george grombacher 0:02
Ricki to get us started give me two truths and a lie, please, sir.

Ricky Grunden 0:06
Okay. One Truth is that my wife and I’ve been married 48 years we have eight children together. We have 12 grandchildren. And we have one grand granddaughter. Another one is when I first asked my wife to marry me, she said, No. And finally, I graduated at the top of my class with a finance degree in 1974, from the University of North Texas. Oh,

george grombacher 0:35
those are excellent. married for 48 years, eight kids, 12 grandkids and a great grandchild. Your wife said, No, the first time and you graduated. What was the third one?

Ricky Grunden 0:48
Ricky, at the top of my class at the University of North Texas in 1974. And right,

george grombacher 0:54
well, it pains me to not guess that your wife said no, but I think that that’s true. So I’m going to say that you didn’t graduate number one in your class. You are exactly right.

Ricky Grunden 1:07
In fact, I only lasted three semesters.

george grombacher 1:10
Good enough, good enough, good enough. A great grandchild. Is that, does that boggle your mind? Is it like what do you think about that? Ah, well,

Ricky Grunden 1:21
it’s not having the, you know, I’m a Family steward. And so from the very beginning, we wanted a large family. And we had like eight kids, and they were 20 years apart from the oldest to the youngest, is somewhat humorous that it took us if you do the math, it took us 40 years to empty nests. And so that happened about six or seven years ago. We’re having the time of our life, with our grandkids with our own children. And we’d like to see him more, but I, I still enjoy what I do. And I’m invested in it.

george grombacher 1:57
That’s excellent. So 48 years of marriage, do you ever bring up to your wife and remind her that she said no.

Ricky Grunden 2:06
Oh, yeah, she knows. She said, the beautiful part about George isn’t as that. And this is what’s so meaningful to me. And you know, you never know where your path is gonna go. But we knew each other, and I had made some bad decisions with the wrong people. And that’s why I only lasted three semesters at University of North Texas. But all that turned out to be a huge blessing. And so when I asked her to marry me, she said, No, I got down on one knee, slipped off the couch, and I got down on one knee and I said, Marsha, is there anything in me you can marry someday? And she set the vision for our family? And she said, I want a man is going to raise our family and according to God’s word, and treat me and, and live in that way together. And I said, Well, will you watch me and see if I can win you. So we were married? Eight months later, and we’ve been married ever since. She came in on January. That was October of 75. She came in on January 3 1976. She sat my lap and my little insurance office. And she said, I think we can get married. So that was a demarcation in my life from January 3 And I think I have been on the straight and narrow. Voluntarily.

george grombacher 3:19
That’s still story literally gave me chills. That is awesome. Marcia set the vision for the family.

Ricky Grunden 3:25
Sure did. Yeah. And we’ve lived it for 48 years.

george grombacher 3:30
I think that that’s incredible.

Ricky Grunden 3:32
Thank you.

george grombacher 3:36
So many different questions. Well, I’ll ask you what is what is top of mind for you Reiki?

Ricky Grunden 3:42
Top of mind for me, and has been for many years is purpose, vision and mission. And the reason I say that is because I used to for 16 years I commuted to North Dallas, live in Denton, Dallas, 38 miles away, 36 miles away, but I commuted to Denton, I mean to Dallas. And then there came a time now that was probably I was from 36, to about 40 years old. And I would drive and think, you know, why am I here? Why was I born? Why me why now? And I’ve struggled with that on those drives to Dallas on a regular basis. And, and it’s so it’d behoove me to search out if there’s, if there’s not two grains of sand on the beach, that are the same. They’re not at snowflake, that’s the same. When you watch a waterfall come down, if there’s not another drop of water that’s ever in all of eternity been the same. There’s nobody else like me. So I set out in the late 80s to determine what is my place in the world. Why was I born and how can I influence the world and my environment and the people around? Elmi and elevate them to a better, better, better life. And so out of that came a quest to find out why I was born. And that generated my purpose. And then I had to create a we created a family vision, and we created a family mission. And then of course that spilled over. That was a big deal. George, I went I was doing as I was also trying to do a business plan writing a business plan, vision and mission. And I thought to myself, Oh, I’m all invested in my business, but the business is that aspect of, not who I am. But what I am to provide for my family, my family is the thing. So we created a family, what we call the family vision and mission statement back and probably we got we finished it in 1992.

george grombacher 5:49
How long is it?

Ricky Grunden 5:51
How long is it? Well, the vision for our family is that we will be a star witness for Christ. And that my purpose at the time in that aspect was that I came down to is to be a husband and a provider and a protector for my family.

george grombacher 6:16
Was it easy to come to that?

Ricky Grunden 6:19
No, no, it took four years. We we would we would get a babysitter, then the children were much smaller Horsham, we’ll enforce that time. But we were going to babysitter we’d go Friday, Saturday and Sunday and go get a hotel and, and read and, and talk and write things down about our goals, objectives, things that we valued aspects about ourselves that would influence our purpose. It took about four years.

george grombacher 6:54
So that was that was very wise to be to recognize that we need to well, I’m guessing you’ve discovered that you needed to remove yourself from the situation and not not the family is the distraction. But when you have four kids running around, it’s harder to have those kinds of conversations. Yes, yes. And

Ricky Grunden 7:13
it was it was it was quite a relief and we enjoyed it we we went out to dinner and stayed out nice hotel and we went out to dinner, we enjoyed each other’s company and we fill out our our any resources we had back then it would be cassette tape. So listen to and about vision and mission about goal setting and things and but the preeminent always what was driving us was that we would like my wife set the vision very first is that we would develop a family and have a family that was led by Christ and and and live according to biblical principles.

george grombacher 7:55
And 48 years and eight kids 12 grandkids great carrot grandkid. Is that easy? Is it hard? Both?

Ricky Grunden 8:06
Well, thank you for asking, you know, it’s a little hard in the sense that I made a decision as we were going through this process that I was not going to be a missionary, I was not going to be a preacher or pastor, I’m not gonna be a youth minister, I was going to remain in the investment advisory at that time the investment advisory business. And because I felt like I would have the opportunity to influence people. And not necessarily in the way I wanted them, but just to have a conversation similar to what we’re having today. And then I’d be able to influence people that that maybe would never have the opportunity to, or I would never have the opportunity. So if we stayed in it that developed into a conviction of mine that I don’t work, I have a ministry, you know, some countries have a ministry of finance. Well, this, this is our ministry and so retirement was never a question in my mind, George. And now that I’m nearing 50 years in the business, it’s it’s it’s like, I love what I do, and a lot of our clients but there’s time restraints and so I have to find a balance between Okay, being with the grandkids, being on my own children, traveling to see them and maintaining the work that I enjoyed doing so much.

george grombacher 9:38
Are all your clients, followers, believers Christians?

Ricky Grunden 9:43
No, no, and certainly not required? Just just I won’t call it my ethos is just, you know, just how I want to live and I think that you know, Proverbs Wisdom books, The Thing of the things like that just are so simple to follow if you can follow them. And or if you have a desire to look, you have just read and see the consequences of bad decisions. And so you want to avoid that. And I’ve made, I’ve made so many bad decisions prior to Marsha setting the vision for our family, I never wanted to go back to that that was very painful. Never wanted to go back to that.

george grombacher 10:33
So when you think about the Ministry of Finance, which which which I think is absolutely fantastic. I think that that’s great. Do you think about you are leading people through personal finance, your work is helping people to become financially secure to reach their financial goals and objectives?

Ricky Grunden 11:02
Yes, absolutely.

george grombacher 11:03
However,

Ricky Grunden 11:06
you know, we are planning centric, and we’re not investment centric. And I’ve got my securities license in the early 80s. And, but so I under I have been investment centric in the past, I have had the part of my life as a market timer. And one of the things I learned in throughout the last from about 95 to about 2002, is don’t confuse a bull market with skill. And so we were really good in the bull market in the late 90s. And market timing. So to answer your question of being planning centric, is it allows us to deeply understand the clients that we work with. And we go through our process and the their financial plan their dreams and goals, influence and really direct us on how things will be invested.

george grombacher 12:03
Got it? Which certainly makes sense. What is what is the value of? What is the right question here? If Jesus were a financial advisor, how would he counseled people? What would? How? How would that look?

Ricky Grunden 12:28
You know? Well, let me just kind of lead into that by saying that just doing a little, little research over the years, I believe that there’s more verses on money, and in the Bible, than there are on faith and prayer combined. So that’s not all Jesus, that’s just collectively from Proverbs, and good decision because you have an understanding of money. Or you don’t have to have understanding, you just have to do with what’s there. But I would say that Jesus would do like, frankly, we live, we are charitable. We are considerate of others. We do our best to not judge others. And and in the decisions that they make. We don’t we don’t do that. I think that he would do almost like well, not like he said it in the Bible is don’t don’t in the parable that he gave his Don’t bury your talents. You no one got scared and buried thing because I want to Oh, good master, I wanted to give you back what you gave me and the other was tenfold. And Jesus said, Well done, the master said Well done my good and faithful servant. So the real aspect of it is how Jesus says Be faithful, and the resources that you’ve been granted and aspire to developing resources so you can elevate the lives of others.

george grombacher 14:03
What do you think about the the idea of invitation versus compulsion? You’re certainly not forcing people to save money, when when when you’re looking around, at General, the general public or even the country. I have a problem personally with the amount of debt and the amount of money that the government is spending, I don’t see ourselves being good stewards of our resources. What are your thoughts on what I said? Well,

Ricky Grunden 14:32
the way I would approach that is I can’t control that. If I really want to make an influence, and I did run for public office 15 years ago as a state representative and just barely missed it, but that was that was lost designs as well, because I would have missed some really important events for my children. But back to your question on you know, the national debt. I can’t control that. I can be precinct Chairman locally, and I can have a lot of influence in the environment and the place where I live. But I can’t control that. And there are many things that go on that I have no control over. And so I’m going to focus on the things I can control, and do be the best steward of the talents that I have and draw out the best talents, if I’m able to the people that want to align with us.

george grombacher 15:26
So it’s a function of figuring out and you help your clients figure out, essentially, the work that you did, which is what’s most important to you? What are you here to do? And then, if that’s what you desire, here are the steps here are some options for actually completing that from a financial standpoint.

Ricky Grunden 15:45
Yeah, I think we go deeper than that. And I don’t want I know, there are a lot of phenomenal financial planners that go deep, and we’re not really life planners. If you’re familiar with John Bowen, CG program, we adopted that about less 20 years ago, and we’ve been doing financial planning related to CG. So that means that we go through the series of questions, we are going to deeply understand their values, we’re gonna understand they’re important relationships, and I’ll go into a lot of it right now. But we’re gonna understand those things. And we’re gonna understand the risk tolerance, and you know what, you know, what’s going to keep them in their seat, when the market goes south. We’re broadly diversified. And we’re not picking stocks, and we’re not timing the market. And we’re educating all the time on the importance of a broadly diversified portfolio. And like some of your other podcasts that I listen to that were really excellent. So just, you know, the long term view, I think that’s been proven over and over again, but the emotions are overwhelming. And so if we can help people focus on the things they can control, and diversify away the things that are to the extent we can diversify the things we can’t control, and just stick to our plan. The beauty of my tenure, 50 years that I’ve lived from the first financial plans we did in 1986. Till today, and I’ve seen what’s happened in those people’s lives, I’ve seen what’s happened in their children’s lives. In fact, my associate and Dave Regan, he’s the adjunct professor at University of North Texas and financial planning. But together, we published a book called The wealth builder challenge. And we, what we did is we did we took the things that were that are successful clients did and compare them back. Remember, Forbes was Henry higher, not rich yet. And we made upstand spend today all now. And we contrasted those things to you know, how different people lived and what the outcome is. So it’s it everybody’s concerned about it, we every meeting we have it’s the debt is the political climate? It is, how are we going to get through this? What about the world situation? What about the Middle East? And, and, you know, you focus on the plan. And then that comes back to I think, our I just want to say that our empathy that we have for the people we work with, that we never invested in a way to begin with, because we understood them well enough that wouldn’t allow them to stay focused on what they are doing and what we’re doing for them.

george grombacher 18:44
Focus on the plan.

Ricky Grunden 18:46
Yes, sir.

george grombacher 18:50
It’s certainly not a surprise that people are interested in talking about what’s going on. And there’s things all over the world that are taking our attention and things that are probably worthy of our attention. But just because they’re worthy of our attention, doesn’t mean we can do anything about it. So by focusing on the plan, I imagined that that helps us to feel more in control. Yeah,

Ricky Grunden 19:13
more control and more more confidence. You know, when you develop the plan, and you set out the objectives that we’re going to accomplish, and try to discern a reasonable rate of return that the portfolio can can provide over a period of years. And then every quarter or sometimes semi annually, longer the clients had been with us they go to maybe annual meetings, but newer clients for the first four or five years or whatever, whatever the case may be, we do. We do quarterly meetings and in person or Bazoom. And what we do is, is we look at the investment returns if they’re in a down market, we always go back and show you here the investment returns here’s what our goal that we’re going to accomplish, but we’re not hitting that goal this year. Remember this year we got twice that much, three times that much. So we’re on target. And we’re on target for accomplishing what you want. And remember, because of your concern about down markets in the way you feel about that, you’re we don’t we don’t have all your money in the market, you know, we have this, this carved out over here that’s just special for you that’s going to provide your income for the next five years, regardless of what the market has done. And then I think with the time and tenure I have in the business, starting in 1974, in the insurance business right at the tail end of 7374, oil embargo and impeachment of Nixon, and there was a resignation of Nixon and the end of the Vietnam War and then hyperinflation coming in. And then having lived through every down market since then. It is, it’s in here. And I know what that feels like. I know it hurts. But we’re gonna get through this. long as we have this. This is what I think the clients eventually learned as long as we have rule of law, private property rights back by rule of law. I don’t know what the busiest street is in your area on the highway, but in our area, it’s in North Dallas, and it’s called LBJ freeway, and I have a market is down. Is there traffic on LBJ freeway? And the oh yeah, we can’t get home, it’s miserable. Is it okay, all those people are going to get a haircut all the way home, they’re gonna buy groceries, they’re gonna get tired, they’re gonna, they’re gonna do all of these things. So you have the velocity of money. And these things will write themselves someday they may not. But this is the way it is now. And that after a while, they begin to see you know, that try, you know. And then after course after 2008 2009, to watch that bounce off the bottom when all the prognosticators really smart people in our industry, if you will say that there was another 20% down to go and hit the market pop that week was up 25 weeks of 25% in one week, and never look back. You know, everybody was made whole after a 50% loss in the s&p 500. And about 18 months, 18 months, 20 months. So it’s just, I think that maybe helps. I don’t want to give undue credit to myself. But you know, when you had somebody who’s actually lived through it, and walk with people through it, and especially the people who’ve been with me that long. They nobody likes it. George de vie likes it. But it’s part of the process. Nobody

george grombacher 22:39
likes it’s part of the process, focus on the plan. I love it. Ricky, you’ve given us a lot, but we’re ready for that difference making tip. What do you have for us, sir? I’m sorry, it was at difference making tip.

Ricky Grunden 22:52
A difference making tech we really one of the things that immediately when I was asked to be honest, I went to your website, and I looked at, you know that you had the alignment Academy, while I needed you back with years ago. And I’m just all impressed. And so my tips are, if there’s anyone that listens to this, that it is imperative that you work through the process of your purpose, Simon Sinek said your why is a great book, okay, he’s eight or nine years old now, but it’s in some of the examples may not be relevant today. But the underlying aspects is what is your why? Why are you doing this? Most people are focused on the how and what? Well, you can you can end up chasing rabbits on the how and what and you if you have a purpose, like Viktor Frankl said, who, you know, one of the best authors and seven books ever sold, who spent, what, how many years, two years in the concentration camp? It came out on the other side, you one must have a purpose and why? To make it through this life. So my tips would be whatever you have to do. And I think after the time I’ve invested with you, I would say how are you guys? If that’s what you do, and help help people find their vision and their mission and function through your purpose?

george grombacher 24:21
Well, I think that that is great stuff that definitely gets a cut. Ricky, thank you so much for coming on. Where can people learn more about you? How can they engage with you?

Ricky Grunden 24:29
Yes, our website is grundon.com grunbn.com. And we have a Facebook page to London and we also have a LinkedIn and we’d appreciate that enjoy having a conversation with anyone that wanted to follow up.

george grombacher 24:49
Excellent. If you enjoyed as much as I did show Ricky your appreciation and share today’s show with a friend who also appreciates good ideas go to grundon.com G are you N D n.com. Find them on Facebook and LinkedIn as well. And take Ricky up on that. Offer to have a conversation and find out if working with him and his firm are a good fit. Thanks again Ricky.

Ricky Grunden 25:14
All right, thank you very much George enjoyed meeting you. Enjoy the time. Likewise.

george grombacher 25:17
Finally, a friendly reminder never good buddy. Anybody more interested in your financial success than you are? So act accordingly?