Gaming the System: Merging Finance with the Digital World of YouTubers & Streamers with Galen M Herbst de Cortina

 00:01
Charlie Van Derven
Welcome to another episode of RIA Collective. As always, I'm your host, Charlie Van Derven. I've got a fun guest. It starts with his name. We'll get to that in a second. Young man. I'm impressed. Where he's come from? I'm impressed. Where he's going? And today we're going to talk about niche marketing. We have that conversation pretty often, but Galen, my guest today, has a pretty narrow focus. That's different for me, but as a 30 something young man, it would be different than me. So, without further ado, galen Herps de Cortina. How did I do? 

 00:37
Galen M Herbst de Cortina
You got it right. 

 00:38
Charlie Van Derven
Like, I didn't roll my R's. I didn't have a cortina or something. I don't know. But it's a German background. I don't know. Galen, welcome to RA Collective, and thank you so much for taking a little time out of your day to be our guest today. Glad to be here, man. So we got a fun story. It starts with your name. That's a fun name. I don't know if you run into it, but when I make so Van Duvern is two words, yours is three. So when I make a reservation for a car or a hotel, I never know, like Charlie Van Durvin. I show up thinking, we don't have you in our reservation system. 

 01:13
Galen M Herbst de Cortina
What's my tab under at the bar? Is it HD or crap? 

 01:20
Charlie Van Derven
Yeah, I run it. So I am, for a lot of people, charlie Durvin or Van charlie. Anyway, you know, so I'll spare you all the details. Yours is even harder than mine, man. 

 01:30
Galen M Herbst de Cortina
Yeah, that's parents instead of Hyphenating, they did the sort of Mexican background. On my mom's side, they did day instead of the Hyphen. So it's herps dad name. Cortina. Mom's name herps de Cortina. 

 01:41
Galen M Herbst de Cortina
I am a Herps of the family Cortina. 

 01:43
Charlie Van Derven
It's cool, man. I like it. So Van Duvern, just for sake, is like of the moors, Dutch last name right here's. The very hearsay, uneducated. I didn't research this, but this is what I hear. Van is of day is the Van Dur. They added an R when we came to America. I guess ven is swamps or moors. So I'm literally Charlie of the swamp land or something like that. Something like that. Sounds less impressive when you say it that way, doesn't it? 

 02:18
Galen M Herbst de Cortina
Those are perfect for like, Florida or. 

 02:20
Galen M Herbst de Cortina
Something like that, right? 

 02:21
Charlie Van Derven
Listen. So, Galen, I am interested. Now, I didn't say it, but Buff, your finances is your firm. And Thousand Oaks, California Been through that area a few times in my life. I want to know about the name because it speaks to a very niche audience. Now, even without the niche, I like Buff Your Finances, that's kind of a cool general name anyway. But it really speaks to an audience that is very specific to the practice you're building. Why don't you tell me a little bit about that? 

 02:51
Galen M Herbst de Cortina
Sure. 

 02:52
Galen M Herbst de Cortina
So I work primarily with people who make a living in what you'd broadly call new, you know, YouTube streaming on platforms like Twitch, that kind of thing. A lot of them video game focused, although not exclusively. And in the video game context, buff is to buff something is to strengthen, improve, make better. 

 03:17
Galen M Herbst de Cortina
Right? 

 03:18
Galen M Herbst de Cortina
The opposite of that would be nerf, if you were talking about parallels, buff versus nerf. And so, when I was looking to pick a firm name, I had settled on that niche after a bit of a winnowing down process and was trying to think through what would make sense to do. And as we talked about at the start of this, my last name is. 

 03:36
Galen M Herbst de Cortina
A real pain in the ass. 

 03:39
Galen M Herbst de Cortina
Great for SEO once you can spell it, but otherwise awful. And so it didn't make sense to be herpsicortina wealth management or herbsic cortina planning. And I didn't know that would necessarily connect with the client base that I was looking for. So I tried to go for something. 

 03:53
Galen M Herbst de Cortina
That was easier to. 

 03:57
Galen M Herbst de Cortina
Say over the phone, type into a browser for a search or something like that, but still spoke to that target market. I've had some people ask me if my target market is, like, people who are into weightlifting and stuff like that, which I can. Then after the fact, I was like, Darn it. Yeah, okay. I can see how that would also be an implication you could take from it. It's really focused around that niche. Same with the brand colors being like the sort of blue, yellow, orange. That's typically what you'd see. Not always, but often in games, that is a color used to denote a buff and then got the eight bitcoin logo, that kind of a thing, all. 

 04:35
Galen M Herbst de Cortina
Hoping to evoke that target market. 

 04:39
Charlie Van Derven
Even the font? Yeah, even the font is that might be old schooly font that I would recognize from my Atari 2600 days. 

 04:47
Galen M Herbst de Cortina
It's again, eight bit. 

 04:50
Charlie Van Derven
Totally. So it's gone beyond space. Invaders. And what else was I playing? I think the coolest game we played when I was a kid was like Jungle Adventure on Activision or something like that. I don't know, whatever it were. And we felt cool because it was way cooler than Texas Instruments or what was the other one? The Lewis and Clark Trail or something like that. I don't know, whatever. 

 05:12
Galen M Herbst de Cortina
Oregon Trail. 

 05:13
Charlie Van Derven
Yeah, Oregon Trail. Thank you. 

 05:14
Galen M Herbst de Cortina
Yeah, Oregon Trail is great. 

 05:15
Charlie Van Derven
Yeah, dude. So I was gamer back in the day, just a little bit before you were, probably. So I can tell we got to know each other a little bit prior to our conversation today. Like, you're in an office that is not fancy. You got a white background. It's not like you got a great mic, you got a great headset. Your audio, I'm sure, is perfect. But your business is really virtually based entirely. 

 05:39
Galen M Herbst de Cortina
And there are a couple of reasons for that. One is my target market is already. 

 05:45
Galen M Herbst de Cortina
Set up virtually like, that's how their business is run. 

 05:48
Galen M Herbst de Cortina
Right. They are typically at home. There's a couple who have their own office, but typically at home filming video content. Video fidelity is important. Audio fidelity is much more important because you can tolerate a video that is a little grainy. 

 06:06
Galen M Herbst de Cortina
But if audio is off, at least. 

 06:09
Galen M Herbst de Cortina
For me, immediately I'd be like, I cannot listen to this. 

 06:11
Galen M Herbst de Cortina
I cannot watch this. 

 06:13
Galen M Herbst de Cortina
So I've operated fully, virtually the entire time. It was from my home for well, first apartment, then home for a while. 

 06:19
Galen M Herbst de Cortina
And then moved out to an office. 

 06:21
Galen M Herbst de Cortina
Space because we wanted the bedroom that was my office for a child's bedroom. And so it made sense for me to move out. 

 06:27
Galen M Herbst de Cortina
But I essentially have never met a. 

 06:32
Galen M Herbst de Cortina
Client in person for a meeting. It's the kind of thing where I usually have art in the background but moved into the office somewhat recently and haven't gotten it set up. 

 06:46
Galen M Herbst de Cortina
But it's the kind of thing where. 

 06:47
Galen M Herbst de Cortina
This is how my clients are already conducting all of their business, and then they don't have to drive to me. Then they aren't geographically restricted because while Los Angeles, which is the sort of. 

 06:57
Galen M Herbst de Cortina
Metro that I'm adjacent to, is basically the biggest market for the kinds of. 

 07:03
Galen M Herbst de Cortina
Clients that I work with, it's a very geographically dispersed industry, so it doesn't make sense to restrict myself to a physical location. And my clients tend to be folks who are well set up for virtual anyways, and they tend to be folks who err on the side of not going places if they don't need to because it's extra time, effort, all that kind of jazz, right? 

 07:26
Charlie Van Derven
Yeah. Again, I got a few years on you, but even at I don't think. 

 07:33
Galen M Herbst de Cortina
I've come out of COVID Yeah, like. 

 07:35
Charlie Van Derven
I really and I would say I'm an introvert masquerading as an extrovert. You know, I don't know. I can do this pretty well, and I can meet in person pretty well. It's not necessary. I spoke at an event yesterday. It's not comfortable. I can do it. I've been doing it for my whole career. But I wouldn't say it's fun being in front of 75 people. That's not fun. It's nerve wracking for me. So I kind of rather that too. Now. I got one good friend that is in gaming that actually I think he was based out of Austin for quite a while. Austin's a big center for moved to and I don't think he's working with a Swedish company. I think he was like, I want. 

 08:20
Galen M Herbst de Cortina
To be in know. 

 08:22
Charlie Van Derven
So pretty cool. Pretty cool. I love that evolution. I kind of fast forward a little bit, galen, I want to back up a little bit, right? We're talking about where you're at today. How did you find financial services? Was it something you always knew you wanted to know? 

 08:39
Galen M Herbst de Cortina
How did all that work out? 

 08:41
Galen M Herbst de Cortina
I never would have thought that this would be something that I would want to do. My dad is a now retired physician who viewed the entire financial services industry as predatory, probably with some reason to that right? 

 08:59
Charlie Van Derven
Sure. 

 09:00
Galen M Herbst de Cortina
And so high income earner, easy to. 

 09:03
Galen M Herbst de Cortina
Target, that kind of stuff. I know he had a lot of products pitched to him that didn't necessarily. 

 09:09
Galen M Herbst de Cortina
Make sense and so because of that. 

 09:12
Galen M Herbst de Cortina
I did not actually grow up with a particularly not that I thought of the industry often or was it much involved in my day to day life. But the thoughts that I had about it were not particularly positive. 

 09:23
Galen M Herbst de Cortina
They were sort of pushy salesy is. 

 09:27
Galen M Herbst de Cortina
Sort of how I perceived it. And so I never would have thought I would have done this. Studied environmental science and policy and undergrad, and after college got a job at a company called Epic that makes electronic. 

 09:38
Galen M Herbst de Cortina
Medical records and worked on. 

 09:42
Galen M Herbst de Cortina
I basically helped hospitals and hospital systems. 

 09:46
Galen M Herbst de Cortina
Get their new technology up and running. 

 09:49
Galen M Herbst de Cortina
And it was a tech job through and through to the point that I burned out because of how much it took to do. 

 10:02
Galen M Herbst de Cortina
And part of that burnout was that I was cognizant of the fact that. 

 10:08
Galen M Herbst de Cortina
The things that I was doing on a macro level was doing a lot of good. Helping a regional hospital system that served the prison population and their local underserved community, do practice medicine more effectively, be more effective with patients, huge amounts of macro good. But I never saw it because my job was to get them to the point where they were live on the software and I didn't see it afterwards and I just moved on to the next project. 

 10:36
Galen M Herbst de Cortina
And so after I burned out there. 

 10:38
Galen M Herbst de Cortina
I ended up at American Family Insurance in a contract project manager role, again on the It side but I was. 

 10:44
Galen M Herbst de Cortina
In the life company and got to. 

 10:48
Galen M Herbst de Cortina
See a bit of how financial services worked there because it happened to be the lifeline that I was placed in. Lifeline as opposed to PNC, not like lifeline one word. 

 11:00
Galen M Herbst de Cortina
And then at the same time I was doing that I got engaged and. 

 11:07
Galen M Herbst de Cortina
Was getting ready to get married and took more of an interest in my own personal finances. I was fortunate enough that I'd gotten. 

 11:13
Galen M Herbst de Cortina
Jobs where I'd had my parents tell. 

 11:16
Galen M Herbst de Cortina
Me, put some in your four hundred and one K and don't overspend. And I was living in the midwest so I had not like a San Francisco tech salary but a good salary living in the midwest. So I was comfortable, I was saving all these kinds of things but I hadn't really ever looked at optimizing. So I started to research it and went wow, this is actually really interesting. In part because I was getting married. 

 11:38
Galen M Herbst de Cortina
And thinking like I should figure some. 

 11:40
Galen M Herbst de Cortina
Of this stuff out. It seems like a valuable long term thing. So I found that to be really interesting and because I'd had two different jobs under my belt. I had some insight into the things. 

 11:51
Galen M Herbst de Cortina
That I liked and didn't like about the work that I'd done and was. 

 11:58
Galen M Herbst de Cortina
Essentially looking for the next thing that I wanted to be doing and came across. 

 12:05
Galen M Herbst de Cortina
It was a book called The Dream. 

 12:09
Galen M Herbst de Cortina
Manager where it taught, if I'm recalling the title correctly, where it talked a lot about. 

 12:16
Galen M Herbst de Cortina
Essentially how can you one of the main gists of it was. 

 12:21
Galen M Herbst de Cortina
Like, how can you sort of help people directly? Because I really like helping people, but. 

 12:25
Galen M Herbst de Cortina
Also recognize that I didn't connect with that macro good. 

 12:29
Galen M Herbst de Cortina
Even though I've been doing this business for six years and working with a good number of clients, I probably did more good for the world in that one, two years in the hospital system than I will ever do in this job just because of the scale of it. 

 12:40
Galen M Herbst de Cortina
But it didn't keep me going in. 

 12:43
Galen M Herbst de Cortina
The same way that helping an individual does. So the book sort of tuned me into financial services. Hey, this is a way you could help people. And then I found George Kinder's lighting the torch. 

 12:52
Galen M Herbst de Cortina
I found what is it called? 

 12:55
Galen M Herbst de Cortina
So you want to be a CFP? I think it was and those really got me going, like, oh, this is. 

 13:01
Galen M Herbst de Cortina
Something I could do in a way that matches what I'm interested in rather. 

 13:07
Galen M Herbst de Cortina
Than my past perception of what the industry is or was based on. Sort of what I'd heard growing up. 

 13:15
Galen M Herbst de Cortina
And then essentially got married, was looking. 

 13:19
Galen M Herbst de Cortina
To make a career change. 

 13:21
Galen M Herbst de Cortina
And we decided that if I was going to make a career change, a needed to get the education to back. 

 13:28
Galen M Herbst de Cortina
It because I was self taught. And that meant that sure, I might better than most people, but I'm far from an expert. So I was going to pursue the CFP education. And then my wife made the extremely good point of if I was going to be changing careers, if I was going to be getting this whole new education, and both were into fields that I didn't have much direct experience with. I might as well see if I can do it in a way where I also get a degree that I could sort of carry elsewhere. So I found a program that happened to be in Thousand Oaks, which also at the university near where I grew up that did an MBA in financial planning. And so that sort of two birds, 1 st. It gave me the core curriculum for the CFP coursework and also got me an MBA. 

 14:12
Galen M Herbst de Cortina
So if I ended up not liking. 

 14:15
Galen M Herbst de Cortina
It, and even though I expected to like it, if I ended up not liking it, well, then I have an. 

 14:18
Galen M Herbst de Cortina
MBA and can presumably take that elsewhere. 

 14:23
Galen M Herbst de Cortina
Awesome. 

 14:23
Charlie Van Derven
Yeah, awesome. So, early job experience in financial services. You had mentioned that you'd worked for a captive firm for a little while. I don't know if we want to bring names into it, probably doesn't know, but what was that experience like? Was an internship, right? 

 14:39
Galen M Herbst de Cortina
Yeah. So it was through an alumnus of the program that I was in the MBA in financial planning that Cal Lutheran does. And so through an alumnus they were looking for an intern and it was a local office localish office that basically was doing a really good job of financial planning and was working on building. 

 15:03
Galen M Herbst de Cortina
A small in house team to do. 

 15:06
Galen M Herbst de Cortina
Their own planning work. And then eventually they were sort of. 

 15:09
Galen M Herbst de Cortina
Contracting it out to other branches of. 

 15:14
Galen M Herbst de Cortina
Their firm of their broker dealer. 

 15:20
Galen M Herbst de Cortina
And the owner had a CFP and also had JD. 

 15:25
Galen M Herbst de Cortina
So they also were able to really. 

 15:27
Galen M Herbst de Cortina
Dive deep into estate planning and so. 

 15:30
Galen M Herbst de Cortina
It was a lot of really good experience doing planning work but entirely like Paraplanner back office. 

 15:40
Galen M Herbst de Cortina
But it got me exposure to not. 

 15:43
Galen M Herbst de Cortina
Only the office that I was in, which was doing just a fantastic they really were doing a fantastic job of financial planning, especially with the tools that they had, by which I mean they were restricted to their firm's tools and then built a bunch of their own to do a good job sort of around those restrictions. Like a heavily customized Nava plan. They'd built their own presentation stuff. A lot of things that now I. 

 16:07
Galen M Herbst de Cortina
Use Write Capital and for my CRM I use Wealthbox. 

 16:10
Galen M Herbst de Cortina
Things that I just have natively now in those that are no issues they were building sort of on their own. But I got to see how well the firm that I was working with. 

 16:20
Galen M Herbst de Cortina
Is doing it and at some level how poorly some of the other branches. 

 16:27
Galen M Herbst de Cortina
Were doing it that we got contracted out to. 

 16:30
Galen M Herbst de Cortina
I remember working on or looking at. 

 16:34
Galen M Herbst de Cortina
A client for another branch of it. 

 16:36
Galen M Herbst de Cortina
Who had a client making $40,000 a. 

 16:39
Galen M Herbst de Cortina
Year as a housekeeper in Los Angeles who was sold a Vul and it was like, oh, I don't know if that's the right vehicle for her. 

 16:50
Galen M Herbst de Cortina
And so because of that, since my. 

 16:54
Galen M Herbst de Cortina
Start was George Kinder lighting the torch, that kind of thing. And I had been interested in being fee only from the start because it really connected with, again, me and my sort of desire to push away from my past mental model of the business as pushy salesy, right? 

 17:10
Galen M Herbst de Cortina
I mean, you can be fee only. 

 17:11
Galen M Herbst de Cortina
And be pushy salesy but for me. 

 17:13
Galen M Herbst de Cortina
Those sort of were on opposite ends. 

 17:15
Galen M Herbst de Cortina
Of it and then seeing a couple of instances where it was this was a product that was sold. 

 17:25
Galen M Herbst de Cortina
Because it. 

 17:26
Galen M Herbst de Cortina
Fit well enough but it was far from optimal. 

 17:31
Galen M Herbst de Cortina
I basically parted ways with that company. 

 17:36
Galen M Herbst de Cortina
Shortly after I'd passed the CFP exam and did some virtual paraplanning for a couple firms basically while I was finishing up my MBA because it was a two year sort of part time program and while I was finishing it up I was doing the virtual paraplanning. And then shortly after I finished the program, I took the 65 because even though I'd passed the CFP exam, I didn't have the experience, so I couldn't use the marks, so I still had to take the 65. And then once I'd done that, I. 

 18:10
Galen M Herbst de Cortina
Got the firm registered. 

 18:12
Charlie Van Derven
Awesome. So here's what I love about this. Your dad at that time, especially because you're right, he's very high profile, high earner, right. So he get an easy guy to find. I'm sure he got all in Malibu, too. Yeah, right? Got all the seminar postcards in the world, got all the cold calls in the world, blah, blah. 

 18:33
Galen M Herbst de Cortina
Right. 

 18:35
Charlie Van Derven
If we look at the age difference, if we look at the three decades or whatever that is between your age and your dad's age, not only has that stuff still exists, man, it really does still exist. But to so much a lesser degree as most books are going, even in a captive environment. Even a series seven book is going so heavily fee based now, the firm is still going to have biases. You're still going to be selling these funds because they list first, because they paid the firm to be top. So there's still biases there. They're still at the big firms incentives to do certain things that may not be super beneficial to the client, but certainly beneficial to the advisor and the firm. But your mindset shift, I think is reflective of the mindset shift of the industry. And so I love to see the growth of the RAA Channel. 

 19:29
Charlie Van Derven
It's the reason the whole podcast exists. So that's awesome. Now got your origin story. We learned a little bit about buff and the focus of the RIA. My curiosity, you're talking about a fairly young population, right? Your focus is a fairly young population. Retirement is always in the back of the mind, but for a lot of these people, it's 30, 40 years off. What are you focused on and do you have to structure the way that you are compensated differently because of what you focus on today? 

 20:04
Galen M Herbst de Cortina
Yeah, we absolutely do have to do it differently than I feel like is sort of standard. So, yeah, average client age as of a year ago, and it probably is still in the same range, was 31. Are you familiar with discord? It's chat communication platform focused on gaming. 

 20:25
Charlie Van Derven
We've got young employees. 

 20:27
Galen M Herbst de Cortina
There you go. I'm in a Discord group of financial planners who like gaming with one of the people who's in there is Michael Kitsis. And were laughing about how when I filled out his survey, I'm probably just going to be a data point that's discarded because the categories for what percentage of your household's clients are in the following age ranges. It was under 35 to 44, 45 to 54, and scales from there. Mine was 61% under 35, 36%, 35 to 44. And the remaining 3% 45 to 54 and zeros for the rest of the call, the rest of the rows. Retirement is it is a thought, but it's less retirement than what my parents did, which is stop working and start doing things that you enjoy more and more about financial independence and not financial. 

 21:18
Galen M Herbst de Cortina
Independence like the fire movement. 

 21:21
Galen M Herbst de Cortina
But just I don't need to be. 

 21:22
Galen M Herbst de Cortina
Spending all of my time working. 

 21:26
Galen M Herbst de Cortina
I can choose to use my time as a resource for something else. 

 21:32
Galen M Herbst de Cortina
And also just again, we're talking about. 

 21:35
Galen M Herbst de Cortina
Decades off for most of them as a 31 year old. And so it's also just the part. 

 21:38
Galen M Herbst de Cortina
Of it being there's so many things. 

 21:42
Galen M Herbst de Cortina
That will change over that time frame that we do a projection and write capital to show like hey, if you do these kinds of things, it'll position you well, but also expect that everything will be different. I mean, the career that most of. 

 21:59
Galen M Herbst de Cortina
My clients work didn't exist 20 years ago. 

 22:06
Galen M Herbst de Cortina
My client who's been doing it the longest has been doing it for 13 years and that makes him literally one of the originals, right? One of the first handful of people who got what's called partnered on the Twitch platform, for instance. So it's a relatively new industry, not that entertainment is new, but their specific area of it is new. Therefore it's also reasonable to expect that it'll be very different that many years from now and probably even in half the time it might be different a year from now. Two years ago, three years ago, a whole bunch of things changed when TikTok became really popular, right? And so. 

 22:47
Galen M Herbst de Cortina
We'Re doing a lot of. 

 22:50
Galen M Herbst de Cortina
The same things that you'd be doing with other planning clients, just with a different bent to it, a different focus. So it's a lot around a lot of them started as hobbyists and then it became a business. So a lot of it is sort of initial business cleanup, making sure they're running things well, making sure they're preparing for taxes, that kind of stuff. 

 23:08
Galen M Herbst de Cortina
It's a lot of if they're in. 

 23:12
Galen M Herbst de Cortina
A position to do it, opening their first account with a little 401K for the business or a Roth IRA or setting up to back to a Roth IRA brokerage account, that kind of thing. If it's not their first account, it's their first non Robin Hood account, right? 

 23:25
Galen M Herbst de Cortina
And then it's making sure that. 

 23:33
Galen M Herbst de Cortina
They. 

 23:33
Galen M Herbst de Cortina
Are well prepared to buy their first. 

 23:36
Galen M Herbst de Cortina
Home potentially because they're self employed. So they're looking at two years of past tax returns. And so it's a lot of balancing. Like what do you do when it comes to saving for future? If you can throw 66k into a solo 401k but also want to show enough income to buy the house that you want, especially if you're around La. 

 23:51
Galen M Herbst de Cortina
And just helping them automate as much. 

 23:56
Galen M Herbst de Cortina
As possible when it comes to sort of their saving and doing things well so that they can focus on the things that they're doing, which are very high intensity in terms of time demands and theoretically also revenue producing. 

 24:12
Galen M Herbst de Cortina
So because of that, we are and. 

 24:16
Galen M Herbst de Cortina
For some of our clients, it is. 

 24:17
Galen M Herbst de Cortina
Also like, hey, I've got a high. 

 24:18
Galen M Herbst de Cortina
Income and I built up debt while I got to the point of this high income because it was many years of not high income, how do I deal with that? Effectively, those kinds of things. And so we're doing fixed planning fees that we break up into monthly. So we use advice, pay and bill it monthly, but it's annual retainer essentially, roughly based off of net worth and income. 

 24:46
Galen M Herbst de Cortina
And then we do manage assets for. 

 24:50
Galen M Herbst de Cortina
Some of our clients. 

 24:51
Galen M Herbst de Cortina
But AUM was about 10% of our revenue last year. 

 24:55
Charlie Van Derven
Kind of what I expected. I mean, the age that you're at that you're serving tough to basically come on. Yeah, exactly. 

 25:04
Galen M Herbst de Cortina
And we didn't offer it initially but had enough clients who it made sense for them to open a Roth IRA. 

 25:13
Galen M Herbst de Cortina
Open a Sep IRA, open a Solo K for their business but really either. 

 25:19
Galen M Herbst de Cortina
Didn'T have the time to do it. 

 25:21
Galen M Herbst de Cortina
Even with us sort of over their shoulders helping them, or just really didn't want to do it because it made them anxious. It hasn't something they hadn't tackled before. It just wasn't interesting to them. And so we started to offer it. 

 25:33
Galen M Herbst de Cortina
But it's not really a focus for. 

 25:35
Galen M Herbst de Cortina
The firm, not typically a focus for. 

 25:37
Galen M Herbst de Cortina
Our clients that may shift over decades right. 

 25:41
Galen M Herbst de Cortina
As they accumulate more assets over their lifetimes. But currently their biggest asset is the income they have yet to earn over their careers, not the assets they've accumulated over exactly. 

 25:51
Charlie Van Derven
Exactly. So. Yeah, I'm sure. Lots of evolution. So, galen awesome story, man. I think you're pretty cool. I've enjoyed our conversations that we've had. I like to ask a couple of questions before we close because I feel like this know if we've got some advisors who are listening and they maybe are not in the environment that they want to be or expect to be in five years, this is where we get to kind of let them learn from your experience. I hope I prepared you for this enough. Is there anything that you look back on and maybe you didn't even know it at the time, but something that you credit for where you've gotten today? Right. Something you did really well, that, again, maybe at the time that you did it, you didn't know it was the perfect move, but it turned out to be great. 

 26:39
Charlie Van Derven
Let's let our listeners learn from your experience. 

 26:41
Galen M Herbst de Cortina
There's a couple of things there, and. 

 26:44
Galen M Herbst de Cortina
The one core one is. 

 26:50
Galen M Herbst de Cortina
It sounds like funny to say from a business planning perspective, but it is actually my marriage. Because I married someone who was supportive of me switching careers, who was the one who made sure that we had food on our plates and a roof over our heads for while my business was getting up and running. Right? I was able to make the jump earlier without I had some savings, but not enough to carry me through the couple of years it took to pay myself enough to live around La. So she was supportive doing that and now she is a stay at home mom for her choice. 

 27:20
Galen M Herbst de Cortina
Right. 

 27:20
Galen M Herbst de Cortina
But it took a while to get there, so that was someone in support of there. Getting the MBA actually ended up being really valuable because my clients are mostly business owners. It actually gave me a lot of insights that I find myself surprised sometimes. 

 27:37
Galen M Herbst de Cortina
That other planners don't know. 

 27:40
Galen M Herbst de Cortina
But then I go, no, you idiot, that wasn't a part of the CFP education. That was a part of your MBA education. 

 27:46
Galen M Herbst de Cortina
Right. 

 27:46
Galen M Herbst de Cortina
So in my head, I'm thinking like, oh yeah, this is a part of what I studied with the it's like, no, it wasn't. Not at all. 

 27:50
Galen M Herbst de Cortina
It was the MBA piece. 

 27:52
Galen M Herbst de Cortina
And that ended up helping a lot because I work with business owners is and then. 

 27:59
Galen M Herbst de Cortina
I think the last one that really added up more than I. 

 28:06
Galen M Herbst de Cortina
Was expecting was. 

 28:10
Galen M Herbst de Cortina
Finding out where my clients were going. 

 28:14
Galen M Herbst de Cortina
And the reason I say that is because they are geographically dispersed, right? They're all over the place. I found the events that they were going to, the conferences that they were going to, that kind of a thing. And I went to those and I met people. And that's where I've met most of the cois who I refer clients back and forth with a ton now. That's where I've met several of my clients. 

 28:31
Galen M Herbst de Cortina
That's where I've met a friend of. 

 28:34
Galen M Herbst de Cortina
A client who then the next time I saw them at the next conference, pulled the client over by the ear and said, I've heard you complaining about this. Here's a guy who does it. 

 28:40
Galen M Herbst de Cortina
Right? 

 28:42
Galen M Herbst de Cortina
And so it's sort of recognizing where I could be, that I would be either positioned as the expert sometimes like talking at the conferences, or other times. 

 28:50
Galen M Herbst de Cortina
Just being present and known. Right. 

 28:55
Galen M Herbst de Cortina
It was something I was really hesitant to deeply engage with initially because it costs money and I didn't have a lot starting out. 

 29:01
Charlie Van Derven
Right. 

 29:01
Galen M Herbst de Cortina
I didn't have a book of business that I had revenue from or anything. 

 29:05
Galen M Herbst de Cortina
Like that, but that's really paid off over the long. 

 29:09
Charlie Van Derven
Here's what I love about that, right, is you got a virtual but there's still a lot of value in the in person encounters. 

 29:16
Galen M Herbst de Cortina
A lot. 

 29:16
Charlie Van Derven
Yeah, that's cool. All right, flip side of that coin, Galen. To do anything that you're like. Damn, I wish I'd have done that differently. 

 29:24
Galen M Herbst de Cortina
There are so many. 

 29:31
Galen M Herbst de Cortina
In terms of. 

 29:32
Galen M Herbst de Cortina
The ones that are probably the most impactful. I was underinvesting early on in the. 

 29:45
Galen M Herbst de Cortina
Business because cash flow was tight, so. 

 29:48
Galen M Herbst de Cortina
There was some level of prudence to. 

 29:51
Galen M Herbst de Cortina
It in the sense of like. I don't want to be overspending and then drawing myself down on the personal side. But the flip side of that being I was likely underinvesting in, like I said, the conferences, for instance, that I now essentially throw money at because I. 

 30:05
Galen M Herbst de Cortina
Know it pays itself back at some. 

 30:07
Galen M Herbst de Cortina
Point in the future. I was underinvesting early on and I was so I mentioned the sort of internal, innate pushback against being salesy. One thing that I would do it's hard to say how I would do it differently, necessarily, but one thing that would be different is I've made a. 

 30:32
Galen M Herbst de Cortina
Big shift from being worried about being too salesy versus recognizing that what I'm doing is helping a lot of my clients. 

 30:45
Galen M Herbst de Cortina
I met with a client yesterday where I've been working with them for a couple years. And in that couple of years now. 

 30:51
Galen M Herbst de Cortina
They'Re great income earners. 

 30:53
Galen M Herbst de Cortina
90% of this is attributed to them, but they went from heavily in credit card debt tons of investments looking at all these other business opportunities because they have the cash on hand, that kind of thing. 

 31:03
Galen M Herbst de Cortina
And a piece of that was, hey. 

 31:07
Galen M Herbst de Cortina
Here'S just how you can do things more effectively. Here's where you're being cost money. 

 31:09
Galen M Herbst de Cortina
Right? 

 31:09
Galen M Herbst de Cortina
So one thing that I would do. 

 31:12
Galen M Herbst de Cortina
Differently is essentially more sales training as. 

 31:21
Galen M Herbst de Cortina
Opposed to just trying to do it myself because it was easy for me to say based on my background, like, oh, being too pushy salesy is bad. But the flip side of it being. 

 31:35
Galen M Herbst de Cortina
How many people will I not get. 

 31:37
Galen M Herbst de Cortina
To help over my career if I'm never in front of them or never show them, hey, I can be valuable to you. 

 31:43
Galen M Herbst de Cortina
Right? 

 31:44
Charlie Van Derven
It's a balance. It really is. I think it's a ziglar thing. And I'll bastardize whatever quote it is. In fact, I won't even try to quote it. But it's like if I've got something that's really useful to you, it's actually me doing you a disservice if I don't tell you about it. 

 32:00
Galen M Herbst de Cortina
Yeah. And that was a big mindset shift. I think some of that was experience. Just like in the sense of to have the confidence to do it, you sort of need some level of experience. At least for me, I need some level of experience to then look back and be like, oh no, this is appropriate. But yeah. 

 32:23
Galen M Herbst de Cortina
I think just sort of broader than that. It can be easy to react too. 

 32:33
Galen M Herbst de Cortina
Much to things that you view as negative. Same reason we didn't offer AUM at first is because, no, this is like my clients, my future clients. It'll make sense for them for it to be structured this way. 

 32:41
Galen M Herbst de Cortina
And that was true, but it didn't. 

 32:43
Galen M Herbst de Cortina
Mean that it wouldn't also make sense for AUM to do a piece of it. 

 32:46
Galen M Herbst de Cortina
Right. Yeah. 

 32:51
Galen M Herbst de Cortina
I think what I would do somewhat. 

 32:53
Galen M Herbst de Cortina
Differently is just essentially the self reflection. 

 32:57
Galen M Herbst de Cortina
To see what kinds of things am. 

 32:59
Galen M Herbst de Cortina
I almost running away from, as weird. 

 33:02
Charlie Van Derven
As that sounds to say, there's a fear there. Listen, again, we talk about our age difference a little bit. I'm 50, right? And I came up in a different I came up in an ABC always Be closing, hard selling kind of here's your methodology, back them into a corner so they can't say no. And that left a bit. It wasn't the predatory aspect of financial services. I was selling websites early in my career to advisors and it was this sales training I went through that never, ever felt right. So I think for a long time that rubber band or the pendulum, whatever, I was on the far side of it, right? Because I so didn't want to come across as that person. And I agree with you with experience kind of I got a prospect call with eight people later today and I'm already kind of thinking about, okay, how are we going to handle this? 

 33:55
Galen M Herbst de Cortina
Right? 

 33:55
Charlie Van Derven
But it becomes just kind of a conversation at some point when you got. 

 33:59
Galen M Herbst de Cortina
Enough experience in it, enough familiarity and. 

 34:01
Galen M Herbst de Cortina
Comfort and confidence and all those things. Well, part of that too is I. 

 34:05
Galen M Herbst de Cortina
Burned out of my first job from being overworked. 

 34:10
Galen M Herbst de Cortina
I was working crazy amounts of hours. I was traveling every week. 

 34:13
Galen M Herbst de Cortina
Just burned out of it. 

 34:14
Galen M Herbst de Cortina
And then the second job, I left it because a project had ended and I had nothing to do. And I was bored to tears and was sitting there feeling like I was basically stealing money from this company because I was sitting there getting paid but had nothing to do. And so I had sort of both of those poles of way too much and way too little. And so over the course of my firm, it's been trying to find that middle ground of like, not too much, not too little or at least the range in which it swings because inevitably it changes week to week is smaller. That's hard. 

 34:47
Charlie Van Derven
Perfect. Segue, man. Where is buff your finances headed? 

 34:52
Galen M Herbst de Cortina
So right now it's myself, it's one employee who is in the process of buying into the firm. 

 34:59
Galen M Herbst de Cortina
We are probably like a. 

 35:05
Galen M Herbst de Cortina
Year and a half or so from capacity if things go as we expect. Probably realistically more like two to three years from capacity. Because we also have some early client relationships where they made sense then, they don't now for them, for us, where it'll be like some level of we're bringing on new clients and also have some clients who are moving to hourly arrangements or just not working with on as consistent of a basis. And our plan at least currently is. 

 35:36
Galen M Herbst de Cortina
To reach what we sort of consider. 

 35:40
Galen M Herbst de Cortina
Capacity and sit there for a year or so, see how it feels, see what we think about it. We have opportunities to roll the firm up into larger ones. We have opportunities to hire and scale if we want. We have opportunities to sit exactly where we are if we want. And some of it will be the current plan is hit capacity and sit for a bit and see how. 

 36:08
Galen M Herbst de Cortina
We feel rather than trying to predict. 

 36:12
Galen M Herbst de Cortina
How we'll feel, because it's been different. 

 36:14
Charlie Van Derven
Yeah. You don't know, right? 

 36:17
Galen M Herbst de Cortina
Yeah. And then there's a whole sort of world of options from there that we. 

 36:22
Galen M Herbst de Cortina
Could do, but we want to. 

 36:28
Galen M Herbst de Cortina
Neither myself nor my employee is an empire builder. If that was something that was a goal of ours, we would actually literally have to put someone else at the helm. I'm not an empire builder. 

 36:40
Galen M Herbst de Cortina
And so the flip side of that being, we would love to help more people. 

 36:46
Galen M Herbst de Cortina
Right. 

 36:48
Galen M Herbst de Cortina
So it really is that, like, give. 

 36:51
Galen M Herbst de Cortina
Ourselves time to acclimate and then decide then instead of trying to pretend that today me knows what I'll be thinking, then. 

 36:58
Galen M Herbst de Cortina
Yeah. 

 36:58
Charlie Van Derven
Incremental, man. Take your time with it, for sure. Yeah. So love that. So many options in financial services. Galen if we've got any listeners, right, that maybe identify with you're a fairly you know, you're young in comparison to the industry, maybe they identify with who you are. Got some questions for you. I want to tap into your knowledge and experience. You could be in a resource. 

 37:28
Galen M Herbst de Cortina
Absolutely. I would not be where I am today without a bunch of people who were resources to me. I had professors in the MBA program who were super helpful. I was involved with Local FBA and still Am, which had a bunch of folks who have learned from and gotten advice from and that kind of a thing, I would be happy to because I absolutely would not be. In the place that I am right now, which is a place that I'm happy with if other folks hadn't been. 

 38:02
Galen M Herbst de Cortina
Available to me as well. 

 38:03
Charlie Van Derven
What's the easiest way to reach you? 

 38:07
Galen M Herbst de Cortina
Probably email that's one where I'm least. 

 38:10
Galen M Herbst de Cortina
Likely to lose it. Galen@bufferfinances.com. I've had people try and call me that's almost useless. Just because I get so much spam calls nowadays that if it's an unknown number and spam calls where it's like true spam, not even like wholesalers or insurance brokers. Trying to get you to do stuff where it's like, okay, this is at least somewhat related to what I do. 

 38:28
Charlie Van Derven
But just three second pause when you pick up. 

 38:32
Galen M Herbst de Cortina
Yeah. A lot of calls that come in. I'm on the west coast, right? A lot of calls that come in at, like, 07:00 A.m., and I'm juggling two kids trying to get them ready in the morning. I'm not in a position to take your call, so probably email is the best way. 

 38:47
Galen M Herbst de Cortina
I am somewhat on social media, but not really. 

 38:52
Galen M Herbst de Cortina
I am less so than I probably should be, given who my client base is. So email would best. Galen@bufferfinances.com and if then someone wants to set up a call or something like that, probably just easiest to manage you there. That's the one that I won't lose. 

 39:08
Charlie Van Derven
Yeah, I'm the same way. 

 39:09
Galen M Herbst de Cortina
Right. 

 39:09
Charlie Van Derven
So I try to be on LinkedIn a lot because it benefits the business and I learn things there, get to know people. But, man, I'll share with you very briefly. We are transitioning to technology platforms and moving on from a key person on the team. 

 39:26
Galen M Herbst de Cortina
I don't have a whole lot of. 

 39:28
Charlie Van Derven
Time for LinkedIn right now. 

 39:29
Galen M Herbst de Cortina
No, my clients aren't on LinkedIn. 

 39:32
Galen M Herbst de Cortina
Right? 

 39:33
Charlie Van Derven
Yeah, different yeah, different focus. Galen, you're awesome, dude. I appreciate knowing you, and I appreciate you're kind of a pioneer in your own right. I love the narrow. You're partially subscription based. That's fairly new to the industry. 

 39:56
Galen M Herbst de Cortina
Right. 

 39:57
Charlie Van Derven
You saw what you didn't like of the industry, created a path for yourself that fed not only a household, but you as a person and a soul. That stuff's cool, man. 

 40:08
Galen M Herbst de Cortina
Yeah. 

 40:09
Galen M Herbst de Cortina
Love all that. 

 40:10
Galen M Herbst de Cortina
Thank you. 

 40:11
Galen M Herbst de Cortina
I really do like what I do. 

 40:14
Galen M Herbst de Cortina
I feel really fortunate that I'm 34, and I feel really fortunate that I found something that I connect with so much as a job. 

 40:28
Galen M Herbst de Cortina
It makes a lot of the things. 

 40:30
Galen M Herbst de Cortina
That made previous jobs that I didn't like as much. 

 40:32
Galen M Herbst de Cortina
Extra bad. 

 40:34
Galen M Herbst de Cortina
Not as bad. Because if I like it, then something where it's like, this is a stressful moment. 

 40:39
Galen M Herbst de Cortina
Yeah, it's a stressful moment, but then. 

 40:41
Galen M Herbst de Cortina
Centered back to but I really love what I do, as opposed to stressful moment, centered back to, wow, I really hate this. 

 40:48
Charlie Van Derven
Easier to deal. 

 40:49
Galen M Herbst de Cortina
Yeah. It's a really good career, and it's a chance to Help a lot of. 

 40:56
Galen M Herbst de Cortina
People in meaningful ways. 

 40:59
Galen M Herbst de Cortina
And for me, the cool thing now for me, too, is with working with younger clients. If I help someone be 5% more efficient and they're 30, that's a lot of lifetime benefit. 

 41:09
Charlie Van Derven
That's it, man. That's it. Galen Herps de Cortinas. You got it. Even out conversations, man. Thank you for being my guest on Rea Collective today. Everybody who took Some Time Out of Their day to listen in and Catch Galen's story and learn From His experience, thank you for that. Now, I say this kind of at the end of every episode, we are not selling sponsorship. It's a pet thing. It's not a for profit podcast. So we're not pumping a bunch of money in to try and reach other people. Now, maybe that's a disservice to it. I don't know. But if you share it, if you know somebody who's in a position at a big firm and they're, this wasn't what I thought I was signing up for. Turn them on to. We'd love to gather some more listeners and impact some more lives. So on behalf of myself and my buddy Galen, thank you for tuning.