Dean Inniss is the Managing Partner of Your Best Life Now, a consultancy for high-achieving individuals who are transforming their lives. As a coach for high-profile clients, he specializes in balancing the pursuit of financial success with personal growth and family values. Dean’s diverse background in business leadership, law enforcement, martial arts, and economic analysis allows him to guide entrepreneurs, CEOs, and other top executives to new heights.
Here’s a glimpse of what you’ll learn:
- [01:06] Dean Inniss discusses the misconception of measuring success with money
- [08:40] Dean’s transition from a profitable career to prioritizing family
- [11:50] How spirituality contributes to a balanced life
- [14:39] Strategies for building wealth as a tool for freedom
- [18:56] Fostering a workplace culture and engaging employees in their roles
- [24:45] The importance of hiring for skill set over personality
In this episode…
Imagine working tirelessly for financial abundance only to realize that true success lies beyond the dollar sign. Is it possible to attain both wealth and happiness without compromising one or the other?
Having transitioned from a career in corporate banking to a flexible role that balances work and family life, inspirational coach Dean Inniss notes that you can achieve equilibrium across key pillars like family, health, and spirituality. This involves defining personal success beyond your company’s financial metrics to include relationships and personal fulfillment. You can also create passive income streams for long-term financial stability and integrate your family into your career journey by communicating your goals.
In today’s episode of The Guts and Glory Show, the Managing Partner of Your Best Life Now, Dean Inniss, joins Luis Scott to talk about cultivating a life of personal and professional freedom. From creating work cultures that thrive on employee engagement to discussing the nuances of living a life rich in purpose and fulfillment, Dean redefines the true meaning of success
Resources mentioned in this episode:
- Luis Scott: Website | LinkedIn
- 8 Figure Firm
- Dean Inniss on LinkedIn | Instagram | Facebook
- Your Best Life Now
Quotable Moments:
- “Success is something that’s definitional; it’s not just about measuring success by billions.”
- “You have to be able to come back to your spirituality, elevate that, and don’t let it deteriorate based on some of the other things that you’re going through.”
- “The starting point to balance is that negotiation piece or that buy-in piece with all of the people involved.”
- “If you create a company as if you’re planning to sell it, you build everything into the company, so it’s self-sustaining.”
- “Money is a tool, not the thing; the more automated your business becomes, the more time and freedom you get.”
Action Steps:
- Define personal success beyond wealth: Establish a personal definition of success that encompasses well-being and contentment, not just financial milestones, for a truly fulfilling life.
- Integrate family into career goals: Discuss and align career goals with family to ensure mutual support and shared understanding, strengthening bonds and creating a supportive environment.
- Pursue passive income streams: Explore opportunities for passive income to gain financial independence and more personal freedom, leading to a balanced and enjoyable lifestyle.
- Invest in employee training: Provide consistent training and retraining to employees to enhance their engagement and satisfaction, ultimately resulting in a more productive workforce.
- Build a company to sell: Even if selling isn’t the goal, strategize your business as if it were to create an operationally strong enterprise that’s attractive to potential buyers or can run autonomously.
Sponsor for this episode…
This episode is brought to you by 8 Figure Firm.
Founded by Luis Scott, 8 Figure Firm helps transform your law firm into a seven-figure or even eight-figure firm.
After spending years searching for the ideal law firm consulting program, Luis started 8 Figure Firm to use his hands-on experience to help other law firms achieve exponential growth.
Visit www.8figurefirm.com to receive a consultation call and start scaling your business today.
Episode Transcript
Intro 0:01
Get ready to be a man. Get ready to be transformed. Get ready to believe it is possible. You’re entering the growth zone on The Guts and Glory Show with your host Luis Scott.
Luis Scott 0:22
Hey guys, my name is Luis. I’m the host of The Guts and Glory Show. And I’m really excited to have you because today we’re going to be talking about how we can help you get more dedicated to learning. So you can be a little bit bigger than you were before, and a little bit better than you were before. And we do that by having amazing guests. And today I have an amazing guest. He started off in the pre show saying something about Balian. We don’t have a lot of people who talk about billions. And he has worked in a company where he has led the company in billions. And he also coaches people who are in the billions and so not to put too much emphasis on that we have a strategist and entrepreneur, the managing partner of Your Best Life Now, Dean Inniss is in the house. Let’s welcome to the show. Dean, how are you?
Dean Inniss 1:06
I’m great, Luis, thank you for the intro. And the B, you know, I always think of that movie. Billions of dollars. Oh, yeah. Oh, my gosh, yeah. I don’t want I don’t want to be associated with him. You know, I guess billions is a good place to start. Because, unfortunately, a lot of times we measure success by billions. And I don’t think that’s what we should do. Thank you success is something that’s definitional. And in your intro, you talk about learning. And I think the premise to learning is identifying what you want, how you want to get there, but also learning about yourself in your not limitations, but the brevity of life, in putting that in context with the other pieces of your life to balance your family, your fitness, you know, your finances and your faith.
Luis Scott 2:00
I love that you mentioned the word balanced, we’re gonna get to that in a second. But tell me what does it mean? Because you’re the you know, as the managing partner of your best life. Now, what does that even mean? You know, we live in a society right now, where so many people are so focused on the future, like one day, I’m going to have this one day, I’m going to have that I’ve been a victim of that, right? I’ve sometimes thought, Well, I’m gonna work super, super hard. Because one day, I’m gonna have that. And I’ve really started to reset my life and say, I need to experience life today, because there’s no guarantee tomorrow. So what is Your Best Life Now? I mean, in the context of you working with high level executives, and entrepreneurs, you
Dean Inniss 2:39
know, in December of 20, we formed a company in the middle of COVID, if you remember. And I had recently retired from running a regional mortgage bank, the largest mortgage bank, and was Texas. And before that, I’d worked for national companies. And I had been guilty of exactly what you said. And and I think, to a degree setting goals, and in implementing that direction is beneficial in every facet of life. As long as you don’t forget the other three things, whichever one you’re focusing on. And in my life, my dad passed away, so he passed away younger than I currently am. So I realized I had to change some things so that my family didn’t end up the way his family did. And so I made some goals, set some goals, but the reason I set those goals is so that I wouldn’t be dead at desk, not that I would be a billionaire, but that I would have enough of that money tool. And that’s all it is, is tool to have time to enjoy things. And so I did that. So when I was 50, I could retire. I kept working for four years, because I believe choice is what you’re after, not anything other. So I stayed working two years longer, which is why I formed the company because I should have stopped, right? But so then I realized that there’s so many people that are driven like I was you get out of school, you’re working 80 hours a week to have this one thing. And you forget about the other stuff, and and I used to fight martial arts in AI, if I waited till I was 55 or 60. To do that, it wouldn’t have worked out very well. It’s kind of like the guy that earns all that money, and then buys a Corvette at 70. And he has a hard time getting in and out of it. You know, we have to figure out that balance. And so we formed the company on four pillars faith, family, fitness, and finance. And what we found with a lot of our clients who were very successful, is that they were missing some of those balance pieces. So we focus a trip every year for trips that focus on one of those we bring in great speakers that are experts in the field, and we do content, but then we stop the content. And then we share community so we can live those things at that time. So people get a taste of that balance. And so that’s how we kind of started it.
Luis Scott 5:08
You know, the thing about balances back, you know, back, I say back in the day, probably today, I always tell people, it’s really hard to have work life balance, like, that’s a very hard thing to do. And I’ve always said, like, let’s have work life integration. So I’ve always been very, you know, one, I’ve always wanted my family to be a part of what I do. For instance, one of my greatest dreams was that my family could travel with me, when I went on work trips. Now, if you know, the cost of travel, you know, you have to be making a significant amount of money to justify spending 1015 grand on a week where you bring a nanny, your family, your flights, and all that stuff. But that was like one of my, my dreams, I wanted them to be a part of my travel schedule in my life. But when we’re home, it’s really hard to find that work life balance. And you mentioned to me before, that, you can always be balanced in every stage of your life. And I think that the listeners would really benefit from hearing how you how you explain this work life balance in the context of the different stages of life. So tell us a little bit more about that. Well,
Dean Inniss 6:17
the first thing I’d like to say is that I think that your goal is amazing. And that’s what we kind of give people to look at. And even though there’s expense in that there’s other things that we can do together. The first most important thing that I teach about balance, right, is when we’re starting our career, we don’t have anything, so we have to develop our career, we have to develop our credibility, we have to get to know what we’re doing. Because when you graduate from college, I’m sorry, I’m not a big college fan anymore. Because they don’t think they give us what we need. They don’t teach you how to get a job, they don’t teach you about reality, they’re teaching something different. And to me, if you’re not in a specialty, I’m not really big fan of college, because I think you can get a lot of that, through business, through experience through people that are willing to understand your skill sets can give you the training you need. But what I think is really important, when you’re trying to find that balance, is bring your family into the decision making. So when you’re very young in your career, bring your family together and say, you know, right now, I may have to work 60 hours a week. But I want to make sure that we’re all on the same page and understand why we’re doing this. Because if you can get that buy in, and integration, that beauty, that’s a beautiful word for what I’m talking about integration of your family into that work life goals scenario, then when you come home, that time that they have, that they can give to you, they give it to you, the time you have you give it to them. So that becomes a more efficient methodology of understanding where you’re at, with the promise that when things are better than that changes. I’m here for you, I’m supporting you. I’m doing that for you. It’s that ying and yang, at different points we need for different things. But the starting point to balance is that negotiation peace or that by in peace with all of the people involved. And too often, people that are the breadwinner in winter, always take that responsibility on themselves. I have to make sure my son could go to college and he could go to college. All that doesn’t mean anything. If you don’t watch him grow up.
Luis Scott 8:40
Oh, my gosh, what you what you just said about the communication piece, I think is so powerful, because so many times we say we’re united, but we don’t act united. We don’t communicate, like we’re united in a family. And many years ago, I had a mentor who said that submission because we’re talking about the concept of submission. And people have this word submission wrong, but submission is to submit to the mission. And it’s hard to be on the same page on the mission if you don’t communicate as to what that mission is. And I think that that’s such good advice, because there’s so many young couples out there who never have a conversation as to what their life is supposed to be like. So how, how could they ever be on the same page if they never even have that conversation? As it pertains, and I want to walk through the four apps, the faith, family fitness and finance? What does it mean to you to live a balanced life as it relates to your faith? Like what what is that all about? Well, everybody
Dean Inniss 9:39
has their own spirituality in their own belief system. In my studies of martial arts, and I’m Catholic and Christianity and I just got back from Dubai and I studied about Muslims. And the amazing thing is all of those things that you mentioned have a core set of beliefs and you know, they begin with peace They begin with respect. And they always end with love. Right? So when you want to get in contact with your spirituality, you have to be able to separate yourself from some of the things in business that we have to cope with. And it it, many people have this idea that, you know, business is okay and businesses, but no, it’s not always okay. And the circumstances around business are not always what you would optimally like, right? So you have to be able to come back to your spirituality, elevate that. And don’t let it deteriorate based on some of the other things that you’re going through that fight with your wife, because you spend too much time at work. And you’re not delivering on the family because you don’t go and spend weekends with them. And those types of things. Like you said, communication, okay. And so we give people tools. That’s what YBL does is it gives people tools to deal with all four of those in their own way. We teach meditation, we teach breathing exercises, then we’ll go on a trip and teach faith and air fitness, and then finance but we always give tools that leads you to action steps that you can practice to be better. And spirituality is something that if you study everything, if you can get in communication with your own spirituality, whatever that is, it brings peace, not just to your heart, but to your body, resulting in lower blood pressure, better ways to deal with stress, leading to mindfulness, better rest, better, better fitness. So they’re all interrelated. So we give tools to help people get in touch with their spirituality, whatever it may be.
Luis Scott 11:50
I love that now, as it relates to the second tenant. So we’ve talked about family and we’ve talked about like, kind of, we’ve already discussed this a little bit, but what is it? What is it about family that helps a person live their best life now? Like, what, what should we be looking at as businessmen or business women? When it comes to to our families? It’s more of like a leadership concept, or what do you do there?
Dean Inniss 12:11
It’s it’s that team sport that we began talking with, with the communication spilt skills. I think that we all have a role in our family at different points in our life. But the one thing that why BL does is encourages you to bring your family to these things, you can be the member. But if you want to bring your family, you can bring them, we don’t exclude it, we encourage it. And that’s because we want people to see what you’re learning so they can learn it so they can share the tools. So that’s the premise. But the second thing, in my own experience, I was very career driven and got married later in life. And when I got married, we were both on our career paths. We were doing good. We did go on vacations we communicated. But when we had my son, I was in that point in my career where I was just blown up. I was the number one account executive in the country. I was doing really well. I was traveling all over. My son was about 12 months old. And what am I doing this? Yeah, and I had gotten offered opportunities all the time. And I got offered an opportunity at home. That was a cut in pay. But it was to run the largest mortgage bank, West Texas. And I thought to myself, I can be home. I can be a dad. Yeah. And in psyche said, What in when being a dad at 21 is recovery mode Hina data two is enjoyment mode, influence mode, strategically giving your child and your spouse whatever they need mode. And so that balance Yeah, I made a little less money. But ultimately, I made more, because when you’re successful, you figured out how to be successful wherever you’re at. But I coached every one of his T ball games. I was his football coach, I went to everything that he did. And you know what? I don’t regret a damn thing. And my son, he got a full ride scholarship in honors engineering to the University of Arizona, mostly because his mom’s an amazing woman. But I had a little bit to deal with. And I mean, it’s like he said, What is your role? And when? And what do we significantly think is important. You learned earlier than most Luis, that that time element and that family element that can never be recovered. You can always do better. You can come back to it and you can rebuild. But you never can recapture it.
Luis Scott 14:39
I mean, I’ll tell you the having the freedom that I have today, it’s really hard to go back. You know, I generally only work Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, I have four day weekends every weekend, and I eat breakfast with the family. I eat dinner with the family. It’s really hard to come back from that once you’ve experienced that. Obviously, it took me a long time to get to the point where I could do that. but it’s it’s definitely I agree with you. It’s like if you can figure out how to make that a reality in your life, it’s far greater than than money. I mean, I There you couldn’t, it would be hard for you to pay me an amount that would make me go back to working six days a week, I was just so I can’t imagine that being you know the case, which is a perfect segue to your fourth F, we’re going to we’re going to pass over fitness, because I want to get to the to the money part. What does it mean to live your best life now with this finance piece? Like? What does that mean? Was that does that mean having a car you want the house you want? Does that was the second vacation home? What does that mean? Because everyone’s in search for something financially. But what makes us happy?
Dean Inniss 15:41
I think the first thing that we get to do is quit worrying about what what makes other people happy. I mean, you know what the problem is with our situation right now. This? Yeah, yep. Everybody’s looking at what somebody else had. One of my clients told me badeen, one of my, my peers does this, and this, and this, and this, and this. And I said, When was the last time they went to a dance recital with their daughter, right? I said, Don’t get caught up in the 30 seconds of the smile that somebody shows you on this, because that is not reality. Reality is when you go home, or you eat breakfast with your child, and you have a fun story, or they tell you what happened. That’s reality. So one of the things we teach in finance is money is a tool. Not the thing. So the first thing I tell people, I won’t coach you if it’s all about the money, right? But I do understand that money is a tool. So what you want to do is you want to exercise your skills, whatever they may be, in a way, that gives you the ability to generate income. Now, early in the careers, most people have to generate that income the old fashioned way, right? It’s trading hours for dollars. Yep. But what we try and teach people is how can you create passive income streams? How can you become an owner instead of an operator? How can you extract yourself as the talent in your business and be the operator so that your business can either generate passive income, or you can sell it, right, and it’s worth more because the talents built into it with standard operating procedures, and all of that, that’s where the executive coaching model comes in, I understand how to build a company from day one, to create a company so that you could sell it, you may never sell it. But if you create a company as if you’re planning to sell it, you build everything into the company. So it’s self sustaining, not reliant on Dean or Luis, right. And so that it becomes automated. So the more you automate, the faster you automate, the more because a passive income stream, which does what gives you more time, more time and more freedom and gives you more freedom. So it’s not all about how much it’s about how and how to create a, you know, for me, I’m a really conservative guy from Wyoming, my son didn’t know what we had, when we grew up. When he grew up, he didn’t know that we could go anywhere, do anything. He had a passport at 18 months, but he didn’t know. And we didn’t show him that we wanted him to learn value base ideals. Yeah. So they could be self sustaining in our absence, right. And I think those lessons, if we can learn those ourselves and teach those to our children, our society would be in a completely different place today. Absolutely. And I’m not giving up. That’s why I love doing a podcast with you, Louis, so I can get the message out.
Luis Scott 18:56
I mean, the message, it resonates with a lot of people. And obviously, we have to continue to be advocates of a message that is transforming people’s lives and the legacies that they that come behind them. And so I think that’s really, really powerful. Now, one of the things that you talk about a lot, is employee engagement and employee retention. And I think that this is a really good topic, because it goes along with this idea of living your best life now, like, how do you? How do you create an environment where you own a business, that people love coming to work? employees stay, because there’s a big problem right now? I mean, employees are jumping ship left and right. So how do we create an environment where people do want to stay? Well,
Dean Inniss 19:40
you know, there’s been a lot of studies done recently. And there’s a lot of blame game from employers saying, well, it’s this generation, they don’t want to work and you know, all that crap. You know, being a guy that worked in several generations having 40 years. Every generation says the same thing. They don’t work as hard they don’t do it. You know what the result is? And I learned this because I was in that game, I’m all about accelerating, learning new things. So I never believed that what we found is this 80% of people are not engaged in what they do. Okay? And how do you engage somebody in what they do? How does the employees, by the way, have a responsibility in this? And I really want to make that important. Because whenever you have is, you know, entrepreneurs make more than their employees. And everybody says, Well, why is that they should make the, you know, I entrepreneurs take all of the risk. Yeah. Right. Everything they have is out there, you can switch jobs, like you said, right, right. But the fundamental premise of being an entrepreneur is to create a culture that cultivates pardon the word success. How do you do that? You put employees, first and foremost, in a job that fits their skill sets. Yeah. And if you put somebody if you put a job description out there, and you identify the skill sets to make that jobs, subject description successful, and you hire that person, then your obligation is to train them to be successful in that, right, retrain them. This is a key because most employers don’t I train them around, they should know that. Well, yeah, nature dictates employers retrain, because people don’t get it all at once. Even if they pass the test. It’s just like school, people go to college, they learn the material, they pass the tests, they forget the material, right? Well, when you’re an employer, if you give people the training, and then you retrain them, then you evaluate them to see their soft spots, then you allow them with their skill sets to do the very best job. They can, right. It’s proven, they’ll go home happy. They’ll come to work happy, right? They won’t care if they’re making $1 less than our than Joe over there. Because when they go to work for Joe, Joe doesn’t have that culture, and they don’t like it. Right, and they’ll come back. It’s proven in the 12 things that are in employee engagement. Money is nowhere in there, even though it’s the one thing that everybody talks about,
Luis Scott 22:34
say that again, because I think the listeners need to hear that, again. Money
Dean Inniss 22:38
is not the number one determining success factor for employees, or employers.
Luis Scott 22:46
I candidly, I tell people this all the time. It’s so true.
Dean Inniss 22:50
There’s a study done in 40. This is not a US This is 40 countries, with 20 million people. And none of them money was if you put if somebody graduates and they want to be this person, they want to do tool dice, they’re the very best tool died, they loved it, they want to do it. And you put it in a job description. It’s for a tool die person, and you interview them and you hate that guy. Your personalities just don’t match. But his skill sets are perfect for the tool dot. Here’s another one that employers need to hear. You hire that guy. Know why? Because if he’s the best tool die guy, and your job description meets his skill sets. And you say, Henry, do those tool dies, baby. He’s gonna take off, because you gave him the opportunity to do something he loves, that he wanted to do. And ultimately, your attitude will change. You’ll be like, damn, I didn’t like that guy. But he’s the best damn Tool Guy there ever was. Yeah, it’s true. I mean, I talk to employers. I didn’t like that guy. I’m like, who cares? You know, you’re hiring an accounting clerk that’s gonna sit in an office, right? And all he loves is numbers, and he doesn’t want to be bothered. And he’s like, the best at numbers or is and the job descriptions all about numbers. And he comes in and looks like a nerd. Or does dress the way you would like him to dress. He’s not wearing a flowery Polo. Right? But he passes the interview passes the test. He’s not your personality type, hire them, put him in his room that he wants to be in, surround him with the proper environment, let him do his job. He’s going to love you. He’s going to love that and you’re going to end up loving him or her I
Luis Scott 24:45
think I think one of the one of the things that that people equate that are not actually the same is personality and culture fit like a person could be a culture fit, but not be a personality fit for you. And it And so you have to be able to distinguish is this person, not a culture fit? Or is it they just don’t have the personality, like, you can’t have everyone be outgoing in your organization, some people are going to be outgoing, some people are gonna be shy, some people are gonna be quiet, some people are gonna be, some people are going to be the best dresser in the rooms and be we’re gonna be the worst dresser in the room. And it doesn’t mean that they can’t fit the culture, they just may not be the right, the right personality, right. And so, I think that that’s a really, really key distinction when it comes to employee, you know, employee hires and employee engagement,
Dean Inniss 25:29
I think that the thing that we need to get people to understand is that a company culture is not necessarily your personality, sometimes it is. But as your company grows, the culture is not going to be you. It’s going to be the culture of what that serves the value proposition, the ideal clients, your employees, that’s going to end up being the culture, if you’re creating an environment where they can serve the purpose of their ideal client. It doesn’t necessarily have to be your personality, it may start that way. Because, you know, when you start a business, it’s all you and we wear different hats and everything else. But the smart businessman start extracting themselves immediately to create not their business, but as successful business, right, different things. I
Luis Scott 26:25
like that. I like that. Dean, this has been great. I appreciate you coming on. If somebody wanted to work with you. There’s an executive out there as an entrepreneur, I know you work with a lot of entrepreneurs, and they wanted to work in these four areas, the faith, the family, the fitness, the finance, maybe attend one of these conferences, how can they get in touch with you? Well,
Dean Inniss 26:46
the beautiful pieces in simple Our website is, first of all, it gives you a really good taste of what we do. It has samples of the trips, it has samples of the speakers, and it’s www yblnow.com yblnow.com. I have an Instagram, it’s DJ_crusade. And I have I’m on LinkedIn, Dean Inniss. I’m also on Facebook Dean Inniss And you can reach us through there. And if you go to the website, and you’re really interested, you can click on it. There’s, there’s a short app and somebody will contact you. And it’s a very intimate group. We want to make sure that we keep the culture good. Interaction good. And like I said, it’s it’s more community based and it is based on Dean or chuck or Megan, the three co founders. Sure we love that. Now I’m there for direction and use of experience and teaching people about the fundamentals of business. We have people that work on the fitness part, we have people that work on all of those things. So it is really kind of cool.
Luis Scott 27:54
Awesome, awesome. So you heard it, it’s yblnow.com. And you can reach Dean by going to ibl.now.com We’ll put it in the show notes. Dean. Thanks for being here. And everyone else. Thank you for listening because you’ve been listening to the Guts and Glory show.
Outro 28:10
You’ve been listening to The Guts and Glory Show for more. And to learn more about Luis hit the website at LuisScottjr.com for consulting opportunities, 8figurefirm.com That’s the number 8figurefirm.com We hope you’ve enjoyed the show. Make sure to like rate and review and we’ll see you next time on The Guts and Glory Show
