Capital Club

Charles Freeman is the president of AdaptFirst Investments. He is a chartered financial analyst in partners with financial advisers to provide investment support and resources in a much more personal way. This includes model investments, customs portfolios, individual stock research, industry and sector analysis, and more.

[00:01 – 08:30 ] Opening Segment

• I welcome our guest for the episode, Charles Freeman
• Charles talks about the state of Public Markets as of January 2021
• He also talks about the real academy and stock market  

[08:31 –  25:43] Rising and Falling 

• Charles perspective in terms of the market and the broader economy
• the support that Fed has given on the monetary and fiscal side   
• Charles talks about his research
• Metrics that Charles tracks to gauge inflation
• Housing and Health Care
• Calculating home crisis
• The factors concerning deflation and inflation
• Strategies to play this market at the present time
• Risk Manage Approach
• Sectoral Approach on Equity exposure

[25:44 - 38:20] Looking in the Markets

• Emerging Markets and Frontier Markets
• The difference between having a broad market exposure and being more thematic
• Does debt on the Federal or Sovereign level matter in terms of ratio in GDP?

[38:21 - 50:17] Closing Segment

• His thoughts about the energy sector
• Market properties owned by Charles
• Connect with Charles. See Links Below.
• Final words

Tweetable Quotes:

 “What I’ve learned over the last twenty years is that when you start getting too thematic you can make a really convincing argument for a certain thing, and then it might just not happen, and then you mess up. So, I think taking a broad market approach makes sense there.” - Charles Freeman 

“What they tried to do is moderate the normal business cycle but in doing that I think what the trade-off is what you’re doing is you’re creating a ‘Boom And Bust Cycle’.” - Charles Freeman

“It’s diversifying their portfolio, right? It is not being so dependent on oil specifically. It’s gonna be sort of multi-approach of, you know having all of those things available. I mean that’s the only way they’re gonna survive.” - Charles Freeman

Resources Mentioned: 

• Ben Bernanke
• Janet Yellen
• Tesla

------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Connect with Charles, follow him on LinkedIn. Check out his content/articles and guestings at www.adaptfirst.com. Send a direct email to [email protected] 

Connect with Excelsior GP:

Excelsior GP Website

LinkedIn

In this episode, I brought in Kevin Erdmann to talk about contrarian theory on the cause of the housing boom and bust. Kevin was a small business owner for 17 years and in 2010 he sold his business and earned his Master’s Degree in Finance from the University of Arizona which allowed him to get grounded in real-world experience in investing within the rigor of the Academy.

Since 2013, he has blogged about his contrary observations on investment strategies and research. He is a visiting fellow at the Mercatus Center at George Mason University, where he and I connected through a mutual connection. He is currently engaged in two book projects with Mercatus on Housing Finance, land use restrictions, and monetary policy. His first book, Shut Out (Rowman & Littlefield, 2019), offers a contrarian theory on the cause of the housing boom and bust.

[00:01 – 04:03] Opening Segment

• I welcome our guest for the episode, Kevin Erdmann
• Kevin Erdmann talks about his background
• His business and how he eventually found his way back to school

[04:04 – 21:23] The Mercatus Center

• How Kevin found his way to The Mercatus Center
• His work and focus
• Kevin talks about his research
• Referencing to the film The Big Short
• Various sections of the country affected by The recession
• Calculating residential investments
• The regulatory bodies responsible for encouraging/allowing developers
• The real difference between coastal cities and the rest of the country

[21:24 – 51:16] The eventual cause of The Great Recession

• Extreme difference between various types of cities in the country
• Rise of rent rates just about everywhere across the country
• Relative pricing differential in different types of neighborhoods
• The most effective way to increase the price to rent ratio on a house
• Cause of a structural failure in the housing market in The Great Recession
• Factors of migration in each city
• The rate of Homeownership pre and post-crisis
• Rates of each age group of homeowners
• Predatory lending and unequal access to credit

[51:17 – 1:01:35] Closing Segment

• A fix for The Housing Shortage/Problem
• What the housing market has created
• Connect with Kevin. See Links Below.
• Final words

Tweetable Quotes:

“There’s a real difference between coastal cities and the rest of the country. It’s almost like you have to go to those cities and experience it to really get a sort of feeling for it, how difficult it is to get from an idea to building something around half the size you wanted.” - Kevin Erdmann

“I think across the country, we need to make sure we turn a corner and find ways to make it easier for multi-unit to be a building choice.” - Kevin Erdmann

“Quantitatively, the most effective way to increase the price to rent ratio on a house, paradoxically is to increase its rent.” - Kevin Erdmann

Resources Mentioned: 

• Shut Out - Kevin Erdmann
• Mercatus Center

------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Connect with Kevin, follow him on LinkedIn. Check out his...

Brittany Cole is a Professional Speaker, Career Coach, and consultant. She studied Political Science and Communications at The University of Tennessee, Knoxville, and earned a certification in Strategies for Building and Leading Diverse Organizations from The Harvard Kennedy School of Public Policy.

As a former sales and marketing leader, Brittany has experienced how intentional leadership development increases colleague engagement, accelerates career achievements, and drives business results. In addition to her corporate achievements, Brittany founded Career Thrivers, which is a leadership development firm that partners with organizations to engage, develop and retain diverse talent through targeted leadership development.

[00:01 – 09:36] Opening Segment

• I welcome our guest for the episode, Brittany Cole
• Get access to Brittany’s book
• See Links below
• Brittany talks about her background
• Her corporate career
• Helping others, especially people of color improve their careers
• Shift and Policy changes brought about by the new regime

[09:37 – 16:29] Thrive Through It

• What led Brittany to write her book
• Helping people make the shift in terms of their view on resilience
• Redefining the view on resilience
• The intention of the road map

[16:30 – 42:50] Grief, Grit, Grace

• Grief
• Powering through inequities in the workplace as a black woman
• Likeability bias
• Grit
• The right way and healthy way to think about Grit
• Leaning into vulnerability
• Decentering ourselves to approach hard conversations
• Grace
• Extending grace

[42:51 – 48:20] Closing Segment

• Actionable things you can do to make a more diverse and inclusive workforce
• Having leadership involvement and investment
• Plans should be connected to the business strategy
• Having an integrated learning and development strategy
• Final words

Tweetable Quotes:

“My father would always tell my brothers and I that the biggest room in our house is the room for improvement.” - Brittany Cole

“The catalyst for the book is really around helping people make the shift in terms of how we view resilience.” - Brittany Cole

“Grief is so individualized, so complex, and so unpredictable.” - Brittany Cole

Grit is about showing up authentically and leaning into that vulnerability. To have those tough conversations, to embrace being uncomfortable, but also to reveal, transparently, where you are so that you can fully heal.” - Brittany Cole

Resources Mentioned: 

• Thrive Through It - Brittany Cole
• Pfizer
• Crucial Conversations

------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Connect with Brittany, follow her on LinkedIn, Twitter and

Matt Browner Hamlin is an activist, organizer, and writer residing in Washington DC. He is the Head of Engagement Strategy & Planning for Greenpeace International. He has previously worked as He is the Managing Director for Digital Strategy of Ethical Electric, a Senior Economic Strategist at Citizen Engagement Lab and an organizer of OccupyOurHomes.org. He was the Deputy New Media Director of SEIU, the Deputy Internet Director on Chris Dodd's presidential campaign, and the Internet Director on Mark Begich's US Senate campaign in Alaska. Matt blogs about politics at Hold Fast, cocktails, bars, and spirits at A Jigger of Blog, and travel and technology at Blogger Hamlin. He has also been a contributor at AMERICAblog. The views and opinions presented in Matt's posts are his alone. They are not representative of the policies or opinions of his employer or past clients.

[INTRODUCTION]

[00:00:07] ANNOUNCER: Thank you for joining the conversation on Colloquium. This episode is brought to you by Excelsior Capital, an investment platform focused on democratizing private equity by providing individuals access to direct opportunities. To learn more about the firm, please visit excelsiorgp.com and connect with Bryan on LinkedIn.

[INTERVIEW]

[00:00:07] BA: Welcome to the conversation on Colloquium. Today I’ve got an old friend of mine, Matt Browner-Hamlin with me. Matt, how are you today?

[00:00:37] MBH: I’m doing great, Bryan. How are you?

[00:00:38] BA: Good. I’m going to give a little bit of kind of the bio and then we'll get into some of the work that you've been doing. And as context, Matt and I went to college together a long time ago and was a good friend of mine in school. And then as many of us in our kind of pre-Facebook generation, just kind of lost track of each other frankly. And it's been probably a good 10 years since we last spoke. But it's fun to get reconnected. And you've been doing some really interesting things. So I’m excited to get into it.

So his background, Matt is an accomplished technology strategist, data-driven campaigner, digital marketer and writer. He is currently the interim chief technology officer at Greenpeace International. Greenpeace is a global independent campaigning organization with offices in 55 countries. Matt has previously worked for a direct consumer renewable energy startup, international human rights, labor economic justice campaigning context, as well as in American politics and presidential incentive campaigns, as well as some other interesting blogging and content creation that you've made over the years, which we'll probably get into. 

But, first, I really want to dig into kind of Greenpeace itself. I think a lot of people in our minds think of the efforts they had against Japanese whaling and the kind of images of television. But it's actually a much older organization. Can you maybe talk a little bit about how you found yourself at Greenpeace and give folks a little bit more context about the originations of the organization and what the focus is today?

[00:02:11] MBH: Yeah, sure thing. And, first, thanks for having me on, Bryan, and it's great to reconnect on this occasion. It's been a long time. And I think a lot of us are using the COVID times to build back old bridges and have...

David Wells works as an advisor to individuals, families, and organizations to help them wrestle with and answer the strategic questions they face to grow and succeed into the future. With over 15 years' experience, David leverages his background as an equity analyst, 4x entrepreneur, and Board member to collaborate with senior leaders across the US.

[EPISODE]

[00:00:29] BA: Hello, and welcome to The Conversation on Colloquium. Today, I've got an old friend of mine, David Wells, with me. David, how are you today?

[00:00:36] DW: I'm doing well, Brian. Doing well.

[00:00:38] BA: Thanks for joining us. David and I have known each other for, gosh, longer than I probably care to admit. But he is always been exceedingly thoughtful, smart, hardworking, and I am so happy for him that he is doing well with his consulting business. And he is put together this book, which I think is really needed right now.

So, before we get into the conversation, I'm going to do a little bit of background. David is the founder and CEO of Family Capital Strategy, which is a boutique consultancy, that provides strategic insight, investment, governance, development, and family office design for families facing liquidity events, generational transitions and other significant changes.

Prior to founding the firm, David has an extensive background conducting strategic and investment analysis. And he served as a partner and Portfolio Manager at a 20-year-old asset management firm, co-founded a long short hedge fund, and was also a senior equity analyst working with large hedge fund and private equity clients. So, a very diverse background and I think given all of that, this will be a very compelling conversation.

Before we get into it, the biggest takeaway I had from reading your book, which is called When Anything Is Possible, and I encourage anybody listening to go check it out. And I'm sure we’ll, at the end of this, provide you some opportunities to connect with David and also access the book. But this is a light motif throughout your book, which is it's all about the why. So, maybe before we get into the guts of the book itself, why did you sit down and write this thing?

[00:02:11] DW: Yeah, great question. I think it comes down to a couple of things, appreciate the bit of bio on my end and I've been very fortunate over the course of my career to work with a lot of different types of investors, a lot of different types of families. And I think what I was struck with was, we would have conversations and even when I was was a portfolio manager, managing portfolios for clients, you would sit down and have a conversation with someone and as a portfolio manager, you're kind of like a chef, where you've got a bunch of different ingredients that you can put together to build a portfolio. But until you know whether the client wants Chinese food, Italian, or hamburger, it's really tough to put something out there that's going to be aligned. And what I found was, you would get into a conversation with a client, begin to start walking down this path of what are you trying to accomplish with your wealth? What's really the priority set? It's a really squishy nebulous kind of ephemeral concept. And the challenge was that almost to a tee, that conversation would be something that families would say, “I want to make sure that I can travel”, in which pre-COVID, such an important part of modern life is, it's so easy to get around the world, they want to see their grandkids, and they may have a few philanthropic causes that they care about. But that was it, that was kind of the full total of the conversation.

And really whatever level of net worth you are, I think you've got a pretty broad range of choices, especially once...

David Wells works as an advisor to individuals, families, and organizations to help them wrestle with and answer the strategic questions they face to grow and succeed into the future. With over 15 years' experience, David leverages his background as an equity analyst, 4x entrepreneur, and Board member to collaborate with senior leaders across the US.

[EPISODE]

[00:00:29] BA: Hello, and welcome to The Conversation on Colloquium. Today, I've got an old friend of mine, David Wells, with me. David, how are you today?

[00:00:36] DW: I'm doing well, Brian. Doing well.

[00:00:38] BA: Thanks for joining us. David and I have known each other for, gosh, longer than I probably care to admit. But he is always been exceedingly thoughtful, smart, hardworking, and I am so happy for him that he is doing well with his consulting business. And he is put together this book, which I think is really needed right now.

So, before we get into the conversation, I'm going to do a little bit of background. David is the founder and CEO of Family Capital Strategy, which is a boutique consultancy, that provides strategic insight, investment, governance, development, and family office design for families facing liquidity events, generational transitions and other significant changes.

Prior to founding the firm, David has an extensive background conducting strategic and investment analysis. And he served as a partner and Portfolio Manager at a 20-year-old asset management firm, co-founded a long short hedge fund, and was also a senior equity analyst working with large hedge fund and private equity clients. So, a very diverse background and I think given all of that, this will be a very compelling conversation.

Before we get into it, the biggest takeaway I had from reading your book, which is called When Anything Is Possible, and I encourage anybody listening to go check it out. And I'm sure we’ll, at the end of this, provide you some opportunities to connect with David and also access the book. But this is a light motif throughout your book, which is it's all about the why. So, maybe before we get into the guts of the book itself, why did you sit down and write this thing?

[00:02:11] DW: Yeah, great question. I think it comes down to a couple of things, appreciate the bit of bio on my end and I've been very fortunate over the course of my career to work with a lot of different types of investors, a lot of different types of families. And I think what I was struck with was, we would have conversations and even when I was was a portfolio manager, managing portfolios for clients, you would sit down and have a conversation with someone and as a portfolio manager, you're kind of like a chef, where you've got a bunch of different ingredients that you can put together to build a portfolio. But until you know whether the client wants Chinese food, Italian, or hamburger, it's really tough to put something out there that's going to be aligned. And what I found was, you would get into a conversation with a client, begin to start walking down this path of what are you trying to accomplish with your wealth? What's really the priority set? It's a really squishy nebulous kind of ephemeral concept. And the challenge was that almost to a tee, that conversation would be something that families would say, “I want to make sure that I can travel”, in which pre-COVID, such an important part of modern life is, it's so easy to get around the world, they want to see their grandkids, and they may have a few philanthropic causes that they care about. But that was it, that was kind of the full total of the conversation.

And really whatever level of net worth you are, I think you've got a pretty broad range of choices, especially once you start getting into what's called kind of the ultra-high net worth category, which is typically kind of around the $25 million mark, especially as you go from there on up into the multi hundred millions, the question then is not okay, “Well, can I travel to the level of which I'm accustomed?” Yes, you could do that. You could live abroad. The answer is yes or can I see my grandkids and be involved in their lives? Absolutely.

So, you lay out those funding priorities, and then there's still a, there's still this massive amount of wealth that's left over. And nobody really knows what to do with it. Maybe it's held for longer term estate planning, maybe it's held for some philanthropic priorities. But for the most part, I think what happens is, as people end up with portfolios, or just an overall view of their wealth, that's not as strategically aligned with what's most important, because it's really hard to surface those kinds of core level priorities that are there, because it it's a little bit of art, and – well, maybe it's a little bit of science and a lot of art, to help people think through those things. And I think in general, the financial community, some folks are more willing to have those conversations, some are not and and the reality is what I found when working with families in my current business, having a series of these dialogues, it may take 15 to 20 hours with the client to really walk through things to lay out priorities, and that's before you even start saying, “Okay, what does that mean in terms of stocks and bonds?” It's just Just kind of getting everything to the table for the first time.

So, that was really the genesis of the book was, okay, it seems like people need some sort of a framework of how to have these conversations. My poor wife, I try out all my ideas on her and we've had a lot of these conversations, just in our household, what are we trying to do with our kids? We can do these things from a travel perspective. We can do these things from a house perspective. How do we surface our values as we make decisions, and it's nebulous, because I think there's great financial advice for folks who have a spending problem. Dave Ramsey, right here in Nashville has done so much for helping getting folks out of debt. It's harder to find folks that can offer a really thoughtful, “What do I do after that?”, as you end up in places where you've got more than you “need”, then you're making decisions based off of some other metric. And I just personally found it hard to find something that was a tool that I could use, either at home, with conversations with friends or with clients. So, it seemed like a book that needed to be written. 

[00:06:00] BA: Yeah, and I would agree as context, my wife's family has a single-family office here in Nashville. And I remember talking to my father-in-law when I first joined the family and learned about the partnership, he said, when he founded it in, I guess, formally, probably like the late ‘90s, the term family office didn't even exist, it just was a limited partnership based in Tennessee for the benefit of his lineal descendants. So, as this concept has really become de rigueur in the financial industry, and everyone seemingly is talking about family offices, et cetera, could you give us a definition of in your mind, what qualifies as a family office?

[00:06:41] DW: Sure, the most common saying in family office world is if you've seen a family office, you've seen one family office, or something around that. And while that may be true, I actually find it to be an almost an unhelpful kind of sentiment, because it makes it sound like there's nothing common across family offices at all, that they're so unique and individualized to the family that you can't say anything holistically about them. So, I actually don't think that's the case, I think there's a lot of commonalities around them. And in general, what I view is, the simplest way that I think to explain a family office, is a family office is a tool that the family uses to manage its complexity. And that's kind of full stop.

Now, what forms in what shape that complexity is really depends on the family, I typically see it fall into three buckets. One is like this bucket of planning, it's all of the moving pieces across all of the various entities that exist within that and it so it's making sure all the ducks are in a row, the i's are dotted, the T's are crossed. So, you've got that vertical, there's the investment piece, when the family decides to make the business of managing its wealth of second business, the natural home of that is in the family office.

And then the third piece is all of this kind of middle stuff, which I kind of call family support, which oftentimes people hear that and they say, “Okay. That's where the family office pays your bills, or walks your dog or books your travel.” And for some offices, that's true. But I think for a lot of families, it's becomes this, if the family has broader goals as a family that aren't necessarily tied to the business, who does that work? If the family wants to schedule time in the summer to get together, and host meetings, like who's going to coordinate that lift? If the family wants to make sure that next generation is having some sort of financial education or history and story of the family work that's done. It's really going to the family office, that's the arms and legs of making sure that work gets done, because I know you and I both are super involved with nonprofits in Nashville, when you've got volunteers in leadership on boards, there's just a finite amount of ask that you can make from people and especially with larger families of wealth.

There's just so many moving pieces that that work has to land somewhere. Now granted, it's got to have good oversight and involvement of the family to make sure that they're moving in lockstep, but it's really the family office that becomes the front line for making sure that all of the other priorities of the fami

As we’ve seen more and more investors, funds and family offices starting to move away from manual processes to manage their real estate investments and investor relations to relying on technology to help scale their efforts, we decided to highlight how others can harness the power of technology themselves.

As portfolios expand and investor bases grow, the management can quickly get out of hand and the need for technology becomes almost imperative. In order to keep up with the progressive firms that have adopted technology to help with their operations and management efforts, it’s important to first understand the types of software available to real estate investors and second, the data you need to track in order to utilize the software effectively.

On July 9, 2020, Brian Adams, Founder & President of Excelsior Capital, spoke about the future of technology’s place in commercial real estate with Abhinav Somani, Managing Director at Leverton Intelligence, Bennett Washabaugh, Co-Founder & CEO of TenantBase, and Carrie Fruge, Strategic Account Director at Juniper Square.

Julie Wald is the founder, CEO and Chief Wellness Officer at Namaste New York, a wellness company that serves a vast and influential clientele of high-performing business leaders and celebrities in achieving their health goals. Join us as we unearth the steps necessary to achieve a more balanced life and gain "inner wealth." 

EPISODE 07

[EPISODE]

[00:00:21] BA: Well, welcome to a conversation on Colloquium. Thank you for joining us. Today I’ve got Julie Wald. It's a real treat for me, one, because her book is phenomenal. And we're going to talk a lot about it. But two, she is one of my best friends and Nashville sister. So it's always kind of fun when you can combine business and friendship in one. So, Julie, thank you for joining us.

[00:00:41] JW: Thank you so much for having me.

[00:00:43] BA: I’m going to give a brief rundown on Julie. Then we're going to go right into it. So Julie is a wellness practitioner for over 25 years. She is the founder, CEO and Chief Wellness Officer at Namaste New York. She has a bachelor's degree in social work from NYU. She began her career in 1995 as a clinical social worker treating adults, children and adolescents and inpatient-outpatient mental health settings. And in the process of building her mental health practice, she also pursued her personal wellness objectives, and in so doing became a certified yoga instructor along with a lot of other things. And the master of these disciplines has combined with an intense fascination for eastern wisdom and proven to be invaluable assets to professional path. 

So that's a lot what. I really want to get into is when I was reading your book, and I’m a 38-year-old white guy who's in finance, and pre-COVID was grinding a lot, traveling, getting up early, trying to cram in as much as I possibly could in the day. I’ve got two little kids, a wife who works. The biggest thing that struck me right off the bat was talking about how abundance does not necessarily equate with success or wellness. And the realization and the self-reflection by me that even though I have really nice things, I live in a nice house, I belong to a nice country club, we don't really have any needs or wants. I often find myself thinking that all of these material things that I have or these memberships that I have, they don't really bring me much joy or happiness. And I don't spend a lot of time reflecting on that because it makes me sad. But I do think it's a conversation that for people who are in that 35 to 55 year old demographic, it's a conversation that we should be having. I think it's important. So maybe if you could expound on that a little bit, that concept and how you fleshed it out with some of your clients and people in your network.

[00:02:43] JW: Absolutely. So it's really, really interesting, because back when we started our business, and this was back kind of in the early 2000s. Officially we started in 2003. I really ended up in living rooms, in offices with some of the highest performers, most incredibly brilliant and wonderful people in the world quite frankly. And one of the things that became really, really clear to me after sort of doing this work for a number of years is that again and again people would come and say, “I’ve achieved X, Y and Z. I’ve met my financial goals. I’ve exceeded my financial goals. I’ve gained all the letters and the titles that I want after my name.” All of these resume items that check the box and say, “But somehow I’m just not feeling as good as I thought I would feel.” 

And this often time came particularly after sort of a hyper focus on that external achievement or external wealth for a period of time, which in many ways was...

As we’ve seen more and more investors, funds and family offices starting to move away from manual processes to manage their real estate investments and investor relations to relying on technology to help scale their efforts, we decided to highlight how others can harness the power of technology themselves.

As portfolios expand and investor bases grow, the management can quickly get out of hand and the need for technology becomes almost imperative. In order to keep up with the progressive firms that have adopted technology to help with their operations and management efforts, it’s important to first understand the types of software available to real estate investors and second, the data you need to track in order to utilize the software effectively.

On July 9, 2020, Brian Adams, Founder & President of Excelsior Capital, spoke about the future of technology’s place in commercial real estate with Abhinav Somani, Managing Director at Leverton Intelligence, Bennett Washabaugh, Co-Founder & CEO of TenantBase, and Carrie Fruge, Strategic Account Director at Juniper Square.

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Julie Wald is the founder, CEO and Chief Wellness Officer at Namaste New York, a wellness company that serves a vast and influential clientele of high-performing business leaders and celebrities in achieving their health goals. Join us as we unearth the steps necessary to achieve a more balanced life and gain "inner wealth." 

EPISODE 07

[EPISODE]

[00:00:21] BA: Well, welcome to a conversation on Colloquium. Thank you for joining us. Today I’ve got Julie Wald. It's a real treat for me, one, because her book is phenomenal. And we're going to talk a lot about it. But two, she is one of my best friends and Nashville sister. So it's always kind of fun when you can combine business and friendship in one. So, Julie, thank you for joining us.

[00:00:41] JW: Thank you so much for having me.

[00:00:43] BA: I’m going to give a brief rundown on Julie. Then we're going to go right into it. So Julie is a wellness practitioner for over 25 years. She is the founder, CEO and Chief Wellness Officer at Namaste New York. She has a bachelor's degree in social work from NYU. She began her career in 1995 as a clinical social worker treating adults, children and adolescents and inpatient-outpatient mental health settings. And in the process of building her mental health practice, she also pursued her personal wellness objectives, and in so doing became a certified yoga instructor along with a lot of other things. And the master of these disciplines has combined with an intense fascination for eastern wisdom and proven to be invaluable assets to professional path. 

So that's a lot what. I really want to get into is when I was reading your book, and I’m a 38-year-old white guy who's in finance, and pre-COVID was grinding a lot, traveling, getting up early, trying to cram in as much as I possibly could in the day. I’ve got two little kids, a wife who works. The biggest thing that struck me right off the bat was talking about how abundance does not necessarily equate with success or wellness. And the realization and the self-reflection by me that even though I have really nice things, I live in a nice house, I belong to a nice country club, we don't really have any needs or wants. I often find myself thinking that all of these material things that I have or these memberships that I have, they don't really bring me much joy or happiness. And I don't spend a lot of time reflecting on that because it makes me sad. But I do think it's a conversation that for people who are in that 35 to 55 year old demographic, it's a conversation that we should be having. I think it's important. So maybe if you could expound on that a little bit, that concept and how you fleshed it out with some of your clients and people in your network.

[00:02:43] JW: Absolutely. So it's really, really interesting, because back when we started our business, and this was back kind of in the early 2000s. Officially we started in 2003. I really ended up in living rooms, in offices with some of the highest performers, most incredibly brilliant and wonderful people in the world quite frankly. And one of the things that became really, really clear to me after sort of doing this work for a number of years is that again and again people would come and say, “I’ve achieved X, Y and Z. I’ve met my financial goals. I’ve exceeded my financial goals. I’ve gained all the letters and the titles that I want after my name.” All of these resume items that check the box and say, “But somehow I’m just not feeling as good as I thought I would feel.” 

And this often time came particularly after sort of a hyper focus on that external achievement or external wealth for a period of time, which in many ways was the greatest strength of these people, this intense focus, this intense commitment, this intense drive, this intense intelligence. All of those things are huge strengths, but it was those exact same things that became liabilities in terms of cultivating what we call just like that internal resource. So they were really good at creating external resource, but in the meantime the internal resources were kind of ignored and under cultivated. And then at a certain point in life, inevitably, things get hard. Things get stressful. Either you're in the middle of a challenging time in your relationship or with a child who's struggling or confronting even a professional relationship that's not what you had hoped it would be. And all of a sudden that gaping hole, that space becomes a huge pain point in terms of those internal resources. And that was oftentimes when I would meet people. And sometimes it would be because these issues would manifest physically. Like suddenly there would be chronic back pain, or chronic migraine headaches, or insomnia and things like that. And other times people would just come and say, “I feel really good about a lot of things in my life, but I simultaneously feel like I lost the plot. And what do I do with that?

[00:05:20] BA: Yeah. I must admit reading the section about Ethan, which again I really encourage everyone to read this book. It's tremendous. The quote I wrote down on my outline is, “I have it all, but I’m not happy. Is this all there is? And when does my life begin?” And those thoughts go through my head a lot, because I’ve had moments myself where, to exactly your point, you internally have signposts that you say, “Once I hit this kind of wealth level or once I become partner or once I become managing director or once I do this big of a deal or once I have this much AUM,” whatever that accomplishment is, you store all this value in it. And some of the saddest moments of my life is when I’ve achieved those internal accomplishments, because I realize nothing's actually changed. And all that perceived value that I put into that accomplishment kind of evaporates. 

So at least for me, and I think it's endemic within my peer group, is, “Okay. Well, then let's put another zero on it and go for that.” Because that's what's been driving you for years. And I don't think it's the healthiest way to live and it is what I’ve discovered especially after spending a lot of time reading material that you've provided, folks like Brené Brown. I just think there has to be more to it. And this book really details how you can gain that kind of inner wealth that you talk about in the book. So kudos to you. It really does speak to a huge issue I think that's within our population of people, especially white men who just don't have the vocabulary to explain some of the emotions they're experiencing. Has that been your experience as well talking to a lot of other people within the finance world?

[00:07:06] JW: Absolutely. In fact for many, many years, my company does both corporate wellness as well as we work with sort of high-performing executives. And particularly in the field of finance, that was sort of that prototype that we would see again and again and again, this theme that would come up again and again and again. And it happens in other industries, but I think when you're dealing for example with people in a startup world or they're more braced for failure and it's a different type of mentality. It's a little bit more if you're familiar with Carol Dweck's work. It's a little more of like a growth mindset. And whereas I found that oftentimes a lot of the clients that I would end up working with sort of had what's called a fixed mindset, which is they sort of believed that they came into the world with a series of strengths and capabilities and not other strengths and capabilities, meaning like maybe you fancied yourself to be good with numbers or have good earning potential or whatever it is. But maybe you never really thought about your capacity for something like empathy, or spirituality, or even something like athleticism. It depends on who you are and who you're talking to. Some people have spent their entire life just with their head in a book and they never thought that they could get joy from their bodies, for example.

So when we think of that mindset, you kind of come into the world and then you're constantly sort of up against what you come to the table with and the prospect of failure. And it's kind of like one or the other. And when you have a growth mindset, you believe that you are constantly evolving. And when we believe that we're constantly evolving, there's really no destination, but it's about that commitment to continually learning and growing. And I think that people who can approach their lives from that perspective just become so much more open and spacious to exploring and developing the different aspects of themselves that ultimately lead to the cultivation of inner wealth or that sense of inner abundance, if that makes sense.

[00:09:37] BA: It does make sense. Could you, for the listeners, define inner wealth and how that interlaces with this concept of the four pillars that you’ve spell out in the book?

[00:09:48] JW: Absolutely. So the four pillars are really the fundamental ingredients that we have found are sort of the baseline for a healthy, happy life. So meaning that without these four pillars, it doesn't mean that you can't have a lot of joy, but there's an imbalance. The foundation is – The fundamentals are not intact. And those four pillars are movement, stillness, connection and nourishment. So that's movement, stillness, connection and nourishment. 

And really these are the fundamental ingredients that a newborn baby needs to thrive. And nothing changes throughout the life cycle. So oftentimes, and I see this with my own kids who are teenagers. Even as early as you know sort of grade school, parents forget that the importance of, for example, making sure that a child gets enough still