I’ve been wrong about something
For a long time I believed everyone should invest.
Build portfolios.
Buy assets.
Let compounding do its thing.
It’s the standard playbook in finance. And don’t get me wrong. Investing still has a role. In many cases it’s necessary. But the longer I’ve sat inside this industry watching how wealth actually behaves, the more something about it has started to bother me.
Not the maths. The psychology.
Because there’s a contradiction in the way we think about money that almost nobody talks about.
The contradiction
People love seeing their assets go up.
Their shares rise.
Their property increases in value.
Their super balance grows.
But those same people complain about the exact mechanisms that make those assets rise.
They celebrate record bank profits while complaining about mortgage rates.
They celebrate supermarket profits while complaining about grocery prices.
They celebrate rising house prices while worrying about housing affordability.
It’s the same force driving both outcomes.
We love it when we’re investors. We hate it when we’re consumers.
Most people don’t realise they’re sitting on both sides of that equation at the same time.
The other thing that bothers me
A lot of modern wealth isn’t really being built anymore.
It’s being clipped.
By that I mean a huge amount of money today is made by taking a percentage of something that already exists.
A clip.
A commission.
A margin.
Look around and you’ll see it everywhere.
Agents.
Brokers.
Consultants.
Fund managers.
Platforms.
Marketplaces.
Middle layers on top of middle layers.
None of these things are inherently bad. But they’re not the original engine of value either. They sit in the flow of money and take a slice as it passes through.
The economy has become very good at creating ways to clip the ticket. But not always at creating new engines of real impact.
The psychology shift
Over the last decade something else has quietly changed.
The dominant strategy for wealth has become very simple.
Earn income.
Buy assets.
Wait.
Passive investing. Portfolio accumulation. Property growth.
There’s nothing wrong with that. But it subtly changes how people think about wealth.
Instead of asking: What should I build?
People start asking: What should I buy?
Ownership replaces creation.
Accumulation replaces contribution. And eventually the entire system becomes dependent on asset prices continuing to rise.
The valuation stretch
When I started in finance twelve years ago, a price to earnings ratio around fifteen was considered fairly normal. Today we regularly see multiples of thirty or more for companies expected to grow in the future. Sometimes far more. Which means in simple terms we are paying further and further into the future today to access those earnings.
There are reasons for this. Lower interest rates for years. Global capital flows. Technology companies scaling across the planet.
But the implication is still the same.
The higher the price you pay today for future earnings, the smaller your margin for error becomes.
The quiet inflation nobody noticed
For years the conversation around inflation focused on groceries, fuel and everyday costs.
But what really exploded first was asset inflation.
Shares.
Property.
Private equity.
Venture capital.
Assets inflated far faster than wages for a long time. Which created a strange dynamic. People began to feel pressured to invest. They needed to keep up with the rising price of the things they eventually wanted to own. And the more people invested, the more capital flowed into those assets. Which pushed prices higher again. Read here If you want to learn more about property & shares.
The easy fight in my industry
Here’s something most people don’t realise. The easy money in my profession is telling people how much more I can make them. And the truth is I probably can. In many cases it wouldn’t even be that difficult.
Most people simply aren’t doing a lot of the structural things they should be doing with their money.
Fix a few gaps. Adjust strategy. Move some pieces around. And the numbers improve.
It’s not magic.
But it sounds impressive.
And you can charge handsomely for it.
That’s the easy fight.
Sell performance.
Sell growth.
Sell the promise of more.
A lot of the industry lives there.
I chose a different fight
I chose the harder one.
Encouraging people to think differently about wealth.
Encouraging people to find something they actually love doing.
Their craft.
Their art.
Their thing.
Something that solves a real problem for real people who actually have that problem.
Not creating problems people don’t have just to sell them solutions they don’t need.
Not chasing money simply to count it.
Build something that genuinely helps people.
Build a life around that.
Earn enough doing work you care about to support your life, your family and your future.
Put enough aside for tomorrow. But enjoy today as well.
And where you can, make an impact along the way.
Conviction led advice
This is why the advice we give is conviction led.
Not product led.
Not trend led.
Conviction led.
Once someone understands what they truly care about, the financial strategy becomes much clearer. They need to know the impact they want to make and the life they want to build.
My role isn’t to simply manage money.
It’s to act as a conviction architect.
Helping people design the financial structure around the life they actually want to live.
Purpose first.
Money second.
The beautiful psychopaths
The people who resonate with this way of thinking are usually the same type of people.
I call them beautiful psychopaths.
Not the Hollywood kind.
The good kind.
The ones who are a little bit wired differently.
The ones who become obsessed with the thing they love doing.
The ones who are just a little bit crazy about their craft.
They want to build things. Create things. Solve things.
They want to do great work with good people.
They want to make an impact.
And they don’t really care if the path is harder, as long as it means something.
Just don’t get on the wrong side of them.
The trade off
The truth is I’ll probably never make as much money doing this as I fighting the easy fight.
Selling performance.
Selling bigger returns.
Selling the idea that more money is always the answer.
But the harder fight changes more lives.
And if I’m lucky I’ve got roughly sixty more years on this planet.
I’d rather spend them helping people build meaningful lives around something they care about. It is more important than simply helping them accumulate larger numbers on a balance sheet.
The mic drop
Investing has a role.
Sometimes it’s necessary.
But the most powerful form of wealth has always come from building something that genuinely creates value in the world.
Investing should support a life. Not become the purpose of it.
And if more people focused on building things that actually helped others instead of simply chasing assets…
I suspect the world would be a far better place.
If this way of thinking about money feels a little different, that’s probably because it is.
Follow along if you’re curious about the inner workings of a beautifully wired psychopath trying to design wealth around purpose, impact and a life well lived.
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