Good Neighbor Podcast: Colorado Springs
Bringing together local businesses and neighbors of Colorado Springs. Good Neighbor Podcast hosted by Tony Hills helps residents discover and connect with your local business owners in and around Colorado Springs, Colorado.
Is your business serving the residents of Colorado Springs? Then, we need to talk! Visit gnpColoradoSprings.com to schedule your free interview.
Good Neighbor Podcast: Colorado Springs
EP #39: Shattering Financial Myths: Jeremy Torgerson on Making Financial Advisors Accessible to All
What makes Jeremy Torgerson with nVest Advisors, LLC a good neighbor?
Have you ever wondered if financial advisors are just for the wealthy? Join us for an enlightening conversation on the Good Neighbor Podcast, where Jeremy Torgerson, founder of nVest Advisors LLC, shatters this myth and many others. Jeremy takes us through his remarkable journey from aspiring actor and small business owner to a committed financial advisor, driven by the economic challenges faced during the 2006-2007 recession in South Texas. His dedication to making financial education accessible to working families and small businesses shines through, especially with his family-oriented approach, including his son in the business. Jeremy’s personal story is a testament to the power of career transformation and the impact of providing inclusive financial planning services.
In this episode, you'll learn about the innovative ways nVest Advisors reaches a broader audience, embracing digital tools like social media and virtual meetings since 2015. Jeremy shares valuable insights into risk mitigation and how the company navigates the financial advisory landscape without minimum account sizes. Beyond the business, Jeremy’s love for live theater, movies, and exploring the Colorado mountains adds an intriguing personal dimension to our discussion. We celebrate the company's achievements and future goals, underscoring the importance of supporting local businesses. Don't miss out on nominating your favorite local businesses for future episodes at GNPColoradoSprings.com.
To learn more about nVest Advisors, LLC go to:
nVest Advisors, LLC
888-852-0702
This is the Good Neighbor Podcast, the place where local businesses and neighbors come together. Here's your host, Tony Hills.
Speaker 2:Welcome to the Good Neighbor Podcast. Are you in need of a great financial planning company? One might be closer than you think. Today I have the pleasure of introducing our good neighbor, jeremy Torgerson, with Invest Advisors LLC. Jeremy, how's it going?
Speaker 3:Doing great and you got that last name as good as I could hope Perfect Thanks, Tony.
Speaker 2:It's great to meet you.
Speaker 3:Awesome. We're excited to have you on the show today. Tell us about your company. Well, invest Advisors actually started.
Speaker 3:This was a career change for me in my early 30s, but we were actually started. I started in the career in deep south Texas, south of almost to Brownsville. Back in those days we didn't have SpaceX there yet. It was mostly agriculture and retirees, but that's where the company that I first became an advisor with set me down, and so we began to realize that, even though I think the original intention was that we're going to give us a lot of, they call them winter Texans, you know, anywhere else in the world they call them snowbirds, but in Texas they're winter Texans and they thought that that would probably be my primary group of customers. But as I was there for you know the 10 years that we lived there I began to realize more and more that there was a lot more financial good we could do if I opened up and broadened our approach.
Speaker 3:Most of those businesses there are just small mom and pop companies. Like I had been. Prior to becoming a financial advisor, my wife and I were business owners first and um, and we saw a lot of lack of just financial education, access to good financial knowledge. So I had a three-year contract with my starting company and I said you know, I can do a better job for this group if, first of all, you get the corporate pressure off of you and you can just really work directly with the client. But let's go at this in a low cost kind of higher volume approach and incorporate a lot of technology which at that time was very new. But let's make a company for working people, not retirees, and we have retired clients and we have very wealthy clients. But that's not what we're based about. We're focused on that working to income family and that small business. And that's where my heart lies, that's where my passion is and that's what we've structured the company to be the primary focus of.
Speaker 2:Awesome. How did you get into this business?
Speaker 3:You know it's kind of a funny story, but we were saying before the podcast started, way back when I thought I was going to be an actor and I went to theater training and all of this stuff to do that and met the girl of my dreams and we've been married. Now we're working on year 32 with two grown kids. My son is a junior advisor now in the firm. I could not get him interested while he was in college, but after a few years of the real world he said dad's, dad's smarter than I thought and came right over. But no, we, we were small business owners in the late 90s and early 2000s. We actually owned two restaurants and a video store for the young ones out there. They actually used to exist and we knew that industry was kind of dying out anyway.
Speaker 3:And as the last big recession started in 2006, 2007, we saw declining sales. We were all struggling. You know, our kids were never seeing mom and dad. We were working, struggling. Our kids were never seeing mom and dad. We were working every hour and I was seeing and hearing the same things from all the business owners down at the Chamber of Commerce meetings, the same kind of struggles, and I began to think. First of all, I was kind of relying on not incorrect people, but I was asking our CPA and our bookkeepers for advice that really is not part of their, their training. I was asking the CPA to give me financial planning advice, and it wasn't. He was worried about this year's return, you know, and as we started to get, like you know, quarterly tax bills as a business owner that was more we owed more in taxes, and I think we even brought home some quarters to our family I said I don't think we're, I'm, just there's things I'm missing about how to do this. And so I started doing a lot of self-research, and when I figured out that, you know, there were lots of things we could have been doing along the way and lots of ways we should have been thinking about our business differently than you know, treating it like our, they're, like our babies, they're not, they're, they're for profit tools that we should be using differently, it made me realize what I wanted to do, and so I told my wife, if we ever got the chance to offload the businesses I know what I want to change to and do you know, being a new career and we did finally get the chance.
Speaker 3:We knew the video store industry was dying out at the time anyway, with Netflix and things like that coming in, but we got somebody that wanted to buy one of the two buildings that our restaurants were in, and so we shut them down. And you can't just like hang a shingle in this business. You need to go through a lot of training, and so you had to pick a firm to get started with, and I chose one, and they gave me the option of you know where would you like to begin? And we selected South Texas. I have family in the area of grandparents that were getting older and my parents lived there as well, and so we moved down and kind of started from there, and in fact, I have a quick story I can tell you, which was kind of fun, but it's the first six months of the business for me were really brutal because, for people who may be familiar with financial news, my first day in the business they call it your can sell day, so they, you get your life was the morning that Lehman brothers in 2008.
Speaker 3:So my first day I was in Tempe, arizona, at the training center, ready to make calls to my new prospects and find some first clients, and they started. They had TV sets around our calling areas so we could see if the client had a question about what was going on in the news. We might be able to look up and see they started shutting those off as we went around the room and that's because the market was collapsing all over the place. So our very first day was the day that the Great Recession really started, and the first six months were really kind of a brutal time for me.
Speaker 3:So it did affect, I think, the way that my philosophy now as a financial advisor is also that gains are great, we want gains for your money, but we also want to be careful about risk, and so we have a practice and a philosophy here, sort of like a Hippocratic Oath the doctor takes.
Speaker 3:We say first do no harm, then we'll go get gains, but first we've got to mitigate losses and be protective of that. And that was very instructive to go. My first six months in the business were not up months. They were the worst since the 1930s and for me to go through that, realizing that people can work a long time and build up enough wealth and if it's not carefully managed, they might have thought they were going to retire in december and now they've got to wait three or four years to retire. So there are things like that that have really affected the way we approach the business, and also I saw that it affected average working people worse than the big corporations. They got baileded out you and I didn't and so there needs to be somebody to stand in the gap for us, and that's the approach that we take here at Invest Advisors, and that's sort of the guiding philosophy has always been there.
Speaker 2:Okay, awesome. What are some myths or misconceptions in your industry?
Speaker 3:I think the first one when people think about working with a financial advisor is that you need to have I think that's one that inexperienced advisors or inexperienced clients or families might think we don't have enough to talk to this guy and that is not true. Because of where we started Specifically, we wanted to make sure that anybody who was sincere about wanting to move forward in their lives financially and just could be helped by professional advice deserves the chance to have professional advice. So this company, which is very different than most, does not have any minimum account size. We have very low cost options where you know very low cost, like less than 1% per year from your first dollar, you could start an investing account. We have clients in their early 20s all the way up to I think our oldest client is 92. So we've got that kind of a misconception.
Speaker 3:I think the other one that might be for more experienced investors is the kind of the attitude if you've seen one, you've seen them all that every advisor does exactly the same things. They do it the same way. Largely that has to do with for many, many years. They have never updated our marketing rules until just a couple years ago, so we all had to say it all the same way to be compliant. But no, there's.
Speaker 3:There's a different philosophy about how to manage money, for example. We we start with risk mitigation first. What you've worked for should not be put at unnecessary risk. We want to get gains and we wanted to accomplish the goals you have in life, but we don't need to. It's not all nothing, and I think that's probably the third thing that investors should be aware of is that risk is not a light switch. It's not risk on or risk off, but it's a thousand shades of gray that we can apply. So we can apply just enough market risk to accomplish the goals you've set, but we don't have to do more than that. We can accomplish things, and risk mitigation is a big, big part of what we do here.
Speaker 2:Okay, who are your target customers and how do you attract them?
Speaker 3:You know, I would say that we attract. It's been a difficult transition for our industry from the days when I started, which was a lot of cold calling and literally knocking on doors and giving out business cards. That's the way we would introduce ourselves. Now, with caller ID, I don't think most people, even when they see a relative calling on their cell phones, they don't pick up anymore. You can't call like that anymore. I'll text my mom and say what were you calling for? I said, I said I figured it up, so we can't do that anymore. So we've kind of had to learn to adapt and evolve. And so we're on social media. We're on all the major ones X Twitter, I'm sorry Twitter X Facebook, linkedin. We have a really active blog on our company website that we try to market with, and then we do your normal things.
Speaker 3:Your community expos the chance to go visit with others, especially small businesses in the community. We have to do a lot of outreach to them because, especially for small businesses and our target audience, which is working families, you're too busy. You're not going to wander by my office. That's one of the major differentiators between us and others too, is we've structured this to be 100% virtual. If you want, you can come to our office. It's in downtown colorado springs, on tejon but, um, you're, you don't have to that. If you are busy and you got kids to get to soccer this this evening, you can meet with us at six o'clock at night right from your kitchen table and, uh, we've set that up. We've done virtual meetings.
Speaker 3:Long before kovat made it cool we were probably 2015 that we were doing virtual meetings with our clients, so we've kind of that outreach is there. How else we've done it is that one of the interesting things is I'm doing a podcast with you is we have some marketing employees who are building up to make me a podcast because they think I should do it, so we're working on that as well. We probably launched that by april 1st is what we're hoping. Youtube most likely, but no, it's mostly social media. Um, we don't. You know, we do some community involvement. Um, it's been kind of an interesting twist since covid, where we know everything was shut off and now we're all kind of like getting back into still five years later, getting getting back into having those normal community gatherings like we used to. So, yeah, it's out there, but you know, podcasts like this are a great way just to introduce yourself to people who might not otherwise wander past our office building and wonder who's on the third floor.
Speaker 2:Awesome Outside of work. What do you do for fun?
Speaker 3:Awesome Outside of work. What do you do for fun? Well, I was kind of thinking what do I do for fun? And it's hard because, like I'll tell you real quick, during COVID there was nothing else to do. So I actually put myself back in college. So I am in my last classes for another degree so I take that at night. So I'm at 53 years old. I put on my freshman 15 pounds again and laid there on the floor doing homework with my dogs for the last three years. But you know, I'm also a big live theater guy, my wife and I being video store owners. I'm a big movie guy. I'm a hardcore old school Trekkie. I love old Star Trek Love.
Speaker 3:As a good Coloradan I am a native Coloradan. I am a long-suffering Denver Broncos fan and love the Colorado Avalanche. You know, just your normal thing. But we love getting out in the community. We live on Cheyenne Mountain, just kind of to my south, so we get to take in all the beauty and, you know, get in some mountain hiking and stuff like that as well. But you know it's a great time. We have two grown kids that are living their lives. So it's me and my wife and our two pups and we just enjoy each other. It's a great time to be. I love being in 50. I don't know if anybody else will agree with that, but I actually love this time of life.
Speaker 2:All right, all right, all right, let's switch gears. Can you describe a hardship, a life challenge you overcame, how it made you stronger and what comes to mind.
Speaker 3:Yeah, a couple. I was actually the. I was born to teenage parents in 1971. Um, they were married for a couple years three, three years, I think, um, and then got divorced. I always had a relationship with both, but I lived with my mother and she was a single mom for most of my childhood, all the way to my teenage years.
Speaker 3:Um, I was the oldest of three, um, and so we, we knew, we knew poverty. We lived in government project housing. Many times I got used clothes, you know, to go to school, so I've known what it is to really struggle, um, and so I've nothing's been really handed to me. I've had to really build my life over the years, which is great, but I also had really good examples. My parents were both hard working is great, but I also had really good examples. My parents were both hard working and my grandparents were both business owners on both sides, and so we watched, I watched them over the years to everybody. All of them played by the rules. They paid their taxes, um, you know, they voted, they were good citizens and they, they, but none of them ever really fully mastered money. So it was something that, you know.
Speaker 3:The entrepreneurial spirit from me definitely came from my upbringing, but I would say that the nagging thought behind me of it takes more than just good intentions. To make it in the American system, you must understand the way the capitalist system works, you must understand the way money works and you must be able to apply that to your own family and your own business. If we can think like the very wealthy think, you can start to replicate, do the things that they do, and then you can start to make those same kinds of achievements. But it all starts here. So it was a mental thing of watching normal, good people and we see it all around us everywhere normal people going and working hard, struggling through this inflation right now, trying to get kids to a good school, trying to just make ends meet. They're doing everything right, but the system is failing them, and so our job is to stand in the gap for you with knowledge and empowerment and to do the hard planning for you to get you on the right track. Um gets you seeing that you can't. There is a brighter future. Let's help you get there. It's a step-by-step process, and so this is.
Speaker 3:You know, this business is also about about building relationships with people. It's not a one-and-done thing. It's not a product sale. It is come on board and we're going to go with you all the way down the line, all the way to the end of the line, and that's what this business, what I love about this business is some of my clients have been with us the entire you know, almost 20 years, many of them. We lose clients mostly because they pass away, not because they leave for another advisor, and we're just, you know, we're thrilled to be able to make clients into lifelong friends, which is an amazing part of this business.
Speaker 2:Great Jeremy. Please tell our listeners one thing they should remember about Invest Advisors LLC.
Speaker 3:I think the thing that people would see differently about us is, although we're set up to be convenient and to be 2025 in terms of technology, making sure you can only meet with us by video if you want to. Making sure that we're 100% paperless, if you want. The reason we incorporate so much tech is so that I have more time as an advisor to spend face-to-face with you or camera-to-camera with you, like we're doing now. The relationship with a human advisor is extremely important. You might be able to learn enough about investing to do pretty well in an up market without an advisor, but it's when things get scary, when markets get choppy, when we have a war breakout or we have an economy that tanks, that you will become subject to a lot of your own internal fears and biases. And having a personal relationship with an advisor that understands that about you and can help you keep your eye on the prize way over there.
Speaker 3:This is not. You know, this momentary thing happening is not the future. You have a future goal over here. Let's stay focused helping somebody do that. Or, like I tell my clients jokingly sometimes I'll say I, my job is to part half the time lay on the hood of your car and not let you make emotional mistakes with money because you're going to want to, and my job is to make sure that we keep you on track and keep you focused on your goals, and I think that's the biggest difference is that many companies are either. Especially when you're going to work with people without a huge account, you're not going to sometimes get your own personal advisor. You're going to work with people without a huge account, you're not going to sometimes get your own personal advisor. You're going to get a 1-800 number to work with someone.
Speaker 3:In this case, you have a personal relationship with an advisor in a family-owned company who has been in the trenches just like you, right alongside you. We know exactly. We know you because we are you, and I think that's an important thing for people to remember. And what makes us different, I think, the other thing is we don't take ourselves too seriously. As you might tell from this podcast, we take the work deadly seriously, but it is one thing to intimidate you in my very nice office. It's another thing to get you to relax and settle in and let us build trust and understanding, and that's why I'm dressed fairly casually for an office and it's all done very, very purposefully. We want you comfortable, because when you're comfortable, you'll listen and you'll give, and we need that in order to do our jobs right.
Speaker 2:Okay, great. How can our listeners learn more about Invest Advisors LLC?
Speaker 3:I think the easiest way is to just visit the website. It's investadvisorscom. Just like the word invest, but take the eye off the front Investadvisorscom. We've got quite a bit of detail about the kind of work we do and how we do it, including quite a bit of blog work that I think if you really want to dig deep about the way we think about certain subjects, you can find it there. You can also directly call the office here, which is an 888 number. It's 888-852-0702. My extension is number four. You can dial me directly if you want to. And then also right there on the website is a link to all of our different advisor emails. We have three advisors on staff and three support staff.
Speaker 2:Okay, Okay, great. Well, Jeremy, I really wish you. Appreciate you being on the show. We wish you and your company much success moving forward.
Speaker 3:Thank you, Tony, it's been a pleasure. It's been a great great to meet you.
Speaker 1:Thank you for listening to the Good Neighbor Podcast. To nominate your favorite local businesses to be featured on the show, go to GNPColoradoSpringscom. That's GNPColoradoSpringscom, or call 719-679-4720.