Episode 140: Continuing With the Core Values and Alignment From the Clarity Compass.

Imagine a tool that can pinpoint the very essence of what drives your decisions—from the significant financial ones to the seemingly trivial daily choices. Our latest episode introduces the Clarity Compass, an innovative approach that starts with a simple card game to help uncover and prioritize your core values. This journey is about more than just identifying what matters; it's about transforming those values into a guiding force that leads to enhanced personal joy and fulfillment. We also confront common hurdles like the hesitance to invest in oneself and reveal how aligning financial decisions with personal values can be profoundly empowering.

For entrepreneurs grappling with the work-play balance, we explore how defining play can transform both personal and professional relationships. Whether it's seeking adventure or finding peace, understanding what play means to you—and your partners—can strengthen bonds and lead to healthier dynamics. Through engaging stories, like Jim's trip to Ireland or the journey of our client Dorothy, we underscore the power of supporting each other's values and embracing the uniqueness that each person brings to a relationship. 

Moreover, we unveil the art of crafting a financial plan that resonates with your core values. Dorothy's inspiring tale of newfound independence and enriched family connections shines a light on the potential of aligning financial resources with personal aspirations. Join us as we equip you with strategies to translate your personal aspirations into a life of intention and fulfillment through the process we call, "The Clarity Compass." 

Chapter Summaries:

(00:00) Discovering Your Core Values
The Clarity Compass helps identify core values, align financial resources, and make intentional decisions for personal fulfillment.

(08:44) Understanding Play and Individual Values
Play is important for entrepreneurs to define individually, support in partnerships, and embrace unique contributions.

(15:59) Creating a Life-Altering Financial Plan
An elderly woman's transformative journey through health, freedom, family, and relationships with the help of technology and financial resources.

(26:58) Blueprinting Financial Goals and Action Steps
Creating a blueprint helps achieve personal and financial goals by translating values into actionable steps.

You can learn more about The Whole Wealth Journey by visiting The Gebhardt Group. You can follow us on Instagram @thewholewealthjourney

Transcript

[00:00:00] What Clarity Compass ultimately does, whether it's health, freedom, fun, family, whatever your four words are that best describe your relationship with people, passion, play, and prosperity. It allows us then to develop a game plan of how does this show up in your life? What does this look like in your life?

And if it's not in your life, how do we go get it?

Welcome to the whole wealth journey. Ooh, that means it's podcast day. It is. What are we gonna talk about? I don't know What do you want to talk about today? I want to talk about the concept of being intentional with your money. Maybe like wealth with a Y and Wealth with a Y. Not a funny spelling. But, W H Y, what are we doing with the money [00:01:00] and why?

Well, that's a great idea. So, how about we tell people who we are and Oh, yeah. Jim Gebhardt. Matthew Grishman. We are the co creators of The Whole Wealth Journey. Are you an entrepreneur who wants more from your money than just more money? If you are, you're in the right spot. You are now part of The Whole Wealth Journey.

Let's go. Now it's time to get into the next big diagnostic tool here in the whole vision space and probably the most important part of the work that we do. And that's what we call the Clarity Compass. So is that like a thing I order on Amazon or what is it? You can. In fact, you could go get the cards that we use on Amazon.

They're called What's a card game? It's a card game. We, we start with a card game, but the, the whole idea of this exercise is to help you. Really drill down on the couple of key values that drive nearly [00:02:00] every decision you ever make. Consciously or subconsciously, every decision you ever make is going to be driven by a certain set of values, a certain set of principles, a certain set of ideals that you hold yourself to.

Which you're making those decisions on a daily basis. Every day. This is just more of an awareness, bringing it very forward in your sphere of consciousness. Yes. And I think we've worn out the word intentionality, but we're going to keep wearing it out. Because now it's, once you go through this exercise, now you're going to have a lens by which to make decisions.

Yes. Why do we go through this process? Yes. is to give you the tool, the lens, the capability, when it starts to come to making big money decisions. Uh, not if I'm having the filet or the chicken, right? But if we're moving or remodeling or whatever, the big financial decision might be. Well, so the decision of whether to have the filet or chicken is definitely a decision for me, that's influenced by the Clarity Compass.

Now that health. Is numero [00:03:00] uno. Is numero uno. In my list of values. Yeah, and we'll get into like, what does that mean to me? Because the word health is just a word. Yeah, that's a big category But there's a certain application to what that means in my life How that comes out in my life and definitely deciding on the chicken versus the filet when I really really want the filet But The chicken is what my clarity compass is telling me I should be having for dinner tonight.

Right? I, I'm not trying to pick on a silly little nitnoid example. No, it, I get it. It does it, it has implications to the biggest financial decisions I make all the way down to these tiny little, what am I gonna have for dinner decisions. It can, so how do we do this with clients? Do we put on like flowy robes and get out the crystal ball and burn incense or, I mean, what are we doing?

Well, let me prove something here. Stop for a second. What are the four most important values in your life? Go. Do you know? Can you do it like that? Can you just spit out, Oh, these are the four most important things in my [00:04:00] life. These are what drive every decision. Now some people might be able to pause and think about that for a minute, but we have a really cool tool that allows you to go deep and really put some fine point definition to not only what those values are, but how they show up in your life.

Where are they present in your life? And then ultimately, how are those values connected to your financial resources? Yeah. And maybe it's a value that's really important. That's been neglected, forgotten, or too scared to kind of put it front and center. Yep. That's a huge aha discovery in this process is realizing that I have a certain value or two like health that I'm not honoring in my life, that I'm not.

Using financial resources to support or giving myself permission to use financial resources Like hiring [00:05:00] a personal trainer because they're so expensive. A good one is a good one It's really expensive. Well, you work with an amateur. Well, if you think a professional is expensive Wait, do you see how much it costs you to hire an amateur good one?

But that's kind of the point is that for years I wasn't able to give myself permission To do certain things because they're expensive. And when I get clear on how important that value is to my life, to my joy, to my happiness, to my mere existence, well all of a sudden now it becomes a no brainer. And because, I don't know about you, I have a really, really, really fast forgetter.

I'm a quick start, right? Colby taught me I'm a quick start. I learn quick. I make decisions quickly. But I also forget very quickly. And sometimes I need something, a tool, to remind me. And that's what the Clarity Compass and the Action Plan that goes with it provides. So we start, and we're not going to give it all the way here today, because this is, you know, this is [00:06:00] what you and I do.

But in effect, we start with a simple card game where we're looking at 50 or so different words, different concepts that, generally speaking, Are all fairly important. Yeah. And what we do is we go through several rounds of elimination of trying to get from concepts and values that are important to concepts and values and principles that are priorities in our life.

There are lots of things that could be important, but what's a priority now? Because the past is the past and we gotta figure that out. Work to stop hoping for a better one of those because it is what it is and the future isn't here yet. It's a fictional movie reel of what ifs and maybes that when it gets here generally is nothing like what we thought it was going to be.

So how do we identify of all the things that are potentially important to the past, the present, and the future? What's a priority today? And [00:07:00] even within those things that are priorities, Can we whittle that down to a couple of very essential, like, these are the things, life and death, I can't be without.

Right. And when we identify what those are, creating the plan of how these show up in life, how these become financial goals, and how we need an accountability team around us to keep us connected to them. Well, one of them ultimately becomes the true north, right? Absolutely. One of the essential principles becomes the anchor by which, you know, everything else is, is focused.

Once we get the four, there's going to be one that kind of holds them all up. And thematically, we've, we see it over and over and over, right? I would say it's family, love, connection, right? However Something in that world. Something in those, in that. [00:08:00] You know, neighborhood. Yep. Health is usually on the list.

Yep. Then it's a whole, you know, bag of donuts after that. Yep. It's wide open. Yep. We've seen wealth. We've seen fun. We've seen safety. We've seen beauty. We've seen, I mean, we've seen, we've seen it all. Yeah. But I would say thematically, somewhere in that family, love, and health are two of the four or five.

Well, okay. So. Yeah. Cool. We're going to let people in on a little secret right now. Oh, I thought I just did. You, you did, but we're going to go even deeper on the secret. Ah. So shh, don't tell anyone. There are four cornerstones to your true wealth. Are there not? Well, most buildings need four cornerstones.

Okay. So as we're I would tend to agree with you. As we're constructing and building and creating and crafting this whole wealth journey that we take individual entrepreneurs and their families and their teams through, We start as we did a couple episodes by describing these four cornerstones of our whole wealth.

And those four [00:09:00] cornerstones are people, passion, play, and prosperity. Well, holy moly. What do you think the four core values we've uncovered? It's not to say we're going to find somebody who has a core value that's outside of that, but generally speaking, out of the 52 words, That we're presenting in this process Four words are going to represent those four cornerstones of your life.

Yes It's just a matter of how you define the word, right? It's not our words. It's your word. It's your words. So our words are people passion play and prosperity right your words might be connection work Adventure and financial security. Mm hmm, right and It's what your words are to you, and then how that shows up in your life.

The power is in the word as it applies to the client. Absolutely. Yeah. The power is not only in the word, but [00:10:00] also in how that word shows up in your life. And whether or not you feel like you have enough of that, We shared this when we first discovered these four concepts and that one of the things we often spend a lot of time developing throughout this process is the play category, right?

How do we go out and just create laughter and enjoyment in our lives? And most entrepreneurs struggle to do that because we're always thinking about work, work, work, work, work, work, work. And our play is our work. And if I'm going to play, I'm going to be working while I play. I love to play golf, but if I'm going to be playing golf, it's going to be with prospective clients or.

Right? It's all about work, work, work, work, work. So we developed that play. What does it look like to you? Is it a sense of adventure? Is it, you know, what, what does it look like? Is it, is it peace and quiet? Is it meditation and a walk in the woods? I mean, is it jumping out of airplanes and have hair blowing adrenaline activities in my life?

That concept of play is, That's a huge [00:11:00] part of life 3. 0. It's a specific concept, but it's a very broad brush that could mean a lot, a lot of different things. I mean, you and I, as business partners have very different definitions of what play look like. There are things we love to do together. Yes. And then there are things we love to do individually.

Well, does that ever happen in a marriage? Are there two people that are ever The healthiest marriages Can do things separately. Well, and this is where this becomes a very, very important exercise is because when you're not aware of this and you are stuck in kind of one of those good old fashioned codependent relationships where you do complete me, well then all of a sudden now if you don't want to do what I want to do and I don't want to do what you want to do, we kind of get in this place of being stuck.

I've seen it with very close members of my family where. You know, the one wanted to do this and travel and the other one didn't. And consequently, the other one didn't travel. [00:12:00] Right. Yet here we are in a partnership with somebody that we want to be with. So, if we can spend some time working with you and your partner at helping you both see the values that each individual possesses, every single situation I have ever had working with a client, and I think you would, I don't want to speak for you, but I think you would agree with me because we do do this together quite a bit.

There are always one or two values that overlap. Oh, yeah, every partnership, right? We did this with ace and teresa here in studio, right? We did this in in the old version of the show back in the financial sobriety days But it was really cool to watch Two people who've been together for so many years learn something about each other see where they have overlap where there's a sense of us But not get lost in this sense of me that still exists.

There's still You A him a her and an us. Yeah, there are still two individuals and an us this third Person in the room [00:13:00] that we can really honor when we Support one another's means when we see what's important to each other and can be supportive of it I'm in my head the whole time you're telling that tale with my recent adventure to ireland in july where It was actually beth You That was pushing me to do it yet.

She wouldn't be caught dead with you on that trip, right? That's not something she would want to know. She has no interest in it. Right. And she was like, honey, you've got to do this. Right. This isn't a weekend in wherever. This is a big ticket item in terms of the travel and the golf and the time and the time away.

It didn't have to be two weeks. That was, that was also her fault. Where she's like, you're almost all the way to Barcelona. You should go see grace. Different value. Very different. Beth was helping support your sense of adventure. And family. And family. Yeah. Absolutely. So I'm in my head the whole time you're talking about that because, you know, without that accountability [00:14:00] partner or a spouse that is understanding of that, right?

She could have been. That's a lot of money. That's a lot of time. That's coming straight out of our landscape budget. But no, no, no she did honest to God. She didn't even bat an eye. She's like you need to you need to go Yeah, my favorite favorite favorite client we ever Ever did this with and it not that she became my favorite client The experience was my favorite experience was unbelievable.

Yeah, we're gonna call her Dorothy today Dorothy was a single woman You In her 70s who had experienced a significant, uh, traumatic health event. It left her unable to do a lot of the things she was once able to do. It left her less than mobile. Uh, and it also left her with this incredible death grip on our money.

She had plenty of money, plenty of money, a couple million bucks, [00:15:00] liquid. She owned a bunch of real estate. I mean, she plenty of money, but yet she lived. Death grip is an excellent. description. Right. And she lived in absolute squalor. Squalor. Awful. I mean, just awful. And she has two adult children that were somewhat supportive and then two grandchildren.

One of her daughters had two sons to her two grandsons. And as we got to know her, trying to help her see how she could use some of her assets. to live better, to take care of herself better. Just, she was not interested in that conversation whatsoever until we started down the Clarity Compass path. And to offer her a simple card game which would help us identify some financial goals, Was a lot easier way to start the conversation about how to take better care of herself and how to utilize her financial resource.

Yeah, being the hammer and going right and just telling her once for us over [00:16:00] the head and that and that's something you and I have learned in our position is that it's not really our job to tell you what to do with your money or to give you permission. To use your money. And that's why we created this tool, the Clarity Compass, because it becomes something that we hold you accountable to using and referencing when you want to make big financial decisions, right?

Our phone rings all the time. with clients asking our opinion about a financial decision they need to make, and in many cases, asking for our permission. I mean, you reminded me that this was a five year old story now. Right. The couple that sat in the conference room and said, you know, so, uh, Bob and I are really, our 50th wedding anniversary is next spring, and we've really talked about taking the family to Paris.

Do you think, what do you think of that? Is that okay? And I, I thought to myself, you know, okay, well, let's, Clarity Compass being what it was, it wasn't like the ideal time to go, you know, bring that out. But I just asked kind of a qualifying question, well, how [00:17:00] many more 50th wedding anniversaries are you going to have?

And with that, they booked the trip. And the Clarity Compass probably helped decide who goes on that trip with them. Yeah. In this case, it was, there are two adult children. One had a wife, the other one was single. And the five of them had a blast. And I even. They even sent you ready for this. When was the last time you got one of these a postcard?

Oh Uh the last time I got a postcard Was it from you when you were in Spain? Somebody just sent us a postcard not that long ago. I wasn't that generous. Oh, okay. Uh, it was too hot to, uh, I mean, the ink would have melted all over the postcard. Yeah, there you go. So, I mean, yes, this tool. Oh, Amy's brother sent us a postcard from Italy from their summer trip.

Thank you. Nice. There you go. He's more thoughtful. It's a wonderful lens by which to help make decisions. Yes. And has Dorothy. progressed with the exercise, we got it down to her four [00:18:00] essentials were health, freedom, fun, and family. Well, and let's break that down and what that looked like in her life. So from a health perspective, she was immobile and she had a nurse.

Well, she could, She could walk, but she needed, she needed help. She couldn't get out of that. She couldn't leave the house. She couldn't leave the house by herself. Right. Couldn't drive. Right. Yet. Yet. And what this kind of helped us with was, okay, you, you have this woman coming into your house to help you out a little bit.

And Dorothy got this bright idea of seeing how health could show up more in her life and how her money could support that is, well, this, this aid who comes into my house, maybe. Maybe she could go out and buy some weights that we could work on together. Because she's told me she would do this with me, but I was just so afraid of spending any of the money.

But gosh, I mean, she could help me get stronger. And if I could get [00:19:00] stronger, I might actually be able to get out there in the world on my own a little bit more. And in that concept of wanting to have some freedom, We introduced her, we're in, you know, here in the, in the Bay Area. We introduced her to the concept of Uber Assist.

Right. And she'd never heard of it. And we explained to her that this is a, this is a ride sharing tool that would assist her from the door to the car, take her where she wants to go. Help her out of the car to the door of where she was going. Could she call Uber Assist on the little flip phone that she had when she came into the office that day?

Nice tagline. No, sir. Uh huh. Because she literally had a flip phone. She did. And when we started talking about Uber Assist, that was the question she asked. Oh, where's the phone number for Uber? Mm hmm. It's called an app. Yes. Which triggered what? Well, The reason she's still at a flip phone is because she refused to spend the money on these egregious things [00:20:00] called smartphones that are like 1, 000.

What a waste of money, because all I need to do is make a phone call. But when we were able to connect the dots to how Uber Assist and an iPhone could potentially allow freedom, which was very important to her. It was one of those values that meant everything in the world to her her ability to move about the country Which she was not able to do Figuring out that this was a value that didn't exist in your life and repositioning some of your assets to support that freedom By spending some money on a damn iphone and getting the uber app Would give her that freedom a new capability, right?

How am I going to learn how to use the iphone? one of the things that she shared with us that was so frustrating was There was a little bit of, uh, stress in the relationship with one of her adult daughters who happened to be the mother of her two grandsons and she struggled to spend time with the grandsons.

What a great [00:21:00] suggestion you made to her when you said, hey, there's nothing young boys like to do more than show grandma how to use technology. Talk about a great way to interact with your grandsons. And spend time together. Spend time, invite them over so that they can show you how to use this gadget.

They will train you because nowadays kids come out of the womb. With knowledge on how to use a smartphone. So take advantage of that. So that would be both a bit of fun, but then in the family category, it was going to be connecting her with two of the most important people in her life that she really didn't get to spend very much time with.

Well, and the fun value was the best. I know. I'm just teeing that up. That was the best. So she has a boyfriend. We'll call him Donnie. And Dorothy and Donnie had gotten to a point, this is a 30 year relationship, right? This is the love of her life. And they just, they never really got married. They just had a real happy relationship the way it was.

Didn't live together. They didn't live together. And [00:22:00] unfortunately, due to her lack of mobility, their weekly dates became Donnie coming over to the house to help her do the bills. To pay the bills. And then he would leave and that was kind of it. And that's how they spent time once a week together. Well, What all of this having an iPhone now allows her to do, as she said to us, is wait a minute.

I'm gonna call Donnie. I'm gonna be stronger. I'm gonna be stronger because of my health. So now I can I can now go out and explore a little bit more. I can get my, with my iPhone, I can get my Uber Assist. So I'm, you know what? I'm going to go pick up Donnie. I'm going to take him out to dinner on a date night, and then I'm going to take him to bed and quote, quote, end quote, end quote.

And Holy cow. I think you fell out of your chair and I caught myself before I did. The, I mean, this is a woman or a seventies life today. It's one of the most shocking [00:23:00] things I've ever, I mean, I've heard a lot of shocking things on TV, but in my conference room, that was one of the most shocking things I'd ever heard.

And to have somebody not only. Give us a little bit of TMI because, you know, here we are with Dorothy kind of picturing this and it was kind of funny. Ha ha but to see how quickly she connected the dots and Loosen the death grip on her money to see how these values can show up in her life was Magical it was mad.

It was absolutely magical Absolutely, and as you may recall She left because her, her friend that brought her to the meeting that was driving for her. As you may recall, they left our office and drove not even a mile down the road to the Verizon store. Yes, she got it right away. And bought the phone.

Going back to your law of diminishing intent. Yep. They went out of the office. So motivated to spend a thousand dollars on a phone. Are you kidding me? This woman When a thousand dollars was a [00:24:00] thousand dollars. It was a thousand dollars. It was absolutely breathtaking to witness. It was awesome. It was so awesome.

So What Clarity Compass ultimately does, whether it's health, freedom, fun, family, whatever your four words are that best describe your relationship with people, passion, play, and prosperity. It allows us then to develop a game plan of how does this show up in your life? What does this look like in your life?

And if it's not in your life, how do we go get it? Who is going to be your accountability partner, and how much time do you need to get the anchor off the bottom an inch and get this thing in motion? Yeah. Not done, but in motion. No, calling the estate planning attorney. Correct. And this is where you and I kind of drop the hammer a little bit.

And expect that there's an action that's happening within the next 24 hours. And that's on the action plan. One of the columns [00:25:00] is because of the law of diminishing intent, what action specific are you going to take in the next 24 hours to honor these values? This is an exercise that has become invaluable because what it does is it sets the whole stage for what's next in the planning process, where we kind of come out of the ethosphere of this unique.

Aspect of financial planning and the whole wealth journey. We come out of the fog in the mountains. We come out of the fog in the mountains. We come down from the 30, 000 feet and now we get to work. We get back into life. We get back into society and we start using these values to discover goals, to discover direction, to discover how our money needs to serve us going forward.

Now, soon, later, and potentially never. that ultimately starts building a legacy for generations to come. This exercise has been a game changer. It has allowed our clients to transformative. They, they develop a whole [00:26:00] new sense of confidence. They, they're clear on where they want to go. And, and there's a sense of capability that I get to make decisions that I feel good about less second guessing, less emotion, less dependency on their financial advisors or their CPAs to give them them.

You know, the answer totally breaks that codependent relationship with your advisors in that all of a sudden now you're a team that co creates this future rather than you being told this is how your money is going to serve you and this is how you can spend it and this is what you have to invest it in.

It's such an incredible co creative process. I wouldn't want to do it any different. I'm grateful we get to play in this space. Yes. I'm grateful that we get to spend our time having this kind of impact, because if somebody just wants more money, you lost me. Yeah, that was what that silence was for. Yeah, that little gap in the action there was, was, I don't, you're not my person.

Yes. We want people that are willing to play. [00:27:00] And willing to play, In areas that may they may feel a little uncomfortable initially Yeah, but we're the guides on the river where you're fishing. This isn't our first rodeo doing this stuff. We've done hundreds of these and Our ability to be able to help guide somebody through this process and then see the transformation that they go through ha ha ha It's it's so fulfilling to me.

I could do this till My last breath. Yeah, this is a very unique entrepreneur that you and I love spending time with and I'm so grateful that you and I have developed the discipline and the desire to say no, a lot more than we say yes, especially when it comes to, Oh, it did. Oh, come on. We had a business to run and we had babies to feed, but now we're at a point in life where you and I have developed a skill set, our own unique abilities, and we have a vision for How we see entrepreneurial success for ourselves and for others.

So what we've created for ourselves is what we feel we want to [00:28:00] share with others. And this is just simply the process of how we created this for ourselves. So if you want to live like us, and you want what we have, and you're willing to do what we've done to get it, You're in the right place. Absolutely.

And we're excited to spend more time with you. Absolutely. So, what's coming up next, brother? We got a little more, uh, teaching to do here in another episode or two? Or three? Or ten? Or twenty? Well, what's coming up is the blueprint. Ooh. What does that make you think of? Plans. Remodeling. Construction. There we go.

Plans. I can hear the background noise already. Right? Yeah. All the hammering and Well, you can't do any of that without the blueprint. Right. Right. Right. And that becomes the action plan, right? That becomes how, one of the big questions clients always have is how? How are we going to, blah, blah, blah, blah.

Well, this is the how. This is now the action steps that are going to take you from leaving our conference room to go taking the action on these different [00:29:00] core values that are now so essential in your life. And turning them into financial goals. Financial goals. And accomplishables. Accomplishables, whether they are buying an iPhone.

Or calling the travel agent, or calling the estate attorney, or calling the personal trainer. Right? When people used to make phone calls. Right. Telephone calls, as you like to say. Right. At our friends at American Finance. Those are some of what's coming next. Now that we've got greater clarity on what is the mission, where is the client headed?

Yeah, what's critical to me? Who am I? Where am I? Where do I want to go? And why? Now we're actually going to start to create that blueprint. How? And there might be some more who's along the way too. Sure. Stick around to find out. Because with that, brother, that's a wrap. Hey, thanks for joining us today on the Whole Wealth Journey.

It absolutely means the world to us that you would invest time to spend with us. If you liked what you heard today, like, subscribe, and please leave us a comment. We would love to [00:30:00] hear what you thought about today's episode. And better yet, ask us a question and we'll get back to you. See you next time on the Whole Wealth Journey.

Jim Gebhardt is a registered representative of and securities offered through Brokers International Financial Services LLC, member SIPC. Jim Gebhardt and Matthew Grishman are investment advisor representatives of Gebhardt Group Incorporated, a registered investment advisor. Brokers International Financial Services LLC and Gebhardt Group Incorporated are not affiliated.

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Opinions expressed on this program do not necessarily reflect those of Brokers International Financial Services, LLC. The topics discussed and opinions given are [00:31:00] not intended to address the specific needs of any listener. Gebhardt Group Incorporated does not offer legal or tax advice. Listeners are encouraged to discuss their financial needs with the appropriate professional regarding your individual circumstance.