Learn Financial and Behavioral Wealth Management with Jonathan DeYoe

Hey, it's Mark Podolski, the land geek with your favorite niche real estate website, thelandgeek.com and this week's podcast. I'm really excited because our guest sort of taps into something that I'm really trying harder to do every single day, which is be more mindful. But before we talk to our guests, I'd be remiss if I didn't properly introduce my co host. You know him, you love him. The brain, the professor, your flight school sherpa, Scott Todd from Scott Todd.net landmodo.com learn anything about anything. Investor ninjas.com Scott Todd. How are you, Mark?

I'm great.

How are you? I think I'm better than you because you look cold in tampa. It's like 77 here today.

Yeah, you got me beat there. It's 70. Well, it depends. Are we going for the higher score or the lower score? Because if we're going for the higher, you win. If we're going for the lower, like in golf, I'm winning.

We're going for the more comfortable score.

What's that?

The more comfortable score.

I think you're winning today.

All right, so our guest today is Jonathan Dio. Jonathan is a big deal. He's worked in wealth management. He's worked for the big Wall street behemoths. He's managed a team, you know, managing like $250 million for 235 families, nonprofits. He's a certified private wealth advisor, but he writes up financial literacy and behavioral wealth management, which I really want to talk more about for news outlets like businessinsider.com mindbodygreen.com but, but he's the author of the Amazon bestseller Mindful Money. Simple practices for realizing your financial goals and increasing your happiness dividend. Jonathan Dio, welcome.

Thanks, Mark. Hey, Scott. How you doing? Glad to be here.

We're so glad you're here. So, Jonathan, what made you think about behavioral wealth management? Like, you know, let's just kind of rewind the tape and one day you're like, oh, yeah, this is something people need.

So, I mean, I didn't invent behavioral finance, right? That's. This is something that's pretty well documented in the academic literature. And there's three now Nobel Prizes for the concepts that are underlying behavioral wealth. My addition is really more of, you know, historically, if you go back 30 years, when people talked about financial advice, they talked about man, woman, humankind as rational animals. We gather data, we think about that data. We make decisions based upon that data. Rationally and then maybe 15, 20 years ago, psychologists, Kahneman, Tversky were the first. And then a bunch since then have talked about, yeah, it turns out we don't actually gather data. We actually don't look at it rationally. We, you know, there's all kinds of biases that get to it before it gets there. And they say, well, okay, so that's the case. And they left us with behavioral finance is an issue. You have to overcome these biases. But they didn't give us a tool. So the thing that I've added onto the list is, okay, if the issue facing us in our successful financial lives is these biases or are these biases, what is the tool that will help us overcome those? And that, I believe is mindfulness. And, and my actual formal mindfulness training, which means meditation.

Interesting. Scott, Ty, what are your thoughts?

I'd like to learn more before I have, before I develop that thoughtfully. Let's learn more.

You know, it's funny because I'm a big behavioral wealth like learner, so I've read Daniel Ariely, particularly irrational, and he's got a few other books and thinking fast, thinking slow. Daniel Kahneman, he won the Nobel Prize. I read, you know, Michael Luce's story about those guys. Was that the Undoing Project? Yeah. I mean, so really, really just fascinating, brilliant stuff. And Jonathan, can you kind of give us an example of one of these sort of things that, you know, we just sort of go to default and doesn't make sense in the real world, just how our minds sort of trick us.

Well, I mean, there are, there are literally dozens of these biases. The two that I think that we see the most are there's this, there's this idea that we rationally gather information, but really what happens is, is before the information enters our minds, or I should say as the information enters our minds, our amygdala, our lizard brain decides, hey, this idea is something that squares with our previously held beliefs. And so therefore we're going to actually highlight that and allow that to be surfaced within the rest of the brain so we can think about it. Or the amygdala might say, hey, you know, this disagrees with a lot of our previous held beliefs. So we're not going to allow that to surface. We're not going to highlight that as something that we should be paying attention to. So if you think about that, in that simple brain function, in a world of risk, we become heightened, aware to all the things that could go wrong. And this is where Kahneman Tversky Talked about how losses hurt us more than positive things help us. So the idea is if we have a $5 gain that is pleasurable, but it's not as the degree to which is pleasurable is not as high as a $5 loss is painful. So the combination of our brain's filter telling us what should we paying attention to and this bias towards negativity makes us focus on things that are bad more than we focus on the big picture. And, and that's really important to understand when you're investing. Also when you're spending, there's a difference thing because if I'm going to get excited about something that creates this emotion about how might feel better or the fear of missing out or all these other things, it becomes deep ingrained in our brain and affects our spending patterns, it affects our investing patterns.

I love it. I love it. Although Jonathan, I, you know, the whole loss aversion thing, I feel like there's a, you know, account to every rule. Well, I do buy it. I do buy it. The one, the one counter example is Vegas because when you think about it, we know we're going to lose when we gamble. And yet it's a billion dollar, multi billion dollar industry. Like I personally don't gamble because it's. The feeling is not reciprocal. So if I win $100, well, it doesn't really move the needle in my life. But If I lose $100, like I'm depressed. I start thinking about all the things I could have bought with that hundred dollars. And so that kind of proves the point.

Mark, that's precisely what it says.

That's me. Yeah, right, that's me. But you know, like Scott Todd's like making it rained out over there.

Come on, man.

He's like double down. He has no respect for money. No, unlike me.

Come on.

Look, I think that Mark, I think that this whole topic is an important one. Because if you think about people that come into land investing, for example, you know, they come into land investing and it's crazy because you've done, I don't know how thousands of deals. I've done thousands of deals buying some land, I have yet to lose money. I mean, on a property, right? I haven't lost money on a property. And I'm not saying that I've made tons of money on every single sale, but I haven't lost money. Because the way that we buy it, okay, like it's in the whole, whole system of how we buy things. We're just not, we're setting ourselves up for Success right off the bat. But there are people that come into this business and they are so afraid of losing, okay, they become paralyzed, right? Like, and, like, I can think of like a handful of people that they come in here and they're so afraid of, like, what if, what if I did this? Or what if I lost that? And my old point is, look, I spend like seventeen hundred dollars on a property. Worst case scenario, I lose it all, like on that property. It's not like I'm betting the house. Like, these are small little bets in our business. And I'd love to know from Jonathan, like, okay, Jonathan, how does someone come in here and understand, like, if my maximum loss is, let's say, $1,000, but. And that's going to paralyze me, how do I get through that? How do I tell my brain to shut up and let me just go do this thing?

I mean, I think the reality is, and I totally appreciate that context, like, if the maximum loss is a thousand bucks, how can I just, how can I move forward? But I think the challenge is most people don't recognize and do the math to figure out what the maximum loss is. Most people don't even get to the space where, hey, we're thinking about land investing, we're thinking about investing in the market, we're thinking about properties we think about. Most people that we see in the world have zero practical knowledge when it comes to personal finance. In writing the book, the thing I'm trying to figure out, the thing I'm trying to help people do is say, okay, there are all these illusions that are out there in the world. And if you spend any time on social media, you see the illusions every single day. This is all basically crap that people are using to express who they are. They're signaling. This is, you know, if they're driving a fantastic car, it may or may not be their car, right? If they're jet setting, it may or may not be their jets. And this is just something to be aware of when you're thinking about, when you're interacting with the world. You don't have to covet that. The thing we have to do is we have to really break down and figure out what are the simple steps that we can take. What is the simple Inflow, outflow. And then after you get through those basic things, you look at the question you're asking and that is, okay, here's a deal. Here is something that could help me create wealth for myself, for my family. Here's the upside, here's the downside. Here are the levers I can pull to make a difference, to make it higher probability of upside, lower probability of downside. And if we can get them to basic education, I'm all about financial literacy and getting people the basic education. And that really opens up the door to beginning to have the conversation about, okay, loss versus gain. What are the levers I can pull to make a difference in this equation? And then how many of these things do I have to stack up so that I can actually have that wealth, success, financial independence for myself and for my family?

Makes sense. Makes sense. So let's just talk about some simple principles in the book. What are some of the more fundamental simple principles that we're going to learn when we read the book?

So the book is, again, it's broken down into three parts. The first part is, you know, I use. I use. I'm a Buddhist, so I use eight. Eight's an important number in Buddhism. It could be nine, could be seven. Not. Not being too specific here. There are eight foundation mistakes that people make that are fed by lack of education on the topics that are fed by media, financial punditry, that we have this inkling that it's this way, and then the world gives us all kinds of information to support it this way, but it's just not that way. So there's this. The first section of the book is Debunking the Financial Myths. The middle section of the book is. And I. Once we get past education, I'm about planning. So everyone should begin with the end in mind, right? Begin with the end in mind. Think about, okay, I want to go here. What are the steps I need to take? If my goal is 10 years from now, what do I have to have done in five years, three years, two years, one year, this quarter, this week, today? What are the steps, the building blocks to get there? Have a plan in place. And then that plan should be based on. And I go to mindfulness, I go to happiness. I talk about the happiness dividend, right? So how do I get a happy life? How do I have a life filled with meaning? And I think there's eight pillars. I think there's eight things. We focus on things like meaning and accountability and generosity and gratitude and optimism and relationships and health. And these are things that when we focus on these and make these the foundation of our plan, then we have a much higher probability of having a happy, more meaningful life. And I think that. That, you know, money kind of underlies this stuff. It's not this stuff, but money can have an effect on any one of these topics. So then the third part of the book, so now we have things don't believe. Then we have things to believe, things to focus on. And then the third part of the book is putting numbers to it, thinking about what your personal goals are. We talked about in the middle part, we talked about what generally leads to a life of happiness and well being. What is specific to you for your happiness and your well being and focus on that and create that plan that puts numbers to it and gets from here to there. That's the simple thing. Ignore, embrace, plan.

Ignore, embrace, plan. So I don't know about Scott Todd, but I've been a long term meditator for years now and I meditate every morning. You know, now I'm up to an hour a day and I have to say like, it's one of my favorite things to do during the day is just to sit and watch the nature of my mind. And really when you get, you get to this point where you have enough mindfulness and you kind of, you sort of realize the illusion of duality, right? Like you think like there feels like there's a thinker behind your face sometimes and then you're, you meditate enough like where's the thinker, Scott? Todd's rolling his eyes, probably doesn't know.

But anyways, Scott, I don't know what you're talking about.

I know, I know. Just, just trust me. Like you get to this point and every, we're all, we're all constantly talking to ourselves, constantly, incessantly and usually they're not nice thoughts. You know, it's usually worries or you know, beating yourself up. I get it from an evolutionary standpoint like if you're just sitting by the, by the pond, staring, having a good old time, you get eaten. So we're kind of like always on hyper alert now. But now nothing, no one's going to eat us. So the paradox that I'd love to know how you sort of reconcile this in wealth management is in Buddhism, desire, we know, desire sort of this contract for unhappiness until we get what we want right as we're going through that journey, then we get it and then it lasts for 15 minutes. Now we're on to the next thing. So. But we can't just sit in a cave all day watching our breath either. So it's this paradox. How do you reconcile this paradox of, you know, we know that we're going to adapt whatever we get, you know, Scott Todd bought a plane. Great. I don't Have a plane. I'm jealous of him. That's a whole other thing. But like, at some point Scott's gonna get used to the plane, he's gonna adapt to it and oh, now I need a bigger plane. Now I need a jet, right? And then he's gonna go out and do the things to go and get a jet. And yet. So how do we, how do we, how do we reconcile this? It's a long winded question, Jonathan. I know.

I don't know that that's even a question.

Well, yeah, how do we, how do we, how do we live our best lives knowing at some level while we're chasing this stuff, it's not going to make us happy? And yet there's a happiness dividend at the end of it.

When you're mindful enough, the stuff doesn't give you the lead to the happiness dividend. And I don't think Scott purchased a plane so that he would be happier. I think he did it for convenience, for speed of travel. Or maybe he thought, maybe he thought, if I just have this plan, I'll be happy. Maybe. I don't know Scott well, but I'm assuming that's probably not the case. So how do you reconcile these two things? It's very difficult. But the first thing is to understand that the thing is not going to give you happiness. As we talk about the first set of the book is to debunk these myths. The thing does not lead to happiness. In fact, many of us set up our lives and I have clients that, you know, we talk about this a lot. You know, if only I had finished that degree, or if only I got that raise, or if only I get that position, I'll be happy. And if you're constantly basing your well being and your happiness on an outcome, then you're missing it. You're missing the journey itself. And this is easy for me to talk about and it may be easy for you guys to talk about as well because I'm doing really, really well. It hasn't always been thus, right. And so I do know that struggle is there and struggle is something that's real. And so you have to overcome that. And it's very difficult to say, well, no, if I just need to sit and watch my mind, then I'll be better off. And that's kind of not the promise of, the promise of meditation isn't financial success. That's not. We're not saying that, hey, you meditate, you'll be financially successful. What I'm saying is if you're meditating, you will be happier and have more well being regardless of the financial outcome. The financial outcome is a target. It's something that people look at in our culture specifically as a goal. You know, if you go to Asia or even Canada, it's less a goal. It's still important. And people want to be successfully, financially successful financially. But. But it's not quite the same God that it is in the United States. It's a big thing here. And so when I'm talking about, hey, let's back off of that a little bit and just see what is it that leads to meaning, happiness and well being. And there's an enormous volume of research on this and we look at those list of eight or nine or ten things that we just mentioned, right? The health and the relationships and optimism. And these things actually lead to lives well lived, regardless of finance. So it's interesting, you know, I have taught budgeting and financial literacy at halfway houses in San Francisco. I have taught retirement planning at community colleges. I've worked one on one with, you know, multi generational trusts and wealthy, wealthy, wealthy individuals. None of those people are free of fear and concern around money. Not the people that don't have it, not the people that have it. So that's interesting to me. It's interesting to me that no matter who you talk to, there's concern, worry, fear around money that tells me it's not whether you have it or whether you don't have it. It's about something that's going on internally. And so Mark, when you sit, and when I sit every single day, we start to become acquainted with that conversation in our own heads. And it's the conversation in our own heads and becoming acquainted with that conversation that allows us to have happier, more meaningful lives regardless of financial outcomes. It's nice to have a plan. It's nice to be living in a nice house. It's nice to take great vacations. Those things alone don't make us happy. They're additive, but those things alone don't make us happy. You have to have a mindset that kind of undergirds that as well. Silence.

Yeah, no, I agree. And I talk about this in, in my book as well, my journey and because I got all these things and I still was miserable. But Scott, Todd, what are your thoughts?

I mean, look, I don't think, okay, like for me, the plane or the things that I have with, with some exceptions, like the plane is not a joy thing for me, the plane has always been like a tool, right? Like I see it as a tool. What did a tool for? Well, it's a tool to. To get me to go to places that I want to go to or to get me to travel. Now, do I enjoy flying the plane? I do. I'm not gonna deny I don't, like, enjoy flying it, But I never really bought the plane saying, like, okay, I'm gonna buy this plane. I'm gonna be, like, instantly happy, and then I'm miserable. And I think that. I think that what Jonathan said is right. Like, if you're. If you're buying something thinking, this is going to make me happy, well, you get the instant gratification, pop. And then you don't. And, you know, like, I kid my wife all the time. I'm like, should we go look for a new house? Like, you know, let's go. Let's go look at a big house, or let's go find the million dollar house. And then I'm like, it's kind of a pain to go move. You know, like, it's. Maybe we'll just stay right here, you know, because we're living a good life now, right? Like, we just stay where we are. Or then you say, like, well, let's just go do this, or let's go on this vacation. Well, vacation is a trip to memory. It's something that you can have there. Does it bring you joy and happiness? I mean, you go on vacation, you create a memory. You have. You have time with your family. It could make you happy. But then you're going to come back, and you're going to be like, can I just go on vacation again? So I think. I think that you're right.

Like, it's.

It's really not about buying things to make you happy, because that's not going to make you happy. You got to find what's going to make you happy. And whether it's service or helping others or doing something else, that's ultimately what I think will make you happy and.

Bring joy to your life.

Boom, Boom.

That's it.

Yeah. I mean, yeah, I agree with Scott. And as I get older, I'm realizing there's, you know, everywhere I go, there I am. So it's really just, you know, I could fly first class. Well, not now, but when Covid lifts, you know, to some exotic location in Hawaii. But if my mind is constantly thinking about, you know, let's just pick on Scott again. You know, I'm in Hawaii, but now Scott's, you know, doing these cool things, playing golf and, you know, doing these Other things. And I'm, and I'm filled with jealous rage. Does it really matter that I'm on this beautiful beach in Maui if that's where my mind is at? So I do think that, you know, being aware of this and really being completely present does translate to happiness as well. So to your point, Jonathan, like it can, it's never, it's almost never enough. Right?

That's the big question is what for me in the whole planning thing, when you, when you base your plan on what makes you happy, you know what the acid pick. There's a menu of things the academics talk about that lead to happiness and then pick among that many, what is the things that really lead to my happiness, what's important to me. And you prioritize those things and you let the other things go. The key is you got to make trade offs. You don't have infinite resources. You got to make trade offs. So if I build the plan on that, and I really am focused on what makes me happy and make that the center, make that the core, make that the foundation, then that's enough, right? I mean, I don't need to have. If you're at Mark, if you're, you know, if you're on the beach and Scott's golfing in Fiji and you're jealous, if you're filled with jealous rage about that golf trip, then I would say that you're being on the beach wasn't skillful, wasn't where you wanted to be. Like, so you didn't start with what was really important to you. And so it's, it's really key, really key to start with what's important to you. Prioritize. And I think that we never learn anything practical about what is the source of happiness. I mean, maybe our parents said, hey, you know, family is important. Or maybe our parents said, you know, there's a value in working hard. There's a value in being creative. Maybe we got some of those messages, but by and large, I don't think most people, unless you study psychology or philosophy or religion, kind of get to that point of, hey, these are the things that create meaningful lives. But if we do a little bit of research, you know, read some of the philosophers, read some of the great, you know, Viktor Frankl, read man's search for meaning. Read, read some of these things. And then maybe if we sit and contemplate these things, we can get to, we can figure out what's important to us and what would be our enough. And that's once we know what our Enough is we pursue our enough. Nothing else matters. That's where we get to be happy. That's where we get. That's where meaningful meaning, meaningful lives comes from.

I love it. And I love that you, you wrote the book and you have a plan for people to not just maximize their wealth, but then at the end of it, be more mindful of the ways that, okay, you've got this solid financial plan, here's how you're going to get to happiness and have that happiness dividend and just use this as a tool to get to where you want to create this meaningful life and a life well lived. And I think it's great. And it definitely differentiates you from 99.9% of wealth advisors out there.

So, Mark, I would just say this. I would just say one last thing. I don't think there's anything wrong. Like you're talking about the whole Maui thing, right? Like, I don't think that there's anything wrong with like you being in Maui. And okay, maybe if you're not enjoying it, that's one thing. But like, if you're looking back going, geez, man, like Scott's playing golf or he's flying or he's doing whatever, man, that guy's got the life, right? There's. To me, there's nothing wrong with saying one, one more sentence after that, which is, man, what's he doing? So that I can replicate it, so I can live that, so I can be free like him too. And I'm not gonna say like, live like him, but like, so that if any one person can do it, well, then other people can do it. You know, like if Jeff Bezos can do it, like anybody else can do it. Now, yes, that's a far fetch, I get it. But that's the thing is like, he brought no special skills other than desire, and he put teams in place to get him to where he is today. And I can do the same thing. It starts here in your brain, and you just got to get past that.

There's a. I totally, I totally agree that it's possible anyone can do anything. Like, I really do in my heart believe that. I think that it's really important though, to understand that you may not want to do that. The issue with the brain is void of a better, more thoughtful approach to what's enough for me. I will pursue whatever is thrown at me. And the issue is if Mark is on the beach and Scott is flying and Mark is jealous of Scott, if that's really what he wants, man, Mark Go for it. Like, that's fantastic. Then ask yourself the question, is it really what I want? Don't just do it because, oh, there's the next shiny thing. You don't want to chase shiny things because there's no happiness in chasing shiny things. It's finding what's important to me first and then pursuing that. And in the process of finding what's important to you, you'll pick from, you know, the menu of options, which are some of the things that we talked about, and the plane and the fast car and the big house and the great vacations. Those are all on the menu. But you have to make choices, and that's where people struggle, is I got to make choices. What are going to be my choices?

Yeah, no, we could talk about this forever because it's such an interesting, deep topic, and we can talk about Stoke philosophy and, you know, go deeper into behavioral management and Dan Ariely and all these irrational things that we do and miswanting. And, I mean, it just. It's an incredible, incredibly interesting rabbit hole to me. But unfortunately, Jonathan, we're at that point in the podcast where we're going to ask you for one more tip of the week. A website, a resource, another book, something else actionable for the art of passive income listeners to go improve their businesses, improve their lives. What do you got?

So there's this. My whole life changed when I. In 2008 when I started doing a couple different things. And the thing that. The one book that helped me get through this was Steven Pressfield's the Art of War, which is a fantastic book for people that are struggling to finish a creative project or start a creative project. And so this was. I was trying to get through my book, finish writing my book, and I just, you know, up against the wall, up against the wall, up against the wall. And Steven's book. Steven Pressfield's book really sort of talks about that struggle and what is it inside our brains that makes that struggle happen and how do we overcome that struggle? So it's. I know that many people deal with the struggle, and I would highly recommend Steven Pressfield's the Art of War. Or is it the War of Art? The War of Art.

The War of Art. The war of Art.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. That's the right one.

Yeah. The great book. Great book. Before we get to Scott Todd's Tip of the Week, I just want to give a quick shout out to our sponsor, Flight School. Learn how the next 16 weeks can literally transform your life. Go up the mountain of land, investing With Scott Todd, who's done it thousands of times. Go up that mountain quickly, safely, efficiently. The tuition for flight school ain't going to cost you nothing because you're going to make it back 180 days or less, guaranteed either terms or cash deals. Learn more go tolandgeek.com training thelandgeek.com training Scott Todd. What's your tip of the week? Mark?

Check out this book everybody writes by Ann Hadley. Okay, like everybody writes in today's society, all business owners, they become media empires if they're doing it right. You have a website, you are a publisher. If you're on social media, just even with your friends, you are in marketing. So create a system that will give you good content all the time. Everyone writes.

All right, fantastic. Well, my tip of the week is arguably the best tip of the week because it's literally going to change your life. Just go to Mindful Money. Mindful Money. Get Jonathan's book, Mindful money. Simple practices for realizing your financial goals and increasing your happiness dividend. And it's a really interesting concept of taking, you know, this mindfulness approach and applying it to wealth management. So I highly recommend everyone do that. Mindful Money. I want to thank the listeners and remind them the only way we're going to get the quality guests like a Jonathan do is if you do three little favors. You got to subscribe, rate, review the podcast, send us a screenshot of that review to support@thelangeek.com we're going to send you the $97 wholetailing course, how to double your money 30 days or less for free. So please do it. All right, Jonathan, are we good?

We're good.

Thanks, Mark. Thanks, Scott.

Scott, are we good?

We're good, Mark.

Let's do this. One, two, three. Let freedom ring.

All right, Jonathan got it.

He got it. Thanks, everybody.