The Ryan Leak Podcast - A Rubric For Having Tough Conversations with Paul Attia

Episode Date: October 31, 2022

Paul Attia specializes in navigating tough conversations with high-net-worth families. In this episode, we learn his rubric for navigating those complex conversations. If you're looking for a coach, check out our coaches at ryanleak.com

Welcome to followership with Ryan Leak. This is a podcast that is designed to talk about the other side of leadership. And over the past few episodes, we've been talking about coaching and receiving advice and feedback from somebody that has experienced that oftentimes that we don't. Sometimes it's not even just experience. Sometimes it's perspective. Today, we have the one and only Paul Attia. He is a lawyer. He is an advisor to family enterprises.

He's a former criminal prosecutor as well. And I've got so many questions for Paul. I don't know that we're going to have enough time because I'm so fascinated by what you do. Nevertheless, Paul, welcome to followership with Ryan Lake. Thank you so much for taking time on your busy schedule to be with us today. say hello to all of our followership listeners.

Hey, Ryan, thanks so much for having me on. Great to be here. I appreciate it. Absolutely. So my first question for you is, what do you do? I know you said to me, hey, I don't like the word consulting. So unpack for us what it is that you do and why you're not a consultant and what's the word that you would use to describe exactly what you do for families? Yeah.

Well, as you mentioned, I'm a former prosecutor. And what I used to do for 10 years is I cross-examined people for what I would say, destructive purposes. I was cross-examining people to expose poor decisions. And I was doing it for a destructive purpose. I was doing, you know, I had a goal as a prosecutor. And I cross-examined. And the goal was to get after the truth. And in so doing, you know, it would use.

help someone unravel and, you know, ideally get to the result the prosecution was looking for. What I now do working with family businesses and ultra wealthy families is it's the same skill set. I'm still cross-examining, but now I'm cross-examining for a constructive purpose. Now I'm cross-examining to help people make really optimal decisions when it comes to relationships and really at the intersection of their wealth and their business. And the reason I take, and with respect to all consultants, the reason I'm not called a consultant is the consulting method is to come in, broadly speaking, do interviews, assess the situation, and provide recommendations, provide a report. So here you go. One of my clients said it's like the Ten Commandments,

here you go. The reality is that it's, it's designed to be bespoke, but the reality is the nature of the beast is here's the report, you know, go forth and conquer. Humans don't really work that way, though. And families in particular don't work that way. And I'm a really big believer that every solution you have that you want to be sustainable has to be grounded in the reality of the human condition. And the case of families, the human condition is the actual boots on the ground condition of that family. Every family has a set of family dynamics that are,

generational in many respects. But by the time I come in, they're 30, 40, 50 years into play. So I take, rather than a prescriptive approach of coming in and saying, I've assessed you, here's the recommendations, I take a much more principle-based approach, which is I come in and I say,

let's figure out what the actual dynamics are for this family. And rather than saying, hey, here's what's going to, here's what's going to work, go after it. It's, I'm going to roll up my sleeves, sit with you at the kitchen table and say, let's actually work together on this. And I'm not telling you what the answers are or telling you what to do. I'm helping guide you all through it as we get to it. And the goal is that you have a set of principles and a process that is now sustainable

for you going forward. That's awesome. So when, Sue, when you get to a table, an ultra wealthy family, this is, perhaps a family that just sold a company or inherited, you know, a great deal of wealth. What do you feel like is the most challenging dynamic at that table? As you sit in that advisor role, what is the most challenging dynamic at that table? So the dynamic that's most challenging for every family is going to be specific to that family. At a high level, though, the most important one is, do we have vest-eastern?

players of the table who are interested in what I would say are honest, cohesive, and productive conversations. So if you think about just sort of how we operate as humans, honesty is not as easy as it sounds. And not for necessarily duplicitous reasons, right? So honesty sort of dishonesty has this idea that, oh, you're dishonest, you're an immoral person. The reality is that's not always the case.

Of course, that is the case for many. But the reality is many of us are dishonest with ourselves. Dishonest. We're dishonest about our expectations, right? Of ourselves. We're dishonest about our expectations of our children. We're dishonest about our approval of things. So one of the most important things I try to draw out of families, and you have to pace it, right?

One of the most challenging parts of the job is finding the right pace. So you've got to push enough that you're moving forward, but you can't push so fast that you blow things up. And that would be true. you're just doing one-on-one coaching, but that's especially true when you're working with five people at a time or in some cases 15 people at a time or 20 people at a time, right? Because I have to move fast enough that the most eager person stays in the room, but slow enough that I don't leave someone off the back, right? So if you think about honesty, one of the big things is like, what are your actual honest expectations of your kids, of your parents, of your, you know, siblings, of your cousins,

etc. And how do you honestly assess other members of your family? Because that's actually really tough. And we're reluctant to admit things that may have downstream negative consequences. But if we're dishonest, just following that through, if we're dishonest, what you've done is you've kicked the can down the road. So one of the most important things, just to answer that question of what's so challenging is getting people to be honest. But at the same time, you have to be honest in a way that is productive and cohesive. Yeah. Because I don't sit down at the first meeting and say, all right, everyone hit me with all the

bad things that you've heard. And tell me what you really think about your idiot brother. I want to hear that. I don't do that because now we might get the honesty, which is, you know, I don't actually trust my brother. I don't think he's good as his job. My dad gave him the CFO job simply because he was looking for a place. He was looking for a warm body.

My brother couldn't get a job elsewhere, right? Like, don't want that, even if you're feeling it because now it's going to blow things up and now we're going backwards. But I also don't want you to be like, no, no, he's fine. he's really good at his job when you don't feel that way because that will bite us down the road. So one of the hard parts is finding this the right amount of honesty at the right pace in a cohesive and a productive way. Wow.

What would be an example of, because again, your role is helping people at a very high level make good decisions. You use your background to help people make good decisions. What would be an example of a terrible decision? and what would be an example of a really good decision that a family business has made, so to speak? Yeah, so again, you know, at the high level, this is the goal.

What ends up happening with every individual family is we go very deep, like we get deep into the weeds. And by design, I only take on so many clients at a time because in order to really help a family make optimal decisions, I have to really understand the players. And I've done a lot of time with people. So it's very in-depth and very bespoke at that. level. So as far as like examples of poor decisions versus ideal decisions. Yeah. So I think one of the

poor decisions that people make often, you can sort of see why is, and parents are obviously the most guilty of it, and you're a parent, I'm a parent, we can understand why. Yeah. Is, and this is going to sound controversial, but that's why we have to keep listening to sort of understand why. It's this idea of like treating all your kids the same. And I don't mean by treating all your kids the same in terms of, you know, equal opportunity or treating them same in terms of respect or in the same of unconditional love or in the same of all these different things, all the things that we strive for as parents. They're treating them the exact same as though their skill set is identical and their passions are identical and their expectations for their life are identical

and their personalities are identical because they're not. Right. So very often, parents will just assume I have, you know, you have two sons. Okay, I have two sons. Now, you already know because your sons are three and seven that they're very different already. Oh, yeah. That delta is only going to expand over time. You know, you're going to end up having moments where you're like, man, these guys are so alike. It's obviously your brothers and you'll have other times. And maybe you and your wife have already said it.

We're like, how can these two guys be related to each other? Right. Right. So just imagine those guys running a business and you saying one day, I have two sons, they're going to run my business. They'll be the two VPs of the Ryan League group. and they'll have equal salaries, right? It's like, okay, let's work with that a little bit. You're trying to do the right thing and you have good intentions,

but the reality is one of them might be the most, I'm just making this up, right? The most shy, introverted, detail-oriented, non-business development guy on the face of the earth, and the other guy might be the rainmaker of the century. Right? They might have vastly different work styles. So you couldn't say the expectation is my sons, if you show up from 8 a.m. to 5 p.m. every single day and work hard, you get paid $100,000 a year.

Right? So there's a great example where we're trying to do that. So I, you know, I kind of get calls from clients at one of three spots. This is how I always try to think about it. Spot number one is people are 10 years away from the edge of the cliff. Okay. So I'm really fortunate in those situations. They call me and they say, look, I'm in my 50s. You know, I've got my kids working in the business now or they may come into the business. I want to get this right. I heard you speak or I heard you on a podcast or I met you or you worked with, you know, you worked with another friend of mine. They said, I got to, you know, sit down with you. And I said, great, we've now got all this time in the world to work on process, decision making. And so we get to almost preemptively ensure we don't go over the edge of the cliff. Then I have other clients who have already gone over the edge of the cliff.

Humpty Bumpty has, you know, he's destroyed and they call and I'm maybe the second or the third call they've had. And then they're like, okay, we heard you can maybe help us put these pieces back together. And then the third type of call I get is the person who's at the edge of the cliff. In those situations, I'm now coming in usually 10, 15, 20 years into it, maybe 10, 15 years into it, where they made the decision that I've just described, where they basically said, we're not going to have the tough conversation up front. We're not going to sit down and say, what does the business actually need?

What can the business afford? Where's the skill set? What are your passions? Ultimately, the ultimate question is this, what are people's expectations? They did not identify expectations at the beginning of the journey, and they didn't identify expectations throughout. So what ends up happening 10, 15 years later, if we don't identify expectations, is we have a ton of disappointment.

Right? Why? Because a disappointment in life is simply expectations unmet. It's that simple, right? Any single disappointment you have, any single disappointment someone has in you was an expectation that was unmet. And so at the end of the day, the most. important thing is to identify our expectations so that we can then manage them and ideally optimize

them. There's an example of a traditionally poor decision that then has this massive snowball effect years later. It's failure to identify expectations. The flip side of that is the really good decisions, right? Is the people who actually say we have an open forum for dialogue in which we're actually going to have the tough conversations, ideally as best, you know, as early as possible. And if we didn't have them in advance, we're now going to press pause and we're actually going to start to have some of these difficult conversations now. And we're actually going to start to figure out what are we trying to do, where are we trying to go, who are the best people for, what are all these different things that we're optimizing for

and to actually put the time and effort to do with that. So nothing I've just said is going to be a surprise to anybody. Right. I haven't shared anything that's actually new. This is the furthest thing from rocket science. the hard part is, you know, doing it and doing it consistently and doing it well. What would you tell are our listeners who, maybe they work in a family business, not a lot of people that work in a family business,

and they've got some frustrations, and they want to have a tough conversation with a member of the family. Yeah. From your insight, from behind the scenes, what would you tell a person is the best approach to do that? Yeah.

So the first and I think most important thing when it comes to communication is asking, the dialogue starts with yourself. This is why so many of us fail. Because most of us, when we think about saying something, don't have an internal dialogue that's robust enough.

Most of us aren't very good at self-reflective questions. So I talked earlier about cross-examining people, right? And doing that as a prosecutor in court, you've done it with your kids, right? Tell me what did you do? Okay, if you didn't hit your brother, you'd agree with me that. You were both outside and you had the stick in your hand, right? So we all do it to some extent.

And most of us actually don't do that with ourselves, right? why am I thinking this way? Why am I feeling this way? I told myself that I was this kind of person and yet I'm behaving in a way that's wildly contradictory to that. So answer your question, and this is a framework that I invite clients to think about. I often say,

why is it that you want to go speak to somebody? And here are two options. Option one is I want to say something. Okay, that's great. So you need to get something. I need to tell Ryan, you are misreading me. You are rude to me. I want to say that to Ryan.

Okay. that's fine. So the person that you're trying to benefit from that communication is yourself, right? Like I'm trying to get this off my chest. I need to say this to stick up for myself. I need to say this so that you know, I've had sleepless nights because you don't know how upset I am. Okay. Nothing wrong with that.

But that's called therapy. And it's central in life. You really need to be able to resolve the unresolved conflict in your soul to be able to get that out to people. Right. But recognize that you're saying that for your benefit. Wow. Okay. Now, option two, you want to say something for Ryan to hear, like for Ryan's benefit,

to move the needle forward. Yeah. That's communication. So then you have to ask yourself, if I'm communicating for your benefit, right? If I'm speaking for your benefit, it's communication. If I'm speaking for my benefit, it's therapy. Wow. So that's the first thing you got to do is you got to figure out, am I looking for a therapy

session or a communication session? And both are essential, but man, do not try to do both of the best. at the same time and be very clear about which one you're doing. Wow. You think of negotiations, right? The proverbial, like, I'm underpaid. I want to talk to my boss. Yes.

This is probably the number one thing. That's right. So I thought about it. I'm like, man, I talk to my friends. They all, they're merking this. I've been here for three years. They were at their jobs for two years. They got to raise every six months.

I did more. I did this. I did this. And all you're doing is you're playing the victim Olympics. You are literally just looking around being like, I'm the biggest loser, right? I call it the victim. Wow. Right?

You're sort of, and so by the time you're done this, you have wrapped yourself up into this thing where you're just like this like individual who storms in there who says like everyone in the universe has wronged me. And you epitomize that as my boss who's underpaid me, underappreciated me, undervalued me, et cetera. Wow. Right? Oh, yeah.

And then you roam. And all you want to do is just tell your boss why they're wrong. But have you thought about making a case? Like if you thought about is this therapy for me? Or, right, what am I trying to get this person to do? What do I want them to hear? So again, it's really simple. If you're focusing on what you want to say, it's therapy.

If you're focusing on what you want them to hear, it's communication. Both are essential. Just know the difference. So if you're thinking of I want to actually communicate, well, then you have to think, what do I want my boss to hear? Okay. So now I've got to go in. Okay, now we go into the next level of framework, right, on communication, which is who is your audience?

Because remember, what motivates my boss may not be what motivates me. What resonates with that person may not be what resonates with me or any other boss or the boss that's sitting in the VP chair beside that person, right? The reality is, I mean, and this was back from my trial days, we had a rule that sort of like when you were walking into court, rule number one of ad, is know your audience. Right? So if you're a trial lawyer, rule number one is know your audience. You know this as a speaker. And we knew it as prosecutors.

Rule number one, you know, and that's why jury cases are tough in some ways, because your judge, you know, I've had Justice Smith, you know, four times in the past, you know, year, I sort of get a sense as to what, you know, I talked to him at the Christmas party last year. He likes sports. Okay, good. You try to figure that out. But with a jury, it's 12 complete strangers.

So you're trying to use your, you know, your voodoo spidey powers, right? sort of thing to out. And that's what makes it so fun, right? It's this idea of like you're trying to get into the, what we used to call you're trying to get into the hearts and the minds of your jurors. You want to be that 13th person in the room and they go into deliberate, right? And the same is true of my job now. The jurors now are the people that I'm working with. The good news is I get to have an interactive dialogue with them. So back to this idea of the person who wants to go and talk to their boss. It's you have to know who that person is you have to know what lands for them. And one of the ways to do that, and this goes back to one of your other questions is in terms of things to do inside of a family business. One of my principles is you have to really judge a man on distance traveled or judge a woman on distance traveled. So what means is we're often evaluating people on where they stand today. Right. Now, Ryan's a really polite guy, but man, that guy never takes his plate up after lunch. Right? Like just as so we judge that and we say, you know, the standard is take your plate off after lunch.

Okay? So we judge someone to that. But the reality is what if I found out you were raised in a family where like, I'm just going to make this up? Like that was never done. You were never once taught. No one ever took the time to tell you that. Right? So I'm judging you on a standard.

The reality is where you were, you know, table manners 10 years ago and where you are today are light years apart. So if I judge you on distance traveled, you've come a long way. You know, that example, by the way, you know, my father is an immigrant and he came from Egypt. And I remember sort of the moment, you know, sort of the light went off. And I realize, you know, my dad's communication skills, you know, are probably not the same is mine. And I remember at times getting frustrated with my father because he's so loving,

but man, is he ever direct? Like, this guy is just the most, like, he will tell you what he thinks of you whether you ask him or not. And he's, and it's, he's very rarely wrong, but holy cow, is he ever direct? And that's, that's tough. That can be very challenging at times. And I remember sort of like, why am I down this way? Or why is he hard on me? Or why is he that, you know, all these different things. And then I was like, if I judge a man on distance traveled, where that guy has come. He was raised as one of nine in rural Egypt to illiterate parents. Like his father was born literally in 1899 to, you know, so like I was like, wow, he came from like one of nine rural Egypt illiterate parents. And now he's become a successful businessman, father, husband in Canada.

That guy has done way more with his life than I have, relatives. Right? And it's sort of, you know, the reason that I, you know, hopefully I'm a good communicator. and I've had some, you know, some nice success family-wise and life-wise in life, is on account of how far my parents have come. And so when I see my dad through that lens, I can appreciate him so much more. So again, back to communication, you want to think, I need to judge someone on distance travel. So it's, I mean, this is the whole idea of you get to walk a mile in someone else's shoes. So this is along with the way of saying, when you're thinking about going and approaching the boss,

you've got to think, who is that person? The other part, if we really want to sort of, again, roll up our sleeves and get into it, is you actually have to figure out and people fail at this all the time. We all do. So again, start one, right? My therapy or is a communication, my speaking because I want to say something or speaking because I want them to hear something. Who is that person? What matters to that person?

What resonates to them? The next one is, where is that person that day? So that's like a really important one. But I always try to say with my clients, you have to manage your state before you manage the state. Right? So it's really important. until you know how someone feels, you can't really know how they feel about something.

So think, for example, if somebody comes to you and asks you for something, and you've just had the best morning ever with your wife and your kids, you had a great workout, you just got this new contract. You are, man, you're buying coffees for everybody, right? Right. You're the most generous guy in the world.

Now let's flip that, and all of a sudden, you've had the worst morning. Your wife is really mad at you. Your kids were up all night. You skipped your workout. And when you did, you heard, you know, you tried to work out quickly, and then you tweaked your knee,

and then you had some PTSD with the fact that now your knee's bothering you, and you're like, shoot, I'm not going to play the basketball game, right? Like, and all of a sudden, you end up in this wicked. And then someone's like, hey, Ryan, I wanted to talk to you with that raise. You're like, for heaven's sakes, you know what I'm picking on you. It's, it's me, right? All of us. So it's unbelievable how different we are based, the state that we're in.

So whenever you want to go and approach somebody, you've got to think, you know, who's this person, what am I speaking to them for? What matters to them and what state are they in? Wow. That's a phenomenal rubric for a lot of people that I know that are listening that are having them. Like they feel like, man, I really need to talk to somebody at my job about having a tough conversation, whether they're in a family business, regular business. I think tough conversations are part of all of our jobs and lives. So I think that that's a phenomenal rubric in that manner. My last question for you is obviously you see people increase their wealth,

which is what you're having a lot of big conversations around. I want to talk to our listeners who they're asking for raise and perhaps they got it. From a very high level that you've played at, what would you tell that person that is, getting a $20,000 raise or getting a $30,000 bonus, you know, because you can make some bad decisions even at that level versus even if it's a $30 million buyout. So what would you say to that person? Because sometimes when I'm working with clients and I hear them say, oh, I'm going to go ask for a raise, I'm like, do you know what you're asking for? Right.

What are you going to do with it? That's right. What's going to happen? You know, you're also asking for more responsibility. you're asking for a completely different life. So I'm curious what your perspective is on that. Yeah. So I have been really fortunate, spend a lot of my time over the last almost decade now,

working with really ultra-wealthy families. And I would say my client group has a good mix of people who are still in an Opco. So they've still got a business and it's doing very well. It's large. It's complex, like different things, but it's family owned. And then another group of my clients are those who there was a family business at some point it's been sold and now they're sitting on that wealth and they're trying to make decisions about what to do with this wealth as it relates to their family dynamics.

So they all have a team of wealth advisors, accountants, lawyers, etc. I don't do that by design. I'm helping them navigate this intersection of family dynamics and wealth and really helping to quarterback that process. So I use this framework with clients and to be honest, I mean, it's something I even think about even with my own children as I'm sort of, you know, navigating my way through that. And it's something that I have seen with another subgroup of clients, which are the group that I call the wealthy now what.

So these are the people who are, you know, sort of 45 to 60. And they didn't grow up Uber wealthy per se by any stretch, but they're self-made now. And they've had their shoulder, the way I describe it is, they've had their shoulder to the plow for 20 years. And then they pop their head up and suddenly they're worth 20 million, 30 million, 40, whatever the number is, it's something that was greater than they ever sort of anticipated. And now it's like, now what? Now what do we do? Do we have to switch schools? Like, you know, do we need to, you know, tear down the cottage and build a new one? Can we still hang out with the same? Do we tell people and then we pay for meals? Do we help our family? There's a bunch of,

there's a whole host of decisions. And it goes back to what you just said, which is the more you get, the more you get of everything. Right. So, um, I mean, I joke with that all the time. I've got, as you know, five kids. And I'm like, man, the more you get, the more you get of everything. So I get probably more hallmark moments than the average bear, and I get more hell moments than the average bear, right? Because you get more of everything. So the way I always look at it is this. Money, very similar to fire, can work for you or work against you.

That's it. You have to really just make a decision to say, you know, and be very intentional about it. You know, fire cooks and fire kills. And me is the exact same thing. I mean, my job in many respects is helping families with work. wealth ensure that their financial asset doesn't become a family liability. So all of that is being intentional around it.

And from a financial standpoint, people can overspend. And they get addicted to a lifestyle. And, you know, everyone listening sort of knows this because they've heard it before. But when you do get a raise, do some thinking before you do some spending. Because don't just raise the floor as soon as you've raised the ceiling. Otherwise, the Delta stays the same. And you go from, you know, you were paycheck to paycheck when you earned 12 bucks an hour. And now your paycheck to paycheck, you know, earning 400 bucks an hour.

And you're still just as stressed about money. And you have more things to even worry about. So you have to be really, really deliberate about what is the purpose of this wealth? And at what point do I want this wealth to work for me? And of course, we've all heard this idea of let your money work for you. And that's the idea of, you know, let your wealth grow while you sleep. And so I get that. And there's no shortage of people who have talked with that.

And it's 100% valid, right? Combat interest is a real thing. And the sooner you can figure out the value of compound. much interest, the richer financially your life can get, and the richer your life can get qualitatively because you have more time. But there's a second part of that in terms of your money working for you, and that is, what is it that you have your wealth for? What things did you want that to create? And it might be material things because you actually really, you know, you like buying nice mountain bikes, you know, or you like trips, or you like a nice house, or you like experiences, or you like hosting,

or you like travel, whatever it is. It's amazing. You want to create educational opportunities for the next two generations. Be very deliberate about that because if all of a sudden you get on the proverbial, right, hamster wheel, and all of a sudden you are just chasing this top line number,

be careful because at that point in time, it's controlling you and you're not controlling it. So regardless of the amount, once you get past that threshold of, I have enough money to cover my main living and I can live like a decent life from a socioeconomic standpoint. Once you get past that,

everything above that, you really need to be really deliberate about. And I can tell you that I've got clients who have created an extraordinary amount of wealth and it's really fascinating to see how they've done it. For the most part, if not all, I sort of work my growing theory. I'd say, yeah, essentially everyone, they are phenomenally hard workers. They have figured out what they do exceptionally well. They're all really, really talented.

And they've done consistently for a long number of years. So that's how they created the wealth. That's what I have found. It's been fascinating. And just one of my clients recently celebrated 50 years in their business. And I went to the sort of the event to celebrate it. And they had video clips of sort of the patriarch who I've gotten to know. And what was amazing was he had this great line.

And this is a huge company now. But it is this great line. If you don't have customers, you don't have a business. And I just, and I remember an experience I had with them where I referred, you know, a friend of mine to them for their services. And the friend would have been like a $500 contract in a multi, multi-million dollar business. And I remember the president of the company called me and said, hey, can I chat with your friend? I want to know how his experience with their company was.

And I was like, holy cow. And I told him later. I said, that was amazing. He said, no, no, he's like we, he said, his feedback to me, that $500 contract, his feedback to me and his experience with our business was exponentially more valuable than the 500 bucks. Wow. You know, so sort of there's these, you sort of spend time with enough great entrepreneurs, and you realize, oh, this is, and they've been it well. I can't stress it. enough how well they've done it consistently. Anyone can be a hero for a day, right? Sure.

It's the course of 30 or 40 years. But the flip side is the family dynamics and the enjoyment of life and all that is you really have to make a decision as to what is the purpose of my wealth and how do I want this wealth to work for my family. And I think a lot of people are struggling with that. I think it's so easy to get excited by making more money and how often do you pause and say, okay, what is the son to me? What's it doing to my health?

What's it doing to my relationships? So one of the things that I always want to pay people to do is this. And this is a practical thing you can do is when you set your goals or when you evaluate, when you do any sort of self-auditing, whether formally or informally, you know, make sure that you have a number of spokes connect to the hub there. Make sure you're actually doing an audit on the quality of things that are, in fairness, harder to measure, but exponentially more important. So I've done this raise.

Okay, that's great. what if any cost was that to you? How is your relationship with your smokes? How's your morning routine? How is your, and I always feel whatever way to sort of frame this for each person, but I also know like, how's your countenance when you're standing in line at the coffee shop? You know, when you're standing in line at the coffee shop, are you just like, and the, I always say, you know, the woman at the front of the line is paying in buttons.

Like she's just, oh, my good, you know what I mean? Like, it couldn't take any longer. Or the person's like, do I want the mocha? when that's happening, how's your countenance? Are you ready, are you having homicidal thoughts or are you just happy to sort of soak it in? Right? Like you sort of have to go for these little things yet and everybody has them, right? What do you do for traffic?

What do you do when your kid literally, you know, comes in the house and they've got paint on your brand new floor? How do you respond to those situations? You know, because at the end of the day, if you have more wealth but you become like, you know, I'll say a bigger drubroney, and it's probably not worth it, you know, like something's not right. So we could go on about this for all, but you get the gist of it, right? It's very important to sort of just ask yourself, you know, wealth can, wealth is like fire, can cook and it can kill. So be very deliberate about what this wealth, what the purpose of this is

and how you want this wealth to benefit your life, not take it over. Dude, that was phenomenal. Dude, I can talk to you all day, man. And you got a lot of these like little one-liners, these little tweets you be thrown out there. Those are solid, man. I really believe that people are going to really be helped by that. Because what you're doing is you're helping people kind of level up in their thinking and how they approach their people in their life,

their friendships and their work relationships. And I also think you're helping people think at a new level in terms of, all right, you want to raise, but why? For what? and in truly making people dig, dig deep and really consider, you know, why, why do they actually want to be more wealthy and in having some strategies, strategies around that? So, dude, once again, thank you so much for taking time to be on followership with Brian today, man.

I really know. No, no. The pleasure is all my Ryan. This is great. And I really appreciate the questions having you. And appreciate you having me on. And again, to know you more. This has been great.

I'm already looking forward to the next conversation. Awesome.