Welcome Home, Elder Now What?
A Guide to Building a Meaningful Life
Post-Mission
For parents & leaders →Ben H Roberts
Then you came home
Nothing broke. Nothing failed. But something changed — and for the first time in a long time, you started feeling an internal unrest you couldn't quite name.
The momentum you had on your mission didn't automatically follow you home.
The confidence you felt teaching the gospel didn't translate into choosing a career or navigating dating.
Everywhere you go, people ask "what's next?" — and you feel behind when you don't have a polished answer.
The spiritual strength that came so naturally doesn't seamlessly carry into your new ward or college apartment.
This chaos does not mean you are failing. Often, it is a sign that you can sense the gap between the life you are living and the person you are capable of becoming.
If the life you are living isn't aligned with your potential, there will be chaos in your soul.Ben H Roberts
The Now What Method
Every important decision
asks the same question
Now what? That decision point is a Now What Moment — what to study, whom to date, what to do with your first real paycheck.
The Now What Method is how you respond. Four steps, the same every time.
Seek
What possibilities have I not yet discovered?
Dream beyond what feels normal, familiar, or expected. Don’t reject a possibility before you’ve honestly explored it.
Study
Which possibility holds up when tested against truth and real life?
Run your strongest options through the Refinement Funnel — Verify, Discern, Identity, Prayer — until one becomes a confident decision.
Shape
How do I build a clear path from where I am to where I want to go?
With a mentor who has the results you want, turn the decision into a plan: skills, habits, routines, and milestones.
Strive
Will I execute the plan, learn from setbacks, and keep adjusting?
Live the plan. Treat setbacks as feedback, not failure. Small daily actions compound.
Chapter Three · Start here, free
Write your Identity Standard
It's the one thing the book tells you not to skip. A written declaration answering a single question: across every season of my life, who am I committed to being? It becomes the filter for every decision that follows.
Or have the worksheet emailed to you:
Your answers never leave your device. The builder runs entirely in your browser — we can't see what you write and we don't store it.
The rest of the book
Your faith, identity, relationships,
career, finances, and health are all connected
The decisions you make in one area of your life will influence every other area. Every chapter has a page here, and the book’s closing section, Start Now, helps you choose where to begin.
Defining Your Eternal Identity
Write the Identity Standard that becomes the filter for every decision that follows.
Chapter FourYour Relationship with Jesus Christ
Define the kind of disciple you want to become, and build a Spiritual Rhythm that fits real life.
Chapter FiveChoosing a Career with Purpose
Choose a path that buys back your time instead of slowly pushing you into a corner.
Chapter SixTwo Entrepreneurs
Todd looked like he was winning. Charles kept getting knocked back. A story about perspective.
Chapter SevenPlan for Your Money
Your income matters far less than your plan. Run the numbers on your own future.
Chapter EightChoosing Your Eternal Companion
Must-haves, deal-breakers, trusted voices, and the conversations every couple needs.
Chapter NineSurround Yourself with Great Friends
Run the Friend Audit and decide who’s on your bus, and where they sit.
Chapter TenPhysical and Mental Health
The foundation that determines how much of your life you can actually carry.
Chapter ElevenProtect What You’ve Built
Most people don’t fall. They drift. Build the guardrails that keep what matters.
Chapter TwelveLiving a Meaningful Life—On Purpose
Then Start Now: revisit your identity, choose one area, and take the first step today.
Chapter Seven · The tool promised in the book
Freedom & Legacy Calculator
Ask your 65-year-old self how much he wants to live on each year. Ask your 55-year-old self whether he wants the option to step away early. Once you choose those two numbers, everything else is math.
These are educational illustrations demonstrating long-term financial principles, not guarantees of future performance. Figures assume a hypothetical 7.5% annual return and do not account for inflation, taxes, fees, or market volatility. Ben Roberts is not a licensed financial advisor.
Get the book
The greatest risk isn’t failing.It’s succeeding at building the wrong life.
Too many returned missionaries spend years working incredibly hard, only to realize they never intentionally chose the life they were building.
The mission taught you how to change lives. This book teaches you how to build your own.
Kindle Edition
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Audiobook
Narrated by me. Coming to Audible.
Ben H Roberts
About the author
Ben H Roberts
Ben H Roberts is a husband, father of five, entrepreneur, mentor, and nonprofit leader committed to helping people build meaningful lives.
Ben co-founded LoanPro and served as its COO for more than fifteen years, helping grow it from a startup in the back office of a car dealership into a financial technology company valued at more than $1 billion. He stepped away from day-to-day operations and now serves on LoanPro’s board, giving more of his time to his faith, family, mentoring, and service.
His entrepreneurial leadership earned him recognition as a 2023 Utah Business 40 Under 40 honoree. He was a finalist for the 2022 Mountain West EY Entrepreneur Of The Year Award and the Silicon Slopes COO of the Year Award.
Today, Ben dedicates much of his time to Become More, the nonprofit he co-founded to help people build lives of greater strength, purpose, and independence. The organization pursues that mission through initiatives in Cambodia and the United States. In Cambodia, it partners with rural villages to help communities move from extreme poverty toward long-term self-reliance. In the United States, its work focuses on personal fulfillment and helping young adults intentionally build meaningful lives.
For more than twenty years, Ben has mentored young adults, especially returned missionaries, through decisions that shape their faith, relationships, careers, finances, health, and future. Those experiences led him to develop The Now What Method, a repeatable four-step process for choosing your direction and building a meaningful life: SEEK, STUDY, SHAPE, and STRIVE.
In Welcome Home, Elder. Now What?, Ben brings the Identity Standard and the Now What Method together to help young men understand their eternal identity, define the man they are committed to becoming, and turn that clarity into decisions and actions that build a meaningful life their future selves will thank them for.
Ben lives in Utah with his wife, Trina, and their five children.
You're holding this book at exactly the right moment — this season you're in right now is one of the most important you'll ever walk through, whether it feels like it yet or not.
I've known Ben for years, and I've watched him mentor young men through exactly this season. He doesn't just teach this process — he uses it, in his own career, his marriage, his faith. I've watched it hold up under real pressure.
Do the work in these pages, not just the reading. This isn't a book about surviving your twenties. It's about which man you become — and you get to build that man on purpose, starting now.
Welcome home. Now let's go build something.
Steven Sharp Nelson