They say money can buy happiness but that is not all true. If you don’t know your worth, you’ll still be miserable in life. The only difference is that you’ll be miserable inside your mansion. True happiness happens when you’re growing your wealth and your worth at the same time. It’s all about personal development and the only way you can grow that is by knowing who you are. You have to live well-thy. Join Dr. Patty Ann Tublin as she talks to Dawn Dahlby (https://dawndahlby.com/), a Certified Financial Planner, who manages the wealth of high-net-worth individuals. She is also the Founder and President of Relevé Financial Group, a multi-million-dollar advisory firm. Dawn shares how you can find wealth by strengthening your relationship with money. Dawn calls this LIVING WELLthy™. This approach teaches how to save for tomorrow without having to sacrifice living today. Learn how to start building your financial plan today!
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Living WELLthy: Growing Your Wealth Along With Your Worth With Dawn Dahlby
When I tell you I have an exciting, amazing A-list woman as our guest now, I am not kidding. We could still be talking offline if we didn’t realize time was ticking away. That is how fabulous this woman is. Before we go any further, since I know you are going to love this episode, make sure you like, share, comment, and subscribe to the show. This woman is a financial advisor guru. She has blazed a path where no financial advisor has gone before. Rather than me telling you about her, I would like you to buckle up because Dawn Dahlby is about to take us for a ride. Welcome, Dawn.
Thank you, Dr. Patty Ann. It’s such a pleasure to be here with you and your energy. I cannot wait to see where our conversation goes.
Let’s go wherever you want to go. You talk about money, women in money, and emotions in money. Tell us a little bit about your background and how you got to where you are now. I don’t think anybody comes out of the wound thinking, “I want to be a behavioral financial advisor.” Honestly, I had to look that up because I wasn’t sure what that was. Tell us how you got here.
I got here because I wanted to learn about money. I used to be a singer-dancer on a cruise ship. I worked on cruise ships when I was twenty.
They would’ve thrown me off the cruise ship. I cannot sing or dance for the life of me.
I did get thrown off one cruise ship but that’s for a whole other episode. I’m once a singer-dancer. I was in hospitality. I didn’t know what the hell I wanted to do but I had a friend that was an advisor, and I was like, “You are advising people, making triple the amount of money I’m making. You are working four days a week. Sign me up.” At age 30, I decided to change careers. I knew nothing about financial advising. I was broke. They decided to give me a draw of $18,000, which we know you could make more at McDonald’s.
Who are they?
A bare price financial advisors. I was making nothing. I was a mom of two little baby girls born eighteen months apart. All I knew was that I wanted more money and more life. To figure out money, I decided to learn about money. That’s how I got into building comprehensive financial plans and all the technical advice.
I’m so glad you said that because my second book that was a best seller was Money Can Buy You Happiness: Secrets Women Need to Know to Get Paid What They Are Worth. People love to say, “Money doesn’t make you happy.” I’m like, “Try living without it.” Zig Ziglar said, “Money is in everything but it’s like air.”
It’s like oxygen. We need it to survive.
When you build your worth and your wealth combined, that is true happiness.
I’m happy that you said you wanted to learn about money because, for some reason, when women say, “Yes, I’m working for money.” It’s almost as if it’s a dirty word. I’ve never once on the planet heard anybody criticize a guy for saying, “I’m working for the money.” When you talk to men, I’ve never met a man who thinks he’s overpaid. Yet, we know plenty of them, and many women will not get paid for their worth. That was my little diatribe.
To stem off of what you said that money alone can make you fulfilled somewhat and can bring happiness in your life. It solves a lot of problems.
It gives you choices.
However, I started learning about money, and it was several years ago that I was still having this broken relationship with money. I was making over $500,000 a year. I was like, “Why do I feel broke? What is going on with me? I know the technicalities on how to build money but there’s still something else wrong with me.” I saw the same thing with my clients. They built their investment portfolios into the millions but they were still having this negative emotional connection with money of they were not going to have enough. The scarcity mindset. I was like, “What is wrong?”
I started peeling back this personal development and emotional competency that you are great at, the relationship and the communication. I was like, “I have to have a different mindset in how I think about wealth. I have to have a different emotional reaction to how I’m building my wealth.” I created this platform after years of studying personal development and setting financial growth and being a fiduciary and a CFP.
I have found now that when you say, “Money does buy happiness,” when you build your worth and your wealth combined and live life at this intersection that I call building your internal security, being secure with who you are as a human being, and having financial security at the same time. That is happiness, fulfillment, contentment, and peace. Those are all the things that we are all striving for.
I would like you to talk about the live wealthy because that’s where you are going with this. What you addressed is interesting because what I always tell people is that all decisions are based on emotion, even financial decisions. That helps explain why someone that grew up poor, no matter how much money they create, many of those people have that lack of money mindset.
In the United States, on April 15th, the date hasn’t changed since it was established. We all have to pay our taxes. In February, the accountant says, “This is what you own.” You are like, “I don’t have any money for that.” That’s an emotional decision that you made because, logically, you know your taxes are due on April 15th but you don’t save for it. It’s not because you are stupid. It’s not because you are dumb. It’s because emotionally, there’s a connection there where you are not saving for the money.
Money is raw with the motion. I created money personalities, and so much of how we view money has to do with what we learned about money growing up. The messages we received from society, “Money is the root of all evil. Money doesn’t grow on trees.” The message is what we heard our parents say or more likely, thought about money. It has nothing to do with how much money you have but it has to do with your mindset towards the money. Speak about that as someone that embraces that psychological, along with the financial aspect of money.
Bruce Lipton, in his book, Biology of Belief, says, “Our beliefs about ourselves and our wealth are formed by the time we are age six.” We don’t even know how to tie our shoes at age six but we already have a belief system about how money works. It’s the subliminal messages. It’s the nonverbal messages we receive from our parents and our grandparents. I remember growing up. My grandmother would take all the Christmas bows that I just flew off all their presents because she wanted to save them for the next year again. We have that mindset in our minds. I’m personally going through that myself. I was like, “I make five times as much money as I thought I ever would. Why do I still have this feeling?”
What was the feeling?
The feeling was being broke that there was never enough. Several years ago, I used to get the credit card bill in the mail. It wasn’t online. I was like, “Here it comes. What did I spend?” It’s an emotion and spending. It’s like, “Do I have enough to support that or not?” It would freak me out. I am the primary income earner in our household and have been to be a mom. There are four of us in our family.
Are you married?
I have been married to my high school sweetheart for 26 years. I have been with him for 35 years.
You were together when you were dancing and singing your way for life.
We were on the cruise ships together. We were in show choir together in high school. It’s not easy.
You are from Minnesota. Is Minnesotan nice?
I don’t know if all Minnesotans are nice but there are a lot of them down here. I’m in Arizona. I’m trying to break the Minnesota accent. My daughters, who I moved down with me to Arizona several ago. They are like, “Mom, you sound like a Midwestern. You need to work on your delivery and your dialect.” I’m like, “Whatever.”
Leave it to your kids. You have the best fan on the planet.
I realized through my clients, myself, and other colleagues I’m in a male-dominated industry. Being around other male colleagues in my life and realizing how they treated me about what I was worth financially and how they gave me these subconscious messages of I wasn’t up worth enough or I didn’t deserve this type of income. I’m talking about people that make seven figures a year plus that were still toxic people. People that you didn’t feel like you were enough to be around them.
Money doesn’t matter if you’re not dealing with your internal worth and how you feel about yourself.
You start feeling that, “They have money. Why do these people still act like this? You can never measure up to them.” You start having dialogue and conversations. It’s like, “You haven’t dealt with your pain. You haven’t emotionally dealt with your life’s challenges when you were younger and all the things that happened to us.” When you don’t go through personal development, deal with your pain and your struggle, and do it the right way, you are numbing yourself through alcohol or trying to become greedy and rich with money because you think that’s going to numb the pain.
Once I started realizing, “Money doesn’t matter if you are not dealing with your internal worth and how you think and feel about yourself.” Building your self-esteem is great. If you do that without money, it freaking sucks. If you build money and don’t have self-esteem, it doesn’t suck as much but it is still not the best place to be.
It sucks in a big house and a nice car.
It does suck but it’s not as bad as being poor and thinking bad about yourself. That’s not in a good position. We are always trying to achieve and grow into something more. Life is this onion, and it keeps peeling back. The more we know and become aware of ourselves, it keeps getting more beautiful as we go. We are always striving for something new. I believe that personal development is 100% about growth. It’s about learning about your awareness of who you are, how to communicate with others, and how to deal with the b******* storms of life. How do you deal with the daily challenges? It’s all in our reaction. You know that as an emotional expert.
Tell us how you got so smart.
I got smart from learning about myself. I married my high school sweetheart. Several years ago, I said, “I can’t wait for our girls to be 18 and 19. I’m going to divorce you. I can’t stand to be around you.” We are the opposite. I’m outgoing. He’s an introvert. He likes to be alone in his movie theater. I like to have a party, and it has been hard.
We went through therapy, and I started analyzing human behavior because out of pure curiosity. I’m like, “Everything in my life stems from within. The problems that I’m having in my marriage, colleagues, pocketbook, kids, and all of that is an inside problem.” I constantly worked on myself. The other thing is that several years ago, we moved to Arizona, and we decided that it was healthier emotionally to live in a place where we could see the sun.
Is that what prompted the move?
Yes. You said you were moving to Florida. I hope that’s public knowledge because I said that. I always thought I would move to Florida because I grew up in Florida. We came here and visited. I love the no humidity. I love the high skies, the sun, and the wellness type of lifestyle where you can live in and outdoors. You don’t get that in Minnesota and Wisconsin. There are three days a year that are beautiful in the Midwest, in my opinion, because there are bugs and mosquitoes.
I do have a colleague from Arizona, and I love this man. He texted me, “It feels like 113 degrees in Arizona.”
It’s not like you are walking outside without your shoes on. You go outside, and you are in the pool. It’s way better than six months of clouds that hang right here and the depression that the Midwest offered me. I have a lot of energy. I can’t deal with that. I felt trapped.
The weather impacts our mindset. There’s no doubt the hypothalamus and all of that stuff.
We moved to Arizona but here’s the thing. My mother decided to move with us and start her life over in Arizona at age 73. She flew in on August 9th, 2018. We went out to dinner. On August 11th, 2018, I woke up to her passing away in my house. She passed away on the day that we were going to move her to her new condo. She was starting her life. I woke up to my husband pounding on the doors because I was sleeping with my teenage daughter. In Arizona, there are monsoons. It was raining, storming, and lightning. We were in a rental home, and my fifteen-year-old was scared. I was like, “I will sleep with you, which mama loves anyway.”
I slept with her that night. My husband, I saw him banging on the door at 8:00 in the morning. He’s like, “Get up.” I was like, “What?” He looked at me, and he goes, “Your mom.” I’m like, “We are moving mom to her condo now. What do you mean?” With the look on his face, I knew it was something else. I ran into the main house, and sure enough, she was slumped over in her bed and gone on the day that we were moving her. I started going, “What happened here?”
I realized she passed on from a heart attack, and she had diabetes. Why did she have diabetes? She had diabetes because she had what’s called Whipple surgery. I don’t know if you’ve heard of Whipple surgery. It’s surgery on your pancreas. She had a non-cancerous tumor on her pancreas several years prior to that. Why did she have that tumor on her pancreas? It’s because she was an alcoholic and drank a lot to numb her pain.
I started feeling like, “Why did she drink all the time?” I had this love-hate relationship with her. I hate even using the word hate because I love my mom. It was this dynamic relationship where it’s this, “I love you. You drive me crazy.” It was because of her drinking, and she drank to numb her pain. When I did her eulogy, I started thinking, “Mom, what message do I want to send to the world on this?” She drank because she didn’t have self-esteem. She never loved herself enough. She grew up with five brothers, and they had to split hot dogs to be able to afford food but her dad had enough money to buy lots of people alcohol every happy hour at the bar.
She grew up in a poor and alcoholic environment. She learned and wasn’t able to get out of that after years of trying. That’s why my mom died probably many years premature. It is because she didn’t love herself enough and didn’t have that self-worth. I realized, “I’m modeling my mom’s behavior now or I have been. How do I start working on that?”
Are you doing it?
No, not the drinking. I’m not an alcoholic but I’m a workaholic.
Your beliefs filter your experience and you’re not even aware of it. Reevaluate what your beliefs are and change them up.
You are impacted by either you mimic the behavior or stay as far away from it as you can get.
I can still have alcohol. I can have a drink or two but I’m never addicted to that. I’m addicted to growth, success, wanting more, and all that stuff. I realized that I was always fighting because I wasn’t enough as well. That’s the defining moment. Little steps throughout my career, “I built money. I got to build my worth because money is not alone. It is not going to solve my life desire, which is to live a purposeful life.” I was modeling my mom’s behavior and realizing all this stuff I’m seeing in my clients, my colleagues, myself, and my husband. I’m seeing it all over the place.
I’m like, “Wouldn’t this be cool if I could create a digital program where I could start giving this type of wealth and worth advice out to the masses.” Not focus on people coming into my investment firm that already have a million-dollar that want to build their financial plan because they have the same emotional issues but already have the money. What about those people that are in their 20s, 30s, and 40s that don’t have money? They are still having an emotional relationship with money and still need to have someone to teach them how to live life at this next level?
I built this PR platform a couple of years ago. It’s called Own It. Earn It. Grow It, where you get to own your worth, and earn your wealth, which is a negotiation and being okay with earning more money and knowing how to do it. We are all okay but knowing how to do it is another thing, and going through the financial planning. You can live life at this elevated level. I’ve opened up the doors to help the people, no matter where they are in their walk and wealth-building journey. They can come to us and get this fiduciary non-biased advice, help them grow, invest their money, their tax planning, their relationship with money, how to grow their income, and be crystal clear on what you want out of life.
All that together, there’s not another platform out there. You can clearly see I’m passionate about it because it already has but it’s going to transform multiple thousands of people’s lives. I cannot wait but several years from now, I will go, “It’s not what I did. It’s through the learning of what we all did together.” I cannot wait for that day.
You are excited about it. I’m excited about it. Share with the readers, and give us three common obstacles that get in the way of people owning, earning, and growing their wealth.
The first obstacle is their belief system. Sometimes women say, “I don’t believe I should earn a certain income.”
Your clients aren’t just women.
They are not just women. I had a woman come to me and say, “I don’t deserve to have an income double what I’m making because I don’t have a college degree.” I’m like, “Really?” We got to get that old-school thinking out of our minds. Your belief system is vitally important. That’s step number one because your beliefs filter your experience, and you are not even aware of it. It’s limiting beliefs and what you think is possible in your life. The first thing that is the most important thing is reevaluating what your beliefs are and changing them up.
Number two, in which you are an expert, it’s this emotional intelligence. They’ve interviewed the most wealthiest people in our country, and it’s not because they are smarter than you and I. It’s because they think and behave differently. It’s their EQ, not their IQ. That’s important for women, men, and anybody to understand your emotions, how that’s driving your decisions in life, how we get caught up in this noise of life and not being able to see a bigger perspective of what’s going on again. We are typically insecure human beings but working through that fear, that biggest emotion for me is dealing with your fear and pushing through the fear to be able to get to the other side.
I still have and hate to admit this because I’m trying not to tell my brain this. I’m going to use the word, “Used to,” but it might mean in the present tense. I used to have a fear of flying. I used to be afraid of getting on an airplane, feeling trapped, and being afraid that I wasn’t going to be able to get out of this. That, “Used to,” happened to me but it’s when I deal and get on that airplane, push through that fear, and get to that destination. There’s something beautiful on the other side. To me, number two is pushing through that emotional fear.
Third, many people are afraid and don’t have a financial plan. We are talking about recessions, investing, interest rate heights, and all of the negative stuff. Many people feel like, “I don’t have enough. I’m not smart enough. I shouldn’t have a financial plan.” I’m telling you something. If you deal with fear and anxiety, that’s a loss of control. If you want control back in your life, you know how you create uncertainty in your life is having a financial plan. It’s easy to set up, and it’s even easier to keep it going.
We work hard for our money. We have to have our money invested and work equally hard for us. We have to do the tax work. We must learn how to minimize our taxes, so we can live free and enjoy spending freedom, not guilt spending but guilt-free spending and enjoy this now, as well as safer travel. You need the balance of both. It’s how you think, getting through your fear, and creating a financial plan. That’s going to help you get to this next level.
Much of my work is always about taking personal responsibility. We love to say, “It’s everybody else’s fault.” If we take personal responsibility, first of all, it’s true. We control the narrative. We can change the narrative. We allow ourselves to be sucked into it. What’s amazing from the neuroscience perspective is that our brain believes what we tell it. Our brain doesn’t know that if we say we are stupid or we are not worth something, that’s not true. They will believe that is the truth. What I tell people all the time is we talk to ourselves in a way we would never let anybody else talk to us but it’s dangerous because our brain takes it as truth.
Here’s the wonderful thing about owning everything that goes on in your life, taking personal responsibility, and owning the fear. When you are the one that owns it, you then have the power to change it. If it’s everybody else’s fault, you can’t do anything else about it. You can’t do anything about what anybody else thinks or feels. All you can do is manage, not control but manage how you feel and how you behave. That will influence how other people behave back to you. It might look like they’ve changed but all they’ve done is responded differently. I hit something. Go where you want to go with that.
I always say, “You get what you tolerate in life.” How is someone else acting towards you? It’s a reflection of what you think about yourself. That’s vitally important that we have to understand that everything stems from within. Here’s one thing that you said, which is interesting. You talk to your community about responsibility, taking ownership of that fear, and how your maneuver everything in life.
I always encourage my team and my community that the responsibility and how to measure that is looking at how you are spending your time throughout the day. I’ve had people come to me and say, “I want more money. I deserve to get paid more. My employer at work is being a bully.” Whatever the issue is. The first issue of wanting to get paid more. How are you spending your time at work?
For a week, go down and analyze how you are spending each hour. Are you scrolling? Are you checking your emails 50 times a day? Are you going on social media? Are you having conversations that have nothing to do with results? That responsibility that you are talking to is if you want higher income, and we all deserve more income, you also have to look yourself in the mirror and say, “How am I spending my time to get better results? How am I measured against that versus against the responsibility I’m taking on as a human being?”
Many times we operate below our pay grade, and we don’t even realize it. We are not doing the things that drive more revenue, and you are not doing those hard things because of fear or makes us uncomfortable. We have to get outside of the box. If you don’t do those things, you are not going to get to that next level. That’s important. For people to understand, that is reading, my mom grew up in an anxious home.
I have a generalized anxiety disorder. I have fear. I’m no different. My mom’s name is Patricia Ann. You are no different either. It’s about this community of people to support. It’s like we are talking about prior. It’s about supporting each other because I might have more energy or financial knowledge than you but everyone has a gift.
If you want a higher income, look at yourself in the mirror and ask, how are you spending your time to get better results?
I would challenge you on that but I don’t think there are many like us.
I was saying you as a reader too. I know I have a lot of energy to use. Other people are bringing some other value to my life. When you are open to receiving that, and we work in a community, that’s where we are all able to get to that breakthrough, next level or whatever that wealthy living level looks like for you.
I work because I’m not cheap. I work with wealthy people, and their issues are not all that different than everybody else’s. The complication for them is that they are surrounded by single fans and people that will tell them what they want to hear. Let’s take Michael Jackson, for example. He died young because everybody that surrounded him wanted a piece of him. Everybody wanted a piece of the gravy train. Nobody cared about him. He was clouded by that. The money created so much noise.
When you take personal responsibility and say, “I want to be paid more. I want more in my life.” You are looking at it from time. The words I use are, what’s the value add you are bringing to the situation? Are you raising your hand? Are you spending your energy because it takes a hell of a lot of energy to avoid our fear, to not go there?
It’s Winston Churchill that said, “When you are going through hell, keep on going, and then you come out the other end.” If you face the fear and if you raise your hand to do the project, do whatever that nobody else wants, take the initiative, even if you don’t know at that moment what the hell you are doing, you need to be 1 or 2 steps ahead of everybody else. I can’t believe, with all the consulting I do, how much people are full of crap. They act like they know what they are doing and have no clue. All you need to do is to be willing to learn and stay 1 or 2 steps ahead but to be genuine and authentic.
If you do that, your worth will increase. If it’s not given to you, you can say, “I took on this initiative. This was my ROI. This is what I’m doing.” For entrepreneurs like you and I, my value add is you can alleviate this by working with me, and what’s it costing you emotionally to not be able to get this pain relieved or whatever it is that you want relieved. I work with a lot of entrepreneurial couples, and it’s like what you said, “You could be working forever.”
Something brilliant that you said resonated with me, and I’ve never put too much thought into it but it is true. It takes more energy to avoid the issue and the fear. That takes way more energy than it is to deal with the fear. Plus, you made a comment of most people are running around those Earth thinking that their bridges are bigger than them. A bridge that’s like an old person saying, and I’m not talking about my age.
In New York, we would say, “Their s*** doesn’t stink.”
If you start peeling back the why behind the why they are acting like that, I can guarantee you that it has to do with a self-esteem issue because they are not growing in their thinking, emotions, and fear. When you don’t grow, you have lower self-esteem, and you have to put up this big act like your **** doesn’t stink or that you are better than everybody else. Nobody can live up to you. It’s because you haven’t dealt with that. When we deal with our grossness of life, we all have it. It makes people like you better. It makes people want to listen to you. It’s human, and people are like, “How can I do that?”
My biggest thing in life is to live and give. Living is learning about yourself and the stuff that we were born with that we need to fix. How do we portray that and give it to others like karma or paint it forward? When we all understand that, come accustomed to that and get outside of our selfish thinking that it’s all about me but the reason why people think it’s all about them is because they are not doing the work inside. They are needy.
When you do the work, it’s not about you anymore. It’s about serving. When people, one by one of us, understand that, think about what a different place this entire planet could be for. Maybe not in our generation time. Hopefully, you can start but our grandchildren and great-grandchildren. Think about the opportunity if we think better and act differently.
Everybody has stuff they have to deal with. When people come across well put together, I’m like, “They are buttoned up. What are they holding inside?” It makes you more relatable. It’s why in the military, when you go through bootcamp. Those friendships last for life or if you are in war because you have been in it together and come out the other end.
That’s life. Everybody’s parents, unless they are crazy and there are crazy people in the world, tried to do the best they can. Everybody’s parents fell short, including us but that doesn’t mean you didn’t do the best you can. I feel very strongly about this, and this is harsh. The moment we stop growing and trying to learn, we start dying.
That’s the mistake people make when they think they retire. What are you retiring from? Make a contribution. What is your contribution going to be? They are like, “I’m going to sit back and collect Social Security.” You are not giving any more. Not everybody. Slowly but surely, you lose your edge. How much golf can you play? How much TV can people watch? There is enough. We have many channels, and there is nothing to watch. It blows my mind. Honestly, I’ve done a lot of TV and daytime stuff. I’m like, “Who’s watching this crowd? It’s news. What are you doing at home?” That sounded terrible. I’m going to get all criticism.
You think about what you see on TV. It’s dramatized or negative news because they want you to pay attention. It’s clickbait for everybody.
We all know it’s the negative headlines that sell but for people that are struggling with anxiety and many people have ADD, and ADHD will tell you, “Shut the TV off.” I stopped watching the news a while ago. I will get my news on my phone. Even then, I used to say this years ago, before all this fancy stuff, I used to tell my kids, “When you read something, you have to know who the author is because you need to know where they are coming from.” That is true now.
If you put on CNN or Fox, you know what you are getting. I want you to give me the facts I can think of for myself. I have the ability to critically think. Thirteen years of college taught me something, but now, people want to be told what to think and do, which blows my mind. What do you do when your clients come to you? I would imagine they are like, “Dawn, create my plan for me.” That’s probably the last thing you want to do. How do you manage that when people tell you to create the financial plan for them that they need?
I ask the hard questions too. I’ve had multiple clients say to me, “You make me think.” Creating a financial plan is not just an investment portfolio but it’s a spending plan, your cash reserves, and all your lines of protection planning, investment planning, goal planning, taxes, and estate plan. It’s everything. Let’s take a look at not just what you are trying to achieve from a financial perspective in the future but what are you trying to achieve now too?
Through a financial planning process, I want you to be able to live for now and plan for tomorrow at the same time. When I dive deep, I ask them, “What are your core values? What are the things you don’t want to live life without? How do we create a plan around your core values? How do we create a spending and savings plan around those things, so we know that you will always have and be enough?”
We go deep into the behavioral side, which is the psychology of money. I ask them how do they want to spend their time. “Money aside, how do you want to live?” I ask them layers and layers of questions before we even put together a financial plan and even go, “Here’s the type of asset allocation diversification you should have. Here’s the standard deviation. Here’s how it should perform in times like these, like the market volatility. When do we take advantage of the Tax Bill?” All the technical stuff.
You should have an investment portfolio that’s built to weather recessions because they happen every 10 years or so.
Most people do this when I start talking technical. They wouldn’t hire me to do that but it’s making sure that they have a solid foundation of life and how they choose to live. As a fiduciary, which means, by law, I have to sit on the same side of the table with the clients. I have to put their best interests way ahead of mine. I’m not there selling them a product or trying to make a commission. I’m there solely to give them objective financial advice.
You get to that level of comfort where they are like, “She’s real and going to tell me how it is.” I do the detail part of the plan when s*** hits the reality fan like, “The market sound 23%. The inflation is at 40% or higher. Interest rates are high. How do I deal with all of that?” I help them build a plan. That’s going to weather all types of storms. That’s the important thing but a real true advisory relationship is not about the numbers. I did the numbers for several years, and it wasn’t enough. We want the money but you got to have a deeper relationship with your money. You are a relationship expert. Your relationship with money, yourself, your spouse, and your kids resembles similarities.
It’s a common denominator. It’s all the core values.
That’s vitally important because, at the end of the day, I’m passionate about life. I want to get the most out of life that I possibly can. I want to learn, lead, educate, support, and give people the opportunity to know what’s possible for them when they think a little bit differently and go through their fear. That’s my why, and creating that why gives me the energy to live passionately.
Everybody deserves to live life at that maximum potential for themselves because nobody else is different. The way we go about it is different. I want everyone to be as happy as possible we can on this Earth. I don’t think we fully get to that 100% ultimately like, “I arrived.” That might happen after we cross over the little bridge but we are trying to strive for that. I want to feel better, understand better, and have more wisdom in my life.
Happiness is a choice. It’s not, “When I get this, I will be happy.” You choose to be happy on the journey every single day. At the end of your life, nobody ever said, “I wished I worked more. I wished I had had a ton of money.” Usually, their wish is about healthier and happier relationships. I’m curious about this. For anybody under 40 or 35, we haven’t had a recession. I’m not a financial person. The market is like a rising tide that lifts all boats. I didn’t open up my statement. I don’t want to see it. I have CNBC on my app. I see the red. I don’t need to know the details. How do you handle people when they are freaking out like some of them are now?
I always use this analogy similar to how I used to think about flying like when I get nervous about being on an airplane. The thing that calms my nerves is no different than what calms the nerves of someone in their money. Losing their money is like losing their oxygen, their life. What we do is we give them the statistical data. We give them the analysis.
We show them based on the risk and how their portfolio has been proactively designed. It will act like this in this situation. There’s a 98% chance that it’s never going to be lower than X. The market is down 20% ish, depends on the day. My client’s portfolios are down 10%. It’s not that they are not losing. They are still losing. The losses are minimized.
We are trying to mitigate their risk and show them the charts and graphs. A recession typically lasts 10 to 14 months. By the time we know we are in a recession, we are like six months in, and we don’t even realize it. By the time we know it, we are always on the way out. I like telling them, “Here’s how statistically or what has happened historically. It’s never going to be exactly the same but it’s going to operate.” You should have an investment portfolio that’s built to weather recessions because they happen every ten years or so. Market volatility happens every 3 or 4 years. When my clients start to complain, most of them don’t. There’s maybe one about their performance. It’s fearful. We show them, “Let me tell you what the stock market did in 2016, 17, 18, 23, and 22. You are down 10%.”
They have to have perspective. Once they have perspective, they are like, “I feel so much better.” That’s the technical details that they want. They don’t want to know the standard deviation of an investment but they want to know like, “When s*** hitting the fan, is my money going to go to zero? Is it performing like it should in this market volatility?”
They want to make sure they are not going to eat cat food.
The other thing is they also want to make sure, like, “There’s always an opportunity in every situation. Can we take and peel off 10% of your portfolio and put it into the equity market that’s on sale at 20%? Based on your lifestyle and how you are spending money from your portfolio when you are going to retire, is there an opportunity here for you?” 9 out of 10 times, it’s, “Yes, let’s do it.”
There’s always an opportunity in everything. Like in 2021 and the majority of 2020 and 2018, as Warren Buffett says, “When people are greedy, that’s the time to be fearful. When it’s time to be greedy is when everyone else is fearful.” When you look at that now, it’s like, “Maybe you are right. There is some opportunity out there for me to take advantage of this recession in market volatility.” It’s going to happen again. It’s part of the life we live. It’s about having your financial plan knowing ahead of time proactively how to manage your emotions and investments. That’s it.
My husband is Mr. Steady as he goes. He could make $1 million, come in steady, lose $1 million, come in steady. It’s grounded, not too high, not too low. What he always says is, “You’ve lost nothing if you haven’t sold it. You’ve gained nothing if you haven’t sold it. It’s all paper, don’t worry about it.”
It will come back like he’s saying. The worst thing an investor can do is not decide if he or she should be an investment, A, B or C but it’s about making the wrong emotional decisions and selling at the wrong time. It’s the emotions. They say, “The average investor gets 3.6% over the last several year schedules.” The S&P has done about 10%. Why is the average investor getting 3.6%? It’s because they make the wrong emotional decisions at the wrong time.
I am going to open up Pandora’s box. I don’t even know if this is in your wheelhouse but I have to ask it because I am desperately trying to understand this. Not that I put a ton of time and energy but a little bit. What’s your take on this whole crypto?
Crypto is not regulated yet. I’m a little hesitant to put a lot of money in. However, I tell clients. “It’s speculative. If you have enough money and built the foundation of your retirement plan, put money in crypto that you can afford to lose.” Maybe it’s 5% of your portfolio but I would suggest that you diversify your crypto in actual crypto, not in exchange-traded fund cryptos. I don’t want to say the physical crypto but actual crypto because we don’t know which one is going to win at this point. If you want to dabble in it, great but do it with regular crypto.
I have one client that invested in crypto because I clear through Charles Schwab. It’s not on our platform yet. I can’t invest in crypto for clients but I had a client that took some money, invested it in crypto, and his cash on the sidelines was locked up because of some X, Y, and Z. It doesn’t matter why, but now, he can’t get at his crypto and cash to take money out or in. It’s not regulated yet. Do I think people are going to get lucky on this and make a boatload of money? I do, but do not do it unless you have your core portfolio built. You can only risk the amount of money you are willing to lose.
The way I look at it is the fact that the government is starting to talk about, “We have to regulate it.” The government is looking for that piece of the pie. To me, that suggests it might have some legs. The government wants a piece of it. Maybe it will be around. Quite frankly, I don’t care what Jamie Dimon says. Warren Buffett and Charlie Munger are geniuses but it’s like the second half. I have been studying a little bit Ethereum. You take a couple of bucks that you can afford to lose. The market is down like crazy.
I don’t even know how to buy it thing but I’m interested. I love listening to the conversation, and when the traditional suits, I call them middle-aged old White men, “It’s not going to happen.” I’m listening to this because I’m trying to learn. I remind people that these are the same people that said, “What’s Amazon? The internet will never work. What’s Apple? Who needs that thing?” Who’s going to be on the leading edge or cutting-edge technology? Probably, younger people. I’m distracted by that. Tell us what you do for fun. I know you said you are a workaholic. Tell us you have to have fun. You have such great energy. I would love to go out with you.
Put money in crypto that you can actually afford to lose. You can only risk the amount of money you’re willing to lose.
Here’s what I love to do for fun. This is what gets me giddy. I love to go to Crate & Barrel. I love to buy stuff for the house. I love to prep for a dinner party and make the food all pretty. I freaking suck in the kitchen. My husband can cook but I sometimes buy it, cater it in, and put it in my own dishes. I like to make presentations. I love to do that. Having parties and people over entertaining, designing, I love to decor, designing houses, and that whole thing. I’m having a blast. I love to do that and have fun with my daughters. I like to give my daughters advice. They don’t listen to me a lot.
Why would they? If they have thirteen friends, there is no way they are much more than you.
They are 17 and 18 now in 2022.
They know everything.
They roll their eyes at me. They listen and watch me but I don’t think they are going to admit it. I do love to give them advice, even though they roll their eyes at me. I love to go out and like, “Do you want to go to lunch? Do you want to go to Target? Do you want to go get our nails up?” I love having that quality time with them that’s not planned. It’s last minute. It’s like, “It’s national ice cream day. Let’s make ice cream sundaes.” They eat half of it. To me, that’s the fun part about life. It’s a connection. I love human beings and connecting with others.
What I’m looking at now is not a virtual screen. That looks like Crate & Barrel right behind you.
It’s not virtual. Yeah.
I noticed that when we first came out, I was like, “That’s like Crate &Barrel.”
I love Target online.
Do you have HomeGoods?
We do. I haven’t been there for a while. I wish I could turn my computer on. I have this queen-size outdoor swing that is ready for me to go out there but it is 114 degrees. I can’t go outside. Two months out of the year is hell here. You are moving to Florida if you want to talk to me about hell weather, good luck because six months out of the year is hotter than hell there but you probably won’t be there the full time.
When I land in Phoenix, I’d say to my friends, “I’m in Hades.”
I love the fact that people think that because it keeps it from being overpopulated. I’m not kidding. June is beautiful. It’s still hot but it’s the first month of the summer. In July, the monsoons come in. I hate September. You are ready for a different wardrobe, and it’s still 1:15. The kids are in school. You are at a football game and are like, “I’m sweating.” September does suck.
Two more questions. What is the one thing you’ve learned about life that you want the reader to know? The one incredibly valuable and important thing you’ve learned about life.
We’ve already talked about it. It’s feeling good in your own skin. It’s knowing that you are worthy. You have skills and strengths. You have an opportunity like every single person has.
Last question. What’s the last book you reread and why?
First of all, I’m a numbers person. I’m not the best reader because you have to sit down and be patient, but there’s one book that I’ve read multiple times, and it’s called The ONE Thing by Gary Keller.
Let the one thing be the one thing. Do you love it because?
It says, “We all have the one thing. If we focus on that one thing, everything else in life will become like a domino effect. It’s about living your passion.” The ONE Thing is the reason why I built this platform. I knew I was a financial advisor, sitting down one-on-one with clients because I was insecure to talk to other people, talk on stages and be one on many. I realized my real gift is inspiring people. I need to get over my fear. My one thing is to do more public speaking, be on the stage and connect with other people. That one thing is why I’m doing what I’m doing now.
That is certainly your gift because the one thing you do is inspire people. Everybody now, I know I was inspired by this interview. That concludes this episode of The Trust Doctor, Dawn. Thank you so much. I know we will be in touch. I’m not saying goodbye. I will say, “I will see you later.” For all our readers out there, was I not right? Did Dawn not take us for a hell of a ride? Make sure you like, comment, share and subscribe to the show. Until next time. Be well.
Important Links
- Dawn Dahlby
- Money Can Buy You Happiness: Secrets Women Need to Know to Get Paid What They Are Worth
- Biology of Belief
- Own It. Earn It. Grow It
- The ONE Thing
- https://DawnDahlby.com/legacy-by-releve/
- https://www.Instagram.com/dawndahlby/?hl=en
- https://www.Facebook.com/groups/livewellthy
- https://Twitter.com/dawndahlby
- https://www.LinkedIn.com/in/dawn-dahlby/
