Finding Financial – And Time – Freedom With Brian Herriot

Discover the key to time freedom strategy with financial coach Brian Herriot. In this eye-opening episode, Brian shares his insights on breaking free from the traditional work-life paradigm and achieving both financial independence and personal fulfillment. Host J.R. Lowry explores Brian’s journey from corporate consultant to freedom-focused entrepreneur, uncovering valuable lessons along the way. Learn how to balance work, savings, and lifestyle to create a sustainable path towards a more flexible and rewarding career. Whether you’re a mid-career professional looking for change or an aspiring entrepreneur seeking balance, this episode offers fresh perspectives on redefining success and reclaiming your time.

Check out the full series of “Career Sessions, Career Lessons” podcasts here or visit pathwise.io/podcast/. A full written transcript of this episode is also available at https://pathwise.io/podcastsbrian-herriot

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Finding Financial – And Time – Freedom With Brian Herriot

Financial Coach / Choosy Consultant

My guest is Brian Herriot. Brian writes and speaks about the power of time freedom. As a Financial Coach and Founder of Choosy Consultant, he helps mid-career professionals escape the corporate grind. His frameworks for personal growth and financial success all start with taking back control of our one truly limited resource, time.

Brian is a lifelong management consultant having worked for Accenture and Point B and he founded his consulting firm years ago. He holds a Master’s degree in Finance, investment, and Banking from the University of Wisconsin. Entrepreneurship, investing, and real estate helped Brian become financially free in 2023 at age 47.

Brian spends months at a time away from work and with the time to reflect, study, and wander. He believes he’s unlocked the secret to living a rich and meaningful life. Brian and his family spend their summers at their lakeside cabin in Northern Wisconsin, and he is currently training to ride his bike across the country.

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Brian, welcome. Thank you for joining me on the show.

Thank you very much. I’m really glad to be here.

You are a financial consultant. Tell us about the work that you do.

I’m what I call a 360-degree financial coach. I’m targeting our independent consultants and coaches, mostly who are at a stage, usually middle career, where they’re looking for more than just pure wealth generation. You reach that point where you’ll ask, “Why exactly am I doing this? There’s got to be something more and better.”

That often means taking control back of your time but to do that, you need to balance it with the money aspect. I try to work with usually small entrepreneurs like independent consultants and coaches to figure out how to make all the pieces of the puzzle fit together, the money piece, the time piece, the impact piece, and create just a better next stage of career.

Relative to a formal financial advisor, you’re not dispensing that financial advice. It’s more about how to reclaim time and get financial freedom, in general, right?

Exactly. You don’t want me to tell you what stocks or bonds to pick because I probably can’t. I know what approximate returns are when we put the larger pieces of the puzzle together, and we can project what that looks like. It’s the solution that I was never able to find, which is how you make any 401k stuff that you’ve built up, plus any individual investments, plus any home or second home or rental real estate you have.

Then how does all that work? You’ve started a business. How much money do you keep in your business? Although those pieces need to fit together, you can work with them to make it work right and I love it. I like pulling different levers and seeing how they work out because you can usually get to where you want to get to faster or slower. It’s just not this linear, efficient, heads-down way of doing it.

There’s a lot about being a consultant, particularly in markets like the US, where you have to think about how I am going to get health care for myself. How do you deal with the things you would normally get from your company if you were working for a company in terms of benefits? A lot of people are good at what they do.

They may be great marketing consultants, great strategy consultants, or great technology consultants. You have to be a bit entrepreneur. You have to be a bit of a financial planner and an accountant to do all those things. I see a lot of the people that I know who are in that space struggle with those aspects of making it all work and having the pieces all fit together.

I think the first piece is there’s fear, “Am I going to have enough?” You have to put that projection of a plan together. You start to play with the numbers and then you could do this in a scenario where you work nine months of the year, but then you have to get real practical. Usually, it’s two main things. “What am I going to do for health coverage?” “If I want to access some money that I was taught when I was 22 coming out of college to put in a 401K, I want to get at that before 59 and a half.”

How can you do that and do it in the right way? There are ways to do it, including taking the 10% penalty, which sometimes could make sense. You’re taught, including myself, never to access that early. It takes some willingness to think a little bit differently about some of the traditional advice that you might have gotten.

There are mechanisms in 401(k)s, as you say, there are hardship withdrawals that you can do. If you can demonstrate that it is hardship, you won’t take that penalty. You can do loans against your 401k, which at least you’re borrowing from yourself. You’re paying interest back to yourself. There are those mechanisms when you need cash before you hit that magic 59-and-a-half threshold when you can start taking money out, but it ended. Healthcare is another core aspect of it. You started on a more traditional path and went into this path. What were some of your, I’ll say, early career years when you were on a more traditional path?

Brian’s Career Journey From Traditional Consulting

My educational background is in engineering. I am an industrial engineer, and I have never practiced that. I went immediately into management consulting. It was Anderson Consulting at the time, but later changed its name to Accenture. I did that big consulting for six years. Then I joined a medium-sized consulting firm that was located out of Seattle.

I joined it when I moved to the San Francisco Bay area and their focus was local consulting. It was a nice fit where I could still do the very interesting work of consulting but not have to do the travel anymore. I was the third employee of this practice they were building here. I had a cool experience to be able to be part of an entrepreneurial venture as well.

That transitioned into my first full-time employment, which was both good and bad in terms of working for a large organization. In this case, it was the University of California, San Francisco Medical Center, or  UCSF Medical Center. Everything that transpired later in my life was triggered by this whole experience at UCSF, both good things and bad things. I started at 37 years old, and of course, I was 40 when everything came to hit me.

At 37, I remember one day we had this thing, which a lot of people find interesting in the Bay Area, called the Casual Carpool, which helps you get into the city by basically hitchhiking with strangers to get over the bridge faster. I was scrolling through. I think it was Google News Feed at the time, and this woman was named Marissa Mayer. I’m not sure you’re familiar with her, but she was the 37-year-old CEO of Yahoo.

The article was about her upbringing in rural Wisconsin. I thought, “My gosh.” I looked her up and she was born and raised 100 miles from me. That was the first shock, “She’s the CEO of Yahoo and I’m some director at UCSF.” It triggered me, “All right, I’m going to put my head down and I’m going to go for it.” For two years, it was great. I opened a new hospital, which was incredible. One day, they lined up and had 75 ambulances transferring patients from the old hospital. It was just this incredible feeling, but I soon realized that I hadn’t played the corporate political game.

After that big project, there was no place for me. When I was 43 years into this whole endeavor, I got called in and was demoted. I lost my directorship. My pay was cut by 25% and talk about a gut punch. It took me another year, but I realized maybe I didn’t want to do this traditional ladder climb to CEO and be Marissa Mayer. It’s hard to get out of those situations when you’re in them, but it took me another year and a half to finally get out of there.

That’s when I formed my independent consulting practice. That’s now three people big. It’s small, but it’s great. Everything that’s happened from 40 to 47 is what I talk about now, what I speak about, and what I coach through entrepreneurship, money management, real estate, and all of those sorts of things. It’s been an interesting ride, for sure.

Once you went through that transitional period, did you get right into the same thing you’re doing today or did it evolve?

Transitioning To Financial Freedom And Time Flexibility

What helped me reach financial freedom was the more traditional consulting that I did, which is traditional management consulting, but as an independent. I would work for large organizations and help them implement their systems and things like that. I did that for seven years, learned a ton of lessons, and made good money while I was doing that.

Seven years later, at age 47, I was able to take the whole summer off. Just last summer, the summer of 2023, I spent a month in Portugal with my family and two months that I had previously spent in our summer cabin in Wisconsin, but I wasn’t working this time. It was great, but it was that three months of getting away from things that made me realize that 1) I do like work and I couldn’t see myself never working again, but I wanted to work on something that I thought was more impactful.

I felt the life I had been able to craft for myself was something that people should experience because it felt great. I was still working hard, doing things that required my brain to function, but I also had the time to help with my son’s soccer league and other things. That’s where the idea hit me to start coaching on this stuff.

I still do some of that more traditional consulting work, but then I pair it with this portion of what I do, which is financial coaching. I always think that people overestimate what they can do in one year, but underestimate what they can do in 10 years. If I look back 10 years ago to when I was at UCSF and to where I am now, I think, “If I can do this, what it will look like 10 years from now, I think it will be so interesting.”

There’s that movement out there called FIRE, Financial Independence Retire Early. You’re financial independence semi-retire early.

Exactly, I’ve swung on the pendulum. I had a great dad, and he taught me all the good things: “Save for your 401(k) right from the get-go and pursue that traditional career.” I was doing that, and then I flipped the FIRE, which means I just have to spend no money, sacrifice, and then run away from work, which then I didn’t find helpful either.

You’re right. I ended up in the middle, which is how you can still live a good life now  without over-sacrificing weirdly? It’s almost like going back to seasonal work from way back when. You work when the season allows for work and you rest when it doesn’t. It’s this interesting scenario when I go back to Wisconsin in the summer, everyone here in California, where I live throughout the rest of the year, they’ll say, “Goodbye, have a great time.”

You get welcomed when you get to Wisconsin, then you flip it and you do it on the reverse and you keep going back and forth. I feel people need that more often. When your head’s down in your career at the same place for ten years, you can get in a rut and you’re not appreciated. I think there’s a better way to work and live.

Key Principles Of Financial Coaching

What are some of the key principles that underlie how you coach your clients?

One for me to share that took me a little while to learn is this concept of people thinking that they need to build this huge mountain of savings. They need to reach this big amount and then you do the 4% rule on it and you live off of that. That’s traditionally taught, but my experience was when you get to a certain point and have a good amount of savings and do the 4% on that, “Wow, that’s not that much to live off of.”

You go back to, I think, Suze Orman, who said that you need $5 million, $6 million, or $10 million to retire comfortably. You’ll think, “Okay, I thought I was doing good, but I’m not that close.” You think it’s going to take you forever. You have fear and you’re right back into working at this full-time stressful life. What I realized after reading and listening to the right things is that the real goal shouldn’t be that mountain.

It should be this river of cash flow and it’s however you’re able to build that river. Sure, some of it might be from whatever you’re saving that is kicking off, but that’s not the only portion of it. The other portion can be this part-time work that you do or this rental real estate that you have. It just allows for a different view of how you perceive what you need to get financially.

You don’t need this big mountain. That’s an underpinning to the whole thing that I teach. After that, there are three pieces to it. How much do you live on? If you can lower that, you’re going to be in good shape. How much can your investments throw off? If you’ve got a high amount there, you’re going to be helpful and then what can you make in this? I call it Whenever Work.

For easy numbers, you live off of 200,000. I’m in California, so you live off of 200,000 a year. Your investments can kick off 100,000. You need to come up with 100,000 that you need to make. You’ll think of how much I would need to work to do that. All of a sudden, you realize that maybe I don’t need to go full-time all the time.

People will say, “Does that mean you suddenly lost your motivation or you have to lower your expectations on what you want?” I don’t think at all. Now, all of a sudden, you have this time to think about what you want to do, and then you end up making even more money. It’s just a real mindset shift that is required. I guess that would be my second principle, which is just a willingness to think a little bit differently. Look at some ideas from a different perspective.

I’ve certainly heard about some of the hardcore FIRE people who are adamant about saving and not spending. The austerity of that doesn’t feel very much fun. I think about some people I know who live up in a rural area. They’ve got a very simple place. They like to hike, they like to be outdoors, bike, swim, canoe, kayak, or whatever it is.

Those things are generally pretty cheap to do once you have the gear. You can have a life that you find fulfilling without spending a lot of money. If you’re living in Northern California, it’s not going to be quite as easy. To me, that’s figuring out the right level, the point where it’s not starving yourself to death and being afraid to spend money on anything in the interest of financial independence.

I think what you’re getting at, gives you a bit more latitude. The idea is that you don’t have to depend just on that 4%. You can supplement and then you plug yourself enough in to bridge that gap but at the heart of all of this is money and you’ve got to have a clear relationship on what you need, what you can get, and what you’ve saved.

I don’t hold anything against people who want to be real minimalists with money and live a simple life. That’s awesome. As long as you enjoy it, go for it. Something that I’ve learned through this coaching process is that I was raised with a certain way of looking at money. It was to save and invest for the future. They manage money well.

Then there are those people out there that are money minimizers. They don’t even want to talk about it. They feel they got an inheritance but didn’t deserve it because they didn’t take part in earning it. I always thought, “Wow, if I had an inheritance, how lucky am I?” That’s great, but not everyone feels it that way.

The third one is something that I’m trying to become more of, which is people who say, “If I want to go make more money, I’ll go make more money.” They have the entrepreneurial mindset. Money’s out there to be made. What’s also interesting is if you want more money, you can make more money. That’s why I always come back to this timepiece, which is there’s only so much time.

That is truly our limited resource. Many people make all this money, put off time, and then run out of time, unfortunately. If you can shift that focus to time earlier, at least you’re forcing yourself to answer the tough questions like, “Am I doing what I’m supposed to be doing here?” “Am I living the life that I want to live?”

Brian Herriot: Time is our truly limited resource. Many people make all this money and then put off time, only to run out of it unfortunately.

When you work with people, go back to the three things you talked about a little bit ago, this idea of how much you need to live on. How much can you get out of your savings? How much do you need to bridge that? Where do you find that people have to make the biggest shift?

If I take them one by one, like, what do you live on? I think there are some really easy ways to cut your expenses by 10% or 20% and live the same lifestyle. That’s usually pretty easy. I don’t believe in budgeting. I believe in sorting your expenses and saying, “Is this moving me toward what I want to move?” “Where I want to go in life.” You can easily cut things out of there, either because you happen to have some subscription or you don’t recognize it.

You’ll realize and say, “This is not how I thought I was spending my money.” That one’s not hard. It’s usually harder to break that traditional message around. You need to build a huge amount of money or you have to save all this in retirement savings and you can’t access it until 60. That’s hard to break for people because they think that they’ll get penalized and it’s forcing you not to be able to use your money.

I believe me, five years ago, if I ever thought I would be saying, maybe you should stop funding your retirement, I wouldn’t believe it, but there are other ways to live a more free life that don’t involve just retirement savings. The last one is about earning money while you’re free and having a situation or a job where you have the flexibility to work on and off or on projects.

It depends if I’m talking with someone who’s got their own business and is an entrepreneur, which is usually the case, but then you have control over that. It’s easier to figure out, but it’s just not aligned when you’re in traditional employment. You’ve got this conventional financial machine and this traditional employment that’s fighting against what I’m trying to do. You have to break those two down to figure out how to make it work. It’s interesting, for sure.

For people who are working with a financial advisor, what should they be discussing with that person that they might not be?

I don’t know if what they should be discussing is something that they could help them with. The question that I would always urge a client or a financial advisor to ask is, “How is what you’re helping me with fitting into this bigger picture?” They may not want to do that, or they may not have the information to help with it. I guess if they’re good and maybe they’re just paid by the hour or are paid that way, then you could demand that. You could say, “This is all of my information. Stocks and bonds are just one piece of it. What advice do you have for me on the whole bit?”

Yes, most of them are going to stick to what your cash needs are. What have you saved? What are you saving? What do you think you’re going to need in retirement? They run a Monte Carlo simulation, based on a bunch of different possible outcomes and give you a number. Everybody wants to know their number, but I think your point is there’s more to it than the number.

Yes, and I got into a lot of this, too, from just looking at all these retirement calculators. A lot of them are just so much set up around how much you have, what’s the interest rate, what’s inflation, what will you end up with, and how much you need to live in retirement. That stops there, but the big missing piece is what you could or should you make after that because that changes everything.

I heard someone talk; he had been a financial advisor for years and had talked with all these people. The people who can’t afford to retire just can’t wait to retire. It’s the people who are well past retirement who don’t want to retire. The reason is because they’ve crafted this job that’s great for them. It gives them status and social connections. You can ramp up and down the hours. If it requires travel, you can go and use it for travel.

The question was, “Why would I ever want to retire from that?” That clicked for me. I got that. If you can figure out this perfect job where you work twenty hours a week, never in the summer, and you maintain your skills, expertise, and connections. You use your brain to solve interesting problems, but I agree that you shouldn’t. If you love it, you feel good going to work when you do, do it forever. Start doing it whenever. That’s the thing. If you know it’s the plan, why not start at 40 instead of 60?

Do you tend to work pretty much exclusively with people who are independent consultants or do you work with people who are in a traditional track as well?

It’s mostly independent consultants and coaches. Then they extended from that. It’s some service-based entrepreneurs. If you’ve got your financial advising accounting or attorney practice, that’s my niche. Even those people who want to move into that. We can still put a plan together, but there’s additional work that has to be done to get you into the situation where you can start to take action on that.

The tools, the projecting, and stuff certainly work for everybody, but those on the traditional path probably will still need to work on the traditional path. Once you put the plan together, there’s not much additional value that I can provide around entrepreneurship and real estate and all these other things. This is just not as complex of a plan.

For those of us on the more traditional track, let us live vicariously for a minute through these people moving into this more flexible lifestyle. What do they do with the time that they earn back for themselves?

First, you definitely travel, and you try to slow travel so that you can just truly take it all in. That’s what happens first, and then usually after three months, which is exactly what happened to me. If you’re still young and successful, your mind will not stop going back to some entrepreneurial ideas. Usually, what’s happening is you’re making connections to make your business better.

The Concept Of 444 Time Splitting

I teach this concept that I call 444 Time Splitting, which is you are a successful micro business owner, and you forcibly build this flexibility into your business and how you manage your time. You spend four months focused on just true excellence in performing what you perform, whatever your service is. The other four months are around practicing to get you to that point or any administrative things that have to be done. That’s eight months out of the year.

What you do in those other four months is this concept is just pondering. That’s the time off where you’re truly working on your business, not in your business and you’re making these creative connections between things and just experiencing different things. Usually that’s translating into better ways to deliver the service that you’re doing. Charging more forward, being more in demand.

In a way, you’re forcing yourself out of the business; you’re forcing your one or two assistants or whatever to become more active in the business and take on all the things that you don’t have to be doing. This interesting and wonderful cycle of creating a better business by getting away from the business. I’m a Midwestern, put your head down and work hard all the time. This has certainly been a mindset change for me in terms of figuring out how to back away to do better.

Do you sense from the people that you work with that there’s a big impact on their physical and mental health when they’ve gotten themselves into a routine here?

Back to the theme of time, when you start to experience time and have the time, you want more of it. The first thing you do is get yourself healthy so that you can live longer. Then the next thing is you want to figure out how to slow down that time because as we get older, it seems time just accelerates and it takes less and less time for five years to go by.

The reason for that, I’ve learned, is that when you start doing the same things all the time, nothing’s new or interesting. It all blurs together. As a kid, it took forever to get to your birthday because that whole year was new for you. The key is to do those things like go to Portugal, travel, or just see different parts of the world because you are thrown into a new situation and that will slow time down for you. Back to your question, from a mental and physical health standpoint, it’s huge. I look at pictures of myself from 10 years ago to now, and I look much worse, honestly. I am younger, but I’m heavier and paler.

Brian Herriot: As you get older, slow down time by experiencing new things. Travel and see different parts of the world to make time feel longer and more fulfilling.

In those early pictures. Yes. The stress of the day-to-day, you wear it. There is a physical reality, all that cortisol running through your body, and it takes a toll whether you go gray faster, lose your hair faster, get wrinkly faster, or get overweight because you’re stress eating. You can break yourself out of some of those cycles.

I was on a Zoom Retirement Party call for somebody and somebody who had previously retired a year earlier called in to participate in that going away Zoom. That person looked so good. They were thinner. They looked clear-eyed. It was like night and that person got so many comments and compliments.  I’m so jealous and that’s why I’m trying to preach that we can do it. There’s a way to do it.

You just have to put the numbers together and then deal with the mindset stuff, too, like the confidence around it. This is where I go back to the advice that my dad always gave me which is, “If you make a decision to try something and it doesn’t work, then make another one.” Don’t burn any bridges. If you ever have to go back, you can just go back. I’ve done that. I left Anderson Consulting a long time ago, to get my MBA, but I couldn’t find anything. I went back and it was fine.

Changing Attitudes Towards Retirement And Age

I think your approach opens up for people and we’re going to see a lot more of this. It used to be you worked for one company, you retired at 60, you drew a pension, you got a gold watch and a party on your way out the door. I’m stereotyping a bit. Then you spent the next 15 years waiting to die. Thinking you were old and waiting to die.

Now, these adages of 50 is the new 30 and 60 is the new 40 and all those things. There is some truth to the fact that people are living longer. I think people also have a very different relationship with age.  I know some people who are well into their 70s or even their 80s and still work and are vibrant and active. Part of this is a mindset thing.

I see some of my contemporaries retiring, but they don’t have a plan. They’ve made enough money. They don’t need to work anymore. You’re 57 or 60 years old, are you going to play golf and tennis until your knees, back, or hips give out? Then what? In some ways, what you’re offering is it doesn’t have to be a dead stop. It can be a glide path until you decide that you do want it to be a full stop.

Also, it doesn’t have to be a glide path down. Another thing I’ve observed in myself and others is that you start life and you’re focused on working for your employer, and then you move to focus on yourself.  What can I get to make myself better? Even to the point of money freedom and time freedom, that’s all very self-focused. When I think about it and the FIRE movement, what do I need to do so that I can retire early?

It’s very inward-focused, and I think the next stage is where you start to think, “How can I help others?” “How can I make an impact on others?” It’s a natural thing. You get older and want to coach, teach, and help people. That’s what this can open up for you in a small way or a big way, whatever you choose for that to be. That’s just a nicer way to live, too, where you start to use your resources, finances, time, or whatever it is to pursue something bigger than yourself.

I can coach many people, but I don’t coach many by choice because I slot people into two-week slots and don’t do any in the summer, but that’s only so many people per year. That’s why I’m pursuing this book. I’m going to be doing more speaking because I feel like I’ll be able to share the ideas with more people, just through podcasts, and put everything that I’ve learned out there too as many people can get access to it as possible. That’s my goal.

I interviewed somebody else for the show, a guy over here in the UK who works with people to break themselves out of the time and material way of thinking about their hourly rate construct. He wrote this very short book, which is a parable based on his own experience working with a golf pro. The golf pro said that he can do so many lessons a day. He makes this much money. It’s not going to be enough, et cetera.

Ultimately, he ends up working with this guy and teaching him how to scale his business. Speaking engagements and having financial arrangements with his golf clients that aren’t based on an hourly rate that is based on, “If I could help get you to this handicap, what would that be worth to you?” Just a different way of thinking about it.

The transition you’re in with the book and the course that you’ve got, it’s about scalability. It’s about a one-to-many relationship that allows you to create a force multiplier on your revenue potential without having to put in more time, which is a wonderful thing that we’ve got in this technology-centric day and age.

It’s true, yes.

What’s a typical engagement look for you with one of your clients?

What I do is, again, practice what I preach. Right now, they’ve worked out to two-week intensives. The people who I’m working with are, of course, currently busy. I need to do this one time in two weeks, go deep, and talk through, of course, the financial plan. If they’re in business for themselves, there’s usually a big component of that. We do this and ultimately produce this independently-minded, totally custom-focused, and mathematically backed freedom plan for them, but it will also usually have one or two key drivers that make the whole plan successful. That usually requires some things you need to do in 3 and 12 months.

The last piece of my offering, in addition to the two-week intensive co-development of this plan, is a monthly group call with folks who are going through the process. That’s just an accountability vehicle I didn’t originally have, but I have realized that it’s important to keep people focused on it. Once you start making progress on a month-by-month basis, it’s usually just a year and then we’ll get the momentum going and keep going with it.

What’s similar to your situation? You mentioned earlier in the conversation that it is taking you a year to make that transition yourself.

There are some things that you want to do right away. One client realized that she had a good amount of money in her marketable portfolio, but it was basically due to the fact that she was very environmentally focused twenty years ago, putting $10,000 in Tesla stock. First of all, you’ve got to diversify that. You do those sorts of things.

Especially if you want to move into an entrepreneurial situation or change the focus of what you’re doing as an independent, it can sometimes take up to a year to put all those pieces in place and build an on-ramp to make that transition. You don’t want to jump too quickly. You have to put the plan together, set yourself up for success, and then you can get going on it.

You’re well into this for yourself. What routines or habits help you to be effective in making this work for yourself?

The Importance Of Having An Assistant

One thing that’s been helpful to me that I wish I had done way earlier, and probably just because I’m a Midwestern do-it-yourselfer, is that I now have an assistant. That has been revolutionary because I only need to work on the most important things now. She handles everything else and that has been huge. It allows me, for example, to do the most important things, write the book, work on my speeches, get speeches, and all of those sorts of things, which I tend to do.

I’ve noticed that I’m most productive in the morning. I block all those times off and that’s where I work on that stuff and the coaching. That’s what I’m most creative. How about that? The coaching and that stuff happens in the early afternoons. Just keeping that schedule and having the assistant, it’s worth $1 million, I swear. That’s been a big one.

Do you work with somebody locally, or do you use one of these virtual assistant services that is based overseas?

She is out of Colorado. She has her own business. She’s virtual. I like her because she’s also her own micro business. We have the same entrepreneurial interests, and we can share notes on things like that as well.

That’s good. You’ve got this book coming out when?

The book is not going to come out until probably the end of 2025. This has been a really good learning experience for me, too, you can certainly write a book and put it out there in three months, but I don’t think I’d be proud of it. If you want a book and you want to get it through a publisher and you want trade press, which allows them to push it out into Barnes & Noble and all that stuff, it takes a year and a half to do.

I’m in it. I’m still in the early stages. I have an outline all mapped out. I have all my processes, procedures, and stuff, but now I have to make sure that it works in a standalone book format, where I’m not working with it every day for two weeks. I want to test that out fully to make sure that when someone gets their hands on it, it’s a good book.

I want it to be a really good book and it’ll take some time, but that’s okay. I’ve got the time, but I’ll be proud of it when it comes out late next year. In conjunction with that, I’m working on keynote speaking. That’s always been a passion of mine and I love it. I think it’s another way to just expand the message to as many people as possible.

Is your course available now?

I don’t have a course, just the coaching. The best way to learn more about me and about that is ChoosyConsultant.com and the Choosy is work for whom, when, and how long you want. There’s a quiz on there. It’s on slash Quiz. I use it when talking to people interested in my services because I can get a really good idea if I feel I can help you accelerate that time and financial freedom. That’s something that you can look at.

Also, I’m starting just next week. On Tuesdays, this is to test out some book concept ideas and do some free life coaching. I put the information for that on my website as well. No registration is required. Just come on and hear what I have to tell you about for 20 minutes and then ask me questions for 40 minutes and I’ll help you out.

What else is ahead for you?

It’s May 2024. We pretty much pack up and head from California to Wisconsin and enjoy the summer, which is my absolute favorite time of year. There’s a lot of water skiing, fishing, fish fries, and all that good stuff. Wisconsin is fun and then we’ll be back and the new soccer season starts. My son worked hard in the last several years and he made the first team this year, he’s going to start that in the fall. We’re excited about that.

I read in your bio that you’re working on training for a cross-country bike ride at some point.

Future Plans And Personal Interests

Yes, my dad was young when he had me. He’s only 70 now, but he’s pretty active and he got me into biking years ago. We’re going to do this race called RAGBRAI again, which is a race across Iowa. We did it last summer.

It’s not a race, right?

It’s more of a ride.

It’s a big party ride.

Yes. It’s not a race at all but it’s a really good father-son bonding, too. Maybe my son is a little bit too young for it, but we’re going to throw him into that. Then we want to go bigger. I don’t know if my dad hasn’t committed to doing the full across the country, but maybe, top to bottom, we could. That’s going to come hopefully in the next couple of years.

Something I always wanted to do. I’m not sure it’s going to happen at this point, but I’m not as serious a rider as I used to be. I’ve gotten more into running lately.

That’s good. That means you still have the knees and ankles to do it, which I do.

So far, yes. This is a great discussion. I appreciate your time and hearing a little bit more about what you’re doing, how you’re living your life, and working with your clients on how they live theirs.

Thank you so much. It was really fun to chat with you.

I want to thank Brian for joining me to discuss his work on time and financial freedom. If this resonates, check out Brian’s website, ChoosyConsultant.com and if you’d like support on other career-related topics, check out PathWise.io. You can become a member. Basic membership is free. It also offers a wealth of career and professional development advice. You can sign up on the website for the PathWise newsletter and follow us on LinkedIn, Facebook, YouTube, Instagram, and TikTok. Thanks.

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About Brian Herriot

Brian Herriot writes and speaks about the power of time freedom. As a financial coach and founder of Choosy Consultant, he helps mid-career professionals escape the corporate grind. His frameworks for personal growth and financial success all start with taking back control of our one truly limited resource: time.

Brian is a lifelong management consultant, having worked for Accenture and Point B, and he founded his own consulting firm seven years ago. He holds a master’s degree in finance, investment and banking from the University of Wisconsin. Entrepreneurship, investing, and real estate helped Brian become financially free in 2023 at age 47.

Brian spends months at a time away from work. With time to reflect, study, and wander, he believes he has unlocked the secret to living a rich and meaningful life. Brian and his family spend their summers at their lakeside cabin in northern Wisconsin. He is currently training to ride his bike across the country.