Episode 33:New School Marketing Strategies Power a $420 Million RIA Led by Matt Blocki and Jamison Wealth, Partners of EWA | How Content Marketing Can Grow a Boutique
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If you're tired of the same old business strategies (that don’t even work for boutiques) and want to carve a path to uncommon success, it's time to challenge the status quo.
Not sure how? You’re in luck with this episode. Matt Blocki and Jamison Smith from Equilibrium Wealth Advisors are coming on the show to share their rebel playbook for success.
Listen in as they discuss:
● The danger of not using EOS
● How over tracking marketing analytics can be harmful
● How specializing supercharged their success
● A fresh client acquisition playbook that skips the usual pestering for referrals strategy
Ready to break the mold so you can take your boutique to new heights? This episode has all the insights you need to make it happen.
About Matthew Blocki:
Matthew Blocki is the founder and CEO of Equilibrium Wealth Advisors, an SEC-Registered Investment Advisory Firm. He has a Bachelor of Science in Business Administration with concentrations in Finance and Accounting. He also holds several designations as a financial advisor: CFP® ChFC® and RICP®.
Before founding EWA as an independent RIA, Matthew started off his financial advisor career with a fortune 100 company, where in his 2nd year he achieved several qualifications that put him in the segment of the top 1% of financial advisors in the USA (based on quality and production metrics). He has maintained this every year since
He is a Pittsburgh native, and enjoys spending time and traveling with his daughter, Aurora (who is almost 5), and his girlfriend (Beth). They also have 2 golden retrievers (Sammie and Chloe) and a Frenchie (named Tito).
About Jamison Smith:
Jamison has dual Bachelor of Science degrees in Accountancy and Business Administration with a concentration in Personal Financial Planning. He began in the financial planning industry as a college intern a large broker dealer, where he met Matt, and later joined EWA shortly after the RIA was launched in 2020. Jamison is now a Lead Advisor and Partner at EWA, where he spends much of his time working with some of the firm’s top clients.
After spending 2 years inside of a fortune 100 broker-dealer crafted his belief that there was a lack of training and awareness of sound financial planning and advice in the industry where much of the training offered is product centric. That’s why In 2022, Matt and Jamison founded Wealth Advisor Training, LLC.
Outside of business, Jamison resides in Pittsburgh where he spends much of his free time with his dog Chance, on the golf course, or traveling to new places.
TRANSCRIPT
Below is an AI-generated transcript and therefore it may contain errors.
Matt Blocki: [00:00:00] Now we're a team of nine and we're bringing in a hundred million net AUM per year without asking for referrals. And I would say, well, what are you doing? I think we're doing really good financial planning, but we're also getting ourselves out there and building the brand up, but we're not tracking like leads or any of this nonsense.
Matt Blocki: I think, you know, as a financial advisor. Provide good service. Get yourself out there and magic will
Stacy Havener: happen. Hey, my name is Stacey Havener. I'm obsessed with startups, stories, and sales. Storytelling has fueled my success as a female founder in the toughest boys club, Wall Street. I've raised over 8 billion that has led to 30 billion in follow on assets for investment boutiques.
Stacy Havener: You could say against the odds. Yeah. Understatement. I share stories of the people behind the portfolios while teaching you how to use story to shape outcomes. It's real talk here. Money, authenticity, growth, setbacks, sales, and marketing are all topics we discuss. Think of this as the [00:01:00] capital raising class you wish you had in college mixed with happy hour, pull up a seat, grab your notebook and get ready to be inspired and challenged while you learn.
Stacy Havener: This is the billion dollar backstory podcast.
Stacy Havener: This is for all my old school founders and friends in the finance biz, because these two next gen financial advisors are going to challenge us to get out of our own way, to let go of the old boring sales and marketing strategies and to embrace new, Authentic content led growth plans. Meet Matthew Blocky and Jameson Smith, CEO and partner of Equilibrium Wealth Advisors, a fast growing RIA who has combined a niche specialty with modern marketing to build multiple companies and hundreds of millions in AUM.
Stacy Havener: This is a [00:02:00] glimpse. Into how investment and wealth boutiques can fight the bigs using a different playbook. Yeah, insert all the David and Goliath references here. If you want to build a different business and create uncommon success, you can't do what everyone else is doing or what everyone else has always done.
Stacy Havener: Matt and Jameson are challenging the status quo. And today's episode invites you inside their four Rebel walls. Here's to finding our slingshots. Meet my friends, Matt and Jamison. Welcome, everyone, to the Billion Dollar Backstory podcast. I am thrilled to have Matt and Jamison from EWA with us today in the studio.
Stacy Havener: This is going to be a super cool conversation, not just for you all, but for me, I am excited to learn about some of the things you guys are doing. And we'll come to that when we get there, but we got to start at the beginning. My [00:03:00] favorite thing, backstory and Matt, I'm going to have you kick us off since you're the founder of EWA.
Stacy Havener: Tell us. What was your path to starting this advisory practice? Did you always know you wanted to be an advisor? You can go back as, as far as you want.
Matt Blocki: Yeah, absolutely. Well, Stacy, real quick, just huge, huge fan of yours. Ron Carson has been a mentor. I've coached with him for a year, his company for years.
Matt Blocki: And so I got turned on to your podcast when you interviewed him. Ever since it's been super impactful. So thanks a lot for you too. Awesome. Thank you. Absolutely. Yes. My backstory, I was a double major in accounting and finance in college. And I remember really specifically, I went to my investments professor who, which was really the only class I really liked in college.
Matt Blocki: And he, I said, do you have any internships for investments? And he sent me to this insurance company and said, this is a great internship. Go do it. So I ended up doing that based upon his recommendation really hated it because I had to let go, you know, solicit friends and family. And even though [00:04:00] I hated it, it was like a top intern of the country.
Matt Blocki: And then Decided to go into accounting after because I had that. And that's just from the advice I had from professors, from family, et cetera, go take the solid job. You know, sales isn't a real job, all that kind of negativity. And so I ended up at accounting is something I really did not like. I ended up following other people's opinions, being miserable.
Matt Blocki: I think I was the most short lived accounting. Career and history for 10 months. And then I was like, I'm out. So then I started interviewing. That's like, you know, I really do want to be a financial advisor. I just want to sell insurance. So I started interviewing at the big wire houses and they said, you know, you didn't have a network of people that have at least 250, 000 to invest.
Matt Blocki: Well, I, I grew up very middle class dad's a pastor. They don't have a special needs sisters. My mom was. Doing a business that's now super successful, but she was living and there wasn't much time. So I didn't have a network. I didn't know one person with over 250, 000. There's maybe one or two people in the church, but I didn't know what it was.
Matt Blocki: I was like, well, I can't do that. So I ended up back at that insurance company because they caught wind that I was [00:05:00] thinking about being a financial advisor. They convinced me, you know, forget about your internship. We'll let you get laced. What you do, we don't have an account minimum. So I spent 10 years there and then the common theme of ending up in the county theme ended up being the common theme of what happened that 10 months.
Matt Blocki: It took me to learn the lesson of don't follow other people's opinions. It secretly reappeared in my life for 10 years because really the culture of that company, it was very competitive, which I'm a very competitive person. And so it kept me there for way too long because I, I really got. Deep into, you know, the culture, the competitiveness, kind of get these study groups.
Matt Blocki: And then I ended up my fifth year in kind of waking up and realizing, you know, are, are my goals really my goals or are they someone else's agenda, you know, for my time. And I had this snap realization. And then from there, it was kind of, once you have that realization and awakening, It's just the writing's on the door, but then it took me many, you know, five more years really to figure out what's the best option.
Matt Blocki: And it ended up being that we had to start our own firm for many reasons, but that's just a quick snapshot of how we got there. [00:06:00] Yeah.
Stacy Havener: So super interesting and interesting that your dad's a pastor. Interesting that your mom was an entrepreneur. What line of business is she in? Was she
Matt Blocki: in Yeah, so she's like one of the top flute professors or priorly, but now she has her own gadget that like helps the airstreams of people that pay flute.
Matt Blocki: And she's like, has been next to like the, most famous flute professors we can imagine, you know, be playing like sports growing up, how much I got made fun of for, for that business being public, but it was good. My mom's super successful and I do regret not playing any instruments because they really wanted me to play all these instruments.
Matt Blocki: I just, I kind of rebelled, but now I do regret it secretly. We can leave that for now.
Stacy Havener: Okay. Well, no, that's amazing. This is the good stuff. We're not leaving this out. Matt. So do you think did watching your mom build a business inspire you as an entrepreneur? Do you think? Oh, for
Matt Blocki: sure. Yeah. There's no
Stacy Havener: question.
Stacy Havener: Yeah. I love that. I love what you said about [00:07:00] waking up one day and realizing, Oh my gosh, I think all my dreams are actually someone else's. What am I doing? That is very relatable for anyone who's worked for a company before you launch a business. You kind of are in this like limbo place of what am I doing and who's writing this story?
Stacy Havener: No question. So good for you for realizing it and okay, so now you are, so now you have this advisory practice, you decide you're going to launch it, you know, you're going to do your own thing. And how does that go? Because that's not easy. Yeah.
Matt Blocki: So despite the very product focus at the prior company. You know, we were really doing financial planning off of that.
Matt Blocki: And so despite, you know, from the company perspective, they basically forced you to wear a hat for the company's best interest. We were always keeping the client's best interest in mind and with every recommendation, everything we did. And so that caused a lot of friction between me and the company.
Matt Blocki: Which ultimately led to me leaving, but ultimately clients felt that. And so, you know, 99 percent of clients that [00:08:00] we, after we left, we sent out a notice and we basically answered questions. We try to think, anticipate all the questions that have, why are you doing this? Why didn't you do this before? Or my fee is going to change, like a list of like many, many questions.
Matt Blocki: And so, 99 percent of our clients followed us and like 80 percent of the assets were actually over in three weeks. Wow. I think it speaks to clients knew that we had their best interests in mind based upon the work we had done, regardless of what company we were with. They could feel that. And so we explained that this wasn't going to further and essentially put it in legal format, us keeping their best interests in mind by starting an REA.
Matt Blocki: They were very happy. And ever since then we've grown dramatically quicker. Because I think clients wanted to recommend this to their friends and family, but they didn't feel necessary to explain that even though he's with this company, he's a good guy. They didn't want to happen conversations, but now it's like, Hey, check all the boxes are checked.
Matt Blocki: I can just say they do good work and, you know, send my family to them.
Stacy Havener: So talk about the growth. [00:09:00] So when you start, so that's fast. So, you know, a lot of clients came with you right away. So give us a baseline, like what was your AUM, let's say kind of in the beginning there after those clients came. Yeah.
Matt Blocki: I want to say it was like one 40 and then we decided to keep, we did an 80, 20 analysis.
Matt Blocki: This was in June of 2020. We say, okay, let's do it. Let's keep the 20 percent of our client base that makes up 80 percent for us. It was like 14 percent that makes up like 90%. I figured that I did a kitchen interview and I figured out the exact metric, but it was basically, it was more of a, uh, 80, 20 analysis than a typical at 20 percent that makes up 80%.
Matt Blocki: So we did that. We had to have the tough conversation and find good homes for those other 80 percent of clients that only made up 20 percent of the revenue. But we did that. It was a good. Time to kind of read it, refocus, reset our client minimums. And so we came over with one 20 and now I believe we're at triple.
Matt Blocki: We're over three 60 now. And that's about three years later. So, well, three and a half, yeah, three and a half years almost because of the June of 2020 when we made the [00:10:00] transition. And now we're pacing for, and we did a hundred million last year of net AUM. I think this year, Jameson's keeping track of that.
Matt Blocki: I think we're, you know, we're closing at a hundred. So we're close. Yeah, that's great. Yeah. We've got that billion dollar goal that Ron Carson instilled in my mind from a couple of years ago that now in four years, that's the theme of your podcast too. So.
Stacy Havener: Yeah, totally. And one of the things we want to do is, you know, take the people like Ron Carson, who was the first, first guest on the show and sort of like made it right.
Stacy Havener: And at a next level and have them tell us what was their journey like. And at the same time also have sort of emerging managers and emerging advisors. That's sort of like the next gen, like the ones who got next. So this is perfect because it kind of That was always the vision and there's a lot to learn from what and how you've built your business And I alluded to this at the top like what's fun Sometimes is you get and I don't i'm not [00:11:00] saying like I feel like i'm dating myself here But you get like that next gen I won't say younger you get like that next gen who thinks differently about Building a business and embracing technology and, you know, getting coaching and using things like EOS, which I want to talk about.
Stacy Havener: And you learn a lot when you're sort of stuck in an old way of doing things from the people who are on the come up because they're doing it different. And so I think there's a lot of lessons for all of us to learn in what you're doing and how. So let's talk about that a little bit. You've done a great job of specializing.
Stacy Havener: I think you have one or two niches, right? I know physicians is one. Is that your primary niche that you serve?
Matt Blocki: Yeah. Physicians is definitely number one. It's like 60 to 70 percent of our client base and then business owners and executives kind of categorize them that they deal with a lot of the same stuff and then ultimately the clients retire.
Matt Blocki: So really three. Okay,
Stacy Havener: but physicians to me is a niche where [00:12:00] those other two are very big like physicians is a very specific type of It could be but I mean they're kind of like business owners in some ways They have a unique set of challenges. So that Specialization is something that a lot of advisors are scared to do because they feel like, Oh, well, then what if, you know, some hundred million dollar client falls from the sky?
Stacy Havener: They're not a physician. I have to say no. So talk through a little bit of that specialization and how has it helped you? Because I think the flip side is it actually helps you more than it hurts
Matt Blocki: you. Yeah, there's no question. I think the niche and the specialization has allowed us to go so deep that we're able to keep, you know, over 99 percent retention rate just because we're able to do stuff that they know if they left us, they couldn't get other places.
Matt Blocki: So just examples of that. I think how I started working with physicians has really figured out that this was, this is really hidden in our name. Equilibrium Wealth Advisors. The toughest lessons I've learned is that your greatest strengths can flip on you into your greatest [00:13:00] weaknesses. So like an example of The competitiveness can be awesome.
Matt Blocki: You can grow an awesome business. But if you don't control that, if it's not purpose driven, then you're gonna always be competing over nonsense or it's gonna be, you're gonna get distracted and maybe you're competing over a client. That's not your nature that you shouldn't be serving. Just an example.
Matt Blocki: And so the other thing that's kind of showed up that's helped and sometimes hurt is maybe it's, you know, from childhood upbringing, I generally had the sense of taking over responsibility for other people's problems, which served me Really well as a financial advisor, because physicians were high stress working 80 hour weeks, have student loans.
Matt Blocki: And so, you know, how we started with that niche is I got referred to a couple, started doing talks, and then I just figured out how to solve what kept them up at night, which essentially was their student loans, how to manage their cash flow during residency and fellowship. And then thereafter, and so where that can flip on you is.
Matt Blocki: You know, I'm working 100 hour weeks and I'm taking on every single stress that you can imagine financially off of someone's [00:14:00] plate. And that's not, you know, obviously sustainable. So that's really how we came up with an aim equilibrium. But back to your, your question is, I couldn't agree more that the niche is super, super important.
Matt Blocki: And it took hundreds of hours of research on contract negotiations, student loans, all of these things that a typical financial advisor would do that has helped us just really grow from pure
Stacy Havener: word of mouth. Yeah, I can see that. And actually, that's why, you know, this idea of niching down is so powerful because the nuances of what a physician is going through in their life, not just with their finances.
Stacy Havener: is, is really unique and to specialize in that when you share stories of clients, you've helped, you know, impact stories. I think Jamison, you and I talked about this when we were together on your podcast, like other physicians can see themselves in that story. They see themselves as the hero on that journey and you as the guide to help them figure it out in a way [00:15:00] that.
Stacy Havener: Somebody who's not a physician is not going to relate. It's totally attract and repel. So that's awesome that you approach that with such bravery. This has been awesome, Matt. And I want to talk a little bit about, again, just on this idea of building a business. And the idea that, you know, we take this on ourselves because that's very real for I think all of us who are in service in any way.
Stacy Havener: And you've done some things that actually we've done too, like EOS. I want to come back to that. But before we talk about EOS, I want to jump over to Jameson for a second. Because one of the things that's unique about your business is that you actually are a multi primer. So you went from having one business to now having two, and the second business you have, Wealth Advisor Training.
Stacy Havener: I want to kind of bring that into the story here so we can talk about some of the challenges of doing two things and how things like EOS can help you. So Jameson, do you want to tell us a little bit about your backstory and then also talk about the [00:16:00] kind of Narrative around wealth advisor training.
Jamison Smith: Yeah, i'll give a quick backstory myself. I think it'll be a good segue So I actually matt and I met at our um last company we were at ironically I actually got fired from that position, which is what led me to to ewa but rewind back. I um Similar as matt double majoring accounting and finance really had no idea what I wanted to do I went to a super small school in west.
Jamison Smith: Virginia played lacrosse and I started to look at these internships and I was looking at like big financial internships and like I get a single interview just from being at a small school. And so I, similar situation, stumble across this internship, same place Matt started, and insurance company, you're on your own, calling your friends and family, selling.
Jamison Smith: Similar thing, grew up in like very middle class, didn't know, you know, I don't think I could name somebody that I grew up with that had like a million dollar net worth. And so as this internship program, I start doing really well just from it's a numbers game. You work really hard You see enough people you'll sell some stuff.
Jamison Smith: So i'm [00:17:00] a senior in college and top intern in like the office I'm, like making money and so I start full time and I quickly realized I had another mentor And that matt and I both know and then I met matt and I quickly realized like what i'm being taught at this company Is not like Real financial planning like we're just being taught to sell the products and what's in the company's best interest So probably like three months at that As a full time out of college I start shifting towards i'm going to do like holistic financial planning Well that becomes really hard because if you start gathering assets You get paid like a very very small percentage of the revenue So they want you to sell the products which is what you get paid on and so very quickly It became a lot of contention with me and like the management and i'd say i'm naturally very like Matt's point, biggest strengths, biggest weaknesses.
Jamison Smith: And that was one that got me into some trouble. So rebelled a bit. And then I started doing some work with Matt and then this other advisor there and they left to start EWA and that was kind of my, like, [00:18:00] Triggered to okay. I should probably start looking around and they found out that I was looking around I got fired and it was pretty funny story Like the day after I got fired matt had called me to started to interview dwa It was like a month after he had started and that's
Stacy Havener: how wait, can I ask you why you got fired?
Stacy Havener: Yeah,
Jamison Smith: I mean basically they just found out that I was looking at other jobs and they blended on like a culture fit Which was which was fair.
Matt Blocki: Okay The funnier story though is that he was interviewing for an advisor that was still at that company. Yeah. But under his team, so that like that advisor and that advisor then called his manager.
Matt Blocki: Oh my God. And told him, Hey, we're thinking about hiring. And then that manager used that information to, to fire him. So it was basically like, Internal backstab, so it's basically like when there's a Netflix documentary that comes out on this, I'm going to have to remove my LinkedIn profile that was ever associated with that.
Matt Blocki: I'm just kidding.
Stacy Havener: Thank you for answering the question because it just speaks to like [00:19:00] how toxic some of these cultures are. I mean, my gosh, like when you talk to advisors who've been a part of these types of firms, you realize like, what is happening? No wonder the financial services business catches such a bad rap.
Stacy Havener: There's just so much broken and kudos to you for realizing that the way to fix it for you and for your clients is to do your own thing and make your own rules and make your own culture and build it your way. So those things even though they're painful to go through they happen for a reason and and look at you now Yeah,
Jamison Smith: I mean that's basically what I tried to do things my own way inside of a large company and it didn't work So but yeah, I had some for a while there There was a lot of like resentment but looking back on it's like that's the best thing that ever happened to me Like that guy did me
Stacy Havener: such a favor.
Stacy Havener: Yeah, totally Okay, so now you join and you're doing your thing and how does this idea for wealth advisor training come to be? So
Jamison Smith: I would say that shaped a lot of my beliefs into kind of where we are now I just learned very [00:20:00] quickly that there's not and again, this is bias being inside of a large company, but Unfortunately, a lot of the industry is made up by these large companies that like there was no good training on how to give good financial advice.
Jamison Smith: It was all product centric. So that led, I mean, I learned most of what I know for financial planning just from learning from Matt, but then also just like researching certain topics that I was never taught, like spending hours, just like figuring stuff out. So fast forward, um, so it was 2020. I joined in like August 2020.
Jamison Smith: So it started in June and then shortly after. Fast forward, end of 2021. So about a year later, Matt had already always had this idea. He had got a lot of people asking for coaching and stuff within the big company. And so what we started doing with EWA, which I'm sure you can see with our podcast and everything, we have a pretty big, like social media presence and online presence.
Jamison Smith: How it started was within that big company. We weren't really allowed to send any mass like communication out. And so we were like, well, this is pretty cool. Now that we're in RIA, we can kind of do our own marketing. [00:21:00] And so we started, if we got a question asked five times by a client, we would just record a five to 10 minute video on it.
Jamison Smith: And then we had this like database of. Videos and we could send them out to clients. So we start recording these videos and that just became every quarter We would bring a video company and we'd record like 20 30 videos and we just make all these for the year That quickly evolved into why don't we post this on social media?
Jamison Smith: So we had this like video database and as We had Matt at this coaching idea. It was kind of like, well, why don't we just like package this all film, some new stuff, gear it towards financial advisors and make it like an online offering that to basically solve that problem that I said with these big companies and then big companies.
Jamison Smith: There's no, there's not a lot of really good training them with RIAs. That's a big stressor. When you hire a new team member, I mean, it takes hours to train them. So we're like, why don't we just streamline all this? And we basically built out what, when we hire an advisor, what we would put them through. To learn everything that we would want them to[00:22:00]
Matt Blocki: awesome.
Stacy Havener: That is so cool. And there's so many things I want to talk about there, but Matt, I see you nodding. Do you want to add anything to this story?
Matt Blocki: Yeah, I was just going to say the, I think the biggest, so two things when I go back for a second, anyone that's thinking about like in that toxic environment, you mentioned, there's no reason we have to play kind of in a culture where it's like victim.
Matt Blocki: You just, you can get out of any bad situations, but even though when it seems impossible at the time, anyone can get out of any bad situation and that's You know, part of what wealth advisors training is showing what's possible and making sure people are doing the best work for their client. But for the Jamison, for the wealth advisor training, I was just going to say the biggest struggle that Ron Carson would talk about is when you go from a single advisor to that higher, your first person, I mean, it's a struggle and it's scary and your financials will go down temporarily.
Matt Blocki: But there's so many advisors out there that are running lifestyle practices that do really good work for their clients that I think are a lot of clients are being underserved because of the lack of ability of resources to train new advisors. And so that's really where I would, [00:23:00] you know, second, what Jamison said is when Jamison came on, I was at full, like, probably double the capacity I should have.
Matt Blocki: And so we were able because of all these videos, we're going to get him not only fully up and running, but even the relationships transferred within like a six month period. Every study I've read has, it's like 2 years, maybe he does a little bit of talking in the meetings, but that's really, we created this resource 1st and foremost for our own firm and then realized how beneficial it could be to repackage it to other financial advisors.
Matt Blocki: But that's been the case now 3 times. That is so
Stacy Havener: good. Thank you. I love it. Okay, so let's unpack some of this because this is super cool So the first thing I love and like threw my hands up in the air waved around like I just don't care Is that you know, you said if you got asked a question five times you turned it into a video That like if you get nothing else from this Please write that down because that applies to any single [00:24:00] business.
Stacy Havener: Any industry. If you keep hearing the same question, what it tells you, like if you're asked a question, the odds are more people have that that aren't asking it. If you get the question five times, what a great. like bell to signal like action. Like the whistle is assigned for action. This means do something and you did it.
Stacy Havener: So if I'm sitting there listening to this and I'm like, gosh, I love what Matt and Jamison did there. Then you said you brought in a video person. Like now, if I'm listening to it, I'm like, Oh great. That's going to just break the bank. Like how much does that cost? Like, how did you do that? How did you find the person?
Stacy Havener: Is it
Jamison Smith: expensive? It kind of evolved. We outsourced to like another company to, we just contracted them basically. And then the sheer volume we were doing, we decided basically when we started the podcast, I guess we brought somebody in house. So yeah, Matt, you can speak on that more. Yeah. Yeah. I think we
Matt Blocki: paid that company.
Matt Blocki: They did a great job. That video is turned around pretty quickly. They'd come in once a quarter, we'd record 20 videos. We basically recorded 80 videos. One was a really a detailed market commentary for our [00:25:00] clients to make sure as a team, we're a unified chip and we have the same story, the same philosophy that we're presenting to our clients.
Matt Blocki: If a client calls me or Jameson, they're getting the same experience essentially. And so I think we paid them 20, 000 for 80 videos and then we found, well, I would have the flexibility to if I have an idea on the spot, so then we decided to hire someone full time just to do this because we're finding that like we don't really have the philosophy that we're going to hammer people for referrals.
Matt Blocki: We have the philosophy to do really good service and mention. That's how we grow. But don't ever ask. And so the more we get, it. Front of people's minds through social media, through newsletters, through all of these different touch points, the more likely that business will come in. And we found that to be true.
Matt Blocki: We don't have a direct correlation of if we create a video, we're getting a new client, but it just, well, the reality is when I was a solo advisor, my best year at my prior, you know, the broker dealer world was like 40 million net assets. Wasn't me into like assistance. And now we're a team of nine and we're bringing in a hundred million net AUM per year.
Matt Blocki: Without asking for referrals. And I would say, well, what are you doing? I [00:26:00] think we're doing really good financial planning, but we're also getting ourselves out there and building the brand up, but we're not tracking like leads or any of this nonsense. I think, you know, as a financial advisor, provide good service, get yourself out there and magic will happen.
Matt Blocki: I
Stacy Havener: love that. Go ahead, Jameson. I want to say, wait, before you go, it makes me think of third, I did a podcast. with Maneesh Khada from Potomac and he also embraced kind of this modern marketing in building a fund company, crazy growth. So just know that like it hockey sticks and you haven't even hit that yet, but he had this saying that just captures everything you just said there, Matt, which is just don't worry about the measuring.
Stacy Havener: Focus on eyes on brand. That was the saying eyes on brand. That's what you want. So podcasts, social, these videos, like eyes on brand, and then just let that build. So that is fabulous advice. Sorry, James. And I would have lost that if I didn't say it right then go ahead.
Jamison Smith: No, [00:27:00] I say a couple of things that like, it's funny when you start something like you really have no idea, like, We didn't start doing the videos and say, Oh, this is going to turn into a podcast.
Jamison Smith: And that's going to be our like market. We had no idea, but we started with like these whiteboard videos. And why I want to bring this up is like, if you're an advisor, I've like reflected back on like, how did I learn some of these topics so quickly? And like, how did I get the knowledge in such a quick period?
Jamison Smith: That's how, I mean, that's like human psychology. The best way to learn something is to teach somebody else. So I would like have to, like, we would have to research these topics and then like draw them on a whiteboard and how wealth advisor training was started. We built, we just bought a whiteboard and put it in the basement of Matt's house.
Jamison Smith: And every Saturday for like eight hours, we would just like, for like six months, we would just like film ourselves in front of this whiteboard to make it geared towards advisors. So that I think is really helpful for someone who's trying to learn and also obviously sprung into marketing. But the one thing you said about like, I think a lot of, um, no offense to marketing people, but if you brought in some like marketing expert to a company that had no correlations to like [00:28:00] management founding anything, they're gonna look at like, what can we have tangible return on investment for marketing?
Jamison Smith: But I think the best marketing is a lot of like founders for their own companies. See this because they're willing to do things that don't have that immediate like rate of return It's like we had no clue if we're gonna just blast all these videos out We can't track like how many yeah referrals come in from that But now we get like one or two a week probably just from emailing into our website that see our content And we had no clue that that was gonna be the end result
Stacy Havener: So great.
Stacy Havener: You know, and one of the things I love is, oh my God, why is his name totally escaping me? Refinelabs, Chris Walker, I think is his name. I don't know if you follow him on LinkedIn, but he's awesome. And one of the things he talks about related to DemandGen, which is kind of what we're talking about here. Is the best way to measure it is actually to act like on any form that you have on your website.
Stacy Havener: Just say, how did you hear about us? And let people tell you. And [00:29:00] it's so funny because it's so freaking simple. You know, there's all this analytics you can run on like, you know, website traffic and all this stuff. I mean, you can get totally lost, but his advice is Just ask people, how did you hear about us and let them tell you, and then see what they say.
Stacy Havener: Yeah.
Matt Blocki: Yeah.
Stacy Havener: It's so simple. You're like, I forgot about that. I mean, we added, we added that to every forum on our website. And to your point, they say LinkedIn, they say podcast, they say all the things that you sort of took that leap of faith to believe would work. And to me, this is the piece that so many people in financial services miss.
Stacy Havener: Yeah. They miss it. They're not doing these things for whatever reason, and there's a lot of reasons you can come up with to not try this stuff. But the thing is, it works, and it's a differentiator. So, in wealth advisor training, are you teaching the business side of building an advisor in addition to [00:30:00] sort of the craft of being a financial advisor?
Stacy Havener: Like, do you have both tracks going on?
Jamison Smith: Yeah, that's exactly it. Literally do have to, when you log in, there's an owner track and an advisor track. The advisor tracks the day to day of financial planning. The undertrack is like EOS, how to implement all of that. And then doing the operations management side of it.
Stacy Havener: Perfect. Cause I can imagine this is the case on the fun side as well. It's like building the business is. When you set out to be an advisor or when a fund manager sets out to be a fund manager, you don't do it because you're an expert at entrepreneurship. You do it because you're an expert at the craft of whatever you're doing.
Stacy Havener: Right. And then all of a sudden you wake up and go, Oh, you know, crap. I'm now an entrepreneur. I have to build the dang thing. And you don't have that. You've never done that. So I love that you're incorporating the building components as well as the craft. Entrepreneurship piece. And maybe that's a good segue to EOS [00:31:00] because before we became friends, we did not know that each of our companies are running on EOS and it was a game changer for our business.
Stacy Havener: Can you, well, first, can you guys talk about just what is EOS and how it has helped you? I wanna
Jamison Smith: say one thing. I wanna turn this to Matt 'cause this is totally his. But, um, I think a lot of advisors struggle from going from practitioner to business owner, because that's like exactly what you said. You're spending all your time in the day to day.
Jamison Smith: Yes. And that's what EOS is going to help. Matt did this obviously firsthand, going from sole practitioner to owner. So I'm going to let him speak on that.
Stacy Havener: Yeah. Okay, cool. Thank you, Jameson. Yeah, I would
Matt Blocki: say the easiest analogy I have, it was Napoleon Hill book, Outwitting the Devil. One of the most powerful things I read in there is that the universe hates open space.
Matt Blocki: If you think about a crack, it's going to fill up with dirt. It's going to fill up with water. It's going to stay there. It's going to get really kind of messy. And that's kind of our lives with time. So the universe, I think, hates time. And if you just let it happen reactively, The times, the [00:32:00] days I have work, it's nothing scheduled.
Matt Blocki: It's great. If I don't put my airplane mode on, if I don't like ignore it, those days just go by quicker than everything, all with reactionary stuff. I can't be any doing proactive stuff. So the U S system fire to answer it's making sure you are intentional. With every decision in your firm so that other reactive stuff doesn't dictate, you know, and then suddenly 10 years go by, what just happened.
Matt Blocki: So it's a 10 year vision, 3 year vision, 1 year vision. I think the most helpful part for us, honestly, is the quarterly rocks because that allows us to really evaluate. Okay, how well are we? Serving our clients, how well are we on track for 1310 year and then the rocks, it allows us to calibrate and make sure if someone's the other thing that I think is very common in the financial advisory space is that it's very competitive.
Matt Blocki: It's a lot of advice on the team. It's easy. We have this main ship of your company. That's like, everyone's harmoniously like rowing along, going in the [00:33:00] same direction. But every once in a while, like one of the buyers will get off in their own little ship rowboat and start tugging at a different direction.
Matt Blocki: And so if I were to say anything, the EOS is making sure those cracks don't get filled up with crap, your time. And then secondly, it's making sure that everyone stays on that same ship, rowing in the same direction for the same vision. And it's a really organized forced mechanism to the intention of the hardest thing.
Matt Blocki: Another Napoleon Hill quote is the hardest thing a man can do. Women can do any entrepreneur could do is think. And the EOS system forces you at least once a week or once a quarter to think. If you don't do that, someone else is thinking for you. Someone else is going to be behind the scenes calling all the shots.
Matt Blocki: And that to me is what's been the most beneficial part of EMS is being very proactive about the business.
Stacy Havener: So good. So at its root, it's entrepreneurial operating system, right? That's what EOS stands for. And so basically it gives you a platform for how to build and run your [00:34:00] business. And as we said a minute ago, this is the piece that when you decide to hang that proverbial shingle, you are not, you're forgetting that this is a hat you wear now as an entrepreneur, not just as.
Stacy Havener: The artisan or the crafts person perfecting your craft on the day to day now You've got all this other stuff that you just took on that is new to you So I love what you said there about the proactive Nature of it. I think for us I would add to everything you said It really helped us figure out What is everybody's you know, what are the rules on the bus?
Stacy Havener: What are the seats on the bus first and foremost before? The people you have, by the way, on your team, what are the seats on the bus? What are those seats need to do? What is the unique ability you need to be in that seat? And then to say, okay, do we have the right people in the right seats? And. That's [00:35:00] painful.
Stacy Havener: I think there's a stat that EOS says something like 80 percent of the leadership teams that you start with when you start the EOS journey, 80 percent of those teams change. Yep. And it happened for us. I don't know if it happened for you. Yeah. A couple of times. It's really hard work, but it's work that matters.
Stacy Havener: And when you get to use your phrase, Matt, when you get everybody rowing in the same direction, because you're aligned with these goals and these rocks, when you get a framework for accountability. Which, oh, by the way, not everybody likes. It is amazing what happens to your business and what happens to you.
Stacy Havener: Because your time, the allocation of your time really changes and gets you into your unique abilities so much more. I mean, it's like a lever. I mean, it's leverage. It's like a, it's a 10x mechanism for
Matt Blocki: sure. Yeah. A friend who's like a managing partner, another like big insurance broker dealer asked to [00:36:00] not our former company, different, a different broker dealer, but he asked, can I come sit in on one of these EOS meetings?
Matt Blocki: Like our level 10 weekly meeting. Yeah. The end of it, I thought it was so simple. I'm like, you're wasting your time. And his mind was He's got like 100 advisors. They've got like 10 billion of AUM and he was like, his mind was blown. It's like, this is amazing. No one can hide. It's the most accountable thing I've ever witnessed.
Matt Blocki: It's like, I need to implement this immediately. And it was like very basic stuff. I just kind of assumed everyone must be doing this, but it's incredible how, how impactful it is with the GWC, get it, want it, capacity to do it, to figure out the right seats, just solving issues, IDS, identify, discuss, evolve.
Matt Blocki: All of that stuff is just, and I do remember our firm when we didn't have this and it was just culturally not good disagreements. And this just puts all of that stuff to rest. I mean, people will self select themselves out if they don't follow the request system. A hundred
Stacy Havener: percent. It's so good. Also, do you find yourself saying I'm solved like everywhere in your life now?
Stacy Havener: Too much. Yeah. Like you're at home and [00:37:00] someone says, you know, you ask a question, someone answers, you're like, I'm solved. And you're like, Oh God, I just speak in EOS now. What am I doing? But it really does change how you think about problem solving. And so anyway, we could go on and on. Point being, we hit you with some new ideas on embracing modern marketing, and we've hit you with EOS, which if you haven't checked that out, highly recommend.
Stacy Havener: And I wanted to share this with you guys. I was telling Jameson in the green room, how inspired I am by what you're building with wealth advisor training. And the reason is literally yesterday. Something I've been working on and we've been working on as a company since 2019 embarrassed to say We launched a founding member launch for our community, which we call the boutique investment collective yesterday Launched it yesterday very similar to what you're describing and we have so many investment boutiques who come to us and want help And we can't serve them [00:38:00] all or the price point's not right or whatever reason and so this Piece was like the last piece in the three programs we wanted to offer was You know, we do it for you We do it with you and this was we teach you to do it yourself and we just launched it yesterday So I feel like for me, this is incredible learning.
Stacy Havener: We haven't marketed it We haven't told it like this You're like the first people i've told outside of the people we invited and and our firm but I really think People crave connection. They crave community. They need help. Again, it kind of goes back to this idea of like, you are the guide. When your clients come to you, you're the guide.
Stacy Havener: You're also the guide for these advisors who are coming to you saying, I don't know how to do all the things and I don't have somebody I can talk to about all those things. And so what you've built with wealth advisor training is saying, Hey, we've got a place for you. We understand you. We see you. We've lived it and we can help you.
Stacy Havener: And [00:39:00] I just think that's the future. Like we don't have that as much as we used to anymore. And I wonder how is it being received? Like, how does it feel all of those things as I sit here, like embarking on the same journey?
Matt Blocki: James, I'm curious. I'm going to say one quick thing. This is all you, but Jameson interacts with the subscribers on a weekly basis.
Matt Blocki: Yeah. I'm going to say two things. I feel very guilty for saying no. This probably goes back to childhood over responsibility. And so the cool thing about, you know, there was a time at Primer Broker Dealer, I counted up the amount of like free one on ones I did with other advisors, just coaching them. It was over a hundred, a hundred hours, like over two weeks of just like free time.
Matt Blocki: And it was exhausting managing that it's a wealth advisor training. The beautiful thing for me, the relief is like, I don't have to say no anymore. I can just say, Hey, everything, my life's work is here. It's a small fee, go get it. And instead of having to agree to like an hour call or so that relief has been over, but that's my.
Matt Blocki: Secondly, I think that just being an inspiration for more people to be creators and not consumers, you know, if anyone's, you know, [00:40:00] lacking fulfillment, lacking happiness, I think that's the quickest shortcut to living a fulfilled life and start creating, stop consuming. I think right off the bat, within a couple of months, you'll be the happiest version of yourself you've ever.
Matt Blocki: And so wealth advisor training just really allows us to do that. But I wanted to say that real quick off topic with Jamison. I'm curious to hear what subscribers
Stacy Havener: are saying. Yeah. Thank you for sharing
Jamison Smith: that. Yeah, it's definitely, it's cool. It's interesting. It's hard to like, not like Matt said, I would help help everybody.
Jamison Smith: You help nobody. Like I would help every single person that asked for advice is really like three big missions, I guess, that we really aligned with. Number one is obviously like doing good financial planning for high net worth people, which is what we do the RIA. Second thing is giving back to the um, advisor community to teach them to do good financial planning, which ultimately trickles down to everybody that needs financial advice.
Jamison Smith: The third thing is like, which I haven't really worked on yet is the financial advice to the other 99%. That's not in the top 1%, but basically that's a really, I found it really fulfilling to we can create that content. And really all we're doing is [00:41:00] Tracking our journey to a billion a video and we're just documenting what we're doing, which is really cool It's forced accountability when you say things publicly and you have to create this content But I found that really fulfilling in a really good way just to like I can make one video and that may impact You know hundreds of people with that one, you know, 10 minute video.
Jamison Smith: So that's really helpful And then one other story I want to share I had a mentor at the past company Helped me a ton and he's still there and he this was actually the last week You Is a wealth advisor training subscriber and I helped with like a physician contract negotiation just like gave him some tips and stuff And it was pretty cool.
Jamison Smith: Just like kind of what matt said earlier stuff that is like so day to day for us And so like normal has such a big impact on like a lot of these other advisors Like he texted me immediately that night at like 9 30 and was like, oh my gosh I just got this guy this physician a hundred thousand dollar increase in his contract from going through that And so that gets really rewarding really impactful when it's I would help everybody if I could, but unfortunately we can't.
Jamison Smith: So that's a really good way [00:42:00] to focus our time and energy to have a big impact.
Stacy Havener: Oh, I love that impact story so much. And it does, it totally, like, it lights you up when you hear stories like that. Even for me, you know, putting myself in your shoes, I know how that feels. And it's an incredible feeling to help, to serve, but you said something super important there.
Stacy Havener: That I want to sort of shine a light on, which is the things that come easy to you that other people find really difficult, that's where the magic is. And what's hard for us to do as entrepreneurs is to realize that the easy things to us are not easy. To other people. And so what happens, especially in this biz, because it's a lot of smart people rolling around in the investment and financial services world is we complicate it.
Stacy Havener: We take the things that like feel easy to us. And we go, well, everyone already knows that it's so simple, [00:43:00] right? And the reality is. No, they don't. No, they don't. That is what you know. And it's easy for you, but it's not easy for them. And so, you know, there's all these sayings about how, like the gold that is just hidden in your files and your everyday work that other people would just die to have.
Stacy Havener: Like it would help them so much. And so what you're doing is you're giving them those things. And I think that's, that's just awesome. That's awesome. And it's really powerful for everybody listening to think about that.
Jamison Smith: Yeah. One other thing I would add to, I think when you learn and you start to like do things, it's at least personally a belief I have is like, I want to teach that stuff to as many people as I can.
Jamison Smith: I think that's a, like a, you totally failed in life if you get to the end of life and you haven't like shared all of your knowledge with other people. So yeah, it's basically the point of wealth advisor training, but yeah, I'm not good.
Matt Blocki: I was going to say, you know, interesting Stacey, what you were just describing, I think founders, entrepreneurs.
Matt Blocki: One of the strongest skill sets that can quickly turn [00:44:00] on you into this greatest weakness is basically having the skill set of being able to assume or anticipate someone's needs, right? So, like, if I sit down with a client, I can pretty well within like a 99 percent accuracy before they tell me what their top dressers are, I can tell you what they are just based upon their background a little bit.
Matt Blocki: I know, and just kind of anticipating that as they become clients, their needs before they ask you is a huge skill set. But then. What happens is that transitions every part of your life and you do what I refer to as a suicide and you assume your team members are on the same page and you assume. And so this great strength that serves your clients so well can just flip on you and hurt.
Matt Blocki: And I think as, as advisors, as creators, what you just said is assuming people know these messages. Basic tasks. I assume that every day and it's, you can provide so much value with just very simple things that you take for granted. So I would advise that it's just get out there and share the Yoda to the world, uh, you know, share your value.
Matt Blocki: And I love, I don't know where I read this recently. I think it was a Morgan houses, but your, your bank account basically directly [00:45:00] affects how much value you provide to others. And I found that so true as we don't have to worry about what leads we're converting, but, but just the more value you put out there, the greater
Stacy Havener: success you'll have.
Stacy Havener: I have to read that book. I haven't read that yet, but it also reminds me of the go giver. Have you ever read the go giver? Yeah. Great book. Right. And I think it's Deb, the character Deb in the real estate agent, she's doing the seminars. And it's like, the lesson is if you want to make more money, add more value.
Stacy Havener: If you want to make more money quickly, figure out how to add the value quickly to more people. And that's. It's also really challenging to figure out how to build something that has scale. When you're in a business that is so much one to one. And so I think that's also what wealth advisor training does, right?
Stacy Havener: You're serving people in a group versus one on one, and there's so much leverage in that.
Jamison Smith: Yeah. I would say one thing that I think would help advisors a ton is like. [00:46:00] It's very easy to do things that you get compensated on, whether you're selling a product, obviously, like we take an AUM fee, so the assets are managing, but where you'll provide the most value.
Jamison Smith: And I think what is maybe next to EOS, maybe one thing that's helped our firm scale so much so quickly is providing value on things that you are not directly getting compensated for. So like rewind 10 years ago, Matt was doing student loan analysis for all these physicians where he was getting zero compensation for it.
Jamison Smith: But that's what the client has a stressor. That's what their stressor is. That's one of their biggest problems. And if you help them with that fast forward 10 years, now we have all these physicians that have been practicing for 10, 15 years that now have a ton
Stacy Havener: of money with them. Meet them where they are, right?
Stacy Havener: Meet them where they are. That's so good. In fact, that's a great segue. And I'm going to ask both of you maybe to do this. We'll start with Matt and we'll go to Jameson. So if you're listening to this and based on your journey so far, sort of what advice would you give? You know, that's [00:47:00] practical. Like what could someone take away from what you've learned to do to grow their advisory practice?
Stacy Havener: And we'll start with Matt and then Jameson. Yeah, that's a great
Matt Blocki: question. I think. So a couple of things. I'm a big Tim Ferriss fan. I would say three things. The first thing would be 80 20 analysis immediately. What are the 20 percent of people in clients that are making up 80 percent of the results? What are 20 percent of the people in your life that are making 80 percent of your happiness?
Matt Blocki: Because it's just all in the energy field that you've got to protect. That would be number one. The second thing would be Make decisions that can eliminate thousands of decisions. Try to automate. I love that. So go to a coffee shop once a week, ask yourself what's my top stressor and then brainstorm for it for 20 minutes.
Matt Blocki: The yellow pad, no phone. Those are all of the like S curve moments I've had are all result of just the yellow pad with a piece of pen and just making sure the way I'm thinking, the goals I have are actually my goals and they're not influenced by anyone else. Cause then if they're my goals, the energy never leaves.
Matt Blocki: If there's someone else's goals, it'll last a week. It'll be like, you know. You put gasoline on a [00:48:00] fire, it goes way up for a week, and then it goes down just even quicker. And so you really, I think, have to calibrate and make sure that your energy is true to yourself. And then the third thing is I would say after, and this is assuming that a crowd has already had some success, like already has a basic client, you know, like a set bandwidth of clients that are looking to grow and scale.
Matt Blocki: The third thing is you have to learn how to say no, and that could be represented through. Someone asking you to do a speaking engagement, to help, to email checking, like email someone else. So when I, when I adopted those three things, life got less stressful, success went way up. And then just the energy came back tenfold into my life.
Matt Blocki: I adopted just those three things.
Stacy Havener: Gosh, that is so good. Thank you for sharing those. I agree with all of them and I'm better at some of them than others. So that was great. Jameson, how about for you? What would your advice be? Yeah, I agree with
Jamison Smith: all that. And I think a lot of like, a lot of the technical stuff for an advisor, I'm going to push people to wealth advisor training.
Jamison Smith: So from just like a, I guess like a personal like [00:49:00] character trait type thing, a couple of things that I think have really helped. Number one, just be extremely curious, like curiosity, I think is a superpower. So like, if you come across a topic as, especially in a young advisor that you've never seen, don't be afraid to dive in and figure it out.
Jamison Smith: And then the second thing would be just like extreme, especially while you're young, like self confidence and, You can't be scared to go sit in front of someone that's 65 years old worth a lot of money as somebody in your 20s. You just have to know that you'll figure it out and you'll find an answer for them.
Jamison Smith: So I'd say those two things. Um, the third thing would just be like, Resilience and finding a way to, we'll use that first example. If you come across something that you don't know, especially with AI now, there's no reason you can't find an answer to it. You can find it pretty quickly too. So yeah, those would be my three, three tips.
Stacy Havener: Great advice. Okay. So first that one about being young and sitting in front of an older, more successful, more established potential client. I hope you guys talk about that in wealth [00:50:00] advisor training because that is real That is not easy to do on many levels. Like that's a great topic. The other thing I wanted to say is Shit, I lost it.
Stacy Havener: So I don't actually know what I wanted to say, but that I wanted to say for sure So we're gonna move on. Okay, fabulous advice Fabulous advice all the levels. I want to do the proofs questionnaire piece before we break You And so I've never done this with two people. So I think what we should do is I'll ask the question.
Stacy Havener: Matt will go first. Jameson will go second. Or do you want to switch that order? You guys tell me. No, that's fine. Yeah, that's great. Okay. So let's do that. All right. Are you ready? Let's roll. Here we go. Okay. So Matt, you're going first, right? Yeah. What book inspires you? Anything
Matt Blocki: Tim Ferriss has written, anything Ron Carson has written, if I had to pick, I would say the four hour work week, you know, literally changed my life.
Stacy Havener: Okay, love it. Jamison?
Jamison Smith: I have so many, but I'm gonna pick the one I literally just finished this [00:51:00] morning. It is the new biography on Elon Musk. It just goes through his life. It's very inspiring.
Stacy Havener: Oh, it was good? Yeah, it was incredible. Okay, great stuff. Both a classic and a new one. Awesome. Okay, so back to Matt.
Stacy Havener: What place inspires you? What's your happy place?
Matt Blocki: So I would say for vacation, I could give you an answer any, I wrote down anywhere I can get in a creative mind to flow. And I don't know where that is until I get there someday. Sometimes it's there. Sometimes it's not. Sometimes it's a coffee shop, but with the mind is just going, there's probably once or twice a month that that just happens.
Matt Blocki: And when you get in that flow, it just magic happens. It's always typically just a different place and just kind of, you know, want from wandering. I would say favorite, like happy place. Yeah. Vacation wise, anywhere but girlfriend, daughter, probably the Bahamas is our most recurring.
Stacy Havener: Ah, yeah. It's really powerful what happens when you're near the water.
Stacy Havener: That's like a scientific thing as well. Great book on that called Blue Mind. Interesting. So, [00:52:00] love it. Okay, Jameson, place that inspires you. Happy place.
Jamison Smith: Yeah, I'm gonna give two. So one in like my day to day life, like if I am stressed or need to solve a problem, I go to the gym. It's my like, just block everything out and work out and I get a lot of good thoughts and good mindset there.
Jamison Smith: And the second thing, outside of my day to day life would just be anywhere like right on the beach, walking on the beach with nothing, not even a cell phone and just good thoughts come, good creative ideas. I
Stacy Havener: relate to that very much. That's great. And you got your
Matt Blocki: beach videos, your beach
Stacy Havener: video. Yeah, I mean, totally.
Stacy Havener: I actually went back by the way and found the first one. Cause I did it like on a dare. Someone challenged me to do this video thing and I found the first one. And I'm like, oh my gosh. It's funny. Anyway, I love the idea. I love the question about sort of where, like the flow state question, like, where do you get your ideas?
Stacy Havener: Like, where does the creativity come from? I hadn't thought of that as a question, but that's a really good one. Okay. So now a little bit of a fun twist here. And [00:53:00] we didn't even get to talk about the fact that Matt played basketball and then his nickname was T Rex. So I had really wanted to work that in, but it just didn't happen.
Stacy Havener: So I'm just Just throw that out there because I love that story. So why it came to mind is the next question is what's your walkout anthem. So let's pretend you're giving, you know, you're giving a, a talk at a stadium full of wealth advisor, training members, subscribers, what song do they play? When you take the stage?
Stacy Havener: You
Matt Blocki: know, I'm not prepared for this. I, I was prepared for this last night and my girlfriend was so curious of what I was going to say. So I don't have an answer, but she was, she runs an event company and she just secured pit bull for this guy's backyard. Like it's called the celebrity care of passive benefits charity.
Matt Blocki: And anyway, so she was listening to Pitbull songs. There was something that this goes along with our, it's like something like ask for money, get it once, ask for advice, get money twice, something like that. So I think that goes in line with all [00:54:00] of our, what we're talking about. So I'm going to go with that Pitbull song about, you know, advice is much more important than money.
Stacy Havener: Um, hello. I love that. Also everything Pitbull touches is just gold. And. I have been saying that phrase for the last two weeks ad nauseum. Like people are like, stop talking about it, which is ask for money, get advice, ask for advice, get money. That's it. That's it. Yeah, that's right. It's amazing. I want to
Jamison Smith: challenge that a little bit because I think Matt would be Anything.
Jamison Smith: Chain smokers. Oh, love
Matt Blocki: ZDM. Yeah. Yeah. I do like Kago. Well, more, it'd probably be Kago. I don't know. I can concentrate really well. It's like some good kigo music and that's sometimes where I get like creative as well. I dunno. That's
Stacy Havener: a great one. I love. See, this is why you need your people around you because they're like, what do you mean?
Stacy Havener: You'd obviously pick this song? .
Matt Blocki: I dunno if that'd be a walkout song though. People be like, where is this guy a raver? I've never been to one in my life. Alright. But yeah, it's definitely I can get into flow statements from Good,
Stacy Havener: totally. All right, so jameson your turn and matt you are encouraged to challenge [00:55:00] him if his choice is not is not
Jamison Smith: authentic I'm, just gonna say probably favorite song of all time is best day ever by mac miller So that would probably be my walkout song
Stacy Havener: wait, I feel like I know that song but I can't pull it into my mind Right now so obviously i'm gonna have to listen to that while we hang up.
Stacy Havener: Okay, is that what you thought it was gonna be? I
Matt Blocki: thought it was going to be that killer. I didn't know. Okay. He grew up in Pittsburgh.
Jamison Smith: Yeah. And so the original music video, it's him as a child and then it goes through like his life. So it's pretty cool. There's a lot of really good, like just hidden quotes.
Stacy Havener: Ooh, I'm here for that. The Eminem commercial that he did for the super bowl and like whatever year that was, I think I told you about this jam. I said, when we were talking that reminds me of that, like I can watch that commercial for, you know, Detroit and be like, okay, where's the nearest one. I'm going to run through it.
Stacy Havener: Um, so I get like why it's more than just the song and sometimes even the visuals. Okay. All right, here we go. We're transitioning now to Matt. What profession other than your own would you like to attempt?
Matt Blocki: Oh, geez. I would say [00:56:00] if I was good enough pro golfer, for sure. Cause it's just the mind, you've watched the full swing on Netflix.
Matt Blocki: I mean, you can just go up and down. So it's all, it's really just your mind or speaking about in mind, I would, I don't know, something after watching what's that show suits our respect, like a high stakes litigator, I think would be so probably so stressful. I think it would be so fun just because so much is at stake and it would definitely get the, uh, the adrenaline way up.
Matt Blocki: So.
Stacy Havener: I love that you can tell you played sports. Okay, Jamison. How about you?
Jamison Smith: Yeah, i'm gonna say this is totally unrealistic And probably will never happen, but I would like to try to be an astronaut to go up into space. I think it'd be cool Oh
Matt Blocki: my gosh,
Stacy Havener: that's a fabulous answer.
Matt Blocki: It sounds like you just read that.
Matt Blocki: Yeah, elon musk. I did. Yeah, I did
Jamison Smith: Yeah space is front of mind for me space and rockets
Stacy Havener: Oh my god, I love it. Okay, that's so good. All right back to matt. What profession would you not like to do? You
Matt Blocki: Well, if it counts, I've already done it accounting. Never for me. Never again. Jameson quote, when I asked, we were trying to figure out, he's like, I'd rather drink bleach than handle something.[00:57:00]
Matt Blocki: So that's my answer. I'd rather drink bleach than, uh, be an accountant. So yeah, to steal Jameson's.
Stacy Havener: That is hilarious. Okay, Jameson, what about
Jamison Smith: you? Oh, there's so many. I probably like some sort of surgeon. I think I would like pass out immediately if I had to cut somebody open. So yeah. You
Stacy Havener: know, what's so funny about that is your niche.
Stacy Havener: Yeah.
Jamison Smith: Yeah. And I think that's why, because I hear a lot of like horror stories and it's like, it just sounds terrible. Yeah. Oh
Stacy Havener: God. I can't imagine. I love it. Okay. Well, this is the final one. So Matt, back to you. Now, this is a long time away because you're building, you're merging, you're crushing it. But what do you want people to say about you after you've retired or left the industry?
Stacy Havener: I
Matt Blocki: would say he left his mark on the industry and changed the industry for good. That benefits clients and education, literacy, you know, just great attitude, great leadership, all those kinds of characteristics. I will
Stacy Havener: I love that made the industry a better place. That's good. That's so good. All [00:58:00] right, jameson
Jamison Smith: Yeah, I would just say that he had a positive impact on my life And as many people that could say that would be my goal,
Stacy Havener: right?
Stacy Havener: I mean, even if we're we're lucky to have one person say that we've done a good job, right and That's the way to do it on a broader scale is to one at a time. Well, you guys are well on your way to both of those things being said about both of you. It has been a true joy to talk with you. And I think there are so many lessons for people to take away from this.
Stacy Havener: So grateful for you being here. Yeah.
Jamison Smith: Thank you very much. It's a lot of fun. Thanks
Matt Blocki: for having us. It's a pleasure.
Stacy Havener: And if people want to follow along on your journey, now we go back to the media piece, what are the best ways for them to do
Matt Blocki: that? LinkedIn, we're most active and then, you know, podcast, YouTube, Spotify, Apple, but yeah, LinkedIn, Instagram.
Stacy Havener: Killing it. All right. Thank you both for being here. Yeah.
Matt Blocki: Thank you. Thanks again. Thanks,
Stacy Havener: Stacy. This podcast is [00:59:00] for informational purposes only and should not be relied upon as a basis for investment decisions. The information is not an offer, solicitation or recommendation of any of the funds, services or products or to adopt any investment strategy.
Stacy Havener: Investment values may fluctuate and past performance is not a guide to future performance. All opinions expressed by guests on the show are solely their own opinion and do not necessarily reflect those at their firm. Manager's appearance on the show does not constitute an endorsement by Stacey Havener or Havener Capital Partners.
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