The Currency of Happiness

In 1943, Edwin Land was on a family trip in New Mexico when his three-year-old daughter Jennifer asked why she couldn't see the photographs he had been taking. Not in a frustrated way. In the way that only small children ask questions, with complete sincerity and no assumption that the current reality is the only possible reality. Land couldn't stop thinking about it. Three years later,...

Stephen Van Santen lost his brother Phil to a drug overdose on November 11, 2022. Andrew lost his brother Simon in July 2025. A few weeks after Simon passed, Stephen called. That conversation is why this episode exists. This is not an interview. It is two people who have loved someone they could not save sitting down to tell the truth about what that actually costs. Phil and Stephen were 1.5 years...

I was cleaning out my closet when I found a notebook from my early twenties. A list of things I wanted to accomplish before I turned 30. Practical things, specific things, personal things. Some of them felt impossible when I wrote them. I had done all of them. Including the rental properties, everyone told me a young person couldn't afford. Including the book. Including the Jeep, which turned...

Most people become parents and then figure it out as they go. Jonathan Brozozog has spent over 20 years arguing that there is a better way. Jonathan is America's #1 Christian parenting coach, Lead Pastor of Creative Church in Minnesota, father of eight, and author of Raising Parents alongside his wife Joanne. His central argument is that the most important variable in how you parent is how yo...

A few years ago I heard a speaker describe how he writes a letter to each of his kids every Father's Day. A reflection of who he saw them becoming over the past year. I thought it was one of the most intentional things I'd ever heard a father do. So I tried it. I wrote from the heart. I got a little emotional putting it together. Then Father's Day morning arrived and I looked at my...

On October 20, 2025, Cindy Jefferies found out she had been elected Mayor of Red Deer by watching a TV screen at a press conference. The people who had run against her were standing in the same room. That moment is where this conversation starts. But the real story started decades earlier. Cindy has served Red Deer for nearly 30 years across school board, city council, and now the mayor's cha...

In 1948, David Ogilvy arrived in New York City with $6,000, no clients, no credentials, and no experience writing advertisements. He was 38 years old. What came before that moment was seventeen years of getting expelled from Oxford, working in a hotel kitchen preparing meals for customers' dogs, selling stoves door to door in the Scottish Highlands, farming with the Amish in Pennsylvania, and...

In September 2015, a 22-year-old named Lindsey More died by suicide. She had been close friends with Mark Jones's daughter. She had spent time in his home. And when she was gone, Mark, a former teacher and principal with 35 years in public education, decided he had to do something. What followed was seven years of coalition building, fundraising, institutional battles, and refusing to stop. O...

Before Emily and I were married, she had a goal. Free by 23. Financially free before her twenty-third birthday, done working for money, living life on her own terms. Twenty-three came and went. I watched that dream get quieter. And it did something to me I didn't have words for at the time. So I made a decision. I was going to retire my wife. I didn't tell her how serious I was. I just g...

Most people don't feel stuck with money because they're lazy or irresponsible. They feel stuck because they're overwhelmed. They don't know where to start, they're afraid of making the wrong move, and the longer they wait, the heavier it feels. Ryan Gaunce is a financial advisor and wealth planner who helps people build plans that actually fit their real lives. He's s...

November 21st, 1915. Antarctica. Ernest Shackleton is standing on the ice watching his ship sink. The expedition is over before it ever started. Twenty-seven men are stranded over a thousand miles from any other human being with no radio, no rescue coming, and no plan left to follow. What he said in that moment, and what he did over the next nineteen months, is one of the most extraordinary leader...

Most people think joy is something you find when life finally gets easier. Steve Moser learned it's something you choose when it doesn't. Steve has walked through betrayal, single parenthood, rebuilding, remarriage, and opening his home to children who needed one. In this conversation, he doesn't talk about joy as a feeling or a mood. He talks about it as a decision, made repeatedly...

My wife was in active labour with our third child. My phone buzzed. It was my realtor. I waited a reasonable amount of time before looking. Maybe two minutes. We made an offer before the baby arrived. I walked through the front door a few days later and found carpet stains, layers of wallpaper stacked like geological sediment, and a bathtub in a shade that hasn't existed since 1974. It was no...

More kids are anxious, overwhelmed, and struggling than ever before. But what if the real issue isn't just what's happening to our kids, it's what's happening around them? Dr. Kene Ezeibe is a child and adolescent mental health physician who has spent over a decade working with kids, teens, and families. He doesn't just see the symptoms. He sees the patterns behind them. A...

I spent a summer repairing windshields in a parking lot. No plan. No vision. Just heat, slow days, and eventually, books. That summer didn't look like much. Looking back, it was the beginning of everything. Reading doesn't just give you information. It changes how you think. And that's a completely different thing. In this episode, Andrew Rocha makes the case that consistent reading...

In this episode of The Currency of Happiness , we explore the tension between hustle culture, high performance, and mental health. Many people chase success, believing achievement will fix what feels broken inside. But the reality is often the opposite. Success has a way of amplifying what is already there. Andrew sits down with Garret Cook , a high-performing real estate professional and leader a...

Sixty thousand dollars. That is how much debt my wife Emily and I were carrying early in our marriage. In this episode of The Currency of Happiness, Andrew Rocha shares how they paid off sixty thousand dollars of debt in seven months. Not through luck or extreme sacrifice, but through a clear decision and a system that supported it long enough to work. This conversation focuses less on tactics and...

In this episode of The Currency of Happiness , we explore why so many people across cultures are searching again for meaning, purpose, and something solid to build their lives on. There is a growing spiritual hunger happening right now. More people are asking deeper questions about faith, identity, healing, and what actually lasts. Andrew sits down with Jachin Mullen , Lead Pastor of Home Church ,...

Most people wait to feel ready before they do something meaningful. More confident. More prepared. More certain. But that moment almost never arrives. In this episode of The Currency of Happiness, Andrew Rocha shares the story of buying his first rental property without feeling ready. Not confident. Not experienced. And not sure he knew what he was doing. This is not a tactical real estate breakdo...

Leadership is easy in theory. It gets complicated in real life. In this episode I sit down with Chad Krahn, Red Deer City Councillor, husband, father, and author of Welcome to Monday. We talk about the real weight of responsibility, the challenge of making decisions when resources are limited, and what stewardship looks like when every option has tradeoffs. Chad shares openly about the parts of le...

Money is just a tool. So why does it so often feel like a trap instead of support? In this episode of The Currency of Happiness, Andrew Rocha breaks down the five things money can actually do and the one direction most people unconsciously send the majority of their income. Not because they are irresponsible, but because they never stopped to decide what their money was for. Drawing from his own l...

Leadership looks like influence from the outside. But real leadership carries weight, responsibility, and consequences. Dr. Mike Bolton advises companies, sits on boards, coaches leaders, and helps shape organizations around the world. From the outside, that looks like success. But leadership always carries weight. In this conversation, we talk about responsibility, stewardship, the long arc of ca...

Debt rarely feels dangerous at first. It feels like relief. Progress. Momentum. But over time, it quietly begins to shrink your life. In this episode of The Currency of Happiness, Andrew Rocha shares the season when he and his wife Emily were doing everything right financially and still ended each month with almost nothing left. Not because of recklessness, but because their financial system was d...

In this episode of The Currency of Happiness , we explore what it really looks like to build legacy through real estate, family, leadership, and influence. Most people meet Bryce Kander and see the realtor, the investor, and the content creator. What they don’t see is the eighteen year old who entered real estate early, trained by one of the best mentors possible, his mom, and the leader who is no...

In this solo episode of The Currency of Happiness , we confront one of the most common and costly traps in modern success. A performance based identity. If your self worth collapses the moment you stop achieving, this episode is for you. Most people think they have a performance problem. In reality, they have an identity problem. When achievement becomes the foundation of your life, success stops...