Balancing Money and Meaning. Jason Pickard

Bob Wheeler:
Welcome, Jason. So great to have you on the show today.

Jason Pickard:
It’s so good to be here with you, Bob. I’m so excited. Thank you.

Bob Wheeler:
Yeah, so I’m curious, you know, you had this life as a trader on Wall Street. Sounds really sexy and crazy and all that stuff. And what events took place that you shifted your career and now you’ve gone a different direction? And tell us a little bit about what you’re doing now, how that happened.

Jason Pickard:
Yeah, I’d love to tell you a little bit about how I got into that. And so essentially, you know, I had my mind and heart set on being this world famous trader. And I really put everything I had into it. And by the time I was 25 or 26, I was super successful.

I really was. I had made millions of dollars. I was working for Paul Tudor Jones, who’s one of the most famous investors of all time and certainly one of the most famous investors and financial traders alive. I was ranked. one of the top 30 traders under 30 years old in the world. I had a very niche approach to trading in a very niche market, and I was becoming one of the youngest,

if not the youngest partners ever at Tudor Investment, this very esteemed, like the New York Yankees or the cowboys of hedge funds, especially at the time when I was there. But despite all that financial success, I was 330 pounds. I was financially wealthy, but I was physically, mentally, emotionally broke and broke in. And I was on the verge of death. I was in a very, very precarious state of health. And so I knew at that moment that despite my financial success,

I was actually missing a really big component because I didn’t feel any sense of purpose or fulfillment or happiness. I had no love in my life. And I was in, like I said, a very precarious state of health. So I went on this two year exercise journey where I lost 170 pounds, just really grinding it out in the gym. Just blood, sweat and tears every single day. Kind of the same approach I took to Wall Street,

just like all in, no pain, no gain, all my cards on the table. And I lost half my body weight. But at the end of that experience, I still didn’t really feel different on the inside. Now I had this bank account. I had this body that was fit, but I still felt like I was living a little bit in flatland. And that’s when I realized that what I was searching for was an inner game.

I was searching for this all on the outside, and I had to do literally an exchange of my outer world for my inner world. And that started about a 15-year journey for me, studying from the best people in self-development, psychology, spirituality. holistic nutrition and health and movement and martial arts and indigenous practices and then incorporating them into my Wall Street career, which made me sustainably successful on Wall Street and really took me to the next level, but also in a way that didn’t ruin my life and ruin my health and ruin my relationships.

And I did that until 2019, where I just felt this calling to do something different. And I wanted to move into the coaching world. So I just threw away that trader part of myself. I said, that guy’s not me. He’s crazy. Leave him on Wall Street. I’m gonna go into just helping people and doing all of this kind of coaching and self-development work, only to find that all roads led back to that wealth piece for me, and that the way that I have found myself being really meaningful to my clients was bridging the gap between wealth and wellbeing.

that if I wanted to literally live my truest purpose and fulfill myself and meet the needs of my clients in the world to the best degree possible, I had to access all parts of myself, which was showing people how to have wealth and wellbeing at the same time. And that was the impetus to create the abundance archetype, which is now my new course, that I lead people through.

Bob Wheeler:
No, that’s so awesome. And you’re sharing the story and I’m wondering, you know, that piece of leaving the trader behind, many of us are socialized that we are our accomplishments, that we are the amount of money that we can generate.

Jason Pickard:
Yes.

Bob Wheeler:
And then to walk away from that or potentially risk losing that.

Jason Pickard:
Yes.

Bob Wheeler:
Or, Hey, I’m going to do some stuff like meditate or do some woo stuff. Maybe that’s not going to present well for the sharks out there saying, well, that person’s sort of crazy because they’re in touch with themselves and they’re breathing and doing all kinds of things that are like counterintuitive of being rich and crazy. How did for you, how was it to let that go? Or maybe that wasn’t even a part of it. I just know for me, I was socialized a certain way and it was very difficult. to give up like, I gotta win, I gotta accomplish, I gotta be the best. And I’m

Jason Pickard:
Yeah.

Bob Wheeler:
wondering how for you that transition was.

Jason Pickard:
Well, I think there’s a few points that I could hit on. First, we’ll just take this winning. One thing I realized that was a key component to being successful on Wall Street was actually not focusing on winning and losing, but focusing on what I would call being an infinite investor.

Paul Tudor Jones once pulled me aside when I was like really focused on putting everything into one trade, and he said, listen man, the point is not to win on this one trade. The way to become successful is if you’re still here in this seat in 10 years. Focus on your career, not the trade. Focus on the marathon, not the sprint. Don’t even focus about winning and losing. It’s about having and developing a process and realizing that really there’s, it’s a horizon point.

There’s a point that every time you get to it, it just pushes off into the distance anyway. So it’s really a contest of who could be the most sustainable and who can be there the longest. You know, you’re only as good as your last trade. And so if you’re putting, if you’re going out there and you’re putting all your eggs in one basket and you’re not thinking about tomorrow, you know, you’re really not a great investor because it’s really about sustainability. Now, with the second piece is that, you know, for me,

I’ve always kind of liked to live outside the box. And I just started to see these things working in my life. I had, you know, I was sitting on a trading floor with 500 people. And we had all of these rows of desks that were all kind of interconnected. I’m sure you’ve seen these typical investment bank desks. And I literally had them cut my desk out of the row to put in a standing desk so I could stand and sit and kneel and sit on a Swiss ball at various heights. I was bringing in my own food.

I was bringing in my own water. I was taking time to meditate during the day. I was getting exercise in. And people at first looked at me like I was crazy. But when they started seeing me put huge numbers on the board, year in and year out, and actually, you know, changing my body, finding, you know, love in my life and having a meaningful life, they really started to ask questions. And it wasn’t actually until about four or five years in that they started transforming the whole place, bringing in organic food, bringing in yoga instructors, giving everybody a standing desk.

And so I really saw the power that one person can have. and influence it really by just working on and changing themselves, I was able to change the rest of the trading floor. When I left the industry though, there was this big kind of death, ego death moment. I was this person who, you know, on paper was very important. People would call me and emailing me and try to take me out to dinner and buy me gifts and book meetings with me and all sorts of stuff.

And I was, my phone was constantly ringing. I constantly had something going on, millions of dollars swinging around at any moment. And then the moment I left Wall Street, it was like fade to black,

Bob Wheeler:
Right.

Jason Pickard:
right? It’s like

Bob Wheeler:
Yeah.

Jason Pickard:
no one’s there, no calls, no emails, no meetings. All I’m doing is picking my kids up in the morning and driving them to school and then picking them up in the afternoon, driving them back and I’m like, who am I? What is this

Bob Wheeler:
Right.

Jason Pickard:
all about?

Bob Wheeler:
Yeah.

Jason Pickard:
And I think that that’s something that people don’t really realize that needs to be talked about as. The process is almost like losing a loved one in some way when you leave an identity that was that entrenched in you for your whole life of what you thought you were. But I really found something that was quite fascinating that I think is really useful for people if I share it.

When I was a kid, I loved drumming and magic. And interestingly, when you think about drumming, if you look at what’s underneath the drummer, it’s somebody, let’s say, who’s connected to rhythm. And what’s underneath magic? It’s like a sense of curiosity, a sense of wonder, a sense of questioning or thinking about things differently, right? When I was a trader, what made me a great trader was being tapped into the rhythm and the pulse and the beat of the market. I could just feel the market and know where she was going. In the same way,

I had this very curious mind about looking at things and questioning things and turning over every stone. That same concept of magic was there in my trading. And when I left trading and became a coach, I realized that what made me great as a coach was my ability to tap into the rhythm of my clients. And when I gave them this enlightening information for them that opened up their eyes, it was like magic for both of us.

So what helped me was recognizing that my gifts and skills and talents, the essence of what made me great and what makes me great, was not actually the trader. That was an expression of something that was native to me from when I was born, that I came

Bob Wheeler:
Right.

Jason Pickard:
into this life with, that was there throughout my childhood, that was just expressing itself in various forms. And that really helped me transition through losing the identity of being the trader. And here we are now, coming back full circle, where I’m realizing that I can’t get away from that either. It’s part of me.

Bob Wheeler:
It’s a part, it’s a part. Well, I’m curious. I want to go back just a moment because I love everything you just shared. And there is a grief process around giving up, um, part of the ego for sure. Um,

Jason Pickard:
Yeah.

Bob Wheeler:
I’m wondering as a kid and that desire to be the greatest trader, you know, that ever lived and all that stuff.

Jason Pickard:
Yeah.

Bob Wheeler:
Was that something innate? Was that something your parents sort of said, we’ll love you more. Like, were there any conditions on this? goal or any perceived, if I do this, I will

Jason Pickard:
Mm-hmm.

Bob Wheeler:
be so loved or I will be super bad-ass like

Jason Pickard:
Yeah.

Bob Wheeler:
what, like what was young Jason thinking, um, and hoping for with this intention to go out

Jason Pickard:
Yeah,

Bob Wheeler:
there and take on the world.

Jason Pickard:
I’ll tell you two stories, one that’s unique to me and that one I think might help other people. In the work I do, I’m a student of Dr. Arnold Mendel’s Processed Work Psychology, Processed Oriented Psychology, it has kind of two names to it, but what they say in that work is that if you go back to your earliest childhood memories, your earliest childhood memories hold the keys to your life’s work and purpose, but also your core wounding.

your core powers and your core wounding. So when I was six or seven years old, I came home with my first report card to my mom, to give to my mom. I walk in the door, I’m expecting this big reward, maybe a big gift, my mom’s gonna take me to the toy store or something great like that. I show her the report card and she says, this is not up to par. And I just flipped out, okay? I literally just threw myself in the air. I cracked my head on a large flower pot, had to be rushed to the hospital to get stitches, this whole saga. Well, what happened in that moment,

if you look at that like a dream? I realized in that moment that for me, being successful, getting that report card, getting the A’s, being the top student, being the top athlete, being the top trader, taking a job where you have a constant report card, every second of every day you have a report card. that was the way that I was going to get love and appreciation from others. I was looking for it on the outside. And that same thing was my wounding. And that no matter how much money I made, no matter how well I did, I did not actually feel it.

And in the same way, I was trying, that’s what I was stuffing to be 330 pounds, trying to fill that same void. And so a lot of that was sort of inherent in my earliest childhood memories. that made me who I was. And so you could think back, you know, the listeners can think back to their earliest childhood memories. And if you looked at it like a dream, what are the key components and players and symbolisms in that might hold your hidden powers and your hidden purpose in your life,

and also where you might have some wounding to work on? So another really cool thing though was, my father was the chief financial officer for Tudor Investment when I was a kid. My father also started Two Sigma Investments hedge fund. He’s one of the three founding founders, three founding people of Two Sigma Investments, which is one of the most successful hedge fund stories ever.

And it’s a very famous, very successful systematic trading fund. But when I was a kid, I was about 12 years old, and there was this family picnic that was going on between four different hedge funds, Tudor and three others, more capital and two others that I can’t remember. And this was very early on, this was like in the early 90s, there were not many hedge funds. Now hedge funds are in the tens of thousands, if not more, probably hundreds of thousands, if not more.

I don’t even know how many, but they’re very common. Anyone in their basement now could have a few bucks in their pocket and call themselves a hedge fund. But back then it was a very sort of up and coming, new, unknown area. And so there was a family picnic. And in this family picnic, the four hedge funds, the employees of the hedge fund would compete in various things like softball or volleyball or whatever, and it was all for fun supposedly.

Bob Wheeler:
Right.

Jason Pickard:
But there was this main event called Tug of War. And my dad was on the Tug of War team and he was the captain. And leading up to this family picnic, on two occasions, about 15 members of men and women that were working for Tudor came to my house because we had a little lake close by with a sandy beach. and they were practicing for this tug of war. Like it was the freaking Olympics.

Bob Wheeler:
Right.

Jason Pickard:
And when I went to the main event at the family picnic, Paul Tudor Jones was there. He was fresh off a heliskiing accident where he was on crutches with a cast on his leg. And he was standing next to the tug of war team, screaming and yelling like it was like the most important thing in the world. And the team wound up winning the tug of war. And at that moment I said, man, this is what I wanna do.

Like. How you do anything is how you do everything. And I just love this competitive, you know, love of life, this intensity. I’m like, that just turned me on at a very young age. And that combined with that drive to get the report card, I think really was the impetus. Now, that is my core power, but like I said, it came at a cost as well. And it’s the same for all of us. And we need to learn how to balance these impulses.

Bob Wheeler:
Yeah, absolutely. And I can appreciate the competitive competitiveness. You know, I think for some people, the competition never ends. Like if I’m playing a board game, I’m going to I will fight to the death. But when it’s over. We’ll play another game down the line, right? It’s not like I’m not going to live in my win or fail. Of course, always win. No, I’m kidding.

Jason Pickard:
Hahaha.

Bob Wheeler:
But I, you know, As long as finding that balance, like you said, I mean, I think competition being competitive can be a very healthy thing. It can be a great motivator. Um, as long as you stay in control and aren’t controlled by, by the competition.

Jason Pickard:
Yeah, yeah, I’ll tell you a pretty funny story though about that. I was playing dominoes with my kids recently and my nine-year-old daughter, I saw her going to place the winning piece to win the game. She was her last one and she was putting it down and she was going to win.

And I was like really excited for her because like some part of me wants my kids to win. Like, you know, like I want to win, but when I’m playing my kids, like in my mind, this attitude, I’m like, I want to give them this winning attitude. that it’s gotta always be about winning, right? And I saw her take the piece and go to put it down to win. And I saw her remove it and purposely put it in the wrong spot so that the game would continue and she wouldn’t win in that moment.

And I was like thinking to myself, oh my God, you gotta win. I’m creating like a loser, you know? And then I’m like, oh my gosh, I get it. She’s an infinite player. She realizes that if she puts that winning piece down, the game is over.

Bob Wheeler:
Right.

Jason Pickard:
She goes to bed. I go back to my office. There’s no more fun. And she taught me a lot in that moment that it’s actually, there’s a lot more than winning and losing. It’s about the real great masters of anything have a love of the game that transcends money, that transcends winning. It’s the love of figuring out the chess match or the puzzle.

And in fact, a lot of the really good flow research by Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi, one of the founders of flow, shows that actually having an easy win doesn’t give us nearly as much life satisfaction that even versus even when we lose, if we’re playing somebody that’s better than us. That what he’s showing is that actually deep fulfillment in life comes from growth, not so much from winning.

Bob Wheeler:
Yeah.

Jason Pickard:
And that has really, those experiences have really helped me think about that differently. But like I’m very much like you in that way that I want to win too.

Bob Wheeler:
Wanna

Jason Pickard:
But

Bob Wheeler:
win?

Jason Pickard:
apparently there’s more than just winning. It’s more about, you know, one of my teachers says, we’re not in a universe, we’re in a university. We’re here to grow and learn and discover new things and not just have easy wins. You know, challenge yourself a couple percent over our ability level so that we can experience more and we can grow and we become more evolved. And it seems like in that, win or lose, we become happier people.

Bob Wheeler:
Yeah, it’s I mean, I’m so with you. And I think that media and all these influences, the way we’re socialized has done a disservice to just focus on the win. I think I’m I think there is starting to be a shift and there’s probably a lot of people, the indigenous folks and a lot of people that are already in touch with spirituality, with connection to earth, connection to health. But probably Western society has not caught up. Um, or fully learned those,

Jason Pickard:
Sure,

Bob Wheeler:
that balance, which I think

Jason Pickard:
sure.

Bob Wheeler:
we’re trying to get back to,

Jason Pickard:
Yeah,

Bob Wheeler:
um, for sure.

Jason Pickard:
and I think it’s a balance. I don’t think anyone has the right answer. I think ultimately these things are a balance of both. You know, for me, growing up in a very Western, Wall Street oriented household, my idea of success was accomplishment and achievement. And what I’ve learned through Native American cultures is that it’s more about nourishment.

How many people are you taking care of? How many people did you feed today? Right, that’s their level of success. And I think that for me, just like this idea in my course of I worked on Wall Street with a lot of wealthy people, including myself, that had money, but had shitty health, or were on four divorces, you know, or were spending all their time in doctor’s offices.

And then I spent my time in a lot of these spiritual groups and these self-help and personal development groups, and nobody has any money. They’re not charging anything for their services, and they’re not having a big impact because they don’t have the means to do it.

And so I think it’s really about balancing the poles and bringing both sides together. I think it’s essential that we bring wealth and well-being together. I think it’s essential we bring science and religion together and so forth, and even accomplishment and achievement with nourishment.

Bob Wheeler:
Yeah, and I think back to, I think it was John Lennon when they asked him when he was little, what did he want to be when he grew up and he said happy? And they’re like, wrong answer. I think we just don’t focus. We haven’t in the past focused on not necessarily just being happy, but feeling fulfilled, being fulfilled, feeling of purpose, not just I want again, I want again, right, because that’s all. That comes and goes.

Jason Pickard:
Yeah, I

Bob Wheeler:
We’re

Jason Pickard:
love

Bob Wheeler:
with

Jason Pickard:
the comment

Bob Wheeler:
ourselves

Jason Pickard:
that,

Bob Wheeler:
forever.

Jason Pickard:
yeah, I love the comment in that real quick because I’m a deep student of etymology and of the worldview of yoga. And just a very interesting thing that brought up in when you said that is that the word happy comes from the word happenstance, which means to be lucky.

And so what we’re really trying to say is we really want equanimity, equilibrium, equipoise, fluidity. balance, right, the middle way. And so what I found in my course, The Abundance Archetype, when I’ve tried to define abundance, is that it’s not so much about always being happy, because when you seek for happiness, there has to be some sadness that comes with it to give the happiness

Bob Wheeler:
Sure.

Jason Pickard:
meaning. You know, if you seek the riches and the highs, there has to be some lows and so forth. And so what I found is that real abundance comes from, no matter what, is thrown at you, no matter what the circumstances. A bull market, a bear market, you know, highs and lows, tax refund or big tax, you know, do whatever. You know, the word is tax bill.

Whatever the circumstances are in our life, there are so many things that are actually out of our control. We can kind of control our process. But ultimately, we can’t control the ultimate outcome. We can’t control what somebody else on the road is gonna do if they’re gonna have a few drinks and drink tonight and drive while we’re out there. We can’t control the weather at a particular event. And many things like this in life, if you think about it, that we can’t ultimately control the outcome. We can only control our approach.

In fact, this is a really great tip for investing is that you can’t ultimately control the market. Being a good investor is much like being the house of the casino. The casino, if you’re playing roulette, they know that there’s 18 black and 18 red numbers, but they have zero and double zero, there’s two green. And so each time you go and play as somebody at the casino and you roll the ball, the house has a 5% approximate edge every time somebody rolls, but on any one roll, they don’t know if they’re gonna win or lose.

Bob Wheeler:
Right.

Jason Pickard:
They could get a red, they could get a black, but they know if they get you to play long enough, if they give you free drinks, if they put some pretty people around you. If they take out the clocks and the windows and they pump you with air conditioning so you stay up all night and give you free food and tickets to a show, you’re gonna play long enough and they’re gonna collect that 5% edge.

And so investing is much like that. You don’t know in any given moment what’s gonna happen. There’s really a random distribution in any one moment. But once you define your edge and you know it and you stick to that process over and over again, you become the house like at the casino, grinding that 5%. And so for me, ultimately to wrap this little story up is that that’s what abundance is to me. That no matter what life throws at me, I’m balanced. That I know

Bob Wheeler:
Yeah.

Jason Pickard:
who I am, I know what I stand for, I know my values, I’m in touch with this inner part that can’t be taken away no matter what happens externally. Yes, I wanna create wealth, yes, that’s important to me, but no matter what, I’m gonna be that balanced place no matter what happens. And at least that’s my goal that I strive for, which is, you know. Hard to do as a human being, but that’s sort of my North Star.

Bob Wheeler:
Yeah, absolutely. Well, you know, talking about your course, I’m, you know, one of the core elements of, of the course, you’ve got those eight core pieces

Jason Pickard:
Yeah.

Bob Wheeler:
be yourself, right? And not everybody wants to be themselves or they’re not comfortable yet being themselves. But that feels like an important piece, but what would people expect to get out of the course? When they sign up, they might have to be themselves, right? They might have to

Jason Pickard:
Yeah.

Bob Wheeler:
alter their state. There’s a few things, but what, when people sign up for abundance archetype, what are

Jason Pickard:
Yeah.

Bob Wheeler:
you hoping?

Jason Pickard:
I’ll just say one thing about be yourself and I’ll quickly go through it because I know we have a lot to cover. But you know, there’s only ever one Bob Wheeler in the world. Nobody else in the history of this planet has your fingerprints.

There are no two snowflakes alike. Nobody else has your unique gifts, skills, and talents, ways of looking at the world, mixture of the elements. No one has your dreams at night. No one has the experiences you’ve had, the preferences you’ve had. You are so unique. And just like your podcast, there’s only one money nerve.

We must ultimately know. what makes our podcast, what makes our business, and what makes us unique, and really lean into that. Because that’s the only way we’ll differentiate ourselves, find our alpha, and really separate ourselves from the pack of normalcy. And so that’s one of the keys to being successful, is finding what do I love to do? What am I naturally good at? How do I invest in myself to support myself in that way, whether or not it’s in my health, or an education, or a coach, or a mentor? or anything that you may need.

And ultimately making yourself the biggest investment and the most important investment, recognizing that I myself am the greatest asset I have, and I am my greatest technology, and starting from that place. So in my course, essentially, there’s really two streams. First, I talk about the importance of developing your process, like we just kind of spoke about, and I go through six steps that I developed while I was on Wall Street working with Paul Tudor Jones and through my own experiences. of six key philosophies that I have to investing, six key philosophies to developing your own process to being a successful investor or being successful in business.

The interesting thing when I was working on that was that I recognized that the same principles that you need to be a good investor of the stock market, let’s say, actually apply to managing yourself if you make yourself the investment. Looking at the different situations in your life like risk reward, diversification, risk management. learning from your mistakes, evaluating your process, and so forth.

What’s the quality of your returns? And what’s the quality of your diet? Are you yo-yo dieting? What’s the quality of your relationships? Are you hot, one minute cold the next, or do you have steady, repeatable returns that last a long time, right? And so forth. So that’s this whole process section. And then I developed eight keys to developing mastery, or eight keys to developing flow states,

where I took all of the stuff that I learned from all of those 20 years. of studying with teachers and masters and gurus around the world into all the kind of the irreducible steps that I think one needs to do in order to perform and feel at their best.

Bob Wheeler:
And when you share all this information, I’m curious, like you learned all this information, what was it that you said, I want to take this out in the world? Like, right. You, you know, you learned something from your daughter. Um, she shared information with you.

Jason Pickard:
Yeah.

Bob Wheeler:
Um, what was it that made you want to share this information with other people?

Jason Pickard:
You know, that’s a good question. On one hand, I feel like when you have rank and power and privileges, it’s a responsibility. I had privileges. I was able to make my way onto Wall Street. I made a lot of money.

I was able to study with some of the greatest people in the world privately to this day. And I do feel this, I don’t wanna say burden, but this weight of responsibility that if I don’t share this, I become a tree that’s holding onto my fruit and just bends over to the ground and rots. You know, it’s just like, it feels like a natural impulse. But interestingly enough, if you look back to that childhood report card experience, and you look at that experience at what’s missing from it, well, there’s the student, but there’s no teacher.

That’s who I’d be coming. It’s like all along this experience of like having a wise person in that dream, the mother or some wise elder or some teacher figure to come to me and say, listen, don’t worry about the grades, you did your best. People learn in different ways. Here’s how you’re good at this, you’re not good at this and cultivate my inner skills.

That’s what was missing for me when I was on Wall Street and when I went to University of Virginia. I did not learn any of this stuff. I learned how to be a successful person on Wall Street, but I didn’t learn how to take care of myself. Nobody taught me how to eat, even eat, or move my body, or make love, right? I mean, or have fun, or

Bob Wheeler:
Right.

Jason Pickard:
create, or dream. These things are so important to the human race. This is what makes us innately human. And to be honest, at this day and age where we have AI, that I believe, you know, I don’t think it’s just my belief. It just have to have a pulse to see that AI is seemingly slowly taking over the world and probably gonna be removing job after job after job. When I was on Wall Street, already more than 50% of the trading was done systematically by computers. That was four years ago. It’s probably even higher now.

Bob Wheeler:
Yeah.

Jason Pickard:
And 20 years from now, it might be 80 or 90%. I don’t know, right? And most industries are probably going that way. When I first started out, I was 19 years old interning on the floor of the Chicago Board of Trade in Chicago. That doesn’t even exist anymore. There’s no floor. It’s a museum, right? And so why am I saying this? What I’m saying is that I think if we want to thrive in the future,

We have to remember what it means to be human. What do we have that machines don’t have? We can dream at night. We can tap into the wisdom intelligence of our body. We can connect to our heart. Machines can innovate, but they can’t create. They can’t pull something out of the ether, out of the unknown, unthought about before, and pull in some new information. So we have to know what we can do well and what machines can do well.

In trading, Machines will do way better at you at execution. Try executing a trade against a computer. In any kind of size, you’re going to get annihilated. Even portfolio construction, a computer will do better. But creating a new idea, a never thought about idea, an Amazon, a Facebook, or whatever,

Bob Wheeler:
Right.

Jason Pickard:
is done by a human being who’s tapping in to their intuition. and their creativity. And I think we’re living in such a fight or flight world. We’re so stressed out, we’re eating crappy food, we don’t know how to take care of ourself, that we’re going down a really bad rabbit hole of losing our imagination, our creativity, our intuition, and ultimately our ability to thrive and be successful in the financial or in any field with this huge competition of artificial intelligence.

So I feel like at this point in time, it’s really essential. and it’s really needed to share this knowledge. So I heard a quote once about, you know you’re doing something right in the world where you have the intersection of what you love to do and what the world needs.

Bob Wheeler:
Right.

Jason Pickard:
And I really feel like finally I’m at that sort of crossing for myself.

Bob Wheeler:
Yeah, no, absolutely. And I want to just go back to one piece that you talked about, um, uh, with privilege comes responsibility. Basically I’m paraphrasing. Um,

Jason Pickard:
Yeah.

Bob Wheeler:
but the one thing I really want to point out and was very aware when you were sharing is you’re not apologizing for that privilege, right? Because that’s what you got handed, it’s an acknowledgement.

I just, I think there are a lot of people out there sometimes feel like they’re, they’re supposed to apologize for their privilege or apologize that they got the break. And for me, it’s about not apologizing for that, but then taking, um, that privilege

Jason Pickard:
Yeah.

Bob Wheeler:
with responsibility and paying it forward for people that didn’t get that privilege.

Jason Pickard:
100%. In my model, in my view, what I’ve learned is it’s not about feeling guilty about it. It’s not denying it. It’s essentially

Bob Wheeler:
Right.

Jason Pickard:
owning it.

Bob Wheeler:
Absolutely.

Jason Pickard:
And I think there was a great Gandhi quote that said, rank, power, and privilege, rank and power are great privileges. Use them well.

Bob Wheeler:
Right.

Jason Pickard:
It’s not about disowning them or being shy about them. It’s like, How can you use them to support other people? Now this concept about rank and power is actually interesting because there are these like, you know, economic rank, right? There’s structural rank. I’m a CEO, you’re the junior employee.

Bob Wheeler:
Right.

Jason Pickard:
We have rank in gender, race, religion, age, weight. All sorts of different social structures, right?

Bob Wheeler:
Yep.

Jason Pickard:
And depending on where you live, those could all vary. We also have psychological rank. Some of us have been through a lot of stuff or we’ve had access to therapy. We’ve done a lot of coaching, we’ve overcome hardships.

And then we also have spiritual rank, being connected to this deeper transcendent place, no matter what’s happening here in the physical. So you could get somebody who might have very high structural rank. They might be a CEO of a company, but then they might be a black woman and walk down the street and actually feel lower rank in other areas

Bob Wheeler:
Right.

Jason Pickard:
and everything in between. And so the whole idea is recognizing where you have rank. You might have low structural rank and low social rank, but you may have very high psychological and very high spiritual rank. Recognizing where you have high rank, where you have lower rank. What can you do for yourself to raise your rank? How can you make more money?

How can you move up in your company? You can’t change something really like a skin color or gender or you know various things like that But you can change how you view yourself in the world How you approach the world from that lens and so forth? So it’s all about what can we do to help other people raise their rank and how can we support ourselves? in raising our own.

Bob Wheeler:
Yeah, absolutely. Absolutely. And I could have rank here and be transported to another country and have zero ranking because of

Jason Pickard:
I

Bob Wheeler:
my

Jason Pickard:
have

Bob Wheeler:
ability.

Jason Pickard:
rank at work and I come home and my kids run all over me.

Bob Wheeler:
Right. Exactly. So I do think that’s so important. I actually I want to bring it back to because at a certain point in time, your mom had rank when you talk about the homework story, the report cards. You went to the hospital. All these things happened. Was there an after conversation? In other words, did your mom be like, Oh my God, I can’t believe I upset you or, uh, well that’s what you get for react. Like, was there any kind of, um, Follow-up?

Jason Pickard:
Well, no. Well, yes and no. I mean, the interesting thing about that is that there I go to the hospital and getting the stitches. I have this very sort of traumatic for seven year old experience. And my dad walks in and gives me the present that I was expecting from the report card. And so here is like, you know, parenting trap 101 of setting up this really belief system that when something bad happens,

I get rewarded. Right? And so that was a very kind of big trap that I’ve also had to work through of like some, you know, something going hand in hand of like making a lot of money, but being unhealthy, unhappy sort of thing. Like the two, you know, there was sort of a negative feedback in that. So no, I don’t think it was very well discussed. In fact, my mom, you know, kind of even denies it to this day, but it doesn’t, you know, she doesn’t look, she doesn’t look at it, but she thinks it makes her look. like a bad mom or something like that.

But to me, I’m like, that was the greatest thing you could ever have done for me. It made me who I am. There’s no way without that moment, I would have made it to Wall Street and had the success I had. Yes, it came with a lot of challenges, but even those were beautiful because I couldn’t be the coach I am today, being able to empathize with people that are overweight or who have gone through difficult challenges without also having that, you know?

Bob Wheeler:
Yeah, absolutely. Be yourself. Be yourself.

Jason Pickard:
Yeah.

Bob Wheeler:
Because that’s what makes us who we are. What practice what practices can we incorporate into our daily lives to

Jason Pickard:
Mm-hmm.

Bob Wheeler:
shift our mindset towards abundance?

Jason Pickard:
Yeah, I’ll just give a really easy one for the sake of time and practicality. But one of the easiest things, you know, I’m sure everyone’s heard of affirmations, right? I mean, this whole thing of like waking up and saying, I am rich, I am abundant, I am beautiful, I am loved, I am whatever.

But I’ve studied the work of Noah St. John, who has a technique called Afformations, A-F-F-O-R, Afformations. And he says that the problem with when we say affirmations is that our mind says, I don’t believe you. We say, I am rich. Our mind says, yeah, right, you are, you’re broke. And so we have this idea that what happens is we say these affirmations in the framework of statements, but the mind… actually works as a process of asking questions.

If I say to you, why is the sky blue? Your mind starts trying to calculate and figure out all of these things, and you can see that it’s a process of thinking through things and having thoughts and feelings and emotions and actions that come from it. Many of us have the experience of saying, I really want a red car, or I want a red Corvette. And then we drive down the road and all we see is red Corvettes. because we’re priming our mind that that’s important to us. It’s not that there’s more red Corvettes on the road, we’re just seeing them.

Bob Wheeler:
Right.

Jason Pickard:
But most of us are asking very negative questions. We say, why am I so poor? Why am I such a loser? Why am I so broke? Why can’t I find love in my life? Why, why, why does this happen to me? But if you just wake up in the morning and you’re brave enough to ask a powerful positive empowered question without even to needing to know the answer and just being open up to a new possibility It can be a small way to taking a new step towards abundance.

Why is it so easy for me to find love? Why is it so easy for me to make money? How come abundance just flows to me? What’s the greatest version of myself I can be today? What’s something new I could see today? What’s I want, you know, how can I experience something beautiful today? Et cetera, whatever it is for you. Why is it so easy for me to lose weight? But just opening up your day, opening up to new possibilities, because most of us are having the same thoughts that we had yesterday, and 90% of them are negative, and we’re asking negative questions, and we’re literally making ourselves stuck in Groundhog Day of negativity.

And so it’s just making the first action in the morning, not waking up and checking your phone, but taking a moment. to open up to a new possibility and a new question and just be curious about what’s something new that I could experience today, more towards the dream life I want to live and not making yesterday equal today and today equal tomorrow.

Bob Wheeler:
Yeah, absolutely. And I’m curious with all of that, how does, um, how does gratitude play a role in abundance

Jason Pickard:
Yeah.

Bob Wheeler:
and in this mindset?

Jason Pickard:
I think gratitude is a really fun one. I’ve been thinking a lot about gratitude lately. And I’ll just tell you a quick little story about it. We know scientifically that gratitude has positive effects. Science has proven that it improves the quality of relationships. It can make us more optimistic. It has other physiological benefits.

But Hawaiian culture, and I studied with a gentleman Kahuna Harry Uhani Jim, an amazing Hawaiian kahuna. And he taught me that the Hawaiians believe that gratitude and abundance comes from the breath. That in Hawaii, they say aloha, which means the breath of the divine is in your presence. Or said another way, the breath of the divine is in your pattern of breathing.

So when they say, when you enter into a mindful breathing pattern, you get into this frequency of what they call kina ole, which means being in the right place at the right time for the right reasons with the right people the first time. You’re doing it the right way. Now you’re in this frequency of abundance. And they say when you engage in this breathing practice, the one who receives the benefit of that breathing practice is the future you that you meet at the end of the breathwork, the end of let’s say the 30 breaths.

And when you meet this future you, and now you have this new intake of oxygen and you have extra energy instead of focusing on the base level survival things. You have this extra energy now to focus on attracting this new frequency of abundance into your life. The natural byproduct of that is gratitude and they say that it’s the gratefulness or the gratefulness being full of oxygen.

So once you experience that in your own self in an embodied sense It’s no longer this academic, because I’m like, what is gratitude? How do I know when I have it? I know I want it. What does it feel like to be grateful? I don’t know. But by breathing for yourself, mindfully, 30 breaths a day, they say, just 30 inhales and 30 exhales. A

nd when you reach the end of the 30 breaths and you meet that future you, that feeling you have, that’s gratitude, and that attracts abundance, and then you can give it to others once you know what it feels like in yourself.

Bob Wheeler:
Yeah, that’s awesome. I love that. I’ll have to do a little Hawaiian research. Maybe with a pinnacle. I

Jason Pickard:
Hehehe

Bob Wheeler:
yeah, I for me, when I can focus on gratitude, then I don’t have time for the questions of why this and why that and why can’t I have because I’m focused on wow, what I what do I have

Jason Pickard:
Sure.

Bob Wheeler:
and be in that moment and shifting that mindset. So

Jason Pickard:
Yeah,

Bob Wheeler:
I so yeah, so appreciate that.

Jason Pickard:
I’m with you 100% on that.

Bob Wheeler:
Well Jason, we’re gonna shift it up a little bit, shift the energy a little bit. It is time to test your nerve.

Jason Pickard:
Oh boy.

Bob Wheeler:
Test your nerve is brought to you by the MoneyNerve. If you’re interested in learning more about your relationship with money, go to our free quiz, testyournerve.com, and see your responses to money and emotions. So we’re gonna have a little fun here, I hope.

Jason Pickard:
All right.

Bob Wheeler:
What’s one thing you would spend money on that would surprise people?

Jason Pickard:
Hmm. That’s a really good question. You know, one of the things that’s coming to my mind, and I don’t know why, but I just usually go with the first thing is I really like to enjoy some ceremonial organic tobacco. And I do it in a very mindful way, but it’s a way that I can just connect with the earth and connect with the plant life. And so, yeah, I just thought that might surprise people based on what I’ve said today. I don’t know. But it

Bob Wheeler:
What?

Jason Pickard:
was something that just came to me, yeah.

Bob Wheeler:
Yeah,

Jason Pickard:
I mean, there’s

Bob Wheeler:
I

Jason Pickard:
a

Bob Wheeler:
love

Jason Pickard:
million

Bob Wheeler:
it.

Jason Pickard:
other ways to go, but that’s the first thing that popped in my mind is my love of… ceremonial organically grown herbs and plants and being in a sacred relationship with them. They really enhanced my life, helped me create altered states that really enhanced my work and my connection with nature and yeah I thought maybe that would surprise people.

Bob Wheeler:
Yeah, I love it. I love it. Surprised me. Can you share a story of a time when you took a financial risk based on your intuition? And how did that work out?

Jason Pickard:
Well, you know, I mean, again, I just go with the first thing that pops in my head. When I’ve met my, the people that helped me build my course, a great company called Freedom Builders for anybody who wants to design a course out there, it might be interested, but I met with the founder, Mike Gonzalez on Zoom like this, and I didn’t do any research with any other companies.

I did not. even really think about doing a course that much. It just, somebody has told me, hey, you know, you really should probably meet with this guy. And I just felt that intuitive knowing. Like I felt something inside of myself. I really know the value of a good partnership. I really say this is that when I was on Wall Street, one of the things that I learned was the ability to identify a good partner. Having a good partner in life and work is priceless.

You can make so much more money splitting your… Bottom line, with a partner in my mind, then you can keeping it all by yourself, if it’s the right partner. And so when I met Mike, I felt that intuition. I just signed up for the course, wrote him a check, and off we went, and people thought I was crazy for not interviewing 50 other course people out there, and without a question of a doubt, it was the right choice. And here we are talking about my course. It’s beautifully done, and it’s been quite successful so far.

Bob Wheeler:
No, that’s awesome. And I can’t agree more. I’d rather have 50% of something than 100% of nothing.

Jason Pickard:
Yeah, yep.

Bob Wheeler:
Absolutely. What would you say is the most valuable life lesson you’ve learned through your experiences with money?

Jason Pickard:
Hmm. Those valuable life lessons I’ve learned through money. I’m not sure if this answers your question, but I’ve been thinking a lot about money lately and what is money? And I looked up the word money and it took me on this really deep rabbit hole of thinking about that money is a mental emotional construct.

If I had $10 million and I lost nine, I’d feel poor. But if I had nothing and you gave me a million dollars, I’d feel like I won the lottery. And the word money comes from the Sanskrit word manas. And manas, we used to be called humanas. We made it patriarchal, human. But we’re

Bob Wheeler:
I’m going to go ahead and turn

Jason Pickard:
humanas.

Bob Wheeler:
it off.

Jason Pickard:
Manas are the thinking, feeling, willing, and memory components that separate us from animals. and it’s what makes us human. And so I’ve been really reflecting on that, that this idea of money actually is in the root word of human that we’ve chopped off. And so that like this concept of money is really anything that we can do to empower someone else or ourself to really know who we are, to really know ourselves and our place here on earth and be valued in that way, that it’s more of an inner wealth. is that’s the only money that we can actually keep.

Not that the exterior is not important. And essentially on this journey, I recognized that wealth and wellbeing have had a nasty divorce. But when I went back, I recognized that all of the great spiritual traditions and religions, all were founded on money. Research says that Jesus was given the equivalent in today’s value of four to five million dollars worth of frankincense, myrrh and gold at birth. Moses lived with the king of Egypt, the Pharaoh. B

uddha was a prince. Arjuna was an Indian prince. Muhammad married a very wealthy business woman and was apparently a very wealthy business merchant. So somewhere along the line, these things have separated. And the lesson that it’s taught me is that the need to go together for the survival of, for survival and our ability to thrive. So

Bob Wheeler:
Yeah.

Jason Pickard:
I may have taken a very circuitous approach to that answer, but I don’t know. It’s just what came out of me.

Bob Wheeler:
That works. That works for me. And yeah, I mean, that works. Yeah.

Jason Pickard:
Just more of my inner reflections lately about money

Bob Wheeler:
Mm-hmm.

Jason Pickard:
and what does it really mean? And

Bob Wheeler:
Yeah.

Jason Pickard:
what is it all about? It’s really currency and current and flow of energy and is my time worth more than my money? Is my presence and my attention my greatest force? Or my love my greatest form of money? I don’t know the answers to these. These are things that I meditate on these days.

Bob Wheeler:
Yeah, those are good things to meditate on. What would you say is your financial superpower?

Jason Pickard:
risk-taking. You know, the interesting thing about that, I’ll just say this, is in my course I asked you to think of essentially, I word it slightly different, but what’s your financial superpower? What’s your investing style? And I say, hell, I was a great risk taker. I was never afraid. I had a huge account.

I was managing over a billion dollars. I always went for it. I never saw it. If I wasn’t living on the edge of… success and near death, I wasn’t feeling alive, you know? It wasn’t investing to me. But on the flip side of that, if you ask me, what annoyed me the most about other traders? I would say the ones who sat on the trading floor and never took risk, that sat around there for three years and never put a position on and just eventually lost their job. I’d look at them and be like. What are you doing? There’s no downside. You have a call option. All you do is put something on there.

Just go for something. And they would sit around and put on peanuts and never really take any risk. But what I learned is that our greatest superpowers hold in them an inherent weakness. And in our weakness, it holds in them an inherent strength. And I was at my best when I could balance that risk-taking superpower with the person who knew when it was right not to have all the chips on the table. Right? And I could tell you more about that. But that’s essentially… You know, it’s interesting because those kinds of things,

I’ll make a cool segue with that, these kinds of things like a dog barking on a podcast or that was actually my mom calling me on my iPad, interestingly enough. But you know, I teach in my course how these things, there’s sort of like a deeper meaning to them that like if I’m working with a client, let’s say, and one of my kids runs into my office. It’s very easy for me to say, get out of here, you know, I’m working with a client.

But what if that’s some sort of message that I need to be more playful with my client? Or I need to have more curiosity, or my client needs more childlike nature? So I’ve learned to kind of do more Aikido with those kinds of things and flow with them, and they can actually help you be a better investor.

Bob Wheeler:
Yeah, absolutely.

Jason Pickard:
Yeah.

Bob Wheeler:
Awareness of what’s present. If you could describe in one word your relationship with money.

Jason Pickard:
Hmm. You have to think about one word. Let’s say attraction. I think I’m attracted to it, but there’s been some part of my belief system that has always felt like it’s been attracted to me as well.

Bob Wheeler:
Mm-mm.

Jason Pickard:
It was like when I was younger and I was running out of money, but then like some check would come in the mail or something would fill the gap or I get a tax refund of $10,000 that would save the day and bridge the gap. But like I’ve always felt like there was something there. But at the same time,

I did feel that there was a point at the end of my trading career where that was completely the opposite. That no matter what I did. I don’t know how I could be wrong after being right for 15 years. I just couldn’t be right. And so one of the things I think that’s coming up for me around attraction is that money flows when you’re doing what you love to do and you’re feeling that attraction of what’s naturally happening.

And I felt that I was going against the grain that there wasn’t that attraction anymore in trading. And that’s really when I left it. And now that I’ve after a couple of years of not really having money coming in being in this. intermediate period of not trading before my course came. It was really a process of finding that attraction again. And now that I found that, the money is coming back in again. And so

Bob Wheeler:
Yeah.

Jason Pickard:
in one word, that’s what I came up with.

Bob Wheeler:
Yep. Yeah, for me, as I was answering the question myself and I was thinking flow, because

Jason Pickard:
Yeah.

Bob Wheeler:
it flows towards, flows away, money’s flowing. We are at the M&M’s spot, our sweet spot, money and motivation. I’m wondering if you have a practical financial tip or a piece of wealth wisdom that you could share with our listeners, something that’s worked for you.

Jason Pickard:
Yeah, I’m going to tell you the first lesson in my course and I mentioned this briefly, but I didn’t really give you the essence of it. Be able to define how is it that you make money in investing, in coaching, in podcasting, in anything in one to two sentences at an elementary school reading level. Find a way to use, to take something complex and speak of it simply.

Get down to the nuts and bolts, put it on your wall. Here is my one sentence, here is exactly what I do. This is my sweet spot. This is my edge. This is how I approach the market. This is all I care about. This is what I look for day in and day out. This opportunity. And know that like on the back of your hand. tattoo it on your arm, put it on your wall, and follow that all the way home, like the house and the casino. Know that first. So many people come in and you ask them that question on Wall Street, how do you make money?

Oh, I do this, I do that, I do this, I look for this, I look for that, no, no. In one sentence, like I’m a fifth grader, knowing that simplicity is the ultimate sophistication. How do you break down what makes this podcast different than every other of the three million plus podcasts out there. What is your competitive edge? Know that. Everything comes from that.

Bob Wheeler:
Love it, love it. Well, Jason, you know, I tell you, this has been a great conversation. Some of the things that really stood out for me is the fact that you talked about being a student, right?

Jason Pickard:
Yeah.

Bob Wheeler:
We are all students. And I think that’s so important, at least for me in terms of mindset that we’re constantly learning, which comes to that point about

Jason Pickard:
Thank

Bob Wheeler:
being

Jason Pickard:
you.

Bob Wheeler:
curious. A lot of us aren’t always so curious to know because we might actually hear something we don’t wanna hear. For me, it’s so important to… keep being curious, go beyond my comfort zone, be challenged, keep asking questions. And so, and throughout this, you’ve talked about the fact that you’re still asking questions, you’re pondering these things.

And it’s not always fun, it’s not always great, some of the answers. Sometimes we get the response we don’t want, we don’t get the present with the good grades, right? But being able to be curious about all that, learning from it. And so I really appreciate that piece about like, we’re all students being curious and just keep asking the questions. I mean, there’s a whole lot of other stuff in there as well, but those really, for me, it’s so important that we be curious and learning to be comfortable with being ourselves. Because so many of us…

myself included, spent a lot of time trying to run from ourselves instead of embracing ourselves. And once we can actually make peace with that, reconcile it, and actually appreciate our uniqueness, then I think we can thrive. So I really appreciate you bringing all that out.

Jason Pickard:
Thank you so much.

Bob Wheeler:
Where can people find you online? Where can they find your course? Where

Jason Pickard:
Yeah,

Bob Wheeler:
can they find you in the internet?

Jason Pickard:
yeah. The easiest place is to go to my website, jasonpicard.org. There you can see a bunch of information about my course. And if you’re really interested in learning more, you can book a 30 minute free discovery call with me. where you get on a call with me and we chat about what’s going on in your life and see if you’re a good fit for this opportunity.

It’s a really exciting movement, I could say now. We have a lot of students that are in the Abundance Archetype. I’m offering a 12-month mentorship program where anyone who takes the course also enters into these live group coaching calls. We meet twice a week with the group. We have a Facebook group altogether where we’re sharing information and experiences with all these abundant seekers. And we’re bringing in a lot of cool guest speakers. and so forth and so it’s really been a lot of fun to witness this

transformation not only in the individual people but also as a group so JasonPicard.org you can book the call with me and I’m also on Instagram at Jason Picard Official.

Bob Wheeler:
Awesome, awesome, awesome. We’ll have all that in the show notes, but I just like to give it voice. So Jason, thanks so much for taking the time out today and giving us a little bit of your wisdom and perspective. And yeah, thank you so much.

Jason Pickard:
I had so much fun, thank you. And yeah, it’s just a great honor to be with you. Thank you.

Bob Wheeler:
Thanks.