Teaching Series: I Changed My Relationship with Money and the Money Changed

Hey everyone, it's Brett. Money is a complex topic for most people because money isn't only about money. It reflects how we see ourselves, how we see society, and how we move through the world. Often when people see Joe's career as a venture capitalist and executive coach, they assume that he's always had an easy relationship to money. But trust me, the opposite could not be more true. In this episode, Joe tells the story of his relationship with money through the different phases of his life, from rejecting it, despising it, meeting billionaires who still felt like they didn't have enough, to eventually realizing that chasing money was the same feeling as chasing his father's love. Enjoy.

So I wanted to share my story about how I related to money over the years, and it has a lot of different twists and turns, a lot of epiphanies in it. And the reason I thought I would share it is because every time I share one of these stories, it seems to have a positive effect on somebody's relationship with money. It changes the way that they see money. It changes the way they relate to it and therefore changes how much money they have. And so I thought if I put all these stories together, it would have a profound effect on anybody out there who's wrestling with money issues. And one thing to know about this is that it's not gonna be your typical, you know, I woke up every morning, I changed my financial routine. I swear that I was gonna kill it. And then I got some money. Like, it's not anything that you would expect. So let me just start with my childhood, which is where my money issues began. My dad's dad grew up in a very poor situation, made a lot of money and then lost it. Made money in real estate, lost it in oil. And so my dad got to see this massive decline in wealth going from somebody who was important in the town to somebody who was one of the poorest people in the town. And so for my father, money was incredibly important. There was something in him that knew what it was like to not have anything. When I was young, it felt to me that my dad cared more about money than he did about me at times. And, you know, like he cared more about having a Rolex or he cared more about driving a Cadillac than he did about how I was doing or how much time we spent together. And that wasn't entirely true, but it's definitely how I felt. I also didn't like the way that my dad handled money. I felt like he thought people were special or good because they had money, not because of who they were. And so naturally, I started rebelling against that perspective of money. Money became something that was evil, something that was bad in my system. Anybody who wanted money was bad. Anybody who thought about money too much was bad. Anybody who wanted expensive things was bad in my, in my mind. So I just kind of entered the world that way. And of course, in the world, you need money too. So I had this internal conflict, like, oh, I want to buy this truck, but I can't particularly want money. And so I spent a lot of my early 20s figuring out how to be poor. I found workaround for things. I figured out how to get that truck really cheaply by buying it in a, like, a, in a salvage yard and then fixing it up. I, I spent a tremendous amount of time figuring out how to get what I wanted without having money. And so there's this constant war inside of me around it. And then I graduated from college, and the first thing that I did is I went and butchered fish in Alaska. So I started to just— how do I make enough money in 3, 6 weeks so that I could basically pay off some debt and figure out how to like exist, get an apartment or something like that. And I did that and it dawned on me for the first time, oh right, people kind of have to work for money. I had always figured out a way around it, but eventually I'm gonna have to start working for money. I didn't like that at all. And at some point I just thought, okay, I'm gonna make as much money as I possibly can so that I can I can be an artist, I can be in a band and do what I wanna do, I had to have freedom, which I find a lot of people get into that trap and sometimes exist to it until they're 50 or 60. Luckily for me, it only happened for a couple of years. And so I went into international stock lending. I had 3 promotions inside of like 18 months, but I hated it. And I was rebelling against it the whole time. I, to today, feel sorry for the people I worked for because on one level I was doing like some crazy good stuff. And on another level, I was, kicking against them the same way that I kicked against my father. So at some point I said, you know what, screw this. I'm not gonna do international stock lending anymore. Like, this is horrible. This is soul-killing. This is crushing, this horrible thing. I'm gonna just pursue the arts. And I don't really care how much debt I go into. I'm just gonna pursue the arts. I'm just gonna take the leap. So I did, I took the leap. And after 7 years of pursuing the arts, and I did some music and I did writing Then I did film and I had gotten to this place where I was being invited onto television sets and doing observing directing roles. And what I realized was that the thing that I was running away from, international stock lending, was the same thing I was running into, that it was the same thing. There was one person who had all the control, that everybody was working hard. Everybody in the system wanted to be someplace besides where they were. They were all trying to get somewhere else. And I remember the star of the television show saying to me, Every time I come to work, it's like having a little piece of my soul ripped out of me. That was like the star. And I'm like, what is— like, this is exactly International Stock Lending. It's just in Hollywood, California. It's not in San Francisco. And at that moment, I recognized something that was really critical, which was everything that I think I want, I don't actually know that I want it. I just have an idea that I want it, but when I get it, I may or may not want it. Like this guy, at the time, Hummers were a big thing, these big cars. And it was like, oh, that person who wanted a Hummer, they wanted it, but then they got it. They're like, oh, I can't find a parking space. Everybody drives around me going, oh, look at that. And like people write on my car that I'm an idiot. And the fuel prices went up. I guess I didn't want this Hummer. I thought I wanted the Hummer, but now I guess I don't want the Hummer. And I realized like, this was life for so many people. But for me, that I'd spent 6 or 7 years going after something that I thought I wanted, only to realize, and sacrificing for it, only to realize it's not what I wanted. And so that was the next, like, massive epiphany in my system was, oh, I need to say yes to the stuff that feels good in the moment, the stuff that's like, oh, this is something that feels good. And I don't really know what feels good, so I'm just gonna say yes to everything. So that's what I did. I just went out into the world and any opportunity in front of me, I just said yes to. Yeah, I'll do that. Yes, I'll do that. And pretty soon there was more opportunities than there was time. And so I had to start picking what I really wanted to do out of the things that were offered to me. And this was a huge moment to start to recognize, oh, if I was doing what I loved, I wasn't burning out. There was actually a lot of energy in my system every day. And that was a massive recognition for me from going from, oh, I'm gonna do this for the future to I'm gonna do this for right now, gave me a tremendous amount of energy. The next thing that happened was one day I was driving along in LA. At this point, for whatever reason, I had gotten to know a couple billionaires and I realized that they were walking around their life feeling like they didn't have enough. Like they didn't have enough love or they didn't have enough money or they weren't number one or whatever it was. There just wasn't enough in their world. And they were driving around and I was driving around and I was like, I don't have enough. I constantly am thinking I don't have enough. I'm like, oh, that means I'm the same as a billionaire. Me and a billionaire are the same thing. And it was such this weird thought. And it just clicked so quickly that The issue that I'm having isn't what I have. It's about what I think I have. It was this moment that I recognized, even though I was poor in Los Angeles, I was wealthier than almost everybody on Earth. Meaning, like, I was still in the top whatever, what, 10% of people on Earth. And I'm like, I'm walking around like I think I'm poor when I have food and I have a place to stay. And they're thinking that they're poor, they don't have enough, and they have a billion dollars. Like, what's going on here? And so every day my wife and I spent 10 to 15 minutes being in gratitude with each other. We were doing a gratitude practice that we teach nowadays, one that's very verbal, very viscerally felt. And we go back and forth just saying all the things we were grateful for in the financial reality of the world, like having enough food or having enough money or having more than enough money or being able to travel or whatever it was that we were doing. And within an incredibly short period of time, I went from $40,000 in debt, which I got into pursuing arts and meditating a ton, to having $50,000, $60,000 in the bank. It was like, I think, 6 months, maybe, maybe 8, but it was a very short period of time. And I recognized at that moment, oh, if I'm going around defining myself as what I don't have, if I'm seeing lack everywhere, I'm not seeing the opportunity. And as soon as I started seeing everything I did have, I saw like this tremendous amount of opportunity everywhere. And I remember this moment when I went outside and I just looked at everything. I was like, holy shit, 20, 30 people made money on everything I see. Like just like the paint, on the road that separated the lane. Somebody made money painting it. Somebody made money making the paint. 20, 30 people made money in the paint factory. Somebody made money selling the paint. Somebody made money being the distributor of the paint. Somebody made money, like, having the patent on the paint. Holy crap, I just saw this thing that I thought wasn't— was scarce is, like, incredibly like, it's ubiquitous. There's— it's all over the place, and it just keeps on getting bigger. We literally have more money today than we did 10 years ago. So it's like this growing, expansive, infinite thing called money, and the only thing that makes it not that is our thought process that there's not enough of it. And so that was a huge epiphany because it hit me far more than just around money, that me feeling like I'm in lack creates that lack. Me defining myself in lack at least supports that lack, whether it's love, whether it's money, whether it's attention. Just, it was just this mind-blowing moment for me. And financially, it just changed my world. And inside of that 6 months, I went from a lot of debt, especially at the time I thought it was a ton of debt, to having plenty of money. It was an amazing situation. And I went from trying to struggle as an artist and trying to get, you know, films and television shows made to doing large-scale video art installations for a wealthy guy in LA. And that was just like an amazing turnaround. I would trade, most all my money today for that feeling of, oh, there's plenty, I have plenty, it's good. Like that is where the security lies, not in how much money you have. In that time period, I was reading all about money. I was learning about money. I stopped thinking that I didn't understand it. I was like, of course I can understand this. And frankly, money is quite simple. And I was sharing with this guy who I was doing art for, these ideas that I had around money, about like where I thought the price of oil and price of gold was gonna go and where I thought the stock market was gonna go and the historical trends, because I'd been doing some reading and I ended up being right. And he ended up saying, I want to have you work for me, not as an artist. I want you to help us make money. And I was like, yeah, that's not really exciting. He's like, well, you think about it. You just think about whatever it is that you wanna do in the world. You tell me. And I was like, well, I like the art. Like, this is what I was fighting for. The more I thought about it, the more I got into this idea of there's plenty. I saw, oh, that means there's plenty of ways that I can be of benefit to the world. And then the idea dawned on me, oh, I want to do venture capital work and I wanna do some work around consciousness on the planet 'cause I was deeply into consciousness at the time. So I said, hey, if you want me to work for you, I will do venture capital around the environment, because I feel like that's a really important thing for us as humans to care for. And venture capital is the biggest change agent on the planet. And I wanna do nonprofit work around consciousness for kids, helping kids if they've had like trauma and how to like help their consciousness grow. And so, so that's, so he said, yeah, yeah, let's do that. And so that's what started this 12-year movement in me of, doing work in the environment, particularly around agriculture, and doing work with kids on consciousness. And that was going well, like not at the beginning with the investment like that, that I had some ups and downs there because I felt like I needed to be needed. And that was when I recognized this moment, which was also mind-blowing, which is that great investors, want their investees, the things they're investing in, to work without them. That actually needing to be needed limits a huge amount of people's financial growth because what they want is to feel like they're in value, valuable. But great investors, they want to feel like they're unnecessary. Great CEOs wanna feel like they're unnecessary, that the whole thing can run without them, right? And then that, that was this next moment of really understanding wealth differently, which is if you want to be valuable, you're disempowering people and you make less money than if you want to be unnecessary, because then you're empowering people and you make more money and you can do more stuff with your time. And so that was this big click in my system of, oh, oh my gosh. And that started to improve my capacity to invest and my ability to invest. So then the next thing that happened And this I alluded to earlier in the story was I was in El Salvador and I'm hanging out on a hammock. I'm reading this thing that says this guy from Sequoia Ventures invested $500,000 in WhatsApp and he was now a billionaire. I was like, whoa. And this kick just came hard and solid right to my stomach, just like, buah. And I thought to myself, what is that? I know that feeling, I know that feeling. So I closed my eyes and without thinking intellectually, I just somatically felt where do I know that feeling from? And what I recognized was that was the feeling of me chasing my dad's love, me chasing my dad's love and not getting it. And I realized, oh, I've been chasing money, trying to get like, really wealthy in venture, and I'm not getting it. And this guy got it. And the fact that I didn't get it, like, I could just feel the shame of it. But the moment that, like, the reason that this, like, unlocked something in me wasn't because I felt the shame. It was because I realized all I had done is taken a relationship that I had with my father and put it onto, projected it onto money. I was just like, okay, dad doesn't love me and I have to chase it. Money doesn't love me, I have to chase it. And that recognition was amazing because it allowed me to know exactly what I needed to heal inside of myself. I started moving more into where my actual passion was. I started moving more into teaching. I started moving more into coaching. And I had found coaching kind of serendipitously because some of my investments weren't really good. That means that the CEOs needed coaching. So I started coaching them, and then other people wanted me to come and coach. And I realized, oh, I'm probably not gonna make as much money doing this because venture pays better. At least I thought at the time it did. But this is what I wanna do. This is where my love is. This is what I was meant to do. And so I just started following that. And I did both for a while. I was just coaching some folks doing venture work and doing nonprofit work. And then that ended and I was just coaching. And there was this moment of recognition that I am going to make less money to do the thing that I love. And it didn't matter to me at all because I stopped chasing this thing outwardly and I was just, being self-possessed and noticing in myself like what really deeply matters to me. And it was the first time that I was fully not rebelling against money. It was the first time that I wasn't reacting to money like I was taught to as my child. I had diminished it over time, but this was the first time that I really felt free of that interaction with money. And it was good and I was happy. And I was like, this is a good life. I'm happy. It's very calming. And then COVID hit and I got super bored 'cause I couldn't do these classes that I was doing live. And serendipity happened and Tiago Forte came to me and said, let's do a course. And we did a course. And all of a sudden I saw this way that we could actually create more money And, and by creating more money, we could touch more people. And by touching more people, we could have a bigger impact. And on some level, chasing impact didn't mean anything to me anymore either. Like the chasing of impact was a lot like the chasing of money. But if this is what wanted to happen, hey, let's, let's see what happens. And as long as we're enjoying it, let's keep going. And this is when those epiphanies started stacking up. Oh, if I'm going to do it, I'm going to enjoy it or I'm going to burn out. So we're going to enjoy it. Oh, if I'm gonna do it, I'm not gonna chase it. I'm going to invite it, see what wants to come, interact with what's actually real, and take advantage of the situation. We just kind of poured all the money that we had back into the business so that we could have bigger reach, so we could grow something. But now what's happened, which is like incredibly interesting, is we still pour all the money from the business back into the business so that we can do things like make this YouTube channel, so that we can do things like hire people to get the word out and get more facilitators et cetera, et cetera. But the private stuff that I do, the coaching stuff that I do, the going into companies that I do, like that is now making as much money as venture. Because what I've noticed is like, I don't want to get paid hourly anymore. I wanna get paid in a way that is I get a percentage of the value that I create. So when I'm out doing stuff for folks, I'm doing it for stock, or I'm doing it for a part of the benefit as much as I can, because that actually puts me in deep alignment with the people that I'm working with. And so again, I kept on, instead of chasing anything, I was just operating from a set of principles that I had learned, which is like, oh, how do I be in connection? How do I be in alignment? How do I do something that feels good? Fuels me, that feeds me. And this is like where the company is being built from. And this is where my world is being built from. And now the newest, weirdest thing that's happening is there's a lot of money. And so today, the practice that I have is really showing gratitude, not for— it actually goes back full circle where I'm now showing gratitude, but it wasn't like I'm showing gratitude to show that I don't have lack. I'm having gratitude for the financial situation we have. It shows me that, oh, there's nothing to be scared of in losing it. I've been poor before. That's not a problem. And it allows me to receive it in such a way that I don't get defined by it. And that was the thing that I was always scared of when I was a kid. I was really scared that I would be like my father, defined by the money, where it's this thing that I have to protect or this person that I have to be.

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