I know a lot of broke rich people. Not financially broke. Need broke.
They need the bigger house. Need a better title. Need another client. Need another promotion. They need people to know they’re successful. And maybe the most expensive need of all: the approval of other people.
The approval tax is a huge cost to pay your entire career. It’s easy to say none of this matters after you’ve spent decades chasing some of it. I did. Maybe that’s how you learn the difference.
I’ve started thinking about wealth differently as I get older. It’s less about how much you accumulate and more about how little you need from the world to feel good about your place in it.
That’s freedom.
And I think valuation professionals understand this better than most.
Spend 30 years as a commercial appraiser and eventually you’ve seen every cycle, reviewed a gazillion reports, analyzed endless valuation puzzles and experienced every review comments imaginable.
As a Chief Appraiser, you’ve survived audits, regulators, credit committees, problem loans and plenty of opinions about what the appraisal department should be doing.
Eventually, you realize you were allowed to define your own scoreboard all along.
You can still be ambitious. You can still care deeply about the quality of the work. You can still want to build a great appraisal practice or a great bank appraisal department.
But you don’t need the title or someone else’s approval to tell you that you matter.
My wife and I don’t watch sports. For us, Realwired is our sport. We love our customers. We love competing. We love entrepreneurs. And I genuinely love trying to elevate the valuation industry. That’s our scorecard.
The distinction is that we play because we love the game, not because we need the scoreboard to tell us we’re winning.
Maybe that’s true success.
No room you need to be invited into. No title you’re afraid to lose. No person you desperately need to impress.
You still show up. You still compete. You still care. But now you’re playing your game, by your rules, using your scoreboard. You can remain intensely ambitious while no longer needing the outcome to validate you.
The first half is getting more.
The second half is needing less.