What The Marine Corps Taught Me About Finance

DANO WEIR: We got one of the military guys in today. Everybody.

DANO WEIR: So these military guys, you got to say the right thing. If you say the wrong thing, they get all out of whack. So this is what we're not saying today. We're not going to say this will defend.

DANO WEIR: We're not going to say duty, honor, country, also the Army. Not going to say aim high, fly, fight, win. We're definitely not going to say that. We're not going to say non-CBCed Petralia, not self, but country. That's the Navy. Semper Supra. We're getting closer. Space Force. Semper Paratus. Always ready. We're not going to say roll tide.

DANO WEIR: Semper Fi? Semper Fi. You got it.

DANO WEIR: Financial confidence for your hip pocket money is really good energy if you're checking out It's All Money welcome inside the Sonoma Wealth conference room Sonoma Wealth Advisors just off the Sonoma square my name is daniel weir marketing director for Sonoma Wealth Advisors this is our show It's All Money where life and finance meet where they intersect and the pieces of your life that end up part of your financial story.

DANO WEIR: Today is an episode I'm really excited about. One of our advisors here at the firm has a unique story about how his background in the military influences his work today with his own life and his family and with you, our clients. So please welcome to the show, former captain of the Marine Corps, Gaetano Bettinelli.

GAETANO BETTINELLI: Thank you. Good to be here.

DANO WEIR: Guy Tano, I want you to tell everybody if they're not one of your clients or if they're not working with you yet, what do you do for the firm?

GAETANO BETTINELLI: I'm a financial advisor here at the firm, part of the team that helps people organize their finances, streamline their finances, gets the most bang for their buck in their financial lives to ultimately get them towards their, reach their financial goals.

DANO WEIR: So your uniform now is professional attire with. A suit and a tie. That's right. A little bit more casual today.

GAETANO BETTINELLI: That's right. I joke with my wife all the time that if I could, I would, like, replace, like, my camouflage, my old camouflage, because it's all the same color. So you just wake up in the morning and you put it on. But I would just, like, buy, like, 10 white shirts and 10 gray pants to replicate the uniform. But I haven't got permission to do that yet.

DANO WEIR: So we mentioned you were in the Marine Corps for many years. Yes. So let's start. You're a Napa native. You, your family there for, for a long time. How do you go from Napa to the Marine Corps?

GAETANO BETTINELLI: Good, good question. Long geographical journey. You know, that's relatively short. So my grandfather was in World War II. My father wasn't in the Army. My father was in Vietnam in the Marine Corps and I just always grew up, just kind of appreciating that and, you know, how those folks. Paved the way for us and, you know, the foundation of the country that we have now.

GAETANO BETTINELLI: And so it was always really important for me to pay that forward. So when it became time to, when, as I was thinking about, you know, as I became of an age, you know, where I was thinking more and more about my future, I always knew that the military was in it. And it's just part of how I was wired to as a human. So those two collided. And I ultimately, when I was in middle school, was a lot of middle school.

DANO WEIR: What was your middle school?

GAETANO BETTINELLI: Robert Louis Stevenson.

DANO WEIR: Middle school in St.

GAETANO BETTINELLI: Helena High.

DANO WEIR: RLS.

GAETANO BETTINELLI: The blue devils.

GAETANO BETTINELLI: I read this book by coach Krzyzewski, Mike Krzyzewski of Duke. And, he went to West Point. And so I was so enamored with the book that I decided that said, Hey, whatever that guy did to form his leadership opinions and skill sets like You know, I think that's a roadmap that I'd like to emulate, which ultimately led me to the service academies.

GAETANO BETTINELLI: And ultimately it came down to senior year. I decided to go to Annapolis instead of West Point.

GAETANO BETTINELLI: And that's what started my military journey.

DANO WEIR: I'm going to go back one second. So you said your grandfather served in World War II, what branch?

GAETANO BETTINELLI: He was in the Army.

DANO WEIR: And then your father was, did you say Army and Marines?

GAETANO BETTINELLI: My father was in the Marine Corps. He was a helicopter pilot.

DANO WEIR: I want to make sure I clarify that. Okay, so you make the decision to go to Annapolis. Today's episode is what the Marines taught me about finance. By me, I mean him. And in working with you here at the firm, it's not something you necessarily lead with. You're not constantly...

DANO WEIR: You know, well, when I was, you know, you're not telling me about things like that. And yet I can feel it kind of in your character and it's, you can sort of feel the leadership lessons coming out. And so in fact, Gaetano was a little hesitant. He was like, I don't know if anybody wants to hear about my time in the, no, man, I think these are some good stories.

DANO WEIR: So today's episode, what the Marines taught Gaetano about finance and what might be useful to you. As a client or potential client of Sonoma Wealth Advisors. So take me to Annapolis. Let's start there. What are some things you learned in Annapolis?

GAETANO BETTINELLI: Well, it's really interesting the journey that they take you on, that you go on through school.

DANO WEIR: And Annapolis is what? I mean, that's a name that's used, but what is the name of the specific academy?

GAETANO BETTINELLI: Correct. So the technical name for the school is the United States Naval Academy. So each service has an academy, right? There's an Air Force Academy. There's a military academy, which is West Point. There's a Naval Academy. There's a Coast Guard academy. There's a merchant Marine academy.

GAETANO BETTINELLI: Not a Space Force Academy yet, but that falls under a subsection of the Air Force Academy.

DANO WEIR: We've got to get back to the moon first.

GAETANO BETTINELLI: Yeah, yeah, that's right. So it's the United States Naval Academy, but it's in Annapolis, Maryland. So it's commonly referred to as Annapolis. And it's just such a unique experience that's tough to encapsulate. But I think for, you know, for the audience, the best way to think about it is imagine that when you show up to your freshman dorm, right, and you have your floor of 40 people there.

GAETANO BETTINELLI: Now, freeze that group of 40 people and go through all four years of college living on that same floor with them. All four years of college. Going to the same classes, eating with just those people at the same table every meal, working out with them and doing your summer internship with them.

GAETANO BETTINELLI: And oh, by the way, at the end of that, you're all going in the same industry. Right. So it's a really intense, compact experience that's quite streamlined. But just, you know, there's an amazing depth of relationships there because you have so many touch points with those people.

DANO WEIR: And just to clarify, too, sorry, I want to get all these details right for people who might be confused. It's the Naval Academy, but Marines go to the Naval Academy because of their special relationship there.

GAETANO BETTINELLI: Correct. Yes. So the Marines, if you look at the organizational chart of the military, the Marines fall under the Department Of The Navy for funding. So what that means is that when Annapolis graduates approximately 1,100 people per year, a portion of that is siphoned off into the Marine Corps and the rest go into the Navy. Various jobs in the Navy, right? Flying ships, submarines, whatever that may be for those individuals.

DANO WEIR: Okay, so you've got this floor. You're seeing these same people all the time. How is that financed for you today?

GAETANO BETTINELLI: How is that funny for me today? Because whoop-dee-doo, dude.

DANO WEIR: We all went to college. Well, maybe not all of us, but many people went to college.

GAETANO BETTINELLI: Yeah, good question.

GAETANO BETTINELLI: So you go through this journey with these folks, and, you know, one of the things that's so unique about it is that everything is a competition, but it's a healthy competition, right? So at any moment, you know where you stand in your class rankings.

GAETANO BETTINELLI: And ultimately where that leads you is, you know, come senior year, they have to divide you up and people have their preferences of where they go. And you compete based off class rank for where you go.

GAETANO BETTINELLI: And so as a result of that, there's all these metrics that you can see. Right. So in your class of eleven hundred people, in your class of eleven hundred people, you know, if you're number one athletically or, you know, eleven hundredth. Athletically, same with academically, same with leadership, right?

GAETANO BETTINELLI: So it's a really intense experience where there's a lot of like-minded individuals that are really like ironing, sharpening iron, and really trying to prove each other. Some people take that competition in an unhealthy way, but the majority of the people use that as in a healthy way to just really ultimately, you know, improve themselves.

GAETANO BETTINELLI: So, you know, when I think about that in the world to finance. You know, where my mind goes to is, you know, you gotta have metrics that you're looking at, right? Like what does winning look like? What does losing look like? Am I ahead of pace?

GAETANO BETTINELLI: Am I behind pace? You know, to, to ultimately reach my goals. So, you know, Most colleges, you know, whether it be San Luis Obispo or Sonoma State, you know, you're doing your thing and you're just it's hard to tell if you're on track or off track.

GAETANO BETTINELLI: But everything's a competition. Right. So there's a saying that says if it gets measured, it gets improved. Right. So, you know, it's a way where you can kind of constantly measure yourself and your self-improvement.

DANO WEIR: Yeah. And wherever you're at in your financial journey, it's very easy to.

DANO WEIR: It's very easy to just sort of either forget about your money or think, especially for someone who's just starting or, you know, feels like they're never going to make it.

DANO WEIR: I'm not going to think about that. I'm not going to focus that. That's not me.

GAETANO BETTINELLI: Yeah.

DANO WEIR: And so if what gets measured gets improved, that's such a good phrase. Focusing on it, deciding what can I do realistically and then hitting those goals, writing that down, that type of thing. That's what you're talking about.

GAETANO BETTINELLI: Yep. Yep. That's right. Right. So I know that if I want to, if upon graduation, if I want to get this highly selective spot, right, these are the metrics that I probably should be looking to hit on track or off track for that. And I also think it really speaks to the power, the whole, the whole experience.

GAETANO BETTINELLI: Right. I don't know anybody who has gone through that experience and, you know, not questioned whether this was the right path for them. Right. At some point saying, hey, you know, do I quit? You know, do I just go to my local state school, whatever?

GAETANO BETTINELLI: But really what what keeps you there is like the vision, like the vision of what you want to do in the future. Right. And kind of constantly reminding yourself about like why you signed up, the purpose for why you signed up, what you're going for.

GAETANO BETTINELLI: And really, I think that's that transcends like. You know, a military goal and goes into finance goal too, right? Like there's going to be hiccups in the road. There's going to be times when you need to pay the price to win. Right. But as long as you keep that like big picture vision and remind yourself of the why that you're there, you know, the, those, those little bumps, you know, become feel less and less.

DANO WEIR: That's what Bitcoin owners are feeling right now.

GAETANO BETTINELLI: Yeah, that's right.

DANO WEIR: Why am I in this asset? No, I believe in it. I do believe in it.

GAETANO BETTINELLI: Yeah. Yeah. That's right. That's right.

DANO WEIR: Tell me about the Leadership Laboratory.

GAETANO BETTINELLI: Yeah. So the school in general, right, is designed to develop leaders for the military, right? And they do that in a pretty unique way, where you don't necessarily, they don't sit you down and say, this is what you're learning, but you're learning it all along without knowing. And so when you're a freshman year, you know, there's all kinds of rules and regulations that you need to follow.

GAETANO BETTINELLI: And a lot of them are quite silly, you know, to be honest with you, things like, you know, when you, when you. Turn, you have to do a 90 degree turn and you have to, you know, chop with high knees and there's walkways you're allowed to go down and walkways you're not allowed to go on them. So there's all kinds of silly rules that you have to follow as a freshman.

GAETANO BETTINELLI: As a junior, you're responsible for mentoring the freshmen, right?

GAETANO BETTINELLI: Being a friend, that's a good influence on them, right? And teaching them to do things the right way. As a junior, your job is to train the freshmen. And so you're not their friends. You're their firm accountability on what they should be doing. Right. And then senior year, your job is to supervise. Your job is to supervise the juniors who are implementing the training for the freshmen. Right.

GAETANO BETTINELLI: So this whole dynamic that you walk through is like, hey, you're learning how to first and foremost lead yourself. Then you're learning how to mentor. Then you're learning how to train. Then you're learning how to supervise. And they don't break it down into those clear terms, but that whole foundation falls apart unless you're able to lead yourself as a freshman. So sometimes you're a freshman, you say, hey, this is silly.

GAETANO BETTINELLI: Why am I doing all this? Well, you're developing discipline, you're developing accountability, all of these things that are foundational for your success in the military. You aren't going to be a good leader or supervisor or a mentor. Unless you're doing the little things right yourself. So let's, let's focus, let's take a year and focus on doing the little things right yourself. Right.

GAETANO BETTINELLI: So, you know, and I think that's, that's a lot about like what finances is too, right? Like it's, you are, you have such a big influence in your financial future, right?

GAETANO BETTINELLI: There's people that can come alongside and help you and point you in the right direction, which is why we have jobs, right? But ultimately, like the work, the heavy lifting of like the foundation of what that looks like, right, is there's a lot that you can control in that.

DANO WEIR: A great example. You're the master of your shit. A great example, and no one ever wants to do it. And certainly if you've done well, maybe you don't have to do it or maybe you're the exact one that you should be doing it.

DANO WEIR: It's a budget. Nobody wants to do a budget. No one. No one. That's right. The numbers are large on there, right? You're like, you know. That's right. Nobody wants to sit and do that. That's right. It feels silly.

GAETANO BETTINELLI: That's right.

DANO WEIR: And yet, study after study, time after time, like a written budget.

GAETANO BETTINELLI: That's right.

DANO WEIR: Is such a key to financial success.

GAETANO BETTINELLI: That's right.

DANO WEIR: And if you can commit and actually do it, you know, it can be transformational.

GAETANO BETTINELLI: Yes, 100%. That's a perfect example right there. Another thing that I learned at school was the importance of accountability, right? So just to use probably an overly used example, but you hear a lot of the media of like Navy SEALs, right? So in one of the options that you can become as a Navy SEAL, you select in a Navy SEALs.

DANO WEIR: You mean when you hear in the media, like there's, they have podcasts and books and stuff like that, well-known special forces unit. Yeah, that's right.

GAETANO BETTINELLI: Yeah, that's better said.

GAETANO BETTINELLI: And so there's a lot of literature out there that says you take 10 people from normal, from a Non-Annapolis college, right?

GAETANO BETTINELLI: From a non-military college, put them in a BUDS class, one's going to make it. Right. If you put 10 in there, one's going to make it. If you put 10 Annapolis graduates in a BUDS class.

GAETANO BETTINELLI: Nine are going to make it right 90 success rate and the question is like why right like why is that right it's nothing it's not that you know there's nothing special in the water there right they don't feed you special food there's nothing like that all it is is accountability right and so those guys they pair up with someone freshman you're gonna say hey you know my buddies who followed that path said hey if i'm not here at 5 a. m Monday Wednesday Friday come to my door wake me up throw water in my face do whatever you gotta do to wake me up because we're going swimming Monday, Wednesday, Friday.

GAETANO BETTINELLI: So you've got to surround yourself with people who share the vision of your dream and who will encourage you along that way and keep you accountable on that path, keep going down that path.

DANO WEIR: And so that's true in finance as well, right? I mean, that's the people around you contribute to the environment that you're creating with your wealth.

GAETANO BETTINELLI: 100%. 100%.

DANO WEIR: As an advisor, have you seen, you know?

GAETANO BETTINELLI: People you've interacted with who have bad influences in their life who could be doing better if they had different people around them yeah 100 right it's like hey i'm i'm overspending and eating you know it's like okay great you know is your friend group what do you do with your friend groups right is your friend group going out to eat or do you ever invite them over a barbecue right i don't know that might be a little harsh maybe i have to edit that out but.

DANO WEIR: When did you get into Marine Leadership Training? Was that at Annapolis or was that somewhere else?

GAETANO BETTINELLI: Good question. So leading up to the summer between your, leading up to your senior year, they expose you to various military options that you can do post-graduation. And then when you come back senior year, they ask you to submit your preferences.

GAETANO BETTINELLI: There are 22 of them with the time that I went through and you list number one through 22. So I want to go Marine Corps ground. That was the right path for me for lots of reasons that are outside the scope of this conversation.

DANO WEIR: Marine Corps ground. Marine Corps ground.

GAETANO BETTINELLI: So you are a Marine that's on the ground. Marines try to keep it really simple for their people, you know, just to make sure that they're really connecting the dots with those things.

DANO WEIR: Can we just, can I stop you right now? Can you describe to someone who's not familiar with the various branches of the services? What makes the Marine Corps different? Because the Marine Corps is different.

GAETANO BETTINELLI: The Marine Corps is different.

DANO WEIR: And the other branches all say it. So can you tell me?

GAETANO BETTINELLI: Yeah, right. So you mean from like a military tactics standpoint?

DANO WEIR: I mean, describe a Marine.

GAETANO BETTINELLI: Stereotypically. Like a Marine will have great enthusiasm.

GAETANO BETTINELLI: Usually good physical proudness, usually overcomes, can have a tendency to overcome problems with just sheer willpower instead of thinking about the smarts.

DANO WEIR: That's what I was looking for. Yeah. And it's kind of awesome. Yeah. And it's kind of, you know, they attack my, my interactions with Marines is that they attack problems maybe in a, you could say in a different manner.

GAETANO BETTINELLI: Yes.

DANO WEIR: You know, then someone in the air force or someone and, you know.

GAETANO BETTINELLI: Occasionally with disproportionate you know enthusiasm and vigor nice nice yeah right i got you off track so so there's so there's Marine ground there's Marine air right there's Marines that work on the ground and then there's Marines that fly and are associated with flying so i want Marine ground which then led me to follow on training, again, keeping it very simple for their audience.

GAETANO BETTINELLI: They went to learn the basics at the Basic School.

DANO WEIR: Makes sense.

GAETANO BETTINELLI: So the Basic School, you know, teaches you the basics about being a Marine.

GAETANO BETTINELLI: It's the Marine Corps. This is for Marine Corps officers. It's the Marine Corps vehicle to teach their version of leadership. Through the classroom of infantry training. So there's a lot of field operations. You know, there's a lot of time spent in the woods. There's a lot of time spent, you know, learning admin that you need to do to be an officer and things like this.

DANO WEIR: Okay. And that ties into finance how?

GAETANO BETTINELLI: Good question. So at the Basic School, right, there's kind of two phrases that everything kind of comes back to. Right. Which they always hammer like brilliance in the basics, brilliance in the basics, brilliance in the basics. Right. So there's so many things that can go wrong on a battlefield that you don't have unless you are taking care of like the basic things.

GAETANO BETTINELLI: Right. And doing like the blocking and tackling. Correct. You're never going to get to the advanced fun, you know, like like fun, tricky things. Right. So they do a great job of just kind of hammering the basics and teaching it in a crawl, walk, run standpoint.

GAETANO BETTINELLI: So what that might look like is like, hey, if you're learning how to do a patrol, right? So you learn all these military things and you're learning how to do a patrol. Well, you know, we're going to go to the classroom and we're going to talk about patrolling tactics. And then we're going to go to like a football field and we're going to literally walk a patrol.

GAETANO BETTINELLI: Super quick. And then we're going to do patrol with four people called a fire team. Once we learn how to do it with four people, we're going to learn to do it with a squad, which is 12 people, three fire teams.

GAETANO BETTINELLI: Once we learn how to do it with a squad, we're going to do it with a platoon, about 40 people. Right? So you take these things and you build on each other. You start slow and you build up your competency and all these various military tenants.

GAETANO BETTINELLI: And by doing so, you know, you, you have a firm foundation before you got to get, try to get tricky. So, you know, sometimes we, we see people come into our office who are, you know, inexperienced investors and there's nothing wrong with that. Right. We always lead with education to bring those people along, you know, but they say, Hey, I want to talk about Bitcoin. It's like.

DANO WEIR: I want to short something.

GAETANO BETTINELLI: Yeah. Let's talk about options. You know, let's talk about shorting. And it's like, okay. Like we can have that conversation, right? But let's build out the foundation first before we get there so that we know that the house is on. Like when we go vertical, when we go vertical construction, it's, you know, it's a solid foundation.

DANO WEIR: Makes sense. You graduate from Annapolis, finished the Basic School. And give me the year. What year is this? 2000.

GAETANO BETTINELLI: So I graduated in May of 2009, graduated from the Basic School in January, 2010.

DANO WEIR: Okay. So 2010 and you are deployed.

GAETANO BETTINELLI: One intermediate step in there. After the Basic School, you get assigned your, MOS, military occupational specialty, which is like your sub, your sub specialty, your job in the Marines.

GAETANO BETTINELLI: I got assigned to be a Logistics officer, in Camp Lejeune, North Carolina. So I, so I had a couple months of specialty Logistics training, you know, associated with that before I got to Camp Lejeune. And then ultimately went right into a deployment workout.

DANO WEIR: Okay. And so just so people can understand, because you did say the word battlefield earlier, describe what some of your, you know, time when you're deployed is like as a Logistics officer.

GAETANO BETTINELLI: Yeah. Yeah.

DANO WEIR: I think when people, something I learned when I started really learning about the military is just in your mind, if you don't think much about it, you just think it's holding the flag and running and charging the hill. Yeah. I think that that's, you know, everything's guns in the military. And they certainly do have some guns, but there's a whole operation that helps make some of that happen. So describe what Logistics does.

GAETANO BETTINELLI: So what that looked like for us is like Logistics, you know, looked far from the movie experience of, you know, saving Private Ryan.

GAETANO BETTINELLI: And so we, my specific experience is we were on Camp Leatherneck. It was a time, it was in 2000, we deployed in 2000, early 2011. It was a time where Obama had ordered a troop surge into Afghanistan thinking, hey, let's kind of get ahead of the power curve here so that we therefore we can dial back. So I was at Camp Leatherneck, which was the big Marine base in the.

GAETANO BETTINELLI: Marines area of responsibility for Afghanistan, right? Army had theirs, you know, et cetera. The whole country was divided up. And so the, the Marine base that we were on, Camp Leatherneck had thousands of people on it. Thousands of people, many square miles. I don't know the exact number, but we were as the Logistics unit, think about a spider web. So that, That was at the center of.

GAETANO BETTINELLI: The Marines area, and then it would spider web out and there would be outposts further out and then be outposts further out after that. And so we were responsible for living on this big Marine Corps base and running Logistics convoys from that big base to right the outer edges of the spider web and dropping off everything that people needed for Logistics.

DANO WEIR: Surprise and stuff like that.

GAETANO BETTINELLI: That's right. The whole gamut of it. So you think about, if you think about a, well, because Afghanistan, there's a lot of sand. So we'll use that as an example, right? If you think of a patch of sand, you say, what do I need to do to set this place up? I need tents for people to sleep in. I need food. I need water.

GAETANO BETTINELLI: I need to, I need, if you know, I need electricity. So therefore I need a generator. If I have a generator, I need gas generators break. So I need repair parts. I need a mechanic who knows how to fix the generator.

GAETANO BETTINELLI: Oh, by the way, that's me just living. Now there's an active enemy that's trying to prevent me from doing my job. So I need to think about, like, how do I create defensive structures? Do I have bullets, right? Do I have rockets? Do I have radios?

DANO WEIR: Bullets.

GAETANO BETTINELLI: Yeah, don't forget your bullets in Afghanistan.

DANO WEIR: Grenades. Hey, Mike.

GAETANO BETTINELLI: Right. Yeah. Yeah.

DANO WEIR: Do we have any?

GAETANO BETTINELLI: Yeah, exactly. That's a bad day if you run out of those.

DANO WEIR: That's right.

GAETANO BETTINELLI: So we were responsible for making sure that, you know, in clear coordination and communication with those outlying units, you know, we would get the big base and we would, you know, drop off what they needed. It's all just about like, hey, there's some place we want to go and something that we want to do in the future. There's a lot of moving parts between here and there.

GAETANO BETTINELLI: How do we organize it systematically, step by step, so that we're constantly, incrementally moving towards that future vision, right? And it's easy to get lost in all the details. But if you just break it down, like, segment by segment, like, in that military example, like, hey, like, I have to live. What do I need to live? Tents, cots, food, water, toilet paper. Cool. All right.

GAETANO BETTINELLI: Let's tackle that first. We got to have that before we do military things. So when you do military things, defensive positions, guard towers, vehicles to go where we need to go on the battlefield. So so so a financial plan, you know, there's a lot of moving parts, but you just break it down into subcategories. And it's a journey to get there. But you just systematically.

DANO WEIR: This is my portfolio. Here's what I need to live. What do I need to live? I need. I'm over my head. I need to pay utilities. I got to pay so-and-so's tuition. I got, okay, so looking at the portfolio I have, how do I position that in various assets and allocations to sort of make sure that that can funnel all of this, right? Organization, a plan.

GAETANO BETTINELLI: Yeah, exactly. And even like the bigger picture before you even start shipping the tents and start staging the fuel and all that, it's like, well, what do we want this to, what do we want this space to do? Right?

GAETANO BETTINELLI: Do we want the space to be in the city so that it can you know work with the local populace do we want this do we want to occupy a space of land to that says you know hey we want this road we want to make sure that this road is clear for civilian traffic so it's like in the military like where you place the base matters. And in finance, what the vision is matters too. Right.

DANO WEIR: We're wrapping up the episode here. As we go, I want to ask you one more thing, which is there's a lot of preconceived notions when it comes to the military, the Marines specifically, people who are in the military. You've spent thousands of hours, years of your life in it. You are also from Napa. You're from this area. What do you think people get wrong about the military and the people who are in it?

GAETANO BETTINELLI: Good question.

DANO WEIR: Like, what are the people like, really? Soldiers? Marines?

GAETANO BETTINELLI: They're normal people. They're normal people. They're normal people who have, they aren't robots. They have their strengths, they have their weaknesses.

GAETANO BETTINELLI: They have their vulnerabilities, their confidences, their inconfidences.

GAETANO BETTINELLI: There's things where they're confident in, there's things that they lack confidence in. But really, it's just a section of, a cross-section of the United States. You know, that has come together and kind of set aside their personal ambitions for four years, you know, for a greater purpose.

GAETANO BETTINELLI: So I think it's easy to say like, oh, that, you know, that person was a wrestler. You know, all of the people that the person I knew that went in the Marine Corps was like this complete meathead and or, you know, something like this.

DANO WEIR: Yeah.

GAETANO BETTINELLI: But there's a lot of different flavors. There's a lot of different types. But, you know, the commonality is saying, hey, I'm putting. Kind of my life on pause for, or my personal ambitions on pause for, you know, a couple of years, you know, I kind of served this greater purpose.

DANO WEIR: Did you get out of it what you hoped you would?

GAETANO BETTINELLI: I'd say more, I'd say more. I think, I think it started with, it started with purpose, and, you know, the desire to give back and what, and what I found in that, in doing that, you know, I had amazing friendships along the way, made lifelong friends. Had, you know, really cool experiences that I'd only get in the military. You know, things like going on a submarine, flying in an airplane, jumping out of airplanes.

GAETANO BETTINELLI: You know, things like this. I was like, yeah, that was a really cool adventure that I wouldn't have gotten anywhere else. And I also, you know, was really inspired by, you know, just being around like such great people. And seeing like what they did when they left the military. That was like, yeah, you know, like dream big, go for it.

DANO WEIR: He is former captain in the Marine Corps, Gaetano Bettinelli, now advisor with Sonoma Wealth Advisors. You've gotten a little of his story today. You can learn more about him on our website, SonomaWealth. Com. You can also take our free wealth analysis there. To our clients who watched the episode, I hope you, if you work with Gaetano, I hope you.

DANO WEIR: Got a new flavor, a new side of him. Learned a little bit more about him. And wherever you found this episode, make sure you subscribe, whether it's on YouTube, Apple Podcasts, or Spotify. Thanks so much for checking it out, and we'll see you next episode. Thanks for watching and listening to It's All Money.

DANO WEIR: We hope today's episode shared information to increase your financial confidence. Now is the time in the show for the voiceover with a bunch of words at the end. Listen close, though. You might find out something you didn't know. It's All Money is powered by Sonoma Wealth Advisors.

DANO WEIR: Sonoma Wealth Advisors helps individuals and families in Northern California and across the country with building, managing, and sustaining wealth. Sonoma Wealth is a comprehensive, holistic finance solution offering financial planning, asset management, tax planning, 401k solutions, and appropriate insurance. Take our free wealth analysis now at sonomowealth.com.

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DANO WEIR: Voiceover by me, Dano. Thank you for listening to the very end. We appreciate diligent viewers and listeners. Fermata Advisors LLC is registered as an investment advisor with the SEC and only transacts business in states where it is properly registered or is excluded or exempted from registration requirements.

DANO WEIR: This content was produced by Fermata Advisors LLC, DBA Sinema Wealth Advisors, DBA Fermata 401K, DBA Fermata Tax. The opinions expressed by Fermata Advisors LLC on this show are their own. Information presented on this program is believed to be factual and up-to-date, but we do not guarantee its accuracy, and it should not be regarded as a complete analysis of the subjects discussed.

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