WEALTH

Mastering Wealth By Developing New Habits

TWS 26 | Master Wealth

In order to master wealth, you need to master your habits. You need to develop new habits so that you don’t just do the same thing over and over. Wealth is a direct result of habits. Join your host Patrick Donohoe as he talks about the different levels of masteries and why habits are crucial to life. Replace your existing habits with new ones today!

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Mastering Wealth By Developing New Habits

Can you learn how to be wealthy? In my experience, wealth is a direct result of habits. You don’t simply read a book, go to a conference, watch a YouTube video and end up being wealthy. At least, that’s my experience. There are some who roll the dice and hit seven. They play Blackjack, bet everything and hit 21. To me, that’s not wealth. That’s a risk. If that’s a strategy or a pattern you want to develop, that doesn’t usually end up producing good results. I believe that wealth is when principled ideas are baked into our nervous system. Our actions to the dynamic or the ever-changing experiences of life are more automatic or unconscious.

How do you get to that point when these principled ideas are baked into your nervous system? First, it’s understanding that ideas and information must travel through three levels particularly. The first level is Cognitive Mastery, which is understanding the ideas and information rationally, and how they apply to the circumstances of your life and what you want.

The second level is Emotional Mastery. This is where you understand that emotions are simply signaling something and they’re there to serve you. They’re there usually to protect you. It’s understanding the nature and the purpose of those emotions, and then figuring out a way to get them to serve you as opposed to how most people treat their emotions where they want to suppress, not embrace.

TWS 26 | Master Wealth

Master Wealth: Wealth is when principled ideas are baked into your nervous system. That your actions to the ever-changing experiences of life are more automatic.

 

The third is Physical Mastery. Physical mastery is when you don’t even think about your actions or reactions, or your decisions. They’re part of you. An easy example of physical mastery is sports. I played ice hockey growing up. I’m in my 40s but with the experience I had growing up playing over and over again street hockey, pond hockey, youth hockey in high school and then college, my body understands how to play hockey. I don’t have to think about it now. Now I’m older, slower, weigh a little bit more than I did when I was younger. At the same time, my body remembers how to skate, pass and shoot. When I played during the summers in a men’s league, I don’t have to think about it. That is physical mastery.

I’ll give you another example as it relates to the new circumstances of our life because that’s an existing circumstance of life. Playing a new game but it’s still the same game. A few months ago, my wife was somewhat critical of how I was acting and she’s usually right. I brought some challenges from work home and it was impacting how present I was for her as well as my kids. She said to me, “With everything you read, all these conferences that you go to, and all the money you’re spending to improve yourself as a human being, our family, the business, you think you’ve figured out a way to show up better when you come home.”

My initial response, you can imagine, the emotional triggers were going off. Many years ago, I would have responded completely differently than I did, but I understood how those responses would serve me or not serve me. They would not serve me. It would have been a rocky road if I responded the way I did many years ago. At that moment, I swore to myself a few times in my head, and then snapped out of it and figured out a way to be present with my family. I fell into those old patterns. We all do. It’s how long we spend suffering in those old patterns if they’re patterns that do not serve us.

Wealth is a direct result of habits. Click To Tweet

A famous quote that I love is, “We are what we repeatedly do. Excellence is not an act, it’s a habit.” This is usually accredited to Aristotle. It was a guy in the early 1900s named Will Durant who took two of Aristotle’s quotes and summarize them within that quote. This is the lesson from these experiences that I’ve been talking about. We have the illusion that we are consciously in control of our day-to-day experiences. I want you to consider just for a moment the possibility that you have zero control. Your responses to the daily circumstances of life are automatic. They are already baked in.

I don’t believe in absolutes but I want you to consider for a moment that how you are going to show up is already baked into your body or your nervous system. If you are happy with the results that you want in life, great. At the same time, we’re wired to grow. There is a paradox there because if you’re wired to grow, it means that you need to have different results than you have now. Trying to look at the same patterns and habits as before producing new results leads to the definition of insanity.

It’s not going to come from our patterns and habits of the past. We want new results. We first have to understand how patterns and habits are developed, and then strategically design some situations and strategies to get rid of or reprogram our old habits and patterns and replace them with new ones. I believe that there are a few primary variables in developing new habits. Number one that’s counterintuitive to how society operates, we’re used to information at our disposal immediately. We’re used to instant food, instant entertainment, everything’s instant.

TWS 26 | Master Wealth

Master Wealth: Replace your existing patterns and habits with new ones. You have to really understand some psychology, but also that it takes a bit of time to develop new habits.

 

I believe that patterns and habits are the opposite. It takes a while, especially as we get older. Replacing existing patterns and habits with new ones. We have to understand some psychology. We have to understand that it takes a bit of time to develop these habits but they’re worth it. Here are a couple of variables. The first variable is designing the pattern or the habit or actions. We want to design them after what’s proven to work. We have lots of examples of the different patterns as it relates to wealth and finance that work.

The second is designing a strategy that either forces us to do it or a strategy that allows repetition over and over again to build into our nervous system these habits. A great example that I love to use is CrossFit. It’s a different workout every single day. It’s hard. I don’t have to think about that. The pattern that I developed was getting up at a certain hour and showing up every single day. That’s a strategic design to get a good workout every single day.

The final variable is establishing stakes, where you recognize that if you don’t change or grow, what’s going to happen? That’s a negative state but you also start to identify the positives. What you’re going to gain? What your experience of life is going to be like if you develop these habits? Over the next two episodes of the show, I’m going to talk about the two primary areas of wealth building. I would say the best habits in those areas. The first area is going to be how you produce income. The second area is what you do with your money.

You are what you repeatedly do. Excellence is not an act. It's a habit. Click To Tweet

I’m going to talk about the habits that I have seen serve people. I’ve seen these habits produce millions, tens of millions, hundreds of millions for people that I know. From a production standpoint, how you make money, and then also investing habits, saving habits, spending habits. Ways in which you can develop these habits and patterns that will ultimately serve you.

Next two episodes, make sure you check back. It’s going to be a fun little series here. Thanks for reading. You got the website for more information about the show and other resources. We’ve updated the resource page and lots of cool stuff are on there. Go check that out. We will talk to you next time, where we will get into the first area of wealth building, which is making money.

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Wealth In A Consumeristic Society With Garrett Gunderson, Part 2

TWS 15 | Consumeristic Society

 

We’re in a consumeristic society where our idea of wealth lies in the physical things we get to have. So we consume and consume thinking that it is the only way we can quench that thirst. Garret Gunderson is back in this second part of the series to redefine the game. He shares his unique insights on wealth and what people are after with their goals. He also taps into the power of intuition, allowing it to guide him to achieve the things he wants and make a better impact.

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Wealth In A Consumeristic Society With Garrett Gunderson, Part 2

There is a saying that embodies the idea of absolute and unwavering commitment. That saying is, “Burn your boats,” which is to say when you make a decision or a commitment, there’s no plan B, no escape clause, no way to back out of the commitment. My good friend, Garrett Gunderson has made a pretty bold commitment. He’s made one of the riskiest moves that I’ve seen in a long time. He spent what most people would consider a fortune on training, coaching Hollywood-level film producers, production crews and other consultants to create this one-hour comedy special, primarily focused around the topic of money and personal finance.

In June of 2021, I was fortunate to be invited to live taping. It is seriously a level ten. It met all expectations and exceeded them. It’s honestly hilarious. Before this film is made available, Garrett is going to be doing a multicity tour and it may be coming to a city near you. Why did he do it? Why comedy? I would say the taboo topics of politics and religion have a stepchild, which is money and personal finance. The stack of cognitive biases that prevent the mind from rationally evaluating financial strategy is pretty thick. The exception is someone having an open mind. However, the rule is that what’s familiar with the status quo, it’s to stay on that course.

Garrett hypothesizes that humor is a catalyst to breaking through these filters but he’s written three books. One of them is a New York Times Bestseller. He’s been in the space for years. Despite what most would consider a success, his mission is to breakthrough what keeps holding people back from living a life that they truly want. He’s spoken on videos. He has a pretty broad social media audience. He’s taken this message, he believes as far as he can go. In this three-part video show series, you’re going to learn a few things about what he’s doing and why he’s doing it.

Number one is how powerful ideas have made their way into our belief systems, with any betting scrutiny or evaluation, how difficult it is to go back and objectively understand these beliefs without shortcuts such as humor. Number two is the unique perspective on wealth and what people are after with their goals like retirement or financial freedom. In the third episode, we’re going to talk about Garrett’s journey, where he’s put his essentially successful career and reputation at risk, why he’s done it and everything that has led up to this point in time and this decision. You are going to love these episodes. I can’t wait for you to experience this new content from Garrett, to learn more about his tour. If it’s coming to a city near you, go ahead over to FreeFlow.group. Enjoy.

I don’t know if we’re designed to sit still. He’s certainly not the type to sit still.

It’s cool to look back. I was a miser when I was first married. I was all about the game of preservation, cutting and budgeting. My kids are fascinated when they hear these stories because they don’t know that version of me. I remember my youngest. She goes, “I thought it would be the best thing for our family at the time.” I was like, “That was so healing.” In our first year of marriage, I felt like my wife was going, “What did I get into?” I’m like, “We need to balance this checkbook. Why are you spending so much on your classroom? You’re supposed to get paid as a teacher, not that you’re paying out. Why is this electrical bill so high?” It’s ridiculous.

She was patient. She keeps holding a mirror up and saying, “Is this what you want? Is this who you want to be?” She creates that powerful listening for me where I’d be like, “I could probably do better.” You’ll love that version but I appreciate this version even more. We can probably go on. We should totally do another one of these. This is what I get that we’re not talking finance because people can learn finance from your book or my book and all this stuff. This is the stuff that’s underneath it that captures wealth.

TWS 15 | Consumeristic Society

Consumeristic Society: Intuition is the source. It is the divine path or divine wheel.

 

That’s where I want it to go. I believe, maybe it’s not direct but there is a total correlation between your enjoyment of life, who you are, your understanding of wealth and your experience of wealth. We all live in a society that we should be in amazement 24/7 because of how we get to live compared to the past, yet there are still people that are miserable. You then have people with lots of money. There is this insatiable thing where they think that physical things are going to quench that thirst. I look at my experience with things. I would love to get your thoughts. Your levels of impact have improved. With impact, I mean ways in which you create wealth. It’s improved because of your internal improvement. I’m not sure if there’s a direct correlation but I know that there is a tie, at least that’s my experience.

We’re in a consumeristic society where the eternal quest is for more.

The limbic part of our brain is like that monkey brain, all it knows is to consume as much as possible.

We're in a consumeristic society where the eternal quest is for more. Click To Tweet

In redefining the game, it changed everything for me. What if more peace and less worry? What if more leisure and less sacrifice? What if more meditation, recreation and less frustration? In my twenties, I had so much ambition of more revenue, even more employees so I could tell people how many employees I have. Do you remember my office back then? It was way extravagant for I was out at that point in my career. It was about more shows and less personal growth because I didn’t have time for it. The work was being at work versus the work is working on myself. I had enough of it because there was a care of what if I do this work.

I can remember one of our mutual friends, Vince. He’s like, “Go to Myanmar.” I thought it was going to make me a better financial advisor. It did but not for the reason I thought it would. In my twenties, I did a lot of talking in this show but now I’m focusing on listening more. Not just listening to people but listening to intuition because I felt like intuition is the source. It is the knowledge that it is the divine path or divine wheel. I can have free will but that could detour a lot of times than listening to that intuition. I still have a choice, whether to pay attention to it or not. That might be a little bit deeper on a philosophical level but I’ve found that to be true.

I don’t know if it was listening to my intuition. I was in LA and walking. I saw this kid looked like he was in pain, in angst and mental pain. He didn’t look like he’d been homeless or if he had been homeless like, “Don’t talk to him, just walk by.” It was inconvenient because there were two other people. I’m walking to the airport and I see this girl. She’s a little bit heavier but she was beautiful. I’m like, “Go tell her she’s beautiful.” He’s like, “I’m married. That might be weird.” My intuition was like maybe she’s needed to hear that at that moment. I start rationalizing and justifying out of safety, protection, convenience, inconvenience or hustler. When I’m listening to my intuitions, I had a dream to write a one-man show. It was a dream. I woke up. I’m like, “I’m doing it.” You’ve seen it. You’ve seen the impact it has. It’s not even officially out yet but that’s intuition.

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About Garrett Gunderson

TWS 15 | Consumeristic SocietyI am the author of the New York Times and Wall Street Journal bestselling personal finance book Killing Sacred Cows: Overcoming the Financial Myths That Are Destroying Your Prosperity.

Founder and Chief Wealth Architect of the Inc. 500 firm, Wealth Factory. A regular on ABC’s Good Money, he has been on Fox, CNBC, as well as hundreds of radio interviews, and I contributor for Forbes. I also am a frequent speaker at workshops and conferences and live in Salt Lake City.

I have also been interviewed by some of the greats in the personal development space like Hal Elrod, Robert Kiyosaki, Ryan Moran at the Capitalism Conference, Dan Sullivan from Strategic Coach, the Mindvalley Podcast, Project Life Mastery with Stefan James, Joe Polish of Genius Network, Entrepreneur on Fire with John Lee Dumas, The Science of Flipping with Justin Colby, The How of Business, and many more!

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Diving Deep Into The $1.9 Trillion Stimulus Bill

TWS 81 | $1.9 Trillion Stimulus Bill

 

Just recently, the House passed the $1.9 trillion stimulus bill in the hopes of rescuing America from the economic damages brought about by the pandemic. But what does it really entail? What are the underlying consequences of putting out all of this money? In this episode, Patrick Donohoe flies solo to share with us his thoughts about this new bill. He takes a look at it from different perspectives and then offers some insights on how you can best navigate your wealth and more.

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Diving Deep Into The $1.9 Trillion Stimulus Bill

Thank you for supporting another episode. I’m glad that you’re here. I’m going to freestyle it, I’ll be by myself. I’m going to bring on some cool guests to speak about some of the points I’ll bring up. I’m going to make some comments regarding the $1.9 trillion stimulus bill. There’s enough information out there in other podcasts that analyze the details. I’m going to approach it from a couple of different angles in hopes of inciting you a different perspective of what’s going on so that you can best navigate your wealth, your business, your profession and the enjoyment of life. I believe that is what wealth is. It’s to extract, to experience the joy in life, regardless of what’s going on, tall order. Wealth is something that most people pursue. Oftentimes when they associate it with money and material things, they come to find out that it is not what they wanted.

Best to start with what wealth truly is, which is mindset, being able to look at your circumstances, look at your life and extract the good, the beauty, the gratitude, which if you think about it is all around us. I tried to approach this $1.9 trillion bill from a more neophyte position, meaning 8-to 10-year-old who understands ideas at a certain level. I look at the $1.9 trillion package from an economics perspective, a legal perspective, a precedent setting perspective. I stepped back and I look at the first idea, which is the surface, especially the title, the American Rescue Plan is pitching this $2,800 per family and also extension of unemployment benefits. I look at how much of the bill that amount is. I’ve seen figures around 9%, 10%, even if it’s 15%. That’s where the focus has been.

It’s unfortunate because in the end, when an 8-to 10-year-old see’s candy, they see an amusement park. They see the surface benefit and don’t necessarily have the experience to look at the unintended consequences. It makes sense to me. Majority of Americans do support the bill. At the same time, I believe if they took a shovel deep look into the other points of the bill, tenets of the bill, where money is being spent, it would cause even the young person to scratch their head. $1 billion here, $10 billion here, $500 million here, things that are unrelated to COVID, but at the same time are being pitched under this umbrella that it’s necessary to rescue America. That’s the first thing that I observed is looking at this from a psychological perspective and how a bill that is monumentally massive in size.

TWS 81 | $1.9 Trillion Stimulus Bill

$1.9 Trillion Stimulus Bill: The government was not set up to take care of people. It was set up to protect the rights of the people.

 

We’ve become desensitized to the language of money. I’m sure $1.9 million to most Americans is a lot of money. 1.9 trillion seconds ago is 60,000 years. This is a massive amount of money and it is going everywhere. If money were free that grew on trees, if it’s what most 8 to 10-year-olds think money is where you swipe a card and you get stuff, it makes sense. Who wouldn’t want all of this stuff? There are consequences for spending this money because it’s not free. Interest has to be paid on it. Principal has to be paid back. For those of you who are interested in economics, monetary policy, and monetary theory, this idea of MMT, Modern Monetary Theory, which removes some of the responsibilities associated with spending money at a government level, it’s something that is happening in a sense. This $1.9 trillion, the amount of debt that’s being piled up, it’s not possible to payback without some significant dire changes.

We’ll get into some of the precedent setting. A couple episodes back, I talked about some of the points of Biden’s fiscal ideas and specifically taxes, what’s going to change in that respect? I believe that because of how this bill was passed, $1.9 trillion, the majority of Republicans, all of them I think opposed it and all of Democrats were in favor of it to an extent. It was right down the line. It’s interesting where this sets a precedent with all their laws that are going to be pushed forward through the House, the Senate and then signed into law. It’s interesting to look at what Biden wants to push forward is going to be an inevitability. That’s the precedent that it sets. It may not be 100% absolute but close.

Going back to a couple episodes ago, whether it’s higher taxes, whether it’s removing step-up in basis for real estate, whether it’s eliminating capital gains, meaning capital gains will be treated, especially for high income earners as ordinary income. These are sweeping changes, changes to the debt tax, the estate tax, the lifetime exemptions that are available and what can be included. It’s crazy. It’s time to pay attention. There is going to be an impact. This is the precedent that it’s setting. It’s setting another precedent as well, which is one that’s way more philosophical. I’ll end with this, making this a shorter episode.

The precedent is that American people are not creative enough, hardworking enough to take care of themselves, to solve their own problems, to exercise their ingenuity, which is deep inside of everybody. This is where the precedent is dangerous. An example is an article that came out a few years ago, it was a study. It was done in Europe, somewhere Sweden, I believe. The study showed that if families had one less child, it would make a huge difference as far as the carbon footprint human beings leave. It’s an incredible claim. You can remove people and we wouldn’t have any carbon footprint. You look at the human ingenuity specific to this claim. The inventor, Bill Gross, you can look him up, has a project called Carbon Capture, which is an economical way to remove a toxic carbon dioxide from the atmosphere. If one of those children that weren’t born wasn’t Bill Gross or was Bill Gross, there’s no solution at that magnitude.

The point I’m trying to make is that when we’re put in predicaments of challenge and difficulty, we can take the easy way out and most people would, if that hand is extended. We can take another way out, a route that allows us to understand ourself at a deeper level, to understand what we’re made of. Think of the loss of fulfillment, the loss of self-respect, self-esteem knowing that you overcame challenge. It’s the feeling of rising above adversity. It’s a feeling of conquering something on the surface that you did not believe was within you, what you weren’t capable of. To me, these are the massive losses that are impossible to quantify. The precedent that’s being set is that, “When there’s challenge, don’t worry about it. You don’t have to do anything. You can sit back and relax. We’ll be there to help you.”

I don’t believe that this is an environment of growth that leads to what we’re looking for, which is a sense of self-understanding, a sense of self-reliance, respect, and having the understanding, having the knowledge that we accomplished something. We overcame something. That to me is sad. I look at the genius in everyone and how that genius is being put on the altar of sacrifice. I believe that there are circumstances where people find themselves in challenging times, maybe impossible to fend for themselves. At the same time, I think that is the exception, but we are making it the rule.

There are a couple of interviews I’m going to link to as I conclude this short episode. They were done a couple of years ago, one with Greg Lukianoff, who’s the author of The Coddling of the American Mind, another one, which is a follow-up to that book with Andy Tanner, talking about what we teach our children, the importance of challenge, of difficulty, of overcoming, and the sense that comes from overcoming, the muscle that builds. It’s important especially with what’s going on now.

As a recap what to take from this episode, number one, I look at it’s a clear path to higher taxes, to inflation, and ensuring that you ask yourself the question, “How is my wealth, my portfolio, my financial future impacted by inflation?” I’ll give you a short crash course on inflation, this $1.9 trillion in addition to the north of $100 billion that hasn’t been spent from the previous COVID stimulus bill. This is the money that will go into circulation even though it goes into areas that would make you question, “Why would we do that?” Go look at some of the details. That money is going to find its way into the business’ pockets. That business is going to buy stuff. They’re going to pay their employees, maybe give them a bonus or raise. Those employees are going to go out and spend money. This money came out of nowhere. The money was not earned. Now, we have that much more that is circulating in our economy.

When you have more money circulating and a seemingly finite amount of goods and services, what ends up happening is that more money bids up the price of assets, of goods and services. We’ve seen that already and we’re going to see even more of that. What that means is that the money you have, the money you earned, the value of your assets, your wealth will be buying less stuff in the future because those things have gone up in price. That’s the nature of stimulus and inflation, higher prices. You can also define inflation as the devaluation of the dollar. That’s the first thing.

We have a prime opportunity as human beings to grow, to thrive, and to learn. Click To Tweet

The second thing is legislation that is coming down the pipe, whether it’s taxes or otherwise that is being pushed forth by the administration. We see that a precedent has been set where they can pass laws that are highly controversial. They can pass measures that are highly controversial. Pay attention and start setting up your tax strategy to help you keep more of the money that you’ve earned. Finally, it’s the context of challenge and hardship. I’m not debating that there isn’t hardship. I’m not debating that COVID hasn’t made an impact or the response to COVID has not made an impact. It has. It is evident, not just the United States but around the world.

I remind myself that government was not set up to take care of people. Government was set up to protect the rights of people. People have done some incredible things over the course of time. In this day and age with access to limitless information, resources, knowledge, we can debate the definition of knowledge, but finding solutions, whether it’s YouTube, books, blogs, podcasts, the majority of which is free if not insanely inexpensive. People have the resources to solve problems. At the same time, when resources aren’t needed, they are rarely taken advantage of. Water is not valuable until you’re in the middle of a desert and thirsty, or running a race. It’s the environment where resources become valuable.

We have a prime opportunity as human beings to grow, to thrive, to learn, not just for our own betterment and the remuneration that comes tangibly materially but it’s the feeling, the sensation. It’s the understanding we have about ourselves about what we’re made of. I think we all thirst for that. In essence, we’re being robbed of that because of what’s going on, where governments are taking care of us. They’re solving our problems. They’re giving us handouts. As I look at it from an 8 to 10-year-old, I can see on the surface that the bill makes sense, the narrative makes sense. As 8 to 10-year-old, maybe 12-year-old, when you realize you’ve been deceived or screwed, you’re going to be pissed. I look at the emotions that are going on in the social and political atmosphere. They’re high, it’s tense.

TWS 81 | $1.9 Trillion Stimulus Bill

$1.9 Trillion Stimulus Bill: People have the resources to solve problems. At the same time, when resources aren’t needed, they are rarely taken advantage of.

 

This is by no means to incite more of what doesn’t serve you, but it’s to make you even more aware of what’s going on, to navigate your life where you’re not dependent on others, you’re not dependent on handouts. You’re dependent on yourself. It’s to take actions, to make efforts to those ends. Thanks for reading. I appreciate the support. Tune in to the next couple of episodes. We’re going to be talking politics. We’re going to be talking tax strategy and some investment strategy given what’s going on with our environment, specifically how the tax implications could impact your investment strategy or wealth strategy, and some ideas of how to remedy that. Until next time, take care. Bye.

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Seeking The Uncertainty You Can Comfortably Live With

TWS 76 | Uncertainty

 

The great Tony Robbins once said, “The quality of your life is in direct proportion to the amount of uncertainty you can comfortably live with.” But up to what extent is it comfortable? How do you measure the amount of uncertainty you can handle in life? In this episode, Patrick Donohoe shares a breakthrough that had him realize the ways we all are seeking uncertainty in life just as much as certainty. He tells us about some of the reflections that occurred to him on what we need to do in order to take in more without reaching beyond the limits of how much uncertainty we can live with, most especially when it comes to our finances. 

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Seeking The Uncertainty You Can Comfortably Live With

Thank you for tuning in. I’m excited to be with you. I’m grateful for your support. I’m excited to share with you some things that have been on my mind that have impacted the way I’ve viewed my life, my financial life, viewed financial life of clients that I have. I’m excited to share that with you. As a side note, there has been a group that is advertising and marketing underneath the #TheWealthStandard and they’re promoting different courses and other things, this is not us. This is not me. Please, if you have come across them, we’re reporting them, doing some cease-and-desist stuff. We’re on top of it but we wanted to let you know that’s going on. There are some people who have purchased some of their material that is associating the reason to this show, which is not true. This is not our group. This is not us, so please be cautious.

I’m excited because I had this breakthrough and the breakthrough occurred in a software training that I host every year, at least I have for the last few years. It’s Financial Advisor Facing. I’ve gone and participated in this training many times. It’s also something I’ve felt strongly about hosting here at my office so that my team can participate in it. In 2020, it was different because of COVID and quarantine, so the majority of it was live but it was virtual. Nonetheless, I had some thoughts that I hadn’t had before. It starts with a quote that I learned from Tony Robbins. I’m not sure if he is the author of this quote. He’s the author of some pretty amazing quotes. This is an amazing quote but he also uses quotes by others as well.

This quote says that, “The quality of your life is in direct proportion to the amount of uncertainty you can comfortably live with.” Uncertainty in his words is a need that we have. He believes we have six human needs. Certainty is the first one. Uncertainty is the second. It’s a contradiction there. You also have significance, love and connection, growth, contribution. These needs that we have, one of them being uncertainty is that we want variety in life, adventure, we want new. We want different. If everything was the exact same thing, we ate the exact same thing, we wore the exact same thing, we did the exact same thing every single day, life would suck.

We're all seeking uncertainty. Click To Tweet

At the same time, we want a degree of certainty. The uncertainty side of things is the new movies you get to watch, the new clothes you get to buy, the vacation you get to go on or the new place you get to visit, the new car that you have, a new experience, skydiving, bungee jumping, scuba diving. The uncertainty is this adventure. It’s doing things that are new and exciting. Comfortably live with, that’s a very interesting word and this is where the epiphany is.

This school I go to, this training, the software program that we put on is called Truth Training. It uses a software program called Truth Concepts. I first learned about this software during this 2009, 2010 period of my life, where it was a very vulnerable time in my life. I was in the middle of getting crushed by the 2008 and 2009 timeframe where I almost went out of business. I almost went bankrupt, lost my family. It was very challenging. It was a scarce point in my life where I was afraid. I lacked certainty. I had way too much uncertainty going on.

That is what I pushed. Truth Concepts is geared around validating the financial product, financial strategy claims. It’s objectively looking at scenarios whether it’s a mutual fund, a piece of property, an alternative investment, it doesn’t matter. It’s objectively analyzing it so that you can see between the lines, the fluff of a sales pitch and understand what’s truly going on. It was humbling. It gave me not only a realization of how individuals are making investments and planning their life financially but also gave me confidence in what I was doing.

TWS 76 | Uncertainty

Uncertainty: Improving the foundation of certainty that you have with your financial life will allow you to experience even more uncertainty than you currently experience.

 

It was right. It was beneficial. It helped people. It started to help me as well. It gave me more certainty. This is the realization that I had at a much deeper level is if uncertainty is what is required to have a higher quality of life, if it’s not balanced out with certainty, it puts you in this position of not comfortable living with uncertainty. You’re uncomfortably living with uncertainty. In essence, improving the foundation of certainty that you have with your financial life will allow you to experience even more uncertainty than you experience.

Going to human needs, these driving human needs that we have most are not aware of those. I’ve been aware of them for quite some time. It doesn’t mean that I understood them. I continue to understand how those needs manifest in me whether it’s the degree of certainty that I’m looking for, it’s the degree of uncertainty that makes me feel alive and excited and gives me that adventurous experience of life. There’s also the need for significance, the thing that allows us to understand that we bring value to the world. There’s also the need for love and connection but there’s also a need for growth.

There’s also a need for contribution, which is giving back, being of value, of service to others. As we look at where we’re getting these needs, one of the big things I’ve learned in my personal development is to strategically position myself so that it’s not this random way in which I’m meeting needs. It’s not this random impulsive behavior that has me doing this, that and the other, and hopefully getting what I want in the end but it’s strategically doing it.

What gave rise to more people wanting to invest is the dream of doubling and tripling a return and what that would mean to their life. Click To Tweet

That’s where in addition to revisiting this software, how financial products work, the combination of financial products and how taxes and inflation and other impacts other financial influences out there give either rise to the claims that are being made or in question the claims that are being made. It allowed me to step back and ask myself the question, “What are our people after?” The driving force behind human behavior is these needs.

As much as I was in this training, there was also a lot of buzz and excitement with regards to what was going on Wall Street, mainly in a few different companies, GameStop, AMC, where you had a group on Reddit and other influence that were combining efforts of retail investors and influencing the rise of certain stocks, which squeezed out those who were short-selling those stock, which are mainly hedge funds. There’s lots of buzz. There was lots of excitement. There was lots of adventure there.

A lot of people made a lot of money but as you can guess, the excitement and buzz led to a lot of people losing money. In the end, what I wanted to do with this very short episode is highlight the fact that we’re all seeking uncertainty. What gave rise to more people wanting to invest was that dream of doubling and tripling, 600% return of what that would mean to their life. It’s exciting. You also had those that were driven by this unbridled control of their behavior and lost money.

The lesson and the connection I made is there are things that are going to pull me, pull you toward adventure, excitement. I believe that degree of certainty that you have as your foundation will allow even more of that. Unfortunately, that’s not the case with everyone but those that understood this principle, whether it’s using the words that I’m using to describe it or using others. If there was a foundation of certainty, certain things that you can count on whether it’s cashflow, your profession, your business, your liquidity, the financial products you have that did provide certainty of outcome or the highest degree of certainty for that outcome, these bets, these risks made you feel alive but did not take you out of the game.

TWS 76 | Uncertainty

Uncertainty: You can experience more uncertainty, adventure, and excitement in your life when you improve the quality of the degree of certainty that you have.

 

That’s my breakthrough is before, I was very prone to creating more certainty and more certainty in my life but not equating that certainty to the amount of uncertainty that I could experience. I don’t get a big rise by making those types of bets in the market. That’s just me. I like to have experiences with my family. I like to make bets in my business as far as trying this thing, trying that thing, developing software, developing a course, developing ways in which I can create more value for clients. That gives me a lot of excitement.

Because I have a degree of certainty that backs me, I’m allowed to push more and more of the limits that were in place previously. I encourage you guys to do the same thing. Don’t let your impulses, your passions be a quilt, strategically position yourself to take advantage of those. That’s what gives us this higher quality of life. However, the positioning is where you create whether it’s financial education, it’s a degree of certainty and the financial products that are at the foundation of your financial life, whatever the case may be. Just look at that, it’s a balance. You can experience more uncertainty, more adventure, more excitement in your life when you improve the quality of the degree of certainty that you have. That’s it. Stay tuned for a couple of episodes that you guys are going to enjoy that are forthcoming. Go out and create some value, have an amazing life. We’ll see you next time.

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The Wealth Gap: Identifying Inequalities With Connor Boyack

TWS 59 | The Wealth Gap

 

One of the most controversial topics today is the existing and widening wealth gap between the rich and the poor. Tackling this important conversation to offer a unique and even quite controversial view, Patrick Donohoe is joined by Connor Boyack, founder and president of Libertas Institute—a free-market think tank in Utah. Here, Connor gets into the significant wealth that has spun great talks about inequality from both sides of the political aisle to create divisiveness. He goes deep into capitalism, the billionaires that keep getting rich, and moving up the economic ladder. Follow along to this insightful episode to learn more about this issue we’re facing now in our society.

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The Wealth Gap: Identifying Inequalities With Connor Boyack

Thank you for tuning in to the show. Connor Boyack is an incredible man. He’s been on the show before. We’re talking about a controversial topic. We’re breaking it into two parts. The first part is going to get into the wealth gap that is significant. Wealth inequality is a theme that’s being used by both sides of the political aisle to create divisiveness. Right now, there are a lot of upset people. This episode, without the proper context, may upset you, so go back and read the last 4 to 5 episodes.

Hopefully, that will prepare you to think rationally about this sensitive topic. The drive we have to make a difference grow and be free is evident across most human behavior. Achieving that result is what I characterize and what I’ve tried to talk to you about as true wealth. The show’s mission is to help you identify sound principles that will guide you to achieve wealth and prosperity regardless of the environment or economic circumstances. Right now, it may not seem possible but understanding the principles will allow you to understand that it’s not the environment that creates that end, it’s principles, and acting on those principles.

Through this lens, these emotionally sensitive topics will inspire you instead of infuriate you which is, unfortunately, the way in which people are looking at this topic. My compadre, Connor Boyack, has dedicated his professional life and arguably because of some threatening experiences that he’s had his whole life to defending the principles of prosperity by being involved in the political arena here in Utah. Also, by expanding that into the world of literature and education with over 21 books, most of them through the children’s book platform.

For those of you who have listened to Connor before The Tuttle Twins books, I get comments about that more than anything else that’s coming from the show. Connor is going to give you a code to get these books. I’m offering something for the rest of 2020. For those of you who purchase the package and Connor is going to give an insane discount for all of the books or the online curriculum that he has, I’m going to match that. What I mean by that is if you purchase, I’m going to pay for another either package of books or the online course that you can give to somebody else. I’m going to do that through the end of 2020.

I hope you gain a lot from this. I hope you’re able to step back and think through some of the points that we make and that it enlightens you to understand the narrative but also understand how to have a productive, and meaningful conversation with somebody else about this topic. I hope it inspires you to understand how the world has improved because of the environment that we have in which people can start businesses. They can be free to fail, free to succeed, and how that improves everybody’s life. Let’s cut to the interview. Without further ado, this is Connor Boyack.

Wealth is not the natural condition in life. Poverty is the natural condition in life. Click To Tweet

He is the President of Libertas Institute, which is a nonprofit think tank here in Utah, but it’s also an educational organization. They promote through a lot of influence up on Capitol Hill during legislative sessions. They promote the principles of liberty but they also educate the public in many different ways. Connor is also the author of 21 books. It also includes a children’s series, which is incredible. It’s called The Tuttle Twins. Connor, welcome to the show. You’re no stranger here except for those that are new and new readers. Thanks for coming back. I appreciate your time.

I’m happy to be here. I’m excited to get into the issues with you.

This is a hot one because it’s something that’s been politicized. It’s being weaponized by different political parties. It’s the wealth gap. I’m going to read some statistics which I haven’t given you in advance I’m sure you won’t be surprised. This is given the federal reserve’s stats, whether they’re objective or not. I would say it’s close to as objective as possible. In the United States is $104 trillion of private wealth in terms of money. The top 1%, $32 trillion, the next 9%, $39.1 trillion, the next 40%, $31 trillion and the bottom 50%, $1.5 trillion. There’s a gap and the gap is shown to widen. Connor, I think we are able to have a conversation that understands both perspectives. When you hear these numbers, when you hear the narrative that’s used and how it’s weaponized and politicized, what goes through your mind? How do you process that?

I’m excited by those numbers, where other people find them repugnant and see an inequality that needs to be addressed. I’m conversely excited and that’s for an important reason. What would those numbers have been like a century ago? What would those numbers have been like three centuries ago? The fact that much wealth has been created has made it so that we all live like kings. Even that bottom 50%, the bottom 10%, even the bottom 2% live like kings compared to people a century ago.

The creature comforts that we enjoy that this wealth inequality has allowed wealthy people to amass capital, to invest in research and development, and come up with new innovative conveniences. The fact that Jeff Bezos is now going to be delivering our products by drone on the same day we order them. Packing the mule over the mountain with a couple of workers that take up a three-week journey to get to you and by then, half of what you ordered has been stolen or moldy. The fact that some people have gotten rich should not distract us from the fact that everyone has gotten rich.

Wealth is not a natural condition in life. Poverty is the natural condition in life. The fact that some people have become wealthier than others doesn’t discount the fact that basically everyone has become wealthier. Everyone has a higher standard of living and it’s this system for all of its warts and bumps and everything else. It’s not perfect. It’s this system compared to any other that has allowed for that massive creation of wealth and prosperity across all the demographics that you can imagine.

TWS 59 | The Wealth Gap

The Wealth Gap: The comforts we enjoy from this wealth inequality have allowed wealthy people to amass capital to invest in research and development and develop new, innovative conveniences.

 

I could have guessed that you were going to say something along those lines, even though we haven’t even talked about this in detail previous to the interview. I have some statistics here that I usually will find from an opinion and perspective research, depending on the perspective. It doesn’t make the news headlines that often but one of them is Matt Ridley. He’s written a bunch of books. The one that hit me the hardest years ago was The Rational Optimist, which is when everything was falling down and he wrote this book that said that the world is amazing.

Here are some of the things that he cited in a blog post. He said, “Extreme poverty has fallen below 10% of the world’s population for the first time.” It was 60% when he was born, which was in the late 1940s. Child mortality has fallen to record low levels. Famine virtually went extinct. Malaria, Polio and heart disease are on the decline. One of the least fashionable predictions that he made was the ecological footprint. We have been able to use more sustainable resources and be more efficient with the way in which we are attentive to those initiatives.

As far as the use of land and the use of water when it comes to producing food has dropped 100%. I can keep going on and on as far as how people are coming out of extreme poverty. Peter Diamandis is more on the technological front. He’s talked about the fact that we’re approaching four billion people with smartphones. Where people are getting connected, they’re getting access to information, education, and so forth. I agree with you. There’s a disease of abundance than there is of scarcity when it comes to living the way that we live now versus what life would have been 100 years ago.

I was going to add to your list before with the proliferation of mobile phones and so forth, access to banking or cryptocurrency, sending money around, transmitting to family members and other countries. The fact that Africa didn’t get into landlines and telephone poles and all the rest. They leapfrogged over that and now have like 95% plus penetration of cell phones, even out in these remote villages where they can access Wikipedia and suddenly any villager can learn from all of the knowledge in the world.

I was a missionary in Honduras many years ago and I lived in these tiny little pueblos for two years. I remember once a week, we would get an opportunity to email the family and say, “I’m still alive out here.” We do that at these internet cafes that were crazy expensive. They were rare. The internet was horrible. Now, the same thing as you pointed out. Everyone’s got cell phones, constant connectivity, connecting all the world, creating amazing remote work opportunities where people out in these villages can go on Upwork.com and say, “I can do graphic design. I can do editing. I can do translation and I can do whatever.” It creates all these economic opportunities that they didn’t have before.

I care a lot about issues surrounding charity and poverty. I don’t want to sound like I’m some kind of greedy capitalist. My wife and I focus and try to lift those who are in need and find ways to serve. I know of no other economic system that does it better than what’s often called capitalism because you have the incentive for these people to go and produce. That means the Jeff Bezos and the Elon Musk and others are going to amass substantial wealth but they’re not extracting it from anyone. It’s not a zero-sum game. They’re not forcibly taking it from people. All that means is they figured out a way to serve a crap ton of people because capitalism and entrepreneurship and business is service. It’s, “I hate pulling weeds and the fact that someone will come to serve me by pulling my weeds and we have an economic exchange, I can make it worth their while.”

There's more of a disease of abundance than there is of scarcity when it comes to living the way that we do today. Click To Tweet

That is still service to me because I would rather part with $10, $20, $50 or whatever than do the weeds. Having an electric car, having drone deliveries, or whatever the issue is. These people have figured out a way to serve a ton of people rather than a few people. In my mind, that is a system that should be praised, notwithstanding that. I do think it’s important that we still look at the inequality issues and figure out even better ways to help people move up that economic ladder. It doesn’t come from the traditional. Do you remember the lobsters and the bucket story? Where you put lobsters in a bucket and as one tries to get out, the other crabs pull down, “Let’s try and pull it down so we can get up.”

That’s not how the system works. We can figure out a way to build up more people. We don’t have to tear down the 1% and take more of their money and remove their incentives to serve even more people. We can do it in a way that empowers even more people and removes those roadblocks of regulations. Even people who want to start a food truck, they’ve got to deal with a nightmare of regulations to get their foot in the door and entrepreneurship to maybe do a food truck to then do three, to then do a brick and mortar restaurant and grow an empire of franchise.

If we have these regulations and other problems in the way that prevent the people on the bottom, if you’ve got money, you can make problems go away. You can be strategic and figure out a way around them. It’s the people on the bottom who don’t have those resources. They can’t navigate the system. They’re often trapped by the system that purports to help them and puts them on the dole and says, “Here’s some money. Go sit on a couch, watch Netflix and chill while we subsidize your inactivity.” What if instead, we remove those roadblocks that don’t have the capital and the network to circumvent on their own so that they can bootstrap themselves up and be able to go to work? There’re many stories of rags to riches that you can’t say that everyone who’s wealthy gets wealthier and everyone who’s poor stays poor. That’s not reality at all but I do think there are improvements we can make to help more of those rags become riches and give even more people that opportunity.

Now, let’s cross lines because just as much as we ourselves have rationalized this, not together but in probably similar ways, the overwhelming majority does not believe this way. Let’s look at their perspective. How do you sympathize with them? How do you understand why they’ve come to a conclusion they have which could be the diametric opposite of ours? How is that being politicized?

You may have seen the video of a Black Lives Matter leader protesting outside of the courthouse saying to the camera, and to the public that it is okay that we go loot these businesses, that we do these riots, that we bash in the store windows, that we take all these apparel, toys, electronics and everything we’re taking because they have insurance. There have been other Black Lives Matter protesters who I watched a video of one woman defending the pillaging of white store owners as a form of reparations because, in her words, it was the black community that has built that business and never been able to take advantage of the profits.

The downside there is, first of all, that’s not how insurance works or why it exists. I think the first comment reflects an economic misunderstanding. She’s trying to justify theft. The second comment was more interesting to me. This notion of reparations and this long-standing injustice that certain people have been kept down. They’ve been denied these opportunities and to that, I say I don’t disagree. There have been a lot of these problems. Zoning laws were instituted because of racism. It was a way to segregate neighborhoods and keep black people out of white neighborhoods. You still have those problems to this day. Zoning boards and city councils and others will perhaps not overtly or explicitly but they can hide their bias and use zoning laws to keep certain people down and prevent them from having commercial activity in their neighborhoods or from integrating into other parts of the city or whatever.

TWS 59 | The Wealth Gap

The Wealth Gap: The fact that some people have become wealthier than others doesn’t discount the fact that basically everyone has to become wealthier.

 

It’s because it was illegal. They could have been fined. They could have been put in jail if they crossed those lines.

There are certainly these policies that have been in place over time that have been put in place but the tough thing I have with reparations is that you don’t have an opportunity to connect one-to-one. By that, I mean that maybe someone did something horrible 80 years ago or 20 years ago, or 150 years ago but how does that justify perpetuating the injustice by forcing someone else whose fault it is not to pay for the misdeeds of what someone else does? I sympathize. I want to help. I want to remove those roadblocks. I want to help everyone be able to flourish and have that opportunity. I just struggle with what some of the demands are where people look at that inequality, and they have this kind of aggregate perception that there’s this systemic problem. Therefore, we’re going to have a systemic solution, an aggregate solution that uses the sledgehammer and says, “We’re going to do this so that we benefit.”

In a way, that’s continuing the injustice that they’re talking about by perpetrating it on more people who are innocent of the misdeeds that they’re rightly pointing out in the past. It becomes a sloppy way. I sympathize with the problems, the solution is where it breaks down. That’s where I think if we can sit down and talk together and resolve this, maybe we’d come up with some interesting ideas. I feel like a lot of the people who speak out against inequality and who are especially vocal about it, especially in the past few months with Black Lives Matter and some of these groups, there’s a bit of an economic ignorance there and perhaps political collectivism where they’re trying to force these solutions on other people. Thereby, they become the perpetrators of the injustice they’re speaking out against.

You have this balance between very strong deep-seated emotions that go back generations. It goes back culturally. That’s when we start out talking logically about the wealth gap, it’s provable. At the same time, people aren’t going to sit back and say, “You’re right. I should think about things differently.” People have these deep-seated emotions that reinforce a perspective. For me, I try to sympathize and empathize with that. I look at some of the extreme things that human beings to this day still do to one another, do to children, do to women and do to the minorities. It’s sickening.

At the same time, you look at history and it’s always happened that way. I look at what do we do now with the “civilized society” that we supposedly live in so that the political sphere is not injecting these cheap, slighted, and shallow emotions into the narrative to gain political capital? What do you do? How do you reconcile all of this? What’s the solution because you have these deep-seated things that are not going to go away and then you have these rational things that we can show, the rich and wealthy people have created much as it relates to our lifestyle?

We use the same internet browser as Jeff Bezos. We have the same iPhone as Bill Gates. They’re not living much of a different lifestyle other than maybe the car they drive and where they go on vacation. It’s not much different. How do you reconcile this, Connor? You’re amazing at taking divisive topics when it comes to liberty and teaching people through books, through education but also promoting principles on Capitol Hill and being influential to lawmakers who clearly have one perspective. They lean toward a party. How do you reconcile all of it?

The market doesn't like uncertainty. We need to have some kind of predictability. Click To Tweet

This one is tough because over the past several months during the shutdown and everything, I’ve been talking to folks about these issues. I feel like among people who are more free-market minded, conservative, libertarian, Republican, whatever you want to call it, there’s a lot of unease in the sense that people have long felt on the foundation of society and their principles and whatever. The degree to which these riots have happened, killings, lootings and all these kinds of things, the way society and culture has been changing as a result of all these events. A lot of these people I’ve talked to have felt uneasy like those footings, the foundation of society is shifting underneath them and they feel that there’s this instability where they don’t know how to act. They don’t know how to step forward. If the ground is loose, how do I know that’s a sure footing so that I can move forward with my life?

There’s absolutely risk and the market doesn’t like uncertainty. We need to have some kind of predictability and this is a tough question for me because how do you forecast things? How do you offer a solution and try and figure out what that approach is? What I’ve seen a lot of families do is think about turning inward. It’s like the story of a tree. When there’s a drought or something to conserve resources, the tree is not going to grow that year. You look at the rings of the tree and when they’re tight like that, that’s during a year where it didn’t have growth. It was in survival mode.

It feels like a lot of families are in that mode right now where they’re trying to say, “How do I talk to my kids about these issues? What do I think about these issues? What voices do I trust?” I’ve seen a lot of these people shift from engaging online or community activism or going up to the Capitol or trying to change the world to say, “I’ve got to protect my family. I’ve got to figure out what we’re going to do and how we make sense of this.” Not only economically, like how’s our job doing but also, if society can shift this much where we’ve got shutdowns, mandates and “Karens.” We have this culture now of shaming one another like, “You’re insufficiently compliance. I’m going to call the cops on you.”

We haven’t had that before in our society. We have riots, lootings, all these blue states and Democrat mayors, letting these people run amok destroying businesses and government buildings. We’ve seen that in Eastern Europe. We’ve seen that in some parts of Asia and Africa and elsewhere. We’ve never seen that in America. That shift is disconcerting to a lot of people. I even feel this way, partially myself, where I struggled to figure out, “Is there anything I should be doing or can be doing right now that I’m not or should I be trying to maintain my balance so that when the ground solidifies a bit more, then I’m ready to move forward?”

Things seem to be changing quickly for a lot of people. I think it’s rational to be like, “I need to wait this out and see where things land.” We’ve shifted a lot. I’ve shifted personally, a lot of my energy into our children’s books, and helping families get material to have these deep conversations and talk about these ideas. It seems like that’s where an investment right now is going to yield a lot of dividends in the future, as opposed to on the policy side of things trying to figure out where to step when the ground is shifting.

I hope you enjoyed part one of this two-part interview. Come back for part two. This is where we get into education. We get into inspiring, influencing and helping kids understand the environment and how to essentially change their life with some simple tweaks. Connor has made some amazing resources available. I’m going to match through the end of 2020 any purchase you make with his steep discount, allowing you guys to give that as a gift to somebody else. Check out all those details on TheWealthStandard.com. Thanks again. Don’t forget to tune into the next episode.

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About Connor Boyack

Connor Boyack is founder and president of Libertas Institute, a free market think tank in Utah.

Named one of Utah’s most politically influential people by The Salt Lake Tribune, Connor’s leadership has led to dozens of legislative victories spanning a wide range of areas such as privacy, government transparency, property rights, drug policy, education, personal freedom, and more.

A public speaker and author of 21 books, Connor is best known for The Tuttle Twins books, a children’s series introducing young readers to economic, political, and civic principles.

Connor lives near Salt Lake City, Utah, with his wife and two homeschooled children.

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