Agency for Change : A Podcast from KidGlov

Changemaker Brandon Hatton, President and Chief Investment Officer, Conscious Wealth

• KidGlov • Season 1 • Episode 255

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What does it really mean to feel like you have enough or that you are enough? In this conversation with Brandon Hatton, President and Chief Investment Officer of Conscious Wealth, we explore how to rewrite your internal money narrative for a greater sense of abundance, wholeness, and possibility. Money shapes our lives in profound ways, yet most of us never examine the stories we've inherited about wealth. As Brandon reveals in this candid conversation, our earliest money memories can continue influencing our decisions decades later, often without our awareness.

Whether you're building wealth, managing it, or thinking about your impact in the world, this episode offers a refreshing perspective that connects financial decisions to deeper questions of meaning and purpose. 

Welcome to the Agency for Change podcast.

Connect with Brandon and Conscious Wealth at: 

·       Website: https://www.consciouswealth.com/

·       LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/brandonthatton/

·       Email: brandon.hatton@consciouswealth.com

Connect with Brandon and Conscious Wealth at: 

·       Website: https://www.consciouswealth.com/

·       LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/brandonthatton/

·       Email: brandon.hatton@consciouswealth.com

Brandon Hatton: 0:01

Don't bury the lead. Just say right away what you want or what you need or what's important.

Announcer: 0:09

Welcome to Agency for Change, a podcast from KidGlov that brings you the stories of changemakers who are actively working to improve our communities. In every episode, we'll meet with people who are making a lasting impact in the places we call home.

Lyn Wineman: 0:23

Hey everyone, welcome back to another episode of the Agency for Change podcast. I'm Lyn Wineman, President and Chief Strategist at KidGlov, so what does it really mean to feel like you have enough or that you are enough? In this episode, I sit down with Brandon Hatton, he is the President and Chief Investment Officer of Conscious Wealth, for a conversation that took an unexpectedly personal turn. We talked about money, and not just dollars and cents, but deeper stories that we each carry, the mindsets we inherit and the ways those beliefs shape our confidence, our choices and our impact in the world. Brandon's mission is bold and beautiful to help people rewrite their internal money narrative so they can feel a greater sense of abundance, wholeness and possibility. And I'll be honest, I found myself getting a little vulnerable too. Brandon, welcome to the podcast.

Brandon Hatton: 1:41

Thank you, Lyn. Thanks for having me podcast. 

Lyn Wineman: 1:42

Absolutely so. I am excited to talk to you today. Our mutual friend, Miren Oca, who was on the podcast, introduced us and she's told me great things about you, Brandon, and I'd love to just start by having you tell us more about Conscious Wealth.

Brandon Hatton: 2:01

So Conscious Wealth is the name of our company. It's an investment firm. What we do is we help clients invest and help them talk about investing or just talk about money in general. Some of the things I really like about Conscious Wealth is that it is an investment firm not named after a person, typically men. Right, if you look at most investment firms, they're named after men. It's named after an idea. It's named after an aspiration. It's named after a concept that I've helped develop and co-create that we are not just our money. Our wealth is actually composed of other things.

And we've codified that with four pillars. So the first pillar is financial, but there is physical health and we all know that if we don't feel well, then we don't feel wealthy. We don't we, you know. You know the old expression your health is your wealth.

The other pillar is connection Our family, our friends. There's a Harvard study out there and many others that say that if you have friends and family, you will actually live longer. Right, and so it kind of shows how these pillars are connected.

Lyn Wineman: 3:09

Brandon, I just read that study over the weekend just, two days ago. It's amazing and what a chance to refocus on friendships and relationships.

Brandon Hatton: 3:21

Yeah, yeah. And then the third thing to help you do that is perspective, this way that you look at the world, the mindset whether it's a growth mindset, gratitude, or just your emotional health, and so all four of those components are part of our wealth, and so, as an investment firm, we are invested in all of those and want to help our clients be able to achieve all of those. And when they're talking about money, not just talk about or sorry, when they're talking about wealth, to look at it more holistically, and so I wish we didn't have to use the word conscious wealth. I wish the word wealth was just in and of itself resonant of that, but we do need a word more resonant today. We need a qualifier, and so that is more on the mindset of conscious wealth and then the firm that we named after it.

Lyn Wineman: 4:07

Yeah, you know, Brandon, as a as a marketer myself, I was eager. One of the reasons I was eager to talk to you is because I know that and my industry, like yours, most advertising agencies are named after their founders, who are usually white men. Right and nothing wrong with that. But why not do something interesting like KidGlov, where we treat people and brands with great care, like Conscious Wealth, where you are doing something that's more than just money? So I'd love to hear more about that. What about you and your vision for the company led you to do something that's different and meaningful, like this?

Brandon Hatton: 4:55

Well, so I have to go back a bit to answer that question. I wasn't, so. I did not graduate from college, buy a pair of wingtips and go work for one of these really large firms that we're talking about. I actually bought a pair of flip-flops, worked on cruise ships. I did that for two years. Then I went and taught, so I opened a school in Egypt. I taught in Lebanon for two years. I taught in Brazil for four years, so I was an educator. I taught world and American history to some of the wealthiest kids in these other countries, with the knowing that, as I taught them to be more compassionate, more loving, more understanding of how the world works, that that could cascade down and would cascade down into society. It wasn't until my 30s that I got involved in wealth management and did work with one of those big firms. Eventually, and for a while, I went into these firms with a real desire if I'm being completely honest with you, Lyn.

Lyn Wineman: 6:00

And there’s nothing wrong with that. You need that right in your 30s.

Brandon Hatton: 6:03

I've led like 13 years of this bohemian lifestyle and I remember so many of my friends saying, oh, I'm so disappointed and I was living vicariously through you, and I was like it's not fun to not have access to money. So I kind of the pendulum swung, I went all in on working and I truly lost myself. So I created wealth while working at these firms, but I actually destroyed all the other pillars of my wealth. There was a destruction of my health. I had a health diagnosis that wasn't pleasant, that I had a loss of friends and family because I was working 12 hour days and I definitely wasn't the bubbly, effervescent person you're talking to today. And so, from that loss and the realization like, oh, it is more than this, I began to start questioning everything that I was doing and I was like how can we find a way to like, how can I find a way, cause I didn't want to quit how can I find a way to incorporate this idea of loss? Rilke says and I just read this quote today let the darkness be your bell tower. Like, how could I find this, this concern, this health concern that I had, this panic at work, this feeling of emptiness, guide me through and help me find some life from it, and it was a journey.

But one of the things that I had on my side were two. I had two things on my side. One I had assets. I had financial assets to hire people to help me get back what had been destroyed, and it was there's an irony in that right Like what was healing me was funded by what helped cause the harm. Money. But then also I had all of these wonderful clients who were 10, 15 years older than me, had been through this experience, and some of them were exhibiting conscious wealth, what I call conscious wealth and so I just started interviewing and talking to them and finding out what did they know that I didn't know and how could I learn from them? Over my career, I've had thousands and thousands of conversations about money, and that is where my learnings come from. I don't make anything up right. This is all just learning from people, and so that led me out of the big firms and into our own independent firm and ability to do what we do today, which I can't even imagine doing when I started this business. I can't even imagine doing the work that we do now.

Lyn Wineman: 8:41

So I love it because you I'm drawing this out on my paper here as we're talking but bohemian lifestyle led you to create Conscious Wealth, and it feels to me like Brandon you probably have to go through both experiences, to get to the other side, right, you really had that roller coaster of beautiful lifestyle, no money, lots of money. Sad, it felt, sad while you were talking about it, sad lifestyle. And then you came out on the other side. Do you feel like that's true?

Brandon Hatton: 9:24

I do. I want to say one thing is co-create conscious wealth. Well, so it wasn't just me on my own. I've had a lot of people and as I'm talking to you, I mean this, really you can't plan these things. I'm just pulling up the poem and you see it because we're on video. Right, it's really the poem, like let your darkness be your bell tower, and so, and if the world has ceased to hear, you say to the silent earth, I flow to the rushing water, speak. I am right. And it says in this uncontrollable night, be the mystery at the crossroads of your sentence the meaning discovered there. And so I did discover it. And I find myself today in a position that I'm doing something that I am so uniquely trained for my whole life has trained me for this.

So one of the things we do at our firm is we help mediate difficult conversations.

Lyn Wineman: 10:18

A lot of those around finance life, family, all of those things yeah.

Brandon Hatton: 10:24

Totally. I sit side by side with my colleague who's a licensed therapist and we sit with families and talk about whatever isn't being talked about, and everything for my training as being a child in a household where we didn't always talk about wasn't being talked about and I decided myself I was going to be the peacemaker. Nobody asked me to do it, nobody gave it to me, but I have a whole lifetime of doing that and then all the healthy and unhealthy things that came with it. I have that lifetime of experience and I never thought, oh, I'd be able to make that a marketable skill when I say marketable skill, a skill where people find value for it and will pay you for it.

All this time of spending I spent from my 20s all the way to my mid 30s living overseas. All of these different cultures, these different religions, these different belief systems and this awareness of how they can all work is uniquely positioned me to do what I've done. And then all of that work in the big firms and the studying and understanding risk and managing risk. So you can only shine back and see like I'm uniquely set up for that and to give myself some credit, I will say I have been able to have the confidence and, born with the confidence, to follow, the energy to get me here, and I took some, some really big risks along the way. Quitting the cruise ship where everything was perfect, ending teaching where it would have been a cush life for me for a long time, right Leaving the big firm where they did not want me to leave.

Lyn Wineman: 12:03

Right, right, I can see that right. Put in a few more 12-hour days, Brandon.

Brandon Hatton: 12:08

And they will, and it was a gut-wrenching experience leaving and the firm comes after you and they come after your clients and all of these big risks along the way. So, but if you put yourself, I put myself oftentimes in positions that there was no other choice to do it. It was like I just had to do it because everything was pointing me there but I didn't know where I was going every time. So you're right, You're right.

Lyn Wineman: 12:35

I love it so much. Brandon, one thing I want to call out there is I just heard you say that you have on your team did you say, a licensed psychologist that helps you work with clients.

Brandon Hatton: 12:51

We do have a licensed therapist. When she's working on our team, she is not working, yeah. So psychologists, when she's working with us she's working, not in that capacity, but she draws upon those skills, and that she is not. She is brought on when a client comes to us and says we're thinking about how to talk to our kids about money.

We're talking we're thinking about how we can make a generative form of multi-generational wealth, and we could talk a lot about what generative form of multi-generational wealth means, or it could be anything that they're not talking about. It could be, there's always, there could always be somebody in the family who's struggling from substance abuse and that's creating a rift within the family. We see that wealthy and unwealthy families right. All of those types of things, and so she is a part of our family office services and we have a really strong relationship and work really well together and enjoy that work.

Lyn Wineman: 13:47

I have never heard of such a thing. I think that's so fascinating, so unique and so driven by your mission. So, Brandon, I want to get to some of the things you're doing outside of the firm, but before we do, I do want to ask so what does this look like in practice? Like, let's say, my husband Neil and I are your client and we're going to come in, what does this look like in practice compared to a more traditional firm?

Brandon Hatton: 14:16

Sure, so our underlying mission is to cultivate abundance. So that is really important to us. That's our guide. How can we cultivate abundance? 

Some people will look at our firm and say, oh well, that means their firm is investing in ESG or they're investing only in things that will good, and I haven’t really found many of those that are only good and not bad.

We're not against those types of investments, but our mission is to cultivate abundance, which means that we want our clients to feel that they have enough, that they are enough and that they're in a sense of security and not fear, so that they can do great things in the world, because we believe their specific actions of greatness will be stronger than their types of investments.

If that's our belief, the difference you're going to have with us is we're going to ask you about your goals in all facets of your life, including health, including leisure, family, work, lifestyle and the language that you'll hear from us whether it's in marketing in your case, or whether it's in conversations around money is we're going to assume that you're smart enough to understand the strategies that we're showing you, and we're going to assume that we don't need to motivate you with fear or confusion for you to invest with us. We're going to make it because we want you to know what you own. We want you to know why you own it. And we want you to know not just why you own it, because what type of investment it is, but why you own it to reach your goals. And if we can get you there, then you can take your hand, you can loosen your hands a little bit on the steering wheel and go do good things out there.

Lyn Wineman: 16:03

All right, Brandon, can I be completely vulnerable with you for a moment? Here I go being completely vulnerable. I feel like, Brandon, almost every conversation I've ever had about money. I feel like I don't have enough. I feel like I am not enough and I feel like what the heck am I doing with my life? Right, which I know, logically, is not true, right, but there's something about the conversation related to money that often stirs the very opposite emotions, because I wrote these words down. You said I want our clients to feel like they have enough, they are enough and they can go out into the world and do great things. I mean, that's got to be completely differentiating for you.

Brandon Hatton: 17:01

Yeah, it's the only way we can operate.

Lyn Wineman: 17:03

Yeah, fantastic.

Brandon Hatton: 17:05

So I'd like to respond to your feelings and what you stated. Yeah, and let me ask you another question which we oftentimes ask our clients and we can see if we get back there or not. Lynn, what was your earliest memory about money?

Lyn Wineman: 17:21

Oh, all right. Well, let's go even deeper. I had very young parents who were still in college when I was a young child and I remember money being very scarce. I mean we always had what we needed, but in the early days there wasn't a lot of extra.

Brandon Hatton: 17:48

Yeah, and so what you just stated was a money memory, and that money memory can go two ways. It can go there's never enough money, so I'm just going to keep spending it and be frivolous, or it can be I'm going to own that, I'm going to own that and I'm going to keep reinforcing that through life. That's only one memory, and there's had tons of memories along the way. But in the book Conscious Wealth I encourage people to examine their money memories and make timelines of their money. What were all of the memories that I had around money? Were they scarce, were they abundant? Right, did they invoke fear? And figure out. And then, once you kind of write all of those money memories down, then you can ask yourself is that still true today? Yeah, is it true? And so I guess I can ask you now is that true today?

Lyn Wineman: 18:45

Not really. I've worked, I've worked hard, my husband's worked hard, we have a business, we've saved, we've, you know, but yet still there's something in there, right, and, Brandon, if I'm going to be completely vulnerable with you one more time, three times, same podcast.

Lyn Wineman: 19:00

You know my family, I live on a family farm that was homesteaded by my great great great grandfather, who left Prussia because there was not enough money in his family to survive, so he came to America to stake his claim family to survive. So I I kind of feel like I'm in this multi generational scarcity, scarcity thing that, yeah, maybe somebody like you could help snap me out of, tell me more about this book, Brandon, that I need to buy and read.

Brandon Hatton: 19:31

I think someone like you can snap you if that's a desire, and I think so you bring up a really valid point. So we have our own money memories, and so where do these memories come from? Where do we store these memories? No scientist has been able to find memories in our brain right, and so how many of them are just out there in the ether right? Or where are they being stored? And are they being stored alongside other memories of our ancestors, or are our ancestors memories being stored in the land? Is there multi-generational trauma around money? These are all really interesting things to ask, and we don't necessarily need to answer all of those or know those in this lifetime, because we may not. But we can start to examine what are our beliefs around money and you don't have to answer this one. Then the follow-up question is what do I have to do to rewrite that story?

And how can I rewrite that story? So, when we talk about the four pillars of conscious wealth, one of them being perspective, is the way we think about money. Right, because we have billionaires who feel poor and we have people that are not millionaires and feel abundantly wealthy.

And so how can you have a mindset to enjoy whatever you have, assuming your basic needs are met and you feel safe and secure, right? If not like so, let's just stop there for a second. That is the work and it's available to you and, embarrassingly, I wrote this book five years ago. I will get you a digital copy. We can hand out some to people and some of your listeners to get copies or audio copies.

But I embarrassingly I wrote a version of it was I'm going to tell everybody else how to do it and I was like this is boring, so let me get it in the book and it's pretty raw. Some of it I wish I could take back, but it's out there in the world.

Lyn Wineman: 21:43

I love it. Okay, Brandon, I'm going to give us this parallel and then I'm going to shift the conversation off. I just wrote a book called Untangling Spaghetti: A Branding Fable. It's all about KidGlov’s process to branding. When I first wrote it was a bullet pointed how to, these are all the steps, this is what you do. This is the timeline. Here's all the tools. Here's all the things. I read it myself and I said this is boring and I'm a storyteller.

So we completely rewrote the book as a story with characters and dialogue and a plot, a start and a beginning, and it's, it's a fun read. I have a couple people who've read it who are like where's the bullet points? It's like, well, you have to go online. If you download the bullet points, you can have them all, but the book, the book is a story. So thanks for that. All right, if I could make a rewinding noise, or if I had sound effects, I would make a rewinding noise because one thing you mentioned a few minutes ago is that you started a school. Can you tell me more about that?

Brandon Hatton: 22:51

Oh, yeah, so I was working on cruise ships two weeks and two summers in college and then, right away when I graduated, I just jumped on the ships and I got to travel the world, which was pretty cool for a kid who never left the country. I left the state of Ohio twice as a child to go to Disney World in Niagara Falls.

And then I ended up on these cruise ships and I was in Alaska for four months, Caribbean for countless months. I went through Europe, all over Europe, the Panama Canal, overnights, in Russia and Constantinople. It was an amazing thing. But, believe it or not, it started to get a little bit old or dry and I had this desire to actually live somewhere and not just visit somewhere. And I did have an education degree that was my in a history degree and an economics concentration.

And so I called up a recruiter and said I want to teach. He said there's no way you're ever going to get a job. You've never taught in a school. Go teach in the United States for a couple of years, we'll get you in the circuit. And I said well, just call me. If you call me, I will go anywhere. Just give me a week's notice. And so he called me and he said hey, I got a job for you. Can you go to Egypt in a week? And I said sure, what am I doing? He goes well, you're going to live in Cairo, you're going to make $1,000 a month.

And look, this wasn't the 1960s, it wasn't a lot of money, but in Egypt it felt like a ton. You're going to pay for housing and you're going to be part of the first faculty to open the school. Great. And so I did it, and it was probably one of the hardest things I've done professionally. It was my first time living overseas. I didn't speak the language. First time living alone First year as a teacher is notoriously hard, and Egyptian culture is so different that I made a year doing it and I had a great time. I learned a lot, but I also knew that that was way too hot for me, like way too intense. And then I went to Lebanon, because a hundred years earlier my family came from Lebanon around the time of the great famine and I wanted to see where my family was from. And so I had that experience of living in Lebanon for two years, seeing where my grandfather was born, being there for September 11th it was a really, really good experience for me and so grateful that I was able to do that.

Lyn Wineman: 25:12

Brandon, I know you've got a strong heart philosophy for giving back. I'm curious to see or hear about some of the other work that you're doing to make the world a better place.

Brandon Hatton: 25:26

Sure, I think at this phase in my life, the best thing that I can do is contribute to society, and I can do right as I can do is contribute to society, and I do that through our work and through our business. I do not, I do not volunteer on boards. I think I would be an asset to board. I'm on one board but it's also because it's a client's charity and I'm supporting a client. I'm not a type of guy who sits on a board. I would like to be the type of person who volunteers on Saturdays or Sundays and honestly, I'm just not in town that much, I'm pretty much on the go. I do give financial contributions to you know to well, we can talk to local organizations, and I think there will be a shift in my life where I am not working as much and my, you know we're always working. Just my work shifts towards board and volunteer and in the trenches, but a lot of my work within serving nonprofits is through financial donations.

Lyn Wineman: 26:31

Yeah, that's a great way to do it, and I think you know we work at KidGlov with a lot of nonprofits and right now is as tough a time as they've ever had, right, and so it's a great way to support impact across the world.

Brandon Hatton: 26:48

Sure, and a lot of what we do is advise our clients on that type of giving, and it's always important to remind people like nonprofit is given a special tax status because oftentimes you shouldn't make a profit off of it.

So, for instance, I support and I just got a letter for them yesterday, so it comes to mind the Covenant House in Atlanta, Georgia, which helps young people who do not have a place to live. Why do we need to make this a profit model? It's disaster relief. It should not be a profit model. So nonprofits are needed because there's not a profit model that supports it. Now there are some hybrid models that we look at that do create revenue, and that's important too, and so as we build out portfolios and I say portfolios of investments for social change we're investing in the covenant investments for social change.

As we build out these portfolios, it's important to get a mix. How am I alleviating suffering? How am I creating hope? And in my mind, how am I creating beauty? I think it's absurd to think we don't need the arts, because to say we don't need to support the arts is almost to say we don't need to support beauty, right, and what is life without beauty? I don't want it. And also there's such a mix I just heard. I just spent a week at the Chautauqua Institution and it was on community and art and hearing from the head of Bloomberg Philanthropy and the former head of the Kennedy Center. And art is not just about art, it's about catalyzing community, it's about opening minds, it's connecting people.

And so those three kind of general tranches is how I look at, and we look at how do I fill those buckets with it? And then the second thing that we think about is systematizing philanthropy. So how do I, or how do I systematize it for myself? I have a rule that I am going to give a percent of either my net worth or my net salary to a donor advised fund, so to this type of vehicle where I can give charitable giving and whatever one is greater, and I have my team keep me accountable. At the end of the year we look at the two numbers and we figure out which one's bigger and the money goes in there and by systematizing it and we encourage our clients to make a system from it. It doesn't get away from you If you say I don't know, is this enough? Is that enough? It's like so weird, it's so hard to answer.

And then one year you might say, boy, that's like last year. For me I was like boy, that seems like a lot. And then it dawns on me, oh, that means I made a lot last year.

Right, I mean like okay, I can do that, and so, and then I also don't have to think about it for weeks, usually early in the fall. Where are we at? Where are we headed towards? Okay, let's go ahead and move this into that account, and that's what we do.

Lyn Wineman: 29:52

That's amazing. I like that idea. I wrote down the three principles that you mentioned earlier too, because I think they're so strong. I think you said alleviate suffering, provide hope and create beauty.

Brandon Hatton: 30:05

Yeah, that's how I think about it.

Lyn Wineman: 30:07

I love that. So, Brandon, you've got so much going on, you've done so much, you've had, you've had a wealthy life, I would say across the board and all the pillars. It sounds like.

Brandon Hatton: 30:20

Have I ever.

Lyn Wineman: 30:22

Yeah, what's next for you? What's, what's on the horizon?

Brandon Hatton: 30:27

Well, my dream, Lyn, is to make a documentary, a docu-series.

That's my dream, and I want to have a TV show where I'm going around and interviewing people who are a custodian of their wealth, who are exemplifying these pillars without even knowing these pillars exist of conscious wealth and telling their stories. Because I don't need to debunk the stories of all the billionaires, of all the greed that is seen with some billionaires, right, or I don't need to debunk the glamour. I don't even need to shine a light on that. I want to just kind of bracket that and talk about how is wealth being used in a generative way, how is it creating life, how is it creating opportunities for others and how are other people doing that? So not just for people who have the assets and want to live that way and want to learn those models, but for people who are coming up and aspire to have financial wealth, to not have to maybe learn all the lessons either and to learn from these other people. That's what's next for me. So you know, any producers?

Lyn Wineman: 31:42

I know actually, I know quite a few producers and several documentary producers. Brandon, that is actually what I was going to ask. Next, how could this podcast and our listeners help support you in that dream? Because that dream is amazing. I think we probably even have some documentary producers listening right now. If they are, how would you like them to connect with you on LinkedIn?

Brandon Hatton: 32:06

LinkedIn's fine. Also, our email is just brandon@consciouswealth.com. 

Lyn Wineman: 32:13

Very generous of you giving your email on the podcast, but we have great listeners who are very socially conscious.

Brandon Hatton: 32:20

That's all right, I'm not worried about it, we'll use it responsibly.

Lyn Wineman: 32:24

So, Brandon, I have loved this conversation so much. I have two more questions for you related to the work that you're doing in Conscious Wealth, and then I want to ask you the question I've been saving up. But first of all, so what advice would you give to families or individuals who want to make positive impact with their wealth, however it's defined?

Brandon Hatton: 32:50

So well, that's it, I would say, to challenge yourself to expand your definition of wealth. Challenge yourself to think so, if you're just thinking of, well, my wealth is my money and if I give away money, then I have less wealth, that definition doesn't work. So I would ask, I would say one thing I would say is expand your definition of wealth to include your mindset, your physical health, your community. And so a lot of times we have people say, well, like, because we deal a lot with multi, with what we would call multi-generational wealth or just, and people would say, well, how am I going to be able to like, how much should I give my kids? And so they get stuck having that conversation about money.

We have been that happens all the time. And I say, well, if you're going to give them multi-generational wealth, remember that wealth is all of these four things, and let's start giving them the non-monetary aspects first. So that's one thing of advice I would have. Yeah, and then, if you get stuck in that thing and saying, well, you know, another thing that people get stuck on is how much should I give my kids? And the answer is and to me a quote by Khalil Gibran, who the Lebanese claim is their poet, and so I'll take it which is your children are not your children, they are the sons and daughters of life's longing for itself. They do not come from you, they come through you, and so, in fact, all children on earth are your children, right? And so when we expand this definition of who are our children, and as we are all one, then our impact should cascade across. If we have that expanded definition, then our impact can expand beyond just our immediate family.

Lyn Wineman: 34:34

Yeah, wow, that is deep and really good advice, and I do want to note that that is the second poem that you've shared on this podcast and that in itself is a beautiful thing, and I really do appreciate that. Brandon, for people who are listening you've already given us your email address they want to connect with you. They want to learn more. How do they find more information about Conscious Wealth? It's consciouswealth.com.

Brandon Hatton: 35:03

So we've got the website. We have two sides to it living and investing. There's resources on both. One's an educational platform the living side, investing, is the investment platform, yeah.

Lyn Wineman: 35:13

That's great. We'll get that link, although it's pretty easy. It's your name.com, but we'll get that link in the show notes on the kid glove website as well. All right, Brandon, you have shared so many inspirational things, but this is the question I ask on every podcast, because I love a great inspirational quote, a great poem. Can you give us a few of your own words of wisdom to inspire our listeners? 

Brandon Hatton: 35:45

Okay. So there's two things my team will hear me say all the time and I can't say they're always happy to hear it. The first is, if they're listening, they're going to have already said it.

Lyn Wineman: 35:55

Of course they're listening. They're all listening copiously and taking notes, I'm sure.

Brandon Hatton: 36:00

So the first one we have is don't bury the lead. That's something they hear me say all the time. We always, when we're having conversations with clients, when we're putting something online or whatever is right away, just say right away what you want or what you need or what's important, and then give all the depth. Yeah, just so I'll always tell people don't bury the lead. That's not so inspirational, but they've heard that a lot.

Lyn Wineman: 36:25

You know it's a good one, though, because some of us keep hearing this sandwich theory right Like, tell me a compliment, tell me the thing and then tell me a compliment which makes you skeptical whenever you get a compliment from that person. Right Like, yeah.

Brandon Hatton: 36:43

Don't bury the lead and then the second. So, breaking a record here, I'm going to go for three for three on poetry yeah, we always. Another thing I tell the guys a lot and gal is that pray for rain thing? I tell the guys a lot and gal, is that pray for rain, right? And so that's the title of a poem from Joy Harjo, a native American poet, poet laureate, I believe, in the United States, but also Jimmy Baldwin used to say that civil rights activist is, and the idea behind pray for rain is that we're just going to keep planting seeds. Yeah, we're not in charge of what happens with those seeds, right? Yeah, where's my journal? I just wrote this this morning.

Lyn Wineman: 37:23

Brandon, this resonates with me. I'm just going to say I've mentioned in my moment of vulnerability, my family, who has family stories of living through the dust bowl and the depression, the praying for rain resonates in a big way.

Brandon Hatton: 37:39

Yeah, TS Eliot said for us there is only the trying. The rest is none of our business. And so pray for rain is like just plant the seeds and the rest is none of our business. It'll take care of itself.

Lyn Wineman: 37:52

I love this. I am going to note for our listeners, because they won't see this video, that during this conversation, Brandon, you've twice just had at the ready poetry and quotes and I’m so inspired by that. 

Brandon Hatton: 38:19

Well, thanks for your time today. This was a great conversation. I loved how you were willing to talk about some of your questions and struggles with money, because we all have them and the more we talk about them, the better.

Lyn Wineman: 38:32

Yep, I think normalizing these ideas, bringing out the things that have been in the darkness, will lead to light for everyone, right, and so I think that's important. I actually do have one last question for you, Brandon. I just like to tie this in a bow by saying what is the most important thing you would like people to remember about this conversation.

Brandon Hatton: 38:57

Well, I think, if we're talking so, if we're so, that's a great question. Part of the journey that we go through with money is to get to the point where we say I have enough, Right. And once we get to that point, we can also get to the point where it's I am enough. And getting to that point of I am enough is where you can really start, as your listeners want to do is to make an impact. It's really hard to make an impact if we don't believe we are a child of God, if we are part of the universe, if we're not connected to everyone else. I think the part of the conscious wealth ethos is getting to a point where we can say we can let go of striving, and that's where impact is made.

Lyn Wineman: 39:47

Yeah, Brandon, the whole reason I have this podcast, the Agency for Change, is to meet people like you and to have conversations like this that really inspire me, that will inspire others, and I just want to say I believe the world needs more people like you, Brandon, oh that's a thank you. More companies like Conscious Wealth, and thank you for taking the time to talk to me. 

Brandon Hatton: 40:14

Thank you, it's been lovely.

Announcer: 40:17

We hope you enjoyed today's Agency for Change podcast. To hear all our interviews with those who are making a positive change in our communities or to nominate a changemaker you'd love to hear from. Visit kidglov.com at K-I-D-G-L-O-V.com to get in touch. As always. If you like what you've heard today, be sure to rate, review, subscribe and share. Thanks for listening and we'll see you next time.