My Dad Figured Out Financial Independence. Here's What He Told Me. | Ep. 8
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Episode Summary
Most people spend decades building toward a number, but far fewer stop to think about what that number is actually for.
In this episode, Gideon Drucker sits down with his dad, Lance Drucker, Chairman of Drucker Wealth, to talk about what financial independence looks like after you have lived it.
Lance shares lessons from 40+ years of advising clients through the shift from growing wealth to creating income, purpose, and freedom.
The conversation explores why retirement is not always about stopping, why vision matters as much as money, and how great financial planning helps people build a life they actually want to live.
Topics Covered
From Life Insurance to Financial Planning [02:14]
The Grind, the Sacrifice, and Building Something Brick by Brick [04:28]
What “Enough” Really Means [08:29]
Financial Independence Does Not Mean Retirement [11:35]
What F-U Money Actually Buys You [14:07]
Income, Family, and Purpose [15:24]
What a Great Advisor Is Really Paid For [27:32]
Resources & Links
Transcript
Below is the full transcript for Episode 8 of Beyond the First Million.
Introduction [00:00]
Gideon: Welcome to Beyond the First Million by Drucker Wealth. I'm your host, Gideon Drucker, and we have a super exciting episode, a treat today. My dad, and the chairman of Drucker Wealth is with us, and if you like my stuff, my newsletter, this podcast, anything you hear me say, you're going to love this episode, because pretty much everything I stole from this guy right here. Seriously, though, this is a treat for me to get to do an episode with my role model, best friend, dad, business partner, everything in between. A huge reason I am where I am. Big guy, welcome to the show.
Lance: It's a pleasure to finally be on. I don't know how many podcasts you've done. Your mother had to call you. I called you, but here we are.
Gideon: I think 18 of your Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu buddies texted me. Hey, love the podcast. Just wondering when your dad is gonna be on? We'd really like to see him on. I’m not gonna be interviewing my dad as a financial advisor. Why my dad's on here is interviewing you as somebody who has reached financial independence, who has done most of the right things. Nobody's done everything right, and I think the key is you’re still working. You enjoy what we do, you love it. And for a lot of our clients, and something we keep coming back to, being financially independent does not mean, oh, I never want to work again, and I want to do nothing for the next 30 years. We hear it every day: well, I still want to find work I enjoy, just maybe not at the speed, not at the level that I've been grinding for 10 to 20 years. So, hearing somebody on the other side of that mountain who has made it and is excited about what you're doing day to day, and some of the takeaways that come from that. But before we get into that side of it, and where you're at now, where you're going, tell us a little bit about how you got your start, how you started Drucker Wealth, and your journey over the last 30 to 40 years.
From Life Insurance to Financial Planning [02:14]
Lance: Most of my friends, smart guys, wanted to be doctors. I saw my dad, who was a financial advisor of sorts, and I saw the lifestyle he had and what he did for us, and I thought, yeah, I could probably do that. Graduated from college, had a degree in accounting and finance. I would have killed myself if I had become an accountant. I would have been the worst accountant. The IRS would have made me a poster boy. And then I started off in the life insurance business. I got a reasonable brain, I got a good mouth, and I believed in it. I think insurance, life insurance, didn't feed my soul, though. For the most part, nobody wants to get a call from their insurance guy saying, “Hey, we need to talk.”
Gideon: I have a great update for you. It's about life insurance.
Lance: Right. But I was good, and I was making money, and as my own personal income and net worth were increasing, I really liked the investing side. That kind of fed my soul.
Gideon: So, maybe just to give the audience, what time frame are we talking about here?
Lance: Probably four to five years in. I had made my bones. People bought insurance, they liked me, they trusted me, and I believed in it. And I bought insurance, and I still believe in it, but it was a little too rigid.
Gideon: Just doing one thing.
Lance: Yeah, but I started getting into the investments on a personal level, and I said, "I like this. This is fascinating, this is interesting." So I morphed to what the insurance side calls the dark side, and that was fun, because then when I was calling the client to talk about investments, they would get on immediately. Yep, I gotta speak to my guy, and that's exactly how it was. The precursor to becoming a certified financial planner, CFP, was something called the ChFC. I got that because I wanted to be a professional. This is what I was gonna do.
Gideon: I'll jump in because you gave a lot of speeches back in the day. I saved all of them, and every now and then, my wife will find me reading a speech you gave from 1991, and everything that Jordan and I have spoken about on this podcast, becoming a student of the business, leaning into technology, building out different parts of the business. I don't say you had this script from day one, but pretty early, in 1991, you gave a speech about why you needed to get a designation to be an actual advisor to your clients. You were thinking about all these things when you didn't have to, and it’s cool hearing you talk about it now, but this isn't your vision; this is history. You were ahead of the game, ahead of what a lot of people were thinking about at the time.
The Grind, the Sacrifice, and Building Something Brick by Brick [04:28]
Lance: And I think, I don't care what you do, if you're a physician, if you're a scientist, if you're whatever you do for a living, the grind is real. Six days a week, and we had one car at the time, and Mom would drop me off at one of the offices, which was a different office, and go shopping for the day, which was the rest of our lives. And then she’d pick me up after I had my meetings, whatever, and it was nice. And I remember at the beginning, you and your sister were young, you were babies, and I'm running out to appointments at a kitchen table with clients, and I remember thinking, is it gonna be worth it? Is this gonna pay off? Because I was missing time with my family, which is the most important thing for probably most people listening to this. And it turned out I was fortunate that it did pay off.
Gideon: It did. And we know how it paid off now, but it even paid off as we got older, because you're saying you missed things. I was a baby, I don't remember that, but what I do remember is you being at every single sporting event, game, through elementary school, middle school, and high school. You were the dad who came to games at 3 o'clock, our tennis matches, and you were at every one. So you hustled and grinded. Did what you needed to do early. And I think this is something we talk about with clients. Not to take too much from the story, but there are ebbs and flows in our careers, right? There are times you put the gas down, and you say, "I need to grind," and what I hear you say is, "Do in your 20s what people won't, so in your 30s and 40s, you can do what others can't," and you really embodied that.
Lance: I said that?
Gideon: You said that. That was pretty good. I mean, you might have picked it up from someone else.
Lance: I had no original things. I had one in 1987, but that was it.
Gideon: We don't remember that. We're really a family-oriented firm, and I think that shows in our team, and our whole firm works together. But we're becoming a bigger ensemble. Was that something you wanted at the start? Did you want to have that evolve? And I feel like the answer is gonna be, I kind of broke you into that over the last few years. But tell us how you thought of that.
Lance: Not even a little bit. I wouldn't say no, I'd say hell no. In fact, I've always had coaches, because I'm not that smart, and I've learned the only thing I've learned is hire really smart people and have them teach you what they know, and expedite everything from business to Brazilian Jiu Jitsu, which, if you don't know, I'm big.
Gideon: I mentioned that earlier, but I’m sure we will get into it.
Lance: So I had a coach, and he said, how much in assets under management do you want to add one day? I don't think like that. He said to me, give me a number. I gave him a number. He said, "Well, you realize you have to have 17 people." 17 people? Are you out of your F-ing mind? I had like three people, and at the time, they were making my head spin.
Gideon: Just for a better perspective, and this applies to any business owner, you wanted to do the thing you were really good at. You wanted to sit with clients, you wanted to provide advice, and build relationships. Managing people, not necessarily for you.
Lance: And here we are now, because you said, Dad, this is the direction we're going, and I said, "Giddy up."
Gideon: And even as you're saying the investment side is the dark side, which is what maybe the insurance people call it, you liked the idea of being able to give continual advice. When you called people, they answered the phone and were excited to speak, and as you were saying that, it made me think of us building the tax business. Because taxes are the thing that you can give great financial advice, but if you're not looking at your tax return, if you don't have enough insight into what's going on there, there's only so much you can give. I think you look at our firm over the last 40 years, it’s brick by brick. You don't do everything at once; it would fail. You wouldn't be good at giving advice if you tried to do all of it. But brick by brick, insurance, cash flow, investments. You really started this on a path of financial planning, becoming a planning-first firm. We're actually now not going to talk about investments or insurance at all until we do financial planning, and now we're at that point with tax and estate planning.
And to bring this full circle, when clients call, we can talk about all that. My dream has always been, I don't want to have to tell every single client, "You're gonna have to speak to your CPA, your attorney, or whatever." And it's taken a while to get there, in multiple generations, but we're there, and that's a cool thing. And obviously, what you and Poppy Bernie started.
What “Enough” Really Means [08:29]
Gideon: Moving a little bit to your financial independence, right? Forget that you're an advisor. You're just like a lot of our clients.
Lance: Regularly yutz.
Gideon: How old are you?
Lance: 62.
Gideon: Just to share a little bit. Did you imagine that you'd be retired at this point? Did you have a number in mind, maybe what that would be, 10 years ago, 15 years ago? What was the vision? And then we can get to maybe how that vision has changed.
Lance: Yeah, everybody talks about putting new goals out there. So when I started in Jiu-Jitsu, my goal was never to be a black belt, just frankly to suck less. I was getting crushed, and I still get crushed now. But now I am a high-level Jiu-Jitsu practitioner.
Gideon: And what's the next belt you would get?
Lance: A little bit away from a black belt.
Gideon: Alright, you heard it here, friends.
Lance: So that wasn't ever my goal, though. It was just to not get crushed as much. That was kind of my life. I never had a goal, I want a million, I want five, I want ten. It was never about that. Two things: the compounding effect of money. My dad used to say it's the eighth wonder of the world. It truly is. They say the first million is brutal, the next million is inevitable. It's true, it's just the compounding. It’s kind of like that story where I used to do a lot of public speaking. I'd say, "Hey, I'd give you $100,000 today, or I'd give you $1, and we'll double that dollar every day for a month." At the end of that month, you're going to have north of $5 million. Most of the growth happens in the last month. That's the secret. My favorite book back in the day was The Millionaire Next Door, by Stanley Danko. I gotta play good defense, meaning I gotta make money, that's the grind. Good defense is living below your means.
One of the really interesting things, I raised my family in a nice town, kind of a bougie town. Nobody knew what I did, and nobody had any idea of how well or not how well I was doing.
Gideon: You truly never cared what the house looked like, the car. But for how competitive you are, and how motivated you are to just crush everything you're doing, that was inside you. You never gave a shit if the rest of the town knew how much money you had, knew how financially independent you were becoming. It just wasn't a drive for you. You wanted to take care of your family and everything else.
Lance: One of our other favorite books, Psychology of Money, the author talks about the story of Kurt Vonnegut and Joseph Heller, who were famous authors, and they get invited to somebody they knew who was a hedge fund guy, who owned a house on an island off the North Fork of Long Island. And they go, it's a magnificent house, they're walking through it, and the view of the ocean and everything in it. And Kurt Vonnegut says to Joseph Heller, "Do you realize this guy made more this year than we, the two top-selling authors of all time, have made in our whole careers?" Joseph Heller says, "Yeah, I do realize." And he says, "But do you realize we have something he'll never have?" What could that possibly be? Look around. He said, "Enough." And I think that's the challenge for most people. How do you know you have enough? What does enough look like? Is it five cars? Is it a huge house, a beach house? And if you measure your life by, do I have enough? You'll never have enough.
Financial Independence Does Not Mean Retirement [11:35]
Gideon: So, what was enough for you? Was retirement part of the dream? Because maybe it wasn’t about a dollar amount, maybe net worth-wise. Was it age? How do you think about working or not, because of how hard you’d worked?
Lance: Yeah, so you brought up a few times, and clients say, or people in Jiu-Jitsu, especially say, you’re retired, right? I ain’t retired. I had a Park Ave corner office, a suite of offices for my team. It was great, and I had to commute every day. It was sucking the soul out of me. Then Covid happened, and they said, “Hey, you can’t come in, you have to work remotely.” And it turns out we could work remotely, and we are a virtual firm. As horrible as COVID was, the best thing for me was that I didn’t commute, and that changed everything. My day, my life, are my own. That gave me true freedom, mental freedom. Anyway, I’m not retired, and one of my good friends talked about the mistake his dad made, which was that he retired, and he was no longer relevant or engaged.
I cannot imagine a universe where I am no longer relevant or engaged. It may happen. I get a little cuckoo for Cocoa Puffs, and I walk around in my underwear, no underwear, that can happen, but short of that, I will always be involved. They say the best leaders are the ones who know it’s time to step up. But three years ago, we were in Montauk, we’re in the ocean, and I looked over at you, and I said, “You’re the man.” You said, “I appreciate that.” I said, “No, literally, you are the man.” And you said, “What does that mean?” And I said, “I’m stepping down as president, and you’re taking over.” And since then, you can run this shit. I’ll call you a dozen times, and your mother called you 20 times to get on this freaking podcast. But here we are. I get to do the things that I like to do. That is the ultimate definition of financial independence: to be able to do what you want, when you want, with whom you want, for as long as you want.
Gideon: And does it feel different working now? You’ve been financially independent for a while. I think it’s not like it happened last year, but does it feel different? And again, we’re trying to bring this to an audience. They’re in their 40s, they’re working, they’re grinding. Some of them know they want to keep doing this for a long time. They love what they do. The idea of sitting on a beach doing nothing, I think we’re both wired like this, you do it for two days. I did it on my honeymoon for two days, and then I was writing out business plans for the next week and a half while we were lying on a beach. We’re wired, a lot of type A, high-income clients that we typically work with. But does it feel different doing what you do now that you’re financially independent, and it’s not really about the paycheck, than before?
What F-U Money Actually Buys You [14:07]
Lance: I sent this video to everyone in my newsletter a couple of weeks ago, the actual video. There's a movie with Mark Wahlberg called The Gambler, a shitty movie.
Gideon: But great scene.
Lance: But this scene, John Goodman is basically opining about how you've got to build FU money, that America was built on saying FU. FU, I don't need you as a client. So what financial independence for me means, it doesn't mean I don't work, doesn't mean I don't take clients’ calls, it doesn't mean any of that. But it means that I have enough, that if I don't like somebody, they're not fun, they're not nice, they're not good people, they can go F themselves. I don't care. It means I do a rant every week, my clients get it, I get more shit about that rant from the things that I say, whatever. I'm not looking to offend anyone, I just don't give a shit. Not to be mean, but the idea that I've made myself financially independent.
Gideon: So you talked about what's taken you to get here. You've worked with a lot of successful clients as well. Let's paint the picture, if somebody's 40 or 45, they're in that period of life, kids under college, to give a range. What’s the advice you would give somebody? It could be financial advice, it could be family, it could be anything. They can’t think about the big picture because they’re stuck so much in the here and now. What advice would you give? What would you tell yourself, even, where you were 20 years ago?
Income, Family, and Purpose [15:24]
Lance: I was very fortunate. I saw my dad make family a priority, and that was the most important thing. I didn't just go to your games; your mother and I coached your travel team, your rec team, and your sister’s teams. It was a gift because I got to meet your friends. That was really important.
Gideon: Let's stay on that, actually, for a second. Talk about our house growing up, and something I’ve written about before, that our house was the house that all the kids wanted to be at. You and Mom set that at a really young age, and that kind of has nothing to do with financial planning, but for parents of young kids, making your house feel not like a museum, right? Not like you have to worry about every little thing that kids want to go to. You start that young, and I’m thinking from a very young age, we were there. And then I remember in high school, my friends felt close enough to you that if somebody had girl trouble, they were asking me, “Hey, can your dad come in? I think he could help with this whole thing.” And you know exactly what they were talking about. And that's lasted to my fraternity brothers, all of my friends. How do you think about that? What did you do that allowed you to get to that point later on?
Lance: The best compliment that I ever got was that somebody said I'm not judgmental. And I think of Ted Lasso, when he said, "Be curious, not judgmental." My house wasn't a museum. You go into homes, and you’ve got to take your shoes off. Your sister, my daughter, she wants me to take my shoes off. I don't take my shoes off. That's just not happening.
Gideon: He really doesn’t. We all do, and he’s committed not to.
Lance: So you come into my house, and I have a beautiful home now. I don’t care. I’m not going to make you take your shoes off. I understand why people do it, but on a personal level, I think it’s batshit crazy. I want people to feel comfortable. My home is your home, honestly.
Gideon: I just saw Karina in the background. You’re never invited into Karina’s home, I can promise you that.
Lance: For a myriad of reasons, and I can understand that. Be comfortable, make it comfortable. Don't be judgmental.
Gideon: There really were a number of things over the years that friends, and even people on the team, or colleagues, would share with you.
Lance: Very fortunate.
Gideon: What's next for you? How do you think about these next few years, and even maybe a little insight into how you're helping clients at this point? The way Jordan and I might run meetings, we're talking about scenario planning around education, changing jobs, and dual income to one. Your clients are at a different point. What kind of crux of the meetings are you talking about with retirement?
Lance: Yeah, so I actually have two tranches of clients. Clients who are near or at retirement, that's one. And I do still have some people in their 40s and 50s who are still building it. They're killing it, they're doing really well. The vantage point that I have is I've been there, and I've had clients I met in their 20s, and I've been there. So for the younger people, I can say, “Hey, I'm your advisor, you're paying me. Listen to me, don't listen to me, I don't give a shit. I'm not validated by you doing it or not, but I'm telling you, you want to pay attention here.” And they do, and that's really gratifying.
The clients who are at or near retirement, the most important thing is not, you have $5 million, $10 million, or $20 million; it doesn’t matter. It's how much income can your assets generate? So if you have Nvidia and Amazon, which don't pay dividends, that's great, how do you monetize that? Well, you’ve got to sell stock, but then you’ve got to pay capital gains. So our clients, as they get closer or near retirement, what's really important is building a portfolio that generates income. So, where does that come from? Only big blue-chip stocks that pay you to own them. Market shits the bed and goes down 30%, who cares? Still getting that dividend. Protected income, things like annuities. Fantastic. Well, it's a lousy investment. Sure.
Gideon: It's not meant to be an investment.
Lance: It's generating income. So, for me, I have built my net worth in such a way that I can generate more income than your mother can spend, and we can gift, and be philanthropic. That's a really big one. I've always been philanthropic, but I guess it's a matter of amounts.
Gideon: And impact. At the start, you’re doing it because you want to get started. And into that, I don’t know if I’m going to tell the story at an event where you gave very little, because you were in your 20s and had a family.
Lance: It was a UJA meeting. Some guy stands up and says, “Hey, when I first started, I was giving $50 a month, $50 a year, that’s all I could afford. Now I'm doing a ridiculous amount.” And remember, I was like 22 years old, and I stood up, I spent $50, and then every year I go to, they had this luncheon once a year, and every year I raised it. And my business kept increasing. I'm not saying it was a correlation, but I wasn't gonna be the person who found out. I just kept raising it. Life's been good. And then I was the person years later, where I said, I went to a meeting, and somebody stood up and said this.
Gideon: Giving people the freedom to say, hey, this person just gave $100,000, you want to stand up and say you're giving $1,000, $50, or $100 per month. And that's something we experience with our clients. A lot of our clients like giving back, and some can give more than others, but it's starting a habit that feels good. There’s something about giving to the things you really care about that's motivating. Oh, I want to be able to give. So, yeah, cause and effect or karma, maybe not, but there’s something of, hey, I think about what’s money for. I want to take care of my family, and I want to contribute to things I really care about. Just to stay on that income piece, because I think that's probably just your experience of being an advisor. Yes, growth matters for most of the time we work with people. We are focused on how do they grow their wealth 10, 20, 30 years out into the future. But once you're retired, or you're getting close to that, the peace of mind of knowing, hey, markets are gonna do what they're gonna do, but I have enough income, my income is higher than my living expenses. I don't know that there's a better feeling.
What is financial independence, if not that?
Lance: That's F-U money, baby.
Gideon: Why should everybody do Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu? Why is that life-changing? And I say that tongue in cheek, but I know you really think that. And you’re getting my nephews and niece, your grandkids, you want them to start.
Lance: I mean, it doesn't have to be Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu, but it probably should be. Yeah, two hard things when you first start. It's miserable. You get your ass kicked every single day, you don’t even know what's going on. And then little by little, you start learning stuff. You can't cheat in Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu. I used to play tennis tournaments and whatnot. Everybody cheated. I've never picked up a golf club in my life.
Gideon: Anybody want to call out my name? Or we’ve gotten over it?
Lance: Yeah, well, they’re on a list. Golf, I understand a lot of people cheat. In Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu, there’s no cheating. It's the most honest thing you can do, and if somebody’s not a decent human being, it comes out real quick. So, the people that are left, all different, cops or doctors, wherever they are, they’re decent human beings. So, you’re with a great group of people, and physically, right now, everything hurts. This finger...
Gideon: Do you want to zoom in on his gross, disgusting finger?
Lance: Physically changing your life, emotionally, mentally, and it makes you more resilient.
Gideon: Yeah, I think that's also a good lesson. When you're in your 30s and 40s, you and Mom both always took care of yourselves physically. Mom just did a marathon five years ago; she’s run my whole life. Every vacation we've ever been on growing up, we’ve run or worked out in the morning. Gabby, my sister, and I, maybe her a little bit more than me, at this exact moment in time. I’ve gotten really good at it now. You’ve got to do something for yourself. Growing up, you played tennis. You were doing it at 5 a.m. or 6 a.m., before you were a dad, and then going to work, right? You weren’t neglecting other parts of your life, but it was always important that you physically took care of yourself, had hobbies, had things you were into, and I think that was a really good learning lesson for Gabby and I growing up.
Lance: And what do they say? You can't love somebody else if you don't love yourself. So self-care is really important. That's also a big change. Now, I’m in my 60s, going to the dermatologist and cardiologist, and I remember my dad, he was retired; he started going to the doctor like every week, it seemed. I'm not there yet. But you realize, you’ve got all the money in the world, is something everybody always says, and it’s really true. I expect me to take the shit out of my grandsons and granddaughter for many years to come.
Gideon: To be clear, they're five, four, and two.
Lance: Yeah, but they’re tough, and also they attack as a block. It's not just one person. I’ve got to stay tough, plus I want to be the toughest guy on our team.
Gideon: Lance just looked at Jordan off-camera. We might have a battle royale over who hosts the next podcast with us. Anything you wanted to share? Not that you're not going to be back. We’re going to do a bunch of episodes.
Lance: I got it. Yeah, I was fortunate. My dad lost his dad when he was 16. My uncle Herb was off in World War II, and he was overseas. My dad became a man. He was the first born in his family to go to college, take care of his mom, and his sister. He created this, you work hard, you grind. The generation that wants things given to them, I’ve got big issues with that. And I told you and your sister, I wasn't going to reward mediocrity, meaning if you guys didn't grind in college and high school, if you didn't have a job. By the way, that is the premier indicator of future success. Having a job when you're in high school. All the parents out there, make sure your kids get jobs.
Gideon: And maybe just because you're mentioning it, what's important about that? Because I worked at, I think I’ve talked about on the podcast, my one and only day working in the bagel shop.
Lance: Gideon wanted to create a business, and I said, “Hey, you’ve got to create a business plan.” He did all that, and then he started giving tennis lessons. It was great. And then one of the dads on the tennis team liked Gideon a lot, and he owned a bagel store, and he said, “Hey, would you like to work at my bagel store?” He said, “Sure.” So it was Saturday, and he worked four hours. So I said, “I will let you go for two hours, and I want to come in and get a bagel.” And I come in, and Gideon.
Gideon: I don't know why. I knew where you were gonna go...
Lance: And he's shoving the knife in the toaster.
Gideon: This isn’t true.
Lance: And I'm saying, “Oh dear God, he's gonna die tonight, first day on the job.” I said, “He set the place on fire.” And then he got the guy’s first paycheck, and he said, “Do you know how much they took out of my paycheck?” Yes, I do. From that, he said, “Well, being a business owner, you work for yourself, you depend on nobody and nothing, and it's basically how much brains and how much other things you have to bring to the table, and how hard you are willing to grind.”
Gideon: I think that story has been exaggerated over the years. 20 years, to let you know.
Lance: 100 percent accurate.
Gideon: To your point, I would say no, because most of our clients are W-2 and not business owners, but there's a degree of what you're doing, right? Find something that develops. Find the firm that allows you to do what you really want to do. I remember Jordan first started Drucker Wealth, that new idea of intrapreneurship, which was Jordan saying, “Hey, he likes building, developing, having ideas, contributing, but within an organization.” So, there are ways of having that business-owner mindset. I got to play tennis every day, four days a week. I got to hit and play tennis. And then I think the second part of that is when my sister wanted to join the business. I told her I was going to sell her, she could buy in, and I would sell her part of the recurring revenues because I’d been doing it for two different summers. And you smacked me in the head, saying, "You’re not selling the business to your sister."
Lance: I said two things. I said, number one, shut the F up, and I did smack him in the head. I said, number two, I bought the tennis balls, I bought the racket, I bought the stringing machine, so you can give your sister the business, and she's not paying anything. This ain’t the mob.
Gideon: That is how that one went. But this idea of creating jobs, you say work in high school, and that can be at Staples, my friends worked at places like that, but it can also be something that you're passionate about, that you're interested in, that is a little bit more rewarding. Yeah, doing something that sucks for a little time, I think about my army service in that way, doing something that sucks is not the worst thing for your future growth.
Lance: Gerald Ford, who’s one of the presidents, most people realize, and his father said to him, one summer, “I need you to find the worst job in the world. Whatever the worst thing is, I need you to do that.” He goes, “Why?” He goes, “I'll tell you later.” So he gets a job painting warehouses in the sun in the summer. The sun would beat on the warehouse, he's painting it, he's getting broiled. It was miserable. His arms hurt; it was dangerous. He finishes the summer and says to his father, “Why did you want me to do that?” He goes, “Were you miserable?” He goes, “Every day.” He goes, “Did you quit?” He goes, “No.” He goes, “That's a good lesson. So study, don't screw around in school, be smart, work hard, get a job, so you don't have to do that.” So I thought that was a great thing.
What a Great Advisor Is Really Paid For [27:32]
Lance: I think the last thing that I was thinking about is, what's the best thing that this Lance does for my clients? And it's always been like that, but now it really is brutal F-ing honesty. I love that we had a call yesterday with a client who’s done a great job. She's in great shape. She has a pied-à-terre in California, she lives in Manhattan, and I said, "Where do you sit on the plane?" She goes, "What do you mean?" I said, "You know what I mean, where do you sit?" "Well, I always want to go in first class, but you know..." I said, "Sweetheart, if I find out you're not sitting in the front of the plane, in first class, you ain’t going to be my client anymore. We're gonna fire you." She goes, "I can do that?" Yeah, you can. She literally started tearing up. That's the gift, the ability that we've worked with for a long time. She's in a great position. She can go freaking first class, sit in the front, without the peasants in coach.
Gideon: Those of you listening that are 20 years away from that, I mean, not just first class, but that stage of life, there's definitely something I’ve seen when I started sitting in on your meetings. If you have been saving your entire life, even honestly, the conversation I have with you when I tell you to spend... that you worked so hard for that. If you live a certain way for 20, 30 years of, I need to save, I need to build my wealth, I need to invest, it can become really difficult when you're in your 60s or 70s, and you're saying, all right, I can loosen the reins a little bit. I can spend my money hard because you've built this amount, but no, I need to save it for a rainy day. Then you get to a point, well, now maybe it is a rainy day, but that's when you enjoy. Not that you do everything you want, but I always say, hey, you’ve got to this point. So what you do for your client, that is a real thing. I’m sure that's one story, but in different ways it happens over and over every day, because your clients have gotten to a point doing one thing. Part of your job is helping them spend money. Everybody helps save. How do you help me spend money?
Lance: Yeah, but it goes the other way, because right before that is with another person who's very successful, but he's miserable, not a happy camper right now. He doesn't know if it's gonna continue. And I said, you're gonna have to make some life decisions. I say, when’s your wife on board? I have to speak with him. Normally, it's both of them, and that's sometimes that brutal honesty. What does a good financial advisor do? Put you in the index fund? We can be doing that. I'm not putting a man on the moon. Tax-loss harvesting, all that stuff is important. That's a seat at the table.
What a good advisor really does is doesn’t buy into bullshit and says, “Hey, you're hiring me to tell you what to do. You can do whatever you want. I don't know why you paid me if you don’t listen to me.” It's like you go to the doctor, and he says, “Hey, you’ve got to stop drinking Coke, potato chips, smoking cigarettes.” Got it. And then, on the way home, you stop at the deli to get the big potato chips, the Coke, and...
Gideon: He gave you a good idea.
Lance: Yeah, so who’s good to think about it, but you ain’t doing with that?
Gideon: With that, you will be back. All jokes aside, we'll do...
Lance: When I come back, by the way, just so we're all clear, this entire thing is being filmed in my home. So that's chutzpah. If you're not sure what that means, look it up. It's an Italian phrase. But tell me, I'll be back in my own home. That’s balls.
Gideon: Thanks for being here, big guy. Thanks for everything else along the way. More importantly, we'll speak to you next week. We hope you enjoyed today's episode, and more to come. Thanks, everybody.
