We spoke to Mitch (this is a pseudonym btw) in this week's episode of Moneywise.
Mitch is the founder of a financial services company now valued at $100-120 million, with an annual income of $4-5 million that could reach $8 million next year. His entrepreneurial journey began selling candy from his school locker and mowing lawns as a child.
Like all Moneywise episodes, Mitch breaks down his net worth, income, portfolio, and monthly expenses and then I, your humble host, pick it all apart.
We also went deep on: his journey through a life-threatening brain surgery, his wife's cancer battle, and how these experiences completely transformed his relationship with wealth and success.
And by the way...this podcast, the concept of it came from Hampton. Hampton is a community I started for entrepreneurs that do over $3m in revenue and raised over $3m in funding. Inside Hampton, we hear these kinds of conversations all the time—honest, vulnerable discussions about money, life, and success. It's for founders, by founders. If you're a CEO, founder, or business owner, check this out. New Moneywise episodes come out weekly.
Now, below are the notes and the full transcript.
Mitch's relationship with money began early. At age 10, he was taking Polaroid photos of lawns he'd mowed and showing them to neighbors to get new clients. "I got hooked," he recalls, describing how he made $300-400 before a professional lawn service provider asked his father to have Mitch stop competing for business.
This early entrepreneurial success sparked something in him: "I think that hooked me to be like, whoa, that's way more fun than just sitting around because I do it. And then there's this money thing, and it gives me independence and I could buy fun things."
After college, Mitch took a consulting job at Deloitte primarily for the $20,000 signing bonus to buy an engagement ring for his now-wife. But the corporate structure quickly frustrated him: "I realized how quickly I was demotivated because you got the same amount every two weeks in a paycheck and I hated it. It just felt like if I crush it these two weeks, nothing changes."
Despite his manager's warning that leaving was "such a bad call," Mitch departed to start his own financial services business. The risk paid off dramatically: "By the time I hit 26 years old, was the first year I made over a million."
At the height of his success, Mitch's world suddenly darkened—literally. "I was sitting in a meeting not dissimilar to this, and I went completely blind and couldn't see," he recalls. Tests revealed he needed brain surgery, with significant risks of death or permanent disability.
Facing possible death at 27, money took on a strange dual significance: "It's funny you actually think about money in about two polar opposites at the same time when you're like, this could probably be it."
On one hand, he worried whether he'd provided enough for his wife. On the other: "It really doesn't matter. And I'm kind of brought back to this whole Ecclesiastes... It was really meaningless after all."
The surgery revealed a cyst rather than a tumor, and Mitch recovered after four months. This experience fundamentally changed his relationship with wealth: "I came to this conclusion. I had fallen into the love of money... But I also didn't come to the conclusion that it was bad."
Instead, he developed a new perspective: "What if I did it with a more sober perspective that I'm going to be on an operating table again one day, and I want to have a better response when I am."
In 2019, at age 30, Mitch faced a pivotal decision. His company offered him a compensation package that would have netted him $1 billion over 20 years. The CFO called him a "generational talent" who deserved this extraordinary compensation.
"My hand was shaking when I got into that elevator," Mitch recalls about turning down the offer. "And the whole time I'm thinking, what am I? I'm a moron. That's the offer of a lifetime."
Instead, he chose independence, knowing it meant starting over. He had accumulated about $3 million in liquid assets and owned a multi-million dollar home. To launch his new venture, he spent nearly all his savings—covering not just business expenses but helping to pay the mortgages of 50-60 employees who followed him.
"I got down to probably, I think 10 to 15,000 because I was paying legal bills. I was setting up a new company. I was paying some of my people's mortgages because none of them could make money either," he explains.
The risk eventually paid off. By 2022, his income was back up to around $4 million annually. His business was finally rebuilt, better than before, and independent.
Just as financial stability returned, Mitch faced an even greater challenge: his wife was diagnosed with breast cancer in December 2022, with a concerning family history of women dying from cancer in their 30s and 40s.
"There's nothing I can describe of the pain," Mitch says of the first half of 2023 during her chemotherapy. His wife's immune system was so compromised that "a common cold, they told us would kill her."
This experience led to perhaps his most profound realization about wealth: "I would give up this moment and this luxury and this ability, power, whatever you want to call it, to have her healed. Put me in an apartment. Never let my kids see Disneyland."
While confronting the limitations of wealth, Mitch also recognized its benefits: "I'm convinced she's still here today because of what wealth created." His connections helped secure faster imaging, access to top oncologists, and treatment when resources were scarce—advantages he acknowledges aren't available to everyone.
His wife's cancer is now in remission, though they remain in the critical five-year window watching for recurrence.
Today, Mitch views his wealth through a completely different lens. He describes what he calls his "impact meter"—the measurement of positive influence he can have through his resources.
"I think the new purpose is... there are two areas that money I have seen causes so much good and impact that if I didn't have it, I wouldn't be able to cause," he explains. "I almost think about it as like a impacto meter. It's like I have this impact meter of my life, and money allows me to set up ten, 20, 30 different impact meters that just keep rising."
This perspective shapes both his business and personal spending decisions. After his wife's cancer treatment, the family established two core values: "experiences over comfort" and using their wealth to facilitate connection.
Their Colorado vacation home stays booked nearly year-round with friends and family. "All we hear every time is it was this beautiful place where we got to connect as a family. And I think that we're, like, really changing to see wealth as a connection in our own family and providing the same connection for others."
Looking forward, Mitch plans to build a portfolio of 12-15 luxury properties over the next 20 years, with a vision that "every week of the year, there'd be someone staying there for free."
"I got pretty arrogant pretty quick, and I just didn't know how to understand all that at, you know, 27 years old."
"If you put your identity, if you put your self-worth into your net worth, you always lose, no matter how much you make or don't make. It's not a beatable game."
"I think what I've learned is probably up to making probably 750 $1 million a year and having maybe 3 or 4 million liquid at least. What I am seeing is everything above that doesn't do anything. I feel no extra value. I actually feel more stress."
"Make plans for sure, but hold it unbelievably loosely because we don't have any control over today. We genuinely don't."
"When you get a day with your kids, your family, and it's just a normal day, appreciate that freaking day. It could be over tomorrow."
[00:00:00] Mitch: I would give up this moment and this luxury and this ability. Power, whatever you want to call it, to have her healed.
[00:00:07] Sam Parr: Money brings us a lot. It gives us control of our time, how and where we live, and how we enjoy ourselves. But no matter how much you have, there's always going to be something out of your control. And that's something that today's guests had to reckon with when his wife was diagnosed with breast cancer.
[00:00:22] Mitch: And here's the other thing I need you to do with where this is. You will not be able to raise these girls if you don't have a week here when you're gone to fully live into her being gone. I know she's not, but you have to mentally do it. Or these three girls. I don't know what's going to happen.
[00:00:41] Sam Parr: And on top of that, Mitch had his own health scare. In this episode, Mitch is going to talk about what it felt like to feel completely powerless in a situation, even though he's made incredibly comfortable life with himself because of his wealth. And we're going to hear about how his experiences completely changed his approach to spending money and how his money did, in fact help his wife's cancer battle. Today's episode we got to give a shout out to Aaron Hayslip. Aaron went and got this interview and I'll be narrating it. And if you are unaware, this is money wise, just spend ten minutes on Instagram and you're gonna find a ton of content on how to get rich. But there's not a lot of stuff out there on how to handle life after you've already made a bunch of money, but I think those are important conversations, and I'm able to see a lot of these types of conversations in Hampton. That's a community that I own. It's for CEOs and business owners. You can check it out at Join Hampton. And the majority of people in Hampton are high net worth people. And so I'm able to see all of these private conversations about wealth. And I think a lot of them should be done publicly. And that's what this podcast is. And so on, money wise, we talked to people who have made a ton of money and how it's changed their lives, but more importantly, they get brutally honest about their finances, meaning they're going to be incredibly transparent about their monthly expenses, their portfolios, and all of the challenges that come with their success and how they've managed them. And so if you are a CEO of a startup, if you're a business owner, if you founded a company, check it out, join Hamptons.com. You'll be able to connect with lots of other smart people. And a lot of the guests on this podcast came from Hampton, and so you'll be able to talk to people like them. So just to get an idea on how comfortable Mitch's life is and how much money he made, let's get straight to his net worth.
[00:02:24] Mitch: The business is now valued 100 120 million. That's where the bulk of my net worth is.
[00:02:31] Aaron Hayslip: And then what percentage of the business would you say is attached to your name?
[00:02:34] Mitch: 80.
[00:02:35] Sam Parr: So that's a net worth of around 80 to $100 million. And plus, it's not just all paper money.
[00:02:41] Mitch: I'm also now pretty set at 4 or 5 million of income a year going forward. Maybe maybe next year, even eight.
[00:02:49] Sam Parr: Now that wealth. It didn't happen suddenly. It's grown gradually over his adult life. He did, however, suddenly lose most of it, and we're going to talk all about that as well. So in this episode, we're going to talk about the false sense of control over your life that money provides. But also, to be fair, the real benefits it provides when in a life or death situation. Because of Mitch's experiences, his view on what money can do for him has changed pretty drastically. We're going to get really deep into that, but we first have to understand where his views started, and that goes back to growing up.
[00:03:19] Mitch: I am definitely the product of both my parents because my dad was much more of an entrepreneur, and so he must have had, I don't know how many different gigs and things he tried. I remember being a kid one day and coming home and there were all these volleyball, beach volleyball, sunglasses. There's thousands of them in his office. And I said, what are you doing? He's like, I think I'm getting into selling these. And that was just kind of par for the course for my father.
[00:03:44] Aaron Hayslip: He was he motivated by money, you think? I mean, was he trying to make a lot of money from these entrepreneur endeavors?
[00:03:49] Mitch: No, we actually had a conversation about this this year. And he was like, you know, Travis, what's really interesting about you and me watching you is when I got to a certain level, it didn't matter, which wasn't a very high level. I mean, we were middle class. Upper middle class. He's like, I just always valued, like going to basketball games and doing those things. And he never had the drive. He said to really care about money.
[00:04:17] Aaron Hayslip: Did you feel the same way, like did you glean that from your dad, or were you hoping to make a lot of money at some point in your life when you were a kid?
[00:04:24] Mitch: No, I was I was definitely and it's something in adulthood I've had to work through. I got in a small little Christian school bubble. I got what's called in-school suspension is very bad. Aaron, this is a bad thing. And how I got it was two different times. So the first time I got it, I went to Sam's Club, which is like a Costco. I bought all this candy And then I, you know, I marked it up out of my locker and, you know, I was making probably ten, $15 a day. And apparently they learned and they said, this is why we have vending machines like you can't this is like an illegal activity. And I just love the sense of making money on that. I don't know, I've always had an appetite for money, I've always had a desire for it, and it's something I have to watch out for.
[00:05:16] Sam Parr: Eventually, Mitch would venture into more legal ways of doing business, and that was when he first discovered the power of having money of his own.
[00:05:23] Mitch: I got hooked when I was ten, maybe 11 years old. My dad had me doing his lawn all the time, and he said, you could try to make a business out of this. I'm like, what's a business? He's like, well, you keep asking me for the Sega Dreamcast. Well, I asked him. I kept like saying, hey, why can't I get this? He goes, you got to work. I'm just going to buy you stuff. And so he said, take this Polaroid legitimately, a Polaroid camera, take a picture of the yard, and then why don't you just go to all of our neighbors, show neighbors, show them the picture and say, I can do this too. I had done this and I probably had 3 or $400. That was just cash, you know? I didn't have a bank account, and, um, we got a ring on the doorbell. And this is when I learned that capitalism sometimes doesn't work out for the ten year olds favor. It was the guy that, uh, he was a guy that had gray hair, and he was the one that was mowing all the lawns. He rang the doorbell and said, is your son the one that is doing all the lawns on these two streets? And my dad's like, yeah. And he goes, listen, I just want to tell you, like, I can't afford for my family any of the things I used to like. I need these lawns back. And so my dad says he'll give them back to you. And so my first entrepreneurial like taste was making a lot for, you know, my age. And then pretty much my parents saying give it back. I think that hooked me, though, to be like, whoa, that's way more fun than just sitting around because I do it. And then there's this money thing, and it gives me independence and I could buy fun things, whatever.
[00:06:50] Sam Parr: That entrepreneurial bug clearly stuck with Mitch, but in college, he briefly abandoned it. Why? Ironically, it's because he needed money. He had fallen in love.
[00:07:00] Mitch: So there was this girl that's now been, you know, my wife for 13 years, but that I really wanted to marry. And so I chose this consulting job because they gave me the largest signing bonus of any of the people that, you know, was trying to hire me. And I saw that as. Wait a second, that's a fast pass of I get all this bonus. I can then go buy a ring. I can have her, you know, engaged, frankly, before, you know, senior year, all this stuff.
[00:07:27] Aaron Hayslip: What was that bonus, by the way?
[00:07:29] Mitch: 20 grand.
[00:07:30] Sam Parr: Mitch had come to value the possibilities that money brings into his life. But there was a problem at his job. Increasing his efforts wasn't being converted into higher buying power. And that's still something that he wanted more of.
[00:07:43] Mitch: I realized how quickly I was demotivated because you got the same amount every two weeks in a paycheck and I hated it. It just felt like if I crush it these two weeks, nothing changes. And then I remember at the end of my first year they're like, you get the top raise. And I think it was 10 or 15%, and it was the top out of like 500 people that started. So I was doing good work. And I'm thinking to myself, whoa, whoa whoa whoa. So like, I'm going up to like 90 K after that crazy year, 80 hour workweeks I was flying to Europe I was doing I didn't see my family a lot. And I'm thinking like, wait a second, if I did this much grinding, even in lawn mowing, I'd have made more than a ten K bonus, you know? So this is kind of a bogus this whole corporate thing is a little bogus to me.
[00:08:27] Aaron Hayslip: What was your first business that you decided to go in and as you transitioned out of consulting?
[00:08:31] Mitch: Well, I was actually still a consulting. This was before Amazon had taken over the world. And, um, me and a couple of consultants all agreed that we didn't want to work there anymore, and we wanted to do something big And, uh, so we decide, what if we could start a subscription based toiletry company where every so often your deodorant came to your front door? So we call it box to me. And we got this great logo that this box is coming to you. And here's how we're going to do it. And I'll never forget one day the guy that was more of the engineer tech guy, he comes in and he goes, guys, I'm leaving the consulting firm. I'm also leaving this idea. And, you know, we'd put some money into it and we were ready to leave Deloitte officially and all that stuff. He says, guys, there's this this gentleman I met that he's trying to do what we're doing, but for razors. And I'm like, what are you talking about? Like razors like to shave your beard. And he's like, yeah. And he wants to make it like a cool club. And he wants to, like, make it just a dollar, a razor. And so he's going to call it like Dollar Shave Club. And it could be really cool. And it's like what we're doing. But you know he's going to manufacture them. And you know we're just kind of distributing and buying. And I was like, dude, that is the dumbest idea of all time. Never going to work like idiotic. All that stuff. Of course, he's, you know, worth a lot of money now and did well. But after doing that, that's what launched me to what I've been doing now the last 12 years.
[00:09:54] Aaron Hayslip: And then when did you start actually making your first money in that gig, and what did your salary look like from entrepreneurship to the first time you started making real money in financial services?
[00:10:05] Mitch: I remember I was leaving the consulting firms my last day, and this partner sits me down and he says, you're sure about this? I said, yeah. He goes, but there's no salary over there. I said, exactly. It's exciting to me. He goes, well, Travis, just so you know, when you come back, I don't know that I'll even take you as my assistant because you're making such a bad call. And I thought that was just an odd. I don't know whether he knew it or not. Maybe he's the best motivator of all time, but I never forgot that. That made me very angry. And it kind of was a in an immature way, in some ways, fuel for me. But I start doing what I'm doing. I made $2,000 in my first six months, and it turns out in that $20,000 I told you about, I had signed something that said, if I don't stay, I think it was two years and I had left, like at the 22nd month. You have to pay it all back. Wow. So I literally am such a moron that I had to. During that six months. I made zero money practically, and then I had to pay that back. And so that's what I was up against. But, um, yeah, it was my second year that things, you know, took off. I think I probably made 6 or $700,000 that year. And then by the time I hit 26 years old, was the first year I made over a million.
[00:11:23] Sam Parr: The first million dollar year. It changed Mitch's life.
[00:11:32] Mitch: I felt unbelievably satisfied and like it only left a to kind of an insatiable appetite to want to go and get more and do more. Frankly, because once you get the taste of whoa and you look at your peers, you know, I didn't have a single person that I knew that had ever made $1 million in a year. I just didn't know anyone at the time. And so whether it's my parents, friends, whatever, and I started to just be like, whoa, have I? Like, what am I? And that was kind of a confusing time. But yeah, I kept telling my wife, like, listen, we have no idea. And so I think my initial response to having a ton of money in the bank was it was just a couple of years before we had zero. And I was trying to tell her, like, it's okay to pay off credit cards, and now there's hundreds of thousands of dollars. And it's almost hypocritical that, like, I was a financial planner, but when you really have it, it's a totally different ball game and the burden. So I think I took more of a fear approach where I was like, I was so tight of we bought a home and it was a great home, but pretty much I just wasn't going to let us go, spend or do big things.
[00:12:42] Aaron Hayslip: How much did you spend on your house?
[00:12:44] Mitch: It would have been the next year. It would have been probably my my second year. So I had a smaller house at the time, but we bought a $2 million house probably the second year I made, you know, seven figures. But again, I was so scared, which it ends up being right, because in 2019 I needed all this money. But, you know, I think it's the Lord's grace that I had this sense of it's okay to have a little tiny bit of nice things, but you need to have a ton, a ton of cash. And I'm obviously really thankful in my story that that that was the case.
[00:13:22] Sam Parr: This is around the time that two major things happened in Mitch's life. The first one that he's referencing is when he suddenly lost most of his wealth. We'll talk about that momentarily, but first we have to get into another, more life threatening event. Mitch had suddenly gone blind and doctors feared the worst. Now we're gonna tell you all about it just after this ad break. So Mitch is on top of the world. He's making seven figures a year. He and his wife had bought a $2 million home, and his ego is even a bit inflated. After leaving his job and proving that he could do more on his own. He felt more in control of his life than ever before until his health scare.
[00:14:00] Mitch: I got pretty arrogant pretty quick, and I just didn't know how to understand all that at, you know. Then it was 27 years old. And yeah, I was sitting in a meeting not dissimilar to this, and I went completely blind and couldn't see. And I thought my buddies were playing a trick on me. And it was like the most epic prank ever until I realized, no, like, people are really worried and, um, yeah. And I think, you know, test after test, they end up putting me in, having to do the surgery where they have to actually open your skull and the thing that forms that you sign. Wow. When they tell you they're going to open your skull, they literally say, like, the odds of you dying in there are this high. The odds of you losing some of your senses are this high. And of course, we had a woman at our church. I think it was a week or two before that had a similar surgery that actually passed away on the table. It's a strange thing, money, because when they are handing you pallets to clean your body off, because you're about to go into one of the most significant surgeries a person can have. It's funny you actually think about money in about two polar opposites at the same time when you're like, this could probably be it. I mean, you're crying, you're hugging your family. You're kind of thinking what could have been all the things.
[00:15:21] Mitch: But then on one end, money, you're thinking, well, what have I really left to my wife? Like, she let me grind the last four years, like 80 hour weeks for four years in a row is what created a lot of that. Did I really leave her in a place that she would say, like I never wanted him to go, but he did take care of me. I have to really worry about finances as as she's grieving and figuring out her life. And I didn't love my answer there. Aaron. And so that was kind of sad. But then on the other side, you think this like, it really doesn't matter. And I'm kind of brought back to this whole Ecclesiastes, you know, which, you know, I love that book. But, you know, I'm kind of brought back to this idea of, oh, I guess I guess they're right. It was really meaningless after all. And you really are just going to give it to somebody else and have no say. The thought that really came through my mind was, was it worth it? Like, how many hours did I not have to emotionally give to her? All for the pursuit of this money thing that, it turns out, is really valuable. But I could have actually helped her with just a large life insurance policy, and made a 10th of what I'd been making and had all been fine.
[00:16:35] Sam Parr: And by the way, I've had my own health scare in the year 2020. I got Lyme disease, and I remember waking up one morning and my face was paralyzed. I thought I was having a stroke. I couldn't move my face at least one half of it. And I remember getting rushed to the hospital. I'm thinking, I'm definitely having a stroke. I'm dying. And turns out I had Lyme disease, which is much less serious, but still a bit serious. And I had to be on an IV for 30 days. And I remember thinking, eh, I could barely afford the hospital treatment and like the 30 day IV treatment I was going through, and b if I died now, my wife is not gonna have a lot because I've not sold my business or I don't have a lot of liquidity. And it honestly changed my perspective on things. And so a classicist, the book that Mitch is referencing here, it's an ancient book that speaks frequently and frankly about money, joy, and the ultimate futility of life. I think what Mitch is referring here is the comparison that a classicist Classes makes between two people. The first is the man who lends a long and prosperous life full of wealth, but then says his soul is not satisfied with life's good things. The other person is a stillborn child, someone who was born but never has a chance to experience life. But it says that in this comparison, the stillborn child is better off than the man who lived a long and prosperous life, because the old man did not enjoy what he had. And like Mitch, by the way, I'm young and I've got children, and I'm working really hard to build something great, but I hope I don't have to have brain surgery to consider this point, which is what is it all for? Is my soul satisfied with my life's? Now, what doctors feared was a brain tumor for Mitch. It thankfully turned out to be a cyst and they were able to successfully remove it. But that experience changed the way that he viewed money forever.
[00:18:13] Mitch: Yeah. I mean, you get punched in the mouth, you know, four months of recovery, you're not allowed to answer a single email, text or phone call. That's a lot of time for a personality like mine to just think, my goodness. This and, you know, you get enough time to really think through. So what did matter? And I came to this conclusion. I had fallen into the love of money. And that was such a motivator. And I and the game of money and what it provided me and all that. But I also didn't come to the conclusion that it was bad. And I also became very convicted that I was a personality that had the ability to make a lot of it for the rest of my life. And I don't know a lot of people that have that ability that they can just say, I'm going to choose to do this and it will happen. And so what a slap in the face, frankly, to the good Lord himself, if I don't use that talent and gift to go do it, because last I checked, a lot of the good guys aren't making the money. And so why not pursue becoming a billionaire? But instead of doing it for the love of the game and what it provides me and my identity and all that? What if I did it with a more sober perspective that I'm going to be on an operating table again one day, and I want to have a better response when I am. And so, yeah, I would say I have since coming back January of 2017 from that surgery, I have had my valleys where I still think there's still a temptation of that love of money. But overall, I think my pursuit is I would like to see hundreds of millions or billions of dollars that I accumulate over my life. The question becomes why and what will I use it for? I think that's what I'm learning matters. Not that it's bad for me to make it.
[00:19:57] Aaron Hayslip: I think what you're saying is loving it meant that you sacrificed parts of your life you wouldn't want to sacrifice. But since you have the ability, you should do it. But you have to find a new purpose for it. Like, what's the new purpose for it?
[00:20:10] Mitch: Yeah, exactly. I think the new purpose is, I mean, very specific to me. There are two areas that money I have seen causes so much good and impact that if I didn't have it, I wouldn't be able to cause. And the first is literally within my own company. I'm able to make decisions and do things for people and provide opportunities that simply don't exist out there. That in some ways aren't even profitable. But I do it because I have money and I don't have to make it all about making money. And then I think this is more from a like giving philanthropic. And, you know, these organizations are unbelievable. They've got these business plans, they've got all these things they want to do. But I'm not the guy that's going to give a lot of time to these. There's other people that can give time and that's amazing. But these organizations can do a lot with money. And it's amazing if I if I have the talent to go make a lot of it, I can feel a lot more things. And I almost think about it as like a impacto meter. It's like I have this impact meter of my life, and money allows me to set up ten, 20, 30 different impact meters that just keep rising instead of just having the one, because I'm able to do that. And I think that's my new game. How many impact meters will I have by the time I die?
[00:21:27] Aaron Hayslip: Absolutely. And then take me to 2019. You begin to talk about it before you had some liquid money to help you kind of restart your, your own business. I'm assuming this is part of the same thread, right? You've got this scare. You're like, no, I'm not going to not make money. I'm actually going to make more money for the impact of people thinking now about, you know, your family and your wife and different ways. Maybe because of that, that health scare, what happened in 2019 and how did that help you get to where you're at now?
[00:21:55] Mitch: Yeah, 2019 is probably the most shaping. You think brain surge is the most shaping part of my life. But I think 19, especially when I view money, that was the single most shaping time of how I viewed it, because I got an offer with the company that I was at. They offered me hey, and they showed me the spreadsheet and I'll leave out the details, but I'll give you the amount. If I would have taken that offer and done what they wanted to do, which was highly generous of them. By the way, the CFO shows me in a spreadsheet that I was 30 years old at this time, that over age 30 to 50, I will have made an income $1 billion. And he wanted to show me how that was possible, and how he thought he was reasonable, and how I was just one of those, he said, generational talents that's going to make this one way or another, and it might as well be there. And that kind of stuck in my head. And so, you know, I'm only two years, two and a half years removed from the brain surgery, you know, so like I just learned a big lesson about money. So I'm so thankful I had that lesson because I could have taken that and run with it and just fallen back into the same traps without the brain surgery.
[00:23:06] Mitch: So the brain surgery is a prep for this moment. And I remember having to sit there and say, is what I want to do with the impact inside of my business back to this whole like impact on meters and all the people I want to impact. Is that something I'm willing to let go of? Because if I take this deal, I may not have the opportunity to control that anymore. And man, I said no. And it was the scariest thing when I said no. My hand was shaking when I got into that elevator. And of course, you know, it's New York City. You got to ride down like 75 floors. And the whole time I'm thinking, what am I? I'm a moron. That's the offer of a I'm 30 years old. This is like dream life stuff. I can have all these houses and you start thinking of all you could buy and do. But then I just kept going back to the. No. I made a commitment here, and obviously I'll keep going of where it goes.
[00:23:55] Sam Parr: That wasn't a slip of tongue. Mitch really did say a billion with a B, and he turned it down. And instead of that comfy all you could want lifestyle, Mitch had to start from nearly zero.
[00:24:06] Mitch: Yeah. So to go independent, I'll save you the gory details. But I had gotten to about 3 million liquid. And then I had that nice house that was probably, you know, maybe, I don't know, 2 or 3 million at the time. And, um, in order to leave, you not only have to pretty much say no to your income and all you've built and try to rebuild it. So all that income and I was probably at that time up to three, 3.5 million of income a year.
[00:24:32] Aaron Hayslip: Okay. What were you spending? Monthly. I mean, I'm assuming you you had a high burn as as you naturally do.
[00:24:39] Mitch: I didn't I didn't I mean, I kind of kept it. I mean, again, it's all relative, right? I bet you my burn was, you know, at the mortgage. I bet my burn was only 20, 20 5KA month. Wow. But I'm making 3.5. I mean, so you can imagine there's a lot. But again, there was always that sense in me. And of course, to your point now I knew why is no one does what I did. Because to do it you have to restart. And so that means all that income you worked up to, you just have to restart it. And that's scary. But also, I was hoping I never was able to call any of my employees, but I was hoping they would leave too. Even if I never called them. And that's a pretty bold move, because then you get to see what type of leader you are. And luckily, a lot of them, you know, I'll never forget it. The only way I knew if they joined me again is if they showed up at my front door. It was legendary, man. It was so amazing. Like crying every time. But yeah. So I spent over the first six months of us going independent. I got down to probably, I think 10 to 15,000 because I was paying legal bills. I was setting up a new company. I was paying some of my people's mortgages because none of them could make money either. Wow. I mean, we were just this group of 50 or 60 people that all were so in belief of a mission. But none of us had planned this out. We didn't actually, if I if I had more time, I could tell you this wasn't exactly our plan. It got thrown on us. And we we made a decision.
[00:26:07] Aaron Hayslip: So that 3 million, which is essentially all you had liquid. That was your family's expenses. You're also paying, I'm assuming some business expenses, legal expenses. And then you're paying. How many employees were you just paying to to live?
[00:26:19] Mitch: Oh, gosh. 50 or 60.
[00:26:22] Aaron Hayslip: Wow. And then did you have other investments?
[00:26:26] Mitch: No. No. Because again, taxes obviously take a ton out of it. But you think about to get to three something. Maybe it's 3.5 million liquid after getting 40% of it taken away. You can imagine, you know, I'd only been making that for three years, you know. So that was me having a pretty tight lifestyle. But I had a freak out moment where the house I'm sitting in right now talking to you on that. I told you I purchased 2016 for a couple million dollars. I had a prayer walk where I called my buddy and I said, hey man, you're in real estate. I need to sell this thing because I'm not going to I'm not going to quit it. And I sat with my sweet wife and I said, hey, sweetie, remember those apartments where we where we started our life. I said, what if we moved the kids back there? I won't do the one bedroom. We'll do the two. And you get to see the joy I've had in my marriage is you get to, uh, you rarely does a marriage get to really see if the marriage puts the money where their mouth is. And I got to see it because she immediately was like, let's go to the apartment. So I'm, like, ready to sell it that week so that I could afford it and go down to because I figured I've been here before. Like when I left the consulting firm, I paid back the bonus. I was in credit card debt. I don't know, I just wasn't scared of negative net worth.
[00:27:48] Sam Parr: Slowly, this big risk paid off. And by 2022, he had his own income back up to around $4 million a year. So at this point, he had gone through a life threatening brain surgery, a massive depletion of his wealth to the point where he had to sell his home. And he's come through the other side back to his luxurious lifestyle and bright future. But his biggest challenge of all was still just around the corner. We're going to tell you the story right after this quick sponsor break.
[00:28:18] Mitch: Seemingly, the business is finally built again. It took a couple years to do it, and it's finally going to do what maybe it used to do, but better and independent. So I'm kind of thinking, whoa, is there light? Because again, brain surgery than this. Like I'm thinking, you know, there couldn't be this, uh, you know, I'm almost saying, like, there's got to be a three year period where we don't go through something hard, but here we go. Three years go by, and another traumatic event she finds, uh, breast cancer in December of 22. You know, her mother had passed away from ovarian cancer. And all the lineage of women in her family had died in their 30s and 40s from this. And so I'd always known about it. I married her, and we had done a lot of genetic testing to know that it was coming her way. And at the same token, no one can prepare for the diagnosis when you've got three kids now, one of which is only, you know, one years old. You know, and so I think I had a three, two and a one year old when she was diagnosed. And man, there's nothing there's nothing worse pain wise.
[00:29:21] Mitch: There's nothing I can describe of the. Yeah. The first half of 2023 of the chemo battle. You know, she got so bad. She's one of the rare people that the blood cell count because of the chemo, it got so low that a common cold, they told us would kill her because she had no immune system. So we were no longer worried about that. So, man, my my doctor says you got to you got to take the girls because these girls are too young. They carry, you know, one, two and three years old. They carry a ton of issues. So I call my folks and say, hey, can you take my one year old? And I guess I'll just take the other two somewhere else. And so I was seeing this oncologist counselor. And the counselor says, Travis, you're going to need to take him out of town. They need that. And here's the other thing I need you to do with where this is. You will not be able to raise these girls if you don't have a week here when you're gone to fully live into her being gone. Wow. I know she's not, but you have to mentally do it. Or these three girls.
[00:30:18] Mitch: I don't know what's going to happen. So, dude, I'm in San Diego trying to, you know, take him to Disneyland and silly things. And I bet you every ten minutes I pulled over with such a deep sob because I did what the counselor said, I. I pictured my life with this sweet woman that we'd finally found our rhythm as a marriage after ten years. And I don't know, it was just this beautiful. Like we finally had these sweet family and the business was doing it. So I did feel like back to what we were saying before, like I finally was about to unleash into even more family time the rest of my life, man. Like, I don't know to say depressed. I don't think depressed is even a big enough word. It was. It was the worst. And she ends up being healed and we're in that five year window. Now, if you know cancer folks, you know, it's that five years after they tell you it's gone that you got to make it through to fight a recurrence. So there's still not a day that goes by that I'm not reminded that she's one blood test away. Yeah. It's hard.
[00:31:16] Aaron Hayslip: Thanks for sharing that I think. I want to ask about this feeling of your perspective on power. I can imagine you got used to everything you're touching. Turning to gold. Even you lost it all, but you got it back even more. How did it make you feel that? I mean, you can kind of buy anything, right? I mean, within reason that most people would, would want to buy, right? But then you run into this season where you've got essentially no control over how a phone call can turn things upside down. Like what? What were you processing in terms of money and power in those dynamics?
[00:31:53] Mitch: Yeah, it was funny. I remember, um, being at Disneyland with my two oldest and, um, hiring the concierge person. That was probably ten grand just for the day, so we didn't have to do the lines. And I'm thinking to myself, this is ridiculous. This is our life. Like, I don't even think about that. We do it because we don't want to wait in lines. And I think I would give up this moment and this luxury and this ability power, whatever you want to call it, to have her healed. Put me in an apartment. Never let my kids see Disneyland. I just remember so vividly like saying God, like, take it. All of it means I can have Jacqueline back. Oh, it's the freaking worst, man. But I think also, you know, it's what's interesting too is, is power at the workplace and this ability to create. Man, I lost my whatever my secret sauce that I've been born with that creates some of this stuff. I lost it during that season because I was so sad that I was definitely scatterbrained in my decision making. I definitely wasn't as motivating. And I was yeah, man. I mean, I wasn't the guy that everyone relies on and rah rah and the things I was the one that just needed people to hold me up. And I think that what I learned was how temporary power is. Because just like that, my personality shifted and changed because of something out of my control. And now I wasn't as attractive to my employees and to the marketplace as I was. And all it took was one little thing. And so it's literally built on complete sand. You could lose it tomorrow if something happens. And that's weird and sobering.
[00:33:32] Aaron Hayslip: Yeah. Did wealth give you better access to care during this season? Do you think that your wife had an advantage because of you had access that maybe others wouldn't have?
[00:33:45] Mitch: I'm convinced she's still here today because of what wealth created. And I don't know if it's the money. As much as money gives you access to relationships and connections. And what I've learned about the wealth game is when you're in the club, so to speak, the club takes care of club members. And so if you're wealthy and there's another group of people that are wealthy and you reach out, it's like an automatic, you pull all the strings. And so whether it was getting her images done three weeks before, most people could, because we had that doctor, you know, whether it was getting into an oncologist, getting a chair, this is sad. At a chemo place when there was no chairs. All of them were connections and people that because of the wealth and the success I had had, I had met along the way, that helped me out tremendously. And I'm forever in debt to them. But it is an unfair thing when we'd see these people in a chemo bed next to Jacqueline and, you know, you strike these conversations up with people going through it and you're all in this. Everyone's equal in the chemo room. That's what's pretty awesome about it. It doesn't matter what you have.
[00:34:51] Aaron Hayslip: Are you conflicted about this at all? I mean, I know my answer, right? If my if my wife's going through this, you know, I've got my kids are six, eight and ten, so I know my answer. But did you feel any guilt for being able to have this kind of access?
[00:35:03] Mitch: All I wanted to do is her survive. So no, I think on the back end of it, when she was good, I don't think it was guilt. It was more let's put that in our kind of impact. Ometer things we call it of like, it's pretty sucky that there are people that are dying in Texas today because there's such rampant cancer going on and not enough beds, and people don't talk about it. And what do you do when they tell you it's four weeks and that four weeks that you're waiting? Cancer's just growing in their body. It's horrible.
[00:35:42] Sam Parr: I think Aaron really meant that. And I love that he got super honest here. I know it's tough to admit sometimes, but if you have an unfair advantage and someone you love needs help. Wouldn't you use that advantage? I think the important thing here is what you do after, and how you end up using your money to help others, be it donations to your community or charities, or funding research. And if you're able to see firsthand that money can have an impact, why not try to help others too? At this point, Mitch's wealth and power have been tested in many ways. Still, with a young family and a wife not completely out of the woods, the way he uses his money is very much with that in mind.
[00:36:22] Aaron Hayslip: What's your current burn like? Have your spending changed from the days where you know you were you were a super penny pincher?
[00:36:28] Mitch: Totally. Yeah. Even even thinking about this podcast was super helpful because I was like, whoa, I really have gone up. I'm at like 65, 70 a month if you annualize like vacations and stuff into monthly. Yeah, I bet it's closer to 70 ish now a month.
[00:36:45] Aaron Hayslip: Yeah. So I mean, your mortgage, I guess in the same house hasn't gone up. Like what's been the big change? Is it travel? I mean experiences? What's the family spending on?
[00:36:54] Mitch: Yeah. Three kids starting. You know, we got private school. The vacations we're doing are now the one we just took was 150 grand. And so it's, um. Yeah, it's I mean, it's again, I know it's your podcast and other people talk this way, but it's embarrassing to say that. I don't know, it's just like, because I know, I know what that means. But back to this whole, like, if you look at our the income coming in, it doesn't affect it. You know, it's not a, it's not like a budgeting item for us. Yeah. But that's it's a weird thing.
[00:37:27] Aaron Hayslip: How much does attached to because here's what if I was in your position the feeling I would have. You can either confirm this or not. But man, if I had almost lost my wife and had a picture of what it's like to go to Disneyland without her, if I had almost lost my own life on an operating table, I think that's how I'd want to spend it, right? Like, let's go to a vacation where, I mean, even your example of being at Disneyland, man, the time is the thing that you can't renew and won't ever get back. So if it means spending ten grand to keep the lines like, let's spend ten grand to skip the lines, is that's how you're thinking about it, because you're not buying. Doesn't seem like a bigger house. I don't know if you're buying cars. It seems like you're spending on experiences, right?
[00:38:08] Mitch: No, I'm not a our style as a family since the cancer has been pretty much too big values that we live by. The first is we believe in experiences over comfort, which means that like, how many times would you do something really amazing, but you sit on the couch and do Netflix, or you say, I'm tired or life is too busy, but like, experiences are everything. And when Jacqueline came back, I told her, listen, 2024, we are going nuts on trips and things and I bet you by the end of this year it'll be close to half a million on experiences. Because you're exactly right. Like, I have her back and we have we have the pictures and all of the unbelievable things this year was. But I think the second thing that we've realized that is a part of our value set is we bought a really great and got to custom build a Colorado place. And uh, this year we only have, I think, a week, maybe two weeks that we won't have a friend or family staying there. And all we hear every time is it was this beautiful place where we got to connect as a family. And I think that we're, like, really changing to see wealth as a connection in our own family and providing the same connection for others. I think that's what matters now to us, because tomorrow we get a call and it's over.
[00:39:26] Aaron Hayslip: You got this significant burn with experiences and all that. How are you investing? What's your portfolio look like now? What would it look like this next year after you make 5 or 8 million, what will you do with the excess?
[00:39:38] Mitch: Yeah, I mean our strategy is of liquid net worth. We're going to continue to buy really unbelievable homes and really unbelievable places across the world. And so that'll be half of it. And the other half, I wouldn't say it's anything more than we've got, you know, amazing people that manage the money and more traditional portfolios. And some of that is private equity investments or friends companies. Sure. But I think our heart is more called to residential high end homes. And so, you know, you go 20 years from now, I wouldn't be surprised if we own 12 or 15 of these things. And, you know, they're all five, 10 million a pop. And we just have a company that manages it. And we have missionaries stay there. We got, you know, different. I mean, that's our hope is that every week of the year, there'd be someone staying there for free. Love it. That's like our thing. Now.
[00:40:32] Aaron Hayslip: What have you learned about the limits of wealth?
[00:40:35] Mitch: I think what I've learned is probably up to Making probably 750 $1 million a year and having maybe 3 or 4 million liquid at least. What I am seeing is everything above that doesn't do anything. I feel no extra value. I actually feel more stress. So I actually think there's a sweet spot of wealth can make your life ridiculously great. But then when it gets so big, it actually feels more like a burden to me now. Like even saying what the company is and like, what if I actually got that money? I wouldn't change a thing I'm doing. I already have everything I'd want wealth wise. And so, I don't know, I think I've just learned, like if there's a listener that's like, I want to make a ton, and you were like me when I was, you know, coming up like, it's not I don't think it's a bad thing. And it is. I mean, it is a fantastic life having it. I mean, there's no other way to say it. And boy, it's got its limitations of what it will provide you.
[00:41:43] Aaron Hayslip: What advice would you have for someone who, despite having a level of financial success, you know, like you've got but lack of control? Because I think that's what you've experienced, right? You've you had a lot of money, but even then it couldn't prevent the cancer. Like, what's the advice here for those folks?
[00:42:02] Mitch: Yeah. I would tell you that again, wealth can give you access to things. But if you put your identity, if you put your self-worth into your net worth, you always lose, no matter how much you make or don't make. It's not a beatable game, right? And so I think the advice is like when you get a day with your kids, your family, and it's just a normal day, appreciate that freaking day. It could be over tomorrow. Like we are all a phone call away from our life radically changing. So make plans for sure, but hold it unbelievably loosely because we don't have any control over today. We genuinely don't.
[00:42:43] Speaker4: I swear, you're the gold I've been running for. Honey. Like I woke up in one the top rock.
[00:42:50] Sam Parr: Few of us have ever experienced what Mitch has experienced, which is to have a nine figure net worth. A near-death experience for yourself and your spouse and have it all happen by the time you're in your mid 30s. But my biggest takeaway, and something I hope you will learn from this is enjoy the good days. Mitch referenced a classes earlier and it's a great book. And there's a great quote from that book and it says, behold, what I've seen to be good and fitting is to eat and to drink and to find enjoyment in all the toil with which one toils under the sun, the few days of his life that God has given him. For this is his lot. My own takeaway from that quote and from Mitch's story is this. We often ask on this podcast how much money is enough? But perhaps this is the wrong question. Maybe whatever we have right now is enough for right now. I think that what Mitch is telling us through his experiences is that the real mistake and the things that we have at risk is not that we're going to make too little or that we're going to fail. It's that we won't enjoy what we already have our family, the work itself, the money, the food that allows us to eat and the experience it allows us to have. Enjoy the good, normal days. The days probably like the one that you're having right now, today. This is what all the work and money is for in the first place. Now, before we wrap up a few plugs.
[00:44:11] Sam Parr: First is for Hampton. That's my company. If you're the CEO, founder, business owner of a startup that does at least 3 million in revenue. Check it out. Join Hamptons.com. The conversation that we're having right now publicly on this podcast, this is the stuff that we talk about all the time in Hampton. You get put into an eight person core group who you meet with monthly, and a lot of them are in real life. And then we have a community with thousands of members, and you can have these types of conversations with anyone. And honestly, this is my life's work and I love it. So I want you to check it out. Join Hamptons.com. And the second plug is for Lower Street. This podcast, it's been a rocket ship. We started this thing a few months ago and it's taken off. And one of the reasons it's taken off is I hired a company called Lower Street. They're the production company that makes this podcast. And so if you want a podcast like it and you want some of the results that I've gotten from it, you have to check out their new product. It's called Authority by Lower Street, and it's reimagined the whole production process with the goal of making shows exactly like this one, exactly like Moneywise, specifically for busy founders and business leaders. You can check it out at Lower Street. All right. I have to give a shout out again to Aaron Hayslip. He did an excellent job with this interview. Let me know on Twitter the Sam Parr what you think you.