[00:00:00] Speaker A: Foreign.
[00:00:23] Speaker B: Hi, I'm Christopher Nudo, and this is your Life and Legacy, where faith, finances, and personal values come together to shape the impact we leave behind.
Today I'm joined by Wayne von Borstel, president of Von Borstel and Associates. Wayne's journey in the financial world started really when his grandmother trusted him to invest her money just at age 18 years old.
Since 1985, he has helped wealthy families and and professionals analyze their financial lives, position their assets wisely, and pursue a future where they can live better, worry less, and leave more.
I want to begin the story today behind that mission, because legacy thinking usually starts long before formal planning ever begins.
First of all, Wayne, welcome to the show.
[00:01:26] Speaker A: Thank you for having me.
[00:01:28] Speaker B: I want to open this segment with your personal entry into finances and how that early trust of your grandmother's really helped you develop responsibility, life experiences and really shape the philosophies you bring to families today.
[00:01:47] Speaker A: Well, you know, there's many touch points where you can go back and try to figure out, how did I get here? And I'm not sure I could create that.
That track again. I'm not sure I could find the path. But one of the significant ones definitely was when grandma gave me her money to invest. You know, I. I'd been investing my own money a little bit. I'd save money and had a little bit invested, but she gave me her wealth to invest.
She always believed I could be anything. She. She believed I was better than I was.
And when you have that kind of love, that kind of respect, you know, you don't want to hurt that. And I invested for her.
And I was farming at the time, and I got on the tractor and started plowing. And when I got off the tractor, her assets were down a bunch.
And, you know, it made me realize that I had to pay attention.
And I don't even think I understood it at that point. It was just a beginning of a growth. It was beginning, but I cared. I cared enough that I needed to figure out, okay, what was I going to do different? How do I keep that from happening? Because grandma had such pride in me. She had such joy in me, and that wasn't what I wanted to do for her.
So it started a path. It started a path that created what I am today.
[00:03:14] Speaker B: And I love the fact that, you know, really, if you boil this down into the relational part of the transaction between your grandmother and you, and you said it so well, Wayne, it was love, right? It was like, you know, she gave you money to invest, and that was the Transactional part. But the love that came behind, hey, this is my grandchildren, my grandson. I really know that he'll do what's best. And that taught you stewardship in a form like that, Trust by your grandma and the stewardship you learned. Tell us about that portion of your life at that point and really what it meant to save and invest.
[00:04:00] Speaker A: I think the biggest thing that that lesson taught me is that I wanted to be better.
Wanted to be better for her. I wanted to be better. Whatever I did, I wanted to be the best I could be. So that started me on a path of looking for answers.
And, you know, it's kind of like climbing a mountain. You can't see the next hill until you get over this cliff. And you got to get there. And. And there were so many times in my career that were challenges, that maybe I failed somebody, that maybe I disappointed someone.
And if I could, just like with grandma, I wanted to find a way to be better.
My mother.
There are three women in my life that were great.
My grandmother loved me and thought I was better than I really was. My mother, that put up with my bad side, that let my good side show out, and my wife, that was always there.
And my mother taught me to serve. That's what she lived for. My mother lived to serve others. That's what she. And that's why I glean from her, is to serve others. And if you're going to serve others, if that's important to you, you have to be your best. You have to work at being better than you were yesterday, and you're doing your best. You know, when I started the business, I was doing my best. I was.
I believe people. I. But I found that some of the people that told me that I was best, some of the people told me I was with the best company or wasn't exactly right.
That wasn't true. And if you're always searching to be your best, if you're always searching to give better value, then that will take you on a path that is where you should be.
[00:05:44] Speaker B: I'm dying to hear, Wayne, about your wife, because you had your grandma, you had the three. You had the three ladies, right? Tell me now where your wife fits into that.
[00:05:53] Speaker A: Well, you know, my wife, and not much I did was traditional in my life.
I went to Chile to visit a girl, and the story is actually bigger than this, but to visit a young lady. And in three weeks, I came back married.
And her grandmother hated me. And I was never further than 60ft from her, from her mother the whole time. So, you know, to do that. And my wife has put up with me for 47 years.
We've gone through struggles. We've gone through things.
And our faith, you know, a lot of what, a lot of what's gotten me where I am is my faith. But our faith. We married each other.
She was 18, I was 23.
We dated all two weeks before we decided we were going to get married.
And we did it. And she couldn't even come to this country. And I had to fight to bring her to this country because she was from Chile.
And, you know, all those things.
Struggles make you stronger.
Struggles make you stronger. But faith, faith is what's gotten us through those 47 years. She never left me, no matter how stupid I was, no matter how she never left me. And she was always there with what I need. Even today, even today, if there's something that needs to be done, she's going to make sure it happens. If my staff doesn't get it done in my office, in my life, in what I do.
[00:07:23] Speaker B: You have a great, great story, Wayne.
We're just getting started and I'm so glad that you're on the program. Our viewers are just going to absolutely love this story.
Wayne, looking back, really today, as you guide families and these bigger financial decisions, I'm guessing you know, it's this inner voice within you of the three ladies and that, and of course, all of your experience that guides you when you're helping. Because we know that families with lots of wealth, they have the same problems as people without wealth.
Sometimes their problems are even bigger. Tell us about how you guide them along
[00:08:09] Speaker A: by coaching, by, by making sure you know, the biggest problem we have in our industry is things happen in the market that people aren't expecting. So let's, let's tell them. I don't know when the next 20% down in the market's going to happen, but I know it's going to happen and I know it's going to happen multiple times in their life. There's three things that are going to happen in their life. Markets are going to go down 20%, inflation is going to go over 10%, and your health is going to go sideways.
And so how do we deal with that? How do we build a plan strong enough? It's like going across the ocean. If you're going to go across the ocean, you want to make sure you're on a ship that's going to survive whatever storm you hit. The time to decide that you are not on seaworthy ship is not in the middle of the typhoon, you need to know you're on a seaworthy ship before you get there. And that's the way financial planning is. And, and to give people the vision, give people the vision of success. We know things are going to happen. What is the plan? What are we going to do? What have we done to mitigate chance of failure? And that's what I do.
[00:09:24] Speaker B: Yeah, you're so right.
I can imagine as you're saying it, 100 miles out at sea and you know, maybe we should add a bigger boat. That just seems like a but, but right. When you translate that to way the people treat their finances, I, I see a lot of parallels. So, you know, the Lord has carried you, sustained you, and really made you successful. But what are those principles that have remained constant in your philosophy even, you know, as markets change, you know, products change, clients need change. What has been those, you know, those core items that you've held on to?
[00:10:12] Speaker A: Truth.
Truth. I'm not, I'm not looking for the next fancy story and I lose some business over that because a lot of my competitors always come out with a new story of the week, new, new thing that's going to happen.
The truth is usually the truth, no matter what. And so stay with the truth. And my clients realize every time they call me, they're going to get the same message from me. Systematic, unemotional, diversified. And when they get tired of that, we're going to be systematic and emotional, diversified, tired of that, we're going to be systematic. And they know that. So they know what? I don't get calls during a down market. I don't get calls because they know what's happening. They know that we're doing our best. They know we have a plan. They know we're headed towards our goals and it won't be a straight line. And I coach them hard on that so that when tough times come, they're prepared. They're tough.
[00:11:08] Speaker B: That's great. We have about one minute, one minute left in this segment. Tell us a little bit about your faith journey. Like when did it start? Did you, did it start as an adult? Were you raised with great faith as a child? Where, where did that, where did that all come from?
[00:11:27] Speaker A: Well, this is another big story, but when I married my wife from Chile, she came from Santiago, 10 million people.
I brought her to Dead Dog Ranch in Bake of an Oregon and a county that only has 1600 people, no trees. And I brought her to a place that she couldn't even imagine.
And you have to learn it's only you and God out there. That's the only thing that's out there. It's, you know, the sage brush, rattlesnakes rot. It's you and God. And you learn to appreciate that relationship. And my mother made sure I went to church every day. I was always in church. And that was an important part of who I am, is my faith. And I don't remember not having faith. I'm not one of those people that, you know, it just was always there.
It was always there. And, you know, we've changed shirts, we've done whatever, but our faith has been critical. Our faith is driven where we live today.
[00:12:25] Speaker B: That's fantastic. And, and I'm sure with that, that is your absolute, the foundation. And we know that foundation on rocks. You stand firm and you seem to be a really good testimony, Wayne, of building your house on a rock. Listen, I want to close this segment by reminding our viewers that a legacy mindset often begins with one meaningful act of trust and grows into a lifelong commitment to the wise. Stay tuned as we spend more time with Wayne and learn his core principles for success.
Hey, welcome back to your life and legacy. I'm here with Wayne von Borstel and we're talking about phrases that capture so much of what families really want. For financial planning to live better and then to worry less and to leave more.
I want to move right into Wayne's core promise and unpack what that means in real life, not just in numbers, but in daily peace of mind, daily freedom, and long term family impact.
So, Wayne, when you say to people, live better, tell us exactly what that means. And is it just more than having money?
[00:13:57] Speaker A: Well, I, I don't think money makes you happy. Money, money can make you unhappy. I, one of the biggest battles I have with clients is to get them to live a simpler life. You know, they get so much stuff. They get, they get so many houses, they get so many boats and, and they can't even take care of it all. They gotta worry about, they go on vacation, they gotta worry about fixing the vacation place up.
Stuff is worry I want people to get so they can go live life.
And that means many different things that can mean, you know, for me, I built Christian schools around the world in places that nobody would go that don't have schools, that, that, that brings something to my soul that nothing else can do. And I hope I can do that a little bit with clients that they go live their life. Whether that's grandkids fishing, they shouldn't have to worry about money.
We do, we put probability. Everything we do is about probability of success. How do we put numbers on our side that no matter what happens, we don't know what's going to happen Monday, but whatever happens, that we will be okay.
[00:15:10] Speaker B: I love the fact, you know, I can just, you know, metaphorically speaking, you're building Christian schools into your clients and you're the teacher and you know, I understand that's not what you meant. You literally are helping build Christian schools throughout probably the world. But like as you said that I'm thinking to myself, yes, and this man is also building into these people the same kind of education because it's Christ centered and right with the right foundation. But despite that, you know this because you do it every day, financial worry is still so dominant in our culture. And you know, you talked about, you know, the materialism and the stuff that gets people.
What are some, what are some of the other problems that people are facing that create this worry, this anxiety that having money produces?
[00:16:12] Speaker A: Well, the biggest thing is they got turn off the news media. You know, news media makes money from us doing silly things.
The news media has advertisers that want to make money from us doing transactions, which most of the time the transactions. You know my book, the Truth Project, Finding the courage to ignore Wall Street. Can you shut it off? You know, one of my clients flew to Europe on a trip, 500 people on the plane. And while he was up there, the stock market dropped 500 points.
And when he got off the plane, he thought he was the only one that wasn't looking for a phone, wasn't looking for a newspaper. He went and enjoyed his.
He went and enjoyed his vacation because he knew he didn't have to worry about. We had taken care of what we needed to take care of. We had a plan, we had a path that we're going to follow. And he can go live his life.
And that's what I'm trying to get people to do. I coach people so hard that we're going to be systematic and emotionally diversified. We're going to follow the plan. No matter what we do, we're going to follow the plan because the only thing God made us emotional animals. I don't know why he did that, but he made us emotional animals. And our worst decisions we make financially are emotion.
So how do I help people fight emotion? How do I help people negate that in their planning? Because that's where they'll make the biggest mistakes. Have a plan, coach them, and educate them well.
[00:17:48] Speaker B: And I think that really rolls into my. My next thought is people can accidentally build wealth, right? You know, they get the right job, their business ends up growing, they have a fantastic idea, they happen to invest correctly, but. But they don't have peace in what they've built. And so how do you help them get that piece? I think it's going to be in the coaching. I've heard it from you already, but expand on that for us.
[00:18:15] Speaker A: Well, we need to set their goals. They have to have a plan based on their goals. It can't be my goals. You know, they accidentally started saving $50 a paycheck, got paid weekly or whatever, and they're worth millions when they get to retirement. And while they're saving, it doesn't worry them at all. But when they get there, now this is real money and they're going to quit working and they got to live off of it, and it scares them.
So we have to build a plan based on their goals. It has to be their goals. Why do they do things? The reason they do things is so they can retire. You know, half my clients wonder why I haven't told them they can retire yet. Another half worry that I will tell them they have to go back to work.
The three things they worry about is retirement, lifestyle, and family. That's why we do everything. And so if we build a plan based on those three things and if everything we do is based on their family, based on their lifestyle, based on what their goals are as far as retirement or not, then then they can. They can believe in that. They can have confidence in that because we're building on their plan. The they know that they've gotten choices and we have a path that we're going to walk to them. And we aren't looking back because we can't control what happened yesterday. We're looking forward. Are we on track? Are we on track? I don't talk about returns. I don't talk about returns because what good does it do? It just makes you nervous. If I make you nervous, you're going to be a terrible client. You're going to make decisions. So my job, Are we on track?
That's all we Are we on track? Are we on peak? And if we aren't, then let's adjust.
Let's do something.
But they're always going to hear the truth from me. They're always going to be bait. Everything we talk about is based on their plan, their goals. When they call me up, they know. They may disagree with me, but they know I know them better than Anybody else, and I'm going to tell them with the best of my confidence what I believe they should do based on their plan, their goals and their desires.
[00:20:14] Speaker B: So taking it, taking us with a new client, you know, you have a new client coming in, you've established that they would be somebody you think, at least at the onset, is somebody you could work with. Well, how do you get them to start thinking about this, these goals and their lifestyle? You know, you have to spend some time and really unpack who they are and then almost start putting the pieces back together. What does that look like?
[00:20:41] Speaker A: Well, we spend three appointments before we engage at all, making sure we fit. I don't want to engage with anybody that I'm not going to exceed their goals, be significant in their life and enjoy the experience.
You know, back 20, 30 years ago, I had 2300 clients. If you could fog a mirror, you were my client. Wow, lousy job for everybody because they have time to do anything. Today I've got 198 clients, I do a great job and I have enough staff that we can do what we should do.
And it takes time. I tell people when they engage with me, it's going in two years.
I want you to not think about money. I want to get you so you believe in the system and what we're doing enough that you don't have to think about money. You can go fishing, you can go play with the grandkids, you can go travel, whatever you want. And if something happens, we get organized enough that it's amazing what you can talk about in 15 minutes if, and make a decision, if you're organized, if you're not organized, you can talk for years and never get any place.
[00:21:44] Speaker B: And I'm assuming that it's that repetitiveness that you've brought to this conversation over and over again that helps people not lose sight of the their long term responsibility. Because I assume this is a partnership, right? They do their part, you do your part, and together you're there to achieve their goals.
[00:22:03] Speaker A: And I'm working for them. My staff works for them. My staff doesn't work for me, they work for them. My staff doesn't have a job except for my clients.
And I am working for them. My job is shut off my biases, shut off my prejudice. Get into their head, get in their heart, think like them and then challenge them to be their best to help them make better decisions.
They don't all think like I do, they don't all have the same faith I do, but they know what they're going to get from me, they can count on what Wayne's going to give them when they call me up, when,
[00:22:37] Speaker B: when people talk about, you know, leaving more, what is that? What do you, what do you really think that means? And what are they trying to express beyond just simply leaving assets to people?
[00:22:52] Speaker A: Well, to me wealth without knowledge is worthless if we don't leave any knowledge. Most wealth doesn't make it two generations.
So how are we going to help kids, family, those that we love if we don't have kids, nephews, nieces, how are we going to help them be better? How are we going to help them grow into a better person? And it's not by spoiling them. It's not by taking all risk away.
It's by helping them when they're 14 understand what money is. I talk to 24 year olds, they never had to worry about money at all. They don't know how to budget, they don't know how to spend.
And all they saw is what their parents did.
And if their parents were moneyholics, which most Americans are, we all have to have more stuff. You know, we're addicted. And if we buy this boat next year, we have to have the better boat.
It's a path that leads to frustration, it leads to never being satisfied.
Things aren't going to make us happy.
Life will make us happy if we live it.
[00:23:54] Speaker B: Yeah, said, said perfectly, Wayne. So Wayne, for our viewers, where can people learn more about Van Vaughn, excuse me, Von Borstel and Associates. Where can they reach you? Wayne and learn more about the firm and get to know what you guys are doing and contact you?
[00:24:12] Speaker A: They can go to our website, von Borstel.com and contact us through that. They can go to infoonborstel.com and reach out to us.
They can join us every month. On the third Thursday of every month at 6:30 we have an educational webinar and they can join us. They can go to our website to join that or contact our office. We have many things because really my best asset is educating clients and an educated client will do better than one that's not.
[00:24:44] Speaker B: That shows through so clearly here. Wayne, listen, I want to transition by emphasizing that the best financial plan is just not one that performs well on paper. It's one that supports a life marked by peace, clarity and purpose.
Stay tuned as we enter into our third segment where Wayne will unpack the secrets of his success.
Hey, welcome back to your life and legacies. Stay connected to this show and every now media TV favorite live or on Demand anytime you'd like, Download the free Now Media TV app on Roku or iOS and unlock non stop bilingual programming in English and Spanish. Hey, are you on the move? Catch our podcast version at NowMedia TV.
I'm back with Wayne von Borstel. And now I want to talk about one of the biggest challenges families face, how to make wise decisions when the market feels uncertain and emotions start driving the conversation.
Wayne, you touched upon it, but it's worth coming back to, you know, the tension and feeling fear of focusing on your emotions and, you know, the volatility, volatility that creates, you know, like you had mentioned, emotions are not our friends when it comes to, you know, working in the markets and so help our viewers understand, even when the markets are good, why your emotion is not a good gauge for, for your money strategy.
[00:26:39] Speaker A: Well, a good example, a lot of my clients are farmers and they get paid on an annual basis or when their crop comes in or whatever. And they would tell you, almost everyone I talk to says, oh, I'm unemotional. I don't do emotional things.
But I think maybe someplace most people on the show have heard buying high and selling low is a bad decision.
But when markets are high, when markets are hot, when everybody's saying how great it is, I'll have a farmer come in and say, you know, I got a hundred thousand dollars to invest. Let's put it in the market. And we're buying in at the highest point in the market's ever been.
Is that a good buy or a bad buy long term? Probably not terrible, but, but that's an emotional buy. It's easy to buy when it's good. But when markets are bad, they're down. Everybody's saying jump out the window because it's, it's different this time. It's never going to be the same.
They don't come in to invest their $100,000. They don't have 100,000. They never have $100,000 to invest. When markets are terrible and when's the best time to invest? Then I don't know where the bottom is, but if we're down 25 or 30%, that's a good buy. Long term, when we're up at all time highs, that's not the best time. But unconsciously we're doing emotional decisions all the time. We're always doing that depending on how we feel. We make wise decisions based on how we feel and bad decisions based on how we feel. And so the best we've got to be focused on the plan, we got to take all those emotions, we got to shut the TV off, shut the newsletter. You can't control it anyhow. So let's build a systematic process. Follow path. Follow a plan that we know why we're doing it and where we're going, and shut the media off. Quit listening. Because we are, we are emotional animals. We cannot listen and stay true to what we should do.
So we need to follow a plan every time we need to follow plan, we need to be systematic, we need to be unemotional, we need to be diversified. We need to talk to a coach that is going to help us look at the bigger view.
Because not only are we worried about what our decision is going to affect our plan today, but 10 years from now, 20 years from now, and all the things that affects. Because every time a client's talking about something, there's 20 things I should be thinking about. Now, we need to be really organized. We need to have a plan. We need to be looking at it, but we need to be thinking about that. And we don't need to talk about it all. But if we do, I bring it to topic.
[00:29:21] Speaker B: And I bet you that conversation, I bet you that conversation is consistent because you've been consistent through the show today that each time a client calls and, you know, they're bouncing this way, they're bouncing that way, they had this great idea, they just came off the tractor and they feel, you know, this is the next way to go. I bet your message is just stalwart. You're just right there, right on it each time. And that, that really, that is the secret.
[00:29:50] Speaker A: They need consistency for me, because the worst thing that could happen is have your financial planner, your leader, get emotional.
That's worse than them being emotional. As if I get emotional.
[00:30:02] Speaker B: That's right.
[00:30:03] Speaker A: That keeps both of us on the right track. That keeps us both going the right direction.
Because markets will get bad in 2008 and 2000 through 2002, when the market was down three years in a row, majority of my competition left the market because they didn't know what to say anymore to people. When Black Monday happened and it went down 22% in one day. What are you going to tell your clients if you don't have a plan?
What's the answer?
You have to have an answer. You need to know what you're going to do before it happens, because it's going to happen. What are we going to do?
[00:30:40] Speaker B: And I want to remind our viewers that, you know, Wayne started this journey in 1985 we are sharing this information in 2026. And what was true then is true today. And he has stood through the test of all of those down markets. So, Wayne, what separates disciplined investors from reactive investors when uncertainties rise?
[00:31:09] Speaker A: Coach game plan. A path, a path that they can follow, a path that is theirs. It's. They need to understand the plan. And again, when we start, it's like, I've gone to the grocery store, I've looked for barrels of trust. I haven't ever found it. If you find some, let me know where you can buy it. But you got earn it. It takes me two years kind of before clients really realize, oh, you know, he's telling me the truth. It's always the same story. He doesn't have a new story. He doesn't have a new thing. Every time I call him up, it's not, you know, he's not telling me that what I did yesterday was crud and let's go do something else. And so I stay excited. And the truth is easy to sell. It's fairly easy to sell.
It's hard to keep clients on because it gets boring.
It gets boring.
[00:31:56] Speaker B: You're not a restaurant that has to reinvent its menu every season.
Every season, your restaurant menu is exactly
[00:32:04] Speaker A: the same, and it should stay the same because that's the best for the client. That's where we're going to get predictable results. I don't know what we're going to end up with, but we're going to do better if we follow the path, if we stay focused on where we're headed, we will need to adjust. Things will happen. Family will happen, health will happen, markets will happen, the president happens. Whatever. You know, things happen.
My faith is always the same.
That's the way my planning needs to be, too.
My planning needs to be something that people can have faith in. And it's much like your faith in Christ. It's much like your faith in God. If you have faith in it, then let you live a good life. Yeah, life. Because I have faith. I have faith in God. And I don't have to worry about a whole bunch of stuff that most people worry about because that's not what's important.
[00:33:00] Speaker B: So well said. So well said. So those conversations you're having with clients, they really reflect a different level of uncertainty than in the past decades. I mean, I know this, Wayne. I know, you know, the.
The older we get, the more secure we are in what we say and how we present things to clients and how confident we are. And Wayne, today, tell us about that guy as he approaches every new client.
[00:33:34] Speaker A: See, I don't think it's any different if we go back to 2000, if we go back to 18 or 18, 1975, if we go back to those years that were bad. There's always been bad times. There was always been, you know, the banks were going to collapse in 2000, the airplanes were going to fall out of the sky because the computers weren't going to work. There's always been. There's always something.
The difference is Wall street, the news media has gotten so good at bombarding us with negative information that they can get us to do things. And so the toughest part is shutting it off because we get 100 times more information today that we can't use. We can't use it, but 100 times more information that we can't keep up with it. It's. Most of the time is not worthy than we got 20 years ago. That's what's different. The times aren't different. Times are tough then. Times, you know, times that, you know, go back 150 years. We had a civil war. We were killing each other. That was. That was a bad time. We have a great life in the United States today. We have a great life, but we're so. We have such a great life that we have time to worry about stuff that. Why do we worry about it? I mean, it's news. It's bad.
But all I can control is what you do.
All I can control. Will we be debt free? Do we have our emergency fund? Do we have five years in conservative assets? Are we living on a proper amount? Those are the things we can control every day. I can't control the news media. Shut it off.
That's what makes today different than 20 years ago. There's too much news, there's too much information, and we can't deal with it anyway. The market has all the information built into it. There's billions of transactions every day with millions of people that know everything except for what's going to happen Monday.
What's going to happen Monday that nobody can predict is what's going to change the market.
So let's be diversified, let's be systematic. Let's have a plan.
And that's our best path.
[00:35:48] Speaker B: Said so eloquently by a man who knows. Listen, I want to close this segment by underscoring that confidence in uncertain times doesn't come from controlling the market, as Wayne just plainly said. It comes from having a disciplined plan and the wisdom to stay anchored in it. Stay tuned as we wrap up things here in our last segment. Segment, you're not going to want to miss it.
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As I wrap up with Wayne von Borstel. I want to end where this show always asks us to look at Legacy, because at the end of the day, the real question is not just how much I leave behind, but what kind of impact it leaves on the people I love.
So I want to explore legacy planning through the broader lens of values and communication, preparation and really how families can pass down wisdom along with wealth. And Wayne, the first place I want to go with this is it's so obvious to me we're going to take it all the way back to where we started. And the three awesome ladies in your life, you know, your grandmother, your mother and your wife, you know, they've all established a legacy.
Your grandmother, by trusting you, just gave you core principles.
Your mom and her steadfastness. Unpack all of that. As to where Wayne is today and the legacy he's leaving.
[00:38:01] Speaker A: Well, you know, I grew up in a County of 1600 people.
You can't lie in one end and get to the other end without the light there. So you used to learn to lie. And my grandma would have slapped me silly if she caught me lying. That, that just wasn't acceptable in, in where we were.
And I, I think those women, my, my mother, I think my mother had the most to do with my faith.
My wife let me grow in it, let me be there. We agreed on how our faith, we agreed before we agreed to get married, we agreed that we're going to be commonly yoked because we weren't necessarily.
And it worked out and that was important to me. But faith is so much.
And to serve. What does to serve mean? If you're serving through your faith, then that means that you need to be better than everybody else. You need to create value. How do you create value? How do you do that to the best of your ability? Because just selling a stock or just selling that's not service.
You have to do things that nobody else is willing to do. You have to look at what's a legacy going to be. What are you going to leave for a legacy and you know, so many people have, Most people I work with have some wealth. You know, maybe they aren't billionaires, but they have, they have some wealth. And what are they going to do the day they're gone?
In 10 years, in 50 years?
Think about if you went back and thought about your great great grandfather. What do you know about him?
Probably for most people, nothing. They, they can't even come up with their name.
And so what is your legacy going to be? You know, I had someone that I worked for when I first got out of high school. I worked on the farm with someone, Charlie Davis. He'd gone broke twice in his life. Logging, gone broke once, farming. He had no kids. He lived in a shack. His house burnt down and he lived in the bunkhouse for the last 30 years of his life.
He farmed a lot of acres and every gallon of diesel we pumped into those tractors was by a hand crank of 55 gallon barrels. If something broke, he took into the forge. He wore old torn up bib overalls, he drove a 30 year old car.
Who's going to remember Charlie when he had no kids, he had no family.
But the day he died, he left an endowment fund to the local high school that forever. Anyone that wants to go to college can get help from Charlie Davis.
He never graduated from high school. He'd gone broke three times in his life.
But he was successful enough, saved enough, lived conservatively enough that he could afford to leave a significant endowment that forever someone will know who Charlie Davis was and what are you doing? What are we doing in our life that when we're gone someone will know we were here.
And it's not for glory. It's not. We don't want to do that for glory. We want to do that because we're serving, because we're helping people. And that's what my hope, the legacy of the 16 schools we built around the world.
I hope I've touched and I'm just going to change those people's lives that much if we're lucky. But they don't have a chance without that school. They don't have much of a chance from our world perspective. And how do we give them that chance? How do we help them be better? And that's what legacy is. What can we do? Legacy is in our children.
You know my biggest, I wanted to create two productive US citizens. I didn't want to make them lazy. I didn't want to make life easy for them necessarily. I grew up on a farm. I and my wife are better because of the struggles we went through. We were broke, we had nothing. And somehow we got here. I don't know, I'm not sure how that all happened, but we got here and we're better for it. And I think that's one thing that parents are dealing. They make life too easy for the kids.
I talked to 24 year olds that have no idea how to deal with money, how to save, how to spend, how at 14, they should be learning that, yeah, you shouldn't, you know, you don't want them to starve to death because. But there should be some small lessons. They should learn to save, they should learn to give to the church or whatever cause you believe in. They should learn to be significant with what they're doing. They should learn about deferred gratification. That's the number one measurement of people that are successful financially and happy. Because if you think you have to have it all, your money's going by it all, you'll never be happy. There's never enough.
There can't be enough. I make more money than I ever dreamt I could make today. I couldn't even dream this big. I've exceeded every goal I had by 10 or 15 times.
But if I'm not happy, if I wasn't happy 10 times ago, I would not have gotten here because I would have been so busy spending money to be happy that I would never gotten here.
The reason I'm here, the reason I can give, the reason I can serve, the reason I have choices is because I had a servant's heart and I didn't need to have money. What gave me more joy was to serve than to make money. And I make the money. I don't know, people may look at me and think differently about that. I make money. So they may say, well, the only reason he does it is because he makes money.
Give it away. I give most. I give 80% of what I make away the people I don't even know. And that's the hardest. People say, well, I'm going to give it to my kids. Well, how much is good for your kids?
[00:43:45] Speaker B: And if without a good plan, you can actually do more harm by transferring that wealth to them than you can Good, right?
[00:43:54] Speaker A: And in your documents, in your documents, if you aren't careful, you're going to set your family up for destruction. A third of my clients don't talk to their siblings because of what mom and dad did in their estate planning.
[00:44:05] Speaker B: Oh, yeah, absolutely.
[00:44:06] Speaker A: 100.
And their mothers love them, their parents love them. It's not that they intended to do something, but how do you think about. It's not just having the documents. It's easy to have documents, although most people don't do it, but it's easy to have wills, trusts, powers, attorney medical directives.
What do they say though?
[00:44:27] Speaker B: Right.
And use those documents and as proper vehicles to really leave the story, the legacy, the family behind. And you're absolutely right. I think the number is higher than you even stated about families that lose touch with one another because they don't like what the estate planning documents say once mom and dad pass away. So, you know, so many families struggle with the transfer of wealth from one generation to the next. And we've just touched, touched upon that.
Why do you think that is? What, what could families do better?
[00:45:05] Speaker A: Educate their children and do what they say?
Many parents talk the talk, but they don't walk the walk. If all your kids see you doing is spending with credit cards, going into debt, buying things you can't afford, if that's what they see, if they don't see you giving, if they don't see you giving time, money or expertise to other people, how are they going to do that? How are they going to know that that's important?
So they need to see you doing what's important. They need to see you giving of your time, effort and money. They need to see you live a conservative life. They need to see you be responsible with your money and to know that there's more important things than wealth.
[00:45:55] Speaker B: Do you, just out of curiosity, Wayne, do you have grandchildren of your own?
[00:45:59] Speaker A: I do.
[00:46:01] Speaker B: And have you passed down this tradition that your grandmother started with your grandchildren? Maybe they're too young or maybe, you know, if you have a story, I'd love to hear it.
[00:46:13] Speaker A: Well, they're 7 to 7 to 16. I don't think they're too young.
But what I see in that. What, what's happened, well, is our kids.
My daughter had to file every piece of paper in my office until she graduated from high school. My son had to clean the toilets until he graduated from high school. And the day my daughter graduated from high school, my staff had a problem because they had to start filing papers.
And so the. But they knew that and I paid them and they had to give 10% to charity. They had save half of it and they could spend the rest. My daughter has every penny she ever got. My son, I don't think knows what. But, but in my kids, I see what we did.
My kids, even though sometimes they drive me nuts, my kids are living life. Well, because of what we did and they saw what we're doing. So that that lives most children, not all. And there's exceptions to everything. Everything I've talked about, there's exceptions. But most children are going to live the life you raise them in and they see you live. So live that life. Live that life well.
[00:47:26] Speaker B: So tell, tell me what?
We have one minute left in the segment. Remind our folks how to get a hold of you, Wayne, in case they want to know more about this story.
[00:47:39] Speaker A: Well, they can go out to von Borstel.com that's our website.
There's a YouTube station with as many YouTube videos as they want to watch probably in a lifetime.
There's a blog, there's contact information.
They can go out and email
[email protected] but all that's on the website. Go look the website. Look, look through what we're offering. We have the third Thursday of every month at 6:30. We have an educational webinar that anybody can join us. And we talk about being systematic on.
But we bring on guest speakers every third month to bring in some other things.
And the biggest thing for those that are listening, be educated, have a system, have a plan, know your path, have confidence. If you don't trust who you're working with, find somebody else. I, I tell that to my own clients. If they don't trust me, they should find somebody else because they'll never do what they should do.
You've got to find somebody that you trust, somebody that is there for you when you need them.
[00:48:47] Speaker B: Absolutely. Wayne, thank you so much. I'm Christopher Nudo. This has been your life and legacy. Many, many, many thanks to Wayne and Von Borstel and Associates for this conversation. That reminds me that true stewardship is not just about building wealth. It's about creating peace and preparing the next generation and leaving behind something that truly matters. I'm Christopher Nudo and I'll see you next time on your Life and Legacy.
