The single greatest shift separating founders who build real wealth from founders who build a golden cage is not some portfolio strategy. It [music] is a single mindset. I went from grinding day after day to building a portfolio of companies that do over $15 million a year with a mostly empty calendar the day I made this one decision.
My business throws off over $3 million in profit a year. I also have an eight-figure portfolio compounding at around 12% a year. And when I look at my net worth statement, the portfolio is not even the biggest line on it.
I want to show you what it is and why it changes everything about how you should be thinking about money as a founder. First things first here, you are the asset. Yes, you.
The first thing to understand is that it's you as the founder, right, that are the biggest asset and basically the biggest determinant of your wealth, right? Let's think of a founder as an example that has $10 million invested, right, in the stock market and it's compounding at say 12% every year. Well, that portfolio this year then is likely to throw off $1.
2 million dollars of passive cash flows from those investments. On the other side, right, let's imagine though that that same founder has a business that's doing $3 million of profit a year. It's clear then that the biggest contributor to that founder's wealth is not the portfolio of their investments right now.
It's the actual engine, meaning their cash-flowing business machine, that's contributing that $3 million of profit each year to their portfolio. That's the biggest determinant of them growing their wealth because that $10 million will turn into $13 million, $16 million, $19 million, $22 million, $25 million over the coming years if they can just keep contributing at least $3 million of profit each year. All of this stuff probably sounds obvious when I say it out loud, right?
but the thing is most people don't act on it, right? I see so many founders pour their attention into spreadsheets and market analysis and things like asset allocation and then they just burn themselves out though running their actual business to the point where they eventually just quit, right? All the money in the world means nothing is if you don't internally feel great.
And so, do you have a business that's making you feel alive or is it draining you? Now, are you looking at your calendar in a given week and it's just stacked with meetings all week? I don't care how much money you're making, that doesn't look like wealth to me.
So, the biggest contributor then um to your net worth growth is you. What we want to do here is start to embody this identity of being an architect, someone designing the machine that pushes the cash, right? Versus the engine to it all, where you're the one doing everything, you're worried about actively investing all the time, you're worried about how your business is going to make money next month or where it's going to get its next client from.
That's not the way to build wealth in my opinion. It's to sit above everything and be able to design the machine. And so, what are the action items from this, okay?
You need to invest in yourself, your skills, your health, your mindset, your education. Make sure that your core offer, right, and the vehicle that you're building is dialed in to actually produce the wealth that you're after. Too many founders are sitting on a business, right, that's not getting them to where they want it to go, right?
It's not going to actually help them hit their wealth goals because like the actual vehicle itself is just it's broken. Um that's that. And just as a heads-up, too, this whole document, you can go and find all these action items and go and download it via the link in the description.
All right, let's move on to the second point here, which is boring investing wins, okay? I have a wealth guy, like I mentioned, right? His name is Stephen.
And every month, I personally invest cash that I pull out of the business into a boring, [music] diversified portfolio. You're probably wondering, every month, what's the point of that? I get great pleasure, let me tell you, of just every month pulling out whatever profits make sense out of the business and then being able to go and get on a call and then invest those in a diversified portfolio, right?
And Steven's there with me on Zoom, and I'm there pressing the buttons, and also being able to then ask Steven different questions around, you know, money. I just think it's important that you have someone you trust in your corner, right? To help you along the way building your wealth, right?
I think it's important to have, you know, a coach for your business, you know, a wealth advisor helping you with your portfolio, a tax advisor helping you on that side of the things, um a great accountant, a great lawyer, right? In a sense, you're kind of building your own like family office, even if you just have like 1 to 2 million dollars. You want to make sure you just have the right advice around you.
So, this idea of like the psychology of wealth, right? Is just that, right? Like what do you really want?
What's important to you? When I think about what's important to me, it's being financially unbreakable, right? Having a bulletproof portfolio that allows me to sleep at night, and playing the long-term compounding game, not worried about making a short-term buck.
I'm totally fine with just boring 8% a year returns, with a portfolio that's diversified, that's low-risk. >> [music] >> I can just passively invest that portfolio, because the active investing I'm doing is the active [music] amount of systems I'm building and wealth I'm generating from my businesses. That's my active portfolio, and I need to make sure I'm maximally focused on that.
[music] See, the thing about compounding and why, you know, Charlie Munger said it's like the eighth wonder of the world, right? Is because, well, it starts to really work later on. When you think about growing your wealth, right?
I think there's >> [music] >> two kinds of people that I see get money. There's the one that, you know, they make a bunch of money, and they start buying Lambos and houses and flashy clothes or whatever. And before long, one thing leads to another, and they have all of these different assets and expenses, >> [music] >> and they're on this hedonic treadmill, always trying to make more to buy more, and it's exhausting.
On On other side, I think there's this idea of like, just keeping your lifestyle simple. You know, my lifestyle at 40k per month and 500k per month didn't change much. >> [music] >> You know, most of my belongings can all fit into two suitcases, living a very minimal, chill life, right?
If anything, my biggest expense is my travel, as well as like the given place I'm staying in any given moment. I have yet, honestly, to even own a car. Again, I live out of two suitcases, essentially.
So, I'm not buying much. So, really having your own idea of what success looks like to you. And then for me, it's optimizing for peace of mind, because honestly, peace at the core is like what I'm really after, right?
And so, this is what um the psychology of money really taught me, right? The highest form of wealth is the ability to wake up every morning and say, "I can do whatever I want today. " And so, my rule for building wealth is that I only work on stuff that really fuels and amplifies my ikigai.
So, ikigai is a Japanese term that stands for your calling in life, and it's just the intersection of what you love, what the world needs, what you can be paid for, and what you're great at. And when I look at that as an example, it's things like, you know, design, traveling, right? Coaching, copywriting, building communities and distribution from day one, automating tasks, building systems, helping founders, right?
This is the core of my calling in life, right? And this is the core of why I went and created Founder OS, right? Which is the community where I'm helping founders build their founder-led brands and social media machines.
And so, when I think about what I want to be spending my time on every day, right? I want to be spending time on just optimizing and developing mastery in those things. This is what I call living every day retirement.
Every day retirement is essentially when every single day you're working on stuff that you would do even if you were retired. From my experience, most of my wealth has been generated from leaning into my strengths, right? Leaning into the things that I love and that I'm great at, not from trying to be great at things that I don't enjoy or that I hate or that I'm just naturally not skilled at.
Now, I think that as an action item you should go and figure out your ikigai. And I've gone and put a whole ikigai lesson and exercise via the link in the description. You can go and check that out right now.
Inside of this you'll see that you have the ability to go and sort through your ikigai, fill this out just like I have. I put my whole example and process into this guide. And then you can go and hone in on the intersection of what you love, what you're great at, what the world needs, and what you can be paid for, so you can double down and optimize your core calling.
All right, number three here is invest in the architect, okay? Once you accept that you're the architect building this portfolio, [music] right, everything changes. We want to go and make sure that we're investing in you, right, in your longevity here, so you can keep running this whole system, this whole portfolio, and the amazing business you have.
What does it mean then to invest in the architect? Well, for me as an example, my actual list is I have a $20,000 coach every month, right? I have a breathwork practitioner that I spend $500 a month with.
I have a wealth advisor, Stephen, as I mentioned. I have a health budget with no ceiling on it. I have, you know, soul trips I do about every 4 weeks.
How do you go and build a team that can run for 10 days without you touching anything? Um, for me it's also having like a house in nature, um, and a calendar that's mostly empty. None of these are line items that I cut, right, when I'm looking for savings, right?
These are the foundations of how my cash machine runs, because if I'm healthy and I'm feeling good, right, my nervous system is relaxed, well, I think in many senses my portfolio, my business, my team, the culture is a product of how my nervous system is feeling. You see this too with the top performers out there, right? LeBron James just recently reported, right, that he spends around 1.
5 billion dollars a year on his body. Honestly, I was kind of surprised how little he spends, right? That actually doesn't seem like that much to me if I'm being honest, right?
Someone who's this like pro NBA player, I'd expect him to be spending even more. And so, when you think then about the action items here, right? You are the architect, so what do you need?
Well, great athletes have coaches, right? You need a coach, right? Making sure that you have your own personal board of advisors around you.
People to advise you with your sales, with your content, with your marketing, with your, you know, finance, operations, right? You need the right people around you. The second thing is, take a break, right?
>> [music] >> Rest your nervous system. Healthy founders build healthy businesses, right? And for me, my one recommendation here, too, as you remember, nature is your greatest mentor.
Now, when I go away in the nature for 2 days each weekend, I get the chances to like think and scheme and plot and slow down, right? And I often times find this is where my best ideas come to me, and it's also what gives me the energy to then go and conquer things the next week. All right, number four, you are a free agent.
You don't owe a country, right? You don't owe a system, you don't owe a structure that taxes you at 50% while telling you to be grateful, okay? And I know this is kind of random, but it's just something that I find myself telling friends, okay, at points, right?
If you don't know much about me, I grew up um I'm from Canada, right? A small town north of Toronto called Sharon, Ontario, population 5,000 folks, so we're talking the boonies here. Um I lived in Canada for the first 24 years of my life back in Appin.
Around uh five, six years ago, I officially exited Canada, right? And um the reason I did that was because, well, I'd been traveling the world for about 12 years, and I'd seen all these amazing countries, all these amazing cultures, and I knew that, you know, there was something more for me out there, right? And so, um I decided to go and play on a different team.
Uh because my view is that we're all free agents, right? Just like LeBron James, right? You can play for one team and then in my case, Canada, but then you can, you know, move to America, you can move to the UAE, you can move to wherever you want.
That's exactly what I did, right? I picked up and I left. But I bring this up because as humans we think a lot about, you know, that we design our environments, right?
But I think it's equally as true that our environments design us. Who are you surrounding yourself with? Are you in an environment that helps you produce wealth?
Over my career, you know, I've lived in New York, Austin, Miami, Dubai, uh all over the place, right? And it's these different places that have given me different perspectives on what's important to me and and how I want to build. You know, when we think about wealth building in general, I think some of the most decision important decisions you can make, right?
Are what you're working on, who you're working with, and where you're working from, right? And so, I think the action items for you that I just want to share with you here like first off, you can try out new places, right? Your environment is your choice.
You know, if you're not happy with where you are right now, go and give it a shot. Go and somewhere else. Change it up.
And that you can do whatever you want, right? so act with high agency, right? You can go and pick up and leave where you are right now and try living in a new city for a couple months.
The founders building real wealth right now are not the ones with the best portfolio. They're the ones who finally understood that the architect is the asset. The business doubles when you invest in the thing that actually runs it.
If you want me and my team to help you go and become the architect, go and apply to Founder's List using the link in the description. We help founders go from invisible to inbound clients in the next 60 days. And if you want to go deeper on the business side, check out this next video for the exact framework I used to build a business that actually funds a life worth living.
