Welcome to Wit, Wisdom, and What Matters Most with Danton Troyer and Kyle Luetters from Moneta. In this podcast, we help corporate executives and business leaders navigate uncertainty around various life stages, including complex benefits, career transitions, and planning for what comes next.
Join us for this journey as we explore the moments that shape careers, leadership, retirement, and legacy. Drawing from years of experience and conversations with guest experts, Danton and Kyle help listeners gain clarity, confidence, and perspective during pivotal transitions, allowing them to focus on what matters most.
And welcome to another edition of Wit, Wisdom, and What Matters Most. It’s a podcast with Moneta’s Gast Freeman Troyer Racen Team. My name is Kyle Luetters.
I’m joined by Danton Troyer, Danton talking a lot about very honorable, amazing, exciting gifting today with a very unique resource that we happen to have right here at the firm.
Danton:
Yeah, I think Deb’s going to provide some insights, maybe just another way of thinking and maybe more in-depth thinking as far as just the philosophy around giving away money.
Kyle:
It was a far-ranging conversation. You’re going to hear quite a bit about who Deb is, Deb Dubin, Chief Philanthropy Officer here at Moneta, who she is, what she does, and some of the ways that you start to really begin to think beyond just the dollar sign when it comes to giving. So with that being said, here’s our conversation with Deb Dubin.
And we’re back with Deb Dubin here on Wit, Wisdom, and What Matters Most.
Deb, you are our Chief Philanthropy Officer here at Moneta. And first and foremost, that’s a really cool title, if I think about it, but how did you get to Moneta? I want to start at the very beginning. How did you get here before we get into the nitty gritty of what you do?
Deb:
Sure. Sure. Well, I mean, there’s personal and professional reasons why I’m here, but yes, Chief Philanthropy Officer, super unique to Moneta, which of course we know is an RIA. Most investment firms don’t have an in-house person who’s an expert on philanthropy. So I feel very privileged and lucky that the folks at Moneta decided we needed to have someone who could talk to clients about their interests and aspirations around philanthropy.
So how I got here was I was running the Regional Association of Grantmakers in Missouri. Very glamorous title of Philanthropy Missouri.
Danton:
That was an upgrade, I think, from the title, at least.
Deb:
Yeah. Yeah, Philanthropy Missouri. I was the CEO for eight years, and that was a collection of funders around the state. We started in St. Louis 50 years ago, and I grew it across the state. And we had about 70 members who were corporations here in town and in Springfield and in Kansas City – foundations, high net worth families, tax-supported foundations…all giving money away and wanting to do it in ways that were impactful.
Sometimes they want to collaborate, sometimes they don’t, but they all have a hunger for connection. So I ran that organization for eight years here in town, and during that time had the opportunity to interact with some of the partners here at Moneta when folks had questions and really kind of came to an obvious point, which is you guys could use someone in-house to work with clients on these things. So one thing led to another. I can name off partners who deserve the most credit, I’ve already taken them all to lunch.
But the idea is really thinking through how we help our clients. We know from studies that have been done nationwide that clients want to talk about philanthropy, and that advisors like you are the most trusted source of information about philanthropy after spouse, which puts pressure on you and also creates an opportunity for you.
Moneta also recognizes that multi-generational wealth, we have a lot of families who we steward their wealth, we help them navigate life’s path, that are multi-generational in nature. And one of the things that really works well when teaching stewardship to families is to have a conversation about philanthropy. Even when families aren’t ready to sort of open the kimono on inheritance, you guys talk about retirement, you guys talk about sort of thinking through what the future looks like and what legacy looks like. Some families aren’t ready to talk strictly about finances. Philanthropy can be a really nice entree into talking about stewardship, using language around we’re grateful, we’re thankful, we’re lucky, we’ve worked hard, and here’s your opportunity to help us do some really amazing things.
Danton:
Yeah, I think you touched on a couple of things that I want to certainly dive into. Sure. But why philanthropy?
How did you…
Deb:
Yeah, how did I get to philanthropy? Well, you know, again, personal and professional. I’ve had a lot of opportunities. I’m a lawyer by training and practiced law in a big law firm for years in San Francisco. And I also worked in government there. When we moved to St. Louis 20 years ago to raise our family, I made the segue to work…taught a little bit at Wash U. And I also worked on some political campaigns, but the bulk of my work was really working with an investment firm that invested in low-income communities through tax credits.
Then went into philanthropy because it seemed like a really neat way to merge knowledge of finance with impact in a broad way. And to help families to do so, I did some training. I have a CAP, which is a Chartered Advisor in Philanthropy degree. And I also did some other training. One course in particular is called 2164, working with multi-generational families. So I pivoted from working with organizations in my previous role that were giving money away to now working with families. It was a really nice progression.
So why philanthropy? That’s on a professional level. On a personal level, I was a young widow. I lost my husband seven years ago to cancer. And think a lot about legacy and think a lot about stewardship and how you memorialize people and how you keep them alive through impact. So one of the things we did when my husband passed away was set up a donor-advised fund in his memory. Folks contributed.
And then I have two boys now in their 20s and we are able to say to ourselves, you know, what do you want to do this year that reflects dad’s values and interests and beliefs and reflects our family’s interest in impacting the world and telling stories, right? Because we always want to tell stories.
So on a personal level, philanthropy feels like a great fit because I’ve spent a lot of time thinking about legacy.
Kyle:
No doubt. And what a powerful personal story as well, too, to really drive that. And that’s what we hear a lot of from folks.
You have brought, and folks are listening to this, they won’t be able to see it. You brought something with you.
Deb:
Oh, today for those at home and the home audience as opposed to the studio audience today. I did, I did.
Kyle:
Can you go through what you brought here? Because it’s a very unique piece.
Deb:
Well, thank you. Yes. Well, thank you. It’s a big ampersand. It’s made out of wood. If you think about that character on the keyboard that we’re all not sure what to use it for except for it represents the word “and,” right? The ampersand represents something really big for me with respect to philanthropy.
And so I lug this wooden ampersand, here’s what it sounds like, around, it’s heavy. I lug it around with me and I have smaller ones that I give to clients when I think they’re going to be fidgety in a meeting so they can take it home. I have a stack of them I got at Michael’s.
The idea of the ampersand is something that I actually learned from improv. I don’t know if either of you have done improv comedy, but you learn to say “yes, and…”
In other words, you take a situation that’s been given to you and you make it better. And you try to keep it funny and warm and keep the motion moving forward, but you’re not allowed to say no or pretend that that’s not what they just told you. You have to keep it going. It’s “yes, and.”
Kyle:
Okay.
Deb:
You’re elaborating on and you’re making better a situation. It’s the same with philanthropy.
We’re acknowledging that there’s abundance in the world. Those of us who are lucky enough to be clients at Moneta and are lucky enough to talk about philanthropy generally have, if not assets to give, we have time and we have talent. Right? Time, talent, and treasure.
The idea is “yes and.” It’s yes, I can be well stewarded by my wealth advisors at Moneta and I can also be a generous person.
And it will be different for every family. Some families that’s a couple hundred dollars or a couple thousand dollars a year. Other families it’s larger increments. Really, every family is different when they think about how they’re going to prioritize and we’ll get deeper into values alignment and how families think about their strategy around philanthropy. There is abundance in the world. I do believe that.
So, the idea is “yes, and…how can I be generous?” “Yes and…how can I do things that are both purposeful and purpose filled?”
When I meet with clients I tell them I really want you to walk out of here feeling purposeful, deliberate, thoughtful, tax-incentivized giving. Your financial advisor’s here because they’re hearing different things. They need to know what needs to be available and when, right? When the assets need to be available.
So purposeful, thoughtfull, and purpose-filled to me means meaningful. The idea is that what we’re doing is meaningful for you, for your family, for your legacy. It’s also meaningful for the nonprofits that you want to work with.
Some folks come to us and want to impose things on nonprofits that aren’t ready or don’t have a mission that aligns with what they want to do, and we take a deep breath and we say I love your enthusiasm and… let’s go talk to the experts because the nonprofit leaders are the ones in proximity to the problems and they know best what needs, what’s needed. So. we have a conversation. We really view our grantees, the folks we’re giving those dollars to, as funded partners and when you can have a conversation with an executive director and say, for example, “What can’t you get funded? I’d love to help you with something.”
It’s a whole new conversation and their heads explode if you offer general operating support which is, you know, giving them dollars to do what they need to do, what their priorities are.
Kyle:
Yeah, run the organization.
Deb:
And we learned a lot about that during COVID and we had to make some changes. Some funders had to make a lot of changes around how they allocated dollars and the idea again is doing it in consultation, making it a meaningful and transformational gift.
Again, the amount may range. It just shows that you hear, you hear that executive director telling you here’s what we really need and I’ll give you an example. We had a client who really loves early childhood education and feels that if you can intervene when kids are tiny, those little brains are still developing, you can change the trajectory of a child’s life by making sure you’re investing in early childhood, right? And those of us with kids understand that that actually is a really powerful time.
So they wanted to give healthy snacks to a preschool located in a low-income neighborhood that they thought was doing really well. They wanted to give healthy snacks. I said, great, and I touched my ampersand.
They said, well, maybe a, maybe a tricycle for the large motor room. I said, great, and…and I explained to them that you can be an immediate donor. You can give something that’s going to help kids today. That’s great. You can think about capacity building and help them.
If you think this is such a great preschool, you want to help them build another classroom, right? Where they can have another teacher; they can serve 15 more kids.
And if you believe in systems change and you’re looking a generation into the future or maybe hopefully a decade into the future, you can work on advocacy and policy. You can lobby in Jefferson City or support organizations working in DC to create more affordable, safe childcare seats.
And every client has an idea about what their time horizon is for change. So you have to match and help them think about that alignment. So for many of us, it’s immediate. We want to touch and see and feel the impact.
And that’s great. Others are more patient. You know, it’s the whole idea about when the best time is to plant a tree, right? And people say, well, 25 years ago. What’s the next best time? Today, right?
So, some folks have a longer time horizon. When I worked as the CEO at Philanthropy Missouri and many of my clients were corporate, they needed more immediate impact. They were rolling up that data into a corporate social responsibility report and they wanted to tell their shareholders, right? And their other stakeholders, here’s what we were able to do this year. This is how many trees we planted.
We know that some people with family foundations or donor advised funds, and we’ll get into that in a minute, have more patience about outcomes and they can wait five years or eight years or 10 years to see the fruits of their labor.
Back to the story about the early child care center, we talked to the executive director. We called her and said, we have a client that wants to give you healthy snacks. How do you feel?
She said, “That’s fantastic, thank you. And… I can do a GoFundMe and get healthy snacks,” which by the way, they did; I was a contributor.
What they can’t get, we said to her, what is it that you can’t fund? And she said, “I can’t find anyone to fund professional development for my teachers.” She said,”They make $12 an hour. They could make $18 at Arby’s down the street, but they stay here because they love kids and they love what they do. And if I could get a small grant for professional development, a couple of things will happen.”
She said, “Number one, we invest in their career and they know that we care, that they are professionals and that they are growing their skillset. Number two, they’re better with the kids. They know more about child development, right? And number three, we stay accredited.”
You know, all these things. So, the idea is that when you ask an executive director, what is it you need, and you say to them that you maybe can’t get funded elsewhere, it creates this whole new situation, this whole new dialogue.
And I have a client who’s doing a lot of this. Maybe we’ll tell some stories later about the nuns. Bring it up. But we’ve had some really, really neat nun stories this year. I have a client who loves nuns.
Danton:
I mean, it sounds like your approach is definitely tailored to the individual, for sure. Not only the family, but also the organization that needs the help, as well.
Deb:
For sure.
Danton:
And, you know, I’m probably, we were talking about the peanut butter analogy, I mean, I just donate, but I, yeah, I give thought to it, but certainly not at that level. And so how do you help families really start to just think maybe deeper about their giving?
Deb:
Sure. Sure, that’s a great question.
And I think peanut butter might’ve been off camera. So I’m going to tell folks about that right now. We have a lot of clients who come to us and they feel either guilty or dismayed or upset that they’re doing what they call, what I call peanut butter giving. And if you could see me right now, you would have, see one hand that’s flat out and I’m showing what this smushing of peanut butter is. It makes it thin, right? It spreads it thin, like on a piece of bread.
And so that’s because we’re giving $150 to a cancer charity because someone asks us to. We’re giving $150 to the Girl Scouts. We’re supporting our kids’ PTO. We’re doing a quick check to the symphony.
Those are all transactional gifts and they are wonderful, right? Our community needs those to thrive. And I always encourage our clients to realize we want our community to thrive. So we keep making those transactional gifts.
And… the other hand is out now and I’m going from a transactional hand to a transformational hand. The idea is that we are going to make some gifts that are transformational in nature.
And I’m not talking necessarily just about assets, right? We’re talking about time, talent, treasure. Maybe you serve on a board, or you donate a lot of hours to an organization.
The idea is you’re making a transformational gift that is unique to you, to your family, and to the nonprofit. That they’re able to use that gift in a way that you are the best person in the world, best situated to kind of make that gift. So again, it could be $5,000, it could be $50,000, or it could be $50 million. We have clients that do that.
The idea is you’re doing something transformational in addition to your smaller transactional gifts. And don’t ever feel guilty about those things.
With respect to each family, thinking about their focus, that’s sort of where we start. When folks come in, you have to be a client of Moneta, and I’m sort of a value-added benefit. You come to me and we talk about…we do a discovery. You know, not unlike your financial discovery, but in this case, it’s a philanthropy discovery. We talk about a family. We talk about your roots. We talk about the base of your tree. We talk about the branches and what you carry, based on the history of your family and the stories that you’ve been told and the stories you want to tell.
So we’ll talk through discovery looks like, tell me about the things you’re involved in now and what’s been satisfying for you. We’ll talk about what concerns you might have about, you know, inheritance issues or legacy issues. We’ll talk about whether you have done some planning and there’s planning in place. And we’ll talk about vehicles.
It’s really important for your financial advisors to be part of that initial discovery because they are the ones who are thinking about everything from tax-incentivized and using the right vehicle, right? That purposeful stuff we discussed, to making sure that the right resources are in the right place at the right time when you need those.
So, we do a discovery process and we go from talking a little bit generically about their family and their stories to talking about what values they carry, right? What are the things that are most important to you? And I have some exercises that we do that are fun. We talk about values, what values you carry. Some families immediately say faith or patriotism or they say things like, you know, social justice, or they say conservation. Every family is different, right?
What we try to do is triangulate around some values. And then we also talk about buckets of interests. Some families are really interested in the cancer moonshot, helping to cure cancer. Some of them have been affected by it.
Other families are focused on the environment or they’re focused on young kids, safety net issues, or adoption or a specific disease their family has been affected by.
The idea is every family is different and what we try to do is define those buckets in a mission statement. And we try to pull that together in alignment with those values. And then we test it. We test the theory.
Many clients have thought about what they want to do after they’re gone with their philanthropy, right? And what I always encourage them to do is kick the tires while they’re living, right? First of all, we see the need in the world where we are today.
And second of all, it’s really fun. And I will say that that is the most important thing. If I leave you with nothing else today is we want to make this joyful, right?
For some people, it feels like a burden. You don’t want to make the wrong decision and you’re afraid to take that first step. We encourage folks to try it.
I mean, philanthropy is so joyful and so much fun, and it is a risk – you’re giving money away. And if you do the work ahead of time and the best work you can do is, I always say you want nonprofits to be sustainable, transparent, and well-led. And I teach clients what those mean and how to figure that out. The best homework you can do is to literally go and touch and feel and see it in person, right?
You can always look on a website and see how something’s evaluated. Charity Navigator is one of those, if those folks aren’t on the ground here in your community. And when I say your community, we’re not limiting this to St. Louis. Clearly, we work with clients across the country. You have clients across the country and we’re able to personalize this and customize this to those folks, as well. So, going and kicking the tires in person, knowing someone on the board, getting to know the executive director over coffee and asking those questions, right? What’s going on? What are your latest initiatives and how can I help?
Kyle:
Perfect. So that was a great overview as to like how you get spooled up working with folks and kind of taking a look at the, you know, kind of the underpinnings of this. Walk us through, like maybe some stories here. We’re going to get to the nuns here in a minute. I’m not going to walk away.
Deb:
I’m just putting an image in your head of nuns at a winery. We’ll take it from there.
Kyle:
There you go.
Deb:
Yeah.
Kyle:
Long-term, like what do the relationships look like? What do they form over time as you work with these families over, over years and maybe generations?
Deb:
Sure, yeah.
Kyle:
How do you walk with them in that regard? Cause I think that’s one of the most fascinating aspects of what you do.
Deb:
It’s really fun when you do the multigenerational work and oftentimes it starts with a family meeting and we set some ground rules that everyone generates about how we’re going to participate; how we, how we trust each other, how we learn, how we give everybody time and space. And then we jump in and we do a family tree exercise so that everyone knows who everyone else is in the space, what we carry. A lot of times families have different ideas, even generationally, about what’s important. And so we try to find, you know, I’m a big fan of Venn diagrams. Like what’s that overlap between the dad who’s a big entrepreneur and believes in making sure everyone can learn how to fish and maybe the next generation that feels really strongly about supporting entrepreneurs who maybe wouldn’t get it, wouldn’t get an opportunity – opportunities in underserved areas. I mean, you can find commonality or conservation is often a great one for a family with hunters and a family that loves clean air, clean water. You know, you find a spot that is that Venn diagram of overlap if they want to work collectively. And the best families, the families that seem to do this the best, are the ones that allow individuals to make choices on their own, too, and recommend them back to the family for giving.
Danton:
Yeah. So I mean I was, that was what I was curious, kind of reading your one page here is on the family meetings. What would a family expect to get out, especially with multi-generational and what does that process look like when you’re starting to include, I mean you talked a little bit about it, but just what’s the goal of this?
Deb:
Yeah. Well, the goal is to get everyone on the same page around stewardship and the idea is for the, if it’s grandparents, for them to talk a little bit about how, how, what’s the source of this wealth, right? Not just in wealth, not just money, but wellbeing and what their wishes are.
Our wish for you is that this money be used to enhance lives, right? And never to be used as a weapon, but to be used as something that keeps us together and allows us to have a flourishing, healthy, happy life.
For some families, it’s going to be about faith. They’re going to talk about their faith.
For other families, it’s going to be about the source of wealth, or the location or the place where grandma and grandpa grew up. They want to have some ties. They want to have a fruitful, healthy, happy…
Remember, you know, by third or fourth generation, a lot is owned in trust, a lot is owned collectively in these wealthy families. And the idea is let’s teach folks how to work together.
Um, and philanthropy can be a great way to start working together to a common end. So we develop a mission statement. People kick the tires on the mission statement and decide if it fits. And then we just cover whether or not giving, you know, is something that the family wants to do. And if so, we’ll set a budget. A family will go out and do their research and their due diligence. And every family operates differently. Some will have the kids come back and make presentations. Um, there’ll be a vote and then they’ll deploy the money and they learn.
You always want to look back and say, what did we learn from this experience? And you revise the system the next time around. So ideally, the families are doing this themselves with a little bit of help from us. And certainly there’s tons of resources out there that we can give them. There’s workbooks, there’s, you know, exercises we can help to get them on their way.
Some folks are really eager to jump in and others just kind of want to soak on it, soak it in. So, you can’t, you can’t really want it more than they do. In the beginning, I remember when I started, I was so impatient for people to start getting going.
And sometimes it takes time. I have clients – I’ve been here a little more than four years now – and I have clients who are circling back. We met two or three years ago and they’re like, okay, we’re ready now. I had a client meeting like that last week. They said, we talked in 2023, we weren’t ready. We’d love to get going now. And let’s talk about some of the ideas we have.
So again, it’s letting it sit for some time to let people absorb it. It’s also not always a priority, which is understandable.
So the idea is that you’re creating a platform and a method for folks to engage if they want to engage. And they’re really driving what that engagement looks like. Again, if it’s time, if it’s talent, if it’s treasure, if it’s some combination of all those things, helping them navigate that with the primary relationship, being their wealth advisor.
I’m here to support.
Danton:
Perfect. Have you tried, the best way, you know, maybe not importance, but between working with first generational wealth and you also mentioned the generational coming through a trust, as well. And does that change the process or the way you work with them? Or what’s the differences you’ve seen there?
Deb:
Yeah. You know, there’s some generalizations that you can make about the earning generation and then sort of the maintaining and then sort of the spending generation. I do think though that every family is different and it really, I see that over and over.
We have a lot of first time, first generation entrepreneurs who are clients here who have incredible humility. They’ve worked incredibly hard and they’re incredibly generous, right? Others who feel it’s their job to kind of keep the capital together to support the family.
And it’s really a lot about, it is about money messages that we receive as young children about what money is for and how to use money. And a lot of us have ideas about abundance and scarcity. And generationally, if you grew up with your parents having gone through the depression. And so you’re in your 70s now or 80s, now you have a very different idea about what money is because you were raised differently in abundance versus scarcity mentality. But again, I think it really just comes down to individuals.
And so part of my job, and our job as advisors, is to understand that really underlying approach to money, whether there’s anxiety, whether there’s not enough attention being paid, right. Once in four years, I’ve had to tell a client to stop giving money away and we didn’t want her to run out, you know, but that’s pretty rare. Mostly the clients we have are pretty well-aware that they are able to allocate money fairly freely. There is abundance and they also are being advised by their wealth advisors, like folks on your team, what is the best way to do this from a tax standpoint and from a strategy standpoint? And so they’re well-served. Moneta is really well-equipped to help them understand both sides of that equation.
Kyle:
I’d like to drive back just a second. We’ve talked quite a bit, with giving money. I’d like to see if you have some stories of how you have worked with folks where it started out as, Hey, I think I’m going to give some money and then maybe it morphed into, Hey, this is really cool.
Now I’m going to start to give some more of the other Ts, the time and the talent. Have you, have you kind of seen a genesis in that in some people?
Deb:
It works both ways.
Kyle:
Okay.
Deb:
Folks who have been involved for a long time as volunteers somewhere are really convinced that it is an organization that they want to bring some capital, bring some assets. Or they’ve inherited money and now they’re ready and capable of being a donor in that way.
And then yes, the other way works, too. A lot of times I’ll take clients on site visits. We’ll go in person to go meet an executive director to take a tour. Um, in the past three months, I think I’ve been to, you know, half a dozen different nonprofits to walk that path with a client who wants to see it, touch it, feel it, meet the people involved. All of them have culminated in gifts.
I think it makes a big difference when you find an organization that understands that trust-based approach. I call them ahead of time and I say, we don’t want a song and dance. You don’t need to show us a PowerPoint. We really want to walk and talk. We want to see what you’re doing on the ground and also make it really clear I’m not trying to create more work for you. You’re a nonprofit executive director. You have plenty to do. Please don’t do anything special for us, right?
We want to come in. We want to see Ranken Jordan Pediatric Hospital, just what you do all day. We want to come see Ronald McDonald House and what you’re doing for families every day. We want to go, you know, walk this, this park that you’re talking about doing a, doing a playground. And we want to see without having to be a burden on your operations.
So we go and we see, and we look and we touch and we feel, and sometimes clients will decide they want to become a volunteer there or they want to serve on a board. If there’s availability to do so, the nonprofits love it. And other times they’re like, I want to make a gift and I don’t even want anyone to know it was me. So part of the approach is talking to the clients about what they want because sometimes these gifts are anonymous, right?
So you have to always make it really clear that with the client, what kind of attribution are you interested in, if any? Some folks want their name on a building. Other folks don’t even want to have their name on a gift that would go in a brochure. It just depends. And sometimes people differ depending on the organization.
So, we find people come to us a lot wanting to do things out of gratefulness, for example, for the hospital, for a specific disease, for a specific organization that helped them in a time of need. And that’s always really interesting too.
And then you have people who love to read and they want to know what are all the literacy organizations in town. I’d love to buy books for kids. I think reading is the most important thing that ever happened to me. So people have different preferences.
One of the exercises I do with clients, and I could have brought the deck with me today, but you know, you may have seen it before. It’s an image deck; it’s about 62. It’s from the group called 2164, just a group of images. And we’ll spread it out on the table and I ask everybody to pick two or three that resonate with them. Don’t overthink it; it doesn’t have to be literal. But it’s everything from a hot air balloon to a dictionary, to a megaphone, to a beautiful park. And it’s just a whole mix, cats and dogs, you know, kids running a road race and pick a few cards that resonate with you and then we’ll talk about how that’s showing up in your life.
And what comes out of that conversation, especially if you have members of the family who maybe are shy or maybe are younger and they don’t speak, everybody can participate in it. It’s called Picture your Legacy; everybody can participate in an exercise like that.
And what happens is they’ll pick a card and they’ll all of a sudden say, I was drawn to this because this is a person getting healthcare at a nonprofit health clinic. And I think that’s really important. Health is really important.
Well, what does that look like in your life right now? And how can we find a way, how can Moneta help you think about a way that you could be a contributor in that way?
So, we do the Picture your Legacy card exercise and a lot of those discovery meetings to enable people to really think through from an initial standpoint, what resonates with you.
Art supplies, there’s a picture of art supplies – a lot of times people will pick that one or the cats and dogs is probably the most popular. You know, everyone who’s a kid picks a cat and dog one. And we talk about how you can, even at a young age, you can be a volunteer at the Humane Society and things like that.
We also help families integrate, in addition to talking to them about the vocabulary that they use around their kids by saying grateful, blessed, lucky, whatever your tradition is, we worked hard. We have many resources because we are a lucky family and we want you to be able to be aware of that.
We also have exercises people can do with kids starting at a very young age. Kids can start being exposed to philanthropic adventures, I would say. So sometimes that’s like grandma and grandpa take you to the bookstore and while you’re there, you pick out your favorite book and they also pick out a book that you pick. They purchase a book that you buy and you guys donate it. So when you go to the bookstore with grandma and grandpa, that’s the activity is picking an extra book. Cause not everybody can afford to buy a new book for themselves. You can drop it in one of those little tiny libraries or find another way to donate it.
Another one is apple picking. My clients really like this one. When you’re going over to Eckert’s in Illinois – that’s where people go from here in St. Louis, there’s a lot of other places to go – and you’re picking apples, pick an extra bushel; have the kids pick an extra bushel. First of all, you have to explain to them what a bushel is, right? None of us really know.
Danton:
Yeah
Deb:
And they love picking the apples. And you say to them, you know, we’re going to pick an extra bushel of apples when we go to the apple orchard. Cause not everybody can get fresh apples and we love apples. So we’re going to share.
So you’re not beating them over the head with an activity that becomes forced; it’s something they’re already doing anyway. On the way home – and I know this is possible cause I called around to a bunch of the food pantries – with them in the car, you drop off the bushel of apples at the food pantry. Now maybe you don’t go inside if they’re not capable or if you can’t, but the idea is that you are showing them, we got these extra apples and we’re now donating these apples because you picked them.
I had a client who shared with me six months ago, they were on the highway getting off the off ramp at Kingshighway and 40. And there was a homeless person who had a sign and they heard a little voice pop up from the back seat and said, mommy, do you think he got one of our apples? This was months after the family had done that activity. The kids listen, they remember, and they understand if you explain it to them.
And again, it’s not beating them over the head. It’s not saying, you know, you need to constantly be thinking about this. It’s, we’re going to integrate this very lightly and genuinely and authentically into activities we’re already doing.
So some people use the Heifer catalog. I don’t know if you’ve ever seen that, it’s a catalog where you can adopt chicks or goat for families abroad and the kids get excited about picking something in the catalog. The eggs from the chickens allow the kids to get school fees and go to school. And so those are things some families use and some families will do. World Wildlife Federation that you can get a stuffed animal and then you’re sponsoring that seal or you’re sponsoring the manta ray or the whatever. Some of the animals are really, really gross, but the kids love them. They love them! And then you get the stuffed animal in the mail and it’s just a representation of something that you did a good deed.
So there’s ways to do that with families and, and I will just end by saying that’s something else we work with families on is how do I get my kids to understand this is pretty special. They are special. We are special and the world is a special place and we want to make sure that we’re helping them walk on that planet in ways that are gentle to the earth.
And so we talk about, again, sustainability, making sure organizations that we pick have a plan and if they don’t, maybe that’s what you fund is a development director or a fund for them to be strategically transparent. We want to look at their tax returns. You know, every nonprofit has to file a tax return every year. If they’re making over a certain amount of money, they have to disclose a lot of information, including salaries. Anyone who’s paid over a hundred thousand dollars, it needs to be disclosed. So you can take a look and see, some people are trapped in this mentality of overhead ratio, like I’m not going to ever give to an organization that has, you know…
And I think that’s a good red flag, but I also want to caution people that models look different. If you’re paying for a mammogram van with medical professionals to go around and deliver free mammograms, that’s going to be different overhead ratio than if you’re distributing free books from an organization that gave them to you for free. Your models are going to look different. So you have to weigh a lot of different things when you’re thinking through what that overhead looks like.
And the last thing I’ll say is every organization needs overhead. You know, you need professionals who are really good at what they do. You need electricity, you need heat, you need an office in some cases. You have to really think through what that looks like. Now, if all they’re doing is fundraising, that’s a red flag. So again, that transparency is about things like tax returns and when you ask questions, they’re really forthcoming, happy to show you their budget.
And then well-led is that third leg to that stool. Leadership’s everything. I trust good leaders to make good decisions. Even if it’s not a decision I would have made, they’re basing it on facts; they’re basing it on proximity to the issue. And hopefully if they’re seasoned and robust, they’re not basing it on ego. They’re basing it on what’s best for the clients, ultimately. So that’s why when I’m with our clients, I try to make sure if they’re interested in meeting with the organization that’s going to be the beneficiary of their grant, that we arrange that.
And there are some leaders in town who I really believe are just true, head and shoulders above leaders, I would even say in some of the private sector industries that we know and we appreciate and we invest in. And you know, these people are doing really complicated things with a lot less money. It’s amazing to see.
Kyle:
Oh, that’s fun. Yeah. Before we drive on out of here, I, we’re going to drive back to the nun stories.
Deb:
Yeah, I will.
Kyle:
So take us on out of here with some of these nun stories that you eluded to earlier.
Deb:
Well, so that’s just one of many stories, but this happened last week. I happened to be able to see some pictures which really moved me. I have a wonderful client, a longtime client of the firm, who has sold a business and would like to distribute the bulk of that in charitable gifting. And is aiming to give away a couple million dollars a year. He’s grateful, he’s super grateful, and totally surprised that he was able to build a company and sell it.
And so he wants to do the bulk of this in generous charitable gifting and he came to me three years ago and said, I don’t know what I don’t know. And I’d love to have someone help me navigate this.
So I did this whole discovery process, figured out what was important to him. And slowly but surely we’ve been inviting him to meet with organizations that are aligned with his giving. One of the things he felt really strongly about was honoring the memory of a great aunt and an aunt who both became women religious and entered into different orders of nuns back in the day. He grew up in South City, came of age in the sixties, and was benefited greatly by family members. He, at one point his family needed to send the boys away because of a family crisis and he lived, they actually lived, in the nunnery. So we tracked down the order that his great aunt worked for. We talked to the lay leader and he said, how are they doing? How are these women doing? Well, they’re all in their eighties at this point. Sadly, the nuns aren’t replenished as much and they’re tough ladies. They’re so smart and they’re so wonderful. And they, this particular order lives in a, what I’ll call a mother house, with many of them are wheelchair bound. And we went and met with the lay leader and said, what do they – he’d like to do a gift for the sisters, he’d like to do something special for them. What do they need?
And she said, I’ll ask them. She went back and asked the sisters. She came back to us and she said, they said, if you gave them a six-figure gift that they would distribute it to the poor, because that’s their mission.
And he said, no. Instead of listening, which we always teach people to do, he said, I want to do something for them. I want to do something that no one else is going to do that really would help them with quality of life.
So she went back to the sisters and said, we want to do something for YOU. So they came up with the idea of a handicap accessible van, which you can wheel roll wheelchairs into the back. So you’ve got an 80-year old nun driving at the steering wheel, and the ones who rolled in the back, and they are the nicest, most interesting people.
And he goes that day, he said, DONE! He bought them a van, a handicap accessible van and with a little extra money for maintenance and fees and registration.
He went to visit them the day that the van was being delivered and they were so grateful. And he said, sisters, where are you going to go? And they said, we’re going to Dunkin Donuts.
Subsequently, and this is what makes it so much fun, it’s been a year. They sent him an album at Christmas with pictures from every field trip. There are 25 different field trips that they went on with this van. They kept track of everywhere they were able to go because of his gift. And there’s pictures of them at a winery in Augusta. There’s pictures of nuns at the Anheuser Busch Brewery with – no, sorry – at Grant’s Farm with a Clydesdale. There’s pictures of them at the art museum. There are pictures of Dunkin Donuts. They are, you could see where they went a couple of times by like what they really liked. You know, they went to Kaldi’s three times, they went a couple of places three times.
But they also went to doctor’s appointments, which they couldn’t have done in the wheelchair transfer, the ones on oxygen. They also went to do mission-driven work and they took a trip to Cleveland to see their long – they would never have seen these women again – these sisters of theirs, part of their order, who live in Cleveland. So they took a picture of the road sign on the way to Cleveland in the van.
So they are able to do something really remarkable that honors their service, their life of service, because this gentleman took the time to listen. What do you really need? And so his gift, I mean the fact that they took pictures and all wrote him thank you notes, by the way, not all nuns have great handwriting, some of them were not, but they’re in their eighties and nineties. But they were so lovely. The fact that they wrote these letters to him and took time to really say to him and his wife, you did something that is meaningful for us and that has lifted us and we bless you. That’s a great example of something that’s, I’m so proud for him and I’m so proud for Moneta for helping facilitate this.
And you know, that’s just one example of many, many examples of things we’re able to help clients do when we listen.
Kyle:
Well, Deb, I can’t think of a better, more fitting way to kind of close this out than that story right there. Just from the sheer impact of that and getting to see the entire thing come to fruition.
Deb:
That’s right. That’s right. And you know, we obviously hold these conversations in confidentiality, which is why I haven’t revealed the client or the order of nuns. I asked for permission to share the story, of course, today.
But I want to also remind you that with our clients, it’s a sacred trust. And I start every meeting by saying it’s a small town; we may know people. I want you to know that what happens in this conversation is completely confidential until you’re ready or until you tell me you want to talk about it more publicly. And I think that’s really important, too, is to recognize that some families are very private and don’t want, and they’ll use us as buffers for example, or as the liaison, because they don’t want to be upfront. So I want to also just mention really quickly that it’s a privilege and an honor to have these conversations with clients. And just as you wouldn’t be discussing their finances, we’re not discussing their philanthropy outside the house until the families are ready or choose to do so.
Kyle:
That’s a good point. Well, it’s been a privilege and honor. Thank you for being with us today. This is awesome and so insightful.
Deb:
My pleasure, thank you.
Kyle:
And you just heard from Deb Dubin. And Danton, what a conversation! So far-ranging and I really wish folks could have seen, not to be a little bit too crazy here, but the sparkle in her eye when she really got the chance to dive into the process that she goes through with these families and how this entire thing comes together. It’s really, just really cool.
Yeah. I mean, there’s so much more to just philanthropy and I’ve worked with nonprofits and boards across the table, and there’s just so much more to it. And having someone like Deb here at Moneta and just to be able to help clients.
And I was talking to her after we got done talking with her, as well about my personal stuff and it’s just a great resource in someone that can really help them just put more thought behind it because we’re all busy in our day-to-day lives. And really, we want to be impactful, but sometimes, you know we just write the check because your friend asked you for a sponsorship, but there’s more you can do if you want to.
Kyle:
And what I really liked was she talked about, among many things was, we spend so much time on the dollar figure or the way she put it, the treasure, but there’s also time and talent. And oftentimes to your point, there’s several organizations we’ve given money to. I really have to watch when I do home improvement projects because the Boy Scouts are hanging out right outside the exit of Lowe’s, among other places.
And, and we’ve all done and given money to when it’s there and it’s transactional. But really, when you start thinking about true impact and, generationally it’s the planned giving, but it’s also giving of your time and your talents, like you’re serving on a board, like what we were talking about her. I thought some of those were some of the most interesting and fruitful conversations, honestly.
Danton:
Yeah. I mean, I would just add the having those conversations with children in a fun way, as well. And the ideas she provided, they’re great. I mean, I could easily go home and do those with my kids. And again, you just get busy and sometimes you just lose sight of those opportunities.
Kyle:
Yeah. Speaking of, there were a ton of opportunities that Deb presented here. If it’s ever on your heart and whatnot, seek someone like Deb out that can help kind of galvanize and put a plan in place around that charitable giving.
Danton as we kind of head for home, any final thoughts on this one? I mean, I thought the nun story was just a perfect way to land the plane.
Danton:
Yeah, I mean, just the impact that he was able to have with those dollars rather than, he could have easily just written a check and kind of said, do whatever you want and we’re done here.
But to go that step further and just really that impact was above and beyond.
Kyle:
Yeah, hopefully and that’s a key whole memory, at least for me on this podcast, and hopefully for you all as well, too.
This edition of Wit, Wisdom, and What Matters Most is a production of Moneta’s Gast Freeman Troyer Racen team, headquartered in St. Louis, Missouri.
Until next time enjoy what matters most!
Investment advisory services offered by Moneta Group Investment Advisors, LLC, an investment adviser registered with the Securities and Exchange Commission. Registration does not imply a certain level of skill or training. The information discussed in this podcast is for informational and educational purposes only. You should consult with an appropriately credentialed professional before making any financial, investment, tax, or legal decision.
Investment advisory services offered by Moneta Group Investment Advisors, LLC, an investment adviser registered with the Securities and Exchange Commission. Registration does not imply a certain level of skill or training. The information discussed in this podcast is for informational and educational purposes only and any endorsements were those of the hosts and not a guarantee of employment. No compensation was provided. You should consult with an appropriately credentialed professional before making any financial, investment, tax, or legal decisions.
And welcome to another edition of Wit, Wisdom, and What Matters Most. It’s a podcast by Moneta’s Gast Freeman Troyer Racen Team. My name is Kyle Luetters, an advisor on the team, joined by Danton Troyer, one of the partners.
Uh, Danton, it is a new year. Everything’s bright, shiny, fresh, new, and today’s guest I think is someone that many folks, as they’ve gotten through the holiday season and have contemplated a full 12-months slate in front of them, potentially a job change is on the horizon and Sarah Renieri, who is the manager of talent acquisition here at Moneta, joins us today for a very far reaching conversation.
Danton:
Yeah. We’ll talk about everything from how to use AI on your job search to how not to use AI on your job search, as well. Then everything again, from internship programs to a C-suite and what’s the best steps to really lock down a job there. And, starting the new year, a lot of people will be either looking to hire and fill out a team and also maybe some RC suite clients might be, you know, looking to make a change as well into the new year.
Kyle:
And with that being said, here’s our conversation with Sarah Renieri.
And we are now joined by Sarah Ranieri here on Wit, Wisdom. and What Matters Most. Sarah, first off, welcome to the podcast and thank you so much for sitting down with us today.
Sarah:
Yeah, thank you so much, Kyle and Danton. I’m so happy to be here. I’m very excited to be here today.
Kyle:
Oh, perfect. We’re going to cover a lot of topics today, but, but really before we get started, we like to dig into the backstory and the personal side of things.
So, you are in talent acquisition here at Moneta. So how did you get into that? Because I don’t necessarily remember going to orientation at college and that being one of the choices there. You know in all transparency, there was a guy that I knew that tested the windshields of airplanes by like firing chickens at them. That also wasn’t on those, but how did you get into talent acquisition? Kind of give us the arc of your career.
Sarah:
Yeah, absolutely. So it’s interesting. I listened to a podcast called the talent acquisition leaders podcast. Every person that they interview are experts, senior level in talent acquisition, and they all fell into it. That’s always their story. And I would say mine is similar.
However, something that’s unique about my story is that when I decided I wanted to be in talent acquisition, I was very intentional. I knew that that was game changing for me. I wanted to go into that, that arena.
So my story, I actually started within accounting. So I got an accounting degree out of college and I worked for a couple of different internal corporations. So I actually did work for a nonprofit organization; I did work for a large commercial real estate company, all within accounting. So, at the time I was really able to start articulating the type of company I wanted to work for. I got a really good exposure of all different arenas.
And so that’s what really brought me to Moneta. It checked all of the boxes for me in terms of the size of the company, culture, the structure that it provided, the training, and long-term career opportunities. So when I started at Moneta, I started as a client service manager.
So I was helping to support financial advisors, such as yourselves on client-facing teams, managing existing client relationships and really becoming an expert at the foundational business of what we do. After doing that for about six years, I was actually given the opportunity, for my team specifically, to help with our recruiting efforts. And I loved that opportunity.
I kind of volunteered. I raised my hand. I said, I’ll be the one to vet the resumes. I’ll be on the side Googling what are appropriate interview questions to ask these people. And the advisors on my team loved it. They really wanted nothing to do with the process; it’s tedious, it’s not their expertise, and they had better things to do. Their priority was the clients.
And from that, an opportunity arose within the firm to help lead and develop our internal recruiting team. So I happily took that opportunity. It was a unique career path as most client service managers proceed into that financial advising path.
But for me, I really knew that this was a really strong fit for me, given my skillset, what I enjoy doing, coupled with the expertise that I had grown up within the firm. I knew the culture, I knew the skillsets we needed to do all of the roles across the organization. This was also a time when Moneta was expanding outside of St. Louis for the first time. So this was about 2018, when we made that transition. So that was also really wonderful time and where I got to make an impact, not only for our hiring needs in St. Louis, but across the nation. So our first office in Denver is when I got a taste of how to, how to recruit for a company where no one really knew who we were, what we did.
Kyle:
Wow. And how long at Moneta now?
Sarah:
So it’ll be 13 years this month.
Kyle:
Holy moly.
Danton:
Yeah. Well, I think one of the things that I found maybe a little unique and interesting was you’re certified in the Workplace Big Five. And so maybe talk a little about that.
And first off, you know, why that one? And then how do you really see personality fit and developing a team, and how does that really play a role?
Sarah:
Yeah, absolutely. So the Workplace Big Five is a personality assessment and it’s one of those assessments that Moneta has used for a long, long time. It itself has evolved over the years.
I actually – this was pre-COVID, I had just, I was celebrating my daughter’s first birthday and I was actually, on her birthday I was traveling to North Carolina for a three-day seminar certification training to get this certification. So that was very memorable.
It’s something people aren’t really doing that much of anymore, that kind of travel. And yeah, so it was very involved, very rigorous learning more about personality types and more importantly about people’s motivations and competencies. So we all have kind of these natural tendencies, natural personality types, such as introversion versus extroversion, your ability to be curious, or maybe you’re more narrow-minded and these all are just what come natural to you. But it doesn’t necessarily mean that that’s what you want or that’s your motivation. It doesn’t always correlate to the things that you want to be doing where you’ll find fulfillment.
So, the Big Five assessment is something that we do administer to all of our senior-level advisors, any kind of executive-level hiring needs. So we do use that to really dive into a candidate’s motivation and skill set.
For all of our candidates across the board, we do use the Wunderlich assessment. And that’s another one that Moneta has always kind of consistently used over the years. And it takes it one step further. It’s like a high level Big Five, but it also measures a candidate’s cognitive ability.
And we do, as a firm, we’ve always placed a lot of emphasis on the cognitive piece in terms of best fit and how long-term success you’ll have in the role, given the challenges that we face on the day-to-day in terms of our analytical, critical thinking skill set.
Kyle:
I remember taking that test on the way in here going, wow, this is the same test they give the NFL quarterbacks at the Combine.
Sarah:
It is exactly the same one.
Kyle:
Perfect. I did reasonably well on it, but I don’t have the physical attributes that they do. So that’s why we do this.
Danton:
We didn’t test your 40-yard dash.
Kyle:
Oh, gosh.
Danton:
I mean, we got the hallway going, though, right?
Kyle:
Yeah, we could do that. I just got to change my shoes. No, I mean, that’s a fascinating way to peek behind the curtain, because one thing I will say, candidly, it is tough to get in here as a job seeker.
So, you know, talk about how you go about recruiting for this firm, knowing that you’re really looking for a very specific skill set. And that’s got to be a challenge. I mean, there’s a lot of people out there, but finding the right people to basically bring in through the door…walk us through the challenge of that.
Sarah:
Yeah, absolutely. And to give you more context on that, as a company, every year we typically receive about 4,800 applications to the firm. We typically hire about 100 people year after year.
And so our acceptance rate, if you will, is right about 2.9 percent, which is lower than Harvard’s. So we have a higher standard than an Ivy League school when it comes to the talent that we hire here at the firm.
So, yes, it is an extreme challenge, probably one of the more challenging things about my job. And a lot of it is the partnerships we develop with our hiring team. So I’ve learned so much from our hiring managers in terms of what they look for and what’s going to really make a successful hiring decision.
So their feedback is integral into what I do. So I compile that feedback and I’m learning and growing with every candidate that I talk to, kind of hearing from the hiring managers what they’re needing right now – and that market kind of shifts and changes as well; that evolves.
Maybe they have several people on their team that have this skill set, but they’re lacking this skill set. So now we’re trying to find that missing puzzle piece.
So all of those little factors come into play. The assessments test, we do help and we kind of do that upfront screening. So while we’re managing this volume, we have to do that efficiently and effectively and timely.
And we’re also a very small but mighty team of three doing this work. So, you know, filtering through the candidate inbox and then identifying the key traits from a resume. We’re looking for professionalism first and foremost, that will always narrow down the pool a little bit, as well as then we provide these assessment tests and that will, you know, gauging on those scores coupled with other things we might know about them.
Often, too, I would say the our most common and successful pool and pipeline of candidates come from our referrals; about over 50 percent of our candidates come from referrals. So that is also a really wonderful network that we’ve established.
So any referral I get across my desk, I’m always going to be reaching out to that person.
Danton:
I guess my question, where are you getting these referrals? I mean, that seems like the best place, but obviously there’s a limit to that as well. So I’m curious where your most successful referrals – is it internal? External? How’s that been beneficial for you guys?
Sarah:
Yeah, certainly internal. And it’s always a good validation because we will get internal referrals from existing employees, maybe in the role already. So they are clearly very fulfilled and loving their job in the company enough to refer a close family member or a friend. And a lot of times, it is family members. So I think that’s really a great testament to our teams and the work that they’re doing, and the kind of career paths they’re providing. So those are often the most successful – our internal.
We will occasionally get external people within our network, sending people our way. We’ll have competitors share candidates with us that might not have been a good fit for them, but they said, hey, you should check out Moneta. So we’ll look into that.
I have recruiters – right now I have an email from a recruiter who said she has an intern candidate that she was hoping to find a good home. And she prefaced with this: I’m not expecting a fee at all. I just want to find a good spot for her. And I know your firm will deliver on that.
So, again, I think that’s a really cool thing to have.
Kyle:
I really want to commend you having been involved with the interns the last two years. You all do an excellent job of getting a lot of very curious, young, motivated people through the door. Again, knowing that a lot of folks apply for this thing, we really do get a great number of candidates that ultimately become interns here. And really the amount of work you all have put into the selection process, but also to the build out of that entire process so that they leave here – in fact, one of them got hired here at the end of it, which I think has got to be a cool feeling for you all just to kind of see that ecosystem or that circle fully complete itself.
Sarah:
Yeah, absolutely. And that’s our main goal of that intern program, right.
So for summer of ’25, about 40 percent of our interns were either hired full-time or came on in another internship capacity for the firm going forward. So huge success there. We’re hoping that we continue to increase that momentum. To us, that’s the whole point of the program. And it’s to your point, Kyle, we see some incredible talent at that new college grad level. Those interns are one of our strongest assessment test scores.
They’re already in it; they’re used to that kind of environment. And, you know, we’ve had our own interns on our team and they’re just an incredible talent. They’re very eager to work. They really want to contribute to the company, make an impact. They’re phenomenal with technology in ways I never dreamed of.
So it’s certainly a wonderful talent pool. And it’s one of our largest. So if you think about interns at the undergraduate level, there’s a lot of those people. The pool narrows as we grow in experience and tenure. So trying to find someone with three to four years of direct industry experience is a lot harder than tapping into a new college grad. So we’re always promoting to hire that new college grad if you can.
Kyle:
Yeah, 100 percent there. And like I’m going to start to age myself just a little bit, but when they do come in, to your point, number one, they’re very good with technology.
Two, they also bring an energy into the workplace that sometimes, not necessarily always, is missing. But when you have someone new and someone that’s really got a lot of giddy up and go, if you will, just such a cool thing.
We were talking a little bit before we got started about busy times of the year. So as we’re having conversations with folks, we work with clients all the time that maybe they, in fact, I’m thinking of a conversation that Danton and I had yesterday with a client that says, I think I’m probably going to start looking for a different job. Kind of walk us through now maybe sitting on the other side of things like you do amazing social media content around job searching, negotiations, recruiting. Walk us through what are some of the things like if you were talking to that client that we had in here the other day, professional, has done very well, but just looking for a different role.
What are some of the tips or what are some of the things that you would recommend someone in those shoes do to make themselves an attractive candidate?
Sarah:
Yeah, absolutely. I would say, too, there’s a lot of noise about the market activity. When’s the candidates’ – right now it’s a strong candidate market versus a strong hiring team market. I would say try to block that out as much as you can. And you really need to be intentional throughout this process for your own benefit. So come to the job search with your own game plan, your own strategy.
We’re not trying to time the market, just like we wouldn’t try to time the market with our investments. So very similar to that. There’s a lot of media, a lot of misinformation as well, so try not to get overwhelmed. And I would block out all that noise, especially if you are needing to take this seriously in terms of pursuing something new.
And my first recommendation to get started is revisit your own personal brand. So to your point, Kyle, talking about the online social media videos I like to post out there, that’s just been a natural involvement for me as I have been in this business now for seven years. All of the really interesting feedback and best practices I’ve learned over the years from candidates and hiring managers alike, it’s created this library of content that I’m kind of like, someone has to hear this. So I like to put it that out there.
And so I would say focus on what is your personal brand look like right now? What is your reputation? Do people know what your expertise is? Is your network aware of your career goals long term? And if not, we need to really start there.
The unique thing about an executive level career search is that it’s not as tactical as you would see for like a mid-entry level type person. Those people are applying to job boards; their jobs are posted. The interview questions are competency based, pretty cut and dry.
This situation, like with your client, I would recommend they avoid job boards altogether. Most of the time, the type of role that they’re looking for or seeking, that’s not going to be posted. For example, at Moneta, we don’t ever post a partnership level role. We’ve never posted a chief or executive level role, and yet we’ve hired several of those people in the last two years. So it’s for our purposes, we’re really already kind of identifying that person that we wanted to add to the firm. We might have a problem for them, but we also are more like, no, we know your skill set, we know your reputation, and we want you to come contribute to Moneta and see what you can do here with us.
So that’s going to be how this type of transaction for this person is going to evolve. So, if they don’t already have that strong network, I would recommend starting there and that will further set them up for success when they are in that job market.
Danton:
Part of our conversation with him was that he had two offers and he was evaluating, and it sounds like he made the wrong choice. So, you know, are there things that you see – either just questions or things to look for, to avoid kind of that picking the wrong spot, especially in that type of role? It’s not easy to make a change. So you want to be right the first time, but that’s not always…maybe easier said than done.
Sarah:
Yeah, absolutely. And that’s great advice. So I would say in this type of search, it could be a six to eighth month process for someone with this level of experience.
And that’s why I would recommend before you’re even thinking about the actual taking action on your job search, you really need to be very clear about what it is that you want to do next. So be able to articulate that. Think about your strengths and your weaknesses, your areas of development.
Think about the goals you want to achieve, the impact you want to have going forward somewhere else. And it might not be a job that’s out there right now. It might be you talking to people and that person taking a risk on you and saying, no, let’s see what you can do and we’ll talk about the job title and job description afterwards.
And that’s how a lot of those people are hired here at Moneta. And so that’s the homework that I would start with first is being really strategic about what it is that you want to do next.
And if you’re kind of lost, or maybe this is an individual that’s been in the same career, the same company for 15 years, this is brand new. So in those situations, I would absolutely recommend look at assessment testing. Often those tests will help clearly define what your strengths are.
And even in some cases, in my perspective, I have some weaknesses that I consider weaknesses. Well, these assessments tell me, no, that’s actually a strength; no one else is good at this, but you.
So that does help shift that perspective. Another really great resource I would recommend to this type of level would be enlisting a life coach. So again, if you’re struggling with, I don’t really know what’s next for me. I know I have a lot more to offer and I’ve kind of run my course where I’m currently at.
I have talked to several great professionals that are life coaches and they bring in those assessments. They do a lot of surveys. They prep you for the interview process to really build your confidence and really help narrow down your focus.
Danton:
That’s interesting; I wouldn’t have thought of a life coach as far as, …but it makes perfect sense when you’re saying it, but that’s not what I would have thought of.
Kyle:
So I think those are all fantastic. I agree with Danton, bringing in the life coach, taking various assessments. I know here at Moneta we use DISC a lot to identify strengths, weaknesses, so on and so forth.
Walk us through, let’s say the hypothetical person has identified a role or a company has identified them. Let’s go into the negotiation table. So what are perhaps some negotiating tips? I hesitate to say tricks. We just got done with Halloween not too long ago. But what are some of the things as someone sitting down to negotiate a job offer should be aware of or that you’re seeing out of the marketplace now?
Sarah:
Yeah. And I mean, like we all know everything is negotiable. So start there.
The other place I would start with is when you’re going into this process. Okay, once we’ve narrowed down, I know what I want to do next, put some monetary number to your value. Really have a clearly defined expectation of what you’re worth, what the type of role and the work you’ll be doing, what that’s valued at.
And you can do that through several different ways. You can start with asking ChatGPT and look at the market you’re in. I would also recommend in addition to that, maybe paying a service or a fee to find that information out. You could even reach out to other professionals that are in that industry.
Maybe it’s a different market, too. So you’re kind of understanding what’s the cost of living and ask if they would be transparent and share the range that they’re at and making sure that that aligns with what you are thinking about. So have that number, that range up front.
And I would say, you know, stick to that. And as you’re having conversations then with future employers, you can be really clear about this is my expectation.
I would also, when you get to those informational interviews, be very upfront about that as well. Don’t wait to the very last minute when you’re in that kind of negotiating phase to articulate what it is that you’re seeking. And it’s a little bit trickier at this stage too, right? Because we’re not going off of a job description where there might be a range posted on it. It’s probably a natural evolution. It might be an opportunity that they’re really crafting and creating for you. And you might come across some organizations that are kind of like, we don’t really know what we should pay you, but you tell us what you want to make. So you’re kind of in charge there as well.
So for all these reasons, I would do a lot of research on the front end, be ready to talk about it earlier than later. And so when you are in that negotiation phase, it’s not so argumentative.
It’s really kind of a natural evolution of we both want this to work out for both sides. And then when you think about those negotiation factors, think about what’s going to be your priorities. And it might not be all tied to compensation.
So I’m curious, have you had conversations with clients or had any kind of feedback or guidance you’ve given to them when they’ve gotten into the negotiation phase?
Danton:
Yeah. I mean, we’ll get offer, we usually get maybe asked questions a little bit at the end where they’re kind of like, is this a good deal or not? And maybe more importantly too is like, does my financial plan work with this or not?
That’s a big thing that we get brought into. I’ll shorten the story, but I had a gentleman, he was a C-suite and I met him in between jobs. So he was actively looking and he got a job and I forget the details, but the salary was well below his expectation.
But then we started walking through all the other perks, if you will. The location was where he wanted to retire. The job was exactly what he wanted. The pay was just not there. And we took a step back and said, does the pay really matter at this point in your career? And the answer was, well, no, I’ve already, …he could have literally retired that day and it would have been fine.
So he took a step back and, I won’t take all the credit, but he was able to take that job and basically then enter into retirement in a way that made sense for him because he was still making good money and he got to move closer to where he wanted to retire. So I think taking a step back and, certainly compensation matters, but there’s other factors as well. Making sure it fits in with what you actually want.
So I think that was one of the times where I was able to maybe influence it more than others.
Kyle:
Yeah. And then I think to Danton’s point, especially when you get to this level, money is one thing, but to what you were alluding to, what’s the quality of life look like, the perks, so to speak, equity compensation also to factors in in a big way, because it’s not necessarily maybe money right up front that a company has to give out. It almost can be tied to performance in a way as well, too, so it’s an easier way for the company to add that in there as well.
So, you know, those are the types of things that we see -is very similar to we may get brought in very early in the process, or we may get brought into, for lack of a better term, bless, if you will, what they’re seeing on the piece of paper. So, just fascinating conversations.
I’m going to ask a little bit of an oddball question, so don’t be alarmed. To the extent that you can, what are some of the oddest things you’ve seen in your time in recruiting and trying to bring on talent? Either things that folks have sent you or things that you’ve observed? Is there anything that really jumps up that was just odd?
Sarah:
Oh, several things, unlimited things. Absolutely. And probably not so much at this level, the executive C-suite level where that’s not nearly the volume that we’re encountering as we would entry to mid level.
So the entry to mid level, we’re seeing candidates, one thing that we’re really passionate about is visiting college campuses and having conversations with our internship program. We do a talent acquisition, learning lesson/learning session with our internship program every summer. Most of that is all centered around how you act professionally within an interview presence.
So your presence professionally – in person or over video. That’s a big – can be an immediate write-off if you’re not careful with how you’re coming across, whether you’re in person or on video. So we’ve had several instances of crazy hair and makeup and really poor, unprofessional backgrounds.
I talked to an intern candidate who, he was calling me from his college dorm room, which that’s totally fine. Just, you know, please make your bed behind you or maybe blur your background. Well, this individual had a stop sign proudly displayed against his window and sure, we were all in college, everyone knows we steal stop signs, you know, street signs. But I pointed it out and asked him about it directly. Like, what’s the meaning of this behind you? He kind of glazed over, gave me some vague response, it was not his, but it was an immediate no for him. Everything else was great, but he immediately lost the opportunity with Moneta because it’s kind of like, well, I’m not going to hold it against you that you’re a college student, but I am going to hold against you that you’re not smart enough to have a professional background behind you when you’re having this video call with me.
So it’s those, the small details that really make a big difference in what is always a very competitive market wherever you are. So the candidates that really shine, they’re the ones that are taking this process very seriously. Every interaction that they have, they really set themselves apart because they’re professionally dressed or prepared. They can clearly articulate their elevator pitch, what they’re looking for. They’re not telling me, oh, I’m just open for opportunities. But that’s really hard for me to go on and we want people that want to be here.
So, yes, I could go on about the stories, but yeah, I think it’s the small details that really, really matter. Yeah.
Danton:
Well, I think maybe my last question is, and you kind of hinted on a little bit, but what have you seen as far as just changing? I mean, we talk about like video interviews. I mean, when I started interviewing, that wasn’t, you showed up. The world has changed just from an interview perspective and I would think there’s different difficulties.
Like that guy has a stop sign in the background – that wasn’t an issue for me in college; you went to the place and it was fine. So what are some of the changes you’ve seen over the years and how can people who, especially in that case, maybe it just wasn’t thinking and obviously that’s part of the problem… but what have you seen that people should keep in mind as the interview process has changed and adapted to that?
Sarah:
Yeah, I would say now more than ever, we’re all very accessible, so I rarely hold it against somebody if they’re running a little bit late or if they’re a no show, but they are apologetic on the front end about it. You know, life is busy. I understand often these are gainfully employed people that might have children at home and maybe they’re even taking time off to have a 30-minute conversation with me. So I’m going to be really respectful of their time as well. However, that being said, a quick, we can text back and forth. We send text messages out to our candidates. So there’s a lot of great, easy mediums to be able to get ahold of somebody right away.
And I would say too, so those video calls, they’re really efficient. So we tripled the amount of screen calls we were having with candidates during COVID because we switched everything to virtual.
And so I was able to have that many more calls during the day. And so to get a lot more work done from that perspective, but it did twist – it’s very rare that I have an in-person interview with a candidate. The hiring teams are always having the in-person. In the screening process, it’s very rare that that’s an in-person opportunity.
So as a candidate, when you do get that opportunity to meet a professional in-person, I would say, treat that, be very intentional with that entire process. Do those things like maybe I’m going to drive to the location the day before to get familiarized with the area and make sure I know where to park. And we’re in Clayton and downtown, and it’s very chaotic to park around here. So those are some things where it’s going to be, again all about taking advantage of that one opportunity that you have and making sure that nothing goes wrong and being very, very prepared for it.
Yeah.
Kyle:
I love that. And as we go to land the plane here, I would be remiss if I didn’t ask. AI is everywhere in the headlines. It’s everywhere seemingly that we turn right now. How do you see, or how have you seen AI impact what you do in talent acquisition?
Sarah:
Yeah, I mean, it’s been game changing. I would say from an internal perspective, it’s really helped with efficiencies for us. And so we use it for our note-taking for screen calls, which has been so nice that the AI function is recording the call, summarizing the notes, it can then shift it to, okay, now here’s feedback for the candidate, here’s feedback to the hiring manager…all of this lift that I would have had to do manually frees up a lot more of my time to be focused on the candidate during that conversation.
So those are things that we’re using it for. We, from time to time, depending on the role, we will use AI to filter through our candidate application.
We posted a data engineer role. We received probably 900 applications in an hour because it’s scheduled. These candidates, a lot of them are international, have it set up to where their AI bots or agents will automatically submit a resume for any data engineer role that posts. So our technology team got involved with that and they said, we’ll filter this and find the person we need. Of that 900 resumes, we literally only found one person that was local, a US citizen, and could do the job. So just that was interesting in itself.
So we are seeing a lot more AI written resumes, AI written cover letters, and it’s really easy to spot them. They all are written the same way. So I still, I tell our young college population, if you’re going to use it, use it wisely. And I think use it again to make the best use of your time.
So start, have it help you build the content, but then revise it. Have it help you practice for your interviews. So you can do a Q and A back and forth with AI. Hey, I’m interviewing for this job. What are some questions I should expect to answer? So those are all really great uses of it, but don’t let it try to do the whole process for you. We’ll have candidates that will be reading off of their AI script to the side during the screen call. And we’re kind of like, okay, well, this is going nowhere.
So there’s things, situations like that where you use it as a crutch and you need to be able, thoughtful with it. And, you certainly should be using it to build that skillset, but use it in a very intentional way.
Yeah.
Kyle:
Well, I, I am infinitely smarter than I was at the beginning of this conversation and that’s kind of the point here, but Sarah, I really want to thank you for joining us today. This has been incredibly insightful and especially helpful for a lot of folks that are listening out there that may be contemplating a job change or that want to be an intern at Moneta, which we would highly recommend and endorse.
So again, thank you very much.
Sarah:
Thank you both. It was a pleasure. Thank you.
Kyle:
And that was our conversation with Sarah Renieri, talent acquisition extraordinaire here at Moneta. And Danton, I found the conversation wide ranging, but also incredibly insightful. I mean, we talked interns, we talked C-suite job seekers, we also talked AI. What are some of the big things that jumped out at you from this conversation?
Danton:
I would have to go with the AI and I knew she would have some examples, but I think going through and listening to some of the specific ways people have maybe abused AI in their job search, as well as how to use that more efficiently. So, and I think that’s in general, just how to use AI; you can’t use it to as a crutch to solve your problem, but you can get some pointed in the right direction. And I think that’s how you need to look at AI as it relates to the job search as well.
Kyle:
I would agree there, too. I also found too, when she turned the tables on us and asked us questions, especially the things that we had sen, and I wanted to drive back to that because I think many times in negotiations, we, I think it’s human nature, we always focus on like what the dollar figure is, what is the compensation coming to me in exchange for the task. But we really dove into some of the perks and you also dove into things like quality of life, and so on and so forth and, and where a financial plan integrates in with that.
And we see that often.
Danton:
Yeah. I mean, certainly helping people think beyond just the numbers there. They’re very important and that is definitely part of the conversation. Most C-suites can figure out a dollar amount of their salaries, that that’s not the difficult part.
But can they make that in the position they want? And then it’s usually not as straightforward as a salary. There’s usually many components to it and trying to evaluate that can get complicated.
Kyle:
It can get very complicated when you start talking about just the regular compensation, as well as potentially equity compensation, additional perks. Do you get a company car? Is there a car allowance? A whole host of things that really can roll into it.
But, again, a far reaching and very informative conversation. And, please be sure, we alluded to it in the podcast and mentioned it, but go ahead and connect with Sarah on social media channels. It’s Sarah Renieri. Last name is spelled R E N I E R I. Her social media content is exceptional. She does a lot of videos, a lot of informative posts. So whether you’re someone in HR looking to recruit talent, or if you’re actually out there seeking a new role yourself, her tips are extremely timely and helpful.
Danton:
I think just following her on social media, you’re going to get some extra tips and this conversation alone was extremely valuable – from anybody looking for an internship, but then also those C-suites who may be influencing their own internship program. She’s got a lot of resources around both sides of the spectrum.
Kyle:
Couldn’t have said it better myself.
And Wit, Wisdom, and What Matters Most is produced by Moneta’s Gast Freeman Troyer Racen Team headquartered in St. Louis, Missouri. Until next time, enjoy what matters most!
Investment advisory services offered by Moneta Group Investment Advisors, LLC, an investment adviser registered with the Securities and Exchange Commission. Registration does not imply a certain level of skill or training. The information discussed in this podcast is for informational and educational purposes only. You should consult with an appropriately credentialed professional before making any financial, investment, tax, or legal decision
And welcome to another edition of Wit, Wisdom, and What Matters Most. It’s a podcast by Moneta’s Gast Freeman Troyer Racen Team. My name is Kyle Luetters, an advisor on the team.
I am joined by Danton Troyer, one of the partners. And Danton, it is very, very difficult to believe, and I know we say this every year, but it’s very difficult to believe we are at the end of another year; 2025 is coming to an end. And what a year it was, especially in Q1 and Q2.
Danton:
Yeah, it’s kind of crazy to think about all the different things we’ve kind of seen and gone through. From tariff talk to, obviously, leading into a presidential term, and we’re at the end of it. So it’ll be interesting to see.
But we want to talk about some of the year-end planning tips that we typically talk through with clients, but also some of the pitfalls we see in trying to implement those.
Kyle:
100%. And to add a caveat into that, tariffs, Liberation Day trades, and then, by the way, we just really overhauled large bits of the tax code, literally on the 4th of July. I remember reading the summary of what they passed at the pool this summer going, this is going to make for some unique year-end planning opportunities. And we’re going to kind of go through some of those.
So first and foremost, I think we should talk about why it’s crucial to have a plan, why it is crucial to be organized going into this time of year.
Danton:
Yeah, we’ve seen lots of mistakes made, especially heading into year-end because there is a very definite deadline to a lot of these things and it’s December 31st. And so if we’re not getting these things done by that date, they don’t count, they don’t happen. So there is a hard stop in a lot of these.
So being organized to your point and getting started earlier than later are all things that can help not run past that deadline. And once you’re passed, you’re passed.
Kyle:
And I think another thing, too, to back that up as well in this line of thought is 12-31 is the deadline for a lot of this. And if you’ve ever been to the DMV on the last day of the month, you know that it is not the most opportune time to try to get something done. In fact, many of our custodial partners will actually tell us that by about mid-December, anything submitted after a certain date is on a best- efforts basis. They will do their best, but they only have, there’s only so much manpower. There’s only so many hours left in the year in order to get these things done. And then also too, if you think about it from like our perspective as well too, it’s the holiday season and taking a look at the holiday schedule this year, Christmas is on a Thursday. You’re probably going to be reduced manpower the day after and probably the following week. So it really starts to back up when some of these things need to be done into late November, early December. And that’s why the timing and having a plan around this is crucial.
We actually, several members on our team, started this work right after Labor Day of pulling together spreadsheets, figuring out what needed to be done, making sure that we talked to clients well enough in advance because there’s not a lot of people that really want to talk numbers with their financial planner at the Thanksgiving table. They want to talk about it with their brother-in-law. That was a joke.
But anyway, so going through the why and the importance of it a little bit, but we’re just going to go through and break down some things that you should probably be considering. And I’m going to be unashamed and say that this is prime time for tax planning. I mean, it’s year end. Uh, we harvested, uh, hopefully some losses earlier this year when the markets were down. Uh, one of the things – do we need to offset some gains?
Danton:
Yeah. I remember the 2018, we had a market correction right there at year end. And it’s not like you can go place those trades on January 1st and say, I want those losses back for me. You got to get it done by December 31st. So, that was a fun holiday, uh, surprise.
Kyle:
I was late to church on Christmas Eve that day because of that. My wife will never forget that.
Danton:
Yeah, I think it’s burned in everybody’s mind. It was at least around here. We’re all hands on deck trying to get clients that loss, that no one saw it coming. And then all of a sudden the market was down significantly. Um, and then I guess to pour salt on it, it did it again and went down again.
So we were in here like two different days were significant losses in the stock market. So you don’t know when that’s going to come, but you need to be prepared to take advantage, potentially, the tax loss harvesting even at year end. But to your point, that deadline is December 31st.
Kyle:
It has to happen in that year, has to be timestamped as happening in that year to help you out. Now, if you have more losses than you do gains – so basically if you have unused losses – they can roll forward into future years to be able to use.
And that’s why in years such as 2025, the tax loss harvesting that we do is so valuable. We may not utilize the full extent of those losses this year, but they’ll carry forward. And we may need to use them in 2026, 2027, so on and so forth until we use them up.
Speaking of taxes, this is another area that we’ve been spending a lot of time on here recently. It is making sure that withholding – if you’re a W2 employee – is fairly accurate. Or if you’re self-employed or retired, kind of getting some hands around an estimated payment that’s due January 15th, by the way. And, really trying to make sure the tax picture is as true as what we can make it.
Danton:
Yeah, at least here you get, well, two weeks of reprieve. It’s not December 31st, but the reality is, again, you need to be on this almost right now to make sure that you are in; a lot of our clients it’s not as simple as, I’m just getting a salary. There’s other income sources, maybe there’s some executive compensation that was under-withheld as far as taxes go – that’s very common, and just maybe a year-end bonus. I mean, whatever it is, making sure accounting for all these different sources of income, how they’re taxed, and then that you paid enough taxes on those because a lot of times, the payroll is only going to do so much.
Kyle:
Uh, I will say as an employee, I love a year-end bonus. As a tax planner, I love a year-end bonus that’s paid in March of the next year, right? It gives us just a little more flexibility of time, but please don’t hear. I am a huge fan of the year-end bonus, but to Danton’s point, it does bring in an additional element.
And if you’ve been laying the framework, if you’ve been laying the foundation for a lot of this work well in advance, then we get to these pivotal moments of the year and it’s small tweaks. Basically, the entire projections built out and we can go and we can tweak numbers and do a little true up. And sometimes with the withholding or the estimated tax payments, especially on withholding, we can go in and, and kind of mitigate if we need to maybe withhold more, or if we need to send some more back to the paycheck, we can, we have more payroll periods to break that up across because nobody really wants to go into December, realize that they’re going to owe a lot in tax and their last paycheck for the year is dramatically reduced. I will tell you, that is like a hard candy Christmas if I’ve ever seen one.
Other tax moves to consider – using up HSA or not HSA, but FSA funds. So Danton, you kind of want to go through like the difference between HSAs and FSAs as far as it comes to a year-end planning.
Danton:
Yeah, the biggest thing there is that the HSA, we can roll forward and definitely you don’t need to worry about that. And in fact, we’d probably advise you not to spend those dollars.
The FSA is, you know, a whole different animal. You have to get those dollars. I know there’s a little bit of reprieve on that, but for right now, you basically, you do have a deadline to spend those dollars as well. So if you’re not, if you don’t have a handle on that and you didn’t get those dollars out, hopefully we’re not waiting until December 31st to try and get those dollars out, but that would be something you need to be creative with potentially and trying to figure out how we can get those dollars out before year-end, at least to the extent that we can’t roll over.
Kyle:
Yeah. You bring up a very important part about the year-end deadline, and we’ve done some talking on charitable giving. Go check out another episode here in the podcast that discusses that more in depth. But walk us through just a little bit some of the pitfalls that can occur if you do some gifting, specifically like directly to charities, if you don’t get it done soon enough before year-end.
Danton:
Yeah, I was, I guess, shocked myself one year. A client, we were going through their year-end giving and we were assisting them and sending out the checks directly from their account, and they just sent them out probably November. We were shocked to find out come January, some of those checks weren’t cashed.
You would think that with some of these charities, they’re, especially a year in, they’re needing money, which is definitely true. But they also, especially some of these smaller charities, just, they may have the same issues. They may not be staffed-up and they may be processing checks because everybody’s sending checks in right now. They may not get through all of these and that’s going to hurt you from a tax standpoint.
Kyle:
Very much so, because again, it has to occur in the year that you’re intending it to occur. And that ends on December 31st. And to that point as well, backing up with the custodial side of things, if those requests aren’t in soon enough, not only could the charity not cash the check, they also may not get sent out due to a deluge or an overwhelming force or wave of those requests coming in.
Danton, as far as the portfolio goes, year-end, what are some of the things like as clients come in that we’re really kind of talking about from a portfolio perspective as we head towards the end of 2025?
Danton:
Well, I think just cause some of the tried and true conversations of making sure that they’re still comfortable, we’re heading into a new year. It’s a good time to kind of revisit your risk tolerance, make sure you’re still comfortable. Hopefully you are.
And then, we talked about tax loss harvesting, but on the tax side too, I think it’s important to, as an advisor, understanding where your tax bracket’s going to land that year, because that can also implement some of the strategies we want to use here at year end. I mean, maybe it does make sense to take some gains if you’re in a lower tax bracket, again, talking about resetting your cost basis in those positions, that can make sense, as well. And especially hopefully by now we’ve got a pretty good understanding of income and you’re not winning the Christmas day Ameristar winnings and throwing our whole tax strategy off.
But, hopefully now we’ve gotten to the point where we kind of have a pretty good, clear picture of what your tax bracket is going to be, and can make some adjustments from a tax standpoint in the portfolio.
Kyle:
It’s a very wise thing. I know it sounds strange to say we’re thinking about realizing gains, but to Danton’s point, especially in some of those years of retirement, if you’ve retired early before you’ve started taking social security, I would say that is probably the maximum time or the maximum benefit time you have to play with the tax brackets. And so that’s why this work is extremely important.
More work that’s extremely important, too, and we bring this up throughout the year, but really like there’s something about the holidays and being around family that brings this topic close to top of mind is your estate planning. And double checking, do I need to update my beneficiaries? Do I need to get that, either get that estate document work done or get it updated?
It really just seems like this time of the year, people are having a lot of conversations with family and families usually tied into that, so…
Danton:
It depends on who showed up to Thanksgiving and who’s out. We’ve had some interesting Thanksgiving conversations and, you know, that might change the beneficiary designations.
Kyle:
The term I’m writing you out of the will tends to get spoken more often than not. And we’re kind of saying that in jest, but it is a good time for self-reflection.
And on that topic of self-reflection, we are at an end of a year and it’s a good time to review what the goals were for 2025. And did we hit those goals? Did the goals need to change? And did we hit the amended goals?
And then also to talk about setting goals for 2026, if you are contemplating a job change or retirement or something of that nature, it’s a really good time of year to plan for those new goals in 2026.
Danton:
Yeah, that’s our job is sitting down with folks and understanding their goals and what’s most important to them. And we put this front and center more often than not. But especially right now, taking that time to really make sure that you’re not just in the routine of doing the same thing over and over and you say, yeah, I want to retirethis and I want to, you know, these are the goals.
But maybe taking a step back and say like, is that still the goal? And the answer hopefully is yes, but I think it’s okay if it’s no. And so I think, you know, having that conversation, you know, maybe internally or maybe with family and making sure that the things that were important are still important.
It’s a good time to kind of take inventory of that.
Kyle:
100%; on the topic of retirement and/or if you’re looking at making a job change, you’re coming to the end of the year. And particularly if you find yourself using a credit card or some type of budget tracking app, December, especially December 31st, you get an entire year’s worth of data to help solve some of these goals going forward into 2026. So, we work with a number of clients that will actually give us a year-end spending summary from their credit card.
And then we’ll add in things like a mortgage and the other things that are not showing up there, but it helps inform and make a better decision, a better goal target inside their financial goal plan. If they are going to contemplate a job shift, because we did have that conversation just the other day, or if someone’s going to retire, it gives them some more trust in the integrity of the number that we’re targeting as we head for the new year.
So, and then also too, planning for major life events is anything in 2026 on the horizon? Weddings, which my goodness.
Danton:
They’re a little pricey these days.
Kyle:
They’re very rich these days. You know, do we need to start kind of setting aside cash for that? And that’s another good part of this year, is we’ve had a good year in the markets. Do we start setting aside some money for big ticket things like weddings? You know, college is maybe on the horizon. And/or retirement, do we need to take some chips off the table just to start building up that income stream in retirement?
So, Danton, as we head for home here, kind of give me some bullet-pointed items. If you’re sitting here and I’m one of your clients, give me like three or four bullet listed things that we should be making sure we knock out in the coming weeks.
Danton:
Yeah, I think the charitable contributions – don’t wait till the last minute as we talked about. That should have already probably happened. And if not, I would not hesitate to potentially follow up with those checks even after they’re sent, just making sure the charity got them and they get cashed on time.
Kyle:
And get a receipt.
Danton:
And get a receipt. So don’t wait till January. I mean, you know, especially if you’re close with that charity, you can make sure that that gets done for yourself.
And, there’s a whole slew of additional things that head up on that December 31st deadline. So, kind of going through your own personal checklist, working with your advisor, going through, just making sure you’ve hit everything. So you can go into the holidays resting assured that you’ve got everything off your financial checklist.
Kyle:
You want to get a lot of these numbers-based things taken care of so that you can truly enjoy and be present during the holiday season instead of worrying about whether or not things are going to get done by the end of the year. And honestly, that’s where someone like us, someone like our team comes into play is to putting a process in place that can be applied across multiple families. And various entities.
So this was fun; I really like it. We did not do an ugly Christmas sweater deal here.
We’re not on video, at least not yet anyway. But this has been another phenomenal year of the podcast. We turned one and now we’re well into what we’re calling season two.
There’ll be even more guests, more conversations, hopefully more myths to debunk as we head into 2026. But I want to just say a special thank you to Danton for being willing to do this. And also, to the folks that have come up to us and said, hey, we listen and we enjoy it. We get something out of it. Just really want to give a shout out and a shot of gratitude to those folks out there.
Danton:
Yeah, the thanks that needs to go out to everybody that’s helped with this podcast is great. And especially guests. We were talking about it, I think, before this. I think we’ve learned a lot just from our guests in different areas. I think our biggest example was learning that there’s a retirement class.
Kyle:
An actual class on retirement that’s not dollars. It’s like mentally and emotionally how to retire.
Danton:
Yeah. I mean, we talk about it all the time. I had no idea there was a class down at SLU.
So, you know listening to one of our clients who’s a business owner talk about his Starlink. And he’s basically running his company from his fishing boat. I have aspirations now. I don’t fish, but, you know, I mean, I’ll learn for that, I think. So, it’s just been great stories throughout the year. And I really just appreciate hearing those stories.
And I’m thankful that we get this opportunity.
Kyle:
A hundred percent. And for the last time in 2025, Wit, Wisdom, and What Matters Most is produced by Moneta’s Gast Freeman Troyer Racen Team, headquartered in St. Louis, Missouri. Until next time, enjoy what matters most and happy holidays.
Investment advisory services offered by Moneta Group Investment Advisors, LLC, an investment adviser registered with the Securities and Exchange Commission. Registration does not imply a certain level of skill or training. The information discussed in this podcast is for informational and educational purposes only. You should consult with an appropriately credentialed professional before making any financial, investment, tax, or legal decision. Past performance is not indicative of future returns. All investments are subject to risk of loss.
And welcome to another edition of Wit to Wisdom and What Matters Most. It is a podcast by Moneta’s Gast Freeman Troyer Racen Team. My name is Kyle Luetters, an advisor on the team, joined by Danton Troyer, one of the partners.
Danton, we are literally falling into the back half of this year and really the back two months. It is holiday season, and we wanted to take this edition of the podcast to talk about things that we’re thankful for. Thankful for you, thankful for this podcast, but in addition to that, it also really causes us to think about maybe giving, especially this time of year, you’ll start to see maybe some more requests for giving.
And we wanted to touch on a couple of things as we get to this part of the year about maybe some ways that folks could do some gifting and giving, so we’ll just kind of dive on into that. But as clients continue to grow, charitable giving really seems like it’s one of the most fun and most rewarding things that clients get to do with their money.
Danton:
Yeah, and I think we’re seeing more people put more thought into it than we ever have in the past. You know, churches are always a big recipient of donations, and that’s certainly not the easy button, but I mean, people are affiliated with the church, they kind of know where to go. But then beyond that, they want to have an impact, and it’s not just, you know, donate to United Way; they do great things, but they want to have their own personal impact, and how are they evaluating that? I think it’s changed more so, especially over the last several years, I’ve seen more and more people want to be more involved.
Kyle:
They want to be more involved, and then giving really speaks to causes or even stories that are deeply personal. You know, if you’re a cancer survivor, there may be an organization that targets the type of cancer that you survived, or there may be an organization that really did a lot of good for your children. There’s one couple that I’m aware of that they love Shriners Children’s Hospital because of what Shriners has done for their child, and they tell all of their friends, this is what this organization did for us.
But you know, there’s obviously the emotional side of giving, but then there’s also, too, a mechanical tax-efficiency side, a financial side to giving, if you will. And we wanted to go over a few of those ideas and those topics today, so really, you know, the place for anyone to start with charitable giving is as a cause that speaks to them. You know, first and foremost, there’s got to be a desire because you are parting with these dollars, and the intention, your hope, is these dollars go to further that cause’s mission and their goals.
Beyond that, then we start to get into the weeds and start to get more to the technical side of how all this works. And so one of the things I wanted to bring up first and foremost is donor-advised funds. So up until maybe a handful of years ago, there was this thought that if we were going to do maybe some large gifting or some ongoing gifting that maybe like a family foundation or something like that would be the thing that we have to have.
But really, donor-advised funds have kind of come onto the scene here lately, and they’ve really opened up a lot of opportunity for a lot of folks. Before we get any deeper in the weeds, do you want to kind of go over what the concept of a donor-advised fund is, kind of what it is and how it works?
Danton:
Yeah, I think just to keep it at a high level, it allows folks, I think historically everyone thought you needed to be millions upon millions of dollars to start, quote-unquote, your trust to potentially help these charities. But now they simplified that process and administration, especially the administration, so you’re able to contribute dollars into this account, and you still get to direct those dollars to the charity that means the most to you, or charities as well, but it doesn’t have to be given right then. So you’re allowed to take those dollars, invest them, and let that grow and basically create a fund to support the charities that mean the most to you and have a greater impact for a longer period of time, potentially.
Kyle:
These are fantastic vehicles. There’s a number of conversations we’re having with clients right now, clients really that are at all stages of their giving, they’re either just starting out, or they’ve been gifting for a long time through other methods, and now they’ve found this vehicle, that to your point, does allow them to contribute dollars or appreciated securities into the donor-advised fund, have those funds be invested and carry over year after year until you’re ready to make the gift. And then by the way, as long as it’s a 501c3 organization, you direct the funds back out of the donor-advised fund to the charities to make the impact.
Danton:
Yeah, we’ve seen a lot. This has become more popular obviously just with the increase in the standard deductions, so you’re not getting as much benefit just from donating the $1,000 gift anymore, but if you’re able to lump these all together, you get a little bit more benefit at least in your tax return. So it’s just we’re never really advocating to obviously donate money to increase your net worth, but if you’re going to donate money, let’s do it in the most efficient way possible.
And then how you use specifically this type of tool is different for everybody, and that’s kind of why we like it, is it is fairly flexible in how it is used. So it’s become probably one of the easiest ways to manage your donations in a tax-efficient way.
Kyle:
100%, and there’s a story that rattles around in the back of my mind where prior to the last handful of years, we had a client that sold his business and had a very large capital gain in that year. He went ahead and contributed a portion of those proceeds into a donor advised fund to help offset his tax liability that year. I won’t give the exact number that he contributed, yet I will say it was a healthy six-figure sum, and this was in 2019.
And he went ahead and he invested those funds inside the donor advised fund, and 2020, 2021 are very robust years in the equities markets, and he remained aggressive with those funds. He was able to give away the amount that he had put in, but he still had that original principal left over. So if you think about that, the leveraging power of growth with those investments, and he was able to basically double the amount that he gave, and he got his tax write-off and all these other things, but it brought him and his wife so much joy, so much joy, and what he shared with us was it is so fulfilling to be able to say yes.
When they would meet someone out at a function or they would see something either in the news or this or that, think of any time a natural disaster strikes and the Red Cross or someone’s organizing relief efforts, to be able to say yes in those times of needs because you already, by the way, with the donor advised fund, have a set-aside bucket. You don’t really necessarily have to think about, oh, well, do I give this out of checking or my investments? No, there is a dedicated bucket that is set aside for these types of things. It makes giving, it almost gives you permission to give.
Danton:
Yeah, in that case too, if you’re able to put in a large enough dollar amount where the growth on that alone is going to be a substantial donation, it’s kind of paying for itself and creating that income stream, if you will, within the donor advised fund to fund these charities. So, especially in that type of situation, it makes it pretty easy to continue to give those dollars and feel good about it and know also it’s not really even pulling from your assets that you’re using for just day-to-day life.
Kyle:
Yeah, so donor advised funds, I think that’s a very good starting place and that’s accessible to just nearly anybody. Now let’s talk about something that is pretty effective as well too, the scope, the population that can utilize it is a bit smaller, and that is the Qualified Charitable Distribution or QCD for short. This really kicks in when you get to age 70 and a half. That is the minimum age on it. And it basically allows you to gift directly from your IRA to a charity and not have that income come to your tax return as taxable income.
Danton:
Yeah, I remember when I think I started my career, I used to always tell people, once it’s in that IRA, there’s no way to get it out without paying taxes. So, I kind of got to eat my words now because there is a way to get it out of your IRA and not pay taxes. We always say eventually you got to pay tax on those, but I guess it’s not entirely true.
But the caveat is you don’t get to use those dollars necessarily, they do need to be directed. But if you’re already going to be directing dollars to that charity, again, let’s do it more officially with pre-tax dollars that you would have had to pay taxes on.
Kyle:
And there is a cap on this one as well to the amount of money you can direct out of it. It’s $108,000 per taxpayer in 2025. So if you’re a married couple, that’s $216,000. But we do anticipate now with some recent legislation passed that that will inflate over time. It used to just be for the longest time that I was doing this, it was a flat $100,000.
Danton:
Yeah, obviously, inflation, especially here recently, has been a little bit higher than we’re used to, and there’s no reason for that not to increase as well, hopefully. And we’re seeing that as well with people trying to donate to charities. I think that’s one of the best things we can do as populations can continue to support these charities and providing these tax benefits, I think is a good thing.
Kyle:
And speaking of tax benefits, the QCD works whether you take the standard deduction or an itemized deduction. And I think it’s a very powerful tool if you look at the way things land on the tax return. It’s certainly an above-the-line deal because it is dollar-for-dollar reducing taxable income. You don’t have to go through the deductions or this or that, so it is an extremely powerful tool. And what we will actually advise a number of clients to do if they are that charitably inclined once they get to that age, they may have been contributing to a donor-advised fund for years, but once they hit 70 and a half, this gateway’s kind of opened.
Danton:
This is even easier than the donor-advised fund in many ways because you just go straight there and you get the tax benefit and it doesn’t even hit your tax return. So yeah, it’s certainly a smaller population because you have to be at that RMD age. But for the ease of use, it’s a great tool to kind of keep in mind, especially as you get towards this time of year and you’re thinking about, oh, I’ve got to take this money out by December 31st, it’s going to hit my tax return, what is it going to do?
This is a way you can maybe mitigate some of that risk. You don’t have to do the full amount. If your requirement of distribution is $100,000, you can do as much under that as you would like.
Kyle:
Exactly. And I would say one thing that is extremely important with a QCD, when custodians, so Schwab, Fidelity, any number of these folks, Vanguard, when they send out tax documents, 1099Rs for a distribution from a retirement account, they don’t list out where everything went. They just show you, hey, what left?
It is on the taxpayer to make sure that they obtain a receipt from the charity once they receive those dollars. That way, your tax preparer can match up the distribution with a charitable contribution. Otherwise, it’s considered taxable, and we have seen instances in going through tax returns where the client will say, look, I made a QCD. Why am I paying this much more in tax? And when you dig into the weeds, as we do, you’ll find out that the receipt was not passed along to the preparer, they weren’t able to match that up, and we amend the return if we need to.
Danton:
I think the other pitfall we’ve seen, especially when we’re talking about year-end giving here, but waiting to year-end may not always be the greatest strategy, especially waiting until the very end. We’ve seen charities just sit on checks, not cash them. That’s been a huge issue, where if you’re sending out checks on December 31st, they’re not going to get there.
And even if you’re sending them out now in November, end of the year, some of these charities, their staff is not huge, and they do need the money, and they want the money, but they got to work to process those. So it can be slower, especially on those smaller charities, and you run the risk of them not getting those dollars before year-end as well.
Kyle:
Exactly. And the checks must be cashed in the year that you are trying to make all of this happen. We were speaking with a client the other day, and really, as Danton alluded to, this time of year, everybody’s thinking about gifting as well as giving, you can kind of use those words interchangeably.
We actually asked the gentleman to go to some of the charities that he supports and say, hey, I was going to gift anyway. Is there a certain time of the year that there might be a low linear giving? If everybody else is doing it right now, could you really benefit from these funds maybe in May, when things are a little leaner? Maybe I’ll just orient my giving around then. That helps you kind of spread it out across the calendar year and make sure that everything happens the way that you want it to. So Danton, those are, I would say, the acronyms, DAF, QCD.
Now let’s talk about, if you don’t really necessarily want to go through a mechanism or go through something, one idea that I think makes more sense than giving cash, especially if you have a large non-retirement account, is gifting appreciated assets directly to an organization. Do you want to kind of walk through how that process goes?
Danton:
Yeah, we’ve seen a nice run up in the market over the last couple of years for sure. Especially working with a lot of executives, they may have employer stock, they may have other positions in their portfolio that have substantial gains. This is a simple way to essentially reset your basis, or how much you would pay in gains, on the stock down the road by simply donating shares of employer stock, as an example.
S&P 500 is setting new highs almost every day, it seems like. You could gift those shares to the charity, and the charity’s not going to have to pay taxes on them, but you will if you were to sell them. So, it’s an easy way to get around those taxes.
If you still want to keep those dollars, if you were going to give the charity cash, just go buy that, in this example, S&P 500 fund with the cash, give them the stock, and it resets for you.
Kyle:
That is an extremely effective tax strategy that we utilize quite often. And again, too, we’ve seen this, or witnessed this personally with, I’ll use the example of charitables with capital campaigns. They’re going to build a building, they’re going to acquire a piece of land, they’re going to retire some debt.
Folks will take shares of an individually held stock, or they’ll take shares of something like an S&P 500 index fund, and gift them directly. They might have 130, 140, 150% gain, I’m just kind of ballparking some numbers. But by gifting that, the charity gets the fair market value of the gift, and in a sense, the taxable gain for the client is removed.
Danton:
Correct.
Kyle:
And so it becomes a much more powerful gift from a tax standpoint than just cash, and then to Danton’s point, using the cash that you were going to give to go ahead and buy the same position, but now your basis – your floor- is much, much higher. So if you’re doing one of those transactions, it’s very important to understand the backoffice side of things, and that’s where working with somebody, a financial planning firm or something like that, really comes into play because they have to be sent electronically, they have to be done so in the right way. There are a lot of big eight- and nine-digit numbers that are involved in these things, and you want to make sure it’s done right. So that is one of the things that’s very key to remember there.
One of the final bullet points that I wanted to really hit here from Danton’s earlier comment about the standard deduction versus the itemized deduction is this concept of bunching donations, and do you kind of want to maybe go through that concept just a little bit, Danton?
Danton:
Yeah, we talk about a little bit with the donor-advised funds kind of easy example where if you’re going to, every year you give $10,000 to a charity, but you’re just under that standard deduction, you’re not getting a tax break, well, why don’t we take the next five years of donations, in this case, throw them in the donor-advised fund, it’s already counted as your complete gift, but you’re actually going to get some benefit to making that gift on your tax return as well.
So it’s just a simple-ish way to be able to pre-fund those donations, but you’re actually going to get a tax benefit versus just giving it to the charity directly and staying under that deduction for the next five years.
Kyle:
I love that as well, too. It’s a strategy that’s really become more in vogue since the standard deduction did double and then some, over the past several pieces of legislation. One thing to keep an eye out for in 2026, as a part of the Big Beautiful Bill legislation, there now will be a $2,000 charitable, basically a write-off, if you will, above the line on the 1040.
So that will change up some gifting strategies a little bit, again, this is where working with a planning team really can come into play in sequencing some of these things. So, do we contribute cash for the first $2,000,. and then do we do a QCD for a certain amount, and then do we do some out of a donor? There’s a lot of sequencing that can go into this, but I don’t want folks to hear that this has to be overly complicated.
It really should just be as simple as if you want to give, give, and you have the means to do it and it matters to you.
Danton:
Yeah, I think that’s a good summary of all of this. There’s all these different strategies you can use, but at the end of the day, making the donation that’s meaningful to you is going to be the most important part of it. Obviously, we’re here to help from the tax strategies and figure all that behind the scenes, but the reality is we want you to be making donations that are meaningful to you.
Kyle:
Yeah, 100%. If you do get down the line and there’s a lot of gifting going on, someone that I do want to have on a future episode of the podcast is here at Moneta, her name is Deb Durbin, and she helps a lot of families codify their giving strategy and that’s a concept that we’re going to expand upon a little bit more, but really what Danton and I wanted to do today is, like I said, it’s a charitable time of year, it’s a giving time of the year.
We wanted to just take some time here before we sit down at the holidays and really kind of go through some of these various strategies of how you can bless others.
Danton:
Yeah, I agree.
Kyle:
All right. Well, that’ll do it for this edition of Wit, Wisdom, and What Matters Most. It is produced by Moneta’s Gast Freeman Troyer Racen Team, headquartered in St. Louis, Missouri. Until next time, enjoy what matters most.
Investment advisory services offered by Moneta Group Investment Advisors, LLC, an investment adviser registered with the Securities and Exchange Commission. Registration does not imply a certain level of skill or training. The information discussed in this podcast is for informational and educational purposes only. You should consult with an appropriately credentialed professional before making any financial, investment, tax, or legal decision.
Kyle:
And welcome to this edition of Wit, Wisdom, and What Matters Most. It’s a podcast by Moneta’s Gast Freeman Troyer Racen Team. My name is Kyle Luetters, an advisor on the team, and I am joined by Danton Troyer, one of the partners.
So ,Danton, no guest on this episode, but actually when we’ve been prepping for what is now season two, that’s hard to believe, we were talking about some of the shows that we wanted to do and some of the guests that we wanted to have. And this show really kind of came up as an idea from something we were talking about in passing, which is just financial myths or financial topics that come up on social media, and really wanting to dive into some of these things. Because, as you very well know, in this industry, it is very, very difficult to paint with a broad brush and to paint in absolutes.
Danton:
Yeah, I think that’s, you hit the nail on the head there. I mean, and social media is obviously not a great place for these types of conversations because they’re very nuanced and very individual. But nonetheless, I can’t tell you how many times a year I get financial advice forwarded from an Instagram clip or some sort of social media presence, and it’s a guru who can solve all your problems just through social media posts. So it’s definitely a topic that’s worth exploring.
Kyle:
I can debunk one without much talking, it’s somehow, someway, somebody pays taxes. It’s like watching the movie National Treasure, where the Harvey Keitel character comes in and he goes, Ben, somebody’s got to go to jail. So we can just debunk that one right off the word go.
But you know, there are different things, different mitigation strategies, but really let’s do this. Let’s kind of have you set this up, and we’ve picked out a couple of them that we’re going to kind of talk through. And we’re going to go banter back and forth on these.
But before we get started, do you have anything else that you wanted to add before we kind of jump into that first myth?
Danton:
No, let’s jump right in.
Kyle:
Okay, go ahead for it.
Danton:
All right. So the first one we’re going to talk about is a strategy called infinite banking. And just broad picture, we’ll dive into more of the details as we talk through this, but it’s using a life insurance policy with a cash value, typically. We see this with a whole life policy. And so the thought here is, why do I need a bank when I can use this as my savings account and just borrow money from the cash value or the insurance company, paying myself interest?
Everything sounds great. I don’t have to pay the bank any interest, I’m paying myself, that sounds reasonable. I’m using the money that I put in and so everything, you know, kind of checks a box that is this easy solution to bank yourself and who needs the big bad banks?
Kyle:
I think, and I hear what you’re saying there, what’s the oldest profession in the world? Sales and persuasion. And I think that’s key in taking a look at a lot of these.
So let’s take this one and go through it just a bit. So you’re going to have a permanent life insurance policy that is going to build cash value. So permanent life insurance policy, as long as the premiums are paid, stays in force over the course of your entire lifetime.
And different from term insurance, whole life insurance builds cash value. Now that’s what you are, in a sense, borrowing against or paying yourself on is the cash value in that policy. First and foremost, whole life insurance is a whole lot more expensive. I think that’s where they get the name – whole is a whole lot more expensive than term insurance. And rightfully so, you are building a cash value. They are doing a calculation based on you keeping this coverage in place over the course of your entire lifetime.
But you’re paying somewhere between 15 to 20 times the cost for that permanent life insurance policy. So I think if you’re going to make this case for having this bank of your own, you have to factor in the cost of insurance, because that’s a very big key in all of this. And that’s where some of the higher costs do come from.
Now there are a ton, and I mean a ton of different types of policies out there, the way the policies are structured. And be very clear when I say this, I do believe there is a case for these types of products in certain scenarios. And again, each individual scenario is individualized.
But by and large, these things are expensive policies. They kind of fit a narrow gap for folks. And the costs are just astronomically high between, the cost of insurance, the cost of riders that are honestly associated with them, and they have a slower growth rate than what you would at other normal investments. So you know, in a lot of cases I’ve seen in-force illustrations where permanent policies don’t really go cash flow positive until about year 14 or 15.
Danton:
I think that’s exactly a couple of the main points that are maybe intentionally left out of that sales pitch is a lot of people see this as kind of a silver bullet that can work right away. And as you said, this is very narrow on when it actually can work partially, I mean, that’s part of the issue. And then you do have the higher costs associated with just insurance in general, which it makes sense you’re paying for that death benefit.
So for it to work, there’s got to be a lot of things that line up perfectly for you. But I think the other caveat is too, those things have to be lined up for a long period of time. This is not something that just you snap your fingers and you’re taking loans to pay for your kids’ college the next year.
It’s not the way it works.
Kyle:
You have to have built up enough cash value in the policy in order to loan against it. And typically, in the first few years, cash value growth is very slow unless you structure it in a certain way. And again, these are very complex products, and I do say that word products, Danton, emphatically, they are complex products. And it may take a while before the cash values get to a point where they could really be a good source of lending. That’s why if you’re older and you’re listening to this and you do have a policy that’s been around for 20 or 30 years and has accumulated a lot of cash value, this might make sense.
But think about that a second. It’s going to take 20 to 30 years for you to, quote unquote, build your bank. Why not go ahead and just borrow from a regular institution?
Because there is another thing, because I know something I will get from other folks is, well, they’ll say, well, you know, you could front load a whole life policy. As Lee Corso, said, not so fast, my friend. There is something called the Modified Endowment Contract.
And if you stuff too much money into the policy from the word go and then think you can borrow against it, you might actually turn this thing into a taxable time bomb that is going to strip away a lot of the tax-deferred or tax-free benefits of a life insurance policy. And again, you have to ask yourself in these deals, in any one of these types of social media financial topics, who benefits the most? Who benefits the most from doing this?
And insurance products, like the whole life policies, have very high commission rates. Now, again, I’m not necessarily saying that that is the case for everybody, but it’s another question to ask as you’re taking a look at potentially employing the strategy.
Danton:
Yeah. And it’s going through, as you said, just the full picture of it. And then the other side is, what’s the opportunity cost out there?
This isn’t the only strategy or way of running your personal finances. So I think that’s part of it too, is there’s definitely an opportunity cost by doing it in a specific way. And it’s just not flexible is the other part with this. I mean, once you’re in, you’re kind of in, so if your life changes, if the world changes, it’s pretty difficult to unravel as versus a bank. I mean, yeah, you may or may not need to pay off that loan right away, but that’s the same thing with this life insurance policy. Plus, you’re potentially going to get hit with a big tax bill too, if you don’t do it appropriately. So you could get hit maybe twice as hard on the backside if you’re not doing it the right way.
Kyle:
You know, one thing in working with a lot of families that I do see on these policies, and then that this was a personal story from someone that I knew very closely, is that when you’re young, cashflow is still a major concern you’re trying to build. You need life insurance coverage, but if someone comes along and says, hey, you know, do this permanent policy, it’s 15 to 20 times more expensive than a term policy, and you get into a tight spell where you’re trying to pay the mortgage, pay groceries, keep shoes on the kids, so to speak, you probably are sitting there going, you know what, this month it’s down between the life insurance premium and Hamburger Helper. And I can guarantee you which one falls by the wayside.
Danton:
Yeah, yeah, I mean, it’s tough because when you need the most life insurance, you’re probably younger and you’ll have less assets to make up that gap. And so something like this might sound appealing, especially before you have kids and maybe your cashflow is feeling pretty good for that short period of time before you to have a couple kids, and that’ll take that away. But that illustrates a point. There’s just life cycles and life changes you go through, and to think that everything’s kind of straight line going to be just better than it was the day before, unfortunately, isn’t always the case. We do have setbacks. I mean, it’s just, it’s life. And these products if you don’t pay the premium, they don’t care.
So, there’s just more flexibility and you may be able to maybe try something different if the bank loan system isn’t working for you. Hopefully, you start saving money. There’s just so many different ways to do this that are more flexible.
Kyle:
And you and I have been doing this now long enough, Danton, I think you would agree with this, in our profession and in what we do, what we’re always trying to find for folks is how many options they can have by controlling their cashflow and giving them the ability to conform their financial plan to updated goals, updated dreams, updated desires over the course of their life.
And again, when we see this being done or propagated, so to speak, it’s usually to a younger crowd. And that’s why we’re kind of beating up on the younger folks here anyways. Again, if you’re older and you’ve had a policy for 20 to 30 years, you’ve built up a decent amount of cash value, there’s not a lot that’s going to be probably changing in your picture. Probably could make sense, I wouldn’t necessarily utilize it all the time. I’ve seen them blow up on retirees from time to time, especially when they get involved in buying other risk assets or buying real estate with some of these dollars.
So just something to keep in mind there. But again, there’s a lot of nuance here, but what we wanted to do was really kind of paint the picture on this one as we wrap it up. It’s not as plug and play, nor is it as immediate as what you might see on an Instagram or YouTube or something like that.
Danton:
Yeah. That’s a great summary.
Kyle:
So another myth that we wanted to talk about here is that the stock market is just gambling. So again, if you could picture it, Danton and I rolling into the casinos out in Vegas, we’re putting it all on black, maybe he’s a red guy, and that’s really how this is going. And to a degree, maybe there is some element of that. I don’t know for sure, depending upon what you see in the headlines and what the markets do and react, one can be led to believe that.
However, I think to just paint with a broad brush, saying that it’s gambling, like in its purest sense, is not truly accurate because of all the information that goes behind it.
Danton:
Yeah, there’s definitely similarities, if you will. I was a nerd and was watching, I think it was a PBS special on the Monte Carlo simulations and we use that a lot in ours. I was interested to find out they do use it in gambling and they do use it in predicting the weather. So to say there’s no correlation is obviously not correct. And I think if I had to say one thing about it, day-to-day, yeah, there’s a lot of gambling.
I mean, the odds are closer to 50/50 on if you’re going to have a positive day or a down day in the stock market. But once you start to add time to that equation, you’re going to come out ahead. With gambling when you start to add time to that equation, you’re not going to come out ahead.
So I think that’s the biggest difference. We as financial advisors, we’re not trying to speculate on the day-to-day, because we just know that that is closer to gambling. But if we take this long-term approach, statistically speaking, we’re going to win.
It’s not to say it’s bulletproof, just like anything else. So, I think that’s where it draws the comparisons to gambling, but obviously there’s a lot of difference there as well.
Kyle:
There really is. And I think this is where asset allocation and diversification come into play as well, too. If you think about it, when you go and you gamble, unless you’re really getting into sports betting and like parlays and stuff like this and that, let’s just take blackjack for instance. You are going and playing basically against the dealer, okay?
Asset diversification is that you’re putting a little bit of money everywhere. I mean, that might be, I am not an expert on things like craps or parlay bets or anything like this or that.
Maybe you do put a little money everywhere. But again, that’s some diversification. But there’s at least some data that is helping to back up what you’re doing with your investing.
You’re investing in an economy that is hopefully growing. I always loved the picture of what our economy is, is if you look out the window and you see cars driving around and you see delivery trucks, and you see construction workers, and all of this and that, you don’t really have that with gambling.
At least in sports betting, you’re just really dependent upon sports officiating, which is a field I would not want to be in these days. I definitely would not want to be an umpire or an official at this point. There’s so much writing on this.
But I think it’s really true that risk can be managed inside of a portfolio and inside of a financial picture. It can’t really be managed, in my opinion, at the blackjack table unless you’re going to be overly conservative or overly aggressive or the same thing too. You and I can’t…if we put some money on the Chiefs, we’re not hopping into uniforms and going out there and making sure, but we can do some research and so on and so forth there.
But I really think that there might be some elements of gambling to it, but I would say that it’s much more informed, much more of a longer-term picture with all of this stuff.
Danton:
I think the bottom line is the odds are statistically in your favor to be investing. And if you think about the reason behind that, you’re basically investing in a company. The company wants to do good. I mean, you know, they want profit.
Kyle:
It’s not adversarial.
Danton:
Yeah, it’s not like when you’re at the table playing blackjack, they do not want you to win. And in fact, they will comp you to stay there longer because they know if they can get you to stay longer, you’re probably going to lose eventually. So it’s just, yeah, to your point, I think adversarial is the correct way to look at it.
You’re in theory on the same side of the table when you’re investing with a company. Where at the casino, you’re trying to take money from them and they’re trying to keep their money.
Kyle:
Exactly, exactly. So I think that’s a good place to be on that one.
Kind of the last one that I want to wrap up with today, and the funny thing about this is we came up with a lot of these. Maybe it’s an indictment on how much social media we are ingesting on this topic. But one that I wanted to talk about, we see this one probably the most in real life out of the three myths.
Danton:
For sure.
Kyle:
And that is the idea of passive real estate investing. And the pitch here is just, hey, go buy a few rental properties, sit back, and watch the checks roll on in.
One of the partners here calls it mailbox money. And that’s in theory, a nice idea. But in practice, it’s not always the case, is it?
Danton:
No, of course not.
And everyone thinks real estate, and there are some very positive things of why you should be invested in real estate, but when you take it to the extreme, which is social media in general, of you should only be invested in real estate and every dollar you need, and it’s the easiest thing in the world, that’s when you start to have maybe some of the myths start to creep in with it. It’s certainly not easy.
And I think the biggest thing that is maybe under told about real estate is, versus just investing in stocks, for example, you can lose more than you put in on real estate.
Kyle:
You’ve always said this.
Danton:
Yes. Yeah. I mean, if you put $10,000 in the stock market and you just pick a bad company, they go out of business, you lost 10 grand.
You buy a house, you get a mortgage, you put $10,000 into it. The bank’s going to want their money. Your renters who trash the house, they don’t care.
You’re going to have to put money into the house to get it fixed up. So that 10 grand not only is out of your pocket, but you need to put more money back into that real estate property just so you can get back to hopefully even at that point.
Kyle:
There is one correlation I would make with real estate investing and regular investing, and that’s when you introduce margin in short selling. That’s when, back to your point, if you buy $10,000 worth of a stock and it goes to zero, you’re out the $10,000. If you start writing options and short selling stocks against those positions, you in theory can owe a lot more and lose a lot more.
That’s the same way that I would look at real estate as well, too. And again, there’s a hassle factor with real estate. If you own a house, you already know that real estate is a hassle if you own a personal residence.
And then imagine transferring that similar type of a headache to properties that you own that you don’t live in and that you don’t maybe have as much of an attachment to. And by the way, you also have folks potentially occupying, whether it’s commercial or residential or industrial, they don’t care as much as you do. That’s a dirty little secret, but they don’t care as much as you do.
That’s also another thing too, like we, in many cases, we’ll tell folks if they move on to not rent out a home that used to be their primary residence for the very reason you’re going to show up a couple, two or three years later, look around and go, oh my God, what did you do?
Danton:
We did that exact thing. We rented out our first house. I didn’t lose. Well, I did. If I had a spreadsheet to put all together, but we stayed at it long enough to where we might’ve broke even, but from an opportunity cost, we definitely lost money on the deal.
But yeah, my wife couldn’t go back to the house. After the first tenants moved in, she was like, you have to go. I cannot see it like that. And they did leave it and they did destroy it and they did not pay rent and I was out of a good amount of money.
And when I first went up there, I had a full-time job and now I basically had to take off work for a week to go clean up this place. And we rented the dumpster, the whole nine yards. And I was sending her pictures, she’s like, I’m so glad I didn’t come with you cause I probably would be crying right now if I had to see it like this. And you know, it was hard. It was our first house. We spent a bunch of time and money fixing up the way we wanted it and we thought it was very nice. And obviously when they moved in, they thought it was nice cause they wanted to live there as well. But at some point, that disconnect – to your point – was they can leave whenever they want with no recourse, basically. So what’s the incentive for them to take care of it?
Kyle:
Yeah. And again, like that upfront cost, whether you’re putting cash into it or if you’re borrowing a lot. So if we can drive this back to the very beginning of the conversation, talking about borrowing, you might be borrowing a lot of money from various entities, banks, credit unions..you might have investors that you’re answering to; it gets to be very stressful and it gets to be so stressful, in some cases, that folks kind of panic about it, especially when interest rates hiccup one way or the other, or they lose a tenant. A lot of the folks, if you really do a deep dive into real estate investing actually really, really are, are a big fans of 100 percent cashflow because once you can get a cashflow or once you get a property paid for, and you can cashflow the next one, cashflow the next one, you’re getting those full dollars coming in. Then you can really start to take a look at the return and go, wow, this is great.
Until then…we’ve done a number of scenarios where we’ve taken a look at cap rates for our clients when they come in and say, I kept this property and it’s doing really, really well. But then when you run the actual numbers through a spreadsheet impartially, you realize that you maybe actually could do better with a professionally-managed fund than you could do with the actual property.
And guess what, Danton? You don’t have the hassle of dealing with a water leak or someone clogging a toilet at 2:00 in the morning, or the heater going out, or the parking lot coming apart if you have a commercial building. And also, too, people that don’t pay. You don’t have to deal with that either.
So those are some things to consider. And again, these are not necessarily all things that should just make you run for the doors with this; there are legitimate folks that just love this. And if you love it and you’re willing to sign up for all of these things, have at it, go for it. I mean, if that’s what you love doing, go for it.
Danton:
Yeah, I think the myth of this is that it is a kind of, to your point, go to the mailbox and collect your money type of situation. I think any serious real estate investor 100% will tell you that that’s not the case. There’s going to be a lot of work in this and there’s going to be a lot of work along the way, as well that you’re not going to be just mailing…Even with a property management company, that it’s the same story. Then still you have to get to the point where you’re scaled enough to make those dollars. And it’s not a get rich quick scheme, like a lot of people think it’s going to be.
Kyle:
Yeah, my funny thing, too, is just watching these things and talking about how hey, in two to three years we built this real estate empire.
And, you know, when we go back to the first one, you know, who benefits from this is if we’re doing so good at real estate and why are we like sharing our secrets? You know, that’s just the cynic in me, maybe just a little bit, and I get that. But at the same token, too, in any one of these things, in any marketing, you have to figure out, okay, who’s benefiting at the end of this. And that doesn’t necessarily have to always be a negative thing, by the way. You know, there’s always services we need. I’m glad that there is a company out there that is marketing their plumbing services when I need something done. Or, you know, we had someone come by and take a look at the roof on our house the other day. He had a lot better shoes to be climbing up there than I did. I’ll just tell you that he did not look like he was getting ready to fall off; I did.
And so, you have to market and you have to ask the question, who’s ultimately going to benefit from this? And that’s where I’m a little suspicious, if you will, in some of these instances.
And also, too, there’s an entire area of this that we could jump into about tax code and tax loopholes. I think there is a lot of misinformation when it comes to this out there. We’re not really going to dive into that because it is very nuanced and delicate. But again, going back up to the top of the show, somebody somewhere is going to pay the taxes. Somebody somewhere is going to have to go to jail. And again, I make that as a joke, if you’ve watched the National Treasure movies, but, you there is going to come a time where that is taken care of there.
Danton:
Yeah, and that’s what we said from the beginning. All of these are rooted in truth in some way.
So that’s a hard part with these and why it’s so hard to discern: does this make sense for me? is basically what it comes down to. So when we say myth, part of it is, yeah, there’s some truth to this, but if you put it all together, it’s not quite exactly as it may seem, especially in a 30-second social media clip.
Kyle:
I think also, too, when we say myth, the myth being that these scenarios or these lines of thought apply 100% of the time. I think that is probably the biggest thing, because in a given scenario, I know we talked about the stock market being gambling, some people may view it that way and that may be their MO, that’s fine. Same thing with the infinite banking, as well as the mailbox money.
It’s just very, very difficult with personal finance. And I’ll say that again slowly – personal finance – to say that certain things work or a certain thought pattern works or applies 100% of the time.
Danton:
Correct. And I think as an individual going to social media and then taking that and running with it and applying and going down that rabbit hole is where we see it just be very dangerous for someone’s personal financial picture, they took that and ran with it sometimes too far.
Kyle:
Yeah, and so what I would always just lament to you, too, is if you’re ever finding yourself taking a look at this, find someone you trust and just, hey, what do you think about this? There are certain people in our lives that we know that we can go to to discern through some of these things.
If you’re ever considering something like this, something that you do see, find someone that you trust and just run it by them and have that impartial party look at both sides and go, hey, you know, based on what I know, maybe this makes sense. Maybe it doesn’t.
Danton:
Yeah, and I think letting somebody that knows you personally from a personality standpoint, and then also, if we’re talking about finances, someone who knows you from a financial standpoint, so they can at least help you know, am I mentally equipped to take this on and also am I financially equipped to take this on? Because the guy on Instagram has no idea, anything about you.
Kyle:
Nope, nope, nope, nope, does not, does not. So, uh, Danton, this was actually a lot of fun. I think we’ve laughed and chuckled a bit. And I hope that everybody that hears this understands that we’re not necessarily saying these are all wrong. What we are saying is peer under the hood a little bit more and see if it really applies in your situation. Maybe if all of it doesn’t apply, maybe does some of it apply, and really have an honest conversation with yourself before you head down some of these paths.
Yep, alrighty folks. Well, Wit, Wisdom, and What Matters Most is produced by Moneta’s Gast Freeman Troyer Racen team, headquartered in St. Louis, Missouri.
And welcome to another edition of Wit, Wisdom, and What Matters Most. It’s a podcast with Moneta’s Gast Freeman Troyer Racen Team. My name is Kyle Luetters. I’m joined by Danton Troyer.
And Danton, a bit of a blast from the past for me on today’s episode; someone that I used to get to work very closely with: a gentleman by the name of Peter Biondo. And Peter is a champion drag racer, family man, and wildly successful event promoter.
And this conversation kind of went all over the place, like we talk about nicknames, we talk about economics, all sorts of stuff. It was fascinating.
Danton:
Yeah, I have no background in racing. So for me, it was just, you know, it’s good to hear that side of things and just learn about a new area that I had no idea about.
Kyle:
So like I said, we’ll cover how he got started in racing, the family background, his racing career, what has meant the most to him. And then the genesis of how one event back in 2010 has now led to arguably one of the most, if not THE most successful brand of bracket races out there. So without further ado, here’s our conversation with Peter Biondo.
And welcome to Wit, Wisdom, and What Matters Most, Peter Biondo. Peter, joining us from New York. How are you doing today, my friend?
Well, obviously not. It looks like it’s a sunny day there, at least from what we can see, and we were catching up before we got started here – a lot of positives going on in life. But you and I have known each other for quite some time. We’ve worked together for a good chunk of that time. And then we were in a small group together and really did life together for a while. And I’ve always found your story, both in life and racing and business, to be very fascinating. So I wanted to see if you would kind of start at the beginning and talk about how you and your family got involved in drag racing and then kind of the genesis forward as you’ve now become a successful racer, a successful entrepreneur. And anyone nicknamed the Terminator has to be tops in what they do.
Peter:
Well, I appreciate that. So, yeah, guys, my father…I was born into it. My father in the late ’60s was in a street gang, not really a gang, but street racers. And after the cops got them off the street in the early to mid-’70s, which I was born in the early ’70s, my father started going to the racetrack and my mother passed away when I was born, so my father had a three year old, a two year old and a newborn. So we were forced to spend time together and that time was at the racetrack.
Kyle:
And then your dad, there’s a real interesting story, too, I think, about the family station wagon, too. Talk about how dad got started with the racing and how Biondo Racing Products really got going too.
Peter:
Yeah, so that that’s interesting you said that because the station wagon. And so basically, we grew up at the racetrack. Like I said, as a toddler, I had no choice. But as we grew up and got into our early teen years, my father gave us a choice and we played sports and did some other stuff, but we always gravitated to the track – we loved it – to the sport of drag racing.
And so the way the business started, we would race the family station wagon. We would literally tow – the family station wagon would tow the race car on an open trailer. We would get there. Of course, the station wagon was 200 degrees by the time we got there, we’d unhook the trailer, and my brother or I would go race it when we were of age. First, my brother; my father would unload the race car, and that was our weekends.
Now, to beyond the racing products part of it, my father, I didn’t really know what he was doing. He was very, I mean, we spent a lot of time together, but he didn’t tell me that much about business when I was 13 years old. But all of a sudden he writes “Practice trees for sale,” on the side of the station wagon. And I’m racing. And he goes, yeah, if anyone asks you, just tell them we have practice trees for sale $299. And he really was the pioneer of that.
And a practice tree, for those who don’t know, are basically the starting line simulation of a drag race and which is very important to master. So we started selling them. His best friend was making them out of his bedroom and we started going to UPS from my one car garage, which I live in that house now, and as a team, my brother, as we were in our teen years we just stayed as a group, stayed together and worked together. And that’s how the business started.
Kyle:
So your genesis to there’s the family business you started talking about racing with your brother. How did your racing career progress from those days going with the family in the station wagon to really being like a multi-time NHRA (National Hot Rod Association) champion, getting the nickname that we referred earlier, and really being known as one of the IT guys for a long period in NHRA racing?
Peter:
Yes, so you know, I was very passionate about it. And whenever you’re passionate about something, whenever I’m passionate about something, I tend to go all in, and I practiced a lot. I’d say right around the early 1990s, I was dominating locally. And I told my father, I said, “Dad, I want to try. I want to travel nationally and see how I can do.”
And right around the mid-’90s is when I made my mark in NHRA.
Danton:
It’s kind of impressive. There’s one thing that’s to me is that, I think about my kids and I like to golf and do some things. And they seem to…anything I say that they should do like golf or other activities, they run away from.
But seems like it had the opposite effect for you. So I was just curious how your dad was able to still keep racing, make it fun for you, even though it was maybe something you quote unquote, “had to do.”
Peter:
That’s a great question. And my father was very careful in not forcing us to do it and leaving the road wide open. And he told us that over and over.
I mean, I started playing hockey. I started playing some sports. But as he just kept saying, “You want to come next weekend?” And I would just say, Yes, yes, yes.” So it was totally my option.
You’re right, though, you’ve got to be careful as a parent myself, as we all are with young children, when they’re in their early teenage years you don’t want to hold them captive to one thing and you want to let them grow. And I just gravitated towards it, man.
I’m a competitor. I love the competition aspect of it. I love the fact that it’s not all about speed, although speed is definitely an adrenaline rush. But it’s also about a lot of logic. It’s a lot of figuring out the weather and how it’s going to affect your car, and putting all the pieces together. Whoever can do that the best and then execute on the racetrack. That’s what really drew me to it – it’s very challenging.
Kyle:
Peter, you mentioned something that was pretty interesting there. All the elements that go in there. You meet folks that are not necessarily in the racing industry or they’re not necessarily familiar as much with drag racing. How do you describe it to them all the work that goes into things? Like what if someone comes up to you and says, “Well, you guys are just going down a straight line when the light turns green.” How do you describe all the intricacies that go into it in a short, compact way?
Peter:
The best way to describe it is just like I just did. It’s basically there’s a lot of elements, factors that come into play, and you have to mix them all together. And the big thing is, like anything else in life, you have to know what to listen to and what to put your effort toward and what not to. And what not to is more important because you could easily go down the trick-of-the-week avenue and you’re wasting time and you’re wasting your mental energy.
So, yeah, I mean, I will say this…a good friend of mine who grew up in the neighborhood asked me to teach him how to race about 15 years ago. He was getting back into it; he never really raced on a high level. And I sat with him and I explained everything over a whole eight-hour period.
But then we went to the track and I drove his car at a national event. And after the weekend, he said, “I cannot believe, like I would have never guessed all this goes into that.” So to answer your question, guys, you’d have to kind of be on my arm for a weekend to really know everything that goes into it.
Danton:
Yeah, you already explained more than I would have ever known that goes into the car. I mean, I certainly knew it was more than meets the eye, but just the extra steps that go into it. I think most of us watching who don’t know anything about it think it’s push the pedal and go. But obviously it’s a lot more.
Kyle:
Peter, as you look back on your driving career, there’s obviously got to be a lot of highlights. Is there like a couple, two or three, that really just stand out to you? Big wins or weekends that really stand out that you’re awfully proud of from a driving aspect?
Peter:
Yeah, I would say the two that stand out the most was in the mid ’90s, I went to the U.S. Nationals for my first time. And that’s the granddaddy – that’s like the Daytona 500 or the PGA Tour. I don’t know, everyone can relate to golf, so Danton, what’s the biggest golf tournament?
Danton:
I mean, you might have the Open, it’s coming up pretty soon, it’s pretty big.
Peter:
Yeah. So, it’s in Indianapolis, so it’s like West Coast and East Coast. All the talk during the year. Who’s the best? Who’s who meets at this granddaddy race.
And I won it in 1993 as a 21-year-old, a 22-year-old. And my father was there, and it was my first national – that win at that race. And him being there and there’s a picture of him on the starting line, like with tears you could see in his eyes. He’s old school Italian; he moved here from Sicily. He was a tough man and didn’t show emotion. But you could see tears in his eyes; that was the biggest one.
Kyle:
Now, kind of the next thing in the genesis, I think, in your story and where I want to go to. So you’re a driver working in the family business as well, too. You and your best friend, Kyle Seipel, competed together for a long time, you on the East Coast, him on the West Coast, so it’s kind of that East versus West type of a deal. But you guys became best friends. And from being around the two of you, very opposite…alike, but very different.
How did the Spring Fling brand bracket races start between the two of you?
Peter:
Yeah, so you hit it right on the head, Kyle. Kyle Seipel and I were, I’m not going to say we were enemies, but we were rivals. We were the same age, I was doing well on the East Coast, he was doing well on the West Coast. And when we saw each other at the events, we would kind of snarl at each other like I’m better than you and blah, blah, blah. But then we became the best of friends.
And in 2010, my girlfriend at the time, Emily, and Kyle and his wife went to Lake Tahoe and we were drawing up, I’m sorry, we were sitting down trying to draw up a schedule that we can…We said we need to – he’s from California, I’m from New York City area – let’s find at least two or three races a year we could race together at and spend time together. And we couldn’t find one.
It seemed like the fun was taken out of the sport at that time. Some of the really fun races were vanished due to neglect. And we said, we just looked at each other and said, “Why don’t we try it?” And that was it.
2010, January 1st, we started drawing on those sheets of paper some ideas, and three months later, we put on our first Spring Fling event.
Kyle:
And talk about what you all went through to plan and then pull off that event, because that was in Bristol, Tennessee. And just describe everything that went into that event, because here you guys are, two racers and now you’re going to kind of what I’d say, go on to the other side of the fence. You’re going to put your promoters’ hats on. Walk us through what that experience was like with that very first one.
Peter:
Well, we had a built-in advantage, let’s say, over our competitors, because for one thing, we were very well, we were very successful as racers, so we had a lot of company support, a lot of manufacturer sponsor support jump right on board with us.
But what we didn’t know is we thought, we’re going to go to these racetracks. I’m going to rent Bristol Motor Speedway, Bristol Dragway, and we’re going to go there and they’re going to run the event and we’re just going to kind of watch. That wasn’t the case.
We learned really quickly that if we wanted it to be our event and our recipe, we were going to have to be hands on every minute of every day. And that that was an eye-opener.
Danton:
One of the things that caught me was you said all the fun events had kind of gone away for whatever reason. I’m curious, from a racer’s perspective, what makes the events fun?
Peter:
What makes the events fun is it’s like any other entertainment business. I mean, first and foremost, they come to race, so you have to remember they want to go up and down the racetrack.
Danton:
Yeah.
Peter:
But aside from that, they’re sitting around, Danton, for more than a few hours at a time and you really want to keep them engaged. And that’s what we found. And Kyle and I, I was more of the – as Kyle Luetters would say – I was more of the head down, figure it out guy. But Kyle was the people person. So we made an incredible, incredible partnership together. And together I would draw things up and he would engage with the people. And so to answer your question in a shorter version, just keep the people from getting bored and keep them entertained, and let them know that you want them there and just keep it fun.
Danton:
Yeah.
Peter:
And it takes a lot of energy to do that as the race is going on. But fortunately, Kyle was able to see some of it -Kyle Luetters, he worked with us for a while and it’s a lot of work. But like anything else, when it’s fun and you love it and you’re passionate about it, it’s not as hard as it looks.
Danton:
Yeah. And so it sounds like you guys were able to expand that series from one to two. And tell me, how did that happen? Were you something you kind of, not necessarily on a whim, but, started a series and then it took off.
Peter:
Yeah, well, we didn’t have any plans on that being our business. I was in the family business selling racing products, which that business was growing and I was heavily involved with. Kyle was selling helmets on the West Coast, which was a successful business in itself.
So we both had a nine-to-five job. We said we’re going to try this once. We had never even talked about doing a second one after the first one. I would have never dreamed we would have did a second one because the first one was that we had a horrible weather forecast, which is the biggest variable that can make or break your event in a racing event. A horrible weather forecast, so we lost a good amount of money after working hard.
And we were taking the banners down and I remember him, Kyle, looking at me to this day I remember where we were standing and he goes, “You think we’re ever going to use these again?”
I said, “No, I think we could throw them out.” But weeks passed and it didn’t rain a bit, it didn’t rain one drop until except for one night out of five nights. And it called for 90 percent, 80 percent every day.
And we didn’t even think about canceling it, we just move forward, but whatever. The bottom line is, we put on an event that was taken well, taken too well by our customers because they called us and “Hey, you gonna do another one? You gonna do another one?”
And a couple of months later, we did a 180 and said, yeah, let’s try again next year.
Kyle:
And so then that success in Bristol, you guys eventually go to the West Coast-ish. You go to Las Vegas and that one has to this day probably the most unique potential pay structure. Talk about the million a little bit, because that’s an event in of itself, especially with where it’s located and then and how the atmosphere of that event is just different, I think.
Peter:
Yeah, well, that was the biggest risk we’ve ever taken as a business, because every racer told us there is no way it will work out there. Vegas is in the middle of no man’s land. It’s great for entertainment with other things, obviously. But if you draw a circle and you try to find 500 racers, that circle is going to be 10 to 20 times larger than, let’s say, North Carolina or Tennessee. So they all said there’s no way it’s going to work out there.
But, you know, it’s definitely a high risk, high reward type business. It can go either way. But we took a , and we took a big shot. We started off a little on the smaller side to hedge our bets, so to speak.
But then after a couple of years, people were coming from all across the country and it became a pinnacle event. And we raised the stakes to call it the Spring Fling Million, where it has the potential to pay a million dollars to one winner. And it’s guaranteed a quarter of a million dollars, but it goes up from there.
Kyle:
I, this is just me having my memories, but like Jeff Verdi, you talk about racers coming from all over. But the very first Spring Fling Million with the big payday, Jeff Verdi towing across the country from Virginia with a cabinetmaker and a Camaro with – I forget the year that it was, but it wasn’t exactly a spring chicken crew cab truck – goes off with against all odds, maybe, I mean, a great racer, don’t get me wrong. But that story I just remember was like you couldn’t script it in Hollywood the way that one went down. And the number of people that were engaged with the event after that was just insane.
Peter:
That definitely put a spark into the event and caught a lot of eyes. Everyone saw the Rocky movie I’m sure, you guys saw Rocky movies as did everyone probably watching this podcast. With that said, it was an absolute, like you said, scripted Rocky movie.
There was the underdog from the East Coast, far Virginia, going towing with an open trailer, which everyone these days has these fancy motorhomes and double trailers. He tows the whole way, it really should have been on Hollywood because he on the way there, he almost got bit by a snake being under the car trying to fix a muffler or something.
And it goes on and on and on. And then he races one of the dragsters from the West Coast, one of the big names from the West Coast, and beats him. And it really was a true underdog story.
You guys got to realize how long it takes to drive and tow a car from Virginia to Vegas.
Danton:
I don’t want to know.
Peter:
From a cabinetmaker, you know, who has a nine to five job and how much money it was.
Kyle:
You guys, again, the success continues to compound. You guys start going to three events, four events…now you guys are up to five events now.
What do you think is the secret sauce here? Like I know, you guys may not say this, your family may not say this, but you guys in a way kind of have a Midas touch here. With the racing, the family business, and now this Fling brand, what do you attribute the success that you all have had in motorsports to?
Peter:
Well, I’d say the passion that we have for the sport itself and the love that we have for the sport itself really was a driving force. Aside from that, Kyle and I, my father would say – my father passed away a few years ago – but he would say that you guys have the best synergy. We were opposite, yet we got along so well and that combination really catapulted us into the front. And to stay there, it was just about finding the right people and working hard and not being afraid to take risks. That’s one thing that we’ve done all across the board, all across the way, all across the years. Not be afraid to take the risk – that’s where our advantage, I think, comes from.
Kyle:
With all of this going on, what do you think, if you dream to the future… what do you think the future holds for you all? Because, I mean, I knew you guys when it was two events and you said, I can’t imagine we do anymore. I just mentioned that you’re going to five this year on the calendar. Like as you dream, Peter, what’s still out there? What’s still something that you want to achieve in doing what you’re doing?
Peter:
Well, I’ll answer that question, but I want to just rewind a quick bit because it just came to mind what we really have a knack for and what’s important in any aspect of any business is the supply and demand. That you’ll hear when you’re in economics when you’re in 10th grade. And that is the biggest thing in any business.
And we were very slow to grow. So we always made sure we had more demand than we did supply. So, it took us three/four years to go to two and another three/four years to go to three.
And I had no intention on going to five, but Bill Bader, one of the most respected track owners in the country, if not the most respected, gave us the opportunity. So I wasn’t going to turn that down.
I don’t know if that answered your question. I went in reverse there a little bit, but that’s the supply and demand. It sounds so, so simple, but just knowing, like when we have it, when we sell pre-entries, we have a cap on how many entries can come in.
And if I go on Google Analytics while it’s happening, I can see if there’s 2,000 people trying to get in a 400-entry event. I know where the supply is. If now it’s getting more diluted so I got to be careful. There’s a lot of promoters just throwing stuff out there, so the numbers aren’t as high.
But to answer your question as for the future, I’m getting older now. I took a step back from racing for a few years to raise my family, I’m into sports with them. And I don’t know, man, I don’t really have any future plans to grow any more than this. I really like our team. I really like the size we are. But I will say there is going to be a day, just like our family business, that I’m going to want to walk away just because I burned myself out with it. But I feel like I have a really good team to pick up my slack when that happens.
Danton:
That’s good. Well, I think one thing that was on my mind that we didn’t talk about was how you got the nickname, the Terminator. We started off with it, but I’m not sure I actually know how you got that nickname.
Peter:
Yeah, so I was a punk kid like in New York with the shaved sides and a rat tail in the back. And I would not talk, I was very shy. I would just walk around the racetrack and I would I was winning every week. So the announcer just said, oh, look, I had like a no-sleeve shirt on and he goes, “There he is, the Terminator.” And that was probably 1988, and it just stuck.
Danton:
It stuck. That’s good; that’s good.
Kyle:
And I think that is a wonderful note to close out on. What a story. Peter, thank you so very much. Number one for doing this, but two for the friendship and the wisdom that you’ve dispensed over the years. It’s been amazing to watch how everything has grown. And it’s been even more amazing now to see your family, Emily, and then now your kids getting involved in the business. So thank you again for doing this. And kudos to you.
Peter:
Yeah, I appreciate it. I had a lot of fun with you guys.
Danton:
Thanks, Peter!
Kyle:
And we just heard from Peter Biondo, racing extraordinaire, event promoter extraordinaire from Bracket Races, the Spring Fling brand of races.
And Danton, didn’t know you so much as a race fan before this. But I think going through Peter’s journey and kind of hearing where he started in New York, to being a racer with a family, and then to really kind of getting into being a successful entrepreneur on the promoter side. It’s kind of a contagious story for a bunch of gearheads, right?
Danton:
Yeah, I mean, I certainly had no background knowledge as far as racing goes, so I probably had some silly questions about racing. But, you know, he did a great job explaining it even to me. But also just outside the track and everything he had to do and kind of go through to get where he is today.
Kyle:
You know, we talk a little bit about it. His business partner and best friend, Kyle Seipel, passed away a handful of years ago. And, you know, one thing we didn’t kind of really delve into was kind of that transition from him and Kyle running the business together to to him now really carrying the mantle. And his lovely wife Emily’s involved; mentioned his kids. Now, if you see on social media, his kids are up there in race control with them working the event. So it’s now really that family, that family business aspect is now carried from Peter and his dad and his brothers, now to Peter, his wife, and his kids as they continue to build out this brand, which is really cool to see.
Danton:
Mm hmm.
Kyle:
You know, a couple of things I learned, you know I had always heard the Terminator nickname, but never knew that that was kind of the start of it, so that was interesting to learn. And then, you know, getting to rehash the Jeff Verdi story, being lucky enough to be there that night was pretty cool. But any other final takeaways from this one? It might be a little step out of the norm from our normal guests, but nonetheless, an interesting story.
Danton:
Yeah, it was just great to hear his story. And we even talked about some economics there in supply and demand, so I think we talked about a wide variety of subjects, and it was really good to hear.
Kyle:
Yeah, we definitely appreciate Peter being on the show and appreciate you all for listening. We get a lot of positive compliments about this show and as long as we have those, we’ll continue to do these as there are many stories out there to tell.
Wit, Wisdom, and What Matters Most is a production of Moneta’s Gast Freeman Troyer Racen Team, headquartered in St. Louis, Missouri.
Welcome to another edition of Wit, Wisdom, and What Matters Most. It’s a podcast with Moneta’s Gast Freeman Troyer Racen Team. My name is Kyle Luetters.
I’m joined by Danton Troyer. Danton, coming off of a holiday weekend where the fireworks weren’t the hottest thing maybe that was going on throughout the weekend. The One Big Beautiful Bill signed into law on Independence Day itself.
For a juxtaposition of numbers, America celebrating 249 years of independence with a bill that’s 1,116 pages long.
Danton:
It’ll be interesting. We get a lot of questions over what’s going to be in the bill and a lot of news. And so now we know. Sort of.
Kyle:
It’s sort of. To that point, that’s why we emphasize the 1,116 pages to it. What we really wanted to do here with this edition of the podcast, though, was really look at this bill, you know, obviously the political situation in Washington is very distinct, but really taking a look at this solely through the eyes of two CERTIFIED FINANCIAL PLANNERS.® What are some of the opportunities? What are some of the key provisions of this tax bill that will affect a lot of different people?
Because there are individual tax provisions. There’s changes to the estate tax as well as certain things for business owners to be aware of and to keep their eyes on as well, too. So we’re not going to cover it all. There’s no possible way. And obviously to check in with CPAs and other tax professionals as well, too, before making any final moves. But we wanted to go through some of the things that as we read through this bill and summaries of this bill, some of the things that just kind of jumped out to us as unique kind of planning opportunities.
Danton:
Yeah, and also discuss what were some of the things that made it into the bill and what were some of the things that got cut last minute and how that might have affected some of the folks that maybe didn’t get everything they wanted to or at least the devil being in the details.
Kyle:
A hundred percent. And Danton, one of the things that I thought was the most unique about this bill versus the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act of 2017 was there,and it has to do with when the bill is passed. I remember Tax Cuts and Jobs Act was passed right at the end of the year. A lot of CPAs and tax professionals were literally pulling their hair out as the final bill gets passed in December and goes into effect January 1st. This bill passed more at the midpoint of the year. So there’s some provisions that affect 2025 and we’ll get into those. And then there’s also some that don’t start until 2026.
But I think one of the biggest things for us to talk about here real quick is the impetus for this bill. Or one of the big ones was that the TCJA, the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act, like we referred to, was scheduled to sunset at the end of 2025, so that’s really what kind of kick started a lot this legislative process.
Danton:
Yeah, so what do you see as the things that are going to be continuing and what’s getting cut from there?
Kyle:
There was a lot in this bill that really codified the changes that were temporary and made them permanent. One of the biggest things is keeping the rate and brackets that we currently have in making them permanent and adjusting them for inflation every year. So, it is definitely more solid footing, if you will, on tax strategy as we’re having conversations about things like Roth conversions, charitable giving, knowing where people are going to end up in the tax brackets.
We were honestly having quite a few conversations and modeling sessions with folks had the election gone the other way at the end of 2024. Fortunately or unfortunately, we wadded up a lot of those and threw them in the waste paper basket. But now we know at least for a while, because we never know what politically will happen, but we at least know for the foreseeable future what brackets we are dealing with.
And a couple of other things that made this permanent, the standard deduction, that was a big leap back in 2017. And it increased a little bit for 2025. It will be indexed for inflation, but we’ve made that increased standard deduction permanent.
Personal exemptions, which used to be a big thing in the tax code, are still removed. And another thing that was kind of codified in this was an Expanded Child Tax Credit. Now the House bill originally was $2,500 per kid. The Senate’s decided on $2,200, starting next year is kind of the final lay of the land. But you got to remember, the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act basically doubled that. And we saw a much higher one during the pandemic as well, too. And that was also, too, when we got into the situation where they kind of doled out that child tax credit early via direct deposit under the Biden administration.
So those are a couple of things there. And we’re going to kind of hop around here a little bit, but some other provisions that are permanent through this, and I think this is a huge one, especially with some of the families that we end up working with quite a bit, is the permanent increase of the estate and lifetime gift tax exemption to an inflation indexed amount of $15 million for single filers and $30 million for joint filers beginning in 2026. So in 2025, it’s about $13.99 million, so a healthy jump into 2026, and then increased for inflation after that, which is a very big planning opportunity.
Danton:
Yeah, it seems like, at least as it relates to the 2017 tax cuts, we kept a lot of the major pieces in place. I mean, there’s some nuance there, but it’s just nice to have kind of at least some clarity on how long this is going to go for and be able to do a little bit more than a year at a time planning, it feels like a lot of these times.
Kyle:
I don’t know if you felt this way, but as a planner, I kind of thought that we were kind of playing with one hand tied behind our back with a sunset. And it was always kind of this weird thing when you were sitting down with someone and saying, hey, now that we know what this is, this is probably 2018, we know that it’s going to sunset at the end of 2025 unless Congress acts, but you may not be ready to do something. And so it was kind of a non-conversation. And now that changes a little bit to say, hey, unless there is another major bill, major piece of sweeping legislation, these are the rules. And so we have a much longer runway.
A couple of other things here on the business side of things, 100% bonus depreciation for short-lived investments, very key for business owners.
And then permanently reinstating the EBITDA-based limitation on business net interest deductions is a huge one that comes into play here.
There’s some international tax provisions. I don’t want everyone to go to sleep that’s listening to this. We won’t dive into those.
Danton:
Talk about the taxes and how that will be addressed as it relates to Social Security, because I think that’s a lot of people’s maybe concern and on their mind is, is it going away? But the taxes, it doesn’t really affect that so much, but it may affect their bottom line and how much they’re receiving.
Kyle:
Very good question because on the campaign trail, we heard a campaign pledge of no taxes on Social Security. We also heard no taxes on tips and overtime, which by the way, did make it into the final bill, there are some pretty low caps on that.
But as far as Social Security goes, that was not addressed specifically in the bill. However, I think the compromise though was added with a temporary senior deduction of $6,000 for each qualifying individual for both itemizers and non-itemizers that phases out when modified adjusted gross income exceeds $75,000. Now that’s temporary; it’s available from 2025 through 2028. And I think as we always talk about in Washington, D.C., you never want to see how the sausage is made. That was one of the compromises to providing some relief in that arena without necessarily completely saying Social Security is not taxed.
A number of the states have it on their ballots to take a look at that. I know Missouri is looking at it; that’s where we are. But I thought that was kind of like a unique compromise, if you will.
Another thing that I thought was very contentious, and I’ll have you chime in on here, was the SALT tax deduction cap. In the old bill, it was $10,000. And the Senate initially said, we’re not raising it from $10,000. The House bill passed at $40,000. There was a lot of handling behind closed doors, but eventually they did increase it to $40,000, and that cap will go up by 1 percent through 2029. And it is subject to a phase-out with taxpayers with incomes above $500,000.
Danton:
Yeah, it seems like this is another political football back and forth where the Democrats want to benefit their potentially higher-income state taxes. So, it’s nice to see that there is a deduction that is increased. So anytime from our perspective, we’re legally able to pay less in taxes, it’s probably a good thing. So, it’s nice to see. It would be nice to have maybe a little bit longer timeframe as far as clarity goes, but it’s better than nothing.
Kyle:
Well, and another thing to point out, too, is that above that $500,000 income, there’s a cap to the flat $10,000 thereafter. So, I mean, it’s not like a use it or a lose it type of a deal, so, but there is some kind of parameters around it.
Another thing that I thought was very interesting was charitable giving was addressed in this bill in two ways. One, it creates a half a percent floor on itemized deductions for charitable contributions. So you need to be aware of that as you’re giving things away.
But then also, too, and this is a unique planning opportunity for the vast majority of people that take the standard deduction, is there is now a permanent $1,000 above the line deduction for charitable contributions if you’re a single filer and $2,000 for joint filers. You know, for a long time, we’ve heard folks coming in saying, hey, you know, the standard deduction just makes the most sense for me, so why should I give? Well, now there’s an increased incentive because with this above-the-line deduction, even if not itemizing you can still see some benefit for your charitable giving.
Danton:
Yeah, I think that, from our perspective, it may take away some of the planning opportunities we do with Donor Advised Funds for those larger gifts. But overall, that’s great to be able to get, quote-unquote “credit” for donating to these charities, especially churches and the kind of one-off donations that people don’t always account for even. So it is nice that they’ll be able to at least get some sort of credit from a tax perspective on those smaller donations.
Kyle:
Well, and I think, not diving too much into the tax weeds here as a nerd, but very similar in the way that you kind of stack the American Opportunity Tax Credit with college expenses, i.e., you have to pay the first $2,000 out of pocket and then spend out of the 529 account. I wonder, and this is something to suss out over the long term is if you don’t take that first $2,000 paid out of pocket, and then your Donor Advised Fund comes in after that to continue doing your giving, because that above-the-line deduction for charitable contributions is for both itemizers and non-itemizers.
Danton:
Yeah, that’ll be another devil in the details of how these things actually get implemented. So, like I said, we have clarity, but it’s not…there’s always additional follow-up questions, it seems like.
Kyle:
Another one that kind of came up here that was for some a bit of a head-scratcher on kind of the individual side, it’s a temporary deal, but making auto loan interest deductible for itemizers and non-itemizers for new autos with final assembly in the United States for tax years from 2025 through 2028. You can deduct up to $10,000 and it phases out at a 20% rate when income exceeds $100,000 for single filers or $200,000 for joint filers. You know, for retirees, somebody that maybe has done a great job planning, they’re not ready to turn on Social Security or take things out of their IRA yet, they might have a year or two where they’re living on kind of savings, if you will, and this might be an effective play if they want to finance a vehicle during that period of time. But again, it’s just temporary, it’s a smaller window, it’s 2025 through 2028, so we’re really, we get two and a half years where this is really kind of taking into a play, but it’s just one of these carved out nuances that I thought was interesting.
Danton:
Yeah, I think that sums it up. I mean, it’s interesting, but the effect from a planning perspective is probably not that much. But, you know, you see that with a lot of these things where they put them in there because they get headlines and then they kind of take it back a little bit with the, even with the no taxes on Social Security is promised, no tax on tips is promised, but then you get the details and they weren’t necessarily not telling the truth, but again, there’s a little detail to it.
Kyle:
Yeah, speaking of that tip income, up to $25,000 of tip income is deductible for individuals in traditionally and customarily tipped industries, define that?, per tax years 2025 through 2028. The deduction phases out at a 10% rate when adjusted gross income exceeds $150,000 for single filers or $300,000 for joint filers. You know, so again, as Danton has always said in this podcast, the devil is in the details and broad brush, it sounds great, but now when we really kind of get into it now, it’s a lot more substantiation on the taxpayers’ side of things.
And to me, the thing that would be most worrisome is traditionally and customarily tipped industries. Danton, I don’t know about you, but it feels like after COVID, like everywhere I go and I place my card in the machine, it asks me if I want to leave a tip. So do they all qualify now? So that’s just something interesting.
Speaking of, to drive back a second to automobiles for a second, another thing that came out in this bill was the repeal of a lot of the Inflation Reduction Act green energy initiatives, namely with the automotives, the $7,500 – up to $7,500 I should say – EV tax credit and how that’s going to affect some folks that made use of that to get an EV here in the past number of years.
Danton:
I think another thing, not as big of an audience, but just those green for your home improvements, those credits are going away at the end of the year. So, you know, if you’re kind of holding off and maybe thinking you had a little more time, you don’t. You probably need to get that on the calendar this year to get those credits on your taxes or those are going away at the end of the year.
Kyle:
So, Danton, referring to the Energy Efficient Home Improvement tax credits, if you’ve got an HVAC system that, and I don’t know why this, but my wife always is convinced that our HVAC system is like two teardrops away from dying. And I think some people are like that. You know, if you are going to replace and do need to replace this year might be advantageous because those tax credits now will, set to, expire at the end of the year. Same thing too for exterior doors and windows. There are tax credits available if you replace those, keep your receipts. I’m not going to go ahead and put the caps here in the podcast, but we will link to some articles that will.1 But, you know, that’s another great way that if there was some things you were going to do this year from a home improvement standpoint, get them done and save a little tax as we go. Because remember that a credit is a dollar-for-dollar reduction in tax liabilities.
And Danton, as we’ve mentioned, there’s no possible way to cover every single provision in this 1,116-page bill. I’m going to continue to lament that just to show you, or convey how, large of a piece of legislation this was. It did live up to its name. I haven’t seen it in physical representation, but I can say that it is a big bill.
But Danton, you and I now have been doing this long enough that administrations change, legislative agendas change. What we do as planners is try to have as long a term outlook as we can and look for opportunities as the rules are updated. I’m not necessarily going to say change, but as rules are updated, because now this seems to be, I’m not going to say a frequent thing, but, we’ve seen a lot of major shifts in tax policy here in the last couple of decades. And so that’s really what we’re after.
Danton:
Yeah, it certainly feels like every four years we get a whole new set of rules. And maybe with this bill, it probably wasn’t as much as the hype kind of leading up to it. It doesn’t seem like there was really that much change. If more of anything, it was just keeping it consistent, which overall I think is good. But if we were looking for a simplified tax code or a change in the way we do things, that certainly wasn’t this. I mean, it’s more of just continuing on the path we were on.
Kyle:
I think you’re spot on there. And I think that this is not going to be, there’s no provision in here that is just absolutely earth-shattering or completely changes the trajectory of someone’s life or their retirement or really their ability to save.
I guess the one thing we really didn’t hit on was Trump account for babies. But there’s enough things that I think Treasury needs to sort out there that I don’t feel confident speaking on those quite yet. But yeah, you nailed it right there. It’s like, it seems like this does change. But I think the key thing is having someone in your corner that’s taking a look at these types of things, distilling them out, and then applying what the new rules, guidelines, regulations are to unique planning opportunities for everyone’s individual picture, because they’re all different. The way that these are applied to achieve goals and objectives is very different. Sometimes they’ll help, and sometimes it’s maybe not worth messing with.
Danton:
Yeah, I think that’s exactly it. Just, a thousand pages, then what does that mean for me?, is what we try to get to. And I mean, that’s obviously what people want out of this. And then also, most people aren’t going to want to read a thousand-page bill when 99% of it doesn’t even apply to them.
Kyle:
Or are you trying to say that my idea of a date night didn’t work? I kid, I kid. But no joke, it was an interesting weekend to see everything that came out of it.
And as always, if you have questions, or if there’s anything further that you want to hear about, please be sure to follow our social channels. We continue to put out content to help distill some of the things that are going on. But, you know, Danton, we’ll continue to chug along and keep doing the things that we’re doing.
Well, What Matters Most is a production of Moneta’s Gast Freeman Troyer Racen team, headquartered in St. Louis, Missouri. Until next time, enjoy what matters most.
Kyle: Welcome to another edition of Wit, Wisdom, and What Matters Most. It’s a podcast with Moneta’s Gast Freeman Troyer Racen Team.
My name is Kyle Luetters; I am joined by Danton Troyer. And, Danton, on this episode, someone that we’ve gotten to know here as of late, we’ve been able to work together a bit, is Scott Stork, an estate planning attorney with Polaris Law Group here in the St. Louis area. And I thought a really interesting conversation with a key moment that folks will hear about, about how he decided to truly pursue estate planning.
Danton: Yeah, it’s one of the most chilling and maybe motivating “whys” out there, especially for a career and kind of getting that going as well. And then talking about how you balance that with family and just the day-to-day that is life. So, a great, great interview with Scott and just talking about how he’s been able to achieve his success.
Kyle: And here’s our conversation with Scott Stork.
And welcoming to Wit, Wisdom, and What Matters Most, it is Mr. Scott Stork. Scott, welcome to the podcast today.
Scott: Thank you very much. I appreciate being here.
Kyle: This has been a long time coming. We met each other here a while back, had a wonderful cup of coffee at Picasso’s, talking shop. And then, kind of throughout our journeys together, we got to learn more about one another’s businesses and our practices.
So, you know, for everyone that is taking the time to listen to this, kind of describe your background, like where you came from, how did you get into estate planning, and how did basically, how did we get here?
Scott: Okay, yeah, absolutely. So, I’ve been a lawyer for longer than I care to admit. So, since 2002, which I think makes me very officially middle-aged.
So, I actually didn’t start out my career doing this. I never had any idea I would be doing this. I spent the first half of my legal career as a prosecuting attorney between Virginia and here in Missouri, and did that for quite a long time and did a lot of trial work and litigation and things like that.
And when I went into private practice, I had anticipated I was going to stay doing litigation and trials and all of the things that I really liked to do. But through kind of a confluence of events, I started to do, to dabble, I would say, in estate planning, which a lot of people in private general practice do.
And I had a friend that got very sick. He was 35, so he was certainly not old. He got cancer. And kind of a long story short, we ended up signing some of his estate planning documents the day he passed away in the hospital.
And that had an enormous effect on my complete outlook on everything. I realized that nothing that I had done up to that point with him made any difference as far as his family’s future or anything like that. And so I made the decision basically right there that I wanted to focus on estate planning and not do litigation anymore. And that was pretty much the change in my practice and I’ve been doing estate planning as the only thing that I that I do ever since.
Kyle: Yeah, that’s incredible that you have that story. And for a lot of people that get into business, especially entrepreneurs, there’s like a seminal moment that you really, that like a switch flips. And you may not become an entrepreneur right at that point, but there’s usually something, an event you can tie back to that really kind of flips that switch into getting you on the path that you’re on now.
Scott: Yeah, absolutely. And it really was the kind of the moment where, again, my worldview changed. I also realized I didn’t know enough to really do good estate planning for clients.
And so it caused me to join some organizations where I basically got a post-secondary, so to speak, education in estate planning. And it’s really changed the way that my partner and I practice and that our law firm practices. So yeah, that was kind of the, that’s my background and that’s my why of what I do.
Danton: Yeah. So with that, that’s a pretty big transition. And I know you have a family.
How are they affected or how are they able to support you through that?
Scott: Yeah, so it’s actually, I didn’t have kids when I started this.
Danton: Makes it easier.
Scott: Yeah, right. So like, hey, I can make a, make a shift and not a big deal. I think it’s actually made a very positive transition. So when you’re doing litigation and, and lawyers who do litigation and you’re off to different courtrooms and in different municipalities or, you know, St. Charles or St. Louis County or the city or wherever you’re at…it tends to just kind of be hair on fire, even though I don’t have any.
Kyle: That’s where it went!
Scott: Yeah, that’s right. Yeah, exactly. So when you do that, it’s really difficult to do a lot of the work-life balance. One of the things that being kind of full-time in estate planning and having a more steady clientele and a cadence to how we plan with people has actually been to make it easier to really have that work-life balance. And that was something that was really important to my partner, Ray, and I because we both have young kids now and families, is how can we make sure that not only we have work life balance, but everybody that we work with has the same. So it’s really informed and shaped how we have developed our law firm.
Kyle: You, you mentioned Ray and I want you to – we’ve been talking about you – now talk about Polaris as a firm, so describe, you’ve mentioned Ray…give us the lay of the land of the firm. I know you guys are growing. We were able to go to you guys’ open house late last year, which was a wonderful thing. it’s a beautiful facility. But tell us a little bit about the firm as it sits today and maybe a little bit where it started. Cause those are always a good story.
Scott: Yeah, it started with me. 2013 it was basically me striking out on my own in about a 1,500 square feet office in St. Charles County. And it was kind of just trying to start getting clients. Right. And it’s grown steadily over the years.
So my partner and I both were in the St. Charles County prosecutor’s office back in the mid two thousands, and we’d been friends for a long time. I started my estate planning firm and for the first four years or so it was me and an assistant. And then Ray and I complement each other very well, as hopefully lots of teams do. He’s strong in areas that I’m weak in and vice versa.
And so we joined up in 2017 after about a year of talking about whether or not it would make sense, and started Polaris in St. Charles off of I-70. And we have grown our practice over the years and brought on staff and things like that. Our practice is a little bit different than a lot of estate planning firms. We aren’t kind of a transactional type of firm. So we have ongoing relationships just like you all do with, with clients where we keep their plans up-to-date and make sure that they still work. And so that’s for us, we have about 350 ongoing clients on that program.
And it also caused us at the beginning of this year, as you talked about, to open a second location in Creve Coeur so that we can increase the amount of people that we’re able to help, and it’s increased the amount of staff that we’ve got. So we’ve got about 10 people currently in our firm plus the two of us, so over the two locations, that’s kind of our setup right now.
Kyle: Very neat.
Danton: Yeah. What would you say, I mean 2013 wasn’t that long ago, and going from a one-man-show to 10 people to two locations…what would you say is the biggest driver of being able to do that?
Scott: Um, the biggest driver…So most law firms aren’t run like the businesses that they are. And so, lawyers tend to, we aren’t trained – just like most other people – on how to run a business. I joined a coaching program a couple of years ago, three years ago now, we joined and that’s been really instrumental in finding weak spots within the firm. You know, one of the reasons that we have so many staff is because we have so many different things we’re helping clients with along their estate planning journey and after they’re done. And so it’s putting the right people in place to do that because when you get a lot of firms where it’s just the lawyers who are doing the work, so to speak, you know, lawyers aren’t good at managing time a lot of times. And so,
Kyle: Really?
Scott: Yeah, right? That there, there’s your nugget for today.
Danton: We didn’t say it; wasn’t us.
Scott: Nope; nope.
Kyle: And I just was inspired to dig deeper…
Scott: Yeah, and so, you have lawyers who for whatever reason are in court or out of town or whatever, if they’re the only ones with their fingers on a certain case, it’s going to be weeks sometimes before they get back with clients. And we don’t want that. That’s not how we want the client experience to be. And it’s really kind of driven a lot of our growth, by having so many loyal, ongoing clients. And I think we’re able to give them a good product and a great experience -and we do that on an ongoing basis. And, and so between word of mouth and everything else, that’s kind of allowed us to grow the way we have.
Kyle:
Sure. You mentioned when we were kind of chatting before this whole thing kicked off, like, you know, getting your marketing, it was, it was going, and then there were some changes, and then now you’re getting going back again. It feels like in marketing, especially in small businesses, in professional services, it is so much about the day-to-day blocking and tackling and showing up.
Scott: Absolutely.
Kyle: Can you guys describe some of the ways that you all market to get the word out about your business in your chosen industry?
Scott: Yeah, it can be difficult, as you all know, because what you really have to do is – people don’t like to talk about sometimes, especially the things I do. So, when you’re talking about what happens when I pass away or if I become disabled or what happens to my family, those are conversations that can be pretty heavy. Clients don’t want to engage in that a lot of times, unless they’ve had something that’s really kind of pushed them to do so. Whether that’s, they’ve got a personal thing that’s happened in their family or to them, or they’ve got somebody kind of knowing that how important this is and pushing them to do it. And so when we talk about marketing, really what we’re marketing towards is apathy on clients’ parts. Because a lot of times they don’t know they need to do this, they don’t know that they need to do estate planning. Or even if they do, they’re, they’re reluctant to get it started.
I’ve had so many people tell me that they’re just afraid. Karma is going to give them, you know, something’s bad is going to happen to them if they go down this road, which is always interesting to me.
Kyle: Coming from a life insurance company. I empathize.
Scott: It’s the exact same, you have the exact same issues on that end as, and even on your part of, people know they should do it, but sometimes they’re just reluctant to pull that trigger. And so when we market, it’s making sure that we market in the right way to tell people this is an important thing that needs to be done without being preachy, right?
And so it can be difficult. You know, you want to get clients who buy in, and who understand what you’re doing, and have the same kinds of values that you do or that I do, and so making sure that that message goes out and making sure that it doesn’t get stale when people see the same thing on Facebook or LinkedIn or whatever that is, keeping that fresh and in front of people can be really important.
Danton: Yeah, and you kind of hit on a couple of things there. I think a lot of people think about work-life balance and growth and not, maybe synonymous sometimes. So how have you been able to grow as well as you have, but still having that work-life balance, especially within, you said you like that across your whole firm, which again, I think a lot of people just hear work-life balance and think like, oh, you can’t be in super growth mode. You’ve got to dedicate one way or the other, but I don’t think that’s the case.
Scott: Yeah, so for me, I think one of my strengths is probably, I know what I’m not good at.
Kyle: That’s a good thing to have…
Scott: And that’s not necessarily something that lawyers are good at admitting. So, lawyers tend to be control freaks, tend to think that they are the best at just about everything. If you’re going to grow, that’s something that you’ve got to be willing to give up. And if you’re going to have work-life balance, you have to realize that you can’t be in charge of everything.
And so Ray and I both are very focused on putting, whether it’s a vendor that we have to come in and do marketing, let’s say, or other things, or joining a coaching program to help us understand where there’s gaps in our systems, and things like that…whatever that might be, we try to bring in others to help us on the things that we know we’re not experts at. I mean, I’m great at the law; I’m great at estate planning. I think I’m a decent business owner, but I certainly don’t have the answers when it comes to that. And frankly, even in estate planning, as should happen with most others, there are issues that I am not an expert at, even in that discipline, even though I do it and I do it very successfully. I know who to bring in, in any event, when there’s something that we need help with,
Kyle: Estate planning, it seems like for a long time, it wasn’t changing up a whole lot; now, it seems like with taxes in an estate, like every couple of years, we just upset the apple cart or we change something big. How do you adapt your business and your messaging in a way where that’s, I don’t necessarily like to say constantly changing, but we see it in our industry where we didn’t really monkey with the tax code a lot until 1986, and then since then there’s been about three or four major bills where a lot of these long-term projections may just get wadded up and thrown out the deal. I think that kind of speaks to the subscription service that you’re talking about a little bit.
Scott: Absolutely, it’s kind of a twofold thing. So our ongoing, we call it lifespan program, is designed with that in mind. So if there’s a legal change, so a great example, because on the estate tax side, that hasn’t been something that we’ve had to wrestle with very much for the last dozen years or so. It’s just, there’s not a lot of appetite, no matter what we think in Washington, to bring back small estate tax exemptions, but there are things like the Secure Act dealing with retirement accounts in the last five years over a couple of different segments of it that have really changed the way that people need to plan, and that we need to interact with financial professionals to make sure that clients are taken care of.
Our ongoing program helps with that, but also leaving a lot of flexibility in the planning that we do is very important, too. So for instance, during the last administration, we really thought there might be some changes on the estate tax side and we had kind of talked to clients and prepared them that this is something that we may need to look at, but let’s not pull a trigger too quickly until we get a little bit of clarity.
Kyle: Right.
Scott: I think there’s a lot of people, especially lawyers who, either don’t do this regularly as kind of their only discipline, or maybe who have a different philosophy who are just like, well, here’s where we’re at now; we have a little uncertainty. Let’s just go ahead and pull the trigger now without really knowing where we’re going.
We belonged to a pretty large estate planning organization. One of the things that we do in that is really try to look as a whole and maybe see where things are going. And then we can make some informed decisions on when we should pull triggers and when we shouldn’t. We’ve had a lot of clients obviously sitting on the sidelines on the estate tax side, and we’re glad that we, that we did that so we don’t have to unwind something that we put into place on a lark. And that said, if we can keep clients engaged and – kind of like the same with you all – make sure that they understand that we’re there to look out for it, then we can make some good decisions and not move too hastily.
Danton: So, you know, we’ve talked a lot about the office and work. You do have a family, we started talking about it as well. So, and the work-life balance, I keep coming back to that, but with three kids – I only have two, so adding one more to the mix – how are you able to stay engaged with work fully? I mean, it’s more than a full-time job, and I’m assuming you do some activities with your kids every once in a while as well. So, I mean, I think that’s a very difficult thing, especially for business owners and lawyers and very busy folks. So, how are you managing that with your partners and your team?
Scott: Yeah, so it’s been an interesting thing. I got divorced six years ago now, after being married for 18 years. I’ve got two kids that are younger, eight now and 11. But I got remarried, two years ago on Tuesday. So I have a 15 year-old stepson, and so it’s really been an interesting dynamic that’s caused us to move in between where both of our kids go to school and all sorts of things. So we’ve kind of had a lot of family, I don’t want to call it upheaval, but changes. I think my wife and I do a great job of managing those. We’ve got kids in sports and, assuming the weather holds out, I’m going to be going and coaching my 11-year old’s, or doing practice, for his baseball today.
And so, it’s really important to put in the calendar so that staff can see, and everything else. These are the things where I know I’m going to be out. I’ve got lunch at my kid’s school next Tuesday. So, we talk a lot about boulders in our calendar and rocks and all of the things that we want to put in for, whether that’s work travel or whether that’s important ongoing calls, which we’ve got too, and family is really the first boulder I put in. So if it’s vacations, if it’s practices, if it’s games, if it’s all those things that I know are important and that I don’t want to be scheduled over, I’ve got to get them in there so that my staff knows exactly what to do. And, you know, when one of my assistants wants to schedule something…
Danton: I like the boulder analogy. Yeah, that makes sense. I mean, sometimes especially family stuff you can’t reschedule, some of those things and it’s also important and maybe sometimes difficult to communicate with work and staff and making sure that everybody’s on the same page.
So, I mean, we do the same thing. It’s like I have one calendar; my wife, she’s a kindergarten teacher, so it’s like, go to school and there’s less throughout the day as far as like the same schedule. But it’s very difficult to communicate that, and so I find it interesting, the boulder analogy, but I might have to start using that one.
Scott: I didn’t come up with that one; as everything, I appropriated that into our conversation.
Danton: I like it.
Kyle: We call it stealing best practices.
Scott: There you go; I like it.
Kyle: As we head for home here, and this has been a wonderful conversation, what’s the future look like? Where do you guys want to go? How do you foresee your business growing and evolving? Because, we’re in an industry and we’re at a firm and a team that’s growing and evolving. And, you know, AI is changing a lot of things, especially in professional services. So put your, put your dreamer hat on just a second, Scott. Where do you foresee the firm and your partnership going?
Scott: Yeah. So, Ray and I have those conversations quite often. I think where we foresee things going, moving into St. Louis County was a big step for us. You know, you bring on more staff, you bring on more attorneys, you bring on more overhead, all of those kinds of things that…
Kyle: That’s what Danton calls me: overhead.
Danton: Yeah. Once again, I did not say any of these things.
Scott: You have to make the joke first.
Kyle: Yeah, if he makes it first, then we have an uncomfortable conversation.
Scott: So, it’s been good. I foresee our firm continuing to grow. So, bringing on attorneys, as you know, assuming marketing continues to work, assuming relationships continue to work, and word of mouth from clients, and things like that. One of our goals going forward is to maybe move into different markets in Missouri. So we’ve talked eventually about moving into Kansas City and some of those things. There’s not a lot of firms who practice the way we do. And we think that it’s a really good way to do that and so we want to bring that to more people.
Kyle: Well, that sounds pretty awesome. We know that you can serve through a channel nationwide. But before we get out of here, there’s a mug here and that’s your gift for being on the podcast today.
Scott: I appreciate that.
Kyle: The last thing that we like to ask when we have guests here on the show, what wisdom or any wit would you pass on to the next generation?
Scott: Ooh, boy, that’s a tough one. I think if I was going to…I’ll use my kids as an example. I think the wisdom I would pass on to kids is when you know what you want to do, 1. put your all into it, but also realize that if you put too much of yourself into one spot, everything else is going to suffer. And I think that’s for me knowing how important it is to have a life outside of my business – even though that’s the focus – has been really important and it’s shaped everything. And so I want my kids to do what they want to do, but also leave room for all of the other things that are so important in life.
Kyle: Very, very well said. And Scott, thanks for joining us.
Scott: Thank you for having me.
Kyle: And that was our conversation with Scott Stork. And Danton, I thought as we were kind of debriefing a little bit about this episode, I really enjoyed Scott’s story, starting over East, prosecuting attorney, comes back over, settles into St. Charles County, goes through this…it’s a sad, but it’s a life-changing event for him with his buddy and getting those estate planning documents done, which kind of reorients the trajectory of his career and, and look what’s happened now with a couple of offices, 10 staff partners, the whole nine yards. It’s an incredible story to hear.
Danton: Yeah, I think the thing that stuck to me, just in that story, what he said specifically was it changes everything. And, and I can’t imagine going through that. And, you know, you’re already maybe dabbling in estate planning, but now you’re like, oh my gosh, this is what I need to be doing in life. And I think that also comes through with his growth and being able to tell that story and just being able to be passionate about it with that story. I mean, it changes everything.
Kyle: You know, Scott has also been real interesting and forthcoming about the challenges of growing a business, of needing to find the right people and talks about how he and Ray spent a year in conversations before Ray comes on over and becomes a partner in the practice. And, and then now they’re taking off and it’s very similar to a lot of what we deal with here, but also too, with what other guests we’ve had on the podcast deal with, is how to manage growth in such a way and, and staff for growth. It’s kind of a fine line, if you will, when it comes to running a practice of any sorts.
Danton: I think a lot of times you kind of just see the successful product at the end. So it was kind of nice to talk about that journey of how did you get here? And a lot of people just see that you’ve got a 10-person firm and everything’s great at this moment. But, you forget about starting as a one-man show and then how you got here and all this stuff that had to happen in between, and it’s a lot.
Kyle: Yeah. There, I think there was one time somebody said that the shining mountain of success, what’s really underneath your feet is years and years and years of a mess. But everybody always compliments the mountain.
You know, I really want to touch on here before you and I get on out of here, what he said at the end about really pursuing, in a sense, not to be too on point, but what matters most, and pursuing it, but not putting yourself fully into it to where you lose yourself. Like have a goal, have vision, have drive, but don’t forget the reason why you’re doing it.
Danton: Yeah, I think that’s a good summary and it’s hard when you’ve got very important things pulling you in very different directions. From we’re talking kids sports practice and, maybe a practice – one practice- isn’t that important, but it is and your kids will remember that. And, but also, he’s driven by that friend that passed away, unfortunately, as well.
So it’s not to say that his work isn’t very important as well. So I think that’s the difficulty of trying to juggle those two. And I mean, it sounds like he’s doing a great job, but it can be challenging, especially in that line of work.
Kyle: And we really appreciate Scott being here. And Wit, Wisdom, and What Matters Most is a production of Moneta’s Gast Freeman Troyer Racen Team, headquartered in St. Louis, Missouri. He’s Danton Troyer; my name is Kyle Luetters. Until next time, enjoy what matters most.
Kyle: The views expressed in this podcast are solely those of the hosts/guests and do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of Moneta.
Kyle: Welcome to another episode of Wit, Wisdom, and What Matters Most, a podcast with Moneta’s Gast Freeman Troyer Racen team. My name is Kyle Luetters, joined by Danton Troyer.
And Danton, very excited for today’s guest, someone that you and your partner Travis Freeman have known for quite a while. It’s Tim Hobart with H&H Health Associates. You want to tell us a bit about Tim?
Danton: Yeah, gosh I can’t remember when I first met Tim, but it had to have been at least 14 years ago. And I met him through Travis Freeman, our partner here.
Tim has an employer assistance program. And so a lot of folks think about counseling services and he talks a little bit about flu shots, and there’s certainly the typical employer assistance program.
But also, he brought us in as a financial resource. And so, that’s been our relationship for over the years. And now it’s interesting to see, he’s, you know, gotten older. We’ve all gotten older and transitioning to his kids, potentially, some of the duties. It’s been a long time knowing Tim and he certainly helped me with my career and hopefully we provided some value for him as well. It’s just great to see him doing so well.
Kyle: Yeah, and so in this interview coming up, you guys are gonna hear about Tim, his business, how the business got started, whom he started a business with. And then probably the most interesting and unique thing to come out of the conversation was a class that Tim found after he went on a journey himself. And then it’ll kind of wrap up with how he has transitioned his business and how he has started to embrace more of what he’s going to do in retirement. So, it’s a great conversation and with that being said, here’s our conversation with Tim Hobart.
And now joined by Tim Hobart. And Tim, you know, number one, thank you for coming here to visit with us today from HH Health Associates. Tim, if you could just describe what it is that you do. It’s a fascinating service.
Tim: Well, thanks to all of you for letting me crash your podcast today. It’s good to be here.
H&H Health Associates is a family-owned business. My wife and I started it about 39 years ago now. Donna, being a nurse by background, would go into companies and do such things as flu shots, OSHA reg screenings, blood work, and anything on the physical side of the ledger.
Myself, having a background for almost 40 years in employee assistance services, counseling primarily, we decided to see if we could keep the marriage together and grow a company at the same time 38 years ago and decided let’s give it a whirl. And the good news is the marriage has thrived and so has the business.
So, employee assistance and on-site wellness to corporate America is what we’ve been doing for these many, many years. That’s in a nutshell what we’ve been up to.
Kyle: That’s a very interesting thing when you talk about it and describe, if you will, what is your typical work week like because there’s got to be some planning elements to this, there’s got to be some on-site elements to it. Kind of walk us through what like a typical work week would be for you.
Tim: So on balance, a typical work week for our nurses and for our counselors are, obviously counselors will be seeing employees of the companies we contract with for the issues that they’re bringing to the table, whether it be family issues, kid issues, stress issues, trying to balance work and home issues. Nothing that you guys would be relatable to…
Danton: Not at all (laughs)
Tim: …but nonetheless the counselors are busy with helping folks get things back on track in their personal lives, their being the employees and family members.
The nurses, lots of time spent on-site doing blood work, flu shots in the fall for example.
Kyle: Okay.
Tim: My typical work week has changed over the past five years because I’ve cut back from being the full-time CEO. And but it would be a lot around customer service, on-site presentations, management trainings, consulting with HRs on issues that come up in their world.
Danton: So as you said, you started this business with your wife; how did you guys come to that conclusion to start a business together? I mean, I can’t imagine starting a business with my wife.
Tim: I can’t either. And so you know that’s what we jokingly say, can the marriage last? Because we’re two different management styles, but we did talk about it long and thoroughly, and the good news is that we thought we were in both careers and our own work worlds, mine being employee assistance on the mental health side of the ledger and Donna being in the physical, the nursing side of the ledger, the physical – that these two had components and synergies that were helpful to companies. And so that’s how we came to the decision.
Danton: So what were you guys doing career-wise prior to starting H&H?
Tim: My background’s in sales and marketing, and I never wanted to be a counselor or a nurse.
Danton: That’s usually the case. The follow-up question is what did you want to be when you grew up? So how did you get the…
Tim: Well since I wasn’t gonna be a major league baseball player I guess, you know, I had not the skills. But in any event, I always liked marketing and sales, and management for that matter. You know I see what I do and what we do, is we’re at the intersection of an owner, a CEO, a company’s interest in the people that come in the door, employees, are okay.
They’re okay here and they’re okay here. Well, what in the world could ever get in the way of that other than life? And so that cross street is labeled “issues,” whether they be physical or mental health. And then how can we, the competitive side of enterprise, I love the marketing, sales, and management…the human side of our enterprise being, quite frankly, is helping people get things back on track regardless of where they are.
Kyle: I’d like to ask this question. You’ve had a long and successful career. How have you seen the services and the issues evolve and change from when you and your wife started this business to where you all are today and what you’re seeing today in the workplace?
Tim: Well in one word, technology. And another word is COVID. That changed the game worldwide for how we go to work or don’t go to work and work at home. And just the rethinking of everything transactional. A lot for the good, quite frankly.
So for the most part of our careers, very hands-on and on-site. So if you think about it, an employee that is dealing with an issue and they want to get some help from a counselor, primarily before COVID, would pick up a phone, call our office and say, hey I got an issue with my teenager and I want to talk to a counselor.
Fine. What office would you like to go to and what day do you want to come?
So okay, thank you very much. Next Tuesday 7 p.m. at this office.
I get in my car, I go there, I see a therapist, I make another appointment for the following week; do that for a number of sessions.
Kyle: Okay.
Tim: Post-COVID, well with technology and virtual links, employees can get services in their own home, in their own place, in their own space, at their own time, whenever, 24/7.
So that really is a godsend for people who were locked up and we all know that now that virtual health care is becoming more of the standard. I would say about 80% of 90% of all of the people that we helped were in person, face-to-face prior to COVID. Post COVID, it’s been flipped.
Although we do find employees do appreciate a personal relationship, a one-on-one face-to-face. There’s something about even in offices that have been virtual, people, we have found a number of people, have missed that connection, that community building, if you will. That gee whiz, I haven’t seen Travis in six months and when I get in and I see Danton and there is something to be said about community building.
And so now we’re seeing much, much more of a hybrid.
Kyle: Okay. You know, Tim, it’s interesting that you mention that. Of course, Travis Freeman, Danton, one of your partners on the team, you all go way back, but speaking of our business, we have a lot of clients now that will request specifically virtual options. And then if they’ve been virtual for a little while and they come back in, I don’t know about you, but the tone and the feel of the meeting is just completely different. Not necessarily wrong that it’s virtual, but it’s just a different tone. It’s a different feel when we have clients that are typically virtual actually come into the office.
Danton: Yeah, you definitely miss a little bit of that relationship building. As you said, that chit-chat before the meeting starts on Zoom or, you know, whatever you use, it’s basically right to business.
Which is great for a review meeting with the client, but you certainly miss out on just the chit-chat and catching up with kids. It’s just not as robust.
Tim: Exactly.
Kyle: And I want to touch on something, Tim, that you had mentioned – that you have slowed down a little bit. You’re no longer full-time CEO. Kind of walk us through what your glide path here is. Because it seems to me like there’s a change coming or you’re in process of a change. What does that look like?
Tim: So, I really haven’t slowed down, but I have made major adjustments. And then, like all of us, I mean, there’s gonna be a time where you’re gonna think, gee whiz, what’s my next chapter gonna look like after I work? Retire? And the synonym for retirement is unemployment.
Kyle: That’s one of the best ways I’ve heard…
Tim: Most of us haven’t been unemployed since we were teenagers probably.
Kyle: Certainly.
Tim: But it did begin, because I’m 75 now, so I don’t know why, but it was in my late 60s I started to think, what’s this next chapter gonna be for me?
I love my work. I love the people. But yet, you know, there’s more to life than working lots.
Kyle: I tell Danton that all the time.
Tim: That’s right. So it was, and most people really do need to work, because they need a paycheck, and that’s important and keeps the game going. And fortunately, on that side of the ledger, we were doing okay.
And it was more from the psychological standpoint of, what do I want to do, when I do, and if I do, retire? And so, I started to look for material, books, podcasts, anything that would talk about retirement, not from the financial standpoint, because that’s 99.9% of everything. Okay, retirement planning means financial; that’s your work.
Kyle: A bunch of numbers on a screen or a piece of paper.
Tim: And it’s really important. But there’s something else there too, is, well, okay, I can’t play golf every day. Well, I guess you could, but it’s going to get a little boring.
Kyle: You just burst a bubble for Danton.
Danton: Danton can do it.
Tim: It just ain’t going to happen. And on the other side, you’re not going to be traveling every week. I mean, maybe you could, but that too, there’s got to be some mixture of what’s up in lots of different areas of your life.
So, I could not find any books that were written that were looking at that psychological side of the ledger.
Happened to be at a school reunion, and one of my friends, a contemporary, asked me, he said, hey, when are you going to retire?
And I said, you know, I’ve been thinking about it. 70 sounds like a nice number, but I don’t know. And that’s about all I’m trying to think. And I told him, I’m trying to look at some materials, anything on the emotional side. And that too.
His eyes got wide, he says, well, you have got to go take this course I just finished, because he had just retired. At St. Louis U, that they had just started, and he was in their first class, called The Next Chapter at St. Louis U. And it’s a retirement course for newly retired or to retire people to look exactly at developing, if you will, a strategic plan for the next chapter. Not financial planning.
Danton: Correct. Right.
Tim: So, I thought, wow, that sounds interesting. I’m intrigued and I’ll go, and I’m glad I did. Because from that did come a strategic plan, just like I did when I started the business. I had, at the end of the semester, put together, as all students do, my next chapter plan, and I had looked at four different pillars.
The first pillar was, I really don’t think I want to retire completely. I’m too connected to the business. This means so much to me, starting it many, many years ago, and that’s my identity. What am I going to do?
Kyle: Right.
Tim: It really is. And come to find out that a lot of people that have had their own businesses, entrepreneurs or whatever, especially males, there’s a tendency for males to be much more connected to and have their identity with…
Danton: Wrapped up in.
Tim: Yeah, what have they been up to for the last 20, 30, 40 years? It’s really important. And to just come to a day where you say adios, thanks a lot. I’m out of here, it doesn’t work well and it doesn’t end well.
Kyle: Right.
Tim: So this class at St. Louis U, I’m giving a little plug for them, they start every fall and it goes the entire year. And it’s a once a week, about a three-hour session. Classes are about 15 to 20 in a class and there’s two different sessions.
And it starts off with an inventory of a Readiness to Retire Index, kind of like a Myers-Briggs or a battery of questions. I recall there were about 300- 400 questions about retirement, which ends up coming to what’s your readiness to retire? Or are you ready to retire?
So the psychologist that created and put the inventory together, when we met one-on-one after we took it, looked at me and said, Tim, you’re not ready to retire.
I said, thanks a lot, Richard. I know that. But I do want to step back.
And he says, well, fine; you can do that.
So that’s exactly what I did. But the pillars that I based my next chapter strategic plan on was work to create a project that would keep me busy, that I would want to go in two to three days a week to work on a project, which I am still working on five years later.
So that’s important. That’s one pillar.
The other pillar was fitness and nutrition of all things. I didn’t want to be a couch potato, sit around and gain a whole bunch of weight and think, gosh, you know, not good. So developed a plan where I would go to the Y three days a week for fitness and then nutrition. So in specifics, without boring you with all of the detail of what does that look like and how is it carried out, a fitness and nutrition plan. That’s the next pillar.
The other pillar was having fun and doing things that Donna and I always talked about we wanted to do. And we didn’t want to be 80-something and say, why didn’t we do it when we could? Because guess what? We can’t do that now. So fitness and fun was another pillar of that strategic plan. Yes, travel, but yes, there’s a lot of stuff right around our metro area we have never done. And we thought that’d be kind of neat to do.
Kyle: Do you have an example of one of those? Just out of curiosity?
Tim: How about the Arch? Since it’s been remodeled.
Kyle: Kind of the reason I like to ask that question, Tim, is because we are lucky enough in St. Louis, there is a lot of unique things to do. And I think when folks mentioned traveling and retirement, it’s off to faraway lands or even within this country. But that was interesting you said that, because there’s so many things that we pass on, maybe not a daily basis, but on a semi frequent basis, that we just never stop in and do with the busyness of life. So I’m glad you shared that; that’s cool.
Tim: Exactly. And the fourth pillar was spiritual. Wherever anyone is or is not, that happened to be important for me. So it was important to be connected to, for my example, our church with our feeding the hungry, and being a part of our church. So those are the four pillars.
And, you know, to kind of let you know, hey, I really, really, really did do this. This is my strategic plan; it’s a multi-page. It’s now four or five years old, but it’s a multi-page strategic plan built on those four pillars.
And I even put, okay, what do we want to do around here? Oh, I don’t know. How about let’s go to the Arch Soldiers Memorial, the Blues Museum, the Old Cathedral, New Cathedral, the ballgames, you name it.
So there are things that we have that we both like to do that we’re doing.
Danton: Yeah, that was my question. So did your wife attend the class with you? Or was that individually or separately?
Tim: She was welcome to attend, but unlike me, she says, I really feel okay about retiring.
And she did. She retired, stopped.
And from now and again, when the business calls for needing yet another nurse, she’ll certainly jump in.
But she didn’t have the problem I did with saying -I couldn’t just break away – I have no problem not doing this anymore.
Danton: And how long has she been retired then?
Tim: She’s been retired for about five years.
Danton: Okay. So about the time you were doing this course. Yeah.
Tim: Yeah. But she didn’t take the course.
Kyle: Right, she just did it.
Tim: She was doing well, too.
Kyle: You know, some of us take the path of least resistance. Others of us take a little longer. It’s okay.
Tim: Yeah. Well, I need that visual and a plan.
Kyle: And that’s what I think is so cool. And this is an audio podcast, but you know, literally, Danton, right out in front of us on the table, Tim has this actual plan. It’s in a folder. And he’s got this all written out, which is a lot of what we talk to folks about, too, is having their plan written out.
It almost gives permission, in a way, to do these types of things because you’ve planned for it. You’ve written it down. You said, hey, this is what’s important to me.
And these are the things that I want to do or I need to do.
Tim: True.
Danton: Yeah, definitely, having it in writing where you can reference them back is key it sounds like.
And but how you get there, obviously, as we just started talking about this, is different for everybody. And maybe different requirements where your wife was, she probably went through mentally a similar process, just not as in depth, and she was fine with it immediately. Whereas, you know, male or just different personality types, it might take some more time to really think through this. And it is a very large decision that you can’t really go back on very easily.
So I applaud you for finding that class. I’m, you know, interested in learning more about it. It sounds like it can be helpful for a lot of folks.
Tim: It’s really intriguing. And it’s already been five years since they started it, and I know it’s grown every year.
So it’s just simply called the next chapter. And the St. Louis U sponsors it.
Danton: Wow. So what do you see as the next chapter for your businesss, if you had the crystal ball?
Tim: Well, going back about now, I think 15-20 years ago, our two sons never expressed any interest in our business growing up. They knew what we did. Yeah, that’s fine. And they went off to college, got the degrees. Both had really, really, really good jobs at Fortune 100 companies.
And the oldest came to us probably 16-17 years ago and said, hey, I think I might like to kick the tires.
Say what? We cannot pay you. And at the time, we do not have company cars.
No, it’s for the long haul. I just want to really get a little bit more
We didn’t see this coming at all. Right. And so, Scott joined us.
And then two years later, his younger brother, same situation doing just fine out in corporate America, but again, the same words to him: we ain’t paying you this.
No, it’s for the long-haul, dad.
So they had come along and been really a godsend. And, you know, smarter than I ever hoped to be. You asked a little while ago, what was the major change I’ve seen in this – it’s technology, and it’s probably the same way here, as it is in a lot of places. They run rings around us on technology. And that’s fine. And they’re doing just fine.
So, the business over the past 10 years, they’ve been more and more and more and more involved. And then at the five-year mark, when I did step back, they were ready to jump in and haven’t looked back. And it’s just really, I’m grateful.
Kyle: We can tell in your, your body language here and taking a look at you, you are very proud of how this is all kind of laid out with having your sons. It was a surprise for them to come back.
Tim: It was a shock. Sometimes, just because of my humor, people ask me, Oh, your sons work with you? I say, yeah, they’re unemployable anywhere else. We’ve got to give them a job.
Kyle: I think that would be about the hope of any parent here. I mean, we talk about family business an awful lot around here with our clients and whatnot. And so we’ve seen it go very well. And it sounds like in your guys’ case, it’s gone very well with the transition and everything. We’ve also seen it not go so well. So that’s a godsend as well.
But it was just really neat to have you bring that up and kind of just see your face light up a little bit when you started talking about your boys.
Tim: Well, it is. We’re really proud. With our business, we deal with family-owned businesses over the years. And second, third generations can really go sideways, in fact, boy, mortality rates are pretty dismal, the further down the road you go. And you know that adage, well, they’re unemployable anywhere else, and they got to have a job here. There’s no faster way to take down a business than employ an unemployable adult kid.
Danton: That’s true.
Tim: Yeah. But ours and the other worked out well.
Danton: You guys did all right, then.
Tim: Grateful and proud.
Kyle: I think that’s a wonderful place to kind of head for home a little bit. You know, you’ve given us so much of your time here today, Tim, we appreciate it a great deal.
As a way to say thank you in a slight way, wanted to get you a coffee mug here, along with some goodies inside of that, for coming by to see us and, and just having a really neat conversation about retirement and how you guys do what you do.
And there’s actually a class on retirement now, which is…
Tim: Emotional side of the ledger.
Kyle: Emotional side, yes.
Tim: There’s hundreds of classes for financial and thousands of books, of which the guy next door has a couple of them. That are pretty good, actually.
Kyle: I don’t know, Danton hasn’t read them yet.
Danton: Shh…Ratting me out on the podcast, come on.
Tim: You have to read?
Danton: I’m asking for the audio to come out.
Tim: Or the abridged version. Yeah. Well, wit, wisdom, and What Matters Most. And, you know, I’m grateful for the relationship we’ve had with you, with all of you guys. and gals, it’s been really good.
And, um, advice? I would say if you’re anywhere near retirement or in retirement and struggling, whether you do a class or not, it’s, it’s really important to look at that emotional/ psychological side of the ledger and to have a plan.
Because if you think about it, you know, I’m 75. I feel like, okay, this is a seventh inning stretch; this doesn’t go on forever.
And as long as you’re healthy and you’ve got some wit and wisdom with you, you can have a remarkable retirement or partial retirement. Yeah, that’s different for everybody.
Kyle: And Danton, and that was our conversation with Tim Hobart from H & H Associates.
What a wonderful conversation that was. And, and what was your biggest takeaway? Cause I know what mine was. It’s probably the same thing.
Danton: Uh, yeah, I want to sign up for the SLU class. He definitely really saw value in that. And that’s a lot of the work that we at least try. Certainly, I would go out on a limb and say they, they have a much better much more, uh, defined process for their class. But those are a lot of the same topics that we are talking about with clients as they’re approaching retirement so we see those struggles.
And now to know there’s a class, or maybe if you’re struggling maybe a little bit more than others, to really put your thoughts into a plan outside of just the finances.
Kyle: Yeah, because I think so much, and we’ve talked about it ad nauseum at times, is that so much of the conversation with retirement is driven by numbers. But more often than not, in our experiences, the numbers are usually okay. It’s the, what am I going to do? It’s the very things that Tim was bringing up, it’s like, this is my identity. How am I now going to drive that forward? How am I going to basically go from doing something, basically, I’ve been employed since a teenager, his words, to being unemployed?How do I transition that mentally and emotionally?
And that, I think, was the coolest thing about the class. And then the other thing too was, I know I mentioned it in the interview, but he did perk up, he did light up a bit when he talked about this being a family business and his sons, who were otherwise uninterested in the business, by his admission had great jobs, Fortune 100 companies, but they still decided, they still felt this tug to come back and talk to mom and dad about joining the business. Which was really cool.
Danton: Yeah, I mean, to have a family business maybe unintentionally work out that great? Yes, it’s amazing. I mean, you don’t typically see that. Usually that’s a recipe for, I don’t want to say disaster. necessarily…And we didn’t get into it too much; I’m sure it wasn’t a smooth ride the entire time, I’m just guessing. But overall, to have that much positive atmosphere with your whole family. I mean, it wasn’t just the kids… the wife, everybody was involved in it. That’s a tough… I couldn’t do it. But it’s a very unique situation. And you can tell he’s just happy in the situation that he’s in now.
Kyle: And you can also see too, that that happiness, and I might be reading between the lines here, but we have some folks that when they retire, they want nothing to do with what they did prior, the company they did it prior with. I think for Tim, because his wife was involved, now she’s fully retired, sounds like she didn’t need the class. Like she just aced the exam, you know, without taking it. She tested out of the retirement class.
Danton: She went straight to the final.
Kyle: But it seemed to me like he was enjoying it so much because he got along with his family so well; that that’s what’s allowed him to kind of stay around two to three days a week. And really, in a sense, provide for a longer, smoother transition to the next generation. Because we know that transitions get messy in a hurry, whether it’s family or not, because sometimes the time frame is truncated.
Danton: Yeah, it sounds like that class really helped define, you know, he kept saying, his project through work. And I’m assuming the sons are able then to step up and start taking over some of his other duties that he had. And I think having that plan, you know, we said they didn’t have a plan, but obviously they started to come up with how this transition would work. And it sounds like so far it’s been very successful.
Kyle: Yeah, 100%. One of probably our most enjoyable conversations; that was Tim Hobart of H&H Health Associates. So, we appreciate Tim coming on by. He got himself a nice mug and some goodies inside of there.
So, you know, Danton, again, these podcasts continue to be a joy.
And Wit, Wisdom, and What Matters Most is a production of Moneta’s Gast Freeman Troyer Racen Team, headquartered in St. Louis, Missouri. And until next time, enjoy what matters most.
