James Lenhoff, CFP is president of WealthQuest, a financial planning firm with 1200 clients across the U.S., managing $1 billion in client assets. His mission is simple but bold: to change the conversation about money.

Between major media outlets, industry gurus and even other financial advisors, we are constantly being told that we aren’t smart enough to understand our own finances. They’ve convinced us that no matter how much we might think we know, we’re still missing something and that we should be worried about our future, the markets and how we stack up against our peers.

But money is more than just math. James’ passion is to help clients and financial advisors realize that money is about emotions, dreams and desires. If we can learn to use money as a tool, we can live truly rich lives.

James is the author of Living a RIch Life: The No Regrets Guide to Building and Spending Wealth, as well as the host of The Rich Life Podcast. He is a Certified Financial Planner and Life Coach, a married father of three, and spends much of his free time in ministry at his church, including financial literacy education programs, men’s ministry, and mission work in Haiti.

In his conversation with us, James dispels the myths about financial planning, money and generosity, and explains how to eliminate the fear-based approach to building and protecting your wealth. He describes the 3 common circuit-breakers for abundance and how to keep them turn on, and how the act of generosity is a fun, family affair that brings family members closer together.

We also explore how generosity plays out in business, leading your team, building your corporate culture, and sharing your knowledge with competitors, and how establishing an employee-owned company benefits everyone.

Key Takeaways

1. The financial industry has spent 20 years teaching people that money is mathematical. The math is the easy part. It’s the humanness and relationships that we mix in with the math that makes it hard. That’s where we need to focus.
2. Most people believe money is complicated and scary. They don’t understand it and don’t have a plan. They don’t know what they want they only know what they don’t want.
3. The meaning of life is relationships.
4. Every financial planner will tell you to have an emergency fund because what if things go wrong? The problem is that we don’t have a good answer to the other question – what if things go well? For most people the answer to that question is to spend more money on ourselves.
5. Define your lifestyle cap where you are content and have what you want, and then deposit anything beyond what you need for that into an abundance fund. It will keep your abundance circuit breakers on.
6. Generosity is not only about charity and tax deductions. It’s life on life impact.
7. A little bit of perspective goes a long way.
8. Generosity is deciding what your family is passionate about and doing something about it, beyond just writing a check – which often doesn’t fix the problem anyway.
9. Generosity is far more risker than charity. You may try to help someone and it doesn’t work out. But that’s what makes it more beautiful when you engage in it and take that risk. It actually means more to you...and the family you’re helping.
10. We need people around us who don’t believe our story (beliefs about ourselves) and will challenge us to create a new story.
11. As business owners, when we set healthy boundaries for our employees (around work-life balance) they actually get more work done. They are so much more productive when they are rested and connected with the people they love.
12. At Wealthquest, they get more accomplished in 4.5 days – normal, comfortable days, where employees leave at 5pm – than their competition does working longer hours.
13. Be generous with your employees and invite them to be involved in generosity with you.

Episode Show Notes: https://leadersoftransformation.com/podcast/business/294-james-lenhoff-transforming-our-view-of-money-and-generosity 

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