Michael Sakraida
Appearances
Chief Change Officer
#121 Chief Burnout Officer Michael Levitt: How Surviving a Heart Attack Changed His Approach to Life and Tech
As someone who has dealt with both, I've dealt with clinical depression myself, as well as burnout. I'll tell you, yeah, there are a lot of similarities, but the key difference is with burnout, you can still muster up the energy to go out and do it. You're fatigued, you're cloudy, you're wiped out, but you're still out there just grinding and just doing it.
Chief Change Officer
#121 Chief Burnout Officer Michael Levitt: How Surviving a Heart Attack Changed His Approach to Life and Tech
You're tired, you want to go to sleep, your body aches, everything, but you're still doing it. When you're clinically depressed, even doing that is a big ask, and sometimes you can't. There are just days where you just like, I can't get out of bed, or I just want to go take a nap. And there's nothing intrinsically wrong with taking a nap. I'm a big fan of them.
Chief Change Officer
#121 Chief Burnout Officer Michael Levitt: How Surviving a Heart Attack Changed His Approach to Life and Tech
But when you don't want to do anything, even things you enjoy doing, that's a big warning sign. But to get back to your original question, because of the stigma of it, and also it's a delicate balancing. It's one of the reasons why I don't list all the companies that I've worked with on my website. It's usually consulting or organizations.
Chief Change Officer
#121 Chief Burnout Officer Michael Levitt: How Surviving a Heart Attack Changed His Approach to Life and Tech
We've worked with these companies and they list a bunch of them and all of that. And there's some companies that I've dealt with in the past that are publicly traded. Their C-suite is the team that I worked with. Could have been an individual, could have been with a couple of them. The problem is because of the stigma, if it got out that the CEO of
Chief Change Officer
#121 Chief Burnout Officer Michael Levitt: How Surviving a Heart Attack Changed His Approach to Life and Tech
this publicly traded company is dealing with depression or burnout what's going to happen to their stock in all likelihood at least in the short term it's probably going to go down it may go down a lot which means shareholders and the business could lose millions billions trillions who knows so this goes back to my healthcare training where privacy is critically important so i don't tell even my spouse
Chief Change Officer
#121 Chief Burnout Officer Michael Levitt: How Surviving a Heart Attack Changed His Approach to Life and Tech
Thank you, Vince. Always good to speak with you. I'm thrilled that you launched your own show too. I always encourage people if they even want to test it out, go for it because your voice and your opinions and your insights are unique to you and the world needs as many insights on things as possible. So congratulations on the launch of your show.
Chief Change Officer
#121 Chief Burnout Officer Michael Levitt: How Surviving a Heart Attack Changed His Approach to Life and Tech
who I'm working with. I just don't. I might say a company if I can, or I'll say I'm working with this industry. I don't say who I work with because I strongly believe in privacy. Even though I'm quite public, I just said a few minutes ago, yeah, I've been clinically depressed and I've burned out and all that stuff. I lost my job, lost this, all that. I publicly declare it, but that's my choice.
Chief Change Officer
#121 Chief Burnout Officer Michael Levitt: How Surviving a Heart Attack Changed His Approach to Life and Tech
I can do that. And my company's not publicly traded. If somebody wants to take it public, okay, they can talk with me. We'll have that conversation. But I I think ultimately getting past that stigma for executives is the first thing. And in understanding that and acknowledging that, because if they're worried about this getting out, it's not going to get out for me.
Chief Change Officer
#121 Chief Burnout Officer Michael Levitt: How Surviving a Heart Attack Changed His Approach to Life and Tech
And secondly, it's literally earning their trust. They got to trust me. Our purpose is to get them past burnout, to get them back to their best version of themselves. And one of the biggest reasons why I hate burnout so much is it robs society of great products and services. And a lot of people say, what do you mean by that?
Chief Change Officer
#121 Chief Burnout Officer Michael Levitt: How Surviving a Heart Attack Changed His Approach to Life and Tech
If people are burned out, they're not their best, which means they're not making their best stuff. They're not doing the best work. They're not creating.
Chief Change Officer
#121 Chief Burnout Officer Michael Levitt: How Surviving a Heart Attack Changed His Approach to Life and Tech
So there's products and services that might exist today that would make our lives easier that unfortunately won't exist because the creators or the people that are thinking about it are burned out and they don't have the energy to carry it forward. So we lose as a society when people are burned out. Once they address the stigma of burnout,
Chief Change Officer
#121 Chief Burnout Officer Michael Levitt: How Surviving a Heart Attack Changed His Approach to Life and Tech
and address it get their trust then we can start doing the work and and the work is simple for me anyway it's one of the reasons why you know i got certified in cognitive behavioral therapy and neurolinguistic programming much easier to say cbt and nlp therapy by the way because those are some mouthful words
Chief Change Officer
#121 Chief Burnout Officer Michael Levitt: How Surviving a Heart Attack Changed His Approach to Life and Tech
But the reason why I did that was time and time again, I kept running into people having similar issues. And a lot of it was what they were telling themselves, their beliefs, their habits, their thought patterns, their programming that they have instilled in their lives. And it's much like programs on your phone or apps on your phone or on your computer.
Chief Change Officer
#121 Chief Burnout Officer Michael Levitt: How Surviving a Heart Attack Changed His Approach to Life and Tech
you can uninstall them and you can install better apps and better programs for you to live your life the way you want your life to be. And just giving them that initial courage that they can make the adjustments that they need to make. In my situation, real quick, I had to reinvent my life because the way that I was living painfully wasn't the best way to live.
Chief Change Officer
#121 Chief Burnout Officer Michael Levitt: How Surviving a Heart Attack Changed His Approach to Life and Tech
But for 99% of the other people out there that are burned out or approaching burnout, you don't need to reinvent your life. Just make a couple adjustments here and there. You'll see humongous dividends when you do so.
Chief Change Officer
#121 Chief Burnout Officer Michael Levitt: How Surviving a Heart Attack Changed His Approach to Life and Tech
Yeah, the first one, turning around an organization culture, they had a ton of turnover. In their early days, they were a startup organization, ton of turnover, no trust, no communication. People were stressed, people were leaving, and these weren't young people by any stretch. They were well-educated individuals that were leaving like they were quitting a fast food job as a teenager.
Chief Change Officer
#121 Chief Burnout Officer Michael Levitt: How Surviving a Heart Attack Changed His Approach to Life and Tech
And I'm like, okay, what's going on here? And it boiled down to communication and trust was a big issue. Expectations, I think, were another. Miscommunication, going back to the communication thing, seems to be a common challenge. And then toss in some ego and you have yourself a toxic environment. So for me, it was like, okay, let's get to the bottom of this. So
Chief Change Officer
#121 Chief Burnout Officer Michael Levitt: How Surviving a Heart Attack Changed His Approach to Life and Tech
The nice thing about it was how I approached it was, look, I'm your friend here. I want to make this better for you. If you were in my seat, what would you change? What would you do? And once they trusted me and felt comfortable sharing, then they were an open book and they would share all the things.
Chief Change Officer
#121 Chief Burnout Officer Michael Levitt: How Surviving a Heart Attack Changed His Approach to Life and Tech
And I put them all together and there was a lot of commonality on both sides, both parties, the one... the upper management and the staff. And once we got to those commonalities, I met with them individually. And then I met with them in small groups and we just shared the misconceptions that people had and misunderstandings.
Chief Change Officer
#121 Chief Burnout Officer Michael Levitt: How Surviving a Heart Attack Changed His Approach to Life and Tech
It went from an organization that was having just tremendous turnover every year to a year later, they were averaging around 6% turnover and they were well in the double digits before. And all it was for me, I say all it was, I tend to simplify things, but I know the work was pretty instrumental.
Chief Change Officer
#121 Chief Burnout Officer Michael Levitt: How Surviving a Heart Attack Changed His Approach to Life and Tech
It was a situation where it just turned things around and it became an organization instead of being or having a reputation of being a toxic workplace to an organization where people were applying to work there when there were no roles open. They wanted to be a part of it because they knew and heard that this was a great place to work. And it was the same people.
Chief Change Officer
#121 Chief Burnout Officer Michael Levitt: How Surviving a Heart Attack Changed His Approach to Life and Tech
It wasn't a case of where we just fired everybody and turned everything around. No, it was the same people that were there before. And the majority of them are still there.
Chief Change Officer
#121 Chief Burnout Officer Michael Levitt: How Surviving a Heart Attack Changed His Approach to Life and Tech
It speaks volumes to if they are, and this is a common thing, if the organization and the upper management and the employees as well are willing to be open about some opportunities and suggestions on how to make things better, if they're open to it, to give it a try, then they have a fighting chance.
Chief Change Officer
#121 Chief Burnout Officer Michael Levitt: How Surviving a Heart Attack Changed His Approach to Life and Tech
If they're close-minded and they just keep blaming everybody else, there's no common ground to be found, unfortunately, and those organizations will continue to struggle. That was definitely a win. An organization where it wasn't as challenging was the opposite effect. They were an organization that was doing well, but then decided because there was some
Chief Change Officer
#121 Chief Burnout Officer Michael Levitt: How Surviving a Heart Attack Changed His Approach to Life and Tech
In fighting in the upper ranks of the organization and certain organizational members, I got to frame this very carefully, that were power hungry is a good way to describe it.
Chief Change Officer
#121 Chief Burnout Officer Michael Levitt: How Surviving a Heart Attack Changed His Approach to Life and Tech
There you go. Yeah, definitely. And there was some power brokers that wanted more power and felt that their way was the best way to go in politics. Not typically a wrong idea to think that, but their approach was a bit abrasive, lacked merit, lacked proper research, lacked all kinds of different things. And then they ended up letting go some key people that was making that organization thrive.
Chief Change Officer
#121 Chief Burnout Officer Michael Levitt: How Surviving a Heart Attack Changed His Approach to Life and Tech
And then that organization went from being really successful, always in profit, to an organization that lost revenue, lost key people, and is not doing well. For me, it was a situation and I think the biggest lesson learned is And this goes back to a talk that I attended years ago that isn't related, but there's some similarity to it. It was a health symposium.
Chief Change Officer
#121 Chief Burnout Officer Michael Levitt: How Surviving a Heart Attack Changed His Approach to Life and Tech
So it was a day-long health conference talking about different programs and initiatives you could implement in your healthcare organization. And there was a physician that was giving a talk and his talk was about weight loss. And one of the things that I learned from that, and I didn't know this before, is that Our body's natural inclination is for it to get to the weight of our highest weight.
Chief Change Officer
#121 Chief Burnout Officer Michael Levitt: How Surviving a Heart Attack Changed His Approach to Life and Tech
So let's say you weighed 300 pounds and you lost a ton of weight because you changed your diet, you exercised, maybe you had a medical procedure to lose the weight, whatever the situation is. Your body, for some reason, the brain, body combination, all that stuff says, no, you were 300 pounds at one point. We have to get back to that.
Chief Change Officer
#121 Chief Burnout Officer Michael Levitt: How Surviving a Heart Attack Changed His Approach to Life and Tech
That's why people struggle so much with losing weight and keeping it off is because your body is fighting you on it. They're like, no, we want to go back to that. And it's the same thing with some organizations are just inherently toxic and you can correct them and make them healthy. But that gravitational pull to return back to the way things were is very strong. So if you don't.
Chief Change Officer
#121 Chief Burnout Officer Michael Levitt: How Surviving a Heart Attack Changed His Approach to Life and Tech
manage it, if you don't nurture it, you don't keep on top of it, you can have a stellar organization return to its toxic traits in a very short period of time. So it's not a set it and forget it kind of thing. And that was the lesson that I learned was, okay, I, and many consultants do. You go in, you give them the ideas. It's clear as day to yourself. They say it's clear to them.
Chief Change Officer
#121 Chief Burnout Officer Michael Levitt: How Surviving a Heart Attack Changed His Approach to Life and Tech
They implement it, which is always nice when they do that. And they see the big changes. And then all of a sudden, a few years later, they're right back into the problem they did before. And I've seen that even with keynote talks. I've given keynote talks to organizations and was brought back several years later when they had new people there, new management.
Chief Change Officer
#121 Chief Burnout Officer Michael Levitt: How Surviving a Heart Attack Changed His Approach to Life and Tech
And they're like, we're having the same problem again. Oh, okay. I'll take your money again. I'm saddened by this because for me, and I have to be careful about this. Sometimes you get to be self-judgmental and they go, maybe my talk isn't good. Maybe I'm not convincing people. Maybe they get, and that's not it. It's the old saying, you can lead a horse to water, but you can't make a drink.
Chief Change Officer
#121 Chief Burnout Officer Michael Levitt: How Surviving a Heart Attack Changed His Approach to Life and Tech
It's the same thing. You can say, here are all of the solutions that will make you feel better. But it is up to them to implement them. And you cannot do that as a consultant. You can't do that as a coach. You can't do that as a manager. You can't get people to do something they are refusing to do. You can encourage them. You can show them all the benefits of it.
Chief Change Officer
#121 Chief Burnout Officer Michael Levitt: How Surviving a Heart Attack Changed His Approach to Life and Tech
First, it came to me in the shower, as a lot of good ideas do. That's why it's always good to invest in those markers you can write on a wall in the shower, because a lot of times you're just thinking about different things while you're getting cleaned up. And that title came out to me because I've been dealing with the burnout space since my own personal journey with burnout back in 2009.
Chief Change Officer
#121 Chief Burnout Officer Michael Levitt: How Surviving a Heart Attack Changed His Approach to Life and Tech
But unless they want to do it, they're not going to do it. And that includes stopping their burnout. Some people, unfortunately, love playing the victim. And I hate to be that...
Chief Change Officer
#121 Chief Burnout Officer Michael Levitt: How Surviving a Heart Attack Changed His Approach to Life and Tech
blunt about it but they do like i'm burned out or i'm a single parent or i've lost my job nobody wants to hire me and it's okay what are you gonna do about it i'm gen x2 we tend to be pretty straightforward on it maybe not as blunt as our predecessors the boomers they tend to be pretty blunt you can take that for what it's worth i appreciate it i love a straight shooter no yeah does it sting sometimes and how they present things of course but
Chief Change Officer
#121 Chief Burnout Officer Michael Levitt: How Surviving a Heart Attack Changed His Approach to Life and Tech
Once your ego dusts itself off, everything's good again. But again, all you can do is bring the information, share the insights of what we've learned, the research, how it's backed, and the benefits of adjusting a few things here and there. And it goes a long way in making things better for you.
Chief Change Officer
#121 Chief Burnout Officer Michael Levitt: How Surviving a Heart Attack Changed His Approach to Life and Tech
Those are the couple stories of many that I've encountered over my career and in recent years and in the works that I do.
Chief Change Officer
#121 Chief Burnout Officer Michael Levitt: How Surviving a Heart Attack Changed His Approach to Life and Tech
Usually what I'll do, and this is again leveraging a lot of therapy work, is have you talk about your current career or the one you're leaving. One of the things we'll talk about is having you go back in time when you first applied for that role and what your feelings were when you were selected and hired and that first day. Go back in that and think about that.
Chief Change Officer
#121 Chief Burnout Officer Michael Levitt: How Surviving a Heart Attack Changed His Approach to Life and Tech
Typically, in most cases, those are some happy memories. Those are some happy thoughts. And then we flush out, okay, what changed? From your perspective, what changed? What was going on? And through that conversation can flush out some of the causes of It could be external. Maybe there was a new manager and that manager was not easy to work with or wasn't clearly communicating or who knows?
Chief Change Officer
#121 Chief Burnout Officer Michael Levitt: How Surviving a Heart Attack Changed His Approach to Life and Tech
There could be all kinds of different things. Or it could be internal. You might have been going through something else during that time.
Chief Change Officer
#121 Chief Burnout Officer Michael Levitt: How Surviving a Heart Attack Changed His Approach to Life and Tech
uh relationship challenges a loss of a loved one or a pet which is a loved one too so i i don't need to separate those but both are traumatic for people and there's all kinds of other things that could be going on it might be the economy it might be upset your team hasn't won in a while or they traded away your favorite player because i don't want to say simple or silly because it's not some people are very passionate about a lot of things in life
Chief Change Officer
#121 Chief Burnout Officer Michael Levitt: How Surviving a Heart Attack Changed His Approach to Life and Tech
It's just getting to the bottom of, okay, where are some of the ingredients that are adding to this? It's okay. Then from there, we can see, are there opportunities to maybe look at things differently or change your perspective on a particular matter to...
Chief Change Officer
#121 Chief Burnout Officer Michael Levitt: How Surviving a Heart Attack Changed His Approach to Life and Tech
But basically, 2014 is when it started to bounce around in my head anyways. And the title of Chief Burnout Officer, as far as they know, I'm the only person that has it. I don't have a trademark. So just basically, if any organization wants to use it,
Chief Change Officer
#121 Chief Burnout Officer Michael Levitt: How Surviving a Heart Attack Changed His Approach to Life and Tech
identify that jerk manager that left from the organization because people leave their managers they don't necessarily leave their companies they leave their managers putting yourself kind of in their shoes okay what do you think their motivation is it'll go from oh they're just evil and mean it's like to do you think they may have some self-confidence issues do you think they don't feel prepared as a manager so they are defaulting to being this
Chief Change Officer
#121 Chief Burnout Officer Michael Levitt: How Surviving a Heart Attack Changed His Approach to Life and Tech
quote-unquote bossy person to do these things to try to cover up for their own self inadequacies if you thought about that what is if you if you dig back deep enough or peel back enough layers you can actually see that in people now it takes time it takes practice it also helps that you study mental health and you get a better understanding of why people do what they do
Chief Change Officer
#121 Chief Burnout Officer Michael Levitt: How Surviving a Heart Attack Changed His Approach to Life and Tech
which is great, but then also frustrating because then all of a sudden you start, and this is just me personally speaking, you get frustrated because you're like, oh, I know what their motivation was in that, or I know why they're doing this. And you want to tell them that, but it could, it would come off completely wrong sometimes if you do.
Chief Change Officer
#121 Chief Burnout Officer Michael Levitt: How Surviving a Heart Attack Changed His Approach to Life and Tech
So it's like knowing the end of the story of a movie and And you're watching it with your good friend who hasn't seen the movie yet. And you want to say, oh yeah, this person does. And you just have to keep your mouth shut. It's that kind of frustration sometimes. But it's one of those things where you got to meet people where they are and work with them from there.
Chief Change Officer
#121 Chief Burnout Officer Michael Levitt: How Surviving a Heart Attack Changed His Approach to Life and Tech
A lot of new therapists and consultants, they'll say, okay, page one of the consulting book. And no, you don't do that. You got to figure out where people are. And then you go to that particular page. Get that low-lying crew, get them some confidence for themselves, and then you'll see how much more they want to work.
Chief Change Officer
#121 Chief Burnout Officer Michael Levitt: How Surviving a Heart Attack Changed His Approach to Life and Tech
Because otherwise, if you start at page one, they might be at page 30, and you're going to lose them before you get to page 30 because they're going to be bored. So you got to meet people where they are when it comes to burnout, and then start from there.
Chief Change Officer
#121 Chief Burnout Officer Michael Levitt: How Surviving a Heart Attack Changed His Approach to Life and Tech
by all means, because if you're going to use that title, what that means is you are focused full center on preventing burnout in your organization and yourself, as well as if someone is burned out, to give them the space and the tools that they need to recover from it and then eventually prevent it from ever happening again to them. So that's where the title came from.
Chief Change Officer
#121 Chief Burnout Officer Michael Levitt: How Surviving a Heart Attack Changed His Approach to Life and Tech
Yep, I'll give you the signs that I see time and time again. One, you're fatigued. You're not sleeping well. Your body aches in places you didn't know you had, and you're just not feeling well. That's a big warning sign. Another one, which was a huge red flag for me, is... You lose interest in doing things in life, and I'm not talking about work. I'm talking about in your personal life.
Chief Change Officer
#121 Chief Burnout Officer Michael Levitt: How Surviving a Heart Attack Changed His Approach to Life and Tech
You quit doing things with your friends that you normally love doing. You quit all your hobbies. You just don't want to do any of that anymore. You find that communication with colleagues and loved ones is harder. Maybe you're a little bit more irritated than normal. And we see that a lot.
Chief Change Officer
#121 Chief Burnout Officer Michael Levitt: How Surviving a Heart Attack Changed His Approach to Life and Tech
There's a lot of people that are angry right now because I think a lot of people are dealing with certain levels of burnout and stress and fatigue over finances, wars, you name it. The post pandemic, all of these things have been taking a toll on people.
Chief Change Officer
#121 Chief Burnout Officer Michael Levitt: How Surviving a Heart Attack Changed His Approach to Life and Tech
And if you notice too that the intake of food and you're not taking time to eat or your food choices aren't what they used to be and you're starting to feel the aftermath of eating too many processed foods and not eating real food and that will take a toll on you as well. So those are some of the signs to warn out or look out for if you think you're burning out.
Chief Change Officer
#121 Chief Burnout Officer Michael Levitt: How Surviving a Heart Attack Changed His Approach to Life and Tech
Now how to fix it, there's several ways to do it. Make sure you schedule time to be active, eat the right foods for you. And that means figuring out what foods are right for you. I had a food intolerance test done a few years ago. They tested me on over 250 types of foods and I got a beautiful report, color coded. that indicated, okay, these are the foods that are good for you.
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#121 Chief Burnout Officer Michael Levitt: How Surviving a Heart Attack Changed His Approach to Life and Tech
Your body naturally likes these foods. And then the page that was in red, which had a lot of items on it, unfortunately, are the foods that I should probably stay away from because I have an intolerance to them in varying degrees. But it was still the red page, so... I do my best to avoid any of the foods that are on that page. And what happens is my digestive system works better.
Chief Change Officer
#121 Chief Burnout Officer Michael Levitt: How Surviving a Heart Attack Changed His Approach to Life and Tech
The food that I eat is naturally good for me and my body breaks it down naturally without any issues. So I don't have to have Tums or acid reflux or anything like that. But if there was one magic pill bullet thing that I would tell people to focus on if they want to help prevent burnout or at least reduce the impact of it is really focus on your sleep. Get really good sleep.
Chief Change Officer
#121 Chief Burnout Officer Michael Levitt: How Surviving a Heart Attack Changed His Approach to Life and Tech
Spend as much money as you can on the best mattress you can afford, the best bedding, the best pillow, sheets, blankets, all of that stuff. Go buy an alarm clock. Don't use your smartphone as an alarm clock. Get that device out of your bedroom and set your alarm.
Chief Change Officer
#121 Chief Burnout Officer Michael Levitt: How Surviving a Heart Attack Changed His Approach to Life and Tech
Help out for the best possible sleep you get every night because when you get the good night's sleep, your body repairs the damage that we do to ourselves on a daily basis, which means you wake up more refreshed, which means you can face those stressful situations in life a little bit better. And prolonged stress is what turns into burnout.
Chief Change Officer
#121 Chief Burnout Officer Michael Levitt: How Surviving a Heart Attack Changed His Approach to Life and Tech
So if you don't have prolonged stress, you won't burn out.
Chief Change Officer
#121 Chief Burnout Officer Michael Levitt: How Surviving a Heart Attack Changed His Approach to Life and Tech
It's something that I strongly believe in because I don't like burnout at all. And I hate what it robs from all of us when people and teams and organizations are burned out.
Chief Change Officer
#121 Chief Burnout Officer Michael Levitt: How Surviving a Heart Attack Changed His Approach to Life and Tech
Thank you, Vince.
Chief Change Officer
#121 Chief Burnout Officer Michael Levitt: How Surviving a Heart Attack Changed His Approach to Life and Tech
Of course, back in 2007, I was hired as a healthcare executive. I was working some absolute insane hours and building up this brand new clinic in a community that was under service that we just didn't have enough doctors in the community to meet the demand of the patients and people in that town. So.
Chief Change Officer
#121 Chief Burnout Officer Michael Levitt: How Surviving a Heart Attack Changed His Approach to Life and Tech
I was working some long hours, recruiting physicians, hiring staff, understanding the health care system because I had never worked in health care before. I had a lot of startup experience, but I'd never worked in health care before. So it was a steep learning curve for me, but it was one that I took on.
Chief Change Officer
#121 Chief Burnout Officer Michael Levitt: How Surviving a Heart Attack Changed His Approach to Life and Tech
I look back at it was a mistake is this is one of those things that happens to people when they burn out is it looks like a good idea to take everything on your shoulders and say, look, I'm going to treat this as if it's my own company and I'm going to build it. It wasn't my own company, but I acted like it was.
Chief Change Officer
#121 Chief Burnout Officer Michael Levitt: How Surviving a Heart Attack Changed His Approach to Life and Tech
So as entrepreneurs know, and as when the multiple careers that you've had in your life, there are times where you just pick up the load and you go, you know, like, okay, we're just going to get this done. But I did that for a solid two plus years. And it caught up with me in the spring of 2009, where over a period of 369 days, so just over a year from May 2009 to May 2010, this happened to me.
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#121 Chief Burnout Officer Michael Levitt: How Surviving a Heart Attack Changed His Approach to Life and Tech
I had a heart attack that should have killed me. 17 weeks later, I was laid off during the Great Recession. A few months later, because I was on heart medication that cost me $1,000 a month out of pocket, had to feed my family and all of that while still looking for a job and not having a lot of income coming in.
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#121 Chief Burnout Officer Michael Levitt: How Surviving a Heart Attack Changed His Approach to Life and Tech
The bank decided to repossess our family vehicle because we didn't have enough money to pay our bills. And then after that happened, we moved to Toronto because they found a work opportunity in Toronto. And then a couple of weeks into it, or actually it was six weeks, after six weeks of working up here, moved the family up here, was getting ready to sell our house back where we had left.
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#121 Chief Burnout Officer Michael Levitt: How Surviving a Heart Attack Changed His Approach to Life and Tech
And I went back there the following weekend after I moved to grab whatever else we forgot. And there was a note on the door and a huge padlock that said foreclosed. So in a year, I had a heart attack, job loss, car repossession, home foreclosure, all in a year. And all those things happened to me because I was burned out. I wasn't taking care of myself. I wasn't resting.
Chief Change Officer
#121 Chief Burnout Officer Michael Levitt: How Surviving a Heart Attack Changed His Approach to Life and Tech
I was making mistakes at work. I was irritable. The poster child for burnout, I would have been on it because I was checking all the boxes for it. Now, after having all of those experiences, some would say, you survived. And I could have chose the path saying, you know what? I'm Superman. I survived it. Here I am. I'm just going to continue on.
Chief Change Officer
#121 Chief Burnout Officer Michael Levitt: How Surviving a Heart Attack Changed His Approach to Life and Tech
But I recognized right away that, especially at the age I was at that time, that's way too young to have a heart attack. I thought, I need to make some changes. And as I started to, and I started to unpack all that had happened, And it wasn't just for the last two years. I did a deep dive and I went back as far back as I can remember to say, okay, why did I make the choices that I made?
Chief Change Officer
#121 Chief Burnout Officer Michael Levitt: How Surviving a Heart Attack Changed His Approach to Life and Tech
What was my goals? What was my motivation for that? And I didn't do it in a critical fashion. I think a lot of people do that when they're looking within. We're often quite critical of ourselves. But I thankfully had the mindset of saying, no, I'm going to look at this like a curiosity of a four-year-old and just say, what's this? Why this? How does that work? So that's how I did it.
Chief Change Officer
#121 Chief Burnout Officer Michael Levitt: How Surviving a Heart Attack Changed His Approach to Life and Tech
I approached it as just an outsider looking and going, okay, why was that important to me to do it that way? Why did I do that? What was I trying to accomplish? Was there something else that caused me to do that or make that decision?
Chief Change Officer
#121 Chief Burnout Officer Michael Levitt: How Surviving a Heart Attack Changed His Approach to Life and Tech
and that took time my only regret not that i have regrets in life but i do have a regret that i didn't work with a therapist before that i have a therapist now and i highly suggest and recommend everyone should have a therapist everyone there's something in your life either now or in the past or potentially in the future that you're going to need to work through.
Chief Change Officer
#121 Chief Burnout Officer Michael Levitt: How Surviving a Heart Attack Changed His Approach to Life and Tech
And if you have somebody that is a therapist, they can help you through that. It's not laying down on the couch and saying what's wrong in your world necessarily, but it's really helpful. So I wish I would have worked with a therapist back then because it would have sped along some things. I still was able to do that. So after recovering,
Chief Change Officer
#121 Chief Burnout Officer Michael Levitt: How Surviving a Heart Attack Changed His Approach to Life and Tech
And after getting back on my feet and finding a new job, just going about things differently, I started noticing and I realized what was going on and that I was burned out. So I started researching burnout and was alarmed. And this was again in 2014, alarmed on the number of cases that I was seeing in burnout in a variety of different sectors, not just healthcare. That was 10 years ago.
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#121 Chief Burnout Officer Michael Levitt: How Surviving a Heart Attack Changed His Approach to Life and Tech
Fast forward to today, burnout is worse than it was 10 years ago. And it's impacting our industry. I thought, you know what, I need to start sharing What I'm discovering about burnouts, I started writing about it on a blog and started talking with people about it, started doing little talks at different conferences and things about it. And then a colleague of mine said, you know what?
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#121 Chief Burnout Officer Michael Levitt: How Surviving a Heart Attack Changed His Approach to Life and Tech
You probably have a consulting business here. That's what I did. I said, okay, let's launch this. And then that led to another colleague saying, launch podcasts and share tidbits on how to prevent burnout. And that's how the original format of my show was. for the first year or so.
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#121 Chief Burnout Officer Michael Levitt: How Surviving a Heart Attack Changed His Approach to Life and Tech
And then I started interviewing guests and meeting great human beings like yourself and a bunch of people across the planet, which has been great. So it spun off into a consulting, content creation, keynote speaking type of entity that I've been working on for years.
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#121 Chief Burnout Officer Michael Levitt: How Surviving a Heart Attack Changed His Approach to Life and Tech
now seven years or actually closer to eight and it's been both very enjoyable but also very sad because nothing would make me happier than for burnout to go away and I don't need to you know talk about it or work with people on it or anything like that I'm thankful that I have the opportunity to but I wish I didn't have to because they wouldn't you know because they're not burned out
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#121 Chief Burnout Officer Michael Levitt: How Surviving a Heart Attack Changed His Approach to Life and Tech
Oh, I definitely agree. It doesn't matter what, as you said, what demographic you're from, your gender, where you're from, what type of work you do, the career, anything like that. It doesn't matter. It attacks you. And it's one of those things that time and time again, I see it. And over the last few years on my keynote talks, I keep track of where I speak. And I always have the industry.
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#121 Chief Burnout Officer Michael Levitt: How Surviving a Heart Attack Changed His Approach to Life and Tech
I spoke legal, education, farming, insurance, finance, retail, manufacturing, nonprofit, for-profit. every industry, you name it. So, yep, I've done something for them, whether it's been a Fortune 500 company or an independent insurance organization outside of Boston or a talk for European leaders. It doesn't matter. Burnout hits everybody and
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#121 Chief Burnout Officer Michael Levitt: How Surviving a Heart Attack Changed His Approach to Life and Tech
It's one of those things that even the World Health Organization recognized burnout as a workplace phenomenon back in 2018 or 2019, prior to all their work with the pandemic. And for them to recognize burnout is a huge issue globally, brought to light, okay, this is not something that's just a thing that's in style right now. This is legitimately a problem for people and
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#121 Chief Burnout Officer Michael Levitt: How Surviving a Heart Attack Changed His Approach to Life and Tech
We need to get to the bottom of it, figure out what it is, identify the signs, which we can easily do. But the thing with burnout recovery or even burnout prevention is the steps that I see work that I used on myself and I've seen others work through them and it's helped me.
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#121 Chief Burnout Officer Michael Levitt: How Surviving a Heart Attack Changed His Approach to Life and Tech
are really easy to do but unfortunately they're also easy not to do and we as humans tend to lean more towards the comfort way of living instead of doing a little bit of challenging work on ourselves and that's that's one of the things that is so hard is when we need to work on us
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#121 Chief Burnout Officer Michael Levitt: How Surviving a Heart Attack Changed His Approach to Life and Tech
For some reason, that's really difficult for some people to do, which is strange in a way, if you think about it, because we're never around anybody else longer than we are with ourselves. So it's an interesting dynamic to see people struggle with trying to do things to make themselves feel better, look better, and be better.
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#121 Chief Burnout Officer Michael Levitt: How Surviving a Heart Attack Changed His Approach to Life and Tech
Yeah, you hit it right on the head when it comes to C-suite executives and C-suite leaders having a difficult time because of the stigma of burnout. There's a mental health component to it. Actually, a lot of people do. In talks and things like that, they'll ask, burnout, especially with the science and all that, it sounds a lot like depression. There are a ton of similarities between the two.
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#140 From Dollars to Smiles: Michael Sakraida’s Playbook for Wealth and Joy – Part Two
I said, then why wouldn't you talk about municipal bonds? There's dead silence. Because he knew exactly what I was talking about. And just completely missed it. I was in my early 20s at the time. It just showed me How many times they get it wrong in the financial media. So they have to get oriented. They have to have greater self-awareness and what's important to them.
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#140 From Dollars to Smiles: Michael Sakraida’s Playbook for Wealth and Joy – Part Two
Most people need to have that orientation, that increase in self-awareness. And one of the things I say in there is, okay, if your candidate advisor isn't asking these three main questions, you should ask them, tell them to ask these questions. So the first is really understand the source of your wealth and how does that affect you emotionally?
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#140 From Dollars to Smiles: Michael Sakraida’s Playbook for Wealth and Joy – Part Two
You have the wealth because you made a business, sold a business, and now you're worrying, I can't screw it up because I don't have another business to sell with it. Did you inherit money? Grandma started a business on the kitchen table and you inherited that money. That comes with a lot of responsibility. I can't waste or do stupid things with grandma's money because she didn't do stupid things.
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#140 From Dollars to Smiles: Michael Sakraida’s Playbook for Wealth and Joy – Part Two
I got to honor her. There's that pressure. So there's all different scenarios affect you from an emotional standpoint. I've had financial advisors yell at me, what does that question have anything to do with me putting a financial plan together? By the very fact you asked that question, you might want to rethink what real value you add to your client.
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#140 From Dollars to Smiles: Michael Sakraida’s Playbook for Wealth and Joy – Part Two
The second question is, what are your financial goals and non-financial goals? What kind of legacy do you want to leave financially, non-financially, the kids, be involved in the community, be involved with your church, want to sail around the world or participate in the Bermuda race? A friend of mine recently did the pilgrimage in Spain. So that took years for him to be able to do that.
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#140 From Dollars to Smiles: Michael Sakraida’s Playbook for Wealth and Joy – Part Two
The third question is, what's been your experience with Wall Street? Is it good? Is it bad? Have you felt ripped off? Have you felt talked down to, clueless? Again, the emotion. Like you said before, hey, Mike, talk about your past because that shapes who you are today.
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#140 From Dollars to Smiles: Michael Sakraida’s Playbook for Wealth and Joy – Part Two
So all those three questions and doing the work, the answering and really the self-awareness from that tells you where you're at today. And that's going to help you make the changes go on the plan.
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#140 From Dollars to Smiles: Michael Sakraida’s Playbook for Wealth and Joy – Part Two
Now, one of the other things, the greatest mistake people make with investing, and this comes into play with risk tolerance, is they look at their investments as just a jumble of money and stocks, bonds, whatever. They don't look at it as an extension of their values, who they are, their hopes, their dreams.
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#140 From Dollars to Smiles: Michael Sakraida’s Playbook for Wealth and Joy – Part Two
And there's studies, I know at least one academic study on this, and I'm sure there's others, that the more you view your investments as an extension of you and your values or your faith or both, the less likely you're going to fall for the fear and greed emotions that we talked about.
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#140 From Dollars to Smiles: Michael Sakraida’s Playbook for Wealth and Joy – Part Two
Wanting to increase your risk at the top of the market where you have the greatest chance of the market to go down. And that fear, after the market goes down, you sell where you have the greatest odds, when you have the greatest odds of the market going back up. Financial professionals make this fall for the same fear and greed.
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#140 From Dollars to Smiles: Michael Sakraida’s Playbook for Wealth and Joy – Part Two
So don't think I'm talking down to the non-financial professionals listening. Many advisor, many CEO of a bank or CEO of insurance company, what have you, has fallen for fear and greed. If not, you wouldn't have had all these companies that had to be bailed out during the Great Recession.
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#140 From Dollars to Smiles: Michael Sakraida’s Playbook for Wealth and Joy – Part Two
You wouldn't have had all these brokerage firms or investment banking firms that went out of business because of that. You have to look at it, those kind of three key things. So anything based on emotions is not a do-it-yourself project. It's not this quick thing that I could do an Instagram post and everyone's so goody like some of these financial influencers.
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#140 From Dollars to Smiles: Michael Sakraida’s Playbook for Wealth and Joy – Part Two
And that's why honestly, I had to write the book was to help these people start this journey and then get them to the point where they're able to take that next step in the journey.
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#140 From Dollars to Smiles: Michael Sakraida’s Playbook for Wealth and Joy – Part Two
For me, financial independence is where you don't have to work, but you still work because you get a lot out of it. You're not doing it for the paycheck. You're doing it for the enjoyment. Yes, there happens to be a paycheck that comes along, but if all of a sudden there's a pandemic or your company goes out of business or just for health reasons, you can no longer work,
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#140 From Dollars to Smiles: Michael Sakraida’s Playbook for Wealth and Joy – Part Two
You don't have to worry about paying the bills. You don't have to worry about having money to leave, have that financial legacy. Independent wealth is both being able to leave a financial legacy, but also a non-financial legacy. that the non-financial legacies is important, if not more important than the financial legacy. To me, you die and you have 20,000 left in the bank.
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#140 From Dollars to Smiles: Michael Sakraida’s Playbook for Wealth and Joy – Part Two
To me, it's not financial independence. That's just being lucky that you didn't outlive your money.
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#140 From Dollars to Smiles: Michael Sakraida’s Playbook for Wealth and Joy – Part Two
I think the whole risk tolerance, how that's handled by the wealth management industry is awful. They have a new client, do a risk tolerance questionnaire, just 10 or so questions. Voila, you're conservative, you're moderate, you're aggressive, and that's how we're going to manage your portfolio. That's as much a CYA approach.
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#140 From Dollars to Smiles: Michael Sakraida’s Playbook for Wealth and Joy – Part Two
activity that the compliance wants to do, but they're not explaining what this means. If you're a conservative person, if the market goes down, say 10% or 15% to your investments, your overall worth on paper,
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#140 From Dollars to Smiles: Michael Sakraida’s Playbook for Wealth and Joy – Part Two
goes down 10 or 15 percent you're going to be more upset more stress maybe even unable to sleep at night than the moderate risk person but they don't explain okay here's what this means for you in terms of achieving your financial goal your financial legacy that you want to have
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#140 From Dollars to Smiles: Michael Sakraida’s Playbook for Wealth and Joy – Part Two
I did an analysis on data provided to me by a financial firm that over a 32-year period, if you're that moderate risk person, advisor has to say to you, you're less likely statistically to reach your financial goal. I had clients like this when I worked directly, they were super wealthy. They had generational wealth. For them to be conservative, didn't matter.
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#140 From Dollars to Smiles: Michael Sakraida’s Playbook for Wealth and Joy – Part Two
But other clients I had that were in that accumulation phase, being conservative or moderate does matter. The advisor needs to have that conversation in very simple terms, not financial advisor speak, not behavioral finance speak, but again, about their emotions. You need to then say, are you okay with this? Some people say, yeah, I just want to be conservative. Yeah, I want to be moderate.
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#140 From Dollars to Smiles: Michael Sakraida’s Playbook for Wealth and Joy – Part Two
But others say, no, I'm not okay. How am I going to have this type of legacy? Some advisors do this, and I got this idea, frankly, from an advisor. And when I first heard it years ago, I was like, of course you should do this. So what he does is they say, no, okay, here's what we're going to do. We're going to work together.
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#140 From Dollars to Smiles: Michael Sakraida’s Playbook for Wealth and Joy – Part Two
It's not going to happen overnight, but it's going to get you further out on that risk tolerance continuum. So that you're going to go from conservative say to a moderate, and then eventually down to aggressive. Now this is only the client wants to do that. And again, with the client understanding this isn't, you can't snap your fingers and have this change happen overnight.
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#140 From Dollars to Smiles: Michael Sakraida’s Playbook for Wealth and Joy – Part Two
So the other problem with the whole risk tolerance is that it's the questions are taken at a point in time. and a point in time with the economy and with the markets. So you're going to have people that, oh yeah, I'm aggressive after the market's been up and a long bull market creates a lot of aggressive investors. And so now all of a sudden the market goes down even 10, 15%.
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#140 From Dollars to Smiles: Michael Sakraida’s Playbook for Wealth and Joy – Part Two
And some of these aggressive people, their whole risk tolerance just changed. They're flipping out. They're upset. What should I do? I should sell. I should sell everything. Dive into the bunker and wait till the bombs stop going off. So the advisors, though, oh, Al's aggressive. I don't need to call him. I don't need to check in on him. And if he's having a problem, he'll call me.
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#140 From Dollars to Smiles: Michael Sakraida’s Playbook for Wealth and Joy – Part Two
Sometimes one don't know when the fear and greed emotions are kicking in. And number two, they might be embarrassed to go from, yeah, I know I told you I was aggressive and I know my survey said I was aggressive, but right now I'm really panicking.
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#140 From Dollars to Smiles: Michael Sakraida’s Playbook for Wealth and Joy – Part Two
And so it's an instrument, the risk tolerance survey, the setting isn't fully being used for the benefit of the clients and also for the benefit of the advisors.
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#140 From Dollars to Smiles: Michael Sakraida’s Playbook for Wealth and Joy – Part Two
First of all, with them, they should either be licensed and regulated like financial advisors or put out of business is my opinion. The regulators, I don't care what is being regulated, are awful. with handling new technology. So all they see is it's this cool technology, social media, and these people providing some help.
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#140 From Dollars to Smiles: Michael Sakraida’s Playbook for Wealth and Joy – Part Two
And it's different than a financial advisor's charging a fee or getting commissions and all. They're just awful with it. But you look at Bitcoin and all that, there's still no regulation on that. It just dropped the ball with that. So if I'm on Instagram,
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#140 From Dollars to Smiles: Michael Sakraida’s Playbook for Wealth and Joy – Part Two
And I have these testimonials from people who did my coaching and they saved X amount of money and say, oh, this person, they save an average of 5,000 a year and increase their income by an average of 20,000 a year. And the FTC, which they're doing, knocks on my door, says, oh, we saw this posting. We need to see all this. We need to see who you did, who did this, what each person's result was.
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#140 From Dollars to Smiles: Michael Sakraida’s Playbook for Wealth and Joy – Part Two
And if not, then you get a nice fine from the FTC. No one's doing that with these people. whatever, internet influencers. So if I have to worry about what I say and get in trouble or I get in trouble, if a financial advisor has to worry about what they say and do and show any conflicts of interest, for example, then I don't get it. I don't get why all these financial influencers...
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#140 From Dollars to Smiles: Michael Sakraida’s Playbook for Wealth and Joy – Part Two
are just allowed to do what they do. So that's maybe not an answer you want to hear, but this is serious stuff. This is serious stuff with people's money. This is their livelihood. There's a reason the Balfour guy, whatever, the Wolf of Wall Street guy, which was a real live person was put out of business. that they were stealing money from people.
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#140 From Dollars to Smiles: Michael Sakraida’s Playbook for Wealth and Joy – Part Two
There's a reason advisors and broker dealers have compliance people, to make sure that everything is done. An advisor cannot even send out a mass email without compliance, reviewing it, filing it. And when they get audited, going to see, okay, they have to see all that. This is my opinion. I don't care if there's some good advice out there. I don't care if there's good intentions out there.
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#140 From Dollars to Smiles: Michael Sakraida’s Playbook for Wealth and Joy – Part Two
All I know is There's a lot of bad actors. There's a lot of stupid people. You talk about the financial media, how you'll read an article and kind of scratch your head. And that the advice in my book, I call some of them the financial media smut club. They just focus on tantalizing things that get you excited, but really aren't good advice. And a lot of these people are
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#140 From Dollars to Smiles: Michael Sakraida’s Playbook for Wealth and Joy – Part Two
They don't know what they're writing about. A recent article I read on restaurants with inflation. So the financial writer was talking about how expensive everything is for these restaurants. They have to charge more. The financial reporter said, I don't know why that would still be an issue because inflation's down. Inflation's not down. The inflation rate is down.
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#140 From Dollars to Smiles: Michael Sakraida’s Playbook for Wealth and Joy – Part Two
And so either that reporter knows that they're lying or that reporter has no clue what they're writing about. I remember there was an article years ago. There's an article in the Wall Street Journal. The author completely missed the point. The article was about if you have a windfall and you're going to buy bonds, what do you buy? It's all corporate bonds, treasuries.
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#140 From Dollars to Smiles: Michael Sakraida’s Playbook for Wealth and Joy – Part Two
I called up the writer of the article. I didn't care. That person wrote for the Wall Street Journal. They didn't intimidate me. They probably went to a better college than I did. I don't care. And I said, okay, if this person has this huge windfall, now do you think that would probably guarantee that they're in the top tax bracket? Yeah, of course, duh.
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#139 From Dollars to Smiles: Michael Sakraida’s Playbook for Wealth and Joy – Part One
Inflation hasn't impacted them on an emotional level. It's an inconvenience. But it damaged their lives, and soon we're seeing it now with the employment numbers. Soon there's going to be more and more layoffs, especially in the tech area and in other areas. And it's not the lack of money. It's that I don't have... It's my fault. It's something I'm doing wrong. Look at all these other people.
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#139 From Dollars to Smiles: Michael Sakraida’s Playbook for Wealth and Joy – Part One
I made a poor choice in becoming a coder. Whatever it might be. And, oh, I wish I could go back. Coulda, woulda, shoulda is... an awful feeling to have instead of just looking forward and saying, all right, this is the lot I have right now. Let me just figure out a way. Take inflation, for example. With that, I have the three E's. how you perceive.
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#139 From Dollars to Smiles: Michael Sakraida’s Playbook for Wealth and Joy – Part One
So you're looking at it and saying, okay, this is actually an opportunity. Where there's crisis, there's opportunity for me to improve my life, get me to focus on what am I wasting money on? What should I do differently? Should I have a side job? What have you? What things can I do? Instead of sending my kid to a private college, doing an in-state college where it's either free or very low cost.
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#139 From Dollars to Smiles: Michael Sakraida’s Playbook for Wealth and Joy – Part One
Then coming up with the conceiving ideas of how am I going to implement all these changes? And then the creativity of that and doing that. Now, so this person is going to be happier. So they still don't have the money. They still are getting killed by inflation. but they are now taking control.
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#139 From Dollars to Smiles: Michael Sakraida’s Playbook for Wealth and Joy – Part One
Most stress, most depression comes with people feel that they don't have control of what's going on around them. So now let's give them control. Now you don't see any of this anywhere. You don't see articles on this. You don't see Wall Street saying, you know what, we're going to donate and create a program to help people.
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#139 From Dollars to Smiles: Michael Sakraida’s Playbook for Wealth and Joy – Part One
Like Elon Musk donating satellites for whatever, helping Ukraine, helping flood victims in North Carolina. Wall Street doesn't do that. And so that's why it's a little complicated answer to a simple question, but when we lose control, We stress, we're unhappy. Money helps us have control.
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#139 From Dollars to Smiles: Michael Sakraida’s Playbook for Wealth and Joy – Part One
In the absence of money, we need to find other ways to get that control so that we're happier, we're not frozen, that we're actually moving forward. Don't let a good crisis go to waste.
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#139 From Dollars to Smiles: Michael Sakraida’s Playbook for Wealth and Joy – Part One
It's everything. It changes everything. That's why the first chapter of my book is called Zen and the Art of Change. The greatest misunderstanding with Wall Street and the financial media is that they don't understand that the three E's of investing are emotions. And so it's the same with change. So we have to have this Zen-like state of calm. First of all, don't have that state.
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#139 From Dollars to Smiles: Michael Sakraida’s Playbook for Wealth and Joy – Part One
We're going to be holding that golf club too tight and we're not going to get much distance in swing. But there's always so much time and there's always so much emotional energy to changing. You want to change. Focus, have that laser focus, if you will, on the changes you should make and ignore the ones you can't change. So your personality changes. You're going to try to change your personality?
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#139 From Dollars to Smiles: Michael Sakraida’s Playbook for Wealth and Joy – Part One
No, it's just not going to happen. Work with your personality. Don't waste time trying to change your personality. Then there's the change that you can and should make. And then there's the one that also trips up a lot of people, waste that emotional capital. And that is change you can do, but don't waste your time on it because it's like triage.
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#139 From Dollars to Smiles: Michael Sakraida’s Playbook for Wealth and Joy – Part One
You look at the old MASH TV show, MASH actual hospitals in Korea, you couldn't care for every soldier that came in injured. So you had to say, this one I could save, but it's going to take three hours. And in that time, I could have saved nothing. six other soldiers. And if I do this person, save them, then those six soldiers are going to die.
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#139 From Dollars to Smiles: Michael Sakraida’s Playbook for Wealth and Joy – Part One
It's that triage you need to look at and say, yeah, I can do that, but it's going to take too long. It's going to take too much emotional capital to do it. So now we have this smaller focused types of change that we can and should do, and then set about doing that. And too many times we try to change our outlook, change our view. I've done some work with the whole ESG movement.
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#139 From Dollars to Smiles: Michael Sakraida’s Playbook for Wealth and Joy – Part One
The criticism I have of it is too many times I've tried to change people's minds, change their view. No, what you first do is you change people's actions. And then by changing your actions, getting up earlier, doing, allocating certain time, reading certain books, hiring somebody to be your accountability partner and to generate ideas, you want to do that.
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#139 From Dollars to Smiles: Michael Sakraida’s Playbook for Wealth and Joy – Part One
And then through those changes, your outlook's going to change. Your perception of things, it's actions change thoughts. You can't change your thoughts very easily without doing that.
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#139 From Dollars to Smiles: Michael Sakraida’s Playbook for Wealth and Joy – Part One
And looking at my journey to where I am today with the mission of trying to help over a million individuals and their advisors, there's really three key segments to it. And the overriding theme in each of those segments is an extension of the Robert Frost poem of taking the road less traveled. I guess I took the road faster.
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#139 From Dollars to Smiles: Michael Sakraida’s Playbook for Wealth and Joy – Part One
that wasn't completed and the parts that were completed had some potholes and other damage to it. And so the first part of my journey to how I got here today was the developmental years. My childhood, I had lots of mentors. and guidance and muses from people both alive and dead. Had two great-grandfathers who were very successful businessmen. One who came over from Eastern Europe, civil engineer.
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#139 From Dollars to Smiles: Michael Sakraida’s Playbook for Wealth and Joy – Part One
So he did build roads, actually, and made his fortune and went back to the old country, which was unusual. And then another great grandfather who was in banking and finance and extremely wealthy and unfortunately was killed when his bank was robbed back the Bonnie and Clyde days with that. But my childhood, my neighborhood, neighbors, my parents, kind of what came out of that was
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#139 From Dollars to Smiles: Michael Sakraida’s Playbook for Wealth and Joy – Part One
Not, I can't do this. I'm not able. How can I possibly do this? It was more, why can't I do it? And would sit around with some neighbors at our beach club in the south shore of Long Island. And I would listen to their stories because I always had that curiosity. And in those stories and just observations, I saw that these were people, yes, they had the money.
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#139 From Dollars to Smiles: Michael Sakraida’s Playbook for Wealth and Joy – Part One
but they had the balance and they had the joy and fun in their lives. They had a range of interests that, besides being CEO of a bank, they also had a jazz that they orchestrated music and performed. Even in college, making sure I took not just the business courses, the finance, accounting, but also taking philosophy, having a history major. And there's a lot...
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#139 From Dollars to Smiles: Michael Sakraida’s Playbook for Wealth and Joy – Part One
that people don't understand about history in terms of the value of it, because it's not just remembering regurgitating dates and locations and activities, but what led to it, what really caused it. With history, You have the advantage of that time so that you can have now the revisionist, the more accurate view of that history. So I applied all this to that, which took me to my second stage.
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#139 From Dollars to Smiles: Michael Sakraida’s Playbook for Wealth and Joy – Part One
And that was the kind of the learner's permit, as someone told me at my beach club. And that is going out there, working for companies. When I started, I had two job offers. One was with a brokerage firm and being a stockbroker. The other was investment management firm.
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#139 From Dollars to Smiles: Michael Sakraida’s Playbook for Wealth and Joy – Part One
brokerage firm paid more, but I didn't see the same growth and development and didn't like the whole, at the time, brokerage model. So I took the lower paying job and was very successful with that. Again, because I didn't know I was too young. We had this mutual fund that was started to take advantage of foreign tax credits for U.S.-based companies.
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#139 From Dollars to Smiles: Michael Sakraida’s Playbook for Wealth and Joy – Part One
We started cold and had all these companies interested, but no one wanted to be first. And so I'm doing a cold call to a treasurer of a large corporation in the Northeast. He hung up the phone on me and I called him back. I said, you just made a big mistake.
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#139 From Dollars to Smiles: Michael Sakraida’s Playbook for Wealth and Joy – Part One
took him off guard i said yeah i understand nine out of ten times person calling you doesn't have anything really unique and that's not going to really help you well this time it's i'm that one out of ten and so he was like okay go on and he not only was one of the larger investors in the fund, but he was the first one. So everyone else was standing around the pool waiting for someone to jump in.
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#139 From Dollars to Smiles: Michael Sakraida’s Playbook for Wealth and Joy – Part One
He's the one that jumped in, then everyone else jumped into the pool. So I had this ability through looking at the human element
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#139 From Dollars to Smiles: Michael Sakraida’s Playbook for Wealth and Joy – Part One
of sales the human element of working with financial advisors getting sub-advisory work with large mutual fund companies and other institutions that human element i quickly realized was make it about them not about their company but what do they want in life and everyone wants more money they want books
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#139 From Dollars to Smiles: Michael Sakraida’s Playbook for Wealth and Joy – Part One
balance or time and they want more joy or social wealth and so trying to show that to them this big discovery incorporating this into all these programs and huge success with this but Total fights every step of the way because I was the change agent.
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#139 From Dollars to Smiles: Michael Sakraida’s Playbook for Wealth and Joy – Part One
And by me being successful in implementing this change in the eyes of these people that were there for years and years, I made them look like failures, that they couldn't do it and this non-insurance guy had to do it. And after a while, I got tired of
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#139 From Dollars to Smiles: Michael Sakraida’s Playbook for Wealth and Joy – Part One
of working at these different companies doing wonderful things for them for their financial professionals that we sold to for their clients but always being sniped at and so i just got tired of always fighting that fight and Actually having a target, the more successful I was, the more I helped my companies, the bigger the target was.
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#139 From Dollars to Smiles: Michael Sakraida’s Playbook for Wealth and Joy – Part One
So then decided to go into the third stage and that is having consulting business and going out there and working with different financial companies. It's really funny. As an employee, they swipe at you. They don't want to listen to you, question everything you say. As a consultant, all of a sudden now they listen and they want to do what you have.
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#139 From Dollars to Smiles: Michael Sakraida’s Playbook for Wealth and Joy – Part One
everything based on what the three key things people want and taken into account. It's money, balance, and joy and taken into account their emotions and just human nature. And so many times I saw people that, oh, it's all logical. No, it's not logical. And I could talk more about that later. But it's about human nature. It's about people's individual needs.
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#139 From Dollars to Smiles: Michael Sakraida’s Playbook for Wealth and Joy – Part One
So that has led me up to where I am right now.
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#139 From Dollars to Smiles: Michael Sakraida’s Playbook for Wealth and Joy – Part One
Sure, money buys happiness when it's part of this three-part ecosystem. And that three-part ecosystem's working in harmony, working holistically. And the three parts of money, monetary wealth, second is time wealth, and the third is the social wealth or the happiness or joy. So we all know the stories of people all they do is work.
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#139 From Dollars to Smiles: Michael Sakraida’s Playbook for Wealth and Joy – Part One
And the thing is, especially my generation, the boomer generation, had a lot of people like that. But the thing I learned from the greatest generation, my parents' generation, was no, you had to have that balance. You had to have that joy. You You had to have that range of a personality and not just be the single mind in this focus. So money per se doesn't buy happiness.
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#139 From Dollars to Smiles: Michael Sakraida’s Playbook for Wealth and Joy – Part One
You can't go to the happiness store, but it helps you. You can hire someone to do the cleaning, mow in the lawn. different painting, hire, buy pre-made food, or go to restaurants versus cooking everything from scratch. So that can buy you the time, then the joy that comes from it. You can get involved with volunteer work, being part of the community.
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#139 From Dollars to Smiles: Michael Sakraida’s Playbook for Wealth and Joy – Part One
But the great thing is each helps the other so that the people who are very successful, the time part, helps them make more money. The joy part helps them make more money. So it's this wonderful merry-go-round, if you will. You have to have that range. You have to have all that in your life because otherwise it's just not a joyful life. Why bother?
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#139 From Dollars to Smiles: Michael Sakraida’s Playbook for Wealth and Joy – Part One
When I was at this big insurance company, my boss was just this tightly wound person After you knew him for 10 minutes, this is not a guy that really was fully enjoying life. And that the old school of, oh, work is work. I put in the hours, I do the work. I really don't like it or I tense up and stress out about it. Then I go home and then I could... have fulfillment.
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#139 From Dollars to Smiles: Michael Sakraida’s Playbook for Wealth and Joy – Part One
If you look at some of the great people out there, they are much more broad doing activities. They start with not, I want to make money, but I want to help people. I want to change the world. Steve Jobs, I want to change the world. That's what he wanted to do. It wasn't, oh, I want to be rich. Now, the money part, of course, comes with it, but
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#139 From Dollars to Smiles: Michael Sakraida’s Playbook for Wealth and Joy – Part One
When you look at some of those leaders, you look at Elon Musk, who will, at the drop of a hat with flooding in North Carolina, say, hey, I'll reassign my satellites to help with communications. He's not doing that for the money. He's not doing that for the publicity. He's doing that to be a good citizen, to help people. So it's just a much more enjoyable life. It's not nine to five of misery.
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#139 From Dollars to Smiles: Michael Sakraida’s Playbook for Wealth and Joy – Part One
clock out and then have joy. But why can't you have that joy? Why can't you have that fulfillment and meaning in your job as well? If you could do that, you're going to be better at your job. better able to help people. It would be better for you to fit and really enjoy yourself. And one of the things I saw with a lot of financial advisors was they were holding the golf club really tight.
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#139 From Dollars to Smiles: Michael Sakraida’s Playbook for Wealth and Joy – Part One
They didn't take into account, they became advisors because they love math or they love investments. And The advisors that I work well with were the ones that became advisors because they love their clients. They love how they could go from having somebody be a total stranger to a great friend, client and great friend within months.
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#139 From Dollars to Smiles: Michael Sakraida’s Playbook for Wealth and Joy – Part One
and the kind of the rush you get when you realize that your client trusts you. So these are all the things with me, my upbringing, that this is how people should work and that holistic wealth or the total wealth with everything. It's so simple. Things that really help are simple.
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#139 From Dollars to Smiles: Michael Sakraida’s Playbook for Wealth and Joy – Part One
So you take out the wealth component. Why are they unhappy? They don't necessarily have to be unhappy, but they are unhappy because we have Wall Street, we have advertising. Look at what's been going on with inflation. So we have this huge cumulative inflation. The American population went from like 40% living from paycheck to 70%.
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#139 From Dollars to Smiles: Michael Sakraida’s Playbook for Wealth and Joy – Part One
And do you really see anything from Wall Street, from the politicians, from the financial media, just about what a devastating effect this is having on people and just the psychological and emotional effect? So these people feel like. No one knows them. No one appreciates or understands what they're going through.
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#139 From Dollars to Smiles: Michael Sakraida’s Playbook for Wealth and Joy – Part One
I did a cartoon on Instagram yesterday, making fun of this, how you're supposed to be happy. And somebody commented, I thought I was the only one that felt this way of being alone. People not understanding what I'm going through. That loneliness, that feeling that, oh, I'm doing something wrong because why? The financial media, they're that top 10%. Wall Street, the top 10%.
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#367 Michael Sakraida: Money, Media, and the Myths That Keep Us Stuck—Part Two
I said, then why wouldn't you talk about municipal bonds? There's dead silence. Because he knew exactly what I was talking about. And just completely missed it. I was in my early 20s at the time. It just showed me how many times they get it wrong in the financial media. So they have to get oriented. They have to have greater self-awareness.
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#367 Michael Sakraida: Money, Media, and the Myths That Keep Us Stuck—Part Two
And what's important to them, most people need to have that orientation, that increase in self-awareness. And one of the things I say in there is, okay, if your candidate advisor isn't asking these three main questions, you should... Ask them, tell them to ask these questions. So the first is really understand the source of your wealth. And how does that affect you emotionally?
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#367 Michael Sakraida: Money, Media, and the Myths That Keep Us Stuck—Part Two
You have the wealth because you made a business, sold a business, and now you're worrying, I can't screw it up because I don't have another business to sell with it. Did you inherit money? Grandma started a business on the kitchen table and you inherited that money. That comes with a lot of responsibility. I can't waste or do stupid things with grandma's money because she didn't do stupid things.
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#367 Michael Sakraida: Money, Media, and the Myths That Keep Us Stuck—Part Two
I got to honor her. There's that pressure. So there's all different scenarios affect you from an emotional standpoint. I've had financial advisors yell at me, what does that question have anything to do with me putting a financial plan together? By the very fact you asked that question, you might want to rethink what real value you add to your client. The second question is,
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#367 Michael Sakraida: Money, Media, and the Myths That Keep Us Stuck—Part Two
What are your financial goals and non-financial goals? What kind of legacy do you want to leave financially, non-financially? The kids, being involved in the community, being involved with your church, want to sail around the world or participate in the Bermuda race. A friend of mine recently did the pilgrimage in Spain. So that took years for him to be able to do that.
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#367 Michael Sakraida: Money, Media, and the Myths That Keep Us Stuck—Part Two
The third question is, what's been your experience with Wall Street? Is it good? Is it bad? Have you felt ripped off? Have you felt talked down to, clueless? Again, the emotion. Like you said before, hey, Mike, talk about your past because that shapes who you are today.
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#367 Michael Sakraida: Money, Media, and the Myths That Keep Us Stuck—Part Two
So all those three questions and doing the work, the answering and really the self-awareness from that tells you where you're at today. And that's going to help you make the changes go on the plan.
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#367 Michael Sakraida: Money, Media, and the Myths That Keep Us Stuck—Part Two
Now, one of the other things, the greatest mistake people make with investing, and this comes into play with risk tolerance, is they look at their investments as just a jumble of money and stocks, bonds, whatever. They don't look at it as an extension of their values, who they are, their hopes, their dreams.
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#367 Michael Sakraida: Money, Media, and the Myths That Keep Us Stuck—Part Two
And there's studies, I know at least one academic study on this, and I'm sure there's others, that the more you view your investments as an extension of you and your values or your faith or both, the less likely you're going to fall for the fear and greed emotions that we talked about.
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#367 Michael Sakraida: Money, Media, and the Myths That Keep Us Stuck—Part Two
Wanting to increase your risk at the top of the market where you have the greatest chance of the market to go down. And that fear, after the market goes down, you sell where you have the greatest odds, when you have the greatest odds of the market going back up. Financial professionals fall for the same fear and greed. So don't think I'm talking down to the non-financial professionals listening.
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#367 Michael Sakraida: Money, Media, and the Myths That Keep Us Stuck—Part Two
Many advisors, many CEOs of banks or CEOs of insurance companies, what have you, fall for fear and greed. If not, you wouldn't have had all these companies that had to be bailed out during the Great Recession. You wouldn't have had all these brokerage firms or investment banking firms that went out of business because of that. You have to look at it, those kind of three key things.
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#367 Michael Sakraida: Money, Media, and the Myths That Keep Us Stuck—Part Two
So anything based on emotions is not a do-it-yourself project. It's not this quick thing that I could do an Instagram post and everyone's so goody like some of these financial influencers. And that's why, honestly, I had to write the book was to help these people start this journey and then get them to the point where they're able to take that next step in the journey.
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#367 Michael Sakraida: Money, Media, and the Myths That Keep Us Stuck—Part Two
For me, financial independence is where you don't have to work, but you still work because you get a lot out of it. You're not doing it for the paycheck, you're doing it for the enjoyment. Yes, there happens to be a paycheck that comes along, but if all of a sudden there's a pandemic or your company goes out of business, or just for health reasons, you can no longer work,
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#367 Michael Sakraida: Money, Media, and the Myths That Keep Us Stuck—Part Two
You don't have to worry about paying the bills. You don't have to worry about having money to leave, have that financial legacy. Independent wealth is both being able to leave a financial legacy, but also a non-financial legacy. That the non-financial legacies is important, if not more important than the financial legacy. To me, you die and you have $20,000 left in the bank.
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#367 Michael Sakraida: Money, Media, and the Myths That Keep Us Stuck—Part Two
To me, it's not financial independence. That's just being lucky that you didn't outlive your money.
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#367 Michael Sakraida: Money, Media, and the Myths That Keep Us Stuck—Part Two
I think the whole risk tolerance, how that's handled by the wealth management industry is awful. They have a new client, do a risk tolerance questionnaire, just 10 or so questions. Voila, you're conservative, you're moderate, you're aggressive, and that's how we're going to manage your portfolio. That's as much a CYA approach.
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#367 Michael Sakraida: Money, Media, and the Myths That Keep Us Stuck—Part Two
that the compliance wants to do, but they're not explaining what this means. If you're a conservative person, if the market goes down, say 10%, where 15% to your investment, your overall worth on paper goes down 10 or 15%, you're going to be more upset, more stressed, maybe even unable to sleep at night than the moderate risk person.
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#367 Michael Sakraida: Money, Media, and the Myths That Keep Us Stuck—Part Two
but they don't explain, okay, here's what this means for you in terms of achieving your financial goal, your financial legacy that you want to have. I did an analysis on data provided to me by a financial firm that over a 32 year period, if you're that moderate risk person, The advisor has to say to you, you're less likely, statistically, to reach your financial goal.
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#367 Michael Sakraida: Money, Media, and the Myths That Keep Us Stuck—Part Two
I had clients like this when I worked directly. They were super wealthy. They had generational problems. For them, to be conservative didn't matter. But other clients I had that were in that accumulation phase, being conservative or moderate does matter.
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#367 Michael Sakraida: Money, Media, and the Myths That Keep Us Stuck—Part Two
The advisor needs to have that conversation in very simple terms, not financial advisor speak, not behavioral finance speak, but again, about their emotions. You need to then say, are you okay with this? Some people say, yeah, I just want to be conservative. Yeah, I want to be moderate. But others say, no, I'm not okay. How am I going to have this type of legacy?
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#367 Michael Sakraida: Money, Media, and the Myths That Keep Us Stuck—Part Two
Some advisors do this, and I got this idea, frankly, from an advisor. And when I first heard it years ago, I was like, of course you should do this. So what he does is they say, no, okay, here's what we're going to do. We're going to work together. It's not going to happen overnight, but it's going to get you further out on that risk tolerance continuum.
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#367 Michael Sakraida: Money, Media, and the Myths That Keep Us Stuck—Part Two
So that you're going to go from conservative, say, to a moderate, and then eventually down to aggressive. Now, this is only the client wants to do that. And again, with the client understanding this isn't, you can't snap your fingers and have this change happen overnight. So the other problem with the whole risk tolerance is that it's, the questions are taken at a point in time
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#367 Michael Sakraida: Money, Media, and the Myths That Keep Us Stuck—Part Two
and a point in time with the economy and with the markets. So you're going to have people that, oh yeah, I'm aggressive after the market's been up and a long bull market creates a lot of aggressive investors. And so now all of a sudden the market goes down even 10, 15%. And some of these aggressive people, their whole risk tolerance just changed. They're flipping out. They're upset.
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#367 Michael Sakraida: Money, Media, and the Myths That Keep Us Stuck—Part Two
What should I do? I should sell. I should sell everything. Dive into the bunker and wait till the bombs stop going off. So the advisors, though, oh, Al's aggressive. I don't need to call him. I don't need to check in on him.
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#367 Michael Sakraida: Money, Media, and the Myths That Keep Us Stuck—Part Two
and if he's having a problem he'll call me sometimes one don't know when they're the fear and greed emotions are kicking in and number two they might be embarrassed to go from yeah i know i told you i was aggressive and i know my survey said i was aggressive but right now i'm really panicking
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#367 Michael Sakraida: Money, Media, and the Myths That Keep Us Stuck—Part Two
And so it's an instrument, the risk tolerance survey, the setting isn't fully being used for the benefit of the clients and also for the benefit of the advisors.
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#367 Michael Sakraida: Money, Media, and the Myths That Keep Us Stuck—Part Two
First of all, with them, they should either be licensed and regulated like financial advisors or put out of business is my opinion. The regulators, I don't care what is being regulated, are awful. with handling new technology. So all they see is it's this cool technology, social media, and these people providing some help.
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#367 Michael Sakraida: Money, Media, and the Myths That Keep Us Stuck—Part Two
And it's different than a financial advisor's charging a fee or getting commissions and all. They're just awful with it. But you look at Bitcoin and all that, there's still no regulation on that. It just dropped the ball with that. So if I'm on Instagram,
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#367 Michael Sakraida: Money, Media, and the Myths That Keep Us Stuck—Part Two
And I have these testimonials from people who did my coaching and they saved X amount of money and say, oh, this person, they save an average of 5,000 a year and increase their income by an average of 20,000 a year. And the FTC, which they're doing, knocks on my door, says, oh, we saw this posting. We need to see all this. We need to see who did this, what each person's result was.
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#367 Michael Sakraida: Money, Media, and the Myths That Keep Us Stuck—Part Two
And if not, then you get a nice fine from the FTC. No one's doing that with these people. whatever, internet influencers. So if I have to worry about what I say and get in trouble or I get in trouble, if a financial advisor has to worry about what they say and do and show any conflicts of interest, for example, then I don't get it. I don't get why all these financial influencers...
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#367 Michael Sakraida: Money, Media, and the Myths That Keep Us Stuck—Part Two
are just allowed to do what they do. So that's maybe not an answer you want to hear, but this is serious stuff. This is serious stuff with people's money. This is their livelihood. There's a reason the Balfour guy, whatever the Wolf of wall street guy, which was a real life person was put out of business. that they were stealing money from people.
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#367 Michael Sakraida: Money, Media, and the Myths That Keep Us Stuck—Part Two
There's a reason advisors and broker-dealers have compliance people, to make sure that everything is done. An advisor cannot even send out a mass email without compliance reviewing it, filing it, and when they get audited, gonna see, okay, they have to see all that. This is my opinion. I don't care if there's some good advice out there. I don't care if there's good intentions out there.
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#367 Michael Sakraida: Money, Media, and the Myths That Keep Us Stuck—Part Two
All I know is There's a lot of bad actors. There's a lot of stupid people. You talk about the financial media, how you'll read an article and kind of scratch your head. And that the advice in my book, I call some of them the financial media smut club. They just focus on tantalizing things that get you excited, but really aren't good advice. And a lot of these people are
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#367 Michael Sakraida: Money, Media, and the Myths That Keep Us Stuck—Part Two
They don't know what they're writing about. A recent article I read on restaurants with inflation. So the financial writer was talking about how expensive everything is for these restaurants. They have to charge more. The financial reporter said, I don't know why that would still be an issue because inflation's down. Inflation's not down. The inflation rate is down.
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#367 Michael Sakraida: Money, Media, and the Myths That Keep Us Stuck—Part Two
And so either that reporter knows that they're lying or that reporter has no clue what they're writing about. I remember there was an article years ago, there's an article in the wall street journal. The author completely missed the point. The article was about if you have a windfall and you're going to buy bonds, what do you buy? It's all corporate bonds, treasuries.
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#367 Michael Sakraida: Money, Media, and the Myths That Keep Us Stuck—Part Two
I called up the writer of the article. I didn't care. That person wrote for the Wall Street Journal. They didn't intimidate me. They probably went to a better college than I did. I don't care. And I said, okay, if this person has this huge windfall, now do you think that would probably guarantee that they're in the top tax bracket? Yeah, of course, duh.
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#366 Michael Sakraida: Rethinking Wealth, Balance, and What Really Makes Us Happy—Part One
Inflation hasn't impacted them on an emotional level. It's an inconvenience. but it damaged their lives. And soon we're seeing it now with the employment numbers. Soon there's gonna be more and more layoffs, especially in the tech area and in other areas. And it's not the lack of money. It's that I don't have, it's my fault. It's something I'm doing wrong. Look at all these other people.
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#366 Michael Sakraida: Rethinking Wealth, Balance, and What Really Makes Us Happy—Part One
I made a poor choice and becoming a coder, whatever it might be. And oh, I wish I can go back. Coulda, woulda, shoulda is... an awful feeling to have instead of just looking forward and saying all right this is the lot i'm i have right now let me just figure out a way take inflation for example with that i have the three e's how you perceive.
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#366 Michael Sakraida: Rethinking Wealth, Balance, and What Really Makes Us Happy—Part One
So you're looking at it and saying, okay, this is actually an opportunity. Where there's crisis, there's opportunity for me to improve my life. Get me to focus on what am I wasting money on? What should I do differently? Should I have a side job? What have you? What things can I do? Instead of sending my kid to a private college, doing an in-state college where it's either free or very low cost.
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#366 Michael Sakraida: Rethinking Wealth, Balance, and What Really Makes Us Happy—Part One
Then coming up with the conceiving ideas of how am I going to implement all these changes? And then the creativity of that and doing that. Now, so this person is going to be happier. So they still don't have the money. They still are getting killed by inflation, but They are now taking control.
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#366 Michael Sakraida: Rethinking Wealth, Balance, and What Really Makes Us Happy—Part One
Most stress, most depression comes with people feel that they don't have control of what's going on around them. So now let's give them control. Now, you don't see any of this anywhere. You don't see articles on this. You don't see Wall Street saying, you know what, we're going to donate money.
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#366 Michael Sakraida: Rethinking Wealth, Balance, and What Really Makes Us Happy—Part One
and create a program to help people like Elon Musk donating satellites for whatever, helping Ukraine, helping flood victims from in North Carolina. Wall Street doesn't do that. And so that's why it's a little complicated answer. It's a simple question, but when we lose control We stress, we're unhappy. Money helps us have control.
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#366 Michael Sakraida: Rethinking Wealth, Balance, and What Really Makes Us Happy—Part One
In the absence of money, we need to find other ways to get that control so that we're happier, we're not frozen, that we're actually moving forward. Don't let a good crisis go to waste.
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#366 Michael Sakraida: Rethinking Wealth, Balance, and What Really Makes Us Happy—Part One
It's everything. It changes everything. That's why the first chapter of my book is called Zen and the Art of Change. The greatest misunderstanding with Wall Street and the financial media is that they don't understand that the three E's of investing are emotions. And so it's the same with change. So we have to have this Zen-like state of calm. First of all, don't have that state.
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#366 Michael Sakraida: Rethinking Wealth, Balance, and What Really Makes Us Happy—Part One
We're going to be holding that golf club too tight and we're not going to get much distance in a swing. But there's always so much time and there's always so much emotional energy to changing. You want to change. Focus, have that laser focus, if you will, on the changes you should make and ignore the ones you can't change. So your personality. You're going to try to change your personality?
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#366 Michael Sakraida: Rethinking Wealth, Balance, and What Really Makes Us Happy—Part One
No, it's just not going to happen. Work with your personality. Don't waste time trying to change your personality. Then there's the change that you can and should make. And then there's the one that also trips up a lot of people, waste that emotional capital. And that is change you can do, but don't waste your time on it because it's like triage.
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#366 Michael Sakraida: Rethinking Wealth, Balance, and What Really Makes Us Happy—Part One
You look at the old MASH TV show, MASH actual hospitals in Korea, you couldn't care for every soldier that came in injured. So you had to say, this one I could save, but it's going to take three hours. And in that time, I could have saved... six other soldiers. And if I do this person save them, then those six soldiers are going to die. It's that triage.
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#366 Michael Sakraida: Rethinking Wealth, Balance, and What Really Makes Us Happy—Part One
You need to look at it and say, yeah, I can do that, but it's going to take too long. It's going to take too much emotional capital to do it. So now we have this smaller focused types of change that we can and should do, and then set about doing that. And too many times we try to change our outlook, change our view. I've done some work with the whole ESG movement.
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#366 Michael Sakraida: Rethinking Wealth, Balance, and What Really Makes Us Happy—Part One
The criticism I have of it is too many times I've tried to change people's minds, change their view. No, what you first do is you change people's actions.
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#366 Michael Sakraida: Rethinking Wealth, Balance, and What Really Makes Us Happy—Part One
and and then by changing your actions getting up earlier doing allocating certain time reading certain books hiring somebody to be your accountability partner and to generate ideas you want to do that and then through those changes your outlook's going to change your perception of things its actions change thoughts You can't change your thoughts very easily without doing that.
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#366 Michael Sakraida: Rethinking Wealth, Balance, and What Really Makes Us Happy—Part One
And looking at my journey to where I am today with the mission of trying to help over a million individuals and their advisors, there's really three key segments to it. And the overriding theme in each of those segments is an extension of the Robert Frost poem of taking the road less traveled. I guess I took the road less traveled.
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#366 Michael Sakraida: Rethinking Wealth, Balance, and What Really Makes Us Happy—Part One
that wasn't completed and the parts that were completed had some potholes and other damage to it. And so the first part of my journey to how I got here today was the developmental years. My childhood, I had lots of mentors and guidance and muses from people both alive and dead. Had two great-grandfathers who were very successful businessmen. One who came over from Eastern Europe, civil engineer.
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#366 Michael Sakraida: Rethinking Wealth, Balance, and What Really Makes Us Happy—Part One
So he did build roads, actually, and made his fortune and went back. to the old country, which was unusual. And then another great grandfather who was in banking and finance and extremely wealthy and unfortunately was killed when his bank was robbed back the Bonnie and Clyde days with that. But my childhood, my neighborhood, neighbors, my parents, kind of what came out of that was
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#366 Michael Sakraida: Rethinking Wealth, Balance, and What Really Makes Us Happy—Part One
Not, I can't do this. I'm not able. How can I possibly do this? It was more, why can't I do it? And would sit around with some neighbors at our beach club in the South Shore of Long Island. And I would listen to their stories because I always had that curiosity. And in those stories and just observations, I saw that these were people, yes, they had the money.
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#366 Michael Sakraida: Rethinking Wealth, Balance, and What Really Makes Us Happy—Part One
but they had the balance and they had the joy and fun in their lives. They had a range of interests that, besides being CEO of a bank, they also had a jazz that they orchestrated music and performed. Even in college, making sure I took not just the business courses, the finance, accounting, but also taking philosophy, having a history major. And there's a lot...
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#366 Michael Sakraida: Rethinking Wealth, Balance, and What Really Makes Us Happy—Part One
that people don't understand about history in terms of the value of it, because it's not just remembering regurgitating dates and locations and activities, but what led to it, what really caused it. With history, you have the advantage of that time so that you can have now the revisionist view.
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#366 Michael Sakraida: Rethinking Wealth, Balance, and What Really Makes Us Happy—Part One
with a more accurate view of that history so I applied all this to that which took me to my second stage and that was the kind of the learner's permit as someone told me at my beach club and that is going out there working for companies when I started I had two job offers one was with a brokerage firm and being a stock broker. The other was investment management firm.
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#366 Michael Sakraida: Rethinking Wealth, Balance, and What Really Makes Us Happy—Part One
brokerage firm paid more, but I didn't see the same growth and development and didn't like the whole, at the time, brokerage model. So I took the lower paying job and was very successful with that. Again, because I didn't know I was too young. We had this mutual fund that was started to take advantage of foreign tax credits for U.S.
Chief Change Officer
#366 Michael Sakraida: Rethinking Wealth, Balance, and What Really Makes Us Happy—Part One
based companies we started cold and you know had all these companies interested but no one wanted to be first and so I'm doing a cold call to a treasurer of a large corporation in the northeast he hung up the phone on me and I called him back I said you just made a big mistake so I Took him off guard.
Chief Change Officer
#366 Michael Sakraida: Rethinking Wealth, Balance, and What Really Makes Us Happy—Part One
I said, yeah, I understand nine out of 10 times person calling you doesn't have anything really unique and that's not going to really help you. Well, this time it's I'm that one out of 10. And so he was like, okay, go on. And he not only was one of the larger investors in the fund, but he was the first one. So everyone else was standing around the pool waiting for someone to jump in.
Chief Change Officer
#366 Michael Sakraida: Rethinking Wealth, Balance, and What Really Makes Us Happy—Part One
He's the one that jumped in. Then everyone else jumped into the pool. So I had this ability through looking at the human element of of sales, the human element of working with financial advisors, getting sub-advisory work with large mutual fund companies and other institutions, that human element I quickly realized was make it about them, not about their company, but what do they want in life?
Chief Change Officer
#366 Michael Sakraida: Rethinking Wealth, Balance, and What Really Makes Us Happy—Part One
And everyone wants more money. They want... balance or time and they want more joy or social wealth and so trying to show that to them this big discovery incorporating this into all these programs and huge success with this but Total fights every step of the way because I was the change agent.
Chief Change Officer
#366 Michael Sakraida: Rethinking Wealth, Balance, and What Really Makes Us Happy—Part One
And by me being successful in implementing this change in the eyes of these people that were there for years and years, I made them look like failures, that they couldn't do it and this non-insurance guy had to do it. And after a while, I got tired.
Chief Change Officer
#366 Michael Sakraida: Rethinking Wealth, Balance, and What Really Makes Us Happy—Part One
of working at these different companies doing wonderful things for them for their financial professionals that we sold to for their clients but always being sniped at and so i just got tired of always fighting that fight and Actually having a target, the more successful I was, the more I helped my companies, the bigger the target was.
Chief Change Officer
#366 Michael Sakraida: Rethinking Wealth, Balance, and What Really Makes Us Happy—Part One
So then decided to go into the third stage and that is having consulting business and going out there and working with different financial companies. It's really funny. As an employee, they swipe at you. They don't want to listen to you, question everything you say. As a consultant, all of a sudden now they listen and they want to do what you have.
Chief Change Officer
#366 Michael Sakraida: Rethinking Wealth, Balance, and What Really Makes Us Happy—Part One
everything based on what the three key things people want and taken into account. It's money, balance, and joy and taken into account their emotions and just human nature. And so many times I saw people that, oh, it's all logical. No, it's not logical. And I could talk more about that later. But it's about human nature. It's about people's individual needs.
Chief Change Officer
#366 Michael Sakraida: Rethinking Wealth, Balance, and What Really Makes Us Happy—Part One
So that has led me up to where I am right now.
Chief Change Officer
#366 Michael Sakraida: Rethinking Wealth, Balance, and What Really Makes Us Happy—Part One
Sure, money buys happiness when it's part of this three-part ecosystem. And that three-part ecosystem's working in harmony, working holistically. And the three parts of money, monetary wealth, second is time wealth, and the third is the social wealth or the happiness or joy. So we all know the stories of people All they do is work.
Chief Change Officer
#366 Michael Sakraida: Rethinking Wealth, Balance, and What Really Makes Us Happy—Part One
And the thing is, especially my generation, the boomer generation had a lot of people like that. But the thing I learned from the greatest generation, my parents generation was no, you had to have that balance. You had to have that joy. You. You had to have that range of a personality and not just be the single mind in this focus. So money per se doesn't buy happiness.
Chief Change Officer
#366 Michael Sakraida: Rethinking Wealth, Balance, and What Really Makes Us Happy—Part One
You can't go to the happiness store, but it helps you. You can hire someone to do the cleaning, mow in the lawn. different painting hire buy pre-made food or go to restaurants versus booking everything from scratch so that can buy you the time then the joy that comes from it you can get involved with volunteer work being part of the community but the great thing is
Chief Change Officer
#366 Michael Sakraida: Rethinking Wealth, Balance, and What Really Makes Us Happy—Part One
each helps the other so that the people who are very successful the time part helps them make more money the joy part helps them make more money so it's this wonderful merry-go-round if you will you know you have to have that range you have to have all that in your life because otherwise it's just not a joyful life why bother
Chief Change Officer
#366 Michael Sakraida: Rethinking Wealth, Balance, and What Really Makes Us Happy—Part One
When I was at this big insurance company, my boss was just this tightly wound person who After you knew him for 10 minutes, this is not a guy that really was fully enjoying life. And that the old school of, oh, work is work. I put in the hours, I do the work. I really don't like it or I tense up and stress out about it. Then I go home and then I could... have fulfillment.
Chief Change Officer
#366 Michael Sakraida: Rethinking Wealth, Balance, and What Really Makes Us Happy—Part One
If you look at some of the great people out there, they are much more broad doing activities. They start with not, I want to make money, but I want to help people. I want to change the world. Steve Jobs, I want to change the world. That's what he wanted to do. It wasn't, oh, I want to be rich. Now, the money part, of course, comes with it, but
Chief Change Officer
#366 Michael Sakraida: Rethinking Wealth, Balance, and What Really Makes Us Happy—Part One
When you look at some of those leaders, you look at Elon Musk, who will, at the drop of a hat, with flooding in North Carolina, say, hey, I'll reassign my satellites to help with communications. He's not doing that for the money. He's not doing that for the publicity. He's doing that to be a good citizen, to help people. So it's just a much more enjoyable life.
Chief Change Officer
#366 Michael Sakraida: Rethinking Wealth, Balance, and What Really Makes Us Happy—Part One
It's not nine to five of misery, clock out and... then have joy. But why can't you have that joy? Why can't you have that fulfillment and meaning in your job as well? If you could do that, you're going to be better at your job, better able to help people. You'd be better for your faith and really enjoy yourself.
Chief Change Officer
#366 Michael Sakraida: Rethinking Wealth, Balance, and What Really Makes Us Happy—Part One
And one of the things I saw with a lot of financial advisors was they were holding the golf club really tight. They didn't take into account, they became advisors because they love math or they love investments. And the advisors that I worked well with were the ones that became advisors because they love their clients.
Chief Change Officer
#366 Michael Sakraida: Rethinking Wealth, Balance, and What Really Makes Us Happy—Part One
They love how they could go from having somebody be a total stranger to a great friend, client and great friend within months. And the kind of the rush you get when you realize that your client trusts you. So these are all the things with me, my upbringing, that this is how people should work. And that holistic wealth or the total wealth with everything. It's so simple.
Chief Change Officer
#366 Michael Sakraida: Rethinking Wealth, Balance, and What Really Makes Us Happy—Part One
Things that really help are simple.
Chief Change Officer
#366 Michael Sakraida: Rethinking Wealth, Balance, and What Really Makes Us Happy—Part One
So you take out the wealth component. Why are they unhappy? unhappy they don't necessarily have to be unhappy but they are unhappy because we have wall street we have advertising look at what's been going on with inflation so we have this huge cumulative inflation the the american population went from like 40 percent living from paycheck to 70 percent
Chief Change Officer
#366 Michael Sakraida: Rethinking Wealth, Balance, and What Really Makes Us Happy—Part One
And do you really see anything from Wall Street, from the politicians, from the financial media, just about what a devastating effect this is having on people and just the psychological and emotional effect? So these people feel like, No one knows them. No one appreciates or understands what they're going through.
Chief Change Officer
#366 Michael Sakraida: Rethinking Wealth, Balance, and What Really Makes Us Happy—Part One
I did a cartoon on Instagram yesterday, making fun of this, how you're supposed to be happy. And somebody commented, I thought I was the only one that felt this way of being alone. people not understanding what I'm going through. That loneliness, that feeling that, oh, I'm doing something wrong because why? The financial media, they're that top 10%. Wall Street, the top 10%.
Chief Change Officer
#229 Michael Sakraida: Change Your Money Mindset, Change Your Life – Part One
Inflation hasn't impacted them on an emotional level. It's an inconvenience. but it damaged their lives. And soon we're seeing it now with the employment numbers. Soon there's gonna be more and more layoffs, especially in the tech area and in other areas. And it's not the lack of money. It's that I don't have, it's my fault. It's something I'm doing wrong. Look at all these other people.
Chief Change Officer
#229 Michael Sakraida: Change Your Money Mindset, Change Your Life – Part One
I made a poor choice and becoming a coder, whatever it might be. And oh, I wish I can go back. Coulda, woulda, shoulda is... an awful feeling to have instead of just looking forward and saying all right this is the lot i'm i have right now let me just figure out a way take inflation for example with that i have the three e's how you perceive.
Chief Change Officer
#229 Michael Sakraida: Change Your Money Mindset, Change Your Life – Part One
So you're looking at it and saying, okay, this is actually an opportunity. Where there's crisis, there's opportunity for me to improve my life. Get me to focus on what am I wasting money on? What should I do differently? Should I have a side job? What have you? What things can I do? Instead of sending my kid to a private college, doing an in-state college where it's either free or very low cost.
Chief Change Officer
#229 Michael Sakraida: Change Your Money Mindset, Change Your Life – Part One
Then coming up with the conceiving ideas of how am I going to implement all these changes? And then the creativity of that and doing that. Now, so this person is going to be happier. So they still don't have the money. They still are getting killed by inflation, but They are now taking control.
Chief Change Officer
#229 Michael Sakraida: Change Your Money Mindset, Change Your Life – Part One
Most stress, most depression comes with people feel that they don't have control of what's going on around them. So now let's give them control. Now, you don't see any of this anywhere. You don't see articles on this. You don't see Wall Street saying, you know what, we're going to donate money.
Chief Change Officer
#229 Michael Sakraida: Change Your Money Mindset, Change Your Life – Part One
and create a program to help people like Elon Musk donating satellites for whatever, helping Ukraine, helping flood victims from in North Carolina. Wall Street doesn't do that. And so that's why it's a little complicated answer. It's a simple question, but when we lose control We stress, we're unhappy. Money helps us have control.
Chief Change Officer
#229 Michael Sakraida: Change Your Money Mindset, Change Your Life – Part One
In the absence of money, we need to find other ways to get that control so that we're happier, we're not frozen, that we're actually moving forward. Don't let a good crisis go to waste.
Chief Change Officer
#229 Michael Sakraida: Change Your Money Mindset, Change Your Life – Part One
It's everything. It changes everything. That's why the first chapter of my book is called Zen and the Art of Change. The greatest misunderstanding with Wall Street and the financial media is that they don't understand that the three E's of investing are emotions. And so it's the same with change. So we have to have this Zen-like state of calm. First of all, don't have that state.
Chief Change Officer
#229 Michael Sakraida: Change Your Money Mindset, Change Your Life – Part One
We're going to be holding that golf club too tight and we're not going to get much distance in a swing. But there's always so much time and there's always so much emotional energy to changing. You want to change. Focus, have that laser focus, if you will, on the changes you should make and ignore the ones you can't change. So your personality. You're going to try to change your personality?
Chief Change Officer
#229 Michael Sakraida: Change Your Money Mindset, Change Your Life – Part One
No, it's just not going to happen. Work with your personality. Don't waste time trying to change your personality. Then there's the change that you can and should make. And then there's the one that also trips up a lot of people, waste that emotional capital. And that is change you can do, but don't waste your time on it because it's like triage.
Chief Change Officer
#229 Michael Sakraida: Change Your Money Mindset, Change Your Life – Part One
You look at the old MASH TV show, MASH actual hospitals in Korea, you couldn't care for every soldier that came in injured. So you had to say, this one I could save, but it's going to take three hours. And in that time, I could have saved... six other soldiers. And if I do this person save them, then those six soldiers are going to die. It's that triage.
Chief Change Officer
#229 Michael Sakraida: Change Your Money Mindset, Change Your Life – Part One
You need to look at it and say, yeah, I can do that, but it's going to take too long. It's going to take too much emotional capital to do it. So now we have this smaller focused types of change that we can and should do, and then set about doing that. And too many times we try to change our outlook, change our view. I've done some work with the whole ESG movement.
Chief Change Officer
#229 Michael Sakraida: Change Your Money Mindset, Change Your Life – Part One
The criticism I have of it is too many times I've tried to change people's minds, change their view. No, what you first do is you change people's actions.
Chief Change Officer
#229 Michael Sakraida: Change Your Money Mindset, Change Your Life – Part One
and and then by changing your actions getting up earlier doing allocating certain time reading certain books hiring somebody to be your accountability partner and to generate ideas you want to do that and then through those changes your outlook's going to change your perception of things its actions change thoughts You can't change your thoughts very easily without doing that.
Chief Change Officer
#229 Michael Sakraida: Change Your Money Mindset, Change Your Life – Part One
And looking at my journey to where I am today with the mission of trying to help over a million individuals and their advisors, there's really three key segments to it. And the overriding theme in each of those segments is an extension of the Robert Frost poem of taking the road less traveled. I guess I took the road less traveled.
Chief Change Officer
#229 Michael Sakraida: Change Your Money Mindset, Change Your Life – Part One
that wasn't completed and the parts that were completed had some potholes and other damage to it. And so the first part of my journey to how I got here today was the developmental years. My childhood, I had lots of mentors and guidance and muses from people both alive and dead. Had two great-grandfathers who were very successful businessmen. One who came over from Eastern Europe, civil engineer.
Chief Change Officer
#229 Michael Sakraida: Change Your Money Mindset, Change Your Life – Part One
So he did build roads, actually, and made his fortune and went back. to the old country, which was unusual. And then another great grandfather who was in banking and finance and extremely wealthy and unfortunately was killed when his bank was robbed back the Bonnie and Clyde days with that. But my childhood, my neighborhood, neighbors, my parents, kind of what came out of that was
Chief Change Officer
#229 Michael Sakraida: Change Your Money Mindset, Change Your Life – Part One
Not, I can't do this. I'm not able. How can I possibly do this? It was more, why can't I do it? And would sit around with some neighbors at our beach club in the South Shore of Long Island. And I would listen to their stories because I always had that curiosity. And in those stories and just observations, I saw that these were people, yes, they had the money.
Chief Change Officer
#229 Michael Sakraida: Change Your Money Mindset, Change Your Life – Part One
but they had the balance and they had the joy and fun in their lives. They had a range of interests that, besides being CEO of a bank, they also had a jazz that they orchestrated music and performed. Even in college, making sure I took not just the business courses, the finance, accounting, but also taking philosophy, having a history major. And there's a lot...
Chief Change Officer
#229 Michael Sakraida: Change Your Money Mindset, Change Your Life – Part One
that people don't understand about history in terms of the value of it, because it's not just remembering regurgitating dates and locations and activities, but what led to it, what really caused it. With history, you have the advantage of that time so that you can have now the revisionist view.
Chief Change Officer
#229 Michael Sakraida: Change Your Money Mindset, Change Your Life – Part One
with a more accurate view of that history so I applied all this to that which took me to my second stage and that was the kind of the learner's permit as someone told me at my beach club and that is going out there working for companies when I started I had two job offers one was with a brokerage firm and being a stock broker. The other was investment management firm.
Chief Change Officer
#229 Michael Sakraida: Change Your Money Mindset, Change Your Life – Part One
brokerage firm paid more, but I didn't see the same growth and development and didn't like the whole, at the time, brokerage model. So I took the lower paying job and was very successful with that. Again, because I didn't know I was too young. We had this mutual fund that was started to take advantage of foreign tax credits for U.S.
Chief Change Officer
#229 Michael Sakraida: Change Your Money Mindset, Change Your Life – Part One
based companies we started cold and you know had all these companies interested but no one wanted to be first and so I'm doing a cold call to a treasurer of a large corporation in the northeast he hung up the phone on me and I called him back I said you just made a big mistake so I Took him off guard.
Chief Change Officer
#229 Michael Sakraida: Change Your Money Mindset, Change Your Life – Part One
I said, yeah, I understand nine out of 10 times person calling you doesn't have anything really unique and that's not going to really help you. Well, this time it's I'm that one out of 10. And so he was like, okay, go on. And he not only was one of the larger investors in the fund, but he was the first one. So everyone else was standing around the pool waiting for someone to jump in.
Chief Change Officer
#229 Michael Sakraida: Change Your Money Mindset, Change Your Life – Part One
He's the one that jumped in. Then everyone else jumped into the pool. So I had this ability through looking at the human element of of sales, the human element of working with financial advisors, getting sub-advisory work with large mutual fund companies and other institutions, that human element I quickly realized was make it about them, not about their company, but what do they want in life?
Chief Change Officer
#229 Michael Sakraida: Change Your Money Mindset, Change Your Life – Part One
And everyone wants more money. They want... balance or time and they want more joy or social wealth and so trying to show that to them this big discovery incorporating this into all these programs and huge success with this but Total fights every step of the way because I was the change agent.
Chief Change Officer
#229 Michael Sakraida: Change Your Money Mindset, Change Your Life – Part One
And by me being successful in implementing this change in the eyes of these people that were there for years and years, I made them look like failures, that they couldn't do it and this non-insurance guy had to do it. And after a while, I got tired.
Chief Change Officer
#229 Michael Sakraida: Change Your Money Mindset, Change Your Life – Part One
of working at these different companies doing wonderful things for them for their financial professionals that we sold to for their clients but always being sniped at and so i just got tired of always fighting that fight and Actually having a target, the more successful I was, the more I helped my companies, the bigger the target was.
Chief Change Officer
#229 Michael Sakraida: Change Your Money Mindset, Change Your Life – Part One
So then decided to go into the third stage and that is having consulting business and going out there and working with different financial companies. It's really funny. As an employee, they swipe at you. They don't want to listen to you, question everything you say. As a consultant, all of a sudden now they listen and they want to do what you have.
Chief Change Officer
#229 Michael Sakraida: Change Your Money Mindset, Change Your Life – Part One
everything based on what the three key things people want and taken into account. It's money, balance, and joy and taken into account their emotions and just human nature. And so many times I saw people that, oh, it's all logical. No, it's not logical. And I could talk more about that later. But it's about human nature. It's about people's individual needs.
Chief Change Officer
#229 Michael Sakraida: Change Your Money Mindset, Change Your Life – Part One
So that has led me up to where I am right now.
Chief Change Officer
#229 Michael Sakraida: Change Your Money Mindset, Change Your Life – Part One
Sure, money buys happiness when it's part of this three-part ecosystem. And that three-part ecosystem's working in harmony, working holistically. And the three parts of money, monetary wealth, second is time wealth, and the third is the social wealth or the happiness or joy. So we all know the stories of people All they do is work.
Chief Change Officer
#229 Michael Sakraida: Change Your Money Mindset, Change Your Life – Part One
And the thing is, especially my generation, the boomer generation had a lot of people like that. But the thing I learned from the greatest generation, my parents generation was no, you had to have that balance. You had to have that joy. You. You had to have that range of a personality and not just be the single mind in this focus. So money per se doesn't buy happiness.
Chief Change Officer
#229 Michael Sakraida: Change Your Money Mindset, Change Your Life – Part One
You can't go to the happiness store, but it helps you. You can hire someone to do the cleaning, mow in the lawn. different painting hire buy pre-made food or go to restaurants versus booking everything from scratch so that can buy you the time then the joy that comes from it you can get involved with volunteer work being part of the community but the great thing is
Chief Change Officer
#229 Michael Sakraida: Change Your Money Mindset, Change Your Life – Part One
each helps the other so that the people who are very successful the time part helps them make more money the joy part helps them make more money so it's this wonderful merry-go-round if you will you know you have to have that range you have to have all that in your life because otherwise it's just not a joyful life why bother
Chief Change Officer
#229 Michael Sakraida: Change Your Money Mindset, Change Your Life – Part One
When I was at this big insurance company, my boss was just this tightly wound person who After you knew him for 10 minutes, this is not a guy that really was fully enjoying life. And that the old school of, oh, work is work. I put in the hours, I do the work. I really don't like it or I tense up and stress out about it. Then I go home and then I could... have fulfillment.
Chief Change Officer
#229 Michael Sakraida: Change Your Money Mindset, Change Your Life – Part One
If you look at some of the great people out there, they are much more broad doing activities. They start with not, I want to make money, but I want to help people. I want to change the world. Steve Jobs, I want to change the world. That's what he wanted to do. It wasn't, oh, I want to be rich. Now, the money part, of course, comes with it, but
Chief Change Officer
#229 Michael Sakraida: Change Your Money Mindset, Change Your Life – Part One
When you look at some of those leaders, you look at Elon Musk, who will, at the drop of a hat, with flooding in North Carolina, say, hey, I'll reassign my satellites to help with communications. He's not doing that for the money. He's not doing that for the publicity. He's doing that to be a good citizen, to help people. So it's just a much more enjoyable life.
Chief Change Officer
#229 Michael Sakraida: Change Your Money Mindset, Change Your Life – Part One
It's not nine to five of misery, clock out and... then have joy. But why can't you have that joy? Why can't you have that fulfillment and meaning in your job as well? If you could do that, you're going to be better at your job, better able to help people. You'd be better for your faith and really enjoy yourself.
Chief Change Officer
#229 Michael Sakraida: Change Your Money Mindset, Change Your Life – Part One
And one of the things I saw with a lot of financial advisors was they were holding the golf club really tight. They didn't take into account, they became advisors because they love math or they love investments. And the advisors that I worked well with were the ones that became advisors because they love their clients.
Chief Change Officer
#229 Michael Sakraida: Change Your Money Mindset, Change Your Life – Part One
They love how they could go from having somebody be a total stranger to a great friend, client and great friend within months. And the kind of the rush you get when you realize that your client trusts you. So these are all the things with me, my upbringing, that this is how people should work. And that holistic wealth or the total wealth with everything. It's so simple.
Chief Change Officer
#229 Michael Sakraida: Change Your Money Mindset, Change Your Life – Part One
Things that really help are simple.
Chief Change Officer
#229 Michael Sakraida: Change Your Money Mindset, Change Your Life – Part One
So you take out the wealth component. Why are they unhappy? unhappy they don't necessarily have to be unhappy but they are unhappy because we have wall street we have advertising look at what's been going on with inflation so we have this huge cumulative inflation the the american population went from like 40 percent living from paycheck to 70 percent
Chief Change Officer
#229 Michael Sakraida: Change Your Money Mindset, Change Your Life – Part One
And do you really see anything from Wall Street, from the politicians, from the financial media, just about what a devastating effect this is having on people and just the psychological and emotional effect? So these people feel like, No one knows them. No one appreciates or understands what they're going through.
Chief Change Officer
#229 Michael Sakraida: Change Your Money Mindset, Change Your Life – Part One
I did a cartoon on Instagram yesterday, making fun of this, how you're supposed to be happy. And somebody commented, I thought I was the only one that felt this way of being alone. people not understanding what I'm going through. That loneliness, that feeling that, oh, I'm doing something wrong because why? The financial media, they're that top 10%. Wall Street, the top 10%.
Chief Change Officer
#230 Michael Sakraida: Change Your Money Mindset, Change Your Life – Part Two
I said, then why wouldn't you talk about municipal bonds? There's dead silence. Because he knew exactly what I was talking about. And just completely missed it. I was in my early 20s at the time. It just showed me how many times they get it wrong in the financial media. So they have to get oriented. They have to have greater self-awareness.
Chief Change Officer
#230 Michael Sakraida: Change Your Money Mindset, Change Your Life – Part Two
And what's important to them, most people need to have that orientation, that increase in self-awareness. And one of the things I say in there is, okay, if your candidate advisor isn't asking these three main questions, you should... Ask them, tell them to ask these questions. So the first is really understand the source of your wealth and how does that affect you emotionally?
Chief Change Officer
#230 Michael Sakraida: Change Your Money Mindset, Change Your Life – Part Two
You have the wealth because you made a business, sold a business, and now you're worrying, I can't screw it up because I don't have another business to sell with it. Did you inherit money? Grandma started a business on the kitchen table and you inherited that money. That comes with a lot of responsibility. I can't waste or do stupid things with grandma's money because she didn't do stupid things.
Chief Change Officer
#230 Michael Sakraida: Change Your Money Mindset, Change Your Life – Part Two
I got to honor her. There's that pressure. So there's all different scenarios affect you from an emotional standpoint. I've had financial advisors yell at me, what does that question have anything to do with me putting a financial plan together? By the very fact you asked that question, you might want to rethink what real value you add to your client. The second question is,
Chief Change Officer
#230 Michael Sakraida: Change Your Money Mindset, Change Your Life – Part Two
What are your financial goals and non-financial goals? What kind of legacy do you want to leave financially, non-financially? The kids, being involved in the community, being involved with your church, want to sail around the world or participate in the Bermuda race. A friend of mine recently did the pilgrimage in Spain. So that took years for him to be able to do that.
Chief Change Officer
#230 Michael Sakraida: Change Your Money Mindset, Change Your Life – Part Two
The third question is, what's been your experience with Wall Street? Is it good? Is it bad? Have you felt ripped off? Have you felt talked down to, clueless? Again, the emotion. Like you said before, hey, Mike, talk about your past because that shapes who you are today.
Chief Change Officer
#230 Michael Sakraida: Change Your Money Mindset, Change Your Life – Part Two
So all those three questions and doing the work, the answering and really the self-awareness from that tells you where you're at today. And that's going to help you make the changes go on the plan.
Chief Change Officer
#230 Michael Sakraida: Change Your Money Mindset, Change Your Life – Part Two
Now, one of the other things, the greatest mistake people make with investing, and this comes into play with risk tolerance, is they look at their investments as just a jumble of money and stocks, bonds, whatever. They don't look at it as an extension of their values, who they are, their hopes, their dreams.
Chief Change Officer
#230 Michael Sakraida: Change Your Money Mindset, Change Your Life – Part Two
And there's studies, I know at least one academic study on this, and I'm sure there's others, that the more you view your investments as an extension of you and your values or your faith or both, the less likely you're going to fall for the fear and greed emotions that we talked about.
Chief Change Officer
#230 Michael Sakraida: Change Your Money Mindset, Change Your Life – Part Two
Wanting to increase your risk at the top of the market where you have the greatest chance of the market to go down. And that fear, after the market goes down, you sell where you have the greatest odds, when you have the greatest odds of the market going back up. Financial professionals fall for the same fear and greed. So don't think I'm talking down to the non-financial professionals listening.
Chief Change Officer
#230 Michael Sakraida: Change Your Money Mindset, Change Your Life – Part Two
Many advisors, many CEOs of banks or CEOs of insurance companies, what have you, fall for fear and greed. If not, you wouldn't have had all these companies that had to be bailed out during the Great Recession. You wouldn't have had all these brokerage firms or investment banking firms that went out of business because of that. You have to look at it, those kind of three key things.
Chief Change Officer
#230 Michael Sakraida: Change Your Money Mindset, Change Your Life – Part Two
So anything based on emotions is not a do-it-yourself project. It's not this quick thing that I could do an Instagram post and everyone's so goody like some of these financial influencers. And that's why, honestly, I had to write the book was to help these people start this journey and then get them to the point where they're able to take that next step in the journey.
Chief Change Officer
#230 Michael Sakraida: Change Your Money Mindset, Change Your Life – Part Two
For me, financial independence is where you don't have to work, but you still work because you get a lot out of it. You're not doing it for the paycheck, you're doing it for the enjoyment. Yes, there happens to be a paycheck that comes along, but if all of a sudden there's a pandemic or your company goes out of business, or just for health reasons, you can no longer work,
Chief Change Officer
#230 Michael Sakraida: Change Your Money Mindset, Change Your Life – Part Two
You don't have to worry about paying the bills. You don't have to worry about having money to leave, have that financial legacy. Independent wealth is both being able to leave a financial legacy, but also a non-financial legacy. That the non-financial legacies is important, if not more important than the financial legacy. To me, you die and you have $20,000 left in the bank.
Chief Change Officer
#230 Michael Sakraida: Change Your Money Mindset, Change Your Life – Part Two
To me, it's not financial independence. That's just being lucky that you didn't outlive your money.
Chief Change Officer
#230 Michael Sakraida: Change Your Money Mindset, Change Your Life – Part Two
I think the whole risk tolerance, how that's handled by the wealth management industry is awful. They have a new client, do a risk tolerance questionnaire, just 10 or so questions. Voila, you're conservative, you're moderate, you're aggressive, and that's how we're going to manage your portfolio. That's as much a CYA approach.
Chief Change Officer
#230 Michael Sakraida: Change Your Money Mindset, Change Your Life – Part Two
that the compliance wants to do, but they're not explaining what this means. If you're a conservative person, if the market goes down, say 10%, where 15% to your investment, your overall worth on paper goes down 10 or 15%, you're going to be more upset, more stressed, maybe even unable to sleep at night than the moderate risk person.
Chief Change Officer
#230 Michael Sakraida: Change Your Money Mindset, Change Your Life – Part Two
but they don't explain, okay, here's what this means for you in terms of achieving your financial goal, your financial legacy that you want to have. I did an analysis on data provided to me by a financial firm that over a 32 year period, if you're that moderate risk person, The advisor has to say to you, you're less likely, statistically, to reach your financial goal.
Chief Change Officer
#230 Michael Sakraida: Change Your Money Mindset, Change Your Life – Part Two
I had clients like this when I worked directly. They were super wealthy. They had generational problems. For them, to be conservative didn't matter. But other clients I had that were in that accumulation phase, being conservative or moderate does matter.
Chief Change Officer
#230 Michael Sakraida: Change Your Money Mindset, Change Your Life – Part Two
The advisor needs to have that conversation in very simple terms, not financial advisor speak, not behavioral finance speak, but again, about their emotions. You need to then say, are you okay with this? Some people say, yeah, I just want to be conservative. Yeah, I want to be moderate. But others say, no, I'm not okay. How am I going to have this type of legacy?
Chief Change Officer
#230 Michael Sakraida: Change Your Money Mindset, Change Your Life – Part Two
Some advisors do this, and I got this idea, frankly, from an advisor. And when I first heard it years ago, I was like, of course you should do this. So what he does is they say, no, okay, here's what we're going to do. We're going to work together. It's not going to happen overnight, but it's going to get you further out on that risk tolerance continuum.
Chief Change Officer
#230 Michael Sakraida: Change Your Money Mindset, Change Your Life – Part Two
So that you're going to go from conservative, say, to a moderate, and then eventually down to aggressive. Now, this is only the client wants to do that. And again, with the client understanding this isn't, you can't snap your fingers and have this change happen overnight. So the other problem with the whole risk tolerance is that it's, the questions are taken at a point in time
Chief Change Officer
#230 Michael Sakraida: Change Your Money Mindset, Change Your Life – Part Two
and a point in time with the economy and with the markets. So you're going to have people that, oh yeah, I'm aggressive after the market's been up and a long bull market creates a lot of aggressive investors. And so now all of a sudden the market goes down even 10, 15%. And some of these aggressive people, their whole risk tolerance just changed. They're flipping out. They're upset.
Chief Change Officer
#230 Michael Sakraida: Change Your Money Mindset, Change Your Life – Part Two
What should I do? I should sell. I should sell everything. Dive into the bunker and wait till the bombs stop going off. So the advisors, though, oh, Al's aggressive. I don't need to call him. I don't need to check in on him.
Chief Change Officer
#230 Michael Sakraida: Change Your Money Mindset, Change Your Life – Part Two
and if he's having a problem he'll call me sometimes one don't know when they're the fear and greed emotions are kicking in and number two they might be embarrassed to go from yeah i know i told you i was aggressive and i know my survey said i was aggressive but right now i'm really panicking
Chief Change Officer
#230 Michael Sakraida: Change Your Money Mindset, Change Your Life – Part Two
And so it's an instrument, the risk tolerance survey, the setting isn't fully being used for the benefit of the clients and also for the benefit of the advisors.
Chief Change Officer
#230 Michael Sakraida: Change Your Money Mindset, Change Your Life – Part Two
First of all, with them, they should either be licensed and regulated like financial advisors or put out of business is my opinion. The regulators, I don't care what is being regulated, are awful. with handling new technology. So all they see is it's this cool technology, social media, and these people providing some help.
Chief Change Officer
#230 Michael Sakraida: Change Your Money Mindset, Change Your Life – Part Two
And it's different than a financial advisor's charging a fee or getting commissions and all. They're just awful with it. But you look at Bitcoin and all that, there's still no regulation on that. It just dropped the ball with that. So if I'm on Instagram,
Chief Change Officer
#230 Michael Sakraida: Change Your Money Mindset, Change Your Life – Part Two
And I have these testimonials from people who did my coaching and they saved X amount of money and say, oh, this person, they save an average of 5,000 a year and increase their income by an average of 20,000 a year. And the FTC, which they're doing, knocks on my door, says, oh, we saw this posting. We need to see all this. We need to see who did this, what each person's result was.
Chief Change Officer
#230 Michael Sakraida: Change Your Money Mindset, Change Your Life – Part Two
And if not, then you get a nice fine from the FTC. No one's doing that with these people. whatever, internet influencers. So if I have to worry about what I say and get in trouble or I get in trouble, if a financial advisor has to worry about what they say and do and show any conflicts of interest, for example, then I don't get it. I don't get why all these financial influencers...
Chief Change Officer
#230 Michael Sakraida: Change Your Money Mindset, Change Your Life – Part Two
are just allowed to do what they do. So that's maybe not an answer you want to hear, but this is serious stuff. This is serious stuff with people's money. This is their livelihood. There's a reason the Balfour guy, whatever the Wolf of wall street guy, which was a real life person was put out of business. that they were stealing money from people.
Chief Change Officer
#230 Michael Sakraida: Change Your Money Mindset, Change Your Life – Part Two
There's a reason advisors and broker-dealers have compliance people, to make sure that everything is done. An advisor cannot even send out a mass email without compliance reviewing it, filing it, and when they get audited, gonna see, okay, they have to see all that. This is my opinion. I don't care if there's some good advice out there. I don't care if there's good intentions out there.
Chief Change Officer
#230 Michael Sakraida: Change Your Money Mindset, Change Your Life – Part Two
All I know is There's a lot of bad actors. There's a lot of stupid people. You talk about the financial media, how you'll read an article and kind of scratch your head. And that the advice in my book, I call some of them the financial media smut club. They just focus on tantalizing things that get you excited, but really aren't good advice. And a lot of these people are
Chief Change Officer
#230 Michael Sakraida: Change Your Money Mindset, Change Your Life – Part Two
They don't know what they're writing about. A recent article I read on restaurants with inflation. So the financial writer was talking about how expensive everything is for these restaurants. They have to charge more. The financial reporter said, I don't know why that would still be an issue because inflation's down. Inflation's not down. The inflation rate is down.
Chief Change Officer
#230 Michael Sakraida: Change Your Money Mindset, Change Your Life – Part Two
And so either that reporter knows that they're lying or that reporter has no clue what they're writing about. I remember there was an article years ago, there's an article in the wall street journal. The author completely missed the point. The article was about if you have a windfall and you're going to buy bonds, what do you buy? It's all corporate bonds, treasuries.
Chief Change Officer
#230 Michael Sakraida: Change Your Money Mindset, Change Your Life – Part Two
I called up the writer of the article. I didn't care. That person wrote for the Wall Street Journal. They didn't intimidate me. They probably went to a better college than I did. I don't care. And I said, okay, if this person has this huge windfall, now do you think that would probably guarantee that they're in the top tax bracket? Yeah, of course, duh.