89: How to Lead Beyond Your Lifetime: Creating generational impact for your family and the world w/ Justin Maxwell

What if your leadership didn’t stop when your career ended—or even when your life did?
In this powerful episode of No Limit Leadership, Sean Patton sits down with Justin Maxwell, a values-driven entrepreneur, advisor, and father of four who helps leaders create generational wealth and legacy. Together, they explore how leadership extends far beyond boardrooms and balance sheets into the most important places—your home, your family, and your future.

Justin reveals why most successful business owners unintentionally abdicate leadership to financial advisors, and how to flip the script by leading every domain of your life with clarity and intention. From building a family mission statement to redefining wealth as impact rather than consumption, this conversation is a roadmap for anyone who wants to create a legacy that endures.

If you want more than success—if you want significance—this episode will show you how to start leading beyond your lifetime.

What You’ll Learn in This Episode:

• [00:54] Fatherhood and leadership – How raising four kids reshaped Justin’s rigid leadership style into one rooted in connection and growth.
• [07:25] Thinking generationally – Why most families fall into a boom-and-bust cycle, and how to create momentum that compounds across generations.
• [13:30] Leading your family like a business – Using values, mission statements, and culture to intentionally shape your family legacy.
• [19:39] Business success vs. personal wealth – Why many entrepreneurs thrive in business but fail to translate it into generational wealth.
• [23:05] Stop abdicating responsibility – How to lead your advisors instead of being led by them.
• [24:55] The 5 Keys framework – Justin’s system for defining your vision, setting priorities, and holding advisors accountable.
• [39:38] Aligning spouses and families – Practical ways to create shared vision and values that unite your household.
• [42:05] Applying leadership in all areas of life – Why holistic leadership is the only way to achieve fulfillment and impact.
• [43:21] Avoiding the “what’s next?” trap – A cautionary story of a nine-figure exit gone wrong and how to prevent it.

Connect with Justin Maxwell

• LinkedIn: Justin D Maxwell
• Speaking: https://justindmaxwell.com/
• https://x.com/justindmaxwell
  Instagram= @maxweatlh_preserve

Stay Connected with Sean Patton

• Subscribe to the No Limit Leadership Newsletter for weekly leadership insights: www.nolimitleaders.com/growth

No Limit Leadership is the go-to podcast for growth-minded executives, middle managers, and team leaders who want more than surface-level leadership advice. Hosted by executive coach and former Special Forces commander Sean Patton, this show dives deep into modern leadership, self-leadership, and the real-world strategies that build high-performing teams. Whether you're focused on leadership development, building a coaching culture, improving leadership communication, or strengthening team accountability, each episode equips you with actionable insights to unlock leadership potential across your organization. From designing onboarding systems that retain talent to asking better questions that drive clarity and impact, No Limit Leadership helps you lead yourself first so you can lead others better. If you're ready to create a culture of ownership, resilience, and results, this leadership podcast is for you.

Transcript

Sean Patton (00:00)
What if leadership didn't stop when your career ended or even when your life did? In today's episode, I sit down with Justin Maxwell to explore a powerful idea, how to lead your family, your business and your wealth in a way that echoes for generations. We talk about why most people are being led by their financial advisors instead of being the other way around and how to flip the script. We unpack how to show up as a leader at home when no one's watching and how to build a legacy so strong it leads even after you're gone.

If you want to build more than just success, if you're aiming for significance, this episode is for you.

Sean Patton (00:47)
Welcome to the No Limit Leadership Podcast. am your host, Sean Patton. I'm very excited to have Justin Maxwell today. He's a values driven entrepreneur, advisor, and leader who helps business leaders build wealth that aligns with their purpose. He brings a rare blend of financial acumen, business insight, and personal conviction. Grounded in a deeply held belief, leadership isn't just about today. It's about setting up the people you love to thrive long after you're gone. I'm excited for this conversation, Justin. Thanks for being on today,

Justin D Maxwell (01:13)
Yeah, Sean, I'm really grateful for the opportunity. love the work you're putting out in the world and the leadership that you embody, and I'm excited to connect with your audience today.

Sean Patton (01:22)
Man, know, one of the things that we, when we talked multiple times ago, we've known each other for a while now, was fatherhood, right? Because as a new father, you're an experienced father. You've got, is it four kids? Is that right?

Justin D Maxwell (01:34)
Yeah, for kids, yeah, for children, for wild, wild.

Sean Patton (01:36)
⁓

man. How were their ages?

Justin D Maxwell (01:39)
10 7 3 9 months

Sean Patton (01:42)
Yeah, you've got to spread out and everything, man. I'm new to the game, so I have much to learn. And obviously, I'm interested in leadership. how has becoming a father or how over the years, how has that changed your definition of leadership?

Justin D Maxwell (01:54)
Yeah, it's changed pretty dramatically for me because I'm a very rigid person. And so like I have high expectations for people around me. But when you have children, you have to like learn really quickly that children don't just automatically jump in line with your rigidness. Like they're very creative and free flowing and think on their own. And if you just want to force leadership and force them to do everything you're doing, you're going to find a lot of opposition.

And I think that's apropos like in anything, any endeavor we have is you have to learn to like get to the level of the child and bond with them in order to lead them. And I think that that's what's changed for me most is, and I honestly, I'll be really honest. I'm still working on it. I'm not like perfect at this. Like I still have rigidity feelings. I still have those, those drives to like, just go do this and just get it done and do it in the way that I want in my head. But like I'm changing and I know that that's not the way.

It's best to lead my children and my family. It just doesn't work. It's going to result in pushback down the line and it won't lead to the rich relationships that I desire with my family.

Sean Patton (03:00)
Has that challenged you to maybe relook your rigidity and your own self leadership?

Justin D Maxwell (03:07)
Yeah, think, I mean, like for me, yes, I think it's, it's a, it's a longer process than I'd like, but it's definitely something that like, I'll just share an experience. everyone's always gotta go find your inner child and figure out the traumas that happened in your past. Well, I grew up in like a very stable household. So nothing is like obvious to me of like traumas that I had, or I wasn't abused. I was, I grew up in a very loving home with high standards.

But me going back and really trying to find why do I behave this way? what is making me think when people respond this way to me or people act this way, why do I respond in X or Y or Z manner? And doing that work has opened that up to the possibility that I have a lot more choice around those things than I first imagined. But it's still not fully there yet. And I think that that's a part of leadership in of itself of

being able to acknowledge that you're working on it, you're becoming something, but you're still a work in progress. I love the term, you're a rough stone rolling. I like that term. It's you're just slowly getting smoothly tossed around and banged across other rocks until you're smooth, but it's a long process.

Sean Patton (04:14)
Well, I love your intentionality with that because I think, maybe one of the differences, around someone who is really trying to be a leader and especially a leader of themselves, which I think is a pre-qualifier. Like you have to be open to growth and getting better is the willingness to do that on a self assessment and like do intentional work, On like who,

who you are and who you're trying to become and have enough. it could be confidence for your, from yourself or just enough drive or enough desire to get better, to do some of that hard, like honest self assessment and self awareness work. Like you mentioned, you know, why, okay, I'm this way. Why am I that way? Like what could be some contributing factors? I know it's been a big work for me. one of my big drivers is to matter.

Like I have this thing, but my mindset coach and I have, you I have this alter ego, my pattern that we call Mr. Matter. inside me, I'm this drive of like, I have to matter. So like I have to make my life matter. I have to make my work matter. And while that, to your point, you know, has made you very successful, like your rigidity, your drive and my drive, and I still believe like you should make your life matter. I still want to matter. but

when we let that take over for us, it starts to become this negative experience of anxiety, of fear, and it's lessening our experience of life instead of us owning that and be like, that's a tool of mine, that's a pattern I can own versus that pattern owning me and impacting my other relationships and my life. I don't know, does that make sense?

Justin D Maxwell (05:39)
Yeah.

No, it really does. And something that stood out to me, and I don't know if this is a thought to you, but I love that phrase. The thought is you're explaining that I want to matter. But the question that popped in my mind, matter to who? It mattered to yourself, mattered to your family, or mattered to people that aren't in line with your values. So that type of work too also matters. And as you're going through this is, who are you actually doing this for and why are you doing this? What are you trying to accomplish?

And when you get really clear on like the who and who you're actually trying to do this world for, I think that helps people a lot. Because oftentimes people get distracted. They want to do the world for other people that don't care about them instead of doing the world for the people that do care about them.

Sean Patton (06:18)
such a good point. You know, I think in today's world too, you know, you and I both put out a lot of content and stuff and even in the comment section, right? Like, I forget the exact quote Alex Ramozzi has because like, in my business coach, said some more things around, you know, if this isn't someone who is like already done what you're trying to do or is already a person that you're trying to become, you know, or is a shared confident that, you know, loves and wants the best for you, like why are

I would place the value on those opinions appropriately, right?

Justin D Maxwell (06:48)
Yeah, no,

I really liked that. Yeah.

Sean Patton (06:52)
Yeah. ⁓

yeah, I think, I think it's, I think it's, super important because we, I think the fear of judgment of other people, the way the, opinions we have, the way we're conducting our life, the way we're leading, you know, if you're leading a team, know, their opinion matters, but, not everyone's does it, especially when it comes to your life. So, you know, take those things in mind, you know, one of things that you brought up before and I've seen you talk about is

leading your family with a generational impact in mind, not just the day to day. And like in practical terms, like what does that mean to you?

Justin D Maxwell (07:25)
Yeah, so I work with a lot of business owners and I've identified a pattern that I think is just very common. So most business owners are like an exception in their family. Most of their families have not created the amount of money that they're creating, that sort of level of businesses they're creating. But it's like this person bursts forward above the family standard. We'll just say down here. And is what happens is they burst forward.

But because there isn't a generational mindset or a generational perspective in mind, the next generation or at least definitely two generations down the line just falls right back down to the previous standard of what everyone else was doing before. And is what I have found is that if you can instead have a mindset of I'm going to burst forward, but we're not restarting. We're not going back to here ever again.

My errors, my generations are going to take off from here, not back here. So we want to create a compounding effect, burst forward, take off. And then your standard of family contri- and thinking and value creation is centered on taking off from where the previous generation started instead of this boom and bust cycle, which is what keeps being repeated around families around the entire world where one person burst forward and then it just falls right back.

standard. We can create through our thinking, through our legacy planning, through our state planning, through our structures, the ability to have it where we're not creating trust fund babies or kids that are entitled, kids that don't learn, kids that don't take advantage and don't create value, but we can create an environment where you're empowering your future generations to take off from where you left off. But the only way you can do that is if you think generationally. If you think towards an end date,

I'm going to get to 75 and then start consuming and using all my assets and spending them. You're teaching your heirs that consumption is the path to wealth and that they're just going to follow that. They'll consume all that you create. So you have to show and demonstrate and lead that we're a family of producers, a family of givers, a family of value creators up until the time that you pass.

Sean Patton (09:34)
Well, I think about, and maybe this is an antiquated concept, but I always thought of the term of the American dream, not as, you know, a three, two house with a white picket fence and two, know, 2.2 kids and a golden retriever. But, ⁓ in terms of each generation doing exactly what you said, right? Like each generation doing better and

I think there's a lot to that. think that sometimes we lose sight of that and we get to this maybe entitlement mindset of like, well, these other people have this other thing. And it's like, to your point, I mean, there might be, you can, you can definitely create generational wealth in one lifetime, or you could definitely change the, you know, if your family came from, addiction and abuse and all things that you can, you can reset that, you know, immediately, but like, but to think that.

because another family or someone else is like, their parents were the ones who, you know, or generations set them up differently, that somehow was like, inherently unfair, is, I think is a bad way look at it. You know, I think of my own family, did, I did like, I don't even remember, I think was ancestry.com. I don't remember, it was years ago, whether it that one or like 23andMe, which I don't think exists anymore, but

I think was ancestry. And I did like the extra little thing to like them try to basically guess further back where you came from. And as far as they could tell, what they told me was, with a pretty high likelihood was I came from like Northern Ireland, for the most part, England, but that my ancestors from Northern Ireland came over in the late 1800s during the potato famine, but they came over as indentured servants and worked in South Carolina basically as white slaves for 20 years to earn their freedom.

And then they like move their way up, eventually end up in Wisconsin working in another farm, earn enough money to then the next generation bought a farm. Then they were farmers. Like they worked their way down. And then I think of like, I know my grandparents talked to them. They talked about how their grandparents were in Wisconsin and they were farmers. And then my grandfather, you know, worked three jobs. He worked on the line, the GM plant, you know, he works, he like did all of that. And then my parents' generation had three of six kids go to college.

And then my generation has an Air Force Academy grad, me as a West Point grad. Nothing like that is, just also like really great people, like multiple doctors, the first female mathematics professor at this university Like, wow, it's just like, see this, but man, this started with like indentured servitude six generations ago.

Justin D Maxwell (11:57)
Yeah, I love what you're talking about here because I think this is a key point when I talk generational, it's not just forward, it's also backwards because we have to acknowledge the fact that the only reason we're here today is because of what they did in the past. And even if we can't identify who those people actually were and get because people come from everyone has different situations. Like some people are adopted. Some people, when they moved to America, their names were changed and they have no idea who actually where they came from or who they were.

But we can still acknowledge that there was people that did hard things and got you to this spot today. And your leadership into your family's generational progress is a thank you to those that came before. And if you can connect from the past and the future, it's all just one timeline that you're a part of, and you're just taking your step and mark forward. And you're going to do your best to continue to build what you and your family have described as this incremental progress.

But I found that if you can identify it and actually call it out, you're gonna increase the likelihood that the next generation is gonna keep that progress moving forward, because you've identified it as an actual value that your family cares about.

Sean Patton (13:01)
So how do you talk to your family and your kids to try to impart this wider aperture and construct around leadership, around creating better lives, including wealth generation, for you personally and then with clients as you have these conversations, what does that look like when they're little, when they're teenage, as they get older, how do you teach this and really get this into the fabric of the...

of the values of your family.

Justin D Maxwell (13:30)
Yeah, so I want to first state something. Like I'm in the thick of this right now, so it's not like I have this figured out, but I want to share with you what I've created and I feel really good about what we've created and you can take it for what you're worth. Most of what I've built my foundation of this knowledge off of is from a man by the name of Rich Christensen. He created a framework called the Legado Family Framework. I believe legado is Spanish for legacy. I'm not actually pausing on that.

but it's L-E-G-A-D-O, so the Otto Family Framework. And the idea behind what Rich purports is that you should be creating this, like when you start a business, when you're in business, you create culture, you create values, you create mission statements, you have like really clear identifications of what good looks like. But then when you look at your family, you don't have those things. You don't have family value statements or family mission statements or family doctrines or milestones.

You just kind of like let family exist and you're hoping that just because you exist in the family unit that it's just gonna automatically produce the results you're looking for, which is successful legacy minded and value creation children. If you wanna do like, I've been thinking recently about this. Most people live life opportunistically. Like if something lands in their lap, they take advantage of it. They take advantage of the opportunity in front of them.

And I think sometimes we parent that way. just opportunistically hope that our children are going to catch on to what we're creating. But as what I would like people to start thinking about is programmatically create the outcomes that give the highest probability within your family. So programmatically create the values that you want your family to stand by and live by and like go backwards to what your families and heirs and ancestors did before. Like what values did they have? What values did they embody?

which were good, which were bad. We'll take the good and we'll dispose of the bad. But like really connect to it and identify what it is you actually want. And then like live it just like you had a business, like the business I see the most successful, like their employees know what the values are. They know what the company stands for. Like, so you need to reinforce that. So dinnertime is an extraordinary period where you can have conversations on how do we embody the

Like we have adventure is one of our values. How did we embody and venture over this last week? Does anyone have any specific examples? And like we're just asking and the three year old has no idea what we're talking about, but the 10 year old is giving really good answers at times. But because we're having the discussion, I know the three year old is going to eventually get it. They just don't know what's going on today. Do activities and embody those have milestones of like, when we get to this age, we're going to do this together and we're going to go tackle this big thing that embodies this.

But so essentially is what I'm inviting people to do is run your family like a business would that gets the culture embodied in that and get them on board and lead it just like you would your employees. You know how to lead your employees just lead now your family instead.

Sean Patton (16:21)
Wow, that is powerful, man. I you're right in so many ways. I also think that people think they're, or they are, they think they're leading their family. People are leading their families one way or another, you know? And most of them are doing, you we're all doing the best we can for the most part, and we're trying. But I think, you know, and we think we're creating the right culture and we're instilling values, but I like codifying it, like you mentioned, like what's our mission statement? What are our values? And then being able

Because when you write that down, you're able to come back to it and reinforce it. So it's not this like moving target that happens to come up in moments of inspiration or whatever, right? Like it's like, you've got these intentional times to come back to these like written out things that your family has.

Justin D Maxwell (16:53)
Yeah.

And it kind of comes back to like, when I look at the most successful entrepreneurs and business owners I have, the ones that reached the highest potential are the ones that did things on purpose. Like they deliberately did things, like they got better at things. They weren't just like hoping that if like things would happen, like they analyze the data of their marketing really, really intently to dial in like what's working, what's not. A lot of entrepreneurs I know don't do that. They just like throw.

Watt of they just throw fuel on the fire and if something works, they'll like run down that path for a while and hope it keeps working. But they don't like have like a system to identifying that. And is what I want you to start thinking is just be really deliberate around the activities you're doing to lead. It doesn't have to be massive things, but just add some small things to the fringes of your leadership that you're already doing to just try and tweak it to be how am going to deliberately get this to have the highest probability that this will actually stick.

with the people and my children that I'm working with. I'll just give one more example, because this I think is just an example of how you can do this. again, like I'm still, like this is all, this doesn't mean this is gonna work, but I just wanna give an example of how you could think about this. I'm really big into I am statements. I believe that we have to embody who we are before we get places. So what I've done is I've created I am statements for each of my children. And then I'm about to record them and then I'm gonna...

We have a morning routine that we participate in and the part of that morning routine is I want them to listen to the I am statement. So they have this constant reassurance and confirmation from me. It's because I'm to be the one doing it where I'm telling them who they are. And it's just like this repeated thing they're to hear every single day as a part of their of what they're doing. But I don't know if it'll work, but that's just something that I'm trying. And I think that's what most parents as leadership can do is just try to do the small things that

you think are going to have an impact that will get your children to buy in to what you're creating as a family.

Sean Patton (18:50)
Hmm. Man, those are awesome. love hearing that. I'm taking notes here as baby Hudson grows up, You'll have to let me know, but I have a high confidence that that's going to make an impact. You mentioned there about some of the you see with some of the clients you work with on what makes some successful versus not.

You talked about looking at data, being intentional, you know, having a plan. Are there any others that you see from like a leadership perspective that across the board? Cause you're in this unique, you know, position where you get to see not just your own business, but a lot of other businesses. And unlike a lot of like consultants or vendors, you're looking at books. So, you know, what's working and what is it? like,

you know, the ones who are successful long term versus not like what are some major differentiating factors that you see?

Justin D Maxwell (19:39)
Yeah. So I think the first thing we have to distinguish is we can be super astronomically successful in business, but just because we're astronomically successful in business does not automatically mean that we're going to have success in personal wealth creation. So the people that I've seen do it best are the ones that able to marry their business wealth creation, i.e. growing their business with their personal wealth.

creation, like they're deliberately viewing them as one in the same. So they don't just let things happen by happenstance. So I'll see these really successful business owners that make their business super successful. They're so deliberate around everything. They're looking at their P and L's on a monthly basis. They're making data driven decisions. But then they, when the money actually comes to them personally, none of those things are there. So they, they spend what's available. They sporadically invest. They have no idea like how to reduce taxes.

It's just like this. are two sides of the coin where on one side they're super deliberate on the other side. They're not the people that can be deliberate on both sides of the ones that translate the wealth they're building in their business into actual sustainable dollar amount generational wealth going forward. And it just is like you can't they're not they're not too often we get empowered by I have a I met some of their day 13 million dollar business. They can say that as like

I have a $13 million business, really, really impressive. Like people are like, wow, that's really amazing. But then you look at the numbers and it's like, they're not profitable. They're barely scraping by. They're driven by the revenue metric of like, that's what people think. They think they want to hear, but it's actually not. It's not real. Like it's not real wealth. It's a fake fallacy. And so I've seen that more often on the personal side than on the business side.

But don't allow fake, don't allow your business to give you the impression that you're wealthy, is what I'm trying to get to.

Sean Patton (21:33)
Well, and looking at that holistically and that net number, and then, I think it goes back to...

people who may be over index in one area, right? So like you have someone who is just driving revenue, got to get bigger, got to get bigger is maybe missing out on obviously, mean, just simplistically, like the mathematical side, like there's another side of that equation, right? Like profit, you're missing any, you're not considering the expense side. And there's obviously some businesses where you got to spend and invest to get a certain market threshold, there's all that, but like,

but to have a plan to get that Delta higher. then to your point, some people are so focused there that they let other parts of their life, including personal wealth, go. And I think that's a value that's important to me to the no limit leaders community and like-minded people that I'm trying to work with and get across is like we're a leader in all aspects of our life. So, sure, you created a $13 million business. Maybe it is making a bunch of money.

but it's all going out the back door. Maybe you do have a successful, you know, the amount of people I know, but your health is crap. Well, that's not going to be fun in 10 years or you're, you haven't had a meaningful conversation with your kids in three months. Is that the life you want? Right? So I think it's like this leadership in, in, in all aspects of your life and accountability in all aspects of your life and how that be balanced, knowing that there's me moments in your time or moments of time in your life where like you may need to over index and focus one area, but have the awareness to come back so that

you can have this more measured and sustainable approach to all of life, including, you know, wealth creation.

Justin D Maxwell (23:05)
Yeah, a hundred percent. And so this is where I think this is the distinction that happens is these business owners get so good at making money through their business and they're so good at leading their business. But then like on, don't, they, they're unsure about how to reduce their taxes. They're unsure on how to get healthy or they're unsure on where to invest outside their business. So instead of like owning it and finding the ability to lead their professionals is what happens is they'll go to people.

that they likely know a little bit, they trust them a little bit. So usually it's people from their past that you helped me in the past as my accountant, as I was growing up, so want to stick with you or you're this investment advisor friend that I had from high school or whatever it is, it's people that they're associated with. And then they completely abdicate responsibility to these people. So they say, you just do this for me. You handle my taxes for me. You handle my investments for me. You handle my health for me.

and they want to abdicate responsibility, even though they already have the recipe in front of them because they've taken full ownership and leadership of their business, but they abdicate responsibility in other areas. And you have to take responsibility for every area of your life. Doesn't mean that you have to do it. You don't have to do your own taxes, but you have to lead your tax accountant. You have to lead your investment advisor. You have to lead your health coach to where you actually want to go. Otherwise, they're just going to take you to where they take everyone else, which

may or may not align with your actual goals that you want to accomplish. And I think that that's one of the biggest reasons that people fall short when it comes to their personal wealth, is they allow advisors to lead them instead of them leading their advisors.

Sean Patton (24:42)
So do you have a way to approach people, at least when it comes to, we'll stick with sort of like wealth advisors, because that's your area of expertise, but how people can lead those wealth advisors more effectively instead of being led by them?

Justin D Maxwell (24:55)
Yeah. So we have a framework that we call the five keys and this can help you with this. The number one thing that I find is that a lot of like most people, most business owners I meet did not grow up wealthy. did not grow up with my say, don't wealthy to me is more than money, but we'll just say in this case, money. They don't, they didn't grow up with money. They grew up in either poverty stricken or middle-class households. Now that they've become successful in business.

they still have their final destination as a middle-class destination. So they've gone through this arc of, started out middle-class and making all this money, but then their destinations they're seeking for are just right back to middle-class. So the first thing you have to do, the first key in our mind of how you lead your advisors is you have to become absolutely clear on what is your actual destination.

And some things that I would invite people to think about is, is that destination something that society told me was good or is the destination that I actually want? So I'll just give some examples so that people can start thinking a little bit differently around this. So a lot of people, when they think of a destination, they're just thinking for, I want to have like $5 million at age 65. That is like a prime example of like a middle, someone that did really well middle-class wives. That's a middle-class destination for a lot of people.

But if you're a successful business owner that's business is doing a million, five million, 10 million in revenue, like if your margins are where they should be, you should be blowing white past five million. But if your destination is five million and you're telling your advisors that they can get you to five million really easy, but now you're just taking advantage of middle-class advice. So you have to become really conscious of is that destination middle-class? Is that destination in alignment with what I actually want?

What is it that I actually want out of life when it comes to my money and wealth? So I have found that if you can, again, this goes back to our conversation early, make your destination generational instead of an end date of time. It will push you to think bigger than just a dollar amount. So for example, in my life, like I have very big aspirations for my family when it comes to giving away money.

So in 20 years, so 2045, I want to give away a million dollars for the first time. But because of the structure we can put in place, I want that to not be the last time. It will be a million dollars from that year forward because of the nature of the account. will just spit off a million dollars a year. That same account 150 years from now, I want it to be giving away a billion dollars. That is a completely different trajectory than I want to end life and live off of five million.

which will then produce 200, 300,000, 400,000 dollars of income on an annual basis. Just become super clear. Not everyone wants to give away money, but clearly define what it is. So key one is clearly define your outcome, but my prompt is clearly define it and double check yourself to make sure that it's not your middle class child telling you that's where you should be reaching. So push beyond it.

But once you have the destination, now we can start actually having conversations of leadership with people. Cause you probably have a destination in your business. We want to be worth this much, or we want to be this size, or we want to be seen as the leader in this industry or this niche, whatever it is. Like you have those, need to have that on the personal well side. So that's key one. Key two is now that you have the destination, you now can reverse engineer the priorities with your person today. So where should I be putting my money?

Well, the question you can ask yourself is if I do this, if I put my money in this vehicle or in this product or in this investment, is it going to help me reach my destination in a timeframe that I've allocated? If the answer to that is no, then we don't, that's not a priority to put our money in that or to use our money for that means in that today. So let's start now, you're leading the conversation because you're working with your person to help you determine that, but you're leading that. Like you're determining the priorities with them.

So that's key two is once we know that we can now focus on the priorities.

Sean Patton (28:55)
So I love that. guess my question would be, and I'm thinking back to maybe the first sort of business mindset book that I read way back in the day that sort of changed my perspective. And I'm sure this is the same for millions of others, but it's Rich Dad Poor Dad. And so I think of like, I'm the same way. I came from basically lower middle class. I mean, I'm still having to learn about money because like I wasn't taught, we lived, my parents, my single mom, was 13 and like,

She did amazing things, got us out of poverty and like worked her ass off. And like, it was amazing, but you know, we always had credit card debt. We were, we were going month to month rent, right? And then, ⁓ we kind of stayed there through the most of my life. So like, now as I start to make money, it's like, how, where can we go? Cause if our minds are preconditioned to wherever we came from, before and to us, you know, you,

$5 million? Awesome. know, like what else do you need? Right? so how do you, how do we do we, it, is it who we need to have conversations with? Is it, you how do we even get in our head what the possibilities are or what that looks like to have this sort of like generational mindset when it comes to wealth to break us of our preconceived notions of what is possible and you know, what generational wealth even looks like if we've never been exposed to it.

Justin D Maxwell (30:10)
Yeah, that's an extraordinary question. the a few things. So first we have to start just look at the numbers of people and I'm going to speak for America right now, but we can look at it in the world too. But look at the amount of people in the world. The average American earns $65,000 a year. So if the average American does that and we'll just say if you're if you're making 200,000, I think I think the numbers are your top 10 % earner in America.

So if you're in the top 10, who is the media gonna focus on? The 10 % or the 90 % of the education you're gonna get? Who are they gonna be trying to, who are the financial, where's the bigger pool of people that they can focus on? So you have to realize immediately that the numbers say that the focus of the education that's received financially is gonna be directed towards the masses, not to the few. Now it doesn't mean that all of that education is wrong.

But that's the first sense is where did I get that education from? it from, I'm not gonna, again, just because you're in, just because your target market is the masses and not the few doesn't mean that the information is wrong. But like people like Dave Ramsey, for example, like he's speaking to the masses, not the few. And so his messaging, though very powerful for the masses, probably is not as applicable to the few.

There's some caveats here because some of the few are behaving like, they're spending all their money and they're massively in debt and they're way over the time. And then that would be the example. But the first checkpoint is, is who's giving me the information and is it for the masses or is it for the few? And in most situations when it's coming from big publications and big brands, it's more for the masses and not for the few. So that can help you start to distinguish between.

Like, is this something that is for the masses? And I'm going to just use the masses and blanket statement middle class. I know that's not fully the case, but that's the way I'm going to use the language right now. Or is it for the few have gotten there? The next piece is just start Googling and researching the phrase family office and figure out like what it is that family offices did to actually

become wealthy because they have set a gold standard of we were focused on usually it's business. We created our wealth through business and then we diversify the wealth in our own private family office that our whole purpose is grow the wealth, protect the wealth. So research what it is that they did and how are they creating wealth and what were their aspirations and what were they creating and things of that nature. There are some extraordinary books.

I've tried to think of the stinking business. There's a book that was created and written, that I really, really like, but right now it's fleeting my memory. If I can remember it all have Sean put it in the show notes, but there was a, there was a CEO, a of a company that's quite large and well known. again, I can't think if I, if I could think of the company, then I could tell you the person, but I can't think of the company right now.

a well-known company and he wrote an extraordinary book around how to think this way. And it's just a completely different way of thinking that the mass is, they can't think that way because they're focused on exchange of dollar or time for money. And it's the leveraging point of it. If I can find it and if I think of it later, I'll tell people.

But that's, think the biggest shift is that the vast majority of people exchange time for money. And even when they're in retirement, they're just exchanging the stored up value of their money in exchange for consumerism versus exchanging value for money or having money be the currency that's a reflection of value and then production. So how can I get my money producing for me?

even without me having to produce and then I'm going to continue to produce so that this enhances how much money my money produces without me. I think that's the big shift that even a rich dad, poor dad starts to put in people's mind. But I still think people have the destination of, just need, I'm sorry I'm rambling a little bit, but I think this is, I want to give an example. I spoke with a client yesterday and really successful. they've,

they've amassed a great amount of wealth for how big their business is. Like their business isn't as big as you'd expect it to be. they, like when they were telling me how much money they wanted to live off of, they gave me the number of like this very base minimum safety number. And like they were only like a million dollars away from able to produce that in cashflow, but they still have like 30 plus years of production left. So instead of thinking,

bigger of I want to just shoot for this massive number and see if I can hit it. They were still shooting for this very safe number. And I think the problem, the reason that people think this way is like, I don't want to be too greedy. Or I think if I have too much, I I won't, I don't want to do anything with it. And it's what I invite people to do is shoot for something massive. And if you have excess, that just gives you the permission to give a heck of a lot.

or to think bigger, I can start a company or organization or a foundation to then help more people in that area. If we shift our focus from the net worth to the net impact, I think that helps as well. I know that is rambling through a whole bunch of stuff out, but I hope that was helpful to answer your question.

Sean Patton (35:17)
so what's the third key?

Justin D Maxwell (35:18)
Yeah.

So the third key is, so we know our vision, we know we want to go. We've, we've shot in for something that's really big. We've gotten our people like, this is a good blanket statement of if you're advised, if you tell your advisors where you want to go and they say, don't think we can get there. They're probably not the right advisor for you. So it starts to weed out the people that aren't in alignment where you want to go because they're not, you can't leverage them to help you get there. Once you know your vision, you now know your priorities. The third key is.

Now you can clearly define with them what does good actually look like. So what is good behavior here look like? So for example, if we're building wealth outside of our business and we know that we want to have, we'll just say $10 million in investable assets in 20 years. We can do calculations to know how much money we need to be saving on an annual basis in order to make that an extremely high probability. So that defines what good looks like.

So that's my area of good. So I know what I have to do to execute that. But then also we now know what good looks like for them because they have to be able to produce that investment returns and minus their fees and net of fees and net of taxes. So we can hold people accountable to that because we've reverse engineered it so far that we even know what good looks like for our people. What I've found is most people don't know what good looks like for their advisors. So they don't know how to hold people accountable to that.

But if you have these conversations, you know where you want to go and you reverse engineer the priorities, you can actually get your advisors to admit what good looks like for them. And you're helping them set the standard for the relationship. And now you have something then to hold them accountable against. Does that make sense?

Sean Patton (36:53)
Yeah, I think so. I think so. So you're, ⁓

by setting that clear goal of where you're headed and backward planning to now, then you're sort of like, am I saying this right? Sort of stress testing where you're having your advisor and you work together to say like, what does that translate into today? Like, what does that look like in terms of like outcome right now?

Justin D Maxwell (37:15)
So if I do this, is that going to get us there? And that would be the definition of good. If this is the behavior we're going to do, are we actually going to reach that? If the answer is no, then what behavior actually is, what actionable, visible behavior actually is going to get us to that destination?

Sean Patton (37:30)
Yeah, okay. I like it. All right, what's four?

Justin D Maxwell (37:32)
And then the fourth one is we use this equation, x plus y equals z. So x is an input, x is we could say, is this what good looks like? We could say y is the time and the effort and energy to get there. Doesn't actually equal that. And the question we hold this to is, are we 90 % confident that if x and y are true, that it will hit z? I have to believe it and my advisor has to believe it. If they say no,

then what needs to change? Does X need to change or does Y need to change? What factors need to be combined together in order for you to have 90 % confidence that will actually hit the target? So that belief of 90 % needs to be had by you, it needs to be had by your advisor, and I'd even propose it needs to be had by your significant other. So everyone's on board with it, not just you, because oftentimes there's one spouse or one...

area that views wealth management and wealth creation much more strongly than the other. But you need to have everyone on the same page. We call this the alignment of business, personal and financial goals that everyone knows that if we perform what good looks like, we can hit our priorities in the timeframe that we need to hit them and we'll hit our end destination with a 90 % confidence. So you're getting so granular with this that it enables you to have all the data you need to lead the team in the direction you need to

Sean Patton (38:53)
think I've seen more often than not if people are really in no matter where they're at sort of financially that values mindset, both limiting beliefs and aspirations, all those things when it comes to finances between partners or spouses is almost always different. Like to see them both have like, yep, that's what we're headed. This is what we both want. It's like, man, I...

I don't know you've seen that a lot, but I have hardly ever seen that. that's such a hard conversation, especially when people are... It's an emotionally charged thing and it's so ingrained in us because of our past experiences around and what we were taught around money. So how do you advise partners to have these types of conversations to get on the same page when it comes to financial decisions?

Justin D Maxwell (39:38)
Yeah. So I want to now pull this back to our beginning of the conversation is if you are both leading the family the way you want it to be led, you're going to come closer and closer together on what you actually wanted to happen because you've created the values based off of what you wanted together. You created the doctrines and mission statements off of what you wanted together. And now you're shining that that's why all of this starts to integrate for me. Like wealth is the accumulation of what happens.

in the home first. And that's the destination, the vision of the spouses are aligned on that destination together before you got to the priorities. But it starts with the leadership of I want to leave my family first to that destination. So to me, that's how you do it. And there's going to be lots of conversation. It's very malleable and it doesn't always align all at once. But I can promise, at least in my family, that as we have keep talking about it and keep

refining it, we keep getting closer and closer and clearer and clearer on where we want to go as a couple and then as a leadership of our family.

Sean Patton (40:42)
I love that. All right, and then think we're one away, right? The last one.

Justin D Maxwell (40:45)
Yeah,

one away is the fifth one is what's in it for everyone. What happens when we win? What happens when we get to the end destination? Because we have to remember that our advisors have hundreds of other clients or thousands of other people they're working with. So how do we get them to buy into our vision just as much as we are bought into it? And the way you can do that is clearly defined for them. If we pull this off, here's where you're going to get from us. You're going to have way more fees.

We might, because for my family specifically, we're going to have a family office in the future. So if you're on board with us this entire time, like I'm going to hire you to be a part of my family office, which means that you're just working for me and you're getting the same exact or even above the salary you're getting with working all with all the other hundreds of people that you're working with. So enticing them to see the vision with you and see that they can win by working and spending their time with you on getting where you.

And I can promise that none of their other clients are doing that. So you will stand out and you'll, cause you're leading them. never get, they never, if I just don't get led, they're always leading everyone else. And this is, you're trying to reverse the table for them and they'll, they'll appreciate that, but help them see how working with you and being on board with you, they can see themselves winning with you.

Sean Patton (41:58)
That's so great. How do you apply these in your own business with the clients you work with?

Justin D Maxwell (42:05)
Yeah, so this is because we, we we do this, we do these services, we do the tax plan and we do the investment management. We people scale their business through acquisition and we help bridge all these pieces together. But our thing that we notice is people still want us to lead them. So they're abdicating responsibility to us. And like, we feel like we can do an extraordinary job and that, the thing that we want, I want our customers to see is that yes, we can lead them for a time, but they need to become the leader once they get a grasp of it.

and once they start feeling empowered to do it. So we're trying to empower our clients to become the leaders of us. And we have the tools and the team to make everything that they want happen possible, but they have to lead us to where they want because we are not them and they have to feel empowered enough that they can take us to where they want to go.

Sean Patton (42:51)
Yeah. Awesome conversation, Justin. I really appreciate it. this has been, one of the more ⁓ unique takes on leadership that I think we've had on the podcast. And I love the integration and the thought process around, leading at home and the values and how that then ties into creating the vision and how that turns into dollars and cents and, leading in all aspects of your life, not just in your thinking about it in terms of business.

but how that plays out in the personal life and the impact you want to make. mean, it really is holistic. So this has been awesome and I really appreciate it.

Justin D Maxwell (43:21)
Yeah, I'll just share one more story and then we can run off with the show. But I was just at that. I was at a mastermind this last weekend and there's a gentleman there, sold his company for nine figures, just extraordinary exit. And he was completely unhappy. He didn't know what he wanted to do. He was burning through cash. Like his wealth was just deteriorating, deteriorating. And he figured it out. And now he teaches people how to mindset shift that. But everything we've talked about today.

The goal of what we're trying to accomplish is to prevent that from happening because you already know what's next. You already have let you thought beyond the next step because you're the leader of your wealth. You're not just the receiving of money. Like it has a purpose beyond what you're already creating. So if you can get that shift that you're the leader of the wealth journey and you're the trajectory changer in your family, you already have thought ahead of what is next. And that's what leaders do. They think beyond just the thing in front of

Sean Patton (44:11)
Amazing. We'll put all the links to you and everything talked about in the show notes. But if someone just wants to reach out to you, like where are you most active? How do they get a hold of you?

Justin D Maxwell (44:21)
I think LinkedIn is the best way to get a hold of me. I'm very active there. I'm happy to have conversations and DMs or have brief conversations with folks that are trying to think differently around this. But Justin D Maxwell, if you just looked in LinkedIn under Justin D Maxwell, you'd find me and I'd be able to have a great conversation with people.

Sean Patton (44:37)
Awesome, well thanks so much, Justin. Have a great day,

Justin D Maxwell (44:40)
Yeah, thank you, Sean. Appreciate it.