The DNA That Drives our Money Behavior with Hugh Massie, Founder of DNA Behavior

Transcript:

Alan Olsen

Hi, this is Alan Olsen and welcome to American Dreams. My guest today is Hugh Massie. He is the chairman and founder of DNA Behavioral International, and which is focuses on behavior, money insights. And he has also done a lot of tremendous work in, in his life path. And I’m gonna let him you know, run us through that he welcome to today’s show.

Hugh Massie

Thank you, Alan, it’s been it’s great to be here with you today.

Alan Olsen

So he for the listeners here, how did you get to where you are today?

Hugh Massie

Well, I started my journey in Korea terms as a as a CPA and I suppose I would call myself now a reformed accountant. So I was a CPA for about 10 years, and I set up a wealth management business in Sydney, where I was helping high net worth clients with their businesses investments. And in that journey, I could see that people became very stressed about money, and that brought out all sorts of behaviors.

And I asked a psychologist one day, what is that and she explained to me, Carol explained to me, this is people’s DNA hardwired behavior, we go back from our socialized learned behaviors to our natural instinctive behaviors when we’re under pressure. And I could see money and relationships, cause that kind of stress and pressure. And I knew that if I was going to be successful, I needed to address that. And so that put me on the path of

building a system, Alan to help uncover what people’s hardwired behaviors are, and help them bring alignment to their life, I think at the end of the day, if you’re going to, people get stressed a lot of the time because they’re not in alignment with who they are. And they don’t have a healthy relationship to money.

And so that’s what got me to this place. And that all started in Australia. So you can tell from my accent, I’m not American, although I’m now a citizen. I live in Atlanta, Georgia, with my family. And the journey brought me to America.

Alan Olsen

That’s a big move. You’ve done a lot of things also, in and in, in the community and service and working with others. You’re also known as a serial entrepreneur.

Hugh Massie

I am. So I’ve, I’ve been involved with different businesses that I either helped fund to start or was part of starting, you know, in telemedicine, internet security, marketing, in real estate areas, I’ve been into a lot of things and, and from a community perspective, my big passion project right now is something called boys without fathers. Because I grew up without a dad, my dad died when I was one. And doing conversations like we’re having now, Alan, a few years ago, but two years ago, with a number of the DNA behavior clients, I found six or seven of them didn’t have a dad too.

And we all had varying doses of the same struggles, whether it was obesity, learning difficulties, social issues, whatever. And I was the lucky one because of my mum and my grandmother. But not everybody’s so lucky. And it does. If you lose a father very early in life, it has an enormous impact. So I wanted to be a mentor to other kids who don’t have a father and get to them early in life. And that’s what we’ve set up this charity boys without fathers to do. So there’s a group of us doing this work.

Alan Olsen

You know, let’s, let’s step back, I want to come back to that. That that father, mentoring, you know, the boys a little later. But before doing that, I want to jump into the DNA behavioral International, big transition from a CPA to, you know, to founding this company, and how did how did you start it? You know, a lot of the listeners here that are entrepreneurial, they’re saying, you know, hey, we want to go do a company, but we don’t know how to do it or how to approach it. How did you approach getting started, you obviously saw a problem in the industry that needed to be solved.

Hugh Massie

So it’s a very good question. And where I started was really I saw a problem in that Every human being has a problem with money and relationship to money and stress. And I thought big, you know, I sort of take that, like Peter Diamandis, a 360, you’ve got to sort of have moonshot thinking, you’ve got to be thinking big. And I thought, this is something that can impact impact the world. But once you’ve got that sorted out, then you need to start small and have the, the philosophy of, of growing big at some point. So there’s always an exponential mindset that’s got to sit there.

But it’s got to start small. But it’s got to happen around your own identity and your own purpose. And this came from somebody asking me, What are you passionate about. And I wanted to help people all over the world become more financially self empowered, that just flew out of my subconscious. So when that happened, I knew I was onto something. And that’s really when I built the business.

And the big thinking around that, Alan, and I think that’s very important for other entrepreneurs, to understand is, if you’re going to go on a big journey, which is going to have a lot of bumps in the road, there’s not every day is not going to be easy, you need plenty of resilience. But you’ve got to have something to come back to. And that’s having a very deep passion and purpose for it. And if you don’t get that right, and then your own identity with it, then you probably aren’t going to go very far.

Alan Olsen

So walk me through the process. You a person comes to you and says, Hey, Ken helped me to be empowered to be financially resilient and weather the storms of life. Yeah, how do we how do we how do we get to where we need to be.

Hugh Massie

So what I do with that is, I take people through the DNA natural behavior discovery process, which helps uncover their hardwired behaviors, not only in terms of talents, but also which are going to help them create wealth, but also the financial behaviors, how they make decisions. So I get people into personal alignment. And then I have another exercise, which we call money, energy that I take them through to see where they are at energetically with money. And that provides the building blocks for helping them build their relationship to money.

Because person’s got to have clarity on what role money is going to play in their life, which usually means they’ve got to have personal clarity first. So so so that’s, that’s what I do. So it’s, in part, it’s taking the diagnostics that we have, and then it’s the facilitation by either someone on our team or one of the financial advisors that uses our systems, or coaches, to guide people through that process to see who they are, paint, have a vision for their life and then be able to have the money compensation.

Alan Olsen

So there are more in the organization, how large is your organization here.

Hugh Massie

So I have 60 people that are on our team on a day to day basis. And then we have consultants, coaches that use our systems. And also, we have a pool of financial advisors that basically have a subscription from us, they run their own clearly run their own business, and they use our service and training to deliver this to their clients.

Alan Olsen

So tough question here, that person coming to you says, Hey, you, I have a problem. I don’t have money, but I’d like you to teach me how to have money. I mean, there must be certain criteria of people that you want to work with, before they come in, what is your ideal client?

Hugh Massie

Yeah, we don’t, as a DNA behavior itself, we don’t work with the, with very many individuals, I mainly work, you know, personally with entrepreneurial leaders that that have a business, they may not necessarily all have a lot of money, but they want to go to the next stage. That’s who I personally work with.

In terms of the investors and the families, they usually do have money and they go through a, you know, the process that we have, but we also have financial advisors that use us that want to help their clients get to the next stage in their life, and they and they use our system for that. But if it’s Hugh Massey, I think it’s working with somebody is really that entrepreneur that wants to adopt an exponential mindset and wants to make quantum leaps in their life.

Then I step in there and work with them. Very cool. asleep to help them do that to unlock every mental barrier that they’re ever going to have.

Alan Olsen

So you got it said that you use are drawn over 4000 scientifically measured behavior money, insights, how did you go about creating that? That that that model?

Hugh Massie

So I had a lot of help from a team of psychologists, a group from groups from two universities to validate the insights. So we came up with a very unique scoring or question asking and scoring model. And then that got us to a to the place where we could validate the behavior and money, the core behavior and money insights on a person. And then really, Alan from just working with clients over the last 20 years, as we got asked questions that lead us to look back in, okay, that’s a new behavior, how do we measure it?

And we go back to the science and measure it. So it’s it unpacked itself, but there was a core philosophy and sort of list or menu of behaviors that we wanted to know at the start, you know, for example, whether people trust or not, how do they set goals? Are they a spender? Or a saver? What risks do they take? Do they like to take charge and set the agenda, they were the easy ones to measure at the start. And then as time gone along, we’ve been asked a raft of questions. And that’s required more measurements, and it’s built up.

So we’re constantly adding new items to the platform all the time.

Alan Olsen

You use coined a phrase called money, energy, what is money, energy? And how does the energy get applied.

Hugh Massie

So if you think about money as having three dimensions, there’s the currency of money, what we invest what we spend, save, on give what’s in the bank account, think of it that there’s money as a behavior in which in terms of is like our life perspectives, which flow through to our biases and how we make decisions. And the next part is the real money energy is the deeper thoughts that we have about money.

And it’s this pent up energetic force that sits inside all of us in terms of, you know, that’s waiting to be released, that can if properly directed, create wealth, but it’s coming from it it’s coming from our thought processes it also can be negative in the sense that we have you know, negative type thinking about money which will be a reduce our money energy and that’s what you know, a lot of all a lot of people suffer from if you want to call it that. So the money energy is really in our in our deepest subconscious.

And it’s something there that’s waiting to be unlocked, but put into a constructive place then with more conscious thinking, if that if that makes sense.

Alan Olsen

Yeah, he’ll How do you what are some elements that you use when you’re, you’re measuring money, energy?

Hugh Massie

So first thing is we look at a person’s relationship to money and how they’ve integrated money across all areas of their life. So how is money integrated into your career? To your family life? Relationships? How do you utilize it in experiences, your community life, you plan giving and your health. So it’s how how money fits into every bucket or component of your life. But the real driver Allen of the money energy is not only the relationship to money, and that being healthy, but is the opportunities that you can create in your life.

And so one, one element of that is you got to have financial flexibility. And if you have a lot of credit card debt, you have a lot of liabilities you’re tied up. You can’t capitalize on opportunities. And the other part is is your just your human capital and there’s a whole lot of elements to that. You know, what skills have you got? What knowledge have you got? What relationship networks have you got?

Your mindset so, because you’ve got to be to make a quantum leap in your life in a way you’ve got to be at the right place at the right time with the right knowledge and the finance have flexibility to capitalize on that opportunity. None of us ever know when that opportunity will come to us in life. But you’ve got to be there ready? And then that’s, then that’s when you can make the Quantum Leap if you have the courage to do it. Otherwise, you go back to sort of more of a linear life progression.

Alan Olsen

Why are many conversations so difficult? And how can you improve them?

Hugh Massie

They’re very difficult. And a lot of the time, it’s because money is seen as taboo, it’s something that’s it’s very awkward. I think people associate success with money, or they associates failure with money as well. And you know, money itself just carries an energy and many deep rooted beliefs, many of them are false. But how do you have the better money conversation, it actually comes back to what we do is help people discover their identity, how are they going? How are you going to show up in the world, how you’re going to be accountable, who’s the person that you want to become?

And learn to make decisions from that perspective? And then draw a painted picture of the life that you want to have living that identity? And what are all the components for that. And money then really is certainly as a currency, and then as your thinking and your relationship to it, is what fuels you living out that vision? Which is structured around your identity? And I find that that what that does is it takes away that confrontational discussion of what is money? What does it mean to you?

Because money then is just a vehicle to living your identity and the vision that you have for your life. And so a lot of the negative energy can get taken away. And it’s putting people in a way, seeing where they could be happy, successful and healthy. And What decisions do you need to make later on? Because if you just walk up and say to somebody, what does money mean to you? Or? Like, I’ve asked people before, what do you define as success? And I’ve know people who say, well, it’s how much money I have in the bank. That’s the scorecard.

That normally tells me there’s a problem. And, and there’s a definite lack of fulfillment with that. And what happens if the money all goes away? Usually, those people are miserable. So it’s getting people back to who they are, Alan, I think what is very important,

Alan Olsen

a person interested in signing up for your program, how would they go ahead and reach you.

Hugh Massie

So if they if they go to our website at DNA behavior.com, forward slash money, energy, you would see what this is about there. And there’s also a link there to download a white paper that we have, which is like a mini book ebook, about money, energy, the process, what you’re going to get out of it. And you can register your interest to do to go through the process there. And I’m more than happy for anybody to do that. And to and to get a taste of this and, and hopefully, propel their lives forward in with quantum leaps, and not just accept linear progression.

Alan Olsen

Thank you. It’s been a pleasure having you on today’s show.

Hugh Massie

Thank you, Alan, it’s been great. Talking with you.

 

 

Curtesy of Alan Olsen’s

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