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Imagine That
Episode

Considerations for Purchasing a Second Home | Season 2, Episode 4

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Join our host and CEO, Greg Weimer, for a discussion around second home ownership. In this episode, we discuss some of the considerations surrounding the purchase of a second home, from the initial expense to ongoing carrying costs like housekeeping, maintenance, and even the logistical aspects such as travel that are sometimes overlooked.

But it’s not all about the financials. Greg also touches on the invaluable investment in family memories and the joy of creating lasting experiences. Whether you are considering an oceanside getaway or a warm cabin in the mountains, tune in to gain insight and discover if a second home is the right decision for you.

Confluence Financial Partners — Considerations for Purchasing a Second Home | Season 2, Episode 4

Greg 00:04

Hello and welcome to the Imagine that podcast. I’m your host, Greg Weimer, founder, partner and wealth manager at Confluence Financial Partners. Each month, we’ll explore new ways to help you maximize your life and your legacy and meet some extraordinary people along the way. So if you’re looking to get more out of your life today and legacy tomorrow, let’s get started.

Katie
00:25
Hi, everyone. This is Katie Montagazzi, director of marketing here at Confluence. I’m sitting here with Greg. We were just talking about some topics that come up in conversation with clients and their families. And as of late, a lot of people are talking about buying a second home. And that sounds exciting, and it is. But as Greg’s going to share, there are a lot of pros, cons, things to think about, and we’re going to talk about that today.

 

Greg
00:51
Yeah, big decision. But I would just say what if. Fun decision, like enjoy the process. We’d be happy to help you facilitate that conversation with your family about a second home. We went through that two and a half years ago, so a lot of stuff to think about, though. I would really encourage you. I’ll just give some random thoughts, go to different places to make sure you really know where you want to be.

 

Greg
01:20
How often do you want to go there? We needed to be within 2025 minutes of an airport because we go in and out a lot, so that’s real important. Should you rent? Should you own some of these prices? I don’t know. Do you look at them?

 

Katie
01:36
Florida. That’s about it. But yeah, I look at crazy.

 

Greg
01:39
look@realtor.com. Every morning to just check the prices. They’re really getting out to be outrageous. How about after you purchase the home, if you’re purchasing costs associated with the house, it is the most underestimated number of all the numbers, the carrying costs of homes. It’s just a lot. You usually have an hoa. You have to take care of it.

 

Greg
02:02
When you’re not there, things break. By the way, I don’t mind that we knew that going in, but I would argue for most people, the carrying costs are extraordinarily high. But I’ll be balanced on this. The carrying costs are extraordinarily high, but the moment you create with your family and the legacy you create. Spending time with your family. I’m just thinking of so many people that have done it, and I think they would almost all agree they are also very high. So you may look at it as a carrying cost, you may look at it as a price, but you also could look at it as an investment in your legacy.

 

Katie
02:44
Yeah, I was going to say, our mission is maximize lives and legacies. And a lot of times that means for people doing things now while you’re living with your family, to create the legacy once you’re gone. So I know for you and your family, that’s been the case for your second home.

 

Greg
02:56
Yeah. If you buy a stock, you get a dividend every quarter, and those dividends are awesome. And when you die, your family gets a stock. And by the way, we love portfolios. So we’re not saying put all your money in second homes. Let’s be really measured on this. But if you own a home or just a second place to go, or you go on vacations, whatever your thing is, you don’t get a dividend.

 

Greg
03:21
But you do get incredible experiences. And then your children get a home that they can sell in 20, 30, 40 years. So it’s not like you’re spending giving the money away. You’re still going to get it back. But there are opportunities. I would say, though, it’s not any fun if you’re stretching, for most people, it’s better to rent, because if you’re just going to go January, February, March, we don’t go that long. We have a couple of weeks at a time.

 

Greg
03:46
If going to go January, February, March, and you’re just going to go down three a lot of times. Renting, even for a month or two. Renting is by far financially, from a financial standpoint, a better decision. And both of them provide the incredible experiences. But you’re right, the carrying costs. Really high.

 

Katie
04:06
Yeah. And I’ve seen clients financial plans where we can put into the plan. We think it’s going to cost x amount of dollars per year on top of buying the house. And we can help you figure out the math of that, too. So it’s not just the logistics, but the math 100%.

 

Greg
04:21
Like, if you’re going to buy a second home, the most valuable reassuring thing to have is to make sure you have the certainty that that second home is not going to put you in a financial pinch, period. Absolutely. So we will model out the additional cost. We will model out how much it’s going to cost you to buy. We’ll model out all that and we’ll literally show you, can you comfortably buy it? Or maybe we would recommend renting or maybe wait a couple of years. But absolutely we can help you with the certainty of that decision.

 

Greg
05:01
I guess that’s the point. It is a big decision. There’s a lot to think about. But I hear a lot of people talking about second homes. Shoot, you go down to parts of Florida now it feels more like Pittsburgh. There’s so many people that travel back and forth. So it’s a wonderful opportunity to have that.

 

Greg
05:17
We love talking to family because at the end of the day and. Your portfolio is awesome, but your portfolio is awesome because it supports your life and your legacy. So if a second home is the right thing for you, we can help you come to that conclusion.

 

Katie
05:37
Thank you, Greg. That was an interesting conversation. And like we said in the beginning of the podcast, purchasing a second home has really become a hot topic for a lot of our clients. So if you want to start or continue the conversation, we’d be happy to do that with you. Thanks.

Insights

Imagine That
Episode

Passing the Torch: Navigating Wealth Transfer | Season 2, Episode 3

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Join host and CEO, Greg Weimer, as he speaks with our COO, Gregory Weimer, CFP® , CPA, and Director of Wealth Planning, Randy Holcombe, CFP® about the significance of planning around wealth transfer. 

Whether you are growing and developing in your career, or contemplating the legacy you’ll leave behind in the latter stages of life, this discussion sheds light on the impact of estate planning and effective communication.

Tune in and discover how these elements can shape not only the inheritance for your heirs, but also the enduring legacy you’ll leave for generations to come.

  • Greg Weimer
  • 00:04
  • Hello, and welcome to the Imagine that podcast. I’m your host, Greg Weimer, founder, partner, and wealth manager at Confluence Financial Partners. Each month, we’ll explore new ways to help you maximize your life and your legacy and meet some extraordinary people along the way. So if you’re looking to get more out of your life today and legacy tomorrow, let’s get started. You. We have a really important topic today, and it’s it’s a megatrend. It’s a megatrend facing the families we serve.
  • GW
  • Greg Weimer
  • 00:35
  • It’s a megatrend facing the families in our country, and it’s a great opportunity. It’s also an incredible responsibility. And that is there’s $96 trillion that’s going to transfer to the next next generation. Unfortunately, some of those transfers will not go well, and the transfer will be viewed by the next generation as a burden and will cause controversy in a family and stress in other families. It will be a blessing. Our goal today is to give you, the listener, some ideas on how to make your family transfer your wealth in a way that it’s a blessing. So have two of my associates with me today.
  • GW
  • Greg Weimer
  • 01:25
  • One also happens to be my son, Gregory. And just to give you a little bit about their background, gregory’s a CFP. He’s a CPA. He’s also a certified exit planning advisor. I also have with me Randy holcomb. Randy’s a CFP, be, and he’s also the director of our wealth planning. So there’s a lot to think about in this transfer.
  • GW
  • Greg Weimer
  • 01:47
  • We pride ourselves in helping people maximize their lives and maximize their legacy. And by the way, there’s a balance to that, obviously, right? There’s a balance to how much of your legacy do you want to create while you’re living? How much do you want it to be inherited? Let’s open it up for a discussion. And obviously, we’re going to start with what do you want the money to do for you? What are your goals with this money?
  • GW
  • Greg Weimer
  • 02:13
  • Next, we’re going to go into, like, okay, does an estate plan make sense? What are some things to think about in the state plan? How do you communicate it to your family, and then how often should you review it? They’re just some thoughts, right? And that’s just a general framework. So you, the listener, know where we are in this conversation. Let’s start out with goals.
  • GW
  • Greg Weimer
  • 02:33
  • So, Gregory, you work with a lot of families. Maybe give the listeners some things to think about as they’re and, Randy, you can chime in too, but Gregory, give them some things to think about on some of the things you should be thinking about when you put together your goals.
  • GJ
  • Gregory J Weimer II
  • 02:50
  • Yeah, and I think you started off with maximize life and legacy, and I think starting there is a perfect spot to start because it is a balance. And so as we’re talking about a wealth transfer, we immediately go to the unfortunate passing of one generation and passing that wealth to the next. But during the life also, how do you balance maximizing moments with your family that they’ll remember or getting involved with philanthropy or whatever is important to you, with your legacy also? So we work with a lot of clients to figure out, okay, with your planning, how much do you want to leave to the next generation? What does that mean for them? And maybe during their life, can you take that extra vacation to create memories? And a lot of times that’s important, and there’s ways we can have those conversations to really bring that out with families.
  • GJ
  • Gregory J Weimer II
  • 03:36
  • Maybe we can get into that later. But it is really interesting, and everyone does have different goals 100%.
  • GW
  • Greg Weimer
  • 03:43
  • And by the way, you would think you spent your whole life thinking about it. Right, but sometimes it’s really hard to articulate. And so, to your point, we can talk about a family meeting if you want and how we help families sort of decide what those goals are. But, you know. Maybe buying the second home is really not about how you’re living, but it’s also about the legacy. I unfortunately just came back from a funeral, and we’ve all been there. When you hear them talk about the person that has just passed and let there be no mistake.
  • GW
  • Greg Weimer
  • 04:11
  • They’re talking about the legacy that person’s already created. And it doesn’t have a whole lot to do with money. It has a lot to do with moments and how they live their life.
  • GJ
  • Gregory J Weimer II
  • 04:21
  • Normally, at that point, no one’s concerned about the money. The estate has to settle, right, and it has to get passed. But when you’re standing there, everyone’s thinking about the legacy of moments. So it’s a really important part of the wealth transfer. And we’re calling it wealth transfer, but it’s a bigger transfer than just that.
  • GW
  • Greg Weimer
  • 04:38
  • It is. And then when the wealth transfers, one of the things you have to consider is how much control do you want? So you’re gone. How much control do you want to make sure that money transfers the way you want it to transfer? The other thing that we should probably talk a little bit about in goals, I think it’s of the $96 trillion, there’s about 19 trillion that is expected to go to philanthropy. So how you want a charity that you really care about and make an impact on to be transferred to that charity is really important.
  • RH
  • Randy Holcombe
  • 05:09
  • I think it’s important to remember, too, that that 96 trillion is not all financial assets. A lot of its real estate, a lot of its businesses. So the goal depends on the asset. If it’s a business you’re passing on, that could be a whole different set of goals than money.
  • GW
  • Greg Weimer
  • 05:23
  • Yeah. 100% of the 96,000,000,000,001 3rd will be in financial assets. That leaves businesses. That leaves car collections. I know your goal may be for someone to really inherit that car collection because that’s what they always wanted, et cetera. The next generation may or may not want that. So you really need to make sure under the goals, that you think about how those things should be transferred.
  • GJ
  • Gregory J Weimer II
  • 05:51
  • Yeah. So every type of asset may be transferred differently also. But then even if it’s going to your children and even if it’s just financial assets, do they get it all upfront? Is it in trust? Is it not in trust? Are the beneficiaries right? Do they get it over a period of time?
  • GJ
  • Gregory J Weimer II
  • 06:06
  • There’s a lot of different language you can put into trust and estate documents to effectuate that, but you have to make sure you have the right team around you so that that’s set up upright or it could put a burden on the next generation if it’s not written the way you intended. Yeah.
  • GW
  • Greg Weimer
  • 06:22
  • I don’t want this to sound as self serving as it maybe is about to, but. It. You really need to make sure Your team of advisors is experienced in thinking through this. I mean, this is what we think through all the time with our families, whether it’s through exit planning, successions, whether it’s through philanthropy, whether it’s through helping them review Their trusts and their wills. I mean, all this stuff’s really important, and it has to really be a team. And so really spend time and ask yourself, do I have the right team of advisors? The acid test in this firm is I visualize I’m no longer going to be here maybe in 30 or 40 years.
  • GW
  • Greg Weimer
  • 07:06
  • And I want to make sure that this organization Is appropriately structured, that when my wife Is sitting in this office without me, that is here to make sure that our wealth, whatever we have, is transferred appropriately through our family. So our promise to you is we’re thinking through this. Our promise to you is we think about how to structure this family for our family and your family on a daily basis. So now that we think about the goals. Let’s think about the estate plan, because I think some misconception about estate plan. Oh, you have to have $30 million to think about that. It makes me crazy.
  • GW
  • Greg Weimer
  • 07:45
  • Randy, why don’t you touch on a little bit on why would you think about what documents you need, or do you need an estate plan?
  • RH
  • Randy Holcombe
  • 07:53
  • Yeah, so there’s several reasons. One is, like you said, some people do have the $30 million estate, and they are really concerned about taxes. So there are certain things you can do to minimize your taxes. But more often, and I don’t care if you have a million, 30 million, your family needs clarity on your estate plan, and you need to provide that. When you put the plan together, people will fight over just about anything. If you don’t make it clear the way everything’s supposed to flow, how it needs to go. And you talked about blessing versus burden.
  • RH
  • Randy Holcombe
  • 08:26
  • If they and have a clear picture of what needs to happen, it can shift quickly over to the burden side.
  • GW
  • Greg Weimer
  • 08:32
  • And when there’s a business involved. It gets a lot more.
  • GJ
  • Gregory J Weimer II
  • 08:39
  • Yeah. I mean, one thing that Randy said, too, is on taxes, and obviously we’re talking about estate taxes. I think even for those who don’t have a big estate, sometimes there are situations where there’s an inheritance tax that’s coming that you could do some planning around that may not be obvious to the naked eye right. But because of the situations, there’s a big one, and because we’re in Pennsylvania, one of the three states, or whatever it is that charges inheritance, this does happen. And that’s something because we’re focused on estate taxes and what the exclusion is, and the state’s not that big, it doesn’t mean there’s not going to be a tax.
  • GW
  • Greg Weimer
  • 09:16
  • And please understand that everybody’s like, well, I don’t have as much money as exclusion. You have no idea what the exclusion is going to be when you die. We know in the next two years. It’s over 20 million or $20 million. We get it. 22 million, whatever it is. Um.
  • GW
  • Greg Weimer
  • 09:30
  • But in 2026, it goes back down, and who knows where it is in ten or 20 years? So regardless of the assets, you have to be smart. We run it all the time. I just saw this week where you see in life insurance policies not owned by trusts, you see a lot of things happen that just could save the families if they’re meaningful means. We you and I have worked on some you look, and we could save them ten, $20 million in state tax, tens of millions. Yeah. It’s remarkable.
  • GW
  • Greg Weimer
  • 10:03
  • And unfortunately, I think people say that they’re going to do this stuff someday. Going to someday. I’m going to do it someday. And you could plan a lot of things. Your death isn’t one of those. So really getting on this stuff right away, and this is front and center. I mean, this is happening now, $96 trillion, and it’s frightening how many people are really not prepared for that moment.
  • GJ
  • Gregory J Weimer II
  • 10:26
  • Yeah. And I think it’s important with the communication and making sure you have the right team to make sure for your next generation there’s things you can do to make sure that when they do inherit wealth, whatever that number may be, they’re ready to live with that. And they know how to invest, they know how to plan. And so help them understand, help the next generation understand how to get started early investing so that it’s a seamless transition. And yes, the dollars are changing, but it’s not the first time that they’re seeing an investment statement go up or down and them accumulate wealth. And to the next generation, start early and do your own planning. If your parents or grandparents haven’t instilled that in you, it goes both ways.
  • GW
  • Greg Weimer
  • 11:09
  • And it helps when you do that planning along the lines how the next generation receives the money. I mean, you see, people say, I’m going to give them a third at 35, a third at 40, a third at 45. There’s another way to do it that you can make sure it goes on for multiple generations and you say they’re allowed to take a stream of income off that, but the principal goes on to the next generation. So then you, as the person passing on your wealth, has the comfort to know that your grandchildren and your grandchildren and I say that very deliberately, will benefit from your wealth over the long haul. So that’s also extraordinarily important. So one of the ways to start the conversation. On how to invest money and how to think about money.
  • GW
  • Greg Weimer
  • 12:03
  • Is philanthropy. Do you want to talk a little bit about, like, a donor advice fund, for example?
  • RH
  • Randy Holcombe
  • 12:07
  • Absolutely. So donor advice fund has become very popular in the last ten years, and essentially what that is, is you can make a donation to a donor advice fund. You get a charitable deduction. It’s just like giving to any other charity in that year. But then what you have is essentially a pool of assets that you can then direct to whatever charities you like. So it’s a great way. We have a lot of clients that will do that and use it as an opportunity to bring the next generation in on wealth conversations, because they say, hey, we have this pool of money that we’ve designated for our family to give to charity, and we want your input.
  • RH
  • Randy Holcombe
  • 12:43
  • We want to make these decisions as a family, so let’s talk about this.
  • GW
  • Greg Weimer
  • 12:47
  • And it’s a great entree into the financial conversations, so we actually can help you think about which charity you want to really participate in. If you need contacts at local charities, we can find out what you really care about and we can connect you with those charities and then we can talk to you about do you want to put it in your estate plan and do a planned gift? Do you want to do a donor advised fund? Do you want to contribute highly appreciated securities? Do you want to think about how to help children with education through EITC? There’s so many ways to do it and do it effectively. It’s a great conversation for families.
  • GW
  • Greg Weimer
  • 13:25
  • So let me back up, because I just want to recap, because then I think the next part for us to talk about is essential. Think about what you want your money to do, not only now, not only for your moments, but into the future, the next 1020 years, once you understand what it is you want to accomplish. Put together your documents to make sure that you’re doing that tax effectively so you’re not spending a bunch of money in estate taxes. And additionally, it creates clarity, which I promise you, we do this all the time. Your family wants clarity, so give them the benefit of having clarity. I remember saying to you about something you’re like, yeah, dad, that’s too vague. Make sure you clarify that.
  • GW
  • Greg Weimer
  • 14:16
  • I don’t want to think about that when you’re gone. And that’s just being honest. And that was you being honest, and I appreciated it. So we made it more clear. So please be clear. Your family will appreciate it. Your family has the ability right now to see the impact you can make over philanthropy, exit planning.
  • GW
  • Greg Weimer
  • 14:34
  • There’s so many things we could talk about. But then once you decide on your estate plan, the next essential part, because, remember, it doesn’t always work out well. 90% of money that’s inherited is squandered in the second generation. I’m sorry? 70% of the money that’s inherited is squandered in the second generation. 90% in the third generation. Don’t allow that to be your family.
  • GW
  • Greg Weimer
  • 15:02
  • The reason that happens is one, something we already talked about, and that is because of a lack of structure and estate plan. Second is because of lack of communication, so not communicating about it does not help the next generation. We just had a meeting this week, but all three of us participated. There were six, seven of us. Whatever there were. You want to talk a little bit about what that was?
  • GJ
  • Gregory J Weimer II
  • 15:29
  • Yeah. And then maybe, Randy, you can provide some clarity on this, because you’re the one kind of spearheading it. But we think family meetings are extremely important in sitting down with a family and allowing them to talk about their goals, the estate plan, charity, whatever is important to them to start to communicate those values now about what’s happening now and what’s going to happen in the future. So we’re working on some modules to allow families to have structure to that conversation. So we’re putting in the work behind the scenes to make those conversations easier with family, because not easy. They’re hard, especially the first one, and hopefully it gets easier over time in our family.
  • GW
  • Greg Weimer
  • 16:08
  • The second one is that.
  • GJ
  • Gregory J Weimer II
  • 16:09
  • Actually the yeah, and we were probably four in or something like that, and the topic’s a little bit different every time, but it’s important, and they’re helpful, and so I don’t think they need to be over engineered, and I think that’s something that probably holds families back. What am I going to talk about? What do I want to say? What’s the kid going to learn? Don’t over engineer it. We’ll do that for you and give you the information we need and simplify it. Randy, maybe you can mention in some of the modules we’ve put together well, we’ve done several, a lot of it.
  • RH
  • Randy Holcombe
  • 16:38
  • We’ve already talked about estate plan, legacy, charitable giving, investing, passing down some of the knowledge to the next generation. But we think there’s very few things that are more important than a family meeting. And if you talk to most clients and you say what’s important to you, if they have children, almost always that’s number one. And yet, despite that, a lot of times they have trouble bringing up the concept of their wealth. Wealth transfer. It’s not always a fun thing to think about, and you know how it is. If you’re uncomfortable with something, you’re less likely to bring it up.
  • GW
  • Greg Weimer
  • 17:13
  • I think they’re the most rewarding, enjoyable I love those meetings.
  • RH
  • Randy Holcombe
  • 17:17
  • They’re always great.
  • GW
  • Greg Weimer
  • 17:18
  • They’re always great. We’re fortunate in that most families, we serve multiple generations, so it would be unusual. There are cases, but it’s unusual that we work with the. Parents and not the children. That would be unusual. And regardless of the age of the children, we’re sitting in my conference room. There have been many 20 year olds and 25 year olds, including my daughters, in here, talking about how to invest whatever money they have so they can start to gain that knowledge.
  • RH
  • Randy Holcombe
  • 17:48
  • Absolutely. And just imagine yourself in a situation where your children are inheriting your money, and think of the difference. If they’re just inheriting it, they’re seeing all of it for the first time. They didn’t know how much was there. They didn’t know what all the accounts said. They didn’t know what the trust said. Imagine how difficult that situation is versus a situation where you’ve been meeting with them for the last ten years, and not only going through the structure of the estate plan, but you’ve been communicating your values, you’ve been communicating what’s important to you.
  • RH
  • Randy Holcombe
  • 18:16
  • You’ve been building a legacy as a family. And so that when the time comes for them to inherit it, it’s just a natural next step as opposed to a jarring event. Yeah.
  • GW
  • Greg Weimer
  • 18:26
  • We’ve had, what, four?
  • GJ
  • Gregory J Weimer II
  • 18:27
  • Yeah, I think we have four in.
  • GW
  • Greg Weimer
  • 18:29
  • Yeah. So I tell you that it’s really important. It’s important to do it, and we enjoy it.
  • GJ
  • Gregory J Weimer II
  • 18:39
  • One of the tools that has been used in a lot of family meetings, we’ve used it just in some client meetings also, that, I think, just gives an example of. Outside of what does my estate plan say? What’s my net worth and what could be passed down? Right? If that’s what you get into. But the other thing that is really important that people really enjoy are the picture cards. And many of you have probably heard us talk about them before, but it’s just a deck of cards with pictures on them.
  • GJ
  • Gregory J Weimer II
  • 19:03
  • And it allows every member of the family to pick out what’s important to them. And it gives people way to share their values. And so you really start to learn what’s important to the family. Do people start picking something that reflects philanthropy? Is it about vacations? But back to the beginning of Maximize Life and legacy. This can help with that.
  • GJ
  • Gregory J Weimer II
  • 19:24
  • This can make the family realize we want to do a donor advised fund and give to. Charities with animals. This could be we love vacations, and we want to spend time making memories now with vacations, whatever it may be. It’s one of the parts of one of the modules that is almost always in one of the first family meetings.
  • GW
  • Greg Weimer
  • 19:44
  • It is so much easier to find the picture that speaks to you than find the words that claire so these pictures is what, 100 cards or something like that? Probably. You pick three or four. Everybody picks three or four. You compare them, you talk about them, and it really does create a wonderful dialogue. I know our family enjoyed it. And by the way, I feel like family meetings, like, overdoing it, right.
  • GW
  • Greg Weimer
  • 20:07
  • All we’re doing is really we’re facilitating a family conversation. So, like, in our family, I sent them out, like, hey, here’s ten things we could talk about. What do you think? So we picked two, and we talked about philanthropy, and we talked about trust, and every year We’ve talked about something different. But it’s really just facilitating a family conversation. So everybody’s on the same page. So wonderful.
  • GW
  • Greg Weimer
  • 20:36
  • It. The goals are important. We can help you through that. Also to say, hey, here’s some things to think about. The estate plan is critical. Find the right attorney. We’ll put you in touch with some attorneys that we think match your personality.
  • GW
  • Greg Weimer
  • 20:50
  • So we work with a lot of different attorneys. We’ll find one that matches your personality. Our job is to make sure your goals come alive in those documents. US. Because so many times there’s a disconnect there, even when you find someone that matches your personality. So we’ll go through the documents they created and we’ll bullet point it for you, saying, hey, this is what the documents say. Is this what you expected them to say?
  • GW
  • Greg Weimer
  • 21:16
  • Sometimes it is, yes, sometimes not. Also, from a communication standpoint, we would love to help you to facilitate those family conversations. So what did we miss, guys? Anything that you think would help the listeners of.
  • RH
  • Randy Holcombe
  • 21:34
  • I think one thing is that we should think about, and we talked a little about businesses, but if you do have assets that are a little bit different coin collection, classic cars. Think through that. You can carve out something special in the estate. Plan to deal with those. If it’s a coin collection, for example, don’t make your children go out and find some way to sell those coins. If you have relationships with people, write that in there. Just make it real clear.
  • GW
  • Greg Weimer
  • 22:00
  • Yeah. We have both of those issues right now. Right? Yes.
  • GJ
  • Gregory J Weimer II
  • 22:06
  • That? No, I think if we’re summarizing two words, I just say that are really key are communication and organization. I think communicating amongst generations is really important and we’ve talked about some ways to do that. And I think organization is also key. Some of that comes from the estate plan and the documents. Some of it comes from your assets not being all over the place. Maybe we didn’t get into businesses too much, but if you’re a business owner, it what happens, right?
  • GJ
  • Gregory J Weimer II
  • 22:34
  • If something happens to you, who does it get passed down to? Is there a next generation ready in the business? And that may not mean family next generation, that could just be next generation. But how do you get bought out? Are the business documents in place? What does your estate plan say? If you have one person in the business, one family member in the business and no one else, what happens?
  • GJ
  • Gregory J Weimer II
  • 22:55
  • How do you communicate that? So there’s a lot there. And so that’s part of organization of make sure all of your ducks are in a row. So that there’s no surprises or stress when that day comes.
  • GW
  • Greg Weimer
  • 23:06
  • They buy you out, right? I mean, how do they buy you out? You have three kids, one’s in the business, the other two aren’t. How do you make that not equal but maybe fair, all of those things. And we can help you think through that. And by the way, the time to think about succession planning in your business and exit planning is 15 years before you do it because that next generation needs to be prepared. So it’s absolutely seamless.
  • GW
  • Greg Weimer
  • 23:36
  • We actually are entering and no one’s going anywhere, but things happen. Every key a person, we just went through this table recently, every key person, if they get hit by the bus, are we ready for that? Just to make sure we’re overly prepared. But in family, that’s also true. So really thinking when you think through the amount of businesses that are going to go, the next generation, there’s the people that will be ready, there’s the people that won’t be ready, and there’s a group that don’t want them. So to really think through how you’re in some families, that’s their biggest asset. So making sure that transfers effectively is huge.
  • GJ
  • Gregory J Weimer II
  • 24:18
  • Yeah. And if you’re the business owner, do you know the number of what at a minimum you would need to receive from the business? And that gives you some flexibility in understanding an internal transfer to the next generation. Or how would family buy me out? Or selling to a third party? That can change. I mean, if all of your wealth is wrapped up in that and you want to retire, you probably need a certain number to maintain your lifestyle.
  • GJ
  • Gregory J Weimer II
  • 24:41
  • So plan for that early so you’re not surprised when that day comes.
  • GW
  • Greg Weimer
  • 24:45
  • So two things just the importance of getting started and then let’s talk a little bit about the importance of review. But I really think it’s important for everyone to just hear that the biggest obstacle to having a good estate plan is the expectation of having a perfect estate plan. So get it started and then understand that from time to time, you may want to review it.
  • GJ
  • Gregory J Weimer II
  • 25:11
  • Yeah, I mean, you’re so right. The estate plan can change in most cases. The documents can change. As life changes, so can the documents. You may add a trust, you may change beneficiaries, you may change guardians. It can change. And so there’s nothing making it permanent in most cases.
  • GW
  • Greg Weimer
  • 25:30
  • It’s really important to get it started. If you don’t, you’re putting your family at risk and the government’s going to benefit at some point, and you’re not going to have clarity. As Randy was talking about earlier, I’m actually on my fifth reinstatement, so that’s not unusual. I’m on my fifth reinstatement of my plan, and our life changes. Fortunately, our family’s growing, so our situation changes.
  • RH
  • Randy Holcombe
  • 25:52
  • And there’s different things I’m sure most of you have heard irrevocable versus revocable trust. Revocable is obviously easier to change, hence the word irrevocable versus revocable. But either one, there’s different things you can do depending on how it’s set up. So, like Greg said, the important thing is get it started. I think. Another thing you say a lot is it’s what it’s like 100 pounds of pressure to get the locomotive moving. Only 20 pounds of pressure to keep it moving, so get it moving, and then you can always adjust it from there.
  • GW
  • Greg Weimer
  • 26:23
  • Totally agree. Be. Thanks, guys. Appreciate it. And hopefully, our gift to you, and we look forward to working with you on these conversations, but hopefully our gift to you is your wealth. Your part of that $96 trillion will be transferred as a blessing, and you will avoid it being a burden on the next generation. So for the families that we are privileged enough to serve, we look forward to being on that journey with you to help you make that succession of wealth successful.
  • GW
  • Greg Weimer
  • 26:54
  • For those of you that we don’t currently work with you, if you think we would be the right advisors for your family. We would welcome the opportunity to continue the conversation. Thank you.

 

Insights

Imagine That
Episode

Fuel Your Body to Maximize Your Life | Season 2, Episode 2

Listen on Apple Podcasts
Listen on Spotify

Join us for a conversation with our Dietitian, Sarah Rupp MS, RD, LDN, on how to fuel your body with nutrition.

In today’s fast-paced world, whether you’re a dedicated business owner, a loving parent, or a high-performing athlete, one thing remains constant – the need to prioritize your health. But let’s face it, navigating the landscape of nutrition can be a daunting task. Join us as we demystify the complexities of nutrition and provide practical insights to fuel your life.

Healthcare Disclaimer: The contents of this episode are meant for educational purposes and not to be misconstrued as medical treatment advice. Please speak with a qualified healthcare provider regarding personalized guidance regarding your specific medical condition before making changes to your unique plan of care.

Greg  0:03  

Hello and welcome to the Imagine That podcast. I’m your host, Greg Weimer, founder, partner and wealth manager at Confluence Financial Partners. Each month, we’ll explore new ways to help you maximize your life and your legacy. And meet some extraordinary people along the way. So if you’re looking to get more out of your life today, and legacy tomorrow, let’s get started. I’m Greg Weimer, and I’m here with Sarah. And Sarah has joined us. What about three months? How long? Yeah, June 1, new, new unusual associate. So that’s why it’s gonna be fun. So Sarah is a dietitian with Confluence. And that was a new thought for us. Probably not totally new in the industry, but a new thought for us. And we knew we wanted to hire a dietician for a while, actually, in fact, if you go back and listen to one of our older podcasts, you know, we were interviewing Dr. Mary Lamb. And she just said the words wealth and health and I’m like, okay, wealth and health. That’s so cool. So, we hired Sarah, to help with our clients’ health. We understand we’re 100% focused also on wealth. But Sarah is a dietitian, and Isaiah and her daughter, Addy, and he’s, what, six months now? Fresh six months, so yes. So we knew we wanted the dietician. But when we found Sarah, it became a lot easier of a decision. So welcome. We’re delighted you’re here. I think first because when we were going through the interview process, one of the things that I was very confused about was like, There’s dietician, there’s dieticians. There’s nutritionists like, and I’m like trying to figure out everybody’s just to make sure you have the right person, not only from a culture standpoint, but from a credential standpoint. So if you could just spend a couple minutes or a couple of just telling us what’s the difference between a dietitian and a nutritionist?

 

Sarah  1:49  

Yeah, so that’s a really common question I get asked a lot. So nutritionists, that’s not like an accredited term. So anyone could really call themselves a nutritionist, you could take some courses online, get some certificates. So it’s not to downplay the knowledge that can be there. But dietitian, there’s credentials behind my name. So kind of the process to go through as you get a bachelor’s degree, you do a coordinated program, which is like a supervised practice for so many hours, and then you sit for the national exam. And then once you pass it, you get credentials, and then you have to keep up on continuing ed. So it’s a very, like, regimented process. Yeah, it just, it has a process to Wonderful.

 

Greg  2:33  

Okay, so you’re credible, we got it, let’s go. So our goal, actually, of this podcast, is we’re not going to change the world. But holy cow, if we could bend the curve, our goal here is just if we could just help people make more informed and therefore better decisions around their health and more specifically, around their diet. So if right, let’s try to do that together. And if we think about the mission of Confluence being maximizing people’s lives and legacies, it’s really hard for us to think about maximizing someone’s life, if we don’t help them also with their health. So for us, it makes total sense. So let me just go through a couple things. Because for one of the things I find, it’s complicated. Like I hear keto diet, Paleo Diet, water’s good, intermittent fasting. So we’re gonna have to get overly detailed, but let’s unravel some of those. So when you think about like paleo, keto, that type of stuff, what goes through your head? What advice do you have for folks?

 

Sarah  3:41  

Yeah, that’s a good question. So there’s, you know, like anything because of the internet and technology, like there’s so much information out there. I think when it comes to nutrition, for most people, like getting back to the basics, you know, maybe it’s not super sexy, but the food groups have, you know, your whole grains, your dairies, your fruits, vegetables, proteins, I think eating a mix of all those foods for most people is going to be what keeps you healthy, those foods have the nutrients that our bodies need, that we can’t create on our own, to give us energy to get to give us energy to help us get through our data to have that kind of capacity. So not processed stuff. Yeah, so not processed, the more food that we can consume and whole form back to its natural state is going to be better for us. There’s a lot of food additives. Now, that can really influence like our energy levels give us energy crashes, provide a lot of inflammation in the body. So as far as like, okay, the keto diet, Paleo like looking at those individually, you know, those have been researched. Those can have some success. I think it really depends on the individual what’s actually realistic for their lifestyle, telling someone like keto to consume predominantly fat If that can be done well, and you can get into ketosis and burn fat, but it could also be done really poorly and ended up hurting your health, making it more difficult to take weight off it. So it kind of depends what your what your goals

 

Greg  5:13  

are. So here’s the so let’s do let’s do, let’s do specific goals that sure someone is in business or in life or a mom or a dad and they want to be at, you know, their peak performance for the day. Yeah. Because you said, you said you know, sugar crashes and stuff like that. We don’t want that. We don’t want that in conflict. We don’t want that with our clients. We don’t want that in the world. So like, give me an ideal scenario. Yeah, I wake up. What do I eat? When do I eat carbs? window window, a protein? Just you know, I mean, just just a quick overview of what like a perfect day would look

 

Sarah  5:44  

like? Yeah, yeah. So it’s a good question. So I would say the perfect day would be that you are waking up drinking water. You’re staying hydrated right off the bat. So nighttime cups of coffee right away. Maybe some I would wait on that. Maybe water first. Yeah, and change. Water first. If you can, a glass of water. Just start the hydration process and then drinking your coffee. If you can drink it black, that would be the best recommendation. And then some people

 

Greg  6:12  

no matter how much coffee I drink, so I don’t know how to get through the day. I’ll promise a bit like a bit like Yeah, so like a pot could be too much. Yeah,

 

Sarah  6:21  

I think different. Like we all have different probably caffeine like tolerances. But does that count as a fluid. Yeah, so that’s good. But yeah, I would say for the normal person, focusing on your carbohydrates, like in the morning and daytime, that’s when our body is most primed to like process like what

 

Greg  6:38  

does that mean? So like, what? Like, what is what so what do we do you do eggs in the morning? Do you like to do eggs and bacon? A lot of these breakfast bars? How do you know like which one to eat? Which one not to eat? Yeah. Right, because they all are marketed to be healthy.

 

Sarah  6:51  

Right? Right. What do you look for so Okay, let’s kind of over like, let’s go back to simplifying it. So I would say with each meal, if you could eat a balance of your focus is protein. So protein foods, that’s going to be your eggs. That’s gonna be your meats like chicken, pork, beef, all the animal products. And so if you can kind of surround your plate with that is like the centerpiece focus that’s going to keep you balanced Protein helps keep you fuller longer. So if you can make that the star of the show every plate, then you’re off to a good start. So your protein foods like breakfast, specifically, big fan, big fan of eggs. Some people don’t love it, then you could go like Greek yogurt. But as long as that is your focus, and you can kind of surround it with some natural carbs. I’m talking like fruits, veggies, that would be ideal. Not everyone is doing that in the morning. Yeah, veggies. Okay. Yeah, but you can also do things you know, that add fiber, like, which is fruits, veggies, but also like your flax seeds or chia seeds if you’re making a smoothie. So in the morning time you want something that’s going to keep your energy balance. Okay, so as opposed to grabbing a croissant or like a muffin, bad, bad. processed food packaged food. Because really what that’s gonna do, right, it’s gonna, it’s just going to taste good, but it’s going to spike your blood sugar, which usually when our blood sugar is spiked, we feel jittery. And then it’s gonna crash, and then we’re gonna be hungry again. Yeah.

 

Greg  8:25  

For all the business owners out there. Or, or, you know, mom, dad, I guess in your homes. One of the things we have Sarah doing in our firm is going through our kitchens and making sure that we’re not having crashes through the day and you can be crisp. So you’re redoing our snacks, right? Tell me about lunch. Here’s Yeah. How about that? How about our conversation about the wrap? Yeah, the wrap was bad news. Yeah, I’ll come clean on this. Here’s my view. My view is we started with the salad. Yeah, healthy right. Then if you wanted to be a little less healthy, you went to a wrap? And then if you wanted to be totally healthy, ate like bread in a sandwich or something? Yeah. So what we found was a wrap in a sandwich. You don’t like this, but it’s equally bad.

 

Sarah  9:14  

So what we’ve been talking about Yeah, I don’t know if we’re not agreeing. It depends on the type of person so like, carbs get a bad rap, like, um, you know, rice, bread products, pasta, all that. It’s because those break down quickly in our body to sugar, we want to use that as quick energy. If we’re not using that as quick energy, then it’s just stored for later. And that’s how we can put on weight. So we just want to make sure we’re balancing those kinds of carb foods with high protein foods that take longer to digest and break down they’re actually keeping us full. So what we were talking about was like, if it’s a whole grain than that is in its full form, so it’s not been processed. So there’s more nutrients to it. There’s more fiber to it. Um, so I would absolutely pick a whole grain wrap. Especially you’re putting like salmon in, right? Like, that’s excellent. Yeah. And then you can fill a rap with vegetables, you know, hummus, like it

 

Unknown Speaker  10:10  

just sounds easier not to have a wrap. Yeah. Well,

 

Sarah  10:13  

if you’re, if you’re satisfied without the wrap, okay, but like, don’t be afraid of the wrap. Don’t be afraid.

 

Greg  10:18  

And then dinner. So like, we were talking about carbs? Not as, like, be careful at dinner, correct? Yeah,

 

Sarah  10:27  

So the theory kind of getting in a little bit behind that is like, our bodies have circadian rhythms, we have a natural process that regulates our hormones that we like that the body prefers to thrive off of. So during the daytime, that is really, there’s a lot of signaling, from daylight, Sunshine like that. This is when our body processes food.

 

Greg  10:49  

We in fact, an allergy. Like we actually had someone come in and speak to our farmer about how to slow dementia and lowering your ability, your chances of getting it. And one of the he He’s incredible. And one of the things he said is important is in the morning, it’s really important to get like natural sunlight. Yeah, in the morning. Yeah, not in natural sunlight. So So yep, exactly.

 

Sarah  11:10  

So kind of going off that, like our bodies have a preferred time to process energy. So there’s something called insulin, that’s a hormone that helps the sugar get inside of ourselves to make energy. So in the evening time, our body is less insulin sensitive. So what that means is that we’re just not going to process it as well. So we probably should not be eating as many carbs in the evening, we’re, a lot of people were more sedentary, you know, you’re getting ready to go to bed. So, you know, going back to like, your plate should be surrounded by like a protein as the centerpiece and then fruits, vegetables, and then like complex carbs. Like if you want to add in some like potatoes, or some like Keane was something like that. But the closer that you can get to those types of like, eat more of these foods, the better.

 

Greg  12:02  

And don’t eat after when like, yeah, like, what time at the in the evening? Should you stop eating?

 

Sarah  12:08  

Yeah, that’s a good question. So going back to like, it has to be realistic for the person to make sense for their lifestyle. But I would say like, if you can have a cut off time of around like seven o’clock at night, that would be really good for your body. Yeah, yeah.

 

Greg  12:23  

So it’s been so much fun to have you around, because I could have like, Hey, Sarah, how about this? Like, Hey, Sarah, how about this? Hi, Mickey. Yeah, hey, sir. How about this? It’s been wonderful. One of the things we talked about is, how about intermittent fasting? You’re hearing all about it. And then I heard you say earlier in the conversation about inflammation, and how it can actually, you know, I’ve heard that intermittent fasting can help reduce inflammation in your body. Is that true?

 

Sarah  12:46  

Yeah, so I’m a big fan of intermittent fasting. There has been a lot of research surrounding it. So it’s not just another fad diet, fasting has been around since the beginning of time, you know, whether, you know, not not out of, like luxury, but more of necessity, really, like in our western civilization, like we’re eating around the clock bodies, we really don’t need that we’re really over fueling ourselves for what we need. So that is contributing to the obesity epidemic. And so essentially, intermittent fasting, it can take a lot of different forms, the most popular one is probably the 16 Eight approach, which is choosing 16 hours within the 24 hours of the day, that you’re going to fast and then there’s going to be an eight hour eating window. So a lot of people include in their fasting time, you know, sleeping, so it might actually be eight hours that you’re awake, that you’re just refraining from food.

 

Unknown Speaker  13:41  

So it’s not that bad. So you skip breakfast. It’s

 

Unknown Speaker  13:43  

not bad. Yeah, it’s depending on how you set it up. So

 

Greg  13:45  

set it up you you skip breakfast, and you go from you eat lunch and dinner, right as long as you’re done by Right, right.

 

Sarah  13:51  

And there’s, there’s ways to do it wrongly, but kind of just to get into it. Like, I like to say that the body is really smart. Some people think that like refraining from food, you’re going to go into like fat storage mode, the body’s going to, you know, freak out and turn on itself, that’s really not the case. The research that I’ve seen is that it can really be beneficial. When we are putting in food in our body for energy, the body creates energy to utilize. And then once those stores are used up or used up, that’s when you start getting into like the fat burning mode. So depending on the timeframe, usually 16 hours fasting won’t get you into like anything like ketosis, anything like that. But that is kind of like a good reset for the body that it can not be stimulated by that insulin hormone, like we said, and therefore not kind of like build up the fat stores. So we’re not stimulating insulin when we’re not putting food in

 

Greg  14:47  

right. What I appreciate about the way you the way you think about this is you have a realistic approach. Like in talking to you it’s not you’re not an extremist of every bread, and it’s like hey man, if you want pizza It like, don’t be afraid of the pizza. Yeah, right. Which which is, which is wonderful just to just to let our listeners understand how we’re going to be using stairs, knowledge and ability inside of Confluence is right now she’s working on content, you’re probably seeing some of that content online, that’s been very valuable. She’s going to be working with our associates internally, to make sure that we, you know, we perform for our clients at a high level, and then we’re going to start doing some lunch and learns so so you’ll start seeing some lunch and learns where we’ll invite you know, clients and friends into our into our offices. And we’ll have, we’ll have just, you know, just some, some five things you need to know about eating in the summertime, or how to eat fast food healthy, or whatever that is, or maybe we’ll dig into some local restaurants, menus. And you can say, like, Hey, if you’re gonna go out to eat in the South Hills, or North Hills, whatever, here’s what you should eat. And then ideally, we would like to make Sara available to some of our clients also, on an individual basis, so that’s the thought process behind it. So a lot of stuff on diet. We didn’t touch on what I asked, like, how do you know cuz I know, I brought in my breakfast bar for you. And you’re like, Yeah, you’re good, even though you sort of made fun of the taste a little bit. But you looked at certain things. So if you’re out there and you’re looking at a breakfast bar, what are the numbers they should look at? And what should they be?

 

Sarah  16:25  

Yeah, that’s a good question. So in full disclosure, I did make fun of it, you did, and I’m sorry, I felt really bad afterwards, I gave it to you. So there’s a time and place for breakfast bars, I get it like I’m a super on the go person, like that’s easiest to grab. When you’re looking for a breakfast bar, just like protein bar in general, I would recommend at least 10 grams of protein, I don’t think it’s worth it. To do any less than that, you’re going to want to always look at the ingredient list to see just how many like additives. You know, chemicals are in it. And you know that, yeah, so it’s gonna be really weird names that like you might have trouble pronouncing. So you want to look for more like natural ingredients that you can pronounce. So one of the the bars that I’m really on a kick of right now, or those are x bars that have those four natural ingredients just really compressed together. It has like dates, maybe like walnuts, chocolate, and you know something. So if you’re eating a bar that just has a ton of chemicals in it, your body is probably not going to know what to do with that. So it would be more advantageous to get the nutrient density of that protein. What about like fats and stuff? Like you know, they what percentage of fat should the bar have? Yeah, so I don’t know about percentage. But if the bar can focus on there’s, there’s different types of fats that are more beneficial. So you want fat and the dye is helpful for keeping us fuller longer, it’s the most energy dense macronutrient we have protein, carbs, fat, it’s going to keep you fuller. So we really want to avoid saturated fat as much as possible. Mono on saturated fat is good. So mono comes from like olive oils, avocados, walnuts, and then saturated fat is what contributes kind of to heart disease. So,

 

Greg  18:16  

so bad. Okay, so here we go. So we talked about the meals. What are the healthy snacks? Yeah, so like, like, if someone’s saying, Yeah, that’s great. But like, I need a snack. Yeah, so what, let’s go through some snacks. So if you just like instead of maybe the Doritos, and this and these things, that long term, you know, may stop you from enjoying your life later on. What are some of the healthy snacks that we could that we could have?

 

Sarah  18:44  

Yeah, so depending on your goals, like if you’re trying to lose weight, or like, if you’re just trying to be healthier, I would just always recommend when you’re choosing a snack, like just be mindful of what you’re choosing, like you said Doritos, like, the bag of chips. Like that’s really not going to get you anywhere in terms of hunger and like satiety. So, I think always having a well rounded snack and what I mean by that is, so like, if you’re go ahead and do a whole fruit so like an apple that’s gonna have good fiber in the skin, a lot of good nutrients,

 

Greg  19:21  

a little bit of an apple. So we got to do something.

 

Sarah  19:25  

Okay, it’s coming. So an apple would be great, but also combine that with with like a hard boiled egg or a beef stick

 

Greg  19:34  

and tell him about when you came in for an interview. The hard bone oh

 

Sarah  19:37  

my gosh, this was amazing. I was like who is interviewing? Yeah, oh, okay. So yeah, we were just like walking around the building after I interviewed and gosh, I’m gonna butcher this it was something like you you really like hard boiled eggs.

 

Greg  19:57  

First of all, let’s just acknowledge making a hard boil. bag perfect is really difficult really difficult. Just acknowledge that. So yeah, so we had some hard boiled egg makers here we gave everyone in the firm a hard boiled egg maker, which is incredible by the way best advice you’re gonna get on this podcast ever hard a boiled egg. Everything I’m saying they make them perfect their partner perfectly put together so anyhow so hard boiled eggs. We love them. We have them in our offices so great to have hard boiled eggs in the fridge. What else?

 

Sarah  20:29  

Yeah, yeah. So yeah, combining those things together. I would say like we’ve talked about before. If you could do veggies like raw veggies with hummus Yeah, so we talked about what was it carrots and celery? Yeah.

 

Greg  20:43  

And is it like there’s so many I felt like there’s all different flavors of hummus doesn’t matter. Like hummus was good.

 

Sarah  20:48  

Yeah, so hummus or hummus is like ground chickpeas. It’s a Mediterranean. Yeah, some people don’t like chickpeas on their own Mediterranean side that has some oil in it. I don’t know that any is better than other there’s garlic there’s red pepper. Yeah, yeah.

 

Greg  21:03  

And like nuts. Like which ones are good? Which ones are bad? Are they all good? Like

 

Sarah  21:11  

yeah, so nuts have the good fats as mono unsaturated so a handful of knots is usually equivalent to like an ounce. There was actually a study I was reading that it was like for people who are consuming at least five ounces of like mixed nuts per week. It decreased their cardiovascular disease risk by like 30% Like it was huge just by adding those in but with that being said, like walnuts are going to be really good source of Omega threes, which are anti inflammatory and actually really help your brain health. Which is important with aging and cognitive function just staying on your game. So walnuts are great pistachios, almonds. The higher like density like calorie nuts would be peanuts and like cashews, which don’t have as many benefits but are so good.

 

Unknown Speaker  22:00  

Yeah, your face was like not as impressive. Yeah,

 

Sarah  22:02  

I would just say like, if you can do the unsalted and like be like note weld or like, okay, those kinds of things, keeping them natural. That would be a really good

 

Greg  22:12  

use. We’re gonna do I’m gonna give you a little warning, rapid fire sort of so like, if I were listening, I would want to know Okay, that’s all great. I got it. I got it. I got it. I think I got I got framework or my day, sleeps really important. We talked about that. We talked about that in another podcast, measure your sleep sleeps important. It’ll keep you healthy. But now give me we’re gonna go through five things bullet points, if I could only do five things. If I right, just like give me the five things you would do. If you’re thinking about our listeners. Yeah, you’re driving down the road. like, Alright, give me some homework. So we’re gonna do five things that you think they should do one?

 

Sarah  22:46  

Yeah. What can I just say this is really focused on nutrition. But you know, we’ve talked about like health. Yes. Is encompassing like you said, sleep stress management, physical activity. So plans. We talked about that quote, Oh, yeah. And he therapy too. There’s so much to talk about.

 

Greg  22:59  

Because you want to get your Nobel Prize. Yeah. Yeah, right. We that’s like the rage.

 

Sarah  23:07  

Yeah, there’s, there’s some benefits to that. I don’t know that. There’s a lot of research to that.

 

Greg  23:13  

I want someone to figure it out. For sure. Before I do that, I do too, which sounds horrible. I gotta know for sure. But by the way, we should say consult your physician. We’re not trying to give medical advice. Thank you. Intermittent Fasting is not for everyone. If you’re allergic to peanuts, we’re not suggesting them. So talk to your physician. They’re just giving you things to think about. That’s

 

Sarah  23:33  

a really good disclaimer. Thank you. So I would say the five things for someone just looking to improve their overall health. Really back to the basics of like, make sure you’re staying hydrated, drink enough water that’s going to help your kidneys flush the toxins out of your body. There was something else that I read that it’s like, you know, low grade dehydration can be really like unnoticed, like symptomless, but that can actually shrink like your brain cells. And overtime like we do something like dementia. So it’s really important to stay hydrated. So that’s one thing. I would say if you can get in 30 minutes of movement per day, like concentrated movement walking, that’s going to be great. As far as nutrition goes, we talked about like, building your play. The

 

Greg  24:17  

one thing that this individual said that we were that we brought in to talk about dementia. He said the same thing. He said like you got to like move 30 minutes a day and he said if you could only do one thing, just one thing. Yes. A dance. Yeah. Why do you have a dance? He said because it’s stress relief. It’s exercise. It’s music, blah, blah, blah. So we got water. We got exercise. How many am I doing? 555 you got five. Oh, I don’t want to do 10 things.

 

Sarah  24:44  

Man I was gonna struggle there. So yeah, the third thing would be Yeah, surround your How did I want to word it? Make make protein the star of your plate protein. Yeah. So every eating occasion. You Eating foods that are high in protein to keep you fuller longer, and to keep your blood sugar stable. I would say that and then number four would be, I would say monitor your alcohol intake. Really? Yeah.

 

Unknown Speaker  25:18  

Can we have a different one? Yeah, I totally agree.

 

Sarah  25:23  

Right? Yeah, that’s, that’s a sneaky one. So alcohol is enjoyable as it is, you know, there’s not, it’s not very nutrient dense. It’s, it’s, you know, kind of empty calories. So, it can also like alter your sleep and just kind of the body, it’s processed in the body as a toxin. So just kind of,

 

Greg  25:45  

if you if you drink, you can’t burn fat for some period of time, because your liver is actually working to get rid of the toxin.

 

Sarah  25:52  

Yeah. Yeah, it’s true that so the liver prioritizes, breaking down the toxin, which I think the active ingredient is ethanol, which the body just doesn’t know what to do with so it breaks it down. And then that means that your the food that you ate with alcohol was further delayed. So if you drink alcohol in the evening, like most people do, that’s going to give you that overnight time to digest your food, which is probably going to lead to some crappy sleep.

 

Greg  26:18  

Yeah, well for me if I if I would drink like beer or wine, I fall asleep and then at two o’clock, I wake up because sugar kicks in. Yes, that’s bad. Wait, so what did we have we had

 

Sarah  26:28  

drink water, drink water, getting in 30 minutes a move 30

 

Greg  26:32  

minutes and movement? Proteins, this protein is the star more protein Hmm. Be careful how much you drink, moderate

 

Sarah  26:39  

your consumption, right. And then I would say the fifth thing is really try and cut out artificial sweeteners as much as possible. So that’s like in drinks. That’s, that’s kind of like sneaky. And like syrups of coffees. It’s in packaged snacks. So I guess what, that’d be checking your food labels and just try to, as much as possible consume the whole food version of snacks.

 

Greg  27:07  

Wonderful. Yeah. Well, we look forward to benefiting from you. We look forward to our clients benefiting from you. And as we were talking about, you know, what’s the goal? What’s the ultimate goal? Clearly, we want to help people maximize their lives and legacies. And we really do believe that helping them with their health is a big part of that. And God willing, someday you’ll be in the mall. And someone will say, Sarah, thank you. You really helped me make some great decisions and because of that, I’m leading a healthier life and a more full life. So we appreciate you. This is gonna be fun. Thanks. Thank you.

 

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Episode

Living Our Mission | Season 2, Episode 1

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Confluence Financial Partners is committed to building a firm that endures – respecting our roots and striving to live our mission today and in the future: Maximizing Lives and Legacies.

In this episode, Greg Weimer, CEO, and Katie Montagazzi, CFP®, Director of Marketing, discuss the practice of envisioning what Confluence needs to look like in the future to serve clients and the steps we are taking today to get there.

Greg: Hello and welcome to the Imagine That Podcast. I’m your host Greg Weimer, founder, partner, and wealth manager at Confluence Financial Partners. Each month, we’ll explore new ways to help you maximize your life and your legacy and meet some extraordinary people along the way. So if you’re looking to get more out of your life today and legacy tomorrow, let’s get started.

Katie: Welcome everybody. Welcome Greg. I want to take this time to just introduce who we are. I’m Katie Montagazzi, director of marketing here at Confluence and Greg Weimer, CEO. So we just want to welcome everybody. We have taken a little time off from the podcast and we wanted to share what we’re talking about internally here and what we’re thinking about at Confluence. So that being said, we have taken a lot of time to say our mission is maximizing lives and legacies of our clients, associates, community, and what does Confluence need to look like in the future to accomplish that. So if we reverse and say what are we doing today so that in the future we are that firm. So I just wanted to pose that question.

Greg: Yeah, so a lot of that question. So I’d say two things that I think about in that question is, one, there’s a lot going on in the world. So when you say maximize people’s lives and legacies, the responsibility with everything going on in the world is incredible. I mean, you have AI, you have things changing, right? And so there’s a lot going on. So we just need to embrace that. We need to embrace it and we need to prepare.

So one, there’s a lot going on in the world and we need to think about that. State true to our core values. There’s no question, but be ready to change and embrace technology and new resources that are available that help our clients. So that’s certainly something we’ve been doing. And then when you say maximize people’s lives and legacies, we’re saying, okay, and we have groups getting together saying, okay, prove it. So if we say maximize lives and legacies, how will we know in some period of time, five or 10 years that we’re actually living that mission? So as you know, with goals, you have to make them quantifiable, measurable, and they have to be time specific. So in different parts of the company, we’re spending time saying, okay, yep, we’re maximizing lives and legacies. That’s what it’s all about. But then we say prove it. And we’re all talking about what those proof points could look like.

Katie: Yeah. So to that point, as far as the next generation of leaders at Confluence, we get together once a month, the directors, and we work through Confluence’s 10, five year plan and then drill that down into what we need to do this quarter, what projects do we need to do? And those are some of the meetings that are happening internally. Yeah. Do you want to talk a little bit about Project Uber?

Greg: Oh, yeah. Yeah, so we, yeah, yeah, Project Uber. So the reason we’re calling it Project Uber, and I don’t know if you or if the listeners are aware of most probably are, what a medallion is.

A medallion. I was not. You were not. Okay, so we should say what it is. So a medallion is what you have to own to be able to drive a taxi cab in New York City. And I remember when I traveled back forth to New York City a lot, I just remember being amazed by the price of a, the price that’s around probably around 2013, something like that, they got to like a million dollars. So to get to, to drive a taxi, million dollars.

Katie: So it was And this is sort of, I, I use the analogy of after I learned about what this was, it’s sort of like a liquor license for a ride. 100%. It’s a liquor license for a taxi to be a tax.

Greg: 100%. So, so a million dollars, right? And that was like, you take out a loan and that would be your, that would be your franchise. That would be your McDonald’s. That’s a, that’s, of them went up for sale.

And I think the highest one went for like $136,000 and most of them didn’t even get a bit. And so you look at that and you go, Okay, wait a minute. What happened? Like, like having a taxi in New York City was like an awesome thing. And then the world changes, right? And then someone says, hey, there’s this thing called Uber. We have an idea.

Instead of standing in the rain, you can text us that sounds better than a taxi. They’re gone. No more need for a medallion. So, and you could do blockbuster and Netflix, you could do that with a whole bunch. So, we put together this group called Project Uber, which I think is like seven of our associates. And we’re saying, okay, what does the next 10 years look like?

What does great look like in the next 10 years? How do we for our clients make sure that we’re Uber and not taxi? And how do we continue to add services and make sure that we’re really doing a great job on money management? So, and so then we think, you know, Project Uber will lead the way in that discussion.

So, that’s one of the organizations. We also have, but we also have like AI, like AI, artificial intelligence. Okay, so we can embrace that. We can use that. We use it for our clients.

Katie: I think, I just want to say, I think AI to a lot of people, it’s a scary thing. Yeah. It’s been marketed on this as a scary thing. Instead of being scared of it, we’re embracing it. 100%.

Greg: Now, it can be frightening, right? I mean, if it’s out of control, but, you know, there’s a lot of information there. We want to harness it. We want to use it. So we have a group that that’s what they’re thinking about. You know, AI, how do we use it and where do we go from there?

Katie: And I do on a small scale. I know a lot of associates here use it to just kind of like brainstorm. Yeah. Think about things and work through ideas

Greg: and things like that matter. Yeah. And I would say to the listeners, get on chat, GPT, play with it and like say, okay, you know, what could what could the topic be? Give me a topic. What should I for breakfast? What you have for breakfast? And then you say, okay. And then it says, then you could say like, okay, give me something a little more tasty. Could you give me that? Could you take out car? Well, like whatever that is, it’s sort of amazing how you can keep manipulating it. Yeah.

Katie: It’s like a friend that’s not really a person. Yeah. Yeah. So kind of coming back a little bit, the next generation of leaders, when we say leaders, we are hope is that everybody at Convloads is a leader. It’s not just the CEO, the COO and that. So what are we doing internally to build associates? Yeah.

Greg: So we owe it to our clients to build a firm that endorse. And we have to respect the roots of where we come from. We have to make sure we’re performing on a daily basis on behalf of our clients at the best of our ability. But then we also need to make sure that we’re here for the children and grandchildren of our current clients. And so we are spending time thinking about how do we make sure in 20, 30, 40 and 50 years, and I think that’s so much fun to think like that. How do we prepare for that? One of the skills that’s difficult, the most difficult I think to teach is to teach people how to think strategically.

So right, how do you think about five or 10 years from now and make it happen? So we have a group of people, we call them the next generation of leaders. I’m not in that group.

But in that group, and none of us are going anywhere. But this is like, we’re thinking about 20 years from now for our next generation, saying, okay, how should we prepare for the next 10 and 20 years? And so they’re putting together plans and they’re thinking about that and they’re meeting regularly. So that’s our next gen group.

Katie: I think it’s important to know just because, again, maybe you’re not in the next gen group, but you’re part of the process. Thinking strategically. We have the more seasoned associates that have perspective. They’ve been in the industry for 30 plus years and then we have fresh people right out of college. We have Sophia, she just grew up a few years ago and she’s spunky and she’s smart and we want to make sure that she grows

Greg: into

Katie: So, I guess to wrap things up a little bit. Our goal for this podcast really is to give everybody insights as to what is happening inside of Confluence. Yeah. So, we’ll be continuing the conversation. I guess if listeners have any interesting thoughts about the future or what they think maybe we should consider, we’d be happy to hear that. We’re always wanting to hear from people.

Greg: 100% and I would love to have a conversation on what we’re doing in our business in more detail if it helps other businesses. Or I mean, we would love to do that. Or I will tell you, if you’re thinking about this type of stuff in your own personal life, I would say, I just read a book. I just listened to a book. Here’s a hack for you. If you listen to a book, it’s become your future self now by, remember that one? Who wrote that?

Katie: Dr. Benjamin Hardy. Dr.

Greg: Benjamin Hardy, become your future self now. So it’ll be out, it’s out. But what I do, I read the books, but then sometimes what I’ll do if I’m running around traveling, I’ll listen to the book on tape and then I put it on one and a half times. So the amount of information you consume goes up. So I’d encourage you to get this book. It really helps you think about the future and really challenges you to become your future self as quickly as possible. So I find it to be valuable if this is the kind of stuff you like to think about.

Katie: That’s great takeaway. That’s sort of what we’re doing with Confluence. Who’s our future self and how are we doing that?

Greg: And how do we accelerate it? Like how do we, one of the things the book says, here’s another thing just for the listeners. It encourages you to say, OK, who’s your future self in 10 years? And you almost have to like separate from who you are today and really think creatively about what it could be in 10 years. Then I did this. And then that person that is 10 years older, wiser, whatever, writes a letter back to your current self. And so my 68 year old Greg wrote a letter to my 58 year old Greg. And I found it incredibly valuable. So there’s another exercise that you do, the kind of things you want to think about that I’d encourage people to do.

Katie: Awesome. Well, thank you, Greg. Thanks. This was enjoyable. Enjoy it. Thanks everybody for listening. We will, we’ll be back soon. Appreciate it.

Episode 28: Developing a Winning Culture: Confluence’s Next Generation

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Imagine That
Episode 28

Developing a Winning Culture: Confluence’s Next Generation

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In August of 2019, Confluence CEO, Greg Weimer sat down with a few of the firm’s younger associates to get their perspectives on wealth management, workplace culture, and life. Since that time, much has changed.

In this episode, we catch up with those same professionals: Randall J. Holcombe, CFP®, Director of Wealth Planning; Katie Montagazzi, CFP®, Director of Marketing and Communication; Gregory Weimer II, CFP®, CEPA, Chief Operating Officer; and Chuck Ziants, CFP®, Wealth Manager.

Join us as explore how Confluence has evolved, examine some of the reasons behind the firm’s success, and look ahead as we continue to improve and innovate on behalf of our clients.

Greg:

Only 52% of millennials reported feeling empowered to drive change within their organizations. Of that 52%, 89% said they feel a sense of belonging with the organization. Imagine that.

(SOURCE: Deloitte, Striving for balance, advocating for change, 2022)

 

Hello and welcome to the Imagine That Podcast. I’m your host, Greg Weimer, founder, partner, and wealth manager at Confluence Financial Partners. Each month we’ll explore new ways to help you maximize your life and your legacy and meet some extraordinary people along the way. So, if you’re looking to get more out of your life today and legacy tomorrow, let’s get started.

 

Welcome. This is Greg Weimer with Confluence Financial Partners, and this will be an, this will be an interesting, this is like, take two. I don’t think we’ve done a 2.0 yet in our, in our podcast, so this will be fun. Some of you may remember that it was in 2019 we did a podcast with four of the millennials in our firm, and we talked about how to communicate with millennials. Well, the good news is I think we’re over that. We know how to communicate pretty well.

 

In fact, the millennials in our firm teach us how to communicate even better, and they’re very good at it. And every once in a while, we have to remind them talking to someone isn’t a text or an email. But other than that we’re, we’re over that. I think the opportunity today and the reason to listen to this podcast or, or, or one is just to give you, it’s been an interesting three and a half years.

So let’s give, let’s give the listeners a peek under the tent of Confluence Financial Partners. So just what’s going on here, What’s happened in the last three years? And then, two, you know, I mean, clients should demand, and I would think they want to know how we’re building this organization for the next 10, 20, 30, and 40, 50 years. So we’ll talk about that and let’s talk about like in the last three years, some of the things we’ve done as a team to build our organization for the future.

 

And then how do you build a team? Like, like what have we done to really make sure everybody has a great work-life balance but is still really driven and passionate and fired up when they come, listen to this, when they come into the office, which is, I think, a little bit different right now. And then we are planning/goal crazy in here. So let’s talk a little bit our pla— about our planning process. And maybe that’ll help some folks that are listening think about how to plan in their lives or in their businesses.

 

So first, we have four, the same four, the same team. It’s a, it’s a, it’s an encore presentation. We have our four millennials and I’m gonna have them introduce themselves, Not that I don’t know their names or, and all about their family and by their families have grown. These, these individuals in front of me have added four children in the last three years. So I guess that’s work-life balance. And but, but if you could go around and the reason this will be helpful also, it’ll help you attach their voices to their names. So the first one’s voice would be pretty easy to distinguish from the other three. So Katie, do you want to start?

 

Katie:

Sure. thanks Greg. My name is Katie Montagazzi. I am now the director of marketing communication here at Confluence. I’m a sort of a financial planner. And I wanted to add as well, there are more than just four millennials at Confluence.

 

Greg:

There’s a lot, right.

 

Katie:

After three years.

 

Greg:

Yep. Right.

 

Katie:

For the sake of this podcast.

 

Greg:

Right, right. And, and, and Katie is a CFP and Katie still works with clients. It’s really, and so she has a unique background in that. She’s, she’s, she certainly is in charge of our marketing communications, which is her passion, but she also knows a lot about our business and as a CFP and part of having a great team is you find, you get, you hire great people and then you put ’em where they, where, where you think they’re gonna be able to shine. So Katie has transitioned a little bit and expanded her responsibilities. Gregory?

 

Gregory:

So I am Gregory Weimer. I’m our Chief Operating Officer and also wealth manager here at Confluence now. In terms of designations, I’m a CPA, I’m a CFP like Katie, and I’m also a CEPA, so I’m a Certified Exit Planning Advisor, is what CEPA stands for.

 

Greg:

Yeah. And so we’ve, we’ve, we’ve been blessed to have several, many, bunch, like whatever clients that have benefited from that, right? That they exit their business and we help them with, with the exits. So, so that, that has been really helpful. You have that designation. You and I should probably do one is like, what’s, what’s it like working with your dad? Right? Cause—

 

Gregory:

That’s a whole ‘nother story.

 

Greg:

That’s, that’s another podcast. But yes, but everybody told me when we were about to do it, how hard it was gonna be. And it, I don’t know. You probably feel differently. I don’t think it’s been that tough.

 

Gregory:

So far, so good.

 

Greg:

So far so good. It’s been great. I mean, so, but it’s really important. And Gregory runs the day-to-day operations. So, cool.

 

Chuck:

Right. Good morning. My name’s Chuck Ziants. I’m a wealth manager at Confluence, and I hold a Certified Financial Planning designation.

 

Greg:

Yeah. And Chuck works on our team and, and works with a lot of our, a lot of our clients. And you and I have known each other longer than you’ve been here though, so it’s, it’s.

 

Chuck:

2013.

 

Greg:

Yeah. So it’s been really good. And, and I’ve never seen you without a lot of energy. And so like he, everybody’s nodding. He brings energy to the game. He works really well with our clients. Very detail oriented. When you go in with Chuck, meeting with Chuck, you, you just, you, you’re gonna know every single detail before you go in. Randall?

 

Randy:

Yep. I’m Randy Holcomb. I’m the director of our wealth planning department here at Confluence, and I’m also a Certified Financial Planner. Just carrying on the theme here.

 

Greg:

We hired Randy. I kept hearing there’s these good kids out at Grove City. So how many years ago was that? Eight. Eight years ago. So I went up to Grove City on one of the recruiting deals and, and Randy was one of the people we met. And you’ve done almost everything right? So if you don’t know who does this, it’s probably Randy. Not only does he do a lot of the financial planning, but, but he’s been incredibly helpful just with a lot of the transitions, a lot of the different things. So he’s sort of like the glue of the organization.

 

As a peek under the tent. Like, you know, it’s been three and a half years since, you know, we, we had one of these podcasts. If you could say the one thing in the last three and a half years that would surprise clients or you’d think clients would want to know about, For me, it, it feels the same. Like, it’s just all, it’s, it’s just all blur frankly. It’s just we keep going. Right. we don’t really slow down very often, but is there a moment that you think some of the listeners would be interested in?

 

Gregory:

Yeah, I’ll go first. I mean, I think when you look at the resources we’ve added over the last three years, and it’s hard to believe, it’s exciting for the next three years, but we’ve brought a lot of expertise in house. So, you know, we have 401K department and Brian, our 401k specialist in house. We have insurance now we have a director of investments with a CFA. So there’s a lot of hires we’ve added that to us probably feel gradual, but for a three-year period, it’s a lot. So I, I think that’s been awesome.

 

Greg:

Yeah. You know, you used the word, you said expertise and you said in-house. And, you know, we have a, we’ve always had a lot of expertise through our relationship with Raymond James. You know, they, they’re a custodian. We own ourselves, but they’re a custodian. But it is a blessing for us and for our clients to have the expertise down the hall, not in some office in a faraway land that’s at an 800 number, and you are totally vulnerable to the person that picks up the phone. So we, we, we have it in house. So we have it, we have a, we have a team of experts here. We keep adding to that expertise. I feel like we’re putting together a band and you just keep putting together great people and music happens. It’s what we’ve been doing. I couldn’t agree more. I think that has been, and that’s been way, it’s been fun. We we’re, we’re not adding expertise, we’re adding really good people. Anyone else?

 

Randy:

I think RIA has been huge for our business in terms of the things it’s allowed us to do. I know we’ve talked a lot about that with clients and communicated quite a bit about it. But just having the independence to build our business for our clients. And that’s, that’s the most important thing. I think that’s been huge.

 

Greg:

It, it is. If you, if you watch the flow of people, if you watch a flow of expertise, you know, the banks are the banks, that, that’s a different animal, a little bit. But people tend to, people from our industry don’t go to a bank, right? So, so when you watch the flow of people there, there’s great big national firms and there’s great people at those firms, and a lot of ’em around here are my friends, so not criticizing them in any way. But those people tend to go to what’s called independent. And then independent tends to go RIA. And so it, it, it does not go the other way. And we are now at the RIA stage, and we think for our clients, that’s, that’s been wildly beneficial. It’s the difference of having an iPhone versus a flip phone. We can put whatever technology and apps we need to together to make sure that we can customize the experience that we want our clients to have, not some person in a faraway land. So Randy, I couldn’t agree with — that’s been, that’s been really important behind the scenes that, that some people may not be aware of. But it’s been extraordinarily important if we’re trying to build a future to take care of our clients for the next 30 years.

 

Katie:

I have two things. One, not just adding resources and associates, but we’ve moved into a new building in the South Hills of Pittsburgh. Built a building, office. Moved into the PPG office downtown. And when, now we have an office in Naples. So logistically we’ve grown—

 

Greg:

By the way, by the way, two of the three were done during Covid. Right.

 

Katie:

Right. <Laugh> Not great timing, but it’s great now. And then second, I wanted to mention this past year we were nominated again as one of the Fastest 50 Growing Companies in Pittsburgh. And we were the fastest financial services firm in Pittsburgh last year. So growth has been the theme.

 

Greg:

Yeah. sometimes people say, Why is that good for our current clients? If you would see the resources and what we can do for clients today versus five years ago. It’s, it’s, it’s significantly better. So it certainly benefits new clients, obviously, and new associates, but our current associates and our current clients have benefited greatly from our growth. And by the way, you cannot keep talent and you cannot attract talent unless you’re growing. No one wants to work for an eroding organization.

 

Chuck:

And I really think that people would be shocked at how much we collaborate. And we really leaned into the challenges the last, you know, three, four years.

 

Greg:

Yeah. I was with some great clients yesterday and I said we probably do more business in the hallways than in the offices. <Laugh>, Right? I do laps around the office and we just get a lot done in the hallways. So Chuck, I agree that the collaboration’s been a big deal.

 

Chuck:

The five-minute drive-bys have been invaluable.

 

Greg:

Yeah. Yep. Fly-bys. Fly-bys. Is that what they are?

 

Chuck:

Mm-Hmm. <affirmative>.

 

Greg:

They’re fly-bys, Yeah.

 

Chuck:

Fly-bys.

 

Greg:

Yeah. And so we do a lot of those. So anyhow, that’s great. I mean, I think that’s a great peek under the tent. And I hope the listeners just, just really hear us say clearly that we are, we are working hard to build an organization that’ll be here for their families. I’m always amazed I said, Oh, here, here a prospective client. So I work with them. I’m like, Oh, right, Really? Why? And it’s like, one or two people, they’re 60 years old and they’re gonna take care of my family. And I’m like, just do the math. They’re not gonna take care. It’s like math. This isn’t an opinion. It’s like math. They’re not gonna take care of your family.

 

So the good thing about here is we have people in their twenties that are very talented. We have people in their thirties that are very talented, forties, fifties, and sixties. And so we, we will be here to take care of families. And we think it’s important that we have that diverse group. And also, it’s important that we stay private so clients can rely us, rely on us in the future. Let’s go to — I don’t know, I may be biased. I think we have an incredible team. I really do.

 

Not, not to make it all about Confluence, but, but more importantly, let’s take it, let’s talk about what do you think we’ve done as an organization that allow, has allowed us to build such a truly, and this is the correct word, driven team? And I honestly don’t know the answer, so I’m fascinated to hear.

 

Randy:

I think we’re pretty upfront at the, from, from the get-go of here’s what the expectation of is of a Confluence associate. I have the privilege of whenever we have a new hire that comes on, I get to do the brief history of Confluence and welcome to Confluence presentation. And one of the things we talk about is the culture of goal setting, of improvement, and how we truly believe that individuals are at their best and happiest, and it’s best for our clients, if we’re constantly improving. And so the expectation is we’re gonna do a five-year plan, we’re gonna do quarterly goals, and it’s gonna be part of our DNA. And I think we end up because of that, we end up attracting people who want that, that excites them.

 

Greg:

So be upfront and honest with what you’re trying to— when you’re hiring someone. I mean, my wife and I started dating, I don’t know, 35 years ago, and I said, Hey, here’s what I want out of life. What do you want out of life? Let’s save each other a bunch of time. So we compared notes, matched up. Good. So if, if you, so if someone wants to say like, Hey, I’m here to coast, that’s great. But there’s a great firm for you — it will not be Confluence Financial Partners. Right? So I think that’s a good point, Randy, just, and thank you for doing that. We, we are very upfront if we’re, we’re, we’re about improvement. What else?

 

Gregory:

And I think even taking that a step further, it’s become part of the interview process also, right? I mean, we’re, we’re talking to people during interviews about: how can we help them succeed? And, you know, being driven, being goal oriented is part of it. And we want to it to be the right fit for potential employees too. So if they’re someone who wants to come in and just check the boxes, they realize it may not be a great fit also.

 

Greg:

I think that’s right. Yep. I think that’s, I think that’s fair.

 

Katie:

So Gregory and Randy mentioned about getting the right people on the bus, as we always say. But I think once you’re, if you’re an associate of Confluence, you also, you don’t just join the organization with that growth mindset or goal-setting aspiration, but we all hold each other very accountable. If somebody’s kind of like falling behind, nobody has an issue saying like, Hey, what’s going on? Like, let’s get it together. So I think all of us do a really good job of actually being a team and carrying everybody along with us on the journey.

 

Greg:

Yeah. And, and it is a team. I mean, and it is accountable, but it’s weird. Like not, it’s, it’s not like, you know, it’s not like in a principal way, it’s just that we, we have a standard and we create it and everybody works really, really hard to live up to it. And as I look around the room, I think I’ve texted every one of you at nine o’clock at night. I’ve texted every one of you at five o’clock in the morning. And I know that sounds crazy, but you know, you don’t always need to respond. But, you know, it gets, and we communicate that way. And it’s, it’s really amazing, you know, the communication and accountability and idea sharing. I remember this was probably 40 days ago, there was a, there was an idea that came out of our Pittsburgh office, our downtown office, and I thought it was something we needed to move quickly on. And I texted Randy and Gregory and said, How quickly can we get this done? And what do we need to do, get to get it done in the next 30 days? It was amazing how quickly you guys moved. You did it in 31, which was okay, but it was, but, but <laugh> But it was good. I mean, we moved, right? And so it’s just how we, it’s just how the organization is.

 

Chuck:

And I think too, I think the, the big thing is, is the leadership here in everyone here takes a vested interest of your success in the office and out of the office. Like that’s one thing that I’ve taken away over the years is, is they care about what you’re doing in the office and outside, which is great. They, we all take a vested interest in each one of our families. It’s great.

 

Greg:

Yeah. It’s, it’s not, that’s— Thank you for pointing that out, because it could make it sound like it’s all about just work, work, work. And it’s not true. I mean, balance is, if you need to be home for your, for your family, you should be home. If you need to be in the office for your office, for the firm, you should be in the office. But that’s, that’s true balance. So we do look at it as a group of families. In fact, in fact, that just reinforces the whole, we don’t do, we don’t work. And this is just how we live our lives, right? We don’t work and we don’t play. We just live. And I think that’s a, that’s different than how most people think. There’s a lot of conversation out there about people not wanting to come back into the office. Not at Confluence, but there’s a lot of conversation out there about people not wanting to come into the office. And you know, you guys are like looking at me, you know, but it’s like, that’s just not — did you want to come in, why’d you come in? Has it made us better with you being in here?

 

Gregory:

Yes and yes.

 

Katie:

We’ve been back in the office since — help me — spring of — no, winter 2021.

 

Gregory:

We went through phases.

 

Greg:

Right, right, right. We were very, Yeah, right. We—

 

Katie:

We were—

 

Greg:

I mean like, like, you know, when there was a sharp spike, we’d be like, okay, we, everybody’s got to get, or even in the office, right? We had a couple breaks and, and so we’re like, okay, let’s, let’s get out of this office and away from each other’s germs for a week or two. And then at first we did, right, for a month or something like that. But yeah, so, but I was— But you’re making, go ahead.

 

Katie:

Yeah. So there was a common theme when we were home working, you know, we were working, but I would call like Chuck, I would call Neil. I would call Gregory just to say hey, because I missed seeing them and just collaborating, whether it be personal or professional. And then coming back in the office, it was like a breath of fresh air. Being home was cool for a little while and then it was like, wow, I really, I feel like we were missing something. And we got back in the office, we were able to collaborate better, circle around the client, do meetings. There were just so many things we were missing out on being home. So I think we can all agree that we were excited to come back. And then I just wanted to add too, still to this day, it happened to me last week, somebody said, Oh, are you guys back in the office? <Laugh>? And I wanted to laugh. I’m like, Well, what have you been doing? Right? Yeah, we’ve been back. It’s been great. Yeah, we’re, you know, it’s, nobody’s had any big issues or anything. Right. So it is interesting. I think we’re kind of the minority in the world.

 

Greg:

Of, and at the same time, and this is true of the fathers also, but as a mother of two young boys, there are moments that it is very convenient and necessary that you work from home.

 

Katie:

Yep.

 

Greg:

And that’s okay.

 

Katie:

Okay. Yes, with children, there’s never a dull moment. I’ll say that. <Laugh>

 

Katie:

But no, it’s great. Yeah. I mean, all of us, I can speak to all of us. We all, you know, if you have something that’s going on at home in your personal life, you are more than welcome to do what you need to do. And whenever it’s time to work and be here, we’re here.

 

Gregory:

Yeah. Our business is also about relationships, right? So for us, we want to sit across the table from our clients and I think we miss that. It’s nice using Zoom or Teams, whatever you’re using for a virtual meeting. But, you know, at some point it’s nice to look at someone in the eyes in the same room. And after a while I miss that. It’s nice to still have the tool, but that’s a big part of our job.

 

Greg:

It is. And, and I, I, I would think the clients are listening. I would think you expect us to be in the office. It’s amazing how many people aren’t, but it’s, I would think you expect us to be in the office and we, look, we, we, Zoom has been great. We have clients 42 states, so we need to use Zoom from time to time. And that works great. But you, you, but it’s, it, it, it is nice to see people face to face.

 

So we actually are in the process of now I know this is this, by the time, hopefully this is by the time this is out, hopefully these meetings will be accomplished. But we have a challenge in here. We want to meet with, we want to do a thousand interactions with our clients. A thousand face-to-face meetings, a thousand Zoom for the people that are out of town. And because we know this is a tough time, we know this is, to Gregory’s point, we know this is a relationship business and we are gonna put that goal out there and say engage, engage with the clients. Let’s make sure that we are out there communicating with our clients in this difficult time.

 

Chuck:

Moral of the story with that plug, let’s meet.

 

Greg:

Let’s meet <laugh>, Let’s meet, let’s meet. Yeah.

 

Katie:

Oh, I was just gonna add something. Doing marketing and communication internally at Confluence, a lot of my, so like clients I would say are advisors, Confluence advisors. So being in the office, the most effective communication happens whenever you’re in the office, belly to belly, eyeball to eyeball, phone calls are great, email’s, great, whatever. But to be physically in the same room as somebody is the most effective way we communicate, I would say.

 

Greg:

Couldn’t agree more. And there are people out there I’m sure that are saying, Yeah, but we are just as effective outside the office. We are not judging you. You may be in a different business than the wealth management business. Frankly, when we were out of the office for a little bit, we were just as productive also. But it was because of the relationships we built when we were in the office. So what I would challenge people to think about is when you fast forward to 20 years, if you’re not in the office, will you have those same relationships that if you’re forced to go outside the office, that you’ll still be productive? We are benefiting from the relationships we’ve built. When we stop building those and we have to go remote, I would, I would challenge the thought that would be that be that productive. And I think for the, the, this, this is, this is an old guy dad advice, if you’re 30 something, get in the office because you need to be around other people to learn from the mentors. We were with a partner of a law firm that will remain nameless in Pittsburgh and you know, he’s okay. I mean, he is, he’s, you know, close to retirement. But man, if I were a new attorney, I would want to be next to this attorney because he’ll just make you better over time.

 

Chuck:

Iron sharpens iron.

 

Greg:

So earlier you all, you said we’re, we’re about goal oriented and we do think a lot about goals. And we do think, and, and you know, as I was saying it, we’re in the planning business, I would hope we think a lot about goals, it’s what we do. I’ll run into financial advisor, say what are your goals? Like, Oh, I don’t have any goals. I’m like, you’re in the goal business for goodness’ sake! Like how don’t you have any goals? You know, I’m just gonna try better. Well that’s cute, but like goals help. Or you just, you know, so— I think it’d be interesting for folks to, you know, from a planning standpoint, maybe, maybe this converts into some listeners lives. Could you talk a little bit about, when you say we’re goal oriented, when you, you know, when, when you, when you say we’re very, you know, intentional about what we do, do you want to just give a couple bullet points about what that means inside of Confluence?

 

Gregory:

I’ll start at the firm level because I think it’s, it’s individual and from a business standpoint. So we, we start and we’re very open about what Confluence’s five-year plan is and what the goals are each of those years to get there. So we start with the five-year plan. We know where we want to be high level in five years, but then we break that down on how we’re going to get there. And I think what helps our associates is we’re open about that. And so everyone feels like they’re part of the growth and they can make their own goals to build on that. So, you know, whatever the planning department needs to do or retirement plan services, everyone’s a part of the same goal and rowing in the same direction.

 

Katie:

I was just gonna add in the last three years we’ve added directors of all of our different teams and within those five-year plans there’s, you know, the Confluence five-year plan and then we all have our responsibilities. Like what’s Katie owning? What’s Gregory owning? And then that filters down into our five-year, one-year, quarterly, daily tasks. So I think Greg, you always say people like 10 years from now or like, how did I get here? Well it’s probably because you didn’t plan <laugh>, so you just ended up wherever you ended up.

 

Greg:

Right.

 

Katie:

So we understand that and we’re being very intentional with not just business, but professional, professional things, personal things. I don’t know, it’s just the way to do it.

 

Greg:

Yeah. So, so just to play on both of us and to bring ’em together, I mean, they’re all part of the same process. You know, Greg, we, we get together and, you know, at the firm level and we, we think about, okay, so here’s where we want to be in five years and we work backwards on it. Okay, so what do we have to do to get there? And so that’s quantitatively that’s, that’s, that’s qualitatively like what do we need to do to get there? And, and it’s, it’s the plan. And then we show it to all of our directors and then the directors put together their plan. And then we show it to the advisors. Then the advisors put together their plan. So, so we absolutely have a five-year plan. And, and by the way, the five-year plan is about how do we improve the experience to our clients? And so when we add this expertise and we add these services, it’s not happenstance. I mean it’s something we’ve, we’ve absolutely thought about because we’re saying, okay, if we were a client, what would we want in five years? What would we want and demand this firm to look like? And that’s how we work on our five-year plan.

 

Randy:

Like Katie said, to go a little more into it, you take the five-year plan and then you say, What do I need to get done in the next year, next two years? You know? And then from there you say, what about this quarter? What do I need to do in the next 90 days? What are the high-impact activities? And then boil it down even further. What do I need to do today to accomplish this quarterly goal? And you know, we have a culture at Confluence around that. And we, it’s not just something you talk about, there’s templates for your quarterly goals. There’s, there’s templates for, you know, plan tomorrow today for your daily tasks. And I think most of us use those things and that’s a big part of our DNA and it shows, you always say, Greg, it’s amazing how often you write something down and then it happens.

 

Greg:

It happens.

 

Chuck:

It’s about identifying the big rocks, right?

 

Gregory:

It’s amazing when you actually accomplish goals too, right? That helps. So you continue to plan and want to plan. When we’re at the end of this year, when you look back at 2022, the rocks we had, the big goals, they’re all accomplished. And we set out a goal to accomplish them and we did. And whether that’s bringing in an in-house insurance specialist, whether that’s adding new technology, we’ve done it for this year. And so the buy-in is there. It’s not just words on a piece of paper that we hope we can accomplish.

 

Greg:

At one point, the, it would’ve been adding the, the, the investment, someone to run the investment group. At one point it had been a South Hills office. At one point it would’ve been launching Naples. At one point it would’ve been, you know, becoming an RIA. And these things are all critical, but they were, they, they existed because they’re all quarterly goals. And, and by the way, I think the other thing that’s important is it also allows you not to try to do too much at one time, right? Because you break things out and say, okay, this is all great. If we try to get it done all this quarter, nothing will happen. If we do it over the next year, we’re gonna get, so we’ll move faster by moving slower.

 

Chuck:

I mean, what do you all say if we do three really good things a quarter in five years.

 

Greg:

Boom, game changer.

 

Chuck:

People are gonna call us lucky, right?

 

Greg:

Yeah. Actually if you do, like, and then with the other one, right? If you do your most important thing every day, just do your one most. I call it my “no matter what.” No matter what, I got to do this, no matter what. I got to like, call this person, you know, meet with this person no matter what. If you do your “no matter what” every day and every day you do your “no matter what,” that’s aligned with your five-year goal.

 

Katie:

Yeah. We never really do it in a vacuum either. So whenever working through our quarterly goals, we’ll share it with the team. And again, if your goals are not maybe the best of your ability, somebody will call you out and say, Hey, you’re probably gonna do that anyhow, so why don’t you think bigger?

 

Greg:

Yeah. That’s called like breathing oxygen. That’s just living, that’s not like changing the world.

 

Katie:

Yeah. Some, sometimes people think tasks are goals and they’re not.

 

Gregory:

You have to have personal goals too, right? We we’re talking about the job and work, but we do a lot of things within Confluence to help people personally. So whether it’s a fitness challenge that we’re doing the fourth quarter of this year or earlier this year, doing a wellness challenge that isn’t only fitness, maybe it’s reading a book or a spiritual ga— whatever it is. There’s a lot of personal goals too that we have and we help associates accomplish.

 

Greg:

Yeah. So the one right now, so they, it’s, it’s, it’s around health and the winner is served dinner by the losers, but—

 

Katie:

Of their choice.

 

Greg:

Of their choice. Yeah. So, so if it’s someone that, you know, maybe if it’s one of our single individuals, you know, they may have some of their friends over and have steaks and beer, you know, whatever steaks and wine, whatever they want to do. If it’s if it’s someone that says, Hey, I just want to have a candlelit dinner with my, with my spouse. So then the, and then the other, the losers have to serve that. There’s only 15 or 20 people in this one, right?

 

Gregory:

Yeah.

 

Greg:

So the losers have to serve the winner. So that’ll, that’ll be fine. And they cannot get it catered. They have to, they have to, they have to make the dinner. So that’ll be fun.

 

Katie:

Then coming full circle, you mentioned the beginning of the podcast, Chuck is very detail oriented.

 

Greg:

Yeah.

 

Katie:

So Chuck is super serious about this contest and he’s sitting at this table with a gallon of water that he’s supposed to consume on a daily basis.

 

Gregory:

How many ounces? How big is that?

 

Chuck:

Gallon. One hundred and twenty-eight ounces.

 

Greg:

So he’s been running to the restroom so often his productivity is plummeting. So, so, but it is fun to challenge each other and I think it’s part of the team, right? It’s so it is also interesting when people say like, how, how’s everyone, so, like how as, you know, one of the leaders of the organization, how do you keep everyone so motivated? And I think it’s such a funny question because I don’t. Like, like I think what’s interesting about our team is: they keep each other motivated. Like it’s, it’s a team. And so everybody has a standard that they hold each other to the standard and you know, you just hire the right people and that, that’s very, very helpful.

 

Randy:

It’s the power of a culture. It can— pushes everybody forward.

 

Greg:

It’s everything. And by the way, I don’t know how you do a culture if no one’s in the office. I know you can do an activity every quarter, I guess that’s cool. But I don’t know how you do a, I don’t know how you do that, right? So are we have, we have a culture because we’re together, we say we’re a culture of improvement and growth. And if I’m listening to this, I’m, and I’m a potential associate, which we’re, we’re, we’re always looking for great people, I think the most important thing I do in my career is, is, is attract and retain good people. I mean that’s, that’s like what I really focus on. That’s one of the things I really focus on. So, you know, we’re trying to make all of us the best versions of ourselves.

 

It’s been three and a half years since we did the first podcast. What do you think the skill set, the thing you learned that, what benefited you the most? How are you different today? However you want to answer it.

 

Randy:

I’ll start. So for me it’s the ability to specialize more and more. So when I started, I think that was what the sixth person at Confluence. And so I did a little bit of everything and I, I still do a little bit of everything. I’m involved in a lot of areas, but now, being the director of wealth planning, as we’ve grown, we’ve been able to specialize in more areas and, and get people doing more of what they’re best at. And put everybody in position to win. And that’s been, that’s been phenomenal. I know I’ve enjoyed that, motivates me. And I, I’ve seen it all around the organization as we continue to grow.

 

Greg:

It’s so cool to be able to, it’s so cool to be able to do more of less, right? I mean, and, and, and Randy with the financial plans, I mean you work with all the financial advisors. So the, the, you see way more than the typical financial advisor. So, so you just, you know, you have different expertise than someone that would do it twice a week.

 

Randy:

I would say mine would probably be two. I would say one would be getting the CFP, Certified Financial Planner. That was right around Covid time, which was a challenge to say the least. As most of you know. I would—

 

Greg:

You were about to take the exam, then they canceled the exam.

 

Randy:

They canceled it. <Laugh> The day before.

 

Greg:

Stress.

 

Randy:

I actually was considering I was calling all the testing centers down the East coast. I was about to drive to Texas to take it. Ended up closing them, pushing it about six months back. So that was fun. I would say the second thing would be joining the Weimer-Wilding team and watching us continue to move and grow and break the process. That’s been invaluable to my career. And for those of you listening that don’t know, I was a solo practitioner when I started. And I would’ve made that decision to join the Weimer-Wilding team, 10 out of 10 times. It’s been awesome.

 

Greg:

And you know, it’s as far as expertise, we hired a consultant and this consultant said, Hey, how about this? And you know, we’re like, Oh, never thought of that. Now, you know, we, we have a lot of teams in the organization, the Weimer-Wilding team being one of ’em. And there is a real advantage of being a team and, and you know, everyone’s benefited, right? I mean, from that, from the team, everyone. And so we’re thankful you’re on it.

 

Gregory:

I don’t think last time we did this, I had been around very long, so, you know, I was working with clients, doing a little bit of everything with the CEPA background. I was still working on our finances. But with the growth of the organization, I think for me the biggest thing has just been, you know, actually taking on the COO responsibility. And now, whereas before it was a little, a little bit of, hey, run this project and make it happen. And I’ve done a lot of those, but now it’s, you’re responsible for making it happen. And I love that. I mean it’s, I’m working on the finances, whether it’s our internal accounting, our billing, I’m working on interviews, I’m working with our operations and our support associates and I still get to work with clients. So for me, the day to day is always changing and that, that’s been a huge change since three and a half years ago. And then there’s been additional designations. There’s been a kid added, so it it’s been a crazy three years.

 

Greg:

The difference, the difference three years makes. Yeah, right. But, but to get all that done, I know his wife fairly well. <Laugh> and Nick will say, she’ll say like, You’re on your computer, it’s at nine o’clock at night. And I don’t, I mean, I know you are. I am too. And what’s interesting is they’re probably not that different than you guys either, right? So, but that’s a lot, that’s a lot to do. Yeah, big change. I mean, I remember when you started, actually, I remember saying to you, you were, he, he was working at EY and he said, I think, I think I’m, I think I want, I think I want to come to Confluence. And I, I thought, okay, we weren’t that big back then, remember? And I, I thought, I don’t know what the hell you’d do <laugh>. Like—

 

Gregory:

I didn’t know either.

 

Greg:

But like now I don’t know what the hell we would do without you. So that’s great.

 

Katie:

Alright, I think, Greg, you touched on this at the beginning, but I’ve had two children in the last three years. So, one, personally, I mean that’s great family growing and second, I think we’re all parents in this room, but I think being a parent really changes your view and makes you better professionally too because your “why” becomes bigger. So that’s been a big change. And I will add, I had my first son Louie in May of 2020. So was working from home, had a child, maternity leave, back to work, but it was work from home. So that, just living life in the last three years has been—

 

Greg:

Yeah. Yeah. You said it made your “why” bigger and people, I mean I think everyone knows about the — we talk about that a lot, right? Whether it’s with clients, or your why, or the firm’s why, or maximize lives and legacies. You want to just touch on like what we mean when we say what you’re all about, all about, and how that is a little different and what that means to you.

 

Randy:

You’re all—

 

Greg:

I asked like 17 questions at once, but I think they’re all the same, right? It’s good. Yeah.

 

Randy:

The key with the, what’s you’re all about is it’s bigger than you might think initially. So sometimes people think of goal, they think, Oh, when do I want to retire? You know, when do I want to buy second home? Or whatever it is. And those are important, but the, what’s it all about is bigger. Like what drives you, what motivates you? When, when all is said and done in your life, what do you want people to say about you? What was important to you? And how do you orient your life, your finances, everything in pursuit of that why? Those are big questions. And I, I think we do a good job of helping each other and clients grapple with those.

 

Greg:

And spoiler alert, I’ve been thinking about this for a really long time. It’s a question that’s fun because you never answer it. You always have an answer, but you’ve never answered it. So, I mean, for me it always evolves and gets bigger and bigger and I was listening to some stuff over the weekend, some different podcasts and videos and I’m like, okay, wait, wait, wait. Am I clear enough about in 30 years what I want people to say or what impact I want to make? Am I clear enough? Can I really visualize it? And the more clear, the more visual you are, the more it’ll inspire you to get your uniform dirty if you have to to get it done.

 

Yeah, I think something, when we’re talking about motivation, I think what’s, clearly, we have motivated financial advisors. Our associates are also wildly motivated, right? I mean we have, we have associates. Whether if you, if you, you know, if you, if you think about some of the, the, the support, the, the support folks, they’re wildly motivated also, are there a couple things we do that maybe other business owners could duplicate to have motivation sort of status quo?

 

Chuck:

I think being open about the business’s goals, right? We’ve mentioned that already, but when the whole staff understands what you’re trying to do, it’s easier for them to feel like they’re part of something. And if they don’t know what the goals are, they’re just coming into work doing the normal job, they think, I have no idea what this is really for, but hey, I’m getting my paycheck. It’s all done. But we have, like you said, really motivated associates and a lot of them, they don’t have to, but they want to study and get licensed in the financial industry and take different tests and certifications and make posts on LinkedIn. They don’t have to do that. It’s not part of the job description, but they want to and I think including everyone is part of your growth plans is why if you have a closed-door policy, people will just see the closed door.

 

Katie:

Yeah. To touch on that I know we always say, Greg, you specifically, you always say we want everybody at Confluence to create the success, not just be a part of it. And once you say that, so many times I think people really take it to heart. And I think that is an example of why and how associates here are so motivated.

 

Randy:

And I think people feel like they have a seat at the table. We talk about that a lot. Whether it’s a new advisor coming on or one of the advantages of being at Confluence is you have a seat at the table and obviously that looks different, you know, depending on where you, where you are within the organization. But there’s been plenty of times where, you know, a support associate had an idea and said, Hey, I think we should do it this way. And everybody was like, Yeah, that sounds good. That’s, that’s a good, let’s do it that way. And that’s rewarding.

 

Greg:

Great idea to action can be, can be in a nanosecond here, right? We, we don’t make, we don’t have a whole layer of people that have to make decisions. If it’s great, we’ll do it and we’ll do it quick. And it doesn’t matter who it comes from.

 

Hopefully you have found this podcast to be of interest, but we really want to make sure we’re given you content and having podcasts that you’re interested in. So we would love to hear from you and just like we’d like to hear from our associates, we’d like to hear from our listeners and if there’s something that you would like us to talk about and you think would be beneficial, please let us know. Would be happy to include it.

 

Katie, Gregory, Chuck, Randy, thank you. We’re fired up that you’re a part of Confluence and we’re looking forward to the next 30, 40 and 50 years of continuing to build this incredible team in this incredible relationship. You know, we started out associates and we continue to build those relationships and end up being friends and I think that benefits clients, that will benefit clients for decades to come. Hopefully the listeners appreciated getting a little peek under the tent of Confluence, the importance of building a team and what talent means to building that team. And then a little bit about a growth mindset and how setting goals and planning those goals and communicating ’em and doing ’em as a team really, when you do those things together, you can really make a major difference. So thank you so much for listening.

 

Thank you for listening to the Imagine That Podcast. We hope you enjoyed this episode and welcome you to reach out to Confluence Financial Partners with your questions and comments. If you’d like to hear more episodes, head over to confluencefp.com/podcasts or find us wherever you get your podcasts.

 

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Imagine That
Episode 27 - Part 2

Folds of Honor – Tiffany Eckert’s Story

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Listen on Spotify

Some investments serve a higher purpose. In this episode, you’ll learn about Folds of Honor, an organization that gives back to a community to whom we owe an unpayable debt.

Since 2007, Folds of Honor has provided scholarships to the families of America’s killed or disabled soldiers. Join host and Confluence Financial Partners CEO, Greg Weimer, as he interviews Gold Star Wife Tiffany Eckert. Tiffany will help us understand exactly why an organization like Folds of Honor means so much, because Tiffany is a Gold Star wife. Her husband, Andy, gave the ultimate sacrifice so all of us could continue to live in freedom. Tiffany was generous enough to share her remarkable story with us and it is our honor to introduce her to our listeners.

To all of our military heroes, veterans, and those like Andy who gave the ultimate sacrifice, we say thank you. We are forever grateful for your service to this great country.

Greg:
Hello, and welcome to the Imagine That podcast. I’m your host, Greg Weimer, founder, partner, and wealth
manager at Confluence Financial Partners. Each month, we’ll explore new ways to help you maximize your
life and your legacy and meet some extraordinary people along the way. So if you’re looking to get more out
of your life today and legacy tomorrow, let’s get started.
Welcome to the second part of our two-part episode on Folds of Honor. If you listened to the first part, you
know all about Folds of Honor and the important work they do. We met Crystal Popella and she shared her
experience and why she founded the Western Pennsylvania chapter of the organization.
Today, Tiffany will help us understand exactly why an organization like Folds of Honor means so much.
Because Tiffany is a Gold Star wife. Her husband, Andy, gave the ultimate sacrifice so all of us could
continue to live in freedom. Andy was killed in action in Iraq. Tiffany was generous enough to share her
remarkable story with us and it is my honor to introduce her to our listeners.
Tiffany:
I’m one of thousands and of a group that I wish never was, but it’s my honor and privilege to be Andy’s wife.
And to be the one that was left behind to carry on his light. And I can say a hundred percent, my life has, the
trajectory of my entire life has been changed because of the vision that Dan Rooney had that day.
Greg:
Tiffany, if you could give your story just to help everybody understand, and this is one of 35,000. But if you
could just give your story and talk about, you know, how freedom really isn’t free and the price that your
family has paid.
Tiffany:
I met Andy Eckert on September 19th of 2002. And I’ll never forget the first time I looked him in the eye. The
piercing blue eyes, the same blue eyes that our children Marley and Myles have, which is the greatest gift.
But also some days just stings, you know? He knew from the minute we met that I was his forever. We met
up the next day and we spent the whole evening together. And when it came time to part, we were sitting on
his front step and he said, Tiffany, I need to tell you something. And you might never wanna talk to me again.
But if you could just hear me out, I have something I wanna share with you. And the long and short of it, he,
again, so intentionally looked me right in the eye, and he said, I know that when I met you last night, I met my
wife. I called my mom at four in the morning and I told her, I met Tiffany, I’m gonna marry her.
I’ve told all of my friends that I met my wife. And he said, and I know after January 1st of this upcoming year,
I’m gonna have to go away with the military. And I don’t know when, how, where or why, but I know I’m
gonna leave. And when I leave, you’ll be my wife. And it was really strange at that point in my life, I was so
young and I thought I had everything planned out. And this was 100 percent a contradiction to everything I
thought that was mapped for me and everything I wanted. But at the same time, it felt so natural. And it
wasn’t just because it was there. It was, it was Andy. It was as if, you know, that moment that we met the
night previous, it was like our souls had already met. We already knew each other. There was just this
perfect harmony, this, this ameshed feeling that I’ve never felt with anybody besides my children. It was
meant to be. And so I looked at him and I said, OK, I believe you. And he was right. Was a handful of months
down the road, February 24, 2003, he got activated to go and be part of the initial wave in the first
occupation of OIF which is Operation Iraqi Freedom.
I wasn’t with him when he got the call. But I got to our apartment and I walked through the door and he’d just
sobbing. His face was soaked in tears, his blue, blue eyes, the, the backdrop behind him was just these
blood-stained eyes. And he looked up at me and he ran over and he dropped to his knees and he put arms
around me and he said, I’m so sorry, our baby is not gonna know who I am. Because we had just found out I
was pregnant. And at the time we didn’t know if we were having a boy or a girl. And I grabbed him on either
side of his face. And I looked at him just like, he always looked at me with such intention and conviction. And
I said, no, I promise, no matter what happens, this baby’s gonna know exactly who you are. I promise.
And then just as nontraditional, as every other part of our relationship, he stood on both feet and looked me
right in the eye, standing, and said, don’t answer me now. I have to go away for a couple of days to do some
paperwork. But when I come back, I want you to marry me. But don’t, don’t answer me right now. And he
went away for a couple days. And when he came back, we went down to the Lucas County courthouse in
Toledo, Ohio. And we got married in a hallway by a stranger and I was wearing jeans. And you look at the
pictures, which we only have one. And Andy was so happy that if he had smiled any wider, his face would’ve
cracked. And I looked terrified, which I was. OK? I was 21. I was pregnant. I was confident that my husband
probably was gonna miss the birth of our first child and my entire pregnancy, which I was right.
And I, I knew that I loved this person more than I’d ever loved anything in my entire life. And then he was
going to war and also in the pictures, you’ll notice Andy had gone out that morning and he took horticulture
in high school. And so flowers and any type of greenery was very important to him. He went out and he got a
pale pink gerber daisy with some hot pink gerber daisies and had them put in a little bouquet. And I was like,
that’s so silly. Why would I take that to the courthouse? He said, you have to, there’s one flower for each of
us: me, you and the baby. And three means, I love you. And I can’t do much for you and this isn’t the
wedding you deserve, but I want you to hold these. And I did. And gerber daisies have become such a pivotal
point in the whole timeline of our story in that, two years, two months and 11 days later, when all of us were
gathered, as Andy was being lowered into the ground, graveside, every single person that was there,
hundreds and hundreds of hot pink and pale pink gerber daisies were placed on top of his casket.
And in all of these years, since we’ve lost Andy, for every special occasion, for every school dance that he’s
missed, for every major event, my children Marley and Myles both receive pale pink or hot pink gerber
daisies. And every now and again, anonymously hot pink gerber daisies will show up at the grave or on my
front porch. I don’t know who puts them there, but I know that ultimately, it’s Andy doing it. So after we got
married on February 28th, it was less than a week later he left for his first tour. On March 6th. And he was
on a 17-month deployment. And just like we both feared, he did not get to come and see Marley born in July.
She was born on July 17th, 2003. It was one of the most wonderful and heartbreaking days of my life. I
never said anything to anyone, but the whole time, all I wanted was to hear Andy’s voice.
And I was in labor for way longer than I should have been. It wasn’t until almost two days later after he got
his Red Cross message that I had gone into labor, that Andy was able to call me on a satellite phone from the
desert to tell me that he loved me. And that’s all I needed. The call was less than two minutes because
things were so tough then. The satellite phone dropped the call, but he was able to tell me, I’m sorry, I’m not
there. I love, you know that I’m with you, I’m in your heart. I’m so proud of you. You can do this. And then
shortly after that, it was like, I felt this release and I was able to give birth to Marley. And I’ll never forget the
first time I met her, she was placed and I was so tired, but I looked down at her and I said, oh, there you are.
I’m happy to meet you, Marley Freedom. I love you. And so does daddy. And then this beautiful moment was
occurring. And my dad goes, Freedom? Marley Freedom? What? That’s not her name. I said, yeah, it is. And
then I explained to my dad, Andy’s not here. And when Marley looks back at the pictures from when she was
born, I want her and her dad, most importantly, but I want everybody to know the reason he is not in the
pictures wasn’t because he didn’t want to be, but because he’s fighting for her freedom, my freedom, your
freedom. Her name is Marley Freedom. And I think she has the coolest name in the world. And her dad
thought so too. So it all worked out and it ended up being almost prophetic, truly that she had that name that
she has. Andy got to come home when she was 11 months old to meet her in April of 2004.
And when he came home, he was a purple heart veteran who had been deemed non-deployable. He never
had to go back to conflict again, ever. He still had shrapnel in his face, he still had shrapnel in his shoulder.
And he narrowly missed never coming home to us. He had been impacted by an IED explosion on March
15th, 2004. And the piece that was meant to take his life missed by a centimeter, missed his jugular. And e
was saved in that moment. He was able to home to us. It was just a handful of months later down the road. I
was at his Army Reserve unit because I was the family readiness leader for his company. And he came to the
room that I was in and I knew something was up. And he sat down and he put his hand on my knee and he
said, babe, they said, if I signed a waiver, I can go back. You know, my unit just got activated and these are
all the guys that I went to Basic and AIT with. And I don’t wanna leave you again. But I need to go. And you
don’t have to say yes, and I’m not begging you to say yes. But this is very important to me. And I believe this
is what I’m supposed to do. And at that time we had just found out I was pregnant with Myles, so here we
were again about repeat history. Here I was so young, 22 years old. And I l looked at him and I said, this is
not what I want, but I could never tell you no. If this is what you feel like you’re supposed to do, then yes, you
can sign the waiver. I will support you. But when you come home, I can’t do this again. And he said, I
promise, I’m gonna make it home. And we’ll be America’s dream team. We’ll just get through this one more
time. So I went with him, and I watched him as he signed the waiver. And coincidentally, every other soldier
that had been deployed in OIF1 that didn’t have to go again, not because they were injured but because of
the timeline. His brothers went and they signed waivers too.
And they went back together. They left for that deployment in OIF3 on Christmas Day, 2004. The only
Christmas we ever spent together was in a hotel room in Indiana. I still have the little, tiny tree in the tiny blue
ornaments, blue and silver bulbs that I bought at Walmart for Marley’s first and only Christmas ever with her
dad. And the only Christmas that we spent together as a family. And, you know, that’s what families like ours
do is they make the most of what moments they’re given. And they’re the grandest moments. We were in a
hotel room. We weren’t in a huge house with a huge tree and tons and tons of gifts, but we had each other
and that’s all that mattered. And those are the things that I try to tell people about and share with them. The
moments that matter most in life are the ones that you don’t even realize they’re your first or your last until
it’s over.
We sent Andy away on Christmas day and he called me, Myles was born in March and he called me about a
week before I was due. And he said, Hey, I’m in Kuwait. I think I’m gonna get to come home, but I don’t
know yet, but I think I’m gonna get to come home and see Myles born. And he said, I’ll call you as soon as I
can. And day after day after day passed, there was no call. And I was ready to have that boy. I had a cracked
pelvis and I called my doctor on Thursday of that week. And I said, listen, I can’t be pregnant one more day. I
am miserable. I don’t think I can walk anymore. I don’t know where my husband is. I did this once without
him. I can do it again. I think he’s on his way home.
I don’t know, but I can’t physically do this anymore. And he said, OK, we’ll induce you tomorrow. Tomorrow
came. It was Friday the 25th of March 2005. I got a call that morning and it was Andy. He said, Hey. I said
where the heck have you been, I haven’t from you for a week? What’re you doing? He’s like, I don’t think I’m
gonna get to come home, I’m really sorry. I said, well, I’m having this baby tonight. And he goes, just kidding.
I’m in Chicago. Can you at 10 AM from the Toledo airport? So he made it just in the nick of time and as fate
would have it. I didn’t need to be induced. I went into labor on my own that night. And Andy got to be home
for 14 days. It was the greatest 14 days that I’ve ever had ever. The only time that my family was together
complete as a family of four. And oftentimes I’ll recount the fact that I have one picture of all four of us
together.
And that is in the moment at the hospital when Marley was brought up to meet Myles. And that’s important.
And I, I share that often because oftentimes especially moms, we like to hide behind the camera. We like to
deny the opportunity to be in pictures because we think we don’t look good enough. Our hair is a mess, our
body isn’t right. And we forgo the opportunity to be in these lasting memories. And so to anyone listening, I
would say, any chance you have to in a picture with your loved ones, your children, your spouse, anybody
important to you — you need to seize that moment and that opportunity. Because I literally have one picture
of my family together, only one. And none of us are looking at the camera. It’s a beautiful moment, we’re all
looking at each other. And I’m thankful for that. But I wish I had more because at the end of the day, when
someone’s gone, they’re gone. Death is permanent. And one day all you’re going have is photos and
memories and what you’ve stored in your mind.
So like I said, Andy was home for 14 days, greatest 14 days ever. Every morning I woke up and Andy and
Marley were sitting at the kitchen table, eating either Froot Loops or Lucky Charms talking to each other. And
she had crooked pigtails on her head. And the neatest part I found out about this after Andy had been killed
was that the weeks leading up to coming home to see Myles born, he had deployed his fellow female soldiers
to teach him how to braid just in case Marley’s hair was long enough to do so, which it wasn’t, but he figured
out how to get her piggies in and they were crooked and they were perfect. And that is one of my favorite
memories of my husband. He was so intentional and thoughtful and he planned everything out and he tried to
do the best he could.
And he was present, although he was an 11-hour time difference. And so many thousands of miles away,
Andy was a part of our every day because I promised him in that moment on February 24th, 2003, when he
was deployed the first time that our kids would know who he was. And he promised from the moment I met
him, that he would be there a hundred percent. And he was. Last time I ever saw Andy alive was the
beginning of April 2005 at the Toledo Lucas County Airport. Andy looked at me when we were standing there
waiting to give the TSA agent his ID. Tears streaming down his face similar to the day he’d been deployed.
And there’s a lot of things I don’t tell anyone. And I’ll only ever share with my kids, but oftentimes I do
recount certain moments from this time. And that is that he looked at me and he said, this is the last time I’m
ever gonna see you. I know I’m not coming home.
I know I’ll never be here again. And I’m very sorry, but I know that you can do this. And know that I’ll be with
you every day and that I love you and I’m proud of you. And I support every decision you make. It’ll be the
right one. Then he looked the lady who was standing at the podium and he said, this is my wife, Tiffany.
She’s the smartest, most beautiful woman in the world and the mother of my children. And this is Marley and
this is Myles. These are my kids. And I love them so much. And you could see she kinda teared up a little
and handed him his ID back and said yes sir. And then he walked in the line and kept every five feet or so, he
would stop and turn around, and wave to us. He’d walk and he’d stop and he’d turn around and wave to us
until we couldn’t see him anymore. And that’s the last time I ever saw Andy alive.
It was on Mother’s Day 2005, May 8th. I woke up and it wasn’t the same wakeup that I’d had every day since
Myles was born and Andy was back in country. Every day without fail between three and four in the morning,
Andy would call me and be like, babe, what are you doing? And I’d be like, well I was sleeping. That call did
not come that day. Never came. I went about my day for the first few hours and all of my friends called. The
other girls that had their soldiers deployed with Andy. And I remember telling my friend, Aubrey, I said,
something’s wrong. I know something’s wrong with Andy, something’s happened. And she said, no, no, no.
They’re probably on lockdown. As soon as they can get to the phones, you know Andy will be the first in line,
he’s gonna call, it’s Mother’s Day. He’ll be the first in line. And I said, no, Aubrey, I know something’s wrong.
And it was about an hour and a half later, I got to Andy’s foster parents’ house, they had raised him until the
end of high school so that he could graduate. And I just said to his foster mom, something’s wrong. I think
something’s happened to Andy. And then my phone started ringing and the phone calls were toggling back
and forth between Southfield, Michigan, where there was a soldier who was attached to Andy’s unit and
Dover, which if you’re getting calls from Dover, that’s not a good sign. That’s where casualty operations
come through. And the one guy said, I just need to know where you are Miss Eckert. I just need to know
where you are. They didn’t have the correct address for us.
And then when I got on the line with Dover the second time I said to the woman, ma’am, is my husband
dead? And she paused for what felt like a really long time, but it probably wasn’t and she said, I, I need to
know where you are, Mrs. Eckert. And then it was about an hour later, a military vehicle pulled up in the
driveway and I was sitting on a rock at the end of the sidewalk. And when only one got out, I thought, okay,
he’s just injured. So we’re gonna go to Germany and bring him home and we’re gonna figure it out. It’s
gonna be fine. And you know, I don’t remember that gentleman’s name. I couldn’t pick him out of a crowd,
but if I ever saw his eyes again, I would know, I would know exactly who he was, cuz that’s what I was
staring at the whole time he was speaking. And I remember every word he said. And when I walked away
from him and oftentimes people in our situation, they imagine what would happen if I was notified.
And I’m sure just regular people may be watching movies where there’s a notification and they think, oh,
what would I do if I found out someone had been killed? Well I walked up the sidewalk and at that time I’d
had time to call my friends in the area, my military friends and they were sitting on the porch and everyone
said what happened? And all I could say was Andy passed away today. And I walked up the steps and I
walked away from everyone. And I sat on a bench all by myself on the opposite side of the porch. I remember
putting my heads in my, my head in my hands. And I said, I can’t do this. I can’t, I can’t do this. And I started
to cry and my friend came over, her mom and she smacked leg really hard, which was good because she
woke me up out of whatever I was at the moment, and she said, oh Tiffany, yes you will and yes you can.
And she grabbed me by my chin and she turned my face very aggressively towards the other end of the
porch. And all I could see were Marley and Myles. And she said, yes, you can. And yes, you will because
those babies need you. You have to get up every day and you have to do this.
You have to do this, Tiffany. And I stood up. And I have never stopped standing. There was never a single day
that I didn’t get outta bed because Marley and Myles needed me. There was never a single day that I felt
sorry for myself to the point where I couldn’t function because Marley and Myles needed me. And I have
stood every second of every single day that has passed in the last 17 years since losing Andy. And I would
listen that if you have the opportunity to be a Miss Terry for someone, do it. Just like Dan had the opportunity
to see out that window and see what he saw that has changed everything and started Folds of Honor. You
have opportunities to be Miss Terry for someone, you just have to be awake. You just have to be aware. You
have to be there for people. Life isn’t about you. You have one chance, one opportunity. Stop being selfish
and be there in moments where you could be the only person. Ms. Terry changed the trajectory of my life.
100%. I wouldn’t have made it this far. If she hadn’t been there with me in that moment. And I could recount
so many memories and so many things that to some, you would say, you would classify them as
heartbreaking. But for me, I would say, don’t let your heart be broken over the trauma I’ve experienced.
However, when you hear stories like mine, let your heart bend, let your heart bend so that you can make a
positive change and gain new perspective for your life and the opportunity that you’ve been given to live. You
know, I was 23 when Andy died, he was 24. Marley was 20 months old and Myles was one month old. This
Mother’s Day, May 8th will be 17 years since Andy died. And it just so happens, I believe it’s the third time
that May 8th has fallen on Mother’s Day again, since he died.
And I would say in all these years, I’m 40 now. I’m starting to get forehead lines. I’m starting to get crow’s
feet. I’m starting to get gray hair. I’m a little overweight. But you know what? I am so thankful for that
opportunity. And the perspective that life is short and my husband will always, always be 24. He did not get
to age. We were supposed to grow old together. I wanted to watch get laugh lines and I wanted to watch his
hair shift from black to silver. But that didn’t happen. And so I would say to people listening, embrace who
you are in this moment because you get to be in this moment because of fate. And also because of people
like Andy, who are willing to die for you, does that make sense?
Greg:
You are amazing. We just need to breathe. I think, candidly, I wanna say thank you. It feels shallow. It’s not
enough. You just need to know we’re grateful. I don’t think that’s enough. I just would say that what we all
can do is just never forget that freedom isn’t free. Never forget Tiffany’s story. Never forget Andy’s story.
Let’s realize the sacrifice that a very small percentage of people make so we can live our lives. There was so
much in there. I wrote like moments. I think you said moments don’t ha— like you don’t realize they’re
special moments until you look back on ’em. You’re not always aware pictures, pictures. I was at a surprise
party on Saturday and they’re all the pictures I’m like, wow.
The pictures of this gentleman, who’s a really good friend of mine and his family, I thought were awesome.
Ms. Terry, there should be a, there should be a national Ms. Terry award, right? I mean that Ms. Terry, I
mean, just be Ms. Terry. That also like listening to you when she turns your chin to your children, it shows
you whether you’re talking about Andy, Tiffany or Crystal, how powerful life can be when you actually focus
on other people. One of my questions was it was gonna be like, how do you stay strong every day? How do
you stand up every day? How do you stay so positive and committed to Andy’s legacy? But you answered it.
Tiffany:
Well there’s more too. I would say, well, for me personally another very, very valid point is I never got to say
goodbye to my husband and every single thing I do every single day, especially this work, this is how I say, I
love you to Andy. This is my tangible way. This work and the way I live my life and the way I treat people now,
I’m not perfect. Some, some days I have bad days or I get frustrated, but for the most part, I am genuinely
very giving, very forgiving, very intentional, very present. And it all goes back to the fact that I will never have
closure. I’m not getting to say goodbye. And I will never hear back at this point in my life, or for the last 17
years. I love you too, Tiff. I have to seek it out if that makes sense.
So especially in regards to any work I do with the military and awareness around the Gold Star community
and Folds of Honor. And anytime I tell our story, this is how I tell Andy, I love you. And this is how I show
Marley and Myles that Andy and I loved each other. And we loved them. Because, you know, I’ve said for
years, I lost a lot and this was very traumatic. You know, I was when your frontal lobe isn’t even fully formed
till you’re 25 years old. So a lot of things happened before I was medically fully sound, if that makes sense.
This is truly how I make sense of something that doesn’t make sense. It doesn’t make sense. Andy was
wonderful. He would’ve been the best dad ever. He would’ve been the best coach ever. He would’ve been all
the things. You know, Marley has never heard her dad say, you’re beautiful. I love you. Now I tell her that
every day, more than she’d like to hear. Enough for three people let alone just him and I. Myles has never
thrown a ball with him. You know, I, I try to be, fill the void, but I can’t. I promised Andy, our kids would know
him. It always goes back to that promise. And I promised Andy that I would love him forever, which I will.
Greg:
So Tiffany, incredible. Could you make the connection between your incredible story and what education
meant to Andy to you and how Folds of Honor have helped you fulfill that mission?
Tiffany:
Yes. So the night before Andy was killed, within hours of his death, he called home. And again, he said many
things. I don’t share everything. He did reiterate again that he knew he wasn’t coming home. And the last
conversation we ever had was in regard to, Andy thought I was the smartest most wonderful person he ever
knew. And he knew that I needed to go to school. And he, he said, I know it might take a while because the
kids are young, but no matter what you need to get an education, it’s very important. And our kids need to
have an education, that’s very important to me. I need you to promise that that’s gonna happen. And I
agreed, and it’s taken a long time for me personally, to go back to school, but in the fall of 2020, in the crux
of the pandemic, I decided to quit my job and go back to school. And in doing so, not only am I fulfilling that
final and last promise, which I was putting it off because it’s the last promise I ever made to him.
And there’s a big sense of finality in that. The last thing you’re hanging onto, you know, that’s over. But I’m,
I’m glad I’m in school. I’m, I’m full-time in college and I’m doing very well, but number one, I’m, I’m filling
that promise. But also, I found healing. My major is human development and family studies with a minor in
gerontology. So my major is the study of human development across the lifespan, which has provided me
with an intense amount of healing in regard to my childhood, as well as the trauma of losing my husband at
such a young age. And it has helped me to be a better person. When I say I have found healing, 100% I have
truly found healing and that wouldn’t have happened if I didn’t go back to school. And Folds of Honor has
provided that opportunity for me. Additionally, my children have been recipients for several years.
Marley is now 18 years old. She graduates in just a couple of weeks and she has been able to go to a private
high school for the last four years where she has excelled. Her cumulative GPA has been above a 4.0 for the
last four years. She applied to multiple colleges and was accepted into every single one. Some big colleges
too. She’s in the National Honor Society. She’s the captain of her rowing team. You know, she’s done a lot of
amazing things, which she wouldn’t have done if she wasn’t at the school she was at. She just told me this
weekend, she declared yesterday, which was the college decision day. She’s decided to stay close to home. I
had a different idea of where I wanted her to go, but ultimately is her decision and she and I will be at the
same college in the fall.
And now I’m hoping we take Spanish together because I’m gonna need a study buddy. So that’s really
special. And then my son, Myles, he is 17. He is a junior in high school and you know, school comes easy for
some and for others, it doesn’t. And oftentimes people forget that everyone has different skill. Now, when I
look at my son, I have always seen this amazing young man who has so much to offer the world, but school’s
been a struggle for him. Since kindergarten. And I remember when he was very young sitting in a meeting
and I was told, you know, he’s got a lot of challenges you should probably come up with a less traditional
plan for him. College might not be in his future. And I said, oh, I beg to differ. I’m pretty sure if he wants to go
to college, he’s gonna go to college.
And here we are, for the last several years, Myles has utilized his Folds of Honor scholarship for private
tutoring, which has put him in a place that I was told. He’d never be and ending his junior year, for him,
Myles has an excellent GPA and it’s looking like he won’t have to go full day for senior year next year. And he
will also be going to the same college that Marley and myself are at. So that will be a fun time.
Greg:
Wow. <Laugh>
Tiffany:
And it of first and foremost, it’s because I love my kids that they have succeeded so well, but also because
Folds of Honor has come in, locked arms and shown us the support and love and additional resources that
we need in order to be successful in regard to our education. And I would say, and I say this every time I
speak, you’re not giving a donation to Folds of Honor.
That’s not how I view it. I view it as an investment. And oftentimes people wanna see the return on their
investments. And to that, I would say, you may not see it because our group, unfortunately, is bigger than it
should be. However, every night when you crawl into bed or every day as you walk around in life and you’re
covered by that blanket of freedom, that is where you find your return. That is where you find the return on
your investment. And it’s immeasurable. You cannot go wrong by providing anybody an education, especially
children like Marley and Myles or spouses like myself. You cannot go wrong by giving someone the gift of
learning and a debt free education.
Greg:
Tiffany, we’re in the investment business, but you’re one of the best investments I think anybody could ever
wanna make. <Laugh>
Greg:
Tiffany or Crystal who would like to step up and tell this story that I think is one of the best stories I’ve ever
heard about being awake about major Dan Rooney. Who’s got it?
Tiffany:
The long, long and short of it is Dan was on a flight and the pilot came over the speaker and asked that they
remained seated because they had hero traveling on board. And he was looking out the side window. He, he
describes it as I believe, a starry night, looking out the window. And he watched as Brock Buckland’s body
was rolled out from underneath the cargo area of the plane. And he watched this entire scene unfold where
Brock’s small son was standing there and they received his remains. And when he turned back around, after
watching everything play out, most of the people on the plane had gotten up and gotten off the plane and
disregarded the message that had come over. And in that moment, he had this pivotal, I would describe it
from hearing the story so many times firsthand and via the video.
He had this awakening. This call to action, where he knew he had to do something as an American, as a
veteran, just as a general human being. He had to do something to change what had happened. And I will
say, hundred percent, in all of the years that have passed since he experienced that epiphany, he has made
a huge sweeper wave of change for my, the community that myself and my children are a part of. And I
believe the ripple effect is immeasurable. What he’s been able to accomplish because he was awake and he
was cognizant. And he was aware in that moment where other people were selfish and didn’t care and were
in a rush. And couldn’t take five minutes to show reverence to one of our fallen.
Greg:
The reality is I ask everybody to listen to it again and take notes. And I think there’s so many lessons in there
on great investments we can make, and gratitude we can have, and pictures we can take. I remember on my
wedding night, there was a manager of the brokerage firm I was at that day. And he said he gave me a $50
bill, which was like back then a trillion. And he gave me a $50 bill. And he said, I’m gonna give you this $50
bill, as long as you do one thing. And he said, make sure you kiss Lori before you go to bed every night and
tell her you love her. And, you know, he was that Mrs. Terry for me that day. And Tiffany, thank you for
reminding me of that today. You, you really are a remarkable person.
Tiffany:
Thank you for receiving it, man. I’m just an ordinary person. Who’s been through some extraordinary things
and I’m trying to make the most of my life, which is what we should all be doing. We just have to do better
and be better. So thank you for being open.
Greg:
I think you just did a pretty good job of explaining a hero but thank you for that explanation. I think it’s pretty
well done.
Tiffany:
Well, too, I would say, I know you’re in the financial business. And so a lot of people listening are in realm,
but not everybody has the same skillsets or resources. So I would to anyone listening in the off chance that
doesn’t have the financial resources to support. Oftentimes people ask, well, what can I do? I’m just, what,
what can I do if I don’t have money to give? And I would say, for me personally, I would never ask you for
anything, regardless of who you are or what resources you have. However, at the end of the day, if you really
wanna know what I personally, as a surviving spouse of a soldier who was killed in action, and the mother of
two kids that were left behind, what I think is: you need to just be a better person, be awake like Dan was. Be
there like Miss Terry was. Be present every day like I am. Be a better person. If you can’t give money, you
know, there’s other ways. Make your life count for something.
Greg:
Tiffany, would you feel comfortable telling Myles’ story?
Tiffany:
Sure. It was the beginning of February 2014. We had a lot of severe weather in our area and the kids had
had multiple snow days in a row. And we had a day off from school that day, but the weather was nice
enough so that we could go out. And I asked the kids, where do you wanna go? Let’s go to lunch. And they
said, let’s go to Cracker Barrel. And so we were walking in the cracker barrel and unbeknownst to me until
we were in the restaurant, Myles had found $20 in the, in the parking lot. And as we were walking in, he was
like super excited and him and Marley were going back and forth and da-da-da-da-da. And we sat down and
Myles was like, mom, I found $20 in the parking lot, our waitress is getting a really big tip today. I was like,
okay buddy. He was like, don’t worry, I got the tip. I was like, alright buddy. So then, I don’t know, 15
minutes or so later, Frank Dailey walked in with his wife and his grandson.
And he was in uniform because he was airman at the 180th in our area, this Air Force base. And he, he
came in and he sat down and Myles’ eyes were just really big. And he was following him until he sat in his
seat. And then he looked at me and he looked back at Frank and he looked at me. And he said, mom, you’re
gonna have to take care of the waitress, cause I’m gonna buy that guy’s lunch instead. And I said, OK, that’s
fine. And so Myles at, I always have post-it notes and a pen on me because we, typically it would be Marley
and I, but we would leave random notes of kindness or pay it forwards and whatever, just scatter them
throughout our day, whenever we were, anywhere. Always based on being anonymous. And Myles wrote this
note and it said, Dear soldier, my dad was a soldier, I found this $20 in the parking lot when we got here. We
like to pay it forward in our family.
Today is your lucky day. And he signed it Myles Eckert, a Gold Star kid. And he wrapped the 20 up in that
green post-it, and then it took him a while. Cuz Myles is very, very nervous. He’s very shy. And I walked over
with him eventually, cuz he kept trying to go and give it to Frank and he would run over there and run back.
And so finally I walked over there with him and I said, Hey, my son wants to give you this. And he said, Hey,
thanks. And that was that. And we went about the rest of our day. Well I think what had happened was
Frank’s daughter took a picture of the note and posted it online locally. And then all of a sudden, people, you
know, the power of social media and Facebook people were like, oh I know that kid.
And they were tagging me. They were like, Hey, that’s Tiffany, I know them, blah, blah, blah, blah. And it
became just like locally, this organically wild story and local news picked it up. And then before, you know it,
all these outlets were calling and Steve Hartman called and he asked if he could come out and do a story,
which he did. And then it went super mega viral. And we were getting calls from every national outlet. I
mean, I said no to Steve Harvey, Meredith Viera, Good Morning America, all these things. And then Ellen
called and it was partially like Ellen. And then also we were getting so much traction. People were sending
mail to the kids’ school. They were, our, our mail was just insane. People were finding my phone number and
calling. People from all over the world. And I said, we gotta put the brakes on this because I don’t know what
to do. And so I said yes to Ellen because I felt that it was the most mainstream platform to get the word out to
say hey, this is really great and nice.
But if you guys could stop sending stuff to my house or, you know, we were trying to redirect the pay it
forwards to something else. And I’ll tell you, behind the scenes, I’m a single mom and life is, it’s hard to be a
single mom and financially I could have taken advantage of the situation, but I never felt I was supposed to.
Never. And so we paid everything forward. We gave it all away and we directed it to a different charity at the
time that was before we knew what Folds was. And in one initiative in a couple of months we raised 1.8
million. And in the time since, you know, 2014 we’ve raised, I mean, I don’t even know at this point, because
it was never about keeping track, right. And we’ve continued to do things, you know, publicly. And then
obviously still tried to maintain, do anonymous things here and there as we can.
And the beauty of Myles’ story is that it went, I believe so far and wide is because it was genuine. And I feel
that my job all this time has been to be the protector of Myles’ story. And so I said no to things that other
people would’ve said yes to, for personal gain. And I believe that’s truly why it has gone so far and wide. And
literally across the globe and day that the publicist had sent Dan through, Frank called and he said, Tiffany, I
a hundred percent support that you are telling these people, all these people, no, I’m okay with it. He goes,
but if there is one thing that you could please say yes to, there’s this guy and he’s a fighter pilot. You know,
Frank was in the Air Force. He goes, he wants us to come to this outing in Owasso at the Patriot, which is,
you know, the golf, the club.
And he goes, I, you know, in order for me to go, you guys have to go. So could you consider saying yes to
this? I said, well, I’ll give the guy a call. How about that? And I knew, I called Dan Rooney on his cell phone.
And I knew the minute that we were on the phone, that he was genuine, authentic. It was real that he wasn’t
take advantage of my son, or our family, or exploit our story, or exploit Andy or Myles.
And, you know I can’t say enough, enough good things about Dan in particular, but also anybody that I’ve
encountered who is a part of the mission. They, I have not met one person who does not genuinely stand
behind our family and the fact that they’re educating these kids. And I’ll tell you, because of Myles’ story and
the exposure we’ve had and things that I’ve been privy to, it is exceptionally rare. That’s why I’ll always stand
with Folds.

Greg:
To sit here and listen. And just so thankful for your commitment, your sacrifice, the lessons you’ve taught all
the listeners today. You know, when Dan says, who I do not know, Dan Rooney, but just watching him and
learning about him, truly is a hero.
And please everybody, in listening to these stories, let’s remember 1% of our country fights for the freedom
of the other 99%. And let’s make sure we understand that freedom isn’t free. And if we’re ever in a situation
like that airplane, let’s stay seated and let’s give our heroes the respect they’ve earned and deserved. God
bless both of you and God bless our military.
Thank you for listening to the Imagine That podcast. We hope you enjoyed this episode and welcome you to
reach out to Confluence Financial Partners with your questions and comments. If you’d like to hear more
episodes, head over to confluencefp.com/podcasts, or find us wherever you get your podcast.

folds_of_honor

Insights

Imagine That
Episode 27 - Part 1

Folds of Honor – Passion Into Action, Crystal Popella’s Story

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Some investments serve a higher purpose. In this episode, you’ll learn about Folds of Honor, an organization that gives back to a community to whom we owe an unpayable debt.

Since 2007, Folds of Honor has provided scholarships to the families of America’s killed or disabled soldiers. Join host and Confluence Financial Partners CEO, Greg Weimer, as he interviews Folds of Honor–Western Pennsylvania board member Crystal Popella (Episode 27) and Gold Star Wife Tiffany Eckert (Episode 28). You’ll hear their stories and learn about the incredible impact Folds of Honor has made in the lives of military families across the nation. You’ll also find out how you can turn passion into action by becoming a part of this important mission.

Greg:

Hello, and welcome to the, Imagine That podcast. I’m your host, Greg Weimer, founder, partner, and wealth manager at Confluence Financial Partners. Each month, we’ll explore new ways to help you maximize your life and your legacy and meet some extraordinary people along the way. So if you’re looking to get more out of your life today and legacy tomorrow, let’s get started.

 

For the first time, we’re releasing a podcast episode in two parts about an organization called Folds of Honor.

Folds of Honor is a nonprofit that provides scholarships to the families of fallen and disabled service members. We spoke with some incredible people involved with Folds of Honor, and their stories were so powerful, we wanted to share them with you in their entirety.

 

Today, I’m here with Crystal Popella and Tiffany Eckert. Let me explain to you who they are and why you should listen. Crystal put her passion into action and she started the Folds of Honor chapter locally. She also has a success successful business career, but she, she started Folds of Honor locally. And we’re gonna tell you all about that. I think there’s lessons to be learned here, folks. And then two, Tiffany Eckert, Tiffany. I was impressed with her. I was blown away by her. I met her six months ago. Tiffany’s husband was, is a hero and gave the ultimate sacrifice. So all of us could continue to live in freedom.

 

There’s three lessons I’m positive we’ll learn. The first one we’re gonna learn is if you’re awake on a daily basis and you’re just awake to go, what’s going on around you. There are lessons that come to us that can literally change your life. And we’re gonna tell you about a guy by the name of Major Dan Rooney, who is awake on a flight. And he literally changed over a hundred thousand people’s lives by just being awake.

 

So the question I have for all of us, are we awake and how can we be better and be more intentional? Second, we’re going to learn when you have a passion, how you turn it into action. And, and really so many people have this whole “gonna” call him. I’m gonna do this. I’m gonna do that. You’re gonna hear loud and clear from Crystal, how you do it. And she turned passion into action. And then also, and then also freedom isn’t free. Let’s start with the first one. And that is Major Dan Rooney.

 

Tiffany:

The long, long and short of it is Dan was on a flight and the pilot came over the speaker and asked that they remained seated because they had hero traveling on board. And he was looking out the side window. He, he describes it as I believe, a starry night, looking out the window. And he watched as Brock Buckland’s body was rolled out from underneath the cargo area of the plane. And he watched this entire scene unfold where Brock’s small son was standing there and they received his remains. And when he turned back around, after watching everything play out, most of the people on the plane had gotten up and gotten off the plane and disregarded the message that had come over. And in that moment, he had this pivotal, I would describe it from hearing the story so many times firsthand and via the video.

 

He had this awakening. This call to action, where he knew he had to do something as an American, as a veteran, just as a general human being. He had to do something to change what had happened. And I will say, hundred percent, in all of the years that have passed since he experienced that epiphany, he has made a huge sweeper wave of change for my, the community that myself and my children are a part of. And I believe the ripple effect is immeasurable. What he’s been able to accomplish because he was awake and he was cognizant. And he was aware in that moment where other people were selfish and didn’t care and were in a rush. And couldn’t take five minutes to show reverence to one of our fallen.

 

Greg:

So Major Dan Rooney, by the way, if I understand correctly, he spent two tours of, of duty in, in Iraq, right? And one of the, one of the things that when he first told, when I first heard him tell the story, he was walking on someone in the military in first class. And when they, and as this right, Tiffany, when they heard him say like, there’s a hero on board, he, he immediately went to, what did that guy do? I mean, he is a hero because he is in the military, but is there more to the story? And the fallen soldier was his twin brother. And so, you know, you put yourself in that story and you say as Major Dan Rooney turned around and 50% of the people on the airplane left, which one would you have been? Like, like, are, are we so busy in our daily basis that we’re like really running to a flight or are we awake to the fact that someone just gave their life?

 

So we had the privilege to be on that flight. And if any of us were really honest, some days when we’re, you know, I mean, and it’s just, but anyhow, he, Major Dan Rooney went on to create, is that the origination of Folds of Honor. Right? So he created Folds of Honor and Folds of Honor they give scholarships to the family of injured and fallen heroes. And, and I tell me if these numbers are right, they may be a little outdated. I, I, I did some Googling. And it’s because of that one person being awake that day folds of honor have given, has given 35,000 scholarships, is that right? Like, that’s amazing. So then I thought like, I can’t really visualize 35,000 scholarships. So I thought, okay, so at Google, how many people fit on a school bus? And you know, that’s 486 school buses.

 

So here’s one guy on one flight and 486 school buses of students later, adults and children, was what this person was way able to create. So really remarkable, just being awake that day made a difference. Changing one family one day at a time. So that takes me to Crystal. Crystal, one of the things that I think is really exciting and, and, you know, I ran into a gentleman that helped me think through this years ago is when you really figure out what your all about is all about. And, and, and, and, and, and that’s true in finance also. When we’re doing financial plans for people, what we really try to figure out is: what’s your all about, all about. And then we help you maximize your life and legacy with a financial plan. You figured out what your all about is all about, and that is Folds of Honor. And what I think is really amazing is you didn’t put it in that “gonna” column you, you immediately created it, created into the, in Western Pennsylvania, that we’re gonna do this. And do you wanna just take us through how you did that and how you turned it into this charity locally that’s making, that’s changing people’s lives?

 

Crystal:

Absolutely. So my husband was at a work conference back in 2013 and had the great opportunity to listen to, now, Lieutenant Colonel Dan Rooney, and he was blown away. So not only back in 2007, when Lieutenant Colonel Dan founded Folds of Honor and changed lives one at a time, he is now touching people in the food service industry, talking to them and encouraging them to find their purpose, find their passion, talks to them about Folds of Honor. My husband was like, I gotta meet this guy. He’s calling me. So he took action, you know, and he said, what can we do?

 

Greg:

So he picked up the phone.

 

Crystal:

No, he walked up to him after the conference and, and shook his hand and said, Hey, I’m Mike Popella. Tell me, tell me what I can do here in Western Pennsylvania.

 

Greg:

So how many people are in that audience and don’t go up, do you know what I mean? Like everybody, again, they’re gonna, there’s like, I really should meet this person. I really should see how I could help. And, and instead you don’t, right. They just, they just, they leave. And they’re like, oh, you know, I, cause that’s what I thought you wanted. He called him the next week or something. No, he went up and he shook his hand.

 

Crystal:

Yep. And from there that built a friendship and a relationship to this day continues to grow. So at that point, you know, we supported the mission, Folds of Honor, financially. But then Mike had the opportunity to listen to him again. And the calling was much deeper and the call to action, like you need to do more. And so Mike came home from that conference back in 2019 and said, there’s no Folds of Honor chapter here in Western Pennsylvania, and we’re gonna start one.

 

Greg:

Yeah.

 

Crystal:

So he went down the road of investigating, what does he need to do to get the LLC set up, you know, all the tax documents and, and then forming that team.

 

Greg:

Okay. So when did it actually start in, in Western PA?

 

Crystal:

Western Pennsylvania chapter launched in October of 2019, our very first fundraiser event was at Top Golf, March 14th, 2020, the day before COVID shut everything down.

 

Greg:

Oh man. Yep.

 

Crystal:

You know, so we had all these people that were like, oh, COVID’s coming, we don’t wanna come. But it was still a great, great success. But back to the formation of Western Pennsylvania Folds of Honor, we, we knew we needed a team, you know? So how do you build a team to be successful? And when Tiffany said, it’s the ripple—

 

Greg:

In the middle of COVID.

 

Crystal:

In the middle of COVID, we, we needed that ripple effect. So we, we knew that we needed to build a diverse team. So we have marketing people on our board. We have real estate people. We have folks in the financial industry to really kind of pull out key pods of people that could help drive the success of the organization here in west Western Pennsylvania. So I feel like that was the critical first step. After the call to action of meeting Dan Rooney and saying, I’m gonna do more.

 

Greg:

And, and by the way, you, you had never started an organization like this before.

 

Crystal:

Never.

 

Greg:

So you made the commitment and then figured out how to do it. I think so many people think they know how to do it before they make the commitment. And it’s, it’s not how success works.

 

Crystal:

Or the fear of not knowing how to do it. So that holds them back.

 

Greg:

For sure. I mean, there’s a myth of success. There’s the myth of accom, myth of accomplishment that, you know exactly what you’re doing before you do it. Untrue. You had probably more variables, you’re in the middle of COVID, and you build a team. And, and how, and tell us about the success.

 

Crystal:

So our very first event you know, people were canceling and, and I’m panicking because Mike is the sales guy.

 

Greg:

Yeah.

 

Crystal:

He sells the dream and he says, we’re having an event and I’m the operational person. Yeah. Like I gotta figure out how to make it happen. I’m a nurse by trade, but I do consulting work and teach people how to identify, you know, the bumps in the road. And how do you improve that process to, you know, drive quality over time?

 

Greg:

Mm-Hmm <affirmative>.

 

Crystal:

So again, we had challenges with people canceling, but we still walked outta that very first event in March of 2020. And we raised enough for two and a half scholarships.

 

Greg:

And how much is the scholarship?

 

Crystal:

$5,000,

 

Greg:

$5,000.

 

Crystal:

So we raised in 12,500 or below 10,000.

 

Greg:

That was great. Oh, really? Yeah. That’s awesome. And what’s, what’s really cool about a, a scholarship. I think when you think about education, so many things, and there’s a lot of great charities, but it’s temporary. You give someone a coat; you know what I mean? You and I, I, I, I mean, we’ve all done those and, and they’re necessary cuz people need coats, but you do go home and you think I didn’t really solve that. And I’m not saying a, a scholarship solves it for everyone, but if you give someone an education that no one can take that away from them and that’ll go on to affect them and I, and, and impact them forever. So that’s what I’d love about Folds of Honor. Not only is it helping our heroes, but also in their families, but also, it’s lasting.

 

Crystal:

And it drives the success of our great nation. You know, like, let’s talk about putting an education in front of these spouses and children who have made that ultimate sacrifice and, and losing a loved one. I mean, you look at Tiffany’s family you know, they’re making a difference. And when you look at that long term effect of what that scholarship is gonna do for not only Tiffany, but each of her children and the legacy that they carry out, you know, it, it, it just continues to grow legs.

 

Greg:

So, yeah. So when you, if you think about those 35,000 people, you think about a family of four, you think about Penn state stadium, you think about that on a Saturday, 110,000 people, all of the people that this one person on an airplane being awake, changing the world, you implement it locally. They would, all the people that were affected would not fit in that stadium. And that’s one generation. You multiply that out.

 

And then when you think about Crystal, she heard this and every, and you know, you hear this and it’s moving, it’s moving. But Crystal and Mike took these moving moments and said, how can we make more investments? And how can we raise money? And I do think it’s, you know, from what two years ago now, is that right? Yeah. So how many scholarships through your work and Mike’s work, have you been able to provide in this area? Over a hundred. Over a hundred. So over a hundred. Yeah. And, and, and there’s a lot of ways to get involved and there’s a lot of ways to make investments and really understand that freedom’s not free and get behind this cause. And I’ll tell you, and, and is your major fundraiser across the nation golf outings, is that like where you raise a lot,

 

Crystal:

That’s the primary focus primary, but we really try to engage other interests, you know, because not everybody’s involved in golf. So how do you engage folks who wanna do a fundraiser around horseback riding,

 

Greg:

Right.

 

Crystal:

Or around cooking classes or so we have a lot of different people that say, here’s my passion and purpose. I also love Folds of Honor. How can I tie the two of them together? We wanna raise money for Folds of Honor, but here’s how we wanna do it. So we certainly encourage those people who raise their hand and say we wanna help.

 

Greg:

So if someone has an idea, they should put forward the idea, give you a call and go.

 

Crystal:

Absolutely. We are always looking for volunteers who wanna make that difference and invest in a family like the Eckerts.

 

Greg:

First time I heard of Folds of Honor, I dunno if it was an email call, text from Chris McKnight up at Laurel Valley: Putting together this golf outing, can you grab a foursome? The pro at St. Clair Country Club is also a friend, Jay Mull, he’s a veteran. He would be our pro. There would be four of us. Come on up. I hear it’s a nice event. Okay. We go. First of all, if you haven’t been to a Folds of Honor event, I know everybody’s been to a lot of golf outings, so have I. We all have been. But it is amazing. I have the ball marker in my pocket. It’s an amazing event. It, if you aren’t moved at that event, you’re not alive. Just go and be awake. It’s it is a, it is an amazing day. And then that night we sat there and, and Tiffany spoke. And I, and I remember when Tiffany spoke and I’m like, holy cow!

 

Like, I, I, I couldn’t believe this story. And, and, and really, I mean, and we’ve done other, we’ve heard, done other podcasts and other things about gratitude and about, about Veterans Day and right. I mean, we’ve done all because it is, it is truly a remarkable story. And just, can’t just can’t thank you enough. And encouraging people to, to get involved. I know there’s a lot of great charities, you know, and, but, but if it’s in your heart to, to really invest in people like Tiffany and it, and, and you know, the charity, what percentage of the money goes to towards scholarships?

 

Crystal:

91 cents of every dollar.

 

Greg:

It’s crazy.

 

Crystal:

Goes back to scholarships.

 

Greg:

It’s really good.

 

Crystal:

It’s unheard of.

 

Greg:

It’s really good.

 

Crystal:

It’s an incredible organization.

 

Greg:

It’s really good. Now, let me ask you, are we, are we, are we filling the need? Are we, do we need to find more like if someone needs a scholarship today, do they get it? And how do you build awareness for people that need a scholarship and don’t even know it exists?

 

Crystal:

Great question. So our mission is twofold here in Western Pennsylvania, first of all, to raise awareness, because when we set out on this mission back in 2019, nobody had ever heard of Folds of Honor. So we’re like, how are we going to raise awareness? So we embedded ourself in the military community. We built a military committee to really showcase what the mission is, who do you know that really would qualify for a scholarship? So that was the one mission. And then the other mission obviously is to raise funds because at that time we were not raising enough funds and we had qualified applicants that were getting turned away because of lack of funding. So we said, okay, we will not turn away any qualified applicants. Parallel to the goal of raising awareness. So everybody in Western PA knows about Folds of Honor. So last year, Folds of Honor, nationally, there was no qualified applicant that was turned away.

 

Every single applicant who qualified, received a scholarship. Mission accomplished.

 

Greg:

Mission accomplished.

 

Crystal:

Yeah. So we feel really, really good about that, but we still know that we have to continue. As Tiffany said, their community of folks who have been injured, disabled, or paid that ultimate sacrifice of death continues to grow every single day. Let’s look about what’s going on in the world. You know, our military, unfortunately, we’re losing them. And we don’t want that to happen, but we have to continue to take care of those families. So yeah, we have to continue to push forward.

 

Greg:

Hopefully everybody really appreciates that freedom isn’t free. And because Major Dan Rooney was awake one day. And because Crystal, you had a passion and you actually turned it into action. And Mike walked up on the stage that day.

 

 

Crystal:

When you talk about doing better and being better you know, and, and being an investment for people. Certainly there’s the investment that we all think about financially, but we talk about that legacy that you wanna leave behind. And you talk about the investment in other people. I feel like giving to other people constantly fills your giving bank again.

 

Greg:

Mm-hmm, <affirmative>.

 

Crystal:

You know it, it may not be a financial reward. For Mike and I, we, we have a full-time job, our careers, and that gives us the financial opportunity to do what we do here today to invest in other people. But that keeps our giving bank full. You know, we’re, we’re not spending all of our money. We, we we’re spending our, our passion to take care of other people. And I think that that’s sometimes what people miss in life. Take action, be an investment in other people and your giving bank will never go empty.

 

 

Greg:

I think that’s philosophical. I think people think that’s philosophical. I think it’s gonna end up being scientific. I actually think someday some scientists will prove that the brain, the more you give, the more you get. I just think that’s absolutely true. And what you said about legacy is — so many people think of it in terms of like there’s, there’s life, there’s death, and then there’s legacy. Untrue. You’re building your legacy as you live. Like what we spend a lot of time with, with our clients is: what are you all about? And, and that is helping them build their life and their legacy, and really being intentional about what they’re doing and having their portfolio support it. And, and legacy is built while you’re alive. I mean, I would challenge anybody that Crystal and Tiffany are building their legacy today, much greater than, right, than anything you’re gonna leave. You’re gonna leave these members. Andy’s legacy is, will go on for a really, really, really, really long time, you know, because of the sacrifice he made and because of Tiffany and because of Folds of Honor. So I think you could, I couldn’t, I don’t think you have said it better. I think that legacy is built based on the things you do when you’re alive.

 

Greg:

I think it’s well said. And I think a lot of the other ways are, you know, more powerful. I’m sure there’s ways to support financially, which, you know, you, we, we do need someone to fund the scholarships. But at the end of the day, it’s, it, it can’t just be checkbook charity, right? There’s more to it than that.

 

Crystal:

Well, and I think when, when you talk about diversity in your investments, there’s also diversity in each one, we’re, we’re all a different mold. And as Tiffany was talking about her son Myles and that, that counselor who said, you’re gonna have to think about a different path for Myles. He’s not gonna be able to go to college. So you think, you think about that message. And then you think about the skillset that everybody has. How can, how can you tap into everybody’s unique characteristics and, and drive it towards one singular mission to be successful and impact millions of people every single day? I think that’s what life is about. You know, we’re not, we’re not just here. There’s a reason why my husband Mike was at a work conference and was introduced to now Lieutenant Colonel Dan, there is a reason why we brought together a great team of people here in Western Pennsylvania to share the mission of Folds of Honor. There is a reason why Chris McKnight called you and said, Hey, you need to come to our golf outing. There is a reason why Tiffany was selected to be our keynote speaker that night. And here we are seven months later talking about that. And how do you drive those connections and those relationships that we have now built forward into the future to impact other people.

 

Greg:

Look at the look at the ripple effects. I mean, it’s, it’s, yeah, it’s a pebble in the pond, but the ripple effects are incredible. So, you know, when we, we talk about it’s more than just money and we would, you know, <laugh>, money’s good. Like we, we, we like people to participate by donating. So clearly, donations are important, but if I think about the charities I’m involved in the MVPs of the charities, candidly, now we appreciate all the donors, but candidly, it’s not the largest donor. The MVPs are the ones that live and breathe the charity and actually forward the mission, like, right? They, they’re, I mean, maybe you and Mike are the largest donors, I have no idea, but, but like your, what you’ve been able to create, right? Tiffany, what you’ve been able to do, it’s bigger than money.

 

Crystal:

And so you think about what Dan Rooney did and how he was able to duplicate and replicate out of his garage, one day formed Folds of Honor to now 32 chapters across the country, carrying out that ripple effect mission, and always attracting new volunteers that again, can host a fundraiser event or share the mission of Folds of Honor. And again, it doesn’t have to be about Folds of Honor. Find what really makes you tick and drive it home, find people likeminded or not likeminded, skill sets that are the same, skillsets that are different. And how can you make an impact moving forward?

 

Greg:

And the weirdest thing, you know, people are like, oh, that’s so unselfish. And it is, but it is amazing when you focus on other people, you focus on helping other people, you have a greater purpose other than yourself, and you really worked on, you knew who it helps the most? You! Like it’s a, if by focusing on others, it reduces anxiety. It makes you better at your career. It makes you a more complete person. It makes you a happier person. It, it is it is, it is, it is, it is really powerful for because you’re changing people’s lives, but it also has a huge impact when people have a purpose, you know? And, and, and then they, and, and, and you may have a purpose, but, but like you did, you built the canvas, right? You built the platform of which you now get to have.

 

Greg:

So, you know, now in October, up at Laurel Valley, there will be, you know, a couple hundred people there that you’re gonna tell the story to again, and it’s gonna have another ripple effect. So, you know, if you have a — you have to have two things. If you really have a passion out there, I give you get it. You you’ve gotta have the passion and you gotta have the audience. So build that. So you have to, you have to have a passion and an audience. And if you can build both, which we can help you do, if you build both, you can really make an impact on people’s lives. Like when you hear either Crystal or Tiffany speak, they have the passion and they’re building the audience and go on and change 35,000 people’s lives.

 

Crystal:

Everything falls into place after that. So—

 

Greg:

It falls into place.

 

Crystal:

And, and then piggyback that with how do we make it bigger and better? How do we continue to process improve things? So when we talk about two years ago, our first event, Top Golf, the day before COVID changed our world, $12,500, we raised to just two months ago, we raised $34,000 for scholarships for our military families. So again, sharing the mission, bringing new people to the fold who also have that passion and wanna share it. Yeah, we’re super proud of what we’re doing here, but I think you have to also you know, not always be asking for money and, and we become humble with that. And I think people are attracted to that passion and that excitement and, and Mike and I talk all the time. We probably work harder and longer hours for Folds of Honor that doesn’t give us a paycheck because that’s where our heart is.

 

Greg:

Yeah.

 

Crystal:

But as I said earlier, that giving bank we’re, we’re still always full. We’re still always giving. We’re still, you know, donating our time. And, and then we now have other nonprofits reaching out to us saying, can you help us? Like, we’ve been doing this for years and, and we are not as successful as you. Can you, can you teach us something?

 

Greg:

So, so, you know, I’m just saying like, your success is amazing. So based on, based on Mike going to a conference, okay. Gets involved, walks up, shakes hands. Top Golf event, which is $12,000. Okay. 12,000 bucks. COVID. How much do you think you’ll raise this year at Laurel Valley? So Top Golf to Laurel Valley, two days. That that’s, I mean, that’s a, that’s an evolution of golf, right? So you go <laugh>. So now you’re two days at Laurel Valley. What’s the goal on how much money you’ll raise and how many scholarships you’ll be?

 

Crystal:

So, so two years ago, Laurel Valley, we, we got eight teams there last year, we sold out this year, we’ve moved it to a two-day event because there’s a waiting list of participants. We can’t handle enough.

 

Greg:

With a potential overnight. People can do that. I saw that.

 

Crystal:

Potential overnight. And we are looking to net over $150,000.

 

Greg:

Two years, 12,000, 150,000, because you have passion, you have purpose and you started the, and you started the mission before you thought you had all the answers. But your heart was in the right spot.

 

Okay. Crystal, you Mike have had incredible success and I, and I get that you made the commitment and then you figured it out. But now that you’ve figured out some things and you’re working on it for other people that want to duplicate your efforts, either in the same field or in a different field or a different passion, there have to, there, there, there, there’s gotta be lessons you’ve learned. So could you do a little bit of a cheat sheet on things you learned and things you’re working on to make sure Folds of Honor survives the test of time?

 

Crystal:

I think there’s lots of different lessons that we’ve learned. You know, first of all, it was just do it. Don’t figure it out and then do it, just do it, jump in. And you’re always going to learn from, you know, your successes and your failures, first of all. But then, meeting the right people was key and critical. Continuing to grow, continuing to spread the mission. But then we have to think about that succession plan. What happens when Mike and I are no longer carrying that torch? Who do we pass that torch onto? Certainly we have a great team of volunteers, a great board of directors that we share a lot of the load with, but who are we gonna pass that torch to? We have formed a young professionals board, really trying to identify the, the younger generation. You know, we, we got into Folds of Honor as kind of our after-career.

 

What are we gonna do with our life after our career to give back? But now we have to think about what are we gonna do to pass this torch for Folds of Honor. So we have a young professionals board, always looking for new people to bring into the fold and to share the mission and to kind of teach them our lessons learned so that they don’t have to fall or stumble as we have.

 

Greg:

Sure.

 

Crystal:

Over the last two years, you know and we’re really trying to make that footprint and, and roadmap for them that they can kind of even travel farther than we have. You know, certainly over the last two and a half years, we’ve gone from in our first year raising a hundred thousand dollars to this year, $400,000. So we know that that trajectory is not gonna continue. How can we sustain it and then teach other people how to do that same thing?

 

I think that’s really, really critical because as you talk about the legacy, what legacy do you wanna leave behind? If people don’t remember where you’ve been and what you’ve done, they will never learn lessons from it and be able to choose to duplicate it, replicate it, or to carry on a new mission. You know, I think that you have to have that succession plan in place. And so that’s something that we’re really starting to build the introductory or foundation for. As we continue to grow Folds of Honor here.

 

Greg:

I actually think that’s really, really thoughtful. And I think that lessons it’s simple. Like it, that’s not, like that’s simple. But it’s amazing how many people that don’t. And I don’t wanna make this about Confluence, but like parallel lives on this, right? So we, we’ve grown a lot. We, as we’ve grown, we’ve enhanced what we’re doing. I, I would say any of our clients would say that we keep, continue to improve on their behalf, but then the real mission, the real thing we think about is how do we continue to get better for the next 50 and 75 and 100 years? How are we when, when, when, when Greg has all gray hair and is gone and Jim, and how does the next generation or any of our advisors, how do we, how do we continue our legacy of helping families and taking care of grandchildren?

 

It’s easy to build a firm for 10 years. It’s easy to build a charity for 10 years. It is harder to build a firm or a charity that survives the test of time. That takes care of families, whether it’s through scholarships or through taking care of families’ lifetime savings, wealth, it, it, it’s harder. And, and so we think about this, not in the next five years, we think about this as the infinite game. How are we building this for the next 50 and 100 years? It’s amazing how many people don’t think about that when they pick an advisor. It’s amazing when people don’t think about that when they pick a charity. It’s really refreshing to hear you say that you and Mike are thinking about the infinite game of how to think about this 10, 20, 30 years. So people like Tiffany continue to be helped.

 

Crystal:

Yep. And, and again, even outside of Folds of Honor, we, we’ve had three other local nonprofits reach out to us to say, how are you doing it? And can you, can you help us? And I think that’s a testament to success that people a took the action to reach out for help. But also wanna carry on their legacy for their nonprofit. So we also do kind of pro bono consulting with three other nonprofits. Have you thought about this? You need to consider this. Moving forward, you should do this again. It’s not just about Folds of Honor, but as a whole community, we have that social responsibility.

 

Greg:

I think that’s great. I hope hopefully, you know, people listening, you planted a seed. And so it’s not just for Folds of Honor, which is awesome, but there’s, there’s other charities out there right now in people’s minds that could, that could, that could have the same ripple effect that, you know, that Folds of Honors have had for the 35,000 scholarships. There’s, there’s, they’re in people’s minds, they’re just in the “gonna” side. And, and hopefully in listening to you, you know, they take that one action, cuz you know, when you go into the gym, the hardest thing is opening the door. That’s the hardest part of the gym. After, once you get open the door, you’re good. So hopefully what you did today is inspire people to open the door to a charity, to then go on, to help a lot of lives. And so thank you so much for sharing.

 

And please everybody, in listening to these stories, let’s remember 1% of our country fights for the freedom of the other 99%. And let’s make sure we understand that freedom isn’t free. And if we’re ever in a situation like that airplane, let’s stay seated and let’s give our heroes the respect they’ve earned and deserved. God bless both of you and God bless our military.

 

Thank you for listening to the Imagine That podcast. We hope you enjoyed this episode and welcome you to reach out to Confluence Financial Partners with your questions and comments. If you’d like to hear more episodes, head over to confluencefp.com/podcasts, or find us wherever you get your podcast.

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Imagine That
Episode 26

Becoming the Architect of Your Future | Episode 26

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Join Confluence Financial Partners CEO, Greg Weimer, along with Confluence Director of Marketing and Communication, Katie Montagazzi, CFP®, for an inspiring conversation on goal planning and the importance of living an intentional life.

In this episode, Greg will share his strategies for becoming the “architect of your future” and how to develop the ability to turn “someday” into “today.” For individuals and business owners who would like to build discipline and focus in aligning your day-to-day activities with your long-term goals, this is an episode that can help you get there.

Katie:

You are 42% more likely to achieve your goals that they are written down, and you are 76% more likely to achieve those goals. If you write action commitments and share weekly progress reports, imagine that.

(SOURCE: Gail Matthews, Dominican University, 2015)

 

Hello and welcome to the Imagine That Podcast. I’m your host, Greg Weimer, founder, partner, and wealth manager at Confluence Financial Partners. Each month we’ll explore new ways to help you maximize your life and your legacy and meet some extraordinary people along the way. So if you’re looking to get more out of your life today and legacy tomorrow, let’s get started.

 

Hello everybody, This is Katie Montagazzi here at Confluence. I’m the director of marketing and communication. Today, I have the privilege of having a conversation with Greg, who’s usually the host of the podcast. We’re flipping seats. Today I have the privilege of sitting in the room for all the podcast recordings and over the few, over the past three years we’ve been doing this. It’s been very obvious to me that Greg is a great podcast guest. So I’m taking the role of host today. Greg is a guest, if you will. And we’re going to talk about becoming the architect of your future. So this is a phrase that we’ve thrown, not thrown around, we use in internally here at Confluence. And it’s essentially the framework we use for, we’ll say, dreaming, understanding your why in creating, in, you know, five-year goals, one-year goals, quarterly goals, daily initiatives, and how that drills down into every single day what you do.

 

So Greg is a great example of somebody who uses this framework very well. So we’re going to walk through what it is, how to use it. And then I know Greg has some real-life examples of how he’s done this over his career.

 

So welcome Greg. Hey, that <laugh>, that sounds so weird. The becoming an architect, becoming the architect of your future. This is sort of the framework that we’ve been using internally for associates to plan both professionally and personally. I guess to start off, do you want to walk through the actual framework?

 

Greg:

Everybody wants to do goal setting, like, hey, okay, I’m a goal setter, but, but you have to ask like, why is it important? Like, you have to go back and say, and, and I’m sure there’s a gazillion of them, but there’s a couple moments in my life when I realized then, you know, one wasn’t that long ago, maybe a year or two ago, year ago maybe I was on social media and there’s this guy, Gary V and there was a woman that came running up to him in a cab and said like, Hey, gimme some of the greatest advice you can give me. And he looked at her and said, You’re gonna die. And we all know that, but I think when you start, and I don’t want to start it low, but, but I find it motivating. Like, because you, you have to allow it to motivate you.

 

You’re gonna die. And so that just helps you with the concept of life short. And you know, at my age, do I have 25 more Christmases with my kids? I don’t know. But I know if I only have 25, I’m gonna make sure every one of ’em is sort of special. So I think about, you know, how many days I this weekend, it’s so pathetic. I was calculating if I live like 20 more years, how many days I have in my life and what. So, so you start with that motivation of life is short. And there’s cert, there’s certain things that I feel like there’s certain things that are so true, but we, we just say so often we don’t really hear. And one of them’s like, grandchildren are the best. And I’m gonna tell you grandchildren are the best, but, but two is life is short.

And I think when you really understand that, that gives you a different motivation to make sure you maximize it. That gives you a different motivation to make sure you’re living your intentional life.

 

Katie:

You always say, and I think everybody can agree, a lot of people are really good at dreaming about someday, you know, someday I’m going to do X, someday I’m gonna do this, I’m gonna do that.

 

Greg:

Gonna, they’re gonna.

 

Katie:

 

I’m gonna, they’re gonna, and then, so that’s cool. I like to dream.

 

Greg:

Yeah.

 

Katie:

And then there are folks that do daily tasks really well, but those daily tasks are just tasks.

 

Greg:

Yeah.

 

Katie:

If they’re not really connected to your dreaming about someday, you’re gonna have some issues, and in 20 years—

 

Greg:

Groundhog Day, they’re just doing Groundhog Day.

 

Katie:

And you wonder how you end up where you are. This framework does a really good job of connecting the dreaming with the daily tasks and everything in between. Can you share with us, back in your career, I think it was American Funds, you had this manifesto—

 

Greg:

I wanted to fundamentally change the way people thought about investing their money in western Pennsylvania, West Virginia. And if I did, so if I did that appropriately, I would help people retire without worry and become educated without limit.

 

Katie:

So that was your dream.

 

Greg:

I mean, I that yeah, that’s been a long time and we had not planned this. And it’s there. It’s, it was my passion.

 

Katie:

Yeah. So I just wanted to note or put into perspective, you have done that really well. Like I think in your career at American Funds, in your career here at Confluence, you’ve done that really well and you do it every day. And—

 

Greg:

I don’t know if we become lazy or more precise, but now at Confluence, it’s real simple. We wanna help people maximize their lives and legacies, I mean, right? I mean, that’s what we wanna do. Yep. And so we’ve a little more precise than that long paragraph I wrote, so, you know, back in the day.

 

Katie:

Yeah. I thought it was, I thought it was good though. <Laugh>. Yeah. So finding your why, so that was your why back then.

 

Greg:

Yeah.

 

Katie:

Finding your why now, how, maybe share a little bit of your why even though it can change, but—

 

Greg:

Yeah.

 

Katie:

—most of the times it’s the same thing. And then maybe Confluence our why.

 

Greg:

Like, it’s sort of the same because — it’s all the same. Like I don’t really have Confluence and my life, it’s just — I may have told this story on a different podcast, but my wife and I were in Turks and Caicos and a really cool dude, like 80 years old with a bandana that was really successful. We were one of those huts on the bar at a bar having a drink. And, and he said to me, son, he said it, it’s all about figuring out what you’re all about is all about. And that really caused me to think about what I’m all about. And it’s changed over the years. You know, you, you just get a different vision and you get something that motivates you and you and, and you and you probably get a burst of precision. So I thought, you know, I wanna be an impact.

 

I wanna be an impact in people’s lives. Like, I, I wanna be, you know, like, like there’s hock— we’ve been blessed in Pittsburgh with great hockey players, whether it’s Lemieux or Crosby, and they make everyone around them better. And I don’t want that to sound arrogant. I really want to be that person that makes everyone around me better. And, and, and I, and I want, I want their lives to be better. And in Confluence, I think that can mean, you know, help people literally maximize their life and the portfolio should support their very best life. And they’re going to have a legacy. They might as well design it and be the architect of it. So let’s have ‘em let— And by the way, part of your, part of your legacy is, is exists while you’re alive. You’re creating it, you’re creating it in moments. So yeah.

 

So it’s really about making an impact and helping people maximize their lives and legacies. And when you can get— And, and by the way, I really, I really force myself to be, to be vivid in what that looks like in 10 or 20 or 30 or 40, 50 years. Because the more specific I get and what it looks like, the more passion and motivation I have about creating it. So, so, so I, I was listening to some stuff over the weekend. I realize I probably could get a little clearer on that. Like, what does that mean in, in 50 years I won’t be here. But you never know. So yeah, so it’s, it’s, it, it, it’s, you just, you get that vision of the future then you just keep working on, on making it better and crystallizing it.

 

Katie:

I will mention when we talk about your why and dreaming you all like, it’s you, you will say, but you will fight and get bloody for your dreams.

 

Greg:

Yeah.

 

Katie:

You won’t do that for your goals. Yeah. So the passion and the emotion you just shared in that little two- minute rant, you just said like, that is super important.

 

Greg:

There’s a sports psychologist, Bob Rotella, he does a lot of the pro golfers and and I, I heard him speak. We were at Pebble Beach and so Bob Rotella came out to speak with us which was sort cool. And he said, Martin Luther King said, I have a dream. He didn’t say I have a goal. So you will get bloody, you will fight, you will have motivate, you will be motivated, you will be inspired to meet your dream. A goal, you’ll, you’ll work at it. Goals are good, dreams are better.

 

Katie:

Yeah. So finding your why dreaming, it needs to be emotional and really get you fired up inside, which is very obvious. You’ve, you’ve done that. Okay. So you have this massive dream, you have this idea that you want for your life, for your family over your lifetime. How do you filter that down to we go down to five year?

 

Greg:

Yeah.

 

Katie:

That actually seems like it goes from really big to really small, really quickly, but we always say, what does great look like in five years?

 

Greg:

Yeah.

 

Katie:

So how do you think about taking that big dream, putting it down into five-year increments?

 

Greg:

Well, the reason it’s five years is because 20 felt long. I started with my, my my 20-year goal. So I really started, I think I, I think I was, if you don’t have “beach it” time, you gotta have “beach it” time. And I don’t know where your “beach it” time—

 

Katie:

What’s “beach it” time?

 

Greg:

“Beach it” time is like it when we go away. I have a, I have a little picture in our house in Naples that says, you know, my other office. And it, and it’s a, it’s a, it’s a chair on the beach and, and you need dream time. So I had “beach it” time and at a family vacation in Hilton Head. And I sat there and I thought about, okay, so what do I want the next 20 years to be like and what do I need to do like, you know, daily to make that happen? Which is cool. And I still do that, but, but for a lot of people thinking about 20 years is like way too. Like it’s just, it’s just like too much. So you should have that. But then what we really do personally and professionally in Confluence is we say, Okay, five years, you start with the end.

 

You don’t take your current whatever and multiply times whatever. You say like, okay, for me to like kill it, for me to be like high fiving in five years, like what, what is my, what do I need to look like? What is it? It could be your health, it could be your wealth, it could be what, it could be whatever that is what has to happen in five years for it to be awesome. And so you have to have quantitative, qualitative. And so we put together our five-year goal and say, okay, in five years, I think, I think all of Confluence knows what our five-year goals, I hope. But we have a pretty specific, here’s what we want to be in five years. And, and I and our clients will benefit from that and our associates will benefit from that. But, but we’re pretty precise on where we want to be in five years from service, et cetera.

 

Katie:

I think this is a good point. A good time to bring up the art of pivoting. Oh yeah. That’s a, I don’t— a buzzword that you use a word that you like.

 

Greg:

Yeah.

 

Katie:

A theme. When we set five-year goals, once you identify those five-year goals, it’s probably, it probably behooves you that you need to pivot. You have to pivot. If you want to accomplish things, you have to understand that you have to, there’s different seasons of life in between those seasons is pivoting.

 

Greg:

Life happens and things happen. A great running back, you know, a great running back can pivot and go in a different direction if they have to, to find the open space so they can score. And you have to be able to pivot. You have to be able to change speeds. And I think if you’re gonna lead a business or if you’re gonna be successful, you have to know when to pivot and, and in, at Confluence I think we pivot pretty well. And I think we change speeds pretty well. You know, I mean hopefully by the time people are listening to this, the down market is over. But my guess is it may not be. And we’re pivoting. I mean, we are, we are really thinking through our — we’re thinking through everything. And making sure that we’re doing everything humanly possible to communicate well and invest well for our clients. You gotta pivot.

 

Katie:

You have your, your dream, five-year goal. Now we’re talking about annual initiatives, annual goals. At Confluence, I’m thinking about our five-year plans and me being marketing, understanding what my one-year initiative needs to be over the next — well we haven’t drilled down into quarters even right now. But annual

 

goals, how, if you give some advice on how to take the five-year goal and then understand each year what do I need to do?

 

Greg:

Yeah. So you have to like take that, that that five-year big vision and you say, Okay, so what does that mean mathematically has to happen? What does that mean, like initiative-wise has, has to happen? Listen, I’d like to do all of the— I’d like to my— I don’t like— I’d love to take the whole five years and put it in the next quarter. And people try to do that and they get nothing done. So you say, Okay, these are, these are all important, but when you build a house and you’re the architect of your future, you, you build certain foundations so then you can ultimately do the decorating.

 

 

 

 

 

So what we do then is we, we take the five years, we break it up into annual into the, the, into the individual specific years. And then we put the big rocks that we have to accomplish and every year to get to the five- year vision. So and, and then by the way, in the next, the ones that are going to happen in the next year, like fourth quarter, good news, and I, I know this may be over already, but in this quarter, I think we have all of our rocks pretty well met. And it, it, so I think we’re good. But, but we, but we put together our rocks and so then if if it’s in, if it’s over the next year, we will, we will then break it down quarterly. And so, okay, so in the next year we can’t do all of ’em in the first quarter like we want. What do we have to do quarter by quarter when you’re one year out? So, so we’re taking our, our what’s it all about? all about.We’re saying what does five years look like? So we’re on that trajectory and what do we need to get done annually to get to five years? So we’re matching our activity with our vision.

 

Katie:

This seems like it’s like Pandora’s box, but annually goes down to quarterly—

 

Greg:

No, no, you know those little dolls they open up, keeps getting—

 

Katie:

Right, exactly.

 

Greg:

 

Well it is like that.

 

Katie:

I dunno what that’s called.

 

Greg:

I don’t either, but it, but it’s what it is.

 

Katie:

Yes, yes. So quarterly initiatives. So I will, so obviously when you identify the annual goals, initiatives you need to accomplish that are like, just need done, it’s a, it’s a fact of life. Quarterly, quarterly accelerators is what we call them here at Confluence.

 

Greg:

If you pivot, you gotta start to accelerate?

 

Katie:

Right, yeah. So they’re—

 

Greg:

Or it’s a stop.

 

Katie:

Right there are goals, but you’re accelerating into the quarter.

 

Greg:

Yeah.

 

Katie:

So for example, and I’ve never done this, but a lot of people like have a word of the year.

 

Greg:

Yeah.

 

Katie:

 

Type thing. That might be like the theme of the year.

 

Greg:

Yeah.

 

Katie:

But we have for, when we’re recording this now, it’s the fourth quarter of 2022. And we think it’s really important for us to engage with our clients and our network and our friends and whoever because the market’s not great right now. We can all agree if hopefully this’s not the case when this podcast comes out, but who knows. But our word is engage. So that word triggers in our heads how we are going to accelerate in the fourth quarter and help our clients get through this time. We don’t always have a word, but that’s the word for the quarter.

 

Greg:

And that’s engage.

 

Katie:

That word informs all of us at the Confluence, whether it be the advisor level, associate level—

 

Greg:

Feel like I need to go into the engage—

 

Katie:

Right.

 

Greg:

Engage Maverick.

 

Katie:

That’s a good example. Okay, we won’t do that. But anyway, that word really helps us understand—

 

Greg:

We do that internally, right? Engage Maverick. It’s time to engage.

 

Katie:

 

Yes. It’s time to engage. So as a team, that word to us for the team means something for everybody differently in, in the team, but the whole theme of the quarter is engage. So I don’t know if that’s helpful for on a personal level, if you’re listening to this and you’re not a part of Confluence internally, but—

 

Greg:

By the way, we wanna, we wanna have a thousand engagements. And that’s the, this quarter. So then we will, we’ll engage. And then we all be at Nemacolin celebrating in, I think it’s, I forget when it is, April. April or something like that.

 

Katie:

Yep.

 

Greg:

We’re gonna take all of our associates, all of them and their spouses are significant others to Nemacolin to celebrate that we engaged. And we’re gonna celebrate the fact that hopefully those engagements helped a bunch of investors.

 

Katie:

That’s right. What are quarterly accelerators?

 

Greg:

Yes. What are the three things that I really need to change, accelerate, pivot this quarter? I think if you get 4, 5, 6 sevens too many, what are the three things you really need to get done this quarter? It’s not your normal activity. That’s a change. It’s an acceleration of something or something you’re doing different. What’s your, what’s your three things that you need to get done that, that are really gonna be game changers in your life, your career or business, whatever that is. So everybody has three of those that are by the way, in line with your annual goals. So it’s all, it’s like, you know, you can see how it’s that thing, right? So it goes to your quarterly goal. So what you’re doing is you’re taking your five-year goal, you’re looking at it, you’re looking at your year and you’re saying, Okay, I get it. Now what do I need to do in this, this quarter for the end of the quarter for me to make significant headway on that five-year goal?

 

Katie:

And if you do that four times a year?

 

Greg:

 

Magic.

 

Katie:

Magic. Three things you’re doing this quarter, how do you filter that down into your daily activities.

 

Greg:

Yeah. So own your calendar. Like if people are like, it amazes me, people don’t own their calendar and they just let it happen. Your calendar, and if you think about it, it’s true. Your calendar is your life. And a day is part of that calendar. And it amazes me how many people are not intentional about what they do that day. And it could be a date with your spouse, it could be something business oriented. But we encourage people to really come to the office and enter the day with intention. And that means that you should be doing things that are in line with your quarterly, five-year and what’s it all about. Now we all have to go to the grocery store. And I understand that’s not like, you know what, like what you’re all about. But we all have time to make sure we plan the day.

 

So, so I put on my daily goals every day I write my things, I need to do my tasks across the top every day. I put I put my three goals. So my three accelerators, every day are across the top, so they’re top of mind. I put some things I’m measuring there, every day, certain amount of things I want to get accomplished, they’re there. And then I think the most important is the N.M.W. My “no matter what.” My “no matter what” is the one thing I need to get done that day, that if I only did one thing, it would, it would put me on the trajectory of my five-year goal or the firm’s five-year goal. So by the way, if you do your most important thing, if you just did that one thing, the most important thing every day. If you’re working on spiritual, maybe it’s reading the Bible, whatever your thing is, and it can be different every day.

 

Mine is different virtually every day. If not, it’s just the normal stuff. But you know, you put your “no matter what,” but if you, but if you, if you really, really think about where you wanna be and you realize life is short and you realize you’re gonna die. And so you really realize that when you look out 20, 30, 40 years, that you’re gonna look back and when you look back, how are you gonna be remembered? What did you do? Did you make an impact? Did you live your dream? And then you have, okay, so what do I need to do to get on the right way? Go in the right direction in the next five years? And then when you break that down from five years to your “no matter what,” you have a way better chance of getting to the end and feel like, you know, you, you did your very best, you did life. It didn’t do you.

 

Katie:

 

So listening to you go through that framework again, I think it’s, somebody might be listening this might say, Wow, he sounds really obsessed with goal planning—

 

Greg:

He is.

 

Katie:

No, he is, I can attest that, but that kind of reverts back to when I said the beginning, the sports psychologist, Martin Luther King said, I have a dream, not a goal. You’ll get bloody, you’ll sweat, you’ll get your uniform dirty for a dream. So being obsessed is part of that. You have to be obsessed.

 

Greg:

Yeah, and it’s, you know, we talk about all the time in Confluence, I I probably mentioned on a lot of podcasts. I mean, we don’t work and we don’t play, we just live. So I’m also obsessed at enjoying getting a break and being in Naples. Now, do I still think about work? Yeah, I love it. I mean, I love it. But part of my goal was to have a place in Naples so I can share Thanksgiving with my entire family this year in Naples. So it’s not just, you know, growth of a business or proving our experience in the business. It’s, it’s also, I, I mean the house in Naples, for me, was about sitting around the table at Thanksgiving by the pool, enjoying time with my children and grandchildren. So it’s not just an obsession with the five-year business goal. It’s just really trying every day, you know, to, to understand I’m gonna die.

 

Katie:

Thanks for sharing all that. Not only we do this internally at Confluence, but we help clients understand the importance of life is short, you’re going to die, let’s help you plan, you know, a plan that maximize your life and legacy. We would love to help anyone listening, our clients, community, friends, network. We really live by this. We think we’re good at it, but we’ll always get better. We’re not, we haven’t really figured it out.

 

Greg:

Yeah, so I it’s for clients, listen, it’s like, I don’t wanna go in there, we’re gonna have to dream about 20 years and like everybody, like, Lighten up Frances, like that movie Stripes. No. You know, everybody thinks about it differently and, and, and like fly fishing, we, we can match the hatch. I think, I think the most difficult part of our job, and yet the most rewarding is when you can see a client light up. And when you can really, you know, talk to client about what the money’s about and what their portfolio is about and what, what their life’s about — without, you know, we’re not, we’re not overdoing it, but you know, you really say, Yeah, I’ve

 

worked hard. This is what I, or I this is, I wanna work hard. This is what I wanna accomplish. You can see it in their face.

 

Like when you can see, when I wanna educate my children, I wanna change this charity. I want to like I wanna be able to retire and have freedom. Like I, you know, whatever. I I remember my mom when she lit up, she said she wanted to retire cuz she wanted to be able to get up in the morning and have a cup of coffee and not rush outta the house. And I remember that moment. I haven’t thought about it for a while, but I remember that moment. And when you can see that in someone’s face, it’s pretty special. And in our firm, we have the ability to see that in people’s face and help ’em accomplish it.

 

Katie:

You’ve said before it’s a really, really good meeting if a client laughs and cries.

 

Greg:

Yeah.

 

Katie:

Within the same meeting. So thank you Greg.

 

Greg:

We will not make you cry No

 

Katie:

<Laugh>. Unless you really want to. If you get the, you know, the emotions rolling. But yeah. Thank you, Greg. This was, I think this is helpful for listeners. It’s always helpful to have a conversation with you, so thank you and thanks for being my guest.

 

Greg:

Hey, thanks. I enjoyed it <laugh>.

 

Thank you for listening to the Imagine That Podcast. We hope you enjoyed this episode and welcome you to reach out to Confluence Financial Partners with your questions and comments. If you’d like to hear more episodes, head over to confluencefp.com/podcasts or find us wherever you get your podcasts.

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Imagine That
Episode 25

The Entrepreneur’s Journey | Episode 25

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What does it take to succeed in an increasingly technology-driven world? Adaptability. Curiosity. Resilience.

In this episode, you’ll learn how smart businesses navigate change and technological disruption by innovating and evolving. Join host and Confluence Financial Partners CEO, Greg Weimer, as he interviews Darrin Grove, founder and CEO of Truefit, a Pittsburgh-based software development company. Darrin will share his story and his experiences building a business along with practical advice for developing your network into a thriving ecosystem to gain (and give) support, mentorship, and guidance. You’ll also hear about actionable strategies for networking and importance of resilience – along with the exponential impact a well-planned legacy can have on the world. For anyone interested in personal growth, strengthening your network, or adapting to change, do not miss this episode.

Confluence Financial Partners — Podcast Title | Episode #

GREG:

97% of individuals with a mentor feel they are highly impactful and valuable. Imagine that.

(SOURCE: Moving Ahead, 2017)

Hello and welcome to the Imagine That podcast. I’m your host, Greg Weimer, founder, partner, and wealth manager at Confluence Financial Partners. Each month, we’ll explore new ways to help you maximize your life and your legacy and meet some extraordinary people along the way. So if you’re looking to get more out of your life today and legacy tomorrow, let’s get started.

We’re gonna discuss several things today. First, we’re gonna go over Darrin Grove’s story. If you’re a business owner, or you’re fascinated how businesses get started and grow, you should listen. If you’re really looking to improve and you want to benefit from the lessons that Darrin Grove learned as he’s created Truefit, you should listen. If you wanna understand the value and power of having an appropriate ecosystem, you should listen. If you want to think about building a business that ends up being bigger than you, and really creates a legacy, you should listen.

Darrin is the founder and CEO of Truefit, which is a really fascinating company. It is a software development company. And, you know, I heard someone say from Raymond James, a friend of mine, said software will not replace people, but people that learn how to use software correctly will replace those that don’t. And, and I just think, I think that’s what it’s all about. So, Darrin and I started talking and I just became fascinated with his story. So and then I started thinking, so we’re gonna lunch after this, cuz I’m hooked. Like it makes me, it makes me realize that. And we’re gonna talk about a lot of different things by the way. But, but, but I think this really gives us an opportunity to talk about how you can really make a greater impact.

So before I go any further and tell your whole story, because I’m fired up about it, let me back up and, and, and allow you to just give us. So it was the late nineties, right? You’re like a coder. So like, right. And you’re like doing code and by the way, I was a computer science guy in college, which

DARRIN:

Oh, nice.

GREG:

On, on the cards. Like we used to do the punch cards.

DARRIN:

We are kindred spirits and I, yeah, I do go back far enough to have done some punch cards.

GREG:

Right. I did punch cards. So I, I could program in Pascal, COBOL, Fortran, BASIC. But, but, but, but I can’t—

DARRIN:

We have so much in common already.

GREG:

—but I can’t spell. So, and I know I don’t even know how to turn on my computer anymore. So things have changed, but, but let’s back up. So you’re, you’re doing coding and then you say, aha, I wanna do blank. And you start Truefit. How does that happen? Cuz there’s so many people that wanna do it, they wanna do it and they don’t, so how do you do that?

DARRIN:

Good question. Good question. So to give a little more context you know, I’m a native Pittsburgher I grew up around here. I love Pittsburgh. And my family has really kind of followed the trajectory of Pittsburgh. So my grandfather was a steelworker. Yeah. And my roots are in manufacturing. So I grew up as a maker. I grew up in a maker family. So I, when I became interested in technology, I was very interested in making software products and that, so that was my expression. You know, my dad made copper tubing. I made, I, I made software. So it’s, it’s a little bit like the kind of renaissance of the Pittsburgh’s gone through from a manufacturing town to a technology.

GREG:

I get it. That’s cool. But it’s interesting. I’m listening to you say I’m a maker and then I’m like, yeah, but he also is a grower.

DARRIN:

Right.

GREG:

Do you know what I mean? So like it’s, it’s, it’s, it’s a little, it’s, it’s a different thing.

DARRIN:

Right. So, to fast forward, I was, I was working for a local manufacturing company.

GREG:

Yeah.

DARRIN:

Penn United Technologies in Saxonburg. And working with a great startup software company on a manufacturing system that we were implementing there from a company called Lilly Software Associates. We found them as a startup and we implemented their software very early. And that started a long-term relationship with Dick Lilly and Dave Lane, who was the VP of development. And we started creating, we, we started working together on the product, even though I was a client, I was the closest to the people who were using the software. And so really understanding the frontline needs of users really understanding the usability of the product. So I was kind of their frontline guy and I started creating product with them. This is in the early nineties. And at some point in time, we decided we should kind of take this to the next level. And so I approached Dave and I said, Hey, what if I spin on a tech technology company? I build a team here in Pittsburgh. And he said, it sounds like a great idea. And Dick Lilly loved it too. And so that’s how Truefit started. I should say that my first pitch to these guys failed entirely. So I, I was doing some custom development work on top of their platform. They, they hated that. Dick was allergic to custom development and for many good reasons that I learned later in life. So he was right about that. He said, I don’t want you to do that thing that you pitched to me. What I want you to do is create a new distribution product for us, cuz they were focused on manufacturing and they wanted to grow and expand into supply chains.

GREG:

Did that discourage you at all? I mean, because I think, you know, you’re, you’re first. So, so at this point you have felt 100% of the time. Was there ever like, okay, this isn’t for me or it’s like, Hey let’s—

DARRIN:

No, not at all. No. I mean, it was, it was grounded in the relationship I had with these guys. It was an inspiring alternative. And it, it, it happened faster than you might think, right? Like I didn’t really pitch this as you would pitch an investor, the way a startup company would work today and get rejected. And it wasn’t like that. We were talking about how we would work together collaboratively and he says, here’s what I really want you to do. And I didn’t know anything about distribution at the time that was brand new to me. And over the course of you know, the kind of the first season of Truefit’s life, if you wanna think about it, the first five years of Truefit I learned how warehouses work, I learned how you know, product flows through a warehouse efficiently. And you know, we put a system together that was competing with the top-of-the-line warehouse management systems, systems like Red Prairie and High Jump and Manhattan.

GREG:

And I think that’s one of the myths with businesses. I think everybody thinks like the entrepreneur knows all the next steps. Right? And you sort of like build the bridge as you walk on it, right. I mean a little bit. I mean, and, and, and, and I think that’s one of the biggest myths out there and I, and there’s something refreshing about that. You and I, before we started the earlier today, we started talking about how, you know, you have to, you’re not how to pivot and you’re, you know, you have chapters, you have to know how to pivot. You have to know how to evolve. And then if you don’t evolve and pivot as a business, you become stale, you become redundant. You no longer, you become irrelevant.

DARRIN:

Right.

GREG:

So that was your first. And then, and then where did you go from there?

DARRIN:

So that was season one. And so we focused, we built a team. We focused on that product, that product was rolled out nationally. And then we realized, Hey you know, as a business, we have one big client and that’s creating a ton of risk for us. And we were not clear. It was not clear to us at the time, how to take the next step and diversify as a business, without competing. What we knew was manufacturing and distribution. We didn’t wanna, we wanted to honor our relationship with Lilly. We didn’t want to compete with them. And so we experimented for five years. The next season of life. I think of it as our kind of our teenage years, trying to figure out what we want to be when we grew up, we experimented with a bunch of different ideas of how to diversify. Most of it was implementing other people’s products, which never felt like us. It never felt like what we love. And so for five years we were kind of in the wilderness trying to figure that out and everything. We tried failed everything. We tried for five years in season two, failed.

GREG:

Resilience. I mean, total resilience. And then the other thing is like, when I hear you say five years, some listeners are probably going like five years! Cause because it’s actually going on. I mean, that’s—

DARRIN:

I’m a slow, I’m a slow learner.

GREG:

No, but I think no, but I think it’s key. I think so many people do not run an infinite firm and try to run it for 5, 10, 50. I mean, we’re trying to build a firm for 50 to 75 years. Yeah. So if you’re thinking 50 years out and you can experiment for five years, not a biggie. Yeah. But if you’re thinking I wanna liquidate now or, I mean, I wanna exit in 10 years and I gotta experiment for five, that doesn’t work. So it’s just the value of having a long-term perspective.

 

DARRIN:

Right. Right. Yeah. And I, I would say, you know, I didn’t know how long, I mean, I would say I always, I did have a long-term perspective. I, I, you know, I wanted to build a great company and we had set out to do that. And you know, we were kind of values driven. And so we had a lot of kind of good foundational stuff. But season two was discouraging mm-hmm at the end of that and, and what kind of got us out of that was a kind of a big decision that we made.

 

I decided that in order for Truefit to reach its potential, I was gonna have to stop coding cuz up until that point in time, I was in architect building software. I had to stop coding, which I loved.

 

GREG:

Get it.

 

DARRIN:

And I had to learn how to sell and I pivoted my career at that point.

 

GREG:

And, by the way that’s big — you don’t think coder, salesperson, right? I mean, there no offense.

 

DARRIN:

No, no, no. I, I get it. I get it. And, and you know, a lot of people think I’m weird in that, in that regard. Yeah. But, and it was not easy. I can say that. I can, it was not easy. It was the right decision looking back on it. And we didn’t have a culture of sales at the time. And I had all kinds of misconceptions about sales. I thought.

 

GREG:

I’m sitting thinking, I don’t even know what it is. And people would laugh hearing me say that. But for me sales is, I just, I just fall in love with what we do. And I tell everybody what we do. I fall in love and tell everybody about it. I don’t know. Like I don’t, I don’t even know how to ask for business. So like, I mean, it’s, it’s, I don’t. So what did that mean to you?

 

DARRIN:

I had, I had real bad stereotypes in my head and I think most of the company did as well. Cause it wasn’t just me, but I thought, you know, what salespeople do is talk people into doing something that they don’t wanna do. And a seasoned friend of mine, who’s a lifelong sales professional, very successful, said to me, you know, look, Darrin, and this was the aha moment for me. He says, look, sales is about helping people and you love to help people. And I was like, okay, like I get it. Like I get it. It took me a while to absorb that. But what I did at the time was I, I basically turned that relationship over the, the big relationship with software over to my number two guy. At the time I started with zero customers, zero revenue and zero idea what I was doing and decided I was gonna learn how to sell. And that was really the first time, honestly, that we did a lot of business in Pittsburgh. Mm-Hmm because the warehouse product was a national product. We were working with clients all over the country. Nobody in Pittsburgh, we’re 10 years in, nobody in Pittsburgh knows who we are.

 

GREG:

What year is this?

 

DARRIN:

This is well, it’s like 2007-ish.

 

GREG:

Yeah, I got it.

 

DARRIN:

Yeah. 2000, 2007-ish. We did some good work there. But the other ingredients that made that successful, I did a project. I worked with branding firm called Clear Brands. Brian Cubarney is a, is a genius. And Brian came in Brian’s superpower is he does organizational DNA testing. So he comes in and he like figures out what our true passion is. Mm-Hmm and he’s the guy that said to me, you guys love creating innovative products. Mm-Hmm you guys are product creators and really helping people innovate and figure out the next thing. And we were like, mm-hmm , that’s what we did on day one, by the way, way that’s that was back to our roots at the time. But we went through the desert of like trying to figure out what we wanted to be when we grew up.

 

GREG:

But those dots are so easy to connect.

 

DARRIN:

You’d think .

 

GREG:

Well, no, but no, but you you’re going like, okay all sales is, which I couldn’t agree more, is really trying to figure out how to help people. Yeah. And guess what? We create things.

 

DARRIN:

Yeah.

 

GREG:

That help people.

 

DARRIN:

Yeah.

 

GREG:

So this is like really cool. Darrin’s in the middle and make and connects those two dots.

 

DARRIN:

You’re, you’re yeah, hindsight’s so much, it’s so much easier to see that in hindsight than it did was at the time I, like I said, I’m a slow learner. So it did take me a lot longer to figure that out than I wish. So young people, cuz I’m a big believer in mentoring. We can talk about that in a little bit. But so when people are asking for advice, you know, like what’s the one thing that you wanna leave us with at the end of this,

 

GREG:

The one thing is there’s not one thing.

 

DARRIN:

Yeah. but, but one of the things I will say to them is learn to sell. My son’s working on a little startup project. I’m working with him now actually. And I, I said, man, if I would’ve learned, when I was your age, you know what you’re learning now, about selling, truth, it would’ve like gone a lot faster. Let’s put it that way. So it took me years and years to learn how to do that. And then season three for us was, you know, this is, think about it 2007 is when kind of mobile technology came.

 

GREG:

And how many, how many associates did you have then?

 

DARRIN:

Probably mid-twenties.

 

GREG:

Okay. Yeah.

 

DARRIN:

I would say.

 

GREG:

So now you have it in people. Yep.

 

DARRIN:

Yeah. So, so think about what was happening technically in 2007, that was the beginning of the kind of the mobile technology boom, right. And we had been early to the game in mobile and so we started creating mobile software products, apps. Everybody wanted an app; we heard all kinds of crazy ideas. It’s interesting.

 

GREG:

So we feel like apps have been around forever apps started like, like really, we didn’t download.

 

DARRIN:

Yeah, 2006, 7, 8, 9.

 

GREG:

That’s fascinating. Right.

 

DARRIN:

Yeah. So if you think about again, what was happening then Apple was driving user experience design. Well, we were a team of engineers. We were very engineering centric. And so we spent the season three creating awesome mobile and web solutions and, and kind of starting to learn about user experience design and the importance of creating value for users, the importance of research. And we had hired a couple people, but then I, I we had done some projects with a local design firm called just design that was run by a guy named John Beck and to make a long story short, we really loved working together. We saw the value of kind of joining forces. John approached me and said, Hey, we’re thinking about kind of restructuring. We’d like to join forces with a larger firm. We think that might be you. And so that ended up with our very first and only acquisition mm-hmm in 2014 the kind of the end of season, season three, with John and I joining forces and us starting to integrate the practices of design and engineering, which are turns out to be really, really critical and important.

And so season four for us was about creating these really high performing cross-functional product development teams. So combining user experience, design, product management, mm-hmm architecture and engineering and quality testing. Today we work in cross-functional teams that have all of that, those ingredients and we’ve tuned up those teams over time to have, you know, just the right ratio. So we have six teams across the company today and that team can start with a concept for a new product and out the other end comes a successful commercial product.

 

GREG:

By the way, that that could be a whole podcast because we work in teams here and getting the right personalities, the right expertise. You know what? I don’t want to make this a commercial anyway, but like our Investment Advisory Committee, we have, we have financial advisors that are practitioners, the physicians. We have people that work in the lab, CFAs, CFPs, that, that, that don’t work directly with clients. And then you have leaders from, from our business and you put ’em all together and you get a cross-pollination. Usually a team is made up of similar people. So just all investment people, all practitioners, you know, so that the lab people never really see a patient, you know, whatever. So it’s having that right team. I think there’s a whole getting the right people in the room is, is a, is a big part of the win.

 

DARRIN:

Right. And we’re take a different approach than a lot of companies take with this, which is kind of part of the success. So we were really tightly integrating these teams. So designers and engineers were working very closely together to make sure we understood the problem that the product intended to solve for whom you know, who the user is, making sure they’re creating value for the user, but then understanding what it takes to actually build it and bringing those things together. So the needs of the user, the needs of the market, the needs of the business, and kinda what it takes to build this because software products are very expensive to build. So you can’t just design anything and build it. You’ve gotta create efficiencies so that you’re using capital wisely. Right? And that’s one of the things we really work closely with our clients to do is making sure that they’re making the right investments in the software and that they’ve thought through their business plan. Mm-Hmm so that when we build this product, they it’s gonna be successful in the market. And they’re going to grow it into a successful business. Almost everybody we work with is either starting a software company or starting a software line of business within an existing company.

GREG:

Yeah. And that’s where we are. Right. We’re, we’re having lunch after this. And, and that’s what I wanna talk to you about. I think, I think the opportunity to have we’ll never get away from, and, and never is a strong word. And I’ll say it again. We will never get away from understanding the relationship is key, but we can enhance and improve that relationship with proper software. And effectively, I heard you, you know, help, help a lot more people. Right. And so our we’re really looking forward as a, as a potential customer at some point to be able to do that. And, and I just think it’s, I, we’ve been, we, in fact, we have an, we have an offsite next week where we’re all gonna get together and, and start to brainstorm about what some of those products would be.

 

DARRIN:

Yeah. But it’s grounded in the belief that great software helps people thrive. Right. That’s kind of the core of it, which is exactly what you just said. Great software helps people thrive. That’s what, that’s what motivates us. That’s what we’re passionate about applying technology so that it improves people’s lives. It makes the world better.

 

GREG:

It feels like we’re there. Like it. I, I like, I wanna know, 20 years ago there was so much technology. Now, the technologies evolved. In my opinion, too, as I sit here with an iPad, and I notice you didn’t bring one in. So it’s interesting. The technology guy is just off the cuff. The software is so good right now, but I feel like it does now, now for me, and for us, it feels like now it needs to be customized for our business.

 

DARRIN:

There are so many different applications for it. I, I still think there’s so much potential for technology. If you look at where technology has come, even over the course of you’re in my career, like you talked about punch cards at the beginning of this right now think, you know, that, that, you know, we carry around in our pocket more power than it, you know, than the Apollo space mission had on their flight to the moon. You know, that’s crazy. That’s, that’s pretty awesome. And we’re only just scratching the surface mm-hmm of, of the potential. So if you look at, you know, we talked a little bit about mobile and kind of the mobile era now that is ubiquitous. Like everybody has a phone in their pocket.

 

GREG:

Okay. So listen to the dinosaur ask the question. When you say mobile?

 

DARRIN:

An app, an app running on your phone. Okay. Got, or, or a mobile experience that I can, I can interact with my product on the go. Now not let me say this. Not every product needs to be a mobile product. There are products, there are jobs that you do at your desk and a browser’s the best place to do those jobs. But for very many applications, there’s a remote component. I wanna be able to do something when I’m on the go.

 

GREG:

Yep.

 

DARRIN:

And so we think through that, and we help people that have the experience, the, the, one of the big trends that we’re seeing now is connected devices, right? So the internet of things, devices, appliances hardware in our world will be connected. So we’re working on a really several really interesting connected device projects. You see this a lot in, in healthcare with medical devices being connected you’re seeing it more and more in consumer with home products being connected. So medical device hook up your pacemaker, whatever, he’ll keep your, you know, heart monitor and the doctor looks at it and you’re at home, or, you know, I’m, I’m you know, I’m diabetic, I’ve got a monitor that monitors my glucose and sugar. I, I can see that on my app. I can use that to help manage my health—

 

GREG:

Right, Children’s Hospital, by the way, they, they, you know, they can, they can remote. So, because they’re so used to looking at children and being with children and being with children that have heart issues, they can then remote into the other hospitals and go on rounds and check heartbeats, et cetera.

 

DARRIN:

Yeah. We did a, we did a really interesting product years ago with a couple of doctors who had physical therapy practices. And it essentially you know, these guys are, they’re top shoulder surgeons. They operate on mm-hmm quarterbacks and pitchers and those kind of guys. So after you have shoulder surgery you, instead of going to a physical therapy office and signing up for all in-office appointments, they would hand you an iPad and some wearable sensors, and the iPad would show you how to do your exercises correctly. The sensors would track you doing them in real time, and this is pre COVID by the way. So if you think about remote physical therapy in the world of the pandemic, you can go like, wow, that was yep. Insightful. But so they would have people doing their exercises at home, but all the data would be tracked and, and the user would get real time feedback about whether they’re doing it correctly. And the physical therapist would have a dashboard to see all their patients, you know, who’s green, who’s yellow, who’s red, who needs attention and needs a call and needs to come in and learn how to do it better. And who’s fine. And recovering well. And are our plans of care actually working? And are they effective? Which if we tweak it, which plans of care are more effective than others? So you can do a lot of things with a solution like that, applying technology to physical therapy. So that was a fascinating, connected device product that we worked on for, for a while.

 

GREG:

Yeah. Again, I see it happen at Children’s and it’s interesting how COVID has accelerated it. Right. So now all of a sudden telemedicine is, wasn’t doing well, now it’s doing great. You know, as we sit here today, there’s four of us. And I don’t think we could have done this three years ago. Right. We couldn’t have, I mean, there’s four of us in this room and then I’m looking on the screen. There’s another, I don’t know, three or four on the, on the screen, which remote. Right? In Zoom. So it’s, it’s, it’s, it’s interesting. We would not have been, I don’t, we would’ve done this three years ago. Everybody would’ve been in the room so, or, or whatever. Yeah. It’s just a different world. Okay.

 

DARRIN:

So connected devices are big, but to touch again, without going down the rabbit hole of, of what meta’s all up to VR and AR is a very interesting trend that, that we’re, is, is gonna have a big impact on our lives. And so we’re paying very close attention to VR and AR, starting to do some R&D in that world. It’s, it’s, it’s nascent, it’s still early for that technology, but that is going to really influence our lives over the next 10 years.

 

GREG:

For our listeners that have no idea what that is.

 

DARRIN:

Oh, sorry.

 

GREG:

And the guy from Johnstown across from you .

 

DARRIN:

So virtual reality is, is what so VR. Yeah. Virtual reality is you know, what you’re seeing in gaming, but now in a lot of applications, so industrial training applications, medical surgical applications virtual reality has a lot of like really interesting applications. I’ll give you, I’ll give you one I’m involved in a, in a venture fund that just invested in a, in a company that does language learning. And so what’s the best way to learn a language, Greg?

 

GREG:

Go to the country.

 

DARRIN:

Go to the country. Right. Okay. So talk about a really practical application of virtual reality. What if I could go to a country or it’ll least be put in a context, like a restaurant where, where we’re speaking Spanish and I’m learning, trying to learn Spanish, and I have to order a meal and I have to pay my check and I have to do all these things. So the company does that. I think that’s an interesting application of virtual reality. And, you know,

 

GREG:

That’s, that’s amazing how many possible.

 

DARRIN:

That’s a metaverse idea that I think is actually practical. I think there’s a lot of metaverse ideas that are kind of—

 

GREG:

Yeah. Yep. Got it. But I don’t know, it’s, your business is fascinating and it’s you wanna talk, I mean, our business certainly is evolving, but, but yours is really interested in, you know a lot of opportunities. So now let’s back, let’s back up because we went over a lot of stuff. Now let’s talk about how we can, you know, help people from your experiences. So like, if, what are some of the things you learned? I mean, I, if you wanna touch a little bit on the pivot and the importance of seasons, and I heard you say something about mentoring, like these are real concepts that are evergreen. They, you know, that that probably need to be talked about.

 

DARRIN:

Yeah. It, it, it’s been interesting to look back over the time because this year we’re celebrating our 25th anniversary in February. Yeah. 25, 25 years. So that’s roughly five seasons of life. And, and we didn’t set out to like, these have these nice, neat five year, like that wasn’t part of the, that wasn’t planned. That just kind of happened. But we found that we’ve kind of reinvented ourselves every five years, and I think it’s really important to pay attention to how you need to evolve. And you need to kind of look for the next level and have a vision for that and be willing to be a lifelong learner. You have to continue to learn as technologists. It kind of comes with a territory, but, you know, then there’s all kinds of things like, you know, going from engineering to sales, where it’s like, I didn’t set out to learn that, but it’s what the business needed at the time. And so that’s what we’re gonna do.

What I’m doing right now is like right now, this month is starting to shift my attention from learning sales, to learning marketing. And it’s a whole world that we honestly haven’t figured out yet. We’re not really great at marketing. And I would say we don’t have a clear idea of how to do it in a way. That’s awesome. I mean, this podcast is a great marketing tool and similar to some ideas that we’ve had but kudos to you for kind of figuring that out and integrating it into how you go to market. So, so I’m, I’m a student, I’m all of a sudden, a student of marketing and I’m learning and I’m working with a coach and I’m but it’s a whole thing for me to learn. And I don’t know anything about it.

 

GREG:

Isn’t it fun? I, I find it’s, I find people that are like you, right. You’re always trying to figure it out. I find that fascinating. And, and what I, what I, what I, what I observe are intelligent people are always trying to figure it out. When I’m with people that think they have figured it out, it makes me crazy frustrated. I, they know it, they got it. Like there’s people in our business. They have it figured out I’ve been in the business for 36 years. I’m still trying to figure it out. By the way podcast. It’s not like I sat down to figure it out. Someone had asked me to be on a podcast five years ago, six years ago, seven years ago. I had no idea what it was. I come into the room. I’m like, what are we doing? And now that, then next thing you know, we have a podcast. It’s just, it’s, it’s also just being open to opportunities, but, but there is a real, the lifelong learner is key. And then knowing when to pivot, you know, we, we have evolved and we have evolved and we always say, oh my gosh, we are so much different than we were five years ago. And, and that is not to criticize what we were doing five years ago. It’s just, we’re gonna say that again in five years from now.

 

DARRIN:

Right.

 

GREG:

But, but knowing when to pivot and continue to learn is key, right?

 

DARRIN:

Yeah. It’s, it’s really ingrained pretty deeply in the Truefit culture is continuous improvement and kind of thinking about how we can always be better. That’s where the team construct came from. Yeah. That’s where I, I joke that, you know, our process is called Idea Launch it’s how do you go from an idea to a, to a finished product, a successfully successful commercial product. And I joke that we’re on like Idea Launch 7.0. You know, like we’re, we, we keep evolving it and we’re about to go through another cuz we keep learning. And you know, when we do something like integrate design and engineering, it changed the whole thing. We had ideal launch before design, but when we put those things together and we started working with integrated teams, that process went to the whole next level.

 

GREG:

Right.

 

DARRIN:

Super, super important. The value we’re able to bring to clients has grown substantially over that, over that time, because we have been learning about design. I’m an again, I’m an engineer. So I, I tend to jump to solutions too quickly. So John, John Beck, our director of product design, it is always like, Hey, let’s stay focused on making sure that we’re solving a real problem. It’s like, and, and that is a fun journey and a kind of a frustrating journey, because like you said, you do bump into those people who, you know, have deep domain expertise and they think they know what this product needs to do. And the journey that we take them on is to really validate some of those things. But also, we point out that, you know, a lot of those things are assumptions that you’re making that we should validate. Right. And sometimes we do run into scenarios where like, they think, oh, the product needs to do a, B and C. And we talk to users, we learn from the market and like C is really important, but a, like nobody’s gonna use that. Right. And so that is when I talk about like really being smart about investment of capital.

Those are the kind of things that we learn with people learn with our clients that saves them money in the long run. Because while I’m, I’m thinking of one, one client in particular who had this idea, you know, a, B and C, and like through the research, we found out that like, nobody’s gonna use a right. And it was kind of his pet feature. And he could, he could have been really upset about that or really depressed that his product vision wasn’t gonna come to reality. But I was like, I just saved you like hundreds of thousands of dollars of building something that nobody’s going use building the right product is way more important than building the product that’s in your head. So how do you discover what the right product is to build? And that’s the journey that we take people on. That’s what Ideal Launch is.

 

GREG:

As I listen to you, the integrity comes through. Clearly you understand your business, clearly it helps your client make a, a great decision, but you know what else I’m sitting or thinking, you know, I wanna work with people that think about our problems and come up with solutions even when we’re not together. My guess is if you’re at the Penguin game and you’re working with Confluence, you’re still thinking about right, you have an active mind and, and do you know what I mean? It’s like people, I, I think, I think that’s why people work with us. I mean, we continually are thinking about our clients. It’s not just the hour that we’re with you and you could just hear you listening. You’re always, you, you know, you have a very, a very active mind, very growth mindset.

So you’ve built an incredible firm. Let’s talk a little bit about outside your firm. Cause I also know you mentioned me mentoring and I hear people talk about mentoring. I hear people talking about network mentoring, networking, and really, I think being in the right ecosystem right. Is incredibly important. Right. And, and, and so let’s talk about how you built and by the way, for the listeners, think about your ecosystem. It is so challenging to be successful if you’re not in the right ecosystem. Right. I mean, if you want, you’ve gotta be around people like Darrin, you gotta be around people that are, that are thinking you gotta be. So how did you build that ecosystem?

 

DARRIN:

That’s interesting. Looking back on it, I, I, I had the privilege of starting out in a really strong ecosystem. So Penn United as a company was run by a group of leaders that were just fantastic. I mean, they were, they were trying to build a great company. They were integrating their faith and their work life. I learned a lot about that back in, back in those days. And so when I started Truefit, I kind of was, felt like I was a little on my own because I had been mentored by these guys. And I was in my, in my late twenties. I started Truefit when I was 29. At that time, I said, okay, I there’s a couple guys I wanna meet. And I started showing up downtown and I, I, I met, I chased down a guy named Fred Federoff. Many people from Pittsburgh will remember Fred. He was the, he did so much good for the city. He’s kind of an elder statesman of Pittsburgh. He passed on years ago, but I wanted to meet Fred. And I, so I chased him down at a seminar and I invited him to lunch. And Fred became a mentor of mine for 10 years. 10 plus years until his last day. He was, he was, he, I learned so much from him, a lunch with Fred was intense. He would just ask you questions the whole time, but they were such the right kind of penetrating questions and really made you think.

And so I’ve had a, over the years, I’ve had a series of relationships like that. Jay Roy, who was the president of federal home loan bank was a mentor of mine. We had lunch regularly for many years. I, I really credit a lot of the person that I’ve become to these guys. I get it, Bruce Bickle, another great. He was a, he was at PNC. Yeah. For a while. Bruce is an amazing, amazing guy. Some of these guys are still with us, some of these guys aren’t anymore, but these are, I think of these guys as the elder statesman of Pittsburgh. And I had the privilege of learning from them for many, many years. And big part of who I’ve become is, was very dependent on that and was shaped by them. So I think it’s always important to have people that are kind of older and further down the path.

And I would take the hardest questions of the day. I mean, being a leader is really, really hard and I there’s always a problem to solve. I, I was on a phone call right before I come over here, solving very hard problems about a, you know, a deal we’re doing with a large global company, being a leader is hard and you need to be able to have those conversations. I think it’s also important to have peers, kind of peer mentoring. So people that are in the same stage of the journey in the role that you’re in. So for probably two decades, I’ve had a monthly dinner with a group of CEOs. We all kind of see the world the same way, have the same belief system all in various stages of our journey as CEOs, but we have dinner every month. And I, that’s a kind of a wisdom council that I go to and I ask hard questions and I get good feedback. There’s, for-profit people, nonprofit people. There’s you know, it’s a diverse group. All I would say like-minded, but it’s important to have those kind of those people, particularly if you lead a company because being a CEO can be a very kind of lonely post. So it’s important to have those relationships.

And then I, I think it’s very important to be investing in next generation leaders. I think that’s super important. So a, a good mentoring ecosystem would be having a few people older, wiser, further down the road, having a few people that are in your role and having a few people that are next generation that you’re helping to navigate their navigate their, their course. And so there’s several people that have reached out to me over the years and said, Hey, will you meet with me? I always say yes. Like I always say yes, sometimes those relationships develop and become strong. We, we become great friends and we, you know, our families get to know each other. Sometimes this is one or two meetings and then you know, that doesn’t develop and that’s okay. You know, that’s, that’s, that’s fine. But I would say, you know, if I wouldn’t have chased down Fred, my life would’ve been poorer as a result of not having Fred’s influence. So if you’re a young person, I encourage my boys to do this. If you’re a young person, like find people that you wanna learn from and invite them to lunch and be prepared and ask them really good questions and see, see how that develops. So that’s been big for me as a, as a leader, as a Pittsburgher, it’s been, it’s been big.

 

GREG:

I think it’s essential. I hope everybody hear like, I, I, I, I’ve been blessed and privileged. I worked for American Funds for like 20 years. And so I was around some of the, you know, the best thinkers in this business. And I benefited from that for young people. Don’t be afraid to make that call. That one call can make a huge difference. In fact, today at 2:30, I’m meeting with a, I think it’s a junior to senior in college. He’s actually interning with a competitor and wants to come over. And so he set up a 2:30 meeting. And so it’s Friday afternoon, I’ve got 2:30. And so I’m gonna meet with him. I had someone else, you know, message me on LinkedIn. He was at Deloitte in in DC. And he was, he, I was in Florida, in Naples at our house. And I saw, I got a message coming in. He wants to get together. And I’m like, I wasn’t doing anything. I was watching TV outside by the pool. So I’m like, okay. And so here, he he’s working in our South Hills office, but here’s just a visual for all of, if you’re, and I know you, you said you, you, you, you went to a seminar. If you are at a seminar and the person on stage is someone you wanna meet, don’t walk to the exit, walk to the stage.

 

DARRIN:

Sure.

 

GREG:

It is amazing to me. Yeah. It’s amazing to me, like there’s a hundred people there and people are like, oh, I’d really like to meet that person. And then they walk to the exit, have a about you up on stage and say, hi, I’m Greg. And you’d be surprised how they respond, cuz no one does it.

 

DARRIN:

Right. Yeah. No, it’s, it’s, it’s critical. I always encourage people to make the ask. Right. Like make the ask.

 

GREG:

Wonderful. And then, you know, just a segue to the, the final part of this, you talked about the next generation of leaders and you know, you’ve created something bigger than you, which is, you know, which is I’m sure rewarding and, and fascinating and helpful humbling, a lot of and humbling and, and difficult. There’s always a problem to solve. I’ve told my wife for 30 some years, don’t worry next year will be easier. And she just laughs at this point, cuz it’s just not how it goes. Yep. But talk about your business. What do you think of when you think about your legacy?

 

DARRIN:

We spent a lot of time thinking about this. When we started the company, we started with a set of core values. You know, Jim Collins talked about the importance of core values and built to last. And I had read that in the early nineties. And so I, it was a value system that I learned at Penn United and that we started the company with. So when I started Truefit, I said, you know, here’s what we stand for. And people were, some people were like, that’s awesome. I want to join. And some people were like, not for me, that’s okay. But we were clear about our values. Recently within the last couple years, we’ve gotten really clear on the vision of the company and you know, kind of met with the broader team and you, you can find this on our website, but the, the, the high notes are, you know, we really do believe that great software helps people thrive. We’re building excellent teams, impactful software, successful businesses to be a catalyst for the common good. So the ingredients, there are excellent teams, impactful software, successful businesses so that people can thrive. That’s, that’s kind of the, the pillars of the, of the vision.

And so we’ve been asking ourselves the question, how do we have an exponential impact? It is not our goal to grow Truefit as big as possible. That is not, that is not the goal. In fact, you know, we think there’s some cultural limits because our, the culture of the company is so important to us. And as you grow, the culture changes. So I see all the time I would put us in a category of wanting, I think we’ll grow bigger than we are today, but I would put us in the category of being intentionally small to keep a super strong culture. But the question still remains. How do you have an exponential impact? So for example, let’s just take excellent teams. We’ve spent a lot of time making sure that our teams are constructed correctly, making sure that they’re working well, that they’re healthy, that people are taking that, that people are able to be effective. You know, it takes a lot of, you know, relational oil to keep a good team lubricated, right? So, so we, we’re very attentive to that.

And now we’re starting to have clients ask us, Hey, you know, we see how effective these Truefit teams are. Can you help us kind of grow our own team? And we have clients that are building teams that look exactly like a Truefit team in their company. So that’s, that’s a way of having an ex exponential impact because it reaches outside of our, our walls and really helps our clients be more successful. That was a key component by the way of the hard problem that I, you know, the call before this, that that was a key component of that conversation. How can we help these guys really be successful by helping them grow a team—

 

GREG:

With software?

 

DARRIN:

Right?

 

GREG:

So software, you know, personality, they analyze personalities, put the right diversity together.

 

DARRIN:

Well, I mean, keep in mind, we’re building products for other people, right? So we’re building a product that you are gonna own. Right?

 

GREG:

Right.

 

DARRIN:

So what, what, what do you need to maintain that product? Well, what do you need to grow that product? Software requires care and feeding, all software is never done. Right? A lot of people think, you know, I’m gonna build this thing and then it’s gonna build a set of features and it’s gonna be done. That’s not the way software works. It’s not the way the world works because everything’s always changing. So there’s, you’re gonna need to be adding new features over time. So it’s part of the educational process that we work with clients on, is helping them to understand that software’s never done that this is a, it’s got a life to it. You have to continue to work with it, the world of technology’s changing and you, can’t just, it’s not a static thing. It’s very much a dynamic evolving thing.

 

GREG:

Yeah. And in our business, it, it, so it feels like the standard is you solve a problem like that, right? Like mean now you solve a problem for a company, you solve a problem for a family or an individual. I think the next, the next level is you solve a problem. They haven’t even considered like that. That’s right. I mean, so you, like, in working with you with software, my understanding of what we need on software is probably pound comparison to what, you know, the software could do for our business. Right. And so it’s for, and say for, same for us, I mean, if a client wants to just buy some investments, you know, a lot of people could do that, but, but there’s another level of helping them maximize their lives and legacies. So it’s a different level.

 

DARRIN:

Right.

 

GREG:

And so, you know, I’m, I’m sitting here looking at my iPad. I never sat there and thought, you know what? I really would like, I would like an iPad because it, iPad didn’t exist. Right? So, so for you, I would think the challenge in like our lunch and meeting with me, it’s like Greg thinks what he, he knows what software he needs. Greg has no idea. How does Darrin create a vision that Greg hasn’t even thought about?

 

DARRIN:

Right. So we, we see that as a partnership that we have with our clients. We have created hundreds of commercial software products over 25 years. And so we’re bringing all of that perspective.

 

GREG:

Yeah.

 

DARRIN:

All of those ideas from multiple industries. So our, our portfolio is very diverse. We work in healthcare; we work in energy. We work in manufacturing. We, we work in a variety. So getting insights from all those different places, you know, connected device. We talked a little bit about that. Yeah. I don’t know if there’s a connected device for financial services. Maybe not, but you know, we’re, we’re, those are the ideas that we’re using through a partnership to help create a product that will create new and exciting value for people. Right?

 

GREG:

Yep.

 

DARRIN:

So that’s, that’s, that’s what, that’s what makes my job so fun because I get to have those conversations every day.

 

GREG:

You say fun. Like, I, I love your passion. I mean, I, I love that. I love that you run the, the, the business on values. I, I, I, I find your vision, fascinating. Your passion comes through. I mean, I’m sure it comes through on the podcast in person. It really comes through also. So thank you.

 

Thank you for being a leader. Thank you for being a leader in the industry. Thank you. In your industry, thank you for mentoring young people, as you, as you mentioned. And, you know, it’s, it’s, it’s interesting to talk, hear you talk about pivoting and resilience and you’ve created a wonderful business and it sounds like there’s great years ahead. So thank you so much. I really, really do appreciate the time.

 

DARRIN:

Oh, you’re very welcome. It was an honor and it’s you know, let’s continue the conversation.

 

GREG:

Let’s do it.

 

DARRIN:

I’m I, like I said, it’s, it’s, this is a very fun conversation. I love doing that. And I’m looking forward to learning more about your business.

 

GREG:

I look forward to our conversation. Thanks, Darrin.

 

DARRIN:

Thank you, Greg.

 

GREG:

Thank you for listening to the Imagine That podcast. We hope you enjoyed this episode and welcome you to reach out to Confluence Financial Partners with your questions and comments. If you’d like to hear more episodes, head over to confluencefp.com/podcasts, or find us wherever you get your podcasts.

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Imagine That
Episode 24

Planning an Extraordinary Retirement | Episode 24

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How do you cap off a lifetime of hard work? With many people retiring healthier, heartier and wealthier than generations before us, retirement can be a chance for adventure, an opportunity to make the most of the next chapter of our lives.

In this episode, host and Confluence Financial Partners CEO, Greg Weimer, introduces us two people living out an extraordinary retirement. Meet Pat and Michelle, whose skillful retirement planning has given them the freedom and flexibility to follow their feeling hearts — all across the U.S. For anyone who has ever considered following a different retirement path, don’t miss this episode.

Confluence Financial Partners — Planning an Extraordinary Retirement | Episode #24

How do you cap off a lifetime of hard work? With many people retiring healthier, heartier and wealthier than generations before us, retirement can be a chance for adventure and an opportunity to make the most of the next chapter of our lives. In this episode, host and Confluence Financial Partners CEO, Greg Weimer, introduces us two people living out an extraordinary retirement. Meet Pat and Michelle, a couple whose skillful retirement planning has given them the freedom and flexibility to follow their feeling hearts — all across the U.S. You’ll hear about their travels and adventures — and learn how they brought their dreams to life. For anyone who has ever considered following a different retirement path, don’t miss this episode.

Greg: Hello, and welcome to the Imagine That podcast. I’m your host, Greg Weimer, founder, partner, and wealth manager at Confluence Financial Partners. Each month, we’ll explore new ways to help you maximize your life and your legacy and meet some extraordinary people along the way. So if you’re looking to get more out of your life today and legacy tomorrow, let’s get started.

At Confluence Financial Partners, helping people maximize their lives and legacies is truly one of the most rewarding things we do. You know, if you think about it, to really enjoy your life, we need to figure out how to go through transitions well, and cuz we all have transitions in our lives and really navigating from one part of your one chapter of your life to another chapter of your life is really an art. And I have had the privilege of getting to know Pat and Michelle. Pat Gaunt and Michelle Bergeron have been friends of mine, we were just trying to figure out when, since the early nineties we’ve known each other and it’s been so much fun to watch these two friends go through transitions together and as a couple. So Pat, Michelle, welcome to Imagine That podcast.

Pat: Thank you for having us.

Michelle: Thanks Greg. Great to be here.

Greg: So the first time I met them, yes, I worked with, I worked with Michelle and that’s how I got to know Pat. I watched you both be road warriors and travel, not for enjoyment, right? Not for enjoyment at all. And then I’ve also watched you. We’re gonna get to like how you can really like love your retirement and think differently about it. They’ve helped me think differently about my retirement. They’ve inspired me, but, but let’s start with cuz I think the first chapter was you two were road warriors. Do you wanna just give a little color and talk about how you both traveled and how you stayed connected while you were in different states?

Michelle: You know, we actually met on an airplane on a Sunday night when I was starting my week and Pat was ending his. And so that was sort of the beginning of our relationship. We both for, oh, over 25 years pretty much full time. And we spent lots of time apart with little time together, but it was something that was a part of a lifestyle that we had chosen, that we knew would be for a finite period of time that we planned for to ultimately allow us to do what we’re doing now and that is have other interests and other things that have been filling our lives.

Greg: Do you wanna just talk a little bit about, as you are traveling into different states, how you knew it wasn’t permanent and that was important to you?

Pat: Greg, for us, it was, it was really a means to an end. We knew that when we left on Monday morning, we typically wouldn’t see each other until Friday night. And we just knew that was the lifestyle that we had chosen really, because it was a means to an end. We knew that by, you know, sacrificing other elements of our lives and, and traveling and working hard during the week that that would enable us to have successful careers. It would enable us to plan for our financial future and you know, to eventually, you know, reap the benefits of that, which is what we’re doing now. We’re very excited with the things that we’re doing now.

Greg: But that root Pat, what you just said, that root of what you just said is really important because one of the things that happen when people don’t transition well, their job becomes their identity. That does not mean— I watched you two, you two put it all on the field and worked a hundred percent. I mean, I watched it. You guys were totally committed, but, but you knew that there was something greater out there, but you still gave 100% to your careers.

Michelle: Yeah. It was, it was very exciting. It was something that we planned for. We knew that the careers that we had chosen were gonna require us to spend a lot of time doing them without a lot of extra time to do other things that many of our friends and people did, but it felt like it was worthwhile. So we planned financially so that we could be fully independent, hopefully by the age of 50. We achieved that sooner. We were very, very fortunate to then allow us to take the next step and take a look at the list of things that we had put together, of things individually and things collectively that we had always wanted to do, but never had the time for. So it was a really exciting transition to be able to venture out into some other things that we had not had the time to experience.

Greg: So Michelle, do you remember we were in a, I don’t know if you were in the room or not. We were in a room; it was Los Angeles. I won’t say the person’s last name, but his name was John and he got up in front of the group and he said, here’s why I’m retiring. And he said, he, when he travels, he sees people walking by him and they, I forget how he said it. And he said, they’re smiling and they look happy. And I just want to go figure out what they’re smiling about and what’s making them happy and I’m gonna go do that.

Michelle: I remember it well. And I think it was very inspiring. And in fact for us, we were very fortunate in our first year of retirement. We met some new folks who have now become our closest friends and they made a comment to was that really stuck and resonated. And they said that, to them, the whole idea of a fulfilled life was to follow your feeling heart. And to Pat and I, that really meant doing things that brought joy, excitement, enthusiasm, passion, and fulfillment. And it really got us thinking about what the next steps were. And so there were things that we had, as I mentioned planned to learn to do together. We learned boat and RVing and scuba diving and things just to name a few. And then it gave us chances to do things individually that were things that had been on our bucket list for a long time. And so it was an opportunity to do things that we just didn’t have time for before. And given the fact that we never know how long we’re gonna be on this earth, it seemed like we needed to take advantage of as much as we could now, while we still could.

Greg: When did you start? So if you said like this is the retirement date, this is the moment it all happens. How far back before that, did you really start to plan?

Pat: Geez, I, early on in our marriage and particularly with Michelle’s background in in fin, in the financial world really from 1991, when we got married, that was a really big part of our plan was, you know, proper management of our finances and, and saving for the future. And because neither one of us really identified ourselves that, you know, we are what our job is to us. It was, it was a means to an end, although we were passionate and we loved what we both did at the end of the day. And I’ll just speak for me, is it that wasn’t who I was in total as a person. So it was really, you know, we’re gonna make these sacrifices, we’re gonna work hard, we’re gonna travel and in our jobs, but at the end of the day, it’s, it’s really the means to the end. And so it really goes back to early on in our marriage of saving for the future. And, and that allowed us to dream big, thinking about the future that we knew that, you know, we, we had a proper financial plan and that allowed us to continue to dream. And as the years went on, we were able to dream bigger because of those those plans and, and sacrifices.

Greg: I think what you just said, that it’s interesting how many people don’t, they don’t really plan their life or, or, or they have like a dream of what they were like, like what they, they, they have a dream of what they want their life to be. They have this dream but they don’t have a plan. So I see people that can think of 30,000 feet and can dream. I see people that are pretty good at living their daily lives. I don’t see a lot of people that match their daily activities with their dream. And, and the fact that you guys started dreaming about it earlier and actually putting plans together, I think that is a huge lesson for people listening that should not be taken for granted. So, so I think that was one lesson you just said, Pat, the second one is you, you were all in on your careers, but you didn’t let it define you.

And, and whether you see it happen with executives like you guys were, or whether you see it happen with athletes, right? I mean, you become Joe from the Steelers. And then all of a sudden number 34 is no longer on your back. And now you’re just Joe and you don’t know how to behave as Joe. So it makes the transition so much harder. I’m not surprised to hear you say the things you say, because it’s allowed you guys to transition into a wonderful next chapter of your life. And I think, for people listening, those nuggets are life changing. And, and, and, and now there were some, there were some intervention and some coincidence, divine intervention, whatever, whatever you may, whatever, whatever you may wanna call it. Tell everyone about the September 11th event, tell ’em on September 11th. What happened? I think that is just beyond consequ— beyond coincidental.

Michelle: 9-11 was an extraordinary, it was just an extraordinary day in that it was an odd day that we both took a cab to the airport. Pat tending intending to go to Dallas. And I was intending to go to San Diego. We were both up in the air when the FAA downed all planes, given what was happening in New York and in other places around the country. And it turned out that we both landed in Dallas and it was a very, as you can all know, and remember, it was a very, very scary time getting off the airplane, seeing the televisions on with buildings that were blowing up. And of course, knowing that each of us had been in the air and wondering where the other was. Fortunately within an hour, we were able to find each other and get together despite phones not working and everything else.

And like many people we spent the next few days glued together. In this case, we were holed up in a hotel trying to figure out how we would get home, watching everything on television. And I believe for both of us, I can say that it was really a, an earth-shattering event that got us think even more about the important things in life and what we really wanted to do with the rest of the time we had on earth. So we had talked previously about, you know, the age of 50 was when we were planning to be financially free, but we also decided at that time that if things weren’t as fun as we had hoped they would be, or if the world was that we needed to make sure that we adapted to make our time here on earth. Exactly what we hoped it would be. And so it was it was a very sobering time and something that was, I think, very instrumental in us helping plan our next chapter.

Greg: And, and the unusual part, you guys were both living, if I remember, you both were in Atlanta, then you, you guys lived in Atlanta.

Michelle: We did.

Greg: And, and you were in a hotel in?

Michelle: Dallas.

Greg: Dallas, Dallas. Yeah. So what’s the chance of that. Like, here you go. You’re both, you’re both grounded and you’re both grounded at the same airport in Dallas with time to, you know, contemplate the importance of accelerating your dreams, which I think is just really, really interesting. The other thing about September 11th, I think about this a lot and I don’t know why. I mean, it just, it feels like to me, in some ways it was yesterday and Michelle, I think it was you that just said like you, we just don’t know how long we’re going to be, going to be on this planet. And I feel like September 11th was yesterday. And when you think about that, that was 21 years ago, roughly 21 years. And so then I look at my life and I say, okay, it’s 21 years went like that. Like, just like that. And if that’s how much longer I have to have energy and passion and live my dream, it gives you a sense of urgency. And I, I don’t think we have to be impatient, but it gives us a sense of urgency to show how, you know, everybody talks about how fast life goes, but I don’t think we hear it.

And so we don’t really embrace every minute and understand, you know, when we look back, are we gonna say like, you know what, just like you did in your career, but in your, in the next chapter of life, did I leave it all on the field? Did I really do everything I wanted to do? So, so here you are, you’re realizing you’ve planned for this your whole life. You’re deciding to go onto your next chapter of your life.

Tell us about how you transitioned from flying all over the place, business. Did you detox? Was it easy? You know, what did you do? I mean, what did you do to all of a sudden become, Hey, we think we’re gonna buy an RV and drive down the coast. Like, like that, that’s a . I mean, by the way, that’s the kind of calls you get when you’re friends with Pat and Michelle. Hey, you know what, the boat thing, we’re gonna talk about all this, but like, like the boat thing, we’re gonna not do the boat thing for a while. We think we gonna do an RV and it’s like, Hey, you know, we’re in Oregon, we’re looking at the Carolinas. You know what we think the Carolinas would be cool. So it’s just like so much fun to be your friend. So how did you transition from, you know, the business executives to, and I don’t want to, but a little bit of a free spirit like you guys are, and I love that. How’d you do that?

Pat: That, Greg, to answer your question for me, it was, it was an easy transition. I loved my career. I loved the people and the companies that I worked with, but I always dreamed about that next chapter in life. And so I had things that I was ready to jump into and devote more time and energy to, from motorcycling, to mountain biking, to fly fishing, to leisure travel, as opposed to business travel. And so to me, it was just one chapter closed, another, another opened up, and it, it allowed for more adventure, more, more travel developing new and different friendships being able to have a more balanced life in terms of the physical, mental, emotional, spiritual components, and to get those more in alignment. And so all in all, for me, it was, it was a very easy transition.

I never identified myself as the person that had a particular job title or particular job responsibility. And so it was, it was a little easier for me to, to let that go, you know, with a great deal of gratitude, but also looking forward rather than in the rear-view mirror. And, and that has served me well over the last bunch of years since. And I always say, you know, once you retire, you’re not retiring from life. You’re just retiring from, from a job. And there’s other challenges. There’s other adventures. There’s other things to learn and do and dedicate yourself to.

Greg: People look at retirement like death. I mean, it’s like, well, I gotta be all in cash when I retire. It’s like, really? You’re retiring. You’re not dying. Like you’re retiring. You don’t need to get all cash just cuz you’re going to retire. But Michelle, what was the, what was the transition like for you?

Michelle: You know, it wasn’t as easy as it was for Pat. He had retired two years prior to me, I had made a commitment at work that I would stay for a two-year assignment and two years to the day is when I retired. But it gave me, listening to Pat every day and all of the activities and things that he was doing, gave me an opportunity to really flush out more what things interested me. I found the issue was more of how to slow down because I was so used to having a schedule out four to six months, just like you, Greg, where you knew you were gonna be on what day and doing what at which time. I started to just completely book myself, which at first worked fine. So the week after I retired, I went because I was very, I’m very interested in mind, body movement modalities, and so I went for two certifications for four weeks for the beginning of my training. And then Pat and I went on what was planned as a four-week National Park tour while we were out, we realized that why did we have to come home? I, we had just put constraints on ourselves and realized we didn’t need to. So we stayed out another few weeks, but for me it was just more, more of a, of slowing down. And I think taking some of those steps by looking at some of our interests and then traveling started to allow me to be more present and slow down from the pace. So much so that, that now we wonder kind of how we did it all back then. It’s been extraordinary.

Greg: Yeah, it is. It is. There’s an addiction to busy. And it’s an ego filling thing. It’s an addiction to busy. Okay, so now you’re deciding you’re in Atlanta, you’re ready for your adventure. What do you do to decide what you’re gonna do, where you’re gonna move? What’s the first adventure?

Pat: Well, the first thing we did when we both retired is we bought a plant and we joke about that and it sounds silly, but when Michelle and I were traveling all the time, we never had plants or pets or you know, so if I wrote a book on retirement, the first chapter would be titled, Time to Buy a Plant. And so we, we laugh about that. That’s

Greg: That’s cool. That is really cool.

Pat: Because you can, you can start like, wow, now we can actually have a plant. We can actually have a pet. We can actually do some of these things that were always put on the back burner. And those that back burner then becomes the front burner and that’s what makes it so exciting. And we’ve been in Atlanta for, for 20 years, you know, we had traveled in our careers all over, I think at last count, I think Michelle is one state ahead of me. I’m at 46 states and Michelle’s at 47, if I remember that correctly, but we finally just opened our, opened ourselves up to where do we wanna go? Where, what do we wanna do? What kind of exploring do we want to do? And early in my career, I had lived in Colorado for a couple of years and loved living out west and really tried to talk to Michelle about the lifestyle of living out west.

And so we, we just decided to take a road trip and we headed west visited Sedona, Arizona, and some of the surrounding areas and fell in love with it. We ended up buying a home there. We spent two years there and that was really the first time we had given ourselves permission to live place that was not dictated by our jobs. And also knowing full well that if we’re gonna move here, it doesn’t mean we have to be here the rest of our lives. And that was such a freeing feeling for us that, you know, Hey, we, there’s something here for us to, to learn, to enjoy. There’s wonderful people to meet. Sedona is one of the most beautiful places on the planet. And but we knew that after we spent a couple of years there, if that wasn’t where we wanted to be after that, then we were gonna take that experience and those memories and we were going to give ourselves permission to look elsewhere.

And that’s really what we did. And that’s what we’ve continued to do is that as we’ve made these, these decisions in terms of getting into boating or getting into RVing or living in other parts of the country, that that’s great for now, what we make the best decision we can with, with what our interest and desires are now. But that doesn’t mean that we can’t change and, and do other things in the future. And to me, that’s been one of the most freeing things about being retired is giving yourself permission to try new and different things and to make course corrections along the way.

Greg: There’s a life lesson in there. Also. I think it’s, I think it’s a big thought, not all decisions are permanent. I just watched, like I watched college kids think about where they’re going to go off to school or high school kids thinking about where they’re gonna go off to school. And it’s so much pressure on these kids. And there could be more than one great decision. And if you, and if you go and there’s a better place for you and the, and you can change, but I think so many people look at decisions like one-and-done, can’t change it. It not only leads to potentially bad decisions, stress, it can paralyze you for making any decisions. So I think it’s just so cool that you guys are like, okay, this is a great, this is a great spot for us now, but it doesn’t mean we’re gonna be here forever, you know, and I’ve watched you guys keep doing that and it, and it’s it, I can, it, I can’t, cause I’m just not like that. I can’t imagine I can’t imagine how freeing it is. How about you Michelle? I mean, what, how did you think about it?

Michelle: Well, you remember Mark Freeman made a comment of Yogi Berra’s comment, When there’s a fork in the road, take it. No decision is permanent. And we’ve just found that you can, when you, when you veer off and just do what feels right for you at the time, there are all kinds of adventures that you can have and different people that you can meet and different experiences. And that’s what we’ve also found with the various hobbies that we’ve done, you know, as we got into boating and met all different kinds of people who have talked about all of these other places that we need to go and experience that we’ve been able to do. So, and now that we’re thinking of leaving Oregon, where we’ve been for nine years now, and we’re talking about the next spot, we have all these other places to consider. If we wanna continue boating or do we wanna go some of the places where we can RV more to, or to, you know, other states that are of interest.

Michelle: And so it’s just incredibly freeing when you just allow yourself that flexibility. And again, it was a complete turnaround from what we did in our careers, because everything was always pre-planned in terms of where you went to, where you were going to be, and everything was always scheduled. And to now have the flexibility to wake up and say, Hey, what do you feel like doing today? Or I really like this place that we’re visiting, just like we recently did, we set out for what we thought was gonna be a four to six, six-week trip, and we’ve been gone for over four months. We just got home. I mean, it was really exciting. So it’s, it’s been great. And it’s been a learning process. Again, for me, who was so used to being scheduled for my entire career, but it’s been a blast.

Greg: So, so you, you were gone for four months and you took your RV, right?

Michelle: Yep.

Greg: And how long did you, how, when did you buy the

Pat: RV? Well, we bought this RV in October of last year and you know, with, with all the crazy, with all the craziness that’s, that’s been going on.

Greg: So I love that. Wait for, for, cuz I don’t know when the, I don’t know when this will air, like they were gone for four months in an RV and they’ve only owned the RV for like six months. Is that about right?

Pat: Yeah, that’s it.

Michelle: Yep.

Greg: That’s, that’s the part that like most people, you say that like casually, most people are like, wait, wait, wait, what? They’re gone for four months. Like they must do that every year. No, that’s just this adventure. I, I remember— and by the way, Michelle quick on, on Mark Freeman, this is another life lesson, Mark Freeman, Michelle and I had the privilege of working with him and he was such a smart guy and a great presenter. And, and remember he said the biggest obstacle to a good investment is the expectation of a perfect one. And you can change that with everything, right? Let’s go back to decisions. The biggest obstacle to a good decision is the expectation of a perfect one. And so like, you’re saying, okay, let’s do the RV, right. It it’s a good decision. It may not be perfect forever, but we’re going to enjoy it for the last four months.

Pat: That’s absolutely right. And, and once Michelle and I stopped listening to our self-imposed limitations is when we really started to experience more joy more fulfillment because you know, you just, you, you, you lead with your heart in, in these kinds of decisions and you know, what’s going to, what’s gonna give us the greatest joy. What’s gonna give us the greatest fulfillment and you lead with your heart and if it feels good in your heart, then you know, it’s the right thing to do at that moment in time. Doesn’t mean you can’t change your mind down the road. It doesn’t mean you can’t, you know, take that life experience and what you learned from it and apply that elsewhere. And, and that has been one of the greatest things is just pushing that those self-imposed limitations aside and saying, Hey, let’s, let’s do this. Let’s have fun.

You know, we bought our RV last October and with the craziness that’s been going on in the world the last couple of years and travel restrictions and we have two wonderful, beautiful dogs that we love to have with us all the time. And it was a great way to, to get back on the road from a leisure point of view and to experience new places and new people and to kind of bring our house with us. And we set out on a four to six month, or four-to-six-week trip and we were gone 130 days and , and we, we got home a couple days ago. And it’s like, we couldn’t believe we were gone that long, but it was a lot of time that was just filled with joy and adventure and meeting new people and giving ourselves permission just to, to follow our feeling heart as far as what felt good for us at that moment in time.

Greg: I just wanna add some color to this. Cause I’ve also watched you, you guys, as you’re going through your adventure, you’re incredibly logical. Like, I’ll give you an example. Like what I remember with, with you guys have the boat and then you have the house and you’re saying, okay, like, we’re looking at how much we’re enjoying the boat. We’re looking how much, what the resources the boat takes. We’re looking how much, how many resources, the, you know, what the resources you allocate towards the house. And I remember you saying, like, it doesn’t feel like we should have this house. And, and, and maybe we should make a change with a house. And, and so it’s, it’s making the decision. You’re free to make the decision, but it, but it doesn’t mean you don’t, you aren’t always learning from the experience and then maybe navigating and making it a little bit better.

And that, and I think that’s what’s unique that you’re always just trying to figure out, you know, how do you maximize your enjoyment? So, you know what, I, think’s fun. I remember the conversation and this is probably you guys like really were, you know, loving adventures. I was in an airport. I was in Naples. I was talking to Michelle. And, and I remember Michelle, I dunno if you remember this conversation, but you’re like, Hey, we’re thinking about a boat. And remember, and I’m like, you’re thinking about a boat. So tell me about the boat. And, and it was just like, it was, it wasn’t, some people buy a boat. You weren’t — this was about a lifestyle. This was, and, and, and tell ’em about how you thought about, tell our listeners how you thought about why you did that in that part of your life. And what was that about? How long did you do that, three years? Is that about right?

Michelle: We actually, actually started boating on a lake when we moved to Atlanta. Pat and I were both there for our careers and it wouldn’t have been a place that we would’ve really chosen to live. And so we were trying to find something that in the small amount of time that we had together, that we could learn together, that we could enjoy. And so we started boating on Lake Lanier with smaller, well, maybe it wasn’t such a small boat because we started sleeping on it and learned how to live in some small quarters. And we did that for a number of years. And then when we retired and left Atlanta, we thought our boating days were done. And so we bought an RV, we went and traveled places. And then we decided that that wasn’t really what we wanted to do. So we sold the RV and we were looking for the next adventure.

And we went to Seattle because we now had the free time available to us. And a friend had said that there was a great concert that we should go see for Kenny Chesney. And so we drove you know, a day’s drive to Seattle to see the concert. And we just decided to stay a few extra days. In staying a few extra days, we started seeing all the marinas with these really big boats. And we started to question where these boats could really go. So we started stopping in and talking to people and realized that we could go all the way to BC. And ultimately, we could go all the way to Alaska if we chose. And that seemed really exciting to us. So we started researching and talking to you about finances and gee, if we do this then and what, just how exciting that could be. And so it has been an extraordinary time for us. We have had an absolute blast with the boat. Had it not been for things happening with COVID and everything else that shut a lot of things down for us, we would probably still be doing it. But then at the same time, it’s been really fun having swapped out and now doing the RV. And who knows we may boat again, we would love to, and we’re looking at a way to possibly do both. So we’ll, we’ll see what happens next,

Greg: By the way, for, for folks listening also, and this isn’t a commercial, this is a plea to maximize your life. Your financial plan should be organized around these adventures. So, so I think so many people have this flat line idea of I’m gonna save my I’m gonna retire. I’m gonna make X. X will. I’m gonna, I’m gonna take X outta my portfolio. X will never change. And it, you know, whatever, and I’m gonna die at like 94.2 years, whatever that is. And, and that’s just not life. It should be way, that’s just a calculator. You don’t need a financial advisor to do that. What you really should be thinking about is, okay, so wait a minute, if from 60 to 78, I’m gonna really go, I’m gonna really have more adventures probably than 78 to 88. You, you should think about that in your plan and you should allocate differently and we don’t need to go deep into it.

But I would just say to people that— make sure the exciting thing of your portfolio, and by the way, the exciting thing for us is helping your portfolio support your adventures. And so if you don’t have adventures in your portfolio, I’d say you’re missing something. If you and your family like to go to Hilton Head for every year. And that, and that’s really special to you, I would ask why you’re only going one time. Let’s make sure that your financial plan really supports the adventure of your life. So you can maximize your life and legacy here. Here’s one of the things that I’m telling you, I know I couldn’t do, I don’t know how many people could. Tell, and I know the website, I think you said it doesn’t even exist anymore. Tell people about how you thought about the, you got on the website and how you picked one of the locations where you actually moved to.

Pat: Back in 2012. We had been in Sedona for a couple of years and really enjoyed our time there, but we were ready for some more adventure. We had started to put down roots there, but then we realized that perhaps that wasn’t the best place, long term for us. The summer, the weather in the summer was, was a little too extreme for us. So Michelle had found this great website and where you could go online, and we did this independent of each other, and you could answer a series of questions. And I think there were like 20 different questions. You could answer about your interest in life. What, you know, if you like the outdoors, what kind of weather do you like? What kind of travel do you like? What, you know, all kinds of lifestyle questions.

And Michelle and I went online and did that independent of each other, and we printed out our results. And then we sat down and we pulled out a map of the United States, and I’ll never forget this. Michelle had a pink highlighter and she, on the map, highlighted every area, every town on this map that had come out from this survey that was recommended from the survey. And as, as fortune would have it, I would say probably 70%, probably 70% of the areas, we had had both come out on our survey results, which made it a lot easier. And then from there we got in the car and we hit the road and where we decided to visit several of these areas along the way. And all of them were on the Western part of the United States. We ended up finding Bend, Oregon, and that’s, we fell in love with it.

And I, we didn’t make it to the rest of our stops on the map. We just fell in love with Bend, Oregon. And, and then that’s how we ended up in Sisters, right outside of Bend. But it was really, it was just, we looked at it as another adventure that, we love Sedona, but Hey, there’s more out there for us to experience. Life’s too short. Let’s get out and experience some other areas. And we’ve been here almost 10 years now in Sisters, Oregon. It’s been just a wonderful place to live. We’ve had some really wonderful adventures and great memories here, but we also started reconsidering, looking back on our lives, what have been the best memories, the most significant memories of our lives. And we found that most of those memories really centered around adventure and trying new things, going different places new hobbies. And so now we’re, we’re once again, kind of reassessing, you know, do we need to have a big home base in Sisters, Oregon, or can we downsize this physical component of our lives and spend more time enjoying adventure and travel while we’re physically able to do it. So that’s kind of where we’re headed right now. We don’t know where it’ll take us, but we’re just gonna, we’re kind of following our feeling heart as we’re embracing this, this new chapter.

Greg: I’m encouraged by this. I think it, I think it it’s inspiring because so many of us are hesitant and I may even use the word fearful of trying new things. And so we all wish we went and, you know, they talk about in your death, people talk about they, they, they regret things they, they, they should have done not the things they’ve done. They wish they would’ve done more. Lessons learned. And how, how long have you guys been, been retired again? It’s been how many years?

Pat: I retired in ninet— in 2007.

Greg: And, and Michelle, when were you?

Michelle: Two years later.

Greg: If you guys could give lessons learned, you know, folks listening, you guys have had great adventures. What are a couple bullet points that you would encourage people to really think about as they plan their adventures?

Pat: Well, for me, the older I get, the more precious time becomes certainly, and in time we don’t know individually how much time we all have left here in this physical form and my advice or my thoughts would be to enjoy every day, embrace every day, embrace adventure, embrace change, embrace new things, look back on your life and, and pursue those things that give you the greatest joy, the greatest pleasure. Certainly not suggesting that the decisions that we have made in terms of travel and places we lived is the right path for, for anyone else. But for us, that’s what fits, that’s what works. But don’t impose limitations on your views, on your life, on your, on your decisions, to experience life in your own personal way, whatever that may be.

Michelle: And for me, I would say, find what it is that inspires you aside from your career. What other things really fill you with joy and love. And, and for us, it’s being together and having our dogs with us and having adventure, but everybody’s got other things that are exciting and that fill their heart. And to me, it’s do those things. Now. We don’t know how much time we have. And so live every day as if it’s your last and think about the, the adventures, the fulfillment, the excitement that you can have, and the enthusiasm of trying something new, you know, sometimes trying something new is a bit scary, but the scariness always comes up with much better, at least in, in our opinion, with, with wider views of things. Bigger experiences. A whole lot more fun. And we’re, we’re just loving it. That’s what I would say.

Greg: So what are the, some of the things you think about when you make these decisions?

Pat: Well, I can say that as, as we made these, these life decisions that, you know, certainly the financial component is a big part of, of many of these decisions in terms of where you’re gonna live and what hobbies you’re gonna enjoy. And, you know, our process has been to follow our feeling heart, but then we also have to, you know, make wise financial decisions. And we haven’t made any of these large decisions, where, where we live, or, you know, a boat or an RV or whatever, without looking at our financial plan and can that accommodate our, our interests and desires moving forward.

Michelle: I would say given my financial background, I’m always the one thinking, wait a minute, can we afford this? I love Pat’s comment that he says often is, which is dream big, and let’s just throw it against the wall and see if it sticks. And so, you know, we can kind of come up with these great ideas and thoughts and ways to have enjoyment and spend our life and do something really big. But then we have the ability to do a back check, to see whether or not they’re really is a potential to do so, still safely allowing us to have the comfortable retirement.

Greg: You guys are inspiring. Pat, Michelle, we are honored to have a front row seat to watch your adventures.

We appreciate the friendship and you are, you are truly inspiring. I have a couple notes and I’m just gonna do bullet points that, that that I heard you say: one, career. Have balance, have hobbies. It’ll make you better. Don’t let it define you. Two, have a life plan. Think about what you want your life to really be and plan. Decisions — now some are, but many are not permanent. So just enjoy that it could be a good decision. It doesn’t need to be a perfect decision, but it may just be a great decision for that moment. Four. I know we hear it, let’s listen into it. Life is short. Life is short. Let’s challenge each other to maximize our lives because it’s short. We use the example of September 11th. Unfortunately it goes quickly. And then the last thing, Michelle, is one of the last things you just said, and that is try something new. At the end of this podcast, the thing we could do is has everybody just try something new that you’re really going to enjoy. We would all have more enriched lives. So Pat, Michelle, thank you so much for the conversation today. I think we will all have a little bit more enjoyment in our lives because of it.

Thank you for listening to the Imagine That podcast. We hope you enjoyed this episode and welcome you to reach out to Confluence Financial Partners with your questions and comments. If you’d like to hear more episodes, head over to confluencefp.com/podcasts, or find us wherever you get your podcasts.

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