Episode 2: 6 Forms of Capital (What does wealth really mean)

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Welcome back to Wealth Strategy Deep Dives—your go-to series for fast, impactful insights on building lasting wealth. In today’s episode, I explore one of my favorite questions to ask: What does wealth actually mean to you?

Too often, society defines “rich” through flashy cars and big homes. But real wealth? It’s multi-dimensional. I unpack the six forms of capital—financial, human, social, emotional, spiritual, and intellectual—and how they collectively shape your true net worth. From building community to protecting your health, from spiritual alignment to growth mindset, this episode challenges you to redefine wealth far beyond your portfolio size.

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Hey everyone. Welcome back to our solo series on wealth strategy secrets. Today I wanted to dive into a topic that’s really important to me and one of the favorite questions I love to ask to different guests on the podcast, as well as folks that I meet out in the marketplace, and that is, what does wealth really mean to you? And I think it’s interesting because we often talk about rich versus wealth. I think that these things mean totally different things. I think that when you see on social media, we see these depictions all the time of rich being, having the fancy car, having the big house, right? All these material-type things. But when you really understand what true wealth is, wealth actually encompasses many different dimensions. And the way I think that can be expressly explained is through the six forms of capital. So we often think of wealth with the main one being financial capital, right? And that’s how much money is in your portfolio, where whatever that looks like.

But beyond that, we want to start looking at the other forms of capital. Those consist of spiritual capital, emotional capital, social capital, human capital, and intellectual capital. And let’s just talk about human capital for a moment, right? This is physical health, this is well-being. And I think about an example such as Steve Jobs, who had all the money, the wealth in the world, but yet he couldn’t buy himself one extra day on this planet. And that’s a real shame, right, because he did not have his physical health. Or think about folks who might be entertainers or athletes who again have tons of financial capital, but they’re struggling with toxic relationships or something from their past, maybe addictions or things like that. And they don’t exactly have the well being to really be wealthy and enjoy that. We talk about social capital as well, being really important.

And that’s about having community, having, having relationship capital. That’s why we run our mastermind. So we can actually have people that are like-minded in the same community be together, so we can share and we can share experiences, we can grow together, we can have accountability. Versus the opposite of that is having no community, where you’re actually just kind of feel as if you’re on an island. And what’s interesting is if you actually look at some of these longevity factors, right, one of the top reasons that people do actually pass away is because of lack of community in an older age. So it’s really important to have a community. Wherever you are on your journey or whatever age you are is certainly a big piece of the capital stack. We also go into emotional capital, and emotional capital includes self-awareness and resilience. And I recall interviewing several centimillionaires, almost billionaires, that talk about one of the most critical attributes you could actually have is that of self-awareness.

So really understanding your own strengths, your liabilities, your expertise and capabilities, and how you can double down on those, to actually be successful, to be, you know, to be really in flow. Right. And not to actually have friction in your life, that’s really important. And to be resilient. Right? Because the reality is, is that the world is a dynamic place. It’s changing all the time. We always know that things and challenges are going to come our way, but how resilient are we to be able to tackle these? On the spiritual capital side, this is basically your higher calling and your beliefs and values, whatever those might be, that are really important to you. And, you know, it’s interesting because I was raised in a Christian family.

You know, we went to church when I was brought up, and we’ve continued some of those traditions in our family, and those have been very important. But what I can tell you is that there’s been a few times in my life that life or death was really on the edge and I was confronting it for other people that were around me and people that I really cared about. And I’ve never felt more of a spiritual calling at that point in time, right? When you’re really looking for some help. So this is a super important component. A lot of people talk about the five F’s, faith being, you know, one of those. But again, whatever your beliefs are, just having some form of spiritual capital is super enriching to you. And lastly, let’s talk about intellectual capital, right? And again, this is actually a core part of the holistic wealth strategy where we talk about increasing our financial IQ, our mindset IQ, right? And we do this by, you know, improving that intellectual capital.

Always growing, always being curious, always learning, and really having a growth mindset so that we can always be kind of, you know, really expanding our world versus the opposite, which is having a fixed mindset and really contracting. So if you add up all of these things together, I think this is the true, really the exponential way to have a really high net worth, right? And when I talk about high net worth, again, it’s not just about the size of your portfolio or your bank account, it’s how enriched are you and all these other categories of capital, right. That are making you a great person, contributing in society and really, you know, feeling great at multiple dimensions. So hope this was helpful. And that’s it for today.