Let's Think About It Podcast

Mastering Financial Freedom: Insights from Chad Hufford

• Morice Mabry • Season 1 • Episode 23

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Imagine transforming your financial life from paycheck-to-paycheck stress to abundant financial freedom 💸. Join me, Coach Mo 🎙️, as I sit down with financial guru Chad Hufford from Anchorage, Alaska 🌲, who reveals how he pivoted from pursuing a career in the medical field to becoming a financial planner with a mission 🌟. Discover the profound ways sound financial planning can reshape your life as Chad shares his unique approach to stabilizing finances and creating solid financial foundations 🏦. This episode is brimming with practical advice and insights aimed at helping you achieve the clarity and confidence needed for financial stability and growth 📈.

At Veritas Wealth Management, the focus is on you—making you a better investor, not just selling you investment products 💼. Chad likens this to personal training in fitness 🏋️‍♂️, holding you accountable to ensure you meet your financial goals even when life gets tough 💪. Listen to a compelling success story about a client who achieved financial freedom in retirement and now dedicates his time to helping others 🏖️. We'll also debunk common misconceptions about investing and financial planning, stressing the importance of taking control of what you can influence rather than getting caught up in the uncontrollable 🚀.

Finally, we explore the critical importance of mindset shifts for financial success 🧠. Chad uses powerful metaphors and analogies to help you view old financial challenges in new, manageable ways 🔄. We'll discuss the importance of having a financial blueprint 📜 and the necessity of staying focused on your goals, even during market downturns 📉. By fostering strong, trust-filled relationships with clients, Chad ensures that they stay supported and motivated throughout their financial journey 🤝. Don't miss this treasure trove of wisdom designed to empower you toward greater financial stability and growth 🌟. Stay connected for more content aimed at helping you become the best version of yourself 🌟.

Speaker 1:

Welcome to the let's Think About it podcast, where we embark on a journey of thoughtfulness and personal growth. I'm your host, coach Mo, and I'm here to guide you through thought-promoting discussions that will inspire you to unlock your full potential. In each episode, we'll explore a wide range of topics, from self-discovery and mindfulness to goal-setting and achieving success. Together, we'll challenge conventional thinking and dive deep into the realms of possibility. Whether you're looking to find clarity in your personal or professional life, or seeking strategies to overcome obstacles, this podcast is your go-to source for insightful conversations and practical advice. So find a comfortable spot, chill and let's embark on this journey of self-improvement together. Remember, the power of transformation lies within you, and together we'll uncover the tools and insights you need to make it happen. So let's dive in. Welcome to another episode of the let's Think About it podcast. I'm your host, coach Mo, and I'm here with another exciting guest, my main man, chad Hufford. He's coming from the financial industry. He's going to drop some nuggets, chad. What's up?

Speaker 2:

brother Mo, I'm just happy to be here. It's a blessing to be able to talk to you and your audience and hopefully we can offer them some encouragement and some education as they plan out their life.

Speaker 1:

Man, that's what I'm talking about. That's what I'm talking about. But first, before we dive into this, where are you calling in? From what part of the country?

Speaker 2:

I'm here in Anchorage, alaska, so you might be wondering why I still got my sweater on and all that yeah it's we. It's barely 60 degrees here. We still haven't had summer yet. It's still springtime weather. But yeah, I'm up here in Anchorage, alaska.

Speaker 1:

Born and raised. Born and raised, yes, sir, wow, wow.

Speaker 2:

Okay, tell me one great thing about Alaska so I can get out there and visit. I would say it is the untamed wilderness. That I love about it is, yeah, we live in a city with all the creature comforts and all that, but there is so much that has been just untapped and untouched by man, and just beautiful views, amazing wildlife. And it's still the last frontier and that's one of the things I love most about it.

Speaker 1:

Man, that's great. That's great. I'm really happy to have you here because I'm really waiting, dying, to tap into your knowledge about just the financial planning, the industry, whatever you want to talk about in that regard. But first tell my audience about your career path and how did you get to where you are today.

Speaker 2:

I actually did not intend to get into this line of work. I grew up in the financial industry. My dad was in finance for many years, retired in the late 90s and coached a lot of people. I saw the impact that investing and good financial stewardship can have in somebody's life. But that wasn't what I thought my calling was going to be. But he taught classes in our church financial classes. He worked with a lot of his own personal clients and just helped them build better futures with more clarity and confidence, and I always appreciated what he did for people and I was really proud of him.

Speaker 2:

But I was going into medicine. That's how I thought I was going to change the world, and my why has always been to help people create the best version of themselves and to live in more freedom and abundance, and I just thought being able to put people back together again physically was going to be the way that I would do that. I would do that, but some things transpired and I felt like a nudge. At first it was a nudge in another direction and then that nudge got stronger and I realized that everything that I wanted was in this field and I could have just as much impact, if not more, doing this than going into medicine.

Speaker 2:

And one of the surgeons who was mentoring me was like one of the tough things about surgery, Chad, is you put people back together but you can't keep them from self-destructive tendencies.

Speaker 2:

You can't change how they're living their life and you get somebody who maybe gets in a car accident, DUI, something like that.

Speaker 2:

You might be able to save their life on that day, but can you really change it? And he said I know how you operate, that's going to be hard for you, but with financial coaching, with financial planning, Mo, we're not just trying to help people find better investments, we're trying to help them become a better investor. And it's a personal relationship, Like we're working not just on the investments in the financial plan but helping that person become a truer version of themselves. And it's been a way that we've been able to impact lives and change not just financial trajectories but really change how people's lives are lived. And that was something that, again, I saw my dad doing. And I've noticed that when people feel empowered in their finances and when people feel like they have a clear path in their investing and their financial plan, that confidence, that clarity, it has a ripple effect into other areas of their life. So I'm just blessed to be able to do this be able to change people's lives through finances.

Speaker 1:

Man, I'm with you, I follow you. Man, I really do so. Here's my first question. The person that's check to check never invested fear of losing money. How do you work with your clients to start to shift that mindset?

Speaker 2:

For people who are check to check, which is most people in our country right now it's most of our society paycheck to paycheck Before we start building their financial house. We want to get a little bit of distance between them and life. So you think about like, yeah, you want to build this financial house, that's what's going to keep you and your family secure in the future, but you don't want to build that financial house in the middle of a forest fire. So we might need to pay off some debts and decrease some liabilities first, get ourselves in a safer financial situation so we can start building. So for some people, getting on a budget might be the first step paying off some credit cards, some student loans and, like I said, getting some distance between them and life.

Speaker 2:

And once they get their debts paid off, then we want to build up a little emergency fund, because the last thing we want, once somebody has done the hard work to get out of debt, is to have to borrow against a retirement account or take on credit card debt or something like that, because life happened, a car needs to be replaced, a kid broke their arm, whatever there's. One of the golden rules of compound interest, compound returns, is to never interrupt it unnecessarily. So we don't want to pull our money out of our investments. We want to just like a tree planted in an orchard you just want to let it sit, let it grow. But we also don't want life events to cause us to need to pull that money out of those things. So to circle back and wrap that question up with a tidy bow, get out of that, get on a budget and get an emergency fund in place.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, but then how do you work on that mindset though? Because it's easier to say that pay off your debts, save your money, have a plan, and things like that. But when a person has a scarcity mindset, how does your team take it to that depth? To?

Speaker 2:

help them. One of the things we try to do, mo, is introduce people to their future selves, get them to start thinking about who they want to be, what they want to be doing and, ultimately, what they want to become in the next 10, 15, 20 years. Because we don't have a very good, as a general rule, we don't have a very good relationship with the future versions of us and, in fact, we often treat that person like they're a completely different individual. We make decisions today that hurt and harm the future versions of us and we act like we aren't going to have to pay those consequences, pay that price. Jerry Seinfeld had a hilarious bit called Morning Guy and Evening Guy, where, even between one day to the next, we often make decisions as if the next morning we're not going to have to pay the consequences for our decisions today.

Speaker 2:

And a lot of people that live in paycheck to paycheck they're also living day to day, minute to minute, hour by hour, and they're not thinking about the repercussions of what they're doing today. So one of the things that I think people need to be thinking about is when you make a decision am I stealing from or serving the future version of me about is when you make a decision. Am I stealing from or serving the future version of me? I like that concept. Yeah, like me, in 10 years, am I going to be proud of the decision I'm making today? And it's really hard to create freedom not just financial freedom, but freedom in any sense. When you have debt, you're literally paying in the future for decisions you made in the past, and it's really hard to get feel independence, to feel freedom, when that's what you're doing.

Speaker 1:

And it's hard for some people to see what that future self is because you're living in day to day, being reactive, being basically being reactive to the day to day right, Consistently, putting out fires right, and not taking a moment to pause to say what is my future, what am I really trying to aspire to be, what is that next step?

Speaker 1:

Right, and being able to pause, take a couple of steps back, seek guidance, whether it's around your finances, whether it's around anything in life, just always having that person to speak with. That's the value of what I love about coaching. Whether it's life coaching, whether it's leadership coaching, financial coaching, it's always that person that's there, that's credible, to help you step by step along the way to create those milestones towards success. So when I think about the work that you do and what you're doing to create milestone success for your clients, right, that's got to be an empowering feeling. And so my next question for you is when was that light bulb for you that you decided to just follow your father's footsteps and go into the financial industry? What was the light that? Just man, maybe I should be doing this.

Speaker 2:

I'll tell you exactly when it was. It was on an airplane headed to Ohio. I was going to a wedding and I just graduated college and I already started second guessing medicine. I had some really nice medical schools lined up. It looked like I had a nice pathway paved and I read a book called Simple Wealth Inevitable Wealth by a gentleman named Nick Murray, and that was the book that got me thinking okay, this is the message I need to bring into the world, and it is a simple wealth, inevitable wealth. That's it. It's simple things that most people won't do.

Speaker 2:

And you talked about coaching, mo, and that's what I love about this job is we're coaching people. You and I are doing it different ways. We're coaching people to help them become better versions themselves. We're not reinventing the wheel. We're just getting people to do the simple, difficult things that most people aren't doing.

Speaker 2:

And what I've seen in life and in finances it isn't what you do one day that makes a difference. The biggest difference is the little things you can commit to every day and holding people accountable that being an accountability partner, because the people that find success in life aren't necessarily doing things completely different than everybody else, but they're doing consistently what most people only do occasionally. They're doing the simple but difficult things like getting up early, eating healthy, going to the gym, spending time with their spouse, being intentional with their kids, saving money. All those things that people might do every now and then, but successful people do them consistently and with diligence, and sometimes even with tenacity. And there's no secret and that's what this book reminded me.

Speaker 2:

I already knew this there's no secret to building meaningful, sustainable wealth. It's simple, but simple things aren't necessarily easy, especially when you have to commit to them for a long period of time, and that's when I got. That's when I felt my calling. I was like this is the message I need to bring to the world to be a source of hope and inspiration, but also accountability, to be able to encourage people when they do feel like taking a break, they feel like giving up, they feel like going off the path, to keep them going and keep them heading in the direction that they need to go.

Speaker 1:

How long have you been a financial coach? 17 years.

Speaker 2:

Got my financial licenses in 2007 and started doing this full time in 2008. In the middle of the financial crisis you remember 2008, 2009, biggest financial crisis we've seen since the great depression the worldwide global financial meltdown people were scared out of their minds and, I'll be honest, mo, they weren't super excited about talking to some punk kid with a biochemistry degree, but that's what I had to offer, and the people that chose to engage me and do this do life together with us. There's still some, even 17 years later, some of the best clients we have.

Speaker 1:

That's amazing. What separates your company? What separates Veritas Wealth Management from your competitors?

Speaker 2:

I'd say because we're working on the individual. So, like I said earlier, there's a lot of financial institutions, a lot of financial advisors that are helping people find better investments, but very few are working on the individual to make them a better investor. And the analogy I'll give you think about. Like fitness, we don't need to invent faster treadmills. That's not the problem with America. America is sedentary and they're obese and they're aging faster than they need to, not because our treadmills don't go fast enough, but because people don't use them. They don't use them correctly.

Speaker 2:

We don't need more gyms. We just need people to actually show up and not use their gym as a very expensive key chain, and that's what's happening. So we don't need to reinvent exercise equipment. A personal trainer their job is to hold people accountable and say this is what you said your goals were. Here's the hard, difficult things that we need to execute to get you to where you said you want to be. Mo. We're just doing the same thing, but with finances. So we're not reinventing the wheel. We're not reinventing. We're not trying to come up with a better investment. We're trying to take the investments already out there and tailor it to somebody's individual needs and their life plan and to keep them executing that plan even when they don't want to and life's throwing them curveballs. So that's what separates us.

Speaker 2:

And take me through an example, and I'm sure you have plenty of them of a powerful success story that you had the opportunity to work with a family individual and you really shifted their world financially. I got a message from a client just a few weeks ago. He's been retired for a couple of years and he's got a great heart. He's up in Fairbanks, alaska. This is a place that gets really cold. Actually, one of the first times I was up there at a speaking event up there it was 55 below. I thought what in the world did I get myself into? So there's a different breed of toughness for the folks that live up there.

Speaker 2:

This guy retired a couple of years ago and he just said I want you to understand just how much freedom I feel right now. And I was able to help my daughter with her car. I was able to help. So he's very mechanically minded. He worked for department of transportation up here. He did mechanic work blue collar guy, blue collar millionaire and he was talking about some of the things he had done just in that week to help people.

Speaker 2:

This was we had a cold spell.

Speaker 2:

He's helping somebody with their boiler and anyway he just like these are things I could have never done if I had to go to work every day and I'm able to use the skills that I got paid for at my job. Now, for people that don't have to pay me they might not necessarily even afford to be able to pay me, but I'm able to do it out of the joy of my heart, and my investments are paying me to do it. I don't need a job, I don't need a paycheck. My investments are providing that. So I can do this stuff out of love for the people that are meaningful to me that I care about, and he just felt so much freedom in that, and that's what I love about this, is it? It's not about helping people create just a better, a bigger pile of money. It's helping them create a better life so they can have more impact on the lives of those around them. That's what we get to do every day and that's why I can't personally retire, because I love what I'm doing too much.

Speaker 1:

I agree, I'm right there with you, man. I can't personally retire because I love helping, I love coaching. This is my space. But let me ask you this what are some common misconceptions when it comes to investing and financial planning?

Speaker 2:

We've already touched on some of the fears, anxieties and things like that. So there's a lot of there's a lot of misconceptions, and I think my industry does a terrible job of misleading people. Again, we've made it a sales industry instead of a coaching industry. We try to sell people a better product. When they're not getting results with what they're doing, we just sell them something different, and again it'd be like somebody who hasn't gone to the gym in a year and I'm not getting results. Okay, we'll sell you another gym membership to a different gym on the other side of town. That's probably not going to help either.

Speaker 2:

So one of the things that I want to remind people of is they have the opportunity to be in the driver's seat of their life. They have the opportunity to take control of what they can influence. And my industry, the financial services industry, focuses so much of our attention on things people can't control. We tell people to worry about the market, worry about the economy, try to guess which direction it's going to go next. Worry about interest rates, worry about who's sitting in the White House all these different things. Worry about wars and all those things.

Speaker 2:

Are they important? Yes, do they have an impact? Absolutely. Can we control any of them? No, can we even slightly influence them Other than voting? We can't, and even voting, this is a very small bit that we can influence there. So if we look at the whole grand scheme of things, mo, what we can influence in the financial area, most people focus on what they can't control and then they end up missing what they can control. And we're trying to flip that because I believe, yes, all those things matter, but biggest variable to somebody's success or failure in life not just in finances is their habits, their choices and the behaviors that they commit to every day. Those are the things that are going to make or break their financial trajectory. So that's what we focus on.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, that's awesome, Because when you talk about the market and all of these reports, that's what ultimately creates the fear and people panic and they're like let me pull my money out. I need to pull my money out, right, Instead of riding the storm or working with your financial planner to get incredible advice. But we listen to the media, we pay attention to social media and we're quick to react based on external things we have no control over.

Speaker 2:

Let's sit on there right there, because what you brought up is actually another misconception a lot of people miss. So let's say that you're investing and maybe you're just a couple of years away from retirement in 2022, and the market goes down like 25% and most people want to do exactly what you said they want to flee, they get scared, they're focusing on what they can't control. And when we focus on what we can't control, we can actually create a state of learned helplessness where we feel like there's nothing that we can do, but just writing it out. That is taking control. It's saying I am choosing not to react, and here's what's also cool about that. So when we talk about investment fluctuations and this is again there's another big misconception People treat volatility like it's the enemy, and I get it.

Speaker 2:

Volatility is uncomfortable, so is running and eating broccoli, but they're good for us and volatility is that temporary uncertainty. Man, I don't know if my 401k is going to grow or if it's going to look like a 301k next month, but when the stock market goes down, you literally have the opportunity to buy the best companies in the world at a discount. Most people are looking at that as this is a catastrophe. This is a disaster. We call a market crash.

Speaker 2:

When anything else goes down in price, we call it a sale, and people run towards it. But when the best companies in the world go on sale, and people run towards it but when the best companies in the world go on sale, we flee the other direction. So that right. There is something that people miss because they've given up their control. They focus on what the market is doing instead of being like okay, market's down, this hurts, this is uncomfortable. It doesn't have to harm me, though, and I'm going to take this opportunity to buy these companies. Buy these businesses on sale, because I know that they're going to come back up eventually.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, Talk about the other misconception because I know this is one too that you need a lot of money to become an investor. Tell us about that misconception that most people carry that, too, their future.

Speaker 2:

We're either investing in positive things or negative things, and everybody is investing in their future one way or another. Some of us are investing harmful seeds that are going to be toxic, and some of us are investing good seeds that are going to produce and reap a bountiful harvest. So you don't get to choose whether you're an investor or not. Everybody listening to this show is an investor. You just get to choose whether you're an effective one or not. And the other thing that I want to point out is when? So we've already used a couple gym analogies, right? So it's be like somebody saying I knew I need to start going to the gym. I'll wait till I'm a little bit stronger before I go. No, you go to the gym to get stronger. Or, man, I want to lose a little bit of weight before I go to the gym. I get that. Or, man, I want to lose a little bit of weight before I go to the gym. I get that.

Speaker 2:

You want to be comfortable in your clothes, whatever for you, but that's not how it works. You got to step into the uncomfortable area, you got to get outside your comfort zone and just begin. And the cliche is true, though the longest journeys begin with a single step. So you have the opportunity. Even if it's 401k at your job or a Roth IRA, it might only be 50 bucks a month, a hundred bucks a month, but you can put something in there, and you start creating the habit of paying your future self, and what you do is you create a tangible reminder not to remind other people, but to remind you. I'm the type of person who cares about their future. I'm the type of person who makes sacrifice today for a better future tomorrow, and there's a lot of power to that. So you might not be able to start with a big step, and that's okay, but start. There's an old Chinese proverb that says the best time to plant a tree is 20 years ago, but the next best time is today.

Speaker 1:

That's nice, that's dope. How do you help a person shift their mindset right? Do you help a person shift their mindset right when and I know you touched on this but they feel as though they lost money and so they feel as though they're a failure and they don't trust investing. How do you work with those clients and reshape their mindset in that regard?

Speaker 2:

First of all for answer. I just got to say your questions are excellent. I really appreciate this because you did your homework and you took the time to think of some really good questions. That's a huge one. How do you shift somebody's mindset? How do you get somebody to look at an old problem in a new way so they could create new solutions? That's what you're asking and that's so powerful, because what ends up happening is a lot of people just keep repeating old behaviors and, unfortunately, a lot of people have invested incorrectly and they didn't get good results. So now they want to give up investing altogether.

Speaker 2:

Right, you're going to hate this, but one more gym analogy. It'd be like somebody going to the gym and they did something wrong and they got hurt and they said the gym is too dangerous, I'm never going back. And people do that in investing all the time. So what we try to do number one we use, as you can probably tell, we use a lot of metaphors and analogies. It helps get people thinking about this thing in a new way, but we also get them thinking about their current decisions through the lens of where they want to be.

Speaker 2:

So a lot of people out there Mo they're not really strategically investing for the future. They're just collecting investments. Even people that max out their 401ks and they're really good savers. They aren't investing really purposefully towards measurable specific outcomes. They're just collecting investments a little here, a little there, a little bit of this fund. And it'd be like building a house without a blueprint. When you have a blueprint that guides your saving and investing decisions, you can connect your current actions with what you're building in the future and say, okay, I know I might be starting small or I know that I got a lot of work today, a lot of work to do, but I can see measurable progress, even if my account is down temporarily. I still added my 500 bucks a month or my 250 bucks a month or whatever that is. Maybe it's a thousand bucks, a paycheck, but you can say I did my part. I'm still chipping away at my financial blueprint and what we do is we can attach their actions to where they want to be and we're going to bring it back to what is your job, what is your role in this? You can't control the stock market, but you can control how much you save, and there's a lot again.

Speaker 2:

My industry is part of the problem here, big part of the problem. But we're so focused on return rate that we miss savings rate. The people who are independently wealthy people, the blue collar millionaires that we work with, they all have great savings rates. Some of them have good return rates, some of them didn't. But we worry too much about about savings or, sorry, we were talking about what the investment does and too little about what we do. So when you have perspective that I am acting on my plan, not reacting to things around me, it's easier to look past those moments and maybe even see them as opportunities. But it takes a shift in perspective for people to focus on their own actions, their choices, their behaviors and also look past the current moment and see the future. You're just putting one brick at a time up there, and you know what? Sometimes the storms come and it doesn't seem like you're making much progress, but that's not up to you. You just go, put one more brick up there and eventually your financial house is going to take shape.

Speaker 1:

I want to tap on this for you because I'm sure this is powerful in your approach. Just talking to you, I'm going to go into the relationships that you have with clients and things like that, because I feel that can be a misconception as well. I'm investing with you, right, and you take my money, I invest, but then I don't ever hear from you and then my patterns get off. I start pulling money out. Whatever things happens, life events happen. I'll start taking money and now I'm off track. But my representative who signed me up or was supposed to be my agent or whatever nowhere to be found because he got the commission and he's off to another client and he's off to another client. But then here I am. I lost money, I'm off track but I'm not in contact with you because my agent has so many clients that he doesn't even tap into me when he sees things as off base. Tell me the importance of your company and the relationships that you have with your clients.

Speaker 2:

No, it's absolutely vital, because people have to understand that we care more about them than their money, and that's why we don't charge commissions. Our success is directly tied to the success of our clients. As their investments, as their plan does better, we do better, so we're all on the same side of the table, which is really important, because when you get somebody again let's say they're getting close to retirement and say they've got a million dollars in a 401k, it goes down to 900,000 or 800,000. They're getting scared. We're feeling it too. They see it on their paper, we see it in our paychecks. And it'd be like being in a plane and you're going to a destination. You're excited, but you hit this turbulence and it gets scary If the pilot is right there next to you, saying we're getting through this together. We knew this could happen. We've got contingencies. That's way different than getting a phone call from somebody on the ground at air traffic control saying you guys are fine up there, you're good, like, we're right with them, and what that does. You didn't use these words.

Speaker 2:

What you talked about is relationship capital, and I'm very analytical. Like I said, I have a degree in biochemistry. I love charts and formulas and all that stuff. But that's not how human beings operate, especially not under stress. So when something happens to somebody and it might not be a market event, it might not be. It might be something small just in their life and not small to them but like a very focused thing. Maybe they're going through a divorce. It's only affecting them. It's not a recession. It's not like their company's getting bought out and they feel very alone in that. Maybe it's a death of a loved one man I was just last week I was at an event, was sitting with a client who's diagnosed with cancer in his 50s and sitting there oh man, I was sitting there with his son and I'm going to get choked up.

Speaker 2:

Sorry mommy might see me cry, but he came up. He'd been down in the war 48 and my client, who I've known for 20 years, he comes up and he got here just a couple of days ago and he got to meet his grandbaby for the first time and I'm there with his son and I'm there with him and there's no chart or graph or anything you can show somebody that is going to show them their family is going to be okay and that's where that really be able to look in somebody's eye and just let them know that, man, I hope this treatment works. I hope it all works out, but if it doesn't, you've done it. You've done the work. Your family's going to be okay. They're going to be taken care of. There is nothing that you can show somebody on a computer screen that will prove that to them.

Speaker 2:

It's relationship, capital, and it's weathering the storms of people. It's being shoulder to shoulder, brother, and just hitting the highs and feeling the lows as crying with them. It's celebrating with them, because when life hits and it does hit, whether it's COVID, whether it's the global financial meltdown, or whether it's what this family is going through, which is very much something that they are, they are going through by themselves. You have to have that relationship, because you're talking about behavioral change, just what you're doing. All the advice in the world, it doesn't work if people don't apply it. You and I. We can't force people to make the right decisions, but if they know that we deeply care about them and their success and the impact that they make on the world, they're going to be much more likely to make the sacrifices to produce that better future.

Speaker 1:

Absolutely Very powerful. Thank you for sharing that, chad. I really do appreciate that, and I can see the emotion behind it too, man, that you really do care, and that's the power of the work that we do too. As we start close out for today, how can my audience find you? How can they find more about your services?

Speaker 2:

Well, veritasalaskacom is our website, and don't let the name fool you. We were founded here in Alaska. We got folks all across the country. I just like keeping the name in there because it's got some cachet to it. Our job is to make sure people don't run out of money or purpose in retirement. That's what we're working for. So if your audience wants to connect with us and whether they want just they have questions. Maybe they want a retirement plan checkup, but have them connect with us on the website. They can also follow us on Instagram, veritas Alaska. We try to put educational and encouraging content up every single day, and I've also got a book out Forging Financial Freedom, and they can visit the website ForgingFinancialFreedomcom. I think I sent you the link for that and we've got some special bonuses that'll be up available for your audience too. So any three of those ways is a great way for them to connect with us. That's awesome.

Speaker 1:

Thank you for sharing that. Any type of workshops and freebies that they would get going to your website and things like that.

Speaker 2:

Yes, in fact, for your audience, we'll do this. We'll do a free financial plan checkup, a free retirement plan checkup for people wondering am I on track for retirement or I just don't even know where to get started. I've maybe lost momentum. Have them email ask at VeritasAlaskacom, ask A-S-K at VeritasAlaskacom and put financial checkup or retirement plan checkup in the subject. We'll take care of them.

Speaker 1:

There it is. There it is you guys. There it is Chad. You're the man. I appreciate you, brother. Thank you for dropping nuggets, thank you for your wisdom. Any last words, thoughts that you want to leave as we sign off?

Speaker 2:

First of all, I just want to thank you. It's been my pleasure to be on here, talk to your audience to invite me into your circle. It means a lot to me. I love this conversation. What you were doing is powerful. You're changing lives and it's been an honor to be a part of that. And just to remind your audience one more time get in the driver's seat. There's a lot of people trying to talk you into being the passenger seat of your own life and you hold the keys to your success, but also to your failure, and take control of what you can control. Learn to ignore the things that are outside of influence and reclaim your agency. You are the difference maker in your own life. Thank you, brother. Appreciate you.

Speaker 1:

Thank you. Thank you for joining me in this episode of let's Think About it. Your time and attention are greatly appreciated. If you found value in today's discussion, I encourage you to subscribe on your favorite podcast platform. Remember, the journey of self-improvement is ongoing and I'm here to support you every step of the way. Connect with me on social media for updates and insights. You can find me on Instagram and Facebook, at Coach Mo Coaching or LinkedIn, at Maurice Mabry, or visit my website at mauricemabrycom for exclusive content. Until next time, keep reflecting, keep growing and, most importantly, keep believing in yourself. Remember, the most effective way to do it is to do it together. We're making incredible strides toward a better and more empowered you, so thank you, and I'll see you in our next episode.