All right, we're here, we're back, we're with Matt this time. And now this guy, I'm not going to do an introduction. That's going to do his background. If you guys look, he does everything and anything that deals with our industry. So I'm going to applaud him. But I will say, go check out bridging the gap podcast. Cause I'm going to be on it. But without me stealing all the intro, Matt, without further ado, I want you to just tell us who you are, what you're about and what your passion is.

Matt Reiner, CFP®:
0:26

Thanks for having me, dude. And we're excited to have you on bridging the gap and it would be a fun conversation there. So be sure to tune in. Yeah. I think, it's best just to hear my story from the beginning, 20, 27 years ago, my dad founded our current wealth management firm, capital investment advisors here in Atlanta. And he built a solid foundation. My brother joined the firm shortly after, and he's he's older than me by about four years. And Join the firm and continue to build on that foundation. And then I joined in, I think I was employee eight or nine. I can't recall. And at that point, dad and my, and Mitch, my brother had built a really solid foundation of a business. And I actually dealt with a lot of imposter syndrome of understanding what was my value, what do I derive? And, I thought I wanted to go down the investment route and I started to try to add a ton of value there and didn't find the passion just dealing with what am I supposed to be doing? Where am I? Why am I? Here. And about five years into my journey, we started a technology business inside of the, inside of our wealth management business. And that kind of was the igniter the accelerant to figuring out what it is that I wanted. The desire of, the entrepreneur idea, the innovative idea the learning aspect, the technology aspect, the inspirational aspect of inspiring and leading a team and doing something different. And being different, it found my home. And we ran that business. We transitioned over to another business and we raised money about 8 million within both the technology businesses, ran them for about eight years. And then the biggest part of my journey was that they both fail. We closed down our most recent one in March of this year. I think that was probably the most bittersweet thing that ever happened, but probably the best thing ever happened because the journey, I would never trade for anything in the world, but it showed me what I wanted to do. Gave me a lot of understanding of being different and creativity and tapping into some of the innovation side that I really enjoy. And it gave us a foundation that we can then bring back into our own, in our own firm and build on that. And I've identified that my passion is creating content. It is creating new ideas. It is thinking differently. It is driving innovation in a different way, taking what we learned in a technology sphere and entering it into the wealth management sphere, but not just from a technology standpoint, from an innovative mindset, innovative processes and stuff of that nature. And so I find that the failure of those businesses were actually probably the best thing that ever happened to me, because that's where you learn the most. What I did well as a leader, what I didn't do well, what I did well as a product manager, what I didn't do well, what I did well with innovation. And it truly has been the springboard for identifying my path and thinking differently to help align my mission in the industry and for our firm going forward. A little bit of a long winded answer, but that's my journey of it's gotten me to where I am and driven me to what I do. I absolutely

Stoy Hall, CFP®:
3:04

love it, man. And the reason we have you on the alternative series is because of that outside innovation thinking, right? Business owners, all of us being business owners, right? We have to, we wear a lot of hats. Ultimately we have to until you can have a team behind you. And what I just learned from you is you took something, some ideas, some, what you thought were driven purposes and they failed. And what you took from it wasn't to sulk and to have all that. I'm sure you took a couple of days, of course, but from there, it's a positive of, okay, that didn't work, but what can we take from that and spit it on to going forward? And that's a message I try to drive home to all business owners is you're going to fail at a lot of things within it. It's your drive to keep going because that keep going this, if you will, is what's going to end up being successful in the long run. So I definitely applaud you for that.

Matt Reiner, CFP®:
3:52

Yeah. I appreciate that. I think that, the idea of failure is easy to talk about in the, in a past tense than in a future tense or a few or present tense, it, the decision and the journey to get to that point took many periods of time, many moments and many days and weeks and months to, to realize that. And so I think that there's some empathy that has to be exude it as well for leaders and entrepreneurs that you know, don't just a fail to fail go, but just be okay with taking a risk and understanding that failure is an option. And when you're able to put failure as an option on the table, then you're able to see things a lot clearer and take the necessary actions to go and drive towards your mission and give it the best. Potential opportunity for success. There is, and early on in my journey as an entrepreneur in our Texas, I said, I didn't put failure on the table. It wasn't until I put failure on the table, I was running away from failure because I didn't want to fail. So I was making decisions to not fail as opposed to succeed. And you think about all the greatest athletes and they talk about that all the time, but there's a journey and an aspect that goes into that you have to put failure on the table and say. It's just a potential option and you know what? I'm going to be okay with it. And I think that the one thing I'll say to any early stage entrepreneur or first time entrepreneur that may be struggling with it is that it's okay to fail and there is another side to it. Just like there's a lot of other sides as you're raising kids and everything of that nature, they go through these like breakups and they're like, ah, life is so terrible. And you're like, there is a, another side to this. And there is a light at the other side. And we used to just keep telling ourselves that, but you can't really do that until you say, Failures on the table, honestly, and wholeheartedly that you're okay with that. And that took me probably about four years or so to get to that point.

Stoy Hall, CFP®:
5:28

And we're both financial planners. So we talk about risk a lot, right? That's what comes up and usually has everything to do with investments. And I have done day trading. I've done the investment side. Obviously folks have heard this. I'm not a huge proponent of investments. I think investments are just a key or a cog to this giant wheel. They're very important, but it's not end all be all. And when it comes back to the risk is why I was getting that is because that failure, those decisions that you couldn't make had everything to do with risk. And ultimately, if you're not making decisions back to my athletic background, if you're not making that decision to pull that trigger, shoot that shot, you're also then failing as well by not taking on the risk. And we use risk a lot. There's different types of risks. There's different categories of risk in terms of the scale of it. However, ultimately. That fear of not doing anything, I believe is the biggest risk for somebody in their life and specifically entrepreneurs. If you're so fearful to make that next step, that next move, then you're going to fail anyway. There's no insight to that.

Matt Reiner, CFP®:
6:31

Yeah. I think that, I believe in don't. Don't slam me if I'm wrong, but I think it was Thomas Edison that had a quote, someone, something of that nature of saying, I didn't fail 10, 000 times. I just had 10, 000 things that didn't work out. And I think that that is the mentality. And I think in our industry, and it's something that it's a mission of mine. My overall mission is I believe that every single human being needs a human financial advisor. And my mission is to help the industry do that. And I think that the value of a human financial advisor is. So important and key and integral to success because of the human aspect of the relationship part of meeting financial goals, not just investment management. I agree with you on what you said, but with that mentality, I think that our industry, one of the things that we have to do to be able to attract more people to what we do is we have to understand where our kind of blind spots are. And I think that one of our blind spots is that. We are very risk averse. And I think it's really good to be risk averse when it comes to investment management, right? Like I'm not proponent of being risk taking when it comes to investment management, but we have to, we have, our industry has evolved so drastically to where investment management is just a sliver of the overall pie and the value that we provide. And in, in order to provide our extreme value and let our kind of our own self. We have to take some risks and that doesn't mean that we're going to take risks on the investment side, but we have to take risks in terms of this value that we provide the services that we provide how we provide that. What the conversations that we have with our clients, right? Having that kind of really deep, personal kind of touchy feely conversation because we're trying to get to fulfillment. And it not going well and like we lose a client like that should be okay. But we're so risk averse because of how our industry has grown, which is not a bad thing. But we also don't have a a strong. Impetus driving us to forcing us to change because we are in a great industry where we can do nothing and continue to grow, right? As long as we just serve who we have, we can double our income without adding any new clients. And that's a phenomenal industry. But I think that comes with a requirement as well. That we should always constantly push ourselves because we have such a great fortunate opportunity. We shouldn't ever stay status quo. We should always continue to drive more for the betterment of our team, the betterment of our clients, and ultimately the betterment of our firm to do better than just be status quo. And I think that's the drive and the mentality shift that I hope I can inspire over time for this industry, because I think it'll allow us to serve more people, attract more people, and impact more people, both ourselves and our clients, more importantly.

Stoy Hall, CFP®:
9:09

See, he's a podcast host because his transition, I was going that way. So it's like we are on the same page. No I could not agree more. I'm a huge proponent of shifting and disrupting our industry from that perspective. It really does come down to, I, I came from the insurance side of things, right? Selling life insurance, doing that whole bit. And it was always coming down to the risk of death and all of that. We, that's all we ever talked about. And that's where like our value stemmed from, but we never wanted to know too much about people. We wanted to know enough to do a fact finder, uh, needs analysis, my life insurance, make the sell and move forward. You start going investments. It's very much the similar aspect. I love what I am seeing from our industry from. And I don't want to say the younger generation because that's not necessarily about age, but this new mindset of humans first, emotions matter. Because that's what people really want, right? My clients, and we talk about it all the time, there's one question that they ask, and I summarize it very shortly, because sometimes it's long winded, clients get that way, is, am I good? They just want to know, are they good? And that good question means one means multiple things. Am I good in terms of retirement? Are we good to go on this trip? Am I good to buy this, this vehicle? And ultimately, Can I be okay and be happy and not have stress? That's what that means and as a planner if we don't know what their triggers are We don't understand where any of that is then when we go to create a plan There's a hole in that plan that plan is null and void if you will because we do something And it affects them. Guess what you didn't, you failed as a financial planner, you failed because now they are stressed even more and I believe, and the big long winded question I'm trying to get to is how in our industry do you believe we're being able to show that value now, that value doesn't have an ROI on it. That value doesn't have a return that people can see. How are we going to be able to see and show that more so we can get

Matt Reiner, CFP®:
11:15

more people? Yeah, I think that's the biggest I think that's one of the biggest challenges that we have. I think that's the biggest, that's one of the bigger hills that I'm trying to scale right now as well is that there is this desire in a need to have more depth in your conversation. And I think that there's a lot of, there's a. That there's a lot of worry because it's changed, right? Like I'm an advisor as well. And that you go to my clients that I've had for 10 years, 15 years and sit down and say, let's talk about emotions. I think that they would look at me and be like, who are you? Has an alien come in and taken you over? Like it would be different, but there's this concept of. And you mentioned it like the earlier, the younger generation, et cetera, is that the, and I was at a conference recently where they talked about micro generations and generations have different needs and we have to be willing to adapt. We can't expect the future generations to adapt to way we do it just because that's the way that we've done it. It's been so successful for current generations. If you're dealing with, just think about it. If you're dealing with a, if your core client is a 50 year old, executive, that person 10 years ago is now 60. They're different generation. They had different upbringings and Morgan Housel talks about it in the psychology of money about how, from the ages, I think he said of 13 to 21 really shapes who you are. And so that's an eight year period. So every eight. Years that you are in business and you're serving the same core clients, because you're not necessarily now just serving six year olds, you're still serving 50 year olds. That's a different generational individual that went through different things and saw different things. And when you start them talking about like 20 year olds, 30 year olds and 40 year olds, they grew up in an era of technology. That's totally different than your current clients. So what this means, and I'll get to answering the exact question is that the way that you introduced this may not be right for who your core clients are. But you need to build a business for where the industry is going. And you can start introducing new ways of doing business for your current, for your new clients that may not be applicable to your current clients, but ultimately your new clients are going to become outweighing of your current clients and you have the ability to make change and it doesn't have to be one size fits all. And that is where a lot of the challenge comes from people to think about it because that means that we have to juggle a lot of balls. Business becomes more difficult. The way that we serve our clients becomes more difficult. We need more processes, more technology, more innovation. And that's where you get to why you need to invest time, effort, and money. Not necessarily money, just time and effort. And maybe money into this concept to be able to allow yourself to be where the industry is going. Not necessarily the industry, but the clients that we serve in this industry are going. That is a core value concept of what we need to think about. And then judging the ROI. It's a feeling, right? This is a relationship business. How do you judge that ROI is the ability to attract and retain. And if you are able to do more that's aligned with the generation of the client that you're serving, the 50 year old who you've been doing it for 15 years and now you have 65 year olds. They're still great. You still continue to serve them because that's your core business, but you may need to serve differently is can you attract and can you retain that should be your ROI now delivering that to the client becomes extremely difficult. And that's the mountain, the challenge of value the challenge. Mountain that I'm trying to scale is how do you deliver that value and show that value tangentially? It has to be different than just showing performance. And so you have to rethink and become creative and innovative in how you talk about what your value is. Maybe we're structuring everything into short term goals and we're talking about experiences and we're moving up the value pyramid. Look at all these charities that we've donated to. We wanted to do five. We did seven this year. You want to take three trips. For you wanted to move close to your kids. We helped you buy a house. Look at that. None of that is performance related. It's actual oriented. It's moving up the value pyramid and it's creating more fulfillment for your clients. But the only way to do that. Is to understand what is their core, why, what is their purpose? And the only way to have that is to have a very difficult conversation at the forefront, that's going to be super uncomfortable, but is necessary because then you can highlight all the good that resonates with them because what drives them. And you know what? A lot of people performance isn't there. It's just the easy, tangible thing to point to. And so we point to it, but it flies over everybody's head and they don't understand value. Value is out of your control by looking at fulfillment value becomes in your control of what you can deliver for your clients. Round of applause

Stoy Hall, CFP®:
15:44

button. Don't worry. We'll get that one up. But hey, yeah, no You're right. One you have to do on the forefront two The value is not in our control But three where I believe a lot of us come together and as a whole as an industry Which I have not seen In my 12 years in this business There's a lot of us that don't really come together and work together. We don't work together collectively as an industry. We always think we're in competition. We never really share too much because we feel like we're in competition. I'm here to answer that for everybody. There's too many people in America, let alone the world, for us to handle, right? We can't handle that. There's not enough of us. So let's stop worrying about competition. Let's get to helping each other out. And I think the really cool way we're doing it is us right now going pod for pod on guest for guests. Sharing content, putting more of this content out because now people are starting to relate and understand what our industry really is about. We have this huge mountain to climb. I'm going to steal that from you from just the perspective of all we do is investments. That is where everyone is stuck at. That's what we do. It's only investments. Back to what we talked about, it's a little part of it. The other part is the emotional side and taking care of all that. So for me, I'm challenging everyone to be louder and to get involved with each other and to share stories and to share more of our client stories. So these prospective clients are out there going shit, they're talking about me. That is me. I want their help now. I can see that as a value. And at that point, it's no longer a value thing to them. You're part of their team. You're part of their family. And once you're there. That's your job. Didn't do your

Matt Reiner, CFP®:
17:26

job. You touch on it. So that, that's incredible perspective and I am aligned with you, right? Let's change this industry together. My mission is for every single human being in the United States to have access to human financial advisor. I'll tell you right now, there's not one firm that's going to do that. And I think that there's two points to take away. One is that. We all, the competitive nature stems to about like 25 years ago when there was this like shift from the broker dealer wirehouse model into the RA model. And it was like, our value prop was on investment management and on being an RA. And so we kept investment management to ourselves because it was like kind of something that we could hide. And that was like a selling proposition. But More that's become more commoditized and more has come to the forefront of understanding what drives people to sign up and be committed to a wealth manager. And it's not investment management data research after research shows that. And I think that people have become aware of that where our moat is around something that can never be replicated by AI, by another person. By me, I can tell you everything about my life. I can tell you exactly how I think the thing that you're not going to replicate is me. And you know what? You're never going to be able to be me, and that's okay. And you know what? There's a lot of people out there that don't want me as their advisor, and that is fine. But I'm going to be a proponent of getting them in the hands of someone, because I believe that they need someone. And there's a lot of people that are committed to me that would never go to anybody else, because they like me as a person, and nobody can replicate that. And our moat is being authentic, and being real, and being who we are. And that's what we should dive into and we should collaborate on how to make our business better so that we can be us to and get more swings at the plate with more people by being us. And we're going to strike out because they just don't like us. That's okay. It's okay. We're in this world. If they don't like us and we're like a failure, it's no, like that's just, we all want to be accepted. And so we don't like to be denied. Like I get that, but we have to overcome that. And i, that's why I'm out there sharing and speaking to advisors and sharing ideas and innovations and things that we're working on and processes that we do, because you can replicate that, but you're not replicating the people we have in our business, the culture we are in the individual that I am. And that's my moat. But I know that my moat isn't going to attract every single human being. And the best thing that I can do is to help others do that more effectively as well. And the second point is that this change that we talk about, I think that some people look at it like that is overwhelming. No chance. I don't even know where to start. And it is like what I talk about is like very much utopia. It's like where theoretically I want to get to because I. need a set of vision in order for me to drive to. And I know that it's a long term vision. And when I think about changing like this advisory firm and how an advisor works and the value they provide and the services they offer, it doesn't have to be all in like a day or a year or two years or three years. It's just go and hopefully take one tidbit of something I say. Hopefully one thing I can say is intelligent and take that. And go implement it and see how it works. See how it feels and just build on that. Have this natural curiosity to learn and evolve as opposed to the stuck in your ways, because all great companies and industries have a a core value of curiosity. They have a natural drive of learning and curiosity. And if you can have that, and you just, and you have this ability to test and iterate and learn. You're going to become better over time. And you'll look back at five years and be like, Holy cow, have I evolved? But if you try to bite, eat the whole elephant with the one bite, like it's just not going to happen.

Stoy Hall, CFP®:
21:04

Do you hear that entrepreneurs? We're not just talking about advisors here. All of you can take something from either our industry, your other industries, other ideas, and start to just. Piece a little bit together just a little bit. That's how I started with the whole podcast too. By the way,

Matt Reiner, CFP®:
21:19

was the best thing is from other industries to your point. No,

Stoy Hall, CFP®:
21:22

yeah, it really is. And that's where I like got the podcast role in a couple of years ago. I had a staff challenge me, let's go do something fun. We started with in the sports side and I didn't really know how I wanted to launch the wealth one and all of a sudden they're like, let's just do one. Let's just do an episode and then we did it and it started to just expel into this. Holy shit. I think this is a platform and not just like the audio part, but also the cutups and the social media and all that stuff really could start to send a message to our communities and to society and showing who financial planners are. And what we can do for others, but also start to share what other entrepreneurs are doing because there's so many tidbits that are out there. I remember going to conferences. I used to go to all of them and boy, it's a nightmare, but you ultimately only leave there with a couple tidbits in a, now a whole new group of friends though, right? You leave with a couple little tidbits and a whole new network, which I love. But now with the power of social media and our podcast and our ability just to verbally be out there now, thanks to compliance I love you SEC We're able to spread that message further than we have before and reach other avenues That is why we have to come together to even blast that more. So I love that. I love the hell out of that Yeah, I mean I that

Matt Reiner, CFP®:
22:48

A lot of people are, they sit and they're like so you started a podcast gosh, it's you got all this stuff, like you got this like Riverside app, you got microphone, like I don't have the setup, you got a camera and here's where my challenge is. It, we didn't, it didn't start this way. Like you should see some of my first ever videos I did and my first ever podcast, like I've gone through five different iterations of podcasts. So then now have this podcast of bridging the gap where we've had almost 150 guests and like we it's consistent, but I didn't just start and it just went to that way. There's a lot of iteration, but there was a natural curiosity that I had. I would follow, I would listen to podcasts. I would take bits of. What I like from others, and I would try and it didn't work, but then I like this part of it, and then I would talk to more people, and then I would talk to more people, and then I would learn, and I would try a little thing, and then I made it my own, and the authenticity of that, and the ability for people to see the authenticity of me in these different mediums is so powerful, and I wish everybody liked me. That'd be great. That'd be nice. But they don't. They don't. Yeah. And I've had to come to grips with that. It wasn't easy. There's a natural desire of acceptance and, but the point I make on that is that be your authentic self. That doesn't mean you have to come up with all of it by yourself. You can come up with it based on other people and then make it your own. Don't try to replicate anybody else because it was, I tried that and it doesn't last long. Because then ultimately my authentic self came out and it didn't work. Be you, but learn from others and build on what they've done. A lot of people have done a lot of work that you can learn from. So how does

Stoy Hall, CFP®:
24:22

someone take that and really internalize that, right? Because a lot of us, our industry, other industries, they always want to put this facade out there or this impersonation and we don't mean to do it, but like to the public, we speak and do different things than we do. If me and you were having a drink and watching the Braves, thank you. 14 inning slump. Like how, what would you say to entice people to actually bring their authentic self out to the public? Is there an initial step? Is there something you did?

Matt Reiner, CFP®:
24:52

Yeah, it's a really good question. I think I think it stems, I think it's like really twofold. I think it's a confidence thing of being confident in who you are. And it's actually three things. I think it's self awareness of being truly self aware of who you are. And I think it starts with accepting who you are. I am, I started my career trying to be someone I wasn't. And I've now looking back, I realized that I thought I needed to be this type of person in this industry for the industry sake, but also because, I was the son and the brother of two of the people that were there before me. And I felt like I had to be that person. And then I started this technology company and I felt like an outcast because I was like, I'm going super creative, but I've also realized that I love creativity. I love that, like that aspect. It gets me going and it's totally different than what we do in our industry. And for a long period of time, I didn't accept that in myself and I tried to avoid it, but now I've accepted it because that's who I am and now I can be my best self. And so it's, but it became from a self awareness. Like it started at self awareness, like investing a ton in self awareness of myself. And then it, that self awareness led to some confidence. And then that allowed me to accept who I am. And allowing me to accept who I am allows me to lean into my difference, my, my uniqueness, which is my cura, my creativity. And I think that too many advisors, especially, they think that they have to be this certain person. And, and they're, they may not be that person. And they're worried that if they show who they are, not in the professional life, in their professional life, that they will be rejected. And remember, we don't like rejection. It's a human psychological bias. We don't like rejection. And so they just, they put this facade up and I, what I would encourage people to do is just try. With one client, one prospect, just be pretend that you're just their friend. Now. Yeah. Like you don't you may not talk about, the things that you did in college that you probably don't need to talk about. I don't really talk about it anymore with my friends because it's, it's a different person, but be a more casual professional. And let more of you shine and I'm telling you, you're going to be like crazy surprise with what ends up because I've started doing that with my clients. I'll have more like deeper conversations with them and I'll let them know how I am, like how I'm feeling. I'll go deep and be vulnerable. And they're like, they then open up and become vulnerable too. And they're like, wow, this is great. And the conversation and the relationship becomes stronger because of that. Yeah. But I used to always avoid that because I was like, I didn't see anybody else doing that. And I was like, I don't want to be the odd man out. But I was like, that's who I am. It's who I am. This world now is accepting of all people and they should be more than ever. And we accept who you are first. And then it's easier. That's what I think would be a piece of advice. Absolutely.

Stoy Hall, CFP®:
27:46

Just try the thing. Just try it. I did the same thing. Your story. I got chills a little bit. Mainly because like I was the same way. One, I'm a black guy coming into this industry, so already I'm an outlier. I'm in Iowa, which is already not already an outlier. We were told always to wear suits, always to do these proper things, and I always felt like an outsider. Always. Now I'm always going to feel that way, specifically in our industry for a while because just skin color in general. But I didn't recognize who I am, what I'm, what my skill set is, and that my skill set is to relate to people and just have fun with them and get them to not even get them to open up. It just naturally happens. We'll talk about stuff we'll open up and that has nothing to do with the financial plan right away, right? That's just us as humans and the human element of building a relationship that we all strive for Everyone does to some degree, they want that connection, right? They want to feel accepted. And the only way to do that is to really just break it down. And then all of a sudden it goes deeper and deeper. And then you finally get to the point where holy hell, I really like you. And they go, yeah, I like you too. Okay. Let's build out your plan. Let's make sure it's good. And we'll check up on you. That's

Matt Reiner, CFP®:
28:57

ultimately where it comes down to. It's so unfortunate that our industry has stigma. Every industry, the world has this. that you believe that you have to live up to this kind of this nature. And, there's going to be people that listen to this podcast and the people that, that may have listened to my podcast and don't listen to it anymore that just don't believe in, in, in the way that, that we are, and they're pointing and saying, look, it's so slow that it's evolving so much slower, like we are right. You're wrong. And I just don't see it as a right or wrong way. I think that there's an opportunity for everybody to be their true self. And I think that. It all goes back to another thing that we've talked about here is it goes back to being genuinely curious. Be genuinely curious about the person across the table from you or next to you, however you set up your office, like just be genuinely curious about their journey in life, like what led them to this and just ask really interesting questions and be genuinely curious with no agenda. And what you'll find is that you then just are building a relationship. That's all this business is. Call it. There is no secret sauce. Just build deeper relationships. And the way you build deeper relationships, it's just like you do in your personal life. You're genuinely interested in curious. And you know what? If you find that you're not interested in curious, then maybe the right thing is not to serve that particular client. Now that is not going to be a hot take for anybody because nobody's going to let me hear that they're going to want to serve everybody. But maybe that is a different approach to look at it in that sense. But it

Stoy Hall, CFP®:
30:19

also then hopefully forces you to get relationships like this or with others and be like, you know what, you're an amazing person, but like we don't jive very well. However, I know Matt, I know Ashley, I know I'm going to do an introduction because I think you'll fit smashingly with them. This is going to be phenomenal. That's where we all can start to lift each other up and not get that feeling of we have to serve everyone. We all go through it. I've been through it just recently, leave my business partner in April and now recognizing, no, this is who I want to work with. And if no one, if they don't fit, I have a handful of people that I trust. To go ahead and say, this is who you should work with. This is the one, this guy's amazing. Let's go get it done. And that's where we need to get to as an industry,

Matt Reiner, CFP®:
31:02

in my opinion. I couldn't agree with you more. And I think that change, and I just want to be super understanding of some people, how they view the profession and where it's going. And they have, maybe have a different view is that change is difficult. And this isn't just a change to change. It's just a, it's a, it's an evolution in my mind. And, I think that. I, I even look at my dad and, I talked to him about some of the things I'm thinking and thinking of doing and what we're building and some of the things that we're building. And, he looks at it and he's what are y'all doing? It's just his vision of it is different, but it doesn't make what he did right and what we're doing wrong. It's just different. And as long as the core foundational element of serving families. stays there in doing what is right by them, then you should be free to try to impact them in a different way. We have all evolved, right? Just think about 15 years ago, we never had an iPhone, right? I think it was like only eight years ago, Zoom came out. Like we're doing this over, like we're changing and you push push push against change. When it comes in, people are like, iPhones are bad. iPhones are bad. The internet's bad. Email's bad. Zoom's bad. Nobody's ever going to do DocuSign. She pushed. And then because it just stays there consistently, because there's voices and needs and an impact and it has merit, it becomes the norm. And so don't push back against change, be more open minded and curious to change. And you will actually adapt. That's the biggest key of a human being is that we're able to adapt better than anything else in the world.

Stoy Hall, CFP®:
32:30

So what are you currently curious about? What's this next creativity of yours? I know that things moving, so you got to tell us.

Matt Reiner, CFP®:
32:37

Yeah. So I'm super interested in we're in the process of building out an innovation lab inside of our firm today. And I'm super interested in how to help build an innovative and infusing innovative mindset. And I'm. Been traveling around and visiting different firms and organizations that are a lot larger than us and learn about how they run innovation and build innovation labs and create transformative mindsets. So I'm really curious on that side and really more on the side of how do we innovate and enhance our client experience? How can we. Create this surprise and delight moment. How can we make it easier for our clients to deliver more value? And then how do we elevate our team experience? How do we make our team more efficient so that they can do more of what they want to do and less of what they don't like to do and and really magnify the human element. And and so it's like super curious of learning from other organizations outside of our industry. And then, what's on the forefront of my mind is like, how do we. To psychologically, how do we help people to overcome the biases that are just naturally inclined in all of us? And how can we utilize processes, relationships and technology to help with that? And I'm super curious of course, as many are right now in generative AI. I think that there's, I think that is. Here to stay. It's one of those, it's one of those kind of transformative moments in our history. And I, whether it's how it is today or not, I think that just a lot of the things are lining up with, in, with generative ai with regards to the accessibility the applicability and the cost is free, right? It's easy to use, it's applicable to ev any day life. It's not just to one industry and there's opportunities to use it for free. That is a transformative moment. In our world, because there's, it's not just a skill set or a particular industry. And so I'm really curious on that side. I still have a passion and have curiosity around VR and AR and how do we implement it incorporated into our world. And I think about it, how do it helps us, I think, overcome some of the psychological barriers. I was just talking with a company about it earlier today is like. How can we use VR, AR metaverse, or even like the non goggle metaverse that they have to help clients understand what decisions mean today for the future. How do we help? That's the biggest challenge. How do we help them visualize the future? And we have that ability with generative AI and handle things that just come out of the blue, right? We don't have to do like an, if this, then that generative AI plus VR can help with that. And then how do we train advisors to handle situations when they're younger? How do we. Shorten the time span of training and helping them go through the situations using analytics and scenario analysis to do that and now make an advisor. It takes them five years of training before they become revenue producing to become 66 months to having an impact on families like. That seems super interesting to me. And I think that there's a lot there and I'm always into like self productivity and self improvement, right? How do I become as productive as possible in the hours that I am? So that I touched all my core values every single day and have as much of an impact as I can, both on my family and my business and everything else in my life. And I'm super curious on, on a lot of those things. Some of them technology, some of them just productivity on that side. You're such a nerd, and

Stoy Hall, CFP®:
35:36

I love it.

Matt Reiner, CFP®:
35:38

I love the hell out of it. I am a nerd. I was thinking

Stoy Hall, CFP®:
35:40

about the VR and AR stuff, and it just got me thinking holy crap, I could really see how that would do both things, right? Both for the client, but also the training, and I think a lot of people understand that in our industry, it takes training, years of experience to even get to a level of where you're confident, too. You've seen enough to really Provide that value. So I love the hell out of that. What is one thing you want everyone to take from today in our conversation?

Matt Reiner, CFP®:
36:08

Yeah, I think it one of my mantra is that you're defined in the present moment. And I would say that what's happened in the past is the past. There's nothing you can do about it. What happens in the future is unknown. All you have is this moment. And I would encourage you to take this moment and start being curious. And I think that if you can do that do that every single day and you're going to be amazed at where you're going to be. I love it. Be curious.

Stoy Hall, CFP®:
36:35

Let's go check out Bridging the Gap. If they want to work with you you're the creative side, but if they want to work with your firm what's the best route and what type of

Matt Reiner, CFP®:
36:43

clientele you're looking for? Yeah. If you want to continue to follow some of this kind of creative, innovative side, you can go to mattreiner. com and subscribe to my newsletter. They're the circle. We do a weekly email with some really in depth frameworks and thoughts to ponder. If you want to work with us on. Wealth management side, you can go to yourwealth. com. And whether it's working with me or one of our team members, we now have 80 team members, we have five offices across the country. So there's someone that will, we will fit you with as aligned with who you are. And you can go there and, we are a firm that's focused on helping families find happiness and retirement. That is what we are about. And we help the millionaire next door. And the millionaire next door is evolving, but we're helping them. And if you're looking to find happiness in retirement we can do that for you. We, or we can help you find that happiness here. The proceeding program was sponsored by black mammoth. Any awards rankings or recognition by unaffiliated third parties or publications are in no way indicative of the advisors, future performance, or any individual client's investment success. No award ranking or recognition should be construed as a current or past endorsement of black mammoth. Information regarding specific awards, rankings, or recognitions is available on the Black Mammoth website, www.black mammoth.com. All investment strategies have the potential for profit or loss. Investment strategies such as asset allocation, diversification, or rebalancing do not assure or guarantee better performance and cannot eliminate the risk of investment losses. There are no guarantees that a portfolio employing these or any other strategy will outperform a portfolio that does not engage in such strategies. This broadcast should not be construed by any client or prospective client as a solicitation to affect or attempt to affect transactions and securities or the rendering of personalized investment advice due to various factors including changing market conditions. The information discussed in this broadcast may no longer be reflective of current positions or recommendations. While information presented is believed to be factual and up to date, Black Mammoth do not guarantee its accuracy, and it should not be regarded as a complete analysis of the subjects discussed. The tax and the state planning information discussed is general in nature and is provided for informational purposes only, and should not be construed as legal or tax advice. Listeners should consult an attorney or tax professional regarding their specific legal or tax situation. Past performance is not indicative of future results.