The Five Types of Wealth Everyone Needs with Sahil Bloom

Summary

Podcast Summary: Aspire with Emma Grede

Episode: The Five Types of Wealth Everyone Needs with Sahil Bloom

Date: December 23, 2025
Host: Emma Grede
Guest: Sahil Bloom

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Overview

In this enlightening episode, Emma Grede sits down with Sahil Bloom—author of the bestselling book The Five Types of Wealth—to unpack a holistic new vision of success and wealth. Bloom, once a fast-rising star in finance, details his journey from chasing society’s traditional scorecard to discovering a richer, more meaningful framework for life. The conversation ranges from practical methods for self-reflection and growth to stories of family, purpose, health, and happiness—revealing the five key areas of wealth that form a truly successful and vibrant life.

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Key Discussion Points and Insights

1. The Trap of Conventional Success

• Chasing Standard Success: Sahil describes spending the first 30 years of his life pursuing society’s standard metrics—elite education, lucrative jobs, external approval.

  “I was winning the game in the traditional definition of it, but 2020 came around and I started having this sensation that if that was what winning felt like, I had to be playing the wrong game.” — Sahil (06:38)

• Personal Backstory: Grew up with “real pressure” from high-achieving parents and developed an inner story of not being “the smart one.”

• Turning Point: The COVID-19 pandemic forced him to slow down and notice cracks in his life—struggling relationships, distance from family, health issues, and a sense of emptiness despite outward "success."

2. The Life-Changing Conversation ([09:11])

• Confronting Mortality: A friend quantified for Sahil how little time he had left with his parents (“If you see them once a year and they’re 65, you’ll see them 15 more times before they die”).
• Immediate Action: Within 45 days, Sahil and his wife left California, quit his job, and moved closer to both their families.

  “We had taken an action and created time for the things that we really care about. And anyone can do that.” — Sahil (17:39)

3. Redefining Wealth: The Five Types

• The Five Types of Wealth ([26:18]):

  • Time Wealth: Freedom in how, where, and with whom you spend your time.
  • Social Wealth: Quality of relationships and human connection.
  • Mental Wealth: Purpose, growth, and internal fulfillment.
  • Physical Wealth: Health and vitality.
  • Financial Wealth: Money as an enabler, not the end goal.

• Research & Wisdom: Insight sourced from thousands of conversations with people aged 13 to 100+ (27:33), revealing time, people, purpose, and health as what truly endures.

4. Deep Dives into Each Wealth Type

A. Financial Wealth ([18:28])

• Concept of “Enough” and Expectations:

  “Expectations are your single greatest financial liability.” — Sahil (18:28)

  • Chasing ever-higher goals leads to dissatisfaction.
  • Appreciation for what present self has previously wished for is essential.

• Building Financial Wealth: ([29:51])
  Three Pillars:

  1. Income generation (cash in)
  2. Expense management (cash out)
  3. Investment for the long term
  • The gap between income and expenses, compounded over time, is true wealth creation.

• Cultural & Practical Barriers:

  • Sahil affirms anyone can build some financial wealth with discipline, though acknowledges systemic hurdles for some.

B. Time Wealth ([44:27])

• Valuing Time Over Money:
  The Warren Buffett Dilemma—no one would trade youth for billions and old age.

  “Your time has quite literally incalculable value. And yet on a daily basis, how much of it are we wasting?” — Sahil (45:34)

• Energy Management (Energy Calendar) ([46:16]):

  • Color-code daily tasks: green (energy-creating), yellow (neutral), red (energy-draining).
  • Make small tweaks (e.g., walking meetings) to turn draining tasks into energizing ones.

C. Social Wealth ([57:49])

• Investment Mindset:

  “Your social connections, your relationships are the best investment that you can make.” — Sahil (59:12)

  • Compounding small actions (texts, calls) builds relationship wealth.
  • Social connections, shown in Harvard’s 85-year study, are the greatest predictor of later-life health.

• Quality over Quantity:

  • “Most people are going to have less than five true deep friends... That’s perfectly fine.” — Sahil (67:00)

• Modern Loneliness Epidemic ([64:17]):

  • Sahil recounts his grandmother’s decline after losing daily in-person social interactions during COVID-19 lockdowns.
  • Real-life relationships are built face-to-face.

D. Mental Wealth ([67:37])

• Carving Your Own Path:

  • The worst fate is living a “good path that isn’t yours.”

  “It’s the challenging questions that you’re avoiding—that is where the answers you seek in life are found.” — Sahil (74:35)

  • Encourages listeners to spend small amounts of time exploring unlived dreams or alternative futures.

• Purpose and Longevity:

  • People with clear purpose live longer, healthier lives.

E. Physical Wealth ([70:27])

• Simplicity Over Hype:

  “Being healthy…is basically three things. Move your body for 30 minutes a day, eat whole unprocessed foods at about 80% of your meals…and sleep for seven hours a night. If you can do those three, that’s it.” — Sahil (71:36)

  • Rejects overcomplicated, market-driven fitness advice.
  • “Do the basics” before getting caught in advanced protocols.

5. Practical Life Strategies

• The 1-1-1 Method (Gratitude Practice) ([21:11]):
  • Every night, jot down: one win, one worry, and one thing you're grateful for.
  • “It helps me go to sleep for sure… And the gratitude piece is scientifically proven to improve your happiness and mental well being.” — Sahil (21:40)
• Managing Work-Life Presence ([56:31]):
  • “Work life balance is a lie.” Instead, integrate family into your overall mission and life design.
  • Model hard work and purpose for your children through lived example, not lectures.
• Periodic Self-Audit ([51:24]):
  • Professional time falls into management, creation, consumption, and ideation; most people neglect the ‘ideation’ space.

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Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

• On Regret and Time (09:55):
  “You never think about time in just how quantified, how countable it really is in the moments that we have with these people.” — Sahil

• On Life Change (11:53):
  “Within 45 days, we had made a dramatic change. I had left my job, we had sold our house in California, and we had moved 3,000 miles to live closer to both of our sets of parents.” — Sahil

• On Awareness (20:27):
  “How many of the things that your younger self prayed for have become things that your current self complains about?” — Sahil

• On Defining Wealth (33:44):
  “My definition of wealth is being able to take my son in the pool at 1pm on a Tuesday… That captures basically everything that I want.” — Sahil

• On Social Media (22:11):
  “Tiny actions compound. Anything above zero compounds in your life. It doesn't have to be optimal for it to be beneficial.” — Sahil

• On Relationships (51:04):
  “Most of your friends aren't really your friends. They are just along for the ride when it's fun, convenient, or valuable.” — Sahil

• On Teaching Children (78:07):
  “I do not believe you can teach your kids anything. I really believe you have to embody the things that you want them to learn.” — Sahil

• On Asking Hard Questions (74:35):
  “The answers you seek in life are found in the questions that you avoid.” — Sahil

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Timestamps for Important Segments

• Sahil’s Backstory & Conventional Success: 04:10–07:55
• Life-Changing Conversation about Parents & Time: 09:11–11:53
• Defining the Five Types of Wealth: 26:18–26:54
• Balancing Financial Ambition & “Enough”: 18:28–21:40, 29:51–34:25
• Tactical Life Design, Taking Leaps of Faith: 13:53–16:23
• The 1-1-1 Nightly Method: 21:11–22:11
• Energy Calendar Exercise: 46:16–47:47
• Quality vs. Quantity in Social Wealth: 66:32–67:25
• Core Physical Health Principles: 71:36–74:13
• On Modeling for Children: 78:07–78:56

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Actionable Wisdom & Takeaways

• Define your own version of wealth and success.
• Audit your time, energy, and relationships regularly.
• Practice daily gratitude with small, consistent actions.
• Build a life design—don’t just drift with default expectations.
• Prioritize in-person relationships; they are essential to long-term health and happiness.
• Tackle big questions and life's “hard asks;” avoid autopilot living.
• Balance across the five types will fluctuate—embrace seasons and adjust accordingly.

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Conclusion

Sahil’s journey and Emma’s probing questions deliver a powerful, relatable message: Wealth is multidimensional, and anyone—by questioning inherited narratives and taking small, intentional actions—can build a truly rich, vibrant, and meaningful life.

Transcript

[A]

What if the wealth you've been chasing isn't the wealth you actually need? Sahil Bloom is the author of the New York Times bestseller the Five Types of Wealth, a groundbreaking new framework that challenges everything we believe about success. We all reach a moment when the life we're chasing collides with the life we're actually living. The moment that shows you what what you can never get back. You may not be able to walk away from everything, but what Sahil reveals next might change the way you live from this moment on. If you want to have your healthiest year yet and become the most vibrant version of yourself, start here. Cleaning up your skincare products. They're rooted in time tested traditional perspectives that honor ancient wisdom, animal based products and clean living education to guide you in creating non toxic rhythms and transformative results in your daily life. From farms, forests and fields, they source ingredients that are regeneratively grown, organic and wild crafted wherever possible. Nature has given us everything we need. No chemicals, fragrance or filters needed. They are wildly passionate about providing research backed, results driven products without compromising your health. Backed by thousands of 5 star reviews and unbelievable before and after photos and their products are proven to create positive change in your skin and sense of wellness. Swapping for natural options is a must if you want to feel good and glow from the inside out. And Primally Pure has harnessed the power of natural ingredients in their complete line of non toxic beauty products from skin, body, baby, hair and home. And you can't forget their cult following natural deodorant and tallow skincare products. Primally Pure products are handcrafted with real raw ingredients to optimize your results and your overall health. Use Code ASPIRE to get 15% off your primary pure purchase. That's www.p r I m a l l y p u r e.com and use code ASPIRE at checkout for 15% off your order. Everywhere you look right now, people are talking about new approaches to personal health and wellness. It's the buzz at group chats and even at the doctor's office. But how do you know which options are right for you? That's where hers comes in. Hers is transforming women's healthcare by connecting you with a medical provider who will help determine the best treatment plan for your needs. If prescribed, you get a full doctor developed program with ongoing care check ins, dosage adjustments and 24. 7 online support. No hidden fees, no memberships. Care with hers is realistic, not restrictive at all with options starting at $69 per when paid upfront in Full all from the comfort of your couch with medical guidance tailored to your goals. If you've been navigating your wellness journey or just want support that fits your life, it's time to find what works for you with hers. Whether you want to grow thicker, fuller hair or find relief for anxiety, hers has you covered. Visit forhers.com aspire to get a personalized, affordable plan that gets you that's F O R H-E R-S.com aspire forhers.com aspire compound drug products are not approved or evaluated for safety, effectiveness or quality by the fda. Prescription required. See website for full details, important safety information and restrictions. Actual price depends on product and plan. Purchased. Sahil, I'm so happy that you're here today. Thank you so much for being with us. Read this book and I am obsessed with the concepts in it and I cannot wait. I've got so many questions for you, it's unbelievable.

[B]

I'm thrilled to be here. Let's get into it.

[A]

Let's get into it. So talk to me about how your book, the Five Types of Wealth actually came to be.

[B]

Oh gosh. I spent the first 30 years of my life chasing every definition of success that you are handed by the world. I think that in general, as a culture and as a society, we have a tendency to move by default into the things that you are told you should want. It's. It's sort of like a cultural osmosis that happens from a young age, like in school and then you get into university and then you get your first job and everything becomes about getting the external approval, the external affirmations from climbing the mountain or running the race that you are told is the one that you should be doing. It's like go to the good school, get the job that is going to be the highest.

[A]

And you did all those things?

[B]

I did those things.

[A]

You did those things.

[B]

And if I'm being totally honest, I did those things because it was grounded in a desire to feel good about myself. I had an insecurity from a young age, really, based on this story that I told myself that I wasn't very smart. I mean, I have an older sister who is extremely high achieving academically. I come from a household with an Indian mother, so very academically oriented and then a Harvard professor father, also very aggravated.

[A]

So there was no choice for you. You were going to college.

[B]

Yeah. No pressure at all. Exactly. No pressure. Right. And my sister was like the extreme high achiever. And so I was kind of like the ne' er do well, younger brother, which created for me this story that I started telling myself that I just wasn't the smart one.

[A]

And was it a story you were telling yourself, or did you actually have pressure from your parents?

[B]

I had real pressure from my parents. Not in a bad way. Probably like in a helpful way, if it was channeled appropriately, as my sister did. What I found is that those stories that you tell yourself can create your entire reality, because humans are incredibly good at finding evidence that confirms the story you already believe to be true. And you'll look around, good or bad, by the way. Good or bad. Yeah. And you can replace the story with a good one if you have the wherewithal to question it and scrape away at the assumptions, which I didn't. I was too young. It took me years. So anyway, I had this insecurity. And what do you do when you have this internal void? You go and seek external solutions to your internal problem. External solutions. In our culture, fastest way is making money and acquiring status.

[A]

And I'm guessing, like, you did all of that, right? Because I've read so much about you and you were very successful ahead of writing this book.

[B]

Absolutely. I mean, I.

[A]

You did all the things. You went to Stanford. You did the right job out of Stanford. You made all the money.

[B]

Yeah, I. I was winning the game in the traditional definition of it, but 2020 came around and I started having this sensation that if that was what winning felt like, I had to be playing the wrong game.

[A]

And was it was Covid that really that turning point for you because you had a moment to slow down, or was there something inside you telling you that beforehand?

[B]

Covid created the space to actually see the bigger picture because you slowed down for most people. I think. I think a lot of people had that, you know, come to Jesus moment. Yeah.

[A]

But not everybody acted on it. A lot of people just were like, you know what? I'll take a break. And then they jumped straight back into what they were doing.

[B]

Not everyone acted on it, but I think a lot of people felt it. And I started feeling it because what I saw was I am winning at this one game of making money, of getting promoted, of these bonuses. But I started to notice that these other areas of my life were showing cracks or falling apart. I mean, my relationships, I was living 3,000 miles away from my parents, never seeing them, my relationship with my wife. Unfortunately, we were in the middle of this two year struggle with infertility, and it was creating strain in our life and in our relationship for the first time. And I was not present in the way that I needed to be in that moment, because I was so focused on money being the path to us feeling good, to me feeling good as a person.

[A]

So you couldn't even really feel what the two of you were going through with the infertility journey. I mean, I've been through my own infertility struggles, and it's so difficult, but even more so if you're kind of.

[B]

Alone in it, especially because infertility is something that men don't typically talk about. And it is a struggle that people and couples typically are told to struggle with in silence.

[A]

Absolutely. And hide it.

[B]

And hide it. It's shameful. And there would have been a lot of good that came from me being willing to open up to people around me about it, but I was not mature enough or comfortable enough in order to do that in that moment. And. And, you know, one of the most beautiful things of this entire journey for us was that within a few weeks of making this big life change, which we'll talk about, we found out that my wife was pregnant. Naturally.

[A]

That's wild.

[B]

I mean, when life comes into alignment, everything falls into place. As soon as it's.

[A]

Everything falls into place. So take me back to this moment where in 2020, you're starting to feel that something isn't quite right. You have these infertility struggles. What do you do? How do you lift yourself out of that moment? Because we all lived through it, and like I said, some people did something with it. Some people, you know, felt different. But a lot of us, we got back into the life that we were living pre Covid, and you clearly didn't.

[B]

It was a single conversation that changed the course of my life. I went out for a drink with an old friend. We sat down, and he asked how I was doing. And I told him that it had started to get difficult living so far away from my parents, who were 3,000 miles away on the east coast. I had noticed for the first time that they were slowing down, that they weren't going to be around forever.

[A]

Well, that's a big realization, isn't it? When you see your own parents age.

[B]

As a kid, you never imagined that time is infinite. And he asked how old they were, And I said, mid-60s. And he asked how often I saw them. And I admitted that it was down to about once a year. And he just looked at me and said, okay, so you're going to see your parents 15 more times before they die. That was my reaction to it.

[A]

Yeah. I mean, that's like Heart wrenching.

[B]

I just felt like I'd been punched in the gut. And I had to actually take a deep breath to not have an angry response to saying that, because we never.

[A]

Think about time in those terms.

[B]

You never think about time in just how quantified, how countable it really is in the moments that we have with these people. And the reality was, it was just math. It wasn't rude or insensitive. It was just.

[A]

No, it's just 65.

[B]

They're live until 80. I see them once a year. It's 15 times.

[A]

Yeah. I mean, I've heard Jesse Itzler to kind of talk about this, and I remember the first time hearing him quantify it in that way. It made me. It completely redefined how I think about time in my own life.

[B]

You can have the awareness in a moment, but if you don't have it in the moment, it's useless. And so for me, this conversation was the awareness in the moment. It was like, this is my testing point, and I needed to do something with it right then, because otherwise it was gonna go away.

[A]

What did you do?

[B]

I went home. And immediately my wife and I got into a deep, candid conversation about what our center really was.

[A]

Was she accepting? Because you're not always on the same, like, you know, wavelength. I know sometimes I'll have, like, a big moment. I can go home to my husband, and he's like, babe, I'm just tired. Can we do, like, not now. Was she open to that conversation at that moment?

[B]

She was open to it because the two of us have grown together through so many different seasons of life that I cannot explain how in tune to each other's energy we are at this point. She had seen this entire trajectory of the things that I was chasing, the things that I was doing, our own struggles and the things that we were facing with infertility. And I think she saw in my eyes that I was serious, that this was meaningful. And look, both of our sets of parents, this applied to both of them. Her parents, in the same situation in the same place. We grew up together. So they all lived on the east coast. And within 45 days, we had made a dramatic change. I had left my job, we had sold our house in California, and we had moved 3,000 miles to live closer to both of our sets of parents.

[A]

No, you didn't.

[B]

Within 45 days. Well done.

[A]

It's so crazy, because, I mean, I say it, like, when I read this part, I mean, all the things go through your mind. It's like, how did you do that? That's so quick. Like, what was your job security? Like, did you have the money to do that? Like what was happening at this point in your life that you could just pick up and go?

[B]

Yeah, I mean, I had worked very hard for seven years. I, it's not like I was rolling in money, but I had some level of debt. I also had been writing, you know, at that point for like a year. There were kind of the seeds. Maybe there's some other business that I could build here. But the reality for me was like, if this is a total mistake and I spend two years trying to figure something new out, I can just take that as like my mba. And that approach is something that not enough people think about. We think of every single decision we make as a one way door. Jeff Bezos talks about one way doors versus two way doors. That most decisions in life are actually two way doors. If you walk through and you don't like what's on the other side, you can turn around and walk on back through it. And, and we very rarely appreciate that. We think every decision is so permanent. All these people, you are so right about that. They're at jobs at like Deloitte or Accenture or PwC working in consulting or in audit, and they have some burning thing that they want to go do and they have this impression that if they leave to go do it, they will never be able to get that job again.

[A]

We think about decisions as so finite, but then it's all the other stuff that creeps in, right? It's like, yeah, I can do it and I can turn back. But like, is that shameful? Is it fearful actually even getting to the place? It's like all of the other things that we start thinking about. And I think, you know, how many people are listening to this today that are in a job that they really don't like or in a circumstance that they really don't like. And it's the, it's, you know, the impetus to get up and do something about it is really, really hard to find because of all that stuff on the other side, because it's so unknown. Well, how did you know that what would be on the other side was okay and doable?

[B]

I'll give you the most tactical version of this because I think that a lot of people talk about this in the abstract and they say like, well, have the confidence bet on yourself. It's like, okay, well that's easier said than done, right? If I don't, what we're talking about fundamentally is taking a leap of faith in life. You're going and taking a leap of faith. Leap of faiths are terrifying. That is why most people don't make.

[A]

The leap of faith.

[B]

They're terrifying because of. On a deconstructed level, tactically speaking, the reason a leap of faith is so scary is because you have an information and an evidence asymmetry, meaning you have all the information in the world and all the evidence in the world about the fact that you can live your life where you currently stand. You know exactly what it looks like, and you know that you can pay your bills, you know your responsibilities are met. All these things here, you have all the information. On this side, other side, you have none of that. You have no information about what it looks like, and you have no evidence that you could live a life over there. So what that manifests as is fear. It's this enormous expanse with nothingness down below. So it's very scary. But that is a solvable problem. That asymmetry is a solvable problem. You can gather information and you can create little bits of evidence that start to close the asymmetry and make it feel like less of a leap.

[A]

And so how did you do that? What did that look like in that moment for you?

[B]

I was actually spending time, unknowingly, on a daily basis for about a year, writing this, doing that. I was writing every single day because I was stuck at home, and I had this energy and this pull towards writing. So I was gathering information by speaking to people, by spending time by writing this newsletter, writing tweets, doing these things that were gathering information and creating evidence.

[A]

Do you have experience writing? Did you write, like, as a kid while you were in college, or was this just something you did during COVID.

[B]

Both my grandmother and my mother are incredible writers and storytellers. We always had a very storytelling rich culture in our household. But I never considered myself a writer. I never thought of, like, I should. I didn't take writing in college. I didn't do any of those things because I thought, oh, I got to do finance and business and go and do these things. Like, that was my creative seriously. But I was fundamental. Without knowing it, I was gathering information and creating evidence that made that leap. When I had to do it feel way less terrifying than it otherwise would have been. It felt like a manageable, like a step rather than an enormous leap.

[A]

I love the way you frame that. So interesting.

[B]

So we did it. So we made this big change. And as I said, within two weeks of getting into our new Place on the East Coast. We found out that my wife was pregnant.

[A]

Naturally insane.

[B]

And I'm not a very religious person, but if there was one moment in my life where I felt like God had winked at us, it was that, that'll be it. And I cannot. I mean, to this day, like, one of the most powerful moments of my entire life was driving home from the hospital with our son and pulling into our driveway and seeing both of our sets of parents there cheering for us. Because it was this moment of recognizing that they were welcoming us home. We were in the right place. We were where we were supposed to be. That everything had come together as it.

[A]

Should, and that all the things that mattered, everything that you had sacrificed on the other end, it's like, look at what you got in return. I mean, exactly. It's incredible. And a lot more time than those individual moments that you and your friend were calculating when you sat in that bar.

[B]

And that number. I mean, this whole realization. And the reason that conversation was a catalyst that has ultimately led to this book, all of these ideas, is because in that one decision that we made, there's a powerful realization that you are in much more control of your time than you think. We had taken an action and created time. That number 15 is now in the hundreds.

[A]

Yes.

[B]

I see my parents multiple times a month. They're a huge part, probably too much. They're a huge part of my son, their grandson's life. We had taken an action and created time for the things that we really care about. And anyone can do that. Anyone can take actions in these other areas of life to build these other types of wealth, to live by your own design, to create your own scoreboard of what a successful wealthy life looks like to you.

[A]

So I want to get into. Because. And I love the way you frame it as the five types of wealth. First of all, brilliant, because I think that we all, you know, we all think about that. We all want more in our life. And I want to start in the way, you know, because you talk about wealth in a way that most people don't think about wealth. But let's talk about it in, like, the societal definition of wealth. And you talk about financial wealth so much. How have you framed that up in.

[B]

This book, I really frame financial wealth around the idea of what it means to you to have enough. The reason I think enough is such a powerful concept is because expectations are your single greatest financial liability. If your expectations rise faster than your assets, you are never going to feel wealthy. You are never going to feel rich. You're just going to be chasing whatever more the world tells you you should want.

[A]

But isn't that the disease of our time? That all of our expectations are sky high because of everything that we see around us? Who has expectations that are lower than their wealth at this point?

[B]

The key is not allowing them to just continuously inflate so that you can never appreciate what you have. I think about this all the time. That how many of the things that your younger self prayed for have become things that your current self complains about? The house.

[A]

That's a great framing.

[B]

I mean, it's, it's true, right? Like I. My son barges into my office, starts knocking things over while I'm trying to focus, and I start having this train of thought, this is so annoying. Why is he doing this? Why is he in here? And then I have to snap myself back to four years ago when we were in the middle of this infertility struggle. I prayed every single night that we would one day have a healthy child. And here I am in this moment complaining about the exact thing that I prayed for. And we do that over and over again on our own journey. The house that we prayed for becomes the house that we complain is too small. The car that we dreamed of becomes, becomes the car that we want to trade in. Engagement ring you lusted after becomes the one that you want to upgrade over and over again. We never catch ourselves and pull ourselves back into the moment to recognize that sometimes you are quite literally living out your prayers. And that is what we all need to do more of. We need to stop taking out our phones and comparing our lives to everyone else out there and start pulling ourselves into the present to appreciate more of the things that we are actually experiencing in the world.

[A]

And how have you done that in your own life? Like, give me an example of how you contextualize that in your.

[B]

Just every day I try to create awareness on a regular basis of it. So, you know, I mentioned earlier that awareness is perishable. What I mean by that is it's great. I say this to you in an abstract, you say, yes, I totally agree with you.

[A]

Got it.

[B]

But then you're on your phone and all of a sudden you find yourself spiraling on something because some more is grabbing you. Having that awareness more regularly, whether through a gratitude practice, through some tiny action that you take on a more regular basis, can really pull you back. And recenter you. I gave the advice to someone yesterday before going to bed. Just write down one thing that you have or that you experienced that Made you feel really grateful during the course of the day.

[A]

Do you do that?

[B]

I do that every day. Yeah, every night before going to bed. I call it my one one one method. I write down one win from the day, something that went well, one point of tension or anxiety, something I felt stressed about that I want to get off my brain. And then one point of gratitude, something that I felt grateful for. It takes two to three minutes.

[A]

And you do that even on like a shitty day. Like even on a day where you're like, I can't one, one, one today. You just go like, I'm going to do it. I'm pushing through every single day. I need this. What does it do for you?

[B]

It helps me go to sleep for sure because I am someone who gets into bed and has like mind racing on things that are stressing me out. Writing it down immediately reduces that. And it reminds me of progress that I made the win, which ambitious people are really bad at recognizing. When you have made progress on things, you only think about the things you didn't do and how little you got to. And then the gratitude piece is scientifically proven to improve your happiness and mental well being. Yes, we know this.

[A]

It is total no brainer.

[B]

Across the board. Across the board. And it takes two minutes. So you never have an excuse to say like, well I can't do my journaling because my journaling is a 30 minute practice. This takes two minutes. Anyone can find a way to do it. You could have a piece of paper next to your bed where you just sit and scrawl it. It doesn't need to be beautiful or immaculate. And that's the important point is tiny actions compound. Anything above zero compounds in your life. It doesn't have to be optimal for it to be beneficial. So do the tiny thing that you know is going to contribute to you feeling a little bit better to pulling you out of the like doom scrolling that we constantly do. The other piece just eliminate things that make you feel negative about your life. I mean we need to be so much more judicious about the information that we are allowing into our brains. You know, it's true. We all know.

[A]

I mean we all know this. But it's so hard to do, isn't it? It's so hard to do on a daily basis. Like if you are a person that is curious like me, I wake up, I want to know the news, but I know that I shouldn't immediately look at my phone. So what are you doing?

[B]

I do still look at my phone first thing in the morning. I have just really dramatically curated what it is that I'm going to see.

[A]

I think that that's a great show.

[B]

You are hardwired. I mean, the phones are designed, they have entire teams of behavioral experts, PhDs designed to make them addictive. You're probably not going to win the battle to make your phone less of an attractive thing.

[A]

It can't be. It certainly can't be obsolete in any of our lives.

[B]

And you need it right, like to do work, to do all these things. But you can really carefully curate what you see, both through your algorithm and your feed, which you can design. You can make changes to it. I've done that very deliberately. Like anything that makes you feel negative, just do the not interested in this thing on Instagram or on whatever platform. And then for news, my life improved dramatically when I reduced my news consumption by 95%. And I know just as much about the world. That's the funny thing is like you consume more news, you actually end up learning less about the world.

[A]

There's nothing I love more than hearing about people's side hustles. You can host your home on Airbnb while you're gone, and it's such a practical way to earn a little extra money without it feeling like a full time job. Just a few nights of hosting could help to cover travel costs or maybe even a nice meal on your next trip. It's simple, easy, and doesn't require constant attention. You just open up your space while you're away and let others enjoy it. So if you've got a trip coming up, whether it's for work, a family visit, or just to get away, hosting really does feel like a smart, practical choice. Seriously, your home might be worth more than you think. Find out how [e-mail] host the holidays are full of joy and chaos. Between travel parties and all the holiday treats, it's easy for your health goals to take a back seat. That's where groons comes in. If you haven't heard me rave about groons before, here's the deal. It's a daily snack pack of gummies that's more than just a multivitamin, greens, gummy or a prebiotic. It's all of that and then some at a fraction of the price. And honestly, they taste amazing. I love that I can take my gummies each morning and know I'm covering my nutrition without skipping a beat. Each daily snack pack includes 6 grams of prebiotic fiber. That's three times the fiber of lean greens, powders and more than 2 cups of broccoli Groon supports your gut, health, immunity, energy, cognition and even beauty. Plus, it's vegan, nut free, gluten free, dairy free and free of artificial colors or flavors. And yes, Groom's ingredients are backed by over 35,000 research publications. There's even a groom's kids version with 21 plus vitamins and 60 plus ingredients to support immunity, brain development and growth. Perfect for little ones. Get 52% off with code Aspire at Gruhns Co. That's code [e-mail]. I'm going to ask you to take me back, actually give me. Just so that we contextualize the book, what are the five types of wealth that you describe in the book?

[B]

The five types of wealth are time, wealth, which is all about freedom. Freedom to choose how you spend your time, who you spend it with, where you spend it, when you trade it for other things. It's about understanding that time is your most precious asset. Social wealth is all about relationships, your connection to those people around you. Mental wealth is about purpose, growth and creating space to actually wrestle with some of these bigger picture questions about your life. Physical wealth is about health and vitality. And then financial wealth is about money. But with the nuance of what we talked about, this idea of having enough and what that really looks like, and.

[A]

How did those ideas become crystallized for you?

[B]

I went on a journey following that big decision to move to start to understand if money was not the right scoreboard for building a good life. It was not. If it was not the exclusive measurement of a good life, what was. And I went and talked to in the end, thousands of people. You did, Young and old, over the last two, three years. As I went on the journey to understand this on through 100 year olds reflecting back on their life, what advice would they give to their younger self? You know, 15 year old kids, their hopes for the future and the things that they were gonna do and everything.

[A]

They were. And this was like purposeful research for the book. I liked it.

[B]

I didn't know it was for a book at the time.

[A]

You just went out and you were like, okay, I need to figure this out for myself.

[B]

Yeah, I am a hyper curious person and I am very much a student of human experience. I love spending time with people more than anything else. Different people from different backgrounds. Right. Like this wasn't me going and talking to the richest people that I could find and like the most impressive people. I spoke to everyone from like a man who had just gotten out of serving a 25 to life jail sentence for a heinous crime through a 99 year old that was still interested in taking college classes to, you know, 13 year olds that were just starting their life and figuring out what mattered and how money tied into it. Everyone, I mean, all across the spectrum, and the common themes that kept coming up were four things. Time, people, purpose, and health. Over and over again, very few people talked about money. Money was kind of an enabler to some of those things, but it was not an end in and of itself in the path that people were trying to create. And when they envisioned their ideal life, their ideal future, it was always about those things that really mattered to them in the end.

[A]

Money, people, time, health.

[B]

Time, people, purpose and health. And then money was an enabler.

[A]

Time, people, purpose and health. And then money's just the enabler.

[B]

It was the enabler. It was a tool, but not the goal.

[A]

But you sitting there from your financial background like you knew you had to write about money.

[B]

I knew that it was a clear piece of the puzzle.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

Money isn't nothing. Anyone that tells you that money can't buy happiness is lying or rich. Let's just be. Yeah, I mean, let's just be completely clear.

[A]

Let's be completely clear.

[B]

I mean, Maslow's hierarchy of needs is true. Like the early stages of your life, you have to meet your basic needs. Food, shelter, basic pleasures, all of those things. Money directly buys happiness in those years. The unfortunate thing is that it creates a pattern in your mind that an incremental unit of money equals an incremental unit of happiness.

[A]

But also there's a, there's this tap out point. Right. There's a time at which like you have enough and it's no longer making you happy.

[B]

Yeah. It has diminishing returns at a very significant level. And the blind, myopic, narrow focus on it can actually lead to atrophy in the other areas.

[A]

Yes.

[B]

And that is, you know, I call it the Pyrrhic victory. It's the victory that comes at such a steep cost that it might as well have been a defeat.

[A]

And you talk about three pillars of financial wealth. So take me through those three pillars.

[B]

Yeah. On the journey to building financial wealth, it's really these three things that come into play. It is income generation, which is cash inflows, making money, expense management, which is the outflows, and then long term investment. And the important point here, and you're.

[A]

Saying those are the three things that you have to focus on.

[B]

Those are the three Things that you have to focus on as you start money out.

[A]

And your investments.

[B]

Yeah, and the investment. And the most key piece there that gets lost is that the gap between the money in and the money out needs to grow over time because that gap is your real wealth building asset. The gap is what can be invested into things that compound. And in an ideal world, to actually build financial independence, you want that gap to grow so that you're stacking more and more into your investments that compound over long periods of time. That's how you get the accelerating runaway effect of wealth creation. My perspective is that every guru and financial guru out there has overcomplicated what it means to build wealth.

[A]

Well, I would say absolutely yes, because you just broke it down so simply in those three steps. But do you honestly believe that anyone can build financial wealth?

[B]

Yes, yes. I mean, I think, I don't think that that means that it is going to be the same level of difficulty for everyone because your starting position clearly impacts your ability to get off the, get off the ground. But I do think that anyone can take the core principles of how to achieve financial independence and get out of a paycheck to paycheck cycle and start working towards a life of financial wealth. That doesn't mean that everyone can go become a multimillionaire. I think it can be very, very challenging depending on where you live and, you know, cultural situations. Like if you come from a low caste in India, it's going to be.

[A]

Very challenging, you're going to be hard.

[B]

But in the modern day and age when every single person, almost every single person, has access to the Internet and to education that is freely available out in the world and to a global economy where you can work for anyone anywhere, the opportunity playing field is increasingly evening. It's not to say it is even or that it will end up even, but it is evening.

[A]

No, I believe that. I think that's a fair point. Talk to me just a little bit about this idea that you touched on earlier, that expectations are our greatest financial liability. Exactly what do you mean by that?

[B]

If your expectations continue to inflate beyond what you are able to actually achieve, you will not feel a level of wealth or satisfaction.

[A]

Because that's the big thing, right? The connector. It's like anyone can go out and make money and achieve some level of financial security, but it's good. You've got to level that with the expectations and you have to be honest about expectations and your limitations.

[B]

Yeah. Scientifically, the person with a hundred million dollars who hangs out with A bunch of billionaires is going to be less happy than the person with a million dollars who hangs out with a bunch of people with $100,000. Your relative position actually matters more than your absolute position, no doubt. And we see this in a whole bunch of research. Michael Norton, this Harvard Business School professor, asked a bunch of high net worth individuals worth anywhere from a million through 100 million plus, how happy are you on a scale of 1 to 10? Then he asked, how much more money would you need to be at a 10 out of 10? And across the board, whether they were worth a million or 100 million plus, they all said they needed two to three times as much money. It makes no sense. At some point there should just be a happiness number, like whatever it is that we think. But humans have an incredible capacity to just do the 2-3-x thing. We get the thing we thought we wanted. We made our happiness conditional on some mountaintop. We get to the mountaintop and just reset to the next one, wherever it is.

[A]

And how do you think about money now, like in your new life?

[B]

My definition of wealth is being able to take my son in the pool at 1pm on a Tuesday. That captures.

[A]

That feels pretty major to me.

[B]

That captures basically everything that I want. That is my version of enough is.

[A]

To say, that's a very interesting answer. I don't know anyone that would answer that question with that because there's nothing to do. Again, it's not to do about money.

[B]

It's not expensive.

[A]

Your choice in how you're spending your time, right?

[B]

Yeah, it has. I have to have the freedom to be able to, at 1pm Go and do that on a Tuesday. I have to have the type of relationship where my son wants me to have a pool, I have to have a pool. So I have to have a baseline level of money. I have to be healthy enough to be able to do that. I have to feel like free and happy to be able to do that. So it captures.

[A]

But it's a great way to contextualize what is important to you when it.

[B]

Comes to money and what that life is that you are actually trying to build towards. What is the money for? No one stops to ask that question on their journey. Everyone sits around. You go ask someone, you're like, well, what does enough mean to you?

[A]

In particular, what is the money for?

[B]

$10 million, $30 million?

[A]

That's the question we should all be asking ourselves. What is the money for? Not how much do I need to earn. It's like, what kind of life do I want to live and therefore what do I need to earn to get to that type of life?

[B]

You need to visualize in excruciating detail what the life is that you actually are trying to work towards and build. Then you can go and create a plan to build that life. It doesn't need to be Spartan or Bear either. I mean, me having a pool right, like that is not a Spartan life. I can create my dream life and then go create a plan to try to build and work towards that. The important point is that the visualized real life, me going in the pool at 1pm on a Tuesday, that does not naturally just disappear and reappear on the horizon in the way that a number does. Humans do a great job of having numbers do the disappearing act, but the life, the vivid imagination of the life you are building towards is a much more rational, natural way to operate.

[A]

So talk me back from that. So you need to visualize exactly what you want in your life and then what are you doing? You're working back into that. You're saying, okay, 1pm on a Tuesday, I want to be able to take my kid into the port.

[B]

Yeah. What are the actions that I can be taking on a daily basis that are going to go and create that life? Because it is very different than if I said I want to be, you know, on a private jet or a yacht.

[A]

Very different.

[B]

It's just a different set of. And it's not to say one is right or wrong.

[A]

No, it's just very different.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

It's.

[B]

The point is that you get to define what the race is that you want to run. If I talk to someone and they say, you know, I really want to be a billionaire, I really want to fly around on private jets, I want to do all those things, I might disagree with the premise that that's going to make them happy. But if they want that, okay, that's a different set of actions. You are going to go have to create $10 billion of value, buy some company, you're going to have to have equity and you're going to capture a portion of value. That's the path. So let's start taking actions to go and do that. But if you want to create a life where you have the freedom to step away and go in the pool and you want to have the time, the meaningful relationship with your kid in this way, you want to be healthy enough to do these things, you need to invest in those things on a daily basis.

[A]

Were you ever that guy? Were you ever the. That was like I want the private jet. I want the things and all the things and the things.

[B]

Yes.

[A]

And you right sized your expectations.

[B]

Yes. I would just say that it was grounded in the wrong reasons. I was that guy. I mean, in my, in my 20s, that was the path I was marching down. I just saw that there are a lot of things in life that look like a good deal when you look at the list price. What I mean by that is like, we know that there is a price for the things we want to achieve in life. We know that it takes a certain amount of hard work and energy and late nights and all of these things. Building a huge company, making a billion dollars, we kind of know that's going to require all of this time and all this energy. But we very rarely think about what the real price is of those things, which includes all of the other sacrifices that are made to other areas of life. And there are a lot of things in life that look like a decent deal based on the list price and are a rip off when it comes to the real price. My entire life fundamentally changed when I realized I would never trade lives with the people that I was reading books about. There are so many people that I know. And look, we're in New York City. You don't have to look very far to see people who have made hundreds of millions, maybe billions of dollars that we pat on the back, we celebrate, we admire, and we ignore the fact that they have four divorces and five kids that don't talk to them. And we write books about these people and we tell them that they won the game. And we very rarely stop to ask ourselves, is that actually a game that I care to win? And for me, I saw that path. I saw what it looked like, and it wasn't for me. And so if something's not for me and if I don't want what the end looks like, I'm gonna go ahead and opt out and find my own.

[A]

It's pretty simple. It's pretty simple.

[B]

It's simple, but scary.

[A]

It is scary because I think when you set yourself up that believing that that is what you want, it takes a lot to ask yourself those questions and a lot to reach inside and actually get the answers out.

[B]

And in a culture that values those things and values this traditional definition of what it looks like, it is hard to opt out and create your own definition of success.

[A]

That is what you're asking of people. You're asking people to step back and answer the question of what is your definition of success?

[B]

Yeah. And we are creating a movement around this. I want that to be normal. I would love for five years from now to be able to say it is entirely normal for people to create their own definition of what it means to build a wealthy life and that we celebrate those things. And I start to. I mean, I start to see it now. There's people on Instagram. You're starting to see this, like, slight vibe shift where there's this content that's going viral that's like people living a really, like, normal, soft life, homesteading, homeschooling, like all of these different ways of life that are getting traction, that people are appreciating.

[A]

We've understood that that is not happiness. On the other side of that, just as you say, it's not what brings you ultimate happiness. And we've read the studies, we've seen it. There's so much more to life. This podcast is brought to you by Kleenex lotion tissues. You can't predict sick days, but with Kleenex lotion tissues, you can be better prepared for them while helping keep your skin healthy. Whether it's a surprise sneeze or a stuffy nose, it's always good to have something gentle on hand. Kleenex lotion tissues moisturise to help prevent skin irritation while you're battling those unwanted cold and flu symptoms. It's extra care when you need it the most. With lotion built into every tissue, your skin stays moisturized and healthy, no matter how many you use. Keep relief within reach. Grab Kleenex lotion tissues to help avoid the added discomfort of irritated skin during cold and flu season. I mean, why not have one less thing to worry about when you're not feeling your best. We all know life is unpredictable, but you can be prepared for that time of year when germs are going around by making sure you've always got Kleenex lotion tissues at the ready for whatever happens next. Grab Kleenex. As someone who spends a lot of time talking into a microphone, I've learned the old adage is absolutely true. It isn't just what you say, it's how you say it. To truly make an impact, you need to set an example, take the lead, and adapt to whatever comes your way. And when you're that driven, you need to drive something equally determined. The Range Rover Sport. The Range Rover Sport is designed to make an impact. Blending pure power, poise and performance, the design is distinctly British, with the capability to take on roads anywhere. Free from unnecessary details, the Range Rover Sport lets its raw power and agility shine delivering a truly instinctive drive. Its assertive stance hits an equal refined performance. This is true modern luxury. The latest innovations provide new levels of quality, comfort and control. You'll feel it with the cabin air purification system and active noise cancellation. And when the roads get challenging, terrain Response Tune Fine tunes the vehicle with seven different terrain modes. This force is powerful inside and out. Created with a choice of engines including plug in hybrid with an estimated range of 53 miles. Like you, the Range Rover Sport was designed to lead. It combines that dynamic sporting personality with elegance and agility in a way that truly sets it apart. Explore Range Rover sport@range rover.com US Sport that's range rover.com USSport When I first became a parent, I remember standing in the formula aisle completely overwhelmed, wanting to make the right choice but completely unsure where to start. I wish Bobbi had existed then. Their story, their transparency, their why it all aligns with mine. Bobbi is redefining what it means to feed with confidence. Their USDA organic European inspired infant formulas are designed to give parents peace of mind. Every single batch goes through over 2000 safety and quality tests plus third party testing before it ever leaves their US facility. Because Bobbi literally loses sleep over what goes into your baby so that you don't have to Founded by mums, trusted by parents and loved by over 700,000 babies, including my own littlest Bobbi's range of formulas has earned top honors like baby's list 2025 top choice organic Formula and recognition from customer reports. Whether you're exclusively formula feeding, combo feeding or just keeping a backup can in the pantry, Bobbi is here for you, supporting every feeding journey with inclusivity and care. If you want to feel good about what's in your baby's bottle, get 10% off with code [e-mail] that's H I B O B B I E.com promo code ASPIRE. I want to pivot because I want to make sure that we can get through everything. Time wealth. Now this is one for me as a very busy person that I may or may not struggle with. But talk to me about your framework around time.

[B]

Well, the question I love to ask people when it comes to time wealth is would you trade lives with Warren Buffett? He's worth $130 billion. He has access.

[A]

Most people at that point would be like, yes.

[B]

Yeah, I mean he has access to anyone in the world. He breeds and learns for a living. He flies around on a Boeing business jet. It all sounds pretty Good. But you would not trade lives with him because he's 95 years old. There's no way you would agree to trade the amount of money that he has for the amount of time that he has. There is no way to make that trade. And on the flip side, he would give anything to be in your shoes. He would give up every dollar that he has to have the amount of time that you have left. So in that simple question, what you are doing is recognizing that your time has quite literally incalculable value. And yet on a daily basis, how much of it are we wasting? How much of it are we spending scrolling on our phones, comparing our lives to other people, following these arbitrary timelines, stressing about the past, anxiety about the future, all of these things that are fundamentally disregarding this one most precious asset that you really have.

[A]

And how did you get to that realization? Because you're just like every one of us, right? Everybody is doing the same thing. What was it for you that suddenly was like, I am wasting so much of my time and I cannot do it anymore?

[B]

I think about this stuff way more than the average person. I think that, honestly, I really think that that is. That was the enabler, was just that that conversation that I had with a friend prompted me to start really thinking about this. How was I spending my time? How much of my time was I spending on things that fundamentally drained my energy? Yes. That is probably the biggest unlock for people. For anyone out there that wants to build more time, wealth, the first thing I would say is develop an understanding of what creates energy versus what drains energy.

[A]

Oh, that's just such a good way to think about it. So the first thing to do is to just look at your life, look at a week, and go, what gives me energy and what takes energy away from me? What happens if the things that take energy away from you are just stuff you have to do? Like, let's just say you have a job and you're like, that just drains me of my energy. Should you change your job, I would.

[B]

Deconstruct it one level further before making that decision, which is to say I do something I call my energy calendar exercise on a Monday.

[A]

What is an energy calendar exercise?

[B]

So on Monday, look at your calendar at the end of the day and color code things according to whether they created energy, meaning they felt lifted up, you felt interest to pull from it market green. If it was neutral, market yellow. And if it drained your energy, if you felt physically drained, market red. If you do that for a week, you will have a Very clear visual perspective on the specific types of activities during your days, both professional and personal, that create energy versus drain energy in your life. You'll see it in green and red on your calendar. That information is super valuable because it tells you a lot more about what adjustments you might need to make, what things you might need to change, what tweaks you can make to improve the overall energy flows during the course of a week, and your outcomes in life. Follow your energy. When you are leaning into things that create energy, things and people, you achieve the best outcomes.

[A]

Yeah. And good stuff happens.

[B]

And there are always slight tweaks and adjustments you can make to the way things are being done.

[A]

How often are you tweaking, do you think? Are you looking every single week?

[B]

I know I do this at least once a quarter, though. Okay, I will take a look at it once a quarter. Once you have an awareness for it, you can kind of come back to it now and then and do it. But I would just say there are things, every time you look at it, there are going to be things that you fundamentally cannot change. I like if I have to make sure I take my kid to whatever these things are, maybe it's energy draining for me. Too bad. It's a responsibility. I have to do it. But then there are things that you will initially say to yourself, I just have to do that. When the reality is there's a slight tweak or adjustment you can make that makes it neutral or even energy creating. An example of that for me was phone calls and zoom meetings. Massively energy draining. Hate doing that. Would have rather, you know, in my old job, stacks of day, I rather staple gun my stomach than sit there and do that for a full day. What I found though was that going on a walking phone call is energy creating for me. Going out, I'm outside, fresh air, nature. I can't multitask when I'm walking around. So it makes the call actually go better, the outcomes better. I took half my phone calls and made them into walking calls. Suddenly my weeks felt dramatically different. Like a week that would have been massively draining, a day that would have been massively draining turned into something that felt more neutral or even good. It's an example of just a slight tweak where I would have initially said, impossible. I can't change anything about it. I just have to do that. 2. Let me ask the question again of is there a slightly different thing that I can do there? But that exercise of an energy calendar is a great place to start for anyone to Just understand, develop that awareness of what is creating energy in your life and what is draining so that you can start making the tiny shifts, including with people. If you identify, there are people you're spending a ton of time with that are just making you feel like you need to take a shower, you should probably spend less time with those people and your life will get better.

[A]

Why do people find it so hard to get away from people that drain their energy? I personally don't have this problem. I would never ever spend time with people that take my energy. But I see it around me all the time. What is that?

[B]

It's much harder when it's your nuclear family or when it's blood relatives. When it's friends. I think the biggest reason is that people have this sensation or this, this sort of attachment to the idea that friends are things that you keep throughout all the seasons of your life. And you feel like, oh, well, that person's an old friend. That's just the way they are. We say things like that.

[A]

That's just the way they've always been.

[B]

Is that, yeah, your life has seasons.

[A]

And, and not everybody's made for every season.

[B]

And very few are actually. They're going to be like, maybe you can count on one hand the number of people that are there across all of them.

[A]

Tiny handful.

[B]

That's okay.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

At the end of the day, most of your friends aren't really your friends. They are just along for the ride when it's fun, convenient or valuable.

[A]

Because your definition of friend would be what?

[B]

My definition of friend is someone that I can call at 3 in the morning when I am down and out and they will pick up and be there. And there are very few people at the end of the day that those are the handfuls.

[A]

There's always only a handful.

[B]

And you need to find those people. You need to cherish those people and.

[A]

You have to have those people. Doesn't matter if you've got one or two of those people, but you have to have those people. Those are the most important relationships you'll have in your life.

[B]

And the way you have those people is by being one to someone else.

[A]

Couldn't have said it better myself. That is an actual fact. I'm fascinated by this concept of you talk about there being four types of professional time. Can you just talk me through that? Because that idea about how we should all spend our work hours I found truly fascinating.

[B]

Yeah, I have this concept that there are really four types of professional time, two of which are largely forgotten and missing from most People's calendars. The majority of professional time is spent in one, which is management time. This is things like meetings, emails, processing, you know, like basic boring admin tasks that ends up being 80% of most people's calendars, which is always such a shame. The second type is creation. That's actually creating things. That's coding, that's writing, that's creating in some way. Then there are the two types of really forgotten time, one of which is consumption. This is about actually inputting new things at the top of the funnel into your brain. It's reading, it's learning, it's conversations, it's the actual input of new ideas. The best stuff at the top, the best, it's listening to this podcast, as a matter of fact. And then the last type is ideation, which is the time to really think about these things. The biggest challenge is with ideation, it's so important to have time to think. When you don't think, you never zoom out to see the bigger picture on anything in your life, professional or personal. And you don't allow these ideas to sort of intermingle and connect, which is where you get the sparks that create the 10x or 100x.

[A]

All the best things come from.

[B]

Where the best things come from. And you can make that change by just structuring those into your life. You need to have blocks on your calendar that are dedicated to consumption and to ideation. You probably already have them for management and for creation.

[A]

Yes, but they need to be for everyone.

[B]

You need them for everyone.

[A]

You need them for everyone.

[B]

Once a week where you have like a 30 minute window where you're going to be just thinking about some of the bigger picture questions in the business that you're facing or the, you know, idea that you're thinking about starting. Create that space in your life to do that and your outcomes will immediately start to improve.

[A]

That's incredible. And I think that that is so true because, you know, I once read that, you know, Bill Gates takes an annual thinking week and he'll go, and he goes out to a lake and he takes a stack of books and a stack of papers and he just goes. And he thinks. And that's where some of like the biggest ideas and the things that have ultimately changed the way that we work, the way that we live now, that's where those things come from. Now a lot of people are not gonna have a whole week, but the idea of maybe just taking an hour and lifting yourself up above all of your problems, above everything that's going on I know for me, that is a must. Like, it's an absolute must.

[B]

One hour, once a month. I call it my think day. It's like an adaptation on his fancy week that he goes in, he does his week.

[A]

Looks so good.

[B]

Yeah, I mean, if you have kids, if you have life, listen, if you.

[A]

Got a big company like Microsoft, maybe it deserves a week wake.

[B]

Yeah, but go, I mean, and bring some big picture questions with you. There's eight thinking prompts in the book for those think days that'll really get your brain zoomed out with a different perspective on your current situation. My absolute favorite question to ask myself at these is, if you were the main character in a movie of your life, what would the audience be screaming at you right now? We've all gone and watched a movie or a TV show and you just want to jump through the screen and grab the main character and shake them and say, like, don't go down in the basement. Look behind you, chase the girl to the airport, whatever the thing is, go down. Yeah, you are that main character in the movie of your life and the audience would be screaming something at you right now. So what is it? What is the thing that is so blindingly obvious from the outside looking in that you are either choosing to ignore or have yet to create enough perspective?

[A]

Yeah. You speak a lot about this window of time that we have with our kids and how short that is. You have a son, I have four kids. And there's so much in terms of, you know, I talk about it all the time, the trade offs that we have between our careers and our ambition and being with our family and being with the people who matter the most. And I just wonder what your advice is for managing that time, because we all know how important it is. But you know, I have an enormous amount of ambition, so how do you think about those two things coupled together?

[B]

You get 10 years with your kids, it's not 18. Everyone says you get 18 summers, you don't get 18 summers. The first few are really tough because the babies are a nightmare.

[A]

The first few you just getting over the plane journeys, by the time they're.

[B]

12 or 13, they have friends, they don't want to necessarily hang out with you. They want to go do other things. And we know statistically 95% of the time you have with your kids is gone by the time they turn 18, 75% by the time they turn 12.

[A]

I still find that that's a lot of fun.

[B]

It's jarring, that tension that you navigate between presence and Ambition, the desire to be present during that magical window that you have with your kids, and your ambition to go and create things, to go and build the way that you choose to navigate that tension is the most fundamental question that you face as a parent. The way that I navigate it is to say that work life balance is a lie.

[A]

Thank you.

[B]

I'll just say that the entire idea of work life balance places the two in opposition to say that they are opposing forces and they pull against each other. The reality is that you can build a life where all of these things are a part of the same mission of building towards the life that you actually want. My son, my wife, they are a part of this mission. Anything that I'm going and doing, they are a part of that life that we are trying to create. So when I travel, when I'm gone, when I'm doing things, I want them both to understand just as much as I do why I'm doing the things that I'm doing. What is it contributing towards? What is the life that we are all working towards and trying to create? Because then rather than saying, oh, Dad's gone, he doesn't want to be here. It's Dad's doing something important. There's a real why behind the things that I'm doing. And that is such an important and simple shift that really just comes from communication. The other piece to that is recognizing that while your presence and your energy is critical, it is also essential that your kids see you working hard on things that you care about.

[A]

Absolutely. All right, so we've had financial wealth and time wealth. Now I want you to talk about social wealth and what that means.

[B]

Social wealth is all about your people and the visualization. Most important thing. I mean, the. The most important thing. In so many ways, scientifically, we know relationships are the key to living a happy, healthy life. The Harvard Study of Adult Development was this amazing study they did over the course of 85 years, followed the lives of 2,000 people. They found that the single greatest predictor of physical health at age 80 was relationship satisfaction at age 50. It wasn't your blood pressure or your cholesterol. It wasn't your smoking or drinking habits. It was how you felt about your relationships that determined your health outcomes.

[A]

And then, listen, we all. First of all, that study is one of the most brilliant things ever because it was so many people over such a long time span, and it was such a clear indicator of what actually matters. But I feel like we all feel this, right? We all know intrinsically that the people that we love the relationships. We have those social connections. Like we feel it intrinsically, and yet somehow it isn't always on the list of things that make us feel good. Right. It just sometimes just slips away. It's like we take that part for granted. So how have you really honed in on that? And how do you make your social connection something that you are able to focus on, knowing that it gives you.

[B]

So much very simple mindset. Shift changed everything for me here, which is your social connections, your relationships are the best investment that you can make. Thinking of them as an investment is the recognition that they compound. We know that with money. You know that if you put away $50 today, it's better than zero because it's going to stack and compound in your future. The exact same rule and principle applies to your social relationships. Sending the text to the person when you're thinking about them is better than doing nothing because it is going to stack and compound in the future. It's going to build that relationship. But relationships are the first thing that fall by the wayside when we get busy because we think that it has to be something dramatic for it to be beneficial. We think, oh, I need to spend hours with this person or I need to make sure that I do the coffee date once a week or get together with this old group of friends and it starts to create stress. So we don't do it. The reality is that the tiny, simple, boring, basic actions of letting people know that you appreciate them, of reaching out, of texting your mom calling in the two minutes that you have, those things compound relationships. They really matter. And those are the things that are going to create the texture of the good life that you want to.

[A]

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[B]

I think that loneliness killed my grandmother.

[A]

You do?

[B]

My grandmother lived in India, and my grandfather before he passed, like, after he retired. My grandfather and his four closest friends all built houses on this one tiny cul de sac so that their wives could all be together if the men passed away. And all four of the men did die, and their wives, their widows, were still there, and they were the closest of friends. My grandfather died in 2005, and for 15 years up until Covid, my grandmother did not go a single day without having someone come over to play scrabble, someone come over for lunch, some chat, some friendship. She was like a social butterfly every single day. And she aged extraordinarily well. Covid hit 18 months of lockdowns. Not being able to see anyone aged my grandmother 20 years in the span of 18 months. And she passed away shortly thereafter. And it was not Covid that got her. It was the lack of social connection.

[A]

The lack of that stimulation creates.

[B]

And many of us are creating that ecosystem in our own lives, that environment of lockdowns we are doing to ourselves.

[A]

Yes, we see. I see it over and over again. There's like, this crazy trend on TikTok right now that talks about, you know, like, making excuses not to go out and just, like, staying home. And I'm like, why is that a thing? Like, I just don't understand that at all. Why would you not leave the house? Why would that be a cool thing?

[B]

Teenagers in the United States, why do we want to be alone in the United states, are spending 70% less time with their friends in person than they were two decades ago, which is wild. 70.

[A]

So how do we build on our social.

[B]

You have to just invest in it in a basic way, spend time with people in person. First off, like, enough of the digital communities. Enough. I look, I'm all for technology. I love these things. At the end of the day, humans are social creatures. Relationships are what allowed us to survive and thrive as a species. Relationships are built in person, spend time with people in person. That is where we build real, meaningful Connections, that is where you build the friendships of the person who will. You can call at 3 in the morning, that will pick up the phone. That's not done over technology.

[A]

What mistakes do you think people are making when it comes to social wealth?

[B]

The biggest mistake I see people making is in thinking that you need to have hundreds of connections in order to be socially wealthy. Depending on who you are and your natural needs, if you're introverted versus extroverted, you may have a full social wealth cup from one deep relationship, two deep relationships.

[A]

And you think that you can have a full. Like you can be fully full with only two relationships.

[B]

I do, I do.

[A]

I think that I can count my friends on one.

[B]

I mean, I'm being realistic. I think that most people are going to have less than five true deep friends or relationships in their life. And I think that that's perfectly fine. The point is, having 10 people that don't really know you, that you can't call at 3 in the morning, is much worse than having one who really knows you.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

And who will really be there for you.

[A]

Oh, definitely. I mean, I can't think of anything worse. Okay, we've done financial wealth, social wealth. We've also done time. Well, but mental wealth, this is a really big one.

[B]

Mental wealth is all about carving your own path. It is about rejecting the default state of normalcy that people want you to consent to and creating your own path. And this is a really challenging one because the worst thing in the world is not being on a bad path. The worst thing in the world is being on a good path that isn't yours. Bad path screams at you every single day to get off Alphabet. A good path that isn't yours. There is a lot of gravity to just stay on.

[A]

Give me an example of that. What do you mean by that exactly?

[B]

It's the person who has the thing that they've always wanted to do that's screaming at them to go do it, but they have the middle manager job at something and they do not have the energy or the guts or the courage to see what that other path might look like. Oh, and having the courage to explore. Not necessarily to quit, to throw everything by the wayside and to go change it, but to carve out 30 minutes a day to just see what that other path might look like. A lot of benefit comes from that. Maybe you find that that thing's not for you and you decide, oh, actually this path is good for me. But that unlived dream, that road not taken is going to eat at you for the rest of your life. Unless you just take that little bit of time on a daily basis. 30 minutes a day is a beautiful thing in a month. 30 minutes a day, 900 minutes, you can learn a whole lot about some other path. Gathering information, creating little bits of evidence, figuring out what that other path might.

[A]

And you're talking about like really finding a purpose here.

[B]

Yeah, I'm talking about finding the thing that is going to make you excited to wake up on a Tuesday morning. People with a clear sense of purpose have lower all cause mortality. There is clear scientific evidence that people that have a sense of purpose live longer lives.

[A]

Wow.

[B]

This was part of the blue zones research that Dan Buettner did. There have been multiple studies and meta analyses of this and it makes sense. I mean, we know this, that waking up in the morning and not knowing what you were supposed to do, not knowing what you are waking up for, is going to make you feel very negative about life. That is going to harm you in a whole lot of different ways. It also leads to more pessimism. And we know scientifically that pessimism reduces the length of your life. Optimists live longer. So for all of those reasons, figuring out and spending the time to think more about yourself, what you love, doing, what you're good at, what your world, however you define your world, needs from you in this moment. Finding the intersection of those things and walking down that path in some way will bring you more joy and a longer life.

[A]

Okay, now I want to talk to you about the physical. Well, because this is a really tough one for so many people.

[B]

Hot topic right now.

[A]

I feel like it is a hot topic. It's always a hot topic.

[B]

Yeah. So all of the gurus in this.

[A]

Space, when you say gurus, who do you mean? The gurus?

[B]

Anyone that is selling you a product associated with health and fitness have an incentive to make it as complicated as possible. It is the exact same incentive that people who sell you fancy financial advice have. Make it complicated so that you can't do it yourself. Because then you need to hire me. You need to buy my ebook, you need to buy my course, you need to buy my whatever, all of those things that I'm going to then sell you. What that does is it creates a level of intimidation about what it means to be healthy. Being healthy and getting fit and healthy is not about cold plunges at 4 in the morning or Saratoga water bottles. It is not about red light therapy. It's not about saunas. It's not about, you know, having the most experience.

[A]

You mean social media is lying to us?

[B]

No, those things are amazing for social media, but they are not what makes you healthy. What makes you healthy is basically three things. Move your body for 30 minutes a day, eat whole unprocessed foods at about 80% of your meals. That's 17 out of 21 meals during the week and sleep for seven hours a night. If you can do those three, that's it, you will be healthier than 90% of people in the world. And I cannot sell you an ebook on that plan. Right, like that would be a very poorly selling ebook. It is so simple and boring and basic, but it's the truth. That is level one of the physical wealth video game. And anyone can go out and do that. And by the way, the rewards to that game are entirely predictable. They're so certain if you go and do that every single day, you will achieve great outcomes.

[A]

But you make it sound so simple and yet for so many people, it's just not that simple. Right. There must be like a hack or some way that we can be like, do I really need to exercise for 30 minutes a day and eat whole foods and get seven hours sleep? Because I'm busy and I like burgers and I'm busy BC everyone wants the.

[B]

Pill and the shortcut.

[A]

Yeah, they do. We do. You don't have a pill or a shortcut or something?

[B]

I don't have a pill to sell, unfortunately.

[A]

8020 rule, right? You talk about the 8020 a little bit.

[B]

Yeah, that is the 8020. That is the 8020. The like, the crazy version is, I tell you, you have to do, you know, an hour of this. You have to sleep eight hours, you have to do all these fancy protocols, take all these supplements, do all these things that might be level 100, but you don't have to worry about level one.

[A]

Most of us don't need that.

[B]

Yeah. Until you just get through level one. Do the basics. By the way, the workout doesn't have to be at the gym. You can go for a walk for 30 minutes and get much more benefit than most people are getting on a daily basis. The thing that I fundamentally feel when it comes to physical wealth is when the rewards are certain, you need to be able to convince yourself to do the thing. I understand when the rewards are uncertain why it's so challenging to motivate yourself. If you were to say, like, oh, I'm going to try to build a business, I'm going to do these daily actions, it may or may not work out that is very scary. Tolerating uncertainty is an equation for success. People who are able to tolerate the most uncertainty eventually find a way to win. Not everyone can do that. That's very hard. Health is an area where you do not have to tolerate uncertainty. If you do these things every single day, you will look and feel better than you did at the start of the month, guaranteed. Unless there's some like really edge case physiological issue. But that's a, you know, separate thing. 99% of people, if you do those things, you will feel dramatically different.

[A]

And you think that's it to physical wealth, like that's your lot. Yes, just do that.

[B]

Yes, do that as a starting point. If you were not, if you were doing nothing, do that.

[A]

I feel like in the book so much of it is surrounded with these like very big questions and I wonder if you've been able, like how that's changed your life and if you've ultimately, if you've got answers to the big questions since you wrote the book, I.

[B]

Really believe that the answers you seek in life are found in the questions that you avoid. The big changes, the life that you are trying to build, it's hiding in the things that you are avoiding asking yourself. It's the challenging questions that you're avoiding. That is why I frame up those questions. It is not to say that you are ever going to just wake up with some enormous epiphany and all of the answers that you've wanted for your life are there. This is a journey. Thriving in life is a continuous journey, not an end state. Trying to create an end state of perfection is actually a fool's errand. That is what leads us to create this conditional statement with respect to our own happiness. We say, when I get X, then I'll be happy. When I get this, then I'll be happy. When I get that, then I'll be happy. When the reality is we need to build this into the journey. And that comes from wrestling with these questions on an ongoing basis. And you are going to change the lens through which I see these questions. Now, as a father of a 3 year old, relative to when I was 30 and had no kids.

[A]

Very different, totally different.

[B]

And it's going to be totally different when I'm 50 and my kids are out of the house, or when I'm 70 and I'm retired, all of these things are going to change. So coming back to and sitting with the questions, that is really where I think you find the most powerful value in your life.

[A]

Yeah, absolutely. No doubt. Have you Found it difficult to almost, like, follow your own advice in the book.

[B]

I have struggled with different areas over the course of the last three years that I've been on the journey, but that's part of it. The nature of life is that you have these seasons of balance and unbalance and coming back to balance, and it's okay to lean into those. You don't need to create this pressure in your mind that your life is supposed to be perfectly balanced at all times across these five types. And you're going to grow evenly. Your life is going to change. What you prioritize or focus on during any one season will change. But you don't want to turn any of the areas completely off. You can just have them on dimmer switches, right? One is turned up, the others are turned down.

[A]

I love that idea.

[B]

And that is a really liberating mindset to just lean into the season that you're in, to recognize that it is a season, it will come to an end, and that you can embrace the next season for whatever might come.

[A]

How are you teaching your little son these concepts?

[B]

I do not believe you can teach your kids anything. I really believe you have to embody the things that you want them to learn. If I want my son to treat my wife like a queen, I better damn well treat my wife like a queen. So if I want him to understand the value of delayed gratification, he better see me working hard on things now for some benefit value later. That is what he sees on a daily basis in our house. He sees my wife and I have hard conversations, but then repair. He sees me work hard on things for work and then reap the rewards of those things. He sees me work hard on things physically. All my workouts. He knows I go to the gym. I do these things. And now I see him acting out those things that he is seeing regularly. He's kind of mimicking those things. I can tell that he is learning from seeing those. So that is really what I'm trying to do with him.

[A]

So, Hill, do you feel infinitely more wealthy after embarking on this whole journey, after speaking to so many thousands of people and then following the advice of your own book? Do you feel more wealthy these days?

[B]

Infinitely more wealthy. I wrote it right at the very beginning of the book that I feel like the wealthiest man on the face of the earth. And that's not a flex on anything because this is my own definition of wealth. This is about me and how I feel. But I have taken the actions to create the life that I actually Wanted for myself and for my family. And anyone can go out and do that. Anyone, Anyone.

[A]

I love that. I'm gonna take you for a quick rapid fire round before I let you go. So what is the first thing that you do when you wake up?

[B]

Cold. Blanche.

[A]

I knew you had a cold fund. I was dead sure of it. What's the last thing you do before you go to bed?

[B]

My one, one, one method that we talked about. I write down something that I'm grateful for.

[A]

It's a brilliant one. What are you currently aspiring for in your business life?

[B]

I want to reach and impact a million people over the course of the next year. With this book and with these ideas, we've reached a quarter million people today and I see the path to doing it and I am committed to getting it out there in the world.

[A]

I have no doubt. And what are you aspiring for in your personal life?

[B]

I want to be the best father, husband, brother and son that I can possibly be.

[A]

Great answer. What is a. I wonder if you're going to say your own word, but what's a book that's changed your life?

[B]

There's a book called When Breath Becomes Air.

[A]

Oh, it's a great. It's the Doctor, what's his name?

[B]

Paul Kalanathi.

[A]

It's the first book I read this year and it is insane.

[B]

Yeah, I was sobbing on a plane when I read it. I sobbed on a plane. It's not light. It's not light reading, but it is extraordinary.

[A]

Extraordinary. I would say everyone has to read that book. It's a really tiny little book. You'll read it very quickly, but it's very, very good. What's something that you valued when you were starting out that you don't anymore?

[B]

Fancy things. Fancy bottles of wine. Status flexes. Bought status flexes. I would say things that you can acquire that signal your worth to the world.

[A]

And what is something that you value now that you didn't back then?

[B]

The things that can only be earned. Meaningful connections with people that you love. Building things that you can't buy. Overnight knowledge, wisdom, experience and a fit, healthy body.

[A]

You cannot buy that. That's amazing. Thank you so much, my dear. I so appreciate you being here.

[B]

Thank you.

[A]

This is lovely. Thank you so much. If you're loving this podcast, be sure to click follow on your favorite listening platform. While you're there, give us a review and a five star rating and share an episode you loved with a friend will be so grateful. Aspire with Emma Greed is presented by Audacy. I'm your host, Emma Greed. Our executive producers are Corrine Gilead Fisher, Derek Brown and me. Our executive producers from Audacy are Maddy Sprung Keyser, Leah Rees Dennis, Asha Salouja and Jenna Weiss Berman. Stephen Key is our senior producer. Sound design and engineering by Bill Schultz. Angela Peluso is our booker. Original music by by Charles Black Video production by Evan Cox, Kirk Courtney, Andrew Steele, Carlos Delgado and Arnie Agassi Social media by Olivia Homan Special thanks to Brittany Smith, Sydney Ford, my teams at the lead company and WME Maura Curran, Josephina Francis, Hilary Schuff, Eric Donnelly, Kate Hutchinson, Rose, Tim Meecol, Sean Cherry and Lauren Vieira. If you you have questions for me, you can DM me at Aspire with Emma Greed. Greed is spelled G R E D E. That's Aspire A S P I R E with Emma Greed. Or you can submit a question to me on my website. Emma Greed Me.

[B]

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