“The Soul of Wealth”: Insights on Health, Happiness, & Success with Daniel Crosby – Episode #580

On this episode of the Dentist Money Show, Daniel Crosby, Ph.D. joins Matt to discuss his latest book The Soul of Wealth. Daniel shares his transformative journey from personal wellness struggles to developing insights on wealth and happiness. He discusses the importance of understanding one’s values, the societal pressures that prioritize wealth over meaningful experiences, and the common regrets people often face at the end of their life. He introduces the PERMA model for flourishing and highlights the epidemic of isolation. Tune in to gain actionable insights on balancing health and wealth, fostering meaningful relationships, and cultivating a life rich in purpose and joy.

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Podcast Transcript

Intro: Hey everybody, welcome back to another episode of the dentist money show brought to you by dentist advisors. Today we have an amazing show for you where I get the opportunity to interview Dr. Daniel Crosby. he is the chief behavioral officer at Orion. he’s written multiple books. And today we talk about his most recent book that was just released in October called the soul of wealth. It’s a little bit different than the other books that he’s done. it’s really approachable. It’s really a book for everyone around money and finding meaning. In your money, and connecting your values to your wealth. It’s a fantastic read. Highly recommend Checking out the soul of wealth. we hope you get something out of this as always and hope you enjoy the show

Matt Mulcock: Okay, we’re getting started here I love, These opportunities to talk to you, the great Daniel Crosby, your Dr. Daniel Crosby here. less of him though, less of Daniel Crosby than before because of let’s talk about this for a second. The, the slenderness of you and how much hard work you put into this.

Daniel Crosby: If you want to, if you want to know how weird my life’s gotten, my gym manager called me today. He’s going up for a promotion. And part of it is he has to talk about someone whose life he’s changed. So now

Matt Mulcock: Didn’t want to put you.

Daniel Crosby: Yeah, no, I’ve become kind of a charity case for, uh, I’ve become kind of like a poster child for, for gym managers.

Yeah. So, April 1st, my buddy, I’ve worked out for years. I mean, I’ve worked out seven, you know, six, seven days a week for better than 10 years, but was always overweight. you know, I was overweight as a kid, was. Like severely underweight for much of like high school and college due to like some pretty severe Restricting and just being strange about food But then in my adult life, like i’ve i’ve always been overweight and like travels made it hard and and things like that But my buddy, I found out my buddy was getting divorced.

Like he was ending his marriage of, you know, nearly 30 years and he was going to be back on the, on the scene. And so, you know, buddy from church who I work out with in the morning said, Hey, will you like, let’s get in shape together. He was paying for all this nutritional coaching and stuff. And he’s like, Hey, I’ll share my plan with you.

And like, I got to get. Get, you know, I got to get on these apps and I need to look good in my profile picture. And so I said, yeah, you know, of course I’m happy to do that. So, uh, he got all this high price consulting around his nutritional plan, which basically boiled down to, you know, a daily calorie deficit, figuring out what your daily burn was, a daily calorie deficit, and then eating about a gram of protein for every pound of ideal body weight.

And so those were kind of my two rules. And so since April 1st, I really have not gone over my calorie goal once. And I’ve been, you know, between 150 and 200 grams of protein a day. And, you know, I’ve continued to work out. I haven’t done anything different really at the gym. But, man, it’s crazy. I mean, I’ve lost 58 pounds. Like, I’ve lost 58 pounds. I’m starving. No, just kidding. Yeah.

Matt Mulcock: You’re like, I’m miserable.

Daniel Crosby: No, I hate my life. My life’s much worse. No, um, no, but what’s what’s wild is that people laugh, you know I had a Snickers bar every night at 8 o’clock. I wake up I wake up and the first thing I enter into my app is a Snickers bar because I’m like whatever else happens that’s getting done.

Matt Mulcock: Yeah. That is happening.

Daniel Crosby: There may not be a fruit or a vegetable that gets consumed today, but there will be a

Matt Mulcock: Yeah.

Daniel Crosby: bar it’s been crazy and there’s all kinds of parallels to finance we could draw but just Daily accountability like I weigh in every day because you know when I went to weigh in for the first time i’m like, ah Like I probably weigh 210 230, you know, you’re like, you just don’t have the data that you need. You just don’t have the information that you need. So I was, you know, deceiving myself and, you know, now I got that daily accountability and I got that budget, that caloric budget and you stick with it.

Matt Mulcock: Yeah. This is amazing. I mean, we hopped, we, I didn’t think it was going to go here. I’m glad it did. Cause we hopped on have, I haven’t seen you since the summit and you were looking good then, but we hop on and I was like, Daniel, you look incredible. And so we started talking about it and there’s so many parallels here to your point. One thing I noticed you said, I want to, If we can for a second, you said all of this sophisticated stuff that he was investing in came down to basically two simple rules.

Daniel Crosby: Yeah

Matt Mulcock: I think there’s so much to be learned there that we talk about all the time with people of like, a lot of times we, we want it to be sophisticated.

My working theory, and I want to hear from you, Daniel, are we, I think we want results or things to be come from sophisticated sources because it means there’s something out there that we’re looking for rather than just looking inward.

Daniel Crosby: it’s been so telling to me, right? It’s been so telling to me to see what kinds of questions people ask me Because a lot of these folks like on my company had the big conference in march And then we just had another one and so, you know, I see people You know, they’re like you’ve lost 60 pounds since the last time I saw you like what have you done?

And people’s assumptions are always grander than the truth. You know, I get lots of questions about ozempic Which

Matt Mulcock: Yeah.

Daniel Crosby: Next look You know, losing weight in the era of the, you know, GLP ones is like, I’m not using Ozipic, but like a lot of people assume, you know, there’s kind of this magic, magic bullet kind of thing that you’re using.

And I’m not, people will say, well, you can’t be eating sugar. You can’t be eating carbs. I’m eating both. You know, people go well, you’ve got to be restricting. You can’t be you know It’s got to be a restrictive window You can’t be eating after six and i’m like I have a snickers bar every night at eight o’clock, you know Just it really is that easy. It really is that easy as you know, enough protein. I didn’t want my, I didn’t want my strength gains to be adversely impacted. So I wanted to make sure I was eating enough protein and then a caloric deficit. And it’s literally that easy and no one can believe it because it’s like, it, it feels like it has to be more, but the biggest piece was like, you said that, that accountability, that ownership And people underestimate their caloric intake by the research shows about 50 percent and they overestimate their activity by about 50%.

So you combine those two things and again, like huge analogs to money. If you had asked me, you know, how much do you eat? I would have said, I don’t know, 2000 calories a day. My friend, when I started eating 2, 300 calories a day, I was losing 3 pounds a week. So I mean, that tells you I was probably eating 1, 000 calories more than that, you know.

Yeah, 1, 000 plus more, more than that, a week. So having the right information, and for me, honestly, it helped that this came from a quote unquote advisor. Like, I would have never paid for, you know, The nutritional counseling and the, you know, the workouts and all the stuff that my buddy was paying for him quite cheap.

Matt Mulcock: Yeah.

Daniel Crosby: I was, I was, I was lucky that, you know, he basically, I basically drafted off his, his coaching and his advice, having all sorts of parallels to money.

Matt Mulcock: So many. and I’d love to maybe circle back on all this, but, and I appreciate the initial, you know, tangent, we do this a lot and hopefully it’s helpful, but I love that we went down that road to start. So, what we should have started with was Dr. Dana Crosby here. Um, do an introduction to you. I want to talk about the soul of wealth that was just released like within a week,

Daniel Crosby: Yeah. Week and a half. Yeah.

Matt Mulcock: Okay. What, what book number is this for you, Daniel?

Daniel Crosby: It’s my third solo behavioral finance book. I wrote a, I wrote a children’s book, and I co authored a behavioral finance book. But yeah, third like solo finance book.

Matt Mulcock: okay. Awesome. Um, so I want to talk about this. I want to talk about the structure. There’s some uniqueness to it that I want to hit and get some origins around that. But first, let’s just maybe for those of you, I think this is your third dish time on our show, which I love. Um, you were just on before, I think last or earlier this year to talk about the summit, but for those of you that maybe don’t know, or haven’t heard those episodes, we just give a summary of. And background of, of who, of who you are.

Daniel Crosby: Yeah, I’m the chief behavioral officer at Orion Advisor Technology. So we create software and asset management solutions for financial advisors. But the more interesting thing is by way, you know, by way of education, I’m a shrink. I’m a psychologist. but I’ve spent my entire career working in, in financial services, sort of studying the psychology of money and, and why people do crazy stuff with their money.

And this latest work is all about sort of happiness, meaning, contentment, and How do we pair abundance with the right mindset to make sure that we’re getting the most out of what we’ve worked so hard for?

Matt Mulcock: Yeah, I love it. And also I will plug this at the end as well. And this is just literally a genuine, I share this with people all the time of the stuff that I’ve listened to or read and, and, uh, your podcast standard deviations, one of my favorite out there, the interviews you do, the things you share on that, if you are out there listening and want another podcast that’s specific around these types of topics.

Definitely check it out. It’s, it’s incredible. so as far as the soul of wealth, the first thing I noticed as I read it, and I’ve heard you talk about on your podcast and we talked a little bit at the summit, is the actual structure of it. The actual, and you’ve shared this kind of the origins of this.

Let me just start there. If anyone’s out there, hasn’t read it yet, I think it’s important to understand how it is structured and kind of the origins of

Daniel Crosby: Yeah, so I started to write my my previous books had been pretty traditionally structured, you know 250 ish pages 12 chapters 20 ish pages apiece You know each sort of around a theme and I started to write I knew I wanted to write a book on happiness and meaning and money You And I started to write The Soul of Wealth in very much the same format.

And there was a moment where I had about 80 pages down. And I started to read it and I was just like this sucks like this just isn’t like this just isn’t good And I don’t know if you’ve ever like gotten really far down. I mean 80 pages takes a minute You know I don’t know if you’ve ever gotten really far down the road on a project and just kind of had to look in the mirror And say it was trash, but uh, it just wasn’t good.

It was just sort of uninspired and so You know i’m a big believer that Great writers are big readers. And so at this I try and read every day and so at this time I was reading rick rubin’s book the creative act now rick rubin is the producer for the beastie boys and jay z and johnny cash and all kinds of folks,

Matt Mulcock: Super interesting character.

Daniel Crosby: Yeah, great guy kind of my um, like just A music producer who can’t play an instrument and just has a sweet beard and

Matt Mulcock: Such a wild story.

Daniel Crosby: Yeah, just doesn’t wear shoes and

Matt Mulcock: Yeah,

Daniel Crosby: Good advice. Like kind of a, kind of a dream job, candidly.

Matt Mulcock: Yeah

Daniel Crosby: So I read his book, which was structured in like 74 chapters of, of sort of like two or three pages a piece, just real concise, pithy wisdom. And I said, Hey, let me try that with, with this topic that I want to write about. And so each of my 50 chapters Begins with some sort of historical or, you know, some art movie, literature, anecdote, then it ties into the research and then it ties into application, around 50 different topics around money, meaning happiness and contentment.

Matt Mulcock: Yeah, I’m glad you went over that cause and, and I’ve, I’d heard you talk about the structure. I love one of my favorite parts about you is just how successful as you’ve been and where you’re at in your career and still humble enough to be like, it just sucked. It just wasn’t good. That’s

Daniel Crosby: Well, well, you know, it’s been six years since my last book. I mean, there was a time when I was cranking out books pretty fast, but it had been a minute. And I wanted whatever came next to be really sort of career defining and important. I wanted, mom and pop Readers to be able to read it too. Like my other two solo books have been industry focused.

I mean, they’re really for professional use For industry folks. And I, I wanted this information to get out to, you know, everyday investors. And that’s, that’s a different, you know, that’s a different type of writing for sure.

Matt Mulcock: Yeah. and I love that. And what I love about this, I love books that you can reference, not from, you don’t have to go start to finish. You can easily jump in and I’ve done this so many times with this book already of like Daniel had, you know, there was something about this, like failure. There was something about failure.

I’m going to go and find that. And it’s like so easy to find. Cause when I first heard 50 chapters, I was like, dang, but they’re so short and I love the flow of it. So I wanted to highlight that. Because of the uniqueness of that, and I think anyone who’s out there thinking that finance books are, intimidating or unapproachable, I think I love what you just said that this is so approachable and can be a little anyone can read it and get something out of it.

Daniel Crosby: Yeah. my 10 year old son was the first person to read, you know, outside of my publisher. I got an early draft copy of it and my 10 year old son asked to read it. And I was like, yeah, give it a, give it a shot. And he, I mean, he hung with it now. He’s he now he’s brilliant.

Matt Mulcock: Yeah. You’re like, he

Daniel Crosby: from incredible, he’s descended from incredible stock. No, but he, he could hang with it. And, I considered that, a sign. I consider that a good thing that, that a 10 year old kid could hang with it.

Matt Mulcock: So the other two you’re referring to laws of wealth, one of my favorite money books of all time, behavioral investor. Fantastic. did you think going into this, that this, this book was related to the, I mean, you, you’d mentioned kind of the difference of those being more industry specific or maybe a little bit more higher or maybe, more sophisticated, but were you thinking like This is a series like this book’s going to connect these dots or was it just kind of separate?

Daniel Crosby: you know, I wish, I wish I had been that prescient, but you know, the. Thinking about it now with 2020 hindsight, I certainly didn’t plan it that way. Yeah. But the laws of wealth is really about how do you stay out of your own way and manage your own behavior on route to creating a rich life. The behavioral investor sort of gets into the nitty gritty of like, how you can pick better stocks and allocate your assets effectively, given what we know about human behavior.

And then this one is like, okay, you read the first two, you’re making good decisions. You got a little bit of cash in your bank account. Now, how can you spend it and save and invest it in a way that’s going to bring you contentment? You know, the, the thing that I like to talk about, which is wild to me, when this country, this, this fine country of ours, Matt, where we’re going to pick a new leader here in 11 days, you know, this, this country of ours, when it was founded in the late 1700s, 85 percent of the world.

Was living on what is today two dollars or less a day, right? That number is about eight and a half percent today Still too many people like struggling but like oh my goodness like in 200 years The level of abundance like the rise of the middle class worldwide is just staggering in the u.

s It’s been more pronounced than anywhere else the size of the average home in the u. s has tripled Post World War II. And you’re like, wow, we must be doing great. And then you look at the the data We’ve never been more disconnected. There have never been more deaths of despair. We’ve never been lonelier or sadder or felt less abundant Demonstrably, we’re richer than we’ve ever been and nobody is happy And so this book is trying to bridge those two realities.

Like how can it be that? That there’s so much abundance in the world and so little appreciation for it. And that’s, you know, that’s the, the, the bridge we’re trying to cross.

Matt Mulcock: I I love that There’s actually a quote near the beginning in the intro of your book. I want to read I think it I think it Goes into this perfectly you write you write humankind finds itself at a strange crossroads. We know intuitively that true wealth Real wealth, soulful wealth is about far more than mere money.

Yet far too often we act as though money is the, is an end to itself, sacrificing some of the richest parts of our lives in its pursuit. And I think that relates to what we’re talking about here and what we talked about at the summit and your incredible talk there that, by the way, people still bring up to me like clients and things, but I think that’s kind of what you’re referring to, right?

Is I think if you ask most people, They would say, oh yeah, true wealth is not about money. And yet, is that how we’re really pursuing our life?

Daniel Crosby: Yeah. Well, there’s a lot of, there’s a lot of self deception involved, you know, go back to my, my weight loss journey. Like you, Oh, I think one thing, you know, I’m two 10. Well, no, I’m two 30. Right. And you know, one of the, one of the chapters, is, you know, talks about sort of money as the ultimate BS indicator.

You know, if I say, Hey, like, what do you, what do you value in your life? Um, Most people are gonna say, you know, relationships, you know, spirituality, leisure, personal growth, you know, some, some constellation of these sorts of things. And you go, okay, well, cool, pull out your budget, you know, for the past, what are you spending money on?

Like if you value self improvement, are you going back to school? Are you going to therapy? Are you taking courses? Are you spending a lot of money on books? Like probably not like, you know, Money has an ability to to teach us about ourselves and what we actually value Because I do think there’s this this disconnect I talked to in the book about you know, brawny where this australian palliative care nurse You Who’s done all this research on people who are on the verge of dying, right?

Like on the verge of dying and she asks them about their biggest regrets and work and money come up once among the top five things mentioned as regrets of the dying and it’s I wish I hadn’t worked so hard and cared so much about money.

Matt Mulcock: Yeah, yeah,

Daniel Crosby: It’s like in, in the moment to moment of our life, like so much of what we spend our time and energy and focus on is more, more, more, more, more.

And then when. The importance of what really matters in life is brought into sharp relief by the imminence of our death. We go, wow, that was really dumb. And I’d love for more of us to have that insight earlier.

Matt Mulcock: Yeah. I love that, and you referenced this, you referenced the Five Regrets of the Dying in your book. you referenced Seligman’s, or, I’m probably saying that wrong, a permamodel.

Daniel Crosby: Seligmanian.

Matt Mulcock: That. Seligman, And it’s funny, So I had three chapters I wanted to highlight as we got into like the insights from the book, one of them being chapter you just highlighted.

Show me your budget. I’ll show you your value. So I want to circle back on that, but I want to hit on this more. And I’m so curious we know this, right? Like meaning we sit here today, people listening are like, They hear that and intuitively it makes so much sense that it’s not about money.

Yet we live our life as if it’s the only thing that matters in a lot of ways. We see this with dentists all the time when we’re talking about how you’re spending your money versus what you tell me on our discussions, what you actually value. and it sounds like you’re highlighting there’s this regret.

Well, I’m just making stuff up as we go, but like regret gap, like how do we reduce the regretful gap of like when I’m at the end of my life, I’m looking back and saying, I lived my life in the way that I truly said I wanted to. Number one, what is this Daniel? Maybe from a psychological standpoint, where does that gap come from?

Daniel Crosby: Yeah. it’s multifaceted, right? So one thing is, we live in a society Where no one will ever give you a hard time for working more, you know, I mean we live in a society at least in the West in the u. s. where consumption materialism Success financial success productivity are kind of the greatest goods and they’re they’re lionized And we have a marketing industrial complex.

That is all day You Like trying to sell us many thousands of times a day trying to sell you on the message That the thing you need to be happy Is a new car or this brand of soft drink or you know, whatever this shirt or whatever So, I mean we are we are drowning in that message. So in some ways it’s the easiest thing in the world to just like If sort of left to our own devices, that’s sort of the default is that this is the ultimate good because that’s the capitalist machine runs on that message.

You know, the other thing that we do is I think we use it and I’ve certainly been guilty of this in my life. We use it as a pretext to get out of stuff we don’t want to do or that’s hard or messy, the human stuff. Right, you know, it’s like, uh, things are messy at home. Like, well, I’m gonna go work because, you know, I’m gonna go I’m gonna go get really busy because nobody’s gonna give you a hard time about that.

And then if they do you go Well, hey, I’m providing for this family You know so work and and the pursuit of wealth becomes this this sort of band aid that covers all ills kind of disingenuously And then if anyone calls us on it or as accuses of us, we can get real self righteous about it because what do you mean?

Like, I’m just, you know, I’m just trying to do this good thing here. And then the final thing is we haven’t always figured out good ways to measure what true success looks like, like holistic success. And yes, that’s why I try to give some of these models in the book, like the PERMA model that you mentioned.

is a good scorecard for a life well lived. And a lot of times, like, a life well lived is so amorphous a concept to us that we can’t really get our arms around it, and so we default to something like money. We go, well, money is a good way to keep score. You know, my kids love is hard to quantify. You know, the strength of my relationship with my wife, hard to quantify.

Bye. Um, you know, my being a good person, a generous person, how would I say, but like more money in the bank, I can do that, you know? And so I think it becomes this stand in for the good life because we haven’t always had good yardsticks for measuring what a good life looks like.

Matt Mulcock: I love that. And you, you kind of already got into the second part of this being, okay, what do we do about it? And you just highlighted a big one of maybe people, I think it sounds like you’re saying kind of like the weight loss journey of saying, number one, you gotta, we gotta be aware of it. We gotta know.

Like we’ve got to create some awareness and hopefully conversations like this and your book and our goal with our content is to highlight stuff like this all the time. So awareness, but it sounds like what you’re saying is you and tell me if I’m wrong here, just maybe elaborate on this of creating. Abetter measuring stick or, or a system or something to measure what success is to you. Do you have thoughts on that?

Daniel Crosby: Yeah. I mean, if you think about how I lost weight, it was, it was basically, you know, Measurement and accountability, right? I mean, it’s just sort of like, and that’s the same thing. So I think it’s worth going over the PERMA model very briefly. Like

Matt Mulcock: I’d love to.

Daniel Crosby: These are the five things that lead to human flourishing.

So the P in PERMA is for positive experiences. This is fun, right? This is leisure. This is a good time. The E is for engagement, deep work. You know, deep, meaningful work. The R is the best predictor of happiness of all. That’s relationships, giving love, receiving love. The M is for meaning, working for something bigger than yourself, whether that’s, you know, your charitable work, your belief in God, your spiritual practice, whatever that, you know, whatever that volunteerism, whatever that looks like for you.

And then A is advancement, which is being better today than you were yesterday. You know, learning how to cook, learning how to play guitar, getting a promotion at work, you know, Upping your lifts at the gym, whatever, like we’re wired for growth. And so we need to be moving forward. If you think about these five dimensions and then you think about how we traditionally prepare for retirement or think about money. Only one of them is like very neatly ticked by money Like you can have a lot of fun with money You know that p the the p in perm like money is full stop. Awesome for like Buying you a beach house buying you a fast car buying you ice cream money does that all day long? It is excellent at that but like deep work love meaning personal growth like All those things Money can facilitate absolutely like money can facilitate, but it cannot just tick the box the way that it can for the, that the sort of the fun and leisure box.

So that’s I think death rates rise dramatically in the first couple of weeks after retirement. And I think, you know, as much as we like to gripe about work, like work gives us a friend group, work gives us something to do, it makes us part of a team that’s bigger than ourselves, it offers opportunities for advancement.

You know, work scratches a lot of these itches and we just kind of have to reorient the way we think about measuring our lives, our retirements, our work lives, and I think the PERMA model is a good place to start.

Matt Mulcock: I love that. And as you highlighted, only one of those things touch money. It’s exactly when you’re going through that. I’m like, none of this has anything to do with money. And like you said, money facilitates it, but it, nothing to do with it. and then you, I love that you just said, I’d love to spend some time on this of the non financial risks that people don’t think about with retirement and us as a financial advising group, and we help people kind of get closer and build out a retirement plan and, and figure all that out.

We always highlight there’s the. Spreadsheet side of it. And then there’s the life side of it. you’re just hitting on something. So I think bears repeating and elaborating on of like, what are the things that you’re thinking about outside of money that come from a life transition, like retirement,

Daniel Crosby: Mm hmm.

Matt Mulcock: Like what are the risks that are there? You just hit on like everything with a permanent model, where are you going to find your meeting? Where are you going to find relationships and things like that? Any other risks that come to mind for you as you talk about people retiring?

Daniel Crosby: Yeah, I think in particular for men, there’s like an isolation epidemic. men tend to, have a lot of their relationships center around an activity. I think, women are more comfortable, engaging in relationships for their own sake. Like. She’s my friend because I like her, you know, whereas whereas men are more sort of of the camp of like He’s my friend because we both like baseball or you know, he’s my friend because we work together And so when that structure is taken away when that sort of structured nine to five is taken away men’s relational lives tend to suffer.

Again, that’s the best predictor of flourishing. couple of stats. Loneliness. There is a loneliness epidemic in the country right now. Uh, 79 percent of Gen Z say they’re lonely. 51 percent of people my age say they’re lonely. And then that I’m in my mid forties and that kind of goes, you know, goes up as you get younger, but being lonely, feeling lonely is the physical equivalent.

It’s twice as damaging to your health as obesity. And it’s the equivalent to smoking 15 cigarettes a day. And you look at parts of the world. When you look at the blue zones research. There’s these nine things that predict, you know, why people live to be a hundred. And three of them are social. And, you know, a lot of it’s like, you, you look at the parts of the world where people live a really long time, and it’s like, Okinawa, yeah, they live They live to be centenarians because they eat seaweed and fish all day.

Like, right. Yep. Got it You know, yeah that makes sense, but there’s places in italy where folks are, you know Eating processed meat and smoking unfiltered cigarettes all day and they’re you know, they’re living to be

Matt Mulcock: Wine every day.

Daniel Crosby: But yeah, drinking wine and they’re living to be a hundred because of the, the fabric of their society is so close knit and, and every night they’re drinking and playing guitar and hanging out on the front porch and laughing.

So men, I think are, are especially in danger of isolation, social isolation, and it’s not this like, it’s not this high class first world problem. It’s, it’s a very big deal and it’s, it’s very legitimately damaging to our health.

Matt Mulcock: And, where do you think the car, what do you think are the causes of this isolation? Cause I’ve seen studies on this too. Like there’s this famous study that was, they asked men. There was like 20 years ago or whatever timeframe it was like, who would you consider a close friend versus now?

And it went from like five down to like one on average. What, what do you think the causes of this has been?

Daniel Crosby: I believe in that study, the modal number. So if you go back to your stats class, the mode is like the most frequently occurring number, not the average, right? But the modal number was zero. Uh, close friends for men. And I mean, that is a wild, that is wild to think that, you know, the most common responses. I have no friends.

So what’s driving this? All sorts of things. I think technology is a piece of it. I think, flight to the suburbs is a piece of it. Larger homes, larger land, less chances to gather, less places to gather and sort of run into each other organically. the breakdown of traditional institutions, you know, everything from church to supper clubs to social clubs, we just don’t participate in that the way that we, we used to.

And those were, strong sources of, of meaning and connection. And men have been, socialized to have the need for a relationship stigmatized. You know, I mean, men are not, we don’t value male friendship and male camaraderie the same way that we do, female friendship. I mean, it’s considered sort of weak minded and, you know, the idea of men as solitary and unemotional and unencumbered by relational bonds is sort of the prototypical alpha male, you know, mindset that we have and that’s damaging.

I mean, it’s, it’s harmful to guys.

Matt Mulcock: Yeah. And, and we see this specific dentistry all the time. We, dentistry’s lonely, we see this where these, you know, dental offices tend to have, you know, the dentist and then their, their staff. There tends to be quite a large gap, e perceived and in reality, gap of income and wealth. And so that leads to a feeling of loneliness in, in.

In dentists feeling that they can’t, they can’t talk to their staff in the same way, or they feel kind of isolated from their staff. leadership as a whole is lonely. and then there’s also this weird, for being specific to dentists, like weird competitiveness or this isolationist among dentists of like, well, I don’t want to talk to you about like business, let’s say, because we’re maybe like these weird competitors.

So, it’s an interesting, but I’m loving that you’re bringing up like the global stats because I think dentists out there are listening to this being like, they feel it just at a personal level for them.

Daniel Crosby: It’s interesting. I’ll never forget my freshman psychology course where I fell in love with psychology. They talked about the incidence of self harm among different occupations. And I remember stockbrokers, as they were called at the time, right? So stockbrokers, you know, financial professionals and dentists were like one, two.

And I, you know, my dad. Yeah, yeah, right. So you’re, you’re in the danger zone, man. But, um, no, we, you know, my dad is a, is an advisor and I, that’s, I think why the data stuck with me, but it’s like, yeah, certain professions certainly lend themselves. And I mean, you’ve made a great case for why dentists would, would be at the top of that list.

Matt Mulcock: Yeah. So I’m glad you’re shedding light on this. I want to shift gears a little bit. There’s another chapter that you had that was titled not caring what people think. Is an asset. Can you just kind of share some, a summary of that and kind of your thoughts around, around that?

Daniel Crosby: Yeah. So the real quick, the anecdote for that one is worth checking out. It’s Nikola Tesla, and he was just such a weird guy. Like he, he fell in love with a pigeon.

Matt Mulcock: Just going to say,

Daniel Crosby: He never married, but he had a romantic relationship with a pigeon, which I didn’t ask too many questions

Matt Mulcock: Yeah,

Daniel Crosby: know I was like, whatever that looks like.

But yeah, loved pigeons, but was a germaphobe, which is a weird juxtaposition. was terrified of round things. So like when women would wear pearls, he would become very twitchy, was obsessed with the number three. He would, he would walk around buildings three times before he’d go in. He would fold 18 napkins before he would eat, because 18 is divisible by three, I mean.

So is 15. So is 21. I

Matt Mulcock: I was going to say, so it was nine. Yeah.

Daniel Crosby: Yeah. I don’t know. I chose that number, but anyway, but yeah, so he just a very quirky guy, but his ownership of his quirks, you know, for better and worse is what allowed him to do his work. And so I use that as sort of a memorable lead in, in that chapter I talk about it’s 27% of Americans have gone into significant debt trying to show off. So they’ve gone into significant debt trying to show off for their neighbors and, almost 80 percent of them regretted it, right? Probably 100%, but 80 percent admitted it, or 77%, I think it was, admitted it. So it’s this thing where we’re, we’re working hard to spend money.

But, you know, Morgan Housel, the author, talks about this too. He calls it the man in the car paradox. Like, if I go spend a bunch of money to buy a Ferrari, right, and I pull up next to you at a stoplight, and you’re in your Geo Prism, and I’m in my Ferrari,

you don’t look at that and go. Boy, that guy is sweet. You look at that and go that car is sweet. You don’t say like I want to be like that guy you say

Matt Mulcock: I want that

Daniel Crosby: That car, right? And so we’re we’re spending all this money thinking we’re going to elevate ourselves in the eyes of our peers And all we’re doing is sort of passing on this materialism and doing really nothing to elevate ourselves in the process.

So, you know, the other point to be made, I make a point in there about just sort of, herding and herd behavior in markets and how people tend to jump in and out of markets at all the wrong times because they’re, they’re caring too much about what other people are doing. So sort of being standing apart from the crowd is a powerful thing to do with your financial life, whether you’re talking about consumption or, or investing.

Matt Mulcock: Yeah, I love this. And I think again, speaking of dentistry, dentists make a ton of money on average, and I think they fall in. It’s a small world of dentistry. There’s only so many, and you tend to like know what’s going on with other dentists or running similar crowds or whatever. And I think it’s status chasing is, is really prevalent.

I’m curious your thoughts, Daniel, on this, as you go through this, I’m wondering, is there almost a compounding effect to the negative? Meaning like, You like these people you’re talking about that go into this debt to chase status or to impress others. Is it almost, does it almost make it worse? Or what are your thoughts on it?

Compounding negatively in the sense of like, if you’re unhappy and then you’re spending all this money to think it’s going to make you happier, you’re going to impress other people. And then it doesn’t, can it almost make it worse? Well,

Daniel Crosby: So it, it totally can, and one of my favorite chapters in the book, talks about the Diderot effect. So Diderot is this great thinker, whose child was getting married and he had no money. And so the queen or the czarina or some, you know, some, some political leader hears about this and she’s an admirer of his work.

And so she says, well, I’m going to help him out. So I’m going to buy his library. Like I’m going to buy his papers, buy his book collection. And I think it was like the equivalent of 60, 000 in today’s money. So I’m going to buy his books and then he’ll have a little cash to help this kid get married. So Diderot helps this kid get married.

But then he buys himself this fine robe and he buys this beautiful like scarlet silk robe Well, he’s in this robe and gets back to his house and he sits down on his threadbare couch And he’s like, well, I’m sitting in this fine silk robe on this crappy moth eaten couch. I gotta get a new couch So he gets a new couch and then he’s like, well the couch looks bad Now the drapes look crummy and just on and on and on so consumption begets consumption And, you know, newness needs more newness, and you see this, this Diderot effect, uh, when people start to overspend, it begets more overspending.

And then one day you wake up, you know, surrounded by the relics of your loneliness and your discontentment and you look around and you look at your bank account and it’s not where it should be and you don’t, no one respects you anymore. No one likes you anymore. They maybe even like you a little less.

Because they’re, you know, jealous of all the stuff you’ve got. And yeah, it, it builds on itself. It never sates the need. It’s meant to sate. And I think that, uh, makes it sort of this self perpetuating negative thing.

Matt Mulcock: I mean, now we’re just, I just feel depressed when I, I don’t know how you feel, but no, I, I,

Daniel Crosby: Don’t buy the robe, man. Just don’t.

Matt Mulcock: Don’t buy the robe.

Daniel Crosby: You don’t buy the robe, you’re good.

Matt Mulcock: Yeah, no, I think this is, this is a great place to kind of like bring this full circle and you said it earlier, money is great and it provides a lot of great things and we’re in no way, I think, I know, I feel this, we run the risk sometimes.

Like we run the risk. Sometimes we talk about this stuff of like coming off self righteous, like you shouldn’t want money. You shouldn’t want wealth. I think you and I are both saying wealth is a worthy pursuit for sure. tell me kind of what your thoughts are around I think what you’re highlighting when you go through this, I’m hearing this.

And we see this all the time, this disconnect of wealth is a worthy pursuit, but not to the end of itself or just like focus on that. It’s what is money providing and what values are connected to that, to that wealth. What are your

Daniel Crosby: Yeah, that’s, that’s That’s great because I don’t want to give you know I don’t want to give people the the idea that this is an anti money book or an anti capitalism book You know, I talked about that that poverty going from 85 percent of the world to not eight and a half percent of the world Capitalism did that right like the pursuit of money did that when we look at the research on money and happiness, right?

There’s a couple of ways that money predictably buys us happiness if we get out of stuff we hate, right, like if we hate cleaning our house or mowing our lawn or cleaning our bathroom or doing our laundry, whatever, if we spend money on those things, that’s a reliably buys us happiness, giving money away is one of the most powerful ways that we can buy happiness.

There’s a couple of chapters on that, and it is, it is good for the world and it is good for you and people don’t realize it’s as good for you as, as it is. Even there’s I’ll use the example of a car right like I talked before about about buying a car If you buy that red ferrari to stunt on your neighbor Right and to show them to show them you’re you’re better than them or you’ve you’ve accomplished more That only buys happiness very fleetingly, you know a couple of weeks, right?

And then sort of the novelty wears off and it is what it is But if you buy that, car You to join the Ferrari club of Salt Lake City. It buys a ton of happiness because now you’ve got some dudes that you sit around with on Saturday and drink coffee and you stare at your engines and you talk about the weather that makes people super happy, right?

Buying experiences, time with people they love, vacations, all of these things reliably by happiness. But you know, the research shows that we perceive money as a good in and of itself, irrespective of the things that it buys. And that’s the danger. Just like number go up more, more, more is the danger.

You know, I need a bigger number. I need more. How much do you need to reach your goals? Well, more than I have today. That’s the danger. There’s a million great ways to spend your money. On the people you love on meeting new friends on making the world a better place There’s a ton of good ways to spend your money and I love money That’s why i’ve written so many books about it But there’s a lot of ways that you can spend it that just don’t fulfill And that’s what i’m trying to help people avoid.

Matt Mulcock: Yeah. And you do a great job of it. And I, this, this intention, this value connection to your wealth, I think is the key. as we kind of wrap this up, Daniel, I mean, I could talk to you for hours about this stuff. I love this. I’m curious from your perspective, what concepts in the book or things that you’ve written about in it?

Um, have you, like in your personal experience, are there areas that you’re like, that you’ve struggled with more than others, um, as a, as a fellow human? And things that you’ve had to overcome and just the experiences there

Daniel Crosby: Yeah the chapter in the book that’s Probably the most personal with respect to my own human experience is the one about health as wealth. I talk in there about a health scare I had. I really thought I was, I really thought I was dying. Right. I mean, I thought I had a brain tumor or something.

It was a dental problem. Funny, funny, funny enough. And I started, I, at first I thought it was a dental problem. I went to my dentist. they said it wasn’t. And so then I imagined all sorts of other scarier things, went to all these specialists and then eventually my tooth cracked and you know, all the migraines and the partial blindness and all this stuff I’d been experiencing, you know, wasn’t a brain tumor.

It was, it was a tooth problem and none of the dentists that listened to this podcast would have missed it. Not one, ever. They would have caught it. Only the dummy I was working with, but no. So, um, so for me there was this moment. Where I was like months into this journey of daily migraines and sensitivity to light and constant pain and like no answers about where it was coming from.

It got so intense, my wife is driving me to the emergency room one night and I’m just sitting in the front crying. And I have worked hard my entire adult life, I have saved aggressively, I have invested well, I got a couple bucks. I would have given you every dollar I had in that moment for relief from the pain and answers to my questions about what was wrong with me.

And it’s moments like that, right? Where you go, Oh yeah, a little perspective around this, like don’t sacrifice your health. You know, the reason I had dental problems is because I stressed out at work and I was gritting my teeth. Bruxism, fellas. Yeah. Bruxism was, you know, was, was the, the thing. The reason I was 50 pounds overweight was, you know, work worries, travel, you know, overexertion.

So don’t sacrifice something that is, you know, of, of marginal worth for something that’s of, of infinite worth. I think we make bad trade offs a lot of times. There’s always going to be trade offs, right? You have to pay your bills. You have to work. You know, I just got done talking to my wife about Getting some squirrels out of our attic, you know thousands of dollars to get the squirrels out of our attic like life is real Like that stuff happens, but don’t sacrifice Things that are are so valuable, you know your health your relationships your well being Don’t sacrifice that on the altar of something you can always make more of that’s something that I have sort of had to learn the hard way

Matt Mulcock: Yeah, I love that. And you told that story at the summit, super powerful. And, I love that you were telling it to an audience of dentists cause cause it happened to be a dental problem. and I love this balance. You’re striking Daniel of, again, you still have to pursue money. Money’s still a requirement.

We’re not saying go be a Buddhist monk. but one thing you are highlighting and we’ll kind of wrap it up here is, um, the difference, like I think most people engage, like, you know, your dad, you’ve been in the financial advising space for a long time in some form or fashion. We’ve done this for a long time.

I think a lot of times people pursue an advisor trying to answer the question of when can I retire or when can I be financially independent? But I love when we talk or I read your books. It’s such a, refreshing, like, Kind of reaffirming for me that that’s not really what we’re trying to pursue. It’s financial peace, financial freedom, and like harmony with your money and wealth and connecting your wealth to your values is so much more easily attainable way before you become financially independent.

And every time you talk and we share these ideas or you’re sharing this, your stories and statistics, I’m thinking about that. Like. We’re not even talking about financial independence or the fact that you still need money to get the squirrels out of the, out of, out of the attic. But it’s, I think we should be pursuing that financial harmony or that financial piece, which comes again, could come way before that.

Daniel Crosby: Yeah, yeah, there’s a chapter in the book called, you know, i’ll be happy win is a trap You know, I think a lot of times we set these conditions on our happiness or our meaning or our contentment And humankind has a nasty habit of moving goalposts and that day never comes Unless you shift your perspective and in all the ways we’ve talked about today

Matt Mulcock: Yeah, for sure. one of the things, Daniel, for me, when I read a book, the one that I fully admit, one of the struggles I have is Okay. I read it. It’s fantastic. I love it. It has an impact me on me in the moment. And then I fail to connect the dots of like, you know, okay, how do I take these great ideas and turn them into action?

Anything from your end that you could share to say, here’s like one or two or three things, if anything you’re going to do to like actually make this impactful, as opposed to like a great book and then move on. Anything you’d leave the listeners with, like, here’s some action to take.

Daniel Crosby: Yeah, so each of the 50 chapters is so different I would say, you know, if you read a book like the soul of wealth, right that’s got 50 sort of bite sized nuggets Each one of the chapters has a little bit of application Pick the one where you’re weakest Right pick the one where you’re weakest and find that application point and start there Don’t try and do 50 things at once start with that one You In terms of the things that we’ve talked about today in terms of that perma model, right?

I’d look at those five things. Where are you the weakest? Are you not having enough positive emotion? Are you not having enough fun and leisure? Is it engagement? Does your work life need some help? Relationships, meaning, advancement. Just think about those five categories of your life. Think about them like, you know, spokes on a wheel.

The wheel can’t roll well if one of them is is sort of out of whack. So think about those five facets of a life well lived and think about what’s something you could do to make that relational life better, that meaning, that work, whatever, you know, wherever the deficit is, one small step in that direction.

I think a lot of times people try and bite off too much. They get inspired. They get excited. They want to try and to do too much at once and That’s where the problem is. So one small step in the direction of that biggest deficit I think it’s the place to start.

Matt Mulcock: Love it. Love it. how do people find you, Daniel? How do people get the book? I’d imagine Amazon, but what’s, what’s the easiest way to get the book and how do they find you if they want more information?

Daniel Crosby: Yeah, the book is the soul of wealth. Amazon’s great Barnes Noble, whatever. But yeah, my name is Daniel Crosby PhD on LinkedIn and just at Daniel Crosby on Twitter

Matt Mulcock: Awesome. if you are listening and you are a client, I don’t want to spoil it, but you may be having a little present coming into you this, this holiday season. We may have been taking care of that for you, so just keep that in mind. but still go get it, give it as a gift. again, it’s a fantastic book. Daniel, thank you so much for being here. Everyone. Thank you so much for listening. Till next time. Bye bye.

Keywords: Wellness, transformation, behavioral finance, happiness, abundance, accountability, money management, personal growth, PERMA model, wealth, happiness, personal growth

Behavioral Finance, Tracking Progress, Work Life Balance