The Chris Voss Show - The Chris Voss Show Podcast – Black Mammoth CEO Shares Financial Planning Tips for Entrepreneurs

Episode Date: March 29, 2024

Black Mammoth CEO Shares Financial Planning Tips for Entrepreneurs Blackmammoth.com About the Guest(s): Stoy Hall is a Certified Financial Planner (CFP) and the CEO and founder of Black Mammoth. With over 13 years of experience in the financial industry, Stoy Hall is recognized for his innovative approach to wealth management and his dedication to promoting financial literacy. As the CEO of Black Mammoth, he has carved a niche in the financial industry by focusing on inclusivity, collaboration, and the holistic well-being of his clients. Episode Summary: Welcome to The Chris Foss Show, where Chris Voss interviews CEOs, authors, thought leaders, visionaries, and motivators. In this episode, Chris Voss sits down with Stoy Hall, the CEO and founder of Black Mammoth, to discuss his innovative approach to wealth management and his dedication to promoting financial literacy. Stoy Hall shares his journey in the financial industry and explains how he started Black Mammoth to create a modern family office that is accessible to everyday business owners. He emphasizes the importance of financial education and the need for a team of professionals to support business owners in managing their finances effectively. Stoy Hall also highlights the various services offered by Black Mammoth, including Mahalo service, personal CFO, and consulting, and provides valuable insights into investment strategies and insurance planning. Key Takeaways: Black Mammoth offers a range of services, including Mahalo service, personal CFO, and consulting, to help business owners organize their finances and achieve their financial goals. Stoy Hall emphasizes the importance of financial education and believes that everyone should have a team of professionals to support them in managing their finances effectively. Investments are just one aspect of a comprehensive financial plan, and Story encourages business owners to focus on building a team and organizing their finances before diving into investments. Insurance planning, including life insurance, disability insurance, and health insurance, is crucial for business owners to protect themselves and their families in case of unforeseen events. Stoy Hall's no BS Wealth podcast provides a platform for open and honest conversations about wealth and financial planning, aiming to bring transparency and clarity to the financial industry. Notable Quotes: "Am I good and do I have your back? Financial planning in general comes down to those two things, and that's what we're here to do." - Stoy Hall "Money is emotional. Our emotions are tied to money. They're integrated. And if you don't understand who you are and where that comes from, then you can't really create a plan 'cause you won't follow it." - Stoy Hall "Investments make up a very small piece of your entire plan. Investments are not just stocks, bonds, mutual funds. Investments are real estate, foreign currency, and you as a person." - Stoy Hall

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We have an amazing gentleman on the show today. He's going to be talking about his success and inspiring you with his stories that he's done through his life and what he's done with building his company. We have Stoy Hall. He's a CFP and the CEO and founder of Black Mammoth. He is a distinguished figure in the realm of financial planning, recognized for his innovative approach to wealth management and his dedication to promoting financial literacy. As the CEO, he has carved a niche in the financial industry by focusing on inclusivity, collaboration,

and the holistic well-being of his clients. His expertise is not limited to financial advisement. He's also a founder and fund manager at, is that Kalal Capital? Kala. Kala Capital. There you go. I'm never good when they have those little hyphens over the letters there. I'm still trying to figure out a St. Motley crew. And his strategic insights drive the firm's success. Welcome to the show, Stoy. How are you?

I appreciate it. I'm doing well. I mean, I'm in Iowa right now, just got from Orlando. It's sunny here, which is great, but it's 32. So it is what it is. And are you guys based in either of those cities? Technically, yes, in Iowa, but we're virtual. We're nationwide. We're looking at moving maybe to Denver or Phoenix, but ultimately we're just virtual firm. There you go. There you go. Move to Phoenix.

It's warmer. Oh, yeah. As long as you can deal with the heat. I lived in Vegas for, I don't know, close to 30 years now, and we don't get as hot as Phoenix. It's an extra three to five degrees over there and it gets pretty hot in vegas denver is nice but that hail man you ever seen that hill that they do there i remember moving to well we had an office one of our offices was in denver

and i i drove into a 7-eleven when i first arrived there and i was laughing because i i saw this car look like somebody took a ball-peen hammer and hit the top of all of it. And I was like, somebody's kid got a hold of a ball-peen hammer and whacked their vehicle. That's funny as hell. And the guy goes, you're not from here, are you? I go, no. He goes, no, that's hail damage.

I'm like, what? And there you go. So give us a.com so people can find you on the interwebs and a 30,000 overview of what you guys do there at Black Mammoth. Absolutely. Blackmammoth.com. Super simple. And ultimately, we're here to answer two questions for you.

And that is, am I good? And do I have your back? Financial planning in general comes down to those two things. And that's what we're here to do. There you go. So tell us about your journey. How long have you guys been in business? How did you start it and get down this road? Yeah, for sure. Business has been around technically for, what, we're going on four

years because we started in September, 2020. I've been in the industry for 13. And I wanted to, throughout my whole career from insurance to other firms was create what I have deemed a modern family office. And a lot of people don't exactly know what a family office is, but your ultra high net worth have this entity called a family office. And really what it is, it's a group and a team of professionals that do all the backend things so that they can live their lives the way they want to in a very simple way. And so I wanted to create that, but I wanted to modernize it so everyday business owners could participate in that. Because I ultimately think we all should have a team that has our back and helps us in every situation so we can focus on the things that we're passionate about. And so launched that in September, 2020, and here we are.

There you go. And so what are some of the aspects of that family office? What are the services that you provide there? Yeah, the fun ones, the ones that I get the most giddy about are everyone has chaos, right? Us business owners, we live in chaos. We live for chaos. Exactly. And I love to take that chaos, organize it, and allow them a path forward, right? And then have my team on the back end handle it. For example, one of my clients just moved to Florida within the last year, but her business is still operating in Iowa and they

needed a new vehicle for their staff because they're interior designers. So they travel. Well, she's gone. She's not here. So what I did is I got on the horn, found the vehicle, got the lending lined up. It was able to do everything DocuSign and that employee was able to pick up that vehicle within 48 hours of them needing it. And that's just one of those things that we're able to do that a family office can handle for you. You call it the Mahalo service? Yes. There you go. A personal CFO. Yeah. My family, my wife and I, we love Hawaii. We go for two weeks probably every year. And that spirit is just inside of us. And so we tie mahalo and we tie a lot of the aloha spirit involved with that as well. And so our service tiers go from mahalo to a personal CFO to ohana within that. And really those are just different tiers of services.

Some have more, some have less. There you go. And so I like that aspect. There you are. Stoy, how are you doing, man? I'm doing good. There you go. We had some, I don't know if it's on our end or if it's just the internet in general, but we did a restart real quick. So we'll just edit this and post and paste it all together. I was asking you if there was a minimum net worth that people needed to have to do business with you. No, not with me, but in the family office realm, typically it's like 25 million net worth. Ultimately I've whittled it down to if a business owner is on our lowest tier, it has about a gross income of two, 300,000, depending on whatever service it is. That's where it becomes a good return. Outside of that, it might be a little bit of a premium for you. There you go. There you go. So tell us

about some of the other services that you offer at Black Mammoth and Aspex. I noticed there's an a la carte service, do-it-yourself services, holistic financial planning. Let's dig into some of that. Yeah. Ultimately, what we're trying to do is get all of your financial questions answered one way or another. And I've learned in this industry and just in life that there's two groups of people. Those that want to do it themselves, learn and just do it themselves. And then those that want to learn, but I don't want to touch it, get the hell away from me, just do it for me. And that's what we did. So we've got VIP day, which is essentially we come in for three and a half or six hours,

and we go through everything in your financial life, both business and personal, if you have a business. And it's a long day. It's exhausting, but it's therefore a reason to be exhausting. Money is emotional. Our emotions are tied to money. They're integrated. And if you don't understand who you are and where that comes from, whether it's money trauma or your first money memory, then you can't really create a plan because you won't follow it. And so that day is designed to do that. Break us all down, get us on the emotional side, and then build us back up within an actual plan. And then we hand it to them and they can go figure it out, go implement it themselves. Or if they turn around, we can always implement it. And then we have a kind of a baby service of that. And that's the Aloha side where it's not that long because that's a long day. And it's only about an hour and a half and can really get about the same amount, same work done, just you're only going to have about three tiers of things to do. There you go. And so it sounds like you have a lot of hands-on concierge type service.

Absolutely. Yeah. There you go. And so people, they're busy, especially if you run a company, you don't have a lot of time for things. And so being able to have someone manage these other aspects. Tell us about how you grew up. How did you get into financial business and get down this road where you finally started your own company? Yeah. I grew up in Omaha, Nebraska with a dad that wasn't around, a mom that was working 12-hour shifts. At some point, she had her own cleaning business.

So that's kind of where I believe the entrepreneur side got to me. Got the bug. Right, got the bug. But ultimately, I believe it came down to the fact that I didn't want to live the way I was raised. And that's not a knock on them 100%, but a lot of it came down to just financial education and understanding how the money game works. And so I was lucky enough to be

athletically gifted, thought I was going to go pro like we all do, ended up playing football at Drake University, went in to get my accounting degree, took my first accounting exam. And Chris, when I tell you that it was a blank sheet of paper, it was a blank sheet of paper. And what it did to my brain, blanked me out, ended up getting a 40% of my first accounting exam, said, not for me, let's go the other route. And so I did, got my degree in finance and minored in business law and insurance. And when I was at school, I worked at the Boys and Girls Club for about four and a half years. And that is when I figured out we have a financial education problem in our country is because people don't know how money works, ultimately. And I wanted to help that. That's what I've been doing ever since.

Credit works, how taking out a mortgage works or a loan, how to balance your checkbook, you know, all that sort of stuff. Like, I see some of these there's a few tiktok accounts there's one that's really funny that the guy reviews a lot of young people face to face their their debt load and their their finances and like you see some people that are really upside down and you're just like holy crap and they they just are completely financially monetarily illiterate. I made that's the right word. And it's sad because people don't get taught this stuff.

And I meet a lot of entrepreneurs too, and you probably see this in your line of work, that they don't understand the money back end of it. I mean, we've interviewed guys on the show that they have crazy stories where they started their first company and they didn't understand, you know, the payroll taxes and costs and that. And they're like, we were underbidding all the jobs and getting all the jobs. And we thought we were hot shit and we were making all this money we thought, but we weren't, you know, anticipating the backend of, you know, paying social security and taxes and for the employees. And then, and then, you know, all the different, you know, things that come into the costs of, of the backend. And they, they were just thinking about, okay, money in and,

and, and, you know, we got the job. And so I've had a few conversations where anywhere from a hundred to half a million dollars upside down and the people are like, oh shit, we got to fix this. And they're able to dig themselves out, which is pretty amazing stories. But a lot of entrepreneurs don't get that. They ignore the financial aspect. And then they're like, why are we broke? Why are we going out of business? Why are we in bankruptcy?

Why are we struggling and we're not making any money? And they're just like, they haven't done the full math on what it really costs on the deep level of running a business. Without a doubt. And it's scary, but it's also ultimately a thing that humans like to do. We try to do everything ourselves, right? I don't need to hire someone to do that. I got this. I'll figure it out. And in the business world, that is a very dangerous, dangerous game to play. We all need a team. I'm sure you have a team for your show. I have a team for my show. I have a team for my business. If you don't have a team, you're not going to be really successful because there are so many moving parts

to what we do that you need those people in line. Yeah. You have to expedite yourself because you can't scale yourself. There's only so much time in the day and there's only so much time you can do. And you have to, you have to expinate yourself and duplicate yourself and get people doing especially when it comes to routine tasks that are that are just a waste of time when you're a CEO or a business person you've got to be looking at the big picture and and be focused on stuff you can't be like you know making sure that the staples are in the stapler sort of thing that's just something that's a good use of time but a lot of a lot. But a lot of entrepreneurs

have a hard time delegating. I have a hard time to this day. I've always had a hard time with it. You're just like, I care about it more than anyone else because it's my baby. And you're like, I'll just do a better job. And I know how to do it really quick. But then it's just a waste of time or your inefficiencies and you can get caught up and stuff but you know such as the nature of add which we all have i swear it's the ceo entrepreneur disease it really is it's a it's a curse and a blessing at the same time you just have to learn to manage it tell us about your podcast you have a wealth podcast you advise people on as well. Yeah, No BS Wealth Podcast. I designed that and that's launched. We're on our 76th episode coming out next week. And it was really designed around to bring no bullshit to

the wealth side of things. I believe our media, a lot of our big heads, they always use big words and they don't get down to the root of who is involved and what decisions they're making. And so we bring in business owners, we bring in other CFPs, we bring in other experts just to come in and have a legitimate unfiltered conversation with each other about their business, the topic, how they got there and what really happens behind the scenes of a business and in life as opposed to, you know, everything we see on social media is always a facade it's always positive it's never being a business owner because i say this a lot being a business owner sucks it does but it's one of the most fulfilling things you can also have in in the world as well yeah social media is really deceptive you know i remember back when there used to be this thing called four square i think it was called people would check in at places so when you went to the store, you're like, hey, I'm at the store.

And you could win mayor and crap. It was kind of a weird little thing. But, you know, people still do that. You know, they take pictures of, hey, I'm in Hawaii, you know. And no one ever takes pictures of themselves standing in front of the bankruptcy hall. Hey, I'm about to go file bankruptcy. Yay. Or, you know, in front of the methadone clinic or the pawn shop or i don't know

i just can't think of any it's despondent places no no it takes pictures in front of those places and yeah i'm just down here filing bankruptcy and i'm just out here moving out of my house that's being repossessed and the the sheriff's throwing everything on the lawn. You never see that on Instagram. What's going on there? So, yeah, you need information. You need different data. It looks like you guys talk about everything on there. Transforming estate planning.

Estate planning is really important to people. Mindset. Marketing is always. This is kind of an interesting article or interview. Finding your athlete within. There you go. I have an athlete within. There you go. I have an athlete within. My athlete without is my biggest problem.

Get on the treadmill, buddy. Get off the couch, bud. Get off the couch. My brain is going, but I'm the internal athlete. I ran a marathon today. I'm tired now. So get on the treadmill, people you need. I was on it last night.

Lots of great data that's there. What do you find motivates you a lot at starting your business and then, of course, helping other people? What's the juice for you? I really think it just comes down to – I think it comes from my mom. Don't know where, how, or indifferent. I just feel like it was ingrained into me. But ultimately, I have this purpose of duty where I want to do right for others and lift them up as much as possible. I just have that natural. It's just something that happens. And that really what drives me every day,

because there's so much negative things that go on in the world or business and you name it, that I feel like someone needs to have someone in their court to help them through it. We don't all have the answers, but we all can get the answers and get help. And those that don't have the ability to do so are the ones that get taken advantage of. And I just always feel like I want to be there for the underdog. I wanted to help them through. There you go. It's one of those things that's so great about being an entrepreneur.

You're solving people's problems. You're giving back. You're helping people achieve their goals. You know, as a business owner, there's only so much you can know. Like even now, there's stuff I don't know about financial stuff, which is surprising to me that all these years, but I mean, all the shit I've had to deal with from running corporations all my life, you know, I know a lot about law and lawyers and collecting money and it's owed to you and all that sort of stuff. Sadly, I really didn't want to know any of that, but it's one of those factors of being successful. I know a lot about accounting and bookkeeping, but tax rules change all the time.

It seems every year I think they've got some sort of new tax things you got to deal with. And wealth building, estate building, trusts, there's just an endless amount of stuff you can know. And really, you just can't deal with it. You guys do one-on-one consulting for life insurance, disability insurance, health insurance, long-term care insurance, and supplemental insurance. Tell us a little bit about that. Yeah. So overall insurance is it's needed, right? It's, it's, it's important, specifically, you know, life insurance and with health costs, you better have some health insurance. And ultimately with those, there are a caveat to the overall plan, right? Some people don't know what they have as an employee benefit or whatnot. And so we want to make sure that they're protected and covered. My background comes from the insurance side, so there's no way I'd get rid of it. But it's not the most important

thing in someone's plan. The plan dictates what we do next. Sometimes that means life insurance first. Sometimes that means health insurance. For others, it means disability. But it's understanding how those fit into your overall plan and your goals that matter the most. Everyone says you should have all of it. It's not necessarily true. Everyone's situation is different and you need to make sure that it's for you and what's best for your family. Not, not just because you saw it on,

you know, some media coverage or you saw it on Tik TOK that, Hey, your life insurance can turn into a bank. Yes. In theory. Sure. But it's not for everybody.

Yeah. Plus you got to pay into it for a long time to have anything in there. It's worth it. It's not like you, you're theory, sure, but it's not for everybody. Yeah, plus you've got to pay into it for a long time to have anything in there that's worth it. It's not like you're like, hey, I made payment one. Can I borrow 50 grand now? No, but TikTok makes you think that way, I promise. I know. It's just everything's Instagram too. It's like the short game.

There's some financial advice the other day. Here's how to get rich and get a million dollars. Okay, you go out and you buy 10 homes. And there was some financial trollers that they actually do their business of trolling some of these kind of crazy videos. And the guy's like, where are you getting the money to buy 10 homes? He's giving advice to young people, Gen Zers, on how to get to being a million dollars net worth. You just go buy 10 homes and rent them out. And you're just like, the Gen Zers go $50,000, $70,000, whatever it is, I don't know, in college debt.

Where's he getting this 10 homes money? Right. And these 10 homes, and it's always a boomer or gen xer i guess i'll throw some shit at my generation it's always a gen xer telling them you know and we had homes that you could buy for 40 grand back so we're just like buy 10 homes and it's yeah 10 of those homes in my generation is one home so there you go but insurance life insurance disability insurance are really important because most entrepreneurs are the core of their business. And if anything happens to them, disability and you're the key person, especially like

a blue collar business where you have a high risk of injury on the job, that can make a big difference. There you go. You guys handle investment strategies, so you sit down with people and help them as to what they should do with their investments, accounts in the market, et cetera. Tell us a little bit about that. Yeah. And I'll actually lead off with, I believe investments are a crock overall. Investments make up a very small piece of your entire plan. And our industry loves just to put everything in investments, invest this, get your return this and all of that. My thing is, and I say it all

the time, quote me all the time. If you, Chris was like, Hey, I can get you a billion dollar return. Awesome. That's fantastic. But I have $0 to put in. Guess what? It's still zero. So if I can't focus to get money in, then there's no point in investing. But so we take that philosophy and we try to manipulate people's opinion on it. And I say it that way specifically because investments aren't just stocks, bonds, mutual funds. Investments are real estate, foreign currency. And my favorite one is you as a person. You have to recognize that you as a person needs an investment, both in your health, both mentally and physically, and overall your wellbeing of happiness matter too. And I feel like our industry does a bad job at correlating and putting that into the investment plan.

We only stick to the equity market. Ah, there you go. So no Bitcoin? I'm not into the crypto. I got some friends who do a lot of that. I don't have the brainpower, apparently, to get behind it. Yeah. Well, it's hard to, I mean, it's really a guesstimate.

You can't go off our earnings. You can't go off our revenue. There's certain valuations that companies have and stock markets have. So it's pretty much, I think it's pretty much pure speculation, really. Yeah. There might be some little news, but it's really pure speculation, which makes it such a high-risk thing. But you're right. A lot of entrepreneurs have to invest in themselves. I mean, most of my investment money either goes to a new business, a new venture, or is being reinvested in

the current company. And that's really where your growth really is because if you're good, you can beat that 20% per annum you're shooting for in the stock market and you can double and triple your money, if not exponated even more, depending upon what you're doing and how hard you're working. But making sure that's effective, like some of the things we've talked about, are you doing your books right? Are you doing your financial planning right? Are you managing everything right? It's so important. So what about you and your business and your services haven't we talked about that we need to tease out to people to get talking to you? the other one is just an overall consulting i'm here i'm an entrepreneur too i have other businesses and it's ultimately i'm here to help and i feel specifically my

industry of course i keep saying that because i know it but it's also just sometimes we don't do things that are very intelligent we don't communicate and have open conversations with people. These podcasts have been great. I have my own, like it's helping, but you don't see a lot of us just having an open conversation with people in any open forum because usually they're scared of compliance for some reason. We're live today. My compliance seems like just don't guarantee people things. Awesome.

Cool. I'm on it. We should be able to have open conversations and be real and not hide behind that falter. And I believe a lot of it is because a lot of us are not comfortable with in our own selves and understand our own plan to be just open and frank with people. And that's the no bullshit approach I'm bringing is just, hey, let's have a conversation. You want help? I'll answer it. Now, if we get into details of your plan, yeah,'re gonna have to pay for an hourly fee for that or something but generic stuff that you can google yeah let's have a conversation definitely you need to get in the depth because i mean most of the stuff you find when you google it it's just kind of the top level top of the top of the top of the

iceberg sort of stuff and you're like well how do I get from there to here? So that makes it have a conversation. So any advice on people that you can give on people that run their own businesses, people are looking for success. What are some of the things you see people struggling with now in most of your clients when they come to you and you're like, hey, we'll fix this problem for you? The biggest thing is the pure chaos and disorganization of everything. And obviously from a business perspective, you had spoke about it, is we wear a lot of different hats

from legal to accounting to just staffing to actually getting sales. There are so many different things a business owner has to deal with that then also you need to do that as a personal side of things too. And they usually forget one or the both and it's ultimately all that organization you need to sit down and look at all of it as a big picture and step away from the nitty-gritty down knees deep into the sand type of stuff and that's where i say you need to take that first step in figuring

out how to how to build a team or hiring someone to help you hire a legitimate team. And when I mean team, I don't mean like internal more staff for you. I mean experts on the outside that can come together and help you within that, whether it's CPAs, bookkeepers, financial planners, attorneys, etc. You need to start to build that team to help you through. And the first thing is just take first step. And if it's a call to me, do it. There you go. There you go. Well, tell people how they can onboard with you, utilize your services and get in touch and learn more about you. Absolutely. Go ahead and go to blackmammoth.com. We have a nice little process. There's a couple

of videos, depending on what service you want to hit upon. And you just schedule directly with me in my calendar. And then we go through and we have want to hit upon. And you just schedule directly with me in my calendar. And then we go through and we have a nice little chat. If you aren't ready for that next step, go ahead and hit up all the social medias. I'm everywhere except for Reddit because they kicked me off. Go ahead and do all of those. Follow my stuff and comment and I'll be there for you. There you go.

And listen to the podcast as well. Get that for you. Yeah. No BS Wealth Podcast. Come check us out. There you go. Thanks for coming on the show, well. Absolutely. Get that one in there for you. Yeah, No BS Wealth Podcast. Come check us out. There you go. Thanks for coming on the show, Stoy. We really appreciate it.

It's been very insightful and hopefully motivated some entrepreneurs. Get off your butts and get everything straight in your financial life. It's really important. Yep. Get on the treadmill. Let's go. There you go. Get on the treadmill.

I love it. Thanks for tuning in to my audience. Go to goodreads.com, 4chesschrisfast, linkedin.com, 4chesschrisfast, chrisfast1, the TikTokity, and chrisfastfacebook.com. Thanks for tuning in. Be good to each other. Stay safe, and we'll see you guys next time. All right, man.