We Study Billionaires - The Investor’s Podcast Network - RWH074: True Wealth w/ Matt Ludmer

Episode Date: October 18, 2026

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

You're listening to TIP. Hi there. It's wonderful to see you again on the richer, wiser, happier podcast. I'm particularly excited about today's episode because it's a long-awaited opportunity to introduce you to someone who's been a really important figure in my life since we first became great friends about eight years ago. His name is Matt Ludma, and he runs a wealth management firm called Aligned Wealth, which helps sophisticated high-net-worth clients build long-term wealth in a very simple simple, low-stress way that tries to give them the freedom and spaciousness to concentrate on

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

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

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

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

please real free to contact my friend and fellow podcast host, Kyle Grieve, and he can answer any questions you might have about it, including information about dates, prices, and such. His email is Kyle, that's K-Y-L-E at the Investorspodcast.com. I'm entirely biased, but I think this is a rare opportunity to become not only a better investor, but to think more deeply about how you actually want to live and to build life-enriching friendships with a really special group of people. If that appeals to you, please reach out to Kyle.

And if the stars align, I'd love to see you in December. And now, back to the show. You're listening to The Richer Wiser, Happier Podcast, where your host, William Green, interviews the world's greatest investors and explores how to win in markets and life. show is not investment advice, it's intended for informational and entertainment purposes only. All opinions expressed by hosts and guests are solely their own, and they may have investments in the securities discussed. Now for your host, William Green.

Hi, folks, I'm thrilled to be back with you today on the richer, wiser, happier podcast. It's an absolute joy to introduce our very special guest, Matt Ludmer, who's one of my closest friends. Matt has spent more than four decades in the investment business. After graduating from the business school at the University of Chicago, he started his career as one of the first wealth managers at Morgan Stanley. He went on to become a director of Morgan Stanley and a director at Donaldson, Lufkin, and Jenrette, where he led the firm's largest wealth advisory group. In 2013, Matt broke free and launched his own company, Aligned Wealth Management, where he manages money for high net worth clients. As we'll discuss, his focus is not just on building

financial riches, but on helping people to move beyond financial success to what he calls true wealth, which involves building a happy and fulfilling life that's rich in the deepest sense of the word. Matt has now written a new book with his co-author, Kristen Kaye. It's titled The Right Mountain, and the subtitle is Practical Wisdom for Achieving True Wealth. I worked very closely with Matt and Kristen on the book over several years and ultimately helped to edit it, so I'm totally biased. But I think it's an extremely valuable book full of insights that can profoundly improve your life.

I'm pretty convinced of that because actually the principles and practices in the book have profoundly improved my own life. So welcome, Matt. It's really lovely to see you. Great to see you, William. It's been a long time coming. We've been sort of thinking about this day for years. This is really a joyful experience.

You know, it's a culmination of a lot of time spent together and, you know, may it be a benefit to the listeners. I hope so. I wanted to start by asking you about your early years because you didn't grow up in a way that obviously predestined you for a career on Wall Street, managing money for extremely rich families. Can you tell us a bit about your parents, about what they did for a living and what your family's lifestyle was like when you were growing up in the wilds of teen-nex?

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

I think he made like something like $10,000. But the coolest thing was that he was just always content. He was always happy with himself, which is the first and biggest lesson that he taught me was to be happy with myself. So I grew up pretty content in a happy, supportive family. But we were sort of behind the eight ball when it came to money. In fact, I had some pretty crazy jobs as a young person. I was everything from the locker boy at the local JCC. I was shining shoes at Fifth Avenue hair cutters. you know, these people who were quite successful would come in and put their feet up,

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

That's why he plays basketball. And I build my, my healthy sense of ego from being an athlete from the earliest, earliest ages. So, yeah, that was my. And I was doing crazy jobs. I remember you telling me at one point about your job selling flash frozen food. I always love that because in some ways, in some ways I think it gets a little bit at your character as sort of somewhat irrepressible and in a way like a born salesman. Tell us what you did. Yeah, yeah. The year between my, I think it was my sophomore in junior year, I learned that

there was a job where you could buy flash frozen meat and seafood and rent a truck and then, you know, buy it for like 500 bucks and then it's flash frozen. And then you go out and you sell it. And where you sell it, it's up to you. So you'd get a bill for $500 and you had the whole day to sell it. And you better make sure you're selling it by the end of the day. Are you going to be a lot of meat and seafood? But I would go to like beauty parlors or libraries and I would just walk in.

And beauty parlors were really good for me because I was a young guy and there were a lot of moms there. And I would say, you know, thanks everybody for listening. You know, have this great meat and seafood that's flash frozen. and you can make it for dinner for your husbands or wives or whatever, you know, that case, husbands. And it'll hold for a few hours and it would help me make my way through college. And, you know, pretty much every day I'd walk home with like $800,900. And it was really pressured, but it was really fun.

There was some great stories. I would go from town to town and until everything was sold. By the end of the day, I was exhausted. And once in a while, like, I would have like a very big meal. And you graduated from Rock. because University, I think, which is a leading state university in New Jersey in about 1982, having majored in economics with a minor in philosophy. And in some ways, I think that's slightly unusual combination of economics and philosophy sort of reflected your

interest, which have always encompassed both the financial world and the world of philosophy and spirituality and trying to figure out how to live. Yeah. I mean, one of the key moments in my life was my dad gave me the book, Think and Grow Rich at probably the age of like, I don't know, 14 or very young. And I started to realize that thoughts were things. So I was a strange kid who in eighth grade had a motivation box. I literally wrote the lines down and put them on my wall. I put my goals down.

I was highly motivated. And I don't know why it hit me, but just as soon as I knew thoughts were things. And then my dad's constant inspiration, like we would watch Norman Vincent Peel in the Marble Collegiate Church. even though we're Jewish, it was like listening to the sermons, he would give me success unlimited magazine. You know, you could say he was programming, but I don't think of it that way. I think we were just sharing the joy of being inspired men. And yeah, so then I would go to five-star basketball camp in the summer to, you know, try to get better.

And eventually I became the starting point guard for Teanick High School. So I felt like, oh, you know, my mind can achieve goals. What else can my mind do? And one day we were at dinner in Englewood, New Jersey. My father was friends with this other family. And, you know, the parents are talking in one room, I'm in the other room in the library, and I'm looking at some books.

And I see commentaries on living by Jay Krishna-Murte. And after having many years, having read, I think and grow rich, it was the first time I was exposed to Eastern philosophy. Jay-Kishnamerte was sort of the next coming in India, and he told everybody to take a walk and figure it out for themselves. and it was very experiential. And when I would read his writings, I would be like, whoa, this is different. You know, this is powerful.

And it's a way of using my mind that's not goal-oriented. So I had this conundrum in the sense that I would feel this depth when I would read him. But when I didn't read him, I didn't feel it. So I was kind of a premeditator. I was looking for something I didn't even know I was searching for that I found when I was in college. So really what happened is my achievement motivation, my motivation to get goals done, became like, okay, that's really good, I can do that. What else can I do with my mind?

And then I started to see people who could do things. And the results of them were like some beautiful, like they're more compassionate, more present. They seem more happy. So another amazing thing that my dad did is he sent me a meditation cushion because he saw I was interested in it my freshman year. And that's when I had this two-tranched life, one that was sort of on the achievement side of doing well, although I didn't know really what I was going to do in college.

And this journey inward that started at an early age. And it was very quiet. I didn't really do it in public. I had my meditation cushion in my room, door closed. It was a separate interest that gave me great satisfaction. and, you know, I was super social. I ended up becoming the assistant business manager of the school newspaper. When I went to college, I put on the first large 1978 disco dance contest at Rutgers

University, which is quite an amazing event. If you can imagine what that's, just all the students were 18,000 students. We were putting out 18,000 papers daily. And, yeah, I was learning about business. I was learning about being with people. And I was learning about creating conditions where joy, could arise. And it was kind of proto everything. It was just laying seeds for what later was going to be in my life. In fact, one day, my best friend who was, I was an RA for one year,

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

And I got this team together. And again, I think you can think this is made up, but this is absolutely. the truth. Life played death in the finals. And as you'd expect, in overtime, life won. And my kids roll their eyes when I tell this story. But, you know, it was sort of just, it was just a really great time at Rutgers. Yeah. And then you went off from Rutgers to the Booth School of Business at the University of Chicago. And it's kind of an unlikely story. Like you'd been rejected by both Harvard Business School and I don't know, I think it was Yale, if I remember correctly. Stanford.

Stanford. How on earth did you get into the University of Chicago? Because I think it says something about your personality that you got in. Yeah. And it was a turning point in your life, I think. It was. It was. I don't know how I did this, but I made the decision that, oh, they actually, I got waitlisted.

And I know wait listing, you just kind of wait, right? It's why it's called a wait list. But I wasn't going to stand for waiting. And I didn't, I don't think, it may have been the first or second time I ever flew on a plane. I bought a ticket to go to University of Chicago. And they didn't take interviews back then. And I, I went to the dean's office in the MBA program. This is a dean of admissions.

And I sat outside his office. I think it was the thing and grow rich element in me, the motivation side of me that said, you know, I have to make this happen. You know, later on I learned the line, you know, if you don't design your life, someone else will design it for you. So I went out and I sat in front of his office and he came. I waited quite a long time and the secretary said, well, he's outside. And I came in and he was very gracious to me. And a week later, I was admitted to the night school and I immediately switched to the day school. And I was a student of Chicago business school.

Which was a really important place to learn about indexing and efficient markets and the like. So we'll come back to all of that because, I mean, they really changed your life, right? Oh my God. I mean, taking a class with Eugene Fama is not exactly a normal thing. Yeah, who had won the Nobel Prize for economics. Yeah, yeah. And be surrounded by people who were all from Yale and Harvard. And, you know, there was an insecurity I had that left me every day in the Regenstein library in the basement just studying my butt off because I felt like I needed to compete. And because I was a point guard, you know, I had some skills in the competitive side. And I wasn't crazy. like nuts, but I definitely knew that, you know, I needed to help my folks because, you know, I had no idea how they were going to take care of themselves later in life. And you never really figured out how your parents even managed to pay for you to go to college, right?

I have no idea. I have no idea. At the time, you were Chicago, I think it was like $15,000 a year. I don't even know what the number was, but whatever it was, my parents didn't have it. But I didn't know that my dad was really well loved and liked. And there's a suspicion that a friend of his lent him the money. But he never confirmed it. He never would tell me it just what it was.

But I have the suspicion, you know, people really cared for my dad. And they saw I had the opportunity. And I also think he worked nights and weekends and did everything he could to make up whatever difference there was. So. I was very struck. I should mention I went, I never met your father, Lano Lutma, but I went to his funeral a couple of years ago.

And I was very struck by a story you told where I'll probably gobbler this. But the way I remember it is you talked about being, you know, working in the locker room at the, the JCC as a boy and someone coming up to you and saying, your father is such a good man. Yeah. You could get me pretty emotional. But yeah, you know, I was a locker boy. It was one of my illustrious jobs from eighth grade on where I,

men would come down to play paddleball or basketball and I would take their things and lock them up or take care of the shower in the locker room. Yeah, but one day, because my dad would play paddleball every Tuesday and Thursday, and when he came out, all the men would be walking through. And that, you know, because my dad wasn't a guy of credentials. He spent two years in college at Fairleigh Dickinson and then went to work in his father's embroidery factory. And then that shut down. You know, when you get something that from a, you know, one of the members of the place there who are substantial and you see they're really revering your dad's ordinary good, you know, way of how he lives his life, I have great admiration, obviously, for him. And you need to have great admiration

for a teacher. It's kind of something that doesn't really happen very often. I understand later why, you know, I took to being a student of teachers because I understand the power of admiring somebody. Yeah, I was very moved by that story because I think it was one of the, I mean, we'll talk about this later. You know, so many of us are just chasing the whole time, right? Like trying to do more, you've told me off with this so many times, you know, do more, get more, become more, you know, achieve more, optimize more. And there was something very sort of centering and reorienting for me, if that's the right word, to think about, here's your dad, very simple life in many ways. And at the end of the day, everyone looks back on what they remember

is he was a really kind, good person and that he was satisfied with what he had. And that's not to say we shouldn't aim to have material successes, we'll discuss later. But I don't know, I find funerals really helpful in some way for reminding you, like what actually constitutes a happy and successful life. Yeah, I mean, how many men do you know that are content? I mean, just, it's a transmission. You know, my father never really gave advice. He would act. He didn't talk very much.

He would do things, and he would be a great example. But I don't remember my father was saying to me, you know, more than a line. Like, I would tell him about something that accomplished, and he goes, well, does it make you happy? You know, like, it's like, good, you know. So he always came from a position of liking himself. So it kind of transmitted to me. And I think, you know, when you surround yourself with people that don't like themselves and they're all trying to prove something, it's kind of toxic. But it also, look, there's a real health to be motivated to achieve.

And we're going to talk about that. And, you know, all the motivational things that I learned from him were real and true. They just came couch in an environment where, you know, you do your best. I come off the court and he would say to me, you know, say there was like a thousand or thousands of people. We had a lot of people show up to our games. And after the game, I remember coming and we'd get in the car drive home. Couldn't drive that. And he wouldn't critique my game.

He says, well, you did your best, right? And I said, yeah, he goes, good, good. I remember you also telling me we were chatting the other day on the phone, just to catch up and you were saying that he would tell you when he thought you were looking at the audience too much for their approval. And so I sort of think of him as someone who, you know, as Buffett would put it, you know, he lived by an inner scorecard and he kind of reminded you, you know, do you really want to define your life by whether everyone else approves of you? That's such a profound lesson. You know,

part of the outer game is looking for feedback. And he told me early on, stop looking at the crowd, you know, play your game. Because early on, if you watch most kids play ball and they're being watched by everybody and their parents in the crowd, I was a basketball coach for my kids and you invariably see the kids instead of watching the game, they're looking at the They're looking at the stands because they want the approval. And that starts out as a seed, but in adulthood, it continues unnoticed. And eventually it creates a hollowness in people because you're constantly feeling hollowed the need for someone to say, oh, that was a good job.

That was really good. Oh, that was really nice success you had. Oh, let me tell you how good you are. And you'd be like, oh, that feels so good. Well, it only feels so good because inside you're not feeling it yourself. And the power of feeling that yourself really matters. And because my dad sort of exemplified that, you know, that was a super good gift. But it was amplified by noting when I wasn't doing that myself.

And at the same time, you were incredibly driven and you were hustling to get ahead. And it's kind of amazing that after sort of struggling somewhat at University of Chicago at business school, you then go off and somehow land a job at Morgan Stanley, which was one of the most prestigious firms on Wall Street along with Goldman Sachs, I guess, and was not traditionally welcoming to Jewish kids from Teenate, New Jersey, whose parents didn't belong to any country clubs and they're like. How on earth did you get a job at Morgan Stanley? Well, you know, it's think and grow rich, not work hard and grow rich, or it's thinking succeed. And early in the, you know, being at the school, I didn't know much. I didn't know anything about Wall Street. And I just saw everybody trying to

get jobs as consultants, you know, at Booz, Hamilton, you know, and Bain and then at Goldman and at Morgan. And I was like, oh, they want those. Let me see what that's about. And, you know, my competitive side came up and I was like, I, you know, maybe I should take a look at that. And then I realized I can't compete on credentials. I have to actually create a story that's going to work when I get in front of a group of people. And I'm interested. You know, the taking classes there sort of perked my interest. And how could you not? You're at your Chicago. And so, yeah, I started looking at the field and then saying, well, if I got my series seven between my first and second year, then at the end of the second year, when you could start getting interviewed, you have a story to tell. And I knew that

my background selling mean seafood and being out of a truck and my, you know, go get it. And it was, but it needed more than that, you know, it needed more than that. So my dad happened to know somebody who was at a brokerage firm. And it was a tiny brokerage firm. It was like one of the penny stock brokerage firms. I didn't even know what a penny stock was. And they needed people to help sell this IPO for a two-sided toothbrush. And, but it was an excuse to get my series seven. So I spent this summer. Which qualifies you to be a financial advisor, I think.

Of course. I mean, you know, if you could sell the side of toothbrush, that must be the greatest investment in the world. I got my series seven. And that was a big deal because when it came to the interviews, you know, it was a positive. But I think the bigger positive was how I actually, you know, got the interview.

It was sort of a similar thing to getting into Chicago. At University of Chicago, they give you 500 points to bid for your interviews. And for people who, you know, were able to, that had families that they could fall back on or contacts, I had none of those. So I couldn't just put 500 points down on a Morgan Stanley interview. It would have been insane. I had to diversify a little bit. But of course, that meant that I didn't get the interview on the normal way in the marketplace where you could actually get an interview cleared by the marketplace. I'm sure the person who bid for the Morgan Stanley interview was taking all their points.

and there were 500 people, so a lot of people were bidding. And so I didn't get it, and I was disappointed. But a friend of mine who was a really good person, he had an interview, and I gave him my resume, and he interviewed in the morning. I said, would you mind just dropping this with the group and saying, I'm interested? He didn't really give any specific instruction, just left my resume. And at lunchtime, I kind of broke the rules. I put my collar up, you know, went into the career center,

and just bypassed everybody and did a B-line to the Morgan Stanley interview room. And they were having lunch and walked through the doors. There were three, you know, investment bankers sitting behind a table. And I said, gentlemen, I know this is really unorthodox. I said, but I really want this job. And I think it would be a good interview, you know, for you to have with me. And they looked at each other like, who is this guy? But it wasn't inappropriate.

You know, I did it in a way that was respect. And they said, please sit down. And I sat down and we had a great interview. I was able to tell my story. And I was, you know, one of two people called back at Chicago to start to be the first trainee at Morgan Stanley. And then I had to compete with other, you know, business schools. And they ended up picking five people in total. And we were the first training class of Morgan Stanley Investment Advisors. So you built a very successful career in those early years. I mean, you quickly, I think you had a real ability to sell, right? I mean, you love people, you love building a rapport, you had a lot of energy, you're willing to make a million cold calls and the like.

Can you talk a little bit about how intoxicating an all-consuming it was? Because my sense is that in those early days, you were full on. I mean, you, you know, there was a huge. Yeah, no, no, no, this was it. You know, I knew that this was above my pay grade. Like, I was punching high on this one, and I had to show up for it. So I was training myself. You know, I was listening to Tony Robbins every day into work.

I was getting imbalanced, right, because I needed to focus in a really strong way. And I had no real knowledge, even though I went to Chicago. I didn't really, I didn't have the insight on how the industry fully worked and how the whole thing worked. And we had a two-year training class, some senior people at Goldman Sachs, people that were handling people at Apple Computer, and this was 1984, 85, left Goldman Sachs to help build this department. And I was sitting on, there was only a thousand people at Morgan Stanley at the time. I was sitting on the trading desk. And they were training us, right, straight from the block desk to the sales desk, the restricted stock desk, the option desk.

and they spent two years training us before we went out. And at that time, there were no products. It was really the quality of your ideas. And Morgan Stanley was New York, Chicago, and L.A., and that was it. And so your territory was the entire United States. They said, here's a phone. We've taught you everything. Now go do.

And that was just, you know, here's your expense account. It's 1980s bonfire of the vanities. And I have to say, you know, more. Morgan, at that moment in time, it was just, there was a certain elegance just in the industry, certainly at the high end places that was not at the low end place. There was like, there was real quality people. Everything was your word, was your bond. Things weren't written.

Things were just handshaked. And I had the opportunity, once again, to admire people who were really good at what they do. So I felt like after all they invested in me, it was. my job to really succeed. So I'd get in at seven. I wouldn't leave till seven. I remember my, I met my wife around that time and she'd always laugh because she'd come to my apartment. It was all full of seltzer bottles because I'd come home exhausted and just want to drink water. I couldn't, so I like seltzer, so I would just drink seltzer. And then my whole, my whole room was just like a bed and seltzer bottles. And then I'd go back to work.

And I was across from Radio City musical in the Exxon building. They didn't have the headquarters at the time. And there were some princes like Anson Beard who would walk around the training floor with this long cigar and everybody seemed to be from Duke because John Mack was from Duke. And I remember once coming in with my kids and John Mack was in the elevator and we got in the elevator and invited my kids into his office on one of the higher floors. And it was just, it was intoxicating. The whole thing was. And that lasted for a while. And early on a, a senior person at Newberger-Burman was also an advisor. And he came to me and asked me to partner with him.

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

And I met some great people. You know, there were some great entrepreneurs who opened their doors, let me in. They said, Morgan Stanley, I had no idea. They had a wealth management department come on in. So, of course, I had a leg up because it was Morgan Stanley. And everywhere from people in Texas, in Dallas, I remember going out, because the territories were unbounded. There were just five of us.

and there's a lot of stories there. But eventually I went back to that gentleman and I said, okay, I'm ready to partner. And we created one of the longest running partnerships at Morgan Stanley until it was, you know, the merger happened with Dean Winter in 1998. Let's take a quick break and hear from today's sponsors. Early in my career, I was shipping away at student loans and it felt like it would never end. I'd make a payment, check the balance and it barely moved. What finally changed my mindset was seeing,

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

Totally, totally. It's sort of like even the self-improvement that I was doing as a teenager as I went to school and learned about meditation. At a certain point, it bespeaks to poverty underneath. And, yeah, I had, you know, I had goals and I was working hard and, you know, I had my parents in mind. And, you know, I wasn't inappropriate in my ambition, but it definitely felt like it was getting, you know, it's taking up a lot. And I remember, I have three daughters, three wonderful

daughters. And I remember coming home one day. And my youngest daughter had created this beautiful art piece. She's an artist. And I remember coming home as a businessman, you know, giving myself a label here, right? And my daughter shows me this art piece. She's maybe, I don't know, 14 or something like that, maybe younger. And I said, Grace, you know, what's this? And she looked at me like, quizzically, what kind of question is that? And I said, well, can you explain this? And she looked to me again. And I said, can you articulate this? And I actually wrote articulation on the wall, which is actually the worst parenting moment anybody could have because an artist speaks their art, not through their words, but I was, you know, a salesman. And I thought, like, how is she going to make

a living as an artist. I was worried underneath, right? I was an insecure dad looking at her, his daughter and saying, how is she going to make a life out of art? And within a very short period of time, we have to walking out of that room and seeing her eyes drop, I realized like, oh, I made a mistake. And I turned around, you know, probably within a week or so, I went back and apologized because it became apparent. And it, you know, it took a conversation with my wife to really see it fully. You know, thankfully she's a very grounding force for me. And I went back and it was when I started to realize that there's a shadow element to ambition. Ambition's great, but you need to be able to turn it on and turn it off. It's a stage of development. As we'll talk

about later, achievement's not fulfillment. Achievement is a stage. It's a stop along the path. It's a, it's a station, not the terminal. And at that point in my life, it was the terminal. It was, was success was the goal, making a lot of money, was the end game. And even though I didn't directly think that, it was showing up in a shadow element, because part of ambition, it could create parts of you that are blind spots that you can't see. Like you'll come into the office and run ramshod over your group,

or people will notice things about you that you can't see. I had learned about the concept of Johari's window in college, where it's a box of what you can see, what you can see, and what others can see, and what others can see. And that makes four boxes when you put them on different axes. But there's one box is where you can't see and others can see. And that is a shadow, that is shadow material. And I didn't realize then, but a really important part of the growing up, of the cleaning up process, or the process of being fully you is making sure that you're seeing all of you, not just the part

that you want to see. And I realized that at that moment that I wasn't doing that, that there was something off. I wasn't able to articulate at that point like I am now, but I'm realizing how important it is as almost, as we'll see later, a form of wealth to be able to fully see yourself. And, you know, I had to clean that up. And I did, and I'm very grateful for it because, you know, out of pain comes learning. And there's no straight shot by any of us to get there. But to be loving and fully present for your children, for the ones you love, is important. But just wanting that is not enough. You actually have to do the work to see where you're triggered and where your shadow is a wonder why that's there. Because it was a conditioning, right?

I was conditioned, as you can see from my childhood, to succeed and, et cetera. And the conditioning is great. It's great training. But it's just directionally good. It's not finally good. It needs to be balanced. Yeah, I remember you're telling me how, you know, when you would leave to go to work at Morgan Stanley, your mom would sort of call out, you know, go get the beans, Jack. You know, so, you know, in a way, I mean, we'll come back to this, sense, this whole idea of the stages of development.

but there is this sort of this healthy ego stage where you're going out and you're just going to, you know, you're going to make your mark and you're going to support yourself. But it feels like at a certain point, we have to outgrow that. Yeah, I mean, if that is the line that you're on, and that's the only line you know really well, there's a good chance you're going to take it too far. And at that point, there was a myopicness. Even though I had some other awareness as it wasn't fully embedded. And so it went too far, but if you think about it, the conditioning is not only personal, not only social, but it's ancestral, right? I'm a second or third generation Jew from the Holocaust. You know, the first generation came in and it was all about survival, and the next generation was all

about achievement. So there was, there was a lot of energy coming at me. So my mother calling out, hey, go get the beans jack. Makes total sense from a, from a, you know, a family, a family influence. and, you know, knowing that story and freeing oneself from the story is a real, real great thing to do, but you first have to be able to see it and to be free of it. And I didn't see it at the time. And seeing it is one thing and then doing the work is the second thing. And we can talk about that. But anyway, at that point, I was starting to get signs of that.

And, yeah, I'm really grateful that that happened, actually. And by the way, the end of the story, graces in Brooklyn. She's an art teacher at an amazing elementary school. She is about as happy as one can be. She's doing what she loves. She's really good at it. She's helping the world and she's making money. I mean, what more could a father want, right?

Yeah, that's pretty good. Pretty good. Yeah, that's very nice. So they survived the lousy parenting, which is very hard for me. Yeah, you know, they somehow good bye. So you had a lot of success on Wall Street. I mean, you became a director of well. management at Morgan Stanley, then you went to Donaldson, Lufkin, Genrat, DLJ.

Then I think Credit Suisse acquired DLJ. So then you go there, then you get lured away by Sandy Wilde, this legendary CEO at Citigroup. So you go to Smith Barney and then that sold to Morgan Stanley. So you go back to Morgan Stanley. So you have this very successful career, you know, this grand tour of major firms on Wall Street. And, you know, I mean, you end up making kind of a fortune, right? you had as successful, a very successful career. So you're making millions of dollars a year, making a fortune for the firm. At what point do you become, like, deeply disillusioned with it and

start to think, you know, after the global financial crisis and maybe, you know, your partnership with your, your partner isn't going so well, and you're starting to think, this is no longer what it used to be. Yeah. Well, there were just a number of marks on that road. The first was that as much as I was ambitious and connected to things, I also knew that my intentionality also had to relax. Like, if you're intentional all day long and all night long and all weekend long, you're just not having any fun. So I needed to break that. And so what I would do is I'd do these unintentional days where I would just not tell anybody where it's going. I'm in the middle of Midtown Manhattan. I would just take a walk around and see something completely outside of finance.

So I would go to the theater district and take a ticket, or I'd go down to Washington Square and just people watch, or I would just go to a cafe in Soho, you know, just get inspired in a different way to see what showed up. And one day I walked into a show, and I think it was year 2000, and the show was called The Wrong Mountain, and I walked into the play, and I sat down because it just, wrong mountain, that sounds interesting.

You can always get one ticket for something. And I walked in and I sat down and the show was about a playwright and a poet. And of course the playwright's making a lot of money, very successful, has a really big show on Broadway. And the poet is poorer and kind of miserable. But he's convinced about his own life being true. And he looked at the playwright and basically in his steam of remarks that, hey, but, you know, with all your money, all your success,

has it occurred to you that you're on the wrong mountain? and obviously that resonated enough that became the title of my book. But I asked myself at that moment in the audience, I'm sitting there and going, whoa, here I am. I've studied J. Krishnamurte, Chugam Chumper Rimpichay, I'm meditating, I'm having this very, you know, I'm having some other things happening in my life besides, you know, the pursuit of money. And I'm eye on the right mountain. So that was jarring for me. And it started a many-year journey into that question. You know, what it really is about ultimately, which is very central to this book,

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

you start around the time of the financial crisis in 2007, 2008 to have this sort of existential crisis where you start to wonder, you know, is this all there is? Yeah. Yeah, I mean, it's especially because at that time, everybody was like, everybody, you know, people could, can really do well. And the analysts are talking about their stock picks. And, and I'm just thinking like, hey, dude, like, we just learned that all these forecasts are wrong. You know, there's a humbling moment that's happening throughout the industry. So I started questioning, I remember questioning even, because also computers were starting to really kick in, right? You had the iPhone in 08. and we're starting to see the numbers behind the curtain.

It's sort of the Wizard of Oz moment, you know. Now we can see behind the curtain. I'm just a powerful Oz. No, you're not. No, you're not at all. So let's use some honesty here. And so that's when I started to turn towards, what does it really mean to be wealthy?

Because remember, I had this contrast. You know, a lot of my clients are beautifully wealthy, but I was meeting a lot of people who weren't. And I contrasted them with my dad, who was super content. And I'm like, I'm trying to pair these things together. I'm like, where am I in all this? And what actually is wealth and to be wealthy?

And I'm the first wealth manager, Morgan Stanley. I should know the answer. All of a sudden, the industry is not calling us investment managers anymore. We're being called wealth managers, which was a very interesting marketing change. So if I'm a wealth manager, let me truly be that. And I had the skills actually to do that because I did have the philosophy background. I did have the studies and all these alternative things that. that are sort of outside what other people look at, you know, day to day and in a sort of more

conventional sense. And I started questioning it. And so to sit there and to listen to someone giving it in the next stock pick is how I'm going to increase someone's wealth, it was like, that ain't going to change their life. You know, how can I make a difference? How can I really be of benefit? So given the change that went on in 08, I started to double down on my study because I happened to have started learning over that part. a few years, we need to make this balanced and harmonious. And the word holistic was being used a lot, but I didn't see anybody define it. And I'm a first principles person. I want to learn exactly what

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

And in fact, that's it. That's what we're talking about. We're talking about how do we get to that balance state that my dad had naturally? You know, how do we get to the well-being while respecting the wealth that we understand? How do we go from, probably around 08 is when the book, the number came out, where people would meet with people and say, okay, let me talk to about your wealth, and it was all about what your net worth is. And it became a proxy for well-being, but it was.

became everything at that time. If you were a financial manager, you met with a client, it's like, what's your net worth before I speak with you? And it's like, it got so narrowed. Because if someone said, how was your year, it was how much their net worth went up. And in some ways, that made sense back then. And in some ways, it's an element, but it is an element of a bigger hole. It is not the whole thing. And you could get convinced that it's the whole thing at a certain point, and then pain comes because you're not really paying attention to the fullness that you're expecting to come from true wealth. And that's where the idea of true wealth came about. That's where it dawned I'm a, I'm a financial manager, not really a wealth manager. It's not till I

understand what true wealth is and really am helping people get there. Because the difference is a hollowness feeling of achievement, which eventually, you know, I could talk about an experience I had where I started to realize that achievement is not fulfillment. It's great and you have to do it. But it's not going to get you fully there. Fulfillment is what gets us there. And well-being is all about fulfillment. So really we're striving for fulfillment, not just achievement. But there's no map for that. People don't show you that. And in fact, we sort of have this Disney view that we'll live happily ever after if we have enough money. And we all know that's not true. But where is map, you know, going to a psychologist office after a while to like try to figure that out,

they're going to make it feel good, but are they going to give you the wisdom of what constitutes the conditions for fulfillment? And what I learned, it's just like a portfolio. You know, when you have a portfolio, you have a diversified group of things. And together, they don't guarantee you a guaranteed rate of return. They guarantee you a normal distribution where the chances are you're going to get it. And the same thing is true and true wealth. that if you have certain conditions, the chances for you of being totally fulfilled increased dramatically. And if you don't have them, the chances are much lower.

So what I said upon studying for now for many years is what are those conditions and how do we create those causes that will produce the effect? Because if anybody tells you, like, here's how you're going to be happy, walk out, you know, there's no guarantee on that. But there is a guarantee of good conditions producing good results. And what I've noticed, and as I've leaned more and more into true wealth as opposed to financial wealth, is that when I meet somebody, I can see that sense of fulfillment or that lack thereof, and then identify where, you know, just a little bit of this, you know, this, if it's notes on a piano, the music isn't playing. So you need like a note or two that are missing that maybe you never even knew or never gave any credence to. that if you just gave a little bit more of that note,

your music would be playing. And when your music plays, I call it you're being lit up. You're a lit up person. And if the music's not playing, you're kind of like my daughter's eyes in the earlier story. You're just, you're kind of grimly getting through.

And the last thing you want to do a successful person is grimly get through your success. And I see a lot of people grimly getting through. And it's not because they're doing anything wrong or they're bad people or that was me. And it was like, we're all trying really hard, but we don't have the map. And so I felt by writing this book, which is taken, really, if you take it from 2000, it took, you know, 26 years as a practitioner, not a writer, to actually try these things out to say, here are the causes,

here are the best, here were the first principle causes that could produce the result. fulfillment ultimately, you know, I'll say this secretly because it's like sort of like it's another book, but to be feel free. But fulfillment's a really good definition of true wealth, you know, it's, we'll get further into that. Well, in the very first chapter of the book, you write about really how to diagnose what's missing, why we're in balance, what aspects of wealth we're lacking. And you mentioned before Ken Wilbur giving you a kind of map. so that you could see. I mean, for people who don't know, Wilbur, Wilbur, this is this kind of polymathic genius who knew pretty right to everything about everything and mapped all of these

different disciplines. And he helped you to see this sort of broader, this broader picture of the different elements that would make for a happy life. And one of the things that you ended up developing was this kind of, this kind of map, this framework called the four quadrants of true wealth. Can you talk about how in practical terms you could use that framework to say, okay, I'm looking at the life of this client or this friend or this mentee, and I can see that it's out of whack. I can see why they're not happy and fulfilled and feeling rich, even though maybe they're incredibly successful in one area. Yeah. All right. Well, thank you for that question, because it's really a fundamental. And I'm just going to take a one,

minute aside on Wilbur and say that what Wilbur did is you realize that for every outside, let's say that the business is an outside business, it's material, it's something you can count in a way. For every outside there's an inside. There's not just a thing as an outside without an inside. If you're starting as just a philosophic framework, you have an object in space, it has an outside and it has an inside, and if there's usually one, there's many. And when you think about it, that means that for ourselves, like we have an outer, objective sense in some parts of us that we can count in way. And then we have an inner self, a subjective self, that sits within us. Like right now I'm sitting here in this desk and William's

over there, but I'm having my own experience of this conversation. William is too and a listener is as well. So there's an outer, you're hearing out of words, but there's an inner experience. And then there's an experience that's inner that's happening between us. And that's sort of our cultural connection, but also we have a system because you're looking on a screen and I'm speaking. So there's an outer, outer system that's happening. The way I've adapted these four, so just to state them on Wilbur's grounds, Wilbur's grounds, there's the outer objective world, there's the intersubjective world, which I mentioned. And then between you and I, there's an intersubjective world. And the way the objects go together, the way systems, economics, the medical

systems, you can observe those outer things and see how they work. So that's philosophic those four, the outer inner, the cultural, and the systems. But if you apply them to your life in a very practical way, for most of us, the outer is our career and our finances. You know, it's what we do with most of our time. I call that work and wealth abundance. And it's a form of wealth that we actively work on. But the inner side of us, I call the mind-body, you know, mind-body awareness, wealth. And a lot of people may miss that inner of the outer. The third form of wealth is heartfelt community connection, how we connect with other people. And the fourth is the subjective systems, whole systems, learning, or, yeah, how the world works, essentially. And it's

very interesting when I meet people because they tend to be one of these forms of wealth dominant versus the other. So if I'm with my Wall Street friends, they're very heavy on the work and wealth abundance, but they may very light on mind-body awareness. And if they're home trading, they just may be really light on community. They mean not have very much heartfelt connection, but between themselves and their, you know, wife and kids. And, you know, if with my meditation friends or my psychologist friends, they may be very strong, their subjective world, the mind-body awareness, how the world works, you know, maybe not so much. No one's ever sat down and explained, you know, that part of life into them in the same way.

So we end up being lopsided in, if you have these forms of wealth and for them and you have good senses of each one, you tend to be balanced. But if you are missing one of these, it oftentimes causes pain. becomes a parent. So if you're very much into heartfelt community of a lot of friends and you're very connected, but you don't really have a career that's working eventually the pain results, or if you're, you know, you're really full of mind-body awareness and you're a great meditator, but your bank account is super low, you know, pain results. Pain results from imbalance. But, you know, the learning and the learning behind each one from a very first principles basis is not really

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

Hotel where various friends of yours show up all these executives. Tell us what happened, because in a way, that's a beautiful indication that, I am not alone. No, no, no, you're not alone at all. You're not alone. Yeah. Look, when I started coming up with these notions, and they're not mine, right, they're coming from some traditions, from philosophies, from deep study, you know, I just know, just

like as an advisor to look at all of them and say which one is the most fundamentally helpful. And so when I set up my firm, the first thing I did is I invited some of my private equity friends and business success friends and even heads of some of the wealth department. to come join me in a very unusual experiment to discuss these concepts of wealth in a well-being sense. And they didn't know really what they were getting into. And I would set up at a really nice place like the Langham Hotel. And we'd all have breakfast.

And I'd say, okay, everybody, you know, we're going to do a little experiment in the next room. And we'd go to another room. And in the room, I literally had work and wealth abundance, career, work, and a poster on in one corner. And then in another corner I had mind-body awareness, like your emotions, your spirituality, your religion, et cetera. And then in another corner, I had heartfelt connection with other people and community and being with others. And then in the last corner, I had like lifelong learning and whole systems understanding.

And I said, all right, everybody just stand up, okay? What I want you to do is I want you to think about your day and think about what you're most concerned about and go to that corner. And everybody got up and everybody went to the Work and wealth abundance corner. And I would have gone there had I not done all this work over the years. And I said, here's a question. If you had all the money and you had complete freedom, where would you actually want to spend more time? And that's when things got really interesting because everybody dispersed around the room.

And I can't tell you how many people ended up in the heartfelt community connections section. Like everybody's, there's a certain level of loneliness in the society that really was revealed to me in this. and then the amount of people who were in the, you know, emotional and spiritual who went that way. And then there were one or two people who went down to the whole system's academic kind of learning space. And we just had conversations about why do we end up where we did when we actually had desires to be in these other forms of wealth? And the conversations were great. And it gave me confidence to continue to pursue this line of inquiry and go further. And where did you feel poorest in your own life?

Well, for me, it was all about I didn't have community. You know, I was sick. I'd wake up in the morning. I'd get in the train. I'd go to work. I had a great family. And I'd sit in my office and, you know, just do my business. And then get on the train, go home late and do that day in and day out.

And I knew that there were levels of community that just weren't part of the culture. In fact, culturally, I didn't know where community. me and he actually lies. A lot of 20 years olds that I mentor, oftentimes will say, like, where can I go for real community around more meaningful things? And, you know, culturally in the United States, it's hard to find that it may be in other cultures where that is much more prevalent. But for me, it was straight to the heartfelt community connection, which actually led me to ultimately build the Align Center or a place where community actually could arise. Community, a place, you know, they call it a third place, right? The first place is your home.

The second place is work. But where is your third place? Where is the place where you really have community with people that are not your family, are not co-workers, but are actually friends outside of your, you know, normal sphere? And if there is such richness in that, it's hard to describe. It's, you know, if someone could say, Matt, you double your network today, or you could build your community, like, to the maximum extent, you know, I'd be hands-down community all day long.

And just to give our listeners and viewers a bit of background, the Alliance Center is this physical space that Matt found in Westchester in New York back, I think, in about 2015. It's this very beautiful floor of a building where he's sitting and actually where I'm sitting because we share an office here and this is where we met. And Matt's hosted lots of parties here. And, you know, so we would go to a watch party when the Knicks were in the NBA finals together and all these people from around. the community from the barbershop and the coffee shop and stuff. They would all come. We'd all get to hang out and drink and eat together and celebrate this amazing MBA final. And it's where I record my podcast and you've had lots of teachers here come through these amazing teachers. And it's literally where we met. I mean, you know, about eight years ago, it's where we met because I was looking for a

sort of soulful, beautiful environment in which to work. And so, I mean, I think that's what's kind of interesting is partly this idea of creating what you would call containers. Yeah. Where there isn't necessarily a thing that, you know, this partly inspired a few years ago when I set up a book group. There was a bunch of everyone in it was a writer pretty much. And so we'd all written books and we got together to discuss great literature. And can you talk a little bit about that? Because I think in some ways, it's a very good example of looking at your life and seeing, yeah,

I have this conventional form of richness that everyone, you know, or at least I'm fully focused on building a conventional form of richness in terms of my job, my work, my professional success. But where am I actually poor? Where am I missing? And then how do I address that? What sort of actions can I take so that I become richer in this area where I feel actually pretty impoverished? Yeah.

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

life as a community. And I didn't feel like there was a place like that. And I also felt that there's my work place, my home life, my place of worship, my place of, we needed a place where all this could come together. So I went looking for a space and I wanted it to be a beautiful space. and I wanted to be in a place that people could both do their business, engage in all these other forms of wealth, and be in community together. So from 2017 to 2020, the Alliance Center was like, you know, full on.

It wasn't in 2022 that I decided to just stop the presses and really start getting serious about the book because everybody was asking me like, we love this place and we love what you're doing, but what are you doing? And to state the answer, take some time as this podcast can, you know, indicates. But now with a book, oh, I'm so happy because I don't have to tell this full story all the time. But we need places.

We need conditions where there's a third place, but not only just a third place for its own sake, but a place where all the forms of wealth can really manifest. You know, so we don't have to feel so fragmented. You know, fragmentation really became apparent to me around 2000. 2010 when I invited my best friends to my 50th birthday party. And they all showed up in a roundtable down in the meatpacking district. And, you know, my closest Buddhist friends, my closest Jewish friends, my closest basketball friends, my closest work friends, nobody knew each other.

And I'm like, what? Nobody knew each other. And it was just the impetus against it sort of how do I unify my life? not just unify the forms of wealth, but unify the community in a place. So I went searching for a place, and I was meditating at Eileen Fisher's headquarters in Irvington, and I saw this gorgeous building with this big, you know, ex-smokestack where the foundry is, where they built and built the botanical garden, the frameworks for the botanical gardens many years ago in the Bronx Zoo and all the great greenhouses.

and right underneath that there is a deck that overlooks the Hudson and I went to the owner of the property and I just said, listen, if you have an inspirational space, I'm really interested and he called me up one day and I said, I think I have it. And this was the place. So

it was, I saw it as a container that people would enter and find the community but also find the other forms of wealth and it sort of happened. I don't know. You know, you just you go on a path and then other people show up.

It's sort of like a little bit of the Wizard of Oz again. You're on the yellow brick road and people know that what you're trying to create is something true, beautiful, and good. They want to be part of it. And then a lot of people came. You know, if you build it, they will come was the motto. Actually, when I was at Morgan Stanley,

I had a vision of this container on my wall. You know, I had someone, an artist, render it. And it was sort of like, you know, it was my goal to make a place like this happen. and because no one else had done it before in the way that I was doing it, there was a certain craziness to it. It's like, why are you doing this? Why are you taking this crazy?

You know, you have such a cushy job. You got a good situation. Everything's set. But I knew that I was lacking community. I knew that a new container needed to be made. And I was getting the positives from the breakfast that everything that I was talking about was resonating. So let's go the full route.

I leased the space for 10 years with another 10 years. I just released it for another 10 years. And then I started to build it. And people started to show up who, you know, it's hardware as a building. The software is the people. And the software just started really coming. And it was beautiful. And it still is.

I think in some ways what's, I mean, there's a, there's a uniqueness and idiosyncrasy to your situation here. But I think there's something really broadly applicable here to go back. to this idea of looking at your life and seeing where you're already rich and where maybe you haven't nurtured different aspects of your life that are going to make you feel richer to things like the mind-body awareness quadrant that you were talking about, this inner world of emotions and spirituality, a mindful awareness and the like, and, you know, the heartfelt community connection idea, you know, this idea of having, you know, rich relationships with family and friends

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

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

I think this relates to all of our listeners. I don't want them to look and just say, well, I can't do this because I don't have enough time or I don't have enough money or whatever. Like there are ways that all of us can look at our lives and say, actually, there's something that I'm really neglecting that's leaving me feeling impoverished. Yeah, it is amazing how just small moves in any of these categories opens up an entire world of fulfillment. And you feel the difference. And it's just that first step that is like, wow, why haven't, why didn't I do this earlier? You know, why didn't I have lunch or dinner once a week with a friend on a Tuesday night no matter what?

Or, you know, why didn't I wake up in the morning and instead of just, you know, working out every other morning and, you know, wake up and just sit and meditate or, you know, learn, you could go within and start. a different kind of practice, or even just learn about a subject, you know, take a class in a university on something that had nothing to do related with your career because you just find it fun. I mean, we're sucking the fun out of life if we're trying to perfect one aspect of it. It just gets too serious. And, you know, one of my models, if not fun, better left undone, There needs to be some adequacy is important. Perfection can be really problematic. Being really good at something is very important.

Being perfect in between those two is a very dangerous place to be because it doesn't allow these other forms of wealth to flourish. You need some space, even if it's an hour. The containers are not only in physical form, they're in time form. And I don't know how many people will you know, but many are time poor. and very wealthy. And time poor is significantly damaging because from a compassion standpoint, someone calls and needs your help, you're not available. So even if it's just an hour or a day that you take out of time and you call people that, you know, you don't get a chance to speak to,

but you know needs your help. And it's just an hour, right? You didn't create a container. The container was a time container. You cut it out of your schedule. And you said, okay, I'm going to call once a day, two people that I know are hurting and I'm just going to be there present and listen to them. Wow. Will that make a difference? Because instead of being on your life conceptually going from thing to thing, you'll actually be in your life. You'll be feeling the connection with other people.

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

And people can feel the difference. Like when I see people go from just one of these dimensions to just two or three, you know, you just see their lid upness about life increase. There's more juice than who they are. They're less flat. There's nothing worse than a person has become flat and narrow over time because their misery level kind of goes up with that. And it's okay to do that for a while. I mean, I did it for a decade, you know, a decade or more.

but at a certain point you start to realize like it reminds me like of an athlete I play basketball and who just shoots from their hands they don't shoot from their feet and it means they're not using their whole body to do emotion and if you're seeking wealth and you're only working from your arms let's say in the money side but you're not working the full body of wealth you're losing power or you don't have the full power and when you have the full power you know it when you meet that person So when I would meet with somebody, I'm their advisor, I can kind of energetically feel like, oh, is this person really engaged fully? They may be at the top of their game.

And because I have credibility in the money part, it sometimes will come through that, look, you won this game, okay, you're done. You sold your company or you have the income that you need. Now, what are you doing? And it's a jarring thing because I'll say, you know, you won the game. game. Okay, you hear this, you won the game. Now you have to change the game. And they may not have the education of that. And that's why the map became so important for me because it became a reference point as to what was missing. Let's take a quick break and hear from today's sponsors.

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absolutely free. Inside, you'll discover how AI could reshape work across your entire organization and how to position your business to prosper from it. I use this and you should too. If your revenues are at least in the seven figures, get our free business guide aligning for the agentic era, how AI is changing everyday work at netseweet.com slash tip. The guide is free to you at net suite.com slash T-I-P. NetSuite.com slash T-I-P. All right, back to the show. I think a lot of it also is actually, A, recognizing that there are these different forms of wealth,

and they really are forms of wealth. Like for me to spend time with my kids, you know, who are now 25 and 28, is a tremendous form of wealth. And I, you know, we talked about this, and I think we write about it in the book where you had bought your next season tickets as a way to have more fun.

You would often take friends or you would lend them to friends. And I took my son Henry. And at the end, I dropped him off at his apartment on the Upper West Side at the time. And as he was getting out of the car, he said to me, that was a highlight. And then he paused and he said, of life. And so for me, suddenly to realize actually to go off and spend an evening when I probably have too many deadlines and to be with my son who I adore, And, you know, and I still have these amazing photos, these sort of selfies of us where we're just like beaming, you know, just like we couldn't smile more broadly.

And we're just sort of shouting and screaming and whyscracks the whole way through. And I know nothing about basketball at all. And, you know, to understand that that's a form of wealth has been very transformative for me. Yeah, that's a blessing to hear that story. And it's what I hope for everybody is that they pick up on a form of wealth that they're not really, given full credence. You know, it's another thing about being in my position is like I could, you know, I could say at least with some level of experience that, you know, yes, you know, succeeding monetarily and financial abundance is super important. But you have to actually

equalize it with these other forms of wealth because they are waiting to give you this level of fulfillment. They're just standing on the sideline saying, look at me, you know. But because we're so conditioned, you know, sort of the inner, you know, an inner life is considered woo-woo, which is ridiculous. And maybe because a bunch of people who did that didn't really live functional lives, but it has such compelling value. It's incredible. Or, you know, a heartfelt connection to have that really in your schedule and in your place, it's so wildly valuable. Or to just understand and sit with people who understand the world and learn from them and really get it as to how things are going on in the world, it's just so powerful that if you have these resonating

at a, to me, just a functional level, or just a little bit more than you had before, if you stop just triumphalizing just the work and wealth abundance quadrant as all, it makes a big difference. So I'll just say really plainly, what I've tried to. to do on a very practical level is take the book of the number, just the number, your net worth, and instead of looking at it as one number, looking at it as seven numbers. It goes from a single number to a dashboard. And you can look at these, you know, the four that we discussed break down further to seven essentials. And if you look at your life from the point of view of the seven essentials, you can essentially evaluate yourself subjectively. Like, do I have enough of that

or do I not have any of that? And what does that even mean? And the difference is that the number will bring you achievement. And I think that's really important. I don't want to denigrate that at all. But if you have the seven numbers functional, these different forms of wealth functional, the payback is enormous.

And I know that because not just for myself, experientially, but from other people of those responses to engaging in all forms of wealth as just like we're only on where I said, Napoleon Hill said, thoughts are things. Well, wealth are things. These are forms of wealth. And if you take them seriously, they will bring rates of return that, you know, no portfolio can do. One of the things that's unusual about the book is that it focuses a lot on the wealth of your inner world, your inner landscape. Actually, before the book gets to

the subject of building financial abundance and professional success, these things that are in the outer world. And part of the discussion of this focus on the inner world is really about meditation and dealing with your habitual, counterproductive patterns of behavior and the like. Can you talk a little bit about why this is a form of wealth? Because a lot of people listening to this or watching this who are sort of real go-getter, ambitious, driven types are not going to be that willing to sit on a cushion and look at themselves and say, well, it's really important for me to do this in a journey. How can you convince us that this inner journey is in fact a form of wealth and that it will yield riches in your life? Yeah. Well, let's just

talk about the, we go from more tangible to less tangible. Let's talk about this, you know, the first one, which is your psychological state and understanding it better. We all know, what it's like to get in our own way. You know what that term is. Like, you're getting in your own way. It could be that you're angry too much or that you want too much or that you are prideful too much or that... Yeah, I'm ticking each of these things as you go along. Yeah, keep describing my flaws, Matt. You know, you're too ambitious or you're too, you know, you're too much of an animal. There's parts of you sometimes that get activated and that, Maybe you can see it, you know, not like through Harvey's window I mentioned earlier, but maybe you could see it, but you can't control it.

So it's kind of what I learned to call the beautiful monster. And I know you interviewed Sokney Ripper-Shea on your podcast, and he's the one who gave that term. But it's the kind of monster that creeps up on you and all of a sudden, like your wife will look at it and you go, I'm sorry, but what happened over dinner, dear? why were you so crazy in that dinner? Or your kids look at you and go, whoa, what happened to dad? Something triggered. And when you have a sense of what your trigger is and why it's there, it's kind of a monster. And it's a party you don't like. And it's you getting in the way of yourself.

And you know it because you're uncomfortable with it. And you probably hide it. And there's a lot of power in that. beautiful because it's got huge amount of powers if you can, instead of putting it through your ego, you can get it out of your ego and just take the power directly. And how do you do that is the question. And there's there's kind of the informal way and the formal way. The formal way, of course, is doing therapy and allowing yourself to see and talk about your monsters. My daughter, Dana, is a somatic therapist because oftentimes these things get locked into your body and she helps

people free themselves from their past traumas and things that trigger them. Or just regular talk therapy. I remember my kids came to me at a certain point in life and said, hey, dad, you know, you always say that if you're not meditating, you're not in therapy, you don't know who you are and you don't know you're in her life. And they said, it's great that you've been meditating your whole life, but maybe you want to try therapy. So I did it and it had me in bed for two days because there were things I just couldn't

see. and I'm just so happy I can see them. Like, for instance, I would never get involved in a conversation that wasn't positive. Like, if you wanted to go negative on me about something and tell me something terrible and really, you know, you were feeling it and feeling bad as a result, I just, you know, I would turn things to a positive conversation. My therapist called it, you know, going left. I wouldn't go, in a basketball, I would, a lot of people always go right because they're

right-handed and they don't want to go left. And in a way, I could go both ways of basketball, but I couldn't. do it in my psychology. And then I realized the great value of sitting with someone in a negative situation, that all the juice that I was missing in life by not, by so preferencing always being positive. And it was stunning. It was just stunning. But the energy that it released in me to be able to be full-hearted with somebody, no matter where they were going, it changed me. Yeah. So if they were in pain or were experiencing something really difficult, being willing to go there instead of always being in sort of the power of positive thinking sales mode.

Exactly. I think another thing you talked about, I think this in the book where you talk about going to therapy and finding that you have like 13 beautiful monsters that you named another of them, which kind of totally jibes with what we were talking about before with your hard driving success on Wall Street. You called the win guy. Yeah. I mean, if you're thinking about how to apply Sok Dürer-Ripchet's techniques of dealing with beautiful monsters, like, how do you deal with that?

Like, if you go to a party and you sort of see yourself telling everyone, and then I went to the University of Chicago Business School, and then I became very, you know, like, when you start seeing yourself in that sort of sales mode, like, what do you do? Well, you just, you just, you just, you just identified it. You know, before I wouldn't know that was happening, because it was in a shadow. But it used to be that I would come into a room, right, because I was programmed to, you know, achieve some result. And I would be part of the conversation a way that would direct the conversation. And like many, you know, people, I don't know what to characterize them, it would take up more space than I really should have. And initially I didn't see that. And then I started to see it. And then I started seeing other people.

Like, it was embarrassing. And so the first thing is just naming it, right? It doesn't wrong. Everybody does something that's off. And I started to, oh, there I go. So when I would get into a room and the trigger would go, because all the men would pony up their credential in a men's group. And it'd be like, oh, I can't wait to like get talked about mine.

And then it was like, oh, there's my beautiful monster. And the thing about a beautiful monster is you have a few options. you could put an antidote to it, you could try to knock it out, you can repress it, you could do all sorts of things to it. But the thing that really transforms it that Sokney-Rimperche taught is you just invite it with some level of compassion. I mean, it's there for a reason. It doesn't want to harm you.

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

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

be themselves in front of you and for you to witness them. And that beautiful monster stopped that from happening. So once I was able to kind of subdue that monster a little bit or be, you know, not subdu that's the other word, befriend it. I was able to really be present. to my friends in a way that was less assertive and more open-hearted. Yeah, I, Suckner-Rubche is an extraordinary teacher, and he came on the podcast with Dan Goldman, a mutual friend of us who I think you introduced me to, actually, an amazing, amazing guy who wrote a book called Why We Meditate. They wrote it together. And I just found that whole practice, the whole idea of beautiful monsters really helpful.

And, you know, he talks about handshake practice and this idea of really, really, you know, these different steps that you write about in your book as well, where you notice this kind of psychological pattern, this imprint from childhood or whatever it is, and you kind of notice it in your body. And so you see when you're, you know, maybe it's a fear of being unlovable or doubting your own self-worth or a terror of failure or whatever. And you kind of feel it in your body where it is. And then you sort of sit with it. And instead of trying to wrestle it in submission, I think what's so beautiful about what Soapney does is this sense of like, you know, he said once, you know, I think, you know, one day we will be friends with all of our beautiful

monsters. So there's the sense of like pulling up this blanket for these little little parts of us and being gentle and tolerant with them. And then he says, you know, then they open up. But not because you're trying to change them or heal them, but actually because you're willing to be with them, they open up sort of counterintuitively. And I love what you said it. You said the magic word, you need to feel it. Like intellectually, it's okay to know this. You need, it's the first step is intellectually understanding it. But then when you feel, when the monster shows, when the beautiful monster shows,

you want to feel where it's happening in your body because that's energy can be helpful to you. You know, you're not pushing it away. You're actually feeling it where it is in the body. And you just stay with the feeling. Don't go away. Because underneath that is a sense of okayness. underneath that is a sense of love. And, you know, self-acceptance, self-compassion.

There's something beautiful that happens when you feel that beautiful monster come up. And if you can identify, I found 13, if you can identify even one or two, your wife or will thank you. I know now, I'm definitely a good at all right. I know, looks for my wife, hey Matt, you know, come on, man. You know, I know that after which he goes, wow, that was, you've really, you know, So this was a bunch of years ago, wow, man, I really, you know, I'm grateful. And because, you know, it was not helpful to her.

Yeah. I think I've way surpassed you on the beautiful monster. I have way more of these terrible aspects of myself that I've suppressed. And so I think this gets one of the big themes of the book, right, which is that we kind have to go on this inner journey if we want to have a truly rich life. because otherwise there are all of these patterns under, you know, that subconsciously or unconsciously are pushing us to behave in ways that are likely to hurt us and the people around them. And so there's a recurring theme both in your life and in the book about the benefits of meditation and as a way of kind of seeing, seeing those patterns of seeing the way we behave, seeing how the mind kind of does crazy things. but I remember once introducing you to a good friend of mine who's a very successful

hedge fund manager, and you were talking to him about meditation, he was worried that it would hurt him professionally because somehow it would blunt his edge. And yet there's also this sense that meditation may be a really good investment for all these people like, you know, Ray Dalia or these friends who I was like, you know, Josh Tarasoff, like Yan Liow or Christopher Sy or Samantha Macklemore, all of these really smart fund managers who meditate a lot. Can you talk about that about why meditation, this actor sitting on a cushion or a chair and going nowhere might actually be a really good investment for people who feel like they should just be charging harder and harder? Yeah.

I could do it in a physical example that I learned from Amy Edelstein. I thought it was a really good way for people who don't know much about meditation. I mean, to some extent, if you have a thought that you're super attached to and you have patterns that you're really attached to, and you have your business ambition that you really attach to. It's sort of like imagine your hand as that subject and you literally put it to your eyes like this. And the question is, you know, what can you see with your hand over your eyes?

You can just see like exactly what's in front of you. There's nothing kind of else available to you. But in meditation, you're not stopping the hand. You're not like, oh, let's get the hand away. What's happening in meditation is you're pulling your hand away from your eyes. and now instead of you're still seeing your hand right but you're seeing everything around in the context of what's happening which is your awareness and the object so i'll put it in the form of mindful awareness when you're mindful you're concentrating on something it could be your business

it could be anything that's that you need to concentrate on but the full surround is unseen if you're too attached so in kind of ways you're unskilful because you're not getting the full context of your action. Whereas if you give it some space, if you're able to just see it with a little bit more distance and relaxation, then you're going to see the full circumference. And I'll give it as a sports analogy. It's like if you're playing basketball and you're looking at the hoop

because you're a point card, which I was, you know, but you're not looking at the full like court and who's hurting and who's really strong and who's moving and what's happening strategically, then all your mindfulness on this one attachment is not going to be a skillful. So in a way, giving yourself some space or giving your thoughts some room to be seen fully is going to allow other signals in. There's no room for the world to come in if you're driven by a storyline.

And you can't see your storyline. Imagine this is your storyline, right? I'm a financial advisor. I've got to make money, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, whatever it is that your storyline is at that moment. You basically ignore the rest of reality. There's nothing profound about it. There's nothing sensitive about it. It's basically a triggered state. And it may be a very effective state in giving you, you know, what you need for that moment. But really, if you live your life like this, you could be running into walls, you could be running over people. You

can be missing the most biggest signal. You could be on the wrong mountain. I think one of the things that I notice with you often just having been friends with you for eight years or so is that you're very good in dealing with other people in being present enough that you kind of see what they're feeling and what they're thinking. You can tune into them. Whereas I think often we get, you know, so triggered or so fixated on what it is we have to do that there's a sort of narrowing of attention. And I'm curious about what you've figured. out about how actually to relate to other people. So you're sort of meeting them where they are because, I mean,

you're particularly good at dealing with people who are, who are difficult or very different from you or pretty triggered in that moment. Like, what are you bringing to bear in those moments? Because I think this whole concept of relationships is also, you know, the subject of relationships is huge in the book, right? Like this sense that if you don't have good relationships, there's a great form of poverty. Yeah. You know, there's one of our teachers is a great teacher in Nepal. And one day I asked her, I said, you know, could you tell your story? And she said, I'm not going to tell my story. I only talk about two things. I talk about wisdom and I talk about compassion. And I think, you know, compassion is a understated form of wealth, the ability to kind of drop your story so that other people have the opportunity to come in and you can fully see them. And what that requires is,

to, you know, have a heart that's first compassionate to yourself, you know, we're not perfect people by any means. So how we treat ourselves is actually how we treat other people. So if you're kind to yourself, which I'm hoping everybody is, and oftentimes not, then it's very easy to be kind to other people. But if you're not kind to yourself, if you haven't done your work psychologically or spiritually, and you're not really great friends with yourself, it's going to be hard for you to befriend other people because how you treat yourself is how you treat other people too. And it's not just, so it certainly starts with the motivation to be of benefit to other people. And what I realized over time, here's another, you know, obvious, but needs to be stated and

needs to be like really relished is that the greatest rate of return is, you know, being helpful to other people. And it wasn't until I built a center that I realized just how huge that is. You know, cause and effect occurs. And you're not doing it for the benefit for yourself, but you really, if you have an altruistic motivation, you know, I often say, you know, if you want to know that something's holistic, what do you do?

Well, you do something that's, and this is accordance with the four quadrants, the true or the outer quadrants, the upper left one, the one that's subjective is beautiful, and the one that's with other people, that's in culture is good. So in a way, how do you check yourself?

You always say, what am I doing? Is it true? Is it beautiful? Is it good? And the good really matters. If you did nothing in your day except focus on the normal day that you have, but open up your heart to the goodness side, just add that like spice, you know, to everything. No matter what happens before you started meeting, how you do it?

And William could tell you if we have meetings where I start with a thing called check in and clear. You know, how are you? You're not a robot. You came here to discuss a topic in business or to get something done. But I actually first care about you. How are you? And maybe even is there something that I could be helpful with right off the bat so we can have a real good conversation?

What do you need to clear? And checking and clear is a big part of my interaction when we do in groups. But on a minor scale, just when I meet people, it's not like, oh, let's get something done. It's like, okay, how are you doing before? let's connect. I don't believe in business that's not personal. Everything's personal. This is all subjective experience happening as well as objective experience. You can't segment one from the other. So the intention of being of benefit and being connected is as important as being wise. And so I take it pretty seriously. It requires me to drop my own lens and drop my story so that there's room for

someone else to come in. If you're full of yourself, literally, where are people going to find a place to be? There is no place. So there is an intellectual part of this. We are all at different stages in our lives. It is important to understand that not everybody's the same stage you are. And this then takes us into, you know, how do we open up our heart more and more? And I think that requires some understanding of adult development, there are people who are more egocentric, that's where they are. They're going to fight, they're going to be at the level of maybe even tribal, and no matter what you're going to do, that's their level of development. And yelling at them and beating them up and doing whatever you can't, you know, it's not going to change them. They have a

lens just like you do. Hopefully your lens is one that you can let go of to be with them. But they're going to come with you at a lens. Or let's say they're very traditional people. And And they're very religious people or they're very much doing what their parents did. There's a certain beauty to being traditional. And when I'm with a traditional person, I want to honor their traditional side and kind of be in that traditional mode. And when I'm with the Wall Street people who may be more achievement oriented, which is another level of development, you know, I want to honor their competitiveness. I want to honor the work they've done. I want to honor the business they built or the work they can.

got or the, you know, the fact that they've made money for their family and have, you know, their kids send their kids to college. But there's also people I'll meet who don't care about that at all. They only care about the people who are not doing well, the postmodern people who are like, you know, we have to make sure that everybody's, you know, doing okay. And, you know, maybe a more progressive group, a more liberal group. And their heart may be wildly open. And, you know, They need you to confirm that yours is too. And so at that moment, that's the lens of that particular person. And there are certain patterns that are just endemic in the lenses in the United States today.

And when you meet someone, they tend to be resonating towards one of these three different lenses. A good portion of the conservative world is very traditional. A good portion of the independent world is very modern. a good portion of the, you know, more progressive world is postmodern liberal. And there's a new development, which is an integral person. An integral person is a person who can be with any of these types of people, but also see the positives and negatives of that viewpoint. So, for instance, if I'm with a conservative person, you know,

I may see the fact that there's an off-stem mentality that I may not want to participate in. but in their group they are amazing and you know they've done some they take the duty and honor really play a big role and i honor that and from with a modern group that's all about achievement they might not care about the losers so they go into a room you know you see people come in who are strict achievers and they're all creating a corner with the people who are successful but the young woman or the older person that's sitting in the corner is not being talked to is not valued from maybe, maybe, you know, again, this is sort of the downside of an achievement view if you're just viewing it as winners and losers. And so knowing your lens and knowing the upside of it and the downside of it, you know, if you're a postmodernist, it may be that you become sort of

sanctimonious about your view, like how could a person be a capitalist or a traditionalist? And if you could see the downside and the upside of your lens, when I meet people who are, you know, very strongly in one of these camps, I can be with them as they are and I can see the limitations and then I can try to be more integral, try to be less judgmental. Be compassionate to each person as you meet them in their condition sense that I'm discussing right now. I don't have to just talk about these three, but they seem to be very big, right, at a point now where we're in a country at odds with each other. Yeah, for people who don't know, I mean, there's more discussion of this in Matt's book, because it's all very much related to this framework of Ken Wilber's, where there's this map of these stages of development. And so there's a sort of theory behind some of the terminology, you know, and talking about

being post-modern. I don't want to go too far awry on the terminology, but you're right. In the book, these are levels of development that one needs to study. And I needed to study this so I can understand, you know, why people are the way they are. Because the way I'm most compassion is if I can understand what person's coming from. But on a personal basis, not just on this more adult development theory level that Ken Wilbur describes that I describe in my book, everybody's hurting. You know, everybody's suffering to some extent. And I'd like to think that's not the case, but it is the case.

There's not a person I meet who's, if they're being really honest, is not suffering in some way. And William points out, like, I'm very interested in that. because, you know, if I want to be of benefit, the way I can be most beneficial is by hearing that and not letting that get covered over. And then, you know, try to be of support in a way that's helpful that way. And I'm not like inappropriately. I don't, you're like, how are you suffering? But just to know that people are suffering, I don't care where they are.

They could be people, you know, there could be people who are living in the best circumstances, but they're constantly checking their portfolio. they're suffering of this maintenance, constant maintenance, or they're striving a position that they're not getting, and they're not getting credit, or they're a woman at the table who's not really being seen because she's relegated as the woman at the table. You know what I mean?

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

I never really had any knowledge of Ken Wilbur. And so for me, it was like a crash course to work with you on the book and to have to study it. and to look at the stages of development. And just, you know, I'm never going to become a big expert on this. But from my point of view, what was revelatory was this, it really tells us with something that a great capitalist, Rav Ashlag said, where he just said, we're all unripened fruit. And so you just get the sense we're all at different stages of our evolution.

Societies go through different cultures, different countries, different individuals. And so looking at other people as being superior or inferior, in a very judgmental or dismissive way is actually just not very helpful because we're all just going through these processes. And so, and you can look at your own life and be like, well, here was a phase where I was totally hell bent on just getting ahead and making money and I would trample over people or whatever. And you're like, well, of course. You know, that was the phase I was going through. And so for me, it's been helpful because it's very, you know, I'm a pretty judgmental person, both of myself and of other people. And I think this kind of perspective of the same,

stages of development that we're all going through is just help me a little bit to be like, oh, well, of course they're that way, because that's the experience that they've had. And that's the background there from. And so it's helped me, I think, a little bit loosen my intolerance. And also then just that sense from Ken Wilbur that the evolution is towards being more integral, which involves being able to carry more perspectives. And so instead of just saying, I have the whole picture, you start to realize, well, actually, this other person has a different part of the picture that I'm totally ignorant and tall of. And so it makes you a little bit more respectful of the gifts that other people bring. And just to finish this, this ridiculous monologue, I love it. No, no, no, no. It's good. It's good. You're getting it. I love the phrase that I learned from you where Wilbur would talk about transcending and including. And so it's not like as you. become more evolved. You look down on the things before and you're like, well, I'm too wise now to care about money or whatever, or I'm too intellectual to care about, you know, going to a football

match with my tribe. It's like, no, you include those things. You include the beauty of each level. Exactly. You desire to be with your family, that you desire to have a Shabbat dinner or or to pray five times a day or whatever it might be. But you also can transcend them and include other perspectives. Exactly. Exactly. Yeah, you know, when I can be fully traditional with my rabbi, it's a beautiful thing. But if I'm, you know, doing, you know, more achieving type stuff, I don't have to forget about that. I can transcend into a different thing and include that. And the worst thing is when you transcend into higher states, quote unquote, and exclude. And I'll just use, and then people know in East there's these notions of chakras,

like lower ones like your hunger and your heart and your head and your spirit. Imagine somebody who says like I'm just ahead, but I don't have a hunger. I'm not, I don't have a lower chakra. I don't have a heart. I'm just all intellect. Like there's something wrong. You can't just transcend up. You need to include your full self.

And so when you're a teenager, you're a certain way. And when you're an adult, you're a certain way. And when you're a grandparent, you're a certain way. but you don't transcend just to be you don't just become a grandparent and there's still the child in you there's still the adult in you that you can always call upon and it's a shame when people trans you get older and they forget about the child in them or the teenager in them because that was a stage of your development that that you still carry and and sometimes you need to call upon it so when you can get multi the word use multi perspectival like you can get like up and down the chain and connect at any level with any person, where they're at, not where you're at, and knowing that it takes a whole lifetime to fully develop. The idea that when I meet somebody that they're the same level as me is ludicrous, we're all going to be at different levels and different aspects of our life. And we have to accept that and just, you know, find joy where we agree. And if we find joy where

we agree, then when we have differences, it's not so terrible. You know, you're just coming from a different place. It's okay. We're starting with love and connection. And I've been where you are or I haven't been and maybe I can learn from you. So yeah, thank you for doing that rundown, William. That's helpful to see these. It's certainly been helpful for me to apply it. I think it's been a very helpful sort of overarching perspective of life and the kind of trajectory we're on in general of becoming like more open-minded and more tolerant, hopefully and less judgmental and I figure there are people who are infinitely more evolved than me who are looking at me like a sort of two-year-old child, you know, stumbling and having tantrums. And look, you

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

that we, you know, that we're each called to do so. And if our hearts are open and we're compassionate, we're helping people do the same. I don't want to neglect the whole aspect of building wealth abundance, which is an important aspect of the book and of your career. You mean I'm a wealth manager? We should talk about financial. And we've been so focused on these other forms of wealth that I don't want to let you. You don't want to transcend and exclude. No, exactly. And so I want to talk a bit about this very important aspect of the book. And this is a chapter that I worked on very closely with you because I think it's a really important, you've figured out some really important principles and insights that you're using with very sophisticated clients, you know, who often

have tens of millions or hundreds of millions of dollars. I mean, these are people who could go anywhere to get advice. And so part of what was a pleasure for me in working on the book was that we were sort of saying, look, you can learn what Matt does with these ultra-sophisticated clients. And, you know, you pay whatever it is, $29 for a book and $1,000. figure out what it is he does with clients is really helpful. You set up your firm aligned wealth management in 2013 and you really rejected a lot of the practices of Wall Street, like the stuff that you'd become disillusioned with, like the hardcore sales tactics and the conflicts of interest and the lavish fees and the misalignment of incentives and stuff. And you created really a very

simple way of investing. And it's built on a handful of really foundational principles. And I don't want to belabor this, but a huge part of what you do when you get a new client is actually kind of educate them and talk through your beliefs about what works in investing, what drives markets up over a long term. Can you just talk about two or three of those really foundational principles that actually are sort of the foundation for what you give a client so that they actually can invest in a way that's not super stressful and that's not super complicated and it's not, you know, because as we'll discuss, a big part of what you do is actually very consistent with what we've discussed before, which is you're trying to invest in a way that's consistent with a kind of calm, peace, full way of life that's relatively spacious. And so this is not a matter of manic day trading,

you know, 400 times a day. Exactly, exactly. I call it a friend of mine, Mark Hebner, came up with the term invest and relax. And I was, I realized that unless we come up with a way of investing that allows the other forms of wealth to pay attention to, then we're not creating a container that's actually going to work. So we need to create a financial structure that allows you to invest and relax and have confidence. And it starts with understanding what doesn't work, you know, because there's a lot that doesn't work. And I found most of my career was keeping clients away from what doesn't work.

And I've had some very interesting episodes along the way on people I've met that, you know, seem to work, but actually don't. So just, you know, the ones that I found that don't work was, and I was there when, you know, this, the sort of the mutual fund business and the money management business, business, you know, really there were no records to be seen and people were doing it based on reputation. And then in 2008, when the numbers came out and like a lot of people were disillusioned and they started really studying performance, I started to see like the chances of me finding the people that William know that can actually do it are very slim. And if I could find them,

getting access to them was very difficult. And for the, you know, for most clients, these are so few and far between, and even if you can find them, the chances that there is a consistency in the performance also becomes chancy. So, you know, finding the right manager or finding the right time to get in the market. Also, you know, we all know the history of people trying to do that and how difficult that is to get in and out and the cost of that. And also just the price that you pay as you trade things. And there's just so much that was not working that I had to sit down again first principals and say, okay, what does work? And I was lucky enough to, you know, graduate in Chicago Business School and see early on, I'm Morgan Stanley basket trading where the institutions

were creating, you know, big baskets and buying them at once. And then I started to see, oh, the performance of these baskets were just as good as individual stocks would look with less volatility. And they may not, you know, have the upside, but they certainly don't, you know, the crazy upside, but they also don't have the crazy downside. But they had a very respectable rates of return. So I very early on was, you know, in the world of ETFs. I remember like trying to get information about them. You couldn't even get them. And they were just so few. And actually went to the heads of Morgan Stanley because dimensional funds, which does indexing, you had to do as an independent person and an independent RAA, but I tried to get them on the Morgan Stanley

platform, but it was very difficult at the time, and it became institutionally difficult. But what happens is the ETF world just really picked up, and people now have access to groups of portfolios in one stock that really made things quite easy. So when I looked at what didn't work, I then said, okay, well, what does work? And then I started studying the models that were coming out of Chicago and looking at the work that what dimensional was doing. And I said, you know, this makes a lot more sense rather than try to pick the right hedge fund, try to pick the right private equity manager.

And when I looked at the track records over a long periods of time, it just seemed like, oh, if I could just own these portfolios and hold them, I would do well. And I actually started to think, like, why are my clients that are wealthy making so much more money than clients that don't. And I was realizing, well, they don't need to sell. And they could live through volatility. So it actually informs my portfolio structure, which I'll go into in a second. But just staying with the principles of having widely diversified portfolios, I realized also that every year, all the prognosticators out, the other track records of what's going to happen next year when studied is quite foolish and quite poor. So they're having a

market opinion was really interesting and can make you a very interesting person at a cocktail party. But oftentimes when you affect it, you know, if I look at the record of the person who's speaking, which was seldom given, you know, they may have been correct on one, but they weren't correct on all their market calls. And as soon as they made one bad market call, you spent so many years trying to make it up, it didn't work. So I said, well, how can I bring someone to invest and relax with this kind of background. And I started to look at, you know, the fact that there's a random walk and that there's a normal distribution behind the rates of return, which means that if I'm rolling dice once or twice, I don't know what I'm going to get, but I know if I roll

it a thousand times, sevens is going to come up primarily. And I noticed, of course, that the market is similar, that there's a randomness, but there's a long-term underlying pattern. So, I started to not accept portfolios that weren't long term in nature. I would say, like, look, if you're not going to invest with me for 10 years where I can get a lot of roles, you know, I'm not so interested in what's trying to make money for the next year. That's just, you know, that's kind of a tough thing. I could act like I know, but I don't know. And I started to also realize that there was so much information now out there that the idea that I could have a view that was different, that really made a difference, became tougher and tougher.

to get the value added in performance. And I started looking at the managers in performance and seeing how tough it was to out-compete the marketplace. So, of course, I want to pause there to underline a couple of things you've said. Please do. Please do. Because I think that's sufficiently profoundly important that I want to make sure if you will don't listen.

So the first is, in the short term, the market is so wildly unpredictable. but as you say, over the long term, it becomes more predictable. Like still pretty wildly unpredictable, but at least if you, you know, one of the things that we write about in that chapter is that you would draw on this data from the Center for Research in Security Prices, which is crisp, I guess it's pronounced. The Chris from the University of Chicago. And you look at their data and the data from dimensional fund advisors, the DFA funds that you often use. And they would show things like from 1926 through 2025, a diversified portfolio

of big American businesses, so like the S&P 500, generated a return of about 10.5% a year. Small cat companies did a bit better, like 12.66% a year. So the whole game in a way became a matter of getting people to be willing to take the short-term volatility. to handle the fact that every few years you were going to lose 10%, 20%, 50%, or whatever, in a really terrible period, so that they could get enough rolls of the dice, so that they could get to the long term, so that they could get this upward trajectory of the market. And part of that is also, I think, built on your belief just in capitalism as a driver of long-term economic growth. Can you talk about that as well? Because I think you're much more

of an optimist by nature than I am, but your optimism is built on a century of data. Yeah, the data confirms my gut on the fact that, you know, there are millions of companies and fundamentally the workers in those companies come to make, you know, the company better. And implicit in that is to make the world better for their children. And each company has a cost of capital. And unless they're going to beat the cost of capital, they're not going to stay in business. So there's this sort of my confidence is in when I have a diversified portfolio, I have hundreds of companies across the entire globe where people are getting up every day to make the company

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

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

and the millions of people that are working at these companies to use AI in a way that's going to help their companies thrive. And the owners are motivated to do that as well. And from an investment standpoint, I remain very optimistic about the future. And because we're going to solve problems. And those problems are not going to be problems that people don't have. No, those are going to be problems that individuals have

that are going to cause them to buy products and servitors from all these companies globally. So, yeah. There's another thing, Matt, that I think is very, very distinctive that I'd like you to explain for a couple of minutes, if you would, about your investment approach, which is what do you call your three-part portfolio? Okay, I'm happy to discuss that. So I think this is key because it helps you deal. It drives completely with, yeah, without this.

Yeah, it helps you deal temperamentally with the fact that you've got to get to the long term. Yeah, the, I had the good fortune of managing an offshore captive insurance company in the 90s, And I looked at the structure of an insurance company where you match assets to liabilities. And I'm thinking, like, why don't individuals do that? So with an insurance company, you have an insurance reserve, which is for your needs for one to five years. You have, I'm sorry, working capital for one to five years. You have your insurance reserve from five to ten years. And then you have your surplus portfolio for ten years plus.

And I managed, you know, this portfolio, a rather large portfolio. and I came to think, like, why am I managing in this 60-40 fashion in one way for just for a client? Why can't I look at it the same way that an insurance company does? And then look at it psychologically. What I came to come up, what I came up with was a three-pot portfolio. And for my clients, the way I think about it is the first pot is to take care of their needs in the short run, the one to five years or whatever the short term it is that they want to cover. But it's a psychological point of, what will keep them comfortable?

Like, if the market goes down 50%, how much do you need to have in short-term treasuries, let's say, to make you feel that you're not going to flinch because you believe in the long term? Dan Goldman's wife, Tara Goldman, wrote a book about emotional alchemy in which he talks about the secure base. We all need security.

And when we have that secure base, it's a lot easier for us to handle volatility. So the inside of the outside of my portfolio structure is that on the inside, you have this feeling of security. So you worry about the volatility is significantly less, because you know you're covered for the point, and for each person it's different. Some people need a lot of security.

Some people need very little security because they really believe in the future. Others, like, I'm not so sure like I have the same view and much more conservative, so that pot is a little bit larger. Obviously, as I talked earlier, the pot three, which is the 10-year plus, is full equity. That's the part that's going to get into a lot of wrong.

roles and over time with the understanding of everybody working for the benefit of the company and how it's structured that the stocks will rise over time. And is it over the case? No, but it seems like when you look at the numbers, like 90% times when the 10, 15 year time horizons, things double. You know, large, diversified portfolios double. But a five to 10 year area I left open because psychologically, right, we want growth in long term that we don't touch and we leave no matter what goes on in the environment, that's going to allow

us to invest and relax. We got the short-term portfolio that is our secure base, that when we get really nervous, we can open up our portfolio, go, oh, I'm okay, I'm okay. And then it's pot two, which is money for five to ten years. Where, you know, maybe you have a private equity fund, maybe you have your hedge fund, or you have a stock pick that you like. It's where your opinions and your desire to implement your own view of the portfolio can be had. And you should know within five or ten years whether it's working. It's an investment. It's not a trade. And it feels like I'll just warn you. Slightly for a psychological reason. It's almost less a time horizon thing, then it's like, this is the bit where you get to play. And I've seen you over the years, like,

you know, invest in Tesla or buy Bitcoin or by Google or whatever. And clients of your have bought racehorses or invested in, you know. In legal cases or in, you know, fighters or in, just all sorts of things over the years. So in a way, it's keeping that desire to play and speculate and do stuff that's often recklessly foolish and like ring fencing it so it doesn't get out of control? Absolutely. Absolutely. What I found about my own pot, too, over time, it's sort of a humbling experience.

Because you get caught up in investing in ways that are of the moment and then later on could be regretful. And I found that true of most of my clients that Potu initially is larger and then it gets smaller and smaller and smaller over time because it's less reliable. Your opinions, but it's fun. And I don't want to take the juice out of the portfolio by saying, okay, we're just going to go full bonds here and full indexes and I'll see you later. like, okay, we could do that.

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

And it's diversification and its exposure, having, you know, Jamie Diamond and having Elon Musk and having all these people working on their behalf in this diversified portfolio and being confident that they want to grow their wealth. And I have a portion of that too. And so part three you talk about in this chapter in some detail, like it might literally just be a selection of ETFs from dimensional funds who apply some factors that they favor, like they favor sort of smaller companies and cheaper stocks and more profitable businesses. But you could also just as easily say what you've done for your parents over the years,

which is pretty much just buy them the Vanguard Total World Stock ETF or my daughter, Madeline, I put a small amount in her IRA at one point. And I just used the dimensional world equity ETF. And I'm like, that's kind of cool. It's like one fund, 13,000 or so companies. So you don't in a way get that sort of exercised about the details of it. In a way, it's like if you're directionally correct in having a really diversified portfolio at a really low cost that you leave for many years, you're okay.

Yeah, it's sort of like, it's a portfolio that you'll hold no matter what, you know, and you could do your ETFs in a number of different ways, but it's the way that it's going to work for you. And, you know, I have a way of doing it. You may have a different way of doing it, but we're talking about, we're taking out company risk, right? If we have three levels of risk in a market, we have the company risk, we have the industry risk or the country risk, you know, we're down to the systematic risk level. If you're getting

to the systematic risk level, that's a good measure that the pot three is going to be healthy because you're not overweighing these smaller bets and you're going to get the growth of capitalism over time. And if somebody says to me, I want to, you know, I like the S&P, even though the S&P has become very much a technology driven index now, you know, I may ask them to do a little bit more diversification, but to me, it's just as long as it's hitting the systematic risk level in a way that's prudent and that they believe in, then I'm for it and they can invest and relax. And obviously, I'm going to give my suggestion on it, but it's one that we both agree on no matter what happens in the world, we're able to hold our position and set the sale right.

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

because what you're actually doing is creating financial conditions in which you can have an abundant life where you can focus on other stuff that's more important to you. Can you just unpack that a little first? Because I think it puts the whole investment game in a different perspective instead of optimizing for like, am I making 10%? Am I making 8%? You know, it's like, it's just like set this aside so it recedes into the background. Are we talking more the purpose or we're talking the light up aspect of it? Whichever you want, dude.

Well, but I'll talk about both. I'll do them individually. First, you know, we're here for a reason. and we have a mission in our lives. I'm not sure what yours is. We all try to figure that. We'll try to climb the right mountain. But you always can tell when someone's on their right mountain because they're lit up.

And they have an energy about them. Williams got that energy, obviously. And it's very exciting to be with people that are lit up about their life. But not everybody is. So there's one of the forms of wealth that you can attend to once your portfolio is in healthy shape, is focus on what lights you up. and a life and maybe a career that's going to light you up. I meet a lot of executives who sell their company and they're like, okay, what do I do?

You know, I'm afraid to sell this company because if I sell it, I'm not quite sure what I'm going to do. And what they're really saying to me is that I'm very lit up about my business. And once it's sold, like, what's my purpose? So being lit up about your life actually has a structure. and the same thing with people who are starting their careers. You know, what's going to light me up? What's going to keep me excited? What's going to wake me up in the morning to get things going?

And it could be business. It could be a portfolio. But when you give yourself time to really look at what's going to cost to a day that's going to get you out of bed, excited, that's a design issue. Like I said earlier, you know, if you don't design your life, someone's going to design it for you. So if you built a container of a three-pot portfolio and you can put money to the background, which for most of us gives us an incredible opportunity in life that a lot of people

don't allow themselves. If you're able to have your revenues above your expenses in a good portfolio and you can turn to these other forms of wealth, you know, the first one that I focus on is light up, like what's going to light you up? And thankfully, in Japan, and there's two models that I use. One is the Iggy Guy model, which is the reason for being. And it's, I have to say, It's a blessing that if we can get our kids to this position, you know, good on you. It's like stand and clap because to me, I wish this for every one of our children. What it is is for the child to know and for us to know ourselves. What are you good at, right?

The Ikega is four circles. And I could be not doing it traditionally, but I'm going to say it this way because it's pragmatic. What are you good at, you know? And oftentimes you get clues from other people because they'll tell you. There's a list of those things in my book. I remember being younger and winning the enthusiasm award. I remember people telling me that I'm good with intangible ideas. I remember, like people telling me I like other people.

It kind of gave me clues as to what I'm good at, besides my own introspection. But once you know what you're good at, like my daughter who was great at art, you know, like she knew she was great at this, you have to look at not only what you're good at, but what you love to do, right? Do you love to do the things that you're thinking about? And again, for my daughter, she loves doing art and she's really good at it. Those are two of the four. And you don't need to talk to, you know, you could just do self-reflection and find those two

for your reason for being. But the third starts to get really interesting. It's not only those two, but what's going to help the world? All of a sudden, now you turn towards doing something meaningful that's going to be of benefit to others. And then the fourth one is what can you get paid for? So if your career has those four components, you're doing what you love, you're doing what you're good at, you're doing something that's going to help the world, and you're making money, that's your I hei-gui-gui point, that's a reason for being. And it took me until I was 50 until I built the center that I really found my Iiki-gui-gui point.

I didn't have it nailed. One of my daughters is a clinical psychologist. She's doing what she loves. She's really good at it. She's getting paid and she's helping people. I mean, boom, done. I'm so happy for that. and I'm happy for another daughter who's a lawyer for the EPA,

and she's doing those for as well, as well as my art disorder. It just sort of involuntarily happened, knock what it continues for them, but knock what it happens for your kids and for you, because then you wake up in the morning. I'm excited, I love what I do, it's helping the world, I get paid for it.

And not everybody can do that. You may need to bifurcate. You do what you're good at and you get paid for it, and maybe what you love, but it's not helping the world. So you go and you do voluntary, work separately, and that lights you up. Eventually, you find your way to all four. So your finance is good. You turn towards your reason for being. Another thing I take a look at with people, and William

and I have had this discussion, is I'll meet somebody and I'll say, and this I got from financial planning first principles with George Kinden. I want to give him great credit for this. But the question becomes, when you look at your life, are you doing what you need to do, right? Are you making the money that you need to and do all requirements, sort of the meat and potatoes of your life. But then are you doing what your heart really yearns for? And oftentimes the answer is no. So the question then becomes, if you had all the money that you needed, what would you be doing? What would really, what does your heart really yearn for? I have one client who is written about in the book, and his name's Mike Taylor and Mike, you know, built some of the great foundations of the great

buildings in the Northeast. And he was literally digging ditches for his whole life. And then at one point, he realized, like, he actually is incredibly musical and he loves fishing. And after a great career, he allowed himself the opportunity to do what he loved, what he's good at. And he could drop because he had sold his business what could make him money. But also, he's now turning towards how he could use these things to be of benefit to others. obviously his music may be one method for him to do that, but he's really lit up about this next part of his life. And I give him great credit because not many people are outrageous enough to make that decision and to find their light up part of their life. Anyway, but for him,

I'll go back to the second model here. I'm sorry, I went off on it, but he was just doing what he had to do. He wasn't doing what his heart really year for, which was music and fishing. being out on the seas. And now he's doing that. And you can just see like, you know, the marked difference in the satisfaction from life. And I know when I built the center, I felt the marked difference in my life. And I saw William doing his book group and talking about it. I saw the mark difference in his life because it was something at his heart really wanted to do. I mean, I keep coming back to this. I keep thinking about, you know, this idea of like if, you know, if you don't design your life, someone else will do it for you.

And so I mean, one of, so I'm internalizing this stuff and acting on it the whole time. So one of the things I told you, Matt, recently, is I decided, well, what would happen if I went to live somewhere different for a month a year with my wife Lauren for the next 10 years? And so, you know, we booked an Airbnb, a beautiful Airbnb in Santa Fe for early next year during the Santa Fe book festival, literary festival. And we'll just go live for a month with our dog. I'm so happy about that. Santa Fe.

Yeah. So some of it is just looking, looking at your life with this sense of like, the richness is not all a matter of possessions and money and credentials and titles and followers and book sales and stuff. It's like, I've got to think in a broader way. And so I think in a way that's been almost the most helpful thing that I've learned

from this process of helping you with the book is to say, no, no, that's a form of wealth as well. And I'll still work for that whole month, no doubt. And I'll still overwork, no doubt. You're transcending and including. Yeah. Exactly. But it's also, it's very idiosyncratic.

And so I think, you know, I mean, not everyone would want to go spend a month in Santa Fe and go to the tree festival and stuff like that. But completely, you know, we each have our own right now. And it should be idiosyncratic because, you know, we've been so conditioned for a certain way that once we find our way, there's a great line. like all this conditioning and maybe even spirituality and all those thoughts can get you into the arena, but ultimately you got to find your own seat. And when you find your own seat, wow, like, when you make that move, the joy is just how can you measure it? You know, you can't. So there were two of the three things I mentioned, doing what you have to do, doing what your heart really wants to do. But the third thing, and you mentioned that earlier, William, do what's fun to do. You know, like

sometimes we just get too serious on the must to do and what we yearn for that we forget. Like, it's important we have fun and enjoy our days. So that's when I bought the next season tickets. That's why with my youngest daughter, we, on a regular basis, go to cultural events in the city to an opera or to a dance or to something. And I always say, hey, Grace, did you get tickets for something? Let's go. If you just do one of these three, like if you're younger and you're just doing what's fun to do, obviously you're ignoring what you must do or maybe what your heart you're in.

to do. Or if you're just doing what your heart yearns to do, you could actually get too serious about it and the point where you're just kind of not great company because you're so into it. Like, it almost becomes like you're achieving, achieving, achieving your heart thing, which is great. But at the same time, you're not lighting up, you're not having fun with it. It could turn too serious. So having a good balance of what's fun to do, what you must do, and what your heart yearns for to me is like a beautiful equation for being lit up. And when I see people who are lit up, they tend to have all three of those kind of checked off and in action. And before I let you go, Matt, because we'll have to wrap this up in a couple of minutes.

Tell us the instruction, the advice that Sokner-Rub She gave you when you saw it. All right. Right, right. Well, yeah, to some of this conversation, you know, it's, you know, once you have the map of true wealth, which you'll have, and we've gone through a bunch of it, but not all of it, once you see these four quadrants of true wealth, I remember I once with Socken Rimpershé, who has been my teacher for a long time, and I told him that I was doing therapy, and he looked at me and he goes, hey, are you trying to be perfect? He goes, don't be perfect, just be functional. And that's probably the biggest message I could leave

today. The idea of all these wealth is not to be perfect. It is to be functional in them. Because if you're functional, there's space in them. Perfect is like we grew up in a Disney world, right? The kids watch Disney films, we watch some. The distance between being functional and being perfect sucks all the joy out. Perfection, you want to be really good at what you do, and you want to have good amounts of all these. But to have perfect amounts is tough, and the wisest people I know say, stop that. You don't want to be the greatest perfect meditator.

You don't want to be perfectly wealthy. You want to be nicely wealthy, you know, because it would just suck out all the other wealths if you try to gain perfection. And look, at the end of the day, once you're able to get functional here, then there's the last move, which is the last essential, which is you just take,

because these are all are functional, you've built the containers, you've built your financial wealth, you've worked on your interiors, you've grown up to see other people's perspectives, you understand how the world, you know, you're functionally, you're in a state of like,

where you could actually have the possibilities of being content, you know, and balanced. But transformation is still left for you, you can actually even go deeper. And that's by just letting all this go because you're functional and playing the music. You got all the notes, right?

And now you can just take, you know, just ease up, right? You can just relax and then find the deepest part of you. And it's not so much a matter of easing up as like, I'm going to retire and not do anything. I think what's really striking when you look at great teachers like Sökenrin Rimpche or like Candela Rimpchet, the other great teacher of us, you didn't, you didn't name before, but who's played a really or I wouldn't put it to Arick Wolf.

Right, right. You're a rabbi. He built this incredible temple in Westchester. Yep. I think what you see in them that's extraordinary is there's this kind of easing up where they're okay no matter what. And I think the more, the more I look at your life, the more I think, you know, in my own life, like that's the goal is to get to a point where you're able, you still, You still want to be successful in the world.

You still want to build abundance. You still want to have influence in the world. You're not looking to us to check out, but you're able to be okay no matter what. That seems the master moved to me because I'm often so dissatisfied, even when things are good. And when I look at someone like Kendra or Sokney, like there's just this sense of joy. I remember once you and I went on a retreat with Sokney-R-M-Shea, and there was a fire alarm that kept going off in the middle the night and everyone would pour out. And he's just totally on face. He's just so chill as he's out there and it's seven from Robs at two in the morning and then at three in the morning.

And can you just say something about that? Because that seems to me the ultimate move is to get to a point where regardless of the circumstances, you're basically fundamentally okay. Yeah, yeah. Yeah. I mean, being unconditional, having unconditional contentment really is an inside out because ultimately once you've set this, even, you know, if it just happens to you that you're able to understand, as I think my dad had the ability to be good from the inside out, irrespective of conditions, it's the understanding of your own richness that's inherent in who you are, it's your birthright. And when you're in touch with that and you really feel it, you're fortunate enough to meet people who actually

walk that way. And you learn to be that way more and more, then you're truly wealthy. You don't have the same need. You're fulfilled, right? Fulfillment means being filled. And unlike, like, the toy that's, you know, that big blow-up thing that's in front of a car wash, that's big and everybody could see it and it's flapping for attention, but it's hollow underneath and it's completely dependent on conditions. If you're full in a fulfillment sense, like Asogne Rupche or like Rabbi Arquev,

you're good in all conditions. and you're sitting in a seat of unconditional, you know, there's sort of the top of the ocean part of you, but when you're really in touch with the lower echelon of the ocean, the part that's unmoving and very steady and very reliable, and you're in touch with that, then you know that everything's workable, and you're working it because you're not done at that point.

You're now working, you now can turn and be of benefit to other people because no matter what's coming your way, you have the feeling of like, I can handle this. I'm good. I'm okay. The state, if I would describe it, you know, from the outside would be a person that's open-hearted, open-minded and super grounded, you know, how the world is and what things are. And I wish that for every person listening that you find that state that's full and has those qualities.

Amen. Amen. It's been a total joy chatting with you. We could talk for about four more. hours, but we'll unpack this further. And people should go by the book, the right mountain, which I think is full of richness. And I'm looking forward to chatting with you soon with my masterclass and with my friends along the path group. And so this is the first of multiple conversations about this, because it's so rich and infinite. And I just wanted to thank you,

because I'm hugely grateful for your friendship. And I'm looking forward to being on the journey with you because I sure as hell I'm not at a point where I'm okay no matter what. And so let this arrive in the years to come. Let it be. Let it be. And I'm just grateful to you to have you as a friend along this path. And it's, it's amazing to have friends who are directionally looking the same way. It's one thing to do this path alone, but to do it with others is such a joy. And that's another thing I wish for everybody. Not only that you find it right now, but you help other people find theirs when you guys do it together as a family, the more people do it, the more enjoy you'll feel and grateful. And I'm just super grateful for our friendship from being friends

along the past. So thank you, William. Thank you. See you soon. Take care. See you soon. Bye. Bye. Thanks for listening to TIP. Follow Richer, Wiser, Happier on your favorite podcast app and visit the investorspodcast.com for show notes and educational resources. This podcast is for informational and entertainment purposes only and does not provide financial, investment, tax or legal advice. The content is impersonal and does not consider your objectives, financial situation or needs. Investing involves risk, including possible loss of principle and past performance is not a guarantee of future results. Listeners should do their own research and consult a qualified professional before making any financial decisions. Nothing on this show is a recommendation or solicitation

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