Starting Your Own Firm: Because You [Had] To with Mike Garry

Sometimes the industry of finance is a hot mess. And there have been many times that I've thought about whether or not this is truly the place for me to try and make an impact or leave a legacy or whatever it is that we are out here attempting to do with our lives on a day to day basis. And it's in moments like that where people like Mike Garry have crossed my path. The industry may be a mess but let me tell you -- it is filled with people who have good hearts and who want to make a difference and be a part of a community that cares for helping others make it out alive. I wish I could have laid this whole podcast out bare to you all with no edits, because you would've been able to see even more of the humanity and the compassion and the kindness that is happening behind the scenes each and every day between the people of finance. Even still, you're in for a treat as you listen in on this conversation Mike and I had about how incredibly tough it can be to start your own RIA (Registered Investment Advisory) on a shoestring and a prayer. He did it though. And I'm incredibly grateful to him for his openness and courage to share it with the world. This one goes out to all the Mike Garry's of the world who are bringing their full hearts to finance. Thanks for showing up and making space for humanity and kindness in this industry. 

For full disclosure statement, visit www.alphaarchitect.com/disclosures/

Transcript

[00:00:00] Jess: Sometimes the industry of finance is a hot mess. And there have been many times that I've thought about whether or not this is truly the place for me to try and make an impact or leave a legacy or whatever it is that we are out here attempting to do with our lives on a day to day basis. And it's in moments like that where people like Mike Garry have crossed my path. The industry may be a mess but let me tell you -- it is filled with people who have good hearts and who want to make a difference and be a part of a community that cares for helping others make it out alive. I wish I could have laid this whole podcast out bare to you all with no edits, because you would've been able to see even more of the humanity and the compassion and the kindness that is happening behind the scenes each and every day between the people of finance. Even still, you're in for a treat as you listen in on this conversation Mike and I had about how incredibly tough it can be to start your own RIA on a shoestring and a prayer. He did it though. And I'm incredibly grateful to him for his openness and courage to share it with the world. This one goes out to all the Mike Garry's of the world who are bringing their full hearts to finance. Thanks for showing up and making space for humanity and kindness in this industry. 

Mike, thanks so much for being with me on the show. I never know how much I'm gonna enjoy these conversations until I'm in the middle of them. And when we were able to visit your office a couple weeks ago, some of the things that came out of just that conversation about life and being an advisor and being a human and having a family and all of that, I just, it was exactly the kind of stories that I'd like to hear in these moments.

I thank you for coming on and being willing to share some of your story here and for joining us today. 

[00:01:59] Mike Garry: Sure. Thanks for having me. Yeah. My only agenda when you and Ryan came in was to ask him about his prep experiences and to make sure I didn't eat more than three donuts and I think I stuck to them both.

[00:02:10] Jess: Oh, yeah. They were delicious. And, Yardley is one of the cutest towns I think I've ever been. I had no idea. 

[00:02:17] Mike Garry: It's pretty cute. It's so little. It's this one traffic light and most people live in lower Mayfield Township which surrounds it other than the river and then New Jersey. And I live in lower Meigs Field all of four minutes from the office, but it's all referred to as Yardley.

And I love being here. I love being in town. I go get my bucket of unsweetened iced tea from Wawa in the morning, right across the street. 

[00:02:41] Jess: Wawa. They're still trying to turn me into the Wawa cult. It's definitely a special thing to native Philadelphians.

[00:02:50] Mike Garry: Yeah. You go in there, it's not dimly lit. Some of the other convenience store chains, the lights are buzzing and low and there's insects flying around. It's brightly lit. Stuff is fresh. There's reasonable prices, and it's convenient. Yeah, who would've thought? A nice place with reasonable prices that was clean and fresh. 

[00:03:08] Jess: And tell me, cuz I know you were an attorney before you became a financial advisor, so back us up and give us a little bit of the story of Mike.

[00:03:17] Mike Garry: Sure. 

[00:03:17] Jess: And you can go back as far as you would like, cuz some of the fun stories and some of the things that make us who we are outside even our career lifespan. So what is it like to grow up in the city of brotherly love?

[00:03:27] Mike Garry: Oh, you know, it felt special, it felt like it was a special place to be. 

I don't know. It was okay, but as a little kid you think, you think about the bicentennial happened when I was nine, and so it was a big thing. 

[00:03:39] Jess: It's iconic. Yeah. 

[00:03:41] Mike Garry: Yeah. It's a big thing. But yeah, so I grew up in Philadelphia, went to high school and college in Philadelphia.

I really had trouble getting like a job after college. I went, got my MBA and then I went to law school and then worked as a lawyer. I was working at my second lawyer job and I hated every second of every day. I could just feel the stress, when I go to push the elevator button, I feel like my heart close up.

It was awful. I really wasn't sure what to do because you don't really learn that in law school. You had to bill hours, at six minute increments. And back then it was before the software so written on a sheet of paper. So somewhere between three and five sheets of paper were given to the lady who worked for me at the end of the day, every day. And, I didn't know lawyering, like the negotiation back and forth. And if you're not coming out of the biggest firms where you could spend time in the library, you had to go out and go to motions. So in addition to not really knowing what I was doing there were also the parts that, that just really felt unsure about everything. And I remember one part where we got an insurance firm and then a partner came in and said I would be handling workers' comp. I'm like, I don't know anything about that. That's different. 

[00:04:57] Jess: Yeah. 

[00:04:58] Mike Garry: And he said here, we'll read these and get started. And then that would be a case where a guy during work fell off a roof and broke both arms and he wanted to never have to work again and his employer wanted him like back that afternoon. And I was like, okay. They're both completely unreasonable. This is not fun. It was really a slog. 

[00:05:22] Jess: Yeah. 

[00:05:24] Mike Garry: And it was hard to see things getting better. Like one of the things I couldn't help noticing was all these partners at law firms, even in their fifties, working till nine o'clock on Thursday nights.

And I didn't like it that much, that I would want to do that. 

[00:05:38] Jess: Right, yeah. Yeah. Did they look like they were liking it?

[00:05:42] Mike Garry: No, not really. And they had left a big firm in the city cause they didn't want to keep working until nine o'clock on Thursday nights. And so they didn't work as much, but they didn't seem happy either.

 Yeah. 

And so, how I got into finance is, I was at one of those networking events that you have to go to . And I met a recruiter from Merrill who said, "Oh, your MBA and law degrees would be very marketable as a financial advisor." I didn't realize how much that would help because, without thinking about being a financial planner, I took all the classes on income tax. 

[00:06:14] Jess: Just liked it. 

[00:06:15] Mike Garry: Wills. Yeah. So I liked all that stuff. So I go to the Merrill office to interview. And the law firm, everybody's miserable. And at the Merrill everybody was happy. This was '98, right? So there's a nice bull market going on.

[00:06:31] Jess: Yeah. Yep. 

[00:06:32] Mike Garry: People are making money and they're pretty happy. 

[00:06:34] Jess: That's wild that you could tell just the atmosphere, 

[00:06:37] Mike Garry: Right? And the lawyers that I, I was friends with are wondering how they're ever gonna pay their student loans back. Meanwhile, these people that didn't spend the extra three years in law school couldn't be happier and making more money.

[00:06:49] Jess: Yeah. Wild. 

[00:06:51] Mike Garry: And it was hard to make the jump though, because, I'd gone to three years of law school, the whole opportunity cost or the sunk cost idea- spent three years doing it, spent a lot of money doing it, it was probably like $75,000 for the three years, which doesn't seem like a lot now, but 1994 to 96, it was a lot.

And then I was four years older than if I had gone right from college. So I worked at a grocery store. And after my first year, through the end of my third year, I worked at the Pennsylvania Attorney General's office. So I had two jobs. And Rachel, I got married after my first year. So I was married, she was going to nursing school and then working as a nurse. And we were not like hanging around playing pool, we were working all the time. 

[00:07:35] Jess: Working all the time. Yeah. 

[00:07:38] Mike Garry: All the time. 

[00:07:39] Jess: I can put myself in those shoes. Having that feeling of working and knowing that this is not a sustainable way of living for me. And just that thought alone, how do I get out of this, off of this wheel and into these other pieces of my life. Yeah. 

[00:08:00] Mike Garry: Yeah. I think I was hoping that law school would help get off that wheel.

But then, yeah, going to law school where you're also working and you're married... it was hard and commuting so it was about an hour from where I lived before we got married, 45 minutes from where we lived, afterwards. So I spent, a lot of hours in the car back at a time when there weren't a lot of productive things you could do in the car. 

[00:08:23] Jess: Y'all were in the middle of just slugging it out and and you guys have two girls? 

[00:08:29] Mike Garry: We have three, three girls. Our oldest was born in June of 96. I graduated from law school in May of 96. 

[00:08:37] Jess: Okay. 

[00:08:37] Mike Garry: Yeah, so that's not really the greatest timing. I went to an okay law school and I was an okay law student, so I was pretty nervous about passing the bar. And it's only twice a year, so it was July test or February test. And so I took a bar review class at Villanova and I did the class on the way home, went to the gym and then would go home and study and do questions, have time for dinner with the family and then go back at it.

And then we moved in with our in-laws. And I remember the week before Barza, my father-in-law said, Hey, Mike, we have couple buddies over, why don't you to play Horseshoe, have a beer or two, Saturday night at six o'clock in the summer. I said, Bill I can't. And he's look, if you don't know it now, you're not gonna know it. And I said, you are right. That is true. 

[00:09:24] Jess: That is true. 

[00:09:24] Mike Garry: But I can't miss by like a question and said everything back a year. I just can't. And then I did crazy good on the bar exam. My multi-state bar exam score was a 160, which is nuts. Yeah it was crazy, but, it played to my strengths and it worked out.

So yeah, of course now, again, being an okay student at okay law school, nobody even interviewed me until they found out I passed the bar and we didn't find out until December. I sent out all those resumes, and no responded until I said that I had passed.

And then in the interviewing process people were, offering like high twenties and low thirties. At the time I was thinking I would've been better off staying at the McDonald's I worked at, 

[00:10:09] Jess: I was about to say, this is 1999, right? 

[00:10:11] Mike Garry: Yeah. 96. But, so Yeah. So terrible. Terrible. So it was my twenties and thirties were very tough financially for us.

So Rachel and I had the long walk on the beach.

Do I really stop this legal journey two years after I graduated from law school, after paying all this money, and it really, I became a practical decision. So like in either event, I could have an okay career to an amazing career. And one of the things that kind of scared me away from the practice of law was the fact that, so say I was somewhere for 8, 10, 12 years and they didn't want me to be a partner.

And then I'd have to go be a pariah. Cause nobody else would then hire you to be a partner. And I'd have to hang up my own shingle. Of course, I did that in almost exactly the same time frame as a financial advisor, and it was the best thing that I ever did. But at the time it seemed so scary.

So when I started at Merrill this back in September of 98, a lot of people said like how awesome their training was.

But the training was really sales training not really anything having to do with what to do with an actual client. Yeah. When I asked what the different C shares were, this is a time when you couldn't really effectively Google anything. Now you say, what's a C share, you could go and see what it is. But then I was like, what does that mean? And sales manager response was, don't worry about that. Just bring people in. I'm like, Ray, I was a lawyer. It's hard for me not to just not worry about something. And so we'd go to training in Princeton and they'd have these things, but it was all about, connections and prospecting and never about how much money does somebody need to have in their retirement account, or what kind of accounts are good, and I felt pretty fortunate that I had a finance background and had an accounting in the other business classes. 

When I think about it now, and when I think about what an important work it is and to think like how little was involved in training to make sure somebody did a good job, it's really bad. It's really bad. Like you, there should be more training in like terms of selling somebody like a coffee machine, right?

And this is you're gonna wind up dealing with people's lives and whether they can retire or whether they're impoverished in old age because of the dumb decisions you make. And the fact that there's no training about that. It, I don't know, it seems almost criminal to me. It's so bad.

[00:12:33] Jess: I agree. 

[00:12:33] Mike Garry: Now that's 25 years ago. Maybe it's better. But that was my experience in 1998 through 2000. I left there in July of 2001. 

[00:12:44] Jess: There are a lot of advisors out there who aren't taught, 

[00:12:48] Mike Garry: Right! 

[00:12:48] Jess: And whenever I joined Alpha Architect that was of all of the things, it was culture, it was their values, and it was the fact that their mission is to educate investors. And for the first time, I had somebody that was willing to tell me how I can have something to believe in for my clients, right? I finally found somebody who was willing to deliver those answers to me. And so there's just so many advisors out there that I feel so compassionate for because they're doing their best and they don't know. They don't know. 

[00:13:21] Mike Garry: So you go back to 1998 through 2001 when I was there, and there's a lot of training about sales, and then also they changed the focus on what they wanted advisors to focus on. And right before I started it was, everybody sold vShare mutual funds. And then they wanted people to go the managed mutual fund marketplace. Then they wanted to do UITs then they closed down the UIT department, and then they wanted Merrill Lynch Umlimited Advantage which would be like a fee based account, and then, Consults, which is a separate managed account platform.

And so you figure every quarter or every six months or every year, they're changing the incentives that they provide to their brokers. And the brokers are taught only really about sales training. No wonder! 

[00:14:15] Jess: Right? 

[00:14:15] Mike Garry: When I went out and, got my number so to speak, I didn't know the first, like bringing the first client, I really didn't know what to do. 

I know. 

But trying to figure out what to do or what to help people as best you can and you certainly don't want to hurt them. And yeah, I think there's a lot of advisors out there that are really lost and trying to figure out what's best and without a lot of guidance not maybe much more guidance than the general public does.

[00:14:41] Jess: Yeah. And I like to make the assumption in most cases that somebody's doing the best that they can. I don't know that I would make that assumption if I saw an annuity inside a Roth IRA but I equate it a lot of times to fitness and health, right?

The cost of hiring someone one on one to look in on your situation is much more expensive than buying like a $20 a month membership to the globo gym down the road. But the $20 a month global gym typically doesn't provide the accountability and the comprehensive look at you personally to help you get results that you're looking for. So a lot of that initiative and drive and information and research has to come from your end. And so you're just lopping that on top of access to every possible fitness piece of equipment in the world. And usually that mix does not work out well. 

[00:15:29] Mike Garry: Yeah. That's, so what you said can be a real good analogy to our business. Yeah. We have clients who pay us a lot of money to make sure that things are going right. And I actually am also a user of a lot of coaches. This past year I did Stephanie Bogan's, and before that I had done Carson for four years or five years. 

[00:15:51] Jess: Okay. Yeah. 

[00:15:52] Mike Garry: I go to a swim coach now, so my triathlons take a little less time. 

[00:15:57] Jess: That would be a good coach for me. Swimming is not my forte.

[00:15:59] Mike Garry: Yeah. It was not mine. It's funny. People ask me what I'm best at. I always say transition cuz I could eat and drink real quick 

[00:16:06] Jess: In the triathlon. 

[00:16:07] Mike Garry: Yeah. But I'm not really good at any of the things. But the funny thing is people are so bad at swimming... with the little bit of swim I've had, swimming will by next year, I guess be my best event. 

[00:16:20] Jess: Fair. Yeah. 

[00:16:20] Mike Garry: I, I had only had six lessons by my race in September and I felt so much stronger than I had before and it translated to being not as tired on the bike or the run.

 So paying somebody to, to teach you stuff and then holding you accountable, it really helps. 

[00:16:38] Jess: Yeah. So I'm laughing at myself and at us cause I think this is maybe the first time that we've took a 30 year leap in conversation, because we went from talking about like how we got into finance and then now we're talking about the where you're at now with your swimming and all of that, which the thing I think that I'm trying to point out is life is settled now and the reason we could make that jump was because you and I have had other conversations offline about that period of time in between. 

I would imagine that these things that you're doing now, the experiences that you're having, the triathlons, the being able to help clients in a certain way that wouldn't have been able to do 20 years ago are so much sweeter because of how tough that 20 year gap is that we just 

[00:17:36] Mike Garry: Yeah, it was really hard, Jess, it was really hard. I went to an advisor who was independent fee only and he was the first and I guess only boss I've ever had who treated me nicely and with respect and it was a great learning experience. He did a lot of things good. Some things not great. He didn't really document too much of anything. And the financial planning he did like yellow pad financial plans, which it's a good start.

[00:18:07] Jess: Yeah. I'm familiar with.

[00:18:08] Mike Garry: Soon after I started, a bunch of other people left and then we hired other people. And so basically I ran his office and he would do other things and work in the business or other interests.

And I got to mature a little bit, make decisions that weren't earth shattering but good practice for making decisions later in life. 

[00:18:30] Jess: Yeah. 

[00:18:30] Mike Garry: Got to handhold clients as the market went down. Things bottomed in October of 2000 and I started working for him and September 11th happened a couple months later. So it was a rough time. 

[00:18:41] Jess: Yeah. 

[00:18:41] Mike Garry: But, it was good learning all the different things about the independent space. I read so much. You went from, you turned on on your computer and everything's there to, okay, there's five or 10 pieces of software and we decide which ones we're gonna have.

[00:18:58] Jess: Yeah. 

[00:18:58] Mike Garry: So it was really exciting that way. Get to learn and grow professionally. The end wasn't the greatest. We had talked to the lawyers a couple times about me buying him out over time cause he's about 20 years older than me. And for me it made a lot of sense cuz it's so hard to bring in clients in this business.

[00:19:13] Jess: Yeah. 

[00:19:14] Mike Garry: And I'm not naturally outgoing and I'm not, 

[00:19:17] Jess: I think we're similar. Yeah. We're not naturally attuned to sales. We like people and relationships. But it actually complicates the sales factor a bit. 

[00:19:25] Mike Garry: Yes. I will go talk to somebody for an hour and then they go to leave. I'm like, oh, I never asked them if they wanted to sign up.

Yeah. So that's not a great thing. And when I, when I left him, it made Rachel, my wife, really nervous. She's yeah, are you gonna sign anybody up? Are you gonna be able to get clients? It was a good experience really, except for, towards the end when I thought we were working on a buy sell agreement, and then I was away.

My buddy Scott called, said, Hey I, Hey Big Mike, I think Chief's thinking of selling. I'm like, what do you mean? And he said I walked by his office. It sounded like he was in the conversation to sell. I was at my sister's in Connecticut for New Year's. Had a very restless weekend. Whenever the day was,] we got back to work, I went and asked him, said, "Hey, you thinking of selling?" And he said " No... maybe." "Oh, what the... does maybe mean in this context.' And he said "I have to protect my interest.' I'm like, 'I thought that's what we've been working on!" But I get it, what am I gonna say to that? I went back in and called Rachel and said, "we're gonna need another plan."

 I figured, okay, I gotta do whatever I have to do to set up an RIA and start the process. So I'd get home from work, Rachel would go in, she was working as a nurse at nighttime. I'd have the kids and I'd try to write down all the different things we had to do. And then so we did that and then we're looking for a house.

2005 was like the second worst period other than the most recent period to buy a house. 

[00:20:52] Jess: Yep. 

[00:20:52] Mike Garry: House we're in was the sixth house we put an offer on. It's crazy. And overpaid for it by a hundred thousand dollars. The good thing is we have great neighbors who are like our best friends, all live within a couple houses of us. So it was worth what we paid for that house, it needed so much work and it was so much more expensive. But before we got that house, we were like, this isn't working. Like our plan to move here is not working like five offers that were outbid and I know I'm gonna be leaving my job and having no income.

[00:21:24] Jess: Yeah. 

[00:21:25] Mike Garry: Anyway, we settle on the house in July, November. It's like a Monday in November. We're going to Disney World. That night he asked if I could meet him at the club where he was a member at the time for lunch. I go and he said, "so I hear you thinking of leaving." Like how do you know that? And it was a guy who's still at DFA, had left the voicemail, but the temp put it in his mailbox instead of my mailbox, back when that was the thing that could happen.

[00:21:51] Jess: That hurts. That just leaves a pit in my stomach. 

[00:21:53] Mike Garry: Yeah. I'm sure that I was like white and sweating. 

[00:21:57] Jess: Oh sure. 

[00:21:57] Mike Garry: And for 30 seconds, cuz I'm not confrontational, at least not initially, I was like, oh my God. And I'm just thinking, "We're packed up. We're going to Disney World tonight." And it's November 7th, let's say. We always joke, our local public school has no school November - the kids are off half days, like the first two weeks of November. And so he said, "I hear you're thinking of leaving." And then ultimately I said, "How could I not think of leaving? Like we, I thought we were gonna make this deal and I was gonna be here forever. I was gonna buy, fund your retirement. And you said that didn't work, so how could I not be looking for something?" And I think he had the real realization that it would be hard to replace me. 

And he offered me a raise and phantom stock. And I said that's a really generous offer. I'm gonna have to think about it though cause I've been spending nine months or 11 months thinking I had to leave. Yeah, I'm gonna need some time. And he said, okay. And I thought, okay, that at least bought us the time.

And so it wound up being some week in February, he said, how about this Friday's it, I'm like, that's, that works. That's fine. So yeah. That was some fun times. And I'm sure I had much thicker hair before all that.

Then we start, and my choice really was to form an RIA because there were no other good choices. Like I hadn't practiced law in seven years, and had only practiced for two years. No one was gonna hire me as a lawyer.

I could go back to a development program at a brokerage firm to make half as much money and be miserable again. Like that did not seem like the answer. So it was form the RIA, but there was no clients. 

I always had people say to me, if you ever leave him, give me a call. 'I called all of those people and all of those people were like "it's not a good time for me now." So some of those people did become clients like in year two, three, or four, but I think they all wanted to make sure that. The business was successful first. 

[00:23:52] Jess: Yeah. 

[00:23:52] Mike Garry: Which leads to a chicken or egg thing, that's really a hard thing because if enough people didn't say yes, we weren't gonna make it. We talked a little bit about that scary situation. So we have zero and there's no brokerage relationship, so I'm not gonna sell somebody an annuity and make some giant payday one day. People come in and they're billed for the quarter and it's prorated. 

So I start at February 10th. Accounts didn't come in until the end of March, so nobody got billed for March 31st. I think our billing in July was $6,000 and October was seven, so maybe we did $13,000 of revenue in 2006, and I made about the same working for him until February 10th.

Right. And Rachel, we had little kids, so it wasn't like she could just go work full-time and it wouldn't be giant daycare costs. So she was working part-time. I was working mostly from home and I opened a 401k and borrowed what I could from it, transferred my account from him.

We went through our savings. We used credit cards. And they were all at 0% and then the financial crisis hit and they all became 30%. And so it took until January of 2009 for our expected business income to meet our current demands. But by that time I still had the giant debt on my $40,000 401k loan, a hundred thousand dollars in credit card debt, no equity in our house because we put 0% down and we overpaid for it.

It took until five years ago for our house to be worth more than we, we paid for it. Yeah. And the kids just getting older, right? So they're born in 96, 2000 and 2001. And it took till 2009 for the current come to meet like current expenses and then starting to pay all that stuff back.

Yeah, it was hard and I didn't have any employees. I hired the first intern in 2013, and she was a 19 year old who cold called me and she was actually amazing. My first book was partially dedicated to, I called her my number one intern, Allie Barch. While waiting for her to start, I prepare all this stuff I thought she'd be doing. And like Tuesday at noon, she's okay what else do you have? And I'm like, holy crap. She's an amazing young woman. Yeah. And I was impressed that she cold called as a 19 year old looking for businesses. She's actually really not an outgoing person. She's shy. So I know that those cold calls were painful for her. 

[00:26:27] Jess: Aww. 

[00:26:27] Mike Garry: But she's a tough brilliant young woman. 

[00:26:30] Jess: That's awesome. 

[00:26:31] Mike Garry: I got so lucky that she called out of the blue. Yeah. Yeah. 

[00:26:35] Jess: Yeah. Cuz you're putting in the sweat equity on your end and just those moments where you just have a burst of light coming through in, in a difficult situation and you realize that you can keep taking that next step. 

 It's those moments, right? Those things. 

[00:26:55] Mike Garry: Number one intern, Allie.

[00:26:58] Jess: That one moment really helps. And I'm sure if you look back those years, like it's just little moments like that. 

[00:27:06] Mike Garry: Yeah. Things just got a little bit better all the time. And for a few years we made our mortgage payment with a under a thousand dollars left each quarter. It was really tight for a while. 

[00:27:19] Jess: I don't know, like when we were first talking, whenever we visited and you were sharing your story, I could just, it all, it all fit together for me.

Your aura about you just has so much peace about it. You give off this vibe that, that life is enjoyable. And I wonder, never know, but I wonder if some of the appreciation and the gratitude, cuz we're talking about gratitude too, that you have for where you are and for the gift that you have, the ability to give to others comes from that you went through all of that, and then maybe even the little bit or some empathy that you have because 

[00:28:03] Mike Garry: Sure. 

[00:28:03] Jess: You recognize that, at 45, that's your life wasn't, 

[00:28:09] Mike Garry: yeah, 

[00:28:10] Jess: it was hard. Wasn't, seemed up at 45. There was still a lot of work to do, but not here. 

[00:28:13] Mike Garry: One of the things I think that, that makes us better as advisors is actually understanding or realizing that, that so many people have similar stories. 

You read the news or you listen to people talk like politics and you think like the country's torn apart cuz people are so different. They have different feelings about a couple percent of the million things that they have thoughts about. And the rest most people went to work today, most people didn't cheat on their spouse, most people paid their taxes. They tried to be a good human, with varying degrees of success. Yeah. Small part didn't do any of those things. Or they did cheat on their spouse or whatever. It's hard, again as advisors, what we have to do is put things in context, yeah. Yes, the stock market is really good today. We're really bad today. How's it gonna be over like the 40 years you'll be investing? That's what you need to worry about. 

[00:29:03] Jess: Yeah. Yeah. And in the midst of those conversations you end up realizing that what they're worried about isn't the stock market at all.

[00:29:10] Mike Garry: Yeah. Yeah. It's the stock market might be the trigger, but there's usually something else going on in their lives that, that is concerning. And if it's a financial thing, then that really makes the stock market be the trigger, even if they're not gonna have to pull anything out, or they don't have a plan to pull anything outta the stock market for 20 years, if there's some financial crisis at home, the stock market being down makes them feel that so much more acutely.

[00:29:36] Jess: Like humans, why people do the things that they do aren't always calculated reasons. 

 It may have nothing to do with whether or not they trust us. And it may have everything to do with the fact that is a scary leap for all the dominoes that would come after that one decision. 

[00:29:53] Mike Garry: I think you laid out one of the central tenants of economics. People respond to incentives, but you don't know what those incentives necessarily are. 

[00:30:01] Jess: Oh, yeah. Jack said something the other day about, I don't know if we should include that or not, because a rational investor, and I'm like, "Jack, the only rational investors I know work at this firm."

It was funny just, that, like I said, I have so much deep respect and appreciation for the fact that they know what they know and they're not using it to take advantage of people. And they're using it to truly educate and to be the good in the world from that sense and to partner with them and be able to bring my gifts, which are not that, to the table. And to be respected for that and to be able to bring that to the team and it'd be valued and all of us work together to be a force has been, it's been a lot of fun. But it's again like we've talked about today, I appreciate it a lot more because of the the things that I went through in finance to get to this point.

[00:30:48] Mike Garry: Yeah. You're right. If I was 22 I got outta college and was just immediately successful and things were easy, I probably wouldn't appreciate it or have the kind of gratitude I have now. 

[00:30:59] Jess: That's right. 

[00:30:59] Mike Garry: Yeah. It certainly has been hard, but still very fortunate. A lot of people, it's hard and they don't get to where I'm at, yeah. The universe doesn't owe us anything. 

[00:31:08] Jess: Listeners, if you've loved this episode of The Breakthrough Factor, don't forget to hit the subscribe button. And if you know someone who has had a breakthrough moment in their life or their business, or if you are the person who's had a breakthrough moment in your life, business, or other, please reach out, let me know. I'd love to have a conversation about bringing you on the podcast. And finally, I appreciate your reviews, your feedback, anything that you have to say that helps us get better on our end so that we can bring you a show that truly educates and encourages, it challenges you, and then ultimately helps you break through those moments in your life that are difficult and standing in the way of what you want. Cheers, friends, as always, go lift heavy and be kind. 

Jess Bost is a Retirement Income Certified Professional and the Vice President of Brand Partnerships at Alpha Architect. Due to industry regulations, Jess will not discuss any of Alpha Architect’s funds on this podcast. All opinions expressed by Jess and podcast guests are solely their own opinions and do not reflect the opinion of Alpha Architect or its affiliates. This podcast is for informational purposes only, and should not be relied upon as a basis for investment decisions. For more information, please visit w w w dot alpha architect dot com