When you hear the word retirement, you probably don't imagine yourself scrambling to pay your bills in your golden years. But for too many Americans, that's the fate that awaits unless they take steps now to plan for the future. Whether you’re twenty-five and starting your first job or fifty-five and watching the career clock start to wind down, today is the day to get serious about your retirement.

On this episode, Dave recaps episodes 386-389 where Chris Hogan shares some financial and retirement advice from his book, “Retire Inspired: It's Not an Age, It's a Financial Number”

Chris Hogan says, when you start to realize the importance of your financial future, you begin to understand who’s an ally and what’s an enemy. Debt is not an ally. Debt takes away from your income. It demands a payment each and every month. Chris wants us to see debt for what it is, and be smart by intentionally getting rid of debt and keeping it out of your life.

Chris Hogan talks about how obstacles are not stopping points; rather they are proving grounds. It’s important to acknowledge that the obstacle is there, but you can overcome it if you have a plan on how you are going to defeat it. What are you going to do to overcome those obstacles so you can move forward for yourself and your family?

Chris Hogan wants us to understand one key fact: retirement has nothing to do with your age, it has everything to do with a financial number. So it’s not about 65, 62, 70, it’s more about how much money we’re going to need to be able to live the lifestyle we want to live in the future.

Chris Hogan says it’s important for all of us to understand the power of our dreams. We all have things we want to do, and it’s important to tap into them because dreams are a better motivator than fear. Fear will motivate you for a little while, but it doesn’t last. Why? Because it’s a negative drag on us. But our dreams are an encouraging kind of motivation, so we’re willing to strive and sacrifice for them because we know deep inside what we want to do.

Have you ever admired those successful, confident, motivated, and charismatic people who seem to have it all? They've climbed the corporate ladder quickly or started a great business. Their love life is amazing and they have fantastic friends. They've made all the right connections. They've mastered networking and how to build relationships. On this episode, Dave recaps episodes 381-384 where Jason Treu shares practical lessons from his book, “Social Wealth: How to Build Extraordinary Relationships By Transforming the Way We Live, Love, Lead and Network”

Author Jason Treu talks about how going to the right places is the key to building the relationships you want, both personally and professionally. Use Google and Facebook or Meetup.com to find events in your local community. You can also volunteer to help work the event you are going to attend. Keep asking people where they’re going and what they’re doing, because then you can build a list for yourself.

Author Jason Treu says you can build relationships much faster than you think if you connect with people emotionally. People have had tons of bad interactions, and typically those interactions have consisted of the same old boring questions. If you meet someone in a professional setting people always ask you, “What do you do?” and it’s boring. Instead, ask people about what they love and what they are emotionally connected to, because everyone is emotional. Lead with emotional questions because when you get down to what someone cares about, you get to know them a lot better than you normally would.

Author Jason Treu says the fear of failure, rejection, and uncertainty are often significant problems for entrepreneurs, especially when we’re treading into new territory. Successful entrepreneurs fall on their face at least once, often many times, when doing anything new. But when we embrace the fear and let it guide us, fear can be the compass that gets us to our destination.

Author Jason Treu says understanding that connection is why we’re here, and belonging is in our DNA. We all need to focus on how do we build extraordinary relationships both in our professional and personal lives. You can’t get there by yourself. We all need people to help us, from marketing to customers, to being an advocate for you and your business. Plus, we all want to create profound and lasting connections with people in our lives. On today’s show, Jason will teach us how to go about the process of building extraordinary relationships.

Your success might come down to a simple word…NO. Do you hear it enough? Do you realize the number of times you hear NO is directly related to how many times you hear YES? On today’s Dave is joined by author Andrea Waltz as we recap our conversations based on her book, “Go for No. Yes is the Destination, No is How You Get There.”