Business
This week I am joined by my great friend Chris Henry. With 24 years of experience working at senior levels within the UK Banking sector and having helped Banking and Financial Services divisions and subsidiaries grow, Chris now uses his knowledge and experience to coach SME business owners, so they get great personal & business results. Chris also owns a Wealth & Property business, has been interviewed on local and Sky TV & has first-hand experience of how to use existing Personal & Business assets to generate increased wealth and 'passive' income. Chris is an experienced SSAS (Pension) Trustee and has a successful track record in deploying funds through 3rd party lending and direct investment in property. Chris is also an author having recently contributed to a book which is a legacy for future generations ’Advice to Your Younger Self’ This is Chris’ powerful chapter in the book ADVICE TO YOUR YOUNGER SELF – AVAILABLE ON AMAZON NOW. As children we have a special place, a place where dreams are formed, and imagination is allowed to meander. My conversation with the young Chris Henry starts here at a sports field (Beck Lane) close to our childhood home, where school summer holidays and evenings were spent practising being the next big football superstar - this was our Wembley. Looking back isn’t something I’ve spent much time doing. I’ve been so focused on moving forwards, meeting the challenges that life has brought, so when I meet myself in my memory, that young man of twenty, his whole life ahead of him, I can’t help but feel a strong desire to impart to him an understanding of the one thing that lies at the heart of everything - the precious gift of time. The average person lives 4,000 weeks, I tell young twenty-year old Chris as we sit in the goal mouth, looking across the well-manicured Beck Lane pitch in Liversedge, West Yorkshire, a place I have known all of my life. Back then the days were long, the memories short and time seemed endless. This area is where I grew up, where I went to school, where I had my children, and where I finally learned what truly mattered. Interesting I say to Chris, that as children we dream but then as adults sadly, we stop as reality kicks in. Time, I tell him, is your most precious asset. It’s the one thing you cannot halt or get back once it’s gone. That perception was never more acute than in 2005, after suffering a pulmonary embolism in Madeira at the age of 44, when time very nearly ran out. What followed was two weeks in intensive care, followed by six months recuperation. I’d been forced to stop, literally, and after being handed my life back, I slowly, over a period of years, began making changes to bring my one precious life back into alignment with who I really was. It made me focus on what I really wanted and though we can’t halt time, I tell young Chris, we can start to use the knowledge and insights gained to make the absolute most of the life we have been given. We were so busy, I tell him, in our twenties, thirties and forties - life went by in a bit of a blur. It was all about earning a living, bringing up a family and not stopping to question. It was only in my 50s when I’d reached a level of financial comfort that I started to appreciate the importance of developing who I was as a person. I discovered that the only way to develop and grow personally was to really get comfortable with being uncomfortable. It was not something I found easy at first but key to this was finding and discovering people further ahead on the journey than you are - inspiring people, with clear plans and goals, mentors, coaches and people who keep questioning you to discover your limitless potential. The key to this is to focus on what brings you joy - ‘follow your bliss’ - when you find what you enjoy doing, throw yourself into it wholeheartedly. Don’t be afraid to reach out for help either – we learn not just from our life experiences but from those around us too. I look back at Chris again and reflect more sadly on the things I didn’t do or say to the people who really mattered. Time eats everything, it leaves nothing in its wake, and when time runs out for people you love, that’s when you regret all the things left unsaid. I wished I’d spent more time with the older people in my family, especially my parents. I know you think they don’t know much - well, you think like that when you’re 20 - but ask them more questions, take their advice, and listen. You won’t regret a moment of that once they’re gone. Young Chris and I make the short walk up the hill to my childhood home, the garden of which was the meeting point for most of the local kids, at the time a large grassed area with a swing and make-shift football goal. We had an amazing upbringing; we weren’t short on laughs/or love/or whatever it is you appreciated most, but with four children in the family, things were financially very tight. We were the children on the free school meals and the hand-me-down clothes and my limiting beliefs about money, set the stage for my earlier work experiences. These beliefs have since being rooted out and challenged and now my thinking around money and wealth has created a freedom I never knew existed. Young Chris looks at me and smiles. Good times ahead maybe, but money isn’t the answer to everything. As a father now myself, it’s become easy to overcompensate with my own children and smother them with the things I wished for as a child, but never had. But the risk is always that they don’t grow themselves, that they lose sight of the journey and every step that brought us here. In February 1995, my beautiful daughter Alexandra was born with a disease called Cystic Fibrosis - a genetic disorder that affects mostly the lungs but also the pancreas, liver, kidneys, and intestine. Life expectancy for Alex, when she was born, was just 40 years. Her appreciation of time and life and her drive and positivity astounds me. As Alex would say, we will all face challenges in life, but don’t ever take your health for granted because some people do not have a choice. Swimming was a big feature of our childhood and the open-air swimming pool in Morecambe was where all our summer holidays were spent. Summers seemed to be hotter then, the outdoor life served us well as children. Eat well and exercise well and just as you take your car in for a service and check up, get your body checked at regular intervals and act on the advice given. Don’t underestimate how important fitness and health are in creating a successful and happy business and personal life. Have an understanding that although money and wealth aren’t everything, learning how money works is the key to creating personal freedom. Having enough money dropping into your bank account whilst you are asleep, enough to cover your basic and luxury needs, is a life-changing concept. What this gives you is choices and options - it gives you back the time you sold for over 30 years making someone else rich. Own a business rather than have a job and make sure that this becomes an asset that can operate without you giving your time and freedom but still reap the financial rewards. Learning this became a game changer. We take a longer walk to the beautiful cemetery in Robertown where my dear parents are buried, an oasis of tranquillity, a place where reflection is easy. There’s something comforting when you visit about having the place to yourself. I explain to young Chris that my parents both died in 2012 within exactly 6 months of each other. Now we are left with the memories. One of the best things I ever did was voice record my father in general day to day conversation, a treasure on my phone that I will keep forever. We also converted some reel tapes to CD for my father shortly before he died and I managed to give him the pleasure of listening to his mother’s voice, a voice he had not heard for 34 years. He listened in private, but I can only imagine the emotion that he felt from the experience. What has this taught me? Start from an early age thinking about how you want to be remembered and what legacy you want to leave behind. What recording of your life do you want future generations to listen to? What do you want people to say at your funeral? This will give you a focus and help you with your road map for your life. As you get older, you do start to look back and reflect more and ask more questions. As I take in the words on my parent’s graves, I think back to my life before Madeira. My life was matter of fact, on autopilot and possibly devoid of any emotion. I remind young Chris of his desire to please others all the time and tell him eventually it will come at the expense of his own happiness. Be true to who you are, I say, without that you will be lost for a very long time. Be yourself, follow your passion, don’t compare your life to others and don’t live by others’ rules either. Be the best version of you possible. As we leave my parents grave behind, I am mindful yet again of the preciousness of time and am reminded of a brilliant poem often read at funerals: ‘The Dash by Linda Ellis’. The Dash is the squiggle on your headstone between your date of birth and your date of death. That’s your life - it’s short, it’s a blip and it’s over in no time. So don’t waste a day of it, I tell my younger self. Savour it all and when it comes to your eulogy, be proud of the things they say about you and how you lived your dash. Media links: https://www.linkedin.com/in/coachchrishenry/ See omnystudio.com/policies/listener for privacy information.