Real talk about financial wellness and authenticity with Peter Dunn

Tiffany Sauder:

Hey, it's Tiffany. If you've been listening to the show for a while, you know I'm feeling this pull away from social media and towards real connection. And that's exactly why I started my newsletter. It's a place for us to connect authentically without having to jump through algorithms. I usually share a little bit about what's going on in my life, my family, practical tips for two career homes, and just generally things that are inspiring me. I'd love for you to join me so we can create this little online space and we can lean into all of the ands in our lives together. You can sign up at the link in our show notes. Enjoy this episode.

I'm a small town kid, born with a big city spirit. I choose to play a lot of awesome roles in life. Mom, wife, entrepreneur, CEO, board member, investor, and mentor. 17 years ago I founded a marketing consultancy and ever since my husband JR and I have been building our careers and our family on the exact same timeline. That means four kids, three businesses, two careers, all building towards one life we love. When I discovered I could purposefully embrace all of these ands in my life, it unlocked my world, and I want that for you too. I'm Tiffany Sauder and this is Scared Confident.

In this episode, I have a conversation with Peter Dunn, also known as Pete the Planner. He spent the better part of the first 20 years of his career becoming a personal finance expert, helping people of all ages like 20 to 60. Figure out how do you build for retirement? How do you have sound, financial health? And I brought him on initially because as I think about fear, I know money is a place where a lot of people have fear, and I wanted to hear from him. He's talked to thousands of people. What are the common fears that are often emerging when people think about money? We did talk about that, but a real surprise aspect of the conversation was, he spent a long time creating content, being this media personality, having syndicated columns, writing books, doing all this stuff, and in the last five years, he's pivoted that knowledge that he was using in a one-to-one environment to begin building a technology company that's scaling what he knows called Your money line.

And we really dove into his fears and where he's at in his life as he's taken this big risk at a time in his career when oftentimes we're beginning to capitalize on the work that we've done. He's in a sense starting over. And so if you're at that place in your life, I think this is an excellent conversation to remind us to have the courage to follow our hearts, to follow our intuition, to follow the newer maybe version of ourselves. And Peter jumped off the deep end and I think it's pretty cool, and he was really vulnerable in sharing that with us. So listen in.

So if I were to say what your money line is, I would say it is a way of scaling what Pete the Planner perfected. Now you can scale it so it's more one to many instead of so one-to-one, is that right?

Peter Dunn:

Yeah. Not only was that our intent, and it's nice to hear that we're somewhat delivering on that. As our product team says, sometimes they've got to get the algorithm out of my head, and so that's been nice.

Tiffany Sauder:

They're decoding your intuition, your experience.

Peter Dunn:

Yeah. Part of the journey was doing over 28,000 one-on-one consultations with people as the early nature of your money line, which was, sit in a conference room at a big company, people came in over 20 minutes, it was financial speed dating, and you just start to see patterns that you're just fascinating to the point where, believe it or not, you can have an amazing financial conversation in 20 minutes, and I would argue it's better than a one-hour conversation. So we've tried to scale the perfect 20-minute conversation.

Tiffany Sauder:

What is the argument for how a 20-minute conversation is better than a 60-minute conversation

Peter Dunn:

Bandwidth and energy around something so stressful. So-

Tiffany Sauder:

Or the other person in the conversation.

Peter Dunn:

Right. Yeah. So when you sit down with someone for 20 minutes, they're so stressed about the topic, and if you were to leave them after a one hour conversation, naturally you're going to have a list of 15, 30 things they need to go do, which is a horrible way to get someone to take action. And so it became, go do this, come back to me when you're done. And they'd come back and be like, awesome, now go do this. And they'd come back, awesome. At this point, they're starting to build confidence. They're starting to build self-control, at some point sacrificed crosses over into self-control. You do something hard and you're like, "Well, that was hard." Then you got to convince yourself to do it again. And then at some point it becomes, "Well, that's just who I am. That's the sort of person I am. I eat a salad with grilled chicken at an airport and not a burger and fries. That's just who I am." But the first couple times you make that decision is not who you are, it's who you're trying to be.

Tiffany Sauder:

So I want to take two branches off of that. You talked about your money line is a culmination of putting together the insights from these 28,000 conversations. When did your money line become in the vision for you? Did you have the foresight the whole way? When did that start becoming part of what you saw?

Peter Dunn:

I think it's when I became more interested in developing other people's careers than my own as a personal finance expert, which is so made up.

Tiffany Sauder:

Well, it's weirder when you say it about yourself, but I'll say it as a personal finance expert.

Peter Dunn:

Thank you so much. As a media personality, how about that? There was Dave Ramsey and Susie Orman who I have respect for, and I was on this path to maybe join them. I made a long way down that path and then it became so unimportant to me just somehow overnight. I was like, well, this is silly. Here's a person born on third base me and I'm going to just turn it into more me? That can't be it. And so that's when your money line really came into focus of like, okay, let's stop making this about me. And that's also why the Pete the Planner thing has become just so, I'm thankful for it, I'm grateful for it. I'm just so interested in it. I'd rather set off a talent bomb of really empathetic leaders than talk more about me.

Tiffany Sauder:

Who noticed that change in you? Did you notice it first? Or did you see people around you projecting that to you? Or where did your energy go where you started to realize? "I don't know, this doesn't feel the same."

Peter Dunn:

I definitely noticed it myself. But I think it was a natural progression, at some point if you just keep going, hey, let's make this about me. There's arguably something wrong with you. I think it's a maturation process. I think just admitting privilege and on some level. You grow up upper middle class, you never want for anything and then you raise your hands in glory of whatever success you have without acknowledging the path. So that's a part of it too. And maybe as a parent, I have a now 14 year old and soon to be an 11 year old. And so just trying to instill values within them and forcing yourself to self-reflect is like what's really going on here?

Tiffany Sauder:

There's an enormous amount of fear, a lot of fear around personal finances and just money in general. And so I want you to speak to that. But before you do, because I've noticed, I think a lot of it comes from people's childhoods. I grew up in a very entrepreneurial home, so we talked about money all the time. And it was part of, I think my dad redeeming some of his own childhood and where he started and not knowing as much as he wanted to. And so he was very intentional about financial literacy with us, which felt normal at the time because it's the only house I grew up in. But now I look at that and say, man, that was a really atypical experience. What was your childhood experience with money and personal finances? I'd love to know that. And then I want to jump into where the fears are at and what you see and what patterns you see across that.

Peter Dunn:

I wasn't forced to get a job, but I was encouraged to get a job as a kid. And so early elementary, I can't even really think back to it what was my financial experience, but I always think it through the lens of an adolescent. What's the expectations that your parents put on you? And the expectation was that you would work. And so the value of work and the interest in work I think drove my financial interests. There's a interest joke there, I'm sure as it relates to money, but I'm not making it.

And so I think that was the relationship with money and my parents and I was that like, you work, you could earn your money. Guess what? You get to do whatever you want with it. And frankly, I think that's beautiful. I mean that's something my formerly 13 year old daughter and now 14, is fresh as you can tell, it's the second reference to it, it's a week old. She she's soccer ref making 160 bucks a weekend is a 13 year old. And I think that's the best way to teach her about money. So that was it. My parents definitely have influenced my career. They made a beautiful life for my sister and I, and again, they paid for our college. I live in the student loan world, talk to people about their student loans and I have to check my privilege at the door. I have to say, yeah, by the way, my parents paid for a private school education. So I'm just going to give you my perspective and I hope you're okay with that.

Which to backtrack it, a hair, Tiffany goes back to this personal finance expert thing. I don't want to shout down the mountain at people as though, "Hey, I've figured all of this out and why don't you climb up here with me." I've always viewed it as I'm going to come down the mountain of the comfort and stability I've built for myself and see if I can walk up next to people. That's more how I view it. That's not to necessarily suggest that other people in my space shout down the mountain. Although if you'd like to draw that conclusion, feel free.

Tiffany Sauder:

We do open book financials at Element three, which is not personal finance, it's business finance. But I find as a starting point, one of the things that are the most intimidating is just the vocabulary. I have a finance degree, and so I was educated in the words. And then I'm a business owner, so I know the words. And then I grew up in a very financially illiterate home. And what I mean by that is we talked about filing taxes in a 1040EZ and the words weren't a thing I was trying to decode as an adult, I had familiarity with them. So how do you break down even the fear of the vocabulary? Having the humility to say, I don't know what that words means, or I've never heard of that form or I didn't know about that thing. I think can be a real stumbling block

Peter Dunn:

If you think about the idea that you have a relationship with money from when you start working and probably before that. And there's this belief that we somehow get better with it because we have an elongated relationship with it. It's like the idea of like, "Oh, well I'm good with food because I've been eating for 45 years." That's ridiculous. And so when I think about people's stress and money troubles, I have financial stress just like anybody else, but I don't have trouble with money. So I go to different areas of my life where I have behavioral challenges that maybe hit me a little different. I don't always make the best nutrition choices and other people do. And they might look at my nutrition choice and be like, "Well, what are you doing? It's so obvious."

Well, it's unfortunately not that easy for me. Or some people maybe are amazing in their faith or in relationships or their mental health, great habits in hygiene there. So, as we try to deliver personal finance advice and hear people, we just offer that idea. You offer the idea of like, okay, great, maybe you're great at money, but you're terrible at this. Or maybe you're terrible at money, but you're great at this. And I think that empathetic approach just takes the terminology out of it.

Tiffany Sauder:

Yeah, that's a great point.

Peter Dunn:

People love to say things like, "Well, I'm not good with money." But that's not really a thing. It's a point in their life of which the desires for themselves and their behavior are not aligned. I think financially, the second you tell yourself you're not good with money, you put all this undue pressure on yourself and you are the only one putting it on yourself, it's just not fair to what you really want for yourself.

Tiffany Sauder:

What do you find people are really saying when they say, I'm not good with money? What's behind I'm a spender?

Peter Dunn:

I think people disassociate with the responsibility they have in getting the results they want. They abstain from their culpability. They're like, "Well, hey, I'm bad. What are you going to do? I'm bad." And it's like, it doesn't really work that way. And again, that's where I go right back to nutrition and in health of like, "Yeah, I have things I love to eat, but I want to see my grandchildren someday. So I've got to change that." I love to do behavioral experiments in myself, and that sounds incredibly clinical, but it's not. I like to do really difficult things just to see what I'm capable of. So we did dry January in our house like many houses do. And I love data and my whoop strap told me that my resting heart rate was 20% lower, not consuming alcohol. And I also noticed my mood was different.

And so without putting too much pressure on myself, I was like, I'm not going to drink this year. And coming off of COVID, I had more than my share and I don't feel like I had an unhealthy relationship with alcohol. But at the same time I'm like, yeah, let's just do it. I used to do 28 pushups a day for several years, which is 10,000 a year. I love pushing the limits because then when times aren't artificially hard, when they're really hard, you can tap that exercise you put yourself through and you'll be like, "Well, I did that, I can do this." And that's been helpful for me.

Tiffany Sauder:

I think in my own life when I've gone into seasons where I'm spending maybe differently than I otherwise would, it's sometimes a reaction to something totally different going on in my life. Insecurity, whatever it is. So when you're doing personal financial advising and people are saying, "I'm here talking about my finances. I'm not here to talk about these other things that my spending is coping with." How does that conversation sound? How do you get to a place where people are willing to be honest with themselves about some of those relationships that they may not see initially?

Peter Dunn:

It's trial and error. At first, it wasn't as easy as it is now. I remember early when I was a financial advisor, I dove down that path once Tiffany with someone, I sensed something. And I remember something saying to the effect of, who do you think you are to ask me that? Or why would I tell you that? And this is early days of Pete the Planner. And I was like, "Well, I'm an expert at that." It was so awkward. It was like a middle school dance, it was so weird. But now I have more confidence in my team. Good lord, the talented people on my advice team. Now you're just so comfortable hearing people. If someone comes to us with something difficult, Tiffany, we can say, "That sounds like you're going through a lot, man. I would feel the exact same way if I was going through that."

And while that's not manipulative language, it's validating to hear that a person isn't just off their rocker, that anybody would feel like that. And that goes a really long way. The first thing you say when someone shares something difficult financially, the very first words impact the rest of the conversation. And the financial world's not the best at empathy. They'll be like, shouldn't have gone into credit card debt? You shouldn't have so much Starbucks. And we just think that's gross. We just think that's just the silliest, most reductive thing. And I get it, maybe Starbucks was the best part of your week. I've been there. That's how we do it.

Tiffany Sauder:

So I give you a chance to pitch the product a little bit. What is the ideal engagement with your money line? You guys have designed the product to be engaged, how?

Peter Dunn:

Well, it's two elements. There's our coaches, which employees through their employers can call our coaches. It's confidential. It doesn't cost anything because the employer picks up the tab, it's an employee benefit. And it's just a opportunity to ask anything about your financial life and you won't be sold anything and our people are experts. You think about your financial life for a second, if you've never talked to a financial person, the only financial life you've ever seen is your own. And soon as you go to make good judgements about it, you don't have really the perspective of, oh, this is how this usually works because you're just in it and it's so visceral and it's so hard and it's so intense. Our people can say, "Oh, actually I've seen this, 100s of times." And then they can poke around a little bit and then they can get people to the right solution.

If you think about the spectrum of your financial life in terms of complexity, so I'm going to take you back a little bit here to your first checking account. That's the first end of complexity. That's like one on the scale and 10 is you're invested in private equity and you're doing estate planning. So that's the spectrum of a person's financial life. Most people need help with one through seven, financial planners do eight through 10. So there's this huge gap of people need problem solving and your money line does one through seven. So that's one element of what we do and then our software that helps facilitate this process. Our software's going to get to a pretty interesting place and I'm really excited about it. I mean, we're putting a lot into it and we're going to ingest a person's entire financial life into the software.

That sounds really scary, but ingest their data so we can be predictive about what's going to happen. I think so many people give up and say, "I'm not good about money," because things feel unknown, but everything's there. If I can say in April of 23, if I can look at a person based on their ingested data and say, "I want you to know Gary," assuming the person's name's Gary, because otherwise that's a weird way to address someone. "In February of 24, you're going to have a cash flow crunch and if you click here right now, we're going to fix it now." That's where we're going and that excites me. Because I think it's an approachable way to help people with what terrifies them.

Tiffany Sauder:

You think about people are afraid to go on vacation because it's going to cost too much money. It's like this is the amount that your normal spending would allow you to spend on a vacation. Would it go to those kinds of things as well?

Peter Dunn:

Yeah, yeah. I mean if you think about a couple examples of that. If you've ever have daycare costs and you think about those daycare costs, sort of hold your paycheck hostage for at least six years. And as soon as those start to go away, the world of possibility opens up to you. But the reality is you know that's going to happen, why not accept that and acknowledge it and make it part of your plan? Another version of that is, you look at the impact that spending on travel sports has on college preparation. You say, "Okay, going to my kid's soccer game is my favorite thing in the world. Even if I've got to drive two states over to watch and play against other 10 year olds." And you're like, well, that doesn't make sense. It might make sense through the lens of, oh, but we're also saving for college.

Some families do that and they say, the actual impact of this decision is going to be this child is going to have $800 a month student loan payments 14 years from now. And some people don't want to know that, but I think if you approach it the right way and you say, "Hey there, it's a safe space, just trade off and here's the actual math." People love to live in the fact, "I don't know the math." No, but the math's there, I know the math and here it is. And that's not meant to make you feel bad to inform you. I love information. I want as much information as it can, because it leads to better decision making. Sometimes I don't like to step on the scale because I don't want to know the number. I don't want to know.

Tiffany Sauder:

This exact is amazing analogy for this.

Peter Dunn:

Yeah, and so I'm in a weird place right now mentally. I don't know if it's good or bad. I'm currently, again taking control of some of my nutrition and fitness decisions. Tiffany, yet to step on the bathroom scale despite the fact that I'm doing it and I know that's the very first thing I should have done. Even after this conversation, I'm working from home the rest of the afternoon. I've already thought twice today of, I guess I do need to step on the scale today and it's wild and that's why I'm comfortable talking about people's personal finances through that lens because I've got my own challenge with something like that.

Tiffany Sauder:

But I've also learned, and this has helped me a lot of disassociating my behaviors from an immediate outcome. Meaning, whatever you're choosing to do, even though you haven't stepped on the scale, if they're moving you closer towards a healthy life, the scale is simply a byproduct of it. For me, that helped me accept habits more as like I'm ingesting this as part of, like you said, this is part of my identity. This is just who I am. I don't know if lifting weights will add five pounds to the scale or if it will take them off, but I know it's important for bone density, for my flexibility, for vitality. If you're going to have a baby at 40, you got to live to be 102, that's my goal. And so that's the thing I'm accepting. I don't know what it will do to the scale, but that's irrelevant to the choice I'm making. I'm sure there's parallels to that in the financial world too.

Peter Dunn:

There has to be, I think it's about intentionality and honesty and accountability. All I really want in my life right now with my relationships is accountability. And I don't know if I've always been there, but that's all I want now. I mean, if I'm not doing something right as a husband or as a dad, I'd like a safe space to talk about it and I'm okay with hearing that's like, you know what? This isn't going well. One of my favorite books ever is Crucial Conversations. And it's because the content of the deficiency, if you address it at that stage, then it never gets to the part where it's a pattern or damages the relationship. And I'm hungry for that level of accountability right now.

Tiffany Sauder:

So I want to know how it felt, again, outsider looking in this Pete the Planner persona that you had created the trajectory of where that was headed. You had columns that were syndicated, you had show all this stuff, it was happening. And then, for whatever reason it sounds like, hey, internally I just changed what I needed. Started over, you went back to startup. I think there's venture capital money involved in this thing, which means you're not totally your own boss. You don't control the wand, totally. Now you have people, now you've got expectations. Going back to a place that you hadn't been at in a really long time, how did that feel? What was that journey like for you? Did fear speak to you in that?

Peter Dunn:

Yeah, very informed question, Tiffany. You know what I mean? It's my entire life right now.

Tiffany Sauder:

I was good at that, can I be good at this too.

Peter Dunn:

Yes. The last year has been the hardest year of my professional life, but it is easily the most fulfilling. I mean, so it's almost cliche. I feel like I should write bad cards. It's been so hard.

Tiffany Sauder:

What's hard? Can you share?

Peter Dunn:

Sure. With respect to all of my coworkers who I've ever had, I was calling the shots from a functional responsibility standpoint in my organization for over 20 years. And now I've hired an incredibly talented group of partners, executive leaders who are amazing. And opened them up to the mistakes I've made and sharing the responsibility has been so fulfilling and I love it. But yet as being the only person who made decisions for over two decades, it's not a matter of giving up control, that's not it. It's to some degree the shame of wasted opportunity. And I extend myself some grace, but that's the truth. And then the stakes are a lot higher. I've never had a boss and the board of directors isn't my boss, but I've chosen to view that relationship somewhere on that spectrum. And as a former investment advisor who used to manage a hundred million dollars, the idea that now people have given me their money as an investment in the decisions I make, that has had an incredible impact on me, I take it so seriously.

The weird juxtaposition of the change today is an amazing example, oddly enough. This morning woke up, went to my office early and did a cable news interview as Pete the Planner. While one of my board members sat in my office next to my studio and I went in and then talked about the direction of our company. And it was so strange that Tiffany had, this happened five years ago, I'm tweeting about the broadcast, I'm telling my wife about it, I'm texting my buddy, I don't care. It was just a task of the morning like, I'm stopping to get an overpriced coffee. But the strange thing is, people still view me as Pete the Planner, I'll be out to eat. People are like, Pete the Planner. And I'm like, okay, and eat. It gave me a lot of opportunity, it was the culmination, a lot of people's belief and hard work.

Tiffany Sauder:

Well, I think it made the practice of being a planner visible such that the underlying construct of what you're building, I think it gives it a perception of credibility because of that.

Peter Dunn:

I was telling my team at the beginning of the first quarter, I just want to be the best CEO I can be. And I read so much to try to arm my brain with those sorts of things. I want to get good at something new.

Tiffany Sauder:

What did you most learn about yourself in the last year that surprised you?

Peter Dunn:

That I could have difficult conversations with people in a respectful way that yeah, there's emotion involved, but there's kindness and honesty. But again, that goes back to my wife's observation, that I tend to take responsibility for anything that goes wrong in any tangential area of my life. I will take 100% responsibility for it because then I feel empowered to fix it. I love to just blame myself because then I'll fix it. If I say, "Oh, well, I was partially responsible," that I don't actually feel that-

Tiffany Sauder:

Compelled.

Peter Dunn:

Compelled. So those tough conversations with people previously, I was just viewing them as my personal failure that I didn't really want to share with them. And so I had to take that view of accepting, well, this isn't working well, that's on me for me to solve. But then I had to realize I'm actually shorting them by not letting them be responsible for that part of the moment. So I think that's been an evolution still in the works for me.

Tiffany Sauder:

I hear you saying, I want to be really good at the CEO thing. I really, really want to do that and I'm reading all these books and ingesting all this information. I would also encourage you not to forget that part of your intuition is also as important about who you are and to not override it so intellectually that you don't just lose your gut. And I think that's the ultimate leadership dance. And I'm not saying I'm there. I'm a highly intuitive leader, and so there's times, I lean too hard on that and I do need to understand that academic underlying framework and structure that drives something. And there's times where I've barreled into things so intellectually that I've intellectually spoken away what my gut was just saying, and I didn't know how to explain it, but I just knew. So I would just encourage you in that journey of finding that balance. I think that's the ultimate evolution, like the nirvana as a leader to know when and how to go between the two sides of those.

Peter Dunn:

I appreciate that. We did disc profiles again here recently, and I'm a highest ID in essence C don't exist [inaudible 00:27:01]. I think the numbers, if you associate I'm 611. And part of what I've learned through that is that it said, I can tend to take my influence to a manipulative place. You want to talk about something to read about yourself. And I reflected back on that to it, to your point. And I thought actually the Pete the Planner brand was manipulation. It was manipulating people to do things they should do that they don't want to do. And I did it for them and I did it and I wasn't trying to sell them stuff. I legitimately feel good about that, but now I still have Pete the Planner's brain.

And so when I think about how I'm able to influence people and potentially say things that it can lead to a direction I want to go, it is in fact on the spectrum of manipulative. And so checking myself there, that's why I've been trying to pour in all this information because I don't want to just have sizzle. I want to make sure I have the substance to back up the Kearney mascot nature. That is Pete the Planner.

Tiffany Sauder:

Interesting.

Peter Dunn:

One of my dearest colleagues, she and I talk about this a lot. She's one of the most substantive people I've ever, ever worked with. We talk about sizzle and substance a lot. And as we're working on just discussions working as colleagues, what I've really realized is that, as much as I want to punch up a joke here, I need to learn how to be more substantive. I think I'm substantive and I think to do what I've done, I've had to have been. But I want to be more so they don't rely as much on the razzled dazzle. She's definitely taught me that.

Tiffany Sauder:

That's cool. How was such low SC did you actually execute and produce so much stuff? I mean that had to take an enormous amount of energy. I am also high DI no SC and getting a high amount of content produced without SCs around me is almost impossible. That's fascinating.

Peter Dunn:

The DISC profile does not account for the chip on my shoulder around my work ethic.

Tiffany Sauder:

Yeah, that created a burner for you.

Peter Dunn:

Totally. Maybe an interesting story I can share with you. In July of 2015, I was driving back from Louisville back to Indianapolis and my phone rang. It was a book publisher and they said, "Hey, we know some people you know, would you want to write a book? Give me book ideas." And I gave them an idea that I'd really been stewing on called the Commissioner, which is a book for people who have a commissioner variable income. I still to this day think the hardest thing to do is to manage your money when you don't know what's coming in. And they're like, "Oh, that's neat, but here's what we're thinking. What about someone like the decade of their life, like their thirties?" I was like, "Yeah, yeah, yeah, that'd be interesting." And I was like, "You know, really could do twenties, thirties, forties, fifties, sixties." "We love that idea. Would you do that?" And I'm like, sure.

And they said, "Well, here's the problem. We want these to be in bookstores in January. So it's July, we would need all six manuscripts and we'll even do commissioner by November 2nd." And I was like, what? Okay. So I wrote 6, 250 page books in four months.

Tiffany Sauder:

No.

Peter Dunn:

Yeah, no, I did. And I don't know how I did it other than I woke up at four every day and wrote till 10:00 AM seven days a week. And that's one of those elements where I forced the delivery. It was great. It was good, but I'm a reformed underachiever, and so that set me straight for a while.

Tiffany Sauder:

That's actually a very rad example, I love that. I talk about living a life of and, and when you've decided you're going to do it, you'll figure out how. You had determined I'm going to do this. And you had committed to somebody external, and so you just figured out how to do it and the people around you coalesced and figured out how to support that. That's amazing.

Peter Dunn:

Yeah, I'm proud of it. But for me, other than an interesting story at a cocktail party of which I won't be having a drink this year, I think it's more an example of you can do anything. You actually can do anything. And that's what I use it for myself.

Tiffany Sauder:

You can literally do anything. You just have to decide you're going to.

Peter Dunn:

Yeah. I love to communicate, I love to write. Used to hate to write now, I love it. I still write my columns and I feel a real connection with my readership. And for me also as a radio person, I want my writing to read like I speak. I want people to read it and hear me on the radio or hear me on the radio and hear my writing. And I feel like that is a skill I do have, that I have the ability to, my writing and my speaking match. For a lot of aspiring speakers, I always tell them that they should record themselves and then use AI to transcribe it and then read it and say to themselves, is this readable? Would I want to read this? And for me, if you actually do that, it's the same thing.

Tiffany Sauder:

Okay, so the last place I want to dive in is not dissecting the Pete the Planner brand, but this idea of, it takes a level of self-awareness. It takes a level of confidence of Moxie to say, here's what I'm going to do. I'm going to brand myself, Pete the Planner, this is what I'm going to be about. Take me back to what was that journey like and how intentional or iterative was it? Because building personal brands is a very En Vogue thing right now. And it was like your young self, it wasn't your 40, you're 45 now?

Peter Dunn:

Yeah, I was 28 ish when it all started.

Tiffany Sauder:

Pretty audacious. If you write it out and say you're a 28 year old financial planner who's maybe had five years of experience is going to work to brand themselves as a personal finance expert, tell me about that.

Peter Dunn:

It was the byproduct of my comedy career, which was parallel to the beginning part of my career. So I was doing a lot of comedy in Indianapolis and did college and was having some success and got some notoriety even within media here locally in around 2004. And it upset me because I was working my tail off to build my financial practice. And I was spending an hour on the weekends doing comedy or two hours whatever. And I was getting all this notoriety here and then in my personal finance, whatever I was doing. I had financial success, but I had no notoriety. And I was like, all right. So I quit comedy, just quit after some pretty nice recognition. I said, "What if I just slapped these two things together?" And actually the birth of the pizza planner thing was that. And so it wasn't, I know a bunch of stuff. It's that I want to entertain and engage.

And it's such an astute question about the audacity of someone at 28 saying, "I know all this about money." I tried to make sure that I was only talking about things that I really did know. Of course I got out ahead of my skis on a few things. But the great learning now at 45 is, man, I know so little. And at 28 I'm like, I know so much. And at 45 I'm like, I don't know much at all. And so people have followed the brand for a long time. They've sort of got to see that. Big comments about parenthood when I have a six month old and big comments about travel sports when I don't have kids. And so I've actually enjoyed learning how much I've been wrong over the last decade or so.

Tiffany Sauder:

Were there moments where you really stuck your foot in your mouth or those will be experiences that stay with me and I'm forever... I'll give you an example in my world, this, just to kind of spur your thoughts. Is I had some people be on the podcast, I didn't necessarily do the interviews, but the shows showed up on my feed. And so it looks like I was part of the conversation. And it was not in keeping with my own beliefs and perspectives and I didn't listen to them before they went live. I'll remember that forever. It looked like an endorsement because my face is on the podcast cover. And I will never have something go live on the pod that I don't listen to if I wasn't in the room or didn't conduct the interview. This is learning, it seems obvious looking back, but I hadn't stubbed my toe enough to know this is a mandate now. So anything like that where you're, as you were finding your message, building it, that you're just like, these are lessons that I learned.

Peter Dunn:

I did suss out on the journey that the way you keep building your brand is to get down the hot take path. I figured that out and I made the decision I didn't want to go down the hot take path. So that may have been the thing that transitioned me out of pizza planner or not. But even if you think about people out in the zeitgeist now, it's how far are you willing to go with hot takes to make your star rise? And I just made that choice pretty early actually in the process.

Tiffany Sauder:

So what's an example of a financial hot take that, just for the lay of us?

Peter Dunn:

So it's attributing a personal finance decision to a character belief. You're an idiot if you have credit card debt. Or you would be stupid to invest in this or that, or here's a great one. Renting is throwing your money away. What you're doing is you're taking a decision and you're making a character judgment about someone. And to me that's just gross. So I didn't do that. But I will note, I had some missteps. In my first book I wrote in 2015. I said something to the effect of, if you don't trust your spouse with money, you don't trust your spouse. And I felt really good about it because I had been married for five years, and so I knew a lot about marriage, Tiffany. And I was like, yeah, that's awesome.

And then I've sort of just grown up, really. My wife doesn't trust me to load the dishwasher, but she does trust me. So we just have different skills and acumen. So it's stuff like that. I mean, it's pretty minor stuff. I will say there is a fear that someday someone will find some video or audio that I've said something that just doesn't make sense. But I don't live in the fear of old photos coming back to harm me or anything crazy like that. I thank God I'm pretty boring actually. The reality is I'm boring.

Tiffany Sauder:

No, that's great. So my oldest is 14 as well, so is she going to high school next year. Yeah, it's a big deal. It feels like a big parenting moment to say we're figuring out high school classes and-

Peter Dunn:

It is. It is. It's been an interesting year, a positive way. As I like to say, I have never been a 13 year old girl, so I've learned a lot this year about what it is in the challenges of being a 13 year old girl. And I think my young lady's done a great job. It's hard being a 13 year old boy seems a lot easier. Seems a lot easier that I was. And to some degree still are.

Tiffany Sauder:

That's funny. So are the things you like as you look at the next four to five years? I just feel like it's a very intentional sure window as I think about it as a mom of a 14 year old daughter. What are the things you're being intentional about in this I'll say near long term stretch, both professionally and personally?

Peter Dunn:

We have a similar brain, my daughter and I. So I will say with her, it's to how to use it the right way and how to advocate for yourself. So business wise, next four or five years, we got some pretty interesting opportunities. So we never necessarily set out in this stage of our business to do a lot of enterprise business, but it's coming in faster than we thought it would. And so that can change things. So at this point, I'm still committed to studying off a talent bum in central Indiana someday, that is very important to me. The strange part about me, although I'm in the financial business, I view money as a metric, not a personal success metric. And so I don't think a lot about my own personal finances in terms of the wealth that could be there, but the numbers associated with that may prove that we've made some right decisions along the way.

So that's a weird thing to get your head around. I guess being Pete the Planner, I've learned to not need that much money to live as we try to fund our goals. I make a nice living, I do, but it's nothing absurd. I promise you that. And my goal has always been to fund retirement in a natural way and fund my kids' college education in a natural way. And I don't need some outlandish event to fund all of that. And I still feel that way. I just want to keep getting intentional. I want to keep finding accountability, healthy accountability. That's where my brain's at right now.

Tiffany Sauder:

One of the things that I'm passionate about is looking back and saying like, "Dear 24 year old self, this is the advice that I would give you today." So if there's somebody younger who's listening to this and they're in this very high achiever mode and have all these things they want to do in life, what advice do you have for them?

Peter Dunn:

I like the idea of advocating for yourself. I talk to our young people at the office a lot about that. There's nothing to say you don't deserve to be in any room you're in. And it's for the person that chooses to say, "I belong here." That's it, that's the threshold. It's the person said, "Yeah, I belong here." And advocating for that. And if you work in a safe space where, people are transparent and they're honest and they give good feedback, if you ever find yourself disagreeing with what's going on, it's on you to say something. So that's the organization we're wanting to build. And I would encourage young people to try to find that environment.

I don't know if this is helpful or not, but this is something I've always hung my hat on. Our capacity for work, our capacity to take on more is fascinating as it grows. Things that 15 years ago I would do in a day, I would talk about for three months, I will do 80 times a week now and I don't care. And that's not to say push yourself harder, I just think it's fascinating. I think it's fascinating the amount of things I can juggle now that it would've been the most amazing thing in my life at 30. I think it's cool.

Tiffany Sauder:

So is advocating for yourself something that comes natural to you or you've had to learn that? Because that's an acute thing right now in your world as you talked about your daughter and just right now, the advice you'd give.

Peter Dunn:

Came naturally to me. I've always believed I belong in any room I'm in. And just coming to learn that people don't feel that way. Sorry, get choked up. Look at me. I'm a human. That's hard for me right now of stop.

Tiffany Sauder:

The people don't feel safe in that way. Yeah. Yeah.

Peter Dunn:

Look at you.

Tiffany Sauder:

I actually feel like I did a good job. So Rachel Downey is-

Peter Dunn:

Hi Rachel.

Tiffany Sauder:

Do you know Rachel?

Peter Dunn:

Yeah. I feel like we've met.

Tiffany Sauder:

Have you? Anyway, I ball every time I'm with her for some reason. Something about the way she asks me questions or listen so intently. I'm like, I don't cry.

Peter Dunn:

I'm a very emotional person. I can talk about business all day long and not get choked up. I started talking about my personal life, although it's my personal life's fine. I do it every time. I'm the worst wedding toast person ever. I'm an amazing speaker. You get me a wedding toast, it's going to be the worst toast you've ever heard.

Tiffany Sauder:

Is long pauses and awkward. [inaudible 00:42:16].

Peter Dunn:

Oh, it's so awkward. I don't know. I feel so privileged that every teacher I ever had was like, "You'll be great. You'll be great." And there's all these people that never hear that. That's wild to me.

Tiffany Sauder:

As you have perfected your ability to be a storyteller and a speaker, what has been some of the most helpful things that you've done to help yourself get better at those things?

Peter Dunn:

We do a thing at our office called Stand and Deliver, where every Wednesday standup meeting, we have a different team member deliver two to five minutes on what they're doing now. But it's really so they can come with me for 15 minutes prior to that and I can make them a better presenter. I can just share some things that I've learned. And so-

Tiffany Sauder:

So they prepped for that with you.

Peter Dunn:

They prep for techniques that they'll use to whatever they're going to say. And so I can share some of those things that I love from people.

Tiffany Sauder:

Yes, it'd be amazing.

Peter Dunn:

Number one, never be the hero of your own story. And I know I'm saying that after talking about myself for several minutes here, so hopefully it didn't come off that way. But I think if you're trying to present in any professional capacity, even as a salesperson, you want the listener to be the hero. You don't want to, "The only way this gets solved is that I'm in the room." And I dislike that, I find it insincere. We always start with, what do I want someone to feel when I'm done? That's our starting point in a sales conversation, maybe you want them to feel like, I can't live without this, or you want someone to feel like you're competent or funny or kind or honest. And so why we start there. If I go up on a stage or on the radio or on a podcast like this, what do I want people to feel when I'm done.

And that's my starting mindset. I think energy is vastly underrated when it comes to presenting of making sure you have the right energy level. Most people could double it and be okay. And then beyond that, be present, which is the least helpful piece of advice because it is mastery level stuff. When I do interviews, I'll go and talk on an hour on a stage and I won't prep for it because I would much rather be present. And it sounds like procrastination. It sounds reckless. I give a better presentation when I can just be in the room and do what's pertinent. And that has taken me a long time. But the goal is to be present. I is to not go up there and be like, "Oh, hey, I brought this from outside the room and now I'm inside the room and I'm going to pour it on you." I want to be inside the room. I want to look around.

And then the final one is, I figure eight a room in terms of my eyes when I'm presenting, so I can get a feel for who my advocates are. And so when I get to a difficult part, especially if I'm being present and I don't know what I'm going to say and I'm searching in my brain, I can use their eyes as an anchor point because they're an advocate for me in that moment. And so I can regain my confidence as I'm figuring out what I'm saying. And then I can go and so I'll find three or four anchor points in a room and then use that person's energy to get me through a moment when I'm just searching. And that's crazy helpful. I do it on Zoom too. You can actually see little boxes. You can see someone leaning forward and laughing. And I might even say, oh, Chelsea. And then they pop up and it's helpful.

Tiffany Sauder:

It's so fascinating. I gave you a presentation a couple months ago. One of the people in the middle of the room was sleeping, it was so distracting.

Peter Dunn:

Yeah, don't look at them.

Tiffany Sauder:

I was like, I don't think this is that bad. But she just had a bad day. It's fine. But it was a wild high. I had to work so hard to not see it.

Peter Dunn:

That's tough. Yeah. I had a buddy who's a Hall of fame speaker. His thing he used to say about bigger audiences is if you can swim, who cares how deep the ocean is? And I love that. It's this idea of if you can speak in front of five people or two people, three people that are in this room, then you can speak on a stage of 3000 people, because you know what it is to communicate. And as I was figuring out that journey, that was really helpful to me. Some people hear that and they're like, I wish. No, I don't. I'm actually more comfortable on a stage of 2000 people than I am a room of three people.

Tiffany Sauder:

That's fascinating. Well, thanks for jumping on and sharing.

Peter Dunn:

Thanks for choking me up. It's been an emotional week, but thank you.

Tiffany Sauder:

It's Thursday. You only have one more day.

Peter Dunn:

Oh Lord.

Tiffany Sauder:

One more day.

Peter Dunn:

We'll get through it.

Tiffany Sauder:

Yeah, that's right. Thank you for joining me on another episode of Scared Confident. Until next time, keep telling fear, "You will not decide what happens in my life, I will." If you want to get the inside scoop, sign up for my newsletter. We decided to make content for you instead of social media algorithms. The link is waiting for you in show notes or you can head over to tiffanysauder.com. Thanks for listening.

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