123 : Creating Opportunity By Engineering Serendipity with Tony Wilkins

Tony, welcome to the Mindful Fire Podcast. I'm so glad to have you here.

Likewise Anna. Thank you so much for having me. I love talking about this stuff.

I came across your TEDx talk I was looking today, it's from four years ago and it's called Engineering Serendipity. And it was a bit of serendipity that brought it to me cuz I'm investing in myself in the biggest and probably one of the first times in my life. It's a challenge people have heard me talk about on the podcast, but I invested in myself and I was in this program and it kicked off. And the homework on the first week was to watch your talk about engineering serendipity. And I listened to the video and it hit me like a lightning bolt because I was like, this is. What I've been doing without even knowing it for so long. And so I thought I'd love to have you on the podcast I shared on LinkedIn and said, Hey, I'd love to meet Tony somehow. And the person running the mastermind had a connection who knows you as a friend of yours and introduced me, to you. And here we are. So it's awesome to have you here and to be talking with you about this idea of engineering serendipity.

glad to have you. And I know we're only gonna talk for finite in my time, but this has been a topic that I could talk about all day and all night to whoever crosses my path. I gotta tell you, I'm gratified fulfilled and, surprised, but not shocked at how the two of us came together on this podcast today, because that's what serendipity is all about.

Exactly. So I'd love to back up a little bit and have you start by sharing with the audience a little bit about who you are, your journey, and what you're up to in the world.

I would say that I tell people all the time that I'm a neighborhood kid who has achieved escape velocity. And when I say that I grew up on the south side of Chicago and my world at that point was all about, Hey, just get a job so you can pay your bills and move outta your dad's house. That was it. and I've always been a decisive person who has some kind of goal in mind and always going for that goal. And I think this whole idea of serendipity came to pass because many times, I. Whenever I made a goal or an objective, if it failed to materialize, what resulted was often something even bigger than I could have possibly imagined. And it happened over and over and over again. whether it was, saying, Hey, I want to go get a track scholarship at U S C UCLA and wound up at Northwestern, which was close, but far enough away from the south side, Hey, I wanna always have a job. But then getting laid off from Chrysler after one year and realizing that a job is not the goal financial independence is, or Hey, I'm gonna be a great electrical engineer and I'm gonna start my own engineering company and I'm gonna have real estate investments and, projects from a lot of different companies. And then being introduced to investment banking and in the finance world, it just kept going on and on to the point where this comment, many people say, Hey, man plans and God smiles. Or if you want God to smile, tell him your plans. That has happened to me so many times and continues to happen that I just laugh at myself and I say, okay, here's what I'm gonna plan, and we're gonna see how it goes and be ready to pivot for the universe to show me something that I don't even know anything about that's better than what I have on my schedule. And it has been, such a great tool to help the people who I mentor and coach and invest with to say, look, let's be ready to fire, aim, and adjust over and over again and keep iterating because that's the way life is. You don't know what you don't know. And, who am I today? I'm a person who is looking to be sustainably impactful. To people in this world who I know or don't even know yet, I e meeting you through this podcast and trying to keep my intentions and actions as pure and as honest and open as possible, as more and more birthdays come by.

I love it. So you've had many examples of engineering serendipity in your life and they continue to happen. and what I love about the talk engineering serendipity, which obviously I'll link in the show notes for everybody to check out, is it's not just hoping and wishing right. It's engineering serendipity, right? There's an active part of it. Mm-hmm. Right? Mm-hmm. And so I'm curious, You mentioned that you want to be sustainably impactful. I wanna understand a little bit more about what that means and how the active nature of engineering serendipity comes into either in your own life and or with the people that you impact.

there's a concept in my mind called enoughness. When you have enough, you go to a restaurant, you have enough food, you ask for a doggy bag to take it home, somebody offers you a third or fourth cup of coffee, ah, that's enough. And in life, I think there is a concept of enough nest that many people miss. you have enough food, you have enough shelter. Do you have enough money? maybe not, but there's enough of whatever at some point, which you go, okay, I'm good. What's next? I'm a huge fan of quotes because they compartmentalize. It captured major concepts. One of the quotes I read was something like a person who is engaged in helping others will never be unemployed. It strikes me that if you are constantly trying to help people in whatever way you're able to, in whatever way they're willing to accept it, you will always be engaged. And being engaged and having success in other people, having joy and other people's success is a recipe for wonderful life. So sustainably impactful means look, as my father-in-law told me, the best thing you can do for poor people is not be one. Then if you're gonna help people, it implies that you must be able to do so sustainably. Meaning you can't be out saving the world 24 hours a day cuz you need to sleep. Sleep helps. Sustainability. You can't be donating all of your money to great causes or great investors because you need some money to pay the bills and eat. So there's this balance of how much of your energy do you spend to help people, and how much do you spend to sustain yourself physically, spiritually, psychologically, and financially. And that to me is the balancing act that I'm engaged in. Going forward. And I remind myself, it's great to be impactful, but you must do so sustainably. Another friend of mine who ran a not-for-profit that I worked with said, Hey, we can be a nonprofit, that's great, but we cannot operate unprofitably. So being sustainably impactful means, Hey, as you go through this world, there will be people who you can help and there will be people who you can't. And if you don't maintain your own personal sustainability, then it's gonna be difficult to enjoy life enough to persist until you're not breathing anymore. So that's what sustainably impactful means. I, that's a long answer to your first question about sustainably impactful.

you hit on something that is a big. Focus of this podcast and a big exploration for me, honestly, the enough and enoughness, when we're talking about financial independence and we're talking about, maybe you add the re retire early, I like to think of it as reprioritize early. Yeah. But when we're talking about those concepts in the question of what is enough is front and center. And I think that a lot of people struggle with answering that question. you mentioned that, you think about it as about enoughness, Yeah. Is there anything that you have found helpful to when you get there? I think what you were getting at is that you've reached a point of enough from a financial standpoint. So now you're looking at how can I continue to make a bigger and bigger impact, but in a sustainable way? when you talk to somebody, you talk to a lot of entrepreneurs, right? They are trying to make a lot of money, I would assume and have impact. What is enough? How do you help people determine what is enough?

To me it's art and science for, I'll give you a couple of examples and maybe that will frame it up for you. We talked about eating and drinking, right? A glass, if you're thirsty, if you're dying, if you're just really thirsty, hot day, you take a sip of water. Maybe you drink a glass of water, the third glass of water you don't need, you have physically reached a point of enoughness. I used to windsurf and love windsurfing dream, but drove around with my windsurfing board on top of the car. I remember one day. It was a phenomenal day here in Chicago. We were out windsurfing off of the south beach in Evanston, and we were windsurfing all day long. And by about five o'clock we were all just wiped out. And we were sitting around the beach house saying, anybody wanna go back out again? I cannot go out again. We reached enoughness. You're at your grandparents' house for Thanksgiving, then you want some more? No, I've had enough. There's that point in everything for me financially, I had a number in mind that I wanted to reach to be what I thought sustainably, financially sustainable, meaning I don't think I'm gonna spend all this money if I live to be a hundred years old. So a hundred years old was the number. If I had enough money to pay my bills to be a hundred, then I didn't need to work anymore. And when I hit that number, And as you get older, that number gets smaller and smaller cuz you're not gonna live as long. I was like, wow, this is enough. Why would I go to work to do something I don't necessarily wanna do except for the dollars if I've got enough money? So for me it was a financial calculations. Say I have enough when I talk to founders. What happens in startup world is, and I'll give you two examples. One, I know two guys. I started a company, it was very rough and tumble. They were hustling, the business was growing. they reached their first round of financing and they were still thrilled to be going because the angel investors and the early stage investors were tolerating the fits and stars, the errors that they were making as they grew the business. Then they reached a second round of funding where it was more formal board meetings, regular reports, audited financials. Meetings with board members, and one of the founders was like, okay, this is enough. I have enough money. I just want to travel the world. Really, this business is big enough to pay me, or my stock is big enough to pay me all the money I want for the foreseeable future. I don't want to do this anymore. And his other partner said, while I'm still good to go. And the business now is a multimillion dollar business with the one partner very happily traveling the world and the other partner learning more and more about the sophisticated aspects required of a bigger company. There's another company, very famous company here, GrubHub, where one of the partners, as they grew the business, Then they said, Hey, let's raise some money. Then they raised venture money and then they sat around and went, you know what? Let's go public. And they went public. And one of the partners was like, We've done a lot, we've grown this business as massive. I don't wanna do this anymore. I'm gonna bow out. And the other partner still is involved in that firm as a public company. So I think enoughness is a very personal thing where, if you talk to anybody who knows me, one of the first things I say is my biggest mantra is choose what you want and pay for it. And when you realize you don't really want this anymore, you've reached the point of enoughness and it's time to go figure out what else you do want to do or just sit back and put yourself in a position for something great to happen, which is engineering serendipity. Got it.

Very good. Yeah, I relate a lot with what you're describing, doing the financial calculation. I think a lot of people in the financial independence movement look at, we call it the FI number, right? So get to their FI number. I'll speak personally for myself that, I'm along the path of financial independence. I'm fortunate to be in a good financial situation, but then the idea of, okay, let me leave this job that's very lucrative that I can do with, sustainable effort, but is not my purpose, right? but it allows me to earn and invest and continue to, live the lifestyle I'm living. I. maybe I've already reached enough. Maybe I'm not, that's where I struggle as my father-in-law says if the money faucet is flowing, grab a bucket. Don't turn it off. And so I struggle with, okay, maybe I already have enough, certainly I have enough to go and pursue my dream of being an entrepreneur. But I look at it as okay, I'm doing that now. I'm also earning a good amount. the faucet is flowing, turning off the faucet is the hard part. You know what I mean?

I will say this. Somebody asked me, and this is really an interesting concept. They said, Tony, What would it take for you to put on a suit and tie every morning and go into the office from nine to five? And do whatever people needed you to do that's not illegal, immoral or unethical, to change your life from what you do now, which is wake up in the morning, go for a bike ride, come back, shower, look through my calendar of all of my executive coaching clients, mentoring, calls, podcasts, et cetera, and then go and eat wherever I want to eat or shop where I'm gonna shop and not worry about how much it costs. what would it take for you to change that? And I thought about it and for the first time in my life I was like, there is no dollar amount that would have me change my lifestyle. Now if she said, Hey Tony, we're gonna give you a billion dollars to come to this job for six months and do whatever we tell you to do, eh, now we could have a conversation. Cause a billion probably that's

a lot of money outside. Could do a lot of, can make a lot of impact with the billion dollars. Make a lot

of impact with that. But I have reached this point in my life where, financially, there's no greater benefit to my life of going to make even more money. Doing the things that now I have full control over the impact and who I want to help and for how long and under what circumstances. And be able to do it sustainably. One of my mentors in this space, when I stopped working on a nine to five, and I was trying to think, oh, should I go keep the money faucet flowing by applying for another executive job in the financial industry or am I okay? And I had my executive coaching business going along pretty well. A couple of other things going along, and I said, guy, how do I think about this? And he said to me, this is very practical advice. He said, I run my coaching business so that I don't have to touch. My 401k. Mm-hmm. And when he told me that and I thought about what my burn rate is and what I was making on a regular basis with investments in coaching, I went, oh, that's a pretty good objective, not touching your 401k. Cause then that's your save for a rainy day or save for old age or save for something bad to happen money. Mm-hmm. you can come to that point where you say, okay, I'm not gonna continue to work to turn that financial faucet on because everything else I'm doing is far more interesting and engaging and a better use of my time than going to turn that faucet on. I think what happens is you reach a certain age or a certain level of financial independence, for instance. So let's, let's look at your situation for a second. If somebody, if you won the lottery, And you had, of course I know you would not take it over the 20 years, you'd probably say, give it to me now. Pay all the taxes, put it in the bank. Your perspective on the best use of your next five minutes of time would change a lot. I remind people of the number 168, 168 is the number of hours in a week. 24 times seven. And if you sit down and think about what do I wanna be doing in those, what's the highest and best use of my time for those 24 hours? And you take work for money out of that equation. now you've got an interesting problem to solve. It's not really a problem, but you've got a very interesting set of things to solve for. What would you do? And I often ask people five questions. What would you do? What would you like to see written on your tombstone? How would you like to be remembered? What would you do if money was absolutely no object? What are you doing when you find that time is passing by so fast because you've been engaged in that? What would you like to be doing the moment lightning strikes and you go to the next world? Or how would you like somebody to be introducing you if they had paid$500 a plate to listen to your story? What would you want to do? As those things begin to align, you begin to figure out, okay, so this is what I want to do with my time. This is what I love to do. This is who I am. This is how I want to be deployed. And when you find you have enough money to fund that set of operations, whether it's teaching English as a second language in the foreign land, or working for a nonprofit or becoming a C e O of a Fortune 500 company, Then you find that there's alignment across a bunch of spectrums and you are doing it enough. You just have to do it sustainably.

Very good. Yeah. A lot to think about there. I think. Love those questions. Love that line of thinking. it gets to that question of what is enough. I think what you're describing for most people, including myself, if you won the lottery, you probably aren't gonna keep doing the job that you're doing. unless you absolutely love it. I like it. I don't absolutely love it. And if I never had to make another dollar again, probably would be doing something else. But to your other point, you can cover your living expenses. assuming you're not balling out and like driving Ferrari every day, you probably can do that with less money than you're making or were making in a, high earning corporate career. So I think there's a lot to think about there. I appreciate you, indulging me on that, Tony. This is what I do here. I'm like, all right, let me just, I'm talking to these awesome people. Let me just ask them, about me, and hopefully people enjoy that can apply to their own life.

Yeah. I'll say one other thing on this one. Sure. I meet and you probably meet a lot of people who feel like they're in either a middle-aged crisis or there's a John Mayor song where he talks about having a quarter century crisis at 25. And when I sit down and talk to people and analyze where they're, what they're doing, why they're having a crisis, Because I'm addicted to helping people figure things out. It usually boils down to the one simple thing is they don't know what they want. I don't know what I wanna do. in my business rather frequently, founders sell their company for more money than they ever thought they were gonna have, and then they're lost. And I hadn't thought about what happens after this happens. when you get to a certain point, I, I personally, I reached a point where all three of my kids were grown. They had W two s, they didn't have any student debt. my wife is working, everything's happy, we're healthy. I'm like, oh, what do I do now? So we all reach a point, hopefully at some point where we don't quite know what's next. And I tell people that the. The response to that is, first of all, it's a high class problem. Absolutely be very happy that you have this problem. But number two, just take a moment and write down what turns you on, what turns you off, what gives you energy? What drains your energy? What do you like to do? What do you not like to do? And write it down. Make it a process so that you're actually observing things that maybe you hadn't paid much attention to. And then as you do that, the next step, if you have time, this is concept of having 50 cups of coffee with people who you know you like, you trust and respect whether or not you know them personally, or whether or not you can get connected to them. Like how you and I got connected, right? And. Just say, look, I just wanna know your story. I wanna hear how you got to where you are. I'll tell you where I am and if you have any thoughts, insights, suggestions, books, blogs, movies I should watch or read, or people I should talk to, I would love to have. And finally, what can I do for you in return? And that process, I tell people all the time, activity alleviates anxiety. So if you're anxious about, what do I do next? Relax. And just write down what turns you on, what turns you off, and have 50 cups of coffee people. And I'm gonna tell you, Adam, it works like magic. maybe if your listeners hear that process and they're a little, confused or dismayed about where they are and what they're doing, whether or not you've got a job, that'll work. Okay, great.

I love that. I appreciate how you added it. It's like you're just like speaking the things that I always think about. it's magical and eerie, like what you just described. People reaching financial independence, not knowing what's next, feeling, anxious or depressed or down after that point because they lose a huge piece of their life and their identity and aren't sure what that next chapter looks like. I. Is exactly the business I'm looking to build and building, right? I'm looking to do like a group coaching program where I help people use the tools of mindfulness and visioning to get clear on what they actually want and start planting the seeds in their mind and taking the actions in their life to start to make it happen. And so it's funny that you're describing that, and I love the idea of 50 cups of coffee because it's getting back to why we're here, the engineering serendipity, and I like that what you phrased, you said, was it action or activity? alleviates anxiety.

That's right. You gotta do something. If you sit there studying your naval, you're not gonna find the answer in your naval. Nope. It's gonna be in somebody else's head. And to the extent that activity is intentional. one of my coaching clients came to an epiphany where he realized that progress is the best measure of success. So for those of us who've been very successful and have hit a milestone is a point in time. Hey, I made, I closed that deal. I sold that house. I married the girl of my dreams. Okay, that's a point in time. What's next? And progress. making sure that relationship with the girl of your dreams is great. Making sure that you know you're helping people be sustainable in the company that you sold, is that progress. when you are progressing after a certain point, you often have to document it so you can look back and see that you have done it. So if you're lost and. People come to me and say, I don't know what I wanna be when I grow up. Okay? There's two kinds of answers. 80% of the people go, I don't know, 10% of the people give me some BS answer. I want to buy a Bugatti. That's not what you want. Be when you grow up. And then 5% of the people will say something like, coaching clients said this to me once. I said, what do you wanna be when you grow up? really? And she smiled and she said, nobody's ever asked me that question, but here's the answer. I've always wanted to be a program manager for a NASA sponsored extraterrestrial space exploration autonomous vehicle. Now, this person was a marketing director at a community college, but that's what she wanted to do. I said, perfect, we can work with that. And I gave her the homework of, I want you to have 50 cups of coffee, and by the time we talk the next two weeks from now, I want you to tell me how far you've gotten with the cups of coffee and how close you've gotten to a person in your expanded network who already has that job and can show you how to do it. Adam, she had four cups of coffee. She met someone who had been in her sorority couple years ahead of her at her school who had that job at nasa. Contacted her and told her about a program that they have for non-science professionals who wanted to be program managers and provide that non-technical alternative perspective to space exploration. I was like, you've gotta be kidding me. It's wild. This is the way

it works. Yeah. it really is. It really is. I've had so many examples like that, not exactly like that obviously, but just in my own life where it's just I want this thing to happen. Like I wanted to take a paid sabbatical last year, right? for three years I wanted to do it and I didn't know how it was gonna happen because Google does not, where I work, doesn't have a paid sabbatical program and they also don't have a sabbatical program. what it ended up happening. I took three months off work, fully paid last year. Amazing. Because it was on my mind and I was ready to see opportunities to make it happen. let's get into this engineering serendipity. I know we're, we're, we've been talking about it around about way in various formats. I would love to hear what's the definition of engineering? Serendipity.

Putting yourself in a position for something better than you imagined to occur. Here's a great example of engineering serendipity. there's a, friend of mine named Jeff Leer, and Jeff taught me something. he has a series of lectures where he talks about unwritten rules. for instance, you get into an elevator, everybody gets into an elevator, and you turn around and you face the door. That's an unwritten rule. If you walk into an elevator and you don't find them, that's weird, but it's not illegal and it's not immoral. It's just an unwritten rule. in order to put yourself in position for something better than you expected to occur, you have to think, is this an unwritten rule that I'm following, or can I challenge this rule and have something better happen to me? Many years ago, I decided that I wanted to take my two sons on a two week business trip to Asia. this gets to choose what you want and pay for it, which is rule number one in my life. Choose what you want and pay for. I'm going on this two week business trip through Asia. My boys are 11 and 14. I want to take them. How do I make this happen? my company was paying for me to fly business class, and I had enough points to let them fly and coach, my younger son, when we got to the gate, had asked me, can we ask the gate agent if we can fly in business class with you? Now, the unwritten rule that I followed was, that's ridiculous. It costs thousands of dollars to upgrade business class. There's no way they're gonna let you upgrade a business class. And I was like, Tony, let's engineer some serendipity here. Clearly your son is picked up on this. So we got to the gate agent and I said, look, my son has asked me to ask you if they can ride in business class with me to Tokyo, so I'm just gonna ask. And on cue, my son looked up at her with these big brown eyes and dimples and smile. She looked down at him and Adam, she said, we can do that and move those two jokers up to business class to Tokyo. And I bought near, had a heart attack, but what an incredible affirmation. Of putting yourself in a position for something better than you possibly could have imagined to happen. I'll tell you another story. had a trip to Miami. I had a friend who lived in Miami, about 20 minutes from where my first meeting was supposed to take place. So I decided I'm gonna fly into Miami on an earlier flight and I'm gonna sit down, hang out with him and his wife and his kids, and then I got 15 minutes to make it. I'll leave 20 minutes before and make it to my meeting. I get there, Hertz gives me a humero, a convertible Camaro, and this is in the days before Bob's. So you get to put the key in the lock and turn. I pull up to his house. He's bought a convertible Camaro, same model, same year. I'm like, oh man, this is great. We're talking. We're talking, but it's cool. So the top is up. I haven't got the top down yet. We talk now, it's running a little late. I run out to the car. I have locked my keys in the car. He looks at me, I look at him. He gives me to look like, bro, I'm late for work too. I can't help you. But I didn't panic. I thought to myself, toss me your keys. So he tossed me his keys. I put the key in the lock. I turned it, lock opened. I tossed him the keys back. He looked at me like, what the, and we both drove off. Put yourself in a position for something even better than you could imagine to have happened. Now, unconsciously, subconsciously, having worked at Chrysler 20 years earlier, I knew that there's only so many combinations of ways that you can cut a key. So I thought, let's just give it a shot. Maybe by some miracle, these two keys work. And they did one of the things I tell people is if you have a negative thought, you are taking yourself out of the opportunity for something good to happen. You have to constantly be thinking positively. Let just call this a positive mental attitude many years ago. You have to always be looking for what you're trying to accomplish and ways for it to occur as a shortcut and accept the fact that there will be some rabbit holes and dead ends and disappointments. But being a constant mindset of trying to engineer serendipity, putting yourself in position for something better to happen, and availability bias starts to kick in and work for you. if I tell you I have an orange Mustang as I just have, I guarantee you that you will see an orange Mustang. Within the next three or four months and go, ah, I just was on a podcast with a guy who's gotten an orange mess because now it's in your brain. You'll be thinking about it. If you set your intentions about what you're trying to accomplish, particularly if they're huge, massive, unbelievable opportunity, like becoming program manager for an unmanned extraterrestrial autonomous space vehicle, you will start to see these things in the world that you never thought before. I remember when my wife was pregnant with our first child, it looked like every woman on the street was pregnant. And that's what availability biases. So you just had to use that availability bias to power your intentions for what it is that you authentically, personally really want to occur.

Yeah. That's some good stuff there. the story about your boys, getting the first class seats was amazing. I heard that the first time and I was like, that's incredible. And I heard it this morning when I listened to it again. And then you telling it now it's yes. I had this idea, this phrase you don't ask, you don't get. if you don't ask there's a guaranteed no. It's like the Michael Jordan quote. You miss a hundred percent of the shots you don't take. That's right. You gotta ask. And that's a perfect example of that. And it's way better than they could even have hoped. They got to sit up with you. And in the talk you mentioned they were grinning ear to ear your entire time. Absolutely. that's like the happiest thing getting something I shouldn't be getting, like that's like the best feeling for me. yeah. And then you mentioned the car, the car keys. It's funny you mentioned that. in high school my first car was a G M C truck, and my friend who parked right next to me in the parking lot in high school, I had a black one, he had a white one. Our keys worked on each other's doors, I don't think it worked in the ignition, but it worked on the door and, it was just funny to hear you saying that, but this idea of putting yourself in a position for something even better to happen it explains why I've had success that I've had right in my life. I can attribute most of the good things in my life. That have happened to doing that. And so that's why this idea of engineering serendipity really hit me like a lightning pole. And so you had in the talk you had Five ideas or practices to put yourself in those opportunities for things to happen better for you. so I'd love to explore those if you'd like and I have them written down.

You tell me what they're, we're going.

so the first one is be honest about what you really want. Yeah. And that's come up quite a bit in the conversation. And I'm curious like, how do you advise people, and we talked about some ways to do it, but how do you advise people, figure out what they really want?

those five questions I talked about earlier. Yeah. How do you want to be remembered? What do you want to do? what's happening when time flies by? we have so many distractions in life. Instagram, it's been worn out that everybody's showing their best lives on Instagram, but they're curated. they've got, filters on'em. They're momentary, they're not true. there's a friend of mine wrote a poem called False Coordinates, and it says, I cannot navigate my life by the coordinates that you expect me to. And I think for most of us, particularly when you were younger, all of us, when we're young, we see that somebody has a car or a job or a title or a house, and we think, yeah, that's what I want. Without thinking really carefully about what turns you on, what turns you off, what you wanna do, what you don't wanna do, and peer pressure. Both personally in high school, middle school is when it starts. Peer pressure, parents pressure. Your, social media or any kind of media pressure tends to make you think about short-term or immediate or unapproachable things. I wanted to be with shortstop for the White Sox, but reality hit and I didn't make my freshman team. So you just have to constantly be saying, okay, so that's not available. What's next? And understand that life's gonna throw you curves and some things will happen, some things that won't happen. but really none of us wants to live any earlier than today. There are no good, there are no good old days. So let's think about what the good future days have in StoreForce and how we get after.

Yeah. The second one was ask questions and listen.

Yes. I find that when. I'm talking to a founder and he's telling me what he's gonna do with this company and how he's gonna make money and what the plan is and does not allow me to talk. I'm completely turned off and I realize that person is not ready yet. They're not really ready to move forward because they still think they have all the answers. They're just trying to sell me on them. When you really don't know where the hell you are or what you're doing, or what you're going, if you're in a foreign country or you're in a neighborhood you're not familiar with and you're trying to find your way to someplace, what's the best way to get someplace you don't know? Ask a question and then listen to the response and maybe write it down and ask for clarification. But that is really how you progress when you have too much going on in your mind about how you know you're supposed to get there. my G P S says I'm supposed to go this way, isn't it? No. Luigi is around the corner, down the street and underneath the bakery. And it's a local person who will tell you how to get there. And if you travel internationally to a place that you don't know the language, it really forces you to ask questions and listen. And that's really what your life journey is. You don't really know where you're going, but you need to ask questions of people who you know, life, trust, respect, listen, and then add it to your own personal poked re of how you're gonna move forward and see if it makes sense.

Yeah. And how do you see asking questions, helping you engineer serendipity?

I ask open-ended questions. So if I say to you, Adam, I'd like to start doing podcasts, what should I do? now I've engaged you in the process. And you are gonna be thinking really hard about the best way to tell me. You may talk for an hour, you may say, Tony, here's this one thing you need to know. But as I begin to accumulate ideas and perspectives and insights on how to do what it is I really want to do, I then begin to build a framework for deciding do I really wanna do podcasts? Or Oh my gosh, this is amazing. It's easier and faster than I thought. Cause I was gonna do it this way. This is better than what the last guy taught me. So questions should be open-ended and engage. The person you're asking. The Chinese have a quote that says, if I tell you, you'll forget. If I show you, you'll remember, but if I engage you, you'll understand. So asking a question is the best way to engage somebody, and the more open-ended that question is if I ask you. A close ended question, Adam, based on what you know about me, should I start being a podcaster or not? That's a yes no question. But if I say, Adam, I'm thinking about podcasting. What do you think? Now you have to engage and I'll get a much more productive conversation from you than if I ask a yes, no question.

Got it. Yeah. that's a great tip. And as you were talking, benefits of that come up when I teach envisioning and I talk about it on the podcast. you gotta talk about your vision. Once you know what you want and you're honest about what you want, you need to go and share that with people and ask questions to get input and ideas. Because it does three things. One, it helps you practice your vision, right? It plants the seeds in your mind. Exactly. It fuels the predictive mind, the availability bias. It also, Helps you make connections in your mind of things that you wouldn't have thought about, right? Because that person's engaged. They're now giving you their take on it and new ideas that you might not have thought. And over time, those are gonna, mingle with the other things in your brain. And you're gonna get new connections and new ideas because of that. And number three, it engages them in your success because you're asking for their input and they're giving it to you and sharing their knowledge and experience. They're now invested in your success and they're aware of it. And so they're aware of what you want. And so when they're out in the world, their availability bias is gonna kick in. And when something comes up that's aligned with your vision, they're much more likely to tell you about it and h and make that connection for you than if you obviously didn't tell them.

Exactly right. when I'm with my coaching clients, I always say, look, please don't wait until our regularly scheduled meeting to share with me an idea or a thought or a question you have. Tell me now, and I'll do the same thing for you. Because it's an ongoing effort. one other thing I'll say is many times we hear unwritten rules that hurt us. One that I hear over and over is, oh, I don't want to jinx it. What are you thinking about doing? Oh, I don't wanna tell you I'm, I don't wanna jinx it. That, to me is personally my own opinion, one of the dumbest things in the world, because A, you can't jinx it by not saying anything about it. Yeah. And B, you can help it. By sharing it just as you just said, sharing it broadly and getting perspective and feedback from people who have been there, done that, or have a better way for you to try and do something. So yeah, unwritten rule.

Abolished. Yeah. I love these unwritten rules. just, no, I don't love the unwritten rules. I love the idea of questioning and asking, am I following an unwritten rule? That's right. I'm just gonna get in the elevator today and just face the wall. Do it. I've done that before. It's hilarious. It's hilarious. Yeah, it's hilarious. Oh my God. That's good. okay, the next one is be helpful.

yes. one of my dearest and most treasured friends said to me one time, Tony, the favors you do for people are not for them. It is a contribution to the wellbeing of the universe, which will be paid back to you in ways that are incalculable. And my youngest brother once told me, Tony, when you give a gift, give it because you want to, not because you're expecting any kind of feedback from it. And that, along with many other, examples just tells me that, I do believe that there is a Carmic bank account that all of us have that the good deeds that you do on behalf of people sustainably and as what makes sense to you. And without expecting anything particular in return, accumulate to something that comes back to you when you need it in a serendipitous way that is incalculable. So I try on a daily basis to be helpful. If I see a homeless person, who looks at me and says, Hey, can I have a dollar? not today, brother, but you have a great day. Hang in there. You walk to a door. You open the door, you hold the door open for somebody else, you let somebody in. When traffic is merging, somebody says, oh my gosh, I forgot my wallet at home. Just pay a couple bucks for whatever it is that they're trying to buy and keep moving and being helpful. In my opinion, as a manner of living your life is similar to something Catherine Hepburn said, which is happiness is not a journey, rather it's a manner of traveling. So when you're helpful and you see the smile on somebody's face because hey, some mom is trying to get into a grocery store door and she's got one kid by the hand and she's pushing the stroller and nobody's helping her open the door, help her in. Hey mom, it's gonna be a great day today. And just keep moving. that not only I think feels good in the moment, but in some universal way, which may or may not be true, but I believe it, it comes back to you when you need it.

Yeah, great advice and I encourage people to listen to the TED Talk because you share a story of a woman that you would just give advice to every time she came over to your desk in the office, and then years later, she reached out to you with an opportunity that you could never even have imagined that was like, perfect for you. yeah, these relationships that we have, and the help that we provide and the me, the kind of impact that we make on people are really powerful. I'm gonna have this moment tomorrow. I'm flying to San Francisco for the first time since leaving in the pandemic, three years ago. every time I go, I call them my legends dinners or my legends happy hours. I just invite every cool person I know. Oh, yeah. In a city just to come. Stop by whenever you want. And I'm gonna see all these people I haven't seen in years, some of them probably in 5, 6, 7 years. And I'm just so excited to reconnect with them and connect them with each other. you said something about five words of like what you really want in the talk. It's connect, create opportunity through connection forwards and yeah, that so many amazing things have happened in my life for me and others by just bringing people together. So I love to do that, so I'm excited for that tomorrow.

Yeah. Yeah. I do that every time I go to San Francisco at a little restaurant in Oakland called, agave Uptown. I think that's what it's called. But same thing, I send out a hundred invitations. Yeah. 25 people come, three people go, oh my God, I didn't know that person. And it makes a connection. So yeah, that is in my opinion, engineering serendipity

here. Yeah. Yeah. In a very practical way. Okay. I know we're coming up on time. So number four, be fearless.

Yes. if it's not gonna kill you, put you in jail or send you to the mor gonna put you in the insane asylum. There's so many things that if you take a second and ask yourself, what's the worst that could happen, you'll be fine. My buddies in high school used to say, Tony, you would just talk to any girl you wanted to. Why is that? What are you gonna do? Shoot me, beat me, hit me. Say no. I guess I've been fortunate to not have the fearful gene. I've survived long enough so that my survival instincts kept me outta really bad stuff. But you have to ask if you want it, what's the worst that could possibly happen, and if you can survive the worst, as my mother used to say, pray for the best, prepare for the worst. you wind up being and looking fearless. Yeah,

great advice. And number five is ruthlessly challenge. What you do know.

Oh my gosh. I saw the movie the big short couple years after the TED Talk and I fell out laughing at the opening quote by Mark Twain, which says, It's not what you don't know that gets you in trouble. It's what you know for sure. Adam, when I was probably 21, I probably felt like I had 80% of everything I needed to know and everybody I needed to know to be successful for the rest of my life. I'm 66. That percentage that was 80 when I was 18 has gone down to about 20 now. I know a lot more than I knew when I was 20, but I'm so much more appreciative of what I don't know. So I'm constantly, asking myself, yeah, N NFTs might not be, something that I want to invest in or think are really gonna occur, but gosh, how well do you know that to be true? So I probably spend more time challenging what I think I know these days as opposed to espousing what I'm pretty sure I know, which again allows me to invite people to test my theories and learn if I'm missing something at the edges and I don't learn that much more new every day, but I don't miss that much new, that might be good for me.

Is there a question that you ask yourself to or a trigger that forces you to question what you know in a certain situation?

Absolutely. Four words. What am I missing? Particularly if everything is absolutely perfect. Everything's squared away. I'm like, okay, what am I missing? And if I ask that question authentically of other people, it often will result in something that was sitting right in front of me that I missed, that somebody else will say, what about this? And, without going into another podcast worth of examples, I'll just say, what am I missing? Is the question that I ask to keep myself square away on that part.

I love it. you're welcome here anytime, Tony. So we can do follow up after follow up if you're open to it anytime. okay, cool. So those are the five. and so let's switch gears now into what I call the mindful fire final four. You ready, Tony? Okay.

Yes I am.

Let's do it. Alright, so the first question is always about envisioning. I would love to hear your thoughts on how engineering serendipity fits into envisioning, and I think of, and talk about envisioning, like getting, thinking really big about the vision you want for your life. It relates a lot to asking what do I really want, but setting aside the limitations and then using the power of our predicting brain to make it By talking about it, practicing it moving forward, I'd love to hear how engineering serendipity can support somebody moving towards their vision in a very practical way.

Releasing yourself from your preconceived notions. we talk a lot these days about diversity, equity, and inclusion. And if you have a certain idea about a person, a place, a thing, a philosophy, a process, then by definition you have constrained yourself to that concept. And that's fine. But engineering serendipity and envisioning. Requires you as a practice to look at everything, everybody, every thought as either a shortcut to where you wanna go, or a rabbit hole that you have to pull yourself back out of because it's not taking you to where you want to go. So to constantly be turning and choosing and associating with people, places, things, concepts, and activities that get you closer to where you're going as opposed to further away is how engineering serendipity aligns with envisioning. Cuz if you think to yourself something big, what do I wanna be when I grow up? What would I do if I won the lottery? What does my perfect mate look like? What's the perfect job? You may have an idea, but by constantly putting yourself in a position for something better to happen, you'll find that, oh wow, that was a good idea, but I never thought I would be doing. This that's even more tuned in line with what you wanna be.

Got it. So it's really constantly course correcting. Yes. and putting yourself in situations where you can learn something or you can move forward towards it. But also having like awareness and mindfulness of, is this taking me towards my vision or not? Is it taking me away from it? like what we were talking about at, way back when we were talking about enough, right? Yeah. I'm getting offered this big job with this big salary, but is it taking me where I want to go, which is having sustainable impact? No. Okay. So I'm gonna let that go and I'm gonna put myself in a situation over here where, something even better can happen to what I actually want.

Yeah, I'll give you a quick, quick, I know we're doing the fast fire, but I had a boss one time who I absolutely detested. I, I hated everything about this guy. And one day he came by and he was passing out all of his reports, this book by Jim Collins, good to Great. And I hated this guy so much that I was gonna just throw the book away. I don't wanna hear anything this guy has to say. And then I was like, Ugh, Tony, even knuckleheads have good ideas from time to time. And I read the book Good to Great. And what I got out of it was, good enough or perfection is the enemy of good enough. That might, I might not remember it correctly, but I do recall going, I was gonna forego this potential opportunity to help me with a shortcut toward my life because of where it came from. So that again, helped me think through, okay, that's an unwritten rule. Check what you know, you don't know and move forward. So it's a practice. It's not a, it's an ongoing practice of this engineering center, not a point in time.

Tony, the second question is, what piece of advice would you give to someone early on their path to financial independence?

Diversify your investments. and if you just simple, four buckets would be, six months of savings. When you get six months of savings, then start to invest in your 401k, maximize your 401k or open an i r a and constantly put money in that because that's gonna grow over the course of 45 years or so. And if you don't think about it and let the stock market do what it's supposed to do, you'll be fine. So it's savings. Retirement investment investing. investing in ideas or people or companies you believe in, either in the stock market, buy a couple of stocks of companies that you really believe in or go on Wefunder and invest in a couple of private companies that you think are interesting. And then, the fourth thing would be don't invest more money in anything that you can afford to lose completely. So when a friend is opening up a restaurant or a lemonade stand or investing, buying an apartment building, and they want you to invest, go ahead and give it a shot. But don't invest more than you can afford to lose entirely and over the course of your lifetime. The savings, the investing, the learning, how to invest and taking a shot from time to time will work out well.

Great advice, especially the last piece, don't invest more than you're willing to lose. Completely. And that's perfect advice for the crypto space.

Exactly. Yep. Oh, I guess the other reason that would be, bulls win. Bears win, but pigs lose. And when you have made enough money, sell, take it off the table. Yep. Enjoy yourself, and then look for the next deal.

Yep. Learned that one the hard way a few times.

Wait, you learned it, but you learned. That's

true. That's true. alright. And, the third question is, what piece of advice would you give to someone getting started with meditation and or mindfulness?

I guess the first thing is, in my opinion, the idea of mindfulness meditation is to calm your mind. And get all the distractions away. So I loved the idea of just breathing and concentrating on your breathing, cuz once you do that, you have to let everything else go. and I would say that meditation in my mind is about finding the thing that is an epiphany, something that's so true that you can't not do it or can't not believe it. There are many ways to do the meditation. My favorite one is a Five Senses meditation, where you take time to completely immerse yourself in what you feel, hear, taste, smell, or see. And that will help calm your mind and reduce all the. Background noises of all the background operating experiences that are going on just to help you function in life. So I like meditation as a way to find out what you really want to do in life, or what you really like or don't like.

Yeah. A good, metaphor that I've learned and through this program I teach at Google is that our minds are like a snow globe that we're constantly shaking up and agitating and mindfulness and meditation are like setting it down on the table, allowing the snow to settle so you can see more clearly what's inside.

Ooh, I love it. I'm gonna have to steal. That's gonna be the price for my, podcast that I steal that please. Analogy from you.

I'm glad I said it. please do. alright, Tony, the last question is, how can people connect with you online and learn more about what you're up to and follow your work?

My LinkedIn profile has everything in that spot. I'm probably at some point gonna do more to make people more available and maybe do coaching classes or more blog posts, but that's in the future. Right now my LinkedIn profile, which is, the LinkedIn, Tony Wilkins 76, www.linkedin.com/i/tony Wilkin 76 is where everything that I'm doing sits for anything that anybody wants to connect with. And my email address is there. I'm obsessive about getting back to people. So if they will reach out to me by, messaging and tell me that they heard about me on your podcast, I will get back one way or the other.

Fantastic. And I'll link all that up in the show notes so people can connect with you. Thank you so much, Tony, for being here and sharing your wisdom and experience with the audience. I really enjoyed it.

I did too, Adam. Thank you and good luck with everything that you're working on. Congratulations on your success at the podcast, and, good luck going forward. Look forward to talking to you again in the future, and thanks for having

me on. My pleasure. Thank you.