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  • Opportunities for AI in Accessibility

    Opportunities for AI in Accessibility

    I was completely moved by Joe Dolson’s subsequent article on the crossroads of AI and convenience, both in terms of the suspicion he has regarding AI in general and how many people have been using it. In fact, I’m very skeptical of AI myself, despite my role at Microsoft as an accessibility technology strategist who helps manage the AI for Accessibility award program. AI can be used in quite productive, equitable, and accessible ways, as well as harmful, exclusive, and harmful ways, just like with any tool. Additionally, there are a bit of uses in the subpar center as well.

    I’d like you to consider this a “yes … and” piece to complement Joe’s post. I’m just trying to reject what he’s saying, but I’m just trying to give some context to initiatives and opportunities where AI can make a difference for people with disabilities. To be clear, I want to take some time to speak about what’s possible in hope that we’ll get there one day. There are, and we’ve needed to address them, like, yesterday.

    Other text

    Joe’s article spends a lot of time examining how computer vision versions can create other words. He raises a number of true points about the state of affairs right now. And while computer-vision concepts continue to improve in the quality and complexity of information in their information, their benefits aren’t wonderful. He argues to be accurate that the state of image research is currently very poor, especially for some graphic types, in large part due to the absence of contextual contexts in which to look at images ( as a result of having separate “foundation” models for words analysis and image analysis ). Today’s models aren’t trained to distinguish between images that are contextually relevant ( should probably have descriptions ) and those that are purely decorative ( couldn’t possibly need a description ) either. However, I still think there’s possible in this area.

    As Joe points out, alt text publishing via human-in-the-loop should be a given. And if AI can intervene to provide a starting place for alt text, even if the rapid might say What is this BS? That’s not correct at all … Let me try to offer a starting point— I think that’s a gain.

    If we can specifically station a design to examine image usage in context, it might help us more quickly determine which images are likely to be elegant and which ones are likely to need a description. That will help clarify which situations require image descriptions, and it will increase authors ‘ effectiveness in making their sites more visible.

    While complex images—like graphs and charts—are challenging to describe in any sort of succinct way ( even for humans ), the image example shared in the GPT4 announcement points to an interesting opportunity as well. Let’s say you came across a map that was simply the description of the chart’s title and the type of representation it was: Pie map comparing smartphone usage to have phone usage in US households earning under$ 30, 000 annually. ( That would be a pretty bad alt text for a chart because it would frequently leave many unanswered questions about the data, but let’s just assume that that was the description in place. ) If your website knew that that picture was a pie graph ( because an ship model concluded this ), imagine a world where people could ask questions like these about the creative:

    • Would more people use smartphones or other types of phones?
    • How many more?
    • Is there a group of people that don’t fall into either of these containers?
    • That number, how some?

    For a moment, the chance to learn more about graphics and data in this way could be innovative for people who are blind and low vision as well as for those with different types of color blindness, cognitive impairments, and other issues. Putting aside the challenges of large language model ( LLM) hallucinations. It could also be useful in educational contexts to help people who can see these charts, as is, to understand the data in the charts.

    What if you could ask your browser to make a complicated chart simpler? What if you demanded that the line graph be isolated into just one line? What if you could ask your browser to transpose the colors of the different lines to work better for form of color blindness you have? What if you asked it to switch colors in favor of patterns? That seems like a possibility given the chat-based interfaces and our current ability to manipulate images in today’s AI tools.

    Now imagine a purpose-built model that could extract the information from that chart and convert it to another format. Perhaps it could convert that pie chart (or, better yet, a series of pie charts ) into more usable ( and useful ) formats, like spreadsheets, for instance. That would be incredible!

    Matching algorithms

    When Safiya Umoja Noble chose to write her book Algorithms of Oppression, she hit the nail on the head. Although her book focused on the ways that search engines can foster racism, I believe it’s equally true that all computer models have the potential to foster conflict, prejudice, and intolerance. Whether it’s Twitter always showing you the latest tweet from a bored billionaire, YouTube sending us into a Q-hole, or Instagram warping our ideas of what natural bodies look like, we know that poorly authored and maintained algorithms are incredibly harmful. A large portion of this is attributable to the lack of diversity in those who create and shape them. However, when these platforms are built with inclusive features in mind, there is real potential for algorithm development to help people with disabilities.

    Take Mentra, for example. They serve as a network of employment for people who are neurodivers. Based on more than 75 data points, they match job seekers with potential employers using an algorithm. On the job-seeker side of things, it considers each candidate’s strengths, their necessary and preferred workplace accommodations, environmental sensitivities, and so on. It takes into account the workplace, the communication environment, and other factors. Mentra made the decision to change the script when it came to the typical employment websites because it was run by neurodivergent people. They use their algorithm to propose available candidates to companies, who can then connect with job seekers that they are interested in, reducing the emotional and physical labor on the job-seeker side of things.

    When more people with disabilities are involved in the development of algorithms, this can lower the likelihood that these algorithms will harm their communities. Diverse teams are crucial because of this.

    Imagine that a social media company’s recommendation engine was tuned to analyze who you’re following and if it was tuned to prioritize follow recommendations for people who talked about similar things but who were different in some key ways from your existing sphere of influence. For instance, if you follow a group of white men who are not white or aren’t white and who also discuss AI, it might be wise to follow those who are also disabled or who are not white. If you followed its advice, you might be able to understand what is happening in the AI field more fully and nuancedly. These same systems should also use their understanding of biases about particular communities—including, for instance, the disability community—to make sure that they aren’t recommending any of their users follow accounts that perpetuate biases against (or, worse, spewing hate toward ) those groups.

    Other ways that AI can assist people with disabilities

    I’m sure I could go on and on about using AI to assist people with disabilities, but I’m going to make this last section into a bit of a lightning round if I weren’t trying to put this together in between other tasks. In no particular order:

      Voice preservation You may be aware of the voice-prescribing options from Microsoft, Acapela, or others, or you may have seen the announcement for VALL-E or Apple’s Global Accessibility Awareness Day. It’s possible to train an AI model to replicate your voice, which can be a tremendous boon for people who have ALS ( Lou Gehrig’s disease ) or motor-neuron disease or other medical conditions that can lead to an inability to talk. This technology can also be used to create audio deepfakes, so we need to approach it responsibly, but the technology has truly transformative potential.
    • voice recognition Researchers like those in the Speech Accessibility Project are paying people with disabilities for their help in collecting recordings of people with atypical speech. As I type, they are actively recruiting people with Parkinson’s and related conditions, and they intend to expand this to other conditions as the project develops. More people with disabilities will be able to use voice assistants, dictation software, and voice-response services as a result of this research, which will result in more inclusive data sets that will enable them to use their computers and other devices more easily and with just their voices.
    • Text transformation. LLMs of the current generation are quite capable of changing text without creating hallucinations. This is incredibly empowering for those who have cognitive disabilities and who may benefit from text summaries, simplified versions, or even text that has been prepared for Bionic Reading.

    The importance of diverse teams and data

    We must acknowledge that our differences matter. The intersections of the identities we exist in have an impact on our lived experiences. These lived experiences—with all their complexities ( and joys and pain ) —are valuable inputs to the software, services, and societies that we shape. The data we use to train new models must be based on our differences, and those who provide it to us need to be compensated for doing so. Stronger models can be created using inclusive data sets, which lead to more equitable outcomes.

    Want a model that doesn’t demean or patronize or objectify people with disabilities? Make sure that you include information about disabilities that is written by people who have a range of disabilities and that is well represented in the training data.

    Want a model that uses ableist language without using it? You may be able to use existing data sets to build a filter that can intercept and remediate ableist language before it reaches readers. Despite this, AI models won’t soon replace human copy editors when it comes to sensitivity reading.

    Want a copilot for coding that provides recomprehensible recommendations after the jump? Train it on code that you know to be accessible.


    I have no doubts about how dangerous AI will be for people today, tomorrow, and for the rest of the world. However, I also think we should acknowledge this and make thoughtful, thoughtful, and intentional changes to our approaches to AI that will reduce harm over time as well. Today, tomorrow, and well into the future.


    Thanks to Kartik Sawhney for assisting me with writing this article, Ashley Bischoff for her invaluable editorial assistance, and of course Joe Dolson for the prompt.

  • The Wax and the Wane of the Web

    The Wax and the Wane of the Web

    When you begin to believe you have everything figured out, everyone does change, in my opinion. Simply as you start to get the hang of injections, diapers, and ordinary sleep, it’s time for solid foods, potty training, and nighttime sleep. When you figure those away, it’s time for some short breaks for nap and school. The cycle goes on and on.

    The same holds true for those of us who are currently employed in design and development. Having worked on the web for about three years at this point, I’ve seen the typical wax and wane of concepts, strategies, and systems. Every day we as developers and designers re-enter the familiar pattern, a brand-new engineering or thought emerges to shake things up and completely alter the world.

    How we got below

    I built my first website in the mid-’90s. Design and development on the web back then was a free-for-all, with few established norms. For any layout aside from a single column, we used table elements, often with empty cells containing a single pixel spacer GIF to add empty space. We styled text with numerous font tags, nesting the tags every time we wanted to vary the font style. And we had only three or four typefaces to choose from: Arial, Courier, or Times New Roman. When Verdana and Georgia came out in 1996, we rejoiced because our options had nearly doubled. The only safe colors to choose from were the 216 “web safe” colors known to work across platforms. The few interactive elements (like contact forms, guest books, and counters) were mostly powered by CGI scripts (predominantly written in Perl at the time). Achieving any kind of unique look involved a pile of hacks all the way down. Interaction was often limited to specific pages in a site.

    website requirements were born.

    At the turn of the century, a new cycle started. Crufty code littered with table layouts and font tags waned, and a push for web standards waxed. Newer technologies like CSS got more widespread adoption by browsers makers, developers, and designers. This shift toward standards didn’t happen accidentally or overnight. It took active engagement between the W3C and browser vendors and heavy evangelism from folks like the Web Standards Project to build standards. A List Apart and books like Designing with Web Standards by Jeffrey Zeldman played key roles in teaching developers and designers why standards are important, how to implement them, and how to sell them to their organizations. And approaches like progressive enhancement introduced the idea that content should be available for all browsers—with additional enhancements available for more advanced browsers. Meanwhile, sites like the CSS Zen Garden showcased just how powerful and versatile CSS can be when combined with a solid semantic HTML structure.

    Server-side language like PHP, Java, and.NET took Perl as the primary back-end computers, and the cgi-bin was tossed in the garbage bin. The first age of internet programs started with content-management systems (especially those used in blogs like Blogger, Grey Matter, Movable Type, and WordPress ), with these better server-side equipment. In the mid-2000s, AJAX opened gates for sequential interaction between the front end and back close. Pages was now revise their content without having to reload. A grain of Script frameworks like Prototype, YUI, and ruby arose to aid developers develop more credible client-side conversation across browsers that had wildly varying levels of standards support. Techniques like picture alternative enable the use of fonts by skilled developers and developers. And technology like Flash made it possible to include movies, sports, and even more engagement.

    These new methods, requirements, and solutions greatly reenergized the sector. Web style flourished as creators and designers explored more different styles and designs. However, we also relied heavily on exploits. Early CSS was a huge improvement over table-based layouts when it came to basic layout and text styling, but its limitations at the time meant that designers and developers still relied heavily on images for complex shapes ( such as rounded or angled corners ) and tiled backgrounds for the appearance of full-length columns (among other hacks ). All kinds of nested floats or absolute positioning ( or both ) were necessary for complicated layouts. Display and photo substitute for specialty styles was a excellent start toward varying the designs from the big five, but both tricks introduced convenience and efficiency issues. Additionally, JavaScript libraries made it simple for anyone to add a dash of interaction to pages, even at the expense of double or even quadrupling the download size of basic websites.

    The web as software platform

    The interplay between the front end and the back end continued to grow, which led to the development of the current era of modern web applications. Between expanded server-side programming languages ( which kept growing to include Ruby, Python, Go, and others ) and newer front-end tools like React, Vue, and Angular, we could build fully capable software on the web. Along with these tools, there were additional options, such as shared package libraries, build automation, and collaborative version control. What was once primarily an environment for linked documents became a realm of infinite possibilities.

    Mobile devices increased in their capabilities as well, and they gave us access to the internet while we were traveling. Mobile apps and responsive design opened up opportunities for new interactions anywhere and any time.

    The development of social media and other centralized tools for people to connect and use resulted from this combination of potent mobile devices and potent development tools. As it became easier and more common to connect with others directly on Twitter, Facebook, and even Slack, the desire for hosted personal sites waned. Social media provided connections on a global scale, with both positive and negative outcomes.

    Want a much more extensive history of how we got here, with some other takes on ways that we can improve? ” Of Time and the Web” was written by Jeremy Keith. Or check out the” Web Design History Timeline” at the Web Design Museum. A fun tour through” Internet Artifacts” is also provided by Neal Agarwal.

    Where we are now

    It seems like we’ve reached yet another significant turning point in the last couple of years. As social-media platforms fracture and wane, there’s been a growing interest in owning our own content again. There are many different ways to create a website, from the tried-and-true classic of hosting plain HTML files to static site generators to content management systems of all varieties. The fracturing of social media also comes with a cost: we lose crucial infrastructure for discovery and connection. Webmentions, RSS, ActivityPub, and other IndieWeb tools can be useful in this regard, but they’re still largely underdeveloped and difficult to use for the less geeky. We can build amazing personal websites and add to them regularly, but without discovery and connection, it can sometimes feel like we may as well be shouting into the void.

    Browser support for standards like web components like CSS, JavaScript, and other standards has increased, particularly with efforts like Interop. New technologies gain support across the board in a fraction of the time that they used to. When I first learn about a new feature, I frequently discover that its coverage is already over 80 % when I check the browser support. Nowadays, the barrier to using newer techniques often isn’t browser support but simply the limits of how quickly designers and developers can learn what’s available and how to adopt it.

    We can now prototype almost any idea with just a few commands and a few lines of code. All the tools that we now have available make it easier than ever to start something new. However, the upfront cost these frameworks may save in initial delivery eventually comes down as the maintenance and upgrading they become a part of our technical debt.

    If we rely on third-party frameworks, adopting new standards can sometimes take longer since we may have to wait for those frameworks to adopt those standards. These frameworks, which previously made it easier to adopt new techniques sooner, have since evolved into obstacles. These same frameworks often come with performance costs too, forcing users to wait for scripts to load before they can read or interact with pages. And when scripts fail ( whether due to poor code, network issues, or other environmental factors ), users frequently have no choice but to use blank or broken pages.

    Where do we go from here?

    Hacks of today help to shape standards for tomorrow. And there’s nothing inherently wrong with embracing hacks —for now—to move the present forward. Problems only arise when we refuse to acknowledge that they are hacks or when we choose not to replace them. So what can we do to create the future we want for the web?

    Build for the long haul. Optimize for performance, for accessibility, and for the user. weigh the costs associated with those user-friendly tools. They may make your job a little easier today, but how do they affect everything else? What does each user pay? To future developers? To adoption of standards? Sometimes the convenience may be worth it. Sometimes it’s just a hack that you’ve gotten used to. And sometimes it’s holding you back from even better options.

    Start with standards. Standards continue to evolve over time, but browsers have done a remarkably good job of continuing to support older standards. Not all third-party frameworks are the same. Sites built with even the hackiest of HTML from the’ 90s still work just fine today. The same can’t be said about websites created with frameworks even after a few years.

    Design with care. Consider the effects of each choice, whether your craft is code, pixels, or processes. The convenience of many a modern tool comes at the cost of not always understanding the underlying decisions that have led to its design and not always considering the impact that those decisions can have. Use the time saved by modern tools to think more carefully and make decisions with care rather than rushing to “move fast and break things”

    Always be learning. If you constantly learn, you also develop. Sometimes it may be hard to pinpoint what’s worth learning and what’s just today’s hack. Even if you were to concentrate solely on learning standards, you might end up focusing on something that won’t matter next year. ( Remember XHTML? ) However, ongoing learning opens up new connections in your brain, and the techniques you learn in one day may be used to guide different experiments in the future.

    Play, experiment, and be weird! This website we created is the most incredible experiment. It’s the single largest human endeavor in history, and yet each of us can create our own pocket within it. Be brave and try something new. Build a playground for ideas. In your own bizarre science lab, perform bizarre experiments. Start your own small business. There has never been a place where we have more room to be creative, take risks, and discover our potential.

    Share and amplify. Share what you think has worked for you as you experiment, play, and learn. Write on your own website, post on whichever social media site you prefer, or shout it from a TikTok. Write something for A List Apart! But take the time to amplify others too: find new voices, learn from them, and share what they’ve taught you.

    Make a move and make it happen.

    As designers and developers for the web ( and beyond ), we’re responsible for building the future every day, whether that may take the shape of personal websites, social media tools used by billions, or anything in between. Let’s give everything we produce a positive vibe by infusing our values into everything we do. Create that thing that only you are uniquely qualified to make. Then share it, improve it, re-use it, or create something new. Learn. Make. Share. Grow. Rinse and repeat. Everything will change whenever you believe you have mastered the web.

  • To Ignite a Personalization Practice, Run this Prepersonalization Workshop

    To Ignite a Personalization Practice, Run this Prepersonalization Workshop

    This is in the photo. You’ve joined a club at your business that’s designing innovative product features with an focus on technology or AI. Or perhaps your business only started using a personalization engine. Either way, you’re designing with information. What then? When it comes to designing for personalization, there are many warning stories, no immediately achievement, and some guidelines for the baffled.

    The personalization gap is real, between the dream of getting it right and the worry of it going wrong ( like when we encounter “persofails” similar to a company’s repeated pleas for more toilet seats from regular people ). It’s an particularly confusing place to be a modern professional without a map, a map, or a strategy.

    There are no Lonely Planet and some tour guides for those of you who want to personalize because powerful customisation is so dependent on each group’s talent, technology, and market position.

    But you can ensure that your group has packed its carriers rationally.

    There’s a DIY method to increase your chances for achievement. You’ll at least at least disarm your boss ‘ irrational exuberance. Before the group you’ll need to properly plan.

    It’s known as prepersonalization.

    Behind the audio

    Take into account Spotify’s DJ feature, which was introduced last season.

    We’re used to seeing the polished final outcome of a personalization function. A personal have had to be conceived, budgeted, and prioritized before the year-end prize, the making-of-backstory, or the behind-the-scenes success chest. Before any customisation have goes live in your product or service, it lives amid a delay of valuable ideas for expressing consumer experiences more automatically.

    How do you decide where to position personalisation wagers? How do you design regular interactions that hasn’t journey up users or—worse—breed mistrust? We’ve found that for many well-known budgeted programs to support their continued investments, they initially required one or more workshops to join vital technologies users and stakeholders. Make it count.

    We’ve closely monitored the same evolution with our consumers, from major software to young companies. In our experience with working on small and large personalization work, a program’s best monitor record—and its capacity to weather tough questions, work steadily toward shared answers, and manage its design and engineering efforts—turns on how successfully these prepersonalization activities play out.

    Effective workshops consistently distinguish successful future endeavors from unsuccessful ones, saving countless hours of time, resources, and overall well-being in the process.

    A personalization practice involves a multiyear effort of testing and feature development. Your tech stack is not experiencing a switch-flip. It’s best managed as a backlog that often evolves through three steps:

    1. customer experience optimization ( CXO, also known as A/B testing or experimentation )
    2. always-on automations ( whether rules-based or machine-generated )
    3. mature features or standalone product development ( such as Spotify’s DJ experience )

    This is why we created our progressive personalization framework and why we’re field-testing an accompanying deck of cards: we believe that there’s a base grammar, a set of “nouns and verbs” that your organization can use to design experiences that are customized, personalized, or automated. These cards won’t be necessary for you. But we strongly recommend that you create something similar, whether that might be digital or physical.

    Set the timer for your kitchen.

    How long does it take to cook up a prepersonalization workshop? The evaluation activities that we suggest include can last for a number of weeks ( and frequently do ). For the core workshop, we recommend aiming for two to three days. Here’s a summary of our more general approach as well as information on the crucial first-day activities.

    The full arc of the wider workshop is threefold:

      Kickstart: This specifies the terms of engagement as you concentrate on the potential, the readiness and drive of your team, and your leadership.
    1. Plan your work: This is the heart of the card-based workshop activities where you specify a plan of attack and the scope of work.
    2. Work your plan: This stage consists of making it possible for team members to individually present their own pilots, which each include a proof-of-concept project, business case, and operating model.

    Give yourself at least a day, split into two large time blocks, to power through a concentrated version of those first two phases.

    Kickstart: Apt your appetite

    We call the first lesson the “landscape of connected experience“. It looks at the possibilities for personalization in your organization. A connected experience, in our parlance, is any UX requiring the orchestration of multiple systems of record on the backend. A marketing-automation platform and a content-management system could be used together. It could be a digital-asset manager combined with a customer-data platform.

    Give examples of connected experience interactions that you admire, find familiar, or even dislike, as examples of consumer and business-to-business examples. This should cover a representative range of personalization patterns, including automated app-based interactions ( such as onboarding sequences or wizards ), notifications, and recommenders. These cards contain a catalog, which we have. Here’s a list of 142 different interactions to jog your thinking.

    It’s all about setting the tone. What are the possible paths for the practice in your organization? Here’s a long-form primer and a strategic framework for a broad perspective.

    Assess each example that you discuss for its complexity and the level of effort that you estimate that it would take for your team to deliver that feature ( or something similar ). We break down connected experiences into five categories in our cards: functions, features, experiences, complete products, and portfolios. Size your own build here. This will help to draw attention to the benefits of ongoing investment as well as the difference between what you currently offer and what you intend to offer in the future.

    Next, have your team plot each idea on the following 2×2 grid, which lays out the four enduring arguments for a personalized experience. This is crucial because it emphasizes how personalization can affect your own methods of working as well as your external customers. It’s also a reminder ( which is why we used the word argument earlier ) of the broader effort beyond these tactical interventions.

    Each team member should decide where they would like to place your company’s emphasis on your product or service. Naturally, you can’t prioritize all of them. Here, the goal is to show how various departments may view their own benefits from the effort, which can vary from one department to the next. Documenting your desired outcomes lets you know how the team internally aligns across representatives from different departments or functional areas.

    The third and final Kickstart activity is about filling in the personalization gap. Is your customer journey well documented? Will ensuring data and privacy is a major challenge too much? Do you have content metadata needs that you have to address? ( We’re pretty sure you do; it’s just a matter of recognizing the need’s magnitude and its solution. ) In our cards, we’ve noted a number of program risks, including common team dispositions. For instance, our Detractor card lists six intractable stakeholder attitudes that prevent progress.

    Effectively collaborating and managing expectations is critical to your success. Consider the potential obstacles to your advancement in the future. Press the participants to name specific steps to overcome or mitigate those barriers in your organization. According to research, personalization initiatives face a number of common obstacles.

    At this point, you’ve hopefully discussed sample interactions, emphasized a key area of benefit, and flagged key gaps? You’re all set to go on, good.

    Hit that test kitchen

    Next, let’s take a look at what you’ll need to create personalization recipes. Personalization engines, which are robust software suites for automating and expressing dynamic content, can intimidate new customers. They give you a variety of options for how your organization can conduct its activities because of their broad and potent capabilities. This presents the question: Where do you begin when you’re configuring a connected experience?

    What’s crucial here is to avoid treating the installed software like a dream kitchen from some imaginary remodeling project ( as one of our client executives memorably put it ). These software engines are more like test kitchens where your team can begin devising, tasting, and refining the snacks and meals that will become a part of your personalization program’s regularly evolving menu.

    Over the course of the workshop, the ultimate menu of the prioritized backlog will come together. And creating “dishes” is the way that you’ll have individual team stakeholders construct personalized interactions that serve their needs or the needs of others.

    The dishes will be made using recipes that have predetermined ingredients.

    Verify your ingredients

    Like a good product manager, you’ll make sure you have everything ready to cook up your desired interaction ( or figure out what needs to be added to your pantry ) and that you validate with the right stakeholders present. These ingredients include the audience that you’re targeting, content and design elements, the context for the interaction, and your measure for how it’ll come together.

    Not just discovering requirements, it is. Documenting your personalizations as a series of if-then statements lets the team:

    1. compare findings to a common strategy for developing features, similar to how artists paint with the same color palette,
    2. specify a consistent set of interactions that users find uniform or familiar,
    3. and establish parity between all important performance indicators and performance metrics.

    This helps you streamline your designs and your technical efforts while you deliver a shared palette of core motifs of your personalized or automated experience.

    Create a recipe.

    What ingredients are important to you? Consider a who-what-when-why construct:

    • Who are your key audience segments or groups?
    • What content, what design elements, and under what circumstances will you give them?
    • And for which business and user benefits?

    Five years ago, we developed these cards and card categories for the first time. We regularly play-test their fit with conference audiences and clients. And we still come across fresh possibilities. But they all follow an underlying who-what-when-why logic.

    In the cards in the accompanying photo below, you can typically follow along with right to left in three examples of subscription-based reading apps.

    1. Nurture personalization: When a guest or an unknown visitor interacts with a product title, a banner or alert bar appears that makes it easier for them to encounter a related title they may want to read, saving them time.
    2. Welcome automation: An email is sent when a new user registers to highlight the breadth of the content catalog and convert them to happy subscribers.
    3. Winback automation: Before their subscription lapses or after a recent failed renewal, a user is sent an email that gives them a promotional offer to suggest that they reconsider renewing or to remind them to renew.

    A good preworkshop activity might be to consider a first draft of what these cards might be for your organization, though we’ve also found that cocreating the recipes themselves can sometimes help this process. Start with a set of blank cards, and begin labeling and grouping them through the design process, eventually distilling them to a refined subset of highly useful candidate cards.

    The later stages of the workshop could be characterized as moving from focusing on a cookbook to a more nuanced customer-journey mapping. Individual” cooks” will pitch their recipes to the team, using a common jobs-to-be-done format so that measurability and results are baked in, and from there, the resulting collection will be prioritized for finished design and delivery to production.

    Better architecture is necessary for better kitchens.

    Simplifying a customer experience is a complicated effort for those who are inside delivering it. Avoid those who make up their mind. With that being said,” Complicated problems can be hard to solve, but they are addressable with rules and recipes“.

    When a team overfits: they aren’t designing with their best data, personalization turns into a laughing line. Like a sparse pantry, every organization has metadata debt to go along with its technical debt, and this creates a drag on personalization effectiveness. For instance, your AI’s output quality is in fact impacted by your IA. Spotify’s poster-child prowess today was unfathomable before they acquired a seemingly modest metadata startup that now powers its underlying information architecture.

    You can withstand the heat without a doubt.

    Personalization technology opens a doorway into a confounding ocean of possible designs. Only a deliberate and cooperative approach will produce the desired outcome. So banish the dream kitchen. Instead, head to the test kitchen to burn off the fantastical ideas that the doers in your organization have in store for time, to preserve job satisfaction and security, and to avoid unnecessary distractions. There are meals to serve and mouths to feed.

    This organizational framework gives you a fighting chance at long-term success as well as solid ground. Wiring up your information layer isn’t an overnight affair. However, you’ll have solid ground for success if you use the same cookbook and the same recipes. We designed these activities to make your organization’s needs concrete and clear, long before the hazards pile up.

    Your time well spent is being able to assess your unique situation and digital skills, despite the associated costs associated with investing in this kind of technology and product design. Don’t squander it. The pudding is the proof, as they say.

  • User Research Is Storytelling

    User Research Is Storytelling

    I’ve been fascinated by shows since I was a child. I loved the heroes and the excitement—but most of all the stories. I aspired to be an artist. And I believed that I’d get to do the things that Indiana Jones did and go on exciting activities. Yet my friends and I had movie ideas to make and sun in. But they never went any farther. However, I did end up in the user experience ( UX) field. Today, I realize that there’s an element of drama to UX— I hadn’t actually considered it before, but consumer research is story. And to get the most out of customer studies, you must tell a compelling story that involves stakeholders, including the product team and decision-makers, and piques their interest in learning more.

    Think of your favourite film. It more than likely follows a three-act construction that’s frequently seen in movies: the layout, the conflict, and the resolution. The second act shows what exists now, and it helps you get to know the figures and the challenges and problems that they face. The issue begins in Act 2, which introduces the issue. Here, difficulties grow or get worse. The solution is the third and final work. This is where the issues are resolved and the figures learn and change. This structure, in my opinion, is also a fantastic way to think about customer research, and I think it can be particularly useful for explaining consumer research to others.

    Use story as a framework for conducting analysis

    It’s sad to say, but many have come to see studies as being dispensable. Research is frequently one of the first things to go when expenses or deadlines are tight. Instead of investing in study, some goods professionals rely on manufacturers or—worse—their personal judgment to make the “right” options for users based on their experience or accepted best practices. That may lead some groups, but that approach can so easily miss the chance to solve people ‘ real issues. To be user-centered, this is something we really avoid. User study improves style. It keeps it on record, pointing to problems and opportunities. Being aware of problems with your goods and taking corrective actions can help you be ahead of your competition.

    In the three-act structure, each action corresponds to a part of the process, and each part is important to telling the whole story. Let’s examine the various functions and how they relate to consumer study.

    Act one: layout

    Fundamental analysis comes in handy because the setup is all about comprehending the background. Basic research ( also called conceptual, discovery, or preliminary research ) helps you understand people and identify their problems. Just like in the movies, you’re learning about the problems users face, what options are available, and how those challenges impact them. To do basic research, you may conduct cultural inquiries or journal studies ( or both! ), which may assist you in identifying both challenges and opportunities. It doesn’t need to get a great investment in time or money.

    Erika Hall writes about the most effective anthropology, which can be as straightforward as spending 15 hours with a customer and asking them to” Walk me through your morning yesterday.” That’s it. Give that one demand. Locked up and listen to them for 15 days. Do everything in your power to keep yourself and your pursuits out of it. Bam, you’re doing ethnography”. According to Hall, “[This ] will probably prove quite fascinating. In the very unlikely event that you didn’t learn anything new or helpful, carry on with increased confidence in your way”.

    I think this makes sense. And I love that this makes consumer studies so visible. You can simply attract participants and carry out the recruitment process without having to make a lot of paperwork! This can offer a wealth of knowledge about your customers, and it’ll help you better understand them and what’s going on in their life. That’s what action one is really all about: understanding where people are coming from.

    Maybe Spool talks about the importance of basic research and how it really type the bulk of your research. If you can supplement what you’ve heard in the fundamental studies by using any more user data that you can obtain, such as surveys or analytics, to make recommendations that may need to be investigated further, you might as well use those that can be drawn from those that you can obtain. Together, all this information creates a clearer picture of the state of things and all its deficiencies. And that’s the start of a gripping tale. It’s the place in the story where you realize that the principal characters—or the people in this case—are facing issues that they need to conquer. This is where you begin to develop compassion for the figures and support their success, much like in the movies. And maybe partners are now doing the same. Their concern may be with their company, which may be losing money because people are unable to complete specific tasks. Or probably they do connect with people ‘ problems. In either case, work one serves as your main strategy to pique the interest and interest of the participants.

    When partners begin to understand the value of basic research, that is open doors to more opportunities that involve users in the decision-making approach. And that can help item team become more user-centric. This gains everyone—users, the goods, and partners. It’s similar to winning an Oscar for a film; it frequently results in a favorable reception and success for your item. And this can be an opportunity for participants to repeat this process with different products. The secret to this method is storytelling, and knowing how to tell a compelling story is the only way to entice partners to do more research.

    This brings us to work two, where you incrementally review a design or idea to see whether it addresses the problems.

    Act two: fight

    Act two is all about digging deeper into the issues that you identified in action one. This typically involves conducting vertical study, such as accessibility tests, where you evaluate a potential solution ( such as a design ) to see if it addresses the problems you identified. The issues may include unfulfilled needs or problems with a circulation or procedure that’s tripping users away. Additional problems will arise in the course of action two of a film. It’s ok that you learn more about the characters as they grow and develop through this work.

    According to Jakob Nielsen, five users should be normally in usability tests, which means that this number of users can generally identify the majority of the issues:” As you add more and more users, you learn less and less because you will keep seeing the same things again and again… After the second user, you are wasting your time by observing the same findings consistently but not learning much new.”

    There are parallels with storytelling here too, if you try to tell a story with too many characters, the plot may get lost. With fewer participants, each user’s struggles will be more easily recalled and shared with other parties when discussing the research. This can help convey the issues that need to be addressed while also highlighting the value of doing the research in the first place.

    Usability tests have been conducted in person for decades, but you can also conduct them remotely using software like Microsoft Teams, Zoom, or other teleconferencing software. This approach has become increasingly popular since the beginning of the pandemic, and it works well. You might consider in-person usability tests like watching a movie as opposed to remote testing like attending a play. There are advantages and disadvantages to each. Usability research in person is a much more valuable learning experience. Stakeholders can experience the sessions with other stakeholders. Additionally, you’ll also hear their reactions in real-time, including surprises, disagreements, and discussions of what they’re seeing. Much like going to a play, where audiences get to take in the stage, the costumes, the lighting, and the actors ‘ interactions, in-person research lets you see users up close, including their body language, how they interact with the moderator, and how the scene is set up.

    If conducting usability testing in the field is like watching a play that is staged and controlled, where any two sessions may be very different from one another. You can take usability testing into the field by creating a replica of the space where users interact with the product and then conduct your research there. Or you can conduct your research by meeting users at their locations. With either option, you get to see how things work in context, things come up that wouldn’t have in a lab environment—and conversion can shift in entirely different directions. You have less control over how these sessions run as researchers, but this can occasionally improve your understanding of users. Meeting users where they are can provide clues to the external forces that could be affecting how they use your product. Usability tests in person offer a level of detail that is frequently absent from remote testing.

    That’s not to say that the “movies” —remote sessions—aren’t a good option. Remote training sessions can reach a wider audience. They allow a lot more stakeholders to be involved in the research and to see what’s going on. Additionally, they make access to a much wider user base geographically. But with any remote session there is the potential of time wasted if participants can’t log in or get their microphone working.

    You can ask real users questions to understand their thoughts and understanding of the solution as a result of usability testing, whether it is conducted remotely or in person. This can help you not only identify problems but also glean why they’re problems in the first place. Additionally, you can test your own hypotheses and determine whether your reasoning is correct. By the end of the sessions, you’ll have a much clearer picture of how usable the designs are and whether they work for their intended purposes. Act two is where the excitement is at the heart of the narrative, but there are also potential surprises. This is equally true of usability tests. Sometimes, participants will say unexpected things that alter the way you look at them, which can lead to unexpected turns in the story.

    Unfortunately, user research is sometimes seen as expendable. Usability testing is often the only method of research that some stakeholders believe they ever need, especially in this regard. In fact, if the designs that you’re evaluating in the usability test aren’t grounded in a solid understanding of your users ( foundational research ), there’s not much to be gained by doing usability testing in the first place. Because you’re narrowing the scope of what you’re receiving feedback on without understanding the needs of the users. As a result, there’s no way of knowing whether the designs might solve a problem that users have. In the context of a usability test, it’s just feedback on a particular design.

    On the other hand, if you only do foundational research, while you might have set out to solve the right problem, you won’t know whether the thing that you’re building will actually solve that. This demonstrates the value of conducting both directional and foundational research.

    In act two, stakeholders will—hopefully—get to watch the story unfold in the user sessions, which creates the conflict and tension in the current design by surfacing their highs and lows. And in turn, this can encourage stakeholders to take action on the issues raised.

    Act three: resolution

    The third act is about resolving the issues raised by the first two acts, whereas the first two are about comprehending the context and the tensions that can compel action. While it’s important to have an audience for the first two acts, it’s crucial that they stick around for the final act. That includes all members of the product team, including developers, UX experts, business analysts, delivery managers, product managers, and any other interested parties. It allows the whole team to hear users ‘ feedback together, ask questions, and discuss what’s possible within the project’s constraints. Additionally, it enables the UX design and research teams to clarify, suggest alternatives, or provide more context for their decisions. So you can get everyone on the same page and get agreement on the way forward.

    This act is primarily told through voiceover with some audience participation. The researcher is the narrator, who paints a picture of the issues and what the future of the product could look like given the things that the team has learned. They provide the stakeholders with their suggestions and suggestions for how to create this vision.

    Nancy Duarte in the Harvard Business Review offers an approach to structuring presentations that follow a persuasive story. The most effective presenters employ the same methods as great storytellers: they create a conflict that needs to be settled by reminding people of the status quo and then revealing a better way, according to Duarte. ” That tension helps them persuade the audience to adopt a new mindset or behave differently”.

    This type of structure aligns well with research results, and particularly results from usability tests. It provides proof for “what is “—the issues you’ve identified. And “what could be “—your recommendations on how to address them. And so forth and forth.

    You can reinforce your recommendations with examples of things that competitors are doing that could address these issues or with examples where competitors are gaining an edge. Or they can be as visual as quick sketches of a potential solution to a problem. These can help generate conversation and momentum. And this continues until the session is over when you’ve concluded by bridging the gaps and offering suggestions for improvement. This is the part where you reiterate the main themes or problems and what they mean for the product—the denouement of the story. This stage provides stakeholders with the next steps and, hoped, the motivation to take those steps!

    While we are nearly at the end of this story, let’s reflect on the idea that user research is storytelling. The three-act structure of user research contains all the components of a good story:

      Act one: You meet the protagonists ( the users ) and the antagonists ( the problems affecting users ). The plot begins here. In act one, researchers might use methods including contextual inquiry, ethnography, diary studies, surveys, and analytics. These techniques can produce personas, empathy maps, user journeys, and analytics dashboards as output.
      Act two: Next, there’s character development. The protagonists encounter problems and challenges, which they must overcome, and there is conflict and tension. In act two, researchers might use methods including usability testing, competitive benchmarking, and heuristics evaluation. Usability findings reports, UX strategy documents, usability guidelines, and best practices can be included in the output of these.
      Act three: The protagonists triumph and you see what a better future looks like. Researchers may use techniques like presentation decks, storytelling, and digital media in act three. The output of these can be: presentation decks, video clips, audio clips, and pictures.

    The researcher performs a number of tasks: they are the producer, the director, and the storyteller. The participants have a small role, but they are significant characters ( in the research ). And the audience is one of the stakeholders. But the most important thing is to get the story right and to use storytelling to tell users ‘ stories through research. By the end, the parties should leave with a goal and an eagerness to address the product’s flaws.

    So the next time that you’re planning research with clients or you’re speaking to stakeholders about research that you’ve done, think about how you can weave in some storytelling. User research is ultimately a win-win situation for everyone, and all you need to do is pique stakeholders ‘ interest in how the story ends.

  • From Beta to Bedrock: Build Products that Stick.

    From Beta to Bedrock: Build Products that Stick.

    As a solution builder for too many times, I can’t recall how many times I’ve seen promising ideas go from being heroes in a few weeks to being useless within months.

    Financial items, which is the area of my specialization, are no exception. It’s tempting to put as many features at the ceiling as possible and hope someone sticks because people’s true, hard-earned money is on the line, user expectations are high, and a crammed market. However, this strategy is a formula for disaster. Why, you see this:

    The fatalities of feature-first growth

    It’s simple to get swept up in the enthusiasm of developing innovative features when you start developing a financial product from scratch or are migrating existing user journeys from papers or telephony channels to online bank or mobile apps. They may believe,” If I may only add one more thing that solves this particular person problem, they’ll enjoy me”! But what happens if you eventually encounter a roadblock as a result of your security team’s negligence? don’t like it, right? When a difficult-fought film fails to win over viewers or fails due to unanticipated difficulty?

    The concept of Minimum Viable Product ( MVP ) comes into play in this area. Even though Jason Fried doesn’t usually refer to it that way, his podcast Rework and his guide Getting Real frequently address this concept. An MVP is a product that offers only enough significance to your users to keep them interested without becoming too hard or frustrating to use. Although the idea seems simple, it requires a razor-sharp eye, a ruthless edge, and the courage to stand up for your position because it is easy to fall for” the Columbo Effect” when there is always” just one more thing …” to add.

    The issue with most fund apps is that they frequently turn out to be reflections of the company’s internal politics rather than an knowledge created specifically for the customer. This implies that the priority should be given to delivering as many features and functionalities as possible in order to satisfy the requirements and needs of competing internal departments as opposed to crafting a compelling value statement that is focused on what people in the real world actually want. As a result, these products can very quickly became a mixed bag of misleading, related, and finally unhappy customer experiences—a feature salad, you might say.

    The significance of the foundation

    What’s a better course of action then? How can we create items that are reliable, user-friendly, and most importantly, stick?

    The concept of “bedrock” comes into play in this context. The mainstay of your product is really important to people, and Bedrock is that. It’s the fundamental building block that creates price and maintains relevance over time.

    The rock has to be in and around the standard servicing journeys in the world of retail bank, which is where I work. People only look at their existing account once every blue sky, but they do so every day. They purchase a credit card every year or every other year, but they at least once a month assess their stability and pay their bills.

    The key is in identifying the main tasks that individuals want to complete and therefore relentlessly striving to make them simple, reliable, and trustworthy.

    But how do you reach the foundation? By focusing on the” MVP” strategy, giving ease precedence, and working incrementally toward a clear value proposition. This entails removing unwanted functions and putting the emphasis on providing genuine value to your users.

    It also requires some nerve, as your coworkers might not always agree on your eyesight right away. And in some cases, it might even mean making it clear to consumers that you won’t be coming over to their home and prepare their meal. Sometimes you may need to use the sporadic “opinionated user interface design” ( i .e. clunky workaround for edge cases ) to test a concept or to give yourself some room to work on something more crucial stuff.

    Functional methods for creating reliable financial goods

    What are the main learnings I’ve made from my own research and expertise?

    1. What trouble are you trying to solve first and foremost with a distinct “why”? Whom? Before beginning any construction, make sure your goal is completely clear. Make certain it also aligns with the goals of your business.
    2. Avoid the temptation to put too many characteristics at once by focusing on one, key feature and focusing on getting that right before moving on to something else. Choose one that actually adds benefit, and work from that.
    3. Give clarity the precedence it deserves over difficulty when it comes to financial products. Eliminate unwanted details and concentrate on what matters most.
    4. Accept constant iteration as Bedrock is a powerful process rather than a fixed destination. Continuously collect customer feedback, improve your product, and work toward that foundational position.
    5. Stop, look, and listen: Don’t just go through with testing your product as part of the delivery process; test it frequently in the field. Use it for yourself. A/B tests are run. User opinions on Gatter. Speak to users and make adjustments accordingly.

    The “bedrock dilemma”

    This is an intriguing conundrum: sacrificing some of the potential for short-term progress in favor of long-term stability is at play. But the reward is worthwhile because products created with a concentrate on core will outlive and outperform their competitors and provide people with ongoing value over time.

    How do you begin your quest for rock, then? Taking it one step at a time. Start by identifying the underlying factors that your customers actually care about. Focus on developing and improving a second, potent have that delivers real value. And most importantly, check constantly because, whatever you think, Abraham Lincoln, Alan Kay, or Peter Drucker are all in the same boat! The best way to foretell the future is to build it, he said.

  • How The Nova Method Is Redefining PR and Brand Trust in the Age of AI

    How The Nova Method Is Redefining PR and Brand Trust in the Age of AI

    How The Nova Method Is Redefining PR and Brand Trust in the Age of AI written by John Jantsch read more at Duct Tape Marketing

    Listen to the full episode:   In this episode of the Duct Tape Marketing Podcast, I interviewed Christine Perkett, a veteran entrepreneur and marketing communications expert with nearly 30 years in the field. Christine is the co-founder and CEO of The Nova Method, a PR and communications firm grounded in what she calls an “audience-first […]

    Why It’s Time to Retire the Idea of Retirement with Derek Coburn written by John Jantsch read more at Duct Tape Marketing

     

    Episode Summary

    In this episode of the Duct Tape Marketing Podcast, host John Jantsch sits down with Derek Coburn — seasoned financial advisor, entrepreneur, and author — to challenge the traditional notion of retirement. With insights from his new book, Let’s Retire Retirement, Derek outlines why the current retirement model is outdated and how a mindset shift can help people live more fulfilled lives both now and later. Whether you’re a business owner, working professional, or planning for what’s next, this episode offers a fresh framework for thinking about purpose, wealth, and work-life design.

    Listen to the Episode

    About Derek Coburn

    Derek Coburn is a financial advisor with over 25 years of experience and the co-founder of Cadre, a curated community of CEOs and entrepreneurs. He’s the bestselling author of Networking is Not Working and a sought-after speaker on networking, wealth strategy, and purpose-driven leadership. In his latest book, Let’s Retire Retirement, he reframes what it means to live a meaningful and financially secure life—one that doesn’t hinge on the outdated idea of “stopping work at 65.”

    Key Takeaways

    • The modern concept of retirement is less than 150 years old—and it no longer matches today’s realities.
    • Living longer and more actively means we need to redefine what “working years” and “rest years” really mean.
    • Deferring joy for some idealized retirement later can lead to disappointment—the time to live fully is now.
    • Working longer can dramatically reduce the pressure to save aggressively in early and mid-career years.
    • Even entrepreneurs fall into the trap of deferring dreams until “after the exit”—a dangerous delay tactic.
    • Small shifts in financial strategy (like converting to Roth 401(k)) can have big long-term impacts.

    Episode Highlights and Timestamps

    • 00:01 – Introduction and guest welcome
    • 01:00 – The true history of retirement: Bismarck, FDR, and outdated milestones
    • 03:00 – Why 25–30% of retirees are going back to work
    • 05:00 – The concept of redefining retirement for personal fulfillment
    • 07:00 – Entrepreneurs and the myth of “I’ll do it after I exit”
    • 09:30 – Real-world case study: Jay Baer’s pivot from agency to tequila influencer
    • 11:00 – Financial math: how working longer cuts required savings dramatically
    • 13:00 – The 401(k) rethink: taxes, Roth conversions, and planning smarter
    • 15:00 – Parenting, presence, and valuing your $50,000 moments
    • 17:30 – The mindset shift needed to fully embrace this new paradigm
    • 19:30 – Grandparenting, legacy, and how to stay connected across generations
    • 20:30 – Where to learn more and connect with Derek

    Learn More and Connect with Derek Coburn

    To dive deeper into Derek’s thinking and explore tools to reframe your financial future, visit:

    Enjoyed This Episode?

    If you liked this conversation, be sure to subscribe to the Duct Tape Marketing Podcast for more candid discussions with authors, entrepreneurs, and thought leaders shaping how we work and live. Share this episode, leave a review, and let us know what part of Derek’s perspective resonated most with you.

    John Jantsch (00:01.085)

    Hello and welcome to another episode of the Duct Tape Marketing Podcast. This is John Jantsch. My guest today is Derek Coburn. He’s a seasoned financial advisor and entrepreneur with over 25 years of experience. He is the co-founder of Cadre, an exclusive community of CEOs and entrepreneurs, which he launched with his wife, Melanie. Derek is also the author of the bestselling book, Networking is Not Working. And we’re going to talk about his latest book today.

    Let’s retire retirement, how to enjoy life to the fullest now and later. So Derek, welcome back to the show.

    Derek Coburn (00:34.85)

    Thanks, John. So happy to be here.

    John Jantsch (00:36.797)

    So I know you’ve done some research on this, so I’m just going to ask you, like, where did retirement come from? Did people in the Middle Ages retire, or is that like a kind of a new thing?

    Derek Coburn (00:45.838)

    Yeah, it’s barely 100 years old. It first started in 1889. It was the first social program developed in Germany by a chancellor named Otto von Bismarck. And they selected the age of 70 at the time because that was the age that most people died. They brought it down to 65 about 10 years later.

    FDR when he was setting up social security in 1935, thought it sounded like a good number at a time when life expectancy in this country was 71. So, you know, it’s barely over 100 years old and it was certainly never intended to be this thing that you, you know, did for 30 plus years.

    John Jantsch (01:28.883)

    So is that, is that, is, was that an alternate title of your book? Work till you die?

    Derek Coburn (01:35.328)

    I’m not sure, you know, I think that might not have gone over as well. Dan Pink like five or six years ago told me, like, I think a good title for your book would be How to Never Retire. And I thought it’s a good title, but I told him that I think that there’s just not enough people, certainly not then, that were raising their hand and knew they already did not want to work. I felt like I needed to have a title that was more inclusive to bring people in and with, you know, with dangling a carrot and then kind of trick them once I got their attention.

    John Jantsch (01:38.683)

    You

    John Jantsch (02:05.235)

    Yeah. Well, and we’ll get back to how you’re defining retirement because that’s key to this. you know, as a financial advisor, mean, most financial advisors spend a whole lot of time talking about people saving for retirement. So how, I mean, has that been something you’ve had to kind of correct in your own advising or is that something that’s never really been a part of your MO?

    Derek Coburn (02:27.694)

    You know, I’ve just been doing this. And the reason that I wrote decided to write this book in 2017 is I realized that collectively the best thing that I had done for the majority of my clients is help them come to the realization that they weren’t going to be happy sitting around doing nothing for 30 years. And I started off writing this book with the intention to use it as a business card to attract more high net worth clients that I might want to work with. But I sold my practice to a private equity company in 2019 and

    got some flexibility and then COVID happened. I kind of set it aside for a number of years and I feel like now, because I’m not looking to grow that practice, I was able to write a book that would appeal to a broader audience, be helpful to a broader audience. to your point, financial advisors are not saying, do you want to retire? They’re saying, what age do you want to retire? And everyone is being opted into this concept and they’re just going along with it, I think, without really questioning whether it’s going to make sense for them or not.

    John Jantsch (03:27.251)

    Yeah. And of course, one variable to this whole thing is that we’re all living longer, right? mean, 65, you you were maybe incapable of doing a whole lot more, you know, a hundred years ago in the workplace, but right. now, you know, well, it’s Warren Buffett, like 90. You know, I mean, so, so how does that factor into this idea that, you know, if you retired 65, I mean, you are probably looking at 25, 30 years.

    Derek Coburn (03:38.765)

    Yeah.

    Derek Coburn (03:44.429)

    Yep.

    Derek Coburn (03:54.22)

    Yeah, well, you’re seeing this, this on, on retirement movement that’s starting to happen. Brian Clark is doing some cool things around it with his new project further, but essentially 25 to 30 % of people who have, who have traditionally retired or going back to work. Some of them are doing it for the money, but most of them are doing it because they missed the connection, the purpose, the ability to, to, to contribute in, in a meaningful way.

    And I think there’s just a lot of people that have gone along with this. They were told if they made sacrifices and did things a certain way that they were going to be rewarded. They were going to be rewarded with this free time and this happiness and this ability to do whatever they want to do. it’s not playing out the way that they thought it was going to.

    John Jantsch (04:36.925)

    Well, and even worse, maybe they worked themselves to the bone, worked more hours, sacrificed their family with the promise of what comes after, right? And then when they got there, it didn’t come, right?

    Derek Coburn (04:45.518)

    Yeah.

    Derek Coburn (04:49.802)

    Exactly. Yep. Like the arrival fallacy, this promise that it would be a certain way and then it’s not.

    John Jantsch (04:55.719)

    Yeah. So that’s a big part of your book. And that’s why I saying, I think you’re saying let’s retire retirement, but you’re also redefining retirement. Aren’t you a little bit in this and a big part of the book is like, let’s have a personally fulfilling life right now.

    Derek Coburn (05:10.882)

    Yeah, I think that a lot of people just don’t realize how well the math works out. So I’m saying to work longer, but I’m also saying that by recognizing that you’ll probably work longer, it should translate into you not feeling like you have to work a lot of extra hours now when maybe your kids need you more, or maybe when you want to travel or date your spouse more aggressively. It’s more about taking advantage of the fact that this income will be coming in in the future.

    And it’s sort of sponsoring the idea that you can do these other things and invest in these other relationships and skills and experiences in a way that maybe you didn’t think you were able to when you wanted to stop at 65.

    John Jantsch (05:48.243)

    Your next book, I’m sorry I got distracted there, Derek, your next book is Date Your Spouse More Aggressively.

    Derek Coburn (05:54.478)

    That’s maybe like the second or third time I’ve said that out loud, but.

    John Jantsch (06:01.407)

    So, you know, there’s a book I read a few years ago that I thought made a lot of sense. I I might get the title wrong. was something like Die Broke, but the idea was that a lot of people also just hang on to all this money that they, you know, squirrel away for retirement instead of like giving it to their kids or their grandkids to send them to college now. You know, like my children when they’re 55 probably don’t need my money.

    as, as much as they might now. And, I think that idea of take that, you know, take that vacation now, you know, do that big trip, you know, now, because when you’re 75, 80, maybe you don’t go to China or you don’t go to Vietnam or something, because it’s hard.

    Derek Coburn (06:40.724)

    Yeah, you I think you’re referring to Die with Zero by Bill Perkins and really good book, you know, and I think that one area where maybe we differ a little bit is he’s making the case that you’re going to enjoy a trip to Europe more when you’re 35 than when you’re 50. You’re not going to be as physically capable to do some of these things, but I’m of the belief, and there’s a lot of science that backs this up, to where if you’re taking better care of yourself now, if you’re going on more trips now, if you’re

    John Jantsch (06:43.813)

    Yeah, that’s it. That’s right. That’s right. Yeah. Yeah.

    Derek Coburn (07:09.29)

    If you’re more active now, you’re more likely to be able to continue doing those things in the future. It’s really the people that aren’t doing those things that I think are going to have a harder time with

    John Jantsch (07:14.803)

    Yeah, yeah. Yeah, I’m actually an avid bike rider and I’m doing a triathlon this year, you know, and I’m 65 and my fear is if I stop doing those, I won’t be able to do it anyway.

    Derek Coburn (07:26.499)

    Yeah.

    Derek Coburn (07:31.424)

    I think it’s a valid fear and it’s a fear well backed by science that agrees with you.

    John Jantsch (07:35.953)

    Yeah. I do have to let the cat out of the bag there. The triathlon I’m doing is a run fish drink. So not exactly, not exactly the same thing, but so you have obviously in your financial practice, I mean, that’s, that’s like literally your research lab, right? To some degree, but then also cadre, you know, you work with a lot of high powered CEOs, folks that run their own companies in that that are

    Derek Coburn (07:46.85)

    That’s a good one. Yeah.

    John Jantsch (08:05.117)

    probably looking at, you know, they’re not looking at the pension plan, you retirement. How has that kind of informed some of your views?

    Derek Coburn (08:09.325)

    Yeah.

    Derek Coburn (08:12.738)

    What’s interesting is even the people that sort of know that they’re never going to stop working, they’re still living their life like they’re going to. They’re still making financial decisions and choices based on the fact they’re going to retire at 65 like everyone else. So for example, when they meet with their financial advisors, they’re saying, like, what do I need to do to stop working at 65 and to stop doing this? And I would say that with entrepreneurs and business owners, sometimes it’s not

    John Jantsch (08:28.465)

    Run.

    Derek Coburn (08:42.262)

    retirement, but it’s I’ll get around to doing X once I have an exit, once I bring in a CEO, once I bring in someone else. And I think that that it’s the same story. It’s the it’s justifying deferring maybe things in relationships that deserve more of your attention right now in the name of getting around to it once you have a certain amount of money or a certain financial experience or exit from your business.

    John Jantsch (09:04.637)

    Yeah, yeah.

    Are you finding, you know, I think some, to some degree, we’re talking about just extending how long you work, but what about a major pivot? You know, it’s like, I’ve, I’ve been doing this for 30 years, done what I want to do here. I want to go do something different. I’m not going to retire, but I’m going to do something totally different. Maybe something that I think is seems totally cool or that I’m more prepared to do today.

    Derek Coburn (09:28.59)

    Yeah, like so I have an entire chapter. It’s the longest chapter in my book that’s that’s that are case studies about people that have that have taken this and they’ve gone into a lot of different directions. And one one maybe that might be fun to share with you is just our mutual friend, Jay Bear, who I spoke with for the book and Jay sold his agency, I think early on in covid and was sitting around and decided he wanted to start making videos about tequila.

    John Jantsch (09:43.475)

    Mm-hmm.

    Derek Coburn (09:54.73)

    And, you know, so he went from that to really leaning into one of his passions and one of his interests. And after sharing the case study, I have a callback later in the book to say, look, I mean, if J. Bear can make a lot of money, you know, drinking tequila and talking about it on video, then I’m sure that there’s a lot of different cool ideas out there that are waiting for you as well.

    John Jantsch (10:17.489)

    Yeah, that also necessitated some amount of travel to some places he hadn’t spent time into. I think it really…

    Derek Coburn (10:25.484)

    I think he’s mostly hurt by the fact that more people recognize him as the tequila guy than the keynote speaker.

    John Jantsch (10:32.595)

    He’s still doing a fair amount of that too. talk about some of the changes, maybe they’re not changes, but if somebody is going to read you, pick up your book and, and really the ideas in it just resonate. What are some of the changes that you they’re probably going to encounter or, maybe it’s just mindset.

    Derek Coburn (10:54.57)

    Yeah, one of the first things that I want to want to point out is just the financial impact it’s going to have. And so I share an example in the book about a fictitious guy named Tony who’s 45 years old. makes one hundred and fifty thousand a year and he has one hundred and fifty thousand dollars saved up for retirement. You could call it two fifty five hundred, one hundred thousand, whatever you want it to be. But if Tony wants to have a traditional retirement at sixty five, he has to save about twenty five hundred dollars per month in order to make that happen, which is.

    20 % of what he’s bringing home, which is a non-starter for most people. That would mean that you are saving about what you’re living on. If Tony decides to work until he’s 75 instead of 65, the amount he has to save on a monthly basis goes from 2,500 down to $110 per month. It goes down by 96%. And even if he doesn’t want to work until he’s 75, he wants to go until he’s 70, it goes down 75 % to 600 bucks a month.

    John Jantsch (11:40.136)

    Mm.

    Derek Coburn (11:50.518)

    And so we’ve all seen these articles that make us feel really dumb about how we should have saved more when we were 22 years old and taking advantage of compounding interest. And while a lot of us didn’t do that, and even if we would have done that, we weren’t really earning a lot of money at that time compared to what we’re earning now. Anyways, there aren’t a lot of articles talking about the benefits of having the advantage of compounding interest by letting it sit in for an extra five or 10 years longer.

    Immediately, I want people to know, I want people to see they have a lot more money and a lot more time that they can spend differently once they realize, you know, I’ll probably be doing this a little bit longer than what I was originally thinking.

    John Jantsch (12:28.657)

    Yeah, I mean, doesn’t even factor in, assuming it’ll be there for a few more years. Doesn’t even factor in the escalation to social security, right? Yeah.

    Derek Coburn (12:36.022)

    Yeah, exactly. I’ll tell you like something maybe more specifically 401k plans became all the rage, mainly because the idea that I can put money away on a tax free basis while I’m working get a tax deduction based on my current tax bracket. And when I pull it out, I won’t be working. So I’ll be at a lower tax bracket. And that seems like a no brainer to anyone when you lay it out like that. But once

    John Jantsch (12:42.259)

    Mm-hmm.

    John Jantsch (12:56.315)

    Over. Yeah.

    Derek Coburn (13:02.166)

    someone realizes there’s a good chance they might be working into their 70s and they’re going to be taking required minimum distributions from their 401k plan and they’re still earning an income, then maybe they’re not in a lower tax bracket.

    John Jantsch (13:13.331)

    Also, also that tax got tax higher bracket

    Derek Coburn (13:17.546)

    Yeah, maybe this 401k plan isn’t as good of a deal as it seems. without getting too technical here, like an easy fix for that, right, is I think over 90 % of 401k plans right now have the option to convert it to a Roth. And that might be something that people want to do where they’re making their contributions on a post-tax basis. But that’s just one example of maybe how your thinking should change a little bit once you realize you might be working a little bit longer.

    John Jantsch (13:22.696)

    Grrrr

    John Jantsch (13:43.251)

    You’ve also missed, you know, I know in our case, we have a 3 % match on the, you know, employer match. So that certainly helps that out a little bit.

    Derek Coburn (13:52.406)

    Yeah, and I say that’s the place even like even maybe before you work to aggressively build up your emergency reserve fund. If you’re getting a match, probably take advantage of that.

    John Jantsch (14:01.233)

    Yeah. Yeah. Plus owners, you know, have the ability to profit share into a 401k. So, you know, which I may or may not have taken full advantage of every one of those.

    Derek Coburn (14:11.95)

    Wow, amazing. Yep.

    John Jantsch (14:17.455)

    Is there any lifestyle change? Because I am here, I’m just going to work longer, right? So how does that affect my spouse? How does that affect other lifestyle things? that something that’s going to be realistic in that regard?

    Derek Coburn (14:37.39)

    I’ll give you like an even short-term example of how it’s playing out for me and some people I know. So I have a 15 and a 12 year old and I spend a significant amount of time with them, with my wife, with my friends compared to most people I know. Yeah, exactly. And one of the driving factors behind that is that when my youngest moves out of the house in five and a half years,

    John Jantsch (14:52.115)

    as your Instagram account will attest.

    Derek Coburn (15:05.006)

    I’m going to be ready to turn it up a notch. I’m going to be ready to work even more than I’m working now. And just knowing that I’m going to have this income coming in in five or six years really frees me up and liberates me to lean into spending as much time with them as possible. And I think that’s just the more shorter term, more abbreviated version of how it works in my mind for thinking about what I’m going to be doing 20, 30 years from now.

    John Jantsch (15:29.713)

    Are you doing any coaching workshops, anything outside of the book?

    Derek Coburn (15:35.2)

    Yeah, I’m not. know, I’m open to it. I’m interested in it, but I feel really good about where I’m where I’m going right now in this message that I have to share. you know, we’ll see where it goes. I’ve been a lot of people ask me, but I’ve just never.

    John Jantsch (15:47.443)

    Because I could, yeah, yeah. And because I think one of the challenges, it’s not necessarily just a, implement these five steps in this framework. you’ll be, I mean, it’s really a mindset first, right? I have to accept this idea because I’ve spent my whole life thinking a different idea.

    Derek Coburn (16:05.71)

    Yeah. Yeah. mean, look, and I’ll give you an example of that. I mean, I have clients who are in their 70s who have significant assets, right? I’ll say client A has, client A and client B both have $15 million. Client A and client B could spend their money as much as they want from now until they pass away and they’re going to be fine. Client A is working a job making about $100,000 $150,000 a year.

    doing things the way they want to do on their terms, how they want to do it, and client B is not doing anything at all. Client A is spending their money in so much more of a carefree way. I think mainly because they know they’re still making money, that’s still coming in. They haven’t entered that phase where, my gosh, all I’m doing is taking out right now. So I’d better be.

    John Jantsch (16:51.635)

    Or or or watching the news or the stock market to see what happened to my retirement account, right?

    Derek Coburn (16:57.038)

    Yeah, exactly. But I agree with you. mean, it’s, you know, even again, like even the people that that know they’re going to work longer, they haven’t really done the software update to to, you know, make a change to how they’re living their lives.

    John Jantsch (17:10.407)

    Yeah. Yeah. So are there first steps? mean, is there like, how do you, how do you get people rethinking their retirement plans?

    Derek Coburn (17:18.956)

    Well, you know, it’s a couple of ways. One is I shared the example about how they now have more money just by realizing, and that usually makes people feel a lot better about leaning into it. gosh, yeah, I’ll easily work an extra couple of years. I would say that

    John Jantsch (17:33.777)

    Are there, there calculators? mean, have you developed calculators that could actually allow somebody to put that, those numbers in? Yeah. Okay.

    Derek Coburn (17:39.168)

    Yeah, I have a calculator on my website, which I can share with you. It’s DerekCoburn.com forward slash never retire. And it kind of allows people to enter in their own numbers and, plug in and see the difference that it would make. But, but it’s that, but it’s also combined with, with maybe, you know, appealing to their fears and their concerns. So one of the, one of the examples I share in the book is when my boys were 10 and five or 10 and seven, we had a nighttime routine where we would take turns.

    John Jantsch (17:48.349)

    Good, good. Yeah.

    Derek Coburn (18:07.606)

    my wife and I laying in bed with them for 10 or 15 minutes and helping them settle down and go to sleep. And it’s really nice when they’re that little. and I caught myself with my oldest. I’m like, this is not going to last much longer. And here I am most nights wishing it would hurry up and end, hurry up and fall asleep. I’m not telling him this, but I’m saying it to myself. I want to go watch a show. I want to go finish this work, respond to this email. And I really worked hard. was like, I want to appreciate this and value it more.

    John Jantsch (18:23.187)

    Yes, yes, yes.

    John Jantsch (18:28.659)

    Right, right, right.

    Derek Coburn (18:36.046)

    So I had this thought, you what if a company invents a time machine? And 20 years from now, they offer me the opportunity to stroke a check, to go back in time for one night with the 10 year old version of my kid for one nighttime routine, one nighttime snuggle, what would I pay for that? And I called it 50 grand. I’d pay more than that, I know that 65 year old me would pay 50 grand in a heartbeat to do that. And I think we’re just having…

    parents are having these $50,000 moments happening all the time that we’re taking for granted. And I think me personally, I’m gonna really miss my kids when they’re gone. And I know there’s gonna be a new phase. I know that it’s gonna be good, hopefully. I know that our relationship will evolve, but I really don’t think that parents are spending the amount of time that they’ll wish they would have spent with their kids.

    John Jantsch (19:26.523)

    Yeah, it’s interesting. I’m in a different phase and then I, you know, I have grandchildren now and I will tell you that, you know, college is a different phase. But, you know, post college is really, I mean, we, we spend, you know, they’re all over the country now and we spend a fair amount of time, you know, with them as individual family units. And, you know, I will say that’s pretty cool as well.

    Derek Coburn (19:30.648)

    Yeah.

    Derek Coburn (19:48.376)

    Yeah, I see how you’re doing it, man. I have a lot of respect and I have no doubt that you guys are just amazing grandparents.

    John Jantsch (19:55.859)

    Well, that’s one that there’s, you know, just like parenting, there’s no like course or book that you can read that will actually allow you to know how to do it. So making it up every day. Absolutely. Well, Derek, I appreciate you taking a few moments to stop by. It’s always great to catch up with you. Is there someplace you’d you already mentioned Derek Coburn.com? Is there anywhere else you’d mentioned that people might want to connect with you or find more about the book?

    Derek Coburn (20:06.786)

    First time that we’re all doing this, yeah.

    Derek Coburn (20:21.676)

    Yeah, that’s great. Like I’ve already been writing and elaborating on a lot of the ideas from the book that aren’t in the book on my website. I’m really just looking forward to starting a movement and seeing how far we can take this thing. So I appreciate you having me here and it’s always wonderful to spend the time with you.

    John Jantsch (20:32.486)

    Awesome.

    John Jantsch (20:35.953)

    Yeah. Well, again, appreciate you coming by and hopefully we’ll see you one these days out there on the road.

    Derek Coburn (20:40.834)

    Thanks, John.

    powered by

  • Why It’s Time to Retire the Idea of Retirement with Derek Coburn

    Why It’s Time to Retire the Idea of Retirement with Derek Coburn

    Why It’s Time to Retire the Idea of Retirement with Derek Coburn written by John Jantsch read more at Duct Tape Marketing

      Episode Summary In this episode of the Duct Tape Marketing Podcast, host John Jantsch sits down with Derek Coburn — seasoned financial advisor, entrepreneur, and author — to challenge the traditional notion of retirement. With insights from his new book, Let’s Retire Retirement, Derek outlines why the current retirement model is outdated and how […]

    Why It’s Time to Retire the Idea of Retirement with Derek Coburn written by John Jantsch read more at Duct Tape Marketing

     

    Episode Summary

    In this episode of the Duct Tape Marketing Podcast, host John Jantsch sits down with Derek Coburn — seasoned financial advisor, entrepreneur, and author — to challenge the traditional notion of retirement. With insights from his new book, Let’s Retire Retirement, Derek outlines why the current retirement model is outdated and how a mindset shift can help people live more fulfilled lives both now and later. Whether you’re a business owner, working professional, or planning for what’s next, this episode offers a fresh framework for thinking about purpose, wealth, and work-life design.

    Listen to the Episode

    About Derek Coburn

    Derek Coburn is a financial advisor with over 25 years of experience and the co-founder of Cadre, a curated community of CEOs and entrepreneurs. He’s the bestselling author of Networking is Not Working and a sought-after speaker on networking, wealth strategy, and purpose-driven leadership. In his latest book, Let’s Retire Retirement, he reframes what it means to live a meaningful and financially secure life—one that doesn’t hinge on the outdated idea of “stopping work at 65.”

    Key Takeaways

    • The modern concept of retirement is less than 150 years old—and it no longer matches today’s realities.
    • Living longer and more actively means we need to redefine what “working years” and “rest years” really mean.
    • Deferring joy for some idealized retirement later can lead to disappointment—the time to live fully is now.
    • Working longer can dramatically reduce the pressure to save aggressively in early and mid-career years.
    • Even entrepreneurs fall into the trap of deferring dreams until “after the exit”—a dangerous delay tactic.
    • Small shifts in financial strategy (like converting to Roth 401(k)) can have big long-term impacts.

    Episode Highlights and Timestamps

    • 00:01 – Introduction and guest welcome
    • 01:00 – The true history of retirement: Bismarck, FDR, and outdated milestones
    • 03:00 – Why 25–30% of retirees are going back to work
    • 05:00 – The concept of redefining retirement for personal fulfillment
    • 07:00 – Entrepreneurs and the myth of “I’ll do it after I exit”
    • 09:30 – Real-world case study: Jay Baer’s pivot from agency to tequila influencer
    • 11:00 – Financial math: how working longer cuts required savings dramatically
    • 13:00 – The 401(k) rethink: taxes, Roth conversions, and planning smarter
    • 15:00 – Parenting, presence, and valuing your $50,000 moments
    • 17:30 – The mindset shift needed to fully embrace this new paradigm
    • 19:30 – Grandparenting, legacy, and how to stay connected across generations
    • 20:30 – Where to learn more and connect with Derek

    Learn More and Connect with Derek Coburn

    To dive deeper into Derek’s thinking and explore tools to reframe your financial future, visit:

    Enjoyed This Episode?

    If you liked this conversation, be sure to subscribe to the Duct Tape Marketing Podcast for more candid discussions with authors, entrepreneurs, and thought leaders shaping how we work and live. Share this episode, leave a review, and let us know what part of Derek’s perspective resonated most with you.

    John Jantsch (00:01.085)

    Hello and welcome to another episode of the Duct Tape Marketing Podcast. This is John Jantsch. My guest today is Derek Coburn. He’s a seasoned financial advisor and entrepreneur with over 25 years of experience. He is the co-founder of Cadre, an exclusive community of CEOs and entrepreneurs, which he launched with his wife, Melanie. Derek is also the author of the bestselling book, Networking is Not Working. And we’re going to talk about his latest book today.

    Let’s retire retirement, how to enjoy life to the fullest now and later. So Derek, welcome back to the show.

    Derek Coburn (00:34.85)

    Thanks, John. So happy to be here.

    John Jantsch (00:36.797)

    So I know you’ve done some research on this, so I’m just going to ask you, like, where did retirement come from? Did people in the Middle Ages retire, or is that like a kind of a new thing?

    Derek Coburn (00:45.838)

    Yeah, it’s barely 100 years old. It first started in 1889. It was the first social program developed in Germany by a chancellor named Otto von Bismarck. And they selected the age of 70 at the time because that was the age that most people died. They brought it down to 65 about 10 years later.

    FDR when he was setting up social security in 1935, thought it sounded like a good number at a time when life expectancy in this country was 71. So, you know, it’s barely over 100 years old and it was certainly never intended to be this thing that you, you know, did for 30 plus years.

    John Jantsch (01:28.883)

    So is that, is that, is, was that an alternate title of your book? Work till you die?

    Derek Coburn (01:35.328)

    I’m not sure, you know, I think that might not have gone over as well. Dan Pink like five or six years ago told me, like, I think a good title for your book would be How to Never Retire. And I thought it’s a good title, but I told him that I think that there’s just not enough people, certainly not then, that were raising their hand and knew they already did not want to work. I felt like I needed to have a title that was more inclusive to bring people in and with, you know, with dangling a carrot and then kind of trick them once I got their attention.

    John Jantsch (01:38.683)

    You

    John Jantsch (02:05.235)

    Yeah. Well, and we’ll get back to how you’re defining retirement because that’s key to this. you know, as a financial advisor, mean, most financial advisors spend a whole lot of time talking about people saving for retirement. So how, I mean, has that been something you’ve had to kind of correct in your own advising or is that something that’s never really been a part of your MO?

    Derek Coburn (02:27.694)

    You know, I’ve just been doing this. And the reason that I wrote decided to write this book in 2017 is I realized that collectively the best thing that I had done for the majority of my clients is help them come to the realization that they weren’t going to be happy sitting around doing nothing for 30 years. And I started off writing this book with the intention to use it as a business card to attract more high net worth clients that I might want to work with. But I sold my practice to a private equity company in 2019 and

    got some flexibility and then COVID happened. I kind of set it aside for a number of years and I feel like now, because I’m not looking to grow that practice, I was able to write a book that would appeal to a broader audience, be helpful to a broader audience. to your point, financial advisors are not saying, do you want to retire? They’re saying, what age do you want to retire? And everyone is being opted into this concept and they’re just going along with it, I think, without really questioning whether it’s going to make sense for them or not.

    John Jantsch (03:27.251)

    Yeah. And of course, one variable to this whole thing is that we’re all living longer, right? mean, 65, you you were maybe incapable of doing a whole lot more, you know, a hundred years ago in the workplace, but right. now, you know, well, it’s Warren Buffett, like 90. You know, I mean, so, so how does that factor into this idea that, you know, if you retired 65, I mean, you are probably looking at 25, 30 years.

    Derek Coburn (03:38.765)

    Yeah.

    Derek Coburn (03:44.429)

    Yep.

    Derek Coburn (03:54.22)

    Yeah, well, you’re seeing this, this on, on retirement movement that’s starting to happen. Brian Clark is doing some cool things around it with his new project further, but essentially 25 to 30 % of people who have, who have traditionally retired or going back to work. Some of them are doing it for the money, but most of them are doing it because they missed the connection, the purpose, the ability to, to, to contribute in, in a meaningful way.

    And I think there’s just a lot of people that have gone along with this. They were told if they made sacrifices and did things a certain way that they were going to be rewarded. They were going to be rewarded with this free time and this happiness and this ability to do whatever they want to do. it’s not playing out the way that they thought it was going to.

    John Jantsch (04:36.925)

    Well, and even worse, maybe they worked themselves to the bone, worked more hours, sacrificed their family with the promise of what comes after, right? And then when they got there, it didn’t come, right?

    Derek Coburn (04:45.518)

    Yeah.

    Derek Coburn (04:49.802)

    Exactly. Yep. Like the arrival fallacy, this promise that it would be a certain way and then it’s not.

    John Jantsch (04:55.719)

    Yeah. So that’s a big part of your book. And that’s why I saying, I think you’re saying let’s retire retirement, but you’re also redefining retirement. Aren’t you a little bit in this and a big part of the book is like, let’s have a personally fulfilling life right now.

    Derek Coburn (05:10.882)

    Yeah, I think that a lot of people just don’t realize how well the math works out. So I’m saying to work longer, but I’m also saying that by recognizing that you’ll probably work longer, it should translate into you not feeling like you have to work a lot of extra hours now when maybe your kids need you more, or maybe when you want to travel or date your spouse more aggressively. It’s more about taking advantage of the fact that this income will be coming in in the future.

    And it’s sort of sponsoring the idea that you can do these other things and invest in these other relationships and skills and experiences in a way that maybe you didn’t think you were able to when you wanted to stop at 65.

    John Jantsch (05:48.243)

    Your next book, I’m sorry I got distracted there, Derek, your next book is Date Your Spouse More Aggressively.

    Derek Coburn (05:54.478)

    That’s maybe like the second or third time I’ve said that out loud, but.

    John Jantsch (06:01.407)

    So, you know, there’s a book I read a few years ago that I thought made a lot of sense. I I might get the title wrong. was something like Die Broke, but the idea was that a lot of people also just hang on to all this money that they, you know, squirrel away for retirement instead of like giving it to their kids or their grandkids to send them to college now. You know, like my children when they’re 55 probably don’t need my money.

    as, as much as they might now. And, I think that idea of take that, you know, take that vacation now, you know, do that big trip, you know, now, because when you’re 75, 80, maybe you don’t go to China or you don’t go to Vietnam or something, because it’s hard.

    Derek Coburn (06:40.724)

    Yeah, you I think you’re referring to Die with Zero by Bill Perkins and really good book, you know, and I think that one area where maybe we differ a little bit is he’s making the case that you’re going to enjoy a trip to Europe more when you’re 35 than when you’re 50. You’re not going to be as physically capable to do some of these things, but I’m of the belief, and there’s a lot of science that backs this up, to where if you’re taking better care of yourself now, if you’re going on more trips now, if you’re

    John Jantsch (06:43.813)

    Yeah, that’s it. That’s right. That’s right. Yeah. Yeah.

    Derek Coburn (07:09.29)

    If you’re more active now, you’re more likely to be able to continue doing those things in the future. It’s really the people that aren’t doing those things that I think are going to have a harder time with

    John Jantsch (07:14.803)

    Yeah, yeah. Yeah, I’m actually an avid bike rider and I’m doing a triathlon this year, you know, and I’m 65 and my fear is if I stop doing those, I won’t be able to do it anyway.

    Derek Coburn (07:26.499)

    Yeah.

    Derek Coburn (07:31.424)

    I think it’s a valid fear and it’s a fear well backed by science that agrees with you.

    John Jantsch (07:35.953)

    Yeah. I do have to let the cat out of the bag there. The triathlon I’m doing is a run fish drink. So not exactly, not exactly the same thing, but so you have obviously in your financial practice, I mean, that’s, that’s like literally your research lab, right? To some degree, but then also cadre, you know, you work with a lot of high powered CEOs, folks that run their own companies in that that are

    Derek Coburn (07:46.85)

    That’s a good one. Yeah.

    John Jantsch (08:05.117)

    probably looking at, you know, they’re not looking at the pension plan, you retirement. How has that kind of informed some of your views?

    Derek Coburn (08:09.325)

    Yeah.

    Derek Coburn (08:12.738)

    What’s interesting is even the people that sort of know that they’re never going to stop working, they’re still living their life like they’re going to. They’re still making financial decisions and choices based on the fact they’re going to retire at 65 like everyone else. So for example, when they meet with their financial advisors, they’re saying, like, what do I need to do to stop working at 65 and to stop doing this? And I would say that with entrepreneurs and business owners, sometimes it’s not

    John Jantsch (08:28.465)

    Run.

    Derek Coburn (08:42.262)

    retirement, but it’s I’ll get around to doing X once I have an exit, once I bring in a CEO, once I bring in someone else. And I think that that it’s the same story. It’s the it’s justifying deferring maybe things in relationships that deserve more of your attention right now in the name of getting around to it once you have a certain amount of money or a certain financial experience or exit from your business.

    John Jantsch (09:04.637)

    Yeah, yeah.

    Are you finding, you know, I think some, to some degree, we’re talking about just extending how long you work, but what about a major pivot? You know, it’s like, I’ve, I’ve been doing this for 30 years, done what I want to do here. I want to go do something different. I’m not going to retire, but I’m going to do something totally different. Maybe something that I think is seems totally cool or that I’m more prepared to do today.

    Derek Coburn (09:28.59)

    Yeah, like so I have an entire chapter. It’s the longest chapter in my book that’s that’s that are case studies about people that have that have taken this and they’ve gone into a lot of different directions. And one one maybe that might be fun to share with you is just our mutual friend, Jay Bear, who I spoke with for the book and Jay sold his agency, I think early on in covid and was sitting around and decided he wanted to start making videos about tequila.

    John Jantsch (09:43.475)

    Mm-hmm.

    Derek Coburn (09:54.73)

    And, you know, so he went from that to really leaning into one of his passions and one of his interests. And after sharing the case study, I have a callback later in the book to say, look, I mean, if J. Bear can make a lot of money, you know, drinking tequila and talking about it on video, then I’m sure that there’s a lot of different cool ideas out there that are waiting for you as well.

    John Jantsch (10:17.489)

    Yeah, that also necessitated some amount of travel to some places he hadn’t spent time into. I think it really…

    Derek Coburn (10:25.484)

    I think he’s mostly hurt by the fact that more people recognize him as the tequila guy than the keynote speaker.

    John Jantsch (10:32.595)

    He’s still doing a fair amount of that too. talk about some of the changes, maybe they’re not changes, but if somebody is going to read you, pick up your book and, and really the ideas in it just resonate. What are some of the changes that you they’re probably going to encounter or, maybe it’s just mindset.

    Derek Coburn (10:54.57)

    Yeah, one of the first things that I want to want to point out is just the financial impact it’s going to have. And so I share an example in the book about a fictitious guy named Tony who’s 45 years old. makes one hundred and fifty thousand a year and he has one hundred and fifty thousand dollars saved up for retirement. You could call it two fifty five hundred, one hundred thousand, whatever you want it to be. But if Tony wants to have a traditional retirement at sixty five, he has to save about twenty five hundred dollars per month in order to make that happen, which is.

    20 % of what he’s bringing home, which is a non-starter for most people. That would mean that you are saving about what you’re living on. If Tony decides to work until he’s 75 instead of 65, the amount he has to save on a monthly basis goes from 2,500 down to $110 per month. It goes down by 96%. And even if he doesn’t want to work until he’s 75, he wants to go until he’s 70, it goes down 75 % to 600 bucks a month.

    John Jantsch (11:40.136)

    Mm.

    Derek Coburn (11:50.518)

    And so we’ve all seen these articles that make us feel really dumb about how we should have saved more when we were 22 years old and taking advantage of compounding interest. And while a lot of us didn’t do that, and even if we would have done that, we weren’t really earning a lot of money at that time compared to what we’re earning now. Anyways, there aren’t a lot of articles talking about the benefits of having the advantage of compounding interest by letting it sit in for an extra five or 10 years longer.

    Immediately, I want people to know, I want people to see they have a lot more money and a lot more time that they can spend differently once they realize, you know, I’ll probably be doing this a little bit longer than what I was originally thinking.

    John Jantsch (12:28.657)

    Yeah, I mean, doesn’t even factor in, assuming it’ll be there for a few more years. Doesn’t even factor in the escalation to social security, right? Yeah.

    Derek Coburn (12:36.022)

    Yeah, exactly. I’ll tell you like something maybe more specifically 401k plans became all the rage, mainly because the idea that I can put money away on a tax free basis while I’m working get a tax deduction based on my current tax bracket. And when I pull it out, I won’t be working. So I’ll be at a lower tax bracket. And that seems like a no brainer to anyone when you lay it out like that. But once

    John Jantsch (12:42.259)

    Mm-hmm.

    John Jantsch (12:56.315)

    Over. Yeah.

    Derek Coburn (13:02.166)

    someone realizes there’s a good chance they might be working into their 70s and they’re going to be taking required minimum distributions from their 401k plan and they’re still earning an income, then maybe they’re not in a lower tax bracket.

    John Jantsch (13:13.331)

    Also, also that tax got tax higher bracket

    Derek Coburn (13:17.546)

    Yeah, maybe this 401k plan isn’t as good of a deal as it seems. without getting too technical here, like an easy fix for that, right, is I think over 90 % of 401k plans right now have the option to convert it to a Roth. And that might be something that people want to do where they’re making their contributions on a post-tax basis. But that’s just one example of maybe how your thinking should change a little bit once you realize you might be working a little bit longer.

    John Jantsch (13:22.696)

    Grrrr

    John Jantsch (13:43.251)

    You’ve also missed, you know, I know in our case, we have a 3 % match on the, you know, employer match. So that certainly helps that out a little bit.

    Derek Coburn (13:52.406)

    Yeah, and I say that’s the place even like even maybe before you work to aggressively build up your emergency reserve fund. If you’re getting a match, probably take advantage of that.

    John Jantsch (14:01.233)

    Yeah. Yeah. Plus owners, you know, have the ability to profit share into a 401k. So, you know, which I may or may not have taken full advantage of every one of those.

    Derek Coburn (14:11.95)

    Wow, amazing. Yep.

    John Jantsch (14:17.455)

    Is there any lifestyle change? Because I am here, I’m just going to work longer, right? So how does that affect my spouse? How does that affect other lifestyle things? that something that’s going to be realistic in that regard?

    Derek Coburn (14:37.39)

    I’ll give you like an even short-term example of how it’s playing out for me and some people I know. So I have a 15 and a 12 year old and I spend a significant amount of time with them, with my wife, with my friends compared to most people I know. Yeah, exactly. And one of the driving factors behind that is that when my youngest moves out of the house in five and a half years,

    John Jantsch (14:52.115)

    as your Instagram account will attest.

    Derek Coburn (15:05.006)

    I’m going to be ready to turn it up a notch. I’m going to be ready to work even more than I’m working now. And just knowing that I’m going to have this income coming in in five or six years really frees me up and liberates me to lean into spending as much time with them as possible. And I think that’s just the more shorter term, more abbreviated version of how it works in my mind for thinking about what I’m going to be doing 20, 30 years from now.

    John Jantsch (15:29.713)

    Are you doing any coaching workshops, anything outside of the book?

    Derek Coburn (15:35.2)

    Yeah, I’m not. know, I’m open to it. I’m interested in it, but I feel really good about where I’m where I’m going right now in this message that I have to share. you know, we’ll see where it goes. I’ve been a lot of people ask me, but I’ve just never.

    John Jantsch (15:47.443)

    Because I could, yeah, yeah. And because I think one of the challenges, it’s not necessarily just a, implement these five steps in this framework. you’ll be, I mean, it’s really a mindset first, right? I have to accept this idea because I’ve spent my whole life thinking a different idea.

    Derek Coburn (16:05.71)

    Yeah. Yeah. mean, look, and I’ll give you an example of that. I mean, I have clients who are in their 70s who have significant assets, right? I’ll say client A has, client A and client B both have $15 million. Client A and client B could spend their money as much as they want from now until they pass away and they’re going to be fine. Client A is working a job making about $100,000 $150,000 a year.

    doing things the way they want to do on their terms, how they want to do it, and client B is not doing anything at all. Client A is spending their money in so much more of a carefree way. I think mainly because they know they’re still making money, that’s still coming in. They haven’t entered that phase where, my gosh, all I’m doing is taking out right now. So I’d better be.

    John Jantsch (16:51.635)

    Or or or watching the news or the stock market to see what happened to my retirement account, right?

    Derek Coburn (16:57.038)

    Yeah, exactly. But I agree with you. mean, it’s, you know, even again, like even the people that that know they’re going to work longer, they haven’t really done the software update to to, you know, make a change to how they’re living their lives.

    John Jantsch (17:10.407)

    Yeah. Yeah. So are there first steps? mean, is there like, how do you, how do you get people rethinking their retirement plans?

    Derek Coburn (17:18.956)

    Well, you know, it’s a couple of ways. One is I shared the example about how they now have more money just by realizing, and that usually makes people feel a lot better about leaning into it. gosh, yeah, I’ll easily work an extra couple of years. I would say that

    John Jantsch (17:33.777)

    Are there, there calculators? mean, have you developed calculators that could actually allow somebody to put that, those numbers in? Yeah. Okay.

    Derek Coburn (17:39.168)

    Yeah, I have a calculator on my website, which I can share with you. It’s DerekCoburn.com forward slash never retire. And it kind of allows people to enter in their own numbers and, plug in and see the difference that it would make. But, but it’s that, but it’s also combined with, with maybe, you know, appealing to their fears and their concerns. So one of the, one of the examples I share in the book is when my boys were 10 and five or 10 and seven, we had a nighttime routine where we would take turns.

    John Jantsch (17:48.349)

    Good, good. Yeah.

    Derek Coburn (18:07.606)

    my wife and I laying in bed with them for 10 or 15 minutes and helping them settle down and go to sleep. And it’s really nice when they’re that little. and I caught myself with my oldest. I’m like, this is not going to last much longer. And here I am most nights wishing it would hurry up and end, hurry up and fall asleep. I’m not telling him this, but I’m saying it to myself. I want to go watch a show. I want to go finish this work, respond to this email. And I really worked hard. was like, I want to appreciate this and value it more.

    John Jantsch (18:23.187)

    Yes, yes, yes.

    John Jantsch (18:28.659)

    Right, right, right.

    Derek Coburn (18:36.046)

    So I had this thought, you what if a company invents a time machine? And 20 years from now, they offer me the opportunity to stroke a check, to go back in time for one night with the 10 year old version of my kid for one nighttime routine, one nighttime snuggle, what would I pay for that? And I called it 50 grand. I’d pay more than that, I know that 65 year old me would pay 50 grand in a heartbeat to do that. And I think we’re just having…

    parents are having these $50,000 moments happening all the time that we’re taking for granted. And I think me personally, I’m gonna really miss my kids when they’re gone. And I know there’s gonna be a new phase. I know that it’s gonna be good, hopefully. I know that our relationship will evolve, but I really don’t think that parents are spending the amount of time that they’ll wish they would have spent with their kids.

    John Jantsch (19:26.523)

    Yeah, it’s interesting. I’m in a different phase and then I, you know, I have grandchildren now and I will tell you that, you know, college is a different phase. But, you know, post college is really, I mean, we, we spend, you know, they’re all over the country now and we spend a fair amount of time, you know, with them as individual family units. And, you know, I will say that’s pretty cool as well.

    Derek Coburn (19:30.648)

    Yeah.

    Derek Coburn (19:48.376)

    Yeah, I see how you’re doing it, man. I have a lot of respect and I have no doubt that you guys are just amazing grandparents.

    John Jantsch (19:55.859)

    Well, that’s one that there’s, you know, just like parenting, there’s no like course or book that you can read that will actually allow you to know how to do it. So making it up every day. Absolutely. Well, Derek, I appreciate you taking a few moments to stop by. It’s always great to catch up with you. Is there someplace you’d you already mentioned Derek Coburn.com? Is there anywhere else you’d mentioned that people might want to connect with you or find more about the book?

    Derek Coburn (20:06.786)

    First time that we’re all doing this, yeah.

    Derek Coburn (20:21.676)

    Yeah, that’s great. Like I’ve already been writing and elaborating on a lot of the ideas from the book that aren’t in the book on my website. I’m really just looking forward to starting a movement and seeing how far we can take this thing. So I appreciate you having me here and it’s always wonderful to spend the time with you.

    John Jantsch (20:32.486)

    Awesome.

    John Jantsch (20:35.953)

    Yeah. Well, again, appreciate you coming by and hopefully we’ll see you one these days out there on the road.

    Derek Coburn (20:40.834)

    Thanks, John.

    powered by

  • How AI Is Rewiring the B2B Buyer Journey—And What Smart Marketers Should Do About It

    How AI Is Rewiring the B2B Buyer Journey—And What Smart Marketers Should Do About It

    How AI Is Rewiring the B2B Buyer Journey—And What Smart Marketers Should Do About It written by John Jantsch read more at Duct Tape Marketing

    Table of Contents Introduction: The AI Tsunami in B2B Marketing The Marketing Hourglass: A Quick Refresher How AI Is Transforming Every Stage of the Buyer Journey Know: Getting Discovered in an AI World Like: Building Genuine Engagement, Not Digital Noise Trust: Earning Confidence Before the First Call Try & Buy: Frictionless, Personalized Experiences Repeat & […]

    Why It’s Time to Retire the Idea of Retirement with Derek Coburn written by John Jantsch read more at Duct Tape Marketing

     

    Episode Summary

    In this episode of the Duct Tape Marketing Podcast, host John Jantsch sits down with Derek Coburn — seasoned financial advisor, entrepreneur, and author — to challenge the traditional notion of retirement. With insights from his new book, Let’s Retire Retirement, Derek outlines why the current retirement model is outdated and how a mindset shift can help people live more fulfilled lives both now and later. Whether you’re a business owner, working professional, or planning for what’s next, this episode offers a fresh framework for thinking about purpose, wealth, and work-life design.

    Listen to the Episode

    About Derek Coburn

    Derek Coburn is a financial advisor with over 25 years of experience and the co-founder of Cadre, a curated community of CEOs and entrepreneurs. He’s the bestselling author of Networking is Not Working and a sought-after speaker on networking, wealth strategy, and purpose-driven leadership. In his latest book, Let’s Retire Retirement, he reframes what it means to live a meaningful and financially secure life—one that doesn’t hinge on the outdated idea of “stopping work at 65.”

    Key Takeaways

    • The modern concept of retirement is less than 150 years old—and it no longer matches today’s realities.
    • Living longer and more actively means we need to redefine what “working years” and “rest years” really mean.
    • Deferring joy for some idealized retirement later can lead to disappointment—the time to live fully is now.
    • Working longer can dramatically reduce the pressure to save aggressively in early and mid-career years.
    • Even entrepreneurs fall into the trap of deferring dreams until “after the exit”—a dangerous delay tactic.
    • Small shifts in financial strategy (like converting to Roth 401(k)) can have big long-term impacts.

    Episode Highlights and Timestamps

    • 00:01 – Introduction and guest welcome
    • 01:00 – The true history of retirement: Bismarck, FDR, and outdated milestones
    • 03:00 – Why 25–30% of retirees are going back to work
    • 05:00 – The concept of redefining retirement for personal fulfillment
    • 07:00 – Entrepreneurs and the myth of “I’ll do it after I exit”
    • 09:30 – Real-world case study: Jay Baer’s pivot from agency to tequila influencer
    • 11:00 – Financial math: how working longer cuts required savings dramatically
    • 13:00 – The 401(k) rethink: taxes, Roth conversions, and planning smarter
    • 15:00 – Parenting, presence, and valuing your $50,000 moments
    • 17:30 – The mindset shift needed to fully embrace this new paradigm
    • 19:30 – Grandparenting, legacy, and how to stay connected across generations
    • 20:30 – Where to learn more and connect with Derek

    Learn More and Connect with Derek Coburn

    To dive deeper into Derek’s thinking and explore tools to reframe your financial future, visit:

    Enjoyed This Episode?

    If you liked this conversation, be sure to subscribe to the Duct Tape Marketing Podcast for more candid discussions with authors, entrepreneurs, and thought leaders shaping how we work and live. Share this episode, leave a review, and let us know what part of Derek’s perspective resonated most with you.

    John Jantsch (00:01.085)

    Hello and welcome to another episode of the Duct Tape Marketing Podcast. This is John Jantsch. My guest today is Derek Coburn. He’s a seasoned financial advisor and entrepreneur with over 25 years of experience. He is the co-founder of Cadre, an exclusive community of CEOs and entrepreneurs, which he launched with his wife, Melanie. Derek is also the author of the bestselling book, Networking is Not Working. And we’re going to talk about his latest book today.

    Let’s retire retirement, how to enjoy life to the fullest now and later. So Derek, welcome back to the show.

    Derek Coburn (00:34.85)

    Thanks, John. So happy to be here.

    John Jantsch (00:36.797)

    So I know you’ve done some research on this, so I’m just going to ask you, like, where did retirement come from? Did people in the Middle Ages retire, or is that like a kind of a new thing?

    Derek Coburn (00:45.838)

    Yeah, it’s barely 100 years old. It first started in 1889. It was the first social program developed in Germany by a chancellor named Otto von Bismarck. And they selected the age of 70 at the time because that was the age that most people died. They brought it down to 65 about 10 years later.

    FDR when he was setting up social security in 1935, thought it sounded like a good number at a time when life expectancy in this country was 71. So, you know, it’s barely over 100 years old and it was certainly never intended to be this thing that you, you know, did for 30 plus years.

    John Jantsch (01:28.883)

    So is that, is that, is, was that an alternate title of your book? Work till you die?

    Derek Coburn (01:35.328)

    I’m not sure, you know, I think that might not have gone over as well. Dan Pink like five or six years ago told me, like, I think a good title for your book would be How to Never Retire. And I thought it’s a good title, but I told him that I think that there’s just not enough people, certainly not then, that were raising their hand and knew they already did not want to work. I felt like I needed to have a title that was more inclusive to bring people in and with, you know, with dangling a carrot and then kind of trick them once I got their attention.

    John Jantsch (01:38.683)

    You

    John Jantsch (02:05.235)

    Yeah. Well, and we’ll get back to how you’re defining retirement because that’s key to this. you know, as a financial advisor, mean, most financial advisors spend a whole lot of time talking about people saving for retirement. So how, I mean, has that been something you’ve had to kind of correct in your own advising or is that something that’s never really been a part of your MO?

    Derek Coburn (02:27.694)

    You know, I’ve just been doing this. And the reason that I wrote decided to write this book in 2017 is I realized that collectively the best thing that I had done for the majority of my clients is help them come to the realization that they weren’t going to be happy sitting around doing nothing for 30 years. And I started off writing this book with the intention to use it as a business card to attract more high net worth clients that I might want to work with. But I sold my practice to a private equity company in 2019 and

    got some flexibility and then COVID happened. I kind of set it aside for a number of years and I feel like now, because I’m not looking to grow that practice, I was able to write a book that would appeal to a broader audience, be helpful to a broader audience. to your point, financial advisors are not saying, do you want to retire? They’re saying, what age do you want to retire? And everyone is being opted into this concept and they’re just going along with it, I think, without really questioning whether it’s going to make sense for them or not.

    John Jantsch (03:27.251)

    Yeah. And of course, one variable to this whole thing is that we’re all living longer, right? mean, 65, you you were maybe incapable of doing a whole lot more, you know, a hundred years ago in the workplace, but right. now, you know, well, it’s Warren Buffett, like 90. You know, I mean, so, so how does that factor into this idea that, you know, if you retired 65, I mean, you are probably looking at 25, 30 years.

    Derek Coburn (03:38.765)

    Yeah.

    Derek Coburn (03:44.429)

    Yep.

    Derek Coburn (03:54.22)

    Yeah, well, you’re seeing this, this on, on retirement movement that’s starting to happen. Brian Clark is doing some cool things around it with his new project further, but essentially 25 to 30 % of people who have, who have traditionally retired or going back to work. Some of them are doing it for the money, but most of them are doing it because they missed the connection, the purpose, the ability to, to, to contribute in, in a meaningful way.

    And I think there’s just a lot of people that have gone along with this. They were told if they made sacrifices and did things a certain way that they were going to be rewarded. They were going to be rewarded with this free time and this happiness and this ability to do whatever they want to do. it’s not playing out the way that they thought it was going to.

    John Jantsch (04:36.925)

    Well, and even worse, maybe they worked themselves to the bone, worked more hours, sacrificed their family with the promise of what comes after, right? And then when they got there, it didn’t come, right?

    Derek Coburn (04:45.518)

    Yeah.

    Derek Coburn (04:49.802)

    Exactly. Yep. Like the arrival fallacy, this promise that it would be a certain way and then it’s not.

    John Jantsch (04:55.719)

    Yeah. So that’s a big part of your book. And that’s why I saying, I think you’re saying let’s retire retirement, but you’re also redefining retirement. Aren’t you a little bit in this and a big part of the book is like, let’s have a personally fulfilling life right now.

    Derek Coburn (05:10.882)

    Yeah, I think that a lot of people just don’t realize how well the math works out. So I’m saying to work longer, but I’m also saying that by recognizing that you’ll probably work longer, it should translate into you not feeling like you have to work a lot of extra hours now when maybe your kids need you more, or maybe when you want to travel or date your spouse more aggressively. It’s more about taking advantage of the fact that this income will be coming in in the future.

    And it’s sort of sponsoring the idea that you can do these other things and invest in these other relationships and skills and experiences in a way that maybe you didn’t think you were able to when you wanted to stop at 65.

    John Jantsch (05:48.243)

    Your next book, I’m sorry I got distracted there, Derek, your next book is Date Your Spouse More Aggressively.

    Derek Coburn (05:54.478)

    That’s maybe like the second or third time I’ve said that out loud, but.

    John Jantsch (06:01.407)

    So, you know, there’s a book I read a few years ago that I thought made a lot of sense. I I might get the title wrong. was something like Die Broke, but the idea was that a lot of people also just hang on to all this money that they, you know, squirrel away for retirement instead of like giving it to their kids or their grandkids to send them to college now. You know, like my children when they’re 55 probably don’t need my money.

    as, as much as they might now. And, I think that idea of take that, you know, take that vacation now, you know, do that big trip, you know, now, because when you’re 75, 80, maybe you don’t go to China or you don’t go to Vietnam or something, because it’s hard.

    Derek Coburn (06:40.724)

    Yeah, you I think you’re referring to Die with Zero by Bill Perkins and really good book, you know, and I think that one area where maybe we differ a little bit is he’s making the case that you’re going to enjoy a trip to Europe more when you’re 35 than when you’re 50. You’re not going to be as physically capable to do some of these things, but I’m of the belief, and there’s a lot of science that backs this up, to where if you’re taking better care of yourself now, if you’re going on more trips now, if you’re

    John Jantsch (06:43.813)

    Yeah, that’s it. That’s right. That’s right. Yeah. Yeah.

    Derek Coburn (07:09.29)

    If you’re more active now, you’re more likely to be able to continue doing those things in the future. It’s really the people that aren’t doing those things that I think are going to have a harder time with

    John Jantsch (07:14.803)

    Yeah, yeah. Yeah, I’m actually an avid bike rider and I’m doing a triathlon this year, you know, and I’m 65 and my fear is if I stop doing those, I won’t be able to do it anyway.

    Derek Coburn (07:26.499)

    Yeah.

    Derek Coburn (07:31.424)

    I think it’s a valid fear and it’s a fear well backed by science that agrees with you.

    John Jantsch (07:35.953)

    Yeah. I do have to let the cat out of the bag there. The triathlon I’m doing is a run fish drink. So not exactly, not exactly the same thing, but so you have obviously in your financial practice, I mean, that’s, that’s like literally your research lab, right? To some degree, but then also cadre, you know, you work with a lot of high powered CEOs, folks that run their own companies in that that are

    Derek Coburn (07:46.85)

    That’s a good one. Yeah.

    John Jantsch (08:05.117)

    probably looking at, you know, they’re not looking at the pension plan, you retirement. How has that kind of informed some of your views?

    Derek Coburn (08:09.325)

    Yeah.

    Derek Coburn (08:12.738)

    What’s interesting is even the people that sort of know that they’re never going to stop working, they’re still living their life like they’re going to. They’re still making financial decisions and choices based on the fact they’re going to retire at 65 like everyone else. So for example, when they meet with their financial advisors, they’re saying, like, what do I need to do to stop working at 65 and to stop doing this? And I would say that with entrepreneurs and business owners, sometimes it’s not

    John Jantsch (08:28.465)

    Run.

    Derek Coburn (08:42.262)

    retirement, but it’s I’ll get around to doing X once I have an exit, once I bring in a CEO, once I bring in someone else. And I think that that it’s the same story. It’s the it’s justifying deferring maybe things in relationships that deserve more of your attention right now in the name of getting around to it once you have a certain amount of money or a certain financial experience or exit from your business.

    John Jantsch (09:04.637)

    Yeah, yeah.

    Are you finding, you know, I think some, to some degree, we’re talking about just extending how long you work, but what about a major pivot? You know, it’s like, I’ve, I’ve been doing this for 30 years, done what I want to do here. I want to go do something different. I’m not going to retire, but I’m going to do something totally different. Maybe something that I think is seems totally cool or that I’m more prepared to do today.

    Derek Coburn (09:28.59)

    Yeah, like so I have an entire chapter. It’s the longest chapter in my book that’s that’s that are case studies about people that have that have taken this and they’ve gone into a lot of different directions. And one one maybe that might be fun to share with you is just our mutual friend, Jay Bear, who I spoke with for the book and Jay sold his agency, I think early on in covid and was sitting around and decided he wanted to start making videos about tequila.

    John Jantsch (09:43.475)

    Mm-hmm.

    Derek Coburn (09:54.73)

    And, you know, so he went from that to really leaning into one of his passions and one of his interests. And after sharing the case study, I have a callback later in the book to say, look, I mean, if J. Bear can make a lot of money, you know, drinking tequila and talking about it on video, then I’m sure that there’s a lot of different cool ideas out there that are waiting for you as well.

    John Jantsch (10:17.489)

    Yeah, that also necessitated some amount of travel to some places he hadn’t spent time into. I think it really…

    Derek Coburn (10:25.484)

    I think he’s mostly hurt by the fact that more people recognize him as the tequila guy than the keynote speaker.

    John Jantsch (10:32.595)

    He’s still doing a fair amount of that too. talk about some of the changes, maybe they’re not changes, but if somebody is going to read you, pick up your book and, and really the ideas in it just resonate. What are some of the changes that you they’re probably going to encounter or, maybe it’s just mindset.

    Derek Coburn (10:54.57)

    Yeah, one of the first things that I want to want to point out is just the financial impact it’s going to have. And so I share an example in the book about a fictitious guy named Tony who’s 45 years old. makes one hundred and fifty thousand a year and he has one hundred and fifty thousand dollars saved up for retirement. You could call it two fifty five hundred, one hundred thousand, whatever you want it to be. But if Tony wants to have a traditional retirement at sixty five, he has to save about twenty five hundred dollars per month in order to make that happen, which is.

    20 % of what he’s bringing home, which is a non-starter for most people. That would mean that you are saving about what you’re living on. If Tony decides to work until he’s 75 instead of 65, the amount he has to save on a monthly basis goes from 2,500 down to $110 per month. It goes down by 96%. And even if he doesn’t want to work until he’s 75, he wants to go until he’s 70, it goes down 75 % to 600 bucks a month.

    John Jantsch (11:40.136)

    Mm.

    Derek Coburn (11:50.518)

    And so we’ve all seen these articles that make us feel really dumb about how we should have saved more when we were 22 years old and taking advantage of compounding interest. And while a lot of us didn’t do that, and even if we would have done that, we weren’t really earning a lot of money at that time compared to what we’re earning now. Anyways, there aren’t a lot of articles talking about the benefits of having the advantage of compounding interest by letting it sit in for an extra five or 10 years longer.

    Immediately, I want people to know, I want people to see they have a lot more money and a lot more time that they can spend differently once they realize, you know, I’ll probably be doing this a little bit longer than what I was originally thinking.

    John Jantsch (12:28.657)

    Yeah, I mean, doesn’t even factor in, assuming it’ll be there for a few more years. Doesn’t even factor in the escalation to social security, right? Yeah.

    Derek Coburn (12:36.022)

    Yeah, exactly. I’ll tell you like something maybe more specifically 401k plans became all the rage, mainly because the idea that I can put money away on a tax free basis while I’m working get a tax deduction based on my current tax bracket. And when I pull it out, I won’t be working. So I’ll be at a lower tax bracket. And that seems like a no brainer to anyone when you lay it out like that. But once

    John Jantsch (12:42.259)

    Mm-hmm.

    John Jantsch (12:56.315)

    Over. Yeah.

    Derek Coburn (13:02.166)

    someone realizes there’s a good chance they might be working into their 70s and they’re going to be taking required minimum distributions from their 401k plan and they’re still earning an income, then maybe they’re not in a lower tax bracket.

    John Jantsch (13:13.331)

    Also, also that tax got tax higher bracket

    Derek Coburn (13:17.546)

    Yeah, maybe this 401k plan isn’t as good of a deal as it seems. without getting too technical here, like an easy fix for that, right, is I think over 90 % of 401k plans right now have the option to convert it to a Roth. And that might be something that people want to do where they’re making their contributions on a post-tax basis. But that’s just one example of maybe how your thinking should change a little bit once you realize you might be working a little bit longer.

    John Jantsch (13:22.696)

    Grrrr

    John Jantsch (13:43.251)

    You’ve also missed, you know, I know in our case, we have a 3 % match on the, you know, employer match. So that certainly helps that out a little bit.

    Derek Coburn (13:52.406)

    Yeah, and I say that’s the place even like even maybe before you work to aggressively build up your emergency reserve fund. If you’re getting a match, probably take advantage of that.

    John Jantsch (14:01.233)

    Yeah. Yeah. Plus owners, you know, have the ability to profit share into a 401k. So, you know, which I may or may not have taken full advantage of every one of those.

    Derek Coburn (14:11.95)

    Wow, amazing. Yep.

    John Jantsch (14:17.455)

    Is there any lifestyle change? Because I am here, I’m just going to work longer, right? So how does that affect my spouse? How does that affect other lifestyle things? that something that’s going to be realistic in that regard?

    Derek Coburn (14:37.39)

    I’ll give you like an even short-term example of how it’s playing out for me and some people I know. So I have a 15 and a 12 year old and I spend a significant amount of time with them, with my wife, with my friends compared to most people I know. Yeah, exactly. And one of the driving factors behind that is that when my youngest moves out of the house in five and a half years,

    John Jantsch (14:52.115)

    as your Instagram account will attest.

    Derek Coburn (15:05.006)

    I’m going to be ready to turn it up a notch. I’m going to be ready to work even more than I’m working now. And just knowing that I’m going to have this income coming in in five or six years really frees me up and liberates me to lean into spending as much time with them as possible. And I think that’s just the more shorter term, more abbreviated version of how it works in my mind for thinking about what I’m going to be doing 20, 30 years from now.

    John Jantsch (15:29.713)

    Are you doing any coaching workshops, anything outside of the book?

    Derek Coburn (15:35.2)

    Yeah, I’m not. know, I’m open to it. I’m interested in it, but I feel really good about where I’m where I’m going right now in this message that I have to share. you know, we’ll see where it goes. I’ve been a lot of people ask me, but I’ve just never.

    John Jantsch (15:47.443)

    Because I could, yeah, yeah. And because I think one of the challenges, it’s not necessarily just a, implement these five steps in this framework. you’ll be, I mean, it’s really a mindset first, right? I have to accept this idea because I’ve spent my whole life thinking a different idea.

    Derek Coburn (16:05.71)

    Yeah. Yeah. mean, look, and I’ll give you an example of that. I mean, I have clients who are in their 70s who have significant assets, right? I’ll say client A has, client A and client B both have $15 million. Client A and client B could spend their money as much as they want from now until they pass away and they’re going to be fine. Client A is working a job making about $100,000 $150,000 a year.

    doing things the way they want to do on their terms, how they want to do it, and client B is not doing anything at all. Client A is spending their money in so much more of a carefree way. I think mainly because they know they’re still making money, that’s still coming in. They haven’t entered that phase where, my gosh, all I’m doing is taking out right now. So I’d better be.

    John Jantsch (16:51.635)

    Or or or watching the news or the stock market to see what happened to my retirement account, right?

    Derek Coburn (16:57.038)

    Yeah, exactly. But I agree with you. mean, it’s, you know, even again, like even the people that that know they’re going to work longer, they haven’t really done the software update to to, you know, make a change to how they’re living their lives.

    John Jantsch (17:10.407)

    Yeah. Yeah. So are there first steps? mean, is there like, how do you, how do you get people rethinking their retirement plans?

    Derek Coburn (17:18.956)

    Well, you know, it’s a couple of ways. One is I shared the example about how they now have more money just by realizing, and that usually makes people feel a lot better about leaning into it. gosh, yeah, I’ll easily work an extra couple of years. I would say that

    John Jantsch (17:33.777)

    Are there, there calculators? mean, have you developed calculators that could actually allow somebody to put that, those numbers in? Yeah. Okay.

    Derek Coburn (17:39.168)

    Yeah, I have a calculator on my website, which I can share with you. It’s DerekCoburn.com forward slash never retire. And it kind of allows people to enter in their own numbers and, plug in and see the difference that it would make. But, but it’s that, but it’s also combined with, with maybe, you know, appealing to their fears and their concerns. So one of the, one of the examples I share in the book is when my boys were 10 and five or 10 and seven, we had a nighttime routine where we would take turns.

    John Jantsch (17:48.349)

    Good, good. Yeah.

    Derek Coburn (18:07.606)

    my wife and I laying in bed with them for 10 or 15 minutes and helping them settle down and go to sleep. And it’s really nice when they’re that little. and I caught myself with my oldest. I’m like, this is not going to last much longer. And here I am most nights wishing it would hurry up and end, hurry up and fall asleep. I’m not telling him this, but I’m saying it to myself. I want to go watch a show. I want to go finish this work, respond to this email. And I really worked hard. was like, I want to appreciate this and value it more.

    John Jantsch (18:23.187)

    Yes, yes, yes.

    John Jantsch (18:28.659)

    Right, right, right.

    Derek Coburn (18:36.046)

    So I had this thought, you what if a company invents a time machine? And 20 years from now, they offer me the opportunity to stroke a check, to go back in time for one night with the 10 year old version of my kid for one nighttime routine, one nighttime snuggle, what would I pay for that? And I called it 50 grand. I’d pay more than that, I know that 65 year old me would pay 50 grand in a heartbeat to do that. And I think we’re just having…

    parents are having these $50,000 moments happening all the time that we’re taking for granted. And I think me personally, I’m gonna really miss my kids when they’re gone. And I know there’s gonna be a new phase. I know that it’s gonna be good, hopefully. I know that our relationship will evolve, but I really don’t think that parents are spending the amount of time that they’ll wish they would have spent with their kids.

    John Jantsch (19:26.523)

    Yeah, it’s interesting. I’m in a different phase and then I, you know, I have grandchildren now and I will tell you that, you know, college is a different phase. But, you know, post college is really, I mean, we, we spend, you know, they’re all over the country now and we spend a fair amount of time, you know, with them as individual family units. And, you know, I will say that’s pretty cool as well.

    Derek Coburn (19:30.648)

    Yeah.

    Derek Coburn (19:48.376)

    Yeah, I see how you’re doing it, man. I have a lot of respect and I have no doubt that you guys are just amazing grandparents.

    John Jantsch (19:55.859)

    Well, that’s one that there’s, you know, just like parenting, there’s no like course or book that you can read that will actually allow you to know how to do it. So making it up every day. Absolutely. Well, Derek, I appreciate you taking a few moments to stop by. It’s always great to catch up with you. Is there someplace you’d you already mentioned Derek Coburn.com? Is there anywhere else you’d mentioned that people might want to connect with you or find more about the book?

    Derek Coburn (20:06.786)

    First time that we’re all doing this, yeah.

    Derek Coburn (20:21.676)

    Yeah, that’s great. Like I’ve already been writing and elaborating on a lot of the ideas from the book that aren’t in the book on my website. I’m really just looking forward to starting a movement and seeing how far we can take this thing. So I appreciate you having me here and it’s always wonderful to spend the time with you.

    John Jantsch (20:32.486)

    Awesome.

    John Jantsch (20:35.953)

    Yeah. Well, again, appreciate you coming by and hopefully we’ll see you one these days out there on the road.

    Derek Coburn (20:40.834)

    Thanks, John.

    powered by

  • Wes Anderson Talks Fatherhood, Interest in Making a Musical, and Why He Had Benicio del Toro Channel The Mummy

    Wes Anderson Talks Fatherhood, Interest in Making a Musical, and Why He Had Benicio del Toro Channel The Mummy

    Wes Anderson has stated repeatedly that the concept of The Phoenician Scheme first appeared while reading biographies of German tycoons from the 1950s. These were the titan of market who, like Aristotle Onassis and Gianni Angelli, developed into a unique type of star in their time. One of the most hilarious items ever…

    Wes Anderson discusses his paternity, his interest in creating a music, and why Benicio del Toro created The Mummy for the first time on Den of Geek.

    The song, which is a key part of the show’s personality, formula, and soul, is one of Phineas and Ferb’s most enduring qualities. The hit songs from Disney’s longest-running active series have no business strutting as difficult as they do. The songs are real bops that have stood the test of time rather than just catchy earworms. They are amazing, person. &nbsp,

    cnx. powershell. push ( function ( ) {cnx ( {playerId:” 106e33c0-3911-473c-b599-b1426db57530″, }). render ( “0270c398a82f44f49c23c16122516796” ), }),

    Let’s look back and rate the top 10 songs from the full run of the show because year five promises to bring some excellent music back into our memories. We&#8217 are omitting the music from the movies Cynthia Against the Universe and Across the 2nd Dimension as well as the offers June Belongs to You and Star Wars only to make things a little harder. Let’s be honest, if Across the 2nd Dimension was included, it had overrun this record because, let’s be honest, it would be done.

    10. The spirit of an alien

    Meet Max Modem, ladies and gentlemen.

    There’s something so charming about Rocky Horror Picture Show composer Richard O’Brien being cast as the voice of Lawrence, the laid-back father of the Flynn-Fletcher clan. To hear him sing in the episode “Meet Max Modem, ladies and gentlemen.” is even more delightful. In an episode that pokes fun at these musicians, the composition of Alien Heart bears a sweet melody and appears to be a tribute to ‘80s synth and new wave music, including DEVO and Oingo Boingo. It is unfortunate that this little song hasn’t made it onto any of the official soundtracks.

    9. Unusual Worky Song

    Multiple Episodes

    Yes, that scatting song that goes &#8220, Soo-dee-up, boo-dee-up. A name is included in the song” Beedla-bee doo-doo-dah “#8221, which plays during every montage sequence in which the boys construct one of their contraptions. Yes, it &#8217, s like an earworm. No lyrics, merely line composer Danny Jacobs stumbling over a guitar and acoustic guitar beat. And frankly, that &#8217, s all you need. &nbsp,

    8. You snuck your approach into my brain.

    We&#8217 are Getting the Band Up Up, Dude.

    There’s no doubt that “We&#8217 are Getting the Band Up Up, Dude.,” is a classic episode for many reasons. It was the first time PnF delivered a 22-minute tale. It was also the first fully musical-oriented episode. Most importantly, it introduced the in-universe ‘80s rock band Love Händel. This ultimate love ballad didn’t sneak its way into our heart. It moved right in. The lyrics capture such a lovely, romantic tune, and the vocals by none other than the legendary Jarret Reddick of Bowling For Soup—I recently discovered this and, as a major fan, I am embarrassed—made for a rocking song and the perfect finale song for one of the show’s finest episodes. GOOD NIGHT, TRI-STATE AREA! 

    7. A Platypus is enraging me, right?

    Mental Drain

    My computer is overheating as I type this entry because Dr. Doofenshmirtz’s spit game is therefore fire. It&#8217 is absurd and interesting enough to have a rap track about Doof that describes how Perry the Platypus uses a mind-control machine to command his movements while spinning files that are glued to his hands to a group of punk teens. The teens ‘ understanding of the situation, however, is what elevates it to the next level, as they assume that platypus is a metaphor for whatever is keeping you down. &#8221, Then proceeds to name things that are Platypus&#8217, including &#8220, cooperations, parents, the government, &#8221, and it goes so hard! Only Phineas and Ferb can pull off this amazing combination of comedy and great songwriting.

    6. The Platypus theme, please

    Multiple Episodes

    Oh my goodness, Perry! This semiaquatic egg-laying mammal of action has nothing to say about this in any James Bond songs, aside from their theme song. Agent P&#8217, s song had everything: dramatic horns, backing vocalists, Randy Cranshaw imitating Tom Jones well enough to make one believe that Tom Jones is singing about a badass secret agent platypus. It’s one of the recurring songs in the series, and whenever it plays, whether it’s the instrumental or just the jingle, it’s a joy. Continue reading. It&#8217, s PERRY! PERRY THE PLATYPUS!

    5. Today is going to be a fantastic day.

    Multiple Episodes 

    Simple facts about life exist. One plus one equals two. We are all alive and all gone. There are 104 days of summer vacation until school just rolls around. Bowling For Soup performed the theme song for Phineas and Ferb, which is unquestionably one of the best tracks in the series. It sings a punk rock anthem full of optimism and joy that perfectly captures the tone and premise of the show. In fact, I occasionally listen to it during the summer just to get my day going. Ferb-tastic serotonin bottled in a perfect theme song, &#8220, Today’s Gonna Be a Great Day, &#8221, makes you feel as though your day will be the best day ever. &nbsp,

    4. S. I. M. P ( Squirrels in My Pants )

    Comet Kermilian

    Before the term” simp&#8221,” which had a negative connotation, was used, it was associated with” &#8220, squirrels in my pants.” A whole generation shook their legs and stomped the ground in imitation of squirrels in their pants in the ridiculous hip-hop song about them scurturing around in Candace’s pants. S. I. M. P ( Squirrels in My Pants ) “is unquestionably the funniest song out of the series. Will always be funny when Ashley Tisdale’s Candace sings squirrels in the chorus just in time for the beat. A hilarious song and a certified hood classic. &nbsp,

    3. ,,,,

    You Scream, I Scream.

    Ashley Tisdale and Olivia Olson are undoubtedly the best vocalists of the series. It’s just facts. So when this Candace/Vanessa duet dropped in the episode “You Scream, I Scream.,” every viewer was absolutely gagged. It became as iconic as Monica and Brandy when they released “The Boy is Mine” or Beyonce and Gaga with “Telephone.” Tisdale and Olson’s voices are so beautifully matched in this song about their determination to bust their family members to their mom — Candace with her brothers building machines and Vanessa with her dad being evil. The lyrics are extremely catchy; it pains me every time just how short it is considering how hard it goes. At the season five premiere this past weekend, Tisdale and Olson performed the song live while dressed in the similarly colored attire as their cartoon counterparts. Now my FOMO has been busted!

    2. Ain&#8217, t Got Rhythm

    We&#8217 are Getting the Band Up Up, Dude.

    Another song from “We&#8217 are Getting the Band Up Up, Dude.,” this one features Phineas and former Love Händel drummer-turned-librarian Sherman/Swampy, in a rhythmic duet that excitedly builds to a progressively louder crescendo throughout. It was so darn remarkable that it ended up landing a Primetime Emmy Award nomination for Outstanding Original Music and Lyrics. Sadly, it lost to “I’m F–ing Matt Damon,” which…fair. However, “Ain’t Got Rhythm” triumphs in so many facets: being a ballad of Sherman’s backstory, having a song that builds towards an uproarious finish, and testing the heights of Vincent Martella and Steve Zahn’s singing voices. Oh yeah, Steve Zahn is Swampy, and he has pipes! His range!

    1. Gitchee Gitchee Goo

    Flop Starz

    The second of what was reportedly many times Dan Povenmire & Jeff” Swampy” Marsh’s love for music was on full display. In the satirical episode &#8220, Flop Starz, and#8221, Phoenix and Ferb attempted to transform into a pop star one-hit wonders, but the song ultimately became the most memorable in the entire series. Given that this song was one of the show’s initial songs, Disney requested the song’s composers to write music for each subsequent episode. It was THE BRILLIANT song that gave Phineas and Ferb their musical identity that they adored or, more specifically, Gitchee Gitchee Goo &#8221. We would undoubtedly not have this list of certified bangers and more without &#8220, Gitchee Gitchee Goo, and &#8221.

    The fifth season of Phineas and Ferb will be available for streaming on Disney + the day after it premieres on Thursday, June 5 on the Disney Channel.

    The first post on Den of Geek was The 10 Best Phineas and Ferb Songs.

  • The 10 Best Phineas and Ferb Songs

    The 10 Best Phineas and Ferb Songs

    One of Phineas and Ferb’s most enduring qualities is its song, which is a key part of the show’s personality, method, and heart. The hit songs from Disney’s longest-running active series have no business acting as difficult as they do. The songs are real thumps who have stood the test, not only clever earworms.

    The first article on Den of Geek was The 10 Best Phineas and Ferb Songs.

    The song, which is a key part of the show’s identity, formula, and soul, is one of Phineas and Ferb’s most enduring qualities. The hit songs from Disney’s longest-running active series have no business strutting as difficult as they do. The songs are authentic chirps that have endured the test of time rather than just clever earworms. Man, they are extraordinary. &nbsp,

    cnx. command. push ( function ( ) {cnx ( {playerId:” 106e33c0-3911-473c-b599-b1426db57530″, }). render ( “0270c398a82f44f49c23c16122516796” ), }),

    Let’s look back and rate the top 10 songs from the full run of the show because year five promises to bring some excellent music back into our memories. We&#8217 are omitting the music from the movies Cynthia Against the Universe and Across the 2nd Dimension as well as the offers June Belongs to You and Star Wars only to make things a little harder. Let’s be honest, if Across the 2nd Dimension was included, it had overrun this record because, let’s be honest.

    10. The spirit of an alien

    Meet Max Modem, Ladies and Gentlemen.

    There’s something so charming about Rocky Horror Picture Show composer Richard O’Brien being cast as the voice of Lawrence, the laid-back father of the Flynn-Fletcher clan. To hear him sing in the episode “Meet Max Modem, Ladies and Gentlemen.” is even more delightful. In an episode that pokes fun at these musicians, the composition of Alien Heart bears a sweet melody and appears to be a tribute to ‘80s synth and new wave music, including DEVO and Oingo Boingo. It is unfortunate that this little song hasn’t made it onto any of the official soundtracks.

    9. Uncomplicated Worky Song

    Multiple Episodes

    Yes, that scatting song that goes &#8220, Soo-dee-up, boo-dee-up. A name is included in the song” Beedla-bee doo-doo-dah “#8221, which plays during every montage sequence in which the boys construct one of their contraptions. Yes, it &#8217, s like an earworm. Danny Jacobs, the creator of the line, scattered over a guitar and acoustic guitar defeat, with no lyrics. And frankly, that &#8217, s all you need. &nbsp,

    8. You snuck your way into my soul.

    We&#8217 are Getting the Band Up Up, Dude.

    There’s no doubt that “We&#8217 are Getting the Band Up Up, Dude.,” is a classic episode for many reasons. It was the first time PnF delivered a 22-minute tale. It was also the first fully musical-oriented episode. Most importantly, it introduced the in-universe ‘80s rock band Love Händel. This ultimate love ballad didn’t sneak its way into our heart. It moved right in. The lyrics capture such a lovely, romantic tune, and the vocals by none other than the legendary Jarret Reddick of Bowling For Soup—I recently discovered this and, as a major fan, I am embarrassed—made for a rocking song and the perfect finale song for one of the show’s finest episodes. GOOD NIGHT, TRI-STATE AREA! 

    7. A Marsupial Is Controlling Me.

    Mental Drain

    My computer is overheating as I type this entry because Dr. Doofenshmirtz’s spit game is so brilliant. It’s absurd and interesting enough to have a music track about Doof that explains how Perry the Platypus manipulates his movements while spinning information that are glued to his hands in front of a crowd of hippie teenagers. The youth ‘ understanding of the situation, however, is what elevates it to the next level, as they assume that marsupial is a metaphor for whatever is keeping you along. &#8221, Next proceeds to name items that are Platypus&#8217, including &#8220, partnerships, families, the government, &#8221, and it goes so difficult! It possesses the best combination of comedy and excellent songwriting that just Phineas and Ferb can achieve.

    6. The Platypus design, please

    Multiple Episodes

    Oh my goodness, Perry! This semi-aquatic egg-laying species of action’s style song is not included in any James Bond songs. Agent P&#8217, s song had everything: serious horns, backing vocalists calling his name, and Randy Cranshaw impersonating strong Tom Jones, giving the impression that Tom Jones is singing about a cool key agent platypus. It’s one of the series ‘ recurring songs, and whenever it plays, whether it’s the instrumental or just the jingle, it’s a joy. Come on in. It&#8217, s PERRY! PERRY THE PLATYPUS!

    5. Today is going to be a fantastic day.

    Multiple Episodes 

    Simple facts about life exist. One plus one equals two. We are all alive until we pass away. There are 104 days of summer vacation until school just rolls around. Bowling For Soup performed the theme song to Phineas and Ferb, which is unquestionably one of the series ‘ best tracks. It is a rousing punk rock tune that is optimistic and joyful and perfectly captures the show’s mood and premise. In fact, I occasionally listen to it during the summer to get my day moving. Today’s Gonna Be a Great Day &#8221, Ferb-tastic serotonin bottled in a perfect theme song that makes you feel as though every day will be the best day ever. &nbsp,

    4. S. I. M. P ( Squirrels in My Pants )

    Comet Kermilian

    Prior to the beginning of the term” simp” and” simps in my pants,” it was associated with” &#8220, squirrels in my pants.” A whole generation shook their legs and stomped the ground in imitation of squirrels in their pants during the ridiculous hip-hop song” Scurtling around in Candace&#8217 ,s pants” ( ). S. I. M. P ( Squirrels in My Pants ) “is unquestionably the funniest song out of the series. Will always be funny when Ashley Tisdale&#8217, s Candace cries out squirrels in the chorus in time the beat. A guaranteed hood classic and a hilarious song. &nbsp,

    3. BUsted &nbsp,

    I Scream, You Scream.

    Ashley Tisdale and Olivia Olson are undoubtedly the best vocalists of the series. It’s just facts. So when this Candace/Vanessa duet dropped in the episode “I Scream, You Scream.,” every viewer was absolutely gagged. It became as iconic as Monica and Brandy when they released “The Boy is Mine” or Beyonce and Gaga with “Telephone.” Tisdale and Olson’s voices are so beautifully matched in this song about their determination to bust their family members to their mom — Candace with her brothers building machines and Vanessa with her dad being evil. The lyrics are extremely catchy; it pains me every time just how short it is considering how hard it goes. At the season five premiere this past weekend, Tisdale and Olson performed the song live while dressed in the similarly colored attire as their cartoon counterparts. Now my FOMO has been busted!

    2. Ain&#8217, t Got Rhythm

    We&#8217 are Getting the Band Up Up, Dude.

    Another song from “We&#8217 are Getting the Band Up Up, Dude.,” this one features Phineas and former Love Händel drummer-turned-librarian Sherman/Swampy, in a rhythmic duet that excitedly builds to a progressively louder crescendo throughout. It was so darn remarkable that it ended up landing a Primetime Emmy Award nomination for Outstanding Original Music and Lyrics. Sadly, it lost to “I’m F–ing Matt Damon,” which…fair. However, “Ain’t Got Rhythm” triumphs in so many facets: being a ballad of Sherman’s backstory, having a song that builds towards an uproarious finish, and testing the heights of Vincent Martella and Steve Zahn’s singing voices. Oh yeah, Steve Zahn is Swampy, and he has pipes! His range!

    1. Gitchee Gitchee Goo

    Flop Starz

    The second of what was reportedly many times Dan Povenmire & Jeff” Swampy” Marsh’s love for music was on full display. In the satirical episode &#8220, Flop Starz, and#8221, Phoenix and Ferb attempted to transform into a pop star one-hit wonders, but the song ultimately became the most memorable in the entire series. Given that this song was one of the show’s first songs, Disney requested the songwriters to write music for each episode.” Gitchee Gitchee Goo” received such a positive response. The trailblazing song served as the musical identity for Phineas and Ferb, or rather, Gitchee Gitchee Goo, for. Without &#8220, Gitchee Gitchee Goo, and &#8221, we would undoubtedly not have this list of endorsed bangers and more.

    The fifth season of Phineas and Ferb will be available for streaming on Disney + the day after it premieres on Thursday, June 5 on the Disney Channel.

    The first article on Den of Geek was The 10 Best Phineas and Ferb Songs.