Paul Winkler: All right, we’re back here on “The Investor Coaching Show.” I’m Paul Winkler, talking about the world of money and investing and talking with Anne Sawasky, who’s hanging out here with me.
The American Dream Experience
The whole idea is just to keep the brain moving forward. Studying for me is a huge thing.
I constantly stay engaged in reading. That’s one of my big things. But there’s a purpose behind it and that’s what I want to talk a little bit about.
This is a process that we bring people through, and I don’t talk about this a whole lot, but I think we ought to talk about it more because I think it’s really become popular. And Anne, I know you’re a huge proponent of the American Dream Experience that we bring people through.
I love what you say about it, that this is something that you’ve had people go through and they can’t wait to go. They tell friends about it and then the friends are so fired up about it that they can’t wait to go as well. But talk a little bit about your experience of that and what it is.
Anne Sawasky: Well, the American Dream Experience is the only transformational financial workshop in the world.
PW: It is.
AS: The only one.
PW: It is literally, yeah, it is the only thing out there. And it’s something that we have done, we’ve been working on, for quite a long time, but it’s a two-day event, and you’re literally getting into your finances because people spend lots of time planning their vacations, but they literally spend almost no time planning the biggest vacation that they’ll ever have, which is their retirement.
So often I find that people don’t save enough for retirement.
They’re stressed about it, they’re worried about money. They’re not only worried about how you invest in all that stuff — that’s important — but they’re also worried about finances because there is a lot to worry about, when it comes down to it, because the news cycle is constantly making us nervous.
But they’re also worried that they’re not going to have enough. And much of it is because they don’t really know how to handle their finances or take time to.
Reacting and Mirroring Versus Having a Plan
AS:
I think the average person goes through life reacting.
So reacting to your situation around you and not saying, “Okay, this is my plan for my life. This is my purpose, this is what I want my life to be like, and how do I get there?”
PW: So basically stuff happens to them and then they figure out what to do. “Oh my goodness, this just happened to me. Now what do I do?” Versus going, “No, I’m going to have a game plan.”
AS: Right. Right.
PW: Yeah, for sure.
AS: I mean, if you don’t plan, it’s like trying to get to LA from New York and you don’t have a route. You don’t know, A, if you’re going to get there, and B, if you’re going to get there in the most efficient and effective way, or if it’s going to take you two years because you’re winding through.
PW: Yeah. It’s like getting in your car and just driving in whichever direction your car is facing.
AS: Yeah. And then at the end, you go, “Gosh, I really wanted to get to LA and I ended up in El Paso, or I ended up getting to LA, but I got there after this amount of time and spent a lot more money than I should have.”
PW: Yeah. As you say that, that’s really interesting. Because a lot of you know that I do counseling. That’s kind of my ministry that I love to do, and I love to work with people.
And what I typically find with people is that, and I tell them, “History doesn’t repeat, but it rhymes.” So what we have a tendency to do is do whatever our parents did, and maybe you don’t necessarily want what your parents got. Maybe you want something different, and that takes a little bit of planning. We were talking about neurons just a second ago, but we have these things called mirror neurons, which is where we tend to imitate behavior.
How my marriage looks is how my parents’ marriage looked just because of thinking, Well, this is how you raise kids. This is how you discipline kids. This is what kids are supposed to do.
This is what you’re supposed to do. This is when you’re supposed to retire. This is when you’re supposed to take Social Security. This is how you invest your money.
Matter of fact, when I just said that statement, it reminded me of a person that I know whose mother is ailing, and because his mother managed money a certain way, he almost feels like he’s got to continue to do the same exact thing that she did.
AS: Yeah, and I think that’s true. Yeah.
PW: And the money management is really, really poor, actually.
AS: Right. And actually, I could think of a couple that I know that are like that. The mother invested in real estate, so now that’s what they’re doing.
PW: Yeah, good example.
AS: I think that’s putting all your eggs in one basket, frankly.
PW: For some people, it may be great, but for a lot of people that is not what you want to do because that’s not your skill set. And also the real estate business is a very different thing than it used to be with the level of competition now, for example.
Your Terministic Screen
AS: I mean, I guess the point is that we see things or are brought up in a certain way and we think, because that’s our terministic screen, that’s the way we look at life.
PW: Yes, that’s a technical term for it. Yeah.
AS: That’s the way we look at life.
PW: Yeah, so the lens that you look at life through.
AS: Yeah.
So we don’t always see that if I take off that lens, I have a whole world.
The way I like to explain that is if you think about —
PW: Well, I’m thinking about virtual reality as you’re saying that.
AS: Well, that’s a great example. Yeah.
PW: When you say that, it’s like, what is on your screen?
AS: Yeah.
PW: It may not have been put there by you. You didn’t determine what was in the goggles.
AS: Yeah. Well, I mean, you think about a fish underwater — the fish sees, I don’t know, whatever’s underwater, other fish, some water, some coral, whatever. They have no idea there’s something above the water. So if they jump out of the water, they’re going to go, “Whoa.”
PW: Hopefully they don’t stay out of there, because they’re not going to last long.
AS: But I mean, that’s a classic example of seeing through a certain screen. And we all have our screens. One of the exercises that you do in the American Dream Experience is try to look at money demons, things that didn’t work in the past for you.
PW: Yeah, things that we’re worried about, we’re nervous about, and we don’t really examine. Yeah. It’s fun.
AS: And maybe even look at questions like, “How was I brought up?”
PW: I always love that exercise. Yeah.
AS: Yeah. I mean, it’s a great tool to look and see.
Learning From Your Beliefs
PW: Well, it was the exercise that actually led to this radio show.
AS: Oh, really? Yeah.
PW: It was literally the reason that this radio show exists — because I went through that exercise.
AS: Oh, really?
PW: Yeah, years ago. And my belief was that the investment industry, once they learned some of the things that I teach here, that I’ve been teaching for over 20 years on this show, that they would change their ways and they would make mincemeat out of little Paul in Goodlettsville, Tennessee, because that was my only office. I was in a 566-square-foot office, and I had a friend of mine who just set me straight and brought me through that exercise, actually.
He brought me through the exercise and he said, “Here is what you believe. There are benefits you get from hanging onto that belief.”
I won’t spoil it by saying what it was, but he was dead on right. Oh, my goodness. He was so right. And it was such a learning experience for me.
What happened was he always said, “You’re probably the most coachable person I’ve ever met in my life.” Because I always kind of felt like I didn’t know everything.
I didn’t want to have that ego when it came down to it. I always felt like there was something I could learn.
What he did is he brought me through that and then he said, “Let’s come up with a different game plan.” I’ll tell you the end part.
The end part was, “No, the investment industry has too much to gain or too much to lose again by staying the way they are; they have too much to lose by changing, and they won’t do it.” And the interesting thing is now, looking back 22 years later, things are worse now in the investment industry, and they are better at hiding it than they used to be, which I think is so interesting.
AS: Yes. Yeah.
Making Your Mind Up
AS: So I mean, the American Dream Experience makes you aware of all of these personal biases, maybe familial biases, but also biases in the investment industry that you have to be on guard for.
But then it also puts you through an exercise of finding where you want to be — what’s your purpose for your life? If you’re there with a spouse, you both go through the exercise and you’ll be surprised. You may have the same purpose, you may have different purposes, but you’re going to get out of there knowing and being on the same page with your spouse about what you want to do with your money and investing because you’re going to learn things in that exercise that are so valuable for your marriage.
PW: And there may be conflict that you’ve got going on where you don’t know why you have the conflict. You can’t figure it out.
“I don’t know. I mean, we have these issues with money she spends.” It may be, “I save” or “I spend and she saves.”
And the issue is not that you’re so different from each other, it’s just you don’t even know why you do what you do.
If you don’t know why you do what you do, you can’t make any kind of progress or changes or compromises.
AS: Right. Right.
PW: Because you don’t even know how to meet in the middle. So yeah, I think that’s really good. So we’re doing that workshop. It’s in April — early April.
AS: I think it’s the 4th and 5th, the first Thursday and Friday of April. And I’ll tell you, I always tell people, “It’s two days — only two days out of your life — to learn everything you need to know about money and investing to give you true peace of mind for the rest of your life.”
And if you’re not a client of ours, you’re going to have a side-by-side analysis of what you’re doing right now. You can compare it to academic Nobel Prize-winning science investing.
You can see, “Am I taking too much risk? Am I not taking enough risk? Am I diversified? Am I not diversified?”
PW: Well, I think it’s key. So you’re not taking somebody else’s word for it. “Am I doing the right thing?”
AS: Right. So then you make your own mind up.
PW: Yeah, you walk away and you feel like you objectively know. Because the reality is, and I always say this to people, Anne, my thing is that we often know the rules of investing. And I do this with everybody.
I did it with Matt Murphy and his wife. We went through this and I said, “These are the rules. What are the rules of investing?” And I have you tell me what they are.
And then what happens is I show them how the things that they’re doing right now are against what they believe. And you have this cognitive dissonance — that’s what we call it. “Oh, my goodness, what I’m doing does not line up with what I believe.”
And then you look at the difference between that versus what the academic research has said. We’re very big on academic research because I don’t want somebody that sells investments, mutual fund companies, investment firms, really guiding the process. When I make decisions, I want to know that it’s backed by evidence-based research. So I’m huge on that.
What’s Your Roadmap?
PW: So let’s do this. We’ll just talk really briefly about getting signed up. You can go to that. It’s something we do.
We don’t charge for the people that go through it because we just want you to go experience that. My thinking is you go through that experience over a couple of days, and that way it gives you the ability to kick the tires on what we do and how we do it.
We have clients that bring their kids through it. I want you to tell a couple of stories, because you’ve had a couple of people go through it.
AS: Yeah. Okay.
PW: Okay. So we were just talking a little bit about something we’ve got coming up in the first part of April — the investor coaching part of our series that we do called the American Dream Experience — where we’re really getting into a lot of things, like purpose and how to handle money. For a lot of people, they don’t save enough, and they can’t figure out why, and quite often the reason has to do with the fact that they really don’t have any kind of a roadmap.
AS: Yeah, yeah.
PW: That’s what’s lacking. So one of the things that we get into is that.
What’s the roadmap? What’s my purpose? What’s really important to me?
What do I want to accomplish? Get a husband or wife on the same page with each other.
AS: Right.
PW: And you’ve had friends go through it. Talk a little bit about some of your friends and family members that have gone through it.
AS: Well, I have clients, friends and family members go through it, and almost invariably, they are so glad they did it because they learn so much.
PW: You were telling me that somebody said, “Can I drag? I’m going to drag. I’m going to fill the workshop for you.”
AS: Yeah. I had a couple go through it last year, and now they want their adult kids to go through it.
And then they told a friend — the friend is dying to go through it — and so she’s like, “Oh, I’ll help you fill it. I’ll help you fill it.” Because unfortunately, we had to cancel the February one because of weather and all of that.
PW: Oh, yeah.
Finding Hope in Your Future
PW: Well, I remember we did one a little while back, and it was so cool. I remember this one person, this one young girl that was at the back, and she started dreaming about what she could do.
AS: Right. That was one of my clients.
PW: Was that?
AS: Yeah.
PW: I remember her just dreaming about it, and then she made decisions as to where she was going to live.
AS: Yeah.
PW: Oh, my goodness. That was really cool.
AS: That was a failure to launch situation, and she started seeing beyond her situation. Well, whenever you have purpose, doesn’t it give you hope, right?
PW: And it’s so funny because one of the things that I wanted to do is I was thinking about finding her some kind of a plaque. Literally, the phrase that I was going to have on the plaque — because I love stuff like this — is, “Hope is always appropriate.”
AS: Right, right.
PW: Because you think about that.
When we’re encouraging somebody, we’re giving them hope.
We’re walking people through something that’s difficult, and they don’t know what to do, and we’re encouraging them that they can do more than they think they can do. It’s always appropriate.
So it’s funny you say that. That just hit me when you made that comment.
AS: So to me, I find that very exciting when we can help people see beyond what they’re not able to see on their own and come up with a plan so they can have hope and they can achieve this thing. Because I think the worst thing to do is whenever the end of your life is, get to the end and go, “Oh, my gosh. I made millions of dollars and I didn’t really do anything.”
PW: Nothing to show for it.
AS: Yeah. “I didn’t accomplish anything I really wanted to accomplish.” And that’s not a place we want our clients to be, I’ll tell you that.
PW: That reminds me of Erik Erikson, who was a psychologist that had these eight stages of life, and the eighth stage of life was integrity versus despair.
AS: Right, right.
PW: So we go through life, we go walking through not really thinking about it or planning, and we can end up in that situation. So yeah, I think that’s really, really appropriate, for sure.
AS: Yeah. So I think it’s just, and I always tell people, it’s a problem-solving two days, and it’s hands-on.
So we try to find areas where you feel you have doubts, you have questions, something hasn’t worked for you in the past. What can we do to fix it?
It’s very hands-on. It’s not just some boring thing you sit through.
PW: So yeah, the way to check that out, we have on our website, paulwinkler.com. You can go there and then look into that. Then get in contact with us and say, “Hey, that’s something I’m interested in checking out.”
And it’s a fun couple-of-day event. Like I said, we’re holding that in —
AS: Murfreesboro.
PW: In Murfreesboro. The next one is going to be Murfreesboro?
AS: Yes. And you know what? If you’re already a client, talk to your advisor, because they can sign you up. If you’re not a client, you can click through on the website or give us a ring and sign up that way, and then we’ll get you an advisor to work with at the event.
Knowing Your Purpose
PW: Yeah. It’s interesting you say that, Anne, because years ago when I first started the company, I actually had a lot of time on my hands. Because you’re starting a business and you got lots of time and you’re trying to get things going. And I would bring a lot of these exercises that we’re doing at this.
And this is not run by me. We have people in the firm, Ira and Nevin, and there’s another guy that comes in and helps us out with that. But basically, these are exercises that I have walked people through for years.
In my early days of starting the company, I would run people through this, and I would charge $550 a quarter. No joke. And I would not even take on as a client unless they went through it.
It was highly inefficient because I was doing it all one-on-one with people. It was really inefficient.
But what I found with that was I had people that went through that process that became just absolute advocates for what we do, life-changing things. I’m hesitating, because I want to tell stories, but I don’t have the permission to tell the stories, the things that I’ve seen.
AS: Yeah, but you know what?
PW: I ought to get people’s permission to tell some of these stories because I remember one guy that was in a business — I’m just going to say a business and be very, very broad — and miserable. He would fall asleep in meetings that I had with him, and it wasn’t me, but he was overworked, he was stressed out.
He didn’t like his partners, and I’m being very, very vague on this thing on purpose. If he heard me saying this, he’d know I’m talking about him, I know it. This guy, he’s still a client to this day.
But what happened was I went through these exercises, and he got out, moved out into the middle of nowhere — no joke, he and his wife — and started working at a different institution than he was working at, to be really vague. He was as happy as I ever had seen him. Then moved to another place, a little bigger place, was incredibly happy, and every time I see him, he is like a little kid, but now in his 80s.
AS: Oh.
PW: Yes.
AS: Yeah.
PW: Yes.
AS: Well, over and over again at the American Dream experience, you see amazing things happen. I’ve seen everything from proposals of marriage to people standing up and saying, “I’m going to quit my job and start a business,” or, “I’m going to start this new charity that I’ve always wanted to do.”
Because when you find purpose, your purpose will lead you in different directions. The idea of purpose is for you to get excited about your life and your future so that you want to do it, right?
That’s why the purpose is so important — because it helps you guide and discipline yourself to keep on track with what you really should be doing.
It’s, “Oh, I really want to do this thing.” “I want to help you succeed,” whatever.
PW: It gives you a reason to get up. Yeah, it gives you a reason to get up.
All right. So check that out. Paulwinkler.com is the website where you can check that out.
Advisory services offered through Paul Winkler, Inc an SEC registered investment advisor. The opinions voiced and information provided in this material are for general informational purposes only and not intended to provide specific advice or recommendations for any individual. To determine what investments are appropriate for you, please consult with a financial advisor. PWI does not provide tax or legal advice. Please consult your tax or legal advisor regarding your particular situation.
