We’re excited to introduce you to the always interesting and insightful Craig Wilson. We hope you’ll enjoy our conversation with Craig below.

Alright, Craig thanks for taking the time to share your stories and insights with us today. We’d love to have you retell us the story behind how you came up with the idea for your business, I think our audience would really enjoy hearing the backstory.

About 18 years ago, I felt compelled to talk about and then create a class called “Living a Meaningful Life” to share “all the things I wished somebody would’ve told me in high school or college that would’ve been really helpful for living a life worth living.”

These thoughts came about because of two major ideas I’d been pondering from a young age. Namely, why weren’t people seemingly as happy as they should be and why were so many people financially strapped and living from paycheck to paycheck in one of the wealthiest countries in the world? I thought it was possible that these two questions were linked and the science of positive psychology, which began near the beginning of the 21st Century, started to unearth some clues in the area of money and happiness.

Well before positive psychology was founded, my wife and I got married in 1990 and decided to try to live on half of our income (including charitable donations) and then take the remainder into a diversified set of investments that would grow and provide income on their own. After consistently living this way for about 15 years (adding five children in the process) and enjoying our simple, debt-free lifestyle, we came to a place of complete financial freedom where the passive income from our accumulated investments more than covered our simple, debt free lifestyle. At that time, we chose to leave full time work and create a more meaningful way of living for us. That included a lot more time devoted to our church and charitable work which led to increased joy and meaning which led to being compelled to talk about our story as it relates to money and happiness which led to creating the class and teaching these principles and providing meaningful inspiration and guidance to many students.

The class focuses on all the things we’ve personally learned as well as scientific findings from Positive Psychology combined with Thoreau’s thoughts from “Walden” on simplicity and how to actually implement a modern-day way of life that is more peaceful with the added benefit of increased savings, a net worth that advances, higher levels of financial peace and eventually complete financial independence. With FI comes the time and means to pursue “Good Samaritan” opportunities by focusing on one’s signature strengths and how to use them to bless people in one’s sphere of existence with both time and money. As you can imagine, meaningful, joyful living is elevated for all human beings in the pursuit of this kind of happiness.

Great, appreciate you sharing that with us. Before we ask you to share more of your insights, can you take a moment to introduce yourself and how you got to where you are today to our readers.

I believe this question was answered with my answer of the previous question.

I’m most proud of not taking any money in the pursuit, implementation and teaching of this class. It’s all been a labor love with the pure motive of seeing students who take the class sensing that something really important is being taught and that some aspects of their life may be changing for the better.

Can you tell us the story behind how you met your business partner?

Curtis LeFrandt, who now co-teaches the class with me, was a former student of mine. He and his wife Misty, newly married at the time, both were inspired by the class, brought friends into it, formed a group called “The Meaningful Life Club” to implement projects within the areas of their “signature strengths” and stayed in touch for a number of years. When he was offered an opportunity as an adjunct professor at BYU years later, he felt that we should re-start this class again and inspire a new generation of students to these important principles.

Let’s talk about resilience next – do you have a story you can share with us?

I have a very strong belief in my Heavenly Father and His Son, Jesus Christ. I felt their guidance in pursuing this idea of sharing these principles to a larger audience, especially to young members of my faith. After many hours and days of research, study, and blending thoughts together, I rented a room in the Salt Lake Library through a community forum on a weekday evening to start the process of sharing what I felt the Lord wanted me to share. Nobody came that evening to my “lecture.” Normally, that would’ve been my sign to “move on.” In this case, it didn’t phase me at all. I knew in my heart this was meant to happen, and somehow it would happen, and I had simply started with the wrong forum for sharing the message.

Image Credits

Craig Wilson