Latest / Marci talks money (and life) / Escape the Middle: Investing, Wealth Building, and Mentorship with Todd Polke

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Escape the Middle: Investing, Wealth Building, and Mentorship with Todd Polke · Marci talks money (and life)

• Marci Grossman (00:15) Hello, I am MoneyMarci and welcome. Today's guest is Todd Polke. Todd is a globally respected wealth strategist, educator and speaker who helps people break free from the default life and create wealth that aligns with their purpose. With over 15 years of experience in investment strategy, financial education and mindset coaching, Todd has empowered thousands to shift from surviving to thriving. not just financially, but holistically. After starting as a broke personal trainer, Todd rewrote his story by studying with world-class mentors, multiple income streams and creating his own financial freedom. He now teaches others how to do the same through his profits to portfolio system, a practical and strategic approach to turning active income into lasting wealth. What sets Todd apart is his fusion of strategy and soul. He doesn't just talk numbers, he helps people uncover and transform the unconscious patterns holding them back so they can build wealth without sacrificing their values, energy or relationships. Whether he's speaking on stages, mentoring entrepreneurs or training investors, Todd's mission is clear, to help people reclaim their time, build purpose-driven wealth, and live a life they actually want. Welcome, Todd. Todd Polke (01:37) Thanks so much for having me, really appreciate it. Marci Grossman (01:39) Well, I am thrilled to have you. I think we have to start with personal trainer to financial. That must have been some kind of leap. Todd Polke (01:46) It was definitely a big switch, that's for sure, but it was almost one of those journeys and those experiences that It flowed onto each other very nicely in some way, shape or form. As a personal trainer, I was grinding my backside out for 17 hours a day, running a small business. Because I was running this philosophy in life, which is simple, which probably many of your listeners will have done as well. The harder I worked, the more successful I'd become. That was my rule of trying to actually become successful in life as a young kind of 18, 19 year old guy trying to find his way. I wound myself by about the age of 19. I broke my body, I wound up in hospital and I had to walk because I wasn't recovering probably. I broke my health, was personal training, getting sick all the time. know, go Todd, congratulations, good role model to society. I broke my relationships. And at the end of the year, I was still broke financially despite working all these hours. And I got to the point of understanding is that... this whole old rules of how we're supposed to live life, just exchange time for money, work hard and think that everything's being okay. I realised that they were broken at a really young age and it just set me into this. intense study around what makes a difference in people's lives. What do successful people do differently than others? And it really after discovering and learning it and learning a whole lot of lessons, it just led me onto this pathway of, well, if I didn't get my money working hard for me, then I was gonna spend my life working hard for my money. And I made an absolute study of mine. Marci Grossman (03:14) So you mentioned mentors. Did you go to school? Is there education or training or certifications or was this kind of a self-study path? Todd Polke (03:22) Yeah, it was definitely a self study path. As you know, for some unknown reason, you know, we work our entire lives for money, but in no formal education system, are we taught how to use it, how to manage it, how to grow it, especially how to create financial freedom, all we're taught is to get out and get a job. That's what we're taught. Honestly, it me really disenfranchised with the education system. I was taught that as long as you get a degree, well, that's your ticket to success. That's your pathway to riches, to abundance, to all this stuff. And I was studying uni at the time and I had this experience studying business and doing this business planning challenge for example. And we got paired with a real life mentor. And so they were trying to get me to do a 25 page business plan. The real life mentor actually has a business. We did a three to four page business plan and I got absolutely smashed on my results because according to their framework of doing things, this business plan wasn't acceptable. And then I realized that the people that were teaching me business at the time had never run a business in their life. And at that point in time, I just lost all faith in the education system. And so when I talk about mentors, I talk about finding real life people who have actually been and done what you want to do. And you know this yourself, right? I became a financial planner when I used to teach people how to trade shares and options. I became a mortgage broker with all my background in property and real estate. I've done a whole lot of these certifications, became a real estate agent, but at no time was I taught in any of those things of how to grow wealth, create financial freedom, become a great property investor. Because qualifications do not mean you qualify to help you grow wealth, Qualification is just a starting point through the door. What you really wanna find when I look for mentors, I find people who are out there in the real world crushing things and actually getting it done. So these were definitely real life mentors. Marci Grossman (05:08) I totally agree with that. As a CPA, my degree is in accounting and then obviously I sat for the exam and got the certification which says that I am on paper qualified. Right. And of course really you get your degree and it means you have the basic knowledge to start learning how to really do something. But I was very fortunate in one of my mentors. He spoke significantly about it's not just doing accounting. Todd Polke (05:11) Yep. Yes. Qualified, right. Marci Grossman (05:35) It's about understanding the business of accounting. How you have to bill people, how you have to value your time and value the things that you can't bill for hourly. I have to value all the different parts of it. Todd Polke (05:37) Right, right. right. Marci Grossman (05:50) and you're not taught any of that in school. You can go to business school and they can teach you foundational things but they don't teach you how to run a business and that's so important that you bring up the guys who were telling you you needed this 25 page business plan and the guy who had a successful business did it in three or four pages. How can they tell you his is wrong when he's proved it and they haven't? Todd Polke (06:13) Right. Right, and you're so true about that. And what I appreciate about you, Marci, is that you've done your degree, but then you've actually applied it and you've learned about it, right? You've got the step in the door, but then you went and did your other study. I I've got many clients who are financial planners, who are accountants, who are mortgage brokers, who are real estate agents, who, and I can tell you right now, they have no idea about money. They have no idea about investing. They have no idea how to create financial freedom. They do it because it's a job. It's just to pay the bills. And that's a very different mindset than what you're talking about which is learning how to run the business, right, because I was the same. I used to think personal training was about training people until I realized it . Right? That was just a mechanism of it I still had to do the marketing I had to take care of the books and if I didn't take care of admin and finance and the whole thing kind of collapses, right. This way I always think about wealth, you know It's every single person is running a personal wealth I'm not saying everyone's business is doing really well because most people's unfortunately isn't because we're not taught about it but we're all running a personal wealth business and at some point in time we've got to get the CEO cap and we've got to put it on our head and go I'm running a personal wealth business which means I take responsibility which means I learn the language of money and I actually go and start implementing in life, right. And you know that's where the game is won. Marci Grossman (07:30) Right, right. And it's not that doing a personal training business is a bad business venture, but if you don't run it as a business, if you don't know what to do with your income and how to manage your expenses and what to do with, hopefully, the profit you have at the end of it, then it's a short little Todd Polke (07:36) Definitely not Marci Grossman (07:47) little task of income expense, income expense, and you're on a treadmill that gets you nowhere. You have to figure out where to go from there. I think it's really important for people to understand just because at your job you trade time for money and you're not the owner of the company doesn't mean you can't build personal wealth. You can't reach personal, you know, your financial freedom. That's all achievable in whatever way. I know people who make Todd Polke (07:54) Right. So true. Marci Grossman (08:15) generous six-figure incomes who are living paycheck to paycheck because they don't have a clue how to manage their money. Todd Polke (08:19) correct. Yeah. And so what we're talking about now is the power of leverage, right? And I completely agree with you. And it's a really important point. To me, success in finances and wealth is not about how much money you earn, right? That's not the deciding factor, right? It's your dedication to your outcome. It's your commitment to the outcome that you want to create. And it's then learning some core principles like, well, when you get paid from your job, well, you have to get some of that money working for you. You've got to invest it, right? And you've got to get it actually growing for while you, for one of, I don't really like the word passive income. just implies, I don't really like the word passive income. I think we always gotta be taking responsibility for our life and what we're doing. But if we're not getting some of that money working for us, then you wind up on that treadmill for your entire life. Welcome to, I mean, I'm sure it's the same in the US, but 77 % of the entire population in Australia, in the end of the day, they're working until they're 65 years of age, if not further. relying upon some form of the pension and retirement because they didn't have any assets or don't have enough retirement to, know, funds to be able to help them. And I personally think that retirement is a very low standard in life, I think that you should be setting up a life you don't have to retire from. Like why grind your backside out for 40, 50 years of your life to then magically one day and live the good life? when you're already 65 or 70 years old, why not like actually set things up so that you can actually go live and enjoy this beautiful, incredible world that we live in and go out and find something you're truly passionate about rather than just grinding it away. Marci Grossman (09:53) Well, talking about that, makes me ⁓ want to come back to when you talked about transforming the unconscious patterns, because those get in the way. that makes me think you've got some kind of background, mentoring, training, whatever in therapy and in something to help people recognize these patterns that get in their way. I talk to people about their patterns all the time, I'm not sure they listen to me so well it sounds like you may have gotten a better hold on that than I have Todd Polke (10:15) Yeah. You know, I make a joke to a lot of my clients that I feel like a lot of what I do is relationship counseling when it comes to money in the end of the game, right? Because, you know, when you've got two people coming in together with different frames around money and different belief systems around money, and then they come in and have no idea how to communicate it, don't understand it, and they clash, and they wonder why that money is the thing that they, you know, they tend to fight about the most. I've done a lot of personal coaching and a lot of financial coaching and stuff over the years. Do I have a background in therapy? No. Like to me, it's all just, hmm. What have I experienced in my own life as I've unwound my own unconscious money patterns? And how after working with tens of thousands of people over the years, what have I observed consistently that are really sabotaging people on regular basis? And there are patterns in all this behavior. Now everyone's individual and beautiful and gorgeous in their own right, right? But everyone tends to have these same patterns that they repeat over and over again. And... I have a training that I put all my clients through is called the money lens training, right? And the whole point about this money lens at the end of the day is that where it's not about money, it's about the meaning that we give to money, right? And because money is just an object in the end, but we have such dirty minds around money, you know, money doesn't grow on trees, and you got to have money to make money and wealthy people are evil in this and this and this. And it's all just baggage that people are handling around money. And so they go on interacting this world where money is an essential tool, unless you're living in some tribes in the Amazon or something like that, but that's another conversation. But like this essential tool in life. and yet they're approaching it from this really muddy lens. And so they're looking at it through this whole set of belief systems, which are not their own. They've actually inherited it and been taught it from somebody else. Because I get really passionate about this topic, Marci, I think it's such a powerful thing. We go through life and that we're taught some things around who we are, what life is, what money is, what we should expect, what we shouldn't expect. What this means for us. We were born in this area in Boston or New York or Massachusetts, wherever it is or in Australia or in Tasmania in Australia or Queensland. And so then we start forming this identity system of who we are. And so we take on these belief systems of the people around us and from society and from the education system. And so we have to understand that they are not ours. We've just inherited it from somebody else. But at some level, when we're young and we're growing up, we begin to adopt those belief systems as our own, and we take it in as our own. And so then these belief systems become the filter through which everything in life passes through. So it's not about what happens in life, it's about the meaning gives to us, right? So the stimulus happens in life. Someone says something, we earn some money, we don't earn some money, whatever goes on. It comes in, we filter it through our own set of belief systems we've inherited from somebody else. Through that filter system, we then decide, unconsciously very often, on an action that we're gonna take in the world. The actions that we do consistently become our reality. And then because they become our reality, the results that we repeat on a consistent basis become a zero line, a set standard of what we should expect in our life. And then we just have this reinforcing pattern that we repeat and repeat and repeat and repeat and repeat, unless either A, you have a schism and you're like, my 19 year old brain, I'm very fortunate I had a schism at 19 years old because I broke myself and I got to a point of so much pain where I realised that this shit is broken, there's gotta be a better way. And I had a schism out of it and it changed my entire world. So we either wait for the schism to happen. or we decide that we want a different outcome in our life. And then we would choose a new standard that we're gonna set with. And then we've got to start reverse engineering and starting to understand, well, how the bloody hell did I get to where I am or at my life right now? That I've potentially been running this pattern for five years, 10 years, 15 years, 20 years, on and on and on, that's delivering this outcome. What is all the stuff underneath, which has gotten me to this point in my life? And how can I start rewiring it and raising my, what I call your millionaire mode. Like raising level of thinking, raising level of standard. in which you can actually start playing the game of money and of life to get a brand new level of outcome. Marci Grossman (14:18) So when you were 19 and you had already been doing the personal training for a year, is that when you were also in university or was that before or after? Todd Polke (14:26) Yeah, no, same, same. I decided like I was gonna go to school and I was gonna take over the world, right? Young guy, lot of ego without much sense, right? That's kind of what it was. And I got out of school, I went and joined the army straight away. I started studying exoscience at university. I started a personal training business and I was playing judo for Australia at that point in time, I was lifting heavy weights. I was doing a whole lot of stuff at a short period of time. My university studies were part-time while I was running this business and really I just pretended to go to university. I was really never a good student. And I went to university, did some stuff and that was me trying to fulfill my parents wishes because their version of success in life, they have three sons, I've got two other brothers, their version of success which I was trying to fulfill at the time was if all of our boys get university degrees then we've won as parents. And so I was trying to fulfill that for the first kind of couple of years outside of school until I realized it was a joke and then I had to let them down, unfortunately. ⁓ So yeah, I was doing it all in a short period of time. But once I had that experience of that business plan, honestly, that business plan experience, I quit university within a month after that. I realized it was a joke. Marci Grossman (15:29) Did your brothers fulfill their plan and get their degrees? Todd Polke (15:32) Yeah, they did. they did. So I might be the disappointment of the family, I don't know. I love my brothers, they're great human beings. But they've also followed a very traditional path. And they've wound up in the same position as probably 90 % of other people where finances is a struggle. There's sometimes this dynamics between families. Like no one ever asked me about money or investing or what they want to do. And so that's their journey in life and that's okay. So hopefully it's not going to be their journey of life for the next 20, 30 years as well. Marci Grossman (16:03) I do want to take a totally off topic break and say judo yay. I am an Ikkyu I only got as far as my top Brown but judo doesn't come up in conversation very much around here. Todd Polke (16:11) well. There you go, but that's fantastic. Awesome, you're absolutely right. Funny story, we've got this people in Australia called Justice of the Peace. It sounds very elaborate name, but what they do is they're people who will notarize your stuff, right? Like if you've got to do a stat deck or something, they'll go notarize your things. And so I went to see this guy to get something notarized for a loan I was going for or something like that. And I saw him wearing Ipon judo pants. And I went, are you kidding me? And then we went in and I was there for a couple of hours after that and he's got his red and white belt. He's like seven darn black, know? Like he's like this one of the gods of judo. I'm sure, yeah, wow, there you go. Judo doesn't come up often. I started at age five years old. One of the most formative things in my life, which I absolutely adapted who I am. And I have a two-year-old little boy. I'm about to get him in Judo now, and I wanna pass that down to him, which just makes me super happy. I'm really, really excited. Marci Grossman (17:10) That is cool. They don't tend to wear their judo pants around here for me to tell. Todd Polke (17:15) Yeah, you're right. Look, I should go get my judo gi. You can go get yours. We'll go to the podcast in our judo gi's after this. It'd be great. Marci Grossman (17:21) Yeah well it's we're only just you know a few hours away from each other. Todd Polke (17:25) Yeah, that's exactly right. Marci Grossman (17:27) So when you started, when you transitioned, you said you've worked as an investment advisor and a real estate agent. So you went into those and then eventually transitioned into overall wealth coaching? Todd Polke (17:42) Here was my journey. I am as a personal trainer, once I got to that point of at 19 years old, realizing there's gotta be a better way. And I dove into the world of financial education and started attending a lot of live seminars. Cause you know, we didn't have podcasts 20 years ago, so it wasn't a thing, right? And so I was attending a lot of these live events. And I met one of my very first mentors in the world of property at that point in time. I made a decision at that point that I was gonna buy my first property in six months time at 19 years old. And I had no idea, I had no money, I had no idea how I was gonna do it. I had no idea what I was doing, but I made one of those decisions and it's one of those true type of decisions, Marci. Like it's when you choose to, you leave your excuses behind your decisions. That there was like, was gonna die in the battlefield type of decision. That's what it was like. And so, And I don't know why I was making that decision at that point in time. I just realized like, I just can't keep doing what I'm doing. I wound up buying my first property at that point in time. I managed to get some of the first home owners grants. I managed to save up $9,000, which doesn't sound like much to me at the time as a fortune. And I bought my very first property deal for $291,000, right? And I renovated that property over the next six months. And I wound up making $70,000 in profit in that property deal in the space of nine months after I bought it. And so I made more than my entire year's income in that one property deal in the space of nine months. I was done. That was it. I was done. Right. And so I then I fell in love with the world of investing. I'd been investing in shares for a little bit, but more just to buy and hold stuff that my parents kind of taught me, you should just buy a few of these and just do a bit of that, which is great. And then I decided I was gonna become a real estate agent. I said, well, I wanna get in the world of investing, so I better get some type of experience. What a better place to go than become a real estate agent. So when I did my real estate training, as I said before, didn't learn a thing about property, didn't learn a thing about investing, didn't learn a thing about money, I learned how to fill out contracts. Became a real estate agent, started working at my first job as a real estate agent at 20, 20 years old. 17 other agents in the office I was the only one apart from one other guy who I thought was about 145 at the time who had a who had another property right and so I realized very quickly I was in the wrong place I wasn't surrounding myself with the people that are actually active in this game. they were doing bigger real estate agents as a job and so that original mentor I met I I decided my strategy was I was going to annoy the crap out of him until he made a job for me. That was my entire strategy. I had nothing else up my sleeve. Twice a week I called him. Six months after doing this, I sat down to have a coffee with him and I let him know, I'm not going away, mate. So you can either give me a job or not, right? I'm just not going away, but you're just going to have to deal with my phone calls all the time. So he offered me a job. And so I got a job in this real estate investing firm, Marci Grossman (20:05) You Todd Polke (20:26) primarily focused on finding deals at that point in time. So more in the buyer's agency type of roles and learning that, know, doing the ropes and due diligence and things like that. I then started interacting with clients. So after they realized that I wasn't crazy, they allowed me to start talking to clients after that rather than being stuck behind a desk. So I started kind of matching the strategy with the deals and helping people guide people through deals. And then I got started, you know, actually coaching clients in the world of property investing. Now, while all that was going on, I learned how to trade options and trade shares. I started investing in gold and silver and things like that, because I was just learning all these things. When the world of cryptocurrency came along, I dove headfirst into that. This is fun, this is interesting. Lending strategies, I mainly focus on a lot of private equity deals on the front end now. I still store more of my wealth in real estate, but private equity is where I spend a lot of time now investing in businesses. It's fun. love working with other entrepreneurs who have a beautiful vision that they wanna bring to life and then be able to be a part of that. That just, that gives me kicks, I enjoy it. And so along the way, what I found was after working with so many property investors is that if you just have properties or strategy in Australia, now it's different in the US market, right? In Australia. If that's your only strategy, then I can pretty well guarantee you're gonna get stuck because the serviceability and the lending capacity and how it's actually set up in Australia is very restrictive and it's very limiting. There's some beautiful things about real estate in Australia and you can make a lot of money in it, no doubt about it, but it's very limiting if you wanna grow a big portfolio. And so I started to understand that, I'm not here to buy real estate, I'm here to build wealth systems. And so if I can use different asset classes that serve different purposes as part of an overarching strategy, then we can actually piece the different puzzle pieces together in the right way for the right person that's gonna create an overarching wealth system which in the end leads to a predictable outcome. So I just love investing, you know, I love property, I love shares, I love crypto, I love business, I just love it all, I just find it fun. And so it's also a big game to me. How can we create these wealth systems which deliver this outcome? And so, ⁓ yeah, it ended up that I did a whole lot of stuff in terms of my own portfolio and then started teaching it. Marci Grossman (22:33) And that makes sense because that's the best way to learn and now you can tell people, I'm telling you this because this is what I've learned. This is what I do. ⁓ Todd Polke (22:42) Yeah, and here's all the things I've stuffed up along the way and here's how I broke, you know, I went broke before and after not protecting myself and how do I keep you safe? Like, you know, so yeah, you learn so much from mistakes just as much as wins. Marci Grossman (22:56) Right, right. Was it more mindset or timing that held you back financially getting started and you said you've lost wealth also? Todd Polke (23:05) Yeah, so to begin with, I was a broke person trainer. I didn't have money. Like I didn't give it an inheritance. didn't win the lottery. I started with nothing, like zero. And it was a grind to me to save up that first little bit of money to get that first property deal done. So I certainly didn't start with a lot of money. I had more drive than I had sense if that makes sense at the time. So I figured I'll just work hard and just get this first thing. And don't get me wrong, hard work is a great thing. And it's served me very well in my life. But if it's your only strategy, then you wind up burnt out and you wind up broken, you wind up stuck, right? And so I built a lot of wealth in a short period of time, which... was a great thing, but it was also a dangerous thing for someone who didn't have a lot of life experience at the time. And so I didn't understand how to protect myself. I just thought I was, yeah, young guy, lot of ego. was, I was the king of the investing world. Nothing's going to go wrong. It's all perfect. It's all beautiful, right? I was leveraging, getting my equity out, doing another deal, doing another deal, learning how to trade, making money here, making money there. And then I got beautifully humbled by the universe. And I didn't protect myself. I didn't understand that like it's not just about buying some things because that's what I thought investing was like well you just leverage and you get some finance and you buy some things let's keep buying things and I didn't realize that One of the biggest part is not about how much you make, it's how much you keep. And so this beautiful thing called, ⁓ know, global financial crisis came along that had an impact on my lending, it impacted other things. And because I wasn't protected and I was over leveraged at the time, I wound up practically almost losing everything and having to start all over again. Painful experience, but a vital one for me as a coach, that's for damn sure. Marci Grossman (24:40) yeah, you certainly learn way more from your own experiences than from other people's. Todd Polke (24:45) 100 % and I look I haven't met any successful investor that hasn't lost some money along the way I mean I assume you have along the way Marci or has everything gone perfectly for you? Marci Grossman (24:54) ⁓ yeah, no. I've had my challenges. I've had my missed opportunities. I've had, you know, we all have. If you invest, people have to understand that there is no perfect investment strategy. If I know the one stock I need to buy, I would put all my money in that. But you balance your portfolio stocks and bonds and real estate and various other investments because you don't know the one that's going to take you all the way. Todd Polke (25:10) Right. Yeah, yeah, absolutely. And you also don't know the one which might look all beautiful, but then wind up being the one that falls for whatever reason, because it's just the market dynamic completely changes underneath as well, right? I don't believe in diversification for diversity sake, but because you see like, and this is why I, know, like superannuation funds in Australia, which is like the version of 401k, right? They just diversify across so many different things just because they have to not because it's intelligent, right? So I just always believe in a strategy about being intentional that every dollar has to serve a purpose. So if you're going to put some money over here, why are you putting it there? What's the reason it's serving? Right? The scatter gun approaches is amateur hour in my, in my idea. So in terms of diversification, right? Marci Grossman (26:03) yeah, intentional diversification, not just randomly throwing darts, ⁓ which has its own appeal, but not necessarily your best financial way to do it. ⁓ So we can talk about true wealth and also financially stable and financially free. These are all terms you hear and they all really mean different things. Todd Polke (26:08) Spot on. Yep. Absolutely right. Sure, definitely. Yep. Marci Grossman (26:27) So as a coach, you've talked about being financially free a lot. How is financial freedom different from having wealth or being financially stable? And what is your advice for people to try and determine which one they are? Todd Polke (26:32) Yeah. Yeah, it's such a good question. Let's talk about financial stability and security for a moment, right? Because we really need to redefine what that means, okay? Because what the original idea, this is very true in Australia. You tell me if it's true in the US, but the idea of financial security is you have your own home, you pay your home off, and you got a little bit of money tucked away for a rainy day, and you've got a safe, secure job. And that's like, that's what we consider to be financial security. Now, what we've experienced over the last 20 odd years. that is not accurate. Just because you have a safe, secure job and you have a home paid off does not mean you're safe in any way, shape or form. You look at global financial crisis, you look at the debt crisis we've been in, you look at the whole COVID pandemic debacle, you look at the wars and stuff that's going on, you look at a lot of industries and stuff with the tariffs that Trump is kind of throwing around the place and things like that and how that's impacting certain things. Like you look at all these things and then you go, How safe am I, right? Because the government can come along and they can change rules and as they do on a regular basis, they introduce more and more rules, don't repeal bloody any. And they can change things from underneath us in a heartbeat. or there's another pandemic or something and then you go, how safe am I actually? So I think financial security isn't about a thing like a safe, secure job or have your home that's paid off. I think it's about your ability to ride through the various challenges that happen in life, right? So if another pandemic or when another pandemic comes along, how are you gonna navigate this in differently than what you did before? Like no matter what comes their way, financial security gives us the ability, we have the tools and some of the resources to be able to navigate our way through it so that you and your family are gonna be safe. That's what I consider financial security is and I'm also thinking about it, financial sovereignty. That's how I kind of think about it now. Now, when it comes to financial freedom, that term is bandied around everywhere, but everyone goes, well, what does it actually mean? What is financial freedom? And that's obviously a different answer to every single person. When I think about financial freedom, I think there's four levels of financial freedom, right? I think there's a level of financial freedom of handling your needs. And so there's needs, wants, dreams, legacy. That's what I think about. So when it comes to handling your needs, how much income do you need to be earning from your going to allow you to cover your basic living expenses. For the singular purpose of getting your time back. That's the singular purpose. Time is the most valuable asset. It should be the thing that we focus on getting back first. This level isn't about driving Lamborghinis or first class travel or doing all this. It's not about any of that. It's just where... What's your base level of income you need to be earning from a portfolio. That's not from a job that's gonna handle basic living expenses for the fundamental purpose, getting your time back. Because as soon as you have your time back, you have your most valuable asset back. And if you apply that in the right places, you're be able to rapidly leverage and expand your wealth at a faster rate than you've ever been able to do before. Level two is what I call the wants. this is, so what level one 'needs' is a zone of time. Level two, 'wants' is the zone of choice, right? If we imagine, I'm just drawing a pyramid in my mind. I've got a model around this as I think about it. And the zone of choice. And it's about giving you, what's some of the choices I wanna have in my life? Is it a bit of travel every year? Is it, I wanna help my kids buy their first property, because they're never gonna be able to afford it themselves. Is it that I wanna send my kids to a private school rather than a public school because I can't afford a private school otherwise? Like, what does it mean to you? And then you cost it out. Well, if I want to go on a trip every year, it's gonna cost me $10,000. Well, I need to add that on top of my needs to be able to do that. You know, my private school fees are 15 grand a year or this, and it costs this. And then we have a tangible outcome that we can actually build and craft a strategy towards. Then we have 'dreams'. and this is a zone of lifestyle. What's the dream life that you wanna be able to live? Because why the bloody hell not, right? We're here, it's a beautiful world. Money is a tool of choice, it's a unit of choice, that's all it is. Why would you not make as much money as you possibly bloody can, handle home base, live an extraordinary quality of life, and then you move to the zone of 'legacy' and then find something bigger than yourself to be able to give it back to, right? Whether that's your family living into generational wealth, whether that is causes you really believe in, how is the world a better place because you were here and what do want to contribute to? So needs, wants, dreams, legacy. That's how I think about financial freedom. Every single one of those has a income target that you're meeting to hit your version level of that. And then we can reverse engineer that and go, well, based on that income target, here's the type of portfolio we're going to need, that delivers the yield that we need to deliver the financial outcome to give you that choice. And then we have a tangible outcome that we can actually build a proper plan and strategy towards. Marci Grossman (31:12) So do you help your clients with their actual investment strategies or you work with investment advisors? How much involved are you as a coach? Todd Polke (31:21) Yeah, yeah, so what I do is that there's two ways I do things. One is that I've unpacked my wealth system that I've been generating for 20 years now, right? After working with tens of thousands of investors and building wealth on my own life and losing wealth and rebuilding it again and all that type of stuff. And so I teach people my entire system and I give people doing a step-by-step format so they can take the level of thinking and go and deploy and apply to their situation as well as get access to ongoing education, also off-market opportunities because the best deals are never done on... your standard real estate sites, they're never done on the S &P 500 or ASX 200 or whatever it is. They're always done off market, right? That's where the best deals are always done. And just because I've got networks everywhere, I'm able to bring some really interesting opportunities to the table. So that's more of a learn then do. Hey, learn the system, learn the language of money, learn the system, and then implement it into your life step by step and get all the support along the way. For the people that go, you know I want some more hands on support. Well, that's when I work with them in the trenches and we go and build your strategy together. We build that the portfolio together. And it's more like this partnership where we're in the trenches together and we're gonna build it out. There's two ways we kind of play in it. Yeah. And we'll work with people on a very hands on basis in that way to actually build effective wealth systems and ⁓ to help them grow the wealth they wanna be able to lead and live for their family. Marci Grossman (32:41) I think that's awesome. I love any conversations that get to the point of generational wealth. They get to the point of giving people the tools to work with as well as the fact that you have these opportunities. Well, you can either go off and fly on your own or you still want some hand holding or support, whatever it is, so that those options are available. Before we wrap up, is there anything we haven't hit that you want to make sure we discuss? Todd Polke (33:06) One thing which is always on my mind and you know we're talking a lot about this programming in life where we wind up right and You know, it's a place that I call the middle, right, that most people wind up in life. And we're programmed to arrive there. And I just want to touch on this point as well, but also, you know, just lead into something that will help your listeners as well if they're called to this kind of journey. Right, so we go through life and we're programmed to live a certain quality of life. And most people wind up stuck in this place called the middle, which is a middle level of income, middle level of earning, middle level of choice, middle level of opportunity, middle level of of freedom, middle level of meaning, middle level of happiness, and they wind up stuck in this place and a lot of people stay there literally for decades of their life, if not their entire life. And at some point in time, we have to make this true decision that we're gonna step away from that. We want a brand new quality of life and we've got to escape out of the middle because there's different money games being played. I don't like using these terms, but the poor and middle-class and wealthy, right? often they're there and they stay in those zones because they're playing a certain set of money rules. And what I would say to every single person is that if you want to get a brand new level of outcome in your life, then you've got to start by playing by brand new set of rules in your life, because that's the very biggest, the biggest thing which is going to start changing. So if your, if your rules aren't currently working, then it's time to throw out the old rule book and get a brand new rule book. And that's the biggest thing that's going to make the shift. Right. I wrote a book and just been published and hopefully it's going to go in the US soon called 'Escape the Middle', which is the entire outcomes, the entire pathway to be able to support people to be able to get out of that middle type of place and be able to shift the mindset and to give them the pathway and the strategy we have to create there. So that's the final thing I will say is that it's possible for everybody. I don't care where anybody is starting. If you're starting with a lot of money or not a lot of money or been educated, you haven't been educated, I really don't care. I truly do believe that financial freedom and abundance is possible for every single person. Marci Grossman (35:01) And I like the way you brought that back to mindset and choices. You have to make changes. If you don't like the way things are going and you don't make changes, you can't be surprised when things don't change. Todd Polke (35:12) Right, spot on, exactly right. Marci Grossman (35:14) Well Todd, thank you so much for joining us today. I will be sharing your website and information in the show notes so that people can check you out. You've got a lot of interesting information on your website and your book is listed there and of course I imagine it's available on Amazon etc. and will be eventually in the US as well. So ⁓ to my listeners Todd Polke (35:33) Sure is. Marci Grossman (35:38) Don't forget to subscribe, leave us a review, and stay tuned because I'll see you next time. This has been MoneyMarci on Marci Talks Money and Life. You got this. See ya.