FXBG Neighbors Podcast
Fredericksburg Neighbors Podcast
FXBG Neighbors Podcast
EP #103 Breaking Money Myths With Greatness Financial Services
A career-ending crash at 85 mph didn’t stop Roberto Jimenez—it redirected him. We sit down with the Marine-turned-broker to explore how leadership, service, and a clear process can turn financial confusion into a confident plan for retirement, legacy, and everyday money decisions. Roberto leads Greatness Financial Services, a veteran-owned, Fredericksburg-based brokerage that operates virtually and partners with more than 30 carriers to tailor solutions instead of selling one-size-fits-all products.
You’ll hear a candid breakdown of the biggest myths in personal finance, including the belief that planning is only for high earners or that you need a certain asset level to get help. Roberto walks through his simple client journey: a Zoom-based discovery call to find gaps, a deep financial analysis to map cash flow and existing accounts, and a transparent plan that prioritizes tax-free growth, penalty-aware access, and protection from market downturns. He explains how non-captive brokerage flexibility helps families compare options, reduce fees, and align strategies with real timelines—like retiring at 50 or funding a child’s future.
What sets this conversation apart is the blend of discipline and heart. Roberto shares how he and his wife run the business with clear roles and daily syncs to protect family time, and why building relationships—not transactions—creates better long-term results. If you’ve ever wondered how to legally pay less in taxes, avoid outliving your savings, and design a plan you can actually follow, this is a practical, no-jargon guide from someone who’s seen pressure up close and still chooses purpose.
If this episode helps you think differently about money, share it with a friend, subscribe for more local stories with real takeaways, and leave us a quick review so others can find the show.
Roberto Jimenez
Greatness Financial Services
operations@greatnessfinances.com
(540) 212-4132
150 Riverside Parkway, Suite 115 Fredericksburg, VA
This is the Fredericksburg Neighbors Podcast, the place where local businesses and neighbors come together. Here's your host, Dori Stewart.
Speaker:Welcome back to another episode of the FXBG Neighbors Podcast, where we share the stories of our favorite local brands. I'm excited to introduce you to my guest today. We've got Roberto Jimenez joining us today, and he is with Greatness Financial Services. Roberto, welcome to the podcast.
Speaker 2:Hey Dori. Hey Dori. Thanks for having me.
Speaker:Yes. Well, I'm excited to dive in and learn all about you and your business. So let's start there. Share with us a little bit about Greatness Financial Services.
Speaker 2:Yeah. So Greatness Financial Services is a financial brokerage. We're finance, we're partnered with Global Financial Impact. And what we do, we simply want to help families strategize towards financial freedom, right? So that can mean so many things as broad as it is. So it can be simple as generational curses, right? Breaking those. It can be creating a seamless financial future where out of these traditional means, we show you non-traditional methods utilizing a different platform, but teach you how to how to scale and truly give you some tax free growth, some benefits, teach you how to leverage tax codes and help you pay less in taxes.
Speaker:So all very important things for families. So I love what you're doing. So I want to dive deeper though. Tell me about you. I want to learn how you got into this. Share your journey with us.
Speaker 2:Yeah. So with me, um, I retired after 15 years from the Marine Corps. After 15 years, uh, I retired medically. I flew off of a motorcycle, um, went headfirst into a pole about 85 miles an hour. Um, very, very fortunate to be here. Um, my body wrapped around that pole and I was able to walk away unscathed, right? Um at least, at least visually, right? Internally, I have a bunch of different injuries and things that I'm still dealing with, right? But it led it led to my career ending in in service. And luckily, through relationships and good people, um, one of my old students that I had in service um reached out to me and offered me an opportunity to become a broker. And uh, I knew nothing about the financial space, right? I was HR, I was admin. I'm like, I know nothing about this. I don't, I don't think I'm your guy. But when he when he talked to me about it as leadership development, you know, self-improvement and just helping families just get to where they want to be, right? Inspiring families to dream again. Um, it truly helped us really see, okay, you know what, we can do this. Um, because that's what we were doing in service. We just got called to a that's a whole different mission, right? So um I got into this uh around August of last year, August, September. Um, so been in business a little over, well, well over a year now, going on two years, crazy, it's December. And um absolutely love it, absolutely love it. My wife and I, you know, we're in business together. We moved back to Virginia, we moved back to the Fredericksburg area. We were stationed up here twice, did two tours. I had Corps Marine Corps, so this just became home away from home, and we love it.
Speaker:Nice, I love that. Well, first, thank you for your service. Thank you, and I love that you bring that service mentality into what you're doing now. That's so important. Absolutely, and congratulations on two years. That's a big milestone.
Speaker 2:Yes, thank you.
Speaker:I love that. So tell me about the industry. Do you find that there are any myths or misconceptions?
Speaker 2:Yeah, um, big myth is that I would say we're only certain people can do it, or that um you have to make a certain amount of money in order to be assisted. And you know, those things are not true, right? You don't have to have a certain amount of assets, you don't have to make a certain amount of money, you don't have to have a degree in this field, right? I feel like anybody can do this, especially the way that we do it, is very different. Um leveraging a different type of platform that's part of the financial industry, right? And I say it that way because the financial industry is so broad, right? There's so many different um different focuses, right, that you can have in it. And what we do is very, very unique leveraging strategies that have been around for centuries and just bringing bringing those strategies into today's age.
Speaker:So interesting. So walk me through what it looks like when a let's say someone listening is you know inspired by the conversation, wants to connect with you, wants to learn more about what you're doing. Walk me through what that looks like from the time that they contact you and and how like your process of how you work with them and what sort of um, I guess, uh, is it a program that you put me put them through? Talk to me all about that.
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah. Um, that's a great question, right? Um, I would say that they reach out. Um, we set up a call. Everything we do is through Zoom. So we're 100% remote, right? I have a physical office right here in Fredericksburg, right on River Side Parkway, of uh exit 133. So um that's not a requirement, right? But that's just something that I do because I love separating work from home, right? Service taught me that, and I love the disconnection where hey, when I'm home, I'm home. I love to be a father, a husband, and just enjoy that time, not really bring the business home. Um, and uh I would say once we connect, we set up a discovery call where we see what the gaps are, right? What are the gaps that you're trying to fill? Um, what type of assets do you currently have? What strategies are you using for retirement? Um, are those working? Are you satisfied? You know, we normally use a quick question like on a scale of one to 10, how confident are you that your retirement vehicles that you're utilizing right now are gonna successfully get you to retire? And a lot of the times that's a low answer, right? So we we help that become reality, right? So if you were to tell me, Dory, like I want to retire by the time I'm 50, I'm gonna do everything in my power to help you strategize so that when you're 50, you retire, right? Um, and that way you stay retired because that's the biggest thing. Retirees, they focus on two things. Am I gonna have enough money to retire or am I gonna outlive my retirement?
Speaker 1:Right.
Speaker 2:We want to help get those answers to yes or no and no, right? Where yes, you're gonna have enough money, and no, you're not gonna outlive. So um, once we get that discovery call to fill those gaps, we create a uh a second session where we do a financial analysis where now we're going deep diving into all your assets, seeing exactly where your funds are, and really open your eyes to your spending habits and see where we can cut back, see what we can add. And then we look at all those assets, come together, and place you into a vehicle that you know we recommend with one of our partners. All right. So we're partnered with over 30 carriers, and that's that's what makes us a non-captive agency. So we're able to truly deliver our services like specifically for our clients, right? Nothing like fitting them into something that's not necessarily for them. The best part is everything we do is completely complementary, right? Everything from initial discovery to servicing to every year that follows that, right? Because I'm creating a relationship, I'm not creating a uh a transaction, right? And what I mean by that is you have me for life. So you're gonna have me for as long as you want me, your kids can have me as long as they, you know, so on and so forth. Because I'm creating a legacy, and that's exactly what I want to do for you, right? So doing that is is is gonna get us to that next step, right? And um really help get our clients exactly what they need.
Speaker:So I love that. How rewarding and fun for you to get to genuinely help people in that way.
Speaker 2:Yes.
Speaker:That's really cool. Yes, I love that. I love that. And so it's interesting that uh you said that you like you have an office, but people can meet with you virtually. You like to keep uh home life separate from work life, and uh your wife is also in the business as well. So that's probably even more important to keep that separate.
Speaker 2:Absolutely, absolutely. We know our roles and we stick to them, right? We don't cross paths, you know. She does her part of the business, I do mine. We don't we don't cross paths, you know. We just we have our uh our daily syncs um where we can connect for about 15 minutes about the business, knock out any questions that we need, then the rest is dropped, right? After that, we don't talk business at all.
Speaker:So I love that. I love that. So let me ask you this. So if someone listening is inspired by your story and is thinking, you know, maybe this is something I want to do. Like it sounds really cool. Like he gets to help people and and open their eyes to you know their futures and and what's going on. Maybe I want to do this. What advice would you give them?
Speaker 2:Yeah, I would say reach out and connect, right? Um, definitely reach out to me. You can get on greatnessfinances.com, um, set up an appointment with me. You can find me on all social media platforms. Um, just just put my name in. I'll I'll come up for sure. All right. Um, on Instagram, I'm at the real underscore Roberto Jimenez. Um find me on Facebook, same way. And um, yeah, I'll definitely get you into the business, into the door. All right. Um, answer any questions that you have and show you how seamless and easy this is. All right. Anybody can do this from anywhere. All right, it's pretty crazy. About three months ago, I was in Mexico. I was over in Tulum on vacation, a business trip vacation, right? And uh, I was taking a meeting with a client on the beach, all right. So he's hearing seagulls and stuff like that, and he's like, Where are you at? And I flipped the camera, and it's just white sand and clear water, right? He's like, Man, how do I do what you do? And he actually came in business with us as well.
Speaker:So wow. No better place to talk to someone about their retirement.
Speaker 2:Yeah, we gotta sell the dream, right? We gotta sell the dream.
Speaker:I love that. I love that. Okay, one last question. What is something that you wish the listeners knew about greatness financial services?
Speaker 2:Yeah, I would say that um one, we're local in town, right? That's something that that I definitely want to um leverage and advertise. Uh, I feel like financial services are not promoted as well as they should be, right? And a lot of people feel alone, right? So I want you to know that greatness finance is like we're here for you. We're here to assist you, to fill those gaps any way that you need, create generational legacies, start plans for your children, for yourselves, protect your home, protect your life, whatever it may be, right? Um, we can help you in all areas of wealth accumulation and money management. Um, we're a veteran-owned business, right? So we definitely love our vets, we love our service members, we love our community, we're always finding ways to give back. So um don't hesitate to reach out, right? We're in 150 Riverside Parkway, right? Right in town. So come down, you know, pay a visit. Um, definitely here to talk. We can do in-person, we can do virtual, right? And um what I what I would say is uh if if there was a way that we can teach you how to save money, have tax-free growth, tax-free withdrawals, penalty-free access, right? Meaning you can touch your money whenever you want. There's no age cap, there's no limit to it. You can touch it literally the moment you have cash access to it, cash value access to it. And uh there's no risk to you losing money to the market. I think it's worth the conversation, wouldn't you say?
unknown:Right?
Speaker:I'd say it's worth it, especially, you know, there's no fee to just have a conversation. So I think it's a no-brainer.
Speaker 2:Exactly. So we're here for you.
Speaker:Amazing. Roberto, thank you so much for joining me on the podcast and sharing Greatness Financial Services with us.
Speaker 2:Yeah, thanks for having me. I appreciate you, Dori.
Speaker:Thank you.
Speaker 1:All right. Thank you for listening to the Fredericksburg Neighbors Podcast. To nominate your favorite local businesses to be featured on the show, go to FXBG NeighborsPodcast.com.