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:
– What daily habits build the clarity to avoid the “middle” trap
– How to redefine success beyond financials for lasting impact
– Why mindset shifts unlock exponential growth in life and business
Episode Transcript
Scott Ritzheimer
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?
Todd Polke
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.
Scott Ritzheimer
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.
Todd Polke
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.
Scott Ritzheimer
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?
Todd Polke
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?
Scott Ritzheimer
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?
Todd Polke
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.
Scott Ritzheimer
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?
Todd Polke
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.
Scott Ritzheimer
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?
Todd Polke
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 escapethemiddle.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.
Scott Ritzheimer
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.
Contact Guest Name
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