True Wealth:

Moving Nonprofit Leaders
From Scarcity to Abundance

Nathan Barkocy is an entrepreneur, keynote speaker, mentor, and advocate for a broader definition of wealth—one that goes far beyond money. After surviving a near-fatal accident that forced him to rebuild his health, faith, and financial life, Nathan developed a philosophy centered on purpose, time freedom, relationships, resilience, generosity, and sustainable impact. He is a #1 international bestselling co-author of Old Wealth. New Wealth. True Wealth. and now helps individuals and leaders rethink what it means to live and lead from abundance rather than scarcity

For more information about Nathan and his work, visit his website at https://nathanbarkocy.com/

The Interview Summary

In this episode of The Non-Profit Exchange, I had the pleasure of speaking with Nathan Barkocy, a keynote speaker, entrepreneur, and founder of True Wealth Philosophy and Community. Nathan’s journey to redefining wealth is both inspiring and profound, shaped by a near-fatal accident that forced him to reevaluate what truly matters in life.

We delved into the often uncomfortable topic of wealth in the nonprofit sector, discussing how the word can feel out of place amidst discussions of generosity and stewardship. Nathan emphasized that while money is a necessary resource for nonprofits, true wealth extends far beyond financial assets. He shared his belief that time, purpose-driven success, fulfillment, and relationships are integral components of true wealth.

Nathan’s insights on shifting from a scarcity mindset to one of abundance were particularly impactful. He encouraged nonprofit leaders to recognize the vast opportunities available to them and to understand that there are many individuals eager to support their missions financially. We explored the importance of relationships in building a successful nonprofit, highlighting how the right connections can open doors and create win-win situations for all involved.

Throughout our conversation, Nathan shared his personal story and the lessons he learned about the value of time and the importance of living each day to its fullest. He also discussed his collaboration with Sharon Lecter on the book “Old Wealth, New Wealth, True Wealth,” which aims to redefine wealth beyond just monetary accumulation.

As we wrapped up, Nathan offered practical advice for nonprofit leaders looking to expand their impact and encouraged them to embrace an abundance mindset. This episode is filled with wisdom and actionable insights that can help nonprofit leaders rethink their approach to wealth and stewardship.

For more information about Nathan and his work, visit his website at https://nathanbarkocy.com/

 

The Interview Transcript

Hugh Ballou

It’s the Nonprofit Exchange again, and this is Hugh Ballou Today’s episode is going to be great Get your notepad out write down what you’re going to do about the ideas You can find this at the Nonprofit Exchange.org And you go back and find all those great ideas that you heard in writing get those sound sound bites. So This is The Nonprofit Exchange. We’re here every Tuesday. We do a live stream. You can find us wherever you get podcasts on YouTube, on Facebook, on LinkedIn. We explore leadership principles, strategies, and ideas that help nonprofit leaders create greater impact and build organizations that can sustain it. Our topic today is one that nonprofit leaders do not always feel comfortable discussing. It’s wealth. In our sector, we talk easily about generosity, service, sacrifice, and stewardship, but sometimes the very word wealth can feel out of place. Yet, without adequate resources, healthy leaders, strong relationships, and sustainable financial capacity, even the best mission can remain limited. My guest today is Nathan Barkocy. He’s a keynote speaker, entrepreneur, mentor, and founder of True Wealth Philosophy and Community. Nathan is a number one international best-selling co-author of Old Wealth, New Wealth, True Wealth with Sharon Lechter, who has her own fame from the Rich Dad, Poor Dad system. His perspective on wealth was shaped profoundly by a near-fatal accident that left him rebuilding his body, his faith, and his life. He later built a multimillion dollar portfolio and now teaches the view of wealth centered not simply on money, but on ownership of time, purpose-driven success, fulfillment, generosity, resilience, and sustainable impact. Nathan, welcome to the Nonprofit Exchange and start by talking about how you redefine true wealth, please.

Nathan Barkocy

Well, Hugh, thank you. And I’m so honored to be with someone like yourself who’s created such an impact in the world because you are living true wealth. You are a prime example of it. And so I’m very honored to be with you. And I think nonprofits are—they are the best expression of true wealth because we’re combining wealth, which we’ll get into, because true wealth does not ignore the money. It requires the money. It requires true ownership. But it also goes so far beyond just the money. So it’s incorporating everything that you’re putting together with these nonprofits. And I love your message. So this all, this all hue came together when,  back when I was 16 years old, I was a nationally ranked competitive cyclist. So I was top 10 in the nation. I was the state champion of New Mexico on my way to the Tour de France on my way to the Olympics. And then January of 2016, I was hit by a car at 60 miles an hour. And you don’t survive that impact. So the officers who came to the site of the scene reported it as a fatality. And I was rushed to the hospital. And by God’s grace, I was revived on the way. And I was in a coma for two weeks. After two weeks, I opened my eyes again. And when I did open my eyes, I was paralyzed. So I was in the ICU for a month. I was in Craig Hospital for two months. And as a nationally ranked competitive cyclist, I had to learn how to walk again and talk again and eat again as a 16-year-old. That’s not what you’re expecting. So when you’re laying in bed, as a nationally ranked athlete, I still knew in my mind that I was on my way to the Tour de France, to the Olympics, but I also couldn’t move. So you get a really big mindset shift about what truly holds value. And so ever since then, I’ve lived by this saying that tomorrow is never promised. So we need to make the most of today. We need to take ownership of our time today because tomorrow is never promised. And we plan for the future, of course, but that planning requires action today. And so my whole mission and message is to ensure that people understand that time is our most valuable asset because you can never get your time back once you’ve spent it, once you’ve expensed it, and then you can never create more time. Time is the only limited asset that we truly have. And so that goes so much into nonprofit organization as well. And I’m excited to dive into all of this with you today, Hugh.

Hugh Ballou

We’ll cover as much as we can in the next 20 minutes. And we’ve got a lot to talk about. The book, what inspired you to write the book with Sharon? You’ve got the big image. Do you have a copy handy? Tell us about the title of the book and why that’s significant.

Nathan Barkocy

Here it is, Old Wealth, New Wealth, True Wealth: Beyond Dollars, The New Currency of Legacy. This is an international bestselling book that we’ve put out. And it’s actually, I prefer the audiobook. We turned it into a huge audiobook production with 10 characters. And it just comes to life. So I would recommend everyone gets the audiobook. It’s on Audible. It’s on Amazon. You can find it anywhere. And the reason I reached out to Sharon Lechter is because she is the co-author of Rich Dad, Poor Dad. And she was co-founder of the Rich Dad brand. She wrote 15 books with Robert Kiyosaki. And they built, I mean, the largest personal finance brand in the world. And that book is what reshaped my mindset around how the dollar works for us. So, you know, when you raise capital for real estate projects or when you’re operating businesses and you allow your dollars to work for you through, you know, through an investment portfolio, I really had my mindset opened to a mindset of abundance through the book, Rich Dad, Poor Dad. So I was thinking to myself, I wanted to write a book that really helps redefine wealth beyond just the dollars, getting into the person that you become and the life that that allows you to live through true ownership of your time. And I thought to myself, well, if I’m going to write a book that redefines wealth, I’d like to reach out to the lady who redefined money through Rich Dad Poor Dad. So I reached out to her on her website directly and sure enough, it was a shot in the dark for me, but sure enough, her team responded and we hit it off. And since then, we’ve written this book and it’s changed the world thus far. So I’m excited to keep impacting as many lives as possible through this positive message.

Hugh Ballou

That’s remarkable. And like I told you, I know Sharon and she’s quite remarkable in the different kinds of things she’s written as well. So she talks on numbers of topics. So we also talked about the word nonprofit putting us into the scarcity mindset. So how do we differentiate as a nonprofit leader from responsible stewardship? Now I’m a recovering Scottish Presbyterian. We treat frugal as key principle. How do we understand responsible stewardship and it’s not really scarcity mindset? Because we’ve inherited all these myths related to the nonprofit space. We can’t, we can’t, we can’t. So how do we differentiate between this prosperity mindset and the scarcity mindset?

Nathan Barkocy

This is a great question. And I would answer the question by another question. How much impact do you want to make? What I think is incredible is the abundance of opportunity that we are surrounded in daily. There’s so many opportunities for so many people to create such an impact. And I think the nonprofit sector is the sector that allows you to create the most impact. I have seen it personally for the for-profit side. I have a lot of incredible high-net-worth capital raisers who have built large real estate portfolios in my sector. They’re the ones who have guided me to become an entrepreneur and they’ve taught me how to raise capital, invest into real estate, and all of this is for-profit. But the key here, Hugh, is the fact that that same sector is reaching out to a large community of investors and people really want their money to go to creating so much value in the world that when you reach out to them about a nonprofit, they’re even more eager to write that check because they want to see the impact in the world. So my number one advice for nonprofit operators is to leave behind the scarcity mindset as in you cannot have enough or you cannot create enough value in the marketplace because nonprofits are so pivotal to our society and to our culture because of the impact that they create. And you would not believe how many people want that impact to continue to expand. And so when I say mindset shift from scarcity to abundance, realizing that there are so many people out there that are ready and willing and excited and eager to write a check for a nonprofit business, because not only does it increase their wealth in their mindset, it increases an entire cultural shift. And this is why when I say true wealth is measured in what you multiply for others, it’s not what you keep for yourself, that is focused on particularly the nonprofit mindset. In a nonprofit, you are multiplying for so many others. You are creating such a positive shift in society that it’s measured nonprofit. True wealth is measured in nonprofits because you’re building such an impact for so many people. While sometimes when you’re doing things for-profit, you are so focused on getting the next Rolex or the next Bentley that you aren’t truly focusing on what’s measured for everyone else.

Hugh Ballou

Those are brilliant words. You’re here at the Nonprofit Exchange. If you happen to come by watching the video stream, you can find us at TheNonprofitExchange.org and you can get all these sound bites and you go back and look at it again. There’s so much wisdom, you know, from a person that’s very young to have this kind of wisdom. I’m quite impressed. So we also talked about Napoleon Hill, and he defines money as the bottom of the list of definitions of wealth. But money is a part of true wealth. So talk about wealth as stewardship, not as accumulation. It’s empowering us with our mission. So put that in perspective for us, would you?

Nathan Barkocy

Yeah, absolutely. So this is why I wanted to gear it as the old wealth, new wealth and the true wealth because everyone’s desiring some form of wealth and money is included in all of that. Money is a common denominator for everyone, including nonprofits. And so we have to focus on this. The old wealth is really structured in more of the accumulation, almost the hoarding, right? And, and it can be long-term and tax advantage like real estate, you know, and, and it’s, it’s smart. I have old wealth, new wealth is the flashier, the get rich quick, the social media fame. And there’s nothing wrong with that, you know, and maybe, maybe you do have a Bentley, maybe you do have a Rolex. There’s not, that’s not, the wrong thing necessarily, but what is that going to do to impact and multiply others, right? So that’s where we move it into true wealth. We leverage the capacity of long-term tax-advantaged wealth or even the accumulation wealth and we include the new entrepreneurial hustle culture of the new wealth And we integrate all of that together to create multiple streams of income, to create a larger impact for true wealth. And true wealth is genuinely that ownership of your time. And when you’re running a nonprofit, you have to realize that every second that you spend is also considered as a form of your wealth. So my call to all of the people that are listening to this who do operate nonprofits or they do raise money for nonprofits is really take an audit, a time audit of your schedule. What did you do during the day that did move your nonprofit forward? What did you do during the day that did raise money for your nonprofit? And then what did you do during the day that allowed you to focus on the true wealth within yourself. That faith. Napoleon Hill talks about faith as a key part of the world. Faith is the beginning of an accumulation of wealth. I would say that that is pivotal. Making sure that your true wealth, your health, your mindset, your core and your faith, those are all grounded and founded and they are not getting confused with the desire to have more or the desire to create more for yourself because that’s what a nonprofit is. You’re building more for so many others.

Hugh Ballou

I like the analogy that I thought of it. I don’t know if it existed before, but we, we build the organization. It’s like getting a car. You make, you build a car, buy a car, and then you learn to drive it, which is leadership. But if it’s going to go anywhere, you need gas. So, in our organization, the gas is our fuel. The money is our fuel. So, psychologists talk about the money shadows, how it puts a negative spin so we back away from the resource that we need. So, let’s talk about relationships on that basis. We tend to, as Murray Bowen, the psychiatrist, talked about, we tend to over-function. And the reciprocity to your team is under-functioning. But the payment that we pay is burnout. And we do that because we’re trying to save money. We have limited resources. So talk about relationship as the true wealth and it’s, in my view, relationships underneath leadership, it’s underneath communications, and it’s the basis for people funding you and engaging with you. So that’s, it’s really key. So that is a genuine wealth, but we have this misconception that we got to do everything, which really has a negative effect. So talk about relationship as true wealth.

Nathan Barkocy

Yeah, well, I mean, you just opened up a whole lot of lines that I’d like to go into. I mean, first of all, with the money, right? Money is not – that creates a scarcity mindset if you see money as a finite tool. There’s an abundance of money and that’s why there’s so much – this is so important for nonprofit operators to understand: there is there is an abundance of money in this world. That’s why people raise capital for for-profit projects that I’m involved with. That’s why people are raising money for nonprofits is because there’s so much money and there’s so many people with that money. So let’s use that money to build an impact as opposed to just burying it or keeping it hidden. And so I would say that that’s an abundance mindset shift that is key to have. And that is generated through your relationships. Like I just said, so many people have a lot of available capital that they want to place into different projects. They want to put into different nonprofits. And so building your relationships allows you to open so many, so many doors. And this is, I think this is crucial for people to understand, is the power of association. This is something that Sharon Lechter always talks about. She says that term specifically, the power of association, because who you know gets you into the right rooms, who you know gets you into the right opportunities. And without co-authoring a book with Sharon Lechter, I wouldn’t have had the same opportunities that I do now. I’ve started this entrepreneurial coaching program and the mentors that we have in that program are incredible. They’re monumental figures in the industry. Without that power of association that I had with Sharon Lechter, without her name on my book, without her guidance as my mentor, I would not have been in these same rooms. And so it’s really about getting to know the people. And then it’s mutually profitable. That’s what I love about nonprofits as well. It’s a win-win-win situation. So you help others win. And if you help them win, then you win. And when they win, everyone wins. It’s just a win-win-win. So that’s the focus. True wealth is not solely for your win. If you’re wanting to build a business or if you’re wanting to do a nonprofit just to make yourself feel good or just to make your own self profitable, that’s not what it’s about. It’s about self-sacrifice. It’s about building more for others and genuinely you will win along the process because when you scale for others, you allow yourself to scale at that same capacity.

Hugh Ballou

Oh, that’s so much wisdom in just a few words. So I tell people, you’re going to be like the people you hang around. So if you want to be broke, you hang around broke people. If you want to be prosperous, you hang around prosperous people. So if you’re the smartest person on your organization, you need to get a new board.

Nathan Barkocy

That’s a problem.

Hugh Ballou

I always want to associate people smarter than me. Some people say it’s not a problem, but I do it. I want to show your website in a second, but talk about your purpose and your faith. You speak openly about faith, and you’ve got a second lease on life. So how does your faith impact your understanding of wealth and stewardship?

Nathan Barkocy

Yeah. Yeah. And before we jump off the relationship part, I love to say this quote.  my dad always shared a quote that he lived by: “Show me your friends, and I’ll show you your future.” So I would say that’s the same thing, right? Keep yourself in those circles where you’re not the smartest person in the room. You’re always learning more and you’re always pushing yourself now in relationship to,  my faith. I’ve done a lot of podcasts about this, and I’ve spoken with a lot of people. So I invite everyone to go look at my YouTube channel to see the podcasts that I’ve done and the times I’ve spoken about my experience with death, my encounter with death. And I know that it’s pivotal for people to understand the importance of our time because this life is so finite, you know, and there’s so much positivity we can create in our life. But at the same time, there’s so much it’s so easy, especially in our modern culture today in America. It’s so easy to waste your time, right, to just lose yourself doom scrolling or to just lose yourself, you know, on things that aren’t creating an impact in the world. And when I came back, what I witnessed beyond death allowed me to come back with so much gratitude for each day. And this is a whole podcast in itself, so I’ll save the details so that other people can listen to that podcast that I’ve done, multiple podcasts about that. But the core message of that whole experience that I witnessed beyond this life is the fact that our time here is so valuable and our relationships are so valuable that if you can build God’s kingdom here on earth as it is in heaven by creating positive relationships and creating such a positive impact, that’s been my mission and my drive because every day I open my eyes, I thank God for another day that I get to see the sun. And that’s the same mentality. That’s the type of abundant mentality, abundant mindset that you need to have is the fact that every day is an abundance of opportunity.

Hugh Ballou

Every day is an abundance of opportunity. There’s so many great little quotes in this interview so far, and I bet we could do a whole nother podcast on any of these topics. So I will put in the show notes, in the page for this show, those links for those that people want to explore those. So let’s go and look at your website. Tell people what the link is.

Nathan Barkocy

Yeah, so the link to my personal website is nathanbarkocy.com, so that’s Nathan, N-A-T-H-A-N, and then Barkocy, B-A-R-K-O-C-Y, Bark Like a Dog, O-C-Y, dot com, and you can see my story on that website, you can see, I mean, my the encounter with death that I experienced. You can see the car that hit me. You can see me in the hospital. You can see me sitting up for the first time. What I’ve built now alongside my mentor, Sharon Lechter, I always encourage people to visit this website and go look at the True Wealth Community, which is the community that I’ve built for proactive and aspiring entrepreneurs. There’s free downloadable gifts that people can access when they log on to that True Wealth community vault. They can get access to a lot of downloadable documents and kind of some accountability trackers to help them live a life of true wealth themselves before even joining the community. And then there’s a lot of media on there. There’s a lot of information about the book. I would recommend, like I said, to order the audiobook. If you go to Amazon, it’s on Amazon. It’s the Old Wealth, New Wealth, True Wealth audiobook. And it is a very fun book to listen to because you get all of the characters involved and the book really comes to life.

Hugh Ballou

And I’ll put some of those links on the landing page for this episode at the nonprofit exchange. So let me do a closing set of questions. Just kind of rapid fire here.  for the nonprofit leader who realizes I have been leading from scarcity, what’s the first shift you would encourage them to make?

Nathan Barkocy

The first shift is to always get in the right rooms because when you’re surrounding yourself with people who know who are where you want to be, then you will get there, right? Put yourself in a room of… You know, this is the saying, right? Put yourself in a room of four billionaires, you’ll be the fifth. And this is the same thing with nonprofit as well, right? So put yourself in a room with Hugh Ballou, put yourself in a room with my friend, Bob Hopkins, who lead nonprofit operators, who lead nonprofit businesses and movements, because they will teach you how to become successful and how to increase your impact.

Hugh Ballou

So what’s one belief about wealth that you hope nonprofit leaders will stop carrying?

Nathan Barkocy

This is a good question. So we would go back to the scarcity mindset because I think when you’re raising money for a nonprofit, You may have limited beliefs on the amount of impact that you can create. The reason that I answered your first question with another question about how much impact do you want to make is because, as I told you, there’s an abundance of opportunity. There’s an abundance of money. And so you just need to tap into that abundance in order to create an abundance of impact, in order to create an abundance of positivity from your nonprofit, because the amount of impact that you can create is solely reliant upon the abundance mindset that you have.

Hugh Ballou

Nathan, thank you for helping us expand my definition and I hope others’ definition of wealth and how we can expand that and truly take advantage of the abundance that God has provided for us and the vision that we carry. So nathanbarkocy.com is where you’ll find him and that will lead to the other sites. So Nathan, it’s been a true gift having you share your wisdom on the Nonprofit Exchange today. Thank you for being my guest.

Nathan Barkocy

Thank you, Hugh, for having me. It’s always an honor.