Episode 13: What Is Holistic Wealth? Redefining Freedom Beyond Just Money

Listen Here

In this new Wealth Strategy Deep Dives episode, Dave redefines what it truly means to be wealthy—not just in terms of dollars and cents, but through a holistic lens that includes emotional, intellectual, spiritual, and social capital. Drawing from his own journey and inspired by thinkers like Dan Sullivan, Dave unpacks how true wealth is rooted in freedom—the freedom of money, time, purpose, relationships, and location.

If you’ve ever felt that being “rich” isn’t the same as being fulfilled, this episode is your wake-up call. Dave explains why chasing material success alone leads to burnout, and how aligning your wealth strategy with your values and purpose is the real secret to living a life of freedom, prosperity, and impact. This isn’t about retirement—it’s about never wanting to stop doing what you love.

Jump to Links and Resources

People often ask me, “Dave, what does holistic wealth mean anyway?” And for me, in my journey, I’ve really discovered that wealth just means so much more than being rich and having a big bank account. Wealth involves so many different dimensions—not only financial capital, but it also involves these other dimensions such as spiritual capital, emotional capital, intellectual capital, and social capital.

All these things really help truly give us fulfillment in life. And they’re much more than just these superficial things around being rich. Right? And on social media, being rich is portrayed as having that nice car, the big house, and all of the fancy clothing or these, you know, fantastic vacations and things like that. And yes, those give you a great dopamine hit, but is it really going to change your life? Right?

And when you can have true wealth, and you can measure things such as freedom—right?—what I think is that wealth ultimately boils down to freedom. And you can unpack freedom in several different ways. Right? You can have freedom of money, you can have freedom of time, you can have freedom of purpose, freedom of location. These are some of the four dimensions of freedom that Dan Sullivan has so well articulated.

And of course, that freedom of money is what usually takes center stage, because we believe we can use that for energy to do all of the things that we really want to do in life. But if you also have freedom of purpose, you’re able to wake up every day and be fascinated and motivated about the work that you do. So, for instance, you might be thinking that passive income is the answer that’s gonna provide you with actual freedom,

but what you’re actually seeking is freedom from an unfulfilled job, which is not having the right purpose in your life. When you have the right purpose, you’re never gonna want to retire. You’re gonna love what you’re doing. So focusing on that purpose in your life is super fulfilling. We can also have freedom of relationships. And in freedom of relationships—right?—we talk about spending time with those that we love and we care to spend time with.

And that’s in your social circle, your family, and also your work environment. Right? Having the ability to actually be able to choose who you want to spend time with, versus being frustrated with a boss. And I’ve had plenty of those times where I’ve been in an environment where I didn’t necessarily agree—my vision wasn’t aligned with the people that I worked with—and it became a very frustrating environment.

So becoming an entrepreneur, I was able to create freedom of relationship and choose who I spend my time with. We also have freedom of time. Right? And this is so important where under certain constructs—right?—like the old world time-and-effort economy where you have to be at work at a certain point in time, versus having freedom of time where you can start that day with your family,

working on yourself and investing in yourself. Maybe that’s your morning routine, it’s exercise, it’s investing in your health, versus trying to just be somewhere so you’re putting a check in the box. Right? It’s creating that time in your life to be able to do that, or to carve out time for those important milestones in your life and not being subjected to somebody else’s schedule. Another big freedom I think that’s out there is freedom of location.

Especially post-pandemic, right? We have this amazing opportunity to work remotely—to frankly work wherever you want in the world—and create value, be productive, and live a great life. Right? So whether that’s living in Europe, living in Asia, or living in a place that has a great climate or that supports your lifestyle—right?—where you can be outdoors more,

you can be doing the things that you love. Having that freedom of location is also super important. So when I pull all these things together, to me, that’s what wealth really is. It’s creating the freedom in life to do those things that you really want to do so you can be fulfilled, you can have purpose, and you can have real quality in your life.