About

Andrew Rocha

Host of The Currency of Happiness, husband to Emily and dad of four.

Andrew Rocha outside in an aspen forest
Andrew as a toddler in a high chair, grinning, with a cracker on the tray

I'm probably not who you'd pick to host a show about money and happiness.

We'd barely unpacked from our honeymoon when the company I worked for couldn't promise anyone a paycheque. I took the first job I could find, in a warehouse, wearing $5 thrift-store boots a size too small. Emily and I lived in a basement suite with $60,000 of debt and $5 left in the budget each month. We ate chickpeas most nights. To the outside world I was pretending to be someone I wasn't, and Emily saw right through it. She stopped talking to me for a week.

Counselling, a lot of honesty and some very unexciting systems got us out. We paid off the $60,000 in seven months.

I've now spent more than eight years in banking, and I've been recognized as a top 1% banker. The whole time I've seen the same thing across my desk. People finally hit the number they've been chasing and sit down more anxious than before they got it.

Eventually I stopped asking how to make more money and started asking what it was for. The Currency of Happiness came out of that question.

Since the boots

  • Built a 10-door rental portfolio, starting in 2018, including two houses bought on the same day, and done flips and wholesale deals along the way
  • Used the cash flow to retire Emily before either of us turned 30
  • Co-host the Central Alberta Real Estate Investor Network, which has grown from 25 members to more than 150
  • Became a two-time #1 Amazon bestselling author, one of them with a joke book I wrote in nine days
  • Named a Top 40 Under 40 in 2025 and a Business Leader of the Year finalist in 2026
  • Working on an MBA in Entrepreneurial Management

The show

Andrew talking into the microphone during a recording The recording set, with lights and a camera pointed at Andrew Andrew listening to a guest

The podcast launched in January 2026 and finished its first month in the top 10% of podcast launches worldwide. It's on YouTube, Spotify and Apple Podcasts, and it airs on Rogers TV across Alberta, which is a strange place for an audio show to end up. If you're ever in a hotel room with nothing to watch, flip over and you might find me.

Most episodes are conversations, recorded in Red Deer with people who've built something or lived through something hard. Most guests so far have been from Alberta, and the plan is to keep widening that circle. Some of them are heavy. I sat down with Stephen Van Santen to talk about losing a brother, a year after I lost mine. Between conversations I record shorter solo episodes that take a story from history or business and look for where it shows up in my own life.

Every conversation ends with the same question: what does happiness look like to you? I've never gotten the same answer twice.

Andrew Rocha at an evening event

Work with Andrew

I speak on leadership, money, goal setting, faith, marriage and fatherhood, and I'm happy to build a talk around whatever your group needs. I'm also glad to be a guest on your podcast or show. Bios, photos and talk topics are on the speaking and media page.

Get in touch

I share something most weeks on Instagram and LinkedIn, so come say hi there too.

Free guide

Turn Your Dreams Into Reality

The free goal-setting framework Emily and I actually use. Look at your whole life first, then pick a few goals worth chasing.

  • The Six Fs: finances, family, friends, faith, fitness and freedom (the one most people forget)
  • SMARTER goals, which add Exciting and Risky to the usual SMART
  • Worksheets that turn the big picture into no more than three goals at a time
  • Why your goals don't have to match your spouse's, and other things we learned the hard way

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