From Setback to Seven Figures: David Nassief's Blueprint for Financial Resilience

SPEAKER_02 0:00

Welcome to the Living the Dream Podcast with Curveball. If you believe, you can achieve.

SPEAKER_01 0:14

Welcome to the Living the Dream with Curveball Podcast, a show where I interview guests that teach, motivate, and inspire. Today I am joined by author and creator of the One Page Wealth Compass, David Nassif. Dave spent 40 years in corporate America, and at 63 he got fired and walked out not knowing what he was going to do financially and with a cardboard box. But within six years, he turned everything around. He uh turned it around to seven figures and he created the one page wealth compass to help people who are going through financial stress. And he he uh created something called uh automated stewardship and he has the number one best-selling hot Amazon book called the One Page Wealth Compass. So going to be talking to David about his method. I know a lot of us are going through a lot of financial stress out here, so hopefully he can help a lot. Hopefully he can help you out. So, David, welcome to the show.

SPEAKER_00 1:31

Greatest, thank you. I'm thrilled to be here with you today.

SPEAKER_01 1:34

Why don't you start off by telling everybody a little bit about yourself?

SPEAKER_00 1:38

Well, sure. Um, I well, I'll just tell you briefly what happened to me and what changed my life dramatically, unexpectedly. Um, I was 63 and I just got fired after 18 years with the same company. And tell you, I would not wish I had day in anyone. When I did the math, it was brutal. If we drained all of our savings and all of our retirement, we were scheduled to be broke by 65. At this point, I'm thinking, who's gonna hire me at my age? But you know, the hardest part, Curtis, was actually driving home thinking, how am I gonna tell my wife Mary? We had been married for 30 years at that point, and she just didn't deserve the mess I just threw our life into. So, anyways, I'm interviewing for companies because I don't want to go back to the corporate world, but I figure I have to put food on the table, have a roof over her head. I can't I can't just sit back, do nothing. And and as I'm interviewing with people, there's no one's interested. Most of them won't even give me an interview. The few that did basically said, no, the company that fired you was right, you're of no value anymore. We don't want you either. I mean, they were very polite about it, but that's basically what they said. So I decided to take a huge risk and I went to work as an independent sales agent on straight commission. No salary, no safety net, no benefits. The first months were brutal cold calls, constant rejection after rejection after rejection, rookie mistakes. You know, but Curtis, as I look back on that experience, I realize something now. All that rejection I was getting, all that resistance I was getting, I really believe was helping me build the mental muscles I needed to punch through that dark period of my life. Well, anyways, after 10 months of grinding, I had an incredible milestone. I was suddenly making more money than my good paying corporate salary. And for a brief moment, I thought we made it, but then I realized, no, we didn't make nothing because I'd been making good money for 40 years. Look where it got me at the verge of collapse financially. So I said, I need to learn how to build wealth, I need to learn how to invest, but I didn't have time for a bunch of theories. So what I did is I read 21 books, listened to 13 podcasts faithfully, read blogs, newsletters. Every time I got a good idea, I'm putting on a piece of paper. Once the paper filled up, when I got a good idea, I'd have to take the worst one off and put a better one on. I kept refining it, refining it until it was a set it and forget it approach. Six years later, I did what I thought was impossible from terrified of being broke to a seven-figure portfolio and real financial freedom. Curtis, I now know it is never too late to rewrite your story. Because if I can pull it off starting as late as 63, anybody can, I truly believe, with the right direction.

SPEAKER_01 4:11

Absolutely. And after 40 years in corporate America, you know, and then going from that to uncertainty, what what did that teach you about separating yourself from who you are and what you do?

SPEAKER_00 4:28

Well, I tell you, I you're asking me now for an even darker period of my life, which was part of that whole process. That wasn't the worst piece of it, I'll be honest with you. This the worst part of it, which talking about my identity, happened a couple weeks later when my wife was trying to conserve money because you know we were kind of in a tough situation. She goes, honey, there's a big sale going on at a store. Would you mind come with me to get some groceries? Because I want to stock up a little bit. So I had nothing else to do. I sent out resumes, get nowhere. So I went with her. And I get to the store and I look around and I felt like I was the only man in the store. All I saw is women with babies and baby carts crying, little babies crying. I'm sure there were men in the store, but I didn't notice any of them. And I just felt so out of place. I felt like I had a sign on my chest, biggest loser. So, anyways, my wife is finally checking out after she gets the groceries. I'm standing at the end of the counter waiting for her to check out. And Curtis, I just wanted to scream. I felt like I was trapped in this mental corporate strait jacket that I couldn't get out of. It was this like corporate identity I had of who I was, but the corporate world threw me out. They didn't want me anymore. And I just I just I wanted to run, I wanted to yell, but where is it gonna run? Where was it gonna yell? So, anyways, that night I went home and I realized that the corporate world clearly told me I was of no value anymore. End of discussion. That's when I decided I need to let the person hiding inside of me come out because we got to fight this thing because we're not gonna get rescued by anybody. The only person that's gonna rescue me is me. And so that's when I says, forget the corporate image, forget the company car, forget the suits, forget everything, the benefits and all the six-figure pay, forget all that stuff because that's not me anymore. Okay, I am me. Okay, and this is not me. And that's when I says, I gotta free myself of that image and just become the person I really need to become for that situation in my life. And that's when all the change happened. That's when I says, okay, now I'm gonna forget this corporate thing, forget looking for a corporate job. I'm gonna make something else happen for myself.

SPEAKER_01 6:33

Well, let's talk about the one-page wealth compass. Talk about uh what what was the problem that you saw uh how and how people manage money to make you create such a simple structure and explain the structure to people.

SPEAKER_00 6:47

I will. Well, first of all, let me tell you how it all came about, how it got inspired. When I was going through the dark period, I heard a true story that really was like a light bulb moment for me. What happened was scientists at the Max Planck Institute did an experiment. They placed people in the center of a dense German forest and taught them, told them to walk in a straight line to the edge. Now, these were confident, capable people, but when the clouds covered the sun and they lost their point of reference, the GPS tracking showed they were gradually starting to walk in circular motions. Some of them were actually ending up right back where they began. But each and every one of them was absolutely convinced, Curtis, they were walking in a perfectly straight line. That is my life story for 40 years. I was working hard, made good money, doing what I thought was the right thing when it came to investing and building wealth, but literally just walking in circles, ending up nowhere, basically. That's when I said, I need a compass, but not a metal compass like traveler shoes. I needed a one-page compass to keep me straight, to keep me focused. And that's when I created my one-page compass. And it gave me that 30,000-foot executive view I needed, Curtis, to keep me on track because I'm the kind of person I get distracted easy. Shiny object, hot tip, I'm off to the races in the wrong direction. Well, I couldn't afford to do that anymore. I was 63. I didn't have much more runway left. My runway was more like a helicopter pad than a runway. And so I couldn't keep making those mistakes and going in circles. And what that gave me is it gave me a clear, crystal clear direction on how to stay in the right path and how to have the shortest distance between where I was and real financial freedom. And that made all the difference for me. It really did.

SPEAKER_01 8:28

Well, let's talk about uh automated stewardship. Uh, explain what that means and why you feel like uh it's better for people to have a system than just simply try harder with their finances.

SPEAKER_00 8:40

Well, because that's why I did that for 40 years. I just tried harder with my finances and it got me nowhere. And that's where I needed a set it and forget it automated system, as you said. Basically, my one one piece of paper, by the way, I'm gonna give this to all your listeners for free. Um, they can just go to one page wealthcompass.com slash free and download a free copy for themselves. So I'm gonna give you the secret sauce to everybody listening to this program. But basically, on the one half of it, I call the nine trail markers. And this is gets you where from where you're at, wherever you're at, different people are gonna be different situations to financial freedom, the most direct path without all the detours and the obstacles and all the craziness, okay, all the noise out there in the financial world. And the other side is what I call my five North Star principles. This is like the things that keep you uh this is like the the protection that keeps you from going off track, okay? These are the guiding principles. And when you've got the specific steps, which are the trail markers and the guiding principles, you've got some real clarity here. But what's nice about this is each of the nine steps, like one of them, number three, is debt freedom strategy. Now that's nice to say, but people say, okay, David, I need a little bit more information than that to get out of debt. I'm in deep credit card debt, and I got student loan debt, and I got other debt. And so basically, next to each one of these points on my one-page compass, I have a chapter reference. It says chapter four. So what you do is you just go to chapter four in the book called One Page Wealth Compass. It's the same name as the compass. And basically you could just look up chapter four and see, okay, different ways to get out of debt. What's the best way for you, for your particular situation and for your personality? And it's not one way to do it, there's several ways that are very successful and very effective for people. And so it's really nice because it's kind of like the internal link on the compass. Every single one of these is linked to a chapter in the book. And so basically, wherever you're at, if you need help, if you need coaching, if you need a mentor, you can just turn to that chapter of the book and it'll give you stories, it gives you the examples, it gives you the principles, gives you the tips and techniques on how to do what you're whatever step you're in, if that makes sense.

SPEAKER_01 12:04

Absolutely. Well, talk about uh some of the biggest mindset shifts that you had to make during the transformation of uh uh being broke to becoming a millionaire at age 69.

SPEAKER_00 12:17

Yes. Well, first of all, one of the things was I I tripled my portfolio three times in that six-year period. And most people say, David, that's not even possible, is it? Well, I will assure you, I wasn't day trading, chasing crypto or trying down the market. I was actually doing the opposite of that. I was doing something so boring it put you to sleep. And here's the crazy part of it, Curtis. When the market was down, I was thrilled. When other people were panicking and selling, I was buying more shares at discount prices. My only regret was the market was down more during that six-year period because I'd even done better than I did. But the thing that really surprised me is the math. There's a thing called the rule of 72. And what it says is that if you're getting um, say a 10% return on your money, it works for any percentage, but just say 10%, it will take you 7.2 years or roughly 86 months to uh double your money. But once I got the compass in place, my first double didn't take 86 months, it only took 30 months. My second double, only 13 months, my third one 29 months for an average of 24 months, way less than half the expected 86 month time period. But the secret wasn't the returns. Actually, I was doing three things that I hadn't figured out for 40 years, and now I understood. The first thing was when I got paid every month, I paid myself once a month. Basically, I took the money right off the top that I was going to put over to savings. Okay. Within an hour hitting my account, it was it was it was out of there. So I didn't get tempted to spend it or buy you know on other things. Okay. The second thing is I got the right kind of investments. For me, it was low-cost index funds. There's I only own two of them, which is this is how simple the system is. Okay. The one is I own an index fund that represents an entire US market publicly traded stock. I own every publicly traded stock in the United States. The second one is an international one, I own every publicly traded stock outside the United States. So, Curtis, I literally own every publicly traded stock on the planet. For me to go broke, the entire world economic system would have to collapse. Okay, and if that happens, we've got bigger problems of money. And the second thing is, I mean, the third thing, excuse me, is I learned to use market volatility to work for me instead of against me. Too many people buy high and sell low, which is the opposite of what you want to do. And that's what happens when you use your emotions to do the investing. Okay, once I understood how the market worked, I things turned around quickly. And let me give an example. If you were to go to an apartment store and they had a sale, so it's 50% off sale, you wouldn't go up to the clerk and say, hey, I don't want no 50% off. I want to pay full retail. When's that thing going back to full retail? It'd be crazy to do that. But people do that every day with the market. Oh my gosh, the market's down, down 20%, down 40%, but I'm 50%. I got to get my money out. I got to get out of the market. No, that's actually when you want to buy because everything is on sale right now. For over 200 years, every time the market has gone down, it is not only fully recovered, it has gone on to new heights. 200 years of data is good enough for me. I sleep really good at night, knowing my money is safe. So basically, I was able to end the cycle of buying high and selling low. And what I was really able to do was build my wealth twice as fast with half the risk compared to how so many people do it. And that made all the difference in the world to me.

SPEAKER_01 15:37

Well, uh talk to the listeners about that number one uh best-selling book, you know, tell us uh what we can expect when we read it and anything else you want us to know about it.

SPEAKER_00 15:48

Sure. Well, let me tell you, when I when I read those, remember I told you I read those 21 books on personal finance. Let me, I'll be honest with you, they were fairly boring. They were good, good information, but fairly boring. Charts and graphs and all kinds of words, a lot of people are familiar with. And I said, when I write my book, I'm gonna do the opposite of that. I'm gonna fill it with stories, true stories of people who succeeded, people who failed, why they succeeded, why they failed, and give examples and then show the principles, then show the technique or the tool. Okay, so it's more like an interesting storybook, but that you learn a lot with the storybook. Okay. And so, because so many people, when they hear finance, like, oh, put me to sleep, I'll read it before I go to bed and then put me to sleep quicker. You know, and that's why I didn't want this, I want this to be the opposite. I want it to be for the non-financial person who just wants to get ahead and stop fighting against all that noise and confusion that's out there. And so that's what I did. And I let me share with you, real quick, if I could, a review I got, because I think it makes an important point here. This is from a clinical psychologist with 25 years of experience, no financial background whatsoever. He said he was facing his own career crisis, and the one-page wealth compass gave him the exact financial hope and practical steps he needed. This is my favorite part of the quote. He said this at the end. I couldn't put the book down. That's exactly what the book is. It's the kind of book you can't put down because the stories are so interesting and they're all true stories that helps you really learn how not to make this thing so complicated. As a matter of fact, it's it can be so simple, we can get it down to one piece of paper, which is exactly what we did. And so that's kind of a little bit about the book. And by the way, you can get it anywhere books are sold. Um, or you can go to onepagewealthcompass.com and there's a link to the book too, but anywhere you like to buy it, it's it's very inexpensive. It comes in paperback, it comes in ebook, and it comes in an audio book. So no matter what you your preference and hardback too. So whatever your preference is, um, well, you can get it, they can get it for you.

SPEAKER_01 17:41

Well, looking back, do you feel like losing your carpet job was an actual setback, or do you feel like it was an opportunity to uh create a new purpose?

SPEAKER_00 17:50

Curtis, it was a blessing. It was a true blessing. I didn't know it at the time, but looking back now, it was one of the greatest gifts of my career. I should really send those people who fired me a gift basket and a thank you card. Because it was the great, I just can't picture. You know, I remember reading somebody once they they they wrote about they were going through a very dark period of their life, and it was more a burden than they felt they could handle. And in the prayer, they said, Please, God, relieve me of this burden. And the answer they got back in their mind during the prayer was, I love you too much to deny you of this experience. Curtis, I am so grateful the Lord loved me too much to deny me that experience. Because although I didn't want it, and although I was scared to death, it was the great I it gave me so much confidence and it gave me so much um strength that I've ever had. I'm having more fun in my life now at age 72 than I think I've ever had. I just I love what I do. I I have more financial freedom than I ever dreamed I would be able to have. And it was it was a true blessing. It was, it was just, I can't tell you how grateful I am for that experience.

SPEAKER_01 19:02

Well, give some people some uh financial habits or decisions that they can start doing today to create more confidence and less stress.

SPEAKER_00 19:11

Well, let me tell you one right off. I bet you a lot of people, well, I know a lot of people are thinking, oh yeah, David, if I made as much money as you do, I could make investments too. Or if I made as much money as Curtis made, I could make investments too. But buddy, I'm living paycheck to paycheck here. I don't have that kind of money to invest in things. What about people like me? Well, first of all, let me tell you that is a lie. And let me explain to you why I say as I know it's a lie you believe in, but let me tell you why it is a lie. The NBA, the National Basketball Association, the average player makes over $10 million a year. I didn't say $10 million in his career. I said $10 million in one single year. And yet, after five years of retirement, 60% of them are broke, according to Netflix documentary Broke. And the NFL is even worse. After only two years of retirement, 78% of them are either bankrupt or in serious financial stress. And that's according to Sports Illustrated. Now compare that to Dale Schroeder, a basketball-loving carpenter who made average to below average income his whole life, but he chose to live on less than he earned, invest the difference wisely. He ended up with a $3 million portfolio. Curtis, that's more money than most of the NBA players and most of the NFL players with their tens of million dollars a year deal. Okay. So when I made the compass, I learned something very powerful, and that is this making money is different than building wealth. Those pro athletes, they were amazing at making money. I mean, how many people do you know personally that make over $10 million a year? Probably not many, but most of them, not all of them, some of them are really good at investing, but most of them were terrible at building wealth. Dale Shorter, on the other hand, he wasn't that great at making money. Let's face it, okay? He didn't make that much money, but he was a master at building wealth. And I'm not pointing fingers here, Curtis, because for 40 years, I was great at making money, but I was terrible at building wealth. I mean terrible. And so I am not saying I'm above anybody here. I I made the same mistakes until I got my compass. I didn't, I didn't have a clue, basically.

SPEAKER_01 21:26

Well, speaking of that, if you could sit down with your 63-year-old self and and uh after learning what you've learned, uh, what would you say to him?

SPEAKER_00 21:36

I would say a couple things. One, start now, stop wasting time. I don't care how late it is, don't don't squander the years and the decades of your life because compound interest is amazingly powerful. And the longer you wait, the more you put the odds against you. So I would never wait to 63 like I did. I mean, it was a miracle what happened to me. I'm grateful for it. I truly am, but I wouldn't wish that on anybody. That's why I wrote the book to help people not make the same mistake I did. But there's another thing I'd like to help people understand, and that is fees. Okay, fees that char the Wall Street charges you for services, you've got to be very careful with them. Tiny fees are like termites. You don't even notice them until your financial foundation crumbles. Let me give an example of what I'm talking about. You got two people, A and B. They're both 25, they're both starting out in their careers, they're gonna work to 65. They both decide, hey, I'm gonna put $25 a week away for investing for my future. Okay, pretty modest amount. Okay. So person A invests in a low-cost index fund with a 0.03% annual management fee. Person B goes to an advisor who charges the standard 1% fee and puts them to an actively managed fund with a 5.75 upfront load and a 0.66% ongoing management fee, which is also very common for active funds. Now let's fast forward 60 years or 40 years, excuse me, to 65. Based on um historical market returns and the and the contributions they made, person A had a $1 million portfolio on a modest $25 a week. Person B had a $570,000 portfolio. Curtis, that's a $430,000 difference. Same market returns, same contributions. The only difference was the fees. And those fees quietly ate away at person B's portfolio. And here's the tragedy. Oh, by the way, we're assuming they never got a race. If they actually got races and we figured that in, that that $430,000 could be close to a million dollar difference. Okay. But the tragedy is person B probably thinks he got great service. He loved his advisor. He's a great guy. They went out to lunch a couple of times. He knows his kids' names. Little did person B realize he did the equivalent of funding someone else's retirement with half of his own money. Now, I'm not against advisors, but what I am against are products that enrich Wall Street at the expense of their clients' portfolio. Now, I want I'm going to say this. I'm embarrassed to admit this, but I never questioned fees for 40 years. I just thought those are the rules of the game. You know, that's the way you gotta do it. But once I made my compass, I realized something. The rules we don't question can cost us the most. And person B's case, it cost him $430,000. Curtis, that's just too much money to take from someone's retirement fund. Just too much money.

SPEAKER_01 24:43

Absolutely. Well, tell us about any upcoming projects that you're working on that listeners need to be aware of.

SPEAKER_00 24:51

Well, um, I would follow me on LinkedIn or YouTube or TikTok because I give regular videos, regular updates, regular tips. Okay. Um, so if you want to follow me there, also I recommend going to my website but and go to the free section called onepagewealthcompass.com slash free. And if you go there, you can download my one page wealth compass for free. Um I'll give you all a secret sauce for free, no charge, no cost, or anything like that. And I strongly recommend doing that because just for your own knowledge, you can see um uh what it's about and how simple it really is. It's gonna shock you how easy and how simple it is. You don't need to complicate. You know, Wall Street loves complexity. The truth is, simplicity is for winners, complexity is for victims, and there's just too many victims out there, and that's why I want to share this with people because there's no need to be a victim anymore. There really isn't.

SPEAKER_01 25:48

So one page wealthcompass.com slash free.

SPEAKER_00 25:52

Absolutely.

SPEAKER_01 25:53

Download a free copy of that book.

SPEAKER_00 25:55

Not the book, not the book. You get the one page wealth compass, the actual company. Now, if you want the book, there's a link on the site for the book. You can get an Amazon wherever you want. And it's a very inexpensive paperback, or like I say, ebook uh or audiobook.

SPEAKER_01 26:09

Okay, thanks for clarifying that.

SPEAKER_00 26:11

Sure.

SPEAKER_01 26:12

Close this out with some final thoughts, maybe if that was something I forgot to talk about that you would like to touch on, or any final thoughts you have for the listeners.

SPEAKER_00 26:19

Well, one final thought I'd like to share with you is statistics from the National Council on Aging, because these are real eye-openers to me. Okay, this is what they're telling us. 80% of older adults are facing financial insecurity. I didn't say 30% or 50%, they said 80%. That's most of the adult population that's seniors out there. Half the people, 60 plus, do not have sufficient income to cover basic needs. I'm talking about food, housing, and health care. And the number one cause for gut-wrenching stress among seniors is the fear of running out of money due to not saving, due to saving too little for retirement. Most of these people, Curtis, they worked hard for 40 years. They were good employees, they were loyal employees, and they helped make their employers rich. But the problem is they forgot to make themselves rich along the way. And that's why I made this compass for people in the book to help people. If you could do it working for somebody, you can do it with your own company, you could do it on a big salary, on a small salary, on an average salary. It doesn't matter the amount of money, it's using the correct principles. And that's why I would encourage everyone to go to onepagewealthcompass.com slash free. Just to go ahead and download it. For there's no cost or obligation and just see if there's a lot of free stuff on my site too, you can get to help you and help you along your path.

SPEAKER_01 27:41

Absolutely, ladies and gentlemen. Please go check out uh the free stuff on David's site and also pick up that book and share it to everybody that you know. We could all use some good sound financial advice. And uh so go check it out. One page, wealthcompass.com slash free. I would also like you to check out www.curveball337.com and share the website and the show to everybody that you know. Keep up with all things living the dream. You can leave me a review on the site if you haven't done so. You can sign up for the newsletter and leave me voicemail, give me suggestions, feedback on the show, stuff like that. Thank you for listening and supporting the show. And David, thank you for all that you're doing to help people who are dealing with financial stress. And thank you for joining me.

SPEAKER_00 28:36

Thank you, Curtis. It's been a pleasure.

SPEAKER_02 28:38

For more information on the Living the Dream with Curveball Podcast, visit www.curveball337.com. Until next time, keep living the dream.