Introduction

When I was a sophomore at Canisius High School in Buffalo, New York, my teacher, Vincent Chiumento, had our class read a book that changed my life: The Once and Future King by T. H. White. It told the tale of King Arthur and the Knights of the Round Table, and it quickly became one of my favorites. Every so often, I read it again, and I always get something new out of the experience.

My favorite part is when Merlin turns a young boy, Arthur (then known as Wart), into a fish, then a bird, and then an ant, teaching Arthur lessons to prepare him to be a good and righteous king. Arthur learns the essential lesson that might is for doing right, not that might makes right.

What resonates most heavily with me is how the author depicts Arthur’s rise, his fall, and then his rise again. We all have rises and falls in our own stories; I know it’s been a common theme throughout my life.

After studying at Canisius, I went to West Point, then into the Army, and then to Ranger School—the rise of the military man. After eight years of doing might for right, I left the Army and joined the Pepsi-Cola Company in Kansas City while serving in the Kansas National Guard on weekends.

Me with the Pepsi “Uh-Huh” Girls.

That gave rise to my time as a franchise operations director for PepsiCo, the corporate owner of Taco Bell, Pizza Hut, and KFC at the time, before getting recruited as a national director for Philips 66. I rose ever higher—becoming a national restaurant consultant in Chicago—before falling from great heights, getting laid off during the 2001 recession.

After that, my life rose in a new direction: I learned to dance, met the woman who would become my wife, and traveled the world before deciding to move back to Overland Park, Kansas, and starting over as a financial advisor for Edward Jones. In the first two-and-a-half years, I went from zero dollars to $40 million by going door to door and asking people to do business with me. Since then, I’ve built my business to $200 million while giving away $80 million to help six new advisors start their businesses while being mentored for a year or two in my office. During my Jones tenure, I created fourteen well-paying jobs in my city as I built a team that was one of the top five offices based on production and client satisfaction as ranked by JD Power.

In November 2019, I became a registered independent advisor and partner with V Wealth Advisors in Overland Park, Kansas. As a certified financial planner with fiduciary responsibility to my clients, it was a natural step in my growth and reinvention to better serve others.

Like King Arthur, I’ve had my share of battles and troubles in life. Ultimately, my goal is still to do good and to strive and help as many people as I can.

Would You Like Fries with That?

People often ask, “How did you get from the military into the restaurant business and then into financial planning?”

My military experience taught me to access a tremendous amount of information and to use it to make good decisions, primarily so I wouldn’t get people killed. Going from that level of responsibility to making sure that customers didn’t get fried chicken when they ordered tacos was an entirely different order of business, yet the same skills applied. Whether leading troops or getting slammed with a rush at Taco Bell, you have to be prepared. What staff do you need? Where do they need to be positioned? What happens if you have more people coming through the drive-through than you expected?

The lessons of leadership I learned in the military have served me throughout my life, most recently in my role as a certified financial planner. I’m able to be proactive, look at the facts and assumptions of a situation, and say, “The market is going to do one of three things: go up, go down, or trade sideways.” Based on my client’s family’s situation, I can prepare a course of action for each possibility.

My experience keeping troops from getting blown up helps me make sure my clients’ accounts don’t blow up when they’re a year away from retirement. I apply everything I’ve learned along the way from my variety of experiences to the task at hand. It involves knowing the facts on the ground and thinking on your feet.

People who’ve done the same thing for fifty years are probably very good at what they do. Someone who has always been a kindergarten teacher only has that one perspective. A military officer who then becomes a contractor for the military has never known anything other than working for the government under very strict rules and regulations; they’ve always been told what to do. If you’ve always been in corporate America but you’ve never been an entrepreneur working on your own (or the reverse—an entrepreneur who has never worked for a larger corporation or been in the military), you have developed a narrow focus through that one set of experiences.

Problems can arise, though, when the world we know shifts and that person doesn’t know how to relate what they know to other situations and to see the big picture. People who have done the same thing for many decades may have tremendous depth but not enough breadth of experience.

As a certified financial planner, it’s important to have both breadth and depth—a wide number of experiences and deep knowledge in a particular area of expertise.

Keep It Simple, Stupid

My goal in writing this book is to share my stories with you, whether you’re a client, a friend, or a family member. I’m in the business of giving financial advice, providing counsel, and assisting people in decision-making. On these pages I hope to show you not only how I got here, but also what we all need to do in order to make rational decisions that bring us more enjoyment and benefits in life.

For example, I met with a couple recently who felt that their house was weighing them down. Trying to keep up with all the costs and effort of making their home picture-perfect kept them from seeing friends and having a good time. They were considering selling, but the value of houses in their area had gone down, and they didn’t want to take a loss.

We talked about their overall situation and determined that, financially, they’d be fine selling their house. But we kept on talking until I discovered what was most important to them: having their family and loved ones around. Instead of focusing on what really mattered in their lives, they’d become overly absorbed in societal expectations, believing that their house had to be perfect. They just didn’t know how to proceed.

As we talked, I helped them see that it’s okay if their house isn’t perfect. More important to them was that the house simply be a comfortable place to entertain friends and family, to have fun and enjoy themselves, instead of worrying about making it a showpiece with perfectly arranged landscaping. Their core values were more about having a community of loved ones to share their home with. It was a simple solution that supported their social nature, instead of striving to keep up with a lifestyle that wasn’t really theirs.

After that, they looked at their house from a different perspective. Rather than seeing it as a burden that prevented them from being able to enjoy time with others, their home became a place for people to come together.

Many of us make life more complicated than it has to be. Instead of striving for perfection, I’ve found it’s far better to strive for what’s good. As you’ll soon see, I’ve never been close to perfect in my life.

An Ordinary Guy

I grew up in Buffalo, New York, which is an ordinary city. There is nothing sexy or extraordinary about Buffalo. It doesn’t compare to Los Angeles, Chicago, or Miami. I came from a blue-collar family where there were no silver spoons. I learned to work for and appreciate everything I have.

My home when I was growing up.

I’ve had health issues, relationship issues, and business issues to battle through. Like many other people, I’ve been laid off and had to pick myself up and go on (unfortunately, getting laid off is an ordinary thing these days). What isn’t ordinary, I suppose, is that after getting laid off, I went on to build a multimillion-dollar business by going door to door and talking to one prospect at a time. My background and experience led me to look setbacks in the eye, as I’ve had to look cancer in the eye, accept the challenge, and run marathons. I’m a chameleon—the Army Ranger who learned to ballroom dance and went on to become a gentleman host onboard the Queen Elizabeth II.

I believe that ordinary people like me can be far more than ordinary.

And you can too.

You may not identify with all the specifics of my stories, but I expect you’ll see some of yourself in the stories I tell. I hope you’ll find yourself reflected in these pages and that some of the lessons I’ve learned will ring true for you.

Lessons Learned

This book is the (abridged) story of a life. As you read through, I hope you’ll come to know me better as a person, gain insight through my experience, and apply some of what I’ve learned to the stories of your own life.

Here’s a start on what’s to come:

• Be in service to others. When you serve others, you put...