RWH074: True Wealth w/ Matt Ludmer

In this episode, William Green speaks with Matt Ludmer, the founder & CEO of Aligned Wealth Management. Matt is a financial adviser to wealthy individuals & families, including clients who have entrusted him with tens or even hundreds of millions of dollars. After decades working on Wall Street, he came to realize he’d misunderstood the meaning of wealth. That revelation led him to write a new book, “The Right Mountain: Practical Wisdom for Achieving True Wealth.” Here, he explores how to build a fulfilling life that includes—& transcends—financial success. IN THIS EPISODE YOU’LL LEARN: (00:00:00) Intro (00:06:33) How Matt started out shining shoes & selling frozen food. (00:18:56) Why Matt Ludmer reveres his father as his greatest teacher. (00:23:50) How he scored an investment adviser job at Morgan Stanley. (00:32:54) What happens when our hunger for success goes too far. (00:54:46) How to diagnose where your life is out of balance. (01:01:48) How loneliness led Matt to create a “heartfelt community.” (01:36:44) Why many top investors view meditation as a smart investment. (01:40:35) How to build rich relationships by meeting people where they are. (01:55:06) How his confidence in stocks is built on a century of data. (02:09:22) Why it’s psychologically shrewd to divide your assets into three pots. (02:15:09) Why Matt prefers low-cost ETFs to actively managed funds. (02:17:13) How to find a career—& design a life—that lights you up. (02:30:48) Why the ultimate prize is unconditional contentment. Disclaimer: Slight discrepancies in the timestamps may occur due to podcast platform differences. BOOKS AND RESOURCES Inquire about William Green’s ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Richer, Wiser, Happier Masterclass⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠. Matt Ludmer’s book, “The Right Mountain.” Napoleon Hill’s book, “Think and Grow Rich!” Krishnamurti’s book, “Commentaries on Living.” Lee Eisenberg’s book, “The Number.” Daniel Goleman & Tsoknyi Rinpoche’s book, “Why We Meditate.” Tara Bennett-Goleman’s book, “Emotional Alchemy.” William Green’s podcast with Tsoknyi Rinpoche & Daniel Goleman. William Green’s book, “Richer, Wiser, Happier” – ⁠⁠read the reviews of this book⁠⁠. Follow William Green on ⁠⁠X⁠⁠. Related ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠books⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ mentioned in the podcast. Ad-free episodes on our ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Premium Feed⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠. NEW TO THE SHOW? Get smarter about valuing businesses through ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠The Intrinsic Value Newsletter⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠. Follow our official social media accounts: ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠X⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ | ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠LinkedIn⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ | ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Facebook⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠. Try our tool for picking stock winners and managing our portfolios: ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠TIP Finance⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠. Enjoy exclusive perks from our ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠favorite Apps and Services⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠. SPONSORS Support our free podcast by supporting our ⁠⁠sponsors⁠⁠: Monarch Plus500 Netsuite References to any third-party products, services, or advertisers do not constitute endorsements, and The Investor’s Podcast Network is not responsible for any claims made by them. Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://theinvestorspodcastnetwork.supportingcast.fm

• 0:00Speaker 00

  You're listening to TIP.

• 0:03Speaker 01

  Hi there. It's wonderful to see you again on the Richer, Wiser, Happier podcast. I'm particularly excited about today's episode because it's a long awaited opportunity to introduce you to someone who's been a really important figure in my life since we first became great friends about eight years ago. His name is Matt Ludma and he runs a wealth management firm called Aligned Wealth, which helps sophisticated high net worth clients build long-term wealth in a very simple, low-stress way that tries to give them the freedom and spaciousness to concentrate on what matters most to them. As you'll hear, Matt's focus is on building a life that's truly rich in every dimension, which obviously goes way

• 0:43Speaker 01

  beyond money. That's also the focus of his new book, which I have right here, which comes out this week. It's titled The Right Mountain and the subtitle is Practical Wisdom for Achieving True Wealth. I'm not by any means an impartial observer because I worked very closely with Matt and his co-author Kristen Kay on this book over several years, ultimately serving as their editor. But I have no doubt at all that you'll find Matt's insights extremely valuable, both in the book and in today's discussion. But before we get to our conversation, I also wanted to mention quickly that I still have several open spaces in my upcoming Richer, Wiser, Happier Masterclass, which begins in December.

• 1:25Speaker 01

  This is an opportunity to study with me over the course of a year in a very small intimate group that's likely to be somewhere between 10 and 20 people. We'll meet once a month over Zoom and we'll also get together in person at a couple of unique events. The aim here is to create a year-long journey of exploration to help you move toward a life that's truly richer, wiser and happier. We'll chat in depth about how you can actually apply in your own life, the lessons I've learned from great investors like Charlie Munger, Sir John Templeton, Ed Thorp, Howard Marks, Nick Sleep, Bill Miller and the like. These are not just lessons about how to build enduring wealth, but about how to think and how to

• 2:07Speaker 01

  live. This is the third year in a row that I've hosted a Richer, Wiser, Happier Masterclass and I expect it to be the last class that I offer. The first two groups included an exceptionally accomplished selection of people from all over the world, including some hugely successful hedge fund managers and mutual fund managers, asset allocators, wealth advisors, managers of family offices, a doctor, a management consultant, several CEOs and entrepreneurs, a renowned physicist turned quant and the head of global real estate at the world's largest asset manager. But what matters most to me is that this is an unusually thoughtful,

• 2:48Speaker 01

  soulful bunch of people who love learning from each other and sharing insights about investing, business and life. One member of the current Masterclass recently landed an extraordinary new job and I was thrilled to learn the other day that another member of the class had played a vital role in helping to guide him and think through this life-changing opportunity. That's really the essence of what we're talking about here. It's all about building really rich relationships with a wonderful group of people who operate as friends along the path, helping you to design a more meaningful, aligned, joyful life. If you'd like to know more about the Masterclass, please feel free to contact my friend and fellow podcast host Kyle Grieve and he can answer any questions you might have about

• 3:33Speaker 01

  it, including information about dates, prices and such. His email is Kyle, that's K-Y-L-E at theinvestorspodcast.com. I'm entirely biased, but I think this is a rare opportunity to become not only a better investor, but to think more deeply about how you actually want to live and to build life-enriching friendships with a really special group of people. If that appeals to you, please reach out to Kyle and if the stars align, I'd love to see you in December. And now, back to the show.

• 4:11Speaker 00

  You're listening to the Richer, Wiser, Happier podcast, where your host, William Green, interviews the world's greatest investors and explores how to win in markets and life. This show is not investment advice. It's intended for informational and entertainment purposes only. All opinions expressed by hosts and guests are solely their own and they may have investments in the securities discussed. Now for your host, William Green.

• 4:45Speaker 01

  Hi folks. I'm thrilled to be back with you today on the Richer, Wiser, Happier podcast. It's an absolute joy to introduce our very special guest, Matt Ludma, who's one of my closest friends. Matt has spent more than four decades in the investment business. After graduating from the business school at the University of Chicago, he started his career as one of the first wealth managers at Morgan Stanley. He went on to become a director at Morgan Stanley and a director at Donaldson, Lufkin and Genret, where he led the firm's largest wealth advisory group. In 2013, Matt broke free and launched his own company, Aligned Wealth Management, where he manages money for high net worth clients. As we'll

• 5:28Speaker 01

  discuss, his focus is not just on building financial riches, but on helping people to move beyond financial success to what he calls true wealth, which involves building a happy and fulfilling life that's rich in the deepest sense of the word. Matt has now written a new book with his co-author Kristen Kay. It's titled The Right Mountain and the subtitle is Practical Wisdom for Achieving True Wealth. I worked very closely with Matt and Kristen on the book over several years and ultimately helped to edit it. So I'm totally biased, but I think it's an extremely valuable book, full of insights that can profoundly improve your life. I'm pretty convinced of that because actually the principles

• 6:12Speaker 01

  and practices in the book have profoundly improved my own life. So, welcome Matt. It's really lovely to see you.

• 6:18Speaker 02

  Great to see you, William.

• 6:20Speaker 01

  It's been a long time coming. We've been sort of thinking about this day for years.

• 6:25Speaker 02

  This is really a joyful experience. You know, it's a culmination of a lot of time spent together and, you know, may it be of benefit to the listeners.

• 6:33Speaker 01

  I hope so. I wanted to start by asking you about your early years because you didn't grow up in a way that obviously predestined you for a career on Wall Street managing money for extremely rich families. Can you tell us a bit about your parents, about what they did for a living and what your family's lifestyle was like when you were growing up in the wilds of Teaneck, New Jersey?

• 6:56Speaker 02

  Sure, sure, sure. So, um, yeah, I grew up in a very middle-class household. My dad sold staples and nails up and down the Jersey Turnpike. Every day he'd come back in his car, I'd done like, I don't know, 200 miles of driving. Uh, my mom was a secretary at Acme Rivet and Screw. That's the name of the manufacturing company she worked at. So, you know, the idea of business and investing was far from the way I grew up. But my dad was my greatest teacher. We had a beautiful, you know, close family and although he, you know, I didn't grow up with, like, we never went to New York City. We were pretty close to New York City. We really went to nice restaurants. And I remember at one time we

• 7:40Speaker 02

  were constantly going to McDonald's and I was like, Dad, what's, what's going on here? And I learned that the year of my bar mitzvah, I think he made like something like $10,000. But the coolest thing was that he was just always content. He was always happy with himself, which is the first and biggest lesson that he taught me was to be happy with myself. So I, yeah, I grew up pretty content in a happy, supportive family. But we were, you know, sort of behind the eight ball when it came to money. In fact, I had some pretty crazy jobs as a young person. I was everything from the locker boy at the local JCC. I was shining shoes at Fifth Avenue Haircutters. You know, these people who, who were quite

• 8:23Speaker 02

  successful would come in and put their feet up, they'd get lathered up and I'd be at the end like with a cloth and shining the shoes. And in some ways, it was really grounding and I was able to kind of get a lot of great life lessons from my dad. I was super into basketball and he was a great supporter. I don't know how he got the wisdom that he got, but um, somehow or another, he got me books that just changed my world early on and gave me a great foundation. And I was also, I was the tallest guy. There was a kid in, I think it was like, I don't know, fifth, sixth grade who wrote a poem about me and he said, Matt Ludma is very tall. That's why he plays basketball. And I build

• 9:02Speaker 02

  my, my healthier sense of ego from being an athlete from the earliest, earliest ages. So, um, yeah, that was my-

• 9:12Speaker 01

  And you were doing crazy jobs. I remember you telling me at one point about your job selling flash frozen food. I always loved that because in some ways, in some ways, I think it gets a little bit, your character is sort of somewhat irrepressible and in a, in a way like a born salesman. Tell us what you did.

• 9:31Speaker 02

  Yeah, yeah. The year between my, I think it was my sophomore and junior year, I learned that there was a job where you could buy flash frozen meat and seafood and rent a truck and then, you know, buy it for like 500 bucks and then it's flash frozen. And then you go out and you sell it. And where you sell it, it's up to you. So you'd get a bill for $500 and you had the whole day to sell it. And you better make sure you're selling it by the end of the day or you're going to be in a lot of meat and seafood. But I would go to like beauty parlors or libraries and I would just walk in and beauty parlors were really good for me because I was a young guy and there were a lot of moms there. And I would say, you know, thanks, everybody for listening. Um, you know, this great meat and

• 10:15Speaker 02

  seafood that's flash frozen and you can make it for dinner for your husbands or wives or whatever, you know, that case husbands and it'll hold for a few hours and I'm helping, it would help me make my way through college. And, you know, pretty much every day I'd walk home with like eight hundred, nine hundred dollars. And it was, it was really pressured, but it was really fun. There was some great stories. I would go from town to town and until everything was sold. By the end of the day, I was exhausted. And once in a while, I, I would have like very, a very big meal.

• 10:45Speaker 01

  And you graduated from Rutgers University, I think, which is a leading state university in New Jersey in about nineteen eighty-two, having majored in economics with a minor in philosophy. And in some ways, I think that slightly unusual combination of economics and philosophy sort of reflected your interests, which have always encompassed both the financial world and the world of philosophy and spirituality and trying to figure out how to, how to live.

• 11:12Speaker 02

  Yeah. I mean, one of the key moments in my life was, uh, my dad gave me the book, Think and Grow Rich at probably the age of like, I don't know, fourteen, very young. And I started to realize that thoughts were things. So I was a strange kid who in eighth grade had a motivation box. I literally wrote the lines down and put them on my wall. I put my goals down. I was highly motivated. And I don't know why it hit me, but just as soon as I knew thoughts were things. And then my dad's constant inspiration, like we would watch Norman Vincent Peale at the Marble Collegiate Church, even though we're Jewish, it was like listening to the sermons. He would give me Success Unlimited magazine. You know, you could say he was programming, but I don't think of it that way. I think we were just

• 11:56Speaker 02

  sharing the joy of being inspired men. And yeah, so, so, and then I would go to five-star basketball camp in the summer to, you know, try to get better. And eventually I became the starting point guard for Tinnick High School. So I felt like, oh, you know, my mind can achieve goals. What else can my mind do? And one day we were at dinner in Englewood, New Jersey. My father was friends with, um, this other family and, you know, the parents are talking in one room, I'm in the other room in the library and I'm looking at some books. And I see, um, Commentaries on Living by J. Krishnamurti. And after having many years having read Think and Grow Rich, it was the first time I was exposed to Eastern

• 12:37Speaker 02

  philosophy. J. Krishnamurti was sort of the next coming in India. And he told everybody to take a walk and figure it out for themselves. And it was very experiential. And when I would read his writings, I would go like, whoa, this is different. You know, this is powerful. And it's a way of using my mind that's not goal oriented. So I had this, this conundrum in the sense that I would feel this depth when I would read him. But when I didn't read him, I didn't feel it. So I was kind of a premeditator. I was looking for something I didn't even know I was searching for, that I found when I was in, in, uh, college. So really what happened is my achievement motivation, my motivation to get goals done, became like,

• 13:18Speaker 02

  okay, that's really good. I can do that. What else can I do with my mind? And then I started to see people who could do things. Um, and the results of them were, were like some beautiful, like they're more compassionate, more present. They seem more happy. So another amazing thing that my dad did is he sent me a meditation cushion because he saw I was interested in it my freshman year. And, and that's when I had this two-tranch life, one that was sort of on the achievement side of doing well, although I didn't know really what I was going to do in, in college. And, uh, this journey inward that started at an early age. And it was very quiet. I didn't really do it in public. I had my meditation

• 14:03Speaker 02

  cushion in my room, door closed. It was a separate interest that gave me great satisfaction. And, you know, I was super social. I ended up becoming the assistant business manager of the school newspaper. When I went to college, I put on the first large nineteen seventy-eight disco dance contest at Rutgers University, which is quite an amazing event. If you can imagine what that's, just all the students were eighteen thousand students. We were putting out eighteen thousand papers daily. And yeah, I was learning about business. I was learning about being with people and I was learning with, about creating conditions where joy could arise. And it was kind of proto everything. It was just laying seeds for what later was

• 14:45Speaker 02

  going to be my life. In fact, one day my, my best friend who was, I was an RA for one year, this guy, Dave Goldberg, one of my best friends, you know, he actually, he and I were walking around the campus and we wondered like, wow, what if we could do this as adults? What if we could have like a, a place where people could learn and have community and, um, and, and you'll learn things deeply and, and accomplish things. And, and we were getting small little hits of that. So, you know, every year there was a basketball team called Death that would win the intramurals at Rutgers. And they were friends of mine and they were pretty intimidating guys. They had a big skull on their shirt with a, a joint coming out and, and they would just beat every team that was there. So I decided with Dave to

• 15:27Speaker 02

  create a team called Life, because I was playing every day as a way of socializing and as a way of enjoying myself. And I, I got this team together. And again, I think, you know, you can think this is made up, but this is absolutely true. Life played Death in the finals. And, uh, and as you'd expect, in overtime, Life won. And you know, my kids roll their eyes when I tell this story. But, you know, it was sort of just, it was just a really great time at Rutgers.

• 15:57Speaker 01

  Yeah. And, and then you went off from Rutgers to the Booth School of Business at the University of Chicago. And, and it's kind of an unlikely story, like the, you'd, you'd been rejected by both Harvard Business School and I don't know, I think it was Yale, if I remember correctly.

• 16:14Speaker 02

  Stanford.

• 16:15Speaker 01

  Stanford. How on earth did you, did you get into the University of Chicago? Because I think it says something about your, your personality that you got in.

• 16:24Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 16:25Speaker 01

  And it was a turning point in your life, I think.

• 16:27Speaker 02

  It was, it was. I, I don't know how I did this, but I made the decision that, oh, they actually, I got waitlisted. And I know waitlisting, you just kind of wait, right? That's why it's called a waitlist. But I wasn't going to stand for waiting. And I didn't, I don't think, it may have been the first or second time I ever flew on a plane. I bought a ticket to go to University of Chicago and they didn't take interviews back then. And I, I went to the dean's office at, in the MBA program. This is dean of admissions and I, I sat outside his office. I think it was the Think and Grow Rich element in me, the motivation side of me that said, you know, I have to make this happen. You know, later on I learned the line, you know, if, if you don't design your life, someone

• 17:08Speaker 02

  else will design it for you. So I went out and I sat in front of his office and he came. I waited quite a long time and the secretary said, well, he's outside. And I came in and he was very gracious to me. And a week later, I was admitted to the night school, then I immediately switched to the day school. And I was a student of University of Chicago Business School.

• 17:28Speaker 01

  Which was a really important place to learn about indexing and efficient markets and the like. So we'll, we'll come back to all of that because it, I mean, they really changed your life, right?

• 17:38Speaker 02

  Oh my God. I mean, taking a class with Eugene Fama is not exactly a normal thing.

• 17:42Speaker 01

  Yeah. Who had won the Nobel Prize for economics.

• 17:44Speaker 02

  Yeah. Yeah. And be surrounded by people who were all from Yale and Harvard. And, you know, there was an insecurity I had that left me every day in the Reaganstein Library in the basement, just studying my butt off because I felt like I needed to compete. And because I was a point guard, you know, I had some skills in the competitive side. Uh, and I wasn't crazy like nuts, but I definitely, I definitely knew that, you know, I, I needed to help my folks. Cause you know, I had no idea how they were going to take care of themselves later in life.

• 18:20Speaker 01

  And you never really figured out how your parents even managed to pay for you to go to college, right?

• 18:25Speaker 02

  I have no idea. I have no idea. At the time, University of Chicago was, I think it was like fifteen thousand a year. I don't even know what the number was, but whatever it was, my parents didn't have it. But I did know that my dad was really well-loved and liked. And there's a suspicion that a friend of his lent him the money, but he never confirmed it. He, he never would tell me it just what it was. And, but I had this suspicion, you know, people really cared for my dad and they saw I had the opportunity. And, and I also think he worked nights and weekends and did everything he could to make up whatever difference there was. So.

• 19:03Speaker 01

  I was very struck. I should, I should mention, I, I went, I, I'd never met your father, Lionel Lutman, but I went to his funeral a couple of years ago. And I was very struck by a story you told where I'll probably gobble this, but the way I remember it is you talked about being, you know, working in the locker room at the, the JCC as a boy and someone coming up to you and saying, your father is such a good man.

• 19:27Speaker 02

  Yeah. You're going to get me pretty emotional, but yeah. You know, I was a locker boy. It was one of my illustrious jobs from eighth grade on where I, the men would come down to play paddleball or basketball and I would take their, their things and lock them up or take care of the shower in the locker room. Yeah. But one day, because my dad would play paddleball every Tuesday and Thursday. And when he came out, all the men would be walking through. And that, you know, because my dad wasn't a guy of credentials. He was spent two, two years in, in college at Fairleigh Dickinson and then went to work in the, his father's embroidery factory. And then that shut down. You know, when you get something that from, from a, you know, one of the members of, of the place there who were substantial

• 20:09Speaker 02

  and, and, and you see they were, they're really revering your dad's ordinary, good, you know, way of, of how he lives his life. I have great admiration, obviously for him. And you need to have great admiration for a teacher. It's kind of a, something that doesn't really happen very often. I understand later why, you know, I took to being a student of teachers, because I understand the power of admiring somebody.

• 20:34Speaker 01

  Yeah, I was very moved by that story because I, I think it was one of the, I mean, we'll talk about this later, you know, so many of us are just chasing the whole time, right? Like trying, trying to do more. You've told me off of this so many times, you know, do more, get more, become more, you know, achieve more, optimize more. And there was something very sort of centering and reorienting for me, if that's the right word, to, to think about, here's your dad, very simple life in many ways. And at the end of the day, everyone looks back on what they remember is he was a really kind, good person. And then he was satisfied with what he had. And, and that's not to, that's not to say we shouldn't aim

• 21:17Speaker 01

  to have material success, as we'll discuss later. But I don't know, I find funerals really helpful in some way for reminding you like what, what actually constitutes a happy and successful life.

• 21:28Speaker 02

  Yeah. Yeah. I mean, how many men do you know that are content? I mean, just, it's a transmission. You know, my father never really gave advice. He would act. He, he didn't talk very much. He would do things and he would be a great example. But I don't remember my father saying to me, yeah, more than a line. Like I would tell him about something that accomplished and he goes, well, does it make you happy? You know, like, it's like, good, you know? So he always came from a position of liking himself. So it kind of transmitted to me. And I think, you know, when you surround yourself with people that don't like themselves and they're all trying to prove something, it's kind of toxic. But it also, look, there's a real health to be motivated to, to achieve. And we're

• 22:10Speaker 02

  going to talk about that. And, you know, all the motivational things that I learned from him were, were real and true. They just came, came couch in an environment where, you know, you do your best. I'd come off the court and he would say to me, he wouldn't, you know, they'd be like, say there was like a thousand, a thousand people, we had, we had a lot of people show up to our games. And after the game, I remember coming and we'd get in the car, drive home, couldn't drive then. And he wouldn't critique my game. He says, well, you did your best, right? And I said, yeah. He goes, good, good.

• 22:41Speaker 01

  I remember you also telling me, we, we were chatting the other day on the phone, just to catch up. And you were saying that he, he would tell you when, when he thought you were looking at the audience too much for their approval. And so I sort of think of him as someone who, you know, as Buffett would put it, you know, he lived by an inner scorecard and he kind of reminded you, you know, do you really want to define your life by whether everyone else approves of you?

• 23:05Speaker 02

  That's such a profound lesson. You know, part of the outer game is looking for feedback. And he told me early on, stop looking at the crowd, you know, play your game. Cause early on, if you watch most kids play ball and they're, they're being watched by everybody and their parents in the crowd. I was a basketball coach for my kids and invariably see the kids, instead of watching the game, they're looking at the, they're looking at the stands because they want the approval. And that starts out as a seed, but in adulthood, it continues unnoticed. And eventually it creates a hollowness in people because you're constantly feeling hollowed. The need for someone to say, oh, that was a good job. That was really good. Oh, that was really nice success you had. Oh, let me tell you how good you are. And you'd be like, oh, that feels so good. Well, it feels so good because inside you're not

• 23:49Speaker 02

  feeling it yourself. And the power of feeling that yourself really matters. And because my dad sort of exemplified that, you know, that was a super good gift. But it was amplified by noting when I wasn't doing that myself.

• 24:04Speaker 01

  And at the same time, you were incredibly driven and you were hustling to get ahead. And, and it's kind of amazing that after sort of struggling somewhat at University of Chicago Business School, you then go off and somehow land a job at Morgan Stanley, which was one of the most prestigious firms on Wall Street, along with Goldman Sachs, I guess, and was not traditionally welcoming to Jewish kids from T-Nite, New Jersey, whose parents didn't belong to any country clubs and the like. How on earth did you get a job at Morgan Stanley?

• 24:38Speaker 02

  Well, you know, it's think and grow rich, not work hard and grow rich, or it's think and succeed. And early in the, you know, being at the school, I, I didn't know much, I didn't know anything about Wall Street. And I just saw everybody trying to get jobs as consultants, you know, at Booz, Hamilton, you know, and, and Bain, and, and then at Goldman and at Morgan. And I was like, oh, they want those. Let me see what that's about. And, you know, my competitive side came up and I was like, I, you know, maybe I should take a look at that. And then I realized I can't compete on credentials. I have to actually create a story that's going to work when I get in front of a group of people.

• 25:18Speaker 02

  And, and I'm interested, you know, the, taking classes there sort of perked my interest. And how could you not? You're University of Chicago. And so, yeah, I started looking at the field and then saying, well, if I got my Series Seven between my first and second year, then at the end of the second year, when you get, start getting interviewed, you have a story to tell. And I knew that my background, selling mean seafood and being like out of a truck and, and my, you know, go get it-ness at the time wasn't, but it needed, it needed more than that, you know, it needed more than that. So my dad happened to know somebody who was at a brokerage firm, and it was a tiny brokerage firm. It was

• 26:02Speaker 02

  like one of the penny stock brokerage firms. I didn't even know what a penny stock was. And they needed people to help sell this IPO for a two-sided toothbrush. And, but it was an excuse to get my Series Seven. So I spent the summer-

• 26:17Speaker 01

  Which qualifies you to be a financial advisor, I think.

• 26:20Speaker 02

  Of course. I mean, you know, if you could sell a tooth, side of toothbrush, that must be the greatest investment in the world. I got my Series Seven. And that was a big deal because when it came to the interviews, you know, it was a positive. But I think the bigger positive was how I actually, you know, got the interview. It was sort of a similar thing to getting into Chicago. At University of Chicago, they give you 500 points to bid for your interviews. And for people who, you know, were able to, that had families that they could fall back on or contacts, I had none of those. So I couldn't just put 500 points down on a Morgan Stanley interview. It would have been insane. I had to diversify a little bit. But of course, that meant that I didn't get the interview

• 27:02Speaker 02

  on the normal way in the marketplace where you could actually get an interview cleared by the marketplace. I'm sure the person who bid for the Morgan Stanley interview was taking all their points. And there were 500 people. So a lot of people were bidding. And so I didn't get it and I was disappointed. But I, a friend of mine who was a really good person, I, I gave him, he had an interview and I gave him my resume. And he interviewed in the morning. I said, would you mind just dropping this with, with the group and saying, I'm interested. He didn't really give any specific instruction, just left my resume. And at lunchtime, I kind of broke the rules. I put my collar up, you know, went into the career center and just bypassed everybody and did a beeline to the Morgan Stanley interview

• 27:47Speaker 02

  room. And they were having lunch and walked through the doors, there were three, you know, investment bankers sitting behind a table. And I said, gentlemen, I know this is really unorthodox. I said, but I really want this job. And, and I think it would, it would be a good interview, you know, for you to have with me. And they looked at each other like, who is this guy? But it wasn't inappropriate. You know, I did it in a way that was respectful. And they said, please sit down. And I sat down and we had a great interview. I was able to tell my story. And I was, you know, one of two people called back at Chicago to start to be the first trainee at Morgan Stanley. And then I had

• 28:29Speaker 02

  to compete with other, you know, business schools. And they ended up picking five people in total. And we were the first training class of Morgan Stanley investment advisors.

• 28:40Speaker 01

  So you built a very successful career in those early years. I mean, you quickly, I, I think you had a real ability to sell, right? I mean, you love people, you love building a rapport, you had a lot of energy, you were willing to make a million cold calls and the like. Can you talk a little bit about how intoxicating and all-consuming it was? Cause my sense is that in all, in those early days, you were full on. I mean, you, you know, there was a-

• 29:07Speaker 02

  Yeah, yeah. No, no, no, no. This was it. You know, I, I knew that this was above my pay grade. Like I was punching high on this one and I had to show up for it. So I was training myself. You know, I was listening to Tony Robbins every day into work. I was getting imbalanced, right? Because I needed to focus in a really strong way. And I had no real knowledge, even though I went to Chicago, I didn't really, I didn't have the insight on how the industry fully worked and how the whole thing worked. And we had a two-year training class, some senior people at Goldman Sachs, people that were handling, you know, people at Apple Computer, and this was 1984, 85, left Goldman Sachs to, to

• 29:52Speaker 02

  help build this department. And I was sitting on, there was only a thousand people at Morgan Stanley at the time. I was sitting on the trading desk. And they were training us, right? Straight from the block desk to the sales desk, the restricted stock desk, the option desk. And I, they spent two years training us before we went out. And at that time, there were no products. It was really the quality of your ideas. And Morgan Stanley was Chicago, was New York, Chicago and LA. And that was it. And so your territory was the entire United States. They said, here's a phone. We've taught you everything. Now go do. And that was just- You know, here's your expense account. It's 1980s bonfire of the vanities.

• 30:33Speaker 02

  And I have to say, you know, Morgan, at that moment in time, it was just, there was a certain elegance just in the industry, certainly at the high end places. That was not at the low end. There was like, there was real quality people. Everything was your word, was your bond. Things weren't written. Things were just handshaked. And I had the opportunity, once again, to admire people who are really good at what they do. So I felt like after all they invested in me, it was my job to really succeed. So I'd get in at seven. I wouldn't leave till seven. I remember my, I had my wife around that time and she'd always laugh because she'd come to my apartment.

• 31:16Speaker 02

  It was all full of seltzer bottles because I'd come home exhausted and just want to drink water. I couldn't, so I like seltzer, so I would just drink seltzer. And then my whole, my whole, my whole room is just like a bed and seltzer bottles. And then I'd go back to work and I was across from Radio City Music Hall in the Exxon building. They didn't have the headquarters at the time. And there were some princes like Anson Beard, who would walk around the training floor with his long cigar and, and everybody seemed to be from Duke because John Mack was from Duke. And I remember once coming in with my kids and John Mack was in the elevator and we, we got in the elevator and he invited my kids into his office on the, you know, one of the higher floors. And there was just, it was intoxicating. The whole thing was.

• 32:00Speaker 02

  And that lasted for a while and early on, a, a senior person at Newburger Berman was, was also a, an advisor. And he came to me and he asked me to partner with him. And I thought about it and I said, no, initially, because I didn't want to be a junior partner. I didn't want to partner until I was somewhat equivalent to him. So I spent two years on my road, on my own, on the road, cold calling, flying out, meeting people. And sometimes being completely dismissed, other times, you know, trying to get in the door. It was a time where you could do this. It's, I don't think it's the same world today. You can't really, people don't even answer their phones, but back then they did.

• 32:43Speaker 02

  And I met some great people, you know, there were some great entrepreneurs who opened their doors, let me in. They said, Morgan Stanley. I had no idea they had a wealth management department. Come on in. So of course I had a leg up because it was Morgan Stanley. And yeah, everywhere from people in, in Texas and Dallas, I remember going, going out. Because the territories were unbounded. There were just five of us. And there's a lot of stories there. But eventually I went back to that gentleman and I said, okay, I'm ready to partner. And we created one of the longest running partnerships at Morgan Stanley till it was, you know, the merger happened with Dean Witter in 1998.

• 33:20Speaker 03

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• 36:27Speaker 01

  All right, back to the show. You write in the, in the book about how there was a sort of a shadow side to that success, a sort of darker side, whereas you put it, you were constantly calculating how to impress, advance and win. And there's a, there's a, a big element of seduction to the whole process of selling. And I'm curious at what stage you, you started to look back and think, God, you know, there's some, some way in which

• 36:55Speaker 02

  This gets unhealthy. Yeah.

• 36:57Speaker 01

  It's unhealthy and corrupting almost.

• 36:59Speaker 02

  Totally, totally. It's sort of like even the self-improvement that I was doing as a teenager as I went to school and learned about meditation. At a certain point, it speaks of poverty underneath. And yeah, I had, you know, I had goals and I was working hard and, you know, I had my parents in mind. And, you know, I wasn't inappropriate in my ambition, but it definitely felt like it was getting, you know, it was taking up a lot. And I remember I have three daughters, three wonderful daughters. And I remember coming home one day and my youngest daughter had created this beautiful art piece. She's an artist. And I remember coming home as a businessman, you know, giving myself a label here, right?

• 37:41Speaker 02

  And my daughter shows me this art piece. She's maybe, I don't know, 14 or something like that, maybe younger. And I said, Grace, you know, what's this? And she looked at me like quizzically, what, what kind of question is that? And I said, well, can you explain this? And she looked at me again and I said, can you articulate this? And I actually wrote articulation on the wall, which is actually the worst parenting moment anybody could have. Because an artist speaks their art, not through their words, but I was, you know, a salesman. And I thought like, how is she going to make a living as an artist? You know, I was worried underneath, right? I was an insecure dad looking at her, his daughter and saying, how is she going to make a life out of art?

• 38:21Speaker 02

  And within a very short period of time, after walking out of that room and seeing her eyes drop, I realized like, oh, I made a mistake. And I turned around, you know, probably within a week or so, I went back and apologized. Cause it became apparent and it, you know, it took a conversation with my wife to really see it fully. You know, thankfully she's a very grounding force for me. And I went back and, and it was when I started to realize that there's a shadow element to ambition. Ambition's great, but you need to be able to turn it on and turn it off. It's, it's, it's a stage of development. As we'll talk about later, achievement's not fulfillment. Achievement is a stage.

• 39:01Speaker 02

  It's a stop along the path. It's a, it's a, it's not the term, it's a station, not the terminal. And at that point in my life, it was the terminal. It was, success was the goal. Making a lot of money was the end game. And even though I didn't, I didn't directly think that it was showing up in a shadow element because part of ambition, it could create parts of you that are blind spots that you can't see. Like you'll come into the office and ramshot over your group or people will notice things about you that you can't see. I had learned about the concept of Johari's window in college, where it's a box of what you can see, what you can't see and what others can see

• 39:44Speaker 02

  and what others can't see. And that makes four boxes when you, you put them on different axes. But there's one boxes where you can't see and others can see. And that is a shadow, that is shadow material. And I didn't realize then, but a really important part of the growing up, of the cleaning up process, of the process of, you know, being fully you is, is making sure that you're seeing all of you, not just the part that you want to see. And I realized that at that moment, that I wasn't doing that, that there was something off. I wasn't able to articulate at that point like I am now. But I'm realizing how important it is as almost, you know, as we'll see later, a form of wealth, to be able to fully see yourself.

• 40:29Speaker 02

  And, you know, I had to clean that up and I did, and I'm very grateful for it because, you know, out of pain comes learning. And it's, there's no straight shot by any of us to get there. But to be loving and, and fully present for your children, for the ones you love is important. But just wanting that is not enough. You actually have to do the work to see where you're triggered and where your shadow is and wonder why that's there. Because it was a conditioning, right? I was conditioned, as you can see from my childhood, to succeed and et cetera. And the conditioning's great. It's great training, but it's just directionally good. It's not finally good. It needs to be balanced.

• 41:07Speaker 01

  Yeah, I remember you, you telling me how, you know, when you, when you would leave to go to work at Morgan Stanley, your mom would sort of call out, you know, go, go get the beans, Jack, you know? So, you know, in a, in a way, I mean, we'll come back to this and this whole idea of the stages of development. But there is this sort of, this healthy ego stage where you're going out, you're just gonna, you know, you're gonna make your mark and you're gonna support yourself. And, but it feels like at a certain point, we have to outgrow that.

• 41:34Speaker 02

  Yeah. I mean, if that is the line that you're on and that's the only line you know really well. There's a good chance you're going to take it too far. And at that point, there was a myopicness. Even though I had some other awarenesses, it wasn't fully, fully embedded. And so it went too far. But if you think about it, the conditioning is not only personal, not only social, but it's ancestral. Right? I'm a second or third generation Jew from the Holocaust. You know, the first generation came in and it was all about survival. And the next generation was all about achievement. So there was, there was a lot of energy coming at me. So my mother calling out, hey, go get the bean jack makes total sense from a, from a, you know,

• 42:18Speaker 02

  a family, a family influence. And, you know, knowing that story and freeing oneself from the story is a real, real great thing to do, but you first have to be able to see it and to be free of it. And I didn't see it at the time. And seeing it is one thing, and then doing the work is the second thing. And we could talk about that. But anyway, at that point, it was starting, I was starting to get signs of that. And yeah, I'm really grateful that that happened, actually. And by the way, the end of the story, Grace is in Brooklyn. She's an art teacher at an amazing elementary school. She is about as happy as one can be. She's doing what she loves. She's really good at it. She's helping the world and she's making money.

• 43:02Speaker 02

  I mean, what more could a father want? Right?

• 43:04Speaker 01

  Yeah, it's pretty good. Pretty good.

• 43:08Speaker 01

  Yeah, that's very nice. So, so they, they survived the lousy parenting, which is very hard.

• 43:13Speaker 02

  Yeah, you know, they said, how to goodbye.

• 43:16Speaker 01

  So you, you had a lot of success on Wall Street. I mean, you, you, you became a director of wealth management at Morgan Stanley. Then you went to Donaldson, Lufkin, Genrat, DLJ. Then I think Credit Suisse acquired DLJ. So then, then, then you go there, then you get lured away by Sandy Weil, this legendary CEO at Citigroup. So you go to Smith Barney and then that's sold to Morgan Stanley. So, so you go back to Morgan Stanley. So you have this very successful career, you know, this grand tour of major firms on Wall Street and, you know, I mean, you end up making kind of a fortune, right? You had a successful, a very successful career. So you're making millions of dollars a year, making a fortune for the firm.

• 43:56Speaker 01

  At what point do you become like deeply disillusioned with it and start to think, you know, after the global financial crisis and maybe, you know, your partnership with your, your partner isn't going so well. And you're starting to think this is no longer what it used to be.

• 44:16Speaker 02

  Yeah. Well, there were just a number of marks on that road. The first was that as much as I was ambitious and connected to things, I also knew that my intentionality also had to relax. Like if you're intentional all day long and all night long and all weekend long, you're just not having any fun. So I needed to break that. And so what I would do is I'd do these unintentional days where I would just not tell anybody where it's going. I'm in the middle of Midtown Manhattan. I would just take a walk around and see something completely outside of finance. So I would, I would go to the theater district and take a ticket or I'd go down to Washington Square and just people watch, or I would just go to a cafe in Soho, you know, just to just

• 44:59Speaker 02

  get inspired in a different way to see what showed up. And one day I walked into a show and I think it was the year 2000 and the show was called The Wrong Mountain. And I walked into the play and I sat down because it just, wrong mountain? That sounds interesting. You can always get one ticket for something. And I walked in and I sat down and the show was about a playwright and a poet. And of course the playwright's making a lot of money, very successful, has a really big show on Broadway and the poet is poor and kind of miserable. But he's convinced about his own life being true. And he looked at the playwright and basically in a stern remarks said, hey bud, you know,

• 45:41Speaker 02

  with all your money, all your success, you know, has it occurred to you that you're on the wrong mountain? And obviously that resonated enough that became the title of my book. But I asked myself at that moment in the audience, I'm sitting there and going, whoa, here I am, I've studied J. Krishnamurti, Chagrinam Truppa Rinpoche, I'm meditating, I'm, I'm having this very fret, you know, I'm having some other things happening in my life besides, you know, the, the pursuit of money. And I'm, I on the right mountain? So that was jarring for me. And it started a many year journey into like that question.

• 46:21Speaker 01

  You know, what it really is about ultimately, which is very central to this book, The, The Right Mountain, which I have here, a galley copy of it. It's all about redefining wealth, right? Like getting to a stage where you start to wonder, okay, I, you know, I climbed, I climbed this mountain that everyone told me I should climb. You know, I got into the University of Chicago to the business school. I got into Morgan Stanley. I called everyone. I built these accounts. I would get like a $70 million account from an insurance company, what, you know, it's like, you do everything and then you start to be like a little bit depleted and out of balance. And, and so my sense is that part, you know, you start around the time of the financial crisis in 2007, 2008, to have this sort of existential crisis where you start to wonder,

• 47:06Speaker 01

  you know, is, is this all there is?

• 47:09Speaker 02

  Yeah. Yeah. I mean, it's especially because at that time, everybody was like, everybody, you know, people could, can really do well and, and, and the analysts are talking about their stock picks. And, and I'm just thinking like, hey dude, like we just learned that all these forecasts are wrong. You know, there's a humbling moment that's happening throughout the industry. So I started questioning, I remember questioning even, because also computers were starting to really kick in, right? You had the iPhone in 08 and we're starting to see the numbers behind the curtain. It's sort of the Wizard of Oz moment, you know? Now we can see behind the curtain. I'm just a powerful Oz. No, you're not. No, you're not at all. So let's use some honesty here.

• 47:50Speaker 02

  And so that's when I started to turn towards, what does it really mean to be wealthy? Cause remember I had this contrast, you know, a lot of my clients are beautifully wealthy, but I was meeting a lot of people who weren't. And, and I contrasted them with my dad who was super content. And I'm like, I'm trying to pair these things together and like, where am I in all this? And what actually is wealth and to be wealthy? And I'm the first wealth manager at Morgan Stanley. I should know the answer. All of a sudden, the industry is not calling us investment managers anymore. We're being called wealth managers, which was a very interesting marketing change. So if I'm a wealth manager, let me truly be that. And I had the skills actually to do that because I did have the philosophy background.

• 48:33Speaker 02

  I did have the studies and all these alternative things that are sort of outside, you know, what other people like look at, you know, day to day and in a sort of more conventional sense. And I started questioning it. And so to sit there and to listen to someone give me the next stock pick is how I'm going to increase someone's wealth. It was like, that ain't going to change their life. You know, how can I make a difference? How can I really be of benefit? So given the changes that went on in 08, I started to double down on my study because I happened to have started learning over that prior few years. We need to like make this balanced and harmonious. And the word holistic was being used a lot, but I didn't see anybody define it. And I'm a first principles person.

• 49:18Speaker 02

  I want to learn exactly what the framework of what does that actually mean? And since when I started studying Ken Wilber and the work of integral theory, which is not, you know, how do you become a great investor? How do you become a great meditator? How do you become a great, you know, person who understands other people's views? How do you understand the world? It's like, how do you do all those together? How do you combine all this? How do you not look at YouTube and see a million different pieces and not be able to cohere anything? So I wanted to unify all this into some different form. And then, you know, in retrospect, it really what I was searching for was the true meaning of wealth, which is wheel, which when you look at the etymology, wealth actually means well being.

• 50:02Speaker 02

  And in fact, that's, that's it. That's what we're talking about. We're talking about how do we get to that balanced state that my dad had naturally? You know, how do we get to the well being while respecting the wealth that we understand? How do we go from probably around 08 is when the book, The Number came out where people would meet with people and say, okay, you know, let me talk about your wealth. And it was all about what your net worth is. And it became a proxy for well being, but it became everything at that time. If you were a financial manager, you met with a client, it's like, what's your net worth before I speak with you? And it's like, it got so narrowed because if someone said, how was your year? It was how much their net worth went up.

• 50:45Speaker 02

  And in some ways that made sense back then. And in some ways it has, it's an element, but it is an element of a bigger whole. It is not the whole thing. And you could get convinced that it's the whole thing at a certain point. And then pain comes because you're not really paying attention to the fullness that you're expecting to come from, from true wealth. And that's where the idea of true wealth came about. That's where it dawned on me. I'm a financial manager, not really a wealth manager. It's not till, it's not till I, I, I understand what true wealth is and, and really am helping people get there. Because the difference is a hollowness feeling of achievement, which eventually, you know, I could talk about an experience I had where I started to realize that achievement is

• 51:30Speaker 02

  not fulfillment. It's great and you have to do it, but it's not going to get you fully there. Fulfillment is what gets us there. And well being is all about fulfillment.

• 51:43Speaker 02

  So really, we're striving for fulfillment, not just achievement. But there's no map for that. You know, people don't show you that. And in fact, there's, we sort of have this Disney view that we'll live happily ever after if we have enough money. And we all know that's not true, but where is the map? You know, go into a psychologist's office after a while to like, try to figure that out. They're going to make you feel good, but are they going to give you the wisdom of what constitutes the conditions for fulfillment? And, and what I learned is just like a portfolio. You know, when you have a portfolio, you have a diversified group of things. And together, they don't guarantee you a guaranteed rate of return. They guarantee you a normal distribution where the chances are you're going to get it. And the same thing is true in true wealth.

• 52:28Speaker 02

  But if you have certain conditions, the chances for you of being totally fulfilled increased dramatically. And if you don't have them, the chances are much lower. So what I said upon studying for now for many years is, what are those conditions? And how do we create those causes that will produce the effect? Cause if anybody tells you like, here's how you're going to be happy, walk out. You know, there's no guarantee on that, but there is a guarantee of good conditions producing good results. And what I've noticed, and what I've, as I've leaned more and more into true wealth as opposed to financial wealth, is that when I meet somebody, I can see that sense of fulfillment or that lack thereof.

• 53:11Speaker 02

  And then identify where, you know, just a little bit of this, you know, this, if this note's on a piano, the music isn't playing. So you need like a note or two that are missing that maybe you never even knew or never gave any credence to. That if you just gave a little bit more of that note, your music would be playing. And when your music plays, I call it, you're being lit up. You're a lit up person. And if the music's not playing, you're kind of like my daughter's eyes in the earlier story. You're just, you're kind of grimly getting through. And the last thing you want to do as a successful person is grimly get through your success.

• 53:51Speaker 02

  And I see a lot of people grimly getting through and it's not because they're doing anything wrong or they're, you know, they're bad people or the, you know, that was me. And it was like, we're all trying really hard, but we don't have the map. And so I felt by writing this book, which is taken really, if you take it from 2000, they like it, it took, you know, 26 years as a practitioner, not a writer, to actually try these things out. To say, here are the causes, here are the best, here are the first principle causes that could produce the result. Fulfillment ultimately, you know, I'll, I'll say this secretly because it's like, sort of like, it's another book.

• 54:33Speaker 02

  But to be feel free, but fulfillment's a really good definition of true wealth, you know, it's a, well, we'll get further into that.

• 54:41Speaker 01

  Well, in, in the very first chapter of the book, you, you write about really how to diagnose what's missing, why we're in balance, what aspects of wealth we're lacking. And you mentioned before Ken Wilber giving you a kind of map so that you could see. I mean, for people who don't know Wilber, Wilber was this kind of polymathic genius who knew pretty much everything about everything and mapped all of these different disciplines. And he helped you to see this sort of broader, this broader picture of the different elements that would make for a happy life. And one of the things that you ended up developing was this kind of, this kind of map, this framework called the four quadrants of true wealth.

• 55:23Speaker 01

  Can you talk about how in practical terms, you could use that framework to say, okay, I'm looking at the life of this client or this friend or this mentee, and I can see that it's out of whack. I can see why they're not happy and fulfilled and feeling rich, even though maybe they're incredibly successful in one area.

• 55:45Speaker 02

  Yeah. All right. Well, thank you for that question because it's really a fundamental. And I'm just going to take a one minute aside on Wilbur and say that what Wilbur did is he realized that for every outside, let's say that the business is an outside business, it's, it's material, it's something you can count in a way. For every outside, there's an inside. There's no such thing as an outside without an inside. If you're starting as just a philosophic framework, you have an object in space. It has an outside and it has an inside, and if there's usually one, there's many. And when you think about it, that means that for ourselves, like we have an outer objective sense in some parts of us that we can count in a way.

• 56:25Speaker 02

  And then we have an inner self, a subjective self that sits within us. Like right now, I'm sitting here in this desk and William's over there, but I'm having my own experience of this conversation. William is too, and a listener is as well. So there's an outer, you're hearing out words, but there's an inner experience. And then there's a, an experience that's inner that's happening between us. And that's sort of our cultural connection. But also we have a system because you're looking on a screen and I'm speaking. So there's a system, there's an outer, outer system that's happening. The way I've adapted these four, so just to state them on Wilbur's grounds. Wilbur's grounds, there's the outer objective world, there's the inner subjective world, which I mentioned.

• 57:10Speaker 02

  And then between you and I, there's an inter subjective world. And, and the way the objects go together, the way systems, economics, the medical systems, you can observe those outer things and see how they work. So that's philosophic, those four, the outer, inner, the cultural and the systems. But if you apply them to your life in a very practical way, for most of us, the outer is our career and our finances. You know, it's what we do with most of our time. I call that work and wealth abundance. And it's a form of wealth that we actively work on. But the inner side of us, I call the mind body, you know, mind body awareness wealth.

• 57:52Speaker 02

  And, and a lot of people may miss that inner of the outer. The third form of wealth is heartfelt community connection, how we connect with other people. And the fourth is the subjective systems, whole systems, learning or yeah, how the world works essentially. And it's very interesting when I meet people because they tend to be one of these forms of wealth dominant versus the others. So if I'm with my Wall Street friends, they're very heavy on the work and wealth abundance, but they may very light on mind body awareness. And if they're home trading, they just may be really light on community. They may not have very much heartfelt connection, but between themselves and their, you know, wife and kids.

• 58:36Speaker 02

  And, you know, if with my meditation friends or my psychologist friends, they may be very strong on their subjective world, the mind body awareness, how the world works, you know, maybe not so much. No one's ever sat down and explained, you know, that part of life into them in, in the same way. So we end up being lopsided in, if you have these forms of wealth and for them, and you have good senses of each one, you tend to be balanced. But if you are missing one of these, it oftentimes causes pain and it becomes apparent. So if you're very much into heartfelt community of a lot of friends and you're very connected,

• 59:18Speaker 02

  but you don't really have a career that's working, eventually the pain results. Or if you're, you know, you're really full of mind body awareness and you're a great meditator, but your bank account is super low, you know, pain results, pain results from imbalance. But, you know, the learning and the, the learning behind each one from a very first principles basis is not really out there. And it's not diagnosed.

• 59:47Speaker 01

  What really helped me was starting to look at this, you know, in a more systematic way, right? Because you're looking at your life in four dimensions in a sense, not in one. So I tend as a sort of fairly driven relentless human to be like constantly trying to do more and become more. And, you know, more podcasts, more speeches, you know, more, more master classes, whatever it is. And in a way, I think what, you know, one of the things that struck me when we were working on the book together is you told this story of, of, you know, short, a couple of years after you had set up your firm aligned wealth, you started to organize these, these breakfasts and you had one at the Langham Hotel where various friends of yours show up, all these executives.

• 1:00:29Speaker 01

  Tell us what happened because in a way that's a beautiful indication that I am not alone.

• 1:00:34Speaker 02

  No, no, no, you're not alone at all. You're not alone at all. Yeah. Look, I, when I started coming up with these notions and they're not mine, right? They're coming from some traditions, from philosophies, from deep study, you know? I just know just like as an advisor to look at all of them and say, which one is, is the most fundamentally helpful? And so I, when I set up my firm, the first thing I did is I invited some of my private equity friends and business success friends, and even heads of some of the wealth departments to come join me in a very unusual experiment to discuss these concepts of wealth in a well-being sense. And they didn't know really what they were getting into. And I would, I would set up at a really nice place like the Langham Hotel.

• 1:01:16Speaker 02

  And we'd all have breakfast and I'd say, okay, everybody, you know, we're gonna, we're gonna do a little experiment in the next room. And we'd go to another room. And in the room, I literally had work and wealth abundance, career, work and a poster on one corner. And then in another corner, I had mind body awareness, like your emotions, your spirituality, your religion, et cetera. And then in another corner, I had heartfelt connection with other people and community and being with others. And then in the last corner, I had like lifelong learning and whole systems understanding. And I said, all right, everybody just stand up, okay? What I want you to do is I want you to think about your day and think about what you're most concerned about and go to that corner.

• 1:01:59Speaker 02

  And everybody got up and everybody went to the work and wealth abundance corner. And I would have gone there had I not done all this work over the years, but, and I said, here's a question. If you had all the money and you had complete freedom, where would you actually want to spend more time? And that's when things got really interesting because everybody dispersed around the room. And I can't tell you how many people ended up in the heartfelt community connection section. Like everybody's, there's a certain level of loneliness in the society that really was revealed to me in this. And then the amount of people who were in the, you know, emotional and spiritual who went that way. And then there were one or two people who went down to the whole systems academic kind of learning space.

• 1:02:40Speaker 02

  And we just had conversations about why do we end up where we did when we actually had desires to be in these other forms of wealth? And the conversations were great and it gave me confidence to continue to pursue this line of inquiry and go further.

• 1:02:57Speaker 01

  And where, where did you feel poorest in your own life?

• 1:03:00Speaker 02

  Well, for me, it was all about, I didn't have community, you know, I was, I'd wake up in the morning, I'd get in the train, I'd go to work, I had a great family and I'd sit in my office and, you know, just do my business and then get on the train, go home late and do that day in and day out. And I knew that there were levels of community that just weren't part of the culture. In fact, culturally, I didn't know where community actually lies. A lot of 20 year olds that I mentor oftentimes will say like, where can I go for real community around more meaningful things? And, you know, culturally in the United States, it's, it's harder to find that it may be in other cultures where that is much

• 1:03:41Speaker 02

  more prevalent. But for me, it was straight to the heartfelt community connection, which actually led me to ultimately build the Align Center, or a place where community actually could arise. Community, a place, you know, they call it a third place, right? The first place is your home, the second place is work, but where is your third place? Where is the place where you really have community with people that are not your family, are not coworkers, but are actually friends outside of your, you know, normal sphere? And there is such richness in that, it's hard to describe. It's, you know, someone could say, Matt, you can double your net worth today, or you could build your community like to the maximum extent, you know, I'd, I'd be hands down community all, all day long.

• 1:04:25Speaker 01

  And just to give our listeners and viewers a, a bit of background, the Align Center is this physical space that Matt found in Westchester in New York back, I think in about 2015. It's this very beautiful floor of a building where he's sitting and actually where I'm sitting, because we share an office here and this is where we met. And, you know, Matt's hosted lots of parties here and, you know, so we would go to a watch party when the Knicks were in the NBA Finals together and all these people from around the community, from the barber shop and, and the coffee shop and, and stuff. They would all come, we'd all get to hang out and drink and eat together and celebrate this amazing NBA final. And,

• 1:05:06Speaker 01

  and it's where I record my podcast and you've had lots of teachers here come through, these amazing teachers. And it's literally where we met. I mean, you know, about eight years ago, it's where we met because I was looking for a sort of soulful, beautiful environment in which to work. And so, I mean, I think that's what's kind of interesting is partly this idea of creating what you would call containers.

• 1:05:31Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:05:32Speaker 01

  Um, where there isn't necessarily a thing that, you know, this partly inspired a few years ago when I set up a book group, there was a bunch of, everyone in it was a writer pretty much. And so we'd all written books and we got together to discuss great literature. And can, can you talk a little bit about that? Because I think in some ways, it's a very good example of looking at your life and seeing, yeah, I have this conventional form of richness that everyone, you know, or, or at least I'm fully focused on building a conventional form of richness in terms of my job, my work, my professional success. But where am I actually poor? Where am I missing? And then how do I address that? What sort of actions can I take so that I become richer in this area where I feel actually pretty impoverished?

• 1:06:14Speaker 02

  Yeah, yeah. I mean, I, I knew that having community was important, but I also knew that these notions of wealth needed a place to tangibly reside. You know, it dawned on me when I was, I guess, yeah, around 2013, that wealth in all these different forms were wonderful, you know, great ideas, but unless they were actually lived, they were just good ideas. And when it comes to community, you need a place, you need a location, you know, heartfelt community means like heartfelt, meaning my heart is close to yours. I'm not sitting in, in some faraway location that I rarely see you, but we're, you know, we're having trivial times as well as deep times, as well as effective times. We're experiencing

• 1:06:57Speaker 02

  life as a community. And I didn't feel like there was a place like that. And I also felt that there's my workout place, my home life, my place of worship, my place of, we needed a place where all this could come together. So I went looking for a space and I wanted it to be a beautiful space. And I wanted to be a place that people could both do their business, engage in all these other forms of wealth and be in community together. So from 2017 to 2022, the Align Center was like, you know, I full on, it wasn't until 2022 that I decided to just stop the presses and start, and, and really start getting

• 1:07:39Speaker 02

  serious about the book. Because everybody was asking me like, we love this place and we love what you're doing, but what are you doing? And, and to state the answer takes some time, as this podcast can, you know, indicates. But now with a book, I'm so happy because I don't have to tell this full story all the time. But we, we need places, we need conditions where there's a third place, but not only just a third place for, for its own sake, but a place where all the forms of wealth can really manifest, you know, so we don't have to feel so fragmented. You know, fragmentation really became apparent

• 1:08:14Speaker 02

  to me around 2010, when I invited my best friends to my 50th birthday party. And they all showed up in a, in a round table down in the Meatpacking District. And, you know, my closest Buddhist friends, my closest Jewish friends, my closest basketball friends, my closest work friends, nobody knew each other. And I'm like, what? Nobody knew each other. And it was just the impetus again to sort of, how do I unify my life? Like not just unify, unify the forms of wealth, but unify the community in a place. So I went

• 1:08:54Speaker 02

  searching for a place and I was meditating at Eileen Fisher's headquarters in Irvington. And I saw this gorgeous building with this big, you know, X Smokestack where the Foundry is where they built and built the botanical garden, the frameworks for the botanical gardens many years ago, and the Bronx Zoo and all the great greenhouses. And right underneath that, there is a deck that overlooks the Hudson. And I went to the owner of the property. I just said, listen, if you have an inspirational space, I'm really interested. And he called me up one day and I said, I think I have it. And this was the place. So it was, I saw it as a container that people would enter and find the community,

• 1:09:35Speaker 02

  but also find the other forms of wealth. And it sort of happened. I don't know, you know, you just, you, you go on a path and then other people show up. It's sort of like a little bit of the Wizard of Oz again, you know, that you're on the Yellow Brick Road and people know that what, what you're trying to create is something true, beautiful and good. They want to be part of it. And then a lot of people came, you know, if you build it, they will come was the motto. Actually, when I was at Morgan Stanley, I had a vision of this container on my wall. You know, I had someone, an artist render it. And it was sort of like, you know, it was my, it was my goal to, to make a place like this happen. And because no one else had done it before, in the way that I was doing it, is like, there was a certain craziness to it. It's like, why are you doing this? Why

• 1:10:19Speaker 02

  are you, why are you taking this crazy, you know, you have such a cushy job, you got a good situation, everything's set. But I knew that I was lacking community. I knew that, that a new container needed to be made. And I was getting the positives from the, the breakfast, that everything that I was talking about was resonating. So let's go the full route. And I leased a space for 10 years with another 10 years. I just now leased it for another 10 years. And then I started to build it. And people started to show up. You know, it's hard, it's hardware as a building, the software is the people. And the software just started really coming. And it was beautiful and, and it still is.

• 1:11:00Speaker 01

  I think in some ways what's, I mean, there's a, there's a uniqueness and idiosyncrasy to your situation here. But I think there's something really broadly applicable here to go back to this idea of looking at your life and seeing where you're already rich and where maybe you haven't nurtured different aspects of your life that are going to make you feel richer. So things like the Mind Body Awareness Quadrant that you were talking about, this inner world of emotions and spirituality, of mindful awareness and the like, and, you know, the heartfelt community connection idea, you know, this idea of having, you know, rich relationships with family and friends and community. And part of what I think had a profound effect on me, as we've discussed this over the years, is in a way giving myself

• 1:11:43Speaker 01

  permission to say, actually, I shouldn't just focus on work and family, because there are other forms of wealth. That I need to give myself permission to explore. And that doesn't require me to rent an enormously expensive, beautiful building, right? I mean, it can literally be something like, I mean, you, you and I and Yen Lea, our wonderful friend and investor and brilliant guy and our friend Evan Wildstein is also a brilliant guy who you write about in the book, who's had a great career in private equity. We meet every Friday morning to chat. That is a formal structure that doesn't cost us anything except time, but we're setting

• 1:12:25Speaker 01

  aside time every single Friday morning, pretty much wherever we are in the world to build that friendship and to discuss stuff and build community. And also, I have a friend who's a great writer, who I would schedule Zoom calls with every few months because he lives in Japan and, and we would call and just chat about Proust or something and, you know, or I would go to Costa Rica to visit Chris Beg. And, and, and in a way, those have, those aren't huge things, but in a way, it's really a result of me looking at my life and saying, I actually need more of this because it's not enough for me just, just to be, um, you know, pummeling away at the rock, trying to, trying to break more rock. Can, can you talk about that?

• 1:13:08Speaker 01

  Cause, cause I, I think this relates to all of our listeners. I don't want them to look and just say, well, I can't do this because I don't have enough time or I don't have enough money or whatever. Like there, there are ways that all of us can look at our lives and say, actually, there's something that I'm really neglecting that's leaving me feeling impoverished.

• 1:13:26Speaker 02

  Yeah, it is amazing how just small moves in any of these categories opens up an entire world of fulfillment and you feel the difference and it's, it's that first step that is like, wow, why haven't, why didn't I do this earlier? You know, why didn't I have lunch or dinner once a week with a friend on a Tuesday night, no matter what? Or, you know, why didn't I wake up in the morning and instead of just, you know, working out every other morning and, you know, wake up and just sit and meditate or, you know, learn, you could go within and start a different kind of practice or even just learn about

• 1:14:06Speaker 02

  a subject, you know, take a class at a university on something that had nothing to do related with your career because you just find it fun. I mean, we're sucking the fun out of life if we're trying to perfect one aspect of it. It just gets too serious. And, you know, one of my mottos, if not fun, better left undone. There needs to be some adequacy is important. Perfection is, can be really problematic. Being really good at something is very important. Being perfect in between those two is a very dangerous place to be because it doesn't allow these other forms of wealth to flourish. You need some space, even if it's an hour, you know, the containers are not only in

• 1:14:51Speaker 02

  physical form, they're in time form. And I don't know how many people you know, but many are time poor and very wealthy. And time poor is significantly damaging because from a compassion standpoint, someone calls and needs your help, you're not available. So even if it's just an hour or a day that you take out of time and you call people that, you know, you don't get a chance to speak to, but you know, needs your help. And it's just an hour, right? You didn't create a container, the container was a time container. You cut it out of your schedule and you said, okay, I'm going to call once a day, two people that I know are hurting and I'm just going to be there present and listen to them. Wow. And will that make a difference?

• 1:15:34Speaker 02

  Cause instead of being on your life, conceptually going from thing to thing, you'll actually be in your life, you'll be feeling the connection with other people. And that connection, however you create it, time wise or place wise, or whatever the container you can think of that you can put in place, it makes a huge difference. You know, the thing about showing up is one of the, when you do all four dimensions of wealth, you're showing up fully to your life. And people say, why do I do that? Why do I have to do this? Why do I need to show up in these ways, even in small ways? And because there's a power in who you are that can't fully manifest unless those four dimensions are at some functional level.

• 1:16:19Speaker 02

  And people can feel the difference, like when they would, when I see people go from just one of these dimensions to just two or three, you know, you just see their, their lit upness about life increase. There's more juice in who they are. They're less flat. There's nothing worse than a person who's become flat and narrow over time because their misery level kind of goes up with that. And it's okay to do that for a while. I mean, I did it for decade, you know, a decade or more, but at a certain point you start to realize like, it reminds me like of an athlete. I play basketball and who just shoots from their hands. They don't shoot from their feet. And it means they're not using their whole body to do emotion.

• 1:17:01Speaker 02

  And if you're seeking wealth and you're only working from your arms, let's say in the money side, but you're not working the full body of wealth, you're losing power or you don't have the full power. And when you have the full power, you know it when you meet that person. So when I would meet with somebody, I'm their advisor, you know, I can kind of energetically feel like, oh, is this person really engaged fully? They may be at the top of their game. And because I have credibility in the money part, it's sometimes will come through that, look, you won this game. Okay, you're done. You sold your company or you have the income that you need. Now what are you doing?

• 1:17:43Speaker 02

  And it's a jarring thing because I'll say, you know, you, you won the game. Okay, you hear this, you won the game. Now you have to change the game. And they may not have the education of that. And that's why the map became so important for me because it became a reference point as to what was missing.

• 1:17:59Speaker 03

  Let's take a quick break and hear from today's sponsors.

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• 1:20:18Speaker 04

  And Sunday morning, a group of us were still debating Socrates over breakfast before everyone headed home. Many of the people at those tables had only known each other from our calls in the mastermind community. That is the community I host with Kyle Grieve and Daniel Manca. Each week we get together on live calls to dig into markets and individual businesses. We bring in fund managers, operators and authors as guest speakers. And a few times a year, like New York this fall and Omaha every spring, we meet in person. If you want to think in decades alongside people who do the same, apply for free at theinvestorspodcast.com/mastermind. If your application stands out, I'll be the one to reach out to you personally.

• 1:21:02Speaker 03

  All right.

• 1:21:02Speaker 01

  Back to the show. I think a lot of it also is actually A, recognizing that there are these different forms of wealth, and they really are forms of wealth. Like for me to spend time with my kids, you know, who are now 25 and 28, is a tremendous form of wealth. And I, you know, we talked about this, and I think we write about it in the book, where you had bought your next season tickets as a, you know, as a way to have more fun. You would often take friends or you would lend them to friends. And I took my son, Henry, and at the end, I dropped him off at his apartment on the Upper West Side at the time. And as he was getting out of the car, he said to me, you know, that, that was a, a highlight. And then

• 1:21:43Speaker 01

  he paused and he said, of life. And, and so for me suddenly to realize, actually, to go off and spend an evening when I probably have too many deadlines, and to be with my son, who I adore, and, you know, and I still have these amazing photos, these sort of selfies of us, where we're just like beaming, you know, just like, like we couldn't smile more broadly. And we're just sort of shouting and screaming and singing and making wisecracks the whole way through. And I know nothing about basketball at all. And, you know, to understand that that's a form of wealth has been very transformative for me.

• 1:22:19Speaker 02

  Yeah, that's a blessing to hear that story. And it's what I hope for everybody is that they pick up on a form of wealth that they're not really given full credence. You know, it's another thing about being in my position is like, I could, you know, I could say, at least with some level of experience, that, you know, yes, you know, succeeding monetarily and financial abundance is super important, but you have to actually equalize it with these other forms of wealth, because they are waiting to give you this level of fulfillment. They're just standing on the sideline and saying, look at me, you know. But because we're so conditioned, you know, sort of the inner, you know, an inner life is considered woo woo, which is ridiculous. And maybe because a bunch of people who did

• 1:23:03Speaker 02

  that didn't really live functional lives. But it, it, it has such compelling value. It's incredible. Or, you know, heartfelt connection to have that really in your schedule and in your place. It's so wildly valuable. Or to just understand and sit with people who understand the world and learn from them, and really get it as to how things are going on in the world. It's just so powerful, that if you have these resonating at a, to me, just a functional level, or just a little bit more than you had before, if you, if you stop just triumphalizing, just the, the work and wealth abundance quadrant as, as

• 1:23:45Speaker 02

  all, it makes a big difference. So I'll just say really plainly, what I've tried to do on a very practical level, is take the book of the number, just the number, your net worth, and instead of looking at it as one number, looking at it as seven numbers. It goes from a single number to a dashboard. And you can look at these, you know, the four that we discussed break down further to seven essentials. And if you look at your life from the point of view of the seven essentials, you can essentially evaluate yourself subjectively, like, do I have enough of that? Or do I not have any of that? And what does that even mean? And the difference is that the number will bring you achievement.

• 1:24:27Speaker 02

  And I think that's really important. I don't want to denigrate that at all. But if you have the seven numbers functional, or these different forms of wealth functional, the payback is enormous. And I know that because not just for myself experientially, but from other people who have responses to engaging in all forms of wealth as, just like earlier on, where I said Napoleon Hill said, thoughts are things. Well, wealth are things. These are, these are forms of wealth. And if you take them seriously, they will bring rates of return that, you know, no portfolio can do.

• 1:25:02Speaker 01

  One of the things that's unusual about the book is that it focuses a lot on the wealth of your inner world, your inner landscape. Actually, before the book gets to the subject of building financial abundance and professional success, these things that are in the outer world. And part of the discussion of this focus on the inner world is really about meditation and dealing with your habitual counterproductive patterns of behavior and the like. Can you talk a little bit about why this is a form of wealth? Because a lot of people listening to this or watching this, who are sort of real go getter, ambitious,

• 1:25:42Speaker 01

  driven types, are not going to be that willing to sit on a cushion, look at themselves and say, well, it's really important for me to do this inner journey. Like, how can you convince us that this inner journey is in fact a form of wealth, and that it will yield riches in your life?

• 1:26:01Speaker 02

  Yeah. Well, let's just talk about the, we go from more tangible to less tangible. Let's, let's talk about this, you know, the first one, which is your psychological state and understanding it better. We all know what it's like to get in our own way. You know, you know what that term is? Like, you're getting in your own way. It could be that you're angry too much, or that you want too much, or that you are prideful too much, or that...

• 1:26:28Speaker 01

  Yeah, I'm taking each of these things as you go along. Yeah, yeah. Keep describing my flaws, Matt.

• 1:26:34Speaker 02

  You know, you're too ambitious, or you're too, you know, you're too much of an animal. There's parts of you, sometimes that get activated, and that maybe you could see it, you know, not like through Harvey's window I mentioned earlier, but maybe you could see it, but you can't control it. So it's kind of a, what I learned to call the beautiful monster. And I know you interviewed Salk尼Riposhay on your podcast, and he's the one who termed, gave that term. But it's the kind of monster that's, that creeps up on you, and all of a sudden, like your wife will look at you and go, I'm sorry, but what happened over dinner, dear? Why were you so crazy in that dinner? Or your kids look

• 1:27:14Speaker 02

  at you and go, whoa, what happened to dad? Something triggered. And when you have a sense of what your trigger is and why it's there, it's kind of a monster, and it's a part of you you don't like. And it's, it's you getting in the way of yourself. And you know, because you're uncomfortable with it, and you probably hide it. And there's a lot of power in that. It's beautiful, because it's got a huge amount of powers. If you could, instead of putting it through your ego, you can get it out of your ego and just take the power directly. And how do you do that, is the question. And there's, there's kind of the informal way and the formal way. The formal way, of course, is to do in therapy, and allowing

• 1:27:54Speaker 02

  yourself to see and talk about your monsters. My daughter Dana is a, a somatic therapist, because oftentimes, these things get locked into your body. And she helps people free themselves from, from their, their past traumas and things that triggered them. Or just regular, you know, talk therapy. I remember my kids came to me at a certain point in life and said, hey, dad, you know, you always say that if you're not meditating, you're not in therapy, you don't really know who you are, and you don't know your inner life. And they said, it's great that you've been meditating your whole life, but hmm, maybe you want to try therapy. So I did it, and it had me in bed for two days, because there were things I just couldn't see. And I'm just so happy I could see them. Like, for instance,

• 1:28:38Speaker 02

  I would never get involved in a conversation that wasn't positive. Like, if you wanted to go negative on me about something, and tell me something terrible, and, and really, you know, you were feeling it and feeling bad as a result, I just, you know, I would turn things to a positive conversation. My therapist called it, you know, going left. I wouldn't go into basketball, I would, a lot of people always go right, because they're right-handed, and they don't want to go left. And in a way, I could go both ways of basketball, but I couldn't do it in my psychology. And then I realized the great value of sitting with someone in a negative situation, that all the juice that I was missing in life by not, by so preferencing always being positive. And it was stunning. It was just stunning. But the energy that it released in me, to be able to be full-hearted with somebody,

• 1:29:23Speaker 02

  no matter where they were going, it changed me.

• 1:29:26Speaker 01

  Yeah. So if they were in pain, or were experiencing something really difficult, being, being willing to go there, instead of always being in sort of the power of positive thinking, sales mode?

• 1:29:36Speaker 02

  Exactly.

• 1:29:37Speaker 01

  I think, I think another thing you talked about, I, I think this in the book where you talk about going to therapy and finding that you have like thirteen beautiful monsters that you named another of them, which kind of totally jives with what we were talking about before with your, your hard driving success and on Wall Street, you called the win guy. And I mean, if, if you're thinking about how to apply Sogyal Rinpoche's techniques of dealing with beautiful monsters, like, how do you deal with that? Like, if you go to a party and you sort of see yourself telling everyone, and then I went to the University of Chicago Business School, and then I became very, you know, like, when you start seeing yourself in that sort of sales mode, like, what do you do?

• 1:30:21Speaker 02

  Well, you just, you just, you just, um, you just identified it, you know, before I wouldn't know that was happening because it was in a shadow. But it used to be that I would come into a room, right? Because I was programmed to, you know, achieve some result. And I would be part of the conversation, the way that would direct the conversation. And like many, you know, people, I don't know what to characterize them, it would take up more space than I really should have. And initially I didn't see that. And then I started to see it. And then I started seeing other people. Like, it was embarrassing. And so the first thing is just naming it, right?

• 1:31:00Speaker 02

  It doesn't wrong. Everybody does something that's off. And I started to, oh, there I go. So when I would get into a room and the trigger would go, because, you know, all the men would pony up their credential in, in a men's group and it'd be like, oh, I can't wait till I get talked about mine. And then it was like, oh, there's my beautiful monster. And the thing about a beautiful monster is you have a few options. You could put an antidote to it. You can could try to knock it out. You can repress it. You could do all sorts of things to it. But the thing that really transforms it that Sogyal Rinpoche taught is you just invite it with some level of compassion. I mean, it's there for a reason.

• 1:31:43Speaker 02

  It doesn't want to harm you. It's doing what it was conditioned to do. So instead of saying, oh, there I go again, I'm such a fool, you know? You just be kind with it and you don't do anything. Literally, you just sit next to it and just observe it. Because you actually have to go in it and be kind to it and just say, okay, here I go. I see what's happening. And if you notice it long enough, and you start to observe yourself, it actually starts to subside. Because A, you see it in a different light. And B, you're not, you know, you don't need to indulge it. You don't need to repress. You just need to be with it as a friend. That's why it's beautiful. Because ultimately, it's you. It's a part of you that you don't like. And you don't want to

• 1:32:28Speaker 02

  cut off a part of you you don't like. You wanted to invite it in and just let it have a seat at the table, but don't give it too much room. You know, it's like, it's, it's there. So and after a while, I got very familiar with it. And then it kind of just, over time, became less of a nuisance. And now I look, I admire, I always admire great men and women who come to a table. And again, it's like my dad's quality. They could just be happy being in the room without even people noticing. That to me is the mark of a person, you know, in Judaism, they have a thing called Bittl. My rabbi is really good at this. It means not here. And you're not here, not because you don't want to be seen. But because, you know, you want to love other people and give them space to be themselves in front of you and for you to witness them.

• 1:33:13Speaker 02

  And that beautiful monster stopped that from happening. So once I was able to kind of subdue that monster a little bit, or be, you know, not subdue, that's not the right word, befriend it. I was able to really be present to my friends in a way that was less assertive and more open hearted.

• 1:33:31Speaker 01

  Yeah, I, Sogyal Rinpoche is an extraordinary teacher and he, he came on the podcast with Dan Goldman, a mutual friend of ours, who I think you introduced me to, actually. Amazing, amazing guy who wrote a book called Why We Meditate. They wrote it together. And I just found that whole practice, the whole idea of beautiful monsters really helpful. And, you know, he, he talks about handshake practice. And this idea of really, you know, these different steps that you write about in your book as well, where you notice this kind of psychological pattern, this imprint from childhood or whatever it is. And you kind of notice it in your body. And so you see when you're, you know, maybe it's a

• 1:34:10Speaker 01

  fear of being unlovable or doubting your own self-worth, or a terror of failure or whatever. And, and you kind of feel it in your body. Where it is, and then you sort of sit with it. And instead of trying to wrestle it into submission, I think what's so beautiful about what Sogyal does is this sense of like, you know, he said once, you know, I think, you know, one day we will be friends with all of our beautiful monsters. So there's this sense of like, pulling up this blanket for these little parts of us. And being gentle and tolerant with them. And then he says, you know, then they open up. But not because you're trying to change them or heal them, but actually because you're willing to be with them, they open up sort of counterintuitively.

• 1:34:51Speaker 02

  And, and I love what you said it, you said the magic word, you need to feel it. Like intellectually, it's okay to know this. You need, the first step is intellectually understanding it. But then, when you feel, when the monster shows, or the beautiful monster shows, you want to feel where it's happening in your body, because that's, energy can be helpful to you. You know, you're not, you're not pushing it away. You're actually feeling it where it is in the body. And you just stay with the feeling. Don't go away. Because underneath that is a sense of okayness. Underneath that is a sense of love and, and you know, self-acceptance, self-compassion. There's something beautiful that happens when you feel that beautiful monster come up.

• 1:35:32Speaker 02

  And if you can identify, I did, I found thirteen, if you can identify even one or two, your wife or your husband will thank you.

• 1:35:41Speaker 02

  I know now, I know now, instead of getting a look from my wife, hey, Matt, you know, come on, man. You know, I know that afterwards she goes, wow, that was, you've really, you know, this was, you know, a bunch of years ago, wow, man, I really, you know, I'm grateful. And because, you know, it was, it's, it's not helpful to her.

• 1:35:59Speaker 01

  Yeah, I think I've way surpassed you on the beautiful monster. I have way more, way more of these, these terrible, these terrible aspects of myself that I've suppressed. And I, so I think, I think this gets to one of the big themes in the book, right? Which is that we kind of have to go on this inner journey if we want to have a truly rich life, because otherwise there are all of these patterns under, you know, that subconsciously or unconsciously are pushing us to behave in ways that are, that are likely to hurt us and the people around them. And, and so there's a, there's a recurring, there's a recurring theme, both in your life and in the book about the, the benefits of meditation.

• 1:36:38Speaker 01

  And as a way of kind of seeing, seeing those patterns of seeing the way we behave, seeing how the mind kind of does crazy things. But I remember once introducing you to a, a good friend of mine who's a very successful hedge fund manager. And you were talking to him about meditation. He was worried that it would hurt him professionally because somehow it would blunt his edge. And yet, there's also this sense that meditation may be a really good investment for all these people like, you know, Ray Dalio, or these friends of ours, like, you know, Josh Tarasoff, or Geng Liao, or Christopher Tsai, or Samantha McElmore, all of these really smart fund managers who meditate a lot.

• 1:37:15Speaker 01

  Can you talk about that, about why, why meditation, this act of sort of sitting on a cushion or a chair and going nowhere, might actually be a really good investment for people who feel like they should just be charging harder and harder?

• 1:37:30Speaker 02

  Yeah, I could do it in a, in a physical example that I learned from Amy Edelstein. I thought it was a really good way for people who don't know much about meditation. I mean, to some extent, if you have a thought that you're super attached to, and you have patterns that you're really attached to, and you have your business ambition that you're really attached to, it's sort of like, imagine your hand as that subject and you literally put it to your eyes like this. And the question is, you know, what can you see with your hand over your eyes? You, you can just see like, exactly what's in front of you. There's nothing kind of else available to you. But in meditation, you're not stopping the hand. You're not like, oh, let's get the hand away. What's happening in meditation is you're pulling your hand away from your eyes.

• 1:38:14Speaker 02

  And now, instead of, you're still seeing your hand, right? But you're seeing everything around in the context of what's happening, which is your awareness and the object. So I'll put it in the form of mindful awareness. When you're mindful, you're concentrating on something. It could be your business, it could be anything that you need to concentrate on. But the full surround is unseen if you're too attached. So in kind of ways, you're unskillful because you're not getting the full context of your action. Whereas if you give it some space, if you're able to just see it with a little bit more distance and relaxation, then you're going to see the full circumference. And I'll give it as a sports analogy.

• 1:38:58Speaker 02

  It's like if you're playing basketball and you're looking at the hoop because you're a point guard, which I was, you know, but you're not looking at the full like court and who's hurting and who's really strong and who's moving and what's happening strategically. Then all your mindfulness on this one attachment is not going to be as skillful. So in a way, giving yourself some space or giving your thoughts some room to be seen fully is going to allow other signals in. There's, there's no room for, for the world to come in if you're driven by a storyline. And you can't see your storyline if you're this, imagine this is your storyline, right? You're, I'm a, I'm a financial advisor, I gotta make money, blah, blah, blah, blah.

• 1:39:40Speaker 02

  You know, whatever it is that your storyline is at that moment, you basically ignore the rest of reality. There's nothing profound about it. There's nothing sensitive about it. It's basically a triggered state. And it may be a very effective state in giving you, you know, what you need for that moment. But really, if you live your life like this, you could be running into walls, you could be running over people, you could be missing the most biggest signal, you could be on the wrong mountain.

• 1:40:06Speaker 01

  I think one of the things that I notice with you, often just having been friends with you for eight years or so, is, is that you're, you're very good in dealing with other people, in being present enough that you kind of see what they're feeling and what they're thinking. You can tune into them, whereas I think often we get, you know, so triggered or so fixated on what it is we have to do, that there's a sort of narrowing of attention. And I'm, I'm curious about what you've figured out about how actually to relate to other people. So you're sort of meeting them where they are. Because, I mean, you're particularly good at dealing with people who are, who are difficult or very different from you, or pretty triggered in that moment.

• 1:40:51Speaker 01

  Like, what are you bringing to bear in those moments? Because I think this whole concept of relationships is also, you know, the subject of relationships is huge in the book, right? Like this sense that if you don't have good relationships, there's a, there's a great form of poverty.

• 1:41:06Speaker 02

  Yeah. You know, there's, one of our teachers is a great teacher in Nepal. And one day I asked her, I said, you know, could you tell your story? And she said, I'm not gonna tell my story. I only talk about two things. I talk about wisdom and I talk about compassion. And I think, you know, compassion is a understated form of wealth. The ability to kind of drop your story so that other people have the opportunity to come in and you can fully see them. And what that requires is to, you know, have a, a heart that's first compassionate to yourself, you know? We're not perfect people by any means. So if, how we treat ourselves is actually how we treat other people.

• 1:41:48Speaker 02

  So if you're kind to yourself, which I'm hoping everybody is, and oftentimes not, then it's very easy to be kind to other people. But if you're not kind to yourself, if you haven't done your work psychologically or spiritually, and you're not really great friends with yourself, it's gonna be hard for you to befriend other people. Because how you treat yourself is how you treat other people too. And it's not just, so it is certainly, it starts with the motivation to be of benefit to other people. And what I realize over time, here's another, you know, obvious, but needs to be stated and needs to be like really relished, is that the greatest rate of return is, you know, being helpful to other people. And it wasn't until I built the center that I realized just how huge that is, you know,

• 1:42:32Speaker 02

  cause and effect occurs. And you're not doing it for the benefit for yourself, but you really, if you, if you have an altruistic motivation, you know, I often say, you know, if you want to know that something's holistic, what do you, what do you do? Well, you do something that's, and this is accordance with the four quadrants, the true or the outer quadrants, the upper left one, the one that's subjective is beautiful, and the one that's with other people, that's in culture is good. So in a way, how do you check yourself? You always say, am I, what am I doing? Is it true? Is it beautiful? Is it good? And the good really matters. If you did nothing in your day, except focus on the normal day that you have, but open up your heart to the goodness side, just add that like spice, you know, to everything.

• 1:43:17Speaker 02

  No matter what happens, before you start a meeting, how you doing? And William could tell you, if we have meetings, where I start with a thing called check-in and clear. You know, how are you? You're not a robot. You, you came here to discuss a topic in business or to get something done, but I actually first care about you. How are you? And, and maybe even, is there something that I could be helpful with right off the bat? So we can have a real good conversation. What do you need to clear? And check-in and clear is a big part of my interaction when we do, do in groups. But on a minor scale, just when I meet people, it's not like, oh, let's get something done. It's like, okay, how you doing? Before, let's connect. I don't believe in business that's not personal. It's, everything's personal.

• 1:44:02Speaker 02

  This is all subjective experience happening, as well as objective experience. You can't segment one from the other. So the intention of being of benefit and being connected is as important as being wise. And so I take it pretty seriously. It requires me to drop my own lens and drop my story so that there's room for someone else to come in. If you're full of yourself, literally, where are people gonna find a, a place to be? There is no place. So there is an intellectual part of this. We are all at different stages in our lives. It is important to understand that not everybody's the same stage you are. And this then takes us into, you know, how do we open up our heart more and more?

• 1:44:47Speaker 02

  And, and I think that requires some understanding of adult development. There are people who are more egocentric. That's where they are. They're gonna fight, they're gonna be at the level of maybe even tribal, and no matter what you're gonna do, that's their level of development. And yelling at them and beating them up and doing whatever you can, you know, it's not gonna change them. They have a lens just like you do. Hopefully, your lens is one that you can let go of to be with them. But they're gonna come with you at a lens. Or let's say they're very traditional people, and they're very religious people, or they're very much doing what their parents did. There's this, a certain beauty to being traditional. And when I'm with a traditional person, I want to honor their traditional side and

• 1:45:32Speaker 02

  kind of be in that traditional mode. And when I'm with the Wall Street people who may be more achievement oriented, which is another level of development, you know, I want to honor their, their competitiveness. I want to honor the work they've done. I want to honor the business they built, or the work they got, or the, you know, the fact that they've made money for their family and have, you know, their kids send their kids to college. But there's also people I'll meet who don't care about that at all. They only care about the people who are not doing well, the postmodern people who are like, you know, we have to make sure that everybody's, you know, doing okay. And, you know, maybe a more progressive group, a more liberal group, and their heart may

• 1:46:17Speaker 02

  be wildly open, and they need you to confirm that yours is too. And so at that moment, that's the lens of that particular person. And, you know, these, there are certain patterns that are just endemic in the lenses in the United States today. And when you meet someone, they tend to be resonating towards one of these three different lenses. You know, a good portion of the conservative world is very traditional, a good portion of the independent world is very modern, a good portion of the, you know, more progressive world is a postmodern liberal. And there's a new development, which is an integral person. An integral person is a person who can

• 1:47:00Speaker 02

  Be with any of these types of people, but also see the positives and negatives of that viewpoint. So for instance, if I'm with a conservative person, you know, I may see the fact that there's an up-stem mentality that I may not want to participate in. But in their group, they are amazing. And, you know, they've done some, they take duty and honor, really play a big role, and I honor that. And if I'm with a modern group that's all about achievement, they may not care about the losers. So they go into a room, you know, you see people come in who are strict achievers, and they're all carreting a corner with the people who are successful. But the young woman or the older person that's sitting in the corner is not being talked to, is not valued from maybe, you

• 1:47:43Speaker 02

  know, again, this is sort of the downside of an achievement view, if you're just viewing it as winners and losers. And so knowing your lens and knowing the upside of it and the downside of it, you know, if you're a postmodernist, it may be that you become sort of sanctimonious about your view, like, how could a person be a capitalist or a traditionalist? And if you could see the downside and the upside of your lens, when I meet people who are, you know, very strongly in one of these camps, I can be with them as they are, and I can see the limitations, and then I can try to be more integral, try to be less judgmental, be compassionate to each person as you meet them, in their conditioned sense that I'm discussing right now. I don't have to just talk about these

• 1:48:27Speaker 02

  three, but they seem to be very big, right, at a point now where we're a country at odds with each other.

• 1:48:33Speaker 01

  Yeah. For people who don't know, I mean, there's more discussion of this in Matt's book, because it's all very much related to this framework of Ken Wilber's, where there's this map of these stages of development. And there's, and so there's a sort of theory behind some of the terminology, you know, talking about

• 1:48:49Speaker 02

  Yeah, yeah, yeah. I don't want to go too far a while on the terminology, but you're right. If you, in the book, these are levels of development that one needs to study. And I needed to study this, so I could understand, you know, why people are the way they are. Because the way I'm most compassionate is if I can understand what person's coming from. But on a personal basis, not just on this more adult development theory level that Ken Wilber describes, that I describe in my book, everybody's hurting. You know, everybody's suffering to some extent. And I'd like to think that's not the case, but it is the case. There's not a person I meet, who's, if they're being really honest, is not suffering in some way. And William points out, like, I'm very interested in that, because,

• 1:49:33Speaker 02

  you know, if I want to be of benefit, the way I can be most beneficial is by hearing that and not letting that get covered over. And, and then be, you know, try to be of support, in a way that's helpful that way. And I'm not like inappropriately, I don't like, oh, how are you suffering? But just to know that people are suffering, I don't care where they are. They could be people, you know, there could be people who are living in the best circumstances, but they're constantly checking their portfolio. They're suffering of this maintenance, constant maintenance. Or they're striving a position that they're not getting, and they're not getting credit. Or they're, you know, a woman at the table who's not really being seen, because she's relegated as the woman at the table. You

• 1:50:15Speaker 02

  know what I mean? There's so many ways that people suffer that go unnoticed. And I think, you know, if we can pay more attention to that when we're with somebody, not just on the wisdom side, and, you know, be brilliant, be brief and be gone, but actually be with people and see the suffering, how can I be helpful, and maybe just, you know, give a hug, or, or say something that's a little bit of relief to someone. To me, that's a really valuable day. And if I could do that, my day becomes so much more valuable.

• 1:50:49Speaker 01

  I never really had any knowledge of Ken Wilber. And so for me, it was like a crash course to work with you on the book, and to have to study it, and to look at the stages of development. And just, you know, I'm never going to become a big expert on this, but from my point of view, what was revelatory, was this, it really tells us, with something that a great capitalist, Rav Ashlag, said, where he just said, we're all unripened fruit. And so you just get the sense, we're all at different stages of our evolution. Societies go through a different cultures, different countries, different individuals. And so looking at other people as being superior or inferior, in a sort of very judgmental or dismissive way, is actually just not very helpful, because we're all just going through

• 1:51:34Speaker 01

  these processes. And so, and you can look at your own life and be like, well, here was a phase where I was totally hell-bent on just getting ahead and making money, and I would trample over people or whatever. And you're like, well, of course, you know, that was the phase I was going through. And so for me, it's been helpful, because it's, you know, I'm a pretty judgmental person, both of myself and of other people. And I think this kind of perspective of the stages of development that we're all going through has just helped me a little bit to be like, oh, well, of course, they're that way, because that's the experience that they've had. And that's, that's the background they're from. And, and so it's helped me, I think, a little bit loosen my intolerance. And also then

• 1:52:17Speaker 01

  just, just that sense from Ken Wilber, that the evolution is towards being more integral, which involves being able to carry more perspectives. And so instead of just saying, I have the whole picture, you start to realize, well, actually, this other person has a different part of the picture that I'm totally ignorant of. And so it makes you a little bit more respectful of the gifts that other people bring. And just to finish this, this ridiculous monologue, I love

• 1:52:47Speaker 02

  No, no, no, no. It's good. It's good. You're getting it.

• 1:52:50Speaker 01

  I loved the phrase that I learned from you, where Wilbur would talk about transcending and including. And so it's not like, as you become more evolved, you look down on the things before, and you're like, well, I'm too wise now to care about money or whatever, or I'm, I'm too intellectual to care about, you know, going to a football match with my tribe. It's like, no, you include those things. You include the beauty of each level.

• 1:53:15Speaker 02

  Exactly.

• 1:53:16Speaker 01

  The desire to be with your family, the desire to have a Shabbat dinner, or

• 1:53:20Speaker 02

  Totally.

• 1:53:21Speaker 01

  Pray four times a day, or whatever it might be. But you also can transcend them and include other perspectives.

• 1:53:28Speaker 02

  Exactly, exactly. Yeah. You know, when I can be fully traditional with my rabbi, it's a beautiful thing. But if I'm, you know, doing more achieving type stuff, I don't have to forget about that. I can transcend into a different thing and include that. The worst thing is when you transcend into higher states, quote unquote, and exclude. And I'll just use, and people know, in the East, there's these notions of chakras, like lower ones, like your hunger, and your heart, and your head, and your spirit. Imagine somebody who says, like, I'm just a head, but I don't have a hunger. I'm not, I don't have a lower chakra. I don't have a heart. I'm just all intellect. Like, there's something wrong.

• 1:54:11Speaker 02

  You can't just transcend up. You need to include your full self. And so, when you're a teenager, you're a certain way. And when you're an adult, you're a certain way. When you're a grandparent, you're a certain way. But you don't transcend just to be, you don't just become a grandparent. And there's still the child in you. There's still the adult in you, that you can always call upon. And it's a shame when people get older, and they forget about the child in them, or the teenager in them. Because that was a stage of your development that you still carry. And sometimes you need to call upon it. So when you can get multi, the word you use, multi-perspectival, like, you can get like, up and down the chain,

• 1:54:52Speaker 02

  and connect at any level with any person, where they're at, not where you're at. And knowing that it takes a whole lifetime to fully develop. The idea that when I meet somebody that they're the same level as me is ludicrous. We're all going to be at different levels and different aspects of our life. And we have to accept that, and just, you know, find joy where we agree. And if we find joy where we agree, then when we have differences, it's not so terrible. You know, you're just coming from a different place. It's okay. You know, we're starting with love and connection. And I've been where you are, or I haven't been, and maybe I can learn from you. So, yeah. Thank you for doing that rundown, William. That's helpful to

• 1:55:34Speaker 01

  It's certainly been helpful for me to apply it. I think it's been a very helpful, sort of overarching perspective of life, and the kind of trajectory we're on in general of becoming like, more open-minded and more tolerant, hopefully, and less judgmental. And I figure there are people who are infinitely more evolved than me, who are looking at me like a sort of two-year-old child, you know, stumbling and having tantrums.

• 1:56:00Speaker 02

  Yeah. And look, you know, we're all evolving. And my hope is to be like a grandparent, which I am right now, and see the children and not get so upset when they're misbehaving. We're seeing the teenagers and just accepting them. You know, not that I'm not going to push them further along on their evolution. And we forget, we think everyone should act at the stage of development that we're at on all things. And it's not fair. People need time to evolve. And we're still evolving, which is beautiful, you know. And we're evolving in our understanding of the world, the truth part. We're evolving in our hearts. And we're evolving in our, you know, in our inner life. And that's a great thing. And we're all doing it in different ways. We're all climbing the right mountain in the way that we, you

• 1:56:43Speaker 02

  know, that we're each called to do so. And, and if our hearts are open, and we're compassionate, we're helping people do the same.

• 1:56:51Speaker 01

  I don't want to neglect the whole aspect of building wealth abundance, which is an important aspect of the of the book and of your career.

• 1:56:58Speaker 02

  You mean I'm a wealth manager? We should talk about financial.

• 1:57:02Speaker 01

  And and we've been so focused on these other forms of wealth that I I don't I don't want to.

• 1:57:07Speaker 02

  You don't want to transcend and exclude.

• 1:57:09Speaker 01

  No, exactly. And so I want to talk a bit about this very important aspect of the book. And this is this is a chapter that I worked on very closely with you because I think it's a really important. You've figured out some really important principles and insights that you're using with very sophisticated clients, you know, who often have tens of millions or hundreds of millions of dollars. I mean, these are, these are people who could go anywhere to get advice. And so part of what was a pleasure for me and working on the book was that we were sort of saying, look, you can learn what Matt does with these ultra sophisticated clients. And, you know, you you pay whatever it is, twenty nine dollars for a book and figure out what it is he does with clients. It's really helpful. You set up your firm aligned wealth management in two thousand and thirteen,

• 1:57:54Speaker 01

  and you really rejected a lot of the practices of Wall Street, like the stuff that you'd become disillusioned with, like the hardcore sales tactics and the conflicts of interest and the lavish fees and the misalignment of incentives and stuff. And you created really a very simple way of investing. And it's built on a handful of really foundational principles. And and I don't want to belabor this, but I, you know, a huge part of what you do when you get a new client is actually kind of educate them and talk through your beliefs about what works in investing, what drives markets up over long term. Can can you just talk about two or three of those really foundational principles

• 1:58:38Speaker 01

  that actually are sort of the foundation for what you give a client so that they they actually can invest in a way that's not super stressful and it's not super complicated? And it's not, you know, because as we'll discuss, a big part of what you do is actually very consistent with what we've discussed before, which is you're trying to invest in a way that's consistent with a kind of calm, peaceful way of life that's relatively spacious. And so this is not a matter of manic day trading, you know, four hundred times a day.

• 1:59:09Speaker 02

  Exactly, exactly. I call I call it, a friend of mine, Mark Habner, came up with the term invest and relax. And I was, I realized that unless we come up with a way of investing that allows you the forms of wealth to pay attention to, then we're not creating a container that's actually going to work. So we need to create a financial structure that allows you to invest and relax and have confidence. And it starts with understanding what doesn't work, you know, because there's a lot that doesn't work. And I found most of my career was keeping clients away from what doesn't work. And I've had some very interesting episodes along the way on people I've met that, you know, seem to work, but actually don't.

• 1:59:51Speaker 02

  So just, you know, the ones that I found that don't work was, and I was there when, you know, this, the sort of the mutual fund business and the money management business, you know, really, there were no records to be seen and people were doing it based on reputation. And then in oh eight, when the numbers came out and like a lot of people were disillusioned and they started really studying performance, I started to see that the chances of me finding the people that William know that can actually do it are very slim. And if I could find them, the getting access to them was very difficult. And for the, you know, for most clients, these are so few and far between. And even if you can find them, the chances that there is a consistency in the performance also becomes chancy.

• 2:00:37Speaker 02

  So, you know, finding the right manager or finding the right time to get in the market. Also, you know, we all, we all know the history of people trying to do that and how difficult that is to get in and out and the cost of that. And also just the price that you pay as you trade things. And there's just so much that was not working that I had to sit down again for us principles and say, okay, what does work? And I, I was lucky enough to, you know, graduate from Chicago Business School and see, early on, on Morgan Stanley basket trading, where the institutions were creating, you know, big baskets and buying them at once. And then I started to see, oh, the performance of these baskets were just as good as individual stocks with less volatility.

• 2:01:22Speaker 02

  And they may not, you know, have the upside, but they certainly don't, you know, the crazy upside, but they also don't have the crazy downside, but they had a very respectable rates of return. So I very early on was, you know, in the in the world of ETFs. I remember like trying to get information about them. You couldn't even get them and they were just so few. And actually went to the heads of Morgan Stanley because Dimensional Funds, which does indexing, you had to do as an independent person and an independent RIA. But I tried to get them on the Morgan Stanley platform, but it was very difficult at the time. And and it became institutionally difficult. But what happens is the ETF world just really picked up.

• 2:02:03Speaker 02

  And people now have access to groups of portfolios in one stock that really made things quite easy. So when I looked at what didn't work, I then said, okay, well, what does work? And then I started studying the models that were coming out of Chicago and looking at the work that what Dimensional was doing. And I said, you know, this makes a lot more sense rather than try to pick the right hedge fund, try to pick the right private equity manager. And when I looked at the track records over long periods of time, it just seemed like, oh, if I could just own these portfolios and hold them, I would do well. And I actually started to think like, why are my clients that are wealthy making so much more money than clients that don't?

• 2:02:45Speaker 02

  And I was realizing, well, they don't need to sell and they could live through volatility. So it actually informs my portfolio structure, which I'll go into in a second. But just staying with the principles of having widely diversified portfolios, I realized also that every year, all the prognosticators out the other track records of what's going to happen next year, when studied, is quite foolish and quite poor. So that having a market opinion was really interesting and can make you a very interesting person at a cocktail party. But oftentimes, when you affect it, you know, if I look at the record of the person who's speaking, which was seldom given, you know, they may have been correct on one, but they weren't correct on all their market calls.

• 2:03:30Speaker 02

  And as soon as they made one bad market call, you spent so many years trying to make it up, it didn't work. So I said, well, how can I bring someone to invest and relax with this kind of background? And I started to look at, you know, the fact that there's a random walk and that there's a normal distribution behind the rates of return, which means that if I'm rolling dice once or twice, I don't know what I'm going to get. But I know if I roll it a thousand times, sevens is going to come up primarily. And I noticed, of course, that the market is similar, that there's a randomness, but there's a long term underlying pattern. So I started to not accept portfolios that weren't long term in nature.

• 2:04:11Speaker 02

  I would say like, look, if you're not going to invest with me for ten years where I can get a lot of rolls, you know, I'm not so interested in what's trying to make money for the next year. That's just, you know, that's kind of a tough thing. I could act like I know, but I don't know. And I started to also realize that there was so much information now out there that the idea that I could have a view that was different, that really made a difference, became tougher and tougher to get, be a value added in performance. And I started looking at the managers and performance and seeing how tough it was to out compete the marketplace. So of course.

• 2:04:48Speaker 01

  I want to pause there to underline a couple of things you've said that are

• 2:04:51Speaker 02

  Please do.

• 2:04:52Speaker 01

  really important because I think, I think they're sufficiently profoundly important that.

• 2:04:57Speaker 02

  Let's go further.

• 2:05:00Speaker 01

  So the first is, so the first is, in the short term, the market is so wildly unpredictable. The but but as you say, over the long term, it becomes more predictable, like still, still pretty wildly unpredictable. But at least if you, you know, one of the things that that we write about in that chapter is that you would draw on this, this data from the Center for Research in Security Prices, which is CRISP, I guess it's pronounced.

• 2:05:25Speaker 02

  The CRISP from the University of Chicago.

• 2:05:26Speaker 01

  Chicago. And you look at their data and the data from Dimensional Fund Advisors, the DFA funds that you often use. And they would show things like from nineteen twenty six through twenty twenty five, a diversified portfolio of big American businesses, so like the S and P five hundred, generated a return of about ten and a half percent a year. Small cap companies did a bit better, like twelve point six six percent a year. So the whole game in a way. Became a matter of getting people to be willing to take the short term volatility, to handle the fact that every few years you were going to lose 10%, 20%, 50% or whatever

• 2:06:09Speaker 01

  in a really terrible period, so that they could get enough rolls of the dice, so that they could get to the long term, so that they could get this upward trajectory of the market. And part of that is also, I think, built on your belief just in capitalism as a driver of long-term economic growth. Can you talk about that as well? Because I think you're much more of an optimist by nature than I am, but your optimism is built on a century of data.

• 2:06:40Speaker 02

  Yeah, the data confirms my gut on the fact that, you know, there are millions of companies and fundamentally, the workers in those companies come to make, you know, the company better. And implicit in that is to make the world better for their children. And each company has a cost of capital, and unless they're going to beat the cost of capital, they're not going to stay in business. So there's this sort of, my confidence is in, when I have a diversified portfolio, I have hundreds of companies across the entire globe where people are getting up every day to make the company bigger and stronger and better. And on the margin, there'll be, you know, super great companies and ones that are terrible.

• 2:07:24Speaker 02

  But on the whole, it's sort of this upward trajectory of growth and growth above the cost of capital, which of course increases their, you know, cash flows and future earnings and, and the trajectory of their stocks. So I have a great belief in that. And if you look at the market, it seems to be, as Nick Murray terms, Nick Murray is a big teacher of the teachers in the financial world, you know, temporary downs and permanent ups, that in the short run, things can dip, but over time, that impetus to growth, that desire for a better world is what keeps this going.

• 2:08:04Speaker 02

  And to me, it's almost like hope over fear and people getting up to solve problems, no matter what the government does, no matter what the environment is. You know, when COVID came, you know, the credit to my clients, I got very few, if any, phone calls because we are prepared for the fact that in the short run, there's going to be problems, the market go down as much as 50%. But over the long haul, we are going to solve our problems. We're not just going to wake up and go, oh, forget about all these companies, all these employees are just going to, you know, we got a problem, let's like not, not deal with this. That's not going to happen. So I have great optimism in the future, even with AI in front of us right now, and who

• 2:08:46Speaker 02

  knows where that, that brings, but there's, my optimism is in the millions of people that are working at these companies to use AI in a way that's going to help their companies thrive. And, and the owners are motivated to do that as well. And from an investment standpoint, you know, I remain very optimistic about the future and because we're going to solve problems and those problems are not going to be problems that people don't have. No, those are going to be problems that individuals have that are going to cause them to buy products and servitors from all these companies globally. So, yeah.

• 2:09:19Speaker 01

  There's another thing, Matt, that I think is very, very distinctive that I'd like you to explain for a couple of minutes, if you would, about your investment approach, which is what you call your, your three pot.

• 2:09:30Speaker 02

  Three pot portfolio. Okay, I'm happy to discuss that.

• 2:09:33Speaker 01

  Because I think this, this is key because it helps you feel.

• 2:09:38Speaker 02

  It drives completely with.

• 2:09:39Speaker 01

  Yeah. It helps you deal temperamentally with the fact that you've got to get to the long term.

• 2:09:43Speaker 02

  Yeah, the, I had the good fortune of managing an offshore captive insurance company in the nineties and I, and I looked at the structure of an insurance company where you match assets to liabilities. And I'm thinking like, why don't individuals do that? So with an insurance company, you have an insurance reserve, which is for your needs for one to five years. You have, I'm sorry, working capital for one to five years, you have your insurance reserve for five to 10 years, and then you have your surplus portfolio for 10 years plus. And I managed, you know, this portfolio, a rather large portfolio, and I came to think like, why am I managing in this 60/40 fashion in one way for just for a client? Why can't I look at it the same way that insurance company does?

• 2:10:28Speaker 02

  And then look at it psychologically. What I came to come up, what I came up with was, was a three pot portfolio. And for my clients, the way I think about it is the first pot is to take care of their needs in the short run, the one to five years or whatever the short term it is that they want to cover. But it's a psychological point of what will keep them comfortable. Like if the market goes down 50%, how much do you need to have in short-term treasuries, let's say, to make you feel that you're not going to flinch because you believe in the long term? Dan Goldman's wife, Tara Goldman, wrote a book about emotional alchemy, in which he talks about the secure base. We all need security. And when we have that secure base, it's a lot easier for us to handle volatility.

• 2:11:12Speaker 02

  So the inside of the outside of my portfolio structure is that on the inside, you have this feeling of security. So you're worried about the volatility is significantly less because you know you're covered for the point, you know, and for each person it's different. Some people need a lot of security, some people need very little security because they really believe in the future. Others like, I'm not so sure, like I have the same view and much more conservative. So that pot is a little bit larger. Obviously, as I talked earlier, the pot three, which is the 10-year plus is feel full equity. That's the, that's the part that's going to get in a lot of rolls and over time, with the understanding of everybody working for the benefit of the company and, and how it's structured, that the stocks will rise over time. And is it over the case?

• 2:11:56Speaker 02

  No, but it's, it seems like when you look at the numbers, like 90% times when you look at the 10, 15-year time horizons, things double, you know, large diversified portfolios double. But a five to 10-year area I left open because psychologically, right, we want growth in the long term that we don't touch and we leave no matter what goes on in the environment. That's going to allow us to invest and relax. We got the short-term portfolio that is our secure base, that when we get really nervous, we can open up our portfolio and go, ah, I'm, I'm, I'm okay, I'm okay. And then it's pot two, which is five to money for five to 10 years, where, you know, maybe you have a private equity fund, maybe you have your hedge fund, or you have a stock pick that you like.

• 2:12:41Speaker 02

  Like it's where your opinions and your desire to implement your own view of the portfolio can be had. And you should know within five or 10 years whether it's working. It's an investment, it's not a trade.

• 2:12:54Speaker 01

  And it feels like.

• 2:12:55Speaker 02

  I'll just warn you.

• 2:12:56Speaker 01

  It's slightly for a psychological reasons, like it's almost a less a time horizon thing than it's like, this is the bit where you get to play. And I, I've seen you over the years, like, you know, invest in Tesla or buy Bitcoin or buy Google or whatever. And clients of yours have bought racehorses or invested in, you know.

• 2:13:15Speaker 02

  In legal, legal cases or in, or in, you know, fighters or in, it's just all sorts of things over the years.

• 2:13:23Speaker 01

  So in a way, it's keeping that desire to play and speculate and do stuff that's often recklessly foolish and like ringfencing it so it doesn't get out of control?

• 2:13:34Speaker 02

  Absolutely, absolutely. What I found about my own pot two is over time, it's sort of a humbling experience because you get caught up in investing in ways that are of the moment and then later on could be regretful. And I found that true of most of my clients, that pot two initially is larger and then it gets smaller and smaller and smaller over time because it's less reliable, your opinions. But it's fun and I don't want to take the juice out of the portfolio by saying, okay, we're just going to go full bonds here and full indexes and I'll see you later. Like, okay, we could do that. In fact, actually, that is the best thing because then you, you fully invested and relaxed and now you could go work on these other forms of wealth.

• 2:14:18Speaker 02

  But being in the game, seeing what's going on in the market, you know, having some money in, as I do in Tesla or something like that, you know, just as, as my own personal bet on the future, because it's just exciting to me to stay current on these things, you know, is, is psychologically important. So again, from the inside, I want to take care of someone's security psychologically. I want to, in the pot two, for their desires and interests, but I want to contain it. I want to make sure that pot one and pot three are fully embedded. And then pot three, where it's like, my job there is to just educate to the point where the client can truly relax into the structure of that portfolio.

• 2:15:01Speaker 02

  And it's diversification, it's exposure, having, you know, Jamie Dimon and having Elon Musk and having all these people working on their behalf in, in this diversified portfolio and being confident that they want to grow their wealth. And I have a portion of that too.

• 2:15:17Speaker 01

  And so pot three, you talk about in, in this chapter in some detail, like it might literally just be, you know, a selection of ETFs from dimensional funds who apply some, some factors that they favor, like they favor sort of smaller companies and cheaper stocks, more profitable businesses. But you could also just as easily say what you've done for your parents over the years, which is pretty much just buy them the Vanguard Total World Stock ETF or my, my daughter Madeline, I put a small amount in her IRA at one point, and I just used the Dimensional World Equity ETF. And I'm like, that's kind of cool. It's like one fund, 13,000 or so companies. So you don't in a way get that sort of exercised about the details of it.

• 2:16:01Speaker 01

  In a way, it's like, if you're directionally correct and having a really diversified portfolio at a really low cost that you leave for many years, you're okay.

• 2:16:12Speaker 02

  Yeah, it's sort of like it's a portfolio that you'll hold no matter what. You know, and you could do your ETFs in a number of different ways. But it's the way that it's going to work for you. And, you know, I have a way of doing it. You may have a different way of doing it, but we're talking about, we're taking out company risk. Right? If we have three levels of risk in a market, we have the company risk, we have the industry risk of the country risk. You know, we're down to the systematic risk level. If you're getting to the systematic risk level, that's a good measure that the pot three is going to be healthy. Because you're, you're not overweighting these smaller bets. And you're going to get the growth of capitalism over time.

• 2:16:54Speaker 02

  And if somebody says to me, I want to, you know, I like the S and P, even though the S and P has become a very much a technology driven index now. You know, I may ask them to do a little bit more diversification, but to me, it's just as long as it's, it's hitting the systematic risk level in a way that's prudent and that they, that they believe in, then I'm for it and they can invest and relax. And obviously I'm going to give my suggestion on it, but it's one that we both agree on. No matter what happens in the world, we're able to hold our position and set the sail right.

• 2:17:27Speaker 01

  I think there were a couple of things that were revelatory to me as I was helping you work on this chapter. One of which is that you're, you're really, you've, you've designed a way of investing that's conducive to a pretty calm, spacious life. And so it's totally consistent with what we were talking about before, when we were talking about how to build a truly wealthy life. It's like you want to have the freedom to go focus on the stuff that really lights you up and really brings you joy. And so you don't want to be sitting there staring at like, you know, four Bloomberg terminals constantly all day long. Unless, unless that's really, really what, you know, rings your bell.

• 2:18:11Speaker 01

  And the other thing that really struck me is that you, you can't ignore this aspect of building financial wealth. Because what you're actually doing is creating financial conditions in which you can have an abundant life, where you can focus on other stuff that's more important to you. Can, can you, can you just unpack that a little first? Because I think, I, I think it puts the whole investment game in a different perspective. Instead of optimizing for like, am I making 10%? Am I making 8%? You know, it's like, it's just like, set this aside so it recedes into the background.

• 2:18:47Speaker 02

  Are we, are we talking more the, the purpose or are we talking the light up aspect of it?

• 2:18:51Speaker 01

  Whichever you want, dude.

• 2:18:54Speaker 02

  Well, but I'll talk about both. I'll do the individually first. You know, we're here for a reason. We have a mission in our lives. I'm not sure what yours is. We all try to figure that out. We try to climb the right mountain. But you always can tell when someone's on their right mountain and because they're lit up. And they have an energy about them. William's got that energy, obviously. And it's very exciting to be with people that are lit up about their life, but not everybody is. So there's one of the forms of wealth that you could attend to. Once your portfolio is in healthy shape, is focus on what lights you up. And a life and maybe a career that's going to light you up. I meet a lot of executives who sell their company and they're like, okay, what do I do?

• 2:19:37Speaker 02

  You know, I'm afraid to sell this company because if I sell it, I'm not quite sure what I'm going to do. And what they're really saying to me is that I'm very lit up about my business. And once it's sold, like, what's my purpose? So being lit up about your life actually has a structure. And the same thing with people who are starting their careers, you know, what's going to light me up? What's going to keep me excited? What's going to wake me up in the morning to get things going? And it could be business, it could be a portfolio, but when you give yourself time to really look at what's going to constitute a day that's going to get you out of bed excited, that's a design issue. Like I said earlier, you know, if you don't design your life, someone's going to design it for you.

• 2:20:19Speaker 02

  So if you've built the container of a three pot portfolio and you can put money to the background, which, you know, for most of us gives us an incredible opportunity in life that a lot of people don't allow themselves. If you're able to like have your revenues above your expenses and a good portfolio, and you can turn to these other forms of wealth. You know, the first one that I focus on is light up, like what's going to light you up? And thankfully in Japan, and there's two models that I use. One is the ikigai model, which is the reason for being. And it's, I have to say it's a blessing that if we can get our kids to this position, you know, good on you. It's like standing clap, because to me, I wish this for every one of our children.

• 2:21:02Speaker 02

  What it is, is for the child to know and for us to know ourselves, what are you good at? Right? The ikigai is four circles. And I could be not doing it traditionally, but I'm going to say it this way because it's pragmatic. What are you good at? You know? And oftentimes you get clues from other people because they'll tell you. There's a list of those things in my book, but I remember being younger and winning the enthusiasm award. I remember people telling me that I'm good with intangible ideas. I remember like people telling me I like other people. It kind of gave me clues as to what I'm good at, besides my own introspection. But once you know what you're good at, like my daughter who was great at art, you know, like she knew she was great at this. You have to look at not only what you're good at, but what you love to do.

• 2:21:47Speaker 02

  Do you love to do the things that you're thinking about? And again, my daughter, she loves doing art and she's really good at it. Those are two of the four, and you don't need to talk to, you know, you could just do self-reflection and find those two for your reason for being. But the third becomes, starts to get really interesting. It's not only those two, but what's going to help the world? Right? All of a sudden now you, you turn towards doing something meaningful that's going to be of benefit to others. And then the fourth one is what can you get paid for? So if your career has those four components, you're doing what you love. You're doing what you're good at. You're doing something that's going to help the world and you're making money.

• 2:22:31Speaker 02

  That's your ikigai point. That's a reason for being. And it took me till I was 50, till I built the center, that I really found my ikigai point. I didn't have it nailed. My daughter, one of my daughters is a clinical psychologist. She's doing what she loves. She's really good at it. She's getting paid and she's helping people. I mean, boom, done. I'm so happy for that. And I'm happy for another one who's a lawyer for the EPA and she's doing those for as well, as well as my own artist order. It just sort of involuntarily happened, not that it continues for them, but not that it happens for your kids and for you. Because then you wake up in the morning, I'm excited, I love what I do, it's helping the world, I get paid for it. And not everybody can do that. You may need to bifurcate. You do, you know, what you're good at and you get paid for it.

• 2:23:14Speaker 02

  And maybe what you love, but just it's not helping the world. So you go and you do voluntary work separately and that lights you up. Eventually you find your way to all four. So your finances are good, you turn towards your reason for being. Another thing I take a look at with people, and William and I have had this discussion, is I'll meet somebody and I'll say, and this I got from financial planning, first principles with George Kindan, I want to give him great credit for this. But the question becomes, when you look at your life, are you doing what you need to do? Right? Are you making the money that you need to and doing all the requirements? Sort of the meat and potatoes of your life. But then are you doing what your heart really yearns for? And oftentimes the answer is no.

• 2:23:58Speaker 02

  So the question then becomes, if you had all the money that you needed, what would you be doing? What would really, what is your heart really yearning for? I have one client who is written about in the book and his name is Mike Taylor. And Mike, you know, built some of the great foundations of the great buildings in the Northeast. And he was literally digging ditches for his whole life. And then at one point he realized like, he actually is incredibly musical and he loves fishing. And after a great career, he allowed himself the opportunity to do what he loved, what he's good at. And he had, he could drop because he had sold his business, what could make him money.

• 2:24:40Speaker 02

  But also he's now turning towards how he could use these things to be of benefit to others. Obviously his music may be one method for him to do that, but he's, he's, he's really lit up about this other, next part of his life. And I give him great credit because not many people are courageous enough to make that decision and, and to find their light up part of their life. Anyway, but for him, I'll go back to the second model here. I'm sorry, I went off on it, but he was just doing what he had to do. He wasn't doing what his heart really yearned for, which was music and fishing and being out on the seas. And now he's doing that. And you can just see like, you know, the marked

• 2:25:21Speaker 02

  difference in the satisfaction from life. And I know when I built the center, I felt the marked difference in my life. And I saw William doing his book group and talking about it. I saw the marked difference in his life because it was something that his heart really wanted to do.

• 2:25:37Speaker 01

  Firstly, I mean, I keep coming back to this. I keep thinking about, you know, you know, this idea of like, if, you know, if you don't design your life, someone else will do it for you. And so, I mean, so I'm internalizing this stuff and acting on it the whole time. So one of the things I told you, Matt, recently is I decided, well, what would happen if I went to live somewhere different for a month, a year with my wife Lauren for the next 10 years? And so, you know, we booked an Airbnb, a beautiful Airbnb in Santa Fe for early next year during the Santa Fe Book Festival, Literary Festival. And we'll just go live for a month with our dog.

• 2:26:13Speaker 02

  I'm so happy about that. You told me that, yeah.

• 2:26:15Speaker 01

  Yeah. So some of it is just looking, looking at your life with this sense of like, the richness is not all a matter of possessions and money and credentials and titles and followers and book sales and stuff. It's like, I've got to think in a broader way. And so I think in a way, that's been almost the most helpful thing that I've learned from this process of helping you with the book is to say, no, no, that's a form of wealth as well. And I'll still work for that whole month, no doubt. And I'll still overwork, no doubt.

• 2:26:48Speaker 02

  You're transcending and including.

• 2:26:49Speaker 01

  Yeah. And it's also, it's very idiosyncratic. And so I think, you know, I mean, not everyone would want to go spend a month in, in Santa Fe and go to the literary festival and stuff like that. But

• 2:27:00Speaker 02

  Completely. You know, we each have our own right mountain and it should be idiosyncratic because, you know, we've been so conditioned for a certain way that once we find our way, there's a great line, like, all this conditioning and maybe even spirituality and all this stuff can get you into the arena. But ultimately, you got to find your own seat. And when you find your own seat, wow. Like, when you make that move, the joy is just, how can you measure it? You know, you can't. So there were two of the three things I mentioned, what, doing what you have to do, doing what your heart really wants to do. But the third thing, and you mentioned that earlier, William, do what's fun to do. You know, like, sometimes we just

• 2:27:41Speaker 02

  get too serious on the must to do and what we yearn for, that we forget, like, it's important we have fun and enjoy our days. So that's when I bought the next season tickets. That's why with my youngest daughter, we on a regular basis go to cultural events in the city, to an opera, to a dance, or to something. And I would say, hey, Grace, did you get tickets for something? Let's go. If you just do one of these three, like, if you're younger and you're just doing what's fun to do, obviously, you're ignoring what you must do, or maybe what your heart yearns to do. Or if you're just doing what your heart yearns to do, you could actually get too serious about it, to the point where you're just kind of not great company because you're so into it. Like, it almost becomes like, you're achieving, achieving, achieving your hard thing, which is great. But at the

• 2:28:24Speaker 02

  same time, you're not lighting up, you're not having fun with it. It gets, it could turn too serious. So having a good balance of what's fun to do, what you must do, and what your heart yearns for, to me, is like a beautiful equation for being lit up. And when I see people who are lit up, they tend to have all three of those kind of checked off and in action.

• 2:28:45Speaker 01

  And before I let you go, Matt, because we'll have to wrap this up in a couple of minutes, tell us the instruction, the advice that Sogni Rinpoche gave you when you saw him.

• 2:28:53Speaker 02

  All right, well.

• 2:28:54Speaker 01

  Because it gets right at that.

• 2:28:56Speaker 02

  Yeah, to some of this conversation, you know, it's, you know, once you have the map of true wealth, which you'll have, and we, we've gone through a bunch of it, but not all of it. Once you see these four quadrants of true wealth, I remember this once with Sogni Rinpoche, who has been my teacher for like, a long time. And I told him that I was doing therapy. And he looked at me, he goes, hey, are you trying to be perfect? He goes, don't be perfect, just be functional. And that's the, probably the biggest message I could leave today. The idea of all these wealth is not to be perfect, it is to be functional in them. Because if you're functional, there's space in them. Perfect is like, we grew up in a Disney world, right? The kids watch Disney films, we watch some. The distance

• 2:29:41Speaker 02

  between being functional and being imperfect sucks all the joy out. Perfection, you want to be really good at what you do. And you want to have good amounts of all these. But to have perfect amounts is, is tough. And, and the wisest people I know say, stop that. You don't want to be the greatest perfect meditator. You don't want to be perfectly wealthy. You want to be nicely wealthy, you know? Because it would just suck out all the other wealths if you try to gain perfection. And, look, at the end of the day, once you're able to get functional here, then there's the last move, which is the last essential, which is you just take, because these are all are functional, you've built the containers, you've built your financial wealth, you've worked on your interiors, you've grown up

• 2:30:23Speaker 02

  to see other people's perspectives, you understand how the world, you know, you're functionally, you're in a state of like, where you could actually have the possibilities of, of being content, you know, and balanced. But transformation is still left for you, you could actually even go deeper. And that's by just letting all this go, because you're functional, and playing the music. You got all the notes, right? And now you can just take, you know, just ease up, right? You can just relax and then find the deepest part of you.

• 2:30:53Speaker 01

  And it's not so much a matter of easing up as like, I'm going to retire and not do anything. I think what's really striking when you look at great teachers like Sogni Rinpoche, or like Kendra Rinpoche, this other great teacher of ours, you didn't, you didn't name before, but who's played a really

• 2:31:09Speaker 02

  Or I want to put in Arak Wolf.

• 2:31:11Speaker 01

  Right, right.

• 2:31:12Speaker 02

  He's built this incredible temple in Westchester. Yep.

• 2:31:14Speaker 01

  I think what you see in them that's extraordinary is there's this kind of easing up where they're okay, no matter what. And I think the more, the more I look at your life, the more I think, you know, in my own life, like, that's the goal, is to get to a point where you're able, you still want to be successful in the world, you still want to build a balance, you still want to have influence in the world. You're not looking just to check out, but you're able to be okay, no matter what. That seems the master move to me, because I'm often so dissatisfied, even when things are good. And when I look at someone like Kendra or Sogni, like, they're just, there's just this sense of joy. I remember once you and

• 2:31:59Speaker 01

  I went on a retreat with Sogni Rinpoche, and there was a fire alarm that kept going off in the middle of the night, and everyone would pour out. And he's just totally unfazed, he's just so chill as he's out there in the South from Rhodes, two in the morning, and then at three in the morning. And can, can you just say something about that? Because that seems to me the ultimate move is to get to a point where, regardless of the circumstances, you're basically fundamentally okay.

• 2:32:25Speaker 02

  Yeah, yeah. Yeah. I mean, being unconditional, having unconditional contentment really is an inside out. Because ultimately, once you've set this, or even, you don't even, you know, if it just happens to you, that you're able to understand, as I think my dad had the ability, to be good from the inside out, irrespective of conditions, it's the understanding of your own richness that's inherent in who you are, it's your birthright. And when you're in touch with that, and you really feel it, you're fortunate enough to meet people who actually walk that way. And you learn to be that way more and more, then you're truly wealthy. You, you, you don't have the same need, you're fulfilled, right?

• 2:33:08Speaker 02

  Fulfillment means being filled. And unlike, like, the toy that's, you know, that big blow up thing that's in front of a car wash, that's big, and everybody could see it, and it's flapping for attention, but it's hollow underneath, and it's completely dependent on conditions. If you're full in a fulfillment sense, like Sogni Rinpoche, or like Rabbi Arak Wolf, you're good in all conditions. And you're sitting in a seat of unconditional, you know, there's sort of the top of the ocean part of you. But when you're really in touch with the lower echelon of the ocean, the part that's unmoving and very steady and very reliable, and you're in touch with that, then you know that everything's workable.

• 2:33:51Speaker 02

  And you're working it, because you're not done at that point. You're now working, you now can turn and be of benefit to other people, because no matter what's coming your way, you have the feeling of like, I can handle this, I'm good, I'm okay. You know, the state, if I were to describe it, you know, from the outside, would be a person that's open-hearted, open-minded, and super grounded, you know, how the world is and what how things are. And I, and I wish that for every person listening, that you, you find that state that's full and has those qualities.

• 2:34:24Speaker 01

  Amen.

• 2:34:25Speaker 02

  Amen.

• 2:34:26Speaker 01

  It's been a total joy chatting with you. We could talk for about four more hours, but we'll, we'll, we'll, we'll unpack this further. And people should go buy the book, The Right Mountain, which I think is, is full of, full of richness. And I'm looking forward to chatting with you soon with my, with my masterclass and with my friends along the path group. And so this is the first of multiple conversations about this, because it's, it's so rich and infinite. And I just wanted to thank you, because I'm hugely grateful for your friendship. And I'm looking forward to being on the journey with you, because I sure as hell am not at a point where I'm okay, no matter what. And so, let, let this arrive in the years to come.

• 2:35:08Speaker 02

  Let it be, let it be. And I'm just grateful to you, to have you as a friend along this path. And, you know, it's, it's amazing to have friends who are directionally looking the same way. It's one thing to do this path alone, but to do it with others is such a joy. And that's another thing I wish for everybody. Not only that you find it right now, but you, you help other people find theirs, and you guys do it together. As a family, the more people do it, the more joy you'll feel and, and gratefulness. And I'm just super grateful for our friendship from being friends along the path. So thank you, William.

• 2:35:43Speaker 01

  Thank you. See you soon. Take care.

• 2:35:45Speaker 02

  See you soon. Bye.

• 2:35:46Speaker 00

  Thanks for listening to TIP. Follow richer, wiser, happier on your favorite podcast app and visit theinvestorspodcast.com for show notes and educational resources. This podcast is for informational and entertainment purposes only and does not provide financial, investment, tax, or legal advice. The content is impersonal and does not consider your objectives, financial situation, or needs. Investing involves risk, including possible loss of principal, and past performance is not a guarantee of future results. Listeners should do their own research and consult a qualified professional before making any financial decisions. Nothing on this show is a recommendation or solicitation to buy or sell any security or other financial product. Hosts, guests, and the Investors Podcast Network may hold positions in securities discussed and may change those positions

• 2:36:28Speaker 00

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