In this transformative episode, Todd Polke, Owner of Todd Polke, shares how to escape post-exit mediocrity and design a legacy of fulfillment and wealth. If you struggle with feeling stuck after selling or craving deeper purpose at scale, you won't want to miss it.

You will discover:

- How to redefine success beyond financials for lasting impact

- Why mindset shifts unlock exponential growth in life and business

- What daily habits build the clarity to avoid the "middle" trap

This episode is ideal for for Founders, Owners, and CEOs in stage 6 of The Founder's Evolution. Not sure which stage you're in? Find out for free in less than 10 minutes at https://www.scalearchitects.com/founders/quiz

Todd Polke is a leading wealth strategist, investor, and international speaker who helps people bridge the gap between financial strategy and personal mindset. With over two decades of experience in property investment, business growth, and wealth creation, Todd has guided thousands of investors and entrepreneurs toward achieving financial freedom and purpose-driven success. His approach blends practical, step-by-step strategies with the inner mindset work needed to create lasting results. Todd has been featured on numerous media platforms and podcasts, sharing his insights on building sustainable wealth, mastering money psychology, and designing a life of freedom.

Want to learn more about Todd Polke's work at Todd Polke? Check out his website at https://www.toddpolke.com/

Connect with Todd Polke through his LinkedIN at https://au.linkedin.com/in/investment-strategist

Get his book Escape the Middle: Switch on Your Millionaire Mindset and Build Wealth That Outlives You at https://www.amazon.in/Escape-Middle-Millionaire-Mindset-Outlives-ebook/dp/B0F22STRL6

Mentioned in this episode:

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Founder's Quiz

Hello, hello and welcome. Welcome once again

to the Start scale and succeed podcast. It's the only podcast

that grows with you through all seven stages of your journey. As

a founder, I'm your host, Scott Ritzheimer, and today I want to

talk to those of you who've you've done it, you've done your

thing, you've built your business. And many of you are

either post exit or thinking about being post exit very soon.

But when you do the question of, what do you do next, starts to

come into view. But the other thing we need to start thinking

about is, how do we do next? Because once the business has

done its job, once you've achieved what our guests talk

about, the financial freedom of an exit, there's something else

left, and we've got to figure it out. And in particular, we want

to talk about personal wealth building strategy, something

that you may have treated more like a hobby than a system in

the past. And if that's you, that's okay. You probably got

away with it for a little while, and you don't have to get away

with it anymore, because my guest today is here to help us

do exactly that we've got with us today, Todd Polke, also from

the other side of the planet. We've got quite a theme here

running the last few episodes, but Todd is a leading wealth

strategist, investor and international speaker who helps

people bridge the gap between financial strategy and personal

mindset. With over two decades of experience in property

investment, business growth and wealth creation. Todd has guided

1000s of investors and entrepreneurs toward achieving

financial freedom and purpose driven success. His approach

blends practical, step by step strategies with inner mindset

work that's needed to create lasting results. Todd has been

featured on numerous media platforms and podcasts sharing

his insights on building sustainable wealth, mastering

money psychology and designing a life of freedom. Todd, I really

am excited to dive into this with you. First off, I had a

chance to read through the book thrive through property, and it

was fantastic. And quite honestly, I had a bunch of

questions lined up on property stuff, but we both agree that

those are kind of boring, and there's a much bigger thing at

play here. And so here's, here's where I want to go with this. We

have a tendency as founders, as entrepreneurs, to think of our

life as our business, right? Our vision is the vision for the

business. Our values are the values for the business. Our

bank account is the bank account of the business, right? Not that

we should do these things, but we do. And so there's a ton of

founders I work with whose businesses are doing well,

right, but whose personal wealth isn't quite in the same

category. And so, you know, for many, they're going to spend a

long time investing in their business, and that's their

growth strategy, and that's okay. But what I really want to

talk to is those who've done that, who've gone all in, who've

succeeded and have been able to exit in some way, shape or form,

who have that financial freedom. What do they do next? What's the

problem with continuing to treat their finances like they did as

they were focusing so intensely on their business in the past?

Yes, Scott, it's a great question, and great to be

here, buddy. You know, what we know about business is that

it's, it's a gladiator sport, and it could be an absolute

black hole, and if you're allowed to, it takes every bit

of energy, every bit of money, every bit of like, you know,

brain space and everything that goes with it right now,

obviously, there's systems around that, and some of the

stuff that you obviously help founders and business owners do

is get them out of that in the thick type of feeling at all

times, right? But a lot of people, they just don't have the

brain space left over all the system to be able to actually

make that transition from a business owner towards, I'm

building sustainable wealth. Yeah, you know, and I see a lot

of business owners, they have this idea that they're going to

exit their business. And a lot of them, unfortunately, failed

to be able to do that as well. And so they spent decades of

their life grounding it, grinding it out, 1015, hours a

day, six days a week. And we know what it goes into building

a business, but then they don't have anything left for it at the

end, right? And that's that's an absolute travesty to me,

absolute travesty. So even the people who are still in the

weeds, this conversation is so relevant, and the need to

actually start transferring some of your business profits and

personal wealth is so essential, it's not funny. Now, when we

start thinking about founders have already done it, I mean,

like, you're one of the few, like, congratulations. Like, how

absolutely epic, and how cool is that. And I've worked with a

bunch of business invest a bunch of business that have gone and

done their exit in what they're doing now. So what I find is

that there's a lot of the same thinking that went into how you

grow and scale your business. Is the exact same thing that you

need to grow and scale your personal wealth. And so you've

already won half the battle, right? There's that psychology,

there's that way of thinking which is sitting there already,

which is going to serve you drastically. Yeah, and this one

of the biggest things is that you now have to put the CEO hat

on for your personal wealth business. One of my core

philosophies is that everyone is running a wealth business, every

single person on the planet. Now, a lot of people don't run

it very well, but you still have one. And so as soon as we put on

the CEO hat for our personal wealth business, our whole

psychology around it changes, rather than it being something

that, oh, well, I have to pay some bills and I've got a home,

and maybe I'll buy a property to I'm actually grow, going to grow

and scale my personal wealth business and put my CEO hat on.

And with that comes systems thinking. With that comes having

clear targets and clear outcomes. With that comes having

an expert team that you can leverage off, and with that

comes building a network and a framework where you can access

quality deals and install good deals in your wealth system that

you can grow and scale that personal wealth business.

Yeah, I love that perspective. The question

that I have for you, especially someone who does this with so

many successful people is, why is there a disconnect between

those two? Why is it, why is it so hard to recognize that we

need to make the shift to thinking of being CEO in our

personal wealth business.

So at some point in time, every single one of your

your people made the shift from a worker mentality to a business

mentality, right? So now, what you mentioned and much older

book that I wrote, like a while back, my new book, is escape the

middle, right? And the whole point about escape the middle is

that in life, we're programmed to accept a level of mediocrity.

And so this is not talking about your people, but most people

that go through life, they exchange, study hard, get good

grades, get out of school, exchange time for money, buy the

home with a fat mortgage on it, pay it off for 3040, years. Work

hard for 40 years of your life, until one day you can magically

retire and live the good life, and you ultimately become a

financial slave. Now, business owners, at some level, have made

the switch out of that. They still fall into this place in

the middle, even though they're successful, they still feel

stuck, right? And because they're still running the same

system, which is an outdated system, which is really

ultimately designed to turn people into good taxpaying

citizens, right? And so at some level, when we're making the

switch from a business owner to an investor and wealth creator,

right, we've got to shift the psychology goes along with it,

and often it means that we've been running the same money

program for decades of our life, and so we just haven't made that

shift away from being a worker mentality in terms of investing

in wealth creation to a wealth creator. And there's two

different ways of thinking. So the same way someone has made

the shift from worker to business owner, that same

mindset shift has to change over here, but it's just they've been

taught the wrong way around money. They've been taught a

certain set of rules which isn't going to serve them, and we have

to choose to throw that rule book out.

Yeah, I couldn't agree more. For someone

listening, if they're kind of, they're wondering, what mindset

do they have? Or maybe they know they have a worker mindset, but

they're trying to give us an example, maybe a little compare,

contrast what's a wealth creator mindset look like? What's as

opposed to the worker mindset that keeps us stuck in the

middle, right?

So, so in life, for most people, normal is your

work, and then you pay bills. That's what normal is to me. I

want to normalize wealth creation, and that's a very

different way of thinking. It's a very different way of doing.

What if you woke up every day where wealth creation and

financial freedom was just your version of normal? And so then

we start thinking about, well, what would I be doing

differently if I'm living in that reality in my world, right?

Because as we go through life, we learn a bunch of things about

what money is, what we're how we should think about it, how we

should use it, what we should expect, and we learn a bunch of

things, and those beliefs are not actually our own. Usually,

we've inherited it from other people. We've inherited from

parents. We've inherited it from society. We then go into the

world, we start operating from those belief systems, and we get

a certain set of results which reinforce our belief system. And

we have this self fulfilling prophecy, right? Because we're

running a certain program. Now, when we choose to put that

program down, the first aspect of that is recognition, like,

what is the program I'm running. Am I running that program of

getting stuck in the middle, which is very often, well, I

work, and I exchange time for money, and then I pay bills

first, and then maybe if there's any money left over, I'll invest

later on, right, as opposed to, well, when I actually go to earn

income, how do I then use and leverage that income to be able

to invest, to have my money working harder for me so I don't

ever have to work hard for my money ever again. And so it

really comes into systems thinking. And so with business

owners, as I said, you have that powerful trade already, because

you've all to exit a business, you've scaled systems right?

Right? So how do we start implementing and scaling wealth

systems into your overarching life?

Yeah, I love that you mentioned a few things

there, the systems themselves, the targets and the outcomes

that you're looking for. You also touched, like in passing,

on this idea of team. And I actually think it's one of the

biggest shifts that happens when we move from that CEO, active

leader, to CEO of our personal wealth investor, Owner, because

the team changes fundamentally. It's not your team most of the

time. In the same way that your executive team was your team. It

takes a different shape. So what does a team look like at this

stage?

Yeah, this is so critical, and you're so right.

You know, I think leverage is one of your master arts in

wealth creation, and leverage is one of your master Arts and

Business building as well. Right? When you apply the

principle of leverage, it allows you to tap into resources far

over and above your own, and your team becomes everything,

because you're only going to get world class advice from world

class team members. But, unfortunately, the so called

professionals, with all the qualifications and the pieces of

paper, are not equipped to actually be able to help you

grow and scale your personal wealth from the level you're at

right now. And you know, this is something I feel really strongly

about, like over my 20 years of investing in and helping others

build their wealth. You know, property is my backbone, but,

you know, I've helped people learn how to trade shares and

options. And, you know, finance is a normal part of everything.

And so I've become a real estate agent, and I've become a

financial planner, and I've become a mortgage broker. And

every single time that I went and did one of these courses and

interacted in that world, I realized that it was full of

shit. And so what I mean by that is like absolute dogs breakfast,

right? I became a financial planner in two weekends by

distance education with an open book exam, yeah. And what I mean

by that is that here are the questions, here are the answers,

Copy, Paste. Two weekends later, I was a qualified financial

advisor, and all of a sudden I lost all faith in that system,

completely just done, dusted, and I realized that

qualifications do not mean qualified to help you grow your

wealth, right? So I feel really strongly about this, because I

feel that people put financial planners or something up on a

pedestal. Oh, they must know what they're talking about. Now,

I'm not bashing financial planners or accountants or

brokers. Like, there are incredible ones, and then there

are dodgy ones. There are great personal trainers, dodgy ones,

good nurses, dodgy ones. Like, that's just how it is. But I

don't care about qualifications. What I care about is, what have

you done in your own life? And what I care about is, how have

you helped other people do the same thing? So I think about a

six star team, right? And when you have this six star team, you

have someone who's focused on strategy. Now, when I work with

business owners and founders, it's the business owner myself,

and we sit in the center, we zoom out to see the bigger

picture, right? Because that's important, right? We zoom out,

we see the bigger picture, and then we install other team

members around us. And we need individual tactical strategies.

If someone's just focused on cryptocurrency or share trading

or depending on their pathway in their strategy, we need

financing options. We need acquisitions like finding deals.

We need a team that helps protect so we need that the

legal team around us. We need the team that helps us to

structure things the right way, so the right accountant, and

then we need the team that's focused on the future planning,

which might be that epic financial planner that connects

all the dots together. So we're not just where we are, but we're

setting up for legacy planning and things like that into the

future, so that that team becomes absolutely foundational.

And the same way you go and choose your executive team,

everyone owns a outcome, everyone's owns a result.

Everybody is there to serve a purpose. And if they're not

cutting the mustard, then it's time to cut them out and move

on. And at this stage, a lot of people need to think about, how

am I going to transform my team? Because it's not the same people

that's going to help you are to where you need to go in the

future.

Yeah, Todd, I love that so much. I feel like

we could talk about this for hours. But the thing that I want

to draw, that I really like about that is the value of

having someone like yourself in the middle of that pie. Because

one of the things that's so different about that team is,

when it's your executive team, you all sit in the same room

together. You all work the same place, right full time is

fractional whatever, but they're like, there's a lot more shared

infrastructure there. And when you go to this next stage,

you're bringing in these world class experts, but they don't

necessarily talk to each other in the same way that your

executive team did. And so is having somebody else in that

strategy piece, who can walk through that with you, connect

those pieces for you is so instrumental in this stage. And

it's just like having your second in command, right? It's

just like having that COO or vice president, or whatever it

may be in the business world. So I love the way that you laid

that out. That's gold advice for folks that are listening. Thing.

I have this question, though, before I let you go, that I want

to ask, it's a question I ask all my guests, and it is this,

what would you say is the biggest secret that you wish

wasn't a secret at all? What's that one thing you wish

everybody watching or listening today knew?

Yeah, what an incredible question. And you

know, the way I always answer this is, it is possible right

now, a lot of people put financial freedom and legacy and

getting to multiple decade millionaires in terms of

investing as this big thing, which sits up in the air

somewhere, is possible for other people, right? And but what I

want everybody to know more than anything is that it is possible.

There is a pathway to it. It's not luck. People are mega, ultra

wealthy, or even wealthy to begin with, right? You know,

they've hit that multi seven figure net worth, or multi eight

figure net worth. They don't get there by luck. They get there

because they follow a different system. And the most beautiful

thing about knowing that is that you can do it too, that there is

a blueprint, there is a pathway. It doesn't mean you have to go

and just throw a whole bunch of stuff in the wall and hope that

it works out. And you know, wealth and investing is a

system. There's no two ways about it if you follow the right

one, at least a predictable, sustainable outcome. And that's

what we're targeting.

So good, so good. Todd, I know there's folks

listening who that's exactly where that exactly what they

need. They need someone to sit in the middle of that team with

them. Where can they reach out? Where can they tell us a little

bit about your new book and then also tell us where folks can

find you and connect with you?

Yeah, really simply, um, first place come and find me

is, I'm on all social media platforms. There's only, there's

not many Todd polkies around, so you find me pretty easily. So

Todd dot polkie and come and find me. Send me a DM. Would

love to hear from you. The next big place is the escape the

middle, right? And so this was just released in mid last year.

It's all through published, all through Australian bookshops and

obviously Amazon. And we're going to be doing, we've just

licensing deal in China. This has happened, then we're going

to be doing a bit of a push into the US later this year, is the

plan. But jump on Amazon. You'll be able to find her on there.

And it truly is the the culmination of 20 years of of

investing experience and systems thinking when it comes to the

world of investing and wealth creation that are packaged in a

place which is going to help anyone, no matter where you are,

to be able to be able to create that blueprint out of that

feeling of the middle, which is that stuck feeling like, you

know, yeah, I mean, so many people, they're high performing

in life, but they have underperforming wealth. And we

need to raise the standard of the wealth creation up in your

world so it matches your standards that you have, and

then continually grow and expand it. And that's what it's

designed to be able to do. So you can go to escape the

middle.com you haven't find the book there, plus a whole bunch

of really cool bonuses and such. But yeah, come and come and hit

me up on on any of the social media handles, we'd love to meet

you.

I love it. Fantastic. Well, Todd, thanks

for being on the show. It's really a privilege and honor

having you here with us today. Loved this conversation, and for

those of you watching and listening, you know that your

time and attention mean the world to us. I hope you got as

much out of this conversation as I know I did, and I cannot wait

to see you next time. Take care.