Today’s amazing guest is Chad Johnson, the embodiment of leveraging business success to create an extraordinary life. Chad’s story isn’t just about elevating his family’s business to new heights; it’s a testament to using entrepreneurial vision to nurture relationships and achieve balance.
As the “Chief Inspiration Officer” of Ceramic Decorating Company, Chad’s journey reflects a compelling blend of reviving a legacy business, fostering a self-managing team, and embracing the philosophy of Strategic Coach® to redefine success.
In our conversation, Chad emphasized the true wealth derived from leaving a legacy of enriched relationships and a life filled with purpose. He also shared the value of a growth mindset and a thirst for continuous learning plus insights on the significance of prioritizing faith, family, and personal fulfillment.
Chad’s personal experiences transcend traditional business strategies, offering a blueprint for achieving success that encompasses personal fulfillment, meaningful relationships, and a well-balanced life. His experiences and adoption of Strategic Coach principles serve as a guiding light for individuals seeking holistic success in both their professional and personal spheres.
In This Episode
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His Giant 5 Priorities in Life
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Returning to their family’s business and his adoption of Strategic Coach principles
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Personal commitment to prioritizing relationships and work-life balance
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Fueling growth and implementing proven strategies for success
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True wealth derived from enriched relationships and a life filled with purpose
Welcome to another episode on Wealth Strategy Secrets. Today we have a special guest, Chad Johnson. Chad has truly achieved holistic wealth with his business and family success to create an extraordinary life.
Chad’s story isn’t about elevating his family business to a new height. It’s a testament to using entrepreneurial vision to nurture relationships and achieve balance. In our conversation, Chad emphasized that true wealth is derived from leaving a legacy of rich relationships, and a life filled with purpose.
He also shared the value of a growth mindset and thirst for continuous learning plus insights into the significance of prioritizing faith, family, and personal fulfillment, what he calls his giant 5 priorities. In addition to covering the giant 5 priorities in this episode, we talked about Chad’s journey returning to his family business and his adaption to strategic coach principles.
We also covered his commitment to prioritizing relationships, and work-life balance, filling growth, and implementing proven strategies for success, and lastly through wealth that’s derived from relationships and a life filled with purpose.
Chad, welcome to the show.
Man, it’s a treat, Dave, to be with you. I’m so pumped. Thank you for having me.
Chad, I am so grateful that you’re on, I know the audience is going to love this episode. One of the core pillars that we talk about in overall holistic wealth strategy is a lot around mindset, the right mindset is it’s everything you know you look at people like Elon Musk and Steve Jobs I mean these major industry transformers right and what mindset they have. What an example and everything.
And I know that’s part of the core of your philosophy as well. So I know folks are going to enjoy this. And then talking about holistic wealth, Because, wealth is really interesting when you start to unpack it, It’s not really about the zeros in your bank account, at some point.
It’s, you can add more zeros, but it doesn’t get you to that overall fulfillment. It’s like the four freedoms and the family, which I know is super important for you as well. So for folks who aren’t familiar with you, tell us a little bit about your story. How did you get here? How did you become an entrepreneur? And, and talk to us about your amazing family as well.
Dave, I love that you went right out of the gate to this big picture of what wealth is. Because I do think a lot of people narrowly define that as like it’s a number. If you reach your number, then wealth is yours. And I love the fact that, at an early age, I guess, growing up in a big family, I was one of eight kids. And I realized from an early age that we were arguably maybe middle class at the time, in our financial situation.
I grew up in an incredibly relationship-rich environment. Where I was around, parents who were pouring into me in the right ways, siblings who were my best friends, and a neighborhood full of connected relationships. So I grew up feeling extremely rich, like never feeling like I lacked, Even though I knew some people lived in big houses and drove big cars, nice cars, and had big trips.
And not that there was anything wrong with any of that. I aspired to see some of those breakthroughs in my financial situation at some point. That was part of my childhood dream. But it’s weird because you mentioned that holistic picture of wealth and what that looks like. And I think from a very early age, I don’t know where it even came to me, but I was like, man, the way I want to measure success in my life will be different than what maybe everybody else would choose.
I came up with these five priorities, And I call them my giant five. I used to spend a lot of time around me. You’re gonna hear me talk about my giant five priorities. And the first one is my faith. I’m a believer. So that grounds me, It’s my relationship with God. It’s my spiritual life. And that’s a first for me.
My number two priority is my key relationship. It’s funny, Harvard did a study and they published this book, the largest longitudinal study on happiness ever. And they tracked it for these generations. And the single outlier on what was it that made human beings flourish?
What was it that made them so happy was that, those key relationships, whatever it was, key friendships, key relationships with maybe parents or a spouse or their partner or kids or friends, but it was those relationships that made it rich.
So I said, okay. If I’m right with God, right there, now my relationship with my wife, I want it to grow and grow and grow. I don’t want it to ever diminish. And it’s funny, Dave because I coach a lot of entrepreneurs, And one of the key areas I see them kind of break down their wealth is through a divorce. Dude, you wanna talk about a hit, to financial well-being and stability? It’s like taking everything you’ve been building for so long and ripping it in half, And ripping the business in half or ripping the assets in half, and what a slowdown.
And so I’m constantly telling people that are wealth builders, hey, take care of those key relationships. It’s not only gonna make you happier, and more fulfilled, but it’s also going to make you richer long-term If you continue to grow in these ways.
So that number two relationship, my wife, Janiece, we celebrated 30 years. I can’t believe it. I’m too young for that. You know that, but no, but it’s, and I like her more than I ever have and she’s still pretending she likes me. No, we have a great relationship, and we work at it, So it’s fun. But that’s the second relationship out of the five for me.
The third is if you have kids, for me, there’s no success, no measure of wealth that will matter to me if my children aren’t flourishing, And you know this, when you have a kid, you ache if one of your kids isn’t doing good. If they’re suffering, if they’re going through difficult times, and every parent has a kid that goes through difficult times. It impacts your whole world.
And you start going, I’m not okay if they’re not okay.
So, point into that third priority and say, hey, I wanna see them flourish and be everything that they were meant to be. I have 11 of them, My wife and I, I told you I liked her a lot. We have proof, we have 11 of these kiddos, and the youngest is 11, and the oldest is now turning 29 in January, Which is hard to believe.
And we’re expecting our 10th-gram baby. I mean, it’s like, and Dave, you know this because we’re both a part of the strategic coach And for years, Dan had that 10X program and I was the one guy that didn’t get what he was talking about, you know? And I took 10X home and I told my wife, hey, we only have four kids, we need to have six more because we got a 10X. And we got a 10X’s family and anyway, she went along with it. But so the third priority for me is those kiddos and seeing them flourish.
And then fourth, Dave, it’s been said that a billionaire with a belly ache wants to feel better. I mean, they can’t even enjoy what they have. None of us can if we’re not in a position of wholeness and health, wellness, vitality, energy, And I could say life, family, business, all of it is an energy game.
And so my fourth priority is how do I take care of myself. Physically, mentally, and spiritually, so that I’m able to bring A-level energy to my best opportunities consistently, And so I lost my health at 12 years old, I mean, at 10 years old, and then my early 20s. Anyway, I won’t go into all that, but it made me realize the value and the wealth, for lack of a better word, there is in health and vitality, high energy living, and being able to protect that asset.
And so health is number four. And then number five for me is really where the great game of business comes in or being a value creator or an entrepreneur, or for those that aren’t entrepreneurs, but it’s crushing your career, your life. It’s taking what you’ve been given, your God-given gifts, talents, and abilities, and putting them in the play in the marketplace and making a massive difference, Serving more people or whatever.
So, to me, these five things and I’m maintaining them in proper reflection of reflecting in my life, I feel like that’s such not only a platform for success, but it’s a model for sustained success, It’s going to get a bit, well, bigger, richer, fuller, year by year.
So those five priorities, I literally came across them, don’t know where I wish I could give credit where it’s due. I don’t know if it was something I came up with or if someone shared something with me, but I was like, these five are gonna be my thing. And so as I went out into my life, I had a really slow start financially. I’ll be real honest with you, my story is a windy path.
And I struggled early on. I had some really, my wife and I, when we were married, couple of kids, I was jumping from one business, starting this business, seeing this one fail, I had a lot of early learning to do, to put it simply.
And then had some successes along the way, but along the way, I was filtering everything through those five priorities. And so when it came to my career, I said, Hey, I’ll start a business, I’ll sell a business, but everything’s going to be in service of these other five.
And so on the career side, if you want a bit of that story, I grew up in Los Angeles. My mom pulled me out of public school after seventh grade. I was one of these students who turned out I loved learning, but school wasn’t the environment I loved learning in.
I felt extremely bored. It was frustrating. I was one of these guys that was like, my grades were okay, but I was there for the social and all the other things. And she thought she could pour into me faster, better, harder. And she did. And so she did that, pulled me out of seventh grade. Homeschooling was not cool, in the eighties in Los Angeles, but I got my high school diploma by the time I was 16.
And at that point, I was like, well, what am I going to do? So I ended up jumping into a local junior college to take some classes and found out I could get my emergency medical technician certificate at 18 and I could become a ski patroller, I was kind of a ski bum, I love skiing and I’m like, Hey, they’ll pay me to do this, but my ambitions, it was funny.
Dave, because I always knew I had big ambition, but I didn’t know how my path was going to develop at all. So I’m ski patrolling, I’m working construction in the summers, and I meet my wife, and I’m like, man, I gotta get a real job. I wanna marry this woman and have a family. And anyway, so I end up going back to, at the age of 21, 22, going back to the family business.
My dad and uncle were running a company in Los Angeles, screen printing labels on glass bottles. Okay, and they were very silk screen these labels. We didn’t do this particular project, but a lot of people recognize this project like Grey Goose Vodka. it’s a gorgeous bottle, color screened into the glass, fired at high temperature. The color becomes a part of the label. It was there in Los Angeles, a city of commerce. And so I start working in that environment and I find that being there, I get so excited about the potential of that company.
I’m seeing the growth opportunities, for reorienting our direction, and for realigning our team. I mean, we had been in business since 1934. My grandfather and his brother started that business in the middle of the Great Depression. I was too young, to be honest with you, in my uncle’s eyes and maybe in my father’s eyes. And they’re like, hey, you know what, Chad? We love your excitement and zeal and all this passion you have, but You don’t know anything from anything.
So we started biting heads, On what could be done, what should be done. And I realized, Hey, I need to go do some other things. And so I went back to school and I started two other companies, a janitorial service window cleaning company. And I started a mobile espresso and coffee bar business, and I thought I’d made it, Dave. I’ll be real frank with you. I thought I was at ski patrol there in Southern California, Snow Summit.
And I thought I had made it because I had a line 10 people deep at my little mobile espresso bar at the bottom of the hill right there at the ski resort. Cause I had contracted with the resort and I’m skiing with my uniform on helping damsels in distress with their broken, bindings and hurt knees and, and whatnot. But the line at my coffee bar buying $6 lattes all day long was cranky. And I had two gals in there running the machine.
And that first month I made 30 grand and I was skiing. And I was like, man, I finally figured out this kind of entrepreneurial mix. This is when I started forecasting my big future around how I was gonna do this and I’m gonna set these up at other ski resorts and in this back early 90s. At that time, in most ski resorts, it was hey, go up to the restaurant and get a coffee. And they didn’t have lattes and mochas and all the other stuff that was coming along.
True wealth is not measured by the size of your bank account, but by the strength of your relationships, health, and the impact you make on the world around you.
So, It’ll last two months, Before the owner of the resort, he’s sitting there going, whoa, Chad’s making a hand over fist down there. And he calls me into his office. Hey Chad, love you. Thanks for the idea and everything, but we’re gonna go and put in our own. And anyway, it is welcome to the entrepreneurial ride. And Dave, at that point, I literally, I’m on my way, but I’m kind of doing some of this, some of that here and there.
Meanwhile, I married the woman of my dreams, Janice, and we had two kids. And my brother sat me down and he’s like, Chad, he didn’t say you’re a loser, but he said, you’re a loser. He says you’re trying all these things. You have all these entrepreneurial dreams. You make some money, you win some, you lose some, but you’re all over the map and you need to sober up and get a job. Like, get some stability in your life.
Right now he had, he was a firefighter paramedic. He had this stable career and he’s like, get a life. So it was funny. I sat down with my wife. I said, is he am I like, and she’s like, it would be kind of cool if we could make a steady income for a while. And like, ’cause we’re all over the place. And I said, okay, I’ll do it. Let’s go. So I jumped back into school and became a firefighter, and paramedic, went to the fire academy, and went to paramedic school.
And it was interesting because, at this point in my life, I found I loved learning. I was there for my reasons. I was sitting in the front seat. I was top of my class. It was an interesting change from my growing-up years around school. But it was funny because I fought that career big time. After all, it felt like I was a fish out of water in a lot of ways.
Got hired in the fire service, and realized that I was not a good mix for the fire service. So much love and respect for the men and women who put on the uniform and go do. But I was not a good government employee. I was not a good union guy. I couldn’t sit at meetings and talk about how we need to get a 2% cost of living increase.
And it wasn’t me, So I was going, I was dying there. And anyway, I’ll shorten this up. I end up getting a call from my buddy. I got hired in the fire service. I’m a year off, I get off probation. I tell my wife the day I get off probation like my chief and captain come in, shake my hand, congratulations, Chad, you have 24 years left. Oh man, it felt like prison bars had slammed around me. And I’d gone and met with a financial advisor a few months prior.
And I sat down with him and he said, Chad, what are your goals? And I said, well, I want to be a millionaire in the next six years. And he looks at me and he’s like dude, you’re nuts. You’re like, you’re crazy. You’re like, what are you thinking? and I’m like, and he says if you saved eight times what you make your gross income, if you saved eight times that for the next 10 years, you wouldn’t even get there.
He’s like, you’re nuts. And I walked out of there and I’m like, I’m doing the wrong thing. I’m in the wrong industry. What am I doing? Back to the drawing board. I got a call two months later from my buddy, Mike Willis. He’s working for UBS as a financial advisor. He says, Chad, I want to fly your Colorado Springs and I want to explain something to you.
I go up to his corner office there on the 10th floor, and I’m like, wow, this is a different world, and he starts talking numbers that I’m like, well, that lines up with my goals. And so he’s like, Hey, would you be interested in doing this? I’m like, a fire guy can do this, I don’t have a degree in finance. Long story short, I get hired by UBS. They put me in a bullpen with seven other guys and these guys are from Duke and Notre Dame and they have finance degrees and I’m like the firefighter paramedic in the room going. I was so out of my game.
And it was saying yes to these opportunities, but all of a sudden I wanted it more than anybody. I had a growing family, I had three kids, and number four was on the way, I’m like, man, and long story, I keep saying that, but it was cool because I found a new world and it was a results economy. And it was an economy that said, hey, if you produce, you win. If you don’t, you fail.
And the results are 100% on your shoulders. And I loved that environment and started to find ways. And it took me longer than I wanted, but I started to find ways to do the work of gathering assets. And in the financial world, I mean, the task Mike gave me because we were gonna be quote unquote partners was I only wanna sit down with people who have a million dollars to invest.
And I realized I did have a lot to learn if I was gonna get that woman, that man to sit down with me, unload their top drawer, share their finances, the whole picture, and trust us and me in particular with that responsibility. And so unbelievable gains in my life growth curve at that time. It wasn’t long before I realized my entrepreneurial passion had come alive. I realized I never wanted to work for somebody else. In a sense, I enjoyed that freedom.
I’m in there three years, we sit in front of hundreds of millions of dollars of assets that come in. It’s an incredible win for both of us. And I got a call from my dad before I was 21 years old, now I’m 32. He’s calling me and he says, Chad, would you move your family back to LA and take over the family business? And I’m like, absolutely not. I said, I’m loving where I’m at. I like the freedom. I like my life. And I’m on a crazy good trajectory. This is good.
He persisted and it was interesting because I said yes eventually. I moved my family in 20, 2002 back to LA. And at that point, he asked me to come in as general manager of that business. And I had this vision of what that business could be. We come into a company and you sit there and go, man, I see it being like this. I see the culture acting in this way, honoring people, really honoring our clients, and doing the best work on the planet. I see us growing in these ways.
And after two years of really head down, my father left the state two weeks after I got there. He was serious about retiring and getting out of the picture. My uncle, who was his partner, had a family emergency and was gone three months later. It was all on me which was the best thing ever, because I was ready to carry that responsibility and do the learning, and it was hard learning.
I saw linear growth over the next two years, but it was very frustrating growth for me, Dave. And in 2004, my buddy who I worked with in finance, Mike, Willis, called me up and said, Chad, you gotta join strategic coach. And I’m like, what’s a strategic coach? He goes, do it. And he goes, and if you do it, don’t sign up for one year, sign up for three years. Commit in your mind that you’re going to go for three years. He says this will change your life.
Anyways, I jumped in and Dave, I want to say that inflection point in 2004, October of 2004 was one of the most profound inflection points in my wealth-building journey in every way. You talked about mindset. I had been reading books voraciously since I got out of high school. I don’t know where that passion for reading, for learning came from. This was before podcasts and all those other things, but I was reading.
And if it wasn’t a book a week, it was a book every two weeks. I was grabbing, I wanted to learn in books on, they were almost all on personal development or mindset or growth or, business or, how to develop customers or how to deal with team or leadership. And so, when I came into the business, I felt like I had this fairly good working knowledge of these things, but I came to coach and all of a sudden I heard concepts called unique ability. And I was like, wow, that’s powerful. You mean there are certain things that I could be better at than anyone in the world. And there are certain things that I will always be incompetent at, or I really shouldn’t spend my time doing.
And you know that concept as well as I do, but it was a profound shift for me.
And I started to orient my business and my life around those new ways of thinking. The gap and the gain. Dave, I don’t know if I’m making an overstatement when I said, I felt like it almost saved my life. I didn’t realize what a gap right was. I lived in a world of constant perfectionism. I was striving towards the ideal. Even when I get to my goal, okay, the goal is to make 100 grand. You get to 100, immediately it goes to 250.
And when you got to 250, it immediately went to 500. And so I was never living in the game. And it was, everything was always moving away. And I didn’t realize what it was doing to my thinking and how it was undermining my confidence. I was undermining my success. And I was one of those perpetual self-floggers. If I didn’t meet the goal or I didn’t meet the mark, man, boy, would I rate myself internally? And I didn’t realize how destructive that was.
Anyways, Coach changed my life. We saw that company over the next 18 years exponentially, top line over eight times, bottom line over 18 times. Started to see these incredible gains and anyway, couldn’t be more grateful now as I look back at the journey, because you mentioned those four freedoms, the freedom of time, the freedom of money, the freedom of relationship, and the freedom of purpose.
And I slap myself, Dave, I wake up every day in that world realizing that I’m free to do what I was put here on earth to do, to choose those opportunities, choose those people. And so now I get to be an investor, I get to be a business owner, I get to be a coach, I get to be a dad and a granddad, and all these things in a world that’s free and it’s stuff I dreamed about as an 18-year-old but now I get to realize. So that’s way too long aversion buddy. I’m sorry, that’s too much but.
That was excellent, Chad. No, I think you went on to all of the questions I was going to ask you subsequently. But I love that. The whole concept of G5, I think is so powerful.
I love frameworks or thinking tools that give people guidelines and sometimes we all get lost in the chaos of the world or information overload. So when you can think about these five, giant five things in your life, how can you keep all of these balls afloat that’s where you’re going to have the most satisfaction and fulfillment.
And what I think we share in common as well, which is kind of fascinating, it’s a really deep level of thinking, but if you go back to Maslow’s hierarchy. You’ve got your basic needs, which is where, we’re all starting in our twenties, trying to figure it out. You’re trying to pay the rent, trying to put food on the table, and figure out what’s important, then you have a family and so you need more financial security. But it’s this path to real self-actualization, right, and this growth that some tremendous people, people like Tony Robbins, and Gandhi, have potentially reached the top, although there is no top.
But it’s this constant journey of growth and things. And I think it becomes so fulfilling and meaningful. So do you have a few concepts or things you could share with the audience in terms of what’s helped fuel your growth, what’s been able to guide your growth through the amazing journey that you’ve had?
You know what, Dave? Yes. when I’m asked that question. I like to say people’s mindset comes out of their mouths when they speak, and you think I’m a real estate investor is one of the things I get to do now. And, and it’s interesting because with real estate, I say the most important real estate in the world is real estate right between your ears. There’s no more important and valuable than real estate and so many of us are undermining our future by either looking at our past the wrong way or choosing our thoughts in the wrong way moment by moment.
I think the most important thing that people do that are successful, that unsuccessful people don’t do, is that they manage the real estate between their ears. They choose their thinking. They choose their thoughts. Dan likes to say they think about their thinking and they realize that a wrong thought or a negative thought or an undermining thought or a thought that dwells on the failure rather than the lesson that stays in the gap is doing yourself brain damage.
And it’s interesting because I like to tell our coach clients, I would love to see my brain scan today. What does my brain look like in a scan versus what did 10, 15, 20 years ago? Because I believe that successful people build better brains. That we’re, when we talk about that journey of growth and success, we’re becoming someone different. People think you landed this, You bought this business you grew this company or you arrived at this certain destination. Well, it was you became someone different along the way.
And so in building our thought and building our brains by every thought we choose, I don’t know that I understood it a young man how important fundamentals are and that every day I’m either building my brain for a bigger future or I’m undermining myself and my present and my future. And every thought matters. And there’s a scripture I love, it says, take every thought captive.
And I like that thought that I cannot allow thoughts to go through my brain. And imagine you have a beautiful piece of real estate. You’re trying to create an environment for somebody and it’s a resort. And if you did not make that resort, if you did not protect that resort and anybody could come through and dump garbage on the lawn and drive through it at any time, morning, noon or night, they could play any kind of music as they barge through your property, it would destroy it in a heartbeat. People get that with real estate, but our brains, we allow that to happen through the things we listen to, and the things we see. I am fanatical about reminding people, turn off the news, why would you let people dump garbage in your brain if you’re trying to create a resort or this purposeful tool? And why would you let all this, and I’m the guy who used to be a junkie for all of it, news and politics and all the stuff.
The most important real estate in the world is right between your ears. Every thought is an investment in your future—choose wisely.
But if I can’t influence it, I don’t need to know about it. Man, I wanna make a difference on the things that are in front of me that I could do. So I to me, that journey of building a brain and know you’re in that process, whether you wanna be or not, Everybody’s in the process. And for them to embrace the opportunity of it. And to me, that would probably be the single greatest factor. When I hear people talk, it breaks my heart sometimes even in their language, they’re beating themselves up. they’ll say, I’m not a positive person. I’m not a good communicator. And I’m like, it’s okay if you say I didn’t used to be, but separate yourself from it. And that’s reframing it, choosing a better thought, because you can be better. And anyway, it protects the number one real estate in the world,
So good, yes.
So good, Chad, really love that metaphor. It makes so much sense. And also one of the things that people should think about too, is this concept of basically, investing and we’re not only investing into financial assets. But it’s the G five that you talk about, we’re investing versus having expenses. So we’re investing in relationships, we’re investing in our health, and we’re investing in our mindset.
And I struggled for years, where I always used to think I’ve got to be the first one into the office and I’ve got to be the last one to leave. And, I’ve got to be there. I’ve got to do all of this, time and effort and everything. And I struggled with the time that I would spend of working out like I’m working out, I should be at work, or how can I have time to meditate? Because I got to get into the office, I got to answer my emails, I got to do all these things.
I mean, I’ve been able to kind of grow from that and look back and say, that the 15 minutes a day that I meditate is one of the most powerful 15 minutes of my entire day. That takes me so much further, so I think when people can make that shift to, making these investments and not seeing things as costs. Like you say, keeping the garbage out of your head, You can you can 10x.
It’s you keyed in on it in a way that I think is so powerful Dave and so few see it. I had someone come up to me and say, how can you blow so much money on family trips? Because I like to ski with my family and do different adventures with my family and have shared memories and experiences. And that was their terminology, How could you blow? How can you do that? And it’s interesting because when you talk wealth, talk holistic wealth, I have created a freedom fund, a separate account, Johnson Family Freedom.
And it’s about, it’s there only to invest in shared experiences, in renting a big house and bringing everyone together, right before Thanksgiving, we brought all our kids, and all our grandkids in, And it’s not an expense to me. I don’t ever even view it as a cost. I see it as this is an investment. Same thing with my wife. when I do anything, when I spoil around, when I plan a trip, when I’m doing constant little things, it’s I wanna be constantly investing, yes, money, but time, creativity. And you hit on it.
If we see ourselves as investing in our health, you and I were talking before the call, about peptides, right, stem cells. What are all the things that we wanna be? None of these things are cheap, or easy, they don’t fall on your lap, they’re not provided by the healthcare system, and you have to go out and find them and invest on your own, but you care about that, so you invest in it.
And I think that framework is so powerful. If we can reframe all those priorities as investments, You’re gonna get to live one of the richest lives of anybody I know. And it’s that mindset that everything that matters deserves investment. You gave me great language.
If we can reframe all our priorities as investments, we get to live the richest lives. Anything that really matters deserves investment.
So powerful, Chad. I think it’s great to focus on that, his mindset. And we have in our holistic wealth strategy, we have five different phases to kind of getting to holistic wealth. But the first one, it’s all about yourself. It’s all about the mindset. And you look at some of the grades of the people who’ve made it far in life in terms of true wealth, In terms of self-actualization, And growing, with all those giant fives, because there’s a lot of people that have made a lot of money, maybe they’re CEO of a Fortune 500 company, but their family is broken, their health, they’ve sacrificed their health, to get to where they are. How do you define success and wealth, I think it’s all with that framing in the mindset.
That’s it. And I love that each individual is going to choose their priorities. And it’s funny, everybody has priorities. Everybody’s already chosen them whether they’re intentional about it or not. They can look back at their calendar over 2023 and look and say, well, this is where I spent my time. This is where I spent my money. This is where I put my energy. These are the people I spent my time with. These are my priorities.
What’s cool is we come to the end of the year. There’s no better time to kind of sit down and say, hey, what do I want? Because we all have the opportunity to level up as we go forward, man. I’m like, I’m more, as much as I’m grateful for my past, I’m so excited about my future, I can’t even see straight. I see so much opportunity and I can’t wait to go there, but it’s so beautiful to think that today, someone listening to this call may sit there and go, my priorities have been A, B, and C.
But I can change them at any point. Maybe health hasn’t been their priority. Maybe their faith hasn’t been their priority, their marriage or their relationship or their kids or whatever. Maybe their business hasn’t, maybe their finances, I don’t know.
But they can sit down today and decide, hey, these are gonna be my top, my giant five, or they can say, hey, these are my top three or whatever. And I think having that filter of your own chosen priorities through which you say yes or no to things, through which you say this is worth my time, my energy, my money, my investment. It’s such a foundational skill set for really getting where you want to go eventually. And I love that people can choose that. And I hear people do that.
And even in our coach workshops, I’ll hear them say, you know what, my priorities have been this. I had a gentleman in my workshop this summer. He’s like, you know what? My business is crushing it. He goes, I’m making millions over. And he says, but what do I want?
And I’m realizing right now as a change of priority, I want to 10X my relationship with my wife. And it was so cool because he came back a quarter later and he said, unbelievable, what changed his intention around his priority? That was it. He didn’t change his wife, he didn’t change his, he said, my priority is shifting. So I think the power of clear priorities, successful people get that. And as we can make, and we all have to make it our own.
And we have them already, but are we choosing them real intentionally? And then are we building our day around that? Our week around that, our calendar around that, our finances around that. Because if we are we can make such crazy good gains and, our richness, there’s a richness of soul like you were talking about, there’s this richness of soul where you sit there and look at each part of your life. And kind of go, I can’t believe I get to, to experience this life, That’s the success I want people to have. They’re gonna go, come on, Is this for real? I mean, come on. Anyway, it’s so good.
Awesome. Chad, what does your morning routine look like?
You know what, I’m a guy that I’ve got to roll out of bed and put on my running shoes. And I will say this, I mentioned that thinking, I choose my first thought while I’m still in bed. I used to wake up in the gap. And the very first thought, I chose it intentionally. It’s now part of my habit. And it’s my kickoff this morning. I wake up and my first thought is, thank you, Lord, and I fill in the blank.
Thanking God for, and it could be that it’s that I get out and be on a podcast with Dave. It was one of the things I was like, I can’t wait to get on a podcast with Dave. I can’t believe I have two other calls today that I get to be on that I can’t wait. They’re amazing people and I get to be in their life. And right, and I, so I’d start by thinking, choose my first thought. I want to start with gratitude.
Next, I roll out and put on my running shoes. I got to get moving. I’m that guy. My wife can go sit down and journal and do all her stuff, quiet. I know, so I get up and go for a run. I used to run a lot. I’ve now backed off my cardio a couple of miles, maybe two miles. And then I do 15 to 30 minutes of weights because I’ve got to start putting muscle on this 53-year-old frame, man. It’s important to me.
So I start with the fitness side, and then often I’ll put in my buds and I’ll be listening to something encouraging, uplifting, or when I’m running, I like to memorize scripture. But I’m concerned and concentrated on feeding my mind that morning and taking care of my body. So I wanted to start with this like you said, this proactive approach to my day. Then come back and then I get out my planner and my journal and my Bible and I kind of have my little quiet time where I’m kind of looking at all the priorities of the day and I often will read a little scripture or I’ll snip it out of a book and I have this little calm, quiet planning time. And then I’m into my day. And I build my days around free focus and buffer days like we talk about at Coach.
And so I want to crush my focus days with A-level value creation, driving the business forward, and driving the revenue side. Buffer days, I’m doing other things. I’m doing level 10s and other meetings, cleaning up the messes, building capabilities, and delegations.
And then I’m convinced that people who are high-performance blow off free time. They don’t know how to rejuvenate many of them. They don’t know how to build an A-level or a gold, silver, free day where they can truly replenish themselves physically, mentally, and spiritually. So, my morning routine, I mean, that’s kind of the kickoff and go.
And I built this little slide deck also that kind of reaffirms my unique ability, what I was put here on it to do my top three activities I want to do. So, I call them my affirmations. This is kind of built on how Elrod’s miracle morning routine. It juices me. That’s it.
Hal Elrods, Miracle morning, that’s excellent. It’s so intentional, It’s so powerful. Like you’re controlling your day, you’re controlling your future, and living not in the gap to someone else’s ideal. You’re living your ideal, and it’s so satisfying and fulfilling. Bridging from that as well, tell everyone about the G5 Summit. I mean, this is in alignment with your philosophy and the G5 that you have are so powerful. And then coming, having 11 children, which blows me out of the water. Okay. I thought having triplets and another one was a lot, but 11 kids, I mean, come on.
Hey, Dave, stop. Triplets are on another level, dude. I was talking to a parent of twins, Dave, twins are next level. Triplets blow my mind, okay? We had them one at a time the old-fashioned way. We were slackers, so don’t even, don’t.
By the way, fun fact though, Chad, So in the Marine Corps, I got EMT certified as well. But I knew that God had another purpose for me because when you have so many kids, you never know what kind of medical emergency can pop up wherever you are. So it’s a great skill set to have.
Come on.
Hahaha
Isn’t that true? It’s so interesting you say that. I love the confidence in knowing, hey, when something goes down, I at least have a framework. You’re exactly right. And it does go in Andy, G5 summit. You know what? Super excited. My wife and I, we, we put on this annual event. Now we call it our G5 summit. It’s around those giant fives. I tell people it’s for people who are crushing it in their life but they wanna make sure that they’re intentionally living their priorities.
And so it’s kind of this planning couples romantic weekend is what it is, or not weekend, it’s an event. We’re doing it in Scottsdale, Arizona, it’s our third one. We typically have anywhere from 10 to 20 couples, I think it’s mostly around 15 couples that have landed.
So we have some great dynamic couples that are coming and we walk them through some great thinking tools that set them up for awesome conversations. They go away, really feeling like they understand each other better like they’re aligned around not only the business goals or the career stuff but also all these other elements that they choose as their priorities. So it’s really fun. We have what we call our five-by-five planning model, which allows us to blow up those five priorities that they choose and map it out so that they calendar their 2024 in a way that aligns with their priorities.
And so the feedback we’re getting is solid, When people get super clear, get attentional, get aligned, and around the same mission and vision, it brings intimacy. And it brings that closeness. So our next one, like I said, is January 10th through 12th, in Scottsdale, Arizona. People could go to g5summit.com. It’s G and then the number five summit.com. And we still have room for more couples. If there are a couple more that want to pop in, we would love to have them join us. And it’s an absolute blast.
I mean, what better way to invest in your number one relationship, I mean, it’s so powerful, And we talk about that, investing, having these relationships that are so important, but are we giving it lip service or are we spending time with that relationship? And I think I’ve found that having some structure around that is so empowering.
And to your earlier point, these relationships are really what’s key from a longevity standpoint, a vitality standpoint. And even, how you live your life day to day, is that marriage? Honestly, not a lot of people can talk about their, marriage the way you did, when we started this. So kudos to you. I mean, it sounds like an amazing relationship and it’s something for those of us to aspire to. But super important to invest in that relationship. So really love what you’re doing there, Chad, and hopefully, some folks will check it out.
I guess the last question I wanted to ask you is If you could give one piece of advice to the audience about how they could accelerate their wealth trajectory or their life trajectory, what would it be?
You know what, it’s such a good question. I wanna take it to this, what a mentor of mine told me about investing. And it serves me very well because there are so many directions people can go with wealth, There are so many different opportunities. I get calls like you do probably every week with people wanting you to be a part of this, invest in this company, be whatever. And this mentor said, hey Chad, three things.
He says, number one, invest in things you know and understand. And I thought that was an interesting thing because I hear people get bites all the time. After all, I don’t know a thing about it, but it sounds great. and it’s like, sounds too good to be true. Well, very good, probably is. But invest in things that you know and understand. The other one is he says to invest in companies or opportunities where you know and trust the integrity of the leadership and their capabilities. He’s like, as much as the opportunity may be great, you may not understand that product or the offering, or the market, make sure that the leadership behind it has integrity.
And then his third thing was he says, Chad, invest in things that you like to use in case the market goes down. And he gave me his examples. He’s a pilot. Believe it or not, he made money with his planes. He also was he liked cars. And so he made money on exotic cars, buying high-end. And he had a strategy for it and was unbelievable. And he enjoyed using them and taking them to a racetrack.
And then the third thing he invested in real estate in, in places he wanted to travel with his family and they were, they were short-term vacation places and a lot of different places that he goes. And then the fourth one he invested in investment-grade jewelry because his wife liked jewelry, but it was investment-grade. And so he had this safe full of really cool jewelry that she liked wearing. And he goes, the thing with doing this and investing in things in love, understand, and then again, he made most of his money in the medical field because he was a doctor and he had done all this great work in that space and understood the players and understood the market and did phenomenally well.
But it was an interesting thing because those three things, I’m gonna tell you, have saved me a lot of stress, and a lot of grief, and it’s made my life as an investor incredibly rich. And it’s funny because it goes, Even if one of those markets goes up or down or whatever, I’m still enjoying the thing that I invested in. And I thought it was so different because a lot of people invest in things they don’t understand, people they don’t know or trust, and things they don’t even want to use or deal with. And so it all becomes a number.
And that’s like measuring your life in one way, in zeros. And I don’t want to measure my life in zeros. I want to measure holistically. So it’s been awesome. I don’t know if that’s in line with what you’re thinking, but it’s beneficial for me.
Sage advice, Chad. I like that perspective and it’s such a unique twist because we’re listening to all these talking heads and financial services that are all talking about, yields and ROI and all of this complexity. But, I encourage people to kind of unpack that and what does it mean to you? And, to your point, you can invest in something that not only you understand, but you have a little bit of passion for. It makes it so much more enriching.
It’s almost like you can’t lose. Even if it goes down, you still like the thing you bought or invested in.
Awesome. Chad, I can’t thank you enough for spending your time with us. It’s been so insightful. Can’t wait to go back and listen to this again and look forward to our next chat.
Appreciate you, Dave. It’s an honor and a privilege to be with you. I respect you and love the work you’re doing. Keep up. It’s awesome.
Thanks, Chad. And lastly, any other, if people would like to follow you, learn more, or connect with you, any final places at the G5 Summit?
Yes, If they go to G5 Summit, there’ll be a dropdown menu for people to sign up to my weekly email. And it’s the rent of encouragement, insight, whatever learnings from my week through a positive focused lens. And it goes out every Wednesday, it’s called Five One Wednesday. So people can subscribe to that there at the G5 Summit. Also, I wrote a book and it’s again, it’s an intentional romance book, True Story of Dating, Marrying My Wife. It’s called How to Win a Heart, but they could lie to howtowinaheart.com and kind of follow along a little more of our story. There are some other offerings along that way, but those would be the two best ways.
Awesome. We’ll be sure to put that in the show notes as well, Chad. Thanks again. You bet.
Thank you so much, Dave. Appreciate you. See you soon. Bye-bye.