Behind the Plan: Meet the Team Driving ClearPath's Planning-First Process

Something a little different this week on ClearPath Retirement Radio.

Stewart is traveling, so Mitch Davies takes the helm — joined by Servicing Adviser Lara Bishop and Marketing Director Kathy Farah — for a conversation that gives listeners a real look at the people and philosophy behind ClearPath's planning-first approach.

If you've ever wondered what it actually feels like to work with a firm that leads with your plan and not a product pitch, this episode answers that question from the inside out.

Mitch opens with the Market Minute — markets have recovered to all-time highs, the AI trade continues to show strong earnings, and what the possibility of a peace deal could mean going forward. Plus a look at GDP and PCE numbers heading into summer.

Then the conversation shifts to the team itself. Mitch and Lara share how they each found their way into retirement planning, what drives them, and how Stewart has built an environment where different personalities, perspectives, and approaches all work together toward one goal — helping clients get to a place where retirement feels secure, not stressful.

You'll also hear:

• Why retirement income planning starts with your expenses and goals, not your assets or returns
• What clients wish they'd known before picking up the phone — and why you don't need to have it all together before you call
• How the planning-first process works in practice, and at what point products even enter the conversation
• What it means that ClearPath advisors have no back-office pressure to sell — and why that changes everything about the client experience
• How the team stays proactively connected with clients, especially when markets get noisy

As Kathy put it during the conversation: the ages haven't mattered. What comes through consistently is that this is a team that genuinely wants to help people and has built a process that reflects that.

If you're in the retirement red zone — roughly the three to five years leading up to retirement — or you're already retired and wondering if your plan is as solid as it should be, this is a good episode to sit with.

Ready to stress-test your retirement plan?

ClearPath Retirement Planning helps retirees and pre-retirees in the Upstate SC and Columbia areas create tax-efficient retirement income strategies. 

📍 300 Executive Center Drive, Suite 104 | Greenville, SC 29615
 📞 (864) 775-5033

Schedule your complimentary consultation today at www.clearpathretirement.com

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Important Disclosure:

Investment advisory services offered through Alphastar Capital Management, LLC, a SEC-registered investment adviser. SEC registration does not constitute an endorsement of the firm by the SEC nor does it indicate that the adviser has attained a particular level of skill or ability. Fixed insurance products are offered through Clearpath Retirement Planning, LLC and Alphastar Capital Management is not involved in the offer, recommendation, sale or management of commission-based fixed Insurance products. Alphastar Capital Management and Clearpath Retirement Plannin...

Transcript

SPEAKER_03 0:00

Welcome to Clear Path Retirement Radio. From retirement income and tax planning to protecting the savings you've worked a lifetime to build. This is Real World Financial Talk designed for real people. People who want clear answers, not sales pitches, so you can make informed decisions and plan for retirement with confidence. Now, here are your hosts, Stuart Smith and Mitch Davies.

SPEAKER_00 0:23

Good morning, and welcome back to Clear Path Retirement Radio. My name is Mitch Davies. I'm your host as always. And we're going to take a opportunity today to introduce a couple members of the team and switch things up a little bit.

SPEAKER_01 0:40

Hey, I'm excited to be here.

SPEAKER_00 0:41

Awesome. And Miss Kathy Fara. Hello. Beautiful. So before we introduce them and get into a discussion, we're going to keep one thing the same, and that's going to be the market minute. As always, we're going to take a few minutes, we'll bump it to the front here, take a few minutes to just talk about where the market's at, and then we're going to open up discussion and kind of do some questions and just have a conversation and uh get to know a little bit more about the team and who we are and what we're trying to do here. But as far as the market minute goes, we're going to keep it as always. We're going to talk about where we're at today, the main things we're watching as far as the next few months go and what our biggest takeaway is. But markets are doing well. If you've been paying attention, we've been talking about it for the last two months. We've seen a crazy March into April, into the beginning of April, with all this stuff overseas. And we've since regained all that red and we're back into all-time high territory. We hit all-time highs yesterday, we're hitting all-time highs today. We continue to break through as we are now on the brink of what could be a peace deal. We've seen the term ceasefire get thrown around a lot, right? And now we're finally at a point where they're actually saying peace deal. So this is the strongest confirmation that we've had or strongest indicator of at all that we're actually towards the end. So we're excited for that. Again, we've talked about the market history, we've talked about how the markets typically recover from these types of events, and it's in this fashion. You know, it's drastic, it's fast, and it's repeatable, and it happens throughout history. So we're happy to see that. We've been talking to our clients a lot with that. Um as far as economic data, we were waiting patiently for GDP and PCE. Uh last last week, at the end of last week, GDP came at about 2%, which isn't great. Again, we're trying to hit that 3% number. But it's a little higher than last year's Q4, which was good. Uh PCE, which is think of like producer inflation essentially, uh, was up to 3.5% over March, again a little higher than we want to see, but um not terrible. Other key things, uh, we had Jerome Powell's meeting last week. That was his final one. We discussed that. Uh Kevin Warsh will step in, and you know, we talked a bit about that, kind of tapering our expectations that again, this is a board of people, it's a board of decision makers, it's not one chairman that decides this. So we don't expect any sweeping policy changes once the new chairman steps in. Uh, as far as individual stocks, we've had a lot of companies report earnings. We're almost through the majority of this Q1 earnings season, and what we're seeing is the AI trade is alive and well. We're seeing these companies report record numbers again, and this is what we've seen as people talk about AI fears and are we in a bubble or what's going on. At the core of this, what we're seeing is companies continue to just produce record profits. Google was the one I really want to highlight. They posted earnings last week. For these big companies, you rarely see huge beats, right? Usually the f analyst forecasts are pretty on point. They don't stray too far. These big companies have very, you know, like forecastable balance sheets. And Google almost 100% beat their expectations. They posted five dollars and something a share, which means that they're making a lot of money and a lot more than people even understood to be possible. So we're seeing these tech companies continue to post record profits, we're seeing the market push higher and higher throughout all this fear overseas. So that's our biggest takeaway is focus on the fundamentals. When we've got these headlines, we've got these crazy news events, we've got all this going on, focus on what's happening in the markets, which is extremely strong earnings reports, companies continue to make a lot of money, and inflation, GDP numbers getting closer to what we want to see. So those are the big takeaways for today, guys. That's kind of the market minute. And then what we're gonna do after that is we're gonna talk a bit about we're gonna talk with Kathy Larr here and just kind of Kathy's got a few questions. She's brand new to the team and she's uh been trying to learn more about us, so we'll take a few minutes on that.

SPEAKER_02 4:43

Hi, so I'm Kathy Farah. I am the new marketing director for Clear Path Retirement, and I've actually been working with the team for the last six months as a contractor and just recently came in-house and joined the team. And so I was very interested in learning more. In fact, I'd like to take an opportunity. I know as I've done a lot of the part of what my role was in the past was doing podcast editing. And so I've listened to quite a few of the Mitch's Market Minute, and I think some of the questions that come to mind when I talk to people, when they listen to that, we've actually got that as a playlist all by itself on YouTube. So one of the things I wanted to better understand is this information that you're sharing each week, how does this help somebody that's moving towards retirement? Like what are the things that they need to hear when you're talking about this that could be beneficial for them as they're looking at their retirement income and plans?

SPEAKER_00 5:44

It's a great question, Kathy. You know, a lot of this is information that you maybe don't need to understand fully in retirement. I guess the point is the the reason we try to bring these market minutes and maybe have things be a bit more advanced in this section is for to help relay the message that there's a lot going on, that the markets are complex. And there's almost to highlight the importance of having a team that fully understands this stuff. You know, this is what we do all day. I've been studying this stuff religiously for eight years now. It's it's my life. I love it. And having a team that fully understands the depths of this, because there's so many moving parts. When you look at the market, people just think, oh, is it up, down? Like you have to understand economic data. That's why we always talk about that. You have to understand the technicals and where money is flowing into the market and how it's flowing in. You have to understand the world at a deep level. You have to understand how currencies are being valued, you have to understand a lot of different things. And the point of these market minutes is we don't expect you guys to understand all this stuff. This is what we do. And I like to just hit a you know, three, four-minute highlight of the main things we're watching almost to help say, like, if you feel like some of the stuff you don't understand, it might be nice to talk to a firm who does. Because if retirement is more important than ever to feel confident and to feel secure in your plan. And if you're not understanding why the market's moving the way it is, it's gonna be hard. It's gonna be hard in retirement to truly just trust that everything's gonna work out. And this is the kind of confidence that we can give you. A firm like us who are solely focused on retirement planning can give you the confidence to understand, hey, we uh live, eat, breathe, sleep this stuff. We're studying this stuff all the time. This is what we do. We have dedicated teams to do deep analysis and understand this stuff at a high level. So I'd say the biggest takeaway is maybe you don't understand all this, but we do, and that's why we're here, and that's why we come on here every week and talk to you guys about it.

SPEAKER_02 7:36

So let me ask you something else, Mitch. Uh, as far as like how does clear path retirement help retirees? I know I've talked to people that have said to me that they see the markets and all the things going on and it freaks them out. Like they get very nervous about that. So, how does clear path retirement help people in that situation when they're in looking at their retirement income? What's the first thing they should be thinking of if they're freaked out by the market?

SPEAKER_00 8:06

Great question, Kathy. So the biggest thing we say in retirement income planning is retirement income planning is not about assets or returns, it's about expenses. So what we're gonna do is, you know, the first step of the clear path retirement process is to understand at a deep level exactly what your income goal in retirement is. That's the foundation of all of this. What do you need and what do you want to be spending in retirement? How does that change if it does from your working career? So we've seen, we've seen everything, right? We've seen people's expenses jump up dramatically in retirement. We've seen people's expenses jump down in retirement, and they're like, hey, we've traveled, we've lived, we want to scale things back. Like we're tired, we're tired of getting on planes, we're tired of doing all this, we don't want to go see the world, we've done that in our careers, we just want to cut way back and spend time with the grandkids. So we've seen all different types of things. So we focus first on what your retirement needs are, and then after that, we can really start to build out a plan of, okay, let's understand your assets at a deep level, let's understand how you're allocated, let's understand your goals, let's understand your estate planning goals. You know, the biggest part of what we do as a retirement planning firm is not focused just on your life and how to get you good returns in retirement. Anybody can get good returns. What we're really focused on is how do you want to pass these assets to the next generation? Are you are you charitably inclined? If you are, we can find different tax strategies around that. So there's so many different moving parts. But the first step for us is always understanding how much money do you need in retirement, how much money do you want for discretionary things, and then how do we structure your assets in a way to safely accomplish that and know every month, no matter what the market's doing, that you're gonna be okay and you can live that retirement that you want and deserve to live after working, you know, your whole career.

SPEAKER_02 9:46

Yeah, that's great to know because I think that's the biggest thing is not having that fear and can where people can just sort of relax and understand that things are taken care of. So let's switch gears a little bit. Tell me a little bit. I know you couldn't have possibly been born knowing the market the way you do. So, what how did you get started knowing the market this way so deeply?

SPEAKER_00 10:09

Good question. So I just fell in love with this world at a young age. And when I was a teenager, you can't open a brokerage account, you can't open an investment account till 18. But prior to that I studied this stuff, I just fell in love with it randomly. My parents didn't, my dad worked in lumber, my mom's a middle school teacher, right? There was no influence in any way, but I just I fell in love with it. Maybe a book that I read, something caught my eye at a young age, and I was like, I need to learn everything I can about the stock market and how it trades. And I got into, you know, day trading at a high level for years, almost to the point where I was teaching this stuff. I I used to, you know, sh live stream every day and I'd, you know, get a decent amount of viewers, nothing crazy, but it was you know it was never gonna be a career in that regard. But I just enjoyed it. And I wasn't looking to make any money on it at that point. I was just trying to teach people something that I cared so deeply about and spent years, you know, it was a couple years before I ever tried to explain anything to anybody because I needed to learn it, right? I needed to figure out how this worked and feel confident that I could teach someone else who was my age at the time. You know, I'm a teenager. And um, to understand how to be able to even explain that to somebody was challenging and it took some time. But, you know, there's a lot that goes into that, and there's a lot of time and a lot of effort and a lot of studying you know to get to that point. But you know, we're coming up to the end of this segment here. We'll we'll continue this discussion. You know, we've got a lot, we'll I'll continue this little history about myself, we'll get into some stuff about Lara, and we'll look forward to continuing this discussion. But as always, this is Clear Path Retirement Planning. If you guys want to get any information, go to Clearpathretirement.com and we'll look forward to talking. We get right back.

SPEAKER_04 11:46

Hey, are you approaching the distribution phase of life where it's time to turn the assets you've worked so hard to accumulate into a reliable retirement income? And are you unsure how to do that in the most tax-efficient way possible? At Clear Path Retirement Planning, we help retirees and pre-retirees design income strategies that aim to reduce taxes, manage risk, and create confidence in retirement. Visit ClearpathRetirement.com to schedule a complimentary consultation.

SPEAKER_03 12:16

Thanks for tuning in to Clear Path Retirement Radio with Stuart Smith and Mitch Davies. Let's get back to the show.

SPEAKER_00 12:24

Welcome back to Clear Path Retirement Radio. I'm your host, as always, Mitch Davies, joined here with Laura Bishop and Kathy Farah, and guys, we're having a great discussion. We started off as the market minute as usual, and now we're just spending a few minutes talking about, we ended off talking about my backstory, how I got into this. I talked about at a young age falling in love with it and kind of how I got to the point where I'm able to come in and feel confident and talk about this stuff. Feel confident to come in and do a radio show, feel confident to sit across from clients every day and talk them through. And I think even though now in my career, I don't need to do day trading and this kind of thing with clients, I think the biggest takeaway for me was getting to the point where I felt so confident knowing the stock market and knowing the history of the stock market and knowing how it's traded and knowing technical analysis and all these things that don't pertain to retirement planning at a deep level, give me the confidence to help coach retirees through and talk retirees through, hey, we've seen these types of events before. You know, this is what gives me the confidence to come on and talk about, hey, we've I I understand the stock market, what it's done since it opened, and to be able to talk people through, hey, this is repeatable, this is history, we have you know study, we can study what's happened, and to talk people through that and have the confidence to fully understand that. I think I attribute all of that to you know learning this at a young age and falling in love with a different sector of financial, the whole financial world, and it's brought me to this point in my career, and I'm so thankful for that.

SPEAKER_02 13:51

Let me ask you a question. Did you go to school for this, or was this just purely a hobby and interest of yours?

SPEAKER_00 13:58

Good question. Funny enough, I actually did not. I studied it all through high school, and I actually, you know, I started an investing club in high school my senior year, which is really cool. And I just I loved it, but I wasn't always to be honest, I wasn't always sure that I wanted to do this as a career, which is funny enough to say. I, you know, worried at the time, being 18, 19 years old, that if I did this, I would have to spend less time trading and less time working on my own portfolio. And I was like, I don't know if I'm gonna want to do that, right? Like I don't know if I'm gonna wanna you you hear people say, I don't want to do what I love as a career because then I might lose that passion. And I couldn't have been more wrong because what I found throughout the years is that what I loved isn't just trading and sitting in my room and trading patterns. What I loved is talking to people about this stuff and working and sharing that knowledge that I've worked so hard to accumulate through the hundreds of books that I've read and millions of hours of videos, it feels like, right? So what I found is that was the aspect I loved was talking through people. You know, I had a a story on social media with hundreds of people that would follow and watch my videos every day. I would post and just talk through what I'm doing for the day, and it was so cool. And that's what the part that I really fell in love with. And it took me a few years to realize that. So I didn't go to school directly for this, but I'm glad I didn't because it led me to the point where you know I'm at today, and I did various other education sources outside of that to learn economics and macro and all this stuff at a deep level. But no, I didn't. And it's funny that I've led brought me to the point now where I just finished taking the CFP last year, which is probably the highest regarded financial test in the industry as far as financial advising goes. So I'm thankful in a way that I my career has led me to this point.

SPEAKER_02 15:42

How would you say taking the CFP, knowing what you know about the market, has been able to combine to where you can come in and talk to retirees where they're far older than you are, you're a young advisor. So how do you think that translates?

SPEAKER_00 15:59

That's a good question. I think the biggest thing for me and Laura, we've had discussions about this, is you know, as somebody younger in the business, people naturally seek experience and they associate age with experience, right? And for somebody younger, you've got different challenges. You have to either you have to either have experience or have done the work on the back end to have the confidence to almost speak like you have experience. And not that I'd ever portray any experience I don't have, but I guess the point is putting in the hours and hours to educate myself to pass the CFP and to spend all the time learning macroeconomics in the stock market, spending all that time almost takes not the place of, but takes the place of experience in this regard, where I can feel so confident to sit at the table from people that are much older than I am and speak to them about this and help on help them understand exactly what we do, exactly the way this stuff works. And you know, having that putting all the work and time in to get to the point that I'm at allows me to have that confidence.

SPEAKER_02 17:03

It's almost the Malcolm Gladwell 10,000 hours idea of learning something for 10,000 hours. And if you're spending a lot of time as a hobby doing it, then it would make sense that even with the years not there, that you would still have the knowledge to be able to share with your clients. We're gonna switch gears and now be able to talk to Laura about the about your role. How did you get into retirement planning at your age? You're also a young advisor.

SPEAKER_01 17:34

Yeah, so it didn't start it with that, like Mick was saying, for me it was I grew up in Venezuela and I saw my family struggle, all their family struggle, and just like seeing that at that time I didn't know what I wanted, but I knew I wanted something different. I knew that I wanted to do something that would put me in a different place. I didn't know at that time what it was, but I remember saving my first $300 to take a financial uh personal finance course, and I fell in love with it. I fell in love with what not money, but what it can do for you, the freedom it can give you. So for me it was just learning about it and telling people about it, gave me power.

SPEAKER_02 18:22

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 18:23

And if I felt that way, I understood that there's so many people in the world that feel like that, especially when you're closer to retirement.

SPEAKER_02 18:31

Yeah. Yeah, I would definitely say that's interesting that that's something that you were diving into at a young age. How old were you when you started taking a on your own saving for a personal finance class?

SPEAKER_01 18:44

I was 12.

SPEAKER_02 18:45

12. Oh my gosh. So yeah, so that really says a lot about your love of something like this because I think what's interesting, not only being a young woman who's learning this, I think a lot of women feel a little uncomfortable with finance, but then young people sometimes feel uncomfortable with finance. So for you to be having that deep desire to move forward and do something like that, it's pretty amazing. How would you say that that 12-year-old, how how did you see yourself as you were moving forward? Like this is an interesting career path to take working with retirees. What led you to do that? Like what made you take that step?

SPEAKER_01 19:27

Yeah, so I came to the States a couple of years ago, and I remember I came oh no as a nanny. Okay. And I didn't know English back then. So yeah.

SPEAKER_02 19:39

So not only are you trying to learn finance, but you're also learning another language. That's pretty impressive.

SPEAKER_01 19:45

So yeah, I went to college here and I didn't know what to do. I knew I liked money. I knew I liked talking about it, but I wasn't sure what I wanted to do. But what I did was finance. I did finance in college. I did four years of finance, and so learning about it in school, it just I feel like it just led me to be here. I just knew I wanted to do it as a job. I knew it was something I loved. And then when I went to ClearPath, I saw their vision and I saw what they were doing, and I knew that was something I wanted to be part of.

SPEAKER_02 20:21

That's great. You were also kind of telling me, so how when you were talking about the financial hardships, like how do you help people sort of move past this as when they start heading into retirement? So if someone's coming to you and they're feeling very nervous about their finances, what are some of the ways that you kind of help them see that there's opportunity ahead where they don't have to worry?

SPEAKER_01 20:44

Knowledge is key. It's the key of everything. And that's what we do at the firm. We give them knowledge, we give them information so we can give them more clarity on what they need to do.

SPEAKER_02 20:55

So how do you guys give them knowledge? Like what is it that you do? Because I noticed as I've worked with you guys, I've noticed there's something that really sticks out that is that Clear Path Retirement is really focused in on one particular way of how you start first every time.

SPEAKER_01 21:13

We're a planning first firm. It doesn't matter where you are, it doesn't matter what you want to do. We the first thing we do is we look at your situation and we plan for it.

SPEAKER_02 21:23

Okay. Like tell give me an example of some of the things that you guys do to build a plan for someone. When they first come in, what are you gathering? What are some of the information that you would be asking them to kind of get started?

SPEAKER_01 21:36

Just where they are at that day, how they feel, what's their biggest fear? Because your fears can tell you a lot with what you need, about what you need. So that's where we start. But Mitch can go more over that.

SPEAKER_00 21:50

Yeah, and that's a great point, Laura. You start with so much of retirement planning is about emotion, right? So much of it, our job is to people are like we just had a Laura and I just had a meeting this morning. And we're doing a policy and we're talking through some stuff with a client and we're setting things up and implementing some of the plan. And I'm like, hey, do you want to kind of recap and go over it? I was like, we've got a few minutes. Like, do you want to? And he was like, no. He was like, I don't. He's like, I just want stuff to happen, you know? And that's the emotional side of it. Understanding the fear, understanding the emotion is almost the more important part. Because he's like, I don't. Like, he's like, that's why I'm here, right? Like, I don't want to go back through it. Because he, because we spent the time in the last three meetings over the last two months, building that confidence with the information that we provide at a level where he feels emotionally solid. He's like, no, I want to walk out of here and feel great. I don't want to know when things are going to happen. I want to know that they're going to happen, right? And he's like, I trust you guys. And that's my favorite feeling as an advisor is to hear that. It's to hear the fact that that fear is alleviated. Because when they came in, I mean, they were worried about this stuff. They were like, hey, how is this tax stuff going to play out? Their biggest thing was Roth conversions and estate planning. Those are the two things they want to accomplish. And today we set up the you know trust meeting to get the trust established, and we have a Roth conversion schedule for them. And he didn't even want to go back through the conversion schedule because he was like, I trust you guys. You guys spent all the time walking me through it at a high level. I feel great. He's like, let's uh we don't even need to go back to it. He's like, I'll see you in a couple weeks for the trust and we'll look forward to it. So the most important thing we do, and I'm glad you mentioned that, Lara, is addressing that emotion and that fear and really letting people enjoy retirement. Because if you have fear in retirement, you're not retired, right? You're stressed and you're worried, and that's what we try to get people out of. So, guys, this is an awesome discussion. Uh, it's been cool to hear deeper about Laura's stuff. I didn't even know. We've been working together for a year, so this is really good stuff. Kathy, we appreciate you asking us all this awesome stuff. It's been great getting to know you too. And we'll look forward to getting back to this discussion when we be right back.

SPEAKER_04 23:45

Retirement planning isn't just about growing money, it's about using it wisely, generating income, managing taxes, planning for health care costs, protecting your legacy. At ClearPath Retirement Planning, we specialize in helping retirees and pre-retirees transition from accumulation to distribution with confidence and clarity. If you're approaching retirement and want to plan, not just opinions, discover the Clear Path difference. Visit ClearpathRetirement.com today.

SPEAKER_03 24:15

Welcome to Clear Path Retirement Radio. From retirement income and tax planning to protecting the savings you've worked a lifetime to build, this is real-world financial talk designed for real people, people who want clear answers, not sales pitches, so you can make informed decisions and plan for retirement with confidence. Now, here are your hosts, Stuart Smith and Mitch Davies.

SPEAKER_00 24:37

Welcome back to Clear Path Retirement Radio. As always, I'm your host, Mitch Davies, joined here with Lara Bishop and Kathy Farah. And we're uh we're having a great discussion, guys. You know, we're talking about we opened up with the market minute, and now we're just getting to know, I've gotten to tell some stories about how I got into the business and how I'm here. We've gotten to hear a bit about Lara and getting to know Kathy a bit. So this is this is going good. Kathy, I'll kick it back to you here.

SPEAKER_02 25:00

Okay, perfect. Well, one of the things that I thought was very interesting when I joined the team was the fact that what a difference in the small team environment, but the difference in in everybody's ages in this industry. Finance is one of those industries that you typically see older people doing as financial advisors. And to see this team where there's a mixture of that, where you have Stewart's experience in the last 25 years, as well as two younger people in their 20s doing the same thing. What do you think that people underestimate about being young in this industry? What do you think, like clients, do they underestimate things about you being a young person talking to them about retirement planning?

SPEAKER_01 25:45

Yeah, all the time. I feel like Mitch was saying at the beginning, they do because we see him yawn, we seem on experience. And like we were saying, it's not always the case. Experience, confident and knowledge comes from a deep work. And we do that. We do that, I did that in college, I did that after college, and like Mitch said, he did it since he was a teenager. A lot of times clients you see our age and they're like, oh, well, I don't I don't feel comfortable. You haven't been in a lot of markets, you haven't been in a lot of different situations, so how can you help me?

SPEAKER_02 26:22

Right. And what's interesting is we've had some conversations in the office, and it's interesting the way the two of you live your financial lives at home. That kind of also talks a little bit about so Lori, you sort of shared that you are a budgeting nut. You go in and you get in there and get into the numbers. Is that true?

SPEAKER_01 26:47

I am. I'm a planner. I plan from the moment I wake up until I go to bed. The same thing with my finances. I just plan everything. Every time I want to do something, I know every dollar that's coming in and coming out of my accounts. But how about you, Mitch? Are you a planner?

SPEAKER_00 27:04

See, I live, people people would be scared to look at the way I manage my money. Like I've got everything invested, I've got no cash sitting anywhere. Like I've invest everything possible, spend the rest, right? Like I just I live, but and I understand that, you know, people that we work with aren't in that case at all. And it's a totally different game. But it it is funny to compare, you know, they they always say people who they always say for financial planners, they're the ones who need financial planners the most. Right. Yeah. And someone like Laura who's extremely disciplined on that, maybe not, but I'd probably be the perfect example of that. Because we spend so much time. It kind of goes back to, you know, we spend so much time working with clients, it becomes an extension of us and our own financial planning, right? It's diving in and pouring our hearts into the clients, it it's easy to neglect your own, especially for myself.

SPEAKER_02 27:51

Well, and I think that's really true of a lot of people. I think when you talk to business owners, oftentimes they're doing for clients what they're not doing for themselves and they know what needs to be done, but they just don't take the time because they love doing it for other people and not as much themselves.

SPEAKER_01 28:07

Yeah, but also the fact that we're so different, it brings so much insight to our business and the way we approach clients because we I can have ideas that Mitch can ever think about, vice versa. Sometimes he comes up with things that I'm like, how do you think about them? Right. So I feel like the fact that we're so different and we have both type A and type B our firm helps us bring the best value to our clients whenever we're doing planning for them.

SPEAKER_02 28:35

Yeah, yeah, I would definitely agree. I know I've sat in on several meetings, and it is interesting because I'll I'll say from my years of working in the corporate environment, when I started out my career, I was in my early 20s, and I didn't always see the opportunity as a young person to be able to share my ideas, have them taken seriously, but I see that that's something very different at ClearPath Retirement that you guys are in meetings and everybody's kind of being able to contribute. Would you agree? Like, how would you say the team environment is working with Stuart and with his knowledge and then you guys coming in from your perspectives?

SPEAKER_01 29:18

Yeah, like I said before in our previous conversations, that's our competitive advantage. We we like change because we want to be better. We want to be more efficient. So because of that, every idea it's valuable because if we can learn something from it and we can do better for our clients, it's gonna be taken into consideration. So that's our competitive advantage. We thrive to be more efficient and we value every insight that we can get.

SPEAKER_02 29:46

Yeah, I would definitely say I know in the times that I've worked with you guys that I would say it's all kind of like mini test in a way, and not in in a bad way, but just when you see that something doesn't work as well, you're you're evolving very quickly and coming up with new ways of doing things. Like I know I've been participating in some of the things that we've been doing to try to make things more efficient and seeing some of the processes where when meetings are scheduled, things are done, you guys are a well-oiled machine. Like everybody has their part. When you're doing dinner seminars or workshops, like Stuart goes up there and he's teaching and he's sharing his information, but you guys are behind the scenes and you're jumping in, you have a process to help people get to the next step. Would you agree?

SPEAKER_00 30:36

Certainly. And I think to talk about ClearPath at that that edge and that advantage and the way we do things, we're able to be so efficient because the way the business is set up, again, it's a small business, we have to be efficient, we have to contribute. And Stuart gives Laura and I such an opportunity to grow. To be able to get that confidence at a young age, you have to be in a system that encourages growth and encourages, gives you opportunity. Some big corporations will purposely taper people off in their 20s and say, hey, you're only gonna see this, you're gonna just make calls and you're not gonna do anything else. And Stuart gets us involved right away. He's like, hey, like I want to get your potential, like I'm throwing you into the fire. And it's a lot at first. But what it does for us is let us the what we what we lack in experience, we get to live through his experience and his mistakes. And we get to see in meetings, and he gets to tell stories. I've heard a million different stories. I've probably heard every story Stuart's told at this point. For the first year, I was just sitting in on all his meetings and learning. But what that gave me is experience that I wouldn't have I was able to be mentored in that way. I wouldn't have had, I would have never lived these experiences because I haven't been in the business long enough. So I get to shortcut a lot of the learning curve being in working with him and alongside him and seeing the business in that whole new way. So that's my favorite thing about ClearPath is we everything's open. We need to be efficient, and how can we get the most potential out of everybody? And that's what allows us at a young age to be so confident and have so much experience meeting with clients and be able to walk people through that uh that whole process.

SPEAKER_02 32:02

Well, I noticed today as uh Stuart was out and he's he's doing some business travel right now. I noticed you two were in meetings. How do you at your age go in and establish trust with clients as you're working with them? What were some of the things like you've recently, in fact, the clients that were in were the ones that you guys had closed yourself and had done the whole process from start to finish? Um so how would you say that you establish that trust with clients?

SPEAKER_00 32:34

I would say the most important thing, we build out a process at ClearPath that's repeatable. We want the experience, whether it's Stuart, myself, Laura, anybody that's working with you to follow the same structure. You know, and we teach a very clear process to any advisor who comes in that this is how we do things, and this is the way that we work, and we want it to be repeatable. We want the client experience to feel the same. We've heard so many horror stories from people coming from different firms, and they're like, Yeah, I just keep getting passed around to different guys and they don't even know anything about me. Like, people hate that, right? So we want whoever comes in the door, we want the process to be the same. And we work hard as advisors to keep that process the same. We have a very tight process, and we all work together on cases. So no matter who you get, everyone's seen it, everyone understands the client. We're a boutique firm, you know, we keep our client base limited to a sense and purpose because we want to understand everyone's situation at a deep level. But for someone like Laura and I, we can come in knowing that we've got the backing of the office, we've got the training, we've got the process, and we've put in work individually to feel confident about ourselves and we're able to go in and deliver that process the same as Stuart, the same as anybody, because we've put in the work and we've got the right system in place.

SPEAKER_02 33:44

I think that's fantastic. Let's switch gears a little bit. So let's talk about both of you guys have worked with a lot of different clients. What do you wish people knew before they picked up the phone, before they came to ClearPath? Don't all talk at once. Do you want to, Mitch, Laura, which one do you want to use the example first?

unknown 34:09

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 34:10

The biggest thing I would say is people people feel like they need to have everything together when they come to us, right? They feel like they need to have everything in place. You know, we go through so many meetings with people and they're like, you know, we always the first time it comes up is the expense question. We're like, well, what are your monthly expenses? And they're like, well, honey, I don't really like I don't know. I mean, the board they start kind of doing in their head, right? They're like the mortgage is this much and the car, and they're like, but what about Amazon? We're spending, you know, and they're embarrassed in a way. And, you know, and they're always like, well, I don't know. And you could see them kind of getting, and we're like, hey, look, like, slow down. Remember, we're we're on your side here. We're here to work with you. We don't care if you spend $20,000 a month. It doesn't matter. We we're not here to, you know, coach you on your spending. We're here to understand what you're doing and make it work, right? So I would say the main thing I wish people understood, and I hate to see it as an advisor, is some people will shy away from going through our process because they feel like I don't really know how much I spend. I don't really know. I I've got an old 401k, I'm embarrassed to say I don't even know where it is, right? We hear that all the time. They're like, well, I used to work with this company and you know it's I left a couple years ago and I don't really know how it's invested. And it's like, I wish people understood we don't need you to have that stuff. That's why you're coming to us, right? If I went to a mechanic and I was embarrassed because my car was a mess and I hadn't changed my oil in two years, I'm not gonna not go to the mechanic because of that. I'm gonna go. Like, hey, I need help. Like, I've been putting this off for sure. And that's the people, that's the feeling people get is they're like, I've been putting this off. I've not been, I'm getting close to retirement and I've not been as diligent as I should. And it's like, that's great. That's why you're here. Like, we welcome that. That's why we want to talk to you. We want, that's my favorite people to talk to. That's the people who don't have it all together. You know, it's one thing to talk to somebody who has been managing it for years and knows every dollar that they have. It's more rewarding for us as advisors to work with families who have never really put it together. They're like, hey, I've got a 401k I've been contributing to, I don't know, but I don't really know anything else. You know, like I don't know this stuff. I need help. And that's when people can let their guard down and just come through our process. Let us help you get all that together. It's like we're not here to judge you. Everything's confidential. We're just we want to work with you, and that's why we do this. That's the thing we love the most.

SPEAKER_01 36:17

Yeah. Another thing is like we know there are a lot of people out there that are just trying to sell you something. And we know we work with people like you every day, and we know how tiring it can get. That someone you want them to do what's best for you, and they just come and say, Well, can I sell you this? Can you can I show you this? This is so good. So, what we want you to know, like we said at the beginning, we're a planning first firm. We're never gonna do something just to sell you. We're gonna go look at your plan. Even last week we'd had so many people that we had to plan for them, and there are things we could offer them, but it was not what was best for them, so we didn't, because we care about our clients. We care that we don't want just to sell you something today and tomorrow you go and say, Hey, they they did this to me. We are a planning for us firm.

SPEAKER_00 37:10

I love that. That's a key distinction, Laura, and that's the biggest thing we pride ourselves on, right? That's that's my favorite thing about working at ClearPath. But guys, this is awesome. We've got one more segment coming up. We'll take a quick little break. Again, guys, this is Clearpath Retirement Planning. We are a local Greenville firm. We'd love to talk to you.

SPEAKER_04 37:27

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SPEAKER_03 37:57

Thanks for tuning in to Clear Path Retirement Radio with Stuart Smith and Mitch Davies. Let's get back to the show.

SPEAKER_00 38:03

Welcome back, everybody. This is Clear Path Retirement Radio. As always, I'm your host, Mitch Davies, and joined today with two special guests from the firm. We're joined with Laura Bishop and Kathy Farrer. And guys, this is a fun one. We're having a great discussion. I'm just getting to understand a bit more about us as Laura and I as advisors, getting to understand a bit more about Kathy and welcome her to the team. We've been so excited to have her. She's been phenomenal for us. And we're just having a discussion today. And it's been great, Kathy, hasn't it?

SPEAKER_02 38:31

Yeah, this is it's definitely very interesting to be able to really get to know both of you. And I think that it also shows a lot, and I hope that's what something our listeners will hear from all of this, is that this is a very well-rounded team. That even though Stuart is the face and he has the years of experience, which certainly adds to things, you guys add a very strong element, and he's done a nice job of creating a well-rounded team of different types of personalities, very budget conscious, not so much we've learned today, but certainly sharp either way, and it doesn't matter, the ages haven't mattered. It's really about really trying to help people. That's the thing that I keep hearing is that you're really wanting to help people. And Laura mentioned earlier about the fact that you know that you're not selling products, and I think that is a big deal. And when would you say that product conversation starts to come in?

SPEAKER_00 39:30

You know, I would say, Kathy, that every financial product has its place. Maybe not everyone, but the majority of them that are used today. You know, whether that's you know, ETFs, whether that's structured notes that are, you know, market notes that are tied up for some time, whether that's things when people think of products, they think of insurance, right? Whether that's life insurance or annuities or these types of things, they all have a place. But what we do, again, is all certified fiduciaries and a planning first focus is we really get to understand, you know, what the client's goals are, what their you know, whole income plan looks like, and then we find the right tools to accomplish those things. What you'll see at a lot of other firms and other companies is they're trying to sell. And it's you know, what can we how can we sell the most, the highest commission type things to be to be blunt. So that's my favorite thing about working at ClearPath is we every tool has a has its place, right? But you can't use a hammer for everything, is the analogy we always say. And we'll have every client conversation is different. And that's why we never we always we pre caution against cocktail party advice we call it at the firm, where it's like, hey, like you need to do this. You're talking to your neighbor, and she says, Oh, well, my advisor said I need to do this. Like, every situation is so different. You know, your neighbor doesn't understand your expenses, doesn't understand your assets, doesn't understand your estate plan. So every meeting that we have is completely different from the last, which is so cool as an advisor to be able to do, to know that there's no pressure from our back office to try to sell a certain product or sell a certain type of investment. It's like we really get to just understand our clients, know them, and figure out what is going to make the most sense.

SPEAKER_02 41:04

And I feel like that that would be a relief for both of you guys going in, is that you're not having to try to feel like it's a high-pressured sales situation, that you're able to go in with a plan and be able to give somebody a clear idea of what the next steps are when they're planning for their retirement. So moving to the idea of it's there was something that we had talked about the other day, and we were kind of talking about as we were preparing for today's show. Um, one of the things that you, in fact, I think you had mentioned, Laura, that the market hasn't fully seen what ClearPath does yet. That we're just starting to get the word out about how we are different to other companies. What would you say, what do you when people do work with us, what do they see? What do you think they start to see when they actually see us versus what they think they know?

SPEAKER_01 42:02

Yeah, they see that we bring value and what we do, no one else is doing it the way at the deep level that we do it. Like I was telling you the other day, we're small in a boutique kind of firm, but so not a lot of people know about us. A big difference. We show them value every time they come, from the moment they open the door to go to our office until they leave, they see that there's things that are different from our firm, from our advisors, from the people that greet them at the door. We're different because we're trying to give you that. We want every client to feel like they're coming to a family reunion, that they can be trusted, that they can trust us with their problems, that they can talk, and they don't feel rushed because the meeting has to end. They don't feel rushed because I you know, I gotta go meet with other clients. Every client has their time and their situation matters to us.

SPEAKER_02 43:00

Yeah, I agree. I think that that you've explained that very well. I can definitely see that the customer experience is very important at Clear Path Retirement. What are some of the things that you guys have done to show your appreciation for people that become clients with the firm?

SPEAKER_01 43:18

Yeah, we do a couple of clients events a year that are really fun. We also Yeah, we we were talking about that.

SPEAKER_02 43:26

We were. Yeah, what's some examples? Yeah, so talk about some of that so that people could get a feel for if they were considering about coming in for a retirement plan, what's some of the things that once they become a client, what does it feel like for them?

SPEAKER_01 43:42

Well, they can call us whenever they want, which after today's meetings we realize is not that common advisor.

SPEAKER_02 43:49

That's interesting. So talk about that. What have you heard that when people do come in and sit down, like some of the things they've shared with working with other advisors?

SPEAKER_01 43:58

Yeah, one of our biggest complaints with obvious. Advisors is like whenever they close their business, they don't hear ever from them.

SPEAKER_02 44:04

Right.

SPEAKER_01 44:05

That the clients are the ones that need to go and call them in order to get information or to get something from them. And that's not something we do at our firm. We have a pretty tight system that we use to make sure we contact clients every year, every couple months, and we do reviews. So they don't need to come and talk to us. We're the one to reach out to them.

SPEAKER_02 44:29

That's I'd say that's definitely a big difference for a lot of places, right?

SPEAKER_00 44:34

So what would you add to that, Mitch? Yeah, and on top of that, you know, we're gonna have our structure, we're gonna have our system, which is great. We're gonna have our reviews, we're gonna reach out. But on top of that, we're small enough and we're in that boutique enough field where we've got our advisors have time to organically reach out. You know, we're gonna have a lot of organic touch points. Like during March, I talked to a lot of clients, right? I talked about restructuring things into different investments. I talked about the market and kind of easing some fear about what was going on. So not only do we have our structure in place, which is great, and we've worked really hard on that, we also have the time. You'll hear from us, you know. Stuart will pick up the phone and call you. We we have the time to organically do this, where it's not just a set review. It's like we want to be, we don't want to ever have the case where a client has to call in for multiple meetings. You know, you're either hearing from us for a scheduled one or we're calling to talk to you about a new idea. Like this is the clear path difference. This is what we really get to focus on is having that or those organic touch points as well, where you're gonna hear from us about I spent a whole like three hours in March talking to most of our biggest clients, talking about, hey, different, here's some markets that we're focused on coming out of this recovery. And they were so happy to hear that. You know, that's the kind of thing that people aren't getting. You just get your annual call and say, hey, here's our performance, right? If you feel like that's the case for you, give us a call because we really get to do that as a small, more boutique firm, and I I love it.

SPEAKER_02 45:53

Yeah, I was gonna say, you even go and actually send out an email to every week, right, to your clients about the market updates. I imagine that's especially important right now with all that's been going on in the markets. How does that work?

SPEAKER_00 46:09

Yeah, so it's actually I do a bi-weekly email. Oh, okay. Which is I used to do every week, and people it people it's better than the bi-weekly. Okay, I've got to be able to do that. Bi weekly been better. But same structure, you know, it's like people want to hear from you more in those times. We hear the biggest complaint, like Laura mentioned, is people are like, yeah, they just call me when things are going well. It's like we want to be more on top of you when things aren't going well. And so the bi-weekly emails are just one point where you get to organically hear from me. You know, I'm taking the time to write this out and to address it's similar to the market minute structure where I get to really address the things that are important and the things that matter. And that's just one of the many ways that we're spending time as advisors connecting with our clients.

SPEAKER_02 46:48

So Laura, was there something you wanted to add to that?

SPEAKER_01 46:50

Yeah, so something we also do is you don't stop being a client or at priority once we close a business with you. We're always looking for new opportunities, new things that are benefit for you. Something that we always do, going back to the planning first, is that your situation tells us where to go. It's not that we have a list of products that we're just trying to fill for you. Your situation says wherever we need to go. So we're always looking for new things that are better because we might set something was good and then we could find something way better later on. So you don't stop being a priority just because we close you.

SPEAKER_02 47:34

I think that's an excellent point. And it also shows as we were just talking about some of the things, the ways that you guys evolve and look for new ideas. So if there's new things that they could be doing, then you're letting them know. You're changing frequency of emails that are going out. I mean, you're learning as as you are listening to your clients and what their needs are and you're making changes that make sense.

SPEAKER_00 47:58

That's right. That's right. And that's the biggest thing, you know. Me and Laura were talking about this the other day. It's like I've been here three years now, and the process is always changing. We're always improving. You know, we don't have that, especially in the financial financial industry. You see this where there's a more old school corporate kind of, hey, this is how we do things, this is how we've done things, and like not adapting. Because we have such a diverse, you know, group of ages, experiences, skill sets, personality types, we're always adapting. We're always challenging the process. We all feel comfortable in meetings to challenge anything. Like, hey, I don't think this is the most efficient. What if we did this instead? We're always able to, and it allows us to continue to push the boundaries. And for a smaller firm, we're able to be so efficient because we never stop challenging. We never stop growing, we never stop learning, and we never stop learning from each other and asking questions. Hey, could we improve the client experience even a bit by doing this? And we'll spend the time on these little changes that over time compound, and we think that's what's going to bring us to the top of this market is the little things like that.

SPEAKER_02 48:55

I like that. So let me ask you this. So I noticed as I was doing editing and listening to podcasts that it seems I'm in the retirement red zone or getting close to that time. Who are the type of clients, like if there's people that have been thinking about retirement planning, when's the best time for them to come in and talk to you guys and sit down and get a plan?

SPEAKER_00 49:18

Um well, the best time is yesterday. But this is the second best time. If you're in that, we call the retirement red zone, the three to five years leading up to retirement, if you're getting close to that phase, or you're already in retirement, or you're deep into retirement, anything in that window, there's always people are like, uh, it's too late for me to talk to you guys, right? We do that. Or it's too early. I'm only 57, I'm not 65 yet. There's no age limit. If you're anywhere in this window, if you're getting ready to retire, if you're already retired, if you're deep into retirement, and the conversation shifts to estate planning. There's so much we can do. Guys, give us a call, 864-775-5033. Go to ClearpathRetirement.com. We'd be happy to talk with you. But it's been a great show, guys, and happy retirement.

SPEAKER_04 49:59

Are you anxious to see what retirement might look like for you? Do you feel like you have the pieces of the puzzle, but you're not sure how they fit together or where to start? At ClearPath Retirement, we help you bring clarity to retirement by organizing your income, taxes, healthcare decisions, and legacy planning into one cohesive plan. Retirement doesn't have to feel uncertain, it just needs a clear path. Schedule your complimentary consultation at Clearpathretirement.com.

SPEAKER_03 50:28

You've been listening to Clearpath Retirement Radio with Stuart Smith and Mitch Davies, helping you make informed decisions so you can plan for retirement with confidence. To learn more, visit Clearpathretirement.com. That's Clearpathretirement.com. Investment advisory service is offered through Alpastar Capital Management LLC, a SEC registered investment advisor. SEC registration does not constitute an endorsement of the firm by the SEC, nor does it indicate that the advisor has attained a particular level of skill or ability. Fixed insurance products are offered through Clearpath Retirement Planning LLC, and AlphaStar Capital Management is not involved in the offer, recommendation, sale, or management of commission based fixed insurance products. AlphaStar Capital Management and Clearpath Retirement Planning LLC are separate and independent entities. This is for informational purposes only and is not intended as legal tax or investment advice or a recommendation of any particular security, investment product, or investment strategy.