Mike Stohler: Hey everybody. Welcome back to another episode
of The Richer Geek Podcast. Today's episode is brought to
you by REI Words, your go to SEO agency for increasing traffic to
your website. Check it out at reiwords.com. Today, we have
Mark Murphy, CEO of Northeast Private Client Group. He's an
accomplished author, speaker motivator, he's revolutionizing
the financial planning and wealth management industry. He
helps entrepreneurs like a lot of us. She had multi
generational wealth through personalized strategies
leveraging his strategic planning and financial
engineering expertise. Forbes has actually ranked him as
number one financial security professional in New Jersey. And
number 15 nationwide.
Mark Murphy: Acutally, No. 3 nationwide, that was 15 to 3.
Mike Stohler: Well, there you go. Congratulations.
He also has a book that we'll get into a little bit the
ultimate investment. No. 1 best seller and new release on
Amazon. How're you doing, Mark?
Mark Murphy: Welcome. I'm doing great, Mike, I'm happy to be
with you.
Mike Stohler: Everyone wants to know a little bit about your
background, who you are.
Mark Murphy: I just think I'm somebody who's endlessly
curious. You know, I grew up dumb and broke in Suffern, New
York. I just always knew about myself that I was always at my
best when I was serving others. And so when I got up, I got off
the campus of Indiana University at the Kelley School of Business
with a degree in Finance. That's my passion right now. It's been
for many, many years, especially Indiana basketball, and Indiana
football. But when I accepted the job at my company in 1985,
they offered me $1,000 a month. And that was $1,000 a month more
than I was making. And it wasn't even really a salary. It's
really a draw against commissions. But I realized that
when I did for my own company, later that year, I realized that
I thought we'd make money, I would hope I hoped we'd be
successful. But this was really my vehicle to make other
people's lives better. And we've built that into what it's become
today, which we're known as the key business strategists and
critical thinkers and financial advisors to entrepreneurs and
entrepreneurial thinking people. And we're the guys that, that
teach people how to create multi generational wealth.
Mike Stohler: Yeah, so I also went to Bobby Knight University.
Yes, basketball, our class this year, transfer portal, I think
is going to be fantastic. I'm really looking forward to the
season.
Mark Murphy: Well, I'm on the National Varsity Club Board. And
so I am tickled pink, I'm very involved with the NFL. As I
said, I've got basketball and football tickets. If anytime you
and your family want to come to a game, I would love you to be
my guest.
Mike Stohler: Absolutely.
Thank you very much. No, there's a lot of commercial students, a
lot of it seems like we're getting inundated with financial
strategists and financial planners, what differentiates
yourself from all these other firms in the industry that
everyone sees.
Mark Murphy: I think that money market CDs, IRAs, 401(k)s
stocks, bonds, mutual funds, blah, blah, blah. Most of our
clients have some or all those assets, most of our clients will
have some or all those assets all their life. But at best
their inflation adjusted holding tanks, Bill Gates was on this
call today wouldn't say "I'm worth $110 billion, because my
401(k)." True wealth is created in one of three areas. It's
investing in your business or some other operating company.
It's investing in real estate, it's financing deals, I'll leave
out divorce and inheritance. And I think that primarily, it's
whether you own a business, or you just have an entrepreneurial
mindset. I always say it's all BS, it's all belief systems. And
it's about an entrepreneurial mindset of how you think about
money, how you think about your life. And I think that success
is not defined just by wealth. It's defined to me by having a
life by design, as my friend Dennis Marble says, "The life by
design, so you're designing your life to be successful in all
areas, not just financially."
Mike Stohler: Yeah, that's very good, because a lot of people
really don't know anything outside of maybe their IRA,
their 401(k), whatever their job gives them, and then they don't
know how to go about choosing in person, this fiduciary thing,
not fiduciary, there's some terms out there that people just
don't understand. And they get kind of caught up and this fund
this bond, you have to do the S&P 500. You have to do these
certain things because they get all this information, or what
would you tell someone that's best looking at the different
options, especially in this type of time period, and we'll get
into this a little bit later on, but someone's just going to your
website and saying, I don't even know what any of this stuff is.
Someone's told me that do the index. Someone says, Hey, but
somebody in risky stuff. What do you tell him at first, the first
timers?
Mark Murphy: I'm telling people that I go back to life by design
I want to sit back and go, "What ultimately does your life look
like?" You know, meaning? What what do you aspire to do? Or
your aspire life to look like? And then how do we reverse
engineer to get there? So before you decide where to put your
money or what to do, I think it has to start with a
visualization of what you want your life to look like, and what
your career should look like. I think sometimes you plan your
life too meticulously. God has a way of laughing at you. But at
the same time, I think things don't happen by happenstance,
I'm not going to, you know, sit on my couch and eat Cheetos, and
the world's going to come to my feet, I think it's going to come
because you're going to go do it with intentionality. And I think
you want to create a strategy, not just a plan, but strategy, a
plan and a strategy around that plan. I'm just a big believer
that people are not planning, I think if more people are
planning on spending more time planning a family vacation than
they're working on their finance.
Mike Stohler: Yeah, that's actually very true. And now how
do you know there's a test up there? The four questions you
need to ask yourself to know if I'm in that right place or not?
Mark Murphy: And those questions clearly are: Am I passionate
about what I'm doing? Am I good at it? Does the world need that
product or service? And can I get paid to do it? And so I look
at that through everything through the prism of those four
questions. And it can't be a yes to one or two, or even all four.
Mike, it's got to be a hell yet to me, for me to move forward.
And if I don't do it, I probably will not do it, I'll find
something else. Because the challenge is always time and
attention. So everybody tells me I don't know anybody who doesn't
tell me how busy they are. They're swamped, they're
overburdened. And I'm saying, what are you willing to give up?
To be able to have what you want to have? Or what are you willing
to do that you're not doing now? That what you don't have the
thing that I listened to very carefully, because remember, the
good ones, till the great ones ask what I listened to, is not
what people want to tell me like, on the vision of what they
want to do, I really listened to what's the plan of what they're
going to do to actually execute it. Because everybody wants all
the prizes in the money in the rewards, the titles and all the
glory that comes from being successful and doing the job and
doing the work. But they're not willing to put the time in to be
able to go do that. They just want to magically appear and
like they're entitled to it. And I think you got to go get you
got to do the work.
Mike Stohler: Yeah and especially for those, when you
say doing the work, how about those people that feel like, I
should probably just do this by myself.
Mark Murphy: I was thinking about doing the same. Instead of
hiring my dentist, I was going to just do my own root canals
from now on, because, I could I could do it better. I think that
that ultimately, there are probably a few people that can
do it well. But to me, there's been lots of studies out that
there's an inverse correlation to the amount of education and
intelligence you have, and the success you have with money,
that the smarter you are, the worse you do, because for so
many people, there's a level of hubris around it. And as we
know, he versus the ruination of all habit. And I think the idea
is that, you know, like, I think in life, you can grind things
out. And you can get a 1x or 2x, or 3x, return on whatever that
that money or that event or that business or whatever. But if you
want to get a 5x, or 10x, or 20x, it's about collaboration
with other like minded people, to help you be able to get what
you need to do. And I think that ultimately, I think, what for
most people, you're talking about personal finance versus
business finance, they're similar, but very, very
different is that if you look at yourself as the person, the
center of the universe, and almost like a sun, where rays
are coming out of the out of the circle, I think most people that
I know have somewhere between five and 15, we call micro
micromanagers. They have an accountant, they have an
attorney, they have a property casualty insurance agent, a life
insurance agent, a money manager, a pension advisor, a
consultant, it depends who you are, you know what kind of
people everyone, some people have very few many people have,
you know, many more, but most of these folks don't know each
other. And so one of the things we try to do is help coordinate
and integrate the micromanagers. And if you've got good people,
let's make them better informed and have them work harder and
more efficiently for you. And if you've got some folks that
really aren't up to speed or not up to speed, where you are or
where you're going right now, let's get them replaced with
people that are like minded to you and espouse your values and
your ideals and your vision of where you want to go.
Mike Stohler: Yeah and I think that is very important. I've
seen financial advisors say no, this is what you need to do. And
I'm like, why? Well, unbeknownst to me, it's because he makes 5%
on the front end in front of 5% on the back end, and then he
tried to do with things but I couldn't get that why, why is
this good for me? And I think that relationship is extremely
important for someone to trust with, their money, this is their
livelihood. It's very important. To know this person and trust
him. Now, we've talked a little bit about getting it going and
starting it, like this one phrase is called, going from
paychecks to go into paychecks. I think that's what all of us
want to get to.
Mark Murphy: I think, ultimately, what we want our
clients to do, is we want them to set up, as somebody who
manages not millions of dollars, but billions of dollars for
somebody that there's really dozens, Mike dozens of asset
classes. But for our purpose, there's only two, and we call
them paychecks or either free capital or paychecks, what we
want our clients to do is create a series of assets that will
give them either a guaranteed or a highly reliable stream of
income to replace their income at their job. And we'll call
those paychecks. But we also want them to have another series
of assets where you can spend it, you can save it, you can
give it away. But the important thing is it will not be
responsible for producing income for your family. So if you have
both paychecks and play checks, that's financial freedom.
Mike Stohler: Yeah, and it's exactly what you want. It's like
you, you need that paycheck, you want to be comfortable, man, as
soon as you start getting some wealth, and you have that
paycheck, then just starts having a little bit more fun.
Mark Murphy: It's about ACR. Annual Recurring Revenue, the
biggest risk I think people have, there's lots of risks, but
the biggest one is the permanent loss of income. And so that
means if you get disabled, but it really also means if you
retire, where are you going to get that income replaced? So
that you can retire? Or you have the opportunity to retire? If
you choose to do that?
Mike Stohler: Yeah, you can't rely on someone who people say,
Well, I'm gonna get Social Security, I'm gonna get this and
that. And I'm like, I think younger people would probably
never see the Social Security or any of those types of things.
Mark Murphy: I talked about, you mentioned belief systems, or you
may answer a question, which I'm going to go back to, we talked a
little bit about, differential mindsets, you said, should I put
the money in the S&P 500 Index, or I should have put it into,
some other vehicle or this or that or the other thing, and I
think the issue is one of the my least proud moments in my career
that I was so proud of at the time. And I look back, and I'm
not proud of is I would come and sit with somebody, and they'd be
in a in a mess, they have a lot of debt. And they had, I'll call
it bad values around money. And what I did is I restructured
their debt, I cleaned it up, I did all kinds of things to help
I help if they owned a business, and I helped them grow their
income or grow their business. And then you check back in a
year. And what you did was because they didn't have good
values around money, by getting them out of debt and then
growing their business. Instead, if you doubled their income you
about 10x their problems, because it was like giving an
alcoholic a gallon of vodka or a drug addict and eight ball of
cocaine.
Mike Stohler: Yeah.
Mark Murphy: And so until they had good values around money, it
was the belief systems weren't right or, or the arrogance of
what happens. Like there's so many folks that I think one of
the great lessons is I hope that adversity comes to you when
you're young, not to scare you. And not so that it hurts you in
the long term. But sometimes realize you don't have the Midas
touch on everything allows you to have a little bit of
perspective and not make silly decisions out of arrogance, the
risk, I think is like when people say, Well, I've been
successful here and I was successful, he maybe even a
second time, so that no matter what I touch turns to gold. And
you're and people are I see a lot of people out there making a
lot of silly, foolish decisions, that they're going to wake up
one day and go, Oh, my God, what did I do? I? I screwed the
pooch.
Mike Stohler: Yeah. Now, you did this. And it was a lesson
learned. What is your belief? Now? How did you switch? What
you're doing now then from when you made that those ierrors in
the past?
Mark Murphy: I think that there's a couple of things. One
is that the simple answer is, there's only three things you
can do with your money. You can save it, you can pay your bills,
or you can spend it. If you do it in any other order. There's
never any money to save. No matter how much you make. You've
got to pay yourself first, you've also got to make sure
that your money works while you sleep. And if you have a
business, you that business must generate revenue or income
without you doing the task.
Mike Stohler: Yeah. And that makes a lot of sense. It's and
Mark Murphy: We should pick it up because my mother would
that's why so many entrepreneurs, successful
really appreciate if you bought a copy if you bought the book
entrepreneurs, make sure that they put some back into the
business to grow the business, they make sure that they
but other other than and that the other reason would be that
diversify their portfolios. Instead of I just it kills me
when I see these young kids that are making a lot of money.
They're driving around in the Bentley's and the Lamborghinis
and things like that. I'm like, That's not getting you anywhere.
It's not doing anything. You know, go buy a house, go buy
some real estate, do something with it. That gives you that
passive income. Now let's dive a little bit and to your book, The
Ultimate Investment. Tell us a little bit about what that is
what's in it and why should we should pick it up.
one of the things and we've kind of expanded on it since then,
and I've trademarked it is the pyramid of great multi
generational wealth. And I think that the number one reason why
people do not succeed or do not succeed, as great or as or as
well as they should succeed, is because they don't have cash
confidence. meaning in life, you got to start with cash
confidence, that cash conference can either be, money that's
liquid and available to you, or stream of income that is
reliable to you. That's what I mean by cash confidence. Because
remember, the best deals are made. When I have cash, and
somebody needs money. I've created a lot of my wealth, when
I had money, and other people needed it. The second thing is,
it's hard to go long term in a plan, because life is not fair.
And it's not level. And it's not, you know, arithmetic, the
world goes like this. And so you must have enough staying power
by having enough cash confidence to better withstand a bad
quarter or a bad year or bad event. And so it starts with
cash conference. The second thing we talked about is if you
only have $1, to invest, the best place I suggest people put
his is in their money machine. And so for people that own a
business, I'm very simple. If you're an expense, you're on the
chopping block, if you're an investment, as long as I can get
a four or five to one return on my money or more, I have an
unlimited appetite for investments. So I want to feed
my money machine first. And then we discussed it earlier in the
podcast is that I want to start to create paychecks and play
checks. But there's still one more level at the top of the of
the pyramid, that if you can have earned income beyond normal
retirement age. So when all your friends are going to early bird
specials or worried about living too long, or drinking domestic
beer instead of imported beer, you could be a net saver in your
50s, your 60s or 70s, even your 80s where you can really create
multi generational wealth by having income beyond that time
by having annual recurring revenue beyond that beyond a
normal retirement income. Remember, what we want people to
do is get paid for what they know not what they do. Even
people that own a business, most people that own a business are
not entrepreneurs, they bought themselves a job. And for the
people watching this, Mike. The other thing is they go well,
what does that have to do with me? I don't own a business.
Well, if you don't own a business, you're the product,
you are the company. And so you sit back and you say to them,
what kind of training do I need? Or education? Do I need to get
the next rung? And among the ladder? Do I need to invest
myself? Do I need to make better presentations? Do I need to
think more entrepreneurially? Do I need to build my network. So I
have a greater network of folks that I can collaborate with to
grow my business. I mean, there's dozens and dozens of
different ways that you can invest, not where you are right
now. And I think what my great skill is, is that I see people
where they are right now. Because if you you can't see
people through rose colored glasses or Pollyanna ish, I got
to see you where you are. But what I want to do is see you at
your highest potential, and help you aspire to be the highest the
best version of what you want to be. And again, that if I was
looking at, one of the very few gifts that I may have, that may
be one of them.
Mike Stohler: Yeah and you talk also about transformational
language. Right. Tell us a little bit about that. And how
does that how's that transform your roles?
Mark Murphy: I think the reason you want to have
transformational language with people is, we have so many
conversations today. By say phone, we have interaction with
people, which we've always had, for anybody's alive as has been
around since the telephone and private interactions. But when
you now add texting and emails to the mix, people are having
1000s of interactions with people almost a date, hundreds
or 1000s. And so it's it's almost impossible to remember
what you had for lunch, much less every conversation that you
have. And so part of the reason I have transformational language
is you need to have a soundbite that sticks in their mind, so
that people can internalize things, you're telling them so
that it's not your idea. But it becomes their idea. You know
that things are working in your business, when your customer,
your client, your patient, whatever you call the people you
do business with, when they start repeating back what you've
taught them, and that becomes their mantra. And I think you
can't do that with a dissertation that may you know
may lay it out it comes back with a transformational language
that allows them to go to then get it like I got it because the
attention span of most people for very good and very bad
reasons is not very, not very, not very robust.
Mike Stohler: That's very true. That's why you don't have one
hour long podcast or two hour long podcast. It needs to be
short and sweet to the point. A lot of bullet points for people.
Now part of the five ingredients to successful life or getting
that you know to me, we've talked about the paycheck
paychecks having multi generational wealth but it's
also kind of like that that time off that me time, to be able to
have this type of wealth, to be able to work from anywhere to be
able to take time off to be able to have kind of like the
meantime, can you explain a little bit that some of the
examples that you've seen from some of your clients where
they've actually said, Thank you, because I actually have
time to think now? They're not?
Mark Murphy: I think that's mean, that's sort of what what
in our wheelhouse meaning what the question, Mike.
I've been asked probably 10,000 times, is some version of how do
I grow my income? How do I grow my business? How do I grow my
freedom of time to take more time off? How do I grow my
freedom of relationships to spend time with the people I
want to spend time with? Or how do I grow my freedom of purpose
to have a purposeful, meaningful life? And you're one person, I'm
one person, pretty daunting when you think about it? And so the
idea is, it's that's probably always the wrong question. It's
not how but it's who do we need to collaborate with to grow our
income, our business, our freedom of relationship, freedom
of time, and, and freedom of purpose. That's the place that
people look, because if you're working 13 hours a day, and you
want to double your income, you actually can't double the amount
of hours you work. So the idea is that it's it's to figure
people how to leverage and scale their their life. And to make
sure that they've got a life by design. What I mean by that is,
to be able to, I think in a perfect world, you don't have
people always say, what is your business life and your personal
life, like, and I go, I don't really understand that. What I
do understand is I have a life. And I put myself in a position
that I go from one thing I love to something, I love more to
something I love more than that, whether it's working spending
time with my five kids spending time with Lisa, spending time
with, I'm gonna date myself at this point, I'm heading to New
York Knicks playoff game. Tonight, as soon as we get off
this podcast.
Mike Stohler: Yeah.
Mark Murphy: Spending time as we talked about watching our
Indiana Hoosiers, hanging a six banner, hopefully, in the near
future, I think, it could be more charitable work, or the
things I want to do to make people's lives better. You know,
I think my goal at this point in my life, you talk about a life
of purpose is I've been so blessed. And all I want to just
help as many people as I can, my goal is to, is to improve the
lives of 100 million people. And I know I can't do that by myself
bike. But if I could collaborate with guys like you, and like
minded people like us, imagine what we could do together to
make everybody's lives better, and create abundance. And
remember, the great thing about abundance is, some of the most
selfish people I know, are people that have just enough,
because they have just enough for themselves in no excess
excess, what I want to do is create as much abundance in the
world as possible, we can create a community of helping as many
people as we can, and making this the kind of world and the
kind of place that we all want to live and raise our kids and
grandkids in.
Mike Stohler: Yeah and that's profound, it's something that I
do in my business is, I have it on the wall in my offices, I
want to build a life I don't need to vacation from. And
that's what I want to do.
Mark Murphy: That is profound. I love that I'm gonna steal that
if you don't mind, I'll give you a credit, I'm gonna steal it.
That's brilliant.
Mike Stohler: You can and you know, I look at it every day.
And when you get down to get this when you get that. And
something else that once you achieve this through some like
Mark Murphy, then you can start giving back because now I have
more freedom that I can. And ladies and gentlemen, that's
listening, you can now go to charities, cheer charities, you
can give back in ways that you didn't think why don't have time
to do this. So build that life, having those paychecks and play
checks, and then all of a sudden, it's like, oh, wow, now
I can get involved and give back. And you can't do that
alone. It's very, very difficult to do that alone. And that's why
you're always saying, I think several times during this
podcast, you're talking about your inner circle, and choosing
your inner circle wisely. And that's just, it's very, very
important, isn't it?
Mark Murphy: I think everybody who's watching this would say
that somebody has said something to them at some time, that ruin
their day. You know, I realize you don't want to give people
control over how you feel about yourself. But they, like myself,
I put out a few pounds over the winter go, somebody's got a you
know, you gotten fat. Well, that's not going to make me
happy. Maybe I'll go home and watch what I eat and move the
move my body a little more. But it doesn't make me feel good. Or
when someone says, I just want to call you and tell you that
you spoke to my son the other night. And it changed how he
thought about his life. And I just want to call you and thank
you for that because he's a different person to just spoke
to, or thank you for something to go. I'm six foot two. When I
have that conversation, I'm seven foot two. And so what we
can make somebody's day or he can ruin someone's day because
of what we're doing. So imagine if we create a community and
ecosystem around us people that are like minded, that no there's
no right way to do the wrong thing. And imagine the
creativity that we can have to inspire each other to create
this incredible synergy, where one plus one does equal two, or
one plus one doesn't equal one and a half, one plus one equals
five, or 10, or 20. That's where I want to be.
Mike Stohler: Yeah. And that's, I think all of us, just most of
us don't know how to do it and don't know how to get there.
They need help. And they need that professional, that mentor.
And no matter how successful you are, you still need the mentors,
you still need the coaches you still need, you can never stop
learning. Can you?
Mark Murphy: That to me is sad. I've said a few things in life.
There are no finish lines, there's only milestones. And so
I think there's something sad when you see people that have
stopped learning and growing, that they have, they're fully
formed, and they've arrived. And what happens is your future has
to be bigger than your past. So what you see people is who stop
learning and growing, their world goes like this, it just
starts getting smaller and smaller and smaller. I always
have a theory that people don't die, their life gets small. It
gets just gets too small, or people stop being having
excitement in life, part of the part of the challenge of not
retiring. There's a lot of trials. And I'll tell you, I
mean, for some people again, there's some people I know
who've retired and they go, Oh my god, this is like going to
summer camp for senior citizens. I should have retired five years
ago.
Mike Stohler: Yeah.
Mark Murphy: But for every entrepreneur I know, if they
were to do that, they must always their mind must always be
in creation and fascination mode, always learning and
growing. When you retire structure goes away. team goes
away. You got a team in your business, you got no team in
retirement. no risk, no reward, no excitement. But and then and
last but not least is the the applause stops. There's nobody
saying "Hey, Mike. Oh my God, I'm gonna steal that sign on the
wall." Well, you just said something profound that this
will be applauding when you retire. I just think there's a
lot of reasons why people want to create, which I thought that
it would you had said was so brilliant that I want to create
a life that I don't need a vacation from. I want to create
a life I don't have to retire from.
Mike Stohler: Yeah and that is profound. And that's why we
really, were into hotels, we own hotels, and I don't ever have to
retire. You just create that team to where I can take a step
back, but you're always still running the business. Before we
leave, Mark, where can people find you? People are interested.
They want to get to know you more? How can they do that?
Mark Murphy: They can call my assistant, Maureen Motherway,
Vice Chief of Staff and call us at Northeast Private Client
Group. I think it's www.northeastprivate.com. Our
headquarters is in Roseland, New Jersey. There's a couple of
other companies around the country that are northeast, but
we're in Roseland where they can call Maureen Motherway, my chief
of staff and I'd be happy to talk to them at area code
973-422-9140. I'd be more than happy to to have a conversation
with anybody. And I just want to tell you how much I appreciate
you and how much gratitude I have for you for including me in
your show.
Mike Stohler: Well, thank you, sir. And it's been some profound
lessons that and takeaways and I think the audience will
absolutely love this. Ladies and gentlemen, Mark Murphy,
Northeast Private and you can go to I think it's
northeastprivate.com?
Mark Murphy: Yes, northeastprivateclientgroup.com
in Roseland, New Jersey, and so it's all good things. Mike,
thank you so much. I appreciate it.
Mike Stohler: Absolutely, Mark. And go Hoosiers!