Podcast Transcription: The Wealth Freedom Formula: Insider Wealth Secrets Revealed to Boost Your Financial Success with Eunicia Peret
Ted Ryce: Eunicia, thanks so much for coming on the show today. I'm really passionate about this topic because as I've gotten a bit older and my business has gotten better, I'm starting to think about long-term the effects of my financial decisions and what that's all going to look like. So really excited to dive into this conversation with you today. 

Eunicia Peret: Likewise, Ted, thank you so much for having me on your show. 

Ted Ryce: Yeah, and I think that, so you have an interesting approach in how you help people with financial services. Can you talk a little bit about how you're a strategic extension of someone's financial team, if they have one or they may not even have one? How do you explain what it is that you do? 

Eunicia Peret: It's an amazing question because for the longest time when people would, I would be introduced, whether it be at an event or a network meeting or wherever, and immediately the response that we would get from the person being introduced to would be, oh, that's wonderful. I have a financial advisor. I have a financial planner. I have a wealth investment person, right? I have someone, I have a him or a her. That's the easiest way.  

And what we've learned is that obviously, not only are we not their competition, but they don't know that because in their mind, they hear anything that's financial or wealth strategy consultancy, and immediately they're thinking, oh, they're just another wealth management firm. What we are is we are an extension to your point from earlier. We are truly an extension of our client's team to the extent that they already have a financial team in place.  

Our job is not to come in and displace them. Our job is to come in and make sure that everybody has a seat on the table because a lot of what we bring to the clients are strategies that frankly do not sit in a box. They're not strategies that you're typically going to find under the financial services umbrella.  

Sometimes they sit more on the accounting side. Sometimes they sit truly just in tax and nothing else. There's nothing more. There's just the CPA takes the information, puts it on the tax return, but it has a bigger impact from an investment standpoint.  

And so, when those strategies are being put into action on behalf of the client, what we found is that if their broader financial team is not at the table, money ends up being seeped in through the cracks. And when our type of clients, when we work with them, typically we're talking about tens, if not hundreds of thousands of dollars year over year. And that's a lot, it amounts to a lot of money. 

Ted Ryce: Yeah. And, and I, you got to forgive me here because this is an area where I'm really interested in it. And the connection in case you're listening right now and you're wondering, well, why is Ted talking about why, why does someone, why is someone from the financial services on this show? It's because money is one of the biggest stresses that we face in life. And here's the thing. 

That's obvious if you're not doing well financially. Like I used to, so I was struggling in my twenties, but what's less obvious about it is the amount of stress that people who are doing well financially or, you know, from other people's perspectives, people who are, you know, making six figures or seven figures, like you're talking about people with higher net worths, sometimes they've worked so hard to build their business or their career that they're getting paid, but the way that the money is getting managed causes some stress, especially if you've kind of let the, what some people might call lifestyle creep, where you make more money, you get a more expensive car, a more expensive home, more expensive vacations.  

And so I really appreciate this because I know you're going to bring a lot to the table. When it comes to what you said earlier about having a him or her on their team, and it doesn't guarantee success, you mentioned how, you know, potentially hundreds of thousands of dollars might be seeping through the cracks. What are some must know things that someone listening right now needs to understand if they already have a person who's helping them, with their finances, but they're not doing the type of job that you would do. What does someone need to know? 

Eunicia Peret: They have to be, they have to be in a position where, to your point, I love the fact that you were mentioning, why is a financial person on the show? You're right. It's because we have to be intentional about where we put our energy. And because we know that money can be such a big stressor. I mean, yes, for individuals that are having it hard from a financial perspective, they're struggling with it from just a day to day. But here's the deal. 

Even individuals that are bringing in millions and millions of dollars on a yearly basis into their companies, or maybe they're earning half a million dollars or whatever it may be.  

They're struggling with financials in a different way, but they're still a struggle. There is still a struggle. And so, to answer your question of what should they know, chances are, if you're listening to this show, you probably have had questions to the effect of why am I paying so much in taxes? 

And the question would be, do you like paying so much in taxes? Would it be helpful to you to know that instead of paying so much in taxes where you're maybe leaving a tip because either you're not leveraging the strategies that you could, or maybe your tax situation has not been shifted to where you can be thinking more about how do I keep more of that money for yourself? Because guess what?  

If you're a business owner, you're going to take that money and you're going to reinvest it back into the business, or you're going to be investing it in other ways where your money is going to grow for you.  

So, if that question is there of why am I paying so much in taxes or could I be paying less in taxes or could I be doing more with my financials or maybe why is my financial team always saying the same thing? We meet with our financial team once a year for 45 minutes. Is that enough? At Excelstra, we meet with our clients once a month. 

And sometimes more, depending on the strategies that are being implemented because nobody wants to be left alone. So, if we're going from once a year to once a month, and we're talking about strategy versus no strategy, as you can tell just right there, there's a huge gap between the haves and the have nots. So that's our job. Our job is to make sure that our clients can think beyond the, we've got someone on our side. 

Because you might have that someone on your side may be doing an excellent job. The question that becomes, what are the different strategies that we can add on to that mix to enable you to keep more, to make more, to have more at the end of the day?  

Ted Ryce: Yeah. And it reminds me of our first conversation, Eunicia, where we hopped on a zoom call and we were trying to understand each other's business and you were explaining it. I'm like, you know what? Cause we do something similar. Some people ask me, well, what's different about you than a personal trainer? I'm like, I was a personal trainer.  

Eunicia Peret: Let me count the ways! 

Ted Ryce: Yeah, exactly. Exactly. And, and, you know, if you're talking about a bespoke aproach a to any area of your life, whether it's finances or health, I think you also mentioned something really important, 45 minutes once a year versus once a month. There's no way to shortcut something like this. And I'm sure some of the people listening are more like me where I'm good at, I'm great at what I do, so people pay me money to do it. 

But I'm not great at managing that money, right? I've gotten better over the years and I don't make any, let's say, ridiculous expenses, but I know I'm not investing it the way I want.  

And so having those conversations, putting the time in, like you said, once a month, it's just, you need to go beyond what other people do if you want those next level results. 

Which brings me to my next question. So, your business, Excelstra, you have a unique approach called the wealth freedom formula. What exactly is that and how does it help someone take their financial situation to the next level? 

Eunicia Peret: Well, I love the question, the fact that you asked the question about the wealth freedom formula, because it is the thing you're mentioning earlier. You said, Ted, you need to go beyond what other people do to see the results. I would also venture to say that you cannot find the next level of success by implementing yesterday's strategies. And I'm sure that applies on the health side as well. Just getting our bodies better, getting our minds in order, getting our finances in order. It's very similar. 

I would also, before I address that question, I would also say we shouldn't ever kind of look at what is it that we could have, should have, or maybe we don't want to take a chance because we're comfortable. If we're too comfortable in what we do and we don't take that leap of faith and we don't get the support, then everything else is useless.  

It's not about the once a month or the twice a month. Sometimes we meet with our clients more than that depending on the strategies that are being implemented. But the reality is that we have to kind of come back to what is true and what is the methodology and what is the process that we follow.  

And that's where the Wealth Freedom Formula comes in. The Wealth Freedom Formula is our approach to walk the client through this journey because it's a journey where they don't feel like they're being pulled and tugged at and they feel uncomfortable. They feel like they're part of something where they belong. 

It's their story. It's their case. It's not somebody else's business case put printed out on a really nice presentation because that's what they need to see. It's how do we go through the journey of figuring out what do we even want the money to do?  

Some people will tell us, I don't care about wealth, Eunicia. And wealth is relative. But as we're, what we found at Excelstra is that as individuals come through and start working with us, they want to feel like their unique story remains their unique story. 

And that's our mission. And through the Wealth Freedom Formula, we're able to do that because it kind of dives into different layers of, again, like I said earlier, what is it that we want the money to do for us, for the client, right? What is it that they see the money doing for them? Is it for retirement? Is it to better their children's or their grandchildren's lifestyle? Is it for them to just be able to have a more enjoyable life even before retirement? 

And once we figured it out, then we start talking about, okay, from a risk perspective, what are the different things that people need to consider? And we do that the way that we walk the clients through that, through that process. It's a process where they feel like, okay, you know what? I got this.  

And then we go to the next level and then we go to the next level. And every single level is, is a different layer of the onion. If you could think of peeling an onion that gets us to the root solution. And we call that the domino effect.  

The domino effect is typically going to be the what are the one or two things that need to be set in motion immediately in order for the client to see the biggest relief, the biggest benefit, because that's how they resonate. That's their biggest problem.  

Versus if we start with, hey, here's, you've got a problem, here's your solution. All we're doing is kind of like just popping pills, right? Just take pills, numb your pain, pretend that it's not there. Who cares? It'll come back. It'll be fine. We'll deal with it again. We'll take some more pills. That's not the point.  

The point is deal with the root cause, fix your problem. And then guess what? You won't go be going to the physical therapist or you won't be going to the masseuse because your back hurts. You'll be going to the masseuse because you just want to have some TLC time. And that is very powerful. If we were to think about it from a health perspective, 

It has to be strategic. And I know you do that with your clients. They see huge transformations, right? They go from being in pain and being miserable in whatever category that they're miserable in, but your unique approach takes them through what is unique to them and through their own journey versus just saying, hey, you've got back pain.  

This is what worked on my last client. I think it's going to be the same. It's going to be fine for you too. It shouldn't be that way. And that's how we're different. And that's how our approach is very different. 

Ted Ryce: Yeah, what I hear you saying is something, you know, there's so many parallels here and I guess it's in other industries as well, but a lot of people get protocols. In other words, it's you run the same strategy with people with your clients because it saves you time and you get some results with it.  

And that's maybe not terrible, but it's also not the best approach. And if you want the best results, it needs to be bespoke. It needs to be customized. And I love what you said about like understanding what the end goal is for the client that you're working with, because that's going to determine what strategies you use. 

And whether they're looking to, like you said, plan for retirement. I have, I'll just, and I would love to hear a story, but one of the things that comes up, I had a client, one of the challenges is he's been very stressed out because he's doing well in his career making mid six figures and he's thinking to himself, I got to do this for 15 more years and he's not loving it at the moment, right? 

And so that one of the big obstacles for him to get into the best shape and to stay there is to change the situation financially for him. And so, so that was kind of how I played quarterback and said, look, like this isn't a, this isn't about giving you a tough talk to start taking your health more seriously. You've got this thing in the background that's causing you a lot of stress. 

And I would even echo that or reinforce that, repeat it to someone listening right now. Sometimes you don't need a health coach. You need maybe a financial coach or could be a relationship coach too.  

If, if, if you're a financial situation, regardless, if you're, you're, you know, doing well on paper or not, but if it's causing you a lot of stress, it's like, start to deal with that first. Because if you're using health as an example to escape the stress of your financial situation, even though it might be good, even though you might have a great lifestyle and making money, but you have these issues with the taxes, you feel disorganized, you feel like you're not invested in the right things and people aren't managing your money appropriately. 

In your eyes, it's like, make sure that gets handled, you know, to talk about like, you know, addressing the root problem instead of just taking a pill or putting a band aid on. 

Can you give an example of a client? I mean, you know, whatever you can share, where they were before they started working with you and then how you helped them and what it was like after? 

Ted Ryce: Oh my gosh, of course I can't, I just can't think of like, there are so many cases that are running through my head and because you just use the example of the client that you're working with that's mid six figures, they're looking to leave, you know, maybe they wish that they could leave. Let's focus on a similar case there. We do work with a lot of executives. We work with a lot of physicians.  

We work with a lot of individuals that have either found us after they made the move and they went, oh, we should have planned this differently. Or we started working before they are going to be making the move and we can now be a lot more strategic with what that looks like.  

And let me just tell you, I'm a perfect example of what that looks like. Please do not jump on the bandwagon unless you absolutely have to without the proper planning, because your life afterwards is going to be both more beautiful and 10 times more stressful.  

Ted Ryce: Could you share your story first then? 

Eunicia Peret: Yes, I'm happy to. It's going to be 10 times more stressful because the money problem is going to be constantly in the back of your head. Now I'm a very unique story because when I left corporate America, it was kind of, I went through a little bit of a shift during a very critical time in my career. We were starting to have the partnership discussion specifically in a large consulting firm. And it was at that point in time, my husband said, I think you need to take a break. And instead of taking a break, I went and I made a shift.  

I went to a smaller consulting firm thinking that that might address the questions that my husband had. Basically, his whole thing was, listen, to be working in it for a partnership is one thing. To be a partner is a totally different thing. Up until now, you drank the Kool -Aid. As a partner, you'll be selling Kool -Aid.  

So, you better be behind that Kool -Aid and he said knowing you and knowing how much heart you bring to everything that you do and your level of integrity, there will be things please understand that you will have to stand behind that maybe your moral backbone is not going to allow you. It's not going to be very flexible. He said, what are you going to do when?  

So, he had this long list of questions of what will you do when? And I was like, this, couldn't you come to me with this until now? He said up until now you were having the just the time of your life, adding value to all of these Fortune 500 clients. 

But you have to understand that the next 10 years are going to be very critical. And if you're miserable in any way, shape or form, your life is going to be miserable.  

So, I thought, okay, long story short, it ended up being a situation where the smaller consulting company was not going to be the place. It was not truly a strategy consulting firm. It was more staff augmentation, which means you go in and you fix the client's problem versus think about the strategy. And so, I thought, okay. 

Let's figure out what this looks like. And my husband said again, he said, do me a favor, take a six-month sabbatical. You've worked really hard. Give yourself a break. It's actually something that even the large companies very much endorse. Take some time for yourself, reset, and then come back as you'll come back stronger.  

And so, I did just that, but during that period of time, I started looking at our own financial situation. And what I realized that was that number one, we did not get the support that we needed. It was not customized. We were dealing with the cookie cutter approaches, which is why we had left tens, if not hundreds of thousands of dollars on the table, paid way too much in taxes.  

And the other thing that I realized was that I didn't know if I could even pay myself. I did not know that I had a business owner or entrepreneur bone in my body. 

And for me, when I made that leap of faith, that jump, it was a jump that was not premeditated. It was not something that I planned out. And once I did it, I knew I could go back. I had backups and I had my safety nets in place, but not having a true strategy put so much stress on me. 

So much stress that I would lay awake at night, not knowing, like wondering financially about things maybe I shouldn't even have wondered. And the only thing that carried me through that process was my husband, who I think had more faith in me as a business owner than I had in myself.  

And of course, because I had built such a name and reputation for myself in strategy consulting, I had several individuals and partners that I had worked with before that said, if you want to take, to ever come back, you will always have a job. And they emphasize the word job, but they also had such a respect for me and for the fact that I had taken such a huge leap of faith that they said, you owe it to yourself to put this baby, make it, make it stand up and at least walk on its own.  

And then you get to decide, do you want to go back to your corporate world or are you going to be so happy as a business owner that you're never going to want to look back? And that's kind of what happened. I would never go look back. I'm looking back at all of the experiences that I got in corporate America because without those experiences, I would not be in a position where I can truly relate to my clients, where I can have the empathy for what they're going through. But at the same time, that transition, it could have and should have been planned a lot better. But the reality is I did not have Excelstra on my side. Back then it was not even a concept. 

Ted Ryce: Who helped you besides your husband? Like, were you just reading books, listening to podcasts? Did you actually hire someone? 

Eunicia Peret: I did. That was actually one of the probably biggest changes for me in my business and career really. It was the fact that I realized that successful business owners have coaches. Coaches in corporate America is not a thing, right? You don't pay your assigned mentors and mentees and coaches and whatever they call them. Every company calls them something else, right? I was one of those for my team members. 

And sometimes, you know, I was a mentor and a coach to individuals on a pro bono basis because I liked them and I wanted to see success in their careers, but it wasn't a thing officially until it became a thing as a business owner. So, I started hiring personal coaches. I hired investment coaches, right?  

Invest in individuals that taught me how to invest in real estate and how to understand real estate from a very different perspective and a different angle which then foreshadowing made me realize that people need more than just your traditional stocks, bonds, mutual funds, T -bills, whatever it is that people are invested in. People want to know that they have options.  

And so, we started baking that in. And then business consultants. What I realized was that it's one thing to be a strategic consultant and come up with a solution for somebody else. And it's a totally different thing to try to come up with it on your own for your own company. 

And so, we continue to even today, I mean, to this day, we have multiple consultants that work for, that consult for us. We have, I have my own personal mentors, my personal mentor, my business mentors, my, you know, individuals that are helping me break through as a business owner to the next level. And then individuals that are also supporting our company as an entity as well. 

Ted Ryce: Yeah, and I would say that's probably the biggest breakthrough, the biggest secret weapon, the biggest not everybody should have a coach, I believe. I think some people are psychologically ready for it. 

But if you're in a situation, well, you have to, it's like, no, I hate coach. I know everything I can learn. Like if you're completely uncoachable, then you shouldn't hire a coach.  

But if you get to the point where you're like, I am tired of listening to podcasts, even though I love doing this podcast, right. I love sharing information. But if you get to a point where you're not happy with the results that you're getting and it's usually because you're either working too hard for the results or you're inconsistent with the results because the results are everything. I'm sure that's in your business too, Eunicia. In my business, it's like people are like, I'm not motivated. It's like, no wonder you're not motivated.  

You're not getting results and you're working hard. You know what I say? I'm like, it's like going to work and not getting paid. How long can you do that for? Right? 

We all want to see a return on our investment, whether that's financial return or results in the mirror, fitting into clothes, blood work, or whatever it is, we need results.  

What do you have to say about the type of person who is for you? What is that person who, the archetype, if you will, who like, okay, this is the type of person who I help. What are their struggles? What are they thinking? What would you say? 

Eunicia Peret: Well, first of all, thank you so much for laying the foundation for that question, because one of the biggest things for us is we only work with clients, first and foremost, somebody is not going to get an invitation to work with us unless they are coachable, unless they are open -minded, unless they are willing to make sure that their broader financial team works together.  

So much so, Ted, that I can think of a couple of clients, potential clients that we, they came in through referrals. Our business has truly just boomed through referrals. They came in through referrals and they tried to short circumvent the process. They went literally around and they said, oh, we found some solutions. I'm like, congratulations. You found a one trick pony. Which by the way, that one trick pony happens to also be a strategy that the IRS just shut down. 

And from the moment that they said we're shutting it down to the moment it was done, it was about a week. And so, you found your one trick pony and did that. Should they come back? Should those individuals even come back to say, well, we changed our mind.  

Their price is probably going to be double because automatically I know that their mindset is not where it should be. And that it would be so much harder for us to pull them through the process because it's not an easy process. We're dealing with money. 

We're dealing with a lot of money and we're dealing with things that not only do sit personal, but they're not easy to pull through because those strategies do not just sit somewhere on a bush or on a fence, easy to just, ready to just be grabbed. Those are strategies that teams of experts, that attorneys, CPAs, CPAs that don't do taxes, by the way, they don't even deal with returns.  

All they do is they just build the strategies, financial individuals that don't manage money, all they do is they just come up with the creative solutions. And so if the individuals that ultimately, we invite to work with us, because first and foremost, we know that we can deliver value, if they're not open -minded, we've learned our lesson. We do not even open up that invitation. If they're the kind of people that will say, you know what, I think we can do it better on our own. 

Then by all means do it. But here's what I'll tell you for all of our listeners. I too tried to do working out on my own and it did not go anywhere. Just like you said, Ted, right? People see incremental and maybe small results and it'll make them feel better for a short period of time, but they're not consistent.  

And that's one of the reasons I was so happy when we first started talking because for people to sustain even their health, they need the right support. They need the support on the health side.  

They need the support on the financial side. They need the support from a personal, inner relationship standpoint. And when we see individuals that have the biggest breakthroughs, those are the people that are willing to invest in themselves and are willing to invest in their companies because then they take them to the next level. Yes, we have had individuals that came to us and said, perfect example, 

I'm selling my business, not my business, but this particular individual selling business, $5 million. What kind of tech strategies are you looking at? Right now we're talking about how much I'm going to be paying in taxes as a result of the transaction. The way we take that is to say, hey, let's plan for that ahead of time. Similarly to jumping off and planning to get maybe out of a career, planning to get out of a business is a totally different beast, but it's very similar. There has to be a plan.  

A plan for how are we going to get the most value out of the company? We have experts that we work with specifically from a valuation standpoint. We have individuals that will say, I'm doing it in the next three to five years.  

Well, let's start talking about some of the tech strategies today so that we know kind of how to position those in the future so that by the time they're ready, their business is worth more, that they have a lot more piece and oh, by the way, they'll be able to keep a lot more of that money so that they can reinvest it into whatever is that they want to invest it in or do whatever they want with it at the end of the day.  

So, it's really, it's more complex than just, it's not a one size fits all. And in terms of clients, it has to be people that are willing to invest the time, the financial component, but more importantly are open-minded. 

Ted Ryce: Yeah, you know, the harsh reality there, it's just. There are, it's really, I think we're living in a world right now where it's increasing in complexity. And while you can, if you're not in this situation where you want to take action in a particular area, because there's other priorities, which, you know, there can be an argument for that.  

Understand that's what you do when you're just trying to get by. But if you're trying to take it to the next level, it's just, there's not enough time these days. Hey, you know what I think a common pitfall is mindset wise, Eunicia, and I'm interested in your take, but sometimes I'll talk to clients and they'll tell me, well, you know, I'm really smart, I'm successful, and these are people making, you know, multiple six figures and they have good education.  

And you could even, some of them are definitely smarter than me. And they're like, well, why would I hire you? And it's like, well, they don't say that, but, but it's how they used to think.  

And the issue is this, it's not that you can't do it. It's not that you're not smart enough or not capable enough to do it. It's just a matter of like, do how long do you have to study, to implement, to get feedback, to iterate because it's a full -time freaking job to do those things.  

And it's like that with health. And I know in a world, in trying to sell your business or the examples you're using, it's got to be even, I would say more complex, of course. Health and fitness is my wheelhouse, but it sounds like really complex and there's just not enough time. And that's why I love what I do at the podcast because it's really about I curate the types of guests I have on the show because it's like the shortcut is delegate that expertise to someone else, pay them and then enjoy the results. And, um, 

Eunicia Peret: I love what you just said. Yeah, go ahead. 

Ted Ryce: No, no, that's kind of it. You know, it's just there's not enough time for you to become an expert in everything. And the other thing I would just throw in is we're in a situation where people are just putting out content. And so now a lot of it's just BS. And if you're not unable, if you're unable rather to tell, okay, what is BS content? And then what's the good stuff?  

And then, from the good strategies, you have to ask, well, what is appropriate for me to do based on the strategies that work and what's the proper sequencing? Because if you get that wrong, it might be a good strategy, but inappropriate for you or inappropriately timed. There's just a few thoughts. What would you, what do you have to say? 

Eunicia Peret: Oh my gosh. I mean, you just dropped a ton of gold. I hope that if you're listening, you were taking notes like I was. So, a few things that you said, Ted, you said, you know, a lot of, a lot of individuals are, you know, very smart and I will not argue with you at that at all on that. Uh, they, and they feel like they need to, they feel like, or they, they think like they can and should do it all.  

Um, the other thing that you said is a lot of people love to put out a lot of content and then the poor sequencing. So, let's talk just first about the individuals that are really smart.  

And when I'm thinking about what I'm thinking about, you know, when I say that is I'm thinking about our physicians. We work with a lot of doctors,  

Ted Ryce: Physicians, super smart, yeah. 

Eunicia Peret: You know, a lot of surgeons. They are so highly skilled. We're dealing with a lot of business owners. They're very highly skilled in their specific industry of business ownership.  

And whether it's because they feel like they need to just master it all or they feel like somebody just put it on their shoulders. The reality is they have become successful in doing the things that are making them successful, which are for a surgeon, it's to do those surgeries, that's like people's lives depend on it. Should that individual have to bear the weight of, do I have the best tech strategies?  

Not long ago, I was introduced to a surgeon by one of our other physicians and the conversation went something along the lines of, Eunicia, here's everything that I'm doing on the tech strategy side. And it was basically the same exact thing, repeating, repeated under different names.  

And it was all from, from and through the real estate lens. So, one strategy called multiple different things through the lens of real estate. What we just did there is we took what we thought were multiple concepts, multiple strategies and realized it was just one and very myopically focused on one industry.  

So, when we're talking about diversification, we just cut the word into a ton of different pieces. And that goes right back to what you said. The other point that you were making is a lot of people just love to put out content. I cannot tell you how many times clients will send me TikTok videos or YouTube videos. 

And say, what do you think about this? The last time it happened, somebody said, I went to a gala, Eunicia, and somebody was talking about this particular tax code. What are your thoughts on that? Is this a good idea? And I'm like, darling, you're already leveraging that tax code.  

But because that individual noticed like with the first individual that I was mentioning, it's the one -text strategy called by a thousand different names or multiple different names, not to exaggerate. It was the same thing. Instead of just calling the specific vehicle by its name, individuals have become very, very aware of the fact that, hey, if we just call it by some other, you know, fence your name, it's going to attract more attention and chances are I'm going to be able to sell a product. 

And that's, that's one of the worst things that individuals can do. Just buy something because it has a fancy name in front of it. Ask someone and that's  

Ted Ryce: The marketing. 

Eunicia Peret: The marketing. And that's, that's where our clients know that they, when they work with us, they can ask all the questions we encourage, we want them to ask the questions. Because my, my joke with our clients is, listen, you will never go to a gala or to an event where you're going to be bamboozled by fancy financial terminology that you have no idea.  

What they're talking, what they're saying or which way is up, right? Because it's those same super smart individuals that get caught into that trap of, but I should know it. My argument is it's okay if you don't.  

As a matter of fact, I would prefer that you know what's happening with your money. Just understand what's happening with your money. Understand what your options are, but don't go in there trying to figure it out because that's not your unique area of expertise.  

And even if somehow, some way you end up learning one of the concepts or mastering something, what you're going to be mastering is you're going to be mastering one thing very deep, but you're certainly not going to be very wide. 

And if you're telling me that you also want to be diversified and now you're telling me that that's what you're doing, automatically the two ideas totally negate themselves.  

And then the last thing that you said about poor sequencing, it goes without saying, right? If we're smart enough to try to figure it out, we're listening to other voices that are going on rabbit trails and we're hope we're implementing something and we're hoping that it's going to stick. It's going to stick. All right.  

But is that the most optimal solution that you're going to get to? Absolutely not. And sometimes, unfortunately, it may stick in the wrong way where it will actually cost you money. And there are several stories that we can talk about even just on that alone.  

It can actually cost you money, money that you're bleeding out of pocket because you're doing things that either jumping on the round bank bandwagon or sometimes the strategies are so misaligned that it truly will cost you in the long or the short run. 

Ted Ryce: Iwould love to hear one of those stories. So just so I understand correctly, this was a person who was seeking solutions for themselves. They found something that was a good strategy. It were, let's not say good, but it was a legitimate strategy, but it just wasn't good for them. And it actually backfired. 

Eunicia Peret: The one thing, the one example that comes to mind, and I speak a lot through intuition, as you can probably tell, it's a client we've worked together with, husband and wife, for about three years now, going on four.  

And when they first came to us, they came to us with some non-traditional financial products. And we always look, we always look and we try to help the clients to figure out what is it that's good. We want to keep what's good. We do not want to undo things, right? That's counterproductive. 

And in this particular situation, we ran the numbers every way to pie heaven, which we always do for our clients. But in this particular case, the numbers were so messed up that I could not, like, it was hard to wrap my head around how someone, anyone would design a strategy so poorly for their, in this case, their friends, for their friends that when we were looking at the trajectory between where they were and the time that they were going to retire.  

They should have in an ideal situation had at least three, if not times more money accumulated than what they've put in. when we ran the numbers because of the heavy, heavy cost and the way that it was designed and what had gone into that particular application, what ended up happening projected out best case scenario by the time same timeframe, by the time those individuals were going to retire, they were going to have somewhere around 60 to 65 % of the money that they put in. 

Ted Ryce: That's the opposite of progress. 

Eunicia Peret: That's the opposite of progress. So, they had the solution that if designed correctly can be very powerful, but it was so unoptimized and it was designed so poorly for them that when we had to sit down and look at the numbers, it was like, here's what this should look like.  

Here's what it looks like. And it wasn't our numbers. It was the numbers that were produced based on actually working with their financial institution. And their question was, okay, so clearly we can't trust anybody. Like, no, you shouldn't trust anybody.  

This is not about trust. This is about going back to having a methodology, having an approach, which is why transparency is so important.  

And that's why the financial services industry does not like transparency because who are you to tell me what it is that my client sure should not be doing? It's like, I'm not anybody to tell you anything. We need to have that conversation and your client, my client needs to understand what the solutions are.  

It's kind of like with you, right? When you're dealing, when you're doing blood work and you're doing all of the things, the analysis for your clients, you're talking to them about the possibilities.  

You're talking to them about the options. And then sometimes you even give them a choice to say, Hey, here's what I might recommend based on what we see. But you get to choose what are the things that maybe you want to work on first, assuming that it's not something that's life threatening, right?  

That's the way that it should be. Unfortunately, it's not. And because of that, there are plenty of sad stories out there that unfortunately people carry and sometimes they don't even know that, you know, that's what's sitting on their shoulders. 

Ted Ryce: Yeah, you mean it's happening to them right now and they're just not aware because they trusted an individual. You're bringing up such a good topic, good, important.  

I'll say this, trust is, the way I look at trust right now, it's like, I already believed my reputation was everything like 20 years ago and I've been in the business 20, 25. So I'll give myself a couple years there when I was just a young, dumb, uh, 22 year old when I first started. But I quickly realized like I ended up working with Robert Downey Jr., uh, Ricky Martin, Robert, um, even got to train Sir Richard Branson one time, but mostly worked with his wife.  

And the reason that it actually happened was because they trusted me. And even Ricky Martin's manager wanted me to sign an NDA. And I said, fine, I didn't care. Of course, this was before social media was a big thing, but I said, fine, but he never followed up and never asked me and I never signed it.  

And so, I think it's even more important now and not only is it important because you need to be able to trust the person. Let's say they have integrity and they're ethical, but also there are people right now who are super sincere and honest, but they're also sincerely wrong because they don't know what they don't know.  

I see it all the time in my industry and I feel like, you know, to your point about transparency, it's thankfully the honesty, the transparency, it's something I've been doing for a long time before it was fashionable, but now I think it's even more important because of those things.  

And even if someone is honest, like my last point, it's like people are honestly wrong. They believe in it, but they believe in something like they can believe that the world is flat. 

And they can sincerely believe it, but there's so much evidence that goes against it. And so, I feel like we're living in a world where it's like, we really have to be able to shine that light like a lighthouse so that people, it's not our job to get people to work with us. It's our job to shine the light as bright as we can so they don't end up crashing on the rocks. But if they do, you know. 

I don't know what to tell you. You're drunk at the helm. I don't know what to tell you. But I think it's also, I would even say this in people's defense, it's even hard to trust your intuition sometimes, especially if you've been taken advantage of or maybe not even taken advantage of, but believed in something and it didn't work out for you. At least that's how it is in my industry. 

Eunicia Peret: The reality is, Ted, you would be right. You would be right. And even if people weren't necessarily being, if they weren't taken advantage of, there are too many situations where that cases that we know of, right, where people paid for service and got nothing at the end of the day. I mean, so much so that, you know, 

Ted Ryce: What do you mean by that? Nothing. 

Eunicia Peret: Right? Nothing, right? They'll pay for some sort of a coaching program and it's nothing but just the loosey goosey holding hands and singing Kumbaya.  

Ted Ryce: Like mindset work. 

Eunicia Peret: Even mindset though, there are some mindset coaches that are phenomenal. I'm working with one right now, right? It's like, Eunicia, we need to find the Eunicia you, the Eunicia before Corporate America. I'm like, what do you mean?  

He said, listen, we know that corporate America beats executives up and down to the point where it's all about the company. It's not about you. It's no, no, you've lost at that point in time, you've lost the emotional bearing, not the bearing itself, but like you've lost the ability to allow your emotions to come through because that's not what's allowed.  

And I was like, no, no, no, no, no, that cannot be.  And so, as we started working together, it sure enough was especially when you're kind of in a male dominated industry, such as financial services and even on the strategy consulting side, it still was very much male dominated.  

And that was fine. It didn't bother me. But you said something that was very, very critical in terms of, you know, when it comes to, to, you know, how do you think about those things and potentially specifically like the mindset and getting past all of those things. 

Oftentimes individuals will also, and I see this often, they'll rely on the guidance from people that are also outside of their environment. Right? Who do I trust? So, I trust, you know, somebody worked with a coach and I'm going to go ahead and do the same. Well, I've learned better. As a matter of fact, just recently I was invited into a mastermind and I looked at the friend who invited me. It was a really nice hefty price tag. And I thought, okay, maybe for the network. 

But then when I had further conversations with my friend and I said, okay, what about this and what about that and what about that? What came out of people that were actually in the inner circles was the person that is facilitating the mastermind. They're figuring things out as they go along.  

And listen, it's okay to be a couple of steps ahead of everybody else, but at least be a couple of steps ahead. In this case, they were saying one thing from up on stage delivering something very different in the background.  

And unless you have those personal connections, which by the way, go to who's in your tribe, you're not going to know. And you could, I mean, there have been individuals that fell prey and in many cases, you know, it turned out for the better. Maybe the leaders made, you know, made heads and tails and were able to turn around the ship around, but in some cases they didn't. 

And because of all of those bad experiences, it compounds in people's minds. They know somebody who's been there, done that, you know, got felt like they were taken to the woodshed. And now people have become desensitized even when it comes to getting help.  

So, then the question becomes of who do you trust? And the reality is you have to trust a process. You can only trust the process. Don't trust an individual, trust a company, trust, trust what clients are saying, trust endorsements, real, genuine, not 

You know, there are all sorts of gimmicks even there. Trust the process because if there is a process that you know can be applicable, will be applicable to your specific situation, then you're probably going to end up being able to rip the results. 

Ted Ryce: Yeah, that's such good advice because there's some very charismatic people out there. And right. But to your point where it's in that mastermind example where they were just a step ahead and just sharing what they were doing at the moment that may or may not work and what they're delivering it in such a charismatic way. 

Hopefully I come across as charismatic Eunicia, but I definitely try to rely on the processes for sure. 

Eunicia Peret: Oh, I'm not talking about present companies totally excluded. You and I would not be talking if I had even the smallest sense that there's something not kosher going on or something funny or fishy because thank God I have some pretty good spidey senses. 

Ted Ryce: Yeah, for sure. And likewise, right? And also, the way we met, we're in a, with a good group of people with Mike Mark. But yeah, what I meant there is like, I've seen some of the more, and this is my business, just because I can't, I don't know your business well enough or your area, financial area well enough to give examples there, but you know, the people who are doing it, it's kind of funny because the people who are doing the best in my business are way better marketers than me, but they're not as good at coaching.  

And how do I know that? I get clients from their coaching program. 

Eunicia Peret: Exactly, exactly.  

Ted Ryce: You know, that's how I know. So, I get the inside scoop, but they're way better marketers than me.  

Eunicia Peret: Yeah. So, beware of good marketers that will just are good on the sales side. I tell everybody, I just, I don't like to sell. They're like, well, but you have to, I'm like, yes, but I don't enjoy it because, you know, people feel it.  

So that's why, you know, even when we work and I'm sure it's the same thing with you guys, when we work with clients, like, this is what we offer. This is the value that we can deliver.  

And then if we feel like they're a good, a good match, we will let them know we feel that we can add this value or if they're not a good match, then we will also tell them, hey, we're not a good match, maybe not right now, here are some resources that you might consider so that we also don't leave them hanging, unfortunately. 

Ted Ryce: Yeah, that's super important. Super important. Well, Eunicia, it's such a great conversation. I know you have, um, you have something coming up at the top of the hour here. And if you're listening right now and you feel a connection with what Eunicia is talking about and you're interested in her process, um, make sure you go to excelstra.com. 

Of course, that's going to be on the show notes for this episode. And Eunice, is there another place where you'd like people to go? 

Eunicia Peret: They can also go to podcast.excelstra.com. You'll find some additional resources there. And of course, if you're interested and you just want to learn more, book a call. It's of no cost to you, but it'll give you some visibility into, do you even have a problem?  

Should this be even a think of consideration for you, your financials, your taxes, et cetera? And if it's not, guess what? At a minimum, you can put a check the box and know that you're okay and then you can focus on everything else. 

Ted Ryce: There you go. And just one more thing. What is something that you hope a person listening today walks away with? 

Eunicia Peret: You can't do it alone. You can't, I'll give you two if that's okay. Number one, you cannot do it alone. And number two, do not, if you have questions that have gone unanswered or if you have questions, period, don't expect that the answer is going to just show up by doing more of the same. Because at that point in time, we're meeting the definition of insanity. Banging our heads against the wall expecting different results. Don't do that to yourself. It's you, it's your life, it's your money, it's your wealth, it's your legacy, it's your business. It deserves to have some answers, whatever category or categories they may fall under. 

Ted Ryce: Powerful way to end the interview today, Eunicia. Great to connect with you. Looking forward to connecting again. And thanks so much for coming on today and helping everyone understand their financial health better. 

Eunicia Peret: Absolutely. It was such a pleasure, Ted. Happy to do it again, especially if you're listening and you have questions, make sure you let Ted know and we can, whenever we come back around, we can embed them into the conversation. 

Ted Ryce: There we go. All right, thanks so much. And again, looking forward to it. 

Eunicia Peret: Likewise.