Education And Mindfulness Are The Bookends Of Success

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In this episode we are joined by Jonathan DeYoe advisor of Mindful Money and the host of the Mindful Money Podcast He discusses how he became a financial advisor what his typical process is for working with clients and what common threads he sees that people struggle with in their financial plans Jonathan emphasizes the importance of mindfulness especially in personal finance and how it can help us increase wealth and lead more meaningful lives 00 01 – 05 03 The Money Philosopher Jonathan shares his background Going back to the financial space Financial planning versus investment selection 05 04 – 16 21 Mindfully Saving and Investing Setting long-term goals What it means to be mindful of the path Getting the emergency fund covered and the rest gets invested How to invest in a volatile market Diversification is key 16 22 – 23 10 Scaling in a Mindful Way Getting out of the poverty mindset Why Jonathan decided to merge his business with another company Understanding your purpose Sign up now for Mindful Money s FREE Values Purpose Goals course 23 11 – 24 09 Closing Segment Reach out to Jonathan Links Below Final Words Tweetable Quotes I don t think anybody can predict anything So given that planning is the tool we use And in fact the two tools we think that are most valuable are planning and education – Jonathan DeYoe The concept of mindfulness is sort of a non-judgmental awareness of the present moment – Jonathan DeYoe Let s not judge the fear Let s not make some kind of an assumption about what s gonna happen next what s on the ground what can we do to make a difference – Jonathan DeYoe —————————————————————————– Connect with Jonathan at the Mindful Money website Check them out on YouTube Instagram Facebook LinkedIn and Twitter Sign up for their Values Purpose Goals course for FREE Connect with me I love helping others place money outside of traditional investments that both diversify a strategy and provide solid predictable returns Facebook LinkedIn Like subscribe and leave us a review on Apple Podcasts Spotify Google Podcasts or whatever platform you listen on Thank you for tuning in Email me sam brickeninvestmentgroup com Want to read the full show notes of the episode Check it out below 00 00 00 Jonathan DeYoe Because of my education in sort of philosophy and you know mindfulness training and meditation and religious kinds of things I think that whenever I m on a show when I m being interviewed or whenever I write that comes across the idea that Hey you know there is a way to make better decisions It s not the way that we re told all the time 00 00 20 Jonathan DeYoe Let s talk about the way that actually is helpful And for some people they go oh that makes a ton of sense Let me talk to Jonathan And when they do then that s stimulation right there 00 00 40 Sam Wilson Jonathan DeYoe is a Lutheran seminary intern Buddhist academic turned financial advisor He s also the advisor of the Mindful Money and the host of the Mindful Money Podcast He has been investing for over four decades in helping others build wealth for the last 25 years Jonathan welcome to the show 00 00 57 Jonathan DeYoe Thanks for having me Sam 00 00 58 Sam Wilson Pleasure s mine There are three questions I ask every guest who comes in the show in 90 seconds or less can you to tell me where did you start Where are you now And how did you get there 00 01 05 Jonathan DeYoe In 90 seconds or less Where did I start So I started off in Rapid City south Dakota was raised pretty poor And so I made a made a goal for myself to make money and to not have that problem you know growing up So took a detour studied finance in college took a detour studied philosophy and comparative religion ended up coming to California to be a Lutheran seminarian The Lutheran school I was I had agreed to go to and they had given me a scholarship 00 01 30 Jonathan DeYoe When I got here they said listen we had a bad year last year We don t have the scholarship money So I went across the street to a Buddhist school and they said yeah we have some money So I ended up studying compared to religion from a Buddhist side was there for two three years realized that I really wanted to practice more than I wanted to be an academic So I meditated every day since And started off you know right after I left at Dean Witter which became Morgan Stanley Dean Witter You know I was at five or six different wall street firms before I started my own firm in 2001 And so the last 20 years building that firm until last year when I merge it into EP Wealth 00 02 05 Sam Wilson Wow Wow That s interesting Tell me you know in that financial planning practice how gimme some color on what that was I mean there s the say financial planning can mean 10 000 different things to 10 000 different people 00 02 18 Jonathan DeYoe Yep Yeah It s it s a great question I and I appreciate more than you probably know So I think most people that have that say financial planner mean investment advisor and I actually mean financial planner I don t think anybody has the ability to guess what s happening next I don t think anybody that can control outcomes I don t think anybody can predict anything So given that planning is the tool we use And in fact the two tools we think that are most valuable are planning and education So in my own personal pivot you know I m I m working with clients on their financial plans and I go in depth on you know all their cash flows incomes outflows all their goals what those costs you know the probability of increased costs later on everything education we go really really really deep in all aspects of their financial lives 00 03 05 Jonathan DeYoe And what that does is it gives us the ability to make better decisions in the now And that s that s really what financial planning is It isn t investment selection it isn t market timing And if you ve got folks that are looking for better investment selection better market timing that s not here And in fact it s not anywhere but especially not here 00 03 20 Sam Wilson That you know I love the idea what you mentioned there differentiating between what is financial planning and what is just investment selection cause those are those are two very different things Getting someone to a point where they want to come to you and say Jonathan let s sit down and let s just pull the curtains back on everything and just dissect this piece by piece has got to be the people that are willing to take the time to do that are few and far between I would imagine Is that is that a fair assumption 00 03 49 Jonathan DeYoe Yeah Thankfully there are many different brands of financial advisors as you sort of alluded to And so people can find the people that fit with them and they re out there I don t believe it s possible that someone can select a better investment or time market any better than I can But if you believe that someone can do that for you then you know I wish you the best of luck I think that s a great thing 00 04 07 Sam Wilson Right And I guess I would the what I was getting at was that what you provide is an incredibly valuable service to people that take the time to do it 00 04 16 Jonathan DeYoe Yeah 00 04 17 Sam Wilson What are the things that bring people to you to where they say Hey Jonathan I need your help 00 04 23 Jonathan DeYoe Well I so I don t know what the thing is that stimulates somebody to make a decision to ultimately call us that that s hard for me to guess but because of my education in sort of philosophy and you know mindfulness training and meditation and religious kinds of things I think that whenever I m on a show or when I m being interviewed or whenever I write that comes across the idea that Hey you know there is a way to make better decisions It s not the way that we re told all the time Let s talk about the way that actually is helpful And for some people they go oh that makes a ton of sense Let me talk to Jonathan And when they do then that s stimulation right there 00 04 59 Sam Wilson Right right That s really cool I like I like that that answer there Tell me you know when you guys dig into or when you dig into someone s financial plan or in this case maybe the lack thereof what are some of the common threads you see that things you go man most people struggle with this and this is how they overcome it 00 05 19 Jonathan DeYoe Yeah and it s a great question The I think that the thing that most people do and the thing that causes the most problems that I ve ever seen is we simply don t save enough Like we don t save enough And how do we save more Well there s three different pieces of this right You you earn more you spend less And then you sort of think longer term So realize that right now right now you you re earning a certain amount and people panic about that And I can t do anything about it Well you re gonna you re gonna earn more later almost guaranteed right 00 05 45 Jonathan DeYoe You are we are always becoming the next version of ourselves And so we get raises we switch jobs we start a side gig And and so in terms of planning you can think about all those kinds of things and I just I just went through this process myself I went back and I don t know if you ve ever done this I went back and looked at goals that I set 11 years ago 10 years ago 00 06 04 Jonathan DeYoe And I kid you not I beat the goals by 10 I had like five specific goals every single one of em I had I had beaten by like 5 or 10 which and I set em 10 years you know 10 years ago I was 40 years old and I was like these are crazy goals I m just gonna I m gonna really set the bar high and boom we we nailed them 00 06 25 Jonathan DeYoe And so the the fact that you put those things on paper that you think about them that you write them down actually does create outcomes You have to follow through you ve got to do the work You got to take the time all that kind of stuff But if you write it down and you you reflect on that on a regular basis You ll get there right You ll get there And I I fully believe that The reminder is this is what you got to do Let s go do it 00 06 46 Sam Wilson Right And I think that goes into the into the title of your book which is the well you or a title of podcast or book which one is it You wrote a book 00 06 53 Jonathan DeYoe Both 00 06 54 Sam Wilson Both It is a Mindful Money and Mindful Money Podcast There it is That s that s the topic Your book is Mindful Money Can you break down what that other than just writing it down and saying Hey this is this is where I want to go What else does that mean to you 00 07 10 Jonathan DeYoe So The second thing I would say if we don t save enough the second thing is we invest without knowing where we re what we re investing for So so mindfulness this concept what is mindfulness The concept of mindfulness is sort of a a non-judgmental awareness of the present moment And right now in the present moment we ve had two quarters of kind of volatile markets after nine years of just a wonderful upside So so people are actually experiencing this now 00 07 35 Jonathan DeYoe And and if you re a real estate investor you haven t experienced this kind of volatility this kind of interest rate rise since 2008 2009 So if you re you know this is kind of scary for a lot of folks for sure But the reality is this is a natural ebb and flow of markets This is this happens 00 07 49 Jonathan DeYoe It s normal it s normal in equity markets It s actually normal in in real estate markets as well And the mindfulness piece is realizing okay there s this scary thing Let s not judge the fear Let s not make some kind of an assumption about what s gonna happen next what s on the ground what can we do to make a difference When you re thinking about somebody that has goals and dreams and things they wanna accomplish if they ve never thought about the goals and dreams and things they re they re behind right 00 08 13 Jonathan DeYoe They they don t they don t know they don t know what they re targeting but more important than not knowing what they re targeting is they don t know how to course correct You know you got to know where you re going in order to know when you re not on the path And so mindfulness is of the path not mindfulness is knowing where I m going knowing that the decisions I need to make to get there and then course correcting along the way being non-judgmental about the environment knowing what I need to do internally right 00 08 38 Jonathan DeYoe And that s the that s very tough to get to that But when you work with people and you sit down with them you do the full analysis of everything you wanna accomplish You say here s the trade offs that you need to make to make that happen Here s the expected normal run of the mill market volatility run of the mill downside you re gonna run into and you have to just keep doing the stuff that we said you had to do while that stuff happens 00 09 00 Jonathan DeYoe Cause that s just normal That s par for the course That s what we can expect Then they meet that when you re on the path right So you you ve made the plan You ve you ve talked about the trade offs You ve told them what to expect and then they that thing hits them that smacks em in the face and then they oh we talked about this and yeah we ll talk about it right then again And we ll talk about it every six months We ll talk about it every year We ll keep talking about it and talking about it and talking about it and then it hits them and then they can work through it And it s that it s that constant message of this is what we got to do This is what we got to do this what we got to do that enables people to do it when the time comes 00 09 32 Sam Wilson I love it I love it You said one of the mistakes that you see people making is that they don t save enough Yeah What does saving mean to you How how how would you answer this What does saving mean to you in an environment where we see the value of especially dollars just going away I mean what does that I mean inflation is just killing savers right now How do you save how do you mindfully save 00 09 56 Jonathan DeYoe Yeah well said well said So saving is is one step in a two step process right Everyone has to have enough savings that is declining in value that inflation s gonna erode 00 10 05 Jonathan DeYoe No question about that right and and it s we re talking a lot about inflation today but inflation has always been a fact It s been 1 8 2 for about 10 years It s always gonna be coming It s always around the corner And you re thinking about 60 year investing lives and 30 year retirements you re gonna face lots of inflation 00 10 22 Jonathan DeYoe So to this isn t a special thing This is something we should expect okay So given that I m always recommending saving more but but saving is just the first step in that two step process Once you have your emergency fund once you have enough sitting in cash then you re investing it you re seeking you re seeking a place to put it that has the highest opportunity right 00 10 42 Jonathan DeYoe And so that could be and I know what you guys do you know lots of real estate I ve done a lot of real estate in my life as well I m a huge fan of of just public equity markets I m actually a huge fan of of private enterprise as well I like now I invest in small businesses locally than when they when they run into trouble 00 10 57 Jonathan DeYoe I invest into small tech companies where where you know I might know the CEO or I might have a friend that s that s introduced me to the CEO or something like that I I love that stuff I love equity I love business I m also a huge fan of real estate as a way to develop wealth 00 11 11 Sam Wilson I like that So you re saying what we do first get the emergency fund covered get your basic get that covered And the rest gets invested 00 11 19 Jonathan DeYoe Totally 00 11 19 Sam Wilson Where do you see prime risk right now in investments Be it in the in the public markets be it in real estate I mean you see a lot of different stuff come across your desk Is there anything right now that when you see it you just get this internal gut check of like oh boy 00 11 37 Jonathan DeYoe I do I m not sure I m gonna win any popularity contest with this 00 11 41 Sam Wilson It s okay We re not here for popularity contest We re here for for honest feedback 00 11 46 Jonathan DeYoe So I think and this goes back every two three years There s something that comes across the pipe that is you know exciting to talk about And usually while it s exciting to talk about it s a really dumb idea to engage you know back you know go back 20 years I m starting the business in the middle of the dot com world You know there s plenty of people that saying nothing but technology matters nothing but connectivity matters This is all that matters and that s all gonna invest in And they did really astoundingly well you know 96 97 98 99 And in 2000 they lost 90 of their assets Because everything chased one idea So now it s in this last couple years there s been a lot of chasing going on You ve had you ve had specs 00 12 27 Jonathan DeYoe They re they re all destroyed NFTs They re pretty much destroyed crypto I think crypto has a case I m not investing in the currency I think there s a case long term not in the currency but in the blockchain I wouldn t I wouldn t touch the currency myself It s just you know that s speculation 00 12 41 Jonathan DeYoe That s not investing So for me I like anything that s broadly diversified You know I like to own lots of different stuff cause I think the risk is in the concentration The risk is engaging the exciting thing getting too concentrated and the exciting thing when it s exciting I love stuff that s like okay everybody hates this now it s probably a pretty good investment right Remember like Tesla was killing it Ford was getting destroyed 2022 comes Tesla gets destroyed Ford is killing it That s a pretty good story That s kind of what you can always anticipate 00 13 15 Sam Wilson I love I love your statement there that the risk is in the concentration We re seeing that right now in the multifamily space I mean I don t know if you track anything in commercial real estate you know specifically but the capital pouring into multifamily has just caused cap rate compression at a pace that I just can t it s unfathomable to me And yes I did buy some multifamily last year It was I mean it just made all the sense in the world They were sweetheart deals and they re crushing it but by and large like I just stepped out of it I just said man this is yeah It s it just seems frothy 00 13 51 Jonathan DeYoe Was it I think Buffett said you know you buy the thing when it s I I don t remember what it was 00 13 56 Sam Wilson Be fearful when others are greedy and be greedy only when others are fearful 00 13 58 Jonathan DeYoe Yeah It s that but if it s dear if it s dear if everyone wants it that s you don t want that You know and there s plenty of in real estate specifically in stocks there s plenty of opportunity Maybe maybe it s parking lots now you know maybe it s not single family Maybe it s you know there s so many different options of how you do it that don t buy the thing that everyone s chasing And right now like the big money is all chasing multifamily You ve got what is it The Blackstone right Buying thousands and thousands of units that drives up prices makes the cash flow less good 00 14 25 Sam Wilson Right Drives up prices I mean it s great It s great for those of us you know if we re exiting 00 14 30 Jonathan DeYoe Yeah If you re an owner it s good time 00 14 33 Sam Wilson Yeah It s a good time to sell that That s absolutely right But no I think I think that s really really smart there When you say the risk is in the concentration I mean do people come to you and send you you know opportunities they have if they re a client of yours and say Hey Jonathan here here s an idea Here s an opportunity to invest in something What do you think 00 14 51 Jonathan DeYoe Yeah I mean it it s rarer I mean the people that are you know I wrote a book called Mindful Money So the the people that attracts first is people that aren t really interested in investing 00 15 02 Sam Wilson Right 00 15 02 Jonathan DeYoe So they don t want to do this themselves They want somebody to do it for them with them you know hold their hand through the process And I m that s what I love to do I love I love to actually walk people through capital markets cause I I love capital markets It s a it s a fun place for me 00 15 14 Jonathan DeYoe But occasionally I have a client who will come in and say Hey I bet this idea I bet this idea Or you know my buddy started this company in Silicon valley what do you think And and you know they they run the gamut from a real estate thing to a new meta platform to a new you know so there s there s so many chip companies there s so many different things that I that I run into 00 15 33 Jonathan DeYoe I actually don t I ve only made a couple of those direct investments myself because there s so much risk And that I mean it s like 98 chance that you lose every penny you put into it right So again concentrations are good I like diversification So I have I have a guy that does this a hundred percent of his time 00 15 50 Jonathan DeYoe This is what he likes to do And so I give him the money that I wanna invest in private enterprise And he invests that money cause he invests in 60 in every fund So that s fine That s how I get diversification in that space And those are out there that re available I recommend those and I think that s in your world that s like syndication right 00 16 04 Jonathan DeYoe So you get somebody that does a bunch of different things and you they pool money and that enables more investments across a broader a broader range of opportunity 00 16 11 Sam Wilson Yeah Yeah Especially especially when you start getting into syndications that are funds where we might pull 10 assets into a single fund 00 16 19 Sam Wilson That s absolutely right Tell me about this You mentioned early on that you were raised poor there s oftentimes I feel that there are mindset shifts that you have to get over especially I m I m in your camp of growing up pretty much yeah pretty pretty on the poor side of things 00 16 37 Sam Wilson And so I ll just speak maybe I m maybe I m projecting here 00 16 40 Jonathan DeYoe Project away 00 16 41 Sam Wilson It took me a long time to really get out of the poverty mindset 00 16 45 Jonathan DeYoe Oh yeah 00 16 45 Sam Wilson It s like oh man this is where I come from This is who I am This is who I ll always be This is the way and my parents treated money fairly well We just didn t have much of it but still there there was a lot of just getting over some of those things Tell me how can you contrast that upbringing and you know your book on on Mindful Money and being mindful of your money What how do those two coincide 00 17 07 Jonathan DeYoe So there s actually a third point in there and we talked about it just briefly before we started So I did I wrote a book and there s three parts to the book The first part of the book is all the illusions you can ignore The middle part is the stuff that can make you that leads to wellbeing happiness contentment whatever that word is you want to use And then the third part of the book is a plan to get there 00 17 25 Jonathan DeYoe So I ve written a book that talks about you know health relationships gratitude generosity all these things that we know lead to happiness right So I know I know this stuff I ve read the research I read the papers all that kind of stuff And it wasn t until last year when my brother died that it really hit me that I wasn t doing it 00 17 46 Jonathan DeYoe Like I wrote the book I understand but I was I am still to this day I have a poverty mindset to this day and it s not that it holds me the way it did when I was younger But it pops up And you go oh there it is Like that s the thing that gets me And I find myself worrying a lot about it all going away 00 18 06 Jonathan DeYoe So that s that you know I built the thing I merge a thing in a larger company I m building more content I m writing I m teaching I m doing all the stuff I love to do And yet there s this thing that I m afraid I m afraid that someone s gonna take it all away It s gonna take it away So when my brother died it really brought home something about the way he lived his life 00 18 23 Jonathan DeYoe And it was you know he didn t mind being late to the movie He didn t mind making you wait He didn t mind He didn t stress All the things that I stress constantly And so I m I m learning to be a little bit more relaxed and you know it ebbs and flows Like I m trying my best And but that man it grips you and it shows up in places you don t expect it 00 18 42 Sam Wilson Yeah It s an interesting thing I probably didn t recognize even in myself or know that it existed Gosh until probably I don t even know five seven years ago And it s like wait there you are like yeah I have a poverty mindset and it just it s recognizing it 00 18 57 Sam Wilson It is a journey you know everybody has their own journey but it s certainly an interesting journey to just explore And so I was just curious how how that worked out One last question here for you before we sign off really curious about your business I know we talked about this a little bit off air but I think it s important for those who are scaling their business and thinking about ways to scale and also scaling in a mindful way 00 19 18 Sam Wilson We re gonna just keep playing with a mindful theme here but you took your business and merged it with another company really so you could focus on the thing that you enjoy the most Is that right 00 19 30 Jonathan DeYoe Yeah that s absolutely right 21 years of building a practice I think we talked about this beforehand 00 19 35 Jonathan DeYoe My my brother when my brother died we had plans that beginning this year So her died middle of last year June of 2021 He was gonna join me first quarter of 2022 and be my COO CEO He was technology genius He was an operations guy He had his MBA and I m much better face to face with a client 00 19 54 Jonathan DeYoe And so I wanted to do none none of the business management and I wanted him to come on and do that kind of stuff And we ve been we ve been planning it We actually started a company in 2006 that we actually shut it in 2008 So we we ve been thinking about how to do this for a long long time So when he died everything changes very quickly 00 20 08 Jonathan DeYoe And and so I was like okay I know I don t wanna do this I know I don t wanna pick the next you know technology tool we use I know I don t wanna do you know so many things we had to think about in terms of our technology stack and I I didn t wanna do that So I I had actually recently talked three years ago 00 20 24 Jonathan DeYoe I had talked to this firm EP wealth And I d gone down the road with them and I chatted with them pretty deeply And and I decided at that point I m just gonna grow this thing I m gonna bring my brother on We re gonna do this together We ve always meant to do this And so I went back to them and I went back to like 15 or 20 other companies 00 20 38 Jonathan DeYoe And I hired an M A firm and said this is this is what my firm is doing This is what we believe in This is our thought process This is our investment process This is our planning process You know find a firm that s a good match and EP you know the people I talked to three years ago ended up to be the the best match for me and I merged in there 00 20 54 Jonathan DeYoe And so now I get to do the two things I want to do We re six months in so there s still some overlap There s still some things I have to take care of right But I see a point in the future where I get to write and I get do my podcast and I get to visit with you on your podcast And I get to sit face to face with my clients and I don t have to worry about any other stuff 00 21 13 Jonathan DeYoe And that s for me that s the dream That s what I want to do And it took 20 something years to get here And I think this year I would ve been there either way You know I don t I would much have preferred doing this with Dave but this is the world we live in now 00 21 26 Sam Wilson It is Yeah And that s one I m really sorry to hear that about your brother I can t I can t imagine that I ve got four of my own and that had be absolutely devastating So thanks thanks for sharing that with us But at the same time I think it is scaling your business And that s the title of the of our podcast is how to scale commercial real estate and the number of people that come on this show and not number number of them 00 21 48 Sam Wilson But but I get kind of two camps that come on One person s gonna say Hey you know we re going gangbusters And we re gonna we re gonna have you know 500 employees and you know own billions of dollars in real estate And that may be exactly what life they wanna create And then there s other people that come on and say look you know what I ve covered I make 250 grand a year passively and I m enjoying the rest of whatever it is until I decide to go back to work and do something differently And I m happy as a a pig and lop It s just very interesting So I think I think mindfully scaling and figuring out and building your business around the way you want it is is a great example that you ve sat for us here by you know partnering up and merging with another firm So you get to do exactly what you love 00 22 29 Jonathan DeYoe Yeah and I think I told you this in the in the little email exchange we had before we sat down but the key to that process is really understanding what you want And that s that that s that goals vision purpose kind of a thing And I think the course that we re gonna put in the show notes is the is our vision course 00 22 46 Jonathan DeYoe And so we have a course that s free Everyone can take it And it s it starts with like what are what are my values What s my purpose And then I can build goals on top of values and purpose And that s so many people never even go through that process And I I try to go through that process every single year 00 23 00 Jonathan DeYoe You know I m I m behind this year but I ll definitely pick it up again next year But that s that s huge Know what s important to you know what your purpose is know why you re here and then build goals on top of those two things 00 23 09 Sam Wilson I love it Jonathan if our listeners wanna get in touch with you or learn more about you or take the free course what is the best way to do that 00 23 16 Jonathan DeYoe So Mindful Money is the place to find all the social media and find the website and find the courses We have a lot of different courses that are financial education and including a financial planning course that s that s built basically right on the chassis of my book and all the exercises in the book 00 23 29 Jonathan DeYoe So people can definitely check that out I m hoping that we can put the in the show notes the link to the free course 00 23 34 Sam Wilson Absolutely Yeah we we ll do that We ll put that link there in the show notes Jonathan thank you so much for coming on the show today I do appreciate it Thank you so much Have a great rest of your day 00 23 43 Jonathan DeYoe Thanks Sam Click here to visit this podcast episode