In December 2015, I went to a personal development course that completely changed my life. I was managing my own hedge-fund, a dream that took almost 20 years to achieve. 

Two things happened in Orlando that completely changed my life.  

First, we had a team building exercise called “Obstacles are Illusions.”  

We were each given a wooden board about two and a half inches thick; eight inches long and five inches wide. Imagine everyone’s horror as we had to fill out “permission slips.”  

We had to literally break it in half with our hand.  

On one side, we wrote our biggest obstacle and on the other side we wrote our ultimate goal.  

It took me a while to write down my goal but eventually it came through me: “Making everyone in this room financially free.”  

Wow! Writing that and saying that made me feel so good. I was being of service to others.  

The 2nd occurrence at that course was that we had a guest speaker explaining stocks and stock options for an hour. He made statements like: 

“Options have unlimited upside.” 

“You can trade them anywhere.” 

“You have very little up-front or start-up costs.” 

“It requires very little time.” 

“Options are where the rich make their money.” 

While many of these statements are true, it is also true that options do have significant risks and if you buy an option, you can lose your whole investment and if you sell an option, you can lose a lot more than your whole premium. 

So, the other thing that happened at that course was that other attendees started to ask me questions about stocks and stock options after our guest speaker on options had finished his introductory tutorial.  

I realized that recommendations to invest in securities without knowing key information about the attendees including their risk tolerance, net worth, earnings, cash flow, and knowledge was inappropriate. And I felt that this part of the presentation was not authentic and potentially misleading.

What I realized from all these discussions was that education was essential and I could do a really good job of helping others and being of service to them based on my long history in the insurance and investment industry.  

Knowing the limited amount of information that most individuals had on investments and the lack of information many have about their own situation, the possibility to help others seemed to be quite large to me. I felt an obligation to help the people in the course and realized there must be many other courses like these that could be hugely beneficial and educational to potential investors, and to help people achieve financial freedom. 

I came home from the course and realized that my mission in life was not investing institutional and high-net worth individuals' money.  

I didn’t sleep the night I came home from the course as the wooden board—actually one half of the wooden board—stared at me all night: “Make everyone in this room financially free.” 

I went into my office that Monday morning and informed my investors I was planning on shutting down my hedge fund. This was a major decision that is hard to make a reader understand. A dream that I thought was “right” for twenty years was really not my true purpose in life. I know that may sound a bit cliché, but it is true.  

This huge decision to shut down my company came quickly. It was my “higher self” telling me “Truth.” I knew that trusting this decision was the right thing to do.

Remember this was the company I longed to start for years. It was the company I had so much difficulty finding investors for in 2012 and 2013.  

Was I throwing this all away based on a “whim?” 

No! 

I began with a simple questions:  

• Is investing my true purpose on earth? 

• Am I supposed to be helping ultra-high-net worth individuals and companies become super wealthy or am I supposed to be of service to those in need? 

• Am I supposed to help those who can really gain by my knowledge and experience?  

• Am I supposed to help those who can gain not only from my financial acumen, but also from my  knowledge that everything depends on your thoughts and if you can “act as if,” you can indeed  achieve what you ask for?

So, yes, now I am a prosperity coach teaching people the truth about money, giving them the  tools to manifest money and learn all types of investing techniques including stocks,  cryptocurrencies, real estate and even business strategies to grow their companies.

You can find  out more about Joel at www.salaurmor.com.