How to Fix Your MONEY MINDSET and Create Real WEALTH! | Dawn Dahlby Interview

Key Takeaways

we're all insecure human beings we don't have enough money we don't have enough purpose we don't have enough life and it's because you know we're not building both our worth and our wealth at the same time i think so many advisors are just out there preaching like save your money save your money save your money right and and what i've learned through i'm very technical i've done comprehensive financial planning and i'm like you guys all you're doing is saving your extra money so you can pay more in taxes or you can give more to your kids is that really in in alignment with your values i think we're so busy living someone else's life there she is hi evan i'm so excited to be with you today i love your platform amazing well welcome aboard don it's awesome to connect with you and uh i love your story i love the whole idea of fixing your mindset around your money so uh dawn feels you don't know is a she is the money she's the money woman she'll help you invest your money keep your money has a new definition of what it means to be wealthy and spells it differently than most people where it's well w-e-l-l-t-h-y and named what the country's first behavioral financial advisor why don't we start right there what does that mean to be the country's first behavioral financial advisor well you know sitting with clients for over 22 plus years one-on-one with clients helping them build their wealth and manage their assets i realize there is still a missing component to how we're giving financial advice out and it's really about the behavior and the relationship people have with money and i think we're all you know money's super important we all want more of it i've never met somebody that doesn't want more money right evan but but it's like why are we chasing the money and how is it aligned with who we are and how do we really continue to to get the right type of advice to build your wealth but also making sure to align it with who you are as a human being and how you're living your life it's like you're combining psychology with personal development with investment advice altogether in fact you said the like the the word that we've you know defined is living wealthy w-e-l-l-t is really about it is really about that personal development and it's building you know the technical advice about building wealth is super important that's why i'm a certified financial planner and the psychology and the personal development around money is super important and i i define it as living wealthy it's really about the it's the combination is we all want security in our life we all want money security and we all want personal security and it's really living life at that intersection and i think we really have a we have a wealth crisis in our world right now i think it's it's all about the foundation of because we have a worth crisis we're all insecure human beings we are you know we don't have enough money we don't have enough purpose we don't have enough life and it's because you know we're not building both our worth and our wealth at the same time so what are some of the mindset issues around money that we have and how do we fix them you know i think the the biggest mindset issue is really it is a mindset it's all how we think and i think we're all chasing what is that enough number and how much is enough and we don't take the time to stop and think about really what that number is and how what is enough in our life and in taking that combination of what is the number and what is enough in life is really you know what we're all we're all chasing for i just think you know evan you and i we sit here and we have beautiful platforms and we talk to people all day long and you know when you peel it back like people just want to be happy right we all just want to be content fulfilled happy but i think we don't really are i think we're not honest with ourself and what that is and how you know we haven't defined really what happyness is for us and we're just constantly on this cycle of of chasing i think we're chasing the wrong thing we don't take time enough to reset our mind and to think about life and think about money so what are some of the questions that you ask clients or exercises that you have them go through because you have a very different process than most financial planners yeah you know it's really about using both the size of your brain you know some of us are really analytic or some of us are really creative and i tap into both sides of my brain so you know for for 20 plus years for two decades it was just a technical part and you know like setting a financial plan and figuring out what people's goals are and what their cash reserves are and how to protect their assets and how to minimize their taxes and minimize their expenses and their investments and how they're going to leave their estate and their legacy but you know and i did that thousands and thousands of times with one-on-one with clients but but the really defining moment for me is when we're like wait a second that's all important because we need the technical advice but what about how you're living like what about creating more of an alignment with your values of who you are as a person and where you're able to own that where you're able to own your purpose your vision your core values your goals and really get crystal clear on what you value as a human being and making sure we're building our wealth in alignment to that area so can you give an example of uh of how to do that maybe it's with you know a current client that we can leave unnamed or or a theoretical example like to make it a little more practical for people yeah you know i i always go back to this one particular client where you know their goal was to retire and to have um and their goal was to retire but they wanted to move and have a little bit bigger house and so we talked about could they afford that or not and it really came down to their you know they told me their values were were family they're super important for them to be able to have family their teenage daughters to come back into the house during the holidays that kind of stuff but they all what was really also important was you know them being able to travel and being connected with you know experiencing more of the world but they only had so much money right they have x amount of dollars in their investment portfolio and so what we really had to take a step back and really get to the core issue of what do they really value do they really value a bigger house and having their children come back to you know holiday time and the expense of that versus the expense of them being able to really meet their values of experiencing life and traveling and spending their money that way because most of us don't have an unlimited source of funds so it's about prioritizing and making those decisions so it's about getting crystal clear on what like truly what do you value like like pulling that back what is it that you value as a human being is it family is it relationships is it spirituality is it travel is it adventure is it like alignment like what is truly the things that you value and then making sure that we're building our wealth around that versus just chasing the dollar so so many of us just chase we want more we want nothing like like there's never enough we just chase chase chase without taking a step back and going the why behind the chase like i'm all about more money so don't get me wrong like i i'm a technical wealth advisor and it's about building wealth but it's about doing it the right way why don't we use you as a quick example so what is dawn value the most and then how have you altered your investment decisions based off of that yeah no i think that's a great question question so you know i personally value alignment in life i'm a very spiritual person i value relationships i value success and um achievement i value excitement like i have a you can see i have a lot of energy and what i realized like in my past i was giving all of those things really my values and my strengths i was giving that to clients one-on-one and i'm about halfway through my career and i realized oh my gosh you know what i'm truly not in alignment with the gift that i've been given and that's really to influence people and to show people a different way of thinking about forward thinking versus backward thinking and giving people this opportunity to really value on what's possible in people's lives i've done that one-on-one for the last two decades but i realized i fully wasn't using my skills and my abilities so that's why i developed a digital platform so i can reach more people and i think that's you know i realized that my values were i wasn't in alignment but i wasn't using them to the full potential does that make sense yeah no and so then and i know you got your book coming up uh about living wealthy and you've got your courses which youtube will link up in the description below um so how does that impact the investment decisions that you make so this is i mean i i get that you're seeing investing as a holistic thing is how you're spending your time so that you're creating courses and you're writing books and you're spending more time with clients and asking the questions so they can make a better decision how does that if you want to live more in alignment like if somebody came to you i'm just trying to use as an example so people kind of get a sense so somebody came to say hey you know what alignment is one of my most important core values how do i then build a portfolio because now we get to the technical side of the investing how would wha what is that shift in what i end up investing in with my money as opposed to just my time i don't think it's really in that what you're investing in it's how much money you're going to invest for the future from a savings perspective and how much money you're going to have available to you to be able to spend today it's about the alignment of the today and tomorrow it's not whether you're investing in crypto you're investing in international and mid cap and small cap it's about that that's the easy part we all have you know we you have a diversified portfolio that's 101 of investing but it's really about how much you're putting towards your investment for the future so you can live in alignment with today and tomorrow i think so many advisors are just out there preaching like save your money save your money save your money right and and what i've learned through i'm very technical i've done comprehensive financial planning i'm like you guys all you're doing is saving your extra money so you can pay more in taxes or you can give more to your kids is that really in in alignment with your values or do you want to free up some of that tax money do you want to free up some of that savings so you can live for today as well and i think that's the alignment it's not where you're investing it's really how much so if somebody said uh yeah again using you as an example hey i've i want to launch a course and i want to write a book and that's going to cost me money because i want to invest in this business then you make the decision to say okay we'll invest x into your portfolio that's going to take care of the future but then also we need to pull y out so that you can create your digital course and write your book et cetera well you're absolutely right and that to me like having the digital course and having a book and i'm doing this beautiful high profile event in las vegas in february we're having celebrities come and we're having a ton of thought leaders like that costs a lot of money to put together right but it's in alignment with me and so i get to make the decision on how much i'm going to spend on that today and how much i'm going to save for my tomorrow and so i when i'm true to me and i'm living my values and my purpose and my that's why i call it own your work like when i'm truly owning my work i get true alignment and i'm not just in this fear-based relationship with money saying i can't afford to put on this event and i can't afford to write a book and i can't afford to build this platform because i'm all so focused on my future it's focus on the right alignment and evan your alignment is very different than mine like we all have these beautiful stories and these these beautiful alignment opportunities for us and i think people need to take a step back and just figure that out i think i i don't want to go on on but i think we're so busy living someone else's life too i mean people are on social media all the time and all we're doing is comparing ourselves and scrolling and going what does evan have and what i don't have like in and what what is this person have why do they have more money or it seems to like they have more money we live in this trap of comparison and i think so much of our extra time in life is spent on comparing you to me versus us taking a step back and going whoa what is it what do i really need and quit living in fear and chasing the dollar you got you chase the dollar in a healthy way and live wealthy i love that you you you humanize it you know i think a lot of people are very afraid to talk to their financial advisor put put ask people like uh top 10 who do you not want to talk to it's like their dentist their lawyer and their financial advisor because they don't understand it because it's it often gets very technical and they feel not good enough and it's like i'd rather just not see it because then i pretend like i don't have a problem but you humanize it and make it feel not just okay but this is empowering it's taking something that makes me feel bad and then turn into something in power and say hey like we can make this happen you can you can play in a better future um and so i love i love the vibe because we've had a bunch of financial people you know on the show come in and talk and no but nobody leads with this kind of stuff right well and you think about it like money is probably you know if we really took a step back like money is probably one of the most important things in our lives it's like oxygen like we can't live without money right and so we all have this emotional connection with enoughness and an emotional connection with money but what happens is like just like you said as people start fearing money and because it's so technical and it's over their head and they never feel like they have enough so they avoid it and that's the last thing we need to be doing we need to be talking about money especially women like we don't talk enough about it's okay to have enough it's okay to be wealthy it's okay to have enough money it's okay to want more it's okay to learn and be educated about how much is enough and and celebrate that and empower people to live a better life and if you had to peel me back like i love money too but if you had to peel me back it's all because like my whole whole mission and vision and goal in life is just to teach better people a better way to think about what's possible for them and allowing them to live a different life and not get strapped into fear i've been strapped with fear and anxiety my whole life like it's in me genetic lee and it's just you know it's it's been part of who i am but once i was able to you know own myself and and and understand the psychology and the technical part about wealth and understanding how to align my life like that's when life started getting so much better for me and now i just want to share with the world and that's what's really important because we have this fearful thing with money it's just ugly and gross and i'm like no let's bring it bring it on and let's talk about it let's have honest communication about it and and what we need to do technically and psychologically to build more wealth because we need more money you talked about women i know that you know it's on your website in the materials and some of the courses and the events and books obviously there's some things that are very it's just a human thing but what what's the difference between men and women i know it's a broad brush and not everybody's new like that but why the focus on women why do you think it's so needed compared to men not that you're like turning men away but specifically women like why the difference what is the difference to be quite frank with you it's really not just about women i think i think women are more attracted to this type of thinking about money um and i think women in particularly need this type of coaching and advice um i also think that women tend to historically not having um it's not okay for us to negotiate and to talk about money and we are very we're emotional creatures and men are very emotional it's just that women actually can it it's more accepted for us to show our emotions than a man when a man shows his emotions i'm generalizing right but when a man shows his emotions it's it's weak and it's not as you know powerful and i think that's why my message probably resonates more with women and i think my message resonates more with successful women because just like myself i've been an entrepreneur my whole life i'm a ceo of a multi-million dollar investment company you know i'm an entrepreneur or a business owner like my that type of message resonates with how do you continue to grow and be at the top of your game but recognizing that we all have emotions and and when we don't deal with our emotions especially as women and we let the emotions take over we're not gonna we're not we're gonna limit our success in it as entrepreneurs does that make sense yeah i'm curious what was the like the evolution of don so you spend your first home remaining you've been doing this for a while you look super young but you've been doing this for a while uh you do it like everybody else says at the beginning and it's just about the technical and the numbers and the question what what was the thing that sparked the difference to say maybe the way everybody else is doing it isn't enough yeah right um it's twofold it was me personally realizing when i had made five times the amount of income that i ever thought i would dream of making but i still feared that credit card statement back in the day when we used to get those credit card statements we'd open it up like oh my god what the hell did i spend over the last month like i would still have this fearful relationship with money myself and i would allow that to continue to dictate my decision making and i noticed it myself and then i noticed it like i would give all my clients the i'm a cfp i'd give them the right financial planning advice but then we'd have meeting after meeting after meeting and i realized oh my god like you guys still think you're gonna run out of money like what is your problem like i'm showing you the technical financial plan i'm showing you a thousand different scenarios that's gonna show you to never run out of money why are you guys not spending your money like you know so i realized oh my gosh there's this ying and yang with spending and this emotions and and retirees are still not spending their money and they're all they're doing is hoarding it and saving it or or we have people that are overspending you know like like i got myself caught up in overspending earlier on in my career it's like because i wasn't enough so i spent enough to be enough you know and i realized this ying and yang relationship with spending and saving was impacting me as the leader of a wealthy you know with leading clients and i realized the clients weren't listening to my technical advice i was like go dang it well i need a different approach like i need people to fall in love with their money and realize that they can like loosen up the purse strings a little bit and live we all just want to live and and and they weren't able to do that until i started having those conversations with them but i'm telling you i didn't recognize that in the clients until i started recognizing it myself i was like oh mama here needs to work on her you know like i need to work on my own relationship with money i had all the technical advice i had all the income coming in it wasn't until it's like oh yeah so we need to combine this relationship the psychological the the personal development piece of money and the technical advice at the same time and i feel like if advisors aren't there advisors out there if they're not helping their clients with both of that those things like we're doing a disservice to clients i've watched clients fall asleep in meetings when i start pulling up the morningstar report and talking about the beta and the alpha and you know like all the like the technical stuff about building wealth they're like what like i i saw them you know how you've seen people like pretend to yawn or not pretend again but they're yawning but they're trying to hold it back yeah yeah it's like oh my why are we why am i wasting i'm wasting their time and i'm wasting my time so let's get to the real issue of how they want to live like and that's where i was just like you know what i need to make a change and how i present advice how i give advice the technical stuff's super important but you just need to make that change were there any rules that helped you then and maybe even now that maybe gave you the permission whether it's i'm going to spend x percent of what i make right i'm going to donate x percent of what i make like were there any like okay i have no choice to set these rules did anything like that help you get over the the mindset huh ah 100 and this is the technical advice and so you know all through financial planning when we sit down with clients we don't really care about their budget or their spending we're just like how much you have and how much are you saving for your future and i was like this is not okay so what i developed is a comprehensive financial planning tool that said okay you guys we need to understand this alignment piece and what your real net income is we all think of when we hear the word net income we think well net income is after we've saved or after we've paid our taxes it's like yeah but that's not really what real net income is after you paid your taxes and after you've committed a percentage of your gross income to saving for your future because we have to save and then we have this real net income after taxes and after saving then we get this pile of money that we get to align into different buckets we get a saving or we get a spending bucket we get a debt bucket we get a core value bucket and we get a charitable bucket like how much money are we we're giving away so i have these four buckets that i say okay people based on your core values like evan if i picked on you right now and said name your five core values and then what i would do is i would say okay i'm gonna start to analyze those values and understand if they're costing you money from a you know spending perspective or are they helping you save money and those core values if there's if if you are living out those core values and they're costing you money great then you can spend 25 of your real net income on the things that you value the most in life like how cool is that is it going out to dinner is it working out is it building your business like what are your what are the things 25 guilt-free guilt-free non-negotiable every single month 25 of your real net income on the things you love and you can spend 35 percent of your real net income on debt like i love debt too like i love healthy debt i don't like credit card debt okay i hate credit card debt but healthy debt to build yourself up for the future and and debt that it's associated with an appreciate appreciating asset like like 35 of your money of your real net income on debt and then 35 percent of your money and all of the bs stuff that we have to spend our household expenses on right just to survive and then you know a portion you can you know five percent of your real net income on charitable giving like when you follow that bucket you create a spending plan not a budget you create you create freedom and security for today while you're still planning for tomorrow and that is the technical advice that i give clients to be able to live in alignment with their today and their tomorrow yeah one of the hardest things i had to deal with was just getting comfortable spending money i'm still like at the core the startup entrepreneur making 300 a month like eating bean salad lunch every day and just having no money uh and so even when i had money i i didn't i didn't spend it and i thought that was actually good but then realized oh but like you could you could be doing more things to bring enjoy in your life but also invest into the business like i wasn't growing my company as much as i should have because i was too afraid to spend money on things um so i'm a lot better but i probably still have a lot of that scarcity early evan in there too that i'm still working through well and i appreciate you saying that evan but you know your platform is about your belief walks that you take right and your beautiful brainy walk yesterday with your wife and then the disney right like i i saw it um but the belief walks because i believe when you start peeling back the personal development and building your work up i'm telling you it a hundred percent comes down to what you believe in and do you believe in yourself enough and your energy of action you're going to take around building your business then if you do then you're going to put more of your money and your financial resources in fact you can even take out debt to do that if you're going to believe in yourself a hundred percent and you're going to follow through on your actions and that's a great that's a great alignment piece right if you don't 100 believe and you still live in this fearful relationship and you let your negative anxiety and emotions take over your life and you don't 100 believe you know then you're going to fail or you're going to you're not going to be as successful as you want to be so it is about beliefs and i love that that's why i love your platform so much because when i start peeling back worth and wealth the floor the bottom line denominator is belief it's all how you believe in yourself and your wealth um but you but you probably still also what you just said too it's like you're spent you need to loosen up some of the pers you need to like you need to live for today and you need to have a spending plan because like like it's like telling i told another podcast i did a couple weeks ago it's like you know if you don't do that you don't loosen up and live today it's like being on a diet your whole life like and we all know that never like 100 of the time that never works a hundred percent of the time being on a budget doesn't work either it's the same concept right and we want to live life on actionable steps that we can take that work not what is going to limit how we think and what we believe in and that also limits our wealth building opportunities i love it well you're you're bringing up all sorts of uh anxiety and feels here so i've got some work to do i gotta i gotta get the book i gotta join the courses what what where do you wanna send people to you've got your your event coming up you've got books you've got courses what's the main thing you wanna guide people to my biggest thing oven is i want people no matter where they're at in their journey of wealth building that they can reach out to me for advice and help if they want free advice they can follow me all over social media if they want they're like oh i'm ready to implement some of this actionable advice they can go to my website dawndalby.com i mean there's something for everybody there the book living wealth or live wealthy is going to be all over the place in april of next year it's going to be online it's going to be in the brick and mortar stores i'm super pumped about this event so if you're a female and you really want to make a big impact in your life and you want to learn how to build both your wealth and your worth at the same time we have owned your worth experience just go to my website you can learn all about everything there and i'm so happy to connect with anybody because i'm telling you it's your mindset it's your thinking it's your ability to make better decisions about yourself and you're just one decision away from living a wealthy life i love it well youtube will link to all that in the description below go check it out don thank you for your time the energy the gift uh helping me but the audience and the big mission you're on super inspiring and can't wait to see all the amazing things that you create thank you and thank you for having me like i said i i i'm so impressed with you and your platform it's been a pleasure much love thank you don all right thank you to see my sit down with tony robbins personal financial advisor check the video right there next to me i think you'll love it continue to believe and i'll see you there there's this myth the market goes up the market goes down that's not really true so how do i know who the person is to help me build my wealth plans like how do i identify that person