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  • Driving Success: Greg Norton | Episode 7

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    Buckle up! We’re about to take a spin behind the scenes of one of our region’s most successful automobile dealerships. Join host and Partner of Confluence Financial Partners, Greg Weimer, as he talks cars, business, and life with Greg Norton, sole owner, and operator of South Hills Honda.

    You’ll find out how Greg Norton managed to launch his company at the start of one of the most severe financial crises in recent history and how he managed to thrive through it all (spoiler alert: excellent customer service). You’ll also get practical tips on understanding prices and negotiating for the best deal, whether you’re buying or leasing a new vehicle. For those interested in how to achieve success, in selling cars or anything else, tune in.

    Confluence Financial Partners — Driving Success: Greg Norton | Episode #7rnrnGreg: One point six trillion dollars is lost by companies in the U.S. because of poor customer experience.rnrnImagine that.rnrnSOURCE: According to Accenture, $1.6 trillion is lost by companies in the U.S. due to customers switching as a result of poor customer service.”rnrnWelcome to the Imagine That Podcast. You should listen to today’s podcast if you are interested in any of the three following topics. One: how to excel in difficult times. Two: do you want to receive great service from automobile dealerships? Or three: you want to walk into the next car dealership, a little more educated so you can enjoy the experience.rnrnToday we’re fortunate to have Greg Norton with us. Greg is the owner of South Hills Honda. So welcome, Greg.rnrnGreg N.: Thank you, Greg.rnrnGreg: Yeah, I’ve known Greg for a while and one of the things we were talking about actually before we started today is that sometimes owning a car dealership, or being in the car business, comes with a certain connotation that can be frustrating. I would argue that also in our industry, sometimes it’s the same connotation, and it’s frustrating. So, I’ve really enjoyed watching you grow. I’ve watched you setting a different standard in that business, and I’ve really enjoyed watching how you have helped people buy vehicles as more of a consultant than a salesperson. So, we’re delighted to hear from you today. We’re delighted to learn from you. And I think it’s interesting also that Greg came in from Philadelphia and started his business in Pittsburgh by starting South Hills, bought a previous dealership, changed the name of it, it’s now called South Hills Honda.rnrnAnd he did that in December — correct me if I’m wrong— of 2007.rnrnGreg N.: That’s correct.rnrnGreg: Now, if anyone remembers — he bought the dealership and the next several years were very, very difficult. Right? We were hit by a recession. And Greg, I just want to share with you, I actually.rnrnWent through and tried to determine and figure out, is it unusual that someone comes in and starts or buys a business in a difficult time and has success?rnrnSo, I’m going to share with you a couple of names. All of these organizations were started in difficult times, which leads us to the conclusion that in tough times, good companies make incredible headway. You may recognize a couple of these names. Apple, Chevron, Disney, Enterprise Car Rental, Exxon, FedEx, Ju0026J, Microsoft, Southwest Airlines, and this little grocery store called Whole Foods. There’s something about starting in a difficult time. You did it in 2007 and in the first ten years, correct me if I’m wrong, you actually doubled the sales of the dealership.rnrnGreg N.: That is correct. Even though in 2007, I didn’t realize that it was the first official month of the recession, but as ’08 became increasingly more difficult, and certainly in the early months, I started to wonder whether I had a just made a catastrophic mistake in leaving Philadelphia pretty decent a situation.rnrnGreg: And you were COO of a couple of different dealerships.rnrnGreg: N. Yeah. We were doing fantastic. Now I had an opportunity to go out on my own as a hundred percent. And while that was certainly the attraction, boy, I second-guessed myself for a few months until we got some traction.rnrnGreg: Sleepless nights?rnrnGreg N. Oh yeah. And it was making the commute either on a Friday night or a Saturday night back to Philly—rnrnGreg: With then, a young family.rnrnGreg, N.: Yeah. Yeah. So of course,rnrn Greg: When was that moment like, “Aha, I think we’re going to be okay.”rnrn Greg N.: I know exactly when it was. It was the middle of April.rnrn Greg: In ’08?rnrn Greg N.: Yes.rnrn Greg: That quick, you knew you were going be okay?rnrn Greg N.: Yes. Yes, absolutely.rnrn Greg: Okay. You didn’t suffer that much.rnrn Greg N. No, but each day, each day seemed like a week.rnrn Greg: Yeah. So, what happened in those, you know, those five months that caused you to be like, okay, we’re all right.rnrnGreg N.: I’ve been involved in some turnarounds before, not as a part-owner, but not as a full owner. Complete. And the first thing you have to do is assess the talent that you currently have. It’s almost, I will say in every situation I’ve been in, this would be the third turnaround that I had been involved with — there was always someone that was overlooked. So, you come into a room like this, you have five people in the room, and one person has been overlooked, I guarantee it. And should be in a position of prominently prominence leadership helping you steer the ship, so to speak. And, sure enough, you know, you do your interviews, you talked to everybody, personally.rnrnI’m talking everyone from the porters to, at the time, I had a general manager, and see if everybody is in the right position. And then you realign, of course, that comes with some stress. But you realign, and then you start building your culture from there. The first thing you have to do though is make sure that everyone is in the right spot. And then you build from there.rnrnGreg: I’m sitting with my mouth open. It’s so, so, so true. Doesn’t matter if it’s a car dealership, an investment firm, a football or baseball team, right? You have to have the right players, and then you absolutely need to put them in the right position.rnrnIs there any assessment that you guys do, and I know any assessment that you do to try to understand people’s strengths and weaknesses?rnrnGreg N.: It was more just me personally interviewing. I know there’s a lot of personality profile stuff out there, but—rnrnGreg: Not as effective as good conversation and looking people in the eyeballs.rnrnGreg N.: Right. But of course, that takes a lot of time. I mean, you imagine we took over, I think we’re at in the low sixties for people now, took over, now we’re in the high thirties for personnel.rnrnBut talked to, can you imagine how long it takes? And I know you can talk to 30 or 40 people, nonstop. I mean, it’s exhausting, but yet there is no shortcut. You can’t shortcut that process and expect to get good results. And once you do that, I mean I had two people that were beacons that should be in positions that they were not, there was a lower position, somehow overlooked or whatever. And ironically enough, one is now my general manager, and one is my general sales manager.rnrnGreg: For people that are listening. If you’re coaching kids, if you’re starting a business or you’re trying to grow a business, spend time with your people. Because the greatest thing you could do for your customers is have the right people, in the right chairs and then you’ll go on to get a result.rnrnLet’s go-to service because I love it. Building that trust of knowing that if I come in to your business or we have a client coming into our business, we are going to do our very best and make sure people are buying the right things for the right reasons, and they’re not overpaying. Right? So, then you service people really well and build that trust over time.rnrnSo how do you get people to be more consultative in the in the service process than, “Hey, you just need another set of tires” or whatever the service du jour item is, how do you get them to the point where they’re more consultative?rnrnGreg N.: That’s a very, very good question. And I like to believe that it starts with your mom and your dad and your coaches and teachers and clergy or all the people that have influenced you along the way. But we are okay; in fact, we like to hire people that don’t have a lot of technical experience in our business. Therefore, less bad, fewer bad habits.rnrnGreg: Yeah.rnrnGreg N.: So, if you hire the nicest people and teach them, try and train them the way of your culture. A lot of it sticks. Most of it sticks.rnrnGreg: It’s odd how similar we bring, we are okay bringing people in from a different industry that we think have the right fiber, the right fabric too, and then training them. Because we want to be like, you guys do a different type of organization than the industry and set a new standard, whether it’s on vehicles or helping people maximize their life and legacy. The challenge is, you can’t hire everybody from your competitors. We can’t hire everybody from our competitors, and then try to be different than the competitors.rnrnGreg N.: You can’t. You absolutely cannot.rnrnGreg: Right? You have to bring people in and then grow them in the Greg Norton way of doing business.rnrnFair?rnrnGreg N.: Spot on.rnrnGreg: One of those, as you are explaining to me, and this is just to help people when you’re sitting in the dealership, and you’re in the service department, or the service manager calls you and says you need tires in 2,000 miles, you might as well get them today. You would say?rnrnGreg N.: You need them in 2,000 miles. We’d rather see you in 2,000 miles. We actually try not to sell. All we want to do is, is help you make the right decision. We’d rather we don’t want to have you overspend on anything, and we’d rather build your trust by you knowing that we’re not trying to sell. All we want to do is help you make good, good decisions. A very consultative approach.rnrnGreg: I said that at lunch in preparation for this to this podcast. So, I sit in with a group for lunch, and they all looked at me and said, (we are sitting around the table, I think are like five or six of us), and they said, we’ve all heard that.rnrnIf this is going to need to be done anytime, sometime in the next six months, you might as well do it now. And one person said, yeah, you’re sitting in the service, you know, waiting room. And they come in and said, “by the way, you’re going to need — you might as well do it now.” And you’re like, okay. But when you think about it, if you make that decision ten times in a row, you’ve just wasted a set of tires. Right? So, something just little like that builds the trust.rnrnGreg N.: At least we believe it does. And, and you know, one of the things that I say a lot and I’ve got a lot of clichés: treat this customer as if it was your mother. What would you tell your mother? Would you say, “Hey mom, you need tires in 5,000 miles, let’s do them right now? No, I’ll find a way to help you maximize the life, bring you back in, you know, three or four months, and then we’ll do it then. Let me help you save some money. And you do that enough times. I mean, we, you know, we serve as 2,000 plus cars a month. You know, you hope that that permeates in the community, and people get a real good feeling, and the trust level goes way up.rnrnGreg: At the end of the day. It doesn’t matter the business, car, investments, pictures, real estate — people buy trust.rnrnGreg N.: I think so.rnrnGreg: I think so also. So that other car dealership may get the new set of tires. I’d rather sell trust.rnrnGreg N.: I would too.rnrnGreg: Because in 10 years, they sold one set of tires. You have a whole community that trust you and comes in and wants to do business with you.rnrnGreg N.: Well, that’s exactly right. “Do unto others,” you know, again, all of those sorts of clichés. But you know, I’ll tell everybody, look, I sleep like a baby. Yeah. I mean, I sleep like an absolute baby, every night.rnrnGreg: I know you guys spent a lot of time on transparency and education for the listeners, you know, so we all become a little bit better buying a car. I know it’s like a major purchase for so many people. And when you accumulate all the purchases of vehicles you make, it’s a gigantic part of expenses for people. So how would you educate them? So, when you walk into a dealership trade-in, you know, car price, list price, how would you educate someone to make sense of all of those numbers, and are there any tips you can give our listeners?rnrnGreg N.: I would. And I thought a lot about this because I thought we’d talk about this.rnrnGreg: Yes.rnrnGreg N.: The first thing I would do is use the internet for your research. Do a little homework on — that is, if you know exactly what you want, I’m talking the brand, the model, the trim level of the model. If you know exactly what you want, do a little research online and find out what they’re transacting for.rnrnGreg: So, so any specific websites that you would recommend?rnrnGreg N.: Kelly Blue Book, kbb.com, edmunds.com. Those are the two premier sites. They’ll tell you what we own the car for our invoice price, which is okay.rnrnGreg: Is that for use new and used?rnrnGreg N.: You can do both. But let’s, let’s stay new. New is a little simpler to explain.rnrnKelly Blue Book, for instance. Well, both of them will tell you what the average trends at transaction price is in your zip code. So, if it’s a $20,000 invoice, they’ll say the average transaction price maybe 20,500. So, if you know that, you can go into South Hills Honda or whatever other dealership and know that if you pay somewhere around there, I’m talking no trade-in, no anything, because they factor in incentives. They’re very up to date, within 24 hours of when a manufacturer’s incentives are posted. But if you were to write a check, you would know if you paid somewhere in the neighborhood of 20,500, be it 20,000 or 20,500 or 21,000; you’re going to do okay.rnrnGreg: You’re in the range.rnrnGreg N.: And you’re going to take a lot of stress out of your life.rnrnGreg: To know that I, I just came out of that dealership and I, as one car dealer that sounds like they do business, very different than you. He said we were playing golf, and he said, “Never forget, Greg, you could’ve got it cheaper.” It’s horrible, right? It’s a horrible feeling. If you know, going in that 20,500 is the right number, 20,000, 700, 300, it’s, it’s close enough that it’s like, okay, there’s reasons for that.rnrnGreg N.: Well, I can’t speak for every brand out there because the more expensive the car, even if the markup percentage was exactly the same from say, a Honda to a Bentley, that margin, that dollarrnrnMargin is going to be higher. Right? But for mainstream automobile sales, the average markup is somewhere, or transaction is somewhere in the neighborhood of 1 to 2%.rnrnGreg: That’s not what people think.rnrnGreg N.: I know, they think if I bought a car for 20,000, you just made 5,000. Well, it couldn’t be further from the truth. And, and I’m hoping that our listeners will heed this advice, because the first thing I wrote down when I talked about, you know — the best, easiest way to buy a car? Try and have fun with it. Most people think that it’s like the worst experience in the world.rnrnGreg: The exhaustion thing costs you money. You end up exhausted, and you end up getting a poorer deal because you just accept some deal that you could’ve had a better one earlier on if you’d have done a little research sitting at your home having coffee on the internet. Instead of running from dealer to dealership, like the Flintstones used to, right? Forty years ago, right? Just running around all over the place.rnrnGreg N.: Well, one of the myths that exists also, I mean now that the internet is a full-fledged force, so in most businesses, you do enough research, you could literally say— my best advice is to try and do business locally. If you think that your local dealer, be at Honda, whomever is a fairly solid entity, by reputation, either online or referrals, try and do business with them. But it’s okay to send an email to that person’s, that dealership’s competitor, local competitor, might be up the road, down the road, whatever, send an email to them saying, “I’m interested in whatever down to the trim level, what would you sell the car for?” So now you have what you can buy it for through KBB or Edmund’s. You’ve got a quote from that other dealer’s competitor, and you’d have to say, I’m writing a check, I’m paying cash. What would you sell that car for?rnrnAnd then you take that to your local competitor. And I mean to tell you, it can be the easiest transaction you’d ever want to do. But a lot of people, unfortunately, and I think as time goes on, they’ll realize that there’s not these gigantic margins. They’re not, really never were, but they’re certainly not now. It’s all volume. You could make this such an easy, fun process — because it should be fun. It should be very exciting. My God, how often do you do it? Three years. Every three years, five years, ten years? It should be more fun than a lot of people make it. And it’s fun when you see that people have figured it out and know, okay, you’re going to make a couple bucks? Great because you’re a business, you’re a local business. I’m patronizing the community. I want to do the right thing locally. And my gosh, we don’t ever forget those people!rnrnGreg: What you’re saying it’s so refreshing. I’m looking at the people in the room, and it’s just so refreshing that, you know, do more research. Call a competitor. It’s transparency. It builds that trust that allows you to have the fun because you — What was that men’s — there was a store that sold suits or something like that?rnrnGreg N.: Men’s Warehouse.rnrnGreg: Was it? What did they used to say? “An educated consumer is our best customer.”rnrnGreg N.: Yes, yes, yes.rnrnGreg: That’s what I’m hearing, you say. We feel the same way, by the way. The more our clients learn, the better chance we have of doing business with them. So, the more, the more educated your car buyer becomes, the more likely they will be comfortable. And unlike that person that you were talking about this morning with this whole adversarial relationship.rnrnI also, though said, embedded in your comments, you said a couple of times — if you’re buying cash. That leads me to believe that some people are, some dealerships may give you a different price that may be lower if you finance. Is that because there’s some money in the financing?rnrnGreg N.: Yes. A lot of this can be a little confusing to people because there’s so many things, so many variables. So, say the selling price is one variable; the trade-in is another variable; the interest rate is another variable. So, you have to isolate certain things, and we help people isolate and educate so that they so that when they have gotten quotes from other dealers, we can compare apples to apples. Because a lot of people, say if we’re talking in your trade-in (and not to go off on a tangent), whenever you have a trade-in, and this is a very important tip for our listeners. If you have a trade-in, which say, 70% of our customers will have, maybe 80. It’s critical that you find out: “What can I buy your car for, mister dealer, and what will you pay me for my trade-in?” Not commingled. Two separate transactions.rnrnGreg: So, I want to know what my trade-in will be, and I want to know what the price on buying will be and don’t put them together.rnrnGreg N.: Don’t put them together.rnrnGreg: So, let me ask this. If you say, I’ll take the trade-in for $10,000, but then, I decided not to buy the car from you. Would you still take the trade-in?rnrnGreg N.: At South Hills Honda, 100% of the time, we will.rnrnGreg: Wow. Is that normal?rnrnGreg N.: Absolutely not.rnrnGreg: So, okay, one more — ready? Buy or lease?rnrnGreg N.: Lifestyle decision. It really is. I happen to be a huge fan of leasing. For Honda, Honda does most of their incentives by way of either lowering the interest rate or lowering the lease rate. It’s very subtle, very quiet, but it’s very meaningful. Most people are payment buyers, and it has zero effect on the resale value. So, if you’re, you know, rebates or incentives of a thousand, $2,000, $3,000, it will have a detrimental effect on a vehicle’s resale value. So, the interest rate discount or the leasing discount is real, and it’s tangible.rnrnGreg: Okay. So, who shouldn’t lease?rnrnGreg N.: I would say people that like to keep their cars for a long, long, long, long time. A good explanation for leasing, if somebody was to come in and say I think I’m going to trade every three or five years. Okay, if you trade in three years say, we’ll use a Civic for example, if you were to lease, if you were to buy your Civic out at the end of your lease, you’ll pay probably $1,000 more than the car is worth at the end of three years. Now is that thousand dollars, paying that thousand dollars more, is that worth it to you to have the option to not want to keep it? I’ve had a bad experience. Maybe with the car, it’s had, you know, lots of issues.rnrnOne of the other big, huge things on late model cars is this vehicle history report phenomenon. I don’t know if you, I’m sure everyone’s heard of Carfax. The two biggies are Carfax and AutoCheck. But a late model car, talking three to five years, or zero to five years old that has had some sort of an accident that’s been documented, could be perfect. I mean, like the most perfect repair you’ve ever seen, will be worth less.rnrnGreg: I couldn’t believe it. So, I did that with my car. So, someone ran into me and, and we had to have the car fixed. And when we, and I went to trade it in, they said minus like five thousand dollars because it was an accident. And I’m like, “Whoa, what do you mean?” It wasn’t even my fault, and it went down $5,000 on the trade-in.rnrnGreg N.: And it’s a real, real thing. And leasing, at least with Honda, I can’t speak for every manufacturer, but Honda, the bad auto or the bad vehicle history report, has no bearing.rnrnGreg: All things being equal, there’s no incentive for you if they lease or buy — all things being equal. It’s just a lifestyle thing and the benefit of them leasing, you know, someone that holds your car forever, I think is probably less advantageous to you than someone that not, right?rnrnGreg N.: It’s just another way of acquiring the car, and then we consult with them on, well, what’s your lifestyle look like? Does it make sense to either pay cash or finance or lease? And to your point, it makes no difference to us.rnrnGreg: So, it’s just a consultative thing based on their lifestyle.rnrnGreg N.: Exactly. Right. Yeah. I mean you get— your payment is less, typically, the payment on the lease.rnrnAnd this is a good tip. A payment on a lease, a three-year, 12,000 mile a year lease normally equates to a zero down, 72-month payment on what you’re buying. Typically. It’s pretty close.rnrnGreg: And if someone says, well, I drive 20,000 miles a year?rnrnGreg N.: We can build it in and show you both ways. Because again—rnrnGreg: Education.rnrnGreg, N.: Yeah.rnrnGreg: Yeah. All right, Greg. So, here’s the question. If I’m a great researcher or a great negotiator, who gets the better deal?rnrnGreg N.: Well, there’s not much room to negotiate. Only because the margins are so small, in our business, we lead with our best foot right out of the gate. Which comes with some risk, because if we’vernrnDone a poor job of educating that the margins are what the margins are, the trade-in values are, your trading value is in this range. And if we’ve done a, not a very good job of really showing you, not just telling you, but showing you how logical our proposal is to, you know, to do business with us. And you still think that there is a lot of room, well, we’re probably not going to do business.rnrnGreg: For the listeners, they just need to be a little bit careful, right. Your offer, you lead with your best offer.rnrnGreg N.: Correct.rnrnGreg: That’s not true at all dealerships.rnrnGreg N.: That is correct.rnrnGreg: So, I just want to be clear for the listeners, like, not every dealership like that. So, let’s not do the, “Hey, I listened to the Imagine That podcast and so, no matter what number you give me, it’s good because it’s your best offer. And that’s not true everywhere.rnrnGreg N.: But negotiating, it means something different, I think to almost everyone. I mean, some folks I think things believe that you have to be really rough and tough in order to negotiate.rnrnGreg: I don’t expect you to remember this, but, so Elizabeth is 25. When she was 16, we came in, and I don’t think we knew each other very well back then. I may have known your name. I don’t know. But that’s it. And so, I came in and came in, because we knew someone in the dealership, and we sat down nine years ago. And when I was talking to the salesperson, you actually came in, and you sat down. And I don’t know if it was negotiating or not; I just remember having a conversation around the facts that led us to a conclusion that it was fair. If that’s negotiating, I’m not sure, but I remember you sitting down, and that was the first time I met you face to face. And I thought, “Hmm, that thought, you know, that felt different than, than the typical experience.” We’d looked at the facts. We understood the facts. You make sure we did. And we actually bought the Honda Civic for Elizabeth.rnrnGreg N.: I don’t remember. I feel bad that I don’t know it as good, but maybe one of the best explanations of negotiating, at least in my world, that I’ve ever heard. And I, and I mean that. That is spot on.rnrnBecause to negotiate implies I think that there is all this room, and back and forth, and, you know,rnrnsmoke-filled, you know cigar smoke, and you know, we’re really going to struggle with trying to get to a common ground. And I still think that there are some businesses to do that. Like start high, and then let’s see where things shake out. Well, I hate that. Yeah, and I think most people don’t like that. And I think that’s one of the things that is perpetuating this feeling of anxiety every time you walk in. I mean, you can, you can see people, I feel so bad for them. They’ll come in and they’ll, there’ll be happy go lucky outside. And the moment they walk through the showroom, they’re as rigid as a board. Oh, I feel so bad for them. And you know, they don’t want to lighten up because that may be a sign of weakness and somebody’s going to take advantage of them.rnrnGreg: They can’t say they liked the color and, my goodness, they can’t say they’re like the car because that means that you think they’re going to buy it, right?rnrnGreg N.: I feel so bad for them. And then you know, we try and help as best we can. And you know, most of the time we’re more successful than not. But you still see how knotted up people get over all this. And I think, you talked about this, and to circle back, the best customer, the best client for us, is an educated client.rnrnGreg: So, I guess the other “aha moment” or takeaway for our listeners, whether you’re buying a vehicle or you’re investing your money — work with someone that’ll help you learn the truth. And if we could get to the truth, it’s a lot easier to process.rnrnGreg N.: Totally agree.rnrnGreg: Okay. So now we talked to, we talked about a lot of different things, but let’s talk about, I can’t help drive up and down 19 or route 79, and I see that big bubble gum machine that distributes called cars called Carvana and I can’t figure it out. I’m sure it’s awesome. I don’t understand. But you know, all industries change. Our industry evolves also. In 10 years, is everybody going over to Carvana or carbuyers.com? Or how does that work? Where do you see the future going?rnrnGreg N.: It’s a great question. It’s a lot of dinner conversation with your colleagues, right? I’ll be honest with you, all of all the research I’ve done, and I’ve looked into it just because I’m curious. I mean, it’s what we do for a living. I’m having a difficult time figuring out it as a business.rnrnI don’t really believe our business will ever become truly an online business. I think it’s a component. I think you even talked about technology aiding, you know, technology for technology’srnrnSake. I think we’re naive if we think that’s a solution. But if you use it to enhance some of your operations, some of the things you do, I think that’s a winner.rnrnGreg: So, we look at it as, we don’t think in our industry, because there’s roboadvisors and all those things and there’s some advantages to them. But when, if you’re having someone to care for your family and something happens to you, the roboadvisors not showing up to be with your family or figuring out what you really care about and really managing your wealth to maximize your life legacy.rnrnSo, there’s a lot of technology out there. So, it’s sort of similar in the way we look at it. And I hear you saying the same thing, is we don’t think technology will replace great relationships and people. But we think that people that use technology and great businesses that use technology appropriately to enhance the customer experience as you are, and as we are, will replace those entities that do not.rnrnSo, an entity that does not, I don’t think we need to be a roboadvisor or Carvana or whatever, but we do need to stay up with the times, use technology to enhance the experience with our clients. And I hear you saying the same thing.rnrnGreg N.: I agree completely, 100%.rnrnGreg: Well, Greg, I don’t know how long we spoke, but I learned a whole bunch with a bunch of “ahas,” and hopefully, the listeners are going to go into car dealerships across America. And in your case, I hope you get some Honda clients also. And I hope they enjoy it. And when they leave there, they’re more educated walking in. So, when they leave there, they had more fun walking out.rnrnGreg N.: Well, I hope so. Also, I mean, I feel bad when people are not having as much fun as they should doing this because I know they just, the majority of people dread it.rnrnGreg: Yes.rnrnGreg N.: And it doesn’t need to be that.rnrnGreg: Yeah, you’ve really helped people think about, you know, if they’re starting a business, even if it’s a tough time, if you stay focused on your people and training and experience, it works.rnrnAnd you help people think about buying cars differently and more educated. So, thank you so much. That was very valuable, and we appreciate your time.rnrnGreg N.: Thank you for the time.rnrnGreg: You bet. Thanks.rnrnGreg: Thanks for listening. If you’d like to hear other subject matters that may be of interest to you, please check us out at ConfluenceFP.com/podcasts.

    Guest Speaker:

    Greg Norton

    Host:

    Greg Weimer

    This session was recorded on October 10, 2019.

    The views and opinions expressed herein are as of the date of its recording. The information may not be current and Confluence has no obligation to provide any updates or changes. There is no guarantee that any statements, opinions or forecasts provided in this podcast will prove to be correct.

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  • Blessing: Kurt Kimmich | Episode 6

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    Greg welcomes his associate and friend, Kurt Kimmich, to discuss the blessings of raising a child who has Down syndrome.

    Kurt shares some of the joys that Ben has brought into his family’s lives, the lessons they’ve learned, and their hopes for the future. You’ll find out how Ben has taught Kurt perspective, kindness, patience, and more. For anyone who is close to a child with special needs, or anyone who needs to hear an uplifting story of family, love, and compassion, this episode is for you.

    u003cstrongu003eConfluence Financial Partners — Blessings: Kurt Kimmich | Episode 6u003c/strongu003ernrnGreg:     If the world could see through the eyes of a person with Down syndrome, it would be a better place. Imagine that.rnrnThis is Greg Weimer and today I have the opportunity/privilege to be with a longtime friend and associate here at Confluence. Kurt Kimmich. Welcome Kurt.rnrnKurt:      Thank you Greg. Happy to be here.rnrnGreg:     All right, so do you remember where we met? Do you remember when we met? Do you remember what you were doing when we met?rnrnKurt:      Yes, only because you reminded me.rnrnGreg:     So, Kurt and I, we, it was 1987, and we worked for a firm back then — I worked for a firm back then, with Kurt’s father Ron, who is actually someone I looked up to a lot. He was an absolute gentleman in the business. And you were his date in Bermuda and I brought my current wife, Laurie, back then and I—she’s my wife now, she wasn’t my wife at that moment. It was 1987, we got married actually in 1989. So, we were in Bermuda and Ron brought his son, Kurt.rnrnAnd here we are literally 30 years ago…rnrnKurt:      32 years.rnrnGreg:     32 years ago. And we’re sitting here as associates. How’d that happen?rnrnKurt:      Yeah, I was still in college. I appreciated that trip from my dad, that’s for sure.rnrnGreg:     That’s a cool thing, right? Although, I think you point out like, you’re in college, as if to suggest I was a lot older, which I wasn’t. I was actually one year out of college, just to set the record straight. So, you’re not that much younger.rnrnKurt:      No. I look younger.rnrnGreg:     Yeah.rnrnKurt:      Much younger.rnrnGreg:     So, I’ve had the opportunity to watch Kurt be a great financial advisor. I’ve watched Kurt grow his family to a — call it from a college kid to now. Six children, and he and his wife Amy have six children. And what we’re going to talk about today is maybe we talk a little bit about the business and lessons you’ve learned along the way.rnrnBut I’ve watched you do a lot of great things and I’ve watched a lot of your accomplishments. But I have to tell you, the one that stands out to me the most is how you’ve raised your children and how you have just a wonderful family. And specifically, Kurt and Amy have a son, Ben, who has Down syndrome. And you know, I think probably, when that first occurred, when you found out that you had a child that was going to have Down syndrome, you know, it may not have been viewed as much of a blessing, but watching you guys turn that into an absolute blessing and watch how it’s effected your family has been an inspiration. So, I think it goes to the saying, “What you dwell on, you multiply,” and I can tell you, the Kimmich family, they’re all about dwelling on the positives, which is cool.rnrnSo, Kurt, just want to take us through, you know, when you found out that you are going to be blessed with a child with Down syndrome and how you thought about that?rnrnKurt:      Sure. Happy to. And I apologize if I get a little emotional, but this is a near and dear topic to me.rnrnObviously, my wife, I would be in deep trouble if I didn’t start by saying she is, without a doubt, the cog that keeps our family wheel moving in the right direction. She is the strongest, most compassionate person I’ve ever met, and she is devoted 100% to her family at all times, which makes my life a lot easier. But we have six children and there is a 13-year age range between the six and two girls and then four boys.rnrnAnd we knew all along we wanted to have a larger family. I think once we got to three or four, it just, you know, sort of started blending together.rnrnGreg:     But, that’s a little aggressive.rnrnKurt:      That is a little aggressive in today’s world.rnrnGreg:     We are more conservative investors then the Kimmich family was with how they grew their family.rnrnKurt:      That is an accurate statement. Yes. And when we found out that we were expecting our sixth child, as any parent does, they go through all of the doctor’s appointments, and the sonograms, and the different conversations that you have with medical professionals. One of them surrounded the results of our sonogram, which showed a slight dark spot in our son’s heart, which is one of the characteristics, possibly, of Down syndrome.rnrnGreg:     Give me the, you shared the odds with me, so, if there’s a dark spot—rnrnKurt:      We were told that there was a 1 in 20 chance that our child was going to be born with Down syndrome. And as Greg alluded to earlier, I am the eternal optimist. And so I immediately was saying to my wife, well, that’s only a 5% chance, where she was looking at the opposite of that, and so, we went through our normal doctor’s appointments and, you know, I remember very vividly walking into the office of a very young healthcare professional. You know, again, young — I was almost 40 at the time when Ben was born and this young lady was probably in her mid-twenties, and I knew exactly what she was going to be talking to Amy and I about.rnrnGreg:     How’d you know?rnrnKurt:      Well, because I had read, when I knew that there was a 5% chance, I knew that the standard procedure for medical personnel was to give you your options on dealing with a child with special needs. And, unfortunately, to not beat around the bush, they were prepared to talk to us about how we could end the pregnancy if we wanted to.rnrnAnd so, I very politely, to the young lady, I said, I know what you’re going to tell us and I just want to very politely tell you that it’s our intention to raise this child just like we are raising our other five children. But if you need to tell me what you are required to tell me, go ahead. And she absolutely did that. And she spent 10 or 15 minutes letting us know exactly how we could terminate — who is now Ben — if we wanted to. And that was hard. That’s, that’s a hard conversation to have.rnrnGreg:     Was her view that like, here’s all the challenges? So it wasn’t, it wasn’t a balanced view of a having a special needs child? It was…rnrnKurt:      No, it was not balanced at all. It was definitely “Here is how you can get rid of this problem.”rnrnGreg:     Is it still like that?rnrnKurt:      So. no. No, actually that’s one of the really incredible experiences that Amy and I have had over the last, you know, Ben is 12 now, over the last 12 years, is so much information is made available to young parents who are in a similar situation to what we were 12 years ago.rnrnAnd it’s all about information. You know, anything in life that you don’t understand, the more you research it and the more you a fact-find about it, the more comfortable you feel with it. And I think that’s, you know, if you’re gonna buy a car, you’re going to go out and you’re going to research all the different types of cars and which ones are good and which ones aren’t, and which ones need repairs and not. So, as you gather more information, you become more comfortable.rnrnSo, we are blessed now, as a society, where there due to the countless hours and days and years of effort by a lot of advocates across the country, where healthcare providers are now required to provide the positives as well as the negatives. But they allow the parent to make an informed decision with all of the information.rnrnGreg:     Okay. So, in that moment, what was going through your mind? What did you and Amy talk about?rnrnBecause it had to be, although you are committed to raising Ben like you were your other five children, it had to be a “holy cow” moment.rnrnKurt:      Oh, absolutely. And I didn’t share, you know, I’m very private in many regards and I didn’t share initially how I felt inside about the news.rnrnGreg:     You didn’t share to Amy or you didn’t share to anybody?rnrnKurt:      Not to anybody. Because again, you know, I’m the eternal optimist and I sort of pride myself on always finding the positive in any situation.rnrnGreg:     You do. I mean, in a very professional way. You don’t take this wrong, you’re, you’re a little bit like Tigger, right? You just like sort of bounce around, you’re happy.rnrnKurt:      It’s a great analogy. I do have a high energy level, too and I don’t sleep much. And I do like Tigger sort of a cool character.rnrnGreg:     He’s awesome.rnrnKurt:      When you have five children under the age of 13 already at home and you are told that your child may be born with a special need, you immediately think of all the negatives.rnrnAnd obviously my mindset today is just the opposite. But at the time, and I’ll share this as sort of an interesting little sidebar. I have a dear friend of ours that lives in Murrysville where we do, and I’ll just refer to her as Kate. And Kate is an advocate for special needs children. And when Kate found out that Amy and I were going to have a child with special needs, she told me that she cried tears of joy. And I found that fascinating in many regards, but initially I was thinking, she’s out of her mind. I have five little kids at home and now we’re going to be… burdened, for lack of better word, with all of the challenges that go along with raising a special needs child.rnrnAnd I struggled, for well over a year, with the fact that I felt that way, because once Ben was born and once we held him, and once we saw our children interacting with him, I had terrible feelings of guilt for a long, long time that I felt that way.rnrnAnd only after the last 12 years of being Ben’s dad and sort of turning into somewhat of an advocate myself, because another interesting little side note is I have two friends of mine. You know, I went to a small college just north of Pittsburgh and you know, only about 1,500 students and two of my college teammates, two of my fraternity brothers, also have sons with Down syndrome. Which is really, the odds of that, statistically are mind boggling, which led me to think our chef at our fraternity house was feeding us something that caused this to happen because it’s just, it’s, it’s astronomical. One of my buddies had his son about six years before, five years before Ben was born. And my other buddy, his son just celebrated his fifth birthday yesterday. So, all three children are about the same distance apart.rnrnMike was a great source of guidance for me as I was going through all of the question and answer. And I feel like I’ve been a very good source to Rob as he’s gone through some of the challenges as well. And it’s sort of interesting that people were put in your life to help support you through what you think are difficult times, but they’re just—rnrnGreg:     Yeah. Let me, let me back up a sec. Because today there’s people receiving news that they have a special needs child. Today there’s people receiving news that their son or daughter could potentially have Down syndrome. Or just receiving some type of other news that’s viewed as challenging and as you put it, quote burden. If you could tell those parents right now, go back tornrn— curtain, Amy, 12 years ago, you know, if you could tell those parents one thing, what would that be?rnrnKurt:      Enjoy it. You may not think it’s a blessing, but you will quickly realize that it is the greatest blessing that you’ve ever had.rnrnGreg:     All right, let’s go there. So, you said quickly, I remember when you just said, “when, the first time I held Ben,” when you watched what it did to your kids. And I watched, you know, Katie just two minutes ago, Ben’s here today, by the way. I just watched Katie with Ben. I watched Ben and your whole family at Maggie’s wedding. I watched you guys all have dinner when my wife and I came out to have dinner with you and your family. And I watched how the boys interact and it’s just flat out awesome.rnrnSo, I believe you when it says, when you say it’s a blessing. Today, 12 years later, when did you realize, “Hey, this really is a blessing and we should have tears of joy”?rnrnKurt:      It took a bit. It, you know, because again, it takes your mind some time to sorta wrap your — just the enormity of, again, having six children in and of itself, creates a lot of a lot of challenges.rnrnGreg:     Babies in general are—rnrnKurt:      Sure.rnrnGreg:     A lot of work, stressful. It’s just difficult, for all the moms and dads out there. It’s tough now. It ends up being great, Right? But at first, you know, when they’re not sleeping and they’re fussy. It’s always a challenge. Are there more specific challenges when you have a special needs or Down syndrome, those first couple and difficult years?rnrnKurt:      Well, I think, I think you don’t understand or realize at first how big of a challenge it may be.rnrnBecause again, we’re very blessed. Ben is a very high functioning, interactive, healthy — he is by far been the healthiest of our six children. He’s never had an ear infection. Which again, is just, yournrnknow, statistically it’s so unusual for, you know, children with Downs syndrome typically have heart issues, they have vision issues, they have hearing issues. Our son has none of those. Some of my older boys on occasion in a fit of frustration with Ben acting out at home, have exclaimed quite proudly or loudly, “I’m not sure Ben even has Down syndrome.” Because his mind works in a way that is not—rnrnGreg:     You think he’s faking it?rnrnKurt:      Sometimes I do. And I’ll tell you one real quick story that absolutely signifies this. You know how cars have child locks on them? We were in the driveway one day and I forgot something in the house and my three boys were in the back seat and Ben was in the third row. And I said, guys, keep an eye on Ben, I have to run inside real quick. I was inside for no more than 30 seconds. And I came out, my three older sons are still in the car. My son Ben is standing in the driveway and the doors are locked. When Ben got out of the car, he knew enough to flip the child lock on the door when it was open, and he immediately shut it so his brothers couldn’t get out of the car. So, tell me that thought process, which I thought was ingenious.rnrnGreg:     Yup.rnrnKurt:      And I am sitting there watching my 16, 14 and 12-year-old sons in the car locked in the car by a child with Down syndrome.rnrnGreg: So, let’s talk about some of the blessings. I mean your family has certainly learned a lot over the last 12 years. What are some of the blessings of Ben and, you know, as you observe the impact he’s had on your family?rnrnKurt:      So, one thing jumps to mind very quickly is, you know, my father who you referenced earlier (and I thank you for all your kind words). My father has dementia and he has late-stage dementia. And so, we have him in a nursing home in Murrysville near us and he is just extraordinarily well cared for and he’s very happy and content. And I take Ben to see him quite often. And walking into a memory care facility is a difficult, sometimes, task. And when Ben walks in there, the whole place lights up. He walks around to every single patient and he talks to them and he holds their hands and he tells the women how pretty they are and that he loves how their hair is. And watching elderly people react to Ben the way that they do is — I’m convinced that God put him into our lives at that particular time for moments like that. Because you wonder whether or not these folks havernrnany family members coming to see them or to spend time with them or to interact with them and Ben sees no differences in people. And that’s one of the greatest lessons that I get from being his dad every day is to look at life through unfiltered glasses because Ben is truly unfiltered, good and bad. He says, and does what he thinks and wants to do.rnrnAnd that’s very refreshing in many ways because you know exactly where he’s coming from at all times. So, when he gives you a hug and he tells you that he loves you, you know that he’s telling you the truth.rnrnGreg: I was walking down the hall and I saw him, and he came over to give me a hug. And it wasn’t, I’m going to hug you because I felt like I u003cemu003ehave u003c/emu003eto hug you. It was, I’m gonna hug you because I want to hug you. Because he was patting me on the back as he was hugging me. It was just a warm hug.rnrnKurt:      Every day when I come home from work—rnrnGreg:     You told me this.rnrnKurt:      —Ben’s waiting for me and it’s like Christmas morning when he hears my voice. And we joke within the house about “Who’s your favorite kid?” Amy and I, and of course Amy gives the, “Oh, I love you all the same.” And I answered no, I absolutely have favorites.rnrnBut Ben, when I come home and I kid you not, it’s every single day when I come home, he comes in, he jumps into my arms like it’s the first time he seen me in two years.rnrnAnd he always says, “Dad, how was work?” And most days I say, “You know what? Work was awesome.” And he’s like, “Awesome!” He goes, “That’s great!” And I know that he genuinely wants to know how my day was.rnrnGreg:     Right.rnrnKurt:      Now, on occasion, I say, “You know what, Ben, today wasn’t such a good day.” You know, the market was down 500 points or whatever. And the expression on his face drops and his shoulders drop and he’s like, “I’m sorry dad.” And just the genuine compassion for helping me through a difficult day, you just don’t get that from everybody and it’s — I can’t explain it, I can only live it.rnrnAnd I just, I tell everybody I come in contact with, I wish you had the opportunity, for one day, to just experience what I experience every day.rnrnGreg:     Yeah. But you, you took it one step further than that. When we were talking several weeks ago, you said to me you would give anything to live a day in Ben’s shoes, right?rnrnKurt:      That’s true. March 21st is a very special day in our house. So that is World Down Syndrome Day. So, children with Down syndrome have an extra 21st chromosome. So, March 21, 3/21, signifies World Down Syndrome Day. And I send an email out every year. I started this five or six years ago, I guess, maybe more. And I send it to everybody in my address book: clients, friends, relatives, anybody that I’ve come in contact with, just so I can share what is a very, very special day to me. And I put in there that it’s my favorite day of the year. And I have several bullet points that I put in the email that sort of encompasses my life with Ben. And I do put — and I actually have a copy of it right here in front of me — that I do put, “if I could only live one day in Ben’s world, a world with no jealousy, spite, or distrust, only genuine care for others.” And I put at the bottom, “think about it and imagine what a better world we would all live in if we all had this attitude.” And that’s Ben, every day. That’s his attitude. He’s not jealous. He’s not spiteful. He, you know, he will show anger every once in a while, but it’s very … few and far between. But he lives the way I want to live.rnrnKurt:      He’s just pure, right? And that’s, that’s obviously somewhat subjective, but I’ll make it quantitative by reading some statistics that absolutely back— that we found — that absolutely back up what you’re saying: 97% of people with Down syndrome like who they are. Let me give you some stats on why that could be: nearly 99% individuals with Down syndrome are happy with their lives. 96% are happy with how they look. 99% love their families. I assume Ben’s in that 99.rnrn97% like they’re brothers and sisters in 86% say it’s easy to make friends with others. I’d be curious how that compares to the general population and as you and I were chatting about this before the podcast and you were saying that, you know, some Down syndrome children that went on to get married and go get their education and they get their college degree.rnrnAnd we were saying, I’d be curious the percentage of divorce between two individuals that have Down syndrome versus those that don’t. Because they just, they love unconditionally.rnrnKurt:      They do. And I, I bet you cannot find any Down syndrome marriages that ended in divorce.rnrnGreg:     Or we were talking about, right, crime and harming others and yeah, because they just have such a pure heart. In fact, to demonstrate that pure heart, I’d be curious to just, tell people about how you took folks to the Pirate game and what that was all about. And in the eighth ending, I remember you telling me this vividly, what Ben did on the way out.rnrnKurt: Yeah. So, a few weeks ago, the pirates had Down Syndrome Awareness Night and we were first introduced to this when Ben was maybe two years old. And so, two of the folks that work on my team, Jackson and Coleen, had come to me with the idea of, “Hey, let’s, let’s organize a night at Down Syndrome Awareness Night for the Pirate game.”rnrnSo, I said, okay, you know what, let’s put together a list of people that we could invite and see how that goes. Now going into this, I’m thinking, okay, you know, I’ll buy 15 or 20 tickets to this game and we’ll go and have a good time. And as I started thinking about all the people that are important to Ben, the list ended up being just north of 70 that we had, I think it was 72 was the final number, tickets that Amy and I purchased. And we invited people to come and just celebrate Ben.rnrnAnd I asked Ben, he actually chose a Hawaiian theme and so I emailed everybody, and everyone wore leis or Hawaiian shirts or shorts or whatever it was. And we had a really, really festive night where he was in his element. And we had actually Charlie who I alluded to earlier, he was there and a good friend of mine, Kurt Kondrich, his daughter, Chloe, was in attendance.rnrnSo, we had a really awesome time. And you know, the game dragged on a little bit and we ended up leaving in the eighth inning. And as Amy and Ben and I were walking out of PNC park, all of the different concession stands under the park were starting to close down for the night. So, there was nobody in line except the workers behind the counter. And Ben stopped at every single concession counter and he thanked the workers that were working behind the counter. And Amy and I have learned that when Ben is in the middle of his acts of kindness, we just let him go. You know, at first, we would try to stop and say, “Oh, come on Ben.” But I just, I stopped and I just let him do his thing because the looks on the faces of the people as he shook their hands — and I believe, I even remember one of the women was out behind the counter and he gave her a hug — that I just wonder what’s going on in their world at that particular time. That maybe that interaction with arnrn12-year-old with Down syndrome or the pat on the back, or the hug was just what they needed in their life at that particular moment.rnrnAnd so, I let Ben go.rnrnGreg:     Let Ben be Ben.rnrnKurt:      With certain restrictions, because we would have been at PNC park till after midnight had we really let him do what he wanted to do. But, you know, Ben, when we’re in public, there’s not a person in a wheelchair that he doesn’t stop to say hello to. Elderly people. He holds doors. And I’ve tried to teach all of my sons to be gentlemen.rnrnWhether or not Ben, he obviously has the capacity to remember that because it’s, it’s just uncanny.rnrnGreg: People are just happier when he’s around. You, I noticed in the office, like you watch Ben, Ben’s in the office today, you watch Ben in the office. Everybody sort of has a smile on their face and people just are genuinely happy or when he’s around.rnrnI’m very, very confident I know the answer to this, because I’ve experienced it firsthand, but what some people may think is, “Holy cow, is that fair to my other children?”rnrnCould you just talk about the impact it’s had on the other five Kimmich kids?rnrnKurt:      Yeah. That, that that’s, you know, I tried to rank all of these positive attributes, and watching Ben make my other children more loving, more sympathetic. It’s opened their eyes to a lot of different things that I don’t believe that they would have been exposed to, had Ben not been their younger brother. It’s really heartwarming to watch, not only my children, but then my children’s friends become exposed to who Ben is.rnrnAnd Ben has a very, very unique and special relationship with each one of his siblings in a way that’s very unlike any of the other siblings. And it’s, and it’s, again, it’s hard to explain, but it’s something that is so deep that it’s yeah — he has made, as I say in my email that I send out March 21st, Ben has made our family complete without a doubt.rnrnGreg:     Well we just experienced that, right? So, we were in Kurt’s office and I said, “What are the concerns, what are some of the concerns you have?” And you said, if something would happen to you and Amy, you worry what would happen to Ben. And out of the corner of my eye, I saw this hand go flying in the air and it was Katie.rnrnKurt:      Katie.rnrnGreg:     Katie’s like, I got it.rnrnGreg:     And I’m sure if your other children were here, they would feel the exact same way.rnrnKurt:      Yeah. I think now that as with each year that passes and, you know, my oldest daughter got married in December and she and her husband or Katie is a senior in college, Matt, we take to Grove City tomorrow — that I know without a doubt, every one of my kids would step up very gladly and very — you know, I bet you they would actually fight over who got to have Ben, I think that there would be a lot of fights and arguments because the others were hogging him. And yeah. So now that my kids are older, it’s less of a concern to me, but it’s still, for any parent with a special needs child. Yeah. Life after us. That’s a big weight on my heart.rnrnGreg:     So, in general, you and I were talking about just how people see the negative, and I apologize to you, because I hope you remember this story about your mom. And how when you found out your mom was sick — and this just shows you how, Kurt was talking about how he learned to look for the positive and things and how your mom was ill and how you looked at those days, instead of a burden of “I have to go to the hospital,” you looked at it as an opportunity to spend a couple more days with your mom.rnrnKurt:      That’s right. And now that my dad and his health challenges, you know, it really sorta brings full circle the saying of, “Hey, enjoy each day that you’re given because tomorrow’s not guaranteed.” And, it’s a cliche, but it’s really something that I try to keep in the front of my mind. Because you know, I can’t believe Ben’s 12 and I’m sure that it’s not going to be too long from now and I’m going to say I can’t believe I’m going out to have a beer with Ben. He’s 21 or 30. Or whatever.rnrnGreg:     Enjoy every moment, right?rnrnKurt:      Enjoy every moment.rnrnGreg:     So, I was talking to Jim Wilding, we were visiting last week about how we try to help people maximize moments. And we talked about how, you know how people say, well, “live your day as your last one.” I don’t know that — living everyday like it’s your last one. Maybe somewhat of a challenge, but if you could live only one more year, it becomes a little easier. Right? If you couldrnrnjust live one more year and you live every year like it’s your last year, that’s probably a little more realistic.rnrnKurt:      Yes.rnrnGreg:     And if you could live one more year?rnrnKurt:      If I was living today as my last, I probably wouldn’t be here with you. No offense.rnrnGreg:     I think you would, I think you would! I think you would take your last day to be an advocate for people with Down syndrome, I do.rnrnKurt:      For Ben. To put it on a podcast for all of eternity.rnrnGreg:     I do, because I can’t imagine receiving the news and hearing you talk about, first of all, being surprised that someone would say to you, you should cry with tears of joy. Sounds bizarre. And then for you to experience it, not only the positive effect that it has on your family, on you and Amy, but also your family. It’s been a delight to watch and I do believe it’s, it’s changed you for the better. Has made you a better husband, advisor, son, et cetera.rnrnKurt:      My friend Kate was 100% right when she said she cried because God sent Ben to us. I can’t imagine life without him, quite frankly.rnrnGreg:     God bless Kurt. I’ve always found you to be an engaging and optimistic person, but I do feel like just watching your face as you talk about Ben and the blessings of Ben, I firmly believe it’s affected your family positively and have changed them for the benefit— for the positive.rnrnWhat are some of the ways it’s changed you and how have you evolved as a person by experiencing and having the opportunity to be the father to Ben?rnrnKurt:      I’m sitting here sort of laughing inside because this, this just came up within the last week. My son Matt, who just turned 19, is heading off to college. Something was going on at home and I, like I normally do, I sort of handle it. I just like let it roll right off my back. And he goes, “Dad, how can you be so patient all the time?”rnrnSo, I will tell you that Ben has certainly helped me become a more patient person, because I just don’t let the little things bother me. I just, I can’t.rnrnAgain, because I think of not only Ben, but all kids with special needs. And the challenges that they have from their appearance, perhaps, from the way that they are perceived in public.rnrnAnd I see it, you know, I, when I walk with Ben, you know, I, I see how people look and watch us interact. And I always use that as a learning moment for anybody that might be watching me. So, empathy, patience, I think I’m a much better listener than I ever have been.rnrnGreg:     Were you always this positive?rnrnKurt:      I’ve always been a positive person.rnrnGreg:     Yeah, I always remember…rnrnKurt:      I always have. Maybe this is just me taking it to another level when you think you’ve sort ofrnrnGreg:     You find the good in almost everything.rnrnKurt:      I try to. Because my attitude is, what good is it gonna do for us to focus on the negative?rnrnGreg:     Right.rnrnKurt:      You know, again, at home I always joke that, you know, the glass is always half full with me. It’s not half empty, it’s half full.rnrnAnd I think of, of you know, again, I as, as I just sort of glance down as we’re talking with, with some of the, some of the different bullet points that I’ve included in my annual email where I see here, you know, Ben’s hugs make even the hardest of days seem so simple, nonverbal communication or a smile on his face or a pat on your back. And I have here: his gentle spirit and passionate soul are infectious. And that’s absolutely the case with my family and our other kids is they see Ben and his genuine goodness, and they can’t help but mimic him and do what he does. And you know, and we live in a world that just has a mental picture of what is “normal.”rnrnGreg:     There is no normal.rnrnKurt:      No, but it always revolves around physical appearance, but not who you are as a human.rnrnGreg:     But life does become easier when you realize there’s no normal, everybody’s trying to become, there’s no normal, we all are unique in our own way. So, when you accept that, it becomes a lot easier. So, Kurt, thank you.rnrnGreg:     At Confluence we learn from you also, we appreciate you as an associate and we appreciate the impact you make on all of us every day and we are delighted that your whole family and more specifically Ben are part of our extended family.rnrnKurt:      Amen.rnrnBen:      Hi Dad. You’re my best friend.rnrnKurt:      Best. Friends. Ever.rnrnGreg:     Aww. Gave a kiss.rnrnBen:      Are we done?rnrnGreg:     Yeah, thanks Ben!rnrnGreg:     Thanks for listening. If you’d like to hear other subject matters that may be of interest to you, please check us out at ConfluenceFP.com/podcasts.

    Guest Speaker:

    Kurt Kimmich

    Host:

    Greg Weimer

    This session was recorded on August 15, 2019.

    The views and opinions expressed herein are as of the date of its recording. The information may not be current and Confluence has no obligation to provide any updates or changes. There is no guarantee that any statements, opinions or forecasts provided in this podcast will prove to be correct.

    This podcast is provided by Confluence for informational purposes only. The information contained herein does not constitute a recommendation to buy, sell or hold any securities and should not be construed as an offer to sell, or a solicitation of an offer to buy any securities. Confluence is not providing any financial, economic, legal, accounting, or tax advice in this podcast. In addition, the receipt of this podcast by any listener is not to be taken as constituting the giving of investment advice by Confluence.

  • Investing in a Healthy Lifestyle: Mary Lamb, M.D. | Episode 5

    Listen on Apple Podcasts
    Listen on Spotify

    Confluence Financial Partners was founded to give investors a higher standard of service and personal attention. That’s also the idea behind Lamb Medical, a concierge medical practice founded by Dr. Mary Parks Lamb.

    In this episode, Greg Weimer, Co-Founder and Wealth Manager of Confluence Financial Partners, and Dr. Mary Lamb discuss how the non-traditional service models of both Confluence and Lamb Medical have the potential to give people in Pittsburgh a luxury experience and better outcomes. You will also hear simple tips for healthy living and discover how the concierge model of care, in both health care and financial services, can help you achieve your long-term goals.

    u003cstrongu003eConfluence Financial Partners­­ – Investing in a Healthy Lifestyle: Mary Lamb, M.D. | Episode 5u003c/strongu003ernrnGreg:    The best investment you can make in planning for your retirement is living your healthiest life. Imagine that. Right.rnrnGreg:    This is Greg Weimer with Confluence Financial Partners and I have the privilege today to be with Dr. Mary Lamb, the owner and founder of Lamb Medical u0026amp; Aesthetics. Welcome Mary.rnrnMary:    Thank you. Happy to be here.rnrnGreg:    We are delighted you are here. So, Meredith, to start off, would you just give an overview of your model of care versus the typical family practice that people would be familiar with. You have personalized — comprehensive, personalized care. How would you describe that to someone?rnrnMary:    Yeah, so the way that I have the model set up is very different from insurance-based care. So, it’s called a direct care or concierge medicine. There’s a little bit of a nuance of a difference. But the way it works is that the patients, I treat many fewer patients. So, in a traditional practice I had over thousands of patients, over 3,000 patients. In this practice, you limit the patient population. Patients have a fee to be part of the practice where they pay a small amount, either monthly or yearly, to be part of the practice. For example, children are around $50 a month, adults around a hundred dollars a month. And different cities and different places vary in terms of that amount. But it’s a nominal fee to be part of the practice and what that gives you is unlimited access to your personal physician. So, everyone gets my cell phone. There’s HIPPA-compliant apps that we use to communicate. People can do virtual visits any time. There’s no limit in the number of visits that people can have. And they also participate in a comprehensive, executive physical exam every year. So, you get lots and lots of care, lots of access, lots of convenient, easy comprehensive care that is just undoable in the traditional practice.rnrnGreg:    It is absolutely essential. You not only have a financial plan, but you also have a plan for your wellness. And just like financial planning, your advisor is your partner in your financial plan. It is essential also that you have a healthcare professional to be a partner in your wellness planning.rnrnMary:    If you don’t have your health, you can’t enjoy your wealth.rnrnGreg:    Right.rnrnMary:    Health is the cornerstone of enjoying your life.rnrnGreg:    Actually, we found a stat that confirms that. More than 80% of today’s retirees say good health is the most important ingredient for a happy retirement*. So, there it is. Right?rnrnSOURCE:               *According to a Merrill Lynch study, more than 80% of today’s retirees say good health is the most important ingredient for a happy retirement. Imagine that.rnrnMary:    There it is.rnrnGreg:    So, here’s the three things I thought we could talk about for the listeners. One is, you have a very different practice and I’ve experienced that firsthand at the age of 54. And understanding your practice more in the last year. It’s unique. And so, I thought we’d do a couple of things.rnrnOne, talk about the traditional practice. How you’re comprehensive, personalized care is absolutely different. Where we think the industry’s going on being a physician and family physicians. So, that’s one to wellness.rnrnTwo, and you’re right, it’s, you can’t maximize your life without wellness. So, what are some of the things we can do? There’s a lot we can’t control, but there are some things we can, we’ll talk about that.rnrnAnd then diagnostics. I feel like the diagnostics and the tests that you can run, it’s really remarkable. And is there any innovation there? Which ones should we think about? Which ones shouldn’t we think about and where’s, where’s it going?rnrnSo, so first why don’t you just tell us the change of where you’ve been because you’ve had a lot of experience over your career and you’ve just made this change how long ago?rnrnMary:    Almost three years.rnrnGreg:    So, what’s the difference, biggest difference between what you’re doing and the traditional family practice model?rnrnMary:    Yeah, I’ve done a little bit of it all, I think in primary care. So, I did, I did some teaching in a residency program and then I did urgent care. And then I tried to establish a comprehensive, progressive primary care practice. And in the traditional model, it’s just very difficult to give the type of care that I wanted to give. And it, it was apparent to me that in order to do that I needed to have a different model, different model of care, different way of actually engaging with patients. And so, this direct primary care or concierge payment model is different in that I don’t accept insurance. And in doing so it, it changes things dramatically. So, lots of my time, instead of being served by insurance companies and having to perform in their programs and provide their documentation, I can actually spend in patient care.rnrnGreg:    So, like you just said to me, before we started, you just whispered, “Hey, did you get your stuff done?” I had a couple of things you needed me to get done medically. And so, it’s like, “Hey, did you get it done?” And I just think that interest that, and I remember what you said to me one of the times, “When you go to the hospital, the cardiologist may know about more about your heart, but when you go to the hospital, I know more about you.” So, so you can be the quarterback, which is interesting. That’s what we talk about, being the quarterback for our clients with their accountant and their attorney, their attorneys know a lot more about estate planning than we do. We can be the quarterback because we understand your family and what you’re trying to accomplish. And that’s what, in our family we’ve really been able to see.rnrnIs that the new frontier? Do you think that’s the new trend? What you’re doing?rnrnMary:    Well, the, the medical system is broken. I think we can all agree about that. And the fix is not easy. I think that’s also the issue, but the big players are the insurance companies. They really do dictate so much of the care that, that we receive. And so, this whole direct primary care movement is, is a backlash against that.rnrnGreg:    Is it a movement?rnrnMary:    It is.rnrnGreg:    I still bring it up to people, and they are like “what?”rnrnMary:    Yeah, most people in smaller cities don’t know what it is, but larger cities they’re quite prevalent. So, New York, DC, especially Florida, there, there are several practices like these.rnrnWHO:   And I’ve mentioned like what it costs typically around here for that versus other cities, and the delta’s gigantic. So, it feels like in Pittsburgh it’s still relatively new,rnrnMary:    Right, it is. You know, so for example, $50 a month for kids, $100 a month for young adults, $150 a month for older adults. So, it’s pretty affordable for the service that you get.rnrnGreg:    It’s an entirely different service model. I mean it feels like, I mean the days of sitting in a waiting room for two hours with a bunch of other people, who could be germy.rnrnMary:    Right.rnrnGreg:    To wait around and it just doesn’t feel comfortable. So, this really is different.rnrnHow does the single payer solution with insurance? How does this effect the typical patient and the care they’re going to receive from an ordinarily family practice?rnrnMary:    I think the difference is that you know that the, we’re in a traditional system, you’re required to see a certain number of patients in order to meet overhead or in order to meet insurance guidelines. And so, you really have about five minutes with patients, seeing 30 patients a day and trying to—rnrnGreg:    So, wait, how many patients do you see a day?rnrnMary:    30.rnrnGreg:    30?rnrnMary:    30, yeah. Most primary care doctors do between 25 and 30 a day. Yeah.rnrnGreg:    So how much time can you prep going in? She’s just like read the chart you’re going in.rnrnMary:    I would try and get up very early in the morning and try to go through everybody’s chart and see what they need and do a lot of pre-visit planning just because you don’t have so much time during the visit. So, I tried to go in there knowing the plan and knowing what to do. But it’s the follow through and the details and the quarterbacking, talking to other doctors, arranging tests, making sure the patient knows where to go, what to do, all of that stuff just gets lost.rnrnGreg:    How do you do that for 30 patients a day?rnrnMary:    Well that was it, you don’t.rnrnGreg:    No, in that world.rnrnMary:    You don’t.rnrnGreg:    But that’s the world, right? The new frontier of what you’re doing is different. But that’s the world.rnrnMary:    And that’s why there’s, no news as good news. That’s why there’s, here call this and you, you arrange all your testing. That’s why there’s a lot less follow through and support for the patient going through difficult things or going through diagnostic workup for something that’s important. So, the difference is, you know, in my practice I can, I can lead all those things. I can really guide the patient and then I can also see the patient in, in all avenues. I can do home visits if they need it. I do that for hospice patients. It’s one of the most meaningful things that I do. I haven’t been able to do that for years.rnrnGreg:    Kid calls us from college and says like, “Hey, what do I do?” I say, “Skype Doctor Lamb.” Done!rnrnMary:    Right? There’s my cell phone, there’s virtual, there’s this, you text, you can call — you can actually get me for the needs that you have.rnrnGreg:    So how many patients would you see in day?rnrnMary:    So now, I see approximately, anywhere from about 10 to 15, so half.rnrnGreg:    Half.rnrnMary:    But I spend so much more time, like my time allotment is better. My follow-up is better. I can, I take time, intersperse that I can coordinate care.rnrnGreg:    So that’s where our worlds are different. Like if I, if I would have three meetings a day — now we’re on the phone a lot. We’re doing research, we’re doing portfolio management. But like three’s like, that’s like about it.rnrnMary:    That’s a lot.rnrnGreg:    Yeah. Just for like pre-work, follow up. Absolutely. It ends up being a lot. So now the, so the single payer though, is that going, I mean, does that help the situation of a typical family practice? Does it hurt?rnrnMary:    You mean you mean if somebody has insurance or—rnrnGreg:    No, if we go to single payer. If there’s one insurance company owned by the government in the United States of America.rnrnMary:    Oh gosh. Well, there’s other countries doing that, right? And usually the care is just, is not the same for sick care. So, in the U.S. we’re very good at taking care of people who have illnesses. Right. We have great testing. We have great, we have great services, we have great treatment for very ill people. We don’t have great preventative care. That’s our, that’s our weakness. And so, some of those single-payer, the national health care systems, they’re very good at preventative care. But boy, if you get something bad, it’s not good.rnrnGreg:    It’s interesting the folks that rely on insurance, I know some other family physicians and when I hear them talk about, and I watch them talk about their practice, some of them are not enjoying it as much as they should. They’re brilliant people. You don’t get to be where you are. Right. UVA, Princeton, you don’t get to where you are unless you’re brilliant. And then you get there and it’s not awesome. But then I see you talk about your practice and your face lights up and what you’re doing and it’s like really fun. Right. And what did I say to you? I said to you a couple of weeks ago, I said, what’s the biggest difference? So, what’d you say? Like freedom or something like that. What’d you say?rnrnMary:    Freedom to take care of people the way I think they deserve to be taken care of. And I did not have that freedom before, someone else told me how to take care of people. And I I’ve gone my whole life training, learning how to take care of people. And if you can’t join them and you can’t take care of the whole person and you can’t do it in the way that you feel is right, it doesn’t sit well morally with you.rnrnGreg:    So, what you were saying is, if I’m not putting words in your mouth, you get to decide what’s right for your patient, not an insurance company from a faraway land.rnrnMary:    The patient and I get to decide. Because I have the time to actually talk with them about it. Right? So that, so it’s a shared decision making. It’s not like, this is what you need to do, because I’ve got 30 seconds to talk to you about them, right? It’s, it’s really about, Hey, what’s important to you? This is what I see. Let’s make some decisions together.rnrnGreg:    Well, God willing, that becomes not only the new frontier, but the new standard.rnrnMary:    It would be great if it takes off.rnrnGreg:    Wouldn’t it be great?rnrnMary:    There’s a lot of roadblocks against it, but, yeah.rnrnGreg:    We’ll see. So, let’s go to the second — people want to maximize their life and the statistic I shared, that 80% of today’s retirees say good health is the most important thing for happy retirement. You know, we think about that a lot. If we just help people with their money, but then when they get to this magical time, which I think there’s a risk of waiting so much for retirement, you don’t enjoy your life, but that’s a different issue. But if someone gets to be 62 or 65 and retires and all of a sudden thinks they’re going to have fun and then they just don’t have the energy or the health to enjoy that. Let’s talk a little bit about wellness because you said something to me. I said, what’s the biggest thing? And what did you say? Like the middle years, if you could repeat that. The middle years of one’s life?rnrnMary:    Yeah, the middle years of one’s life, are, I think, are the most neglected in terms of their health. Because they’re so busy, they’re busy with their careers, they’re busy with kids, they’re busy with their families, they’re sandwiched generation of elderly parents. There’s so many demands on their time that they don’t have time to take care of themselves.rnrnGreg:    You’re saying middle age, like—rnrnMary:    Gosh, 30 to 50, 30 to 55.rnrnGreg:    Okay. So, I don’t need to take care of my health anymore. I’m 54. That ship has sailed. I’m actually wonderful. So, let’s go through a couple of things because, I know, I think people try, right? Right. Like this new diet. There’s the — I may mispronounce them — but there’s like the “whole 30,” the “Quito,” eat fruit, don’t eat fruit…rnrnMary:    Yeah, right.rnrnGreg:    Is any of that sustainable? When you say things that control is die, a big part of it?rnrnMary:    Oh my gosh. So that, you know, the tenets of wellness really are, the habits that you create every day. You know? So, things like, having a regular schedule, things like, making sure you get adequate sleep. Things like, eating a healthy, well-balanced diet, things like, trying to fit in exercise as much as you can, you know, whenever you should.rnrnGreg:    Meditation, is that something—rnrnMary:    Sure, well that, in my mind, that encompassing stress-relief so some kind of stress techniques to make sure that your stress level is controlled in a way that’s healthy, that isn’t in a way that’s not abusing drugs or alcohol or tobacco. It’s, it’s more meditation, exercise, you know, support with friends, time with family, things like that. Getting away from work and balancing your life in a way that, yeah, that helps you guide—rnrnGreg:    What do you think of the diet stuff?rnrnMary:    So, some of the diet stuff is very faddy. Yeah, for sure. And I think it helps people focus on their diet again and focus on, on ways to lose weight. But a lot of it isn’t sustainable, but it brings it to the forefront of people’s minds. So, if they’re paying attention, they’re usually trying to improve their health. You really get in trouble — most people — when they’re not paying attention at all, and they’re just not watching portions and they’re not really making good choices because they’re busy and they, you know, frankly don’t have time to deal with it or don’t have the right resources in place to make sure they’re eating that way. So, I think it has a place in helping people. But gosh, for the long haul, I usually don’t recommend it. I, I definitely am more of a moderate approach, you know—rnrnGreg:    And some of it’s confusing and some of it feels conflicting.rnrnMary:    It is. And, and some of it you just plain don’t like—rnrnGreg:    Yeah. Like we hired a nutritionist, she’s like, “Don’t eat fruit.” I’m like, “Fruit! Can we not have an apple?”rnrnMary:    It’s about as close to nature as you get!rnrnGreg:    I thought that’d be a good thing.rnrnMary:    Right.rnrnGreg:    She’s wonderful by the way.rnrnMary:    I’m much more about moderation. I think people need to, you know, tracking tools, things on your phones now are very interesting. You can really gain a lot of information just by tracking what you’re eating and how many calories you’re eating and what food groups you’re missing. So, I do that. I sit down with patients and look over those things and try to find some strategies where they can actually reach their health goals. So, there’s lots of—rnrnGreg:    What about water? Like, do you drink a lot of water? I hear conflicting information about that also.rnrnMary:    Water is important. I think people don’t, they under-drink because your thirst mechanism isn’t quite there in terms of telling you how much you need.rnrnGreg:    Yes. I heard we were in the desert once and, and the person was like, you know it was a tennis thing — I don’t play tennis but, that happened to be a tennis thing. He said, “By the time you’re thirsty, it’s too late.”rnrnMary:    Right. So, your thirst is just a delayed and not really adequate measure for you. Especially as we age, it gets worse.rnrnGreg:    So how many ounces of water a day? People say a hundred. That’s like a lot. A hundred ounces of beer is easier. Hundred ounces of water, somehow—rnrnMary:    If you had a hundred ounces of beer, you gotta do a hundred ounces of water you won’t get out of the bathroom if you’re doing that.rnrnSo, anything dehydrating, you’ve got drink something hydrating, right? And so, people think, Oh, if I’m drinking soda, if I’m drinking coffee, if I’m drinking something, then then that’s going to replenish my needs. It’s not.rnrnGreg:    So, like if you’re drinking coffee in the morning, you have three cups of coffee, go coffee, water, coffee, water. Is that right?rnrnMary:    Yeah.rnrnGreg:    Or if you’re out and you’re having dinner and you’re with your spouse and you’re having a mixed drink or glass of wine, have water also. Make sure you drink the water.rnrnMary:    Definitely. Yeah.rnrnGreg:    Yeah. I do feel better when, as you and I both sit here with a glass of water. I do feel better, right when I drink water. And we actually read some statistics on, on alertness and productivity. So, we bought everybody in the firm these Yetis and we have them all drinking water and how many, how many ounces a day. And at least for me, I hope for everybody else in the firm, it was really, really helpful.rnrnWhat’s the one, what’s the—rnrnMary:    Helps people feel better for sure.rnrnGreg:    Then when you get used to it, you start craving water.rnrnMary:    Yeah! You’re more like, oh, I need it. And I think it helps with hunger. I think it helps fill people up, I think it helps in a lot of ways.rnrnGreg:    Okay, so there’s a takeaway for the listeners. Drink water.rnrnWhat’s the other big one you mentioned? Another big one. And I’ll say see if you say the same thing, if not, we have two more. What’s the biggest thing people could do?rnrnMary:    In terms of their, in terms of health?rnrnGreg:    Their health.rnrnMary:    I think really paying attention to those years where they neglect it, you know, or go to the doctor, make sure you’re getting your blood pressure checked, make sure your vital signs are in check. So, your BMI isn’t too high. Yeah. Making sure you’re getting your screenings that are age appropriate. All that stuff is so important just to pick up things that we can treat quickly.rnrnGreg:    So that’s very close to what you said to me. You said, “Get a physical.” And I’m sure there’s people listening right now, by the way, you’re very kind. We don’t like going to see you.rnrnMary:    I get that every day.rnrnWHO:   So, going to see your doctor, it’s not, I mean it’s just, not— Now yours is a more pleasant experience given the environment —rnrnMary:    Yeah, we try to create a nice experience.rnrnGreg:    —you wear a robe; you think you’re at Nemacolin. It’s all nice. You’ve got great music, but it’s still going to see a doctor. So, in fact, I said to my wife’s grandfather, I said — he died at 90 some years old — and I remember saying to him, “What’s the key to living that long?” He used some curse words, so I’ll take those out. He said, “Don’t go to a doctor.” Because they’ll find something. I’ll go find something.rnrnMary:    He rolled the dice and got lucky.rnrnWHO:   But that’s it, right? So, how often do you suggest someone comes in and gets a physical?rnrnMary:    For my practice I do yearly, there’s so much that can happen in the span of a year in someone’s life that I think it behooves them to really talk with me and really go through how are they’re doing, things that happened, changes in their health status. I have so many questions I always like to ask, you know, there’s so many—rnrnGreg:    That’s one of the things I appreciate about your practice in that you get paid whether we come in or not.rnrnMary:    Yeah.rnrnGreg:    And you’ll get the email. Where are you for your physical, right?rnrnMary:    Yeah.rnrnGreg:    And I mean it’s a lot of other good information on raising teenagers or you know, or if something’s going on in the community with, you know, a virus or something, you do a great job of keeping us up to speed. But the annual physical is something that so many people don’t — In fact, what we’re thinking about doing, what we want to do, is actually, in the next 12 months, give people bonuses in our firm, if they get their physicals!rnrnMary:    A lot of employers are doing that because they recognize there’s value in that.rnrnGreg:    We want healthy associates that aren’t worrying about things or having nagging health issues. Do you see a lot of folks that go — I’m just the people listening to this, I bet someone’s like, “Uh-oh, I drink water, but I better go get a physical.” But it’s true. Right? Do you see a lot of people when they first come to your practice?rnrnMary:    Oh my gosh, and they haven’t been seen by doctor for years.rnrnGreg:    I was one, I don’t know if you remember that. I was one and you looked at my chart and you’re like, where? Like what? Like what? You went off the radar.rnrnSo be moderate. Be careful in your middle years. In your middle years. it’s probably true that we still feel like we’re going to live forever.rnrnMary:    You have that mentality, yes.rnrnGreg:    So, we still felt like we’re going to live forever. And so you just probably come a little less when you’re younger, maybe you’re more active and then when you get older, you become more aware of your mortality and then in the middle and you’re right, you’re, busy and you’re like, I’m gonna live forever. I got 30 more years now, I don’t have to worry about it. And then you get to be 60 years old and it’s too late.rnrnMary:    It’s too late.rnrnGreg:    Unfortunately, as we’ve talked about before, there’s a lot of things you can’t control.rnrnMary:    Right.rnrnGreg:    And that’s very unfortunate, but there are things we can control, so thank you for that information. The last thing I wanted to touch on is innovation and diagnostics. Yeah, I mean, you said when we were talking, you said, we should talk about cancer markers. And I’m like, or tumor markers. That’s right. No, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no. We’re not talking about that. But just want to explain some of the new diagnostics and the benefit?rnrnMary:    And there’s some places, it’s interesting. It’s a catch 22, sometimes. There’s some places that will do, you know, full body MRI or full body CT scan. We have the capability of doing those kinds of things and there’s people that offer it at just, you know, pay out of pocket cost. Sometimes it just runs into some trouble. If you find some things that really aren’t that important in terms of your health and your future, it can lead you down a path of emotional turmoil. As you’re looking at those things. The body makes all kinds of benign things, cysts, lesions, things that aren’t really concerning. And so sometimes doing a lot of testing can be a problem. Other times there’s incredible value, valuable information that you can find. So, if you do tumor markers and they’re elevated, it just allows you to look at that area much more carefully and see if you can find a cancer before it’s spread, before it’s more of a problem.rnrnWe can treat cancer in its early stages very well and very easily. It’s always the later stages that’s the problem. So, we’re constantly looking for things to screen the population in order to find a cancer at a time where you can treat it. And that’s why it’s so important to get things like your mammogram and a colonoscopy. Prostate cancer screening is still controversial —rnrnGreg:    Yeah, I remember you saying that.rnrnMary:    But yeah, but there’s things that we can do to look and see if people are at risk for the most common cancers. The thing I think that’s the most interesting recent development has been screening the genome. Just, just sequencing the genome. So, there’s all this genetic testing, there’s even genetic testing for cancer now. So, if someone is diagnosed with a cancer, treatment is actually based on the biology of the tumor and the genetics and immunology of the tumor. It never used to be.rnrnSo that’s a whole new advance that’s fascinating. But when you get your genome sequenced yourself, you can find out all kinds of information, things that you’re at risk for, things that may be troubling to hear. So, it’s a good idea to have a good relationship with your physician who can go through those kinds of things and watch out and come up with a plan for you. How do you, how do you deal with that information over time? You know, and what do you need to do in terms of follow up? The other thing that some of these companies do is once your, once your genome is sequenced, they will go back with new advances and new things that they find and re-sequence those people or re-test those people against a new mutation or some kind of disease that they uncover to see if they have it. So, I just got notified by a company just last week that a patient of mine was positive for a new genetic sequence that they didn’t know about.rnrnGreg:    So, is that the thing that’s going to change medicine? Because that’s what I hear, right? The sequencing of the human genome. So, when I was over at Children’s Hospital, you know, I’m involved over there. And so, I had the privilege of being in the lab and they were talking about the advancements in treatment and the new standard of care based on being able to sequence the human genome. And I will get the numbers wrong, but I think 10 years to sequence once genome was tens and tens of millions of dollars and it took months and months, now it’s a thousand over the weekend.rnrnMary:    Right.rnrnGreg:    Or it’s, it’s or hundreds over the weekend. That’s how much.rnrnMary:    Yeah.rnrnGreg:    So, when people say like medicine’s changing like, right now, right?rnrnMary:    Right now, it’s changing absolutely.rnrnGreg:    It’s right now. So, I guess the good news is if someone is diagnosed with something as you’re suggesting, there’s hope on the way.rnrnMary:    Oh, for sure. Yeah. And there’s so much you can do in terms of personalized medicine too, again, I feel blessed to be practicing medicine this way because I can practice really personalized medicine. It doesn’t have to be just population screening, which is what insurance does and what the traditional model does. It’s really about you and about what your risks are, what your needs are, and how I can best keep you functioning and living your best life.rnrnGreg:    Like, like for example, just as a quick example, I mean, I know you were telling me about an blood test that actually you can do and it’s not 100% by any means, but it actually says, it’ll actually inform you on which foods are likely to agree with you and which ones aren’t.rnrnMary:    Right. Yeah, yeah. So, there’s a newer test that looks at inflammation rate based on the foods that you eat. So, it’s, it’s different than an allergy. So, there’s another other blood tests that can test for allergens in the blood. So that’s a true IgE-mediated sort of allergy specific test. This one is inflammatory based. So, you can measure inflammation in someone’s body, in someone’s bloodstream when they’re exposed to certain foods. And it’s really fascinating. I’ve had some real breakthroughs of it.rnrnWHO:   So, I think it’s, it’s like, it gives you, and it’s just simple, right? It’s like, here’s the red foods, here’s your yellow foods, here’s the green foods. My red food was a banana.rnrnMary:    Yeah.rnrnGreg:    Like if I had had an upset stomach, I would have ate a banana. And like that’s the one thing that not so good.rnrnSo anyhow, Mary, thank you so much. As always, wealth of information. I absolutely love your passion for wellness, your passion for creating a new standard of personalized care. So, thank you so much for your time. We truly do appreciate it. Thank you so much for having me. Appreciate being here.rnrnGreg:    Thanks for listening. If you’d like to hear other subject matters that may be of interest to you, please check us at ConfluenceFP.com/podcast.

    This session was recorded on July 10, 2019. The views and opinions expressed herein are as of the date of its recording. The information may not be current and Confluence has no obligation to provide any updates or changes. There is no guarantee that any statements, opinions or forecasts provided in this podcast will prove to be correct. This podcast is provided by Confluence for informational purposes only. The information contained herein does not constitute a recommendation to buy, sell or hold any securities and should not be construed as an offer to sell, or a solicitation of an offer to buy any securities. Confluence is not providing any financial, economic, legal, accounting, or tax advice in this podcast. In addition, the receipt of this podcast by any listener is not to be taken as constituting the giving of investment advice by Confluence. More than 80% of today’s retirees say good health is the most important ingredient for a happy retirement. SOURCE: Health and Retirement: Planning for the Great Unknown; A Merrill Lynch Retirement Study conducted in partnership with Age Wave Confluence Wealth Services, Inc. d/b/a Confluence Financial Partners is an SEC-registered investment adviser. Registration of an investment adviser does not imply any level of skill or training. Please refer to our Form ADV Part 2A and Form CRS for further information regarding our investment services and their corresponding risks. Additional information about Confluence Wealth Services, Inc. is available on the Investment Adviser Public Disclosure (IAPD) website at: www.adviserinfo.sec.gov. Confluence Financial Partners is not affiliated with and does not endorse the opinions or services of Dr. Mary Lamb. Any opinions are those of the speaker and not necessarily those of Confluence Financial Partners. The information has been obtained from sources considered to be reliable, but we do not guarantee that the foregoing material is accurate or complete.

  • Living with Purpose: Doug Smith | Episode 4

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    Doug Smith, L3 (Learn, Launch, Lead) Leadership founder and podcast host has interviewed hundreds of world-class leaders — from Clint Hurdle, Mike Sullivan, and Mike Tomlin to Dr. Henry Cloud and Laura Ellsworth.

    In this episode, Greg Weimer, co-founder and Wealth Manager of Confluence Financial Partners, turns the tables on Doug to find out what he’s learned from all his interviews. They discuss the “aha” moments along their leadership journeys, as well as the power of living with intention and setting and achieving your career and retirement goals. If you’re looking for actionable tips on improving your leadership skills and maximizing your life and your legacy, tune in.

    This session was recorded on June 26, 2019. The views and opinions expressed herein are as of the date of its recording. The information may not be current and Confluence has no obligation to provide any updates or changes. There is no guarantee that any statements, opinions or forecasts provided in this podcast will prove to be correct. This podcast is provided by Confluence for informational purposes only. The information contained herein does not constitute a recommendation to buy, sell or hold any securities and should not be construed as an offer to sell, or a solicitation of an offer to buy any securities. Confluence is not providing any financial, economic, legal, accounting, or tax advice in this podcast. In addition, the receipt of this podcast by any listener is not to be taken as constituting the giving of investment advice by Confluence. Confluence Financial Partners is not affiliated with and does not endorse the opinions or services of Doug Smith, Light of Life, or L3 Leadership. Any opinions are those of the speaker and not necessarily those of Confluence Financial Partners.

  • Maximizing Your Legacy with The Pittsburgh Foundation’s Kate McKenzie | Episode 3

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    Almost every high-net-worth investor wants to make a difference through philanthropy., but far too few know how to maximize the impact of their generosity. Greg Weimer, one of Confluence’s founders and Wealth Manager, leads a conversation with Kate McKenzie, Senior Development Officer at The Pittsburgh Foundation, on the many benefits of charitable giving.

    Together, they examine how strategic philanthropy can help high-net-worth families to clarify their goals, pass values along to their children and grandchildren, and create a legacy that lasts for generations. You’ll discover how talking to your financial advisor about including philanthropy in your financial plan cannot only help you maximize your legacy, but may also provide tax advantages to support your estate planning objectives.

    Confluence Financial Partners — Maximizing Your Legacy: Kate McKenzie | Episode 3rnrnGreg: Over 95% of high net worth clients are generous in their support of various causes. Imagine that.rnrnThis is Greg Weimer with Confluence Financial Partners and I’m here today with Kate McKenzie, who’s the assistant director of development for The Pittsburgh Foundation. Welcome Kate.rnrnKate: Thank you so much for having me, Greg.rnrnGreg: I’m looking forward to this conversation because I’ve met with you several times now and, I remember the first time actually, the first time we met was in this room. It was, and I’ve always been impressed with The Pittsburgh Foundation and what they have been able to, to accomplish for families and philanthropy and bend the curve on some really big issues for our society, but equally important, I have to tell you, when we met in this room, I was really impressed with your passion to help families find their values and what they really care about in their philanthropy.rnrnSo, we’ll get to that in a minute, but just for a little bit of a backdrop, could you just give us a brief overview of The Pittsburgh Foundation?rnrnKate: Sure. The Pittsburgh Foundation is a community foundation. We are one of the oldest and largest in the country, believe it or not. And we have just over 1.2 billion in assets. But really, what we do is we help individuals and families start individual funds under our umbrella. Those are named funds so they can be named after a family, or a family legacy, or they can remain anonymous if they so choose. And during their lifetime. And again, after dollars are continuously being granted out to the nonprofits that the donors care about most in the community.rnrnGreg: And what I like about The Pittsburgh Foundation and working with foundations in general is one of the things that Confluence is, you know, that we think a lot about is, how do we help clients and families maximize their legacy.rnrnFor the listeners. Kate actually participated in an off offsite with us last week where we brought the entire organization together. And we talked about donor-advised funds and we talked about the difference that philanthropy can make in working with families. So, one of the things you said, and I don’t know if you remember this or not, about how you can set up a foundation, and you used the number 100, and you talked about your legacy in context of a hundred years. Do you remember that?rnrnKate: Yeah, I do. I think what I was really trying to get across is that I’m working with a community foundation can really help individuals and families, just like you said, create that legacy. And when we talk to our donors, your clients about their philanthropy, we ask them, “Mr. and Mrs. Client, what do you want this fun to look like a hundred years from now?” Because all of our funds are permanent endowments. So, we want to make sure that the things that the donors care about most in the community, that we’re really having a conversation that’s ongoing and capturing that intent to make sure that it’s always going to go to the place that they preferred.rnrnGreg: So, it’s an interesting day. I’ll connect two dots for you because I totally agree with what you just said. And then this morning, I had a conversation with a very good client and he was talking about one of his concerns with some of the organizations he’s involved in — charities — and he’s a very generous human being — is what direction are they going and are they? Is he still going to be motivated in three years or four years or five years to be contributing to the same charities? What type of due diligence and expertise can The Pittsburgh Foundation lend and helping make that assessment?rnrnKate: So, we can help families in a lot of ways to give money strategically and to know that the money that they are giving away to nonprofits is going to go to great use. We have, once a donor starts a fund at The Pittsburgh Foundation, they have a dedicated donor services staff, that’s their person. So, they will be able to utilize our staff members to do research to know who’s doing the best work in a specific space within nonprofits. And we’re able to help that client make sure that their money is being put to good use. And in addition to that, if clients are, and your donors are, naming specific nonprofits in with their fund, when they establish it, we’re making sure that those distributions are always going to nonprofits who are in good standing with the IRS and who are using the money in the way that the donor intended.rnrnGreg: Hearing you speak. I’m just wondering, Pittsburgh Foundation sounds really big, foundation sounds really huge… What’s the minimum you have to invest, or you have to contribute to open up a donor-advised fund, for example?rnrnKate: The minimum to start a donor-advised fund at The Pittsburgh Foundation is $10,000.rnrnGreg: Okay. So, I know that’s not the typical one, but it just shows you, for a lot of families, having a foundation of some sort is very doable.rnrnKate: Absolutely. And it’s a great way to just start that legacy.rnrnGreg: Explain to our listeners what a donor-advised fund is.rnrnKate: So, a donor-advised fund is an individual fund, a named fund, under the Community Foundation umbrella, that’s established to give money away and grant money to nonprofits as the donor recommends throughout any given year. So, it’s very flexible. And that the donor can send grants out to any nonprofit, any 501(c)(3) domestically. Usually grants from the foundation in Pittsburgh go to Pittsburgh-based organizations or a surrounding area, but they can use that money throughout the year to give donations and grants away to nonprofits. Of course, when they make that initial gift to The Pittsburgh Foundation, they get an upfront tax deduction by the end of that calendar year and then have the flexibility to give that money away as they see fit.rnrnGreg: So, if someone had a very lucrative, lucrative year where they’re gonna pay a lot of taxes and they want to make the majority of their contribution in one year, right, you could open a foundation and get the write-off in that calendar year.rnrnKate: Absolutely correct. And that’s a very smart way to give to charity.rnrnGreg: And then the other thing is, so then you can advise and maybe help explain the advisor role. You can advise where you would like the grants to be made, in perpetuity, either you or your successor advisor.rnrnKate: Correct.rnrnGreg: If you could just explain.rnrnKate: Yeah, that’s correct. So, with the donor-advised fund, the client and donor actually has the ability to recommend those grants during their lifetime. And then it’s an ongoing conversation with us to figure out, “What is the future purpose of this fund look like again a hundred years from now?” “Would you like your family to continue the advising, as successor advisors on this fund, to make grants out to nonprofits or would you prefer to name specific charities to receive the distributions from this fund?” It can look a lot of different ways and it’s very customizable and individual to that particular donor.rnrnGreg: Do people normally contribute stock? Could you talk a little bit about the advantages of that? Or cash?rnrnKate: Sure. Cash is always king, but appreciated securities make a whole lot of sense when you’re talking about charitable giving. The reason being, the client of course gets that a fair market value for the stock gift for tax purposes. And that’s the biggest bang for their buck because they don’t have to realize those capital gains. They use that to fund their donor-advised fund at The Pittsburgh Foundation. And then they can recommend those grants as they prefer throughout the years.rnrnGreg: So, here’s what’s interesting, I remember last week you mentioned a couple of numbers. Over 90% of high-net-worth investors are inclined to give, right?rnrnKate: That’s right.rnrnGreg: And then, what percentage of their financial advisors are involved?rnrnKate: About 6.6%rnrnGreg: So that’s crazy.rnrnKate: Yeah.rnrnGreg: Because well, two parts of that I find somewhat concerning.rnrnOne, that means sometimes they should be using highly appreciated securities and they’re not. So, there’s some people contributing cash that could be using highly appreciated securities and there are some tax advantages to that. So, that’s one.rnrnAnd then two, just how does it fit into your financial plan? So, that is actually somewhat concerning.rnrnThe other thing we talked about, you talked about, and I’ll paraphrase it as: how philanthropy and a donor-advised fund can be a gateway conversation to have families talk about their wealth and what their wealth means and their values and their expectation. Could you talk a little bit about how The Pittsburgh Foundation works with families and helps them communicate about their goals and objectives around philanthropy?rnrnKate: So, bringing a family together to have values-based discussions about philanthropy is really important because it’s more than just money and it brings people together around the table to talk without having to talk numbers at all. And it brings people around for a purpose.rnrnGreg: Did you know that, one of the challenges of a family, I shouldn’t say challenges. One of the opportunities of a family is to figure out what they’re all about is really all about.rnrnKate: Yeah.rnrnGreg: Right? So, what’s their “why?” Any great company, any great individual, any great family figures out: what’s their “why.”rnrnIf you don’t mind, last week, you brought these pictures on those cards, those cards you brought to us. I thought they were fascinating. And could you give our listeners just a little overview of the exercise we went through and how it helped people really visualize what they cared about?rnrnKate: Absolutely. I would start by saying too that it’s important when you bring different generations of families together to have an understanding that everyone is coming from a different place. So, if you have two to three generations around the table, values and understanding of the world are going to be so different and also values around money, without a doubt. But the tools that we used with your firm last week are really helpful. We at The Pittsburgh Foundation have several different types of activities that we can facilitate with families around values, legacy and things that really matter that have really nothing to do with the dollars.rnrnGreg: Yeah.rnrnKate: To talk about their highest ideals. So, in the case of last week, we use something called “picture your legacy.” These are cards that have photos of all different types of things on them, from nature photos, to old family pictures, to athletes, you know, in a race. And it allows for families and individuals to pick out cards that speak to them in some way and how they’d either like to be remembered as their legacy or just something that resonates with them. And then we ask the individuals who are in the activity for their feedback.rnrnGreg: Yeah. It was really fascinating. So, we did that and then you went around, and I thought you were, were very skillful in getting people to articulate what they probably couldn’t have without the pictures. So, because of the pictures you would say to them like, “Why did you pick those three? What’s your favorite of those three?” And, knowing the associates as well as we do, hearing them articulate what they really cared about was fascinating. I will tell you it had such a great impact. Two things happened. One, we ordered those and we’re going to start implementing them with our discussions with our clients so we really can figure out what they care about. And then two, it was such a powerful discussion. We actually continued, we went to an associate’s house afterwards and the conversation continued. So, thank you so much. That was a valuable exercise.rnrnKate: Thank you, that’s fantastic. And it’s having something tangible in front of you to use as a tool to kind of share is a lot easier than just picking your most important things in your world, out of the sky. When you have something like an activity and something in your hands, it’s just, it makes it a lot more interactive and fun too.rnrnGreg: So, Kate, clearly there’s a lot of benefits to the families, but I just know in working with you there’s also great benefits to the community. Give us an idea of the size, first of all, of The Pittsburgh Foundation and then the amount of grants that it made to charitiesrnrnKate: As one of the oldest and largest community foundations, we have just over 1.2 billion in assets at the foundation and we grant around 50 million every single year out to nonprofits in the community. So, that’s broken down by our individual donors. So, donors who have donor-advised funds or designated funds who are sending money onto the community.rnrnGreg: So wonderful. It sounds like there’s great benefits to families, clearly; based on around $50 million in grants, great benefits to a lot of wonderful charities.rnrnAbove and beyond the money, is there an opportunity for donors to also get involved in the charities, beyond just the financial contributions?rnrnKate: So, donors to The Pittsburgh Foundation are able to learn more about specific pressing needs in the community and we’re able to connect them with nonprofits doing really great work in the space that they’re interested in. So, it’s a very individualized process in which they can get involved, not only from just giving grants out to those nonprofits, but also going to see where those services are provided at a specific nonprofit. Meet some of the staff who are doing fantastic work because there are a lot of great things happening in this area. And then also, to feeling good about giving those types of nonprofits a legacy-type gift when they’re no longer here, so they can support them during their lifetime with their donor-advised fund. But then also to know that their fund can continue to support those types of things when they’re no longer here.rnrnGreg: You may not know this. I’m just curious, how many people work or working at The Pittsburgh Foundation, around?rnrnKate: Around 50.rnrnGreg: Okay, so here, let me just put some numbers together. You’re saying because potentially you all have $1.2 billion, you have grants of about 50 million a year, and have 50 people to support you…rnrnKate: Yes.rnrnGreg: …That you may get different access and have more resources with local charities than some individual would?rnrnKate: Absolutely.rnrnGreg: Right, so there it is. So, there it is. So, that’s wonderful for someone that really wants to know or get involved in a charity and have that involvement financially go on for a long period of time in a prudent way with successor advisors.rnrnYou know what? I’m saying the word “successor,” I’m saying the words “successor advisor” and I’m wondering if people know what that is. Do you want to just touch on that?rnrnKate: Successor advisor is naming someone to take over the grant making of that fund. When the donor-establishers are no longer here. In many cases, that’s naming children and grandchildren as successor advisers to the fund and that can continue in the family to create that family legacy.rnrnGreg: Let me just tie up some loose ends. So, if I have some highly appreciated stock and I want to get the benefit today, but have the impact for generations, I open up a donor-advised fund, correct?rnrnKate: Correct.rnrnGreg: I’m the advisor.rnrnKate: Yes.rnrnGreg: I can start to communicate with my family about how to advise on that fund.rnrnKate: Right.rnrnGreg: Correct?rnrnKate: Correct.rnrnGreg: And then if I want my children and grandchildren continue that legacy, they can continue to make recommendations or suggestions to The Pittsburgh Foundation on potential grants. Is that how it works?rnrnKate: That’s exactly right. And I think it’s important to know also that starting a fund at the Foundation and becoming a donor and a partner with us, we’re going to going to help you to create that philanthropic plan, so you don’t have to know everything right away. You don’t have to know exactly how you want this fund to work in perpetuity. We’ll help you today and we’ll be together with you for many, many years, to come up with a plan for your philanthropy to make sure that it does exactly what you’d like it to do — to create that legacy that you and your family are looking for.rnrnGreg: Mm-hm. That’s good to hear. Because I think when people hear something like “The Pittsburgh Foundation,” it sounds big.rnrnKate: Yeah.rnrnGreg: Right. It just sounds really big and is it right for me? How do I have access? So, do you want to talk about when someone makes that decision to open up a foundation, you know, what do they do, who do they call? I mean, other than Confluence Financial Partners, right? And then we help them through the process also, because the last thing we want to be is part of that statisticrnrnKate: Sure.rnrnGreg: You know, only 6% of advisors work with their — holy cow! Only 6% of advisors work with their clients on philanthropy.rnrnKate: Your firm does a great job in talking with your clients about things that really matter to them.rnrnGreg: Thank you.rnrnKate: And so, I think including you, if your clients include you in that conversation and then bring us into it as well. That’s when philanthropy works best. When we all work together.rnrnGreg: We try to do a good job, but those cards are going to help more. Wait till we get the pictures and we have clients picking.rnrnKate: You got it! You know that. Sure.rnrnGreg: It really does, it helps clients put into words what they really care about, which isn’t always easy.rnrnLet me ask you this one. What would people be surprised — or maybe were you surprised — that people don’t know about The Pittsburgh Foundation? You know, I f I thinkrnrnKate: You know, I think that when people think about The Pittsburgh Foundation, they think about us grantmaking into the community. We have, you know, a lot of foundations in Pittsburgh. We’re a very philanthropic community, but community foundations are different than private foundations who are granting money out. And so, knowing that, we are made up of individuals and families who really care about Pittsburgh and want to start that legacy with us, no matter if it’s a $10,000 fun or larger than that, you know, we’re going to help them hand in hand, give that money away. We do, of course, have those unrestricted dollars that we’re granting out to the community, but that our donors are a huge asset to this community and can make significant changes where we have many pressing needs.rnrnGreg: Kate, thank you so much. It was really, once again, great to have a conversation with you. Pittsburgh appreciates The Pittsburgh Foundation and I appreciate your passion for it, and we look forward to working with The Pittsburgh Foundation and working with our families that we serve to continue to create a legacy for the families, and ultimately, for the communities. Thank you so much for your time. I appreciate it.rnrnKate: Thank you Greg. It means a lot that your firm is doing such incredible work in this space. It says a lot about the people that you have here and your leadership as well.rnrnGreg: Thank you.rnrnKate: Appreciate it.rnrnGreg: Thank you.rnrnGreg: If you think we can help you maximize your life and legacy, reach out at u003ca href=u0022/u0022u003eConfluencefp.comu003c/au003e.

    This session was recorded on June 3, 2019. The views and opinions expressed herein are as of the date of its recording. The information may not be current and Confluence has no obligation to provide any updates or changes. There is no guarantee that any statements, opinions or forecasts provided in this podcast will prove to be correct. This podcast is provided by Confluence for informational purposes only. The information contained herein does not constitute a recommendation to buy, sell or hold any securities and should not be construed as an offer to sell, or a solicitation of an offer to buy any securities. Confluence is not providing any financial, economic, legal, accounting, or tax advice in this podcast. In addition, the receipt of this podcast by any listener is not to be taken as constituting the giving of investment advice by Confluence. Any opinions in the podcast are those of Confluence Financial Partners and/or any guest speakers. Expressions of opinion are as of this date and are subject to change without notice. The information has been obtained from sources considered to be reliable, but we do not guarantee that the foregoing material is accurate or complete. Investments and strategies mentioned may not be suitable for all investors. This information is not a complete summary or statement of all available data necessary for making an investment decision and does not constitute a recommendation. Confluence Financial Partners and its advisors do not offer tax or legal advice. You should discuss any tax or legal matters with the appropriate professional. Donors are urged to consult their attorneys, accountants or tax advisors with respect to questions relating to the deductibility of various types of contributions to a Donor-Advised Fund for federal and state tax purposes. To learn more about the potential risks and benefits of Donor Advised Funds, please contact us. Confluence Financial Partners is not affiliated with and does not endorse the services of The Pittsburgh Foundation.

  • The Importance of Communicating with the Next Generation | Episode 2

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    Youth is served as Confluence’s youngest associates, Katie Montagazzi, Randy Holcombe, Chuck Ziants and Greg Weimer, Jr., join Greg to discuss the future of financial services and wealth management.

    Together, the team addresses some of the misconceptions around millennials and money, examines Confluence’s culture of teamwork, continuous improvement and work-life integration, and explores what it takes to continue to be an elite wealth management practice.

    Confluence Financial Partners — The Importance of Communicating with the Next Generation | Episode 2rnrnGreg: 92% of millennials believe business success should be measured by more than just profit. Imagine that.rnrnGreg: Today we have an interesting podcast, at least from my perspective because we get to look in inside the mind of millennials and if you believe like we do, that part of happiness is really believing your future is going to be greater than your past. This gives us the opportunity to dig into the minds of the future.rnrnWith that thought in mind, I’d like to introduce to four of our associates that we have with us today and they happen to be four of our millennials.rnrnRandy Holcombe, who’s been with us five years and we found Randy at Grove City College. We loved the institution. Thought we’d go up there and see if we if there’s any, if there’s any students that we would be interested in in obtaining. And we found Randy and it’s been a good choice. Randy’s been one of the MVPs here. In fact, you’ve been with us five years and have done almost everything and continue to be the — what’s it called in baseball? Dude comes in to— It’s the uh, it’s the uh—rnrnChuck: Utility.rnrnGreg: It’s the utility infielder. Thank you.rnrnAnd that takes us to our second associate. We have it with us today, Chuck Ziants and Chuck has been with us now for over two years and he comes from Bethany College. I’ll tell you what we liked about Chuck. He was working with the Pittsburgh Pirates in luxury ticket sales and we were his client and we absolutely loved the service he gave us and how he was always an advocate for us. And so, we talked to Chuck about joining us and he did that over two years ago and as a financial advisor and is working with clients and has made us better and has helped us on a, on a whole host of fronts.rnrnGreg: Our third associate is new and his name is Gregory Weimer.rnrnSo yes, it is a Gregory Weimer. It’s my son and Gregory went to Virginia Tech and then he got his master’s in accounting at Pitt. And then he spent five years at one of the big four and is a CPA. And so, Gregory’s bringing a different set of expertise. It’s a different expertise to us and we’re looking forward to having, I assume you’re going to be around for awhile. So we look forward to the next generation.rnrnAnd then, Katie Montagazzi, she came to us from a local bank and she was introduced to us from a mutual friend and he actually said, “I think she’d be great for the organization.” And I thought, “Wow, I’ll see about that.” So, we went and visited with Katie and her interest and passion for the business captured us. In fact, she was learning and studying for her CFP prior to even joining Confluence. So, this is just a small segment of the people that we have designed to take us to the next generation.rnrnSo, I’m just curious, millennials, here we go. What stereotype makes you crazy when people say, the millennials do blank or the millennials are blank?rnrnRandy: Okay. I would say that millennials are lazy. I mean, I think that’s pretty general of all millennials that people think that, and I don’t know that it’s necessarily true. I think in any generation you could probably just find hard workers and some lazy people. And I think just depends on what they’re motivated by, maybe what their ultimate goals are. But I don’t know that they’re necessarily lazy.rnrnKatie: So, for me something I hear often is that millennials are obsessed with technology and do everything online. But I disagree. I think face-to-face interactions are really important to millennials. Especially, I can speak for us for in the room, definitely not obsessed with technology here. I use it, learn it to be efficient and all of that, but I definitely need face-to-face interaction.rnrnGreg: So, it’s interesting, right? So as far as “millennials are lazy,” if I were you, that would make me crazy. And in our organization, you guys sort of set the standard. It’s not unusual that all four of you have texted on a Saturday and Sunday and prior to seven o’clock in the morning. So, if I were you that I — I find that to be absolutely inaccurate. I’m sure there are lazy millennials, there are also lazy baby boomers. I totally agree. And Katie, I agree, you tend to be someone that is a face-to-face person as our organization is focused on.rnrnHowever, one of the things I have to tell you that I think is interesting about millennials, when they say, “I’ve talked to someone,” that doesn’t mean they necessarily talked to them. Right? As you’re all shaking your head, like you’ll say to me, I talked to blank client and I’ll be like, “Did we talk or does that also mean an email or a text?” Which is sort of interesting.rnrnNow let me, let me ask this. What do you think millennials bring to the table?rnrnChuck: A new perspective, new energy and a difference of opinion. I would say when it comes to millennials, we don’t lack our opinions, as everyone smiles in the room. I do think in our ability to work collaboratively, you know, working in a team is huge.rnrnRandy: And I think millennials have a, almost a need to challenge or question the status quo, which, to Chuck’s point, I think can be a really good thing and help us to look at things differently, innovate. I know some baby boomers probably roll their eyes because sometimes millennials… see if we can do it better, it can be a real asset.rnrnGreg: No, I have to tell you from our perspective that’s been wonderful because we want to have a diverse group of people from sex, ethnicity and opinion. And it really does challenge us. And if anybody has — and please don’t take this the wrong way — but if anybody has dogs,rnthe way you keep an older dog young is you buy him a puppy. Pretty soon — right? They tend to be happier and they challenge each other.rnrnSo, I’m curious what, what would you say millennials can learn from the older generations?rnrnGregory: I think communication skills is important. I mean, back to the technology versus face-to-face and some people, you know, being more comfortable with that. Just the way millennials grew up, they didn’t have to be as face-to-face, even making a phone call because of texts and emails. So I think just learning how older generations communicate and speaking to people I think is very important. Not that millennials don’t do that. They also had the benefit of text and quicker communications that they didn’t have to do the face-to-face.rnrnGreg: As a father, and now a grandfather, one of the things I learned is if you want to communicate with a millennial and get a quick response, text them! Send them a text. So, you know, it goes both ways. We’ve also learned that the way you communicate is through podcasts and texting, not just through face to face. Both are important.rnrnKatie: So something I think we can learn from the older generations will be patience. I think in the age we’re in, of abundance of information and technology and everything’s at your fingertips, literally being patient, whether it’s communicating with somebody, results from something, patience in yourself,if you’re working towards a goal. That’s definitely something I need to learn over time.rnrnRandy: I think a big one is the first step is recognizing that there is a lot to learn from the older generation. And so, I think millennials benefit from listening more. I think we want to talk a lot, which is great, but I think it’s important to listen and recognize that those who are older than us have a lot of wisdom, and often, a lot that we could learn from.rnrnGreg: One of the things as I, as I look at the four of you, that I think distinguishes you is your passion to improve. What are some of the things that you do to improve your skillset?rnrnKatie: So, we’re sitting here making a podcast. I think everybody in the room listens to podcasts probably every day. We share podcasts and whether it’s like a crime podcast or something about personal development, that’s definitely one way. Second, we work in a team. So, I think we actually learn a lot from each other and we grow that way.rnrnGregory: I would agree with that. I mean, I can think of at least three times in the past three days, over the weekend that this group of the five of us shared a podcast for the others to listen to and everybody pretty much listened to it right away, which was pretty cool to see and helps you get a different set of podcasts that you may not find on your own.rnrnChuck: I would think too, what’s pretty uniform about everyone’s answers here is that the type of how we’re taking in information, right? It’s a world of convenience.rnrnSo, podcasts, you can listen to them at your convenience no matter where you’re at. I personally like audio books, so I’ll listen to podcast audio books in the car while I’m driving to and from the gym or to and from the office. It makes it a lot easier for me to digest information.rnrnGreg: Humans are happiest when they’re growing and improving. And so, the fact that we are all sharing information throughout the weekend, I find that enjoyable. I find it interesting. I think that is something that distinguishes the relationships we have in our firm. In that we’re always challenging each other.rnrnTo your point, Randy, we’re always challenging each other to think differently and to improve. And, and Katie, to your point on teams, it’s not unusual in our firm where we have working on the same issue, someone in their 20s, 30s, 40s, 50s and 60s in the room at the same time thinking about an issue. And I can tell you as someone in their 50s, that’s been extraordinarily beneficial to not only rely on other people’s experience, but also to your point, Randy, rely on some folks, new perspectives on the industry.rnrnSo, a lot of the folks listening to this have children or grandchildren that are millennials. What would your advice be to them on how they should talk to those millennials about money, finance and wealth?rnrnRandy: I know this is how this generation was, was raised, but I think a lot of money issues for older generations are pretty taboo. Not something maybe they’ve talked about with kids, grandkids, but I really think that it’s important to communicate, not only, maybe not details about money initially, but what’s the vision? What’s the legacy that that grandparents and parents want to leave?rnrnWe just talked about, you know, one of the things that the title of the podcast is, millennials are motivated by more than money and more than profits. And so I think you can really motivate younger generations by instilling within them the values, the goals, the dreams that you have for your money and how you want to see it treated after you’re gone.rnrnGreg: So, as millennials, you would find it helpful if your parents or grandparents had more conversations with you about wealth and about money.rnrnMillennial: Yes.rnrnGreg: Thank you. They were all nodding yes, forgetting that you cannot see their faces, but they were all nodding, absolutely. Which is interesting because we had a focus group with our parents and grandparents clients and they said to us, one of the things that they would like us to help them do is have conversations with their children and grandchildren about their wealth.rnrnSo, somewhere there’s a disconnect, isn’t there? Because when you look at the statistics, 70% of wealth is squandered in the second generation, 90% in the third generation. Number one reason is communication. Parents want, the grandparents want to communicate more. Children and grandchildren want to be communicated with more and there’s a disconnect. Hopefully, we, together, can facilitate those conversations because many times inheritance is viewed as a burden on the next generation and not a blessing, because it wasn’t communicated enough. Why do you think that is?rnrnKatie: So, to Randy’s point. I agree that talking about money also includes the vision and the values and what the grandparents and parents have in mind for their grandchildren or kids. So, beyond that, to formally start talking about money, sit down in a room and put numbers on a screen is really foreign to most people. Even for themselves, I think some people that come in, prospective clients, new clients, it’s new to them.rnrnSo, for them to get their children and grandchildren in a room to talk about money, it’s really weird. So, I think that’s where we can come in as advisors to facilitate those meetings and just put some formality around it and it’ll be easier to talk about.rnrnGreg: Do you think there’s a risk? I think one of the things parents worry about is if they talk about money and let their children and grandchildren know that they have some wealth that they’re ultimately going to inherit, the concern is they’ll become lazy.rnrnGregory: I think can do the opposite, actually. Just personally, we’ve been doing this in our family for the past few years, around Christmas time, once a year, we all sit down to talk and it’s really helpful, to me at least. I think it shows everyone a vision of: you watched your parents or grandparents grow up, go through their careers, what did they do to get to where they are? And it gives you a vision. Okay, I want to do what they did. I want to do better. I don’t want to make changes. And it lets the younger person or the millennial see what it takes to get to a spot. So, really helps you see what’s needed to meet your goals.rnrnGreg: I’m just, sorry, I’m just curious for the rest of you, have your parents talked to you at all about their money or have you talked to them about money and wealth and expectations?rnrnRandy: For me, a little bit, especially since I’ve been in the business.rnrnGreg: Yeah.rnrnRandy: And so, I’ve actually been fortunate, I’ve been able to offer some advice and help there. So we’ve talked about it more. Growing up, not so much.rnrnKatie: Growing up? Not really, but like the informal talking about the value of a dollar, hard work. You know, you earn money, you save money, spend money. That was kind of discussed. But again, since being part of the industry, those conversations have turned into more detailed and goal-oriented type of conversation.rnrnGreg: And we want to be clear, it’s not just talking about wealth like, “Holy cow, I’m going to get this inheritance.” It’s “Hey, here’s the difference you can make with this portfolio” or “Here’s why you work so hard” or “Here’s how you pay your bills.”rnrnIt’s interesting, you can go through college and never really learn how to put together a portfolio or save money or what a 401k is. So I’m not, we’re not just referring to this chunk of wealth that’s being transferred. It’s also just “How do you handle finances and the responsibility in general?” And my experience has been that when you have those conversation, there’s no correlation to lazy. So, we just need to dispel that myth. You see folks with means that are lazy. You see folks that have no wealth, that are lazy. It has more to do with values than it does wealth.rnrnRandy: And I think that’s actually a really good point when you’re thinking about how to start these conversations because I would agree with Katie that my parents did do a very good job instilling values and hard work and how to think about money. And I think that can actually be a really good segue into some more specifics if that’s where you’re looking to go. And I think most parents have had some of those conversations around values and that makes it easier to transition.rnrnGreg: It’s interesting that some, some folks will say, “I don’t want to talk about it,” as if, when they pass it’s going to be easier. I can assure you it’ll be more challenging. Right?rnrnSo that to talk about it and just start the conversation is wonderful. And in another podcast, we actually interview someone on philanthropy and talk about donor-advised funds and talk about how, how donor-advised funds can be the gateway conversation to talking to millennials and heirs about wealth.rnrnKatie: Not just talking about legacy and inheritance, but I think having those conversations with your children also sets them up for personal success. A lot of people I know that are our age, they know nothing about 401ks, IRAs or anything. So, it also affects their lifetime, not just inheritance they have down the road. So, I think talking with your kids and your grandchildren will also help them personally, for themselves, their spouses, their families.rnrnGreg: So as an organization, if we want to help facilitate those conversations and we want to help clients maximize their life, the moments in their life, and maximize their legacy by clearly defining it — one of the things we need to make sure is that our organization continues to attract and develop young talent.rnrnSo, all of you and others are here to help the next generation of clients, make sure we’re maximizing their lives and legacies also.rnrnWhat is it about Confluence that you think makes it a unique place for a millennial to work?rnrnRandy: Greg and Jim had done an exceptional job of communicating the vision where we’re going in making us feel like we are absolutely a part of that vision. One thing that Greg says is, you know, we’re not here to participate in the success of the organization. We are we’re here to create it.rnrnEverything we do, and this was communicated from day one until now, is about the clients. It hasn’t been difficult for me to connect what we’re doing with a greater meaning because it’s so obvious every day. And we talk about it and make sure that that focus doesn’t change.rnrnGreg: I think just the energy in the office, all of the offices, everyone’s always trying to figure out a way to improve the client experience or better each other through the sharing of podcasts and just growth, sharing articles, books, everything like that. There’s just so much energy in the office that it makes it a fun place to work. You really care about what you’re doing.rnrnChuck: And in addition to Gregory’s comment the importance of challenging each other all the time that consistently get better, right? We don’t want to plateau or level off. We want to continue to level up our performance internally and also with our clients.rnrnGreg: Yeah, I think we all agree, right? If you’re not willing to be challenged, probably the wrong spot, for all of us.rnrnKatie: The vision for Confluence is, every day we’re talking about it, we’re thinking about it. So, if you have a long-term vision about anything, you’ll do anything to get to that goal, that vision down the road. So I think every day we know where we’re going, we know we have to do every single day to get there and like Gregory said, the energy in the offices and with everybody is like, it influences you every single day. On the weekends, during the week, anything.rnrnWe’re all totally focused on what we’re doing. And I think another thing to mention would be the older generations, from my viewpoint at least, they separated work and life: went to work every day, came home, forgot about work, like shut it off, went home, watched TV, went to bed, went to work again.rnrnWith our organization, with millennials, I think it’s important that we see working and life — you know, work-life balance isn’t a thing. We just, we work and we live. And it’s all the same. I think Confluence does a really good job of teaching us how to do that and enjoying it while we’re doing it.rnrnRandy: You can almost call it work life integration.rnrnGreg: Yeah, that’s a great point. That’s a good point. We communicate often when we’re not in the office, right through text or calls or whatever. And so we just live, I don’t know if we’re working or playing, we just live.rnrnHaving said that, I hope you would agree, that if you had something important in your families and it was a Wednesday at three o’clock — the other side of it’s also true, that you should be there. Would you agree with that?rnrnKatie: Totally.rnrnChuck: Yup.rnrnGreg: Yeah. I hope that would be the case.rnrnGregory: Yeah, the flexibility is definitely there if you need it.rnrnGreg: Flexibility’s there. But, but just as far as the energy and the collaboration, does anyone want to explain the offsite we had on Friday, for example, just how everybody contributes to the future of the organization and really how much input there is into that.rnrnKatie: Yeah. So last Friday we got together as a company. I think there’s 28 employees now. So, we get together and the focus of the offsites is usually, “What are we doing today that we need to improve on? What are we doing today that is good? And what’s working?” And then we also do kind of long-term goal slash vision activities. Like how can we innovate? How can we as a company beat the competition? It’s very collaborative and fun. The energy’s there.rnrnGreg: I got to tell you, “beat the competition” was sort of an interesting drill we did. We split the room into two and we were going to do one half of the room was still at Confluence. The other half of the room was fired by Confluence. And the other half, the one side of the room that’s fired would have to create an organization that could serve clients better than we could.rnrnAnd we scrapped that idea and split the associates into two and said, okay, you have to create a firm from scratch that would serve clients better than Confluence. What would you do? And it was interesting, right? I mean we had some things that became obvious that maybe we could work on, in the next 10, 20 and 30 years as we think long term.rnrnSo, based on some of the things you guys have said so far, the opening to the podcast sounds like it’s accurate, right? 92% of millennials do believe success should be measured by more than just profit. Do you all agree with that?rnrnKatie: I agree, but it’s also a business, so it’s important to know where you’re going and know what you have to do.rnrnGreg: Well, for us to, for us to be here in 50 years for our clients and for their children or grandchildren, we need to run a profitable, growing firm.rnrnRandy: Because of all the negative stereotypes of millennials, I think sometimes you may read that statement, which is “92% of the millennials measure success by more than just profits.” They would read that to say, well, millennials don’t care about profits. They’re not realistic, but I think the reality is, we do care about profits, but we recognize that there’s more as well.rnrnGreg: I guess I would think Jim and I would read the 92% as too low, because the fact that any business would be run for only profit is remarkable. Right? That’s not, that’s capitalist, but that’s not compassionate.rnrnSo, we have a lot of goals in the organization. I can assure you, a specific profitability number? We’ve never even discussed it.rnrnRandy: Greg, here’s a question for you as we talk about the importance of profitability. You know, we’re on the investment advisory committee and we look at investments every day. Can you share a little bit about how that impacts our investment philosophy?rnrnGreg: A great organization cares about profit as we stated, but equally important, if it’s an organization that is only focused on current profit and not also developing people, not innovating, not doing Ru0026amp;D, right? And investing back into themselves. That is a short-term success. So, I think our organization isn’t all that different than the portfolio managers or companies that we would feel most comfortable investing in. And that is, they absolutely understand the profitability of today, but they don’t sacrifice the future by maximizing their profitability today. And a key component of that is making sure you’re investing in the right people, the right products and the right technology.rnrnChuck: Well. And I also think too, if you build a team based on solely profitability, you’re going to get a bunch of people at the table and an organization that thinks the same way. And what I think Confluence does a really good job on is putting people in positions and building a team around people skill set, and developing and putting them in positions to succeed.rnrnGregory: Yeah. If a company was only focused on profits, we would not have the energy in the office that we do. Just wouldn’t happenrnrnGreg: Yeah. We’re building it for the next 50 years, which brings up the next question. I may not be here in 50 years, or at least won’t be quite as active. You all, hopefully, will. What does Confluence look like in 50 years?rnrnKatie: So, 50 years is a long time. I think the industry we’re in is going to completely change. I think it will always encompass what we do now, in addition to wealth management, I think it’ll become a more holistic picture of the person and the family. So, not just managing their assets, but helping them to be healthy, stay healthy, focus more on intangible goals. So, moments with their families, their loved ones. And I think we’ll just in 50 years, God willing, we’ll have a better way of making that happen for everybody.rnrnRandy: Another note about millennials is, we talk about fees and you always hear about fee compression and millennials don’t want to pay. I think that’s not entirely fair. I think millennials appreciate good value and they’re willing to pay for services again that they find valuable. And to that point, I think the industry and Confluence, I think we’ll be on the cutting edge of this, is going to evolve, like Katie said, to encompass more things to make it so that we’re able to do more for our clients in a more holistic way. And again, I don’t think millennials have a problem paying for that kind of thing. They just want to know what they’re getting.rnrnChuck: And I do think that having difference of opinions on our team and having our age gap, that we’re going to be a firm that communicates with all ages in a way that they’re most comfortable. Right? Whether it is an office that is, you know, more conducive to the younger generation or text messages or podcasts or video meetings, whatever it is, we want to be based around the client, no matter what their age is, versus just being the older advisor that has a huge conference room with too many chairs and it’s uncomfortable for them. So, we want to provide our clients, an area that they’re going to be the most comfortable in.rnrnGreg: Wonderful. I guess, I guess the advice and the challenge to all of us and then, to all of you will be, let’s never lose the value of the art values of the organization, of creating a new standard for clients, but let’s become absolutely flexible so we can evolve in helping them in many different ways over the next 50 years. And if we do that, we’ll continue to have a strong organization that’ll have an impact on families for generations to come.rnrnWell, thank you. Thank you for your input. We continue to benefit from your association with Confluence and look forward to working with you for the next 30 to 50 years. I said that to be happy and to feel successful, you have to believe your future is going to be greater than your past. And based on the faces I’m looking at right now, there’s no question that’ll be true.rnrnSo, thank you so much for your participation. And more importantly, thank you for everybody that listened to this podcast. We look forward to sharing more podcasts with you in the future, and the way you access them is to get on u003ca href=u0022/podcastsu0022u003eConfluenceFP.com/podcastsu003c/au003e.rnrnWe look forward to speaking with you in the future, and if you have any topics you would like us to review, please let us know. Thank you.

    Guest Speakers: Randy Holcombe Katie Montagazzi Gregory Weimer II, CPA Chuck Ziants

    This session was recorded on June 3, 2019. The views and opinions expressed herein are as of the date of its recording. The information may not be current and Confluence has no obligation to provide any updates or changes. There is no guarantee that any statements, opinions or forecasts provided in this podcast will prove to be correct. This podcast is provided by Confluence for informational purposes only. The information contained herein does not constitute a recommendation to buy, sell or hold any securities and should not be construed as an offer to sell, or a solicitation of an offer to buy any securities. Confluence is not providing any financial, economic, legal, accounting, or tax advice in this podcast. In addition, the receipt of this podcast by any listener is not to be taken as constituting the giving of investment advice by Confluence. Confluence Wealth Services, Inc. d/b/a Confluence Financial Partners is an SEC-registered investment adviser. Registration of an investment adviser does not imply any level of skill or training. Please refer to our Form ADV Part 2A and Form CRS for further information regarding our investment services and their corresponding risks. Additional information about Confluence Wealth Services, Inc. is available on the Investment Adviser Public Disclosure (IAPD) website at: www.adviserinfo.sec.gov.

  • A Powerful Partnership: Greg Weimer & Jim Wilding | Episode 1

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    Greg Weimer launches the “Imagine That” podcast by interviewing his friend, partner and Confluence co-founder, Jim Wilding.

    Greg and Jim reveal why they started the practice and discuss their goal of setting a new standard in the industry. The partners also examine how their team approach to financial planning — in everything from the client experience to investment strategy and risk management — sets Confluence Financial Partners apart.

    Confluence Financial Partners — A Powerful Partnership: Jim Wilding | Episode 1rnrnGreg: Greg Weimer and Jim Wilding. A relationship 26 years in the making … and we’re just getting started. Imagine that.rnrnI’m Greg Weimer. Welcome to the Confluence Financial Partners podcast. And today I have the privilege of having a conversation with my longtime friend and partner Jim Wilding. Thanks. Great.rnrnDo you remember the first time we sat down and started talking about Confluence and I guess we didn’t know the name of it then, we just knew we wanted to create something special. Do you remember that? I do. So, here’s what it’ll be interesting. I want to hear what you remember from that day and I’ll give you what I remember.rnrnJim: When we got to talking, one of the things you said was, wouldn’t it be cool if we could create a firm that looked at things and did things significantly different from the rest of the industry. And that was the very beginning of us putting our heads together to come up with, as you just said, the creation of Confluence before it had an eight.rnrnGreg: My, my recollection is very, very similar to that. I didn’t enjoy being retired in and I think, like you, Jim, neither of us are planning on being retired anytime soon and we just love what we do. I certainly didn’t like it. And knew that we wanted to, I wanted to create something different in the firm that created a new standard. And the reason I wanted to have lunch with you that day was, as I’ve mentioned before to many, Jim was my financial advisor. And so, I just really, really respected Jim and so when I wanted to open up a firm that treated people differently, I wanted Jim to know about that and we decided quickly, right? I remember we shook hands and — ha ha — we were done, and we were partners and moving forward in days, not weeks. What’s interesting, I remember though also we didn’t spend too much time when, financially, we certainly are partners, but we just trusted each other. And so now it’s curious. We both, five and half years ago, wanted to create something different.rnrnJim: Yeah.rnrnGreg: What do you think, I’d be curious from your perspective, what worked really well and then equally important, where do you think we need the most work to continue on our quest to create a unique firm?rnrnJim: If we want to continue to have a unique firm, we need to continue to grow and evolve. And when I say grow, I don’t necessarily just mean grow the number of clients we serve or grow the revenues that are produced. I mean grow in what we offer to our clients. And so, one of the things that I think has worked very well is the way we truly look at a client situation first. We don’t have any interest in pushing a certain product or providing something to a client that isn’t, in our opinions, at least truly in their very best interest. And I think we’ve done a good job of creating a process where the client does come first and where the portfolios and the plans are all about what’s important to the client. And I think we do a good job of really digging in with our clients and trying to help them think beyond just: “what age do you want to retire?” and think about other things that are important to them, their life and their legacy and what we can do to help there.rnrnGreg: You know, there are multiple times in a week, and I’m sure you feel the same way, where you think, “I wish our clients were here to see the work we’re doing for them.” One of the things that just popped into my mind as you were saying that, why don’t you explain, when we review a client’s plan, how the entire team comes together to look at that plan and try to add massive value. So, what we were doing on Fridays— now the Tuesday meeting. Why don’t you explain like what we do in that meeting?rnrnJim: So, I think we have in total now about nine people on our team. And you know, one of the things that I think we bring to our clients isn’t just the expertise that Greg or I might have. It’s the expertise that all nine of the people on our team have. And although a client might meet individually with one or two members of the team, we do review the client’s plan and portfolio together as a team. And so, we literally sit down and we put on our big screen the client’s situation and their plan. And then we let everybody in the room really kind of try to poke holes in it and whoever knows the client the best, the lead person for that client, the lead advisor will take everybody through their situation and describe what the goals and objectives are, and then show the plan in detail and the portfolio.rnrnAnd we get insights from not just the person who owns that relationship, but from everybody else on our team. And one of the things that I think that really brings value to the client is you do get a bunch of other perspectives. There’s also sometimes, and literally in a meeting last week, I went over this with a client and they I think really appreciated this — I said, you and I have been working together 25 years. There could be some things I totally have a blind spot towards or just take for granted because I feel like I know you so well. Somebody new who looks at that situation might be able to very quickly identify, “Hey, why didn’t you do this?” Or, “Have you ever thought about it this way?” And so, we think there’s a lot of value in having fresh perspectives and different people look at all of our clients.rnrnGreg: Yes. I know you and I’ve been around a long time and we tend to think similarly, but on our team we have, we have some CFPs, we have a CPA, we have people that just come at it from a different perspective, which I agree is totally, very, very helpful. It’s interesting. Maybe it would be helpful also, I will book end that a little bit for you. Like, so where we came up with the idea of all working together on the client instead of working separately on the client — it sounds like a subtle difference, but it’s different. A lot of firms work separately on the same client. So, you get 20 years of experience, five different times. With us, you get a hundred years of experience because we’re all in the same room together working on the client. So that came from, we were talking to someone that is in charge of a cardiac department at a hospital and their results went from a 97% success ratio to a 99% success ratio, which that’s a lot of improved lives based on that success ratio.rnrnAnd so I actually asked the guy, I said, “How’d you do it?” The physician, he said, we broke down all the walls, we started to collaborate, and we put the patient at the center, and we all get into the same room, and talk about the client or talk about the patient. And he said, “That’s really improved our results.” They also said this month is about diversity — that we’re working on also. And so that’s what we decided to do. We all get into the same room and we talk about the client. So, we benefit from all the different perspectives. In addition, at the end, the final question becomes at the end of that meeting, “How are we producing massive value for the client?” And if we aren’t really adding massive value, you know, we want to make sure that — well, we’ve got to add massive value, right? Or we’re missing something, because if we’re doing their plans and we’re figuring out their goals, we should be developing massive value.rnrnJim, another thing we do that you are obviously very, very instrumental in is we both sit on the investment advisory committee. It’s been a great addition to our firm. I don’t really remember how that started. I think a couple of us sat in an office and started talking about it and it evolved. Why don’t you explain to everybody the Investment Advisory Committee and how it goes about putting objective-based portfolios together.rnrnJim: Okay. I agree with you, I think that’s been a really valuable addition to our firm, in what we’re able to provide our clients. I think it started with us realizing that the best way for us to manage portfolios, if we have 350 clients, wasn’t to have 350 different portfolios. Sometimes it sounds really great to say I have a portfolio just customized precisely for you, but at the end of the day, if you’re doing 350 customized portfolios, that’s really an impossible task to maintain those and really be on top of all 350. And so, what we tried to do was trade our portfolios and what we call objective-based portfolios. Now we still have a decent number, in the 30s, but a lot more manageable, especially when you consider that there’s six people that are on the investment committee. And so, we created these portfolios for the various objectives that our clients might have.rnrnSo, for instance, a portfolio that’s growth-oriented at one end of the spectrum of portfolios, one that’s purely income-oriented at the other end of the spectrum. And we review the components of these portfolios in great detail, but we don’t necessarily change the components with great regularity. And when you think that through, I think that’s what most clients would really want. And that is good long-term managers that we have tremendous confidence in their ability to produce very solid investment results, over the long term. We need to do a lot of due diligence to make sure that those managers that are in the portfolios are gonna produce good results and then give them the time. So, we monitor the results of the portfolios and the components and make sure we understand when one might be underperforming or outperforming, make sure that that is as-expected. We would replace a portfolio manager only when there’s something going on that gives us less confidence in the ability for them to produce the results that we’d expect.rnrnFor instance, if a portfolio manager, literally retires and whomever is taking over is one that we don’t have as much confidence in.rnrnGreg: Or for example, I’ll interject, like right now there’s two decent sized mutual fund companies. The one just bought the other one. Anybody that’s been through a merger would have to admit the world’s changed for those companies. If they think what they did in the past is going to be the same — mergers change worlds. So, in our world, would you agree, we would probably think about no longer holding those investments based on that merger. It will be something we would think about. Fair?rnrnJim: Definitely. One of the things that is a criteria for us when we do select the managers is the ownership or ownership structure of the firm. You might look at that and say, well, why is that important? Well, we really want to be invested for the long term and the way a firm manages money is absolutely influenced by the ownership of that firm.rnrnGreg: Jim, why don’t you talk a little bit about how careful we are not to do quid pro quo? You got it?rnrnJim: Yep. So in, in our industry, one of the things that there is a lot of, is, you know, the offer from a from a money manager or a mutual fund manager, “Hey, let me take you golfing,” “let me take you, come out to Los Angeles and visit us, and we’re gonna have some fun, going to the Dodgers game,” that kind of thing. And one of the things that we feel is really, really important is, we’re here to manage our clients’ long-term investment portfolios, their hard-earned money. Any decision we make regarding a money manager or mutual fund manager is purely about, “Is this the best fit for our client?” So, at the end of the day, we definitely do our due diligence, but when we fly to Santa Fe, New Mexico or Los Angeles or New York City, we pay to fly there and we’re perfectly happy to do that.rnrnJim: You know, usually the mutual fund company will offer to reimburse us, and we tell them, thanks but no thanks. We’d rather be 100% confident that there is no conflict of interest in the slightest bit. So, when we have a mutual fund manager or a mutual fund company come into our office to make a presentation to us, we buy lunch, they don’t. And, you know this Greg, that lots of times the mutual fund managers are pretty shocked. They’re startled by it because that’s a different way of doing it. But as minor a thing as buying lunches, we still just feel better about, no, you know, no way we’re going to favor one over another based on anything other than: what we think is the best for our clients.rnrnGreg: Yeah. And we’ve been working, we’ve been very consistent about that across the firm. And I remember, oddly enough now that you’re telling that story and telling how we’re so unbiased, I remember 30 years ago or 25 years ago, when you were with a different firm and there was someone that came into your office from a money manager saying, and I don’t know if you remember this or not, if you put x amount of dollars (oh, you’re nodding, yeah), if you put x amount of money with us, we’ll also refer you this amount of dollars. And I remember, back then, how impressed I was at how appalled you were by that concept. And so, we’ve stayed very consistent to that. And just that subconsciously we don’t want any quid pro quo. People saved their money for a long time and we want to make sure we’re investing for the right reasons.rnrnYou know, we’re fortunate to have a great team at Confluence. If I were listening to this podcast, one of the things I’d want to know about is, “How do you communicate?” So, you know, you may want to touch on how you and I communicate and maybe the times of day and the days of the week, but also, just how we communicate with our associates. Because collaboration is key, right?rnrnJim: Yes. It absolutely is. And one of the things I think we do a really good job of is our communication. So, Greg and I are alike, in maybe too many ways, sometimes we both get up pretty early in the morning and, literally when I get up, I go running. And when I come back from running, I usually have two texts on my phone from Greg. When I’m finished running, it’s like 5:30 in the morning.rnrnGreg: If I don’t hear from him before seven, I’m like calling 911. I’m worried about you. Ha ha.rnrnJim: Yeah. So, we definitely communicate quite a bit before at least most people’s work day begins. But you know, one of the times, we both agree, that we get a lot done is in that hour and a half or so before seven o’clock in the morning with our team, we have formal communications. So, we have a team meeting every Tuesday that usually lasts about an hour and we go through you know, what’s going on that week, who’s coming in. And we review a few client portfolios and plans after that meeting. So that’s an additional meeting that we have. We also have a group text with our team and you know, it’s unusual if we don’t have a text going out during the weekend and just touch base with them, what’s going on, or if somebody listened to a really good podcast they’ll share that with the team and send that out.rnrnJim: And so, you know, one of the things that’s great about the technologies that we have today is it can keep you way more connected than, than what we could do before. So, we think it’s really important to kind of always be on. We love our jobs, but our jobs are the kinds of thing that we’re thinking about pretty much all the time. And I don’t say that like, not at all with any conceit. It’s awesome to be able to work with the people I work with, both from my peers here at Confluence and the many clients we work with. And it’s just a fun thing to be able to think about pretty much all the time.rnrnGreg: Yeah. We, we talked about we just live — we don’t work and we don’t play. We just live. So, you never really know if we’re working or playing because we, with our clients, a lot of our clients are our friends and, and Jim and I, we work together. We tend to work out at the same time, we play a lot of golf together. So, we are always thinking about the business and we’re always enjoying it. So, it’s, we just live.rnrnBut you know, thinking about communicating with our team, it’s remarkable, it’s interesting we’re doing this on a podcast, but it’s remarkable how many times our associates are sending us podcasts to listen to, “Hey, you should listen to this one.” Now I do appreciate, if it’s a 40-minute podcast, they say, “Listen to minutes 20 to 25,” and we can just get in on that one.rnrnBut the sharing of ideas, of podcasts, and I know you sent me an article this week and it’s just a really, really fluid team, which is I think, unusual for most firms. And I was thinking about it as you were answering this morning. I talked to three of our advisors before I got to work. Nathan, Chuck and Joe. So, before I got to work, tonight at dinner, I’ll be having a dinner with Amy and Kurt with my wife, Lori. So, it’s a team that communicates consistently throughout the day.rnrnWhy don’t you dig a little bit deeper and talk about some of the things that we put in a financial plan and some of the goals that clients may have that are a little bit out of the norm.rnrnJim: I do think our industry, over the course of time, has put such a huge emphasis on, “Okay, what, what the finish line is — retirement and you’re going to need this much money.” You know, we try to do more than that and get clients to think a little bit more about “Hey, are there things that I want to do with my family now?” And you know, managing that. Maybe you’re 50 and retirement for you might be 15 years away or 20 years away. And what we try to do is say, “Okay, well let’s plan for not just 15 or 20 years down the road, but what’s going on now?” I think one of the things that we sometimes get clients to think a little broader and causes them to say, “I’m going to have to go back and think about this a little bit more” is “let’s think about your life in terms of how much fun do I want to have with my family and are there special times that I want to make sure that I have with my family?”rnrnAnd lots of times we’ll say, well, if you wanted to go on this nice vacation every year between now and retirement, are you willing to work two and a half years longer? Because that’s what that might cost you. Because, at the end of the day, what we really want to make sure clients are able to do is, kind of see, all right, you know, “Could I have like a much more enjoyable time while I’m working here?” as opposed to just putting everything about when I finally retire in the plans. We’ll put some very detailed objectives and timeframes in there. So, for instance, if it’s important to you that your two granddaughters have a college education all paid for, we’ll help you figure that out and make sure that we can earmark money for your granddaughters’ college education. And again, not everybody is only about retirement and we want to make sure that our clients are living their best lives that they can live, not just in retirement, but even now.rnrnGreg: And that’s the fun of the job, right? I mean, just think about it: we are able to, working with the client, making sure their portfolios, not just an accumulation of investments, but that portfolio can actually help provide for a moment annually at Thanksgiving at Hilton Head with them and their whole family. That’s a moment that’s special. Or creating a legacy of education. I think you’ll agree that’s the fun of the job. So many times, it’s not discussed. So many times, in our industry, you don’t get to that level of detail about what people really care about. And I’ll tell you what fun you can see in their face. Like, if we’re sitting across the table from clients and you start talking about like you’re mentioning Jim, education for the granddaughters, you’ll see their face light up, you know you hit on something that’s really important to them and absolutely should be in the plan.rnrnBack to the focus groups, consistent with goals. Do you remember, one of the things as we were asking our clients some questions, they talked about their children.rnJim: Yup.rnrnGreg: And, do you just want to expand on that, because we do that and it was interesting how much clients wanted us to participate in their families.rnrnJim: Yeah. And I think a lot of clients maybe struggle a little bit. A lot of people, period, struggled a little bit with talking to their adult children or even their college-aged kids that are maybe not quite full adults yet, but about, you know, investing or about what they might inherit someday and trying to get them on the right track. And so, what we’ve done with a fair amount of our client families is had meetings to help discuss that and to help get the young adults off to a great start in investing. And lots of times that’s just simply helping them with their first job in their 401k and making sure we have that set up appropriately. And that, quite often, evolves into more and it evolves sometimes into a family setting up a charitable foundation and the kids participating in that, you know, down the road.rnrnJim: Sometimes it takes a little bit of time for the parents to be comfortable sharing with their children, “Hey, here’s what we have and here’s what you might inherit someday.” And you know, I think that one of the reasons so many people, when they inherit money, don’t do a great job of taking care of it is because it’s a surprise to them. And they never knew that it was going to be coming to them. And if, if a parent isn’t able or doesn’t share their expectations with their child, you know, it’s usually not going to work as well.rnrnWe did get a lot of comments around that saying, “That would be great. We’d like to do that more often.” And so, that’s one of the things, you know, when Greg, when we talk about adding massive value that might be one area, if you really think about it, where we can add long-term, truly massive value.rnrnGreg: Well, when you look at the statistics, right, 70% of wealth is squandered in the second generation, 90% in the third generation. So, mathematically we would like to help that change, bend the curve on those numbers. But also, I think so many of us have an estate and we assume our children are going to receive it as a blessing, instead of viewing it as a burden. And unfortunately, what we both see, if it’s not handled well structurally and from a communication standpoint, it ends up being a burden. And it ends up being a stressful thing that could break apart a family, not bring it together. It would be massive value if we could change the numbers in the statistics and change the view about how the assets are received. And I agree with you, communication is a very, very big part of that.rnrnSo, it’s been 26 years. We’ve known each other, assuming we’re healthy, where are we in 26 years?rnrnJim: Whoo. So, this probably surprises most people, but I can honestly say that I hope 26 years from now, I’m still with Confluence. It would be cool if there were a few associates in Confluence that had the same last name as Greg and I, 26 years from now.rnGreg: We just hired one of those.rnrnJim: We did. And yes. And it’s a great addition to have Gregory, Greg’s oldest, on our team now. I’m pretty confident that 26 years from now, we’ll be offering to our clients everything that we’re offering today and more. And I’m very hopeful that 26 years from now, we’ll have a lot of current young adult children that we’ll be dealing with their children. I’m looking forward to the next 26 years.rnrnGreg: Yeah, it’s interesting, we talk about — there’s different business models, right? I mean, you could, we could certainly build this — and one model would be, build it and sell it in 10 years. And we have zero interest in that, and it’s actually somewhat easy, if that’s your model.rnrnJim and I talk a lot about the decisions we’re making today. Is it the right decision, not for the next 10, but for the next 50 years. So, we’re building this for the next generation, and that to me, and I think — just looking at your face, how you answer that — to you, is really rewarding. A lot of fun. So, the next 26 years I’m certainly, I’m certainly looking forward to it also. And I plan on being at Confluence.rnrnI just turned a baby cry, is that amazing to me? That’s cool! So we have babies crying and we have construction in the background. You’ve got to love that. So, what are we missing? Is there anything that you’d like to discuss as we just did? Anything we missed that you wish I would’ve asked you?rnrnJim: I think sometimes people look to us, even people that have known us for a long time, and they might say, “Where do you think the market’s going to go?”rnrnGreg: Yeah.rnrnJim: And you know, the longer I’ve done this and I think you feel similarly, the more I’m convinced that in the short term (and when I say short term, meaning 18 months or so), nobody can give you a consistently accurate portrayal of what the market’s going to do.rnrnGreg: Yeah, I had someone ask me like, do you think this is a good entry point to the market? So, I had to think of a really nice way to say, “How the hell would I know?” Because you know, when, at 30, I started — holy moley — I started 33 … 33 years ago. If you’d have asked me about 33 years ago, I knew. Now I know enough to know, I don’t know.rnrnSo, but it’s still interesting how people think they can predict the market in the short run. And then I’m not even sure the value of that, if they know where it’s going in the long run, right? But you still have people ask you that all the time. It’s interesting to me.rnrnJim: Yup.rnrnGreg: Why don’t you talk about risk because now that you brought up the market, how when we work with clients, the idea of risk is somewhat misunderstood.rnrnJim: It definitely is. And I would have to say that our industry has done more to contribute to that then help that. And so, the way risk is defined by our industry is in the volatility of the prices of securities. And I would say most people, when they think of true risk, it’s about investing and not being able to accomplish their goals of investing. In other words, permanent loss of money or not having the income that they need when they need it.rnrnGreg: And fluctuation is not loss.rnrnJim: Exactly. And so, one of the things that we say quite often to clients, we’ll show them what the market drop was from the peak in October of ‘07 through the trough in March of 2009. But we always remind them, you didn’t lose that money if you didn’t sell out in March of 2000.rnrnGreg: By the way, Jim’s a guy, if you want to know what the market did anytime in the last 200 years, you can give him the date. And he’ll give you the number. Maybe not quite. The year, maybe not the day, but the year.rnrnJim: But I do, I think that it’s really important to have a good understanding of what risk really is and it really shouldn’t be for most people fluctuation in prices. And obviously, if someone has a two-year goal that they’re gonna need money in two years, it’s not an appropriate investment to have that, you know, sitting in a bunch of stocks. Now that’s totally different from if I’m retired and I have some stocks, I’m going to live off of the return I’m getting from the stocks. But what we do for all of our retired clients is build a strategy that protects them from the short-term temporary declines in equity prices.rnrnGreg: Why don’t you, why don’t you dig into that a little bit, because you’re, you’re starting to go into the “bucket strategy,” right?rnrnJim: Yep.rnrnGreg: Because managing money for someone that’s accumulating money is a whole different scenario than managing money for someone who’s in the distribution phase of their life, right? So why don’t you share a little bit about how we manage money for someone in the distribution phase of their life.rnrnJim: Right. And that is a little bit, it even more significant now, in such as just a low interest rate environment. So, you know, back when you started Greg, you could have a 50/50 portfolio, half in bonds, half in stocks, and your bonds will be making like—rnrnGreg: Oh, when I started out, I was investing people in municipal bonds earning 10%. And if they, if they were at nine and a half, they wanted to wait until they got back to 10% muni bonds. Yeah.rnrnJim: It was a lot harder to, you know, get someone to buy into equities when the competition was 10% then today when the competitions like two — but in today’s environment, what would that kind of says is, you have to have a huge pile of money, if the rate of return from bonds is going to be everything you need. So, for almost all of our clients, when they’re retired, they need to still hold a significant portion of their portfolio and equities. Having a significant portion of your portfolio in equities entails living off what we would call a systematic withdrawal from that portfolio. So, if you have $1 million in equities and you’re going to live off of $40,000, you’re going to need a little bit more than the dividends. And so, what we figure out for each one of our clients, is to how to have a customized, what we call “bucket strategy,” so that you can invest everything in equities and keep it long-term.rnrnAnd the part that needs to be in the quote-unquote bucket, which is cash and very short-term bonds, is the amount that you would need if we had a 20% or more decline in the market — stock market, that is — that you could then pull out of that short-term bucket and say, “Okay, I don’t have to worry about I’m taking money out of my stocks because I’m not anymore until they come back.” And so, we figured that out for each one of our clients. And like I said, that is actually something that’s customized because it’s very specific to each person’s very different situation. And it is something that we had to implement fairly recently. And on Christmas Eve, the market was down 20% from where it was in September. And so, for the first four months of this year for our retired clients, we were using the bucket strategy. But again, that’s something that we build to help offset the quote-unquote risk of the price volatility in inequities that allows our retired to still be long-term investors in equities.rnrnGreg: Yeah. If someone’s listening to this in five years, they’re like Christmas Eve, I wonder when that was? It was 2018, so it was last year. This is 2019.rnrnJim in the past, in this conversation, we’ve mentioned the focus groups a couple of times, which I think is a little unique. So, I realize now just replaying it in my mind, our conversation, we’re saying “focus group” like the listeners may know what that is. So, could you explain to them what we do and why we do them?rnrnJim: Yeah. So, I guess we started this last year where we thought it would be a good idea if we could get together relatively small groups of clients, you know, in the neighborhood of 15 to 20 clients. And get together in the evening, have a short cocktail hour where we can spend a little bit of social time and then sit down for dinner and just kind of begin a conversation about what should we be doing with you. And asking our clients for their honest opinions of “What are we doing well?,” “What are we doing not so well?,” “How could we get better?,” “What are the things that maybe we haven’t thought of that would be good for us to be able to offer to our clients?”rnrnAnd I think, I was at least, I think maybe you were when we first started this, we’re a little bit apprehensive about, “All right, how’s this gonna go?” And it’s been super easy because when we sit down with our great clients, they’re super willing to share with us their thoughts. And, and you know, where we could improve and what we’re doing right. And it’s been extremely helpful, I think, for what we need to focus on and how we need to build and grow.rnrnGreg: I agree with you. One of the concerns when we had those was, are we going to hear crickets, right? And that we weren’t going to— and our clients have been just, just so cooperative and joining us in this journey with the firm and wanting to be active participants and helping us build it, which we’re extremely grateful for.rnrnBut not only do we have focus groups with our clients, why don’t you explain the meeting we have, I think it’s next Friday with all of our associates and our offsite and how we think about implementing some of those ideas and thinking outside the box and the services we’re about to provide for our clients.rnrnJim: So one of the things that we’ve been doing for a few years now is we’ll get the whole firm together and have a couple of times a year and take a full business day and just dedicate it to focusing on the things that Confluence is doing for their clients and trying to make it better. You know, we’re up to about 30 people or so that’ll be in that meeting and it takes some time to prepare and get ready for that meeting, but it’s a really a meeting that, if I were a client, I’d feel really good about the fact that “Hey, these guys are taking a whole day to go away and figure out how they can do things better.”rnrnAnd one of the things I think that we always have is a real good focus on constant improvement. Again, I don’t say that with conceit. I’m really more humble about the fact that we feel honored to be able to work with as many clients as we work with. But we absolutely feel like if we’re not doing a better job next year than we are this year,rnrnGreg: Or tomorrow versus today.rnrnJim: That’s right. It’s just not right.rnrnGreg: Yeah. So, to give you an idea of some of the things we’ll be discussing next week on next Friday on behalf of the client. So one is, I’ll give you three.rnrnOne, we have a group coming in to help us do a better job of figuring out what the real values of our clients are around investing. So just asking better questions. So, the whole organization participates in that.rnrnFrom a philanthropy standpoint, we have someone come in and talk to us about donor-advised funds, just to make sure that we are absolutely doing the best job possible for our clients on donor-advised funds.rnrnThe one I’m actually looking forward to, Jim, is when we were going to break our organization up into two groups, one group will continue to be employed by Confluence, the other group was just terminated by Confluence. The group that was terminated: How are you competing against Confluence? And Confluence, how are you going to continue to evolve and come at it from that standpoint to make sure we truly are creating a different standard?rnrnThat’ll be fun. I would think you and I will be in different groups. You’ll be the one getting fired. I’ll stay with Confluence and will and we’ll see how that goes.rnrnJim, it’s been an awesome 26 years and more specifically the last five and a half, and I can tell you from the bottom of my heart I’m really looking forward to the next 26, creating a new standard and our promise to the listeners is very clear. We are going to work as hard as we can to continue to earn your business and we promise to work as hard as we can to never let you down.rnrnThank you so much for listening.rnrnYou can find this and other episodes of our podcast at u003ca href=u0022/podcastsu0022u003eConfluenceFP.com/podcastsu003c/au003e.

    Guest Speaker: Jim Wilding

    This session was recorded on May 23, 2019. The views and opinions expressed herein are as of the date of its recording. The information may not be current and Confluence has no obligation to provide any updates or changes. There is no guarantee that any statements, opinions or forecasts provided in this podcast will prove to be correct. This podcast is provided by Confluence for informational purposes only. The information contained herein does not constitute a recommendation to buy, sell or hold any securities and should not be construed as an offer to sell, or a solicitation of an offer to buy any securities. Confluence is not providing any financial, economic, legal, accounting, or tax advice in this podcast. In addition, the receipt of this podcast by any listener is not to be taken as constituting the giving of investment advice by Confluence. SOURCES: “70% of wealth is squandered in the second generation, 90% in the third generation,” according to the Williams Group wealth consultancy.