ENRICH: Create Wealth in Time, Money, and Meaning

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Advance Praise

Finally, a self-help book that helps! Most work-life balance books fail to address adequately the issue of money management. Not ENRICH. This book prioritizes financial security and offers a realistic and easy-to-implement strategy for building passive income. Todd Miller speaks from experience.

—Michelle Tanmizi, Author of Bestseller Novel, Late Dawn; retired from business life at 40

We have been taught a lot about how to manage our businesses, but not nearly enough on how to manage our lives. Todd Miller is full of creative, provocative, valuable ideas. ENRICH offers useful tools to greater fulfilment. At this moment when the world faces multiple disruptions, we all need this book more than ever.

—Ricky Ow, President, WarnerMedia Entertainment Networks Asia Pacific

Companies need effective and sustainable strategies to win. Professionals also need strategies to flourish. Todd Miller has spent two decades probing, researching, and experimenting with effective strategies to enrich life.

—M. Eric Johnson, Dean and Professor of Strategy, Vanderbilt University Owen Graduate School of Management

Todd Miller faced a dilemma familiar to many professionals: promotion or parenthood. ENRICH lays out an actionable, relevant framework to enrich your life personally, professionally, and financially.

—Laurence Bates, General Counsel and first non-Japanese Director, Panasonic Corporation; proud father of two

A practical solution for the 24/7 grind. Todd Miller has experimented with reimagining the work-life equation. In these roller-coaster times, we can benefit from some enrichment.

—Louisa Wong, Executive Chairman, Global Sage, a leading international executive search firm headquartered in Hong Kong

With steely determination and resolve, Todd Miller has achieved what many of us can only dream about: he has arrived at a place where he really is in control of his life. And his happiness is palpable. This book recounts that journey. I urge you to read it.

—Simon Pollock, Managing Director, International, Sucherman Group, London; a media and entertainment industry veteran, Pollock has held senior international roles at Disney, Sony, and A&E Networks

Most self-help books about work-life balance talk a big game but come up short on particulars. Not this one. ENRICH doesn’t pretend money isn’t important or that it will somehow magically appear if you simply pursue your passion. This book gets down to business and shows you what school never did—how to tackle financial freedom.

—Gene Soo, Head of Ecosystem, major publicly listed company and a startup ecosystem builder

Everyone should have a mentor like Todd guiding them through life. While continuing to build a strong family, financial security, and never letting down his colleagues, Todd managed to take two sabbaticals. This is a testament to Todd’s ability to innovate the work-life equation.

—Superna Kalle, Executive Vice President, International Digital Networks, STARZ, a Lionsgate company, Los Angeles

After reading this book, I was able to bounce back from a job loss by using the ENRICH strategies to take control of my career, my finances, and my personal life. If I had learned these lessons in business school, I can only imagine where I would be at this point financially and professionally. It’s never too late to enrich.

—Alex Strah, Senior Tech Executive, Silicon Valley Startup

ENRICH reignited the youthful passion and drive that had slowly faded over the course of my career. It showed me that I was caught in a trap of my own making, and it gave me a step-by-step guide on how to actualize the life I have long desired.

—Johnny D., Ivy League Graduate, age 32

I love this book because it combines solid practical business insight sprinkled with spirituality and mixed with interesting personal anecdotes. It’s the perfect recipe to inspire and ignite possibilities for one’s future.

—Jennifer Takaki, Documentary Filmmaker, New York

ENRICH has so much to offer that I read it twice. The book inspired me to embark upon the career I always wanted, but never felt confident or compelled to pursue—until now. Thank you!

—Michael March, International Lawyer, C-Suite Media Executive, Entrepreneur, and Now Actor

The ENRICH formula future-proofs financial security and champions life success. It’s a powerful message—the right words at the right time from the right guy.

—Sabina Astner, Award-Winning Designer, Munich

This is a measured and intelligent answer to anybody thinking: There must be more to life than this, surely?"

—Tashan Mehta, Novelist and Author, The Liar’s Weave

When it comes to the game of life, ENRICH showed me how to flip the game board over.

—David Smith, Auditor, New York

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Copyright © 2020 Todd Miller

All rights reserved.

ISBN: 978-1-5445-1587-8

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To my father, who teaches there is no dress rehearsal.

To my mother-in-law, whose sudden passing reminds, It’s About Time.

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Contents

Acknowledgments

Introduction

1. Monday Morning Malaise

Step I: ESSENTIALIZE

2. The Essential Eight

Step II: NARROW

3. Avoid the Default Setting

Step III: REACH

4. Intended Outcomes

5. Your Aspirational Life Plan

6. Future-Proof Your Financial Security

7. Work Your Money

8. Build Your Financial Security

Step IV: IGNITE

9. Get Into Action

Step V: CALIBRATE

10. Bust Out of the Chicken Coop

11. Habits for Enriched Happiness

Step VI: HARNESS TIME

12. It’s About Time

13. How to Make Life Delicious

Bonus Chapter

Appendix I

Appendix II

Appendix III

Appendix IV

Appendix V

Appendix VI

Appendix VII

References

About The Author

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Acknowledgments

It takes a village to produce a book. At least this particular book. I owe much to many who helped shape ENRICH and give this project life and resonance.

Special thanks to my immediate family—Patrick and Huey—who politely accommodated this persistent intruder into our lives, like a guest who overstays his welcome.

This book’s development spanned years. Susan Patnaik helped pull these strategies into form and function at the front end and in the final stretch. Michael March helped fine-tune the messaging over three separate iterations of this manuscript. Michael gave it to me straight and questioned everything with his lawyerly instincts and substantial wisdom. Alex Strah thoroughly tested and validated these strategies and inspired much of the final chapter. Susan, Michael, and Alex went out of their way to contribute to this book. They immensely enriched ENRICH.

A special thank you to the beta readers who endured a sprawling, messy early draft. Their time generosity and patience in wading through this first iteration yielded considerable constructive feedback and produced a better book. Thank you Johnny Dryman, J. B. Hsu, Ken Jacquin, Albert Kuo, Michael March, Stephen Ong, Alex Strah, Jennifer Takaki, and Joanna Tan.

Friends across four continents graciously served as a virtual focus group that provided real-time and brutally honest feedback. Thank you Steve Chu, Jenny Chua, Jim Crump, Allen Feng, Tim Hoffman, Albert Kuo, Michael March, John Miller, Katie Enterline Miller, Stephen Ong, David Pan, Susan Patnaik, Gene Soo, Jennifer Takaki, Brad Wilson, Jacob Wong, and Laura Wong. A shout-out also to dozens of members of the Columbia and Vanderbilt communities who volunteered timely input.

Many professionals contributed perspective and life experience as I did my background research. Hearing other people’s insightful, inspiring stories helped me give voice to my own. Thank you to H.K. Ang, Annabelle Bond, Danny Burke, Jeremy Butler, Ronna Chao, Jenny Chua, Diana David, David Gething, Adrian Hayes, Paul Heffner, Alan Hodges, Ann Bridgewater Hsu, Carla Jeffrey, Ophelia Ngan, Sylvia Noronha, Charles Scott, Bert Shi, SuSan Tan, Michelle Tanmizi, Fanny Wong, Laura Wong, and Airin Zainul.

The excellent team at Scribe provided just the right amount of handholding to get this book over the finish line. Thank you Emily Anderson, Rachel Brandenburg, Hal Clifford, Rikki Jump, Tucker Max, Carolyn Purnell, Jenny Shipley, and Kayla Sokol. In particular, Tashan Mehta’s beautiful editing packs a powerful punch. She was looking out for you, dear reader, to ensure a seamless reading experience. Tashan taught me about narrative, flow, and unpacking complex ideas.

Sasha Sakhnevich and Matt Young produced the elegant graphics.

Finally, reader, thank YOU. I respect your time and have done my best to make this book a worthy investment.

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Introduction

I sketched my first Life Plan on a piece of scratch paper in the middle of the night, while sitting on the Dubai airport floor awaiting a connecting flight.

In January 2020, twenty-four years to the day after I created that first Life Plan, I traded the fast life of Hong Kong for the beach life of Thailand, the country I now call home. I did not just change the scenery or change the pace of life. I shifted to a lifestyle that I anticipated and planned twenty-four years earlier.

On the same day I relocated to Thailand, I received a frantic text message from a good friend seeking some fast career and financial advice. He just lost his job in a company reshuffling. With a family to support, kids in private school, and a mortgage to service, he would imminently lose his only source of income.

He needed some help.

I fully empathized with my friend’s situation. I had been there too.

Connecting the dots between writing that first Life Plan and kicking back to a tropical lifestyle forms the philosophy of this book. I discovered early in my career that while higher education prepares us for prestigious careers, we are often unprepared to lead meaningful lives. What constitutes a purposeful life, anyway? Business schools teach corporate finance but skip personal finance. If we make enough money, the notion goes, we will eventually figure it out. Eventually.

In other words, we have to wing it.

Since those hours on the Dubai airport floor, I have spent much of my adult life experimenting with the work-life equation. I have pursued answers to some salient questions:

Career is important, but is it enough? Is career an end or a means?

What do I want to accomplish? What is my legacy?

What constitutes an optimal life? How can I enhance my quality of life?

What is success and how much is enough?

How do I prevent work from crowding out life?

How do I insulate myself from a significant shock, such as job loss or market crash?

Some books might teach you how to get rich quick or even how to retire early. Some books might instruct you on how to advance your career or improve productivity in the workplace. This book is more ambitious. This book guides you to take control, own your future, and enrich your life.

ENRICH is a methodology that empowers you to design an aspirational plan and live it. This process takes a corporate approach to personal optimization using time-honored business techniques. For many professionals, money is frequently the elephant in the room when it comes to work-life discussions. ENRICH embraces this elephant. ENRICH future-proofs financial security to mitigate dependence upon a paycheck. This creates optionality at work and in life.

The outcome? You liberate your time. You build time wealth in addition to financial wealth. Most importantly, this method helps you to create meaning by igniting your biggest, boldest life goals.

In researching this book, I investigated best practices and current research across many disciplines. I interviewed professionals around the world from a spectrum of backgrounds. These individuals achieve professional success and live exuberantly.

I then went further. I spoke with several holders of multiple world records to dig into how they set and actualize compelling goals. There’s much to learn from the first, fastest, or the sole person on the planet to accomplish something.

You will also learn from the pain I endured and the insights I gained during a corporate career. For a quarter century, I have run multimillion-dollar businesses. This includes eight years as CEO of Asia’s largest independent regional broadcaster and a lengthy track record in senior leadership with a major Hollywood studio, where I had responsibility for one of the world’s fastest-growing regions.

Through the organizations I have run, I have helped to entertain tens of millions of consumers. I have negotiated international joint ventures, lobbied foreign governments, collaborated with billionaires and celebrities, and launched new businesses. I have also maneuvered through massive technological disruption and industry consolidation.

And I have confronted more corporate BS than anyone deserves in a lifetime.

For a kid from Kentucky, I’ve been blessed with a colorful career. But it is probably my experiences outside the office that best equipped me to write this book. During my corporate tenure, I managed to:

Jump off the career ladder twice to enjoy sabbaticals

Create a family through adoption

Organize epic annual extended family vacations all over the world

Cycle coast-to-coast across two continents

Raise substantial money for Asian children’s charities

Explore more than one hundred countries on all seven continents

Construct a dream beach house

Experiment aggressively with traditional work structures

These experiences helped me formulate and refine the ENRICH concepts, all of which are in this book. Following these principles, I fully retired at the early-ish age of fifty-three—I’m enormously grateful for this privilege. Although my initial plan took twenty-four years to completely realize, the ENRICH strategies can also work on a more compressed timeline. SuSan Tan, who you’ll meet in chapter 5, used the ENRICH principles to turn around her life in three years. In chapter 13 you’ll read about Alex Strah, the friend who sent that panicky text the day I relocated to Thailand. Facing the worst employment market since the Depression, he used the ENRICH principles to turn around a job loss in just four months. As you go through this book and read the stories of individuals who’ve benefited from this perspective, you’ll see that the stress-tested ENRICH process works. In success, this method transforms.

Fast forward to March 2020, two months after I relocated to Thailand. COVID-19 had infected everything and gut-punched the economy: lives and livelihoods disrupted at light speed, millions of jobs and trillions of dollars wiped out.

It is hard to find anything good about the pandemic pandemonium of 2020, and the pain and hardship this virus has unleashed. And yet, amidst all the wreckage, we find a clarifying opportunity. An opportunity to rethink, rebuild, and rejuvenate our lives and our careers—and to envision a new, enriched normal.

If there is a positive outcome from the viral and economic pandemics of 2020, I posit it will be this: 20/20 clarity about what matters most. The world has changed dramatically, but the principals of life success haven’t.

I wrote this book to provide a framework that helps people enrich their lives financially, professionally, and personally. This book is for professionals like my good friend Alex Strah, a well-educated, well-off, successful high achiever dealing with a significant life disruption. Just as it helped Strah, this framework can help you nurture life success and financial security—whether you’re starting your first job, approaching the pinnacle of your career, thinking about what follows, or facing a big decision. It is never too late or too early to enrich your life.

While many things changed in 2020, the relevance, validity, and immediacy of these principles hold steadfast. In this post-pandemic world, perhaps now more than ever, we can all benefit from some enrichment. The goal is not to have it all, but to Ignite all that matters.

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Chapter 1

1. Monday Morning Malaise

America’s Professional Elite: Wealthy, Successful, and Miserable.

—The New York Times headline, February 21, 2019

Sunday Night is the New Monday Morning, and Workers are Miserable.

—The Wall Street Journal headline, July 7, 2019

February 2011—I flew to company headquarters in Los Angeles with the expectation and giddy hope that I would be fired. There were rumors that another round of corporate restructuring was around the corner, and I detected subtle signals. I wanted it to happen. I needed it to happen. I was confident it would happen.

My boss scheduled a 5 p.m. meeting on a Friday afternoon, my last session that week in LA. An encouraging sign, I thought. A classic HR move. All week I gleefully anticipated that meeting the way a child looks forward to Christmas morning. I eagerly awaited a golden parachute. I fantasized about how I would play the victim. How I would suppress the joy of terminating a seventeen-year work relationship. Seventeen years. That was nearly half of my life. I fantasized about how liberated I would soon feel.

The 5 p.m. conversation on that Friday did not go the way I expected.

It was a business-as-usual meeting. I received more projects to tackle and things to do. Is there anything else we need to talk about? I asked my boss, hopefully, at the end of the meeting.

Have a good flight was all I got in response.

My head exploded as I left his office. Instead of liberation, I got perpetuation.

I hated that soul-sucking job. I did not know how I could face another day in that organization. Every morning my stomach churned as I drove to work. I hated the office politics. The always-on expectations. The 10 p.m. conference calls. The bureaucracy.

I hated everything about that job except for the paycheck. Then I hated myself for not having the guts to walk away from that paycheck. I felt as if I gave a small piece of my heart every time I walked into my very nice office, with its expansive views and modern furniture. I was a wage slave. Trapped. Stuck inside a good job at a high-profile company in a sexy industry. I had a decent personal balance sheet, but my assets were unproductive. I did not have independent cash flow. I depended upon that salary. Although most other aspects of my life rocked, the unhappiness at work polluted everything else.

An enriched life, this was not.

The Many Work Mindsets

Think back to last Monday morning.

During your commute into work, what was your frame of mind? Were you looking forward to the day? Or looking forward to the day being over?

If you are lucky, perhaps your thoughts were optimistic…

Financially Secure Mindset: The new project excites me. It could game-change the company and my career. Sure, it’s risky, but we have a shot at making a big difference in the market. This opportunity energizes me while I work my butt off to make sure we get it right. If we do not greenlight the project, everything will be okay. I can afford to take a chunk of time off. Heck, I would enjoy some time off. Either way, I win.

Alternatively, were you less upbeat last Monday morning? Perhaps this is more familiar…

Hanging-On Mindset: I need this job. I have a kid in college and another on the way to University. I have years left on my mortgage and I’m years behind in my retirement readiness. I am screwed if the market does not recover. If the rumored restructuring happens, I’m also screwed. I have to suck up to Bob to make sure I will be safe. I can’t make any ripples. Gotta make sure I survive this. I need that December bonus.

Or maybe your commuting thoughts last Monday morning were along these lines…

This Sucks Mindset: I hate this job. I cannot believe I missed seeing my son score that goal on Saturday because of that stupid conference call with my boss. I wish Margaret would get a life so everyone else could have one, too. That fire drill last week with the Boston client. What a waste of time. My wife is still pissed that I missed