Doug Lynam 0:03

I thought taking a vow of poverty was gonna get me out of the material rat race forever, and it turned out to be ironically just the opposite. Because a couple years after I, I joined, our community became insolvent, and we fell into bankruptcy because we all hated dealing with money. Who else would take a vow of poverty except folks with some money issues hanging out in their closet?

Speaker 0:24

Have you ever tried to escape something painful, only to find it waiting for you at every door? Doug Lynam took a vow of poverty to leave the chaos of money behind and ended up becoming one of the clearest voices alive on why our relationship with money is really a map of our deepest wounds.

Speaker 2 0:48

This is the Your Next Success podcast, and I am your host, Dr. Caroline Sangal. I am a Life first career coach and strategist on a mission to normalize questioning your career because I believe each of us is made on purpose for a purpose only we can fulfill. The Your Next Success Podcast is where we explore how to build a career that truly fuels your life. We talk about self-discovery, smart job, search strategies, professional growth. And you will hear stories from people who have navigated big career transitions themselves. So you can create a life, first career and become your own version of authentic success, one that is aligned, meaningful, and truly yours.

Speaker 1:38

Doug Lynam is a financial advisor, a best-selling author, and his TEDx talk on the psychology of money has gathered over four hundred thousand views. His work centers on one conviction Your money problems are almost never about money, and the path to financial freedom runs straight through the childhood wounds you have been carrying your whole life. It is such a pleasure to have had this conversation with Doug Lynam. Let's listen in.

Caroline 2:09

Doug Lynam, welcome to Your Next Success.

Doug Lynam 2:11

thanks, Caroline. Nice to be here. I'm so honored.

Caroline 2:14

We have the, wonderful experience to have actually met each other in person, at the NSA, meetups second Saturdays. For those of you in the Raleigh Durham area, please do come, meet Doug I, and many, many other amazing people

Doug Lynam 2:28

A great event, a great group, a lot of energy, so if you're into public speaking or wanna learn the craft, it's a, it's a really robust group of people to learn from and be a part of. Yeah,

Caroline 2:39

to each other.

Doug Lynam 2:39

met you and, you've become a real friend and I'm really grateful to have to know you and deepen our friendship I'm sure it will keep growing over time.

Caroline 2:46

So let's dig into your story. We are going to get to all of the amazing work that you do. You have your two books behind you. I'll put your two books behind me for just a quick second. It'll be like a fun mirroring matching event. But you, you're a TEDx speaker. You've written two amazing books, from Monk to Money Manager., And taming your Money Monster. So we're gonna get to all of that, but like automatically, I mean from Monk to Money Manager. But, so we're gonna, we're gonna start at the beginning though, and kind of go through some of your life, your career transitions, 'cause that's part of what your next success is all about. Everybody's already successful wherever they are. And what would you love to do next? And so let's start it at the beginning though, like where were you born? What was life like

Doug Lynam 3:35

I grew up in a town called Naperville, Illinois, which is a suburbia about an hour due west of Chicago. Naperville was a very idyllic, kind of Midwestern town to grow up in. People have often ranked it as one of the top places in America to live. It wasn't great for me for a number of reasons. I think when my parents divorced when I was six or seven, kind of total war warfare broke out in my family and, there was a lot of loneliness and heartache and rejection that came from that when both my parents kind of imploded in their own ways, and I grew up in a relatively affluent home. My dad worked, he was a CEO of a chemical company. My mom was a certified financial planner, but money became the tool that they used for domination and control of the battlefield. I grew up with a really unhealthy mindsets around money. I thought, money was dirty and evil and nasty, and it was a thing I wanted nothing to do with because I really saw it as a tool for manipulation and power in ways that were not not healthy. You know, my parents, they had enough, but you'd ask, They'd always play financial chicken every time I needed something, you ask my mom, she'd say, well, go ask your dad. You ask my dad. He'd say, well, your mom's got my money. And then they, they both play poor, meanwhile, they're, you know, taking. vacations and buying new cars every year and living in big houses. So it, it got it. Got it. Was th- th- I think that's kind of the beginning of my origin story around money was developing now what I would call a real money monster, a v- avoidant relationship to money and didn't want anything to deal with it. So, that's the quick version of the backstory.

Caroline 5:18

Totally.

Doug Lynam 5:19

Okay.

Caroline 5:19

If you're willing.

Doug Lynam 5:20

Go for it.

Caroline 5:21

so do you have siblings?

Doug Lynam 5:23

I do, I have a twin brother, fraternal twin. We don't look at all alike. He's got bright red curly hair that he wears down to his waist, uh, I've got an older brother, Nicholas, and yeah. So two brothers.

Caroline 5:36

So your parents had three boys.

Doug Lynam 5:38

Hmm?

Caroline 5:38

and what I've learned with my two boys is, same input can be completely different output. Very interesting how, how genetics actually works. So you have a fraternal twin, same age, different looks, different experiences,

Doug Lynam 5:58

Yeah, I mean, I think maybe the harder struggle for me growing up was, you know, I was I was born second and I was a little bit on the, we, we were both, my mom's like five foot, so she had twins and were a month, month and a half premature.

Caroline 6:13

Wow.

Doug Lynam 6:13

I think my brother was there for like but I was there for like three or four. And so I just, developed a little bit slower, so I was always just developmentally a little bit behind him and I think that developed a lot of insecurities for me growing up I always felt like we were being, you know, everyone put... you're standing side by side and w- everyone's always comparing the twins, and first of

Caroline 6:34

Interesting.

Doug Lynam 6:35

different in appearance, but then he would just, you know, he would hit puberty like a year before I did. So, I was always trying to play, felt like I was trying to play catch up. You know, we were both good students. We both did well and, but if I got, you know, an A minus, he'd get an A plus or I got a B plus, he'd get an A minus whatever. He was just that little bit, you know, it was just, I could never, I always felt like I was not good enough. And, so that I think developed a real competitive streak in me that has served me well in many ways, but also has been a bane of a lot of struggles at the same time,

Caroline 7:08

thank you for, thank you for sharing. I think a lot, see a lot of people haven't done as much work as, as you have to, and we're gonna get into that as far as like, contemplating, your place in the world or what it, what this means, or having the time to, making the time to try to sort out, you know, where does this come from? Who am I, what, who wa who do I want to become? What does my purpose, what does all this matter? So what I'm, what I'm hearing is you had a family dynamic in an affluent home where on the outskirts, people looking in might think, ah, they are living the dream.

Doug Lynam 7:45

Right?

Caroline 7:47

Nice house, nice family, three wonderful boys, different,

Doug Lynam 7:51

Right.

Caroline 7:55

This internal competitive drive that you adopted on your own? So I was always competing with my brother. I don't know that he was ever competing with me. He's two years older. But yeah, just this kind of like anything he can do, I wanna try to do better, but I don't know that I'm doing it better,

Doug Lynam 8:10

Yep. And then, and then the irony was that because we were always competing with each other all the time, the only way to be sane was to differentiate from each other by doing completely opposite things. So if we did the same thing at the same time, I always felt like I would lose. I got a head start in something, I would have a little competitive advantage. Then I could get, I could pull ahead and then I would, I would be in pole position and he wouldn't compete with me or couldn't compete. So basically, if he liked something I didn't like something, I almost defined myself in opposition to him growing up.

Caroline 8:45

Yeah.

Doug Lynam 8:46

go left, I'd go right. If he had one interest, I'd pick another. So we weren't in the same lane all the time trying to compete and, that was, I think, really gave us such radically different personalities. In addition to being fraternal twins, you you couldn't find two siblings that look or act more differently than we do. And it's pretty quite odd that we're twins.

Caroline 9:07

Tell me a little bit about, you mentioned kind of like being a good student, so what were some of the school subjects that you were fascinated with from an early age, and what are the things outside of school that you started to become driven to exploring?

Doug Lynam 9:23

In school I really liked anything in the social sciences, history, psychology, sociology. I liked English class a lot, but the problem with social studies classes, I found them too easy, so I didn't take it seriously 'cause they just came so naturally to me, other classes were a lot harder, the math, science and things. But, but in writing books have always been an important part of my life. I've been an avid reader my whole life, so it's fun to see myself as an author now because I would, I was kind of the geeky kid who would cram through a sci-fi book a day in the summers and spend a lot of time on the video games hiding out. So,

Caroline 9:56

What video games?

Doug Lynam 9:57

oh, and, gosh, all of them. There was one called Might and Magic or Doom, or you

Caroline 10:02

That's cool. I mean, I started back with like Pong,

Doug Lynam 10:06

Yeah. I remember Pong.

Caroline 10:07

it was bad.

Doug Lynam 10:07

And

Caroline 10:08

you'd like hurt your, your, the center of your hand to try to like move that joystick around.

Doug Lynam 10:13

We got 85K on this Atari like, oh my gosh.

Caroline 10:19

Oh, okay. So books wise, you liked sci-fi. Were there any other kind of genres that, you know, I guess kind of,

Doug Lynam 10:26

Any escapist. You know, I used to read to escape. That was my entertainment. So f- fantasy novels, the Dungeons Dragons kind of stuff, or,

Caroline 10:33

yeah.

Doug Lynam 10:33

Isaac Asimov, Robert Heinlein, Orson Scott Card, all those biggies

Caroline 10:38

Okay, so pre six or seven, you may not have even been consciously aware, but sometime during childhood, what did you think success meant from what you viewed in the world around you? Did you have an early definition of what you thought it was to be a successful member of society or successful adult?

Doug Lynam 11:01

I grew up just very lost and confused.

Caroline 11:03

Mm.

Doug Lynam 11:04

success I think meant going to school, going, to college, getting a good degree. Those pressures were real. And at the same time, you know, I had a father figure who was successful. Parents who were successful by all the external measures, but were not happy internally. So I just d- didn't know what, that's probably what drove the monastic impulse is just, let's just get out of the game entirely. 'cause this whole thing feels rigged. What am I gonna do? Go join the corporate world and get a career and get the pension and be as miserable as my parents are? That doesn't seem great. Um, and I didn't see a lot of good models out there, so I, I think I, I grew up feeling pretty lost and confused w- especially without any real parental guidance. We were, we were in many ways just emotionally abandoned as kids. When, know, when my parents divorced, the first thing my mom did was hire an a li- a full-time live-in nanny. So we got, we lost our dad and we lost our mom. There was like, we didn't have parents, essentially.

Caroline 12:03

Interesting.

Doug Lynam 12:04

like, what are we doing here? Like, I don't grow up and have a family and have the kids and have the career. Well, that sounds awful. So I, I think it was just a lot of confusion, more than any clear direction.

Caroline 12:15

Did you realize that your parents were unhappy?

Doug Lynam 12:19

Oh, it was obvious. Sure. I mean, my mom, I mean, I, and, and my m- I have a wonderful, re- as I got older, my relationship with my parents changed into something

Caroline 12:29

So.

Doug Lynam 12:29

and healthy. And my mom's a wonderful human being. but I don't think she would mind if I say that she basically had a complete breakdown at that point. I mean, imagine being a young mother with three boys being on your own and trying to, you know, particularly in her generation, that was when divorce wasn't common

Caroline 12:46

Yeah.

Doug Lynam 12:47

Maybe in the early '80s and, and then my dad, you know, had a drinking problem and you could see him coming home every night, pounding back a couple of Manhattans every evening to, you know, deal with his stressors and, and certainly had some other issue- substance issues as well. I, I didn't, I, I didn't, it was obvious that things weren't going great.

Caroline 13:10

And you had this real longing for some sort of like connection or desire to wanna find out, you know, what's this all about? But yet, in the, in the same moment, the immediate needs that you had were just, you are like, uh, did you view yourself as like, maybe I'm a problem? Or did you view yourself as like, I wanna get the heck outta here 'cause this isn't it? Yeah.

Doug Lynam 13:33

A, I'm a problem. B, I was, 'cause back then ultrasounds were fairly new. They didn't my parents didn't know they were having twins until like a week before we were born.

Caroline 13:41

Oh wow.

Doug Lynam 13:42

And, and they actually didn't expect me to survive. My dad would tell this story with somewhat sadistically. I was like, "Well, how we got our family names? And he's like, well, how and I was like, well, we named you Doug 'cause we didn't wanna waste a good name on you. We thought we, the doctor said you gotta name him quick 'cause he's not gonna make it. So they gave me, you know, they named me after my mom's older brother who she always resented and hated, all my brothers got named after, so all my brothers are named after my dad's side of the family. I got named after my mom's side of the family because they just didn't want it. like, that was a throwaway name. Well, we'll use that one up and then it'll be out, out of the, out of the queue.

Caroline 14:16

Oh

Doug Lynam 14:17

So,

Caroline 14:18

dang. Oh, I just wanna like reach through and give you a little hug or something like, oh, buddy.

Doug Lynam 14:23

So I was sort of the runt, I was unexpected and I think I always felt, not that I l- I, my mom loves me to pieces.

Caroline 14:29

Right.

Doug Lynam 14:30

but, but I don't think my dad knew how to love anybody including himself, which was the hard part. And definitely felt like it was like, my older brother had this expectation, all the family expectations got put on my older brother, and by the time it came to me, there was like, no expectations. We don't expect anything from you. You're just kind of like, whatever. You know, you're kind of an error.

Caroline 14:48

So you go through high school, there is some expectation for some sort of college, but like, and, and you're kind of interested in reading and all of that, but what other, I think there were some other activities you started to, to get into or like what was your first job even? Did you even need to get a job? I mean, what?

Doug Lynam 15:05

I

Caroline 15:06

Yeah.

Doug Lynam 15:06

to get a job because my parents wouldn't give me any money. So my first job was mowing lawns. For in the neighborhood. And then my first real job be- first paycheck. I, I even through high school, I worked all through high school. I worked first at Baskin-Robbins for a few years. That was probably one of my favorite jobs actually.

Caroline 15:23

Yeah.

Doug Lynam 15:23

you can eat,

Caroline 15:24

Did it hurt your wrist though? I feel like those people are getting carpal tunnel or something like,

Doug Lynam 15:28

I got my first job

Caroline 15:29

oh.

Doug Lynam 15:29

in a Baskin-Robbins, and then I worked in a Wendy's after that. That was, I didn't like that very much. But yeah, if I want, like, that was one of my frustrations. Like here I am in a, in a relatively affluent family and my first car, I had to go out and at the, I had to buy it myself. I had to buy everything myself because it, it, wasn't. It was just anything I needed was a fight. Even like new shoes. It was a fight. And so I saw a lot of my, like my, friends who were maybe more middle class and they would have things that that I didn't because you know, they would, their parents were just a little bit more generous with the resources they had.

Caroline 16:06

Did your brother also have to fight for stuff too?

Doug Lynam 16:09

we,

Caroline 16:09

Yeah,

Doug Lynam 16:10

was,

Caroline 16:10

because like at least, or at least that's even ish,

Doug Lynam 16:13

Definitely

Caroline 16:13

Yeah,

Doug Lynam 16:14

was a discrimination on that

Caroline 16:15

So then how did you decide as you're kind of getting ready to graduate?

Doug Lynam 16:19

pay for co college. I couldn't get my dad to pay for college for much, much of it either. It was like every- everything was a fight.

Caroline 16:26

Wow.

Doug Lynam 16:27

it like I, yeah, so.

Caroline 16:28

So against that obstacle and odd though, like then how did you decide that you were even even going to go to college and then what to do?

Doug Lynam 16:38

Well that again, that's a good question. So that's why I went to a very unusual school. I ended up going to a place called St. John's College,

Caroline 16:45

Yeah.

Doug Lynam 16:45

the great book school. They have a campus in Annapolis, Maryland and Santa Fe, New Mexico. And I spent time at both, mostly Santa Fe, but it's called The Great Book School because, only about 400 students in the undergrad program. It's a spinoff from the University of Chicago. And way it works is you start, you have four core classes all four years. You've got math, science, foreign language. The first two years are ancient Greek. Next two years are modern French. then your big course is called your seminar. It's your main anchor course, and that's your literature philosophy. And so you study all of those subjects in chronological order, starting with the Greeks and Romans in your freshman year from original source texts only, all the way up to the twentieth century in your senior year. So when you're doing the math curriculum, you're learning math from Apollonius, Euclid, Galileo, Newton, Einstein, right? There's no textbooks. It's just the original sources. Of the original authors. So it's sort of the Marine Corps of the mind, if you will,

Caroline 17:45

Yeah.

Doug Lynam 17:45

boot camp for your brain where you're forced to master all these different disciplines in a very deep way and be able to figure it out for yourself without any lectures or textbooks telling you what to think.

Caroline 17:56

How did you even realize that was an option that that sort of school existed and it was an option?

Doug Lynam 18:02

Well, I, there, used to be a thing called a, I don't know if it's still around, it's called the Fiske Guide to Colleges. It was the biggie in my day. And I, you could get this big, this big tome and

Caroline 18:11

Yeah.

Doug Lynam 18:12

it cover to cover and I flagged every unusual school that was different and alternative that I could find. Like my parents were pushing me to go to University of Illinois, big state school, like everybody I know knew all my classes. If you were a good student, you just went to University of Illinois. There wasn't really... Nobody thought much about it. It was

Caroline 18:29

Yeah.

Doug Lynam 18:30

school to go to. And I felt like, um, there's an old Rush song if you know the Band Rush, they have a song called Subdivisions but it's a story about living in suburbia in middle America and how

Caroline 18:41

Yeah,

Doug Lynam 18:41

and how you just It's cookie cutter. Everything's cookie cutter. just felt like I was being pressed into this mold all the time, and and just rebelled against it. So I, knew if I wanted to go out of state. Which I des- I desperately wanted to pick a school that was at least five states away from where my parents lived. Um, and and so that was my goal was to get the hell out of Illinois. And, but because of the financial struggles, I had to pick a school that was different enough that I could convince my parents to chip in some, like, how am I gonna pay for this? I still had to pay for part of it, but I did blackmail my parents eventually to helping out a little bit, well, quite a bit actually. What would justify the out-of-state tuition what would. What would be different enough that I couldn't get it at University of Illinois, and that was what St. John's offered.

Caroline 19:34

Interesting.

Doug Lynam 19:35

I'm a book lover

Caroline 19:36

Yeah.

Doug Lynam 19:37

had my head up a book, so it felt like home.

Caroline 19:40

Made for you.

Doug Lynam 19:41

It's like where, where geeks, unite.

Caroline 19:44

That's awesome. Now also, I think in high school you started spending time at some friend's house and your experience in that family and with those friends was a little bit different. Do you know what I'm talking about? Yeah. I think that this experience, like your experience, and I'd like you to tell a little bit more about that, but like that also starts shaping who you're becoming.

Doug Lynam 20:07

Yeah, I had a great, my best friend

Caroline 20:09

I.

Doug Lynam 20:09

named Steve Olsen. I haven't talked to him in decades. I don't know what happened to him, but he had a family. He was my best friend i-in high school for a long time. You know, you always, as kids do sleepovers at kids' houses, but I would always sleep over at my friends' houses every chance I could get. And I never had anyone sleep over at my house. Like, I just, wa-- I wanted out and there was no way I was gonna bring a friend into that chaos

Caroline 20:32

Yeah.

Doug Lynam 20:32

dysfunction. So if I could sleep over at someone's house, I did, and his family was really warm and gracious and welcoming, a-and his parents were, were lovely human beings. And, you know, he, his family was very evangelical. They're, they were a conservative evangelical Christian home and, and, there were a lot of good things that went with that. Like taking in stray puppies like me, they just kinda, like, were very loving and fed me and sheltered me. And they did that for lots of people. Strangers on the street, they'd meet hitchhikers and take them in. And so they had this warm, generous heart and, and, a, and a warm family. And so I was really drawn to that. And they s-- They're like, well, you're sleeping over all the time. We're going to church tomorrow. You want, you know, do you wanna come? I'm like, well, sure. I mean anything to not go home. So I started going to church with them on Sundays and eventually decided to join their community and it was a very evangelical

Caroline 21:26

Christian

Doug Lynam 21:26

environment and you know, all the negativities that come with that, but also some real positives that went with that. And so the nice thing about the evangelical community is all you gotta do is say the magic words, you know? And, I accept Jesus Christ as my Lord and Savior. And now you're in the club, and now you've got a family, and now you've got a tribe, and now you've got belonging and you've got connection and you've got community. And that was really appealing to me. So I I went down that rabbit hole for a few years in high school. it served me well because it also kept me from, the, the, kind of moral purity codes. You know, it kept me out of some trouble. It, it kept me from, from, all the, you know, fire and brimstone stuff as, as awful as it is, at least it, it, gave me some structure and it gave me some direction and told me what to do and what not to do. And not all of that is bad. Some of it's quite good, and it came with some theology that I found over time, deeply problematic, at that time, the way they treated people of other races and the way they treated, you know, people who were gay or people who were just different. You know, that kind of like, if you're not, if you don't look like us, you don't act like us, you don't think like us, you're gonna be cast into the fire for eternity. It's like,

Caroline 22:36

Yeah.

Doug Lynam 22:36

that doesn't make a lot of sense. So I did, I did grow out of that, but it was a phase I went through and you know, that's the story.

Caroline 22:43

So your own parents, was there any religious anything?

Doug Lynam 22:48

Nothing. I mean, my mom took us to church once in a while for Easter and Christmas. We did.

Caroline 22:52

What kind of church did she take you to?

Doug Lynam 22:55

She took us to the United Church of Christ, which is a really good church, you know,

Caroline 22:58

Yeah.

Doug Lynam 22:58

you know, I respect it a great deal, but we would go occasionally and do some summer school stu- summer camp stuff. Once they had a summer camp that

Caroline 23:08

Yeah.

Doug Lynam 23:08

once in a while, that was fun, but other than that, it really there was no guidance there.

Caroline 23:14

A connection. It wasn't a relationship.

Doug Lynam 23:16

right. The, my parents couldn't give us what they didn't have themselves,

Caroline 23:20

Hmm.

Doug Lynam 23:22

that depth or that connection, so they didn't really able to pass it on to us.

Caroline 23:28

I've heard from, so I'm cradle Catholic. And ended up helping out with the baptism program, and, and trying to help new parents choose whether or not that was the right time for them and their families to, to bring their kids into the church. Right. And so one of the things that was said was sometimes it's kind of hard to consider that there's this loving, forgiving father in heaven if your lived experience is challenging and you don't see those elements in your own father on earth.

Doug Lynam 24:02

100%. We tend to project our parental issues onto God, like whatever our, our daddy issues are, or even our mommy issues, we, particularly our daddy issues, we tend to project that onto the father in heaven and then that can deeply distort our theology and our relationship to the divine.

Caroline 24:20

Interesting. Okay. And so, you're realizing this, and I also was kind of like curious like your friend that at that phase that was such a welcoming house at Steve's house, like, you know, there's that song. And they'll know we are Christians by our love. Like, did you know they were Christians by their love? Like, did that actually because

Doug Lynam 24:38

So they're f-

Caroline 24:39

Yeah.

Doug Lynam 24:39

Like they were, they were, v- they were a wonderful family. I have nothing. but they were also, there was this other.

Caroline 24:47

Yeah.

Doug Lynam 24:48

to the community they were a part of

Caroline 24:51

Became not aligned.

Doug Lynam 24:53

Right?

Caroline 24:53

Yeah.

Doug Lynam 24:54

Any problem in that household, but I did see it in the wider community that they were a part of.

Caroline 24:58

I see. I see. Yeah. So you,

Doug Lynam 24:59

I would-- that's actually not true. I, d- well, what really I did see in that household was a lot of sexism that really did

Caroline 25:06

oh,

Doug Lynam 25:07

the father is in charge, the mother is subservient, the wife is subservient to to the husband. And that was a, like a really big deal for their, their household. And that, that often chafed at me because of being raised by a single mom.

Caroline 25:18

Okay.

Doug Lynam 25:19

women have to have this role. It was a disconnect between what I saw in my own home in some ways was positive, seeing my mom step up and be in the workforce and, you know, actually take those roles on. So I never, that sexism is part of it. I did see, but then I, did, I did see a lot of racism, not in them, but in the wider community and homophobia and everything else that I'm just like,

Caroline 25:41

so, but what, but we have some themes here of you have this quest for knowledge, this quest for trying to get to original sources. This quest for human connection and this real, like when somebody is meeting you in a way that is compassionate and is kind, kind and is loving and accepting, then you're like enjoying that bit of peace and rest for a moment.

Doug Lynam 26:09

Absolutely.

Caroline 26:10

Okay, so now you, you go,

Doug Lynam 26:13

make great strawberry jam, by the way. I remember that.

Caroline 26:15

Yes.

Doug Lynam 26:16

Sunday morning. Anyway

Caroline 26:17

Oh, yeah, we had some neighbors that did like canning and all of that too, and it was just like, wow.

Doug Lynam 26:22

On some pancakes.

Caroline 26:23

Imagine what your life would be like if your career aligned with who you are, what you do best, and actually fueled the life you want. At Next Success, we support all ages and stages through career transitions from students exploring majors or careers to job seekers actively searching or re-imagining their next move to professionals committed to self-awareness and leadership growth. Stay connected and explore what's possible at nextsuccesscareers.com and follow @nextsuccessmethod on LinkedIn, YouTube, Instagram, and Facebook. Okay, so now how do you get from St. John's College to then a chapter that kind of came after that, I think.

Doug Lynam 27:12

Mm-hmm.

Caroline 27:14

But what, what came right after St. John's College and how did that become a part of your horizon of what you wanted to sign up for?

Doug Lynam 27:20

Well, it was actually kind of during college actually. I went to officer candidate school with the Marine Corps. So I signed up for the Marines.

Caroline 27:27

Like how did that come on here?

Doug Lynam 27:31

Well, I showed up to St. John's, a long-haired hippie, you know, that was my way. So after the evangelical stage, I went to a hippie stage. Well, there was a metal stage, then there was the Christian stage, then there was the hippie stage.

Caroline 27:43

Awesome.

Doug Lynam 27:45

And and I think what happened to me at St. John's, I finally was able to like, first of all, be free from my brothers wh- who I love deeply, but a lot of my identity was just kind of a little bit of playing follow the leader, with my older brother and, and, and, my twin trying to fit in a little bit and they went that longhaired route and I just like, I'll, I'll guess this is the thing we all do. And it was a great way to really annoy our parents. So we all kind of joined in and I remember there's a long story with the car, but basically my mom remarried a guy we didn't get along with, and so to really annoy him, we painted a rainforest mural on the side of our car and a big peace symbol on the hood. And, you know, just made it as wild and crazy hippie mobile as we could to just be an eyesore in the front yard. so that was kind of how I showed up at college. And then I got a little disillusioned with that. I saw the supposed wannabe hippie movement at the time, such as it was, we weren't real hippies by any means, but like that culture was a lot of selfishness.

Caroline 28:59

Mm.

Doug Lynam 29:00

and you talk about peace and love and all that stuff, but it's really just about me, me, me doing what I wanna do when I wanna do it. And nobody tell me how to live my life, which isn't all bad. But the flakiness of it and the, and. I, I, think I have, I'm somewhat, I think I have like this almost, do you call it? Not counterphobic, but, oh, my therapist named it once. And besides being ADHD, it's like, it's counter, re-- it's not codependent, it's counterdependent. Some people are really codependent on the people they're around. I tend to be counterdependent, like I, you are, I kind of. go... because of my twin brother thing, I always kind of go the other direction. And so now I find myself in this really sort of hippie community of geeks and I'm like, and I kind of like, now what's the opposite of this? And then because it, it's a, you know, the great, one of my favorite t-shirts from St. John's College is they had this t-shirt in the day. It's not true anymore. It said Great books, St. John's College, great books, no gym. Right? So there was, they didn't even have a gym at this school because it's like, this is, there's no sports, no this, is... I grew up in a sports culture, which I really rebelled against. So loved it there, but then once I got there, I felt like. now I'm feeling like I'm kind of-- we're all the same. So now what, maybe what's gonna, what's the opposite of this? And I think the headiness of it was overwhelming and, and the It's like, well, what would balance this out in some weird cosmic way? Like, and what would be a physical challenge that would be the counterpoint to

Caroline 30:41

Interesting.

Doug Lynam 30:42

I signed up for Officer Cand School with the Marines. And the reason I picked the Marines is because you could do their training and there's no commitment. You don't have to, you're not locked in until you actually get, you know, get pinned as they say. You get your bars and you complete the training. So I kind of wasn't sure I was gonna ever make a career out of it, but I, I did think of it very seriously at many times, but I ended up going during my summers between my sophomore and junior year, and then again during my junior and senior year off to Quantico, Virginia, and spent the summers training with the Marines. I finished near the, near the top of my class and I had a blast. I mean, I look back on it. It was one of the great adventures of my life and I also had a good mentor at the time. A professor of mine who had served in Vietnam, while I was going through all this, he's like, Hey, you need to read the history of the Marines really well if you're gonna do this. And

Caroline 31:32

Oh.

Doug Lynam 31:33

he kinda gave me every book on the Vietnam War history to read and make, make sure I was going in with my eyes open. So I became, and I've always been a bit of a history buff, although I can never remember dates to save my life. Um, then I kind of had this question this real burning question, like, I love the Marines. I trusted the Marine Corps. I trusted the leadership, but I didn't fundamentally trust the political leadership that was directing and guiding the Marine Corps. I wasn't convinced that we weren't gonna repeat the same mistakes of Vietnam again, and this was in the late '90s, Clinton was president. There weren't any active conflicts and, and and I decided at that point that maybe I, and I also realized that unresolved anger issues and, high explosives were a bad combination. And maybe I didn't need to go blowing people up around the world to get out my daddy issues. So It actually turned out to be a, a pretty wise choice because the, second Iraq war popped up. Right after that, and I would've been certainly been deployed to Iraq or Af- Afghanistan or both, which of, I think history has shown that that's just another Vietnam or at large,

Caroline 32:45

So you didn't end up signing on to, to be part of the Marines for longer. You didn't get the pin, you didn't accept the pin. Yeah. You didn't choose it

Doug Lynam 32:55

the training, they sent me back St. John's to finish my senior year. I hadn't finished my degree, so to become an officer, you need two things, the training

Caroline 33:03

and the degree. Okay.

Doug Lynam 33:04

So I had this whole year to like, sit on this decision and wrestle with it. It was a really hard year for me for that reason, but ultimately decided to turn my commission down, which I, I don't know anyone else who's ever done that. so, so yeah, it, it was a hard call, but I, really had to dig deep and just decide The, the harder realization was how much I enjoyed the Marines in a, in a weird way. like, the, the Marines teach you to be good at your job and, and, and your job is to kill people. And so i- essentially it's training you to enjoy the process of combat. And I think there's something in all of us that can resonate with it. It's why we love action films and violent movies, and it's the reason we're the dominant species on the planet. We, we got here for a reason because we're the most vicious predator out there. And to, to see that impulse inside myself, it was very-- To see that shadow side of my own personality was very, very revelatory. And, also realized that maybe this isn't something I need to... I need to feed and, and there... maybe there's a better way forward

Caroline 34:11

Gotcha. So you recognize this shadow side kind of deciding, "Oh, I don't think that's what I want to be acting on," and the skepticism of the leadership if we'd really learned our lessons. And so you, you, you paused on that. But then what did you decide? How did you move forward after graduating?

Doug Lynam 34:29

I had a, good mentor in college who was my thesis advisor, and we were talking a lot about my deep spiritual quest that I was on, the sort of existential dilemmas and, questions that I was searching for answers for, and suggested that, you know, "You might wanna look at this thing called monasticism," and invited me to join a community there in Santa Fe that, was really quite beautiful in many ways. I didn't go into a monastery with any faith. I wasn't raised Catholic or, with any real spiritual guidance, but I thought it was also, if I was gonna leave the Marines, you know, what would be a higher calling? What would give me all the things I loved about the Marines, the esprit de corps, the camaraderie, the sense of purpose, you know, the idea of service, but maybe with a higher calling, a higher purpose than what the Marines offered. So I thought of it really as an experiment. It was gonna be like grad school. I was gonna go try it for a year or two and see how... try it out. It was also a great way to really flabbergast my parents and annoy them to no end, because I couldn't have picked a lifestyle choice that was more antithetical to the way I was raised. I thought I'd just escape the world of money and materialism and all of it and just give that a shot for a bit and see where it would take me. End up being a 20-year adventure, and in many ways it was fantastic. You know, plus there's free haircuts, and the robes are super soft, so there's some perks. But

Caroline 35:58

So you decide to become a monk, a monk. Now how does that work? You just like show up one day at a monastery and you're like, "Knock, knock, knock. Hello, do you have room for one more?" Or like, do you make an appointment? Like is there how, does it work to actually enter in, stay for a while? like it's just such a unknown world to me.

Doug Lynam 36:22

There's a, there's there's an application process. There's, a postulate, They call it a postulancy, where you present yourself to the community to see if you're a fit, then y- there's levels of vows. So you kind of take t- temporary vows for the first, anywhere from four to seven years, and you kind of re-up each year to see if you wanna really make this a, a serious commitment, how, how committed you are and whether you like the community and whether the community likes you. So usually you, go for like a week or two, try it out, you go away, then you come back for six months, go away, come back more long-term is typically how it works. And so I, had I basically kind of just jumped into the deep end, for a lot of reasons and tried it out. And, I did the temporary vows and then after a few years, I actually ended up going full tilt and full bore and took my permanent vows and decided that this was gonna be the, the way I wanted to live my life. Didn't actually turn out the way I expected, but there

Caroline 37:24

Yeah.

Doug Lynam 37:24

twists

Caroline 37:25

But-- And so did you end up becoming Catholic while you were a monk? Wow. Wow. So that's kind of like a entering in on all, all sorts, right? You got all sorts of... Is there a sacrament for becoming a monk

Doug Lynam 37:41

There's an there's an

Caroline 37:42

yeah.

Doug Lynam 37:43

A, a priest and monks are very, very, very different. But there's a similar sort of ordination process that you go through, absolutely. And I was really honored to have, Father Richard Rohr say the mass at my ordination ceremony, which was really, a really meaningful moment in my life, and he became a, a good friend over the years.

Caroline 38:01

How did you first meet him?

Doug Lynam 38:02

Well, through my ordination. He happened, for various connections, he agreed to preside mass over the ceremony. And I didn't know much of him, but that's really where I got to meet him because he knew the other brothers very well and, that's how that connection first came about.

Caroline 38:19

And did you learn about the Enneagram before or after

Doug Lynam 38:23

W--

Caroline 38:23

meeting Richard Rohr?

Doug Lynam 38:26

After he was really the one who introduced me to it. I had didn't know anything about it up until that point, and so he was my first introduction and that, but, you know, I didn't take the Enneagram that seriously until I left the monastery, oddly enough.

Caroline 38:38

I, think

Doug Lynam 38:41

because I couldn't really figure out the why behind it. Ev-everyone would say, "Well, here's how it works," but like, "Well, why does it work?" And I couldn't really get a good answer. I was always kind of in the, well, that's an interesting tool, but..." And that was one of the things I really explored in my book. I had to figure that out for myself first before I could really adopt it as a meaningful rubric for understanding personality structure

Caroline 39:07

Okay, so just to catch people up, what is the Enneagram? Like,

Doug Lynam 39:11

Okay. Well, the, Enneagram is, it's a personality typology. The word enneagram, ennea in Greek means nine, gram means drawn and so it's really these nine archetypes of personality that we typically draw. Think of it like a, color wheel. If you were to, draw a color wheel and, divide it up into nine pie slices, then there's Your personality tends to fall on a range somewhere in one of those quadrants with infinite hues and shades and textures that are possible. And it, it, it doesn't tell you everything about your personality because your personality has many components to it. You have a na- a, nurture and a nature. Like, your nurture is how you're raised and your nature is your DNA. It just explains kind of the nurture portion of your personality, the, how, how you were raised in your childhood environment, what some of the, the way your ego formed to protect you from the biggest stressors in that environment, what were the coping mechanisms you developed and some of those defenses which got you through childhood but may be causing some difficulty in your adult life

Caroline 40:16

So you become introduced to the Enneagram through Richard Rohr, although it was after the monastery that that became, something that you picked up more. Okay, so now let's go back. So now you're in the monastery, and at first the, the initial part is like, "I'm going to escape money, and I'm going to escape these other things. This community seems kind of cool." You sign up for a while, you're there, and what do monks actually do while they're in the monastery? Of course, there's gotta be a component of, like, praying for people in the world, but then what? 'Cause I was kind of surprised in your book that you mentioned you were also working, and I'm like, "Wait, what?" Like, that I didn't... Yeah, help me understand all those.

Doug Lynam 41:04

There's plenty of chanting and prayer and meditation and services and all the things you would typically expect in a, in a monastery. But w- we were a Benedictine order, and so we were also a teaching order. So we, we taught in a local private school, and that was kind of one of the ways we brought income into the community and I was working as the chair of the math department at that school, so I was teaching math and also some science, and then down the road, economics and personal finance, 'cause that became something I got really interested in

Caroline 41:32

Yeah. So how did you become interested in finance and personal finance? 'Cause it's like on one hand you're like, "I thought you're supposed to be running away from having to worry about money." And then what happened?

Doug Lynam 41:45

really, you know, I thought taking a vow of poverty was gonna get me out of the material rat race forever, and it turned out to be ironically just the opposite. Because a couple years after I, I joined, our community became insolvent, and we fell into bankruptcy because we all hated dealing with money. Who else would take a vow of poverty except folks with some money issues hanging out in their closet? So a lot of very smart, successful, ed- well-educated individuals still couldn't get the financial side of our, of our community together because we just, you know you know, so the, there were a number of what I call money monsters roaming around the halls of our monastery, all taking different shapes, sizes, and forms. Essentially it was this idea that if we're doing good in the world, we're serving God, we're loving our neighbor as ourselves to the best of our ability, and that somehow th-that, you know, God was gonna come in and take care of all it for us. It was all gonna magically work out. So there was ma- there was some magical thinking, there was some delusional thinking, there was a lot of avoidance and then, then just some, some mis- some poor, poor invest- I'd say poor allocation choices of resources that e-eventually led us to a point where w- you know, we, we couldn't, you know... It was a struggle to put food on the table and keep the roof over our heads and somebody had to go sort that mess out and I was the youngest, most junior monk at the time and so for whatever naive reason I was like, "Throw me in coach. I raise my hand, I'll fix it. I'll take care of this." And you know, people pleasing behavior or whatever and, I didn't know I, I was financially illiterate at the time. I didn't have any idea what I was doing, but I figured the bar was set so low I couldn't do a worse job than my predecessor so at least I was gonna, put the hours in and try it out and that's really what me to realize that the material life and the spiritual life are not incompatible. In fact, they have to go together because you can't feed the hungry or clothe the naked or tend to the sick without money in your pocket. You know, unless you can master the miracle of multiplying the loaves and fishes, you really can't do any much It's hard to do good works in the world without the resources to back it up. Otherwise, it's just good intentions. So I realized as the monastery had a lot of good intentions, but w-we struggled to actually put them into practice because we didn't have the money to do it, and that made me realize that these two worlds have to come together in order to live the fullest life that you wanna live.

Caroline 44:11

And so how did you start tackling that?

Doug Lynam 44:13

Well, that's a long story, but basically, first of all, getting your profit and loss sheet kind of straight, getting your budget figured out, what's coming in, what's coming out. And eventually, you know, bankruptcy cleared out some of our debts, and then a lot of it was, better money management, better cash flow, understanding. Increasing the cash flow and then up in places that were-- where we were bleeding money and basically trying to get us back to at least somewhere where we were, you know, not in the red. And then, but it was a, it was a two-and-a-half-year process to do that

Caroline 44:51

Yeah, and how do you bring in money aside from the income that you guys earn as, as teachers? I mean, do you then go solicit donations, or do you host retreats and charge? Or like, how, w- what else, you know? 'Cause there's a lot of stuff that happens within the Catholic Church that it's like, "Oh, there's a suggested donation,"

Doug Lynam 45:10

Right.

Caroline 45:11

But it's just a suggestion.

Doug Lynam 45:12

At some point it needs to stop being a suggestion and more of a direct ask. Like, a lot of it was just not, not asking, just giving without any expectation of return, and then in many cases, being taken advantage of at times, where you need to be a little more upfront with people saying, "Yes, and, you know, here's what we expect." and, and being able to, you know, actually, some money into the community so people don't make assumptions that we have these infinite resources to-- that you can just, You know, feed off of

Caroline 45:44

So you turned that around, In two and a half years. Now I'm also kinda curious because mentioned a lot, well, yeah, particularly in the, Taming Your Money Monster, but like where did your fascination of cars come in?

Doug Lynam 45:57

It didn't.

Caroline 45:58

Yeah. You just utilized the, analogies of cars 'cause it made sense? 'Cause I'm like, wait, you were kind of near indie-ish, but not. But like how did, like, did, was there... Okay, so no fascination with cars, but utilizing lots of examples of cars while describing certain money monster types by taking the Enneagram plus your money knowledge and making it into a way that people can, I guess, relate to.

Doug Lynam 46:28

I was actually sort of frustrated when I, when I realized that the car metaphors that weave throughout the book were... problem is I had a lot of mixed metaphors when I did the first draft. I was using this metaphor and that metaphor and that metaphor, and the car one just worked really well to describe, you know, what kind of ego you're driving around in. And so it, it, to describe your Enneagram type, and it it, worked so beautifully that I kinda got, with it. And I'm, I'm happy with it-- I'm really thrilled with how it worked out. But, but I, I'm, I'm not really a car guy, to be honest with you

Caroline 46:59

So you become this money, Manager in the monastery. You also are teaching some finance things to students in, in the school, and things seem to be going kind of swimmingly. You've got everybody out of debt. You're in a great community, and then what happens? Like, what questions do you start having, or how does that kind of pivot and change? Of course, everyone changes over a 20-year timeframe, but how did you kind of grow and evolve, and then what did that lead to then?

Doug Lynam 47:35

Yeah. Well, first of all, our school didn't offer any personal finance or economics classes, and so I was like, "This is a real lack that

Caroline 47:41

Ah.

Doug Lynam 47:43

the world financially illiterate like I was," and then it creates all this suffering for people. So those were elective courses I invented, so to speak, or, offered. then, a lot of things happened. I would say there were two sort of... the pivotal moment was just realizing that our community was dying, we weren't, there were no new, you know, brothers coming to join, and was still, after 20 years, you know, the youngest person in the room, and that at some point, this community's just gonna age out. And it also became kind of very, what do you call it, say, sclerotic or just calcified. The decision-making process wasn't, as democratic, I would say, as it could've been. And there was real resistance to change, for the community to change in a way so it could grow and become more sustainable. And I realized if I stay another 20 years, I'll be the last one here to turn out the lights, and that just isn't a life I wanna be living. And I also felt like I wasn't growing. You know, you, you could describe it to, as an analogy f-for folks, it's sort of like a marriage, you know. It can start off really well, and then over time, the relationship can, can deteriorate. And, you know, it probably a little, somewhere after year 10, things started to get a little uncomfortable, and I thought, "Well, I'll just stick it out. You know, I made my vows. I made my commitments. gonna see this through to the end." And then I realized over time, it just got w- the, the community became increasingly dysfunctional, and I c- I couldn't f- make the changes. I couldn't, couldn't... Had no power to basically steer things in a different direction, and the community was gonna fall apart, so I had to go f- Find a different path.

Caroline 49:30

I think this is such a real, Thing that people can experience anywhere in their corporate life, in a home life, anything where it's like you're there, you, and you try to power through, and you try to push through. And whether it's a vocation like, being a monk or whether it's being part of a company for 10 or more years, it's like after a while you start pointing out problems, and that can backfire. At least in my own corporate experience, pointing out the problem because I wanted them to be changed, nobody else banded around and joined in and was like, "Yes, thank you. Let's, let's tackle that." It was more like, "You pointed out a problem. Now you're the problem." And then that became increasingly uncomfortable, but I got to go home. But if you're serving in a community, that is home. So things like that could just kind of compound and

Doug Lynam 50:24

and

Caroline 50:24

not

Doug Lynam 50:25

I

Caroline 50:25

be fun.

Doug Lynam 50:26

able to ta- th- these money monsters, one of them that I saw was this idea that money is inherently corrupting or evil or bad. And so here I am dealing with it all the time, kind of made me suspect in the community in a way, is like my efforts weren't always appreciated, even though the fruits of those labors were deeply, know, appreciated.

Caroline 50:47

Yeah.

Doug Lynam 50:47

the work itself wasn't always. and and so I felt I was at this real

Caroline 50:52

disconnect

Doug Lynam 50:53

in terms of of like, w- "Why are you worrying about this thing all the time, and why are you..." You know, like, well, because if we don't, I mean, somebody's gotta do it. And, and it, it it felt like our values just became, grew further and fur- further apart

Caroline 51:09

So how does somebody go about the process of unbecoming?

Doug Lynam 51:14

Well, it's, a-again, it's just a decision you make. It's, it's a bit like a divorce in a marriage. You just say one day, you can just say, "You can leave anytime you want. There's no locks on the doors." But it, it was a very, it was a very difficult process, and it, it, and it, it wasn't-- It took some time, and there was some compromises made to try to keep me to stay, and they-- It was like, "Well, we'll do this, we'll do that. It was like, "All right, well, I'll stick around for six months to see if things get better," and they didn't. it, it didn't work. I, I couldn't, I couldn't see myself staying in that role, any longer it, it was just so psychologically d-dysfunctional, and even at times what I felt would be even, abusive. And I just- realized I was not happy and I was not fulfilling my deepest purpose in life, and I had some gifts to give to the world and some... and a life to live. And so very hard bec- it's, you know, sort of like leaving Amish or something like that. You can, you know, you can go, but then you, you have to leave everything you know behind. You're leaving your, your community, your family, your career, e-everything, your

Caroline 52:25

Yeah.

Doug Lynam 52:26

you have to leave behind. And so what made it so difficult to, to transition away. But eventually, I made, made the decision and, and, and glad I did

Caroline 52:36

So the pain of staying the same finally became greater than the pain of leaving, even though that's the loss of, yeah, an identity, a vocation, a community, and still you felt this deep calling that, yeah, this is what I need to be doing. And so you embark on that new journey, but then what happened?

Doug Lynam 53:00

Well, um, well, good things happened mostly. I mean, it took, it took some time, but, know, I decided to then go into finance and become an investment advisor and, you know, help relieve the suffering that I saw from poor financial decisions that people make. I focused, first on like for, you know, retirement plans, 401Ks, 403Bs, moved into individual wealth management at a firm in Santa Fe. And my story was unique enough that it got picked up by The New York Times, and so there was a feature-length article about me in The New York Times in the business section on the cover that went viral. Got me a two-book deal from Harper Collins, and things kind of really, you know, took off. it was, it was, it was fits and starts, but, but I did manage to, you know, build a really successful career out of it.

Caroline 53:46

Then along the way, you also became a TEDx speaker. You also help all sorts of people. So, fascinating. A- and, and then what happened? Because, like, you were there in New Mexico, and now you're here in North Carolina. A- and like you had mentioned before, that, you know, you can do something and it can be great for a while, and then you have an urge to kind of start a new chapter or do something different. But help catch us up, like, and then what happened with you?

Doug Lynam 54:16

I did meet a beautiful, wonderful lady and fell in love and got married, and we had what I ca-we call a pandemic marriage. Some people have pandemic puppies. We had a pandemic marriage. And, so I we, we... I think the pandemic pushed us together a little faster than was prudent, then when that ended, the relationship ended for a number of reasons. Some of them were entirely my fault, and, basically I went through a very hard divorce. And then I decided to take, and I had a second book to write with Harper Collins, and I needed some time. So I took a sabbatical for two years and wrote my second book, got that out in the world, and then that I felt Santa Fe had been home for thirty, thirty-four years, and I needed to... I needed a shift. I needed something completely different and, you know, without a lot of the emotional triggers and some of the baggage that, was there. So I decided to come move out to North Carolina to be closer to my family. My mom's here. My brother's here. My, my twin brother's just north up in New York. So really decided that family was really important to me after having kind of neglected it for so long. I also wanted to be out of the desert and wanted to be, you know, in a slightly more vibrant, well, Santa Fe's a great town, but it's small. It's sixty-five thousand people in the city, eighty-five in the county, and it's also very-- It's one of the poorer states in the nation. And, and in terms of client base, it's really limited. And so, I've, I realized that this was a b-a better opportunity to grow my practice, and, I'm now with a-an amazing firm called Course Management Investment Advisors here in Pinehurst, which I'm really thrilled to have joined. I love their investment strategies, are really, Spot on. It's a great team, and so it was really, way to just, you know, just reboot one more time, and

Caroline 56:08

That's awesome

Doug Lynam 56:09

hope there isn't another, but you never know.

Caroline 56:12

So now you are holistically living into what you believe you're made for, making great contributions, being closer to your, your family, enjoying this time with them, doing great work for people in the community. How do you define authentic success for you now?

Doug Lynam 56:33

I think it's... Oof, that's a hard one. Um, authentic success is serving my clients well, doing a good job for them, helping them, you know, manage the ups and downs of their financial life, the emotional side of it as well as the, the mathematical side of it. and that's number one, d- offering great customer service. And then also being able to have the, the, the time in my day to have control over my... that's a nice part about my practice is I to be completely autonomous and, and design my day however I want that's gonna, you m-move the ball forward, whatever is important to me today. And then it gives me space to keep writing and keep thinking exploring and, you know, deepen my spiritual practice and, finding, creative ways to be of love and service to the world around me. So it's, it's been a big adjustment coming out here, and I'm still kinda finding my, my... getting my feet underneath right now. But I'm finding community, I'm finding friends, and it's really, it's been a, bit of positive shift for me.

Caroline 57:43

Well, you're super fascinating. I'm, I'm so grateful, To have met you and to be able to call you, a friend.

Doug Lynam 57:50

Yeah

Caroline 57:50

So I highly recommend anyone who is wanting to explore what it could look like to have a better financial future and to really understand their present to engage with, Doug, call him up, find out, and/or there's two amazing books, "From Monk to Money Manager" and "Taming Your Money Monster." And this is the-- "Taming Your Money Monster" is the one that takes the Enneagram approach and, looks specifically through a financial lens and I know that you're an excellent, practitioner of helping others on, on all facets. So how can people find you?

Doug Lynam 58:27

my business website, I'm at Course Management Investment Advisors in Pinehurst, North Carolina. You can also go to my personal website, which is douglynam.com D-O-U-G-L-Y-N-A-M DOT COM And there you can find resources to my TEDx and my books as well. And all my social media handles are @douglynam, so w- take your pick. They're all out there.

Caroline 58:48

Well, thank you so, so much, Doug. I'm so excited, for having you on the show, and I wish you the most amazing Next Success ever.

Doug Lynam 58:56

Thanks, Caroline. Appreciate it a lot.

Speaker 58:58

Thanks for listening to Your Next Success with Dr. Caroline Sangal. Remember, authentic success is yours to define and includes aligning your career to support the life you want.