Ep 46. Money as an Amplifier: Designing a Business That Serves Your Life with Anthony Englert
Building wealth isn’t about making more money. It’s about designing a business that gives you freedom, options, and impact.
In this episode, Anthony Englert breaks down why your business should be treated as a wealth engine, not just a source of income and how money simply amplifies who you already are.
We explore what separates lifestyle businesses from legacy businesses, why founders burn out when everything depends on them, and how building for exit can actually create more income, clarity, and optionality today.
In this episode, you’ll learn:
→ Why money is an amplifier, not the goal
→ How to shift from income thinking to building a true wealth engine
→ The difference between building for income vs. building for exit
→ Why burnout is often a design problem, not a motivation problem
→ How staying in your zone of genius increases both impact and wealth
→ Why more money doesn’t automatically create happiness or fulfillment
→ How early money stories influence entrepreneurial decisions
→ What it really means to build wealth that supports your next chapter
This conversation is for founders who want to build real wealth with intention, and create a legacy that extends far beyond their business.
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Anthony Englert is the founder of ALFA Advisory, a specialty wealth advisory firm serving entrepreneurs. After spending 15 years at Goldman Sachs, Anthony launched ALFA Advisory to address a critical gap in the financial industry: the lack of strategic guidance for founders before the big exit.
He works with entrepreneurs ranging from $1M to $100M+ to help them design businesses that function as wealth-creation engines—supporting not only financial success, but freedom, purpose, and long-term impact. Anthony believes entrepreneurs are the most powerful force for good in the world and that when they win, the world wins with them.
Based in Colorado, Anthony is an avid adventurer, having climbed Mount Kilimanjaro and rafted in Patagonia. He enjoys skiing, traveling, and spending time with his wife, sons, and dogs.
Connect with Anthony:
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00:00 – Welcome & Episode Framing
02:00 – Why Entrepreneurs Need to Think Beyond Income
05:00 – Reframing the Business as a Wealth Engine
08:00 – Common Exit Mistakes Founders Make
11:30 – Lifestyle Business vs. Legacy Business
15:00 – The Eight Dimensions of Wealth
18:30 – Why Wealth Without Purpose Feels Empty
22:00 – Anthony’s Childhood Money Story & Its Impact
27:00 – Money as an Amplifier, Not a Solution
31:00 – Defining Legacy and Designing the Next Chapter
34:00 – How to Connect with Anthony & Final Thoughts
FULL TRANSCRIPT
Stop thinking about your business as a source of income, and instead to start thinking about it as the engine of your wealth.
Welcome to the Legacy Branding Podcast. I'm your host, Laura Beauparlant, here to guide you through the journey of selling your business, and building a personal brand that leaves a lasting impact. On the show, we'll explore real life founder stories, expert insights, and actionable strategies to help you navigate the transition, avoid post sale crisis, and create your impact driven legacy brand. Whether you're thinking of selling, building to sell, or already on the other side, this podcast is your go to resource for making your next evolution, your best one yet. Let's dive in.
Today on the Legacy Branding Podcast, I'm joined by Anthony Englert, the founder of Alpha Advisory, a specialty wealth firm for entrepreneurs. After 15 years at Goldman Sachs, Anthony launched Alpha to fill a critical gap, helping founders plan strategically before their big exit. He's advised entrepreneurs from 1 million to a hundred million plus on how to turn their businesses into wealth, creating engines that support their next chapter and legacy.
Anthony believes entrepreneurs are the most powerful force for good in the world, and his mission is to help them build freedom, purpose, and impact beyond the balance sheet. Anthony, welcome to the show.
Thank you, Laura. I'm so excited to be here.
I know we really connected the first time we met, so I'm really excited to dive deeper into the work that you do. We work with the same clients from two different perspectives, but ultimately reading what your mission is on your website and learning more about you, it's like, oh, we are so aligned. We just tackle the same problem in a way from a completely different angle.
Well, it's funny you say that because I felt the same way the first time I met you, and that was almost a year ago. A lot of marketers, a lot of branding people, they're just focused on how do we generate more revenue in the business? And from this first conversation we had, I was like, oh, Laura gets it. 'cause it's not just about income, it's about wealth creation. So you gotta play the long term game.
Exactly. And so I love that you created this business to fill this gap that you saw. So what did you see was missing?
Yeah, so my time working at Goldman Sachs, I got to really peek behind the curtain and see how multi-generational wealth is both created and then maintained. And what I saw frankly pissed me off. Got up really upset because there's all these techniques and strategies and tools and they're only available to these elite folks who, they got there, they earned it, they deserve it. But those strategies then don't get shared with anybody else. As you said in my bio, I'm so passionate about entrepreneurs because they are the change agents in our world, they're the catalyst for change of the creators, the innovators. And so they're who move the world forward. And so when an entrepreneur has access to more resources, more opportunity, more, they can make a bigger impact.
And so when they win, the world wins. I'm looking at these strategies and saying, these could be literally wormholes that would transport people years forward on their plans. Why can't we share these with entrepreneurs? And the reason is because the wealth management industry, well, it's very aptly named.
It's not the wealth creation industry. They're not interested in helping you create the wealth. They only want to help you manage it once it's been created. The other big problem is that entrepreneurs, so much of their wealth is locked up in their business. So, the wealth management industry is built to serve liquid wealth.
So stocks, bonds, life insurance, cash in the bank the even a mortgage on your house, right? All of this relates to cash, but if all of your wealth is tied up in the business, they can't charge you on that. They can't turn it into a product or a sale. And so they tell you to come back later.
And that was the thing that I just could not live with, was seeing these people that were so deserving, making such a big change in the world, and then being told, well come back later. After you sell your business for $50 million, then you can have access to these strategies.
So interesting. So those two things you just talked about, wealth management versus wealth creation, and that really hit me because I feel like that is what so many of us are in that place of like, we need to create it. Not necessarily at a place where we're like, the management piece is obviously a part of it, but first you have to create it and you often need that support to do that.
yeah.
So I think that is really key. And then the other thing you mentioned was about it being liquid versus in our business. It sounds almost like, well, obviously, but when you said it, it just really hit me of like how important and real those things are.
Yeah. Well, so the first shift that I recommend, or that I ask entrepreneurs to make when we work together is to stop thinking about your business as a source of income, and instead to start thinking about it as the engine of your wealth. Because when I hear income I just hear tax. The tax system, the tax code, it's all set up to reward long-term capital gains and to penalize income. So in the same way that highly paid professionals, doctors, lawyers, that kind of thing, make a good salary, but then they only keep half, well, entrepreneurs are often doing the same thing to themselves. They're so focused on paying these huge distributions in a given year that they're really making the government their number one shareholder as they pay those distributions and they're actually robbing themselves of creating wealth. So there is no silver bullet in financial products and strategies. I went into Goldman looking for what is that silver bullet? So it's, I'm here to tell you it doesn't exist. But the closest thing to it is the way the tax structure rewards business owners, if you know how to run it correctly, or I should say, if you know how to set it up correctly.
And I'll give you a simple example. If you're in a position where you can afford not to take these massive distributions. I'm not saying pay yourself nothing, but let's take it to that extreme. If you were to pay yourself nothing, then there's no income tax, right? And what you would've been pulling outta your business and distributing is now getting reinvested in the business. And so it's compounding tax free because you're putting it into services, into employees, into marketing spend, right? However you reinvested in the business that's growing not only revenue, but also the value of the business. And we can talk about what drives that, but then at some point down the road, then having an exit that's where the real wealth gets created. Because it's a long, slow grind to save your way to wealth. You can do it. It just takes 15 to 20, 25 years. That's what the doctors and the lawyers are doing. So if you wanna join that crowd, that is a path. But most entrepreneurs I meet, one of their biggest values is freedom, and they just don't have the patience to wait that long.
Yeah, absolutely. So is that if you look across the board at the clients that you've worked with, the founders who've had these exits from, a million to a hundred million, is that what you see as being overlooked before a sale or is there something else?
Most people overlook is beginning with the end in mind. Because if you don't know what your destination is, how can you set a strategy and a plan to get there? Right? I love the old Alice Wonderland, Lewis Carroll quote by the Cheshire Cat. I'm paraphrasing, Alice says, where, what, which road do I take?
And he says, well, where are you going? She says, I don't know. And he says, then, any road we'll take you there, right? And so, if you, if you don't know where you're going, any road will take you there. And so if you set out with the idea of I want to exit for this amount that's gonna define and also what do I want out of that exit that's gonna define the type of buyer. A lot of people think the only buyer is gonna be private equity. Some big company that's gonna come write you this big check. In reality, there's a lot of different types of buyers you could sell to private equity. There's different flavors of that. You could sell to a strategic acquirer, somebody who has a reason to pay an extra premium to incorporate your business in to theirs.
You could sell to employees, you could sell to family members. There's so many different ways, and also it's not an all or nothing proposition. It's you often do multiple sales and multiple bites of the apple. You might take on capital for expansion and have an investor who's a minority owner, and then later that might flip, and you might sell a majority of the business, but you retain a minority stake. So there's just so many ways to go about this. So I think the problem number or mistake number one is not knowing what that destination looks like, what that end game looks like for you. Then problem number two is not having a clear plan that connects where you are today with where you are.
Too often I see people waiting to get that plan until they achieve some arbitrary, when I get to 5 million in revenue, or when I have a thousand clients, or when I have 10 employees or when the kids are graduated, when the timing is right. Some arbitrary deadline, but again, that's backwards.
The most important thing is to figure out where I want to go and then to build the plan that's gonna get me there, the fastest and most efficiently.
So I love that. Are those things that you help your clients with?
A Absolutely. The center point offering that we have is called our Wealth Co-Pilot program. So we compare business to a flight, right? So if take a step back first. The first kind of like framing is if you're a lifestyle business. We compare that to a car. It's easy to operate by one person, it turns on a dime. Relatively low maintenance costs. Pretty simple, straightforward, reliable, but it's not meant for long haul travel. There's no bathroom in it. Compare that with what we call a legacy business which doesn't necessarily mean you have to IPO or sell for a hundred million dollars.
It just means your intention is to build something bigger than yourself that's going to outlast you. By the way, Laura, the reality is we're all gonna exit our businesses one day whether we like it or
Oh, oh, I know. I've just wrote a blog post about that.
I'd rather be set up to exit on my terms than when, I get hit by the proverbial bus or other things that often will knock people off the path is a death in the family getting divorced having liquidity crunch, IE debt or a partner disagreement. Those are kind of the big things that will knock people off course and then force an exit at the worst possible time. The other worst possible time is when you wait till you're burnt out because then your business is likely, on the down slope, not on the upswing.
And you're gonna get penalized for that.
But anyway, coming back to, we think about the business as a flight plan, we think about the legacy business as an airplane. It's way more complicated than a car, right? Multiple systems, lots of backups, takes two pilots to fly, and very clumsy and clunky on the ground.
But when you get it up into cruising altitude, it's more efficient. And travels faster and further and arguably in more style than a car. And so when we think about your business, we think about that flight plan of are you on the runway? Are you climbing up to cruising altitude? Are you at cruising altitude or are you in the landing phase? Each of those different phases is gonna present different problems and challenges. And when it comes to the owner's personal wealth there's gonna be overlap in lots of different categories. So we like to talk about the eight dimensions of wealth, and I'll just run through those quickly so we have a frame for what those are. But it's not, nobody has to memorize this. There isn't a test coming at the end, but it's your mindset and your goals. It's your cash flow, it's your multi-year tax plan. It's your multi-year exit plan. It's your capital on. That's gonna fund all that along the way. It's your insurance and risk management strategy, your retirement investment strategy, and then finally your estate and charitable giving strategy. You ask a financial question. A lot of times the answer is gonna touch all those different categories. At least two or three of them, if not four or five, six and sometimes all eight. And the challenge is most of the advisors that entrepreneurs are working with are giving conflicting advice. The CPAs saying one thing, the estate planning attorneys saying another your insurance guy just wants to sell you a policy, right? If there is an investment advisor, they're like, how much can you get outta the business and, give me to manage the socks and the bonds, and so everybody's pulling this eight pieces apart rather than trying to help you figure out how to fit them together.
And that's, so that's what we like to do in that Wealth Copilot service, is to help you make the smartest decisions for your business, for your goals at each stage, right? Which is gonna mean different strategies, different things, but across all eight of those. And so to really integrate that and to help you win, to help you get the results and the financial rewards that you, so genuinely deserve because of the impact you're making, the jobs you're creating, the communities that you're building, the change you're making in the world.
Absolutely. And I think that leads into my next question, which is around this wealth creation engine. So, you talked about you've got the plane, you've got the system, or you've got the car.
Yeah.
What does it take to design a business that supports people's financial goals and the bigger mission that they have?
Yeah. So I think the first answer to that is the point of wealth is not accumulation as we've been led to believe. The point of wealth is activation for your next cause, your next big thing.
I like that.
people will pick these arbitrary numbers, right? I want to have a $50 million exit. Okay. I would challenge that. What's the next chapter? What's the next thing that's coming? Because if you don't have a next thing, then it's like saying, I want to go to Hawaii, and the plane lands and they say, congratulations. You can't leave the airport. That's not the Hawaii vacation that anybody envisions, right?
You wanna be on a beach with a cocktail. So if you don't have a next plan, a next step, a bigger mission, purpose, vision in life, I've seen this played way too many times this movie it's great for three months, you're golfing or fishing or whatever you wanna do to pass the time.
And then there's this like deep loneliness that entrepreneurs reach because they're going, that was my identity, that was my mission purpose impact in the world now, who am I now? What do I do? So another part of what we do is help people figure out what that next chapter is gonna be. But back to your question on wealth creation. So, let's just pick an arbitrary number. Let's say 25 million. Is your your exit target. What that would do is you'll probably pay around 5 million in taxes and that'll leave you with 20 million. Then that 20 million that's left over if invested prudently and strategically, the Summa 5% annual withdrawal rate, that generates about a million dollars a year of income. That is kind of the frame that people start with of, well, I'd like to get to that place. Then the next question I ask is, so what?. So if you're in that place, then what are you going to do next? What are you gonna go create? What are you gonna do? And sometimes people come, boomerang all the way back to, well I guess I would I do the same, the same business. Right? I dunno if you've heard the story of the fishermen and the investment banker.
No.
indulge me here really quickly.
Yes, please.
bankers on vacation. We'll just say he's in Mexico, right? And he gets up really early one morning and he watches the fishermen go out in their boats and a few hours later. One fisherman comes back in and, pulls his boat up on shore, starts unloading the fish, and the investment banker says, why are you back so soon? And he goes, well, I have enough fish already. I'm good. I sell 'em in the market, feed my family, I'm good. And the investment banker goes I could really help you here. If we could get more fish, then we could make more money. And the guy goes, well, what would I do with that? Well, then we could have more boats and we could hire other fishermen and we could create a fleet, and then we could get more fish. And he is like, and what would we do with that?
He was like, well, then we could build this huge international multinational fishing company, and then we could take it public. And then you could have all this money. And the fisherman goes, and then what would I do with that? And the invest banker goes, well, then you could retire and do whatever you wanted. You could go fishing every day. And so the point is like. Why do you need all the money if you already are living the lifestyle that you want? Exactly right. Money is just an amplifier, it's just a resource. And if you are a centered person with a big heart and big goals, money is gonna amplify your ability to do good in the world. And if you're, conversely, if you're a hurt person, a damaged person, a traumatized person, unfortunately money just allows you more resources to do more self harm or harm to others. If money's just an amplifier, then we really have to know what are we trying to build for? What is the goal here? And as I said, for some people it comes all the way back around to I don't think I ever want to exit this business. I just want to grow it, scale it. I wanna make the biggest impact I possibly can, and I want to focus my time on, my zone of genius, my unique ability, my 4%, whichever version of that entrepreneurial coaching system you subscribe
Yeah.
I just, I love showing up and I love doing this one thing. I do it better than anybody else. And I got the team to do, they do everything else. That's one version of success.
Another version is we actually grow it and then sell it, and we have that profit. And now I can go on to my next thing, right?
So my wife is a physician, but one of her lifelong missions and dreams is to start a animal shelter. She loves dogs and, so that would be if she was a physician, building her own practice. She does love the practice of medicine. But maybe not for forever. Her business to then exit it and then create a foundation that she can then serve as the chair of the foundation and rescue more dogs and other animals than we can afford to have at our property.
Right. So those animals are somewhere else. They're not coming into your home. I love that.
It is an interesting way to put it. And I think a lot of people, a lot of founders aren't thinking about the fact that they actually really love. Maybe a piece of their business, like maybe they're exhausted or that end goal feels like it should be to sell, but the reality is they're like, well, I've got all the systems. I've got the engine I could sell. I think having a business that is sellable at any given time, like you said, you're gonna exit one way or another.
Yeah.
a good plan. But then how can you work inside your business, in your zone of genius and create the role that is the thing, doing the thing that lights you up the most, that you feel like you can contribute the most to and hire other people to do the other things that I think that's a great way.
And then conversely, also thinking about my end goal is something outside of this business, and I think those are really two interesting points for the people who are listening to consider. Is it staying in the business in a specific role or is it actually, this is going to get me to be able to do this other thing that is really a deeper part of my mission.
Yeah. So, the Navy Seals, US Navy Seals have this saying that slow is smooth and smooth is fast. And, kind of how I apply this to business because if you build a business that's all about revenue, about income, about I wanna make a million dollars a year and all that tax. That is a one dimensional business, but a business that's built for exit is it's independent from the owner. It has systems, it has people, it has processes, right? It has a real team that drives it forward. One of the things that team drives is a scalable sales marketing, positioning lead gen process that doesn't include the founder. If you're excited to tell somebody that, I'm involved in every major sale that my company makes. That actually is hurting the value of your business.
Yep.
And then it's the third kind of leg is the financial dimension, right? It's about dialing in your customer concentration, your supplier concentration, cash conversion cycle.
So how quickly does a dollar of marketing spend turn into a dollar of profit at the bottom right? When you have all these things dialed in, then I think business is actually really fun for most entrepreneurs. And then it becomes, why would I ever stop doing this? So if you build that business for exit, you have not only the best value and the most options, but you also then have the most income. Whereas conversely, if you build a business purely for income, then you are not gonna have a business that has transferable value. You're probably gonna be wearing a lot of hats. And back in that, I thought this was supposed to be fun. Why is this sucking the life outta me?
Yep.
That's a, one of our frameworks that we coach people through, we call the five value levers. And they kind of just reign you through it. Helping people understand which value levers in which order to pull to create the most value and the most freedom in their business. Because is all comes back to your biggest is your greatest, your business is your greatest asset. And if every wealth conversation doesn't start and stop with your business, then you know we're focusing on the minority, right? We're getting a master's in small things rather than focusing on the big things that actually really matter.
Yeah, I love that and I think so many entrepreneurs. I think we're built different. We see the world different. We don't have the same vision of retirement. And I've heard so many stories of people exiting and then, like you said, spend three months doing, golf or this or that, and then realizing, oh, I'm gonna start, I'm gonna build a new business, or I'm going to do something else, or whatever that might be.
I think across the board rethinking retirement is a good thing because I don't think we were meant to just work really hard until a certain age and then stop abruptly. I don't think that serves anybody, but I think you could work differently into your later years in life. But contributing and feeling purposeful and having a mission and connecting with people, those are all important parts of business and life, and I don't think the goal should be to make a ton of money retire and then just start spending that money and really doing nothing.
Yeah I couldn't agree more. Retirement literally means to take out of service. Right. And that's, you retire capital equipment, not human beings. I think we have shifted from an the industrial age to the information age and maybe now to the AI age. But in any event I think retirement is an outdated concept. And so for entrepreneurs, in my experience when I was a very young, new advisor. I made the mistake of believing that people would stay retired, right? So they had this big liquidity event. We created this big portfolio for forever kind of thing. And then three months later they came back and said, Hey, I need some of that money back 'cause I'm starting another business.
So now I'm wiser. We keep some dry powder and we say, let's just let this sit for three months 'cause chances are you're gonna be back and nine times outta 10. It's the fun thing that they go do that gives them the time and the space to reflect then that. Oh my gosh, here's a problem.
I have a solution. The wheels start turning, oh, I could bring this person in. Who not? How, oh, this is gonna be so fun, and they're off to the races again. So I,
Yeah,
that entrepreneurs are cut from a different cloth and most of them can't help themselves, but go start another business and solve another problem.
And that's why we should invest in them, and they're our greatest natural resource.
Oh, I love that reference. That's great. And I think it is true that that time and space can do people wonders.
Yeah.
It really can. You can love your business, you can love all these things, but that time and space is I think key for everybody to just be away and get a different perspective, to have some clarity, whatever that can provide.
So everybody's different. But for me, I'm a whiteboard guy. Like when I have a real problem that I gotta wrangle and get my head around I just start writing different ideas and things out on the whiteboard and I take a step back and I stare at it, and then I see how it all kind of comes together I am shocked at how, you know how sometimes there's a big problem facing me and I'm like, I don't know what the answer is, I don't know what the answer is 'cause I've only given it five minutes to think about it. And if I block off a half day really get clear on what's the problem, what's the outcome? let's brainstorm solutions. Let's play with different timeframes. Let's play with different economics, right? The size of the problem. What if resources weren't a problem, what would the solution be? When I play with those things, I get incredible answers and results in just three to four hours. And so, if you can do that in a half day and afternoon, think about what you could do with 2, 3, 4 weeks of quiet time of strategic thinking of rest and recharge. We tend to run ourselves a little too ragged in our current hustle culture. It's short term thinking actually, because your ability to be innovative and creative, which is one of your superpowers as an entrepreneur, that gets whittled down day by day as you deal with the fires and the urgent issues and the like. And so if you can't bring a second party, right? A COO, an integrator, somebody else to deal with the fires so that you can focus on the horizon, on the strategy. You're really doing yourself a disservice. And so that's a plea I have for all entrepreneurs is to make the time to think strategically. To think creatively. I think you'll surprise yourself in the results that you can generate if you just set aside an afternoon or a couple of days.
Absolutely. Yeah. Something that I read in your bio is that you worked summers in your family's business growing up. I'm assuming maybe as a teenager, I'd love to know what that experience taught you, maybe about entrepreneurship, running a business and has that informed your own journey.
Well, thank you for asking the question, Laura. It has informed my own journey, but not in the way that you're gonna expect. So I think a lot of entrepreneurs have this we sat around the kitchen table and I learned about business and money and, you know, that was not my experience. So, my mom is a architect and my dad is a general contractor, and to this day, they still operate this business that does gut remodels of luxury homes. They're in Salt Lake City, Utah, park City, and that kind of thing in the ski area. They've won awards for their work. They do beautiful designs. But growing up the business was more often a threat to our financial stability than the provider of it. So, my brother and I, our typical afternoon where they, my parents would pick us up from school, we'd go back to their office, we'd do our homework, and then when we were done with our homework and it was dinner time. We go pick up a fast food dinner from somewhere down the street and we'd clean off the conference table, and that would be our dinner table a couple nights a week. So, I remember very specifically, it's early fall, in the early nineties one of those hot afternoons where you're like, wait, isn't it still summer?
But the leaves are changing. We went to Wendy's and we're in the drive through and I'm looking at the menu and I'm thinking, well, if I get all the things I want a burger, fries, chicken nugget, and a Coke or whatever. It's gonna be like five bucks. And if my mom does the same and my dad does the same and my brother does the same, it's gonna be $20.
And that's $20 that we don't have. And remember, this is early nineties, so $20 actually went a lot further than it does
I was like, that doesn't get you very far at Wendy's today.
And so, as a 7-year-old, I couldn't figure out how to save my family money without ordering less. And so I lied, said, I'm No t that hungry. I'm just gonna get, fries and a drink. Then we went back to the office and I remember dragging my fries through the ketchup and just feeling the weight of money being a limiter about it. I didn't have the freedom, the option to do what I wanted to do because money was the obstacle. I made a commitment to myself right then and there, that money was not gonna be a limiter in my life.
And then I was gonna figure out whatever it took to make sure that wasn't an obstacle. And then this. Feeling was further supported by lots of dinnertime conversations that focused on the problems and the challenges and the complaints and the frustration of different things that were going on in my parents' business. I just remember thinking like they've got so many problems on their plate. I don't want to be a problem. So I'm just gonna sit here and eat my food and. Not get in the way basically. So that is what set me on a journey to figure out, why is this so hard to crack? Like, what is it that they're missing or not getting? Because they had advisors, but again, they, their advisors were often giving them recommendations in a silo and not like, integrating things. And nobody really helped them take ownership of the business and their wealth and their plan. And, it was just like, well, let's put out this fire today and we'll put out the next fire tomorrow.
And then eventually. We'll have something. And unfortunately, that just led to, a great career as a firefighter, but didn't actually build much value as a business owner. So that's what set me on this path of then trying to figure out, what are the answers? Reading books like the E Myth and going, oh, there's a big difference between being self-employed and being an entrepreneur. Going off to college, studying finance, reading hundreds of books on my own, starting a real estate investment company making every mistake in the book failing. Quite spectacularly as a 21-year-old and losing my life savings of $20,000, and that's what led me to conclude that in this business of money, finance, wealth it really is one of mentorship and it's, there's such a difference between street smarts and book smarts. I had just proved to myself that book smarts weren't enough. And so that's what led me to going to work at Goldman Sachs so that I could get the street smarts, I could see how other people did this.
And really like learned those lessons. selfishly to, I wanted to apply it myself and then, I saw what was going on and realized I had to help other people get access to these strategies as well.
Thank you for sharing that. I think it's.
Yeah,
Such an important lesson and I think we take so much from our childhood that we don't always even realize, and I think there's so many people with money stories that come and different versions of the story, whether it's
Yeah.
was wealth or there wasn't, and how that has informed people's paths.
But I think it taught you a lot.
When in that Wendy's moment as I was dragging those fries, it created a belief and the belief was more money gives you more options, more options, brings happiness. I carried that belief with me all the way into my thirties when I was working with families that had 50 million, a hundred million or more at Goldman Sachs.
That hit me square in the face because I got the first half right. It does give you more options. But here was lots of evidence in front of me that more money, more options, does not bring happiness. Like I was saying earlier, it actually just expedited people's ability to get more of whatever it is they were chasing. And if very few people were chasing more happiness, most people were thought they were chasing happiness, but they were actually looking for external validation. And I'm here to tell you, the world does not have enough Ferraris to bring self-worth. You can't spend your way to that. You gotta do the self-work the hard way.
Yeah, I think opportunities can, I mean, can definitely lead to happiness, but I think there's a lot of unpacking that needs to happen in order to ensure that it really is happiness, like you said, which I think that could be a whole other podcast. We dive into.
I will, I'll leave you with a a lyric from I believe this is fabulous. The rapper, he says, money doesn't buy happiness, but it's a damn good down payment. And that's because it gives you those options, right? So
A hundred percent.
I'm not saying don't build as much wealth as you can, but just realize that, like I said earlier, it's about activation, not accumulation.
What are you gonna do next? What is it gonna lead to? What are the opportunities that you want? And then, yeah, money's a great resource. It'll get you there. It'll open a lot of doors. It'll give you a lot of options. You don't always have to have it, but it sure makes things easier.
Absolutely. Yeah. One of the questions I always ask people about on the podcast is about legacy, so it's called the Legacy Branding Podcast, and I'd love to know what legacy means to you and what is the legacy that you are creating for yourself?
Yeah, that's a,
Just a small question.
So think for me, my legacy is I actually love this, body of work, right? Finance, investments, strategy, business, entrepreneurship. And I love seeing how all these pieces fit together. And so when I realized that this stuff that's fun and exciting to me and comes quite naturally and easy is actually something that most people pull their hair out and they hate and they don't wanna spend time and energy and learn that was a big aha for me. And so, my legacy became, how can I take my unique ability, my zone of genius, and help as many people as I can to live the best life I can live, make the biggest impact I can make. And through that process, build wealth for my family, but also to create ripples of impact that, go across the world. I think that you help one entrepreneur, they have a business that hires 10 people. Those 10 people feed their families. Right? One of those kids goes off to college and solves cancer. So I just want to, my whole thesis is if we can all just give back. And the best way to give back is to live in our zone of genius, right?
What an incredible world it would be if every single person spend 80 to 90% of their time in their zone of genius, their 4%, right? I think everybody would be so much happier and the world would literally change, right? Think about all the innovation, all the creation, just that would be kind of my version of heaven on earth.
And so, another interesting factoid, there's a social study that they did at Harvard that showed that in the history of the world, any social change didn't require more than 3% of a population to participate in nonviolent protest, and a lot of times it only took one or two. When I read that, the way I internalized it was, oh, thank goodness I don't have to help every entrepreneur in the world. I can find a way to serve just one, two, or even 3% of all the entrepreneurs, then that's all we need to create this social movement, this social change. And that's not another thing I love about this. It's not for me to judge. I work with folks on all sorts of ends of the political spectrum of how our world should operate. Everybody having a bigger voice and creating a bigger discourse and discussion, that's what's gonna lead to the best outcomes. So please don't misinterpret that as we're gonna end up on one side of the spectrum or the other. It's no, the more people we can give a voice to and that they can then make their own decisions and shape the world and the way that they see it. That's we're gonna crowdsource the future. And so that's my mission, the legacy that I'm trying to create along the way.
This is why we're so aligned and why when we first connected, it was immediate. Like I, I still remember that first conversation. It was like, wow, we've never met before and we went deep. And it's because of this. When you have a shared idea of like what you want and what you see in the world and the impact you wanna have, it's so easy to connect with other people that have a similar mission to you.
So thank you for sharing. That was beautiful and articulate and I even, I want you to listen back to it when this comes out so that you can hear what you just said because it was really, really beautiful.
Well, thank you.
So how can people connect with you? How can they learn more about your company, about working with you or connect with you personally?
Absolutely. So you can find me on LinkedIn. I have a pretty unique last name, so it shouldn't be too hard, but Anthony Englert Alpha Advisory alpha is spelled A L F A, so it's quote unquote, the wrong spelling. It's an a, it's an acronym for abundance Leadership, Freedom, Accelerated. But come to my website, alphaadvisory.com. You can book a, a meeting with me there, or for the guests or for the listeners of your show, rather. We have a special bonus if you go to alpha advisory.com/ branding Legacy. So just the name of your show, Laura. There is a 20 question assessment that you can take that will help you understand where you are on that founder's flight plan.
Right? It'll are you lifestyle or legacy? And then if you're legacy and you're in airplane, are you at on the runway? Are you in takeoff? Are you at altitude? And then rec make recommendations about. What you should be focused on at that stage. So it's not quite an AI chat bot, which will give you every answer, but our goal there was to create a really meaningful tool that people can go and interact with just to get a sense of where am I and what should I be thinking about?
So I hope that's helpful to your listeners.
Thank you. That is amazing we'll make sure. To have all those links in the show notes. Anthony, thank you again so much for being here. It was a really valuable
no,
awesome conversation.
This has been so fun. Thanks for having me, Laura.
Thanks for tuning into the Legacy Branding podcast. I hope today's episode has inspired and empowered you on your journey to building a brand that truly matters. If you enjoyed today's show, please subscribe, leave a review, and share it with other founders who you think would benefit from listening.
And if you're ready to take the next step in building your legacy brand, visit our website, labcreative.ca to learn more and book a call. Don't forget to join us next time for more conversations that will help you navigate your transition and create your legacy. Until then, I'm Laura Beauparlant.