069: Time Freedom Tips for a Balanced and Intentional Life with Christopher Nelson

00:00 - 27:31 | Christopher Nelson: So many people focus on the concept of financial freedom and not what's really behind it. Financial freedom is one of five different freedoms that people pursue for lifestyle design because that's the ultimate goal. The goal is to design a life around things that you love to do, around work, that brings you joy around a purpose that brings you joy. So it's truly understanding what are the underlying five freedoms that move you forward that ultimately do unlock financial freedom for many. Welcome to Tech Equity and Money Talk. I'm your host, Christopher Nelson. Today, we're going to be talking about how to design your life based on the five freedoms. As I was pursuing financial freedom, I was seeking some other things. I wasn't sure how this whole thing worked together. I saw one freedom that I was seeking and other things started unfolding in front of me. It's Building great relationships and talking to other people who've been through these experiences can provide you a new language. And when I met Maurice Filajin, who I've interviewed on episode 13 of Tech Equity and Money Talk, go give that a listen. It's a very popular video to watch too. He exposed me to the five freedoms of lifestyle design. And when I became familiar with this framework, I had this moment finally, Finally, here's a language. Here's all of the things I've been trying to unlock. And now I see it in a framework. And as I went back and I did some journaling on this, I realized that I was seeking to unlock some of these freedoms myself. In today's episode, I want to walk through these freedoms with you. I want to break down each one of them individually, help you understand what it is. Then I'm going to walk you through how I iterated through them myself and unlock some things for you as well. I am very bullish on this. I believe that this strategy is, it's very freeing. I don't mean to be repetitive, but it, It's liberating to think about because you're able to understand where you can make small adjustments that give you big rewards. It also gives you things to focus on. I'm always focused on targets. What are my targets? And when you have targets, you get clarity. Clarity gives you confidence. And when you have clarity and confidence, you tend to then be more committed to executing. So let's get into the five. So the first one, which is this, and all of these are interconnected, they all work together, and I'm going to tease this out, but the first one is time freedom. having control over your schedule. So when you have time freedom, you have the ability to choose what you want. I know for myself, my main goal in pursuing financial freedom was to get to time freedom. That was the main focus for myself. I wanted to have a lifestyle that provided me the opportunity to be very flexible and very available for my sons as they are walking from, you know, boys to becoming young men. That was just really something that I dreamed about and became my purpose. So it was really around time freedom. Financial freedom is the second one. So financial freedom is where you as the individual have created the business or the portfolio that creates income so that you're not dependent on a nine to five, or you're not dependent on somebody else's influence of where you have to go in to make your money. That's financial independence. And so achieving financial independence, which for me came August 22nd, 2022, That allowed me to not have to go into an office, not have to have a boss, and have this portfolio that I'm managing that's the main source of that income, manage that portfolio flexibly with a lot less time to generate the income, time freedom, financial freedom. That leads to the third one, which is geographic freedom. And sometimes this, you know, money can solve that problem. Also being strategic in the way that you set up your house. If your house, I know plenty of people today who set up their house to be able to be Airbnb, so they can go and not be paying their rent and go and pay for something somewhere else. But geographic freedom is the ability to live and work from wherever you want. Remote work is opened up a lot of this show this is where with geographic freedom we were able to spend the summer living and working in spain and france having an experiment of what's it like to pick up our families go move to another country and in. move what we do from here to over there. It's geographic freedom. And that's something that we're seeking more of. I am trying to understand how can we get more geographic freedom as a family. And my wife and I are envisioning that our life as empty nesters will be as digital nomads, that we can choose where we truly want to live and work, month to month, quarter to quarter. The fourth one is really important to understand in the context of our social structure, and it's called the freedom of relationships. That's the fourth one is the freedom of relationships. Many times in our jobs, we feel pressure to go to networking events, to stay within a small circle. That can happen from a scarcity mindset. It can also happen from an abundance mindset, meaning I was very privileged and blessed to have a formal networking group inside of the Bay Area that helped develop me into a CIO that gave me a phenomenal group of peers that were going through the same experience that we're still in touch with today. But sometimes, even when things are going well, we can be In the same pool of people where thinking of this freedom, you know, and this is how they're all interlaced when you're geographically free, you're going to go to different places, you're going to meet different people who have different ideas. For me, I really found. relationship freedom as I got into private equity investing and found a completely different group of people that were doing a lot of active investing, meaning that they were buying a lot of their own commercial properties or people that were doing limited partner investing. And I created a whole different group of people. When you're freedom focused, you're intentional about that. You're thinking of your lifestyle and how you're designing it. And the groups aren't just aligned, your social networks and your relationships are not just aligned with your vocation, but they're aligned with your interest and your passions. That brings us to the last one. which I think the last one is incredibly interesting, which is that is your freedom of mission and purpose. And so how do you pursue a meaningful path in life beyond just your job, beyond your vocation? This one isn't talked about enough, and I believe that this is the most powerful one. And I also think it's one that if not addressed, people can struggle with it. I have observed that when people get to financial independence or sometimes when people have the ability to become financially independent, and I know plenty of people that have large portfolios that could support them. But they get scared. They get scared because they don't know what their mission is outside of their job. So they keep working because they want to feel relevant. They want to feel needed. And this is one that we have to, as we're thinking of getting to financial independence, we have to be very intentional on what we want to do with our time. Because if we don't do anything, then that can lead to ill health, mental health, if you believe that humans were made so that they have a purpose and they thrive when they're serving a mission and serving other things, which I do believe. And so my work is I have moved from serving corporations inside of an IT role to serving investors who have invested with me in my private equity funds, serving my partners as we're executing operations, especially in the mobile home park space, and then serving the tech community, who I'm very passionate about educating when it comes to how to work for equity, how to manage the money that comes with it, because I know there's a lot of pain, consternation, confusion around that. I have been able to find a mission and I'm not saying this to brag, I'm saying this to educate that I think that many people in their roles in tech can take the skills that they have and retool them to support the community. The reality is, is I always look at the top of the food chain. You think about what CEOs do. A lot of CEOs that have built careers, growing companies, they move from being CEOs to doing board work. They get compensated for it. They usually get a lot of equity compensation and they're able to continue to still serve companies and still have a mission and a purpose in the tech community. There's also plenty of people that are advisors and mentors to companies that they invest in. So, it's important when you're thinking about getting to financial freedom, you're thinking about all five of these and how they work together. This is why I'm so grateful for Maurice for sharing this with me because I realized how I was leveraging some of these different freedoms as goals and focus to ultimately unlock financial freedom. So to recap, there's time freedom, freedom to do what you want, when you want with your time. There's financial freedom where you're generating income and it's not dependent on a job or another source. It's something that you ultimately control. There's geographic freedom, freedom to live and work where you want. Then there's the freedom of relationship, where you can build relationships that fuel you and energize you that aren't just tied to your vocation, but are tied to your passions, your interests, and your new locations. The last one is the freedom of mission, so that you can be on a mission outside of your work. I want to pause on that one one more time, because there was another point that I wanted to make. Which is, and we'll talk about this in a little bit is sometimes when people become so disengaged with their mission, you can leverage the pursuit of financial independence and creating a portfolio as a multi-generational business. You can pursue that and that becomes your purpose and then work becomes purposeful. So it's important to understand how to use that. And I'm going to tease that out a little bit as I go through. My story and how I built this and got to this point. Saying this not to brag, saying this because we need to have these conversations. People need to share how it worked for them. I'm tired of listening to the astronomers talk about how they're seeing the moon, the stars, and ideally want to go there one day. I want to hear from the astronauts. And I know that you do too. So this is where I want to share this with you. So my story starts in 2010. In 2010, I had exited a failed startup that I tried to go to work for equity. At the same time, I also lost a side hustle. I had stood up a couple of juice and smoothie bars with a friend in Arizona. to create cashflow. We were going to go buy real estate and that had folded shop because of the great recession. It was hard to compete a $4 smoothie against a $5 foot long sub. And it was at this low point financially, I still had a good skillset that I met the woman who would be my wife. So I was motivated. I was like, okay, we want to build a family together. I need to get on a good financial footing. So the focus started becoming financial independence or just really getting on a solid financial footing. This is where I got laser focused and thought, I'm not going to do a side hustle. I am going to build my skills. I'm going to think like an investor with my time and talent, and I am going to figure out how to work for equity and how to win by leveraging skill and not gambling. And that's what led me to working for Splunk. They came in 2011, so did some work focused on that. Then 2011 came along, went to work for Splunk. 2012 was then our first IPO as a family. And As i said before it was a multiple seven figure payday it was more than we imagined so now we had good financial footing we did not have financial freedom we did have in twenty twelve also our first son and i started having this vision that okay if he's. you know, going to turn one in 2013. So he's here with us in 2012. And in 10 or 11 years, when he gets to be a middle schooler, could I have financial independence and be with him and walk with him in his journey? I know it's hard. It's hard for me. I think it's hard for many people. Could I be there and have that? So that became the next purpose. And so what I had to do was figure out now with the money that we'd made, that was sitting there in a single stock, we're overweight in this large position. How do I tax efficiently diversify it? How do I start putting it into a portfolio that can start working for us? And I'm telling you the full story of how I'm focused on the freedoms and I'm leveraging these skills that I teach, which are this foundational four of from equity to exit, where you focus on your expertise, you trade that for equity, for the best equity that you can, then you build an evergreen portfolio, then you plan your exit. You plan your graduation from every single level that you're at. That was essentially, I was using the five freedoms as these goals. So it was first financial freedom. Okay, we actually got a strong financial footing, but now I need to get that money to work for us. I need to build the skill of how do I build an evergreen portfolio? The goal was time freedom. How do I have more flexibility of time? So as I continued to execute on this plan, What happened is I was taking roles that had more and more responsibilities. So I left a senior director role, went to a chief information officer role that had a lot of demands on my time. We'd relocated to the New York tri-state area. And I realized at that point that while I was getting the equity in the role that was meeting the financial freedom. that move took away from my time freedom, meaning that I had less flexibility because I had more responsibilities. And I wanted to at least have some time with my family when my kids were young. I didn't want to be isolated in an office. And so it was understanding that lesson, that hard lesson learned of, oh, if I continue to climb just seeking financial freedom, I'm going to actually have less time freedom to at least spend with my family. And then also think about how am I going to manage this money? I mean, that was one of the other factors too, is while it was less time with my family, I was losing focus on how do I build this evergreen portfolio. Evergreen portfolio. Say that five times fast. So then it was transitioning to taking a step down, going from a CIO to then working for another CIO as a vice president. That opportunity gave me more time freedom. I got some time back. We also changed location. We came to Texas. In Texas, there was more opportunity when it came to commercial real estate and residential real estate when we came into 2017. So with the time freedom, we spent more time, my wife and I, investing. in residential real estate, in commercial real estate, building our portfolio, building income. Now it's still working. I didn't need income then, but many people on the road to financial freedom, they think, oh, I'm just going to keep all of my investments in growth because I'll turn it into income when I need it. Do not do that. Because you don't know where the investments are going to be, where the market's going to be at that time. You want to be building your portfolio today, how you want it to behave in five years. If you don't need the income, just reinvest it. It's pretty easy if you're disciplined. And again, you structure and set it up like a business. It's relatively straightforward. So I got time back. So I was getting some time freedom and I was building financial freedom in the portfolio. Then it was at the end of 2019, so it was obvious to me at that point that I had been at that role for around three years at Forcepoint, and we knew that it wasn't going to go IPO, so I knew that I had to figure out what I was going to do next. So I took a sabbatical. In that sabbatical, I realized a couple of things. The portfolio needed some more tokens. We needed some more investment to get it to where we wanted to perform to replace my paycheck. The other thing is that I really enjoyed being remote. I enjoyed not having to go into the office. So then the decision was for me, and my wife was already working remote at that point as well, Let's get the geographic freedom. Let's work remotely so that we can work where we want. And so that is, I took on the next role, which again is I did not advance. In fact, I went from a vice president. I took a senior director role at a pre IPO company, GitLab, all remote company. Pre-IPO equity, it was executing the same playbook that I'd done before. I'd done significant amount of due diligence on the company and went to work there. That gave me, and also because of their asynchronous style that they worked, it gave me a lot of time freedom, it gave me geographic freedom, and that helped me continue to unlock the financial freedom. Now in 2019, as I was really building my private equity company, the one thing I started understanding too, as I was building that company to help technology employees invest, I was creating investments for people because I thought that was the best way to serve them was I want to show them what a good income investment looks like. I started realizing that I have a heart and a passion to teach people all of the things that I was struggling to learn. I started developing a mission that was outside of work and while i had the desire to go back and do another tour inside of tech working in business applications i knew that i had a mission that was growing outside of that i also at that point had started building another network Outside of tech, I had a network that was in commercial real estate, a network that was in private equity and started branching that network into multiple different connections that have helped me unlock the way to structure and build my portfolio. So all of these pieces, as I was working towards one thing, financial freedom, I realized I wanted the time freedom. and I was on the traditional path and I got to where I thought I wanted to, the CIO, I realized I was giving a both. I then start taking roles that were no longer the CIO role, but were the second to the CIO and performing very well, focusing on ensuring that I was executing very well, that I was meeting deadlines, that I was doing all those things, but also having time freedom to spend with my family, focus on building the portfolio and was developing this mission to help others in building these other relationships. It's been in reflection that I realized that these are all part of these freedoms that work together. That ultimately got me to the point that when I left full-time employment from GitLab on August 26th, 2022, I had a portfolio that had replaced my paycheck. I had a mission that had replaced what I had been doing before, which you know, for working for companies and building great teams to service business applications and help a tech company scale. Now I had a mission and then I also had a new network and now I was able to ultimately unlock time, freedom, financial freedom, and geographic freedom. And so this is how it worked for me is it was pursuit of one in, in understanding how they're all working together so that I could unlock them. And I can imagine, as I talk with many technology executives and employees today, some who I'm working with in coaching, some who are attending my courses on how do you build a portfolio as a business, there is a strategic way that you can do this. But understanding these freedoms and what's the most important to you at that point in time is critical. Do you want more time freedom? Are you trying to create some margin at work? Well, then maybe it's not about the promotion. There's a lot of evidence that says the amount of dollars that you're going to get in that promotion may not be worth it. Now, the thing you want to consider is what's the amount of equity? Are you going to work for another couple of years and be able to stash four or five years worth of paychecks? Okay, you have to understand what's most important to you, or is it time freedom? I'm not going to take the promotion. I'm going to focus on executing my job with excellence and creating margin for myself so I have more time to do other things. Understanding how the freedoms work together, how they can support you as you're working through tech. And then building those fundamental skills, because the freedoms work together with what I'm teaching on from equity to exit, which is if you're building your expertise so you can build a brand and a business around it, that in and of itself can give you time freedom. If you are an expert enough that you can go and be a consultant and own your own time, work when you want to, that can then allow you to have some time and geographic freedom. It doesn't all have to be just about financial freedom. I think that's a goal for many of us, but sometimes it takes time to build up the portfolio to a point where it can truly support you. So you have to be able to add different pieces on. Ultimately, you could be in a role right now and saying, if I just had some geographic freedom, If I was just able to find a remote role so that I could say, take workations and I could go work for four weeks from Northern Spain on the beach, or I could go work from South America or be in Japan, I could get some energy because a lot of this is around how do we design our life to fulfill ourselves while we are still leveraging the vocation to create the portfolio so that ultimately we can own all of those. And this is why I think, so expertise, you can build a brand or a business around it. And I think with expertise, you can also then command roles that give you the most amount of equity. You can also command roles that give you remote work opportunities. I know the conversation that I had with Darren Murph, I can't remember the exact episode. He is somebody who created such expertise in creating remote workplaces that he always created remote roles for himself. Geographic freedom was important to him upfront. This is where you get the opportunity to decide. And then, as I mentioned before, if your work isn't creating a purpose for you, the easiest thing to do is to say, I want to get free for myself, for my family, to spend more time with them. I'm going to make work purposeful because I am harvesting equity to put into my portfolio as a business that is my purpose. And let's talk about that for a moment. I have had conversations with people. They said, well, isn't this pursuit of your portfolio as a business? Isn't that soulless? Isn't it? Like, do you not have a purpose doing that? And I think you can have a purpose in building a portfolio as a business. And let me give you some examples. Part of a portfolio. And part of a advanced tax structure is going to be philanthropy and plenty of people. And again, we've seen examples. I can think of, you know, Bill and Melinda Gates. I can think of Mackenzie Bezos who got all this money. She's managing her portfolio. She's focused on the giving portion. And I think that there's very strategic ways that you can give. And what is give? What is giving philanthropy? Well, if done correctly, you're investing in impact. I mean, because we use the term, I'm giving you the money. And that's part of the transaction is it is donated. However, if you're donating a significant amount or you're donating in a different way, then you can have influence over that organization. You could advise that organization. So our work right now with the Ugandan Water Project that we went on site last year, we went and visited that team. As we're now investing in that, we're looking at some of the different problems that they're solving, the strategic ways they're approaching bringing water to the rest of Uganda and solving this problem. It's been a phenomenal partnership and gets me excited about the donation. It gets me excited about the giving because we see it as a family as we're investing in impact. So when you're running your portfolio, that I believe also when you're thinking about succession, you're thinking about how do you teach your kids that we're creating a business here, not that you can consume off of, but that you can create with. This business can be something that fuels your innovation, fuels you solving some of the world's hardest problems. So I don't believe that running a portfolio as a business is soulless. I think it is what you make it. And if you make it a family business that, yeah, the core of the business is we're partnering with other investors to provide them capital, give us a return. And this return comes in, we're providing for the family and we're also investing with impact with some of our philanthropic partners. You can make that a life journey. I mean, that's something that we're walking through today with our sons. And so I hope that this was insightful to you. I think those five freedoms, when you think about it, they give more substance than just the pursuit of financial independence. So time freedom, financial freedom, geographic freedom, freedom of relationship, and then freedom of mission. I would encourage you to take that and think about how you can apply those to your situation today and where you can just increment and get a little bit of those freedoms. Can you get a little bit of time freedom by implementing some time blocking at work and working on something that's going to get you to financial freedom? Or maybe it's getting outside of your comfort zone and going to a real estate meetup or an investing meetup or something that you're passionate about. I don't know. Maybe it is a meetup that has to do with your skillset, engineering meetup, or maybe it's just getting to a remote role and getting some geographic freedom so you can think about things in a different way. Leverage these freedoms to start designing your life today. You don't need to wait for anything. You just need to understand how they work and be able to pull the levers. Thank you so much for joining me. I hope you enjoyed this. We'll see on the next one.