Intro: 00:00

Welcome to the You Can’t Take it With You show, where we feature stories around generosity designed to inspire and encourage others to do meaningful things in their communities. Now, here’s your host, Jim Dunlop.

Jim Dunlop: 00:17

Hi, Jim Dunlop here, a wealth advisor and host of the show, where I sit down with people who get it when it comes to generosity. I’m excited to have guests who can give us stories on generosity, to not only inspire our listeners, but to give practical ideas on ways we can give.

Today’s guest is Zac Larson. Past guests include Peter Greer, Jim Langley, and Phil Cubeta, among others.

But before we get to Zac, I want to share that this episode is brought to you by Advent Partners Ready for Good. Advent is a financial planning team dedicated to helping you make informed decisions that simplify your financial journey. At Advent Partners, we’re ready for good. Our bold ten year vision to help clients donate $100 million to transform lives through generosity and planning united by generosity, relationship excellence, authenticity and fun. We empower meaningful lives and lasting community impact. To learn more about Advent Partners and how we can guide your financial success, visit. Readyforgood.com.

And now, Zac. Zachary Larson has dedicated over two decades to improving clients lives through purposeful, service centered financial partnerships. His career began with Thriving Financial, where he and business partner Corey Schmidt found a platform aligning their professional pursuits with personal values. Together, they co-founded IntentGen Financial Partners in 2018 to deliver greater value to clients, team and community through specialized financial planning, asset management, and community engagement. In his current role, Zac focuses on enhancing intentions, culture, and brand while building client and community relationships. His expertise helps clients strategize for retirement income, investment management, wealth transfer, tax efficiency, and charitable giving. His leadership aims to create opportunities for employees, clients and the community to live intentionally and experience generous living beyond work. Zac is husband to Kristen, whom he married in 2003 and father to four teenage sons. 

 He serves on nonprofit boards, coaches his son’s basketball teams and enjoys golfing, scuba diving, skiing, cycling, and traveling. Through these multifaceted pursuits, Zac fosters a legacy of intentional and generous living that he strives to pay for daily. I first met Zac, was a long time colleague and friend over 20 years ago, and I’m excited to have him as a guest. Zac, welcome.

Zac Larson: 02:32

Jim. I’m fired up. I thought I was coming on here to maybe provide a little inspiration for others, but you just inspired me. Can you say that goal again that Advent Partners has that ten year vision?

Jim Dunlop: 02:43

Yeah. So our big ten year vision is to help our clients that guide our clients to be generous to $100 million. It’s something that we’re starting to track and we want to, we know that we’re doing good when our clients are doing good things. And so that’s, that’s where we’re, we’re, we where we want to head.

Zac Larson: 03:05

That’s phenomenal. Let’s make a dent in that goal today.

Jim Dunlop: 03:08

Yeah, absolutely. So I, I, I think it’s always good to just start out by giving our listeners a little bit of background. So maybe give us a little bit of an additional autobiography on who Zac is and, and, and then we’ll go from there.

Zac Larson: 03:25

Sure. I’m, I’m going to start with a quick story that encapsulates a lot, I think of, of who I am and where I’ve come from. So you and I are from the same era, same generation. And we can remember basketball at its best when there was this guy playing named Michael Jordan. And Jordan was in all the commercials, and there was a commercial that he did with spike Lee.

And it was focused on it’s got to be the shoes. And, and that’s like a core memory to me, not the Michael Jordan commercial, but a moment that was all about the shoes. So I’ll rewind the tape. I’m. I’m a teenager. 

 This is early 90s. And our family. I’m the middle of three boys. My parents are both pastors and our family rhythm was that we would have a family dinner and we were expected to drop the activities and come in and, and be part of that. And then my parents as pastors most of the time were going back to meetings at church. 

 And so we would have to do the dishes, clean up the kitchen before we could go back. And of course, I was a grateful teenager. I really appreciated everything my parents did. I was happy to come home and help out. Right? 

 Not of course not. So one night I’m reluctantly, begrudgingly, like doing the dishes and kind of make a demand of my parents, like I need new basketball shoes and shorts. And I don’t remember what the money was exactly, but let’s say it was 150 bucks that this was going to cost. And I didn’t know the family finances. I we always had enough. 

 There was food on the table, but there was never felt like there was extra. And we talked about it. My mom asked some questions and ultimately the answer was no. And then she followed it up with a statement that I, I can still vividly like, see, see the, the place where we were the expression on her face and she kind of rolled her eyes and was like, you better get a good job someday because you really like nice things. And so I, I followed her advice like I, I started a lawn mowing business in high school and college. 

 I got a good job of, in a career that I love. But something happened just a couple weeks after that night where I didn’t get the shoes and I saw something for the first time that I’d seen a bunch of times before, but I saw it differently. My parents, one would preach, the other one was in the church pews with my brothers and me. And I saw him put a check into the plate every week. But this week I saw how much it was. 

 Any guess?

Jim Dunlop: 05:59

$150.

Zac Larson: 06:01

You got it. 150 bucks. And I’m thinking here is like a selfish teenager, like, man, I can’t get my shoes. And they’re putting 150 bucks a week into the offering plate. And this is like 1990s dollars.

That was a lot of money then. Still a lot of money now. And you can imagine at the time, I probably wasn’t like, oh, my parents are amazing. They’re doing this and I’m fine not to get my shoes. It was a little different attitude, but that values prioritization that they had has been so impactful on my life. 

 And it’s inspired me to be on my own generosity journey. And then as I went through college and internships, I felt called to be in this financial career where luckily, if we’re helping our clients do good, for some reason, we get paid okay on it too. And so I still like nice things. I love the job that I get to do to help people with their money and to be confident about it. But I’ve been on this generosity journey too. 

 And so it’s been an incredible privilege to have those conversations with people to help them on their own journeys. And I’m sure we’ll get into that a lot more as we go. But that’s a glimpse into my past.

Jim Dunlop: 07:18

So usually after I ask for the autobiography, I ask for the generosity story, origin story, and I feel like I just got it.

Zac Larson: 07:25

They are one and the same for me. Maybe just one little anecdote to that when I. One of my earliest memories of money was we got four quarters for our allowance, and one of those quarters had to go into the offering plate at Sunday school. And the other three, we could save one and spend two. So like we hear this biblical principle of a tithe.

And there’s giving traditions through lots of different faiths and culture as well, but like a tithe is 10%. And my parents, they said, screw that, you’re just starting at 25%. So then I’ve been on this journey, my wife and I, to say, how can we grow in ours? How do we get back to that number and now go beyond it and keep finding meaning and joy in the giving that we get to do?

Jim Dunlop: 08:15

So you’ve touched on a little bit the work that you’re in and that I’m in, in the area of planning and helping guide people with money, I’m guessing you have some good stories that you’ve witnessed along the way in that work. Could you share some of those with us of ways that people have had an impact that might be surprising or, or just unique?

Zac Larson: 08:38

Sure. And I think it starts with a observation I’ve had over time that rarely do people get to a place where they feel they have enough money. But I think good planning helps give people confidence that they’re on track for what they want to do, and given reasonable probabilities and assumptions, they have enough. And usually it’s at that point that people can jump off into doing more for others. Now, I’d love to, for people to, to feel the excitement and the joy of just saying, I trust I’m going to start giving and then build from there.

But I know not everybody tracks that way, but one of the, the simplest and coolest stories that I, I’ll always remember was with clients that wanted to be on that progressive journey. And they said, we’re going to start automating or systematizing our giving, rather than just having it be an intention. Like I want to do this. They put it at the top of their cash flow funnel, and I don’t remember the amount, but let’s just say it was a 100 bucks a month or 500 bucks a month. It doesn’t matter. 

 It was the principle of it. And when at a review a year later, I asked him what they felt like was going well. And they said the best thing they felt about their finances for that year. And, you know, the market had gone up, their savings had gone up. They did a lot of smart things, paid down debt, but they felt really great about that giving. 

 And I said, okay, so what’s next? What do you want to do? And they wanted to double that monthly amount. And I think it’s just those simple steps that we can all take to say, if this is a priority, let’s take action. Let’s not worry about how it affects the plan. 

 Is this the best way to do it? Is it the right thing? Just start doing it and experience the fun that happens. Experience the impact that happens from it. And they did it and they’ve been on that progressive journey. 

 And I think it’s just a fun place for people to get to.

Jim Dunlop: 10:40

I like that idea. It’s the idea of, you know, what’s the best way to elephant is one bite at a time. And I think Sometimes I feel like people find themselves frozen in that they want to figure out the perfect way or the perfect plan, and sometimes it’s just taking that first step and building that building that muscle almost.

Zac Larson: 11:05

Absolutely. And I don’t meet people who regret the giving that they’ve done. Now, I’ve heard stories of like they gave somewhere and the money didn’t get used properly or there was fraud. I mean, unfortunately, we’re in a world where that stuff happens and people could say, I wish I hadn’t given it there, but I’ve never met anyone who gave money and was like, oh, I wish, I wish I hadn’t done that. But I do meet people that they buy something or they commit to something financially and they’re like, I wish I hadn’t done that.

But it’s never about generosity. So that’s one encouragement is take the first step. I’m going to go to a far, far other extreme and then a couple more normalized stories too.

Jim Dunlop: 11:46

Oh, great.

Zac Larson: 11:48

So this is not the norm for most of our clients, or probably yours or the people listening, but I think a lot of people can resonate with the idea of having something aspirational to work towards and then achieving it. Whether it’s a second home college for kids or grandkids, a boat, and in this case, it was a boat. And this was a wealthy client who they checked all the boxes on their financial plan. Like things were on track. They had enough.

They were doing all the smart things and they just said, I really want to buy this boat. And they entered into an agreement to buy a very expensive boat in the early stages of 2020. So rewind our tape. There was some that happened in February and March of 2020 that disrupted everybody’s plan. And, and we all know what that Covid experience was like. 

 But imagine you had a long term plan to make a huge purchase, and then you’re a month later, you’re down 30% And you’re saying, how do I figure this out? Well, we work through a process. Ultimately, they ended up going through to buy the boat because they valued the experiences that that would create. It was less about having the boat than it was about being able to take their family on it, take friends on it, go with people they want to go places they wanted. And so they were grateful that I helped them through that process. 

 And ultimately the market rebounded and fortunately, their plan worked. So these clients invited me to join them on their boat. And in 2022, I did that in Fort Myers. And I took two of my young boys, and I was just blown away by their hospitality, their generosity to create a cool experience for us. But what I can’t ever forget is we walk into the Marina, the guy meets us, we walk down to the pier, and there’s this glistening white boat shimmering in the sun and the blue water, and right next to it, on the other side of a pier is a boat that’s even bigger. 

 And this guy couldn’t help himself. But talk about the other person’s boat for the first minute that we’re together. And it just reminds me that in life, there’s always a bigger boat. So when we’re doing things for ourselves, for our family, like there’s an element of contentment that has to be there. And so I talk a lot about generosity and contentment as being a balancing act. 

 And on one side of the equation, the world will tell us we never have enough. There’s always more. There’s always a bigger boat. And then if we look the other way, there’s always somebody who needs our help, needs more needs a, you know, a leg up. And generosity is like this amazing balancing act. 

 If you can find contentment where you are and be generous, that life seems to level out a little bit. So I don’t get those boat stories very often, but there’s some cool things that have happened kind of in the middle that that I’d love to share too.

Jim Dunlop: 14:44

Yeah. So go right ahead. a. We love to hear stories and love to share these stories with our listeners with the hope that if. If nothing else, we’re planting some seeds for future generous ideas.

Zac Larson: 14:58

Yeah. So let’s think about our hobbies. I know you love to cycle. What else do you like to do?

Jim Dunlop: 15:04

I’m not good at it, but I like golf and I’m an avid reader.

Zac Larson: 15:10

All right. Well, we’re going to throw out reading because that’s a cheap hobby. But cycling. Cycling and golf can be as expensive as we let them be. And so I was sitting down with some clients and golf was their hobby.

And we’re going through cash flow projections and working through what they need for retirement. And they had already started their retirement transition. So they had their place in our hometown and they had a place in South Carolina. And for them, their values, they that meant they had a church here and a church there, and they wanted to support both. And they had a country club here and they had a country club there. 

 So we’re going through the cash flow and starting to model it out, and that the husband shares what he thinks it costs for each country club per year. And the wife kind of gulps and looks at him and is like, what? And then they’re going through their charitable budget. And then she just has this like, moment where she looks at him and says, don’t you think our giving budget should be as big as our golf budget? And I mean, any of us can imagine that kind of situation. 

 How is this person supposed to respond? Like of course. So put on the spot by his spouse. And that’s where their values kind of lined up. So they shifted their giving to a line. 

 They said, we value the experiences and the fun of this hobby and insert your hobby there. I have clients that ride horses and breed horses. Well, expensive hobby, but whatever it is to just say, I value that and I’m okay to use my money on it. But I also want to value helping others and being generous. And so let’s just line up those budgets as a simple target to do that. 

 And then this one’s a little more recent, but it’s just one of my all time favorites. And I share it because of the relative simplicity of it, but the huge impact. So generosity doesn’t have to be about huge numbers. Sometimes it’s steps forward and was having a conversation with someone and I just said, who are the people and places you care about? It was a family, their two daughters, and it was a charity called Wounded Warriors. 

 And I said, great, what are you doing for the your family? What are you doing for these places? And they talked about family and what they might like to do more. I said okay for the charity and he said, well, we, we love this place. They’re great. 

 And we signed up for their $20 a month, like automatic giving. And I’m not pleased here. I’m not judging, I’m not condemning anything. But this was a a family that had a net worth of probably 3 or 4 million bucks. And they felt good about giving their $20 a month. 

 And that was really all they did for charitable. That to me is not good or bad. That’s just the place they were on their journey. And I said, how would you feel if you did more? And they said, well, we love it, but we don’t know that we can. 

 And I said, okay. Let’s model it. And so we have their financial plan. And I click a button and I show a bigger number than 240. And it doesn’t move the needle obviously on a plan for them. 

 And he’s like, oh, we could do that. And I said, yeah, and you don’t even have to do it from your checking account where you’re giving, because this person was now over 70.5 and could give right out of their IRA, which is where the bulk of their money was anyway. Sure. So we set up a strategy that they stopped their monthly giving for 20 bucks a month, and they now give a thousand bucks a month or not. I’m sorry, not a month, but a thousand bucks a year to this charity that they care about. 

 So I like to put that in a statistical reference and say we increased their giving by over 400%. Yeah. And, and they felt phenomenal about it. And now they’re a significant donor at a thousand bucks compared to the impact that they were having before at 240. So it’s just a kind of a encapsulation of numbers work on big scales, but impact works at all, all different levels.

Jim Dunlop: 19:12

Yeah. So Zac, this is probably a good time. You know, you have some great stories. And if you have some more to share, great. However, I know there’s a place where people can get more stories from Zac on generosity.

Could you tell us about that?

Zac Larson: 19:27

Sure. It’s been a privilege, just like you’ve had, Jim, over 20 years of journeying with people on their lives and finances and families. And so I wanted to give voice to these people. And so I’ve heard them, I’ve lived them, I’ve walked with people on it. And I said, maybe it can inspire other people to do the same.

It’s just kind of the same concept that your podcast is doing. But I put it in written word and I wrote a book called Retire Intentionally and Retire Intentionally is all about the stories and strategies that give people confidence to spend, give, and live the life that they want. And there’s an element of some financial components in that book, but really, it’s about the cool things that people have done with their money, because we’re all at different points on our financial journeys. And you and I have talked a lot about generosity in terms of giving to other places, but the book is filled with stories too, of saying, you know what, let’s give you confidence to go do things for yourself that maybe you’ve wanted to do and you felt like, I don’t know if I could or I should, or I want to do things for my family now rather than leave an inheritance later, or I’d like to give some money now rather than leave it behind in my estate.

Jim Dunlop: 20:42

Yeah, and I like that. If we can pull up that thread a little bit like this idea of generosity, I think often a very common default is giving to his charitable giving. But generosity is a much broader term than that.

Zac Larson: 20:58

Yeah, I so I’m going to share a quick biblical perspective. And this is dangerous to do because one of the challenges that people will pull things without context or isolation and use it to manipulate what they want. And I’m not trying to do that. But there is a story where Jesus is with his disciples and one of his the group, one of his followers tries to put some oil on his feet and someone’s like, you can’t do that. We should sell that money and give to the poor, noble thing to do.

But Jesus responds in a relationship driven way, in a compassionate way that says essentially, yes, we will do that for the poor, but there will always be an element of that, and I won’t always be here. So it’s okay to have this relational experience. And I’m not trying to say that to justify someone going to spend everything in the mantra of YOLO and whatever, but I am sharing it in the context of relationship. Like we’re all here for a short time. And if people are holding on to things and they won’t go have an experience with their family that they could, that probably should be an element of their generosity, as well as giving it to their church or to places that they care about.

Jim Dunlop: 22:24

I don’t know about you, but I’ve often lived with and doing this work long enough. I try to give voice to this, to clients. There’s clients. When you reach a certain magical age, you’re forced to take money out of retirement plans And and one of the things that I’ve discovered or heard early in my career was people in their 80s saying, why didn’t we take more of this money ten years ago when we were in better health, or we felt like doing things that we don’t really feel like doing? And, and I think giving people permission to, to be generous to their families, to themselves is, is really important.

And I’ve, I’ve seen enough people over the years have enough regret over not having, you know, done those types of things only to get to a place in their 85 and the government’s forcing out lots of money from their retirement account that they don’t need, or they don’t have the inclination to spend, and they’re not able or interested in traveling or going anywhere anymore. And I think that that goes well with that.

Zac Larson: 23:30

Yeah. You used an interesting word and we actually used that and talk about it a lot. You said permission And I don’t think it’s ever that we’re giving someone else permission, but we’re like empowering them to give themselves permission to do it.

Jim Dunlop: 23:47

Yes.

Zac Larson: 23:48

And, and we talk a lot about confidence with that of like the confidence to use it. And then along with that, there’s, you’re leading into something that I wanted to touch on to. This is a very practical perspective on giving that we talk about because think about my giving story. It was four quarters and it was a check in the offering plate. Where is that money coming from?

If you look at someone’s financial picture, it’s coming from their checking account or their cash. And that’s how most of us have been taught to give, and that’s how the majority of people give. But I’m going to put you on the spot. You didn’t know this was coming. I’m not going to ask for numbers. 

 So this is, you know, still confidential, obviously, but think about what you keep personally in your checking account and then compare that to your investment account and then compare that to your net worth. Put them in order. Which one’s biggest to smallest?

Jim Dunlop: 24:45

My net worth would be my biggest. My investments would be in the middle. And my, the cash in my bank account would be the smallest.

Zac Larson: 24:54

Yeah. And that would be the same for probably 99% of people. I’m sure there are some exceptions out there, but the giving that we get solicited for is like, you know, come to this event, sign up for this monthly auto contribution, give a check to support a fundraiser. And it’s all focused on the checking account. And that’s where people have the least amount of money.

And so it becomes a very scarce resource. But the next level of giving that we work through is to say, how can we help people look at their investments and their assets and say, could we give out of there? And we’re not going to get into tax strategies. And that’s what people can do with their advisors. But essentially, there is an easy, simple way to move towards investments to give and could be donor advised funds could be when the people reach that age 70.5 and they give out of their IRAs as qualified charitable distributions. 

 So I know we always need disclaimers. They should consult with their tax advisor and their financial advisor. Right? But conceptually, all I’m getting at is it opens up the floodgates for people to think differently about what they could do. And it can often be very tax efficient. 

 And then the third piece is net worth of like, I’m still some of your language. So person saves well accumulates. They’ve been blessed. They’ve been good stewards. They have a large net worth and they can’t take it with them.

Jim Dunlop: 26:27

That’s right.

Zac Larson: 26:28

So if you can’t take it with them or with them, what’s the purpose of that net worth? And that’s really the essence of my book is like stop focusing on net worth. Figure out a net income strategy to get the money that you want to be able to use, to spend and give, and then think about the net impact of what’s left. Like, what do you want to do with that? And let’s have some fun brainstorming it rather than just hanging on to it to say, what if?

Jim Dunlop: 26:54

I have a story I want to ask you about and it’s a game I think I saw it on. I think I saw it on LinkedIn a year or so ago, where you went on vacation or something with a bunch of friends, and everybody had to go into a grocery store with $100. Am I remembering this story? What’s the story?

Zac Larson: 27:13

Well, we’ve been fortunate. My in-laws have a lake home in northern Wisconsin, and we’ve been the recipients of their generosity for 20 years. And we go up there and we have these magical family experiences. We’ve taken friends, our kids have taken friends, and then we go live this dream vacation life. And meanwhile, there’s a community around there that supports that the local businesses and there’s people that are doing great and there’s people in need, and there’s the local food pantry and it sits right near the grocery store.

We go on vacations and, you know, we’re fortunate on a vacation. You just let the kids go, go crazy in the grocery store and get whatever they want. And then we had this realization of like, well, if we get to do that, maybe we could support the food pantry there. So it started as writing a check, but that was not meaningful to our kids. We could talk about it, but they didn’t experience it. 

 So I just came up with this crazy idea. I said, let’s go to the grocery store and we’re going to play a Price is Right kind of game. So each of you gets to go. We asked the food pantry some things that they needed, so every cart had to have a few different types of items. No phones or calculators. 

 Make them do some math. And each person had 100 bucks to spend to fill their cart. And the kids had friends up there, so I think there were like eight people shopping. So we got 800 bucks worth of food for the food pantry, and the kids loved it, and they got competitive. And we had prizes for the winners of who got the closest without going over. 

 But what it did then is it connected the kids to this experience. And so then we went around the corner and dropped off the bags of food and loaded them into the food pantry to help some other people there. And Kristen and I still did what we wanted to do. We wrote a check along with that, but we created an experience. And ultimately, I think our kids were motivated by it and felt connected. 

 The community was impacted, the grocery store got business. And what we never intended, like this was not about anybody else knowing it, but the local town newspaper picked it up and like put out a story on it. And so now it’s inspired other people to go do the same thing at the grocery store.

Jim Dunlop: 29:35

I love that idea. I think I want to copy it on our next family vacation. But, you know, one of the themes that comes out in this podcast and a lot of these episodes is somebody does something and it creates this ripple effect. The copycat copycat effect. And this is a perfect example of that.

And I had another thought too, is, and I don’t know who all was in the group, but let’s say it’s a friend of one of your kids or one of your sons is there. And, and 20 years from now, they’re sitting on a podcast and somebody says, well, what’s, what’s your generosity origin story? And say, you know, my friend’s parents took us to their, to the family lake house and we did this thing at the grocery store.

Zac Larson: 30:17

And that’s cool. That would be powerful. I never thought about that element of it. But yeah, we’re, we’re planting seeds. We never know where they will get harvested.

Jim Dunlop: 30:26

I think that’s great. So I want to switch gears a little bit. You and I are both very passionate about cycling. You know, we were talking a little bit ago about expensive hobbies and the, the, the fun saying is teach your kids to get into cycling. They’ll never have money for drugs.

But on a serious note, what is the Solstice Century?

Zac Larson: 30:50

Well, Jim, hopefully you’re going to come experience it yourself. Or maybe you’ll know some people that want to. But I did something crazy for my 40th. I’d been lucky to go with other people on a golf trip or whatever, and people have their fun. But I was like, I want to do something that’s a challenge physically and has some charitable impact.

And so I’m from Iowa and there’s a ride in Iowa called RAGBRAI, and it stands for the registered annual Great Bike Ride across Iowa. And it’s a week long party on a bike, and you end up riding like 400 some miles. But there’s bands and music and craft beer tents and pork chops, like all kinds of good stuff, but I had never cycled before, so I just said, I want to do this. I hired my brother who was a vacation adventure planner, to do all the logistics, and we rented an RV and I said, come join me for the trip. We’re going to cover the cost of it. 

 And I had crazy friends from different chapters, and they just came and did the ride with us. And then each person reached out to their own networks and raised money for a community center in the the town where the ride finished, which is where I grew up in Davenport, Iowa. And we ended up like raising money probably, I think it was 25 or $26,000 for this place called the Friendly House. So that was fun impact. But what it did is it caused some of us to fall in love with a new hobby. 

 So we chose then the goal of going to a different state each year and writing what’s called a century ride and a century ride is a fun milestone. If people have never done it, it would be like the runners of equivalent of a marathon. Although every runner tells me it’s easier to ride a century than run a marathon. I don’t know, never run the marathon. But as I have told people about that, here’s where it connects back to Solstice Century. 

 As I told people about that, what I always hear is, well, I could never do that. That sounds like too much. And I think we all undersell ourselves continually. And, and so we created this idea of a physical and a charitable challenge, and our company sponsors it along with some others in the community. So it’s a free experience for writers. 

 And we ask two things. We ask that they commit to trying to ride 100 miles in a day, and that they reach out to their network and raise money for some local charities that we select, and we ask everybody to ride 100 miles and raise a thousand bucks. And this will be the third year. It’s on June 19th, and there’s a website, SolsticeCentury.com. So I think we have people coming from five, maybe six states if you join us, I think this might be the year that we get to cap the ride at 100. 

 So signups are open and it’s ultimately it’ll be huge charitable impact. But I think the two biggest things for people who, who do it are the following. One, they accomplish a physical goal, which is we get older. That’s harder and harder to challenge ourselves to do. And the other is they experience the joy of collective generosity. 

 Like people have have been very afraid to go ask to raise money, and then they’ve been overwhelmed with how their family and friends want to support them, and they blow away their thousand dollar goal. And that, to me, is just the power of the community that says, yeah, we want to support people who are doing good things. And when people experience that, it just opens up their eyes to not only the impact they can have, but how people care about them.

Jim Dunlop: 34:28

I like it and I I’ve been, of course, aware of this ride for the last couple of years, and I, I plan to get there soon and maybe even this year. As we wrap up, I want to ask you just a few things. I know there’s some really important people in your life. You’ve talked a little bit at the beginning about your mom and dad. And also I wanted to ask you about Julie Bullock.

Can you tell us a little bit about them and the influence they’ve had on you?

Zac Larson: 34:59

Yeah. So I had no idea about this a decade ago or maybe 15 years ago. But there’s companies out there that just focus on generosity, like how to help people experience that joy. And our church hired one of those companies to help with what normally would be known as like a fundraiser or a capital campaign. And I got to be part of the leadership of this group.

And the company was called GENERIS, and their focus was helping people grow in generosity, not just a fundraising capital campaign. And the two go hand in hand. Right. We were raising money for some things that our church. But Julie was just this wonderfully creative, thoughtful, reflective person who taught me a lot and worked with our church through that process. 

 But one of the core truths that she talked about, and that I’ve experienced and uncovered through my life, is this idea that God wants generosity for us and not from us. And I think even if someone doesn’t have a faith background or a faith that’s important, you could put that in secular terms and just say generosity is for you, not from you. And that’s supported by a cliche we all know, which is it’s better to give than receive. But overwhelmingly science supports it. Scripture supports it. 

 Like cool things happen when we’re generous to others. And Julie was influential in helping me with that. And then along the way, there’s another organization that’s called the National Christian Foundation, and there’s the Thrivent Charitable Foundation, and there’s the Fidelity Charitable Foundation. And I started to realize like, wow, in every faith background, in every community background, in every investment background, there’s a connection in the charitable giving, and there’s cool tools that those places help equip people to do more efficient giving to maximize the impact. And so Julie was just kind of one of the people that helped launch me on that journey.

Jim Dunlop: 37:06

That’s pretty cool. So I, as we wrap up, I, I want to ask you one final question, but before I do that, I just want to point people to where they can learn a little bit more about some of the stuff we’ve talked about. First of all, you can find Zac at intentgen.com. That’s the word intentgen.com. No surprise where that came from.

You can find him on LinkedIn. You can buy the book Retire Intentionally at amazon.com and anywhere where good books are sold, I assume.

Zac Larson: 37:38

And yeah.

Jim Dunlop: 37:40

And I would say, go check out solsticecentury.com if you want to support that ride, either by participating or donating, it’s there. And our last question is, if you had the opportunity to, to have a lot of have the world’s attention for a very short moment in time, what would be your message?

Zac Larson: 38:02

That’s, that’s a lot. You should have prepped me for that one. No, I think I don’t really have to contemplate it. It’s in the mission of our company. It’s I feel like what my personal mission is, is to empower people to live intentionally.

Like, just go do it. Stop trying to make it perfect. Stop trying to analyze everything. Be purposeful, thoughtful, intentional, and then, you know, figure it out as you go. Which sounds weird coming from a planner, but like people got to do things.

Jim Dunlop: 38:36

Yeah, I, I, I have yet to find somebody in all of my years of working that made a charitable gift that they regretted because it meant they ran out of money because it never happened. Right. And so.

Zac Larson: 38:51

Jim, I’ll close with a, like a quick story. This is a spoiler for my book because this is the last page of my book, but it stuck with me. There’s a person who’s now passed away, sadly, but I, I talked about him in the book. And by the way, all the stories in my book are fictional names, but real, real people. And this person I called him Charlie in the book.

We’d done all the planning, like checked all the boxes and they’d had. They lived a good life. They’d had experiences. They gave. They were close to their family. 

 Like there was nothing sad about this story. But we were wrapping up a Zoom call and he was in his 80s and he said, wait, I’ve got one last thing for you. I was like, alright, well what’s that? And he kind of gives me this little smile and but there was another look in his eyes too, and he said, I’d like to trade some money for time. And I was like, yeah, I can’t, can’t help with that one. 

 And that’s to your point earlier, is there’s, there’s an end time for all of us and you can’t take it with you. You say that pretty well.

Jim Dunlop: 40:00

Zac, thanks so much for being with us today. Again, please check out Zac at intentgen.com and solsticecentury.com.

Outro: 40:11

Thanks for joining us to hear stories of generosity that remind us that you can’t take it with you. Visit our site at canttakeitwithyou.com for more details on today’s episode and to subscribe to future shows.

Disclosure: 40:29

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