Designing a Life You Don’t Need to Escape | Kevin Dahlstrom & Mike Brown
Kevin Dahlstrom and Mike Brown discuss minimalism and financial freedom, arguing that joy, not denial, drives smart choices. They share how they ditched sports cars for practical trucks and explain why $30-50k monthly income is often the sweet spot. Building liquid assets that generate cash flow beats chasing net worth alone.
Chapters
Simplicity is the ultimate luxury. I've learned the hard way that every little thing that you own owns a piece of you. It, it really is true. Just trying to simplify life as much as possible. And you know, what we're really talking about here is minimalism. And minimalism is widely misunderstood. People think of it as like, you know, you're trying to live like a monk and you need to deny yourself of pleasure. And it's actually the exact opposite. Minimalism is simply about asking of everything, does this bring me joy? And if it doesn't bring you joy, get rid of it so that you make more room for things that do bring you joy. So it's kind of hedonistic in a way, because the whole idea of minimalism is to gorge on things that bring you joy. So today I live a very simple life and there's only a few things that I allow onto my, into my schedule. And, you know, it's climbing, it's family, it's my work projects, and anything else is, it's very hard to get a yes out of me for anything else.
And protecting your freedom or your time or your mental bandwidth, your energy that way, it takes practice and it takes intentionality. It does. And there's an inherent discipline in creating that kind of middle ground and embracing it. You know, I recently sold my Lambo. I custom ordered a beautiful Lamborghini Huracán. And the reality is like supercars have been a big part of my life. Like for me, I had a Lamborghini poster on my wall when I was growing up. And like, that's what, success meant to me. And I'm really glad that I did that. Supercars brought me so much joy for so long. I would do track days, I would go on, you know, rallies, car meets, all of this stuff. And then a couple of months ago, my wife, who loves to call me on my shit.
Yeah.
Was like, hey, when was the last time you drove the Lamborghini? And I was like, I can't remember. And I went and looked at it and I was like, I'm not sure enough. I put less than 1,000 miles on it in a year. And there was a beautiful part of the process, which was acknowledging that, like, I don't regret it. I don't, I don't regret that part of my life and owning supercars. They brought me a tremendous amount of joy and my priorities are shifting.
Yep.
Right. So it's, there's something beautiful about being real about, does this bring me joy? And just because it brought me joy yesterday.
Yep.
Doesn't mean it does today.
Well, there, I'm a big believer in seasons of life and your priorities can change. Dramatically. One of the things, like, I have— I get contacted or DMs on X from a bunch of young guys, and they're like, hey, I want a life like yours. I'm like, well, I'm flattered, thank you, but, but also recognize that I've been at this for 30 years. You're not in the same season as me. There is a season to put your head down and grind, and maybe there's even a season where you get a lot of joy out of things that maybe later in life won't bring you as much joy. And the thing— here's the thing about minimalism, again, that a lot of people misunderstand is it's different for everybody. Like, if you're really into supercars, that brings you great joy, that's your form of minimalism, right? But you can't be into everything. Like, you have to make room for the things that bring you joy and sort of go all in on those. I have a very similar story. This was years ago when I sort of first broke into the C-suite. I got this huge bonus and I was like, you know, I'm gonna go buy a Porsche 911. I, in my case, I'm not a huge car guy, but like a lot of kids in the '80s, you know, growing up, I had the, the poster of the Porsche 911 on my, you know, bedroom wall. It always just represented the pinnacle of success to me, the most beautiful car ever designed. And so I said, I'm gonna go buy a Porsche 911. So I went to Park City's Porsche in Dallas, Texas, paid cash for a 911 twin turbo convertible. It was absolutely gorgeous. So 2.7-second 0 to 60, fast, like just everything I dreamed of as a kid. And I kid you not, I drove the car home, put it in the garage. That night I'm laying in bed wide awake thinking about that car. That car was stressing me out. I was thinking, you know, thinking about like, you know, when am I going to drive it? How much should I drive it? You know, how often do I need to get it maintained? Every little thing owns a piece of you. What I realized very quickly was I wasn't 16-year-old Kevin anymore. That car did not represent success to me anymore. Success to me was not having a car that I have to worry about. So, so fast forward to today. I drive a 2008 truck with 180,000 miles on it, but I love that truck because I don't have to think about it. I can beat the hell out of it. It's got slide-out drawers in the back with all my climbing gear. I, I drove it to the crag this morning, went climbing. That represents success to me. And I talk about how, you know, sometimes less really is more. Well, really tangible example is exactly that. So that, this was many years ago, they probably cost a lot more now, but That 911 was $220,000. My mechanic tells me that my truck is worth at best $2,000. So it's a 100-to-1 ratio, but I actually get more joy out of the truck that my kids call the jalopy because it fits the lifestyle that I want.
Yeah, there's something really profound in there, right? And here's the thing that I offer to people is buy the ticket, take the ride. Like, I think there's something really great about buying the car, right? And then realizing and gaining the freedom on the backside, realizing that you don't need it or it didn't do the thing that you thought it was going to do, right? And when I think about purchases, I like to ask 2 questions. Number 1 is, how do I want to feel by making this purchase? And number 2 is, how do I want to not feel, right? And so for me, buying a car, what does that— how do I want to feel? I want to feel successful. I want to feel like I've arrived. I want to feel like I've made it. I want to feel like— I can go to that, that third grade kid who didn't have that car on his wall and say, hey, anything is possible. And I don't need to own that car long-term in order to do that.
Yeah.
Yeah.
I think it's, it's totally fine and sometimes necessary to check those boxes. And by the way, you know, let's not pretend, you know, I always talk about minimalism that, that, you know, being poor sucks. Let's, let's be honest. Yeah. You said something at a talk I attended of yours. That really stuck with me, which is I think you said once you get to an income of— was it $30,000 a month or $50,000 a month? One of the two.
It's actually between the two. Yeah. Like, like it's above $50,000. It's really hard to increase enjoyment out of life without like collecting shit or collecting homes or flying private.
That's right. So there is a sweet spot, right? Being poor sucks, but there is, you know, rapidly declining benefit and I think you nailed it. I think like kind of in that range and recognizing that that's a privileged place to be.
Absolutely. It's still a tremendous amount of money.
It's a lot of money, but it's not $100 million.
Correct.
Right. And, and the other thing that I wish I would've understood about money when I was younger is, so there's like, there's the sort of FIRE-based approach which says, you know, you have assets that, uh, produce enough, you know, you can basically withdraw 4% of your assets and if you can live on that, then you'll never run out of money. But there's even faster way to get there, which is just building cash flows, right? And that's, that's the piece I had never, like, never even thought about, never heard of.
Totally.
It's often a lot faster to get to a place where you've got enough cash flow, even if you don't have lots of assets in the bank, you know, investments and whatnot. You've got a business that's driving enough cash flow that will support your life indefinitely. And beyond that, you know that you have the ability to to generate that cash flow. So back to that trust and betting on yourself, that's probably the fastest way to get there or to achieve freedom.
Yeah, absolutely. I mean, there's many paths to get there, but you know, the reality is, and I learned this the hard way, is that net worth doesn't matter, right? I mean, I was a multimillionaire on paper and I couldn't access any of my liquidity and I ran out of optionality. And you know, liquidity to me is optionality. It is because the only way to get knocked out of the game is to run out of money.
Yeah.
I mean, ultimately, right? And building a multimillion-dollar portfolio that you can't access has zero utility.
Yeah.
Right. It's great to brag at parties. I'm an investor in this, this VC-backed company or whatever. But reality is I needed another VC investment like I needed a hole in the head.
Yeah. I'll get real with you because that resonates with me. I don't think I took it to the extreme you did, but look, I'm 54 years old. I'm like, you know, even though I'm not retired, but I have a retirement mindset when when it comes to my, my finances. And years ago, I thought I wanted to be an angel investor, right? And I, I went pretty deep. I, I actually, to this day, still have over 50 angel investor investments. I would sell those for par today, dude. And I've done okay, but dude, liquidity is so important. And I've got a ton of money locked up in that. I've got a ton of money locked up in non-liquid real estate. And like, this is a recent epiphany that I had, which is like, gosh, I wish I just had all that just in the S&P 500. Like, and, and again, there's seasons to life. And I think, you know, look, take big swings for the fence when you're young, but over time I've really begun to appreciate the value of just having like very boring liquid assets.
