The Start Line
The Whole Steward is an idea born out of a mindset shift at the start of 2018. At the time, I began to reflect on some significant areas of my life where I was not doing well.
Among these were how many hours I spent commuting and working away from my family. My expenses were growing in lock step with my income. My financial liabilities were growing. I had only one main source of income.
I happened to run into an old friend while standing in line at the California DMV to register yet another liability. He was reading a little purple book called “Rich Dad Poor Dad” and recommended I read it too.
I felt financially trapped. I was ready for a change. Not a change in job…a change in trajectory.
Over the holiday break, I started looking for other ways to build wealth, like selling on Amazon or owning rental property. To learn more, I did what any millennial would do…I googled it: “how to invest in real estate.”
An unexplained motivation started welling up inside me, and on January 1st 2018, I ordered my copy of Rich Dad Poor Dad. The concepts flew off the page, and I was astounded.
Thus began my journey. I immediately declared myself a real estate investor and got to work.
The Journey
The first thing I did was draw out on the white board what I was learning in “Rich Dad Poor Dad” to bring my lovely wife Anna-Leah up to speed. I knew, if I was going to be making changes, I needed her to come along too.
She understood the concepts, but thought I was crazy at first. Why would I want to leave my good secure job to be a real estate investor or start my own business?
Answer: A safe secure job is not as safe and secure as you might think.
I was working as a Software Engineer for Texas Instruments, the 3rd largest silicon vendor at the time, and 1 month later, I got laid off. In fact the entire San Diego branch got laid off, because they were consolidating the engineering to their headquarters in Texas. Everyone was handed their papers on the same day. You could move to Texas, or find a new job.
Then it made sense. Then it all clicked. We both understood it now. This had just gotten very real.
I got another job to pay the bills, but my mind was in a VERY different place.
Real Estate Investing
I spent the first year reading, watching videos, attending local real estate meetups, and touring properties. I even printed business cards titling myself a real estate investor and handed them out.
But I didn’t know what I was doing. I barely had any money, and the median home price in my hometown was over $600K with a rent-to-value ratio of 0.4%. None of the creative strategies, from house hacking to rehabbing seem to work for my situation.
For the first time ever, I started listening to podcasts and was shocked by the wealth of information at my fingertips. What once seemed so distant was there all along. I just didn’t think to look or listen.
Being a Christian, I always filter everything through the Word of God.
One of the podcasts I listened to was Get Rich Education with Keith Weinhold. I thought it was a strange name. This was not Get Rich Quick Education. It was Get Rich Education. It was the learnings of a successful long term buy and hold real estate investor, shared directly with me week in and week out, all for free.
He taught me how to think abundantly. He taught me how to do the right thing and then learn to do things right, and the order of importance in real estate investing: Mindset, Market, Team, Property (in that order, or it won’t work).
As the Real Estate Guys point out, you must “Be. Do. Have.” Who you “are” leads to what you “do” which determines what you “have”. If you want to change the latter, you must first change the former.
With the newly found knowledge, we started to take action, closing on our first investment property in September 2019.
I was now a real estate investor!
The Power of Learning
I started to realize the power of what I was learning while consuming 100’s of hours in podcasts and books, soaking everything up like a sponge, from goal setting, to business, to taxes, learning by doing.
I was back in school again and I was enjoying every minute of it.
We continued to add properties to my portfolio. I no longer blamed my circumstances for my outcomes. I met people who were like minded. My attitude was changed.
“It is your attitude, more than your aptitude, that will determine your altitude.”
Zig Ziglar
I became intrigued with business, abundance mindset and value creation. My respect for successful business owners grew. My respect for the wealthy grew. My respect for everyone grew.
“You can have everything in life you want, if you will just help other people get what they want.”
Zig Ziglar
Anna-Leah and I made many changes to our lives and things started to look very different. We started eliminating our liabilities. Our income was now greater than our expenses. We were expanding our means, saving more and giving more. Most importantly, we learned financial unity in our marriage.
The Lord really blessed us!
The Next Phase
This transformation was such a blessing, I wanted to share it! I wanted to see others experience the same thing.
I can learn finance from anyone who knows it well. Likewise for mathematics, engineering, programming, or business. But when it comes to the existential questions of life, often the answers fall short.
This started me thinking. My mind started brainstorming on where to go next.
I heard someone say, even if no one is listening, you should create your own podcast. You should validate your ideas, simply at a minimum with yourself. This will keep your ideas tested, improving and growing.
At the same time, I started to realize that though I had learned so much valuable insight about business and investing from so many financially successful entrepreneurs and business owners, there was still something missing.
That is the big question: Why?
Why do all this? Why work hard to become so successful, build a business, a brand, serve others with so much value, or become independently wealthy?
This is where I saw the gap. The best I would hear is “to leave a legacy”, “to leave an inheritance”, “to serve others” or “live a happy and fulfilled life”.
What is missing from all this? Who is missing from all this?
The Answer: Our Creator. The Lord God, maker of heaven and earth.
An Idea Is Born
When I started down my journey of learning in 2018 I had thought to myself, as a Christian I should know what the Bible says about all this. About money, investing, business and stewardship.
Since then, every time I’ve encountered a verse in my bible reading which had anything to do with money, investing, business, resources, wealth, material and stewardship in general, I underlined it with a green pencil.
You know what happened? My bible lit up with green! It was everywhere. In every book of the bible. Practically in every chapter!
I had learned from Chris Martenson at Peak Prosperity about the different forms of capital we all manage on a daily basis, and realized God has spoken in His Word about every single one of them.
When people think of stewardship, they often mean money management. But we are managers of much more than that, and we have the need for balance in all areas of our stewardship.
Spiritual – Living – Intellectual – Experiential – Relational – Cultural – Material – Financial – Time
If you’re successful in business, but your family relationships are a train-wreck, well, that’s a problem. Or maybe you’re great physically, or intellectually, but your finances are messed up. Or maybe you’re independently wealthy, but spiritually spurn your creator, who made it all.
I wanted to share this. I prayed about it extensively. While alone with the Lord. My wife and I together. All the time.
I wanted to show others how much God cares about not just some, but all of these areas of stewardship.
Thus was born The Whole Steward.
“The holistic approach to wealth from a Christian worldview.”
Idea to Reality
We brainstormed this idea for a long time. Anna-Leah and I picked the name very carefully so it would best capture the sense of who we are.
But for a long time, it was just an idea. Something we talked about, but that was about it. I asked a few people, “hey, if I did a podcast like this, would you listen?”
But I knew the idea of it would be hard. I knew it would take tremendous commitment, and certainly didn’t want to start something I wasn’t willing to complete with excellence as best I could. I would need a lot of support, especially from my family.
So for a long time, it remained just that, an idea. Until…
One day, in February 2022, Anna-Leah and I were alone together and I asked her what our goals were for the year. She looked at me, and said “this is the year you start The Whole Steward.”
“Are you sure?”, I asked, in unbelief.
“Yes” was her reply.
As I started to list out all the implications, challenges and details this would entail, she got on the computer right then and there, searched for the website domain, and found it still available.
This was the nudge we needed. We prayed about it again, having done so many times before, asking the Lord for wisdom and guidance. This was it, before our talk was over, the domain was purchased. https://thewholesteward.com was ours.
So it’s begun.
Ready, Set, Go!
The next 10 months involved intensive work in late nights, early mornings and weekends, getting everything ready.
The business plan, fictitious business name, the equipment, the studio, the logo, the website, the theme song, the tag line, posting content, creating the newsletter, and recording the first episodes, etc.
What a tremendous amount of hard yet rewarding work! The date kept pushing out further and further, until all of 2022 was gone.
But…we were finally ready!
On January 4th 2023, The Whole Steward is live!
9 The heart of man plans his way, but the LORD establishes his steps.
Proverbs 16:9
13 Come now, you who say, “Today or tomorrow we will go into such and such a town and spend a year there and trade and make a profit”— 14 yet you do not know what tomorrow will bring. What is your life? For you are a mist that appears for a little time and then vanishes. 15 Instead you ought to say, “If the Lord wills, we will live and do this or that.”
James 4:13–15
If the Lord wills, we will continue to bring you great content in “the holistic approach to wealth from a Christian worldview.”
Soli Deo Gloria!
Thanks for joining us on this journey. To learn more about what we do and why we do it, please visit our about page, join our newsletter, and subscribe to the podcast today!
What’s your journey? We’d love to hear it. Other’s will be inspired by it. So please share here or contact us today!
