Episode 1: Welcome to The Financial Huddle – What is our Why?

Episode 1: Welcome to The Financial Huddle – What is our Why?

In our very first episode, meet your hosts Ryan Fleming, Ed Beemiller, and Brian Minier as we launch The Financial Huddle! We’re diving into why we started this podcast, how we each found our way into financial planning, and why financial literacy matters now more than ever. From sports backgrounds to corporate careers, we share our stories, our passion for helping others, and our vision for this podcast. Whether you're just starting your financial journey or looking to sharpen your strategy, you're in the right place. Huddle up—it’s time to talk money, mindset, and making a difference.

https://www.keystoneadvisors.com/

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Disclosure: Information contained in this podcast is for entertainment and informational purposes only, and should not be considered as financial advice. Financial Planning and Advisory Services are offered through Prosperity Capital Advisors (“PCA”), an SEC registered investment adviser. Registration as an investment adviser does not imply a certain level of skill or training. Keystone Financial Group and PCA are separate, non- affiliated entities. PCA does not provide tax or legal advice.

Transcript

Brian Minier: 0:00

All right, everybody, huddle up. The play calls in. This is the Financial Huddle. Ready, Break!

Ryan Fleming: 0:08

Well, hello, hello, everybody. Let me be the first to just proudly welcome everybody to our first ever... podcast, The Financial Huddle. About time. It's about time, brother. It is about time, isn't it? My name is Ryan Fleming. I'm here with my esteemed colleagues, business partners, friends, cohorts, Ed Beemiller and Brian M inier. And fellas, this has been a long time coming. Oh, yeah.

Ed Beemiller: 0:34

Welcome, everyone.

Ryan Fleming: 0:35

Yeah. We've been thinking about this for a long time, brainstorming. Should we do it? Shouldn't we do it? Are we going to sound silly or what? We're definitely going to sound silly, but that's okay. But here we

Ed Beemiller: 0:47

are. That's part of it. That is part

Ryan Fleming: 0:49

of it. It's a real thing. So, you know, maybe you can share, you know, what's on your heart and mind, you know, why we did this. What are we trying to get out of this?

Ed Beemiller: 1:25

You know, there has to be a why. You know, if you've been in business or anything else, a big thing to talk about is what's your why? What's your why? You know, and understanding, you know. why we got into the business, but then also why are we sitting here doing this, right? And one of the points that we came to is really the term financial literacy. And what does that mean? Well, financial literacy, just like financial education. We feel there's a significant need and a shortcoming in our society in regards to why you do things what type of financial strategies a lot of people have no comprehension or very little understanding of why do i need a financial plan yeah you know yeah and uh you know from that standpoint you know we've talked our ears off about the lack of education within you know whether it's elementary school junior high high school college that it really should be part of the curriculum when we talk about this. When you graduate college, you should know how to balance a checkbook. You should know that you should save and not spend more than you earn.

Ryan Fleming: 2:39

We're going to get into all of that. There's millions of people out there talking about this kind of stuff, but we're going to try to put our own spin on it. What is this podcast going to be about for our listeners? What can we get into outside of some of the rhetoric about financial planning and budgeting, all the stuff that we hear.

Brian Minier: 2:57

You know how it is. When you're meeting with somebody, they just want to have confidence. They want to feel they're doing the right thing. We've talked to a number of people and there's confusion. I know, Ed, you've said there's misinformation out there. People just want to feel confident. They want to understand what it is that they're getting into and how their retirement outlie is going to impact them. And there's a lot of things, especially now that are going on in the news, whether it's tariffs or the big, beautiful bill. And what does that mean? So I think it's important that we take those current events. Ed, you said financial literacy. What do those current events mean to you? And what does it mean to your finances? And what other events are out there? We all love sports and So how do we tie that into

Ryan Fleming: 3:47

some of, you know? And as everyone can see, episode one, we want to hit it off with a bang, repping the cap city here. You know, got the blue jackets, Buckeyes, Buckeyes. You know, we want to get you guys educated, not on financial literacy, but we also want to make this personal. We want you guys to understand a little bit more about our heart, our mind, our upbringing, our background, and just really kind of connect the dots to why we get out of bed every single day and serve people, right? My dad told me when I was young, is that, you know, opportunities in life look like hard work, right? Anything worth doing in life is not going to be easy. And this job's not easy. Doing this podcast is not easy. But let me tell you, I mean, in this arena that we get up and go to work every single day to serve people and help them with their finances and their life, it's pretty rewarding. So, you know, who is this for? It's for everybody, right? Yeah, that's right. But it's not just for our listeners. It's for everybody.

Ed Beemiller: 4:40

Yeah, I mean, you know, obviously we've established a client base of people that we hope we'll listen in and maybe get a little bit. It's just that one little thing. All you got to get is one little thing out of each one of these, hopefully. But the financial education and literacy is really society in general. And I've talked to a lot of clients and their children that just don't understand. Don't understand that, hey, you should, if you start saving at 16, 17, 18, you got to put a lot less money to have what you want when you retire, as opposed to all of a sudden life happens, you're 50 years old, your kids are off to college, you're figuring out, trying to figure out, and you know this, Ryan, how do I pay for the college? And then, oh my God, I'm going to retire in 10, 15 years. I don't have any money saved up. How do I catch up? And, you know, what I always say is, you know, you need to have a plan. Everyone's plan's different. Right. I mean, everyone, you know, earnings, income, assets, they're all different. But we need to understand. And one of the biggest things that we do within our practice and that we hope you're doing is listening. And you got to listen to understand what are the goals and objectives and then go from there. And I think

Brian Minier: 5:55

that's a really important thing you said. Everybody's got to have a plan that's going to be different. There's a lot of talking heads out there that will say this is the plan for everybody. And everybody's got to have a customized plan. And I feel that's what we're all pretty good at within our practice. And so that's what we want to help with. We want to help encourage people to do that and help just provide information that can

Ryan Fleming: 6:15

help them with that plan. And inside of that, you know, not only is everybody's plan different, but We're all different in how we got into this business, how we actually ended up working together. We all came from different backgrounds. So I just want to take a minute here, episode one, just to share a little bit about how we got to where we're at and just to get you connected a little bit more. I came from an industry that had nothing to do with the financial services. And I got into this by somebody that really educated me. And I became pretty interested in financial concepts. I read this one particular book that we'll talk about about on other episodes, like four or five times and started telling my friends about it. And, you know, next thing you know, I switched careers and, you know, I got an opportunity to hop into this industry. Whereas a lot of people come in it from a different way. At

Ed Beemiller: 7:03

the point you came in, what level was your financial

Ryan Fleming: 7:06

literacy? I mean, I literally knew nothing. I always make a joke. This is no lie. I remember one of my first ever fact finder meetings. This guy was doing a fact finder and I was like, how much money do you have in checking savings, blah, blah, blah. And he said, Oh, and I also have about $600,000 in munibonds. I had no idea what a munibond was. So as I was doing the notes, I wrote down the word M-U-N-Y, munibond. And I took it to the guy I was working with and he started laughing. He goes, first of all, that's not how you spell munibonds. Second of all, you need to take a couple of deep breaths because you... they can tell that you've never seen that much money on a piece of paper before. Like just, it's okay. It's just a couple extra zeros. So I knew nothing. And, um, you know, maybe that's encouraging for people out there to know that, you know, if you have the right temperament and you have the willing to learn and to serve people, um, you know, that's how I got into it. I'll tell you guys more about my personal story as future episodes come down, but I know you have a different, how'd you get into this?

Brian Minier: 8:06

I know your story, you know, but you were a big part of my story. So, uh, like a lot of people, I was in corporate America for a number of years. And you start to, and I know, Ed, you probably face this too. You get to a certain age, you're like, This is not fun. I don't like doing this anymore. And with the way that our family's finances was set up, I had the luxury of doing a reset. I could start over. And Ryan, you were already in the business at that point. I was. We had become friends. Yeah. And we had talked a lot about it. And you basically stole me from corporate America and said, hey, get into this business, the financial planning business. And I mean, it was scary. You're going from salary and benefits to You eat what you kill.

Ryan Fleming: 8:51

Yeah. And I didn't share this earlier, but as far as scary, I mean, it just... what I came from was the sports world, right? I mean, I came from a professional baseball background, played in the minor leagues for a long time. And so I went from kind of like the top of that industry to literally like the bottom sucker, like nothing, no guaranteed income. Like, oh my gosh. Where's my

Ed Beemiller: 9:13

next paycheck?

Ryan Fleming: 9:14

That's right. I'm the type of person that caused the 2008 crisis. I got a loan on an income stated loan for a mortgage. You had nothing and they gave you a loan.

Brian Minier: 9:22

Yeah. So yeah, I got into the business and obviously We'll get into a little bit more about how we were working together and then eventually creating our own firm. But for me, it was just one of those where I didn't want to do what I was doing for the rest of my life. And I wanted to start something where I could help people and make a living

Ryan Fleming: 9:46

doing it. And so that's how I got into it. Yeah, and both of you guys aren't from Columbus. I was born and raised in Columbus, Akron area. And then there's a Cleveland boy up here. So what was your journey? Eastside. Eastside. on the side of Cleveland.

Ed Beemiller: 9:57

Now, we're all Ohio boys, so I like to say we're reflective of the Midwest. O-H.

Brian Minier: 10:02

That's right, I-O.

Ed Beemiller: 10:03

And, you know, I was a little different, you know, where Ryan was talking about, you know, he came from a professional baseball career. His financial literacy when he started was near zero, right? Okay. I got a paycheck every week. I deposited it. Then my wife paid some bills and hope I had some

Ryan Fleming: 10:20

money. I could hit some line drives. I was pretty good at that.

Ed Beemiller: 10:23

Hope I had some money left.

Ryan Fleming: 10:24

Now,

Ed Beemiller: 10:24

I started my career a little different. I've spent all of my career in the financial services industry, you know, and so right out of school, jumped right into a management training program, 17 years in banking, and I was a CFO for one of my companies, and then basically kind of had a more of a small business consulting, because similar to, you know, Brian, what you said, you know, I was getting up, you know, the corporate culture and the larger the companies, had to be at my desk at 7.30 in the Expected to be there at 6 o'clock at night. Wore a suit and tie every single day. And it was, you know, I looked at that. I've always been a little bit of an outside-of-the-box thinker. And I would like to say in everything I did, you know, when I was in banking as a lender, I considered myself definitely much more of a customer advocate. Well, banking in the financial industry is highly regulated. So you got to play within that sandbox. But you need to do what's in the best interest of your client. So I was always kind of pushing for that, and that kind of rubbed some people the wrong way. But coming through that, after 20 years in that corporate culture, kind of seeing all these different sides, it was just timing. It was a point in my life where I was kind of doing that individual consulting, business consulting, and then really kind of decided, hey, We're social people, right? We're social beings. I like being part of a group. I like to, A, I like to help people. A position, you know, someone came to me that we all know. Oh, yeah. And provided an opportunity. That was back in 2011. And Brian, you remember just several months, maybe six months later, you joined.

Brian Minier: 12:16

Yeah.

Ed Beemiller: 12:17

And the story has grown from there. And it's gotten us to, you know, we're all sitting here. And at the end of the day, kind of, you know, you look at what's the American dream, right? American dream is to own your own business. And, you know, everyone can complain about their job and, you know, moan about it. Oh, this is horrible. Well, then, you know, life's too short. Go do something else. I mean, there's a lot of opportunities out there. You just, you know, sitting on your couch, you're not going to. You're not going to accomplish anything by that or change anything. Doing the same thing over and over and over and expecting a different result. That's kind of how we got to where we are here today.

Ryan Fleming: 12:57

Absolutely. And everybody, as we know, has a background, has a story, has a person in their life that's made a comment or offered an opportunity that's changed the direction of our life. And I think that we would all agree here together that however we got here, we are here together. And we're unified in our mission. I don't know the statistics on this. Maybe we can look it up. But I think the reality is, is that most people, they do not get their health right and they don't get their finances right. And again, that is our goal for this, is that we want to unite our energies, our efforts, our expertise, our drive to serve humanity and help people with their financial literacy and, you know, get rid of the misnomers and the misinformation, dispel guru myths, whatever it is that's out there. And as long as we have our health and as long as we're together, that's what we're going to do. And for episode one, I think this is a great kickoff to what we want to try to accomplish. We've got a lot of good information that's going to come up. We will love to hear from you. We would love to hear what your feedback is, things, topics that are important to you that you'd like for us to speak on. We definitely definitely encourage you that if you find this information valuable, that you share it, you know, pass it along to a loved one, a coworker, um, and spread the word out there, you know, first

Ed Beemiller: 14:17

and foremost, you know, as you said, this needs to be educational. You know, we're going to try to create and talk about facts instead of opinions. Opinions are opinions are fine. Everyone has them, but as much as you can, you know, to, to offset, a lot of those financial myths and things that people talk about. And there's a lot of that information out there is, let's just present it. And then the second part of this is, have fun and we want to have fun doing this and we hope you know the people listening to this yeah enjoy it and the content's going to vary but it's going to kind of tie in how that the financial yeah side of things obviously but it's also going to tie in kind of our backgrounds you know playing sports in school and college professional this type of thing so we're going to have a good time

Ryan Fleming: 15:06

yep absolutely so whether you're watching us on Youtube you're driving down the highway listening to us on on the car we just want to encourage everybody every single time that you a chance to huddle up with us, you know, gather near and let's have some fun. Let's learn some stuff. Well said. All right. Well said.