The Science Side of Prosperity with David Osmond – Episode 650

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[00:01] Welcome to the Prosperity Podcast. Hey, Prosperity Thinkers. Today, I have a special guest on the podcast. It’s David Osmond. And David is involved with the Prosperity team in a little bit of a lot of areas, we’ll call that. And I say a little bit because he has a background where he’s been able to listen well, have clear thinking, clear sight on how he can help people in the community. So Kim has asked me to do a special interview today. So David, thank you for being with us. Yeah, thank you very much, Spencer. I’m super excited to be here and just talk to you and share with you a little bit. I’m glad to be here. Perfect, so first I’m gonna take a swipe at it and say, what does prosperity mean to you?

[00:57] Ooh, prosperity to me is really tied to freedom. And a lot of that is the freedom to make a choice instead of being trapped in an area where you just have to respond. Prosperity is living in that space where now you’re making the choices for the best outcomes for you. And you’re not being held back by your own sort of backwards thinking or your own financial limitations. And you’re really able to step forward into who you’re supposed to be, following your passions and making the world a better place. So that’s what the long definition. Yeah, so David, did you grow up with that thinking or was that a thinking that you had to adopt and solidify? I definitely didn’t grow up that way, right? I grew up, the longer you get to know me,

[01:45] you’ll figure this stuff out. I’m a country kid at heart and we grew up just survival mode. And so a lot of what we lived through was just, hey, do we have enough food to eat? Can we keep the lights on? And it was a mindset that was really limited to just finding a way to fit into a bigger part of someone else’s picture, right? Like, can I get this better job? Can I get more hours at work? And it was really limited because we weren’t thinking about how do we create something, right? How do we step out of this mode where we’re always just responding and doing other people’s work into a mode where, yeah, we’re still doing that. We’re still doing other people’s work. But at the same time, we’re building something for ourselves.

[02:29] And so it was very much learned. I was surprised actually when I first, it’s probably close to 20 years ago, when I first found a book that was like this. And I said, wait, maybe this is possible. Maybe it’s not about getting a really good education or that’s important, right? But maybe it’s not just that. Maybe it’s not just a good job, right? Maybe there’s something more that needs to be done in order to be successful. That is awesome. So you found a book, you found something that opened up your eyes. Did you look at it and want to go down the path of investor? Or did you wanna go down the path of entrepreneur? Did you wanna go down the path of intrapreneur? Like, what was the pathway that you decided

[03:17] was gonna be your first step? And also your first step’s not always your last, but what was that first step? Yeah, that first step was really one of skepticism. I’ve always been a little bit of a contrarian and I read stuff and I say, could that actually work? So that my default mode was to get into a little bit of a testing premise. And I’ll tell you the book was, it was about using life insurance for banking and these principles, and it was Nelson Nash’s book. And I said, is that real? Could you do that? And I started to just experiment, right? So I had a policy and I used that for a little while. And I said, yeah, this seems to work out. It wasn’t a really great time. Also, I wasn’t building anything with it, right?

[03:59] I was just using it, using the policy. And I was like, I’m not doing anything great. So at the same time I was working as a college professor and kind of in this academic structure, right? Where I’m just really, just going along and doing my stuff, working as a college professor and not really owning my own labor, so to speak. Like I could work really hard, but that, you know, you don’t get paid more. It sounds weird to say that. You just did something else. That was cool. You published something, you know, you got a teaching award. That was really great. And that was sort of the end of it. And so it was really only about two years that I’ve been in, in the mode where I’m applying what I use,

[04:36] more working with entrepreneurs, myself being one, but other entrepreneurs that I’ve worked with. And that’s where it becomes really powerful because you’re now thinking about creating a lot more than just, you know, sort of using it for paying for car loans and stuff like that. So there was some real eye-opening moments to me just in that process. That’s cool. I think if we can get lucky, we might have to give you the nickname of professor, but we’ll see, we’ll wait on that one. But what were the things that, let’s sidestep for a second. What did you enjoy about being a professor and what did you seriously dislike? What I love about being a professor is getting to meet new people, seeing where they’re at,

[05:21] and just being able to really push in and help them get to the next stage where they want it to go, right? And that’s something I’m actually really skilled at is meeting people, understanding them, and just appreciating them no matter their stage in life. And so it’s fascinating to me how I could have really wage earners just struggling to get by. We get along great and we find something to connect over. Or I find people, they’re very affluent and the same thing, we, it doesn’t matter where you are, there’s a way that you could grow. There’s a way that you could be more successful. There’s a way that you could be a more complete version of yourself, I think is the best way to think of it. And what I loved when I was a college professor

[06:03] is that’s what I did. Like on a daily basis, I really dug into the individuals. I was at a smaller school. And so I just connected, helped them be successful. And I love that. The thing I always hated was start of the semester, filling out right in my syllabi and the meetings that went nowhere. You’re 14 years and you have the same academic meeting and you realize there’s nothing that’s gonna change. We’re gonna be here, we’re gonna be stuck. And that part was hard for me because I like progress and I like to see people and I like to see institutions improve. And so just how long it takes in an educational setting was really frustrating to be. So that’s just my thoughts. Like I had to say something I don’t like,

[06:48] but that was it. So we’ll call it getting stuck with doing things that don’t make a difference and doing things that people do just because they do. And so you made the jump over to the prosperity community. So tell us a little bit of why you made that jump and talk to us a little bit more about what are some of the unique things that you’ve brought from being a professor over to here? Yeah, I think a lot of the reason why I made the jump, the financial world is interesting because people end up doing financial strategy work, financial advisors, all of these. They couldn’t end up there from different areas, different arenas. And for me, I mean, I had considered doing this probably 10 years ago,

[07:45] thinking about doing financial strategy work a decade ago, but I was always in this place of kind of doubting my ability to be successful. And so it was just, I mean, less than a year ago where I was interacting with some people. I took a risk and went to a conference, a financial conference, really great people there and got to talking to them. And I wasn’t in the space and they said, dude, you got the skills to do this full time. Like, what are you waiting for? And I saw like, and this is what’s really crazy. Like right now there’s several key elements in the financial world that are coming together where it’s critical. I really feel this like, you know, you could have been building something the last 10 years,

[08:31] 15 years, 20 years ago, but right now there’s so many things that are coming together in the financial world, political world, just technology as well, that now’s the time that people really have the most to lose and also the most to gain. And so that’s where I was just like, it was clear to me if I don’t make a change and I look back 10 years, 20 years, I’m gonna be really disappointed with myself for not having the courage to take the risk, to do the thing that I know that I can do and that I need to do. And that’s the right thing to do. And so that was a big decision for me. And you asked the second part to that question. What was it? What did I find about working with a proctor? Yeah, so you told us of the jump

[09:16] and I wanted to see also, along with it, what are the things that you brought from being a professor over into this world? Yeah, I think from the academic space, a lot of what I focused on was science education and that was very practical. You could see it, you could have it modeled, but I was also in the space of doing a lot of physics education, so crunching numbers and making simulations and things like that. So that’s why I feel like I can really shine in this space because I understand how, not only do what the graph says, like a chart, but I also understand the back end of what it takes for someone to understand that and what it takes for someone’s concept of the world to change. Their cognitive mindset and the metacognition,

[10:04] how they think about their thinking. I can walk people through those strategies so maybe they come in with one view, sort of a money script that they might carry themselves and help them transition that in a way that’s more in alignment with their stated goals and where they wanna go in life so that they’re not responding subconsciously, that they’ve made that thought process more transparent for themselves and they could step into who they are destined to be and who they’re entitled to be, right? So that’s really where I think that skill set is gonna be useful because I spent the last, you know, probably 12 years thinking about how people think, you know? And there’s not a lot of people who do that.

[10:51] They present information, but they’re not thinking about the other level of what the other person is receiving. You know, what I find really unique that you have a science and you have a physics background where a lot of people in this industry, they have a really strong sales background or marketing background and there’s nothing wrong with that. You have to understand how people think and how they act and those are great skills to have. Everyone should have those. Gaining a science and physics background requires a different discipline and it’s a different type of thinking and so for you to be able to look at that, it makes me think more of how Todd Langford approaches this stuff, which is very mathematical

[11:37] and very pragmatic and you get other people like Nelson’s book, great book, but it’s more of like, hey, run your car loan through this or things that are day to day and it’s orienting towards a marketing person. So for you to have that science background, let’s call some unique things that raise your antenna to help people in the community. What are unique things you do? Yeah, so a lot of the unique stuff that I do is I will crunch those numbers, I’ll put them in, I don’t shy away from doing that and so I love kind of grappling with that and messing with it, but I also recognize that most people, once you put up two numbers on a screen, their brain stops listening, right? And that’s out of that background of teaching.

[12:27] So people need to see the concept before they even look at the numbers and get the idea. So I think having that math mind gives me a lot of surety, it gives me a lot of confidence as I go forward in what we’re looking at and what the strategy would be and how that’s gonna work out in people’s best interests and I could digest that in a way that it becomes approachable, right? That you’re not having to know how to do it all yourself and crunching the numbers, but we could look at it and any point in time, you could say, actually, I do wanna see the numbers and I could walk you through how that process goes and so that’s what I think is really different about, I met a lot of salespeople, right?

[13:09] And they’ll sell you stuff and at the end of the day, you buy it and you say, why did I buy this? And you don’t have anything other than, well, he told me it was good, right? Or she told me it was good and I don’t wanna be that kind of person. I do wanna sell you things and I believe really important because what we do is valuable, right? And it is for your best interest. I’m not selling you something that’s for my best interest, right? There’s other things out there that I can make a lot more money doing but my goal is to help my clients and so that’s where I do want them to buy it but I also want them to know why they bought it and I want them to have confidence that what they bought and the strategies that we’re using

[13:50] are gonna help them be successful and so the science background helps because I don’t mind digging into a problem. The more complex, the better sometimes. I just geek out on hard problems but I also, I want people to use it. It’s not a problem for the sake of a problem. I want that to go somewhere. I want their lives to be better at the end of it. I want them to win because when they win, the whole world gets better and so that’s just my focus and my love to tie those together. It’s something that when you’re in an academic setting, you’re required to teach some standards. We could teach you about electronegativity, Spencer, and you’re not gonna use it in your life. Like, be like, oh, that’s great.

[14:31] It’s the balance charge or whatever and it’s not relevant for most of the stuff that you do but money touches every part of your life and the way you think about money, the way you interact with it, the order that you use your money, that could have drastic impact on your ability to be successful, your ability to love others, to love yourself and to make the world better can be limited by you just making one decision, one wrong decision. So let’s fix it. Absolutely. That was, I think, the best sound bite, the snippet of this conversation that we had. David, you know, for me on the other side of the camera and microphone, I get to hear your background, your expertise, how you care about this and then how you’ve made this leap.

[15:18] Thank you for sharing your story today on the podcast. We really appreciate your time. And for any of you listeners, if you want to reach out, ask a special question to David, they get to know him more. There is a special email just for podcast listeners. It’s hello at prosperitythinkers.com. Send an email there and you’ll get routed over to him and you can ask away anything that would be. Thank you for spending time with us today, David. Yeah, thank you very much, Spencer. Great to see you and talk to you and thanks to all the listeners and I hope to talk to you in the future. That’s it. Thank you for listening to the Prosperity Podcast. To take control of your money and have it work for you,

[16:04] visit ProsperityThinkers.com. Call Shannon Maldonado, your founder of YOWE, a souvenir shop with artisanal articles and pieces selected by artists. I chose Shopify because after trying other platforms, this was undoubtedly one of the most intuitive. For me, it was important to think about where we would be in the future. All the tools to analyze sales, such as inventory management, are right there on our dashboard. Start your free evaluation at shopify.com.