Decoding Wealth: Built on the Side

In 2024, De took his family on a cruise — and upgraded to a corner suite nobody asked for. He called it treating his family. The truth: he was treating himself and acting like a big shot. That one upgrade set the tone for overspending the whole trip, and it took his family driving home for him to see they never cared about the room. They wanted time together. In this Relationship x Financial episode: why the first spend works like a thermostat, how to tell who a purchase is really for, and three moves before your next trip. Plus this week's Season 3 follow-through. Free FRESH Score quiz: decodingwealth.net/quiz

Last episode, De said his exercise wasn't consistent, with a treadmill sitting right there in the room. Turns out he was already walking on it at his desk almost every workday. He just didn't count it. Season 3 is the follow-through, and it opens with a receipt and a correction. Vegetables, fruit, less fast food, one to two hours of walking while he works. And he's starting to feel it: losing weight, more energy. For anyone building on the side of a job that takes everything: stop undercounting what doesn't look the part, and build health into the hours you already have.

The rule: an audit that won't allow an honest win isn't an audit either.

In this episode:

• The receipt: food first. More vegetables and fruit, less fast food, less eating out
• The desk treadmill he didn't count, because to him exercise meant running and a good sweat
• Why most of us treat health like a second job we never have time to apply for
• Putting the move where you already are: the desk, the truck, the kitchen, the drive in
• Optimizing your day isn't the same as never stopping. Step away, breathe, then come back
• Why "almost every day" beats a perfect week you never start

Your challenge this week: Count what you're already doing. Put one move inside a place you already are, and count it honestly for seven days. Then tell De what you counted → callme.decodingwealth.net

Resources:

• Talk to Ace (Health) in the DCW app → decodingwealth.net. If the hard part is how you see yourself, that's Emery (Emotional)
• Audio Library in the app: past sessions from all five coaches, filterable by pillar
• Free FRESH Score quiz → decodingwealth.net/quiz
• Leave De a voicemail → callme.decodingwealth.net
• Listen anywhere → listen.decodingwealth.net

Contact: [email protected]

Disclaimer: De isn't a doctor, a dietitian or a trainer. No degree, no certification, no letters behind his name. What he's got is his life, shared honestly. Nothing in this episode is medical, nutrition or fitness advice. Talk to your doctor before you change how you move or how you eat. And if today's episode brings up something you're struggling to carry on your own, please talk to a licensed counselor or a therapist. Getting help is strength, not weakness.

Keywords: FRESH Method, health pillar, desk treadmill, walking while working, eating better, weight loss, follow-through, Season 3, W-2 and a side hustle, building on the side, Decoding Wealth

De closes Season 2 by running his own numbers out loud — five questions, one per FRESH pillar, answered honestly on the record before he asks you a thing.

A few are in a solid place. One still gets away from him. And one is only half moving — the food is improving, the exercise isn't consistent, with a treadmill sitting right there in the room. "I've always worked hard. That's not a flex. That's a confession."

The rule: an audit that won't allow an honest failure isn't an audit.

Plus three Peeps wrote in and every one picked a different pillar — and De settles a promise he made on air in Atlanta that he didn't hit.

In this episode:

• Financial: budgeting everything, personal and business
• Relationship: a solid corner, and taking care of each other
• Emotional: where empathy gets the best of him
• Spiritual: integrity when nobody's watching
• Health: the food is better, the exercise isn't, and the treadmill is right there
• Three listener messages, three different pillars
• The Ep 7 promise of four guests by December, and the honest reset: two, in November and December

Your challenge this week: Answer your own five questions, one per pillar, honestly, before anybody else asks. Then tell De what you found → callme.decodingwealth.net

Resources:

• Talk to the coach for your weakest pillar in the DCW app → decodingwealth.net: Finn (Financial) · Rhea (Relationship) · Emery (Emotional) · Sol (Spiritual) · Ace (Health)
• Audio Library in the app: past sessions from all five coaches, filterable by pillar
• Free FRESH Score quiz → decodingwealth.net/quiz
• Leave De a voicemail → callme.decodingwealth.net
• Listen anywhere → listen.decodingwealth.net
• If Season 2 meant something to you, a follow and a rating on Spotify or Apple Podcasts helps the next Peep find it.

Contact: [email protected]

Disclaimer: De isn't professionally trained in any of this. No degree, no certification, no letters behind his name. What he's got is his life, shared honestly. Nothing in this episode is financial, medical or mental-health advice. If today's episode brings up something you're struggling to carry on your own, please talk to a licensed counselor or a therapist. Getting help is strength, not weakness.

Keywords: FRESH Method, five pillars of wealth, self-audit, personal budget, integrity, empathy, exercise consistency, season finale, W-2 and a side hustle, building on the side, Decoding Wealth

In 2016, for National Driver Appreciation Week, De threw a party for truck drivers and brought in a DJ from a big Maine radio station. The DJ broadcast live from the event and asked, on air, if people could just call him. De answered without thinking: "Yeah — call me De Directly."

That sentence became radio, then TV, then a brand.

It also changed something with the people closest to him. In front of others, they were proud. Alone with him, it was a joke — and he still doesn't know if it was friendly.

It hurt a little. A little, every time, for years, adds up to something.

Emotional × Relationship.

In this episode:

• How one unscripted answer on live radio became a name, a campaign and a brand
• Public applause, private jokes, and never being able to tell which one was real
• Why comments from strangers slid off, and a joke from someone close didn't. Words weigh who said them.
• When you can't tell what somebody meant, you fill the gap yourself, usually with the worst reading
• What they did was information about the relationship. What you believed about yourself was a decision.
• The driver who called: the campaign was the door, the relationship is the house

Your challenge this week: Put your name on one thing, and decide your number before you do it.

Know someone sitting on something they haven't put their name on yet? Send them this one.

Resources:

• Talk to Emery (Emotional) or Rhea (Relationship) in the DCW app → decodingwealth.net
• Audio Library in the app: past sessions from all five coaches, filterable by pillar
• Free FRESH Score quiz → decodingwealth.net/quiz
• Listen anywhere → listen.decodingwealth.net
• If this one landed, a follow and a rating on Spotify or Apple Podcasts helps the next Peep find it.

Contact: [email protected]

Disclaimer: De isn't professionally trained in any of this. No degree, no certification, no letters behind his name. What he's got is his life, shared honestly. If today's episode brings up something you're struggling to carry on your own, please talk to a licensed counselor or a therapist. Getting help is strength, not weakness. Nobody in this story is identified.

Keywords: National Driver Appreciation Week, trucking recruiter, Call Me De Directly, personal brand, public praise and private jokes, self-doubt, emotional wealth, relationships, blue collar leadership, building on the side, FRESH Method, Decoding Wealth

De Echols makes tough calls every day. Most of them he's fine with. Some of them follow him home — and it took him years to figure out what those ones have in common.

Running a hundred-driver terminal in South Carolina, De had to let somebody go. The business case was right — he says so plainly, and he'd make the same call today. He just didn't fully agree with it. And he stood behind it anyway, without ever telling his team there was a gap.

This is a Relationship × Spiritual episode about the rooms nobody sees you in, why the ache is evidence rather than weakness, and where you're supposed to put the part you're not allowed to leak.

In this episode:

• The three rooms every leader operates in — and why only one of them has witnesses

• Why "for the record, this wasn't my call" is the most tempting sentence in leadership, and what it actually costs you

• Agreement is not alignment — the distinction that separates integrity from obedience

• Up, down, or sideways: the only thing that matters about where your disagreement goes

• The real variable in which decisions follow you home — and why the day it stops bothering you is the day to worry

• Why "did I make the right decision?" is the wrong question, and the one that replaces it

• The FRESH Check on carried weight — and the Health bill that comes due

Your challenge this week: Name your load out loud to one person who isn't affected by it.

Resources:

• The FRESH Method assessment + the DCW app → decodingwealth.net

• Talk to Rhea (Relationship) or Sol (Spiritual) in the app

• Contact: [email protected]

Disclaimer: De is not a licensed professional. This show is lived experience shared honestly. If today's episode stirs up something bigger than you can carry alone, please seek professional counseling.

Keywords: leadership pressure, hard decisions at work, letting someone go, middle management, leading a team, integrity at work, faith and leadership, blue collar leadership, trucking operations, building a business on the side, FRESH Method, Decoding Wealth

De sat down one night to update a personal budget he'd let slide for a few months. He wasn't broke — savings in the bank, money invested, the biggest income of his life coming in every two weeks. Then he saw the outflow, and his jaw hit the floor.

Worse: his business budget was perfect. Never missed a month. He'd been running his business like a professional and his own life like a guy who'd get to it eventually.

The Financial pillar, aimed at the idea that your job is a cage. Sometimes the job really does need to change — but employment itself isn't the enemy. Used intentionally, the W-2 can be the runway.

Take the free FRESH Score quiz at decodingwealth.net/quiz.

Five-thirty in the morning, Maine, snowing hard. De's showered, dressed, and standing at a window waiting on a plow guy who isn't coming. By seven he's outside with a shovel in his work clothes, digging a path so he isn't late.

He eventually figured out the real reason it happened — and it wasn't the truck or the snow. It was a conversation about price, months earlier.

The Relationship pillar of the FRESH Method, told through tenants, contractors and vendors. No villains. Just the five relationships nobody mentions when they sell you on real estate.

What 30,000 People Came to Atlanta For | Decoding Wealth Ep. 7

De Echols spent the weekend at InvestFest 2026 in Atlanta — his third year — with thirty thousand people in one building. This is not a recap. It's an honest look at what that room was actually full of, and why a great event still doesn't turn most attendees into owners.

Standing on the second floor looking down at the floor, De realized he'd felt that exact excitement before: in 2021, when he bought his first property. What he doesn't usually say out loud is where he was living at the time — a hotel, on shaky ground, looking at a duplex he was sure he couldn't afford.

He bought it anyway — and the thing that made it possible wasn't more money. It was learning he could use the existing tenant's rent to help qualify for the loan, which he only found out by asking people who already owned property. This episode is the unedited version of what came next: a tenant moving out, a broken dishwasher inside the first month, a basement humidifier fighting mold, a toilet, and a Maine winter with no reliable plow service. And everything worked out.

Inside: why the room ending is a feature and not a bug, why "waiting to be ready" is the most expensive story you tell yourself, and the three reasons good information doesn't become ownership. Plus three moves you can run this week whether you were in Atlanta or working all weekend like most of My Peeps.

The Financial pillar of the FRESH Method — colliding with the Spiritual pillar, because faith isn't a feeling you wait for. It's a move you make before the evidence shows up.

Episode 6: The Bill Your Body Sends

Your body is always talking. The question is: are you listening before it has to get louder?

In Episode 6 of Decoding Wealth: Built on the Side, De Echols closes out the FRESH Method with the pillar that supports everything else — Health Wealth.

De gets personal about the gradual drift from the strong, active body he remembers from his Navy days to weight gain, rising blood pressure, drinking becoming a routine, poor sleep, and the realization that being able to keep working doesn’t necessarily mean your body is doing well.

He also shares what it taught him to watch people he loves experience the consequences of neglected health — and why building wealth means very little if you aren’t healthy enough to enjoy it or be present for the people who matter.

This isn’t a fitness lecture or a quick-fix challenge. It’s an honest conversation for busy people who spend so much time building careers, businesses, families, and futures that they sometimes forget about the body carrying them through all of it.

De leaves you with three practical moves: get checked, make one realistic health swap, and protect your sleep.

Real wealth lives in all five rooms: Financial, Relationship, Emotional, Spiritual, and Health. And Health is the foundation they all stand on.

🎙️ Decoding Wealth: Built on the Side
🌐 decodingwealth.net

This episode reflects personal lived experience and is for educational purposes only. For health concerns, consult a qualified medical professional.

What happens when the grind becomes the only thing holding you together — and then it stops being enough?

In Episode 5, De Echols takes on the Spiritual pillar of The FRESH Method: the why behind everything you're building. He shares how his grandmother's quiet, consistent faith built a root system he didn't know he had — until many years of grinding wore it away. And how the biggest paycheck of his career pointed him back toward the question he'd been avoiding.

This episode is for anyone building hard and starting to wonder what it's all actually for.

Decoding Wealth: Built on the Side — decodingwealth.net