If you are afraid of taking on risk to make more money, if you are afraid of losing the money you have, if you spend it as fast as it touches your hands — your children can feel all of it. Your feelings, beliefs, and actions around wealth are imprinting your kids with an operating system that will either support or limit them in their ability to make and hang onto money.
Almost every man I know grew up in a family with limited beliefs about money and wealth. They said things like “Money doesn’t grow on trees.” “You’ve got to have money to make money.” “It must be nice to be rich.” Or they truly believed that desiring money was evil — and so, consciously or unconsciously, limited themselves from taking any action that would result in lasting wealth, because that would clash with their identity. No one identifies as evil.
We have our own money traumas too. Getting scammed, losing money on a bad investment, starting a business that fails, struggling to recover from job loss: but our wealth patterns started developing long before we had to pay the bills. Our wealth imprint started the moment we began to tune into our parents’ nervous system around money.
When I first started thinking about money as a teenager, I began to notice there were two types of people - rich and poor. As I got older, I realized that not all of the “rich” people were rich all of the time. Sometimes they were deep in debt, sometimes their well ran dry and they had to sell assets, a lot of the “rich” people I watched over the years would go broke and most of them would bounce back.
On the flip side, I saw poor people inherit money or win the lottery or have a lucrative job for a season and go right back to being poor for the rest of their lives. The reason broke people bounce back to being rich is because of what made them rich in the first place - risk taking.
The risk takers have green years and lean years, but they are never “poor,” because poor is not a financial status, poor is an identity. What keeps people “poor” are their beliefs around being poor - and the most deep-rooted beliefs are the ones we attach to our identity.
If I identify as a father, a husband, a son… any evidence that this isn’t true I reject out of hand — because I identify as those things. If I identify as poor, I must stay poor to affirm my identity. If I, instead, identify as a risk taker - I can overcome my conditioning and chart a new path forward.
The challenge for most of us is that much of our identity is still under cover.
Secret Identities
What are you identifying as that you haven’t put words to? Given a conscious choice, which identities would you be willing to give up?
When someone says “we’re poor people” or “we’re not rich,” their unconscious mind goes to work making and keeping it so. But it’s not always so overt— “it must be nice to have money,” “some people make it too easy,” “desiring money is the root of evil,” “you’ve gotta have money to make money,” “you can only be rich if you hurt somebody, rip somebody off, cheat, or get lucky” — all of these are poor-identified people’s beliefs. If you hold these beliefs, you cannot build lasting wealth - no matter how much time and energy you are willing to throw at the goal.
I didn’t grow up with an empowering financial education. So I spent my twenties filling my mind with the strategies and tactics of the successful. Learning about economics, sales & marketing, debt & taxes, hiring & firing, writing contracts and building brands - you name it. I listened to 40+ non-fiction audiobooks every year, traveled the US spending tens of thousands of dollars on seminars, courses, and coaches and I put it into action.
By the time my first daughter was born when I was twenty-six, I’d already made and lost well over a million dollars. Real estate investing, screen printing, general contracting - I had entrepreneurial ADHD that came with roller-coaster income. A cycle of feast and famine that produced hard-won lessons that would become source material when I began my career as a public speaker - traveling the world, speaking on stages for TV celebrities like Daymond John from Shark Tank.
Little did I know, there were secret identities still at play.
Breaking Point
In my early thirties, I reached a breaking point. I was traveling forty times a year - now with two kids at home. I was providing well financially, but my family didn’t have my presence. Despite how glamorous it may have looked from the outside, on the inside, I felt like a fraud.
My marriage was on the rocks, I was missing birthdays, and my body was going through the wringer. The pressure of being a provider combined with the shame of falling short was breaking me down from the inside out. I had gut issues — literally going to the bathroom four, five, six times a day.
Ever the experimenter, I had to go to work figuring this out. Only the stakes were much higher this time and more business books weren’t going to cut it. I could feel my life was out of integrity, but I didn’t have the words or direction. Just the instinct to make things right before it was too late.
An instinct that led me to discover who was really running the show.
Unconscious Programs
Identities run unconscious programs to keep things status quo. Programs that may drive us to create success - but also limit us. I was achieving a lot — but the cost to my body and my heart was real.
I discovered that I needed to clean things out, not add more things in. Instead of working on a new business - what I needed to work on was me. I needed to take a candid look at the stories, the language, and nervous system imprints that were unconsciously driving me.
Carl Jung is credited with saying, “until you make the unconscious conscious, it will direct your life and you will call it fate.”
Beliefs about worthiness, the insatiable need to prove myself, my “inner dialogue” about what success really was. There was so much driving me and all my “busy-ness” and the studying were just misdirections from what was really lurking beneath the surface.
So began my next decade of growth. Where my identity as the provider for my family would lead me back into integrity. Where I would shed harmful programs, unlock new beliefs, and re-wire my nervous system to build a life I’m proud of.
I am no expert. I am a forever-student of life. And over these last 10+ years, I have found some tools, some techniques, and some teachers who have helped me along my journey.
I’m far from done and nowhere near the perfect provider. Yet, when I reflect on where I was in my thirties - I am overcome with gratitude for my health, my marriage, and the relationship I have with my teenage daughters. And the money is pretty great too.
Provider
So that’s what I’m going to share here on Substack. I’m going to invest some time writing essays and introducing you to the tools and systems that I’ve found, through my own study and experimentation, help fathers become better providers.
By the way, if you didn’t notice - that’s the name of this project: “Provider.” Because that is who it’s for - family men who want to get stronger and lead with love.
We won’t talk about 101 business tactics — there’s plenty of that out there. We’ll talk about what’s running underneath: the beliefs, the wiring, the nervous system — and how it shows up in your money, your marriage, and your parenting. We’ll explore what’s going on inside of you that’s keeping you from achieving your potential as a provider.
Will it impact your money? No doubt. But, if I learned anything these last twenty years - it’s that working on the outside alone only makes us miserable. When you take the time to look under the hood - to tune up your beliefs, re-write your stories, and regulate your nervous system you not only achieve more in your life - you model for your children how to succeed in theirs.
Your kids are already learning money from you. The only question is what you’re teaching. Subscribe, and I’ll walk you through what I found, in order — the blocks first, then the wiring, then the numbers — so you can do in a year what took me ten.
Do it for them.
Trey Stinnett