Business Innovators Radio - Interview with Brad Jones, Founder, and Financial Advisor with Jones Retirement Advisors

Episode Date: August 21, 2023

Brad is dedicated to helping clients create financial independence through a well-thought-out financial strategy for retirement. As a junior in high school, Brad knew he wanted to be a financial advisor and help others work toward their retirement dreams. He then went on to attend Eastern Michigan University and graduated with his Bachelor’s Degree in finance.Following college, he spent the first decade of his career with a regional consulting firm, honing his skills. He went on to open his own firm and focus on his love of providing retirement advice. With more than 17 years of experience working with retirees and those near retirement, Brad enjoys connecting with clients and prospects by conducting informational seminars and workshops in the community.Brad is a very family-centered person. In November of 2021, Brad and his wife Angie welcomed their first child, Eleanor Grace. Also, a part of the family is rescue dogs Lucy and Ocque. When out of the office, Brad enjoys golfing, taking the dogs to the park, and creating memories with his family.Learn More:https://jonesretirement.com/Securities products and services made available through AE Financial Services, LLC (AEFS), member FINRA/SIPC. Investment advisory products and services made available through AE Wealth Management, LLC (AEWM), a Registered Investment Advisor. Insurance products are offered through the insurance business Jones Retirement Advisors, LLC. Jones Retirement Advisors, LLC is also a Financial Services practice that offers products and services through AE Financial Services, LLC (AEFS), member FINRA/SIPC. Jones Retirement Advisors, LLC is also an Investment Advisory practice that offers investment advisory products and services through AE Wealth Management, LLC (AEWM), a Registered Investment Advisor. AEFS and AEWM do not offer insurance products. The insurance products offered by Jones Retirement Advisors, LLC are not subject to regulatory requirements or standards of care applicable to registered representatives and are not subject to Investment Advisor requirements.Influential Entrepreneurs with Mike Saundershttps://businessinnovatorsradio.com/influential-entrepreneurs-with-mike-saunders/Source: https://businessinnovatorsradio.com/interview-with-brad-jones-founder-and-financial-advisor-with-jones-retirement-advisors

Welcome to influential entrepreneurs, bringing you interviews with elite business leaders and experts, sharing tips and strategies for elevating your business to the next level. Here's your host, Mike Saunders. Hello and welcome to this episode of Influential Entrepreneurs. This is Mike Saunders, the authority positioning coach. Today we have with us Brad Jones, who's the founder and a financial advisor with Jones Retirement Advisors. Brad, welcome to the program. Hey, thanks for having me, Mike. I appreciate it.

You're welcome. I'm excited to talk with you because I love hearing perspectives from people who come at the industry from many different angles. So what is your story in background and how did you get into the financial services industry? Yeah. So my story is, I think, unique, probably not fully unique, but I grew up here in a suburb of Detroit, Michigan with a very loving mom and dad who, you know, quite frankly, struggled financially. My running tab on that is that they lived paycheck to Wednesday. So they made it 12 out of a 14-day pay cycle, and it felt like every other Wednesday. I don't think it felt like anything. It literally was.

Every other Wednesday, my mom would jump in the car and go down to Farmer Jack, which is nostalgic for us, Michiganers. And she would get some groceries, and she'd write a personal check for the groceries because she knew that check wouldn't clear until Friday. So we were always buying groceries with money. We hadn't quite earned yet. And so growing up in that household, I excelled and enjoyed math. I still do. I call myself a math nerd.

And I was like, hey, what can I do for a living and use this skill of math and ran across financial advisor on a college brochure one day? And so when I was a junior in high school, I came home and said, hey, mom and dad, I'm going to study financing in college and I'm going to be a financial advisor. And they said, cool, I don't know what that is, but that sounds like it's perfect for you. We support you. Yeah, we support you on that. So I graduated high school. I have a late birthday. So I was 17, went to college with the Eastern Michigan University. He graduated at 21 and then took my series seven, 10 days after I graduated college and five days after that started working 70 hours a week earning probably three bucks an hour if he did the math on the hourly rate.

And I'm 38. So that was 2006, not like 1972. So, yeah, we weren't doing too well at first, trying to convince people that a 21-year-old that looked like he was 15 could help with their finances. And, you know, so eventually figured it out, stuck to it, which I think this industry, that is really what it takes is, you know, a head that says I'm okay making three bucks an hour for a few years. and stuck to it and worked for another firm and worked and really help somebody else grow their not worth for, oh, a decade before eventually kind of breaking off on my own.

In the time when I was still with that old firm, and I think this is kind of my driving passion, maybe three, four, five years into this business. My mom and dad came into the office and said, hey, we need your help. We're ready. And they didn't have much saved at the time. And they said, my dad said, I want to retire at 65. and I said, hey, 65 is a great goal. But your current savings and spending habits tell me that you need to have a late retirement and early death in order to be okay, which I saw in a comic book strip.

He didn't think it was as funny as I did. And so I looked right across the table at my mom and dad and said, hey, if you're willing to make some really positive change, I think you can make this happen, but it's going to take some hard work. And I think that's something that I tell my clients to this day. And basically for my mom and dad, they both smoked cigarettes at the time. And for whatever reason, my mom just stopped cooking, which she did quite a bit when we were growing up, out of necessity. And now they were no longer paycheck to Wednesday.

You know, they made it every paycheck. Probably had a slight amount of fluff in their budget. And so I just said, hey, will you quit smoking in order to retire? Will you cook more in order to retire? And my dad kind of shocked me when he said yes, because he was, oh, probably darn near 55. I've smoked since he was 10 years old. Wow. You know, my running joke, though, is that he quit smoking cigarettes the same way that I quit, that I lose weight, which is I'm going to start this diet tomorrow.

He said, I'm going to quit smoking some other time in the future. And then had a small but not serious health scare that had him in the hospital for a few days. And he got out, said, I guess I quit smoking. And they just started saving all those dollars and that they were spending on cigarettes and going out to eat and actually retired at 64 and 62. And they actually live on a lake out here in beautiful Brighton, Michigan. where our office is. And like I said, retired earlier than they wanted,

then they even had their original goal and did it while, you know, they're probably on a pontoon boat as we're chatting about this right now. That's neat. You know, so all my driving passion was which I didn't want to live paycheck to paycheck. I didn't want my parents to have, you know,

realistically didn't want them to have a late retirement. Certainly didn't want the second part. And so that was really my driving passion is how do I help not only my own family once I have one, but also how do I help the family that I, I started with Bob and Vicki. And it's been fantastic. So that's really my driving passion for this is helping folks in everyday America

achieve the dream of permanent vacation, aka retirement. You know, and the thing that I find curious about your driving passion was not, I want two yachts. I want four vacation homes. I want to make a billion trillion dollars. It was I want to avoid this that I went through myself, this pain. And that's kind of part of huge. psychology, what motivates us. And a lot of times it's not to get those big good things. That's

an element of it. But a lot of times it's like, I want to avoid this pain. And then when you couple that with personal experience and helping your family. And then like what I heard you say at a couple of those early firms, you were helping other people create their wealth. But yet there were some wins throughout there. You were helping a client and this client and that client, I'm sure you saw some results. And it's like, okay, I want to be in this industry. I just don't want to build someone else as well, I want to get out on my own. But yet you really love the fact that you roll up your sleeves. You sit down and create relationships with your clients. Yeah, and we hope they're permanent relationships. And to your point, I think the biggest win is

that you can't learn this business the right way on your own. And so I probably spent too long working for somebody else, you know, bluntly. In hindsight, it's always 2020. But, you know, I learned at a great place to learn how to properly do this line of work and properly help people and properly, you know, have success on your own life, but also your client's life, which I think, I think that's the key for anyone is, is this business doesn't work if we're not truly helping people. It certainly doesn't work forever. And, you know, if a client becomes a client of Jones retirement advisors, we want them to be a client forever, quite bluntly. And, you know, that's always my driving passion is how do we help you and in turn? Like any business, right? Your customer has to get benefit from it. But then the business has to get benefit from it as well. And that's really our focus day in and day out. So here's a pop quiz slash litmus test.

Do you ever receive referrals from your clients to either their parents or their children when they are your client? So client A, you do a good job and they refer you their parents because the client is younger and their parents need your help. or you do some good work for a client and they're the parents and they go, hey, my kid just graduated from college, has his first job, can you work with them? Do you receive referrals like that? All the time, all the time. So there's your answer. That's where I want you to go deeper on that, but that's my first bell ringer.

If you are just churning and burning and trying to make a buck and getting another client and leaving them high and dry, people don't make those referrals because you are not going to refer someone you don't trust and certainly not to a close loved family member. So when that happens, that's a huge, huge mark by your name positively. Yeah, we work with several families where we work with the whole generations that are still living. You know, bluntly, we've kind of changed our business model a little bit in the last handful of years. We're really focused on those people that are near or in retirement. But all the time I'm taking phone calls from clients, children and saying, hey, here's some kind of off

the off the book guidance and here's who I would look to hire or hey if we can help you here's how we can help you but you know you're just getting started you know bluntly don't spend the money on it right now it's like hey when you first get out of college cut your own grass and if um you know you're 35 and you have kids and and you don't want to cut your own grass then pay a service right um 100% and so uh yeah we get that quite a bit and and actually this evening um you know we do uh dinner dinner dinner seminar kind of marketing slash education events around the community and we have actually won this evening the day that we're taping this. And I have a client who's bringing, I believe, his neighbors and his sister to that event.

And that happens, gosh, that happens all the time, especially with that particular client talking about. That's awesome. Yeah. Yeah. That is great. So you mentioned you do things a little bit differently. And I think the phrase retirement planning is so broad and has a lot of variables there.

What is it that you guys are doing in your approach to retirement planning? that's a little different than other wealth managers. Yeah, so I think, you know, we try to steer away from even like referring to ourselves as wealth managers, I think is the big thing, right? I mean, retirement planning, to your point, is not only broad, but part of my French, kind of bastardized, as is the term financial planning financial advisor, and that it's like, it's a lot of times someone said, have a financial advisor, and what they mean by that is I manage investments for a fee or, hey, I'm a financial advisor, retirement planner, but what I mean by

that is I sell insurance products. And yeah, we do those things right as a course of how we help clients. But really our planning process, which is called climb through retirement, encompasses all of someone's finances that they would need within that kind of five to 10 year window of becoming retired and then through retirement. And that's always been our focus is real planning, real guidance. And then how we then get compensated is through managing assets in any way, shape, or form. And people say they do that, but I just don't see that happen in reality all too often.

A lot of times it's like, have this great product, have this great widget. And there's really not any planning, right? No talk about estate planning. No talk about taxes. No talk about, you know, how they really drive an income from this, right? I mean, I think it's if you do it wrong, it's like driving a car with your foot on the gas and break at the same time. You could be working against each other if you're having one area working like a clock work. and then another area being disregarded and it's like, wow,

we just need everything to be holistically working together. I've always looked, Mike, at like the Mayo Clinic, right? And if you know anyone that's had back surgery, it's like, hey, I had back surgery. And I need to have back surgery again. And it's like you keep fixing the effect and you don't get to the cause. And the cause might just be that for whatever reason, your right leg's a half an inch longer than your left leg. You just need to put a little inch shirt, your left shoe.

And but the back surgeon's like, yeah, I'm going to fix your back. right and that's what happens in our industry as well is if you go to someone and you say hey here's what i'm looking for that's what they're going to give you right but you really need to get to the root of the issue right we need to go fix the causes and then we'll have the effect or the outcome i'm really looking for and it shouldn't be unique i always laugh at one of the big box firms where it seems like every every few years i see that their new CEO or something has a big initiative and it's like hey we're going to do financial planning now and i'm like great you're only 25 years behind the times. And it's like every few years from the same firm, I won't name them, so

nobody gets in trouble. But I keep seeing that. I'm like, man, I've been doing financial planning, real financial planning, retirement planning since 2006, since well before I had even an outfit facial. So. Yeah. You know, and I think that that number one, it makes sense. But number two, it does what I said before. It makes all the pieces play nice to get together. But also from an intrinsic point of view, I would suspect you hear this. Brett, I just don't want to go searching around for this person to help me with the estate side of things, the attorney, and then the CPA and then the taxes, then the financial. So if you can just kind of help us corral them all together, I know like Brad Jones doesn't

do it all, but if you can corral them together and be the quarterback and bring them all and make sure everything's going together, they feel like it's like a relief that it's a one-stop shop. Yeah, yeah. And I think, you know, from that standpoint, just the ease of doing it. But then also, to your point, making sure the right hand and the left hand are working in coordination, because the estate planning attorney sees stuff from an estate planning standpoint, right? And the financial advisor sees something from a financial planning retirement planning standpoint.

And you've got to figure out how to mirror those two things together. And sometimes it's two opposites, right? Even just how you name a beneficiary can drastically change the outcome for that beneficiary. And that's where having those two human beings, the estate planning attorney and the advisor, sitting side by side and being your advocate is a huge difference from trying to go and piecemeal these things together. Yeah. And I think that if all you had was a hammer, then everything you see needs a hammer, so you're

just whacking at everything. So having that, you know, 360 degree approach and seeing yourself how this piece fits with the other piece and then seeing it all come together. And I'm sure you've got dozens and hundreds of these examples of a client that comes in. And yeah, sometimes people only need this one element. but when you do a full-on plan and they're implementing and you see it just come to life from start to finish and they go, wow, this is not what I was expecting and it just feels right. I think that right there, you know, that earns the best referrals without saying,

please refer me. They're like, of course I will. You know, I'm compelled to refer because this is not what I typically am seeing out there. So I think that's such a great approach that you've got. Yeah, we love it. We love it. I mean, we don't, I mean, again, I stress this, right? So, like, we have, we have a couple rules.

One of the rules that we have is you cannot hire us the first time you sit down with us, right? Because we're like, hey, we don't want you to hire us because you're really excited. You want you to hire us because you expect to be by our side a few times a year in perpetuity. And we want to form a relationship, not form a transaction. And I think that that plays huge. And I think that's why we tend to get more and more. more and more referrals on an annual basis than we did the year before. Right.

You know, I'm looking at your website and I want to, you know, bring you back on in a future date and talk through your climb process because I think that is spectacular, but it's all climbing a mountain kind of a connotation. And it reminds me of this statistic I heard maybe you can clarify it. But, you know, a lot of people try to climb Mount Everest, but there's the people that do get to the top, over 50% of the deaths that happen, happen on. the way down. You already hit the peak. You already got there, but the problems come in when you take your eye off the prize and start letting up. And now on the way down, there's the issue. So talk a

little bit about just the 30,000 foot view of when you help people accumulate, you know, the wealth, planning for retirement. Now you got to make sure that you're securing it, not risking it, and all of the things before, you know, you punch holes in the proverbial bucket. Yeah, I think what you just said is perfect. And I use that analysis. all the time, right? As people, one is there's no oxygen at the top of the mountain. So that's why in reality it becomes a struggle. But then the other thing is you practice climbing mountains, right?

I can go do a rock climb, right? I can go do that over and over and over again. And I'm sure someone climbing Mount Everest is pretty talented in rock climbing in general. But you only climb out Everest wants, right? So if a human being there within a couple years of retirement, they're already retired, whatever. This is their only time doing that. I retire on a daily basis with folks. And so,

you know, we use that climate analogy quite a bit in pretty much everything that we do. And it's like, hey, I want to be your retirement Sherpa. And I found this out, I found this out firsthand. My wife and I went to Fiji for our honeymoon.

Like a year after we got married, we did a real honeymoon, went to Fiji. And, you know, I'm a little out of shape. I'm a little more out of shape now than I was even five years ago. The only went.

And, and I'm terrified of heights. But I said, hey babe and i really want to rock i really want to go zip lining and so we go to the ziplining place and i'm really excited about it and i kind of forgot that zip lining in a mountain means you need to climb to get to the zip line and so you know the first clue was he said hey you need to both bring a bottle of water my wife's like we'll just bring one and they're like no no we need to both bring one and we go up these zip lines we're halfway to

the zip line and the guy goes you know there's nine more of these uphill there's 21 photo but only nine more are up till. And I look at my wife and I'm like, all right, let's just live through this. And it was really the other comical part about it is this is the third time. The guides were doing this trip that day. Wow.

And I struggled making it up the first jaunt to the first zip line of 21. They didn't bring water with them. Yeah. And the analogy there is like, hey, I retire every day. You retire one time. They climb that mountain every day three times a day.

There's a lot of unknowns that I don't understand. going to a zip line. There's a lot of unknowns. The consumer doesn't understand because they've never retired before. This is their very first time. They've never been at the top of Mount Everest. There's no way to simulate that.

You just do it and you hope it works out. And we've done that. But then you hope that you're connected to a good Sherpa that can guide you to the left here, up over this, up under that, to the left. And all of a sudden, they know where some pitfalls have been and are. And they go, hold up, let's go over here. And they're doing it out of just a knee-jerk

reaction just out of, you know, of this is what we do. We just know it. And you don't need to worry about not knowing because you've got someone watching your back. Correct. Correct. And that's our, that's our value proposition on a daily basis is your requirement, Sherpa. And, you know, it's all we do. I love it. Well, Brad, it's been really great chatting with you. If someone's interested in learning more about what you do and how you do it, what's the best way they can connect with you? there's several ways that connect with us the best way is to you know request a visit on our website so you just go to jones retirement dot com and request to visit that way and when i say visit it's typically a 15 minute conversation that we start with and then we decide if we should get together

in person or via zoom depending on where you're at in the country or you can call our office which is 81077 jones or in layman's term 81077566377 and, you know, schedule a 15-minute conversation with myself. And from there, we decide if we should go any further and have the real full-on, you know, one-hour Zoom or in-person visit from there. I love it. Well, Brad, thank you so much for coming on today. It's been a real pleasure chatting with you.

Yeah, it's been great, Mike. And this is great, which people probably won't understand. This is our first conversation. So it's been fantastic. And I appreciate it. Thanks, Mike. You're welcome. You've been listening to Influen

influential entrepreneurs with Mike Saunders. To learn more about the resources mentioned on today's show or listen to past episodes, visit www.com.