Decoding The Wealth Matrix: Bryan Huhn's Journey from Wall Street to Reflective Wealth

Josh St. Laurent: Welcome to the Wealth and Yourself Podcast, a show dedicated to helping you master the complex subject of money by simplifying it through stories and actionable advice. I'm Josh St. Laurent and this is Wealth and Yourself. Welcome to the Wealth and Yourself Podcast where we help people to design their ideal life and take control of their time and money. I'm your host Josh St. Laurent. Today we're joined by Brian Hune. Brian is a CFP and founder of Reflective Wealth. He's also a father, husband and someone who sticks to his values. Similar to myself, he worked in corporate finance for years only to realize that there was a better way to do financial planning which led to the birth of reflective wealth. He hosts the Affordable Freedom Podcast and is a founding member of the first gen entrepreneurs group. He's overcome health struggles and burnout to get to where he is today and now helps others do the same. Josh St. Laurent: Brian, welcome. God you're here. Bryan Huhn: Josh, glad to be here. Thanks for having me, my friend. Josh St. Laurent: For anyone listening who isn't familiar with you and the work that you do, what do you want them to know about you? Bryan Huhn: Obviously, I'm a financial advisor, a financial planner just like you. I take a little bit of a different approach on things I think than the rest of the industry. My objective is not to necessarily maximize the amount of zeros in my client's bank accounts, give them a certain investment return or anything like that. He's simply to help them live the happiest life that they can possibly live. I think if we live a life that we truly love and we're living according to our values, I think financial success is just kind of the natural outcome. I focus much more on the human than the products or the solutions. Josh St. Laurent: Totally agree. What led to that? As CFPs, what we learn is maximize, maximize, maximize all the zeros and only now are they starting to weave in some of that psychology of money. What was that journey for you? You were working in corporate finance. How did it come to be that you said, I want to focus more on the person than the maximization of the bank account? Bryan Huhn: For me, it was just the struggles that I had gone through personally. I spent over a decade on the product distribution side of the business. I worked for the fund companies. My job was to go visit financial advisors and hopefully convince them to put their clients money into my company's products. Don't get me wrong. There were some good products, but a lot of them weren't that great. I never put my own money in any of the products that I represented. There was always that internal conflict of interest or just internal struggle where my work conflicted with my values. Really, my only goal for most of my career was to maximize my checks, maximize my income. I didn't really have any intrinsic motivation. When that's the case and you don't really enjoy the work that you're doing, I think you fall into a scarcity mindset. That certainly happened for me. My mindset used to be, I need to accumulate as much money as I possibly can so that I never have to work again because I don't like the work that I'm doing. That led me ultimately to a point where I burned out. I had a lot of mental struggles. I struggled with anxiety, fell into a deep depression. Shortly after I hit my mental rock bottom, my physical health took a term for the worse. I had previously been diagnosed with indolent non-Hodgkin's lymphoma, which means very slow growing. In the summer of 21, it transformed into an aggressive form of lymphoma. When it's slow growing, lymphoma is kind of a weird cancer. When it's slow growing, it's not much of a threat. It's almost more like a chronic condition. I remember my oncologist telling me back in 2015 when I was originally diagnosed. Brian, with today's medicine, not even considering the advancements that are taking place, but with today's medicine, you'll probably live another three decades. It's just something we have to monitor and manage over time. That didn't really hit me. When it relapsed, it hit me. It was like, okay, this is aggressive. This thing could kill me. I need to do chemotherapy. I went through all of that. That's where I really started to do all this soul searching about what was I doing? Why was I spending my whole life just trying to accumulate as much money as possible? During this mindset for transformation, I shifted from that scarcity mindset that I had mentioned earlier where I just needed to accumulate as much as possible so I could stop working. To now, my mindset is, I love what I do. I'm inspired every day to help the people that I'm helping. I can do it from anywhere, as long as I have an internet connection. Why would I ever retire? Now it's like, I don't need to accumulate so much money. I just need to make enough to continue doing the work that I'm doing, to continue doing work that I love. I think that whole process is really what caused me to make this shift away from maximizing dollars and focusing more on the quality of life. Josh St. Laurent: Makes perfect sense to me. I got to imagine there are people listening, whether they are corporate America employees, maybe financial advisors who are saying, yes, I'm really resonating with the before scenario that Brian's talking about. Have you found a way, whether it's with clients or colleagues, to help people gain that sort of perspective without actually going to the doctor and getting cancer, is there a line of questions? Is there a way that you can help people gain that perspective? Bryan Huhn: It's a great question and it's very difficult to do. When I think back to myself, if I looked back five, ten years ago, nobody was going to talk any sense into me. I feel like all I can do is share my story, share what I've been through and try to resonate with people at a human level. When I bring on new clients and our first conversation, we don't even talk about money. We don't talk about finance. I try to just keep it. We're talking about life. What's the life that you want to live and the money is going to be the tool to help you achieve that life. There is one exercise that I put together and this was kind of in hindsight because I had wished that I had this mindset transformation a long, long time ago and didn't have to go through what I went through. I started thinking I need to really be intentional not only with my money but also with my time, how I'm spending my time and my money. Those two things are equally important. Actually time is probably more valuable. But I've distilled my life down to the three highest values, my reason for getting up every morning. The first value is my most important relationships. I want to maximize the quality of those relationships. For me, it's primarily my family, my wife and my kids, but also like my extended family. My brothers who live far away, one brother lives, I'm in Texas, one brother lives all the way out in North Carolina. The other one is up in Chicago, which is where I grew up. My mom and my stepdad live out in Tennessee now. We're all kind of spread out and I've really made an effort to become closer and rekindle some of those relationships that I had let sort of cool a little bit. That's number one is my most important relationships. Number two are my most cherished experiences. For me, and it's different for everyone, obviously, but for me, it's the traveling. It's one of those things that's very important to me. Experiencing the arts, like I'm a big live music guy, I want to go to as much live music as I possibly can. Then enjoying the outdoors, just getting outside, getting into nature. I like to go on hikes with my son. That's the second one is the experiences. The third one is my purpose and legacy. A big part of that is health because the longer I can live, the longer I can be here, I can create a legacy while I'm here instead of just worrying about the money that I leave behind. Then, of course, the business that I'm trying to build and the impact that I want to have on my community here. Those are my three highest values, relationships, experiences, and my purpose and legacy. Every single dollar that I spend on top of my basic living expenses, which are pretty modest now because I'm not spending money trying to compensate for unhappiness. Every single dollar that I spend above my basic expenses needs to serve two out of those three buckets. If it doesn't, I'm not going to spend the money on it. I try to share this with people and have them go through this exercise, which can be a little difficult, but I feel like between that and then sharing the experience that I've had, it's been resonating. I think my clients are benefiting from it. Josh St. Laurent: I'd be curious to get your perspective on this. When I hear you talking about it, I'm like, okay, hiking with your son, live music, these aren't mega yacht type of purchases. It doesn't require millions and millions of dollars to live this ideal life that you're talking about. Do you find the same thing with your clients? Bryan Huhn: Yeah. Maybe I'm just attracting people that don't want all that fancy stuff or maybe talking to me helps them to rein in. But I say, most clients, when I first work with them, they're not spending extravagantly. I think I'm probably just attracting people that are like me. Josh St. Laurent: Yeah, absolutely. I think that that's something that I've noticed as well. A lot of people, for whatever reason, have this maximize mindset, well, I need to have a couple million dollars to stop working. I think COVID has changed a lot too, where people realize, if I could just take off a month or if I could just play on one trip a year, that would be moving the needle as far as quality of life for me. I always think that's fascinating. Like it doesn't typically require as much money as people think. And I want to touch upon something you said a little while ago, you know, that we're sort of the anomalies, right, focusing on what we do and not doing product sales. So how did this focus on transparency and fiduciary duty and financial services, something that's so rare? Like can you talk about maybe the shift where you said, you know what? Maybe I could make more money selling products, but I would much rather focus on being a fiduciary and being transparent for my clients. Like how did that come to be? Bryan Huhn: Yeah. So like I said, I spent a long time working for fund companies where the only incentive was just to maximize the amount of products that I could sell. You know, for a long time, I was just kind of young and ambitious and I wanted to be successful. So I worked as hard as I could, but then it got to a point where my motivation wasn't necessarily to be successful. It got to a point where my motivation was to do enough to not get fired so I could just keep the paycheck. You know, and eventually that took its toll on me and I was like, I got to do something else, right? So product distribution side of the business for people who aren't aware. I'm sure many of the listeners are, but it's a very commission driven business. Advisor positions a product to their client. Client puts money in it. Client gets a commission for selling that product. So very questionable alignment of incentives. Then there's the fiduciary world, right, which is the fee only financial advisors. And that's what I did. I decided to move from the commission world to work for a fee only registered investment advisor. But then even there, I was like, hmm, I don't necessarily agree with that. I don't necessarily agree with this. And there were just still lots of conflicts of interest there because when the fee is set up to collect a percentage of a client's portfolio, then the incentive is simply to retain assets, gather assets, and then grow them over time. So clients that want to take money out, maybe, to do something they've always wanted to do, they'll always get pushback. Client who, it might make sense to move some money into cash. That might be the best financial decision, but their advisor will say, no, you can't do that because then they can't charge a fee on the cash, right? So I started seeing, even in that world, there were all these conflicts of interest. So that kind of got me to the point that I described earlier where I eventually just kind of burned out and I just cut the core, didn't know what I was going to do. I left my job, I started studying for the CFP exam, and then I just started thinking like, okay, I've spent nearly 15 years in this industry and I have yet to find a single firm that I would actually use myself and recommend to people that I care about. So I guess I'm just going to have to create it. Josh St. Laurent: I love that. My next going to be tired from nodding so much. There's so much overlap in our two stories. I felt so similar in the corporate world caught up between, I need to make a living, but also I don't believe in these things that I'm sort of being forced to sell on commission. And I don't believe in this asset collection model for all the reasons that you just said. So I want to get your take on this because a lot of people ask me, well, then how do I find a good advisor? And it's not an easy question because even as advisors, we're constantly sifting through all this jargon and terminology and a million different ways to charge people. So what advice do you give someone who says, well, you know what I do want to fiduciary honest advisors, not going to make commissions off me. I like the idea of flat fee. Where did they even begin? Bryan Huhn: Well, you have to start with the person. You have to get to know the person on a human level, understand what their values are. Make sure that their values align with your values. That's more important than even the business models that I mentioned. I think that the flat fee structure that I use and I think you use as well, right, Josh? I do is by far in the best interest of clients. Like I think that's the future of our industry. But that being said, not every flat fee advisor is going to be a great advisor. So maybe you find a really good ethical advisor that charges a percentage of your portfolio that's not an egregious percentage. And you know that they're always going to do the right things. They're not going to let those conflicts of interest determine their actions. So that's the most important thing is just find the person that you connect with the most. Josh St. Laurent: I love that you mentioned that and that you went there because it's true. At the end of the day, I've had clients go with, you know, their college body as their advisor. Bryan Huhn: And the reason why is because there is implicit trust there. They might work for a big broker dealer company. They might make commissions, but the relationship that they built prior to them even working at that company sort of trumps that commission structure, I would hope, right? Josh St. Laurent: So I'm glad that you make that point. I wanted to transition a little bit. I'd LinkedIn. You've got your title as anti CEO. What can you tell us about that? Have you ever seen the YouTube video with the founder of Chobani? I watched that presentation that he gave a long time ago and he talks about when he bought this old rundown decrepit plant in upstate New York, the neighborhood had been decimated because the plant went out of business. I forget what the plant was before. It was not a yogurt plant, but the plant went out of business and he went out and visited this plant. Bryan Huhn: And while everybody else saw it as just a wasteland and no opportunity there, he saw opportunity. He said, this has everything I need to run the business the way I need to run it. And what we can do is we can serve this community. We can hire people. We can pay them a good wage. We can worry not only about profits, but also investing in the community. That's where I got it from. What he calls this presentation that he gives is the anti CEO playbook. And it's simply rejecting the historical US capitalism business model of just maximizing short term profits at all costs. It's the rising tide can lift all boats. And guess what? As the person who started a company, I can do pretty well financially as well. It doesn't have to be at the expense of other people. Josh St. Laurent: So true. You've been a business owner for a while now, but you transitioned from the corporate America side of things. Josh St. Laurent: You've been a W2 employee. And now you've been the CEO, the anti CEO, right? And you run a company and you build a company from scratch. What were some of the big lessons along the way that you've learned? Bryan Huhn: Yeah. It's a good question. There's just so many lessons that I've learned. It's hard to kind of pick one or two. But first off is kind of what I alluded to earlier about doing work that I love, you know, and not chasing after money, right? It was very scary when I first started a business and you don't have an income and you're so used to having an income. Like, I'm somebody who worked since I was 14, 15 years old. And so to have that income go away suddenly like that, it was really, really scary. And I was tempted in the early stages to like bring on a client that I kind of knew wasn't going to be a good fit. Bryan Huhn: I kind of knew they were going to drain my energy and maybe get me back to the place that I was previously, the situation that I left where I got burned out. I had to kind of learn to say no to short-term results in order to, you know, stand in my convictions and build something that I knew was going to continue to give me energy over time. So I think that's the biggest change is getting out of the corporate mindset of focusing so much on short-term results. It's hilarious. Like, there's so many times where I would look at like the amount of new discovery calls that I had and there weren't many in the early days. And there would be this voice in the back of my head telling me like, you're a failure. If you're not talking to at least 10 people a week, you're not going to be getting the business that you need to get. Bryan Huhn: And this is all this short-termism that was drilled into my head in the corporate world. So I think that's the biggest lesson I learned is that if I stay true to myself and I try to build something, a business around what I enjoy doing, around the things that I'm best at rather than trying to be something else in order to get results, then that's going to result in a much, much more sustainable business. Josh St. Laurent: Definitely. I've been coming across this question a lot, just a piggyback off of what you're saying. A lot of people who are saying, you know what, I'm fed up with my corporate job. I am thinking about starting my own business, but the thought of the paycheck going away is just debilitating. What advice do you give to those people? How do they prepare? Is it just have a secure financial runway or are there other things that they can do on top of that? Bryan Huhn: Yeah, so there's several things. Number one is what we talked about earlier, identifying what you truly value and making sure that your life is aligned with what you truly value. Typically, when you do that, your bank accounts are going to thank you. Good move to be happier and it's a good move to have more money, more discretionary money. So that's the biggest thing is living according to your values. The other thing is, yeah, absolutely. A cash runway is important. You know, I would recommend don't do what I did and don't just jump ship because you can't take it anymore. Like, I kicked the can down the road so long and just went through the motions for so long that I got to a point where like mentally I was just breaking down and I couldn't do it anymore. Like, I would say like, if I look back in my career five, 10 years ago, it wasn't great. Bryan Huhn: Like, I'm not, I wasn't living the happy life that I'm living today. There were little dissatisfactions, but during those relatively good times, like get out in front of it. If you've got little dissatisfactions that are kind of driving in at every day, don't wait for it to get bad. Start building that plan, build a financial runway that'll give you, you know, maybe a year, maybe two, because I love the idea of when you leave corporate, you're still going to have a lot of that stuff in your head. And so you have to spend some time away to completely unplug from it. So if you can get the longer runway, you can give yourself the better. If you could take the first six months to sit down and just absolutely do nothing other than soul search and reflect on what you want the rest of your life to look like, I think that's ideal. Bryan Huhn: Most people maybe can't do that, but I think with some intention, a lot of people can. So according to your values to minimize expenses, have a cash runway setup so that you can figure out what the next phase of your life is going to be. And then the other thing I would say, and this may be a little bit controversial in our industry, but be afraid to pull future assets forward into the present. Like if you have a retirement account, an IRA or a 401k or whatever, that has, you know, $300,000 in order, $250,000, whatever it is. Well, $250,000, what if you took $50,000 of that out? And you pay the 10% early withdrawal penalty. So you pay $5,000. And now you got $45,000 that you can use today to live the life that you want to live. If you never put another dollar in there, if you still have $200,000, you never put another dollar in there. Bryan Huhn: And let's say you're 40 now and you wait until 65 and you just let it, let it ride. I forget exactly what the numbers are, but I ran this recently by 65. You'd have around 2.1 million or so, you know, given historical stock market returns. Now, 25 years of inflation, that's not going to be the really, you know, the significant amount of money that it is today. But then if you just let that ride in other five years, because now you've transformed your life and you're loving the work that you're doing. So maybe you're not in such a hurry to retire because you got this income coming in. So that's less stress on your retirement savings. You let that grow another five years to 70 and I think it was something like three and a half million. If you let it go another five years to 75, I think it was like 5.6 million. Bryan Huhn: And so I think that is a really important concept for people to grasp, you know, if you look at Warren Buffett, over 90% of his net worth was accumulated after the age of 65. So if you can just think about it and say, hey, I'm going to do happy work for the rest of my life or the rest of my career, then you're not going to want to escape that work. So you can put off pulling money out of your retirement accounts and let compounding be your best friend. Josh St. Laurent: Couldn't have said any better myself. That was beautiful. I love the focus in the very beginning on action too. So many people get caught up in their emotions of, you know, what was me? I'm unhappy, but I'm just going to sit here and wait for an opportunity versus, hey, let me take action and let me start setting aside that money and change my mindset, change my perspective to, you know, hey, maybe I will make less money. Josh St. Laurent: I can always speak for myself, but, you know, I still have a master salary that I was making at that company that I left, but my happiness, my lifestyle, I mean, 10X is probably a conservative estimate, right? I would entrate it for all the money in the world. And so I think that's important to realize for someone who's sitting in that position. And the other thing too is like, I think sometimes people will hear what I just said and think, well, you're an entrepreneur. So of course, you can run an online business and you're never going to want to retire, but not everybody wants to do that. Okay, if you can leave your job that you hate and that's high stress and go to something, maybe switch careers to something where it's a lower paying job. And eventually, yeah, you, you will retire, but let's say at age 60, you retire and then you say, you know what? Josh St. Laurent: I'm going to get a job at a concert venue. So that way I can just catch live music all the time or I'm going to get a job at a, at a local bar because I love hanging out there. I love being a member of the community and interacting with people. So like there's all these joyful ways that you can earn an income. So I'd say start thinking about it that way. Like you can continue to work even in retirement and do work that you're really like and be a happy person. So I think we just as a society have to move away from this, you know, we work a certain amount of years and then we're done because work sucks so bad and we just have to escape it. Bryan Huhn: Yes, couldn't agree more. And there's too much data coming out now about people needing purpose in their lives, right? I'm retired just to realize I shouldn't have done that. I need something and then they go work at the music venue anyway, but I think realizing that sooner has been a huge turning point in my life and a lot of clients that I've worked with. It's like, man, I don't miss that job where I made X amount of dollars more than I do in this job, but I love this job and I wouldn't trade it for anything. And I think that's hard to wrap your head around when you're in a good, high paying job that you work so hard so many years to build up to only to realize, man, this is not what I thought it was going to be. Josh St. Laurent: Yeah. And let's face it, our industry does a fantastic job of scaring people that they're not going to have enough saved up. Right. I mean, you've seen the stats out there. What is it? Something like 10X, your income or something like that or even more? It's like, no, if you use your money efficiently and you figure out like joyful ways to actually earn a little bit of side income, you don't need nearly as much as the industry. It would scare you into thinking. Bryan Huhn: Yeah. And life is too fluid, you know, I think over my career, I've had too many instances. I'll just share a quick client story. I was actually invited to the retirement party day before the party. He was chopping wood to have a fire for the party. Tree fell on him and he passed away, you know, not even day one and into retirement, you know. And so I look at that and I'm just like, man, you just never know. You save all this money for all this time, you know, for what? You got to enjoy your life now. So that's a story that I share with clients sometimes who are like, no, I got to work until 67 and it's like, says who? Why for what? For who? What is that doing for you? So that's where my mind goes to. Josh St. Laurent: I can talk about this all day long with you, but I wanted to ask for the audience out there who say, man, Brian's a good guy. How do I get in touch with them? Who does he work with? Can you tell us a little bit about your business and like the clients that you focus on and who should be reaching out to you for help? Bryan Huhn: So you can reach me on LinkedIn right now. That's the only social media platform that I'm active on. Although one of the things that I'm doing this year is working with a marketing specialist that's going to help me kind of repurpose and curate a lot of the content I've been pumping out over the last year and a half and get on to other platforms. But for now, LinkedIn and then my website is reflectivewealth.com and I've tried to be as transparent as possible and as detailed as possible. So you can understand who I am and what the business is all about. And then as far as who I work with, that's an evolving thing, man, like you and I, we've talked, I think about who is our ideal client and who do we serve. I think a lot of times like we try to pinpoint it, but really it's just an evolution over time. And so like ideally I want to work with people who are the way I was a decade ago, five years ago that are just unhappy in their careers and don't think that it's possible to escape because it is. And I want to help them do that because they deserve to be happy. So like ideally those are the clients that I work with. Bryan Huhn: But you know, I'm also starting to get some retired clients that are interested and they like the message, they like the way that I think about money, you know, and they're tired of paying a percent or more of their assets every single year and not getting the value out of it. So they like the flat fee structure better. It's going to save them a lot of money over time. So I shared a lot here on the show today about who I am and what I value. So if that resonates with you, then maybe I'm a good person for you to reach out to. Josh St. Laurent: Absolutely. I'll put some links in the show notes to to make it easy on anyone listening who does want to reach out. So I want to transition to these three questions that I try to ask towards the end of the show a little more personal to you just to give the listeners kind of a perspective into what matters to you. So the first question is what is living a wealthy life look like for you? Bryan Huhn: It means living a healthy life with fantastic relationships with the people that matter most to you and not having to worry about money. Josh St. Laurent: Yes. If you could give one message to someone working to gain financial freedom who isn't there yet, what would it be? Bryan Huhn: Get introspective. Figure out who you are. What do you value? Forget about all the external expectations that were drilled into your head by your employer, your family, your friends. Forget about it all. Figure out what you want. And once you know what you want, you can go and get it. Josh St. Laurent: That's so good. All right. I save the hardest one for last. If you only had a thousand dollars and you were starting over, what would be the first thing you would do with that money? Bryan Huhn: Everything in Bitcoin. No, I'm just kidding. Bryan Huhn: Shoot. If I only had a thousand bucks, you know, starting all over, just going back to what we've been talking about as far as, you know, living a values aligned life is I would figure out how to use that money to maximize the quality of my life right now so that I can be in a headspace to do work that I'm going to be excited to do so that I can continue to earn more and more money on top of that thousand dollars. I don't know. Was that a good answer? Josh St. Laurent: I like that answer. You know, it's really interesting for me to think back. I had this mindset. I grew up with like no money. And so when I started to make money, I thought, you know, eating Robin Noodles every meal and, you know, I mean, just cutting corners, trying to like penny pinch. I thought that was the answer back then. And I feel like a comfortable circle now where I realized like the quality of my life, like I was making myself miserable, right? So I like that answer though. Take that thousand dollars and put yourself in a position where you're in a good headspace and you can be successful and you can get the work done that you need. Problem is that's not going to get you too far. Thousand dollars might pay one month rent. So if you're lucky, so I don't know. That's why it's the hardest question. Josh St. Laurent: What else have we not talked about that we should have talked about something that the listeners really ought to know that maybe no one else is talking about out there right now. Bryan Huhn: Well, one thing that's been on my mind a lot recently, Josh is it's becoming pretty trendy in the financial planning industry to like talk badly about investment management and say like investment management is not worth it. Managers can't beat the index. So just buy the index to an extent. I subscribe to that belief. I think most people if they own a well structured stock market index and they contribute to it over time and they're disciplined and they stick with it, they're going to do well financially. But I also think that it can be a little bit lazy on the part of financial advisors to just say, you know what index and chill, I don't have to pay attention to what's going on in the market. I don't have to pay attention to macro trends that are going to change the way the economy works. So one of the things that I try to do is I don't actively manage like on a day to day basis, but I build around that index fund, that kind of core holding with thematic ETFs, like emerging themes, you know, and these are not recommendations, but things like cybersecurity, clean energy, fintech, like entire industries that are probably going to experience a lot of growth over the next decade. And with an ETF, you can just buy the whole industry rather than trying to pick the individual winners and losers. And tails tend to drive the whole index anyways. Like if you look at the S.A.P. 500, it's been driven by seven stocks, right? So if you buy the whole clean energy industry rather than trying to pick the winners and losers and it's market cap weighted, you're probably going to end up owning the ones that you want to own. So index is fine, but there are also better ways to enhance your growth over time in my opinion. Josh St. Laurent: Definitely. So you open Pandora's box. I'm going to blame it on you here. This conversation could go on for a whole other podcast, right? But this kind of drives me crazy as well, right? This sort of blanket statements thrown out there of like, well, you could just, you know, buy index and chill. Like you said, I had a debate about this a couple months back. I was at Golden Gate teaching a class and the, you know, half the class was team index and the other half was team actively managing. We had a debate not to prove a winner, but just to show how nuanced the conversation could be, right? I pulled up some research from dimensional funds of exactly what you're talking about, right? It's like, well, maybe a stock index. But what about a bond index? What about an emerging market, you know, emerging market small cap? Like what if we look at these little, you know, smaller asset classes? Is that the case where index is beating active, right? And I say all that to say it's nuance, right? It's not so simple as, well, just buy index funds. And so I'm sure you're no different. I mean with clients all the time where this is sort of the how we lead into the conversation. A lot of people think that financial planning is driven by investments or mainly investments. And so a lot of times a conversation starts there. And so kind of a long, winded question, but I wanted to ask you, how do you approach someone who says that they're self directed? Maybe they've always been self directed or they still identify a self directed? I don't need any help. I have such and such newsletter. I watch Kramer and I'm self directed. What do you say to those people? Bryan Huhn: That's great. That's great. Keep doing it yourself, you know, and let me help you to give you a framework, you know, to do that within. I tell them that a financial plan is the best risk management tool you could ever have. Because if you have a comprehensive financial plan that looks at looks over every single aspect of your financial life and your financial plan, the data in your financial plan tells you that you can afford to take whatever risk you're taking, then you know you're going to be okay. Josh St. Laurent: Yeah. I liked that approach. Help give them the framework because there is a lot of information out there admittedly in finance, right? It's really the organization and implementation, I think is where we step in as financial planners. I was jokal with my wife last night. I'm teaching a personal financial planning, basically the intro class for CFP right now. And I could break my foot if I drop this book, you know, thinking about that, right? It's kind of crazy as CFP is to think back and be like, wow, we have this breath of knowledge. And we use like the tip of the iceberg in most situations. And I think that's something that is eye opening for clients to realize when they actually sit down with a financial planner, especially if they've always been self directed to see how deep it can really go, right? And so any closing thoughts from you on investing, being self directed, getting yourself in a good financial position, you know, if you don't have someone right now. Bryan Huhn: Never stop learning, you know, if you want to commit the time to learning and getting better at it, then you should do that. But be honest with yourself, if you're not going to commit the time, then you should probably get some help. You know, one of the things that I've done the way I've structured my business is I have a newsletter, which is not unusual. I think most of us all have newsletters. But I have thought long and hard like, how do I turn this into an actual legitimate free service, not just a lead magnet? And so I sent requests for feedback to all my subscribers and like, what do you want to learn about? And I got several different answers, but the overwhelming majority wanted to learn about investing. So I was like, this is great because that's like what my background is in. It's what I love learning about the most and it's where I can add the most value. So I've turned my newsletter into basically a free service to help the subscribers become a great investor. Like I'm going to teach you all the stuff that I've learned after, you know, a 15 year career of working with some of the best institutional money managers in the industry. And if you can take that and do the stuff on your own, then that's great. But I also think that like the more educated DIY investors get, they start to see the value of having someone like me or you to bounce things off of. So they're not alone in their endeavors. Josh St. Laurent: That newsletter sounds like gold. I mean, there's not a lot of information out there like that that I've come across. So we'll drop the link definitely head over to Brian's website and subscribe to the newsletter. Appreciate you being here, man. This has been a really fun conversation. Bryan Huhn: Yeah, thanks, Josh. It was great being here. Thanks for having me on. We'll talk again soon. Josh St. Laurent: Absolutely. This has been the Wealth in Yourself Podcast where we help people to design their ideal life and take control of their time and money. Our guest today was Brian Hune. Thanks for listening and we'll see you next time. The Wealth in Yourself Podcast is hosted by me, Josh St. Loren, an edited and produced by Ray Haycraft. To learn more about how to make your money work for you, visit us at www.wealthinyourself.com and connect with us on all social media at Wealth in Yourself. This podcast is educational in nature and is not meant to be investment advice. Please do not construe anything said to be advice and the opinions of the guests may or may not represent the opinions of Wealth in yourself. This podcast and the information presented are separate for my employment at Golden Gate University. Still, they are part of my mission to make no-cost, financial knowledge more accessible. If you like the show, please take a moment to leave us a review. We read all of your feedback and we want to make sure we cover the topics that matter most. If you have a specific subject you'd like us to explore or a guest you'd love to hear interviewed, don't hesitate to shoot us a direct message. 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