Founder's Story - Success is a Total Mindset Shift, I learned from Billionaires (Chad Willardson: Fully Invested) | Ep. 267

Episode Date: October 8, 2025

Prepare for a paradigm shift! Chad unpacks why you can't earn your way to financial freedom – you have to invest your way there. This isn't just about money; it's about building a 'Fully Invested' life where you win in business and at home. In this deep dive, you'll discover: The Investment Imperative: Why disciplined investing, not just higher income, is the true engine of lasting wealth. Challenging Entrepreneurship: When the 'go all in' myth might actually be a trap, and how to assess your true path. Purpose Beyond the Paycheck: What actually brings joy and significance to ultra-successful individuals once financial worries are gone. Work-Life Alignment, Not Balance: Why chasing an elusive "work-life balance" creates guilt and distraction, and how to integrate your life for maximum presence and impact. The Strategic NO: Learning to filter decisions with "good, better, best" to protect your most valuable asset: your time. Chad shares a powerful, relatable story from a family vacation. Delegation Over Control: The common habit among high-achievers that unknowingly destroys their wealth and stunts growth. Finding Your Working Genius: How focusing on your natural strengths transforms business growth and personal fulfillment. Tony Robbins' Lasting Impact: Chad shares insights and inspiration from his interactions with growth-focused legends. Get Chad's newest Best-Selling book, "Fully Invested": fullyinvested.com Connect with Chad Willardson: chadwillardson.com Get more leads and grow your business. Go to https://www.pipedrive.com/founders and get started with a 30 day free trial. Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Today's episode is sponsored by Pipe Drive, the number one CRM tool for small to medium businesses. I am excited to share more about them later in the episode. Not everyone is built for entrepreneurship and that's okay. What is the single biggest money lie that keeps people broke no matter how much they earn? People are told you they can earn their way to financial freedom. You have to invest your way there. Being an entrepreneur is not the only way to become successful or financially free. Should you continue with this income, invest in other people's business, invest in other things?

Or do you become an entrepreneur and then hopefully make the money to then invest and to do things? It depends if his business idea is profitable. If he leaves a high paying, steady job to start a business and it fails and collapses and he uses a bunch of his investment savings, that was a terrible move. Let's talk about purpose. I think the purpose that people have is hunger for growth and significance. progress and impact, you know, that's one thing my friend Tony Robbins talks a lot about is that progress equals happiness. So, Chad, excited to have you, not just because you have some of the most epic people on your

website, like Tony Robbins and such. And I can't wait to learn more about what you learned from people like that. But you've managed over $1.4 billion. dollars what is the single biggest money lie that keeps people broke no matter how much they earn that's a great question thanks for having me on i think the biggest money lie is that people are told you they can earn their way to financial freedom and people are so focused on how much money they make when really you cannot earn your way there you have to invest your way there so if someone's making a hundred thousand dollars let's say and they just think hey i'll start investing and I'll be able to really have financial freedom and independence once I make $150,000 or $200,000 or whatever the number is, it's not true.

If you can't invest and manage your income on $100,000 or $200,000, you wouldn't be able to do it if it was $500,000 or $1 million. If you don't invest or handle $10,000 responsibly, then you wouldn't manage or invest $10 million responsibly. So the biggest lie is that we can, you know, the earnings are the only thing that matter when really it's the investments. Okay. So I've had this debate with somebody and I'm glad you bring this up. I'm going to give you two scenarios. I have a friend makes a couple hundred thousand dollars a year. He's been investing it for a while. Never wants to quit his job. He's like 25 years in, makes a steady income, invest. And he wants to quit to be an entrepreneur. And I can tell him, don't. Like, stay with what you're doing. Because when you become an entrepreneur, now you have to put all your money into the business and you don't have this extra money. Then on the other end, it's like you can't really build a business unless you really go 100% in. So we had this debate around should you continue with this income, invest in other people's business, invest in other things? Or do you become an entrepreneur and then

hopefully make the money to then invest and to do things? What are your thoughts? I think that not everyone is built for entrepreneurship and that's okay. Being an entrepreneur is not the only way to become successful or financially free. So I disagree with that myth that I see online a lot that just glorifies entrepreneurship and puts everyone else down. I don't think that's legitimate. It depends. It depends if his business idea is profitable. If he leaves a high paying, steady job to start a business and it fails and collapses and he uses a bunch of his investment savings, that was a terrible move. If he's able to create a, a business that does really well and provides an impact for customers and clients and he's able to

get out of a job maybe that he doesn't enjoy, then it could be a huge success story. So it kind of depends on the business. You know, if it doesn't work out, it wasn't a good move just to do it for the sake of leaving. So that really depends on how, you know, how solid his business idea really is. So when you talk, let's talk about purpose because I know you, you obviously meet incredible people. you've gotten to deal with highly successful people. They've obviously achieved a certain financial freedom when it comes to money. But what do you find makes them happy and provides purpose once they get to that level of financial freedom? I think the purpose that people have is hunger for growth and significance, progress and impact.

That's one thing my friend Tony Robbins talks a lot about is that, progress equals happiness. If you make a lot of money and you sell your business and you do nothing and maybe let's say you say, oh, I'm just going to golf every day, you're eventually going to be bored of that and you're not going to be growing. And so you're just going to be kind of stagnant and feeling no purpose. And so some people are fueled by impact. Some people are fueled by just the scorecard of growth in their business. Some people are fueled by the freedom. And the purposes that I see most often for the really successful, it seems to be about health and experiences, family, travel, relationships, charity, and things like that. Once they're,

once they know their financial freedom goals are met and they really don't have to worry about money anymore, they look to other reasons to care and to give back. How did you find your purpose beyond just making money? My purpose was never just making money. money. So I'm married 24 years now. I got married young. I was in college and we have five kids. So for me, it was always about building a great family life. You know, my wife, she was the fourth of six kids. I was the oldest of four. And so we knew we wanted a big family. And so creating a family that was a place that people could thrive and our kids could grow up with a lot of opportunities and a lot of experiences and memories that to me was always always a driving factor so you have five kids

which is incredible by the way i know what you talk about when it comes to balance because i'm thinking you know parenthood entrepreneurship business those things you say that work life balance is a myth there's so many people that talk about their opinion on work life balance but do you think that chasing that actually can make people more unhappy I think, yeah, I think that people are at work and they're feeling bad about not being at home with family. And then they're with family and they're checking their emails and their Slack messages and they're feeling guilty about not getting work done. And we're just distracted and we are half in. And there's a high tax for being half in for not being present ever.

You know, we're at work and we're checking personal messages all the time or we're at home and we're focused on emails for work. and we're just struggling in everywhere, you know, in every place of our lives. And so the balance lie is that work and family and everything are competing. And so it's like we live multiple different lives and we're trying to balance a scale, which is not true. If you're struggling at home, your work performance is probably going to suffer a little bit. If work is going terribly, you're not going to be very happy and excited at home. So my belief is that all of these things are correlated together and that alignment is what we're seeking.

Alignment and integration and being fully invested rather than trying to perfectly balance different components of our life. That doesn't really work. I can relate. I think we can all relay. Plus, it almost creates your internal resentment around, oh, I wanted to show up for my kid's recital, but I couldn't because I need to do this business. I wanted to show for business, but I couldn't because I need to do this, or if you have partners, which makes me think about no. For me, one of the hardest things is saying no. Like you said, I'll be checking things when I probably shouldn't, right? And maybe I'm getting my wife upset because, you know, we're supposed to be doing something, but I'm focused on this. So what for you was a time when you, maybe was the hardest time where you had to say no? And how did that change everything that you thought around this word?

I'll start with a story. We were at the Grand Cayman Islands on a family vacation over Christmas break. And the beaches were incredible. The weather, it was sunny and blue skies. The water was warm, turquoise water. And people were playing beach volleyball outside of the resort. And so we rented one of those kind of bigger beach beds that had an umbrella over it. So we could kind of come back and eat our snacks and go back in the water and play.

And in the beach bed next to us, the dad of this family spent no less than eight hours on his laptop and his cell phone the whole day. He never left the lounge chair. He didn't get his feet in the sand. He didn't go in the water. And I remember his kids, because his kids and our kids were kind of playing together in the sand. And his kids kept coming up and trying to ask him to come get in the water. And he'd say, just a minute I'm almost done. just a minute I'm almost done.

He never finished. By the time we finished, it was like four or five o'clock, we were going to go back in the hotel, shower up, and go to dinner. He was still sitting there with his laptop and his cell phone out. And I thought, man, that just, that's not, that is not ideal. That's not ideal. And yet it's common where we're on vacation with our family on a holiday break, but we're not really.

And, you know, for me, I think it was difficult more in the beginning. because I was trying to build a business. It was difficult to say no to business invitations. I wanted to say yes. I wanted to say, yeah, I want to go to that networking event. I want to go to that mixer. I want to go speak at that on that stage. What a great event.

I could get new clients. But as I thought about what I would be given up, I realized I can't do both. You know, I can't be pulled in all these different directions or I'm going to break. So I got to use the filter from Dallin H. Oaks, which is good, better, best. There's a lot of good things that I could say yes to.

but the best is often going to be saying no to the good things. And so there are a lot of invitations where I politely decline because I have other priorities. I've spoken to hundreds of entrepreneurs and one of the biggest pain points they share is generating consistent quality leads. Most founders spend hours chasing down prospects, juggling outreach and still end up with missed opportunities. That's why I recommend today's sponsor, Pipe Drive, the number one CRM tool for small to medium businesses. Top sales teams are using Pipe Drive to close an average of three times more leads per month. My favorite part, Pipe Drive takes messy sales process, turns it into a visual pipeline so you can see exactly where every deal stands and what you need to do next.

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Just head to PipeDrive.com slash founders to get started. That's PipeDrive.com slash founders, and you can be up and running in minutes. say that one more time you said it was say no the best thing is to say no to the good thing say that one more time how you said it yes so the filter of decisions good better and best and once you have your priority straight and you know what the best decisions are it becomes a lot easier to say no to good invitations to good opportunities and so meetings or or just business events or things like that they may be good but it's not the best use of your time and so i don't want to feel that resentment wherever i am so i'll make decisions based on what i feel is best i like that probably

the hardest thing we've had a lot of great people on this show from billionaires i have to say a lot of them have had multiple divorces if i could look at a commonality they they really sacrificed the family over the business and many of them when we would ask you know what do you what do you regret they would say I regret the impacts it had on my family or that I allowed it to have on my family so they missed their kids childhood like I see that Daniel I I've met a lot of very successful people and they're on their third marriage or they're not married or they've they've lost relationships with their kids and I never wanted to be that guy so my I'm striving to be the opposite of that and to be a voice that says the hustle culture is a lie. Work life balance

is a lie. And you can actually do well. You can win big and have a successful family life and a successful business career at the same time. So that's what I hope my voice and my message gets out there to preach. I love that. I know you've written your six-time bestselling author. Do any of these books relate to any of that? And there's anything you can share in that? Yeah. In fact, I'll hold it up right here. The newest book, fully invested. That's what this book is all about. Seven Strategies to Win Big in Business and at Home.

And you can see on the cover, it's the first time I've had my whole family on the cover of a book. But in this book, I just share the frameworks and filters and basically the fully invested operating system. It's not about how do I squeeze in more into an 18-hour day. That's not going to work. You're going to get burned out. You'll have bad health and you'll struggle.

It's more about how to filter, how to make better decisions, how to say no, what to delegate, how you can be more integrated when it comes to work and family, how you can involve your family and your work. So I believe that if you have a strong marriage, you're going to show up a better leader in business. I really believe that. I love it. Fully invested. So when you look at high achievers, is there a pattern to what actually is distrable? destroying their wealth. Because I know you're talking about the investment side and how they're making

money or how you're making money from money. But is there something that actually destroys the wealth of successful people? Maybe they don't even know it. I think what happens most often is that business leaders have a hard time delegating. They're such control freaks. They're type A achievers. And so they want to be involved in every decision. And that causes them to basically stunt their growth. They stunt their business growth. They stunt their financial wealth growth because they want to have like a strangle hold on all the decisions because they feel they're so smart and successful. When really, if you trust experts in different areas, that leverage produces a lot of freedom and a lot of opportunity for growth. Let's say you are starting over in a new business tomorrow.

Was there some principle that would carry over to whatever business, whatever new business or new venture that you would do in the future that you've learned so far? Yes. And I do start new businesses. So this is an easy answer. I believe that people should be in their working genius zone. Like they should be doing the things that they're naturally best at and nothing else. And so I really strive to put people in a position where they're excited to work.

They come in on a Monday morning. They're excited about it. They know what they're supposed to do. and they're naturally good at it, and they want to keep getting better. So I don't try to do everything myself. I try to hire people who are really great at specific things, and they specialize in that, and I'll bring them into the business and say, okay, this is what I need you to do.

Here's the vision. Here's the long-term goal. And you just apply your skill sets to make that happen. And so any new business I get involved with, that's absolutely a core foundation, is that we're going to hire people who are good, energy, good attitudes, and we're going to put them in the spot where they are a specialist. You know, and when I was in my corporate days, the biggest challenge that I felt corporate or corporations

have was that they, I didn't feel they were ever really good at doing that. And it was rather like performance improve people out of their position, even though instead, hey, let's, maybe you're just not in the right position. Maybe that's why you're not performing or you're unhappy. is you're not doing that thing that you're even good at. Like, we stick people in positions to do things they're not even good at. And I could see frustration on both ends. So I appreciate you bringing that up. Is there anyone out, anyone maybe that you have not met yet?

Anyone in the business world or any, you know, any, any, does that entrepreneur or somebody out there who you're like, well, I would like to meet this person and I would like to learn X from them? That's a good question. I think it'd be fascinating to meet Elon Musk. he's just such a thinker um i've i just people who think bigger and and go against the grain of like well they say this is impossible well i'm going to see if it's possible like that's someone who i mean i probably wouldn't sound very smart having a conversation with someone like that but i just i like i like being around big thinkers who have ideas that go against the grain and say why not why don't we try something you know i've met a lot of people who have been very

successful. What I've always found in common with them is that they're very hungry for growth. They're teachable. They don't, they don't, the people who are not successful feel like they know it all already. And they don't want to hire a coach and they don't want to get trained. The people who are really successful, ask questions. They're still curious. They're teachable. And to me, that's very respectable. I can see that. And I can see that within yourself. of it. It's the, I find that curiosity is so important, like you said, being curious about things, which is why I always like to travel and, and meet new people and, and see new cultures and new things. I feel like it's really helped me in the business and sales work. Who is somebody

that you have met, that you have a really interesting story about either that meeting or just some time that you are with them, that you can share? I would say, Jesse Itzler. Jesse is one of the most, you know, one of the reasons I like him is because he's not just successful in business. He models a great family life. He's an engaged father. He's happily married. And his story is one of just hustling and trying new things, which I thought was really impressive. I met him a few times.

Tony Robbins, the word that keeps coming to me with him is just hunger. He's still striving even in his mid to late 60s right now. I was just with him a few months ago. he's still striving to reach significant goals where he's stretched and he's stressed and he's going for stuff. So it's inspiring to me, who's a couple decades behind him, like, man, they're really, if you're focused on growth and opportunities, you don't have to stop and and just kind of shut it down like a lot of people do when they turn 60 or 65. You know, he's still striving for new things, which is exciting. I'm amazed by his energy. Do you find that too? Like,

I don't even have the energy at 40. I can imagine being in my 60s. What's the energy you get from him? And what do you think, based on your experiences with him, what's like driving this energy? He is really passionate about helping people. I've seen it. He is a very genuine guy. He's larger than life.

He's a big man. I mean, he's a big dude. And he just has a lot of energy for life. He's excited. he knows what he wants and he goes for it and he's he's definitely very talented in his area of work like i've seen him turn some some mindsets around like right in front of me it's pretty cool so i was in the four seasons in new york and we were having an event and we asked them out of all these people that they've met because they said we've had like every celebrity

to royalty we asked who had the most security and they actually said out of all the people that have been there. Tony Robbins had the most security. And they were saying, because people want to come up to him and think that they can, like, he can just change their life, like just anyone on the street versus a celebrity like they want an autograph. But I found that really, really, that stuck with, that was like a couple of years ago. I heard this. And I was like, that is very interesting, right? So fully invested, Chad, how can people get the book? How can people get in touch with you? Yeah, fully invested.com. Grab a copy there. And my website is Chad Willardson.com. so happy to connect there fully invested.com how did you get that URL I don't know I don't know I just fully invested has always been my signature tagline for probably 16 or 17 years and so one day before I ever wrote the book I just said you know I should get that that you should get that URL just in case I ever use it someday you manifested it doody Roberts would be proud of you getting that's a good that is a really good do I buy just random domains every day and then

And that is a really hard one, but fully invested.com. Chad, this has been a great conversation. I learned a lot. I know the audience is going to learn a lot, too, and I can't wait to read the book. And thank you for joining us today on Founder's Story. Thank you, Daniel. Appreciate it.