In this episode, Ray with guest co-host Kevin Davis talk about the five main beliefs that The Luckiest People in the World have ad living life from your core beliefs. We get a peek into Kevin's life and some of his foundational core values. Those core values of faith, family, creativity, and purpose. Kevin gives examples of what it looks like to live out his core value of family. Make sure to tune in to this episode to learn more about how Kevin is Changing the Rules.
Co-host and guest: Kevin Davis: kevinkaera@comcast.net
Transcription:
Kris Parsons00:02
Thank you for listening to changing the rules, a weekly podcast about people who are living their best life, and how you can figure out how to do that too. Join us with your lively host Ray Loewe, better known as the luckiest guy in the world.
Ray Loewe00:15
Good morning, everybody and welcome to changing the rules and changing the rules is is a podcast dedicated to showcasing some of the people that we think are the luckiest people in the world. And our definition here is that luck is not just luck, the luckiest people in the world actually take the time to design their own lives, under their terms. And then they live them under their terms. So they're some of the happiest people in the world. And because of that, their journeys, take them on some of the most interesting paths in the world. And we have with us today, Kevin Davis, and Kevin is doing double duty today. He is our co-host, and he'll be with us for the next three or four podcasts. But today, I wanted to tap his brain because he's got this tremendous experience, dealing with financial advisors dealing with a financial community. And he's just got some great insights to what it takes to be lucky and how you put things together. So Kevin, welcome to changing the rules.
Kevin Davis01:26
Thank you so much. I appreciate it. Great to be here with you. Co-hosting and getting to talk about some fun stuff. Glad to be here, Ray.
Ray Loewe01:34
Yeah. And last week, we talked to a great guy, didn't we? And it was a guy who was actually making a change from work to being one of the luckiest people in the world.
Kevin Davis01:46
Yeah, I mean, that was a lot of fun talking with Mike, and boy, you've got to have a real direction and purpose in your life if you're willing to leave the NFL to go do something different, right. I mean, that's, free tickets to the Super Bowl he walked away from.
Ray Loewe02:05
Yeah, absolutely. So give us a quick preview, you're introducing us to three new guests, we're actually doing an extra podcast this month, and give us the short version of who the next three are and why we need to listen to their podcasts.
Kevin Davis02:20
Sure, well, you know, we're gonna, this will sound interesting and different all at the same time, we're gonna have a chance to talk with my parents, Lance and Penny Davis, which, you know, on the one hand, you better listen, because they're my parents. And if I don't, I might get in trouble. I mean, even though I'm about 50, Mom's still mom, right. But it's, weird when it's your parents, and it's, you know, your family, it's just life, you know, their experience just as normal, because it's the experience we all lived. When you step away from it, and you made some comments, it really made me realize this, and you have a chance to talk with a couple that lived in a war-torn country in Africa and basically decided to do something crazy and take their one child and whatever, they could get on a plane and show up in another country and start over and go through everything that comes with that. And all these years later, you know, here they are, successful entrepreneurs, in this country, having run their own business for the last 25 years, it's really very interesting to get their perspective. And so I think as we talk with them, you will begin to see more of where a lot of my thinking came from. But I'm the lucky one because they're the ones that took all of the really significant risks. And, I got to benefit from that, you know, so that'll be a lot of fun, then we're gonna get, we'll get to have a chance to spend some time with a dear friend of mine, Joe Colavito. Joe and I worked together for years. And he is just very focused on helping people really think through and understand their purpose. And that's a thread Ray that we've been hearing. You know, and the not too distant past here, and that you and I have talked about is it. It seems like the luckiest people in the world. When you really peel the onion back. They're lucky and they're living, shall we say living life on their own terms? Well, that makes it sound like everything goes perfectly and there's no problems and we know that's not the reality of it at all. I think it's because they have a purpose and a direction that they tend to figure it out and make the best of situations and they keep moving. And when you look back you go Wow, look at that. That's what a great life they've been living. And so Joe's gonna talk about purpose and I think that's just so important. And then, you know, when we talk with Steve and you've met Joe and Steve and, you know, Steve, so not only is he one of the foremost experts on centenarians in our country today, what started out as a small project one in an interview, a handful of people over the age of 100, turned into a passion and he just kind of kept going. And between in-person and then, you know, in writing.Hundreds and hundreds of centenarians later he amassed wisdom, that is just, it's fun. It's, it's humorous, it's, it's sad, but it's just filled with truth. And maybe, more importantly, he's my barbecue mentor, he is the guy who taught me how to how to smoke meat that you know that you'll hop in the car and travel 15 hours for so. I think the real problem we have Ray is how are we going to get all that done in 20-25 minutes each, right?
Ray Loewe05:57
Well, we'll manage. We'll manage to scrunch them all in and, you know, each of these people are going to back up some of the things that I want to talk to you about today. And, you know, we talk so much about the luckiest people in the world designing their own lives. Well, you know, if you think about it, if you design your own life, and you live it under your own terms, and one of the goals of being able to do this is that you are happier than you've ever been in your life. I mean, what's not to like? But the problem is that it takes some work to do that. And one of the things that I want to bounce around with you today is one of the mindsets of the luckiest people in the world is that they have to know what they want. And if you don't know what you want, how can you design your own life? So you got to figure this out. And yet, I get the comment from so but so many people, how can you know what you want when things change so fast? You know, we all kind of knew what we wanted before this COVID thing, and then look what happened. So why should we take the time to plan and think about this, but you know, the luckiest people in the world? And this is a hypothesis I'm going to put in front of you. And then I'm going to turn you loose and let you comment on it. I think there are five things that the luckiest people in the world need to have in order to know what they want. And be and when you do this, you can pivot you can go from one place to another whenever you need to do that always finding the path that you want to be happy and lucky. So here's what the five are Kevin. Okay, let's go. The first one is purpose, you know, they all have a purpose. And you know, you said Joe Colavito is going to come in and talk about that more. But I think the people who know who they are and why they're here have a sense of direction built into them. Yeah, the second one is mission. And that's kind of related. But mission, I think is where you take your purpose, and you figure out how to transform it into something that will help others as you go. You did a session for us a long time ago on values. And you know, I think the people who know what they want always go back to the values, they have a good sense of what's important to them. On the fifth one is a passion for excellence. I mean, you've got to have skill levels. And when you work within those skill levels that you're really good at and you're passionate about, then everything seems to work better than when you try to do other things. And I've got some sneaky examples I'm going to pull out of you on that one, Kevin. And then the last one, which I think is just really cool, is they want to like their day, at the end of everything. They want to go through a day and they want to say I liked my day. Yeah, so I so where do you want to start? Oh, Master, oh, pitmaster barbecueist, executive coach, and Master of the meaning of life?
Kevin Davis09:09
Why don't we jump into the value one because, you know, Joe will be with us talking about your purpose and submission will be woven in there as well. Like you said, We don't have time for all of them. But the value is one I think is so important because, you know, it's life happens. And who knows what tomorrow brings. And I think how we respond and move through life is really a big part of what determines that you know, are we happy? Is there joy our lives? Do we feel like we're living the life that we want to live? And I think that means when there are moments where there are tough decisions to be made and remember doing nothing is a decision. Right? And I think we forget that because a lot of times the default might be Oh, I don't know what to do, I'm not going to do anything. But it's a decision that we just made. And it's a tough decision. So I think having a set of values you can look at, really gives a great lens, now I'll share, you know, three or four of my core values. And then I want to give a story. So, you know, I grew up in a family of deep faith, my dad's a Reverend, my parents were a bit of a cliche, but they were actually missionaries in Africa. And so faith is very important to that. So that's a key foundational value. So decisions will always be made through that lens. Another one is family. You know, it's very important to me, to be with my family, spend time with my family. So that's another important lens. Another one is creativity. You know, Ray, I've got a creative streak in me. And so it's very important to me that I get to use that. And if I just stopped there, there's others. But if I kind of stopped there, here's the problem with those faith, family, that's almost a cliche, right? We hear it, you know, you could throw an apple pie at the end too if you want. What's that look like, though, when it really comes time to make some significant decisions. So I thought I'd share a story about the family one. So as you know, I lived in Jersey for about 10 years, that's when we met didn't live too far from you. And two, if you go back about eight, nine years, there were two significant things that happened in about a six, nine-month period, that really kind of caused me to step back and ask some good hard questions around what is the life we were living as good as it was, I mean, we were just happy we had good friends and a great job. You know, I in the financial industry working in and around the metro New York area, that's kind of the mecca of the financial industry. So you'd look from the outside and go, Well, why were you even asking questions? Everything's great. Well, so here are the two things that happened. My grandmother passed away. Now she lived a long life just shy of 90. But I'll share a bit about why that had such an impact beyond all of the obvious. And then I went to a funeral for a friend when his father passed away. So here's the context. My grandmother was living in New Zealand. We need another whole podcast to talk about her life, because she started out in Africa, ended up in New Zealand. She was you know getting up there in years, and she got sick, and my parents rushed over to be with her. But you know, New Zealand is almost exactly halfway around the globe. It's not an easy place to rush to. And just with everything that was going on, we sort of made a family decision that I would sort of stay behind to try and help from here. And they would go to be with Gran, it was my dad's mom. And so there was a good decision about what that meant is I didn't get to see her that one last time. We had seen her maybe nine months before. And we were blessed and thankful. But you know, it's not like we just seen her two weekends ago. So that got me thinking, boy, you know, family is important. But I've got part of my family halfway around the world. When you get to these moments where you're celebrating or you're mourning, you're far away. Then I went to this funeral, maybe you know, 6,7,8 months later, for a gentleman, I knew an advisor in North Jersey, we became friends, his dad had passed, I didn't know his father. So it wasn't the same level of emotion. But I'm sitting at the back and I'm watching his whole family taking up, you know, the front eight, or 10 pews it was a big family, and watching the interaction with them that there was certainly the sorrow but then afterwards, you know, that there's the reliving these memories, the joy of all that. And I had gone with a friend of mine, and I looked at her and I said, Wow, that's amazing to watch that. It makes me kind of wonder, is it wise for me to be raising my family, my daughters, my three girls up here away from their grandparents, and potentially repeating what happened to me away from my grandparents. And so as only a true friend can do, Ray, she looked at me, she said, Yeah, you're right. You're stupid. You need to move. And I was like, What are you crazy? As you know, we did. So when we say family is a value, right? That's what I think it looks like when you do those things that from the outside. Someone go? What are you doing? Yeah, that's insane, man. You're moving without a job. At the time the decision was made before I had a job. Thankfully, we had one before we got there. But we made the decision based on the value. And I look back, what an amazing decision when I look at the things we have enjoyed in the last eight years, since being back living 15 minutes from my sister and her family, 15 minutes from my parents, and my three girls growing up with cousins. And then my wife's sister's an hour away with her two boys. So we have seen the kids grow up with their cousins around the pools and at the beaches and all that, oh, he's just looking at Oh, man, are we lucky. But it went back to there was a process that we could look at life lens we could look at life through. And that one core value where we realized, Hey, you know, it's not quite right, something's off. So that's what I mean with value.
Ray Loewe15:57
Okay. Let me inject a couple of things. You know, one of the things that I get from people about designing your own life, is they say, isn't that selfish? And I think when you put your values in place is not selfish at all. Okay, yeah. Because you're not doing this, at the exclusion of your family, if family is important, you're going to include them, and you're going to base what you do around them. And that's why values are so important. And let me throw in one other thing we've seen since this COVID thing, that a lot of people who have decided or had decided that at some point in time, they were going to move into one of these over 55, continuing care kind of communities, and are now changing their mind. Because they're saying that what I missed during this year is I wasn't able to be with my family. And I'm now gonna rethink how I do this. And go ahead, Kevin.
Kevin Davis17:01
Well, no, You said something I think's profound. Isn't it selfish? I would argue that making decisions that aren't based on your values are selfish, because here's the thing, how many people do you know that will say, hey, one of my core values is selfishness. Probably not many. There's something sure lived that way. When you get down to it, most people have core values that are as much about others as themselves. And so when decisions are being made that way, they are almost always others-focused. And I think that's maybe part of why those people are so happy, though.
Ray Loewe17:47
Yeah, because the other focus, okay, I want to change direction, because we'll run out of time if we're not careful. So I want to talk a little bit about this passion for excellence. And, this whole bit about taking into account what you're good at, and what you're passionate about, and building your life around those things. So start making your comments, and then I'll force you into a story about you.
Kevin Davis18:13
Well, I think I even know the story you want. So I'll just jump right in. I think you nailed it, when you're doing something that you're passionate about that you're good at mind you, right? So you can be passionate about something and candidly would be pretty bad at it. And there's a point where that, you know, that's not fun for anybody. But when you're good at it, I think you gain joy and energy from it. You know, I enjoy talking to people I know, that's a surprise, you might catch some of the energy in my voice when we're doing this. Because this is fun. This isn't work. This is I love this, right? Give me a spreadsheet, and I want to kill myself or but let's give a real-life example. My bathroom. You know the story. So we were looking my wife and I over the holidays, we're looking at the bathroom. And we noticed we had those big plate wall mirrors up on the walls over the sinks, you know, whatever they are five foot by four foot those big ones. And she noticed that one of them had slipped it had dropped out of the little piece that holds it. And she's like, you know, we need to fix that. You better get someone to come in and do that. Because if that falls forward, it's going to shatter oh man and it'll be dangerous. It'll be a massive disaster. And so I of course looked at that and I thought, How hard could that be? That doesn't I don't need to hire someone to come. I can fix the mirror. I said honey, I got this. Now, my wife, is an amazing woman, very wise were married almost 28 years. And she very lovingly said Are you sure that's the best idea. No, no, I got the hun. I got a little extra time on. Okay. And she stepped back. Well, you know how the story goes, I get into it. And it turns out, I can't fix it. So then I'm like, well, I'll just take it off the wall. And that'll probably help me figure out what to do. And maybe I'll just replace it and put a new one up. Well, you know, these have been there since the house was built. So I take them off the wall, and I realized, Oh, no, it took part of the wallboard with it. Now I've got this disaster of a wall. And, and in the process of taking, there were three of them. And they were on sort of an angle two sides, and then one on an angle in between the two of them, and it was the middle one that had slipped. So in the process of getting it out, I, of course, loosen the other two and advertently. Now I'm taking three mirrors off the wall, and this whole project starts to snowball. Before you know it, I'm having to do drywall repair. Now we're starting to think about well, maybe you got to paint right. And well, if you're painting should you repaint, and now that leads into Well, you know, the fixtures you kind of nicked one of those and they're kind of old and now we're replacing fixtures. I am not an electrician. Here I am face timing my father-in-law who built his house, and he's up in New York. Hey, Dan, how do I do this? Well, he's laughing at me. And a month later, I'm about ready to just jump out the window.
Ray Loewe21:37
And it took you that long?
Kevin Davis21:39
It took me that long. We won't talk about the number of times I was redoing things because I did them wrong the first time, I would say the miracle is to this day, you know, a couple of months later, the light fixtures are still on the wall. And they actually turn on when I throw the switch. Now it looks okay, right now it looks pretty good. All right. But here's the problem. It took way longer than it would have for someone who's actually good at that. It cost me more money because I messed stuff up so many times, and don't even talk about the level of anxiety and frustration that came with it. And at no point in that stretch. Would anyone have thought I looked like a lucky guy? Now you would have been lucky to watch and laugh. But I think that crazy story underscores the point. Excellence matters. If you're good at something, get phenomenal at it. And you will love the process and everyone else around you will love being part of the process. If you're not good at something, that's okay. We're not you know that that's the beauty of life. We're all good at different things. But we're all good at something. Understand what that is and strive to be excellent in that area. And let the others who are excellent in other areas, let them Excel there, I think, isn't that the beauty of a painting, right? A painting with one color is just called paint on a wall. Yeah, painting with a bunch of colors is called a masterpiece. And I was just reminded that in my masterpiece of life, it should not include me doing extensive home repairs.
Ray Loewe23:27
And this is all part of why the luckiest people in the world know what they want and are able to pivot and they know in advance that they're going to crank their values into it. And they know they're going to crank what they're good at and what they're not good at, and not get caught up in something where they have an obligation where they just don't have the mental commitment to follow through. So um that all leads to I just want to like my day.
Kevin Davis23:55
Yeah, well, you know, the first four lead to the fifth. And I don't think you get to the fifth without the first four. It's a process and I think it's important that we allow ourselves to be okay, with not doing things if they're not what we're great at. And not to feel guilty about that. I think that's real important. But I hope that there's maybe I hope this is encouraging to people. Because I do think and you sort of alluded to this earlier, I think there are some people that go well, how do I live this life on purpose? When crazy things like COVID happen. That wasn't in my plan. I yeah, that's called life. When you have a process that you can loosely follow. I think it helps you. As you said, figure out where do you pivot to because life's about pivoting? It's never a straight line.
Ray Loewe24:57
Yeah. And if you base it on your values, and you know what they are and you base it on what you're good at, it's going to come out, okay. And you're going to find that solution. And I hate to interrupt you Kevin, but we're near the end of our time. Okay. And all good things come to an end. And what we're going to be able to do is we're going to be able to follow up on this concept of how do you know what you want? Over the next several weeks? Because we're talking to people who are experts at pieces of this, I think.
Kevin Davis25:28
Yeah, yeah, I agree. And I, my dad shared with me something that is wonderful that he wants to talk on is he wants to talk about sweet spot, living in your sweet spot. It's this idea of passion for excellence. Right? Okay. And I think it's cool because he's obviously at a different stage of life than I am at a stage where a lot of times I think society says you're supposed to be winding down, retiring, you know, sitting on the golf course, and not being valuable to the rest of the world anymore. And yet, they're talking about how do they make sure they're in their sweet spot for the next stage of life? Think about that for a minute, the next stage of life?
Ray Loewe26:10
Yeah, and then we're gonna bring in Steve Franklin, at some point time he's going to talk about these centenarians, people will live to be 100. And there's a good chance that all of us have a chance to do that. And what are we going to do with our time going forward? So uh, Kevin, you know, thanks so much for being with me today. And I'm looking forward to the next couple of weeks. And we'll do some great guests. And we'll see our guest shortly on changing the rules. Have a good day.
Kevin Davis26:39
Thanks, Ray you too.
Kris Parsons26:41
Thank you for listening to changing the rules, a weekly podcast about people who are living their best life and how you can figure out how to do that too. Join us with your lively host Ray Loewe, better known as the luckiest guy in the world.