In this episode of The Resilient Advisor Show, Jay Coulter sits down with Ritholtz Wealth CEO and CNBC contributor Josh Brown. They explore key topics from Josh's new book, 'You Weren't Supposed to See That'. Josh delves into the legacy of legendary trader Jesse Livermore, discussing how his trading style and insights into behavioral finance remain relevant today. They also unpack the power of optimism in investing, even in the face of market volatility and sensational headlines.
The conversation continues with Josh’s thoughts on building a sustainable advisory business, embracing the power of experience and networking at Future Proof, and the evolving nature of client engagement in today’s information-rich world.
Listeners and views will also learn about Josh's challenging start in the business. Jay and Josh talk about some of the nonsense of being a broker in the 1990's. Josh also gives advisors some great advice on how to help clients deal with the market noise today.
For financial advisors, Josh shares practical tips on managing client expectations and finding the right clientele, providing insight into how he built Ritholtz Wealth with a selective, values-driven approach. Tune in to gain valuable perspectives on building resilience in both investing and advisory practices.
Grab a copy of Josh's new book: https://www.amazon.com/You-Werent-Supposed-See-That/dp/180409059X
Transcript:
00:00
Leaning into optimism, avoiding headline sensationalism, building an advisory business today, and lessons from the most important trader who ever lived. On this episode of The Resilient Advisor with Ritholtz CEO, Josh Brown. This is The Resilient Advisor Show with Jay Coulter.
00:24
Josh Brown does not need an introduction to this audience, but just in case, he is the CEO of Ritholtz Wealth, a CNBC contributor and author of the new book called You Weren't Supposed to See That. Josh, thanks for coming on the show. It's so nice to be here. Thank you for having me, Jay. I really enjoyed your new book. Let's dig into a couple of the topics. You talked about one of my favorite traders of all time, Jesse Livermore. You called him the most storied and important trader who ever lived.
00:52
What can modern investors learn from Jesse? Well, yes, I gave him compliments and then I talked about how he was probably bipolar, undiagnosed and perhaps had one of the worst legacies in terms of what happened with his family members that maybe I've ever read in my life. But other than that, I think Jesse was one of the first people, and he didn't realize he was doing it, one of the first people ever.
01:21
to talk about and maybe master behavioral finance. And if you're a financial advisor, the concepts that he came up with all on his own with no formal schooling, I think he left home at 12 years old. So just like all of these incredible things that he figured out just by living the life and being in the markets, these are things that wouldn't be confirmed or documented.
01:47
by social scientists for like 50 or 80 years after he had first come across these ideas. So that's why Livermore is worth studying and why I gave him a chapter in the book. Yeah, I mean, it's the outcome of his life that is really so intriguing because all the success he had, all the money he made, all of the euphoria that he was able to participate in, and then at the end of the day, he had nothing. Well, I think he went bankrupt three times and
02:16
all three times were as a result of his behavior and breaking his own rules. And he would meticulously lay out like, this is what you don't do. And then there would be something that looked like it should be an exception and he would do that thing and he would blow up. And there was a moment where he became the wealthiest human being on earth. There was one moment where he was wealthier than J. Pierpont Morgan in his time. And
02:44
He went bankrupt like a couple of years after that. He built this big estate in Great Neck, which is on the gold coast of Long Island, not far from where I live. And he basically conquered the markets and he had made more money than anyone ever had made in the markets up until that time. And it was as a result of seeing the Great Depression, seeing the crash of 29 in advance and then placing a bet big enough.
03:14
to be that extraordinary. And he knew the right things to do. And he said the money is made by sitting, not by acting. And he understood these things, but he just couldn't live by the thing that he said was the thing to live by. And that's what makes him so relentlessly fascinating for someone like me, whose job it is to help people make good decisions with their money. Yeah. Well, that brings me to the next topic in your book I'd love to go into, and that's optimism.
03:44
So I've always struggled with a default setting to being negative, especially when we're looking at the markets. Josh, you and I got into the business in the same time. We went through the internet bubble. We went through the great financial crisis, the COVID crisis. And in your new book, you say that pessimism is intellectually seductive, and the arguments always sound smarter, especially when they dovetail into your own worries. That's always hit home for me and has personally, frankly, cost me money over the years. Josh, you've been on TV for so long.
04:13
That is not your default setting. How have you kept such an optimistic mindset and how do you keep that mindset in your clients? Well, I think when you're around long enough, it gets easier. So there's this like, there's this stereotype of the typical perma-bear or cromugin and it's usually somebody who's an older person. And that's weird to me because what I find when I talk to my clients or I talk to,
04:42
older successful people, they're all optimists. So it's a really, it's like this really weird thing where we think that people get more negative when they get older. And that's not really true. It's just that we have a few very prominent examples of people who probably should have retired a long time ago, or people who are effectively are retired, but nobody bothered to tell them. So you get these guys, it's always guys, they're like a former chief economist for some like
05:09
Canadian gold investment bank or whatever. And effectively they're retired, they don't have that job anymore. But they're still talking their stuff on the web, like for anyone who will listen, infecting people with like their subscription product or whatever. Those people are rare. When you're out in the world and not on the internet, you meet older people who have succeeded, none of them are pessimists. It's the weirdest thing on earth.
05:39
Imagine you get invited to someone's house in the Hamptons or somebody's beautiful luxury apartment in Manhattan or Miami or Some like star-studded celebrity party in the Hollywood Hills you walk around you meet people who are in their 50s and 60s people who have really made it None of them are pessimists. It's only on the internet and it's this weird thing that it's like only in Wall Street Do you find these freaks so I? It's not hard for me
06:08
to stay optimistic because what I do is, I look at these people and I say like, God, if I ever turn into that, take away my login to my blog. Like I don't wanna talk anymore if that's the way I come off. So look, I'm sarcastic, I'm from New York, I'm sardonic, I'm a little bit of a cynic. I'm not one of these people that just like automatically wakes up every day, jumps out of bed, and is like, ooh, the sun is shining. But.
06:37
When it comes to investing, how could you not believe that things are gonna get better five years from now? 10 years, what like, have you been living in a cave? Look around, it's not hard to understand that bad things happen, but over time, the good things, the positive developments went out. So that's just kind of where I am and people can, look, I'll give you a test. Jay, you could do this right now. Anybody watching could do this.
07:07
Go on Twitter or LinkedIn and say, you know what actually, I'm pretty upbeat about 2025. I think everything's gonna be fine. And then just ghost and then come back a day later and see what the comments are. You know what I'll do, Josh? You're complacent. This time it's different. It's weird to me. I don't wanna be around people like that is the truth. So it's really easy. You spot them.
07:36
and you go out of your way to not be anything like them. You know what I'll do, Josh? Before this episode broadcasts, I'll do that and I'll link back to it and we'll see what kind of trash we get in the comments section. I'm gonna troll you though. I tell you, another quote you had in that section that stood out to me, who does have to try to not be negative, is you said, being optimistic all the time is difficult, but having any other disposition as a default setting.
08:02
makes little sense when you're investing for a future far out in front of us. For financial advisors in your experience, keeping clients optimistic is a challenge, especially in periods like where we sit today right before the election. How do you work with your clients to keep them optimistic? All right. So the cheat code is we are really selective about who our clients are. And we are not like randomly like meeting people. We're not like heavily reliant on some sort of like, oh,
08:31
I'm like influential in my church or my temple and therefore all my clients coming to me that like our people come to us because they agree with our philosophy. So it's their self selecting before we even say one word to them because they're fans and you can't be a fan of ours and be like a doom like a like a doom person because it's just it's not what we do. So that's the cheat code is you were starting off talking to the right people. We talked to.
09:01
people that are very skeptical about the government and big tech and, you know, of course, they have things that they're worried about. And they think about the Middle East and Ukraine and, you know, the proliferation of nuclear weapons and what if there's another pandemic? They're not stupid, but they have this bigger understanding, which is that the market is really good at pricing in these risks.
09:28
And by the time everyone identifies something as a risk, it's probably already on its way to being transmogrified into more of an opportunity. And our clients get that, and that's kinda, if that's not fully their mindset coming in, ultimately it'll become their mindset as a result of having prolonged exposure to us. And that's kind of like a good thing. So I don't have to deal with people who think the world is gonna end tomorrow, because those aren't the people that call me.
09:58
So we're lucky in that way, but also it's like sort of by design at this point. Yeah, advisors, he nailed it. The easy cheat code is don't onboard those types of clients. They just make your life difficult. You can't, well you can't help them. And you might take pity, you might want to help them. Like of course, who wouldn't? Like somebody that just, the S&P 500 has just compounded at 14% over the last 15 years.
10:26
You could live another 50 years and never see a stretch of time like this again. Do you know how many people spent this period of time in a fallout shelter financially? Now you come across these people and they're like, all right, well, what do I do now? Oh my God. I don't know. But you do want to help and you want to give them something constructive. It's just have they really changed? Or
10:53
at the first 10% correction in the market, is that the person that's like blowing up your phone? Get me out, how could you do this to me, blah, blah, blah. Right? So it's really hard to help those people, even if you want to, and of course, every financial planner worth their salt would. But some people reform. So we've onboarded clients that left like the Peter Schiff cult, or left the Mark Faber cult.
11:22
Remember that Doom, Gloom and Boom report? Yep. He had a huge following before he went on TV and said actually slavery was good. So we've met these people along the way. Remember, it's me, it's Barry Ritholtz. We've spoken to thousands of people that were fleeing one cult or another. And some of them, they do. They figure it out and they change. But a lot of them, it's just like...
11:50
I'm going to onboard you with the Dow at 45,000. And when we're at 36,000, you're going to tell me you're suicidal. And can I get you through that moment? I don't know. So you've got to start with talking to the right people. Yeah. And in the book, you also talk a little bit about behavioral science, making sure that you have a good plan for the long term, the table stakes for managing money.
12:17
But one of the things that really stood out to me in a recent interview you had with Ryan Rosiglio, which by the way, that was fantastic. What a change up on that podcast. You said we are in an age where every day something unprecedented happens. Josh, when you and I started in the 90s, there was no social media, we didn't have to worry about the term clickbait didn't even exist. And so our clients weren't being licensed. You said you, you got you got licensed in 97. I believe same time. Right.
12:46
Yeah, where were you working at the time? Dean Witter, do you remember them? All right, yeah, for sure. Where'd you start? I wasn't quite so lucky. I started at a firm that two weeks before I started there, they had a lawsuit settle, the biggest sexual harassment lawsuit of all time. I had no idea what was going on, and I walked in two weeks after they settled. Like they were in the newspaper, and do we...
13:15
The reason I started there was my dad played golf with like one of the brokers who was like a big shot there. And I wish I could say the place got better, but it was kind of a pirate ship. But I did fall in love with the stock market while I was there. So, but I got Series 7 licensed and you know, you're right. In the late 90s, there was no internet, there were no cell phones, don't tell anyone, but that's true too. Like there was no email.
13:44
If you had an email, if you sent an email as an NASD registered broker, I think you could go to jail. That's right. Right? Yep. And it didn't matter because none of your clients were sending emails because it just wasn't a thing. So you communicated by phone or like in-person meeting and basically there were no online discount brokerages. That was just in its infancy. There was like, you know, there was already Schwab and Fidelity and Waterhouse and Brown, what was it called?
14:14
Brown Brothers Harriman, is that it? Oldie, yeah, yeah, Oldie was another one. So there were discount brokerages, but those were like 1-800 numbers. So the point that I'm trying to make is if people wanted to be invested, they had to talk to a broker. They had to go through a broker. Maybe it was somebody at Merrill Lynch or maybe it was me or maybe it was you, but like we were the connection between the public and the stock market and we kind of controlled the information that people heard.
14:42
There was Barron's Wall Street Journal, Forbes Fortune, but like clients listened to us because they didn't have a phone sending them headlines all day. So it's a little bit easier to manage like your client's perception of what was happening in the market back then. Now it's, you know, now it's like, we're just, we're drowning in a sea of noise and everybody says, I'm gonna help you cut through the noise. The people that say that are probably
15:12
the biggest contributors to the noise. So maybe I'm part of that. So like, it's very different today than back then. Yeah, you have any advice for advisors trying to deal with that with their clients, handle it, manage the expectations? I mean, giving your platform, it has to be something that you run across. You can't get mad at it. You have to have a good sense of humor. And you have to understand enough about what people, you can't tune, this idea that you're gonna like, oh, tune it all out, oh, really?
15:41
and then your client asks you a question about something that happened that morning and you, ooh, I'm tuning out the noise. Because the thing is that you don't know what's gonna be important until later. That's right. So like 10 things might be happening right now and nine of them fade away and one of them lingers and becomes like a huge issue and you don't know which of those. So it's really important to stay informed and to stay informed you have to consume a lot of news and you have to just be open-minded. Things change, you're gonna have this gut reaction like,
16:11
that's wrong, it should be this way, and then time goes by and you realize, oh wait, maybe the world actually has changed and things aren't gonna be that way anymore. So you have to be open-minded, have a sense of humor. Somebody asked me, all right, so you're telling your clients tune out the noise, blah, blah, blah, but then you're on CNBC and you're talking about headlines that happen pretty much every day. And I explained, if you saw the first Avengers,
16:39
There's this like back and forth between Tony Stark and Bruce Banner about like Tony Stark's teasing Bruce Banner to get him to Hulk out. Like how do I get you to freak out? Why aren't you freaking out? And Bruce Banner seems to have it under control. And it's frustrating to Tony Stark because you know, for fun he wants to. And finally he's like, Bruce Banner says, all right, you wanna know my secret?
17:06
You want it like how I how I keep from Hulk Hulk like raging. My secret is I'm always mad. OK. My secret is I am always consuming the news. So there's like literally nothing that could happen that's going to provoke a reaction in me because I have not tuning out. I went the other way. Prolonged exposure to every bullshit thing that everyone says morning noon and night. I swim in it.
17:37
You understand? I sleep with it. So it's much easier for me to understand. All right, why is everyone talking about this? I kinda like, I'm behind the scenes. I know this TV producer read this article, in this publication, or saw this smart ass tweeting about it, and they came up with a segment, and they did the segment, and now all the other media companies, they wanna have their own version or twist on that story. And I kinda like understand how that all happens and takes place.
18:07
and how it eventually fades away. So I can't get provoked to do stupid things with my portfolio from anything happening in the headlines because I know too much. And it's a Bruce Banner thing. Like my secret is I always pay attention. Yeah, and I like that framework. You are swimming in it. In fact- I don't know. Were you looking for 20 minute answers? I don't really know how the format of the show. I like it. It's great.
18:36
It's great. And the best part is, you're authentic on this podcast for financial advisors as you are on CNBC. So I love it. I appreciate that. Thank you, Jay. On that Ryan Rosiglio interview, he said something. You said, publicly traded companies are obscenely good at raising prices. And it made me laugh out loud. But really, just the joke was on me is I heard you unpack it as to why you needed to be invested in these large publicly traded companies.
19:03
Could you walk my listeners through that framework? Well, I think the big thing to understand is that we've moved from an economy where people pay for transactions to an economy where people pay subscriptions. And what ends up happening is that when you're not forced to pull out your credit card or pull out cash or go somewhere and there's just like money changing hands behind the scenes, you can very easily lull yourself into a situation where it's just like.
19:32
You're just like automatically serving as the source of some other company reporting revenue. Like you are that revenue just by waking up that day. And I don't suggest anything's wrong with that. We're in a business where we're billing quarterly on fees. But like that's just the nature of the economy. And then the next piece of that is, well, if I'm already billing you and you like what you're getting, I could probably bill you a little bit more. You're probably not going to cancel.
20:01
You know, some of that is transaction, some of that is subscription. So Chipotle and Netflix, they both bill differently. There's no Chipotle plus service that I'm aware of. I think you actually have to pay for the burrito when you show up. But like, if they go, if they go from $9 to $11 over the course of three years, you probably are not changing how much of the burrito you're consuming. Now, part of it is they have to, cause they have to pay their staff. Um, but then part of it is like, they want to be able to tell Wall Street, Hey, we're growing.
20:31
uh, same store sales by 6%. Oh, didn't you just raise the price by 6%? Shut up. Don't worry about that. So this is the economy now and it is what it is. And you know, one of the reasons why the S and P 500 is such an amazing inflation hedge and has proven to be over the last, the fullness of time over the last five years, I wouldn't have, you know, you wouldn't have said this in 2022 obviously, but over the last five years,
21:00
Has the S&P 500 hedged out your inflation risk? I think yes. I think maybe better than any other asset class. Maybe Bitcoin. Like, I don't know that anything, I think Bitcoin's like 600% return since 2019 or something. But I don't think gold has done as well as the S&P. I don't think REITs have done as well as the S&P. So like, people are searching, like what do I do about inflation? It's right in front of your face.
21:28
The top 500 companies in America are awesome at getting you to pay more money almost every year. Right? So that's kind of like the way that I try to get people to understand like, why are you investing? Oh, make more money. Yeah, actually, how about to make sure that the money you already made can actually buy you something at some point in the future? Like isn't that even more elemental reason to stay invested? Yep, absolutely.
21:57
I just love the line. They're obscenely good at raising prices. Because it's true. Make demonstrators. Best in the world. Yep. Yep. Yeah. This is one of the one other thing like people are like, Oh, the economy is so bad. Why are these stocks going up? It's a bubble. No, idiot. These are the best 500 companies on earth. It's 500 Michael Jordans. It's not a reflection of the economy. It's two separate things. They're related. They're cousins.
22:27
The economy's terrible, why would I invest? Because you're not buying the economy. You're buying shares in the 500 best companies on planet Earth, what's wrong with you? Sometimes you have to kind of drill that into people. They don't want to, it's not that they don't want to understand it, it's that they have this outlook on the economy and some of it is anecdotes and some of it is personal experience and their brother-in-law got laid off and the price of eggs and it's, dude.
22:56
No one's saying buy a share in the American economy. This is not that. These are, this is Apple. Do you understand? So when I say these companies are obscenely good at raising price, they're obscenely good at almost everything. Do you know how good you have to be to be one of the largest three capitalized businesses in any particular sector, right? That's why.
23:21
I don't think that people's assessment of how they feel about the economy should enter into whether or not they invest. And it also works the other way. Don't look at the stock market and think that that's a reflection of economics. Again, these are the most talented managers, the best companies, the best products and services. It's not a mood ring for GDP. I love your passion behind that. Spot on. Let's talk about being an advisor today, Josh.
23:51
If you had to start over and build an advisory practice from scratch today, I give up I said I already surrender. Just the premise. If I have to start off. Well, I mean, the beauty is we all got to watch you build Ritholtz over the last 11 years because you did it so publicly. But for an advisor starting out today, what would you do? What would you recommend they do? All right, part of me thinks it's really hard to be starting on today. But then part of me feels like it's really easy. So I'm not sure.
24:20
I'm not really sure which is right. It's really hard because the wealth management industry is very sophisticated now. And a lot is getting done with technology. And in order to earn your place as sort of like an entry level advisor who needs five to 10 years of seasoning and training, it's like really hard for somebody to give you a shot. Because they're gonna have to give you a salary.
24:50
and it's gonna be a while before you can stand on your own feet. So you're gonna be a cost. And also the payback on training somebody, there's an immediate payback because you could start taking some of the paperwork and administrative stuff off their plate and free them up to spend more time with clients or play golf or whatever. So that's sort of an immediate payback, but like the bigger payback of you becoming a full-fledged advisor and staying at that firm and generating
25:20
you know, revenue that can then turn into profit for that owner that gave you a shot. Honestly, it's like a 10-year engagement. And even if somebody commits to 10 years right now, like I'm going to take this 24-year-old, and when they're 34, they'll be capable of managing $100, $200 million. I don't know for sure that it's going to work, even if I commit to paying you a six-figure salary on average over the next 10 years. So I got to bet like a million bucks.
25:47
And the outcome is fairly uncertain. Or what if you're incredible as a young advisor and you leave me? So it's really, really hard. And because that's the case, we don't have as much training and young advisor development in our space as we probably should. And the biggest symptom of that is the success of Michael Kitsis and XY Planning Group.
26:17
Because we have a lot of young people who think their only route into the industry is to start their own firm. That's like, you wouldn't do that in most industries. Like most lawyers don't graduate law school and start a law practice, right? Most doctors work in a practice for 10 years and build up like a knowledge base. But like we really haven't given our young people that many great options. They can answer the phones at Fidelity.
26:46
That's not bad. They can answer the phones at Vanguard. They can answer the phones at a Charles Schwab branch. Okay. They can go to Merrill Lynch and Morgan Stanley for the Hunger Games, right? One out of a thousand might become an advisor. They can go to Northwest Mutual, make a list of 50 family members they could sell a life policy to, and maybe develop something. But like...
27:12
how many RIAs are like really focused on training a large amount of people at once? I don't know of any. Do you know of any? I don't. And it's the biggest issue our industry has. We've talked about this, all the boomers retiring out, it was supposed to have been an issue 510 years ago. It's only now starting come to fruition. I get calls from firms looking for that successor. They can't find people to take over books of business. Yeah, you know, it's look, it's it's a
27:38
It's, and I'm not one to talk. It's not like I'm turning out 10 trainees a year. I don't have the capacity to do it. We had an internship program, we canceled it, because it ended up being an exercise in like make work. Like I had staffers who were like busy, and I'm like, hey, do me a favor. Can you like do this thing for the interns? It's like, okay, first time. Second time it's like, all right. The third time it's like, no, I can't. Like there are clients waiting for me to call them back. I can't.
28:07
I can't take the kids out to lunch right now. So unless we get to a place where there are like 50 to 100 firms of size who are willing to build in-house training and not just for one person at a time, but like to have a class of advisor trainees to eat the loss for the half of them that don't make it.
28:34
and like spend the next 10 years developing the five that do, I don't know what the right answer is. And that's why we have like all these 23, 25 year olds running around with $4 million under management calling themselves a firm. And you know, it's, I don't, look, it's not that none of them will make it. Of course, some of them will make it, but like we lie as an industry about the success failure rate. We don't tell the truth. Michael tells the truth.
29:03
But like, we don't really tell the truth. It's a lot of feast and famine. And I don't know what the right answer is, but I don't think we figured it out yet as an industry. And I hope that that's something that I'll be able to say has changed if we talk again a few years from now. Yeah, yeah, I hope so. What pieces of fintech do you really like using today in your practice? So let's start with research. We are power users of Y charts. Most people know that.
29:32
YCharts has been an incredible resource to us almost since day one. We met Sean Brown and he had not really been catering directly to advisors early on. But I think he realized that YCharts and wealth management is a perfect marriage. People that are managing money for others constantly need to generate resources to make those conversations worthwhile for their clients.
30:01
and really have something that they can demonstrate and illustrate, not just the value of how they're investing or what they're providing, but really just give people, hey, here's what's going on in the world right now, or here's a way to compare five different funds for the same asset class, or whatever it is. So YCharts is really great. They doubled and tripled down on the advisor community. If you see the content that they put out, they tend to feature a lot of advisors. And
30:28
I think it's an indispensable piece of tech. We use Orion for portfolio accounting. Almost all of our clients are equipped with an Orion login and we use Orion's Eclipse tool for trading. We're trading across multiple custodians. We trade five days a week and that technology is extremely important to us and has helped us run a more efficient practice. We're a Salesforce firm, which means we're locked in and we can never...
30:58
go anywhere. Salesforce is like the last bill that we'll be paying till we all drop dead, basically, but it works. And we've customized it relentlessly and it helps us get a lot done. You talk about public companies being insanely good at raising prices. I don't think there's a price Salesforce could name that we would be like, no, it would be really, really hard. Hopefully nobody's listening that works there.
31:27
Who else? What else? Oh, I mean, there's so many things like we, uh, we use Betterment for, we have a tier which we call Liftoff and Liftoff is built on Betterment's technology and Liftoff is our entry level client portal. So if you have between zero and $250,000 investible and you want to become a client, instead of us telling you, we can't help you, we can help you.
31:54
and we manage portfolios. It's about 40 some odd million dollars we have on the platform right now. And these are clients that honestly, I don't, oh, hang on, I'm sorry. Hang on, Jay, can we pause this for one sec? Yes? All right, one sec, one sec.
32:15
you back? No. All right. So sorry. No worries. I'm in my I'm in my home office today because my wife is getting like a really important delivery. And it was like the only thing I was responsible for today. So I'm glad you got up to try to get it. Josh, you've done an exceptional job blogging over the course of your career, starting with the reform broker and then recently moving over to downtown Josh Brown. Why did you in the reform broker and start the new blog?
32:45
I'm just not that guy anymore. It was like, you know, we all evolve and we all change. And I just didn't see myself as a reformed broker. It just felt very anachronistic and kind of played out. And I loved the experience of writing that blog and talking from the perspective of like somebody who had been in the trenches and had seen all the things that I had seen, but it's kind of not what I wanted to talk about anymore.
33:14
So now I so I said like, let me get a clean slate and let me start over. And let me talk from the perspective of who I am today. And so that's why we wanted to sunset reformed broker and start start something fresh. And how much time do you spend blogging each week about
33:35
Not that much these days. So one of the things about the Reformed Broker was when it was at its height, I was writing seven days a week and some days multiple times per day. And the markets necessitated that. Like in 2011, the things that were going on all over the world and here, like there was just like news, news, news, news. And I just wanted to make sure that I was kind of chronicling the things that I thought were important.
34:04
I don't feel that way today. And maybe there is like a young person out there just started writing that they are like relentlessly doing that right now. I don't know. It's just not what I am or where I am right now. So I don't write as much as I used to. I try to publish once or twice a week. And when I do, it's because I actually have something to say. I'm not writing for the sake of writing. And I think that's two things. Number one, I'm too busy. But number two, it's respect for the audience.
34:34
I don't believe in putting something out on a schedule if there's nothing worth saying. And if there's a lot worth saying, then by all means, like say it. The other thing though is that we're doing a lot more multimedia and the podcast has taken off and that is coming out on a schedule. And so a lot of the things that we would write or I would write, it's just like, you know what, I'm actually going to say it. And it's a different form of expression and it's a different way to communicate. And
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it's it's I don't think it's better or worse than writing. It's definitely feels more immediate though. And we're doing YouTube. And so like listen if you want to hear what I think you don't have to wait for me to write something like if you're if you're subscribed to our stuff you're definitely going to hear it. That's right. Well Josh you guys just wrapped up another successful future proof conference with your partner Matt Middleton and the team. It's become the top advisor conference and wealth conference.
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very quickly, I think this is your third or fourth year doing it. Why do advisors need to put this conference on the radar for next year? Well, look, I don't think that the mainstream conferences that everyone goes to, I don't think they need to change. I don't think there's anything wrong with them. I go to events. We just wanted to do something really unique and really special.
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And we wanted to double down on two aspects of the conference going experience. So during the pandemic, Matt and I were talking like, what, all right, assuming this is going to end at some point, why would anyone get on an airplane ever again to go to an event? And you know, you could do your CE credits online. Um, you can like, uh, watch endless amounts of video of people giving speeches from the stage. So like, what's really going to be the thing. And.
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The two things we hit upon were experience and networking. So if you go to Future Proof, you can see, we quadrupled down on experience and on networking. And it's not that we don't have good content on the stage. I have celebrities on the stage. It's not like we're like, oh, who cares about the stage? I'm putting the top people on stage. But that's not the point. The point is, you should be able to go there, spend three days, and come home with 25 new people.
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that are either going to be friends, allies, contacts, sources of information, vendors to you, whatever. And we really go out of our way to hook those things up and make sure that you actually end up in those conversations. And we do it better than anyone, and I don't care what anyone says, we hosted 32,000 one-on-one meetings that were preselected, pre-scheduled meetings. That is sick.
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Sick. Compare that to showing up somewhere at some hotel ballroom, like pretending that you want a frisbee to ask somebody a question who's sitting on the other side of a booth in front of other people. It's so embarrassing. Advisors are like not good at flirting naturally. It's not like what comes naturally to most of us. So like the experience of coming to our thing, you're gonna have an amazing time.
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You're going to meet so many people. Go to something else that's hit or miss. You might meet worthwhile people. You might not, who knows, maybe in the men's room, maybe at the bar, possibly you get seated at the rub and ch rubber, uh, chicken lunch, you know, with somebody that you, I mean, it's, it's like very, um, serendipitous and that's not a good use of anyone's time. So we doubled, triple, quadruple down on building relationships and just
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don't take my word for it. Go look at the feedback and and look how many people come back every year because they understand. It's the only conference that I've never received negative feedback about for my advisor community. So make sure you put that on your radar advisors. Josh, let's wrap up with some of your thoughts around Ritholtz wealth. It's been really fun watching you guys build that publicly. You've built an incredible organization, a great RIA for your clients and for advisors.
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What would be a right fit advisor for somebody interested in potentially working with your firm? That's a great, thank you for asking. That's a great question. We only hire one or two advisors a year. This year we hired none, I think. So we interview, we interviewed dozens of people. We just, it's a, it's, we're not snobs. It's just that.
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We think that a place on our rocket ship is like the most expensive, not expensive in dollar terms, but like emotionally is the most valuable real estate there is in this industry and we don't just give it away. And we really care so much about the people that have joined the firm over the years that we wouldn't dare insult what they've given, like they've given all of themselves to be a part of this culture.
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to just throw random people in, like in my mind, we would just never do that. So this is part of it, we don't do acquisitions. I don't wanna import 40 bodies at a time and hope that most of them are decent human beings. That's not the agenda. The agenda is we will talk to anyone, we will allow anybody to come in and pitch us on why they should be part of this, but we're only gonna take people that we can say, this is the girl, this is the boy.
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You know, it's got to be like the right fit. So we managed to, I think we have 28 client facing advisors, almost all are CFP professionals and we're no rush. And if we're at 30 advisors five years from now, it's fine. Our advisors have tons of capacity and we're not relying on them to, you know, make it rain. We're relying on them to do an amazing job for our clients.
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And it's a different philosophy. And hopefully we can sustain this and continue this way. Josh, thanks for your time coming on this episode. Tell me, where can viewers and listeners grab a copy of You Were Not Supposed to See That? Fine airports everywhere. No, go to Amazon, go to Barnes and Noble, go to Borders, that's the whole thing. The independent bookstores have them, but I just,
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preemptively say thank you. If you buy the book, I really, really hope you love it. And if you really love it, I would love to hear from you. And just tell me what you liked about it. And I have to tell you, that is the greatest feeling on earth, and I'm sure, Jay, you can relate to that. When somebody says they love your show, or they've learned something from watching you and your guests, like, nothing is better. So, like, the book and the feedback to the book, it's like, it's giving me life.
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So thank you to everyone watching who bought it. Thank you to everyone who's planning to buy it. And thank you for all the great feedback. I can't even tell you how happy it makes me. Thank you, Josh. Links to everything will be in the show notes.
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