Podcast: Special Appearance [Truest Fan] Keep Looking Forward and Don’t Look Back

I recently appeared with Rob Brown on the Truest Fan podcast. You can check out the podcast here, or listen to the podcast in your favorite podcast app.

A transcript of our conversation, lightly edited for clarity, follows.

Rob  00:04

It’s easy to go through life with blinders on just focusing on your very next step. But today’s guest Phil Weiss of Apprise Wealth Management talks about why it’s important to not go through life with blinders on, why it’s so important to think about the future, and why to not try and relive the past to have big dreams. He shares some specific examples from his incredible career of how opening himself up to new possibilities created opportunities for him to serve more people, to be a great dad, and to really live the life that he was meant to live. A life that he truly enjoys. And I know you’ll learn from it. Listen in.

 

Announcer  00:51

You’re listening to the Truest Fan podcast. And now here’s your host, Rob Brown.

 

Rob  01:02

Okay, welcome. Welcome back to the Truest Fan Podcast, Rob Brown here with my special guest, Phil Weiss, who is the founder of Apprise Wealth Management. In full disclosure, Phil and I have known each other for a number of years. He’s a client of mine. I always enjoy talking with Phil, and we tend to talk longer than we plan. But I still promise to keep this episode to a reasonable amount of time. Welcome aboard, Phil. Glad to have you here.

 

Philip Weiss  01:31

Happy to be here, Rob. Thanks for having me.

 

Rob  01:33

Oh, my, my pleasure. I’m glad, I’m sure that our audience will, will learn a lot from our conversation today. Because I always learn a lot when I talk to you. If you’ve been listening to this podcast, you know that I like to start out by asking my guests who their favorite baseball team is because one of the inspirations for the whole Truest Fan idea for me is being a fan of the Cleveland Indians. And as much as I hate to ask this question of Phil, I will. Hey, Phil, who’s your favorite baseball team?

 

Philip Weiss  02:01

Well, I know you know the answer and I know you’re not a fan of the answer, but my favorite baseball team is the Yankees. How that happened is something that I often tell people. My grandfather on my father’s side of the family came to the United States from Austria in the ‘20s. They ended up in Newark, New Jersey, which was later a home for a farm team of the Yankees. So being a fan of the Yankees in my family goes all the way back to Ruth and Gehrig.

 

Rob  02:22

Wow. Actually, I’ve never heard that story before. But that’s one of the things I do love about fans, especially sports fans, when you hear that they have you know, that family tradition that goes way back. And it’s not like those bandwagon fans that do exist for some teams, maybe even the Yankees, you know, they say the Indians is not a real bandwagon, sort of team or the Guardians. I’m sorry, it’s not a bandwagon sort of team since it’s, they haven’t won the World Series in a long, long time. But we’re working on it this year. But anyway, great to have you, Phil, even though you’re a Yankees fan, and they are killing it this year. I was talking to the guy in the post office today whom I know is a Yankees fan. And I said, “Well, I think they’re like 35 games above 500.” And he goes, “No, no, 37 You better get that right.”

 

Philip Weiss  03:13

Yeah, I think it’s 34. Now.

 

Rob  03:15

Oh. Well good. It’s going in the right direction. I still think the lead is, is big enough, they’ll probably hold on. But anyway, enough about baseball. So I love to start the podcast, we kind of dig into discussion topics to let my guest lead by sharing some you know, pieces of wisdom or knowledge that you’ve gained over the years, maybe from a family member or a mentor that you kind of carry with you and the things that you do and caring for your family or running your business and taking care of your clients. Is there a piece of knowledge and nugget of wisdom that really sticks with you, Phil?

 

Philip Weiss  03:52

I think there are two things. So one, I come at that from a little bit different angle, I think because I blogged about this before talking about my experience growing up (See Confessions of a Financial Advisor.) And there are always two kinds of role models you can have. And my role models, especially when it came to finances weren’t the best. So, I think I learned how to do things right by seeing what not to do. One thing that just sticks with me is that sometimes you have to kind of figure it out on your own. But then the other thing I’ve talked about this with my kids a lot too is this idea. If I look at my career, it’s changed a lot over time. I started as a CPA and a tax guy, I’ve been a writer, and I’ve been an analyst. Now I have my own firm. And so it’s the idea that when we go through life, we don’t want to have blinders on and look down this narrow tunnel because I would say there could be something way out to the side that you’re not going to see if you have those blinders on. So you want to make sure that you’re open and take that big-picture view instead of taking a narrow focus.

 

Rob  04:44

Yeah, wow. Two, two really great points. I’m gonna dive into both of them maybe a little bit more deeply. You talked about sometimes you learn things by watching other people do them incorrectly and that kind of caused you to really think about what’s the right way to do that. And in the line of business, you’re in, you know, advising clients about their financial plans and their investments do you see that sometimes with the clients that you serve, that they’ve been going down, you know, a wrong path, and you help them learn how you can help them by pointing out maybe some of the mistakes that they’ve made is that part of what you do and learn from that?

 

Philip Weiss  05:25

it can be and it’s one of my favorite stories from the clients that I’ve worked with. And I think back to when I started, one of my early clients, I had this couple come to me, and really no other advisor was willing to talk to them when they looked at their situation. But when you’re starting out, it’s easier to just say yes to almost anybody, because you’re trying to build a business. They came in, they had credit card debt, and they had all this student loan debt, and their finances were kind of a mess. But their credit was, was still good enough that they could do some things to change it because they were paying their bills, but they just weren’t paying them enough. I helped them, I recommended a 0% interest credit card and a whole host of other steps. And I remember the next time that we looked to update their plan, I said, “Wow you guys are doing such a great job. I’m so proud of you.” And they responded, “Phil, we couldn’t have done it without you.” And then later on, as we continued to develop their plan and work together, they told me that “We needed somebody to show us what to do. We didn’t know what we were supposed to do. And you’ve helped us figure out what it is we’re supposed to do.” So now they’ve moved – one of their original goals was to move back to where her family lives. They recently had their first child. We’re talking about saving for college for their son so that their child doesn’t have that same start with all this student loan debt and everything else. Now their credit card debt is gone. She is a public service employee. So eventually, the rest of her student loan debt will be forgiven. They’re in such a different place. That’s definitely an example of where that has been the case. Yes.

 

Rob  06:43

Right. So it wasn’t as though they made giant mistakes. They just weren’t on the right track. And you helped improve the track that they were on. And that made a huge difference. And I think sometimes we can learn about lots of stuff like that in life, right? Where we were going along, we knew we’re not robbing banks every day to pay the bills, but it was not quite right. And just those small adjustments can make big, big changes.

 

Philip Weiss  07:10

Yeah, that’s right. I mean, you think about it, when you get a credit card bill, and it says there’s a minimum payment, it’s okay, that’s all I have to pay. But if you just pay your minimum payment, that balance is going to stay there forever. So, it’s the idea that we’re going to pick a strategy. And that was part of this too. What’s our strategy to pay down these cards, we’re going to pay them down one at a time. But we’re going to use a certain method to pick which one we’re going to off first, and then we’re going to attack the next one. And so, like that was all part of it instead of just paying a little bit to each.

 

Rob  07:33

Right, right. Yeah. And just again, seems like such a simple thing. A lot of folks who are listening to this podcast may be financial advisors, and they’re probably nodding their head saying, Yep, I’ve run into those situations before where I’ve helped somebody out who maybe wasn’t even a client, but somebody that came to me and said, you know, give me a little advice, what’s something I can do and you just let go, it seems natural to you, it seems like second nature to be able to give that sort of advice. But, switching topics, I love what you brought up about blinders and not having blinders on. Because one of the things that I know about you and maybe you could even share a little bit of your history and how you got into the starting the business that you have now what Apprise is, five, five years old, six years old, and but you didn’t come at it necessarily the way a lot of advisors get into the business. You have a writing background you wrote for The Motley Fool. You were an oil analyst. Talk a little bit about how, how you had your blinders off as you’ve made this career journey.

 

Philip Weiss  08:33

Sure. So it really started back in college, I mentioned the financial difficulties growing up, and I had in my mind that I was going to be a doctor. And I decided to go to Duke because I thought that would give me the best chance to go to medical school. My father had said, “Hey, you go where you want, I’ll take care of it.” And then he didn’t, and I did a lot to stay in school. I even went and spoke to the President of Duke when they were cutting student loans. And he said nobody’s going to have to leave school because of the cuts in student loans. And I had that conversation. But then at the end of my junior year, I still owed them money. And we decided I would leave school temporarily so I could earn the money to repay what I owed. Then I would go back. I was going to be a psychology major and a doctor. After I left school, I ended up moving across the country to Arizona. I planned to work for a couple of years out there until had enough money to pay off my debt. But I decided to change majors. I wanted to study accounting. I was ready to go back to school, but Duke doesn’t offer undergraduate accounting degrees, and I decided that’s what I was going to do. So I applied to Rutgers, and I applied to the University of Arizona because I actually could get residency in either place. I decided Rutgers was going to be better for me because it’d be closer to my family, and I thought I would get a better job graduating from Rutgers than the U of A. I moved back to New Jersey and graduated from Rutgers. Before I graduated, I started in the tax department for Deloitte. I worked as a tax professional; I ended up specializing in International Tax research and planning.

 

After doing that at Deloitte and for some large multinational companies, I decided I didn’t want to do that anymore. In my cynical mode, I said I was telling companies how to shuffle paper around to increase the size of the national debt. And that just wasn’t really what I wanted to do. I had started writing for The Motley Fool, as you mentioned. They used to have online portfolios. I helped manage one of those and I really loved doing that. And working in finance/investing was something I thought about before I started my career journey. I found out from one of my friends at The Fool about the CFA program and said, That’s my ticket out of the tax department. So, I decided I was going to go for my CFA Right before I started that I got a job with T. Rowe Price. I was a writer and an editor for T Rowe. After I finished the CFA process, I ended up leaving T. Rowe and went to work for an independent research provider where I was an equity analyst, I covered oil and gas stocks for seven years. I left there and went to work for another financial advisor. At the end of the day, it just wasn’t a good fit philosophically, in terms of the approach, and I left. Once again, my cynical side kicked in, and I thought of it this way. I would say, I decided to stop working for idiots. I was going to become the idiot because I was going to open up my own business.

 

Rob  08:59

Yeah, well I’m not just saying this because we work together, but you are far from an idiot. I love that story, that journey, because even though I guess in a way, most of it was tied in some way to numbers and finances, what you did throughout the journey was very different. And as you shared the experiences you went through that you didn’t have blinders on, you didn’t say, Okay, I don’t like what I’m doing. And I’m going to stick with it to hope it gets better. You opened up your horizons, and you looked at the parts of what you did, that you liked and enjoyed, which led you to the CFA, which kind of led you down another path. I think that’s, that’s really, that’s really important.

 

Philip Weiss  11:14

Well, thanks. And looking back, I’m so glad it worked out the way that it did. I wouldn’t trade any of those experiences along the way, because they all helped to get me to where I am today.

 

Rob  11:22

Right, right. So talk about that. I think you mentioned when you were talking about not going around life with blinders, how’s that? You know, how does that apply, kind of getting away from the business and the way that you mentor your children because or in your family? And when how you encourage them, Is that a big part of how you teach them as a dad?

 

Philip Weiss  11:41

It is.  My second son is a Computer Science Kid, and he interned with Amazon this summer. He wants to do coding, he worked as part of AWS – Amazon Web Services. And my wife and I have been talking to him about like, do you think you want to go to grad school, he’s like, I don’t know, I really want to code. And I don’t want to deal with a lot of people. But I remind him to keep his mind open, that grad school can help create other opportunities and things like that. If I think back to when my kids were growing up, I coached them in all different sports. Because again, you’ve got to try out different things and see what works best for you. And I’ve always encouraged my kids to try different things out and see what works. We have another son right now he worked for an auto mechanic for the summer. He wants to be a mechanical engineer, he wanted to learn how to do things like how to change the oil or change the brakes on a car. So that’s what he did for the summer. So always encourage you to do different things and have different interests.

 

Rob  12:31

When I think about some of the concepts that come out of the Truest Fan. One of them is the idea of believing in yourself. So, I think when you’re going about life, and you’re encouraged, you’re trying not to have blinders on yourself and maybe encouraging others not to have blinders on. That’s, that’s a big part of it. They have, you have to believe in yourself, you have to believe that even if you don’t take the next few steps, the way that you may have thought that you would because you opened yourself up to a new possibility that if you stop and say, you know, I can do this because I do believe in myself, I do believe in my ability to make a change make an adjustment, that I don’t have to necessarily follow that track that my you know, my dad had for me or that you know, that I laid out for myself. Do you think that’s a part of it?

 

Philip Weiss  13:18

I do. I mean, if I take it a step further to when I started the business. One thing that was you know, I talked about not having blinders. But I do think you need to think ahead. And so, one of the things that I think has helped me in terms of growing my business is always thinking ahead, trying to visualize what the future might look like. That gives me goals and targets to move towards. It doesn’t mean that everything has to go exactly that way. Like if I think about where my business is gone. It’s met my initial goals. Yes. But it’s different than how I thought it would be. But I definitely think it’s important to look ahead and think about and envision what your future might look like because I think it’s a lot easier to achieve that future if you do.

 

 

Rob  13:54

Yeah. And I think that’s a great point on two levels. One, I think too often it may be even especially during a time like this where for financial professionals, there’s been a disruption in businesses because of what’s going on with the markets and you know, the wind of in the sales that they’ve had, because the markets have gone so well, for so long has kind of gone away. And I think in some instances, there can be maybe a little bit of a lack of belief in those dreams and looking ahead, that that it’s really important to go back and reevaluate. You know, we talk about this all the time in the work that we do to grow you’ve got to really think about what that future is that you want for yourself and your business and your clients and your family and the other things that you care about because that, that’s the NorthStar that keeps you pointed in the right direction. So I think, that’s one of the big pieces that came out of what you just said for me. But the other is that you broke it back. You also said then when you are working on those things that you know that you need to do this month or this quarter, you can kind of bang those up against that big dream and say you know, these are the steps I need to do today and I’m not doing it just for no reason I’m doing it because I know those are steps in my, in my process. Does that, does that make sense?

 

Philip Weiss  15:39

It does. And the other thing, too, is that I do life planning with my clients. I like to tell them that it’s not about beating the market, it’s about living the life that you want. And so I actually had a conversation like that with a new client this morning. And you start with a design-your-life type question. And now it’s like money’s not an object, tell me what would you do? What do you want to do with your time? What’s important to you? What matters? What do you want to accomplish, then we narrow it down a little bit. You have less time. Now you go to the doctor, and he tells you, you have five to 10 years left. We don’t know when that last day is going to be. But we’ve got five to 10 years left. So what do you want to do in the time that you have left? And then you get down to the last question, which is always the hardest one. Now you go to the doctor and today’s the day doctor tells you, unfortunately, this is your last day. And now it’s what did you miss? What didn’t you get to do? Some clients really go full force into this, and it can be a very emotional set of questions. But it gives me a chance to get to know my clients and what matters to them. Because then when we build their plan, those are the things that we want to make sure they can do. Understand what matters most to them.

 

Rob  16:34

Right, because as you’re making adjustments and decisions, maybe thinking about risks that you’re taking, or different strategies that you might have, or what they might be spending money on if they have some new big financial opportunity that they want to take advantage of you can bounce it against that life plan that you help them form. Because I would imagine that that conversation that you just mentioned more often than not takes one conversation, because it’s really hard to stop and think about some of those questions, because they’re really, they can be tough questions to answer.

 

Philip Weiss  17:07

It can be very tough. I had somebody here a couple of weeks ago that I did, I went through the questions with her, and she got very emotional, and her husband was with her. And as she was answering the question, I could see that he reached over and held her hand to comfort her as she was going through it. And then when she finished she said, I think other than my husband, you’re the only person I’ve ever told any of these things to. So it’s a lot. And if you really want it to be, it can be a really good opportunity to explore and get deep into some things that really matter to you, it can become very emotional.

 

Rob  17:34

Because it’s easy, whether you’re like me, and you’re working with business owners and helping them set their plans for the future just to go through the steps, right, these are, you go from here to here, to here to here. And it’s very logical, very mechanical, you can do that with a financial plan with a client, you know, first, we’re gonna you know, get your retirement number, then we’re going to get your, you know, the college number for your kids. And then we’re going to think about giving some money away when you pass on. And, and it is, as important as those things are if they really aren’t attached to what you really want with that picture of the future really is, even important things like retirement and college education and philanthropic giving can just be mechanical steps, and not really living your life and planning in a way that makes the most of it.

 

Philip Weiss  18:19

I completely agree. And if I look. So when I do a financial plan, there’s always a one-page summary that comes with it. If you look at the top left corner, which is to me something that your eyes are going to go to first and it shows what is most important to you. And I remember a long time ago, you went through an exercise with your clients and talked, asked us what was most important to us, I always make sure that that’s kind of that focal point on every plan because it all revolves around that.

 

Rob  18:38

Yeah. Because the, as I said a little earlier, that’s kind of the North Star. That’s what it all works toward. And that plan could be really far out into the future. You know, a lot of times when I’m talking about it with my clients, we’re starting out, like 10 years, because that gets the number crunchers. No, no offense, Mr. number cruncher gets the number of crunches away. It’s harder to calculate like 10 years out than it is like the next quarter. So you really start to think about it. But it’s, but it’s really important because I think if, you know if we talk about this whole idea of wanting to live our best lives and be the best versions of ourselves, part of that attaches to accomplishing, you know, big things that may in day to day conversation almost be unspeakable. Because we’re just not comfortable talking about those big dreams and those big desires that we have.

 

Philip Weiss  19:29

That’s right. As I said, it can be very hard for people to do, but it’s also important. Sometimes it’s interesting to go through those questions, and we get to the last one and something changed and they don’t realize it till we get to the end you talked about all these other things. But now when I asked you at the end, something changed. I remember this one younger woman, and I asked her this and by the time she got the last one, it was all about her relationship with her dad and making sure that when he was older that he was taken care of. That was all she wanted to do, but she hadn’t mentioned a lot of that earlier. For some people it’s very consistent, but for some people as they start to think and they go through it, something changes.

 

Rob  20:00

Yeah, no, no, for sure, for sure. You know, one of the things that I try to do when I’m helping people with those questions is just ask, “Why?”. Why did they say the last thing that they said? And ask them you know, why did you say that? Tell me more. You know, I’ve not heard it that way before and just allow time to think because I think if we’re being true to ourselves, and those things that we want to accomplish that it can’t just be because, you know, we have this image of what things should look like, based on a TV ad that we saw of, like, two perfectly silver-haired folks who are in retirement dancing down the beach with the orchestra following, following behind. No, I think that’s right. Definitely think that’s right, Just a few more questions. So tell me what, what really makes you smile? Because I think those who listen to the podcast know, one of my favorite Truest Fan ideas is this idea that we all need to do a good job of offering smiles and kind words to other people to pick people up. So what, what makes you smile? And are there things that you do in your life to really make sure that the folks around you are happy and smiling?

 

Philip Weiss  21:04

My family makes me smile. I was telling somebody this the other day when Father’s Day came this year, and I went to my kids and they said, “What do you want to do Dad?” And I have three sons and a daughter. My daughter doesn’t bike ride much, and she was going to play in a lacrosse tournament. I took her on the first day. My wife took her the second. But to my three boys, I said, “I want to go on a bike ride.” And that’s what we did. We rode about 25 miles. We started at our house and rode to this nearby trail and went riding together. Spending time with my family matters. You know, I’ll go play disc golf with my kids. I do all the cooking in the house. I enjoy having everybody sit down for a meal together and listening to my kids interact. And that’s something that changed a lot with the pandemic, all my kids were home for the pandemic, even though our oldest is 25. But all the kids have been home, and their relationships changed in good ways during the pandemic. So like in that way, I feel like we were blessed by the pandemic because it brought my kids closer together. There were times when they were younger that it felt like they were always at each other. They weren’t. They were sharing more and they were having good conversations. I enjoy listening to them. We had a family game night at one point during the pandemic. I taught them how to play Texas Hold’em. All six of us would play Texas Hold’em. We didn’t try to knock anyone out for good. For us, the winner of the last hand won. And if somebody got out, somebody would give them chips. So everybody always played it wasn’t about winning, but just the interaction that came from playing. Those kinds of things make me smile.

 

Rob  22:18

Yeah, that’s great. That’s a great story. Because you know, you not only were just because of the age of your kids, in addition to them, maybe constantly being on each other a little bit as they were getting older. I guess you all were also in a way planning for everybody to be away because I think your, daughter now is finishing high school. So this will be one more year of high school or two more. Okay. All right, I was, I was, I was sorry, I was aging her too fast. I don’t want to do that. I don’t make you frown, as your sons, we’re kind of going off and spreading out. So you had this combination of that was, this was, this could have been a time when you were working on separations and living more apart and you became closer together. So I think that’s really, that’s really great. And that you were, sounds like you were all very intentional about really kind of rooting each other on and being around each other and caring for each other because of the special circumstances of the pandemic, but also the special circumstances of, of where they were in their lives and going in different places. Lots of, there’s lots of change in the air. Absolutely. Right. And like I said, I think we were very fortunate to have that time because we got time with our kids that we wouldn’t have gotten otherwise. And that really was important. So like I said, just a couple more questions. One’s kind of a combo question. So who is an ideal client for your business? When you talk about this process that you go through of helping people, who’s that ideal client, and if somebody is interested in working with you, what’s the best way to learn more about you and contact you?

 

Philip Weiss  23:47

I work with a lot of female-led households. I think of it as relationships where the wife takes the lead in the relationship. Sometimes the husband has been managing the family’s finances all their lives. And now they’ve gotten to this point where kind of like what I talked about with us. The kids are getting ready to leave and she’s starting to try to figure out what’s next. And she says to him, so we’ve been saving money. What does that mean? What are we going to do? And he’s like, I don’t know, I’ve just been saving. And I don’t know what we can do. I don’t know where that puts us, and then they find me. A lot of female-led households, usually it’s dual-income households, where the wife has been working, too, but she’s also been taking care of the kids and all that. And I trace how things worked out this way back to the beginning the stories about my household growing up and my mother. She got breast cancer at the age of 51. And she passed away at the age of 53. And we found out even more about how bad things were financially, and I was trying to take care of my mom and help her. She asked me to do that, and I did. But, unfortunately, she didn’t live that much longer. So I view it as I’m still trying to help my mom by helping women that are in situations like she was maybe not as bad but still they need some help figuring out the financial end of their lives. In terms of where you can find me, my website is www.apprisewealth.com. You can go to my website. I have a blog there you can read called “Confessions of a Financial Advisor.” It tells more about my story and why I like to work with the types of clients I work with.  You can subscribe to my blog. You can reach out to me through my website, that’s the easiest way.

 

Rob  25:10

Okay, perfect. Yeah. And I would encourage anybody who’s felt that something a little bit different about the way that Phil serves his clients. And I think it is in a very special way. And Phil’s also a prolific writer. So there’s lots of great stuff on his blog. In fact, you just released an e-book aimed directly at those female-led households. It’s not that you don’t work with people other than female-led households, but you’ve just kind of gone down that path. Because that’s been very rewarding to you, and not just from your side, but from the stories that you get back from your clients who work with you and appreciate the way that you approach them.

 

Philip Weiss  25:46

Yeah, I mean, I love when I hear from a client, there’s nothing more rewarding than when a client says thanks for doing this, or you helped me with that, that to me is a really special thing. And I love what I do. And when I get those notes like that, it reminds of me why I do it. You know, the other day, I was talking to my wife, and I didn’t say they were my clients, I told her they were my people. And that’s really how I feel. My clients are people that I’m here to take care of and help.

 

Rob  26:10

Yeah, yeah, And I know, and I hear that in the way that you reference the opportunities that you have to serve people and help them accomplish little things and big things. You are, you are a Truest Fan of your clients, for sure. And I’m sure it flips back around the other way. So as we close today, you know, we talked a little bit about sometimes you learn by watching negative examples and like, like what not to do. And we talked about not having blinders on as you approach different things. We talked about the importance of dreaming and kind of taking those dreams back to what you do on a day-to-day basis. So, we’ve covered a lot of ground is there any part of that, that you might want to emphasize, as we close the call, or maybe add to it that just gives our audience a chance to take even more away from our discussion?

 

Philip Weiss  26:55

So, I think that ties into something that I’ve talked a lot about lately because it’s part of that whole thing with growing up, both my sister and I stopped talking to my father for many years. And then right before COVID set in, we reconnected. Unfortunately, didn’t get to see each other that much. But we communicated on a regular basis. And as I thought about things, there was one thing that made that better. And I think it all ties into this whole concept. I like to look forward and not back, it helps me have a better outlook on life. And it helps me not worry about like things that happened in the past. It’s like I talked about the fact that I went to Duke and I admit there are times it’s like, damn, I went to Duke for three years. And the reason I didn’t graduate wasn’t that I flunked out. But I didn’t graduate for all these financial reasons. And I say, but if I had, I’m almost positive, I never would have met my wife. I never would have had the kids that I have now; my life would have been so different. And I’m happy with how it turned out. So, there’s no reason to look back and lament those things, even though I can talk about them. That doesn’t mean I lament them, it’s important to just keep looking forward and not back. And not worry about the past. And let’s move forward.

 

Rob  27:54

And it’s the difference between learning from what’s happened in the past and using that constructively versus letting that be a recurring theme that could potentially make you think that you’re not worthy of the opportunities that you have in your life and the opportunity that you have to serve other people. There’s a difference in the way that you use your past and look to the future.

 

Philip Weiss  28:15

I think that’s really true. And that’s something I think it’s changed for me over the years. And I think meeting my wife had a big part in that because she was more of a positive person than I was, I think when we met and seeing that and seeing her interactions made me become much more of an optimist. And I think that made a big difference.

 

Rob  28:30

You know, one of the things and I’ll close on this, Phil that I think makes you a really special person is that quiet, positive perseverance that you have you are, you know, you are a real cheerleader for your clients, for your family, for the Yankees. Maybe not quite for them. I haven’t seen you at a game, but you just have this quiet, confident, positive attitude about you. And I think that’s just a great way to go about life. Because sometimes I think we all feel like we need to live out loud, you know, yelling and screaming and shouting and cheering and, sometimes for good things and sometimes because we’re moaning about something that we don’t like, but you just have that quiet confidence. And I think that’s something else that folks listening to this podcast can learn how can you be a cheerleader in that spirit that is really you being you helping others be more of who they can be because that’s, that’s one of the best definitions I think of being a truest fan. So, Phil, thanks for being on the truest fan podcast. I really enjoyed our conversation, and we’ll talk real soon. Take care.

 

Philip Weiss  29:32

Thanks, Rob. I appreciated the opportunity to speak to you today. I really enjoyed it. Thank you.

 

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