Chad Willardson, CFF, CRPC®, AWMA®, is the founder and president of Pacific Capital, a fiduciary wealth advisory firm serving entrepreneurs and families. He’s a 3-time best-selling author. His first book, Stress-Free Money, was featured in Forbes’s “21 Books to Read in 2021,” and his second book, Smart, Not Spoiled: The 7 Money Skills Kids Must Master Before Leaving the Nest, deals with increasing financial literacy among young people across the country, and his latest book, Beyond the Money: 8 Lifestyle Shifts for Entrepreneurs with 8 Figures or More, doesn’t tell you what you want to hear; instead, it tells you want you need to hear to achieve fulfillment while increasing lifestyle freedom to do more of what you love.
Chad also invests a $450 million portfolio as the elected city treasurer in his community. Recognized as one of the top wealth management experts in the country, he’s been written about in The Wall Street Journal, Forbes, US News & World Report, NBC News, Yahoo Finance, InvestmentNews, Entrepreneur, and Financial Advisor.
Today’s episode is with Chad Willardson, a high net-worth financial advisor with a side-mission to make kids smart about money. We talk about book reports, reading books rather than watching TV, his belief about learning and earning, the power of YES, the 3 tips for us all on how to find our own work/life balance, and making money a comfortable conversation.
Chad’s an all-star, and I hope you love this episode.
Listen. Watch. Enjoy!
To learn more about Chad, please see the links below:
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/chadwillardson
Website: https://www.pacificcapital.com
Twitter: PacificCap
And now here’s Chad Willardson.
Full transcript below
Video With Chad Willardson – Making Money a Comfortable Conversation
Get Motivation, Inspiration, and Ideas to Level Up Your Life.
Subscribe to the How’d It Happen Podcast
Want to be the first to know when new episodes are released? Click here to subscribe
Thank you for being a How’d it Happen listener. Please enter your email address below to subscribe, or subscribe on Apple Podcast, Stitcher, or wherever you like to listen.
Subscribe to My Newsletter
Write a Podcast Review
Also, podcast reviews are important to iTunes, and the more reviews we receive, the more likely we’ll be able to get this podcast and message in front of more people (something about iTunes algorithms?). I’d be extremely grateful if you took less than 30 seconds and 5 clicks to rate the podcast and leave a quick review. Here’s how to do it in less than 30 seconds:
Click on This Link – https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/howd-it-happen-podcast/id1441722417
Click on the “Listen on Apple Podcast” Box
Click on “Open iTunes” – You will go directly to the iTunes page for the Podcast
Click on “Ratings and Reviews”
Click on the 5thStar (or whatever one makes the most sense to you 🙂
Podcast with Chad Willardson. Making Money a Comfortable Conversation.
348.Chad Willardson-Making Money a Comfortable Conversation.01.30.2023
Wed, Jan 04, 2023 5:46PM • 33:44
SUMMARY KEYWORDS
book, people, money, read, left, chad, goals, freedom, kids, merrill lynch, clients, company, college, felt, called, parents, team, sell, movies, gravy
SPEAKERS
Chad Willardson, Mike Malatesta
Mike Malatesta 00:03
Hey, Chad, welcome to the podcast.
Chad Willardson 00:16
Thank you happy to be here, Mike/
Mike Malatesta 00:17
Yeah, like I was saying earlier before we started recording I I feel like I know you a little bit because I’ve heard you on at least one other podcast with, I think it was with Dan Sullivan, maybe Scott Donald, talking about your book and GravyStack stack and some other things you’re doing to help kids with financial literacy. So anyway, it seems like I know you, but for everybody who hasn’t had my experience, here’s a little bit more about Chad. So Chad is a wealth advisory firm owner. He’s a money man. He is a Chartered Financial fiduciary. He’s the founder and president of Pacific Capital, which is a wealth advisory firm serving entrepreneurs and families. He’s a three-time best-selling author. His first book was called “Stress Free Money.” That was a 2021 book, one of the 2021 books to read by Forbes, and his second book, “Smart, Not Spoiled.” Great name, by the way. “The seven money skills kids must master before leaving the nest” is about increasing financial literacy among young people across the country, which we’re in desperate need of, and his newest book, Chad’s newest book is “Beyond the Money, Eight Lifestyle Shifts for Entrepreneurs with Eight Figures or More,” which, at least as of today, you can get for less than one figure. You can get for 99 cents today. And hopefully, forever on Amazon for the Kindle version. Chad also invests as a treasurer, an elected treasurer, so he’s sort of a politician for the city of Corona, California’s $450 million portfolio for his community. And he’s been recognized as one of the top wealth management experts in the country, been written about in The Wall Street Journal, Forbes, US World and US News and World Report and many others. And Chad lives in Southern California. And he’s joining us today. So Chad, I start every podcast with the same simple question. And that is, how’d it happen for you?
Chad Willardson 02:33
Yeah, I had a hunch, you’re gonna ask that. I guess the question is, How did I get to where I am today? I have to rewind, back to my early childhood. I grew up in Southern California as the oldest of four kids, I have three younger sisters. Neither of my parents were entrepreneurs. But they were very hard workers, very much, very honest, hard workers, just good people. Family Values was very important to us. We’re a faith-based family. And ever since I grew up, I was taught to just really be the best that I could be and make an impact for other people. And along the way, that’s what I really tried to do. And I go back to when I was first married; my wife and I, next week, celebrate 21 years of marriage. And so we were married as college students, I was 22, she was 20. And we were married. We were students. And I had a job after school, I was making $6.25 an hour at a market research survey call center, taking the bus to work after school from campus and then taking the bus home or walking home to our little apartment. And, you know, fast forward and our lifestyle is very different. And I think, How’d it happen? It happened over a long period of time of consistency and discipline and hard work and working with great people. And a lot of family support. But it didn’t happen overnight. It didn’t happen instantly. It didn’t happen because of luck or inheritance. It happened with a lot of struggle and failure and sacrifice along the way, for sure.
Mike Malatesta 04:29
Yeah, and that sounds like a humble beginning as well. This $6.25-an-hour job has me intrigued because I’m always thinking about the jobs that I had as a kid and then up through college, and I worked in cemetery, I worked for a trash company which actually ended up becoming my career. I worked for a fence company. I did all these different things, and I’m always wondering about what the takeaway is, what are the things from those jobs that have stuck with me? So I’m wondering like, whether it was this job or others that you had? What stuck with you? What do you use now that you learned in these sorts of beginning level jobs?
Chad Willardson 05:16
Yeah, I think one thing I took away from that call center job was goal-setting, team-building, putting in the work, regardless of how long it takes. There were days where I had a lot of homework to do. But I stayed late to finish the work and make sure that I hit my goals of how many calls I could make and how many successes I had, regardless of what I saw, people leaving the second turn five o’clock, and a lot of people would just stop their calls and go home. But if I didn’t have my goals met for the day, I would stay until I finished the job. And I think that, well, that was quickly recognized by the co-founder owner of the company, who only after a few months kind of made me a team leader and a manager. I was by far the youngest in the group of the 50 to 60 people there. And then he eventually just pulled me to be his right-hand man almost like his assistant/intern/just-do-whatever-I-asked-him-to-do-kind-of-a-guy, you know, I’d take his dry cleaning in, I’d take his wife’s car to get washed. I was helping him write his book, his biography, autobiography. But I got to then sit in his massive corner office and I was taking notes in every meeting that he had. I was listening to every phone call when he came in and had almost like a disciplinary meeting with one of his employees or managers. I was right there. I heard and absorbed everything. So for a 22-year-old college kid, I felt like I got a fire hose of training from a really successful entrepreneur. And I learned a lot, actually. He tried to get me to drop out of college and open up a branch for him in Laguna Beach, California. So when I was in college, I’m from Orange County, California. I’m a California boy. But I went to school at the BYU Brigham Young University in Provo, Utah. So he was really wanting me to drop out of college and venture out and start this branch for him in California. But my parents encouraged me otherwise. I’m very glad that I stayed in school and took a different career path. But I learned a lot, for sure. And I still use those lessons today.
Mike Malatesta 07:34
Oh, wait, so he wanted you to drop out of school and start this thing?
Chad Willardson 07:39
Yeah, I was like a junior in college. And he was like, I’m gonna pay lots of money. You’ve got so much potential. Let me just get you on my team. And you can go down and start the branch like next year. So he was trying to get me to quit college early. Yes. And just be his right-hand guy.
Mike Malatesta 07:56
Nice. So when I’m listening to that, I’m thinking to myself, Okay, two things, right? One is the power of Yes. Like, Oh, okay. You want me to do this? Yes, I’ll do that. Let me do this. Yes, I’ll do that. Right. Because I’m going to make my mark. I’m going to say yes. So I think that’s very important, particularly easy early in your career. And then there’s the learning/not earning part, right? So you’re not earning much. And it’d be easy for you to say, Well, I’m not that’s not my job or whatever. But you were into it for the learning. And this person was actually pretty skilled at selling you on that, even though, maybe not overtly, but certainly, yeah, certainly seemed like in the stuff that stuck with you. So that’s phenomenal.
Chad Willardson 08:41
Yeah. And today, I preach to our team that learners are earners. And readers are leaders. And so everyone on my team here, none of us are know-it-alls; we all proclaim to be learn-it-alls. And everyone on the team actually reads a book that relates to their role every month and submits a book report with actionable ideas at the end of the book report. So it’s something that I’m very big on, learning. And I think that has really helped propel my career to where it is today.
Mike Malatesta 09:14
So tell me about the structure of the book report. That’s really interesting. Is there a structure
Chad Willardson 09:19
Basically, there’s not a specific structure of how the report needs to come in. But everyone on my team is eligible for a quarterly bonus. And they have to set for goals that are outside the kind of stretch goals, outside their day-to-day roles that can make a permanent impact on the company for our clients and our team. And they have four goals plus the fifth is read three books, submit three book reports in the quarter, and that’s how they earn their quarterly bonuses, which are above and beyond their salary and benefits and profit sharing and things like that. So the book reports really are typically one to two page, bullet-point summaries, the key highlights that they’ve learned. And at the end is the idea to implement so we can be a better firm and better serve our clients. And then we set an action plan to do something to make a change, make an adjustment, or do something different because of the book that they’ve read.
Mike Malatesta 10:19
And so tell me about the genesis of this, Chad. Where did that idea come from? How did you sell it? And what’s been the buy in?
Chad Willardson 10:31
First of all, for full disclosure, I hated reading as a kid, I was not a reader. I hated reading books in high school, I hated reading books in college, like I did not like to read, just tell me the main points, and I’ll try to pass the test. Like I just wasn’t into reading, especially actual books. Soon as I graduated college, I started at Merrill Lynch, I realized how little I knew. And if I wanted to get ahead, I had to learn by studying the smart people and what they taught. And so I became an obsessive reader. And people are out partying on the weekends, or late at night, they’re watching TV or movies, I was reading, I completely quit movies and TV shows; the last TV show I watched was over 15 years ago. So I’ve never logged into Netflix in my life. I don’t watch much TV, I watch sports. But I don’t watch TV shows, or mostly I don’t watch many movies, I became a voracious reader. And so I’ve been reading between 100, 200 books a year, nonfiction, and highlighting and making notes and trying to implement a little thing from each book. And so I felt like asking my team to read one book a month was not that big of a deal. At first, I got a little resistance from a couple people. And if you’re watching this, you know who you are. But they’ve completely adopted it. And they get excited. And they say, Hey, I found a book, you know. And so basically, I have a big library in my house. And I have a little library here at the office. And so, hey, can we add this to the library, and so I’ll buy the books. And someone will say, This was an awesome book, I think it applies to everyone. It’s really how to be a better listener for our clients. And so everyone will read it for one of their monthly goals. But the adoption has been great; in fact, it’s almost the end of the month, so they’re turning in their book reports for December. And I had one team member submit two book reports, she decided to read two books in December, and it’s only the 20th right now. And she’s already finished both. So I think it’s a culture of learning and growth that I’ve tried to instill in the team.
Mike Malatesta 12:40
And you read them all, and what do you do with them after
Chad Willardson 12:44
I read all the book reports, and I’ll give suggestions on the ideas to implement what they put at the bottom of the report. And I’ll say I like that idea. Let’s have so and so, you know, get working on that. Okay, so I don’t like everyone to read and do nothing and just have warm fuzzies from the book, I want us to actually do something because of it. So that’s an important part of it to me.
Mike Malatesta 13:07
So you were in Strategic Coach. I was in Strategic Coach for about seven years, a decade or so ago. And I don’t know if you got this idea from there. It sounds like maybe you didn’t, you said, you know, Merrill, I when I started doing the 90-day goal-setting in Strategic Coach, I thought that had such an impact on me. So I did something similar. I put a program together for all of our team with personal and professional goals in every quarter. And it was the basis for earning a bonus. And I thought it was the greatest thing I could ever do for people who wouldn’t ordinarily do this on their own, that is help them become goal-setters and goal-achievers because so many people walk through life just letting it happen to them. And wishing for something different. And I thought, Man if we could, you know, get this into people in a positive way. and reward them for progress is like the best thing I could think of doing.
Chad Willardson 14:17
Yeah, I would say now the tool I use is absolutely from Strategic Coach. It’s called the Moving Future. And it’s the 90-day goal-setting template, where you essentially reflect on the last quarter, look at the next quarter. It also kicked off way before I joined Strategic Coach, I’ve only been in it four years. But I read a book called the “12-week Year” where you divide your year into 12 weeks and instead of setting goals for the full 12 months, set them for three months and I started implementing that but I really got a lot more clear with the team once I joined Strategic Coach and got the Moving Future tool that we started using.
Mike Malatesta 14:57
Did your career actually start at Merrill, but you got to manage it?
Chad Willardson 15:04
Yeah, I started I started directly at Merrill Lynch college. Yes.
Mike Malatesta 15:08
And, and just as a, what? As a broker?
Chad Willardson 15:13
Yeah, we analyze financial advisors and investment advisors. Yeah. So I was dealing with the public, investing money professionally for people.
Mike Malatesta 15:22
I’m thinking you had a good career there, you moved up, you’re probably doing very well. And then 2011 you started Pacific Capital? Tell me what prompted you to make the move and go out on your own.
Chad Willardson 15:50
It’s kind of like the movie Jerry Maguire. I just got up and decided to leave, there was a ton of bureaucracy that changed, it just got uncomfortable and not fun to work at Merrill Lynch once Bank of America bought them during the Great Recession of 2009, 2008. So by 2011, I just was not enjoying it anymore. And it felt like we weren’t putting clients’ interests first, I felt like we were putting the bank’s interests first. And that didn’t sit well with me. So I took a major risk. I was 32 years old, most people that I’ve spoken with confidentially thought it was a dangerous move, unnecessary. I was in the top 2% of Merrill Lynch nationwide at that time at a big corner office, a lot of perks, a lot of awards and recognition. But it didn’t feel right. I just didn’t feel like that was where I wanted to be long term. And so I had never started a business before that day. But 11-11-11 sounded like a lucky date to me. So I left and started Pacific Capital and have since founded or co-founded many businesses and had a great growth starting over after nine years at Merrill Lynch, but we’ve grown to significantly outpace what I was doing when I was at Merrill Lynch. So it was definitely the right long-term move once again, not without struggle, or failures or hard times, but absolutely worth the journey.
Mike Malatesta 17:27
And just out of curiosity, and this may be out of left field, but I know that sometimes when those kinds of transitions happen, companies like Merrill Lynch, not Merrill Lynch, specifically, but they don’t really like that when a high performer leaves, was there a dynamic of that to your departure?
Chad Willardson 17:55
Absolutely. I played by the rules, I was extremely careful and compliant with all the rules and regulations of a transition of me leaving and opening up my own company. They still were coming after me, they were suing me, it was costing me a lot of money to defend completely bogus claims for almost a year and a half. They just basically want to make it miserable when a high performer leaves, so it’s as expensive and as miserable as possible. But I survived it. It was crazy. It was absolutely out of line. They had way deeper pockets than me, but I survived it.
Mike Malatesta 18:35
And the people that were advising you initially who were saying, Well, that’s it, you use the word dangerous. Was that part of what they were thinking? or was there some other danger that they were trying to I just,
Chad Willardson 18:47
I think there were a lot of people were saying, like, Why would you leave like you’ve got it all there at Merrill Lynch here, the top one of the top guys in the country, they fly you around to speak and you got all these cool perks and the big name, the big brand. And none of that was really important to me, it was more about serving the clients and having the freedom to be totally, I’m a very upfront person, I tell the truth regardless. So I wanted to be able to have that unfiltered relationship with clients. And at that point in time, when I left, we could not have unfiltered relationships, we had to have extremely filtered conversations and extremely filtered emails, extremely filthy relationships, where I felt like I was not allowed to always be myself and always be transparent. And transparency and trust is to me very important in business and in personal life. Yeah, so I was no longer a match for that company anymore.
Mike Malatesta 19:48
And maybe you weren’t always able to say to a client or recommend to a client what you really thought or wanted to. Yeah, yeah. So Pacific Capital you’ve sort of grown into, you know, a firm that really specializes in ultra-high net worth.
Chad Willardson 20:11
Yeah, so it’s eight, nine-figure entrepreneurs, so entrepreneurs with, if I were to put a range, I’m gonna say $10 million to $200 million to invest. That’s our target client. That’s when we serve.
Mike Malatesta 20:25
And I’m sure that everybody listening to this has, if they’re not there, has some inkling of desire to be like, Wow, that would be cool if only I was there. But what I’ve read from some of your stuff, and it’s not as easy as it sounds, like every stage in life brings you new challenges and opportunities. And there’s a lot to work through which you do in your in your newest book. But this sort of caught me when I was reading this, it says, you know, in the book, “you’ll discover how a change in focus can align your actions and with your priorities, dramatically improving your health, relationships and happiness. Beyond the Money doesn’t tell you what you want to hear. Instead, it tells you what you need to hear. If you truly want to achieve fulfillment, while increasing lifestyle, freedom to do more of what you love.” And as I was reading that I was thinking myself, okay, let’s do a little test here, or a little lesson, you can give me a little lesson here. So just say, for the sake of argument, a person sells their business for $50 million. Maybe after taxes, they net 35, or something like that. So they have $35 million that they’ve never had before, right? The most they’ve ever had in money is maybe what a couple million that they’ve saved up in their 401k and whatever over time. So a person like that comes to you, comes to your firm, and what’s some of this stuff that they may not expect to hear? Or what’s some of the stuff that they don’t want to hear? Is that a fair question to ask, without, you know, just in general generalities.
Chad Willardson 22:15
I think most entrepreneurs are really good at doing their business. But as far as organizing their financial life, and prioritizing their attention, they have a hard time with that. They, it’s sometimes difficult for them to filter out what matters and what doesn’t matter. They often are aimless after a business sale, they lose their identity, they’re not sure what to do next. So I really coach them on how to stay engaged, how to do things that fulfill their talents and their priorities. And what they love to do, because it’s in their DNA to create and start and be challenged and take risks. So it’s not in their DNA to sell a business, and play golf seven days a week for the next 25 years. That’s not their DNA. So it’s a lot of mindset coaching of how to organize your financial life and your future business ventures to really bring out the best in you and keep you fulfilled and highly energized, regardless of what you’re doing. So maybe you do it better and smarter the second time than you did the first time, you don’t have to do the same exact route for the next business venture. Okay. And that’s something they’re often not prepared for. But when I talk to them about free company sale, it makes a lot of sense. And they have a game plan. So they’re selling so they can have freedom from the burden and the stresses and all these other things. But I like to talk about what are you going towards? What’s your freedom to, and we talk about your game plan for the next phase of life, which is really about beyond the money, the third book.
Mike Malatesta 24:03
So the ‘freedom from’ is something that they get more easily than the ‘freedom to.’
Chad Willardson 24:09
Correct, they don’t think about the freedom to as much; they just know what they don’t want to do anymore. And what’s really given them health issues and stress and sleepless nights and all that stuff. They’re very familiar with that, but then they kind of don’t know what to do.
Mike Malatesta 24:30
Yeah, I’ve seen a lot of that, and they don’t actually do much talking to people like you, at least in my experience, before they make the decision to sell so they can kind of get their mind around this freedom to concept, right. They’re just so focused on freedom from
Chad Willardson 24:49
and if they sell the business and they have a commitment to work in the business as an employee, CEO, president for a couple years, that’s even worse because they really feel trapped. They’re in their home, but they have no keys, like they’re in the business, but they’re not in the driver’s seat. And so it’s a real struggle, it’s mentally painful. And so a lot of times, I try to help them structure that differently. So they have more freedom and flexibility. So that it’s not as much of a shock.
Mike Malatesta 25:23
I can very much relate to that, because so many, like, I did something similar, where I stayed around for three years. And I really tried to be good about this. And I probably wasn’t perfect, but so many people that I see, they sell the business, they stick around, I think it’s going to be just like it was and that they’ll be able to, they’ll be able to run it. And they’ll be treated just like they were when they were, you know, the entrepreneur or the owner. And it’s like, they don’t get that you gave up all that for this money that you now have, you know, maybe you didn’t give it all up, but you gave up some of it, you know, it’s not yours anymore. And that’s hard. For sure. It’s hard, especially when you stick around. Yeah. And if you don’t mind, before we drop off here because we don’t have that much time, your second book, “Smart Not Spoiled” and this company that you’re a board member of and invested in called GravyStack, I’m really interested if you just talk to us a little bit about financial literacy with kids, and what your books about, what GravyStack’s about and what we as parents aren’t doing and maybe need to be doing better to help prepare our kids for a sound financial future.
Chad Willardson 26:47
Yeah, this is the topic that I get asked about the most, I think it’s on most parents’ and grandparents’ minds. I have five kids, myself, ages seven to 18. So they’re all in school, our oldest graduates next May, June. So I’ve been passionate about teaching kids to be smart with money and not spoiled because I’m a parent. And naturally, that’s what I want for my kids. And I just realized that if I don’t have all this together as a financial expert, then most people don’t. It’s not taught well in schools, and most parents don’t know where to start or what to teach. So I tried to create a very simple guidebook with specific topics. I chose seven. And with each chapter, I have actual activities with conversation prompts for families to really just go through and have a conversation at home. I think number one advice to parents and families is to make money a comfortable conversation topic in the home. Don’t make it taboo. Don’t make it a contentious argument every time the word money is mentioned enough in the family have intention around it. Your kids are learning stuff just by watching you. If you push a button on your phone, and a box shows up the next day, they understand that like okay, if you push a button on the phone, I get stuff, right. So if you’re not intentional about teaching how that whole thing works, then they may have very twisted views and their money mindset and their blueprints that carry with them for the next 30 to 50 years. I’ve seen it. So a lot of the work that I do in the beginning of a relationship is asking them about how was money talked about when you guys were kids? What did your parents do? They fight about money a lot? Is there a scarcity or over-abundance mindset around money? How do you guys make money decisions? Who do you talk to? Who do you rely on? So as kids, we teach them in high school how to dissect a frog. And we teach them how to, you know learn all the different parts of a cell membrane, but they have no idea how to have their own budget or to apply for a loan or what’s good and what’s a bad financial decision. How to avoid get-rich-quick schemes. So “Smart Not Spoiled” is the book that I wrote that sold more copies in the first week than my other two books combined. Cumulatively, because the topic is so critical. And everyone obviously is top of mind, which led to me being a co-founder in a company called gravy stack with Scott Donnell and Travis Adams. And so we we’re just now starting a podcast for next year, 2023. We’ve already filmed a bunch, but the show is called the Smart Money Parenting Show, where we’re going to be talking to parents, and really give a lot of different tips and ideas on how to raise kids to be financially prepared to succeed. GravyStack is the financial bank for kids. But it’s like a game. So there’s learning and gaming and earning all in one. It’s live to the public sometime in q1 of 2023. So hopefully the app is downloadable soon, but we’re very excited about it. We have invested millions of dollars in it, have a huge team of 50 working on it. And we’re hoping to create 50 million financially competent kids who are prepared to succeed in the real world in the next 10 years, so we have a big mission-driven goal for that company.
Mike Malatesta 30:17
Nice. And if you want to listen and learn more about GravyStack, I did happen to do an episode with Chad’s partner, Scott Donnell, Episode 344. You can check it out. We talk a lot about GravyStack and the gamification and all the cool things.
Chad Willardson 30:33
Scott’s the fun, high-energy one.
Mike Malatesta 30:41
Hey, one last thing before we go on, I want to get back to this TV and movie thing. So you’re just not absorbing TVs, movies, much movies or any TV? How about the rest of your family? Because I’m just curious, are they still sort of? I mean, air quote, normal around. Yeah, TV-watching and you’re sort of the outlier, or is it a family thing?
Chad Willardson 31:04
That’s actually a great question. No one’s ever asked me that. They are. They’re not normal in TV watching. They read a lot. Even our kids, a little kids are reading the Harry Potter 700-page books. They’re normal in movie watching. So my kids still watch movies, obviously, we screen for parental advisement, but they still go to the movies or watch movies. So I’m the oddball weirdo that doesn’t really go to one, maybe one movie a year. But they still do the movie thing. They don’t do the TV show thing. We have too many other priorities, musical instruments, reading, sports and other things like that.
Mike Malatesta 31:51
Okay. Well, I’m glad I got that question. And because I am a reader, well, we’re all readers, but I’m less of a TV watcher than the rest of the family. And it gets a little special.
Chad Willardson 32:02
It’s annoying. It’s frustrating.
Mike Malatesta 32:06
Anyway, all right. Well, Chad, thank you so much for being on the show today. You know, Chad’s company is Pacific Capital, Pacificcapital.com. Is there any place else where you would like to be communicated with or found or any place you want to send people? And is there anything I didn’t ask you that I should have that you have to say before you go?
Chad Willardson 32:28
Other places to find me LinkedIn, follow me there. I post daily insights on LinkedIn. And this week, my website, construction should be done for Chadwillardson.com, which will have all the things that I’m doing, and indeed the ways you can engage with me there. I think you did a great interview. I don’t think there’s anything else to ask. My first book is Stress Free Money. And I believe that money can be a very stressful thing. The markets are uncertain, interest rates, inflation, the economy, everything is a lot to absorb. And I believe it’s my job to help spread the message of hope, and give people an opportunity and the tools to reduce their stress around money and to enjoy their life more. So that’s really what my mission is. Sounds like a great mission.
Mike Malatesta 33:23
Thank you for doing it. Thank you for coming on the show. Thank you for being you. And thank you for your flexibility too, because we had a few technical issues and I’m not gonna lie to the rest of you. My pleasure. Have a great day. Thank you. Thank you.
