“True wealth is not of the pocket, but of the heart and of the mind.”
— Kevin Gates
For most of my career, acquiring wealth looked a lot like hustling and climbing. Chasing deals, chasing goals, chasing the next milestone. Always more. Always faster.
But lately, something’s shifted. Not all at once. Not in a clean, linear arc. Just a slow, persistent change in how I define fulfillment and what I now think of as wealth.
Bottom line… my definition has evolved and so has the version of wealth I’m designing my life around.
The end of proving myself
I no longer feel the need to prove myself like I once did. Instead of striving for more projects, more leads, more opportunities, I’ve gently shifted to more collaboration, more leverage, more meaning.
Today, my work life looks very different that it did just 2 years ago:
- I’m collaborating with trusted partners like Oxygen and The Driver Group
- I’m doing meaningful work without doing everything alone
- I’m focused on earning enough to support my desired lifestyle without mindlessly striving for more
This is a shift that feels good – harmony over hustle.
The New Wealth
I’m having a good time exploring a new relationship with wealth – something more than a number. It’s a composition of elements that support my definition of a fulfilling life.
If you asked me a decade ago what wealth meant, I would have said: income, equity, assets, growth, maybe freedom. But today? Wealth looks completely different.
Wealth now means:
- Doing interesting, energizing work
- Having time to think, walk, write, exercise, be
- Time with Jill and the dogs, unrushed
- Living and working in places that expand my perspective
- Feeling like I have enough
I spent the first half of my career on autopilot, chasing quotas and doing work I didn’t really enjoy, to finance a life I didn’t necessarily want.
I spent another decade trying to do it all myself as a freelance solopreneur: coaching, facilitating, advising.
Now, I’m prioritizing my life for deep fulfillment through aligned partnerships, energizing work, more time to think and create, and living in a way that energizes me.
This new version of wealth feels like breathing again. I work 5 hour days on average and make the same income as when I was working 50 hour weeks.
And the best part? I don’t feel lazy or guilty for any of it! I feel it’s my duty as a creative entrepreneur to honor my style of working and living in a way that allows me to show up at my best every day – for my clients, my family, and myself.
The question that guides me now
Before I say yes to anything these days, I ask myself a new question: “Will this bring me peace?”
This is a personal anchor point for me. I still fight the urge to chase. My nervous system is wired for hustle & growth – for saying yes, jumping in, proving my worth.
But these days, I’m trying to choose peace over pressure. Spaciousness over speed. Enoughness over endlessness.
Letting go of ‘All or Nothing’
For most of my life, I operated with an all-or-nothing mindset. Go big or go home. But now I’m searching for something more nuanced: a sweet spot in the middle. Room to flex. Space to breathe.
It’s a subtle recognition that not everything is meant to be full tilt… all the time. Does work and life require more of me at intervals? Sure.
But I’ve realized that sprinting through work and life wires me for the chase, not peace.
Optimizing for peace requires a new mindset and a pretty big shift in how I think.
And a big realization that I get to define what “enough” looks like. And more importantly, what it feels like.
How I’m designing my life around The New Wealth
My wife and I have made some big shifts over the last two years. We sold our home in the city, simplified our lives for ease & meaning, and let go of things that our culture often prioritizes.
We’ve essentially optimized our work and lives around the following:
1) Optimize for Meaning & Purpose
- Portfolio entrepreneurship as a path: I’ve recognized that I do my best work when I blend a combination of things that I naturally enjoy, reinforce each other, and reduce overall risk. Right now that looks like choosing roles that align with my strengths and complement each other. This builds flexibility, sharpens my skills, and allows me to do work I care about. Just like a balanced investment portfolio – blending opportunities, strengths, and preferences has allowed me to operate with more confidence. If my private coaching practice has a slow couple of months, I’ll be just fine with the work I’m doing in my other partnerships. Diversification has proven to be a solid move.
- Leveraging the skills I enjoy most: Combining coaching, facilitation, retreats, and teaching is my sweet spot. These are the things that I’ve practiced for over a decade. Leveraging them in new ways that work for me is the key. Through a series of experiments and experience, I’ve learned that a fusion of these is what works best. By intentionally infusing these skills into opportunities that feel aligned, I’ve managed to create a good living.
- Becoming multidimensional: Today’s environment no longer requires us to choose just one identity. In fact, sticking to a single path might actually limit our potential. With a changing economy and the rapidly growing influence of AI, avoiding single points of failure through diversified work and relationships has been an important part of my process. This doesn’t mean saying yes to everything – it means becoming very discerning about what works and what doesn’t, and then embracing the right blend of activities and opportunities that work for you.
2) Optimize for Time
- 5-hour workdays as a constraint: One of my biggest shifts over the last couple of years has been reclaiming my time. Parkinson’s Law suggests that work expands to fill the time available for its completion. This essentially means that a task or project will take as long as you give it. Conversely, giving a task or project a shorter deadline often leads to increased efficiency and productivity. My north star? A 5-hour workday. It doesn’t always happen but I hit it more times than not.
- Using boundaries to reduce friction: At the start of every week I look at my calendar and lock in blocks of time outside of committed client work. I used to treat this as undisciplined “floating” time that I could do anything with. The result? I would usually fill it with distractions, multitasking, and random busywork. Now, I create intentional time blocks where I’m either vision building (moving an important project forward), creating (writing a blog like this one), or learning (expanding my growth edge in an area that requires new skills).
- Setup a “hard stop” transition to mark the end of my workday: My nervous system is still wired for productivity based on the way I’ve been trained to work. My workaround is to create a clear “hard stop” – specifically going to the gym – as a clear transition to mark the end of a focused workday. I typically schedule a gym session in the afternoon, usually around 3:00. This serves as a deliberate cutoff, helping me to shift out of work mode and into rest and recovery mode. This physical activity intentionally signals the completion of work and a transition to non-work pursuits while preventing work from bleeding into personal time. It also forces me to be deliberate with my focused work time.
3) Optimize for Flexibility & Autonomy
- Simplicity and letting go: Last year we sold our home in the city and moved closer to nature. It was hard to finally pull the trigger and sell our beloved craftsman bungalow in Portland but it was evident that it was time for that chapter to close. In doing so, we decluttered, downsized, and minimized our living expenses so that we could explore more and be less attached to a specific location.
- Designing for independence: 12 years ago, when I decided to set out on my own as a coach. My primary goal was to replace my corporate income doing more meaningful work. I achieved it but it came at a cost. I worked harder at establishing my coaching business than I had worked in a long time, which is common with getting any new endeavor off the ground. A distressing insight was that I had created another job for myself. Even though I enjoyed my work more than selling software and managing enterprise accounts, my income was still dependent on my time. I had no leverage. Since then, I’ve partnered with other people and organizations to coach, train, and facilitate group cohorts. Most of this work is virtual, which allows me to do it from anywhere. In the months and years ahead, I anticipate continuing to find ways that I can create leverage and optimize for even more independence and autonomy.
- Living and working where we love: Our environment plays a big role in how we feel and work. Some environments feel more constraining while others feel expansive and alive. For example, our current home base is what I call a “suburban mountain town.” It’s only 25 minutes from the amenities of a big city and an international airport, but without all the noise. We’re a 10-minute nature walk to the river where we walk our dogs almost every day. And we’re literally living in “The Gateway to the Gorge” where we can explore endless hiking trails along the Columbia River, trips to Mt Hood for hiking & skiing, and scenic drives to Hood River and the Hood River Valley. And we supplement this with seasonal travels to places we either love or choose to explore. Places like Costa Rica, Mexico, Greece, Italy, Croatia, and more. Our environment fuels our creativity and we’re doing our best to live and explore the places that energize us.
Added together, all of these elements represent a continuous evolution that’s rooted in reinvention, intention, and desire. And a whole lot of experimentation and adventure.
Choosing your definition of wealth
I no longer measure wealth exclusively by assets, possessions, or the amount of money in my accounts. I also measure it by how I feel. By whether I’m doing meaningful work. By having time to walk the dogs to the river and take Jill to lunch on a Tuesday.
More and more I’m coming to realize that maybe wealth isn’t something we earn. Maybe it’s something we design. And if that’s true, we get to choose what that looks like.
Live bravely,
Michael
P.S. What does wealth mean to you? And if your definition has changed… how have your choices changed with it?
