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Welcome to the Success Architect, where we don't just build homes, we build legacies. I'm your host, Jake Lewendal, custom home builder and coach. Each week, I sit down with builders and entrepreneurs who are ready to 10x their business, their health, and their mindset. This is where blueprints become breakthroughs. Let's get to work. What's up, guys? This is Jake Lewendal. I'm the Success Architect, and I am super excited to come to you with a little four-part series that we've got going this month. We're going to talk about money and your financial philosophy. So the thesis for this series is that most people are executing someone else's money strategy. So, what does that mean? You've heard me talk a lot. We've had guests and I've talked a lot about scripts or basically operating system code in your unconscious that runs your life. And this happens in a massive way with money. Sometimes there has been something in our past, whether it's a parent's fear, something that is an assumption from our culture or our religion, or a really strong moment of past scarcity or abundance could go the other way. But something happened in our past that we did not choose, and it created a script in our operating system that has to do with money. So I want to walk through some ways to for you to start seeing what that operating system is, how it's affecting your life, and how you can possibly diagnose and fix whatever you would like to and get rid of the bad and hold on to the good. So let's dive into it. The first episode that we're going to talk here is where did your money beliefs come from? And sometimes this is actually a really hard one to answer because when we started coming up with this four-part series, it's really hard for me to really diagnose exactly where my money beliefs came from. I actually had a very open relationship with money growing up, but my parents were very, very different in their money beliefs. So I'm going to talk about that here in a minute. The core idea here is you didn't choose your first financial philosophy. You were probably given it, whether you inherited it, whether you learned it through religion or culture, or something happened to you. So before you were old enough to even question it, you received this thing. Now, the question is, is it serving you or not? So, first question: when was the last time you evaluated the financial philosophy you are living by? Did you inherit it? Did you build it yourself? Did someone hand it to you? So, my personal example is between my parents, you know, my dad had very much an abundance mindset around money. And I won't say my mom had a scarcity mindset, but she grew up in a household that we would always say that mom is Dutch. She's great at pinching pennies. And we still say that because she she still pinches pennies, even though she doesn't have to. It's very impressive in one way. And also I'm like, hey, mom, you're retired. You're worth a lot of money. Like, you can do what you do what you want. So stop pinching pennies. But maybe that's how they got there. So I had kind of these a semi-dichotomy in my household. But one of the main things that my dad taught me was about compound interest. He would constantly talk about that if I saved from the time I was, you know, 10 years old, I don't know, $20 a month or whatever that is, and then you raise it up with compound interest, you know, when you're 65, you've got $1.8 million sitting in your bank account. And when you're in your, you know, eight, nine years old, even your early teens, having $1.8 million sounds like enough for you to live the rest of your life on, right? And yes, compound interest is extremely powerful and it's very underrated. Just look at Warren Buffett. I mean, he's a master. But when you start looking at your life and how much things cost, and depending on where you live, how much the cost of living is, that compound interest does not work for your entire life. So you have to combine it with something else, which my dad also did teach me. But what I found is that compound interest alone was not going to get me what I wanted. I had to build a business. I had to build something in order to sell or exit and get a big windfall in order to live the lifestyle that I want. And so that is what I'm working on. I've not done it yet. But these are things where I was told something and it did take me a while to understand it and to come up with my own operating system and how I was going to do it. Now I know that I have other operating systems running in the back of my mind that I actually work on with coaches right now that I have not fully fixed up yet. I've talked about guilt being one of those. And interestingly enough, that guilt plays out in tons of places in my life, whether it's relationships, business, or money. And so it's not usually just one operating system running in your mind that is going to dictate how your life is. It's going to be a bunch of them compounded on each other. And it's up to you to ask yourself the right questions in order to find out what those are and then find out how to resolve them and push them into a positive light. So for you guys listening, first thing that you can do is start to look for exactly what I said. When did you evaluate your financial philosophy and what is it? So here's a couple sources for you to think about in asking that question. Was this family of origin? What was said and modeled in your family? Did you have an uncle that said money doesn't grow on trees? Things like that. Culture, community, faith, religion. A lot of religions have very specific understandings of how money should work, how much you should give away, how much you're allowed to keep. And that can follow you your entire life, whether you stay in that religion or not. This can also happen in culture and community. And this is a constant conversation depending on where you live, what neighborhood you live in. Sometimes being born in a specific neighborhood will hold you back because just being in that location will actually define your operating system for how you see money. You know, some people, it's it's the term money is the root of all evil, as opposed to money as a tool. So those are questions to be asking yourself and saying, what is my belief? What did I grow up learning? And is it serving me? So as I was talking about up here, we talked about the script or operating system. There's also strategies in your life. And this is where I mean, Instagram has tons and tons of strategies. If you start following money, guys, you're gonna get memes every single day that talk to you about strategies. And we got to understand that an operating system and a strategy are two very different things. So your operating system is more emotional and absolute. Something like we don't talk about money, or we don't talk about money at the dinner table. Another one is debt is always bad, or rich people are greedy. Another one I heard recently is all billionaires are bad people. So if you think about any of those things running in the back of your mind, do you think you are ever going to get past a certain point in the money game? Probably not, because then you're gonna think that stuff about yourself. So your unconscious will make moves in your life in order to keep you at a certain level. These are the scripts and the operating systems that I would implore you to write down, figure out what they are, and then go back to my episode about operating systems and resolving them and work on resolving that specific script or operating system and finding a positive one to replace it with. Strategies are different. Strategies are chosen and testable, and they can be revised when they stop working as long as you consciously see them, you test them, and you make modifications to them. Strategies can be chosen, you know, through anything. You can talk to a financial advisor, you can look on Instagram, you can get all kinds of financial strategies. Cloud will give you tons, and the thing to do is to choose the right one for you and your situation. So, a couple questions to ask yourself in order to figure out what is your belief and what operating system is running, and how are you going to change it for the positive? First question is do I know why I believe this and does it feel true? Number two, I love this one. Would I teach this to my kids on purpose, or am I just repeating it? That one I love because honestly, you can use that for anything in your day-to-day life. Like if I'm doing something and I say, wow, would I teach my kids to do this? It probably tells you if it's quote unquote right or wrong. I usually am not a big fan of saying right or wrong or good or bad, because usually things just are and it's your choice. But if you would not teach your kids to do this thing, then you might want to reconsider yourself. Number three, has this belief ever cost me money, opportunity, or peace? Now, the thing here that I really want you to listen to is peace. So has this belief ever cost me money, opportunity, or peace? We have to remember that in this financial conversation, we're not just talking about money. Money can offer opportunity. Money can offer peace. And that's when we have to understand that money is a tool. And, you know, one that's so interesting. I heard someone say on a call that, you know, all billionaires are bad people. And what's so interesting to me is that a lot of people believe that the more money you have, it's going to bring out the bad side of you. And what I believe is that the more money you have, the more you show who you really are. Because your habits, who you are is there. And the more money you have, the more opportunity you have to show who you are. So if you are greedy, if you're kind of an asshole and you're rude to people, it's gonna be a hell of a lot easier to do all those things with more money, and it's gonna be a lot more prevalent and in people's faces. Now, if you are a giver and you have good habits, you are polite, you want to help people, that also is going to be magnified with more money. You're gonna be able to help more people, you're gonna be able to give to more people, you're gonna be able to be more polite by sharing what you have. Money just magnifies who you already are. The last portion of this in understanding these scripts and these strategies around money is doing a quick audit. So the thing to look at is where are you in your life? An undiagnosed script or operating system can show up in your life as self-sabotage. This can show up in your personal life, this can show up in business. A couple examples are maybe underpricing your work. I see this a lot with contractors or trades guys who just want to be helpful and they just barely make it by in their personal life because they're not charging enough. They underprice their work. Many people believe in oversaving. They oversave out of fear and scarcity. So instead of investing their money, they just save it. They don't use it as a tool. It just sits there. And when money just sits there, it does not grow. It may make you feel a little more comfortable, which, if there's an amount that someone needs in order to feel comfortable, I'm all about holding that in a savings account to make yourself feel comfortable, have maybe a six-month or a year buffer. But once you get beyond that and you're holding too much cash, you are wasting time and you are wasting that money. Exactly what I just said. This comes down to avoiding investment risk that's actually appropriate for your situation. Oversaving means you are not investing and that money is not working for you. The final one here that we kind of talked about in prepping for this is staying broke to stay relatable to friends and family. And this is a really, really tricky one that I think a lot of people actually run into but don't realize it. And this, I would say, is an operating system for sure that gets stuck in the background, and most people won't find it because your family matters, your friends matter. And society tells us that we want to be relatable to our family and our friends, and friends and family are more important than money, which is true. But go back to what I said earlier. It magnifies who you are. What if your friends and family are more important than money, but you have a ton of money, which means you can help your friends and your family, and you can do more of the good stuff that you want to do for them and for yourself. That is a thing to really consider when you're looking at all of these operating systems running in the background. Last action step to understand and try to pull out these scripts and these operating systems. This week, write down three money rules that you happen to live by next to each, write where it came from. Now, I will be the first to tell you this is actually kind of hard. And the last one that I said about staying broke to stay relatable to family, that is a very, very, very difficult one to flush out, which is why I wanted to state it out loud. It is not the societal norm, it goes against what our culture tells you to feel. And so those are the things that in order to really drill down and figure these things out for yourself, you have to be honest with yourself. So write down three money rules that you live by and where they came from. Next episode, we are gonna talk about that. Basically, once you know where the belief came from, the next question is is this belief serving you? Stay tuned. We're gonna come on next week with episode number two: Scarcity, Abundance, and the Lie of the Binary. See you guys on the next one. Thanks for tuning in to the Success Architect. If today's episode helped you lay a stronger foundation for your business or your life, subscribe and share it with someone ready to do the same with theirs. You can follow me, Jake Lewendah, on social for daily tips on health, wealth, and building success that lasts. Until next time, keep designing, keep building, and keep leveling up.