Legacy Built to Last: 3 Principles to Build a Modern “Dynasty” | EP. 10

0:00 – Here’s a stat that’ll stop you right in your tracks, 70% of wealthy families lose their
0:06 – wealth by the second generation, and a full 90% lose it by the third generation, not because
0:12 – they weren’t smart, not because they didn’t work hard, but because they never built a bedrock
0:17 – foundation.
0:18 – Today’s all about building wealth that will actually survive you.
0:20 – Here’s the uncomfortable question, what if you accumulate wealth and it disappears in
0:25 – one generation?
0:27 – What if you build all of this and it doesn’t matter?
0:29 – What if on paper you succeed it?
0:31 – But privately you’re wondering, is this it?
0:34 – What’s the point of all this?
0:35 – I’ve met a lot of very successful people in the five to twenty five million dollar net
0:39 – worth range, right?
0:40 – On paper they’re quote unquote successful in the access to society, right?
0:43 – They’ve won.
0:44 – They’ve won the game of life, but there’s something that’s unsettled inside of them.
0:47 – The income is there.
0:48 – The portfolio is there.
0:49 – The reputation is there, but the legacy, it’s not yet defined, and that’s what this episode
0:54 – is all about.
0:55 – Welcome back to the Sage Investor Podcast.
0:57 – I’m Brian Spear in my mission is to help as many people as possible generate cash flow
1:01 – and build legacy wealth in a tax-efficient manner, because that’s what I’m trying to do for
1:04 – my family.
1:05 – You’re going to help as many people as possible do that as we can along the way.
1:08 – And today we arrive at the final pillar of our seven pillar framework, the Sunrise
1:13 – Capital Strategy.
1:15 – See cash flow, A, add value, P, protect the downside, I invest, don’t speculate, T, tax-efficient
1:23 – structure, A, assurance of outcome, and now L, legacy built to last.
1:30 – This is the culmination.
1:31 – Everything that we’ve discussed up to this point has been preparation.
1:34 – It’s been structure, discipline, durability, margin of safety, compounding.
1:39 – In my studies, here’s how a Sage Investor thinks about legacy.
1:43 – They’ve got three principles here.
1:45 – Principle number one, think in generations, principle number two, separate bedrock capital
1:51 – from lifestyle capital, and principle number three, transfer wisdom before wealth.
1:57 – Survival gets you durability.
2:00 – Durability gets you freedom.
2:02 – Freedom gives you the ability to think beyond yourself.
2:05 – So let’s reframe everything that we’ve done so far here.
2:08 – Cash flow first, and that removes anxiety, add value, that creates control where you
2:13 – control your own destiny, protect the downside that preserves survival.
2:19 – Invest, don’t speculate, that extends your time horizon.
2:23 – Tax-efficiency, that protects compounding, assurance of outcome.
2:27 – That increases the likelihood, the probability that you’re going to be successful.
2:32 – But none of that matters.
2:33 – None of that matters unless it actually leads somewhere, and that somewhere is legacy.
2:38 – There’s a saying that I absolutely love, that I absolutely adore that I’ve taken to
2:42 – heart here, and it’s all revolving around the fact that money doesn’t buy happiness.
2:45 – If you follow this plan, the capital strategy plan, we’ve been doing it for a long time,
2:49 – it is much more of an inevitability that you’re going to be successful in new time, right?
2:54 – Real estate’s not a get rich quick style of business over a short period of time with
2:58 – a low probability of success.
2:59 – It is a build massive amounts of wealth over a very long period of time, with a very high
3:04 – probability of success, but you have to actually be an investor.
3:08 – But what we know is that money doesn’t buy happiness, even if you get to the promised
3:11 – land.
3:12 – There’s a lot of individuals that have a figured net worse and beyond that actually are
3:15 – having very difficult lives.
3:16 – They’re not happy.
3:17 – So what is happiness, right?
3:18 – There’s a great saying that I love that I just cherish here, and it’s if you want to
3:23 – be happy for a day, buy some dessert.
3:25 – If you want to be happy for a week, take a vacation.
3:28 – If you want to be happy for a month, go buy a new car.
3:31 – But if you want to be happy for the rest of your life, be someone that people will miss
3:36 – when you’re gone, and that speaks to legacy.
3:39 – That speaks to legacy.
3:40 – Really, really close friend of mine, name Scott, ultimately told me something once that
3:44 – I’ve never forgotten regarding the idea and the concept of legacy.
3:48 – It was about a state planning, right?
3:49 – At the end of the day, a state planning, if you do it properly, right?
3:53 – You set up your will, you set up your trust, you do an exceptional job of setting up an
3:57 – exceptional estate passing along the legacy.
3:59 – The truth is, a state planning done properly is the ultimate love letter.
4:04 – Let that sink in a little bit, right?
4:06 – It’s not paperwork, it’s not tax avoidance, it’s not legal structuring.
4:10 – It is a love letter, the ultimate love letter.
4:12 – It says, I love you enough to protect you from ruin.
4:16 – It says, I love you enough to design your freedom.
4:19 – I love you enough to think beyond my own lifetime.
4:22 – Legacy is not about our own demise.
4:25 – Everybody unfortunately is going to meet that at some point in the future.
4:29 – There’s a 100% success rate in that occurring in time.
4:31 – It’s a sad state of affairs.
4:33 – It’s not about death, right?
4:34 – It’s about continuity.
4:35 – It’s about continuity.
4:36 – And the greatest expression of love is not emotional, it’s structural.
4:40 – So we’re going to come back to that in a little bit.
4:41 – But first, let’s go ahead and lay the foundation here, okay?
4:43 – If your grandchildren inherited all that money tomorrow, would it serve them or would it
4:48 – burden them?
4:49 – That’s not a rhetorical question.
4:50 – So let’s move on to the three principles that we have here in the how to actually go
4:54 – about building a legacy, right?
4:55 – If you want a legacy that’s built to last, how do you go about doing it?
4:58 – We have three ironclad principles inside of the sunrise capital strategy that we follow
5:02 – to build that legacy.
5:03 – The first one is to think in generations.
5:07 – You need to think in generations and not days because the decisions that you make today,
5:12 – they ripple far beyond one lifetime.
5:15 – They echo through your children, through your grandchildren, your community, right?
5:19 – And even the people that you might not ever meet, when you shift your time horizon from
5:25 – years to generations down the road, everything changes.
5:28 – Your risk tolerance changes, your leverage decisions change.
5:33 – Your patience increases and your ego ends up decreasing.
5:36 – You become much more of a steward than an owner.
5:39 – You stop optimizing for applause in the marketplace, right?
5:42 – You start optimizing for endurance over the long haul.
5:45 – And this principle of thinking in generations, it’s rooted in the fundamental rule of compounding,
5:51 – the longer the time horizon, the more powerful the compounding effect becomes.
5:57 – And that’s true for money, but it’s also true for knowledge.
6:00 – It’s also true for relationships, reputation, character, all these things compound over
6:04 – long periods of time.
6:06 – Something does not just apply to capital, it applies to behavior.
6:10 – Warren Buffett captured this one beautifully, you guys all know this quote, someone is
6:13 – sitting in the shade today because somebody planted a tree a long time ago.
6:17 – And that’s what you have the luxury of doing.
6:19 – If we’ve become successful in the eyes of society, you make a couple of really quality
6:23 – decisions today and decades from now, generations from now, kids, grandchildren, great-grank
6:28 – children can all benefit from the decisions that you make today.
6:31 – The person who planted that tree, they didn’t benefit from the shade that it actually creates,
6:36 – right?
6:37 – But somebody else does, somebody else did.
6:39 – And the same ideas derived from the great unbelievable cathedrals of Europe.
6:43 – You’ve had the chance to spend a little bit of time out there.
6:45 – These buildings were built hundreds of years ago, but they took exceedingly long periods
6:50 – of time to put together.
6:51 – They were built over centuries.
6:53 – The people who laid the foundation, who laid that first stone, they knew that they were
6:59 – never going to ultimately see the finished ceiling at the end of the day.
7:02 – But they were driven by a vision of something that would ultimately outlast them over time.
7:07 – And that’s a generational thinking.
7:09 – So here’s a number that really kind of resets perspective, right?
7:12 – We’ve talked about compound interest and over long periods of time, it is the eighth
7:15 – wonder of the world.
7:16 – Let’s emphasize it by extending that perspective just a little bit further.
7:20 – One million dollars, a mere one million dollars, compounded at a mere 5% rate for 200 years
7:28 – becomes over 17 trillion dollars.
7:32 – Again, the difference is not brilliance, it’s duration, and setting up a structure that
7:37 – allows for compound interest to take effect.
7:40 – Most families think in one lifetime, dynasties think in centuries, and history gives us
7:46 – a couple of paths.
7:47 – You guys have seen it, right?
7:48 – Cornelius Vanderbilt.
7:49 – He died one of the richest men in the world.
7:51 – Within three generations, all that wealth was gone.
7:53 – He had no structure, had no generational design.
7:56 – And if you contrast that with the Rockefellers, multiple generations later, that wealth
8:00 – still endures, and the difference was not intelligence.
8:03 – Both of these individuals exceedingly intelligent patriarchs.
8:06 – It was structure, that’s the difference.
8:09 – And it began with a generational mindset.
8:12 – So the real question is not whether or not you can build wealth, you most assuredly can.
8:16 – We’ve played out a plan of exactly how to get to the promised land.
8:19 – The question is what is the legacy that you want to leave?
8:23 – And how can you structure your wealth today so that it makes a positive impact on your
8:28 – family, right now, your community, and the world long after you’re gone?
8:33 – You now stand at that fork, right?
8:34 – You’ve become successful in the eyes of society.
8:37 – You can choose whether you just want to build wealth, or whether you want to build wealth
8:42 – that lasts, and those are not the same thing.
8:46 – The second evergreen principle we have underneath leave a legacy is separate bedrock capital
8:52 – from lifestyle capital.
8:54 – You need to separate bedrock capital from lifestyle capital.
8:59 – Bedrock capital is untouchable principle.
9:02 – It compounds forever, and lifestyle capital ends up becoming everything else.
9:07 – You can be personal discretionary spending, some consumption, some some risk capital over
9:11 – and above what you would consider bedrock capital.
9:15 – Most families blend the two, and that’s how fortunes die over time.
9:21 – But dynasties separate these two things.
9:24 – Many years ago I read a book on JP Kennedy, it was a patriarch of the Kennedy family.
9:28 – A lot of people know John F. Kennedy, JFK, president of the United States, but far fewer people
9:33 – have ever even heard of JP Kennedy.
9:37 – The truth is, JP Kennedy is actually the patriarch of the Kennedy family.
9:42 – It’s a renowned family that has multi-generational wealth, and JP Kennedy is the individual that
9:47 – ultimately set that up at the very beginning.
9:49 – How did he do it?
9:51 – When I read that book, I was unbelievably impressed with the foundation that he was able to lay.
9:55 – He was an exceptional entrepreneur, a great businessman who ultimately had multiple
9:59 – different businesses.
10:00 – He was a banker and made a lot of money and real estate along the way as well.
10:04 – After he built wealth, once he created it, his true genius wasn’t just wealth creation.
10:11 – It was wealth structure.
10:14 – So in 1926, he established a series of dynasty trusts with some iron clad rules.
10:22 – Number one, the heirs could never withdraw the principle.
10:26 – They could only live off of the interest and the income deriving from that principle.
10:31 – And then also another one of the beautiful aspects are he stipulated inside of the trust
10:36 – that that principle, which was never to be touched, was to be passed on to their children
10:43 – upon their death, basically setting up his grandkids as well.
10:47 – And that was going to last into perpetuity.
10:49 – And as you can imagine, as we’ve talked about, $1 million compounded at a mere 5% over
10:53 – 200 years becomes over $17 trillion.
10:56 – So he set his family up in such a way that the bedrock capital will be there into perpetuity
11:02 – continuing to compound for generations to come.
11:04 – And ultimately, that’s how you leave a legacy to the next generation.
11:08 – So Kennedy was obviously adhering to the first two principles, right?
11:10 – He’s already been thinking in generations and he clearly understood how to separate bedrock
11:14 – capital from lifestyle capital.
11:17 – And before we dive into that third-stage principle today, I just want to plant a question.
11:21 – I just want to plant a question in your mind to tie legacy to the concept of wealth.
11:28 – Do you have an inner scorecard or do you have an outer scorecard?
11:32 – How do you view yourself?
11:34 – Do you have an inner scorecard or an outer scorecard?
11:37 – I will share that my biggest fear in life.
11:40 – My single biggest fear in life, I’m asked in forums and entrepreneurial environments
11:45 – when you’re really trying to get to know somebody, right?
11:48 – What is the single thing that you’re most scared of in this world?
11:51 – And for me, I am petrified that my children, my two girls, will not know for want.
12:00 – And ultimately, they will grow up to be more versions of spoiled, trust-fun babies.
12:07 – I’m petrified in terms of how do I instill exceptional amounts of character into them knowing
12:14 – where I came from.
12:15 – I’m an individual that grew up in a mobile home, didn’t really come from much, ultimately
12:18 – built an 8-figure net worth.
12:19 – I’ve done pretty successful for myself and my family over time.
12:22 – And I would never change the route that I took to ultimately get here because that path
12:26 – of being forged through fire is ultimately where that character derives.
12:31 – So I would never change it.
12:32 – And I never want to take that away from my next generation, right, from all of the kids
12:36 – that are in the house.
12:38 – But how do you try to put them in a position where they can struggle and build that character
12:43 – and move through adversity?
12:45 – My biggest fear is that they’re not going to have that luxury.
12:48 – It’s an odd dynamic because you obviously want better for the next generation, but on
12:52 – the flip side, you don’t want to be able to give them too much and ultimately spoil them
12:56 – along the way.
12:57 – I’m petrified that I’m ultimately going to spoil the kids.
12:58 – So how do we go about solving that problem?
13:01 – The third principle is what we’ve ultimately decided is the best way to do it.
13:04 – And that third principle is to transfer wisdom before you transfer wealth.
13:09 – You have to pass along not only wealth because that is not enough, but you also have to
13:14 – pass along wisdom along the way, sage wisdom.
13:18 – So continuing on the story with JP Kennedy, what did he ultimately do to try to pass along
13:22 – that level of wisdom to his kids and ultimately grandkids and great grandkids beyond that?
13:26 – What he ended up doing was this.
13:27 – We talked about the principle, the vault, the bedrock capital that he set aside, only living
13:32 – off of that respective income.
13:33 – But then he set some other principles inside of his trust and he said, look, the kids they’re
13:38 – not going to be able to tap into any of that respective income whatsoever until they’re
13:43 – at least 36 years old.
13:45 – Why did he choose to do that?
13:46 – Why the age difference?
13:48 – Kennedy believed that his family, his children, they needed to prove themselves in the real
13:54 – world much earlier.
13:55 – They got to go out and build careers, stand on your own two feet, earn respect, establish
13:59 – an identity that is separate from the family wealth.
14:02 – And the result of that is by the time that the kids ultimately become 35 years old, they’re
14:06 – kind of, you know, becoming into the middle age, right?
14:08 – By the time that they could actually access the income derived from the bedrock capital,
14:14 – they’ve already established themselves.
14:16 – They weren’t just trust fund kids, trust fund babies, they were veterans, they were lawyers,
14:21 – they were public servants.
14:22 – The bedrock capital did not make them lazy, it made them fearless.
14:27 – Robert Kennedy could serve as an attorney general pursuing justice over corporate legal
14:32 – fees.
14:33 – Ted Kennedy, he could spend 47 years in the Senate focused on health care and civil rights.
14:39 – And that is exactly what JP Kennedy sought out to achieve when he ultimately built his
14:44 – family’s legacy.
14:45 – When he sat down and he wrote the dynasty, what did he say?
14:47 – His entire life, his entire life’s mission was that I want to build wealth.
14:51 – I want to build a large amount of wealth for my family so that we could pass it along and
14:55 – build a legacy that lasts for multiple generations, why?
14:58 – Because he said, I want my family to be able to dedicate their lives to public service.
15:04 – And what an absolutely wonderful result that he has had, right?
15:07 – The principle, the bedrock capital, it compounded across generations.
15:13 – Kennedy’s initial trusts that were estimated at about $200, $300, $400 million in today’s
15:19 – dollars.
15:20 – They now support dozens of errors while remaining structurally intact.
15:25 – The family has produced 16, more than 16 members of Congress, diplomats, activists, authors,
15:31 – exceptionally successful individuals that bedrock capital, it did not just preserve wealth.
15:37 – It funded legacy.
15:39 – And if you contrast that with the Vanderbilt’s Cornelius Vanderbilt was the richest man in
15:44 – America in 1877.
15:46 – He left $100 million, which is about $2.5 billion today to his errors with no protective
15:53 – structure.
15:54 – But by 1973, less than a hundred years later, just 96 years later, when 120 Vanderbilt
16:02 – descendants gathered, not one of them was wealthy.
16:05 – The family fortune had evaporated.
16:08 – No bedrock capital, no structure, no dynasty.
16:13 – The difference between Kennedy and Vanderbilt was not intelligence, was not initial wealth.
16:18 – It was structure.
16:19 – Kennedy built bedrock.
16:23 – Vanderbilt didn’t.
16:24 – You’ll have to choose wisely.
16:26 – So how does this apply today, right?
16:27 – We’re talking about stuff that occurred hundreds of years ago.
16:29 – How does that apply right now today for current real world folks seeking to build a legacy
16:34 – that lasts?
16:35 – What we would say is this, look, I’m not in a state planning attorney.
16:39 – You’ll have to sit down with yours and ultimately craft the trust and the mechanisms that you believe
16:45 – are best suited for you and your families you progress.
16:47 – And I don’t want to get that granular in this respective podcast.
16:50 – It’s not the intent, but we’ll just lay out a little bit of framework.
16:53 – One of the things that you need to do is determine your bedrock amount, define your bedrock
17:00 – capital amount.
17:01 – What is the base that’s going to go in the vault that is never to be sold?
17:04 – You have to define that, whatever it means for you and your family.
17:07 – You then need to sit down and establish an irrevocable dynasty trust, something that
17:11 – is able and capable of lasting for multiple generations.
17:15 – You also need to explain, again, in the interest of passing along not only wealth, but also
17:19 – wisdom and wisdom before the wealth, you need to communicate the concept of the vault of
17:26 – the bedrock capital and the concept of the vault that it is never to be touched with
17:30 – your ears.
17:31 – You also need to set age based distribution milestones.
17:37 – Many, many, many families have had absolutely brutal results by too early in the tenure
17:44 – of a young adolescent providing them with a windfall of cash.
17:48 – I’m sure that you can relate to this.
17:50 – When I was 22 years old, I knew everything.
17:54 – But the truth of the matter is, looking back multiple decades, I realized now how little
17:58 – I did know.
17:59 – I now today take a different perspective.
18:01 – I only know that I know nothing, even though you are full of energy and wanting to take
18:08 – over the world.
18:09 – World domination is no longer on my to do list, but at the time, it was.
18:12 – I mean, I was out there trying to take over the world, and the truth is, individuals that
18:16 – are at that age, they’re still forming what they want and need to do for the rest of their
18:20 – lives.
18:21 – It takes them a little bit of time to go out into the real world, get a real job, earn their
18:24 – own income, stand on their own two feet as a high quality member of society, and only
18:29 – after they’ve gotten to that threshold, and that threshold will be dependent upon what
18:33 – you believe it to be for you and your children, but you need to set aged, based distribution
18:37 – milestones so that the income that they’re receiving only occurs after they have proven
18:43 – themselves to be men and women of high quality character so that they’re not in precarious
18:48 – situations where they’re focusing on the old drug sex and rock and roll sort of scenarios
18:54 – that you see far too many trust fund babies end up being in.
18:58 – In addition to that, you need to pair the bedrock capital with financial education.
19:06 – They need to know at least the basics.
19:08 – They might not want espouse or have the capacity to spend as much time, energy, and effort
19:16 – and finances you do as you grab the ball, as you hold the wheel and you steer your family’s
19:22 – financial foundation from the driver’s seat.
19:25 – They might not have any interest in that, but they need to have the basic level of understanding.
19:30 – And I would also say that inside of your trust, you need to document your intent.
19:35 – Write down what your intent is with this respective capital, Ironclad rules, very similar
19:41 – to how JP Kennedy did.
19:43 – This is what this amount of bedrock capital is for is how it is to be used.
19:48 – It will not only go on to you as the heir, but also when you pass, it’ll go on to your
19:53 – children as well, so on and so forth into perpetuity.
19:57 – Whatever that means for you, sit down and document your intent because if you do not put
20:02 – it on paper on purpose in advance, I can promise the moment that one of those individuals
20:07 – has the ability to liquidate the trust, they will.
20:11 – The farther removed the individuals get from seeing the hard work, energy, and effort
20:17 – it took to ultimately build that first generation wealth, oftentimes the second generation
20:21 – can feel the impact and ramifications because they can see the hard work that is put
20:26 – into ultimately creating that.
20:27 – But the third generation typically is too far removed.
20:29 – They were not able to see that hard work put in.
20:33 – And because they did not see the price that you paid to build the wealth, they don’t understand
20:37 – the value associated with the dollars and it’s very difficult for them to grasp it unless
20:43 – you put in place boundaries, rules, and document your intent in advance.
20:48 – And the last thing I’d say on the topic of just a state planning in general is to review
20:52 – and adapt it every decade, every 10 years, review and adapt it, make sure that everybody’s
20:56 – in the same page moving forward, things change, and you just want to make sure that you keep
21:00 – it fresh for a million reasons.
21:01 – I will stop there.
21:02 – The intent is not to get exceedingly granular, it’s to lay a framework for you so that you
21:08 – can think through how you might want to craft a similar dynasty trust for you and your
21:14 – family that can literally build a legacy to last for multiple generations.
21:19 – That’s what I intend to do.
21:20 – And I hope that you have the luxury of doing the same for you and your family as you
21:23 – progress.
21:24 – So while separating bedrock capital from your lifestyle capital is one of the most important
21:28 – decisions that you’re going to make for your family for the next multiple hundreds of
21:33 – years, the third principle is just as critical.
21:36 – You have to transfer wisdom before wealth because money without judgment is dangerous and
21:43 – the history proves it.
21:44 – Shirt sleeves to shirt sleeves and three generations.
21:46 – The first generation builds it, second one maintains it, third one dissipates it because
21:52 – wealth was transferred, but the thinking was not.
21:56 – Benjamin Franklin’s got a great quote on this, right?
21:58 – An investment in knowledge pays the best interest.
22:01 – And Charlie Munger in his typical quippy fashion says it very concisely, go to bed smarter than
22:06 – when you woke up.
22:07 – If you can pass along the capital strategy framework, if your ears understand margin of
22:12 – safety, patience, tax efficiency, stewardship, the inner score card discipline, then wealth
22:20 – has a fighting chance.
22:21 – But if they don’t, it’s just a countdown clock.
22:24 – So you have to transfer wisdom before wealth and not after.
22:29 – So I just hinted at the idea of the inner score card again.
22:31 – Let’s kind of revisit that.
22:32 – Go a little bit deeper.
22:33 – It actually brings me back to Warren Buffett, you know, Buffett at one point was the wealthiest
22:38 – individual on the entire planet.
22:40 – He built a business from $0 to $1 trillion in one generation.
22:44 – It’s absolutely amazing, right?
22:46 – But his ultimate objective was not money.
22:49 – It was living with an internal score card.
22:52 – One of the favorite things that I’ve really come to understand is the idea of the difference
22:55 – between the having an inner score card or an outer score card.
23:00 – And the big question about how people behave is really, you know, whether they’ve got
23:03 – an inner score card or an outer score card.
23:06 – I really do believe it’s really the only way that you can actually be happy in life
23:09 – is to have an inner score card.
23:12 – And you know, it ties into one of these John Wooden quotes that I love as well.
23:15 – John Wooden has conveyed that, you know, your reputation is different than your character.
23:20 – Your reputation is what other people think you are, but your character is what you actually
23:26 – are.
23:27 – And that’s the difference between an inner score card and an outer score card.
23:31 – I’m going to quote Warren Buffett directly here.
23:33 – Warren Buffett’s said, I always pose it this way.
23:37 – I always say, look, if the world couldn’t see your results, would you rather be thought
23:41 – of as the world’s greatest investor?
23:44 – But in reality, have the world’s worst record or would you rather be thought of as the world’s
23:49 – worst investor when you actually have the best?
23:52 – And that’s obviously a really phenomenal metaphor, right?
23:54 – It goes, he goes on to explain that if all of the emphasis is on what the world is going
24:00 – to think about you, forgetting about how you really behave, you’re going to wind up with
24:05 – an outer score card.
24:07 – And Buffett learned this lesson from his father, right?
24:09 – So he says, look, my dad, he was a 100% inner score card guy.
24:13 – That knowledge was passed along from generation to generation.
24:16 – He espouses it.
24:17 – And I absolutely love that principle of having an inner score card at the end of the day
24:20 – when you lay your head down at night.
24:21 – Did you know that you worked your hardest?
24:23 – Did you know that you have exceptional character, your man of integrity, you’re doing what
24:27 – you say you’re going to do?
24:28 – And honestly, it’s not about money.
24:30 – If you’re just simply trying to accumulate money to impress the world, to impress other
24:35 – individuals, you need to spend a little bit of time looking in the mirror because that’s
24:38 – not going to give you happiness.
24:40 – You have to be focused on your own internal score card.
24:42 – What are you trying to achieve for yourself and your family and have the biggest impact
24:45 – possible while you’re here?
24:47 – That’s what actually matters most.
24:49 – You know, Buffett went on to say that his dad was a maverick, right?
24:51 – He was a maverick.
24:52 – You know, not a maverick for the sake of being a maverick, he just didn’t care about what
24:55 – other people thought.
24:56 – His dad taught him how life should be lived.
24:59 – He’s never seen anybody quite like it, right?
25:01 – Buffett said he’s never seen anybody quite like it.
25:03 – For me, for me, I try to live my life focusing on the idea and the concept of an inner score
25:08 – card for this reason.
25:10 – And that kind of ties us back into the idea and the concept of happiness, right?
25:13 – That money doesn’t buy happiness in order to really be happy.
25:16 – You got to live a life that such that people will miss you when you’re gone.
25:22 – And you know, we love studying history’s greatest investors, history’s greatest entrepreneurs,
25:27 – businessmen, so that we can, so I can personally continue to get better and as an entrepreneur
25:31 – as a businessman to grow the business and be a better capital allocator to grow wealth
25:36 – over time.
25:37 – But as you go through all of that study, you also come to realize when you read biographies
25:43 – of all the individuals that have been so unbelievably successful financially in the
25:47 – eyes of society, you also come to realize that some of them have an absolute train wreck
25:52 – of a personal life.
25:53 – You come to appreciate some who espouse the character and the principles that you want
25:58 – to espouse in your life.
26:00 – And you also had the luxury of seeing some of the mistakes that individuals have made
26:03 – over time and trying to avoid those mistakes, right?
26:06 – If I’ve seen further than others, it is only because I’ve stood on the shoulders of giants.
26:10 – And one such example is Warren Buffett speaking about his own individual personal life towards
26:15 – the end of his journey, late in his life, his wife was unfortunate on the very six.
26:19 – She was going to pass away very soon.
26:21 – He was actually giving a speech as he often does.
26:23 – He went to the local university.
26:24 – I think he was at Georgia Tech and he was giving a speech and he just asked a lot of questions
26:29 – from the local adolescents there and somebody asked him what had been his greatest success
26:33 – in life or maybe what his greatest failure was.
26:35 – And oftentimes he’ll talk about his mistakes of omission in terms of investments, things
26:41 – that he hasn’t pulled the trigger on.
26:42 – But this time he didn’t.
26:44 – Instead, he said, you know, basically when you get to my age, you really measure your
26:48 – success in life by how many of the people that you want to have love you actually do love
26:54 – you.
26:55 – I know people who have a lot of money and they get testimonial dinners and they get hospital
26:59 – wings named after them.
27:01 – But the truth is that nobody in the world loves them.
27:05 – And if you get to my age and life and nobody thinks well of you, I don’t care how big your
27:10 – bank account is.
27:11 – Your life is a disaster.
27:13 – And that’s the ultimate test of how you’ve lived your life.
27:16 – The trouble with love is that you can’t buy it.
27:19 – You can buy a lot of things in life, right?
27:20 – You can buy testimonial dinners.
27:22 – You can buy pamphlets and say how wonderful you are.
27:24 – But the only way to get love is to be lovable and it’s very irritating, right, for people
27:29 – that are successful.
27:30 – They have a lot of money.
27:31 – You’d like to think that you could just write a check and say, I buy a million dollars
27:34 – worth of love please, but it doesn’t work that way.
27:37 – The more you give love away, the more that you get.
27:42 – And from my perspective, that is why a state planning and building a legacy that lasts
27:48 – is the ultimate love letter.
27:50 – You’re passing along not only wealth, but wisdom at the end of the day.
27:53 – So that as we’ve mentioned, when you’re no longer there, people will miss you when you’re
27:58 – gone.
27:59 – And that’s the ultimate love letter that you can leave to your family.
28:01 – So if you follow that capital strategy with discipline, you’re going to build wealth.
28:07 – But wealth is not the prize.
28:09 – The prize is becoming a sage investor, a wise steward of capital, somebody who thinks
28:15 – in generations, who separates bedrock capital from lifestyle capital, who transfers wisdom
28:22 – before wealth, who operates from an inner scorecard, who builds freedom for others, right?
28:28 – Who builds freedom of time, freedom of money, freedom of relationship, freedom of purpose.
28:32 – You can win financially and lose generationally, or you can plant trees today who seat, grow
28:41 – into massive oak trees that create shade that you’re never personally going to sit under.
28:46 – But that is a legacy that’s built to last.
28:48 – And if you do it correctly, when you lay your head down at night, your inner scorecard
28:53 – will most assuredly be satisfied.
28:55 – And when you’re gone, people will miss you, not because of your bank account, but because
28:59 – of your character, because of what you protected, because of what you passed along, because
29:05 – of the love letter that you wrote with your life.
29:08 – So that sums it up.
29:09 – We’ve gone through every single one of the seven pillars of the sunrise capital strategy
29:14 – in detail.
29:15 – So on the next episode, what we’re going to do is we’re going to show you a case study,
29:18 – real life, real world example of what happens when you buy a property and you actually implement
29:23 – the entirety of that capital strategy.
29:26 – How does it actually play out in the real world?
29:27 – We’re going to do a deep dive on a real deal that’s making real money that we still own
29:32 – today that’s thrown off cash flow and generating legacy wealth in a tax-efficient manner, because
29:37 – that’s what I want for my family.
29:38 – And we’re going to help as many people as possible do that as we can along the way.
29:42 – But until next time.