How to Become Wealthy w/Greg Luken

Greg Luken joins me in today’s episode discussing how to become wealthy in life. Sharing what he has learned by working with several individuals who are first generation wealth, Greg has defined three key superpowers as the driver of this wealth. 

What you’ll learn in this episode:

✅ How people who didn’t grow up with money built wealth

✅ Financial and emotional challenges on your wealth journey

✅ The three key superpowers to amass wealth

✅ How to stay inspired and focused on your wealth journey

Connect with Greg:

Luken Wealth Management

Unleash Your Financial Superpowers

Facebook

LinkedIn

Ready to Get Clear on Your Retirement Path?

Book your free Confidence Kickstart Call and in just 30 minutes, you’ll know what’s standing between you and retirement, and how to overcome it.

👉 Click here to book your free call now

Or, grab one of my free resources to help you take the first step:

5 Must-Do Steps for Retirement Planning — A simple guide to help you prepare with purpose

Retirement Ready Checklist — Make sure you’re not missing a single step on the road to retirement

Transcript

 Well, Greg, welcome to the podcast. I'm excited to chat with you today as we were just discussing right before I hit record. The way you like to detail stories, and these stories are from your experience of three and a half dec decades. So ready to dive into that. Before we do, tell us who you are, what you do, and what you love.

Ah, great. My name's Greg Luken. What I do is  I help people do what they wanna do. I mean, we can make it sound real complicated, but it, it really gets down to just helping 'em make smart decisions about money so they can do whatever it is they want do. It's interesting just at, at lunch I was talking to somebody I said.

I feel so fortunate because for me there's a blurring of lines between work and play. And, and so as we share, in our office, Hey, what's good news, personally and professionally, I start sharing personal and it ends up being, Hey, yeah, I got this project done. And so what I love to do is I love being outside.

I love to hike. I love to ski. I, I love to, do adventurous sports and and fortunately I, I'm able to do that so. I love that. And I love to work. And, work should be fun. I love to work as well and I'm glad I chose this as a quote job in my retirement years. It just brings me so much joy.

So, to dive into the fact that you primarily work with first generation wealthy, and I think you said you kind of recognized that and then there was some underlying things that you also discovered. So. Let us know what does first generation mean? Who is that and, what are their characteristics, things like that.

Sure. Virtually everyone I've worked with for three and a half decades came from I'll say modest or humble meet, we have a client whose parents were migrant workers, and he was too as a child and, people that had school teachers and, firemen for parents and  people that grew up with what I would call just a normal, middle class upbringing.

But there were something that happened where they had some drive and they became top performing, either top performing professionals or a business owner back. When I was younger, we called them business owners. Now everybody's an entrepreneur, but, but before everybody was an entrepreneur.

It's, they're either entrepreneurs or top performing professionals. And so what ends up happening is there are all these psychological things that show up because these people really have a foot in each world. They have a foot in their old world where you didn't talk about money around the dinner table.

You weren't raised with a silver spoon in your mouth. You had a plastic spork. And one person shared the story that Hey, we lost our house. I ended up couch surfing. My mom moved in with her parents. I slept on friends' couches. And I got out of college, worked my way through college.

I got a job at a firm, became a partner there. And now, 35 years later, I have attorneys and CPAs telling me what states I can't afford to die in. And, so this whole idea that, there are complexities that we didn't talk about around the dinner table. There were things that weren't talked about.

There are these things that show up just. Psychographically, I guess you say that. Like imposter syndrome or, or fomo, the fear of missing out or fomo, the fear of messing up or, you know, the waffle house, hash brown life where you're scattered, smothered, and all covered up. You got, you know, aging parents, you got kids, you're trying to help them adult, you've got a career to manage and you're trying to have a life somewhere in there.

So there are all these things going on and then. I didn't grow up knowing about, we didn't talk about private equity or 10 35 exchanges, or 10 31 tax free exchanges or section 25 0 2 there. Nobody knew anything about the tax code 'cause it didn't really affect us. And so it's  really fun to me because it's a really.

Tangible way to help people who have moved literally from one world into another. It's like other people talking to me and they're like, well, how did it work for them? And how did they get there? And why, what, why them?

Why not me? Why them type of thing. And so we know they've worked hard. They weren't, it wasn't inherited, but what would you say was different about them? How were they to able to get past the FOMO or that fomo, like you said, to reach their actual place of, you know, wealth? One of the distinctions we make is there's a difference between wealth and riches.

Riches. There's when you know, the paycheck comes in and, you've got money to spend on whatever it is, and everybody can see that you have money to spend wealth is when you store it. And so wealth is not really a factor of someone's income. I've known people we had a client who at the height of his career.

Made $36,000 of income and retire. He retired before age 50 and was continuing to save money because he was so frugal and he lived on a fraction of what he made. So one of those factors is that they are continually living significantly below their means. Another factor is. That they're able to do that because they've identified what we call the three superpowers.

And so they are able to use those three superpowers to overcome the things that get in their way, overcome the hurdles, and stay on track because they have a clear sense of where they're going. It's like, wow, so good. But I, I love that you brought up the difference between riches and wealth.

And I also believe wealth is, it is what you keep and it's what you have monetarily, but it's also who is there with you, and it comes in a lot of different forms. So I think that's equally important. But the thing I want to ask you, since we talked about.  All of the tax code and all of those numbers and all of those things, you know, it's like you only know what you know, but how did these individuals gain the knowledge they needed to, boost themselves, to move themselves forward?

Yes, Daley. Is it all right if I talk about the three superpowers? 'cause I think that really ties into answering this question, and I'm not, yeah, I'm not trying to take the long way around, but, but really kind of get to the heart of the issue. The three superpowers we identify, which are, they're not gonna sound like rocket surgery.

Number one is the power of purpose. Number two is the power of plan. And number three is the power of execution. So. If you think about purpose or your deep why, or you know, what is that? What is that magnetic that magnetic force that, that north star and  I can't help but think of the show The Biggest Loser and at the beginning of, I haven't seen it for a while, but at the beginning of the, the seasons that I saw, the shows that I saw, they would ask me, well, why do you wanna lose this weight? What struck me was the answer was never. So I can brag about how great my body looks. It's not about, so everybody will look at me.

It's, it always ended up being some answer about somebody else because I. I wanna be healthy enough to walk my daughter down the aisle when she graduates high school, or when she gets married or I wanna do this for my wife or my husband so that I'm really there to enjoy that time with them.

So it's that sense of why that sense of purpose is whether you call it an anchor or a North star. It is that sense of why then the power of plan. I know I need a plan. I don't know what the plan needs to be, but finding someone to help them get a plan, whether it's for budgeting or whatever.

As you know from, from your coaching business. The hardest time to make a money decision is right in the midst of when you have to make a money decision because cognitively it takes so much energy to make that decision. And there's so many things coming at you emotionally and, if you're able to make the decision previously so that you have a step by step.

Concrete plan of action, it's much easier. It's like going to the gym and saying, today is upper body day and I'm gonna go do some upper body workout. You'll probably get a workout and it may be okay. However, when you go in with an exercise plan or go in, even better, go in with a coach who says, alright, here's what we're gonna do to warm up.

We're gonna do these five exercises, do three rounds, then what we're gonna do is we're gonna do three setss of 10 reps of, and it's all spelled out, and you don't have to think. All you have to do is. Complain to the coach, I'm tired. And they say, okay, take another five seconds and give me 10 more pushups.

And it is that kind of concrete plan where you don't have to think cognitively. It's laid out for you ahead of time. Just like you know how you may help coach people on budgeting where? I don't have to get to the restaurant and then decide, what am I, you already know ahead of time. Here's the game plan.

And then that third piece that the power of consistent execution is, we know we're all human, we're all gonna fall off the wagon, we're all gonna get bucked out of the saddle. And so do you have a process in place to say, okay. You messed up, but that was yesterday. It's today. Dust yourself off, get back on track, let's get going.

And so having those three pieces where you've got the clear sense of where you're going, the step-by-step plan of action to get there, and a game plan, call it a, a safety net for when you fall off plan, how you're gonna get back on and what all these people have done is been able to. Either have a team or or at least allow themselves to be coached.

For years, I wished I had a mentor and I was in business and I said, well, it must be because this business is really competitive or you know, there's a lot of professional jealousy or something. And looking back on it now after a few decades, yeah. The more likely cause may have been, I may not have been coachable.

And so getting to that point where I'm coachable, I think has allowed me to really help other people. And it's through those relationships. We can really make that lasting change because that's what helps us have that game plan. That's what helps us get back on track and helps us remember what is that centering power of why, or that power of purpose.

Yeah. I love how you brought up the fact that we all fall off, absolutely. Have stumbling blocks, whatever it is. But I think, going back to that power of plan, you have that plan and so, that idea of getting back on you just like, well, here I was, and you just keep going.

I think that's important for people to realize that we are not bulletproof, we are not, you know, perfect. No one, even those who have amassed a certain amount of wealth . Right. So I love that and I love your powers, the power of purpose plan and execution, and as you were describing those, those are.

The exact steps I took as I set myself in to be able to retire, before the age of 50 and I waited till I was 50. But I had my reason, I had my purpose. That kept out the fomo. I could have cared less what everybody else was doing 'cause I knew what I wanted. 

Those three powers allow you to focus on you. Getting what you want for the reasons that are important to you. I have kids and I was, talking to one of 'em who was talking about,  I really want this kind of watch, and why do you want this kind of, well, 'cause it's really cool, but it's expensive and da da da.

And  here's an example of. There's nothing wrong with having that watch. You can have, you know, you can get that watch, but there is, please understand why you want the watch. Is it because you need to tell time? Because if so, don't you have a clock on your phone?

Don't you have a, a cheap Cassio wristwatch. Yes. And you want this watch that costs a few thousand dollars and it's because of what it signals that I fit in. We all have some way of doing that. Right. And, so it's not, I'm not making a value judgment on it.

I'm just saying it's important to understand. Why, and, and when you have that clear sense of your own inner why, then you can, decide, whether that watch is important or not. And it, and it may be still you just may love the, the design, the aesthetic of it, and, and that's okay.

But it is just interesting. We all make so many money decisions sometimes for reasons that we don't even know. I always try to tell people,  it doesn't matter. Like you're saying, have your purpose. Be able to defend your purpose. Because if you can defend your purpose, you're not gonna second guess yourself.

You're not gonna go, oh, well, I'm doing it wrong, or going to somewhere else. You're willing to stick to that plan and execute it.  So, all right. How did you get started as a financial advisor? Well it's one of my, one of my favorite stories.

I got outta college after kind of a circuitous path. I didn't get out in four years and dropped out and worked for a while, but, I had a couple corporate jobs, bought some real estate. I dug a really deep hole and eventually got to the point where my goal was to work my way up to zero.

I wanted to get from negative numbers to up to zero.  And in doing that, I also had a distant relative who owned a he was an independent financial advisor and I thought that sounded interesting and, for years and kind of thought about that. So I started interviewing. I got rejection letters from.

Very storied names on Wall Street about why I didn't have  the core competencies to be successful. I think a lot of that had to do with just having a proclivity for sales that wasn't my strong suit. But I found somebody that let me get started. I started as a stockbroker in the early nineties, started writing some code to help make better decisions that.

Code worked out pretty well. We still use a quantitative approach built on, on that the foundation of that initial algorithm. And it's been improved over the years. And started a broker dealer, started a register. Investment advisor was a. Founding member, initial shareholder of a pricing platform for non-standardized derivatives.

Derivatives. So we've done some, kind of. Nerdy things along the way. And subscription service for financial advisors for quantitative portfolio. We've done several things along the way, but  our core is, is working with first gen wealth and everything else really supports that.

But, it's interesting, I've been in this industry for quite some time, and yet what I do now doesn't really resemble what I did 30 years ago just because of the evolution of the industry. And I think things have gotten a lot more complex. Oh, most definitely.

Yeah, I was chatting, I think I was with my husband. He gets tired of listening to me. I understand that, but I'm telling him all of these reasons why you're probably the only one. Why different generations struggle with saving, but it's really these products, right? Like 4 0 1 Ks to my parent were like, what?

They didn't educate me. My dad did. I shouldn't say that, but you know, it's like this passing along. I remember when the Roth came out and the HSA and I was like, what? You know, and so I have to go through this education period where the next generation, you have the millennials just adopting it like crazy.

I have worked with clients who still want to do the check register and they have to balance it to the T and I'm like, we have digital ways of checking in, making sure we have no fraud, making sure everything's gone through, and we've gotta simplify it because it is there.

So yeah, for you to have amassed over the, three and a half decades is just amazing. So. If somebody is looking to work with you, if they're a first gen, maybe they're like, oh yeah, I'm doing pretty well. How can they reach you? And what does that look like? Thank you for asking. Our website is luen.pro, L-U-K-E-N dot PRO.

And there's contact form on there. And that starts with a discovery call just. Figuring out what's going on and, and seeing if we can help people on that, on that first call or point 'em in the right direction. Sometimes it's, they just have questions, need a sounding board, and so make sure we're getting them in pointed in the right direction.

And then if it makes sense we start with a what we call a wealth roadmap, which helps lay out somebody's deep why. You know, that sense of purpose that really everything else falls under. And then, really clarifying some goals and and timeframes and that's a good way to get started.

If you think of it this way, making good decisions about our money at whatever level is really about the same kind of. Fundamental factors is, is running a good business,  do you have more coming in than you have going out? Do you have a game plan so that you don't have stress?  Running your own money, running your portfolio is really like running a good business.

It's there are some checks and balances in place. You have controls in place, you have a process in place, and it's not just going willy-nilly. Yeah. That's very good advice. Thank you listeners connect with him, especially if you're interested, maybe to discuss further this first gen wealth, maybe that is you reach out to him.

What an amazing feat for these people to have reached that and. How honoring for you and rewarding for you to be able to work with them. Thank you very much. It was a pleasure. And we're really excited about unleash your financial superpowers that is  coming out.

That's right, your book. So links for all of his information, including that book, will be down in the show notes. Grab that and schedule that discovery call. Thank you, Greg. Thank you so much. Have a great day.