Wealthy Life

A Daily Legacy: Creating And Passing On Generational Wealth To Your Descendants

TWS 72 | Generational Wealth

What is the greatest obstacle that is preventing you from living a life at the next level? For many people, it’s creating and passing on generational wealth. There are many ways to be financially free, but how do you enable your children and their children after them to have the same freedom? What does wealth mean for you in the first place anyway? Patrick Donohoe unpacks this for us in this special episode of The Wealth Standard.

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A Daily Legacy: Creating And Passing On Generational Wealth To Your Descendants

I hope you are in a festive mood despite the shutdown circumstances. I hope you have an amazing holiday and enjoy yourselves and enjoy the season. Welcome to this episode. I’m going to be speaking about generational wealth. Many of I sent out a survey in order to get feedback, insights and ideas about how to create a digital course that would be meaningful to you. I have completed that. If you go to Go.TheWealthStandard.com/freedom, you can purchase that. It is version one, I’m going to be doing some live Q and A sessions and getting direct feedback about some of the things I came up with in order to refine and improve, iterate and so forth. It’s exciting.

In the responses that I got, there are some common themes. That’s what I have been addressing in the episodes. I’m going to be doing that. The question I’m mostly getting into, which was in the survey, is what’s standing in the way? What’s the greatest obstacle that is preventing you from living a life at the next level? It’s obviously very broad but it’s been cool to read through the responses. This is one that I felt was important to address given the season but also given some things that I know that are on my client’s mind, my mind specifically. I hope they’re on your mind as well, especially if you have children even if you don’t, it doesn’t matter. It could be grandchildren, it could be nieces and nephews. It could be people in general, frankly. Let’s unpack the idea of generational wealth. Thanks for joining me.

The specific response was as follows. This is to what is the biggest obstacle that is standing in the way. It’s creating and passing on generational wealth. I’m looking to be financially free, but once I have achieved that, how do I enable my kids to have similar responsibility and freedom for their children? I’m assuming for them and for their children. There are a couple of parts here. Creating and passing on generational wealth, I’m looking to be financially free, but once I have achieved that, how do I enable my kids to have similar responsibility and freedom for themselves and their children? As I thought through this there are a few things that come to mind.

Be, do, have. Click To Tweet

Daily Journey

The first is, again, parts to this obstacle. It’s creating then passing it on. It’s the idea of financial freedom. It’s enabling kids to have similar responsibilities and freedom. Let’s address the first one, creating then passing it on. We should first talk about wealth in general. What I’ve come to understand as wealth isn’t merely financial wealth, even though that’s a part of it. There’s a cool book that I’m listening to. I have five days left on my 75 Hard challenge, which is an intense challenge. I listen to lots of audiobooks. I’ve been listening to Greenlights by Matthew McConaughey. It’s a fascinating book. I definitely recommended it. One of the things he said is, I’m paraphrasing, “Happiness is not contingent on certain things.”

He identified people that he had met in Central America and South America in the Middle Eastern regions. They essentially live like paupers but they’re the happiest, friendly and abundant people he’s ever met. Sometimes actual financial wealth makes it more difficult to understand the true nature of wealth because there are a lot of things that can mask it. When you don’t have as many distractions, it tends to be a little bit easier. Financial wealth allows more distraction that prevents the true essence of wealth. I would say wealth, again, I’ve defined in the past as being able to extract happiness, joy and fulfillment out of any moment, the good, the bad, and the ugly. Financial wealth, in the end, will only magnify who a person already is.

TWS 72 | Generational Wealth

Generational Wealth: There isn’t an end to passing generational wealth. It’s a journey and the journey is every day.

 

Creating the generational wealth and then passing it on first has to do with us, the individuals that do have this desire. I include myself in that. It’s understanding that there isn’t an end to passing generational wealth. I believe it’s a journey and the journey is every day. Our legacy is literally a daily achievement that we make because we don’t know how many days we have. We do know that they are numbered. It matters when and how. We look at life from that perspective. If we took a life, I would say, as more fragile, which in 2020 is a great opportunity to do that, regardless of how you feel about COVID-19, there’s been a scare. There’s been a health scare and it’s allowed us to evaluate our lives.

As we’ve been able to adjust, adapt and find happiness, joy and fulfillment within what has happened and how it’s disrupted our lives, that is a true test of wealth, regardless of how much money you have. I’m going, to be honest, and frank with you as I always am. In 2020, I had a great year financially so far. However, it was a very challenging year. I had nobody in my office. I came here by myself day in and day out with 1 or 2 people in here but little interaction where I’m used to interacting with lots of people physically. I didn’t know how dependent on that I was. I also have two teenage girls who’ve been prevented from visiting with their friends and going out and doing fun things.

We haven’t traveled anywhere. I haven’t seen my parents in over a year. It’s been a trying time and it’s been a great test. It’s been a great challenge because it’s allowed me to find the joy and figure out ways to be appreciative, to be grateful because when everything’s going great, it’s easy to be happy. The true test is when things don’t go the way in which you anticipate. This is a whole idea behind have, do, be versus be, do, have. One of the things I picked up in this response to the survey question was the idea of once. “Once I do this, once I do that,” and I try to eliminate that from my vocabulary. I believe we’re all habitually conditioned to think that once we have this car, job, title, girl, boy, spouse, children, that we’re going to be happy. It’s like when we achieve this, then we will be this.

I believe it’s the other way around. At least, I believe that we can experience the other way around. When we experience that, what we want in the end will come quicker. That is the be first, then do and then have. That idea of being, which is experiencing, embodying the idea of extracting joy, fulfillment, and happiness out of any given moment or experience, life is happening to me versus life is happening for me. A lot of this, I picked up from my exposure and experience with the Tony Robbins organization, where it’s our perspective of life that determines our happiness and that is a daily occurrence. Developing generational wealth starts with how you show up for your family, for your kids, for your loved ones.

Daily Legacy

That right there isn’t a one-time event. It’s a consistent event because when you’re speaking about children, the first 10, 15 years of their life is where a lot of their perspective of who they are, what life is about, what school is about, what money is about, what friends are about. Who they are, how they understand themselves, what they believe in themselves. That’s developed in the first 10 to 15 years of life. It’s not like someday you pass on a bunch of money and suddenly your kids are going to figure their life out. I believe that a lot of what we’re doing to influence our children is often looked over and it’s not seen as making that much of a difference. I have something that I love to say to myself as like an empowering statement which is what my legacy is today.

It’s challenging because children are getting used to life. They are pushing on you. They are pushing on one another, they are testing boundaries and they’re always going to do that. I look at sometimes how we, as parents and adults, show up to children’s lives. It allows us to influence in one way or another. I believe that that is the greatest set of gifts that you can bring to a child. It’s being able to influence their experience of life so that they can discover who they are. They can discover what life is about. They can understand virtues and principles and how to live by them because, in essence, they’re laws. Those are some of the greatest lessons because here’s the thing. Technology is following Maslow’s hierarchy of needs where technology is making the physiological needs of life almost zero cost eventually. Whether it’s transportation, energy, food, housing, communication, entertainment, the costs there are being driven down significantly.

When we cross this barrier, to a large extent, of having to work in order to live where we have to work. We have to earn money. We have to do those things that are becoming less and less of a truth. I believe that in the very near future, technology is pushing towards this working less and less but being able to live a decent lifestyle. Up until 2020, poverty rates around the world were coming down at a staggering rate because of the spread of technology, the spread of efficiencies that are being developed.

I believe our children and grandchildren will live a very different lifestyle from physiological and safety needs, which is the next step in Maslow’s hierarchy of needs, then we have. A lot of what makes us afraid of those that are currently in the X generation, the Baby Boomer generation, is that we still have on our mind this idea that if we don’t have a job, if we don’t earn money, then we’re not going to be able to survive. If we can’t pay our bills, we’re going to be homeless and we’re going to be on the streets. We go to these worst-case scenarios, those fears are going to be non-existent because of technology. That’s an opinion.

I have some evidence to back that up but hopefully, you know where I’m going with this, which is from a financial standpoint, is going to be different for our generation than it has been in the past, especially with regards to our kids and their generation. Wealth is very qualitative. It’s not quantitative as far as measuring in terms of money or cash flow or income. It is qualitative based on the quality of our experience in life, not yesterday, not tomorrow, not a month or a year or twenty years from now but now.

The first two hierarchies of wealth are the first two levels in the hierarchy of needs. The two levels above physiological and safety needs in the hierarchy of needs, these two levels. Technology, I believe, is rapidly solving. Now you get to relationships. Right now this is being expressed. Social media is incredible as far as how we develop relationships. You may not define them as relationships, connections, friends, whatever you want to call them. It’s this need of seeking community. This need for seeking relationships. This need of seeking partners, intimate partners, wanting that desire that happens to want to have children. These innate needs that Maslow talks about, are now being met with technology. You get into self-esteem. These are very important. This is where we, as influencers of our children, of other people, can focus attention on what a healthy relationship is. It is not necessarily by us directly teaching, but I would say indirectly showing through our actions, as well as self-esteem.

Oftentimes, I look at how completely different my kids are from one another. A big part of me has always wanted and tried to show them through the example of how to appreciate their uniqueness, how to understand that they are different than one another. I believe sometimes they want to be like one another in order to get love from their parents. Celebrating the uniqueness and difference of our children is a powerful way in which we create in themselves the seeds to enjoy life at a high level, not one time but consistently over time. I’ll end with maybe a few points around doing this and doing it strategically.

Daily Challenge

The reason I’m getting into this is I believe wealth is going to amplify who your kids, who your grandkids already are when they get money. It’s going to amplify whatever results they’re already getting. You hand them a bunch of money, it’s not going to improve their life from a qualitative standpoint. Long-term, there may be a house, a car, some cool things that they can do to entertain themselves. I do believe that that is also something that is drastically coming down at price. More people are going to be able to experience it. It goes to this idea of being, does, have versus have, do, be. If kids believe that they have to have a job in order to feel successful, if they believe that they have to get straight A’s in subjects that they may not be that great at, they have to do that in order to be successful and feel good about themselves.

TWS 72 | Generational Wealth

Generational Wealth: The bottom line with passing on generational wealth is you have to define what wealth is for you first. You also have to realize that what you are doing on a daily basis is your legacy.

 

I believe that instilling in children this idea that everybody is different and also demonstrating that through how we treat them and then carrying out, I would say, experiences that allow them to have challenges associated with who they are in order to develop self-esteem relative to what they’re capable of by overcoming challenges. It could be as simple as in the summer of 2020, we had some travel plans to visit my parents back East and some other things. All of those were disrupted. We were restricted to where we could drive, so we did a trip up to Northern Montana and it was cold during the summer. We hiked in the snow. We hiked in rain. We hiked some challenging things. For my six-year-old, it was definitely a challenge. He was on my shoulders half the time.

These challenges we may not believe or they may not seem like they are that impactful but they truly are where kids face challenges and they overcome them. They face difficult things and they overcome them. I wouldn’t say this is more physical than anything else but it’s also the lesson around it that you can demonstrate whether it’s directly or how you face your own challenges. Do you show up and battle and push through or do you tuck tail and run? Do you analyze it, celebrate it, realize how beneficial it is to your circumstances because it’s an opportunity to grow, or do we complain? Do we blame somebody else? Do we blame circumstances, COVID, the president, a boss, or the economy? Those are the things that our kids pick up on and it’s developed into how they view the world.

We have a place an hour up in the mountains and it’s right on this river. The river is cold all year round. One of the things that I do is jump in the river. I jumped in it and it was freezing. It was incredibly cold. My kids did it a lot up until it got a little too cold but it was this idea of facing something that you are afraid of, facing something that it’s like, “That’s going to be painful,” but you do it anyway and experience it. It’s not life-threatening. At the same time, it’s that experience that wires us to understand fear at a different level. Understand the anxiety of looking over at that water. I know that that is cold but you push through that and do it anyway.

I’ve always said that one of the decisions I made many years ago that made a drastic difference in my life, especially in my business life but also personal life, you can carry it into all aspects of life, was picking up CrossFit, which is a workout philosophy routine. I still do it almost every day. It’s not necessarily for the workout but it’s because you face physical failure daily and you figure out a way to push through what your brain is telling you one another, shouldn’t be doing. “This is too much. You can’t do it. Stop,” but there’s all the environment of CrossFit allows you to face that over and over again. That builds in a lot of physical mastery, as far as how we show up to the other challenges in our life. The other things where it’s like, “That’s impossible, I’m going to run. I’m not going to do that. That’s somebody else’s fault,” it allows you the fortitude. It allows you the strength to push through and overcome whatever that challenge is.

I’ve gone all over the place with this. The bottom line with passing on generational wealth is you have to define what wealth is for you first. You also have to realize that what you are doing on a daily basis is your legacy. If you currently have kids, you are influencing them. It’s stepping back and it’s analyzing, what am I doing now? What lessons am I teaching my kids indirectly? You want to do some direct stuff obviously but indirectly through my behavior, through my response, how I behave. By no means am I perfect at this. This is a very sobering episode for me because there are many things that I could do better for my kids. I try my best and I continue to try. I realize that I fail. Even when I’m doing something and I know that I’m failing, sometimes I keep doing it. It’s being able to step back when you’re in a neutral mindset and analyze the situation and go to your kids and talk to them about your shortcomings.

Talk to them about what you’re trying to do. Talk to them about their uniqueness, you wanted them to live a meaningful, beneficial life. Having those direct conversations, especially after you fail. I think that’s the worst thing when parents try to hide their faults. I’ve hidden mine in the past and it does not jive with my principles. I’ve had to go back and be penitent to my kids on more than one occasion. In the end, this demonstrates that making mistakes is okay as long as you learn and grow from them.

The last thing I would say is there are ways in which you can structure your finances so that your children benefit from that when you pass on. This is not what I usually start with. What I explained and went through was what I believe the true generational wealth is, which is basically the strategic design of having your kids experience the principles and virtues of life and come to understand their uniqueness. How they, based on the current circumstances that they experience as well as future ones, how to extract the lesson, how to extract the joy and the beauty. How to understand that life is happening for you as opposed to, to you, which is the case with most people, unfortunately, and your kids see that. My kids see that.

Your legacy is today. Creating generational wealth is an everyday responsibility. Click To Tweet

If we want to turn the tide, that is the greatest way to pass on generational wealth. Not from a financial standpoint. There are estate planning techniques. There are ways in which you can position your assets so that you don’t have a check written to your kids upon your passing, whether that’s later in life or prematurely. There are ways in which you can structure that so that it’s not a blank check so that it goes for specific purposes.

I would caution you here to find someone who is very astute at this in the digital course that I created, I have a financial directory in there. My personal attorney is in there. His firm does a wonderful job at helping to structure an estate plan strategy so that you can pass on your values, your virtues, what you want to pass onto your kids but you do it in a responsible and intelligent way. Andrew is great at this. Thank you for reading. I hope you have an amazing and eventful holiday season. Even though they’re not going to be the typical events, you can still create some cool things. I know you have some creativity inside of you to create those lasting memories for you and your family. Best wishes and we’ll see you in the next episode. Take care.

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Introducing A Course Survey That Will Take Your Life To The Next Level

 

While our experiences can be varied, there are still some common threads that bind us to reach our financial goals. In this unique episode, Patrick Donohoe works to tie those and create a course that will allow you to take your life—financial, professional, and investments—to the next level. Asking for your help, he shares a survey that will guide him to feel the listeners’ pulse as they try to create wealth and, in turn, offer the best course that can take you there. Join Patrick in today’s show as he breaks down the questions that need your answers and will help you breakthrough to the next level and beyond.

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Introducing A Course Survey That Will Take Your Life To The Next Level

I have an episode that’s different than the past. It might be shorter, but who knows? It can go long. I have no idea yet, but I have prepared some thoughts around some help that I’m going to request from you. This year has been monumental for everyone, including myself. It’s allowed me to introspect a lot more. I’ve shared quite a bit of that on the show. I like to take it to another level. I brought on another person to my marketing team and him and I had made a goal to create a specific course for the show’s audience before the end of 2020. If you are reading this down the road, this is October 2020. I’ve given you a lot of material whether it’s the book or whether it’s courses I’ve done with my company Paradigm Life, but this one is going to be specific to the show.

What I want to do is derive the common things that hold people back and create some curriculum, some education, as well as exercises that allow you as readers to take your life, your financial life, your professional life, your investments to the next level. That sounds somewhat cliché. At the same time, there are those fundamental principles that pertain to unique, personal situations. All of us have a different perspective of the world. There are some things we have in common. At the same time, we all have different experiences that have formed. Our paradigm formed our perspective. Those are all unique at the same time because we’re human. We have some things in common. I believe that there are some end results, some achievements in life that everybody wants. I believe that there are some fundamental principles regardless of the uniqueness of our situation, that if we understood them and if we applied them, we’ll be able to break through to the next level and then the level beyond.

Instead of talking about it on the show, because I know information and ideas have some value. As a business owner, entrepreneur and observer of our modern reality, I realized that ideas are abundant, but what’s scarce is execution. It’s the ability to act and create a new reality based on the ideas that we have. I’d like to first walk you through in this episode the survey I’d like you to fill out. It’s short. There are half a dozen questions or so as well as a statement that you can make. I believe that about 20 would be a good sample size, maybe 30, but for the first 10, I’m going to give you a signed copy of the book and also free access to the course once it’s available.

Ideas are so abundant, but what's scarce is execution. Click To Tweet

For the second ten, I’m going to send you a free copy of the paperback. I’m going to walk you through that survey and give you something in exchange. I think this is going to be a great starting place because this specific course, I have tons of ideas around it. At the same time, I want to order it in the right way. I want to make it actionable so it’s not information that you absorb and then try to figure out what to do with it. It’s information you absorb and then are able to do something with it. This isn’t a course that’s available now. It’s going to be available at the end of 2020, but I’m going to start into it.

Let me give you some context as to some of the questions I’m going to ask. The content of the solo shows I’ve done have revolved around disruption, a major disruption in some cases, to all of our lives. I believe disruption is interesting because the scale or the magnitude of that disruption is what I believe impacted people. At the same time, we’re disrupted by things every day. I believe that life and the unique path that we have in our living is going to face specific disruptive events. As I’ve quoted the famous quote from Victor Frankel, “Between stimulus and response, there is a space and in that space lies your freedom,” and it’s the response to the things that happened to us.

It’s the ability for us to stray away from being convinced that the outside circumstances have to align in order for us to be happy. Whether it’s a specific person in a political office, a boss treating you the right way, the partner that you have or the employees that you have. When we start to condition, happiness, success and our achievement around the outside world conforming to our wishes, that’s when things go sideways. At the same time, that’s what we all do. I would say that the course, what it’s going to do is it’s going to help you understand what you want. It’s going to help you define these end results and the purpose behind them. That starts to help you align with the actual financial behavior that you have whether it’s how you spend money, how you save money, what are some of the obstacles you have and the actions you have to take.

TWS 64 | Next Level

Next Level: The meaning that we’ve created around our experiences in life has woven together in the way we perceive things.

 

However, those actions without the right mindset are going to be fleeting, temporary. Ultimately, you’re going to end up most likely right back where you started, maybe even worse. Let me get into it. I’m going to start with the first question. I’m going to maybe summarize what I’ve already stated. We have these experiences of life and the meaning that we’ve created around those experiences and all of that has woven together in the way in which we perceive things. The way in which we perceive things is mostly subconscious and little is conscious. We have this operating system that gets up every single day and does the same things. We’re in these patterns, even though the day is brand new and the experiences, in a sense, are brand new yet our operating system is the exact same.

We’re going to respond in a similar way, which creates a deeper pattern and then I would say it makes it more difficult to transition out of that into something that can potentially give us what we want. Let me get into the first question. I’ve ordered these strategically and it’s not a perfect order, but I asked the questions and I ordered them specifically for a reason. Here’s the first question. If you could get the world’s foremost expert on any topic for a day, who would be the expert? What would the topic be? Why? I think this is profound because number one, I believe that the answer shows some of the values that you have come to understand over the course of time in your life. You associate those values with somebody. Somebody who demonstrates them in reality. You’re able to identify that, but then also extract some of the potential characteristics and values out of this person that aligned with you and then start to discover why.

The second question. What thoughts about money occupy your mind the most during the day? What do you find yourself thinking about the most? It’s a redundant second part. At the same time, what this does is it allows you to understand the focus of where your attention is. The 10,000-year-old part of our DNA is looking for what’s wrong. It’s looking for danger. It’s looking to protect us. I look at all of us having the tendency to gravitate toward these protectionist type of feelings. At the same time, if we don’t become aware of them and then also know how to process, understand and subsequently respond to them, then we are essentially allowing these patterns we’ve developed over the course of time to run our programs. It could be a virus. It could be some malware or some spyware. It’s essentially infiltrated itself into your operating system and essentially stimulating a process that you don’t necessarily want. This is a question I believe is going to be introspective into what you think about and how that pattern is either helping you move forward or holding you back and preventing you from achieving what you want.

Struggles and adversity, if you contextualize them in a certain way, are the grounds for growth. Click To Tweet

The next question is in a brief summary, tell me about a financial struggle you are facing and what you associate as the reasons for that challenge? I think this is an interesting question because struggles are going to be something we all are going to face for the rest of our life. I believe struggles and adversity, if you contextualize them in a certain way, are the grounds for growth. As we look at them as something that’s holding us back or looking at them as something that is challenging us to face that challenge, push through and grow from it, we’re going to have different outcomes. Sometimes I believe struggle without the right focus can be those preventative things that we believe can’t be conquered.

At the same time. If you look at the miracle we have with communication, with information whether it’s books, courses or videos, most of the world’s challenges from an external standpoint, even from an internal standpoint, from a psychological spiritual standpoint have been overcome. As you start to connect your struggles, what you’re going through, challenges, what you define as in your way, that’s when you can look to those that have overcome challenges. Those that have pushed through and then start to connect what needs to be a belief system inside of you that allows you to be in the right mindset to overcome whatever the challenge is in front of you.

Seriously, it’s any challenge. If you don’t make enough money, if you’ve lost in investments, if you feel guilty about something, if you’ve made a mistake, if you’ve hurt somebody, if you’ve been raised a certain way where you believe that you can’t make more than this or else you’re greedy or unworthy. There are other people that are suffering in the world and who are you to want to achieve great things and leave these other people in the dirt. There are weird stories that we have in the background, in our subconscious, are there. I believe that as you address those, as you become aware of those, you can understand yourself better but also start to take the steps to overcome those challenges.

Struggle without the right focus can be those preventative things that we believe can't be conquered. Click To Tweet

The next one, and this is the second to last one, what is the biggest obstacle standing in the way of living life at the next level? It’s similar to the previous one. At the same time, it’s not necessarily a financial struggle. It’s a challenge or an obstacle in general. The final one, if I were to build a course for you on the topic of financial independence, what specific subjects would you like me to focus the content on most? As you’ve gone through these other questions, it’ll help me see what amount of content is best to spend on the psychological side of things, the ability to understand what you truly want first to be in the state of mind to have the right paradigm or perspective. Subsequently, how much time and attention and content to spend on actual strategies, the tactics and the accountability associated with that.

I know this is definitely a different episode, but I would love your help. I would love to know especially for those that have read the episodes, what’s going through your mind? What are you struggling with most? What is occupying the space between your ears? What would you like to see in a specific course that will allow you to better understand this material, but also to implement it in a way that is unique to your life? I’m excited. I’ve already outlined quite a bit of the course. This is essentially a survey that’s going to help me refine the order. It’s going to refine some of the initial content and believe me, there’s going to be more that we add to this over the course of time as we iterate based on the results we see you get.

I’m excited about it, so is the marketing team that I have. I can’t wait to start to work on it. It’s 90 days or so before the end of 2020. I want to get moving on it. I’m excited for you to help participate. That’s it for this. It’s a short episode. Thank you for sticking with me. For those that fill out this survey, the first ten, I’m going to send you a signed hardcover copy of the book as well as access to the initial course for free. For the second ten, I’m going to give you a paperback version of the book. Go ahead and access the Google Forms survey and I can’t wait to get your responses. We’ll talk to you again next time. Take care.

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The Wealth Mindset: The Difference Between Being Wealthy And Being Rich

TWS 58 | Wealth Mindset

 

Mindset is what differentiates being wealthy from being rich and mindset is not a buzzword; it is something concrete, something you can take action upon. We are so used to thinking that success is dependent on strategy and tactics. We want the shortcuts. We want a step-by-step formula that we can follow to the letter. But all the brilliant strategies and tactics in the world will not give you what you want if you are not in the right state to experience a wealthy life. Ultimately, success is a function of you – of how you perceive, optimize and utilize what you have at this very moment. Listen to Patrick Donohoe as he explains why so many of our beliefs around wealth and success are turned on their heads and how we can put ourselves in the right state to build efficiency around what we have at this moment.

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The Wealth Mindset: The Difference Between Being Wealthy And Being Rich

It’s been fun for me to talk about what’s on my mind, what I’m experiencing, what I am perceiving in the lives of clients and the business, and my general observations about the environment that we’re in. I hope you have found value in it. I’m going to wrap up a lot of those thoughts in this episode. I had the opportunity to attend Tony Robbins’ Virtual 360 Business Mastery. It’s an event I’ve attended about half a dozen times. It’s the first time in a virtual format. It was good and I want to frame the last couple of episodes with what Tony incessantly talks about, which is state, story, and strategy.

First, I hope you are doing well. I hope you are seeing the environment that we’re in and you’re finding opportunities. You’re finding things to be grateful for. You’re essentially putting yourself in the right mindset and state to capitalize on opportunities because it’s easy to get distracted. It’s easy to be frustrated. It’s easy to look at the environment and use it as a scapegoat for falling short of what you are trying to achieve, your goals, what you wanted for 2020, your business, your profession, and etc. As much as I look at those frustrations out there and potentially, they are more extreme now than before, in the end, it’s those things that we achieve and accomplish that are most meaningful to us. Right now is an opportunity to dig deep, understand what you want, what you want to achieve, and then find within you the strength to pursue and overcome what those challenges are, which stand in the way of getting what you want and achieving the life that you want.

I know that’s why you’re here. I have titled this episode Being Wealthy Versus Being Rich because there is a difference. Being wealthy is finding the opportunity to live life at a high level whether things changed or not, and regardless of the environment. It’s understanding that deep down in our day and age, there’s so much to be grateful for. There’s so much that we are able to experience. Oftentimes, we succumb to this disease of abundance where we forget and have this short-term mentality of how we live versus those that live 50, 60, 100 years ago. I believe that being able to find that opportunities are an interesting paradox. The more you’re in that mindset, the more likely you are.

The mindset of being content, satisfied and happy with where you’re at, with what your life is about, whether things changed or not, that mindset is most likely to get you what you believe is the environment that will make you happy. I’ll talk more about that paradox here. You’re probably saying throughout all of these episodes, what does this have to do with wealth? Why don’t you just tell me what to invest in? Why don’t you tell me where to put my money and give me a shortcut? In the end, wealth is a mindset. The tools, tactics and products and these are what I find interesting. There’s so much debate out there regarding the difference between this product and that product. This has higher fees and this has lower fees. You should invest in this thing and that thing.

In the end, I would say successful investing and becoming wealthy is a function of strategy, but I believe strategy comes after you understand the mindset of what I talked about. It’s interesting, there are many people, whether it’s a real estate project that has been successful, whether it’s single-family homes, multifamily, industrial or storage. There are many different aspects of real estate and people advocate for one or the other, pros and cons, but there have been people that are successful in that area. You also had people go bankrupt in certain areas.

I had the opportunity to go to Southern Utah with my family and some neighbors. It was a huge lake. It’s the Grand Canyon that was dammed up. It’s called Lake Powell. It’s such a unique place. There are hundreds of feet of water and you have these big rock walls. The water is 85 degrees and it’s hot. It’s in the hundreds every single day. When we were there, there were these beautiful boats and it was a new brand. I know some of the executive team. I did not necessarily experience them with high favor in regards to their business practices years before. Typically, during 2008, 2009 when I knew some of them. Yet they had these beautiful boats and they are all over. They’re the most expensive boats on the water, only to come to find out that there were some practices that they had where there are lawsuits, embezzlement charges and several other things associated with it.

Mindset comes first before strategy. Click To Tweet

What I’m trying to say is on the surface, some things look like they are successful. Some strategies and products and investments look like they’re going to bring you success, but there’s so much below the surface that if you’re uneducated, you ultimately learn the hard way. Whether it’s business, stock market, real estate, commodities, gold, Bitcoin, and other cryptocurrencies, those products are important, but they’re not the most important. In fact, they’re the least important. We had several episodes in years past about the Rich Dad B-I Triangle. They talked about successful business as well as investment in the business. The least important thing in that triangle is the actual product itself. Yet that’s where all the focus is.

The State Paradox

For me, I look at what creates success and ultimately success is a function of you. That’s where I want to frame the context now with the equation that I’ve talked about in the past or the formula I’ve talked about in the past, which is state, story and strategy. State is a function of your language, your focus and your physiology. State is ultimately what everybody wants, but they think that some environment is what’s going to give it to them. “If this happens or if it weren’t for COVID-19, I would be this. If it weren’t for the stock market, I’d be this. If it weren’t for the job market, I would be this.” There are all these contingencies that stand in the way of getting what people want in their minds because they believe that strategy and environment have to align in a certain way in order to experience what people want, which is all internal for me.

That’s the irony and that’s why there’s a paradox. I believe that understanding yourself and your mindset, and being mindful of yourself, self-concept and there are other terms for it. The idea is the experience of achievement is a feeling. There’s a focus there and there are also words used to describe it. This is the paradox, being in that state is most likely going to get you closer to what you want or think you want, as opposed to thinking that what you want is ultimately going to give you this specific state. It’s a paradox in a sense because I believe that if you’re content, happy and fulfilled based on what you have without anything being added to you, it is most likely going to attract the things that you want. They will get you and grow you to the next level.

Emotionality Vs. Rationality

Hopefully, that makes sense. I’ve spoken to these principles in a couple of previous episodes. That’s where I look at whether it’s the parody of The Opposite George and Seinfeld or all the different paradoxes that are out there in relation to some of the most important aspects of life. It applies to money as well. That’s the difference between wealth or being rich. What I would say is when it comes to what you want, being in that state is going to help you to have the right focus, the right language in order to perceive the right strategy for you to get what you want. What I would say is, as I’ve mentioned in one of the episodes, a big part of wealth is winning those battles between your emotions, reality, logic and rationality.

There are such heightened levels of emotion regarding what’s going on. Elections are part of it. There are also states that are doing specific things. You have the debacle with the post office. What I’m going to do is I’ll use the example with the post office. What people place as meaning under the post office is that it should exist, be funded and get money so that there’s fairness in the elections. If you remove the post office, you don’t allow that to happen, then there’s somehow not going to be fairness and justice. There’s a couple of different ways to approach that argument. There’s an emotional side of things that typically aligns with a political party and how you think things should be run in our country, but then you also have a rational side of things. I would say that wealth is understanding both sides, then being happy whether it goes one direction or another direction.

If it goes one way or the other way, then your happiness is now contingent on something that’s outside of your control. With the post office and don’t confuse the former Postmaster General with me because his name is Patrick Donahoe. It’s spelled with an A instead of an O. How I look at what the post office as far as service is concerned is the amount of money that the taxpayer has given to them over the last ten years, which is upwards of $100 billion. That’s $100 billion that needs to be given to them because they’re not creating the revenue as far as expenses are concerned. There’s a $100 billion shortfall if you measure out all the different bailouts they’ve been getting over the last ten years and specifically the $25 billion.

TWS 58 | Wealth Mindset

Wealth Mindset: Being in a state of fulfillment gets you closer to what you want, not the other way around.

 

If you look at the service of the mail and what it specifically does. This is where there’s a proper role of government when you break down the fundamentals of it, but the government has taken this role in solving everybody’s problems. If you look at it going to the rational side of why the specific government was created and what its role is versus what it is now, that’s the rational side of things. There is so much emotion and I might even get you blowing up on me, unsubscribing, and giving me hate mail. That again proves my point where there’s so much emotion involved with these discussions that people do not peel back the layers of reality and rationality. Ultimately, the post office provides us with service in an incredibly unprofitable way. $100 billion of opportunity costs where that money could have either not been taxed printed by the Federal Reserve.

The private sector has solved a lot of those problems anyway. We can deliver things to people’s houses. There are some technical things involved in that, but look at what we’ve been able to do as a human race, especially in the last few years with technology. There’s so much complexity in the different innovations that have occurred. The iPhone 12 is about to come out. There’s so much computing power and so much below the surface of that screen that is brilliant. Sometimes you step back and think about what went into that and how was that created, all the different supply chains, materials, the innovation and the design. It’s incredible. The complexity of that shows that human beings can get together and provide a product and service that is way more efficient than typically a government can provide because that’s not necessarily their role

The rational side of things is what’s being displayed now, but emotions are attached to this argument because it’s associated with elections. Elections go into the different parties and then it goes into who’s right and who’s wrong. It goes into all of these deeper levels of emotion. I’m not saying from an emotional standpoint that this party is right or this party is wrong. Going into a rational conversation, you have to understand where your emotions are and specifically as they relate to potentially being wrong. Maybe there’s another opinion that might be important to understand. Having those stifled or muted for a moment to understand the logical side of things or even another perspective. If you can win that war, that’s true wealth. The last thing is having a lot of money and having a miserable life.

I’m going to use another example. There are more people that are planning on leaving California because of the proposed income tax hike, which taxes the wealthy, the higher echelon of society there because quarantine has impacted the lives of many people. At the same time, if you think about the rational side of things, the buzzword is justice, social justice, economic justice and wealth inequality. I’m not going to get into the details here because these are highly emotional topics and I’m bringing them up because I want you to discern between the emotional side of things and the actual logical side of things in order to come to a conclusion. Hopefully, in most cases, you realize that most of the stuff you get emotionally stirred by, affected by and influenced by has little meaning to the quality of your life which was fascinating to think about. I won’t go down that tangent. As far as taxes are concerned, the understanding that people are affected by COVID-19.

As individuals or human beings, we seek comfort. It’s natural for us. It’s part of Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs. We see seek safety. What’s interesting is when safety and comfort are given to somebody without any effort on their part, what it does is cancels out the experience of comfort. It also robs the individual of one of the primary things that separate us from the animal world or the animal kingdom, which is our ability to rationalize, problem solve, think through things and come up with solutions. When somebody achieves, especially an achievement that puts their economic wellbeing in jeopardy when somebody overcomes that. They find another job, they move to a different state, they get training and learn something new and are now more valuable and get a different job. The impact that has on the human soul and what a person is able to feel about themselves and the confidence that they have, that is what human beings are capable.

It’s essentially being robbed by providing stimulus, unemployment benefits and a Band-Aid to what’s going on. I know some people are down and out more so than others. At the same time, you stifle the experience of life that’s most meaningful when you rob people of being able to figure out their own problems and overcome their own challenges. This now goes into the proper role of the government. Is it the government’s job to tax more and then give to those that are impacted by this? I understand the arguments on both sides, but my point is to bring up this high emotional conversation. It helps you realize how much that impact the quality of your life, especially when it comes to the things that you can’t control and don’t have much relevance to your specific environment and your specific life.

There are ways to be more efficient with what you already have. That’s where all strategy should start. Click To Tweet

That being the case, this goes to the state. You look at what you want from your life, where you’re at right now, and the gap between where you are and where you want to be. Inside of that gap is a state. There’s a story that comes from the different states that you’re in. Usually, the state is it’s the stock market’s fault or it’s my employer’s fault, or my colleague got a raise and I didn’t, and it’s not fair, or this happened or that happened. We always have excuses. We always have a story about why we’re not in the place that we want to be. That’s unfortunate but looking at a state shift, being able to change your state and there are three variables to state: different physiology, different focus and different language. When you start to use a different language, you start focusing on what you have, not what you don’t have. You’re able to think back on the times where you have achieved, overcome and succeeded. That then is going to be a different story and the way in which you perceive strategy, tactics and things to do.

I know all of you want shortcuts and want the things to do, want the strategies, want the tactics, but without state and story, those will rob you of the experience and most likely, it will not help you even if you did get them. I believe that most people with the wrong state and the wrong story will not be able to use strategy in an effective way to get them from point A to point B and overcome that gap. It’s natural for us to respond to the circumstances of life with excuses, “This happened, this person left me, this person cheated me, my employer this, my employer that, the government this, the government that, the president this, the president that.” When we started to take accountability for our life, that’s when our state can change and doors of opportunity open up to apply a strategy.

The Efficiency Formula

Now, I’m going to give you some strategy. I do tactics but I’m going to give you some simple ones as an example. Many of you had read the season I did on capitalism. If you remember Hernando de Soto, which I tried to get him on the show two dozen times. He’s old and was sick, but he wrote the book, The Mystery of Capital. It’s a fascinating read. I’d encourage all of you to read it. It’s written in a simple way where most people without an economic background can understand and benefit from. Capital comes from the word cattle. The reason why it comes from the word cattle, in and of itself a cow, he didn’t say it was where the value was. Capital is created as a byproduct of the cow. What that means is here’s the cow, now how do we optimize the different elements of a cow, the meat, the leather, the milk, it keeps going on and on, the different types of meat. My wife is from Mexico and they eat cow tongue there and intestines. There’s an optimal way to look at all of the different elements of a cow and essentially derive additional value more so than what’s experienced on the surface, which is just a cow.

It’s the same thing with petroleum. Petroleum was just oil. It was this nasty stuff in the ground that bubbled up and ruined crops for farmers. We’ve learned to make many different things as a derivative of that. That’s capital. What I’m trying to get to here is in your specific life, there are ways to be more efficient with what you have. That’s where I would start. That’s where all strategies should start. It’s not adding, but being more efficient with what you already have and deriving opportunities from what’s going on. Let me give you some examples. Interest rates have been extremely low and I was able to refinance all my rental properties. I have a small mortgage on my home but other than that, no personal debt. I carry mortgages on all my investment properties. I was able to increase cashflow by thousands of dollars by refinancing with very little money out of pocket. I was able to skip some payments as well.

It’s finding ways to be more efficient with what you already have. That’s a great example of doing that. If you have personal debt, refinancing personal debt and ultimately paying it off, student loan debt and car loan debt. It’s being more efficient with your cashflow. The second thing for me is being forced based on what has happened with shutdown and quarantine. You’re not spending as much because you’re forced to not spend in a sense. Many of you may have an Amazon addiction, but it’s looking at what comes in and what goes out. From a spending standpoint, I know that there are record levels of people paying off their personal debt because of this increase in discretionary income. That’s another thing, it is to pay attention to what’s coming in and what’s going out. I’ve referenced you need Budget, which is a software I use for my personal finances. Go over to the website, TheWealthStandard.com. There’s a link there. You’ll get a little discount for signing up, but you need Budget.com.

Now that you have maybe some handle on where your cashflow is and an efficient spending plan, you’re going to find equity. You’re going to find the difference between what you make and what you spend. That’s cashflow. One of the things, and this is a very simple way of doing it, it’s a psychological shift, which is setting up a separate account. I call mine the Donohoe Family Fund and it has rules associated with it. Out of that fund, no money is spent on consumption. It’s all investment or putting money into a financial product. This fund is completely separate from your checking account and operational account. Sometimes people have found it useful to have those accounts at different institutions. I have mine at the same institution but what it is, is to separates. It creates rules around it and stick to those rules.

TWS 58 | Wealth Mindset

Wealth Mindset: Focus on what you have, not on what you don’t have.

 

Looking at that, when money comes into this specific account, I usually advocate six months of liquidity, whether it’s in a specific liquid guaranteed safe environment product, not a bank account but more of a product. We use insurance with my company, Paradigm Life, but even inside of this fund, it’s having at least six months of liquidity. That’s even before paying off personal debts. I would say having that liquidity, those reserves, there’s something psychological that happens when you know that you have money in the bank that can last you six months. There’s something that happens that triggers something and creates a level of safety and certainty that allows you to operate a little bit differently. You then essentially go through what to invest in and what type of assets.

There are two things I’m going to bring up. I’ve been working on ways in which we can do some online technology applications that are more self-assessment in nature. I’d love your help. One of them is specific to what I’m talking about. It’s called the Financial Independence Calculator. It’s in an Excel spreadsheet. I would love for you to access that. I’m going to ask for your email address because I want to request some feedback. I’m developing some software and getting some feedback from you will help with the whole user experience that people have. If you would download that, check it out. What it does is it gives you a Financial Independence Day. It is a function of your saving, your investment cashflow, as well as your ideal scenario in which you produce and work. I hope you like that one.

That’s a great first investment but there’s a second part, a second calculator called The Hierarchy of Wealth. This is something I talked extensively about in my book, Heads I Win. Tails You Lose. If you don’t have a copy of that, that’s also available for free, both the PDF and the audiobook in TheWealthStandard.com. You can go to Amazon and buy the book or download an Audible book. There’s Kindle as well, hardcover, softcover, but this is a way in which you can get access to it for free. You can learn about The Hierarchy of Wealth there. There’s a calculator that they developed. It’s in an Excel spreadsheet. What it does is it helps you to identify all the different assets that you have and it ranks them in a specific hierarchy.

The hierarchy that I came up with is a function of risk and control and you will see that in there. That will help prioritize what I call your opportunity fund. Once you have money that goes above and beyond your liquidity, your six months or some of you may want 12 months or 18 months, depending on your comfort level and what gives you that feeling, that psychology of certainty. When there’s money above and beyond that, it becomes your opportunity fund. An opportunity fund is to make an investment. Making an investment, you want to know, “Where are the opportunities to invest?” What I would say is to understand where your other investments are first. That’s where The Hierarchy of Wealth comes from.

The Hierarchy of Wealth will help categorize all the assets that you have and then give you some insight into potentially where are some types of investments to think about first. For me, one thing I am adamant about regardless of where my investments are and how my assets are allocated. As I mentioned, Business Mastery by Tony Robbins. I’m huge about personal development and investing in myself to become a better leader and to understand business strategy, leadership strategy, operational strategy and financial strategy within the business. I believe that’s where the most control that you have and where you can ultimately find the best returns. I believe your business and your profession is what creates liquidity. That liquidity is then invested, which creates cashflow and subsequently degree of wealth, and more options when it comes to money.

This is a shorter episode but I’m glad that you are on. Please go to TheWealthStandard.com to access those two free self-assessment spreadsheets. I’d love to hear your feedback. That’s it for now. There are going to be some cool guests. One specifically is going to talk about education and what’s going on with our kids and options you may not have thought about before. We’re also going to probably get into some other libertarian type of topics. It’s going to get juicy. Thank you for your support. If you like what you read, head over to iTunes, Spotify and give the show a good rating. That always helps to get the word out. Share it with friends and feel free to share all these apps and other resources with your friends as well. I will talk to you next time.

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