The Bamboo Lab Podcast
"Ordinary people doing extraordinary things!"
The Bamboo Lab Podcast
Building Success Through Letting Go: Insights from Richard Adams
What if letting go is the key to unlocking your true potential? Join us on this episode of the Bamboo Lab Podcast as we sit down with Richard Adams, a resilient financial advisor from Charlotte, North Carolina. Richard's journey from a small-town upbringing with a population of just 150 to his current success is nothing short of inspiring. Raised by a single mother after his father left at 13, Richard faced numerous educational and personal challenges that shaped his character and career.
Richard opens up about the transformative power of shedding emotional baggage and unhealthy relationships. He shares profound insights from his own experiences, emphasizing how releasing what no longer serves us can lead to significant growth. The conversation touches on the importance of vulnerability and the strength found in building a supportive network. Richard's personal anecdotes and hard-earned wisdom provide a compelling narrative on the necessity of collaboration and emotional support in achieving professional and personal success.
Listeners will be captivated by Richard's reflections on pivotal moments of self-realization and the importance of continuous self-challenge. From his baseball days to his early career struggles, Richard illustrates how feedback and discipline have driven him to his true potential. This episode also delves into the rewarding experience of helping others achieve their dreams and the profound fulfillment that comes from it. Richard's story is a testament to the fact that success isn't just about economic gain but also the joy found in positively impacting others' lives. Tune in for an episode packed with valuable lessons on growth, resilience, and the power of community.
https://bamboolab3.com/
Hello and welcome to the Bamboo Lab Podcast with your host, peak Performance Coach, brian Bosley. Are you stuck on the hamster wheel of life, spinning and spinning but not really moving forward? Are you ready to jump off and soar? Are you finally ready to sculpt your life? If so, you've landed in the right place. This podcast is created and broadcast just for you, all of you strivers, thrivers and survivors out there. If you'd like to learn more about Brian and the Bamboo Lab, feel free to reach out to explore your true peak level at wwwbamboolab3.com.
Speaker 2:Welcome everyone to this week's episode of the Bamboo Lab Podcast. I am your host, brian, and today we have a really interesting, unique fella on the show. I've known Richard Adams now for four and a half years. I got the privilege of meeting him at a company Christmas party Well 2019, I believe it was in December and I instantly struck by this guy's energy and his drive. So I've had the pleasure of talking to Ricky quite often over the past four and a half years and I asked him to come on and he thankfully took time out of his busy schedule to join in. So a little bit about Ricky. Well, ricky Richard.
Speaker 2:Richard is a 30-year-old financial advisor out of Charlotte, north Carolina, where he was born and raised in the area. Currently, he is the owner of his own branch of CG Financial. With the encouragement of Tony Mazzelli and Jeff Casey, the founders of the company, he leads both his clients and employees through the journey of finding financial independence and security. With a focus on authenticity and I like this part and a refusal to conform to the industry norms. He's been able to find success and happiness in being a financial advisor. He's got a ton of numbers or alphabets after his title very accredited Really cool thing, though, he was named by the National Association of Plan Advisors as a top 100 retirement plan advisor under 40. When Richard's not working, he is an avid sports fan, loves to travel to the beach and is getting annoyed by his dog, ramsey. He's also an aspiring home chef and grill master and he hopes one day this is something I just found out today to be a jet ski tour guide in the Caribbean. Richard Adams, my friend, welcome to the Bamboo Lab podcast.
Speaker 3:Glad to be here, Brian. Thank you.
Speaker 2:How come you never told me about the aspiration to be a jet ski tour guide?
Speaker 3:Man. I don't think many people know that, but it's definitely on the retirement list of when I'm done with this. I'm going to go out, get a couple and just take people around an island all day and then be every day Saturday at that point. So that's the plan.
Speaker 2:That's cool. Well, I'm here to tell you. A lot of people know about it now.
Speaker 3:I think so.
Speaker 2:All right. So obviously I call you Ricky most often. So, folks, Richard, Ricky, you'll hear me go back and forth. Ricky, I know a lot about you. I've gotten to know you very well over the past almost five years now. But can you please share with the audience members out there a little bit about yourself?
Speaker 3:your childhood, growing up, your family, who or what inspired you? Yeah, absolutely so. Born and raised in Charlotte and for those of you that don't know why that's a big deal. You never find someone basically born and raised in Charlotte. Everybody's kind of a you know a melting pot here and you see people from New York, new Jersey, florida, you name it. Everyone comes here. But I was actually born and raised Um funny story about me.
Speaker 3:Um family structure on either side mom or dad wasn't extremely strong. So since I can remember it's just really been me and my mom. My dad was around for for basically the first 13 years of life and then after that greener pastures came and took him away and he decided to to uh pursue other, um, I guess, adventures in life and then had some, you know, have brothers and sisters not by my mom and dad, by, um, you know, kind of uh mixed families. And then you know you get kind of used to doing your own thing because you didn't grow up around many people. So that's kind of my first introduction of who I've started to become is you got used to being alone, kind of a very interesting part about me. I don't think anyone knows this other than one person.
Speaker 3:The first 13 years of my life I lived in an extremely small town. One grocery store, one volunteer fire department at one church. That's really all we had for the first 13 years of life, and if there was more than 150 people in this town I would be extremely shocked. Um, one of the gentlemen that lived behind us said that when he was 10 or 11 that he used to run to the front door when he heard a car coming, because you would only see two to three a week. I mean, that's how's how small this town was.
Speaker 2:I didn't know that.
Speaker 3:Yeah, yeah, I mean, a lot of people didn't. And then we actually had to use a fake address for me of a family friend for me to go to another school district. The one that I would have been appointed to was not the greatest from a public school standpoint. So my mom would take me back and forth 30 minutes one way every single day and we were using a fake address. So that was kind of the school side of things. Then once the summers came, pretty lonely, because you can't have friends over. At that point If you get found out that you're not living in a school district you're pretty much kicked out. So summers was just working with my dad in the garden, which was a quarter of an acre, half an acre, and then, um, my mom would take me to baseball practice. But again, again, when you look at the formative years of my life, it was a lot of alone time, right. So you know you fast forward a couple years. Dad moved on to greener pastures.
Speaker 3:As I said, after a severe head injury um that I uh had during baseball, um thought I was 10 foot tall and bulletproof at 13, 14. Ball caught me behind the ear while I was still in batting practice and it really, uh, really damaged me at that point in time. So that was a. It was a pretty critical moment, um, from life there on, because then it started to really clue in that life is not as simple as you want it to be.
Speaker 3:Almost immediately going to freshman, sophomore year of high school, my mom gets sick over a simple hysterectomy gone wrong. Fast forward, a lot of that part basically just doctor made a bad move and she was in and out of the hospital quite a bit. So then again it goes back to being alone a lot, 14, 15, 16 years old, didn't really have anyone around because she was in and out of the hospital. And then around that time I started going through life and I had to give up baseball. Um, I just could not get past the head injury you know people call it the yips or whatever that may be and kind of um athletic terms but at the end of the day I just had to give it up.
Speaker 2:And you were pretty good weren't you.
Speaker 3:I would like to think so. I mean, there was a point in time where I definitely thought I'd play at the next level, being collegiate. I don't know if pro was ahead of me. I got to play against some guys that are in the major leagues now and I don't know if that would have been my kind of career path, but I most certainly probably would have played at the collegiate level. So that was tough to give up. I mean, that was my first, second, third love. So giving up baseball was tough and it was really a crossroads. So I went through a major identity crisis when that happened. So when you talk about true peak identity, I had one identity. It was really a crossroads, so I went through a major identity crisis when that happened. So when you talk about true peak identity, I had one identity. It was a baseball player. That's all I ever knew. And you go through that and your prior friends were still playing baseball and we pretty much stopped talking almost immediately, like they're doing their thing.
Speaker 3:I had moved into Mooresville at that time because after my dad left, we were no longer living in the small town. We actually had to move into the school district. At that point. Tom was very lonely. Your friends that you had grew up with and played baseball with. Through that time they're gone.
Speaker 3:Then a still friend of mine, tyler Bell, who I hope is listening to this. He really saved my life because he included me in almost everything and he really helped me understand the value of a community. And if you fast forward some of my story you start to see where I started realizing where you can't just be alone all the time. But not all of it is sad. I mean I applied myself in the classroom, was accepted at UNC Charlotte, I got a full ride between academic and needs-based scholarship, which was great, and then now I am on your podcast speaking to you and I'm a professional. So not all of it was sad. Definitely was eye-opening at times and it helped me get here. But yeah, that's a little bit about me and kind of my family upbringing and how I got to this point.
Speaker 2:I've learned two or three things about you since you called in today that I didn't know. After four and a half years, Maybe I should just put every client on the podcast within the first month of coaching them, get everything out and then go from there.
Speaker 3:Absolutely.
Speaker 2:Like I told you, some of my equipment was going to fall Absolutely side of some pretty driven people. You're definitely at the top. You're in the top five.
Speaker 3:Who or what inspired you or does inspire you to do that? Yeah, I mean, when you go through life and you see some turmoil, you can go back to some of the books that you've had me read. The Obstacle is the Way, or what inspired me the most. One of the people was my mom, for sure. I mean she truly tried to make it a better life, and no parent is perfect, right, I mean I don't think anybody's ever going to get on the show and say I had a perfect parent. They might, but I really saw my mom just from start to finish, even when my dad was away. She saw me through everything Losing baseball, starting, starting college, starting a career, um, making sure I always had transportation, a roof and and and food on the plate and food on the table, which was huge. I mean, when you don't have to worry about some of those, you know hierarchy and needs, the first levels there, it allows you to focus on you and then it became a you know, do I want all this to be my excuse for my story, and for a long time and when you first met me I'm sure you could echo this statement I was.
Speaker 3:I think I let a lot of anger in what happened to me fuel me to say you know, I'm not that person I'm going to show them.
Speaker 3:And a lot of that came from just saying you know, I was forgot about life, I had to give up baseball too quickly and I just I kept a chip on my shoulder that sometimes probably didn't need to be there but was there. And then the drive came from. I was just so done making an excuse of why I couldn't go on a vacation or why I couldn't do the things I wanted to do, and I told myself you can work your way out of this hole. You might not want to and it might be hard work. You absolutely can do that. Then I fast forward and look at some of the other people that were formative. You know, all of the men and women at CG Financial definitely helped me to get to where I was at. I mean, I look at my first interview, and it was with Matt O'Neill, and I came to the interview in a black suit with brown belt, brown shoes. We want to talk about a work in progress.
Speaker 2:I think I would still do that today. I don't know fashion, so I'm going to take your word for it, that's oh it was, it was.
Speaker 3:uh, I was a misfit for sure. I mean I remember him asking me what skills do you have? And I said I really do not have skills, I just work really hard. I don't. I don't have, I don't have skills. I I said I really do not have skills, I just work really hard. I don't, I don't have, I don't have skills. I just know that I can come to work and do what I'm told and work really hard at it.
Speaker 3:And you just had a lot of people around you that dared you to dream big. And I was never asked to dream responsibly in life, which I think helped me out a lot. I was asked to dream as big as I wanted to, and I think that was huge for me as well is that I was allowed to dream as big as I want to, and the world was kind of my oyster at that point and I could look at it and say this is what I want. And between my mom and the people at CG, they allowed me to work as hard as I wanted to, didn't hold me back. And you know, I sit here now, um, some eight years later, thinking to myself wow, without them, where would I be?
Speaker 2:Ricky, I remember when I was, when we were in Grand Rapids, when I first met you and I obviously I knew I was going to be coming into the company to do some consulting and coaching. So obviously you know Tony had invited me to the company Christmas party and I was living in Grand Rapids so it was very convenient. So I remember going around obviously talking to Tony and Jeff and Dave Robinson and all the people I had known prior, and then I was getting a drink at the bar and you came up to me and I don't think you left my side the rest of the night.
Speaker 3:I remember that you were stuck to me like stink. On't think you left my side the rest of the night.
Speaker 2:I mean you were I remember that you were stuck to me like stink on a turd man and I'm like at a point, like this guy. I told Tony, what in the hell? Who is this guy? He's most intense man I've ever met and uh, lo and behold, you're on my, one of my first people with the company that I got the privilege of working with. So it that that was a big uh sign for me that you were going to be successful. At that time you were already successful. For what? 25 years old or whatever.
Speaker 2:But the steps you've taken in, not just your professional growth and your financial growth, but what I've seen from you is such a huge leap in your personal development over the past few years. I mean just almost miraculous, the transformations you've made. So, man, kudos to you. You're still that intense guy. You at least now you're not following a bald guy around in a, in a company party. You're actually chasing off big clients and COIs and chasing after them. So, um, richard, what do you think? You've had some big changes in the last several months of your life. You know, obviously you branched out on your own as a branch of CG Financial. I think you've got a pretty amazing woman in your life. If I'm not mistaken, you just you've changed a lot. You've hired Lucky. Who not gotten kudos to you? She's incredible. What do you?
Speaker 3:think your biggest learning has been as of late? Yeah, that's the, that's the million dollar question there. To say the biggest, it's hard because I've learned so much and you know I would honestly say that what I learned is you cannot keep things in your life once their reason has been fulfilled, once their reason has been fulfilled, and I had such a hard time letting go of anything. Right, it was almost like you say, all the time driving around with your emergency brake, but it's almost. You know, a rocket ship has to shed so many things to get to its final destination and I would hold on to so much baggage, whether it was bad, you know bad things that happened to me.
Speaker 3:Uh, potentially people, um, sometimes, you know, wanting to have recognition or job title, whatever that may be, and, um, you know, I've seen it the most with personal relationships, whether that's friends or someone you think it's a partner, and definitely the job, positions and roles. Everything has a purpose or a reason to be around, for sure. But when you hold on to it past that reason, the law of diminishing returns kicks in, and it kicks in quickly and then it starts to deteriorate all the progress you made. So for me, when I look at the most impactful learning. You can call it a monkey trap, like I said, driving with your emergency brake on. Whatever you want to call it it really comes down to has this object, activity, person, whatever served its intended purpose? And if it has, you have to be honest enough with yourself to say you cannot confuse movement with progress. It's time to let go and move forward.
Speaker 2:Okay, I want to stop just for a minute. I want to reiterate to the audience out there what you just said, because I think there's a lot of power in those statements. So what Richard just said is I like this right here you cannot keep things in your life once their reason has been fulfilled. So I want everyone out there think about the things maybe people, maybe it's old bad ideas, baggage, emotional mental baggage, spiritual baggage, old processes or systems, whatever it might be in your life and ask yourself has their reason in my life been fulfilled? Because, like Richard said, everything has a purpose. But many of those things, at a certain point they reach a point of diminishing return and it takes a lot of balls and courage to be able to say, to cut the string and say I'm done with that, now I'm going on to something better. And we're not talking about love them and leave them, type things with women or men. Obviously, some relationships serve their purpose, but a lot of it's just the emotional baggage and mental baggage we carry in life and some of those things that we once, that now no longer serve a purpose, at one time might have been the most important thing to you.
Speaker 2:You know I always tell the story and I sometimes, when I speak in a crowd, I wear this old it's kind of a satin, looks like a bowling jacket, but it's my high school football team. It just says Saints on the back of it. I remember when I was a freshman I got that jacket. It was the most. I loved it. I wore that all the time other than the warmest days of summer. I was so proud of that thing.
Speaker 2:And about seven, eight years ago I was in my mom's attic and I dug it out and again, this was my most prized possession in my early high school years. You know, until I earned my letter jacket and I put it on. I have a couple of pictures of me. I can't even button the darn thing. My shoulders are obviously bigger, my stomach's bigger Hopefully my chest is a little bit bigger than at 15 years old and I thought this is a perfect example of something that was so valuable to me now, so precious, or was at that time, in the early 1980s, so precious to me, so valuable Today, if I wear it in public I would look like a damn fool, and that's really what you're saying.
Speaker 2:It served its purpose. There was a point of diminishing return. I still have it because I use it as a prop when I speak, but it's not something I ever wear in public or around my house, so I think that's incredibly powerful. Do you think you've learned that, richard, more in the last year, or is that something you've been learning over the past several years?
Speaker 3:I think that you understand how to articulate it in your mind. You definitely learn it over time. You understand how to articulate it in your mind, Like you definitely learn it over time, but you don't understand how to apply it to a situation and over the last year I learned it more of. It's just life, right, and you cannot hang on to things that could hurt you, and it becomes decision time and something that's through therapy. It'll be a little bit vulnerable here. I mean, you know, you go to therapy, you learn that you're not 10 foot tall and bulletproof, which was hard for me to hear, Um, and then, and then you start realizing, yeah, you know, this is the issue and you have to move on. So I think I learned how to apply the logic over time. Of course you you're doing it, but I think I learned how to apply it and just put things in a silo over the last year.
Speaker 2:Well, you had mentioned the term monkey trap, so I just want to steer the audience members out there too. If you want to go back to February 21st and 28th of 2022, and actually March 7th as well, I did three podcast shows on the concept of the monkey trap and what that means, so I'd refer back to one of our earliest I think it's in the first 10 or 10 or 11 shows. We did three episodes on monkey trap. So thanks for bringing that up. All right, ricky, this is a million dollar question. Actually, this is a question. I think that really, I audience members identify with this very well. They connect with you through this question. Oftentimes, they learn a great deal through this question and answer what do you think is one of the most difficult things you've ever gone through in your life and what did you do to overcome it and scale the wall?
Speaker 3:Yeah, um, yeah, that is a good question. I believe it or not, it's not anything that happened in my youth. I kind of come to terms with that, but I would say the most difficult thing that I've been through was having to admit that it was time to really grow up and start over. On a few things where I had this utopic mindset of man, I filled up the struggle meter and now it's nothing but success and freedom and easy living from this point, because, you know, in my mind it's. I come out of 2021 and I thought to myself you know, ricky, you made 49,000 cold calls real number. You had to give up your first love in baseball. You didn't have, you know, you didn't have the best life growing up. You had friends and loved ones come and go on some questionable actions and behavior. So you've overcame all those obstacles. You're good to go. Um, and I really, I really bought into that.
Speaker 3:And then some real humbling happened between 2022 and 2023, where I had people that I thought were forever walking out of my life. I had financial, financial security in question a little bit. I had a secondary identity crisis. I mean, some things really started happening and I didn't have that same resilient mindset that I had when I was younger. So I basically had became content and when people and security started leaving at a pretty rapid level, I became lost. As I mentioned, I was used to being alone earlier in life, so I tried to do the same thing again of isolate figure it out on your own, you're good to go.
Speaker 3:It became extremely obvious that at that point in time it was time to build a support system and I had to develop trust in the right people. Now some people may be listening and say I'm a lone wolf, I'm good to go. I want to express that trusting the right people is 100% different. It's a different type of relationship and everything when it's the right person. And then you know to let things go that were killing me slowly. And that was the lesson that had to be learned from that experience to scale that wall.
Speaker 3:And I, for you know 28 years um, 28 to 29 years was so worried about getting all the credit for my success and say look at where I'm at, look at what I did.
Speaker 3:Against all odds, I did it and I was holding myself back. I mean, it became ever more obvious that I had set such lofty goals in my life that without a team of people and that means colleagues, friends, employees, supportive clients You're not getting there without all of those people and if you want to do it on your own, you're not going to hit those goals. So to scale that wall, it had to be an ego check, it had to be a trust in the right people and then it had to be. It's okay to be vulnerable, but you have to find the right support system. So that that was definitely the most difficult time of just basically having to rip up the train tracks of what was considered success to this point and say, just because that success doesn't mean that you're done with it and it also doesn't mean that you're done struggling. So that was, that was definitely the most trying time of my life so, so, you literally did 49,000 cold calls in 2021.
Speaker 3:No, no, no, no. It was over the course of from 2016 to 2021,. I'd made 49,000 cold calls in my career to that point.
Speaker 2:That is a lot of cold calls, it is. It is so what you're saying. If I just could encapsulate this and summarize this, it was going from that grind, grind, grind, really type of work that you can't maintain forever. You know you're going to wear down, so you replace that with bringing more talented, supportive, trusting, trustworthy people into your circle. So you replaced that back-breaking work. You know, you and I talked one time. You're a natural check player in hockey but you have to be a finesse skater. So you went and you added that finesse skating to your check playing mentality, which when you did that, you didn't have to check people against the boards as much because you were a better skater. Is that what I'm hearing?
Speaker 3:Yeah, I would say that for sure. It's a you. You know, harry truman had this quote of it and I'm going to butcher it, but it was basically along the lines of you will reach a level of success if you don't necessarily care who gets the credit right. And for me, um, the hardest thing to do was to say that I needed people in my life and I needed more than just me and rely on myself.
Speaker 2:I like what you when you said you just had to be more vulnerable, because that's a difficult thing. It's more difficult sometimes for men to admit vulnerability than anything else and I know I've had problems with that when I was younger and I was a lot like you, richard. We've had this conversation many, many times where I just would grind, work out so much and I isolated myself, just like you did, and I didn't learn at age 30. I think I didn't learn it until probably 40, in my 40s, but when I started just really not just you know, it isn't just your team of people around you professionally, it is that but it's also the type of clients you bring in and becoming friends with your clients. It's also how you treat your actual friend group.
Speaker 2:For me, it's also how I just treat strangers, your actual friend group. For me it's also how I just treat strangers. I realize that I treat strangers much, much, much better than I ever have, because I feel the solidity and the stability of having such a great group of people around me in my personal and professional life and it gives you a kind of a confidence or a foundation and if you don't have anybody in your life, professionally or personally, you're going to treat strangers like crap because you need that foundation and overall, just to be a better human being. I think, and I know in the last six, seven months you brought on an employee. What do you think of that? How's that going for you?
Speaker 3:it has been. Yeah, so it's been fulfilling and it's been um fear. You know it's. It's instilled some fear in you at times that you keep a very humble mindset when you do that, because you know the fulfilling piece is obviously you're helping someone reach their financial security, independence and they are growing their family, and it's definitely cool to see how hard you've worked, be able to help someone else.
Speaker 3:The fear piece is is that you know now that every decision you make right when you get up in the morning if you want to mail it in, if you want to run a stoplight, if you want to be lethargic, that you want to run a stoplight if you want to be lethargic that does rub off on people that are not just you anymore. You know I don't have kids, for instance, so it was the first time in my life where you can't just wake up and say, eh, not a big deal. Today you do have to wake up and have a certain level of compassion and empathy for everyone around you and say I have to go do this because I have someone relying on me and it really helped me become a better advisor and it helped me. It helped me with relationships with clients as well, because now I understand the people aspect of things more. When you, you are definitely dealing with a person at all times which you knew, but now it's just more realistic than it was before.
Speaker 2:It is. I think when you bring on employees, you get that same not reliance commitment, I guess, or dedication, similar to having children and, of course, now me, having grandchildren. Yeah, you do think of things differently. It's not just you, or you and your mom, it's now you have Lucky and you have now you've got all these clients too that are relying on you. You put things into perspective. Like you said, you don't run that's a good metaphor. You don't run the red lights as readily as you probably did when you were, you know, young and dumb and free Nope, Ricky. Right now you've got.
Speaker 2:As your company is growing and your branch is growing like it is, I've always said there's never a chance. Richard Adams will not be highly successful. I mean, you were designed to be successful and I think and this is something I learned again today I didn't realize something you said is you were taught to dream big, not necessarily responsibly, and I think that that has carried over from your youth working in the garden with your dad to playing baseball in your early teens, then becoming a professional and now branching out on your own. You've had these stages where you've always applied that kind of big dream, but yet you're a unique individual where you do dream big but you are not a pipe dreamer. I always say there are three types of people in the world there are visionaries, there are pipe dreamers and there are apologists.
Speaker 2:Now, an apologist is somebody who, just like it, says they apologize for taking up space on the planet. You know they wander around, you know they live life through nine to five. They come home. Nothing ever changes, they never think about the future, they never dream about things outside of their captive little world. But then you have pipe dreamers who dream a lot. They dream big, they talk big I'm going to someday, someday but they never put anything to action. A visionary does both. They dream big, but they put shit into action on a consistent basis. And I think that's something that I noticed in you right away is, even though, yeah, you had a lot of your baggage, as you claim, you were a big dreamer, you knew you were going somewhere and you always applied the grit and the grind to get there and constantly modifying yourself and doing things differently, and to the point of, at times it was a little annoying to me as someone who was working alongside. I'd be like dude, just stick to this, stick to this. Stick to this. It's going to work.
Speaker 1:Stick to this, stick to this, stick to this. It's going to work.
Speaker 2:I mean, you were the perfect example of what's I think it's the guy who had Intel, I think microchips Something about all winners are paranoids or something like that, I don't know, but you have that. You're always looking at the future. You're always looking at trying to change things that you're currently doing and adapting and expanding them, but yet you're also right there every day calling on clients and prospects, servicing your clients, calling on centers of influence, traveling and speaking and doing all these different things. Is it? Does it ever get where? Where you're thin at all? I mean?
Speaker 3:now you're still young, you're 30 years old, but does it ever get where you're like, oh my gosh, this is wearing me down. So it it does. Um, and I have faced burnout. I mean, don't get me wrong, I've definitely faced burnout now and this is super vulnerable. I don't think I've ever expressed why, um, but I felt, uh, that my dream of baseball had to be given up because I really did not apply myself then the way I do now and what I mean by that is, is that I feel like I've shortchanged myself at 16, where I didn't, I did not put in the work necessary to see where it would end up.
Speaker 3:And now I live in this kind of not necessarily fear, but I live in this world of you. Better not leave anything left on the table, because you're not going to go back in high school and ever pick up a baseball again. You're never going to be able to figure out if that dream was going to be fulfilled. Well, you cannot let that happen again. So, while I do get tired and it does wear me thin and people around me see it, you know, I do wear my emotions on my sleeve and I think people that know me know that if you get me wound up, you're going to hear it. Get me wound up, you're going to hear it. I cannot deal with the thought of I'm melded in and I don't know anymore, like that is the biggest regret of my life has been the reason why I work so hard now. So while it does wear me thin, that constant reminder of you didn't apply yourself then you can't do that again.
Speaker 2:So I'm going to share two stories. Ricky, I couldn't agree with you more and I think you know you and I are cut from the same cloth in so many ways. When I played high school football, I remember after my senior year, we all, after the senior season, all the seniors went into the football coach's office and he just talked to each of us privately, you know, just basically you know thanking each one of us and sharing stories, and one of the things he said to me is he said you know, every time you were on the field I knew you had more to give than you gave. He said, in practice, you had more to give than you gave. You know he was so nice because you know he said your brother always gave everything he had on the football field. He said you always had more to give that you didn't give me and that set hard with me.
Speaker 2:So then, obviously, I played rugby a couple years later and I put a whole new level of intensity in that. But then I graduated college and I went to, obviously, ids Financial Services with Tony and we were in a training class and Dave Robinson was our training manager, and he were in a training class and Dave Robinson was our training manager and he was like a year or two more advanced than we were, maybe two years or I don't know how long it was, but he was the training manager and I remember in a training session one time he was doing something pretty cool and Dave was and I yelled out in the room overachiever. And he turned around, he looked at me, he goes underachiever.
Speaker 2:And I'm like that shit hit me like a ton of bricks and that was in my first six months in my career and I was out of 29 financial advisors. To his credit, I was ranked number 29 out of 29. I was the bottom of the barrel and that stuck with me. That was 32 years ago maybe and that thing he said to me stuck with me and it was a mental switch for me. I decided, okay, that's not who I'm going to be and so you know, had those certain learnings, like you with baseball, me with Dave and my football coach. Had those not happened, I have no idea where you would be or where I would be. And those are the things. Those moments that we regret can sometimes be the most powerful moments in our lives.
Speaker 3:Yeah, I mean you run. You run faster away from something than do something, and I think that's that's been my experience to this point.
Speaker 2:Well, I always tell somebody if you put a hundred, a hundred thousand dollars at the end of a finish line, I'll run really fast to it. If you put a grizzly bear chasing me behind me, I'm going to run a little bit faster without the $100,000 reward We've also talked, ricky, about.
Speaker 2:It's in those dark times of our life and those moments in our lives where we a lot of times look back and wish those wouldn't have happened. You for baseball, me for being an underachiever, my first six months as a professional. It's within those moments. If you look back and reflect and dig into those, it's where oftentimes we find our true purpose in life. It's in those where our emotions are at a certain level, where there's that learning.
Speaker 2:I did a talk on this last Friday, a virtual talk, to a team of people, and I shared that with them. I said when you look at the darkest moments of your life, when you're feeling the most vulnerable, most scared, most broken down, that is where your purpose begins to be forged. You just have to notice it, you have to look for it and you have to take action on it and build it from there. And I see now where your purpose in life is really never to repeat, never to go. And my friend Dave Dick said it best. He said when I die on my deathbed I want to shake hands with the man I could have become, and when I do that, I want to be looking in the mirror and I thought man just saying that gives me goosebumps. And I look at this.
Speaker 2:I was driving yesterday, richard, coming back from my daughter's house, and I was picturing in my head it's the first time I ever pictured it this way is there's an ideal version of each one of us out there, right? They're not necessarily realized yet in the physical form, but you have an ideal Richard Adams, out there somewhere. I have an ideal, brian Bowles. That would be the man that would be us in almost a perfect form, having reached our full potential in all areas. And I look at it like sometimes that man is way ahead of me because I've done something stupid or I started picking up bad habits. But then there are times I really start to gain on that man. I'm like, oh no, I can see him, he's ahead of me, but at least I can see him. And I think our job is to every day gain a little ground to the point where we become that man or that woman eventually, where we become our true, realized, full potential in life.
Speaker 2:And I like that thought of that metaphor because you know, when I go, when I do something stupid for a few days, or maybe even just as little as I don't work out hard for a week, I'm falling behind that ideal man. When I drop, you know I'm not reading as much. I'm doing too much a day. I'm scrolling behind that ideal man. When I drop, you know I'm not reading as much. I'm doing too much damn scrolling on YouTube. I'm falling behind that man. But when I decide to do some hard things in life, some challenging things, and stretch my comfort zone, I'm now catching up to that man. I may never reach that man, but man, I hope I'm within arm's length when I leave this earth. You know, and I think that's exactly what you're doing in your life, but I really do believe that and you've got a lot of years behind me. So when I was your age and I think we've talked about this I think you started your, you branched out on your own at 30, right, or were you 29 still?
Speaker 3:I was 29.
Speaker 2:And I was 29 when I left American Express to start this coaching process. So you've got a good journey ahead of you, my friend. Okay, so now you're several months into your own branch. You've got Lucky backing you up. You've got the full support of CG Financial, which is an incredible firm to support you Right now in your life, either personally or professionally. Ricky, what would you say is a win or a victory for you?
Speaker 3:victory for you. Yeah, from someone that's his own worst critic and I don't cherish wins much at all because of because of the contentness that I've had in life and it scared me out of that Um, it's tough to even say, but I would say the biggest win for me, or what a win looks like right now, is when a friend you know, my mom, a loved one or a client achieves their goal, and I know I had something to do with it. I would say, you know, just here in the past 12 months I've had clients come back just beaming with joy. Um, one lady got to take her grandkid on vacation and she said well, it was because of you, you helped me do it. Pretty humbling to hear that. And then I had a lady. She flies cross country to see her family and she has more time to do that now and she thanks me for it.
Speaker 3:And it's extremely humbling to know that people that worked their entire lives had nothing to do with them getting a job, them saving money. The only thing I had to do was help them, basically be an architect and put this all together and give them some peace of mind that they thank me for this and say that they couldn't have done it without me, when really all I did was just give them an idea. Right, that's all a financial advisor is at the end of the day. They're just a bundle of ideas and if you align with their idea, typically you pick them. Uh, I look at my longtime friend and the employee of Lucky, um, buying her first home. That's a really cool thing to see. I mean that's that's awesome. Um, that's a really cool thing to see. I mean that's that's awesome. Um, someone very near and dear to my heart, um, you know the lady in my life having the courage to explore a different career and look at me and say you know, you're helping me do that. That's that's extremely humbling.
Speaker 3:So it's it's being able to say that I had some sort of effect, that it was never because of me, but I just injected myself in their life at a, at the right time, potentially, and just had a reasonable enough mind to say, hey, this is how I would look at it or this is what I would do. And then people are either having an experience they didn't think they would have, or achieving things quicker than they thought they would, or having the courage to go do something. That has been a win to me, because if you'd have asked me this question two to three years ago, it would have been something around economic benefit or freedom. That's just not a win to me anymore. Anything. That's not the money, it's not the freedom or ego of owning your own business. That's not there. It's seeing other people happy and knowing that I had something to do with it.
Speaker 2:So it's that making that impact on those around you, on your clients, your loved ones, your friends, for sure that's, and it really I. There's a lot of that sentiment I hear in the financial world. I hear a lot of it at CG Financial. There's a lot of desire to impact people's lives. I think you do take it to the next level. I know you and I have talked about purpose in life many times and every time that's come up it has been that for you making a positive impact on the people around you, personally and professionally. We've got to keep developing that a little bit, by the way.
Speaker 3:Absolutely.
Speaker 2:This is probably my favorite question, richard, and I call it the time machine question. And so let's just say I'm going to come down to Charlotte today and we're going to jump in my time machine and you can pick a time in your life where I don't care if it's when you were 13, when your dad left, or it was 16, quitting baseball, or I don't care if it was 10 years ago. Go back to a previous, younger, more inexperienced, more immature Richard Adams, and you get to sit down and talk to your former self. What would you say? What words of wisdom, recipes for success would you share to yourself?
Speaker 3:success would you share to yourself? Yeah, I think if I could bottle it all up into like one main idea. It's that look kid, you do not have to struggle and have this amount of and have like a certain amount of disdain or discomfort, or just you don't have to be miserable to be successful. And I know that sounds so weird, but I designed myself behind closed doors to be miserable and discontent with my surroundings, so I would strive for success. And then I had this teeter-totter in my mind of if you have this much amount of stress and this much amount of misery and this much amount of disdain, you're going to get this amount of pleasure and success. And they're not correlated right.
Speaker 3:And that held me back for so long and it damaged relationships with people. It damaged relationships with friends. It stole years of my life. It was something that if I would have known that then hell, I don't even know if we're having this conversation now I might be retired already. I mean, I feel like it was such a narrow-minded way to live life. But I just rationalize it in my mind that if you go through this pain and suffering, you're awarded something like no one gets anything handed to them, so you have to put yourself through this amount of uh, pain, suffering, whatever that may be, to get this huge piece of success you want, and if I could convey that message to 18 year old me, 22, 22 year old me, I can almost guarantee you that my journey would have been a whole hell of a lot different, for sure.
Speaker 2:Well, I, I do. You know, obviously, when you're, when you're chasing dreams and you're dreaming big and chasing them you're going to go through enough. You know just, natural challenge and obstacles and you're going to have, you know, days when you're worn thin as an old knife blade, naturally. But I think you're right, a lot of people, they proactively put that, that crap on themselves. They think that that's the ticket to success. No, that's just a by-product of success. That's what we have to go through some of those things. But when you put the unnatural ones on there, there's this, there's this. I don't know if you ever watched Seinfeld much, but there's this one of the episodes where George, I think, works for the Yankees or works for George. The character on there works for somebody and he doesn't do anything all day. So what he does to make people think he's working is every time somebody walks by his office he looks like he's mad, he throws things around, he has a disgruntled look on his face which means to them oh, he must be working hard.
Speaker 2:And I've had people in my life and we all know these people where, when you say how are things going? Oh, I've just been so busy, so busy lately, and I'm like, well then you're stupid. And if you're busy all the time and yet and it's stressful busy, that's on you. I had this guy years and years ago. He built, I think, my first website and I think he was a client for a while too. But we kind of became friends and every single time I talked to him or saw him on the streets he'd say, oh, it's just been so busy. I'm like dude, I know what you do for a living. You aren't busy, you don't even know what busy is.
Speaker 2:But his perception was if he says he's busy, people are going to think he's successful. I mean, you walk into it when I used to. You can sit in a restaurant and you can tell when a person comes flying through real fast and then another person comes in walking very slow and confidently. I'm going to bet, 99.9% of the time, that that guy who's walking, or woman is walking slowly and confidently is by far the most successful, not the one who's scurrying around like a shrew. It's always that person who is in full control of themselves. You know, physically, emotionally, mentally and spiritually. And that that was one of my biggest learnings in life. I know that is. I used to be that same guy.
Speaker 2:You know I would work like I told you when I first started in 2006, 2026, I don't know whatever 28 years ago, this November, whatever that is, I would, you know, work 80 to a hundred hour weeks and all by myself, kind of like you, I'd isolate and I'm looking for clients and and I would I would be so proud of myself because I tracked my hours when I'd get to like 80 hours, but I wasn't making any money. I literally had, I literally didn't even have a phone. I had a pager and when a prospect or client would call me I'd run down and thankfully I had. I had calling cards. When they had, uh, I'd run down to a little corner gas station and call them back on a calling card. I didn't even have a car, richard. My car broke down, I think, and I had to borrow my first ever client Thank God for Scott deals at a S deals architect in Ann Arbor. He was my very first client and when my car broke down he let me his 16 year old daughter's car for like two months until I could afford a new car.
Speaker 2:That's not success, but yet when you looked at me, I was working a hundred hour weeks, 80 hour weeks, and proud of it. I mean you do you get work done during that time, but I could have done the same on 40 hours and I could have had a much. But I look back and like, as you do, you look back at those moments in your life when you were doing that, you look back on it favorably. It's like that was fun, man. It was stressful, you know. Digging for money out of my know, robbing money for my daughter's piggy bank to get groceries, digging for money out of the couch just to you know. You know, put a little gas in the car and you know, because my girl thankfully my girlfriend had a car, so we did have one car in the family and where we lived. But, um, I look back now it was, it was fun, but, man, I could have. I could have saved myself a lot of headache had I known what we know now.
Speaker 3:Oh, absolutely. I, you know. To finish that point up, I you got onto me one time about this. I would and if anyone's listening that does this, you don't have to self-punish yourself, please don't. I would punish myself and not eat lunch Like I would have the money to go eat lunch, but if I didn't bring my lunch or if I did something incorrect in life, I punished myself. Very, very, very detrimental to your mental health. Don't do it. But that is just because you did that does not mean that tomorrow will be better. Like the world doesn't keep a tallying system of well, your life sucked just this much this day, so now we're going to give you a better day tomorrow. That's just not how it works, and I think that would be again, if any, you know, even for my younger self or anyone you know. If you take anything away from it, it's just don't make yourself miserable, for the hell of it.
Speaker 2:Yeah, misery is not a game, it's not a sport. No, there's enough damn misery in the world. Don't put more on it. Correct? Well, Richard, what's next for you on this journey? What's the next big thing for you?
Speaker 3:yeah, I mean. Now it's how do you give back? I mean, I am so unbelievably blessed and I say that from the fact of I've had clients believe in me since 2016. I think every one of them um more than they could possibly know. I've had great mentors, whether it it be you, dave Robinson, tony Matt O'Neill, eric Fritz, brent it does not matter who you name at CG They've helped in some way.
Speaker 3:It's time for me to figure out how, what capacity do I have to give back? And then what do I want to do with that? So I've kicked around the tires on scholarships for kids that maybe came from a similar background as mine, and they need that support through an academic journey and a life journey as well. I've thought about, you know, using a platform such as yours and trying to create my own and helping people that need financial literacy and need the understanding of how to dig themselves out of a bad financial situation or just make the right money moves.
Speaker 3:I mean, a lot of families, in my opinion, are one decision away from a gallon of gas to a gallon of milk of putting themselves in a bad financial spot. Bad financial spot and now that I have become so incredibly blessed turning around and helping um the masses and influencing the world in either a big way or a small way. That's kind of what's next, because you know I've jumped up on these platforms and achieve the things I want to achieve. But the big platform is how can you really give back and help the next generation achieve what you achieved, and potentially even quicker and even, you know, an even higher platform than where you're at today?
Speaker 2:Right, you know we've talked about this in the last month or so. You and I and I don't know who was the guy Zig Ziglar. We talked about this quote.
Speaker 3:Zig Ziglar.
Speaker 2:I don't know. Do you know the exact quote? I don't. I know we butcher it every time, but we know what we mean by it. I was just looking up one of these days.
Speaker 2:Anyway, the sentiment is you know, in order to be truly successful in life, just help a lot of people achieve their dreams. You know, help if you. The more people you help, the more success you're going to realize. And but to help people without the intent of getting anything back, right, you know, I've found that the last six months, I've given out several speeches for free. You know, some virtual, which I hate, some live where before I would have just negotiated for a fee. And I just negotiated one last week and I said whatever you're. They asked me what I charge. I said whatever your budget is, just pay me whatever your budget is. And I still don't have a price on that one. I think we're talking tomorrow.
Speaker 2:But I think when you do that, you get this fulfillment that you can't put a price tag on. But I do believe that the universe, or God, or whoever, however you want to say it later on does put a price tag on it, and I think that when you get what you give or you you get what? Yeah, you you get what you receive, what you give. And I do believe that when you help a lot of people, we think we're doing it Um cause we want to to help other people, with no desire to gain anything back. But I do think not just emotional gain, but I do think there's a lot of financial gain that comes back down the road and I think a lot of it's.
Speaker 2:I think when you chase money all the time, it's very elusive. But when you sit back and say, okay, I'm going to chase my dreams, I'm going to help other people chase their dreams, all of a sudden money kind of comes sneaking back around in your life. You know, it's like when you break up with somebody. If you beg them to come back, they don't. But when you say, yeah, I'm okay, I'll be, I'll be all right without you didn't learn that until far, far too late in my life, in my 50s actually, but that's a great lesson. So we're going to talk further on that. I like that scholarship idea. I think that's pretty cool. All right, my friend. We're down to the final question here, and that is the. I call it kind of a net question because it catches anything I may have not asked? Is there any question, richard, that I did not ask, that you wish I would have? Or is there any final message you want to leave with that one audience member out there right now who is glued intently to your message?
Speaker 3:Yeah, I would say both Kind of the message standpoint is and I just said to me fairly recently, spite is drinking poison and hoping it kills the other person. And that was something that was so impactful to me, because sometimes in life and this could be winning an arcade game, getting a promotion really doesn't matter what it is. Sometimes you're in a competition with someone else and if you're not doing it for yourself and you're hoping that when you win, that person looks at you and you're like man, you're the better person, or if you hope that confetti and balloons are going to come down from the ceiling, I'm here to tell you it's not so doing anything out of spite and that could be anything right it doesn't really matter what it is. I've never been on the and even when I succeeded in a spiteful event that it went the way I wanted it to go. So alleviating yourself of that, I think, is the biggest one for me.
Speaker 3:And then the question I would go back and probably listen to every single episode for a lot of you I shouldn't say every single episode, but I would for a good majority of your guests if money was never a deciding factor, what would you have done and why? That would be the one question that I would want to hear from a number of people. You know, for me, my profession would be gone, so my life would be totally different. But yeah, if money was never a deciding factor, what would you do and why?
Speaker 2:Okay, I'm writing that one down. Well, let me ask you that question If money was not a factor, richard, what would you do in your life?
Speaker 3:and I don't even do that. I honestly don't know. I mean, if I, if I were to put my thumb on it, it would be something outside by the coast. It would be giving someone an experience. It would definitely be helping someone, um, because I do love helping people and I do love being outside by the water. But that was a tough question and I've contemplated that question for days, thinking to myself like how would I even answer that? And I truly it's been tough for me to figure that out. But you know, it would probably be on a boat somewhere out in the middle of the ocean, potentially either helping someone or fishing to provide for a village. I would have to be a provider.
Speaker 3:If it just went to sticks and stones and we're all back in the nomad phase. I know I'd have to be a provider because I don't have a sense of self-worth outside of being a provider. So I know that I would have to be a provider for something or someone, for sure.
Speaker 2:And that's really what you do professionally. So obviously, if money wasn't a factor, the financial industry wouldn't be around. But you do that, you provide, you serve and you impact other people. You just happen to do it in the arena of financial planning.
Speaker 3:Absolutely. I mean I'm lost, like me at a core. When I went through some of the things I went through earlier in life, especially in 22 and 23, when I had nothing to provide for outside of clients, I gave my clients my 110%. But once I clocked out of work I felt like I had nothing Right. So I know for me like that is part of my moral fabric, like I have to be a provider or else I don't feel like I have a self-meeting.
Speaker 2:I love that, anything else, richard, you want to leave man, this has been fantastic and we talk so much on the phone I feel like we're not even doing a podcast right now.
Speaker 3:I know I can feel the same, Honestly, for those that are listening. If you're going through anything, I would say find a support system, find the right people, trust the right people. If you've been contemplating needing the help, seeking out the help is there, whether it be in the form of someone like Brian or someone therapy, whatever that may be. You're never weak. No one ever looks down on you. I think you might think that because you might feel alone in a room full of people, but I can tell you that someone out there is willing to help and you have to be able to trust that and trust the right people and you're going to be a much better person professional, family member after that. So I would just encourage anyone that's listening. If you're on the kind of that teetering moment of do I need help, Do I not go find it, Because the only thing it's going to do is slingshot you forward.
Speaker 2:Amen, great, great. Final message Rich, I appreciate that I'm going to leave one quick story before we wrap up. This has you've done this in the right way. But there's a story by a friend of mine by the name of Ray Kelly, former executive at American Express Financial Advisors, now a leading man at Think2Perform, an amazing company out of Minnesota, and he tells a story that was reminded to me yesterday by my friend, dave Dick, and it's the story of five, and I'm going to butcher this. This is Ray's, and Ray, I'm not trying to offend you, I think you. Actually, he was a guest on the podcast a year or so ago and he shared this. There are five frogs sitting on a log and one decides to jump in the pond. How many frogs are left in the log? For sure, I'm going to ask you that.
Speaker 3:Say that one more time, so I can't. So I want to make sure that.
Speaker 2:I'm hearing all of this. Five frogs are sitting on a log and one decides to jump in the pond. How many are left on the log?
Speaker 3:I'd say four.
Speaker 2:You would say that that's what I said yesterday, having known this no five, because one decided to jump in the pond, but he didn't necessarily jump in the pond, he just decided to. So, everybody out there, I just want to remind you jump in the damn pond today, stop thinking and overthinking and overthinking. Just jump in the pond, ready fire, aim. Richard, you are an amazing man, you're an amazing friend, you're an amazing professional and I can't thank you enough for being such an amazing guest on the Bamboo Lab podcast.
Speaker 3:Thank you.
Speaker 2:Oh, my pleasure. All right, everyone, I want you to please smash that like button, please rate and review us and please share this episode with three people. The message I took, another again, another page of notes. I learned more about Richard today than I have in four and a half years. There's a lot of wisdom, a lot of experience that many of you, as a listener out there and as a subscriber, are going to benefit greatly from it. But so many of the people you love and care for can also benefit, so please share. In the meantime, I'll talk to you a week from today, same time, same place. In the meantime, please get out there and strive to give and be your best. Please show love and respect to others and don't forget to share that with yourself as well, and also live consciously and live with a purpose. I appreciate each and every single one of you. Until next time.