Latest / The Chiro Money Show / 049 | Money Lessons From The Ultra Wealthy w/ Dr. Laurence Tham

Transcript

049 | Money Lessons From The Ultra Wealthy w/ Dr. Laurence Tham · The Chiro Money Show

• Scott Campbell: Hello, welcome back to the Chiro Money Show where we're helping chiropractors make better financial decisions so they can build stability in their finances and a lifestyle that they love. I'm Scott Campbell, financial planner with Align Wealth. Thanks for tuning in for another episode. If you're a parent like myself, hope this first week or so of school of getting the kids back into routine has been going well. I know for us it's you know, nice to get back into routine, but certainly we'll miss the less structured, go with the flow days. Of summer. So today on the podcast, we have part two with Dr. Laurence Tham If you have not checked out our previous episode with Dr. Laurence, I highly recommend that you go back and maybe give that a listen first as it is a bit of a teaser in that episode for what we're going to talk about today. So, Laurence, he is the chair of one of the global groups, his being in Portugal called Tiger 21. It's a peer group for people who have already built some pretty substantial wealth to get into one of these groups. You need $20 million in investable net worth. So that can't include your house, not your business, 20 million liquid. So there's 12 to 15 people in a room once a month, and at every meeting, one member opens their entire portfolio to the group. They talk about business, they talk about money, relationships. It sounded really interesting. So we asked him the obvious question. What's happening in these rooms, and most importantly, what can we take away from these ultra high net worth individuals and apply that to our lives, to you, our listeners. So we dove in and talked a lot about their mindsets, how they value money, some of the ways some of the ways they think about investing and growing and preserving their wealth. So super interesting conversation with Dr. Laurence. He brought some really great insights, and I think you will appreciate today's conversation. Before we get into today's episode, if you're looking to get a sense of where you stand today with your finances in terms of what's working well for you and where you might have some blind spots, I encourage you to check out our financial clarity scorecard assessment. It takes less than five minutes to complete. You'll be asked some really insightful questions, and you'll get a personalized report specific to you and how you answer those questions delivered to your inbox. Just head over to alignwealth.ca and hit that bright blue financial clarity scorecard button. All right. Let's get into the episode. Here's part two with Dr. Laurence Tham Enjoy. Chris: Dr. Laurence Tem, welcome back. Another episode here with us on the Chiro Money Show. Thank you so much. Laurence Tham: I'm looking forward to having a second conversation with you guys. Thanks for inviting me back. Chris: So in the first episode there we talked a bit about AI and just kinda your journey and some of the coaching stuff you do and and that was great. This is a bit of a a shifting of gears, let's say, and This episode we want to focus on asking you about your experience in in something called the the Tiger 21 group. And I I don't know if a lot of our listeners will be familiar with that, as I was not either, but why don't you tell us a little bit about what this group is and how you came to be involved with it. Laurence Tham: Yeah, so we we kinda hinted at it in our last episode. So let me kind of start with this journey. I didn't know anything about it either. So I moved to Portugal and w after a couple of years I I started some creating these paddle groups. so organized these paddle groups. So if if you aren't familiar with paddle, paddle's like one of the fastest growing sport in all of Europe and it's sort of like the pickle v ball version, but it's we think of pickleball as more ping pong and p paddle as being a real sport. Just joking for those people who play pickleball. But but if you haven't seen what paddle is, you should definitely go take a look at paddle. But paddle is huge. And so here in Portugal, it's one of those things that for expats like me, it's a great way to kind of build community and also meet a lot of people. And so I started organizing these paddle groups. And so through that, I you know, people saw this person kind of came up to me and said, Hey, you know, we we wanna ha create this Tiger Twenty One group here in Portugal. We we need a chair. didn't understand what a chair was. Well, basically a chair is like someone who can organize and who could run meetings for us. And they won't start a chapter until you actually have a chair. So then I had to figure out what Tiger 21 was and they go, they explained it to me. So this is how it's explained to me. Tiger 21 is an organization that's been around for like 25, 27 years now. And it started off by a guy named Michael Michael Sonnenfeldt And Michael Sonnenfeldt he was like a founder of a company. it was part of a different organization. I'm trying to remember Vistach. It was as part of it. that they I think that's the organization. And this is just like any mastermind group. So they have like groups of like ten to fifteen people. They it's like EO or YPO. And these groups are usually like masterminds. They meet every single month and they talk about business, life, investments, or whatever is on their mind. And these are sort of like think about like like minded people. sorry, like minded people to ensure that you actually have great conversations that you can actually trust the you know the trusting of your peers. And so that's sort of like how we kind of got started. So that's how they got started. And so when he sold his company and left, Vicious was like, No, no, you you you can no longer be part of this organization because you don't actually own a company anymore. It's like, what are you talking about? These are my best friends, these are the people I I trust the most. Like, how can I not be part of it? So, anyways, he decided like I'm gonna start my company. So basically what Tiger Twenty One is is like it's an organization to help founders, entrepreneurs, wealth creators, to really come together as peers to have discussions around investments. life, business, relationships. The main thing that we kind of talk about a lot about is is basically mostly about how to keep your money because a lot of our founders have actually made their money and all of a sudden like it's the first time they're the first person who's ever I think it would say eighty percent or or ninety percent of people are first time wealth creators. So which means that they basically have, you know, twenty, fifty, hundred million, hundred and fifty million for the first first time, you know, and now they have to figure out how to keep it for generations. so that's a big responsibility to to have. Second thing we always talk about is how do you grow, continue to grow that wealth. Third is about relationship. I think relationship changes, right? Your friends start coming out of the woodworks, your family dynamics, do you tell your spouse, do you tell your kids how do you handle it? Do you fly private? Do you not fly private? Do you fly economy so you don't spoil your kids? You know, how much money do you give to your kids? Do you give them everything? Do you when do you give that like there's a so much conversations around estate planning and all these things because you know, most of them come from nothing. So therefore it's like, you know. as much as you want to spoil your kids at the same time, but you know that that's gonna take away a lot of their, you know, drive and, you know, everything else. So there's you know, it seems like a first world problem, but it is. It's still a problem. So just because you have a whole bunch of money doesn't mean you your problems go away. If anything, your money your problems actually expansionate to big bigger challenges. And then the fourth thing is that philanthropy, you know, impact. And what do you do with that? You know, because now you're a steward of wealth. You know, just because you have a hundred million dollars and you do you keep it for yourself, do you want to make impact? But then You see all these charities that blow money away, that get wasted. So, like who do you trust? Who do you so these are all the conversations we kind of tend to have in these groups? So they're all around the world. Most of them has been in North America, because that's where it started. And now it's all around the world. We we you know they expanded into Europe, obviously, into Asia Pacific, A Asia Pacific, sorry, to you know, India and Dubai. So each group is about twelve to fifteen members and it was run by a chair. So they They asked me to kind of come in to chair the Portugal group. this was a member, a former member in the US that wanted to start a group here. And so that's how I kind of got involved. I'm like, I didn't know anything about it. So, you know, the next logical question is like, well, why you not anything to do with it? I didn't come from finance. Most of the chairs are usually either former members who want to be a chair, or they usually come from finance or some sort because they want to have connections in those worlds. Because one of my goals is to recruit these people, right? I don't know. I didn't even know that the group existed, so I didn't even know. As I mentioned last episode, I didn't even know this type of wealth even existed. It's not within my sphere. But when you start getting into it, I I the reason why I got into it, like I come from a very different background. They they weren't sure about me either, because I'm a chiropractor. I'm a former chiropractor, a coach. Like I'm not in this world, I'm in health. But the one skill that I had was facilitation, because I did a lot of coaching. I, you know, created retreats from all around the world. My clients used to travel all around the world in Europe and Australia. So I knew how to facilitate groups. And I'm comfortable talking to these types of people. So communication comes into play and my organization comes into play. And also being able to facilitate conversation comes into play. I'm not teaching anybody anything. This is very different than coaching, right? Coaching is a little bit like, okay, I'm guiding people. I'm what do I have to teach someone who's got $150 or $50 million, right? Nothing that they're all like smart type A personalities. My job is to kind of rein them in, right? And have proper conversations. That's the challenging part. So the so my role is to kind of meet. I I organize the meeting every single month and I curate the conversations and facilitate the conversation. They are very transparent in their portfolio. So the the beautiful part about one of each meeting is that one person shares open portfolio, everything, net worth, how it's allocated, what are they allocated, what are they investing in, what they're currently investing, what they're going to invest. Like so I as open book, like everything's fully confidential outlets, like I'm, you know, there's no disclosure of any members. I'm very, you know, tight without no no one knows. so the reason why I got into it was like for several reasons. Like one, it's like it's a totally different room, right? This is a this is a room that I never even knew existed. And there's this great play, like Hamilton, you theater in Broadway. And I remember like this one song, it's like you gotta be in the room, right? Or be and or something like that. And it's just like that stuck with my mind. I'm like, yeah, I gotta be in the room. I I don't I just be I wanna be in a fly on the wall to be able to just like listen to people's conversation. I also wanted that I'm a big mindset guy. So like it's like I want to surround myself. With these people who have been successful in their life and I want to know like what makes them tick. Now, maybe it's a little bit too late for me to make some changes. I don't think it is. Like I still feel like I'm adopting some of these mindset. But actually more importantly, I have two young kids. I got two young kids who are going, leaving their teenage years and moving towards adulthood. What can I instill in them? And the third thing is connections, right? I get to meet prospects who maybe not qualified or maybe are qualified, but now I'm meeting all these people, not just in Portugal, but all around the world. I've I run two groups. I one I run a group in Portugal and also run a group globally, so like we meet online. So I have like members from like Moscow to you know Florida to Ireland to you know where Germany or whatever and and Mauritius and like all of these places and I have connections now. I've you know meet other members from other groups and so that's the opportunity to kind of understand like understand wealth, understand what people are doing, what can I learn that can impart myself to better me, better my kids, but also then better my clients too as well. And This is why the I feel like, you know, those are the reasons why I chose it 'cause it's such a different element for me. and but I've been having it blast and it's been a fun experience. Chris: Wow. What an opportunity. you mentioned in our previous conversation this idea that you had of like, like once I hit a million or three million, like that's kinda like that that was the upper level. Like maybe that Laurence Tham: Mm-hmm. Chris: that was the goalpost, but now being in this room you see maybe that's that's a little different. Like your your your thinking has got a little bit bigger. Can you share a bit more on like how How being in this room has changed the way you think about whether it's wealth or success, even what that looks like. Laurence Tham: Sure. Yeah. So just for context, it's important to understand like in order for you to qualify to be a member, you have to have at least a minimum of twenty million of net worth, of actually investable net worth. So which means like you can't use your home as part of your net worth, that doesn't qualify. It has to be investable, which means like it has to be something that is liquid. So you can't come in if you own them a company that's worth twenty million dollars either. Like that's not. Because that's not liquid. So the reason why for that is is like we w wanna help the members to grow their wealth, but they send al change the allocation as required or at least what's needed to help them shape to have a better allocation. So so that's the context of the types of members. So what what did I learn? I I mean there's so many things I've learned, but like let's go with the some of the simpler ones. Number one, they're just regular people. That flat out. Like that's that's the most important thing I need to like really kind of state is like they are just They are my neighbors. Like they're people who live around me, behind me. Sure, they might have a bigger house, but they don't flaunt it. They go to the same schools my kids go to. they play paddle with me. And I wouldn't have never known. Like there's no way any of us would be able to tell because they're not the ones that are flashy. Now, of course, are there flashy members? Like we have to over 2,000 members around the world, right? So of course there are. But they're not the ones who drive the Ross Roy's, the Ferraris, the the they drive a Tesla. They might drive like a a Mercedes or something. Like you but you would never be able to know how much wealth they 'cause they don't flaunt it. They don't live the lifestyle of what we imagine celebrities, you know, you know, what they do in in the world, like buying yachts and everything. No, if anything, they're a frugal, right? So the neck the you know that book, the the the millionaire next door? Like that is kind of true. Like it is these are like, you know, twenty, thirty, fifty million, hundred millions. Like you the reason why twenty million is set as the bar is because They felt that at you I mean it has to be a bar somewhere. But there's actually a major difference between someone who has like ten million to twenty million or but after twenty million or so, it's like I don't know, the the difference between how someone lives their life between thirty million or fifty million or a hundred is not that much different anymore. Like for some reason, like it's just like sure, like they might travel a little bit, but most of them are very frugal in a sense of they they actually frugal's not the wrong word or wrong word. Actually, I think value. Is the right word. Meaning like they're gonna spend money on what's valuable to them. And so what that means is I'll give you a perfect example. I remember having a conversation with one of my members. I have a Tesla, and he was thinking about buying a Tesla. And he's like asking me, like, hey, listen, do you pay for the the monthly so when you own a Tesla, you pay for the internet connection, it's ten dollars or ten euros a month so that you can have the up-to-date. You don't have to, but it's like 10 years off. So 120. Euros a a year. He's like, Do you pay for him? Like, Yeah, of course. I mean, I got Spotify, get all this stuff, right? You know, stuff. He goes, Yeah, I don't I'm not sure. I'm like, What are we talking about here? Like, are you kidding me? And you know, and another same conversation was like with someone else who's like, yeah, these ads they on YouTube is this bothering me. I'm like, You don't have YouTube premium? He's like, No, it's like it's like twenty bucks a month. I'm like, first of all, it's not twenty, it's like twelve. And seriously, what are we talking about here? So like This is the type of mindset, but they will, you know, spend five thousand or, you know, whatever on something. So this is not to me about being cheap. It's about value. Is it valuable to them? And I think that's the key important element, right? of when we're assessing. So it's not about how much money, because they're exactly the same people as any of us. sure, they live a better life in terms of the experiences that they get to have in the different holidays, but they they choose their their choice they make their choices based on value. And I think that we also We need to do that the same as well. It doesn't really matter. No matter how much you have, it's like, what do you value? Some of us value a business class ticket, but some of us like I don't travel business because like I five seven, I fit normally, fit perfectly well in an economy seat, especially when I fly from Australia. People used like, you gotta fly. I'm like, I'm fine. Like if I was like two inches taller, yeah, probably is a pain, right? Like I would probably, you know, go to a business. But I don't need to. Like I'm pretty happy in an economy because it just fits perfectly for me. I have my own ritual when I f like five, twenty-four hours a day, you know, when from Australia. But it's like that's fine for me. But for some people, it's like, no, they they value the sleep and they're willing to pay the extra three. Perfectly fine, right? Some people will love to stay, they need to stay at a five star hotel. But some people like, you what, holiday ends good for me. Like, I don't care. I think that's how we need to think about money and spending and r and then reverse engineer and go, what do you actually need? I think that's probably what you guys kind of talk about, you clients, is like. What do you mean? As I mentioned in the last episode, everybody's different. Everybody has a different v freedom value and what that means to them. And I think you gotta work backwards to figure out like what kind of life do you wanna have. And then from there, then you can develop the chase and what you're trying to what are you trying to achieve. Scott Campbell: being in this room and and having this network built out and meeting so many of these different individuals that have varying levels of wealth but all over that 20 million threshold what would you say like maybe a couple of core habits or disciplines that they have as they just not even necessarily with how they've designed their portfolio and how they've gotten their wealth, but like how they just kind of carry themselves in terms of day to day how they're thinking from a mindset standpoint that can be applicable to you know one of the chiropractic Chris: Yeah. Scott Campbell: To this episode. Laurence Tham: Yeah, I think number one, like there's a before and after. So I think let's like separate them because like the before they actually had their wealth and then that's also the mindset afterwards because I think they're sometimes can be distinctively different. from what I noticed. This is again, this is just my observation with the members that I have, which is not always the case for every single person. I wanna s you know, let's just be kind of be put an asterisk on that just because it's it's important because not everybody's like it. So I think like for the entrepreneurs and wealth creators, meaning like the the ones who build the business from nothing, you know. the mindset was like a lot of it is has a lot to do with they just they just have a separate mindset of like creating value in terms of how to grow a company that I never thought about or and I kinda wish I did. And I think it's also because they are surrounded themselves with people that have similar mindset. So what I mean by that is like I I find like a lot of them come from like Silicon Valley as an example. Or in the tech world. And I think that now that I'm a lot in that circles and like dealing with those people, I realize that they think totally different than just the say a practitioner as a chiropractor. And not that it's good or bad, just like chiropractors, we all hang around, we kind of think similarly in terms of how we see the world and how we see practice and health and everything else. Well, people from Silicon Valley, like they all they know is about growth, right? Not necessarily from just money, but also growth in terms of. They are willing to take a lot of chances and idea, willing to like start a company without knowing that that's probably they know the first idea is probably not the idea that but they're gonna start and then their tenth version of that idea is what's gonna grow. Like they're thinking in unicorn kind of like that projection versus where most of us, like, we have we're so confined by making the right choice as our next choice, where these guys are like willing to fail fast, like what we talked about in the last episode. Like they're just like, Whatever, okay. If that didn't work, already, but we already got this money, so we're just gonna build something else. And and they just keep on building and building until something works. They kind of figure it out along the way rather than and I don't have that mindset. Like I'm like, I just gotta make the right choice, you know, because I don't wanna screw this up. So I feel like that mindset was like they move fast. I think Zuckerberg has, you know, from Facebook, I w I I remember visiting Facebook once in California and going in there and they were talking about like move fast and break things. Like that's his model. Right. So Facebook always has this model and all the employees we would talk about this. This is going back like 15 years ago. And it's like they want to move fast. They to trial. And they like literally the person I I knew there was telling me like they would trial something for an hour if it didn't work in a certain region. They're like, Okay, move on. Let's do the next test. Right. They won't come back to that. Right. Where we would probably s it's like some like, do we think about this for like three months before we trial and then we do it and then we send like three, six months trialing and like, it didn't work. And then we're like, we're failures. Like they're moving so fast. On trial things that we would not ha can't comprehend. So I I think that mindset of that Silicon Valley mindset or that tech world mindset is so different than our practitioners. I feel like and I'm not saying that that's the so the lesson I want to extract from that, for me at least, is more about the people you surround yourself with. So what I feel like if you Want to change the mindset of whatever it is, whether it be relationships, whether it be wealth or or you know family values or health values, you need to actually evaluate the people around you that you hang around the most in each of those categories and ask yourself: are they examples of where you want to be or are they not? And if they're not. You have to have the courage to be able to break away from those relationships or at least not spend less time and find other people that you want to emulate because you want to kind of start picking up those habits or at least see the world and how they see it. Chiropractors know this from a health perspective. When you hang around with a bunch of chiropractors in a conference, like we all see eye to eye on certain things, right? Especially specific conferences. Like you see the eye on, like this is how we see nervousism, this is how we see chiropractic. That's because we all have similar, you know, and we like that. We like that we we have we're part of a tribe. Well, it's the same thing when it comes to wealth. It's 'cause the same thing when it comes to, you know, relationship, you know, like marriages and stuff. And there's same thing with how you raise your kids. So I think that's the extraction, not so much about like we need to be, well, we should all move to San Francisco. No, I'm not saying that. I'm just saying like whatever your values are, find areas of pockets of people where you emulate and try to get into those circles. And you want to be the dumbest person in the room, right? You don't want to be the smartest person in the room. If you're the smartest person in the room, you're in the wrong room. And so therefore what you need to do is figure out like how can I get into a room which I am in now? I'm in the room. I'm definitely the dumbest person and the least experienced in this room. they're not asking for my advice, but I can get to listen and I learn to elevate my understanding and of around wealth. And I have never spent more time like trying to understand wealth than in the last sort of five years, simply because of like the circles I'm in now. I but I wish I learned a lot. You know, we talked about mistakes. Listen, like sure. It's easy when you do a podcast like this and you kinda go like, you know, like he made the right choices and stuff. No, there were so many choices I made wrongly. I've lost a quarter million dollars like back in 2008. Like I've made some these stupid financial mistakes. The biggest financial mistake I made was not investing. So when I lost that quarter million dollars, we can go into it, but it's not relevant. But when I lost that money, I invested in something that I should not have invested in because it was way above my head. And I lost that quarter million dollars and lost a quarter million dollars for my my dad my parents as well. So we lost a half million dollars all the and plus my my in-laws. So it was a brutal loss, right? But I stopped investing because I was just like, no, I'm gonna put my head down working on my business, which was a smart thing for me to do at the same time, but I didn't invest. And so because I was so scared of it and because I was investing up to that point and I was so scared of it, and those years I can't get back. And it was not until like only recently, like until like 2020 in the last six years when I started running, I'm like, I'm on this side of 50, which like I was like 45, 40. I'm on this side, which means like when you're young, you can go, listen, I got a long life to live. I can just work and I can make all this money and figure it out. That's at least in your head, right? But you realize at some point, which what which I did around 45, was like, crap. I'm turning over this side, which means like my runway to earn is now shortened. And now I'm in a position where like, hmm, I really need to start thinking about this, or myself, my family, my wife is gonna be in trouble. And so it's really not until that pressure moment that I wish I learned, like when I was in my twenties and thirties. I'm trying to impart that to my kids, is that to start early because as you know, like the younger you start, I think was the best line, right? So like the best time to invest was yesterday and the next best time is like now, right? I th I wish I learned that and everybody's taught me, you knew it, like you know it, like everybody talks about it. But it's like following like knowing something and then following through with something are two completely different actions, right? Two different actions. So I think that if we're gonna part any like one liner thing is that invest sooner rather than later, because you know you don't want to live with regret. Chris: Yeah, for sure. You mentioned like mindset and habits of you know, there's this distinct kind of difference in the the room you're in of like kind of before, like as they're building their business and building their, you know, their wealth and then maybe now they're on the other side of that line Laurence Tham: Yeah. Chris: and they have the wealth. Tell us a bit more about that. Laurence Tham: Yeah. it's really interesting. Like one of the surprising things when you know, when you meet these people, like it and once you like obviously when they're meeting me, it's a little bit different, but when you start to see the interactions among like among the members, there's no like which I what c which I love about like the types of people, remember, it's like drawing certain types of people into these groups, right? 'Cause they're open and transparent with each other, which means there's no ego in the room. Like and but that's also by selection, like selection from them, but also selection from me to like choosing the right people. Like this is not a show off room. This is about room of like helping each other. Like I what I pitched to them is like this is your board of directors, your personal board of directors, right? No one has anything to gain. Like no one's selling it. There's no solicitation. No one sells anything. There there's there's actually no rule to like sell and you know, this is come to my fund and everything like this, none of that. So what's important here is like they want to help each other. And that could be with family, relationships, it could be conversations, or it could be about money. What to invest. The the idea that I was really surprised with is that after earning their money, the the challenge that that I see in them is that there's a lot of pressure for them. There's pressure and guilt are the two unexpected emotions that I I can see, not all of them, but some of them. The pressure is like you have all this wealth, which means you gotta deal with that. So when when the S P five hundred ha which is what you know, majority of them will have their SP. When your S P five hundred drops like twenty percent in a quarter, right? If you're like, think about that. If you have a hundred million dollars, that's twenty million dollars gone. Like at least on paper, right? That's not comfortable. Even though yes, it's all about percentage, but like it's let's like it still sucks, right? If you had a million dollars, that's you know, $200,000, that sucks. A hundred thousand dollars, like it's all relative, but it's like it sucks to the moment. And so these drawdowns and This is where, you know, especially nowadays, we have no idea where, you know, are we in a are we in the peak? Are we in the bubble? Who freaking knows? But this is the challenge. And so they have to keep an eye on. But remember, they weren't investors, right? They were entrepreneurs. They were building. They had nothing. They're coming from like nothing. And they all of a sudden they got this wealth. Now they gotta manage it. So there's this pressure of like, I gotta keep this. I don't wanna lose it. So the reason why I talked about, you know, not being frugal they're not being frugal, it's but more like they're just They remember, they still remember the moments when they used to just sleep, you know, in their in their company, right? They still remember those moments when they had nothing. So which means that they don't almost like have this beautiful golden goose egg, but they don't want to lose it. So you start becoming more protective. So the they start shifting their mindset, I feel like you know, you almost need to realize that wealth creation is very different than wealth preservation. And so the strategies are very uniquely different. I thought I was going in, was like, I get to like learn what they're investing in. No, no, actually, if anything, they're way more conservative than I would have thought, but makes sense now in hindsight because they're there to protect their wealth, because they don't need to earn any more. Like, when do you have $50 million? Like, what is another 50 gonna do for you? That's good. How is that gonna change your lifestyle? It isn't, right? You might be to buy another, I don't know, like another house somewhere, but it's not gonna make a difference. And if anything, like a lot of the Initial like portfolios, like there was like, I don't know if I'm spending too much. And like most of the comments, like I would say nine out of ten, actually, you know, ten out of ten conversations from the members, like you're not spending enough, right? Because they're so conservative in how much they spend. Now, yes, for number one, they're spending more than what you know any of us would, but from a percentage point of view, they're spending so little compared to what we would spend compared to our wealth. And it that was really fascinating. But the feeling, the emotional attachment of that though. it is really challenging 'cause that it's a very different mindset. Remember, if they still have this old mindset of like how they lived and but now they have this wealth, they s like of course they can elevate it, but it still kinda hangs in there. which is a smart thing to do 'cause then you don't blow it Chris: So from our experience and kind of insights, we we really believe that simple is the best approach to investing. Like there are no tricks, there's no like you know, there's nothing fancy that you can do to to get a better return. Like it's really just the basics. And I'm cu really curious, like What do you see in these portfolios, these high net worth individuals? Like, are they trying are they investing in things that like we don't have access to as people without twenty millions of dollars? Or are they investing the same things that that we are, like a balanced, diversified portfolio across the globe? Laurence Tham: I'll answer that in a couple of different ways. Number one, what I see now is I think it's true, is the more wealth you actually accumulate, the more opportunities are available to you to build that wealth faster. and I think that's across the board, whether it be from like someone who earns a hundred thousand dollars a net worth and to now to have a million, you're just gonna have more opportunities that are presented to you and which means that you you can use it for leverage. And if you have one million versus ten million, then you're gonna have more opportunities. Ten million over twenty is gonna have more opportunities. So opportunities are coming at you. If anything, you have almost too many opportunities. You gotta figure out which one you actually want to go after. like for example, like we have s recently SpaceX, we have Anthropic coming up, O Open AI. That's not usually available to the public, right? But anybody with some sort of wealth, not even that much, will have opportunities to buy into those through very you know, SPVs and all all these other opportunities to buy into those, which could then 10x, 100x easily, and that only creates more wealth. Now, this is where I think this is why you know people talk about like the wealth gets rich, richer. It goes, it's true, because they have just more opportunities. Now, I'm not saying that's wrong. It's just, it just, it just that's the fact of life. so that's one. Number two, though, however, having said that, they're very conservative. If anything, like I've already mentioned this, like very, very conservative and very simplified. But the most important thing here is they have buckets. I think the people who do it really well have buckets, meaning like X percentage, and this let's just say call it majority, more than more than 50%, is actually in a safe like allocation. That's protection for their wealth. So no matter what happens here, this is protected. But they still they're still interested, right? There's they're entrepreneurs are They're driven by like wanting to need. So they carve out a per percentage where they get to play. Now, playing means, not sorry, I shouldn't say play, invest on their own. So what they tend to do, and I think I've seen this many times, is that they are going to invest in things they already are good at or have an expertise at. And oftentimes it's like psychology doesn't change, right? People are going to. Do the things what everybody else is doing to think the grass is greener on the other side. So meaning like if you never had crypto before and you see your friends earning so much in crypto or Bitcoin or whatever, he goes, Maybe I should get into that, right? If someone is like never owned real estate and they built like tech companies, they're like, maybe I should diversify it and go into real estate. Or someone who've like who had been startup, like, okay, I grill all this wealth in startup, I maybe I should go buy in the SP like S P five hundred, right? So there's always these things that not knowing because why? Why does Let's talk about the reason why. Number one is there's so many ways to create wealth. That's one thing I learned. There's so many ways. And there's not one path. There's multiple paths. what I see in the world is that there's just so much opportunity to create wealth. So I know people have built wealth from all from real estate. I've known people who built wealth from purely just investing in the right stock. I remember the first person's portfolio I saw. He made his money. He was a big company like Amazon, kind of one of the f early employees or whatever. one of those companies, Stripe or Amazon, I can't remember which one, or Skype or something like that. But he he made his money. Okay, this is actually good advice for for for chiropractors. We are living in a profession. I'll come back to that story. We live in a profession where we are creating cash flow. Okay. You have cash flow. You that's the someone explained this to me like a long, long time ago, which is great. It's like, You're never gonna earn a massive amount of wealth being a chiropractor. But what you can earn a lot of wealth is actually taking that funnel of cash flow from being a chiropractor and then utilizing that cash flow to leverage. It's what you do with that money you get and leveraging it is what's gonna make you wealthy, not from the cash flow itself. And this is the mistake that I kind of made where what I talked about, like those years of missing years, I call it, of not investing, is that if I just did that, if I even just took like, you know. fifty thousand dollars or whatever and just invest in something something safe or whatever, like an SP five hundred, like that compounding over those ten, twenty years, like it's just infallible what that could have been. Just stupid, right? Like just dumb and you know, as what in what in your line of business, like, yeah, that's we talk about this every day. But for people who are not in that world, because what do we do? Chiropractors are served, we just want to give love and we want to care for people. We don't think about those things. But Wanna come back to that story, which is like this is what this this employee of like one of these companies, sure that he might have earned a great salary, but what was his bets? Because I saw his portfolio, Tesla. Bitcoin, I think those were it. Two things, two bets at the right time. I don't know what what years that's called, like, you know, like er like before before Andy was big. And then boom, you know, 2020 happened. Tesla goes to skyrocket, Bitcoin goes crazy, sold at the right time. That was his wealth, right? was he smarter than anybody else? Maybe. Maybe did he do his diligence? Maybe. I have no idea. But the thing is, sometimes like so what I said, real estate, you can have been smart with the right bets. Some of it has been like I were we're doing, this person has built like sixty-seven, he's invested in sixty-seven different, you know, tech companies or started sixty-seven. Okay, that's one way to build wealth. Or you you have a company and you sold it. Right? You created a company out of nothing, you sold it for you know. 30, 40 million dollars or 100 million dollars. That's another way, right? So there's so many ways, is what I'm saying. And going back to like portfolio, what I've seen is that people have a tendency to want to do something different than what the core is. But what the answer always comes back to, and is not necessarily the right advice, which is yes, diversify, but maybe stick to what you already know. Like the real estate person is like, hey, maybe like, maybe diversify what you're investing in real estate, but doesn't mean like you should just Go all in on SP 500 or go all in on tech companies because that's the the the you know, or go all in on AI at the moment, right? Like that could be enticing, but you don't know anything about it. So which means you're evaluating those companies very differently than you're evaluing an apartment building or a piece of land because that's what you know. Because you've seen it for 10 Chris: Yeah. Laurence Tham: or 20 years. You see all the little things that you wouldn't normally see, but you know, going to invest in an AI company, what are you evaluating? I have no you have no idea because you're not in tech. So I think that there's different types of allocations. I hope that answers that question, which means that. Chris: Yeah. Laurence Tham: Everybody can earn wealth in a whole bunch of ways, but not no one ever really knows. And being a creator of wealth doesn't necessarily mean you're an investor. you it's a totally different skill set. And and I I realize this for me, at least looking at the investing, is like it's a thing that constantly I'm learning and you know, being humbled by all the time because it's changing. And, you know, you're hearing narratives, but you gotta make that decision at the same time of where the world is moving towards and the economy. You need to understand a whole lot. which is a lot harder. So sometimes you can understand all that, but really it comes down to like, you know what, maybe the S P five hundred is the best way 'cause that simplifies and I'd be I'd rather take the the the average than trying to outpace yourself. Chris: Yeah, fair enough. I like let's let's kinda as we look to wrap things up here, I like your your comment on cash flow for for our chiropractors. Like that's their That's their their main thing that they have going for them as practitioners. Like they have the ability to have that cash flow coming in and how they utilize that cash flow is gonna be the difference maker, right? Like they're building an asset, they're building a business for sure. That's that's one thing, and you know, we could talk about maybe that's another conversation for another day of like building a saleable asset that has real value that you can sell. But then what you actually do with you know, with your any earnings you have, like rather than just having some retained earnings in your in your corp just kind sitting there idle because it feels good and just continuing to go to work, you know, actually getting that money invested and and you know growing your wealth that way is is probably gonna move the needle a lot more than just you know increasing your your volume by five percent per year. It's just a cash flow thing still, right? Laurence Tham: Yeah, it's a a total cash flow thing. And there's there we're gonna have good times and we're gonna have bad times. And you know, the market is the market. And so at least this is what I know, and you guys would know more than me. But realizing that it's really, really difficult and almost impossible to time the market. I don't think we are we have the capabilities as normal practitioners to be able to outsmart people who do this twenty four seven. Like they are in this and they can see. So no different than us chiropractors thinking A physio can't come in and adjust like we you know, we always poo-poo the physios who trying to adjust or do with spinal manipulation, what we'll call it. well, it's the same thing. It was because we are hands-on, like taking it's not just like, sure, to the public's eyes, it's just we're cracking spines. But from a chiropractor's point, no, we got we're very specific and we're very, you know, intentional, we're affecting the nervous system. So that same concept is the same thing who someone who can see the investment world or investing in a particular company or whatever or a stock. They know every little thing. They can see every little tiny movement that you don't you can't fathom. There's no way you're gonna beat that person. Cause they're looking at this 24-7. You're looking at for like one minute a day or a couple of minutes watching YouTube influencer trying to tell you to buy this particular stock. Like you're not gonna be able to outpace them. So sure, if you want to play, play, but portion, like a small percentage and go like so that you can get like at least in the system, like that's my play money. If I lose it all, I'm okay, I'm gonna be okay with it. But don't bet the house on it, right? I think that's the smart plan. This is what I meant by like, you know, having different type different styles. Like I remember I remember meeting this member, I just thought was really interesting. He has a what he calls a barbell investment portfolio. And the barbell portfolio is like basically it's like a barbell, which is like heavy on one end and heavy on the other side. And it's one's conservative and one's risk. Actually interesting. Not everything is invested. But remember, these guys have a lot of money. So it's not like yes, it's percent is all based on percentage. So but they have cash because of just so they're ready to activate, especially nowadays, right? Where no one really knows what's going on so they're ready activate in case and when the market drops, they're ready to go buy. So that's that. But then on the other side of the barbell, it's all invested in companies, like startups, companies he's part of or friends that he's starting up with, and that's all. He has nothing in between. He's never bought a single stock in his life, which is like, what? Like not, like not a single stock, not SP 500, nothing. He's never bought a Tesla stock. He like literally just holds these two, like bonds and cash and you know, just startup companies. It's been he's been successful at it, and that's what he does. Now, is that a does that mean that I'm giving you advice to go, that's what you should? No. Like this is a person who's started five different companies, right? He knows what he's looking for. So there's his risk, but he also knows his risk out, you know, not all of those. five say five or ten companies gonna be successful, he knows like maybe two of them will be successful and hopefully, you know, like two of them will break even or whatever. So that's what I mean by learning wealth is that you got to be clear on like what are your goals, what are you trying to achieve, but also know what your skill is at. If you're no skill fed from an investment board, you can sure understand it, but it takes years to master, just like it takes years to become a great chiropractor and a great adjuster, great communicator, it takes a long time and you need to kind of understand that perspective and appreciate That's what they do for a living and they they're in this game you know, 24-7 and they they know it. This is like professional sports, right? You know, sure we can criticize like a a hockey player or a basketball player and a football player, like, yeah, you should have done this. You're not there on the field. All right. You're not you're not the quarterback that has a three hundred pound lineman like rushing into you at full speed and and and you're just gonna knock you and every time it hits you, like you get a concussion. Like you don't you don't know that, right? You can't feel that there's no way unless you're on the field. And so I think that sometimes we need to start thinking like that when it comes to investing. And sometimes it's best to actually follow through with professional people who actually understand the and the game so that you can actually get who actually understands the risk and and also being understand like what's available to you and also understanding the implication when things go wrong. It's great when everything goes right, but when it goes wrong, no one has a prediction of that, but that's what they're there to protect. I think that's important for people to understand. Chris: Awesome. Okay, last question for you. So our chiropractors listening, you know, a lot of them probably are not gonna be at that 20 million mark where they can join Tiger 21, but how could they go, what would you what would be your suggestion? Like how do we go and build our own, as you called it, like personal like board of directors so that we can be in the those groups in those communities where you know it's iron sharpening iron, it's you know, we're growing together. Laurence Tham: Yeah, I think obviously one is a it's it's you just gotta be able to be attentive and and seeing that through your networks. I mean, chiropractors are one of the people of the of this world that have the most diverse people that you're coming in contact on a regular basis, right? Like you don't work for like say, I don't know, like Boeing or any particular company where you're surrounded by people who are in that corporate world and doing the same thing. No, we're in in a profession where we're meeting someone who is like a single mom with three kids to someone who's a CEO of a company, like and everybody in between. And so we're so diverse in terms of the of the types of people that come in and out of our offices. You just gotta be attentive enough to be able to listen and pick up like who are the people that are resonating. When I was in practice, I was always looking for people, not necessarily like from a mastermind perspective, I was looking for people like who are interesting people. And crack practice would understand this, and it's not Talking bad about patients. Certain patients are listen, I love all my patients, but I love them like family, which means that they're part of my family, but I don't have to love every single one of them, right? Like because they're we're family by blood, but I don't have to love all of you. I don't want to necessarily hang out with all of my family, my cousins or whatever, right? No offense to anybody in particular. But it's sort of like that. I treat I treat everybody like family, meaning like I take care of you because you're my family, but I don't have to love you. I don't have to spend time with you, but we're just bonded by blood. So Same thing with your patients. Like I always kind of looked out for like really interesting people that intrigued me, you know, that I can go, I can really resonate with you. And it's having the the the courage to be able to ask certain questions to find out. Like you might find a mentor or you might find someone who is really like smart and and go, Well, like can I have a coffee with you? Right? Don't pick someone's brain. Like no one wants their brain picked. What you want to do is like have a conversation and be a human being. To just ask interesting conversation to have curiosity. I think so finding those people can be rare, but I'm telling you, wealth is all around us. You have no idea because no one talks about that wealth. No one knows how much each of us earn or no one really knows. We might make speculations because the car you drive and the house you have and the way you spend your lifetime, but no one really knows, right? So don't be, don't be lost in like going after people with you know, cars and stuff. Go to the people that's interesting to you. And like what I said. Find people that resonate with you that are that you want to emulate or at least appreciate how they raise their family, how they, you know, take vacations or how where they go, similar interests, and just kind of create some sort of meeting. So here's a couple of like tactical ways you can do this, right? When I became a chiropractor when I first got to Perth when I became an associate there, I was new. I didn't know a single soul in Western Australia. So what did I do? Like I went to the you know the the normal board meeting or whatever and I just picked like there was like, these these two guys who were a couple years ahead of me, they s have similar energy to me. They're similar age. And I'm like, hey, do you wanna catch up for coffee? So we did. We caught up for coffee every single week and we just talked about strategies, how to do marketing, how to take care of our patients. And we did that for like two years. We just kind of went back and forth and came right. It was just like this ritual, right? Was was it always amazing? No. But it was just this constant kind of surrounding yourself with right people. So that's one way. It's just grabbing people you already know that you kind of want to and but remember, don't be the smartest person in the room. Like choose people that are smarter than you. That's one way. The other way is I've done this as well, which is a good friend of mine, Jason Gaynor from Toronto. Like he he has created something called the mastermind dinners. So what he would do is like he would go, and this is how I kind of create, you know, some connections is like I would go, hey, I know you know I don't really know you, but I'm going to create a dinner six to eight people. And I'll love for you to you know you invite them, or maybe you can invite a friend, and we just have a dinner and you just have a conversation, not like surface level conversation, how's your day, how's your summer? No, curate certain questions around the room. Like a perfect example would be like, if you were to have dinner with three people, dead or alive, who would those three people be and why? And just let people answer. Like that's a much more fascinating question, but there's no right or wrong answers here. But you're gonna know a lot more about that person based on the answers that someone could be saying, my grandfather. And the reason why is because, you know, I never met my grandfather and da-da. And this is what they did. It's like, my God, that's fascinating. Or it could be like, I want to meet Martin Luther King. Someone said, like freaking someone said would be like Hitler. I'm like, okay, that's interesting. Like, why? And then so then you go into that, right? There's no right or wrong because when you get to understand the sideky of people choosing, you have this connected conversation and you always remember that. And I think having these types of dinners is another way of being able to connect people to each other. And then you can find your your tribe, you can find your community, you're find your people based on s self-selection and the types of people and energetically. Some people are not gonna be right fit, but that's okay. You're gonna it's like it's a numbers game. But all comes down to is your are you willing to go out there? It's harder when you're older, easier when you're 20 or 30, harder when it comes when you have family, you got young kids, and and be able to commit the time. But not impossible. It's the you have to have the intention of actually wanting it to better better your life. And that's what's gonna better your life is to go out and meet people. You have to actually, you know, you can't wait for the invitation. So instead of waiting, Chris: Mm-hmm. Laurence Tham: go create it. Chris: Yep. Love it. Well, thank you so much, Dr. Laurence Tham That's a great way to to end our our chat here today. appreciate your insights and to the Tiger Twenty One group and everything that you're you're doing. And yeah, we'll have to we'll have to do this again in the future. Laurence Tham: Appreciate it. And hope that's you guys got a lot of value in it out of it. And most importantly, just take action. Don't sit and decide and just go talk to someone and make some decisions, go invest. I think this is one of the most important things because we need you to be successful. Number one in practice. Number two, learn how to invest so that you can actually learn to give more to our profession and actually help the next generation of chiropractors. Chris: All right, thank you so much.