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Building Pillars of Independence with Greg Curry · RIA Collective

• 0:16
  Charlie van Derven: Welcome to RIA Collective.
• 0:18
  Charlie van Derven: My name's Charlie Van Dervin and if you listen to our podcast in past months, you'll see that we haven't posted an episode in a long time.
• 0:26
  Charlie van Derven: My company, social Advisors went through a little restructuring, and frankly, the podcast got set aside for about a year and a half.
• 0:32
  Charlie van Derven: But it's something I love doing and so we're dusting it off and bringing it back.
• 0:36
  Charlie van Derven: And, the purpose for the podcast is to we're talking to owners of RIA.
• 0:41
  Charlie van Derven: I've worked in financial services for almost 30 years.
• 0:44
  Charlie van Derven: My guest has too, so we'll we'll introduce him in a second here.
• 0:47
  Charlie van Derven: And one of the things that has come up time and again, is a lack of trust in the industry.
• 0:53
  Charlie van Derven: Advisors selling proprietary products and having to hit quotas and, maybe serving themselves and then the company before they serve a client.
• 1:02
  Charlie van Derven: And I truly believe in having worked in many facets of the industry that the RIA or the independent channel creates the purest client advisor relationship.
• 1:11
  Charlie van Derven: Of course, being a fee only advisor takes a lot of the bias outta recommendations and things like that.
• 1:15
  Charlie van Derven: In my little world, I like to interview owners of RIAs to get to learn about their experience, whether they made a transition out of a wirehouse.
• 1:24
  Charlie van Derven: Large large insurance house.
• 1:26
  Charlie van Derven: Like our guest today he had some background in product sales at, on the insurance level, but he didn't really make that breakaway.
• 1:32
  Charlie van Derven: However, he's got some great lessons to teach for for some maybe young advisors that find themselves in a big bank that maybe that's not the right place for him anymore.
• 1:40
  Charlie van Derven: Without further ado, let me introduce Greg Curry, my guest for the day.
• 1:43
  Charlie van Derven: Greg is, greg's firm is called Pillar Financially.
• 1:46
  Charlie van Derven: He's based outta Louisville, Kentucky, and Greg's been at this 28 years, so he's got a lot of wisdom to drop.
• 1:52
  Charlie van Derven: Greg, welcome man.
• 1:53
  Charlie van Derven: Thank you for being my guest on RA Collective.
• 1:56
  Greg Curry: Thanks for having me.
• 1:56
  Greg Curry: I'm excited to share whatever I can.
• 1:59
  Greg Curry: Like I mentioned before, it's been a long time, so memory might be a little sketchy, a little selective, but.
• 2:06
  Greg Curry: It's still there.
• 2:07
  Greg Curry: Haven't lost it
• 2:07
  Charlie van Derven: yet.
• 2:08
  Charlie van Derven: Listen around.
• 2:08
  Charlie van Derven: We, we bonded over things other than the industry.
• 2:11
  Charlie van Derven: We both love punk rock.
• 2:13
  Charlie van Derven: You got a couple years on me, Greg just a couple.
• 2:15
  Charlie van Derven: Just a couple.
• 2:15
  Charlie van Derven: Not too many guitar in the background there.
• 2:18
  Charlie van Derven: I've got one on the wall though.
• 2:19
  Charlie van Derven: Your mind has more dust on it than years does, it looks like.
• 2:22
  Charlie van Derven: And he didn't shame me too bad for actually liking the Grateful Dead too, right?
• 2:26
  Charlie van Derven: Yeah.
• 2:27
  Greg Curry: Like I said, every we all have our flaws.
• 2:30
  Greg Curry: I'm sure I've got my own.
• 2:32
  Charlie van Derven: Yeah.
• 2:32
  Charlie van Derven: We don't want to bring that up.
• 2:34
  Charlie van Derven: Not no.
• 2:34
  Charlie van Derven: So good.
• 2:35
  Charlie van Derven: Greg, we often interview people who come out that big bank environment or come out of a big insurance house who, pushing prop proprietary products.
• 2:42
  Charlie van Derven: And some people have, legal issues.
• 2:44
  Charlie van Derven: They had to deal with your situation's a little bit different.
• 2:48
  Charlie van Derven: But, the conversation we're getting to know each other really was.
• 2:50
  Charlie van Derven: Based around operations.
• 2:51
  Charlie van Derven: So I think you bring a lot of value to our conversation today.
• 2:54
  Charlie van Derven: Why don't you give us a little background.
• 2:55
  Charlie van Derven: How'd how'd you end up starting your own RIA?
• 2:58
  Greg Curry: Yeah, so my background is I started as a CPA, worked in a large Coopers and library, and that'll, that name will date me when it was still the Big eight.
• 3:07
  Greg Curry: And worked there for three years.
• 3:08
  Greg Curry: Loved the experience used the experience being a CPA.
• 3:12
  Greg Curry: Back then today, it has really carried through my entire career.
• 3:16
  Greg Curry: But after about three years, moved to a large Louisville insurance company where I spent a little time in internal audit and then moved over to, a product, but it wasn't you say product sales.
• 3:28
  Greg Curry: It wasn't a retail product, it was an institutional product.
• 3:31
  Greg Curry: Okay.
• 3:31
  Greg Curry: So our customers were large 401k plans in the stable value space.
• 3:36
  Greg Curry: Any, anybody who has had a 401k plan probably had a stable value fund.
• 3:42
  Greg Curry: That was our our niche.
• 3:44
  Greg Curry: And we, we worked with large investment.
• 3:47
  Greg Curry: Advisors because we provided guarantees.
• 3:50
  Greg Curry: But I'm getting ahead of myself.
• 3:52
  Greg Curry: But going through that process, I started on the operation side.
• 3:56
  Greg Curry: So when I moved over to that product side of the business, I started in operations doing the administration for these stable value contracts until I actually moved into product management and more, I wouldn't call it sales as much as sales support.
• 4:13
  Charlie van Derven: Okay,
• 4:13
  Greg Curry: so I was the expert,
• 4:15
  Charlie van Derven: right?
• 4:15
  Charlie van Derven: Yeah.
• 4:15
  Greg Curry: I had more experience than anybody.
• 4:16
  Greg Curry: It was a brand new product when I started.
• 4:18
  Greg Curry: Very cool.
• 4:19
  Greg Curry: Great experience.
• 4:20
  Greg Curry: Got to work with some of the biggest fixed income managers in the world.
• 4:25
  Greg Curry: Saw how they worked.
• 4:26
  Greg Curry: A lot of that actually helped define our investment philosophy, which is very passive.
• 4:33
  Greg Curry: In nature, because I heard a lot of stories about how great these investment managers were, and then at the end of the day, it didn't come.
• 4:42
  Greg Curry: It didn't come to fruition.
• 4:43
  Greg Curry: So
• 4:44
  Charlie van Derven: yeah, your experience was a little different.
• 4:46
  Greg Curry: Yeah, it was okay.
• 4:47
  Greg Curry: They weren't bad.
• 4:48
  Greg Curry: It was just nobody was really adding the value that they, thought they would regardless.
• 4:53
  Greg Curry: Having that operations background having that real, key to being able to serve our clients was being able to have good systems behind us.
• 5:03
  Greg Curry: When I did start the the RIA, when I started Pillar Financial I was coming from a different world.
• 5:10
  Greg Curry: I was coming from the institutional world, not the retail world.
• 5:12
  Greg Curry: Yeah.
• 5:13
  Greg Curry: So for me, starting a an RIA a fee only practice.
• 5:18
  Greg Curry: Only seemed natural because that's what I was used to.
• 5:22
  Greg Curry: Yeah.
• 5:22
  Greg Curry: There's not an institutional play, big institutional player out there that's gonna pay commissions or pay to play type things or anything like that on any ongoing basis.
• 5:33
  Greg Curry: So to me it was just natural.
• 5:35
  Charlie van Derven: Cool.
• 5:36
  Charlie van Derven: So what what led to the career change?
• 5:39
  Charlie van Derven: What was the mindset change that led to making this leap?
• 5:41
  Greg Curry: So I worked for a company.
• 5:43
  Greg Curry: It was originally Capital Holding, and then it was called Pian.
• 5:47
  Greg Curry: And we were on the block.
• 5:48
  Greg Curry: We knew it, someone was gonna buy us, they were selling the company.
• 5:51
  Greg Curry: Gotcha.
• 5:52
  Greg Curry: There were two suitors.
• 5:53
  Greg Curry: One was Agon.
• 5:55
  Greg Curry: One was, I believe, Conseco.
• 5:57
  Greg Curry: If Conseco had bought us, our business would've dried up because their credit ratings weren't.
• 6:03
  Greg Curry: Good enough.
• 6:03
  Greg Curry: Yeah.
• 6:04
  Greg Curry: So my business partner and I decided, hey, if this happens, we'll take our nice fat severance and we'll do something on our own.
• 6:12
  Greg Curry: And I would love to be able to tell you that on day one I was like, I'm gonna be an financial advisor.
• 6:18
  Greg Curry: I'm gonna work on taxes.
• 6:20
  Greg Curry: I'm gonna do, that wasn't the case.
• 6:22
  Greg Curry: We were gonna be a boutiquey investment management shop.
• 6:25
  Greg Curry: Okay.
• 6:26
  Greg Curry: But it didn't take me long to figure out that the value is much more on the planning side and working with people and digging into their finances and being able to guide them through anything that comes along than we're gonna invest.
• 6:44
  Greg Curry: We invest their we do manage the investments.
• 6:46
  Greg Curry: I think we do a fantastic job doing that.
• 6:50
  Greg Curry: But the value comes on the planning side, and I've learned that over and over.
• 6:54
  Greg Curry: And I will fight you to the grave on that one.
• 6:58
  Charlie van Derven: I complete, I completely agree with you, right?
• 7:00
  Charlie van Derven: If you're investment management only, right?
• 7:03
  Charlie van Derven: You're really subject to outside forces that you have little control over.
• 7:07
  Charlie van Derven: Where if it's planning based, regardless of what's happening with the outside forces, it just you tweak the plan to stay on path, right?
• 7:14
  Charlie van Derven: Yeah.
• 7:14
  Charlie van Derven: And I agree, and I think as the industry goes, I think the greatest thing you have is that planning relationship.
• 7:20
  Charlie van Derven: Stress on the relationship.
• 7:22
  Charlie van Derven: There's so many fintechs out there that allow you as a, allow you access to research and, it's the relationship of the advisor that really sticks.
• 7:30
  Greg Curry: Agreed.
• 7:30
  Greg Curry: Definitely
• 7:30
  Charlie van Derven: let, so let's go back to early years.
• 7:32
  Charlie van Derven: And we've both been, we've been in this industry about the same amount of time, and I know my memory's foggy from 27, 28 years ago too.
• 7:39
  Charlie van Derven: As you look back on the early days what were some of the things that you did really well that, maybe were a catalyst to where you find yourself today?
• 7:47
  Charlie van Derven: Was there anything in particular that you did that you were like, Ooh, we could have done that differently, that we can help maybe our listeners avoid?
• 7:53
  Charlie van Derven: The same type of mode, same type of, I won't call it a mistake 'cause everything's a learning experience, but,
• 7:58
  Greg Curry: yeah.
• 7:59
  Greg Curry: I'll focus on a couple of things.
• 8:00
  Greg Curry: One, going back to operations having good support, even when it was just myself being able to, build.
• 8:08
  Greg Curry: If nothing more than a checklist or something like that to make for sure that when I was delivering what we were delivering to our clients, that we could be consistent from client to client and make for sure that we weren't winging it.
• 8:22
  Greg Curry: That we were actually, that.
• 8:24
  Greg Curry: I say we, but at that point it was me that I was wearing all the hats.
• 8:30
  Greg Curry: I was a client service professional.
• 8:32
  Greg Curry: I was an investment management professional.
• 8:35
  Greg Curry: I was an operations professional.
• 8:37
  Greg Curry: And building those those processes over time, it again, would love to go back and go, wow.
• 8:43
  Greg Curry: We had processes down pat on day one, not the case.
• 8:46
  Greg Curry: Obviously, there were times where we had to, I had to wing it.
• 8:51
  Greg Curry: Yeah.
• 8:51
  Greg Curry: And sometimes that got.
• 8:54
  Greg Curry: That got me in trouble.
• 8:55
  Greg Curry: Not major trouble, not massive, errors or anything, but, things that would happen.
• 9:00
  Greg Curry: And my philosophy's always been if there's an issue, one, identify what it is and what caused it.
• 9:06
  Greg Curry: Fix it.
• 9:08
  Greg Curry: If it if it made a client if it costs a client, you make 'em whole.
• 9:12
  Greg Curry: There's, and there's no compromising that.
• 9:14
  Greg Curry: There's no hiding it, there's no, oh, it was their fault.
• 9:17
  Greg Curry: It was this fault.
• 9:18
  Greg Curry: Own it.
• 9:19
  Greg Curry: Stand up.
• 9:20
  Greg Curry: And every time I've done that, it has done nothing but solidify the relationship with the client and then create a controller process to make sure that doesn't happen again.
• 9:30
  Greg Curry: Yeah.
• 9:30
  Greg Curry: Fool me once.
• 9:32
  Greg Curry: Shame on you, fool me twice, shame on me.
• 9:34
  Greg Curry: That's how, and that comes from my CPA background and, being so controlled.
• 9:38
  Greg Curry: Building those processes over time making sure that you come outta the box.
• 9:42
  Greg Curry: And again, when I started, I had nothing.
• 9:46
  Greg Curry: There was, there were no books.
• 9:49
  Greg Curry: There were no, NAPFA was there, but they didn't have their new, new advisor, new company type thing.
• 9:57
  Greg Curry: There just was nothing, so I was in a lot of cases, ma not making it up, but creating it as I went.
• 10:05
  Greg Curry: Yeah.
• 10:05
  Greg Curry: So our process now.
• 10:08
  Greg Curry: Derived from that and has grown since then.
• 10:11
  Greg Curry: But you'll see if we get into it, what I use as planning software.
• 10:15
  Greg Curry: The tools that we use might look a little different from, someone who's just going out and buying money Guide Pro or ride capital or one of those, one of those things.
• 10:25
  Greg Curry: I, I have nothing against those plan those programs, but I like digging in.
• 10:31
  Greg Curry: I like getting my hands dirty with numbers, and I find that difficult to do with, black box type software and it's, I know it's not black box, I know that there's things behind it, but we use Excel quite a bit.
• 10:44
  Greg Curry: We use tools to supplement that.
• 10:45
  Greg Curry: Okay.
• 10:46
  Greg Curry: Having all of that, pulling it together as important.
• 10:49
  Charlie van Derven: So
• 10:50
  Greg Curry: the second thing I wanted to mention was the thing that the thing that I've learned almost throughout my entire career is the simpler we get, the better.
• 10:59
  Greg Curry: I would love to show you my very first plan.
• 11:02
  Greg Curry: It is while it certainly served the purpose, it is abysmal.
• 11:06
  Greg Curry: It was a book and it had graphs and it had tables and my poor aunt and uncle who were my first client.
• 11:15
  Greg Curry: They're like, why are you showing us this?
• 11:17
  Greg Curry: We're gonna hire you donor.
• 11:19
  Charlie van Derven: Yeah.
• 11:20
  Greg Curry: But every step of the way, as I've simplified what we del what we actually deliver to our clients the document, the, whatever it is, the simpler we get, the more the clients buy into it.
• 11:31
  Greg Curry: Now we can always dig deep, we can always, some I'm worth an engineer and they wanna see this and that.
• 11:37
  Greg Curry: No problem whatsoever.
• 11:38
  Greg Curry: But yeah.
• 11:39
  Greg Curry: That simplification.
• 11:41
  Greg Curry: Every time we got rid of a report, every time we made it more conversational.
• 11:46
  Greg Curry: It just got more powerful.
• 11:50
  Greg Curry: The clients bought in.
• 11:51
  Greg Curry: We knew what our marching orders are, were when the crap hits, the fan markets are down 40%.
• 11:59
  Greg Curry: We always get call.
• 12:00
  Greg Curry: I'll get one person say, man, you must be on the phone all day.
• 12:03
  Greg Curry: I'm.
• 12:04
  Greg Curry: No, we've already doing a
• 12:05
  Charlie van Derven: good job.
• 12:05
  Charlie van Derven: We talked about
• 12:06
  Greg Curry: this when we met.
• 12:07
  Greg Curry: Yeah.
• 12:07
  Greg Curry: The first time that when this happens.
• 12:10
  Greg Curry: Yeah.
• 12:10
  Greg Curry: We got a plan.
• 12:11
  Greg Curry: Yeah.
• 12:11
  Greg Curry: There's the simple way we do it.
• 12:13
  Charlie van Derven: It's not an if, it's a win.
• 12:14
  Charlie van Derven: And always building a plan and anticipation of that win is a big part of it.
• 12:19
  Charlie van Derven: I want to key on a couple of things because you and I have had some similar experiences.
• 12:23
  Charlie van Derven: Small business, right?
• 12:24
  Charlie van Derven: Our businesses are different, but certainly it was me, myself and I, when, I moved the bed outta the master bedroom the first day we went to business and built a website, moved a table in, built a website, set up some email addresses, and away we were going right?
• 12:37
  Charlie van Derven: I don't know what that looked like.
• 12:38
  Charlie van Derven: That's 12 years ago.
• 12:39
  Charlie van Derven: So that's evolved a lot.
• 12:40
  Charlie van Derven: The simplification, I think is a lesson I've learned over the years too as a young professional, whether that's age or, amount of time in the profession.
• 12:50
  Charlie van Derven: We wanna wow with our, our credibility is how smart we are and let us display the intelligence and, frankly, we get hired because people trust us.
• 12:59
  Charlie van Derven: At the end of the day, they like us and they trust us.
• 13:02
  Charlie van Derven: And I have learned that my clients don't want all that detail.
• 13:06
  Charlie van Derven: Charlie, we trust you to do this.
• 13:08
  Charlie van Derven: If the outcome's good, then good.
• 13:10
  Charlie van Derven: If the outcome's not good, then we dive deep and find out why not.
• 13:13
  Charlie van Derven: Yeah, no, definitely.
• 13:15
  Charlie van Derven: So now it sounds like Greg, a lot of the, a lot of the processes and operations you put in place sounds like are not out of the box, right?
• 13:22
  Charlie van Derven: They're not the black box software that you talked about.
• 13:24
  Charlie van Derven: It's things that you guys, whether yourself or an internal team have modified existing technologies to fit your needs.
• 13:31
  Charlie van Derven: Let's talk about that a little bit.
• 13:32
  Charlie van Derven: What does that look like?
• 13:33
  Charlie van Derven: And then do you have any recommendations that you can make for advisors who are looking at this path?
• 13:39
  Charlie van Derven: Tools that they might be able to use?
• 13:43
  Greg Curry: Yeah, it's our focus tends to start with cash flow, the client's cash flow.
• 13:49
  Charlie van Derven: Okay.
• 13:49
  Greg Curry: So over the years we've just developed a methodology for creating a high level, pretty accurate cash flow statement for right now.
• 13:59
  Greg Curry: Cool.
• 14:00
  Greg Curry: So a client can really see.
• 14:03
  Greg Curry: Here's how much we've got coming in, here's where it's going.
• 14:06
  Greg Curry: Taxes, debt, living expenses, savings, and investments.
• 14:10
  Greg Curry: I don't really feel the need to go any deeper than that.
• 14:13
  Greg Curry: I don't need to know how much you're spending on groceries or anything like that.
• 14:16
  Greg Curry: No budgeting.
• 14:17
  Greg Curry: Sure.
• 14:17
  Greg Curry: I'm not good with budgeting.
• 14:19
  Greg Curry: So if someone comes in with a spending problem, we might not be the right firm for them.
• 14:24
  Greg Curry: 'Cause my answer is just stop.
• 14:26
  Greg Curry: Yeah.
• 14:28
  Greg Curry: Just don't do that anymore.
• 14:29
  Greg Curry: Spend less.
• 14:30
  Greg Curry: Yes.
• 14:31
  Greg Curry: A big part of what we do is that, that cash flow statement and how that defines what your cash flow is gonna look like in retirement when before you take social Security and then retirement.
• 14:42
  Greg Curry: When you take Social Security.
• 14:44
  Greg Curry: Again, simplification.
• 14:45
  Greg Curry: We don't need every year cash flow.
• 14:49
  Greg Curry: We don't need.
• 14:50
  Greg Curry: Super duper accurate budgets because I don't know about you, but what I'm spending today looks nothing like I, I spent five years ago and I had no way five years ago of predicting what that is, we assume, Hey, if you're comfortable in this lifestyle, that's what we're gonna target to.
• 15:07
  Greg Curry: And then every year we're gonna look at it and we'll see if it's drifting and we'll adjust the plan.
• 15:12
  Greg Curry: It's a very, it's an ongoing fluid process.
• 15:16
  Greg Curry: It's not a, Hey, here's what we're gonna do.
• 15:18
  Greg Curry: Come see me in five or 10 years.
• 15:21
  Greg Curry: Excel is a big part of what we do.
• 15:23
  Greg Curry: We used to, we used, we've, I've dabbled in Monte Carlo simulation.
• 15:28
  Greg Curry: Okay.
• 15:28
  Greg Curry: I. I know that it's a powerful tool that a lot of people like to lean on, but I also know how sensitive the outputs are to very small changes in the inputs, meaning, oh, I'm gonna change the standard deviation or the correlation between these two.
• 15:46
  Greg Curry: And you can, I'm not saying people do it, but you can manipulate.
• 15:52
  Greg Curry: The output to meet whatever, if you're an advisor with, bad intentions or even if you're just an advisor that, that, that doesn't have enough experience, you wanna be able to show, hey, you've got a 83.4% chance of your plan working out.
• 16:08
  Greg Curry: It's wow, really?
• 16:09
  Greg Curry: Are we sure about that?
• 16:11
  Greg Curry: That's a pretty precise number to be giving to.
• 16:17
  Greg Curry: A client who's worked in human resources, they, it's, I don't know.
• 16:22
  Greg Curry: I just find it ridiculous.
• 16:23
  Charlie van Derven: And there's a lot of variables that are completely outside of control.
• 16:27
  Greg Curry: And again, so we know, the things that we know about the returns of the capital markets.
• 16:35
  Greg Curry: Yeah.
• 16:35
  Greg Curry: We know that at least historically.
• 16:38
  Greg Curry: Fixed income is gonna be inflation plus, one to 3%, right?
• 16:43
  Greg Curry: Yeah.
• 16:43
  Greg Curry: We know that stocks are gonna be somewhere between inflation plus, I don't know, pick a number, six and 8%, five to 7%, but it's gonna be more than fixed income, right?
• 16:54
  Greg Curry: Over time.
• 16:55
  Greg Curry: And it's going to be ti, it's just gonna be more than inflation.
• 16:59
  Greg Curry: It's gonna be your growth.
• 17:00
  Greg Curry: Your growth.
• 17:01
  Greg Curry: So whether.
• 17:03
  Greg Curry: In the future, we earn inflation plus six, or inflation plus eight.
• 17:08
  Greg Curry: It's missing the point.
• 17:09
  Greg Curry: It is getting our clients positioned so that they earn the returns that are available and they need to meet their goals, not.
• 17:21
  Greg Curry: We gotta reach for the sky, not we gotta, oh, we gotta go invest in this new asset class because the last 10 years it returned 150% a year.
• 17:30
  Greg Curry: I'm not gonna mention which asset class it is.
• 17:32
  Greg Curry: We probably all know what it's,
• 17:34
  Charlie van Derven: yeah.
• 17:34
  Greg Curry: It's not our job anyway.
• 17:35
  Greg Curry: I know I got off track a little bit, but No, not at all.
• 17:38
  Greg Curry: The tools we use are pretty, again, simplistic but fluid.
• 17:43
  Greg Curry: So we wanna make for sure that we're going in the right direction, especially for younger clients.
• 17:48
  Greg Curry: It's not about hitting a mark, it's about doing the right things for the next 15 to 20 years.
• 17:53
  Greg Curry: And then as you approach retirement, we can start fine tuning what we're looking at in terms of what is it going to take?
• 18:02
  Greg Curry: To meet your cash flow needs in five years and are we prepared for the bear market that might come within those five years?
• 18:08
  Greg Curry: And, do we have a safety net and are we positioned so that we can manage your taxes in retirement?
• 18:14
  Greg Curry: 'cause we all know that can be the biggest expense we have.
• 18:18
  Charlie van Derven: Sure.
• 18:19
  Greg Curry: We've got some flexibility.
• 18:20
  Greg Curry: We can, do that.
• 18:21
  Greg Curry: So the tools we use are excel homegrown spreadsheets and projection spreadsheets.
• 18:28
  Greg Curry: Holistic plan is probably the best.
• 18:30
  Greg Curry: I can't believe how good a tax planning piece of software that is.
• 18:37
  Greg Curry: Yeah.
• 18:37
  Greg Curry: But you gotta know the tax law.
• 18:39
  Greg Curry: You gotta have somebody that can really look and go that doesn't look right.
• 18:43
  Greg Curry: I can't tell you how many times that, one of my team members brings me something and they're like, I can't figure this out.
• 18:49
  Greg Curry: And because I've looked at.
• 18:51
  Greg Curry: 50,000 tax returns, I can, pick it out.
• 18:54
  Greg Curry: But it's a fantastic tool.
• 18:56
  Greg Curry: Awesome.
• 18:57
  Greg Curry: It's one, it's the tool that we probably use the most.
• 18:59
  Charlie van Derven: Very cool.
• 19:00
  Charlie van Derven: We're, so we'll plug a list of plan.
• 19:01
  Charlie van Derven: They don't pay us or anything, but
• 19:02
  Greg Curry: Yeah, that's all right.
• 19:03
  Greg Curry: But yeah, no, greatly you're check if you're looking for a tax planning thing, you need to go look at a list of plan.
• 19:09
  Charlie van Derven: Operational excellence, let's call it that.
• 19:11
  Charlie van Derven: And simplicity.
• 19:13
  Charlie van Derven: Those are really the two things that I hear thematically out of your outta your years of learning and where you are today.
• 19:20
  Greg Curry: Yeah.
• 19:20
  Charlie van Derven: Greg, you got a great story, man.
• 19:22
  Charlie van Derven: And I would imagine some of our listeners may wanna reach out, have some questions thinking about transition anyway, resonate with your message.
• 19:30
  Charlie van Derven: Are you okay with that?
• 19:31
  Charlie van Derven: And if so, if not, I'll just cut that piece of the podcast, but if so, I'll leave it in.
• 19:36
  Charlie van Derven: What's the best way for them to reach you?
• 19:38
  Greg Curry: The best way would be email.
• 19:40
  Greg Curry: Okay.
• 19:40
  Greg Curry: Is it okay to say the email here or provide it?
• 19:43
  Greg Curry: Sure, man.
• 19:44
  Greg Curry: Sure.
• 19:44
  Greg Curry: Yeah, it's easy.
• 19:45
  Greg Curry: It's greg@pillar.net.
• 19:47
  Greg Curry: Cool.
• 19:48
  Greg Curry: P-I-L-L-A r.net.
• 19:49
  Greg Curry: And yes, I've I had some along the journey.
• 19:53
  Greg Curry: I had many advisors help me along the way.
• 19:57
  Greg Curry: Of course I needed that.
• 19:58
  Greg Curry: I didn't have books and, things like that.
• 20:01
  Greg Curry: Always felt.
• 20:03
  Greg Curry: Very strongly about paying that forward.
• 20:06
  Greg Curry: Helping advisors helping people who are thinking about it.
• 20:10
  Greg Curry: It's not an easy road.
• 20:12
  Greg Curry: No.
• 20:12
  Greg Curry: Let's be clear.
• 20:13
  Greg Curry: I was not ready to be a business owner.
• 20:16
  Greg Curry: I was barely ready to be a business owner after 11 years and being a CPA in the corporate world.
• 20:23
  Greg Curry: And I still think in some ways I was a little early.
• 20:27
  Greg Curry: But.
• 20:28
  Greg Curry: It's paid off and it's grown into something, it's not just me.
• 20:33
  Greg Curry: There are five of us here right now.
• 20:34
  Greg Curry: We're probably gonna expand into at least one more in the, in 2026, probably later in the year.
• 20:40
  Greg Curry: Cool.
• 20:41
  Greg Curry: It's turned into something that I think can continue to add value to our current clients, future clients.
• 20:48
  Greg Curry: It is I cannot imagine a career that is more fruitful for everyone involved me.
• 20:56
  Greg Curry: Personally, my team, our clients, the CPAs that we work with.
• 21:02
  Greg Curry: The whole thing, everything is about value.
• 21:05
  Greg Curry: And look, finances, personal finances have the power to change everything.
• 21:12
  Greg Curry: I don't wanna be too, too philosophical.
• 21:14
  Greg Curry: But it's true.
• 21:15
  Greg Curry: Having, having something that you know is gonna be there for the rest of your life can be freeing.
• 21:22
  Greg Curry: It's hard for people to make the transition, but it can be very freeing.
• 21:27
  Greg Curry: Yeah.
• 21:28
  Charlie van Derven: That's awesome.
• 21:28
  Charlie van Derven: You've got your heart's in the right place, clear clearly.
• 21:31
  Charlie van Derven: You lead with, client intent and so ab absolutely love the work that you're doing.
• 21:36
  Charlie van Derven: So anybody wants to reach out with Greg to Greg greg@pillar.net.
• 21:40
  Charlie van Derven: Again, Greg Curry, Louisville, Kentucky, pillar Financial.
• 21:44
  Charlie van Derven: Greg's active on LinkedIn too.
• 21:45
  Charlie van Derven: I, that's where I ran into him.
• 21:47
  Charlie van Derven: All right, Greg, I got one closing question off topic a little bit.
• 21:50
  Charlie van Derven: Oh.
• 21:51
  Charlie van Derven: If you're gonna, if you're gonna recommend one old punk rock album to me, which one is it?
• 21:57
  Greg Curry: Man, that's tough.
• 21:58
  Greg Curry: I know.
• 21:59
  Greg Curry: I gotta tell you.
• 22:00
  Greg Curry: I've been on a huge under undertones kick lately.
• 22:03
  Charlie van Derven: Cool.
• 22:04
  Charlie van Derven: All right.
• 22:05
  Greg Curry: And the album that I got introduced from, it's not the first one.
• 22:08
  Greg Curry: A lot of people would say, listen to the first one.
• 22:10
  Greg Curry: Listen to teenage cases.
• 22:11
  Greg Curry: I love hypnotized.
• 22:12
  Charlie van Derven: Hypnotized.
• 22:13
  Greg Curry: And there's just something about hypnotized, and if you get the.
• 22:16
  Greg Curry: Current deluxe version, whatever that is.
• 22:18
  Greg Curry: It's got some of the singles.
• 22:20
  Greg Curry: They okay.
• 22:21
  Greg Curry: They released along the way.
• 22:23
  Greg Curry: You got my number still probably one of my all time favorite songs of all time.
• 22:27
  Greg Curry: Very cool.
• 22:27
  Greg Curry: So there you go.
• 22:28
  Greg Curry: Very cool.
• 22:29
  Greg Curry: And they're still out there playing without their original lead singer, but.
• 22:33
  Greg Curry: A lot of those guys are, I've never seen 'em.
• 22:35
  Greg Curry: I might end up traveling to Ireland someday to
• 22:39
  Charlie van Derven: see, go check it out.
• 22:39
  Charlie van Derven: Yeah.
• 22:40
  Charlie van Derven: I, in the recent years, let's see, I, social distortion, it was, a little the damned saw the damn play.
• 22:45
  Charlie van Derven: That was pretty great.
• 22:46
  Charlie van Derven: Dead Kennedy's without Jello but they sounded awesome.
• 22:49
  Charlie van Derven: Outdoor, couple hundred people, venue.
• 22:51
  Charlie van Derven: It was very cool.
• 22:52
  Charlie van Derven: Yeah.
• 22:52
  Charlie van Derven: I love catching up on that old music.
• 22:54
  Greg Curry: In my younger days, I'd be really militant about it.
• 22:57
  Greg Curry: I'm not gonna go see a band if.
• 22:59
  Greg Curry: They don't have all the original members.
• 23:00
  Greg Curry: Yeah, I'm just not, so I'll give you another one.
• 23:02
  Greg Curry: Yeah, punk is my thing, but I grew up on kiss.
• 23:05
  Greg Curry: I cut my teeth on Kiss.
• 23:06
  Greg Curry: Very cool.
• 23:06
  Greg Curry: I saw Kiss more than any other band or during my lifetime.
• 23:10
  Greg Curry: And when Ace and Peter left for the final time, I said, I'm never gonna sing their cover band.
• 23:16
  Greg Curry: And then somebody came and said, yeah, I got tickets.
• 23:18
  Greg Curry: Why don't you come see me?
• 23:20
  Greg Curry: That concert was, might have been the best Kiss, kiss concert with the with Eric Singer and Tony Thayer.
• 23:25
  Charlie van Derven: Very cool.
• 23:26
  Charlie van Derven: Anyway, so
• 23:27
  Greg Curry: I'm gonna give up some of my punk cred to say that I'm a massive
• 23:31
  Charlie van Derven: Ah, no, that's good.
• 23:32
  Charlie van Derven: I saw him, not too, I saw him in the last five years and I actually ran into not that I talked to him or anything else, but Gene Simmons was in a local seven 11.
• 23:40
  Charlie van Derven: We live at the end of the road.
• 23:41
  Charlie van Derven: Kind of beach community in Florida, which is pretty quiet.
• 23:45
  Greg Curry: Yeah.
• 23:45
  Charlie van Derven: And yeah.
• 23:46
  Charlie van Derven: So escaping the public eye and he was Shannon Tweed, is that her name?
• 23:51
  Greg Curry: Yeah.
• 23:51
  Charlie van Derven: They were in 7 11 1 day when I was in there doing whatever in the neighborhood.
• 23:55
  Charlie van Derven: I didn't bother him.
• 23:57
  Greg Curry: I know I'm the same way.
• 23:58
  Greg Curry: I'm, I have met a couple of celebrities that I could not.
• 24:02
  Greg Curry: A couple of music people that I could not avoid.
• 24:05
  Greg Curry: Just going, look, I'm sorry.
• 24:06
  Greg Curry: I know I'm being a fan boy.
• 24:07
  Greg Curry: Yep.
• 24:08
  Greg Curry: I gotta say hello.
• 24:09
  Greg Curry: Thank you.
• 24:10
  Greg Curry: Love your music, and then move on.
• 24:11
  Charlie van Derven: Yep, exactly right.
• 24:13
  Charlie van Derven: Yeah, exactly right.
• 24:14
  Charlie van Derven: I hate to be, yeah, I hate to be that guy.
• 24:16
  Charlie van Derven: But also there's a few out there that.
• 24:17
  Charlie van Derven: You have to be that guy.
• 24:18
  Charlie van Derven: Exactly.
• 24:19
  Charlie van Derven: Greg we got a lot in common, man.
• 24:21
  Charlie van Derven: I enjoy you a lot.
• 24:22
  Charlie van Derven: I want thank you again for being a guest on the revamp of REA collective.
• 24:26
  Charlie van Derven: It's been a little while, but this is our first our first episode going back out there.
• 24:30
  Charlie van Derven: I enjoy doing this stuff.
• 24:31
  Charlie van Derven: Gives me an opportunity to meet new people and yeah, just appreciate you sharing your story and and being a part of ours.
• 24:37
  Greg Curry: Yeah.
• 24:37
  Greg Curry: Next time you're up north,
• 24:39
  Charlie van Derven: I got a client in Danville.
• 24:40
  Greg Curry: Come on up.
• 24:41
  Charlie van Derven: I'll come see you man.
• 24:42
  Charlie van Derven: We'll show, we'll find a show somewhere.
• 24:43
  Charlie van Derven: We'll find some music.
• 24:44
  Charlie van Derven: I'll come see you.
• 24:45
  Charlie van Derven: Yeah, I got a client in Danville that probably, I probably owe a visit here pretty soon.
• 24:49
  Greg Curry: Alright, Danville's not the i, 15 minutes away.
• 24:51
  Charlie van Derven: There you go.
• 24:52
  Charlie van Derven: We'll make it happen.
• 24:53
  Charlie van Derven: Alright, thanks Charlie.
• 24:54
  Charlie van Derven: Cheers, Greg.
• 24:54
  Charlie van Derven: Thank you man.
• 24:55
  Charlie van Derven: Appreciate it.
• 24:56
  Greg Curry: Thanks.
• 24:56
  Charlie van Derven: And for everybody who spent some time with me and my new buddy, Greg Curry here on REA Collective, thank you very much for the time you spent with us.
• 25:03
  Charlie van Derven: My name's Charlie Van Dervin.
• 25:04
  Charlie van Derven: I'm an easy guy to find, so if you've got some questions for me or somebody I should interview.
• 25:08
  Charlie van Derven: Hit me up and of course like, and subscribe and all that other stuff that the kids tell us to do.
• 25:13
  Charlie van Derven: Greg, thanks again.
• 25:14
  Charlie van Derven: Thank you.
• 25:15
  Charlie van Derven: Take care.