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Today, we have a truly inspiring guest joining us, Barry Garapedian. Barry is a 39-year Wall Street veteran and founder of Mag7 Consultants, and he’s made it his mission to empower the next generation of leaders. With decades of experience in family governance, coaching heirs, and guiding young minds, Barry has distilled what he calls the “16 attributes of high performance”—essential skills, habits, and values that go far beyond what’s taught in schools.
Barry’s impact reaches deep into the lives of Gen Z and young professionals, helping them build character, confidence, and real-world legacy—not just financial wealth. Through Mag7, he works directly with clients aged 13 to 28, giving them unfair competitive advantages, from networking and high-performance habits to emotional intelligence and the art of connection. His approach is hands-on, with practical methods like writing gratitude notes, cultivating high-performance habits, and tackling healthy challenges that drive growth and self-esteem.
In this episode, Barry opens up about why legacy wealth often disappears by the second generation, how to create true family values and governance, and the practical actions families and young minds can take to sustain and multiply impact for generations. His passion for helping others become value creators and his actionable strategies make this conversation an absolute must-listen for entrepreneurs, parents, and anyone seeking to build lasting legacy.
In This Episode
- Why legacy wealth often disappears by the second generation
- The 16 attributes of high performance
- Building confidence and self-esteem in young minds
- Practical strategies for family governance and creating lasting value
Teaching them to create value for others, not selling. Create value. Create value for others. Good things happen. So be a value creator.
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 bestselling book The Holistic Wealth Strategy.
How’s it going, everyone? And welcome back to Wealth Strategy Secrets of the Ultra Wealthy. Today we’re diving into a topic that every entrepreneur, parent, and wealth builder cares about but very few actually master—creating legacy. Not just financial wealth, but values, character, and identity that last generations. My guest is Barry Garapedian, 39-year Wall Street veteran and founder of Mag7 Consultants, where he helps Gen Z and young professionals build the skills, habits, and values they’ll never learn in school. Barry has spent decades inside family governance, coaching heirs, guiding rising leaders, and codifying what he calls the 16 attributes of high performance for the next generation. In this episode, we unpack why legacy wealth disappears by the second generation, the crisis of confidence and self-esteem facing young people today, and how values like discipline, the art of connection, high-performance habits, and emotional intelligence are the real inheritance that sustains families. Barry shares simple but powerful practices—from family constitutions to handwritten notes to getting kids in the habit of creating value—that transform young minds into leaders.
All right, and now onto the show. Barry, welcome to the show.
It’s great to be here. Can’t wait to get started.
Really excited to have you on the show, Barry, and really unpack and help the listeners uncover a topic that is quite elusive, and that is creating legacy wealth—passing on to generations not only wealth, but really values, right? Things that might be encapsulated in a family constitution or other types of vehicles and strategies. You’ve taken on some of the hard work that most people avoid. So really appreciate what you’re doing. I think your mission is fantastic—really to build a better world out there and help that next generation become much more enabled, certainly more than a lot of us were when we started. So why don’t we begin by telling us a bit about yourself, your background, your journey, and how you got here real quick?
I was on Wall Street for 39 years, one company, and ran a couple billion dollars of AUM, or assets under management. I sold the business three years ago, and the business was with myself—family governance. I did a lot of work with families, and I got to work with the young minds, which are kids. And so that’s how I’m now doing what I’m doing with Mag7. We’re specifically working with young minds on all the stuff they haven’t learned in school. And you say, gosh, schools do a great job—they don’t do enough. So what we’ve figured out is we’ve come up with 16 attributes of high performance—things kids can be doing, a lot of call to action. And in simple terms, we make them even more amazing than they are.
I’m not a doctor, I’m not a therapist, I’m not going to help a kid from smoking dope or doing alcohol and all the naughty things. I’m not that person. I am the person for the young mind to be in the fast lane. If they want to drive fast, if they want to get to where they want to get, I have the keys to the fast button. So in simple terms, I’ve codified genius, and I merely put choreography around it—the steps they need to take. And that’s exactly what we’re doing right now.
That’s great. So let’s first identify for the audience who is your target market. Who are you really serving? Let’s start there, and then let’s get into some of those top principles for your blueprint.
Our market is the Gen Z market, which is ages 13 to 28, not 50 or 60. It seems to be the sweet spot where most of the values need to be created in that time horizon. So 13 to 28. Our youngest is 14. We have kids in their 30s. A lot of young minds need to get into schools, colleges, or they just graduate. They don’t know what they want to do. So we help them figure out what genre they want to be in. We help them with introductions, interviewing, resumes, LinkedIn, all that kind of stuff.
But at the end of the day, everyone is different, and it’s customized. They will work with me for 30 minutes once a week for 52 weeks. It’s a one-year contract, and we go one year at a time. So they’re going to see and hear me every week for 30 minutes on Zoom, and they’re going to be talking to me. In addition to that, they’re going to be getting text calls of things they have to do. So, for instance, it’s Thanksgiving. Right now we’re having most of our clients write pre-notes or gratitude notes to people in their life. So it could be anyone.
Write a note to someone about how much gratitude you have for them. As an example, one of our pillars of the 16 is the art of connection, which is a very valuable tool because, in many cases, it’s relationship capital. So how do you have the ability to connect with people? We have many strategies. One strategy is the art of writing hand notes. Really big on how to write a hand note. With a hand note, it’s dripping wax, putting your seal on the back. On the front of the envelope, it’s a stamp, then vintage stamps, then a return stamp. We have six or seven different kinds of return stamps for the patron. Someone might be into horses, someone might be into dressing nicely.
So we have different return stamps for the patron. If we knew enough about the individual, they might be a skier—here’s a skiing one. So we would align them with tools to write a hand note. But then what goes in the hand note? The hand note is always about the other person, empowering the other person—how to write that note. But then how do you deliver a hand note? When I was at Genius Network, when I saw you at the annual event, I pre-wrote 14 hand notes to people. I knew they were going to be there.
Pulled them out of my pocket—great to see you, so-and-so. I gave them a hand note of gratitude. Who does that? The kids we work with do that. If there’s a special meeting coming up, we’re going to have them write a hand note before the meeting starts. They’ll have a note to the matriarch or whoever might be running the meeting.
And then, of course, hand notes after a meeting or if they meet someone. There are many different applications of writing notes. It’s a lost art. We’re in the world of AI—faster, quicker, everything’s quicker. We lose the heart. Remember, the heart’s a force multiplier. When you open your heart, things come in. It’s a magnet.
So it’s all about creating value for others. The underlying narrative, Dave, is about how we teach the kid to create value—being a value creator. You say, gosh, a kid doesn’t have any money. No. Well, there’s material value, emotional value, and spiritual value. A kid can create value for someone else by being there. Emotional value, spiritual—there are many different ways we show them how to create value.
If you create value, then you ascend up the pyramid, and you can figure out a problem or something you can help them with or fix a pain point, which gets into some more advanced stuff. But the fact of the matter is the mindset is to be a value creator. The mindset is to be relentlessly useful. Let’s repeat that—relentlessly useful. So if someone came to our house and we’re doing an event, most good kids will come in and say, can I help you with anything? That’s okay. We’re fine.
But that’s not enough. The kid should find something else they could do to help the patron, the homeowner. It might be looking in the kitchen—if the trash areas are full, taking the trash out, wrapping it, taking it out to the trash can. If a kid did that in my house, he immediately ascends up my pyramid of “wow, this kid’s been trained.” This kid has good manners. Those are the little things we will equip the young mind with if they’re thinking about how they can create value. Even though the patron says, no, we’re fine.
At the end of the evening, they’re collecting, helping clean up, bringing dishes and trays in, taking the trash out—doing anything they can to show value. That’s the kind of person I would hire. Years ago, when my kids were younger—they’re older now, 31 and 29—we had a policy in our family constitution. Dave, if you drove to our house in your car, my son or daughter would come up to you and say, Dave, let me have your keys to the car, please. What do you do? The keys to the car—we’re going to wash.
I’m going to wash your car. We have a policy of creating value. My kid would wash your car, Armor All the tires, Windex the windows. You say, why? Because we believe in creating value. And they weren’t paid. No—we won’t accept a penny from you. This is part of our family rituals and constitution. So it starts with values, inner truths, ideologies, principles.
We have created 16 attributes of what those things are. And depending on the kid, we put the young mind through a discovery process, and then we come up with seven deliverables or seven areas or blind spots we want to get amazingly good at—whatever they might be. Then we put a significant amount of energy into those blind spots. One of them is the art of connection. Another could be high-performance habits. What do you mean by a high-performance habit? Well, it takes about two to three months to create a habit. I’m talking about a real habit.
A habit that you automatically do—no negotiation. So we create four of those a year, one every quarter. I let the kid take the first one, and they’re trying to think, what can I do that’s a habit? Do you make your bed in the morning? Most kids don’t make their bed.
Well, guess what? We’re going to start with making your bed. Can you make your bed for 30 straight days and not miss? Take a picture of it. That’s the standard. You have to make your bed every morning.
Why?
Well, there’s a whole piece on Admiral McRaven making your bed in the morning accomplishment. So I don’t need to tell you that you are a veteran. You understand how important that is. But we might start with something so simple like making your bed. And then I’m okay, now I get to pick the next one. And it will be never hitting your snooze button, honoring your alarm. It could be anything but creating high-performance habits. And you start depending where the kid is, what level they’re at.
And there’s some that are pretty amazing with fitness or doing an ab routine in the morning or drinking half your body weight in ounces every day. There are a whole bunch of things we can get into. So there’s a whole bunch of stuff depending on where the kid is and if they really want to grow. If they don’t want to grow, you’re not ready for me. You’re not ready for this stuff. But if you want to grow, it’s an unfair competitive advantage because I’m going to take all the things I’ve learned in almost 40 years on Wall Street with people and relationship collateral, and I’m going to bring it down to where you can actually use this stuff. And school’s great. There are certain things in school that are fantastic. They’re not going to talk about this stuff because it’s just not.
You’re going to learn this from your parents, mentors, and coaches. And many folks don’t have mentors or coaches. They have great parents. So that’s a little tidbit.
I was going to ask you, Barry, what is the true source of the challenge for kids? Is it kids coming from broken homes? Is it kids coming from this day and age that we’re in with social media, phones in their pockets? Is it the school systems that need to be re-engineered? What are you seeing as the true challenges that we’re trying to overcome?
I would say universally it’s a self-esteem issue and confidence issue to start. In other words, many of the young minds don’t have the “I believe” button. Now, how do you build more self-esteem? The one way you build more self-esteem is by accomplishments. You have to have wins. To feel good, you need accomplishments. So we get them into a game of winning, making accomplishments, doing things that they feel good about themselves. It could be writing a hand note to someone. The reactions would be very positive.
When someone’s “oh my God, that’s incredible, thank you,” that’s positive. We also have them track their wins. So I do something I learned in Strategic Coach 25 years ago called WinStreak. Write down every day your three biggest wins. Write down your three biggest wins you want tomorrow. Just focus on the things you’re doing well. Done that for decades. So there’s many. But I would say to answer your question, it’s self-esteem. Confidence is clearly areas that we develop more now. We need to put them through healthy challenges, what I call healthy struggles. Because you can’t talk your way into confidence. You could do some incantations, they won’t last. You have to actually do things.
So what are you going to do? Maybe you sign up for a 5K, maybe you sign up for a 10K, maybe you run a half marathon. Start with that. So I’m really big into the physical challenges of fitness, emotional as well as physical. I call it energy management. It’s a whole sleeve on energy management. What are you eating? Processed foods, unprocessed foods. What are you drinking? You’re drinking sodas. Come on.
We know that’s not good for you. And of course, if you’re vaping, naughty, naughty, naughty.
Can’t do that.
Okay, it’s probably… anyway. So we get into the whole energy management piece that if you want to have a kickass entrepreneurial business, you have to feel good. You have to have energy. How could you run a world-class business if you don’t have the energy and you lose it at three or four o’clock in the afternoon? Not going to work because there’s no timelines on being an entrepreneur. So I would say self-esteem and confidence are huge. I’m big into books you read, people you meet. Books you read, people you meet. Well, now, kids are not natural readers.
Why? It’s quick, fast, whatever. So I have a strategy that I think your listeners would love to get them to read. And listen to this. I actually learned this at Genius Network, which you’re a member of. Let’s take the book Shoe Dog by Phil Knight. It’s a great entrepreneurial book. It’s the story about how Phil Knight built Nike. Three hundred fifty, four hundred pages. I have everyone want to read that. Many kids won’t finish.
Here’s what I want you to do. I want you to take that book Shoe Dog by Phil Knight, run it through ChatGPT, and ask Chat: give me the five biggest narratives. Give me the five biggest epiphanies we can learn from that book. We’re going to collect epiphanies, print it out, and you’re going to put it in a notebook like this. So every quarter they’re going to have a little half-inch binder with books that I’m going to give them. They’re going to get a book a week from me. They have to know the author, they have to know the title.
They have to know the narratives and the epiphanies. And with that book, the epiphany is be relentlessly useful. Relentlessly. Grit. Now we get them understanding titles. They can go into a room and talk about a book. They can talk about an authority of a Dan Sullivan, Ben Hardy (Who Not How or The Gap and the Gain) or Think and Grow Rich by Napoleon Hill or Dale Carnegie with How to Win Friends and Influence People. These are basic books you gotta read.
But they’re not going to read them. Maybe they’ll read them. They’ll say they read them or they’ll go to Audible. But they don’t finish. This strategy is fun. It’s AI. We start here. And now they’re talking about authors in front of their parents.
And I’m like, God, how does he know about that author? That’s an example of adapting into this new world that we’re in, Dave. The old world where you and I grew up, it was how smart you were with IQ. Then it transitioned into EQ, emotional intelligence. Can you read the room? Can you share your toys with other people? The new superpower today is adaptability. AQ. Can you and I adapt into this new world of technology? And we are the same thing with these kids. These kids think differently. Their technology—they’re very strong with technology. They run loops around me.
That’s why I’ve hired the who’s, and I hired AI kids that are amazing, which I could do, but it’ll take me 10x longer to do it. So I have to get on the same page with them. If you want to be around the right people in the right rooms, you need to be smart. Well, let’s start with books you read. And then now it gets into people you meet. What do you mean people you meet? We’re going to learn how to network. What do you mean network? That means when you meet someone, we’re going to take notes and we’re going to follow up with that person with a note, and we’re going to figure out a way to help that person and stay in contact. I give them tools how to do that. I have a strategy with texting where they might have a network where maybe two or three times a week they’re texting with a tidbit, an idea.
If you want a kick-ass entrepreneurial business, you have to feel good and have energy. There’s no timeline on being an entrepreneur.
I have it called, very briefly for myself, I have 200 people in our network I stay connected to. So there’s all kinds of strategies with networking, but many kids aren’t even aware of networking when they’re in high school or college. One of the ways we have them network in high school and college is I’m going to publish them. I’m going to make them an author. You say, what do you mean make them an author? They’re going to write a book. That’s right. The name of the book is called Profiles and Success.
They’re going to interview 25 successful business leaders in whatever genre they’re interested in. And maybe they don’t know the genre. It could be supply chain, logistics, engineering, private equity, whatever. And they’re going to take their phone and they’re going to walk up, find who that person is in their community, and they’re going to interview them and they’re going to say, “Dave, tell me how you did it. Where did you go to school? What did you do? How did you become so incredibly successful? I want to hear your story.” They’re going to put on Otter. They’re going to send me the transcript of Otter. I have writers that will take that transcription and write a 1500-word profile on that person.
We’re going to take 25 of those, we’re going to put it into a book called Profiles and Success with the kid as the author. They’re going to take that book and they’re going to repurpose and re-gift it to other young minds to help them. Now, what just happened here? The kid has to get the interview, has to find the 25. I’ll write it. They have to find the person to do the interview. They’re going to meet 25 people. I would say three, four, five of them will become potential internships or job opportunities. They’re going to get more confident talking to 25 new people.
Brilliant strategy. We do this all the time and it’s fun. It’s not like something—this is not a school project. It’s something that we’re doing on our own.
Yeah, it’s really fantastic, Barry. Like I’m thinking here, you’ve really almost combined so many different things. You’ve combined learning values from what people would get out of the military. You’ve combined things from what people would get out of a cotillion, perhaps, or maybe going to their church and getting certain values and certain structures and things like that, and then some business PR in this that you need to be effective in today’s world. And like you say, I love that Adaptability Quotient. It’s really key because I think kids are increasingly actually disconnected as they get into the workforce.
I mean, forget about writing letters. They don’t even write emails. The kids are just used to writing texts, you know, how they communicate with people. And it’s really interesting because my kids are in their 20s, so I’m kind of experiencing that phase of how they become successful in the world. And as much as we want to do as parents and have great things like car washing at your own house or whatever that might be for your family, there’s also just, once they become teenagers, they don’t want to listen to mom and dad. They think they know it all and everything. So there’s some great elements here. I think that you, as really a consultant, as a mentor, can really guide these kids into becoming successful.
And what I love about all this is it’s really creating shortcuts and opportunities that we really didn’t have. And you spent almost 40 years learning all of these things, and now you can collapse that all down in 12 months to give kids all of that knowledge. It’s like you’re changing the source code. They’re getting a complete upgrade within 12 months.
Legacy isn’t just about financial wealth. It’s about values, character, and identity that endure long after the money is gone.
Getting outside their comfort zone is a big thing. How do we get them outside their comfort zone in a safe way? Getting outside your fail-forward mindset. Many of these kids will never get in the batter’s box because they’re scared to fail. And I was one of those kids decades ago. I wish I would have learned to take more risks. I played tennis and my game was consistency. I’d never miss, never miss. But the best players I could never beat because they would take big risks, and they would oftentimes have a big return on that.
So when I think of ROI, the traditional sense of ROI—return on investment—for the kids, it’s ROI: return on impact. How can they impact others? So we teach them to be more leadership-orchestrated. Example: let’s say the kid’s invited to a wedding, which they always are, or a birthday party. I would have them—and they love their phones, so we use it as an ally—ask the host or hostess if they could do a reel. In other words, if there are 100 people at this wedding, I want them to talk to 50 of them and say something nice about the bride and groom.
So they go, “3, 2, 1,” walk up to someone, and then they’re interviewing someone and getting it on video. They’ll send me 50 clips in an album, different people. They’re going to create it; we create a movie. I give it to a video editor. We add music. We then have a three-to-five-minute reel of people saying wonderful things about the bride and groom. The kid then gifts it to the bride and groom. The kid is going to be elevated because no one does this. It’s hard because you’re walking up to strangers and asking, “Hey, 3, 2, 1, say something nice about the bride.” It sounds easy, but at the moment of truth, it could be a little scary for an introverted kid, but I tell them how to do it.
There’s a strategy. When people are starting to drink on the dance floor, it’s a different element. You don’t do it during speeches or while everyone’s seated for the ceremony. There’s a time when you do it. Kids have done this. They’re meeting people they would never talk to. They’re feeling extroverted because it’s third-person—you’re doing this for a greater good. You’re gifting this to the bride and groom, and it’s awesome. Of course, there’s a regular professional video crew doing their thing, but this organic stuff, you’re on the dance floor filming someone saying how great the bride and groom are. We do that. That’s another strategy.
So I find ways to make it fun but also elevate the kid. It’s all about building their confidence. You have to do stuff. You can’t just sit and read. You have to demonstrate. When you’re in a room—have you read the book Think and Grow Rich by Napoleon Hill? It’s a basic business book. I’m assuming you read it. Do you understand the narrative? Do you understand the epiphany? Hello.
They’ll know that even though they didn’t read the book—which they should. But if they didn’t, most won’t—they’ll know enough about it. So it’s a huge self-esteem, confidence thing that we’re getting into. And I have this whole narrative with Dan Sullivan, Strategic Coach, who’s one of my mentors: more is caught than taught. In other words, you need to do stuff. That’s your best lesson in learning. You can’t learn how to play golf or tennis or running distance unless you do it. It’s hard to do some of these things. So we get them out to fail forward. So I said fail forward. It’s okay. You’re going to learn a lot.
It’s either winning or learning. Winning or learning. Can’t fail.
Can’t fail.
In my eyes, the only way you could fail is by not getting in the batter’s box, not wanting to go out there and do it. So I want you to go out and try things. I want you to go. And the worst thing someone can say is they ignore you. I want you to be first. So a call to action for our listeners—this is a good one to start with. The art of connection is something called practice going first. I want the kid to be the first to initiate, to say good morning first, good afternoon first.
I want them to be the first to stick out their hand and shake hands with someone. I want them first to offer. If they’re in an elevator, position yourself near the buttons so you can ask everybody, “What floor?” Four? Three? I want you to press the buttons. Demonstrate leadership in a very micro way, which is going to build your confidence. That’s a strategy. A strategy would be: okay, I want five of those every day. I want 25 in the week.
And I create a dashboard where they have to metrically put the number in because what you measure is what you achieve. So there’s metrics. I want five of those every day. Anything that you demonstrate—it could be picking up that piece of trash in the park. I want you to go see that piece of trash, pick it up, and throw it in the trash. That’s going first. I want you to be the first to introduce. It’s simple stuff like this.
It’s very simple stuff, but it really gets the point home. And we talked about this from the military, and that’s why you’re making your bed and you’re bouncing quarters off of it, and everything is perfect. It’s all about the discipline. Or scrubbing a toilet bowl with a toothbrush.
Or shining shoes and all of those things. It just really instills that discipline and that structure.
And Dave, like you did, is learning to do hard things. So we would get them doing hard things, safe things, but things outside their comfort zone that are perceived hard. So that’s how you grow, and that’s how you can handle thicker skin to handle situations that will be challenging. Because there’s gonna be a lot of challenges as you get older. So let’s bring some hard things in. I want you to demonstrate. So they say, well, what could be hard? Well, have you ever run before? Have you ever done a, you know, half marathon or a 10k or a 5k, or have you swam, or do you go to the gym or whatever? Well, I’ll find their niche. But we want to build confidence.
And you’re not gonna do that by just talking to me. We have to do things. I’m gonna guide you. I’m a guide. I’m not a teacher. I’m a guide. I’m guiding you. And if you choose to do these things, I’ll give you a strong probability some really good things are going to happen to you. Maybe it’s monetizing, maybe it’s other things, but my definition of winning is seven things.
It’s family — take care of your family. It’s faith. However you define faith, it could be spiritual. It’s friends. It’s fitness, so it’s emotional as well as physical. It’s financial stewardship — are you a good financial steward? Are you having fun? And are you a giver? Philanthropy. Seven Fs. That’s winning the game of life. That’s the whole MAG.
Seven is MAG Seven — stands for the seven lessons you never learned in school. Those are the seven. So, God, I want you to, no matter what, take care of your brothers and sisters. I don’t care what’s going on. You honor your brothers and sisters, period. We’re not going to be around forever. Starts with family. Your mom — no matter what, you take care of your parents.
What does that mean? Financially, emotionally, you take care of your parents. So it starts with that kind of dialogue. Faith — everyone has different, you know, things on faith. But anyways, the point is we can get into that whole scene.
Barry, so you’re also an expert in family governance. And so let’s talk about just the family unit as a whole. Right. What are some of the strategies that people can use as a family, whether that be a family retreat, a family constitution, you know, things that you’ve seen to really help kind of solidify those values and ethics around a group that can be, quite frankly, quite challenging, right, to steer?
There’s something magical, Dave, of writing out things — actually writing about them. It’s one thing to think of values, but when you put them on paper, a value… So a value on our family constitution one day, as an example, we have a guideline that any family member that goes to the airport — a family member must take a family member to the airport and pick them up.
Why?
We value drive time. It’s our immediate family. You know, families are pretty big, but you have to have a guideline. But the point is, when you write these down, we revisit them. So we have family dinners every Sunday night at our house. Our kids are older, we have grandkids, so family dinners are traditional. We talk about… typically when I go around the table, I say, “What’s the best thing that happened last week? What’s the best thing that happened? What are you looking forward to this week?” It’s all about that kind of thing. Get them talking about their things.
We also bring in pieces of the constitution of things that we could put some focus into every month, such as Thanksgiving — how we’re going to organize Thanksgiving or Christmas or family things. So there’s usually some context of things we can do better. It could be giving, it could be philanthropies, it could be whatever kind of thing. So I think once you put words on a piece of paper, now many times those words are going to go into a bookshelf and you’re not going to look at them again. The key — someone has to be the steward of the constitution to keep it alive. To keep it alive. So that’s my job. And when we do a family constitution for a family, once a month I’m sending a group text out to a family member or to the patriarch or the matriarch.
“Hey, what do we want to focus on this month?” “Oh, I want to focus on doing a retreat in the summer.” “Oh, okay. Let’s make this fun. Let’s have everybody throw names in the hat where they want to go and how long,” and that so we can make it fun. And then when you’re on the retreat or family vacation, we’re going to talk. You’re going to talk about this for an hour — values and how important it is to show up on time or whatever. Whatever’s important.
So you make it fun. Remember, life is… people are busy and I find having written values or guidelines is the cornerstone for my kids and they’ve been raised with this. Now it’s my grandkids. So as a veteran, we have a policy in our constitution that anytime — especially in airports — you are looking for a veteran. Now, how do you know if there’s a veteran? But you’re going to thank them for their service. But we go one step further. I’ve gotten them commemorative coins like this that each kid has — these coins to give a veteran something of value.
Our kids are doing this now. We’re teaching our five-year-old how to do it. It’s all fun. “Daddy, go over to the person and say, ‘Thank you for your service.’” Thank you for your service. He doesn’t even know, really, at five years old, but we’re starting it.
“But I want you to give the veteran the coin.” “Oh, that’s really neat. Here you go.” It starts early. I carry coins around with me. Can you believe that? I really do. I have my kids carrying coins around with me. I have a goal that anytime I go to an airport, I’m looking for a veteran.
Sometimes I can’t find them. You don’t know unless they’re wearing military fatigues. I was in New York three weeks ago in JFK, and I look and I found someone, and the guy had his back turned. He’s a military face. I tapped him on the shoulder and I said, “I want to thank you for your service.” He looked at me. He couldn’t believe it. He couldn’t believe it.
“What are you doing?” “I’m thanking you for your service.” And I went on my way. I don’t want anything from you. I just want to thank you for your service. “You give me an opportunity to grow an incredible business because of you.” Wow. Every kid I work with is going to have that narrative. They’re going to be doing this.
That’s what I believe. It’s what I believe my kids are. So these are guidelines that are written that I’m leader now. I’m demonstrating the leadership because I’m doing this stuff. All this stuff that we’re talking about, I’m doing. So it’s not like hand notes, whatever. I’m doing all this stuff, so I believe in it because I know it works. Plus, it makes me feel good.
I want to feel happy, good, joyful. There’s a strategy called FOMO — you heard of FOMO, fear of missing out. I reverse it — called Joy-MO. The joy of missing out. I love doing hard things. The joy of being in a pool, swimming laps.
The joy of running laps or lifting weights. I love that kind of stuff. And I love doing hard things. So that’s the kind of game. And then on top of all of that, teaching these young minds how to have a conversation with someone. So most of the time we have issues with girls and boys — it’s all about them.
It’s all about them. No, no. It’s about being curious about the other person. So I call it having a third vault conversation. “What do you mean, a third vault conversation?” Well, if you go into a bank, the very first vault has some valuable things there, but it’s like having a conversation — “Did the Dodgers win? It’s hot outside.” That’s a first vault conversation.
Then you go into a second vault conversation — it’s like then about your story, about who you are, their story. But then where we want to get is in the third vault in the bank. That’s where the most valuable things are in the bank. The third vault conversations are things about vulnerability and things that really matter. That’s where the magic is — about their stuff. Teach them how to get into a third vault conversation. It’s not the first vault where you’re going to score or the second vault.
It’s the third vault, and they love that when I can let them think about a bank. And then the very back — behind us, behind here, behind her — that’s the third vault.
So great stuff, Barry. There’s so many good examples. I really appreciate that you’ve given so many different examples for us to really think through. And you know, when I think about legacy, the statistics are really sadly staggering that it’s almost 80% of Gen 2 — the wealth is actually lost. And it’s even higher than that once you get to Gen 3.
So all of these values and these concepts that are just so important, that you’re teaching these young minds, grandkids, and the next generation down — I think it’s just so impactful and it’s really creating the world as a better place and that overall impact. So, really appreciate your mission and you sharing that with everyone. If anyone wants to reach out and learn more about what you’re doing with MAG7 for their kids, or maybe they can make some connections for you or help you in your mission, what’s the best place?
So I have a phone number. The phone number is 818-427-6109. And I have a website: mag7consultants.com. And I’d love to talk to anyone if they have any questions or thoughts, and I can collaborate. I’m pretty sure I could probably give you some value.
That’s fantastic. And in one closing thought, if there was only one thing that the audience could do to accelerate their legacy, what would it be?
I would teach your kids to be relentlessly useful. Teach them to create value for others — not selling. Create value. Create value for others. Good things happen. So be a value creator.
Be a producer, not a consumer.
Exactly.
Love it. Barry, thanks again for your time. I really appreciate you and your mission. You’re on a fantastic mission creating wonderful impact in the world. So thanks so much for sharing that with us.
My pleasure. Anytime, David. See you soon.
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.