Wealth Coaching

Hello from Lake Placid, New York. I’m skiing Whiteface on a weekday. The mountain has 3,400 feet of vertical, the most in the northeast.

As usual, I’ve been doing many things. I’m working on a season of podcast episodes I’m excited to share in the coming weeks.

I’ve been going hard in finance and investing for the past few months, paying close attention to the businesses I own, the macro-environment, and making changes to my portfolio. Naturally, I wrote and shared three essays about finance.

I’ve also been working as a writing coach, helping people tell their stories, go deeper, and share with the world. It’s been great. I love it. I often find it easier and more rewarding to help others than to help myself.

A friend told me that he invested in a company, and it went to the moon. I forwarded him intel that suggested it could be a good time to consider selling that company’s shares. He sold, and it crashed.

At a party, we talked at length about finance. He asked me, Can I just pay you to teach me what I need to know about investing?

I said, Yeah, we could do that.

I’ve been working as a coach for five years. First in skiing, then mountain biking, then writing coaching.

It took about two hours to create V1 of wealth coaching.

We launched today. It went great. He went from not knowing what market cap means to grasping the relationship between P/E ratio and interest rates, in about an hour. These are fundamental requirements for being a successful investor. The next step is to take action to internalize how these concepts help us never lose money, which is rule number 1.

Years ago I took a college finance class taught that risk is volatility, but it’s more useful to think of risk as not knowing what you’re doing. Increasing knowledge, doing due diligence, decreases risk.

I told two people what I’m up to in regard to wealth coaching, and both indicated interest in signing up. It occurred to me that skiing, mountain biking, and writing coaching are nice-to-haves. Wealth is more of a need-to-have.

It’s sort of silly that I didn’t think to do this earlier. But, I finally feel I’m ready for it, after 9 years in the finance arena.

Back in business school, I was less than impressed with the finance classes. I struggled to find other students as interested in investing in businesses as I was. I created a video course on investing in businesses, and gave it to one of my classmates for free. He completed the course and thanked me for it. I then graduated early and went into ski coaching and building solar roofs for Tesla, among other things.

At the end of the first wealth coaching session, the client asked if I had any homework for him. I suggested things including creating a spreadsheet overview of his financial situation. Afterward, I remembered the video course that I made 6 years earlier. I searched my drive, and there it was, still as relevant as ever.

That’s basically how you start a business with trying, grinding, or advertising. Help people until they ask to pay you.

Financial education is generally abysmal. This friend/coaching client went to “good” schools for 20 years and is a math teacher. Somehow no one told him essential information about wealth creation. It’s weird that financial illiteracy has been normalized. The education gap is a main driver of the increasing wealth gap.

I’m happy to share what I’ve learned and help people never lose money.

Coaching is underrated. The generation above me has internalized the value of coaching for sports, but not for other things like health, wealth, relationships or creating.

I think the demand for coaching will grow.

Schools are a not teaching what we need to be healthy, wealthy, and well. Legacy credentialed professionals are in short supply, expensive, and not as useful as you’d think. Coaches are part of the solution.

It’s late now, and I have late-winter snow to get up early for.

God bless, and have a great rest of your day.

Music