EXPERIENCE 67 | Clint Jasperson, Wealth Advisor and Partner of Purpose Driven Wealth at Thrivent Financial
Clint's the Co-Owner of Purpose Driven Wealth at Thrivent. They have three offices, in Windsor Colorado, Cheyenne, Wyoming, and Durango Colorado.
During our conversation we talk a lot about building a business in the financial services industry. What I found interesting is that Clint has built a team of advisors that work together but they also compete against each other, as well as the general marketplace.
We also talk about Clint's life during college and the things he struggled with while growing up. During his youth, he went through the tragedy of loosing his father which made him become the kind of leader he is today.
It's a wide ranging conversation and we talk about all kinds of things from economics to faith, to the best financial practices. There's a lot here for everybody, so I hope you'll tune in and enjoy this episode with Clint Jasperson.
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Music By: A Brother's Fountain
My guest on today's podcast was Clint Jesperson. Clint is a thriving agent and has an office with purpose-driven wealth, which has three offices, really one in Windsor, Colorado, one in Cheyenne, Wyoming, and one in Durango, Colorado. Clinton's the founder of purpose-driven wealth and has a partner. What I found interesting about this conversation is that Clint has built a team of advisors that work together rather than a group of independent, largely agents that, um, are all kind of competing against each other as well as the general marketplace. So we talk a lot about building a business in the financial services industry. We talk about his why a lot, uh, Clint was, uh, Chuck. Kid that drank too much during March part of his college years and, uh, and really found himself. Um, during that time he went through a tragedy in his early youth with the loss of his father and, and just really, um, came through some tough times to become the kind of leader of himself that he's become. And so we talk about all kinds of things from economics to faith, to, uh, financial best practices. And there's a lot here for everybody. I hope you'll tune in and enjoy this episode with Clint. Jesperson.
Curt:
We will get rolling here. Okay. Sounds good. Welcome back to the local experience podcast. My guest today is Clint jazz person, Clint is the founder and primary owner of purpose-driven wealth management, which is a Thrivent, um, office here in Northern Colorado. And, uh, let's just get started. Clint, talk to me about Thrivent
Clint:
thrivent is an organization that's been around a long, long time. Uh, originally started by members of the Lutheran church, um, a hundred plus years ago. And, um, that organization grew to become two organism. Well, there were two organizations that ultimately joined together to form thriving, uh, aid association of Lutherans and Lutheran brotherhood to create thriving, financial, and the important things to understand about Thrivent. Um, the first thing is that because of those roots and that our background, um, we just have a different mission. I think when it comes to helping people, uh, with their finances. So, you know, our mission is to create financial clarity and to inspire meetings of lives and generosity of lives, meanings, lives of meaning. Yeah, meaningful lives, lives of meaning and generosity. And, um, you know, we can do all the things like, you know, insurance products, mutual funds, brokerage accounts, those types of things. But there's also because we're a fraternal organization, I think 5 0 1 C eight or whatever it is in the tax code. We also do a number of, uh, charitable events and, and things to help the community be a better place to create a member
Curt:
owned almost like a B Corp.
Clint:
Yeah. Yeah. It's very, very, very similar to that. I mean, it's, um, I think if anyone's ever done business with a credit union versus a bank, you know, nothing against banks, but it's just a different business model. And so I think thriving as an organization really appealed to me that way, um, in terms of, uh, you know, the attraction that ultimately like how I got connected to them back in 2013.
Curt:
Yeah. And disclosure to the listeners. I wasn't thriving agent that's when Clinton I met. And, uh, when I left the industry to pursue local think tank full time, um, I turned over my client base, most of them to Clinton his team, um, because they just did it. Right. Um, and, uh, so talk to me about purpose driven wealth, because you're more than just, uh, a solopreneur investment guy. Like most people probably are mostly accustomed to.
Clint:
Yeah. So, um, what's unique about us is so in the financial services industry, you'll have a lot of, uh, individual advisors that they might even share the same office. Maybe they share some expenses or some staff, but they're really not trying to, for the most part, they're not trying to build something larger together. And so what I mean by that is there's, there's three components that we try to dial in over the last five years, uh, and are still trying every day cause they're ideals, but the verses, we really want to get culture. Right. You know, so culture is about, you know, defining a common vision. Talking about our values. You know, why, what we do is important and helping our clients feel loved on when it comes to their finances so that we can make the world a better place and making sure that everyone gets why we're in business, but then you've got to get leadership things in place. So who does what and clear the financial service industry can be a place that attracts, I mean, most people, when they get started, they don't start with a salary. You got to let go and build your own business. Right. And, um, that can be really challenging because, um, you know, candidly, like you can be, you know, to be responsible for selling your way to success while also learning the business. I, you know, I sell anybody, anything, whether it's the right, I think that it increases that potential, that potential conflict, right. And it's also just a really difficult way to start in the business. And so we're different in the sense that, um, we all, all the revenue from all of us goes into the same bucket and we all have this and we all have a salary to take and there's profit sharing based off of ownership. And, um, how that's different is, you know, if, if another advisor on the team needs something, you know, of course, like from a values perspective, I would want to help them, but it's not just, Hey, I'm doing this and I'm also going to get paid to do it. It's more of just, uh, we're all on the same team and everyone shares and everyone else's success. And our goal is to ultimately build something larger than any one personality. So, um, it's done in the industry, but it's less frequent and it's, it's more difficult to, to bring something like that together.
Curt:
Well, I want to. Unfold the business journey a little bit. Yeah, I understand. Uh, you've got some things you need to read as far as regulatory things. Do you want to just like do that right now and knock it out before they get into the
Clint:
exciting part of, yeah. So for the listeners out there, I'll just, uh, one of the things there's so many compliance hurdles have to be in the industry. And so some that Kurt was gracious enough to let me get some stuff out of the race. So my title is a wealth advisor for thrive, investment management, a wholly owned subsidiary of Thrivent. Uh, uh, let's see the views in this broadcast are my own and they'd may not represent, uh, thrive ins. Um, any, any time I'm referenced like a financial rating, like from ambassador or something like that, we probably won't. Yeah, probably won't but, um, it's a rating based on thrive. It's financial strength and claims paying ability does not apply to investment product performance. And then last thing, um, for our team members that are financial advisors, when I refer to them insurance products, securities investment values, assurances are provided by appropriately pointed in licensed financial advisor professionals, only individuals or financial advisors are credentialed to provide investment advisory services, visit thriving.com or Finos broker check for more information about that, actually
Curt:
that's thank you for that summary of why I'm no longer an investment management professional. I just wasn't that good at it.
Clint:
Well, I mean, you know, everyone's got their strengths, man. I showed promise. So did you did? Yeah, really good at really good at building trust relationships, but you liked the Loco, the local idea more and you. Yeah, we're getting there. Yeah. You're
Curt:
still making way more money than I am, but right now,
Clint:
for sure, until you hit a bag, right. We'll
Curt:
see. Yeah. Maybe the local experience podcast will be that route. Yeah, for sure. So I, part of the reason I wanted to have you on today clinics, cause I really love your journey. It's been one of, you know, a lot of challenges and, and succeeding, despite challenges and things. And so I want to just take us all the way back to a little third grade, Clint or fifth grade Clint or something like that. Like where'd you grow up? What was your family background? A little bit and stuff. And I think in through that story will unfold kind of some of your why in terms of
Clint:
thrive and also, yeah, totally. So I grew up in rural Wyoming in the middle of nowhere. So 45 miles away from a grocery store if you're in Northern Colorado. Um, so between Cheyenne and Laramie, which, you know, there's the IED interstate, there's a old highway road called happy Jack road, that kind of parallels IAT. So I grew up on that road next to a place called WVU basically, which is probably the closest geographical reference, great climbing area. Yeah. Great climbing area, great place to go camping. Um, and I literally grew up in a log cabin in the middle of the nowhere. So one of the benefits of growing up in that environment was, you know, you learn the value of a handshake and that your word is your bond. My neighbors were like extended family members. Yeah. And that's just. How that's just the way it is
Curt:
back now. Was this like where your parents were from or something? Are they escaping a investigation in the city somewhere and moved to a
Clint:
cabin? Well, my dad, my dad was born in Afton, Wyoming. Uh, but he, he and my mom met while they were in Nebraska. Uh, I think running like a hotel or something like that or Ramada Inn. And then my dad decided he wanted to, uh, exit the hotel industry and somehow found himself back in Cheyenne, Wyoming, teaching English. And so my mom's originally from Maryville, Missouri and has actually, uh, she's a, she runs, uh, an organization for the boilermakers. That's a large labor union and administers all the benefits for like, you know, a hundred thousand people or something in a pension plans, health and welfare trust. So, and you know, in a lot of ways, she, I mean, she is my hero or one of the heroes growing up. I mean, my dad had a lot of positive aspects of them too, but my mom never graduated college, you know? And so when my, my dad passed away when I was 15 and she had to take care of two young boys, she was an office manager for a dental practice when that happened. And I'll tell you, like, it makes an impression. One of my favorite questions or favorite things to explore with clients is what their first money memory is. My one of my more powerful ones is I literally remember sitting on a couch in our log cabin where we grew up and we had two neighbors, Daryl, and Dorothy. And I was the oldest child, um, for, well, I have two older half-brothers, um, that I consider, you know, full brothers that were actually close to now. I didn't really know them prior to this. There's a whole, we can spend hours on this if you want. But anyway, um, I was talking with my neighbors and I, you know, feel the oldest in the household at the time. I was like, you know, are we going to be okay? Like, I'm really concerned that, you know, we're not, you know, that this isn't gonna work out. And they're like, well, you know, um, your dad was a really smart man. He's a teacher, et cetera. There's this type of insurance that when you die, it pays off all your bills. I'm sure he had some of that. And he didn't, he had two times as teacher salary and life insurance. Based on how teachers are paid today. They're paid probably underpaid, you know, just as much back then. And so we, we had to sell the house right away within a month. I mean, it was just a whoa. So I remember deciding I never want to be in that
Curt:
situation. We kind of jumped ahead to your dad passed suddenly at 15. Yeah. Like car accident or,
Clint:
well, it was a car accident actually. So my dad, uh, my dad was an alcoholic and he passed away while drinking. Thank goodness. He didn't take anybody else with him, but he literally, he literally passed away on the happy Jack road. There's bar called Matt and Pat's bunk house bar had too much to drink, fell asleep while drinking one Friday night, uh, during frontier days, um, passed out, fell asleep, died. And that was that. Thank goodness. Didn't take anyone else with him, but yeah.
Curt:
And you're, you're the older brother. So you you're
Clint:
15. Yeah. Yeah. My younger brother, Dane is a year and a half younger than me. And so, you know that I didn't have, I have two, I have two older brothers that my dad from previous marriage, but my dad had a, uh, tense relationship with them at best. You know, my, my dad had some issues with his alcoholism and wasn't great at relationships. A lot of things.
Curt:
When do you remember that going back to like, as long as you remember
Clint:
the alcoholism or the, um, well, so it's funny, you talk with people that have parents of other alcoholics and they have. Different cultural or other dynamics around like there's a certain behaviors you kind of learn about. So I remember my dad having some type of relationship with alcohol at a very young age, like always had a beer, those types of things, but it never really felt like it was a negative thing until probably my like 10, 11, 12, like, right. That, that sort of precipice right before you start to transition. And you know, maybe you start to realize too, like that's maybe when you start to challenge your parents a little bit more, I don't know what it was, but that's when I started to kind of sense it. Yeah. Yeah. And it it's weird. Cause like you don't realize until you step out of that culture, just how different it is. Like I think about, you know, so, so it was pretty common when I was a kid, like, you know, my dad, every Friday night would come home. So my dad is a teacher who picked us up everyday from school. He got the summers off like many brilliant qualities of my dad. You know, he filled up the entire St Mary's Catholic cathedral in China when he passed away, which is the largest church in Cheyenne. He was a well-liked, he was a well-liked guy, had many talents and many bright lights that all strengths that also CA you know, everyone has shadows. Right. And, um, for your, where I was going with this, uh, I kind
Curt:
of lost my that's celebrating who he was. And, but also, I guess the, the weaknesses as the cracks started to show yeah,
Clint:
yeah. You start to you start. Oh yeah. So then, so every Friday night you would actually go to the bar, you know, and have, I mean, literally every Friday night, you know, so most of my childhood memories on the weekend. My dad would come home, go to the bar Friday nights, you know? And like that was every Friday, Saturday morning. I mean, so my dad was, I get my, I get, my mom was a hard worker, but so is my dad. The thing about my dad was he could be out, you know, get home at midnight and it'd be six 30 in the morning. And I was, uh, I was out shoveling horse manure with him in the barn. So it, uh, I don't know where he got that. Yeah. If
Curt:
I was out until two o'clock in the morning as a 15 year old, yeah. Dad made sure we started the day at five 30
Clint:
and it was him driving. We might've started
Curt:
at six 30 if I wasn't home so late, but yeah, exactly. Part of his coaching of how not to get home so late. Yeah, totally. It actually, my dad didn't drink. We were really pretty poor and it wasn't that he in his dad was an alcoholic, um, and had a broken family because of both died early and whatever, but, but he kind of, you know, instead of taking that background as being something, a crutch to lean on and forbid him from success, kind of like you have, perhaps he took it as a challenge to really be successful, you know, and, and not spending money on alcohol when you're trying to feed four kids is
Clint:
an important thing. Yeah, totally. And yeah, it's, it's, it's amazing. The things like now that I'm a parent, I go back and I'm like, wow. You know, that was different for me growing up. And I'm grateful for a lot of things. Um, I genuinely am in a place where. I love my dad now. And I miss him now, these gone, but when he passed, it's the sad thing to say is it was probably more of a blessing for me when he passed then, uh, then, uh, and I was going to ask that if it was going to be a relief in a
Curt:
lot of ways, it was even though you knew the money thing was going to be scary once you started putting the yeah. The
Clint:
money thing. Um, I mean, to my mom's credit, like she just rose to the challenge. Like, I mean, she went from being a dental office manager to basically being the first, like the founding sales person for a health maintenance organization and grew that to 25,000 people and the small state of Wyoming, because she was a single parent and didn't want to take risks. She worked on salary. Had she taken a commission? She'd probably have been retired at that point in time knowing how right. The benefits industry works. But, um, but yeah, so she, I mean, it literally on her shoulders, you know, my brother and I, she kept you guys in the lower middle-class. I mean, we never, we never, we never wanted for food. She was able to help us out with college. You know, I got a number of scholarships, so she was actually able to help us with that. Um, and so, uh, yeah, what's your mom's name? Laurie Jasper says, hi, Lori.
Curt:
I hope you're listening to this or I'm sure you will
Clint:
probably send it to her afterward. Yeah.
Curt:
Um, and so you're, you're 15, you're figuring this out. You're, you know, have this. Anger and fear and lots of challenges going on in that time. Yeah. A hundred percent. Who were you aside from that? Like, were you an athlete? Were you a good student? Were you a country bumpkin? You know, you're pretty polished, honestly
Clint:
right now. Thanks. Yeah. No, not, not the case. So, um, I'm probably a Testament that good things from come from small beginnings, um, you know, and that, and then, uh, those experiences can serve as compost. Uh, so back then I was, um, most of my life I've struck. I had struggled with being overweight. Uh, so I was, I was pretty overweight. Most of that period of time, I had started playing football in high school, which my dad never wanted me to play, but I did it anyways. Cause once I could drive and buy my own car, like I could do those types of things without his permission. Um, but honestly, after he passed away, like I was kind of in a dark place with, with, you know, highlights around that. So I've always been a very curious person and I like to learn new things. And I think a talent that I get from my dad is my dad was very, very smart, like in a really good passionate communicator. So if I care about something and I'm curious about it, I mean, pretty much anything. I, I have no intimidation I can learn about it and whether that's foolhardy or not. Like, I know that if I put enough effort in this, something I can learn about it. And so I've always carried that, that quality, unfortunately, like I was, I was. You know, I, I got mostly A's occasional BS in high school and I never really had to try. I mean, as a type of kid that would come in and, and when I went to college, it was, it was really hard for me cause I was like, oh, I'm not going to have to try when I'm in college, whatever. And I remember I got my first C ever in college and it was like devastating. Like I was like, what the hell is wrong with me? You know, maybe I'm not cut out for college, et cetera. At night. At the time in my life, my identity was more associated with being really good at partying and drinking. Um, and uh, being a guitar player than it was anything else. And I think identity is like a big thing. You know, what people believe themselves and what
Curt:
you tell yourself about
Clint:
yourself a hundred percent,
Curt:
a hundred percent. Cause you read my blog last month. I did not read it. What's your story anyway. And it's all about that stories we tell each other and tell ourselves.
Clint:
Yeah, for sure. No, a hundred percent. It's funny
Curt:
to me how similar our paths are because I was mostly a occasional B high school student. I thought I would be totally, uh, actually overwhelmed by the competition in college. And then I proved it right by not going to class and not studying and taking my same habits from high school into college. And then I was, I was a 2.13 after three semesters was my GPA. That's so good. Yeah. I,
Clint:
um, I feel super fortunate for the people. We're very positive role models. You know, for me, like I was fortunate that I joined a fraternity, which you might think would be like a bad thing. Cause they've got a reputation, you know, and we did a week
Curt:
drinking wheels and you're partying skills too.
Clint:
We definitely did that, but I have a really good friend to this day, his name's Ryan Fitzpatrick, that was such a positive male role model for me in that first year of school. Because, um, you know, was he, I don't know. We, we connected off something so simple, Dave Matthews, band music we bought, he's still a huge fan. So mine, I don't get as many shows as he does now, but we both play guitar. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, he's, he's gone to like, you know, a hundred plus shows a year at this point. I maybe gone to 30, which is a lot of laws. People I've been to one.
Curt:
Yeah. Were you
Clint:
there in older? I was. Yup. Yup. Yup. Um, so anyway, you just, you look back and you, um, I, I, that is one thing I have, you know, that foot, that footprints in the sand, um, that foot, you got some footsteps above. That's funny, you know, talking about footsteps in the sand, we got a guardian angel dancing on our ceiling right now, but I remember reading that at that time in my life and being like, you know, where's God now. Cause I really questioned just every, you know, I was raised Catholic. I was, I was like a Fairweather Catholic in the sense that we showed up for Easter and midnight mass. And I put myself through catechism, uh, studying, you know, in a rural environment. You're not going to church every day. So they allowed us to do that. But I really didn't understand what belief or faith was. And I was so angry. At God that I was convinced he didn't exist. Um, and it's really due to people like that that actually showed me, you know, role modeled, you know, whether you're Christian or not, there are people out there that role model, religious figures in the behaviors they do every day that, you know, really were pivotal for me to, to be nourished in a way that I needed since I didn't have a father figure,
Curt:
it was friends like Ryan. And what else? Like, it sounds like you eventually confronted your funk.
Clint:
Yeah. I mean, I think, um, forgot past it. Yeah. I, I think, you know, I, the fraternity was a way for me to like demonstrate, you know, I've always been a nerd. Like I was the kid growing up in rural Wyoming that like, I wanted to play chess with other people. My dad was a nerd too, you know, I wanted to play Dungeons and dragons. There's literally no one around that could do it. You know, speaking of, of habits that we pick up during COVID I finally get to do that now as an adult and I love it. Uh, but I, um, you know, there's always been like a nerdier or sort of piece of me that's interested in that thing. So the first, you know, I was originally, I think my history was for a long time in my life taking the jobs that no one else wants. So I was given the job of fraternity, uh, philanthropy, philanthropy, chair, whatever my fraternity. I don't know if it was like a chip on my shoulder or what, but I remember someone made a comment to me that was like, yeah, you got this job because no one expects much of it. And that really pissed me off. I didn't say anything at the time, but I was like, okay, well, we're going to do more community service projects than we've ever done before. And that year we won the community service award and the next year, same thing happened. And so like, so, so then what I realized was the jobs that everybody complains about are really the best opportunities. Like, like I would just say, you know, if anyone, not, not that you asked for advice, but if like anyone wants to be successful in the world, just listen to what everyone's complaining about and then design something or solve that problem. It's like that easy.
Curt:
Um, you don't make my financial future. Good.
Clint:
It's harder than that. Yeah. Wave a magic wand.
Curt:
So you finished college, I guess. And this is U w we haven't even really mentioned for sure. Yeah.
Clint:
Yeah. University of Wyoming. And, um, I had, I was not sure what I was going to do after graduating with business or marketing or, oh yeah. So I still, I took class. I got my degree in psychology, also took a number of classes of business. I was like one class away from getting my minor and I was going to go and get my MBA because all of the coaching you get as a psych student is you either gotta be lucky and find some business that values that stuff, which at the time, you know, Tony rock, I mean, it wasn't very. I think people kind of poo-pooed on that type of stuff much, you know, the self-help genres now a thing, it was not when I was graduating and then, um, or you go and do research and I was actually really good at research. Um, but I, I D I knew I didn't want to do that. So got coached. Um, I was super involved as a student. I booked, you know, I helped organize concerts at the college, you know, leadership progression of different opportunities that no one wants. Right. And, you know, my, the highlight of my senior year was I was responsible for booking concerts on campus, including helping book, like people like Hootie, the Blowfish and those types of things. So that was what really.
Curt:
Yeah. And I mean, it really is. You were such a music kid.
Clint:
Well, I, it wasn't, um, music is an element of that, but I think it was just, you know, sort of, yeah. I don't even know what, I, I just been fortunate that, like I had people that, I mean, honestly, how I got solicited to apply for that position was there was someone that had previously, so here's what had happened. I had gone in and actually wanted to bring this musician called Justin King for a charitable event as an extension of that other role that I had. And the guy that I asked who was in this role that I eventually end up assuming was like a huge bluegrass fan. And basically it was like, if it wasn't bluegrass, he didn't do it. And it was all about his tastes. And so, so I was like, okay. And, you know, I guess, I guess I just, this warrior as well. Yeah. Maybe, maybe a chip on my shoulder is when someone tells me I can't do something. I'll just, you know, when someone tells me any percent of advisors fail out of the business, so I'm going to prove them wrong. Right. So, you know, when he told me I couldn't do it and he's like, oh yeah. And you're not gonna be able to concert and all these other types of things. I mean, then I went out and booked the concert. And not only that, like I called the mayor and the Laramie and got the, you know, the city council, I passed the deadline and like was just happened to be a fact. And I was like, no, this is, we're gonna raise all this money. We raised like the most amount of money that we'd ever raised for this thing. And like, I was like, oh, this is really, and I didn't think anything was unusual about that. Like for me, it was just like, oh, okay. You're not going to help me. I'm just going to go and do these things and kind of figure it out. I'm just going to go and do it. You know what I mean? And so he thought it was an attack on his. Yeah, I think, I think he just didn't want to bring it. Yeah. And like, I ended up not going through the college campus, but the people that kind of oversew him, cause he was a student at the time were like, you know, Clint, Clint demonstrated some promise here and fall through. He just went and did it. I wonder what his view is. And they were looking for someone that would be more welcoming. And I I've always had a reputation for accepting people as they are. I think because the background that I come from, like I don't, I don't easily pass judgment on people, you know? So like I, I was friends with every college group on campus and welcoming to them. I was kind of the non traditional, you know, fraternity guy where it's like, I'm friends with the jocks, I'm friends with, you know, the nerds I am wanting, you know, like all these different types of subgroups. And it was like, oh, you want to bring your hip hop artists then? Awesome. Like how can we help you? Yeah.
Curt:
Is there enough demand for that? And so we touched on like, you were. Chubby kid and then football and then back chubby and angry and stuff like that. When did your health start to change? And was that still during college as the, it
Clint:
was probably during my senior year of college. So my senior year, I was probably the heaviest I got. So I used, this is so crazy to even think about, but there was a period in college where I would go through when my drinking was like, I, again, I prided myself on being great at drinking and I remember like certain moments and changes, but I go through like a case of forties in a week, like, that's ridiculous. Right. And, uh, so anyways, um, there was a period of time where my identity really started to change and it was, there were different challenges, whether it was the philanthropy thing or whatever. Like I ended up getting the version of Wyoming's homecoming, king and queen. And part of that happened again, like there was some news article in the student paper I read and I was like, oh, that'd be really cool if I could do that someday. And I was just thinking out loud and one of these a-holes and I've turned that I really didn't like, it was like, yeah, like you're not going to be able to do that. And like, it wasn't as direct as me going and be like, oh, here's my 10 point plan to do that. But those challenges have always really inspired and greater things for me. So thanks to all the, you know, that thanks to all the haters out there like was legitimately fuels people's fires. So thanks for your service. But, um, anyways, I think my senior year of college has written, my health really started to change. I had tried, I think a lot of my desire to go out and drink and stuff was really desire to like have genuine friendships and relationships with people, including. Um, you know, women that I was attracted to. And then I remember, I, I remember this day when I was in a coffee shop and I was like, why don't I like, you know, I'm, I'm not, I'm not finding success here. Why don't I, why don't I just try to meet women at the things that I genuinely am interested in? You know, like drinking is fun and all, but like, I, you know, I'd rather like, you know, go to Friday night fever, which was the university of Wyoming, did these events that were so, you know, sober, they had laser tag on Friday and lake I'm like, I'm just going to go and do that. Like, so, and then I happened to start dating someone and that person that I was dating her, name's JJ, you know, obviously no longer together we're together for a couple of years, but, you know, she was, she was interested in going snowboarding and I really like, she, I really want to learn how to go snowboarding. So finding people, I think one of the beauties, one of my beliefs is that I think that, um, God designs us to be activated and pursue self-actualization and relationship. So I think we don't self activate self-actualization so almost all of my, like real big aha moments are, are in a lot of ways due to like really great relationships with people or people either positive or negative, positive
Curt:
or negative. Yeah. Some kind of an oppositional force to push against or encouraging someone lifting you up kind of a hundred percent. I find another corollary in there is that. I was so I wasn't the chubby kid, uh, but I was five foot, one until know beginning of my junior year of high school, tall drink of water now. Well, and then I got to college. I was six foot, 202 pounds. Wow. You know, and so I wasn't bringing the baby, the babies were not coming around yet six foot, two, a hundred and thirty two, if you can imagine. And so I always had kind of this love for the outcast and the misfit and a willingness to be friends with the jocks and the nerds and whatever else. Right. And I think we share that a hundred. So a hundred percent college was, was really, especially late college was really a transformative time for you around
Clint:
my health. It was because, and I think it just, I was, it was easier for me to drink less because my environment changed. And so that was when I started, I think I started to first have the insight that wow. Environment and relationships and who you spend time with can play a really huge role in who you become. Yeah. You know, and, and I, and so I started to do some discernment on that. And the hardest part was like, I have friends that I'm still friends in relationship with, but they didn't want to be on the same journey, even, even if you wanted to invite them along for fun. So I remember I had some really good friends that also said that they were really into snowboarding. And I remember one day we hit agreed on like a Friday morning. Drive up to snowy range, which is like a local ski area for the first time. Awesome. Awesome. I mean, they get as good as snow as Steamboat, so shout it's smaller now the lines are short and so on the runs. Yeah. The wind is long get Wyoming winds up there, but anyway, um, we were supposed to like, so, you know, and this friend of mine was like really into partying and I was like, okay, well, I'll come over to Kegan eggs at seven 30 in the morning, I'll have a beer. And then, um, and then we'll go up and ride up together. And then this, this friend of mine ended up just wanting to stay in party. And, and I just remember the time I was like this, this is why, like I had experienced this content because previously I would have wanted to go snowboarding, but wouldn't have maybe done it if I'd been by myself. But I had this woman I was dating at the time. That really helped me have the confidence, I guess, to embrace who I am. So that was the beginning of it. Um, and then it just, yeah, exactly. Yeah. It's awkward to say, but yeah, that's definitely very true. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Curt:
Gratitude, you know, if it wasn't for, if it wasn't for the desire to be the kind of man that it will move with love men would be pretty miserable creatures. We do
Clint:
it a hundred percent, man. I it's, I have two daughters now and I, I think about that dynamic a lot in terms of just like who I was and I'm like, I hope they find someone 10 times better than. And at the same time, you know, me dating my wife, like, I mean, I totally married up, so
Curt:
yeah. Yeah. Fair enough. And so what's that first job search look like after college, you mentioned you were thinking about MBAs and different things and
Clint:
whatever. Yeah. Yeah. So thanks to you. I long-winded as always, that's what
Curt:
we do here.
Clint:
Fair enough. You're great at this, by the way. Um, so we, so I was looking to try to get my MBA and I had a really great mentor named Matt Kyra's shout out to Matt. And he was in a student affairs, higher education student affairs program. And he was like, you know, Quinn, you've been super active. Like he's like, I you're, he's like everything you're telling me about the MBAs. Like, you know, I know you're interested in, you know, finance and, you know, business and stuff like that. And he's like, but you're getting some of that already in these activities. And what I think you really need is more of the people stuff like, you know, to, and you'll get a lot of this. And by the way, they'll pay for all your schooling. If you get into the right program and you'll actually make money, you get a job, you get like an internship that comes with this. And I was like, really, because, you know, I didn't con you know, don't come from humble beginnings and like we're country bumpkins. We don't even know a hundred percent. Well, like if you're looking at, I mean, the programs I was looking at at the time, you know, so Wharton was like, I think 200 grand a year at that time, uh, Harvard was to, uh, the application process for people with less job experience was pretty rigorous, right? Like, I mean, it just, and, and you know, this was right before the great financial crisis. 2007 is when I graduated college. And, um, you know, um, there was no jobs available either, so that was a great leading indicator. Right. So what was going on? And I was like, huh, um, I don't want to, I don't want to, you know, take out a mortgage, essentially type debt to live in, to live in a college education that really doesn't provide food or shelter for me. I mean, you know, just do the math and, you know, you come out of your MBA program, let's say you're making a hundred thousand dollars a year, but you got 250,$300,000 for the debt. Oh. You know, it's like, it just didn't make sense to me. And, and I wasn't, um, you know, I wasn't the elitist of the elite in terms of academics, GMAT. I don't
Curt:
remember. Um, I thought about the same path. Yeah. 6 85. It was pretty good. I
Clint:
know. I, I, I know I was getting courted, but not enough to get scholarships. Cause most of them didn't didn't provide that. So, and I was, I was getting a lot of like, there were scholarship opportunities locally, but at the time I was like, oh, I kind of want to go beyond my comfort zone. Yeah. So, um, naively or arrogantly or whatever. I played a one program. I don't apply to multiply. I applied to one program from where my mentor was from because I trusted him and it turned out that it was like one of the top five in the country. I didn't know that I knew it was a great program, but like ironically enough, I think I've another track record is like, I just go for it. Like I, I'm very focused on, you know, I'm not trying to diversify. I'm like I wanna get. These w this one thing that I'm doing right now and I'm really focused on it. So I, I, I don't think I was probably the most qualified, I mean, I'm sure there are people that had way more activities than I am and all these other things. But when I went there, I was super convicted as to why I wanted to go to the university of Vermont and there. And they're like, did you apply to any of the school? And I was like, Nope. If I don't get in here, I, I will apply reapply again next year. And I think that, I think that actually worked to my favor. Oh yeah. You know, in hindsight, because I was by far like the other people in the program were like way better than me in most respects. Right. Well, I was fortunate that
Curt:
way. Sit with people regularly that are trying to explore career changes and things, because they've seen me bounce here and bounce there and seem to find some fulfillment. And one of the things I always tell them is, you know, make a list of the 20 companies that you really would like to work for sincerely. And don't worry about whether they have job openings or anything, but send them a really damn good cover letter and your resume and walk in there. Like I love you OtterBox, and I want to be part of your team. Yeah, totally. Cause it's so flattering. And these people from Vermont, I certainly suspected at least that played in that. Like he loves us. Yeah.
Clint:
I, I, I think it had that effect. Um, and it's also odd to like, because I was so focused on this one place, it made it very easily to prepare. Cause I had all this time to prepare for one program. This is like a university of Vermont, so higher education in student affairs. So it was like, I got my master's in education there and it was, it was a blend of things. So one of the things I learned there was an appreciation for, uh, social justice. So what I mean by that is growing up in rural Wyoming. I didn't have a lot of exposure to the marginalization that occur can occur from people with different backgrounds than I can. Um, and so that was, I was grateful for that, you know, I mean, even growing up with a single parent, you know, and seeing similar challenges, I saw that and my mom, you know, she, she would have been eligible for some of these support programs during these moments transition. Not too proud in a prideful way, but just felt like she wanted to do her absolute best before she ever
relied
Curt:
on other people that need it more than us. Yeah,
Clint:
exactly. You know, and I, my family is a hundred percent, a hundred percent. And so my mom was that person. So I had, you know, it's like, you know, I can appreciate people with hard circumstances, so that was nice about it. And then I just, you know, um, I loved working with students and I love the learning process. And I think at the end of it, my dad was a teacher. I'm a teacher at heart. I think that with my kids, I do that with my clients. Like that's been a year. I there's one thing I love to teach people and, and, and inspire them to have the same insights that I have, because I feel like, oh, this is knowledge and it should be shared. You know, it's like, uh, I think there's some quote out there. It's like, you know, if I have an apple and you have an apple and I give you an apple and you give me an apple, we each have one apple. But if I give you an idea and vice versa, we each walk, we have two ideas and that's a strong conviction of mine. But so I love that. What I didn't like was some of the politicking that goes on there. And also candidly, like, um, I think, well, I'm not going to get too far down in the politics thing, but I think that there's a lot of harm that's done by people claiming to be social justice advocates, um, because it distracts us from the core of the issue. So I'll give an example. We don't have to do that right to, and again, this represents Clint's view, not thriving, but you know, I think it's unfair to frame an argument in terms of like black lives matter, blue lives matter. I understand both sides of that, you know, debate, but it's like, you know, if you really were to try to help make someone's life. Who does someone who's a marginalized person call when violence comes against them. Right. It's not, it it's usually the police. Right. So it's like ironic that like, you know, part of the reason why police forces militarized was because of lack of some budgeting. Now, granted, I, I, you know, police reform needs to happen, community policing, et cetera, all that stuff. But I just think that that's, that does more harm than good. Yeah. It's a false choice. And so many of that's being presented and I didn't like some of the politicalization that was happening in academia around that. And I was like, eh, I don't fit here. You know? And so, so interesting so that I didn't
Curt:
go into it yeah. Age and whatever, and, and being relatively innocent to that whole conversation, you know, growing up in white bread, Wyoming. Yeah.
Clint:
Fair enough. Well like final, final example of this. So we ha there are fanatically conservative people in Wyoming, and there are fanatically liberal people in Vermont and where I was at Vermont, Vermont, it's actually real, estate's theirs, but, but in, in Burlington rancheros arrows, and what's ironic is the closed-mindedness that existed on both sides. They had more in common, those extreme ends of the continuum had more in common with one another. Right. And then the people that were like willing to like say either stuff, it's like, they need to go to their own island, let the rest of us get back to making more progress.
Curt:
And I want to go back to that idea just for a moment in that, like that apple and apple reminded me of something I've been sharing lately. If you share a viewpoint that doesn't jive with kind of the narrative right now, you get either canceled literally or censored or, or what else. But if we all agreed on everything, what would be the point of talking a hundred percent? We could just stop communicating about
Clint:
every little thing. So, so there was a, there was an internship that I was offered and I ended up turning it down because it paid less money, but I was shocked that I got it because the director of cultural pluralism in Vermont, if you look up that definition, it literally like imp it states, you know, the, the welcoming of diverse ideas. Right. And if you practice that, like there do have to be some lines drawn, right? Like if, if someone's, you know, I, I don't think that like Nazi-ism, and I did like, yeah, we should appreciate that. It's like, no, no, you're off, you're off. You're voted off the island. Like, that's a non-starter. Right. But I remember during that, like, you know, I'm, I'm this, you know, uh, white dude, you know, that, that comes with, you know, apparently a lot of privileges associated with that. Right. And I'm interviewing for this position and they offered it to me because they felt like when they explored my ideas, I was the one that actually got the most, like, I was the least sort of biased. And it was like a native American woman in Africa and, uh, an uh, at an African-American man or person of color, man, and I'm sitting there talk with him and I was like honored by the fact. And I'm like, oh, this is really cool. And then you have the, the people that. The claim to represent that view that are like trying to pigeonhole folks or like demean folks. And I just don't think that's constructive. I mean, you know, let's just say someone is ignorant and actually does believe in racism or whatever. Like, I, I don't know that the way to, to reach them is to say is to call them a deplorable or an idiot, you know? And I just don't think that that's a good way to approach it. So we just had
Curt:
an example here at Loco. Um, we're having a Cinco de Mayo Freethink, which is like a free sample version. And I'm going to serve margarita is and have some snacks and Alma, my Hispanic, uh, uh, digital experience coordinator, misspelled cerveza. And she used an S instead of a Z. And she got called out, like somebody sends a note and said, Hey, this cultural misappropriation by intentional misspelling of a word or whatever is, is a demeaning to all parties. And ed Alma was shocked by it, but she wrote the best note back. It was like, you know, I, I promise, you know, sometimes I get these confused. My reading, my spoken Spanish is so much stronger than my written Spanish, but. Uh, these are confusing for me. And so thank you. And I promise you as a Chicana that, you know, a cultural misappropriation isn't part of our thing. Yeah, totally. It just kind of like, but if Alma wouldn't have been Hispanic, then this lady would have just been left thinking that we were like these, like that's the ideas that she's got in her mind is that our percent data or this terrible organization, and that's mocking Hispanics.
Clint:
It's amazing to me, the amount of people that claim that they're about truth and justice that just suck at listening. Right. You know, because, and then, and then they, they miss, like, there are a number of people that I, that are friends of mine that feel tokenized.
Curt:
I took her off the subscription list, by the way. So hopefully she's not listening to this podcast. You're a
Clint:
racist. Yeah. Well, welcome to the conversation, you know, but like, I just it's, you know, I have friends that, you know, from, like I said, you know, for my life, I've had friends from all different backgrounds and like, you know, many of them feel tokenized when you say, oh, XYZ. People feel this way. It's like, you know, and I, let me also say this. Cause I think it's important to say there are legit systematic differences and opportunities that people experience. And like that is a real problem. I'm convicted around doing something around there's as much as 100%. And like, as a business owner, like, you know, here's the way to make a difference. Why does every job description out there require college degree, right? Like, or, you know, five years of experience, like if you really want to do some, like, I was a young, like I still am a young person relatively. Right. But like. And I've had jobs from 16, but like, if you really want to like break barriers, like think about reforming those types of things. Like that makes a huge difference. Not a quota that someone has to look, look a certain way, which I know they claim is not dumb, but in practice it feels that way because of how it's done. It's like, no, we're going to, and there's enough talented people out there that like, just by the diverse backgrounds that they have, we'll get opportunities and they're super hardworking. They want to do these types of things. They just need to be coached and developed a little bit. That makes a much world of difference than, you know, trying to represent your argument. Like, you need to take someone else's property away or something like that. And even if you believe that I'm just telling you, like, that's a way less effective place to start. And like, I'm going to try to enable opportunities for others. Yeah. Can
Curt:
we just have a culture instead that says, if you see somebody that's from a disadvantaged background and you have the opportunity to maybe put them a half a notch up higher than you might've otherwise
Clint:
yeah. Do it. Yeah. A hundred percent. That's the kind of encouragement I want to have. Yeah. Like, I mean, someone did that for my mom, you know, like she was an office manager and like, you know, it was hard for us growing up and like, I'm glad that the, I believe that a social safety net is helpful for people. Um, cause you know, it, it can be really difficult to yeah. To, I think that that's important, but I just, you know, um, the way to get the result that we want, which is, which is more. Access to opportunities for everybody it's it needs to be approached differently. And so I didn't feel like higher education was the best place to do that. Yeah. I just didn't feel like,
Curt:
oh yeah, that's cool. That's so funny.
Clint:
I almost, I almost turned down this class of whiskey gave me a, now I'm like, oh, well, here comes loose lip Clint, but I love it. Um, so anyway, from there, um, went to, uh, I lost a bunch of weight. I quit chewing tobacco. That was another nasty habit I'd picked up. And people had seen me go through this transformation. And this was right before it was right around the time that, uh, former president Barack Obama was. And I had written a white paper, um, and, and been sending research to a friend of mine who was actually a mentor for the, for my mom had left that health maintenance organization, the HMO that she created and gone to work for the boilermakers at that time, which is where she's still at. Yeah. And I had been corresponding with the CEO of that organization. I was like, look, you guys need to start taking an active role in making your population health here. I'm just like, first of all, it's going to help your bottom line. Cause you're, you're assuming the risk for all these people. Right. But also there's, I'm just telling you, like, I think this is going to be a thing, you know, and what most people think is that like, education is enough, right? It's common misnomer, but again, common theme of my life. Uh, I don't think people self activate self-actualization and what I had experienced, I was like, we should develop a behavioral coaching program to help people get healthier. Cause I think they need relationship to do this. So I developed this pro I got hired to do this coming out of college, which completely or master's degree, which is completely unrelated. Right. So I'm doing that. And then my first day that CEO, the Friday, before I start, she says, Hey, Clint, um, I I've resigned or I've been fired. There's been essentially a coup to all this. And I'm like, oh, she's like, but you still have your job. Um, but candidly, I just don't know what the new leadership is going to think of this program. And I was like, sweet. So coming on Monday and made the rounds in the office and within two weeks. The new guy that started was like 72 at the point. And he kinda, the metaphor described as like, he was kind of like the old grizzly dog that was kinda like, you know, constantly in pain and grouchy. And didn't really like the young puppy and I was the young puppy. And so he was like, Hey, I don't believe in wellness. I think it's BS. So if you don't get this program financially stable and get our three largest clients on it and the next couple in the next, like two months, like you're gone. So I was like, okay. And I was like, so I built a proposal together, a challenge. Yeah, exactly. So I was like, okay. You know, and I, I just don't, I'm like, well, that's my option. You know, it's like your Cortez moment. My ship had been burned. So I, uh, so I go and I have relationships that go back, you know, 20 years in Wyoming. Right. That's how it is. So I was like, look, here's what worked for me, et cetera. You know, I've literally lost weight with this process. People need it. So we have like, all of our largest clients say yes to this, right? And so the economics are sustainable. We have enough money to hire someone. He's like, oh, I changed my mind. You have to do this all by yourself. And I was like, what do you mean? He's like, yeah, you're going to need a coach, like 600 people. And I was like, uh, so I did that for like six months and I realized that I was so burned. I am, I am empathetic and empathetic, but I'm not, I can't emote with people constantly and be energized. And you can.
Curt:
Pull people out of there, you know, you can't push people out of bad health. Yeah. Well, and, and I, and you can't pull them there. One-on-one very easily, you know, that not your personality.
Clint:
I don't, I don't, I'm not, you know, my belief is people gotta, you kinda gotta help them sell themselves out it's relationship. But, but, uh, it's just too much besides like, and I'm a huge believer in like therapy and counselors and those, but I, I don't, I'm not energized by that work. I think it's hugely important. I built this business around this business line and having other people do that because I knew my weaknesses, ironically enough, that program still was working in spite of that. And our, our trends for those organizations were actually flat or descending claims. So, so in spite of that, I was, I had a great story to tell and I got recruited by Cigna, um, by another like now mentor of mine. Um, and, um, anyway, I got recruited to Cigna. I started airing with it anyway. Yeah. And so I think I started there like nine or 12 months after I started the other gig. Um, and then I was in healthcare for a bit, did benefits advising. I was there for about two. Uh, two years. Um, and then I realized like I was, I was, I loved my mentor. She was like several layers up in the organization, but she got moved to a different segment and I had got a new boss at the time and I'd basically been given the responsibilities of like three other people and they never, they'd never back-filled. And I had, I, I L I had closed one of our,
Curt:
I liked the phrase though. People don't quit jobs. They quit bosses. Yeah.
Clint:
Yeah. And, and this, um, he wasn't, he just wasn't a good leader. Like he was just absent, but it enabled some really, there were some other very poisonous and I, there's only one person that I've ever. I think was genuinely ill willed that I've ever worked for. Like almost like Machiavellian and this person not going to mention the name, but like, I I'm able to see the good, most people, even in hindsight, not able to, and it wasn't just me. It was like he later was fired cause cause enough people abandoned ship and you're like, like even this guy that was 72, that was like, you know, I'm like, yeah, he was just the old dog. Yeah. He just, we had different views, you know? Yeah, exactly. Yeah. It's it's, you know, whatever. Um, I think, you know, at the time I would have been arrogant name and said your views are irrelevant and he probably thinks I'm the young pup that doesn't know squat, so that's fine. But, um, anyway, so that I was having panic attacks at work and I was just like, cause I I'd always say yes. And I had seen myself as this person that was like, oh, I'm going to be successful. And I had decision on myself and I'm like, man, if this is how it's supposed to be, I can't do because they
were
Curt:
just grinding you kind of corporate style. And like
Clint:
I am the right fit role. I won't even go into it except for just like, I think everybody has a moment there. Where they just feel completely out of alignment, but they're scared to do anything. And I finally was just like, you know what, either have to accept this and compromise who I thought I was or could become is not realistic, mindless
Curt:
drone. It wasn't even mindless. It
Clint:
was, it was hard. Yeah. It was just bad. It was real bad in a lot of different ways. Or I've got to abandon ship and actually prove to myself. And so I happened at that point in time, about three, uh, let's see, I've been dating my now wife for several months at that time. And she had gotten to know thriving. She had actually tried to be, uh, an advisor back in 2007 when she graduated school fresh, you know, and then, and to get some experience, here's the great thing about her. Like, she was actually top like 50 new person, but she was paying like$2,000 a month expense at the time. Got totally abused by the system at that time. Like, you know, just ridiculous now that I know what I know, but, um, she had really great things to say about the organization and her pastor growing up, uh, Don Johnson, who's still alive and, you know, talking about mentors and relationships to stand on the shoulders of giants, um, he was willing to coach and mentor me and do those types of things. And then after I'd been, so I made the transition to go to thrive it. Yup. And that's a pretty
Curt:
sweet program. As far as financial services, you know, I interviewed several entry points into the, the marketplace. Banking and I shut my food business down. I was like, well, this seems like a pretty nice fit. And they had like, what, like 12 months or 14 months are a decent amount of time where they paid you to learn. And then then three out of the nest.
Clint:
Yeah. I'm thankful. Like, um, I am very thankful because I think that the most important thing for me about my relationship with Don is he had, he is the thing I learned about Don was that I had not learned at that time is people need to know that they care before they care about what you know, and it's such a simple thing, but like I, because I could always rely on my smarts and my bill to learn things. I just assumed well, if I'm right, like people will listen. Yeah. And that's just, that's a very naive to assume, you know, like until you go through hard knocks and you're like, well, but I was more right. Well, Claire, do you want to be effective? Or do you want to be right? Because if you're always effective, you'll always be right. And I'm like, oh, okay. And that's, that's easier to say than practice, but he really taught me that. Um, and so that, that was that kind of, I trusted the organization because I trusted my now wife. I trust the Dawn and I'm grateful that it's worked out and he actually, he ended up retiring about two years after I joined. And so I ended up purchasing his practice from him. Oh yeah. It was, it was a relatively small practice, but it was, it was enough to help me know that, like I, I had, it gave me peace of mind leads to pool efficient.
Curt:
Yes. Yeah. Instead of just like when I joined thrive and it was like, 2000 people, but yeah, I don't have any
Clint:
clients, you know? Yeah. Yeah. And I, and I would say too, like, um, what I, the majority of our growth since then has actually come from outside, but like, you learn a lot. I mean, just the jobs that no one wants to do. So like I learned, you know, from servicing all those accounts and taking care of people and, and many of those products,
Curt:
and were you there, like helping him while he was there? Kind of, yeah.
Clint:
And not getting paid for it by the way. So I was learning from, you know, yeah. I was learning and I was getting paid in experience, but it's just surprised you would have been
Curt:
nearly so far along like a hundred percent. I joined thrive and I was like, who is this whippersnapper that knows so much more about everything than I do then I've been, I've been in the financial services industry for 15 years. You know, I was a banker for a long time and that's a pretty good training ground for the investments, world and insurance. I understand all those things pretty well. But, uh, anyway, I digress. So tell me about those first like, months. Like what was like, obviously you're, you're doing a bunch of Don's work for him and not getting paid, but you're getting, uh, a stray referral once in a while that he doesn't want to mess around
Clint:
with. And
Curt:
so, um, and what was Lindsay doing by this time? Not done that. Yeah. It's that right? Lindsey.
Clint:
Yeah. Lindsay. Yeah. Um, so it's funny so far, I feel like this podcast has been all personal, no business, but it feels good. So I'm gonna keep going with it. Yeah. Lindsay's father passed away like two weeks before I was supposed to join. Oh, wow. So we got engaged. Her dad passed away a week after that. Wow. So when you shared someone what's gone on for you guys in the last two years, like, I feel your pain specifically as a supporting spouse and like your heart literally breaks watching the person you care most about it's heartbreak. Right. Um,
Curt:
and, and I'd rather have somebody close to me pass, then somebody close to my wife, for sure. Yup.
Clint:
Yup. And so that was a really, um, that was a hard time. And, and in some ways, like to, you know, to take the over on this like a really beautiful time in retrospect, because
Curt:
well, you're going to become somebody she could trust.
Clint:
Yeah. And like, you know, we got engaged the week prior. So like, you know, my belief is that God put me there knowing that my wife would need that in that moment, you know? And it, uh, it definitely galvanized our relationship, you know, uh, trial by trial, by fire. And
Curt:
we'll jump on family later. But tell me about the love story. Like how did you guys meet in general and why, why her, why you
Clint:
a little? Yeah. So, um, I had dated, uh, I had chosen poorly for a number of years. Um, then I, the last relationship JJ
Curt:
has positive benefit acknowledged, but
Clint:
yeah. Yeah. I mean, yes,
Curt:
but that after her, there was a bunch of
Clint:
yeah. Party girls, even with that party girls in the last podcast. Yeah. Um, even, so I think a common theme, even with JJ was like, I seem to be more committed than the other person. Right. Like, and meaning, like I always wanted more whatever. And, um, I think the other mistake I made was I would, things would look good on paper, but they, they weren't, they didn't feel good in practice. And when you grow up at a lot of kids, when they grow up in alcoholic environment, become very skilled at reading the external environment, because you need to know that to know how to be safe. You know, it was my dad in a good mood now are not like those types of things. And like, how's my brother do it. How's my mom doing right. You it's taken practice and still takes intense focus for me to think well, but how do I feel about this? What does my gut say? And I didn't believe I didn't trust that and believe yourself. Yeah. And so, so there was a relationship that I, there was, there were two relationships prior. There was a brief one before, uh, I married my wife and that one was for me, mostly fun. Um, I had dated someone about nine years older than me. I knew it was just fun. I really loved this person, but I knew for me it wasn't her for longterm in the relationship. It was basically, I found out the infidelity had been going on the whole time. Oh boy. And I that's a
Curt:
competence booster, trust
Clint:
enhancer. Yeah. And I, I remember at the time I almost, I it's hard to describe, but I remember when I found that out, it felt like something broke inside of me. And I actually thought I would never, I was like, you know what, I'm just really not cut out for relationships. Like I want what I want doesn't exist. So I'm just going to have fun. And ironically, I'd never just had like a fun relationship. I always was thinking like, oh, I'll find my, my person. Right. So I was having fun. You know, I just had moved on from this other relationship a couple months ago. And my wife and I had actually met, uh, Rican. We knew each other, kind of have each other at school to university of Wyoming. Cause she's from Windsor, Colorado. Um, and so we we'd actually reconnected with Zac brown band concert. A mutual friend of ours had invited us and I'd asked her out to coffee. She was always too busy. And at the time, cause I was an overweight, nice guy for most of my life. I finally was like, you know what, she's probably just too nice to say she's not interested. So I kind of was like, she's just not interested. Right. Even though in hindsight, she's like, no, I really was too busy. Like call me again for coffee, but yeah. Well, and then I started dating this other person. And so anyway, a few months went by that relationship was over. She reached out to me actually like around Valentine's day was like, Hey, you know, what are you doing for Valentine's day? And I was like, nothing. She's like, well I'm gonna be in town. We should link up. So she came over at a glass of wine and like we just kinda started hanging out. And then March 17th is considering our dating anniversary. Okay. So we kind of rekindled the Zac brown band, but. For those that don't knows was March 17th? Uh, no, no, no. St Patrick's day. Yeah, it was, it was like the weekend before that, but St Patrick's day was like, we just had a blast together and it was really like, and it was weird because I felt it got legs. I felt immediate like, wow, this feels like something different, but because I didn't trust myself from before, I was like, well, I'm going to cool the jets there. So ironically about like four or five months in our relationship, I was like, you know what, we should do couples counseling together. And she was like, yeah, I actually think that'd be cool. Cause she had actually already done therapy from other stuff. So most people it's just, um, weird. Uh, but it was cool to have, um, someone like that, uh, go through that process,
Curt:
a couple of services. Like you guys have the best young relationship I've seen for a while. You don't need me.
Clint:
It was, it was helpful. I mean, cause you know, without knowing it, like, you know, when Lindsay's father passed away, we already had a support system built in a place. And um, so you know how that dovetails back into thrive. It was Don her pastor growing up was like really super good friends with Lindsey's dad. So we'd essentially kind of made all these, he'd made this promise commitment to be there and help me, you know, help me learn the business. And he was in Arizona for like the first seven months that I was gone and I understand, I mean he was just, he was in such grief, you know, and all those types of things, you know, we were living in Denver at the time. We decided to move back up to Northern Colorado to live with my mother-in-law Deb. Um, and so I was just surrounded by grief 24 7. Oh that was, that was basically my first year. Like, I don't know how. I am fortunate, you know, my, my first three months, you know, my mom was my best client. Right. You know, like she's always been my biggest spiral, but I think over to you. Yeah, exactly, exactly, exactly. Of course. You're right. Um, but you know, that first 12 months, I think, you know, I'm, I'm sure I worked hard and stuff like that, but I just feel like the Lord really provided for me because there were some things like, it's so funny, like I'm processing this, like my, my life theme is like, I just do the jobs. No one else wants. So basically, you know, how I, how I survived my first year, I got invited to go to this benefits thing, university of Northern Colorado. And everyone's like, oh yeah, it's a great opportunity. Great opportunity. I'm like, oh, thanks for helping the new guy. Get the new opportunity. Right. Show up there. And it was like complete waste of time. Like, no one's stopping in our booth. And I'm like, this is terrible. So I'm like, well, I'm gonna make the best of it. And I walk around each of the other booth vendors turns out that the head of human resources for UNC is there. And I start talking to her and I had benefits background before, before Cigna. So I was like, Hey, you know, I'm just curious, like, do you guys have questions about long-term care, how social student impacts para all these types of planning things. She's like, you know what, like we do. And I would love to have someone come in and talk about that. And I'm like, great. I will buy lunch. You get the invites there. And like, it was just one of those things. Right. And so I, you know, because I did the job that no one else wanted to, I was extended this opportunity to, you know, and that's how I survived the first couple of years. Um, yeah. So sorry. And
Curt:
then like, by the time I got there, In 20, I guess 15. So this is when circuit me a little bit on when, um,
Clint:
2013 was when I started in the fall of 2013, it was on here, made the transition to thriving because Lindsey's dad passed away. Um,
Curt:
so, and so you were kind of to some extent, just turning the corner to, for reals, with confidence in the industry and stuff.
Clint:
When I showed up. Yeah. Well, and I was actually say, like, it probably took me five years before I was like, I'm not going to fail out of the business. And I know from an outsider's perspective were locked for me. Well, and, and, and, you know, maybe that was true, but I just think I had, you know, maybe that Cortez moment for me, I'm like, I can't stop and tell, you know, and one
Curt:
of my special talents is recognizing special talent. Yeah. That's true. Right place. So it was probably easier for me to see your future success at that point.
Clint:
That's probably true. Yeah. I was convinced I was going to fail every year for the first five minutes and she was like, well, maybe I won't fill out the business.
Curt:
Right. I could at least hang on. I got whatever you're, you're exactly be the CEO of the world. I forget who told me that about you. But, uh, my
Clint:
business partner, Jeff would probably be
Curt:
happier than that, but I wouldn't trust everybody with that job. Well, thanks. Very many people. Talk to me about like going from, cause it's just you, right? You didn't have an assistant, you didn't have a helper. Don was basically checked out and turning his book over to you and taking most of the commissions or whatever. Yeah. Or maybe not, he was a good mentor and she
Clint:
taught you a lesson. We did business together. He would share, he would share the payments on stuff, but I was not getting paid for the service work and he didn't have any staff. So I got, I got paid in experience. I got the job
Curt:
and you got to understand all of what your service work staff now does from doing true, you know, and that gives you an appreciation for it. It gives a total respect for them. That's different than otherwise. All of that. So what's the turn like when does it go from like cleanse busy as heck and overwhelmed kind of with the amount of client needs and stuff and I need a person. Yeah.
Clint:
So, um, it's important to understand what I thought my success would look like first and who I thought I would talk about. And then how, how the Lord redirected me, even though I, it took a while for me to listen. So I thought I was going to help families that look like mine, meaning I was, you know, my, why still is that, you know, if you asked my mom why they didn't have any of the financial things lined up, that I would have recommended that they get in place like term life insurance to cover the debts on the house, we'll start saving for retirement. What you would say is no one ever talked to them about, or no one she trusted, ever talked to them about it. Yeah. So that's my conviction on what I do. Every family. And I was like convicted. I'm like, I'm gonna help all the families that look like mine. Right. And it took me probably two years to realize that, um, the nature of a lot of those needs and the business model tied to serve those needs for clients requires them more transactional, less, you know, deep thoughts, kind of, kind of relationship.
Curt:
I don't have a full financial plan on the way to selling a$60 a month life insurance. Well, you
Clint:
can, it's just like, you know, when I want to sit there and talk to them about like, you know, what's going on with your family and how that impacts your financial decisions. Like that's, you know, so I'll contrast this. Like people think that it's a real easy problem. If you've got a billion dollars, right? Like, like I'm going to get taken a really extreme example, but there are real first world. They are first world, but they are existential challenges. None the less, like, for example, for the parents out there listening, like if you gave your kid$30 million, you know, like there's, it's a catalyst, right? Like you could potentially by giving them that money, robbed them of the opportunity to know what it's like to, to build confidence and have conviction in the pride that comes from working together to experience their own failures and the self-empowerment that comes from rising above that. Right? Yeah. The big Coke
Curt:
habit and early death is probably as likely as not
Clint:
right. Let's just say you want to get, let's just say you want to give away a hundred million dollars. Okay. How do you know that the organization you give it to is going to steward it well, and I'm going to spend it in a way that's aligned with your values and actually make the impact, right? I mean, we already see that where we'll have people that get elected on XYZ ticket and yet the results don't change. So it's a real problem. Like there are existential challenges that come with, you know, what does it mean to be a good steward? And I, I was love having those conversations, but like, and, and here, and here's the thing, like those clients with the clients that look families like mine, they don't have to know show, or they wanted me to like 6:30 PM at night. And then like, you know, I went and bought a piece of furniture from someone off Craigslist. We talked for two hours and he's like, you need to meet my mom. She's got several million dollars. I need your help with all these things. And I was like, what? This is weird. I'm 27 years old. I'm not supposed to be getting an opportunity to help someone like this. I'm told it takes 30 years. Yeah. And so I just kept thinking like, oh, this is going to be my path. And I kept getting redirected here and I had all this like kind of weird guilt too. Like, well, these families need help over here. And then when I realized it was actually really positive impact, you can make by helping, helping clients that have been blessed with a lot, be better stewards when it's a holistic view of what that responsibility looks like. Well, and that's
Curt:
who you serve a lot of. Does your firm only serve kind
Clint:
of a thriving, thriving, more broadly. I mean fortune 500 services organization. Like there's, there's a wide spectrum of the advisors choose to affiliate and the business model tied to that. Right. Um, our firm has a continuum of people that we work with and like we've even thrive in. It's actually been really good about developing. So for example, they just released this, uh, I think it's past the pilot stage, but it's a central it behavioral coaching program for people that just need help with budgeting called money canvas. And so, so I think as a firm, Thrivent believes that everybody deserves to have a plan. And I believe that morally as well, our practice can't build a business model yet that serves everybody on our own. So like, depending on the type of relationship, we might actually refer someone to a different advisor depending on if they fit our client service model. But it's not like someone has to have a million dollars to work with us. Right. Um, like we have it, you know, I would say if people are, have a million dollars. Yeah, exactly. So, I mean, you know, key things that people look for, like, you know, they, they have a stewardship mindset. Um, they, they feel a sense of responsibility to do more than just accumulating legacy. Yeah. They want advice holistic, you know, planned into those types of things, you know, and I'd say there's a couple of different demographics. So like, you know, dynamic young professionals would be one, you know? So like you have, you know, being someone that's self-employed, you've got different tax
Curt:
things that are going to change along this next 20 year journey, 30 year journey. And you want an active financial manager in there with you.
Clint:
Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. And it's not just like about what my portfolio has done, but also like, Hey, what should I think about. I just do there's, there's more there's places where we can, there's some financial
Curt:
coach and therapist and service provider. Yeah.
Clint:
Because, because the value I can add to you or client, client base is that much more tangible value and intangible value. We can charge more. Which also means that like, charge more than say, like, you know, if someone buys like a$10 a month term life insurance product, there's not, there's really not enough margin there to. Uh, Ford for my time or really most, I mean, a lot of people just go online for that stuff. Now we broke her term for people. Um, but it's like they have more needs than that usually. And, um, the reason why is because there's just not enough margin there for that relational aspect that I am so passionate about. And then our team is so passionate about. So like, I think, I think it, I would say if, if I had to narrow it down for our specific practice purpose-driven well, I would say probably 70% of our clients are going through some type of a wealth transition moment. Right. So the, they either have inheritance or they're selling their company or they're retired from that they're retiring, right? Like those types of big life events where there's a large amount of financial responsibility. Yeah. That's when, like, they're like a couple years, you know? So if someone, if a parent pass away, a lot of times just don't expect it. Right. But like, for example, um, we have mutual people that, you know, are thinking about business transitions, right? So there's all these types of things. You got to get ducks in a row, right. Not only just like, Hey, is, is the sale of the business going to be enough to provide for me, but like, what other relationships do I need to help me maximize this? Do I need to be introduced to X, Y, Z private equity group? Do I need to, you know, what types of conversations should I be having with my CPA right now? Um, what types of, uh, conversations should I be having with my kids, family
Curt:
members for my longer term,
Clint:
all that stuff. Right. Whereas like, you know, if someone is. Let's say, you know, they, they are recently married and, you know, um, they just need like term life insurance and Roth IRA. We will help people get that in place. And then we'll, we'll say, Hey, here's the other ways that we can engage with you in the future. So you can opt to like paying us and advice when you're ready. Yeah. So we'll still get them taken care of, but it's, that's not our core offering, you know? And, and we're clear about that. And, but because we deserve that everybody, or because we believe that everybody deserves to have, have that were convicted to meeting those needs, but our core businesses, either the wealth transition thing, or like dynamic young business professional or something, not even young, just dynamic business professional maybe is about, which is where you would fall in. Yeah.
Curt:
I'm dynamic. You are, I don't know
anyone
Curt:
that's met. You knows that. So talk to me about that first, um, like those first employees and you, you've done some growth by organic and a little bit by acquisition. Like tell me some of them walk me through the kind of that development of turning it from a practice into a business, I think is probably how you would almost phrase that like, cause you didn't start out as perfect driven purpose driven wealth. You remember that? Even when I turned over my,
Clint:
yeah, we actually originally I wanted to be called the Barnabas associates and the story behind that is, um, because it implies that yeah, the theme of our firm, which is if you don't know the story of Barnabas in the Bible, essentially, um, this character in the Bible goes through this process where originally he's kind of known as like a naysayer pessimistic person, but because he, his behavior changes. So significantly in response to the virtues, he's discovered through meaning Jesus, that he becomes known as the encourager. And he, he becomes renamed by his community as Barnabas. Yeah. So I just think that that's like, I'm like, yeah, we want to be the encouragers for people on their journey. Uh, it turns out that there's actually an organization that was way ahead of me in this and already trademarked that and all that other stuff. But so it was like, yeah, they don't, they won't let us use it. Okay. Thanks. Um, so
Curt:
anyway, and you, so you're trying to encourage people that have been blessed beyond what maybe they would have even expected in some respects are, are not even that, frankly, just any person to live a life of generosity and intention and stewardship.
Clint:
I would say at the, at the core of who we are, I think the clients that are attracted to work with us really resonate with our philosophy, which is we believe that everything we have is a gift. So if we believe that everything we have is a gift and ultimately. It's a tool to serve a certain purpose. What does that purpose? How should we define that? Well, if we look at stewardship and we define it, there's kind of three different buckets that I would say it falls into one bucket is the bucket of provision. So I believe that like when a husband and wife get together or partners or whomever, they've got a moral obligation to provide for one another. Now that could look like one spouse works one spouse doesn't it also means that like the spouse, if there is a state home house they're providing for the family, right? Like you are providing for one another that way. So the reason why you buy life insurance is because you've got them. You've made a moral obligation to continue providing for that person, even after you're gone. Right. That's a different way of approaching the conversation of, oh, Hey, and granted, like we can calculate and run the Excel sheets and everything else, but like, it's just a different conversation, right. That conversation would be, you could be financially rich and spiritually, relationally poor though, if you didn't focus on the other areas, which is, there's a con contentment piece and an enjoyment piece of stewardship as well. So if we all know somebody that's got more than enough money, that isn't happy in
Curt:
our, yeah. Joe Rogan said that recently, he's like, well, it's wild. We go. He's like, like I know a bunch of billionaires and half of them are miserable. Yeah. You know, and I, if I go to visit some place in Puerto Rico or Mexico, and everybody's got. Like at least three quarters
Clint:
of we're happy. Yeah. There's this, there's this, uh, hedonistic adaptation that we're all accustomed to. Um, human beings are designed to reach, you know, we have this amazing process called homeostasis that, you know, we, we tend to adapt and re and, and so, you know, if you may, and so the reason why contentment is so important, you know, we believe that most people achieve contentment by giving because giving breaks the power that money has over us, but that's not just financially. That is isn't. That is an important piece. But giving of your time and your talent, because the most finite resource that we have actually isn't money. I mean, the fed prints more money every day, right. So guess what? We can make more of it, but you only get until we figure out a pill to, you know, become a mortal or whatever. Maybe we upload ourselves as a metaverse. Yeah. Like time and talent is really fine. It, and guess what, when you transition away from retirement, you stop working to provide for your. You're still going to have time and you're still gonna have talent. What's your plan for that? Yeah. So, so, so, and giving of that gender, you know, that that's an important piece to help feel that sense of contentment. And then it's also important to enjoy and celebrate what we've been blessed with. Right. So, you know, whether that's going and having margarita on the beach or, you know, going by in a Ford Raptor, cause you just really have always wanted one. Yeah. You know, whatever those elements are, like, it takes a balanced approach to those things. And what I found in working with clients is, you know, like a lot of people can be really, really good at the provision aspect, but they're, they haven't thought about the contentment or the enjoyment piece or vice versa. And so we try to bring that all full view of that. And ultimately our work is guided by principles. We've found through scripture and those types of things, but it's amazing. Stewardship is a universal concept. I mean, we have several atheists or Buddhists that are just like, they love the principle-based framework to do that. So that's why I kind of come even back earlier, the conversation, it brings people together. And then guess what, like when someone understands that they've got more than enough for how much they need to provide for themselves, they're more likely to give away or be generous or to go spend money on a super fun trip, you know, that someone else's paycheck. Right. And I think having those conversations is, is what I love to do. Yeah. So
Curt:
I think that's an important, uh, framework to take it on by. Um, so to ask that question, practice is important because. Identifying your mission and your why, and frankly, even part of why you require a team rather than exactly smart.
Clint:
So when you have that insight right, where it's like, okay, now you know what your business model is. And you're like, okay, what do I need to make that the best experience possible? You know? And you start thinking, well, if I'm really encouraging my clients to have these conversations about like, okay, what happens? You know, when your business leaves and how are you imparting those values to your kids? You know, both wisdom and inheritance are good thing, but if you have to air inside, when one side wisdom, how has the wisdom going to be translated? How are the promises that I've made to my clients? And the trust that I've earned, how's that going to be steward if you know, COVID comes and takes me or whatever, right? Oh, shoot. I can do a better job here. So that naturally necessitates surrounding yourself with people that are better than you in certain aspects. And you know, in a lot of aspects actually, like I'm, it turns out that I may be good at one or two things. Right. And so you, you, you three at least, yeah. Two or three.
Curt:
So there's like 15 that you're yeah.
Clint:
More than that huge long list. And so, so, you know, you have that insight and you're like, okay, but how do I get there? So then, you know, the first stage when you're, you know, essentially, you know, solo practitioners, you're like my God, how do I stay on top of scheduling and all those other types of things. So the second you can hire a part-time staff or expense share someone, or like I was fortunate. Thrive. And still has this program where you can kind of opt in part-time to like a licensed professional to help out with paperwork. Like I did that the second I could afford to do that. Right. And that, I mean, cause that immediately gives you time leverage. Right. Right. So in theory, if I
Curt:
lose you, part of the things that you like the least,
Clint:
so yeah. Well and yeah. Who loves paperwork? Right. Some people do not for me, but like, let's just say that's 25 to$35 an hour work or whatever the number is. Well, if I can go and do$200 an hour work, that's a trade you'd want to make all day long. Right. And so you just continue that thought process. I think the first, the first really hard stepping stone was getting like my first full-time staff person, like once I had that, I was like, okay, I feel stable now. And then after that, it's about, okay, how do I build a culture to then build other teammates? And then, you know, I brought, um, Jeff Solomon's son, who's my business partner. We're co-owners of the practice. Now he came along about, I think four years ago. And like part of that was like, I just realized like I'm tired of being the only person thinking with an owner designer. I need help. Like I I'm, there might be things, you know, I'm still relatively young to be doing what I'm doing. Um, I love getting the challenges of people doubting me, like, thanks for the opportunity. You know, so many people underestimate me and it's a gift. Cause I usually like, that's how I win. But that doesn't mean that like, I don't really need someone. That's got, you know, a different perspective on things. In fact, I need that. Like, I, I don't have as much experience as wisdom is someone that's been doing this for 20 years. Like my business partner has. To his credit, you know, how many people that have more seniority in terms of time and experience are willing to come on and say, okay, well, I'm willing to partner with someone that's, you know, this, this young firebox over here, you know, that 72 year old that we mentioned earlier was not willing to do that. Right. Which truly believes age is just a number. It's more about the perspective of the person. But, so that was another milestone in that process to, to actually get business married with someone and that, that catalyzed and other series of, you know, of growth. So
Curt:
like I want to get a little bit more fragmented by the way, I listened to a podcast this morning where it was a, it was a young lady lawyer, and she was talking about the phrase that she used was, it seems you've underestimated me. This is going to be fun. And I can repeat that in my mind, as you're sharing some of these stories, um, was angel your first
Clint:
angel angel, was
Curt:
there still in thrive when you hired
Clint:
her? Yep. So angel is our first full-time employee. She was great still as great. She was what was great about her. She was the perfect employee or teammate that we could have at that time, because like, to this day, Um, I would put her against anybody in terms of task, masters. Like she can just 35 tasks, like get them all time, just, just crazy, crazy good at that stuff. Right. And so we actually like, you know, and to be honest, when she, because she was like, my first full-time person, I was like, oh, like, I really want this person to be with us for 30 years, et cetera. Um, she had some personal stuff come up and also some different career interests. We actually helped her get a job with a thriving corporate office. Yeah. So, so nothing but love there helped her with that transition. And then, um, gradually we added team members along the way, but that was the first, it was like her and I kind of conquering the world. Right. And then what kind of, uh, was a catalyst for like con uh, talking with Jeff and then also bringing on more teammates was there, um, there was another office that, uh, because I'm from Wyoming, there's a gentleman by the name of Jeff Ross who was interested in retiring. He's super nice guy. He actually approached me. He's like, Hey, Clint, you know, you're from Wyoming, you know, it's like, we speak different lingo up here. Kind of thing, you know, would you, I want to retire, like, please be my retirement partner. And I was like, uh, man, I don't know if I have enough time for this. Like I, you know, and I didn't know it at the time, but you know, shortly after we inked out that, so I knew I was going to need help. I, I, Jeff and I had kind of started to build a more informal relationship. He was at, he was. In a different region at the time. So, um, but we we'd like snowboard it a couple of times. I was like, dude, why don't you come back and being an advisor? Like, you seem like you're good at what you're doing. That's great, Wyoming. Yeah. Yeah. Well, and I was like, and I was like, why don't you, you know, I was like, you know, Jeff Ross talk with me, but why don't you take this? You know? And I was like willing to like give it to me. Right. Well, so, um, fast forward a couple months, you know, Jeff decides to come back and, and, and be, you know, do this together. And we didn't really have, it was just a Cheyenne office that we joined that we owned together. So we have a Windsor office and then we have a Durango office to get to Durango in a second. Um, the Windsor office was like still my baby. Cause I was like, I had built it. I didn't go into this earlier. But like when I launched, there's a bunch of other people in the office. And like I realized like, okay, if you're going to be part of a team, like you gotta, you gotta do some due diligence on your business part. Like, does everyone want to pay their bills on time and that type of thing. Right. Right. So, um, anyway, we're up in Cheyenne and we're, it's going really well. We hired another staff person up there and it took some time, um, actually a friend of yours and mine, Bruce fear. We paid him as a consultant in addition to some leadership stuff, their
Curt:
local facilitator. If you're listening to this, Bruce. Yeah. There you go.
Clint:
Next year. Yeah, exactly. Um, so Bruce was great and we worked with him to. Really document our vision, our values and those types of things, because Bruce is a very skilled listener. And as you're probably getting from this podcast, I could talk for hours. Um, but I it's documenting it, writing it down. And then, and then having it in a way where you translate it, often, everybody around you, it's not
Curt:
just you, but people
Clint:
know a hundred percent, a hundred percent. Yep. And it was that kind of when purpose-driven wealth, that was when it started to become more formalized, like you were already maybe kind of like our culture was there, but it hadn't been formalized. How was the beginning of formalizing? And so once we kind of documented those things, it also provoked some other things like, Ooh, this is interesting. Like, you know, how are we going to, um, you know, uh, It's weird if you've got, you know, a Cheyenne team and a Windsor team, right. Like, that's weird. Like I wasn't trying to, by the way, we set it up trying to instill like, oh, you've got to shine and team in a team, but that was a little while the Windsor
Curt:
team keeps kicking the Cheyenne team's ass.
Clint:
I mean, there, there was some of that, but it was, it was more so just like, um, you know, hindsight, I could've done a better job. I almost wonder if I would've been a better leader at that point in time or known more like, if, if, if angel would have been, you know, more, you know, had more of appeal to just staying with us because had you done some of that work kind of bridge it together, you know, because I think Angel's view was she worked for me, not necessarily teammate, you know, and it was true, right. Like I was covering the way that we just, the way that Jeff and I had structured this was I was covering all the expenses. Um, it, it just, without going into the details, like there was there's some, there were those three aspects of cultural manager alignment. We had aligned the culture, but we had dysfunction between the managerial aspects, like who reports to who where's accountability. How do the finances align with that? Right. Those pieces were missing. Yeah. And
Curt:
so that there was unintended consequences of the things that you didn't know kind of when you inked the deal. Yes. And whether or not you wanted to be a combined team or not the documentation and the written stuff had to pull that together.
Clint:
None of that has really been formalized. I mean, other than just Jeff and I knew that we own shine 50, 50. Yeah. You know, so for, so, so that. And
Curt:
so I'm trying harder. You're trying harder. Who's trying harder. I've got a
Clint:
supportive, I want, you know, to just credit, like we've never really had a conflict of, Hey, I feel like I'm working harder than you are. It was more just like, you know, there, there was, there was another associate at the time that was working on the shine office and I was like, you know, he wasn't paying rent, but he would go and generate business with Jeff and then, and I'd be like, Hey, is he part of our team? Or not like, what's the end. It would be, you know, so it was those types of things that we hadn't really talked through and like, you know, to Jeff's credit, like he was always transparent about it. We, I never, I didn't, I never expected anything because we never talked about it. Right. So we had never had like a conflict where, where we felt taken advantage of, but it was like, we need, we need to Trump some gaps here. And so, um, and Bruce did a good job in terms of helping us, um, document those things. Didn't really tease out any of the areas where we needed to kind of have those more awkward conversations, not awkward, but just how do we clarify this? You know, about that. So in the middle of this, then we, then we had another advisor that actually contacted us for help in transitioning and want to retire his name's Keith paid Natta Durango. Okay. I had, you know, it was never on my radar to go Durango, but it's a nice place to visit super beautiful place. I'd never been there prior to that. Um, and it's, it's, that's been a very rewarding relationship. I mean, KP KP wanted to stay on for a couple of years. Jeff Ross wanted to pretty much be done. Um, and he's actually had, you know, some of his best years ever in the last couple of years, it's, it's been really rewarding. You're helping him cover. He totally gets it. I mean, he's. You know, age-wise, um, you know, closer to the gentleman I referenced earlier, but like just, you know, an avid learner. So like he's cool guy, neat guy. And so totally gets our culture. And then we've hired, you know, so Lindsay who we'd started in Cheyenne, she's actually our operations manager now. So she's grown into that role and it's continued progress there. We hired a paraplanner in 2020 need Alyssa cause now our business model is we want someone in, on every meeting with the advisor, taken notes and kind of run them whispering and also technically provision the foundation with that plan. And exactly, exactly. So that's, that's kind of how it's fast forward. Do you mind if we, yeah, I was thinking
Curt:
bathroom break you. Yeah, let's do it. So, um, Clint, we've just been talking about kind of that, that third location and really kind of practice sizing it, um, and partnering with Jeff. Like that's an interesting thing. And I I'm imagining from him his perspective because Jeff has, I don't know, 55 or something, you know, he doesn't have 20 years of hard work left in him. And so for him like to be part of a partnership is like, well, as I gained clients and build my practice back again, after being a trainer and manager of, of thriving agents for so long, I won't abandon them. I will leave them with a really great team, you know, and to me that has to be part of his incentive as well as just being kind of frankly, charmed by your charisma and the vision that purpose-driven wealth was putting together. But like, talk to me about that. And the why of it. What's the benefit to you? And like, how do you dance with the right person if you're thinking about that?
Clint:
So I think, um, business partnerships for me is kind of how I view marriage the same way. I mean, in a way you're getting business married, right? Uh, ideally you have different strengths, right? Cause if you've got two business partners that think the same thing, one's less relevant than the most useful, useful. Right. And, and usefulness is important in that context because business is about being useful and of utility to others. Yeah. So what's nice about Jeff. I mean, I, um, you know, I'm someone that's, my mind kind of never is always restless. I'm always trying to learn new things. There are future focused and trying to figure out where we need to be for five years. You know, Jeff is very focused on like the present and one of my gifts has always been that, you know, I can take seemingly non-related things and draw convergent circles around them. He's good at reminding me and coaching me and developing me in a way to like, I need to help other people to have those same insights that I've had. I would also say Jeff, Jeff's more likable than I am, frankly. I mean, he's just a super, I mean, thanks. You know, I like the word people, so yeah, yeah, yeah, no, yeah, exactly. Yeah. You and me are, we're looking at your Jeff. Yeah. I love you too. You're not weird enough for me, but I don't know how else to describe it. Like he's, he's a, uh, you know, for example, um, he's the type of guy. You know, if a teammate was moving their house, he'd show up and help you pack boxes and just, you know, he, he does those types of things. He's just, he, and that's, that's different from, it's not that I'm unwilling to pack boxes. It just, you know, right now my stage of life got young kids or other types of things. So the way that we show up as different. Yeah. Um, and so that's, that's making each other better. We make each other better that way, for sure. And, you know, I think to, um, Jeff has a lot, there's just something to be said for experience and time. And I really undervalued that in the early years of my life, you know, cause I'm like, ah, you know, this person, I know way more than this person or whatever. And there was some arrogance even before, you know, mostly before I was at thriving. Cause I got really humbled, my, um, experience centers like, wow, I can be the most, the most competent whatever in the room and it doesn't matter. Um, and you know, Jeff brings with it, like there's just a wisdom you acquire from experience. Right? And so I think to the extent that you can borrow that or steal that from people on your team to help make better decisions. So I think that way it's been really helpful and you know, it's like different, you know, relationally leadership wise. There's some things that he does on the team that I don't do and vice versa that just, we're better, more skilled at. So that's how we
Curt:
benefit. And I was starting my entrepreneurial journey. My, uh, I was invited my dad to be a partner in my enterprises that were going to be super successful, you know, And he was like, well, I could loan you some money, but I don't know why you would want to partner only for their money.
Clint:
Yeah, I think that's,
Curt:
and I think that's good advice for anybody thinking about a partnership is that there's a lot of ways to get money that aren't as painful as having a partner that doesn't compliment you. Yeah.
Clint:
I, um, like just how you wouldn't get married for money. I mean, I'm sure some people do. I just don't think that that would be a very fruitful marriage for myself. I think the core of any business partnership is values and the beauty of how they're definitely, you know, we could've done things a lot better than we did when Jeff and I started partnering together. But one of the things that I think we did really well is in some ways that the setup was perfect because we got to essentially professionally date in a safe context with just the shine on risk there's limited risk, it was constrained and really got, gave us the ability to get to know one another, how we made decisions, how we resolve mistakes without kind of putting all the state, all the chips, pushing all the chips into the table. Yeah. And I think, I think it, it's one thing to think that, you know, someone in their values, it's another thing to see the decisions and the behaviors that they do. Yeah. You know, and I, I feel fortunate. I mean, I, I, it's more common than not for business partnerships to not work. Very well in these settings and so far has, has, and I don't have any reason to believe it would,
Curt:
I feel compelled to share, uh, a Don Baer quote, uh, which is son, you know, you should always, always marry for love and you shouldn't marry for money, but remember, it's just as easy to love a rich woman as it is for one.
Clint:
Yeah. It would've been nice if you know, Jeff, Jeff had a billion dollars in me too. I'm sure. Yeah.
Curt:
That's more probably about the load for sure. So, um, what's the vision for what's next? Like, are you looking actively for other thriving offices or even non thriving offices that you could make a, be a part of purpose-driven wealth? Yeah. And roll this thing up a little bit.
Clint:
Yeah. So this is, um, our vision over the next five years. Like we have a revenue goal that we want to get to, but what's more important about the reason why the revenue goal is important is more so around the experience. It helps us create. So, you know, I have a vision that whenever anyone calls our office or when a zoom meeting with them or they walk in that we know everything about where they're from. So faith, family, recreation, occupation, money, health, and how that all connects to their finances. You know? So by default, you know, that means that we have a really deep relationship with a select number of clients that, and we wrap our entire, our entire services around them. So, I mean, so for example, you know, the last couple of weeks, there were many, there are many instances where we are getting proactively engaged. Uh, clients is CPAs and I love, you know, CPAs out there. You know, contacts turns, I mean, there's, we were talking about this yesterday in our next level group. There's just a, there's a lack of talent there, you know, and frankly, like I'm concerned about what that's gonna look like over the next 10 or 15 years, but the reality is like most CPAs, if they're not engaged with you to provide strategic tax advice, like they're not, they're just not equipped. They're not getting paid. They're, they're thinking compliant, retroactive, how do I lower your tax burn for this 12 months? They're not, they're not synthesizing all these different other elements. And so that's, that's one area where like providing tax education to our clients where we can help them. Right. And, and in a way where it's proactive, where it's like, no, you know, we had, we literally had a client call
Curt:
or CPS talk to you about this or
Clint:
not, but, well, for perspective, you got to remind them. So we literally had a situation. This is, this is an extreme outlier situation, but we had a client who called us and was like, Hey, my tax bills, XYZ. Um, that seems like really high don't you think so? And I was like, yeah. And you know, CPA made, uh, it, I can understand how the mistake was made, but I'm glad we were there. Cause it was like a half million dollar tax difference. Right. And, and it was just, it was just, it was something that had gotten forgotten about. And I was like, Hey, here's an email detailing all this like, oh, you know, and I, we didn't represent alien that CPA because the reality. It wasn't really, th there's there are gaps in people's finances where there's no one there. Right. Cause you've got like your state attorney, you got your CPA, whatever. And like, they often don't talk. So a lot of times we're the social lubricant and coach slash quarterback that you want to bring all these elements to together. And so, because of that, like, and that depth of relationship, number one, you want to work with clients that really value that and need that service. Another one is like, by default, in order to know them that, well, we have to have less clients. Right. And so like, like we can't be everything to everybody. Um, so I don't mean like we're going to fire existing clients. What I mean is like, we don't want to be everything to everybody. Um, and so w and you know what that means our teammates are growing along and, and developing extra areas of special specialty. Right. It means that, um, I mean, we, we actually have systems of documenting notes and taking notes from people on their personal information, just so that they feel loved by us. And like, it's important that they feel that way and that we know that well, do we remember
Curt:
that, you know, theoretically create a division for your trainees and stuff that where they could provide real personalized service to those families like you and your mom were back in the day as a service, but it's not the high touch coincide, large
Clint:
need that. So they don't need that nor do they want it. Right. And so it's like, um, and, and so, and there's because I'm, you know, with thrive and others, other programs like that, and we've referred other professionals, there are other advisors thrive. That are interested in that more. I don't want to say transactional, but it's just, it's a different type of relationship. You guys
Curt:
want to be deep with everybody you serve. And if that isn't really afforded by the opportunities or the interest of the client, then what's the point.
Clint:
Yeah. So what I would say is like, if someone comes to us and they just want a product purchase, we will help them meet that purchase need, but it's like, Hey, if you want, if you want this type of relationship, this is what we expect of you. And this is what you can expect for us. And we're really clear about what that looks like. And I think so continuing to build upon that is really important, um, and continue to scale and build out the operations. And so there are certain revenue goals. We have to know the things we need to
Curt:
acquisition traditional growth. Like what's your growth rate, uh, and you don't have to talk.
Clint:
No, no. That's okay. So like, so our, um, so our core business has helping those clients has helping our clients that we just talked about. Right? Yep. And there are two adjacencies right now that we are exploring ideas with the first is offering other services to advisors like this tax
Curt:
planning kind of thing. Oh. So to advise clients, you can do that already. Yeah. So we can coach other advisors on what, like how to be, we can, you guys actually have a baller, uh, like portfolio manager kind of guy on your team, right?
Clint:
Yeah. So we have like, we can be subject matter experts, subjective trawler. Yeah. That's right. That's the official title actually. No. Um, no. So we, we have, um, we have, uh, we can be subject matter experts and consult in working with clients, you know? Um, but more so than that, Just just to like manage certain components of the business operation, right. Or do due diligence on investment portfolios or those types of things. So we're figuring out how to allow advisors to opt into those services where we're essentially acting like their back office in a way, but they can still brand it and market as their own. And so that's one, and I think longterm, our strategic interest in doing that is there's going to be so, so that's not hugely profitable for us to do it basically reduces our expenses for things we'd already be doing. And maybe invest a little bit more on those, but the bigger seeds there is potentially there are a advisory to using that, that really aligned with our strategic mission, that might be good partners to join, right. Or they want to retire, whatever becomes a requisite. And then the second option is thinking through like does acquisition, um, as, as a more focused point, you know, we did some, the examples I mentioned earlier were relatively minor. They were, they were, they were asking that, um, and it's, you know, they're good values fit. So, so that we did really, really well, but they weren't significant like, like most of our growth has been organic, new trust that's earned. Um, there's and then the rest of that's been existing clients that they had. They, they were, they had a third of their
Curt:
stuff with you and another guy,
Clint:
or they just, they, they, they had all these other, because you know, some of the people that retired only had certain licenses were able to offer a more broader spectrum of services. So I think that another adjacency where we're considering is like how intentional is our acquisition strategy and what does that look like? And, you know, is it a priority for us right now? And those types of things.
Curt:
So could you imagine being a 50 person firm five years
Clint:
from now? Yeah, I think, um, I, or whatever we need to create that experience, like at the end of the day, like I'm convicted and I love, I love what I seven offices or, yeah. It's like the hard part about those, right? It's like, well, what does that mean? Like what does 10 offices really accomplish for 50 people? Right. It's at the end of the day, you know, when our, when our clients call, they need something it's like, do they know who they are like, and all those aspects are we proactively helping them this way? And is that is the experiences of business that we're providing a robust enough that no one person is so dispensable to providing that experience that, you know, if one person leaves, then, then the entire relationship has compromised and we've broken trust with that client, you know? And that's, that's, um, it's so common in our industry, you know, like an advisor, it's super common for a lot of advisors to just literally do this, you know, until their mid seventies, until it's like, they got a few clients left and they kind of trip, you know, trail off. And I don't want to finish that way. Um, I believe that at some point, you know, all, I'll come to a point where it's like, you know, there's someone, there's my, what I was great at before. There's someone greater than me. And I, I should be welcoming of that moment when it comes and allow that person to kind of have their moment, you know? And so then
Curt:
what, uh, Clinton goes and does other entrepreneurial things I'm so
Clint:
far as to scratch I'm so far, like I'm so far away from that. They're like, I don't, it's hard to know that I really do love what I do right now, but you know, my dad passed away in a car accident. Right. Like if that happened to me, I do, I it's foolish to say it, but like, I, I wonder like how would my clients be taken care of if you know, and the reality is there's a, there's a part of key business risks that I have right now that long-term, I want to get rid of where it's like, I don't want to be so indispensable to the business that, you know, if something happens to me yeah. You know, that they'll feel that way. And it takes a while to get there and do it in the right way. And so that's, that's what we're really focused on over the next, I'd say five years or so. And with that comes, you know, what I'm really enjoying about where we're at right now is I've seen some of our teammates just, you know, like Alyssa and Lindsay, for example, have just grown tremendously. You know, I almost feel like they're, you know, maybe not the PC way to say it, but like almost like their dad or parents in a way where I see them realize these really cool step stones in their career. And I'm like, wow, this is just the beginning for them. And like, I see all this potential. And again, they're better at things than me, and I'm excited by that, you know, and that's really rewarding, you know? So that, that part's been a nice reward to get some leadership, you know, dividends from that. If that makes
Curt:
sense. Um, anything else you want to talk about business wise? It seems like we've pulled a lot of nuggets out and chased a lot of squirrels. I
Clint:
I'm good if you're
Curt:
good. Yeah, I'm good. Yeah. And you know, we're running already up on our, uh, no, not running on time shortage yet,
Clint:
but I got to
Curt:
get some time you might need more whiskey. Um, so faith, family politics, uh, you've obviously mentioned faith a fair bit during this conversation. Um, do you wanna just swing it right into that start?
Clint:
Yeah, so I identify as Christian, um, and it's, you know, my, my journey there is, you know, based on the story I shared earlier, like I was wayward for a long, long time
Curt:
I identified as vaccinated, but it wasn't true. Sorry. You're so funny. Yeah. Anyway, I was just poking fun at your identify as Christian.
Clint:
Yeah, yeah. I guess. Yeah. I identify as Christian. Um, so, you know, I identify as Christian, but I am also one of those Christians that I think that there's, there are tactical practical things that like, you know, so for example, I think one of, if you were clearly looking at Christianity from an academic sense or whatever, there's a lot of. One of the things that's interesting about, you know, Western theological tradition, specifically Christianity is like sacrifice is a key component of things. Right. And like being externally a better person for lack of a better term. And, you know, there's hypocritical illness and faults with any institution, whether it's the Catholic church or my local church here, whatever it is. Right. But that exists everywhere. Um, however, like one of the things, you know, like meditation and those types of things and thoughtfully prayer, like a lot of Eastern traditions actually like the practice of meditating, where that comes from, like, that's actually enhanced my relationship with God and the sense of learning those types, things like meditation and prayer, the same thing,
Curt:
that's kind of my own perspective is we're talking about the same thing. We have different language around it. And I was thinking to myself, when you were talking about, um, that notion of giving and, uh, as like a spiritually beneficial thing, like even the Sabbath or the ties that are from that, Judeo-Christian kind of background, they're basically both prompts to feel that same element of gratitude and not strife.
Clint:
Yeah. And I would actually say like, you know, if people are say, like giving their tide, but they're doing it in like a legalistic, like, oh, I have to do this in order to be in order to here's my chip to get into heaven. What I, I wouldn't, I wouldn't even like make a recommendation to just be like, yeah, The way that I interpret it as it's like, ultimately freewill was there for a reason. And so like what, you know, I would say like the value of that, I know, I know that like if you're making ends meet and like you're tied and stuff can literally feel like, oh my gosh, you know, I'm been there. Yeah. We've all, we've all. I mean, we've you and I have
Curt:
right now. Oh yeah. I'm like, yeah. Half of that,
Clint:
probably. Sure. Sure. Well, but, but see, even like, you know, and people are those that don't know that
Curt:
10% top line
Clint:
and even that, so like, um, it depends on your interpretation of things, but like, I think looking at it from a legalistic perspective is a literally a poor way to look at it because, um, you know, for example, uh, I'm on the board at serves six, eight year in Northern Colorado. Love the organization helps people in crisis. Um, I know you and a couple of other people connected with like the business, you know, self COVID great organization. Right. And that organization helps so many people like through crisis and those types of things. Right. So we all know someone that's got a, it worse off than we do or have had it worse off than we do, et cetera. So, Mike, I remember, you know, I, I, uh, attend Timberline church here locally and I, I love going there. And one of the things I love about it is, you know, the first time I showed up there, um, serve six, eight, actually I think kind of emerged as a launching pad from that, you know, they're no longer direct. They have. They've got 35 other churches now, but I think they got incubated at serfs at Timberline. And there's just like the sea of red shirts serve six, eight shirts are going out. I'm like, wow, this is literally like, this is like, yeah, like this is the best parts for me about any belief system where like you're going out and you're actually, you're, you're being the hands and feet. You're supposed to actually go out and make the world a better place. And I love that aspect of those types of things. And so anyways, um, serve six, eight puts on this, uh, charitable then every year where it's, um, the whole idea is that, so they, they do this thing called adopt a family during Christmas. And it's not just about providing the family Christmas gifts, but actually like trying to build a relationship with them. You know what I mean? Like in a, you know, real dignified way. And I remember the first time I, you know, they came and spoke at Timberline and they did the offering and stuff, and I was like, happy to cut a check. Right. But what I love about what Mike said, cause it was, it was so true. He was like, you know, it'd be it. You know, thank you so much. Are financial sports such as like, but you know, it'd be really great if you volunteer at the event and I'll just tell you a lot of fundraisers don't have the Kony Stu do that or they're just, they, they would rather just have the check. Right? I know. I'll tell you about. For me, it's actually much harder for me to dedicate my time right now at this stage in the game. And when I did that, both my wife and I did it, number one, and it was, I got so much more from giving my time than I, than I gave, you know, in some of these, some of these, you know, at that time, at that specific event, they were taking family photos for people. And some of those people literally don't have a family photo together, like yeah, just, you know, and I that's really what it's about, you know, so even if I hadn't cut a check the meaning behind it and what that says about my values. Oh, and then by the way, if you have kids, like how do you teach your kids those values? Yeah. I mean, at the end of the day, kids learn through stories, you know, you know, even if you're not religious, it's like, well, what's a technology that helps teach values and virtues like telling stories through religion. Like that's. So, and I, there's a communal aspect to that. That's harder to get. And even non-faith based tradition like secular humanism and those types
Curt:
of things. Well, and I like, I think things that are simpler easier, and I was just reflecting as you talked about sort of six, eight, and otherwise that, you know, the, the, when Jesus was asked to boil it down and he's like, well, love God with all your heart, soul and mind. And to me, that means kind of love, truth, love, ordered love, justice, love, you know, the, the creation force and respect it. Um, and then love your neighbor as yourself. And that's like, as yourself is something that I think is really significant too, because we don't all love ourselves. You know, and so then just say, love yourself and love your neighbor. Just that way. Like it's so summarizing what all deep face mostly believed well,
Clint:
and, and like we're one body, right? So like, so, you know, I think, um, you know, I'm not a theologian, so I can't tell you the differences between Eastern tradition. I know, you know, some scripture I've referenced it today. Um, and I, I feel fulfilled by that. And what I would say is like, you know, the people for me that helped me connect with God when I was wayward, when I was in college and those types of things. Cause there's a period of time where I was very lost. I was depressed. There's even a church in years. There I, yeah. I mean, I hadn't been, um, there was even a brief moment where I was like, contemplating suicide. Not like, not seriously, like I had made a plan or anything, but I was like, wow, I am not used to anybody. You know, just super
Curt:
dark one time. I was like, well, I'm going to wait at least wait until football season's over because football season is the best. Wow.
Clint:
Yeah. Yeah. I, wow man. Like I, it, I think it's, it's so common that people have dark moments like that, you know? And for me that's, that is the true Christian experience where to know that there, there are true. Um, there's something greater than myself that I can rest my troubles on. And I used to view that as a weakness, you know, or that like that. And I actually don't, you know, as a crutch and you know what, I guess what, I'm humble enough to admit I need a crutch then, because the reality is like, there are some things, you know, I sleep soundly for when I do fall asleep at reading and stuff, I don't stay awake out of anxiety most nights, like I used to, you know, it's like, I'm interested in so many things, but I sleep peacefully at night because I, I believe that there's a greater calling to things. And to know that that's whether that's a, you know, biologically designed mechanism to cope with my fatal existence, which is what, you know, maybe secular humanist would say, or I'm designed that way, whatever your view is out there. And he continued in between, like my recommendation is be like, choose a system of virtue and belief system and then own that, and then try to connect with people on the values that you share, because I'm just so tired of the same narrative of, you know, oh, you know, like, let's go into politics now briefly. Well, before we go
Curt:
there, though, I want to, I want to ask you like, why Christian then, like, you've, you've definitely expressed appreciation and understanding probably of other faith, traditions and stuff, but, um, why, why Jesus, like, and obviously you were raised Catholic and stuff, so you had that familiar, but I suspect that you've done some study, done some research to support your choice.
Clint:
It's just not as much. The opposite. So I think for a long time, I actually tried to take it academically and that wasn't working for me. Um, and it's really just, I pray, I asked for guidance on it and yeah, and for me in my heart, there's a, there's a piece of scripture that I really liked delight yourself in the Lord. And he will give you the desires of your heart. And what I like about that is, you know, one, it implies the Bryan Providence. That's what everybody thinks it means. But the deeper theological interpretation is sometimes like, if you don't know what's in your heart, you just praying about it enough, you know, like how often, you know, a fault of my personality previously, not trusting my God or paying attention. I feel a thing is like, oh, I would try to rationalize my way into something when it's like, well, maybe I should just have the humility sometimes when I don't know, instead of trying to figure it out to say, you know, God, what do you think about this? Yeah. And I, and there's literally been times in my life where it's like, I, my life didn't make sense to me for a long period of time. But like when I look back now, I literally feel like I was designed to be right where I'm at right now. You know, like my dad passes away and like, that makes no sense for like a decade of my life. And then I meet my now wife and her dad passes away week after meeting. And I am as equipped as any person could be to understand what she's going through. Oh. And then not only that, but those life experiences. And for me on how to really be convicted around helping people think about uncomfortable questions that make serious differences to the people that they care about if they don't address it. So it's like, okay, that gives me a lot of conviction that like I have a higher calling and I am choosing to believe like the, at the end of the day, what I had to decide was I have to choose to believe that. Yeah,
Curt:
well, and that's probably an interesting dichotomy in my own life. Like whether it's true or whether I've come to believe it talked myself into it. Most of the really hardest things that have happened to me have been the doorway to some really positive change or outcome. And, or you can take those hard things that happened as like proof that God hates you. Yeah.
Clint:
Yeah. I, I think, I, I think for me, freewill is a, it's a blessing and it's a difficult burden to bear sometimes because there's a book that was really, there are two books, well, a book that was really helpful for. Um, it, there's a book written by Viktor Frankl. Man's search for meaning. Yeah. Great one. And essentially the premise, you know, now it's been re-packaged by Simon Sinek, which is, you know, know your why, but, uh, and that's, that's cool. Like it, you know, whatever, but Viktor Frankl was this, uh, Jewish man who, um, was basically placed in Auswitch. So him and his wife relocated different concentration camps and Victor Franco, when he went there was actually corresponding with Sigmund Freud who was a leading, you know, psych person at the time of the founding psychology kind of, uh, you know, all sides, some unique habits like cocaine abuse, et cetera, but had some interesting things around, like for me, ego and all the basics. Yeah. The form, the foundation of what's known in a lot of psychology, foundational psychological concepts. Anyway, this book basically journalist his experience of observing, like how, why the people that survived Auschwitz survived and how some of them actually thrived in spite of horrendous experiences. And essentially the premise of the book is, is if you know your, why you can bear almost any how, and that there's something unique about the human spirit specifically, that if you choose to live for something greater than yourself. So, so an example of this and observation, he was like, you know, the, the men in my camp that chose to be generous because they, because it was important to them in spite of literally starving to death somehow were healthier and got sick less right. Than the men who said, you know what? I am going to concede it. Yeah. From other prisoners. If I don't get out by this date. Right. So his Victor Frankel's vision was, I will get out of here and see my wife at some point. Right? Like, so there's this intrinsic value of love and whatever, not just, oh, well, once the state passes and how many men, sometimes literally the date passed and they would literally get sick and die. Right. You know? And so ultimately what it comes down to is like, where are you going to choose? Because, uh, a, you know, Nietzsche, I mean, you know, a lot of philosophers, you don't realize this, a lot of philosophers and it, I mean, some of them are really depressed people, you know, he killed himself. Right. And he basically, you know, God is dead. Right. And what's behind the philosophic movement. And if you believe in this metaphor, that life is essentially, you're pushing this Boulder up this hill that you can never crack rested over. Well, why do you choose to actually push that damn Boulder up there? Hill stop. Yeah. Right. Like, like at the end of the day, you can like, but why are you, even if you sink, you're going to stop you. Don't because the only way to get out of pushing at that Boulder is to take your own life, which is ultimately what he did. Right. So if you're choosing like the, the kind of conclusion I came to was okay, I'm choosing to be alive. Like I decided not to, I decided to be here. So why am I here? Like, and that's, I think that's the ultimate foundation of our human condition. Like you have to choose that unfortunately. Or fortunately, no, one's going to offer that for you. Now, there is a path here. My path is Christian. Yeah. Like I've accepted Jesus, but like you have a choice and like, there's, it is your responsibility to go find that. And that sucks sometimes, but it's just the real truth and there's fulfillment and. The uglier parts of that, where it's like, wow. Sometimes the human condition just really sucks and life isn't fair.
Curt:
Well, and I have, I have a wide door kind of a God policy where, you know, if somebody becomes a Buddhist and becomes the best person at loving others and themselves and whatever they can, it, God's got a, he's got a pass for that person. Like it made me that's a heretical probably, but he's the decider and he sees the heart and he will also exclude a whole bunch of people that go to church every Sunday from a legalistic perspective.
Clint:
Totally. So I think, I think, um, uh, legalistic or heretical, you know, interpretation and be like, oh, I can't believe you said that as a Christian. Right. But I think the majority of the Bible has so many other focus on good works and other things that it's like, if that's really where your heart spent most of the time, I would say, how often are you actually paying attention to that? I do. You know, the book does say that, you know, it's like, you have to accept Jesus as your Lord and savior. Yes, it does say that. Right. But there, there are other elements of this book that it's like, can you make 90% of that, your focus and let that be your process for evangelization. Um, and that, you know, uh, that's just my opinion, but I, you know, like I share that I hesitate to judge. Yeah. Well, I mean, in theory, we're not supposed to, right. I mean, you can, you can tell with the Bible and say, by definition, this is, you know, this does fit and, you know, I think be crazy habits. Okay. Right here and hacked my head off heresy well, and pastors have a tough job. Right. Cause you know, like in some ways they are, they are responsible for stewarding that truth. But you know, I think at the end of the day, like, you know, trying to make the world a better place, if everybody did that, you're at least making more progress than it'd be a better, you know, the person that legalistically operates in the context of the Bible, but is a miserable person. And actually doesn't follow through on some of those things. Right. Fair enough.
Curt:
Yeah. Um, we started shifting into politics from there. Do you want to do that right now? Or do you want to just jump into family first and close with politics
Clint:
because it's more fun. Um, sure. We'll talk family. Um, so I, uh, any, so I got, tell me the love story a little bit.
Curt:
Yeah. Uh, you guys have been married for how many years
Clint:
now? So we got married in 2014. So in September, 2014, so it'll come up this year will be our eighth year of marriage men together for almost 10 years. So we dated a couple of years prior to that. I just got a couple littles now. Yes. Two daughters. I'm a girl dad. Best gift ever. Man. How old are they? Um, two and four. Well Freya. My youngest kid will turn two in may. Okay. Uh, Karna, my oldest just turned four, uh, two weekends ago and here here's a cool for the believers out in the audience are those that believe in unconditional love from some type of crime. I tell you what, like the love that you feel for your kid and to, to, if you have the belief for no know that God loves you that way completely fricking blew my mind, because I never felt the love like that. You know? And, and, and I'd love to say like, oh yeah, I love my wife unconditionally. But the reality is I'm fallible and there's moments where I'm like, you know, we're having conflict where like, I definitely dislike you. I'm committed to being married to you, but dang and I dislike you. Yeah. There is nothing my kids could do. Like I was watching this, um, yeah, I was scrolling through this, like Tom Sigora. I was scrolling through Netflix, trying to look for something. And like, there was this 32nd Tom cigarette clip that came on. He's a comedian for those in the audience know now. And he's like, you know, I love, I love the people that talk about like, oh, you know, that don't have kids at like, oh, I've got a dog. I love my dog, whatever. And he's like, he was like, that's true. I love my dog. I love my dog. But if my dog, like, you know, hard, my kid in about 30 seconds, I would grab that dog. And I would drown that dog. And then I would say, look at what I did for you. Cause I love you. And by the way, why don't you stand up for yourself? And I just thought that was so funny. Cause it's like, it's weird how parenting it just it's like this. You like join this fraternity of stuff. It's just so, but I love being a parent and I love being a girl, dad surrounded by, uh, incredibly strong willed and emotional women. And it's the best thing ever.
Curt:
Um, I'd like to ask our guests to do a one-word description of their. You have a one word description? It was Freya was
Clint:
the younger. Yeah. Yeah. So CARNA would be fierce. Okay. Um, Freya would be solitude. Ooh,
Curt:
interesting. How the solitude or contentment.
Clint:
So like, yeah, like Freya. So CARNA is just like, you know, 11, you know, if you've ever spent commands here or current is just, yeah. She's just like, you know, joy and sadness. It's just like full bore, full frequency all the time. You know, it was talking full sentences, like, you know, a year before she was supposed to just all sorts of stuff. Freya is like, in some ways the opposite, like just content. She, she, and I it's like the yin and yang of just energy, you know? And it's, I love them both so much. Like, I, it is crazy to me. Like, you can love two people that are so different, so unlimitedly, it's, it's cool.
Curt:
I was actually just talking with Alma the other day about a blog I wrote a couple of years ago. It was the balance between striving and contentment was the topic. And I came to the end with gratitude. Like gratitude is like the solution to this challenge of whether you're striving or content kind of. And, uh, anyway, you might share that with Freya and with CARNA sometime. Totally. Anyway, I digress. No, that's great. Talk to me more about like, uh, well you too foreign too. Do you have a goalie pulled right now? You're going to shoot for a boy here.
Clint:
Uh, so we are discussing that right now. I think. Sorry. That's no, no, no, no, you're fine. Um, so, um, Lindsay and I are both type a people like, I mean,
Curt:
we have, it's really, she's got some FOMO going on about career stuff. Yeah,
Clint:
yeah, yeah. I know we've been talking about that too. Yeah. So for the audience, you know, I'm in Kurt's next level group, um, we're actually, co-participants in one group together, which by the way, any business owners out there, this is not a paid plug, highly recommend. Um, and we, uh, I was talking about that the other day where, so my wife is just this amazing. She was like top salesperson in HP, Hewlett Packard for like years and was just getting to the point where she was burnt out. And she probably could have left like three years ago, but she had a really great boss. And then when the boss left was like, you know, I just, I, she was feeling a call to do something different. And of course she became a parent, you know, we became parents together. And so that played into that. And then COVID really exaggerated that where it's like, you know, and so she was curious what the stay at home parent would look like, you know, full-time mom and she's great at that. I think she's amazing at it. I think right now she's searching for what you know, is that enough for her. Um, do I, you know, oh, I feel guilty for the fact that like, it might not be enough for me right now. What does that mean? You know, and you don't realize like your friendships through work, your sense of ego, you know, kind of part of how you define yourself, huge identity.
Curt:
We are two year old into your four-year-old that give you positive and negative
Clint:
feedback. Mostly. Yeah. A hundred percent. A hundred percent. Yeah. And, and I'm sure a lot of women out there can relate to this, you know, perhaps, you know, stay-at-home fathers too, where she just, you know, it's like she gave up, she did cut out a lot of, like, there are many pauses from Rockaway, it was the right decision to walk away. But now where do you head? You know, what do you head towards? Like, you know, she loves being a mom, but like, you know, with part-time work helps. So what I'll say out there is like, right now she's entertaining that we've looked at franchises, those types of things also. But right now she's exploring the idea of like maybe a part-time sales role somewhere. Cause she's like a freaking awesome Salesforce think tank. Maybe we should talk after this. Um, because like she, she just, she needs something where it's like, she could still accommodate her home priorities, but like to stimulate that ego achiever, like she was a very competitive swimmer. She went to S you know, she had a scholarship for a while in college due to swimming. She like had the Windsor there's for awhile. I think she had some state record in Colorado run swimming. So she's got that like hard charging type, a personality. It's not exactly, always the most constructive tool with your kids. And so like, where do you stimulate that part of yourself? Right. But we've also, so to answer your question too, about the kids thing, like, we've been talking about that too. And like, you know, we had like our 10 point plan with our first one. It's like, oh, you know, we took all the classes and then carnet came and it was like, nothing worked like fierce, right? Like in a pot, like she's just gonna feel what she's going to feel. It's hard to AB to soothe sleepless nights until 18 months. And then Freya comes and everything works like, oh, this is like, you know, and so it was just, it was so funny. Right. Cause make, you know, want to make God laugh, make, make plans. Right. So ironically, you'd never guessed this for his type a and is organized. We are, it's like, you know what, we're just going to see what God has in store for us. So I think we're probably just going to try for a couple months. It doesn't happen. That's our sign. And if it does happen, we are meant to have a third baby. And we'll see. And you know, I do think a couple months, I think for a few. Yeah. Well, I don't know. We'll see where even for us to all your whole marriage when you're not actually yeah. Pull the goalie as you referenced earlier. But I think what's interesting about it is like, it's so weird for me to even not have like a tight timeframe goal. Like normally be like, we're going to try it for this period of time. Then when it's done, it's done. It still fills up in the air and it feels right. Like we're relaxed about it.
Curt:
So one of the interesting things about becoming basically. Going into poverty from being a banker is Jill. My wife was able to not able to, but she got a big promotion where she basically tripled her income and became a salaried employee instead of a contract person and stuff. And she is so much more fulfilled from that interaction. Now we don't have kids. And so obviously that's a different component and, you know, the opportunity to, to homeschool or not, or all those things. Like there's a lot of ways that moms could impact the world for good, through heavy service to their children. But also you hate to see all that talent left on the bench too much. And, and for her to be less fulfilled.
Clint:
Yeah. I think there, there are some moms out there that I know. I mean, we've talked to them that like, they just knew they were destined to be a mom and like, and then there are other moms out there that just know like, there's no way they could do it. You know, I love it.
Curt:
And 20 years of this will break me. Yeah. And I think,
Clint:
or bore me. Yeah. And I think every, you know, every, woman's got to answer that for themselves. And you know, if my daughter is in this situation, I'd be like, well, you know, like think, pray about it, you know, test things. It does not, you know, just because you're doing something right now, you know, it's like the same thing. And I think the hardest thing for me as a spouse right now is just like, just listening and accepting that, like I can't fix it. So I've just got to listen to accept where she feels, but it's, it's harder. It's easier said than done.
Curt:
Um, God bless you, Lindsay. I hope you find yourself in a place that. Super-duper likewise when you land there and, uh, if I can help, cause I do meet with people regularly to talk about this kind of stuff. I'm an armchair psychologist.
Clint:
Yeah, totally. Totally. Yeah. Maybe we'll talk about is. Yeah, no for sure.
Curt:
um, so faith, family politics, um, this isn't really in politics, but you're, but I'll lead it off this way. Cause it's relatively easy. You're, you're a crypto inquisitor, which is super unusual for an old school, like financial investments kind of planner, guy, whatever. Um, but tell me about that just a little bit, like why the fascination what's the utility and let's try to keep it into like a five minute segment because yeah, I've only just recently after declining to buy a bunch of Bitcoins for$25 a piece, you know, 10, 12 years ago or whatever, I was starting to come on board and be leaving that it's probably better than not to have a portion of my wealth into something that isn't as subject to inflation, likely as everything else in my world.
Clint:
Yeah. So two caveats before that, number one reminder, these are Clint Jasper sins opinions and not thrive in. So it doesn't look this shit at all. Yeah. Well it's not even thrive in it, but the other thing I would say is, um, Anyone that's getting investment advice from a podcast. Like, I'll just go get your head checked or whatever, like talk, talk to your advisor out there, have this conversation, you know, just, uh, you know, uh, don't listen to me. Um, so here here's, what I hear is I think more interesting than the investment piece of it. It's really, because I think the broader theme of the
Curt:
regulatory piece
Clint:
is a big part of it. Just like, what does it mean for society? Right? Because, because if you think about, I want to walk us all back to like 2008 and how terrible that seemed and people thought the world was going to end and, you know, our own almost our entire financial system almost came to a close. Right. And it didn't thank goodness. Right. And there were decisions that were made that, you know, maybe there should've been more people were allowed to fail and from their decisions, but during that period of time, there was something that happened and that something was the iPhone was launched. Yeah. And most people don't remember that, but literally one of the greatest inventions that changed everything was launched during a very difficult time. Right. And it was galvanized by a lot of things that were going on then. And, you know, I remember a few years before that, what I wanted for Christmas was a GPS that I could put my car, you know, you can upload with CDs what happened in that business. Right. Um, so I want, you know, it was impossible almost to anticipate what impacts the iPhone would have, but everybody knew it was different that had the experience and it was more, and it was, there are potential consequences. We can only see or glimpse in the future about five or 10%. Right. That's what I think digital assets and blockchain has the potential to introduce. And, um, you know, Bitcoin specifically the way I understand that, you know, the investment thesis route, you know, something about finite, you know, there's a cap on supply and all those other types of things. One of the things that I think is unique about it though, is the ability to like self custody, your savings. Right? So, so, and, and
Curt:
mean actually a savings to phase. It's not an investment device is what I was
Clint:
legally it's property again, like, like I'm sure my compliance officers like listening to the real estate on
Curt:
frankly, it's digital real estate in a way that other things
Clint:
legally defined as property. And, and that's important because like for Bitcoin specifically, um, but what it really lets you do is it, if it's a, the invest, the reason why people buy it is they believe it's going to be a store value. And it also has a network effect component to it. And I actually think that that's the more important thing to pay attention to for the entire.
Curt:
It becomes more impactful. Well, so
Clint:
what a network effect is, and you know, again, you said five minutes, I'm probably past that here, but so keep me honest, our time constraints, but essentially a network effect. Like if we think, if we think about the exponential improvements, that more technology yields, right. So, you know, as a microprocessing chip gets faster, it actually helps to development for more faster microprocessing chips. And that continues to compound exponentially, right? Until we run into physical or biological constraints with like hardware. Right. Right. So technology, the better technology becomes the better technology becomes, et cetera, et cetera. So if you mathematically chart that out, you know, linear growth of something that looks like a thing. Yeah. If you, if you chart off, like, you know, uh, like to visualize this a step, you know, a series of steps is what linear growth looks like. Basically exponential growth looks basically like hockey stick, you know, it suddenly takes off and it just skyrockets and what's hard for people to wrap their heads around. That is it's for traditional finance people. A lot of things are mean reverting, right? So you referenced Marty and portfolio theory, use statistics and all of these types, over
Curt:
80 years, the stock market's going to get like 7% and that might get 15% one year or N minus five,
Clint:
the next forever. Yeah. And that's still valid. The problem is like, that's not that mathematical model is not applicable for network effects. So how we've all experienced this in real time is, you know, anyone that was a member of Facebook, you know, I do have activated my account a couple of years ago. You know, back in college, I remember like, okay, I remember I had a friend at Tufts university that had access to it and I'm like, oh, this is kind of a cool thing. Um, and there was only like maybe 10 or 20 campuses that had access to it. And then by the end of college, like a number of, you know, a hundred, maybe 200 campuses had it. And then within a year, every college campus had one. And within two years, everyone in the U S I know within three to four years, it was like everyone in the world, right. That is an exponential growth of things. Right? So as, as I introduce someone to the value proposition of Facebook or whatever, and I tell five other friends, they tell five other friends, they tell five other friends, that's an X, that's a network effect, right. Businesses that have been able to incorporate that into their business model, um, have really thrown traditional finance folks for a loop. And I won't get into like specific stocks or companies, but I think that concept is one of the more important things to understand around why people believe that the, the, the digital tokens or cryptocurrencies that let's just say they do have value. Why they have tremendous potential for upside is because the volatility works both ways. But if you believe that there's promise to the upside exponential volatility to the positive as a really, really significant upside. Right. Okay. Part of what's driving the appeal to that right now is people look around, they're like, oh, you know, where am I going to safe? Yeah. W well, where am I going to generate yield? You know, feds lowered, interest rate, all the same stuff, people and talk about 10 year for the last, you know, 10 years. And, um, well, longer than that, even. And, um, that's, I think why people, you know, our, our appeal, you know, that appeals to them. Yeah.
Curt:
So why like, what's your, and probably you're not quite as much of a vision guy as much of a present tense guy in some respects, but where does the government go with this? Like, do they regulate it? Do they issue their own crypto? Do they like outlaw? Yeah. Well, gains on, especially on
Clint:
Bitcoin, I would say is like, uh, Janet Yellen actually just spoke on this, I think last week and she's got, and then this, and so there is, there are some piece pieces of legal clarity that need to be, you know, so let's see. So you have companies out there, like micro strategy that literally like their entire, the majority of their treasury assets for a fortune 500 company are held in Bitcoin, like billions of dollars. Right? Most companies out there are not going to be that forward leaning right now because there's, I think it's gap accounting, um, is very unfavorable treatment to Bitcoin. So
Curt:
for, if we start capital gains taxing on unrealized gains, I
Clint:
mean, that's a different, that's completely different, you know? And so as an example, semi completely, I mean, it, it it's all related in the sense that like. There there's regulatory hurdles where it's like, it really isn't even been given a fair, it's not even been treated like other property. Right. And so, so in order for that, so in order for other, there are already are institutions like pension funds, banks, hedge funds, family offices invest. Yeah. Tesla's got a very minor part of their balance sheet, but investing in Bitcoin as a store of value. Right. And there are other blockchains and stuff tied to that. So I think what the F you know, there is, interestingly enough, there's a gal, uh, Caitlin long up at, in Wyoming.
Curt:
Um, I'm trying on LinkedIn, actually. She
Clint:
seems pretty smart. Yeah. Super smart. I think she's one of the smartest regulatory people out there for folks that are listening. She loved the fact that she's from Wyoming, Cynthia Lummis, who's also a Senator from Wyoming is leading a bipartisan effort. Um, there's other senators. I just happen to know Cynthia cause I grew up in Wyoming and, um, actually went to high school with her doc school, with her daughter, but like, and there's real innovation happening there. And so if I was a betting person, what I, what I would hope for is that the U S finds a way to tie the U S that they established regulatory clarity. And there are these things called stable coins that there needs to be some work done there. And if they do it right, it will actually establish, um, it will be similar to the petrodollar system where it makes the U S dollars still a safe place for that. So there's actually a way
Curt:
that w that could preserve the U S dollar as the reserve currency. Frankly, if they would accept that market derived valuation association with crypto. Yeah.
Clint:
And, and I think the reason why this societal consequences are like, here's what this enables. So we're pretty privileged in the U S like, in spite of all of our complaints, like we presently don't have a dictator that's like seizing the money in our accounts, but if you live in a place like Venezuela or Canada, or, well, yeah. I mean, so that's actually good. That's a good example of where, you know, regardless of what you think about the truckers in Canada, you had people that, from that made payments to support this mission up there. And then suddenly those people that made payments to fund that are now, like their capital might be getting seized or there's penalty. And
Curt:
like bank account is closed. They can pay their mortgage. Yeah. That's childcare
Clint:
person. Yeah. And like, I would hope that most people think that that's a scary thing for any government. And it's like, if you don't believe that let's test that theory. Okay. So let's say you're a Democrat. Do you believe Donald Trump should have that power? No. Okay, great. So you actually don't, if you're a Republican, do you think that, you know, uh, Joe Biden should have that right. You know what I mean? So I think, I think that I'm not a Republican. Yeah. I, I, yeah. So, so I think, I think what's really positive about the technology and I think is why it's inherently really positive for the west, because I think there's going to be this emergence of conflict that exists between the east and the west. We're going to see that manifest with Taiwan. Here's, here's the thing that we've got going on right now in our world. Um, we've got. So, if you look at like Western ideology and you look at Eastern ideology, as it relates to politics, right? Both of them have been trending more and more towards centralization. So what I mean by centralization is you've got the east, which is like, you know, th th th the Mandarin character for state looks very similar to family. Right. And like different culture, like the, the, the idea that an individual, you know, powers continuing to concentrate in fear for your hands and artificial intelligence at scale allows social monitoring combined with blockchain could potentially be very, very, like we're talking V for vendetta scary type of stuff. Yeah. Like where, where, you know, every single type of activity from your financial transaction to where you got like, can all be monitored right. And done. So at scale, where power is able to be concentrated, very few hands things are trending that way in China, in the U S economic, if money is power or tool for power, that continues to be concentrated in fewer and fewer hands. Right. So that's continuing to get more centralized. Right. Um, so both of those things are trending towards, and both places are working less and less for the majority. Yeah. So where is, where is the, the fightback tool? Well, now, so, and, and by the way, whether the west or the east winds, those trends are going to continue all lose, right? Like the centralization is going to continue. Um, so now you've got this technology that essentially. Power to be organized in a decentralized way and it allows it to do so with what people believe to, you know, have financial resources. So for ways that this has been practically used in the war with Russia and Ukraine going on right now, there were people in Ukraine that were leaving the party and they had gold bars or cash in their suitcase. Well, when you're leaving the country, that's, that gets seized by the Ukraine army. They needed to buy money for their militia. But if you had cryptocurrency, if you, if you store it in your virtual wallet or your self custody, it there's a process for doing that. Like in self custody, it's stored actually virtually on the blockchain. So it's not physically on you. It's stored virtually in a computer and there's all these computers everywhere else called nodes or validators that essentially authenticate that virtual ledger, which is a blockchain. So if they're able to keep that password in their head, they can, they can go across border with that cap, you know, hundreds of dollars or whatever. And then it's still there. Yeah. Like, I mean, they all that type of stuff. They don't have to have physically stored on their phone or anything. They get over there and now they're able to buy groceries for their family or to rent or those two. And that's literally how right now, and you're seeing people type to do that. And so Bitcoin is, property is different from like other types of blockchains, because like they're
Curt:
more currency. It feels like from,
Clint:
well, cryptocurrency is not even the right term because it, in my opinion, I understand why I've chosen that way. But like a lot of these, they actually haven't here. Here's an example of the way that this technology is going to be used by. I would say almost everybody within the next five years. Okay. There's a process. Uh, non fungible, token or NFT for short, essentially allows you to create digital scarcity. What does digital scarcity mean? A unique identifier for whatever intangible digital asset exists out there. What's an example of that already. Well, when was the last time you got physical tickets to a concert event, most people get them over email. You pull up in your email, you get it scanned at the concert. Okay. So what happens when I want to resell that to someone else? Well, how do they know when they're not getting scammed? Oh, by the way, the music vendor doesn't make a commission when I resell that ticket. Right. So now if I'm able to, let's say I use a blockchain to organize NFTs this way. I can, I can actually send your ticket that you buy for. Let's say I'm an owner of the Dallas Mavericks, mark Cuban. And he actually talks about this. We got and listened to him, but okay, now I'm going to sell my I'm going to do my basketball tickets via NFT. Right? So it's stored in your virtual wallet. You show up, give me authenticator. Oh. But Kurt decides he can't go. And he's a season ticket holder. So he decides to sell, you know, a really, really important basketball game, uh, for the Mavericks against the golden state warriors to pay for a season tickets. But that's weird. Cause like mark really wants Dallas Mavericks fans in the stadium that night. Right. So he's actually going to have the ability to charge a higher commission on the take rate because they can monitor that the blockchain. So now there's incentive for the business though. Kurt winds and the buyer of that Kurt winds, cause one it's, it's authentic, you know, I know that I'm actually getting tickets. Yeah. Yeah, exactly. And it's, it's it, you know, if anyone's tried to buy resale tickets before it's a major pain in the neck, I'm pretty sure I'm
Curt:
going to do like a line of Kurt bear baseball cards for the local experience podcast. There you
Clint:
go. Yeah. That's awesome. Yeah.
Curt:
Errors. And right now I'm going to give one to
Clint:
every podcast. Well, and here's where, here's where I think this has the power to be really, really neat. And I, I happen to believe that it's going to be a tool to usher in like a new Renaissance type period. So if you think about what, um, if you think about what has happened with the internet, right? A lot of the rails for the internet are owned by private companies. And the danger of that is they, they control the public square. If you believe that the public square is
Curt:
like the free freedom of speech, hasn't been restricted by the government. It's just their lackeys at Twitter and Facebook have done it
Clint:
instead. Yeah. And so, so like, again, it's just like, well, you know, if you, um, we, we need as a society to resolve that. We haven't yet. We just kind of pretended that it's not happening. We just, you know, the government's like, well, legally the corporations can decide that, but we need to have a debate on that and what we decided as the public square. But here's the thing you could actually have. What, what blockchain is essentially allows is the rails to be owned by everybody. And so the downside of that is, you know, you're going to get some fringes of society. You know, like the internet was back in the old days, that's like uncomfortable with. But that's the cost that we pay for preserving freedom for everybody to do over here. And it gives us the opportunity to reorganize under that social construct and have in a decentralized way. That's maintained by everybody. And it's, I think that's going to be really positive and what I would say too, there's been some downsides, right? Like, you know, a lot of the revenue for most musicians, for example, goes to Spotify as the world. Hey, it's a great, I understand why Spotify did that. That's economics. Right. But like now as like a visual creator, let's say, let's say, I let's say I'm an artist out there that takes these amazingly artistic pictures of clowns. Yeah. Okay. Well, you know, my ability to like distribute and sell that artwork at scale is going to be significantly enhanced by the ability issue that as an NFT. Cause I can organize and tokenize those assets in ways that were not as easy to do that before. Well, and if
Curt:
you're a, if you're a start-up artist, you probably can't command the kind of price that you might otherwise do. But if it turns out that this league of clown art, fascinated people start buying and bidding up your thing, you can build in kind of a continuing commission.
Clint:
Sorry I'm jumping in. No, no, no. You're a hundred percent. So I'll give you an example and mind people like, oh, this is going to also charge more money. You know, some people are going to look at this as a, get rich, quick scheme, but let me, there are ways to do this. So if you think about some of the most valuable assets in the world, right? A lot of them are actually intangible. So what is the value of the memories that we all have that have watched a Disney movie with the memories and the emotion that we have behind those childhood memories? It's hard to put a value on that people would say, oh, Disney's brand is worth XYZ, but it's more difficult, even hard to monetize that. Right now, I would bet money within 10 years, that that actually starts to get monetized because it's going to enable to take some of these less tangible assets and actually monetize them and enable it to where all stakeholders, not just shareholders can benefit from the economic upside. So for example, of how that could work, you know, I have a friend that just attended a concert up in red rocks and they got after the concert, they got mailed an NFT said, Hey, you PR you attended the concert, whatever this, you know, digital token represents your attendants. Any, any merchant you have and you get all these other points or whatever. And it's like, it's a token right now that didn't cost him anything. Like he didn't even know he was going to get it. So that's something that this, you know, creative person did for free to kind of build brand and community. This person's not that well-known, those tools now are easier to do at scale. And so those types of things are going to start to manifest.
Curt:
Yeah. Yeah. Um, we better jump off of here cause we could spend a minute while. Um, so one of the things I was going to ask you about politics as we continued through that, I guess let's just like, what's the, the right role of government in society. Um, and, and where, how would you classify yourself? Uh, and I, I suspect that you're, uh, independent, maybe you're registered Democrat or Republican. I don't know. But, um, like talk to me about like the party system where we're at, what you think would be the best thing.
Clint:
Yeah. Um, so I think a fault I see is people defined themselves first, what their ideology. And I think that that's dangerous. So there's three things. There's three toolboxes that I think people can use to construct meaning in Western thought their theology, what they, how, where they get virtue from their philosophy, how they come to know things true empiricism, and then how they generate ideas and ideology. Right. So, you know, if I define them, if my primary way of defining myself as Democrat or Republican or any other identity, or, or let's just say that to where the con that's how people think. I think that that's a, that's a path to shallow discussion. Whereas I would actually say people should first be guided by their theology. Let's just take us, you know, a secretary humanist or atheist approach to that you would first start. Cause you know, people might be like, oh, well it's the Christian Guy saying that. So let's just say you believe in truth justice. And we'll just say truth injustice, right. And fairness. And let's just say you believe in the humidity kind of
Curt:
a cool food.
Clint:
Yeah. Yeah. And let's say you believe, let's say you believe in freewill and that life is like, is know sacred and meaningful, right? So a way that you see this and constructively manifested, if someone defines themselves by their ideology, let's take the pro-life versus pro-choice argument. Those are actually two different arguments. So if I'm like, Hey, you know, I'm pro choice. I think life is meaningless without free. Will you could actually defend that from a theological perspective is sound Christian viewpoints, right? Yeah. If I say all life is sacred, you can definitely defend that from a theological perspective. Both of those things can be true. They're not actually in conflict with one another. So I'm actually never going to reach status with someone to have an argument, to actually win an argument or lose an argument. Right? So those, those things are never ending and it just divides people. However, if we said, Hey, I believe all like a sacred. And I believe that life is meaningless without free will. And I think that less abortion is a good thing. That's something that almost everybody can get behind. So how can we make it so that less abortion happens? You know, the less abortion happens, period. That's and that, that you won't see that
Curt:
the last abortion happened because it's illegal or does less abortion happen actually, because. Rare or whatever,
Clint:
like it's cultural, it's a problem to be solved and we can come together on that.
Curt:
That speaks actually to, I deviating a slightly, but it speaks so accurately to like the COVID challenge or other like elemental challenges of what's the outcome we're seeking for and which is the better way to get there. And we don't know.
Clint:
Yeah. Yeah. I mean, and I think, you know, the humility to admit you don't know, and that like statesmanship should Trump partisanship and I, part of why this exists is it's our, right now, my belief is to why we have these like ideological divides is that the sort of social justice continuum of things became cheaper to modelize monetize to organize politics than labor used to. So if you go back in the eighties, you would actually have, like, it was labor was one of the, you know, pro union or against union. Right. And with unions, you know, due to president Reagan and some of the reform that happened and really getting, you know, devastated by a lot of that. Right. Rightfully or wrongfully. So like, it became more cost-effective to organize people on these other social continuum that I'm talking about. So, um, I think so I don't define myself with any political ideology. I think there's elements of, you know, so, um, you know, I'm attracted to Republican views in the sense of the pull yourself up by your own bootstraps self work ethic. But I also think that like, you know, ever having a social safety net as useful and like not everyone gets the same amount of economic opportunities, so we need it. And like, let's focus on that, you know, um, you know, I believe in social justice and I want people to have those economic opportunities, but I also think there should be some responsibility with that, you know, and the reality is we actually do need a more military because the world's not a utopia. And, and we're probably never will be because I think humans are inherently fallible including myself. So we actually need to have some fundamental rules and systems and, and by the way, like authority is, um, merit is a great thing. It's not a, it's not a negative thing. It's simultaneous of equal opportunity and people that are, people are going to Excel. Yeah. And like, that's what you want. Like, I wanna, I want someone that's a plumber to fix my plumbing, not, oh, well, you know, someone's a teacher, but they deserve the plumbing opportunity as well. Like that's not a functioning world order and we'll never be like, that's just not how it works. And then, you know, I, uh, the less government intervention is attracted me about libertarian views, but where I see a lot of things I don't like about libertarianism and Iran's view is like, where's the virtue guiding the decision and that can sometimes be missing. You know, I believe Iran was a priest out atheist. I think that virtual that was missing from that. So agreed like my, to answer your question about government, I would say ideally first we'd have capital markets solve. I didn't capital market in a stakeholder driven capitalism system, which we need reform. Digital assets have the potential to help with that. That solves a lot of problems, you know, but there are some problems, for example, that actually capitalism won't solve. Cause there's no capital market. Like non-refrigerated vaccines. There's like, there's no market. There's no, there's no business model. That's gonna make someone say that's a profitable business. We're going to go and solve that. So philanthropy is a really great place for that to step in. And that's where like, you know, bill gates or whomever else can go and fund that. And I think philanthropy needs to step up and do that. Anything else that can't be solved by that then maybe government steps in. But like I think the first two can solve a lot of issues and then government can fill in the back seat and then yeah. Yeah. They're for
Curt:
the gaps instead of creating problems that are yeah. Or solving problems that aren't yet.
Clint:
Yeah. And the other continuum I think about is like, you know, I probably want my government, I PR for at the federal level, I probably have a more like libertarian, do you like the least involvement necessarily, but maybe I have a communistic view with my family and a socialistic view with my friends and those types of things. And then maybe a, you know, and the kind of content and then like get local politics. It's maybe more democratic because guess what? I can go across to the city counselor and have that convo and resolve that versus like, you know, how many people really feel like DC is working for them right now. So you want to give those folks more power like that, that doesn't make sense to me. So, um, you know, goofball, what do I know about I'm convinced actually
Curt:
that a looser association of states is necessary to maintain a Republic? Um, I think. The danger that we're facing now is that the populous states that are kind of sucking, wind financially are going to like pass something that makes everybody else bailed them out, and then we're going to break it. And that if we just totally took it more loosely with compassion and love, you know, that it will be happier.
Clint:
Yeah. Well, in conflict was like built into the process it's supposed to be. Yeah. And I, I don't, I think people lose sight of that. There are definitely disadvantages to that, you know, if I'm in China and, uh, you know, I'm a dictator and I decide, I just want to weld you in your apartment door to house. COVID like, there are definitely advantages to fix it. Right.
Curt:
Um, broke the city, but fix the COVID.
Clint:
Yeah. One thing I worry about right now, it's, it's really easy to tear down institutions. And I do think we have a lot of institutional decay and some of it probably needs to be torn down, but it is much harder to rebuild an institution and we need to be mindful of that as we try, as we necessarily need to restructure things, the rule of law
Curt:
is a big part of that, right?
Clint:
Yeah. I mean, it is. And you know, there needs to be, you know, talking about regulation with digital assets, right? Like all those types of things. Yeah. That's going to take a significant amount of leadership. And my message would be like, for those that have been in politics for 30 years, like please step aside. Right? Like, please step up. Like, you know, if, if we have another Trump Biden runoff, like yeah. What, you know, like there are plenty of people out there that are not going to be 80 years old or even seven years old. Like where's the 50 year old or the 60 year old. No difference
Curt:
in that is Nancy Pelosi. She is so relevant.
Clint:
Oh, sorry. I know. I mean, it's just so it's like crazy, right? Like we've
Curt:
we sign up to have all these octogenarians like yeah. Run the country. Yeah. I mean, has almost in every other facet of society, they
Clint:
have no relevance. Yeah. Well, and, and like, look, have relevance, but from providing strategic advice behind the scenes, give someone else the authority to lead differently. Like you can provide wisdom without being the one that makes the final decision, because frankly,
Curt:
if you're listening to this step aside
Clint:
yeah. Just, I mean, like you to Joe Biden. Yeah. Like there's, there's gotta be other talent out there. So that's my key message.
Curt:
All right.
Clint:
Uh, thanks for everybody else for listening for this long.
Curt:
So let's do the local experience, your crazy experience from your lifetime that you're willing to share. And let's call it five minutes. Cause my date is five minutes
Clint:
later. Um, Uh, this is the first thing that popped into mind. So one time I, I streaked across fraternity row, like wow. Like young frat guy or whatever. Oh yeah, totally. Like it was, it was part of this, like,
Curt:
uh, you started saying like, I think my weight went up and down and I don't know if you could give us a number at your
Clint:
house as to 250 pounds. Yeah. And it was a soft and squishy two 50. Now I'm ready to rock with a little belly. Yeah, it wasn't any of that. I was. Doing 40 ounce curls, a cerveza, not a 20 pound curls in the gym, but yeah, streaking across fraternity row was the first thing that came in. And what was your level of
Curt:
sobriety?
Clint:
Uh, not, I was not that to zero points. Yeah. And I, I skipped and held hands and I didn't know this ahead of time, but we had to go like knock on the sorority doors and they didn't tell us that while doing that, they had called all the sororities to be out. And ironically enough, Matt Jairus, who later became my mentor app. And we having dinner as a university administrator at that campus in sauce. And like, there were basically three encounters that I had with him like that, that involved somewhat of a contentious or unfavorable profession. And he's still impression. And he still gave me the benefit of the doubt and we became good partners and a mentor of mine. So, um,
Curt:
and so don't judge, uh, at first instinct, perhaps as a last bit of wisdom from Mr. Jesperson. Yes. Fair enough. At least not me, not you. Um, if people want to learn about you more or like vote for you or, uh, like have a financial plan completed or whatever, what's the easiest way to
Clint:
find you? Um, just, I mean, you could type in my name, click Jasper sin, you know, Thrivent or congestion. Yeah. Google I'm on LinkedIn. Clint Jasper said, and you could type in purpose-driven wealth, thrive into you'll find us. We have an office in Windsor called. Okay, cool. Yep.
Curt:
All right. Um, would you like to sing a quick line from a song or share a quote, maybe a Shakespearean thing or anything like that at the end?
Clint:
You know, I think anybody that's not, I mean, I'm sure people are tired of listening to me at this point. So I just, um, uh, here's what I would say. Like I doubted being a parent for a long, long time. Cause like the world seemed like a scary place and all those other types of things, but to anybody out there that needs encouragement to have hope and things, and you know, I would just encourage you, like take risks, have faith, you know, like become a parent, buy a house, you know, take a job, take a vested interest in society. The only way that the world's gonna be better places if we contribute to that. And inevitably there will be people that step aside whether voluntarily or not, and you know, you gotta take stake in the system to make it better. And
Curt:
the aggregate, the whole world is like the sum of all of its parts. Like if we all try hard to make the world a better place, it wouldn't be utopia that some people dream about, but it would be pretty damn good. All right. I agree.
Clint:
Let's leave it at that. Thanks sir.
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