Podcast #8 – Harmon Kong Reveals the Secret to Generational Wealth and True Legacy

Doug Dvorak (00:00.118)
Hello Mission Podcast community. I’m your host, Doug Dvorak, and I’m excited to bring you inspiring stories from incredible guests. These individuals are on a mission to create remarkable possibilities that not only enhance their own lives, but also make a lasting impact on the communities they serve and the communities they live in. Stay tuned for some truly amazing conversations.

I’m so excited. My guest today is Harmon Kong, a certified financial planner and co-founder of Apriem Advisors, headquartered in Irvine, California, with additional offices in San Diego and Los Angeles. Apriem is a financial services firm that strives to provide clients with the highest degree of service, handling all facets of their finances to ensure financial security and peace of mind.

the term Apriem means exceedingly above all to the highest degree. Harmon, welcome to the Mission Possible podcast.

Harmon A Kong (01:03.377)
Thank you, Doug. It’s an honor to be here with you.

Doug Dvorak (01:05.718)
It’s a high honor and privilege and I couldn’t put it down. Values over valuables. What a great book. Thank you for writing it. Thank you for turning me on to it. And I’ve got three copies. I’m going to give both of my nephews a copy of this book. It’s just really impactful and I think the timing is so appropriate. Tell me, what was the inspiration and what inspired you to write values over valuables?

Harmon A Kong (01:34.766)
Well, first off, thank you for reading the book, Doug, and more thank you for passing it on to your family. I am not a writer, so I can’t say I was always inspired to write. I joke in my family that I am probably the least likely to write a book. I was good with numbers and not so good with words, even though my father was a college professor. So what inspired me really is something that I read maybe about 15 years ago.

about how generational wealth doesn’t typically last past the second and third generation. In fact, 70 % of the next generation loses what they inherit. And then 90 % of the third generation, which would be your grandkids lose what they inherit. So I was really, really struck by that. And so for the past several years, I was really trying to understand why, how is that even possible? Especially when you work with families that…

have certain capacity, you create a strategy to protect the moat, protect the castle, I want to say. And so I was really struck that families that really struggle with passing on wealth to the next generation.

Doug Dvorak (02:47.314)
Excellent. Talk to me about the significance. The title is very compelling. Values over valuables. Can you elaborate on the meaning behind that?

Harmon A Kong (02:55.992)
Well, you know, they say when you write a book, you don’t know what the title is until it’s actually done. And I think what came out after the book was written is that the focus wasn’t so much about the valuables itself, which is the tendency of what we tend to do in our industry as financial advisors and wealth managers. We sort of focus on the money aspect, the assets, the real estate, the stock portfolio, how it’s structured. have

lawyers and CPAs and money managers and we spend an exorbitant amount of time on these things yet even though we do that we still find that when we leave it to the next generation they struggle to maintain what they’ve inherited. So I started in my journey trying to understand why is it and I realized that you know what we’re not spending time on is passing on the values that make us who we are. So that’s how the title came out values over valuables.

Doug Dvorak (03:52.182)
Excellent. And the core message, what’s the main takeaway you hope readers will gain from this book?

Harmon A Kong (03:58.22)
Well, my hope is that people will maybe get a mind shift and kind of revisit their life and think about the things that matter most. And it’s not what you, the assets you leave behind, it’s really the people in your life. And if I could leave anything to my kids, it would be the values that make me who I am and the values I inherited from my parents.

Doug Dvorak (04:22.454)
Excellent. Talk to us a little bit about your upbringing. Your dad and mom were from Hawaii. The Hawaiian culture is deeply imbued in you and your family. But take us back to the two-acre parcel in California where you had chickens.

vegetable garden, your mom and dad were accomplished bonsai artists and they had a little bonsai nursery and thrift was important to you early on. Can you share what values specifically and that experience of hard work with many mouths to feed, a total of seven, you had four siblings? Unpack that for us because I think that was really instrumental in your upbringing and your current values about money, thrift and savings.

Harmon A Kong (05:03.957)
Yeah, well, that

Harmon A Kong (05:10.37)
Yeah, thank you, Doug. That’s a big question and really a lot to unpack. Sometimes I feel like I’m still unpacking that. But I will speak on this idea of the Hawaiian culture of my parents because family was a core value for them. And not just in the nucleus sense, but in a broader sense. When you come from a small island in a small town, my dad was raising Kaneohe and my mother was raising Kailua.

You’re forced to live in community. So what was very clear to me was my dad approached life as if everyone was family in some way. And in Hawaii, we sort of are. know, when you start to talk to people, realize, my gosh, we actually could be related. So it’s scary thought. But to look at everyone in the sense that, you know, if you were my family, how would I treat you? How would I approach you? And so it is a simple golden rule of treating others as you want to be treated. But

in our culture is really about everyone is family. And so I, for me, I’ve been able to translate that to how I view life, how I make decisions, how I do business, how I treat my friends in the community around that. But to your question about, you know, living on two acres and farm, we even had steers, we raised our own meat. You know, my dad was, had a fascination for life science. So.

He taught life science as a college professor. So anything that had a living cell was his fascination. But in the process of this, this is probably in the 70s, I’m kind of dating myself, but he was really interested in organic farming before organic was even a term. And part of this came from him and his buddies’ realization that in horticulture, in plant world, Monsanto started playing with genetically altered ways to produce more efficient crops.

and more efficient farming. And they weren’t sure about the effects of that. So they decided, you know what, it’s time to grow our own fruits and vegetables. And we moved to a lot that had two acres and we sort of became a self-sustaining family. I couldn’t figure out, I even share that in a book that, you know, I had a little bit of resentment of that. to give you an example, the first place I bought was a townhome with no yard. And I remember calling my dad saying,

Harmon A Kong (07:29.346)
Guess what? I bought my first real estate and you know what? There’s no yard. There’s nothing to maintain because I was so tired and exhausted of maintaining a property with with plants and gardening and livestock. But as I look back on that, what it taught me was a lot. It taught me that you know there is such thing as hard work and actually using your hands today has become very therapeutic for me. Because much of what I do is mental thinking and.

For me to relax, I need to do something more creative or something with my hands. So now I wish I had a yard with two acres and a farm, but that’s not possible today. Maybe it is, but today I kind of live in a much more provincial space that I can control where I have a gardener that takes care of the yard work. But I think there’s something very therapeutic about growing things. My dad wanted to teach the value of hard work. So to him, hard work meant digging ditches.

Doug Dvorak (08:15.648)
Mm-hmm.

Harmon A Kong (08:26.158)
in the ground and planting and gardening and taking care of livestock. But the fruit of that really was that we got to eat what we produced. And as I look back, I think my dad was ahead of his time because he was organic farmer before organic was even a term.

Doug Dvorak (08:43.488)
Wow. Let’s dovetail one last question on your Hawaiian heritage. Explain Ohana to our guests, please.

Harmon A Kong (08:53.014)
Ohana is just another word for family. you know, we think about Ohana as, as I mentioned, as a wider audience of, you know, we are all part of the human race. We are all family in some direct or indirect way. And when you think about people in that way, then you have a greater awareness to the needs of those around you. Because what I was brought up thinking,

as a family being a core value is there is nothing we wouldn’t do for family, right? So when you think of life that way, you begin to think of your neighbor as there isn’t anything I wouldn’t do to help them or help them improve a situation. It’s hard to sort of turn away from the needs of others and, cause we wouldn’t do it to our own family. So the idea of that is,

you know, treating others like you want to be treated, but also looking at life in a broader community of people. So.

Doug Dvorak (09:58.198)
I’d like to just pause for a minute and share with you a story, you know as I started working and enjoyed a modicum of financial success I had a broker and At the end of the year when I talked to my broker I’d get all these trades and then I’d look at the S &P up 16 % and I was up three the money kept moving and when I finally 25 years ago worked with a proficient

wealth manager and fiduciary, my whole financial world changed because I’m not a money manager and I don’t want to trade stocks and I’ll read the Wall Street Journal of Fortune. That’s not my lane. But can you share with our listeners the difference between a wealth manager fiduciary opposed to a broker? No disrespect to brokers, but in my experience, that’s when I really started seeing the value of compounding and excellent financial advice, please.

Harmon A Kong (10:56.238)
Well, that’s great to hear, Doug. I’m glad you’ve found a way that makes sense for you and you’re having much greater success. And yes, there is a lot of confusion in our industry as to how advisors practice. I started my career at a brokerage firm where we had what’s called a suitability standard. today, 27 years ago, I left that to move more to what’s called a registered investment advisory firm.

and practice in a fiduciary manner. And the difference really is this, is that fiduciaries are held to a much higher standard. It’s we have to articulate due diligence as to every investment we invest in, what kind of investments we personally own, what kind of diligence we did to make a decision whether or not that was a good investment or not, what investments we did not invest in and why or why not.

So we get under the scrutiny of the Securities Exchange Commission to identify, are we really acting in the best interest of our clients? Now, the suitability standard really is this, is if you are a suitable, if the investment is suitable for you, then it’s a good investment, regardless of the cost, fees, performance, it’s really more suitability. So let me give an example. If you say, hey, I’m aggressive growth investor,

and your broker recommends a growth investment that’s categorized as a growth investment and you buy it and it doesn’t grow and it happens to be the worst growth investment in its peer group, then there’s nothing wrong with that because you were suited for that investment. You said you want to growth. This is a growth investment, but the investment didn’t grow, but it was suitable. Where a fiduciary gets scrutinized is, okay, why did you buy that growth investment? How did you compare that to other investments?

How does that compare to the benchmark? Why did you pick it? Explain to me your process. And by the way, do you own that too? And so when I left my brokerage business, which is where I started out of college, I spent about nine years for a Wall Street firm and started my company today of 27 years. I wanted life to be much more simple. And going back to the value of family, it really comes down to this is that would I buy that myself and would I recommend that to my

Harmon A Kong (13:15.982)
parents, my brother, my sister, my aunt, my uncle. Because if I can’t recommend it to the people that I love and the people around me, I have no business recommending that to anyone else because we’re all investors here. And so I think the fiduciary standard fit me and my core values much more than practicing on the brokerage side of Wall Street. But yet today, I will say that there are a of good brokers, a lot of good brokerage firms. It’s just a different structure.

And I think what’s really important to your point really is that the public have awareness that there are choices for them.

Doug Dvorak (13:51.606)
And I didn’t even know the difference between broker, fiduciary, advisors, and really I’m impressed with the advisors I’ve met that are fiduciaries. Harmon, how have your personal values shaped your journey both professionally and personally? You’ve talked a little bit about it, but can you share with our listeners your personal values and how that shaped your journey professionally and personally?

Harmon A Kong (14:15.726)
Well yeah, so I talk about family as a core value. In the book I share my core values, I have five. And I think every family should identify at least five to seven. So I have an exercise you go through and it’s available on my website as well. But it’s basically an exercise to try to narrow down what your core values are. And I believe that everyone has core values, whether they’re spoken or unspoken.

It’s sort of our lens of life. It’s how we look at things, how we discern information, how we decipher information, how we make decisions, how we behave. And we don’t talk about that enough. And that’s really the point of the book. And if I were to ask my kids or if you were to ask your kids, hey, what are mom and dad’s core values? Would they know what they are? So how does it shape our life? Well, it shapes everything. And if you identify what they are,

then it starts to make sense. No wonder I think like that. No wonder I make these decisions. So it’s important that we’re sort of in touch with ourselves, sort of like a self-reflection of inventory of who am I, what do I care about most? So these core values really shaped our family and how I raised my kids. I talk about services is one of our core values. have my kids have chosen careers that…

are in the service industry because they wanted to make a difference in people’s lives. So my oldest serves in the military, is an Air Force pilot. My daughter is an example as a mental health therapist. Mental health therapist, I could barely say that. But they chose careers because, not because they’re gonna make a lot of money. You don’t typically join the military because you’re make money. You join because you wanna serve our country. My daughter picked mental health because she wanted to help other people. So I can see how if service is a core value, then it can affect

the outcomes of not just yourself, but your children as they become adults and discover what they care most about. And I believe that if you find something that you truly enjoy doing, then you’re gonna be really good at it and everything else sort of takes care of itself. So that’s just an example of how that core value has shaped, our core value has shaped our own life.

Doug Dvorak (16:27.606)
Excellent and really a key differentiator in this book from my perspective I read a lot is it’s well written, but it’s it’s very honest authentic You speak from the heart you talk about your family’s allegories stories anecdotes But what I really liked is the back and all the you know discovering my values worksheet mission statement it’s very Specific yet not too highbrow in that you it

just really relatable matter of fact with those guide posts at the end. You talk about a number of things. Unpack the three envelopes for our listeners. I love that.

Harmon A Kong (17:11.182)
Yeah, that’s a great story. I like that story because it’s personal. So I was trying to think about this question, and I think we all question, how do you raise financially responsible young kids? Especially, you my kids grew up in an environment where they always had. I mean, they never had lack of anything. So my biggest worry was, how do I raise them to be financially responsible in this kind of environment?

You know, my dad used to tell me things like, hey, eat all your food. Don’t you know they’re starving kids in Africa? And I go, I don’t really know what that means. So we can tell them things or we can show them things. what we did early on when our kids are really young, because we started doing family meetings when the youngest were just turning eight years old. So our kids are, we have.

Doug Dvorak (18:00.874)
And what were and what are the frequency of those meetings now?

Harmon A Kong (18:05.238)
When they were young, it was once a month. And then as they got older, we were doing quarterly, semi-annual. Today we do them annually. And we have three new spouses in the family. So they’re included. And now they’ve become sort of annual retreats. And they typically take at least a half a day, because we have a lot of things that we like to cover and everyone likes to share. But going back to your question on the three envelopes, what I did was

We just, my wife and I decided that we were going to give our kids some financial allowance. And we didn’t want allowance to be something that was conditional. Cause I see this happening where parents would say, you know, you were really naughty Johnny. So I’m deducting that from your allowance or you broke the window. So you have to take it out of your allowance and pay for that. That can create an apathetic child. You know, if you think about it at some point, if you have a really naughty kid who always disappoints and can’t perform next year, you know, the kids like,

Okay, you know, I don’t really care about the allowance. I don’t want it. And that’s not what we wanted to teach. That’s not a performance metric. We wanted them to know that you get this because that’s part of the privilege of being in this family. What I was more interested in is what they did with it. So we kind of guided them along the line and we created three envelopes. Very simple. One envelope said spending, one said giving, and one said savings.

And so they had to decide when they got their envelope how much would go into each one of those three envelopes. And they always decided there’d be something going into each one. And they would put money in the giving, put money in the savings. If they put money in savings, I would ask them, what are you saving for? Sometimes it was a computer game. I think one of their biggest purchases they did was the two boys saved up for a guitar. And then on the spending side, was

Okay, take the spending envelope and stick it in your wallet or your purse. I, mom and I will never question what you do with that because it’s your right to spend it. Now here’s where the teaching comes in. Sometimes your kid would take a lot of money and stick it in the spending section and you have to run them through. They’ll say, know, how would you feel if you lost your wallet and all that money was gone? You think it’s wise to carry 40 bucks for a 10 year old, you know, in your wallet?

Harmon A Kong (20:25.614)
And they go, yeah, probably not a good idea, dad. Okay, well, let’s maybe take some off there. And then on the giving side, one of our other values was generosity. So how do you teach generosity to a young kid? So we wanted them to understand what that looked like. So that they took a portion of their allowance, stuck it in the giving envelope. I never told them where to give it. I just said, I gave them options. said, you know, if you find something that you think you care about, then you can give it there. Or I have an idea. don’t you guys can also collectively

pull it together. And if you did that, then I would match what you guys give by sometimes a 5x multiple. And we got to talk about the needs of others. And for years, our kids donated to poverty initiatives because they realized, well, there’s some people don’t have the life we have. And so was our way to teach them about being financially responsible. And at that age, really, kids can only understand three things about money.

One, could spend it, save it, or give it away. And that’s all I wanted to teach them. Right, today they’re adults, so it’s little more complex than that. But they still understand that. They understand.

Doug Dvorak (21:29.142)
Hmm.

Doug Dvorak (21:33.878)
And how has that demonstrated itself now that they’re older? Do you have any specific stories that you can share that might be interesting to our audience?

Harmon A Kong (21:44.802)
Yeah, so on the giving side, I think what’s interesting, just last meeting we had just last month, it was a new year, so we had our family meeting. And what was really neat is to see how they’re taking percentage of their income and giving it to causes they care about. And everyone got to share a little bit about that. And so one of the things I did to encourage that was I decided to match some of their giving, especially to causes that align up with us. So I hear things like…

poverty initiatives, homelessness, trafficking, women issues. so really the idea is that, you know, they find their own cause. And I do believe that everyone should have a cause. I think if you, in the book I write about the purpose of wealth. And I talk about that I dedicate a whole chapter to redefining financial freedom. And if you recall that I described it as three levels. There’s

Most people think of financial freedom as financial security, right? And most of the people I work with are very financially secure. So they have more than they need. And we think of that as freedom because I have enough, I can do whatever I want, whenever I want, wherever I want. I just have capacity to make choices. But what I have found is that you meet a lot of very secure people, and I know you have too, Doug, that don’t have this level of peace of mind. And I think…

You can’t be free if you don’t have peace of mind. And so then what brings you to peace of mind? And so that’s a deeper question, but it’s something that we have to understand and try to address. And then the third level of financial freedom is really about what’s the point of it? What’s the purpose of this money? Because having more of it doesn’t necessarily change my life.

anyway, because I’m still going to sleep in the same bed, drive the same car, eat. I can only eat so much. So so then what do you do with excess capacity? And I think philanthropy is is something that people find a greater purpose for or a cause that they can care about. So I think financial freedom is really about security, peace of mind and financial purpose. And if you can combine those two together, then you have a much more secure feeling about what

Harmon A Kong (24:03.072)
it means to be financially free.

Doug Dvorak (24:06.326)
I love that because that answers this question I was going to ask you. I loved your quote. Nothing is wrong with a desire to prosper, but at some level of wealth, money loses its utility, meaning more of it does not add to quantity or quality of one’s life. And what you just said really succinctly, know, how much is enough? What’s enough? How big is the house, the car, the watch? And, you know, peace of mind, but the ability to use that wealth.

to really impact the lives and communities of others. What a huge privilege. And that’ll lead me to my next question. You mention in your book two families, and I love the section on the lessons of history. And I’ve read on the Carnegie’s and Vanderbilt’s, Carnegie was Scottish, US Steel, all his…

In fact, I was in a tertiary market and guess what I saw in this really small town, a Carnegie Library. He funded libraries. But you know, the Carnegie saved their subsequent generations, didn’t lose it, but the Vanderbilt squandered it. Can you unpack that, those two dichotomies of huge wealth, Carnegie, huge wealth, Vanderbilts, and what sort of lessons happened at each and share some takeaways for our audience?

Harmon A Kong (25:32.492)
Yeah, thank you for bringing that up. There are fascinating biographies if you ever have time and you want to really dive into sort of old industrial money. The Carnegie’s and Vanderbilt’s are case studies and if you’ve ever gone to Newport, Rhode Island to go look at their cottages, pretty, it was the early American aristocracy, right? Pretty impressive. But I think what’s very clear as you unpack that is that Carnegie had a set of values, which is really sort of the point of

my book is that his values were service to others. And he also has been noted by quoted by saying, it’s a sin to die wealthy. And so he did believe that using your funds to benefit society and others was a great thing to aspire to do. And I believe he left his wife and his daughter just one piece of real estate.

and enough to live comfortably, but not excessively comfortable. Where the other side of it, maybe they didn’t talk about the values that were really core. still don’t really know what drove Vanderbilt other than more success, more success and conquer the world. That’s probably what we get after reading it. But that carried through and by the third generation, a lot of their wealth was lost, just as today’s statistic still shows. So I think what’s interesting about that is a lot really hasn’t changed, unfortunately.

So when I read this study over 15 years ago, I wanted to unpack the study and I found that they studied 3,200 wealthy families. And here’s the key to that. They said they studied wealthy families. So I said, well, if you study wealthy families, here’s what I know. Most wealthy families have a slew of advisors. They have attorneys, accountants, money managers, people that are really advising the family. And so my thought was, so even with that, these families still

failed in generational wealth. And I thought, wow, man, that kind of diminishes the work that I do. Thinking, well, all this I’m doing really isn’t going to matter anyway. So I really want to understand why that is. And I really think, as the title of my book says, is that we need to focus on our values before our valuables. And I think if you can secure the values of who you are and what you really want to pass down,

Harmon A Kong (27:56.438)
inevitably you will secure the family valuables in the process. So that’s really the premise of my book. I also would like to add to just this thought of, know, when you work for an organization or you had my company or any company, and I know you have a lot of experience working with a lot of different firms and advise a lot of different people, most companies and organizations have core values, right?

And not only that, they draft pretty articulate, sometimes short or long vision statements. And then they have mission statements as well to go along with that. And then they have regular meetings, right, Doug? Where they talk about, hey, are we fulfilling our mission? Are we true to our values and our vision for the future? Why aren’t we doing that with our families? And that’s really what the workbooks are at the back of the book is.

It’s never too late to start. Whether you’re starting a young family today, don’t get caught up in the content of the meeting. It’s just really more the practice of gathering as a family. The other stuff can come later. If you’re later in life and your kids are all grown up, you know, I say, plan a meal. The best place to gather is around the dinner table, right? Or around the kitchen. I think having shared meals is sort of got lost in the busyness of life.

I know it was really difficult when we had four kids that have a meal together because everyone was kind of going in different directions. But when you really think about that, a lot of our culture has sort of lost some of those values of just gathering. So I think it’s important that families identify what their values are, develop a vision, have a mission, and meet regularly to make sure you maintain that family unity. I think you’ll see a significant benefit to your family.

Doug Dvorak (29:51.516)
Excellent and really spend do the heavy lifting with your family go through the exercises at the end of the book be consistent execute against this strategy opposed to lip service you go back to Enron if you went to Enron corporates headquarter a huge Boulder with their four overarching Core mission or principles honesty integrity service value. They didn’t live them

And look what happened, skilling and doing prison time because they did not live the values. It was window dressing. And really where you’re going with this values over valuables, really and many times throughout the book, it’s about significance and not success. Can you share with us a little bit about that statement?

Harmon A Kong (30:45.442)
Yeah, it used to be a tagline to our company where we’d say significance beyond success. And partly why we use that is we wanted to just kind of reframe the work we do for our clients. And most of our clients are already successful. But what they sort of lack is significance or purpose. And so our encouragement is try to help people understand what their significance is.

Most of the time when you really think about significance, it’s different from success because success is more self, almost like self-serving. It’s like success is what do I want? Significance is more what can I give? What can I give to have lasting impact that’s going to have significance beyond my own life? And that’s the reframing of the two words. Would you pursue significance or success? I think…

most of us focus on the success piece without defining what success is. So we let culture define it for us. Success means financial success. But then when we have that, then we start thinking about, you know, what’s that all for? And then we kind of go back to the significance piece. And, you know, I think some people have got it right. They started the significance before the success. And I’m happy to say, I think my kids went there, you know, what’s more important to you? And they find significance in serving.

But it’s something that we all sort of rustle with and try to understand what do we care about. In the book, I talk about kind of igniting that thought process in yourself. And I asked two questions, finished this sentence. I find it absurd that we live in a world where.

And to follow that would be, there anything in the world that you see that makes you cry? And so there are certain initiatives in our family that we take on. So one of them is human trafficking. And if I were put that in that sentence, I would say, I find it absurd that we live in a world where children are trafficked for money. Or I find it absurd that we live in a world where almost 2 billion people don’t have access to clean water. And so those things go on and on and on.

Harmon A Kong (32:58.456)
So what you’re finding is that, know, champion a cause or something, you’ll find a lot more significance doing that than just kind of living in your own success.

Doug Dvorak (33:11.094)
Excellent. Let’s look at values over valuables in a broader context. The cultural relevance. We live in a consumer-driven, I want it now world. What do you think, or why do you think this message is especially important now?

Harmon A Kong (33:26.702)
I’m glad you asked that question, I think the most significant thing that I bring early on the book is that we live at a time where there has been an incredible amount of wealth that has accumulated for a generation. And so if you think about generational wealth, we have the silent generation, which is a lot of our war veterans who fought in the war are sort of dying off. And then we have the baby boom generation, which is sort of you and my generation. I’m the tail end of that, but I still…

have benefited from a post-war generation that has generally had some significant success. And much of our success is through ownership. We own real estate, we own equity investments in the stock market, and what has happened is that there’s been a rising tide that has lifted our boats. So some of us have done better than others, but for the most part, Fortune Magazine,

estimated that, and this was just earlier last year, estimated that anywhere from 85 to 129 trillion dollars is going to go from one generation to the next. The question is, what is this generation going do with all that wealth? Especially when you read the statistics that they’re not going to do well. Significantly most of them are going to lose it. 70 % of that generation is going lose it. And then the grandkids, 90 % are going to lose it. And so…

But here’s the other thing that in the backdrop of all this, I can honestly say that watching my kids go from grade school, high school and college didn’t have one class on personal finance. Isn’t that odd? So my daughter got her degree. She got her master’s in social work and I use her as sort of an example is that I tease about this is that when I went to her orientation, they said, here’s her schedule.

Doug Dvorak (35:02.079)
Really?

Harmon A Kong (35:18.658)
there was no room for other elective classes and I sat in the back and I kind of raised my hand and I said, is there a way she can take like a basic course in economics or like finance? And the counselor looked at me and said, do you want her to graduate in four years or five years? And I said, okay, four years. Four years sounds good to me. So the point of bringing this up is that I don’t think our education system is really helping our young adults be prepared for life.

Doug Dvorak (35:33.526)
Hahaha

Harmon A Kong (35:47.426)
learning life skills about spending, saving, budgeting, emergency funds, investing. And so where is it going to come from? Where are they going to get it? And I like to think knowledge is acquired one of two ways. One is we learn it, we study it. The other is vicariously, right? Experiential, meaning we’re going to learn the hard way. We’ll make mistakes and you you won’t do that again. And I when it comes to personal finance, have those two factors. We have

Maybe a lack of awareness or knowledge or literacy. Some people are a champion financial literacy for a next generation. But we also have this incredible amount of wealth that’s going to go from one generation to the next. And the question is, are they prepared for it? That’s really the question. And so to answer your question, I kind of answer it with another question.

Doug Dvorak (36:36.502)
No, that’s great. over the course of my life and career, I’ve read some personal finance books. I can’t attribute back to Einstein, but you’ve probably heard this story on his deathbed. asked him, what’s the most important thing you’ve learned in your life? His response was compound interest. know, yeah, eighth wonder of the world. And I remember when I was making under $20,000 a year as a sales rep.

Harmon A Kong (36:54.412)
Yes, the eighth wonder of the world.

Doug Dvorak (37:05.158)
in the early 80s and I started putting $25 into my IRA and over 30 years the time value of money, compounding, living below my means, paying myself first, having great values and respect for thrift and savings, fast forward 30 years, it’s amazing the benefit of compounding. Harmon, you also speak and I really like this.

how one’s values are more important than the value of one’s portfolio. Please explain.

Harmon A Kong (37:42.318)
Well, I mean, there’s kind of a simple explanation to that. mean, if you had some success, what’s when you’re gone, I guess this is more of a question of when you’re gone, what what’s left? I mean, what do you really care about? It’s it’s not that you’re leaving a nice stock portfolio to your kids. It’s it’s really what what values have you passed on? So I speak a little bit about, you know, my father and the values he left for us as kids.

And education was one, family was another, hard work was another. And those are the things that matter the most, more than any kind of inheritance I’m gonna receive from him. And so I think our kids think the same thing at the core of what they care about most is who you are. Those are the stories that are gonna last.

And so that’s why it’s even more critical to have family time and have intentional meetings to talk about things openly and to share stories. So that’s why I think values are more important than talking about the portfolio. It’s easier to talk about the portfolio sometimes, but not about the values with your kids and your family. So that’s my simple answer to your question.

Doug Dvorak (39:07.862)
Well, you shared, you know, in the next couple decades, the baby boomers are going to pass on $75 to $125 trillion. I loved your quote from Warren Buffett on his wise stewardship of his massive fortune and how much he will leave to his kids. His quote is, leave your children enough money so that they feel they could do anything, but not so much that they could do nothing. What’s your thought on this massive

tens of trillions, hundreds of trillions going from us to our kids and that quote relative to stewardship of wealth and his philosophy on leaving his children money.

Harmon A Kong (39:48.108)
Yeah, I love that posture of his quote because I think it’s something when you really think about that, it’s something we all need to think about, right? Like I want to leave my kids something to do something, but not so much they do nothing. We don’t need them just to receive money and live a lack of purpose, purposeless life.

We want their life to have much more deeper meaning in whatever that looks like for them. So it’s something they have to discover. But it is important to think about what matters most and how I think when I think about it, think it’s an incredible first off, it’s an incredible opportunity. Leaving a fortune like that in the hands of many.

who can do something really positive for everyone is an incredible pent-up potential to do incredible things. Yet if we don’t talk about these things today, nothing’s gonna happen. People, kids, the next generation will receive their inheritance and many of them might be 40, 50 years old when they get it, maybe later. And then they have this choice of living a life of financial security.

and security to them might be that one level I talk about. I get to do whatever I want. And is that what we’re trying to, is that the value we’re trying to instill? So sometimes I joke with my clients about, you know, they have done well, but they live very frugal. They haven’t changed their way of living. So I tease them and say, you know, if you don’t fly first class today, your kids will. it’s kind of this.

Doug Dvorak (41:38.454)
I like that. I’m gonna I’m gonna harvest that

Harmon A Kong (41:40.684)
It’s kind of this harsh reality of, know, I didn’t grow up with money, but I do know this. I don’t need to go and do this and do that, but don’t worry your kids well.

Doug Dvorak (41:45.663)
If you don’t.

Doug Dvorak (41:54.868)
I love that. Hey, Harmon, let’s talk about some personal reflection. Everybody’s got a story. Everybody has a book in them. But the writing process, what was the most challenging part of writing this book? And what did you learn about yourself in the process?

Harmon A Kong (42:09.934)
Well, I learned that I don’t think I don’t know if I could do this again. To be very honest with you, it was a project I started in 2019 and then we hit COVID. And so I told my publisher Forbes, hey, I just need to take a break. There’s too much going on. I need to focus on other things. And then COVID lasted a lot longer than we all expected. So then coming out of it, they reached back out to me and said, hey, do you want to finish this project? And I said, yeah, sure.

But I really didn’t want to finish it. I was just telling them that to kind of go away. And then they said, OK, we’ll check back with you in a month. And we sort of did this game for a couple of months. And I would say probably at least six months. And then finally, one of their editors, Nate, he’s a great guy, called me and said, you’re not going to do this, huh? You got me. You called me out on it. I said, yeah, honestly, to be very, honest, lost interest. I don’t really have anything.

that hasn’t been said by somebody else. It’s just, it’s kind of common sense stuff. And I don’t really feel like I want to finish this. I am kind of busy doing other things. And he said, well, I’ve read through what you have. I, know, for me, just personally, I really think you should get your message out there. And, and I think it can help a lot of people. And he said, why don’t we do this? Why don’t we tackle one chapter in one month? Do you think you can do that?

And how do you say no to that? Right. I go, yeah, I read more than that in a day, just reading news and stuff I read for work. And so I said, you know what, that, that, sounds like a good idea. And he was, yeah, and I’ll give you my thoughts. You give me your thoughts and maybe together we’ll finish a chapter. So I agreed to do that. And June 17th, 2024 is when I signed off. And as you know, cause you’re a publisher too, an author, when you sign off, it’s done.

it’s going to print, there’s no changing it. And I did that so reluctantly. And he kept saying, you know what, here’s the thing is that you never think it’s done. You’re always gonna go back and I was gonna, go, you’re right, I don’t think it’s done. And so the process of writing was a lot more creative and a lot more difficult than I thought. And I guess that’s why most people don’t write.

Harmon A Kong (44:33.454)
books because it’s a lot to think about structure chapters message and to be honest with you. I the book had maybe over 200 pages initially and I started in this is good thing. It happened much later. I started thinking about the books that I really enjoyed and I and I remember and they were shorter books because typically what happens is is if you get a book that sounds like a good book, you want to read it.

Doug Dvorak (44:35.901)
It’s a

Harmon A Kong (45:02.446)
It’s 250 pages. What I typically do is I’ll buy it and I’ll set it next to my bed and say, yeah, when I have time, I’ll read it. But the truth is I’d never have time. And then I buy another book about the same size and I start getting a stack of them and I never really finished. So I started thinking, what books have I read that really resonate with me? And it’s the books that are non-threatening, the books that are not 250 pages or more. So I started cutting out. And that’s why I see when you read the book, the later chapters get shorter.

Doug Dvorak (45:14.336)
Mm-hmm.

Harmon A Kong (45:30.766)
So I kind of consolidate down, if I can get this down to 150, 160 pages, because I think when you look at it, go, okay, I can read this over the weekend. And I think you read it over the weekend, Doug.

Doug Dvorak (45:40.244)
Over the weekend, was a, the length is just right. It’s well written. Yeah, read it in two days.

Harmon A Kong (45:49.486)
Yeah, so I did. I did learn that about book book rise that you know, just get your point across and and land the plane. Because to me it wasn’t so much about OK, you read it. It’s what are you going to do with it, right? You actually going to apply some of these things.

Doug Dvorak (46:03.548)
Exactly. So let’s talk about feedback and I’ll sort of commingle. Have any of your readers or colleagues shared stories about how your book has changed their perspective or their family’s perspectives and behaviors?

Harmon A Kong (46:18.828)
Yeah, probably the biggest thing that has been encouraging to me is here that families are starting meetings for the first time. I had one reader show me that they created a, they cut up all the values into little tiles and they scrambled them on the table and then they all started to, everyone had one and they started to pick one. They started with 10 and he did this with his adult kids and then they narrowed it down to seven.

But he sort of made it into took it at a different level and just cut them all up and said, let’s just kind of pick the ones that are meaningful to you. And that warmed my heart to see that, okay, this family is getting in touch with their core values and or another family who just said, hey, we had our first meeting, it was rough, but everyone agreed that we need to do this more regularly. And so those things really.

make me feel good that, okay, someone’s actually applying some of these principles.

Doug Dvorak (47:17.534)
You answered my next question, action steps. If listeners could take one immediate step, action step after reading your book, have a meeting, take some of the content, work on their family mission statement, have those candid conversations around a table of food and great family time. That’s great. One last question before we get into the rapid fire round. Personal mantra, if you had…

to distill your message into one guiding principle for life, what would it be?

Harmon A Kong (47:51.182)
Wow, guiding principle is love your neighbor. Yeah, if you can love your family, you should be able to love your, we gotta start there, right? Can’t love your family, man. What does love look like to other people? So I think everything is rooted there.

Doug Dvorak (48:13.002)
honesty, purity, love, service can make the world a better place. So are you ready, Mr. Kong, for the rapid fire Doug Dvorak questioning round? All right, I’m gonna give you a series of questions, one word response or a short phrase. Here we go. One word, if you had to describe values over valuables in one word or a short phrase, what would it be?

Harmon A Kong (48:43.747)
family.

Doug Dvorak (48:45.472)
Biggest inspiration. Who has influenced your values the most?

Harmon A Kong (48:51.33)
Wow, people, you know, my parents, my dad.

Doug Dvorak (48:56.456)
Excellent. Morning ritual. What’s one habit you swear by to start your day?

Harmon A Kong (49:01.722)
Well, it’s not yoga, I can tell you that. A cup of coffee. I know that sounds bad, yeah.

Doug Dvorak (49:10.432)
Caffeine it is
Work or play? What brings you more joy? Work or leisure?

Harmon A Kong (49:40.44)
Do both. Can I say both? I love work. I love work and work is play to me sometimes.

Doug Dvorak (49:42.1)
You can say both. Great.

Excellent, because you love what you do and you’re very good at it. Biggest lesson, what’s the most important lesson life has taught you?

Harmon A Kong (49:51.756)
It’s okay to make mistakes.

Doug Dvorak (49:53.554)
Excellent book recommendation besides your own. What’s a book everyone should read?

Harmon A Kong (49:58.7)
Whoa, man, I’m gonna use a faith book, Purpose Driven Life.

Doug Dvorak (50:04.574)
Love it. Core value. If you had to pick one core value to live by, what would it be?

Harmon A Kong (50:10.1)
faith.

Doug Dvorak (50:11.274)
Guilty pleasure, what’s one thing you enjoy but might not align with traditional values?

Harmon A Kong (50:15.886)
Sometimes I like being lazy, doing nothing.

Doug Dvorak (50:22.664)
Excellent dream collaboration. you could work with any thought leader, who would it be?

Harmon A Kong (50:28.91)
You’ll Warren Buffett, right?

Doug Dvorak (50:30.494)
Excellent. Life-changing moment. What’s one moment that completely shifted your perspective?

Harmon A Kong (50:37.138)
I think some near death type experiences. I almost drowned a couple of times cause I kind of do things that are probably not smart, like in the ocean. it kind of gives you a pause of, wow, this is how I’m going to go. So I try not to do those things anymore. Can I check my

Doug Dvorak (50:46.23)
Wow.

Doug Dvorak (50:58.846)
Okay, future goal. What’s one thing you hope to achieve in the next five years?

Harmon A Kong (51:03.66)
Become a grandfather.

Doug Dvorak (51:05.49)
Excellent. Very worthy goal. Hobby, what’s something you love doing when no one’s watching?

Harmon A Kong (51:11.694)
when no one’s watching.

Harmon A Kong (51:16.546)
Hmm. I still like reading. I know it sounds boring.

Doug Dvorak (51:20.648)
Excellent. No, I love to read. Legacy in one sentence, how do you want to be remembered?

Harmon A Kong (51:27.892)
as a good father, good husband.

Doug Dvorak (51:30.334)
Excellent. Last question. Values over valuables, a tough choice. What’s one valuable you’d never give up?

Harmon A Kong (51:39.182)
gosh, wow. Generosity.

Doug Dvorak (51:45.856)
That’s great. Harmon 52 minutes. Time flies when you have a great guest like yourself. Podcast Nation community. My guest has been Harmon Kong with Apriem Wealth Management in Orange County. Author of the new book by Forbes, Amazon bestseller values over valuables. Harmon, if our community and listeners want to get a hold of you, how can they get a hold of you? And then how can they buy your book?

Harmon A Kong (51:52.258)
Wow.

Harmon A Kong (52:14.958)
Yeah, well, the book is available on Amazon, Target, Barnes and Noble. It’s also available as a audible version and a Kindle digital version as well. You can contact me at my author website, harmonkong.com, as well as my company apriem.com. The author website does have the downloadable versions in the back. So I put it in a fillable.

PDF version that you can download for free and start working on it with your family.

Doug Dvorak (52:48.982)
Our guest has been Harmon Kong. Harmon, thank you. I really enjoyed the book and getting to know you better. Thank you Mission Possible Podcast Nation to remember to have fun because if you don’t have fun, this could happen to you. There once was a man who never romped nor played. He never smoked. He never drank nor even kissed a maid. And when he upped and passed away, life insurance was denied for since he never lived, they claimed he never died. Carpe diem.