Episode 148 – Jacquie Doucette

 

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Richard Matthews  0:01  

Heroes are an inspiring group of people, every one of them from the larger than life comic book heroes you see on the big silver screen, the everyday heroes that let us live the privileged lives we do. Every hero has a story to tell, the doctor saving lives at your local hospital, the war veteran down the street, who risked his life for our freedom to the police officers and the firefighters who risked their safety to ensure ours every hero is special and every story worth telling. But there was one class of heroes that I think is often ignored the entrepreneur, the creator, the producer, the ones who look at the problems in this world and think to themselves, you know what I can fix that I can help people I can make a difference. And they go out and do exactly that by creating a new product or introducing a new service. Some go on to change the world, others make a world of difference to their customers. Welcome to the Hero Show. Join us as we pull back the masks on the world’s finest hero preneurs and learn the secrets to their powers their success and their influence. So you can use those secrets to attract more sales, make more money and experience more freedom in your business. I’m your host, Richard Matthews, and we are on in 3…2…1…

  

 

Richard Matthews  0:51  

Hello and welcome back to The Hero Show. My name is Richard Matthews and I have the pleasure of having Jacquie Doucette on the line. Jacquie, are you there?

 

Jacquie Doucette  0:57  

I’m here. Nice to see you, Richard. 

 

Richard Matthews  0:59  

Awesome. So glad to have you here. Thank you for joining me on this wonderful holiday week. We’re just a couple of days before Christmas at the time of this recording. And for those of you who have been following along with our adventures as we travel, my family and I are up in South Carolina for the holidays and enjoying ourselves where you are coming in from Jacquie.

 

Jacquie Doucette  1:16  

I’m just south of Ottawa, Ontario in Canada. Nice and snowy.

 

Richard Matthews  1:19  

It’s way far north.

 

Jacquie Doucette  1:20  

Yeah. Compared to you.

 

Jacquie Doucette  1:23  

Is it all frozen over there yet?

 

Jacquie Doucette  1:25  

It’s not too bad. Right now. It’s just about at the freezing point. So we had a little bit of snow, we were kind of worried that it wasn’t going to be a white Christmas, but it looks like it’s gonna be.

 

Richard Matthews  1:43  

Nice I have a good friend of mine who lives in Toronto. And I always tease her every year I send her this GIF that has a picture of a guy popping up out of an ice fishing hole and then skating away and it says, watching Canadians being born and I was like, Look, I found your birth story. She laughs at me because if it gets below 65 I’m cold. And she’s like, she posts pictures of walking to work in the snow. Yep. And I’m like, that’s not a thing. Like people go outside in that kind of weather. That’s not the way it works down here.

 

Jacquie Doucette  2:17  

We spend a lot of time inside.

 

Richard Matthews  2:21  

Yeah, thank you so much for coming on today and telling your story a little bit. I want to just dive into your bio real quick for our audience who may not know who you are, and then we’ll get started with the podcast. So Jacquie Doucette says I teach people to navigate their journey beyond retirement with excitement and enthusiasm. After over 35 years of working a nine-to-five job and one false retirement, Jacquie needed some help with staying retired, but there aren’t many available sides. Besides financial advice. Since retirement usually happens in our golden years, Jacquie is paving the way for future generations with her lifestyle blueprint, a custom designed plan suited to your specific situation. In addition to the blueprint, Jacquie has a podcast and a blog dedicated to life beyond the rat race, in hopes of attracting more people to the idea that you don’t have to wait until your golden years to start living your life. I have to say before we even get started, I couldn’t agree more. That’s one of the reasons my wife and I travel full time with our kids right now is because we don’t want to wait until we retired to live life and experience everything. So with that introduction, Jacquie, why don’t you tell us a little bit about what you’re known for what your business is like, and who it is that you actually serve in your business?

 

Jacquie Doucette  3:38  

Okay, what I’m known for is probably talking about wanting to be retired, because it’s taken a while to get there and we’re still kind of going along the path. But I’m known as the person to talk to when you’re looking for some enthusiasm when you’re looking for something to keep you going when you think you’ve reached the end of the road. I’ve watched so many people retire from their lifetime career and then just stop and it just didn’t seem right to me I couldn’t believe that it’s our fate to work so long and do so much and then just do nothing later on. So I always thought that we have three kinds of distinct phases we’ve got the education phase, where you go to school, you do all the stuff you’re supposed to do, whatever that might be in university, then you spend your time doing the working phase. And then you have what’s coming next and that should be the fun part. That’s the part where you get to really live your life and it doesn’t matter how long each of those phases is. It doesn’t have to be when you turn 60 that you get to have fun in your life It should be whenever you can. So I started looking into retirement online to see what I could find because I was coming close to that time and all there was out there like you said in my bio is financial advice. put money into your RSP’s or your 401k, you know, plan for retirement, but there was nothing about what do you do? When you’re retired and someone says, so what do you do? And you say nothing. I mean, I decided, that needs to change. So I work with people who are getting ready to retire or getting ready to step away from whatever it is they’re doing. And they’re hoping to create a big life and exciting life for themselves beyond retirement, something that they can do forever without having to think about retiring anymore.

 

Richard Matthews  5:31  

Awesome. So how do you actually perform that service? Is it just your blogging or your book your podcast? Or do you actually do coaching? consulting? How’s the actual, financial transaction help people? How does that look, look in your business?

 

Jacquie Doucette  5:45  

Okay, I call it, lifestyle intensive. So what it is, is you sit down with me on something like this, like on zoom for a couple of hours. And we go over, I should step back first, you complete a big questionnaire about with all kinds of questions about your lifestyle. Now, what your hopes are, what you’re interested in what you’ve done in the past, that sort of thing. And I get that, and I go through it. And from that, I figure out what kind of things you’re looking for in your life, because that’s one of the questions. And then we sit down for a couple of hours. And we go through all the different ideas that you’ve got the different ideas that I have suggestions for you things that you could look into ways that you could be moving forward in your life. And then we come up with a nice long battle plan for lack of a better term for how you can move ahead and go forward. And I prepare that all to you as a written report, the stages that you can go through the steps that you need to take, and I present that to you and you can continue with that with me if you want as a coach, or you can do it on your own, or you can go off and find someone else. But in any case, you’ve got all the steps that you need to take, and you can move forward from there.

 

Richard Matthews  7:04  

Absolutely, I love the use of phrase, things that you hope to do. And I know one of my favorite things was taught to me by a mentor of mine, he said you’re never old until your regrets outweigh your desires. And that stuck with me forever. Because the whole idea that, if you’re always striving for something, you have something to move forward to. That’s actually how you describe youth, right is a moving forward into goals and whatnot. And I think culturally, at least here in the Americas, we have a lot of problem with that where people they get to their retirement agent, and they just stop. And we talked about that all the time. Like, hey, when I retire, I’m going to stop and sit on the beach and drink martinis. Like it’s the picture of perfection. And the reality is we as human beings, don’t like to be stopped, right? It’s nice to take a break every once in a while. But we have goals and dreams and aspirations and things we want to do and the impact we want to make and the legacy we want to leave. So it sounds like you’re helping people sort of make that transition from thinking hey, maybe I want to sit on the beach and drink martinis forever to actually wanting to make an impact and enjoy their lives.

 

Jacquie Doucette  8:21  

 Exactly.

 

Richard Matthews  8:22  

That’s really cool. So I want to start off then with talking about your origin story, right? We say every good comic book hero has an origin story. It’s the thing that made them into the hero they are today. So we want to hear that story. Were you born a hero? Were you a bit by a radioactive spider that made you want to work with retirees? Or did you start a new job eventually moved to become an entrepreneur? Basically, we want to know where you came from that brought you to this point?

 

Jacquie Doucette  8:49  

Well, I’m from a long line of serial employees. We spent all of our lives everybody working for somebody else, and just kind of looking for that retirement point. But I think my entrepreneurial spirit was born I guess, in the gardens when I was a kid, because I had an absolutely intense dislike of green beans. And on our farm, green beans grew better than anything else. And we ate them for lunch and we ate them for supper. And for a change, we’d have green beans. And at some point, I guess I complained enough. And my parents said, Look, if you want to pick the beans, you can sell them. And I kind of looked at them and really, I can keep the money. So I was out there and I picked beans like they were going out of style. And we just happened to live on a road that headed down to a river where there was land that had been parceled off for cottagers, and all the cottagers from the nearby cities would come by there every weekend until some are really hit and then they’d be there for good. So Every weekend, they come by and they buy all my green beans. Then they buy the tomatoes and the radishes and the lettuce and everything else that I would pick and bring to them. And it was amazing. I had more money, I couldn’t even keep up with them. I had so many people coming and that was the start. It’s like, I can do something and I can make money at it. Why would I want to sit at a desk?

 

Richard Matthews  10:24  

So your entrepreneurial journey? Did it go beyond that? Or what did your life look like from selling green beans as a child to working with retirees now?

 

Jacquie Doucette  10:35  

Well, it kind of took a little bit of a hiatus. As I went through school, I did a little bit of, you know, babysitting, but that’s not really entrepreneurial. And I kind of put it on the back burner, to be honest. And then as I got older and got into university, it kind of came back to me and I started doing a little bit of freelancing I did the direct sales, MLM kind of stuff that a lot of people do when they’re getting into the entrepreneurial world. And it’s kind of moved on a little bit from that, as time has gone on. A little bit of online, other things, some affiliate marketing, that sort of stuff. And it’s kind of led me into, I want to do something else I want to be making a difference to somebody not just selling something. And that’s where I started thinking about where can I spend my time, the most valuable, and I was watching my dad retire. And he was one of the ones who sat in a chair, and he watched TV, and he read a book. And he did that for 40 years. And it just broke my heart that that’s what it came to. And I was determined that that wasn’t going to be the way that it was for other people if I could help it.

 

Richard Matthews  11:53  

Yeah, I know, one of the things I tell my wife all the time is my plan is to get into the grave. So yeah, cuz I definitely don’t want to go out sitting in a chair reading a book not that it’s a bad thing to do. But I want to have other things going on. Right, and still making an impact. So I want to talk a little bit about your superpowers then, so every iconic hero has a superpower, whether that’s a fancy flying suit made by the genius, intellect, or the ability to call down Thunder from the sky, or super strength. In the real world. Here’s what I call a zone of genius, which is either a skill or a set of skills that you were born with, or developed over the course of time, that really energizes all of your other skills. It’s the common thread between everything that you’ve been doing in your life. And it’s what lets you help your people come out on top in their own journeys. It’s the thing that you use to actually help them. And with that sort of framing, you have a superpower, what do you think it is?

 

Jacquie Doucette  12:53  

Well, I haven’t called down Thunder since my kids grew up. So I don’t think it’s that. I think probably it’s my ability to organize tasks. I’ve always been very methodical in the things that I do. And I’ve been able to take a bunch of random ideas and random tasks that somebody has and put them all down in an order that makes it quick and easy for them to just get everything done with a minimal effort and be off to the races and you know, kind of boom, they’re winning. So I think that’s probably it.

 

Richard Matthews  13:28  

How do you think that impacts the work you do now with retirees when it comes to helping them figure out what they want to do with their lives?

 

Jacquie Doucette  13:35  

We talk about the things that they’ve done in the past, we talk about the things that, you know, that they dream about, and what’s stopping them from doing it. And once we figure out what it is that they feel is stopping them from doing those things. We break each item down into the steps that it takes to knock it off the shelf so that it’s not a problem anymore, and it’s not stopping them.

 

Richard Matthews  14:00  

Your dream maker,

 

Jacquie Doucette  14:01  

I am it says on my profile is Dreamweaver.

 

Richard Matthews  14:06  

Oh, there you go. I didn’t even notice that. But yeah, Dreamweaver. So my question for you then is for those of us who are listening, we’re looking at things like I know this something that I have to work through all the time is I have got this big goal and I want to get there I have this dream I want to accomplish. You have to break those down. What’s your advice for people who are looking to accomplish something big, and want to start taking steps to get there?

 

Jacquie Doucette  14:35  

Usually what I tell them is to look at the finished product, what it is they’re looking to accomplish, and take a step backward, what’s the last thing that they need to do in order for that thing to happen? Don’t worry about all the things that you have to do to get there. What is the one step that you’ll take? That gets you to it, so that one step back is the next step that you focus on and you make a priority. And then you look at that and you say what would get me to there and you just break it back, break it down backward, until you get to what’s the step you can take right now. And once it’s in those little steps, then it’s easy to follow them.

 

Richard Matthews  15:16  

That’s one of the things we were just talking about another interview I did with another guest was, my wife and I are talking about next after the RV travels, we want to buy a yacht and start traveling the world with the kids that way, I am looking at like, what are the steps, right? So it’s, we need to have a down payment, and the down payment is this much. And we make this much from our clients. And we have this many clients now and this how many clients we need to add in order to accomplish that, and what’s the next thing that we need to do to get clients like we got to get this marketing thing and this marketing thing has these pieces to it. And the first thing that needs to get done as I need to write this headline.

 

Jacquie Doucette  15:51  

Yep. And that’s pretty simple.

 

Richard Matthews  15:54  

Yeah, I mean that’s a pretty simplified version of it. But that’s how we think about big goals is I want to buy a yacht. My next step is I need to write this headline, I need to write the body copy for this piece of marketing material, I need to get this thing published. It’s the next steps that go into each thing. And for me, it’s always like, how do I make a single step forward progress every day, even if it’s a micro step? Right. So anyway, that’s how I follow all that stuff. It’s nice to hear that you follow the same thing. So the flip side then of your superpower. If your superpower is the ability to see those big picture items and break them down for people so they can turn them into manageable steps, the flip side of that is your fatal flaw. So just like Superman, has this kryptonite or Wonder Woman can’t remove her bracelets of victory without going mad, you probably have a flaw that’s held you back in growing your business. Maybe it’s some of the things I struggled with, like perfectionism, which kept me from shipping products, or lack of self care which early in my entrepreneur career, I let clients walk all over me. And that was a tough thing to learn to get over. But I think more important than what the flaw is, is how have you learned to rectify it so you can continue to grow and expand your business? So people who are listening might learn a little bit from your experience?

 

Jacquie Doucette  17:14  

Well, my kryptonite, I think it’s probably what I call SOS. It’s shiny object syndrome. And I think it’s a problem for a lot of entrepreneurs. What happens to me is I start helping someone I started listening to the things that they’re doing the things that they want to do, and my mind starts to wander too. And I start to think about, oh, I could do that. And maybe if I start doing this next step, and I have a lot of trouble reining that back in once I get going my dreams just continue to expand as well.

 

Richard Matthews  17:50  

So you’re thinking of traveling the yacht now.

 

Jacquie Doucette  17:52  

Exactly. As soon as I get done with the RV part.

 

Richard Matthews  17:59  

So how have you worked to sort of overcome that and really keep the focus on the things that you want to be doing next?

 

Jacquie Doucette  18:08  

Lately, what I’ve been doing is, I make a very stringent list of the things that I’m working on. And I can’t put a new thing on the list until I’ve taken one thing off the list. And to take the thing off the list, it’s got to be completed. So the items that make it to the list are the important things in my plan for my future. And until they’re done. I can’t add another one. And it’s a matter of discipline, sometimes it’s hard, sometimes it’s not so hard. It depends on what the item is that I’m looking at.

 

Richard Matthews  18:39  

Yeah, it sounds like we’re doing something similar in our house right now with Christmas gifts, right? Because when you live in a 40 foot RV, and you’re traveling the country, we’re gonna add new things. Old things have to come out, you have to know what’s important to you. So that’s and it’s actually I think it’s an important skill to both learn and also teach your children is to figure out what’s actually important in your life, whether it’s the tasks that are going to get you to your next goal or what you keep in your closet, and things like that, because it helps to make sure that the things you’re keeping are actually important, right. And I think one of the biggest breakthroughs I made in my business was learning how to only work on important tasks. And that’s a hard thing to learn how to do. So one of them is because, when you’re a young entrepreneur, you don’t always know the difference between something that’s urgent and important, right? And you don’t know what actually moves the needle. So you have to just do all sorts of things until you learn. And the same thing with life. You don’t always know what stuff is important and what stuff you’re actually going to use and keep doing those things. And I think the more experience you get, the better you get at making those decisions, and the more focused you can be on just the important things.

 

Jacquie Doucette  19:49  

Exactly. I had a guest on my own show recently, and he talked about the Picasso work and he was helping people half retire and the idea is that most people who can’t seem to retire, have their finger into many things. And he helps them understand what is the one or two, what are the one or two things that they have to do that nobody else can do. And all the rest of the stuff can be delegated to someone else, it’s the same idea with seeing the urgent tasks, the important tasks, and not so important ones, which ones really have to be done.

 

Richard Matthews  20:25  

Yeah, I have a rule in my business that I use with managing my team. And it’s basically it’s really simple, it’s only doing what only you can do. Yep. And I try to make sure we build our systems in such a way that each member of the team is only doing things that only they can do, right, and we try to move as much as we can, from management and project stuff onto automation when we can, and then making sure the tasks are split up in such a way that they’re utilizing the team members strengths. And that’s such an important skill. And it’s interesting trying to figure out how you translate that into your personal life. Everything from, I have some really wealthy entrepreneurial friends that are I don’t do my laundry, right, because that’s something I can hire someone else to do. And I’ve got more important things I can it goes down to that. And it’s interesting to think of your life that way. I have I haven’t gotten that point yet. But I think at some point, I’m gonna have to figure out how to take some of the life tasks that are not as important to what I actually want to accomplish and figure out how to learn how to delegate those things. At the moment, it’s going pretty well, because I got three children that have to learn to do chores, four children, but that’s not gonna last forever.

 

Jacquie Doucette  21:44  

I was thinking about that, actually, about delegating to your kids,

 

Richard Matthews  21:47  

Yeah, delegating to your kids, cuz I gotta learn how to do all that fun stuff. So at the moment, my second daughter has just reached the height where she can reach the counter to do dishes. She’s not too thrilled with the addition of new chores. But my son who’s 11 is super excited to have someone else step in and start helping him do the dishes. Exactly. So that’s where we are. So my next question for you then is about your common enemy. And every superhero has what I call an arch nemesis, right? It’s a thing that they constantly have to fight against in their world. In the world of business, it takes a lot of forms. But generally, we put it in the context of your clients, right? The people that you work with on a regular basis. And it’s a mindset, or it’s a flaw that you’re constantly having to fight against, to overcome so that they can get the results that they’re looking for. And it’s something that, if you had your magic wand, and someone contacted you and hired you, you could just bop them on the head. And you wouldn’t have to deal with that anymore. What’s the first thing that sort of comes to your mind is arch nemesis, you’re constantly having to fight with your clients?

 

Jacquie Doucette  22:54  

For me, I think it’s the idea that it’s too late for them that they haven’t made their plan, so they can’t retire now. It doesn’t matter what stage they’re at. They all think I needed to make plans, yesterday or last week or last month, they figure that they have to

 

Richard Matthews  23:12  

20 or 30 and I missed my opportunity.

 

Jacquie Doucette  23:17  

Exactly, they believe that retirement is the end of the road and that it means stopping work. And that’s what I have to keep trying to beat out of them. If I had a magic wand for that, then I guess I’d probably be out of a job. Because they would realize that retirement isn’t the end. It’s you’re retiring to something, not from something?

 

Richard Matthews  23:42  

Absolutely. So what are some of your tips and tricks that you use to help someone make that mental transition to make that leap into thinking that hey, my life hasn’t ended because I’ve retired? 

 

Jacquie Doucette  23:58  

That’s a hard one. I talked to them, I continued to remind them about their dreams. I asked them what it is, why did they want to retire? Was it because they wanted to sit and watch people go by every day looking out their window wondering what the Joneses are doing next door? Or did they have something in mind that they wanted to do? And if you can keep the dreams alive or revive them, then people have a reason to keep going and that’s what they’re looking for.

 

Richard Matthews  24:26  

Absolutely. So just out of curiosity, how often are what you’re coaching people to do is to make career changes or to actually go in and take the money that they’ve saved or created over their lifetime and put it into their dreams instead of just holding on to it where do you sort of find yourself helping people go there is it just sort of all over the map depending on the person?

 

Jacquie Doucette  24:45  

It depends on the person. Most of the time. If I get someone who has got some savings, we start talking about what the savings are for because people save money they say they’re putting money away for retirement, but they’ve never really thought about what am I going to do with it when retirement hits? I can’t keep it forever and just give it to my kids when I’m done. There’s got to be something else. So the biggest thing is planning with them, I guess, and trying to show them that it’s okay to spend the money because there’s a big mind slip or mind flip from saving all the time to actually spending that money. And it’s a really hard wall that people come up against because they’ve saved if they’ve been saving they’ve saved for so long, it’s so hard to switch that or flip that switch so that they can spend now there’s always the Oh, I need to save but what are you saving for? Your saving to this point? Yeah, exactly.

 

Richard Matthews  25:50  

Absolutely. I know, that’s a tough thing. I know, one of the things my wife and I are always talking about is savings versus investing in our lifestyle or investing in our future. And I know we’ve made some fairly risky decisions over the last 10 years or so where we took a lot of money that could have gone into savings, and we put it in instead into our business. And it’s a risky move to take. But at the same time, 10 years later, we have made more money in our business than we would have been able to save over the same time. And if we hadn’t invest in the business, we wouldn’t have been able to create the income. And it’s an interesting sort of, I don’t what you call it, that mental shift where you’re like, I want to actually invest in my life and invest in my business and invest in my future. Versus, putting the money in the bank. Nothing wrong with putting money in the bank. I absolutely recommend everyone I know have an emergency fund and those kind of things. But beyond that, savings is more useful. If you’re putting it into action, and you’re doing things with it.

 

Jacquie Doucette  26:55  

Exactly. Exactly.

 

Richard Matthews  26:58  

So the flip side, then of your common enemy, is even if your common enemy is what you fight against, then your driving force is what you fight for. So just like Spider Man fight save New York or Batman fight save Gotham or Google fights to index and categorize all the world’s information. What is it that you fight for in your business? You have a mission, so to speak, what what is it?

 

Jacquie Doucette  27:20  

I think I mentioned that before my mission, what I’m trying to do is change people’s attitudes about retirement, and the idea that you’re not retiring from something, you’re retiring to something and it’s the next stage of your life. And it’s an exciting stage, and it’s something that you should be looking forward to not just an end like you’re falling off a cliff Now that I’m done, what do I do? Its mission is to retire to something, find something new, make your life exciting, make it worthwhile.

 

Richard Matthews  27:51  

So how do you think helping more retirees make that transition is going to impact our world?

 

Jacquie Doucette  27:58  

There are a lot of people out there retirees, I mean, yes, I am at the people who are baby boomers and, hitting that retirement point, they’ve got a lot of experience, they’ve got a lot of vitality, they’ve got a lot of things going for them. And they’ve got the experience of 40 years of working for most of them, that they could share with other people, they can change the way that the future generations are looking at retirement if they go out and they make changes, and they and the younger people see that, hey, there’s life out there, there’s more things I can do. Maybe people will stop looking at retirement as the end of the road and a retired person as old. And I think that’s what I’m trying to change is that people think, oh, you’re getting close to retirement, you’re old.

 

Richard Matthews  28:47  

You’re done, you’re no longer useful to society. And that kind of stuff that is the worst kind of thought. And I hate that our culture has that. And one of the things that I have fallen in love with the traveling lifestyle is the people that we get to meet along the way. It tends to attract a lot of retirees. And so a lot of our friends and peers in the traveling sense tend to be in that category. And we meet people all over the country now that you get to sit down and sit around a fire, sit around a dinner table or drink a glass of wine, and hear their stories and learn about their experiences. And I gotta tell you, there are so many things that I have been stumped to run into problems and things like that I know. I got a book that I’m halfway through about the chaos of running a business from the road. And we had had an evening where our RV died on the side of a mountain. And we couldn’t do anything about it. We were just stuck there. And it’s crying in the middle of the night kind of thing. And we finally got the coach going the next day and we pull into our spot and the guy next to us is a retiree, and I’m telling him about the problem. What not he’s like, Oh, I know exactly how to fix that something we’ve been struggling with for two years, trying to figure out how to get this thing and not deal. He comes in and 10 minutes later, we never had a problem with the coach again, after that. And that’s just one of the hundreds of stories like that over the last four or five years, that there’s just so much experience in life and vitality that you can find in our older generation that I think we miss out on so much if we don’t learn how to integrate and be you learn from the people that are above you learn from the people that are younger than you, I learned as much from my kids as I do from my seniors, right, the people who are older than myself.

 

Jacquie Doucette  30:33  

It’s funny, I was just looking into possibly doing some English as a second language teaching or as a foreign language teaching in Thailand, and I was told that I wouldn’t be able to, because once you hit 60, you’re not allowed to work in Thailand, because they actually do revere their elders, and they don’t think that they should need to work anymore. So they’re not allowed to. Well, that’s different.

 

Richard Matthews  31:00  

That’s awesome. Yeah, my wife has her teaching English as a foreign language certificate. We were gonna do some teaching in Japan a number of years ago, but we had a bunch of kids and they were like, we just want couples without kids. So we didn’t end up using it. But it’s the way that that goes down. But yeah, that’s a, I hear Thailand is a super vibrant community for expats. Yeah, and everything. So yeah. So they straight up won’t let you work in their country?

 

Jacquie Doucette  31:31  

That’s right. Um, I’ve got a friend actually, who is there. And he’s the same age as me, and he is working. And he said that’s what they tell you. But what they actually do is different. So you can’t see it legally.

 

Richard Matthews  31:44  

You can be actually illegal over there.

 

Jacquie Doucette  31:45  

Yeah, he says, what you do is you come in, and when you work, you don’t come into work?

 

Richard Matthews  31:52  

Yeah, because unfortunately, not all of us have retirement savings account that’s big enough to allow us to just not work for the rest of our lives.

 

Jacquie Doucette  32:01  

Exactly.

 

Richard Matthews  32:03  

Awesome. So I want to change gears a little bit and talk about some practical things, right. And I call this the heroes tool belt. Just every hero has a tool belt with awesome gadgets, like batarangs or web slingers, or big magical hammers that you know, they can use to call down thunder, we want to talk about the top one or two practical tools you couldn’t live without in your business, that could be anything from your notepad to your calendar, to your marketing tools to something you use for your actual product delivery, something you think is essential to getting your job done today?

 

Jacquie Doucette  32:36  

Wow. I’d really like to have that magic wand. But I think my tool, how boring as it is, is my Google Calendar. I think that’s the most important thing because, without it, I’d be a mess. I don’t just put appointments in it, I put the tasks that I need to have done and when I want to have them done, and everything is categorized, nice, pretty colors, everything is set up. It’s the only thing that keeps me organized from day to day.

 

Richard Matthews  33:08  

Yeah, you know what’s surprising to me, not surprising. Well, maybe hopefully, it’ll help you feel a little better about that answer is almost 85-90% of the interviews that I do, the answer to that question is my calendar. Because I tell people who are not entrepreneurs all the time that I live and die by my calendar, and they’re like that’s crazy. And if you’re an entrepreneur you understand, people are like, my calendar is my life. And we even go so far, like in my family we have my calendar, and my wife’s calendar and the family calendar. And any of my online stuff will automatically check my family calendar stuff for busy times. And my wife knows that if she wants to make sure I’m there for it, she’ll block it out on the family calendar. So it doesn’t get overwritten by something that I’m doing for my business. And it’s just the way that has to be in order to manage this type of life. And so, it’s interesting how important managing our time is, as an entrepreneur. And because as an employee, you generally hand your calendar over to someone else be like, hey, these hours are yours. And they tell you what that time is for and we have to manage all that ourselves as entrepreneurs.

 

Jacquie Doucette  34:26  

That’s it. And I think before I started doing my entrepreneurial things, I had the great big mom’s daily calendar on my wall with all the kid’s names and my husband’s name and everything was always marked off anyway. So I think really, the business world knows what you need, and they’re selling those calendars to put on the walls so they’re trying to make everybody follow a calendar all the time.

 

Richard Matthews  34:53  

My wife’s the same way she’s got her little, what you call it her bullet journal thing that she sits down every week with all of her art supplies and makes her week look all beautiful and amazing. And but she runs a house with four kids and a traveling family and all that kind of stuff. She’s amazing and a lot of it is because of her calendar calendaring abilities. One of these days, I’m gonna have my video editor, who’s fantastic. Go through all of our episodes and pull out the answer to that question and make a montage. Like a calendar, calendar, calendar, the calendar, my calendar. Yeah. Cuz it’s true, if for nothing else than to share it with all of my non-entrepreneur friends who were, I don’t understand your insistence on everything going through your calendar. 

 

Richard Matthews  35:49  

Speaking of heroic tools, I want to take a few minutes to tell you about a tool we built that powers the Hero Show, and is now this show’s primary sponsor. Hey, there fellow podcaster. Having a weekly audio and video show on all the major online networks that builds your brand creates fame and drive sales for your business doesn’t have to be hard. I know it feels that way. Because you’ve tried managing your show internally and realize how resource intensive it can be. You felt the pain of pouring eight to 10 hours of work into just getting one hour of content published and promoted all over the place. You see the drain on your resources, but you do it anyways because you know how powerful it is heck you’ve probably even tried some of those automated solutions and ended up with stuff that makes your brand look cheesy and cheap. That’s not helping grow your business. Don’t give up though. The struggle ends now introducing Push Button Podcasts a done for you service that will help you get your show out every single week without you lifting a finger. After you’ve pushed that stop record button. We handle everything else uploading, editing, transcribing, writing, research graphics, publication, and promotion, all done by real humans who know understand, and care about your brand, almost as much as you do. Empowered by our own proprietary technology, our team will let you get back to doing what you love. While we handle the rest. Check us out at pushbuttonpodcasts.com forward slash hero for 10% off the lifetime of your service with us and see the power of having an audio and video podcast growing and driving micro celebrity status and business in your niche without you having to lift more than a finger to push that stop record button. Again, that’s push buttonpodcasts.com forward slash hero See you there. You’re listening to the Hero Show, unlocking the power of influence and success. 

   

 

Richard Matthews  37:27  

So I want to talk a little bit about your own personal heroes, right so every hero has their mentors. You know Frodo had Gandalf, Luke had Obi Wan Kenobi Robert Kiyosaki had his rich dad, Spider Man even had his Uncle Ben. So who were some of your heroes? Were they real life mentors, speakers, or authors, maybe peers who are a couple of years ahead of you, and how important were they what you’ve accomplished so far?

 

Jacquie Doucette  37:51  

I’ve had a few different mentors, and they give advice on different aspects of my life and my business. And I think it’s all of that together. That’s really helped make me who I am. But one of the very first people that really played a part in my life was my high school volleyball coach. And when I was finishing high school, she wrote in my yearbook that my sticktoitiveness would take me a long way. And I really remembered that when I was having trouble later on, what she meant was that it didn’t matter that I had no skill in volleyball at the start. I kept trying, and I kept showing up, and I made it on the team. And I got better, and I got better until I was one of the first string players. But if I hadn’t, if I had just given up when I couldn’t do it, then that would have been the end of that. Volleyball is right up here was I breathing and important to me, it’s one of the things that I really love. So it wasn’t hard to stick to it. But sometimes it’s harder. And remembering those words. helps me get through that all the time.

 

Richard Matthews  38:57  

Yeah, I have a similar thing with my son and one of his friends with gymnastics. One of his friends is ridiculously good and doesn’t even have to try. It’s just who he is. And my son has to work hard. And I’ve always told him, I was like, hey, he never has to work to be where he’s at. If he added work to what he was doing, he’d be an Olympian when he was 20. Right. But he’s not going to be because he’s not willing to put the work in you are willing to have that sticktoitiveness to work and show up every day and get better and get better. And that’s a hard skill to learn, but sticktoitiveness is really important.

 

Jacquie Doucette  39:38  

Yeah. And I guess my other hero, I’m a softy is my husband, because he is not an entrepreneur by any stretch of the imagination. He doesn’t understand my drive or the things that get me up in the morning. But he stood behind me all the time. He supports everything that I do and he always is there to ensure that I have the time and the freedom to do what I want to do. And he’s gathering people up and doing the other activities that need to be done around the house so that I can have the time to do the things I want to do. And without that, I wouldn’t be where I am.

 

Richard Matthews  40:14  

Yeah, my wife’s the same way she thinks I’m nuts, because I’m an entrepreneur, but she stands up and supports me all the way through. And I said she runs our whole house, so I can run our whole business. So that’s it’s always good to have partners there that are ready and willing to pick up the slack that sometimes our crazy lives can lead us to. Yeah. So I want to talk a little bit about your guiding principles, right. One of the things that make heroes heroic is that they live by a code. For instance, Batman never kills his enemies, he only ever brings them to Arkham Asylum. So as we wrap up the interview, I want to talk about the top one or two principles that you live your life by, maybe something that you wish you knew when you first started out on your own hero’s journey.

 

Jacquie Doucette  40:59  

I think that the principle that I live by the thing that I try to keep in mind all the time comes from my schooling, I was trained as a pharmacist. So along those lines are the Hippocratic Oath is the idea of doing no wrong or do no harm. I mean, and I try to keep that, in my mind, when I’m talking to people when I’m working with someone. When I’m suggesting actions or activities or ways to move forward, I do my very best to make sure that they’re not going to be detrimental along the way, that the idea or the plan that we’re making is going to move those people forward. And that’s really important. I won’t, I won’t encourage anybody to do something. If I think it’s gonna fall off the rails, I mean, why would you do that? That’s totally against any kind of honor system, or any kind of code that anybody could have is, Hey, I’m gonna do this and get your money. But don’t talk to me later, because you’re gonna fall over the cliff. I can’t do that. I think that the goal of my lifestyle blueprint is to guide clients towards a life that fills them with joy, and that’s what fills me with joy is watching them move on to better things.

 

Richard Matthews  42:17  

Yeah, I had a mentor tell me once I was about 17, just getting ready to graduate high school. He said, Be careful what you say to people because people will listen to you. Right? He’s like, take ownership of that. And I was like yeah, whatever, right? I thought he was nuts at the time. And you learn later when you start getting into, you realize that you have a skill set that lends itself towards coaching and helping people, accomplish things. And then, the first time happened to me in college, I sit down and chat with an individual for, a whole evening because he was dealing with some stuff. And the next day, he goes out and starts changing his life based on the discussion we had. And I was like, whoa. And you realize the gravity of how important it is to make sure that the things that you’re saying, and the things that you’re recommending for other people are in their best interest. Right. And I tell people all the time now that a persuasion is a neutral tool. And when you use it for the betterment of others, we call that leadership when you use it for the benefit of yourself. We call that manipulation. Yep. And so you have to learn how to be a leader, especially when, when your career like what you’re doing. People are asking you Hey, can you help lead me to the next point in my life? So, it’s an important thing. Awesome. So that’s basically a wrap on our interview. Jacquie, thank you so much for coming on. I do have one little thing I do at the end of all of my shows that I call the hero challenge. And I do this basically because it’s a selfish way to get access to stories I might not otherwise find on my own. So the question is simple. Do you have someone in your life or in your network that you think has a cool entrepreneurial story? Who are they? first names are fine, and why do you think they should come to share their story with our audience here on the hero show? First person to come to mind for you?

 

Jacquie Doucette  44:07  

Um, yeah, I’ve got a friend. In my circle, her name is Ream. I don’t know if that means anything to you. She started off her life. She was a business person. She did very well in her career, she worked hard. She and then she had a baby. And the day she gave birth to her baby, she was fired. And some people would fall apart at that, but she didn’t. She went on to build her own business. And not only has she built a multi six figure business, but she’s also done three of them. And she’s made such a name such a legacy for herself out of that one tiny thing that could have just destroyed her.

 

Richard Matthews  44:55  

Yeah, that’s really awesome. So yeah, we’ll reach out afterward and see if we can get her on the show. I’ll send you an email, see if we can get an introduction or something love to talk to her and hear about that story that seems to be cool. So, in comic books, at the end of the story, there’s always the crowd, who is clapping and cheering for their acts of heroism? So as we close, our analogous to that is, I want to know, where can people find you? If they want your help in the future? Where can they light up the bat signal, so to speak, and say, Hey, Jacquie, I would really love your help and planning the next stage of my life. I think more important than where they can go is who are the right types of people to reach out and actually light up the bat signal?

 

Jacquie Doucette  45:35  

Okay, well, where they can go is pretty simple. It’s to beyondretirement.ca. That’s where you can reach me and that’s where all my stuff is. the kind of person that I’m looking for is someone who knows that there’s more to life than what they’re doing right now. They’re getting close to making a change. They want to make a change. They don’t know what they’re doing. They don’t know where to go, or how to take that next step. And those are the people that I want to talk to, not the ones who are looking forward to sitting on the sofa drinking a beer and watching TV for the rest of their life. if they’ve got no ambition, they aren’t going to be making any changes.

 

Richard Matthews  46:15  

Yeah, so ambitious people who are ready to take the next step. Awesome. So thank you very much Jacquie for coming on and sharing your story with us today. And if you’re in that spot, and you’re looking to get some help, definitely check out he said it’s beyond retirement.ca.

 

Jacquie Doucette  46:29  

That’s right. Awesome.

 

Richard Matthews  46:30  

Thank you very much for coming on today Jacquie. Really appreciate it. Do you have any final words of wisdom for our audience before I hit this stop record button?

 

Jacquie Doucette  46:37  

I do not. I think just live your life. That’s it. That’s the big thing. Never let go. Never stop.

 

Richard Matthews  46:44  

Awesome. Thank you very much, Jacquie.