Cosmos: 

Welcome back to the show, my fellow Shaw Americans. For today’s guest, we have Adam Kus. Adam is the president and Portfolio manager at Libertas Wealth Management Group Inc., a Napa-affiliated fee-only fiduciary RIA firm in Columbus, Ohio. Adam grew up absorbing the power of deep, meaningful relationships his father fostered in his optometry practice. This early exposure to entrepreneurialism sparked his desire to one day own a business, and he could significantly impact others’ lives.

His professional journey began just 10 days before the tragic attack on the World Trade Center in 2001, and he has since guided his clients through four of the worst market crashes in US history. Columbus Business First has named Adam one of the 20 people to know in finance and is a recipient of the 40 under 40 award. Investopedia also ranks him as one of the top 100 most influential financial advisors in the US. He won the coveted Better Business Burial Torture award for ethics and trust. He’s an extraordinary American, and I’m honored to have him on the show. Adam, are you there?

Adam:

 I’m here.

Cosmos: 

Adam, it’s so good to have you on the show.

Can you tell the audience more about yourself, your background, your story, and how you got started?

Adam: 

Sure, yeah. You can mention my dad, which I appreciate. He’s still my idol and the person I want to be most like. When I was growing up, I used to stop by his office, his optometry office, and his practice almost every day, and just hang out with him, sit in his office, and watch how he interacted with his staff and patients. When I watched that, I just thought, I want to see it someday. 

I want to have a doctor’s office where I’m the person helping people and making them feel better, in whatever way that was or would be. I want to have a great staff, and I want to have patients with whom I truly make an impact. To make a long story short, I shadowed him once, and I decided. Decided, pretty quickly, that optometry wasn’t for me. He would sit there all day, 10 to 14 appointments, and say, Is this better? Is this one? What about this one? Is this one better? And it was just the same thing all day long. 

So, I felt bad telling him at the end of that day that he was like, Hey, what do you think? And I’m thinking, oh, it’s a little too routine. But I knew I wanted to do something in medicine.

 So I went to college at Ohio State University. I was pre-med for three or four years, almost three and a half years. And again, I’m not going to. I won’t get into the details, but some pretty big, kind of personal, life-changing things took place at the time that caused me to switch gears and drop out of the pre-med program. And I was talking to my dad on the phone, when I officially made, I guess, told him what I was doing.

 And he says, What are you going to do now? And I’m like, I don’t know. I haven’t. I’ve thought a little bit about it. And I’m interested in computers, software, and medicine, but I don’t want to be a PA. I don’t want to. I don’t want to take the next step down from what I wanted to be. I probably want to do something else. And he says, What about a financial advisor? And I’m thinking, Dad, I took one econ class in college. I took chemistry, biology, biochemistry, and zoology, and he says, yeah, but you’re. You’ve got that virtual stock exchange account you’re always messing with. And he’s like, you’re great with people. And he’s like, what? In the financial industry, there’s a lack of good communication and education. And he’s like, I think you’d be good at that. 

So I met his advisor up in Cleveland, and I was kind of iffy about it because there’s a lot of poor ethics in our industry, unfortunately. And so I didn’t have a good image of the industry, which repelled me. Then, I went to a seminar in Columbus, where I live. 

And, the seminar, the company that was hiring, said that if you could work out of your home for the first nine months, and if you proved you could make it,  you proved you’re profitable, then they would build out an office for you. But it was your office, and you could have one assistant once you were profitable enough for an assistant. 

So it wasn’t what I imagined. I guess, or it was the only firm that I’d found that was going to let you do your thing to a certain extent, as opposed to having you on this big sales floor with a bunch of people pedaling stocks or peddling IPOs or, whatever the latest, greatest commission is. So I thought, why not give it a shot? And then I started my career, ten days before the World Trade Center collapsed, unfortunately. I was 21 years old. I looked like I was 16 because I was 60 pounds lighter than I am now. 

And, I was trying to get people three times my age to trust me with their life savings, going door to door, business to business. So it was very difficult, but I fell in love with it. And my dad, what he said in the beginning was that there were two things. One, he said that it’s financial surgery instead of physical surgery. And the other thing he said when I asked him, when I started my company, in 2004, at 25 years of age, I started, Libertas. I said, What, being that you’re so successful, what is it? What one piece of advice would you give me that would make. Make, help me carve my success and path. And he said, just pretend everything’s in tomorrow’s front page, and the rest will take care of itself. And so that’s kind of how we’ve guided ourselves over the last 23 and a half years.

Cosmos: 

Wow, Adam, there’s, like, so much to get into here, but, like, one of the things I wanted to ask was, like, how did the September 11, attacks, that you were there during that time, like, how did that shape your, vision and your strategy regarding financial. When the planes hit, they’re attacking the economy and the financial capital of the world. How did that experience shape you?

Adam: 

It should be in a lot of ways. It’s a great question. I’ve never been asked that question before. I think that it’s. It was learning resilience that was crucial early on in becoming successful. If things had been great early on, it probably would have been harder to experience something bad that happened later in my career.

So, getting hit in the face with it right out of the gate forced me to either put up or shut up. It was like either. Either I’m going to make this work and it’s going to work forever, or it’s just not going to work. And so, I’ve always sought out mentors, found people who are smarter than me, better than me, more successful than me, and just ask them for advice and pick their brains. And many of them, thankfully, were willing to give the shirts off their back to help me when I needed it. But then at the end of the day, you can get all the advice in the world and spend more time getting more advice. However, it comes down to execution. 

So, I think that what, starting at a time that, basically losing all my clients money for 18 straight months when you’re that young and that green, it taught me resilience and it taught me hard work and execution and that,  , when you, if you’re going to succeed, you got to do the activities that are required to succeed. You can’t focus on the results; you can’t focus on the research. But from a business standpoint, that shaped me in that way. From a portfolio management standpoint, the investment management standpoint shaped me differently. But we can get to that if you want to.

Cosmos: 

Yeah, I mean, it’s interesting how resiliency plays a role in not just business and investing, but also. Like, sometimes you just, you like. I mean, not sometimes. A lot of times, you have to play the long game. There will be many ups and downs, but when they’re first getting into business, they don’t understand that because it’s exciting initially, but then you’re always in the long haul.

Adam: 

For sure. Agree

Cosmos: 

So, there was this crash, I mean, this 2006-2008 crisis. Right. So, from your perspective, what do you do? What is your opinion on what happened, and how do you think investors should react to a potential future crisis that could be on the horizon?

Adam: 

That’s another great question. This is going to get more fun than I thought it was. All right, so obviously, the 2000, 2001, and 2002 crashes were among the longest in history, except for the depression. The 2007, 8, and 9 were the deepest and fastest, with 58% in 18 months. That’s a fast crash. And we all know that at some point it will happen again. 

Right. We all know that. When you look back at 2009, when the market bottomed back then, we’ve had some quick drops since then. You can technically call them crashes because, by definition, a drop in the market of anywhere between 0 and 10% is considered a pullback. A drop of 10 to 20% is considered a correction, and a drop of 20% or more is considered a bear market or a crash, as they call it. So, we understand that we have to draw a line at 20, but unfortunately, there’s been 20M18. The market dropped about 20% in about 52 trading days. But it wasn’t a big deal, and it recovered quickly. COVID, the market went down 34% in 22 days and recovered 29 days later. And while the businesses were shut down and everybody was stuck at home, that was wild. In 2022, the market, S&P, wasn’t quite down 20%, but the NASDAQ was down, I believe, more than 30%. And the bond market was down about 18%. 

So the only things making money in 2022 were commodities, oil stocks, gold, etc. So there’s nowhere to hide. But it still was pretty mild, right? It started in 2021 and ended at the end of 22. It wasn’t a multi-year, know, 30, 40% crash. Right.

So I think that, I guess that kind of gets into the conversation about how the two crashes that we, the big ones, we saw in the 22 thousands, 2000s, 2001, 2002, and then the Great Recession in 2007. Eight, nine. In the summer of 08, I decided that either A, I would sell my company and do something else for a living, or I would find a better way to manage portfolios and investments. And I decided B. So, I started using what’s called technical analysis. A technical analysis is a big name for many different things, but if I keep it in a nutshell, essentially, what we use at our office is a combination of relative strength. Relative strength sounds like a nerdy word, but it’s like, we’re amid March Madness right now in the United States. So, imagine instead of investing all of our money equally in all the March Madness teams to be diversified, we want to invest all our money in the top four seeded teams in all four brackets.

 So it’s investing in the playoff teams and avoiding the rest. That’s relative strength, then rotating out of weakness and into strength. The second thing that technical analysis from a 30,000-foot view is trend following. It’s okay being out of the market if things get really bad. And while things aren’t, in my opinion, really bad right now, our trend following models are sitting at about 60% in cash. 

So we’ve already, in the last four weeks, started scaling out of the market and letting the market tell us what to do. So, I don’t think this will be the next crash we live in now. But I think that, undeniably, there will be another big crash. And I have no idea when that is. And that’s why it’s trend following and not trend prediction. Right. But when that time comes, I think that what investors should do is either A, do it themselves or B, find a financial advisory firm, portfolio manager, a combination, of the two that implement some sort of proactive tactical portfolio management, whether they do it in house or even if they hire it out to somebody else and do it.

Cosmos: 

So, Adam, what you’re saying is right: the crash,  a crisis, is on the horizon, but it’s almost a sense of impending doom. But many average Americans would not know how to respond to it. So, for the audience’s sake, and the people listening to this, let’s say there’s a crash in the future, and then now you have the banks and everything; they’re pretty much printing money as usual. And then you see a crash and slowly see inflation. As the printed money is circulating in the economy, how would you advise anybody watching this to safeguard their finances successfully?

Adam: 

That’s a tough question because you just said that the qualifier is that they can’t do it themselves.  They don’t have the education, they don’t have the training. Right. 

So if we take doing it yourself off the table, getting the education and training yourself, or getting the training to, I might have two pieces of advice. The first is if you don’t want to hire somebody specializing in portfolio management. I recommend ensuring you’re in a diversified portfolio and continue adding money. I know people don’t want to hear that. Still, if you’re going to do it yourself and you’re not going to try to be proactive and tactical, my recommendation would be to keep adding money to the portfolio consistently. 

So, if it’s a good day, then we’re paying X. But if it’s a bad day, a bad month, or a bad year, or we’re buying shares of market prices on sale, right? Or on clearance, for that matter. Inevitably, because every market crash is temporary, it doesn’t even feel like it is forever at the time, but eventually, the market comes back. Unless you’re somebody who just doesn’t believe in the United States and you think that we’re going to the Roman Empire and we’re going to go to zero. I don’t think that’s going to happen. If you believe that I wouldn’t even buy gold because nobody will want to eat your gold when it hits the fan, and we’re in the middle of an apocalypse.  They want food and ammunition. 

So I don’t think gold’s even worth it. But I digress. So I think that the problem occurs. So either A, do it yourself, add money to the portfolio, keep buying, keep buying, keep buying in an appropriately adjusted risk-adjusted portfolio that works for you, whether that be aggressive, moderate, growth, balance, conservative. B would hire somebody who specializes in doing a little more, using relative strength and tactical trend following as part of the strategy.

But the tough part is that as long as you’re not retired and working toward retirement, we call that being in your accumulation phase of your life. As long as you’re in your accumulation phase, you can afford, until a certain point, to absorb a market crash because it’s not like you’ll start spending the money anytime soon. Right? Where we start to run into trouble or investors start to run into trouble is if they’re 55, 60, they’re within five years, maybe seven, eight years of retirement, or worse yet, they’re already retired. They’re not adding money to their portfolio. Right. They’re taking money out of their portfolio. 

And if we’re talking about someone that, your question gets even more difficult because the only answer I would have for them is if they can’t do it themselves, they don’t want to do it themselves, train themselves, get the training. It would be unequivocal to look for somebody who is a proactive, tactical portfolio manager, financial advisor, whatever you want to call it. And I would make sure that that person is a fee-only fiduciary. 

And the way you do that is you find the only fiduciaries by going to napa.org. Hence, NAPFA, the National Association of Personal Financial Advisors, NAPFA.org, put your zip code in and hit enter. You’ll see all the true fiduciaries that live near you. Then I would interview a few of them and try to find the ones more proactive with their portfolio management techniques, understanding that you can work with anybody worldwide. Not the world, but anyone in the country. You don’t necessarily have to work with somebody in your backyard. But if you want somebody local, that’s what I would do.

Cosmos: 

So, Adam, when it comes to investing, many people have strong preferences, regardless of the market. Some people prefer to invest in gold and silver, but they’re like, okay, this will protect us in the long term. Others are advocates of bitcoin and cryptocurrencies, as well as real estate. So, from your perspective, when you talk about a diversified portfolio, how, and somebody’s doing it by themselves instead of hiring an expert, how should they go about it? What should their thinking process be when it comes to investing?

Adam: 

Yeah, I mean, there are lots of resources out there online. I hate for this to be my answer, but it’s my best answer. There are resources online that you can go to our website, think of, and click on the free risk assessment at the top of the webpage, libertaswealth.com, and there’s no cost. And you answer 14 questions, and it’ll tell you what your risk profile looks like. 

So, how aggressive or conservative are you from there? Websites Vanguard and Fidelity allow you to look up a diversified portfolio for your risk profile. So, hypothetically, you come out as a moderate growth investor, which works to be somewhere in the ballpark of 70, 30 stocks and bonds. Well, it’s not just stocks and bonds. Right. 

It’s going to be, of that 70% in equities or at-risk assets, we might be looking at something like 40% US equities, 20% international equities, and then 10% commodities, perhaps. And then for the 70 or the 25% in bonds, you’ve got to be careful because when interest rates go up, bonds go down. And when interest rates go down, bonds go up in value. So, US treasuries, 20-year treasuries have decreased by about 50% since COVID and have been decimated. And that’s because interest rates have gone up.

 So you’ve got to be careful not just to throw money in bonds arbitrarily, but I would try to stick to the low end of the yield curve. So, I’d look at short-term bonds, short-term corporates, and short-term government bonds. I wouldn’t be looking at 20- and 30-year treasuries, or 2030-year corporate bonds. But anyway, that’s that. I would look for those resources to come up with a diversified portfolio. That, that’d be the best way to do it.

Cosmos: 

Yeah, that’s what you’re saying, Preacher. You have to look online and at the right sources. But I feel people often have difficulty trusting the right financial advisors or don’t know the good sources. So I guess that becomes an issue,

Adam: 

Yeah, I think that’s a great point. One of the things we’ve discussed for two decades is the number one question we can’t answer: Can we trust you? Right. And that’s why you have Google reviews these days. If you look up our company, we have 61 five-star Google reviews. And it’s not even about the reviews, it’s about what people say. Right. 

What are they saying in those reviews, and how authentic are they? But I think that’s one way to find trust, I think. But again, going back to what I mentioned earlier about NAFTA.org fee-only fiduciaries, if I expand on that briefly, what is a fiduciary? A fee-only fiduciary is somebody who’s let go of all their brokerage Licenses and insurance licenses. For example, in 2013, when we converted our firm to a fee-only firm, I had to eliminate my Series 7, Series 24, and Series 31. I had to eliminate my life, health, and variable annuity licenses. What makes fee-only fiduciaries different from everybody else, and it’s only 11% of the country, by the way, is that we cannot legally charge commissions. 

So the way we charge our fees is very, there are conflicts of interest, aren’t there? So, for instance, we could have our clients invested in 100% large-cap stocks, 100% gold, or 100% invested in the rupee, and we get paid the same. It doesn’t make any bit of difference. Right? So really we’re, we’re, we’re on the incentive. Our incentive is to ensure the client’s money is taken care of, protected, and grows, as best as possible, but as safely as possible.

Cosmos: 

So, Adam, what was the biggest lesson or revelation you had or experienced regarding portfolio management, clients, and everything else in your entire career?

Adam: 

It’d be hard to put a finger on one big lesson because I’d say I learned two huge lessons. The first lesson I learned was what I kind of alluded to earlier, middle of 28, 2008, on the phone with a very, very well-known, famous portfolio manager, who managed a very well-known top 10 mutual fund in the country. And he told me that he thought the market had another 20 to 25% down before it bottomed. However, the mutual fund was invested in stocks at 90- 92%. 

And so I asked him, I was like, if you think this thing’s legs are on the downside, why are we so heavily invested in equities? And an attorney breaks in the line and says, Well, we have an investment policy to adhere to. It’s on page 14, the prospectus, and we must always stay invested at 90% more in stocks. 

So it’s almost there, all. You have to be aware of these things. And when I learned that most of these mutual funds and all ETFs, by the way, have to be invested at a certain percentage or more in stocks, bonds, or whatever they invest in. That moment, I realized I had to do something different here. And so that was a huge moment for me in my career. And that’s where I mentioned it: either sell the company and do something else, or manage money differently. And that’s where we started using technical analysis. That was the first one, and the second one is related. It’s kind of interesting. 

But I realized years later that there are times when trend following doesn’t work.  Covet is a perfect example.  When the market drops 34% in 22 days, you won’t sell toward the top. I mean it’s not happening.  You’re going to sell on the way down the hill, but on the way down the hill, it was so fast that you’re selling, and the market’s down, say 34%. You’re selling down 20% because it went down so fast. The market starts going back up. It went up so fast. Now you’re paying higher prices to get back in. So, trend following is great. It’s amazing during long grinding bear markets that last,  you mentioned earlier, 2007, 8, 9. But during short, quick markets, it doesn’t work so well. 

So the second big eye-opening lesson I learned in my career was between 2008 and 2021. I was implementing our portfolio management with only trend following portfolios, and learned the hard way that it would probably be best to do both. 

So there’s going to be times when it’s best to stay in the market, and there’s going to be times when it’s best to get out of the market. The problem is you don’t know until it’s over, right? Because if it happens fast, you look behind you in the rear view mirror and you’re like, oh, I wish I had stayed in the market. It happened too fast, right? It recovered too fast. So, but you can, there’s no way to know in advance that’s going to happen. 

So, for about four or five years now, we’ve been implementing a dual-pronged approach where we have strategic portfolios that stay invested in those playoff teams.  I mentioned the March Madness analogy. And then we have tactical, ah, portfolio models, trend following models that stay invested in the playoff teams as long as they stay above an absolute line in the sand. But once they cross that line and break down in trend, we go to cash because they’re just, it’s better to just, tornado sirens are going off, better to go to the bunker and wait for a sunnier day.

Cosmos: 

So, Adam, the 2006, 2008 crash, right? Many people had a negative view of Wall Street, just large hedge fund managers and all that stuff. But from your perspective as a smart investor, or somebody in the audience looking at this and wanting to be a very good investor, how should they view the crash, Wall Street, and everything in general?

Adam: 

That’s a tough question. I would take your focus off Wall Street and the news. I would. If you watch any news, put like, I, I have CNBC on my TV all the time, but it’s on mute. You don’t want to listen to what they’re saying. Most of it is just sensationalism. One of the things I’ve been talking to people a lot about today,  this past few weeks, is that not too long ago, we saw this market, the S&P 500, drop 10 percent or more over a very similar period, but no one cared. I mean, a few people cared, but no one cared. And, and the reason why was because we didn’t have Trump as the president and the news didn’t have anything to latch onto and piss everybody off. So now that there’s a reason in these tariffs and, and a way to kind of increase their ratings, now they’re freaking everybody out, and they know if they freak you out, you’ll keep watching. 

So they’re winning and you’re losing. So I think my view of Wall Street would start with the media and realize that every investor is trying to make money.  , every. It doesn’t matter if you’re on the long side of the trade, trying to make money when stocks go up, or if you’re on the short side of this trade, trying to make money when they go down.

Some people have a negative view of short traders and short sellers. I think the way to look at it is that it’s not, you’re not. When you make money or somebody loses money, when you make money, you’re not taking money from somebody else. And when you lose money, you’re not losing money to someone else. That pie just keeps getting bigger as the economy grows. Assuming it’s growing, of course. But I don’t think I would take such an emotional approach, I guess, toward Wall Street. But I would caution people to be very careful about the news they watch. I would avoid political news altogether. I think that their politics has no place in investing at all. I don’t think opinions have any place in investing. The market doesn’t care what we think. Right.

Cosmos: 

But I feel the media, when you mentioned the media, just got me thinking that the media plays a huge role in, like, in the hyping things, just creating fear. And then,  the masses just buy something based on what the media tells them, or sell out. 

And then, as an investor, you have to be aware of what they are doing to get people in and out, but. And you have to see the trend of where people are. Normally, you buy as if you have to do the opposite of what the masses usually do. Right?

Adam: 

Yeah, I mean, that’s a lot. There are some sayings out there,  Baron Rothschild. Right. Buy when there’s blood in the streets, even if it’s your own, is his quote. Be greedy when others are fearful and be fearful when others are greedy. That’s Warren Buffett, I believe. 

So, yeah, all those things are true, but they’re easier said than done. Right. It’s a fun quote. But, when is the blood running, and when is it not? And again, going back to the present day, I know this. We want this to be timeless here, which you and I are discussing. 

But, going to the present day, what is it? April 2, 2025, everything’s being sensationalized. A lot of the time, there’s some bad news out there. When I look at charts and real data, there’s some negative news, there’s some negative evidence. However, most evidence suggests this is a short-term court correction within a long-term bull market. I don’t, I don’t see a crash yet. And that could change in a month or two, but I don’t see that now.

Cosmos:

 So, Adam, one of the things that I’m curious about is I’ve asked other guests about this is like, what would, as somebody that’s been in this space for a lot of years and like, with the rise of crypto and a lot of people talk about investing in crypto, what is your opinion about this new, currency? People are just spending a lot of their money investing in these new coins and all of that stuff. And is it here to stay?

Adam: 

Yeah, Bitcoin and probably Ethereum are here to stay. I think, in fact, traditionally speaking, for years and years and years and years, for decades, the traditional asset classes are US stocks, international stocks, bonds, so fixed income currencies, commodities, and cash—six asset classes. I would argue that digital currencies are the seventh asset class. 

And it’s new and it’s here to stay. I think that to invest. This is a very, very strong opinion. To invest in cryptocurrencies, but even bitcoin being the most stable these days, I think you have to, you don’t have to. I gotta be careful what I say here.  I would not invest in digital assets without some trend-following component attached to it because the volatility can swing so wide that you could outperform the stock market by 40, 50, 60, 70% or more in a year. Yeah, you could, but then you could lose 60 in three months. Right. 

So I think it’s important, yes, it’s here to stay. I also think the volatility will get lower as time goes on. It already has. And I think that, yeah, I think it’s here to stay.

Cosmos: 

Yeah, I mean, it’s interesting how,  in this century, there have been so many technological changes, including cryptocurrency, which has changed along with AI, and social media, which has changed how we look at everything, including business. The way business was done in the 20th century and the way it’s done now are completely different because we have the Internet. We have social media, and marketing has just been revolutionized.

Adam: 

Yeah, agree.

Cosmos: 

So, Adam, from your perspective, if let’s say,  Americans, want to attain financial freedom, right,  true financial freedom, and they want to realize that identity, how should they go about doing so? Should they prioritize starting a business and learning from the Internet, or should they do it somewhere else? Somewhere else?

Adam: 

I think it isn’t easy to start a business and succeed. So I would hesitate to make the answer to your question: Start a business now if you’re motivated, have the right personality type, and have resilience and a work ethic. You have the wherewithal to understand that you don’t know it all. And you’re going to have to hire others to help you. You won’t have to pay full-time employees, whether virtual assistants or people. You have the money to make your way to be the most successful and live the true American dream without a doubt, starting a business. I mean, without a doubt. The problem is, again, I can’t reiterate more. It isn’t easy, and most people don’t have the personality type. 

So I would say to the masses that if you can’t start a business, don’t want to start a business, aren’t willing to take the risk and worry you don’t have the tenacity to do it and be successful, then I think what you should focus first on doing is saving and putting the whole pay yourself first thing.  , saving for yourself. And, to use a rule of thumb, save roughly 14 to 16% of your income. Ah, primarily if you have a company-sponsored 401 (k), 457, or 403b plan. So, a pre-tax tax-deductible retirement plan through your company. And that’s including your match. 

So if your match is 4% and you put away 11%, that’s 15. Right. So that would be the first thing I would do. I would also caution that if you talk to a financial advisor, they will tell you to give them money instead and put money in an IRA, a Roth IRA, or a brokerage account before you’ve done the tax savings side of the coin. I would caution the advice. I would I would question the advice. I should say so. So, once you- I mean the goal- I think everybody’s goal, eventually, especially if you’re successful as an employee and an executive, doesn’t matter what your job is. 

Still, a working professional will say that it should be to max out your 401 (k) plan. If you can max it out with that match, you’re doing well for yourself. But get a financial plan. That will be the second thing I would recommend. Honestly, the first thing I’d recommend is getting a financial plan. But get a financial plan to know exactly what you need to save, where, and how, so you can make work optional when you can quit working. 

So when you start implementing that plan and you’re putting Money in your 401k and you’ve got money, say, let’s just say going into a Roth IRA, you’ve got the kids, college paid for, let’s just say a relatively young age. Now, any money you spend on vacations or cars is guilt-free. You have no guilt spending that money because you’ve planned to make sure you’ve taken care of your future. So, that would probably be the best advice I could give. 

And then just work hard, right? Work hard. Resilience. Even if. Even if you’re not a business owner, act one. Act, you have the desired job, work your way up, and get paid.

Cosmos: 

So, Adam, I completely agree where, you, starting a business might not be for everyone, but if you look at today’s job market,  , like, it’s not the 1950s where, like, you had a stable job and, you had, like, you could be in the same company for a lot of years and then they would take care of you. Like, today we live in a very cutthroat society where you could lose your job anytime and for any reason. And the companies do not care about you as much as they did, half a century ago. 

So from that perspective, I feel you have to do something in today’s world to have financial security, at least in the long term. If you wait until you reach 65 and then retire, you might not have enough money.

Adam: 

Possible. Yeah, yeah, it’s possible. The advice is multifaceted if we’re talking to business owners specifically or potential business owners. It’s finding mentors and seeking them out. It’s get consultants, pay them, hire them, get help, read books, listen to podcasts, and educate yourself. Instead of watching a TV series, listen to a podcast. Instead of scrolling through your phone on social media and wasting your time and life away, listen to a book and educate yourself, and get smart. And then, hire people. I strongly believe in Dan Sullivan’s who, not how, if you’ve read that book. I strongly believe in hiring those who do not know how to do something.

 So I’d rather have an expert either doing something for me and my company than I would try to figure it out myself, any day of the week. And so, I think those are the things you probably need to do. And then so that it’s the E. Myth, right. The e Myth says there’s the entrepreneur, the technical worker, and the manager. And. And any one person can only be two of those things. So, for instance, I am an entrepreneur and technical worker. 

So I’m good at what I do, and I’m good at growing the company. But I’m an awful manager. I’m terrible. I want people to leave me alone. So I’m not very good at disciplining. I’m not very good at bringing up the bad things regarding conflict. And then I. I fester on things, then wait until it’s too late and blow up.

 So I have somebody else manage people, which is way better for me than trying to manage them myself. And being aware of that and letting them know regularly, hey, I’m a shitty manager. Just reminding you, so be easy on me.

Cosmos: 

Adam, what you just said is so profound because managing people in a business, especially employees, and the different aspects of it, is easier said than done. It’s one of the hardest things to do because you have to have this fine balance where you cannot be too nice to, but you cannot be too tough. And it’s just that way, that delicate balance of, like, how to go about doing it. It’s pretty. It’s a very. It’s almost an art, if you. If you’d ask me.

Adam: 

Yeah, I agree with you. Yeah, it’s. It’s. It is, in my opinion, the hardest thing to do. But there are e. Myth, readers out there who are, like, I’m the technical word or the manager, and that’s what I’m best at. And they just kick ass at managing. And I just. I can’t even fathom how their brain works, but that’s just, we all have our strengths and weaknesses.

Cosmos: 

Yeah, for sure.

And, Adam, can you tell me, an audience, a little bit more about your company, Libertas, and how you? How did you start? What was the premise of how it started, and what was it about?

Adam: 

Sure, yeah. Libertas started primarily because I was working for a national brokerage firm, and I got tired of being limited to my investments. I had access to. I was limited as to the advice I was allowed to give. I was limited in the education I could provide, whether videos or articles.  There’s the compliance involved because our industry has so many bad apples.  They had. The compliance has to be tight. 

So I started Libertas on November 4th of 2004 because I just wanted to get to the top of the mountain and tell everybody that we’re an ethical firm legally. First of all, all. And second of all, I love writing, recording videos, podcasts, and educating. I strongly believe in giving all the advice away for free, understanding that roughly 10% of the people out there will take all that advice and do it themselves. 

And I’m not going to make any money, but 90% of those people will take the advice and education and feel empowered to make those decisions through me and my company. So I’d rather just give it all away. So that’s how Libertas got started. And I’ve got two other companies. The second is Elevate and Exit. Elevate and exit. Elevateexit.com is a business, transition, and exit planning firm where I help companies grow and sell. 

So our target client is somebody who’s within three years of selling. The goal is to increase their company’s absolute value before they sell and the relative value, so they’re multiple. And then I have a third company that’s called Adrenaline Advisor Consulting. It’s AdrenalinAdvisor.com, specifically for financial advisors looking for where I’m helping them grow their practices and build what I’ve essentially built here at Libertas.

Cosmos: 

Wow, that’s amazing, Adam. Like, the fact that you’re building, you build three companies and everything. Like, it’s for people, a lot of people. Building one company is a lot of work, but you have the mindset to do three. And, it’s pretty, it’s pretty impressive.

Adam: 

Thank you. I think it’s just how I’m wired. I was just having lunch with somebody before this podcast, telling him what’s happening now and updating him on everything. There’s technically four companies, but I was updating him on them, and he goes, he goes, man, he’s like. I’ve realized I will once I get things to where they’re working. Again, who not how. Right. 

I implement and delegate, where I’m spending less money on the things that require my specific expertise, and letting other people become wealthy and successful as a result of what I’ve built. But I get bored. 

So I’m building things; I think that’s just something wired in me my whole life. I just built it once. I face the challenge of building something. Once it’s built and the processes and systems are in place, I want to move on to something else.

Cosmos: 

So, Adam, what you mentioned about delegation is so relevant because a lot of business owners, like, they don’t want to delegate because they’re like, they’re afraid of trusting somebody, and like, it’s one of those factors, where, like, you have to trust somebody to a certain extent, and to dele. And a lot of business owners find that pretty difficult.

Adam: 

Most business owners find that very difficult. They say things like, well, I could. It’d be easier to do it myself is one thing I hear all the time. Another thing I hear is, well, if I have them do it, what if they make mistakes? And my answer to that is they’re going to. You could expect them to make mistakes. We have a big sign on our fridge at the office that says there are no mistakes, only lessons. 

And you have. If you want to grow a company, you have to trust people and understand they will make mistakes. But as part of teaching them, you have to teach them to own those mistakes. And whether it’s answering to you, the client, or both, they must learn how to own that, make it better, learn from it, and move on. 

One of the best ways to train people is to take more time upfront to train them and then let go. However, the exponential compounding effect of the time that you get back by taking that extra time to train them is way more than 3 to 1. It’s, it’s 10 to 1. @ the end of the day, what it earns you back, whether that’s freedom you want, whether it’s more time to do something else, make more money, whatever the case is. 

But the best way to train them these days with technology is to record it, do the task you’re teaching them, record your screen, talking about it, going through it, put it on your server, or wherever you keep your files on the, in the cloud and then let them watch you do it. Then, they can refer back to that video and use it as their training if they have questions, and they shouldn’t get it wrong. And it lives there forever.

So if they’re not here, somebody else can do it. If they’re out on vacation, somebody else can do it. You have to fire them, or they. They move on to another company. You’ve already done the video, so now you can tell me. Watch the video.

Cosmos: 

No, I mean, that’s, that’s very good. And what do you mean by there’s no mistakes, only lessons is such a thing? It’s a mindset hack that if people truly adopt, they can. They can succeed in life because most people are afraid of failure. But if you realize that these are not failures, just lessons, stepping stones towards success, they completely change everything. More people will be successful due to just that one thing.

Adam: 

Yeah, there are a couple of quotes. The first one is, if no, then not yet, and if never, who’s next? That’s the first one. The second is more like growing a business and dealing with rejection. But the other one was one of my early mentors, probably in 2011, so maybe not early mentors. His name’s Tommy Dorsey. He owned, he started, I should say, Dorsey, Wright and Associates. He sold it in 20. I think it was 2015. He sold it to NASDAQ for $240 million. And early on, when I first met him and he was mentoring me, he told me that it was just in general conversation, he said, You have to learn to fail, which I’d already done plenty of times. But he’s like, not only do you have to learn to fail, but you have to learn to fail fast. 

So it’s failing fast, so move on. And I remember iPods back when you had to put the music on your iPod. I had my iPod engraved, so I’d see it at the gym. It said, Fail fast and move on. So I think. I think failure is something that if you have a. If you want. If you ever want a prayer of being successful in anything, business or not, you have to be willing to fail. And. And that’s what it takes to stick your neck out there and take some risks, be at the edge, and be innovative.

Cosmos: 

No, totally. Adam. And Adam, can you tell me, the audience, how they can connect with you? And get to know more about everything that you do. And  Libertas. And if somebody wanted financial advice, how would you do that?

Adam:

Sure. You can connect with me on LinkedIn. That’s probably a really easy way to find me. So, just look me up. Adam. The last name is K, and the double O.S. is Sam. Libertas. Wealth.com is easy. If you want a second opinion on your financial plan, portfolio, or both, just go to libertaswealth.com. There’s a little but. You can click buttons everywhere to see if we’re a good fit, say if I’m right for you, or something else. It says, so click on that, and answer a few questions in a survey. It’ll come to us. We’ll set up an intro call to get to know you better and answer any questions. If you’re a business owner looking to sell in the next three to five years, elevate and exit.com. And then last, if you’re a financial advisor looking to increase the growth of your practice, if you’re trying to get out of being stuck. I don’t know, you’re kind of burnt out on the business and need to be reinvigorated. You’re looking for proven processes for prospecting and growing your company. Thank you so much, Adam, at adrenalineadvisor.com, for sharing that.

Cosmos: 

And thank you so much for taking the time to come to this podcast and share your invaluable wisdom, because we all need to know how to invest properly, how to do business, and how to have the right mindset. And I hope that you’d come back to this podcast at a later time.

Adam:

No. Well, if that’s an invitation, I’d love to, but Cosmos, I really appreciate you even inviting me in the first place, so thanks so much for having me.

Cosmos: 

No, thank you, Adam. And I want to conclude this episode by letting my fellow extraordinary Americans know that, hey, look, there’s an extraordinary within every one of us. We must awaken it and unleash it. Until next time. Bye for now.