Marketing Happy Hour - Smart Financial Habits for Young Professionals | Mike Quattrochi, Certified Financial Planner

Episode Date: February 18, 2025

BONUS Episode: Let’s talk about money—because let’s be real, balancing student loans, saving for the future, and actually enjoying life can feel overwhelming. That’s why we’re bringing you a special finance episode with Certified Financial Planner® Mike Quattrochi, a millennial leader who’s helping young professionals build financial wellness without the stress.In this episode, Mike breaks down the biggest financial mistakes young professionals make (and how to avoid them), why employer benefits are your secret weapon, and how to start small with savings and investing without feeling like you’re sacrificing everything fun. Key Takeaways:// Learn how to balance saving, spending, and investing so you can enjoy life and build wealth.// Discover common mistakes people make when managing debt and how to tackle yours strategically.// Mike explains why you should never leave matching contributions on the table and what other workplace perks you should be taking advantage of.// Whether it’s savings, investing, or debt repayment, learn simple ways to start now and build momentum over time.// Mike shares key financial and career strategies to help you level up in both money and leadership.Connect with Mike: LinkedInLearn more about Mike’s firm: WebsiteSpecial thanks to Marlon Gordon and NxtGen Network for the studio space____Say hi! DM me on Instagram and let us know what content you want to hear on the show - I can't wait to hear from you! Please also consider rating the show and leaving a review, as that helps us tremendously as we move forward in this Marketing Happy Hour journey and create more content for all of you. ⁠Join our FREE Open Jobs group on LinkedIn:⁠Join now⁠Get the latest from MHH, straight to your inbox: ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Join our email list!⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Follow MHH on Social: ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Instagram⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ | ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠LinkedIn⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ |⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠TikTok⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ | ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Facebook⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠

When that day comes and you're negotiating your offer, think about things other than what the salary is going to be. Potentially look at some of those other benefits like, help me pay off my student loans, or what's your employer match going to be on my 401k when I'm putting into my future retirement account? What are you going to do for me? Welcome to Marketing Happy Hour. I'm Cassie, consultant, podcaster, and your host.

Every Thursday, you'll hear episodes packed with insights from brand leaders on an array of topics from crafting effective marketing strategies and hitting career goals to building leadership skills and launching your own business. Inspired by those unfiltered happy hour combos with peers, this show is all about practical, empowering chats to support your professional journey. So grab your favorite drink and let's get to the episode. Welcome to Marketing Happy Hour. We are in a different setting than normal here. A very special episode. Shout out to Marlon Gordon behind the cameras there at NextGen Network for this amazing setup. But joined by Mike Q. What's up? How's it

going? Good. It's good to see you. Good. You too. You too. You and I go way back. We do. Way back. I'm excited. Yeah. I'm excited to hear what you've been working on and what you're doing. I love doing these episodes on finance about once a year just to help prepare young professionals, saving all of the information we should already know and unfortunately don't always know. So I'm excited to dive into that. But can you tell us just your story? Like, how did you land where you are today? Yeah, so kind of an interesting story. I was fortunate enough to discover early on when I was in school that I had made an initial mistake of what I thought I wanted

to do and then was able to pivot pretty quickly before I spent too much money on a major that I wasn't going to go into. But I originally grew up and had a great mentor in the medical field and had every intention of becoming a physician assistant. Pretty good at science, pretty good at math. English was never my strong suit, so I wasn't going to go into your realm of work. But when I got up there, I started looking at what the classes were going to entail, things like organic chemistry. Everybody was talking about that. And looking at the coursework and realizing that that probably wasn't what I was going to do. I don't know. Maybe I just didn't want to try and pass those classes or whatever,

but was able to figure out that I've always been kind of business-oriented, had a bit of a business brain, worked in high school, different restaurants and things like that. So I was able to pivot pretty quickly and chose business first. And then when I actually had to kind of hone it in further to find it into finance. And from there, I was fortunate enough to get a great internship at a big firm in St. Pete who gave me a shot, brought me in, and then worked there for a few years, working with advisors, kind of supporting them. And what's interesting is this industry, our industry, where advisors, the average age is like mid-50s.

And there's many, many, many people over the next very short amount of years that will be retiring out. And so what then happens to their businesses and so it's hard as a young individual who wants to become an advisor because you know you're going to sit in front of mr and mrs mcgillicuddy and say you know hey i have what it takes i have the knowledge i have have the skills, but I need you to trust me that I know that because I don't have gray hair yet. And so myself, when I found an opportunity to move over to be an advisor, it was kind of ahead of when I expected to become one. I knew that I had an interest in becoming one because I was working closely with them and supporting them. And their job sounded very interesting to me, very impactful. But in my head, it was way further down the road. And so after COVID hit, I was working from home like everybody else, kind of getting a little

stagnant, a little bored. I was in the big corporate structure and had an opportunity to meet a gentleman who's now our managing partner that was looking for, well, next gen, the next gen, for his business because he'd been working, you know, he's been in the business for 43 years and now has built kind of the next gen, the second generation of leadership in our firm to where I joined him in 2021. His son joined us in 2022. And both him and I are now kind of in that second gen leadership role to kind of carry the business forward now. So that's kind of a very quick, I don't know how long that was, if that was a two minute kind of synopsis or longer, but my journey so far into the financial field,

becoming a certified financial planner, it's a lot of work, but certainly added to my skill set, credibility with the public, et cetera, to where now when I sit in a room with my team, our team-based approach, you know, isbased approach is what a lot of people want. Rather than just working with one individual person, we get to brag that we have three brains working on it. So that's kind of my journey. That's awesome. So we're going to talk a little bit more about career and stuff here in a minute, but I got to ask you just because something sparked from what you were sharing. We speak with a lot of young professionals who have this fear of not being taken seriously and, you know, they're younger in their space versus everyone else. So do you have any encouragement or even just insight into what it's like being a

young professional and how do you build that confidence just to step up and show you know your stuff despite your age, for example? Yeah. For me specifically, again, going above and beyond what may be the normal or the average amount of education or skills to obtain, right? If you wanted to start a marketing agency, you may go and get a marketing major or an advertising or be public relations major. I think that's what you did, right? Okay. Well, everybody does that, right? So if you want to stand out, maybe you have a good looking resume, internships, jobs at various firms. But for myself, it was more about, well, what can I obtain to go above and beyond everybody else, including those that are older than me?

Well, a very small percentage of advisors in our industry are certified financial planners, which is kind of known as the gold standard. There's other great designations out there, but that's kind of for financial planning, that is the gold standard. So that's what I went out to get. And I tried to get it early on. And so that has helped me with the confidence because I was able to further my knowledge, number one. But number two, also now with the credential and the letters after your name kind of thing, which a lot of people are really gung ho about that. It's great, but I'm not like,

oh, you know, Michael Kutrow for CFP. That's not how I introduce myself. But in my world, that's a very credible designation. And so for myself now having the luxury of, you know, owning that designation, it helps me to have the confidence, the advanced skill set so that I do have that confidence, even though I don't have any gray hair. Well, I did find one the other day, but you know what I mean. Sure. So that has helped me get more comfortable when I'm sitting in the room, either by myself or with my team, and the mic gets passed to me to say, hey, introduce our firm, talk about financial planning,

how we might be able to help this client or this business owner. That has helped me to kind of further my confidence right in the confidence in that right yeah i know in our space it's a little bit tricky because there's not specifically certain certifications to go for whatever but i always tell people i'm like make sure you're in the platforms you're doing the work all the time experience is huge but also yeah if there's certifications out there that you want to get and ultimately the more knowledge that you have, the more preparation going into a meeting, like that's going to stand out to people. So I think that's, that's huge. Um, so I want to

ask you diving into finance. That's why we're here today. What does financial wellness mean to you? What does that term mean and why is it important that professionals prioritize it? Financial wellness, kind of a buzzword a little bit, but I think it means something a little bit different for everybody, right? Everybody kind of has a goal and a dream of what they want to obtain, especially in American culture, right? You know, if we talk about what the American dream is, I think financial wellness is a part of that, but it kind of means something different for everybody. Um, at, at my firm, we prioritize our, we've kind of coined the phrase return on life, right? I'll use that interchangeably with financial wellness, right? Well, you might have a couple that walks into

our office and says, well, I was a road warrior and I was on planes my whole career. I hate planes. I don't want to travel. Okay. Well, traveling the world is probably not going to be part of their retirement plan return on life, but they may be very passionate about being philanthropic, giving, right? So for them, getting them into a spot of financial wellness, where now they feel comfortable giving away money to nonprofits or people in need, for example, that is their personal financial wellness. For most young professionals, it may be trying to get out of debt, trying to not live paycheck to paycheck, have a little bit of margin left over to where if their friend calls and they want to go out on Saturday, they don't feel like they're

digging themselves in a hole in order to go and do that. That could be that person's financial wellness. Others, you know, you take a look at like the fire movement. I'm not sure if you've heard of that before. Financial independence, retire early. A lot of individuals have kind of broken the mold of, well, maybe I don't want to work until 67 years old. Maybe I want to live very modestly, boost my income as high as possible, but save as much as possible so that I can be financially independent, financially well, but then also not have to work until 67 like my parents did, or even maybe later like my grandparents did. So they want to retire early, which is a great thing if that's what you want to do. I love what I do. So I'll probably do it for a lot longer than,

you know, mid fifties, which is, you know, when some people try and retire, but, you know, financial wellness can mean many different things. But I think, I do think that is important for people to think about, well, what is that for you? Right. If you have a goal of being philanthropic, well, you want to make sure your own bills are paid for so that you can potentially bless somebody else down the road. Um, you know, for others, it's the fire movement, right? I'm going to live on beans and rice, rice and beans for an extended period of time because I want to pay off my debt. I want to pay off my car. I want to pay off my house.

I want to get out of student debt. And I want to save this huge nest egg to where now I can retire early and kind of break that conventional mold of working into your late 60s and then only having 30-ish, maybe shorter amount of years to actually kind of enjoy life. So there's a lot of different ways to be financially well. So I think it's personal, but I think it's important to identify early so that you have the benefit of time to get yourself on that track for whatever that is for you. Right. Yeah, that's a good kind of first step to be thinking about. What are those goals in the first place? What are you looking to do long term, short term?

How far in advance do you recommend young professionals just think about those goals? Even from like a personal angle, like how are you kind of looking at goals? I know that's hard to anticipate. I mean, if you're a young professional and you're a young individual, if you can find your lane and then identify what do you want your life to look like. There's that saying out there, work is not my life, it's how I fund my life. Well, if you also enjoy what you're doing, it won't feel like work. That's that cliche out there. use your career or use your job, use what you do to generate income or resources to then work toward that goal, the earlier you identify what you're aiming at, the easier it will be to

obtain. Right. Right. So the earlier, the better, I guess, is the easy answer. But sometimes you do kind of have to try things out. You do have to bounce around. But the earlier that a person can at least identify what they think their life should look like or they want their life to look like. And then what are you doing today to make that happen? That's kind of what we take people through when they sit in front of our eyes and in front of our desk. So for a young professional, dream it up, but then retroactively do the back math on that and go, okay, well, what am I doing today to make that happen in the future? So the earlier you can at least identify a primary goal, I think the better. Yeah, absolutely.

And so I think, too, as young professionals, we face this weird juggle of I want to save money and I want to pay juggle of, I want to save money and I want to pay off my debt and I want to enjoy life and I want to travel and I want to do all these things. And I do think like social media certainly does not help. Like we have these aspirations for what we want our life to look like based off of what we see other people doing. So I recommend to people not to build out your aspirations based off of that. It's hard for us as marketers too, because we're in it all the time. But how do you feel young professionals can kind of approach that challenge of balancing

all these different financial goals that they have while also still enjoying life? Yeah. So it kind of goes back to that saying, you know, with what we preach that return on life, right? There are people out there that have a viewpoint that I'm going to suffer for a long period of time so that one day I don't have to, and then I finally can enjoy life. I believe, my firm believes, it's a balance.

It doesn't have to be black or white. It can be gray. There can be fun involved during your career. There can be fun involved, you know, early on. There can be fun involved in retirement as well. So it's all about balance, right? It's like anything in life. But you touched on something that I think is kind of important, which I believe that our generation and future generations will struggle with because of social media, which is delayed gratification and comparing others, right? Comparing like, oh, you know, so-and-so they have this or they've achieved this. That's fantastic. Well, that's great. And there's nothing wrong with dreaming it up and saying, I want that, but you can't let it consume you, right. And you also have to build your own path as long as it doesn't come from a position of envy of like, I, you know,

I want, I want that. And I'm, I'm, I'm jealous or I'm envious of that. I see it more when I look at somebody that has, um, you know, something that I like, or I would want, I don't see that as a, you know, Oh, that's unfair. I see that as a, you know, what can I do or I would want. I don't see that as a, you know, oh, that's unfair. I see that as a, you know, what can I do to obtain that if that's really what I want? Right. Right. So now what am I going to do today to make that happen? Right. Going back to what I just said. Right. But I do think that it's a balancing act, right? If somebody's sitting in front of me and they say, Mike, you know, I got myself in a hole. I got a lot of credit card debt. I need help getting out of it. And I am, I'm living skinny right now because I want to pay this off as soon as possible. And then we ask them, well, like, you know, when's the last time you took

your spouse out on a date? Oh, well, we haven't done that in forever because, you know, we, you know, we're just so focused on, you know, paying off this debt, paying off this debt. It's our number one goal. We want to get it done. We want to crush it. Well, fantastic. But every once in a while, you got to celebrate a win. So there's nothing wrong with enjoying life as you're trying to potentially come up with a financial goal or complete a financial goal, it's not just black or white of like, you have to be

this super intense, crazy, crazy focused, all I do is think about this and just go full bore versus the other end of the coin, which would be, I don't really pay attention to that and I just go out and have fun and who cares about how much I spend or whatever, because know, I don't really pay attention to that and I just go out and have fun. And who cares about how much I spend or whatever, because, you know, you and I don't get to do that. So we have to be disciplined somehow, but it's a balancing act. It's okay to have some fun in the meantime. We don't have to wait until we're in our 60s and we can hardly move anymore to go have fun. And it's scary, I think, to like approach how do I have fun in a way that makes sense for me, especially when you

have looming debt, for example, car payments and all this stuff, like looking at your bank account can be terrifying. And you're like, can I actually afford to go out to dinner? Like it's unfortunate that sometimes we think those ways. And speaking of debts, uh, student loans are very much a, uh, a relevant situation that we young professionals and even shoot further into life to something that we face. And even according to Pew Research Center, as of June 2024, Americans own about one point six trillion trillion, which is insane. So why do you think student loan debt has become such a big challenge for professionals just overall? That's a loaded question. Yeah, for sure. And a hot topic too.

So we can kind of break it down a little bit. So I think it started a long time ago and it's kind of compounded over the years. And, you know, I'm sure everybody knows and has seen, there's been some things that we've tried to do to mitigate that a little bit. You know, if I'm focusing on young professionals from a young age, I believe in, in, in grade school, we're taught that going to college, uh, and maybe going to a expensive, prestigious school is your only way to be successful. Right. And we know that's just not true. I think if you are a young professional that is looking to go to school now, you should really take a hard look at, you don't have to go to a four-year university. You don't have to go

to an Ivy League school. You can go to a trade school not everybody's college material And that doesn't mean that you're not intelligent It just means that that might not be for you the student loan issue is still very prevalent If you're gonna go to a college try and get as many scholarships as possible Potentially work those that go to the university and say I want to live my college life Good on you, but don't do it at the expense of your future self because you had to incur these very extreme costs that you'll be paying off for a long time. Yeah. So for like for myself, I worked through school. I went two years state college,

two years university, whole heck of a lot cheaper than living on campus, you know, at a university meal plan, all of those things. Um, fortunate enough that mom and dad were, you know, happy to have me at home and save some money, but I was working and I did take out loans. And then as I worked through the semester, I went and paid that off, right. Pay that off. And then, so when I graduated, I had a very small balance and was able to just kind of knock it out very quickly. I think when I graduated USF, they made you go through this little course

and it told you like, here's how you're going to pay your loan. And here's what the average student is leaving with, is graduating with. And I think at the time was like 20 $20,000 or $22,000, right? And that was kind of low compared to the whole country. But, man, to stare down the barrel of $20,000 in debt and you just got your first job, I mean, that's the low number.

And that's a big mountain to climb, you know, especially when things are so expensive nowadays. So it's a big mountain to climb, especially when things are so expensive nowadays. So it's a big issue and it's not a simple answer of like, wave the wand and here's how to fix it. But I think if you're a young professional and you're trying to avoid falling into that trap, you really got to look at where am I going to go?

What am I going to study? And whatever you study, make sure that there's a job that's going to be at the end of the rainbow. Don't do underwater basket weaving at a private college because there might only be two jobs in the country that offer that. So pick something, pick a lane, business, finance, where there's a lot of options that you don't have to silo yourself so specifically to where if you graduate and it's a tough job environment, well, maybe you don't do your dream job right away, but you got to get the work. Your loan's going to come due in six months and you got to start making payments. So

that would be my advice to young professionals now have to think about it differently than what we were taught growing up of you have to go to university in order to have a successful career. That's not true. For the record, that is not true. I have seen it firsthand. So and you've seen it, absolutely. Especially in this field. It's like everything I learned in school almost 10 years ago. Terrifying. But a lot of that stuff is not relevant anymore. But I did take away. Some of those dream jobs that you want to hold and look at seeing if, do they require a degree? Like what kind of degree, what kind of education? Like a lot of companies nowadays are stripping away their degree requirements, like even big companies like Google, for example. And so there's a lot of those parameters are going away. So to your point, just making sure it's aligned with your future goals and not feeling like you have to do it just because everyone else says that

you have to, you know, so how many people in the last 10 years have asked you where you graduated? No one cares. Yeah. It's not on my resume anymore. Yeah. It's not great. It's not a great point. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, I think at, at some point, like, especially if you're, I don't know, five plus years in your career, people want to know what is your experience? What have you done? They don't care where you went to school, what your degree is. And 99% of the time, our degrees like aren't even related to what we do anyways. So yeah, it's, I don't know.

There's a balance there. Agree. Agree. Yeah. Yeah. There's a lot of emphasis on, you on, and people are very passionate about schools. They're a Buckeyes fan. Congratulations. But those that strive to go to certain colleges maybe because it's a legacy play.

Oh, my parents went there. I will be the third generation that goes to Ohio State or something like that. Great. that goes to Ohio State or something like that, great. But if you're just basing that based on, I feel like I have to go there to a four-year university, a big-name school, because that's going to be the only way that I'm going to have a fair shot at life and have a successful career and be financially well, second-guess that.

Let's look a little bit deeper at what we're doing here. Because, you know, two years state college, two years university, in state, do it. Get it done. You know, get your education. It's proving to a future employer that you have the ability to learn at a higher level. Yeah. It's really all it is. Yeah.

And so then get out into the workforce and get some experience. I totally agree with you. Yeah. It's really all it is. Yeah. And so then get out into the workforce and get some experience. I totally agree with you. Yeah. Nobody asks me, where did you get your finance degree from? I tell them I have a finance degree. Now, if I went to Harvard, I'd probably say, I got a finance degree from Harvard. Yes. I would flaunt that everywhere. Yeah. But most people are not going to Harvard. So that's kind of the case. Yes. Don't get me wrong. I love USF. It's a great school. Go Bulls. But yeah. Okay. So let's talk employer benefits. I think this is another thing, you know, we are not taught these things in school. And so getting our first job, second job, third job, there's this layer of what kind of benefits do we take advantage of? How do we approach that? So for someone new to the workforce or early on, young professionals, what are some examples of employer benefits we should be taking advantage of?

Yeah. Great question. Everybody focuses on salary. What's my salary going to be? Right. They go on Glassdoor. They look up what they think the job pays. Right.

Yep. They look at what the national average is for the job, which doesn't take into account geography and what the cost of living is in their area sometimes. And they're so focused on what's the big number. But there's so many other benefits that are available to employees, especially if you're working for a big company. Typically, the bigger the company, the more options as far as and flexibility that they may have to help entice you to come to their company. But sometimes you have to think about what are the other options, right? They call them fringe benefits, right?

So. A perfect example of what we just talked about would be student loans. A lot of places now, a lot of the companies you just mentioned, the big Fortune 500, the publicly traded companies, they know that students are coming out with student loan debt. And some of them are offering benefits of, hey, if you work for us for a period of time, show your loyalty, show that you are going to be a good employee, we will help you pay down your student loan debt. That's good to know. And I've seen some young professionals that when they go in, HR department's thinking that they're going to be coming in with a big counteroffer on the salary. But what if you maybe just ask for a small bump in your salary, but then you really focus on the student loan forgiveness or helping pay off the student loans

or, you know, a sign on bonus or what my employee match is going to be, what my paid time off is going to be, right? A lot of big companies now they're doing unlimited PTO, things like that. That's great. I wouldn't even say that's a big ask anymore. That's just kind of like, do you, do you, do you want me to be healthy or do you want me to just hate coming to work every day? Are you going to have a profit sharing? Depending on the position, if you have a large influence in the success of the company that you're going to be at, maybe it's a small firm. Well, maybe you're able to negotiate some profit sharing in addition to your salary and setting yourself up for your future self.

You know, hey, I want to work here, but I've also got some student loan debt that I want to knock out. So what do you guys think about, you guys as the employer, what do you guys think about helping me pay that down by giving me a little incentive here so that I can move my story forward as I excel at your company. So thinking about those fringe benefits, what's your employer match going to be on my 401k when I'm putting into my future retirement account? What are you going to do for me for my future retirement from your company? So thinking about those types of things, I think can really set up a young professional to be ahead of their peers. Do a little more research other than Glassdoor.

Don't just bring that to the table. Yeah. Like what is actually happening in the industry yourself? Like what have you done or what do you need, et cetera? And one other comment on that as well, you know, when you're going into a room and you're, you're in a position where most likely they've already selected you, they've made you an offer. You're the person, right? So you're kind of in the driver's seat. You got to kind of come do your homework, like you mentioned, but you also got to come prepared with, you know, A, B, and C. If you pitch A and they say no, no, and heck no. Great. Well, you better have a B, you know, have a B, have a C, you know, because again, at some point they're going to hopefully come somewhere in the middle and you don't get what you don't ask for.

So speaking of that too, the idea of not leaving money on the table. So contributions. So that's a whole nother benefit, you know, that a lot of companies offer, 401k matching, whatever, you name it. So why is it critical not to leave that kind of money and those opportunities on the table? Yeah, good question. I always tell young professionals this. They come into our office and I ask them, hey, do you have an employer-sponsored retirement account, 401k, for example?

And they go, yeah. And I say, all right, well, are you contributing to it? Oh, no, I can't afford that. Okay. Um, maybe that might be true, you know, but what I typically will encourage them to do is start small and increase over time, 20 bucks, 50 bucks, a hundred dollars every paycheck, right? Well, the first one or two months, you might notice that in your cash flow. You might have to give up something. But over time, you start to forget about it. Number one, because it comes out of your paycheck before you even, it hits your checking account.

And then number two, most companies are going to offer a match, like you mentioned. Well, that's free money on the table. They're saying, if you put money in for your future self, we will match that up to a certain percentage or whatever the arrangement is. If you're mad about, oh, my boss didn't give me a raise, well, give yourself one. You're leaving money on the table. Most companies say 3%. That's kind of the industry standard. Well, give yourself a 3% raise for your future self. Put a little bit of money in. Maybe you can't afford right away to go from zero to three, but go to one, go to two, go to three, and then go up from

there. Don't just stop. Again, thinking about the total comp package, not just salary. We will give you more money in your total comp package if you put some of your money into this long-term retirement account, using a 401k as an example. So that would be my encouragement. People go, oh, my salary, my salary. I didn't get a raise and cost of living and everything. Well, you're leaving 3% on the table most of the time. Some companies are higher than that. So at a minimum, at a minimum, you should be doing at least a company match. That should be your starting point. If you can't quite get there from day one to day two, that's fine.

Work your way up. And I think to your point, it comes back to you at some point. I know it's not this like instant gratification, which is hard, again, in our society to come to terms with. But speaking of that too, just this concept of delayed gratification, like a lot of these investments we don't see come to fruition until later down the road. So why is it important to kind of look at that positively just for long term success overall? So going back to the power of social media can be a blessing and it can be a curse because it can be a blessing in the sense of everybody has access to information. It has be a blessing and it can be a curse because it can be a blessing in the sense of everybody has access to information. It has made the investing world a lot more efficient,

but there's a lot of bad information out there, misguided information out there that can easily blow people off course, specifically young people who are ambitious and want to grow their wealth. Again, that goal is not a bad thing, but what are you going to do to get there makes all the difference. And so with my industry and in the event, it's been particularly hard with things like TikTok and other social media media platforms because there are people out there that will go and, you know, pick out one minute specific success story of when it worked one time and then blast it out to the masses. And then people will pick up on that and say, well, that's a great idea.

I should do that. When 99 times out of 100, it did not go that way. It went that way one time, but 99 times it did not go that way. It did not play out that way. So it's very important to seek wise counsel. Again, growing wealth, being financially well is supposed to be a boring thing. It's supposed to be a long process. Unless you're going to hit six numbers on a Saturday night, and I am not advocating

for the audience to spend their money gambling, but unless you're hitting six numbers on a Saturday night and winning the lottery, most of us have to accumulate our wealth throughout our careers, and that takes time. That takes discipline. That takes diligence, doing the right thing at the right time, putting yourself in a position to win, giving yourself a 3% raise by making maybe a lifestyle change because you might need that 3% for your current lifestyle. We'll dial that back a little bit so we can get our company match. Doing those types of things, there's no get rich quick true method. You're in the introduction of the book right now. You'll get there, but maybe not yet. We're not quite there yet.

It's good to accumulate those strategies too for the future and just educate yourself. Educate with sound counsel, of course. So it's okay. You can always tap back into those later. Do you have examples too of how young professionals can start small with savings or investments and gradually build up financial habits over time? I know this topic in general of just financial wellness can be overwhelming, especially to professionals who were not educated growing up or did not have the luxury of having parents who focused on those kinds of habits. So yeah, how can we start small and kind of build up to some of those? You hit it right on the head and it all starts with the fact that like none of this stuff is taught in school, right? You know, when I was in school, learning

about finance or learning about money was learning how to write a check. Right. How many of those have you written in the last year? Probably like one, I would say. Not a whole lot, right? Everything is electronic, right? But that was pretty much to the extent what they should have been learning, teaching us about was,

you know, why do I have this salary but when I get my paycheck, it's not... Right. It doesn't look like that anymore. It doesn't add up to what my salary was supposed to be. Well, yeah. How about you teach us about taxes? Right. How to file them, what they do, breaking down a pay stub. That would be a good concept. What I would say is for those that are just getting started, i just said start small again you don't have to put your whole paycheck into savings or into an investment into a portfolio etc start small it's better to start small then don't come in too hot and then fall off the tracks yeah right because then you're

you're gonna have a harder time getting back on. Starting small, being consistent, and then just doing that over a period of time, right? Small changes over time if you're going back to the 401k. If you're not contributing right now, start off with either a dollar amount or 1%. If that's all you can do, fantastic. That is 100% better than what you were doing, going from zero to one. Yeah, right

Then over time increase that you know, because again, maybe you get a raise maybe you get a promotion. You're making more money anyways Okay, we'll bump up that contribution bump up your savings same exact thing with if we were talking about the debt conversation. Mm-hmm Okay, you got this mountain of debt of debt well how do you eat an elephant one bite at a time let's not try and you know just take this thing out all in one shot no let's small little things over time and that's the thing time yeah most people don't want to wait patience you have you have to be patient you have to be diligent and you have to be disciplined too, because there's going to be a lot of things through a career that are going to potentially blow you off track. You have to be disciplined to say, nope, I've made this my goal early on.

This is what I'm sticking to. I'm going to say no to this so that I can say yes to this. And I think the discipline is extra important too, as we get older, because as you know, adulting is, I mean, we get thrown curve balls all the time, you know, especially if you're buying a home, which we won't dive into that, but buying a home, buying cars, like things happen. And so being able to be prepared for that stuff and be proactive for situations that come up randomly that we're not anticipating, it reduces the stress when we are prepared financially for those situations. You brought up a good point there, and that is the majority of Americans save last.

They get their paycheck, they have their expenses, and then if there's anything left over at the end of the month, that's what they put in savings, right? Well, if you're going to live a disciplined life, you flip that around, right? You have your paycheck. Maybe you give a little money away, church, organization, whatever it is. And then you also save right under that line item. You put it up at the front because what you put first is what you're prioritizing, right? So that is counterintuitive to what most people do. Right. But that is a, that can be a very powerful way to get started is, is, you know, when I'm going to sit down, I'm going to do a budget, right? I'm gonna do my best to

stick to that. Can't be spending more than I'm bringing in every month. Right. We don't get to live like that, you know, but putting it up front, putting it at the top, you're prioritizing it. Then you have your lifestyle. So I would say start small and you have to prioritize it. You got to put it at the top. Very, very important and counterintuitive to what most people are doing today. All right. So in true marketing happy hour form, I have to ask you some career related questions. You're a leader under 30. You're a leader under 30. You're a partner under 30, which is amazing. Congrats.

That's a recent development here. So I just want to know advice you would share with young professionals who are aspiring to move into leadership roles. Anything we should be focusing on thinking about to build again, going back to the original topic, right? Like this future goal. I want to lead. I want to influence people in that way. What should we be doing? My encouragement, my suggestion would be to put yourself in a position to win whatever that means for the individual. If it means going above and beyond with your education, everybody's getting bachelor's degrees now. Okay. Well, are you going to be ahead if you means going above and beyond with your education.

Everybody's getting bachelor's degrees now. Okay, well, are you going to be ahead if you go and get a master's degree? If you're in business, you have a business degree, great. Well, if you're working at a company, look around at the leaders. Do all of them have MBAs? Well, it's probably a requirement. You may want to look into that at some point. And then number two, get a good mentor, I would say, whether that's at your company, a leader in your company.

Hey, I want to ask you a couple of questions about your journey. People love talking about themselves, right? Can I take you to coffee? At my previous organization, it was the home office of a firm that had 12,000 employees around the world. Never once, part of the culture of the firm, but probably for most firms with good leaders, never once did I have a leader turn me down. It was always an immediate reply and, you know, let's get that on the calendar. Let's make it happen. And then get the FaceTime in

front of those people, ask them intelligent, prepared questions about if I wanted to become you, right. Get into your role, get into leadership, become a people manager, become a leader of an organization. What do I need to do? Whether that's education, maybe it's an experience requirement, put yourself in a position to win. And then you want to be a leader, act like one. Don't lollygag around the office or just do the bare minimum of the work that you're required. No, you should be at the forefront. You should be challenging the status quo. If you're at a good organization, they're going to want you to do that. You should be looking on how you can improve what you're doing, how you can, you know, our generation, very tech-focused.

Maybe you're working for a company that's still not using a lot of tech, proving to them that this is the future, this is the way it can cut costs, save time, you know, reduce errors, things like that. And then you've got to understand that it is not an overnight thing. No, yeah. Again, time. That's the theme of this episode. Delayed gratification.

Is that the title? Okay. You didn't tell me what the title was. Yeah, literally. So you have to, the old cliche, you got to pay your dues. Yeah. You know. Absolutely.

If you're going to be a good leader in an organization, you have to have the experience of what you're going to be telling all of your other employees to do. You need to know what it's like to work in accounting and operations and, you know, those various areas of a big company or whatever it is so that when you're making decisions and telling people what to do and you're delegating as a leader, you're going to know what the impact is on that decision. So that would be my encouragement. That was probably a very long answer, but that would be my encouragement for a young professional or even a middle career professional that's maybe looking to make a change or wants to work into leadership. Absolutely. 100% agree. Yeah. And I think that goes back to the social media and LinkedIn. I

love LinkedIn. However, a lot of things that we see look like they're just quick, easy moves and actions and everything. And it's just understanding that most of those people either worked on a relationship for years to get to where they are. They did micro steps to get to where they are today. There's always a story behind that. And so understanding that and not comparing your journey ultimately to someone else is important too. I love the analogy of, this is going to sound stupid, the duck, right? A duck in water, above the surface, calm, cool, and collected, right? That's what we see online.

That's what we see on LinkedIn when somebody says, oh, I've been promoted to whatever. But underneath the surface, the feet are flying, right? And there's a lot of action going on behind the scenes, right? Underneath the water. And that's, I think, what people forget. Social media is not the full story. We all know that. It's not. It's not. Have you read Atomic Habits? I have not, actually. It's on the recommended list. Okay. It very much reminds me of this conversation. Oh, does it? It's great. Yeah. Well, then I don't need to read it.

Okay. You already know it. Just kidding. I'll add it to the list. I'm more of an audio book guy anyways. That's fine. I'm sure you can listen to it. Okay. Really quickly before we close out, I want to ask about marketing, of course. Marketing happy hour. You guys have a great tagline. I'm a big messaging person. Is there anything outside of just making sure you have clarity of focus, clarity of offering that you guys are doing as a firm and now as a leader of that firm to market your business and an effective using my industry as an example, I think our firm has done a really great job of embracing technology, embracing the digital age in an industry that is typically an older crowd. So for our firm, this is not a humble brag, but we do grow a lot faster than the industry average.

And I believe that is because we have fully embraced the technology that is available to us. We have a heavy presence on social media. We do Google ads, right? We worked with a web development team to redo our website. We've redone our website twice in the last four years, right? Complete revamps, complete gut and redo. Why? Because we want to keep it fresh. And what we've seen is that the digital presence puts our firm far and above the typical growth rates in our industry. And that probably translates to other industries as well. But mine specifically has always been a little hesitant to change. Like, oh, you know, we've always done it this way. You know, oh, we're a heavily referral based business. Fantastic. That's a great way to grow. But how are

you then going to grow organically with people that are not recommending you, but are looking for somebody like you? So for us, we have a heavy, heavy online presence. We've leaned in hard. Yeah. It's that lesson too, in marketing, especially of always innovating, being open to changes and everything. Our industry is changing every single day. And so being open to capitalize on new things, test and learn and everything. And I think one of the most detrimental statements that a marketer, a business owner can make is, well, this is the way we've always done it. Right. And it's just, you cannot, you cannot have that mindset in order to succeed in the future, which is not going to work. Well, it may work for a little period of time, but at some point you're going to fall behind. You're going to fall behind because everybody else is going to eventually adopt it.

Yeah. So we've chosen to be at the forefront of that. Yeah. Good advice there. So you all serve 33 plus states, right? Okay. Capacity to serve all 50. Is that correct? That's correct. Okay. So how do we get in touch with you if we're looking for some additional financial support, financial planning, investment management, whatever it is, how can we get in touch with you all? And then how do we stay in touch with you personally? Okay. Well, I just pitched our website. So return on life.us is our site on there. I think it's really important to mention we have an insights tab. It's kind of like a blog that we do. And our team periodically will write different pieces. Last year was an election year, for example. We wrote several pieces on investing during a year during an election year, for example. We wrote several pieces on investing during an election year, market volatility, what does it mean, you know, one side gets in versus the other.

We had a lot of good pieces that we were able to direct clients to, to kind of calm a little bit and also cut through the noise we talked about. Sometimes social media can be a really tough place to really find what is truth, what's real, what is a good way of thinking about it. And so returnonlife.us, check out the Insights tab. And then me personally, again, social media-wise, I'm primarily on LinkedIn. So LinkedIn, I think it's slash Mike Quattrochi or something like that. We'll drop it below. Put it in the show notes, please. The last name is long.

It'll probably get misspelled. $50 gift card if you can spell your name correctly the first time. Is that what you're doing? Challenge for people. Okay, all right. You can't look it up. A little bonus.

You can't cheat. Yeah, no, you can't cheat. But primarily on LinkedIn. And again, my team, we have a Cornerstone Wealth Advisors. That's the firm I work for. We have a LinkedIn page. We're all over social as well. Everything is return on life. Thank you so much. Yeah, this is great. I know we could have gone a lot deeper, but hopefully this was insightful and helpful. I mean, we're approaching tax season, so everyone's thinking about finances.

We should always be thinking about finances though. And how do we be financially well overall? So thank you. Appreciate it. Thank you for having me. Thank you so much for tuning into this week's episode. If you enjoyed this conversation, I would love your feedback. And if you're ready to take things to the next level, sign up for my weekly newsletter in the show notes. You'll get weekly career and marketing insights straight to your inbox. And if you have an idea

for a future Marketing Happy Hour episode, shoot me an email. Hello at marketinghappyhr.com. Thank you again. And I'll see you next Thursday.