That’s what they tell themselves. And they have the spreadsheet to prove it.

You know the spreadsheet. You’ve got one too. It says: today I have this much. If I add this much every week, at this rate of return, with the options vesting in 2030 and the bonuses on top, I’ll have enough. And on that day, I can finally quit.

The date on mine moved four times.

Not because the math was wrong. The math was perfect. The date moved because every January, “enough” moved with it. The balance went up fifty percent. Enough went up fifty percent. The distance never changed.

Pull yours up right now. I’ll bet your date is three to five years out. In three to five years, it still will be. You’ll just be three to five years older. So will everyone under your roof.

That’s the carrot. And the carrot is tied to the cart.

Here’s why we never catch it.

There are two goal lines in your life. The “enough money” line. And the “start living” line. Somewhere along the way you tied them together. You can’t start living until the money says so. So when one moves, the other moves. Same rate. Same day.

Every raise moves the number. Every promotion raises the standard. Every year of waiting makes the life you’re waiting for more expensive.

That’s not a plan. That’s a treadmill with a spreadsheet on it.

So let’s change the math. Not the inputs. The math.

I built the sheet three ways. Same person. Same starting balance of $1.24 million. Same seven percent return. Same $640,000 of options vesting in four years.

The old way. Grind for four more years at the pace you’re at now. Collect the options. Hit $2.5 million. Retire. Then draw $195,000 a year from savings for the rest of your life, and pray it lasts thirty-six years. Balance at 62: $3.4 million. Balance at 87: $5.8 million. Four years you can’t slow down, then forty years of watching the market with your stomach.

The new way. Walk away now. Build something that pays you a quarter of what you make today, doing work you’d choose. Stop adding to savings. Stop taking from savings. Never touch it. Balance at 62: the same $3.4 million. Balance at 87: $18.6 million.

Same number at 62. One of them needed it to survive. The other never touched it.

That’s what making less to do what you love does over time. It doesn’t just change your days. It changes how much you need to retire, because you never retire from a life you’d choose anyway. When you don’t have to draw down, compounding runs for forty years instead of four.

The patient way. This is the one I’d actually show you. Stay four more years, with an end date. Collect the options and the bonuses. Then trade. Balance at 62: $5.3 million. Balance at 87: $28.5 million. Every dollar of that is yours to leave alone.

You don’t have to quit before you start. But you do have to start.

The difference between the old way and the patient way isn’t the four years. Both spend them. The difference is what you’re building during them. One builds a bigger number to hide behind. The other builds the thing that pays you after.

I wrote about this trade in The Trade. The book is the long version of what the spreadsheet is the short version of.

Here’s the math I wish someone had shown me.

Old way: earn forty years of income in five. Kill yourself doing it. Then try to make up for lost time with kids who are long gone.

New way: build something early enough and sound enough that it pays you for the next forty years. Doing what you love. At a pace you can live with.

Different income. Different time horizon. Different life.

Open your spreadsheet tonight. Add one row at the bottom. Label it “what I’d build if the date never came.” Put a number next to it. Even a small one.

That’s the row that changes the math.

You’ve already done the hard part. You built a career worth having, and worth leaving.

This is the best day you have left to start building the thing worth staying for.

This is the Next 40.

And you are ready.

Never alone.

Lon.

https://calendly.com/normal40/the-ramble

Then he sold it.

Marty is 59. Naples, Florida. Married, two grown kids. Pitched in college. Spent his career in tech, most of it at a company you’ve heard of, then a smaller one that got acquired. In the spring, he and a third of the company were deemed redundant. His last day was April 30.

His financial advisor told him he could r…

Read more

Ted had spent twenty-eight years with one company.

Minutes into the call, he confessed something incredible.

“I knew seven years ago that it was time to leave.”

He didn’t say it vaguely. He knew.

There was something else he was supposed to be doing, and he could name it.

So, he stayed.

Not for the money, though the mo…

Read more

Read more

Four years ago I hit “join meeting” with a stranger named Jeff Donaldson.

If you had lined up a hundred people and asked me to point to the one carrying the most, Jeff is the last one I would have picked. Warm. Put together. Generous before he had any reason to be.

That was the clue I missed. The ones carrying the most are the ones you’d…

Read more

Today he’s a friend. He’s walked through Vintage. He’s led Insider calls. He’s stood out at the ranch in South Dakota with me, watching the light go long across the prairie and talking about the things you only get to when the phones are off and there’s nowhere you have to be. We’ve done some life together.

None o…

Read more

For most of that life, it was just a place to work. A place to mend fence. A place to put the cows. A place, on occasion, to put up hay. A place that stood between what needed to get done and what I would rather be doing instead.

For decades, I crossed it the way you cros…

Read more

Not something irresponsible.

Not something reckless.

Just... unexpected.

When was the last time your spouse looked at you and said, “I never would’ve guessed you’d do that?” Or a friend laughed and said, “That doesn’t sound like you.” Better yet, when was the las…

Read more

Maybe it came from your boss after a difficult project. Maybe it came from a patient who trusted you with their care. Maybe it came from your spouse after another week where you somehow managed to keep everything moving. Or maybe you overheard someone say it about you when they didn’t real…

Read more

It doesn’t usually arrive because one catastrophic thing happened. It isn’t born from a single failure or one terrible decision. More often, it begins quietly, through a collection of ordinary moments that seem insignificant at the time but somehow stay with us for decades.

A coach doesn’t put yo…

Read more

“What do you want?”

Not what do you do.

Not what are your goals.

Not what are you working on.

What do you want?

It’s amazing how often the room changes when that question arrives.

These are capable people. Accomplished people. People who have built companies, led teams, raised families, accumula…

Read more

You sit across from a manager, an executive, a compensation committee, or maybe just a screen displaying numbers in a portal. There is a discussion about performance, contribution, market value, and compensation. If things went well, there might be a raise, a bonus, a stock grant, or maybe even…

Read more

“What’s next?”

After more than three decades in healthcare, he had done what so many of us spend our lives trying to do. He had built a successful career. He had served others. He and his wife had planned carefully and responsibly for the future. Retirement was no longer a distant idea. It was visible.

Like many people who find their way into Normal 40, he wasn’t trying to escape his life. He was beginning to wonder what else might still be possible within it.

Then a phone call changed everything.

Stage 4 colon cancer.

In an instant, the future he had carefully imagined disappeared and was replaced by a different set of questions. Questions none of us want to answer. Questions most of us quietly assume we will have more time to consider.

This week on the Normal 40 Podcast, Chris shares his story.

What struck me most about our conversation wasn’t the diagnosis itself. It was the clarity that followed. When something this significant enters your life, it has a way of stripping away the noise. The things that once felt urgent suddenly seem trivial. The things we postpone become impossible to ignore.

Chris talks openly about fear, uncertainty, treatment, family, and what it means to move forward when the future looks nothing like you expected it would. But underneath all of those topics is something deeper.

Perspective.

The diagnosis didn’t create new truths. It revealed old ones.

The people you love matter more than the things you own.

Time matters more than money.

The conversations you’ve been putting off are probably the ones worth having.

And the life you’re waiting to start was never promised tomorrow.

One of the themes we return to often inside Normal 40 is the idea of the Second Resume. The first resume is what the world sees: your title, accomplishments, credentials, promotions, and achievements. The second resume is built from something entirely different. It is shaped by hardship, setbacks, losses, failures, disappointments, and moments you never would have chosen for yourself.

Those experiences become the things that teach us who we really are.

Chris didn’t choose this chapter.

But he is choosing how he will live it.

Listening to him reminded me that some of the most powerful teachers aren’t the people who have everything figured out. They are the people who find themselves in circumstances they never wanted and still decide to show up with courage, honesty, and purpose.

Most of us believe we have more time.

More time to make the call.

More time to repair the relationship.

More time to prioritize our health.

More time to become the person we keep telling ourselves we want to become.

Maybe we do.

Maybe we don’t.

That’s why this conversation matters.

Not because it’s about cancer.

Because it’s about life.

And because every one of us is living on a clock we cannot see.

Listen to the episode and let’s be up to something.

—Lon

We call it burnout because that’s the closest word we have. It’s socially acceptable. Understandable. Easy to explain at dinner parties and leadership retreats. “I’m just burned out.” Everybody nods. Everybody understands. Everybody moves on.

But the more conversations I’ve had with elite pe…

Read more

Nothing is technically wrong.

Your career still works. People still respect you. The paycheck still hits the account. The meetings still happen. The calendar is still full. From the outside, your life appears stable, productive, and successful.

But internal…

Read more

We just inherited it.

Revenue.
Titles.
Growth.
Recognition.
Performance reviews.
Bonuses.
More.

And for a while, it works.

Until one day you realize you’re winning a game you don’t even want to play anymore.

This week’s podcast is an Insider replay about what happens when the old scorecard stops working and you finally ask a harder question:

What am I actually measuring now?

A member of our community shared the story of his father unexpectedly passing away… with a handwritten “life scorecard” still sitting in his pocket.

Not a financial statement.

A personal one.

How he was doing as a husband.
As a father.
As a man.
Where he was growing.
Where he still needed work.

It changed the entire conversation.

Because eventually, all of us reach the same question:

What are we actually measuring?

This episode isn’t really about business.
It’s about the hidden metrics quietly running your life.

The things you say matter.
The things you neglect.
And the danger of building a new life using the same old scorecard that exhausted you in the first place.

We talk about:
• Why success can quietly become performance
• The difference between revenue and meaning
• How to stop rebuilding the life you already outgrew
• And why the hardest part of the trade is redefining what “winning” even means

This is one of the most honest Insider conversations we’ve shared publicly.

And if you’ve been feeling successful on paper but disconnected in real life…

This one will probably find you.

🎧 Listen to Episode #87: “The Scorecard”

—Lon

You got the degree. Took the job. Worked hard. Said yes to opportunities. You built credibility. Stability. Momentum. Maybe even wealth. You became the dependable one. The capable one. The person people could count on.

And somewhere along the way, your life stopped feeling like a series of conscious…

Read more

It was his last day before everything changed.

We talked about faith.
About purpose.
About what might happen next.

At the time, neither of us really knew.

He didn’t know where he’d go.
I didn’t know who he’d become.

We just knew it mattered.

A few days ago, we sat down again.

Same two people.
Very different perspective.

This time, the conversation wasn’t about what could happen.

It was about what did.

What it’s actually like to say yes without a plan.
What happens when you follow something you don’t fully understand.
How you change when you’re forced to rely on something bigger than yourself.

And what I saw, for the first time, as a dad.

This episode is the follow-up to one of the most personal conversations I’ve ever shared.

Not theory.
Not advice.
Proof.

🎧 Listen to the episode:
The Return: A father and son conversation about Faith, Growth, and What Happened Next

If you listened to the first one, you’ll want this.

If you didn’t, start here… then go back.

Because this isn’t just a story about my son.

It’s about what happens when any of us finally says yes.

—Lon

And if you’re paying attention, you feel it.

This episode was recorded 18 months ago on a beach in Kona, Hawaii. It was the last day I had with my son before he stepped into a completely new chapter of his life.

A last for me.
A first for him.

I didn’t plan it. I woke up early (1:56 AM), started writing, and a few hours later asked him to sit down with me for a conversation.

What I thought would be a chance to share a few things I’ve learned…
turned into something very different.

He had just as much to teach me.

We talked about faith.
About courage.
About curiosity.
About what it means to let someone go… while still being there for them.

About going through life without ever letting anyone steal your art.

It’s raw. It’s emotional. It’s real.

There are a few long pauses in here … but just listen through them. Trust me.

And it made me realize something simple:

Some conversations shouldn’t wait.

While others simply can’t.

🎧 Listen to the episode now.

And if there’s someone in your life you’ve been meaning to sit down with…

Do it.

You won’t regret it.

—Lon

It was going to demand everything I had. A lifetime of experience. Three years of dedicated focus to a singular mission I call Normal 40. And the hard, quiet, daily work of building something I believed had the potential to change, motivate, move, and inspire an entire gene…

Read more