4 Rules To Live Your Rich Life – Episode #545

So we had a summit. Grand Summit Hotel, no. You know, I have never made that connection just until now. Literally, right now.

The Grand Summit. We had the summit of the Grand Summit.

I thought about every time I saw the sign, I was like, we’re holding the summit at the Grand Summit. How does it make you feel?

Literally right

Wait, which part? That I didn’t make the connection?

I don’t know. No, that answer was fine. It doesn’t matter what the question was. That was the perfect answer. Over or under, did it go better than you guys thought? Did it go as good as you thought? Exceed? What did you guys think?

Perfect answer.

My God, exceeds every expectation. I don’t know, I’m more anxious and I was part of the planning committee and so I was helping plan this for a whole year. And so kind of relating to another podcast episode about all this work you do for just, you know, a little bit, for moments.

Yeah, so much. seconds of glory sometimes. In an Olympian’s experience, it can be seconds of glory. But you’re right, you planned for a year. I did nothing. I just showed up, which was a feat in itself, and I was excited for that. But you guys did so much.

Yeah, so we planned this for a year. So of course I had some natural anxiety to be like, are people gonna show up? Do people like this?

What were you most scared about? What were you most anxious about not working

I don’t, it was a bunch of little things. Like, did we remember the bingo boxes? Do we have laptops? What about this? are, like, I was just afraid of like the checklist. Yeah, I had full trust in like our speakers and the big things, but because those were set so far in advance that I wasn’t worried. I was more focused on adding like the next like high touch for people and whatnot. And it was so, I was just worried, but yeah, it went really well.

The level of detail

Hmm. So I think you guys totally crushed that. You guys did. All of you who planned. Can we just name who was like in the planning? Let’s just, who was

Yeah. Yeah. So Spencer Chipping headed the whole thing and then we had, yeah, so well. And then we had Becky who also ended up being, DJ Bex. No. Sorry. Sorry. sorry. DJ Batty Bex. My apologies. and then we had Sthuti. So Becky and Sthuti on our marketing team, myself, and then Powell. And then at the end there we had Michelle, one of our interns come help us. So it was our small but mighty team and we helped put it together. It was phenomenal.

That’s amazing. Yeah, you guys, you just, you guys did such a phenomenal job. I think my biggest concern, which was alleviated in the probably month leading up to it, but up to that point was just attendance because to like, you know, our sponsors are spending money and everyone’s traveling and blocking up the times and our speakers. And if it was an empty room, it would have just hurt so much.

When we, when we started talking about this the year before, I literally said the only goal we have is that people cannot walk in and say, where is everyone? That was like it. That was success to us. And far, not even close. It was, the attendance was far better than I, we could have ever hoped

Ryan Isaac:

Yeah.  But it was not, it was not like that at all. Yeah. Full room, tons of engagement with the partners. loved seeing, cause I don’t like when I go to shows like that as a partner or exhibitor and then you’re so isolated from the attendees and you don’t really get to have conversations. They were like mixing the whole time. just, yeah, it was really well done. Stoked. I’m excited for next year. Same place, summit, the grand summit for the second summit. I can’t wait till it comes to San Diego, to be honest though. Is that year three? Year 10.

Right. Yeah. Same place, same week.

Okay, year 10, we’ll take it to San Diego. Anyway, probably the best, like the most inspirational, yeah, the presentation with the most crying, with the most crying by far from the speaker was Matt’s and yeah, most crying from the speaker. Matt, how are you feeling though? Because you have the job of day one right after like the main speaker

Kind of crazy. mean, I think it felt surreal in a lot of ways. It really did because since I’d been at Dennis advisors now for going on seven years, we’d been talking about doing this. So it felt extremely surreal being like, Holy cow. Yeah. Like I’m now on stage kicking off, officially kicking off the first ever Dennis money summit. it felt, yeah, it felt wild. It was really cool. very surreal, very honored to be up there representing the team.

That’s cool. For what it’s worth, you did a fantastic job. It was really great. You were like totally, you wouldn’t have guessed. You were super calm and collected and you were just like measured speaking. Good. was, was, it was great. How did you, and we’ll talk about them. How did you come up with what you were going to, like, how did you decide what you were going to talk about? Because like you said, you, yeah, there were a couple of headlining discussions that were really big.

You would not have guessed, that’s what I was gonna say.

Awesome motivational things. How did you come up with what you wanted?

Yeah, I mean, think so the theme of the event, I guess we should start there. We knew when we put this whole theme together, or sorry, the whole event together, the summit, we knew pretty quickly we wanted to do it themed. And we’re going to continue this on of having a theme for the event. And the reason we wanted to do that is we wanted to give people kind of like a lens in which to present their experiences or their stories or their examples, or just share their message through the lens of a theme.

We thought that was the best way to do it. So we came up with this pretty quickly. This idea of a rich, learn to live your rich life. we just really liked that message, kind of like the double meaning, with using the word rich. And so me being kind of the kickoff after James Lawrence, who just shared his, like his kind of like story, right. It didn’t really didn’t have anything to do with like our theme. wanted him to be a car keynote. And then when I kicked it off, it was kind pretty, at least straightforward to have at least a topic. I was like, okay, well, I’m going to kick off this theme of what does it mean to live a rich life? That was the general idea. And then from there, just kind of, I had that sort of message I wanted to start working with. And then it took me at least a couple of weeks to, through conversations, like shout out to Victoria, like honestly, she helped me ton. Justin helped me a ton. The other advisor is just kind of bouncing ideas off of

I had a general idea with this rich life concept and then just started piecing it together. then through weeks and weeks of iterations and talking and editing, you come up with, then it kind of boiled down to this idea of having four rules for a rich life. just sort of like organically happened.

Yeah, that’s cool, man. Let’s go through those. You wanna like kick those off? Let’s kinda go through those four things and before we do that too, I was just gonna ask like, you, do we know the theme for next year? We do, right? Is it already, it’s called Plan for the Present.

Yeah. Plan for the plan for the present. Yeah. Becky, think shout out Becky, our marketing director. It was either that or it was a combination of Becky and Justin. can’t remember one of the, it was those, think it was those two together either way. We’re going to give them, them both credit.

Becky. DJ Baddy Becks.

Yeah, well, did. Becky has just been such a genius and so incredible with us. It’s it’s amazing. Cool. OK, I was just curious what the theme carrying next year. So four points. And before you go through them, do you think that they landed like what’s your takeaway? Do feel like people got it from your conversation after?

She’s amazing. So I don’t know. This actually comes from me, Ryan, for real. Shout out to you for real. you said years ago when we were at an event together, we were, one of us was speaking or maybe we were both speaking and you said something and I’ve never forgotten. I use this all the time and it’s, I really took it to heart, which is having kind of the mentality of can we add some value and can we have some fun?

Mmm, sounds like me.

And so that’s truly what I try to do. So to your point of like, did people take it to heart or did people get something out of this? Like, I think so. I really, yeah, I think.

I mean, I would say yes. Yeah, I would say yes. What about you? Did you get something out of it? Did you have fun?

Totally had a ton of fun, tons of fun doing it. And, and just kind of reaffirmed for me what it means to live a rich life. think when you’re doing something like this, whether you’re, you’re the one teaching or you’re the one speaking. I tend to think you actually probably get more out of it than anyone else. Like going through the actual process, before you present. So, I guess really quick, I’ll set the stage before we go through the rules and we’ll kind of like, we can just talk about this.

Yeah, yeah, all the time.

So I wanted to set the stage with some, some like the hook, right? The hook. And, uh, we had talked about this on a podcast a while ago. Will actually brought it up. The, the idea of the happiness index that Gallup did. And the numbers are pretty shocking. So, uh, Gallup does this every single year. They’ve been doing it for over 12 years. They go country by country, literally hit every country in the world. I believe they hit every country and they ask a simple question, which is how happy are you scale of one to 10? How happy are you? And the data around the U S is pretty, uh, alarming because we continue to drop in this index. in 20, yeah. Do you want to hit it? Scale of one to 10. How happy are

Are you guys gonna answer this real fast? I want to, let’s go Victoria first. Just in this moment.

My first instinct was eight.

Okay, ooh, I was gonna say a seven.

I would have said eight as well. Yeah. Depends on the day. Depends on the day. Yeah. So this is what, this is where I thought it was really interesting is in the most recent report, most recent index, the U S came in at number 23. That was eight spots lower than the year before. And it was the first time ever the U S has fallen outside the top

Okay, I’m the least happy in this bunch, great. Okay, how does the United States come in on average?

Top 20 happiest countries in the world. No, no, it’s literally gigantic. And what’s even crazier is you break this down by age groupings, right? And the first, so the youngest age grouping in this index is 30 and younger, right? they, 30 and younger, then they go from like 31 to 45 and so on and so forth. So the 30 and younger crowd in the U .S. that they surveyed came in at 62nd happiest among their peers. 30 and younger.

30 and younger, 60 second. Ooh.

Yep. Which, well, so here’s what’s crazy. And this is why, this is why I wanted to start with this, with this whole talk. And we’ll obviously we’re talking about it today is that in and of itself is wild. Just hearing that it’s like, Holy cow. How are you like behind several third world countries? There’s 61 countries that are happier. That have like better quality of life or better wellbeing than for someone under 30. Uh, then I started to do some digging and I’m like, okay.

I’m in the wrong country.

Yeah, yeah, what’s wrong? For someone under 30, yeah.

There’s no way this can match up with how good we have it in the U S from like a financial standpoint from like, are the richest country to ever exist on the planet, right? In the history of mankind. And I, sorry, so I wanted to start backing this up with some data. And so, we don’t need to go through every single detail, but the one that’s the most stark, the most shocking to me was, people talk about like the wealth gap in the U S. So if you start talking about like, we’re the richest country in the world. The response you might get is, well yeah, the rich are getting richer. But what about everyone else? Well, if you actually, that’s not true. The federal reserve releases a report every, every three years. And what this report shows it’s a summary of the median household income or sorry, the median household net worth in America. the median, right? So the middle, the midpoint of America.

And they show the real growth. net of inflation of that net worth, the most recent report was released in 2022. They showed a real net worth growth of 37%. 37 % over that three year period. So over that three year period, saw the median household in America saw their net worth grow by 37 % in real terms, net of inflation, right? It’s the highest they’ve ever seen. They’ve been doing this since 1989.

Okay, from the previous three year, geez, the median data point, 37 % growth, cool.

Wow.

Yeah, that seems like a lot. Yeah, that’s a lot. huh.

Yep. The median household in America is growing in real terms. It’s the highest I’ve ever seen. And then also, this is what’s even crazier. I didn’t know this until I started doing this research. It just happened to fit perfectly for the most part. They also break this down by age grouping. The youngest age cohort in this report, the federal reserve releases is 35 and younger. So five years off, but still the youngest pretty dang close. They saw a real net worth increase over that three year period of 143 % net of inflation. So this is where it was the most shocking to me. there’s a bunch of other, can go through the rest of it. But by almost every objective measure, we are getting wealthier. We have more access to things than we’ve ever had before. We’ve got a super computer sitting in our pocket. We can have literally anything at our doorstep and hours. Like we are objectively better than we’ve ever been from a wealth standpoint, common conveniences and luxuries standpoint. And yet we are as unhappy as we’ve ever

Which we could probably talk about forever. Only one of us is near that age bracket. can’t comment. Was my age bracket happy? I don’t know.

I wonder if that’s kind of like, like, I don’t know what the formal name of it is, but the, like the second place or the silver medalist kind of complex, for, for that age group, right? Because yeah, you’re seeing your, you’re kind of like watching your peers do it as well. More than any other generation has.

More than any other generation ever has. yeah, your access to comparison is greater than any other generation. -huh. That’s gotta, yeah, have something to do with it. But that is really fascinating. Wasn’t, another shout out to one of our keynotes, Dr. Daniel Crosby. Wasn’t he talking about some of the measurements of like wealth and health and all the things that we…

Yeah. I’m like, I was like the Kroger version of Daniel Crosby’s talk. he’s incredible. Shout out to Daniel.

Yeah, he was saying in his presentation, those with mid -range salaries were happier than those with very high or very low salaries.

Wow.

Yeah, he hit a lot of stuff at the beginning of his, that went into even more detail than what I did. That just, like you said, supported the point of we are wealthier than like, there is no arguing that right? Like you, like those are just facts. Like any objective measure, we are wealthier than we’ve ever been across the board, by the way. Like the, the, the median household in America, or even like the poor end of the spectrum in America lives better today than John D Rockefeller did.

No, yeah, yeah, by any objective measure,

Who was the richest man alive 100 years ago.

So, I remember what just struck me. One of the books we were, you guys will remember one of the books we read recently as a crew was the statistic around the amount of people he used to die at their jobs. Not that many decades ago, like the death rate at work for the average American used to be astonishingly high. Yeah, just things like that are so interesting. So that, okay, that was kind of the premise that you were thinking about, Matt, kind of like that’s the thing going on and then you built the four things around

Yes. So really quick. again, I’m going to give it another, we’re just throwing out shout outs. We’re like Oprah, you get a shout out and you get a shout out. But, but truly, I talked a lot to Justin and a lot to Victoria about this is like, as I was starting to frame this and put this together and what, what I was struggling with, I’ll just kind of like put feet behind the curtain. Like I was very much struggling with this transition of meaning I share.

This data around happiness and the disparity between happiness and wealth in America. And I think what I was feeling uncomfortable with as I was talking about this transition and thinking about it was, and I truly thought about this for a while, I was going this angle of saying, of like feeling like I was going to get kind of lecture, like kind of luxury, kind of like the financial advisor sitting up here quoting Charlie Munger and saying like, just lower your expectations.

Yeah, like, be grateful.

Yeah.

And so I thought about going that, like my natural naturally, I was going to go that route. I was literally going to say, I was going to quote Charlie Munger who says, you know, the key to a happy life is lower expectations. or talk about compounding and how like compounding happens too slow to notice. And we’ve just adapted to our surroundings or comparison, all these things. But I started to feel like, my gosh, I’m going to just sit up there and lecture. And so again, Victoria, Justin, some other members of the team were helping kind of helped me give this epiphany of saying, why don’t I share that and say, thought about going this route, but I actually wanted to go a different route. And I found a quote. I read this years and years ago and it popped up in my mind as I was going through this. It’s from a guy named Henry Simon.

The quote is from a guy named Henry Simon from the 1970s. And the quote is a wealth of information creates a poverty of attention. And it clicked for me. I don’t know if it clicked for everyone else, but this is, this is the message that I shared, which was it is true that we are wealthier than we’ve ever been. And we are more unhappy than we’ve ever been. And it’d be really easy for me to sit up here and just tell everyone, just lower your expectations. That’s like telling someone who’s unhealthy, just get healthy. I just think it’s, it’s not fair.

So I truly do believe this when I really started to put this together was although we have more access to conveniences, we have more access to like luxuries, everything you can possibly want and need more access to money, all these things. it has actually created an environment that has never been harder to focus on the things that actually matter. Like we’ve, it truly, it’s never been easier to compare and never been harder to focus on the rich life and what it actually means. So that’s really the angle that I took.

Cool, yeah, good for you. I think that’s cool, man. And that you got good advice from people, that kind of vulnerability to say, I thought this was gonna be the route, but it’s not. Here’s what would probably be more helpful. Yeah, that’s cool. Yeah, say that quote again.

Yep. Yep. A wealth of information leads to a poverty of attention. The irony of this is this quote came out in the 1970s and he was, he’s a, he was talking about like data and newspapers and media, which can you believe like Henry Simon today? must, mine would be blown. He’s yeah.

Newspapers?

He’s rolling in his grave.

Yeah, you do hear that a lot in studies about just the ability, like we just, there’s too much, we know too much. It’s depressing. You know?

Yeah. Yeah. I need to be, I want to be in a smaller pond. I don’t want to see it all.

Yeah. Yeah. You hear that from really smart people sometimes are like, I don’t, I just read books that were published long time ago. don’t read tweets anymore or news or yeah, that’s cool. I think that’s a good, that’s a good angle and it’s reflected so much, which is unfortunate because every other measure would tell us like, Hey, everything’s great. Be grateful. Just wake up and notice it and be grateful for it. But it’s, we’re not feeling it. That’s not the experience we’re having. So clearly something’s not matching

Yep. Yep. Exactly.

Well, what I like also about this angle is it just, meets people where they’re at because the amount of distractions that we have today, that’s not anybody’s fault. It’s a lot harder to be grateful nowadays when you can see what the potential is. You have such easy access to compare and it’s natural to doom scroll. It hits a, right,

Yeah, what you don’t have in everything we do. And it’s sad how much it robs us of like our experiences.

Yeah. And so I think when we were talking about it, I was like, let’s, you know, a lot of this isn’t people’s fault. This is just the world that we live in. And so I think the messaging and then the rules were more so like, okay, this is the world we live in. This is the acts like this is the level of access that you have. So how do we navigate this? How can you be happy now with where you are at? And that’s what I really liked about it because I hate the whole like, just be grateful.

That’s hard. That is hard to do and to practice in your every single, everyday life, right?

Yeah, well, and it doesn’t work. Mm Good point.

Well, yeah, and I’ll be honest, a big part of me was, who I thought this, like, who am I to sit up here and tell people like, just lower your expectations? Like, I don’t know their situation. Every single person out there. No. So again, who am I to sit up there and be like, your problem, your problem is you need to lower expectations. It’s just like, no, I wanted to, I wanted to give people from my experience, not only being an advisor, but just in my own life.

Yeah, you don’t know. You can’t say that. No.

Right? You don’t know what people carry. Like, yeah is you.

What are some areas that you can actually like, again, to Victoria’s point, it is not your fault. Like it isn’t people’s fault. It has never been harder to focus on the things that actually matter in life. The things that by the end of your life, you’re going to care about that rich life. it has never been more difficult in my opinion to focus on those things, or I should say it has never been easier to get distracted from those things. So that was the message I wanted to

Yes.

Yeah. Well, you’re right. Yeah. Our entire capitalistic economy is built on like, how much more can we put in front of people’s faces and how many more ads can we put on things and how much more can we sell? I mean, we’re all part of the system that’s incentivized to do that. So yeah. And it’s just, it is our culture. So what did you land on? What are the four points that you landed on to help kind of maybe tie this in, a way that’s not, I like the, you’re like, yeah, I decided not to stand up and gaslight the whole audience and tell them it was their problem.

Right

Exactly. Yep. Yeah. t’s a very good call. I think it landed, I think better is more relatable. I I wanted my focus to be on these rules. and so, and here’s one thing I’ll say when I say rules and I said this when I gave, when I delivered this, which, which is yes, these areas I believe are rules. Like I think it’d be really hard to live a rich life if you’re not focused on these areas, but you’ll know more when I actually go through these, the rules themselves can be, are up for interpretation.

That was a good call. Totally. Yeah, totally did. Yeah, sure. Cool. Let’s hit it, let’s hit it. Yeah, number

Yes.

and, so, do you to just, we go one by one? So rule number one, I think the rule number one for to live a rich life is prioritize your

Hmm. Hmm.

I will leave it there if you guys have thoughts.

I’m thinking of, again, didn’t Daniel Crosby dive into health statistics? I want to say that he was like getting in, maybe that was part of his like America is like the measurement of objective, like growth and progress we’ve made. Yeah. I mean, I think everyone’s experienced the time when they didn’t have their health. I mean, it could have been a broken foot, could have been like something major and immediately nothing else matters. Literally nothing at all matters as soon as you lose the ability to just like move your body or use your brain. mean nothing at all matters and I think we’ve all probably experienced something like some people major in major ways but yeah Victoria sorry what were you gonna say?

No, I think that one is the easiest to forget and take for granted is your actual physical body, right? The ability to walk around, to do your activities, to see, like all of that. And I know, I feel like a lot of it gets attacked for being woo -woo and whatnot, but really, thinking.

Hmm. Woo woo. Get woo woo. Do it.

But I think to times where like, couldn’t do that, you know, like hurt my knee for a little bit while skiing. And I had to like sit on my couch for a couple of weeks. I was like, I can’t, I was so sad for like, it was like a week where I literally couldn’t go on a 10 minute walk. And I was so sad cause I couldn’t go outside. couldn’t, Oh yeah. The neighborhood cats. I couldn’t go see the cats.

That’s what saying. Yeah, just walking now. And you always take pictures of kitties on the street, and that’s like so sad that you never see neighborhood cats anymore.

Couldn’t share that with the people.

I couldn’t share that with the good people, but truly I think it’s just, it’s the easiest thing to forget about, but it has the highest consequence when you don’t have it anymore, right? So I think this was just, it was such a big one because of what I just said there. Like it’s the easiest to forget, but it’s the highest consequence.

Yeah, I feel like we probably talk about this a lot. feel like it was a recent discussion, but working with dentists, and we all feel this way, like in your 20s and 30s, you just have so much more, you have more energy and you have more time on your hands. And it does seem like you still have so much life left. Not to say that when you’re my age, you’re almost dead. I’m almost gone. But this was my experience at least, and I see this happening.

You’re like one foot in the grave, right?

Pretty commonly, like in those early years of your career, you almost kind of feel like I have so much time, I can do this stuff later. Like I will grind myself to the bone. I’ll take any patient, any insurance, I’ll work any hours, I’ll do six days. Like it doesn’t matter. I’ll just like really punish myself physically just to, you know, what it takes to get ahead in your career, finally make a little bit of money, finally get a house, like whatever it is. do, I don’t know if it’s false sense of security that you’ll have more time or health later. But I think it’s just really common to do that in your early stage of your career. You have no money and you have all the time in the world. So you just trade all that time for like physically punishing work. But if you’re not careful, you can look up decades later and be like, my gosh, like I feel horrible. I haven’t gotten to anything. I don’t have like hobbies or activities. I don’t, I just don’t feel good. And now I have the money,

Now the health isn’t there and then there’s only one thing you want to like spend your money on chasing back and trying to get back is your time and your health. You’re so right.

Yeah. I there’s a, use this in the talk, Confucius quote, a healthy man wants a thousand things. A sick man only wants one or wants only one. And it’s this whole idea of like, it’s you don’t think about it to Victoria’s point until you don’t have it. And so, everything. Yeah. And I also, when I thought of this topic or this rule or whatever, we were talking about it, like I thought

Yeah. And then the smallest things matter, like walking and seeing neighborhood kitties, like come on, I know.

Yes. Yes!

Not like all, all health, right? Like we’re talking a lot about physical health, but mental health, like emotional, spiritual health. Like I think when I talk about this, think prior number one, if you’re not prioritizing this, I think it’s going to be really difficult or, I should say it’s really easy to your point, Ryan, to like lose track. And then before you know it, you look back and you’re like, Holy cow, I wish I would have been investing in

Yeah, emotional health,

Mental health.

Yeah. Well, and it kind of sucks too, because I think a lot of us, a lot of people get to a point where you build that success. You have the career success, the business success, the financial, the money success, and you almost can overlook it and then not even enjoy it if you don’t have that other piece of the health in your life. And we see this a lot too. People get burnt out. They start second guessing and questioning their career paths and like, maybe I should throw a wrench in this whole thing and just change the whole thing up. And it’s like, maybe, but maybe that’s not the problem. know, maybe the problem is you’re neglecting another piece of your life that’s making everything else feel like it’s the problem. And it’s easy to do that though. And you don’t feel healthy in all those areas and then you can just, you know, start chasing. Maybe it’s like chasing something in your career, chasing more money. Maybe that’s the issue, you know, or like start doing like more and more risky stuff with your money and investing because you’re trying to like get that feeling back when that’s not even the problem at all. can really rob the experience of what you have built and sacrificed up to that point.

Well, let’s be honest, we live in a culture specifically in America. We were just saying this in one of the stats that I highlighted at the very beginning was that it’s like 37 % ish, somewhere in the 30 % range of the world’s millionaires live in the US. So it’s up 68 % over the last 10 years. So to this point, I think we live in a hustle culture in America, the sleep when I’m dead culture.

Yeah. huh, yeah. It’s celebrated, yeah. It gets views and clicks and likes and comments and shares and subscribes, yeah.

Ugh.

Of like all that matters is yeah, it’s yeah, the only addiction you could have in America that’s not frowned upon is work. It’s actually like almost, it’s almost like propped up until you’re in

Until you’re midlife, until you’re in the middle of life and your kids are moved on and you’re like, okay, oops, yeah, -huh. You’re right.

Yeah, exactly. So to that point, I think people are willing to sacrifice their health for this grind hustle culture that you’re highlighting. And I just think that can lead to a lot of regret if you’re not taking some time to think about

Totally.

Cause it compounds, that’s the thing. Not having healthy habits for your physical body, your mental health. You let that go on for years, that compounds and it robs you of a rich life later on. Whether that be shortening your lifespan or just you’re not in a body that allows you to be able to enjoy your family or travel and whatnot.

Yes.

Coupled that with the fact that a lot of people will put off their happiness until retirement, like, I’ll travel when I retire and this and that, but then you’re in a body that doesn’t actually let you do that thing. It does not want to move like that anymore, right? So yeah.

He doesn’t want to do that anymore. Doesn’t feel good.

Yep. Yep. Yeah, it’s so true. so to that point too, I think some like Will brought this up, right? Leading up to the event, this idea of health and prioritizing your health. And he, he made, had made a comment about feeling like it’s, he can’t prioritize it because he feels selfish taking time to himself to go to the gym or to like do something for himself. And I think I get that. First of all, we all, think understand that if you have kids or people that rely on you. It’s like, I think it’s easy to feel guilty, but I think Victoria, you’re hitting on this. It’s an act of love, like investing in yourself and being able to show up as your best self. You’re going to make, not only are you going to be able to show up for the people that count on you and love you, but you’re, think you’re going to make better decisions. I think there’s a lot of connection to making better decisions in life, whether it be money or elsewhere is if you’re grounded and you’re healthy and you’re prioritizing these things.

Yeah, physically, mentally, whether that’s grinding at the gym or grinding in therapy.

Yeah, both all of the above putting that work in.

Yeah, the mental, the gym for the mind. Well, you just think like when you are under tremendous amounts of stress and anxiety or like whatever it is that you’re facing, your decisions aren’t, they’re just not going to be as sharp or well thought out and you might rush things and panic through business and financial decisions. So yeah, totally. Cool. Point number one, point well taken, Matt. Thank you

Point number one, prioritize your health. One quick thing on this, I will say, we’ll hit this really fast. I think one of the risks in this area of life nowadays, especially social media influencers, it’s really easy to get bogged down in this like optimize. The word I used when I spoke was productivity porn or life hack porn. said porn. I said porn a lot. I said, I said, I said.

Yeah. Yeah, you said porn a few times for a financial conference. It was interesting. Yeah. Is that the secret to like making sure your audience is like snapping back and paying attention? Just like throw words out that are just like, huh? Wait, what? What’d say?

Yeah, you said it four times. You’re like, I’m saying porn too much.

But my, my point was like, and I is there’s so many of these like life coaches out there telling you about their morning routine and get up for the morning and mine don’t go to sleep in mind palace and my mind reverie and all this bull crap. And I think it’s really, I think it’s really like easy to feel inadequate and feel like you’re not like, you don’t even know where to start. So the one takeaway or the one thing I offered here.

And then it was mind Palace.

Don’t go to sleep.

Four hours of sleep a night.

that I think is hopefully really simple and practical advice. Something that I use in my own life is every single day, you just trying to get three wins, physical win, mental win, spiritual win. And you decide what those are. It could be a 10 minute walk. The mental wind could be listening to an audible while you, whatever drive to work. Uh, and a spiritual wind could be like, I don’t know, journaling or saying a prayer in the morning. You get to decide what that take the pressure off yourself. Prioritizing your health does not have to be some crazy morning routine. It’s just getting normal and sustainable. dude, and sustainable is the key word here, right? It has to be sustainable. So prioritize your health, number

It can be normal and sustainable. Yeah, it can take 10 minutes. Yeah. Yeah. Um, sorry, you’re going to have to edit this. I need to stand up and close my window and my daughter and like six teenagers or sell that outside. I’m sorry. Hold

Yes. Love

Pause. Do I have a joke? On the spot?

Let’s see, what do I have for

They’re still so loud. It is kind of cool though. It’s like my daughter woke up early, they went surfing all day, now they’re sitting in the hot tub. I’m like, that’s a freaking life, dude. Good for you guys. It makes me happy for them, but they’re very loud. Okay, number two, point number

That’s so cool. That is the life. Rule number two, I jumped ahead. Okay. Rule number two for living a rich life, invest in your relationships.

I love this one. This one’s my favorite one. me? Well, I don’t want to explain Matt’s presentation.

Why? Okay, why? You explain. You take the lead. Why did you, why? Because you just said, why do you love this one? Why did you love this one the most? He doesn’t own these rules. He just shared them.

No, you’re gonna explain it. You can give your take. This isn’t my thing, it’s our thing. Yeah, it’s here for the world.

Okay. No, this one hit most home for me because I think after some life events and ups and downs in a tumultuous year, it was really the relationships in my life that I found mattered. I went through basically like a deep social cleanse and got rid of probably like half my social circle and within six to eight months. It was pretty devastating at the time to be quite honest. But the people who are there for you and who matter, just that’s everything really. And there’s so much, and I’m sure you’ll speak to this Matt, so much data that backs this up that that is the key to life is your relationships. I mean, it really spoke to me because like my friends are everything, the people close to me who’ve cared for me and gotten me through some really tough times. That just, that matters so much.

Cool. Yeah, Matt, yeah, you might have statistics on this. It’d be cool if you had some of this. know, like Victoria said, there’s a lot of studies that show one of the main leading factors to overall health is the quality and connections of your long life. Have you guys ever seen that chart? It’s really depressing. It’s like, do you know what I’m gonna say? It’s that chart, it’s a timeline from left to right from your young age into your old age, and it has the time spent with family.

Long life.

I know where you’re going with this. I know exactly where you’re going with this. Yes.

Uh, coworkers and kids and then it like ebbs and flows and spikes and then just like plummets off a cliff of like You basically spend your whole life with coworkers It’s just forever your coworkers and then like your time with your kids just drops off a cliff at 18 and then time with like partner spouse drops and it’s like you realize You’re like, I am in the good old days like i’m in them right now and you have to nourish those relationships and hold onto the field. That doesn’t mean that you have to have like probably dozens or 50 people around you, but like two or three quality people can make the whole. Yeah. don’t know. Maybe you have data on that map, but that’s it’s yeah, it’s backed by a lot of science and how important that is, the impact it has and how far reaching to the, like how good of work you’ll do as a financial advisor based on how good of a friendship you have in your life with somebody. Like that’s kind of wild, but that’s exactly how it works.

Yeah, no, it’s so true. And you’re right. There’s so much data behind this. I, for different reasons, but this one hits very close to home for me and the health one. And really the first two rules for me, as I was thinking about these things, hit the closest to home for me. I’ve mentioned this before and I’m like, literally just getting to a place where I can even like talk about this, but lost my mom to cancer three years ago. She was my best friend like you realize when you lose someone that close to you and you see the impact that has on your own life, you see the impact that has on like my dad, you see the impact that has on my siblings and like the people that are around her. You realize like it’s the only thing in life that matters is having good health and having good people in your life. Everything else is replaceable. Everything else literally doesn’t matter. So it’s sad that it takes those situations sometimes to you know, have that reset in your life to be like, Holy cow. This is all like, that’s literally it. The only thing, and this is backed by data to your point, Ryan, Daniel Crosby talked about this. He referenced a study, Victoria, I know you’ve mentioned this on podcasts before. Kind of the opposite of this, right. Of having quality relationships is being lonely. Right. So, he mentioned the data. It’s an, loneliness is an epidemic in America. And, he talked about.

Yeah, It’s an epidemic.

The one study that’s become pretty famous around loneliness being equivalent to, those who, who indicate they have, they feel loneliness in their life, like chronic loneliness. It is the equivalent of smoking 15, I think it was 15, like packs of cigarettes a day or something like it was wild. It’s hard to even fathom how like loneliness can lead to poor, poor health outcomes. And then the opposite quality relationships leading to positive health outcomes.

It was something more. It was like 10 to 15. Yeah.

So unhealthy it’s hard to even fathom it. Yeah,

Yes.

This start, so the most famous study around this was in 1938, Harvard start kind of pioneered this, uh, long standing. call it a generational study where they literally followed. they, what they did is they went to, um, Boston. They, they took two groups of men. Yes. 1938. They only did men. This has since been replicated. Yes. This has since been replicated over and over again with other groups of but they took two groups of men. took sophomores at Harvard, the 1938 class of Harvard. And then they, they took, they went to the poorest areas of Boston, the poorest neighborhoods in Boston. And they also gathered those men and they basically just followed them throughout their life. And we’re talking about presidents of the United States all the way down to janitors and everything in between. And they wanted to determine with this study.

What was it? What are the factors in people’s lives that actually made them happy? What led to wellbeing? And they said one thing across the board, unequivocal, there’s only one thing. And this is an exact quote from the study that said, close relationships more than money or fame are what keep people happy throughout their lives.

Geez, yeah, I believe it, 100%. That is kind of like on a study of that kind of scale and timeline with people of that different status in life. That’s kind of wild, but I believe it. Yeah, that makes a lot of

So rule number two, invest in your relationships.

Pause right now and go text a friend right now. Right now, phone a friend. Really? I’m the old one, why did I say text and you said call? That doesn’t make any sense. Are you on the call train now? I love texting. I hate calling, don’t call me. Really? yeah, I’m like,

Call a friend. I say call. Yes.

Call your friend, call your mom, call your dad. I know.

I don’t I’m not a texter. No, I I’m like, please FaceTime me. I want to see your face. I want to hear your voice Yeah, like I much prefer like send me a podcast of how your day went via voice memo the longer the better like short story long Please every detail

I like this. I like this. So do you guys have this? really quick side note, since you’re bringing this up, I have text friends and I have call friends. So like a meeting, I have friends. interesting.

I do a long Marco Polo, I don’t have call friends. I don’t have any call friends. I have text friends and then I have like two Marco Polo friends. And one’s my sister and we just, and she hits record and then gets distracted. And then I watch her drive or like work. And then I’m like, And then they’re long, but yeah. Then you call it. Well, okay. You have call and text friends. You’ll get on the phone with people.

I make all of them call friends. I just call them.

Well, so my siblings and I, we’re all pretty much call friends, right? We’re all call friends for the most part. And then I have one friend in particular who we talk literally every day, usually twice a day. And then I’ve got a bunch of text friends. So anyway, it’s just kind of

Hmm. do have the, I do have overlapping. My best friends, I see them multiple times a week. We surf together. We text all day long about the dumbest things in a thread. We never get on the phone. If one of those guys calls me, I’m like, crap. Yeah. What’s wrong? yeah. Cause I see him in person like three, four times a week.

That’s See, this is the thing. I have this too. have a group of friends we text, we’re in a text chain for the last over 20 years and just, we can’t, we cannot, we cannot, we cannot let that leak. If any of us run for office, we’re in trouble. Um, but, but we have that, but I have some, I have some friends in that group that if they called me, I’d be like, what are you calling about? Yeah. It’s just kind of interesting how that works.

It used to freak my friends out because like I would people please and be like, okay, I guess we’re texting. I hate it. really like, I much prefer to see your face and hear your voice. And so when I first started being like, I’m gonna just call them. They would always be like, are you okay? Like what’s wrong? I’m like, no, I just wanted to hear how your day was. Yeah. And I’m like, no. So now they know, but yeah, big on voice memos and phone calls and FaceTimes.

That’s kind of cool. Yeah, it’s shocking. I just want to say hi. Yeah, that’s really interesting.

Yeah, like what’s wrong? Isn’t that funny? Isn’t that funny?

Cool, I like that, rule number two. No, we did digress, then let’s regress. Let’s just grass in general. Should we just grass? Okay, let’s grass to number three.

Let’s regress, let’s grass, let’s grass it up. So let’s, so rule number three, rule number three for rich, living a rich life is spend with intention.

There’s something I want to say about this. Victoria, you can say first. I had a screenshot from someone’s presentation there that

See, what I like about this is it gets rid of strict budgeting culture. feel like right after COVID, everybody got so on the budgeting train. What is your travel budget? Have a budget for travel, have a budget for this, blah, blah, blah. And I guess I will say, budgeting can be helpful. I’m not a 100 % a budget hater. I used to actually love them and I actually have done a bunch of budgets for people in the past. I think much more effective and importantly is just spending with intention. And that means spending a lot on the things you care about. And that is really freaking hard to do in today’s day and age when you have Prime Day the other day or Labor Day sale, like Memorial Day sale, you know. So I don’t blame people. mean, I’ve fallen prey to buying stuff off Instagram, you know. Yeah,

Yeah, we just buy stuff we don’t need. Yeah, because we were told to. yeah. I’m such a sucker for good advertising.

Yeah, especially if I’ve been like not a great mental place, right? Like not prioritizing my mental health, then yeah, the online shopping can definitely spike for sure. So, no, I don’t blame people. Again, like I think like the beauty of this presentation was really like, hey, we don’t blame you. This is a hard environment to navigate and that we all built collectively and we do support.

That we all built, yeah. And we support wholeheartedly. Like we all support it, yeah.

So I like, I love the solution of just spending it with intention. We’re saying, we’re not saying to not spend and to lower your expectations. It’s just like, we’ll spend on the things you actually care

Yeah, I took a, I found the screenshot. was from Daniel Krause’s presentation. I think it was a book called happy money from to Dun and Orton. You know that one, Matt? Of course he read it. He’s read so many books. No, it’s pretty true. It’s pretty good. It’s pretty true.

Yeah, it’s a great book. It’s a really great book. Yeah That is not true that is not true Hey, there’s no shame or blame here or guilt. We all do our things and have our own hobbies

He’s read everything. I’m over here reading like fantasy books about dragons.

Pretty true. Dun and Norton, happy money. Yeah, there was a few bullet points on there. Spend on experiences, bless the lives of others, buy your time back, fund life’s necessities, get out of work you hate doing, and spend money that’s consistent with your personality. So I took that as just buy more surfboards. I’m like, thanks for the permission, I like that. But yeah, that’s it, that’s consistent, and I will do without expensive clothes. Just get I get I get made fun of that so bad of my family. It’s amazing. I wash them. I lay them out. Yeah, my kids are always like, what are you gonna wear today, then? My daughter’s always like, I wish I was a guy. I could just like choose which white t shirt to wear and which color shorts, you know, I’m like, yeah. And is my hat gonna be frontwards or backwards? You know, that’s the that’s the big decision. Yeah, backwards.

Yeah. And you’ll just buy your six pack of Amazon shirts every other month. No, but I love that. Cause you, are spending. Yeah.

Exactly.

Black or white? Backwards, the keywords is backwards always.

That’s it. That’s all. Yeah. But I like those. Those are, those are good bullet points and just being intentional. And you’re right. The message of like, starve yourself and don’t spend any money and just budget yourself into the grave until wait till you’re 60 and then do it. It’s like, eh,

Yeah, like if you have student loans, you better not step inside a restaurant, know? Dave Ramsey.

Yeah, don’t ever, yeah, don’t go do anything you like until you’re fully, it’s like, no, that’s not, it’s not gonna last.

It’s like the worst Instagram spending advice is like, this is characterized by like the caricature of this is the latte advice. Like don’t buy the latte and like how much money could that $5 latte turn into if you just invested that every day? Like it’s the most tired advice ever. And I’m not saying the numbers aren’t true, but what I hate about it, if you take that to like the second order level of thinking is you’re saying. Assuming you love lattes, assuming lattes bring joy to your life. What you’re saying is in that, if you’re taking that advice is, don’t enjoy your life now to enjoy your life someday in the future. Maybe. So to this point, like you said, Victoria, I fully don’t believe in budgets as a long -term strategy. think they can work like…

The examples I give sometimes is like a crash diet. Like you’re trying to get summer ready for a trip or something. Okay. Crash diet might work. And then, but, but you’re going to go right back to where you were after the trip and maybe worse, probably worse. yeah, exactly. I think, I think budgeting is kind of something similar. Like, they get you back on track by being really strict with the budget? Maybe can it bring mindfulness to your spending? Yes. But it’s not a long -term strategy. liked Victoria. You hit it right on the head is the intentional spending.

And maybe worse, Yeah, because you’re so deprived.

There’s more around spending, spending what you want on the things that bring you joy and then cutting everything else. Right. That was the quote I used from Ramit Sethi, which was exactly, says, spend extravagantly on the things that you love and cut mercilessly on the things that you don’t. When we talk about spending intentionally as a financial advisor, all we’re saying is it’s the mindless spending we’re trying to cut. It’s the stuff that all of us have. All of us have at the end of every quarter, end of every year, what was my, like, how much did I spend on Amazon? Like, huh? Yeah.

Wait what? Wait what?

Yeah. I saw this TikTok where it was, somebody was like, I don’t want to see your most recent Amazon hauls. I want to see how your summer 2023 Amazon hauls are doing. And I felt attacked because I’m like, I could not, I couldn’t tell you, right? Like a lot of it I’ve, yeah, like I’ve been getting rid of a bunch of, I threw away like what six trash bags full of like clothes. Like I donated it. like, how, I mean,

Dang, I don’t know where anything is. None of it exists, yeah, it’s all thrown away.

It’s so true.

My family does it like every three months. I’m like, where did this come from you guys? Like, how is this happening?

Yeah, I mean, I also still wear some of the clothes I’ve had in high school. anyways.

Well, and I think one of the key points here too is the, like, you’ve got to, the, the one thing you have to be honest with yourself about out there listening, and I’m the same way we all do is the, you’ve got to prioritize. Like you can’t just say everything matters. Cause if everything matters, nothing does. You can’t just be like, well I want to spend on the boat and I want to go on these trips and I want to send my kids to private school and I want to buy that new house and the second house.

For most people, you can’t do it all. Like the, the, the, the work here is actually figuring out what makes you happy and what does bring you joy and what your values are. And then aligning your spending with that, but it can’t just be everything. Like Ryan, you can’t be like, well, surfboards bring me happiness, but also I want to go, whatever, go buy this brand new car, this Maserati.

Yeah, it can’t be cars and it can’t be clothes if it’s going to be surfboards or surf trips and

Yeah, it’s like you’ve got to make some trade -offs somewhere.

So last thing on this, Ryan, you already mentioned Daniel Crosby. got this from him. I gave a spending cheat sheet. If you’re out there thinking, well, okay, what do I, I don’t know what brings me joy. Like how do I get pointed in the right direction data on upon data study after study shows this. There are three areas in your life to spend money on to, to, increase the probability of happiness, its experiences. So what Daniel Crosby says is creating novelty in your life. So traveling almost across the board.

Traveling, sharing experiences with friends, getting outside. A lot of times like it’s experiences in nature will always, will most often lead to happiness. Outsourcing. were saying this earlier, Ryan, Daniel Crosby reiterated this buying your time back, right? So outsourcing the things you don’t. Yeah. To get rid of jobs you hate. And then third is, spending on other people. So charity or just service of some kind. These three things, these three main areas studies show.

Get out of jobs you hate, yeah.

Will increase happiness when it comes to your money.

Cool. Yeah, cool. Was that three? Okay.

So rule number three, spend with intention. We said we didn’t want to go an hour and here we are. Sorry. You’re going to go get to concert.

I know. Speaking of spending with intention, I’m about to leave to a concert on more. I spend a lot on concert tickets actually. I go a lot. Yeah, it’s one of my favorite, live music is just one of the best things in the whole life experience. So, are you? I’m so in. Good for you.

That’s amazing!

I think I’m getting into my concert era here pretty soon. I’m entering my concert era. Okay. Rule number four, last and final rule. By the way, this was not an exhaustive list, by the way. There’s other rules, I’m sure, but these are the four that I thought of. Four is find your why.

Love

I remembered what I was going to say, Ryan, but I’m glad that I forgot because it ties into this. Yeah. I think whenever I see this, either in other people or myself, where there’s a lot of mindless spending going on and we all do this, like I am not above it. Like sometimes you kind of have to do it. But I think when I see it either in other people or myself, I think the question that comes up is like, what are you avoiding?

Okay. Okay. cool.

What are you running away from? is, you know, cause for me, if I, we’re not getting into it, but truly like, think to times where I’ve, as the Gen Zers would say, had a little menti bee and mental breakdown,

A little menti bee. You know that one, good job. But truly, the dopamine that you get from ordering and then getting a little gift to yourself, it’s like, wow, this is nice. And then the orders keep coming in and you’re horrified. You’re like, what did I order?

Boots the house down. Yep.

Yeah, and the dopamine stops dripping and it’s like, it’s not working anymore.

It’s not, shoot, now I actually have to pay for this credit card bill. But that’s always the question that comes up is like, what work are you avoiding or what situation are you avoiding? What are you trying not to feel, right? And again, I don’t blame people. think mindless spending can be an excellent coping mechanism. But if again, things like that compound. So I think kind of going back to this rule.

What are you trying not to feel right now? Yeah. Yeah, we all do this,

Of finding your way and doing the deeper work saves you so much freaking money. It’s insane. I wish there were studies on this that could quantify what that would do for you if you had you were grounded in your purpose and whatnot.

Hmm. Yeah. that’s, that’s so good. I sometimes like, I love this question and I think it’s one of the most important things we could ever do. And you’re, and the reality is we probably have different whys for different phases of our life or different whys for different things in our life at the same time. But sometimes the, this is just my lived experience, but sometimes the frustrating part about that, as I look back at my own life and experiences, sometimes you got to just like kind of wander for a

Love

Not really. Yeah. You just like, don’t know, man. Like you’re like, I don’t know. You’re just going through the motions for months and years and then it’ll sometimes hit you out of nowhere. Sometimes when you’re not even looking for it, you know, when you’re kind of just trying to be present and enjoy life, you’ll find it. But I think that’s the hard thing about finding your why is that it can just take time. And sometimes you can’t force it either. You can’t force

In the desert.

It does take time.

as much as it would be nice to just be like, find your wife, cool. I’m just gonna go do that on Thursday afternoon. And I found it, yeah, life is, it’s like, that might be like five years from now. But you gotta go through some of the motions and the work to do that. there’s probably nothing more important than just finding out like what truly like really makes you be alive and then stick to that and challenge it. yeah, yeah, totally.

Well, and things that challenge your why too. Yeah.

Well, I think this gets conflated sometimes too, with passion. Meaning I think, I think one of the biggest disservices we do, meaning we as like society, this, this fallacy we bought into is having like a passion mindset or we need to go find our passion. Go chase your passion. Yeah. think it’s a really dangerous mindset. I really do. I think that leads to a lot of unhappiness and a lot of floundering and, people feeling unfulfilled because we’re, we think, we think.

Yeah, good call. Yeah, go chase your passion. Turn your passion into your career.

There’s this, like this passion and then when we’re told on social media or we hear speeches or whatever, and people are like, I should find my passion. Like, well, I feel I don’t have a passion. So, my work’s not my passion. think a bigger, more important point here in my opinion, and what I found and Ryan, I love your point of saying it still takes work. still takes time and evolution and finding this, but purpose is way different than passion. I think.

Yes.

People go their whole life, not having a passion. And I think that’s totally fine. think far more important to find your purpose. Cal Newport really quick. has a great, he’s written a few books. He’s awesome. He’s incredible, but he talks about this. And what I love about his framing of this is the difference between a passion mindset and a purpose mindset. He says a passion mindset is having the mindset of what can the world offer me.

That’s a good point.

Having a purpose mindset is saying, can I offer the world? And I love that approach. It’s just so different. so anyway, I think about that all the time, trying to find more of a purpose. And I think it is critical. talk about sustainability with money or sustainability with success. think the only way, or maybe one of the only ways you can be like have sustained success again, with money, your practice, whatever it is, is finding a purpose.

It’s really hard to find sustainability without a purpose.

What I like about that, Matt, is it reframes passion as like an activity or you found your thing and it reframes it around like values and principles because you maybe, haven’t found it. Maybe you didn’t find your thing. Maybe your passion’s gonna come when you’re 70 years old, but you can take the values around whatever that is, the principles of that purpose, and you can apply it to the things that might feel mundane right now.

Right.

And maybe still find a sense of that fulfillment and a little bit of the why, even if you totally feel like you haven’t fully arrived yet, which is really cool. I like that. That’s a good way to reframe that.

I like that a lot because I think the passion or the activity is like what the purpose is like channeled through, you know, like what, right. Because I think the passion and the activities is just like where you put your purpose, like where you like express it, right? Like I love being outdoors. Like I love hiking, skiing, like paddle boarding, all of that. But it’s not like the individual activities itself that I’m just super jazzed. Like I love skiing, right?

It’s like the outcome. Yeah, it’s a result. -huh.

Victoria Ferguson:

What I love more is being on the mountain with like my ski buddies or friends, right? Because it’s like, then that brings about the memories. And then that is me investing in relationships and spending way too much for a pre -ski with chicken nuggets and beer. But, you know, like I’m not like extremely passionate about skiing. like, you know, connections is one of my values and that’s just where it is expressed. And I think that takes a

Yeah. Yeah, you don’t have to be skiing to feel that. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

No, I don’t have to be good at it. I’m not good at it by any means. And I think what I love about it is it takes the pressure off. Like it takes all the pressure off of like having to try to find your thing. You know, I don’t think there’s anything in particular that I’m extremely passionate about. think the closest thing is birding, but I’m not good at it. You guys like, I love it. I think it’s great, but no, I’m not passionate at all. That just feeds the value.

Love this.

That’s a whole other podcast. Yeah. Yeah. Your burger. Yeah. That’s really cool. I liked the, yeah. I was just going to say, I liked the thought of that. The expression of the principles or the values isn’t necessarily the end goal. was just going to say in my own life, no question, hands down, biggest passion of my life was finding surfing and doing it. But really

A whole other podcast.

Of education, like I love learning and I’ll learn about anything, but you know, I love I thought you were gonna say your cat.

Yeah, well, that’s a different one. But the values around that are like being outside, being active, being in nature, getting some sunshine, being with friends, like being social while being active. Those principles, I carried them out in other places I lived in other activities. It’s more fun to do it surfing, but like, yeah, the principles and the values of it were more important than like the expression, how it was actually happening. Yeah. Good point.

Right. Being with your friends.

Well, not only that, and I love what this conversation has gone, but not only that, Ryan, you’re lucky enough to have a passion, right? And I do, say lucky because I think a lot of people go their whole life without having a passion. But where I think this gets dangerous is people, and I’ll be honest, especially dentists thinking that their work’s not fulfilling because they’re not passionate about dentistry. And it’s like, to your point, the only way you can pursue your passion

Totally. 100%. Yeah.

Is by creating sustainability in your work by finding purpose in it. that to me is find your passions great, but don’t think that has to be the same thing as your purpose or same thing as your livelihood. Oftentimes it is not. think the most dangerous thing you can tell a child when it comes to career success and work is chase what you like, chase your passions, do what you love. It’s like, no, do what you are good at and what you can offer the world and what the world values and what you find purpose in. And

Your livelihood. Yeah. Do what you love. Yeah. -huh. Yeah.

Yeah. What can you do well? Yeah.

What can you do well and the world values and you can find some purpose and then you can go chase your passions afterwards.

Yeah, do something well, cause that’ll pay you and then you can go, that’ll pay you and give you freedom. Then you can chase passions. yeah. A hundred percent. Love

Exactly. Yes.

Yeah. Raise your hand if you’re super passionate about financial planning. None of us would. It’s not, and I think you talked about this, Matt, like in your pre… But exactly, exactly. But am I like super passionate about backdoor Roth IRAs and Augusta rule and how much you should be paid in W -2 versus your… No, I’m not passionate about that at all. But I… Yes. Love it.

No, I’m not.

Yeah, I mean, yeah, it’s such a good point, though.

But I, I find incredible purpose in

Yeah. But relationships and teaching and helping and being a trusted source for someone and giving someone some peace and confidence and clarity. That feels great.

Yes, yes, exactly.

Yep. Totally guys. I love this. This could be like a multi -part podcast. It’s such a great conversation.

This was amazing!

Well done, I feel so good. I’m gonna take this passion and go to a concert with my daughter. Yeah, I’m so stoked. Mac DeMarco for any people who might know who that is. Yeah, it’s a big deal. It’s a big deal. Thanks guys.

Aww, I love that! Who are you seeing?

Perfect.

I have no idea.

Gen Z hit. okay. So, four rules for rich life. Prioritize your health. Number one, number two, invest in relationships. Number three, spend with intention. Number four, find your why or find your purpose. Another way to put that. Those are four rules for a rich life. Go get after

Cool. Thanks guys. Go be purposeful and do the rules and live rich everybody.

Go forth and live your rich life. Do the rules.

Live rich get rich as hell. That’s it. Goodbye.