As I reflect on nearly four decades of life—of building, growing, failing, risking, and compounding—I feel a deep responsibility to pass on what I’ve learned. Not just for my own kids, but for anyone in the younger generation who wants to live with intention. This isn’t about becoming rich for its own sake. It’s about achieving full autonomy. It’s about designing a life that allows you to live well and give well.
Over the years, I’ve learned that success is rarely about talent or luck alone. It’s about mindset, discipline, leverage, and intention. It’s about engineering your path instead of drifting along someone else’s. And if you’re serious about building a life of freedom, impact, and purpose, here are the 39 beliefs, philosophies, and frameworks that have shaped mine.
FOUNDATION: Set the Stage for Success
1. Your Time Is the Most Valuable Asset You Have
Time is the one resource you can never replenish. Guard it fiercely. Trade money to buy back time whenever possible. Say no more often. Time discipline is life discipline.
2. Think in Decades, Act in Days
A 10-year vision gives clarity. Acting on it daily gives momentum. Long-term thinkers win because they aren’t chasing dopamine—they’re building legacy.
3. Write Letters to Your Future Self
Vision casting works. When you write from your future self’s perspective, you create clarity and conviction. Here’s how I did it in my first letter.
4. Ask Better Questions to Get Better Results
Your questions shape your actions. Instead of “Can I afford this?” ask “How can I afford this and keep investing?” Quality questions unlock solutions.
5. Your Environment Is More Powerful Than Your Willpower
Design your space and social circle to support your goals. Habits follow cues. Align your default settings with your desired outcomes.
6. Optimize for Energy, Not Just Efficiency
Energy fuels results. Prioritize sleep, movement, hydration, and purpose. Your energy is your edge.
7. Don’t Confuse Movement With Progress
Being busy isn’t the same as being effective. Measure progress by outcomes, not activity.
8. Your Health Multiplies Everything—or Erodes It All
Wealth without health is a hollow win. Fitness, nutrition, and mental clarity are force multipliers.
9. Be Ambitiously Lazy
Work like hell early to build leverage—then let systems carry the load. Aim to be the lion who rests 20 hours and dominates for four.
10. Have a Bias Towards Action, but Make Room for Stillness
Take massive action, but pause to reflect. Strategic rest is not weakness—it’s power.
11. Embrace the Seasons—There Is a Time for Grind and a Time for Grace
There’s a season for sprinting, a season for rest, and a season for reinvention. Know which one you’re in.
MINDSET: Think Like a Builder
12. Become a Student of the Game—Any Game You Enter
Obsess over mastery. Study models. Reverse engineer results. You can compress decades into days if you follow the right blueprints.
13. Play the Long Game, Fast
Move with urgency but think long-term. Skip the distractions. Focus, execute, iterate.
14. Chase Mastery, Not Just Money
Money follows value. Mastery builds confidence, positioning, and leverage.
15. Learn to Sell—Ideas, Value, Yourself
Everyone is in sales. The ability to persuade ethically is a superpower.
16. Money Is a Great Servant, But a Terrible Master
Use money to buy time and peace. Don’t sacrifice meaning on the altar of more.
17. Information Is Everywhere—Wisdom Requires Filtering
In a noisy world, the ability to filter signal from noise is vital. Learn to say no to good ideas in order to be able to say yes to great ones.
18. Every “No” Is a Compounding “Yes” to Something Better
Saying no is how you stay aligned. Guard your attention like your future depends on it—because it does.
19. Your Calendar Reveals Your Real Priorities
Where you spend your time shows what you actually value. Audit your schedule like you audit your finances.
20. Be the Architect of Your Own Incentives
Design rewards that reinforce your long-term behavior. Gamify your progress. Incentives drive action.
21. Build the Life You Don’t Need a Vacation From
Don’t tolerate misery five days a week for a two-week escape once a year. Design a life you’re proud to wake up to.
MONEY: Make It Work for You
22. Ownership Over Everything
Employees get raises. Owners get multiples. Whether it’s equity in a business, stock, or real estate—owning the upside is the cheat code.
23. Engineer Your Wealth Curve Early
Start tracking net worth, spending, savings, and income early. Here’s my financial tracking for the last 10 years. Awareness drives optimization.
24. The First Million Is the Hardest, the Second Is Inevitable
Once you build the engine, it scales. Momentum compounds. Systems beat willpower.
25. Invest in Asymmetry
Make bets with limited downside and huge upside. A single well-timed move can change your trajectory forever.
26. Wealth Is Measured in Options, Not Stuff
Freedom to say no is more valuable than the newest gadget. Wealth buys optionality.
27. Track Your Net Worth Like a Scoreboard
What gets measured gets improved. Monthly tracking keeps you engaged and accountable.
28. Debt Can Be a Weapon or a Wrecking Ball—Use It Intentionally
Used wisely, debt accelerates wealth. Used blindly, it destroys it. Understand the difference.
29. Avoid Lifestyle Creep—Unless It’s Designed With Intention
Upgrade only when your systems are solid (see: Law of 50/50) and your values align. Lifestyle inflation is only dangerous when it’s unconscious.
30. Always Have a Runway—Financial, Emotional, Mental
Optionality is peace. Runways let you take risks. Build buffers in all forms.
31. Multiplying > Adding
Leverage beats labor. Seek opportunities where your effort creates exponential, not linear, results.
32. The Game Isn’t Money, It’s Freedom
Money is the tool. Freedom is the goal. Time, choice, purpose—that’s the real wealth.
GROWTH: Expand Your Impact
33. Success Is Better Shared
Get rich with your friends. Collaborate. Partner. Give away some of the upside to go farther, faster.
34. The Best Deals Are Found, Not Given
Build relationships. Stay curious. The best opportunities rarely have a “for sale” sign.
35. Take Sabbaticals to See Clearly Again
Space creates perspective. Every few years, step back. Reassess. Realign.
36. Document Your Journey—It Will Inspire Others More Than You Know
Your story can spark someone else’s breakthrough. That’s why I started this blog.
LEGACY: Live Well, Give Well
37. Make Your Kids Your Greatest Investment
Teach them autonomy. Model intentional living. Your ceiling becomes their floor.
38. Be the Friend You Needed 10 Years Ago
Send the elevator back down. Be someone’s first believer. Share the lessons you wish someone had given you.
39. You Already Won When You Designed Life on Your Terms
If you wake up living in alignment, you’re winning. Freedom isn’t the destination—it’s the foundation.
If you’re in your 20s or 30s reading this, know this: You have time. But not forever. The decisions you make today echo for decades. Choose intention over inertia. Make your money work as hard as you do. Design the life that sets your soul on fire.
The world doesn’t need more people stuck in survival mode. It needs more people who are fully alive—living well, giving well, and helping others do the same.
– Gen Y Finance Guy
