In this episode of The Agent of Wealth Podcast, host Marc Bautis is joined by Kevin Hoover, founder of Next Crest. Discover Kevin’s insights gained from consulting over 50 small businesses, where he redefines retirement for entrepreneurs and business leaders. Learn practical strategies to shift your mindset, automate your business for longevity, and embrace flexible retirement approaches that suit your lifestyle.
In this episode, you will learn:
- Why there is a need for a mindset shift regarding retirement – from a fixed age-based milestone (like 65) to a more flexible approach that considers longer lifespans and continued work in fulfilling roles.
- How a phased retirement approach – a gradual reduction in workload – can fit into your retirement plan, especially those of business owners.
- A variety of strategies to navigate retirement goals while also creating financial stability (The “Never Retire Approach,” and “Practice Retirement Approach,” as examples).
- And more!
Resources:
Next Crest Consulting | Kevin Hoover – LinkedIn | Mission To Margins (YouTube) | Bautis Financial: 8 Hillside Ave, Suite LL1 Montclair, New Jersey 07042 (862) 205-5000 | Schedule an Introductory Call
Disclosure: The transcript below has been edited for clarity and content. It is not a direct transcription of the full episode, which can be listened to above.
Welcome back to The Agent of Wealth Podcast, this is your host Marc Bautis. Today, I’m joined by a special guest, Kevin Hoover.
Kevin is the founder of Next Crest, a consulting company helping business leaders, coaches and visionaries overcome burnout, lagging sales and low life balance so they can do the work great leaders are here to do.
He is a “yes you can” type of change-maker bringing out-of-the-box strategy, multiple lives worth of experience and a proven track record of results for business leaders, entrepreneurs and visionaries in building businesses in less time.
Kevin, welcome to the show.
Thanks, Marc.
So it’s my understanding that you’ve consulted on over 50 small businesses in recent years and you found that retirement is always, or a lot of times a concern for them. As a result, you work to rewire business owners’ mindset around retirement. First, why do you think retirement is such a concern with business owners?
I think it adds a little bit of pressure. As I transitioned from my forties to my fifties, I began feeling the weight of not having saved enough for greater financial security. The concept of retirement certainly amplifies this pressure. If you’re launching a business later in life, rather than as your first career, it can compel decisions that may unnecessarily scale your operations or induce external stress as you compare yourself against arbitrary financial benchmarks. Reframing this mindset allows for more deliberate and strategic business choices. Over my years of consulting, I’ve often asked clients: why the rush to build an empire? Couldn’t we pursue our goals calmly, methodically, and with a robust, sustainable approach?
Often, business owners become intensely focused on building their businesses, letting other aspects, including retirement planning, slip by. At some juncture, every business owner will inevitably transition away from day-to-day operations, necessitating a clear strategy for the future. Many assume they’ll fund their retirement simply by selling the business, but the success of this approach varies. How can we reshape perceptions of retirement and guide individuals toward more proactive planning?
How to Take Control of Your Retirement Concerns
It begins with mindset and how we perceive our lives. If we contemplate our eventual passing, what age do we envision? Traditionally, retirement is pegged at 65, yet when I pose this question, many envision ages like 92, 98, or 88—far beyond the typical retirement age. Reframing this mindset is crucial. In my parents’ era and earlier in my life, retiring at 65 meant many jobs were seen as problematic. Today, however, opportunities abound to earn well into our twilight years, thanks to the ability to generate income rapidly and sustainably.
This mindset about stopping work at 65 or winding down in our mid-sixties can confine us to a narrow view of our future. The reality is, you can continue thriving in business well into your eighties or nineties. It’s about confronting this reality and understanding the time it takes to achieve financial success in today’s world. Unlike in the past, where it might have taken decades to build wealth, today’s environment offers quicker returns on sound investments and decisions.
I see how mindset is pivotal because it varies widely. People are living longer now and working longer, while others aim to retire early, potentially leading to a 40-year retirement span. This diversity brings both benefits and challenges to retirement planning, due to the broad range of factors influencing it.
Creating Financial Stability with Various Approaches
How do you help people achieve financial stability using technology, investing, and entrepreneurship? Can you explain how these strategies can collaborate to achieve retirement goals?
Automation and delegation are essential for entrepreneurs. Initially, we wear multiple hats to manage time and finances, often questioning our business motives later on. Understanding that we don’t need to handle every task ourselves is crucial in today’s business landscape. Automating and delegating tasks play a significant role in building a sustainable legacy and preventing burnout.
Consider:
- Is the business scalable?
- Is it leveraged?
- Can we automate any processes?
Although sometimes controversial, leveraging AI for repetitive tasks can significantly increase productivity and profit margins. Effective automation frees up bandwidth to focus on strategic business decisions rather than daily operations. This shift from merely working for income to building a sustainable business can extend your professional longevity and enhance retirement prospects.
Ways to Improve Mindset Around Retirement
Are there any other tools or resources you recommend for those trying to improve their mindset around retirement?
Starting out, it’s smart to focus on your finances and look at tasks that directly affect how much money your business makes. Many owners find it helpful to bring in people who work on commission, especially for jobs like marketing, social media, or sales calls. It really depends on what your business needs most.
Think about where you’re spending the most time each day—that’s often where the biggest issues lie. For many, the first hire tends to be in accounting or bookkeeping. This frees you up from diving deep into financial details every day, letting you take more of a big-picture role in decision-making. After that, expanding your sales team or outreach efforts lets you step back even more from the day-to-day grind and think more like a CEO. But be careful not to rush into hiring for things like marketing or social media too early. If you do, it can muddy your business’s message and actually hurt your revenue.
Understanding When to Outsource or Hire
When it comes to hiring versus outsourcing, it’s all about focusing on tasks that directly bring in money. Outsourcing roles like social media management or bookkeeping can be a great move to free up your time and keep things running smoothly as your business grows.
And I think that’s the big distinction between the world that I grew up in the seventies and the world we live in now. I’ve run my business for eight years. I’m the only employee of my business, but I have independent contractors that work with me throughout the year on different projects. I have VAs that work with me that are charged by the hour. So the gig economy really can play to your advantage if you’re looking for an assistant. You don’t have to hire someone full-time and offer them a whole benefit package. There’s a lot of people who prefer the flexibility, who would take various hours and fees a week or 10 hours a week from a remote location.
So you can really leverage depending on the needs, you can use platforms like Fiverr. If you need a video produced, go on Fiverr, you can pay a small amount to have a video produced for your marketing campaign and you can really utilize that as much as you want without bringing someone in full-time and having the sort of backend structure to support full-time employees. That’s generally the first stop until the need is to bring on someone full-time as you grow and as you lead with revenue, I think as you know, and as I’m sure everyone knows, money’s got to make sense first. So if you’re on a tight budget, I would seek out the gig economy solutions, which would be the copywriters, the SEO folks; some salespeople can do the gig economy stuff, but it really is the projects that you would spend a lot of time doing, creating the marketing, the graphic design, the copy, the websites, any of that would be something you could outsource very, very easily for not a lot of money.
Determining Which Tasks to Outsource
How do you determine what tasks to handle yourself and what to delegate or outsource? Do you simply go through your list of responsibilities as a business owner and decide, “Yes, I should handle this personally,” or “No, this is better outsourced”? Also, how does a business owner identify tasks they might not even realize they should be handling, but aren’t currently considering?
I usually start by looking at what I’m good at. I’m great with business operations, but when it comes to stuff like graphic design or video editing, I struggle. Even with tools like Canva, I can’t quite get the look I want, so I prefer to hand those tasks off to someone who’s really skilled in those areas. It saves me time and gets me better results.
I always ask myself: am I really good enough at this task that someone would pay me to do it? Usually, the answer’s no—no one’s hiring me to edit their videos. That’s my cue to think about outsourcing. As your business grows, if tasks like graphic design or video editing start bringing in serious revenue, then it might make sense to hire someone full-time for those roles.
Like many founders, I started out doing everything myself because, well, money was tight. But as the business expands, you start realizing where your time is best spent. If you find yourself spending hours trying to learn something you’re not naturally good at—like mastering video editing—it’s probably smarter to find a specialist who can handle it quickly and professionally. That way, I can focus on running the business smoothly while leaving the design and tech stuff to the pros.
Helping Business Owners Know What They’re Best At
Have you ever consulted with a business owner and concluded that perhaps they might be better suited working for another company rather than running their own business? They might excel in their field, but running a business might not be the best fit for them.
It’s a tough conversation I often have. Entrepreneurship is challenging, and sometimes, despite skillfulness in a particular area, it might not translate into a successful business venture financially or structurally. There comes a point where one needs to evaluate if they’re truly committed to becoming a proficient business operator and leader—understanding finances, market dynamics, and visionary company growth—or if their skillset might be better utilized within an established company. Embracing the gig economy can offer opportunities to leverage skills without the full weight of running a business. It’s not an easy topic to broach, but sometimes it’s necessary to discuss whether redirecting skills into an existing business or investing in becoming a business leader is the right path forward.
I imagine most business owners appreciate having those two options presented because I often see them clinging to the status quo. It’s practical to lay out these choices clearly: either make a decisive change or follow a specific path to achieve success in your endeavors.
Resources to Improve Mindset
Shifting back to retirement for business owners, I know you mentioned the importance of mindset. Are there any tools or exercises that you go through to help improve someone’s mindset?
The first thing is to forget everything you’ve been told about retirement. I say that in jest, but it normally gets individuals’ attention. The vision for your life is something that retirement plays into.
Consider:
- How do you want to live your seventies, your eighties, your sixties?
- How do you want to live in those decades?
- What is it that you’re going to be doing?
- What does your life look like?
- What does your work life look like?
And honestly, the big “aha”, and everyone knows people like this. I’ll just use my dad as an example. My father created a really great business and he sold it which means a great house is paid for, we can breathe out a little bit. He did what we said we were going to do, 65 years old, sold the business a year later, called his buddy and said, you’ve got to give me a job. I’m bored out of my mind. Money wasn’t the issue. It was really the amount of time that he had and what he had just 50 years of working. And that comes to an abrupt stop and now you’ve got this time and sure we can fill that time, but it really becomes part of living a fulfilled life and contributing to a bigger mission. So while fishing was great, it only filled so many days and it only created fulfillment on so many levels.
So, it’s quite common to see this scenario, where having a clear vision of post-retirement life makes a big difference. If you’ve got a plan—knowing where you’ll live, who you’ll be with, and what activities you’ll pursue—it can shape your retirement in a positive way. On the other hand, without a clear vision, retirement can lead to feelings of boredom and a sense of not contributing to something meaningful. It’s about more than just having things to do; it’s about feeling fulfilled and purposeful.
When thinking about your seventies or any decade of retirement, having a vision is crucial. It helps you plan how you’ll spend your time—whether it’s working less, enjoying hobbies like golf, or staying active in other ways. Looking at life in decades helps us realize how much time we have and what we can accomplish. Our perception of time shifts as we age—from feeling like we have forever in our twenties to realizing how quickly the years pass as we approach each milestone. Understanding this timeframe helps us make the most of our years ahead and plan accordingly.
Phased Retirement Approach
I’m seeing many business owners and individuals are considering a phased retirement approach rather than a sudden switch from full-time work to no work at all. This gradual transition makes sense for various reasons, as abruptly stopping can be challenging. By gradually reducing their workload over time, business owners can prepare themselves and their businesses for a new phase. This flexibility allows them to adjust roles, work fewer hours, or explore new interests while maintaining their connection to the business they’ve built.
I’m a big fan of that. I think if you have the vision that that’s what you’re going for, you can kind of timeline it out to where you know about the time that you’ll be taking a step back. So the five years leading up to that time, you’re maybe bringing in the support roles that you might need or maybe it’s passing it down to your children and they’re coming in and learning the business. I’m a big fan of the phased approach much more so than the abrupt stop at 65. That’s the last day I work kind of mentality. The phase approach works.
Never Retire Approach
There’s another approach that I subscribe to myself. It is that I’m just never going to stop working. I’m not going to always work like I did when I was 30. I can’t even now at 50, I can’t do that. But what I can do is say, I don’t want to stop working, so I’m just going to go with that for now. And it may change. Health comes up, family comes up, various things can come up that would change that opinion, but I’ve got a business where I can run it three days a week from anywhere in the world and with little overhead and it’s a very lean and mean company and that is possible. But that was by design. When my vision for my retirement years came up, I didn’t want to stop working. I didn’t want to be doing manual labor per se, but I did want to keep the business that I like so much. So that will be, and that kind of morphs into a phased kind of part where I can have a few clients or just do a little bit. But I think there’s a few ways you can go about it. And the last two either don’t stop working or have a phased approach, I find to be much easier to navigate than just that abrupt there. We’re done working, we’ve got what we’ve got and that’s it. And there’s no going back.
“Practice Retirement” Approach
Another strategy some consider, which I wouldn’t necessarily call our approach but more of a tactic, is to try out a practice retirement. This involves structuring your business or job so you can take extended time off—beyond just a typical vacation—to see how it feels. Whether you sell the company, switch roles, or take a different job, the idea is to step away for a while and assess if you miss the work or enjoy the change of pace. It’s a way to test the waters before making a permanent decision because for many business owners, their work is their life, and abruptly stopping can be emotionally challenging even if it’s not financially motivated.
Yeah, it is. I actually did something similar to that about two years ago. My family and I sold our house, bought an RV, and we traveled the country for about 18 months. I ran my business from the RV. It was like practicing retirement without knowing it was that but I was working very small amounts of time. But I think what makes that work is I was not focused on growing the business. I was focused on just maintaining the business. It was at a level where we lived comfortably. We didn’t worry about anything and you could just maintain. And I did that for 18 months and I was like, okay, concept proven that you don’t have to always be in growth mode. You can kind of create a business that is sustainable and then you can peel back your time from there plug in key roles if you need to. But I think we feel like we always have to be growing or we’re not in business. And the truth of the matter is the reason we start a business is so that we can control those seasons of rapid growth where it may require more of your time and energy and then seasons of maintaining where we just, I didn’t grow my business for two years. It didn’t shrink, but I didn’t grow it. And that was good practice of saying, wow, okay, I can get to a point and then just ride that wave for a little while and then make the next decision when it comes.
Alright, Kevin, we’re just about out of time. I want to thank you for joining us today on the episode of The Agent of Wealth. Before we go, how can listeners learn more about what you do and get in touch with you?
My website is the best way: It’s www.mynextcrest.com and you can peruse that. It’ll give you more information than you probably want.
Great. We’ll include that in the resources section in the show notes. Thanks again Kevin and thank you to everyone who tuned into today’s episode. Don’t forget to follow The Agent of Wealth on the platform you listen from and leave us a review of the show. We are currently accepting new clients, if you’d like to schedule a 1-on-1 consultation with our advisors, please do so below.