Jim Farrin, a former corporate executive, joins Jamie Hopkins to discuss how instead of retiring, he rewired his life to serve others. Jim is now the co-founder of the Petey Greene Program, which recruits college students to tutor adult and juvenile prisoners and detainees. Today, the program has more than 1,000 volunteers from over 30 colleges.

Closing Bell

Successfully 'Flunking' Retirement

Welcome back to Cheddar news, disclosing bell Everyone. This next segment is brought to you by Carson wealth, your trusted financial advisor, Carson wealth, we'll help you find your freedom by meeting you where you are and aligning your financial picture with your life's vision. While Carson wealth is a presenting sponsor of this segment, the opinions and statements expressed in the following are Cheddars. So Cheddar recently teamed up with amazon bestseller Jamie Hopkins to explore the term requirement while highlighting those who didn't let retirement be the end of their journey. Instead, they used it as a new beginning. And today Jamie speaking with Jim Farren, a former corporate executive who instead of retiring, rewired his life to serve others. Now, Jim is the co founder of the Pd Green program which recruits college students to tutor adult and juvenile prisoners and detainees. And today the program has more than 1000 volunteers from over 30 colleges take a look jim you've been saying that you flunked retirement and I love that because I often talk about how people should rewire instead of retire. Really change up your life, go after a passion. So tell me a little bit about how you channeled that flunking into your work with the Pd Green program. Well, it was a short time coming Jamie because I was in corporate America, it was, I did okay, but I didn't really at times feel the passion and so I thought I've got to do something which will give me real satisfaction and hopefully come out in a way that is significant for me and and maybe even help others. And um I have, I've always thought of life in three chapters. One is education a second is achieving and the third is giving back and I was awfully slow to get into giving back. I'm embarrassed to say how long it was, but once it hit me, I had never been so satisfied in doing it far exceeded my uh what I got out of corporate. Uh it didn't give me money, but that was really the point is follow your passion, try something different, try to challenge yourself to do something that you would think you couldn't do in 2017. You were awarded the A. R. P. Purpose prize. Let's talk about that idea of purpose. You know, why did you feel that need to realign your purpose after retirement? Well the purpose came from a feeling that I was helping people uh and uh for the Petey Greene program. The it started because I believe it or not, I had a senior thesis which I I wrote on an unknown judge that I guarantee Jamie you he never heard of Judge Benjamin bar Lindsay and he did some incredible things like he got guys and he said, okay, you're going down to prison. Here's some money for you. You you go down by by car or you face somebody to drive you or you get there and then he said to you, but you will not let me down. You will not let me down. I'm trusting you to do this. And I was fascinated with that, That's a judge handing out money to guide person to go there. Uh and it started me thinking I wrote my senior thesis at Princeton on that guy, Judge Benjamin Bar Lindsay. And when we, my wife and I came back and I thought, well what can I do now? What can, what could really be exciting? And lo and behold. My wife met somebody who said, bring your husband down to a prison. And he said, why ha ha he's not going to go to prison? No, go down there because we need we need him. And the person who ran the prison said, hey jim, come on in. And I said, wait a minute, you know my name? He said, yeah, you're gonna you're gonna help us, We're going to do something really exciting. We're gonna get Princeton students to come in to these prisons and help help us here. So that was the way that I got started. And it was looked out of out of nowhere. Um and I just took it step by step and the more I stepped into the prisons and see the situation, the stronger my my heart was beating. We gotta do something. You've also gone through some challenges, right? You were diagnosed with colon cancer towards the end of your career. But you said before you took step after step, you didn't take that as a you know, this is the end of things. You took that as an opportunity to challenge yourself. So for other people, you know, how do you how do you get that message across to somebody when they're faced with, you know, challenges today to take the next step to reinvent themselves. To challenge. As you said, skydiving. And you've also done stand up comedy now to yeah, I'm I'm going back to that now actually, but I don't see many people laughing here. So I think it may be a bit of a slow uptick. We'll see. Um it's it's really getting them comfortable with the idea of taking the first step because so many people think whoa, I read that whole thing, it became terribly hard, but it was achieved, I believe, by going step by step and starting with the first step. I mean in my skydiving, uh deal, I found out there was a skydiving place pretty close to us, that was step one. Once you get to step one, the others can come pretty rapidly after that if you get some encouragement and it's really important to look for someone else who believes in you. Or even I had some people who were laughing their heads off telling me I was very funny, even though I wasn't, but just someone telling you that can get you started and you have to totally forget the whatever you've done in the past that has nothing to do with the present and the future and as long as you're able to walk to talk, there's so many things that are possible, but you gotta believe in yourself in the end, you believe in yourself, I can do this, I can do it well for somebody looking, you know, towards retirement and thinking about rewiring changing up their life. We've also heard your passion about all of this. Do you have any advice for people? How did they marry that passion in life and something that they might not have even done before with that next step? Well for me it always was look for a challenge. Look for a challenge. If you've done something in your, your life up to this point and you want to do something again, don't make it going back to being a schoolteacher, assuming you were a school teacher, nothing wrong with that obviously, But it could be very exciting to explore. Almost like an explorer itself, explore something new entirely new and start taking a step towards that. Find someone who will encourage you in doing that and laugh and enjoy it because gosh, there's so much we can enjoy if you find something new in your life too many people I believe, stuck in a rut and get out of that rut, try something new, challenge yourself and gosh if the people that do that will receive so much more. But the real kicker is help somebody else when people in, in who are incarcerated get graduated, believe it or not, they get graduated, they have the tassel on top when they go in there and you see them coming down the aisle, they play the music and you see them coming towards you and they say, hey mom, I did it, I got my degree and you see a whole bunch of relatives crying, your life has changed right there and it's all about giving back helping society and nothing beats that. Nothing beats that jim. Absolutely love your story, your passion, the impact you've had on education and you know, so many people that are impacted by the prison system here and thank you for that inspiration for others who are looking at their future and saying, how do I take that next step? How do I put my passion together and rewire life instead of just retired to something they already know that's comfortable. So thank you for coming here. Thank you for your impact. Okay, well if you want to learn more about how to rewire instead of retire, download your free copy of Jamie Hopkins, amazon bestseller rewire mint now, Carson wealth dot com slash requirement