Clint Willis has made purposeful choices throughout his life and has never looked back. Starting as a little boy in New Orleans, he landed job in New York City as a fact checker for Time, Inc. for the fledgling Money Magazine. His years there included working for well-respected editors who mentored him and he developed into one of the few personal finance writers of that time. But a desire to spread his wings and provide a great life for his young family found Clint moving to Portland, Maine.He started The Writing Company as a means to provide for his family and also afford him the opportunity to pursue wherever his curiosity took him. Learn more about the insights Clint has uncovered in his journey to being one of The Luckiest People in the World. Find out about The Luckiest People in the World at www.theluckiestpeopleintheworld.com
Contact Clint through TheWritingCompany.com
TRANSCRIPT
Diane Dayton 0:02
This is changing the rules. A podcast about designing the life you want to live, hosted by KC Dempster and Ray Loewe, the luckiest guy in the world.
KC Dempster 0:12
Good morning, everybody. Welcome to changing the rules. I'm KC Dempster. And I'm here with Ray Loewe in the wonderful Wildfire Studios in beautiful downtown Woodbury, New Jersey. And in a couple of minutes, we're going to be speaking with an old friend. And I'm not talking age old. I'm talking. We've known for many years. His name's Clint Willis, and I'm really looking forward to this. So good morning, Ray.
Ray Loewe 0:36
Good morning. You stole my line about wonderful, wonderful Wildfire.
KC Dempster 0:41
Well, I just thought we could share.
Ray Loewe 0:43
So now I have to regroup. Yeah, okay. So anyway, we are fortunate enough to be here in the Wildfire Podcasting Studios. And, and Wildfire has been a wonderful resource for us. About a year ago, we started doing podcasts, we had no idea of what to do. They took us through the process they have is up and running. I'm still not sure we know what we're doing. But But
KC Dempster 1:07
well, we've been through a lot together. I mean, we did a lot, a lot of them from home during the social isolation. And so we've we've had our ups and downs.
Ray Loewe 1:17
And if you ever want to go on the podcasting, business, wildfires a place to go, they've got they've got the right people to get us going. And we're thankful for that.
KC Dempster 1:26
In this week of Thanksgiving. Yes,
Ray Loewe 1:28
that's correct. So when we talk today, we're talking to one of the luckiest people in the world. And the luckiest people in the world are those people who personally design their own lives. And then they step into them and live them to the max. And when we talk to Clint in a minute, you're going to find out he very definitely is one of them. Also, there are a couple of mindsets that the luckiest people in the world have. And if you listen to what Clint says you're going to find that they pop up all the time. One is they know how to be happy. Number two is they tend to follow what's fascinating and motivating and interesting. Mm hmm. Number three, they really know themselves. Mm hmm. And number four, is kind of a little different. But it's how do you get space to do what you want? That's part of designing your own life? Yes. So let's take a quick station break here. So everybody knows they're listening. to us, and then we're gonna come back and start talking to Clint Wallace.
Diane Dayton 2:34
You're listening to changing the rules with KC Dempster. And Ray Loewe, the luckiest guy in the world. We will be right back with more exciting information.
KC Dempster 2:43
And Welcome back, everybody. And, Ray, please hurry up and introduce Clint because this is going to be a great, great show.
Ray Loewe 2:51
We'll Clint Clint is always a hard person to introduce. Because we've known him for a long time we we met him long ago, when he was a writer for Tme/Life and Money Magazine. And we were a source of college planning information for him at the time and, and over a long period of time, we kind of developed this relationship and at the time, Clint was on living in New York City. And Clint, tell us a little bit about your life at time, your life at Time/Life. And and then and then we're going to kind of branch off into where you went, because that's where that's where it gets interesting. Yeah. And that's where that's where you become the luckiest guy and luckiest people in the world.
Clint Willis 3:42
Sure, so I went to work at Time Inc, in 1981, I think. And I was I think, 24, almost 25. And, and it was great. I had a great time I learned a lot there I was I started out as a fact checker. So I learned a lot about getting it right. There was a it felt like the stakes were enormous, you know, you would publish a monthly magazine, it would be out there for a month and you couldn't go online and correct your mistakes it was there an any little mistake would be picked up by one of our some point I think we had a couple million readers. And they you know, they paid whatever it was two bucks for the magazine and they see a mistake and that was like, Yes. There. And then, you know, if you had so if you had then it could be the tiniest little mistake. So anyway, I learned a lot there about respect for about getting it right and about making things clear, because a lot of times factchecking was about interpretation. Like how will people read this sentence. Well, you know, so you ended up putting yourself in the readers mind and I spent many long nights really fun but an exciting for me as a young guy sitting in the timeline building with a view of the radio center. You know, radio, music hall across the street, and just sort of like sitting in there with some editor who'd been like, through the wars at Time magazine or wherever, and, and getting grilled by them about stuff. It was really fun. But um, but I had, you know, I was married, and we ended up with a couple of little kids. And after being in and out of that building, kind of take some time off from freelance, and I got recruited through a startup magazine for a while, after about eight or 10 years of that I started to feel like I, you know, I was ready to do something more. That was more mine, you know, cuz you kind of it was a little bit like joining the army or something might be I mean, I never was in the army. But But you're you were in part of this huge organization, and you had your place, and you needed to accommodate the mores and the standards and the history and the culture. Yeah, yeah, exactly. And I had my own culture, I was trying to develop like, Who am I, what am I into a woman? So I started looking around,
Ray Loewe 6:06
and you ran away to Maine,
Clint Willis 6:09
we did. So my wife, Jennifer and I, we had our two little boys at that point, we realized that New York City was a tough place to raise his family on a journalist salary. And I also had ambitions as a writer, you know, at that point, I wanted to write about some other stuff. And so we had friends who moved up to Portland, Maine, and we went to visit them, and we just loved it. I mean, you're so much closer to the to nature, ocean, and the mountains, and the trees and the sky and all that and the quiet. And, and the the quality of life was, you know, way more accessible to us as a young couple. And I figured I could freelance, you know, I had, I had some skills at that point, thanks to my mentors and teachers at Time Inc. And I knew something about how the world worked. I was interested in everything, it felt like I just wanted to know more, you know, and that was a great kind of motivation for a reporter and for a freelancer, because I just went looking for work from everywhere, like I remember, I wrote a tennis column for a magazine I, I wrote a, I wrote personal essays, I wrote a lot of personal finance stuff, because that was where I had a real strong skill set that set me apart from a lot of journalists, there weren't a lot of financial journalists in those days back, this would be back in the early 90s, like 93. So I could make money pretty efficiently doing that and kind of start to clear space to do other work. And I hired a couple of young guys, right when I got here, right out of college, they'd gone to school up here at I think both of them are from Bowden. And we I use them as my fact checkers and my reporters. And eventually, that kind of vary over over many years, and in different ways have evolved into what's now a Content Agency in Portland and it called The Writing Company. And it has a team of about 20 writers and 20. Plus writers and editors are really a community that we develop over the years have have an add three younger partners who run the business now. And that's been part of my journey, you know, figuring out how to own a business and how to build a community and how to be a good mentor myself after having had so many myself. And I just want to give a shout out early in the interview to the folks who run The Writing Company. Now they do an incredible job, doing content for all sorts of big financial service companies, financial advisors, healthcare technology companies, a lot of work with a lot of big agencies. They've really built something amazing up here and I'm my role these days is I'm effectively retired, you know, I kind of have a few years looked up ago and said, you know, it's really time for them to run it. And as long as I'm in the room that's difficult for them. And it's difficult for me, right, I stepped out of decision making and now I'm kind of this not even counted, but like eminence grise or something, old guy. Yeah.
Ray Loewe 9:12
Like trot out and ask them a question. You'll figure out your place sooner or later. He said, he
KC Dempster 9:16
He's emeritus now,
Ray Loewe 9:18
yeah, so so I find this process interesting. So you have to be a pretty gutsy guy. Because to leave a safe, secure situation with a big company, and relocate out of New York domain without really having a firm job. You know, you're reaching into your skill. So why, you know, how did that affect the family? And how did that make you feel at that time?
Clint Willis 9:45
Yeah, you know, it's really funny. I felt I felt so excited and so free when we left New York and I left Time Inc. to start my own thing. You know, I had I don't know where I had the confidence to do it. To be honest. I you know, when thing I wanted to talk about today was just when I think about what allowed me to make choices that have led me down a good path in terms of my own happiness and, and, you know, things like that, a lot of it was about getting to that place where you feel safe, where you don't feel quite so scared, or you feel safe enough anyway to take risks. And, you know, for me, as you know, like, early, early in my, well, when I was around 30, I remember one day, my wife looked at me and I looked at her and, and we both just sort of said, I needed to get, I need to get some therapy, like I was acting out, I was still kind of big baby, you know, 30 years old, we went to babe we had a baby of our own at that point, it was like, we don't need two babies in this family ever tantrums. And I was unhappy, you know. And so I went to see a therapist, and that was enormously important in helping me kind of sort through my own issues and grow up enough to realize, to take a more constructive view towards things and to be able to feel safe enough to start to take chances, and do that and start to look for things that would make me happy. You know, and, and that it was so obvious to me, when, towards the end of our time in New York, that it would make me happier to live somewhere like this, that I was willing to risk, you know, taking a hit financially. And, and my wife, Jennifer has always been game for anything that led in the direction of you know, everybody being happier. Yeah. Yeah. It's no fun to be married to someone who's not happy. So your happiness is my happiness to some degree. Yeah.
Ray Loewe 11:43
So you know, you seem to dwell on this a lot. And one of the things you said in our pre interview, and I'll get this on the air, because I'm not sure , you put it on there. But one of the reasons you marry Jennifer was because she was a happy person.
Clint Willis 11:57
I saw that that sort of oriented, she had an open heart, and you could just see it in her face, like the first time I laid eyes on her, you know, I had a sort of a dark, brooding kind of thing going on. And she just looks filled with joy and the capacity for joy. And I thought, that's the direction I want to go in, I knew that something in me knew that, that that was where, you know, that was the way to go. And I think my whole life since then, has been, and maybe before that, too, we're always looking for where's the light? Where's the joy? Where's the where's the safety first, because I think most people to get to joy, you got to get to safety. First you got to show you got to feel safe. And so I'm always like, when people ask me, like sometimes young people or whatever will ask me about what should I do or whatever. And I'm a firm believer in touchstones, like being able to, to draw back to something you know, deeply, and then operate from that place when you're making choices. And one thing I know deeply, and I feel that way, as an editor and a writer. What's true here is often where I'll be asking myself, what and what will the reader what does the reader want? You know, and in this case, when you're making decisions about happiness, it's like, how, how can I feel safe enough to relax enough to feel like I know what to do, you know which direction to go. And, and that finding that safety is so important, you know, if you just rush forward and make choices, out of desperation, or anxiety, or fear or anger, you're going to make bad choices, generally speaking. And if you come from a place of clarity and calm, even if it's momentary, it'll move you a little bit in the right direction, where safety will be easier to find next time, your decisions just get better and better. And sometimes you need help with that. That's why therapy talk therapy was has been a hugely important part of my, my journey. But there are other ways to find it, too. You know, and I think one of them is finding things you love doing and spending at least a little time doing that, like no matter what it is, how crazy it seems, whether it sort of takes up time that you think you don't have or even money, you think your own have, if you sometimes it's worth making that investment, in your own sense of safety and calm. And then, like I said, that's a platform to look for happiness from.
Ray Loewe 14:19
Yeah, you know, you you said a couple of other things, going back to our kind of our pre interview here and, and you said one of the things that excited you about going off on your own was that you always wanted to figure out how the world works. And when you were at Money, you were kind of constrained to being the financial guy now it paid you okay, but but talk a little bit about this. Your search for how the world works and how writing has helped you and how your journey has helped you do that. Tell me how your journey you know the the the the the trip to Maine, the starting of The Writing Company. Yeah, they all fit I think
Clint Willis 15:01
Yeah, well, you know, growing up as a little kid, I grew up in South Louisiana. I was born in New Orleans, and I grew up there and and Lafayette. And I remember being a really tiny little guy living on Joseph street in New Orleans, and standing on the sidewalk, I guess, and looking up and seeing the cars go by on our little street and thinking, who's in charge of this? How did this happen? Like, what? How did this possibly happen? It's so important. Everyone has a place to live. And there's cars and streets who did because I didn't know anyone who was doing that, as far as I could tell. Right. Yeah. So that sense of puzzlement and and interest in that somehow, I think I think for me, it was part of feeling safe in the world is knowing Well, what's going on, which I think is true for everyone, right? That's why Asian can be such a great empowering thing. Because you're like, Oh, I get it. That's what's happening here. So what's my place in all that? How can I make a contribution? You know, what do I have to worry about? So anyway, like a journal, I started out in college, I thought I was going to be an academic, I thought I was going to study politics. So I even went to grad school briefly. And I realized I didn't want to do the academic thing, where you dive very deeply into one topic, or at least that's how I understood and I think that was the program I was in. But I was like, What about being a journalist where you just get to do a story, ask a bunch of questions, and then move on to the next story The next day, if it's a daily, you know, and I'll learn a lot really quickly. So I'm, that always kind of guided me. And it's got and it guided me as a journalist. And then it guided me as a, as a writer. And it guided me as a, you know, because I ended up with a career in books, I wrote a book, kind of a biography, a group biography of a bunch of English climbers, called The Boys of Everest, which was kind of one of my ambitions was to do a book like that. And it was like, great, I had to learn all about like, English society. After World War Two, and into the 60s and 70s, that I learned, I learned, I had to learn about climbing. And then to do that I got really involved in climbing, partly as a research project, but partly because I had always loved it, because I was introduced to it at summer camp. But I ended up learning all about that little world. And you know, and then in running a business, turning The Writing Company into, you know, some kind of an actual business, I had to learn about small business and making those choices. It's all interesting, right? And it all makes you feel me feel like I know what I'm doing. And I'm a little bit safer in the world.
KC Dempster 17:34
And you're an intensely curious person, I think,
Ray Loewe 17:36
I think so. You know, talk about surfing, for a minute, surfing, got into your life somehow here, too. Yeah.
Clint Willis 17:43
Yeah, yeah, totally. It's related to all this stuff. I mean, in terms of being curious, that comes from anxiety, I think it's a small child, I was very anxious, because my family was like, I really, really have. I've had a really interesting journey with my my birth family, like in terms of coming to terms with who those people were and what they were trying to do and what was going on. And there was some mental illness in my family, and you know, that kind of stuff. So as a little kid, I was kind of looking around going, alright, what's gonna happen next, what's going on here? So I think curiosity is partly grounded, something like anxiety can channel into something like curiosity, which can be really productive, right? And my focus on feeling safe in the world comes from that personal history. So everyone else will have their own narrative and their own story. And maybe safety won't be as big an issue for them, maybe something else will. But uh, I gotta drink something.
Ray Loewe 18:44
Well, you know what, while you're taking a drink there, I think there's a pattern here that is really interesting. And it's a role model that you can be for other people. You've taken your curiosity, you've taken your skills, you kind of Escape from New York and rebuild your life. You you founded this Writing Company. And I think one of the other things that you said about the writing company is it was one of the first uh companies of this kind in the country. And that one of the reasons you did it was also to be able to give you a little space to be able to make money and then give you space to follow what you want to do. And and it's that pattern that keeps coming back up. So how would you How would you coach other people who are trying to do things in following what they want?
Clint Willis 19:36
Yeah, so yeah, I mean, I shared this with you in the pre interview about this Bible story I was familiar with from my childhood, where someone asked Jesus, should we should you pay taxes? Should people pay taxes and they're trying to trap him into saying, because if he says, Yes, his followers will be angry. And if he says, No, the Romans will, perhaps arrest him and he says, render this to get here. His answer render the Caesar that which is Caesar's, and unto God that which is God's. And I love that story. And it provided a kind of frame for me when I was thinking about how to spend my time, you know, as somebody who wanted to make a living and, and, you know, help support my family and, and all that, I also wanted to do things that was really important to me at the time to do my own writing, actually, that was a real motivator, where I wouldn't necessarily get hired to do it, but I wanted to do it anyway. And, you know, so I wanted to write books and that kind of stuff. And so I decided, I'm going to render unto Caesar that, which is Caesar, I'm going to figure out a way to make a living as efficiently as I can, without, without doing anything that doesn't feel good to me, you know, I'm going to try to enjoy it, I'm going to try to do a good job, I'm going to, you know, be responsible. But I'm also going to try to clear some space to do whatever I want as a writer. And that's the part that goes to God, you know, is a sort of conceptual approach. And so I did you know, and one of the ways to be really efficient, and also to play to some of my own interests was to hire other people, as a writer to support my writing, and then eventually to train them to write and to convince our clients that it was okay, if I didn't write it, it was okay, if I just edited it, I'd make sure it was, you know, it was it was the kind of thing they would get from me. But somebody else was doing a lot of the work. And that was, that was kind of a new thing. I think at the time, there weren't a lot of people doing that. And I was doing it for personal reasons, I didn't have in mind that particular inventing a new kind of editorial agency, and I'm not sure I did invent it, but, but I kind of did mean, maybe someone else did over somewhere else, too. But I was inventing it as I went along. And then I had people who were very early in the process, you know, becoming my partners, as well, as, you know, people I was mentoring. And then, you know, like, so I and I loved that I found it incredibly empowering. And I love collaborating with people that I love. Like, you know, it's amazing to collaborate with someone there where there's mutual respect, and, and a sense of comfort and safety and friendship. And I got a lot of that in my life, which is one reason that I am very lucky. Other people are amazing. And yeah, which is a whole
Ray Loewe 22:24
nother show. Yes, you're one of the luckiest people in the world. There's no doubt about that. And, you know, unfortunately, we're at the end of our time limit here. And I think what I'd like to do, I'm going to be really curious to find out what's the next step and where you go. And so what we're going to have to do is do another one of these a year or two down the line here and find out what's changed. And and I think that what I hope a lot of people who listen to this will do is to step out from their their restrictions, create their own life, think about what they want, and then think about how they're going to do it and make it work. And Clint, thank you so much for showing us and telling us about how you did that.
Clint Willis 23:06
So much fun. Thank you so much, guys. All right,
Ray Loewe 23:09
and have a great day. And KC, we'll be back next week with another.
KC Dempster 23:14
Yes, we're going to be talking to Ray's arch nemesis.
Ray Loewe 23:18
We're going into the Swimming World next year.
KC Dempster 23:20
Don't give it away.
Ray Loewe 23:22
It's gonna give me trauma and anxiety, all that stuff that Clint got rid of. All right, everybody. Well, thanks for being with us. And we'll see you next week.
Diane Dayton 23:31
Thank you for listening to Changing the Rules, a podcast designed to help you live your life the way you want, and give you what you need to make it happen. Join us in two weeks for our next exciting topics on Changing the Rules with KC Dempster and Ray Loewe the luckiest guy in the world.