Millionaires think differently than other people.
They are tenacious. They are focused. They sacrifice. They set goals and stick to their plan. They handle adversity. They struggle and fail, but get back up. They seek to influence the world around them. They find mentors. They ask for the business. They reward loyalty. They are assertive.
They aren’t different than we are in any real sense. They just see the world differently. They view money differently. And they aren’t afraid to go after their dreams. If we can learn what they know, and train ourselves to think like they think, then we can have what they have. That’s what Think Like A Rich Guy is all about.
Hello. My name is Jeremy Torgerson. I’m a husband, dad, dog lover, professional actor, lifelong Trekkie, Denver Broncos football fan, financial advisor and small business owner. I run my own investment advisory firm called nVest Advisors, that specializes in helping average working American families save, invest, and plan for a better future.
Over the course of my career, I’ve met and worked with hundreds of wonderful, hard-working people: professionals, small business owners, young families, and retirees. My clients span the demographic spectrum, and come from a wide range of backgrounds and life experiences.
I’ve learned so much from all of them. They’ve truly made me a better person as they share the most intimate details of their lives with me, a trusted personal advisor. I’ve mourned as clients pass away. I’ve celebrated the arrival of children or grandchildren. I’ve prayed over a job loss and a business failure. I’ve cheered for new promotions and financial success.
I’ve been in the trenches with real people for a long time, helping them set goals and reach their dreams. They’ve taught me that many of us misunderstand how money works, but that we can learn. My own financial education started a long time ago.
My childhood was spent in poverty in a single parent household. And though my mother worked hard to support three kids, we never got ahead. We moved a lot because we couldn’t always pay the rent. We got free lunches at school and charities used to bring us holiday dinners. We shopped for secondhand clothes. We endured scornful stares while my mother bought our groceries with food stamps. We had to return gifts to the store when money was tight, and crawl out of one of the car windows because the door was stuck. Most of my childhood was spent in government housing.
Don’t get me wrong; there was immense love in our home. There was just never any stability.
Growing up poor gives you a certain perception about money, and about those who have it (and those who don’t). It fundamentally affects your ability to see and understand financial concepts clearly. It makes you believe that only outside forces, like winning the Lottery, could rescue your situation. It makes you surrender your dreams.
At a very young age I was taught through experience that:
- Rich people are better than me, because money gives a person status, prestige, power and possessions.
- The system will never let a poor person really win.
- Many of the very wealthy must have stolen, ripped off, or unfairly earned what they have. Or else, grew rich off the backs of poor people.
- There is only so much wealth in the world. So if someone has a lot of money, there is less for the rest of us.
- Money equals happiness.
Except none of that is true. I didn’t know it at the time, but I learned it through years of hard work and life experience and yes, having and losing my fair share of money.
After I married and my wife and I had our two amazing kids, we purchased our first small business, and over the course of the next 6 years, we ran not just one, but three small businesses. We had revenues approaching a million dollars a year and had 65 part-time employees. Life was good. It was hard work, but we were doing what we wanted to do and making a living doing it.
Then the recession and financial meltdown of 2007 / 2008 happened, and we lost our business. Actually, we lost much more than that. We lost our home, our dignity, our social standing. I suddenly couldn’t keep that promise I had made to myself that my children would never know what it’s like to have to move away from their home, friends, and school because of financial hardship. I felt, as a man, like a worthless failure. I briefly even thought of suicide.
They say God never closes one door without opening another, and my life has been a testament to that old adage. It was only at my lowest point that I finally found my mission. Much of my life had been made difficult, not because of money, but because of my relationship with it. But I had in my power the ability to change that. To do so, I had to get to know my enemy.
I decided to make my life’s work the study of money; what it is, how it works, and why so many good people struggle to master it. I wanted to know everything: to how save, invest, avoid debt, manage taxes, etc. But I didn’t want to just study money as an institution – I wanted to focus on how regular people, like me, interact with it, and how rich people interacted with it, and how the two approaches differed. I believed it would help my own healing to help other families avoid the hardships we faced.
I truly believe life gives you experiences for a reason. Mine would be to share what I learned through my trials and hardships, so that you wouldn’t have to.
So I became a financial advisor. As I grew my book of clients, most of whom were school teachers, small business owners, successfully retired farmers, and regular “blue collar” folks, I realized my mission was the right one. My heart was with people like me – people who play by the rules, pay their taxes, do what they’re supposed to. People like us don’t usually get the benefit of financial education, tax planners, or wealth managers. I wanted to change that. I decided nVest Advisors would focus exclusively to the needs of the working American family and the small business owner. People, I assume, like you.
The rich have lots of people wanting their business. Us? Not so much. nVest Advisors seeks to fill that much-needed niche.
And now, I’ve decided to take it a step further. A financial firm like mine is in business to perform the tasks of money management, but we can’t spend the time we want giving non-clients a financial education. And although we host a totally free financial education website, nVest Academy, as well as sponsor free webinars throughout the year, I wanted to take the study of money, along with the training and life skills you’ll need to master it, much further than an investment management practice. I wanted to create a community where we learn together, share success stories, mentor each other, and grow. That’s what Think Like A Rich Guy is all about.
The purpose of this blog is not to “make” you rich. You have to do that. But it is going to try to help you think about money, wealth, and what makes a person “rich”, differently than perhaps you’ve ever thought about it before.
You see, poor people see money as a prize. Rich people see money as a resource. Poor people typically view life as a matter of choices – for example, do I have a good income, or do I have work/life balance? Rich people ask themselves how they can achieve BOTH.
Poor people limit their options. They compromise on what they want. They settle for less. And so they give up on their dreams.
I’m here to tell you – you don’t have to. If there is something I can do to help as many of you as I can to learn the lessons my life has been gracious enough to teach me, then I’ll consider every difficult moment worth it – ten times over.
I honestly have no idea how many people will eventually join me on this journey. I have no idea whether the thought of a life lived richly appeals to anyone but the already-rich. Let’s find out.
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Let’s begin.