The Chris Voss Show - The Chris Voss Show Podcast – Chas Woodhull Shares Wealth Management Insights

Episode Date: April 2, 2025

Chas Woodhull Shares Wealth Management Insights Gallagher-pool.com About the Guest(s): Chas Woodhull is an accomplished financial advisor with a deep-rooted passion for entrepreneurship and investing. He began his journey at the tender age of eight and has since built a substantial career in wealth management. Currently serving as a Private Wealth Advisor at Gallagher Pool Wealth Management, Chas holds titles such as Accredited Investment Fiduciary and Certified Exit Planning Advisor. At only 29, he manages over $70 million in assets and is considered one of the most successful young money managers in the U.S. His career trajectory includes experiences at Northwestern Mutual and Gallagher Pool, where his strategic expertise in helping clients grow, preserve, and transfer wealth has been instrumental. Episode Summary: In this engaging episode of the Chris Voss Show, we explore the journey of Chas Woodhull, a dynamic young entrepreneur and financial expert, who started his investment career at the age of eight by purchasing Microsoft stock with his Kentucky Derby winnings. Host Chris Voss invites Chas to share his experiences growing up in an entrepreneurial family, his passion for investing, and his current role as a Private Wealth Advisor at Gallagher Pool Wealth Management. This episode is filled with insights into Chas's approach to financial planning and wealth management. Listeners will delve into Chas's unique perspective on investment strategies, highlighting how Gallagher Pool Wealth Management distinguishes itself by adopting principles of the world's greatest investors. Chas emphasizes the importance of maintaining a concentrated portfolio of quality companies with strong balance sheets, rather than adhering to conventional diversified investments. Throughout the conversation, Chas offers valuable advice on financial literacy, the significance of starting early with investments, and cultivating a mindset geared toward constant personal and professional growth. Key Takeaways: Chas Woodhull began investing at age eight, inspired by his entrepreneurial family and a passion for financial literacy. Gallagher Pool Wealth Management emphasizes a focused investment strategy aligned with top investors rather than broad diversification commonly pushed by large financial institutions. Starting early and being consistent is crucial in building wealth, with a significant impact from time invested in the market. Chas's firm prioritizes working with clients who are coachable and willing to learn, regardless of their initial investment size. Personal health and fitness are key components of Chas's success, reflecting his dedication to being the best version of himself. Notable Quotes: "If you don't have a plan, you plan to fail." - Chris Voss "The best time to get ahold of your finances and to start investing was five, ten years ago, or yesterday. The second best time is today." - Chas Woodhull "I believe that the way most big companies tell people to invest is for two reasons: it's easily saleable, and they know they're not gonna get sued." - Chas Woodhull "Life's too short not to work with good people." - Chas Woodhull "I've always been competitive. I've always wanted to be really great at whatever I do." - Chas Woodhull

You wanted the best. You've got the best podcast, the hottest podcast in the world. The Chris Voss Show, the preeminent podcast with guests so smart you may experience serious brain bleed. The CEOs, authors, thought leaders, visionaries and motivators. Get ready, get ready, strap yourself in. Keep your hands, arms, and legs inside the vehicle at all times. Cause you're about to go on a monster education rollercoaster

with your brain. Now, here's your host, Chris Voss. Hi, folks, it's Voss here from thechrisvossshow.com. The Chris Voss show is coming up. There you go ladies and gentlemen, the earliest things that makes official. Welcome to 16 years and 23 episodes of The Chris Foss Show. The CEO of the billionaires, the White House presidential advisors, the governors, the

congressmen, all the wonderful smart people, Pulitzer Prize winners, the great authors, the great minds, the great entrepreneurs who come with you on the show and share their journeys, their lessons of life and their stories. Stories as I always say on The Chris Foss Show is the fabric of our lives. Cause without it, I don't know, without the idiot stories I would have, who would I be, who would I be? Just some guy on a podcast rambling into the mic like a madman. That pretty much explains 16 years.

Opinions expressed by guests on the podcast are solely their own and do not necessarily reflect the opinions of the host or the Chris Voss show. Some guests of the show may be advertising on the podcast, but it is not an endorsement or review of any kind. Today we have an amazing young man on the show with us today, Jazz Woodhull. He joins us in the show. We're going to be talking about his entrepreneurial journey that started at a very young age of eight and has gone on from there.

Jazz is a private wealth advisor at Gallagher Pool Wealth Management. Investing his first company at the age of eight, he has a lifelong love of investing. He started working in wealth management as an intern for Gallagher Pool. Later Chas started his full-time career as a financial advisor at Northwestern Mutual for a number of years before returning to Gallagher Pool. He is an accredited investment fiduciary and certified exit planning advisor he's focusing on helping clients manage their goals by building a strategic plan in order to grow preserve and transfer wealth as I always like to say if you

don't have a plan you're what is it was he'll saying if you don't have a plan you plan to fail if you don't plan plan, you plan to fail? If you don't plan to succeed, you plan to fail? If you don't plan to fail, you plan to fail. That's why the whole thing, I didn't plan that and so it failed, Chaz. But thank you for saving it. He's 29 years old and he's an independent financial advisor. He owns his own practice over $70 million in assets under management. He's one of the most successful young money managers in the US.

Chaz, how are you? Welcome to the show. I'm great. How are you doing? I am good as well. Where do you want people to find you on the interwebs there? Yeah. So a great place to learn more about our firm is our website. So gallagher-pool.com is the website for our financial planning firm. So give us a $30,000 overview of what you guys do over there. Yeah, great question. The whole reason why anyone tries to be good with money, Chris, is so that we can do what

we want in our lives. And so what we do is we help our clients build financial plans that are aligned with their goals to help them get to where they want to be in life. build financial plans that are aligned with their goals to help them get to where they want to be in life. And the process we use to do that is, you know, we sit down, we figure out, hey, is this even a good fit? You know, we're not a good fit for everybody. Not everyone's good fit for us,

but get to know each other, get to know where are you now and where are you trying to go? What are some goals? And then take a look at your finances, run our analysis and build up a financial plan to get you where you're going. Yeah. Money is important and all that good stuff and how it works. So you have an interesting journey of growing up and becoming an entrepreneur.

You're very driven and all that good stuff. Tell us about what that was like and how you were raised and how you got the entrepreneurial bug. Tim Cynova Yeah, yeah, that's a good question. So the entrepreneurial bug is pretty much in my blood. Both my parents were entrepreneurs. Both my grandfathers were business owners or entrepreneurs, grandfathers were business owners or entrepreneurs, cousins, siblings, aunts, uncles who were entrepreneurial way back. So it's just kind of the way I was raised, you know, sitting around the dinner table, listening to my mom and dad talk about the business, you know, what's going on, how are sales, how's this person. And you know, so I just got to grow up around it. And I also, I like to say I

have a strong streak of juvenile delinquents and I am told what to do. You know, I just, no, third, yeah. But I just always, I always knew I wanted to do something on my own. So yeah, that's kind of how it started. It's and so tell us about your journey. How did you end up in the financial field? Why, why'd you pick that field to go into and all that stuff? And how did you, how did you arrive to where you are now? Yeah, that's, that's another good question. So it really started when I was seven, I was working for my

grandma in her garden and she was paying me 25 cents an hour. I was like, Gigi, what gives I, you know, I can't do anything with point bucks. And so she said, if you want to learn how to make money, learn how to invest. And I said, what's that? And she sat me down and told me about Warren Buffett and Berkshire Hathaway. And there was this guy out in Omaha who sits and reads all day and makes millions and millions of dollars a year.

It blew my mind as a kid. So I started to learn all about it. And then a few months later, after my eighth birthday, I was at the Kentucky Derby, put $3 on a horse. It won. I want $36. I was at the Kentucky Derby, put $3 on a horse, it won. I won $36, Microsoft was trading at 32 at the time and so I bought my first stock. I bought some Microsoft that day.

Wow. Yeah. Probably a good thing to do because if you just keep betting on the horses, eventually you'll lose, I think, technically, isn't that? Yeah, yeah, yeah. Isn't that the rule of, you know, I live in Vegas, what's the old thing, if you let them gamble long enough,

they'll eventually, the house always wins. So it's good. You put your money towards something wise. You know, do you think more young people need that sort of influence? You know, when I first started my first entrepreneur in company 18, I didn't, there was like no, it wasn't like today where everything's about entrepreneurs and starting your own company would be in your own thing. I was just, I'd gotten fired from McDonald's for having long hair and from this guy who hated all my rock concert t-shirts who was ultra religious, he hated my long satanic hair and my, you know, Van Halen concert t-shirts, you know, clearly very satanic and devious. But, so I was just trying to make a buck. There was

no announcement to me that you have become an entrepreneur. I was just like, I seem to be controlling my destiny a little better. So do you think more young people need guidance like that and influence to know what entrepreneurism is? Chris Bounds Yeah, definitely. Yeah, I think so. I was really lucky and I actually, I say this all the time, but I was particularly lucky because I had a grandmother who knew about investing and who taught me about it.

I had parents who were entrepreneurs and they never sat us down and said, oh, here's a balance sheet. But just being around them was a lesson in and of itself. And a lot of people don't have that. And they used to teach in many schools across the US in what was called civics class. They used to teach basic financial literacy,

how to pay taxes, how to balance a balance sheet. And they don't do that anymore. And in the world, if we want to have as much agency sheet and they don't do that anymore. In the world, if we want to have as much agency over our lives as possible, if we want to be successful, then we have to know the basic ingredients for finances. We have to understand how businesses work, how money works. And it's not super complicated, but yeah, that information isn't readily out there and young people definitely should have more access to it.

Deftly, more influence, know what it is, know the benefits of it. I think we're going to see a lot of entrepreneurs and growing in the next few years. It seems like with AI, there's a lot of people that are going to be losing jobs and being moved out of stuff. I've been seeing my Coder friends kind of starting to freak out in Silicon Valley because they're like, hey, AI is going to make us, it's writing code now. So we have some issues. Yeah. It's- I mean, I'm seeing people on X write complete programs with AI in the matter of a few hours. Yeah. I can probably pull it off and I'm an idiot.

I mean, yeah, it's unbelievable. These people are, yeah, writing complete programs and having a finished business with a marketing plan, identifying, you know, strengths and weaknesses or pain points in their target audience within a few hours with a finished product ready to go to market. It's unbelievable. That is, I mean, it's just crazy. And then of course, you know, there's all sorts of other things going on. I think ChatGPD just put out something, but yeah, a lot of people are going to be out

looking for new work and you know, more and more, I think we'rePD just put out something. But yeah, a lot of people are going to be out looking for new work. You know, more and more, I think we're going to become an information coaching society where we share and teach each other and I guess make money doing that. Then we'll just all spend it on Vegas on the real-life wheel. Now it says here that you're super driven and I find this very interesting. You ran seven half marathons last year, climbed Kilimanjaro. This year you're going to be running the Chicago Marathon and climbing Mount Blanc. That's a tall pen to climb. You remember the Mont Blanc pens?

Yeah. When I was growing up in the 70s and 80s, the 80s, those were the things to have on Wall Street. You exercise twice a day, six days a week, highly focused, highly driven, highly compassionate individual. Tell us about what keeps you driven? How did you arrive at being so driven and what keeps you driven and motivated? Chris Yeah, that's a great question. I mean, part of it is just the people that I grew up with, I mean, part of it is just the people that I grew up with, I really admired and still do. My grandparents, they're all passed away, but I admired them. My parents, family, friends, and I just really looked up to them in a lot of ways.

And so I wanted to be the best version of me I could always be. I've always been competitive. I don't know if that's a gene or what, but I've had that competitive bug my whole life. So I've, for the longest time, as long as I can remember, I've always wanted to be really great at whatever I do. And recently through, I don't know, just the process of self-discovery, I realized that the best

thing I can do, the best way to channel my competitive spirit is to be the best version of me that I can be and to be the person that I would have looked up to five years ago. And so that's really just a part of who I am and it's part of my core values. I did a values assessment. Personal growth is my number three top value. So I'm just always pushing to try to be better in every way for myself and for others. Good for you, man. It's good to be driven and take care of yourself, especially early in life.

I wish I'd done more of that when I was 29. Life is long, but it's also really short. Really catches up to you. Yeah. Once you start slacking, you can wake up one day and 10 years have gone by and you're like, I should get to the gym. And you don't want to be that person, trust me, because I did that. There's a lot of entrepreneurs who make the mistake that they put their health second

and they're like, I'll eat the shitty food and exercise and sit at the desk and just work to build this business. And then it takes a toll on your body. Just being an entrepreneur and running a company and stuff like that. So let's get back to, go ahead. I was going to say, I mean, think about the story of Brian Johnson, that biohacker who's trying to live forever. Oh yeah, that guy.

Yeah, he built up his business and sold it for I don't know how many hundreds of millions, but he sacrificed his relationships and his body and his health and his mental health and well-being for the sake of his company. It ended up being okay, he sold the business and made a ton of money. But yeah, I think it's kind of have seven habits of highly successful people. You got to do what's most important first. What's most important is taking care of yourself so that you can have the energy to then go out into the world and show up as your best self in your business and in your relationships.

Yeah, I mean it affects your state of mind, it affects your mindset, it affects your health. If you feel good, you work good, you do good. If you don't feel good, then you just perform awful. Tell me, let's get back to Gallagher Pool, wealth management. Tell me about what makes you guys different than your competitors in the marketplace. Yeah. I guess first I'll describe kind of the marketplace and financial services in general, I believe that the way most big companies tell people to invest, they do that for two reasons. One, it's easily saleable and two, they know they're not going to get sued.

So, I mean, these companies, the financial services industry exists to make money. A lot of these Black Rock, Vanguard, these massive companies, they exist to make money. And when they tell people to invest in, oh, Uber diversified, buy a slice of every company on planet earth, that's easily saleable, tells a good story. And two is you can very easily defend yourself in court and saying that you're fulfilling your fiduciary duty to the client. What I also know is that there isn't one of the best investors of all time who invested that way. Those two things are true. of all time who invested that way. Those two things are true. What we do is we invest much more in line with how the greatest investors of all time

did their business. So what we do is we keep a pretty concentrated portfolio of about 20 to 25 companies, and we try to have exposure to every sector of the economy, and we buy the best businesses that we can. For example, the S&P 500, 6% of the S&P 500 are companies that have over 100% debt to equity ratio, meaning they're more debt than they are shareholder equity. So we don't want to invest in companies like that. We invest in companies that have great balance sheets, competitive advantages, good revenues. And the other thing that really sets us apart is if you go to pretty much

anyone, they're going to say, hey, you need US exposure, you need international exposure. Like I said, you need to buy a slice of every business on earth. We don't think like that. We think like business owners. Chris, if you own Coca-Cola, okay? Financial services industry is gonna tell you Coca-Cola is a, they'll put it in a box, they'll say it's a large cap domestic company. Big company located in the US. When we look at it, we say, yeah, it's a big company and its mailbox is located in Atlanta,

but over two thirds of its revenue comes from outside the US. Oh, really? Wow. Yeah. Coca-Cola bought almost every non-alcoholic brand in India. And it's a very smart move. And then they're allowing those local India managers to use their knowledge of the local economy to expand their product base. So if I have a share of Coca-Cola, I know that two thirds of every bit of revenue comes from outside the United States. That's international exposure. I forget what percentage it is of the S&P 500, but I think it's over 20% of the revenues in the S&P come from outside the United States. So we believe that's international exposure, because it is,

and the financial services industry believes, oh no, no, that's not international exposure. You need Novo Nordisk in Denmark to have international exposure, even though most of Novo Nordisk, who makes Zempik, sells their products in the United States. We just think about things differently and we approach investing from the mindset really more of business owners. You want results. I mean, it's hard to, you know, you really have to look at some of these companies that have multi-global international fingers in all the pies and stuff and the true value there. And so now for investors that might be out there listening on LinkedIn or the places that we post

this, do they need to be accredited investors to invest with you? What's the minimum sort of investor portfolio profile that you're looking at? Yeah, that's a great question. No, they don't need to be accredited investors. Typically, when we work with people, typically we're going to work with people who have over $250,000 of investable assets. That being said, you know, we work with, I work with many younger families and younger couples who are starting out. And obviously they're not going to graduate from college with a quarter million dollars in their pocket.

But, but the biggest, the biggest requirement that we have, Chris, is that the people we work with need to be coachable and good people who are fun to work with because life's too short not to work with good people. Yeah. Yeah, you definitely have to get along with your clients. You've got to have some clients who respect your work and you respect what they do and stuff and there's those clients out there that are kind of funky. But do they need to have a minimum amount of investment?

Is there a minimum requirement to invest? No. Okay. No, there's no technical minimum. Like I said, we really try to work with most people above 250, but technically there's no minimum. Independent private wealth management firm. So it sounds like maybe you guys take a look at your customer base, your clients, as you know, getting to know them, help them with

their future and hopefully you guys will, they'll grow with you guys. Yeah, yeah, exactly. And that's how we run our business and that's also how our fees are structured. So we charge typically 1% on assets under management and that's a flat 1%. We typically will pay for all other costs of doing business. But what that means is that as our clients make more money, we make more money. So our incentives are really well aligned. And yeah, when we get to grow with clients and they get to buy their first house or buy an engagement ring or retire, you know, it's really cool to be able to sit down with somebody over Zoom or at their kitchen table and, you know, personally congratulate them on retiring and let them know that they're going to be okay.

Yeah. And that's a concern for a lot of people. I think I read that most millennials right now don't have a healthy retirement, some Gen Z or did I say Gen Z or some Gen Xers? And then of course, Gen Z has to start planning for that sort of stuff in their lives. It's always fun. Plan for your retirement. You're like, I'm 20 and I'm just trying to make a buck.

Yeah, I don't know if you want to talk to us about that. Why the importance of planning for retirement and all that stuff is important. I don't know. Here's a good question. Is it ever too late to start investing in these things? I know some people that are really probably behind the eight ball with what they've... They've been spending a lot of money on Target and Amazon. That's their main portfolio.

Yeah. So no, it's never too late. Even if you start the day you retire, you know, trying to squirrel away a few bucks, you know, retirement's typically your 20, 30 years. So it's never too late. But it's critically important. I say this a lot. There's basically three main ingredients with growing wealth. There's how much you put away and save, how you invest those savings, and for how long. So out of those three, by far the most powerful is how long. Time is the only

thing that we cannot replicate in any way, shape or form when it comes to building wealth. And something I use to illustrate this is if you take a 20-year-old and Roth IRA, you know, for those who know Roth IRAs, you could put $7,000 a year currently into Roth IRAs. So let's say you take a 20 year old and that 20 year old puts $7,000 a year, okay, until they're 27 and then stops. That person who started at 20 is going to have more money at retirement than the person who started at 20 is going to have more money at retirement than the person who started at 28 and put $7,000 a year into that account for the rest of their lives. So getting started early, I mean, the best time, I stress this, the best time to get a hold of your finances and to start investing is five, 10 years ago or yesterday.

And the second best time is today. And that's, I mean, you really should have some urgency around it. I have some urgency around it. The, yeah, retirement's important. Planning for the future's important. I remember a few years ago, I was day trading during the dot com boom and making a lot of money and then I got to work and make a lot of money. My business partner that I'd had for 10 years or 13 years or 12 years at the time, I asked him what he was doing with all this money we were making.

What are you doing with the money? Because I'm investing and over here, you want me to show you what I'm doing. And he had bought hundreds of Franklin mint plates. I don't know if you remember the back of magazines used to have this thing called Franklin mint. You might be too young for that being 29, but they used to sell these Franklin mint plates and they're like plates, you know, they're like, have you ever seen one of those presidential plates? They'll sell the merch from the White House. It's one of those and you know, you can buy a thing and he'd spent his money on buying hundreds of those because he thought they were definitely going to go up. He was wrong. I think everyone knows that now. But I was sitting going, I'm investing in the stock market. I mean, we were

making a lot of money at the time. And yeah, that's what he did. And so a lot of people do dumb shit with their money. There was that meme of that lady podcaster and she's financial advisor and author. And she says, quit doing dumb shit with your money. So it's important to plan for the future, right? Yeah. In an appropriate way, I guess. Yeah. I mean, it's, well, there's, in an appropriate way is definitely important because, you know,

the decisions, when it comes to building wealth, the decisions that you make, good or bad, have compounding effects over time. And so if you make a poor decision, that poor decision is going to compound throughout the rest of your life. I can't tell you how many stories I've heard of if I only didn't sell during 2001 or if only I didn't sell at the bottom in 2009. Doing it appropriately is a good copy out there. That brings me to one of your blog posts you guys have on your website about how emotion is a bad way to manage your investments.

It's a bad way to make most of any decision really. But doing a motion, oh, the stock market's on fire, sell today because the stock's down five points or whatever. And I suppose unless there's any sort of support behind that for a reason why it's down, sometimes it's just the hiccup of the day or whatever, the stock market's got heartburn over something. And sometimes it'll bounce back. I've seen that with owning a mortgage company for 20 years. We'd see our portfolio sometimes dip $400,000 and then it go back up in the next week.

And you're like, okay, there's no reason to sweat that, but it is 400 grand. What else have we discussed about your firm that people should know about so they can talk to you guys about potentially investing over there and working with you? Sure. I think the biggest thing is that whenever we talk with anybody, whenever anyone approaches us in the first conversations, we don't charge for that. I mean, if somebody calls me up and they say, hey, I want to get to know you guys and see

if it would be a good fit. A lot of places will say, okay, well, if you talk to us, it's this process and it's going to cost you X amount. We just say, all right, sure, let's hop on a quick call, get to know each other real quick and just see if it's even a good fit to begin with just from our personalities. So to get to know us and to see if we might be a good fit for you and to see if you guys might be a good fit for us, it's no commitment, no cost, and then we'll go from there. So that's probably important for people to know.

Yeah. Great way to onboard and get to know people better, make sure there's a good fit and all that good stuff. What's the best way that they can reach out to you, give people your final pitch on the show and your dot coms? Yeah. The best way to reach out to me is probably through email. So you can email me at chas, that's chas at gallagher-pool.com, G-A-L-L-A, G-H-E-R-pool, like swimmingpool.com, or you can go to our website at gallagher-pool.com,

spelled the same way. So those are the best ways to reach out to me. You can also reach out to me on LinkedIn at Chas Woodhull. It's been fun to have you on Chas, and what a journey. What a journey you've been out on the thing. Good job, man. And keep up with the, keep up taking care of yourself, taking care of your health. You'll appreciate it later because man, if you don't then... So thank you for coming to the show.

We really appreciate it. Yeah. Thanks for having me. Appreciate it. Thanks to our audience for tuning in. Go to Goodreads.com, Fortress, Chris Foss, LinkedIn.com, Fortress, Chris Foss, Chris Foss One on the TikTok and eating all those crazy places on the internet. Be good to each other, stay safe, we'll see you guys next time.