Finding Financial Freedom With Jamie Hopkins

Jamie Hopkins

Jamie Hopkins is the Managing Partner of Wealth Solutions for Carson Group and is a Finance Professor of Practice at Creighton University’s Heider College of Business. He is the author of Rewirement: Rewiring The Way You Think About Retirement and Find Your Freedom: Financial Planning for a Life on Purpose. Jamie is a nationally recognized writer and researcher and has been published in dozens of financial, educational, and legal journals. He’s developed educational materials for The American College’s CFP^®, CLU, ChFC^®, and RICP programs as well as being a regular contributor to Forbes. He has been featured on Wall Street Journal podcasts, NPR radio, Fox radio, and is the host of the Framework Podcast.

Here’s a glimpse of what you’ll learn:

Jamie Hopkins talks about continually evolving the life insurance industry to meet client needs
Why mentors can help you build the structure and systems for success
Being an advocate for client needs to discover the best solutions
Jamie explains niche marketing and why it might not be for everyone
Jamie discusses retirement planning and how bias can impact the process
How can you enhance credibility within your field by gathering with other agents?
Jamie shares some goals on making retirement more secure

In this episode…

How can you earn your clients’ trust after it’s been broken by a Ponzi scheme? When common misconceptions and bias get in the way, is it possible to show people actionable solutions to their financial needs?

While niche marketing may not be for everyone, Jamie Hopkins takes a constructive approach to client relationships. By narrowing down the pain point of the client and showcasing upfront solutions, your client can feel content and happier when presented with a compensation model. As an agent, preparing clients for their financial future shouldn’t be stressful. Through education and preparation, you can be better equipped to provide the best solution to their financial needs. Jamie is helping to monetize and reshape how to plan for retirement. Listen to this episode for all of the details.

In this episode of Advisor Today, Chris Gandy sits down with Jamie Hopkins, Managing Partner of Wealth Solutions at Carson Group, to discuss retirement planning in a crowded industry. Jamie talks about evolving to meet client needs, being an advocate for retirement planning, and increasing your footprint within the industry through credibility.

Resources mentioned in this episode:

Sponsor for this episode...

This episode is brought to you by the National Association of Insurance and Financial Advisors, or NAIFA, the #1 association for producers in financial services.

At NAIFA, we enhance professional skills, promote ethical conduct, and advocate for legislative and regulatory environments.

By joining NAIFA, you gain access to a partnership that elevates your performance while providing greater purpose to your professional work. NAIFA members are happier, make more money, and stay in the business longer.

Get in touch with NAIFA and learn more about how to join NAIFA by visiting NAIFA.org.

Episode Transcript

Intro 0:02

Welcome to NAIFA's Advisor Today podcast series, where we focus on how financial advisors work, live and give to their local communities and our greater financial services industry. Now, let's get started with the show.

Chris Gandy 0:21

Hi, this is Chris Gandy, one of your hosts for Advisor Today's podcast here where we feature some of the top leaders in the insurance and financial services industry. Our guest today, Jamie Hopkins, we're going to get a chance to spend a little bit of time with him. We're at the National Leadership Conference here in Washington DC, where we will be here to focus our time, energy and effort on trying to impact the laws that impact Main Street America. As your national trustee, our co host is not here today joining me. But she's here in spirit, Suzanne Carawan. She's actually participated in a national leadership conference. And she's she's very intrical, to making sure that that go off goes off at a very, very, very smooth pace. So with that being said, I'll represent her an AI today. Today, we don't have a sponsor, our sponsor will be the National Association of Insurance and Financial Advisors. And next year, we hope to see you here at the National Leadership Conference in Washington DC with no further ado, I'm honored to have one of the wonderful guests, also a trustee as a trustee, similar to myself, who serves NAIFA and represents everyone out there in the marketplace. So we get a chance to interview Jamie Hopkins. And this is a long time coming, Jamie. Jamie joined the board last year as an advocate and now we get a chance to have a conversation with Jamie get to know Jamie a little bit get to know one of the reasons what are some of the reasons why he joined NAIFA and continues to add value. And those who don't know Jamie, Jamie is it has been a staple in the financial services industry and in the insurance industry and is here to help us learn a little bit about where the industry is going. How to find freedom and some of the some of the aspects of of what's happening in your world and, and kinda as you kind of make your way through NAIFA What do you see and observing and things that you would look to or advice you would give people that have to go through names. So with that being said, we're going to have to have a little bit of fun today. So Jamie, welcome. How are you doing? I'm doing

Jamie Hopkins 2:30

awful, man. Just awful. You know why I thought I was gonna get the better the two co hosts on the show. And yeah, Suzanne's actually got to make sure everything runs out there. And so but now it's amazing to be here. I'd love I love DC is a beautiful place that I grew up, you know, just north of here and National Leadership Conference been great so far, as you said, like, what do you get the takeaways of it. But I mean, being involved in the political side, the advocacy sides, what NAIFA does better than anybody else out there. And it's huge. Like, I know, people don't love politics a lot of times, but it's so important, as you mentioned going in like, these are the laws that shape our businesses, and then how we get to serve people. You know, I started off in political consulting. And you know, it's a tough area, but it's so important. It drives the country. It drives the world as a huge part of what we do here at NAIFA.

Chris Gandy 3:15

Yeah, exactly. So, Jamie, we'd like to take a journey. So let's, let's rewind the tape route. Let's rewind the tape backwards. And, Jamie, let's talk a little bit about how did you start in the industry? I mean, how did you get your feet wet? What are you? Where did you start and tell us a little bit about your journey?

Jamie Hopkins 3:31

Yeah, well rewind it way back. My journey starts pretty early say, one of the things I always like to tell people is like, you've got to find that why that makes you cry. And mean, you don't always have to cry. But you know, you got to have that, that meaning behind what you do. And, you know, I don't know that I started it with that meaning, but I figured it out. And so my story really starts when my dad passed away when I was eight years old. And he did roofing and gutters and construction is up on a roof. And you know, it started to rain. We lived in Baltimore, and then you know, temperatures dropped and aluminum ladders freeze over faster than roof does. So he's coming down that after the basically a full day finished up the job slipped and fell and was gone. And so that left my mom, my sister and I write without a dad and neither one of my parents graduated college and you know, they ran this company together. Well, they're the exact people that need help from an insurance or financial advisor, but they never got that help. Right and even today is a little bit of a joke but it's a serious one too is like I've never run into anyone that says you know I specialize my niche is construction workers. I've still never heard that right? Like, maybe there is one advisor but they I still haven't run into them. People like that don't get advice, you know that I know that and even the basic thing of having car insurance there would have changed my parents, you know, my mom's life, my life and so she struggled through all those things. And after, you know, really the breadwinner passed away. So that's like the origin story, right? So somewhere during all that trauma The future of retirement person was born. Right. That's the backstory, right? You can do a flashback and how to get into the industry well, actually wanted to be in private equity. And that was my first job at a law school. So I went to Davidson for undergrad grade school and Steph Curry's just lighting it up everywhere. I went to Villanova for law school, and I wanted to go to private equity, very first job out, I went to Evans capital in Philadelphia, did Chemical Company acquisitions and got to work on some deal structure legal documents stuff for a while. And so that's in our world, but it's not our world, right? That's a different area of finance. And then eventually after that, I went and clerked in the appellate division. And this was kind of some formative stuff happening there. One, I got to work on some ERISA pension cases. So I started getting really into the laws around retirement plans, gaining that knowledge, like further than just studying at a law school, but really spending time with the intricacies of these lawsuits. And then I also worked on one of Bernie Madoff cases. So that's a big trigger moment in life too well, and so you actually saw the opposite of what we wanted to see you think about my origin story. And this eight year old losing his parents and wishing there was an advisor there to be helped than the first real advisor I ever run into from like a business world stance ends up being Bernie Madoff.

Chris Gandy 6:14

Wow, wow. Yeah, one of the one of the largest Ponzi schemes or one of the largest fraud schemes in the world.

Jamie Hopkins 6:21

Yeah. Right. And so you look at that. And you say, Well, why don't people like my mom trust? financial professionals get help? Well, it's the Bernie Madoff, so the world so the fact that we still know Ponzi his name, right? That's the guy's name. We know his name, right? There's a lot of great Cluj. Now UTCs, we never we never learn their name. Right. And they helped a lot of people. Yeah. And so you see, as our industry is not trusted, and it came to this whole thing, like, wow, like, how did this happen, and this is total abuse of trust. And in this profession, like trust is so key to what we do, though, to what I used to teach life insurance law, I said, it's almost a fundamentally different transaction than any other transaction you'll have in your life. Because if you go you go buy a book, you got iPhone, you go to Chick fil A, and buy a sandwich, you can walk back in and be like, hey, my sandwiches wrong, like give me a sandwich. Right? At Chick fil A, I'd be like, Absolutely, sir. Thank you so much. Here's a new sandwich, right? And like the iPhone, same thing, like they'll send you a new one if it's broken. But if your life insurance, or your plan breaks, when you die, you can't walk back in there and say, Hey, I need to know, hey, this didn't go as I thought it was gonna go. Right. So we have to trust that both like the companies, the strategies, and the people will actually follow through with it. So I know that's a lot. And then, you know, into my own estate planning firm, I have my own consulting firm, I spent seven years at American college building out the our ICP, and then I've been with Carson Group now for a little over four years, I really head up everything on the wealth solution side. But even though it's not out yet, you know, my job is going to probably continuously evolve. I always tell people, I don't think I've been in the same role here for nine months at any point. So I'm right, get again, pretty close to that other nine month periods. I'll probably be shifting a little bit in the future again, sir.

Chris Gandy 8:04

Sure. So So So Jamie, what an impactful story, right, and you tell the story of your father. And what it seeded in you was, was that you never wanted that to happen to someone else. And that's a powerful story. And I think if people are out there who don't have a powerful story, you can leverage a financial professionals like Jamie's, because it can happen to you, it can happen to anyone, it can happen to your clients, and it's our responsibility to serve those people who don't have a voice, like your dad coming down the ladder, who didn't have a voice to say, let me do this to protect my family. So so that starts you out, right? Any mentors along the way that you say, Man, without this person, you know, I'm not sure why we you know, any mentors that you would say, kind of have helped you along the

Jamie Hopkins 8:52

way, there's probably too many to count. So we want to really rewind it back. I've had a lot of great coaches, right. Like, I played a lot of sports to not not the same level as you, you know, and I couldn't get them off the ground as high. But you know, I hopped on a diving board. I got pretty nervous. Okay, yeah. But you know, I swam and Bob Bowman, and that probably had three really great Swimming Coaches. And they weren't necessarily mentors at that level in the sense of your whole life, like how you approach things, the discipline and building structure and systems so you could be successful. Like that was super important. Probably a couple of my mentors I had after actually, Jimmy hen was a great mentor. 1847 Penn mutual guy runs that division. Dude, he was probably the very first person I asked like, Hey, will you mentor me? Sure, right. Up until that point, it's kind of the accidental ones. Judge Murray law hats was fantastic. Also, like without her, that's how I met my wife and so three kids and wife wouldn't be there without her. And she was a great mentor in the sense of like, kind of getting my personal life together so I could be more effective as you know. somebody's out like a whole person, right like that you can't just do work in, you can't just be at home, like, you got to find that balance across everything. And so those were all really big mentors. And then Dave Attell. And American college I spent seven years with and it was a great mentor, he was an Olympic fencer. And you know, probably, I don't know, he's probably educated as many people in financial services as anyone who's ever been alive. So I think he spent about 45 years at American college, you run those numbers out. So that's a lot of people.

Chris Gandy 10:30

You know, Jamie, I've always said that, you know, your story, just getting to know you over the over the last year, that your story is pretty interesting, because the way in which you impact Financial Services is a little bit different, right? So so you didn't grow up, like many of us are many people that typically listen to a podcast, with the idea of as a career agent and an insurance shop, and right. And so NAIFA, I know has a very heavy insurance. Following Yeah, right. And so with that being said, How did you come to be so connected to NAIFA, and then so connected, that you're actually sitting in a trustees position to represent financial freedom, everybody? So tell us a little bit about how you you married what you were doing? Because you said private equity, those those evidences are different, a different part of the balance sheet. Right? How did you marry those things with the idea of partnering with the insurance quote unquote? Advocate? Yeah. So like,

Jamie Hopkins 11:38

none of it's a super clean as you might want to be right? It's not like, you know, I woke up one to say, and I looked out and I saw CLU sign the lctcs sign that said, like, want to go work with NAIFA. Right, like, right. There. But no, what happened was, you know, there was a, let's say, there was a lot of industry organizations that got a long well with American college when I was there. So you know, I think George Nichols is here CEO and president too strong historical connection at the time, actually, NAIFA, American college had a business arrangement to on the education side. So I did actually teach a little bit in that program, I'll go out and talk to NAIFA. A lot of the members also have other designations. So I kind of learned from the grassroots up, like, literally, it's the advisors and agents that I got to meet with them, like, wow, they're doing really important stuff. And then what I realized at some point, you know, my, my brief political background was that there's a huge like, gaping hole out there on the advocacy side, for a lot of the stuff like in American college, we didn't do any of that, right. We're education, we didn't do that. So I started paying attention more and more to what NAIFA was doing there, I would come down here to some of the hill meetings. And like, I love that. So that's where I started getting involved there. And then part of it, right, we talked about it in the name like we're NAIFA supposed to represent, right, like Main Street all across the country, all these individuals and clients, including the financial advisor clients, not just insurance clients, and not just product clients, but planning clients. And so one of the assets, you know, when the, you know, the new president came in, was like, Hey, let's bring in some of that outside of just insurance. But I kind of represent now, today an interesting spot. When I joined Carson, somebody actually made this comment. They said, Oh, the annuity guy, which is really funny, because if you ask this world, they're like, oh, you know, the raa guy. Right? Part of it is I didn't come into this industry and profession selling product, I was an inner producer role, right? I was in a different aspect of it. And the good thing about that, for me was I didn't come in with a lot of the built in biases that you develop, once you're told like, Hey, this is the best product go seller wherever you sit like mortgage wise investment, ETFs mutual funds versus you know, long term care whole life, it like I didn't care, like I was like, hey, they're all just products. And so I took this more like, there are solutions, and we need to figure out which ones then the client needs. Right. And so I think that was super helpful for me, right. I've been an advocate for reverse mortgages, annuities, life insurance, I'm an advocate for some of the ETF technology that's been developed. And yeah, I think I said it at risk alized conference, like, like, I love products, and I also don't care about them at all. Like I don't care what the robotics called, like the new, you know, the universal Double Life extra special fees on top, you don't care what that is

Chris Gandy 14:26

long term care. Right. See, right. Critical Care, right? Yeah. What what? So, so So, so you're able to see things which is really interesting, you're able to see things from a from a planning perspective, right? And then you find the products either fit the solution or they don't, right. And because you didn't come in with a bias, you can see the positives and negatives to different products. Right. And so I think we are unfortunately we are bias because we came in learning all the wonderful things about insurance and didn't learn a lot about these other products because it might not have been in the financial best interest of the companies in which we've represented good, bad or indifferent. Right? So, so now that we look at the world, and it's it's different now, right? We have, we have career advisors, we've got broker, independent brokers, we've got financial planners, we've got fee only advisors, we've got, we've got some we got a series that we have now we have bank coordinated relationships. So we got so how do we set ourselves apart? You know, and how do you set yourself apart amongst all the chaos of everybody's doing? Everybody's into got their hand in the financial industry? From your perspective? What What would you say? What advice would you give a young advisor out there? Who came into the industry and said, Look how crowded it is? How do I how do I create a name a brand for myself? That's unique in approach, and I can approach it agnostically sure to speak. Yeah. Going forward, because that that is kind of the wave going forward?

Jamie Hopkins 16:02

Yeah, man, you put a lot into that, that that question had like 13 different layers and

Chris Gandy 16:08

layers to this

Jamie Hopkins 16:09

onion or a cake. Starting to peel back. So one of the first ones like, I don't want it to come across, like I got tons of biases, they just weren't product biases, but lots of them. And, you know, I do think, though, that attorneys make really good. You know, I don't know if I'd say financial planners, maybe it's probably the better one, but like, they make really good planners, because they're they're taught right how to dissect things and challenge things. And so I think that, like me being an attorney coming in was beneficial. Now, if somebody starting out today, we'll start with the brand question. So you are like this to Chris, which is like we both believe in brand and marketing and the growth that can come along with that, right? NAIFA believes in that. Now to that you have to promote your brand, you got to promote the brand of the people around you. Now, what I always told people, if you come in, I'd say, Today I modified a little bit, I'll say find your voice. And so that might be podcasts, it might be video, it might be Instagram, Tik Tok, Twitter, whichever medium you decided is your place. Find your voice, I used to tell everybody to write. And I still do, but with more of a hesitation than before. A lot of them medium deliveries are still the old, I think video is very strong today, I still think it's important to write down your thoughts, because you're usually a much better speaker once you've written down, right and actually forced yourself to put that into a condensed format. And you know, a lot of the best speakers out there, you know, they've written books, and then they're just kind of repeating what they've written down. But they've narrowed it in. So I tell everybody to write and find their voice. The next part is you don't have to have it all figured out. When you start, like you don't have it all figured out. I didn't. And it's okay to give yourself that permission that like, look like you might if you're running your own firm, you might change pricing 19 times. That's okay. Right. Like you have to get it right the first time. Then the other part, though, is like, how are you going to grow like this in the world today. And I think that we have to grow in different ways. Like we can't just call our family and friends and ask them to become our clients and sell them insurance or manage their assets. So I don't I don't totally believe in like, well, I guess I go back and forth. I don't know if niche marketing is for everybody. And niche planning is for everybody. For some people, it works really well. So one strategy is like, I want to work with doctors, or I want to work with dentists or I want to work with young professionals. And you can pick an area and that can get very narrow and you can deliver. I also think it's totally fine in this world to be like, hey, like, I'll generally work with people who need help with planning. It's like a restaurant, right? Like, I don't say like I only want doctors come into my restaurant. Like if I do really good food, anybody can come eat. Or if I do really good planning. Anybody can come eat, right? And so it depends on what you're delivering. Now, if you're delivering executive benefits. And that's what you focus on like, yeah, not everybody's a fit for you, like my dad wasn't going to be a fit for you when that's okay. But I think deciding that is important. And then do you want to serve the lifecycle of the client or the client in a single moment in time? And I'll be honest, not a lot of advisors when I ask them that are super clear on the server. But if you think from a business perspective, like most other businesses try to answer that question. Right, right. And I think a lot of advisors don't answer it. And so you get a little bit murky when you pitch your services. And it makes it harder for people to say yes, because they don't know exactly what the relationship

Chris Gandy 19:26

was. Right. Right. So so. So what I believe I heard you say is, niches aren't forever necessarily for everybody. It may be for some people. Yeah. But the idea that if you can, the more granular you can get with your approach to the marketplace is the more easier it is for people to say yes. So there's some work there's some homework for for everyone out there is to ask yourself that question. Jamie, would you give it to us one more time the question you asked to advisors is what Yeah, And then they need to spend some time with that. Right?

Jamie Hopkins 20:02

Yeah. So the question you ask is like, do you want to serve a client across their whole life? So the lifecycle the client? Or do you want to solve a problem at a single point in time? Right? Those are two very different relationships, right? Like, if a consultant comes to you, they're usually solving one problem, and then they're gone. Right? Like, that's it? That's the business model. It is not, hey, every six months, you come back to me, right? There's a different relationship. But a lot of advisors do both. But they don't think about in those terms, and a lot of it's, you know, point of sale sell, but how are you? Are you going to service them over the life cycle, or if you really treat that as a sale of a product, then be very clear about that. And I think if you actually look at data, there's this survey that was done called the value of advice. And in that though, clients are happier when they know the difference upfront both how somebody is compensated and the relationship. So it's not just the like, oh, it's some esoteric conversation, no, the data actually backs up that clients are happier in those situations, and regardless of which situation they ended up in. So the argument is not that one is better than the other. And the same thing with a lot of compensation models, clients don't care about it as much as long as they know what it is up front. And as long as they know that they become happier, they become more likely to refer somebody else to you for just a selfish business growth aspect. The clearer you can be up front, the more the clients going to enjoy it, and the more you're going to get referrals.

Chris Gandy 21:21

So so so there's a lot of layers to it. Yeah. Tune in. Jamie has his own podcast. He's he's out there. Google, JPMorgan framework is the name of it. Google, Jamie Hopkins, he's got a ton of good stuff. fellow NAIFA member, we're gonna get into kind of, you know, Jamie's taken a different journey. One of the things he's hit, you know, he's on his second book. And we want to talk a little bit about that. We got it here, "Finding Your Freedom". But we want to talk a little bit about his first book that led him to writing his second book. Jamie also was behind the RSVP at American college. So I asked the question, I said, you know, Jamie, what, what designations should I get next? He's like our ICP. And I said, Well, why, you know, and tell me why you said that.

Jamie Hopkins 22:13

So actually, that gets to that granular level, right, like retirement income is one of the key things that most people are looking for in a financial service professional relationship, right? Or they eventually want to know that they're going to be okay in retirement. So to me, I always say like, you know, I wouldn't hire a surgeon to perform surgery on me that didn't go to med school, I wouldn't hire an attorney to represent me in court that didn't go to law school, would you hire somebody to manage your retirement that didn't study it? So to me, yeah, we should study, right. And so that's the key thing for me there. It's like, I'm education. I think advisors need to learn it, too. There are a lot of clients looking for that expertise skill set now. So having those letters also says, hey, look, I've dedicated myself to this. But if you don't work in that space, and don't get it, right, get a CLU or an L ECCF. Like, everybody doesn't have to be in that space you can be in. There's exit planner designations now, like, maybe that's the space you want to be. But that's why I talked about RSVP. It's also built correctly. Like from an educational standpoint, we did a lot of interviews, it wasn't just like, let me let me Jamie tell you how smart I am. And so I'm gonna go over a bunch of stuff. Like we had just fantastic people in there. A bunch of NAIFA, members at Tom Hagen is in the program, Curtis cloak, bunch of people on this show that you've probably seen before.

Chris Gandy 23:30

We call him out where we put them on the Mount Rushmore of financial services, right? If you had to build the bet, you know, the dream team, right? Those are two guys that that name recognition, right. They've done a great job at marketing themselves. They've done a great job as is transcending knowledge to others and making it dialing it back to, you know, no one's as smart as those guys. But they're, they're smart in their own way. And again, everything is borrowed and repurpose. So we're able to repurpose some of the things or at least some of the techniques that they use to be able to work with work with clients, but you didn't say it for that reason. You also told me You said, Well, you know, I actually held that back. Right, that thing.

Jamie Hopkins 24:05

Yeah. And so here's a really interesting thing this summer that occurred to is somebody asked me what my brand was, I said, What's probably like the retirement guy, and I'm a little cards I do on LinkedIn and stuff. But the funny thing about all of that now is like, it's all kind of like, it's all like the secondary stuff. So when you talk about the program, people think about like, oh, I designed content for it. But yeah, like what we did is we built a program up from scratch, we got to compliance approve, we ran the business case for it. I went and sold that thing to I mean, I probably did 200 days on the road the first year that that thing came, I was at every big company out I mean, you know, the the nationwide is a thriving, it's in there, you know, American funds, like basically anybody who is in this industry, we're out on the road trying to get them to adopt it. And so really what I did that those first couple years is we ran a new business, right? We scaled up a new offering, research the program, build all of it, the content delivered it and by the time I left there. I was there for about, I guess six years with the program up and running about seven years total. We have put about 18,000 financial service professionals through the Ric pay in six years. Right. That's basically the totality of NAIFA it'd be every single NAIFA. Member today we're going through a program. Well think about that. Well, that's pretty impressive. Yeah. So that's, it's more than anybody went through any other program like CFP CLU LD TCF, like, we just kind of dwarfed all them in that six year period. And so that was really impressive, right, we scaled up a great program delivered a lot of value. And that's kind of what I do. And then that, that led me to retirement, which was my first book. And the first book was all about retirement income planning and the process and then the behavioral hurdles, we have to shift from that accumulation phase to D accumulation from savings and risk. And, you know, survivor bias all those things and how they impact our planning. And so that was book one. And that did that did better than I thought it was like I went into that saying, I'll probably won't sell a single one of these, right? Like none, but I'm gonna hand them out at conferences when I go and talk. And they'd like people will get my book. Well, I got a bunch of bulk orders through that one. And it turned out like I probably, I probably did, like, make 100 bucks eventually, right? Let you know, I think I sold about 20,000 copies of requirements. It's in the book world, it's actually pretty good. Now,

Chris Gandy 26:20

it's called the requirement. You can get it on Amazon. It's out there. And I told Jamie, if he was coming on our podcast, if you send it to him, he has to at least sign I will sign

Jamie Hopkins 26:29

Yeah, no, I still have a couple sometimes people paying. So this is funny. Like, I guess this probably happens to every author, but I'll get random people that just ping me and be like, Hey, can you send me a copy of your book? And I'm like, you know, like, it does cost me like 10 bucks to print it and six to ship it out to you. So I probably sent 200 out just from people asking. Yeah, and then I wrote the new book here, which you can preorder now or order for November 22. Find your freedom. And one of my big goals, get it onto your time bestseller list. So how it helped me out so I Chris helped me out too. But yeah, so I wrote that one, it went better than I thought I wrote this one. This past year, I published with Harriman house. And coming out, I wrote three textbooks in my life two and two ebooks for Forbes. But this is probably the first one I'd say like, I really put my story until the other ones like you don't put your story into a textbook, like nobody wants to hear about like, when I talk about my dad or my sister being sick, or any of those things. So this is really the first time I've kind of put my story into a planning book. I would also say there aren't very many planning books out there. I asked this question before I wrote it last year. And this is where it came from, which was I said, Hey, like, what's your best? What's your favorite financial service book? And all the answers were the Rich Dad, Poor Dad, how do I invest my money? Right? Millionaire Next Door. They're all investment books, right? Like, they're not planning books. And so I kind of set out to hopefully, break the best plan book that's ever been written today. And then somebody else will write a better one than me. And then somebody's gonna write a better one than that. And then this will be the worst planning book ever written in like 10 years. But it'll be the first best one,

Chris Gandy 28:01

right? Well, they say that someone has to has to be first. Yeah. So if someone has to be first, we're going to hope it's a NAIFA. Member, like Jamie Hopkins. So so get Jamie's book find finding your find your freedom, it'll be out. Let's make him if you can see it. Let's make him the, you know, a world a world renowned author. And let's let's get him on the New York Times bestseller. Jamie, how many how many books does the audience need to order to make that happen? Yeah, if

Jamie Hopkins 28:31

we were to, like 10,000 of these will be in a good sundial. Yeah.

Chris Gandy 28:35

So if everybody orders, at least 50 for distribution for their clients, I mean, think about that, right? If everyone out there orders 50. We can give them to our clients. Yep. Our can we can make them as a part of our sales process when we're working with someone in retirement planning. And we get a chance to do two things. One, we get a chance to help promote the message, a well renowned message. And we know it's it's insurance friendly. So we get a chance to actually promote that. And we get a chance to give our clients something that we can actually teach them through an app. Right. So so so we give them an actual playbook to kind of try to try and a story and a story behind. Yeah.

Jamie Hopkins 29:12

So I'll give you two really cool things about this to the way that we've wrote the book with with Harriman house, which is why we ended up landing on them is the advisors that we have a Carson actually will be able to write the foreword to it. So they'll actually be able to hand this out to their clients with foreword by Chris Gandy and hand it out to their clients. And I think that's going to be super cool. But that's not available yet. For our partners. We want to get it under your time first and then it'll be new your time book and you can hand it out. And the other really cool thing is like that's already started to happen. So fairway which will give us a shout out to one of the NAIFA sponsors and got it usually have a good amount of fairway listeners. I'm guessing out there too. Yeah, great sponsor great partner of NAIFA. They went ahead and bought a whole bunch to hand out to their clients and prospects and asset map who's another sponsor here with us today they did the same thing. So yeah, feel free to do that. And then Tyrone Ross, a great financial advisor out there started out in this space too. His firm just bought a bunch to hand out some of their clients too. So, yeah, it's, it's a good thing. You know, I think if we if we said, Everybody went out and read a financial planning book, like, wouldn't we be pretty happy in the financial services space? I think we're pretty happy, right?

Chris Gandy 30:21

Well, we're gonna go out, you know, Midwest legacy our firm will buy, we'll buy some and make sure we support you and your journey, as you continue to impact NAIFA impact the members and provide provide great value. I know, everybody out there, you know, you know, they, you know, many people I've talked to kind of deem you the kind of the whiz kid kind of a kid, you know, because Jamie, Jamie is Jamie, Jamie is is from a, from an experience perspective, you would think he's 60. Right? But But Jamie, how old are you?

Jamie Hopkins 30:52

I feel like 60 Now we we did a run yesterday. And it hurt man. Yeah, it's, yeah, so I'm 37 now, but I graduated cows when I was 21. So I've got, you know, I now have 16 When I was 16 years, 16 years. So that's the other funny thing. We go to like the young, you know, advisor stuff now. And I'm a decade older than the next verse and there, which is great to say.

Chris Gandy 31:15

You're the old man. The old man. Well, Jamie, thank you for the time is there anything else you want to share with with at the National Leadership Conference that you would like to share about yourself, your book, your journey? And or to NAIFA? Members? Before we get to what I call the speed round speed rounds, got it on. So

Jamie Hopkins 31:39

fun? Well, I'll give three things. I like things in three. So number one is, if you haven't been to national leaders forum, or if you don't come to the Congressional meeting, I'd say come to come to those come to DC get involved. Like it's the I think it's one of the best things you can do in this entire industry, not just nationwide, but like in the whole industry has come down here. I mean, getting to meet with your senators and House reps, that adds credibility your clients and like define the world that you want to live in, don't let it define you. So I think that's one. The energy here is always nice, right like that. That's another part too. I love the talk about the huddle. And you know, taking care of your team, right. Like that was a beautiful thing, right? Like, are you taking care of your team? So I think that's a big message. A lot of people are burnout right now. So when you look around your team, you know, you have a lot of leaders on this, are you taking care of your team today? And you need to do something different to make sure that they're okay. And then the last part is, you know, I'd also you know that we have that the name of the book, find your freedom, but start asking people that question like, What does freedom mean to you? Like I that's Leonard was talking about when he was up on stage here that he's sick, I was talking to Jamie and I kept pushing on him last night. It's like, well, what does freedom mean to you? Well, you know, we had a really cool conversation about that. So I'd love to hear your answer on that. Right? Like, I'm the guest, but everyone my own show, too. So I can answer. Yeah, what does freedom mean to you, Chris?

Chris Gandy 32:59

Oh, no, without having some some deep thought and really putting together words that mean something to me? I would simply say it's the ability to choose. For me, it's the ability to choose and transcend my previous thoughts. So so so the ability to choose for me gives me the opportunity to change things. Yeah. And the ability to to know that my last thought isn't as good as my next thought, I think allows for me to start to really think like this. Yeah, versus think linear, right. And so, I joke all the time, because my staff is always like, Okay, we're good where we are, that said, if we're good, what we are, we've only just began to scratch the surface of our opera job, our opportunity and what we're capable of, you know, the word that I've always heard in sports, and I'll relate it to financial services as a sport, is potential. You hear if someone's not living up to their potential, and it typically they are living up to their potential, they're just not living up to, to to what others Pete other people's expectation is of their potential. Right? And so their ability to be able to our ability to be able to think and be able to really understand where we came from, and what motivates us every day when no one else is watching. I think that allows for us to really put some arms some some someone rolled around that freedom concept. And again, it means something different to everybody, but for me, it means not being poor again, you know, and that's that's my choice. There. Yeah. Or to choice me.

Jamie Hopkins 34:42

Yeah, that's it. That's beautiful. And yeah, that's it. That's the thing is it's different for everybody. And it's, it's an interesting, it's not just like how are you doing? What do you want to be in the future like, it's just the language is different and like, to me, it's similar, like I want to be able to wake up and design my day. That's it. Like that's what that's what it means. I don't have that today. I tell people like I wrote a whole book about finding your freedom, but like, I don't feel free yet. But I know what I'm doing to get there. Right. And I think it's about the journey. And, you know, luckily, I also have Ron Carson around me, he's much more free on the free scale. When we talk like, I'm over here at like three or four, Ron's like Atlanta, he's got a plane, he's flying around, like, you know, he's he started the business in 83 selling insurance out of his dorm room. But he found that freedom now, you know, 30 40 years later,

Chris Gandy 35:27

right? So so so for you, and I, yeah, I don't want to take that long. You know, I don't want to, I don't want to take that. I mean, seriously, like, so show. So the people that are listening to this podcast, that whole idea is that we want to be able to move to mediums and be able to understand that we don't have to, you know, time is nothing more than an element of experience. Right. And so we think, based on the way we were raised that time, is that an integral part of success? Yeah. But if we look up the definition of success, time is not in there. No, it's not in the definition at all. So if we're able to now say, I don't want to take that long. Like I said, I wanted to be the CEO of my firm by the age of 30. And we're like, right, bla bla bla bla, so no one hired me as a CEO. So on my 30th birthday, I created it. Yeah, I literally filed the paperwork for an LLC didn't know what the hell we're going to do. Yeah, right. But I knew that I knew I had a concept in my head of kind of what I wanted to create. And we created a group called Apex Consulting Group, which was basically everything I learned about the business of sports, as a concierge service that I knew my agent didn't have the capability of bringing. That's awesome, right. So I started that great Khans great concept. really brought it out to players. And it really was a good idea. But the idea was simple. I wanted to be able to say I said I was going to do something and I didn't regardless of if I was prepared or ready it. Yeah. Right. And I think that's that's a big part of about finding us, you know, the comment that you made about the book, which is, again, finding your freedom go get it? What is it come

Jamie Hopkins 37:05

out, Jamie? November 22. So, Tuesday this week, right? Yeah. So by the

Chris Gandy 37:10

time you hear this, it will be Yeah, go get you some copies go order it for your clients for Christmas. But you have a word they're finding? Yeah. So that means we're on a journey. And is because that that journey is continuous. And

Jamie Hopkins 37:24

for the rest of your life. And I've had some really interesting conversation about that, like, does anybody actually get to a 10? Are you always at a nine when you're free striving for something more? Right. And like, that's a really interesting concept. The other thing is that so I was at the Schwab IMPACT Conference, and we had that up there. And somebody came by and said, Oh, so you're selling freedom? They said, No, it's even better. We're gonna help you find it. Yeah. Yeah. And they were like, That's pretty.

Chris Gandy 37:50

You can't, you can't just say, Well, wait. I thought I was telling me that you would just hit me with a slider. Yeah. Nice. It's good.

Jamie Hopkins 37:59

But yeah, like, you know, I've got some huge goals, you know, in my world, and some of them I have to redesign. Like I said, at one point, like, I want to help make retirement more secure for a million Americans. And like, when I tell people that they're like, wow, like, that's crazy. Like, it's a big goal. And I was like, Yeah, I think I hit that was 34 years old. Right? 34. Okay. So like, I need to come up with a bigger goal. And, you know, I don't think it's just upping the number. But that's all I've done so far. Right now, like 100 million. And like, that's, that's the next one. Right? But, you know, and like, I've always listed that like, I want to be I had it listed. I want to be a CEO by 40. So, you know, yes, I'm 37. So if anyone's listening, you know, and they call Ron and say, Hey, we want you Amy, you know, but Ron knows that too. I talked about it a lot with him. And like, that's one of my goals, right? Like, I want to run something. That title is actually not as important to me. But like, I know, I want to run it like top to bottom right. And I have my own consulting and estate planning firm, but I mean, it was made so like, I was the best and worst boss ever. The same time.

Chris Gandy 39:02

We'll run through the speed round. Jamie, thank you for your time. Everyone out there. Jamie Hopkins comm check him out. He's a loyal NAIFA member. Also check out his book, find "Find Your Freedom". It's out. It'll be out there on Amazon. reached out to Jamie, also Jamie yogi is email you can reach out to him if you want to buy bulk. I don't know how the bulk process is going. But again, we can we can talk about that. Let's go into the speed round. We'll hurry through this. So. So Jamie, here we go. So the goal of this feed route is whatever comes to mind first, that's what it is. Right. So yeah. So there's not a lot of deep thought. So you know, we'll see what we're seeing what happens here. So, so so so, Jamie, you ready? So we'll start off with what's your favorite color? Green. Okay, so that easy. That was okay, so let's get Alright, so Jamie, we're in DC. So we're gonna have a little fun with DC. Right? Yeah. So what's your favorite place here in DC to visit?

Jamie Hopkins 39:54

So my favorite place is a 930. Club. It's a music venue. Okay, I've seen a lot of really good acts there.

Chris Gandy 40:00

Okay, so the 930 Club. Okay, sounds like a great opportunity. The most memorable time you've had in DC,

Jamie Hopkins 40:05

most memorable time I've had in DC. It was there. So I got to I guess we got to meet Ben Harper. And I actually became friends with his bass player who him and I actually jammed together for, you know, a couple different times later on. So that that was really cool.

Chris Gandy 40:20

Okay, so favorite kind of music. Jamie, what about that?

Jamie Hopkins 40:24

Yes, I'm a metal guy. Which I haven't flown that. But that's my, that's my answer is metal. And I also love Leo's pizza here in DC. So shout out the litas pizza.

Chris Gandy 40:34

So favorite sports team? Yeah,

Jamie Hopkins 40:37

that's tough right now. Used to be the Washington football team. I gotta say right now. They're not my favorite team. So I gotta go with Notre Dame then right now Notre Dame, football's gonna be number one.

Chris Gandy 40:48

And then for all our names, remembers, to date, your most proudest experience as a as a as impacting or being in the financial services industry. That's a good one. So

Jamie Hopkins 41:02

I do know what it is. And I wasn't there for it. So that's an interesting thing. I helped connect a woman who was a widow, to an advisor. And then they ended up working with the advisor. And I know when they signed the paperwork and move their accounts, she just cried. And she said, like, I didn't think I was going to find somebody that understood me. And that, you know, I eventually got the story. It wasn't there. But that was super impactful, because like, that's probably the closest thing to my mom's story coming back, right, where, you know, without my existence in there, that person wouldn't have went to an advisor, they wouldn't have been found another woman advisor that they felt connected to, that's a great advisor, Abby Henderson. Just fantastic. Does all the right things. And like that was probably it. Right. And like, that's the small story. I mean, I know that I have to do a lot of things to be able to make that happen. But that's a pretty beautiful

Chris Gandy 41:56

story. Yeah. Well, thank you, Jamie Hopkins, let's go out and support our NAIFA our NAIFA Trustee Jamie Hopkins on finding your freedom his book is out. His first book was

Jamie Hopkins 42:08

requirements, but that's okay. Then we were two books come on. But requirements out there

Chris Gandy 42:13

requirements out it's been out a little bit of time. If you haven't read the first one doesn't mean you can't read the second week. Read the second one first, if you choose to. Listen, let's go on and support. Jamie. Thanks, Jamie, for being here at the National Leadership Conference where you lead by example, you lead by inspiration. And we're so proud to have you as a member. Thank all of you for tuning into Advisor Today's podcast where we support each other uplift each other for the education and empowerment for the future of what the industry looks like. And we represent the voice of those in Main Street today. So thank you so much. We appreciate it. God bless. We'll see you next week. On to Advisor Today's podcast. Thank you.

Jamie Hopkins 42:53

Thank you everybody at NAIFA.

Outro 42:59

Thanks for joining us for NAIFA's Advisor Today podcast series. Make sure to subscribe to get future episodes. And if you're interested in coming on the show, let us know.

April Is National Financial Literacy Month

41 min read