A Framework for Realigning Your Life When Success Isn’t Enough

There doesn’t have to be a crisis for midlife to feel “off.”

It happens quietly: you look around one day and realize the life you built—successful, respectable, busy—no longer feels aligned with who you are or want to be. Most respond by pushing harder or numbing the discomfort. Neither works for long.

My work offers a different path.

I write for people who have achieved success but lack coherence. Aspirations of Excellence is focused on helping high-achieving adults move from quiet dissatisfaction to purposeful alignment by anchoring their lives in service, elevating their efforts through craft, and refocusing their days through wise stewardship of time.

Drawing on decades of leadership experience, philosophical depth, and my own journey, I write for people who want more than productivity hacks or empty inspiration. I write for people who want to move from ambition to the pursuit of excellence.

Who Am I?

I am a strategic thinker and author based in Nashville, TN.

Professionally, I am the President of Greycourt & Co. where I help advise some of the world’s wealthiest families about how to manage their investments, govern their affairs, and educate future generations of their families.

I currently and have served on numerous non-profit and for-profit boards over the past 20 years (15+ and counting). I have published two books When Anything is Possible (2021) about intentionality with money and the Family Enterprise Playbook about building enduring families.

My Background

My work has always been at the intersection of the theoretical and the deeply pragmatic.

The last 10 years of my career have been focused as a strategic advisor help people, families and organizations solve their trickiest problems.

Prior to joining Greycourt, I founded a strategy consulting firm in 2019 working with single family offices. I worked closely with a group of single-family offices at the intersection of investment, strategy and governance. Prior to that, I worked with an investment advisory firm here in Nashville.

Before moving into the advisory world, the first ten years of my career were focused on being an investor.

In 2012 at the age of 28, I co-founded a hedge fund. It was time to take what I had learned and apply it - at least that’s what I thought. Over the next four years, I got what felt like an MBA from the school of hard knocks that is entrepreneurship.

My training to found a hedge fund began in 2006, when I moved to Nashville to get married, and entered the investment world as research analyst. My job was a mixture of investigative journalism and corporate finance. I conducted deep industry research and learned how to talk to business owners and learn about what they were facing in their business. We then translated that research into our opinion about how that impacted publicly traded companies. I published written research 1-2 days a week for nearly 6 years - a great lesson in learning how to write professionally!

My path to this world was anything but straightforward.

My first post college job was in consulting with Accenture working with large financial services companies. This experience built on my college internship in the operations department for a large investment firm. The longer I was in financial services, the more the world of investing quickly captured my interest, as it is one of the few places where thinking can be applied immediately when making an investment.

Across all this, has always been deep dive into the theoretical of why things work the way they do, combined with a pragmatic application of my thinking in the real world. This mirrored my education at Wake Forest where I was a business major and philosophy minor. Neither department seemed to know what to do with me.

I’m massively curious and read a ton - almost 40 books a year for 20 years running. I enjoy lifting weights, playing golf and tennis. I love the arts - having seen nearly 50 plays and musicals. I have been fortunate to call Nashville home for almost 20 years. My wife, Meredith, and I share our home with 2 teenagers, a third grader, and a reasonably well behaved goldendoodle.

Thanks again, and please tell a few friends if you feel like it.

Best,
David C Wells Jr

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