Who Is Coach Joe Lukacs?

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This is the Transition To RIA Vendor Profile Series where we take a look at the solution providers powering the RIA model. On this episode:

Vendor name:

Coach Joe Lukacs

Vendor category:

Practice Management

Episode host:

Brad Wales

Episode guest:

Joe Lukacs

Vendor contact info:

Website

Full Transcript:

Brad Wales – Hi, I’m Brad Wales with Transition To RIA, and this is the Transition To RIA Vendor Profile Series, where we take a look at the solution providers powering the RIA model. On today’s episode, we’re answering the question “Who is Coach Joe Lukacs?” And naturally, there is no better person to help us with that than Coach Joe Lukacs himself. Joe, thank you for coming on.

Coach Joe Lukacs – Brad, it’s my pleasure and thanks for inviting me.

Brad – As I was telling Joe ahead of time, I’m all proud of my 150 plus videos I’ve made. And he not only one upped me, he buried me underneath the ground and pointed out he’s edging over 2,000 from the time he started. So we’ll put more pressure on you, Joe, for the quality of this video than on me, but I welcome the challenge.

Coach Joe – I appreciate that. Quick sidebar story. So on my YouTube channel, and you just go find it, just Google me, my very, very, very first video is still there. And it’s terrible. And the reason why I leave it there is so many people try to be perfect out of the gate. And what they don’t realize is about doing the reps, right? Whether you’re an advisor asking for referrals or wanting to do COIs or do networking events or anything, any skill set, right?

We have this real affinity not to fail or look bad and the reality is to be successful, you’ve got to go walk through the fire, right? So every ever time I see it I go “Man, I’ve got to pull that sucker down.” But then I realized that there’s a reason why it’s there over that period of time, right? So you want to go check it out? It’s literally the hostage video with the timer running on the bottom. It’s really interesting. So a little little little story there.

Brad – Good, good. I can relate. I cringe at the thought of my first couple and obviously by the tenth one you get better, the 50th, 100th one and as you said unless you get that process started you never get there. But I can’t even bring myself to go back and watch the first couple just because I’m sure they’re pretty rough. But I like that analogy that you’ve got to get that started somehow.

Great, well hey, let’s jump in. So let’s start just at a high level, then we’ll kind of jump into some details. But, actually let me back up, I’ll give a little setup here for the viewer. One of the misconceptions about folks going into the RIA model and sometimes any independent-type path is they feel that oh, I’m going to be on this island once I make that move. I’ll be isolated, I won’t have colleagues, I won’t have maybe home office resources is what they’re thinking to help me with the business, whether that’s grow it, market it, whatever the case may be.

And the reality is, particularly in the last five, 10, 15 years, although as Joe’s going to point out to us, his 10 years is quite a bit longer than that, that there are resources, you just have to know who they are to be able to get the help you want. And Joe is a wonderful example of that. So with that set up, and I don’t want to steal your thunder on exactly what the offer is, but if you could give us a high-level overview of what it is you do for advisors.

Coach Joe – You know, that’s a long question, but I’m going to keep the answer very short. I mean, ultimately what it boils down to, and the frame I want to give your audience is this, if you’re looking to be the best version of yourself, if you’re looking to have the highest level of success in your career, whether that’s just purely based on economics or economics and lifestyle and balance and all those other elements to it, to go it alone is crazy. And you can look at any profession.

And I don’t care if you look at sports, you will look at the creative arts. You’re going to find that the top, very tip of the pyramid, they surround themselves with teams. They surround themselves with people that are going to make them the best version.

Great examples like LeBron James, you how does he have this great longevity in the NBA? And I don’t remember the exact number, but I want to say he invests several million dollars a year into just his body with the body workers, the nutritionist, the stretch coach, the strength coach, the yoga coach, the sports psychologist. And when he goes away in the summer, whether we rents a yacht, wherever Lebron goes, and he probably does anything he wants, they all go with him. They’re W2. They’re on his staff, right?

So to me, it’s really no different. Some of the advisors I coach, and I’ve coached them for decades, several of my clients have been with me 30-plus years. You know, they’re on the Barron’s list. And everybody thinks like, man, once you make the Barron’s list, it’s like, I’ve won the Academy Award for everything in this industry.

And I just want to let everybody know that there are a lot of Barron’s top that, yeah, they’ve reached the economic pinnacle. But if you really kind of peel them back, their health is terrible. They leave a trail of broken relationships personally behind them. So while they won the economic game, they haven’t really won the game. And I think that’s what’s good about surrounding yourself with the right people that act as a second set of eyes, the truth tellers, if you will. That’s what really, really makes a difference.

So for me, in my personal work, it’s really operating alongside my client as a non-equity partner, where I bring my 32 years of pretty much seeing it all, doing it all, experiencing it all. And the major thing is, let’s not step on any lot. There’s truly two things. Let’s not step on any landmines and blow ourselves up and let’s compress time so we can become, have a greater level of success in a shorter period of time and be 100% totally sustainable.

Brad – Do people that are seeing this vision and reaching out, is it typically because there’s some specific pain point in their world that they have recognized they want to fix? Or is it that and or maybe also, I know I’m capable of more and I’ve probably been stagnant and I need some help with that? What is a typical pivot that causes people to say, hey, I want to engage in this?

Coach Joe – Great, so really there’s really kind of two buckets that I find in my career, inspiration and desperation. So on the one side, they’re inspired, hey, I’m really good, but I wanna be great. So they’ll talk to some of their colleagues and they’ll find, and this is not just for me, one of my core beliefs is every financial advisor needs to have a coaching relationship. Whether it’s with Joe Lukacs and Magellan or CEG and John Bowen or ClientWise or it doesn’t matter. Go find your tribe, right? So inspiration.

And desperation is they’re frustrated. Like they’ve done all they can in their business model. They’ve maxed out, they stopped growing. They’re trying to grow. They can’t push through because they don’t realize that they have to evolve who they are as a person. So they’re trying to be the same version but work more and work harder and out-effort it. And motivation is great. That lasts from like January 1st to about January 25th. And then it’s gone, man.

Then you’re into the commitment zone and that’s for the other 11 months and one week basically, right? So what most advisors don’t realize is it’s like a staircase. So, hey, I want to grow to a certain level. There’s a mindset strategy. Execute. Well, then you just can’t keep doing the same thing, execute more. You have to shift. You got to become a different version of yourself, raise your standards, think differently, probably higher, right?

So your P&L is not going to do great for a year or so, but then we make the next ascension. And so it’s very much like that. It never goes straight. And a lot of advisors think that it will, or they want it to do it that way. When it doesn’t happen, they think there’s something wrong. And we all know, Brad, you know the space. Show me a patient advisor and I’ll show you somebody that’s not an advisor. They’re all impatient. So they tend not to give it time to do what they need to do.

So really in my world, I’m going to get somebody that’s already good at what they wanna do, good at their game, but they wanna be great, or they’re frustrated because they maxed out their concept, and they need a breakthrough, and they need an agent of change, and I act as that agent of change.

Brad – And most of my audience is advisors in transition, right? That’s why they might be consuming my content or coming to me for help. I frequently talk about during a transition kind of having two phases.

So phase one is you need to go through the trenches with the actual transition and make sure the experience is good for you and your team and your clients. And you’ve got to get through that, right? And all the fun stuff, if you will, of, wow, the new marketing things I can do. I want to have a podcast reference. Okay, great. Well, that’s phase two because we’ve got to get through phase one successfully.

So, correct me you feel differently. I’d put where your service is coming to more that phase two, like, let’s get through the trenches. Now let’s take advantage of our newfound world going forward. What would you say to those folks of when they should engage you? So obviously, you know, the earlier, the better I get it, but it’s easy to, oh, let me catch my breath for 12 months. And then 12 months turns into 24 months.

What would you say to those folks who are thinking okay, I’m just taking a breath after a very big process, but at the same time, you don’t want to. Next thing you know, five years has gone by and nothing. So what would you tell those people?

Coach Joe – Yeah, right. So in my career, in fact, we just got done with one in the fall, I’ve helped 157 clients move. So I’ve been really riding shotgun a lot on these. In fact, one of my teams, they just left a big wirehouse last year, $600 million for partners. It was a very complex move. So typically, if I had my perfect world, I’m going to get them a year before they move.

And the reason why I’m going to get them a year before their move is I’m going to help them get mentally ready for the move. Because they’re going to have the sleepless nights. They’re going to have the doubts. This is good idea. Should we be doing this? Are my clients going to come? And depending where they’re exiting from, how hard is the former firm going to push to retain? Are they going to grant everybody, all the clients, a free year of no fees to retain assets? All the things that are possible in our space, we know.

So I want to get them there. So to me, phase one is, okay, deciding to do it, right? And then locking that in with the custodian, with yourself and all that. That’s phase one. And then the day before you pull the trigger is the night you don’t sleep well at all, period, right? You’re freaking out. And trust me, I would probably say in the third to maybe 40% of the situation, I’d literally get a text message or a phone call in the middle of the night or first thing the next morning going, tell me why I’m doing this again, because they have that doubt.

And I have to remind them, hey, remember a year ago when we set this all in motion, this was your compelling idea, and I have them write this all down. So this has become, why are we doing this? What is our compelling reason for it? Where do we want to be 10 years from now? This is the fire we need to walk through to get to the other side. This is the second-hardest thing you’re ever going to do in the business. The first hardest thing was to be successful in the first place.  And I prepped them for that. So that’s like for me, phase one.

Phase two is when they hand in the resignation letter and then for like the first, depending on the moves, you know, 90 to 180 days, we’re only doing two things. We’re moving our people and learning our new platform. That’s it, man. Like 1A, 1B, that’s all you’re going to sleep, eat and drink for that three- to six-month period of time. Then we’re getting into phase three, which is what do we do with this new platform, right? All this marketing stuff. We are so far behind with our client reviews, right?

You know, normally leading up to a move, you’re not doing reviews in your normal cadence. In fact, you’re going to go dark. And definitely on the other side of that, you’re not bringing ACAP forms in and then doing reviews on top of that. That’s crazy, right?

So you’re going to be a good six to nine months behind on your review cadence. And this is where you’ve got to really demonstrate to them, hey, this is why we did this for you guys, right? Look at the tech we have now. Look at the reporting we have now. Look, we’re able to do webinars and actually record them and make them available for you and all these other things. So to me, that’s like phase three, let’s get the client experience good.

Then phase four is what is now possible? Podcasting, deploying new technology. So if I look at it from the moment they said go to the transition to where we’re into phase four, it’s about a two- to maybe two-and-a-half-year cycle. And that can get compressed obviously.

What I need to do a lot of times when we’re kind of in that phase, and we all know this too, and I’ll say this, when you make a transition, you really don’t know what client’s going to say yes when. And this is the big unknown.

I tell all my clients, look, here’s the deal. You’re going to be surprised. The clients that you think that you went to their kid’s wedding or bar mitzvah and you think it was tight, they’re going to go, “Well, hey, we’re going to think about it you know, we’re going to take a meeting with the team that took over.” and you’re flabbergasted like my gosh, right? Now that doesn’t mean they’re going to stay. But it freaks you out a little bit, right?

And then there are others wherein we’re going to send them the ACAT paperwork thinking “I don’t think they like us, so they’re probably not going to sign it.” But they’re the first ones to get the paperwork back. And it’s just so random that it’s literally unpredictable. That’s why I tell everybody and you really can’t measure these moves on a percentage or however you’re measure it for at least 90 to maybe 120, 160 days. It’s just going to take time. And again, that patience, which most advisors lack.

So it’s really for me just helping them get over the mental and emotional hurdles and the massive, massive amount of uncertainty that they have, no matter how much planning you do, no matter how good you are in getting everything all squared away. Man, they’re still jumping out of the airplane and we help them pack the parachute, right? And that sucker better open for them. So there’s a lot of moving parts with a transition, and you know this well as I do.

Brad – Yeah. I wrote that down. The mental aspect, like you said, and then the word I often use is confidence. I can very much reassure someone we have chosen the right path for them and we put the right building blocks in place. They still need that mental confidence to plow through it. And so to your point, yeah,  I guess it’s certainly valid that mental part needs to start building up well in advance.

And I certainly joke with people that how often I’ve had to walk folks back from the ledge and they’ll even admit that kind of thing. Then at the same time, though, I would say you’ve got to have the right pieces in place and you do have some support to help you through it mentally. Then on the other end, most all those advisors come back after the dust has settled, they’ve caught their breath and say, wow, I was way too worried or way overreacting. But that doesn’t seem like it at the time.

Coach Joe – No, no, no, no. I talked to them and it was like, “Joe, how do I get more confident about this move?” And I’m like, “You’re not” And they’re like, “What?” I said, “No, man, you need courage right now. So that’s the emotion you need because that’s the only way you’re gonna get confidence.” How do we get confidence? Confidence is a belief that something’s gonna go really well no matter what, right? That’s confidence. Hey, I believe this is gonna happen.

Well, you and I, it’s not our lives, right? It’s the person whose life, the advisor’s life, right? So we can tell, man, this is gonna be great. You’ve done hundreds, I’ve done hundreds from my seat, right? And we have a track record and we can tell them that. You know what though? Their conscious mind hears it. Their analytical mind hears it. Their caveman brain goes “Danger!” How do we know? The reality is they’re not gonna know. How much data do you put in front of a human being? So at the end of the day, look man, you’re just gonna need courage.

Courage first, confidence second. You just in your gut know this is the right move to make for you and your clients. And that’s going to take you courage to walk in or submit that letter of resignation. That is a moment not of confidence, that is a moment of courage. And it’s different than in their brain where they think, now, OK, I’m not trying to be confident because I’ve tried that. It’s not really working that well. But I can definitely get the courage to do this, right?

So I just, in other words, I want them to run a different pattern up until the move, right? And then as soon as I start getting ACAT paperwork in and transfers, that’s where the confidence really manifests itself in a real way. And they’re like, oh yeah, this is gonna work out. And then now I got courage and confidence going and then we kind of tamp it all down. And then a couple of months later we’re in good shape and typically, I’m sure you’ve heard it too, man. They say “I should have done this years ago.”

It’s just one of those things where I’ve never seen something not what I call economically paper out well. The economics are just staggering in terms of the moves. It’s getting the human mind around it.

If somebody is really certainty driven, like a great example, I’m not going into names, is why doesn’t an advisor stay at a firm and give away, let’s say, 60% of revenue? In other words, if I get a million dollar solo advisor and so they’re giving the firm basically $600,000, right? Plus whatever they don’t reimburse firstly and buy it as source. And they still gotta come out of pocket for stuff.  And are they really getting $600,000 worth of value there? And they really don’t, I say this respectfully, and they really don’t own anything.

So I mean, just looking at it from a logical standpoint, you’re like, well, where’s the business case in that? I mean, from the firm and the shareholders, it’s perfect business case, right, in essence. On our side, no, but then why doesn’t everybody do it? Because not everybody’s wired for it, right? And they’ll create a narrative in their mind like this.

I don’t we want to worry about having to keep stocking the paper clips and making sure we have light bulbs. I don’t wanna be alone on an island by myself, right? I need this big thing, because it makes me feel like a cocoon. I’ve got all these resources. I say, yeah, man, you’re paying for every one of them, by the way, whether you use them or not. I’ve got all this.

So it’s really something where it’s not for everyone, but here’s what I do say. And this is like one of the biggest pieces of advice I think I can give your audience. I am an absolute non-negotiable believer in what I call a plan B strategy. What is a plan B strategy? Right now, if you’re at a firm, that’s your plan A. But what happens if local leadership changes?

Or, as they always tend to do every year, jack with the grid again, right? Or they tell you something that you’ve had access to, you no longer have access to. And now you’re in a situation. Or just say politically, and I’ve seen this, I won’t get into names, but I’ve seen clients walked out the door for doing nothing other than not being on the good side of the branch of regional people, right? They can always find a reason to get rid of you, by the way, and they don’t have to tell you they’re gonna do it till they do. So bottom line is this, if something goes sideways in your game, who’s your first call?

And if you don’t have that figured out and don’t have things pre-vetted, then you’re going to be behind a very bad, dangerous and expensive curve. So all my clients, even if they’re affirmed, say, look, man, I know you love it here and that’s great. But maybe one day you’ll wake up and you won’t. So let’s do some vetting. And I would say in three quarters of the vetting process, three quarters of time, it’s just what it is. Vetting, oh yeah, here’s I know, you know, here’s what I’m going to do, so like that.

But in a quarter of them, they start really understanding the economics and the differential in the models and they go, maybe I don’t need my own personal black swan moment. Maybe we need to really explore this and really do our due diligence around it and really make a decision.

So worst case for me, I’ve protected my client. They’ve got a plan B. If something goes sideways, we know what we’re going to do. The other case is, hey, this sounds pretty doggone good, maybe I should just do it, right? And then we get into that whole countdown period and stuff like that.

So at the end of the day, again, if you’re watching and listening to this, you always talk to your clients about allocation and risk migration and all the other things we talk about when you invest your client’s money or do their planning, but what’s your plan as the advisor?

Like, what are you gonna do if something doesn’t go the way you want it to, or God forbid, you just for whatever reason, you’re all of a sudden, you know, not liked anymore and they want to get rid of you? What are you going to do? That’s your family’s livelihood at stake. You owe it to your family to at least do a Plan B vetting.

Brad – I always point out that the industry continues to evolve. How the world works today was not how it worked 30 years ago. And so I typically say, hey, you probably should be doing this exercise every five years or so anyways, just to just to make sure whatever your setup is, is still the best thing for you. And I also say be careful what you ask for, though, because the minute you start dipping a toe and taking a look, you just might like what you find out. And, you know, and it could be pretty cool.

Coach Joe – Pretty, pretty cool. Yeah. I want to share a quick story if I can.  I have a client, this is really interesting, so they are there with an IBD. So it’s not even like a wirehouse gig, right? But they went to Future Proof last year and they literally called me from Future Proof going “We’re going 100% RIA.” I said “Why?” I know Future Proof is Burning Man for advisors. I know exactly what that thing is right? He goes, “There’s all this great tech, all this AI is coming down. He said we can’t use any of it. Our broker-dealer won’t even let us use the note-taking app for our Zooms.”

So the point is that, yeah, when you start looking, when you kind of peek your head over the fence to see what the other side looks like, and your eyes go really wide with all the possibilities and what all the tools are available, yeah, be careful what you wish for, maybe, right? But wouldn’t you at least rather know, and this is what the firms are really good at, is insulating their people from all that. Like, oh, you don’t need that. We do that.

I remember, I won’t get into names because it’d be embarrassing, but I spoke at a broker-dealer home office conference several years ago. And it’s one of the larger regionals, if I said the name, everybody would know who they are. And I sat next to the CEO, because I was going to go on stage and do something. So we’re we’re prepping the day before, like we’re in practice mode.

And so he’s sitting next to me and the director of training’s on the other side of me. And he looks at me he goes “You know, Joe, we have the best technology in the entire industry.” And I’m like, I didn’t say anything. I said, “Oh good. Yeah, it’s good. Yeah, congratulations.” Right, what am I going to say? Like I’m going, my brain’s going, he has no idea what’s really out there. No clue whatsoever. Right. He’s got the ivory tower mind. Right. So I turned to Mike, the training director and go “Does he really believe that?” He goes “Yep.”

I go this guy has not been out in the, I bet you he’s never gone to a Schwab conference or anything to see really what the rest of the world’s like, right? They live in their little ecosystem and they think their world’s the best world, you know, in the pond. And so that gets trickled down, right, to all the advisors and staff and regional people. And next thing you know, you got this big case of group think until one them goes, takes a look and then, huh, maybe there’s a difference. It’s almost like a, I don’t say cult, that’s a little too harsh.

But there’s this real mindset that you need the mothership and the mothership is responsible for your level of success. I think early in somebody’s career, I think there’s more truth to that statement. And I think as you kind of mature through, you know, year one to year five is what I call, you know, survival years.

And then years five to 10 is the sustainability years and then years 10 plus is the scale or the scale decade. And that first maybe five to eight years, that’s probably true in most cases where you need that infrastructure and you don’t know anything. But at some point, you start paying the bill as you continue to elevate and the value prop really does change.

Brad – Obviously we’re touching at a high level in what you can do. For those people that are maybe in that scale phase and this has kind of resonated and they’re seeing the value in someone like you that could help them grow that and scale that, I think a lot of your comments are indicative of how you can help people. But every advisor, as you know, every advisor team, every advisor situation, every team situation is unique.

So if someone were to reach out, and we’ll get into contact info here in a second, but what does that look like? So somebody says, Coach Joe, it seems like you could help me, but I have no idea. What does that look like just to kind of set the tone?

Coach Joe – Yeah, that’s great. So I’ve had this very open door policy for decades. It serves me well. Every once in a while I get a weirdo, but for the most part, it’s been really nice people. So you just go to my website, coachjoe.guru, G-U-R-U. And there’s an intro Zoom link right there.

You just book it like with a Calendly link, you have 30 minutes. Any advisor in this industry can have 30 minutes of my time, no questions asked. It’s not a sales pitch fest or anything like that. It’s just a conversation. It’s very similar to what you and I are shooting right now, just back and forth.

Typically, if there’s something there, we’ll go to a more formal evaluation, which will kind of do some things. The two things I will say is, number one, is that I am very process-driven when we think about taking on new engagements. So it is not, it’s the anti-sales process, I like to call it. And if we decide to do some work together, everything I do is month-to-month.

So you’re not doing a six-month, one-year gig. I really created my business model decades ago under the premise that I want to treat others as I want to be treated. And coaching is not something that can be sold. It has to be experienced. So what we tend to do is do trial periods where someone can come into our space for a couple of weeks or even a month or so, and there’s no credit card. We don’t charge them. We want them to make an educated decision on if we’re a right fit for them and are they a right fit for us.

So my philosophy has always been to take the risk away from the decision maker. And that’s just the way we do business. We’ve done it that way for 32 years. I don’t plan to change it anytime soon. And I just think it’s a way to do it.

If you think about advisors, no advisor that you and I know has a five-year deal to run their client’s money. It’s a total at-will relationship, So why shouldn’t the coach that’s advising that advisor operate under the same set of rules, right? To me, it just makes sense, right?

And so that’s the way we do things here. We’re a little bit different than some of the other, and they’re all good, by the way. So everybody’s entitled to their own way of doing business, and so it’s all good. That’s just our approach, how we do it.

Brad – Yeah, you’ve got to kind of earn the business month after month by providing that ongoing value and yeah, I like that. So for those folks that have never used a coach or certainly never used you to just to kind of clarify, generally your model is a month-to-month engagement.

I realize every situation is unique. So this is you would kind of work with them, figure out where you can add value and then come up with what the price point would be and then that would kind of be an ongoing thing throughout the duration?

Coach Joe – We like the word investment, right? No, no, we don’t like the word “price”. So yeah, look, I mean, so we have two businesses real quick. I think this helps.

So on the personal coaching, I.e., you want to work with me. There’s a wait list. So we go through an interview process, a vetting process, an application process, and if that all checks out and we’re all aligned, then we would go talk about engagement, right? Going forward again, month-to-month.

But I will tell you, and I haven’t done the math on this recently, I probably need to. The last time I added it up, I’ve got four clients that have been with me 30 years. And I’ve got clients, if I were to kind of put a median together, we’re probably at 12- to 15-year engagements on the personal side. I’m very sticky that way.

Typically what I’ll do is I’ll graduate somebody. Like when they’ve gotten to where they wanna go, like, I’m good, congratulations. If you’ve reached your destination economically and business-wise, then you don’t really need to talk to me anymore. I get bored real easy. I want to work with advisors that have big dreams, big visions. Like, you know, I want to be excited about what we’re doing, right? So that’s the one side.

The other side, we do have a group coaching and AI coaching game, Magellan Network. That’s MagellanNetwork.net. They’re the same protocol. You can come in, fill out a very short application. You’re interviewed by a member of my team, my son Michael, who runs that group for us.

And again, same scenario, you come in 30 days, you get full access to the platform, the AI, everything. We would treat you like a client. And you’ll know within a couple of weeks whether we’re a good fit for you or not. It doesn’t cost you anything.

And Brad, the reason why I do it this way, somebody asked me this a while ago, and you know this, this is very small world, okay? Reputations matter. So I would rather have somebody say, hey, you know what? I tried the Coach Joe-Magellan thing, it wasn’t for me, but they got some really good stuff in there. I didn’t get burned, I didn’t have to sign a contract, I didn’t pay him a dime, great, right?

That to me is failure, and I’ll live with that all day. I’ll take that level of failure all day long, right? Because, again, my integrity is at stake. So we’ve created everything around this, we take the risk. And it’s worked really well for us. We don’t have salespeople. We don’t dial people up five times a day to try to get them to sign up or anything crazy like that. We attract them. If it’s a good fit, it’s a good fit. If it’s not, no harm, no foul. Plenty of advisors to help. We’re all cool with that.

Brad – Yeah, I like it. I frame it by saying it’s better to play the long game, right? And so if someone’s not a fit now, well, they could send someone to you down the line and you’re better off just playing the long game and it works out in the end.

Coach Joe – Or their timing’s not right. So in other words, say, you know what? Good possibility it’s not the right timing. Everybody can have great goals, poor timeline. Not a great goal, right? So everything has to be there, and we’re cool with that. Like, I really, really am. And I just love this space. Like I said, I’ve been doing that for 32 years. My goal, and I’ll say it out loud, is to do this until I’m doing it for 50 years. That’ll put me at year 80, by the way, on the chronological world. And I think I’m just getting started. I really do. Just getting started.

Brad – I think a thing that’s huge about that 32 years, and I’m creeping up on 25 in the industry, is what I’ve realized is, and advisors that have been in the game a long time can relate to this, it’s not just your skill set. It’s not just your knowledge. It’s 32 years of war stories that you can share in 32 years of seeing how things were done well and how things were not done well. And so not to take anything away from a you know, newer coaches out there, but it is what it is.

There’s a lot of value with 32 years that you can share with folks. So I know you wouldn’t say it so blatantly that much because you’re humble, but there is value there, yeah.

Coach Joe – Yeah. No, I mean, you know, it’s funny. I think some of you get very nostalgic because my anniversary is on the 15th of February. And, you know, I was thinking about this recently. I’m like, oh, what have I really seen? And I remember when I started my career, when I was cold-walking lower Manhattan, you know, I had literally a pager, a phone card, and an ugly business card.

And back then, fee-based and advisory was like, that was so early adopter. It was all commissionaries dropping tickets and banging away on the phones and selling stuff. And to where we are today and just the evolution and then obviously some bumps in the road, right? 9-11, COVID, right? 2008, 2009. And so, you work through all that.

You realize a couple things about our industry number one. I told somebody this at a conference, I said if financial advising as an industry is like the cockroach, it will survive a nuclear holocaust. Because it will always be adapting. I remember said oh, you know, discount brokers. They’re gonna put everybody out of business, right? Then it was the robo advisors. They’re going to put us out of business. Then it was DOL, the partner labor rules. They’re going to put us out of business, right?

Then the great recession, well, that’s going to put us out of business. And now it’s like AI. When? Joe, AI is going to replace the device.

I said, nope, not at all. Not a shot. Never will happen. Not in the lifetime that we’re going to care about who watches and listens to this. It will augment you. You’d be crazy not to adopt it. But it’s not going to replace you. It’s going to extend you, if anything.

So I’ve just seen so much. And this whole industry tries to either write us off or legislate us out. At the end of the day, man, we always find a way to adapt. So I’m not worried about anything.

And the last thing I would say, and I know we got to wrap this up, if any of your listeners have adult children or children that will be adults in any period of time here, I would have you really strongly encourage them to look at being a financial planner, financial advisor. Number one, we have a massive shortage coming up. I talked to lot of my colleagues in the consulting world about what are we going to do about the brain drain that we’re having?

And it’s just a great gig to help people with their money and to get paid well to do it. I mean, you know, I would, if somebody said to me, my son’s thinking about being a lawyer, doctor, an accountant, or an advisor, which one would you him pick without hesitation, I go, do the advisor thing.

You’ll make more money than a doctor will, and you’ll have a lot more time, freedom, economic abundance. You won’t get sued nearly as much.

And if you do it a certain way, you can have a real asset for your family. So I’m just a real big, I get a little evangelical about it, but I’m super passionate about this space, both today and for the future.

Brad – I love it man, that’s a good way to end it. I love your passion, it’s obviously coming through. We’ll put the websites there in the show notes as well, but also if you could just make a plug, what’s the best way for people to see your videos and your podcasts that you put out there as well. I think it’s a great resource people can tap.

Coach Joe – Yeah, I mean, you’re just one, I mean, you can do it AI search or Google, just put Coach Joe or Magellan Network or coachjoe.guru. I mean, those are all my sites. You can find everything. I Google myself every once in a while. I show up, so I know it’s there. Just do the right searching. If you do my last name, just make sure you spell it properly, L-U-K-A-C-S, not like it sounds. That will mess some people up. Other than that, it’s been a blast doing this with you, Brad.

Brad – Cool, well thank you for coming on. For those folks that are kind of excited about this as I’m sure you are and think Joe you and I could, if time wasn’t an issue we could keep chatting for another couple hours on this stuff so.

Coach Joe – Yes, we can do some Tim Ferriss- level stuff on this, 100%.

Brad – Yeah, yeah. Well, hey, I appreciate all that you do for the industry and I appreciate you coming on to share some wisdom with us here.

Coach Joe – No, thank you. It’s been my pleasure.

Brad – Alright, thanks Joe.​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​

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