Why There Is a Clock in My Logo
My dad put a clock where the letter O should be. He did it in 2004, the year he started the business, the same year I turned eight and started hanging around the office without understanding a single thing happening in it. The clock sat in that logo for twenty years. Through one rebrand. Through a second one. Nobody ever asked him why it was there. Not a client. Not a teammate. Not me.
I was twenty nine the year I finally asked.
We were in the middle of changing everything, the name, the look, the way we talked about the work. I was the one pushing for it, because I wanted to build something that would still make sense to somebody forty years from now. And there was this clock I had looked at ten thousand times and never questioned. So I asked him. “What’s the clock about?”
He didn’t pause. “Time is the only asset you can’t buy more of.”
I sat there. Twenty years that sentence had been sitting inside our own logo and we had never once said it out loud to a client. I remember thinking, why have we not told anyone? We help families with taxes and bookkeeping and insurance, all the things busy people don’t want to do, and the entire time the real thing we were protecting was right there in the artwork. Time. Not the money. The money was always just the tool.
That was the moment the whole business changed for me. Not because we learned something new. Because we finally noticed what we already knew.
The Math I Had Been Doing Was the Wrong Math
For most of my twenties I was running one calculation. Get to a million dollars by thirty. That was the number. That was the proof I was going to use to tell myself I had made it.
I am thirty something now and I am not anywhere close to that number. What I have instead is four kids. So I tell people I became a millionaire in a different sense, and I mean it, but I want to be honest about how long it took me to actually believe it instead of just saying it.
The thing that broke the old math was a kid I don’t even know.
I was coming home from a trip, walking down the escalator at the airport, and my kids were at the bottom with a sign, jumping up and down, completely losing it because Dad was home. Everybody around me was watching. And a guy I had traveled with had his teenage son with him, and the kid looked at the whole scene and said, “If that’s not the richest guy I know, I don’t know what is.”
That high school kid ripped my heart out. Because in my head, in that exact moment, I was still going, I have to get a million dollars in the bank. Standing there with the actual evidence in front of me, the proof, and I was still chasing the bank balance. You don’t have it written on your forehead how much time you have left. There is no ticker tape counting it down. So it is the easiest thing in the world to get stuck in the next dollar, telling yourself it will make you happier than the last one did.
It won’t. I do this for a living and it still doesn’t for me. So I had to build a tool that forced me to choose on purpose, before the urge to spend showed up. Here is the tool.
Build the Scoreboard Before you Build the Goals
The first thing I make every client do, and the first thing I do on myself once a year, is not a budget. It is an honest look in the mirror.
Draw a circle, almost like a target, and split it into the parts of your life that actually matter. Spiritual. Health. Family. Career. Personal finances. Score each one from one to ten, where you actually are today, not where you wish you were or where you want the answer to land. The hardest part of the whole exercise is not lying to yourself.
When you connect the dots, a perfectly balanced person draws a perfect circle. Nobody draws a perfect circle. I draw a star. Right now I am strong on career and strong on faith, and my health is the short point on the star, which is exactly why I bought a sauna and have not even had the electrician hook it up yet. The star is the point. It shows you, in one picture, that you can be an A plus in your career and a one in your personal life at the same time, and that those are two completely different scores.
Because here is what I have watched happen to people who only chase the money score. They put a ten next to their net worth, and a one next to their family, and a zero next to their faith, and their fitness is in the trash. Good for you. I am not sure I would trade lives. Your wins are not worth what they are costing you.
Do the One Statement Nobody Wants to do
After the self assessment, do a net worth statement. Most people have never done one and it is the most clarifying hour you will spend all year.
On one side, list everything you own at what it is actually worth today. Cash. Investments. Your house at market value, not the dream number you would sell it for. Your cars at Kelley Blue Book, not what you paid. If you own a business, what could you sell it for tomorrow.
On the other side, list everything you owe to other people. Credit cards. Tax liabilities. The mortgage. The car notes. The student loans. Every dollar that belongs to somebody else.
Assets minus liabilities. That number is your net worth, and it is a scoreboard. I had a year where I crossed a million in assets and felt great about it until I did this exact statement and remembered I owed almost all of it to other people. A million in assets and a hundred grand to my name. On paper I looked rich. In reality I owed everybody else on it.
You do this every year, and the only goal is to be in better shape than the year before. You will be shocked how often you went backward without noticing, because you picked up a car note in March and over leveraged the house in July and never did the math until the next December.
Give Every Dollar a Job Before Life Gives it One
This is where the budget finally comes in, and the trick is to do it backward. Most people budget what is left. Instead, decide what your dollars are for first.
I keep what I call a master dream list. I want to own, I want to do, I want to be, I want to go, I want to achieve. Then I attach timeframes, one year, three years, seven years. My wife and I each fill ours out separately, because the thing you never find out by just living next to someone is what they actually want. We compare them and we find the common ground, and that combined list becomes the source of truth.
Then, when the urge hits, and it always hits, the pool we want to put in now, the upgrade, the thing, we go back to the list and ask two questions. Does doing this sooner cost us more later. And is this even on the list we agreed to. If a goldfish gets a bigger bowl it grows to fill the bigger bowl, and your spending does the exact same thing the second your income goes up. The list is the thing that stops the bowl from growing on autopilot.
Money, it turns out, is the easy part. Once you have a plan, money is the most controllable thing in your life. You can put it in treasuries and make five percent without lifting a finger. You cannot do that with your health, or your marriage, or your faith. I could guarantee you would grow five percent in the gym too, but only if you actually show up every day. You don’t get to do a quick transfer and let it ride. You have to make the daily deposit. That is the part nobody automates for you.
What I am Actually Chasing Now
For years I wrote big, hungry goals in that journal. I found an old one recently from five years ago, back when my house payment was a fraction of what it is now and I made a fraction of what I make now. I had written, “I am too busy, I don’t make enough money, I can barely pay my bills.” Same worries I still catch myself having today, except now the numbers are bigger and the worry is identical. I hit the financial goal I was chasing and the chasing did not stop on its own.
So this year, at the top of my own list, where I used to write the next big number, I wrote one word. Peace. I do not think I will wake up one morning and have it, the same way I do not think you wake up one morning a finished person. It is a pursuit. But I have learned that if I chase peace instead of the next dollar, and if I make the daily deposits into the people in front of me, the rest tends to follow.
The clock was right the whole time. Time is the only asset you cannot buy more of. The least we can do is decide on purpose where it goes.
#createyourart
If this resonated, you can hear more conversations like this every week on the Create Your Art Podcast. Listen here or follow along at 1898creative.com.
Full Transcript:
Sean: Time. You don’t really realize it’s fleeting until it’s gone. You don’t have it written on your forehead how much time you’ve got left. There’s no ticker tape for that. Goals change, plans change, life changes. I thought I’d be a millionaire by 30. I’m not anywhere close. I had four kids instead, so I’m a millionaire in a different sense. Money is a resource. Time is a resource. How do we use those so that at the end of our lives, we may not be millionaires even then, and we can still say, that was a great life.
Darren: Sean, thank you so much for taking the time to be here with us today, man.
Sean: Thanks, I appreciate it.
Darren: You and I have gotten to know each other over the last couple of months as we’ve been working on the new iteration of your podcast. But something I want to start with today is this. You, at Performance Financial, and the whole crew, you, your dad, everybody there, you talk a lot about investing your time wisely. That’s actually the name of the podcast. That’s what you guys believe in. I’d love to hear a little bit of that story, why it’s something you’re so passionate about. It’s not just investing your finances, though that’s part of it. It’s investing your time, and what that looks like. Can you paint that picture for me and break it down?
Sean: Yeah. The biggest thing to start with is that it hasn’t always been the mantra. When I first got into the business (my dad’s been doing this since 2004), I tell the story about the clock and the logo on my podcast. I learned it when I was eight years old in 2004, but I didn’t really realize it until I was 29. When it comes to time, you don’t realize it’s fleeting until it’s gone.
So, similar to you, four kids, busy professional, I love my wife, I try to be as involved as I can. I coached high school sports for a long time. What I realized I was lacking in my own life was that time piece. Last year, when I was soul searching, I’d been looking at jumping back into the podcast world for a while. I was thinking about a dad podcast. I had one I was going to do called the Average Christian Podcast. I just want to be a seven out of ten Christian. That’s what I really want to be. You’ve got your ten out of tens, the guys in the front row. I don’t think I’m there yet, but hopefully someday. I definitely don’t want to be a zero. But if I could be 70 percent, faithfully follow Christ (that’s the number one goal) and still have a couple beers on Saturday night.
Darren: There you go.
Sean: I was playing with all these different ideas and I couldn’t find the time to put into really finding what made the most sense. So as we went through this big brand change last year, I finally asked my dad the question about the clock and the logo. Before that, our mantra was “helping families find financial freedom.” Easy to say. We got put in this position where I asked him, and he goes, “Well, time is the only asset you can’t buy more of.” In that very moment, as a dad of four kids, as somebody who had just stepped away from coaching wrestling, as somebody who didn’t feel like I could be enough at work or at home, light bulb. So between me and ChatGPT and my buddy TR, we landed on “invest your time wisely.” It just fit so well. It’s on the shirt. It’s the mantra we can all get behind.
In our office, we do tax, accounting, bookkeeping, insurance, all the things busy people don’t want to do. Our number one job is to take pressure off you. Take one thing off your financial plate, off your world plate. And now we’ve turned it into this bigger thing of, how do you invest your time wisely, not only with your finances, but with your family, your church, your community? The long story short is, while I paint this picture, it’s not Bob Ross over an hour. It’s the Sistine Chapel. It took 30 years of life for me to find that I truly didn’t have time, even though on a large scale, if I live to be 100, I’m very early in the game.
I think by learning this and preaching it to clients, they learn, one, that they’re not alone. Whether you’re a busy entrepreneur or a busy mom or a busy dad, it’s a lonely feeling. But there are so many other people who can take these lessons and invest their time where they think it’s best spent, and get the best ROI, and it’s not always financial.
Darren: I love that, because often when you’re in the finance world, you can easily go, “We’ve got to figure out how to make you more money, how to save you more money,” and all of that becomes the goal. That’s not bad. Obviously that’s what you guys do. But there’s this underlying thing that’s deeper, that’s richer, that says, hey, your time is where it’s at. If we can help you get the financial side handled, that’ll actually give you more time with your family, your friends, your community. That’s why I wanted to talk with you about this, because around here we believe you are an artist, even though you’re in the financial field. When you help people invest their time, it can literally change the world. That’s such a beautiful thing.
So take me back. You alluded to it, but I’d love for you to tell the story again here, of asking your dad, “Why is there a clock in our logo?” That’s a random thing to have in a financial logo. Take me back to that moment when you started to unpack this “invest your time wisely” idea.
Sean: Yeah. It was either last year or the year before. I was going through the rebrand anyway. In 2004, when he started his first business, he put a clock as the “O” in Performance. He’s used it consistently. We changed it a little when we rebranded, made it more of a modern widget clock. And as somebody thinking 20, 30, 40 years down the line, I asked, do I want to create a lasting brand that makes sense to other people? One of the things nobody had ever asked is, why is there a clock in the logo? Why does this matter? Even me. So I finally said, “Hey, what’s the clock all about?” And he goes, “Well, time’s the only asset you can’t buy more of.”
In that moment I go, “Why have we not told anyone?” He just dropped that truth bomb. We’d never really used it in conversation. We could build our entire business around it. It’s a differentiator from a Charles Schwab, an Edward Jones, all those guys. We have this family business, this story. I called the episode with my dad “The 20 Year Overnight Success.” By the time we were done, I realized it was a 40 year journey. So I started to slow down and say, all right, I’m busy, other people are busy, and the bigger the client I work with, the more I realize how constrained they are on time. It fit perfectly into where we wanted to lead people. Our job is to be a guide on your financial journey. If we can take that constraint of time and use it as the foundation of our conversations, even internally with our teammates, now you’ve created brand value and life lessons. That conversation has now stemmed into a small book that’s still in editing, the podcast that’s coming out, the whole brand update, and truly something I feel passionate about pouring myself into for the next 20, 30 years.
Darren: I love that. Seeing it beyond just now, saying, hey, there’s life in 20 years, life in 40 years that we can invest in now, that changes not only your trajectory but your kids’ and your clients’. That’s super cool. So this is something you embed into the work you do with your clients. Is there a story that stands out? A client you walked some of this through with that’s been a cool success story?
Sean: The interesting thing about really turning this on in 2026 is that I’m in pursuit of that goal right now. I could look back at the last ten years and show you client success stories that translate to time. But right now I’m really trying to focus on those conversations. I’ve got a young guy I’m working with, runs a large scale construction company, about my age. He does all his own payables, all his own receivables, all his own payroll, and at the same time he does all the work in the field. You can always buy equipment to lower your tax bill. But you can also start to look at the pieces that go further and longer. So I’m changing the conversation to, where do you want to be? Especially with business owner clients, because so many of them are just stuck in the job.
How do you take some of these extra resources and save them, not as a rainy day fund, but toward, what is your ideal life in 20 years? Where do you want to see your kids? Where do you want the compounding to hit, whether it’s in dollars or in lifestyle? What I’m trying to do with him is relieve as much pressure off his seven day a week schedule, give him a more normal life, whether he likes it or not. There are a lot of pain points when you’re used to that control and there’s always work to be done. So it’s an active pursuit of helping people. I’m starting to feel the effects as a friend, those little moments where you reduce someone’s stress and friction so they can be a better father, a better husband. Those little compounding pieces do him a lot more good. The financial aspect I can take off his plate pretty quick, hand it to teammates, get him on a good plan. As long as we stick to it long enough, we can hit those goals. It’s fun, because I’m starting to see a bigger impact than just trying to save somebody dollars.
Darren: In the financial world, if I came to you, I’m thinking about all the ways you can save me on taxes, or do this or that. My thinking is limited. Then I sit across the table from you and you go, “Where do you want to go?” and you start to put a plan in place. Now all of a sudden I’m thinking bigger, thinking differently, thinking in ways I wasn’t 20 minutes before I walked into your office. That’s what I love. All of us are artists in our own way. When you change the way someone sees their finances, that’s a life changing creative experience for them. That’s what being an artist is all about. I know people push back, “I’m not an artist, I’m not creative like that.” No, but when you help people in that way, that is a life changing creative experience. How does that sit with you when I say that?
Sean: It feels like imposter syndrome most of the time. Recording a podcast in a basement feels like imposter syndrome, like, what do you have to say? But I think it means we’re headed the right direction. If you’ve ever invested in any market and you’re dollar cost averaging, 50 bucks a month, like my dad said the other day, the first 100,000 is the hardest to get. After that, the numbers double a lot quicker. It’s easier to go from one to two, two to four, four to eight. Once you’re in the game of doubles. But it’s the daily deposits that get you there. You have to have that strong foundation at the beginning. Now that I feel 100 percent in, I like to show up to work every day. I actually don’t like not working, which is a tough piece for me, because I always think there’s more I can do. As long as we keep refining the process, I hope that at the end of my life you can see a lot of people do amazing things. It’s not about me. The market’s going to be the market. Insurance is insurance. It’s just, how many lives can we change along the way?
Darren: Let me ask you some practicals. Somebody listening, and maybe I’m asking for myself too, let’s talk about somebody who’s been putting in the work, in a job or in a business they’re building. Finances are decent, could always be better, but they’re going, “I need to think differently about this.” What are some practical things they could do today? Give us three baby steps. Not to put us in the Dave Ramsey bucket, but you know what I’m saying. What should I be thinking about that maybe I’m not right now?
Sean: The number one thing, and I’ll steal this from Dave Ramsey, is have a budget. I say that because it’s easy to say and hard to do. It’s really easy to have a budget and not follow it. I have a home budget, a work budget, I know my numbers, and they don’t always match. You’re going to have incidentals, things that pop up. If you’re a W-2 employee, you have a pretty good idea what you’ll make each month. You can back into the math: here are our fixed expenses, here are the variables.
What I always like to do is the goal sheet. The goal sheet is: I want to own, I want to do, I want to be, I want to learn, I want to achieve. At the top, when you say “I want to own,” mine was a sauna, my wife’s was a pool. Then you attach timeframes.
Darren: It’s funny you said sauna, because Asana is the task management software I use, so I was very confused for a second. “Oh, you’re just going to own it. Okay.” Anyway.
Sean: By putting those bigger things down, the things that don’t fit your traditional budget, you can say, now I’m going to put X amount into my sauna fund. The pool’s a ten year plan. We want to pay cash, I don’t want to go into debt. Based on those things, I have these little life happiness moments I’m reaching toward. My dollars have jobs. If I can give every dollar a job, that can be that investment. Most people, we live in a fishbowl. If you give a goldfish a bowl, it grows to the size of the bowl. Give it a bigger tank, it grows to the bigger tank. So we run into lifestyle inflation. As you make more, you do more and spend more. It’s a natural evolution, and even as somebody in the industry, it’s incredibly hard not to do. As your family grows, you do need a bigger house, the minivan, these things. Do you need a brand new this, a brand new that? The answer is usually no. But I have a brand new minivan and we built a house. We did those things. They cost us. We don’t go on a lot of vacations. We really enjoy our home.
So that budget can’t just be a document on your notes that you send to your wife when you’re mad. You can’t have one person on a budget and one person who’s not. You have to do it together. When I do the master dream list (I want to own, go, do, be, achieve), I give every client, male and female, usually married couples, one each, and I keep one in the middle. I say, go fill these out separately. What we don’t realize is what our spouse wants. It’s not that we don’t ask, it’s that we’re just living. When you’re living, you’re just doing, and when you’re doing, you’re not thinking. So I have them fill it out separately and then compare. “Oh, I didn’t know you wanted to go to Italy.” Mine was Massachusetts. Let’s find common ground, and then we’ll put this as our ten year, our five year. I like to work in buckets: one, three, seven. These are my one year goals, my three year goals, my seven year goals. You make them achievable and build plans around them. Together you have the master document, the source of truth. When somebody has an urge, because that’s what we have as human beings, when we have an urge to put the pool in now, we go back to the document and ask, is this going to cost us more by doing it sooner, and is this even on the list, because this is what we agreed on.
Darren: That’s so good.
Sean: And we still do it every year, because goals change, plans change, life changes. Doing it annually lets you have these big highlight things you really want, and you can back into the math of what it takes to get there. Some people’s biggest goal is to retire at 50. I don’t know what I’d do if I was done working at 50.
Darren: I wouldn’t either.
Sean: But that means you’ve got to shell money to the side for the next X years to hit it. Which means you’re not doing the pool now, because that’s going to cost you 100,000 out of the retirement you need if you want to be done at 50. So, have realistic goals, a plan to get there, and live on that budget. These aren’t things I’m even perfect at. These are things I spew to clients all the time. It’s really hard to practice what you preach. But at a foundational level, it sets the stage for everything else. And I personally don’t like consumer debt at all. Same idea my dad talked about: you’re robbing your future self today. The things you want now versus the things you want most.
Darren: I love that, because what I hear you saying is, it’s not about being perfect. It’s about having a plan and adjusting. You pivot when the pivots make sense. Having a plan gives you the direction to make the small steps. A lot of us live, and I’ve done this, where you kind of just hope and pray secretly in the back of your mind that you’ll get where you want to go. That’s not going to get you there. You have to have a goal, write it down, put it on paper on purpose.
Sponsor break
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Darren: I’d love for you to dig deeper into that goal sheet, because that’s something I’ve heard you guys talk about a lot in the last couple of months. If somebody was going to set this up for themselves right now, walk us through that goal sheet, because I think it could change somebody’s life today.
Sean: Yeah. So this goal packet is available on our website for download.
Darren: What’s the website? Where can they download it?
Sean: Performance Financial. You should be able to find it on a blog I wrote back in 2021.
Darren: Don’t make me search for it, Sean, come on.
Sean: The blog post is called “Plans Are in Pencil, Goals Are in Ink.” There’s a download link that kicks you straight to it. It’s a roughly 30 page document. The sheet I usually give out is the Master Dream List, a single piece of paper within the whole packet. The nice thing is, when my dad first started, he was in the life insurance industry, so it’s built like a big business plan packet. How do I build a business plan as a single guy going out and selling a commissionable product? I do that for a living, so I like it, but we make our whole staff use it because it has tidbits, some that pertain to you and some that don’t. Once a year you pull out this 30 page packet. It talks you through building a business plan. If you’re not a business owner, pivot it. It’s a life plan, same idea. There are some Theodore Roosevelt quotes in there, as there should be.
The first thing you do is a self assessment, an analysis of thyself. It’s the hardest part. Anyone who’s done a personality test online knows you’re trying to stay true to yourself without answering toward the question. It’s a circle, almost like a target, and it’s got spiritual, health, income, family, all these different pieces. You build it based on the scores you fill out.
Darren: And this is an assessment of where you’re at currently?
Sean: Correct. How good am I at working out? How’s my nutrition? Am I dressing like the best version of myself, or like a slob? Am I spending enough time with my family? Am I present in that moment with my family? Am I going to church? Am I being more mindful and spiritual? Am I reading daily? It takes this big scope, the answers are one to ten, and you draw the circle. The ideal, perfectly balanced person is a perfect circle. Me, I’m built like a star. I’m great at career, right now I’m huge into faith, I’m lacking on personal health, which is why I bought a sauna, I think that’s going to fix it.
Darren: Just sweat it out.
Sean: Get my demons out. Then you go to the other things. How are we doing on personal finances? Because there’s a difference between career and finances. I can be an A-plus in my career and a one in my personal finances because I’m overspending. So you look at your star and make decisions based on where you want to be. After the personal assessment, they make you do a net worth statement. Actually first an income statement, which is pretty much a budget: how much do I make, how much do I spend, what’s my excess, where can I put it. Then the net worth statement. Have you ever done a net worth statement?
Darren: I have not done a net worth statement.
Sean: Do one today. I’ll send you the link. A net worth statement is your assets minus your liabilities. On the left, you put how much cash you have, how much is invested, what your house is worth. Use market information, don’t use what you think you’d sell it for. What are your cars worth, not what you owe on them. Go on Kelley Blue Book. If it’s worth 2,500, it’s worth 2,500. Go down all your assets. If you’ve got businesses or business assets, what could you sell them for tomorrow? On the other side, you put all the money you owe to other people: credit cards, tax liabilities, what you owe on your house, your cars, student loans, anything you owe to somebody else. Assets minus liabilities equals net worth. So if my assets are a million bucks, but I owe 900,000, my net worth is only 100 grand. On paper I can say, “Well, I’ve got a million in assets.” The only problem is I owe everybody else on them.
Darren: That’s a very eye opening experience. You go, “Oh crap, I thought I was doing good.”
Sean: My young people are surprised when it’s negative. Student loan debt, the only asset is a car, but you owe more on it than you thought. To me, it’s a scoreboard. It’s an annual thing. The goal is to do better financially than the year before. You don’t realize you picked up another car note or over leveraged a house until you do the math next year and go, “Well, we were at 250 last year, we’re at 249 this year.” That’s the wrong direction. Could be the market, the market could be down that year. But having a scoreboard you can conceptualize matters.
The goal is not to be a millionaire. I tell people that all the time. I thought I’d be a millionaire by 30. Not anywhere close. Had four kids instead, so I’m a millionaire in a different sense. I’m blessed. I was coming home from a trip, coming down the escalator, and my kids were there to greet me at the bottom. They had a sign, they were jumping up and down, they were so thrilled. Everybody around me was like, “Oh, who’s this?” And a guy who was on the trip with me, his son said, “Dude, if that’s not the richest guy I know, I don’t know what is.” It hit me. This high school kid just ripped my heart out. Because I’m over here going, “I’ve got to get a million dollars in the bank.” Maybe I already do, I don’t know, it’s just a different bank. It’s like time. You don’t have on your forehead how much time you’ve got left. There’s no ticker tape for that. We had a guest pastor who said, “Live like you’ll die tomorrow, and die like you’ll live forever.” But society’s not built that way. So it’s easy to get stuck in the minutia of the game. It turns into, the next dollar is going to make me happier than the last dollar. When realistically, we’re just trying to use the resource in front of us. Money is a resource, time is a resource. How do we use those to compound so that at the end of our lives, we may not be millionaires even then, and say, that was a great life. I did what I was put on this earth to do.
These are financial tools, but that self assessment is huge. If you’ve got a million bucks on your net worth statement and you put that as a ten, but your family life’s a one and your spiritual life’s a zero and your fitness is in the trash, good for you. I’m not sure I’d trade lives. Your wins aren’t worth what they’re costing you.
Darren: Everybody, from a financial conversation, says, “I need more, I need more.” But when you do the assessment the way you laid it out, that opens your eyes to, “Oh, I’m a one there, I’ve got to work on that.” Which might mean I take my eye off the financial dollar for a minute so I can bring this up.
Sean: Well, it’s harder to control. Once you get to a certain level of finance, money is the easiest thing in the world to control. You can place it where you want. You can put it in treasuries and make 5 percent guaranteed. I can guarantee you’ll grow 5 percent in the gym if you went every single day. But you didn’t just do a quick transfer and let it ride. You’ve got to show up. As I’ve gotten older, those daily deposit pieces are still incredibly difficult. My health is probably my weakest piece.
Darren: You’ve got a sauna though, so you’re good.
Sean: Well, it’s not set up. I’ve got to get an electrician out. I looked at it for a while, knew what I wanted, pulled the trigger thinking it would just make me healthier. But you still have to do the other steps. It’s not set it and forget it. As you know, faith wise, it’s a daily deposit. If you only show up on Sundays, it doesn’t fill your cup the way it needs to. If you’re serving other people, leading with that mentality, that’s where the big shift happens.
Darren: Do you feel there’s one on the list that, if you focus on it, helps the other numbers grow as well?
Sean: Spirituality, 100 percent. And health, if I’m being honest, because an object in motion tends to stay in motion. If you can do those two things, which take the most mental and physical energy, to get out of bed and go do the hard thing, it trickles into the rest of your life so much easier. If you just do the money and the career and lack the other things, you’re doing it for pointless reasons. But if you focus on the two bigger pieces, the mind and the body, those lead to increased performance everywhere else.
Darren: On the faith side, there’s the verse about being transformed by the renewing of your mind. God begins to move in your mind in ways you don’t see all the time. It’s that slow change. He changes you by changing the way you think, the way you see the world, the way you show up for your family, your friends, your community. Over time, those daily deposits change you, and the other numbers grow naturally. I love that, because it goes back to the fact that yes, you’re a financial organization trying to help people on that side, but ultimately you’re helping them pursue the greater piece. It’s not just the dollar. It’s so much more.
So you said it’s a 30 page document, and you’ve scratched the surface. If they head over, where is it?
Sean: Performance Financial. Go to the blog post, “Plans Are in Pencil, Goals Are in Ink.” There’s a download link. It doesn’t matter if you’ve never done one, start one tomorrow. If you do do one, old school, put it on your bathroom mirror. We hang ours up. I’ve got a buddy who laminated his. Another buddy and his wife framed it and keep it in their kitchen.
Darren: That’s so cool.
Sean: It’s easy to put it back in the drawer and it’s gone. I keep my personal ones hanging behind me at the office. Seeing your goals, that self reminder, is a huge piece. But going through the whole exercise, I’ve done it for seven years, and I’ve changed. I used to have all these big dreams that were almost idolatry. Now I just put “peace.” I want to find contentment, and it’s a very hard thing to find, especially when you work in a world full of money.
Darren: Talk to me more about that. Peace. What does that mean?
Sean: In 2020 or 2021, I found an old notebook, a daily journal. I found it the other day. At the time, my house payment was a quarter, if not an eighth, of what it is now. My income was much less. But I’d written down, “I’m too busy. I don’t make enough money. I can barely pay my bills.” I wrote these stressful things back then, the same worries I still have today, this survivor mentality. If I could go back and tell that kid, “This is where you got to.” And it’s only been five years. At the same time, it was a gratitude journal. I’d write what I was grateful for and then do a reflection, and my reflections weren’t always grateful.
Darren: Poor kids, man. That’s what happens.
Sean: Now that I’m older, I’m still chasing the same thing I wanted when I was young. Even though I reached the financial goal I was aiming for, I’m still searching for that gratitude and contentment piece. How can I just be happy with what I have? As a capitalistic society, and as human beings built to ever evolve and ever grow, fighting that natural urge is tough, especially when you’re a driven entrepreneur. So I’ve turned my leading indicators into the lagging indicator. Where I’m at now is, how do I impact as many people as possible? I’ll always get what I need if I can help enough people. You can’t get more than you give. If I can make daily deposits into human beings, relationships, and steward the pieces I’ve been blessed with, I think I’ll be fine. That’s where I think I’ll find peace. But it’s in the pursuit of peace that’s the hard part. I don’t think peace is achieved with four kids, peace in that sense. There’s peace and quiet, you might get a piece of quiet when you’re on your lawnmower for two hours. My goals now are much more broad. I’m using peace as my number one. I don’t want any more auto debt, because I just want the peace of mind that it’s not something I have to worry about. I’m not one who says pay your house off like Dave Ramsey, his is Financial Peace University, that’s his mantra. I’m okay sacrificing long term investment status to reduce overall risk today if it lifts some of those heavy weights. When I did my financial assessment this year, I was over a million, but I still owed a lot of money. You don’t realize it until you do it. My net worth is up, and there’s baggage that comes with that. And then you take that baggage to other conversations, and my whole job is to tell people not to do this.
Darren: Do you feel peace is something you’ll wake up one day and go, “All right, I did it”? Or is it a pursuit?
Sean: A pursuit of. Same thing with faith. I don’t think you wake up one day as the ten out of ten Christian. I don’t think you ever are. Other people may think you’re a ten out of ten, but you’re going, “You don’t know what’s in my mind, you don’t know what’s in my heart.” It’s the sermon from last week, “the not enough.” What’s holding you back? I wrote down (you’re not supposed to share these, but I’m telling all seven people who have watched this), I wrote down “balance.” I drew a little judicial scale and put work and life on it. What I’ve learned is the word is integration. I just have to combine the two, because in my head, one takes from the other. So instead I’ve integrated it all. If you call me and it’s a work call, my kids are in the back seat. It is what it is. COVID helped, people are a lot more lax about it now. So that’s where I’m at. I integrate the two and do the best I can. I don’t think I’ll wake up with peace, but I do know that if I chase peace, the rest will follow.
Darren: I love that you wrote that down, because it becomes so much bigger. Early on it was probably the cars, the house, the stuff. Now it’s, no, there’s something richer here I can pursue, and peace is one of those. That might mean some things come off the list, but the richness of life comes up, even if it’s not, “Oh, I get to live in that house or drive that car.” So cool. I want to pivot to something you said in passing the other day. Correct me if I’ve got this wrong. A couple of years back you had “have a podcast” on your goal sheet. It was on there for a couple of years. You started one, then life got busy, and it fell off. Now it’s back on the goal sheet, and recently you’ve stepped into doing it. You spoke of impact earlier. Talk to me about that two year gap of, “I was doing a podcast, no I’m not, and I want to.” What were you thinking and feeling in that time of staying silent and not using your voice to impact the people you want to impact?
Sean: From 2020 to 2023, I ran a pretty consistent local, hyper niche small business podcast. Part of that was a 22 year old kid trying to get out into the community. It’s easier for people to talk to you if you invite them on a show, even if nobody watches it. I was never trying to be salesy. What I learned I was good at was communication and connection. In the business world I turned into a huge “I’ve got a guy for that” connector. The podcast became my first version of service, give before you get. I did that for a long time, and honestly I think I got jaded for not getting. Life went from two to three kids, we lived in a camper while building a house. Everything got constrained around the one side. I was getting busier at work, hiring new people. That priority kept falling because I wasn’t doing it for the right reasons.
I knew I wanted to get back into it, because when I wrote that gratitude journal, one of the things I wrote down was my ideal day, my perfect day. And it was pretty much the exact same day I already worked. Every Friday I’d have a podcast in the morning or grab a coffee with somebody, meet someone, have a quick lunch. None of it had work in it. The only difference between the Friday I actually worked and the day I wrote in my journal was maybe a mountain view. Gratitude wise, I was already living the life I wanted to live, in that moment when I was serving others. I found that to be the real inspiration as we went through the brand change, as I went through my faith journey, as I got baptized last year. Now there’s this evangelical side of me, back to the hands and feet, how can I impact people?
At the same time I ran into imposter syndrome the entire time. Who am I, with all these big guys like Alex Hormozi out there? If I start posting this, what are people going to think? It’s been so delayed, I can’t just start it back up, then I’m a quitter again. What if I only do one? I booked a space twice. It cost me money, because I thought money was the driver of my own intention. I rented that space for a year and used it for maybe two lunches. All my equipment’s set up in there.
Darren: Good lunches?
Sean: They were fine lunches. I carried that, because that’s part of the goal list, you carry forward what you don’t achieve. Those were conscious decisions to say, I still want to do this. So now, with the brand change, with where my head’s at, with what I really want to do for other people, the podcast makes the most sense to get back into. I knew I needed to reduce friction. Before, I self edited, self did everything, booked all my own people. As a dad of four with ten employees, I needed to reduce as much friction as possible. So I got hooked up with you guys, and I looked at it and went, this is the easiest way for me to just spend money and then have to go do it, because all the other friction points are taken away. No editing, no recording, no setup, no tear down. And honestly, the process helped me redefine what the podcast was about. We did the Impact90 program. It helped me realign the whole time. You could go through my ChatGPT history of me just trying to figure out how to lay this out on my own. But the confidence of the proof of concept, hearing from you and from TR, “I think this is going to work.” I’m not in it for eyeballs. I’m in it for the small stuff. We watched The Chosen last night. There’s a scene where Jesus gives a sermon and says, what do you do if you lose a sheep? You go get the sheep. What about the other 99? They’re not lost. You keep them and go grab that extra one. So for me now it’s not about the hundred or the 99, it’s about the one. What small impact can I make that leads toward some sort of truth, some sort of growth? If there are positive effects for us outside of that, fine. But that’s not the point anymore.
Darren: What I hear you saying is, it’s like on your goal sheet where you removed the stuff and put peace and those things. It sounds like that’s happening here. The impact you can make in small increments is even more important. Not that you don’t pay attention to the business side, but the impact is the bottom line. You can meet people where they’re at, walk them through these goal sheets, and make an impact on somebody who might never spend a dollar with you. But you know you’re doing what you’re supposed to be doing. And Sean, let me take a second to say, in the last few months of getting to know you and hearing these stories, you are making impact, even on my own life. I’m looking at this thing going, “I’ve got to do that tonight.” When the kids go down, we’re pulling this out and walking through it, because it will make my life better. And I know anybody who listens today and takes action on this, their life will be better too. So you are doing those things and making an impact. It’s been so cool over the last couple of months to see you show up and start sharing your voice again. At the time of this recording, we recorded with your dad this week on episodes three and four. It’s so cool to see the legacy you have with your dad, and the mantle you’re taking on now, saying, “I’m going to step into this.” You’re going to make that impact, because you’re investing in it, putting it on paper, and walking it through. It’s going to be really cool to see in three, five, ten, twelve months from now who’s being impacted by that. I encourage you, man. You’re an artist, and you’re doing the artist’s work, as weird as that probably feels in the financial world. You’re doing awesome stuff. Keep sharing your voice.
One challenge I want to give our listeners: I think everybody, including myself, needs to go to Performance Financial, find the blog post “Plans Are in Pencil, Goals Are in Ink,” and download the goal sheet. We’ll put it in the show notes for easy access. If our listeners just do that one thing, I think it’ll be a game changer. Where can they find you on the socials?
Sean: The team is at Performance Financial on Facebook and Instagram, and Performance Financial dot com is the website. If you want to find me specifically, honestly the best way is LinkedIn, Sean Kirby. It’s the most professional version of me you’ll find, though there are still a lot of tidbits about the kids and family, because that’s the direction we’re heading. That’s investing your time wisely. For me, that means my family and my kids.
Darren: That’s important, man. You’re going to show people what that actually means. So go hunt Sean down on LinkedIn and say, “Hey dude, I did this, it changed my life,” and share your goals with him. That would be awesome. Sean, I’ve taken a ton of your time. I appreciate you coming on, being part of this, sharing your heart and your vision. I’ll say it again. You are an artist, and I love that you bring this art to the world in the financial sphere.
As we wrap up today, I want you to walk away with three things. One, your voice matters in this world. Two, you are an artist. Much like Sean, you are an artist. And the last thing, I want you to remember that you are loved more than you could ever imagine. So go out and create your art, and we’ll see you next time on the Create Your Art Podcast.
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