Can you follow your passion AND make money?
Or maybe, you should follow your purpose –– at least that’s what Doc G (aka Jordan Grummet) shares with me on today’s episode. You may remember Doc G from his episode on How to Live a Regret-Free Life, where he shared how his time as a hospice doctor led him to re-evaluate how he spent his time and his money (I highly recommend checking it out as a companion to today’s episode!).
Today’s guest, Dr. Jordan Grummet, is here to guide us through figuring out that fine balance between passion, purpose, and building a financial future that supports our dreams and goals. In the episode, Doc G clarifies how to find “big P” and “little p” purpose in your day-to-day life, why following your passion may not be the best way to make money, and how to build in anchors to keep you grounded as you figure it all out. A fantastic episode for the start of the year, especially if you’re setting goals and feeling overwhelmed by it all.
Before we get any further… ICYMI, we launched our first EVER exclusive community where you can get live coaching from me, accountability from likeminded financial feminists, and access to thoouussaannddss of dollars of content on everything from budgeting to debt payoff and more. Learn more about The $100K Club!
Key takeaways
Distinguish ‘big P’ purpose from ‘little P’ purpose
“Big P” Purpose often revolves around huge, singular life goals—like becoming president or gaining six-pack abs—that can create anxiety if you never “arrive.” In contrast, “Little P” Purpose is about focusing on everyday, process-oriented activities that genuinely light you up. It’s a more flexible, abundant approach: if one passion fades, you can shift to another without feeling like you’ve failed.
Use your money as a support system, not just a goal
Rather than fixating on a specific amount in your bank account, think of money as a powerful tool that enables you to pursue your most meaningful endeavors. By aligning your finances with what brings you joy—whether that’s traveling, taking up a dance class, or contributing to causes you care about—you channel your resources in a way that enhances your overall sense of purpose.
Combat burnout by aligning actions with values
Feeling drained often stems from chasing goals that don’t align with your deeper convictions. The conversation highlights that burnout isn’t simply about overwork; it’s about emotional disconnection from what you’re doing. When you shape your schedule around pursuits that resonate with your personal values, you’re more likely to remain motivated and avoid the trap of chronic exhaustion.
Embrace small joys to make a big impact
You don’t need to cure cancer or write a bestselling novel to live a life rich in meaning. Simple joys—like buying and selling baseball cards—can profoundly influence others. By engaging in “little” passions, you naturally foster community and connection, often making a bigger difference than you might expect.
Adopt practical tools for injecting purpose into daily life
Jordan introduces methods like the “joy of addition” (adding in activities you love), the “art of subtraction” (removing what you loathe), and “substitution” (swapping in tasks or roles that better suit you). These strategies offer a structured way to gradually reshape your calendar and infuse more genuine purpose into your routine.
Overcome ‘purpose anxiety’ by building, not ‘finding’
If you feel frustrated by being told to “find your purpose,” you’re not alone. Jordan reframes purpose as something you construct step by step—through small experiments, tackling regrets, or revisiting childhood passions—instead of a hidden treasure you stumble upon. This perspective gives you permission to explore, pivot, and grow without the fear of “failing” at life’s big questions.
Notable quotes
“A lot of us try to purpose our way to ‘enough.’ But unless we revisit our old stories and regrets, no amount of achievement will make us truly feel it.”
“Don’t wait to ‘find’ your purpose. Build it. Add it to your life bit by bit, so you create a mosaic of joyful, meaningful activities.”
“We need to put purpose before our financial framework—money is just a tool that helps us live our best lives.”
Episode at-a-glance
04:59 Big P vs. Little P Purpose
08:47 Meaning vs. Purpose
18:13 Finding Purpose in Everyday Life
28:47 Defining Purpose and Legacy
33:58 Purpose in Personal Finance
41:49 Building Purpose Anchors
Jordan’s Links:
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Transcript:
Jordan Grummet:
I always say, you don’t find purpose. You build purpose. So you do need some of these anchors, some of these things you enjoy. And we talked about the joys of childhood are a great place to find purpose anchors, like, what did I love as a kid? Well, can I bring that back into my life as an adult? Did you love riding horses? Well, can I bring that back as an adult, can that be a purpose anchor? And then I can build a life of purpose around it.
Tori Dunlap:
Okay, so you all know how I think, how I watch The Food Network all the time. That is probably 60% of my TV watching, probably more than that honestly, is Food Network. And one of my 2025 goals, I have two big ones that feel stretch goals, and so I’m manifesting them, I’m saying them out into the world.
One is that I want to be on Sesame Street and I want to teach The Muppets how to be good with money and teach Cookie Monster how to afford his cookies. And Elmo was my favorite and always has been. We posted a couple photos on Instagram about it, but I carried him around everywhere and I still… My mom decorated, this is maybe a little weird, but too bad. My mom decorated my college dorm as a go fly, be free with Elmo stuff. It was subtle, but Elmo soap and a little Elmo cutout that she put on my mirror. And I had this little Elmo I carried everywhere and I couldn’t pronounce Elmo, so I called him Daw. So Daw is my favorite. So that is one goal I have is being on Sesame Street.
My second goal for 2025 is I want to be a guest judge on The Food Network, and the one that probably makes the most sense is Beat Bobby Flay and I have become friends with Sophie, his daughter. Hello Sophie, if you’re listening, and one of the things that I fucking love about Bobby Flay, and I’ve already rehearsed this in my mind of… Because if you haven’t seen an episode of Beat Bobby Flay, you come on and the guests, you try to beat him and you just make fun of him the entire time and it’s kind of fun. And if you watch that show, you’ll realize that Bobby Flay relies on two key ingredients. I can almost bet you that at least 75% of the dishes are going to have one of two things. Calabrian chilies or pomegranates. These are his crutches. And I get it. I do the same thing. I have my key ingredients that go in everything, and I’m not even a fucking chef. I get it. But also I just think it’s hysterical.
So when, I’m not going to say if, when I get on The Food Network, Bobby Flay. Yeah, I’m making fun of your pomegranate usage. Like my man, I love pomegranates too, I get them. They’re little beautiful little pearls, they’re nature’s gushers. I get it. But the crutch of the pomegranate, I’m like, let’s do something else. The Calabrian chilies, I get it. They’re great. So I was watching Bobby Flay and literally one of the people who was challenging him brought out a can of Calabrian chilies and was like, “Here you go, Bobby,” as a joke. And I fucking loved it. Anyway, that’s my love of The Food Network.
And speaking of goals, we have an episode coming out next week about goals. And this probably fun little antidote should have gone on that, but too bad. Today’s episode is… Oh, I didn’t even do an intro. That’s fine. You can keep this. Hi, you know me. And if you don’t… You probably don’t actually, because we get a bunch of new listeners in the new year. I’m Tori, I’m a New York Times bestselling author. I’m a multimillionaire. We have over 5 million social media followers and we have helped them save money, pay off debt, start investing, start businesses. I believe I was put on this earth to fight for your financial rights. We fight the patriarchy, we get rich. The show is a feminist show that happens to talk about money. So we talk about money and how it affects women differently as well as different issues around self-confidence, self-worth and just liking yourself more. So thank you for being here and we hope you stick around. We have over 200 episodes that you can listen to, to kickstart your goals and your finances for this year. Hello, welcome.
That was probably too long of an intro for someone who’s never met me, and it’s like we’re going to talk about The Food Network? This is not a Food Network podcast. I kind of wish it was.
Let’s talk about today’s episode with a returning guest and a friend of mine. This is such a powerful episode that truly will set your 2025 off on the right foot. So let’s talk about Jordan, Doc G. Jordan Grumet, born in Evanston, Illinois found the spark to become a doctor after a deeply personal event reshaped his life’s trajectory. You can listen to that life’s event and more about it in the previous episode that we did. But his loss of his father, who was an oncologist, ignited a passion within him to practice medicine and instilled a unique vantage point that later melded seamlessly with his financial expertise.
This convergence of roles has spurred him to explore profound notions like wealth, abundance, and financial independence with a thoughtful and critical lens. In August 2022, Jordan’s literary pursuit took shape as his book, Taking Stock: A Hospice Doctor’s Advice on Financial Independence, Building Wealth, and Living a Regret-Free Life was published. And his second book, The Purpose Code, is out now or is out maybe tomorrow. And we’re so excited to have him on the show. Jordan’s journey intertwines Medical Insight and financial wisdom resonating deeply with those seeking a balanced, meaningful life.
So first of all, if you did not listen to the first episode we did with Doc G, it was so powerful about how to live a regret free life, how to discover what’s important to you and how to really show up for yourself and for others. On today’s episode, which was so impactful for me that I was literally taking notes as we were talking, we get into the difference between purpose and passion and even further, the difference between big P passion and little P passion, how purpose and passion tie into our finances and why it’s important to keep purpose at the forefront while not altogether for forgoing passion and finding a better balance to build happier lives.
This is the perfect episode to kickstart this year. I would love for you to listen to it and share it with others in your life who you think would get a lot from it. So without further ado, let’s go ahead and get into it. But first a word from our sponsors.
I can only cold plunge when it’s like… I have to be very, very warm before. I have friends who just raw dog it, who just get immediately into the cold plunge and I’m, like, I can’t. Couldn’t be me.
Jordan Grummet:
Too much, man. Too much.
Tori Dunlap:
Yeah, I got to be in the sauna until I’m so hot that actually the cold’s going to feel good. That’s where I’m at.
Jordan Grummet:
Yeah.
Tori Dunlap:
I’m excited to have you back on the show. I love bringing people back, repeat guests. What have you been up to since the last time we chatted?
Jordan Grummet:
I’ve been writing and thinking about purpose and talking to people about purpose and doing purpose coaching and podcasting and masterminding. So lots of talking about what drives people to do what they do.
Tori Dunlap:
Can we talk about the importance of just purpose in general, specifically why you’re so committed to talking about it alongside personal finance?
Jordan Grummet:
So I was not talking about purpose a few years ago. In fact, I wrote a book called Taking Stock. I’m a hospice doctor, I deal with dying patients. I wrote this book about what the dying can teach us about money and life. And one of the main premises of that book was that we should put purpose before our financial framework. So purpose should come first.
And I went to market this book and I would give talks and I’d go to conferences and people would come up to me afterwards and instead of being excited and happy, they’d be kind of angry. And the first time this happened, I’m like, “What’s going on? Why are you angry?” And they’d look at me and they’d say, “Stop telling me to find my purpose. I’m so sick of people telling me to find purpose. I’ve been looking for it my whole life. I can’t find it and it’s frustrating me. I don’t think there is purpose.”
And so the first time I heard this, I kind of blew it off, but I heard it over and over again. I’m like, there’s something here. And I did a deep dive and after looking at many, many studies about purpose, I found two things that seem to contradict each other. First and foremost, purpose is associated with health, longevity and happiness. There’s a clear association, multiple, multiple studies, that’s one side.
But on the other side, up to 91% of people at some point in their life have what’s called purpose anxiety. This idea of purpose actually makes them frustrated and depressed. And so I saw a paradox here. And so the question is how do we resolve that paradox? And that became the story behind The Purpose Code. And the connection to money is just this: basically money is a tool and we want to use that tool to live the best, most happy life we can. And I think purpose is essential to happiness and that’s why it comes into the money conversation.
Tori Dunlap:
Yeah, I mean I have so much empathy for the people who are angry because I feel like that’s so many people, but especially so many women where it’s just, yeah, you’re told to find your passion, find your purpose, and then you feel crazy if you can’t find it.
And especially if you’re watching, whether it’s me, somebody else who… I have been so clear on what my purpose was, but I’ve told this story many times. I didn’t know this until the 2016 election until years after that. So I do think it’s so annoying though to watch people on social media, watch people in our lives be like, “Oh, they said they were going to be an author when they were three and now they’re an author.” I just have empathy for that.
So with that anger, talk to me a bit more about really what’s going on for that person. Obviously they don’t feel like they have a purpose. Why for them is that such a frustrating thing? And how can we at least, and we’ll talk the whole episode about it, but how can we help them move through that frustration?
Jordan Grummet:
Well, it’s actually pretty simple. Most of us are brought up believing that we have this one big essential purpose and we either find it and live a happy life or we don’t find it an all is lost. And so that’s the baseline.
But then also listen to all the voices that are telling us what purpose should look like. So we have online influencers who are showing us TikToks and Instagrams of making seven figures in their business, traveling the world, having six-pack abs. Basically, there are all sorts of versions of purpose that people are trying to sell to us. And many of these influencers, not all of them, there are some very ethical good influencers, you and I both know some of them.
Tori Dunlap:
You were calling me out for a second and then you said six-pack abs, and I was like, “Oh, phew, it’s not me.”
Jordan Grummet:
Well, the question often is is, why are you influencing in the way you are? So some people are influencing to make money, and so they create all these visions of what they think you want to see to make money off you versus some people influence to say, “Hey, this is possible and you can achieve some of the things you want.” And there’s a big ethical difference I think, between the two.
And so I think people trying to sell us stuff show us a version of purpose, and often we co-opt it because we don’t know what purpose should be. And I think marketers do the same thing, right? All these images of what we should buy and what kind of lifestyle we should live, they’re all trying to sell us something. So there’s this vacuum. We know we should find purpose, but we don’t know what it is. And then we have people filling this vacuum who sometimes are filling this vacuum to fulfill their own needs and not ours.
And so we develop what I call big P purpose, this big audacious plan for what is purposeful in our life. So if we do have an image of what that is, the image is actually something that most of us don’t have agency to actually achieve. Most of us can’t get six-pack abs no matter how hard we try. Most of us can’t become president, right? We know there’s an election coming up and there’s only going to be one. So that’s kind of all or nothing and winner takes all. And most of us aren’t the winner. Most of us don’t have the genetics.
And a lot of times most of us just don’t have the luck. And so if you don’t have all these things and your version of purpose is really big and you happen not to get it right, you feel frustrated and anxious and confused because what’s been sold to us is what our purpose should be, this big P, this big audacious purpose is something we don’t have the agency to achieve, and so it feels really bad.
Tori Dunlap:
Well, and I think we’re often told, and I wasn’t even going to talk about this, but what you just mentioned brought it up for me of like, and again, I’m through the lens of women, like, when I have this, then I’ll be happy. And so the purpose is in getting the thing, when I have this amount of money in my bank account, then I will be happy, that’s my purpose. Or when I weigh this amount, then I’ll be happy. When I find a partner, then I’ll be happy.
And so it’s equating, as cheesy as it sounds, of course, success to the destination, not the journey, but also specifically of this one outcome that I would argue really is patriarchy lying to us. Diet culture is the easiest thing we can point to, of like, genetics and what you eat and how active you are have everything to do with your health, not if you took that diet pill or if you’re pushing yourself to exhaustion or what even your weight looks like, right? We know weight is kind of bullshit. So I think that it is the equating, like, if I get this, then I’ll be happy.
Jordan Grummet:
Yeah. So two things about that. One is it’s goal-oriented purpose, which tends to really be a letdown, especially if you’re spending all your time doing things you don’t like to do in order to get that goal, that’s first of all. Second of all, it’s someone else’s version of purpose that they’re thrusting onto us.
Tori Dunlap:
Yes.
Jordan Grummet:
And so very much as you said, the difference is that unhealthy purpose, that big P purpose, is very goal-oriented, whereas I really am pushing for what I call little P purpose, which is very process-oriented.
So what are the things that light us up that we really like to do that it doesn’t matter if we reach the end goal or not. Now that doesn’t mean you can’t have goals, and that doesn’t mean reaching them isn’t joyful. But if you’re not enjoying the process, you’re kind of wasting your time. And unlike the scarcity with big P purpose, that again is all or nothing and winter takes all and only a few people get there. Little P purpose is very abundant. How many millions of things could we love the process of doing? It takes all the stakes off of it. Instead of being this, like, “I find this thing and I live a good life, or I don’t find this thing and I don’t.” It’s like, no, there are very many versions of what could light you up. And if you start pursuing those intentionally, you’ll find yourself becoming much more happy.
Tori Dunlap:
The thing I hear immediately from you, that is something I’ve tried to work on and I totally agree, is that you have to do things even if you are bad at them, if they make you happy.
Jordan Grummet:
Yes.
Tori Dunlap:
But I’m a high achiever. Everybody listening is a high achiever. I don’t want to be bad at things. I want to be good at them. I want to not do something if I feel like I’m going to suck at it. And of course, I have known for years that this is not the way we go about it, but it sounds like we do have to take pottery classes, even if we’re not the world’s best potter. How do we do that though?
Jordan Grummet:
So here’s a distinction that I think takes a moment to understand, but once you do makes this much more clear, and it’s the distinction between meaning and purpose.
So let’s talk about the difference between meaning and purpose. And I think you need both meaning and purpose to be happy. So meaning is about our past and it’s about our thoughts. It’s our cognitive understanding of our past. It’s the stories we tell ourselves about ourselves. People who have a good sense of meaning and end up happy, tell themselves heroic stories about themselves. They say, “Well, I went through something really hard and shitty and it was bad, but look where I am today and how I grew.” Whereas unhappy people tend to tell themselves a victim story. “I went through something really bad and shitty and hard, and look where I am today. It’s not where I want to be because I was held back.”
That’s meaning. And people who have a good sense of meaning come to a good sense of enough-ness, right? When you have a great sense of meaning, what you kind of say is, “Bad things happen to me, but I was enough and I grew and pivoted, and I am enough today.” But when you have a bad sense of meaning, you kind of say, “I’m not enough.”
So how does that play into the conversation we’re having? Well, purpose is not about the past. Purpose is about the present and future and has everything to do with action. So again, meaning has to do with thoughts and is about the past. Purpose has to do with the present and future and is about action. You can’t purpose yourself to happiness and you can’t purpose yourself to enough. You have to address meaning to get to enough. And then once you do that, you can joyfully go into the actions of today and tomorrow that are purpose.
So the problem with overachievers is often they think that they can purpose their way to enough that if I just achieve this thing, I’m going to feel good about myself and everything is going to be okay. And the perfect example of this is Elon Musk. Elon Musk is one of the most wealthy people. He is the most wealthy person, and he’s also accomplished some of the most amazing things. He’s achieved everything he could want to achieve, and yet he doesn’t look happy at all. He’s trying to purpose his way to enough.
Elon had a tough childhood, and he had a father who’s hard on him, and he got teased a lot. If he really wants to feel better about himself, he has to go back to meaning and tell himself better stories about himself. No matter how many achievements Elon has, none of them are going to make him happy. And you and I we’re not as likely to be as successful as Elon. So thinking we can chase achievements and that’s going to really get us to happiness, I don’t know if it’s going to work.
Tori Dunlap:
So how do you then balance the goals you have with not having those goals wreck your pursuit of purpose?
Jordan Grummet:
So we have to be goal-agnostic, but not goal-phobic. Goal-agnostic, but not goal-phobic.
Tori Dunlap:
Okay.
Jordan Grummet:
We can have goals and we can joyfully pursue those goals, but if we’re not enjoying the process of doing what we’re doing, then all is lost. So whether you reach the goal or not is really not the point. And for me, I love podcasting. And so I always use podcasting as an example. I could plan to have 10 million downloads a month, and that could be my goal, and that’s fine as long as I still love getting in front of the mic and interviewing someone regardless if anyone listens or not.
But when I start looking at that 10 million and I’m like, “I’m only getting 500,000 and this doesn’t feel good,” and I start doing things I don’t like doing, like getting out on social media and spending 12, 24 hours a day doing it instead of spending time with my family and it gets pressured and anxious and it no longer feels good, then I’ve let big P purpose get in the way of actual enjoyment and fulfillment.
And so for me, hell, I’d love to have millions of downloads a month, but whether I get there or not, what I really want to do is enjoy the moments of doing the thing. And so goal-agnostic, that’s what I think most of us should be. But hey, set big goals. That’s awesome. Just make sure your happiness and your sense of purpose doesn’t rely on reaching those goals.
Tori Dunlap:
Well, and it sounds like the pursuit of goals, even if they’re not aligned with your purpose, what you’re describing is burnout. What you’re describing is doing the thing that you don’t really like over and over and over again because you feel like it’s what you should be doing.
And we’ve talked with Jenna Kutcher on this show about burnout. And burnout really only happens if yeah, you’re pursuing something that doesn’t feel good. I can work really hard, but if I have, again, my sense of purpose, if I like what I’m doing, it doesn’t feel, at least not all the time, it doesn’t feel like such a strain. So I think what, yeah, what you’re describing is you’re doing this thing over and over again without purpose, it’s burnout.
Jordan Grummet:
And I would add, let’s say you do have this big audacious goal and it’s really, really important to you, and you spend a lot of time doing things you don’t like in pursuit of that goal. Here’s the problem. You spend 90 to 95% of your time doing something you don’t like doing for the 5% of reaching that goal. And we all know this, because of hedonic adaption, that reaching a goal doesn’t make you feel good long term.
Tori Dunlap:
Yeah.
Jordan Grummet:
It makes you feel good short term, but eventually, especially if you’re trying to purpose your way to enough, right, if you don’t feel enough inside and you reach that goal and you feel enough briefly, we all know it doesn’t solve the problem and you’re going to set another goal, you’re going to double down and you’re going to find yourself, again, spending 90% of your time doing stuff you don’t like in service of a goal that doesn’t actually fulfill your needs.
Tori Dunlap:
Kristen’s going to be so happy, I’m actually going to ask you a question from the sheet. I’ve been riffing with you until now. Okay, so we talked about purpose anxiety before. Can you define what that is, what it feels like? Because I imagine we’ve all had it at some point.
Jordan Grummet:
Yeah. Purpose anxiety is that feeling of disconnection we get when we’ve been told our whole lives that we should have purpose, and yet we can’t really define what that looks like. We don’t know what the activities are. We don’t know what fills us up or lights us up. We don’t know what the impact or legacy is supposed to be. And so we feel lost. We feel like there’s this calling and we’re missing it. And generally we feel bad. We feel bad about ourselves, and we feel bad about our place in the world. And that’s why people get so angry and they become what I call purpose nihilists, right? They decide, well, there is no purpose. And the problem with nihilism in general is it’s usually a form of anxiety.
Tori Dunlap:
I think about in my own life, and I know for all of the women listening, there is a constant stream of expectations for what we should or should not be doing with our lives and what we should or should not be doing with our careers and in relationships or not relationships.
And I love my parents very much, but I think the first most brave thing that I did in my early 20s was determine what do I actually want? And it was really, really difficult. It took me years to… I’m an only child, I want to make my parents proud, but I had a very different idea of what made myself proud versus what my parents wanted for me. And that was so difficult because I love them. I want all these things. And I think talk to me about the sort of messages we receive from society, from well-meaning family or friends, if it doesn’t fit with what we actually want for ourselves.
Jordan Grummet:
So I think we talked a little bit about influencers and marketing, but a huge place where we’re told what purpose should look like from our families and our parents specifically, and society pushes this idea that it’s fun and fine is a little kid to do things you love and you enjoy and that fill you up. So little kids are full of purpose, right? They go out and they play and they don’t care the outcome. They are so in the moment, that’s why they always forget time and come late for dinner because they are so in the flow of doing what they’re doing that they lose track of all time.
But what happens? We get older and we let go of those childlike joys and replace them with plans for a career. Like playing is fine, but you got to become a CPA or a doctor or a lawyer or whatever it is.
Tori Dunlap:
Yeah, you got to pay rent, you got to pay your insurance. When you’re a kid, yeah, you’re not thinking about how do I pay rent. Yeah.
Jordan Grummet:
And we get trapped into these things. And does that mean that we shouldn’t embark on careers? No. But what I also think is we have to connect and hold onto those senses of joy that we have because we should be integrating those into our lives. Is everyone going to have a job that they love that is purposeful? No, but we have a set amount of time on this earth, and the only thing we have control of is what activities we put in those time slots.
We want to be looking regularly at our calendar and trying to figure out, here’s where we are today and how can we bring in more purposeful activities and get rid of more activities we loathe, and that’s that calculus that we should be doing on our calendar throughout our lives. And in the beginning of our lives, we might have more things there that we don’t love, maybe careers we don’t love because of the necessity of making money and building a family and doing all those basic things. But as we get older, we should really be moving much more to things we love and getting rid of things we loathe.
Tori Dunlap:
In America, the default is you hear purpose, you think career. I think your purpose can come from your job or part of your purpose can come from your job. But as you said, and as we know, some people work jobs where they’re not passionate about it, but they need to get paid. How else can purpose show up for us and how do we make sure that it’s a healthy purpose as opposed to, again, tied up in our self-worth or tied up in other people’s expectations for us?
Jordan Grummet:
So I think it’s really important to differentiate between big P purpose and little P purpose. And I think big P purpose, that big audacious purpose that’s goal oriented, that’s all or nothing. I think that’s what really leads to the anxiety.
And so what we’re really talking about is little P purpose is the kind of purpose I think most of us should be engaging in. This is process-oriented, doing things we love, it’s incredibly abundant. And so I think we should build a life of purpose around that. So what I always say, you don’t find purpose, you build purpose. So you do need some of these anchors, some of these things you enjoy.
And we talked about the joys of childhood are a great place to find purpose anchors. What did I love as a kid? Well, can I bring that back into my life as an adult? Did you love riding horses? Well, can I bring that back as an adult? Can that be a purpose anchor? And then I can build a life of purpose around it. That does also mean that you can incorporate purpose into your job. So yes, you could teach riding and that could be what you do, but maybe you’re a journalist and you write at magazines. So maybe you switch jobs and you write for a horse riding magazine. You’re still practicing your career, but you’re bringing one of those anchors in and you’re building a life of purpose around it.
And so the idea is how do we find these anchors, and then how do we incorporate them more into our lives in whatever ways we can. The joys of childhood is a great anchor. The art of subtraction, taking what you… Maybe a job you don’t like, but finding that five or 10 minutes during the day that you love of your job and trying to exploit that and build more of that into your life.
I’ve talked about a lot, life review, I talk about that in my book, Taking Stock. As a hospice doctor, we do something called the life review where we talk to our patients, our dying patients about a lot of things. One of the big things we talk about is regret. And so regret in a dying person is really dissatisfying because you don’t have agency to undo that. But regret in a young person is just another word for a purpose anchor, right? If I’m regretting something and I’m 30 years old, why aren’t I building a life of purpose around that?
And the mistake everyone makes is they think that purpose has to be this big thing. You can have tons of types of purpose. You can have four or five going at a time. One of them could last a week or a month. Some of them might last your whole lifetime. Some of them might just be for you. Some of your versions of purpose might be for other people. There are no rules other than you have to kind of love doing what you’re doing while you’re in the process.
So to bring it all home, purpose is not something we do for a living, purpose is not a job. Purpose is who we are. And so the point is, how do we bring more of who we are into our jobs, into our extracurricular activities, into our hobbies? How do we bring who we want to be and who we are into our everyday life? And so it’s about living consistently with what’s important to you.
Tori Dunlap:
I promise this is connected. Have you either read or seen The Notebook?
Jordan Grummet:
Yes, I have. I’ve seen The Notebook and I’ve cried.
Tori Dunlap:
Oh, I can’t talk too much about it, or I’ll start crying. I think we’ve all seen The Notebook. If you haven’t read the book, and I think maybe the movie starts this way too, but there’s this beautiful quote that starts the book where he’s like, “I haven’t lived a grand life. I haven’t created a cure for anything. I haven’t traveled a bunch, but I’ve loved really deeply. I’ve loved another person with my entire heart. And that for me is enough.”
And it sounds like that is kind of what we’re talking about here is it’s like you don’t need to cure cancer. You don’t need to win a Nobel Peace Prize. You don’t need to do all of these things. You need to make sure that you are doing good in the world and that you’re making yourself and others happy, right? Is that kind of what we’re talking about?
Jordan Grummet:
It is. And in fact, I would say that this is backed up by data. So we talk about what really makes people happy. And I’ve already told you that the studies show that purpose increases health, longevity, and happiness.
But the truth of the matter is, I’m going to contradict myself here. The longest standing study on happiness is the Harvard Adult Developmental Study. It started in the early 1900s, they took a bunch of Harvard grads, eventually they included a bunch of their family members, eventually they took some controls from Boston in general. And they did questionnaires with them every two years, and as the technology improved, they started doing blood tests, MRIs, EEGs, interviewing their family members, asking about happiness, income, all these kinds of things. And they studied them for over 80 years.
And their conclusion was the thing most related to happiness was not money, was not achievements, was not your job and wasn’t even purpose per se. It was interpersonal connections.
But here’s the thing, my belief is the best way to form communities and build interpersonal connections is through little P purpose. When you do things that light you up that you love the process of doing, you shine brightly and it attracts other people like a moth to the flame. They want to collaborate with you. They want to learn from you. They want to teach you if they know things you don’t. And this creates communities, and I believe communities and love and connection, all of that is what eventually brings happiness. So just like The Notebook, I think the main character found love and connection.
Now, I will argue, and I’ve argued in my book that people are probably not a great version of purpose. And there are a lot of reasons for that, but people are very, very important.
Tori Dunlap:
Yeah. You can’t tie up your purpose into another person because then it’s very close to when I get a boyfriend, I’ll be happy. When I repair my relationship with my partner then I’ll be happy, right? It’s more that do you surround yourself in relationships where you feel loved, where you can give, where, yeah, it feels like you’re leaving that interaction with somebody feeling good about yourself.
Jordan Grummet:
Yeah. And I’ve made the argument in this book that little P purpose actually leads to greater impact and legacy than big P purpose.
And one of the ways it does, and it relates to this idea that people can’t be your purpose, is when you pursue your version of little P purpose and people see that modeling, they see you lit up doing things you love in forming communities, that gives them permission to do the same.
So I especially think about this with parents and children. I don’t want my children to grow up and think that their whole life’s happiness is connected to their own children. I want them to have the ability to say, “No, I’m going to do things that are deeply important to me and that’s going to connect me to other people.” And I want to give them permission to pursue that type of purpose in their life. Not that their kids won’t be important or their spouse or everyone else, but I want to give them that permission to really pursue a joyful life where they’re doing things that really light them up.
Tori Dunlap:
I want to talk briefly about the story you opened your book with about a man you knew as a child named Roman and how his journey really impacted other people. Can you share some of that story and why it was important for you to open the book with that?
Jordan Grummet:
Roman was probably one of the purest versions of little P purpose that I’ve ever seen. And this is why. He was a football player in high school, loved football, hurt his knee, decided not to go to college, and took over his father’s antique store. And he used to basically take armoires and desks and things, and he would basically fix them up, clean them and sell them to other people.
And one day when he was doing this, he found a collection of baseball cards in one of the armoire drawers when he was cleaning it. So he thought nothing of it. He didn’t know anything about baseball cards. He took them, he put them out on the desk, didn’t think about it again. A few days later, a woman came in with her snarky teenager, and the teenager was acting bored as teenagers do in an antique shop. And he saw these baseball cards and the teenager thumbed threw him and he said, “I’ll give you 10 bucks for these cards.”
Now, Roman had no idea what they were worth, and he had gotten permission from the owner of the armoire who didn’t want them to go ahead and sell them. So he thought he was making out pretty good, 10 bucks, not so bad, easy money. So he sells them to the kid and the kid lays him out right in front of him on the desk and says, “This one, this one, this one together worth $100.” Now instead of being pissed, Roman got strangely excited, he was like, “Oh, this is really kind of cool. This feels joyful to me.”
So immediately he hired the kid and he decided he was going to start selling baseball cards in his antique store. As the years passed, it became more and more of his business. He loved it, and it became a hub for kids, teenagers in the area. And I was one of those kids. And I had a learning disability, and my dad died and I had almost no friends, and I was feeling very lost. And I would go to his antique store and we would talk about baseball cards, and Roman became our mentor. If you had a bad day, he’d give you a free pack and you’d open it up and you’d laugh. And I developed a sense of friends and community that I had never had before. And it wasn’t just me, it was probably hundreds of other kids.
And so Roman eventually got cancer and had to actually close his store, and he eventually died. But interestingly enough, those kids, those hundred kids, walked the world with a new sense of confidence. They went out to the world and they became doctors and lawyers and CPAs. Some of them probably sold things just like Roman. And the thing is, that was never Roman’s purpose. His purpose wasn’t to change the world of all these kids. It wasn’t even to build a community. He just loved buying and selling the baseball cards. And that filled him up. That was his little P purpose.
But now 30 years later, after he’s died, I’m still talking about him. He’s changed my life. And this is what I call generational growth. When we do things that light us up and form communities around ourselves based on these things, like a stone dropped in the ocean, we create a wave and with nowhere else for that displaced water to go. It builds at times and joins other waves and then dissipates at other times. But it keeps going sometimes for years, sometimes for hundreds of miles and washes up on the shore and looks like me being a doctor, it looks like someone else deciding to collect baseball cards with his or her son or daughter, and having that bond and connection.
And so that’s the important, because I don’t want people to hear this and be like, “Well, you’re talking about little P purpose and you are selfish. What you’re saying is we should all be these hedonists who just do what we want.” But what I’m really trying to say is if we want to pass something on, if we want impact and legacy, we can go for this big audacious purpose. I could have decided that instead of learning from Roman, I wanted to be Mickey Mantle because I collected Mickey Mantle baseball cards and he was a great baseball player. But if that was my version of purpose, I most likely would’ve been failed. It was probably not the right person at the right time with the right skill set, with the right amount of luck, I probably would’ve never made it, and I would’ve felt a great deal of anxiousness.
But instead, I had this model of this guy doing something he deeply loved and that gave me permission to do the same. And his impact and his legacy lives on, even if you don’t see him in any record books. And that’s what I want for people reading this book. I want them to develop this version of purpose so they can quietly change the world and affect the people around them.
Tori Dunlap:
All I do on the show is cry.
Jordan Grummet:
Me too. Me too.
Tori Dunlap:
That’s really lovely, thank you. Sorry, give me a second. It’s really sweet.
Well, and it just reminds me that the best thing that you can do is just live the version of life that feels most authentic and joyful for you. You want to change the world, you want to make an impact on people, it’s just by being the kindest, most authentic version of yourself. And you’re right, it’s not selfish, it’s actually… It feels selfish because it’s true to you. But the amount of people that I have taken inspiration from just because they are so authentically themselves and so warm and kind because they like themselves and it makes me like myself more.
And you’re exactly right. Again, it doesn’t have to be this crazy accomplishment. You don’t have to play in the MLB, you don’t have to do all these things. You can live a very, quote unquote, “stereotypical normal life,” but you can impact the people around you just because you are so authentically yourself.
Jordan Grummet:
And I think that’s how we change the world. I think we change the world… I think we act locally and think globally. I think we change the world locally and I think it has consequences and it matters. And that’s why it’s so important to actually be intentional and do what’s important to you because that’s what we’re really sending out into the world.
Tori Dunlap:
Okay, I need a second then we’re going to talk about personal finance. Hold on.
Jordan Grummet:
Yeah, for sure. And this ties in very well with personal finance.
Tori Dunlap:
It does, a hundred percent. No, I had a fun, and we can keep this, Kristen, if we want. I had a fun little cry in the parking lot this morning because as we’re recording this it’s Halloween and we’re days before the election, and I’m just like, it’s hitting me. The stress is hitting me.
Jordan Grummet:
Yeah, it’s hard.
Tori Dunlap:
I’m really nervous and I’m scared and I’m angry, and I’m just like, why do I have to beg? And women have to beg other people to take our rights seriously. It’s just so frustrating. And I just keep coming back to these small moments of joy and hope that I’m looking at.
And it’s not… I love her speeches. It’s the beautiful speeches from Kamala Harris, but it’s these little moments of, I was phone banking this weekend and people are just like, “Thank you, sweetie for calling. It’s just so nice.” And it’s just, I’m like, God, change really just does happen. It’s just so tiny. It’s just these little human to human interactions. It’s just you showing up as the best version of yourself that you can give that day. It’s not these huge grand gestures. I don’t know. I’m just really emotional today.
Jordan Grummet:
I definitely think, and I’ve been thinking about this a lot. The truth of the matter is you and I fall on the same side politically very clearly.
Tori Dunlap:
Yeah, yeah.
Jordan Grummet:
But no matter what happens at the end of this election, somewhere around 45 to 50% of the population is going to be miserably upset.
Tori Dunlap:
Yeah, yep.
Jordan Grummet:
And I think this is a big time to start thinking about, again, purpose and being intentional because this is what we have agency over. And so up until the election, we have some agency, we can phone bank, we can give money, we can do all these kind of things to the causes we believe in. But we will be wherever we are in January of 2025. And that’s why I think turning it back inwards and thinking about purpose and what we can do and what we have agency to show up as our best selves and affect the world, I think this conversation of purpose becomes even more important.
Tori Dunlap:
Yeah. And Kristen, I don’t even know when we’re releasing this. It’s going to be definitely after the election. So everybody who’s listening, hello, hopefully our outcome is what we want it to be. And if it’s not, like, okay, the work doesn’t change. The work doesn’t stop regardless of who gets elected or regardless of what happens, right? The work continues. And yeah, your own personal sense of purpose has to continue regardless of who gets elected president or senator or not. Yeah.
Okay. So when we’re talking about money, and I so believe this, and I know you believe this as well, that money is not really about math. It’s not really about your Excel spreadsheets, it’s about your emotions, your psychology. And of course for you, it’s really about purpose. And in my book I talk about when you’re setting financial goals, they need to be specific. You need to be a specific amount of money or specifically what you want to do. They need to be timely. You need to know when you’re trying to achieve them by. But they also need to be mission-driven. They need to have what you would say is purpose, which I agree. For me, my 100K goal was not just 100K at 25, it was 100K at 25 so I can start my business or continue my business full time.
So can we talk about why we have to actually think about purpose before we think about how to create our budget categories and that sort of thing?
Jordan Grummet:
So money is a great tool, but that’s all it is. So the question is what are we going to use this extremely powerful tool to achieve? And if you don’t think about purpose, then you don’t really know what you are amassing money for. And this was very clear to me is I was amassing money as a doctor and then realized this purpose, this identity that I bought into no longer fit me. I burnt out. I realized that I probably walked this pathway because my father died when I was young and he was a doctor and I was trying to make up for this cosmic mistake by walking in his footsteps.
And then I got to a place and I’m like, “Oh, this is stressing me out. I can make enough money to walk away from it.” But I hit that panic, that anxiety, that purpose anxiety and depression because I didn’t know what the heck I was going to do with myself or who I would be. So I had amassed all this money, but I didn’t know what to do with that tool.
And I love this way of thinking because it works both ways. So, money is a tool and it’s a important tool, but it’s not the only tool. And so people forget, and I get this argument all the time, it’s like, “ell, you’re a doctor. You made it to financial independence. It’s really a privilege. And well, of course you can talk about purpose, but the rest of us aren’t in such a good position.”
But I remind people that money is a tool, but it’s not the only tool. In fact, we have a bunch of other tools in our tool belt. We have our passions, we have our youth, our energy, our communities, our skills. And a lot of times young people when they feel like they’re stressed out and they’re working their 8:00 to 6:00 and they don’t really like their job and they say, “I can’t try to find this purpose thing now.”
A lot of times I remind them, I’m 51, I have a mortgage, I have kids. You’re in your 20s. So you might not have the tool of money I have, but you have the tool of energy and time. You probably don’t have a mortgage or kids yet. So maybe you can add in some purposeful activities during the weekend. Maybe you do a side hustle doing something you really love for three hours on Sunday and six months later, if that turns into a revenue stream, maybe you can back off that 9:00 to 5:00 a little bit and give yourself some extra time, give yourself some margin.
And if it doesn’t turn into a revenue stream, at least you just added in three hours of purposeful activity to what would otherwise not be purposeful. I think money helps us, but we have to start looking at those other tools and those other abilities.
Tori Dunlap:
Yeah, I think that, again, it’s very easy to get caught up in, especially you were just talking about monetizing, I have… And I really make an effort to this year and last year. But up till then, I’ve monetized every hobby I’ve had. And it’s so easy under capitalism to be like, “Oh, I like to read. I should start a book Instagram and promote books,” right?
I actually have a friend, a good friend of mine who lives in this beautiful apartment. It’s like a brick facade. She’s a really good… She has designed it very beautifully. And she started posting these very beautiful videos of her apartment and the sunset through the windows on TikTok. And she comes to me and she’s like, “I absolutely love this.” And I was like, “I love it too. I think it looks great.” It’s her hobby now. She’s like, “I’m creating these videos and they’re really cute and I’m creating this community.”
And we had a conversation where she’s like, “I think I could probably… Maybe I could make money off of this.” And I was like, “Don’t.” I was like, “Don’t do it.” Yes, you could. And even part of me, I think at first I was like, “Well, you could monetize that if you got to a certain level.” And I was like, “But you might hate it then if it becomes something you’re trying to do to make money, you might feel obligated then to do it, or you might feel trapped into doing it.”
And so how do we reject the impulse to monetize everything that brings us joy or again, to feel like we have to be good at it or there’s no point in doing it, even if we like it and it makes us happy?
Jordan Grummet:
So behavioral theory agrees with you. So there’s this thing about internal motivation and external rewards, and the studies show that actually if you take something you’re highly internally motivated to do and you receive external rewards like money for it, it actually kills the internal motivation.
And so I think that’s a real phenomena. It gets back to being a little bit more goal-agnostic. Look, if you’re doing something and you love doing it and you’re like, “I could possibly monetize it,” go for it. But if the monetization starts taking the thing that you’re enjoying the process of doing and starts making it mangled and not fun, and you find yourself doing more and more activities that you have to do as opposed to that you love to do, then it’s time to really change.
Tori Dunlap:
Is there a way to do it? And this might be the question that neither of us can answer. What if you need that for your life? What if you become financially dependent then on that money? Do you get a new sense of purpose? What is the answer to that if you’re now between a rock and a hard place where you’re like, actually this money’s kind of nice, but I hate it?
Jordan Grummet:
That’s why I think this conversation about our tools and our toolkit as well as I would add in some levers really help us figure this out. So as I was saying, the tools are things, not just money, but also our youth, our free time, our communities, our passions, et cetera.
And then the levers, there’s three of them. There is the joy of addition, the art of subtraction and substitution. And so even if you’re busy doing something that makes you money that you don’t love, you can always add in purposeful activities, right? On the weekends, at nights, even during lunchtime, add in a little purpose in your life and you’re going to feel better about everything. So that’s the joy of addition.
There is also the art of subtraction. So the art of subtraction is you get rid of things you loathe. So maybe in your job there are things you don’t like and you’re able to change bosses or change activities or even change companies, whatever it is that you kind of subtract out the things you loathe.
And last but not least, there’s substitution. So when all else fails, what can you change up? Like I said, can you change managers? Maybe you work for one manager in the company you don’t like, maybe you can go work for another. Maybe you hate working in the mornings and you can start doing the night shift. Whatever that is, we can use those levers and those tools to make the best out of the situation.
Here’s what I always say. Winning the game is filling up as many of the time slots of your life as possible with purposeful activity and getting rid of the things you loathe. So the key then becomes try to work this calculus of your schedule over and over again every month to add in things you love, get rid of things you loathe, substitute when nothing else is possible. Use all those other tools you have and spend as much time as possible doing purposeful things.
Tori Dunlap:
So obviously we have the entire episode. Please listen, take notes of finding that purpose. What are a few steps that somebody could take right now to help find that little P purpose for themselves, especially if they’re having purpose anxiety?
Jordan Grummet:
And again, I’ll be annoying about this. We don’t really find purpose, we build it. But what you’re asking, I think more importantly, are those purpose anchors. So here are three really, actually four really good easy ways to start looking at purpose anchors.
First and foremost, we talked about regret. Take something you regret, turn it around and start building a life of purpose around it. Second one are the joys of childhood, think about what were the trophies, drawings, posters in your room when you’re a kid, could you re-explore some of those? Next, art of subtraction, look at your job, find the five minutes a day that you love and try to build purpose around whatever that activity is. And last but not least, a really easy one is the spaghetti method. Throw a bunch of stuff up against the wall and see what sticks. Try things you don’t normally try. Hang out with people you don’t normally hang out with. Do things that make you feel a little bit uncomfortable. And if you enjoy the day you did that, try building a little purpose around that.
The truth of the matter is, the more people I meet and the more coaching I do, I realize that almost everyone knows what feels like purpose in their life. They just don’t have the courage to explore it. Most people, when their eyes are closing and they’re about to fall asleep, dream a dream. And a lot of people are just too afraid to talk about what that is. I’m giving you permission. You don’t have to succeed at it. You don’t have to hit some big goal, but start building some activities around whatever that is, and the activities are abundant.
You dream of being a famous author, but hate to write. Start a book club, start a podcast, start a blog. Become the leader of a fan club for your favorite artist, whatever it is. Maybe one day you’ll decide that writing is purposeful for you and you’ll start writing. But let go of some of those big goals and just get involved in those things and build community around them, and I guarantee you’ll be happier.
Tori Dunlap:
Well, and I’ll give a couple of mine if that’s helpful for people listening.
I haven’t talked about this publicly because it’s been my own fun little journey. And honestly, I have lost it in the last couple months. But one of the commitments I made to myself this year was that I was going to get back into doing either music or theater because that was my background, that was what I love to do and I miss it so much. And so again, I haven’t been in a while, and this is going to remind me to go again, is I had started taking the occasional tap class on Saturdays. They have drop-in tap classes, and that was so fun. And guys, I’m rusty. I’m not what I used to be. The classes are challenging, but oh God, it’s so joyful and it’s so fun. And so that’s something.
I was a huge reader as a kid, continue to read. I find that when I am more miserable it’s because I’m not reading, so I’m reading. And I don’t read fiction… Or nonfiction. I feel like my life is a nonfiction book, but running this podcast is a nonfiction thing. I only read fiction. I’m reading Throne of Glass, it’s fantasy, a little smutty. It’s great. And so I think that those are the things that I’m starting to remind myself that do bring me joy, and where I do find the sense of purpose that have nothing to do with Her First $100K with my work and with my day-to-day 9:00 to 5:00 activities.
Jordan Grummet:
And what I love about this is when people really start thinking about it, and in coaching, I’ll do this where we’ll start building out the purpose anchors and looking at activities, having to do them. There is so much on their schedule that there’s no way they could do it all. You’re going to have to limit yourself because you like writing and podcasting and exercising and dancing and reading and traveling.
Tori Dunlap:
Yep.
Jordan Grummet:
And so this is that beautiful abundance that I think all of us have lost when it comes to purpose. There’s this beautiful abundance. And you’re going to actually have to narrow it down to only choosing a few because we don’t have the human time available.
And what’s wonderful about that is the minute something loses its sense of excitement or joy or purpose, you just drop it and pick something else up. So there are going to be seasons in your life where your purpose very much looks like curling up on the couch and reading. And that’s what you need during that season. And that’s fantastic. And there are going to be seasons of your life where it’s getting out there and public speaking and podcasting and interacting with the world and being much more engaged or political or whatever it may be. And your life can accommodate all those seasons comfortably.
Tori Dunlap:
And I’ll also say too, with an asterisk to that, everyone listening because I feel it too. You can’t quit because you’re bad at it, you quit because you don’t like it. You can hate being bad at something, that’s okay, but you can’t quit because you suck. If you suck and you don’t like it, okay, fine. But it can’t be, “Yeah, I’m not as good as I used to be or this other person in this class, or doing this thing is better at it than I am, or I’m never going to be the most great professional tapper ever.” That’s okay. You got to do it.
Jordan Grummet:
Can I tell you one of my biggest secrets?
Tori Dunlap:
Yeah, please.
Jordan Grummet:
The thing I’m best at in the world is being a doctor. The thing that I don’t want to do anymore, that wasn’t filling me up. I’m a much better doctor than I am a podcaster. I’m a much better doctor than I am a writer. I mean, don’t get me wrong, I think I’m a good podcaster and a writer too.
Tori Dunlap:
Yeah. Very much so.
Jordan Grummet:
But that was actually the thing in which I was best at. But I had to give myself permission to mostly step away from it because it wasn’t filling me up. I wasn’t my best person while I was doing that. I was best at the physical activity of doing it, but I became a much happier, more fulfilled person when I stepped away.
That is something I think we all have to deal with. Sometimes your sense of purpose is something that you’re just godawful at, and that’s totally okay if it still brings you joy. There’s no goal. You don’t have to be the world’s best. You just got to do things you like.
Tori Dunlap:
And I’ll also say, please don’t get in the trap of comparing yourself to other people again. So you have to be happy with your work or with the thing you learned today or the fact that you were brave enough to show up. It can’t be, I’m trying to be better than the person next to me or even I’m trying to be better than I was last week. I think it’s just being okay with being brave enough to be there.
Jordan Grummet:
And what I love about that too is when you find yourself doing your sense of purpose and you connect to communities of people, there are going to be some in that community that are far ahead of you and some of the people that are far below you.
What I’ve found is the joy of being in that community has gotten so great that I now instead of feeling jealous, feel my own sense of joy when my friends do things even in a field that I’m really interested in where they’re really successful. So for instance, Tori, I get to see you write a book and do very well in it. And so as your friend, I get to be like, “That’s my friend, and she just kicked ass.” And as opposed to the kind of jealousness I used to have, it’s much more I feel part of that success. I feel like I was part of that community that you came from where you created this great thing.
Tori Dunlap:
I appreciate that. I’ll also say too, for the listener, we haven’t really talked specifically about this, and that was my last question, we’re just riffing now. Where I wrote the book, hardest thing I’ve ever done professionally. Really glad I did it for many reasons, both the business reasons of accessibility and all of that. But proud because I did this really hard thing and I also really wanted to. As a kid I wanted to write a book. Did I think it was going to be nonfiction, personal finance? Absolutely not. But wrote a book.
I, within about six months, was getting calls from my agent and calls from my publisher, “Wow, this book’s going really well. What’s the plan for the next one?” And I know you’re writing books and you love that. I did not like the process. It was not very fun for me. And we went into this year and we had literally on our 2024 business goals that Tori was going to write her proposal for the next book.
And every time it got brought up, I was like, “I do not want to do this.” But I felt obligated. I feel like, “Oh, I need to, and I can make not a ton of money, because that’s not what books are for, but okay, it’ll do well.” And I just got to the point where I was like, “Do I want to do this?” That was the question. Not does the business need it or is it the quote unquote, “right thing to do?” Do I want to do this? My answer right now is absolutely not. I do not want to do this. And it was going to be so painful and I wasn’t going to put my best work out there because I didn’t want to. I didn’t want to do it. And so I just said no. I just said, “No, we’re not going to do it.” And of course you know it’s the right decision when you say no and-
Jordan Grummet:
You feel relief, the relief.
Tori Dunlap:
… the sigh of relief happens after. Yes. So I think that that’s the other thing too, is there’s some things… Life means that you’re going to do shit you don’t want to do. It’s not entirely avoidable or unavoidable.
But I think that there are certain things where I felt the sense of purpose because it was my first book. I did want New York Times bestseller list. I wanted all these things, but I also wanted to walk into a bookstore and be able to sign… A bookstore anywhere in the country and be able to sign my book and to know that seven-year-old me was so excited. For now, that’s great. I’m good. I achieved that. I don’t need another one, at least right now. And probably for at least a couple more years, I’m good.
Jordan Grummet:
If you are going to do something you loathe, you really have to do it with the intention that it’ll somehow serve something else that’s purposeful to you.
Tori Dunlap:
Yeah. Right.
Jordan Grummet:
So it’s very rarely worth the trade-off. I’m not saying it’s never, and so sometimes we do things, we choose to do things that we don’t love. But if you’re going to do that, it really has to be in service of something you do. And so there may be a point, Tori, where you’re like, this is in service of my business. This is in service of the message that I’m trying to get out to people. And then it might be different. Yeah.
Tori Dunlap:
Yeah. Well, and I want to be able to have something to say and I do. My next book is probably not going to be a personal finance book actually, very similar to you. It’s going to be about confidence and self-worth for women. But until I feel like I am absolutely compelled to say this and say it in this format, I’m not going to do it yet. It doesn’t make sense.
Jordan Grummet:
But congrats to you on recognizing that you should not be spending your time doing stuff that you don’t want to do just because either society or even your business manager or whoever else tells you to do it. If it’s not bringing you joy, the process, it might not be worth your time.
Tori Dunlap:
And I will say, and this is not me trying to get kudos from you, although I appreciate it. I will say to you, listener, it was scary. It felt like it wasn’t this, again, big, huge, brave thing. But it did feel like, “Oh, am I letting the business down?”
And this actually just happened recently. I had some health stuff and I literally had flown out to L.A. and I was supposed to be there for a couple days. This happened last week. And I had to make the decision to come home after 24 hours. And I’m just starting to listen to myself more. And even if it’s scary, and I felt like I was disappointing everybody and I felt like I was fucking the business over and I felt all these things. And I am just trying to build the muscle of purpose and resilience and taking care of myself because the more I do it, the more comfortable it gets.
Jordan Grummet:
And I think the health of the business long-term depends on your own internal sense of health or purpose. Otherwise, we get exactly what we’re talking about, which is burnout. And then that serves no one. Yeah.
Tori Dunlap:
Yeah. Thank you for coming back on the show. I have loved this conversation. It’s honestly helped me so much. There are so many nuggets that I’m taking and it’s a reminder to get my butt to tap class. Where can people find the book and your work, plug away.
Jordan Grummet:
The easiest way is to go to Jordangrumet.com. That’s J-O-R-D-A-N-G-R-U-M-E t.com. There you can find The Purpose Code as well as my first book, Taking Stock, as well as links to all the places I create content, including The Earn & Invest podcast and The Purpose Code substack.
Tori Dunlap:
Thank you, Doc G, it’s good to see you.
Jordan Grummet:
It is great to see you. Thank you for having me on.
Tori Dunlap:
Thank you so much to Doc G for joining us. You can find his new book, The Purpose Code, wherever you get your books. And again, if you didn’t listen to his first episode he did on our show, please go back and listen to that one. It’s a good one-two punch here.
Thank you so much for being here as always, Financial Feminist, we really appreciate it. And if you’re new to the show, you can go to herfirst100k.com/quiz to get a free personalized money plan. We ask you a couple of questions to check in where you’re at in your finances, and we’ll send you over some free resources that fit wherever you’re at in your financial journey. So again, herfirst100k.com/quiz. Thank you so much and we’ll talk to you very soon. Okay, bye.
Thank you for listening to Financial Feminist, a Her First $100K podcast. Financial Feminist is hosted by me, Tori Dunlap, produced by Kristen Fields and Tamisha Grant. Researched by Sarah Sciortino. Audio and video Engineering by Alyssa Midcalf. Marketing and Operations by Karina Patel and Amanda Leffew. Special thanks to our team at Her First 100K, Kailyn Sprinkle, Masha Bakhmetyeva, Taylor Chou, Sasha Bonar, Rae Wong, Elizabeth McCumber, Claire Kurronen, Daryl Ann Ingram and Meghan Walker. Promotional graphics by Mary Stratton. Photography by Sarah Wolfe. And theme music by Jonah Cohen Sound.
A huge thanks to the entire Her First $100K community for supporting the show. For more information about Financial Feminist, Her First $100K, our guests and episode show notes, visit financialfeministpodcast.com. If you’re confused about your personal finances and you’re wondering where to start, go to herfirsthundredk.com/quiz for a free personalized money plan.
Tori Dunlap
Tori Dunlap is an internationally-recognized money and career expert. After saving $100,000 at age 25, Tori quit her corporate job in marketing and founded Her First $100K to fight financial inequality by giving women actionable resources to better their money. She has helped over five million women negotiate salaries, pay off debt, build savings, and invest.
Tori’s work has been featured on Good Morning America, the New York Times, BBC, TIME, PEOPLE, CNN, New York Magazine, Forbes, CNBC, BuzzFeed, and more.
With a dedicated following of over 2.1 million on Instagram and 2.4 million on TikTok —and multiple instances of her story going viral—Tori’s unique take on financial advice has made her the go-to voice for ambitious millennial women. CNBC called Tori “the voice of financial confidence for women.”
An honors graduate of the University of Portland, Tori currently lives in Seattle, where she enjoys eating fried chicken, going to barre classes, and attempting to naturally work John Mulaney bits into conversation.
