Defining Your Vision of True Wealth.

We first started the conversation, he said, well, I’m not wealthy. And I said, okay. Well, I’m managing most of his assets, and we’re we built a and so I said to him, well, that’s interesting. So what is wealth to you?

And this gentleman had a wealth in excess of ten million dollars So I’m sitting there going, you know, if anybody has wealth, you should have it. And his response was anybody with a dollar more than me. And I thought to myself, yeah, you know what? You’re never gonna find it.

Welcome to the True Wealth podcast, where happiness is more often found in the soul of someone’s wealth rather than the size of it. Money, after all, is a tool. It’s not the destination. Money is a fuel to advance your core values and your purpose. Join us as we share some inspiring stories, true wealth life lessons, and practical strategies to help you design a life of intention, generosity, and fulfillment.

Today, I think it would be good just to give the listener a little bit more insight is, okay, so the name of the podcast is True Wealth.

What is that? What does that mean? What does that mean to you?

I was gonna turn it back to you Yeah. Because you literally wrote the book on this thing. Well So I was gonna say there’s nobody better to answer that question in my estimation than you, because my definitions are rooted in all honesty, lot of my definitions.

We’ve always said that true wealth is everything you have that money can’t buy and death is unable to take away. In its broadest sense, that’s what it is. Now, you know, what does that mean, right? Okay, so to me, I always tell people, if you closed your eyes and you said, if you were financially confident, you’re spiritually nourished, you’re emotionally engaged, you’re physically fit, and you’re surrounded by deep, relationships, Really, life doesn’t get much better than that.

The tricky part is most people think more money solves all that. And really, ironically, money is woven through it all because money makes your, you know, if you want to give philanthropically or you have strong spiritual convictions and you want to support that entity, it takes money to do that. If you want to improve your health, it takes money to do that. So money is the tool or the engine or the fuel that makes it all work.

But true wealth is much more than that. It’s not a destination.

So in a broad sense, that’s what true wealth means to me.

I always think of city slickers. You guys ever watch that movie? Yeah. You know, you get to they go on this this cattle drive, and Curly, you know, the the grizzly cowboy, and and him and Mitch are are on their horses.

And and, you know, Mitch basically asks the question, like, to the secret of life. And and Curly just lifts his one finger in the air and says it’s one thing. Yeah. And Mitch says, well, what is it?

Well, that’s for you to figure out.

You can’t you can’t write True wealth is True wealth is different for everybody.

Yeah. Really? I mean, there’s basically a core that’s similar for all of us, but there’s extensions of that, which is different. And for some, it may be they may think it’s a house on a beach.

Some, it may be, I want to put my kids through college. Some, it may be, I want to retire early. But see that again, now it’s all focusing too much on money, and I think they’re missing out on a much bigger piece of that. Ryan, how about you?

One of the things we discussed a few months ago was this idea that true wealth isn’t a destination. It’s more of a a paradigm or a worldview. It’s a way of looking at life A state of being. Differently. A state of being. Right?

And so it it’s it’s it’s a hard one to decide. Am I there or not? Because there isn’t really a there. I think it’s more of a, you know, a lens through which we see life. Right. And so what we’re trying to do is to is to infuse that idea of true wealth, this idea that the true things, really meaningful, purposeful, lasting things, are the things that we wanna focus on. How do we how do we match, how do we connect the puzzle piece of your finances to that and make sure that they are communicating with each other and in line with each other?

Yeah. What what I’ve found over the years is there’s a certain point when you’re working on it with somebody and you’re and you’re laying out a good financial life, like, game plan, and you’re getting that all played out, you’ve identified their goals, what’s important, all the things that that every other podcast is each gonna also talk about. But I’ve had it where there comes a moment when they say, you know what? I don’t worry about money anymore.

Yep. And it’s just like, click, the light went on and says, Well, when does that happen? Well, that’s different for everybody. It may be that they’re no longer worrying because the budget’s figured out, or it could be that they’re no longer worrying because they realize more isn’t the solution.

One of the things that I have found over the years, which we’ll kind of use at the same time, is when I ask the question, why build wealth?

What do you think some of the responses are? I know you guys ask the questions too, so share what some of the responses are.

The the ones that the ones that truly mean something are the ones that why I don’t wanna be a burden to my to my family. Yep. And and I found power in asking the question the question why because I think you get to the real the real root of it. You get you get some of the you get you get some that say, well, because because more is better.

Right. You know? Because I want it. Yeah.

And and I call those you know, they’re they’re more really personal prosperity.

I don’t have it. I want it. I need it. Or what I have, I need more.

Yep. And, you know, they’re we can still work with those relationships, but those are exhausting. Yep. Because if you get a million, they need if you get a hundred thousand, they need two hundred.

If you get a million, they need two million. If you get three, they need five. It’s the old adage, you’ve done a lot for me, but what have you done lately? Right.

You can’t it’s a target you can’t hit. Yeah. They very, very rarely find true well. One individual, he’s come around, and he’s When I first asked him, you know, that question, he basically said, Well, I’m not wealthy, when we first started the conversation.

He said, well, I’m not wealthy. And I said, okay. Well, I’m managing most of his assets, and we built a and so I said to him, well, that’s interesting. So what is wealth to you?

And this gentleman had a wealth in excess of ten million dollars So I’m sitting there going, you know, if anybody has wealth, he should have it. And his response was anybody with one dollar more than me. And I thought to myself, yeah, you know what? You’re never going to find it.

Yeah. Because somebody’s always gonna have one more, and you’re gonna have one more than them, and the cycle continues. Yeah. So that true wealth person really falls more on the when they start talking about personal responsibility.

Yeah. It’s like you said. I don’t wanna be a burden to society. What responses have you gotten, Ryan?

Well, and that comes back to our job as financial advisors. If we are just focused on the nuts and bolts, the Excel spreadsheet version of a financial plan, and and the client has that worldview or that paradigm that just one dollar more, and then I’ll be satisfied. It doesn’t matter what we do. They’re never gonna reach that light bulb moment that you talked about that they go, you know what? I don’t worry about money anymore. I feel like I feel like I’m okay.

It’s not because they’ve reached that number.

It’s not a number.

Yeah. Soul of wealth. Right? It’s not the number that made the change. It’s I feel like my money is empowered.

Yeah. It has a purpose because it’s it’s aligned with my goals. It’s aligned with my objectives or our objectives if you’re doing this with a partner.

And and that’s really what we wanna get more people dialed into.

Well, at its core, well, you I mean, isn’t true wealth at its core a rerouting almost? Sure. That our, I mean, our our culture has has basically spent years, you know, telling us that that while while more is better, just a dollar more, and and it’s gonna be enough. We don’t have this understanding and this grasp of what enough looks like in our lives.

And so to me, true wealth is almost, you know, churning up and tilling up the the roots that have been that have been placed in our life for a long time and replanting, you know, seeds of of truth. And I guess if I if I think about the concept as a as a whole, like, I just close my eyes and process true wealth, you know, the first thing that pops through my head is some of your definitions. But what leads what that leads to to me is peace, you know, is a is a huge one that that always pops up in my my head when I think about it. Yeah.

Confidence is another one. Joy is another one. And and if you boil it down, like, money money cannot do that in our lives. We we’ve talked about it a lot, that we’ve we’ve all seen people with with plenty.

They have more they have more than they’ll ever know what to do with, but there’s no joy in their life. There’s no peace in their life. Right. So it’s gotta come from somewhere else.

Sure. And that somewhere else is different for for everybody, but I do think that’s part of our job. That if we’re gonna guide people towards a life confidently enjoyed, there’s a confidence and a joy that are a piece of that. And if that can’t come from money, then our our conversations can’t all revolve around money.

There’s gotta be some sort of conversation point that that leads them to processing things in a different way. And that’s why I say, like, part of our job is that re that rerouting.

Well, for listeners and viewers out there, you know, if you’ve gone through any college course or you’ve done extension study, really, kind of is based out of Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs to I’m sure you both have studied that too. People can’t start thinking about why am I here, what’s my purpose, what am I trying to accomplish, until their basic necessities are met. You know, food, shelter, clothing.

Then once they get there, then they start saying, okay, now that that is met, what’s my next goal, or what’s my next target in life? And do start thinking about accumulation.

But still, it’s when you get to this top level, which I don’t again, that’s why it’s we gotta be careful. It’s not a destination to reach that piece, that level. But it’s when you start to get, okay, I need my money to align with what’s my passions? What’s my purpose?

What are my core values? We’ve got some pretty interesting tools to take people through, which we’ll we’ll make available in extended circumstances here. But what that helps people drive through. What is what are my values?

What is my purpose?

Why why is it why is it so hard in our society to do that? I mean, it’s not it’s not an easily grasped concept. And, like, so what what is it about our society Well that makes it so different?

Ryan, what are your thoughts?

I’ve got a I always have a few.

So, Ryan, what are your thoughts?

Yeah. Well, think for us to redefine success as part of this idea of true wealth One one of the a pastor that I’ve that I’ve learned a lot from once said success needs to be redefined as obedience to Christ. So whether you’re a whether you’re a believer or not, I I believe that to be true. But if we redefine success in our financial plans, I think that’s a really important foundational piece to build the financial plan on.

Because if success means you outperform the markets, well, the question you ask a lot of clients is is, I think, extremely relevant. What happens if we outperform the markets by ten percent every year and you run out of money? Have we succeeded? Is that is that plan a success?

Right. So we need to redefine success, and success, I think, can be redefined with this idea of true wealth. Hey. Let’s get back to let’s get to the top of that hierarchy of the Maslow’s hierarchy as quick as we can so that we don’t so though so that we don’t use all these pieces on the bottom that are our, you know, our Roth IRAs and our tax planning and all that sort of thing.

We don’t use those as a means to an end, but we use those as tools to help us accomplish.

Yeah.

It’s that self actualization. Right. Why I’m here? What do I wanna accomplish? What’s my purpose?

Yep. And part of the reason I think people have a tough time addressing that is because today’s society, at least, it feels different than when I grew up. You I had you kinda have to morph to that. But it is seems to feel like a much more me society.

It’s I call it the three by three. If doesn’t fall inside of their three by three box Yep.

They don’t care. And I think to break through that, we have to get them to think beyond that three by three and say, you know, or we gotta get this in that three by three box that they can resonate with that just says, yeah, why am I here? No. Not about a goal that I wanna accomplish, but what things are my passion? Yeah. And that’s usually where you start to get a glimpse or start to uncover what true wealth means for them.

Well, I think you you look at society and the amount of time that we spend with technology and all those things, and all of the money and resources that goes into even how we interact with those things and the experience that we have and the message that that’s trying to get delivered, instant gratification. Yep. You need it, and you need it now. Yep. You know?

And everybody else has it, and and you better go get it too, or or you’re not those messages have been carefully curated and crafted Sure.

For years. Sure. And and all those roots have have taken deep.

Well, Ryan, even the one you mentioned, if you beat the market by ten percent every year, did you succeed?

By a lot of podcast standards and by a lot of the information out there, the answer would be yes. Yeah. But it’s that last piece. Yeah. Does that really matter? Really, the only index that people should be, in my mind, competing with is their own personal family index. What do I need to make based on how much I can save and my timeline to have enough assets to be able to do the things that are important to me?

Well, and I think too many people we live in a scoreboard society too. We wanna talk about issues with our with our society. And what does a scoreboard do? It shows you who’s winning.

Right.

And so what do we do when we don’t have a basketball game to watch or a football game to watch? We go, okay. The scoreboard is my team versus the Joneses that live next to me. Right.

And am I winning, or am I losing? Right. And if I’m losing, then I need to do what I can to win. Yep.

Because winning is important in our culture, and in the end, he who dies with the most gold is still dead. Right.

And so there’s no U Haul at back of the hearse. I mean, none of this is gonna go with us, and so we need to, again, back to this redefining success, getting away from the scoreboard that constantly causes us to compare ourselves to our neighbors, and saying, let’s look at our own selves. Instead of saying, okay, did we win this game today or not? You could win the game by thirty points in a basketball game, but you play terrible.

Right.

You make all kinds of mistakes. Did you really win that game? I mean, in from a coaching standpoint, no. We have a lot more to work on than we did well.

Right? And so in getting away from the scoreboard mentality that compares ourselves to our neighbors and saying, what have we been put on this earth to do? What are we supposed to do with what we have, and how do we do the best we can with the puzzle pieces we’ve been given? To me, that’s a redefining of success that’s more in line with true all.

Right. And it’s not basically, to me, the line is, am I better today than I was yesterday? Yeah. And how do I become better tomorrow?

We’ll we’ll unpack this in a lot more different ways, but, again, we’re trying to stay on our time level. Let me just share one thing. You know? Because for me, true wealth, I’ve always tried to teach it because it’s been important to me. But for me, it stems out of out of my dad, who’s who is my hero of life. He’s he’s been passed away in two since two thousand fifteen. But everything I learned about true wealth, and and I put that in my first book called Head North, but it’s everything my mom and dad taught me about happiness at a little resort in Northern Minnesota called happiness.

And, you know, my mom worried about money enough for the both of them. My dad was a pastor, and to him, he had this true, the Lord will provide for me. And I thought, well, I believe that. But by the same token, it’s like, dad, you gotta have a responsibility.

And he said, am. That’s why I had you. You worry about it. But when we were when I was growing up, you know, he would say, yeah.

Your mom and I are wealthy. And I’d sit there and I think, yeah.

I no. But why can’t I have french fries?

Yeah. Well, he asked me once. He said, is there ever anything in your life that you have really wanted that you don’t have? And, yeah, there was maybe a few things, but really I had to answer no. And he said, you know, your mom and I have enough.

To me, he was a pastor, so he had this unique balance between he was a fisher of men and a fisherman. He loved to go up to Northern Minnesota and fish. And for me, why that was important was because for two weeks out of every year when we would go find happiness, I’d climb in his little red lawn with him, and he was no longer a pastor. He was my dad.

That the one time I could see him, and the curtain came down, and he would just talk. And he said to me, you know, your mom and are wealthy. And I’m going, no, not by the world standard. And he’d say, is there anything you’ve aspired for that we have not provided for you?

No. He said, I got enough bait. I got enough money that I can buy the bait I want. I can support the things that are important to me.

We can get away when we want to. I really don’t have a lot of worries.

We can support causes that are important to us. What more do I need? And my light went on at that time and went, yeah. You know what?

You’re wealthy. I’m not. So he I’m teaching it. He’s living it. Yeah. So my goal, at least as an extension of this podcast, is to get more people living it out, aspiring to and trying to figure out through maybe some of our life lessons and teachings, I want that.

How do I do that? So that’s what I hope to uncover more.

Anything any other insights before we I mean, just listening to you tell the story about your dad, like, he that’s the definition of stewardship, though.

Yes. Right? Like, all of a sudden, it’s a it changes the role that money that money plays in your in your life. And it’s instead of instead of us owning it, you know, and and money money controlling it, when you’re able to to truly just look at it and say, alright, if God truly owns it all, you know, then then I simply my only job becomes to becomes to steward this this well.

And, you know, I think, you know, the the question to ask a lot of times is, you know, people people come to us, and they start to ask questions around those pieces. And you go to the the verse, I think it’s out of Matthew six, where they talk about seek first the kingdom. Yep. You’re asking the wrong individual, You know?

And I think at the end of the day, it’s it’s seeking how how do I feel called to steward these these dollars? If they’re not mine, God has given me everything that I that I have, my time, my talent, my treasure, everything that I have, what is my role in stewarding that? Right. And I think where you come to, when you can come to peace, which your dad obviously did, with what that looks like in your own personal life, that’s where joy and Yeah.

Comfort and peace and all those things, all those things come.

So it’s just that we are He had the money aspect down, but I’ll share more stories about him because Yeah.

He’s one of my great resources. Him and I shared the same physical problems.

We like to eat.

So, yeah, as much as he had that figured out, there were other areas of life that he but even there, he kinda had them figured out. His doctor always told him, you need to eat less bacon. And he’d say, why? I like bacon.

Yeah. And he’d say, well, because it’ll add five years to your life. And he said, doc, I’m a pastor. I’ve seen most people’s last five.

It is not their best spot.

So if I can if I can avoid that so he he he knew what he liked. Now he needed to be more responsible of that. And, yeah, he said too later in life, if I would’ve known I was gonna live this long, I would’ve taken a little better care of myself. So that’s important. We’ll unpack some of those things.

Did your dad ever use the term true, wealth?

No.

Or where did the terminology Well, learned it as I was teaching concepts about there’s more to life than money.

And then through my affiliation with Carson Group back at the time, Omani Carson had a teaching group that taught true wealth concepts, true wealth principles. So that’s really where I learned them. And when I showed up, it was like, wow. Yeah.

This this is there’s a kind of a curriculum out there. Yeah. And and I’ll share some insights too of the the person that was sitting next to me who had accumulated more wealth than than I will ever, and yet he was not happy. And it wasn’t until he figured out what he really wanted to do with his money, which was unique.

And it’s a great story. I’ll give you a little teaser for it. But he basically changed how he was using his money, and his wealth grew exponentially faster than it ever had because it was aligned. It was doing what was important to him.

So that’s where we wanna get more people to.

And even then, what stands out to me about that story is we talk with a lot of clients about estate planning. Right? I mean, that’s one of the puzzle pieces of the financial plan. That’s one of those black and white Excel spreadsheet kind of issues.

But but there’s a difference between estate planning and legacy planning. Right. And I look at what your dad left behind to you probably was less financial. Absolutely.

And and yet you wrote a book on all of the on the nine principles that your dad left you with. So when we talk with clients about things that are more aligned with true wealth, I think this idea that what you leave behind is not just dollars and cents, and it’s important to focus on investing yourself in a way that doesn’t just leave dollars and cents.

Absolutely.

So we’ll talk more about that.

Well, you can see we’re we’re breaking our first rule of trying to keep this within a half hour format, so we’ll wrap it up and come back to we have certainly more reasons for more episodes.

Right? We’re not running out of things to say yet. So again, thanks for joining us on today’s episode of the True Wealth podcast. If you enjoyed this conversation, we’d love for you to subscribe, share it with your friends so that we can reach more people who want to experience a life of confidently enjoyed.

Feel free to share your thoughts. And if you have any specific questions regarding future topics or specific things about True Wealth, send them to either Ryan, Nick, or myself. Just go to the infopinnaclewealth dot com. Send us your questions, and we’ll hash them out on the air as they speak.

So thank you.

Why pinnacle wealth?

Because the pinnacle of wealth is true wealth.

Thanks for joining us. We’ll be back soon.

The opinions voiced in today’s True Wealth podcast with Kevin Ingers, Nick Omlut, and Ryan Ovieden are for general information only and are not intended to provide specific advice or recommendation by any individual. Past performance is no guarantee of future results. All indices are unmanaged and may not be invested into directly. Investing involves risk, including possible loss of principal. No strategy assures success or protects against loss. To determine what may be appropriate for you, consult with your attorney, accountant, financial, or tax adviser prior to investing.