Latest / Beyond Fulfillment Podcast / How Hiring a Coach Transformed Ed Meek's Financial Advisory Business

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How Hiring a Coach Transformed Ed Meek's Financial Advisory Business · Beyond Fulfillment Podcast

• 0:00
  Imagine you've built a flourishing business, but you find yourself overwhelmed, stretched thin, and no longer enjoying the work that once brought you so much joy.
• 0:10
  How would you manage the demands of running your business while ensuring that you're living a life of fulfillment?
• 0:16
  Well, today we're joined by Ed Meek, the founder and CEO of Edge Financial Advisors and the host of the podcast Ed's Edge.
• 0:26
  Ed's journey from a dissatisfied corporate employee of Fidelity to a successful entrepreneur will inspire you to find your own path to a balanced and prosperous life.
• 0:37
  He'll share actionable insights into the pivotal decisions and strategies that enabled him to grow his business while staying true to his core values.
• 0:46
  This episode is for any entrepreneur who's built something from the ground up and is seeking advice on how to keep growing without losing their sanity or sacrificing their quality of life.
• 0:58
  As always, if you found value from this content, please like and subscribe.
• 1:04
  Hello everyone, and welcome to another episode of the Beyond Fulfillment podcast.
• 1:09
  I'm your host, Dave Goulis, and this week my guest is the founder and CEO of Edge Financial Advisors and also the host of the podcast Ed's Edge, Ed Meek.
• 1:23
  Welcome, Ed.
• 1:24
  Thanks, Dave.
• 1:25
  Really appreciate it.
• 1:27
  I appreciate the opportunity to be able to speak about my journey and being an entrepreneur myself and helping people, you know, with what, what I do.
• 1:37
  Absolutely, yeah.
• 1:38
  We appreciate you taking the time to be here, if you could, for everyone.
• 1:41
  Can you tell us what Edge Financial Advisors is and, and how it gets started?
• 1:46
  Yeah.
• 1:47
  So I've been in the financial planning industry my entire life.
• 1:51
  I got out of college, had no idea.
• 1:52
  I mean, I didn't.
• 1:53
  I grew up with a very middle class family with parents who didn't know anything or taught me anything about money.
• 1:59
  And I certainly didn't know anything.
• 2:00
  I got married right out of college and had to figure it all out, but fortunately kind of stumbled into this industry and just loved it because I've always enjoyed helping people.
• 2:09
  And it's a great way to help people kind of take a look at their financial situation and how to figure out how can you thrive financially.
• 2:18
  And so that was kind of always my motto.
• 2:21
  And I did that the first half of my career with a company called Fidelity Investments.
• 2:26
  And it was a great company to work for, but eventually I wanted to roll up my sleeves and work with less people and, and do more comprehensive, what's called financial planning in all areas of their financial life.
• 2:37
  And so I started the company almost 20 years ago and continue to grow that and help more and more people.
• 2:44
  And that's really My goal is to eventually get to like a thousand people and help them thrive financially.
• 2:51
  Okay, all right, so appreciate you laying that out.
• 2:55
  So you, you got into the finance industry early in your career and you were with Fidelity, big firm for a number of years.
• 3:04
  So how, what was it?
• 3:06
  Was it just a matter of, you know, you had this inkling that you wanted to do more, you wanted to do it on your own, and after a while you got, I guess, tired of the, the corporate life.
• 3:15
  Is that fair to say?
• 3:17
  I'd say that that's a lot of it.
• 3:19
  What happened was I, I'm what's called a certified financial planner.
• 3:23
  It's kind of like a master's in the industry.
• 3:26
  And so maybe when I was originally got that degree, maybe 5 to 10% of advisors had it.
• 3:33
  It's becoming more commonplace.
• 3:34
  I don't know what the statistic now is.
• 3:36
  I'd say at least a third to close to third to a half, try to get it.
• 3:40
  And when I learned how to get that, it's, it's not just a lot of times people will look at financial advisors as, oh, the person who helps me with my money and invests my money and a key piece
• 3:49
  to it.
• 3:50
  But the most important part of it is understanding the dynamics of every financial decision.
• 3:55
  And financial planning helps you kind of look at it from every area.
• 3:58
  You know, how much, how can I save money on taxes, how can I strategically set aside money for this, you know, college for my retirement, for my, you know, what should I do inside my business?
• 4:09
  And so I really enjoy and feel like I do the best work when I help people kind of look at all of that encompassing way and figure out a custom plan for them.
• 4:19
  And when I was at Fidelity, I got the degree when I was there.
• 4:23
  But Fidelity is this huge company and people would come in all the time and I helped them start this area of the business where we would help people with higher end people who had more assets.
• 4:37
  And I was only supposed to work with about 100, 150 people.
• 4:40
  That's about the most in our industry.
• 4:42
  They've done studies and if you want to comprehensive, comprehensively help people do all areas of their financial life, it's hard to help more than about 100 or 150 people.
• 4:53
  By the time I was done at fidelity, I had 500 people I was supposed to help.
• 4:57
  And so, you know, there's just no way you can comprehensively help 500 people.
• 5:02
  There's not enough time in the day.
• 5:03
  And so I grew a little disenchanted with the way I was doing it, and I couldn't help people the way I wanted to.
• 5:11
  So I thought, you know what?
• 5:12
  I'm in this fortunate situation.
• 5:14
  I mean, it was a big risk going out on my own, but I thought enough of those 500 people would like kind of what I was able to provide if I went and started my own company in a
• 5:26
  much more comprehensive way than I could do when I was at Fidelity.
• 5:29
  And so that was the impetus as to why I did it.
• 5:32
  Fidelity was great.
• 5:33
  They offered great investments.
• 5:35
  I just couldn't do everything I wanted to and help people the way I thought I could.
• 5:39
  So that's why I started my own company.
• 5:45
  In my world, a personal brand is invaluable.
• 5:48
  A year ago, EasyDC was brand new with just a couple of customers and no online presence.
• 5:54
  Then I found Hicks Marketing.
• 5:56
  They helped me amplify my personal brand, build a solid content strategy, publish my podcast, and 10x the number of customers we serve, all in less than one year.
• 6:06
  Do you need a marketing partner who gets you and cares about your success?
• 6:10
  Reach out to aliciaicksmarketing.com for more info and tell her Dave Gula sent you.
• 6:16
  And so when you first started out, like you said, it's a big risk, but you made the decision, you took the leap, and you started.
• 6:24
  What was the biggest surprise?
• 6:26
  Going from a big corporate company like Fidelity and having that type of backing to starting on your own, what was the biggest surprise that you faced?
• 6:34
  I'd say the biggest surprise by far was, you know, I knew I kind of had to figure everything out, but literally, like, incorporating compliance, you know, you name it, you know, you know what it's like running your own
• 6:47
  company.
• 6:47
  Boy, oh, boy.
• 6:48
  You have to, absolutely.
• 6:49
  When you start on, you have to do absolutely everything on your own.
• 6:52
  Now it was just me.
• 6:53
  I didn't even have any employees.
• 6:54
  Like, I had to be the chief bottle washer.
• 6:57
  I had to be, you know, I mean, I'm joking because I was running, but, you know, clean the bathrooms.
• 7:01
  I had to do it all.
• 7:02
  And so I would say the biggest surprise was how much time I had to spend doing those things.
• 7:07
  And it was the only way I had to do it.
• 7:09
  I mean, I was starting with from scratch.
• 7:12
  It wasn't like I had a bunch of clients that were coming with me.
• 7:15
  Some of them would come with me.
• 7:17
  But I'd say the biggest surprise and the most difficult part was all of a sudden having to be everything to everybody, which, you know, a lot of people will do that, but eventually you can't do that and be
• 7:28
  effective long term.
• 7:30
  Okay, so like you said, rude awakening, so to speak, when you, when you went out on your own and realized just how much work there is.
• 7:38
  So how.
• 7:38
  How did you start to manage that?
• 7:41
  So in order to scale the business and grow it, in the very early days when, like you said, you're having to literally do everything.
• 7:48
  Yeah, I remember I have this friend, so I'm fortunate.
• 7:51
  A lot of my friends own their own businesses.
• 7:53
  And I had this other.
• 7:54
  This friend who had been doing it six or eight years, and like, we're talking maybe a year and a half, two years and starting my company.
• 8:01
  And he was asking me questions and saying, hey, you know, I know you're paying yourself enough to like, pay your bills at home and everything, but do you have more and are you taking that home?
• 8:12
  And.
• 8:12
  And I was like, yeah, I am.
• 8:13
  He's like, are you investing back in your business?
• 8:16
  Because you need to do everything you possibly can to, if you.
• 8:21
  If you do have that bandwidth, is to invest back in the business.
• 8:24
  And what does that mean?
• 8:26
  For me, it meant at the time was start outsourcing, potentially hiring.
• 8:30
  I hired my first employee one year in, then hired my second employee two and a half years in.
• 8:36
  And it was the idea of, like, I'm not good at a lot of these things.
• 8:39
  I know I'm not.
• 8:40
  I don't even enjoy them.
• 8:42
  Be smart and balanced.
• 8:43
  And how are you going to spend your money?
• 8:45
  Not take all of it if you possibly can, because you just can't be good at everything.
• 8:51
  And so it was that balancing act.
• 8:53
  And that's continues to be a balancing act as, you know, 20 years in, doing very, very well.
• 8:59
  How much am I going to invest in the business versus pull out of the business?
• 9:03
  And I think that once people become somewhat successful, that's a difficult thing at times.
• 9:09
  Yeah, absolutely.
• 9:10
  Right.
• 9:10
  Because especially you.
• 9:12
  You work so hard to build it, get some momentum, and then, of course, right, there's surplus.
• 9:17
  So every entrepreneur deals with that in terms of deciding how much to invest and what to pull out and whatnot.
• 9:24
  How did you go about.
• 9:25
  Was it something just innate where you realized, okay, I'm really good here, I'm not so good there.
• 9:30
  So these are the.
• 9:31
  Did you already kind of have it identified, like the first areas you're going to outsource?
• 9:36
  I think so, yes, initially, I.
• 9:39
  But one thing I did do was after talking to this, this friend of mine who owned the business, his own business, and said that to me, one of the things I invested in after hiring My first employee and
• 9:49
  outsourcing a couple of things is I found.
• 9:53
  I.
• 9:53
  I started looking for.
• 9:54
  And I found a coach, and I found a coach that specifically coaches people in my industry.
• 10:00
  And hiring that coach enlightened me a lot because the coach specifically knows exactly what I'm walking through because she coaches a lot of other people.
• 10:09
  And so I think we're blind sometimes, right?
• 10:12
  Until somebody might bring something up, we're blind to, like, what, you know, how can I get better?
• 10:18
  Like, and all of a sudden, if somebody kind of takes a look in and sees what you're doing, they can highlight things, you know, in all relationships, right?
• 10:26
  I mean, we have relationships.
• 10:28
  You know, I don't know.
• 10:29
  I'm married.
• 10:29
  I've been married 33 years.
• 10:31
  I have friendships.
• 10:32
  Sometimes I don't see things a certain way.
• 10:34
  And so I think it was a combination of.
• 10:37
  I am somewhat intuitive.
• 10:39
  That's what makes me good at being a financial planner, is I can see things from a lot of angles and.
• 10:44
  And ask a lot of questions, but also to be willing to have other people look in and say, you know, what.
• 10:53
  What other things am I not seeing?
• 10:56
  Yeah, I love that.
• 10:57
  Right.
• 10:58
  So important because, you know, as the saying goes, you can't see the picture when you're in the frame.
• 11:03
  Okay.
• 11:04
  And was there, you know, like you said that.
• 11:06
  That hiring a coach was a.
• 11:08
  Was a big, I guess, game changer for you.
• 11:13
  Was there.
• 11:13
  Were you initially.
• 11:14
  Was that a decision, too?
• 11:15
  When you're looking at, you know, you're growing and what to allocate resources to, was that something too, where you, you, you know, you kind of had to take a leap of faith in terms of just you, right.
• 11:24
  Paying for coaching when maybe the early days, your business, that.
• 11:27
  That money could have been spent elsewhere.
• 11:28
  A hundred percent.
• 11:29
  I mean, that was, that was that balancing act, you know, And I thought if I.
• 11:33
  I'm a big believer in investing in yourself.
• 11:36
  I, I have that.
• 11:37
  I.
• 11:37
  I have a.
• 11:37
  A lot of money set aside now in employee.
• 11:41
  I've got nine other employees, and I encourage them and have them use that money to invest in getting better.
• 11:49
  You know, this Dave.
• 11:50
  Like, there's just certain people that have that drive, like, how can I get better?
• 11:54
  What can I do to get better?
• 11:56
  And when I.
• 11:57
  I actually picked the most expensive.
• 11:59
  I looked at three coaches.
• 12:00
  I picked the most expensive one, and I.
• 12:03
  I got her for one month.
• 12:04
  I mean, for one.
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  One hour a month.
• 12:07
  That's how much she coached me.
• 12:09
  But I'll tell you.
• 12:10
  And it's the most expensive.
• 12:11
  You Know, I guess I've had a couple lawyers that are pretty expensive per hour, but it was by far the most expensive I paid anybody anything.
• 12:19
  You know, it was like Almost, this was 16 years ago.
• 12:22
  I was paying her a grand a month for one hour of her work.
• 12:26
  And that's the best thousand dollars an hour.
• 12:30
  I would say historically that, that I've used, you know, that I've spent as an investment.
• 12:35
  So all costs in a business are not equal.
• 12:39
  Right.
• 12:40
  And some of them can be way more fruitful if you utilize them the right way.
• 12:46
  And I felt like at the time that was a good investment.
• 12:49
  And it's paid off in spades in my opinion, because now I've actually hired her.
• 12:53
  She eventually coached my entire company.
• 12:55
  I hired her for two straight years to coach my company, and that was much more expensive.
• 12:59
  But now my company and I are 100% aligned in exactly how we're interacting.
• 13:06
  It's called mastering high performance.
• 13:08
  And so our company is focused on mastering high performance.
• 13:11
  And there's a variety of things each month that we go through in order to figure out how, how do, like how do we do agreements for say, or for example, meaning like if you verbally say something or you
• 13:26
  insinuate something, it's an agreement.
• 13:29
  It might not be an agreement that you necessarily realize you're making an agreement too.
• 13:34
  But if people don't understand how to interact and how to deal with conflict appropriately, then your business just isn't as efficient.
• 13:42
  And so I have applied that in spades, not just to myself, but to every employee at the company.
• 13:49
  And now it allows us to take care of our clients much better.
• 13:53
  Okay, and you bring up another great point there too, because as you mentioned, you scaled your company, you now have nine employees.
• 14:00
  That is.
• 14:01
  Yeah, that's right.
• 14:01
  There's ten of us now.
• 14:02
  Yep.
• 14:03
  Okay, so how, you know, being like a first time entrepreneur and, and starting with you, the only one initially, like, how did you, I guess like figure out the process of hiring the right people and like you said,
• 14:16
  having them aligned with your company vision and, and having it, you know, obviously been in business 20 years too, so.
• 14:22
  And, and having that, that long term success.
• 14:27
  Yeah, I think, I think the first thing is it was identifying what are the areas that are super crucial to what we do that can make the biggest impact.
• 14:38
  So my first hire was a gentleman that worked with me when I was at Fidelity.
• 14:42
  He was on my team at Fidelity.
• 14:44
  He's very sharp analytically.
• 14:46
  And it's not that I'm not analytical, but it's not like my desire.
• 14:51
  I'm not as analytical as him when it comes to, like, the investments and all and all of that.
• 14:55
  So he was a really, really good compliment for me.
• 14:58
  He could do a lot of things, enjoyed a lot of things that I didn't.
• 15:01
  And so he took a lot off my plate.
• 15:03
  That was super important for the clients to make sure their portfolios were structured in the right way, kept it.
• 15:09
  And I could have done that, except it just wasn't something as enjoyable for me.
• 15:13
  And so as I hired people, it was analyzing where specifically can I make the biggest impact by hiring someone?
• 15:20
  And sometimes it ended up being someone that might be more expensive than hiring someone doing something else.
• 15:26
  But that is an investment.
• 15:27
  We always have to look at everything as an investment.
• 15:29
  How am I investing my time and my resources and what's going to make the biggest impact for me?
• 15:36
  And then sometimes I've gotten better and better at outsourcing.
• 15:39
  I mean, I can't believe how much I outsource.
• 15:41
  Now I have nine employees, but I really probably have four or five other employees that just do very specific outsourcing type of things that I could have hired someone to do in here, but they're really awesome.
• 15:53
  Like, I have a CFO that's outsourced and I could have easily hired someone to do that work here.
• 15:59
  But why, why would I do that when I cannot find someone that is awesome at it and it's only going to take them 10 hours a week where I'd have to hire someone that would take, you know, more
• 16:08
  time.
• 16:09
  So that's how I've made my decisions is internal and external, a use of people and, and now technology as well.
• 16:17
  But, but mainly people in, in how I invest the money.
• 16:21
  Okay.
• 16:21
  And like you said, like hiring fractional, fractional positions, so to speak.
• 16:27
  Right.
• 16:27
  In term, like you said, a CFO, 10 hours a week, because that's what's needed.
• 16:31
  And you have someone that can, that can add value doing it, that, that amount of time.
• 16:36
  Okay.
• 16:37
  And yeah, you, you.
• 16:37
  Another great point too.
• 16:39
  Like you mentioned different people with skill sets.
• 16:42
  And of course there's, you know, I'm sure you've studied the different personality types.
• 16:46
  How important is that?
• 16:48
  Right?
• 16:48
  Like in terms of just having the right people doing the right tasks within, within the business.
• 16:55
  I actually think that's probably, if not the most important, one of the most important things.
• 17:00
  And here's an example.
• 17:01
  So I hired a gentleman early on.
• 17:04
  This is nine years ago.
• 17:05
  Um, he was my fourth employee.
• 17:09
  And he, I, I eventually was getting to a Point where I couldn't handle taking care of, like, we're getting more and more clients.
• 17:15
  So I needed another person to start taking on clients and bringing in, you know, help bring in more clients.
• 17:20
  And so I hired him to be another financial advisor.
• 17:22
  I was going to mentor him.
• 17:23
  And six months goes by and he's sitting in meetings with me, and he's real smart guy, and he's.
• 17:29
  And.
• 17:29
  And eventually he sat down with me and he's like, ed, you know, like, what you do, I didn't fully understand.
• 17:34
  And there's these elements of what you do that I just don't know if it's really me.
• 17:41
  And so at that point in time, I had to decide, like, it's.
• 17:46
  I'm not going to try to put a square peg in a round hole with this guy.
• 17:49
  I'm not going to try to make him be an advisor.
• 17:51
  But he was super sharp, and he is one of my, like, super key employees to this day.
• 17:57
  And the reason is we pivoted.
• 17:58
  He's an A player.
• 18:00
  Like, I have my coach.
• 18:02
  That's one of the things she.
• 18:03
  She said is higher A players that might cost more, it might take longer to find them, but hire A players.
• 18:09
  Now, I don't know about you, Dave, but I've hired a lot of people over the years, and they always haven't been A players.
• 18:15
  And initially I kind of kept some of them on a little too long and eventually realized they're never going to be an A player, and I just kept them on too long.
• 18:25
  And so now it hasn't happened in a while.
• 18:29
  But if I hire someone that's just not the right fit, I'm going to take care of them on the way out.
• 18:33
  But my whole goal is to find people who love what they're doing, and even if I have to kind of alter kind of what their original position was, get them to do something for us, because it's an environment
• 18:46
  that they want to work in.
• 18:48
  And then I'll find somebody else or I'll outsource it like I did with that CFO situation.
• 18:53
  Because things are going to work a lot better when you have all A players or maybe B players that, you know can become A players.
• 19:01
  At least that's what's worked for me.
• 19:03
  Okay, so you found too, like you said, higher A players.
• 19:06
  I'm sure everyone would agree with that.
• 19:08
  But then if you have an A player that's not in the right position.
• 19:12
  Right.
• 19:13
  Be willing to pivot, and if you can certainly find another role for them, then sounds like that worked out for you in terms of just, you know, switching them into the other role and continuing to keep them on
• 19:23
  staff.
• 19:25
  Yeah.
• 19:25
  And I mean, we all are thinking we're hiring or potential A players or A players, but sometimes they're not.
• 19:32
  I mean, you just.
• 19:33
  That's just the way it goes.
• 19:34
  Right.
• 19:35
  It's also identifying.
• 19:37
  And he's actually the same guy.
• 19:39
  He's actually the one that's like, we've had times in the past where he's like, you know what?
• 19:44
  We, we only want a players.
• 19:46
  And this person I don't think can ever become an A player.
• 19:49
  It's like, you know, cut your losses when you can, and it's better for those people, too.
• 19:53
  So I think it's just being smart about, you know, how you're doing things and who you have in those because they might be a great A player for another company, but we just would just do things a certain
• 20:04
  way and got to make sure people fit, you know, in the way we do it.
• 20:10
  Okay, so now, as you mentioned, you coach entrepreneurs and help them thrive financially.
• 20:16
  So, so as you've been doing this, what do you find are the biggest challenges, you know, that, that the entrepreneurs you work with have with regards to finances?
• 20:26
  I think the biggest challenges are taking a step back.
• 20:30
  Like, you know, these entrepreneurs are really usually very successful, and what got them there was this ability.
• 20:37
  I mean, everybody's a hard worker.
• 20:39
  They're super smart in the area they're in.
• 20:41
  I think what they, what they don't know, they don't know.
• 20:44
  And so sometimes they don't even realize that there's just, there's these blind spots that they have when it comes to financially of, you know, am I utilizing the cash inside my company?
• 20:56
  Am I.
• 20:56
  Have I created benefits in a certain way, especially when it comes like retirement benefits or investment benefits for, for my employees, if I set these things up properly.
• 21:07
  And then even more importantly for a lot of, for a lot of owners, it, you know, their biggest asset is the value in their business.
• 21:14
  And am I utilizing that properly?
• 21:17
  Am I setting it up right?
• 21:19
  Am I just like the thing I told you before, Am I stripping the company of too much in profits and not reinvesting?
• 21:26
  And while I don't, like, help them make their decision specifically on, like, if I don't know their industry, I'm not going to help them, like, is this a good idea?
• 21:34
  But I could certainly help them do coaching around some of these things and get set up, because you don't want to have all your assets in one Basket.
• 21:43
  This is one of the problems a lot of business owners have is they, as they build, they build, they build.
• 21:48
  And if something happens and you don't have like protection elements like in, in financial, in financial planning.
• 21:56
  One of the areas of the six key areas of financial planning is called risk management insurance planning is, are you set up for, if catastrophes or bad things happen?
• 22:06
  Like if you're a business owner and it's literally dependent on you and you have all, almost all your assets inside, you know, your equity and everything you own is inside your company.
• 22:17
  If, if one or two things happens negatively and that thing could falter and if that happens, it's kind of screws up your whole long term financial picture.
• 22:27
  And so we need to be able to figure out how can we diversify some things away and, or also get you ready.
• 22:35
  So eventually our goal when we're done is to have the pot of gold, I call it the pot of gold, to have enough so we can maintain a certain lifestyle and move on and do another business or move
• 22:46
  on and be retired.
• 22:47
  And so I would say it's kind of thinking strategically, asking lots and lots of questions on how can you, how can you position yourself with help of somebody?
• 22:58
  Most people just aren't good at doing that themselves because they're busy being awesome at what they're, you know, their company's about.
• 23:05
  Now do you find that there's, there's a challenge in getting entrepreneurs to even subscribe to that theory being being that so often they're risk takers, they're very ambitious and a lot of the conventional business wisdom out there is
• 23:20
  to focus and to concentrate all your efforts towards this one goal.
• 23:24
  Oftentimes it's growing your bit.
• 23:26
  You know, there's a lot of people that teach to put everything in your bit, you know what I mean?
• 23:30
  Not to diversify until you truly, you know, whatever level of success that is, but that there's so much emphasis put on focus in one area?
• 23:41
  Yeah.
• 23:41
  And I think there's some validity to that.
• 23:43
  I mean I, I certainly did that when, when I had to get started.
• 23:47
  I mean, I remember my wife has a cousin who's extremely successful, owns like five businesses.
• 23:54
  And I approached him and said, hey, you know, I'm, I'm like going to be pretty strapped here financially.
• 24:03
  I was wondering if you wanted to like help invest in the business a little bit, you know, with some money.
• 24:07
  And, and he said I could easily.
• 24:09
  He could, he was so wealthy he could have easily done it.
• 24:11
  But he talked to me about bootstrapping it and doing it on my own and, and I did that.
• 24:18
  So it was great advice.
• 24:20
  And for a long time I, you know, almost all my assets were, you know, I owned a house, had a little equity in the house, a little bit money in retirement account from 401k or from Fidelity, but for
• 24:31
  the most part, everything was on this business.
• 24:33
  And I think there's an element of that that should be the case for a while.
• 24:38
  But eventually, as your, as your business starts growing, it becomes more and more aggressive.
• 24:45
  It's no different than, you know, today, the big, big stock that everybody's making a lot of money in, if they own it, it's called Nvidia.
• 24:53
  It's just gone up like this.
• 24:55
  And if you own one stock or two stocks and you ride those and things work out in the long run, then you're going to be extremely wealthy.
• 25:05
  But there's a chance that some chip companies might come about in the next five years and Nvidia might make a wrong step and the stock could collapse 75%.
• 25:17
  No one should put all their eggs in one basket.
• 25:19
  Eventually.
• 25:20
  Eventually there's a point where you should diversify.
• 25:23
  And I think that's part of the discussion is where are you at in your business?
• 25:28
  And eventually where do you want that business to be and what do you want to get out of it?
• 25:34
  And if you get to the point where you're like, wait a minute, you know, maybe if I can do this, those are some of the discussions to have.
• 25:41
  So it just depends on the situation.
• 25:43
  But at some point in time, you're going to want to diversify, I think.
• 25:47
  Okay, okay.
• 25:49
  And another thing too, you mentioned is when you started out, right, you, you were very fortunate to, I guess, stumble into this industry and you liked it.
• 25:58
  And you know, you've been there your whole career.
• 26:00
  But as you mentioned too, right, so much about money is not taught in schools.
• 26:07
  Whether it's, you know, financial literacy and taxes and etc, how big of an issue do you, do you see that in terms of, you know, with the clients that you work with?
• 26:18
  Oh my gosh.
• 26:19
  I mean, that's such a.
• 26:20
  I've been saying my whole life, like, or my whole finite, you know, adult life, like, if, if they just had like one class in high school, it just helps you learn a little bit.
• 26:30
  And then one.
• 26:31
  And I think every college should have this.
• 26:34
  Kids, as they become adults would, would thrive.
• 26:38
  You know, they would thrive much better.
• 26:39
  You know, the problem is, is their parents don't know any better.
• 26:43
  And so, you know, the, the people who aren't educated, can't help their kids because they don't know any better.
• 26:50
  And then even people that are extremely success.
• 26:53
  Successful in making good money and owning businesses, you know, they're still, they're very blind in certain, in certain areas.
• 27:00
  I'm not saying everybody, but there's sometimes I come across situations, the business owners, I'm like, if you actually did this and this, you're going to save 25, 50, 75 grand a year in taxes.
• 27:14
  If you just took some of these steps, that's money that's in your pocket.
• 27:17
  And if you actually utilize that in a certain way, there's certain types of plans that we can do for people that, I mean, I have a lot of business owners that now I tell them, like, all right, we're
• 27:28
  setting this thing up.
• 27:29
  We're going to do this.
• 27:30
  You're going to retire three years sooner.
• 27:32
  Now, like, there's just certain things that we're ignorant about that there's just no way these business owners can know everything.
• 27:40
  And if you strategically set things up a particular way when it comes to your money and utilizing inside your company and setting up certain type of retirement accounts, it can make huge, huge differences that are going to make
• 27:53
  this literally, you're going to have an extra million or $2 million sometimes.
• 27:57
  So it's, it's not their fault.
• 28:00
  And that's why I, like, I don't just have a coach for me at business.
• 28:04
  I actually have one for my health now.
• 28:07
  And I've seen a lot of successful business owners, they get coaches in numerous areas of their life.
• 28:12
  I mean, some of them do from spiritual, some of it do it for business.
• 28:16
  I wholeheartedly believe in that.
• 28:18
  And so I just say to people, all right, well, I could be that for you when it comes to your financial things.
• 28:25
  And, you know, you might need a coach in another area.
• 28:29
  I mean, so hopefully that, you know, makes sense to what you were saying.
• 28:35
  Yeah, yeah, absolutely.
• 28:37
  And, and like you said, too, right?
• 28:38
  So often it makes sense to outsource to an expert or even to hire an expert to coach, whether, like you said, physical.
• 28:46
  Some people, it might be spiritual or of course, financial, because, you know, no one's an expert at everything.
• 28:53
  So, you know, having those, those key people in other areas can be very valuable as well.
• 28:58
  Yeah.
• 28:59
  I mean, and I think if people take a step back and they understand what's, you know, sometimes the way we get paid is sometimes consulting fees, but also sometimes by keeping an.
• 29:11
  Keep an eye on people's investments and we get a percentage of that.
• 29:14
  And sometimes people are like, oh, man, like, is that really worth it?
• 29:18
  And, you know, sometimes if I'm able to point out, if you do this and this, and you save 25, 50, a hundred thousand dollars a year in taxes, you know, my fee is minuscule compared to that.
• 29:30
  And so sometimes people just don't understand that by utilizing experts can save you so much or put you in such a better position.
• 29:38
  It's just an incredible investment.
• 29:40
  It's just sometimes people don't understand, but it's worth exploring at least.
• 29:44
  I mean, there's no downside to explore and.
• 29:47
  And see if that would be helpful.
• 29:49
  Absolutely.
• 29:51
  All right.
• 29:51
  And, Ed, if people want to get in touch with you and learn more about what you do and the services that you offer, what's the best way that people can do that?
• 29:58
  So the name of my company is called Edge Financial Advisors.
• 30:01
  We help people all across the country.
• 30:03
  My clients are all over the country.
• 30:06
  Our.
• 30:06
  Our websites, Edge, fa, E, D, G, E, F A and I in the website there, I also have my podcasts.
• 30:16
  I've done, I don't know, around 50 podcasts just regarding all different types of questions that people have around money and financial planning.
• 30:24
  And.
• 30:25
  And I'm on all the major podcast platforms.
• 30:28
  So it's called Ed's Edge.
• 30:30
  That's the name of my podcast.
• 30:31
  So those are probably the best ways to.
• 30:33
  To get a hold of us.
• 30:34
  Okay, and real quick, you mentioned the podcast, and.
• 30:37
  Yeah.
• 30:38
  What.
• 30:38
  What made you decide to start that?
• 30:41
  You know, when I revamped, kind of did some rebranding of the company, I actually used to be called Edge Portfolio Management.
• 30:49
  And that, I think, communicated to people.
• 30:52
  Yeah, we do portfolio management, but it was very, very specific.
• 30:56
  Even though I was doing helping people in all areas of their financial life, I think we were communicating a little differently.
• 31:04
  And so also during that time, I've always enjoyed, like, I don't know, mentoring and teaching people.
• 31:11
  And I thought, man, I've got all this knowledge, and every time I talk to people, they're always so thankful.
• 31:15
  And I.
• 31:16
  I just.
• 31:16
  What I get jazzed about is when I meet with people and when they kind of leave feeling more at peace about their situation.
• 31:22
  And I thought it would be super cool to be able to just kind of put what I've learned out there for people.
• 31:27
  And that's why I do the podcast.
• 31:28
  I have a partner who's 20 years younger than me, and we play off each other fairly well, and we just try to come up with ideas of what could be helpful to the general public in various areas of
• 31:38
  financial planning that they can learn from by.
• 31:42
  And I love podcasts, so I thought I would say I'm no Joe Rogan, but I'm also not chopped liver.
• 31:49
  And so I think some people get something out of it, and so that's why I did it.
• 31:54
  Okay.
• 31:54
  And how.
• 31:55
  How has that impacted the business and the growth since you've been doing the podcast?
• 32:00
  It's actually been extremely helpful.
• 32:02
  So we have a variety of ways that we bring in new clients, and now almost all of them, we either tell them about the podcast or they find it on their own.
• 32:12
  And it's a great way for them to kind of get to know us and kind of how we help people.
• 32:16
  Oftentimes, I'll sit in a meeting with somebody and I'll start saying something, they'll be like, oh, that podcast.
• 32:22
  You were saying that in the podcast about that one specific issue.
• 32:25
  And so it.
• 32:27
  It's what I call a great validator.
• 32:29
  It's a way for people to be able to get to.
• 32:32
  Because I'm in the trust business, like, at some point in time, people just don't know everything that we know.
• 32:37
  That's why we're experts at that.
• 32:39
  They have to eventually have huge trust to hand over what they hand over to us.
• 32:45
  And so we have to figure out, can we trust this person in a number of different ways.
• 32:49
  And I think the podcast has helped humanize us and humanize me to be able to feel like that guy, I think is, you know, if I thump him, he's pretty trustworthy.
• 32:59
  It's helped in that way, I think.
• 33:01
  Excellent.
• 33:02
  All right, so we'll link the link to your podcast and your.
• 33:06
  Your contact info in the show notes for everyone.
• 33:08
  Ed.
• 33:09
  Okay, thanks, Dave.
• 33:10
  Yeah.
• 33:11
  Thank you so much for being here, taking the time to share these lessons about your journey and.
• 33:15
  And how you're helping entrepreneurs with their finances and whatnot.
• 33:18
  And I know some of our audience will certainly find value in this.
• 33:21
  And, yeah, anyone that needs or would like to reach out to Ed to learn more, his info will be in the show notes.
• 33:27
  So thank you very much for being here, Ed.
• 33:29
  Yeah, thank you, Dave.
• 33:30
  Appreciate it.
• 33:32
  And that is all the time we have for now.
• 33:33
  We will see you next time.