Erik Weir wrote a book about how to become wealthy.
That doesn’t mean it’s all about making money.
“If you ask me, I’d say ‘wealthy’ to most people just means the ability to have enough money to make choices in life without worry, but there are always higher levels,” Weir said. “It starts out with choices like, ‘Do I want to fly or drive somewhere?’ And then it becomes, ‘Do I want to fly or do I want to fly first class?’ And then it’s, ‘Should I fly first class or private?’ What I’m saying is, there’s no real end to it, by that definition.”
Weir should know about this kind of wealth — he’s spent his career as a successful financial wealth advisor. That includes his current role as the principal of WCM Global Wealth, a financial wealth advisory firm that serves clients such as business owners, recording artists, celebrities, sports icons, fashion designers and some of the families on Forbes World’s Billionaires List.
He’s now catalogued his greatest tips, lessons and stories into one volume, “Who’s Eating Your Pie?: Essential Financial Advice That Will Transform Your Life,” recently published by Forefront Books, a subsidiary of Simon & Schuster.
But when it comes to that limited definition of “wealth equals money,” Weir pushes back.
“Ask yourself: If you gave billionaire 91-year-old Warren Buffett a chance to swap places with a totally broke 35-year-old, do you think he’d take that trade? I’m sure he would, because that broke 35-year-old has more time,” Weir said.
For him, the true definition of wealth can be broken down into the “five F’s of success,” which are:
- Faith
- Family
- Fitness
- Finance
- Friends
“Let’s start with faith, which doesn’t necessarily mean your religion in this context but can just be your set of values or your belief system,” Weir said. “From there, everything else is a balancing act. You choose what you want to put in the center, but you can’t focus on that alone.”
From an outsider’s perspective, that balance is often skewed, Weir said, as people see financial success as the end-all-be-all.
“But if you have money and no friends or family, or if you have money and bad health, is that really success?” he said.
The magic wand technique
Whenever he’s meeting with people who are struggling to advance their goals, whether career-related or otherwise, Weir likes to implement a thought strategy he calls “the magic wand technique.”
The premise is simple.
“Imagine you have a magic wand, but not just any wand — this one is really special, because anything you choose to do, you cannot fail so long as you have this wand,” Weir said.
The goal of the exercise is to get people to envision what their greatest goal in life is, whether that’s starting a business, creating a new product, publishing a book or any other possible achievement that seems out of reach.
“If you’re trying to start a business, you might say, ‘Oh, I don’t have any money for that… I don’t have connections… I don’t know how to run a business…’ and right from the start, you’re already stopping yourself with limiting thoughts,” Weir said. “With the magic wand in our head, you know what you want, so you’re starting with clarity. Now all you have to do is lay out the steps that it will take to get there.”
That can still seem daunting, he admits, and often impatience can act as another limiting factor, but throughout his career, one of the most important lessons Weir has learned is the importance of gradual improvement.
“The biggest problem all of us face is that we overestimate the amount of change we can make quickly,” Weir said, “and we underestimate the amount of change we can make over time.”
What’s in a name?
The title of the book, “Who’s Eating Your Pie?” came about when Weir was trying to teach his young son about taxation. “I took a big bite out of his apple pie one day, eating about 25% of it, and his face was totally shocked,” Weir said. “I told him, ‘That’s taxation.’ When I went in to take a second bite of his pie to round it up to make it a 40% tax, he blocked my arm. Then I told him, ‘See what you just did? That’s financial planning.’”
“Who’s Eating Your Pie” is available at M Judson Booksellers in downtown Greenville and for purchase online via Bookshop.org, Amazon and Barnes & Noble.
