Who Are We & Why a Podcast
Sit down with Paul and Garrett of Ascend Investment Partners to learn more about who they are and why they are starting a podcast.
Full Transcript:
00;00;06;21 - 00;00;25;19
Garrett & Paul
Hello and welcome to your investment partners with Paul and Garrett, where we talk about all things financial, focusing on helping you plan, keep and grow for a successful future. If you're new to the podcast, welcome and if you're tuning in again, welcome back and thank you for listening. Hello and welcome to the very first episode of your Investment Partners podcast with Paul and Jeremy.
00;00;25;24 - 00;00;44;16
Garrett & Paul
We're excited to have you today. We're going to be covering a few different things about how and why we got in this business and why we're doing a podcast. My name is Garrett Smith and I look forward to your time with us. Welcome to the podcast. We got to get it all in. Here we go. And now I think we're going, Well, here we are.
00;00;44;19 - 00;01;07;02
Garrett & Paul
Yeah. So I think what we want to kind of talk about is just who we are, how we got into the business and why we're doing a podcast. So Paul, why don't you lead us off about how you got the business, how I got in the business? Well, I remember first getting interested in financial stuff. I was probably only about 12 or 13 years old.
00;01;08;05 - 00;01;33;15
Garrett & Paul
Went to a state planning meeting with my dad and I remember the guy's name was Woody Woodward. Really? Yeah. Yeah. And he worked for a local insurance agent. He was kind of their estate planning guy. And so my dad was setting up his trust and, you know, all the stuff. And I was just I mean, I'm 12 or 13 years old and I'm just fascinated with this conversation.
00;01;33;15 - 00;01;59;18
Garrett & Paul
And, you know, him showing us tax laws and estate tax laws and how everything worked. And I just was super interested in that. So that's kind of was my introduction to, you know, financial services business and clear back then. And I subscribed to my first financial newsletter when I was probably about 14, 15 years old. I subscribe to Howard Roughs.
00;02;01;01 - 00;02;23;00
Garrett & Paul
It was the rough times, so it was like stock picks or yeah, he had stock picks and, you know, state of the economy and just all the all the stuff and then I subscribed to another one, Young's intelligence report. And those were all, you know, long before college and everything. So I've just, you know, I've always been interested in math.
00;02;23;02 - 00;02;46;12
Garrett & Paul
Got fascinated with compound interest, how it works and and it just one thing led to another and it just I just never really, ever wanted to do anything else, so. KING So you're saving up your milking cow money to buy financial newsletters? Absolutely. Yeah. That's that's how it all got started. So then how did you get going after, you know, through college, after college.
00;02;47;08 - 00;03;17;23
Garrett & Paul
So my first real job, other than, you know, working on the farm as a boy and working in my teenage years with my dad on construction, was I started selling life insurance for for a guy actually what he Woodward had retired and this other guy replaced him and my wife Pam, was working there. And so I, you know, go and see her and this guy wanted to meet me.
00;03;17;23 - 00;03;41;20
Garrett & Paul
And so we talked and and he said, Hey, why don't you come to work? And I'm like, done. So I just went to work selling life insurance and just kind of been in the business ever since. So about what year was that? That would have been 1983. So is before Pam and I got married. We got married in 84.
00;03;41;20 - 00;04;05;23
Garrett & Paul
So 1983 I started starting in the business. So I guess that's been. Oh, that's almost 40 years now. It's coming up fast. Wow. Yeah. So and then when you switched kind of from insurance more onto the investment side. Yeah. Insurance was was fine. I'm glad I had the background because it you know, it really helps me with, you know, annuity products.
00;04;05;23 - 00;04;36;21
Garrett & Paul
And we run into life insurance quite a bit. But really, investments were, you know, a lot more interesting to me. So I, I started studying for my securities licenses in 1987, and I got licensed to do mutual funds and stuff like that in the summer of 1987. And that fall, there was one of the scariest market corrections. They call it the flash crash.
00;04;36;21 - 00;05;04;04
Garrett & Paul
In October of 1987, the market went down. I think it's like 20, 22% in one day. Hmm. So that was my introduction to the investment side of things. Welcome. Hi. Welcome. Welcome to the world of investments where things happen that you don't think are possible. So but that's how I got started in. Of course, I've just been a lot more interested in the vestment side than the insurance side.
00;05;04;04 - 00;05;36;24
Garrett & Paul
And a few years later, I got hired on as investment officer at First Security Bank, and I worked there for about ten years and really met a lot of our current clients there and just had a really, really good time working there and developed some really good relationships. And so that's that's where that's kind of my history and then bounced from my first for security, UBS, Wells Fargo and then Independent.
00;05;37;09 - 00;06;07;26
Garrett & Paul
That's correct. Yeah. I left for security because I didn't want to work for Wells Fargo. And what do UBS for about ten years and then needed to move again, inked a deal with Wachovia Securities and we hadn't signed the papers more than a month. And then the financial crisis of 2009 hit and Wells Fargo bought Wachovia. So I did end up working back for Wells Fargo, and they were fine.
00;06;07;26 - 00;06;30;26
Garrett & Paul
We were on the independent platform side. And so it worked out worked out fine. But, you know, we've we've since moved on just and assigned investment partners are our current IRA platform, and we're totally independent now and just steer our own ship and buy a lot of research. And it's just the best, the best position we've ever been in as far as independence is concerned.
00;06;30;26 - 00;06;54;03
Garrett & Paul
It's been a really good move for us, I think. Yeah, I would agree. You know, I joined you in 2013 and you're at Wells at the time and I there's definitely some good things from there. I think it was a great way to kind of get an education in the business for myself. But then moving to the more independent platform, not like doing it in the middle of COVID worldwide pandemic.
00;06;54;03 - 00;07;15;25
Garrett & Paul
That was that was an adventure. Yeah. Good thing we have some great clients that, you know, stuck with us and and followed along. And I think it's been a lot better situation. Yeah I agree flowers to in in all circumstances but client interest first and that's been that's been I think really beneficial since we've been fully independent on the array side.
00;07;16;03 - 00;07;47;12
Garrett & Paul
Yeah I never thought I'd end up in this financial business it's always been of interest, studied it, you know, I paid attention to it through high school. I always had a lateral interest, but I studied physics in college and tell you the amount of information when you're studying stars and different systems, there's there's not a lot of data you can collect on the physics side because it takes so long to set up experiments.
00;07;47;22 - 00;18;17;26
Garrett & Paul
And then you have and then moving to the financial side, it was it was amazing to see, you know, you have pricing every second of every day. And so the overwhelming amount of data it was was something that was a big change. But studying physics in college and then I got a master's degree in finance and.
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