Elevate Springfield

Elevate Springfield featuring Brandon Wellman: Elevating Through the Power of Financial Education, Relationship Building, and Continuous Learning

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Summary

In this engaging interview, Brandon Wellman from Navigator Wealth Strategies shares his journey from aspiring English teacher to financial advisor, emphasizing the importance of community networking, continuous learning, and comprehensive financial education. Discover practical insights on retirement accounts, effective networking strategies, and how to build a resilient financial future.

Key topics

  • Importance of community networking and mentorship
  • Educational approach to financial planning and client education
  • Differences between Traditional and Roth IRAs
  • Strategies for building a successful financial advisory business
  • The role of industry associations like Million Dollar Roundtable
  • Personal development and community involvement for success

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SPEAKER_02

Welcome to Elevate Springfield, where we will dive into strategies and stories that help you rise to your full potential. Each episode, we'll talk about how you can take intentional steps to elevate your life and your business while making a meaningful impact on those around you. Along the way, we're going to bring in the change makers from our community that are already elevating. We'll bring the actionable strategies, you bring the discipline and follow through, and together we can elevate Springfield. Alright, let's go, Springfield. Time to 10X your life, your business, all of it. Time to crush those goals, time to get after it. Let's go. You are listening to the Elevate Springfield Podcast. Robert Farrell here, certified 10X coach, speaker, and mentor here to bring you actionable strategies. You bring the discipline and follow through. And together, we're going to Elevate Springfield. We're coming to you again from beautiful downtown Springfield in the Big Dog Construction Studio. Hey, we've got so much going on in Springfield right now. Make sure you are participating. Get out there, network with folks, be a part of the community, support local businesses, support local nonprofits, and let's go. We can all grow together. So, hey, another great episode for you today. We're gonna get right to our guest after the break. Hey Springfield, when it comes to reliable, high-quality roofing, you don't want to leave things to chance. That's why you should reach out to Acosta Angeli Ruffing, your local roughing expert serving Springfield and surrounding communities. From quick dependable repairs to full replacement, from residential to commercial, they are your trusted pros. Call them today at 217-993-2748 or visit their website to book your free quote and inspection. Don't wait. A little leak now could lead to major damage later. Trust the local experts, protect your home, and get peace of mind with Acosta Angeli Roofing. Alright, and we are back. Joining me in the studio now, Brandon Wellman from Navigator Wealth Strategy. Brandon, how are you doing today? I'm doing fantastic, Robert. How are you? I'm great. Appreciate you coming in. Yeah. Apologize for the sun hitting you right there. That's coming in just right a little bit.

SPEAKER_01

So that's the worst part of my day, then life's pretty good, right?

SPEAKER_02

There you go. So no, I'm looking forward to learning a little bit more about Navigator. But before we do that, let's uh learn a bit a little bit about Brandon. Tell me about your background, man. Yeah.

SPEAKER_01

So um I grew up um in um Santa Barbara, California. And then we moved to Quincy, Illinois after uh my mom passed. And um then um I moved to um Springfield in the same time that I got into the financial uh services industry. So uh I've been in Springfield since 2011 and uh love the community we have here and always happy to support it and I just love the fact that uh it's given me so much and I have opportunities to share that.

SPEAKER_02

So financial services, when did you decide, hey, this is what I want to do? Was that always the plan or no?

SPEAKER_01

No, I I had no idea that that's what was gonna happen to me. I thought I was gonna be a high school English teacher. So I've got my degree in uh English, thinking that you know that was the path I was gonna go on. And uh my uncle was a uh uh uh manager here locally uh at Prudential, and I moved here because I um my uh wife at the time was gonna be going to UIS, and so we were moving to Springfield anyway, and uh we had my son on the way, and so I needed a real job. So I went to my uncle and said, Hey, is there any chance that Prudential's hiring? And it just so happened that they were, and uh, I didn't know anything about the industry or was what I was getting into, didn't realize that they're kind of always hiring. Yeah, I thought the stars were aligning and everything was, you know, finally coming my way. And um, yeah, it wasn't until about, I don't know, two, three weeks into the training program that it hit me that this is a career where you really have to know people in the community. And we were just moving from Quincy. I knew nobody, so I was kind of forced to, you know, hey, I gotta go meet people. So I got very involved with the chamber, you know, I got involved with the rotary group and just tried to take any opportunity I could to go meet people, right? Yeah, and that is. I mean, in that line of work, you really do have to have a network. And uh I was 24 when I started, so I was uh young, and so I've grew up my facial haired and you know, tried to do everything that I could to make myself look older. Sure. One of the unintended consequences is that you know I've lost quite a bit of hair, but uh, you know, it's worked to my advantage to make me look more older and uh experienced. There you go. There you go.

SPEAKER_02

So the the teaching early on, what drew you to teaching?

SPEAKER_01

So my mother was a uh was a teacher, and so I wanted to follow in that path. And I really thought that if I didn't know what I wanted to do, but I thought that teaching would allow me to still write, be creative, do all those things, and just share my love of learning with with kids. And uh that didn't quite happen for me. But what I love about my current role as a financial planner is most of what I do is actually education, right? Except instead of talking about Chaucer or William Blake and all of that, we're talking about finances. There's a big need for that because I think that a lot of people don't get that base level of financial education from the schools, and there's a lot to life that revolves around financial things. So being able to educate and and help people in that way is one of the most rewarding parts of my career. No doubt about it.

SPEAKER_02

Walk us through how you you educate your clients. What do you bring them through?

SPEAKER_01

Yeah, so it can be from anything from basic financial terms and financial knowledge on how different accounts work. A lot of people don't understand, you know, the difference between their checking, savings, money market, how credit card interest is, you know, accruing, or um mortgage interest, car payments, all of those things. But more importantly, what I do is educate them about all the different types of uh investment accounts there are, right? There's retirement accounts like 401ks, traditional IRAs, Roth IRAs, a non-qualified after-tax investment, all these different things. But what do they mean for you? Um, how can you make them grow? How do you figure out how much to contribute to that? Because you want to take care of today, but also plan for tomorrow and just getting your kind of financial foundation in order. Sure. Well, how about we do some educating right here for them? Sure. What's the difference between a traditional and a Roth IRA? Great question. Um traditional IRA is gonna be pre-taxed dollars. So uh let's just say I'm making uh$100,000 a year and I put$5,000 away into my traditional IRA. Well, from a tax standpoint, I'm only gonna pay$95,000 on taxes that year. That other five percent or that five thousand is now growing, tax deferred, um, and it can grow, uh, it kind of works a little harder for you, right? Because Uncle Sam's not getting his cut on that. So that$5,000 continues to grow for you. And then when you get into retirement and you pull that money out, it's all taxable to you. The Roth IRA is all after tax dollars, and then it grows tax free. So if you have that same scenario where you've got$100,000 of earning, you put$5,000 into your Roth, you don't get any tax savings today. So you're still paying taxes on that full$100,000. However, when you go to pull that money out, no matter how much it's grown, it's all tax-free to you. So it's basically tax me later, tax me now, never again.

SPEAKER_02

Right. So what would be the decision-making process on which one you should do?

SPEAKER_01

Yeah. So it's gonna be a very personal question because it just depends on everything else in your financial life. I'm a big fan of the Roth because I think that taxes are most likely going to go up in the future. So I'd rather pay it now. But if you're in a situation where, you know, you're on the cusp of uh entering into another tax bracket or you're looking for those deductions, by all means, that traditional IRA is a huge advantage to being able to accomplish that. So short answer is it depends. Long answer is there are times for both. And ideally, you want to start building out different buckets of money because it's not so much about what you make, it's what you keep, right? And Uncle Sam's gonna get his cut. So if you have these different types of money, it allows us to be more flexible in the future for where we're drawing from, especially when it comes to, you know, we talk about diversity inside of a portfolio or diversifying your income streams. We want to do that same thing from a tax standpoint beyond just how we're investing. Yeah. So those different buckets allow us to do that.

SPEAKER_02

Absolutely. We'll do a little more educating here in a little bit, but let's go back to those first couple of years in business. You said you went did all the networking associations and everything, but what are some other things that you did to help kickstart that career?

SPEAKER_01

Yeah. So one of the things that uh I'm a big fan of learning, and I started reading books by Brian Tracy. Brian Tracy's a huge personal development uh advocate, and he shared this idea of turning your car into a mobile university, right? Now, this is back when you know I would get CDs, or my car actually did have a tape deck in it, but uh, I would get these CDs of Brian Tracy books and just listen to that, and then that evolved into branching out beyond Brian Tracy's Zig Ziggler and all that. Um, and um, you know, Audible and Hoopla from the uh Lincoln Library, all these resources that we have that allow you to listen to audiobooks and then expands that even further, so we don't need that physical media anymore. Yeah, I just listened to as many books on business that I could, and that really helped give me this roadmap of how do you build this from scratch, right? Right. Uh Brian Tracy actually had this uh this workbook that uh came in this binder, you know, and you'd fill it out and just how do I build my business brick by brick brick by brick? And uh I I owe a lot to that because then that gave me the foundation to go beyond Brian Tracy.

SPEAKER_02

Yeah, no, I love it. Now in 10X and then Grant Cardone, all his strategies and everything, we do a lot of the similar things. And we have uh Cardone University, and I turn my car into a university all the time. There you go. So listening to his books or listening to some of the training programs that we have embedded in that. So I'm a big believer in that. Instead of just sitting there listening to music or something or listening to the AM news or something on the, you know, get in there, do some learning while you're while you're in the car.

SPEAKER_01

Yeah. I love uh Grant's uh you know way of looking at like if you're gonna two times your business, you might as well try to tax it, right? Like you're gonna put in that same amount of effort and energy. So let's shoot for the moon. That's right.

SPEAKER_02

Let's shit, let's set those big, massive targets. Let's go, and then take that massive action to get there. Yep. Love it. So with those networking groups, any of them early on that were especially you think successful for you getting into the business?

SPEAKER_01

You know, it is networking is one of those things, especially in my business, where it's tough to get your true ROI on it, you know, because you never know where someone's heard of you or that. I did a lot of advertising and I'd like to think that uh I got something out of that, but I can't bring back any specific thing that that brought in that business. But I think it's just about awareness, right? I was listening to to your podcast actually, and you talked about uh best known beats best. Yeah, right. Absolutely. And uh, I'm a firm believer in that is that hey, we're we're all striving to be the best. We're we're great, we're awesome, but if no one knows what who you are, what you can do for them, it doesn't help, right? Right. So uh the best way to help people is to let them know that you're here and get out there and meet the people.

SPEAKER_02

No doubt about it. Yeah, Grant always his his line is always uh if they don't know you, they can't flow you. So if you if they don't know you, they're not gonna be able to do business with you. So you get you gotta be out there, you gotta be omnipresent, you gotta do it all.

SPEAKER_01

Yep. I actually uh at one point I was doing a lot of advertising and uh never advertised on a billboard, but I had someone come up to me and say, Hey, I saw your billboard, it looked awesome, you know, and I'm just like, what's happening here? For real, but just because you know, getting out there and just being known, people don't know where they Yeah, people think they see you everywhere because you're around so much.

SPEAKER_02

Where where were some of the places you were advertising early on?

SPEAKER_01

Uh early on, I was uh advertising in the Springfield Business Journal. Um advertised a lot and there's some different like local magazines and and things like that that worked. And there was a uh a guy in in my office when I first started, uh, and he would talk about how he would advertise in the SJR every day. And he would say, I don't think I've ever got a return on that SJR advertisement, but I'm not gonna stop advertising in that, you know, because you just never know when someone's gonna meet you there. Or it's not that they call you because of that advertisement, but whenever you see them, they recognize you and it gives you more credibility.

SPEAKER_02

Yeah, because it really it takes so many touch points a lot of times for somebody to actually call on you. But whether they've seen you in the newspaper or the billboard or listened to your commercial on the radio or on TV or saw you on social, it's all those things combined into that one big pot that eventually make that person get to you, I guess. Yeah. So being omnipresent, that's what we always always try to try to and strive to be in in 10x.

SPEAKER_01

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02

So so what were some of the struggles early on in the business that you had to that you had to go through?

SPEAKER_01

Man, I I'd say early on, it's just uh, you know, that smile and dial mentality and you know, getting out there and uh you got to get to through a lot of no's before you get that yes. And um, I think that was a a big challenge is just uh learning how to put in the work to to grow it and just being in reality about how much rejection you face to get to that yes. But then also uh for me, what a hard part of it was just my age. And uh honestly, part of it too was that I was 24, I didn't have experience. I wouldn't trust me with my money until I had to prove why I was able to be trusted, trustworthy.

SPEAKER_02

Now the getting through the no's. I think a lot of people that are in any kind of sales, they you know underestimate the amount of no's they have to get through and they and that part of things before they get to the yeses and before they start getting consistent with getting those yeses. Yeah, especially if you're doing a lot of cold calls and everything. Majority of the time it's gonna be a no. Yeah. So and you gotta get through all that.

SPEAKER_01

Yeah, I I I got a little bit uh lucky that um I was able to I I was in the um um uh Springfield Business Journals 40 under 40 uh when I was 25. So I just moved to Springfield like that previous September, and then by that June I was nominated for the 40 under 40, and that just gave me this little streamline of credibility. Hey, I I'm I plan on being here for the long haul, right? I've got uh got people watching.

SPEAKER_02

Yeah, and those those types of things are awesome because they do, they they almost give you instant and credibility, even if you haven't been in business for too awful long, which you were 25, so you were barely in business for a year, I guess, when you got that.

SPEAKER_01

Yeah, it was about um maybe eight months or so. And yeah, it was uh it was a little surreal, but it was really cool and it again helped me connect to to other people in the community.

SPEAKER_02

Well, what do you think drove that? Being only in business for eight months and o and already get the 40 under what do you think drove that?

SPEAKER_01

Yeah, I I think uh, you know, that um credit it just to hey, I gotta go meet people. So I just met as many people as I could and let them know, you know, who I was and what my mission was and wanted to help people with their money, and I could do that, right? And uh if I could just uh name drop, I'd say uh Josh Britton helped a lot. Uh he was someone that I met uh early on moving to Springfield and he helped get me connected to a lot of people and he was uh one of the people highly involved in the business journal at the time. Very cool.

SPEAKER_02

Now it how important is that? I mean, to have those people that are that can one vouch for you, that can two get you in touch with other people and help you network and because when you have somebody like that that's helping you put that foot through the door, it's it's big. Yeah, it's big.

SPEAKER_01

I was an ambassador with the chamber of commerce here locally, and um a lot of the people in the chamber helped me to just see how you're supposed to interact with people, how you network, how you meet people, you know, because I'm um I think I I'm a type A personality, but I can be shy until I get to know someone, right? And just watching other people before helps to to know how to do that, right? So I'm a huge fan of finding mentors because that's gonna get you farther. You've walked the path. No doubt about it. Yep.

SPEAKER_02

So how have your strategies changed over the years from those early years to now?

SPEAKER_01

I'd say the biggest thing is finding time to there's so many things that's like, hey, I did that, it worked so well that I stopped doing it, right? Kind of remembering how the basics happened and all that. And I think that uh still being involved in the community is super important and being out there, getting your name, you know, to other groups. I think the the local first uh Springfield is uh amazing group to get connected to and just kind of keep in doing what we're doing. But I'm also fortunate enough to not just be me anymore, right? So I've got uh two partners at Navigator Wealth Strategies, uh Matthew Hutton and Ryan Kaiser, and they've got experience in the industry too, and we're all out there, you know, getting the name, promoting all that. So um we're approaching our our one year anniversary of branding as Navigator Wealth Strategy.

SPEAKER_02

So walk us through how that how that changed because you were originally Prudential, right? Right. Your Navigator Wealth Strategy. So walk us through that transition.

SPEAKER_01

Yeah, so I started with uh Prudential and I'm actually still with Prudential. We just um, you know, over time trying to get more just name recognition out there and all of that. So moved out of the normal prudential office and opened up uh like a they call it an outside private office, but it still had prudential on the door. And uh we sent out uh these, this was, I don't know, maybe in 2017. Uh we sent out all these mailers to existing clients in prudential envelopes with uh prudential letterhead, um, you know, with our prudential business cards, just letting them know that we moved. And we got a lot of reactions from people saying, Well, why did you leave Prudential? And it's like, I don't know how to make this more clear. Right. So for a while I I had uh Wellman Financial Services and ended up uh getting a spot out off uh we're off Toronto Road, off the uh frontage road there. Yeah. And then uh when Matt joined the team, it uh became apparent that uh Wellman Financial Services wasn't gonna work when we weren't all Wellman, right? And then uh Ryan Kaiser was actually my trainer when I first started at Prudential, and he had uh a group called uh Cornerstone Financial Services. And uh the three of us started talking, we're all certified financial planners, and you know, we're always looking for kind of that win-win mindset. And we thought, you know, why don't we work together and pool our resources? And we created navigator wealth strategies, and uh, you know, big thing is that we're all certified financial planners. We've all got the similar mission to help our clients to you know have better understanding of their financial situation. So yeah.

SPEAKER_02

So you're still attached to prudential though, but under but under your own umbrella. Yeah.

SPEAKER_01

So so we're still with prudential um and we clear through LPL and yeah, it it's it's worked out well. So it's all one and the same. But the reason that we wanted that that DBA, the Nat the Navigator Wealth Strategies, is because usually when someone thinks of Prudential, they think of life insurance, yeah, right. Uh life insurance is a very important part of your financial picture, your you know, everything. However, we do a lot more than life insurance, right? Honestly, life insurance probably makes up less than 10% of my overall like revenue and everything. Want to talk to people about the fact that we do retirement planning and uh investments and wealth management, and all of that is a lot of times outside of prudential. We're very fortunate to be with a company that doesn't handcuff us to them. So we're able to go out and find whatever makes sense for the client. Sometimes that's prudential, but a lot of times it's not, right? So it just helps to differentiate that hey, we're more than just that, you know.

SPEAKER_02

Yeah, that's what I was gonna say. So what's some other benefits out, you know, of having you under navigator rather than just underprudential, that allows you to go outside of that realm too.

SPEAKER_01

Right. And and it's nice too because you know prudential is a very big company, it's a very uh well-known, respected company, but we can kind of do our own advertising too, right? So it's like the best of both worlds with that. Love it.

SPEAKER_02

Well, and you're right, with prudential, I mean, the first thing that comes to my mind is insurance, life insurance, right? Or annuities or something like that. And so that's that is what comes to my mind. So having under navigator wealth strategies, I think that does broaden the scope of what people might think of when they just initially see your see your brand. I would imagine they don't think in initially insurance, they think all of personal finance and wealth. So that's great. Any other benefits to being under your umbrella rather than just under the prudential emblem?

SPEAKER_01

Um, I think it just um it's able to advertise our own way too. You know, prudential does a ton of advertising, but um for us to be able to kind of go create our own kind of cool things that we wouldn't be able to otherwise is is neat. And from a client perspective, it just helps to um let them know that we can handle whatever it is that you're needing help with. Again, most of what we do is uh we're very uh financial planning forward and uh wealth management is our biggest piece of the puzzle that we work with.

SPEAKER_02

Okay. Well, walk us through what you do with a client. You know, if I were to come to you today and say, Brandon, you know, I need some help, where do you start walking through with them?

SPEAKER_01

So uh what we're gonna do, Robert, is we're gonna get to know Robert, right? Sometimes I think people come to us thinking that we're just uh like stockbrokers or something. We've got like some hot tip, you know, to share. But uh But none of that matters if we don't know what the purpose is, right? So we start with the why. Uh we start with who you are and um, you know, what are your goals and let us know what you've got going toward those goals. And then we figure out how do we get from A to B. And, you know, sometimes that's a a short strategy, and most of the time it's a very long-term strategy, right? But we want to help you get better than where you are today. Love it.

SPEAKER_02

Well, speaking of purpose and why, what's what's your purpose and why?

SPEAKER_01

So I'd say that um when I first started, it was just survival. Right. I had my son on the way and I was trying to, you know, figure out how all this worked. But um, I'm happy to say that, you know, it's well beyond that now, you know, and the my why is just uh I want to put people in, I want them to be in a better place after meeting me, right? And we can do that by uh helping them to make good decisions with their money. And um, it helps me with my own financial goals, right? My wife and I, uh, we want to make sure that uh we're leaving a good legacy, not only to our kids, but for our kids, right? We want to improve our community, we want to give back and we want to do all the things that uh that allow us to do that. So absolutely.

SPEAKER_02

So you said, you know, sometimes people think that when you're talking about financial planning that it's the you know, the stock tip or anything. I mean, do you get a lot of that? Hey, I've got oh, I've got twenty thousand dollars. I what do I do with it?

SPEAKER_01

What do I I think that's the the question that that bugs me the most is when someone just says, Hey, I got XYZ amount, what should I do with it? Where should I put this? It's just like, well, that really depends, right? Um you want to think about um, you know, what's the purpose of that money? When are you gonna need that money? How much risk are we gonna take with that money? You know, all of these things are are part of that that goes into the equation, right? And it's a lot more nuanced than just where's the best place to put this.

SPEAKER_02

Yeah, but I I could see people doing it. Well, I've got this, I've got this 20,000 that's not earmarked for anything. What do I what do I do with it?

SPEAKER_01

Where can I put that? And I think a lot of people uh they don't understand that we want to get the full picture, right? We're trying to build this puzzle, right? But without knowing what the end result is, what that picture looks like on the box, we don't know how these pieces fit together, right? So, you know, it's more than just this, you know, let's just say you've got 20 grand and you want to put it somewhere. Well, we also need to know what else is there. What else you got going on? Yeah, and how does this fit into it, right?

SPEAKER_02

So yeah, because you're trying to get them to their overall financial goals and their purpose and everything, not just a quick, hey, we can make a little money on this right here, right? Yeah. So you mentioned being involved in the community now. You know, back at the beginning, you were getting into networking groups, but what are you doing out in the community now?

SPEAKER_01

Yeah, so um locally involved in the local first. We just joined that uh at the uh end of last year. I think that's a great uh organization. Uh we support the chamber, and um, you know, I'm in a couple of smaller networking groups. And then uh from a larger, more global scale, my industry has an association called Million Dollar Roundtable. I'm uh very involved with them, but it's uh specifically for financial advisors, and you have to qualify uh with you know certain production levels to be part of that. But as an organization, our goal is to empower financial advisors from around the world to better serve their clients, and we share our best practices, and this is what's working for me, you know, how we're putting people in a better spot. So it's really cool to be involved in that and get perspective from all over.

SPEAKER_02

Yeah. So the million dollar roundtable, that's not just a prudential thing or a schwab thing or whatever.

SPEAKER_01

It's a everybody it's an industry-wide thing, yeah. So it's really cool. Very cool. I've I've got friends, you know, in in Australia and uh Great Britain, Canada, that uh we talk regularly and we meet up and yeah, we're able to share practices from all over.

SPEAKER_02

I think that's cool that you have to meet certain qualifications production-wise, because that gets you a level of a level of person in there that's been in it for a while and can really give great insight into what's going on, and you guys can help each other out.

SPEAKER_01

And yeah, that's awesome. And it's really cool because everyone there is um, you know, someone that wants to help someone else, right? We're all trying to pull each other up. And, you know, um I I think of uh like uh the King of the Hill game when you were a kid, right? You're pushing everyone off the mountain. Well instead, we're pulling everybody up and saying, hey, come enjoy this view with me, right? And this is how I built it, and you can too. Love it. Um so it's really cool. But but I'm a big fan of of just uh finding a mentor and following someone that's that's you know walked that path before. So, you know, organizations like that help me do that.

SPEAKER_02

But I thought I saw uh a post you had recently. Did you speak at a at one of the million dollar roundtable events here recently?

SPEAKER_01

Yeah, yeah. So I um last couple years, uh, you know, I've I've uh we have like in-person uh meetings where you know we meet globally and uh I've spoken at a couple of those, but then uh last several years I've been in charge of their uh virtual events. So um you know, we're putting on virtual events for members in between our big meetings and everything. And uh yeah, it it's been good. So very involved uh and um love it's it's one of my ways of giving back to the industry.

SPEAKER_02

What are some topics you've uh you've talked on there?

SPEAKER_01

A lot of it is uh prospecting, how do we find our clients? And um I'm a millennial, I speak in memes. Um, so you know how do you create memes and you know, how do you relate that to your clients and you know, have it uh be something that you know you can connect people with? Yeah, I I think bottom line is just how do you connect with people?

SPEAKER_02

We had our local first event last last week. That was a good night. Did you have fun? Yeah, that was great at the crafted stag. Yeah, that place is awesome. Awesome, isn't it? Yeah. I hadn't been in there, and earlier that week I did the interview with Grant, the owner there, and I hadn't been in there yet. And I'm kicking myself that I haven't been in, that I hadn't been in there yet, but such a cool, such a cool atmosphere, so unique. One thing he said was trying to create a space that's unique in an Amazon world, you know. So that's why he has the bar and the barber shop and all the cool stuff in there. So just fun night.

SPEAKER_01

Yeah, it's so cool. You know, I mean, I don't need the the barber services, but uh hey, they do hot shaves. There we go. There you go. Um but uh yeah, the the bar vibe is really cool. The clothes there are really cool. And actually that night I um I've got a friend that uh his birthday, and um he's a puzzler like I am, so you know, we'll spend our Friday nights just working on puzzles and all that. But they had a very cool, unique uh Abraham Lincoln puzzle that you know I haven't seen elsewhere, right? And there's so much cool stuff in that store that you just don't see anywhere else. Right.

SPEAKER_02

So it's awesome. They do a great job with their merchandising there and just the vibe and the whole things. Appreciate their ability to host us that night and everything. So looking forward to the next local first Springfield event, which uh we're partnering up with Silsa, the Central Illinois Customer Service Association, for their March Madness event coming up here uh in just a couple weeks.

SPEAKER_01

It's gonna be awesome. Yeah, Silsa's a great organization. Um last year they had this um, I don't know if it was like business rules or something, but it was like things that you learn through uh Ted Lasso. Oh, yeah, yeah. I was there at that.

SPEAKER_02

That was a good one. I really like that one. Yeah. Did you go to the one a couple weeks ago? They had uh fighter pilot, former fighter pilot. Oh wow. Yeah, it was called Debrief to Win. It was pretty cool. Yeah, yeah, I missed that one. Yeah, it was good. It was good. I'll s I'll send you his name. He's got a book out there, be worth a good and worth a read there. Yeah. And he has an online program you can do too. So it was good. He did a nice job. They always have nice, nice speakers there with good content.

SPEAKER_01

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02

That's awesome. Let's flip over to the personal side for a few minutes. What are some ways you elevate your life personally?

SPEAKER_01

So I'm a big fan of, like I said, personal development. Um, I'm always listening to either podcasts or audio books that, you know, help me just get in a better spot, whether that's spiritually, business-wise, or you know, dealing with uh things with the family, right? Is that and then one of the things that uh I've been doing for the last several years is been going on long walks and there's a lot of trash out there. So I've been picking up trash on these walks. Almost have up to um, I think I'm around 450 uh bags of trash that I picked up while doing this. Wow. But I've been taking pictures of um, you know, some of the weird stuff that I find on there and started taking pictures of socks. And it it wasn't just like a pair of socks, it would just be like one sock on the side of the road or you know, something. And it just kept happening until I started posting that on on Facebook and it kind of took a life of its own. And uh now I continue to find socks everywhere I go, and um, you know, probably like without exaggeration, I'd say I see one to four a week on on average. Just keep finding you. Yeah, uh, I'm known as the sock guy now, and I have friends from from all over that send me pictures of socks when they find them. But you know, one time uh I was down in Effingham uh walking through the woods, and there's a sock just in the middle of this leaf pile and stuff. And I was in Arizona, we climbed this uh mountain, top of the mountain, there's a bench and one solo sock. Yeah. And I'm like, Lord, what are you trying to tell me?

SPEAKER_02

Right, right. Well, and you always wonder how did how did somebody just lose their one sock? Right. Like up on top of the mountain. They they still have their other sock on and they left their other one there for some reason.

SPEAKER_01

That wherever the you know dryer takes that other sock, you know, it ends up going into some portal right in front of my route.

SPEAKER_02

Right. So well, now I know where to. I mean, uh every now and again I'll see one here in downtown Springfield. There'll be one on the sidewalk or in one of the porticos or something, and take a picture of it and I'll send it over to you. Hey, found brandy another sock here.

SPEAKER_01

That's funny. That's funny. I see it all the time. And um, you know, people are always asking me, like, what do you do with these socks? And I'm like, I throw them away, they're gross, right? Yeah, I don't want, don't necessarily want to keep them. I'm not making anything, uh, you know, no quilt or anything beyond. Right, yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_02

No, I don't know if I'd want a bunch of dirty socks hanging around either.

SPEAKER_01

Yeah. Anything else? Well, you know, the on that topic of socks, you know, we we tried to figure out how do we turn this into something fun. So if uh for our clients, we ended up uh doing a sock drive because uh socks are actually one of the biggest uh requested items within homeless shelters.

SPEAKER_02

They are, yeah.

SPEAKER_01

And so, you know, our clients responded well to that and kept, you know, we we ended up uh bringing over 300 socks to help out here locally. So that was awesome.

SPEAKER_02

Cool. So you did uh you said you're in Arizona climbing up a mountain. You travel a lot. You like traveling?

SPEAKER_01

Yeah, yeah. Love love to travel. It it's really cool being able to take the family out places and then I work with uh with Million Dollar Round Table, takes me all over. So yeah, it's awesome to see the world and get out in it. There you go. You got another one coming up for Million Dollar Round Table anywhere? Uh yeah, our annual meeting's gonna be in Anaheim, so uh right across from uh Disney. So say headed to Disneyland. Yeah, yeah. We had um an event uh in Orlando a couple years ago, and uh Prudential ended up uh having their big uh entonces stuff in uh Disney World. So it was cool. We we got to have get this like little tour of Epcot Center and all that. Very cool. Yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_02

We're we're a Disney family. We've we've been to Disney many times. That's one of our favorite places to hop by and see, but we've never been to Disneyland yet. That's one of those things. We've never never gone out to Anaheim to check that out. We might have to do that. Yeah, you should do it sometime. It's pretty fun. Yeah, and I don't think we've been most around the country a ton, but we've never we've never taken them to California at all, really. So really we just need to make that trip to California, hit Anaheim and LA and I don't know, San Francisco, make a couple weeks out of it. Yeah, something go a few different places.

SPEAKER_01

Yeah, so you know, I I grew up in uh I was born in Santa Barbara, California. I've got family out there still and everything, so we're actually gonna be leaving there for spring break and it'll it'll be fun. So Santa Barbara, like close on the beach, close to the beach, or we actually my house growing up was like right by like a beach. Like we had um, I don't know, maybe a half mile walk to to the beach, but it was perfect. Nice, nice surfer or anything back then? Way back when I I used to boogie board quite a bit. Oh, did you?

SPEAKER_02

Yeah, okay. Yeah, that's always fun.

SPEAKER_01

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02

I'll have to head out there. Any uh recommendations for where if if I was to go out to California, what would be your top place to go?

SPEAKER_01

I don't know, it just depends uh what you're looking to do, right? Um I I really like Pasadena because you're close enough to LA without being in LA, you know, so you can go see all the sites and everything. And yeah. There you go. It's a kind of cool older town and everything.

unknown

All right.

SPEAKER_02

Well, I'll hit Pasadena, I'll hit Anaheim, go down to San Diego, I don't know. We'll see. There you go. Just take the whole state.

SPEAKER_01

The place I want to go with my family sometime is uh the Redwoods up north. Oh yeah.

SPEAKER_02

Uh-huh. That'd be cool. Definitely. Well, Brandon, let's do just a little bit more educating for folks. Are there uh I don't know, any misconceptions that you see a lot? Anything that people ask you about a lot that most of the time might be ill-informed or misinformed about?

SPEAKER_01

I think uh a lot of people are, you know, the stock market, they look at that and uh, you know, maybe they've had some experience with it that wasn't favorable and all that, but long term the market has had incredible results, right? And I think that um understanding that short-term volatility should not scare you out of these long-term goals, right? Um but I see people acting very emotionally and quickly when when things go up and down and everything. But if you just give it enough time, you should have success.

SPEAKER_02

Yeah, because over the I mean, over the long haul, the what's what's the stock market average is what 12% over over the long, long haul.

SPEAKER_01

Right. You know, depending on you know what time period you're looking at, you know, it's it's over 10% long term.

SPEAKER_02

Yeah. So you just gotta not not freak out on the dip. You know, sometimes on the dip is the time to reinvest.

SPEAKER_01

I think too, uh another kind of misnomer that people have is that a financial planner is going to set you on a budget and gonna control your money for you, and then you like lose some freedom. You know, we're all about just educating you and trying to help you see how to hit these goals, right? And a lot of that has to do with just helping you to build these habits or foundations so that you have long-term success. It's not necessarily about restricting you, but you know, sometimes if you have this kind of plan in place, it gives you more freedom than than you think.

SPEAKER_02

Yeah, no doubt about it. So what are you most uh what are you most proud of with your in your first uh oh a little over a year, I guess, as Navigator Wealth Strategy.

SPEAKER_01

Yeah, I I'd say the the thing I'm most proud of is just our team and uh you know um staying focused on you know the mission and and all that. But uh yeah, we've got um it's myself, uh Matt Hutton, uh Ryan Kaiser, and my wife Heather works with us. We've got uh Yvonne with us as well, and it's uh it's a good team and just building it together. Love it, love it.

SPEAKER_02

Well, so much great stuff. I like to close with these last uh couple of things, Brandon. So let's give the audience a piece of advice, one on the personal side, one on the professional side to help them elevate their life or business.

SPEAKER_01

Yeah, I'd say that um, you know, from a personal perspective, it's never as good as it seems, it's never as bad as it seems. Keep moving forward and it's gonna be okay. Professional is kind of the same thing, right? I think that that really got me through a lot of my uh early years, you know. It's just like uh, you know, when times were tough, it's like, hey, let's just take a step back, look at this from another angle, and perspective's uh an amazing thing.

SPEAKER_02

Keep pushing, yeah, keep pushing, keep taking action. Let's go. And is there anything we can do community-wide to help all of us here elevate Springfield or the surrounding communities?

SPEAKER_01

Let's uh clean up our our city. And uh I'm trying to do my trash walks to to do that personally, but let's all just uh you know be more mindful of where we're putting our trash.

SPEAKER_02

Yeah, absolutely. You're certainly doing your part there. You said 450 bags of trash. Yes, it's it's it's a little bit shy of that right now, but we're getting pretty close to that number. So if everybody out there could maybe just do at least one bag of trash, we'd be we'd be sitting pretty, wouldn't we? Yeah. So well, Brandon, great stuff today. Remind everybody where they can go to find out more about you and find out more about Navigator Wealth Strategies.

SPEAKER_01

Yeah, so Navigator Wealth Strategies, we're at uh 6300 South Sixth Street, Frontage Road E, which is a bit of a mouthful sometimes. So we're off uh Tor Toronto Road and that frontage road. Um kind of old down by the same road as the old hen house used to be. Um we've got www.navigatorwealthstrategies.com, and our phone number is two one seven six seven nine four one nine nine.

SPEAKER_02

There you go. And we sat here long enough for that sun to move a little bit. There we go. Not in your face anymore, isn't it?

SPEAKER_01

That's good. It's never as bad as that's right. That's right.

SPEAKER_02

It only lasted about the first 15 minutes of the interview, gave you a little shine in there. There we go. Well, appreciate you coming and visiting with me today. It was fun. Thanks for having me.

SPEAKER_01

This is a lot of fun.

SPEAKER_02

Absolutely. Well, we're gonna let Brandon get back to Elevate in Springfield, but for the rest of y'all, we'll be right back. Looking for expert tree care with hometown integrity, look no further than Sangamon Tree Service. They're your trusted local pros, delivering quality workmanship, exceptional customer service, and fair, honest pricing every time. Whether it's trimming, removal, or storm cleanup, their team brings professionalism and care to every job, big or small. Call the name your neighbors trust, Sangman Tree Service, or visit them today at Sangman TreeService.com. Sangman Tree Service, rooted in quality, built on trust.

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SPEAKER_02

Well, thank you for joining us today, everybody. Appreciate you making us a part of your day. Hey, don't forget while you're out on social, check ours out. You can check my personal one out at RobertFarrell at everywhere. Check out those Elevate Springfield pages, those big dog business coaching pages as well. Check us out over on YouTube. Give us a subscribe, give us a like or a follow on any of those channels. We would certainly appreciate it. So, hey, take what you learn today. You bring the discipline and follow through and together. That's right, y'all. We're gonna elevate Springfield. Be great. Looking for personalized insurance with hometown care, David Hilst, American Family Insurance Agent's here to help you protect what matters most: your family, your home, and your dreams. Whether it's auto, home, life, business, David and his team are proud to serve the Springfield community with trusted advice and reliable coverage. Local service, real relationships, peace of mind. Call today or stop by their office. They can build your dream protection plan together. Call 217 726 6343.