Mindful Money with Jonathan DeYoe

Jonathan DeYoe 0:34
Well, so there’s a there’s a lot that’s happened in the last since we talked few years ago. And I don’t think we actually touched on this before. But everything changed for me literally two years ago, my brother died, he drowned in the Pacific Ocean.

george grombacher 0:02
Jonathan do is a money philosopher. He is a speaker. He is the host of the mindful money podcast. He is a partner with EP Wealth Advisors. He is an author, which I mentioned his newest book, which is available now is mindful investing, right focus better outcomes, greater well being. Welcome back, Jonathan.

Jonathan DeYoe 0:22
Thanks, George. It’s exciting to see you again. And to catch up.

george grombacher 0:25
Great to have you back on refresh our memories. Tell us a bit about your personal lives more about your work, and what motivated you put pen to paper for the new book?

Jonathan DeYoe 0:48
You hear stories about, you know, the workaholic, who goes to the doctor and, you know, discovers a heart condition, Doc says you got to slow down, you’re gonna die, new perspective starts to make some different choices. When Dave died, I had a pretty similar experience, you know, he died at the tail end of the pandemic, things were starting to open back up. So my social circle had dwindled during the pandemic, to my immediate family and him to say, we were close as an understatement. You know, he was my best friend in the world, he was the one person I spent time with outside my own family. And maybe my work colleagues, you know, resume for that two year period, his death woke up for me, the need for friends, and I read articles before, about, you know how important it is how friendships decline over time, and I know my situation is pretty normal. Even if it’s a little extreme, I had 1000s of connections, hundreds of contacts, lots of associates, you know, couple friends and my brother, he was one of the two, right, and I was in the, it’s never gonna happen to me camp until it happened, and his death woke up. And then he friends also woke up this need for meaningful work. And it’s not just that the work needs to be meaningful, but the the activities that I spend during my day, the things that I work on, everything’s got to be meaningful. So by the end of 2021, he died in June of 2021, I merged my firm into a larger practice, I gave up managing HR and managing technology platforms and tech stack and all that and all those decisions that are business oriented, and I did two things, I pivoted towards time with clients. And which I love I love working with clients, we’re getting individuals is great. And also on to financial education. So the the book, I wrote the first book in 2017. The second book is just one of the second one in a series of probably three or four that I’m gonna work on, that are all about financial education and financial literacy, helping people that don’t have access. So by the end of 2022, I added a third thing, and this is part of my recovery following his death was, you know what, I’m going to be a mindfulness teacher as well. So I joined Jack Kornfield, and Tara brach and becoming a certified mindfulness instructor. So the books and the writing financial education is kind of the path. And the mindfulness is kind of the method.

george grombacher 3:07
Well, I’m so sorry about your brother. Thanks. And life is a really funny thing. I don’t my brother passed away at the beginning of 20. And you and I are similar in so many ways, Jonathan, I

Jonathan DeYoe 3:21
think I did not know that man.

george grombacher 3:24
And it sort of it sparked similar things in in me. So you’re, you’re you’re explaining that and I’m just listening, and I’m taking it in. You are a really smart, intelligent and thoughtful person now even more so thoughtful. It’s interesting. I think I was already wasn’t already doing this stuff. didn’t already know this stuff. But I didn’t know.

Jonathan DeYoe 3:54
You think you think it’s, I mean, like I said, you don’t think it’s gonna happen you, you know the things you should do. But we don’t do them. There’s a gap between what we know and what we do. And then we learn. We learn.

george grombacher 4:07
So that gap, that’s not exclusive to you. And I that’s a that’s that’s a human feature and bug,

Jonathan DeYoe 4:15
I guess for sure. Yeah.

george grombacher 4:18
So how do is the hope of the book when when when somebody picks it up? What what are you hoping it would that people are going to get from reading it?

Jonathan DeYoe 4:32
So it’s no surprise and you know, this, like, it’s no surprise, financial education is just lacking, like, people with resources, hire people like you and I, other advisors CPAs to help them plan, stay on plan and educate their kids and all this kind of stuff. But 95 Maybe 98% of people just simply don’t have access. They don’t have the assets for people to manage. They don’t have access to good advice. There’s a education out there, but almost all of it sells products, you go to a bank, you get something, and it tells you, there’s my education platform, it tells you okay, this is how you use our banks, you know, products, most people end up doing it themselves. And unfortunately, the the sort of the milieu that the stuff that people swim in the media, the social media, it’s always talking about and bringing us bringing our focus on the things that we can’t predict and can’t control. So we end up trying to make decisions about things that don’t help us. So the key to our education coaching is we help people focus on the things that can actually make a difference in their financial outcomes. So I keep going back to, as an advisor, one on one with people, I get to make a lot of the decisions for people, that’s what they want me to do. But for people that aren’t sitting with people, they have to learn, you’ve got to educate themselves first. So the books and the writing and the blogs and podcasts and your podcasts and other podcasts. This is how people learn. And we need to we need to somehow get more of this learning out there so that people can bridge their own gaps between knowing and doing.

george grombacher 6:08
I think I think that that’s spot on. And I think it’s a good thing that more people are talking about financial wellness, but a lot of it does fall fall flat. And I think that you really hit on some of those reasons. So knowing versus doing, I like to think about financial literacy and financial wellness, essentially, like I know about financial stuff, but a lot of people don’t. And so we need to understand what I know or what I don’t know, and then how to actually put that into practice. Right? That’s, that’s not easy to do in a book.

Jonathan DeYoe 6:41
So the point of the book is to and I did kind of same thing with the first book in terms of planning and how to make decisions about money. But investing isn’t a complex thing. It’s not rocket science. I say this all the time. No adviser has any greater ability to pick better investments or time to market than any other advisor or than any other person. There’s been a lot I mean, there’s been plenty of research on this. No one can guess the future. No one knows what the next big thing coming down the pipe is. And there’s article after article after article, I think. RITHOLTZ put something out today or yesterday about how everyone got it wrong about 2023. And and the thing that bothers me about those kinds of articles, is it it suggests that everyone had a right in 2022, and everyone had a right in 2021. No one ever gets it, right. Like, it’s not something you can do, you cannot consistently predict or time markets. So what do you do. And in the in the, in mindful investing, I talk about just simple, simple, simple things that people can do, you have to save enough you have to plan, you got to know what’s important to you, you know, and then when you’re in terms of investing, which is really the core of the book, it’s, you keep it as simple as possible. And I tell people, how I invest. And I tell people how I suggest people don’t want to do it themselves. And it’s really, you know, pick a global equity thing, don’t pick 15 different things. Don’t pick 30 different securities, don’t pick, keep it really simple. And just add money to it when you can and ignore it, let it go. Because you can’t predict no one can predict. And there’s perceived complexity out there forces people to focus on things that don’t add the value. And again, just take that complexity back, keep it simple, make fewer decisions, let it take up fewer mental cycles, and you’ll end up with better outcomes and more joy.

george grombacher 8:31
Well said. I think it is perceived complexity. I also sort of think it’s engineered complexity.

Jonathan DeYoe 8:39
Oh, yeah, we could get into that for sure.

george grombacher 8:42
But, but But regardless, the the point that I’m getting here, and I couldn’t agree more with is that you investor, are perfectly capable of doing this.

Jonathan DeYoe 8:54
Yeah, totally. Anyone can invest themselves. There’s, you know, there are some special how do you how do you convert an IRA to a Roth IRA, there’s definitely some plant benefits with planning and there’s a state planning stuff and there’s tax planning, there’s all kinds of complexity, but 95% of people don’t have that kind of complexity. They need to put money into an investment and let that investment grow. And that’s the point of the book is held that 95% of people

george grombacher 9:20
love it. And and in terms of of actually writing the book, you have been a writer is writing something that you do every day.

Jonathan DeYoe 9:35
Yeah, I mean, so this goes back this this story gets really tied up with my brother David as well. So I I’ve had this before he died I had this incredible morning routine people talk about your morning routine sort of determines your day determines your success, everything like this. So I had this incredible morning routine. I get up every day at 430. I would meditate for 30 minutes I would work out for you know an hour Are I during my cooldown, which you know, for my body is like 90 minutes, I would read and write for 90 minutes. And I do it every day. And I did it every day for like 20 years, I did it forever. When Dave died, I couldn’t get out of bed in the morning, I couldn’t do it all fell apart. And this is literally we’re two weeks now, two weeks ago, it kind of started to come back together. The meditation started come back, coming back together, like maybe four months ago. But the workouts were to come back together and I’m starting to be healthy again. I’ve had some health stuff happen as well in the last in the last year. But it’s I’m turning this corner where I’m 430 Let’s face it, that’s ridiculous. I’m not doing that every day. But But But 530 I could do it’s 530 I’m just starting work a little bit later. Instead, even some of those trade offs I’m learning maybe don’t work. So hard. Start a little bit later do the same kind of routine workout, meditate. Cool off Read Write. So yeah, I’ve I write every day. I can’t help. But I have thoughts I have to know. And because of the reading I it’s forces me to think about some things. So

george grombacher 11:01
do you think that I really think that writing makes me a better thinker. And I’m sure that if I wasn’t doing it, then I would be a worse thinker. And I can’t afford to do that, Jonathan. Yeah.

Jonathan DeYoe 11:18
Nor nor can I. But if you’ve done it for, as long as I think we’ve both done it, you, you can start to see like this morning, I had I had I had a client call and he had this, oh, there’s this guy who’s got this tax shenanigan thing that’s happening. And I’m just like, just doesn’t sound kosher. To me, it doesn’t sound like this is a realistic thing. So let me you know, send me the documentation. I’m going to talk to a CPA, and I know what I’m gonna hear back and oh, no, this is not okay, someone’s selling him something right. And so it’s, but having read a lot and having written and having thought a lot about finance, you just you just have like a sixth sense about it. At this point, you’ve seen it all, like, you know, where the where the nooks and crannies are. And so bringing that to light in my own writing and trying to help people make it really simple and not get caught in these kinds of things. That’s kind of my, that’s kind of my new thing. My my brother and I were going to do this together, he was a he was set up to become my CEO in the company. And he’s gonna start January 2022. And he died in June of 21. So obviously, he couldn’t do that. And by the end of that year, I had merged the firm, like I said, so I don’t have to think about this kind of stuff. Which means I have more time to do the thing that we were going to do together, which is sort of build these programs and build a stuff and write more and that I’m, I’m just loving that part of it writing more.

george grombacher 12:34
Yeah, I appreciate that. I think that’s awesome. And I’m also very much a creature of habit. And I spent a good amount of time thinking about habits, and then the routines. And I think that what we’re all looking for is is sustainable success. Because I can get up at four o’clock in the morning as well. And, you know, do 50 things in this that the other thing, but does that mean it’s going to be sustainable are really serving me. And I think that that’s something where else, I don’t know if we’re all struggling with it, but we can all optimize that.

Jonathan DeYoe 13:08
Right? And I it was I mean, my wife, this is this goes back 25 years before we were married, she would get up at morning in the morning at 3am. And I’d be gone. And she’d be like, when did she text me you know, back in the day when you had to had the single dot dot dot yet to hit the number three times on your on your flip phone to text somebody to text me and I’m like, Yeah, I’m on the way to work. And it’s just get up early. And if I can’t sleep, I get up and go to work. And I’ve done that my entire life, like my default place. And this has changed since they’ve died. My default place was okay, I’m up. It’s quiet. I’m gonna I’m gonna go to work. And back in the day it was that would mean get on the bus and bus down, you know, bus down the hill in San Francisco to downtown San Francisco. Now I just walked down the stairs, that’s you know, it’s easier.

george grombacher 13:56
Yeah. It’s, it’s fascinating. So he talked about how you and Dave was gonna become the CEO of of, of your organization, and you were going to work on these things together. And we talked about refocusing and reprioritizing. And you had health issues as well. So are you honoring him through the work you’re doing? How do you see that moving forward?

Jonathan DeYoe 14:30
Oh, there’s no, there’s no doubt. And I talked about this mid podcast episodes, you know, I do a podcast as well. And so there’s a couple episodes I’ve recorded that are all about sort of how I’m doing with my own recovery relative to Dave’s death. And how this is sort of bringing the things just a little bit of an aside, in in 2004 He and I actually took got articles of incorporation in California for something we call workers financial. And it was it was, it was a company that was just going to be around education and coaching. And so we started thinking about this a long time ago. And then of course, 2004 is also the year my, my son is born and his son was born, as you know, my first child has and so we, you know, we, we built up more than we could chew, we mothballed that, we come back to that at, you know, probably 10 years later. So this is six years ago. And we start building we built the first course, worked with, you know, people on how to how to market that more broadly, and how to get that into into more people’s hands. And then, and then I started writing the first book, and then and then now we work on worked on a little bit of some ideas for the second book, and how do we how do we reach more people. And so it’s, it’s been something we’ve always had been been going to do together. My part is sort of the experience in the financial world. His part was, how do we reach people through Facebook and have social media, so we wanted to have a broad impact. And so now today, the challenge for me is, I still have the same ideas, I still have the same content and the same stuff, but I don’t, I don’t have the reach that I might have had. And so I’m having an impact, and I love having an impact. But I’ll never have the same impact, which just means I gotta keep doing it longer to incorporate an honor and just have him be part of it. The cool thing is, and the thing that’s great for me is that the dedication of the second book is to is to his his boys. And his youngest son, like randomly, this is probably a couple of months ago said, hey, my dad always said that you worked with investing, let’s and he’s 14, right? Can you tell me about what it means? And I’m like, I was just so stoked to have him ask the question, because as you know, I had a great conversation, my kids don’t show as much interest in it, because they see that do it all the time. Sort of like you know, he doesn’t see it. So honors his legacy from what we’re going to do together, provides an avenue to support his family a little bit, which is something I really want to do and really much of the changes are all about is how do I how do I be a better uncle? How do I be a better brother in law? Because, you know, their lives changed a lot more than my life changed. It hurt and it sucks. And I hate it when I trade anything to get them back. But it doesn’t affect my day to day, the same way it affects their day to day. Yeah,

george grombacher 17:24
I appreciate that. I know you do. Well, Jonathan, I, I grats. On the book, tell us where people can can get their copy of mindful investing, right focus better outcomes, better, greater wellbeing, and how people can engage and track you as well. Yeah,

Jonathan DeYoe 17:45
best place to go is to is WWW dot mindful that money. It’s not.com. It’s mindful that money. And we got a bunch of free resources there. I encourage people to take advantage of them. The one that most people like the most is we have this course that’s free values, purpose and goals course that helps people get started. Once you know that’s the first step anyone should have is sort of introspective, what what’s important to me what I want out of life, what do I value, and that’s life gets built on top of those values. Goals get built on top of values. And so that’s that’s usually the place people start. So that’s where I’d go go to mindful dot money.

george grombacher 18:22
Excellent. Well, if you enjoyed as much as I did, show, Jonathan, your appreciation and share today’s show with a friend who also appreciates good ideas. Check out the mindful money podcast, wherever you listen to your podcasts, go to mindful dot money and check out all the great resources take advantage of that values, purpose and goals course that Jonathan was talking about, and then pick up your copy of mindful investing. Wherever you buy your books. Thanks. Good, Jonathan. Thanks, George. And until next time, remember, do your part by doing your best