When people have their eyes set on their purpose, it guides their decision making and actions. Purpose fuels their dreams for their current reality and their future. But so often, we can get bogged down by life events, and forget or never explore our purpose. However, when we connect our purpose with income, we are able to explore how we can strive for our dreams now, and think about how we can live life fully at every stage.
In this episode we talk with Caleb Guilliams, the founder and CEO of Better Wealth, a company committed to showing people how to have control over their money today while maximizing their future wealth potential. Founded in 2017, Better Wealth is on a mission to help people see and reach their highest potential. In this episode, we explore the question: how can money enable the life we want?
Show Notes
You can learn more about BetterWealth at betterwealth.com or by listening to Caleb’s podcast, BetterWealth with Caleb Guilliams.
This podcast is brought to you by the team at The Cultural North. It’s edited and scored by Ethan Gibbs. Written by Hannah Fordice and Beau Walsh. You can learn more about our passion for bringing peoples about into action through web, branding, and film by visiting our website at culturalnorth.us.
Transcript
Narration: [00:00:00] This is the about page, a podcast by a group of web makers who explore the connection between what we’re about and what we do with Kaley Herman
Kaley: we all have, superpowers.
Narration: Aaron Johnson,
Aaron: So I’d like to have my voice a little bit sharper than a little bit sharper, a little bit sharper.
Narration: And me Beau Walsh.
Beau: Maybe my voice is just that deep. Check, check, check, check, check, check.
Narration: And in this episode, we’re talking about aligning your finances with your life goals.
Caleb Guilliam’s Story of Starting BetterWealth
Money. It is one of the most stress-inducing and contentious topics for most people. But it’s also a topic that we all deal with on a daily basis, whether it’s related to our short-term needs like paying rent and buying groceries, or our long-term visions, like investing and saving for our retirement.
However, [00:01:00] Will Rogers is famous for saying “Too many people spend money they haven’t earned, to buy things they don’t want, to impress people that they don’t like.”
For Caleb Williams, the young founder and CEO of better wealth.com, there has to be a better way.
Caleb: We, we had a guy come into our bank and I was, I’m like 20 years old and he’s going to retire and he’s really pumped about that. And he’s, he, he’s worked his entire life at a job that you and I wouldn’t last a week at. Okay. And. We sit down and he’s just, he’s going to retire, like something magical, like you’ve hit retirement.
Narration: So they sat down and looked at his finances and Caleb came to the realization that there was no way that he could retire.
Caleb: and so I had to, I had to like [00:02:00] share that with him. And I remember after him leaving, I was just so emotional. I was just like, I don’t want to just be in a position where I sit back, do my thing, check the boxes.
Like there’s got to be a better way.
Narration: And that’s what better wealth is all about, teaching people, how to take back control of their financial future. Caleb started better wealth when he was just 21 years old, which is an incredible feat and one that people often ask him how he managed to accomplish.
Caleb: I can’t really give you a direct answer other than, Better wealth is just a combination of. Of, uh, a lot of generous people teaching, pouring into us.
Narration: Although Caleb’s story of success may seem picture perfect. His journey there was only possible because of the help and wisdom of others, starting with his mom.
Caleb: One of the, one of the stories that I think, uh, encompasses just who, who [00:03:00] I am and some of the values that I have to this day, was when I was 12 years old at a camp called Riverside Bible camp. And 12 year old Caleb was very much, I was short for my age, I struggled with dyslexia. Um, I was at that age where I wanted to like impress girls, but I was too afraid to date kind of deal. And I remember the last night, we had a talent show where I don’t remember what the show was supposed to be about, but I do remember being afraid to get up in front of people, but everyone had to do it.
Narration: He had two lines to say, but when he got to the moment they just weren’t coming up.
Caleb: And I totally blanked. And I remember that moment of just like forgetting what I was going to say. And I remember pulling out my note card. And because of my dyslexia, I sounded out every single word. And again, I don’t remember what the show is all about it. I do remember feeling totally defeated coming off that stage.
And I remember going to [00:04:00] my mom the next day I was in tears because I was frustrated. I thought I was stupid. I didn’t, I didn’t think I was that smart. I was frustrated that I literally looked way younger than my younger sister. And I always kind of like the joke that, you know, I looked like a child and, and my mom just looked at me and she said, “Caleb, you can’t do anything about your height. You can’t put your identity in something that’s outside your control.”
Beau, as I look back like that is, that’s one of the things that I like resonate with is this concept of like majority of things in our life we can control, like as an entrepreneur, as, as someone who’s, we’re talking, we’re gonna talk about money. Like all these things, we can look at the things that we can’t control, like the fed printing money and taxation and politics.
But at the end of the day, how we show up day in and day out, majority of things is we can control. And so like that kind of shaped who I was.
Narration: Our stories, our journeys and our struggles, they all shape us.
I’ve been thinking a lot lately about this concept in storytelling called the inciting incident. This is [00:05:00] essentially when a character, all of a sudden discovers that a tension exists in the world, or even sometimes within themselves. It’s what grips them initially and sets them on a path towards their ultimate.
For example, Frodo being given the ring of power or Neo given the choice between the red pill and the blue pill. I think looking at the inciting incidents in our lives can bring a kind of clarity to our purpose that pivots us towards a specific vision.
For Caleb, his inciting incident was being different from the other kids growing up around him. He took his dyslexia and instead of continuing to see it as his weakness, he chose a different way to learn.
He got into the habit of finding people who were experts and simply asking for help.
Caleb: reading is extremely difficult for me Like when it comes to reading, I don’t, you know, dyslexic dyslexia, which is really ironic because no dyslexic person can actually spell dyslexia. So, uh, but it’s really interesting because [00:06:00] like I learn way different than the average person, another Simon Sinek-ism, is the solutions that you find your weaknesses growing up, become your greatest strength.
As, as a kid, I never would re retain information by reading. What would I do? I would always go to usually the girls in the front row that were taking copious notes and asking them, Hey, could I like, could we like study together or I would always go and find people that were experts.
Well, I did the same thing in the finance world, and I’m realizing there’s really, really smart people that want to share the information that want to leave a legacy that want to help people. And I just asked them to help and they did it.
Narration: But Caleb’s journey from camp talent show to successful business owner was anything but easy. Like most teenagers, he worked a series of part-time jobs and positions before he even started better wealth.
Caleb: um, I then worked at a chicken farm and I’ll, I’ll save you all the gory details, let’s just say I made [00:07:00] money for processing chickens. And I appreciate Chick-fil-A way more than everyone listening to this.
And so, uh, I started making money and, um, it was funny because every neck that we had, we got paid a dollar. And so I started making money and while all my friends were blowing it, I would say on just things like cars or whatever, like I just would save my money. I would pack lunches. Um, that was very much like our family wasn’t necessarily investors, but they were savers. And so I learned that. And then, uh, for my 16th birthday, someone gave me a news article, uh, like subscription.
Narration: And through that, he started to read about stocks gold and financial strategies.
Caleb: I just became hooked, read books, like The Richest Man in Babylon. Good to Great. And I couldn’t articulate it at the time, but at 16 year-old Caleb, by the way was still short. I had to sit on a pillow and I got my license and all that stuff just to see over. I couldn’t articulate it, but I, but I wanted to do something in the money space.
Narration: So at the [00:08:00] age of 17, he got a job at a bank.
Caleb: I connected with one person who, um, my hope was like, I wanted to talk to them about what I should go to college for . And he just said, young man, you need experience. And no joke. He picked up his phone, made one call and got me a job at a bank. I wasn’t even 18.
Narration: This was his first experience that who, you know, is super, super key. This was his first experience that who, you know, is super, super key.
This was his first experience that.
Caleb: who, you know, is super, super key.
Narration: So Caleb worked at the bank in every position he could get into from the teller line to marketing to the loan department and even going on the radio for ad spots.[00:09:00]
Caleb: I was like the HR nightmare
Narration: then at age 18, he started working as an investment assistant.
Caleb: And I thought I arrived because I had my name written on a business card, Caleb Williams, investment assistant.
Narration: A year later. The head of the investment department took another job.
Another year later. And the head of the investment department took another job
a year later. And the head. a year later, the head of the in investment department a year later, the inve blah, a year later, the head of the investment department took another job.
Caleb: And what, what meant to be just me stepping in. Um, but it turned into me staying. I took over the bank’s investment department.
Narration: This made him one of the youngest people to run the bank’s investment department at the time.[00:10:00]
Caleb: And it was interesting because I was going to school for business and finance. I was living at home. I had this dream of helping people with money. I get the corner office of a bank, have a bank phone, have like one of the nicest offices going to school full-time, pretty much working full- time.
Narration: From all appearances, he had arrived. He was going to school for finance, but already had a job in finance.
Caleb: And on another hand, if you could experience the faces of people walking into my office and they’re like, I have grandchildren older than you. How in the world are you supposed to help me with money? And so I, I learned to talk less because the more I talk, the less credibility I had, I learned to really listen.
And I became really, really savvy.
Narration: He took what he did on a local level for networking and brought it to a national level by implementing a [00:11:00] technique from Simon Sinek’s “Start With Why”.
Caleb: I listened to people and a lot of people for the very first time would tell me what they actually wanted out of their life, because nobody, nobody took the time to actually understand why people were doing what they were doing.
And then I would say something like your money, your time, what you do with all these quote unquote retirement plans should literally back up your desire to live your dream life. And there’d be like, yeah, I’ve never thought of that before.
And so at the age of 21, I remember sitting in, in my office, and I remember thinking to myself, I’m playing it safe.
Narration: So he went out on a limb and started BetterWealth.
Caleb: it was called better wealth solutions at the time because we couldn’t afford betterwealth.com. And we just had this vision of like, we’re going to show people a better way.
So I read Stephen Covey’s book…
Narration: Seven habits of highly effective [00:12:00] people.
Caleb: And in that book, there’s, there’s principle number two is think with the end in mind, you do the whole obituary test. And I just think I’m a big fan of doing that. I believe every single person should be the main speaker at their funeral.
Narration: Ironically and tragically shortly after Caleb started better well solutions and read Steven Covey’s book, one of his best friends and co-founders passed away from cancer.
Before he died, Caleb sat down with, him and recorded an interview, a living obituary, if you will.
Caleb: It was one of the biggest blessings in disguise because I learned some super valuable lessons about intentionality, about the value of life, but every moment [00:13:00] mattering, way more big of a deal than just money and retirement accounts and financial strategies.
This, this idea is, it’s like this idea of intentional living. It can be like pie in the sky, but what is one thing that we can do today or what is one thing that we can do with the people that we love the most, that can ultimately be a part of our living why? Usually the definition of retirement is to be taken out of service. So why is the whole carrot to retire? I would just like very much encourage people to lean into what they actually want and start addressing their time and what they’re, who they’re spending their time with. You talk a lot about in estate planning, your living will and all this stuff. And it’s like, okay, what’s the purpose of a living will, as it relates to your assets, if you don’t actually know the values around why that’s important.
Value 1 – Return on Result
Narration: Caleb’s fascination with the why was eventually integrated into a concept that he calls ROR.
Most people in the financial world think of ROR as standing for rate of [00:14:00] return or return on risk, but for Caleb and better wealth, it stands for return on result.
In other words, Caleb and his team believe that if you can clearly articulate the result that you want, you can begin to strategize a way to get there.
However, if you don’t know what you want, ultimately you will end up chasing whatever metric of success culture or your financial institution tells you to chase.
Caleb: In, in the financial planning world, a lot of there’s a lot of complicated metrics. A lot of people do distribution planning. There’s something called the 4% rule and it’s all based on, you got plan around some theory. Um, and there’s a lot of different theories that we can get into. Um, but that theory ultimately is what you’re basing your life on.
Narration: And it turned out that the majority of people he talked to couldn’t actually say what metric or theory they were following.[00:15:00]
Caleb: They they’ll always say like, oh, somebody is figuring it out. Like the 401k person or the financial advisor person, they got that figured out, but they can’t actually articulate what they want.
And I experienced this even at the bank. It’s like, I would have really smart people coming in and they literally turn their brain off. They were really, really smart making the money. But then they just literally turned off their brain as it relates to what they did with that money.
Narration: For better wealth, and with us at the about page, what you do with your money is an expression of what you’re about. Finding that out is the key to discover how you can live life with intentionality in all that you do.
Caleb: First of all, living intentionally for you is different than it is for me. And, and it, it really comes down to what would you do if money wasn’t an issue?
Like if money didn’t matter, what would you spend your time doing? What would you do? What, [00:16:00] what would be the most fulfilling thing, that is the metric. And then we can reverse engineer your time. We can reverse engineer your money. We can reverse engineer the value and the potential that you have and build a plan or a strategy to best realize that.
Narration: And in order to find your desired results or that thing that you’re earning money for.
Caleb: I ask you, what would you do if money wasn’t an issue? And you would say something like, I would spend more time with the kids. Why? You start asking why? And you start getting deeper, deeper down to like, what are your values? What are, do you stand by? Like truly, what would you do if money wasn’t an issue. So we get that. And that’s what, that’s what we make our ROR statement.
So if we were working together, I’d say, okay, this is, this is the metric. Can we agree that if, if we had time freedom, if we had money freedom. You’ve, you’ve hit the goal. But it’s like, you don’t need to be a [00:17:00] multimillionaire to live your dream.
Narration: Caleb likes to share this illustration of a fisherman.
Caleb: He’s fishing. And he’s able to make some money and spends time with his family and all this stuff.
Narration: One day when he’s out fishing, a Harvard MBA comes down to the water and says to him
Caleb: “Wait, you could make so much more money if you worked and you built a team and you did all these things. What would you do if you had all that money?”
Narration: the fisherman replies.
Caleb: Well, I would get up, I would fish. I would spend time with my family and all that stuff.”
Narration: So this helps illustrate that each person is different in their goals and aspirations. And yet we often think that more money is the thing that everyone needs more of.
Caleb: Maybe, the worst thing that you could be doing is investing a bunch of money and your time into building businesses, because [00:18:00] you might have it set in the route that you’re going.
Our world doesn’t work off of like customized for everybody. It’s usually like, this is the, this is the narrative. And so whole idea of retirement is I do believe you should be financially free to the, to the level that you are living your life on your terms. And you’re making intentional the decision on who you’re spending time with, how you’re spending your money and what you’re doing.
Narration: But like he mentioned earlier, retirement, shouldn’t be the whole carrot or the end game in itself
Caleb: It’s really simple but we’re not incentivized to do that. And I just that’s one of the things I’m really passionate about is I feel like if we take more time and lean into those true metrics, we’re not only going to have happier clients, but everyone will make money in the end because there’s a lot more clarity that comes.
And that’s the last thing I’ll say is when you get really clear about what that looks like, clarity cleans up a lot of [00:19:00] messes. A lot of people are doing things they hate and investing in things they don’t understand because they don’t have clarity on the actual results that they want.
Beau: I think though the, the return on result idea, um, it’s this, it’s this idea of reverse engineering your life. And I think that that phrase is so useful because that’s really what we do in the About Page is we say, this is what we’re about. Now, let’s work that back down into what we do in our day to day. And so I think we, we learn a lot more about, um, kind of the ecosystem that our decisions live in when we start with kind of what is the boundaries of this thing. And that’s the why to me.
And so, reverse engineering for him, from that why, I think it’s a surprising one in the financial industry, because everybody’s so used to just tactics. They’re just, you know, here, go do this, go buy this, invest in this, get this stock, sell the stock. And [00:20:00] what I appreciate is that it’s, it’s not cookie cutter.
Aaron: Yeah. The the concept of reverse engineering and how much clarity it provides when you do that deep dive, into the why, into the outcome that you want to see. And When you pull back the curtain and say, if money was no object, this is what you would be doing. This is what I would be doing. The clarity that provides is so much better. And then you start to apply the tactics to it, right. Even how, even as we talk about features, benefits, outcomes. if You start with the outcome, it’s easier to work backwards to the benefits and the features. And and even as he’s talking about it, you know, it’s, it’s very simple. It’s not, it’s not this, this grandiose scheme. It’s getting clarity on where you want to go and then here’s the vehicles to do that.
Kaley: So I think it’s really interesting when you think about what do I want to be doing, and if it’s, you know, reading in my hammock, and I [00:21:00] say yes to volunteering someplace, and I say yes to um, going out to dinner. And I say yes to all of these things. Eventually, I’m no longer at the point that I’m able to do what I actually want to do. And having that clarity, I think can be really life shaping, because if you’re wanting to do something and you put barriers in your own life to make that impossible, you’re the person that can actually change it. And you can do something about it rather than just thinking, oh, I’m just, a, at the whim of my life, rather than in Control of it.
Beau: yeah, because basically our vision trickles down, um, to not just our, the way we spend our money, but the way we spend our time and the way we make any decisions.
I think our financial decisions are more profound than we, when we think they are. It really conveys what we, what we believe in, what we want in our day to day, what we want in our future. [00:22:00] I think, um, we tend to think of swiping the credit card as just a miniature part of our day, but it really spiderwebs and butterfly effects into so many things of, of our, um, our life.
Well, I used two different insects in one metaphor.
Aaron: So how does that apply into intentional living then?
Beau: I think it is living with the awareness that that’s the case, but not seeing it as enslavement or like as, uh, a burden, but as a, as a lens to view the world around you. When you have that future vision that you’re going for, and you can look back on your day and say, did my decisions point that direction?
Aaron: Yeah, you have the freedom of choices. You make decisions on if you’re actually pointing towards that, that vision, or if you are, standing against it, or making decisions that are counter to, to that vision.
Beau: So we’ve gone [00:23:00] this far without asking, but I think we should ask if, if money wasn’t an object, if money wasn’t an issue, how would you paint your life?
Aaron: I would be coaching and developing people. I would be investing in my family. I would be, uh, leading my boys and teaching them how to become men. I would be loving on my girls and, and helping Amy raise them and, pointing them to, the successful life that they can have and cheering them on. And then I would be investing in young professionals to help them grow and develop.
Kaley: Um, reading, like reading and writing, for sure. Yeah. Like any, any time that I can be like creating a story or reading something and just learning. I just love learning new things and to just being able to convey [00:24:00] things. So I don’t know if that necessarily comes down to what I would do but I think it’s the stage of life that I’m at right nowfamily.
So I don’t know if that necessarily comes down to what I would do, but I think it’s the stage of life that I’m at right now.
Beau: Um, for me, my, my kind of ultimate, you know, money isn’t an issue in my life is that I want the capacity to just create things. And do it doing it collaboratively is something I’ve learned. Like there’s so many things I want to create in my life and there’s not enough time in my life to do them all.
So, you know, creating things, uh, with my friends, with my wife, with my daughter, with, um, family. And, you know, talking about a legacy, I want to see content put out there that is an extension of me and in my vision so that my daughter and, and her kids can all kind of have a connection to the things that I’ve learned throughout my life. vision.
the things that I’ve learned [00:25:00] throughout my life.
Value 2 – Know Thyself
Narration: For Caleb gaining clarity on the why naturally leads to the question of how, like, how will someone reach that ultimate goal, that lifestyle, where they can do the things that matter the most to them without the fear of financial restraints. The answer:
Caleb: “know thyself” and design your life in a way with your time money and people and potential.
My favorite thing is, is getting clear on what someone’s unique ability is, and then figuring out how to take that unique ability and increase the wealth, because usually what happens is you make more money and you’re more fulfilled.
Narration: Now of course, Caleb doesn’t mean that money itself brings fulfillment. If it did, that would negate our entire conversation on tailoring finances to the why. Rather he’s getting at this reality, that money is a tool that allows us to pursue the things that really matter to us.[00:26:00]
Caleb: Design your life in a way that you can go after that and understand how things like the market, the real estate, building businesses, Bitcoin, other assets. How that translates into helping and be able to actually create some type of metric, whether you’re working with a company like ours or someone else, make sure you can measure like this versus that, because if you can’t, then you’re literally just like most of America just throwing something at the wall and hoping it sticks, which sounds crazy but almost everybody is doing it including very, very successful people. They’re doing the same thing. They just have a lot more money to, to lose than you, but it’s, we see it all across the board.
Narration: I love this idea of designing a unique financial strategy because none of us are the same. None of us are clones or carbon copies of each other. So better wealth uses a unique framework to help its clients customize their financial plans.
Caleb: [00:27:00] The, the very first thing, what, what makes you really excited? What things that you don’t like to do? We don’t care about what Wall Street’s doing. We don’t care about what Bitcoin’s doing and whatever, like, those are all tools. Those are all strategies that can help us get closer to where we want to go. But at the end of the day, it all goes back to you.
The next thing that we do is we do a quick audit of what’s going on. Every everything is based around cashflow. You could be a billionaire on paper, but if you don’t have cashflow coming in, you’re not going to be able to have lights, groceries. You’re not going to be able to live.
So cashflow makes the world go round. And the fact that majority of people are not doing quote unquote financial planning around a cashflow is crazy to me. So cashflow comes in and then your, your cashflow can only do two things.
Narration: It can be consumed or it can be saved.
Caleb: What’s really interesting is that again, people like to complicate things, but once you have money and it’s either consumed or it’s saved, what’s the purpose of [00:28:00] saving. It’s ultimately to create more cashflow so that we can consume it or pass it on so that it can be consumed by next generation.
Like that’s, that’s as simple as money.
Narration: He doesn’t need to ask you for your budget to see what’s going on. All he needs to ask is how much money are you saving for the.
Caleb: And just to make a number simple. If you’re making a hundred thousand dollars a year and you’re saving 10,000, what does that tell me about how much money you spend per year to do your life? It’s 90. Now, a lot of people will say, well, I don’t spend 90. I only spend, you know, 40. And it’s like, well, but all these things that you’re not accounting for like taxes. And they’re like, well, that’s not spending, well, you need this. You need to pay your taxes for your life. So we need to factor that into your lifestyle.
And then we can also then look at where they’re saving their money, how they’re investing it, what, what they’re doing with their [00:29:00] money. And we can tell you on two lines, if you’re financially imbalanced or not based on cashflow, not based on any fancy, you know, metrics and strategies, we’re just, you can show you from a cash ratio. Are you balanced or not?
What’s interesting is once we, once we see that there’s four things that can happen. Majority of people, 98% of people are not financially balanced.
Meaning there’s going to be a time where they are going to run out of cashflow and they need to change something in their life. So a lot of people need to save more money, which either is being more efficient in your consumption, or literally just saving more money. Some people need to work longer. That’s what we see a lot. Some people need to reduce their standard of living in the future, or some people need to find a better investment strategies.
And so from a practical standpoint, we’re not only the company that shows you that simple framework, but also helps you implement that.
Aaron: It’s it’s funny, even if you watch TV, you see all of the financial companies like [00:30:00] fidelity like mass mutual, like, you know, New York life and all of these companies that are just saying tactics, right? And they, they say like, It’s almost, it’s almost forced fed on us that our tactic is to retire, to have enough money to retire.
Wow. What, does that look like? Right. I I’m sorry, you’re not going to be able to communicate with everybody. What everyone’s retirement is going to be on a 60 second commercial
Kaley: Yeah. And for a lot of people, retirement is not something that they actually want. like they might want to retire from the job that they’ve been working at for 60 years because they don’t like that job, but no one, wants to just. On their butt and twiddle their thumbs, and just be like, well, I’m here. Like you want to be able to do something you want to retire [00:31:00] so that you can do something else a lot of the time, or,
Aaron: that concept of retirement as out of service it was like, whoa. Yeah. you’re right.
Beau: I think some people think that’s what they want though. They, they look at like, okay, my entire life is going to be sitting on a beach, the rest of my life. And then I think they get there and they’re go now what?
Kaley: And a lot of the time, actually those people will, they get to that point and then immediately get really sick because they’ve been living a life for so long, that is extremely stressful. They have no supports, you know, all of these negative things that we know are bad for health outcomes, but they’re like, well, I did this thing and I got to this beach, and it’s like, can you enjoy can you do the things that you want to
Beau: That’s why it just seems backwards to focus on suffering for 40 years in order to have relaxation for [00:32:00] another what, 10 to 20, um, it just doesn’t seem worth it to me.
Aaron: Yeah. I’ve got, I’ve got a really, uh, hard story with that because that’s what happened to my dad. So when he retired and they, and they lived in Duluth for several years after that, but, um, then they, they finally got to the position, where they made the decision to move to their retirement home in they’re in, and they moved south.
And three years later he Died of cancer. and it was like, Oh, they finally got to that position. Now they, they did other things right? Like my dad was still really involved in the community and, and things like that. So they, they were, it’s not like they got to the beach, Like their vision was not to just sit in retirement. They, they didn’t want to do things together, but it’s a, an example of like, you should have a clarity of [00:33:00] vision of things that you want to accomplish at all times.
Beau: Yeah. I, I think that’s what it’s saying too, is we, our, our purpose in life doesn’t change when our vocation does. And that’s what we need to decide is if, if our purpose in life is decided now, then, then we should live that now and then all the way into retirement, whatever, however we do it.
Kaley: Yeah. and it also makes me think too of cause we, we cannot account for everything because we can, we can live with vision for our entire lives and still have something happen that it’s too soon. And, um, so I think even, especially knowing that, that was your dad’s story. I just want to say that too of it’s like, we can’t always account for what happens and when it happens, but if you get to that point, where it’s just like [00:34:00] I lived, I lived my life. I was not on autopilot.
Aaron: yeah. well, I mean, listening to him talk, and how passionate he was passionate he was, I wanted to call him. The funny thing was, is I was thinking, yeah, I need help with my life plan. Not my investment strategy, or not my like, none of it was like, it had graduated beyond that.
Beau: Yeah, yeah, yeah. You don’t just go. That’s crazy. You, we can go to him for financial advice, but really it’s like here’s life advice. And then here’s how to accomplish that life goal with finances. Yeah. Yeah.
Aaron: Here’s how to align your finances with what your life goal is.
Caleb: When I started learning about Simon Sinek and, you know, people don’t care how you do what you do or what you do until they know your why. And I realized, okay, a lot of people don’t know their why, so how can I help someone see and reach their highest potential if they don’t even know what what, what that is. the why and vision and values very much were the, the foundation and gasoline that was poured on the desire to understand all the tactics.
If you’re just trying to find a [00:35:00] tactic in anything, if you’re in a marketing, if you’re in a finance, if you’re in a business, if you’re just trying to find tactics, you’re gonna, you’re gonna run out of steam because it’s really, really difficult.
I believe majority of people are slaves to their limiting beliefs are slaves to, um, things like comparison and, and at a deeper spiritual level. I believe that a lot of that’s intentional.
So what brings me joy is when people have something much bigger that they’re working on than just themselves.
What brings me joy is when, when one of our clients say like Caleb, like I am able to start dreaming again because I spent 50 years of my life not dreaming because no, like I just never intentionally leaned into that. What, what brings me joy is when you see someone go overseas to help people and realize that their whole world is rocked, because it just gives you perspective.
And so I, I, I think what brings me joy is ultimately just this journey of like [00:36:00] dreaming and helping other people. And I don’t want to be like the, like, that’s maybe an obvious answer based on our conversation, but it truly is the thing that makes me light up and brings me the most joy.
Narration: It comes down to investing in what matters first, which that begs the question of what is, Caleb’s why the reason he’s so passionate about finances and his work with better wealth, the reason he continues to invest in this business.
Caleb: I believe everyone has amazing potential. You know, I just believe we’re all created in the image of God. We have potential to do so much. And so few people are living that out. So my mission statement clearly just reads to help people see and reach their highest potential.
Everything that I, everything that I do, whether I’m gutting chickens, whether I’m working behind the teller line, whether I’m starting businesses, whether I’m having a conversation with a friend, whether I’m [00:37:00] writing, whatever, everything I do ultimately comes down to this concept of helping people see and reach.
We’re on a mission to helping people see and reach their highest potential. This is, this is so much more than just money.
Beau: So much more than just money. that’s the about page because the businesses that make the world a better place, decide on a vision that they want to reach and then go to work, building a business that accomplishes it. The money, the products, the services, it, it just, it all comes together as tools and tactics to see more people thriving and living intentionally.
Narration: So I ask you if money wasn’t an issue in your life, how would you live? What are the metrics that you could look back at the end and say, I lived my life.
You can hear more of Caleb on his fantastic podcast, better wealth with Caleb Williams or visit better wealth.com.
This show is brought to you by the team at the [00:38:00] cultural north. It’s a design agency in Duluth, Minnesota.
It’s edited and scored by Ethan Gibbs. And it’s written by Hannah Fordice and Beau Walsh.
You can learn more about our passion for bringing peoples about into action through web branding and film by visiting our website at culturalnorth.us.
And thank you for listening. We’re still a very new podcast. So any amount of sharing or reviewing or rating our show, wherever it’s convenient is a huge help for us.
And you can also find show notes and learn more at our website. The about.page.