← Ready For Retirement
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- [00:03]
James Knoll
This is another episode of Ready for Retirement. I'm your host, James Knoll, and I'm.
- [00:07]
Ari
Here to teach you how to get.
- [00:07]
James Knoll
The most out of life with your money. And now onto the episode. Hey, Ari. So we have our root collective now, which by the time people are listening to this, has gone through a little bit of an evolution in terms of what it is, what it costs, how it operates, and what this podcast is going to become. This specific podcast, you and me, Root Talks, as we're calling it, which people can find on my podcast, your podcast, our root financial YouTube channel. We're going to start answering questions directly from the community, from the collective here on this podcast. So couple things. Number one, if you're not already in the root collective, it is now free. It did not start that way, but we made the decision to say, how do we make this as accessible and available to as many people as possible? We make it free. So awesome traction happening there. Lots of great people joining. If you're listening, not already in there, join the root collective. We'll have a link in the show notes here. And then secondly, we're going to be pulling some of your questions, and once a week we're going to address those on this podcast here. So, Ari, what is our question pulled directly from the root collective for today?
- [01:09]
Ari
So our question for today, and just as James said, there's going to be a root channel inside of the collective. So if you're wondering where do I go put my question or my comment, you'll be able to click in there very easily and you will see it right when you join, if you're not already enrolled. The question comes from, and this is an actual client who uses a pseudonym, goes by George Darcy. And this was in relation to a post we put out talking about the intersection of fun and service. We had a media day where James, our head of culture, Josh, and our amazing marketing team that helps us do everything that we do. We were talking about, hey, we're going to do this as long as we're having fun. And he said the following. Thank you for sharing this. Seeing the fun in our advisor is both a magnet drawing us as clients in, but it also spreads from the advisor to the client and hopefully back to the advisor. Though relatively still young, the firm has weathered some significant fluctuations in the market. Fun is especially important during market downturns. How do you take something that can be super serious and emotionally draining and keep the fun times going? Because to me, that's when we need it most.
- [02:17]
James Knoll
Yeah. So I think we need to start by defining fun. But before that, I'm going to tell a story. If I. It was five years ago now, which is wild to think five years ago was 2020. And at the beginning of 2020, February of 2020 specifically, there started to be this news about this thing called Covid happening. It started out just, okay, whatever, there's this thing going on and okay, now it's spreading and okay, now we should be worried, okay, now there's full blown shutdowns. And it was insane. And it wasn't just insane in one regard, it was insane in every regard. Everything from jobs being lost, to markets cratering, to people getting sick and passing, to all these horrible things. And I remember that was an incredibly difficult time to be an advisor. And I remember those conversations with clients leading up to that and through that and beyond that were some very heavy conversations. So to this individual's point like that, that was not what I would consider to be fun. But I do, I do remember this. I remember thinking, okay, if I have no idea how long this is going to last, nobody has any idea how long this is going to last. This could be something that's a few weeks, a few months, a few years, anybody's guess at this point. And I do remember that I realized the importance of taking care of myself in that moment, as selfish as that sounds. But I'm saying I'm about to have eight to nine hours of just talking to clients all day about their concerns, about their fears, about their portfolio, about their retirement. I need to make sure that I'm getting up, I'm meditating, I'm praying, I'm exercising, I'm doing all these things so I could go into the day feeling fresh, feeling ready, so that I could be the best support system, I could be the best guide, I could be the best coach and advisor to my clients. And I remember the first day, the first few days, my wife and I, we went down to the beach and we just did a workout because gyms were shut down. You can go. Couldn't go to the gym, it was closed, you couldn't go do a lot of things. They shut down. We went down the beach and we're just doing push ups and burpees and sit ups. And I would run and jump in the ocean and say, okay, at least the days starts right. I now feel like I'm clear, I'm mentally available to go have these tough conversations and navigate these conversations with clients. And in a regard that was fun, it was almost like this, preparing for battle in a Way, like, okay, you got to prepare. You have to be able to put yourself in a position mentally to where people who are relying on you can rely on you. And I say that because at one point they closed the beaches down. As absurd as it sounds like, we had a lifeguard come to us, there's nobody on the beach, we're just working out. But they said, hey, you can't be on the beach. Okay? We can't go to the gym, we can't go to some common places we might work out. We can't even work out on the beach. I remember the next few days, I just didn't work out, didn't do anything in the morning, rolled out of bed, started taking client calls. It was horrible. Like I, by lunchtime I was like, I'm about to. I don't want to do this. Like, this is. I am so beyond fatigued, so beyond exhausted that it just wasn't something I felt like I could show up and provide the best level advice to my clients. Thankfully, after that we're able to start doing some workouts again. Just some outdoor park areas. But I remember looking back on that and saying the importance of advisors being rested and recovered and enjoying their work and having purposeful work. Like it sounds like, oh, fun cool. You're running around in flying kites and playing ping pong and having these. Like, that's not what we're talking about with fun. We're talking about doing meaningful work with people we love doing it with for clients. We love serving, growing, expanding, learning, like for the growth minded individual like all of our advisors are. That is fun now. Yes, we also want to have fun people. We also do want to have aspects of this that are just, you're laughing, you're connecting. Like that is all healthy. But it's not just because we want to come to. We don't want it to. To have laughter be the end goal, to have connection be the end goal, to have fun be the end goal. We do that because that creates healthy individuals, that creates healthy team. So that when the next bear market comes and that is a heavy load to carry and you do have a lot of clients who are relying on you and you do have a lot of. We have to show up as our best. If we're just focused on, I don't know if we're not focused on that and we're already kind of feeling a little burned out or a little bit at our wits end or a little bit overworked and then that happens. I don't want to Be a client of that advisor who's feeling that way because I've been that advisor before and it was tough and thankfully I didn't last very long and I was really able to course correct on that. But I think as we talk about having fun, recovering, performing the same way with athletes like, you have to train, you have to rest, you have to recover so that you can be your best on game day. We view this as game day. Like when we're working with clients, when there's a bear market, that's game day. And if we haven't done the right things ahead of that, we as a team might not be fully prepared to be able to serve our clients the best possible way through those downturns.
- [07:14]
Ari
Yeah, two things. Number one, I never told you this, James, but I was the lifeguard that kicked you off the beach that day. No, I wasn't. But the in all seriousness, like fun. When I play soccer, it's fun to be prepared. We train during the week, other teams don't, that we'll play against. But it's fun feeling prepared. And that big anxiety of, oh my gosh, if I retire and markets go down, it's not if, it's when. And when they do go down, we are going to be ready. So for those who have not seen it, I posted a video talking where it's James and our head of culture talking about, we're going to do this thing here at root, help clients manage their money, as long as it's fun. And this is what we mean by fun. It's that we are going to serve you in those times where it is difficult. Maybe there's a job loss, maybe, you know, there was a divorce, maybe a parent's no longer with us. Those are not easy times and we are not thinking rationally when that occurs. And that's why it's, you know, truly a partnership here. So going back to fun. Fun to us is being prepared. So, James, love that story. Another comment that I just want to reference that was left once again in the collective in the same thread here.
- [08:22]
James Knoll
So.
- [08:23]
Ari
So I posted this video and these are the comments that we're referencing. This comes very similar from someone who's not a client but is very active in this collective. So in case you hear us say community or collective, root collective is what we call this community. He says, what does that intersection look like in a bear market? How do you exude fun at the intersection? When people are scared, tension is high. How do you lean into wins, celebrate avoiding pitfalls, champion security, both for your clients and your team.
- [08:54]
James Knoll
I think we all have those relationships where it's easy for things to be good when everything externally is good. It's easy to get along when everything externally is good. And then the second something goes wrong, if that relationship isn't built upon something healthy, some level of trust, some level of depth, some level of trust there, as soon as something goes wrong, that relationship sours, that relationship tears apart, that relationship ends. And so, yeah. Is there going to be a bear market? A hundred percent. There's going to be a bear market. Statistically speaking, one out of every four or five years, there's going to be a bear market. When we are working with our clients, when we're working with our team in the healthy times, how do you prepare for the hard times? Part of that is developing healthy relationships, both internally as a team and externally with clients. The way that you do that is by the things that we're talking about. The things that we're talking about are. By the way, I love your sports analogy. Like, it's probably. You love soccer. It's. You've told me this before. It's fun for you to do drills and things that people might look at in the outside. That's. That's not fun. It is fun because it's for this purpose of me getting to be able to play the game that I love being able to do the thing that I love. Running, stretching, working out. Like you said, you don't actually love working out, but you love it because it allows you to play soccer at a much higher level. So that's kind of like it's fun for you to train because of what that enables. Same thing here. We want this to be a fun place so that we can develop healthy relationships with each other and with clients, so that when the day of testing comes, which isn't just a bear market, by the way, that's some external that impacts all of us. But as you mentioned, it could be the death of a loved one, it could be a divorce, it could be unexpected job loss, it could be your stock options all of a sudden are worth nothing because company flounder. Like, there's all of these that are going to be anywhere from small traumas to large traumas over the course of your lifetime. If your relationship with your advisor is just built on that surface level, hey, when things are good, we're good. But the second things aren't good, we're not good anymore because we haven't developed that environment, we haven't created that trust. That's not healthy. And so this isn't, you know, when we're talking about fun and service, that's awesome. But that's not us being, you know, heads in the cloud, just totally ambivalent to all the. Or unaware of all the potential down. Like, we know that stuff's going to happen. We've gone through that stuff. This is how we can best prepare for it. The next time it comes around is build healthy relationships, build healthy habits, enjoy the work that you're doing, enjoy who you're doing it with. And when things get tested, you're going to be a whole lot better off in that situation than you otherwise would have been.
- [11:40]
Ari
It reminds me a few things, but you said the biggest word there is, which is trust. And it's hard to find a new advisor and trust them. And people will ask me, and I'll often take the first call with people that reach out, how do I know I'm going to trust my advisor? And I said, after the first meeting, you won't. And after the second, you also won't. And after the third, you might a little bit, but you still won't because you haven't really gone through it with them. It's like when you're in a relationship and things are going well, and then all of a sudden there's a conflict. That's when you really get to see, is it you versus them, or is it you both versus the problem? And the goal here is to make sure you never run out of money and that you live a life that's complete with fulfillment and purpose and everything you've dreamed and more. Okay, well, that's not going to occur unless there are some difficult conversations. How much do you want to leave to children? Is there a goal to retire early? And is it going to be weird since you haven't been home for 30 years and you're going to have to redate your spouse? What's that going to be like?
- [12:38]
James Knoll
It's.
- [12:38]
Ari
It's weird when people are not getting emotional in our meetings, and that's different. So the point here is regarding trust, many of you that are reaching out to work with Root, you have seen our videos. Maybe 3, 4, 5, maybe 50, maybe you've watched us for a year or listened to us for many years, and you go, yeah, it just feels different. I have a friend, and they're my advisor. I've had them for 20 years. But I feel like I haven't gotten to the depth of conversations that it appears your advisors are having with clients. And also, yeah, that's how it works. Like we are really going deep and if that's not the case, like we're not doing our job well. We could not talk about fun. I could not post a video easily about how we have fun at work. And if it was looked at in a way without intent, it would look like kind of when you think of a tech company that's growing, when you think of a startup, you think, like you said, ping pong, bocce ball, that that's not what we're doing. What we're doing is trying to make it so that you guys can go, oh, I see there's intentionality behind how you build trust. So love that you've brought up trust and surface level because those are things that we take serious.
- [13:43]
James Knoll
Yeah, awesome. Well, anything else, Ari? I know these were both questions. As we mentioned, these are in the Root collective, so if you're wondering what that is again, check out the link in the Show Notes. Join the Collective. It's completely free. Ask questions there. This is what this this Root Talks is going to be all about. But anything else you want to add to today's conversation?
- [14:01]
Ari
No, other than I am a junior lifeguard, so I actually would never have had the authority to kick you off the beach. And I wouldn't have even if I could.
- [14:09]
James Knoll
Awesome. Well, thank you, Ari, and for everyone listening, thanks for listening. Join the Collective. We'll see you in there and we'll see you all on the next episode.
- [14:17]
Ari
See ya.
- [14:20]
James Knoll
The information presented is for educational purposes only and is not intended as an offer or solicitation for the sale or purchase of any specific securities, investments or investment strategies. Investments involve risk and are not guaranteed. Any mention of rates of return are historical and illustrative in nature and are not a guarantee of future returns. Past performance does not guarantee future performance.
- [14:40]
Ari
Viewers are encouraged to seek advice from a qualified tax legal or investment advisor professional to determine whether any information presented may be suitable for their specific situation.
- [14:50]
James Knoll
Hey everyone, it's me again. For the disclaimer, please be smart about this. Before doing anything, please be sure to consult with your tax planner or financial planner. Nothing in this podcast should be construed as investment tax, legal or other financial advice. It is for informational purposes only. Thank you for listening to another episode of the Ready for Retirement podcast. If you want to see how Root Financial can help you implement the techniques I discussed in this podcast, then go to rootfinancialpartners.com and click Start Here, where you can schedule a call with one of our advisors. We work with clients all over the country, and we love the opportunity to speak with you about your goals and how we might be able to help. And please remember, nothing we discuss on this podcast is intended to serve as advice. You should always consult a financial, legal or tax professional who's familiar with your unique circumstances before making any financial decisions.