Help Clients, Not Companies with Juan Munoz

00:01
Charlie Van Derven
Hi there and welcome to another episode of RIA Collective. My name Charlie Van Derven and I'm your host for the next 30 or so minutes. We got a great guest today. I'm excited to get to know Juan Munoz a bit. Juan's in Cypress, Texas. His RIA is life strategy, financial. We're going to dive deep into Juan's story and what drew him to independence. Hopefully I've met Juan a couple of times now, so I know Juan is going to drop some dimes of wisdom on us and our listening audience that are thinking about making that same type of move. So, Juan, welcome to you and thank you for joining me on RIA Collective. 

00:39
Juan Munoz
Thank you, Charlie. Thank you for the invitation. 

00:41
Charlie Van Derven
Yeah, man, I check out your profile on LinkedIn and I was like, this guy's got some experience. There's got to be some wisdom underneath all that. 

00:51
Juan Munoz
It's a lot of trial and error, to be honest with you. I didn't get to where I'm at just from one day to another. It's a lot of learning experience that helped me get here. I think at some point in time, we all kind of have to earn our stripes, right? We all have to kind of work for someone, learn from somebody, and that's the only way to get to where we want to be. 

01:14
Charlie Van Derven
Yeah, I completely agree with you. I was with a couple of firms in the industry before starting. Well, my company this is RIA Collective, my company's social advisor, who started that nine years ago. I was with FMG Sweet prior to that and a company called 50 Below that was spun up through anyway, some people remember these names. I don't know how many people will, but was spun up through Emerald Connect and is now part of broader. So I agree with you. There's things that I take out of those experiences. Like these guys did a great job with team building or camaraderie or go to market or whatever it might be. There's things that I take out of it that were experiences that were negative that I learned from, that hopefully helps me avoid pitfalls in the future as well. 

01:57
Juan Munoz
Correct. I learned also, like, even from prior to joining the financial industry, I worked in retail and there was just a lot of things that were going on. I don't know if you remember Circuit City back in the day, it was number one giant. I was working there where Best Buy took over and Best Buy was number one, and Circuit City was hurting. And they went from commission to hourly. I saw how they had to lay off all those great employees because the ones that were doing good, the ones who are making the good commissions, that had to be laid off because the pay was just too much. I saw that process and I think to me, it was like nothing against big companies, but big companies look for themselves. I felt like I always look for my employees. I always look for the people that I work with. 

02:46
Juan Munoz
Sure enough, it translates to I want to help the people that I can and not necessarily help a company. There's some other things that I learned through other, not necessarily financial services by my other experience. 

03:01
Charlie Van Derven
Yeah, no doubt. Interestingly. I just got done reading good. The dog is up here, and I don't know what it's out . That's all. 

03:11
Juan Munoz
Right. 

03:12
Charlie Van Derven
Adds to the moment of our interview. Yes, I just got done reading Good to great audio this time for, I don't know, the second or third time. Circuit City, of course, is one of their darlings in that book, right? I'm listening to this thinking that book was published in a one or two, and how right at that time, those companies, a lot of those companies fell off a cliff. Walgreens was another one of their darlings, right. For those of you who either haven't read or you can let the cat come into it, those of you who haven't read so Good to Great is 15. They study publicly traded companies because there's a ton of data, and it was 15 years prior to a Pivot moment. They kind of stumbled along market norms, hit a Pivot moment and then far exceeded market norms for another period of 15 years. 

04:06
Charlie Van Derven
Circuit City, right, when they're writing this book, had done an amazing job. And then Best Buy takes over. Right? Of course, retail gets hurt by the Internet in a huge way. It was funny to watch, like that Pivot moment where those people did well. I'm waiting for the next book where it's like, okay, and here's what happened to those companies. Because Walgreens in the same books, right? CVS just ran them over. It's interesting you bring that into the conversation. That's not necessarily what we're talking about today. As I just read that book, I was like, yeah, and they were the darlings, and then look what happened. Right. One thing you said to me, and this is along the line when were getting acquainted a few weeks ago, one of the things you said to me is, I don't want to make a firm stronger. Right? 

04:51
Charlie Van Derven
I'm here to make people stronger. Right. Maybe that's our working title as we're talking about it, but that strikes me that's such a pure situation, and it really speaks to that move from that captive warehouse environment into a more independent environment. Let's talk about that a little bit. So you got AIG in your background. 

05:14
Juan Munoz
Yeah, so I was there in 2008 when the whole mess was going on, and I was actually on the phones the very first day that we saw AIG on the news, and people were calling in talking about their accounts, nurses, teachers, concerned, they wanted to pull out, they wanted to move their accounts. It was about talking to them, about where was Edgy status and what was going on and trying to calm them down. I think the most important lesson there is not necessarily talk to them off the cliff, but talk to them and more like listening and listening what was really the concern, the true pain they were going through, and explaining what's going on. I mean, in a lot of situations we have seen companies like Enron, right, that they gone bankrupt and people lose their savings. This situation almost looked similar, but obviously they're in accounts or in different types of investments, so it wasn't as urgent as people were going to lose their money. 

06:22
Juan Munoz
You still need to explain and listen to them and try to calm them down. This is one of the factors that I loved. It was more of a behavior finance that we don't talk much about, but we get to experience it, right? We hear people telling us we all want to do better, we all want to save, we all want to be millionaires, but there's other things going on. I think that's what I really enjoy the most, listening and truly uncovering what is holding them back and helping them overcome that. Yeah, IG was a big learning experience as well, and also taught me a big lesson that companies, sometimes they just look for themselves. I think I continue my path from AIG to Sage Point to Raymond James, not to being independent. I learned that the smaller I was getting, the better I could engage with my clients, taking all the other factors out of the picture when it came to companies and products and all this stuff, right? 

07:26
Juan Munoz
For me was remove commissions as well. Remove companies that are telling you they have quotas or they have certain needs, right? Remove all obstacles. That really allowed for me to have a non conflicting relationship with the client where I can truly help them. It's not about selling them something or it's not about pushing something out to them that they don't want. That was a big learning experience, especially that I have had the last 1015 years of my life having to adjust from big company to now being independent. I really love the fact that being independent, I would tell anybody, it's totally worth it. Being independent. You have more flexibility to do more for your clients. You have more flexibility to spend the time, learn the clients. To me, when you're a big company, it's all about numbers. I don't know if you read the book Game of Numbers, but if you read that book Game of Numbers, it's all about how many people you can talk to, how many people can touch, how many people you can connect with. 

08:40
Juan Munoz
Now it's like, I don't need to connect with everybody. I just need to connect to people that truly need help and focus on them instead of trying to find 2030, 40, 50 people all at one time. Right? 

08:53
Charlie Van Derven
Man, do I love that. You said a mouthful. One. Wow. What jumps into this park and people are cruising by and this lady is singing. I love it. It's so late. Just rolling by. You've been first off, what an amazing story. What an amazing sentiment. Right? I've really over the time of doing broadcasting, RA Collective and up to that also because I worked in the warehouse environment and then with independent broker dealers more than anything else. RA is kind of new to me, really, as it is to a lot of people, I think, because that move is happening a lot more quickly. I feel like I was touching in that world, and I was working with a lot of independent broker dealer advisers, and we'd certainly pepper in some RIA's there, I would say. One, in the time of doing this, I've identified really five reasons that people make the move. 

09:52
Charlie Van Derven
Right. Yours is purely and I love this, it's fiduciary. Now, you mentioned the word flexibility in there as well. Like flexibility of schedule. Also and that's how I kind of think of it, flexibility offering as well, like depending on where somebody is in their life and what their needs are, you've got flexibility as to what you can provide as an IAR, as an RIA versus cookie cutter. Portfolio management, if you will. 

10:23
Juan Munoz
Correct. I always liked that aspect that it started first, it was like all investments or well, actually started more with products. Products, investments, more financial planning. And I kept going. Obviously passing the CFP seven, eight years ago, opened my world of now we're looking at holistic level, right? We're not looking at just investments. Let's look at retirement, state planning, risk management, everything else from simple things. It's funny because a lot of advisers don't focus on certain things are so essential, like budgeting or looking at auto and home insurance. And it's just needed. Those things can be just as important as having those big portfolios. So, yeah, it's allowed me to be more holistic, more well rounded when it comes to the financial planning. It's not just I can do portfolio management all day long, but I really enjoy, actually the other stuff as well. 

11:23
Charlie Van Derven
Yeah, well, it's a little more interpersonal, which is something I noticed about you, is not only is your financial career important to you, but your community is pretty important to you also. 

11:35
Juan Munoz
Yeah, I was part of the Financial Plan Association of Houston. Well, thank you. I still am. I'm rolling off December as a chairman. Okay. Yeah. One of my colleagues, good friend Adam from University of Texas Tech at that's where I graduated. He was the incoming president. He needed treasure. He put an email out, and it caught my attention, and I decided to join the board. Two years later, I became the president. One of the things that being part of the board that a lot of people as members of the FPA don't see is from the board. You become a very close type friendship community, and they help each other. You help each other. I think, to me, the starting of me becoming independent started there. I met this girl called Jennifer Pritchard. She was a virtual paraplener at the time for the XY MPN Network. 

12:44
Juan Munoz
I asked her, I was talking to her, and she was telling me all the stuff that she did and all the advice that she worked with. I asked her, hey, can you connect me with some of the advisors? Let me talk to them, how they're doing? Right? Sure enough, I talked to a couple of people, and they're like 24, 25 years old, successful, someone traveling the world. I was like, man, if I can do it, I certainly can do it as well. I just need to figure out how to do it right. That's where I started getting curious about going independent. Actually, in purpose, I did, like, 20 some interviews. I was like, okay, I'm going to interview and see what best fits me. Right. I took that as a learning experience, not because I was looking for a job. So, yeah, if something good when it came up, obviously I would have gone for it, but I was kind of more for learning, like, okay, what do those people do? 

13:36
Juan Munoz
How do people work, how they've been successful? At the end of the 20, I think it was 23 interviews, I decided that, what the best thing for me? I don't know what's good for everybody, but for me was to become independent. Yeah, I'm self motivated. I know what I want, to help clients. It was just a matter of I just needed to hear the experience from other people for me to get brave enough to actually do it. That's why I always welcome phone calls from people from the University of Houston. Of the students. I go to the Career Fair, the FPA of Houston, and they'll come to me and they ask me questions, and sometimes they make me feel like, really old. And I'm like, I'm not that old. 

14:26
Charlie Van Derven
I feel that more and more. 

14:28
Juan Munoz
Yeah, students from Texas A and M, they reach out to me. I think there was one that asked me to do a seminar. So did the seminar for them. Random people from LinkedIn, right, including yourself, they find out, like, hey, can I talk to you? Can I find out what's going on? How are you doing it? So I was welcomed, though. I think it's a way for me to pay back. Right. Other people help me. Why not help others. That was really the start of me. My community, actually, my local community is what helped me. I made some really great relationships on FBA as well. Not just local level, but national level. And I just have a question. I need something. I grab the phone and they pick up the phone. They don't hold back and they're like they talk to me and they help me or they just talk to me sometimes just about talking, right. 

15:22
Juan Munoz
That's something that I will cherish forever. I kind of hate rolling off the board, but it's time for me to dedicate more time to my clients and my business, right? 

15:34
Charlie Van Derven
That's it. We'll get your contact information before we wrap up here? Because if you're open to it like you'd be a resource to our listeners, maybe it's that young person who's in an environment like you were at AIG or even the retail experience that they're making a firm richer and their take home and their payout gets lesser and their flexibility is whether it's lifestyle or products. We'll get your contact info before we wrap a couple of things that really you're a very thoughtful guy, right? You said self-motivated. One word I was thinking of when you talked about the interviews you were doing is you're incredibly thoughtful. Right. A lot of us move too quickly. Maybe we don't aim right. You are thoughtful about your next step, it seems. I want to tap into that thoughtfulness. Number one is you look back, right, because you've gone you've had several steps between AIG and where you are now with life strategy, financial. 

16:34
Charlie Van Derven
Right? As you think about those moves that you made, the decisions you made along the way, is there anything that stands out? We're going to start with a negative. 

16:44
Juan Munoz
Okay. 

16:44
Charlie Van Derven
I don't like to do this too much, but hoping that our listeners are avoiding pitfalls. There anything in particular you did that you were like, gosh, I wish I'd have done that differently? 

16:56
Juan Munoz
Yes. One of the things that happened to me is obviously when I went to college, I had to pay for my tuition, for my living expenses, so I had to work. The easiest job for me to get was retail at the time and actually did good for I got to management in retail, but when I graduated, nobody wanted to hire me because they saw my experience was not there, and they saw that everybody wanted for me for sales because they think retail is sales. I honestly wanted to work more for the smaller boutique that focuses on financial planning. And unfortunately, I couldn't get those jobs. I had to start the rough way. I had to start, okay, fine, let's go to sales. And I'll take it as a learning experience. I took it as even though, like, right now, I don't sell products, I think they do have to sell me. 

17:56
Juan Munoz
I had to sell my service right to them. I take that as we all sell something in our life, whether it's our story, our why, what we do. That was one of the things that I kind of wish I would have more experience. I could have started maybe earlier in the right track. That was one of the things. Another one that you probably don't like is after IAG, I worked at Sage Point in Raymond James. I work for smaller firms and I work best for someone. One of the things that I learned through there, yes, it was beneficial for me to learn and to experience how other people worked. At the end of the day, they only look for their family or for their best for themselves. Right. I feel like what they sell you, that they're going to take care of you and help you grow and help you succeed. 

18:54
Juan Munoz
At the end of the day, unfortunately, people will take care of themselves first. People will take care of their families. Especially with Raymond James, at the last job, it was about the father taking care of their kids, and obviously he's going to give preference to the kids. I learned that I'm not their family, and I need to take care of my family. The only way I can do it is being the one in charge or being the one that has the decision making of what to do with the company. Right. That's why I decided to go independent. This is a great learning experience that I feel like a lot of people that work for other companies, that they feel like, man, they can lay me off anytime because they may not need me or they're not helping me, or they want me to get certain amount of sales, I think, well, it's valuable to experience it. 

19:50
Juan Munoz
It's also valuable to know that's not really how it needs to be. You can go independent, work for yourself, have that liberty of you taking care of yourself and especially your clients or your clients. I feel after a while that I had so many clients I need to bring in a year that after a while I can't keep up with even my clients because it's a volume career instead of quality and pay attention to my clients career. That's another thing too, that I wish I knew that ahead of time. I do take the fact that I learned from that as well. 

20:34
Charlie Van Derven
Yeah, right. Obviously, we're all on a path, but I love the one about you knew where you were headed after college, but you still took a retail job and we're successful with it, but it didn't set you up for immediate success getting out of college. I think that's great. Right. 

20:49
Juan Munoz
I did that retail to go to Valley, but they wanted me for sale. 

20:53
Charlie Van Derven
Yeah, I got you. Right? Just to get you down the course that you were looking for in the long term. Again, being thoughtful, we'll do this for a while until we can transition. I think working in those firms right. If they're going to be selfish, you can be selfish too, right? I mean, I think it's a great learning experience. You've got access to a lot of resources that you can draw from or leveraging your growth, whether that's professional skill sets. Right. Anyway, so I think that there's a lot that, if they're going to be selfish, you can certainly draw from be selfish on what they're able to provide because of their breath. Now, the flip side of that negative question is, what would you change? It's not necessarily negative, but looking back, the flip side of that is, what are some of the things, one, that you've done, one or two things that you've done, you're like, this is one of the most important things I did in making this transition to independence successful for you? 

22:01
Juan Munoz
I think I kind of already said it. I think talking to people what's important for me, talking to different people that do different things or set up different things. But you called it earlier as well. I'm a planner, not just financial planner, but I'm a planner from when I was a little kid. Everyone would tell me, your drawers are so organized, your room so organized. You are so organized with everything. It's like, don't let it fool you. I'm not super organized, but I do like to plan things. I like things that are in order, things that I like to look forward and kind of plan or look up for outlooks that I want to achieve. I think the biggest thing that helped me going independent was the planning. Ahead of doing that, it took me probably about a year and a half to really commit to actually from committing to happening. 

22:55
Juan Munoz
It went from planning the logo of the company, from the software. By the time I got to the point that I was ready to launch, I had everything ready to go. So planning for me was essential. I'm one of those people that I don't like to take steps forward if I don't feel comfortable and if I don't know where I'm heading. I wanted to know how's it going to look like, what's it going to look like? Yes. When you go independent, you still are afraid. You don't know what's going to happen. There's still a level of security. How many clients, how am I going to survive? At the end of the day, I think I did such a great job with my clients that some of them follow me. That helped me skyrocket right away where I needed to be. I know it's scary to launch at first because you don't know how you're going to make it. 

23:46
Juan Munoz
Are you going to find clients? Expenses are still coming, right? For me, it was planning everything ahead. I needed to know how much the business is going to I actually budgeted the business. It cost me the first year, about 12,000 and some change, almost $13,000. Because I work from home when I started, so my overhead was very low. Obviously, I still have personal bills that I need to kind of account for, so I had to kind of do a budget for myself overall and figure out, like, okay, I need this much, and I need to make this much. I need to do this, and I can only afford this, and I can afford that. And planning was a key factor. Once I got to that level that I can pay everything, then I was like, okay, that's time to have fun. Now I can spend time with clients. 

24:38
Juan Munoz
I can spend my time finding people and, getting to know them. That pressure of I know a lot of people take about two years, usually when they go solar for the first time. For me, it was about six months. So to me, it was like, perfect. 

24:54
Charlie Van Derven
What's interesting then is you put a year and a half into the planning, six months into covering your expenses, where others who don't do the planning upfront probably have the same time investment before they get to that water level, if you will. Interesting how the times just encapsulated differently, but I think the fears change, right? The fears go from, am I going to make quota? Am I going to jump through the hoops that have been set in front of me? When you're in that kind of firm, shareholder driven, profit driven environment versus am I going to COVID my immediate living expenses? Am I going to be able to pick the best softwares to run a good process for myself and my clients? The fears change, and frankly, I'd rather rely on myself than somebody else's whim, if you will, profit down. We got to cut some people, or whatever the case may be. 

25:55
Charlie Van Derven
Listen, I've seen that happen in all shapes and sizes in my career as well, and it doesn't matter. Doesn't matter the size of the company. Doesn't have to be Ford Motor Company. Went through layoffs recently. Doesn't have to be a Ford Motor Company to have to go through layoffs. Well, give me a little glimpse as to where life strategy, financial is headed. You've been on this ride with really relying on yourself for a little over three years now. Is that an accurate timeline? 

26:25
Juan Munoz
Yeah, three years and a half. 

26:27
Charlie Van Derven
Okay, so what is the next? As a planner, you've already got an idea of what that looks like in the years ahead. What does that look like for you? 

26:36
Juan Munoz
Ultimately? It's growth. Right? 

26:38
Charlie Van Derven
Juan, hold on 1 second. 

26:40
Juan Munoz
Yeah. 

26:42
Charlie Van Derven
I got to tell you, for those listening, we just had a break in the recording because for the first time in doing this out of my camper, a cop approached me. What are you doing here? We were talking when I pulled in here. I've only been in here for you anyway, so that was a new experience. Pardon me for pausing one, but I figured I had to answer to law enforcement for a second there. 

27:03
Juan Munoz
No, I understand. Going back to your question, so what do I see ahead? So at this point, it's growth, right. I still have a lot of capacity. I don't want to get like a humongous big firm. I want to still be somewhat of a smaller firm because I want to be able to help as many people as I can, but truly help them and get to know them and, their dog names, know their kids names, . I think if I start expanding way too much, it's going to get to a point I can I know all my clients very well, but it will be great to have maybe a couple of people work with me. Obviously at some point in time, I do need to create a path for someone to take over on that strategy. Financial. 

27:50
Charlie Van Derven
You're hiding behind that beard, you're young man? 

27:55
Juan Munoz
Yeah, I still have to go, but it's never too late to start planning, right? It's about planning the future. It's growth at this point, and at the same time, I want to have fun with it. I got the opportunity that, okay, can you buy another practice or can we give you a book of business and help you grow that fast and does not want it? Because it's going to be to that point that now I cannot really truly focus on all my clients as well. I would like to take my time actually growing. I'm not going to be exponentially growing so fast that I can keep up. I want to be able to do it. If I get to that point that, hey, I'm getting busy. I'll hire someone and I'll work with someone I always wanted to pass or help someone in college, if I wish they would happen to me. 

28:51
Juan Munoz
I will reach out to either Texas Tech, texas A and M or U of H and get someone to help me. I think at this point it's just enjoy and grow and get to know my clients. 

29:04
Charlie Van Derven
You had said something earlier, the smaller the better I can engage. That was my scribbles on writing down sound bites because you're full of them. You've given me all kinds of great audio sound bites I can pull out of this, so I just jot them down and know where to look for them along those lines. Right now, people come into this making a. Good living is not a bad thing. Right. That's a good thing for people. That's one of the great things that comes out of the environment that we're working. It's not for everybody. Right. Making a good living as secondary, it feels like to supporting not only the advisors and the team around you, but also the clients that are in your care. 

29:56
Juan Munoz
You're right. I've been told I'm cheap. My laptop manager said you're cheap, you don't charge almost anything. Yeah, to be honest with you, Charlie, if it was up to me, if I didn't have to charge, if I didn't have to pay bills, I would do it for free. I really enjoy this. Obviously I still have to pay bills, so I still have to charge. One of the things that was taught to me by my parents is that free is not free. There's no value in free. Even if I charge there's value on something that you're paying for. To me doing a financial plan or portfolio management, I feel like I need to charge and to need I charge something decent. Yeah, money is not really a priority for me. To me is my clients. The communication that I can get to my clients. I can tell you that I would like to raise the level experience probably more because I want to know everything about my clients and I only know so much, but there's so much time also that I can talk to them about everything else besides what they need. 

31:07
Juan Munoz
Right. That would be one thing that I would like to do more of. Yeah, money is not an issue for me at all. 

31:13
Charlie Van Derven
Juan Munios, you're awesome and I think you've got such a great mindset. You're impacting a lot of lives FPA the universities, your clients, advisers that are lucky enough to work with you. Thank you for bringing good to financial services and especially that RA community, I think makes it probably easier. Listen, you'd already offered to be a resource, so you can't back out of that. Now what's the easiest way for someone to get in touch with you on. 

31:46
Juan Munoz
Phone call or email? Anybody can find me on LinkedIn now you should accept everybody on LinkedIn, the phone call, email. Do you want me to give you the information? 

31:55
Charlie Van Derven
Yeah, sure. What's the website so they can learn more about LifeStrategy financial. 

32:00
Juan Munoz
Okay, so you'll find everything on the website, so obviously www dot livestrategyfin so short for financial lifestrategyfin.com. 

32:11
Charlie Van Derven
Awesome. Juan Munios, thank you so much for being my guest. RIA collective today. For those of you out there who are thinking about going independent, please listen to some prior episodes. We've done some great interviews with breakaway attorneys and leaders of large firms, gentlemen like Juan, who's been at it for three and a half years in his own shop and lots of great experiences to draw from. This has been actually our a collective one, I got to tell you, has changed my outlook on financial services. I've been working in the industry for a long time, but getting these very personal stories to independence and what drove somebody in that direction, how they handled it. And everybody is different. Everybody's got a different path. Everybody's got something different than bringing in the industry. A lot of great learning, opportunity and prior episodes. If somebody who's thinking about going that way, please share this with them. 

33:04
Charlie Van Derven
Of course, on your favorite podcast episode, this is what all the people say, right? All the podcasts are say one, you got to subscribe and you got to give us a review so we can get off the charts . Juan News, thanks so much for being here. Life financial strategy. Life strategy financial. Sorry about that one. Life Strategy Financial in Greater Houston Site, Texas. Thank you, man. Appreciate your insight. 

33:30
Juan Munoz
Thank you, Charlie.