90: How do you respect money? How do you relate to money? Jim Dew shares key skills.

Welcome to the Mutually Amazing Podcast. I'm your host, Mike Domitrz, with the Center for Respect. The episode you're about to listen to was recorded when this show used to be called the Respect Podcast. So you might hear that mentioned during this episode. Well, let's get to the show. This week, I am so excited with the guest we have for you today. His book really helped transform one aspect of my life. So I want to dive right into this. For 24 years, Jim has advised elite entrepreneurs on how to manage their wealth through a virtual family office framework. And this is Jim Doo. Jim, thank you so much for joining me.

You're welcome, Mike. It's great to be on your podcast.

Absolutely. And you help people with respecting their finances and their financial goals and where they want to go. And so how does respect play an important role with money?

It really does in a dramatic way. So I think the first thing is people have to have respect for themselves. as that relates to money. And often, one of the things we're not taught in school is anything about financial or wealth management matters and relationships, the 2 most important things that we have to do in our lives. So knowing who you are and what matters to you and how money relates to that is critical. And that, I think, is a deep level of respect for respecting yourself and your true goals and your true things that you want to achieve, in addition to how money can help you get there. And not be a problem in your life. Because for many people, money becomes a problem.

And what happens in childhood? Because you brought up something really important there. It's, it's not something we're taught a lot about in school, you know, and even college students will joke about, you know, I was never taught how to pay this or do that. You know, there are some schools that do it and some, but not overall how you view money. And sometimes you can even learn that money's bad, right? And so people really get a negative connection to money. Where and how do you think these relationships They usually start very young.

And most people, I would say, if you're on this podcast today, you can probably envision, if you take a minute and think about it, a couple of moments in your childhood that defined how you feel or how you think about money. And for me, if I could just share my own, both my parents were Depression babies. My mom just passed away a couple of months ago. She was 92. My dad is 93 and still alive. So they both grew up very poor. The only thing I learned from my father about money is you have to be very careful and you have to try to keep every penny. Be really frugal. Money is hard to make and when you make it, you have to be super vigilant to make sure you don't lose it. Well, how that translated into my life is I heard these stories about the Great Depression and I thought being poor was an honorable thing. When I was 16 years old, I had this vivid memory that I refused to let my mom buy me new tennis shoes. So my tennis shoes had holes in the sides, my socks would stick out, but I refused because I was trying to be frugal and make my dad proud, which of course my dad thought was great until my socks started getting holes in them and I started ruining socks, at which point my mom got really angry at my dad and said, you have to make him let us buy him tennis shoes, which is a weird thing for a 16-year-old. But then my mom would give me this lecture and she would say, Jim, it's not a good thing to be poor. I was poor, and your father was poor. And I can tell you, it's not a good thing to be poor. And by the way, you're not poor. So quit acting like you're poor, because we're middle class. But I was trying to somehow identify with this honorable nature of being poor. And I had to change that in my mind, not only to be a good wealth manager, but also to be successful in my own life, because money is a tool that when you respect it right, There's so many things you can do with it that you cannot do if you're poor. And I've been able to do all kinds of things with my wife, Mimi, and I, both from charitable things for children that means a lot to us, from helping my mother at times in her older age, to lifestyle things, experiences, joining groups like Genius Network that you and I are both involved in, to meet other people, to expand my horizons, to become a bigger, better person than what I was in the past. All those things came out of learning that, hey, money can be a really good thing and used the right way. It's actually much better to have money than not to have money.

Well, and you used a great example there of, you know, trying to show I can live without. And people listening might think, yeah, but there's no harm in that. There's no harm in, you know, being frugal with your money. So how do you respond to that? Yeah.

So for me, I would say that what it did is it allowed me to put a limit on myself financially. My first job when I was in college, I said, what can I do that will make a difference that has no regard for making money? Guess what profession I chose?

I'm going to take a wild guess here, teaching.

Yeah. I became a math teacher. That was my first job out of college. You can ask Mimi. Mimi and I were dating at the time, and she jokes around that she thought she was going to have to find a way to support us. Because I couldn't care less about making money. But because of that, and by the way, being a math teacher for five years was a tremendous opportunity. I'm glad I did it. I learned a lot. I feel like I made a difference with some young people that I had a chance to touch. That being said, though, I also put myself in a box. I didn't want to look at anything where I could actually make a lot of money because I put that in my mind that yeah, being frugal is one thing, but people who make money, then there's all these problems, and then people get arrogant, and I just thought you know rich people. Were bad people. Because of that, I limited my ability to grow as a person and also grow financially. I think that's where it's a problem. It's fine to be frugal. In fact, too many people aren't frugal enough. They spend everything they make and they have nothing to show for it 10 years later. On the flip side, though, people who are merely frugal and put themselves a cap on their potential, and this is both as a human being, but also their financial potential. Sometimes people will think, Money is bad, rich people are bad, so they don't look for opportunities to actually grow wealth and grow finances. When you do that, and you realize it's a tool that can be used for good in the world and good in your own life, then it opens these doors to all these things that you can do that you couldn't do before. Look at Bill Gates, what he's done with his foundation all over the world. If he was a poor person, or even if he had a meager financial position, he couldn't affect all those lives. So money can be a good thing, and I think being frugal is good, staying within your means, but also being allowed to dream a little bit and think about, okay, if I wasn't so scared of protecting and keeping money, what could I do on the side of actually making money and growing money?

Yeah, and there's so many extremes here because there's also the person who gets locked in on making money. Uh, Deepak Chopra, I once heard say Uh, if you're a millionaire and you're worried about your next dollar, you're as broke as the homeless person.

That's fantastic.

And that always stuck with me. So how do you— how do people get to that place and how do they get out of that place?

So one thing I think people have to ask themselves is, when it comes to material things, are you owning those things or are they owning you? And are you looking to material things to fulfill something in yourself that you think is missing? So I see people, they may go shopping or they may buy a fancy car or they might buy jewelry or a huge house. And if you're doing that because it's going to make you feel better and somehow complete you as a person, it's never going to happen. And that's why you see sometimes people who make more money, they have to make more, they have to make more. And they're always comparing to their friends. Oh, well, that guy has a better car than me now, or she has a better house than I do, whatever it might be. Comparing yourself to someone else is a recipe for unhappiness, and not only that, it doesn't do you any good. So I think tying money and goals, whether you want to be a billionaire or a millionaire or you just want to be comfortable, but doing that in a way that also ties in to what really matters to you. Because I haven't met anyone who said— I said, what if you could just put a blank slate up on the wall and tell me what would you want to achieve in this life? What would you want to leave behind? What would you want to create or do? Or who would you like to help? Nobody says, if I could just get a Lamborghini, I'd be fulfilled. That would be it. Yet sometimes people are chasing buying a Lamborghini that they somehow think will solve their problems. I think the other thing you need to do is you need to have caring people who respect you and who you respect, who can keep you grounded. If you look at all these professional athletes and famous actors and actresses who end up broke, a lot of times they don't have advisors around them, which could be friends, it could be family, it could be professionals like myself, around them who can tell them the truth and who can say, that's not really you. Why are you chasing that? That's not going to help you get to where you want to go, and keeping them grounded in that framework. I have those people in my life. I would imagine you do too. But anyone who's successful financially has at least 1, 2, or 3 people in their lives who keep them grounded. Because if you're surrounded by people who are just chasing more money, more money, or rich people are bad, let's be frugal. I don't think then you end up actually fulfilling something that gives you a great position in life as far as how you feel about yourself and the world and achieving what we all are after, which is fulfillment.

And so how does somebody shift their mindset to that healthy understanding of money, that money can allow me to help others, In my line of work, you'll hear this approach, which is, as long as I'm helping lives, money doesn't matter.

Yeah, the problem with that is eventually you're gonna need money just to sustain yourself. And I think our first responsibility is taking care of ourselves. Yeah, I look at America and I think if everyone just said, number one, I'm gonna take care of myself and make sure I'm okay, and then if I can help someone else or take care of someone else, then it, it just gets better from there. The first thing that has to happen is, I think, some soul searching about who you are and what matters in your life. That may sound funny when we talk about money, but it's very important. The other thing is most of us have grown up with some bias about money that clouds our judgment, so it's hard to get clarity. I think the 2 most important things are awareness and clarity. You have to get those 2 things lined up. Just like I like to say that— When I was a kid, when I was a little kid and I thought there was a monster in the closet, my mom would come in and what would she do?

She'd open the closet and prove to you there's no monster.

Yeah, she'd turn on the light, right? Open the closet, turn on the light, go, there's no monster here, right? So I think with money, sometimes I say you have to turn on the light. So a lot of times people are afraid to look at their finances or their money situation because it's that monster in the closet. But generally, when you turn the light on those things, They are not as scary as you think they are when the closet door is closed. I tell people that whether you are capable of doing that, or you need to have someone else, a friend, a family member, your spouse, an expert, a professional come in and go, okay, let us just put everything out on the table, and let us shine a light on this. Then let us craft how we can use your current financial situation, your future potential opportunities, And who you are and what you really want to achieve. And how do we match those up in a way that feels good to you? Because a lot of times people are chasing the bigger house or the nicer car just because they're not aware that that's not going to do it for them. And when they really sit down, they go, oh, you know what, that's really not gonna change my life in a positive way. And I'm not saying that if you have the wherewithal to do everything you want and be who you want, you want to buy a Lamborghini too. No problem. However, if that's your driving force, then I think you end up either unhappy, or you try to escape through drugs and alcohol, or you try to escape through other ways of just ignoring the truth of what's going on in your life. So shining a light, whether you're worth millions and millions of dollars, or you're just starting out, or you're somewhere in between, or you have a lot of debt, no matter what it is, shining a light on that and saying, okay, Where am I today? Where do I want to get to? And what do I need to do to make that happen? And if you start looking for those things, you'll find the world will open up. You'll start noticing books that will help you. You'll start noticing podcasts you can listen to. You'll start noticing friends that have a like mindset that you can connect with to help you do better.

Well, your book was fantastic. It's called Beyond a Million: The Entrepreneur's Playbook for Expanding Wealth, Freedom, and Time. It was awesome, Jim. Uh, in there you have a very unique concept. Well, unique as in a lot of people don't realize it, I think. And that is when you look at billionaires, they don't have a financial advisor and that's it. They actually— and what I love is your spoke system. I just think it's brilliant, which is if you think of bicycles, but this is how I interpret it. You think of a bicycle and let's say there were 12 spokes and people who are billionaires have literally 12 different areas of their finances that may be managed. It could be a tax person. It could be the accountant. It could be the financial advisor. But there could be these 12, it could be their insurance, these 12. And most people put themselves in the middle controlling all the spokes, but the really successful billionaires have a person called the wealth manager in the middle that runs all of that. 'Cause that's what that person's an expert in. The odds that any of us are going to be an expert in it when that's not what we do for a living are slim. What I loved about that was how all of us could step back and go, Hmm. Who could be that in my life? Who could be a supportive person in my life? Even if I'm nowhere in that world, even if I'm not a billionaire, even if I'm not a millionaire, how do I find that person? That's how I interpreted it for me. Uh, and I thought it was powerful. Was that an accurate depiction? Excellent.

I should put you on my marketing team. That was great.

So what I did is I went to my financial advisor and said, can you be this for me? And now I was fortunate because he heard what I was talking about. He's like, well, that's what we want to be for you. So, you know, I'm excited we're able to open this conversation up and really explore that because I think you bring up a really important point about the light. And I love that you said whether you're struggling with money and have very little, or if you're a millionaire, because I think you would reveal there are millionaires who are even more millions in debt.

Absolutely. And I meet entrepreneurs all the time who, have a persona, public persona, that they're extremely wealthy and successful and their life is perfect online. And they come into my office and sit down. You know the first thing they say to me? Jim, I'm not as rich as people think I am. They're embarrassed. They're embarrassed because they know they haven't paid attention to their wealth management and their finances, and they come clean with me. But, you know, no matter what your, your stress level is or based on what your situation is, a lot of people who don't have money think If I had tens of millions of dollars, I'd have no problems. But sometimes money can be an enormous problem and can create all kinds of problems for people with money. I know that's hard to understand if you don't have money, but either way can be a problem and having a healthy relationship with money is important. And then as you say, I always tell people, your structure is the most important aspect of your wealth management. And if your structure, like you're alluding to, is the— I call it the financial flat tire. Where you've got these advisors that you've picked up over the years. You might have an insurance person you picked up, you picked up an accountant, you might have an attorney that did a will or a trust for you, you might have an investment advisor. And they may not all be A players. You may have B, C, and even D players on your team. They're probably not talking to each other or collaborating on your behalf. And what's worse is you're in the middle and you don't speak tax or legal or insurance or investment languages. Those you have to speak every day to be fluent. Then it becomes this wonky financial flat tire. What I like is what I call the functional wealth wheel, or the virtual family office, where you have someone in the middle, billionaires would call it their family office CEO. I call it for our clients, the wealth manager in the middle. You have A players around, so they're all A players, they're all vetted and continuously monitored for Their ability to continue to add value in your life. They're coordinating and collaborating on your behalf. And then you have one contact person who speaks all the languages, so then you become like a pedal on that wheel. And a pedal can effortlessly move a big wheel, and you have one point of contact. Of course, you're going to have meetings with the other professionals from time to time, but that scenario or that structure will work for anyone. It just takes more legwork If you're not at a financial level like a billionaire who can just hire them all as employees, or I would say like my clients who can hire me to do all of that for them. But some people don't fall in those 2 categories. You can still do it yourself. It just takes more legwork, and you have to find the person who's willing to be in the middle. And then you just hold them accountable and make sure you have a great relationship and you communicate a lot.

Yeah, absolutely. And being transparent, I'm not at that level, and yet my financial advisor is able to say, let's talk about how to make this work. You know, so I, I think a lot of times we just forget to ask the people who are already maybe in our system. You, one of the spokes might be the person, right?

Absolutely.

Like a financial advisor was for us, uh, in helping you do that. And cause I've made that mistake in the past where I get caught up in, uh, that I'm so mission-focused. I want to be out there. I want to do the speaking. I want to be doing and reaching people, making a difference that, oh, as long as I'm out there doing enough, I won't have to worry about that. And what happened is I had, you can have to worry about that at times and suddenly What people I don't think realize is if you're not on top of this, you're not lighting it up. It can take away your joy. Finances can, of the work you love doing. If suddenly you, let's say you're, you, you're doing the work you love, it's mission-based, but you're coming home every day worried about your finances. How joyful can you be? It takes away a lot of it. And so staying on top of it can make such a huge difference.

Absolutely. Yeah, it's very true. And I, I created this thing called Wealth Mastery Matrix where I came up with the characters of where I see most people fall into. If you want me to take a second, I can kind of describe each.

Yeah, that'd be great.

So the first is where wealth management is easy, but the results are usually poor. And I call that the ostrich. And the ostrich lives by ignore and avoid. So the ostrich will say things like, I'm too busy, I'm just going to keep my head down and just keep making more money and everything will work out for itself. That's the ostrich. Easy, because you're ignoring, but the results are usually poor. Then there's the juggler. The juggler is someone who really doesn't have any great advisors and who's trying to manage everything himself or herself. For the juggler, as you can imagine, it's very hard and the results are usually poor. The juggler will say things like, gosh, Jim, all these things I'm trying to keep track of and I really have to, it's all up to me, I really don't have a lot of help. That's the juggler, and those results are usually poor as well. Then there's the air traffic controller, and this is where you have someone who has excellent advisors, so A-players around them, but they're in the middle managing all of those advisors. The air traffic controller can actually get excellent wealth management results, but it's very stressful, it's very hard. Just like an air traffic controller, if you're not paying attention all the time, something could crash. Then ultimately, I like to get clients to the point where I talk about the virtual family office, or that functional wealth wheel, where they have someone else in the middle who's an expert at knowing all these different areas, who can help manage the advisors, and then your job becomes easy, the results can be excellent, and then you can go off and focus on living a great life, spending more time with the people you love, Creating a vision or dreams about helping others, building your business in ways you haven't built it before. Because every entrepreneur I've taken through this kind of journey, in the end they tell me they're surprised at how much they underestimated how this was holding down their business, their personal life, their relationships. Because even if you're the ostrich, at some level you know you're not paying attention and that's going to stress you out in some way. That's going to distract you in some way. And I want people to live their greatest life and spend the time with the people they love and make a difference and build wealth.

Yeah. It's, it's, I love your approach. It's beautiful. It's caring. Uh, it's, and it's so such a healthy viewpoint. How do you think, what is the key step people need to take to get a, to experience a transformation for respecting money? We talked about that earlier about how people can easily learn bad habits, What's needed to make the shift from— so no matter who you are, whatever personality you are, you can value and respect money?

Number one is, I would say, being clear of your values. What kind of values do you want in your life and what do you represent? Because if your value is generosity, then think about how money— maybe not today, maybe you're not ready for that today, but create a vision of how you can create Enough wealth where you can do things that are generous, that help others, that would really fulfill you. If it's honesty, think about if my value is honesty, am I being honest with myself about money? Am I being honest with my spouse about money? Am I being honest about my dreams, about what I would like to do or have or create with my money? So I think step number 1 is become really clear and aware of your personal values and how you want to live your life. It might just be reinforcing how you've been living your life and just bring it to your attention. Then say, okay, now what are my values about money? How do I think about money? And then compare those lists. Because if you want to be generous, but then you feel when you look at money, you go, God, I'm cheap. I've done this, that, and the other that were really cheap. I stiffed that server and whatever. Well, then you're incongruent. You've got to figure a way to get those things to match up. So first, Your personal values. Second, how do you think about money? And then third, combine those 2. And if you need help, because a lot of people do, elicit a friend who you think has a really good feel for values and for money, or a loved one, or your spouse, or a professional. Go to a professional that you can just sit down with. It could be your accountant. It could be an attorney. It could be your financial advisor. And just say, hey, could we just talk about money and help me understand? Here are my values. Tell me what you're seeing in our experience together about how my values relate to money and what could I do differently, or maybe coach me a little bit. Because sometimes just having another set of eyes and someone you can bounce ideas off of, someone who's not judgmental, someone who's not gonna— you know, you don't want to go to the uncle that's very frugal and is going to tell you, that's stupid, why are you doing this? You want someone who's going to listen and empathize and go back and forth so that you can Get a good understanding of that. Because really, as I said, awareness and clarity is the first step to really achieving anything.

Yeah. And having— if you're in a marriage or in a relationship, having a partner who you two are on the same page is huge on this, on respecting money. It doesn't mean you have to have all the same views, but on the same page of respecting. You have such a great partner, and I've been fortunate to meet Mimi. And absolutely, you two make such a fantastic team. How do you think respect of a relationship plays into all of this.

That's huge. And I'm not an expert on divorce, but I would bet that if you looked at divorce, the 2 major causes of divorce would be infidelity and finances. And I think that that would— I don't know which is bigger, but I bet finances is a huge part of divorce. So understanding how each of you feel about money, what's important about money, and so that you can help each other achieve what you want to achieve. So in my marriage— so Mimi and I just celebrated our 27th wedding anniversary and our first date.

Congratulations!

Thanks, Mike. I appreciate that. And I know you know Mimi. She's the best thing ever happened to me. I couldn't live 1,000 lives and hope to meet someone as amazing as Mimi. So, but it's interesting. So her background— she was born in Korea and her family immigrated here when she was about 5 years old. Her dad believed, as an immigrant from Korea, making money in America is the easiest thing. Anybody can make money in America. Are you kidding? Just go out and make money. It's the easiest thing in the world. On the other hand, her dad also was a spender. He didn't believe in saving because he always believed you can just make more money. On the other hand, my parents, which I alluded to earlier, my dad was like, making money is really hard in this country. Any money you make, you got to squirrel it away and be super careful and don't take any risk and put it in the bank and all those kinds of things. When we came together, especially Mimi was the one that got me to start my own company in 1999, she just said, you have to do this. She was fearless about entrepreneurial risk. She was fearless about what if we fail, what if we don't make money, what if we lose our house? She's like, don't worry about that. It's America. You're talented, you're going to make money. On the other hand, I brought to the table, okay, I'm with that, but let's not spend all our money. Let's squirrel money away so that we can also build something up so that we have this thing called financial security. For me, number one was I want financial security. For her, she was like, I want to help people. She's a huge giver. I want to give to charities and help others. I want to have a great lifestyle. And I want to grow and make a lot of money. So together, we found our strengths and weaknesses and we kind of puzzle pieced those things together where I calmed down a little bit on the risk of spending money on starting a business and those kinds of things. And she calmed down a little bit on, okay, we're going to work this out so that enough money is going off to the side so I feel good, but we're still doing things that makes her feel good or we're giving money away or we're doing lifestyle and enjoying our wealth and our growth. That's something that we started very early when we were dating, believe it or not, in college. We had a very serious talk about everything including finances. She told me her family history and how she felt about money and I told her mine. We said, hey, you know what? Even though our parents were so different, they were both part right and they were both part wrong. If we could take the best of each and meld it together in our relationship, I think we've got something. And so that's been throughout our marriage that we follow that kind of guidance and we sit down and talk and share and we negotiate. There are times when she's like, hey, we should spend this on the business, and I go, ah, makes me uncomfortable. And then we talk it through and figure out what is the best answer. And usually, we come to a better answer than if I was on my own or she was on her own. But the key, I think, is constantly communicating because over the last 30 years, things change. Things evolve, relationships change, and if you're not continually reconnecting on the money issue, it could definitely get, you know, out of control or into a ditch, or you might have resentment between you that gets so large that you can't bridge the gap and come back together.

Yeah, I've seen that with friends where one clearly controls the money. It's not just that they're managing the money, they control, and that can create resentment because the other one's left powerless in ways. So I think that's so important that you brought that up. Thank you. And I feel the same way. While I may think, oh, this is the right thing to do, when I talk it out with Karen, even though Karen may push back, I'm like, no, why are you pushing back? In the end, it's always better when I throw that out and get to hear the feedback and we make it together. Absolutely. But do you find the same thing though? At times you're like, or, or Mimi is like, no, no, no, no, I know what I want. I know what I want. But then you're like a day later, uh, I needed to hear that.

Absolutely. Yeah. It happens all the time. You know, and then we have some general rules, like Any purchase over— maybe we should revisit this, but it used to always be any purchase over $500, we have a conversation so that nobody's out buying something because it freaks me out if all of a sudden, I realize we just spent $2,000 on something. Even if it's— I don't know what would cost $2,000 around the house, a couple of washing machines or something.

Right.

I don't know. But even if it was necessary, it triggers something from my childhood and from my parents and the Great Depression that Just money going out flips me out unless I've been able to rationally think it through. She'll come to me and say, we need a new washer and dryer. Okay, what kind do we need? Let's go shopping for it, whatever. Then we have a conversation, then I negotiate because Mimi is so nice to people that we were— and funny, this is a funny side story, but when we remodeled our kitchen a few years ago, we got all new appliances. We go down to the appliance shop, and I'm negotiating with the guy on the price of the appliances. Mimi takes the other guy's side. She goes, honey, I think the price is fair by now. I'm going, honey, you're negotiating against me with the sales guy. That's how nice she is. I say, honey, when we're negotiating, trust me, he knows the numbers better than me. He's not going to sell me the stuff at a loss. Just let me negotiate with them. We have that funny conversation that she will negotiate against me because she wants to be fair to the salesperson.

Right. That's hilarious. That's awesome, Jim. I want to make sure everybody can find you. It's dewealth.com. Dew like honeydew, D-E-W, dewealth.com and wealthmasterymatrix.com. Jim, this has been awesome. Thank you so much for joining us.

It's been great, Mike. And by the way, any of the listeners, if you ever have a chance to see Mike present in person, he's a phenomenal presenter and a phenomenal speaker. I had that opportunity a couple of weeks ago. And I still remember it. So, I learned a lot from watching that and I was inspired by watching him. So, if you have a chance, see him in person.

Well, that means a lot to me. Thank you so much, Jim. For our listeners, you know what's next. It is Question of the Week. This week's Question of the Week is for you instead of for me. The question is, what are ways that you practice treating other human beings with respect on a daily basis? I'd love for you to answer this on our Facebook page. So we have the Respect Podcast Discussion Group. You can go there, you can join the group, and I'd love to hear ways you practice respect in your daily life for yourself and for others. We'd love to hear your questions, your thoughts, and your ideas. And the best place to leave those with us is on our Facebook page at facebook.com/mutuallyamazingpodcast. Of course, you can always contact us on our website at mutuallyamazingpodcast.com. Remember to subscribe to this show so you automatically get it every week. And if you could take one moment to leave a review, that really helps other people find the show, which we are greatly appreciative of. So thank you so much for joining us. May you make today and every day a life full of mutually amazing relationships.