financial freedom

TWS 22 | Financial Literacy And Freedom

Achieving Financial Literacy And Freedom With Sharon Lechter

October 10, 2019 Patrick Donohoe Podcast 00:30:49 Comments Off on Achieving Financial Literacy And Freedom With Sharon Lechter

Podcast: Play in new window | Download

TWS 22 | Financial Literacy And Freedom

 

Everybody wants to be financially free, but are they willing to take action? For today’s segment, financial literacy expert, keynote speaker, and best-selling author Sharon Lechter teaches about financial freedom in its barest definition and shares how you can achieve it. Sharon co-authored the international bestseller, Rich Dad Poor Dad, and fourteen other books in the Rich Dad series. She recalls the inspiration that started her into financial education and how this literacy can be a catalyst for change. She also touches on the power of association and reveals the secrets to successful entrepreneurship. The choices that you make today shape what you will become tomorrow. Take action and don’t miss this podcast episode.

—

Watch the episode here:

Listen to the podcast here:

Achieving Financial Literacy And Freedom With Sharon Lechter

Our guest is an interesting one. You will enjoy the interview. It’s Sharon Lechter. Sharon is the former CEO of Rich Dad and Pay Your Family First. She’s an entrepreneur and a number one New York Times international best-selling author, philanthropist, international speaker, mentor, licensed CPA and chartered global management accountant. She co-authored Rich Dad Poor Dad, which is why you must be thinking about her name. She also co-authored with Donald Trump and Kiyosaki in Why We Want You To Be Rich. Also Greg Reid who we interviewed, she co-authored a book with him called Three Feet From Gold and also Outwitting The Devil, Think and Grow Rich For Women, Success and Something Greater: Your Magic Key. She’s written a lot of books and she’s written quite a bit.

She was in Columbia and had some cool things to say about that. I do a lot of work with the Rich Dad organization, mainly their Rich Dad Advisors. I have great relationships with all of them, with Tom Wheelwright and Andy Tanner, the Cashflow Wealth Summit which is an annual conference is 100% online. I never had the chance to meet Sharon Lechter although I know she was part of the Rich Dad story. I came to gain a good feeling about her as well as respect and adoration. The influence she had on Rich Dad or the influence it had on here and vice versa, I know it’s mutual.

She’s out there doing good and I believe she has some sound principles she talks about and we recommend you to go her website. She’s definitely mission-driven and still has a lot of work to do. I hope you enjoy the interview we had talking about the theme of entrepreneurship. She definitely is one that has seen many of those. If you like the show, we would love your feedback on iTunes. iTunes started deleting podcasts in general, hopefully not our podcast yet and hopefully never. They’re definitely restructuring some of the podcasts stuff on iTunes. If you would head over and support us, that would be amazing. All you have to do is give us a review and subscribe.

—

Sharon, thank you so much for taking the time to do this interview. I’m excited to talk to you about entrepreneurship because you have extensive experience in that arena.

Thanks, Patrick. I’ve been around a long time. I have done a lot of things.

Which says a lot. I’m hoping we can get to some of that. The first that I’ve been intrigued by is I’ve discovered that there are these universal variables or principles that determine the success or failure of a business or an entrepreneur. What are a few of those variables that you have discovered along the way? You’ve seen probably thousands of businesses, lots of success but also lots of failure. Have you come to some of those conclusions?

Certainly. One of the biggest ones is every entrepreneur, they’re in love with their product or their service, their idea, the deliverable of their company but too few of them take the time to build the foundation around that business. Everybody wants a successful business, but in order to make that successful business scalable and then ultimately saleable, you need to have the foundation around it. Some of that part is boring because you have to have the right legal structure, you have to have the right agreements, you have to have the right business systems and most people don’t think about that. It’s very important when you are a young entrepreneur to make sure you have a team around you and mentors that can help you build the business structure so that you can create and scale your success.

Getting to that point though, most entrepreneurs or business owners will start because they have a product or a service. Other than finding an amazing all-star team to put together right out of the gate, what are ways in which you’ve seen someone go through stages of a business to get to the point where they realize, “I need a team, I need some structure and I need to set up my operations this way?” What’s usually the process that an entrepreneur goes through before they have that realization?

The first step is you do start small. I invested $1,500 in our first print run of Rich Dad Poor Dad and continued to reinvest in the profits of the sale of the book so we can continue growing and expanding to a multimillion-dollar operation. It’s making sure you understand the needs that you have and then also that power of association is something that I talk about a lot. We were taught in school to do things on our own. Entrepreneurs typically they have their passion, they have their talent, they have their product and they feel they have to do everything themselves. The power of association is what’s going to speed your way to success.

When you're an entrepreneur, everybody's looking to you for the answer; it can get lonely and scary. Click To Tweet

In today’s world, it’s almost a necessity that you have the right people around, the right people that are going to help you market, the right mentors. It’s so important to have a mentor that can guide you around the pitfalls that other people fall into and open the Rolodex. When I have my mentoring clients, I want to make sure that they are looking at what that next level is, not where they are now but where they want to go and who can get them there the quickest. Do I know someone I can introduce them to? Is there a new association, somebody that can help them market their product? Entrepreneurship is a constantly creating environment but with that underlying structure, what you create stays and continues producing for you.

A few things that are interesting around people and having different people with different skillsets, different abilities. How do you go out finding the right person? How do you identify them? Resumes by now are understood as not necessarily the whole truth and nothing but the truth. How do you go about determining if it’s the right person?

There are lots of levels. If it’s an employee, I say hire slow, fire fast. You want to make sure that the employees that you’re bringing on understand your vision, understand where you want to go and that they have strengths where maybe you have weaknesses so they can fill that in but there’s a shared initiative. Let them be an entrepreneur within their job. Part of it is understanding what they’ve done in the past, what their strengths are and then giving them the opportunity to grow within the business. Not just hire them to do the same thing every day and give them the opportunity to own their jobs so that they feel that level of contribution.

In today’s environment, I talked to business owners all the time. If you’re not creating that entrepreneurial environment for the Millennials, install a revolving door because they want to feel like they have ownership over their life and what they’re doing even as an employee. When you’re looking at building your business advisers, does the accountant that you use have experience in what you’re doing so that they can bring their experience to the table to help create greater value for you. Is the attorney you’re using somebody that is an expert in what you do so that they can make sure they’re supporting you, that they’re not learning on your dime? Do you have a mentor who’s challenging you as well as supporting you?

Being an entrepreneur can be very lonely. You may have been a professional in a group of other peer professionals and if you had a question, you walked down the hall and walk into somebody’s office, but when you’re an entrepreneur, you’re the top. Everybody’s looking to you for the answer. It can get lonely and scary. That’s why it’s important to have those people that you and they may be in different industries, but if they’re going through the same growing pains, they may be able to help you deal with issues that come up and help you get past it. It’s a comfort to know that you have people out there that are supporting you in your success as you’re supporting them in theirs.

What are maybe some of those organizations that you have seen best support those leadership and entrepreneur roles? I totally agree with you.

There are quite a few that are regional. They may have a group in your area that may not be national. There is YPO, Young Presidents’ Organization. There’s YEO, Young Entrepreneurs’ Organization. There’s NAWBO, National Association of Women Business Owners. It’s for the women business owners who have more established businesses over $1 million. WPO, Women Presidents’ Organization, I’ve been on their national board and a member of for over twenty years. It’s an incredible organization of peer mentoring. There’s BNI, there’s LeTip. All of these are organizations are there to create and support and inter-networking and supporting each other in businesses. In addition, there are other probably local and regional organizations right here in Arizona. There’s one that’s more of a technology-based group. Check it out. Look out and find out. Talk to other people and what organizations they belong to.

That’s awesome because we haven’t mentioned any of those types of networking groups often. We’re talking about a lot of entrepreneurial principles but as far as networking, it’s always best to learn off of the experience of others instead of having to experience it yourself sometimes.

Experiential learning is so much better than book learning. If you get it from someone else, you save yourself the heartache of learning that lesson the hard way.

One of the things that I find intriguing is the notion of leadership. I find leadership an interesting principle. How have you come to characterize leadership and good leadership and maybe even bad leadership?

TWS 22 | Financial Literacy And Freedom

Financial Literacy And Freedom: Experiential learning is so much better than book learning. If you get it from someone else, you save yourself the heartache of learning that lesson the hard way.

 

There are so many thought leaders on the topic of leadership but from my perspective, I try to make things simple. A leader needs to know when to listen. A leader needs to know when to support. A leader needs to know when to make a decision. There are times when your function is that of a cheerleader, letting your team do what they do best and cheering them on. You duck when there’s praise, but you stand up when there’s criticism. There are times as a leader that you have to be the pit boss. You need to make the tough call. You need to call someone who are not performing. A leader always has the vision of the company, but also has the heart of the team and makes decisions based on both.

I would say one of the biggest things that I’ve faced is when you do have to make those critical tough, tough calls, I value the principle of co of kindness. Sometimes the managerial, dictatorial stick, for whatever reason, it’s never resonated with me. For those that experience those feelings, what are some rules of thumb to abide by to hold the line, tow the line but also do so with a degree of kindness as opposed to the proverbial stick?

The greatest talent of leaders being able to listen. Certainly, I know when I was a member of a team, if I knew I had the environment to be heard, no matter what the outcome was, I would respect it because I know I was heard. My thoughts and my suggestions were taken into consideration. As a leader, there are times when you have to be the decision-maker and you have to do what’s right for the company. Sometimes that means somebody on the team is in the wrong seat on the bus and probably if you sit and meet with them and you help them find something that’s better for them, they’re going to be happier in the long term. A toxic employee creates a toxic environment. That doesn’t mean as a leader that you can’t do it with passion and that’s how you communicate with them. Maybe it takes a little more time than a dictatorial leader will, but it ends up being better in the space in the long-term because an employee that is unhappy in their job may stay unhappy in that job. That’s not good for them, it’s not good for the company and it’s not good for the leader.

Part of that comes back to the first question you asked me is if you had the right business systems, the right code of conduct, the code of honor, things that imply what your business is for, what you believe the code of conduct is and an employee is not performing. If you can manage to the system, it’s a lot easier than manage to the personality because it keeps the emotion out of it. I had a client, a very successful dentist, he’s having a terrible time with her Millennial employees. She was very much more 8 to 5, “Don’t use your cell phone when you’re at the desk.” We sat down and I said, “Why don’t you have a code of conduct? When the next time you have a problem, you say, ‘Which one of these do you think you violated?’” It can almost become comical because I say, “I blew number five.” “What are you going to do about it?” It takes that angst, that emotion out of it because you’re pointing to a piece of paper, not to a person. That’s something that I share with all of my clients. Think of McDonald’s, you take out a little bit of that emotion and when you have high emotion, you have low intelligence. If you can manage the emotion, you’re going to get better results.

I’d love to hear your story. What are maybe some resources to point to, to understand what a code of conduct or code of honor is, how it’s created and then maybe get into some business systems? Are there some resources or guides that would help someone that’s listening that may have a smaller business that does not have established systems and would want to explore establishing?

Certainly. My husband’s an intellectual property attorney. He’s been by my side and he’s the legal mind behind many of the businesses I’ve built and created, this global brand as well as Rich Dad and many others. We put together a course called Essential Components of a Successful Business. I’m not intending this to be a commercial message, but I’m answering your question. We have that course. You can find it at SharonLechter.com because we couldn’t find it anywhere else. It’s like a college MBA class on how to build every aspect from the legal structure, understanding intellectual property, how to protect it and leverage it, business systems, how to raise money, different ways to use other people’s money, other people’s time, other people’s resources, understanding marketing and communication strategy and how important that is to have the follow up and the follow-through.

People talk about follow-up. Following through is usually the problem. It’s understanding every aspect of business systems from the moment somebody answers the phone, to following through on emails, whether you have a funnel, making sure that the customer experience is there and systems on how are you going to pay your bills, how are you going to collect money, what is your system so that you can stick to it, so that you have an organization that can be duplicated or scaled. Those systems are so important. It’s all held together by you as a leader, your team and your vision, your mission of the company. Once you can solidify that, you have an asset. That business becomes an asset. It’s no longer a job. It’s an asset that can operate with or without you.

From a system standpoint, there are so many different industries out there, different types of businesses, whether it’s product-related, service-related. Have you found that business systems are mostly universal or do they vary from industry to industry?

They vary between a large manufacturing company versus a service company. It is unique to the style of business that you have. Think operations manual, that’s step one. How does your business operate? How do you source your goods? How do you source your components? What are the financial terms related to that? Is it in time delivery or do you want to hold a certain number of days of supply down to how much of this do you have components? Who’s going to combine them? What’s the quality control procedures? What’s the return procedures? What are you going to do in handling defective merchandise? What is your return policy?

All of those and that’s a small piece of the types of systems that you have. Your operations manual is your first step in defining what’s missing within your business systems. I’ve got clients or people that have gotten all excited because they’ve got a big order from Costco or from QVC. They spent and they went and mortgaged their house to get the money to create products to be on QVC to find out that it all got dumped back to them. They lost a fortune because they got this high emotion. They didn’t have the systems and the financial intelligence to understand the importance of managing your cashflow.

Oftentimes, saying yes can get you in trouble. The entrepreneurial curse is you want to say yes to everything, but you should only say yes to a few things.

Financial freedom comes when income from your assets exceed your monthly expenses. Click To Tweet

A lot of people say yes and then figure out how. It can be a nice thing to say, but it’s a hard thing to do. You have to make sure you’ve got the financial wherewithal to follow through and then it’s the right thing for you and your business.

There’s a book that I read, Ready, Fire, Aim, and I see the point behind it. At the same time, there are also some drawbacks to approaching big decisions that way. Talk about what your story is and what gave you this bug. Clearly, you’ve had so many different experiences, whether it’s writing books or running businesses, consulting within numerous industries. What gave you that bug and what has kept it alive?

I started my profession as a CPA. Even from the very beginning of my career, I was inside companies of all different industries and saw how they did things right. Probably more importantly saw a lot of them did things wrong. It gave me this base of understanding of business operations and systems and what it takes to be successful in business. Fast forward a few years, I get married and meet the inventor of the talking book. I was able to take that and apply that in-licensing strategy around the globe. We had a new technology. This was back in 1987 before a child had any electronics. We were the very first electronic in a child’s hand. To get the parents to trust us, we partnered with companies like Disney, Warner Brothers, Sesame Street.

Understanding that power of association that helps validate you and elevate you when you needed it most allowed us to grow a very successful company that exploded over the four years from $1 million to $9 million to $23 million to $52 million in sales. Selling that company, we moved to Arizona. This was back in ’91 and in ’92, my oldest son went off to college and came home from September to December. He came home in December with a credit card debt. We didn’t even know he had a credit card. He got to college and there was a table saying, “Free pizza, free money,” and other one, “Free T-shirt, free money.” He had a good time his first semester in college. That was when he came home. It was December of ’92, we said no to bailing him out and we made him figure it out on his own.

It’s probably one of the better decisions we’ve made as parents. That was December of ’92 and that’s when I dedicated the rest of my career to financial education, financial literacy and entrepreneurship education. My passion now is as strong as it was in December of ’92. The way that I’ve done things that built the Rich Dad organization over ten years to be the largest personal finance brand in the world because of the need. I grew up in a very entrepreneurial home. I didn’t understand that everybody didn’t think the way I did. Financial freedom comes when income from your assets exceed your monthly expenses. It’s that simple. You want to invest your time in buying, building or creating assets. Once those assets get to that point, you’re financially free. It doesn’t need to be millions of dollars.

When I met Robert Kiyosaki, he was only making $100,000 a year. He lived in a two-bedroom condo. He had two small apartment complexes and it generated $100,000. His living expenses were $30,000. He was technically financially free. That message is what more people need to understand because people think financial freedom is when you’re at $10 million. No. You can become financially free if you focus on buying, building and creating assets. That has been my lifelong passion. I had fifteen books with Rich Dad. I’ve done four books with the Napoleon Hill Foundation, Three Feet from Gold, Outwitting the Devil, Think and Grow Rich for Women. Success and Something Greater, the reason I wrote this book is I want people to wake up that success means different things to different people.

We have some content that has never been published from Napoleon Hill, but we also highlight close to twenty people that have created success in their industries, all from different magic keys or secret sauce, whatever you want to call it. Their focus and their definition of success is different, but then they also always gave back that success and something greater. The reader is going to see these different stories of success and one may not relate to them at all but the next one can go, “I can do that.” I want to empower people to realize that you are where you are now because of the choices you made before now. If you want success in your life, start making different choices because it’s never been easier to start a business. It’s never been easier to promote a business. It’s never been easier to create success in your life if you do it with the right information.

From 1992, you have grown and it’s awesome that this book is coming out. At the same time, what trapped your son in 1992 it seems that the educational system, the business environment has continued to grow as well and not necessarily providing the financial education for individuals to achieve that end of financial freedom. What do you see in the Millennial generation or what do you see in the environment now that gives you hope? I’m talking mostly in the United States, but the indoctrination of kids and how they’re trained to be employees, trained to be managers, what are some signs that you see that things are changing, that kids are waking up? The Millennial generation, I find extremely fascinating because it’s totally different than all previous generations and they haven’t bought in as hard as a lot of other generations have. What else are you seeing maybe besides the Millennial generation that gives you hope?

There’s a positive and a negative. Millennials now and the younger generation, they recognize that there’s no job security. They recognize that there’s not going to be a 30-year career with a gold watch. They’re not going into it with that expectation, which means they also have more demands. You have to make sure you understand as an employer that it’s not just the paycheck, it’s the environment. If you want to build loyalty in your employees, you need to understand what they want, what they’re looking for and make them feel ownership in what they’re doing with your company. In addition to that, the school system itself is still behind the times. We’ve succeeded in some states, Arizona, we now have personal financial educations as a requirement for high school graduation. It’s not enough and we’re still working on that degree.

We talk about how the rich get richer, the poor get poorer. That’s because they learned about money at home, not at school. If we truly want to level the playing field for students and people around the world, providing that financial education is what’s going to give kids an equal footing. As we see these kids coming up, a lot of people say, “They’re lazy. They don’t want to do anything.” There are those individuals in every generation. I see young people eager to take control of their own lives, eager, recognizing that there is no job security. We will always need employees. Companies will always need employees. If you are in the market and with our low unemployment right now, it’s even more important to create an environment where your employees are proud to be part of your company. Proud to be there, proud to want to work for you and create success. As an employer, as a leader, sometimes you have to be more creative as to how you maintain that environment of excitement even if it’s a corporation and environment of entrepreneurship.

TWS 22 | Financial Literacy And Freedom

Financial Literacy And Freedom: If you want success in your life, start making different choices and start building your business.

 

Sharon, you’ve provided so much information. Tell the audience how they can get your new book and also access some of the resources that you have available. Maybe talk one more time about the business course that you have available on your website.

Thank you so much. I appreciate that. SharonLechter.com is my website. I’m also Sharon Lechter on Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter, Instagram, everywhere. On my website, you can find more information about several online courses I have. One is the Essential Components of a Successful Business, which I spoke about earlier with my husband. I have a Financial Mastery Course that is also very in-depth getting you from being financially stressed to financially secure. I have a Play Big course, which helps take you to the point where you are financially free. All of those are available. I also have another course on Think and Grow Rich for Women.

For free, I have a podcast, Play Big Movement with Sharon Lechter and then I also have a private Facebook group, Play Big Movement with Sharon Lechter. I invite you all to join all of those. The book Success and Something Greater is available through Amazon. If you want to have a special gift related to you defining your own personal success equation, you can go to Bit.ly/successequation. It’s not a sales pitch. It’s a download of walking you through your own personal success equation, your passion, your talents, your powers of association, what actions you can take and most of all having faith in yourself, faith that what you’re doing is needed and necessary and faith that you can succeed.

Sharon, this has been amazing. Thanks again. Any final words of wisdom?

I want to thank you, Patrick, for what you’re doing. The more information we get out there energizes people to take action. I literally came home from Columbia and the folks down there, South America, they’re so eager to learn. They’re so excited. They were there before the doors open. They stayed until after the doors closed. They were so eager. I think we need to get people energized, particularly in the United States, to take the action. Many people are waiting for it to come to them. Don’t wait, make that decision and go out and create your success.

When the spectrum is wide as far as having freedom and not having freedom and being pushed in certain directions, especially from a country and political standpoint, it’s amazing how much freedom is valued, how much education is valued, how much other perspective is valued. I have tremendous hope for South America. Columbia has made its strides.

It’s amazing. It’s like the beginning. It’s on the upswing. It’s very fast-growing economy with people that are so loving and excited and eager to learn. I’m looking forward to seeing how the economy there grows.

Sometimes those countries have to experience some pretty rough times in order to turn things around and have a shift for the better. That’s awesome you were down there and were able to give them value.

Thank you. It was wonderful. They were incredible people. It was incredible seeing the progress.

I know it’s making a difference and I look at countries like Venezuela and I know Argentina is having issues too. It’s one of those things where you have the Columbias of the world and you have other countries that are making these drastic changes, it provides that flagship and a beacon of hope for the other countries that are their close neighbors. Thank you again for your time, Sharon. Best of luck on everything. We’ll get the word out on all the resources that you mentioned as well as your books.

Thank you, Patrick. Thank you for all that you do.

Important Links:

About Sharon Lechter

TWS 22 | Financial Literacy And FreedomSharon Lechter is internationally recognized as a financial literacy expert and keynote speaker. She is a New York Times Bestselling author, successful entrepreneur, philanthropist, and licensed CPA and CGMA.

Sharon has been a pioneer in developing new technologies, programs and products to bring education into people’s lives in ways that are innovative, challenging and fun, and remains committed to education – particularly financial literacy and entrepreneurship. In 1989, she helped the inventor expand the electronic book industry to a multi-million dollar international market.

As founder and CEO of Pay Your Family First, a financial education organization, Sharon has served as a Presidential Adviser to Presidents Bush and Obama on the topic. In 2009, Sharon was appointed to the National CPA Financial Literacy Commission as a national spokesperson on financial literacy and was reappointed in 2014. Sharon is also a Founding Chancellor for Junior Achievement University of Success and was appointed by Arizona Treasurer Kimberly Yee in 2019 to the Arizona Financial Literacy Task Force.

Sharon co-authored the international bestseller Rich Dad Poor Dadand 14 other books in the Rich Dad series. Over 10 years as co-Founder and CEO, she led the Rich Dad Company and brand to global success. In 2008, when the economy crashed, she was asked by the Napoleon Hill Foundation to help re-energize the teachings of Napoleon Hill. Her best-selling books with the Foundation includeThree Feet from Gold, Outwitting the Devil and Think and Grow Rich for Women. And her fourth book, Success and Something Greater was just released in September. She is also featured in the movie Think and Grow Rich: The Legacy.

Love the show? Subscribe, rate, review, and share!
Join The Wealth Standard community today:
TWS 18 | Financial Freedom For Millennials

Financial Freedom For Millennials with Daniel Ameduri

September 12, 2019 Patrick Donohoe Podcast 00:23:28 Comments Off on Financial Freedom For Millennials with Daniel Ameduri

Podcast: Play in new window | Download

TWS 18 | Financial Freedom For Millennials

 

The road to financial freedom has always been dictated by financial norms, a lot of which don’t really seem like freedom at all. Editor and the Founder of Future Money Trends, Daniel Ameduri, talks about financial freedom and what it looks like for the Millennials. Walking us through the concepts of his book, Don’t Save for Retirement: A Millennial’s Guide to Financial Freedom, Daniel notes that the Baby Boomer generation has inculcated in most Millennials the idea of saving for their retirement and putting their money on retirement funds which has given the younger generation more pressure. Breaking the shackles that are forcing us to commit to that tradition, Dan teaches Millennials how to deviate efficiently from investment and embrace the gifts brought by their time.

—

Watch the episode here:

Listen to the podcast here:

Financial Freedom For Millennials with Daniel Ameduri

On this episode, I have my good friend. He’s become a great friend, but he’s also the Editor and Founder of Future Money Trends, which is a publication business. He has come out with a book, Don’t Save for Retirement: A Millennial’s Guide to Financial Freedom. I know he has been working on this for a while. I had him on the show many years ago. Daniel has been front-running the cryptocurrency, the cannabis, the precious metals and other alternative investment world for quite some time on his YouTube channel and very popular website, FutureMoneyTrends.com. You are going to get to love his perspective on life and I think you’re going to get a lot out of reading his book and hearing the story firsthand. Daniel is an amazing writer and entrepreneur. If you’re reading about him for the first time, then it is going to be a treat. Without further ado, welcome, Daniel Ameduri.

—

Daniel, thank you for spending the time, it’s awesome having you back on. You were on several months ago. It’s a pleasure and I’m super excited about your book.

Thank you for having me on. I should let the audience know that I have seventeen policies, dividend-paying, cashflowing, gushing, safe. I’m dual compounding them too, but I’m sure we don’t want to go down that rabbit hole but they need to learn from Paradigm Life for that.

There are many things you can do as a Millennial if you embrace all the gifts and the things that the world has given us. Click To Tweet

Daniel, I’ve gotten to know you over the years and you’ve done some incredible work. It was awesome to hear more about your story. I never got into that with you even though we’ve had some discussions over the years. Your book is well-written and I like how it opens up your life. How people come to this opinion or perspective of life, there’s a backstory to it. Without that backstory, sometimes it’s hard to buy into a person’s perspective, especially if it’s different than the status quo. Looking at the title of your book, it’s totally against what most people believe. Telling your story and opening yourself up that way awesome. Would you mind maybe talking through what was the book about? What was the purpose of it? What message do you want to send? Who is it intended for? Maybe start there.

The book is called Don’t Save for Retirement. For your audience, we’ve set up a special page at FutureMoneyTrends.com/save. They can read the intro in the first chapter. If they like it, they can buy it. There’s a link. This book started when I was in an attorney’s office setting up my trust, my will and I turned to my wife like, “We know where the kids are going to go. We know where the money’s going to go. What about teaching the kids? What if they get this bad conventional wisdom conditioned into them without mom and dad there who is a fairly strong presence and force against that stuff.” We started brainstorming what we could do. I was like, “How about we write a book? It will be great for the business. It will be great for other people who can read it.” It started with no initial audience in the sense that it was teaching my children, but also keeping in mind Millennials and other people who might be saving the conventional means of retirement and what they could do with their money.

I wanted to bring in what my wife and I did because I didn’t want people to think that, “This guy has got an economic sense on his shoulders and all this stuff.” The intro starts in a bankruptcy attorney’s office. We were messed up after 2008. I got a job making $10 an hour. My wife was a school teacher. We were about to have a baby. Things were wrecked. That’s where the book starts. It starts off how I dug myself out, what it took not just financially, but a change in my mindset and my change in what is even acceptable. The book, Don’t Save for Retirement, I would say almost is a cross between my personal story and personal finance. That’s an alternative way.

It’s not Robert Kiyosaki where it’s all getting leverage. It’s definitely not Dave Ramsey where it’s like, “No debt.” It’s like, “This was my story. This is how I did it. This is all the things I learned along the way.” One thing that rings true with what I’ve learned from Robert Kiyosaki is the poor and middle-class speculate, they just do, no matter what they’re in. Their retirement vehicles, they’re always speculating. The rich preserve and focus on income, which is one of the reasons why I’m so attracted to your company, Paradigm Life, that preservation and income mindset. The advantage of the rich is they’re already rich. However, I learned that if the middle class apply those same principles, they can also be very wealthy.

TWS 18 | Financial Freedom For Millennials

Don’t Save for Retirement: A Millennial’s Guide to Financial Freedom

You use some very strategic words in the book. The one that comes to mind is the idea of control and I thought a lot lately about group psychology, a group narrative. I look at our school system. I look at the workplace. I think it’s programmed into our mind the being told what to do mentality, “You’ve got to do this. I am superior, therefore do what I say.” These days, people are speculating, but they’re not even thinking. They’re doing what everybody else is doing and they’re assuming that whoever’s telling them to do it is going to give them the results that they want, which of course there are many different examples of that not being the case. It was cool as taking control and using your mind to figure out what you want financially is where it starts. Unfortunately, there are these traumatic events, difficult events that cause us to have those paradigm shifts. When you’re writing the book specifically for your kids, if they read the book, what did you want them to get? What was that message? They close the 196-page and it’s like, “What is that next thought?”

That they choose their destiny, that there is no right way or wrong way. Whether they have a job and become great passive income investors or they have a business and they’re investors as well or they’re a stay-at-home-mom or a stay-at-home-dad. I don’t care what they do. I want them to know that they can do whatever they want to do. It is their life and many of us, exactly in line with your question, do what everyone else does and follow the crowd. Everyone else is going to college. Everyone else is saving for retirement. Everyone else is financing their house for a few decades. Everyone else is financing their cars for a few years. Everyone else is buying term because your whole life’s a scheme.

It’s nonstop no critical thinking and I want them to let them know like, “You can do whatever you want and if you want freedom, you have to buy your freedom. It’s not going to be free. It will require sacrifice and it will require good decision-making that will compound. You’re not going to be eighteen and financially-free, but you could be 25 to 40 years old and be financially free as opposed to the alternative plan which is, ‘Give all your money to Wall Street and we promise you in 30 to 40 years, even though you have no idea what your tax withdrawal rate will be or what the funds will even be at, you’ll be able to retire at this magic number that some German politician wanted to win an election.’ He upped the other guy by instead of running on 70, he said 65.” I want people to know that ultimately you choose your destiny and a lot of us have to be woken up and slapped in the face like, “What are you doing? You’re on autopilot.”

I’d love to hear your opinion on what are the events that would cause a person to read this information and not necessarily have it discarded but actually implemented and used. We’re in this period of time where debt is an all-time high, student loan debt, consumer debt. If you look at household income, it’s been stagnant for many decades. You look at people who are not getting ahead and I know that there’s frustration. There are polls. There are headlines that come out all the time about the frustration that exists in America with people not growing, not getting ahead, which essentially is the anti-life because people are naturally compelled to grow. Where do you think the pain threshold is until people snap out of it?

I hope their pain threshold is not bankruptcy or like me, where I was in a bankruptcy attorney’s office with my wife crying. I certainly hope their pain threshold doesn’t go to a point where they get so angry at their job that maybe they do something that gets them fired or damages their resume for the future. Ultimately, that frustration Americans are feeling is because they have subscribed to a middle-class lifestyle that is not sustainable. Much like the national story of what our government is doing, our citizens are doing. I can’t fix the government, but we can all fix ourselves by making some changes in our own lives. In the book, I talk about what my wife and I did. We drastically cut spending.

Did we do it forever? No, but we did it for a year-and-a-half, two years. Even when we weren’t drastically in cutting spending mode, we still live very frugally. I always tell people it took many years. When I achieved that financial independence, net worth millionaire status, not even liquid, but net worth. I was driving a 2003 Nissan Altima. It was a ten-year-old car. I was living in a house, at the time when I purchased it, it was about one time our annual income. By the time I was financially independent, the thing was one-third of our annual income, but I was still doing that and not permanent. Now, I live in a very nice house and I get to enjoy all the luxuries of those sacrifices that I made.

If you want freedom, you have to buy your freedom. It's not going to be free. It will require sacrifice and good decision-making. Click To Tweet

You have to, at some point in time, say stop. For most of us, unfortunately, we’ve subscribed to the unsustainable lifestyle. You might have a car that’s equal to your annual income spread out over a few years. You might have a house that’s ten times your annual income. You might have done a lot of things that have messed you up. That’s where I love the Dave Ramsey personal finance part like, “Start the cutting spending.” Stop doing all this stupid stuff that’s excessive. What I like to do is after I cut the spending is shift the savings of the spending into buying income and training that brain that everything I buy, I want to see a check either quarterly, annually, monthly. I want money coming in from everything I do. One of the things I have in my house in the children’s schoolroom is only to buy assets that cashflow.

We’re all going to get involved with speculation. I’m the worst. I love microcap investing and venture capitalism, especially here in California. Ultimately, 90% of my efforts and my focus is focused on buying income. Anyone who’s frustrated and who is in that lifestyle of trying to keep up with the Joneses realizes that financing everything in your life and spending every last bit of your paycheck, it is not normal. It may be perceived as normal because that’s what everybody else was doing, but it’s not. You have to say no. If you’re reading and that resonates with you, it can be done. It’s going to take a few years to mop this thing up, but you can be financially independent and either quit your job or work part-time or full-time because you love what you do.

These are all amazing points. In the book, what direction are you giving to people? What are the steps that they can take? Starting with whomever that person you were writing to when you were typing out the words of the book and getting them to take that first step then the next step. What are some steps that people can take to go from where they’re at and start to circumvent better or build a bridge over the gap to where they want to be?

The first chapter starts with, “What is wealth?” A lot of people don’t even know what they want. They’re just going through the motions of life. They’re killing time while they’re here on earth, which is very sad. For me, wealth is the ability to be able to do what I want with my time, to wake up when I’m done sleeping, to be free. I think that’s the first step is defining what you want. I always tell people, I learned this from James Altucher. He talked about the three things you want people to say at your funeral. What do you want people to say who you are and then embrace those things? Remind yourself, write it down on a piece of paper and see it every day when you get up. I have daily statements for every single of my kids and my wife and I. I like to remind myself that. Steve Jobs talked about that, ask yourself every day, “Am I happy with what I’m about to do right now?”

The next step is if you decide to become financially free, you need to see what the gap is? What do I need? How much income do I need to pay for my expenses, my monthly lifestyle? Ultimately, becoming financially independent, in my opinion and in the book, is to be able to have multiple sources of income. Instead of having a one or two-household income, think about having how do you get to a 21-household income? Maybe it doesn’t pay all the bills, maybe it just pays the utilities. How good will that feel? It pays all your utilities, maybe it pays the mortgage. However, you want to look at it, how would you like it if every month you went to work and you realize that all your utilities and your mortgage were being paid by passive income?

TWS 18 | Financial Freedom For Millennials

Financial Freedom For Millennials: The Millennials may have been conditioned to believe that they want socialism, but they love the efficiency of capitalism.

It starts small. The book talks about the biggest first step is work where you can cut. For a lot of people, that’s moving, that’s one of the biggest expenses. Whether you’re moving to a further area in your county or you’re moving to another state. My wife and I moved to a desert community in California. The next area is retraining their brain. Instead of dumping all this money into a 401(k), start using these whole life policies to dual compound. Start using different investments that pay an actual dividend that bring a check into your life. That’s the biggest thing I can tell people to have that mindset of start buying things that make you money.

It’s interesting and I’ll be somewhat open here because the first thing you said resonated. Most people don’t know what they want. I think it goes back to the mindset that we’ve been programmed or highly influenced to understand, which is being told what we want or being told what to do instead of us recognize. It sounds trivial but us recognizing that we have a choice of what we want. I had one of my business coaches, I had this meltdown. I didn’t even anticipate it, but it was the rocking chair test. They essentially get you into this state where you’re 95 years old, you’re sitting in a rocking chair and you’re describing what life was about. It was powerful for me and I connected with what was important to me. I connected with what I wanted.

It wasn’t necessarily a dollar amount. It was more about my relationships. It was about the people that I loved as opposed to anything material. At the same time, those material things allow a magnification of the experiences with the people that you love. The second piece is interesting too that you talked about, which is the idea of understanding where you are financially and where you want to be. I look at what most people obsessed with, which is weight and money because it’s measurable. At the same time, how people measure money is fascinating because it usually has to do with either their income or their bank account and that’s it. The true measurement of money, which Robert Kiyosaki heavily emphasizes in all of his books, is a financial statement.

He has a whole book at how to create a financial statement, which is ultimately the scorecard for where you’re currently at but can also help you objectively measure what you need to do in order to get to where you want. Ultimately, the wealth side of things is fascinating, Daniel, because in the end, why are financially successful people so miserable end up committing suicide or getting multiple divorces or alienating children? It’s interesting where people have connected wealth with money but yet, in the end, people would trade all of their money for what is truly valuable to them if they opened up and were vulnerable. That’s where I look at where we’re at in our day and age with society and what’s available to us with technology.

Wealth is the ability to be able to do what you want with your time, to wake up when you are done sleeping, and to be free. Click To Tweet

It’s more possible than ever to live that type of life, but yet the comfort that people have with what society has told them is a success is still bought into. Even though people are starting to see that there’s a different way of doing things and there’s a different lifestyle. “Look at this guy, look at this friend,” but yet they’re still programmed to do what’s safe and comfortable. How did you break out of that? Where have you may be talked about in the book how you have written whether it’s your newsletter or your YouTube channel, like getting people to snap out of it and believe in what is possible.

I would say that what you just touched on, the first thing I thought of was the Millennials. The Millennials are trying to apply the Baby Boomer life plan to a totally different economy. They are suffering and complaining about it. I got rid of my car because I Uber everywhere and I go for nice long walks or I jump on a Lime scooter and I go as far as I want. I don’t have to go back to a parking lot. I flip out my phone and five minutes later, I’m back at the house. You can start a website for $10 if you’re a Millennial, a business for $10. You can freelance anything, sell your skills, you’re going to work from home and you can monetize your own job. There are many things you can do as a Millennial if you embrace all these gifts and these things that the world has given us.

I ordered lunch and I wanted to order some Thai food, so I went onto Grubhub. A lot of people are trying to do the same thing with their investments and their investment mind setting. The Baby Boomers had the best bond market, best real estate market and the best stock market. According to Vanguard, the median account for 65 and older is only $58,000. If that experiment didn’t work for them, and by the way for most people, 401(k)s have only been around since the ‘80s. They passed them in the ‘70s but ‘80s for all intents, purposes and implementation. A lot of people think the 401(k) was with Adam and Eve, and they came out and they had their employer match.

TWS 18 | Financial Freedom For Millennials

Financial Freedom For Millennials: Trying to keep up with the Joneses financing everything in your life and spending every last bit of your paycheck is not normal.

A lot of this stuff is new. It didn’t work and that’s okay. Some of the intentions were probably good. What does work? What’s been around for hundreds of years, thousands of years when it comes to passive income and the way the rich invest? I look at the frustrations of people that it’s a lot of times it’s because they’re adopting and applying these rituals. I was in Africa and I was with the Maasai. I was asking the guy, “What’s your goal in life?” He was like, “I need more cows.” I was like, “You guys cleaned our rooms and you see the bathrooms and the match them. You don’t want a mattress in your house? The houses are made of cow crap. You don’t want a toilet?” He’s like, “No, the elders say that’s not the Maasai way.” I’m like, “Tradition can kill,” like it’s doing to the Maasai, it’s doing to the Millennials here in America and all around the world because they are in the tradition of something that hasn’t even been around that long, especially when you apply the way conventional finance has been applied to for people.

Here’s what’s fascinating. What you said is that the root of the word capital, like capitalism, comes from cattle. The nature of capitalism isn’t the cattle itself. That’s not capital. The capital comes from the derivative use of cattle, how people figured out to use a cow for not just milk, not just meat, but leather for instance. I look at the world of immense resources and people look at the value in a piece of land or the property. That’s not where the value is. The value is our ability to take our mind and make use of that in a variety of different ways. Look at what we live amongst every single day, whether it’s Grubhub, uh, whether it’s the Lime scooters. These are essentially resources that people figured out how to look at some friction or some frustration and to get a solution to it. That’s all around us, but yet not understanding the fundamentals and subscribing to the status quo doesn’t open your mind up to what those possibilities are. That’s why the Millennials don’t like capitalism. It’s because everybody else is coming up with ideas and they’re not.

They may have been conditioned to believe that they want socialism, but look at every aspect of their life, they love the efficiency of capitalism.

It’s an amazing world we live in and it’s evolving so quickly. It’s awesome that there are more books like this coming out. They are reinforcing not just talking points, but they’re reinforcing principles that have been around for a long time, but also ways in which you can capitalize on the current environment to achieve the outcome that I would assume most people want.

In the book, I provided the links of the different companies I invest with. Obviously, your company is mentioned in there when it comes to my whole life policies. I didn’t hold anything back. I put it out there and the same thing goes with my letter at FutureMoneyTrends.com. If I’m investing in it or writing a check, it’s in there. If not, it’s not in there at all.

Daniel, what are some other ways in which they can follow you, learn about what you’re up to, learn about Future Money Trends, some of the video stuff that you’re doing online. Why don’t you throw those out there?

I would love for them to go to FutureMoneyTrends.com/save. They get the Weekly Wall Digest free. It shares a lot of the different stories and things that my wife and I went through and did to become financially independent as well as some stuff that I teach my children, as well as any investment, passive income or speculative that I’m actively involved in. They get to also read the first chapter of the book.

Daniel, it’s a pleasure talking to you. Thank you so much for taking the time. Hopefully, we get to do a follow-up soon.

I hope to see you soon.

Thank you.

Important Links:

About Daniel Ameduri

TWS 18 | Financial Freedom For MillennialsDaniel Ameduri is a self-made multi-millionaire, a full-time skeptic of conventional thought, and a proud father of three. He is the co-founder of FutureMoney-trends.com, which, with nearly 150,000 subscribers, it’s the most widely recognized online authority in investment ideas and economic advice. He’s been featured in The Wall Street Journal, on ABC World News Tonight, and on Russia Today TV. Daniel correctly predicted the collapse of Lehman Brothers, AIG, and Washington Mutual on “Vision Victory,” the YouTube channel he launched in 2007 and which now has had more than thirteen million views.

 

Love the show? Subscribe, rate, review, and share!
Join The Wealth Standard community today:
TWS FF 10 | Raise For Life

Italy – The Past, The Present And The Future

March 22, 2019 Patrick Donohoe Podcast 00:21:45 Comments Off on Italy – The Past, The Present And The Future

Podcast: Play in new window | Download

TWS FF 10 | Raise For Life

 

Humans are designed to grow, to expand, and to solve new problems. It may be at various levels and capacities based on our uniqueness, but we all have that within each of us.  With that in mind, how do you get a 10% raise for life? There are actually more opportunities to work from home or work in a place you want to live in because of how society is progressing. Everything is within your reach because of the internet. Knowing that all these options exist creates focus and ultimately a path to build your value statement. In this episode, Patrick tackles how to make more money or make the same amount of money with less time and do it every year.

—

Watch the episode here:

Listen to the podcast here:

Italy – The Past, The Present And The Future

Financial Friday

I am in a different location than Salt Lake City, Utah, my home office. I’m actually in Florence, Italy. My wife has had a dream of coming here for so many years and there’s actually a conference that I’m attending so we’re excited to extend a little bit and visit a few cities. We were in Milan, then went to Venice for a few days, then came here to the conference in Florence. Then we’re headed to Rome for a few days. We’re hitting all of the hot spots. I thought what would be appropriate for this episode is to talk about Italy, the past, the present and the future, and what that has to do with you specifically in regards to the idea of compound interest. Get ready for another episode.

—

Let’s first talk about the past. I’ve mentioned this in episodes of the past, but Italy is actually credited as being the ground zero for banking. It’s really the more robust organizations. They had massive influence that started here in Italy and you can still see signs of that. One of the most prominent families, probably one of the more well-known ones was the Medici family. You could see their coat of arms everywhere and it’s popular here. I learned a few different things I thought that would be interesting for you. First off, they’re the first prominent banking family that had tremendous influence during the Renaissance era. Eventually part of this line became Popes and lots of influence. From a banking perspective, here’s something that’s pretty fascinating. They’re credited with the creation of double accounting using two variables: credits and debits. The banking family also funded the creation of the opera and they also funded the creation of the piano. These are things that we look at every day and realize that they’re just a part of our culture, but they weren’t necessarily here several thousand years ago. It’s interesting to see that history behind it and that it was funded by credit, by somebody taking a loan, using that loan to make something. In this case, it was opera and the piano.

However, a lot of the early banking families like the Rothschilds, obviously the Medici family is also part of it, they lent a lot of money to the Catholic Church. In addition to these ventures, the opera and the piano, the Medici family also funded the construction of St. Peter’s Basilica, which is at the Vatican City. That’s also very interesting. Then there’s a bank in Siena, which is the oldest bank still running today and it was founded in 1472. Before Columbus sailed the ocean blue, there was an Italian bank that was up and running and it’s called the Banca Monte dei Paschi di Siena. That’s essentially very instrumental in creating what we know as banking now.

Let’s get to the transition to the present. You look around Italy and it’s such an amazing culture. I’ve never been here before, but there’s beauty everywhere. The art, the cathedrals, the ornateness of everything, the food, the culture is so rich. Why don’t they have the power that they once did? They were the superpower of the world. Obviously, Rome being one of the greatest examples of a society that rose and then subsequently fell. There are many variables. If you look at why they lost so much power, I put it into two primary reasons. The first reason is the wealthy that were clearly intelligent, mainly coming from banking and being able to lend on ventures that were suitable for lending, such as the opera such as the piano, there are lots of different trade ships and the shipping industry being funded by banks. They had it going really well and there were some incredibly wealthy nobles and non-nobles.

What you started to find was that there became this idea that in order for the wealthy person to get into heaven, they had to make some pretty big donations to the church for them to be permitted to go to heaven. It was interesting. There are several different comments on some of the tours we took that talked about how much of the wealthy’s money went into funding, just these incredible cathedrals and churches, which is nice because we still have that today. At the same time, you look at the productivity and the wealth that was created in the first place, the ability to analyze and price-risk that it wouldn’t do something that really did not produce anything.

Humans are designed to grow, to expand, and to solve new problems. Click To Tweet

Second variable is that disruption happens. What happened in 1492? Columbus sailed the ocean blue, new trade routes were created, new trade partners were created. It no longer was the Mediterranean Sea. It really became to the Americas and slowly the Roman empire as well as Italy and their significance started to falter. It’s interesting to see how us as humans and our race, how we innovate and we’re always making things better and new things are created that we don’t necessarily anticipate. It ruins businesses sometimes. Just look at what the retail industry is becoming because of Amazon, you have disruption and you have cycles and you have new ways of doing business. It puts the older businesses, established business on the fritz. You see that quite often, especially in our day and age, and it happened back then too.

Let’s transition to today. Italy today is part of the European Union. This is the present. It’s not doing so well. However, Italy has a pretty big economy. It’s about a $2 trillion economy. It’s part of the European Union. I think it’s either fourth or fifth as far as its GDP. $2 trillion is its GDP. The issue with Italy is that from a banking perspective, they should be the experts in loans. If they’re the ones where banking originated, right now their GDP is over 150% and their credit rating is one notch above junk. Junk is considered a very high-risk bond or a high-risk investment. That’s where Italy’s bond rating is right now. One of the riskiest countries out there, one of the poorest situations, they’re in a recession. They had some negative quarters of GDP in 2018.

I’m going to give you one example of some of the stuff they’re spending money on. They’re taking out loans, you would think with a background in banking that they would know how to price the risk of different ventures just as a culture. They committed money to building this tunnel that goes underneath the Alps and it connects to France. I know the European Union has pledged money for it as well as France and a few other countries. However, Italy pledged 30%, 35% of the project and the project from the get-go has a negative $7 billion return. Obviously the point of making an investment with debt is to have a positive return. That’s the nature of debt. Oftentimes when you put debt in the hands of government politicians, they don’t necessarily have the incentive to always be profitable. It’s to do what’s good for everyone, yet there are a lot of unintended consequences with that, such as the situation they’re in right now where they have way more debt than they have GDP. As interest rates should be creeping in on their ability to go into Junk status and possibly be defunct and bankrupt. What’s interesting is the whole concept of bankruptcy originated in Italy, banco rotto, which is like a broken table because banking used to happen on a table. That’s where banco comes from.

This is where Italy’s at. I looked at where they’re priced in the market and they’re priced at a very interesting interest rate. In the United States, typically to understand the medium of short-term and long-term bonds, you have the ten-year yield. In Italy, it is basically at the same level as the US’ ten-year bond. That shows you just how mispriced the markets are when it comes to the underlying collateral, which is in this case, Italy’s government and being on par with the United States who has the best credit rating that’s out there. It’s just fascinating. The reason why it’s priced like that in the present is because you have the European Union, the European Central Bank, is ultimately going to be forced to bail them out. Who knows what the future is going to be? Oftentimes the fundamentals, the logical way of thinking as far as A plus B plus C equals this, “If this happens, then this should happen. Then this should happen.” It’s the human being’s ability to deduce and the ability to be rational and understand connections. At the same time, human beings also have the tendency more often than not to be irrational and their behaviors don’t reflect logic.

That comes down to the future. That in the future we don’t really know what’s going to happen. We can speculate but right now, Japan has been operating at over 200% debt to GDP for a really long time. They keep on going. Obviously, they have their own central bank, which is the Bank of Japan, whereas Italy does not see the European Central Bay because they’re part of the European Union. They can’t create their own currency. It would be interesting what the future holds. What this does show is that there are a lot of things that are out of whack and things are changing very quickly as far as technology, as far as the new people coming online, new technologies. That disruption is what creates companies going out of business, countries having major issues politically. What does that have to do with you? That has a lot to do with you because we live in a world that is interconnected.

The majority of American savings, which I’m assuming the majority of my audience are Americans, the majority of savings is tied to markets and markets are affected and impacted by a few things, the speculation of what things are right. For instance, the two and a half percent-ish that the Italian tenure is at as far as yield is concerned. That’s priced into expecting that the European Central Bank is going to bail them out. If they don’t bail them out, what is going to happen? You’re going to have a tumbling in the bond market, which means prices are going to go down quite a bit and the yield is going to spike to where normal levels should be for a country that has a bad rating. Right now, the expectation is that the European Central Bank’s going to bail them out. Therefore, the yield is still pretty stable. You look at other aspects of the market and what it prices and sometimes it’s rational, sometimes it’s not. The disruption and how quickly things are evolving shows that there is going to be volatility. When you have volatility, you have a much higher probability of loss when asset prices go down.

Let me hit on one more point. I look at my experience here in Italy because it’s not just the debt to GDP, which is really high, but there’s super high unemployment, almost 11%. Walking around the streets of these different countries, you wouldn’t think that there is a high unemployment rate. The people of Italy seem to be very productive. What I mean by that is they don’t open until 10:30, 11:00 in the morning, stores, cafes, restaurants, and then they close for the majority of the afternoon for like a siesta. Then they open up at night and they still are profitable. I look at the amount of youth that are on the street as well as a lot of the businesses that I have observed. There’s a lot of productivity. It’s a very dynamic people too. You look at how beautiful the hills are, the environment is the tourism that exists here. It’s incredible. Those resources are there for the Italian people. Yet oftentimes that’s not what is relied upon for things to rebound. It’s typically government who intervenes and thinks that they know the right decisions to make. Apparently that’s not working out so well for most companies, but we’re not going to have to be talking about that more than what I’ve already mentioned.

Let’s get to the last aspect of this short episode of Financial Friday, which is compound interest. One of the things that I see as the biggest misunderstanding or financial point that is made that is never questioned, which is the idea of compound interest. Compound interest is typically defined when an amount, typically money, is earning interest and then that interest earns interest, and that continues to grow. The hockey stick example is often used, exponential growth is often used. The rule of 72 applies to compound interest. Whenever it comes to something that can lose, when there is a loss available and anything that is assessed as being a compound interest, the whole notion of compound interest must be questioned. Here’s why. I used this example in the book that I wrote in Heads I Win, Tails You Lose. I hit on it a few different times because a lot of the claims in financial services with typical financial planning, is that because the market has earned certain rates of return in the past that they use that even though they disclaim that the past results are not indicative of what future results are going to be, they still use it. They use an interest rate to determine how interest compounds over time. If the market has averaged let’s say 10% over the last 30 years, then that 10% is used every single year without loss to determine what an end value will be.

TWS FF 10 | Raise For Life

Raise For Life: As you’re doing research and due diligence on what is available to you to make more money, make sure that it is fulfilling and aligns with who you are.

 

Here’s the problem with that is if you actually look at the nature of markets, when a market goes up and interest is earned, but then the market goes down and there is a loss, what happens next is very important. You can’t just measure the number because if you look at an average return, if you lose 50% in the market and then you earn 50% that next year, so one year you lose 50% in the next year and you gain 50%, you’re not going to be at zero. If you earn 50% and then lose 50%, you’re going to be at zero. Why is that the case? Let’s look at 2008. The markets collapsed in 2008 and the S&P lost about 40%. Math shows that if it lost 40%, it’s going to get back to breakeven if it earns 40% because negative 40 plus 40 is zero divided by two is zero. However if you have a $200,000 balance, you lose 40%, $40,000 and then you gained back 40%, you’re only gaining back 40% on $60,000.

Let me do that math for you again. If you start with $100,000 and in 2008 you lose 40%, your balance is $60,000. If you earn 40%, you’re earning not on a hundred, you’re earning on 60% which is only $24,000. You’re at $84,000 not back to a hundred but yet the average return is zero. There was an event that boil my blood because he’s talking about compound interest and talk about average returns and they were showing what the future will look like if these average returns are earned. The claim was made that if you didn’t participate in the 300% increase in the market over the course of the last ten years, then you lost out. I’ve heard that quite a bit, not just from this group. This group particularly hit home because there’s an affinity that I have with so many other of their teachings. This thing totally spun me because of the notion of compound interest and just how misunderstood even at very high levels this concept is.

I ran some numbers. The numbers show that from 2008 to 2018, the eleven-year period of time, the market losing was 38.49% in the S&P 500. The gains that it earned since 2009, if you look at the increase that it’s being talked about, it’s the level of the S&P and the level that it’s at now, which we argued that those two levels show almost a 300% increase. However, that is not how money works. That’s how math works, where you can measure those two points and show the increase but you’re missing time. Number one, you’re missing ten years there. 300% in one year is amazing. Over the course of ten years, not so much. Even if you look at a 30% average, which you just took 300 divided by ten. That’s not reality. The average return is actually only 6.74% over that eleven-year period of time if you factor in the 38% loss. If you factor in management fees, 1%, then you factor in taxes, the actual return is just above 2.5%. That is how profoundly misunderstood this concept is.

When you hear average returns, that’s something that you want to call into question. If it has to do with an account that can lose money, where your balance can actually have a loss in a year. The notion of compound interest must be analyzed at a much higher economic level where you are able to factor in the actual losses of money, not just the losses of an interest rate. I didn’t want to lose you too much. I’m going to post a video that I did on compound interest because this will help kind of go through these examples. When you think, do you like what you’re reading? Is this interesting to you? Do you like some of the history of banking? I hope that you take some action and actually go and study what compound interest is, how it works. These videos are very short, ten, twelve minutes the particular one I’m referring to. I know that it will make a big difference because it will give you some knowledge, give you some education that as you’re learning about finance and seeing how it applies to you specifically, most people will ultimately run some compound interest calculations, make so you do it the right way.

If you wouldn’t mind and if you’re not subscribed to the YouTube channel, subscribe. If you aren’t following me on social media, Instagram, Facebook, I love to connect with you. I try to post as much as possible. I’m posting about being here in Europe. It’s a fantastic trip. I hope you get to come here if you haven’t already. Also if you would do some reviews, if you review in iTunes, that really helps us get the word out, get the message out. I love to hear your feedback. Thanks for tuning into this episode of Financial Friday.

Love the show? Subscribe, rate, review, and share!
Join The Wealth Standard community today:
TWSFF 06 | Financial Certainty

The Pursuit Of Financial Certainty And Happiness with Will Street – Part 1

February 22, 2019 Patrick Donohoe Podcast 00:27:20 Comments Off on The Pursuit Of Financial Certainty And Happiness with Will Street – Part 1

Podcast: Play in new window | Download

TWSFF 06 | Financial Certainty

 

Everyone wants financial freedom, but not everyone is willing take responsibility to create one for themselves. Wealth strategist Will Street enlightens everyone on the importance of taking ownership of your finances. We can never be certain of the risk, but not taking the risk will not get you anywhere near financial certainty. Will shares stories of risks taken by investors and what we can learn from it. Failure is inevitable, but what makes a difference is rising up, learning from these failures, and having the will to continue the pursuit of financial certainty and happiness.

—

Watch the episode here:

Listen to the podcast here:

The Pursuit Of Financial Certainty And Happiness with Will Street – Part 1

Financial Friday

I’m here with my good pal, Will Street. How are you doing, Will?

I’m good. It’s been a while since I’ve been on a podcast.

It’s going to be a fun one because we’re going to talk about the context of some of the guests we’ve had on so far for Financial Friday. We’re going to review an article probably as a part two that is going to help us prove or hits home some of these points. I look at finance and I look at it from probably a different perspective than most and I think you’re starting to grasp that. You had the legal background and practiced in the financial sector as an attorney, which gave you a perspective and then being here for a few years now. You’ve worked with a lot of individuals personally, but you’ve also heard things about the situations of people when it comes to finances. It’s helped you fine-tune perspective when it comes to what financial success is and what it isn’t. Talk to that briefly. What have you seen as the reasoning behind what creates success for people financially? What gets them into trouble, gets them to make bad investment decisions or financial decisions?

TWSFF 06 | Financial Certainty

Extreme Ownership: How US Navy SEALs Lead and Win

I finished reading the book, Extreme Ownership by Jocko Willink. I’ve read/listened to it. I had it and then I listened to the Audible version driving into work. The whole premise behind Extreme Ownership is you own everything. If there’s something within your sphere of influence, as a leader, he’s talking about it from the Navy SEALs perspective. You don’t cast blame on other people, you own it.

It’s your responsibility, your stewardship.

If something isn’t going right, don’t point fingers at somebody else. Look at what you could have done better to improve the outcome. To go back to your question, many people nowadays are passive when it comes to what they do financially. They assume that somebody else, whether it’s the government or Wall Street or businesses or whoever has their best interest at heart.

They’re competent to give them the advice that they should trust.

Things didn’t go well. Immediately, they look outward to try and cast blame on somebody else. My philosophy that has evolved over time is this idea that if I want to get somewhere financially or if a client wants to get somewhere financially, it’s got to start with us. It’s got to start with what we know, with what we understand, with what our objectives are and putting together a game plan to get there. It’s no one’s responsibility more than it is our own. That’s something that I didn’t understand the notion of Extreme Ownership in the beginning, but as people get into trouble it has to do with not taking an active role in what they do financially. Making assumptions that things will fall into place a certain way, that somebody else is looking out for their best interest and them not doing nearly what they need to do to take ownership of their own.

You’ve got to realize that all human beings, number one, we’re fallible. We all have opinion and we all have a perspective. Opinion and perspective can go hand-in-hand. Individuals tend to delegate responsibility to others, especially when it comes to things that they don’t understand. It’s easy. That’s the easy button. If they’re competent, they have experience and you don’t have to go through the trouble of learning everything, it makes common sense. That’s where most people get in trouble. What do you do? If you don’t have all the time in the world to study every single financial decision that you make, what’s the route that you take?

On this show, we’ve had individuals that represent a commodity type of investment. We’ve had Gene Guarino, who I’ve known for a long time. He has a new fund and investment in a cool niche part of the real estate industry. We’ve also had note investing guys in here. If you go to the Cash Flow Wealth Summit, the first presentation of Financial Fridays was my presentation at the Cash Flow Wealth Summit, which hits on a lot of this. We have the Hierarchy of Wealth, which helps to categorize where investments are. A lot of the categorization has to do with what you understand or the degree of certainty and control you have over whatever the financial decision is, whatever the asset is. In the Cash Flow Wealth Summit, we’ve had every type of real estate investing you can think of. We’ve had FlipNerd on and Mike Hambright on there. We’ve had Mobile Home. Andrew Lanoie was on as well for Financial Fridays.

These are all sorts of investment ideas, their perspectives, the little niches that people have and they’re presenting opportunities. You and I both know that there are a lot of opportunities out there that don’t end up the way that they were intended. That’s where I’ve tried to hit on this notion of instead of asking about the details or features and benefits of the actual underlying investment, it’s also to start to look into the business itself. The operations, the people involved because that’s where it starts to fall apart. There are some other things that you can do. That’s how I look at finances. I never try to discount anything.

When somebody claims or somebody says their perspective, I don’t say, “You’re right and I trust you,” I say, “That’s an interesting perspective and that’s valuable to me regardless of what the perspective is.” I start to ask some questions about it and verify if it’s a valid piece of advice if it’s a valid claim or not. That’s where we’ve used the three sides of the coin where you have heads, tails and the edge. Heads are one opinion, tails are the other opinion and then the edge is where you sit to make the most informed decision. As you’ve looked at investment opportunities and made financial decisions for yourself, what are some of the things that you do consistently that helps you make an informed decision?

You don't cast blame on other people, you own it. Click To Tweet

The image that I have in mind is the Cash Flow Wealth Summit is this financial buffet of all different options and different strategies, tools, experts, companies and things like that. What a lot of people tend to do when it comes to their finances is they’ve got their tray and they take a little scoop of this, they take a little scoop of that. Then they get back to their table and then start to dig into it, but there’s no rhyme or reason to it. There’s no forethought given to what they’re going to do and how these various elements might interact with each other. It goes back to your point about everyone has a perspective. Everyone has some background, some knowledge and some familiarity with something. Everybody has somewhere to start. What I try to do is recognize that, “I don’t know everything, but I do know something. I know what my risk tolerance is. I know where my interests are.

I know generally where my goals and objectives are. I can start to put together a strategy that will start to point me in that direction as opposed to taking a little bit of this, taking a little bit of that, throwing it against the wall and hoping that something sticks.” Instead of taking that buffet approach, doing some analysis of, “What do I know? What am I drawn to? What am I interested in? Do I have any prior knowledge or experience or expertise with certain assets or asset classes or companies and starting to build from there?” I love the hierarchy because it does give us our blueprint for how to build our financial game plan. If we don’t have tier one established, if we don’t have the foundation securely in place, we’ve got no business jumping to the tip-top of the hierarchy. You’ve got to start it and you’ve got to continue it in the proper sequence.

Here’s how I look at it. It’s made me think about the idea and principle of certainty. It’s like human beings have this drive toward both certainty and uncertainty. Uncertainty is variety. It’s doing new things. It’s experiencing going on a roller coaster. We have this internal drive to do that. Sometimes, choosing from the buffet of financial options, it appeals sometimes to that internal drive. That’s why we’ve developed the Hierarchy of Wealth is because the foundation is certainty. That’s where we have certain characteristics and criteria. We teach the wealth maximization account and we use that for the characteristics that it has. Above that is when the degree of uncertainty sets in. There are three tiers above that. There’s tier two, tier three and tier four. In each level up, the degree of uncertainty increases. The idea is once your foundation is set, now it can properly balance the pursuit of this uncertainty, there’s a variety of different things that you may do. Let’s talk about tier two and tier three and some of the characteristics there. I’m going to use some examples as far as some bad decisions that I’ve made and also some bad decisions that I know clients have made, actual experiences. How do you look at tier two?

If I’m walking through the hierarchy with clients, which I do. The way that I explain it is where each layer, each tier that we’re building on top of the previous, there’s a little bit more risk or a little bit less control or a little bit less certainty with the previous. We don’t have a license to take on a bunch of uncertainty and give up a bunch of control if we don’t have the most secure, the most control and the least amount of risk established. For me, that’s that bottom layer. As we’re stepping into tier two and maybe it’s a little bit less certain, a little bit riskier and a little bit less control, I’m going to look at assets like real estate. Real estate’s a broad category in and of itself. For me, what I define as a good solid tier two asset would be the good buy and hold, three-bed, two-bath rental property. Going back to my own experience and my own expertise, my wife would tell you I have basically zero construction knowledge, expertise and ability. I’ll mess up an Ikea piece of furniture. That’s how bad I am.

In other words, I’ve got no business in a flip because I have no idea what needs to be done. I don’t know if it’s being done correctly. No clue, no concept. That is outside of my area of expertise, I understand buying a property. I understand what metrics to look at when it comes to rent relative to purchase price and some of those things. A good solid tangible asset like a piece of real estate or rental property is a fantastic tier two asset for me, or for somebody else, it might be starting a business. It’s something that you have control over. It’s something that you can impact. You’re not surrendering control to somebody else. You’re not leaving it up to chance. When you wake up in the morning, you’re not looking at the ticker and finding that, “The market is in the toilet now,” and you had no control. That’s not a tier two asset. We’re looking at something that might be a little bit less control, a little bit less certain and a little bit more risk than that bottom layer. We want to be careful about how much additional risk we’re taking on or how much uncertainty we’re moving into. At least that’s my philosophy.

TWSFF 06 | Financial Certainty

Financial Certainty: A good solid tangible asset like a piece of real estate or rental property is a fantastic tier two asset. It’s something that you have control over.

 

I’m going to deviate. This comes to some stuff I’ve been thinking about. I don’t want to get into failures and some bad decisions that I’ve made and clients have made. I look at some of the events that occurred in the last couple of years. You had Robin Williams commit suicide. You had Kate Spade and Anthony Bourdain. There are others as well. The thoughts that I’ve had is here you have individuals, you have human beings who achieved what some people are after. People are after what they consider financial independence, financial freedom and to be at a certain level. To be successful here, to be successful there, to have a lot of money here and a lot of money there. I would argue that that’s financial freedom that might not be freedom. Tier two for me is a lot of investment in yourself. I look at where people are at and a lot of what they want to become independent from or free from. It’s something that they don’t like to do, but that doesn’t mean that you shouldn’t do.

I’ve joined an inner circle of Tony Robbins, which is called Platinum Partnership. I’ve been listening to a lot of his material. There’s something that hit me and he said, “For a fulfilling life, you have to spend between 50% and 60% doing meaningful things.” It’s the discovery that I don’t think most people ever venture to do. Meaningful things are something that drives you, something you’re inspired by, something that you know makes a difference and aligns with who you are, your talents, your abilities, your strengths. The discovery of that is part of tier two because one of the things is potentially starting a business. Retirement is an idea of escaping something. You stopped doing what you don’t like doing, but it doesn’t mean you shouldn’t do because a part of you dies when you’re not contributing. I look at the meaningful things that people do and what drives them and why they thrive. It’s not because they make a lot of money but because there’s another interest in it besides that.

Tier two is where you can take assessments. You can take StrengthsFinder 2.0. You can take Kolbe, DISC and Myers-Briggs. There are a number of them out there. The idea is to understand more about you. It’s also to dig deep and start to pay attention and put some glasses on where you can see the world and the things that you enjoy doing, the things that make a difference. It’s starting to pursue a business that revolves around that. If you look at tier two, some of the criteria are things that you have more control over, but still have an element of uncertainty. Real estate has that, but at the same time, there’s still a degree of control that you have especially with how you determine markets. How you determine rents and values. How you determine down payments. How you determine mortgage payments versus rents. It’s one of those things where it doesn’t take a rocket scientist to have a good piece of real estate. It’s somewhat passive.

You look at other investments to make. There’s an article that I wrote a few years ago and I mentioned the idea in the book, which is how to get a 10% raise for life. Most people get a 3% raise. If you look at a 30-year career, someone that makes $100,000 will earn shy of $5 million total earnings with a 3% increase yearly. If you make a 10% increase yearly, the earnings are almost $17 million. It’s a huge difference, a little over $11 million. What’s the difference between someone that gets a 3% raise and someone that gets a 10% raise? 3% raise is because of the cost of living. It’s standard. If you look at 10%, it’s because somebody has figured out a way to create more value in either that capacity or another capacity. They get a certification. They learn management. They learn leadership. They learn how to do marketing. They learn things that create more value for an employer or for customers. That’s the idea. That opportunity is available to everyone. It’s where you have the most control when it comes to taking risks or delving into the realm of uncertainty.

It’s one of those things where all of us can think about times where we’ve done something meaningful. Maybe it’s giving to a charitable organization or serving in some way. The feeling of invigoration that comes from that, it makes you fire on all cylinders. If you can start to make that a part of what you do as a matter of practice, how much more driven are you going to be to get out of bed in the morning to work harder, to be better, to produce more. Think about somebody who’s stuck in a job that they don’t enjoy and how deflating that is and demotivating and difficult life can be and unhappy. Flip that completely 180 degrees the opposite and you start to invest in yourself and to fuel what drives you. That’s huge.

Let’s talk about some failures. We’re hitting on things that we’ve hit on before. It’s going into the context of what’s the purpose of being financially successful? What’s the end result to escape or to support or help to buffer doing the most meaningful things according to what makes the biggest difference in your life and in other people’s lives? The failure side of things, I look at all the decisions you make. You want to have trustworthy people in your life, but at the same time you have to look back and say, “Everyone has fallibility.” They make mistakes. They make bad calls. Rarely is an investment opportunity going to tell you not to invest with them. You have to look at that and that essentially gives you the area in which you can ask questions. You can dig a little bit deeper. You can verify. You can check and use your financial education to make a decision. Oftentimes, that comes as the result of not doing it. You can say, “That guy sounds like a credible guy. I’ll write him a check.” These are mistakes that I made a number of years ago. This was probably 2004, 2005.

I remember I was invited to this person’s house. In Utah, there are two things that happen at people’s houses. The first thing is it’s like MLM or network marketing company. They try to have you sell the vitamins or the juices or whatever, or it’s some investment or business. I’ve been to both. I didn’t grow up here, but I learned whenever you get that call, “I have this business I did. You’re a business guy. I think you should come and attend.” It’s one of those two things. This was an investment one. The investment opportunity was a fish farm and they had this proprietary way to breed fish. It sounded cool and the name of the company that did it was Winsome. That should have been a sign. It was a $20,000 investment and I never saw anything from it. It was a group of people that was in Sandy. It was about 30 minutes away. It’s an investment that went bad. The actual fish farm existed, it’s just that they had nobody to sell the fish to.

Individuals tend to delegate responsibility to others, especially when it comes to things that they don't understand. Click To Tweet

What was cool was this guy went to prison. This was a few years after this occurred. It was right during the time where I had tons of different failure business-wise. I was called into an FBI office. There’s a building here in Salt Lake and in the building, there are three floors of FBI. I went in there and there were no signs or whatever. I go into a huge boardroom and there are people everywhere, plus there were people on conference calls. There’s this horseshoe thing and I come in. They asked me questions like, “How did you hear about this guy? What happened? How much did you invest? What type of communication did you receive from him?” It was an interesting experience. I learned more about what this guy did. It wasn’t just people in Utah. There were a bunch of other states.

It’s one of those things where every single person that gave this guy money and it was millions of dollars. It was done by trusting that he knew what he was doing. Nobody asked questions about, “Who are your customers? Do you have contracts? Can I see those contracts? Let me see the business plan. Who else is on your team? Who’s doing the marketing? Who’s doing the operations? You’re in Texas so who’s running the thing in Puerto Rico?” It’s one of those things where nobody was asking those questions. All the questions were, “What’s the rate of return? When am I going to get my money? Do I get it monthly? Do I get it quarterly? How much is it? Could I get more?” All had to do with the financial details, not the principles, the values and the operations. That was one of the more crazy investments that I heard of.

I’ll give one that will make everybody laugh. This was in 2018. We started getting lots of people who were interested in cryptocurrency. You’re talking to them and explaining the Hierarchy of Wealth and how to position assets. People started to tell us that they were refinancing their homes and cashing out everything and putting their money in Bitcoin. This was when Bitcoin was probably $18,000, $19,000. They were convinced that Bitcoin was going to $100,000 and that was going to be the key to their retirement. This is an example that sounds ridiculous, but it was happening a lot. It was a number of instances. There’s another one too, which is the Iraqi Dinar. This was probably a few years ago when we started to get these types of calls where people were like, “I’m coming into this large sum of money, which is to the tune of potentially $500 million. I need a place to put that.” I’m not going to get into the details of that, there’s plenty of information online. Individuals, the uncertainty that they’re in pursuit of is natural. It’s not like people wake up one morning and like, “I’m going to go pursue uncertainty.” It’s one of those natural drives that compel us to want variety. We realize that, but at the same time once you realize it you have to position things so that you don’t let that get in the way for making good decisions.

TWSFF 06 | Financial Certainty

Financial Certainty: You want to have trustworthy people in your life, but at the same time you have to look back and say, “Everyone has fallibility.”

 

I would say there are a number of people I talked to that have lost money, lost investments and they value what we do a lot more than those that haven’t lost money, but at the same time, I look at that as a powerful tuition. It’s an investment and it’s an investment in your future. I got off the phone with a guy. He was a dentist. He was successful and made bad decisions. It costs him $500,000. He was like, “I want to make up for lost time.” I was like, “You didn’t lose time.” You gained time if you think about it because you learned some valuable lessons that are going to be essential as you expand your practice and as you raise your family and as you determine what your future looks like. You’re going to have so many financial decisions throughout your life, whether it’s purchase decisions, whether it’s investment decisions or whether it’s what you do with your career.

We advocate that having a foundation of certainty, which consists of financial education as well as certain assets and structure that allows you to buffer the uncertain decisions that you make. That’s where you start. It’s also to understand the values and the principles that underlie all of these decisions. Sometimes that’s the discovery of your strengths, your purpose, your mission, your calling and the pursuit of that meaningful work. We are going to be reviewing an article of a woman who studied 600 millionaires and she discovered where you choose to live has two effects on your ability to build wealth. We’re going to talk about that. We’re going to take the contrarian. Her opinion’s heads, this is tails. Stick with us until the next episode for the second segment of Financial Friday with Will Street. Thanks. We’ll see you in the next episode.

Important Links:

About Will Street

TWSFF 06 | Financial Certainty

Will earned his Bachelor of Arts degree from Brigham Young University in 2005. After graduating from BYU, Will attended the University of Iowa College of Law and received his Juris Doctor in May of 2008. Will began practicing law with the law firm of VanCott, Bagley, Cornwall & McCarthy the oldest and one of the most well-respected law firms in the State of Utah. Will’s practice focused primarily on consumer finance-related litigation, consumer finance transactions, sale and purchase agreements, NDA’s, RFP’s, teaming agreements, security agreements, creditor’s rights in bankruptcy, and estate planning. Working directly with clients to analyze a problem, develop a solution, and working to ensure a successful resolution are what Will enjoyed most about being an attorney. Will comes to Paradigm after nearly six years in the private practice of law.

After his exposure to the Infinite Banking concept and seeing that his legal training would be directly relevant to his role at Paradigm, Will made the decision to leave his practice. Paradigm allows Will to continue to do what he enjoys most – develop client relationships, dissect problems, create solutions and work collaboratively with the client towards a successful resolution. Originally from the Tri-Cities area of Eastern Washington, Will currently resides in Salt Lake City with his wife, Sunny, and their three children.

 

Love the show? Subscribe, rate, review, and share!
Join The Wealth Standard community today:
TWS FF 1 | Hierarchy Of Wealth

The Hierarchy Of Wealth Unpacked

January 11, 2019 Patrick Donohoe Podcast 00:45:15 Comments Off on The Hierarchy Of Wealth Unpacked

Podcast: Play in new window | Download

TWS FF 1 | Hierarchy Of Wealth

 

This is a replay of the presentation Patrick gave at 2018 Cash Flow Wealth Summit about the hierarchy of wealth. When you look at the hierarchy of wealth, there is always a starting place which is the foundation. There is a process that you go through step by step. Patrick ranks these different levels or categorizations of wealth based on the degree of control as well as risk. Patrick created The Hierarchy of Wealth to help him as well as the clients that he works within the personal advising space to prioritize investments, financial decisions, and opportunities. Learn this simple model so that you can position certain assets in different places as well as their priority and sequence.

—

Watch the episode here:

Listen to the podcast here:

The Hierarchy Of Wealth Unpacked

Financial Friday

It is an honor to be able to talk about financial strategy with you in the 2019 Financial Fridays season. This is going to be the first episode. Instead of me going into a diatribe of my financial philosophy, I’m going to replay the presentation I gave at the 2018 Cash Flow Wealth Summit. Some of you are familiar with it and some of you may not be familiar with it but for more information, you can go to CashFlowWealthSummit.com. We also have a podcast, the Cash Flow Wealth Show, but I’m going to just introduce the topic that I spoke of in the Cash Flow Summit relating to my financial philosophy. For those of you who have listened to The Wealth Standard for a long time, you probably came to an idea of what my philosophy is in general. When it comes to my financial philosophy, I believe it’s very similar if not the same.

TWS FF 1 | Hierarchy Of Wealth

Heads I Win, Tails You Lose: A Financial Strategy to Reignite the American Dream

The presentation is one way in which I like to explain it. I thought this out quite a bit for the book that I came out with, Heads I Win, Tails You Lose: A Financial Strategy to Reignite the American Dream, and it’s what’s called the hierarchy of wealth. The inspiration behind it was the nature of an investment and how investment is evaluated by an individual. I don’t think it’s evaluated in the exact same way. I look at the Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs as well as the framework in which I built the hierarchy of wealth. Maslow has a hierarchy or a process by which humans meet their needs starting with physiological ending with self-actualization. There’s a number of them in between, but there is a process where you go step-by-step. You don’t necessarily skip steps. I look at the hierarchy of wealth and I believe that there is a starting place which is the foundation.

I ranked these different levels of wealth or categorizations of wealth based on the degree of control as well as risk. There’s a different way of looking at something depending on the person looking at it and that’s where the control on risks come into play. Looking at the hierarchy of wealth, it starts with a foundation of tier one. That tier one has certain characteristics of wealth and a certain percentage of your overall financial strategies that should be in that foundation. Then there’s tier two where you progress to which has a good degree of control and perhaps slightly more risk associated with it. Tier three, which has less control and more risks. Finally, tier four which has very little control, if any control, and very high risk. Looking at the financial strategies, the typical financial plan, it’s an inverted pyramid. People start with the riskiest whether it’s mutual funds or stock market-based investing where they don’t have much control and also take on a tremendous amount of risk as it relates to the performance of their overall strategy. I believe that that is the opposite way to look at it.

You are going to learn quite a bit in this presentation but throughout the Financial Fridays, I’m going to be talking with who I consider experts. Some I know very well and some I don’t know very well. The nature of the questioning is around the financial strategy that is in their business. These are individuals who offer their services to investors and you’re going to see that I take two angles. The first angle is the actual service and product and what they do. What I believe why a business succeeds or fails is the other angle that I take, which is around their business operations. It’s an angle that most people don’t know how to take. It’s the most important because financial failures and investment failures come from the operations and not the product itself. A good example of that is a Wall Street model where they have an incredible business and operational system and a lackluster, poor product that has not performed. I look at why they’ve been so successful. It’s not because of the product and it’s very similar to the McDonald’s and the quality of their hamburger. They’re so successful because of their operations. It’s not because of the quality of their food.

If you look at alternative investments, I believe there are gems in the alternative space whether it’s a rental property or other alternative investments. However, there’s a tremendous risk and that risk may not always be the actual product itself and the offering of the investment. It’s the actual people behind it and their operational structure, their background, and their experience. That tells you a lot about what they will do when it comes to challenges in the economy or challenges with their business, which is an inevitability. I hope you enjoy this first segment of understanding the hierarchy of wealth so that you can figure out the ways in which you position where your wealth is, where your money is allocated, where you focus your attention and your time and what you decide as a pursuit of expertise when it comes to understanding certain investment categories. I hope you enjoy the rest of the season where we’re going to be talking on Fridays about financial strategy.

—

I wanted to acknowledge you for being here and the time you have been willing to invest in listening to what my expertise is. This is what I do outside of being the co-host of the Summit as well as the co-founder. It’s something I’ve dedicated my life to and it does mean a lot to me that you are investing time and you’re investing attention and I don’t take that lightly. Thank you for doing the things that I believe are necessary to accomplishing financial freedom and achieving your goals. Thank you for being here.

My topic is called the hierarchy of wealth. The hierarchy of wealth is something that I created to help me, as well as the clients that I work within the personal advising space, to prioritize investments, financial decisions and opportunities. Priorities are very important because there are so many choices. We’re adding to these choices and adding to the opportunities just based on what you’re learning at the Summit, but where do those opportunities fall in your specific strategy and your specific path to those end goals that you’re seeking? I believe that the hierarchy of wealth is a simple model so that you can position certain assets in different places as well as their priority and in sequence. This is something that I use personally and it’s helped me personally to stay focused. Before I get into the meat of the presentation, I wanted to introduce myself to those of you who may not know who I am.

Priorities are very important because there are so many choices. Click To Tweet

I am the author of the book Heads I Win, Tails You Lose: A Financial Strategy to Reignite the American Dream. It’s something that took me a couple of years to write and it’s been well-received. It has a lot of my stories and my experiences over the years and also a lot of details in regard to the financial strategies that my firm specializes in. I’m also the host of The Wealth Standard Podcast, which has been out there for years. It started about 2007. Something I love doing is interview a lot of people and talk about things that are of interest to me. The topics range anything from financial strategy to financial products to economic issues and theories to investing and business. I do get into a lot of personal development topics as well. If you haven’t listened to the podcast, I would encourage you to do so. It means a lot to me to support me and it’s something I love doing and I’m passionate about. This is getting into my expertise and my firm. I was honored by Investopedia as one of the Top 100 Most Influential Financial Advisors. It comes down to the influence that we’ve had in the marketplace by putting out what our financial strategies are and how they are benefiting the lives of our clients. I do that through my firm, which is Paradigm Life.

In Paradigm Life, I am the President and CEO. I also still do some personal advising, but we specialize in certain financial strategies that help people achieve financial independence. In addition to that, I’m active on social media. I’m relatively active on social media and I would love to connect with you out there. I share a lot of information and other resources that you may find valuable. Let’s get into the hierarchy of wealth. The hierarchy is something that didn’t necessarily just spawn one morning. It’s a conglomeration of the experiences that I’ve had with individuals and their unique financial situations. We do business with people all over the country and Canada and even outside of the United States. I have had the tremendous privilege to see where people are in their finances, what they’re trying to do, what are some of their challenges, what are some of the things that keep them up at night.

Maslow’s Hierarchy Of Needs

I’ve been able to position certain strategies to help them. In addition to that, I’ve experienced all of the investment opportunities, ideas, and innovations that are out there. It gets confusing sometimes and I get excited about certain things and become unfocused on others, so the hierarchy of wealth is something that helps me. It’s a simple model where you can position and prioritize your wealth building by essentially adding a label to the different opportunities that you have. The model and the pyramid and the word hierarchy was originated from Abraham Maslow and I was participating in a business event and the training was around the Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs. As I was learning about that psychological model that outlines our instinctive behaviors to pursue the certain thing that’s called human needs, I made a connection between that and finance. What I’ll do first is just explain what the Hierarchy of Needs is for those of you who are unfamiliar with it. Abraham Maslow was a very famous psychologist and this is a very famous model that has been used in a number of publications and a number of contexts. The model essentially illustrates the sequence of needs that we have as human beings and also the order in which we seek those needs.

The first is the foundational level of the pyramid, which is physiological. The physiological is food, shelter and clothing. Ultimately, we seek those instinctively before we seek anything else. Once we have established food, shelter and clothing, we seek to establish safety. That could be the safety of our community, our neighborhood, the country that we live in, the state that we live in. It’s seeking a safe environment. We naturally seek that once we have established our physiological needs. As you’ve established physiological and safety, then once those two are established, the next need that we seek are relationships. Those relationships could be friendships, family or community but also our intimate relationship with a partner. That is something that comes after our basic foundational physiological needs are met and our safety needs are met. We pursue those relationships. Once those three sets of needs are established, the next thing we seek is self-esteem. Our identity, our meaning in the world and our self-concept. There are a number of ways to explain it, but we seek to separate ourselves from others. We seek to magnify who we are and, in our uniqueness, compare to others.

TWS FF 1 | Hierarchy Of Wealth

Hierarchy Of Wealth: Financial education and having a financial statement are foundational elements upon which rest all the other investments that you have as well as financial decisions.

 

The Hierarchy Of Wealth

Once you’ve established all of these others, physiological, safety, relationships, self-esteem, you pursue what Maslow called self-actualization. Self-actualization is pursuing something outside of you. It’s a common altruistic idea where you’re seeking not for personal gain but you’re seeking to provide ultimate value for people. What does this have to do with anything? For me, it is a very famous model that makes sense. I believe as human beings, we like models to create a context for us which we organize, help us understand, give us direction or simplify. What I did is I connect the dots between the Hierarchy of Needs and how to position investments and financial decisions and that’s where we created the hierarchy of wealth. This correlation is important for you to understand and I’ll try to make it as simple as possible. The first arrow going down is control and influence. I’d also say it corresponds to the nature of certainty. If you go to the red side, it is uncertainty and then risks, the probability of loss. The idea is on tier one, tier two, tier there and tier four. These are different types of investment decisions and investments themselves. Financial decision could be considered here.

The bottom tier is where you have the highest degree of certainty and it’s because of an element that you possess or control and influence. The higher up you go, the more risk you take on because of the uncertainty. It’s the categorization of assets. Tier one is your financial foundation. The easy way to explain that is your reserves, your sleep well at night account, the money that’s set aside when things don’t go the way in which you had planned. I would say financial education is a big part of tier one. Insurance, insuring against those events that you may not be able to adequately prepare for. Organization skills, your business and how your business is set up and your overall financial strategy. Having a financial statement is also part of tier one. These are these foundational elements upon which rest all the other investments that you have as well as financial decisions.

Tier two is investments where you have more control and influence. In tier two, you can identify yourself as an asset or something that produces cashflow. I believe we are our number one asset because there is the greatest rate of return based on the money that we put into ourselves whether it’s a financial education or professional education or just maximizing our ability to create value. I’d also say that there are some other investments that would fit in here that have collateral that produces cashflow where you have control and influence. I’m trying to get the general concepts across. Tier three are investments that you have less control over. It’s money that you will give to another person. When you do give money to another person, you have a level of education where you can ask the right questions and you understand what the money is doing. There is cashflow associated with that investment. That investment is where you’re able to ask the right questions, do the right due diligence, understand the mechanics of what is going on and potentially also have collateral associated with it. It’s an actual tangible asset of the underlying investment and the money that you’re putting in.

Tier three is not where you have the ultimate control and influence, but it’s where there are investments that you understand, and you hand your money over to somebody else to make a return. Tier four are assets that you have the least control and influence over and it’s where the highest risks exist. The education that you possess is not adequate to understand the underlying investment. Tier four is where most people have their money. If you were to flip the pyramid around, the typical financial mindset and typical financial plan are to start with your mutual funds and your 401(k) assets that are in something where you just hand your money over to a money manager or an investment bank. You trust that they’re competent enough to make a return for you and give you the end result that you’re looking for way down the road. I don’t think that’s realistic. I think that’s irresponsible. If you look at establishing foundation and building on that foundation, that is how I look at wealth-building. That’s how I have looked at success based on the numerous experiences that I’ve had with individuals and their personal finances.

It's important to establish your foundation first which creates an abundant mindset that allows you to make better decisions. Click To Tweet

The Hierarchy Of Wealth Unpacked

It is almost the complete opposite of how we as a society are taught to manage our money and what we’re supposed to do with our money and how to invest. That’s the basics of the hierarchy. I’m going to dive a little bit deeper into the story of how this was created. There was an event back in 2013 that touched me deeply and it helped me start to put some of these elements together. It was an investment conference where I was speaking and a number of Rich Dad’s advisors were speaking. Robert Kiyosaki is the author of Rich Dad Poor Dad. He spoke on our Summit and his wife has also spoken a few times, Kim Kiyosaki. The Rich Dad’s advisors are specialists in a particular field that Robert Kiyosaki has chosen to have as his personal advisors as well as those who have written books underneath his brand. I get Andy Tanner and Tom Wheelwright, the other Cofounders of the Summit. Andy Tanner is one of the co-hosts. they are Rich Dad’s advisors in particular areas and very intelligent and very giving people.

I’ve learned a tremendous amount from all of them but this particular time in 2013 was very simple but I had not connected the dots. This is what I was taught by Ken McElroy, Josh and Lisa Lannon. It came down to a continuum or an order of focus to create the most amount of wealth. It started with producing money as a business. It’s where your business is going to produce the most amount of wealth and cashflow. I would also add to this, it’s not just your business. If you don’t have a business, it doesn’t mean that it’s not going to produce cashflow. It’s the business of you. It’s your ability to educate yourself, figure out ways to be more valuable to others and in return, receive compensation for that value. The idea is to produce as much of this cashflow as possible. Once you’re producing that cashflow, it’s setting aside a certain percentage outside of your lifestyle to capitalize on investment.

If you haven’t read the book Rich Dad Poor Dad, the definition of an asset is something that puts money in your pocket. An asset according to that definition is also producing cashflow. The idea is to build your cashflow to the point where it’s passive. There’s not much time or effort on your part which allows you the mental wherewithal to produce more money as a business or as an individual. Here is where there are infinite possibilities associated with you learning something and being a value to other people. The financial decisions I make and the investments that I position is to be an infrastructure for me to figure out a way to be the most valuable to others. You taking on this mindset, you first have to consider yourself your most valuable asset because you are. Once you have established that belief or that idea, now it’s figuring out ways to educate your assets so that you are more valuable to other people. It’s a model or a continuum that’s simple but it connected so many dots for me.

It doesn’t matter how big your business is or no business. If you’re an established business owner or you’re just out of college in your entry-level job, it doesn’t matter. When you identify yourself as an asset, you figure out ways to maximize it. It requires education but also requires leverage. It requires insights by others, coaching, being in the right environments and these right social groups. There are so many different ways in which you can figure out how to take who you are and be a value to somebody else and have a financial remuneration for that exchange. There’s no barrier to entry to understand yourself as an asset. The equation that you do want to understand is here you are and if you improve your education and education I would say, the definition is to improve your capacity to be valuable to somebody else. Increasing education increases your value and an increase in value gives you more money. There are infinite possibilities there. There’s something you can always work on. As you establish passive cashflow, that enables more of this. Hopefully, I’ve established that point.

TWS FF 1 | Hierarchy Of Wealth

Hierarchy Of Wealth: Start to look for opportunities to increase your cashflow to make more money.

 

I’m going to expand off of that continuum. You have your specific business or the business of you and you produce value, you get money in return and then you make an investment. This is where it comes down to the hierarchy of wealth where you are able to categorize the priority of what you established first, second, third, and fourth. I’m going to break down some of the assets and give you some examples. First, as you are producing cashflow and that you are investing that cashflow, tier one is what gets filled up first. Tier one is assets but they’re also financial decisions. Some of these decisions may not be an investment that is a stereotypical investment or something that puts money in your pocket. It might be an organization. It might be a financial team. Whatever dollar amount allows you to sleep well at night and not have to worry about losing the primary income and having six or twelve months to figure it out, that is some of the most valuable money ever. Getting rid of bad debt, if that’s the situation that you’re in, is a good decision in tier one. Your financial team is important to establish. Asset protection falls there as well as your business structure.

There are numbers of other things that relate to the specific situation of the individual, but this is your foundation. This is a foundation that may not produce any return, but it is a foundation that will ensure that wherever tier two, tier three or tier four investment goes, you are protected. Whereas I see most people when one of these goes wrong, it crashes the entire house of cards. It’s important to establish your foundation first which creates an abundant mindset that allows you to make better decisions to focus more on where your strengths are and how you can use those strengths to produce massive value for others. Establishing that foundation is paramount. This is where my team and I and our expertise falls. We feel and have used it over the test of time in thousands of clients that we’ve worked with, but there is one fundamental tool that should be in your tier one arsenal. It is a specific type of life insurance policy and it is a life insurance policy that isn’t your stereotypical life insurance. It’s a life insurance policy that when you design it, it acts as a growth vehicle that has a liquid cash value as well as a number of other benefits.

As we’re talking about the foundational asset, as you are producing cashflow and you’re filling up your bucket as far as reserves are concerned, we encourage that you systematically save and put aside a certain percentage of your income. That percentage first builds whatever your reserve requirement is in six to twelve months, but then beyond that, is where you start to get into other investments. Even in the six to twelve months of reserves, the account that we encourage which we have defined as the wealth maximization account, which is this specific type of life insurance policy designed in a specific way, meets the criteria of this tier one asset. It’s something that you have control and influence over but it’s also something that you can’t lose. There is a contractual guarantee backed by some of the strongest institutions in the world, but you have a higher amount of interest that’s earned on your reserves. You have a level of protection as well, but you also have the ability to take a loan against the growing value in this account. That is important when it comes to making investments in tier two, tier three and tier four.

The wealth maximization account is something that we designed based on what your situation is. We designed it first to establish the reserves that help you sleep better at night. Once that is established, the money beyond that will become your opportunity fund. The opportunity fund or opportunity amount is what you identify as the amount of money to invest and that investment is going to be in tier two. I’m going to get into something that may seem somewhat complex. The idea of establishing your reserves is paramount than getting into money above and beyond that reserve amount as your opportunity fund. At that point, as you start to acquire tier two investments, it also produces cashflow. As you use the loan provision that is afforded to you by the insurance company, the cashflow from that asset is paying back the loan that was taken to capitalize it. It will keep you disciplined to continually save and be disciplined to payback and then capitalize more investments. Every time you make a loan payment, that money is available to make another investment.

Ask questions based on your expertise or education around an investment instead of blindly giving money to people. Click To Tweet

As you establish your reserve amount, the six to twelve months of your comfortable living expenses and you have money that is available that’s above and beyond that which we are calling the opportunity fund, it’s when you start to look for opportunities to increase your cashflow to make more money. This might be first as far as tier two is concerned. These could be personal development type of investments and that’s basically investing in yourself. It could be a certification for the career that you’re in or the profession that you’re in. It could be learning leadership and management skills. It could be to invest in a paid mastermind group. Kyle Wilson, that’s one of his primary businesses is establishing these high-level paid mastermind groups in different parts of the country. These are groups of people that get together. They’re in different professions, different ages, different goals, and different priorities, but they get together and exchange ideas, brainstorm and mastermind so that you can get insight. Have your own board of directors in a sense to gain insight into what your biggest and best opportunities are. If you’re interested in that, pay attention to Kyle.

These are investments that you control and have influence over. It may not be a personal development course. Maybe it is purchasing a property, a property that you hold title to, a property that you control, or a property that you have influence over. If you are a business owner, it also could be to capitalize on hiring somebody or a marketing strategy or ways in which you can improve the cashflow of the business. Tier two assets are vast, but the idea is that as you acquire those, you acquire them by using your opportunity fund which is a loan provided by the insurance company. Once you capitalize it, the discipline over whether that investment is working or not is the cashflow that it’s producing. The loan payback acts as a disciplined way to ensure that it was a worthwhile investment.

I’ve personally analyzed hundreds of different types of investments ranging from real estate investments to commodity type of investments to training investments. I would never say that I’ve heard them all, but I’ve heard about lots of different types of investments. This is where I would say it’s important to realize that it’s all subjective. These aren’t just absolute rules because you may know a certain field better than another field. That may for you be a tier three or tier two investment. For me, it might be tier four investment because I don’t have that background or education. As you’re positioning where your investment opportunities are, a great thing to ask yourself is how much you know about the mechanics of an investment? How much control do you have? How much influence do you have? What’s the liquidity?

If you don’t some of those variables, then it kicks into tier three and you are now asking questions based on your expertise or education around that investment instead of blindly giving money to people. That’s what I would consider a tier four investment. The idea here is to have a way in which you categorize your investments. From a percentage of wealth standpoint, I have broken them down into different ranges as far as how much of your total wealth should be in tier one, tier two, tier three, and tier four. Here are the ranges that I’ve found to be the most successful. Your foundation which is your tier one investment is 30% to 50% of your wealth. Tier two is 30% to 40% of your wealth. Tier three is 10% to 30% and then tier four, I put 0% to 5%. I believe that a focus on just the first three can get you to the point where you have achieved financial freedom in a short period of time, but it’s establishing a foundation and going in the right sequence.

TWS FF 1 | Hierarchy Of Wealth

Hierarchy Of Wealth: The hierarchy of wealth is a great way to set the foundation of a context that could give you the direction of what to focus on first.

 

As this whole ecosystem is working for you. The idea is to focus the financial returns from the investment as a means and as a medium to discover what is truly the best thing that you can do with your time to create value for other people? I would consider that as an infinite type of investment that you should always be focused on. What I wanted to do is to teach you about this in the context of a story. It’s a client that I believe represents the story very well. It’s also a client that is stereotypical of those that we work with and how the concept of the hierarchy of wealth has helped them to be more organized, have more certainty and have more direction associated with their finance.

Paradigm Life

I’d want you to meet John and how we do business at Paradigm Life which is virtually where we don’t meet with people face-to-face in person. We do meet with some, but 95% plus are those that we connect with and do business with virtually. We meet through a video conference and John was one of these relationships. I met John years ago and he was one of those driven guys that were excited about life. Similar to my four-year-old who has an on switch and he has an off switch. He’s on switch is all out all the time and that was like John. He was excited. He was motivated, and he was driven. He was excited about life. At the time, he was in a high paying government job which was difficult for him to leave especially with the carat of a pension that he had now. It was in California but regardless he had put a lot of time into this profession and he wanted to stick it out for a certain period of time where he became invested in his pension.

He had money in the stock market. He had a 401(k) on his pension but he discovered this entrepreneurial drive inside of himself and started to pursue those types of investments. He had a few real estate investments, a couple of single-family homes. He also had a handful of individual mobile homes. His master plan was to leave this particular municipality once he achieved his tenure or his vesting which is twenty years. His dream was to open a hospice franchise for a variety of reasons. I knew a lot of this before I even met John because of the team that I work in and how they do some discovery to see if our services are the right fit for people. I was excited to meet him because of how driven he was and the interactions that took place before I was able to meet with him.

How I usually start my meetings is by asking a very simple question which is, what keeps them up at night? I asked John this question and that’s when he unloaded. He described this drive within him and this frustration that his job was creating to pursue what he wanted to do. He talked about his investment experience and also talked about some of the investment losses that he had. He also went into his time is spread thin where he’s not able to focus because he’s going to conferences and he’s going to events. He had a financial coaching thing he was doing. He had his job and he had his family as well. He started to drop balls and he made some bad decisions with some investments. It started to run up credit cards. He was using credit cards to purchase the mobile homes and the thought that he would be able to get enough cashflow to pay them off before the 0% phase was done which didn’t happen.

How I usually start my meetings is by asking a very simple question which is, what keeps them up at night? Click To Tweet

He had his finances all over the place and everything was disorganized. It was keeping him up at night and the level of uncertainty that he had was at an all-time high. As I took his story and then took some of the concerns and challenges that he was facing, I sympathize with him. I had seen those similar financial situations with other people that I’ve met with. This is where I started to explain to him how the hierarchy of wealth worked. It was a model that was so simple that we started to talk about all the different things that he was involved with and it started to place him in those different tiers. We found out that most of what he was doing was in tier three and tier four and it was putting his entire life in jeopardy. The first milestone was to figure out a way with some of his budgeting and cashflow to set aside 10% of what he was currently making into a wealth maximization account. He committed to me to not make any other investments or made investments decisions until he had established his sleep well at night account. We wanted to achieve twelve months of his expenses because it wasn’t just him sleeping well at night, but it was his spouse who was also not sleeping very well at night.

The first order of business was to set aside a systematic way in which John could save into a wealth maximization account. We started to establish reserves at the same time we were paying off some of his high-interest credit card debt which required selling a couple of his properties. One was sold at a loss, but we felt that this was something that made sense because of the high interest that he was paying. Also, the fact that two of the properties were not performing at what he was anticipating. Those are the first couple of priorities. The fourth priority and milestone was to start to establish in his opportunity fund the down payment for that first franchise, but something else occurred during this whole process. It was the fact that with this franchise that he wanted to open up. There was a team involved, a team of experienced nurses and licensed people which he was not. I can’t remember what the minimum number of people was, but it was just under a dozen and John hadn’t had much leadership or management experience. This was one of those overlooked things. Because he didn’t have that background or experience, he was now going to have to rely on those skills which he didn’t have to operate a franchise.

We came to the conclusion that this was something that he should not invest in until that experience or that understanding of leadership and management was in place. The plan was his idea. He found some opportunities within the municipality to do a lateral move which would have put in jeopardy anything that he had established as far as benefits were concerned. It was being over first and the second-year employees to the municipality. It wasn’t a two-year plan. It ended up being a little bit longer than three years, but he established an idea of how to run a team. He started to study management. He started to study leadership. He felt he was adequate at being able to provide a good office environment, a good team and business environment to make this franchise work. That mindset was paramount, and everything changed. His priorities changed, and some other opportunities presented themselves. The idea behind the hierarchy of wealth that it helped to create context and focus of what he had and how that related to what his goals and the things that he wanted to achieve with his life were.

It was an amazing experience for me and for him as well. As I look at John’s situation, your situation and the countless others that I’ve been fortunate to meet with, this is a model that is subjective. It is based on your situation which could be having a lot of money but still not being able to sleep well at night to having no money. The hierarchy of wealth is a great way to set the foundation of a context that could give you the direction of what to focus on first. This is something that I’d love to talk about. I love finance and I love seeing people succeed. I’ve seen a lot of success over the course of my career and it’s something that is inspiring to me personally, but I also see a lot of failures. That failure is preventable and at the same time, there are only so many things that we know. I’ve failed a lot at investing and business as well in the past and I’ve discovered ways in which I can take those lessons and use them to empower me and achieve better things for myself. From a financial perspective, I’m confident that this is a model that could benefit you and can help you. It could allow you to position your investments in a way that gives you a degree of certainty that is part of the mindset of financial freedom and it’s impossible to be financially free without it.

Thank you for being here. I hope that you found value in this. As far as learning more about this mindset, this philosophy, these strategies, the best direction to give you is through the audio and PDF that talks about the hierarchy of wealth as well as the wealth maximization account. There’s a whole study guide that’s online that has dozens of videos in there and you can access it even without the book. You can go to HeadsOrTailsIWin.com and you can register for the study guide and also subscribe to the podcast. This is where I’m always talking about these ideas and talking about the ways in which you can improve your life and finances. I would be honored if you subscribed. Thank you so much for spending this time and for investing in yourself. I wish you the best when it comes to your investing and on your road to financial freedom. I hope to hear from you soon or at least hear about your success. Thank you.

Important Links:

 

Love the show? Subscribe, rate, review, and share!
Join The Wealth Standard community today:

About the host

Patrick Donohoe

Patrick Donohoe

CEO Paradigm Life

Patrick is the President and CEO and started Paradigm Life in 2007 after learning from his mentor Kim Butler about financial strategies outside of Wall Street.

With a background in economics and marketing, Patrick immediately realized the opportunity to teach investors, business owners, professionals and families on a large scale using modern digital media and communication technology. Since 2007 Paradigm Life has worked with thousands of individuals in all 50 states.