Back To School With A Billion (First Live Audience!)

DANO WEIR: All right class, I asked my 10 year old son to help me write the intro for today's show because I felt like if we're going back to our high school, I wanted to connect and I wanted to speak the language. So this is what he had to say.

DANO WEIR: His drip is straight boomer, his grind is hella bougie, but I'm gonna keep it 100. Do you manage a billion dollars?

DAREN BLONSKI CFP®: Bet.

DANO WEIR: Welcome to It's All Money. Hosts are right here in front of you.

DAREN BLONSKI CFP®: We're taking out It's All Money.

DANO WEIR: Welcome to It's All Money. My name is Dan O'Weir. I'm the marketing director for Sonoma Wealth Advisors and the co-host of the show. I'm joined by Darren Blonsky, CFP. And make some noise. We are having our first live audience. Thank you all for being here. Where are we today?

DANO WEIR: We are at... At Casa Grande High School in Petaluma, California to celebrate a milestone for Cinema Wealth Advisors and take an opportunity to give back to the school that both Darren and I went to. I am class of 2002. You were class of 1999. That's right.

DAREN BLONSKI CFP®: Darren was... 99 is the last and best, you know.

DANO WEIR: I was a freshman when Darren was a senior. Darren went to state as a wrestler. That was a big deal. Yeah. And then life happens and things go on and then you end up right back here.

DAREN BLONSKI CFP®: 40 years old and here we are.

DANO WEIR: So let's start with our headline. I mentioned it. We had a milestone for the firm and we talked about it right at the beginning. A billion.

DANO WEIR: Managing a billion dollars as a financial advisor with Sonoma Wealth Advisors. Does that mean you have a billion dollars?

DAREN BLONSKI CFP®: You know, unfortunately it doesn't, Dan. It doesn't mean we have a billion dollars, but it means we have the stewardship for a billion dollars.

DANO WEIR: Stewardship.

DAREN BLONSKI CFP®: That's right. So stewardship, meaning that we have lots of wonderful families and individuals and corporations and organizations where we manage their money as a steward of their money.

DANO WEIR: Managing their money. So for someone who doesn't know what a financial advisor is, what do you do for those clients?

DAREN BLONSKI CFP®: We invest their money in a way that meets their goals, their financial goals, and it meets their comfort with volatility and risk in the markets.

DANO WEIR: And as you walked out of Casa Grande High School with your green cap. And gown, you said, that's exactly what I want to do. From day one or your career?

DAREN BLONSKI CFP®: Definitely not what I said. I actually wanted to be a firefighter when I walked out of Casa Grande High School.

DANO WEIR: So how do you go from a firefighter to a financial advisor?

DAREN BLONSKI CFP®: Well, so I grew up, my Dad was a fire chief for East Bay Regional Parks and I grew up in the fire business. And I realized that my Dad was gone fighting fires a lot and I didn't, I wanted to be a Dad to my children. So I chose to. Do something differently.

DAREN BLONSKI CFP®: And that's why I ended up doing an entrepreneurial, I guess, venture. So why is it UC Davis I worked in for the student resident firefighter program. And what I found myself always doing is trying to create businesses even while I was working as a firefighter. And my mind just wanted more and it had these ideas and I wanted to realize these ideas.

DAREN BLONSKI CFP®: And it was almost became a distraction to think about being a firefighter. So I realized I had to be true to myself and say, I'm going to follow that dream because the fire service was a family business before. And that was my departure from the fire service.

DANO WEIR: Your family's business. That's what your Dad did, right?

DAREN BLONSKI CFP®: My family did. My sister was in the fire service. And my godfather was a fire chief. It was what we talked about around the dinner table.

DANO WEIR: We're sitting here in the entrepreneurship class. What a great story right here to begin with, which is that some of you may. Have businesses or may have careers that are sort of in line for you or your parents kind of think you should do something and you bucked that trend.

DAREN BLONSKI CFP®: I did buck that trend.

DANO WEIR: What did your Dad say?

DAREN BLONSKI CFP®: You know, my Dad was an incredible champion for us. I was a wrestler here at Casa Grande and we had, as the wrestlers in the room know, the tournaments are very long, Saturday, all Saturday, and he'd sit there and watch us and he was always just super supportive of us. I think deep down, he wanted me to be a firefighter though.

DANO WEIR: Was he ultimately proud of you though?

DAREN BLONSKI CFP®: Yeah, I think my Dad was really, really proud of me actually. Yeah.

DANO WEIR: So you decide you're going to break away. You're going to do your own thing. How do you even start for someone in this class? You've made a decision. Could be my financial advisor. Could be any other career for you. Could be a scientist. Could be a restaurant owner. Could be anything. How did you start? What was day one of I'm going to be financial advisor?

DAREN BLONSKI CFP®: So Dan, you know the book, Matthew... By Matthew McConaughey called Green Lights, right? So it's a great book if you haven't read it.

DANO WEIR: It's not exactly appropriate for high school maybe, but yeah, then again.

DAREN BLONSKI CFP®: It's a great book and teaches a great principle. And one of the great principles they teach in there is this idea of green lights and this idea that if the universe in some sort of odd way shows up for us. And so what I always tell young entrepreneurs is when you've decided, then the universe shows up. And it's first about deciding what you want to do. It's your lack of commitment.

DAREN BLONSKI CFP®: That gets in your way. It's not the universe. So I have found, even with Sonoma Wealth, when we created Sonoma Wealth, we had to, we were talking about this earlier, we were trying to find a URL. That's one of the most challenging parts of creating a business now is actually finding a website that works because they're all bought or owned and ready to be sold or they're actually being utilized.

DAREN BLONSKI CFP®: And we, so we picked Sonoma Wealth Advisors because we could get that website. And then two years into the a business, I got an email that said, Hey, Sonoma Wealth's for sale. Do you want it? And we bought it and changed it all over. And that was a green light moment. Like, Oh wait, this, this is, this makes sense.

DAREN BLONSKI CFP®: This is, we're on the right path. It was a tip of the hat from the old universe that I call it. So I always believe that if you, if you have clear, insight and decision and you're decisive and you know what you want, everything will align for you. It doesn't mean it won't be hard. It doesn't mean you won't almost fail many times. It just means. Things will happen for you.

DANO WEIR: And to that same point, something that I've learned really from Darren working with Jerem is that sometimes in business and in life, you'll feel like it's an either or situation. I have to go to this college or I have to go to this college.

DANO WEIR: I have to do a deal with this person or I have to do a deal with this person. It can really feel like you have one choice to make. And one thing that Darren has stressed to me is sometimes the decision is to do nothing.

DANO WEIR: So if it's not obvious what you need to do. Sometimes it's just to chill. Sometimes it's just to see what comes to you and see if something else changes or see if something else presents itself. And you can end up catching green lights, as you said, or destiny or whatever you want to call it. Indicators of which path you should be taking.

DAREN BLONSKI CFP®: I always in my mind say that inaction is just as important as action and that you have to be willing to sit tight and observe that. Time where you're gestating your ideas and being creative and thinking is just as important as the time when you're executing. One of our organizational goals is called pivot, or I guess our values we call pivot.

DAREN BLONSKI CFP®: And the idea is that we'll go down a road and it doesn't work out and we'll just pivot and move to the next one. And one of the fundamental keys of being a good entrepreneur is being able to pivot in the moment. Being able to say, we did that, we just spent a million bucks on that project and we're going this way. Actually, a fun story. Guy named Chet Lim used to work for Apple. He was a graduate.

DAREN BLONSKI CFP®: He used to wrestle with me here at Casa Grande and he was an engineer and he developed one of the first earbuds for Apple. And he developed that and then presented it to Jobs at the time. And he'd spent like, I don't know, he told me like two or $3 million developing one of the first earbuds and Jobs looked at it and said, I hate it and threw it out. And I always just think about that.

DAREN BLONSKI CFP®: Like That's how decisive and how thoughtful an entrepreneur needs to be and needs to be willing just to pivot. If it's not the right thing, we're moving on. And we're not going to spend any drama worried about why it didn't work and what broke and what we did wrong. We're going to learn, but we're not going to do drama. And we're just going to move forward in the next direction.

DANO WEIR: That's a great point too. No babies in business. I come from a more creative side of media side as my background. And you will see people who have a creative project. It's my logo. It's my shirt. It's my... Whatever creative vision for the video.

DANO WEIR: And for whatever reason, it doesn't work out. You have to be able to separate your emotion from that and just say, it didn't work out. Boom. Rather than getting caught up and, well, why? That will do so much more damage, than just moving on.

DAREN BLONSKI CFP®: We actually call it killing your sacred cow. Like an entrepreneur has to be willing to kill the sacred cow and we all have sacred cows, but if you're not willing to look at them and, and accept that that sacred cow could be holding your success back. You're going to get in trouble.

DANO WEIR: All right. So whoop-dee-doo, you decided to be a financial advisor. Maybe you went to school for it. You got licensed.

DAREN BLONSKI CFP®: I decided to be a financial advisor. So financial advising is what I ended up doing. I consider myself an entrepreneur. So the pre-step to firefighting was I was an industrial psychologist. So I was in, and I taught leadership development, team development, and realized in that career, I traveled too much.

DAREN BLONSKI CFP®: So then one of the best training companies in the nation is a company called Edward Jones. For financial advisors. And I love the markets. My first investment account was at age 13. And I hired a guy that used to be on the local KTVU, I think it was. The name was Jim McBride. I think he's still even around. And I gave him a bunch of money that I had saved up and it didn't grow.

DAREN BLONSKI CFP®: And so then I said, what's going on? And so my first job out of high school was working at Kenwood, I guess what is now Sugarloaf State Park. And I would sit up in that little booth that summer out of high school and just read about investing. And that's where it started.

DAREN BLONSKI CFP®: But I always had this entrepreneurial drive. So I look and consider myself as an entrepreneur who chooses my medium of expression through financial services, whether it's financial planning, tax services, but I've got a whole lot of other things in the bag ready to go.

DANO WEIR: But that's the cerebral approach to it, Darren. How did you get a client? How did you get your first client? You know, we can all, we can all decide who we are and stuff like that and puff our chest out with our confidence. You had to get a first client. How did it happen?

DAREN BLONSKI CFP®: So that was actually a painful process.

DAREN BLONSKI CFP®: I, so I had had my, just had my second child and I had my master's in psychology, industrial psych, and I decided to be a financial advisor. And the company I started with, the way they teach you to get a client is literally go door to door and knock doors. And so my very first clients came off knocking doors. I'm literal residential doors. Not 1950.

DANO WEIR: 2012. Yeah.

DAREN BLONSKI CFP®: Not 1985, not 1962.

DANO WEIR: In what year?

DAREN BLONSKI CFP®: 2011, 2012.

DANO WEIR: You were knocking doors.

DAREN BLONSKI CFP®: I was knocking doors.

DANO WEIR: The internet existed.

DAREN BLONSKI CFP®: The internet did exist.

DANO WEIR: But you were knocking doors.

DAREN BLONSKI CFP®: I was because there's an old entrepreneur rule when you're trying to market, when everyone's doing this, do that. When everyone's doing that, do this. And knocking doors was a brilliant strategy because everybody, all our emails are blown up and everybody's getting stuff in their face constantly. But when you show up on someone's door, they have to respond to you.

DAREN BLONSKI CFP®: Now, it might be negative sometimes, but at least they're responding to you because the antithesis to your success as an entrepreneur is not forcing people to have a response. If they don't have to slow down long enough to either say yes or no, you didn't even get in the door to potentially win. And so when you're on someone's door, they got to deal with you one way or the other.

DAREN BLONSKI CFP®: And what I found, which was interesting through that, I knocked on 9,000 doors before I stopped knocking doors. And when I finally stopped knocking doors, I found the only thing that I could correlate with success was asking people and just saying to people, I just want to introduce myself. Didn't matter what I said, but if I just said, I just want to introduce myself, they opened up to me and were willing to engage with me.

DANO WEIR: And even today at the start of class, he walked around and introduced himself to the whole class, right? Yeah, that worked. See what he was doing there?

DANO WEIR: So you do get some clients, right?

DAREN BLONSKI CFP®: You get some clients.

DANO WEIR: You get a lot of clients.

DAREN BLONSKI CFP®: You get a lot.

DANO WEIR: You have sat with, quote, millionaires.

DANO WEIR: What does society, social media get wrong about millionaires and their impression of what they might be or look like?

DAREN BLONSKI CFP®: Most of what... Social media is presenting to you about millionaires, these are people who are just broke at a higher level. These are not millionaires. These are people who have a lot of money coming in, but there's also a lot of money going out. Most true millionaires, meaning they've got the wealth, I call them the millionaires next door. They're people you don't know. They're people that drive used cars.

DAREN BLONSKI CFP®: More millionaires drive used cars than new cars. More millionaires live in everyday homes that we all live in than... The homes you think they live in. Now, there are those that have what I call stupid money, where they don't even know what to do with it. But there are far more millionaires who became millionaires through investing in a 401k over the life of their retirement.

DAREN BLONSKI CFP®: And you wouldn't know because they put on clothes every day that just you and I wear, you would not see them.

DANO WEIR: So let's just describe the service in detail in case you're wondering what he actually literally does. Let's just say I am a firefighter meme. I'm Dan. I'm a firefighter. I've got a retirement. It's a million dollars and I'm wondering where I'm supposed to put it.

DANO WEIR: I've worked 30 years in the fire industry and I've got a million dollars. I'm wondering, do I leave it in cash? I heard Nvidia is hot. I heard Bitcoin's a thing. What do I do? And they come and they sit down with you.

DAREN BLONSKI CFP®: That's right. They sit down with us and we build a financial plan for them. Save this much, do this. You'll be able to retire at this point based upon isolating a bunch of variables. So the way we create value.

DAREN BLONSKI CFP®: So entrepreneurs at their essence all have to create value, right? So any business you have to ask yourself, how do I create value? And if you're more worried about creating value than anything else as an entrepreneur, you're more likely to be successful.

DAREN BLONSKI CFP®: I've heard it. That a lot of entrepreneurial individuals teach their children just to create value, not to make money. Money follows where value is. So if you create value, money shows up. And money is just a byproduct or a symptom of creating value. A lot of people get that wrong, they go after the money first.

DAREN BLONSKI CFP®: So they show up in my world and we create value by showing them the plan, how they can realize their dreams. I contend that most people, when we're on our deathbed, Dan, were... Not going to look at our life in a linear progression and say, hey, I lived a good life, but we're going to remember our life in episodic moments, moments of time that said, I lived a good life. I felt good about my life.

DANO WEIR: And, I saw the giants win the world series. I held my child for the first time. I remember that time we sang a song together when I hadn't seen you in five years, that type of thing.

DAREN BLONSKI CFP®: That's right. And those moments in life, what creates richness. So if you think about money, money is just a mechanism or a tool to transfer energy, and to create moments that are meaningful that will help you feel successful when your life is done.

DANO WEIR: When a financial advisor is managing a client's money, so in that same scenario, I'm the firefighter, you gave me the financial advice, it's say a million dollar retirement. Where does the money physically live? Where does it end up? Are you holding it?

DAREN BLONSKI CFP®: I'm not holding it, and luckily so. When you're an independent financial advisor like we are, There's custodians that hold it. So Charles Schwab is our primary custodian. And all that money lives generally at the Charles Schwab Investment Custodian Company.

DANO WEIR: Which is a large investment company, which has $7 trillion in assets that they hold. Think of it similar to, I guess, a bank if you're trying to conceptualize it. They have a bank arm.

DAREN BLONSKI CFP®: We just get what's called a limited power of attorney or get the keys to tell that money where to go.

DANO WEIR: Being successful in life has two sides. You've got, we've talked a little bit about the professional side, but there's also the personal side. Your own personal finance can impact your success in life. So, what's the biggest mistake that a high school graduate could make with money right out of the gate?

DAREN BLONSKI CFP®: You know, my first rule, I've got a bunch of rules about money that I try to follow myself. But the first mistake they make is they don't pay themselves first. So, what do I mean by that? If money comes in and money goes out. What did you actually gain?

DAREN BLONSKI CFP®: If you bring in a hundred bucks and a hundred bucks goes out, you didn't actually gain anything. You got more value in the sense, maybe you got some food, maybe you got to do something cool, but you didn't gain anything.

DAREN BLONSKI CFP®: And so that's why we always say, you need to pay yourself first. So we, you need to pay yourself generally to retire someday 15% of everything you earn. So 15% of what goes in needs to be moved this way and not just directly out. And that's where you're growing your balance sheet.

DANO WEIR: This way. So you're talking about investing.

DAREN BLONSKI CFP®: That's right, in yourself.

DANO WEIR: So, and that could take a number of forms. So that could take investing in the market. That could take education in yourself. It could be reading a book. It could be investing time in yourself and your health.

DAREN BLONSKI CFP®: Yeah. So I spend a lot of time and money investing in knowledge and growing knowledge. I'm a big believer that what got me here today won't get me there tomorrow. And that I need to expand my brain and how it works. So I try to allocate money to investment so that someday if my body doesn't work, I don't have to work.

DAREN BLONSKI CFP®: But I also try to invest a lot of my extra cash and resources into growing and expanding my mind. So that I understand things that I don't understand today. One of the biggest superpowers at this age, if you could figure out how to do this, is...

DAREN BLONSKI CFP®: At a young age, if you could figure out how to put yourself in rooms with people that know things you don't know, you're going to be far more successful. So I'm constantly obsessed about how do I get in a room with someone that knows something I want to know so that I can expand my knowledge base.

DANO WEIR: It's stunning how much people will just offer up if you ask them.

DAREN BLONSKI CFP®: People use TikTok, right? The dude walking around saying, what do you do for a living? Right. And it's the same thing. Like, dude's like, oh, I do all this. I manage 80, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.

DANO WEIR: Yeah.

DAREN BLONSKI CFP®: People give, if you ask.

DANO WEIR: When should, we've got a range of ages in here, 14 to 18 year old kids in Petaluma, California. When should someone begin investing money in their life?

DAREN BLONSKI CFP®: Right now. Like the sooner you start, the law of compounding interest will benefit you greater. So One thing my Dad taught me is every year he'd say, Darren, you've got to work enough so that I can max out your IRA for you every year. And he was really religious about that. So if I could earn $5,000...

DANO WEIR: Ira is your individual retirement account. Which is a special investment account that is tax advantage, meaning it helps you on taxes that you make, and you use it to make investments.

DAREN BLONSKI CFP®: That's right. So he would say, hey, Darren, work just enough so I can contribute for you for your retirement account for the year. So even during school, I had Jobs all through school.

DANO WEIR: Is it okay to borrow money from family?

DAREN BLONSKI CFP®: We call those FFF loans, friends, family, and fool loans. Is it okay? Well, I guess it depends, but it's usually a stupid business proposition.

DANO WEIR: Borrow. Gift is one thing. Borrow. As soon as the business and the personal start to cross, it can become fraught with danger. But it can be a natural situation that pops up where it's just like, oh yeah, they just, anytime, I say anytime it's a handshake deal, it can often become a headshake deal.

DAREN BLONSKI CFP®: I actually wrote my master's thesis, I don't know if I've ever told you this, on family business and family business dynamics and building trust in family businesses. And family businesses in particular are very difficult and generally don't make it past the second generation.

DAREN BLONSKI CFP®: Unfortunately, most of them actually fail within five years. Crossing family and business is probably one of the worst business decisions you can do. It's very, very difficult to be successful. Families can do it, but it's very difficult.

DANO WEIR: Does a Fancy car mean you're wealthy?

DAREN BLONSKI CFP®: Absolutely not. Fancy card generally means you're broke at a higher level.

DANO WEIR: How do you mean that? You mentioned that earlier. Say that again.

DAREN BLONSKI CFP®: It's just you're broke at a higher level. It just means you have more money coming in and just as much going out. You're still broke.

DANO WEIR: How are we doing, class?

DANO WEIR: Yeah, a couple head nods. Only a few people are asleep. Thank you. I appreciate that.

DANO WEIR: This is an interactive episode. So we want to give you a chance. I've got some more questions for Darren, but I want to give you a chance to, you know, after you've learned a little bit about his story in our show, talked a little bit about money and finance, I want to give you an opportunity to ask your own questions. So we've got Zach with the mic here.

DAREN BLONSKI CFP®: Who's got a question?

DAREN BLONSKI CFP®: If you don't, we'll just keep rapping until you do. We're not going to make it all awkward for y'all.

DANO WEIR: Why don't you start with your full name and what grade you're in?

DANIEL MEJIA (STUDENT): Daniel Mejia, and I'm a senior. And my question is, what inspired you guys to start doing podcasts?

DAREN BLONSKI CFP®: Wow, that's a great question. So, Dan, tell us some of your story, because I think you've got an incredible story. And tell them how I poached you out of radio.

DANO WEIR: So we could do probably an entire episode on my story. But long story short, I was a radio personality for 15 years here in Sonoma County on a country radio station, and a little bit on a news station. And... I was looking for a financial advisor. And so I used, there's a famous radio guy named Dave Ramsey, if anyone's ever heard of him.

DANO WEIR: He has a directory where you can punch in your zip code and pull up your financial advisors in your area. And I pulled up three and no, no. And number three is Darren Blonsky from high school. I was like, Darren Blonsky from high school? And Darren and I both went to the school.

DANO WEIR: We were not really friends at school. We just, he was a senior, I was a freshman. He was friends with a guy who I was friends with his little brother. So we knew of each other, but weren't really close. And so, but I thought I got to call him, you know, I got to call Darren.

DANO WEIR: Flash forward three years from now, I'm working for him. So, Darren has always had an interest in media and in teaching and in teaching to large group. And so I think he saw my skillset, from radio and media and, saw a fit there. And I was ready to make a move myself. So that's the backstory. Your specific question was why start the podcast?

DANO WEIR: Darren, I actually worked for Darren for 18 months before we even talked about a podcast because I hate shows that just are shows for people to have shows to talk about shows because you need content, fill in the content. You just need to fill it. You just need to exist. It has to be a reason why.

DANO WEIR: The reason why we have the show is I realized, and one of the reasons I got into the business, there's a lot of misinformation out there about money. And I've seen it in my own life where money problems are the underpinning of so many other problems. You think this is the problem, and it's like if you look behind the curtain, there's a money issue.

DANO WEIR: And there's so much misinformation out there. There's so much competing information out there. There are people who are telling you the truth, but their particular service might be predatory.

DANO WEIR: They're going to sell you investment product that has a huge upside for them and minor upside for you that's maybe not the best fit. So the whole goal of the podcast is to give what I call financial confidence, which is you at least know what you're talking about, and then you make the decision, empowering you to make the decision. So thank you, Angel, for asking.

DAREN BLONSKI CFP®: I appreciate that. Well, and another part of that question, and I think this relates to any business out there, if you're looking to start a business. What you're finding, one of the Jobs of anyone in business or in entrepreneurship is to tap into where things are headed, right? You always have to be thinking forward, like where are things headed, what's happening, what's changing.

DAREN BLONSKI CFP®: And it's really clear that what generates interest now is this kind of natural thing, right? Like nobody turns on the main media sources and like, oh, I'm going to get the truth today. Like that's an oxymoron to watch legacy media and get the truth. We all go to different sources for that. Well, the same is with marketing and advertising.

DAREN BLONSKI CFP®: What we know in business is that you've got to create content that attracts people to it, and that's what sells. You actually start seeing this in movies. I don't know if you've noticed, like if you watch an action thriller these days, and you'll see the camera like Mercedes is advertising in that particular movie, and you'll see it'll pan right onto that Mercedes logo and the high-speed chase.

DAREN BLONSKI CFP®: That's them marketing to you, right? And that's... Where the, that's where the economy's headed. We do these natural forms of marketing. We call it content marketing, right? So if I'm a financial advisor and I'm talking about financial advice, I need to be producing content that provides value to people that then are attracted to what the value offering in the business is.

DANO WEIR: Is that a long enough answer for you? Do you want it to be longer? Who else?

LUCAS HYMAN (STUDENT): I'm Lucas Hyman and I'm a freshman and my question is what are the main properties of a successful business?

DAREN BLONSKI CFP®: The main properties of a successful business. The most important property of a successful business is culture which is kind of sounds weird but the culture the people that you're with and what you believe as an organization is by far the most important attribute of a successful company.

DAREN BLONSKI CFP®: Once you get the culture right? You have to think about what's our processes for creating value, right? I told you earlier about, it's all about value creation. You have to think about what are our key core processes for creating values. So like in the financial services, our core three processes are marketing and sales.

DAREN BLONSKI CFP®: So that's building content, interest. People talk about us. They want to talk to us. Then they come in and we close the sale and then we onboard them onto our firm to help them out. And then we do this service part. And those are our three core. Processes.

DAREN BLONSKI CFP®: So every business has core processes. So you have to think about what are the core processes of my business once you get that culture correct. And then part of that culture should be what I call relentless execution. You've got to implement the things in which you set out to do.

DAREN BLONSKI CFP®: I had a mentor of mine that would often tell me that the idea in business is only worth 10%. Like I can create great ideas, man. I got a whole Rolodex of great ideas. But it's the execution implementation of it that makes it successful. Actually, one of my failures is I tried to create Facebook before Facebook became Facebook.

DAREN BLONSKI CFP®: I don't think I've told you this story, Dan, but I was part of the Sacramento Entrepreneurship Academy in college, and we created a product, and we called it Terminus, where people in school communities could come together and communicate.

DANO WEIR: At an airport?

DAREN BLONSKI CFP®: Yeah, right? The name was awful, right?

DANO WEIR: Terminus?

DAREN BLONSKI CFP®: But the idea we saw at Facebook took off and worked and became very successful. And ours didn't. It sunk and failed miserably. But that's another piece of, I think, a really great business person is failures and failure, failures learning.

DANO WEIR: And what, to say succinctly, you know, doing exactly what you said you were going to do.

DANO WEIR: If you tell any business has a client, whether, you know, when you walk into Pete's Coffee and you order a coffee, you're their client. And if you ordered a coffee and they didn't give you a coffee, you might go back one more time. You're not putting up that twice. So it's the same in any other business.

DAREN BLONSKI CFP®: You know, actually on the wall, there's a guy named Peter Drucker over there. Peter Drucker was one of the foremost thinkers of business. And Peter Drucker has a quote that says, three things happen naturally in organizations, friction, confusion, and underperformance.

DAREN BLONSKI CFP®: And then he says, everything else requires leadership. So another really important attribute of that is. The leadership, right? As an entrepreneur, you're a leader. And understanding leadership and how that works is what will help you be most successful.

DANO WEIR: So we got Mr. Merrick, teacher of the class. This is the entrepreneurship class.

DAVID MERRICK (TEACHER): Yes. Thank you guys for being here. Two quick ones, maybe related, maybe not.

DAVID MERRICK (TEACHER): Are you happy with the choice that you made for your college degree in psychology, right? And then the second one is, why do we even need you guys if we can just go straight to Vanguard or whoever?

DANO WEIR: Or robo-advisor AI. Yeah, that's right.

DAREN BLONSKI CFP®: I love that question. All right. So I'm going to take the first one first.

DAREN BLONSKI CFP®: In college, I was in a networking event. It was with a large bank, and it was all the executives. And a friend of mine... Was an executive assistant to all the executives at the bank. And I was invited to this networking event. And so I went to this networking event and I asked each of the bankers, I was like, what'd you do in college to become a banker? And these are executives of a very large bank.

DAREN BLONSKI CFP®: To a T, none of them said finance. Oh, I did this. Oh, I did that.

DAREN BLONSKI CFP®: I always believe that egregious entry, it just teaches you how to learn. So whatever you want to learn, go learn it. And the degree just teaches you how to learn. But that's what the goal of school is, to teach you how to learn. The people in life who adapt faster, learn faster, are more successful. It doesn't really matter what you learn.

DAREN BLONSKI CFP®: Chances you're going to use your degree out of college, slim to none, statistically. But it's a proving ground to teach you how to learn. And that's why getting a degree is really important. Because you need to learn how to learn. Because in business, you need to learn and learn quick. So that's the first thing.

DAREN BLONSKI CFP®: The second thing is why do you need a financial advisor if you can just go to Vanguard? And I love this question, especially because if you go and you look on the internet, and we'll put this in the show notes, and you look at Vanguard's alpha study, okay? So Vanguard, that is the do-it-yourselfer of all, I guess, investment world is like the belly of the beast.

DANO WEIR: In our scenario, instead of me going to Darren and asking him to help me pick I just say, I don't need to pay you any money. I can just go to the internet and do it myself. Diy. I'll choose the investments and they'll robo invest it for me.

DAREN BLONSKI CFP®: That's right. And what's most likely to happen is you're going to go invest your money. And our brains are actually wired to do it wrong. That you're going to do things with your money that will get you in trouble and not help you get to the end of the road. And we call that behavioral finance.

DAREN BLONSKI CFP®: And so when you look at Vanguard's Alpha Advisor Study, what it says is, Most of the value the advisor plays, and it's roughly around 3% in enhanced returns every year, comes from behavioral coaching. What's that mean? It means when the market's crashing and you're freaked out and you want to sell all your assets, you're like, your advisor says, timeout, timeout, timeout.

DAREN BLONSKI CFP®: It means when you want to put all your money and YOLO it into PepeCoin, your advisor says, timeout, let's hold off. Here's why you want diversification. So it's that check through that system in your brain. Your lizard brain, because we all got lizard brains, are wired to do it wrong.

DAREN BLONSKI CFP®: And so if you don't have an advisor or somebody in your life that is your checkpoint for not making bad financial decisions, chances are you're going to do it wrong. You would be one of the very few people that are successful. In fact, traders know this.

DAREN BLONSKI CFP®: Like we look, you think of the Wall Street traders, the people that you hear about in the movies that are trading money, moving it constantly. They generally only win 40% of their trades. And the number one reason they mess up their trades is because they emotionally respond to that trade and don't understand their emotions.

DAREN BLONSKI CFP®: The best traders in the world, the best people managing money, they are absolutely zeroed in on their emotional intelligence. And how do I know when I'm acting out of fear? How do I know when I'm acting out of greed? And how do I arrest that process? Because that's what's going to get you in trouble.

DAREN BLONSKI CFP®: And so that's what an advisor does. If you're going to do all that emotional intelligent work to really learn how to invest on your own, you can be very successful. There's lots of people that do it, but the bulk of the population is probably more worried about the football game on Saturday or Sunday. And you gotta be really honest though.

DAREN BLONSKI CFP®: I mean, for Dan, it's all there is. So you, you, you gotta be really honest with yourself when it comes to investing. And I always tell this to clients. I'm like, look, I could go build a house right now. I could figure it out. I'm smart enough. I can get a book.

DAREN BLONSKI CFP®: I can watch YouTube and I could build a house, but I promise you, I'm going to make a lot of mistakes building that house. And I've. Made a lot of mistakes in my financial life. I've watched people make mistakes. Chances are, we're going to build that house faster together with less mistakes. And that's why I need an advisor.

DAREN BLONSKI CFP®: That fiduciary, so the question is, are we a fiduciary? We're absolutely a fiduciary. I think it's paramount that you're a fiduciary. So in the investment advisors, I actually wrote a whole book on this called The Broken Dealer. And it is ludicrous. To actually work with a broker when it comes to your finances.

DAREN BLONSKI CFP®: Because effectively, when you're working with your finances, it's one of the most vulnerable things you can possibly do. Here's my life. Here's everything going on. And guess what? I'm going to tell it all to you and be vulnerable. And then I'm going to let you sell me something.

DANO WEIR: Let's go super slow on that. Is everybody with, anybody want to know about this? The difference between a broker and a fiduciary? This is important.

DANO WEIR: It's good. This is important. Okay. So it all breaks down to how someone is paid. Okay, so let's say in this case that I'm the advisor now. I am the captain now, okay? I'm the advisor, you're the client, and I'm a broker, and I want to sell Darren some stock. Pick a stock, somebody give me a stock. Anything. Any company. All right, Chevy.

DAREN BLONSKI CFP®: Coke's good.

DANO WEIR: Darren, you're my client. I want to sell you. I think you should invest some money in Chevy. This is what I think you should do. You should buy this. This is good for you. And then you say yes. And now I get paid because I sold him some Chevy.

DAREN BLONSKI CFP®: That's a broker.

DANO WEIR: That's a broker. A fiduciary is Darren pays me a fee. To be determined, but Darren pays me a fee no matter what. And then I tell him of all of the investments in the entire world, what I actually think is the best for him.

DAREN BLONSKI CFP®: That's right.

DANO WEIR: So the person who's telling you that they want you to buy this specific mutual fund, security, crypto, whatever it is, is incentivized to sell you that versus, hey, I've met you. I know what your goals are. I know what risk you want to take out of the entire universe of everything that exists. I actually think it's this instead of just a limited list. Does that make sense?

DAREN BLONSKI CFP®: We actually see the most abuse in this way in the insurance industry. So often you'll get an insurance agent who calls himself a financial advisor. If you get paid more to sell insurance, you're going to sell insurance. And so if I come to you, Dan, and I say, Dan, here's my $100,000. Here's my million dollars. And you're an insurance agent. Chances are I'm going to end up with an insurance policy.

DANO WEIR: I know there's 87 other things I could tell you, but actually some insurance would be a really good thing for you. That's right. That's what I think.

DAREN BLONSKI CFP®: Yeah. And that becomes the issue, right? And it's not that insurance doesn't play a valuable role in everyone's financial picture. It's just what do you lead with and what are the incentives? And you always want to know when you work with any professional. In fact, that's a superpower.

DAREN BLONSKI CFP®: If you can figure out what everybody's incentive is, you can usually figure out what they want from you. And if you know what they want from you, you know how to get what you want. And in negotiation, it's very important. And in life, it's very important to understand incentives.

DANO WEIR: All right. We're pushing up on the edge of the episode here. So who, who, does anybody, does anybody want to talk about Bitcoin? Yeah. All right. Okay.

DAREN BLONSKI CFP®: All right. You can roll on that. What do you guys want to talk about on it?

DANO WEIR: Let's get the mic going again. Does anybody have any questions?

DANO WEIR: Let's get the mic. Yeah. Your name and your grade.

PARKER HEFFELFINGER (STUDENT): My name is Parker Heffelfinger. I'm a senior. What do you think about the Hawk to a coin?

DAREN BLONSKI CFP®: Oh, gosh. Oh, no.

DANO WEIR: This is a general question.

DANO WEIR: Of all the coins. Well, 500 million dollars.

DAREN BLONSKI CFP®: Pump and dump. Pump and dump. It's a pump and dump.

DANO WEIR: What is a pump and dump?

DAREN BLONSKI CFP®: So you got to be really careful, right? So, and this is part of influencer culture. So does everyone know what I mean when I say influencer culture? So. A lot of these people on TikTok and YouTube and whatnot, they're being paid to talk about things. They're literally, they'll get on there.

DAREN BLONSKI CFP®: In fact, our politicians were paying, in this last presidential election, were paying influencers to talk about them on their social media channels, okay? So let's just talk about, so I don't know that we want to talk about Hoctaw, but let's talk about any crypto, okay?

DANO WEIR: So any type of- What's another meme coin?

DAREN BLONSKI CFP®: Pepe coin is one that's popular right now. I own some Pepe actually as kind of a joke, but so Pepe coin, has to do with memes that are all over social media. Okay. And, what happens is these people who develop crypto go to all these social influencers, right?

DAREN BLONSKI CFP®: They look at their channels, they figure out who's got the most subscribers and they say, we'll pay you some money or give you some of this crypto if you talk about our crypto. So what happens is everybody piles in cause they see it on social media and they, they do what we call rug pull. Everyone know what the term rug pull is, right? So they rug pull it. So it goes up, way up, way up.

DAREN BLONSKI CFP®: And when it's running hard and up, they sell all their coins and leave the people that came in from the influencers following behind. It's fraud and people are being sued and they're going to jail for it. So the particular crypto you referred to, I think there's going to be some legal action on that one.

DANO WEIR: More questions.

DAREN BLONSKI CFP®: No, you're good. Just go.

DANO WEIR: How do you find value in what you do?

DAREN BLONSKI CFP®: So I find value in what I do by watching the lives change the people I work with. Right? So, I mean, the countless people I've helped in my career where it's, they just lost their mom. They just lost their Dad. They just inherited a bunch of money. They don't know what to do.

DAREN BLONSKI CFP®: They want to retire. I mean, there's literally thousands of people in this community that are retired and living a comfortable retired life because of what my team does. And we help people realize their vision and their goals. And that's the coolest thing about life, right? I go back to what I talked about.

DAREN BLONSKI CFP®: I contended our deathbeds. We're not going to go, oh, I lived a great life because here's my linear sequence of how great it was. We're going to say, I lived a great life and I feel fulfilled because these moments of fulfillment happened in our lives. And that's what we help propel in our planning.

DANO WEIR: And you help employ 25 people?

DAREN BLONSKI CFP®: Yep.

DANO WEIR: Yep. I mean, his work has changed my life without question.

DANO WEIR: And that doesn't mean that, you know, I just get to come up and show up and not work hard myself. But I only get an opportunity to do so because of all the decisions that he made, you know. So there's tremendous value in that. The transformational impact on so many people's lives. Just by living by principles.

DANO WEIR: And some of the things you've already talked about.

DAREN BLONSKI CFP®: We have a saying, my partner and I, and this is another superpower in entrepreneurship.

DANO WEIR: Your business partner, Chris?

DAREN BLONSKI CFP®: Yeah, Chris Sipes. Pick your partners carefully. I've picked bad ones and I've picked good ones. But if you learn to pick good partners, that's a superpower.

DAREN BLONSKI CFP®: And what we talk about is we believe fundamentally as a culture, as a company, if we take care of the people at the company, they're going to take care of the clients. And if the clients are going to get taken care of, then it's all going to work out because they're going to create more value for the client. Right.

DANO WEIR: And another thing I'll add to is you don't always have to have a partner. I mean, no one is going to get anywhere by themselves per se, but sometimes there's almost a predisposition that I'm going to start a business. I've got to find someone else to partner with. No, you just wanted a friend.

DANO WEIR: Sometimes you can do it on your own, you know, with other vendors or with, you know, you're going to need partnerships. You're going to have your clients are in a way are your partners. But you don't always have to get another guy or gal or whoever and, you know, start the business together.

DANO WEIR: Sometimes some people, knowing yourself really well, it can be better to be, to know, you know what, I'm a decision maker and I'm not going to be able to do things by committee. I need to be in charge.

DAREN BLONSKI CFP®: Well, you know, so Dan, that's an interesting point, right? So Tom Furr, does anyone know who Tom Furr is here?

DAREN BLONSKI CFP®: Bear guy, right? So you see this bear thing on campus. Now I think it's Dan. What's Dan's name? Danny.

DANO WEIR: Dan Hubacher, who teaches, who's the anglers class now.

DAREN BLONSKI CFP®: UACG.

DANO WEIR: Yeah.

DAREN BLONSKI CFP®: And I was United Angler Casa Grande when I was here and helped run the fish hatchery thing with Tom.

DANO WEIR: Before Dan, it was Mr. Furr.

DAREN BLONSKI CFP®: That's right, Mr. Furr. And so Mr. Furr was my teacher. And one of the things that Mr. Furr taught me, and I was always amazed by how he could get these kids to like put on boots and go jump in a creek and get dirty and love playing with fish. Like you think about that, like that's kind of the last thing that students think about sometimes.

DAREN BLONSKI CFP®: And what he taught me, and I learned this in business, is he always said, thank you. Like you would go and you'd go out and be like, thank you, Darren. And he helps you feel a part of something bigger than yourself.

DAREN BLONSKI CFP®: And that's one of the fundamental, I think, capabilities of leadership is to help people feel a part of something bigger than themselves. So you're right, Dan, we might not always need a partner, but your people should always be your partner. And you should always be working together towards a larger, whole larger vision because that's what's going to create success. Anybody else?

JOSUE ARENAS (STUDENT): My name is Josue Arenas. I'm a junior. And my question is, what are the pros and cons about trading and do you recommend it for people at a young age?

DAREN BLONSKI CFP®: Pros and cons of trading and do you recommend it? Is that what I heard? Yeah. Wow. That's a good one. So.

DAREN BLONSKI CFP®: There's this concept in psychology called core memory. So as an individual, we all have core memories. As a baby, how we were treated by our parents, how we were treated by our loved ones, by our siblings, those kinds of things. Those create core memories for how we see the world, right?

DAREN BLONSKI CFP®: What happens to us at a young age. In high school, like it's really four years of your life. It's not that big of a time, but it has a huge impact on your life. And you carry the things you learn here out of here for the rest of your life, for good or bad. Like some Some people's experience in high school is awful.

DAREN BLONSKI CFP®: And some people's experience in high school is amazing. And you'll carry these core memories, but it will be a very small portion of your overall life. But why are those memories so much more important than all the other four years you're going to spend in college and doing other things?

DAREN BLONSKI CFP®: And it's because they're core memories, right? So we create core memories. One of the biggest challenges this generation has is that you've only been trading in the market since the Federal Reserve has been printing money. Now, let me explain that because it's very confusing.

DAREN BLONSKI CFP®: So we have this organization in the United States called the Federal Reserve. And in 2019, the debt of the US government was $19 trillion. $19 trillion. Anyone know how big trillion is? It's a lot of zeros, okay? It's a lot of money. In 2019, it was $19 trillion.

DAREN BLONSKI CFP®: Today, it's just over $36 trillion. So our whole history up until 2019, we built $19 trillion of debt. And in the last few years, we've got to $36 trillion. It's said that every 100 days, this country is layering on $1 trillion in debt. Every 100 days. So every 100 days, this country is layering on...

DAREN BLONSKI CFP®: Every 100 days, we get $1 trillion in debt. We get that $1 trillion worth of debt. That becomes an issue systemically for the country. Our government is printing so much right now that there's this false sense of security in traders. There's this false sense of security in investors.

DAREN BLONSKI CFP®: That I could just put money in and whatever I'm doing, I'm going to make more money. It's going to go up. The reality is that's not true though. So this generation of investors is developing a core memory that the markets just go up because the government prints.

DAREN BLONSKI CFP®: And that is problematic. So do I recommend people get into trading? Well, I said it earlier, true traders, traders on Wall Street, professional traders, that's all they do. They win 40% of their trades.

DAREN BLONSKI CFP®: So if you're good with losing 60% of your time, then trading could be a route for you. Every trader I know that's a successful stock trader and whatever type of commodity or asset, they've blown up an account. You know what blow up an account means? You'll lose it all.

DAREN BLONSKI CFP®: So I'm a big believer that if you're going to trade, you start trading with paper money first. And what do I mean by paper money? It's fake money, right? It's just a play account. You trade on the paper account, you get good, and you figure out an edge. An edge means some way you can win more trades than lose trades. Then maybe consider trading. But I'm here to tell you that the game is absolutely rigged against you.

DANO WEIR: Bye.

DAREN BLONSKI CFP®: By the big Wall Street trading firms. It's absolutely rigged.

DANO WEIR: Of which you are not a part.

DAREN BLONSKI CFP®: I'm not a part of that, right? So we're an investment advisor. We invest in asset allocate, but we don't trade client accounts. So the way that works is there's big banks and they're paying traders on a big floor and they're trading money every day. And their job is to take money out of the market. So if that person sits there all day, every day, and only wins 40% of your trades.

DAREN BLONSKI CFP®: And you think that the half hour a day you're going to actually go in and trade and win on a consistent basis, you're fooling yourself. In fact, one of our clients is a slot tech for one of the big casinos around here. And that means that he programs the slot so when people go into the casino, they put their money in.

DAREN BLONSKI CFP®: And what he tells me is that the longer you play, the more likely it is that you're only getting 85 cents on the dollar back. And it's called the law of large numbers. So I might go in and gamble my money and trade my money and win big once. But then what's that tell me to do? Oh, go back because I'll win again. But then I'm going to start losing and I'm going to give money to the house.

DANO WEIR: And now you got to chase those lofts.

DAREN BLONSKI CFP®: And you keep going, you end up in the hole. So most traders aren't winning money. The problem with it is the psychology of it is such that we don't talk about our losses in life. I'm not going to get on TikTok and be like, hey man, I just lost a million bucks on trading. Nobody does that.

DANO WEIR: Yes, you're down 40%.

DAREN BLONSKI CFP®: That's right. I saw an interesting thread this morning that there's a guy who lost a million dollars trading crypto on Reddit and he's offering to marry someone who's gained a million dollars trading and they're going to marry and then they're going to use those capital gains and those capital lock to split it and hash it out. So that's a marriage proposal if I've ever heard it.

DANO WEIR: But I'm going to stop you there because you said earlier you recommend that people invest, but now you're saying that trading is fraught with danger. So where's the middle ground between there? How should someone do so responsibly?

DAREN BLONSKI CFP®: Well, I gave you that solution. That was trade with paper money first. Okay. If you're going to trade, you need to play with paper money first, and you need to create an edge. An edge is a way to win more than lose more. Win more than you lose. And that's what you want to do. You should always invest, but there's a difference between trading and allocating, right?

DAREN BLONSKI CFP®: Anyone could go out there and go to, you know, like a Vanguard or any of those and buy an S&P 500 fund, which is the largest 500 US stocks. You can do that. And that's investing. Trading is going in and out of the market, constantly thinking that that's going to win you money. Statistically, the longer you play, the more you're going to lose.

DANO WEIR: So you would, so what you, so you're saying more long-term investing. And in general, giving yourself a chance to see where something goes versus I got in today. Oh, it went down two cents. I'm out. Oh, I got in. I got in today. An hour later, it's up five cents. I'm out. You know, whatever it is.

DAREN BLONSKI CFP®: Investing is picking good quality assets and staying the course with them. Trading is trying to take short-term wins on stuff and it can work, but you can't fool yourself. It's the cards are not stacked in your favor. So. And it's the same thing with business when you think about it, right? Most small businesses fail within five years. The vast majority of businesses, they're done within five years. They go bankrupt.

DAREN BLONSKI CFP®: So whenever I'm talking to people about starting businesses, I always ask them the question, why are you not going to fail? Because if you can't answer that question, why are you not going to fail? I promise you, you're likely to fail. You have to know what your edge is. Why are you better than the competition? Why are you going to beat out everybody else? If you can't answer that question. They're going to eat your lunch.

DANO WEIR: Any more questions?

DAREN BLONSKI CFP®: I knocked on, so the way I'd answer that question is one, or a couple things. So I learned here as a wrestler in Casa Grande that I could outwork anyone. And that's always been my edge. One, that I'm willing to learn quick and outwork. And I'm going to adapt.

DAREN BLONSKI CFP®: Those were my, I would say, secret sauces for success. And I had confidence from my time here as a wrestler that if I worked hard enough, because I wasn't the most talented wrestler here, but I outworked my competition and the other wrestlers here.

DANO WEIR: Anybody else? Last call.

DANO WEIR: The teacher's asking if young people should follow their passion.

DAREN BLONSKI CFP®: I'm mixed on this, to be honest. I think following your passion can be a real trap. And the reason for that is if my passion's basket weaving and my goal is to make money, like it's probably not going to work out for well for me. If my passion is, you know, doing something that I guess the, me answer this question, if you're going to follow your passion, you got to be really clear what success is.

DAREN BLONSKI CFP®: If your passion is something that's not monetarily appreciative towards you, then you, your success. Parameters have to be different, right? And so like teaching, teaching isn't typically going to bring tons of money, but it's the reward of the letters on the wall from the entrepreneurs that send them back to you, right?

DAREN BLONSKI CFP®: It's like, that's my, whatever that cachet is in your life, what that means success to you. For me and my value set, it was really important for my wife to be able to be with the kids while I worked, or at least one of us to be home.

DAREN BLONSKI CFP®: I knew I had to pick a career where I could create enough money for the family so that one of us could be home. Or my wife would have to do that. So, that was a goal of mine. And I thought very strategically about that. In fact, when I was industrial psychology, part of the reason I stopped doing industrial psychology is that I realized I was trading time for money and you don't ever get rich trading time for money.

DAREN BLONSKI CFP®: You have to find a way to generate money when you're not working while you're sleeping. That's how you get rich and make money. And to me having my having a monetary base to do the things I love doing was a very important value to me because I grew up without it, right?

DAREN BLONSKI CFP®: I grew up with parents that were working full-time. They were gone a lot and latchkey kid it. And I'm like, I want to be home for my kids. I want to take my kids to school and pick them up. I want to have flexibility and job. And that meant I had to create the financial tools to be able to do that.

DANO WEIR: Something I like to say is, I tell this to my kids, we can't do everything, but you can do anything. That's right. And sometimes you can do many things, so you're not limited. And what that means is, Darren, you really wanted to write a book.

DANO WEIR: You really wanted to write a book about your Dad, and you did. And it's out, and it's great.

DANO WEIR: You were able to do that.

DANO WEIR: You can do things that you really want to do. You're not necessarily also going to... Make that book make six million dollars and it rolls into a movie and you got to the end, end, end, end, end, end, end.

DANO WEIR: There are so many stories of extreme success out there that it can scare people from trying things or it can scare people from doing one or two things and being really proud of, you know, achieving that. And maybe it does roll on and that's great, but you shouldn't not learn how to sing because you're never going to. I don't even know what's, you know.

DAREN BLONSKI CFP®: Be George Strait.

DANO WEIR: Yeah, yeah. You're never going to be Ariana Grande. You're never going to be in Wicked 2. You know, I mean, you should pursue those things because you love them. If they lead to money, that's good. If you need to do other things to make heads meet, that's good. Ideally, you know, it's a combo, right?

DANO WEIR: I mean, ideally, who wouldn't want to do the thing that they love to do, be great at it, and make a ton of money? That's the goal. That's what everybody's trying to do. A small fraction of people do that. There's usually a lot more to it than you realize. And don't get hung up on being a massive success. Focus on the thing that you want to do and try to make it a success.

DAREN BLONSKI CFP®: We've had this conversation a lot in my family with my middle son, Brighton. My middle son, Brighton, is an artist. He loves art. That's all he does all day long. He's like, Dad, I just want to do art as my career. And so it's this conversation about, okay, that's great. Now how do we translate that into making a living for you and your family if that's the way you choose to go about it?

DAREN BLONSKI CFP®: Like there's a connection there. So one of our clients is an animator for pictures. Pixar and created, he was a director for one of the big, featured films. And so I text this guy earlier on last week and I said, Hey, you know, my son really likes anime. He's really into it. He wants to do animation.

DAREN BLONSKI CFP®: Can we take you to lunch right and that that's like one of the most important things you all can do find something you are passionate about someone who's successful at it and take them to lunch everybody has to eat lunch and everyone loves to give back and you find that person you call them up and be brave and say let's go to lunch i'll pay lunch for you so i'm going to take Brighton to go have lunch with this animator with Pixar and you know hopefully spur for Brighton like how can i take this passion into something that will financially create viability for me And it's that balance, right?

DAREN BLONSKI CFP®: And like, I want to appreciate him about his love for art and I want to support his love for art. And I want to find animation schools he can go to when he's not in regular school and support it in a way that becomes fruitful for him. And I think that's the role of a parent is stewarding that process through for your kid.

DANO WEIR: Casa Grande High School entrepreneurship class in 2024, Mr. Merrick's class. You have watched a live podcast episode. You've hopefully learned one or two or six things about business, about investing. But most importantly, you got out of a normal day of class to watch a podcast. And we really thank you.

DAREN BLONSKI CFP®: Hey, Dan, they're in class.

DANO WEIR: So thank you so much.

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