Listen Here
Today’s episode is a powerful detour from traditional wealth-building strategies 
as we welcome Nels Jensen to the show. Nels is the CEO of Williamsburg Learning, a thriving entrepreneur, and a dedicated yoga instructor who has mastered the art of integrating business, personal growth, and family. Unlike most stories you hear about the ultra-wealthy, Nels reveals how he became a “time billionaire”—someone who has intentionally created an abundance of free time and peace, not just financial success.
In this enlightening conversation, Nels shares his journey from building a fast-growing online education company to structuring his life and business in a way that allows him to take months-long sabbaticals and truly be present with his family. He opens up about the mindset shifts required to move beyond the typical entrepreneurial trap of busyness and burnout, and instead cultivate intentionality, clarity, and harmony.
Nels and host Dave Wolcott also explore the deeper aspects of living a fulfilling life—touching on consciousness, personal rituals, and how to invest your time and energy with as much precision as your money. Nels even offers actionable tools like the “Teach the Class” mindset to help listeners break free from self-imposed limitations and find more peace.
In This Episode
- How Nels became a “time billionaire” and structured his business for maximum freedom
- The importance of intentional living and mindset in breaking free from the trap of busyness
- Creating a personal “time and energy investment thesis” to live with more purpose and less stress
- Practical strategies for cultivating peace, harmony, and consciousness in everyday life
If any of us are going to have peace and clarity, we’re going to create it on purpose — like you do with your cold plunge, your cycling, your yoga, your morning routine, and your rituals where you actively have to play defense and protect your peace.
Welcome to the Wealth Strategy Secrets of the Ultra Wealthy podcast, where we help entrepreneurs like you exponentially build wealth through passive income to live a life of freedom and prosperity. Are you tired of paying too much in taxes, gambling your future on the stock market, and want to learn about hidden strategies for making your money work for you?
And now, your host — Dave Wolcott, serial entrepreneur and author of the best-selling book The Holistic Wealth Strategy.
Welcome back to Wealth Strategy Secrets of the Ultra Wealthy, the show where we decode the unconventional paths to building true wealth and living with purpose, freedom, and peace of mind. Today, we’re taking a powerful detour from talking about freedom of money and instead diving into freedom of time, freedom of purpose, and how to become a true time billionaire.
My guest is Nels Jensen — entrepreneur, CEO of Williamsburg Learning, yoga teacher, and someone who’s built a thriving business that runs without him, giving him the ultimate luxury: time. He recently took seven months off work to be fully present with his family, explore Costa Rica, and reconnect to what really matters — without stepping away from his role as CEO.
In this episode, we unpack how he did it, and you’ll learn how to create a time and energy investment thesis, how to identify and teach the class on the traps you’ve built around yourself, and how to replace hustle with harmony. If you’ve ever felt trapped in your own success or wondered how to architect a life of intentionality, peace, and exponential fulfillment, this conversation will blow your mind.
So let’s dive in: How to Become a Time Billionaire with Nels Jensen.
Nels, welcome to the show.
Thanks, Dave. Great to be with you.
Yeah, always a pleasure to connect. I think the audience is really going to be inspired by your story — by your journey here. We’re going to do something today a little bit out of the ordinary and really not necessarily focus on freedom of money, but we’re going to talk about freedom of time, freedom of purpose, living an intentional life, and how you can really become a time billionaire and live life the way you want — on your terms.
Money is obviously important in that scenario, with that energy. But it also takes a lot of courage to be able to do what you’ve done and to create a really adventurous and pretty neat lifestyle that I think the audience is really going to be inspired by.
So, before we jump into your story around your most recent sabbatical, why don’t we tell the audience a little bit about your journey as an entrepreneur and how you’ve gotten to where you are today?
So, sure. I started in 2008 and founded my company — it’s called Williamsburg Learning. We are in the online learning space. The quickest way to say it is we do online school for middle school and high school kids, mostly in the U.S., a little bit abroad. It’s a growing industry, and we’ve got a fast-growing company. It’s just been a beautiful journey.
So that’s my core, my main business, and I have intentionally integrated the business into my life so that I’ve got my life constructed in a very intentional way, which has allowed me to…
In the last year, I took seven months off work out of the last 12 months. Right now, I’m on an eight-week trip in Costa Rica with my family. I run my business in about 12 hours a week, and I have an executive team that’s very dialed — they essentially run the company for me. I’m the CEO and visionary, so I am very engaged, but I’m just very precise with my time.
It’s really fun because I’m raising my kids right now, and I’ve got this abundance of time to create experiences with them. So I’m really just enjoying the freedom that being an entrepreneur can provide — that I think, if you do it in a certain way, being an entrepreneur can provide more freedom than anything else that I know of.
Yeah. So, tell us how you became inspired to really take a sabbatical in the first place. Have you ever done anything like that in the past? What was your intention with that? Were you trying to just get some free time to think about things differently, or was it about travel or experiences?
Help us think through that process — if we were to come into that ourselves, what is the thinking around that?
Yeah, the thinking is — we as humans are multifaceted beings, right? We’re not one-dimensional. We need to do economic activities in the world to create value, to earn a living, or to build a business. That’s one aspect of who we are. There’s a deeper aspect — there’s a consciousness aspect, there’s a soul. There is the whole emotional experience that you’re having.
For me, I just got to a point where I realized I’d been an entrepreneur for more than 15 years. I needed a deep, soul-level rest. I needed a period of time where I didn’t carry this on my shoulders. I didn’t think about the business, I didn’t think about payroll, I didn’t think about risk. As a human being, I needed that.
So it started from just a recognition of my needs as a human — and how if I didn’t listen to that, I was going to experience a lot of suffering, right? Because I would have been prioritizing my business’s needs over my own. I think that’s a situation every business owner probably feels at times.
So I latched onto the idea of a sabbatical a couple of years ago. My team wasn’t ready, my company wasn’t ready for it. So I just set it as a goal to do someday. I spent about a year and a half getting ready for it. Then I did a one-month test, and that went well. Three months later, I did a six-month sabbatical.
Yeah, that’s really awesome. This really harkens back to my mind when I read Kiyosaki’s Cashflow Quadrant. There’s a really important distinction in that Cashflow Quadrant — being a business owner is very different than being self-employed.
Self-employed is someone like a doctor who only makes money when he’s there performing surgery, or a dentist. We try to get to that business owner level — where you’re actually creating a system, you’re creating a team around you so that you can take time off or focus on your unique ability and what you’re doing.
Yeah, that’s really awesome. This really harkens back to my mind when I read Kiyosaki’s Cashflow Quadrant. There’s a really important distinction in that Cashflow Quadrant — being a business owner is very different than being self-employed.
Self-employed is someone like a doctor who only makes money when he’s there performing surgery, or a dentist. We try to get to that business owner level — where you’re actually creating a system, you’re creating a team around you so that you can take time off or focus on your unique ability and what you’re doing.
Yeah, absolutely. I know for me, that’s been one of my biggest challenges as well, because no matter what it is I’m doing, I’m 100%, 110% immersed in it. So taking time off — a lot of this is actually mindset, right? It’s not just creating a great team and systems and processes around you — it’s your mindset.
But you’re right. Dan talks about so many different things around this concept, because when you can actually let go, you give your team the opportunity to rise above and do things they thought they weren’t capable of. Now you create a new capability, right? And then we’re able to actually… not only can they function without you, but you move into that self-managing and self-multiplying business — which is really, I think, where we’re all going as entrepreneurs.
But even more critical to the evolution is something you talked about earlier, which is so spot on — taking your time and using it with precision. Focusing on your unique ability, where you can actually provide the most amount of value and get the most reward and fulfillment from that.
Yeah. So just to round out the picture — if you were to back up five years ago, the experience I was having was very different. Very busy. I felt constant pressure on my shoulders. If I went on vacation with my family, I would be in work mode to some extent almost every day. I’d be checking emails, doing things. I might be at the beach and look at my phone. I felt this 50–60 hours a week pressure, and I was under the gun.
I felt trapped in my own business. I think most entrepreneurs get to a point where they feel trapped in their own business. It’s like, okay, I built this thing for myself, and what did I do? I created a trap that I can never get out of. It follows me everywhere I go. The message I have for entrepreneurs is: hey, there’s a way out. There’s a way out.
It’s actually normal to create the trap for yourself. Every entrepreneur I know goes through that. And then there’s a way out — and it does start with mindset. That’s the very first step: shifting your mindset to realize there’s got to be a different way to do this. Can I think about my company differently?
I want to give a little tool here — a very specific mindset tool that maybe someone in the audience can use. This doesn’t come from me. One of my mentors, Jim, gave me this tool. It’s called Teach the Class.
If you’re experiencing something in your life that you do not like — there’s a dynamic that you don’t like — you could actually teach a class on how to create that exact situation. For example, I have a friend — I’m going to call him John (I’m changing his name) — who was dissatisfied in his marriage. There was no physical intimacy going on, and he was complaining, vocalizing about it.
Then my friend Jim said, “Hey John, are you interested in changing that?”
“Yes, I hate this. I want to change it.”
And so Jim said, “Okay, teach me a class on how to have a marriage where there’s no physical intimacy.”
And John goes, “Oh, okay. Well, you have to work too much. When you come home, you have to get on your phone. You have to not take vacations. You have to take your spouse for granted.” He started listing off all the things that were going on in his life that created this situation he said he didn’t like. That’s when he realized — oh, I could teach a class on how to build this.
So, if you’re an entrepreneur in a business where you feel trapped, the first question I would ask to start shifting your mindset is: “Hey, teach me the class on how you built this business that you feel trapped in.”
“I want to be an entrepreneur in a business where I feel trapped. How do I do it?”
If you can articulate that and write it, then you can start to see how you built the trap — and that’s when you can start to undo it. This Teach the Class concept can really be applied in any area of life.
“I’m not healthy. I want to be healthier.”
Okay — teach me a class on how to have the kind of health you currently have.
That’s the first step. If you can do that, then you can realize: “Okay, I built this. If I built this, it’s possible to build something else.” What’s the something else that I want to build?
Yeah, what a great construct. I never really thought about it that way. I’ve heard about teaching, because teaching is really the highest form of education — to be able to actually teach a concept in terms of your learning. But that’s such a great way to really turn the tables and think about it.
Nels, also, I’ve heard you deliver in one of our groups an amazing presentation on finding more peace in your life. I think that really dovetails into this as well — this journey to consciousness. It is quite fascinating, because I think society really applauds this achievement path to net worth. We’re looking at people like Elon Musk and asking, what are all the billionaires doing? And social media is completely like that — who’s got the biggest yacht, and things like that.
And it’s in front of you all the time. So it can really put you in this phase of, like, “Hey, I’m just not good enough.” But in reality, I think consciousness, self-actualization — these are some of the things we’re trying to move towards as human beings.
And I know you’ve really developed yourself quite a bit during this journey, especially as a yoga teacher and things like that. So can you share with us a little bit about how we can find more peace — how we can really make some progress on that path to consciousness?
Yeah, well, in my experience, peace is really easy to create if you’re committed to it. All you have to do is ask one question. If you want to expand your peace, you simply ask — you sit with a possibility.
So, for example: I could hire this person. I could get into this romantic relationship. I could buy this car. You sit quietly with the possibility, close your eyes, and get connected to your intuition. You hold the possibility in your mind — “Okay, here’s this car, I’m thinking of buying it. Here’s this person I’m thinking of hiring.” And you ask: Does this add to my peace or take away? Then you wait for the answer.
Your body will tell you. Your body knows the answer.
We all have three intelligence centers hardwired into our nervous system: the head, the heart, and the gut. When all three of those are saying yes, that’s a thing that is going to add peace to your life. When any one of those three is saying no — if we proceed — the result will be suffering and less peace.
So, for example: “I want to hire this person. Should I hire this person?” And then you get a bad gut feeling. If you don’t listen to that, you’re going to hire that person, and it’s going to come back to bite you. You will regret it.
But if you listen — “Oh, I have a bad gut feeling, I’m not going to hire this person” — and then you interview and interview until you find the person who, when you ask, gives you all yeses… and you hire them.
So, creating peace in your life is a simple process. I believe people can 10x their peace if they want to. If you just simply use this filter — literally, start right now — Any new thing I’m going to do, I run it through the peace filter. If it doesn’t add peace to my life, it doesn’t belong.
Anything new that comes in has to add peace.
Then you can start cleaning the closet — that’s step two. “Okay, what’s in my life now that’s not helping my peace?” I’m going to take this out. I need to take that out.
It’s actually simple — not necessarily easy. You’re going to have some awkward moments. You might have some hard conversations that need to be had. You might need to reposition some things. But the clarity isn’t hard to get.
Yeah, love that. I think it’s such a great filter to be thinking through things in that way. And the other thing I would add to it is — in today’s day and age, it’s really challenging for people to find the space to be able to think utilizing those three centers, because we have so many things coming at us. We’re raising kids, we’re running to a meeting or to the office, we’re traveling, we’re trying to squeak in a workout — we just have all these demands on us.
So finding that time is really key. For me, it’s been my morning practice, which is just essential. I really see my yoga practice, as well as cycling, as active thinking. I’ll actually take things I’m trying to think through — I kind of preload them before I go cycling — and then I’m outside and able to work through them.
Also, post-ride — like this morning, I was in the cold plunge just thinking about today’s discussion and working through some things — where there are no distractions and you’re in a great space. Or right after you’ve meditated — that’s another time where you can get much more clarity in connecting with those three centers.
Yeah, I agree, Dave. I think that we’re all hardwired to want peace. Peace feels good. Clarity feels good. Conflict feels bad. Distraction feels bad. So we all want peace and clarity, but the world isn’t necessarily set up to be our ally in that. If you look at the context in which we live, we live in the most distracted, pressure-filled time in history. There are a million distractions you can pull up on your phone in two minutes that are designed by PhDs to hijack your attention and take you down some rabbit trail that is not in your benefit in any way.
If any of us are going to have peace and clarity, we’re going to create it on purpose — like you do with your cold plunge, your cycling, your yoga, your morning routine, and your rituals — where you actively have to play defense and protect your peace.
That’s the time in which we live. If you’re an entrepreneur, you have to be a ninja at playing defense and protecting your peace, because the world is designed to try to capture your attention. That’s the world in which we live right now. There’s a big competition for who can get the most attention share, and there are very sophisticated companies and interests going after your attention.
Yeah, well said. Now, on a consciousness perspective, how do you really — I don’t know if balance is the right word. I think a better word is actually creating harmony in your life. How are you able to create harmony and really continue to elevate yourself?
And then, the other thing before we just jump into that — I just want to tie back to the peace point. One more point which I think is really essential for people. We all get caught up, and we talk a lot on this show about building wealth, different wealth strategies that are non-conventional. And that’s certainly important. It’s got a key space.
But if you are missing some of these other dimensions — like time, freedom, freedom of purpose — you don’t have peace in your life. I know plenty of people who have a ton of money, they never need to worry about money again, but they don’t have peace in their life or they’re not moving closer to consciousness. And so frankly, I would see them as much less successful than someone who has a lot less money, but they’re much more centered, they have more time, and they have better relationships.
All of these other dimensions of capital, I think, are really important in developing oneself.
I would agree. And, you know, I think often what can happen is someone’s financial investment thesis is much more sophisticated than their time and energy investment thesis.
But the thing is, time and energy are the things that we don’t get back, right? You’re never going to live today again. You got one shot, right? A million dollars—you can lose it and make it back. And so, if you have a much more sophisticated financial thesis than you do a time and energy thesis, your money is going to be about… your life’s going to be about money. And then there will be a concomitant emptiness that comes in. At least that’s been my experience. I’ve never lived anyone else’s life.
But the thing that centers me is I come back to what is going to matter at the end of my life, right? So one of the ways to slice through the distraction, and the noise, and the distortion is: stop.
What’s going to matter at the end of my life? And I got this from Jeff Sandifer, one of my teachers in business school. Three things, okay? We all are gonna have this in common—at the end of our lives, only three things will matter to us:
-
Was I a good person?
-
Who did I love and who loved me?
-
Did I leave the world better than I found it?
At the end of life, that’s what will matter to us. And then you’re gonna lay down your body, Dave, and you’re gonna lay down all the money you’ve made and all your houses and all your stuff. You’re not taking any of it, and it’s not going to matter.
So, I like—when I get distracted, my ego wants to go get more, more, more—I like to go back to that question: Wait a second. What’s going to matter at the end? Why don’t I line it up now—line my life up now—with what’s going to matter at the end?
And that’s how I know when I get to the end, I’ll have joy and not regret.
Yeah. Really love that. Nels, tell us more about your time and energy thesis. This is. This is really a great concept.
Well, so it starts with a mindset on time, which is: I am the source of time. Okay? Time is not something that happens out there, and I need to find it or get it, right? I am the source of time. If you—when you flip to “I’m the source of time,” all of a sudden you go from being at the effect of time. And when you’re at the effect of something, you’re a victim to that thing, right? And I’ve spent plenty of my life being a victim to time. Oh, I don’t have enough time.
I’m experiencing a scarcity of time as time’s going away. I’m afraid there’s not enough time, too many things to do, right? Too much pressure. All of that was some version of me being a victim of time. And it got to the point where it’s exhausting. And I don’t think people liked being around me either, because I was always in a bad mood, because I felt all this pressure around time, right? And then the light bulb came—wait a second, wait a second.
Where does time come from? Who owns my time? Who owns the choice of how Nel spends his moments? I do. I’m the owner of it. I’m the source, okay? I’m the one who’s generating this whole experience that I’m having around time, okay? What experience do I want to have? And so to me, when I own that I’m the source of time, now I feel confident, I feel solid. I’m the director, right? And I’m not at the effect of time. And so then I can look at it. I can say I’m willing to give my business 12 hours a week. I work noon to 3, Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday. Thursdays, I don’t work. Friday, I work 9 to noon. That’s what my business gets from me, because I’m the source of time.
Now, during that time, how can I be surgical and precise and do only the most important things? Okay. So I give myself that construct, and guess what? It works out. It works out. And then I have all this feeling of abundance of time to do other things I care about and that are actually going to matter to me when I’m 95, right? Which is: I’m going surfing with Brig today at 4:30, and nothing about my work is going to stop that from happening, because we’re going to make a memory today at 4:30 in the ocean.
And I think everyone can have this experience where you flip—you’re the author of your time. And it’s similar to taking ownership of your finances, right? Dave, can you be a good investment advisor to someone who doesn’t take full responsibility for their financial decisions?
No.
Can you help that person? You know, step one, you got to get them to own it, right? Then you can go somewhere. And I think the same thing applies to time.
Yeah, that’s so good. And it’s interesting how there’s different, you know, cultural associations to time as well. I’ve learned so much of this through traveling across the world, right? But we in the US, it’s actually almost a badge of honor to be super busy, right? That’s kind of the standard response when you run into people or you catch up with people—”Hey, how are you?” “I’m super busy. I’m really busy,” right?
But the reality is, if you did it the way you’re talking about, it means you’re not in control of your own time and creating your own compass and intention in how you want to use that time. You’re just basically being utilized by other people who are kind of using you, right, with your time. So I think you’re spot on in terms of mindset.
It all starts with mindset and kind of changing that. You can and should be—if you want to be busy—busy doing the things that absolutely matter to you. And again, just in Europe kind of in general, they have such a great appreciation for spending time with family and friends, quality time. I mean, even if we try to get together with friends around here, it’s like you’re pulling out your calendars and you’re a month out just to get together to go have a coffee or something. I mean, it seems a little bit crazy, right?
Well, it is. It’s completely contrived and man-made. The time pressure that we have—it’s not natural. I believe nature is the best teacher, okay? So if we observe nature, what is going on? Nature’s never in a hurry, and yet everything gets accomplished, right? The tide comes up and then the tide goes out, and then the tide comes up.
The tide doesn’t hurry. The sun doesn’t hurry. Okay, so where do we get these ideas that we need to be running around in a hurry? It’s man-made. It’s contrived. And then often I feel like, well, we’ve been sold a bill of goods because how does this actually add to the quality of our lives? Does being busy correlate with happiness? And does it even correlate with productivity? I don’t know that it does. I really think engaged—what if we’re fully engaged in what we’re doing?
And one of the things I love about your way of teaching investing—I’ve learned a lot from you about investing, by the way, and thank you for that. You’re my favorite investment teacher that I’ve found so far—because you take complex concepts and then you distill them down to the simple principles underneath, and that just works for me.
Like, I can grab on to that. And so, in one of your recent emails, you gave an example of a complex person where they had 12 different investments and all these things to keep track of, right? And then you juxtaposed that with the simple, where you just have three things. Get good at three things. Get good at investment skills, master them, and you don’t need more than three. You’ll actually make more money and you’ll have a much more peaceful experience.
I think the same is true not just with money, but with our time— with the way we set up our lives.
Yeah, that’s a great correlation there, right—trying to actually have focus versus this diversification. And it is, it’s really interesting, right? Because, you know, and maybe it starts off in school. I mean, I went to—studied liberal arts, right?
So you’re kind of this jack of all trades, right? You’re studying all these different things, or we’re in environments where you’re supposed to kind of be good at everything. But if you do run a business, you’re an entrepreneur, right? You realize that, you know, it’s about leveraging shortcuts and people and just focusing on two things that really matter. That’s the one thing, right?
That book was Michael Gerber, right? That’s just so good about kind of having that focus. So yeah, what a great parallel to think about that in terms of our time, right? Instead of trying to do it all. And that’s why I also believe that that word “balance” is a bit of a misnomer, right?
So you think about maybe the seven to ten things that are really important in life, and you’re trying to balance everyone—and there’re going to be times where, you know, you don’t have balance across those things. So really I think a better depiction of that is harmony, right? How can you create that harmony? Because that harmony can also leverage what you talked about earlier, right—which is your energy. And I find that’s also like a real breakthrough: can you plan your time according to your energy?
Right. When I’m most energetic, like in the mornings, is when I focus on my deep work and my high-impact work—when I have the most energy. And then when I have the least amount of energy or I’m in rejuvenation mode, right, I’m going to spend that with more things that I can do to be kind of successful with that, right?
Yeah, I agree. And I think harmony—first of all—is just a really nice feeling, right? To feel harmonious means you’re not experiencing conflict, strife, or friction. And everyone wants that. We all want a frictionless experience.
But harmony is also a kind of signal. It tells us what’s meant for us and what isn’t. When you feel aligned—with a person or with what you’re doing—there’s a sense of rightness and wholeness. I call that harmony.
And that, ultimately, is a much more satisfying and rewarding experience than anything else. Even if you’re getting paid a lot for something—or it brings in a ton of money—if it doesn’t create that feeling of harmony, it’s not going to feel good to you.
Yeah, it’s really also, Nels, you know, I’ve learned so much. We haven’t talked much about you being a yoga instructor, but I had the opportunity actually as a kid to learn from my uncle. And I remember, you know, literally.
Yeah.
You know, like sitting in his living room at 5 a.m. when I was a kid, and we had a record—literally had a record player—and we worked through different breath work and different poses and things. I had the opportunity to learn over the years through different instructors, different styles. Today I practice Raja Yoga, which is Kame Yoga, and it’s been such an amazing source.
Right. If you think about energy, so much energy can come within and how you show up for people. And I find that yoga is one of those amazing things that, if you’re feeling externally drained by people, the environment, those things going on around you—how can you actually create energy for yourself internally? Yoga is such a phenomenal tool to do that.
And I think this is all part of this practice—being in harmony, having energy, having time—and it’s really kind of a cultivation, because we all have these things. I think it never ceases to amaze me the amount of challenges that come across your daily life. Whether it’s something physical, whether it’s the loss of a loved one that you just find out unexpectedly, something at work that you have no idea how you’re going to get through, things that aren’t necessarily your fault but you’re responsible for—like, all of these different things happen in life that are really outside of our control.
And I find that if you can really cultivate this practice around harmony, energy, these different things—they will really help you with being fulfilled, moving towards that state of consciousness.
Yes, I agree. Dave, would you. Would you say that. That your yoga practice makes you a better investor in any way?
100%. It makes me a better person. And to your earlier point, right, using those three centers to make decisions, I feel so much more connected. Right. Because your brain is an organ—it’s a physical organ in your body. So when you’re very connected to yourself physically, you can really think so much better. So I feel.
And it’s really, you know, I would also call it kind of active meditation, right, as you’re doing yoga. To be grounded, to be centered, and not to be reacting to the latest headline or something, right?
Yes. And I think whether it’s yoga or something else, we all need physical practices to rebalance and process our energy. Personally, I love yoga for that because yoga is thousands of years old. It’s at least 4,000 years old—probably more like 5 to 10. And the root word there means union.
Yoga has eight limbs to it. Only two of those eight are physical. The first one is asana—that’s poses, yoga poses. The second one is pranayama—that’s breath work. Right. And then all the other six branches of yoga are about your internal state.
So the whole point why the ancients invented yoga was they understood there’s a connection between how I’m moving my body, I’m breathing, and my internal state of being. Who I’m being cannot be disconnected from how I’m moving my body and how I’m breathing. When you step on the yoga mat, it’s a sacred space, because what you are doing is connecting all parts of your being into one. So you’re going from fragmented to unified. Right?
And I step on my yoga mat when I’m having the best day, and I step on it when I’m having the worst day, and I want to go curl up in a ball and cry. And I step in that space and I process. And 100% of the time, I feel uplifted. Sure. Right. And so if you don’t have yoga in your life, what do you have that does that for you? Everyone, I believe, needs something like that—some practice like that.
I happen to think yoga is one of the very best you can find because it’s endlessly deep.
For sure. And the breath work is just so powerful. And, you know, I focus a lot on my gratitude practice. And, you know, it also makes you think. I mean, we’re lucky every day, right, to have access to our limbs and our health and things. And what if all of a sudden you didn’t, right? And all you had was your breath? Right? It just makes you appreciate that so much more. And you constantly hear stories like—it’s just amazing. People you knew, like good friends growing up—it just seems more and more you hear of these life-altering illnesses or death or things like that that are really going on.
And you know this, quite frankly, Nelson—for the audience out there—this is where I think this is so important. One of the takeaways here, where I’m always talking about, and this is at the beginning of our holistic wealth strategy, which is phase number one, right? Which is investing in yourself as your number one greatest asset and really understanding that and having that mindset. So, whether you do yoga or breath work or some type of practice to really help develop yourself, it is going to pay the biggest amount of dividends in your life, bar none.
I agree, Dave. And I think if you look at the activity of investing—okay—what fundamentally you get down to, first principles-type thinking. What is investing? The way I think about it is: okay, investing is interacting with the laws of the universe to grow something. And if I go against the laws of the universe, I’m going to shrink something. And if I go with the laws of the universe, I’m going to grow something. Okay? So being an investor is someone who takes a resource—any resource—starts to cooperate with the laws of the universe, and grows that resource.
So with that kind of mindset, you can look at investing and say, well, how about I be an investor in every area of my life, not just with money? So if I’m an investor, my core identity is: I’m a person who takes things and grows them and makes them better. And it’s not because of me or I’m anything special, but I just am connected in with this universe. The universe wants growth. The universe wants expansion. The universe wants unity.
So if I get into this mindset where I’m looking for how can I collaborate and connect in with the laws of the universe in every area of my life, I think that’s when the light bulbs start to go off. And the awesome part that can come in from that—this is what I’m working on right now with trying to become a better investor—is how do I integrate in, so every area of my life that I’m investing in cooperates with every other area?
So how do I make sure my financial investments cooperate with my time investment thesis, cooperate with my relationship investment thesis, so that nothing is fighting anything? Right?
I think that’s the highest way that I can think of being an investor. And I think that’s ultimately what money’s for—it’s just to teach us how to cooperate with the universe and grow something.
Being an investor means collaborating with the laws of the universe to grow something-not just money, but everything in life.
Yeah, that is so well articulated, Nels. And talk about actually taking something complex and really trying to simplify it. I really agree with you on that premise. Right? And it’s just trying to—it’s kind of akin to, you know, the definition of an entrepreneur, right? Taking something of a lower level of productivity and moving it to a higher level.
And, you know, I’ve always been fascinated with this path of growth. Right? How can we improve something? How can we grow something? How can we do it better? And when you are aligned with your time, your energy, your purpose—all of those different dimensions—it just becomes completely exponential.
Yeah, it does. And, you know, I love multiple definitions of things. I think to really understand something, you need multiple definitions. And entrepreneurship is one of those concepts that needs multiple. And so the one you just threw out—taking a resource from less productivity to more—I think goes back to John Baptiste Say and one of the earlier writers about it. There’s another guy named Richard Cantillon, who was a Scottish writer who wrote about it. His definition I also really like, which was: an entrepreneur is someone who risks their own capital in their own business.
Okay. If you’re an entrepreneur, you risk your own capital in your own business. And I love that because what that’s saying is, okay, I’m now in direct collaboration with the universe. Here’s this little bit—the capital that I have control over is a tiny fraction of what’s out there in the universe—and I’m going to invest that in my own little project and see if I can grow it and see if I can get into harmony and get things going the way the universe is already going.
Yeah, spot on. Nels, I definitely want to respect your time so you don’t miss your surfing appointment, and really appreciate you taking the time today to be with us and share such powerful insights that, frankly, I think people don’t talk about enough. Hopefully, this helped kind of inspire the audience a little bit and give some different ways to be thinking about this time and energy thesis—how we can create more peace in our lives, how we can elevate in terms of consciousness. You know, these are the topics, like you said, that really matter the most. So I can’t thank you enough for your time and insights today. If you could give just one piece of advice to the audience as a final takeaway, what would that be?
It would be an invitation to, hey, what if you took 90 minutes in your journal and no phone, and you went and sat quietly somewhere and ask yourself, what’s going to matter to me at the end of my life and what do I need to shift so I’m aligned to it now? What would happen in your life if you took 90 minutes and you went and did that? I’m curious, you know, so that would be my challenge, slash, invitation to the audience.
Awesome. I’ll do that this weekend for sure.
When you’re aligned with time, energy, and purpose, everything becomes exponential.
Love it. Well, I just want to thank you for the conversation and for all the ways that you’ve created value for me and helped me in my journey. Really love having you as a friend and as an advisor in my life.
Yeah, really appreciate that, Nels. It’s been such a pleasure to connect over the years and look forward to continuing to grow that for sure. If people would like to connect with you, I know you have a yoga channel, or maybe there are some collaboration opportunities out there that people might want to connect with you on. Williamsburg, what is the best place people can reach out to you?
Find me on LinkedIn — Nels Jensen — if you want to connect on an entrepreneurship/professional level. I do have a yoga channel; it’s just under my name, and I’m kind of new at that. I started it a few months ago, but I love sharing yoga with people. So if you want to have some short 20 to 40-minute yoga practices, you can always go to YouTube and find me there. I’d love to hear from anyone who resonates, and if I can help someone in some way, then that’s why I’m here.
Awesome. Thanks again so much Nels. Really appreciate it.
Yep, thanks Dave.
Thanks for listening to this episode of Wealth Strategy Secrets. If you’d like to get a free copy of the book, go to holisticwealthstrategy.com — that’s holisticwealthstrategy.com. If you’d like to learn more about upcoming opportunities at Pantheon, please visit pantheoninvest.com — that’s pantheoninvest.com.