't know what,what is he talking about?
And at the end of it, I just said, aslong as you quote, give credit to the
who made it myself and the illustrator.
'cause they, they didthat for their living.
I don't want to justlet them pass it around.
So one of the things he quoted, I was socurious, what is he gonna do with this?
I, was referring to middle school, whenI was talking about these things, he had

(49:36):
told me, and I, I didn't know until Iwatched his TED talk that he had tried
the experiment, which with his students.
He tried it first 'cause he wasgonna go be a sixth grade teacher
from professorship and he said itwas really hard And then he went to
be a professor at, teach university.
I dunno if it was chemistry, he didwith one of the things I said, which
was a great teacher sings one of thethings my teachers, my students told me.

(50:00):
And he said he sang to hisclass and it erupted into this
incredible applause, just like ithappened to me in my classroom.
But these were college A students.
What I noticed is that I had moreinfluence and power and potency outside
of the classroom because now I wasinfluencing people in a bigger way, right?
I don't know how many students I'vehelped over the course of my 25 years

(50:21):
in the classroom, but having a TED Talkthen impacted 4 million, it's much more
Oh, right.
I'm, made that shift because Irealized, oh, I need to move beyond
this and myself out there because I'mlimiting who I think I am staying in
the classroom because I have a beliefthat if I leave, I'm hurting kids.

(50:41):
I'm not committed, I'm not all thesesort of stories, but what I realized
is I've made more impact by givingthat one 18 minute talk than I did all
those years I was in the classroom.
Oh, wow.
You hit home there.
I, definitely love the idea of, oneto many, I was doing stuff that was
not touching very many people at all.
But yeah, once you hit the stage.

(51:02):
And the talk is recorded.
You're writing books, you'retalking millions, and you're
impacting So many more people.
And Bill, that's.
what we're kind of doing with the podcast.
We have had moments where, we aredoing one-on-one or small groups.
It's like we have a bigger voice.
There's ways that we should be sharingthis that will touch more people.
And, so I, I love hearing that from you.

(51:24):
Z
And dyslexia because it's, it'ssome part of our development.
We don't know we have it.
We don't know what's
Hmm.
third grade, I became exceptionally goodat memorizing those primers, Jack, you
Right?
Yeah.
Dick or whatever.
But eventually, chapterbooks I couldn't memorize.
So at third grade, theyrealized I couldn't
Right,
Like I was compensating allalong, I'm really good at speaking

(51:47):
because it's a better form.
I would
right.
teachers to let me speech or somethingmore than a paper if I could.
and that's sort of how it developed.
But if you use your gift in away that compliments you, you
start to actually exercise it.
So for me, like, if you asked me,I was a little bit nervous when
you asked me to read out loud.
I'm like, I know I wrote it, but Istill struggle with reading out loud.

(52:08):
when I was 48, I learned to speed read,which I never even knew I could do
Oh wow.
we were taught in schoolto sound out words, right?
Sound this out.
I didn't wanna tell any teacher thatthese little things don't make sounds.
So they make sounds to you.
It's just, yeah, they make soundslike that's a, these just are
little sticks and word like letter.
They don't make sounds to me.

(52:29):
They kept telling me it makes sound.
I'm like, there's no sound.
It's making like theseletters make a sound.
I go, not to me it doesn't.
So all this reading slowlyhappened because I was pronouncing
every word, every syllable.
Our humanity.
Like our, was pronouncing everysingle syllable and every word.
'cause that's what they tell you.
They don't tell you to stop doing that.

(52:50):
Right.
really vocalization iswhat slows most of us down.
We read every word.
read every word I read from topright corner to bottom, left corner.
And I consume paragraphs at atime because I can, my brain
Wow.
But most people think that they,especially dyslexic, we think we're
supposed to read the way we're taught.
You have to let go of what theytaught you to be able to read
more quickly and efficiently.

(53:11):
'cause reading every worddid not help me at all.
Yeah, all this is making sense to me.
I took the CFP exam a couple of years agoand they have these case studies that's
like several paragraphs, and I was deathlyafraid of taking this timed exam because
I, knew I would get stuck on readingthe case studies for comprehension.
So I had to find ways around that.

(53:34):
And through the whole process ofgetting my CFP, I was an auditory
learner and I had to find ways tohave, someone talking about a topic
on YouTube or something like that.
But boy did I learn stuff about myself.
And you are like, setting off all kinds ofbells and whistles for my learning style.
Yeah, because I, I would tell kidsthe first thing I would do is put

(53:54):
'em the chalkboard, a a little boxand a check mark, and they, I said, I
just want to, this is my spell check.
And they would laugh and they'relike, I said, because I will
spell things on this board.
That will be correctly S spelledtoday and tomorrow or next
period will be spelled wrong.
My brain doesn't knowthe difference between
Hmm.
words.
I can't tell you ifthey're s spelled right.
I can tell you if they'res spelledwrong, but I can't always tell

(54:15):
you if you're s spelled right.
so my spell check is you canfeel free to come correct it.
If it's wrong, you can feel freeto challenge me when it's wrong.
That's my spell check.
You become my human spell check.
But I don't take offense to it.
But as long as you knowI'm extremely intelligent.
I have a master's degree from UCLA.
I'm not unintelligent.
I just have this way.
My brain works is different than yours.
And they accepted that.

(54:36):
And one kid wrote, came back whenhe was a college student, said,
Hey, I wrote my paper about youtelling me about you being dyslexic.
'cause I realized my disabilitydidn't define me and I decided I
was going to college and I got in.
'cause I wrote about that.
I was like, that's amazing.
That's great.
I mean, my educational style wasreading books and memorization.
I, pursued the traditional model.
I'm of that generation.

(54:57):
I'm 60 years old, and Istruggled with perfection.
I mean, in order to write a paper,I had to write it in my head first.
I couldn't just, go through streamof consciousness and flow and
recursively write and rewrite, andrewrite until the story really became.
Clear and it wasn't fuzzy anymore.
run from fear of failure.

(55:18):
Paulo Alo talks about there is onlyone thing that makes a dream impossible
to achieve the fear of failure.
And one of the things you dowith your author's coaching
is to help people with that.
Tell me about the fear of failureand how you do overcome it.
Yeah, I think that's a great question.
of what I do is I don't teachpeople how to write, right?

(55:39):
because I didn't even teach students.
They already know.
I just teach them to getbetter at what they're doing.
So one of the things I do to helppeople is realize that most of what you
fear has nothing to do with writing.
Your fear is what happenswhen you're done with writing.
we need to address that before you write.
My fear is what if no one likes this?
What if this is bad?

(56:01):
What if they laugh at me?
What if this isn't my best?
What if I'm wrong?
What if all these things, whatI spend a great deal of my time
helping people with, and I don't,want them to feel belittled by it.
I want them to feel aware andlike, well, I just need to
know how the marketing works.
I go, oh, are you afraid that would,if you write your book and it doesn't
get marketed well, it won't do well.

(56:22):
Yeah.
I said, okay.
At least we're honest, but we'renot marketing our book right now.
We're writing, authorship isabout owning the fact that you're
gonna be doing it terrified.
Can you accept that?
You wanna know, how do I getrid of all these feelings?
Those feelings are what motivate you.
Fear and feelings are thefuel you need to write.
'cause if you don't fear anything,you won't write anything worth saying.

(56:42):
You'll write what you think peoplewant to hear that's different.
you have to let go of the idea that youneed to remediate, fear to do the work.
Fear is what you should leaninto, not run from or get rid of.
Perfectionism is a way for us to avoid it.
If I just do it right,though, I won't get that.
Those feelings, I won't getridiculed, I won't get made fun of.
I won't look stupid.
I'm like, oh, then you'renot gonna be a writer.

(57:05):
Guess what?
That's all it is, because you're takingthe risk of putting yourself out there.
That's what I spend my time coachingpeople on the soul of being a human,
about being okay with who they are and notbeing afraid, like middle school, that if
I wear this outfit, I'll be made fun of.
It's just
Hmm.
version of what that happens.
And kids taught me this, right?
I, I didn't learn anything.
I didn't learn from a kid.

(57:26):
izo, would that be the samewith fiction and nonfiction?
Yes, I find fiction extremely rewarding,but infinitely harder because there's
some good part about nonfiction.
Is you're writing about what you know.
I
Right,
phi, so I can write about, Inever wrote a book about what
makes a good teacher great.
'cause I don't think Iknow a lot about that.

(57:47):
I think I'm learning about that,but I don't know a lot about that.
But you can write it, whatyou know, but infinitely more
difficult to write who you are.
Right.
right.
of ai.
I just interviewed a gentleman, hisname's Jeff, who was running for governor
of Utah during the pandemic and wrotea book recently called The Last Book,
written by Human Fascinating book.
But what was interesting about itwas that he was saying that, look,

(58:09):
if AI can start to do these things,writing what you know, right?
Think about it, writing whatyou know, then what you know
is not a commodity anymore.
So the only thing left to write aboutis who you are, which is uniquely
imprinted on who you are as a person.
There's no one like you.
You were just like yourfingerprint, right?
So write that.
But that with writing thatcomes this extreme amount

(58:29):
of fear of not being enough.
You're right, you're notenough for anyone else.
You're the only person here onthis planet with those things
and thoughts in your mind.
So you're right, you're nevergonna measure up to other
people and that's terrifying.
'cause they want to, Iwanna be sure it goes well.
I'm like, Ooh, I can't tell you.
That's what life is.
That's what life is about.
Not knowing.
That's where creativity comes from.
The unknown, not from knowing.

(58:51):
Right, right.
I definitely felt that, when I waswriting, I didn't quite know what I
was doing, but I felt that when I waswriting both books and one day Bill,
perhaps we will have a book aroundcatching up to fi and our unique
perspectives and things like that.
And I think there's alittle fear with that.
Like you said, you like to try to gofor perfection and all of that, and
Azul is telling us it's not perfection.

(59:12):
I love some of the stories that youtell, and I guess I see certain aspects
of the book being unique enough to whereit needs to be out in the atmosphere
and perfection isn't required.
Right.
Isol.
No.
No, because catching up defyis all about being imperfect.
Is it?
Not
Yeah, it is.
up, but the majority of us, when I walkedinto that room, I was so intimidated.

(59:35):
I was like, But I was like, oh, themajority of us are catching up Mo.
Yeah.
in there going, yeah, I did it.
I've been doing it since I'm 28.
I'm really ready.
we love people who have,we will cheer them on, but
that's not the majority of us.
Right.
Right.
We knew that.
we're catching up.
We knew that for a long time.
But Bill, you were the one thatstarted catchy, amplify, and we started
talking about it and we saw that wefilled a gap and our audience and

(59:58):
other late starters have have spoken
Yeah,
I mean, one of, one of the problems aboutcatching up to FI is that the people
that get it right are perfectionistabout their fi, get the numbers right.
And we talk about our generation being thesilent generation, the lost generation.
It's sort of the real down anddirty generation where life
is messy and I didn't get myfinances right at the beginning.

(01:00:21):
And then I do have a wake up moment,and that's when you become creative
and take back your life and takeback the control of your money so
that you can focus on other things.
Yeah, that's what I've learned fromcoaching is it's often the things
that you seem like not as important,not as essential, maybe a little more

(01:00:43):
tender that you deal with that arethe most useful because it's what the
rest of us are actually experiencing.
So the idea that catchingup to FI isn't a problem.
It actually is the way.
Yeah.
it's liberating.
It doesn't make me feel stupid.
It doesn't make me feel like,well, I should have known.
I mean, I did know, but I didn't do it.
I cashed out my retirement to buythat lake house and it burnt down.
Like whatever we did,this is where we're at.

(01:01:04):
I think it's a beautiful reason towrite a book even if it's on your heart,
because the majority of us are the oneswho aren't gonna be, be doing phi because
we missed, quote, missed the boat.
So I just wanna encourage youboth like I went to your talk.
I just felt so inspired, and I gottabe honest, I, I was like looking
around like someone's watching me.
I didn't go to a lot of those talks,but I went to yours because I really
thought there's something here missingat this conference that I could sense

(01:01:28):
you both carried with you, which is,
Hmm.
this is possible people, even if
Yeah.
and I'm like, oh, is it possible for me?
It was just the seed I needed.
So it's not, it's not asecond chapter of phi.
It is phi.
It is completely what PHIis about in my opinion.

(01:01:48):
Y Yeah.
And we've had a breakout at economyI think for all the last three years.
And I hope our audience, I hopeyour ears perked up because one
of the biggest benefits of a latestarter is that you have lived life.
You've got the stories.
How are you, memorializing that,how are you putting that out there

(01:02:09):
in the atmosphere for as yourlegacy, people coming behind you?
Or also, I learned this is a wayto organize your own thoughts
like your, the kids that were inyour class, take this stuff and.
Put it in a way that'sgonna tell a powerful story.
You're a storyteller too, so everyonein our audience, I'm sure they

(01:02:29):
have a book in them or some othertype of way to get their story out.
And it could be very therapeutic.
I know writing is very therapeutic for me.
Yeah.
vulnerability.
imbues trust and was an.
Unspoken audience of people out there, thereal citizen that didn't get their money

(01:02:49):
right, that had no voice and everybodyin in the PHI community got it right.
And like, who's talking to us?
How do I process my shame, remorse, regretand anger, but maybe I did get life right?
Maybe I inverted it and,embraced experiences first.
But I realized that I'vegotta be responsible as well.

(01:03:09):
And we hope we get people to wake up,in 35 40 before they're 55, 60, so that
at least they can experience that stagefour retirement where there's freedom.
And what we found is this hasresonated with a very large community.
They're not anonymous.
They come out of the closettoo and say, I got it wrong.

(01:03:31):
This is how I got it wrong.
I want to help you not makethe mistakes that I made.
And we're learning from each other.
Just like you learn from your students.
Yeah, I think it's great.
And you know what, it's really amazingfor those who are catching up the file.
You can be more creativethan traditional people
Right.
you don't have the luxury of time,but you have the luxury of creativity.

(01:03:56):
There is a beautiful woman who she, sheprobably had no problem her phi, but
she was worried that she couldn't retirebecause she was a, corporate attorney.
And being a corporate attorney, youhave a pretty substantial income and
you built your lifestyle around that.
But she had to keep working toensure that into her later life,
that she could have that lifestyle.
But she was a writer.
She was writing, writing undera pen name 'cause she was so

(01:04:17):
afraid her peers would find it.
And eventually her writing startedto catch on and she started to have
to be a persona for her pen name.
And started to sell reallygood books and she was starting
to make equal money to her.
As a lawyer, which was blowing her mind.
She's like, Azul, I can't believethis, but I'm afraid that I can.
I didn't need to coach her on writing.
What I needed to coach her on isletting go of the idea that she

(01:04:40):
should wait three years so that shecould retire and not be worried.
she got with her financial person, theywent over the numbers several time, and
she came back to me, she goes, yeah, Istill, he says this, but I don't know.
I'm like, you have an issuearound belief that we have to
Yeah.
We wrestled it away with someactivities and eventually she,
called me, said, I just retired.
It was three years ahead of schedule.

(01:05:01):
And she goes,
Yay.
got a Hallmark movie whowanted to buy my book.
so things shifted.
She got creative because she stuck withher creativity and things started to move.
She didn't get lockstep.
So her creativity gave her anopportunity that, that catching up
to FI can't allow because you'relike, I'm just gonna be creative.
I'm gonna start doing stuff on eBayfrom, sell stuff on garage sales.

(01:05:22):
And you start getting creative instead.
Well, I'll just 20 more yearsof this instead of you like.
I might do it in five or 10 becauseI'm being creative with my life, and
that's what I witnessed with her.
Her creativity met the gap.
was interesting that shejust let go of a belief.
She had stuck in her head.
Wow.
And it is so hard to step outta yourcomfort zone, but that's a great story.
I love it.

(01:05:42):
Yeah, and you don't have to necessarilyfinancially succeed with your creativity.
I mean, I'm not retiring onthis podcast, that's for sure.
Jackie thinks one day we might, butyou know, earn enough money to fuel
our creativity and help produce thepodcast and the joy in doing it.
The joy in reaching people and makinga difference in their lives where

(01:06:03):
we hear back from our audience andwe do want to hear back from you.
You know what?
You made a difference.
Thank you so much for teachingme this one thing, or thank you.
So much for helping me unlockmy financial creativity.
As I've said many times before, andI'll say it again, I have gotten more
joy and response and gratitude fromthe people that we've talked to and

(01:06:28):
interacted with on this podcast and inthe conferences in the last two years.
Then I've gotten really from beinga physician for 26 to 30 years.
Isn't that amazing?
An ER physician at that.
Saving lives?
that's, the thing that happened to me.
It was the reward I could feel betweenus, both the people that I was serving and

(01:06:49):
the people that were getting back from me.
It took a long time for that to happenin the classroom because I didn't
let go early enough of the control.
that feeling of givinghas reciprocated in me.
I've been doing my podcast eight yearsin October, and I've never read ads.
I didn't.
it any particular way.
'cause it was my gift to people and itwas the way I felt like I wanted to do it.

(01:07:11):
Like people thought, youneed to monetize this.
And it's like,
Right.
work with me, great, but I'm here to teachand explore and be curious with them.
And that, gift has produced morewealth than any efforting has ever.
Well, you talk about letting go of controland what was interesting in my field and
maybe, in a lot of fields, we approachedlife as a lone wolf, or at least in my

(01:07:33):
field . I have to be captain of the ship.
I have to be right.
The buck stops with me.
I became a better doctorwhen I relinquished control
and monitored the team.
And I've had nurses come to meand save patients' lives because
they noticed something thatI wasn't noticing or missing.
And I had the wherewithal to goexplore that and get to the answer, but

(01:07:57):
they tell me something's wrong here.
Just like your students said youdid, you misspelled that word.
Let me help you.
And as soon as you let your team helpyou, you're acknowledging their value.
And it's not just about,I'll take care of everything.
And processing youranxiety with perfection.
When you do, or when you areable to let go of control.
In my case, you're practicingthe art of medicine.

(01:08:19):
You're practicing theart of collaboration.
You don't have to have all the answers.
And it's okay to commend other peoplefor say, you know what, I would've missed
that you saved this patient's life.
And thank you.
Yeah.
That's amazing.
And what a testament to you as the doctor.
I mean, I've helped a lot ofdoctors over the years, and they're

(01:08:40):
not all like you that spirit.
But I, I, I think if you're listeningout there and you're thinking, maybe I
could write a book that's not, there'sno, maybe that maybe should be thrown out.
I'm telling you, if I cando it, anyone can do it.
If my kids can do it, anyone can do it.
It's just a matter of are youwilling And to put aside the idea

(01:09:00):
that fear will be the thing that'salways present to mitigate fear is
like saying that you're taking awaythe chance that life is giving you.
Fear is the thing that makesyou know you're alive, you're
on the edge of something great.
So I just wanna encourage peoplebecause, we were designed to
share something from within us.
I've seen so many people's lives change.
I didn't share this from theeconomy stage, but there's this

(01:09:23):
one gentleman that came to me.
would say he's a B-list celebrity, meaningyou probably would've recognized him
10 years ago, walking people, talkingpeople on the line at like American Idol.
Or he would've been somebody on a stagelike guy Ferretti or like he was a side,
you know, like a bee celebrity thatpeople would recognize but not know.
And he wanted to write a book.
And his book was about this incredible,terrible loss of a relationship where he

(01:09:45):
showed up for coffee with his wife and sheordered a latte and said, I'm leaving you,
I'm having someone else's baby goodbye.
All in one breath.
And he was like, devastated,as you can imagine.
And he left that table and got outa one way trip around the world.
'cause he was his mom's standbywho worked for the airlines, and
he just kept traveling from onecity to the next, trying to figure
out what he'd do with his life.
Well, when I found him, he thought hewanted to write about this standby life.

(01:10:08):
But what I helped him see is hewas stuck in a pattern of his life.
And what we discovered was that throughthe writing of this book that I kept
asking, why is he not mad at thiswoman that I would be incredibly,
, unhappy and mad at the situation.
And we discovered all along that hewasn't ever really in love with her.

(01:10:29):
He was just mad at theidea that he had failed.
And so once he figured thatout, he was able to move on
and got another relationship.
He produced.
That was the year he producedan Emmy-winning show.
He won his first Emmy.
He married a girl in his building whowas just, he, he just happened to be
a weather girl and the local news.
And they moved back to Hollywoodand his life kicked off again.
But writing did that for him.

(01:10:50):
Wow.
shifted his life for him becausehe was unaware of what was
inside of him unconsciously.
And as he wrote it, itbecame more conscious.
So I don't want people tothink you have to be perfect.
And that book he told me at the end,he goes, I don't wanna publish that.
I don't need people to know all that.
I thought I did 'causeI wanted revenge, but.
I found myself again.
That's all I was looking for.
Like, great.
And so he was grateful forthe trauma interesting.

(01:11:11):
In the, light of ai 'cause I'veread a book written by AI voice.
A
perspective and you talkabout this, so and what's.
Yeah.
I, I think

(01:11:42):
I don't have an English major,so I don't know, but voice
and tone is your perspective.
Like who are you on this page?
Why am I listening to you?
And if you can't share who youreally are, then me reading what
you have to say won't matter.
It's just words on a page.
There's this one girl, boy, shewrote some hard stuff, but man, talk

(01:12:03):
about a, a breaking open your heart.
As a 12-year-old writer,she moved me in such a way.
I could still remember her wordstoday, but she had gone through so
much loss and suffering that shehad the perspective that she could
stand firm and tell you the truth.
Whether you were 45, 50, liveda whole lifetime, you may not
have lived the life she had.
And because she was not fulfillinga requirement of a paper she

(01:12:26):
was writing, what was true?
changed me.
It shifted the people that readit, even kids, other kids are like,
whoa, whoa, you been through this?
You're like, yeah.
I'm like, wow.
That's what perspective is,is about who you really are.
When you don't worry that whatyou say will make cause a problem,

(01:12:46):
Yeah.
So,
things.
Yeah.
So you make such a convincingargument for the fact that
everyone has a book inside of them.
They have these stories to tell,they have a unique perspective.
Now, back early on, you were talkingabout some of the logistical part of it.
So if someone's, their ears are perkingup, they're like, I do have a book in me,

(01:13:09):
then they get to the next step to say,well, how do I actually put this together?
But you talked about, Amazon andCreate Space and how, how it's so easy
to actually get the book to publish.
Can you just give us a quick little,if someone's ready to do it, like
what would be some easy steps just toget it out there in the atmosphere?
Yeah.
Let's go over it.
So Amazon has
I.

(01:13:30):
Direct Publishing, which is allow youto publish books both digitally, like
on ebook or a print on demand book.
And if you're not aware of whata Print on demand book, it is a
book that's printed in real time.
So if you
Right,
Amazon, they print itand then ship it out.
They don't have a, warehouse full ofbooks, which is brilliant on their
part because the most expensive part ofAmazon is not fulfillment, it's storage.

(01:13:52):
right,
if they can print a book one at atime, you can get your book printed
and it doesn't cost you a dime,
right.
will let you put your, book, yourfiles up on Amazon and create an
account and hit publish all in thecourse of one day with no cost to you.
And someone could buy that book.
I have a friend, I help her to writea book 'cause it's her first written

(01:14:13):
book, but she, published 600 books.
gosh.
they're all books with no content.
So like coloring books, journals,
And she makes a hundredgrand a year on those things.
wow.
opportunity, right?
There's no wor
but she just puts 'em on there,hits publish, and then if they
do well, she puts ads to 'em.
If not, she moves on.
So it's not difficult.
The difficult part is the belief, but whatI put it out there w all those things.

(01:14:36):
So I would love to give itto your listeners a gif.
It's a secret podcast I give to my clientscalled Born to Write, scared to Start.
Oh
it's 11 episodes about me dealing withthese issues before you get to hit
publish, because I know it's the one thatwill keep them from publishing if they
don't get through these secret fears.
But publishing on Amazonis such an easy task with
yeah.
know, I get gladly givethat course away to anybody.

(01:14:58):
'cause that's not the hard part.
It's all the moments upuntil you hit publish.
That's difficult.
Okay.
I just didn't want thatpiece to hold anyone back.
But you just talked about it in lessthan a minute about how easy it is.
And even 10 years ago, my first book, itwas called Money Letters to My Daughter.
I did exactly that and Ifigured out how to do it.

(01:15:18):
So Yeah.
we definitely take you up on the offerto, give us that freebie for our audience
because we know that there is stories
that our audience holds thatshould be out in, in the
atmosphere for everyone to read.
And we may give them an opportunityto share their stories with

(01:15:38):
us and put it in our book.
Yeah.
And as a collaboration it's just reallycool to kind of impact and legacy you
can have with doing this because yousay in your book, because PHI and fear
of money have a lot to do with writingand fear of writing a book, and they're
like mirror images and you talk in yourbook even about learning to write a book.

(01:16:01):
Wealth isn't measured by the zerosin your spreadsheet or bank account.
It's measured by the impactthat you leave behind.
That's your quote.
That isn't Gandhi.
That isn't Maya Angelou.
That's so, We don't wanna be therichest person in the graveyard.
We do wanna leave it all on the table.
When I ran a marathon, Ijust didn't lop through it.

(01:16:22):
I was like, I actually trained.
I followed a process justlike you do with a book.
And when I ran the race, I said,this may be the only race I ever run.
Why not leave it all on the course?
And the result was incredible.
And the the same is true for thejourney to writing a book, the
journey to taking over your own money.
This is the Hero's journey, right?

(01:16:43):
Yeah, absolutely.
And I think people thinkthat somehow people like you,
like you're, you're special.
Yes, you are special.
Like everyone's special.
But the way you think of yourself,you're like, yeah, I, I, I'm just,
I'm kind of fumbling around here too.
Yeah.
That's what most people who are doingamazing things, they don't see it as
special as much as they're just fumblingaround as well, but trusting that they

(01:17:04):
were put on this earth for a reason.
And it isn't just be FIyou're put on this earth to do
something that only you can do.
And most people don't investigate.
Well, what is that thing?
Because good at lots of things.
Right?
Gay Hendricks in his book theBig Leap talks about you can be.
Excellent.
Something, right?

(01:17:24):
And that's the biggest challenge is youget stuck in your zone of excellence.
You're excellent, you're an excellentprincipal, as a well, excellent teacher.
You're a great professor.
I was a professor for eight years.
You're really good at this.
being excellent isn't the same as being inyour zone of genius, which is effortless.
It's just who you are.
most of us don't investigate.
Well, what is that though?
We leave that untold and I think weshould be spending our, our investment

(01:17:49):
of time in figuring that out.
That's why I talk about it inthe very first chapter of that
book is like, what's your gift?
And if you don't
Yeah.
spend all my time doing that.
Yeah.
all about finding, it'slike the runner's high.
It's about finding thatmoment like I'm in right now.
Talking with you, having thispodcast, I'm in a moment of flow
and it is about finding thosemoments where it is effortless.

(01:18:11):
You're kind of, I just watched themovie F1 with Brad Pitt, and you
would think, why does that come up?
Well, the purpose of the a movie is to,by the end, he finds his flow again, and
he's flying through a race course, andhe's in that place where he feels peace.
It's kinda like the art of scuba diving,where you're weightless and you're just

(01:18:32):
enjoying your surroundings and you're in aDA different phase of sensory deprivation.
There's many, many different ways to findflow, and we wanna encourage our audience
to find their gift, find their flow.
Use this podcast to invigorate yourself,to step outside of yourself like Azul.
And I wanna know Azul,what is the next step?

(01:18:54):
What is the next level of your genius?
Are there future plans?
Are there bigger ideas?
You know what the zone of genius is?
Any place you find presence,so where you find that you.
Get lost and it doesn'tfeel like efforting.
It feels like being, forme, it's storytelling.

(01:19:14):
IOO obviously on the page or onthe stage, I, I didn't learn it.
I didn't, no one taught me.
I mean, yes, I've taken work workshopsto get better at stage, presence
and things, but just something Ihave and I find myself incredibly in
presence when I'm telling stories.
So for me, I know that anywhere Ifind myself in complete blissfulness

(01:19:36):
of being, that's, that's their gift.
And if you don't, if you haven'texperienced when time disappears,
that's what you're looking for.
And if you can only do it for fiveminutes, then five minutes is enough.
And maybe someday I'll besix and seven and eight.
I didn't know I could make a living.
And I've been doing this10 years without a boss
Yeah.
didn't, I, I had no idea whatI was doing, and I still don't.

(01:19:57):
And that's not needing toknow what I'm doing isn't as
important as just being here
Right.
saying yes to the things that light me up.
So I, I think that's what it is.
Like that look for more stories fromme, whatever that is, that's why
I started wading into fiction wainto other mediums that use stories
because it's what's effortless for me.
So Zul, if someone needs to get incontact with you or find your work,

(01:20:21):
where is the best place for that?
I think if you go to a seonisanywhere on social, I, I have
such a unique name that you could
Okay.
But authors who lead.com, if youwant to learn about what I do for
coaching authors and I have a podcastof the same name where I've been
Yeah.
I like to know behind the scenes thesebig authors isn't really as hard but
authors who lead.com, if you wanna learn

(01:20:43):
Okay.
And we will drop that in the show notesalong with any other additional material
you'd like to share with our audience.
But thank you so much forjoining us today, bill.
what.
else you got before welet Azo get outta here.
No, I'm grateful for his time.
I'm very selfish in this podcastbecause I get to meet fantastic people.
And, we're glad to take the fantasticpeople that we meet and share them with

(01:21:07):
a different world than they may live in.
Who would think that being an authorand coaching authors has anything
to do with personal finance,but they're intimately related.
There's a lot more connection in thisworld than we allow ourselves to see.
Yeah.
Absolutely.
Yeah.
Well, thank you so much for joiningus Azul, and we will see you

(01:21:28):
next time on Catching up to FI.
Thank you so much.
You're welcome and thank you.

All Episodes

Tell Your Story With A Book, Here’s How | Azul Terronez | 164

Episode Transcript

Popular Podcasts

Stuff You Should Know

Dateline NBC

The Herd with Colin Cowherd

.css-15opob5{left:0;position:absolute;top:0.8rem;} All Episodes

.css-14f5ked{margin:0;word-break:break-word;display:-webkit-box;-webkit-box-orient:vertical;box-orient:vertical;-webkit-line-clamp:2;overflow:hidden;}Tell Your Story With A Book, Here’s How | Azul Terronez | 164