Ep573: Dr. Chris Stout – Plan for the End

Andrew Stotz 00:02
Hello fellow risk takers and welcome to my worst investment ever stories of loss to keep you winning. In our community. We know that to win an investing, you must take risk but to win big, you've got to reduce it. Ladies and gentlemen, I'm on a mission to help 1 million people reduce risk in their lives to reduce risk in your life. Go to my worst investment ever.com today and take the risk reduction assessment I created from the lessons I've learned from more than 500 guests. Fellow risk takers, this is your worst podcast host Andrew Stotz from a Stotz Academy, and I'm here with a featured guest, Dr. Chris stout, Dr. Chris stout. Oh, my goodness, are you ready to join the mission?

Dr Chris Stout 00:44
Absolutely.

Andrew Stotz 00:46
I'm excited to have you on and I want to introduce you to the audience. Dr. Chris Stout is a licensed clinical psychologist and international humanitarian with a diverse background in various domains. He's the founding director of the top ranked nonprofit, the Center for Global Initiatives, and works as an as the executive producer and host of the popular living a life in full podcast, a top five present show with an audience reach of 3 million plus, he was a fellow in the School of Public Health and full professor in the Department of Psychology in the College of Medicine at the University of Illinois, Chicago. And prior to that, he held an academic appointment at Northwestern University's Feinberg School of Medicine. And you know, one other thing about you that I was just rummaging through in your, you know, your tremendous accomplishments is that you've, you've written 38 books, my goodness, it's amazing. Maybe you can just take a moment and tell us about the unique value that you bring to this world.

Dr Chris Stout 01:53
Well, thank you, Andrew, first of all, thanks. Again, I appreciate being a guest on your show. And having enjoyed your show for a while. I guess. That's, that's a wonderful, challenging question to kind of start off, what I tried to do is be of service to others, I have found just as much as that sounds like, you know, kind of an outward perspective, it also is one of the things that I find just for myself, and I think a lot of other people feel this way, too, is that it brings great joy. So if I can be additive, if I can contribute, if there's some something that I can do at a small level, or at a lower level, or a grand level or a big project, I'm there, I'm happy to roll up my sleeves, not be a dilettante, and see if I can be of help and value.

Andrew Stotz 02:40
That's fantastic. And I wonder, you know, let's go back in time, what is it that motivate you to study, you know, psychology and become a clinical psychologist? I mean, you're at a great point in your life now. But in the beginning, I'm just curious, like, what was it that triggered you to do that?

Dr Chris Stout 02:57
Gosh, it was sort of benign counseling, I think from people. So a quick snapshot of my life story is that my folks got divorced before I was one year old. They, you know, I kind of grew up with a single working mom, which was, you know, it turned out fine. But my parents hadn't gone to college, my paternal grandparents hadn't even graduated high school. So while there was value for education, there really wasn't a whole lot of, you know, experience or anything, you know, specifically from my family about that. So I was the first to go to college and first go to graduate school, to that benign counseling. I had never even taken a psychology class in high school. So I went to college as an undergrad, and just kind of, like, didn't know what to do. I was a math major to start, because I was interested in computers. And this is back in the cro-magnon era where computers were like these, you know, big, big machines and big buildings. And I took my first Fortran class and we were on you know, punch cards and deck tins and all this and I said, Oh my god, I can't write code, you know, we didn't call it code back then I can't write programs back then. You know, forever for you know, my 40 hours a week kind of a thing. And I was in the School of Science for that in the department of mathematics. And I took a psychology class as an elective and loved it and where I went, they had psychologists and social science like it's a one on one and psychology is a biological sciences a 102. I took them both love them, and then started taking others and filling up my electives with all these psychology classes and but you know, I really didn't want to stay in it because it didn't even exist as computer science. So I didn't want to stay with in mathematics and shifted into psychology and took I think 50 some odd credits by the time I graduated, I just my senior year I took 21 credits just because I was so nuts about psychology, so everyone else is like taking 12 or whatever just to stay full time. And I'm like, Hey, this is great. And, and as the old Joker cliche goes, you know, what do you do with an undergraduate degree in psychology? Well, you apply to graduate school because you really can't do a whole lot specifically in psychology. So that got me into graduate school. And I thought I would be back with my math, and you as an analyst, you would get this, you know, I liked data. And I thought, I'll be a researcher, and I'll, you know, do psychological research, I'll be an academic, and I wound up and I'll, you know, do that really like the clinical get into a clinical program enjoyed the clinical aspect of it. And I thought, Okay, well, I'll work with adults as outpatients, and then I wound up graduating and working with children as inpatients. So it's sort of like, you know, a little bit of Mr. Magoo as I like to describe it, because I kind of go in one direction and see what that was like. And I'd find, you know, some other bright, sparkly object and go off in that direction. And, generally, that's kind of been this patchwork of what my career has looked about look like, as I look back, but they all kind of everything sort of added something to every other little part of it. And I stayed in the academic side, I like to write I did a lot of data analytics and big data stuff towards the tail end of my work, and, and, you know, it just all kind of fit together in a generally cohesive package.

Andrew Stotz 06:13
It's, uh, you know, you make me you bring me back in time, to let say, 1970, let's say 1973, or something like that. And I was just, I was, you know, a young kid, and I was in school, and I was just, you know, I was full of energy. It's what you would call ADHD nowadays, probably, or something like that. But I just was full of energy. And I didn't have much time for the teachers and all. And so, but I'll tell you an interesting story. So my parents sent me to see a psychologist and a psychiatrist, then in those days, and, you know, I don't remember much of those days, but my mom gave me a booklet when I was 14. And it was my medical notes that she made on my medical life, you know, what, what happened, my different diseases or whatever I got. But at the age of seven, my mother put in the notes that they started giving me Ritalin. And as I looked at that, at the age of 40, cranium, it was kind of shocking to me to think about that. And then when I look at the addiction that I went through, you know, and having to go through and I was an inpatient in different hospitals in different places, and trying to overcome addiction at a pretty young age, which I eventually did. I just, I look back at that. And I just think, wow, that I wonder what impact that had and then, fast forward, I haven't lived in the US for 30 years. And I talk to people and I listen to things that are going on there. And I just think, yeah, I mean, child psychology and support for young people. I mean, I just saw a study that said that 30% of people say that they're lonely, and they don't have one relationship. And I remember reading this book, Reality therapy by Dr. William Glasser, many years ago. And it talked about the importance of building trusting relationship, and how many mental and you know, emotional reactions or just your body coping yourself coping with, you know, with not having that trusting relationship. And I just wonder, you know, like, what, what did you see at that time? What do you see now, as far as what's going on, with young people and and in their struggles?

Dr Chris Stout 08:44
That's a very good and deep and complex question. I, I it's, it's also I, I want to tip my hat to your transparency and sharing your experiences, too, because a lot of people feel very stigmatized by that. And I think it's very helpful for others to see people that are successful, like you to know that, you know, you weren't, you know, it wasn't an easy path. And that you, you know, you made your way through a variety of other kinds of challenges that people probably would have never stopped to think about. And I think that gives inspiration to others that are currently going through the struggle so that that I think it's very important, as far as relationships, I mean, kind of universally, I think through there's, you know, a variety of different kinds of approaches and flavors of therapy, if you will, and I think the relationship is kind of, you know, with whoever it might be is critical. You know, there's early, even like in paleo, illogical kinds of research, not even psychological, you know, there's bonding and there's tribes, and there's relationships with parents and offspring and bonding kinds of issues. So, when those attachments and bonds aren't stable, or there's abuse or there's neglect, you know, those bonds, you know, Break, they evaporate, they're not there. I think today with technology and not to sound like a Luddite or anything, but I think that's even more challenging. Because it's almost like people have these pseudo relationships where, like, I've, you know, you and I are deep in the podcast world, I mean, there's some people that feel like, is audience members that they know, the podcast hosts so well, because they've listened to a bazillion of their episodes, and then they feel like they have a relationship with them. And, you know, people used to feel this way with, you know, with movie stars, or, you know, that sort of thing. So people, to me, it's sort of like a proxy for having a relationship, and it's not, you know, it's obviously not a real relationship. So the technology that we thought, you know, in the early 2000s is going to bring us all together and Unitas, it has from information, but it hasn't necessarily in relationships and that kind of thing. So I think it's in even in therapy, you know, to be able to have a good therapeutic relationship, you have to have a therapeutic bond, and you have to have a level of trust, and you have to have a level of knowledge to form those kinds of things. And if people don't have those as for early experiences, it is something that's learnable and teachable. But it just makes life a bit more of a challenge and, and loneliness. You know, what the whole COVID thing and restrictions and quarantines just exacerbated it. I mean, just really kind of, I think, you know, blipped the gas on that in a very negative, corrosive kind of way.

Andrew Stotz 11:25
Yeah, it's interesting. In Thailand, we didn't have a lot of COVID deaths, because people's health is pretty strong here. And that has helped them a lot, that obesity is not, you know, an epidemic here and all that. Right. But the lockdowns caused suicide rates to go up massively. And so you with countries that are relatively healthy, you can literally have more damage from the lockdown through suicides, then you have benefits of, you know, people that you save, so, yeah, it's very, it's very real. And for the listeners out there, you know, if you don't have, you know, if you don't have a close relationship of someone that you can rely on, work on finding that person. Yeah, reach out to somebody that you admire, you're interested in, you know, you liked them. And I tell the story about a friend of mine, named Andrew Biggs, another Andrew, and he and I are both in Thailand. And we kind of knew each other briefly and a little bit. But I don't know about 10 or 15 years ago, we just started to make an effort to get to know each other. And after we really got to know each other, I thought to myself, you know, it's, it's been a long time since I've made a new friend. And so maybe that's kind of the attribute of this discussion is to challenge everybody who's listening, like, maybe it's time to think about adding a new friend to your life.

Dr Chris Stout 12:54
Yeah, that's good. And I think one of the best ways to do that is to be a friend to someone else, you know, show that kindness show that sincere authentic interest in someone else. And you know, that's rewarding in and of itself to just to not just as a way of why I need a friend, but to be able to say, I also need to be a friend.

Andrew Stotz 13:14
Great point. And I teach a course in ethics for finance, and, and also for the Chartered Financial Analysts, you know, Society Institute and all that. And basically, I have 1010 ways that ethics adds value to you. And I tried to put ethics in a positive light, and try to help people see that, you know, this really is something they can add a lot to you. So I talked about, you know, things like confidentiality of your clients information, I talk about the way you interact with people and the way you do your work. But when you talk about when you interact with people, one of the things I talk about is to be a trustworthy person, that the client can trust you with their money with their, you know, with their objectives, ultimately. So I'm always asked the same question when I'm in front of audiences of people and I say, How many people do you trust? And the average, you know, the range comes between zero and five? Most, as I say, for most people that say five, they probably hasn't haven't really tested. But I would say that, I'm pretty confident to say that most people probably have two people they can trust, maybe three if you're lucky. And, and then, but then I asked the second question, which is, if I was to ask your friend, how many people they trust, and they identify one or two, would you be that one? And that goes to the point that you're saying, try to be a trustworthy person, try to be a good friend, and then you create good friendships. But one of the things I also take from that is that we can See, that's a simple research. It's a survey. And it's got some flaws in it. But if we wanted to do some research, we could beef that up and ask people that question. And in the end, we may end up with, you know, 123, on average, that people trust, you know, how many people they trust? And that is evidence right there. That trust is rare.

Dr Chris Stout 15:23
Yeah, yeah. And it's not a given to, I mean, sometimes there's circumstances, you know, you can kind of just pick out anything from, from stories from real life that, you know, trust typically gets tested, you know, and in serious relationships, not superficial relationships, and if the trust is there, and the trust is, you know, is mutual and there's a reciprocity, then, you know, I think it strengthens it, but it sort of like as much as other things can strengthen, it doesn't take much either to dilute it or to weaken it, uh, you know, either. So it's, it's a, it's a tight rope sometime.

Andrew Stotz 16:00
Yeah, I mean, that other thing you can say about trust is, with all the books and stuff out there, call it the hack, the secret, whatever, there is no secret or hack, there's no shortcut to trust, it just takes time. And as you say, you're going to have to go through some difficult situations. And I described you before we turned on the recorder about, you know, being living to the 1997 Asian crisis, and being stuck in my factory lost my job with my best friend trying to figure things out. But all the way through that time, he never broke trust. And so I'd never broke his trucks. And now we've been friends for, you know, 40 some years, and we've never broken trust. So I really, really challenge. And I think this is a good theme for everybody listening is reach out to that person that you do trust and tell them, hey, I really appreciate the fact that I can trust you over the years. And if you don't have someone that you can trust, put in some effort. You know, here you're hearing it from a clinical psychologist, not from just your random, you know, podcasts are like me, and business guy. And so go out and find those people. Let's build trust in this world. All right, well, let me just ask, before we get into the big question, what is the thing? What are some of the things that you're most excited about right now? I mean, you got I was interested in your latest podcast episode, because you guys were talking about running and I'm just trying to become a runner. I'm more of a shuffler right now.

Dr Chris Stout 17:34
That's, that's, that's me, too, man. I like to finish races. I never think about winning them. I'm going for the finish. Exactly. Going for the start. Yeah.

Andrew Stotz 17:48
Tell me what's exciting out of all the different things you're doing for the audience of what's the best way to get value for you right now?

Dr Chris Stout 17:57
Well, I'll try and give a little bit of a checklist. I have recently, one of my alma mater, has been invited to do some mentoring. So it's the School of Science, which we're just talking about is probably top of mine. And I did a invited kind of a workshop mentor workshop that anybody can listen to, it's freely available on YouTube. Talking about like, if for if people to people in your audience may be a little older than this demographic, but like if you're in undergrad, and you're looking to get into graduate school, or if you're an undergrad looking to graduate and get into that first job, what are some of the best ways to be able to do that? So I'm kind of this and that was kind of the first project in what I think will be an ongoing project with that school. So everything I do specifically for that school tends to be pretty generalizable. Maybe to people in that circumstance, you know, if you're looking for a job or whatever, doesn't necessarily have to be your first job and how to maximize the likelihood and how to properly utilize LinkedIn, things like that. For my nonprofit, with how my life has kind of evolved to where I'm at today, I had, we developed a fellowship and certificate program, which we're very proud of to be able to help people you know, get involved in that. And if they're interested in that area, all of the materials we have for that are free of charge. And also just a plug for our nonprofit center for global initiatives. We have everything on our site is free. There's no paywalls we have downloadable spreadsheets, we have, oh gosh, probably a dozen 1012 YouTube links for videos and lectures. We have a whole downloadable library and a variety of things. If you're already working in the humanitarian area, we have a link for discounted humanitarian airfare if you're working internationally. So it's just really kind of this cornucopia. We are always adding to it. It's always updated. There's a variety of things there. And then segwaying that into the podcast. So just being able to use media, we also have the podcast which drops once a month, living life in full in a common thread, although it's a magazine style show, like you said, we just had Jordan med salon and talking about running and health and healthspan. There's probably a thread through no matter what the person is, because we've also had William Green and Guy spear, we've had journalists, we've had financial people, we've had diplomats, we had an astronaut. I mean, it's really a cornucopia of really kind of cool, interesting people. And the, the aspect that almost all of them have is that they are also involved in the philanthropic or humanitarian space, in all diverse different kinds of areas. So that's kind of cool. And maybe the last thing to get the tease this up is that I'm a LinkedIn influencer. So LinkedIn requires you if you're an influencer to write and contribute original content, in a fairly frequent cadence, and which is great, it's good discipline. For me, I love writing. And it's nice to kind of have topical kinds of things, current event kinds of things going on. And to do it outside of specifically my field, I oftentimes lean into technology and healthcare and startups, but also, you know, healthcare and global health and nonprofits and just kind of, you know, whatever tickles my fancy. So a recent guest is a fella named Charlie Bressler, and Charlie worked with Peter Singer who wrote the book, the life you can save. For those who may not know Peter Singer is a philosopher, based out of Australia, and really has this perspective that's kind of grown into what people call Effective Altruism. So kind of I was really moved by the book, I had read it a long time ago, it's come out in a new 10th edition, updated, or pardon me in your second edition. And it really got me to thinking in a philosophical area about moral obligations, and what our obligations might be to others, you know, if there's things that we have that we can do to be of help, and the whole Effective Altruism movement in this conversation I had with Charlie who kind of became the the initial director of a nonprofit that's based on the book the life you can say. And so publicly here, what I decided to do was to this is 2022. So all of 2021. And thus far in 2022, I've donated 100%, of my salary, to nonprofits. And I'm going to try and continue to do that and live off my investments as long as I can and, and continue to continue to do that 100% Just as kind of a reach goal. For others to think about, I'm not recommending anybody else should do this, or needs to do this. But if that's kind of what fit for me, that's kind of what I wanted to really kind of full throated, say, I'm really moved by this, you know, I have the nonprofit and I've done this, I've done that. That's great. But you know, let's up the ante a little bit for me. So that's kind of my current experiment out in this concept of moral obligation and Effective Altruism. So we'll, we'll see how long I can tread water and do that. But that's, that's kind of my, my big nutshell, your simple question with my mouth full of answer. But that's kind of what I'm working on these days.

Andrew Stotz 23:16
That's admirable, I don't think I could do that right now. But I hope I look forward to today. Now, let me ask you another thing on LinkedIn, you have something you do called tools for change, and you publish it monthly, you've got 127,000 subscribers on that, which is huge. And for anybody that wants to go, you just go to Dr. Chris stout, and you can find this on his profile. But when you go through it, I mean, my goodness, the tools that are in there, the links the length of what you've done, I mean, just tell us a little bit about that. That seems like a very valuable thing.

Dr Chris Stout 23:51
Well, thank you, I really appreciate the shout out on that it's a lot of these obviously, are labors of love. Because there's really not laborers of economics. I just Yeah, I guess it's kind of the the inner professor in me that I just really liked to teach and to instruct and, and sometimes, you know, I get to be the, the person kind of behind the scenes when it's a podcast that I do my research on my guest, and then they get to, you know, share their experience and add to others but tools for change is again, kind of maybe the digital or the the written version of that in the sense of it's a compilation of kind of latest news and tidbits and things in a variety of areas. And to be a little I don't know, cute about it, you know, everything is like tools for this are tools for that. So when I come across things that I've you know, read and then I felt are like really kind of cool, and I want to share some, you know, share it with somebody, then I just aggregate those over the course of the month prior and then put them into this kind of structured format. The format stays the same month to month but the content obviously changes with each With each issue and yeah, I've got a thank you for saying that, because I've gotten a lot of, you know, nice comments on that we evolved initially, it was born out of global health and COVID and public health issues initially. And we were weekly kind of when COVID was really kind of in the heat of the moment to try and find to be a place of vetted resource. So because there's a lot of, you know, fake news and untrustworthy things, and it's just sort of like, again, moral obligation that, you know, well, I've got a background in public health and I got a background in psychology, get a background in science, I can kind of vet you know, what seems like you know, baloney and fake news I've written on LinkedIn, I've got a three part series on for what I call fad science, and you know, how to kind of distinguish what's you know, snake oil versus what science. So it just seemed kind of like a natural fit. And then once COVID, thankfully, has died down a bit and hopefully will continue to not be as front and center as it was, we decided to evolve, there wasn't a need to be weekly, in again, with the concept of tools. And back to your very first question of trying to add value, it's sort of like, these are things that I've vetted, that I think are great, a lot of times, it'll be, you know, friends that have written something that I want to help, you know, publicize about them. And again, it's free just comes to your inbox and you know, once a month they sit on LinkedIn. So if you missed an issue or something or want to go back and look at them, you know, they're they're fairly, some of the contents fairly evergreen, it's not like it's news flashes or you know, here's here's how the stock market did last week, but it might be more long term investing things so you know, people will say you know, drop again a thing that William Green or guy spear Mark Mahaney, you know, etc, those kinds of folks because I track their stuff, I read their stuff and when it's something that I feel like it's valuable, then you know, it's more than it's it's my moral obligation to help share with others

Andrew Stotz 26:49
tools for productivity tools for living your life and full tools for fitness and performance. I just like the one one article you references the Mind Gym five ways to make exercise a pleasure tools for your career for investing, as you were saying, leadership founders, just a wealth of information. So for the audience, you know, go to Chris's LinkedIn and look for tools for change. I guarantee you that's going to be valuable for about anybody that is looking for tools. So Well, thank you, Andrew, what a great intro. Now it's time to share your worst investment ever. And since no one goes into their worst investment thinking you will be tell us a bit about the circumstances leading up to it, then tell us your story. Oh, thank you.

Dr Chris Stout 27:39
That was when my voice goes out. Well, it was, for me the circumstances, you know, because I'm not involved in I'm kind of like, probably, you know, Joe Average in terms of investments and things like that. So it's not a full time job or anything that you know, managing those things, and in or playing the markets or day trading or anything. But for me, it was really more so an experience with my nonprofit, I had the story in the background that that is that. I also I like to climb and one of my goals was to climb the Seven Summits and the Seven Summits is the tallest mountain on each of the seven continents. And I started off you know, wisely, I think what the easy one, which is Kilimanjaro, not that it's easy, but compared to the flee to others it is. So on that hike, I met a fellow who lived in Tanzania, he was working his way through seminary. And we just really hit it off. And this is 1992. So there was no public internet or anything like that. We became pen pals. And then he graduated, he was kind of working as a porter on our expedition to make money to pay for his college to go to seminary and to become a priest, which all that worked out well. And he did indeed do that. And we continue to keep in touch. And he got in charge put in charge of a orphanage in Tanzania and later became in charge a chaplain at two hospitals in Tanzania and we just always kind of kept in touch during that time. One thing led to another and make long story short, we tried to be helpful. I was working at a hospital at the time and we shipped a number of materials over for the kids for Christmas. So it was like school supplies and art supplies and coloring books and things like that. We found that it cost a fortune to do that. It and we said seven boxes like he thanked me in February because it took like four months for him to get there for the five boxes. To wit Lord knows where so. So anyway, we just thought okay, well this is you know, we're trying to do good and it shouldn't be so hard, you know to do good and shouldn't be so frickin expensive either. So I had a mentor then and continue to be in touch with him a guy who was an attorney, and he said you know we'll who funds all this stuff who paid for all that shipping. I said well I Didn't he goes, you know, he asked me if we got a couple of other projects. He said, Well, how'd you find that? And I said, Well, I pay for it. And he said, Well, what are you gonna, like, you know, fund all this stuff. And I guess maybe now from what I was saying about donating my salary, I guess maybe I've come full circle with that. Yeah, I guess I am. But he said, you know, what you do people want to support. But he said, If someone has a choice of writing a check to the Red Cross for 25 bucks, and someone has a choice of writing a check to Chris stout to help fund this project, for 25 bucks, they'll get a tax deduction with the Red Cross, and they they won't get a tax deduction with Chris down, they'll get a warm and fuzzy with both. But you know, if you're going to tip the scale, then why not get the tax tax deduction? So I got that. And I said, well, great, wonderful. He's, so what do I do? And he said, Well, you need to create a nonprofit, I said, Great, wonderful. How do I go about doing that? So he said, call my wife, well, his wife is also an attorney who works in that area. So everybody, I should also say, a plug to those kinds of folks, everybody that's been part of our center has done it pro bono. And so they did this entire IRS application, which is a huge pain. And there's no guarantee that the IRS will approve it or anything like that, it takes a while to put together it takes a while to hear back, I learned you would appreciate this from your financial background, that you file a whole different set of taxes, I had no idea. You know, you do a 990, you don't do a 1040. And it was just like this whole new world. And they held me by the hand and they got me the big crayons and they help step me through all this stuff. We got our approval. So then people could make you know, these donations, and they could get their tax deductions. It's worked out nicely online, because there's a variety of platforms that the only way that you can even be on there is if you are legitimate 501 C three, so so all that, you know, turned out? Well, we're feeling you know, pretty proud, I have a nice board of directors. We're doing a project in India, we're doing a project in Cambodia, doing a project in Africa with my friend, cash, where else we did a project in quinine Africa we did. There's another it's like the seven doors, I can always name six. So we had five projects I can, you know, always name for but not the five. And we had someone this couple from Ukraine come to us. And this is to set the time for this. This is probably, we found it in 2007. So this is probably around 2009. And they came to me and they said, you know, hey, we have this project that we want to do. And we feel like it'd be a good collaboration with your center. And we're applying for a grant through USA ID. And it was to do a project with profoundly developmentally different children in orphanages in Ukraine. And we said, okay, great. So we roll up our sleeves, we start to, you know, and I've done grants, I've worked for the State of Illinois, the chief of psychology for their hospitals, and I am very familiar with the grant process and things and USAA, it wasn't a whole lot different. So we're, you know, putting pencil and paper and looking at the numbers and looking at what the project is going to require. And as I'm doing this with my board subsequent, like it was sort of like the requirement was we need to do baseline assessments, to see if the intervention would have an impact. And it was going to be a three year grant. And the first year was to do the assessments. And the second year was to do the intervention, the third year was to look at outcomes. And each one of those segments would require a quarterly visit to go, you know, in country, you can't do this remotely, to do an evaluation of the sites. And I was the no one else on my board was a psychologist, I was a psychologist and I was training, there's a thing called the mus Ward atmosphere scale. So I was trained in that. So I was kind of like the guy that was going to be doing this, which was cool, which was fine. You know, I've been all over the place and been to much worse places. And, and, but, but those were typically kind of one off things to, you know, to give a lecture to do this or that, well, this is an ongoing thing. So I would had to have gone to give four times a year for about a week to 10 days each time. And I need to do that and make a commitment to do that, you know, for three years. And you know, I have a day job. Like I said, this is an all volunteer CGI and all volunteer organization. And I can't. I didn't have four weeks a year vacation to begin with. And if I were to tell my family who I had young children at the time that you know, hey, guess what, I'm going to Ukraine, and you guys are going to Miami Beach or something and I guess I'll see you later. So it just wasn't sustainable. And it wasn't scalable. And I just felt like I was right out of the blocks and tripped and fell right on flat on my face. So in the sense of I know from your background of how you kind of assess what are the salient aspects I felt like I probably didn't have a realistic enough view I was a little too blue sky in my thinking that, you know, this, we can scale this forever. You know, this will go you know, we can do a million projects, we can, you know, go anywhere, do anything blah, blah, blah. And it was a very sobering experience to say no this you know, the projects that you have going are a little different, I should also say that we never pick a project, projects always picked us. So they were always with some kind of colleague or with someone that we were already, you know, had an involvement with, like my friend in Tanzania. So that was a little different with this group, they had kind of wood by that point, our center had some notoriety and visibility to others. And that's why they had come to us, and they were local to the Chicago area as well. I mean, we physically, you know, met in person. So I just thought, well, you know, great, you know, what are we doing now? Do I just shutter it? Do we just say, Okay, well, we're closed for any new business, you know, I started like, this is awful, you know, it's like, you know, we went through all this work, all the IRS stuff, all the volunteer effort and, and sweat equity into this, and now what, so, my board, bless their hearts really kind of took pity on me, because I was probably relatively transparent in my upset with how this, you know, now had seen like, you know, crashed and burned. And they said, you know, you through this process, it wasn't all me, but you know, it's kind of, you know, the ringleader of this or remastered and they said, You have put together a group of people that kind of, you know, have these different areas of expertise, we've gone through this 501 C three process, and I was, you know, shoulder to shoulder with everybody doing, I didn't just hand it off to them. I mean, I was writing it, and they were telling me what to write about how these forums translated into English and stuff like that. We've got a lot of valuable content, which maybe again, harkens back to Tools for chain, we've gotten a lot of valuable content and a lot of valuable experience, that can be a real step saver for people wanting to start their own 501, C threes, we've got a lot of content out there that, you know, we put together that, you know, you write for LinkedIn, you know, put it on the website, you know, stick it out there and give a give a talk and record the next talk and webinars that you give and put it out there for people, you know, kind of start to compile, create digital, virtual publicly accessible libraries for people with this, provide consultation for people when they you know, come to you to say, well, I want to, I'm a graduate, or I'm a student, and I want to get into the nonprofit arena, I want to get involved in public health or global health or mental health or you know, blah, blah, blah, you've got expertise in these areas, you know, so part of what you can provide to people is free consultations for people wanting to do these things, or helping people through this crazy process of you know, whatever their project is so. So that's kind of what we did our big pivot was to kind of become this teacher, person to fish or to be the Johnny Appleseed of, you know, helping people that want to do this, but where, where do they start, they can spend literally days hours, you know, on Google figuring this stuff out, but we've already done it. So, you know, why not lean into us? You know, so I've had, I can't tell you how many hours of conversations with people to help them get their nonprofit started, we've put together like I said, this, this certificate in fellowship program to kind of formalize it. And for me to be obsessive compulsive and organize things in a way that makes it kind of you know, step one, step two, step three, rather than just organic and mishmash, and whatever, you know, comes to mind when I'm talking to someone, and to really try and grow that and amplify that. And it again, tools for change was maybe an amplification and an augmentation of that even further to say, you know, we do still have the humanitarian part of it, we still have the global health part of it, we saw the psychology part of it. But we also, you know, I realized, too, that people have, you know, need to have jobs just like, you know, I need to have that day job to be able to do this. So, while we have a lot of nonprofit job, links in there, there's a great new group I was introduced to by Charlie Bressler called 80,000 hours, there are people that specifically focus on jobs that are in the kind of not necessarily humanitarian, but in the helping areas for people and you don't need to, you can have an undergrad degree or probably even no degree, and be able to get fine jobs, if this is something that you want to spend your 80,000 hours of your career in. So, so for me, I just dig that. I mean, I did these kinds of conversations where I can be on the other side of the mic, with a smart person with you with worldly experience, to be able to share these experiences to new audiences that might not necessarily you know, know about our show, or know about the kinds of things that I've made freely publicly available. I mean, honest to goodness, there is not a thing. I don't even know if there's other stuff that I'm on that hasn't paywall to it. But I mean, it's just sort of like having all this stuff be out there freely available for people to you know, find into us and because what are they going to do with it, they're going to then go do a project that I don't have to be a part of. That's great. That's the amplification. That's the, you know, kind of what what we've pivoted to do so, so I guess it's it's like not I guess maybe another part of it to the mistaking part of it is that I also didn't appreciate and realize the value of what it was that I was doing, you know, that could have for other people. And I suspect that maybe some folks in your audience and in a similar situation may not have that kind of appreciation that the what they've done and what they have the capacity to do. They may not give themselves credit for and I think, you know, I would say I would take that on as a shoot for me to that I really kind of, oh, well, if I can do it, it's easier. Oh, I can do it. Anybody can do it or whatever. I still think that's true. But it's sort of like, it's not that these things are necessarily hard. But it's also they're things that there's easier ways to skin the cat . If people can learn from the mistakes I've made to then not make them, well, then all the faster it's going to be for those folks. So, but thank you for the platform to give that diatribe. But that's kind of, you know, kind of what I went through the emotional part of it and then coming out the other end going okay, well, here's, this is a good pivot. Maybe this is even a better fit than what we thought and knock on wood. So far, so good.

Andrew Stotz 40:55
So how would you think about it? You know, based upon what you learned from that, and what you've continued to learn? What one action would you recommend our listeners take to avoid suffering the same fate?

Dr Chris Stout 41:08
I guess, you know, Schumpeter talks about creative destruction. And I guess, Covey in a different way, talks about begin with the end in mind, but I guess maybe in the sense of maybe blending those is like to plan for the end. I mean, I never really thought about, well, what's going to happen to the center? You know, is it you know, when I croak? Is it going to croak? Is it going to live on without me if I made it so dependent upon me that it can't be independent. And I've had deep public deep thoughts about it and public conversations about it. And kind of the current point where I'm at right now is to say that I don't want to become some moribund, outdated old fashions, you know, center or entity or nonprofit that kind of has outlived its usefulness. So we've kind of it's not a suicide, Bilbo, I mean, we've kind of put in a design that, you know, will, we will shutter the center, you know, at a certain point in time, and, you know, the Jerry Seinfeld leave them wanting more, you know, so, so we, you know, it's that kind of a thing, where, you know, I've also written, I got a new piece that will come out probably in September, on LinkedIn, about this whole Effective Altruism, and foundations, you know, spending down the funds that they have, and being able to, you know, not live for the reason of living, like, for example, you know, like, there's, there's large institutions that grow to be large institutions, that then all of a sudden, like William Easterly writes in the White Man's Burden, like the power of the small project, versus when you get so huge, you've got such large overhead, you've got such large expenses, that all of a sudden your operating budget exceeds, you know, your your, your, the amount of money that you put into the work, so to speak. So I never, ever, ever, I don't never get to that point, because I'll never have that much funding, but I never ever want to get to that even you know, proportionately are in a ratio kind of way. So, so I guess I, you know, I would say that think about, you know, how will this end? What's the best way for this to end. And that might also maybe inform maybe this is a little blue sky? Again, if me, it might also maybe inform what happens when things don't go well. And you do need to make that pivot. So maybe that's the way I can squeeze in two answers to your one question.

Andrew Stotz 43:26
So well, given the city that you're from, I'm going to say, Everybody should accept that you're going to have the last dance at some point. Oh, nice reference. For those people that haven't watched the last dance, I just can't imagine that somebody hasn't. But if you're listening to see it, I have to admit, I think I've watched it three times now. Oh, wow. That's impressive. Headed his spirit of Michael Jordan is just I watched Netflix in my bed, basically, on a little on my phone, you know, propped up, and I'm watching the last dance. If you were outside the room, you did care occasion. Yes. So yes, we all are going to have our last dance. So that's bad. And so that's another question I have for you is, you know, you've got so many different resources, what would be a resource of yours that you would recommend for the listeners?

Dr Chris Stout 44:32
Well, probably two, and they're both digital websites. And they're both kind of portals in the sense that it seems that word sounds old fashioned now. But if you go to center for global initiatives.org That's the obviously the nonprofits site. We've got we've revamped the website. Thank goodness. It was really getting kind of long in the tooth. So I'm kind of happy with how it looks now and it's refreshness. And we'll always keep, like I said, adding new content and new tweaks and stuff. So you know, keep coming back. But if you particularly in particular, there's a section called like tools and resources. So that again, if you're interested in the nonprofit area, cost saving things, tips, lectures, webinars, free downloadable books and articles, scientific articles, blah, blah, blah, it's just really kind of a big font to sip from those kinds of things. If listeners are more interested in broader topics, excuse me an aspects then come to a life in full.org. And a life in full.org is, again, just a different set of tools. We have all the the podcast lives there, as well as all the podcast platforms that it's on where I think we're on probably like you, you know, we're on like, 30 some odd now, we have a YouTube channel, we have there's a couple of other little things are kind of parts and projects of that. We have a section that links actually, it might sound odd, but it really works well to a number of Pinterest boards. So if you're interested in startups, we've got a set of content there. If you're interested in finance, we've got one there, if you're interested in travel, we've got stuff there. I also kind of build customized motorcycles is a bit of a hobby. So we've got a thing on inspirations for motorcycle art. So it's really kind of a, you know, what interests again, very broad, broad based magazine II, you know, kinds of things. But if you also we've got a thing once I hit 60, there's a call, originally called it epic 60 kind of thinking, Okay, now now, what am I going to do what's going to be epic in this next chapter. And then I kind of broaden it because as I was looking at that as well, like, it's just like to do this, they're adults. Now. It's like, well, they don't have to wait to 60 to be able to do this. So I just call it epic living. So we're kind of growing, that we'll have some tips and ideas and things, you know, there as well to cover health and exercise and interesting things and interesting people. So, that side, again, it's really kind of a you know, choose your own adventure kind of site, you know, depending on what you're interested in there. And it's not going to have everybody's you know, I'm not interested in a lot of things, but probably not everything. But if it is something I'm interested in, chances are, I've been probably kind of a deep dive and anything I find that I think is interesting, of course, I narcissistically think everyone's gonna think it's interesting. So I, you know, post it or link it or whatever on the off chance that my might again be of help to people. So fantastic. So those are probably the best two sites. Thanks. Yeah, I'm

Andrew Stotz 47:51
just looking at it right now. And I went to your Pinterest and saw so many different cool pictures. So I think it's, you can explore for a long time here on a life in fool.org, we'll have the links to that in the show notes, too.

Dr Chris Stout 48:06
Thanks. It's kind of corny. You know, people always think of Pinterest. Well, it's like, you know, it's a, you know, I'm gonna get baking recipes, or, you know, a pattern for my miniskirt or something which of course you can, but it's like, I like the visual aspect of it. I mean, I can have, like a dropbox link or something. And you see a number of files sitting there thumbnails, or whatever. But I just thought that it's just easy to do to, like, I just recently did some stuff on, you know, the, the top the rank order of the top national parks in the United States. And so that's really kind of cool. And I'm not going to them anytime soon, but I probably will in the future. So I linked it for myself. So I can go back and easily find it and anybody else can too. So again, it's all kind of born out of scratching my own itch. But you know that people obviously, someone wrote the thing, though, so there's some audience for it as well too. So if I can help propagate it and get it out there, then you know, Mazel Tov, when

Andrew Stotz 49:04
I've just re-read that's my first time being on my Pinterest in a while. So that's reigniting it. So good. Right. Awesome. Last question. What is your number one goal for the next 12 months?

Dr Chris Stout 49:24
Boy, I guess I still feel like I'm getting I always kind of cheat on answering your questions. I guess I'm trying to still establish a little bit of an equilibrium for myself, where I'm at in my current status. And I'm not quite sure I think it'll be probably you know, a variety of different things. You know, it'll be the doing consulting and in startup stuff. It'll probably be some grooming of that letting some go to make room for new ones, in you know, bidding them you know, the best with kind of their growth. Um, but I don't, you know, it's sort of like, where I'm at right now I have opportunities to do a variety of things. And again, I like the all the bright and sparkly things. But I also, I guess, maybe need to develop a discipline of, you know, being a bit more selective, like, like Derek Sciver says, you know, if it's not healthy, yes, it's no. So you know, trying to really kind of keep the bandwidth Stewart Brand also says, Any project we're doing is probably going to take five years. So you know, you have to kind of commit to saying, you know, okay, I am, if I'm going to do this, I'm going to do it, well, you know, we're going to write a book, or I'm going to make a movie, or I'm going to do whatever that you know, it's going to be about this. And there's only so many more five years that you know, that any of us have left. And so that's kind of how I'm trying to adopt that as well, too. So I guess maybe the general answer to your question is to have a better mindset of how to do what it is that I feel like I still need to do with the time remaining. So before the clock runs out, so

Andrew Stotz 51:03
Well, listeners, there you have it another story of loss to keep you winning. If you haven't yet taken the risk reduction assessment, I challenge you to go to my worst investment ever.com Right now, and start building wealth the easy way by reducing risk. As we conclude, Chris, I want to thank you again for joining our mission. And on behalf of a stocks Academy, I hereby award you alumni status for turning your worst investment ever into your best teaching moment. Do you have any parting words for the audience?

Dr Chris Stout 51:35
Well, again, I just want to give a tip of the hat to you, Andrew, I love your work. I love what you've done. I love what you're doing. I can't wait to see what comes next. And please, anyone in the audience wants to reach out, check out the sites you can reach me through those. I'm happy to be of help.

Andrew Stotz 51:50
Fantastic. And ladies and gentlemen, just go to the show notes and we'll have all the links there. And that's a wrap on another great story to help us create, grow and protect our wealth fellow risk takers. Let's celebrate that today. We added one more person to our mission to help 1 million people reduce risk in our lives. This is your worst podcast host Andrew Stotz saying. I'll see you on the upside.