What Does a Financial Advisor Do? | Zach Miller, Sam Acho, Jeff Locke, Riccardo Stewart | NFL Players’ Podcast #20
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What comes with being an NFL player is financial complexity and complexity necessitates clarity.
However, the financial industry is as noisy as Wall Street, leaving players confused or unclear about the role and expectations of their Financial Advisor.
In this episode, the AWM team attempts to debunk the archaic view of a Financial Advisor’s job as handling investments only. NFL players need Advisors who provide comprehensive services not limited to only investments but much more.
For questions, you can reach out to Riccardo Stewart at +1 (602) 989-5022.
+ Read the Transcript
Riccardo Stewart (00:11): Hey guys, want to welcome you back to another episode of the AWM NFL podcast. My name is Riccardo Stewart and I'm your host and I'm joined as usual by my good friends. We've got Zach Miller, Sam Acho and Jeff Locke. And, uh, you know, today's episode we're, we're talking to you particularly about what it is that we do and not just the four of us, but in typical and in particular, like financial advisors, what is our job? And here's the genesis of this is we have client meetings where we're talking to clients.
We're talking to their parents. We're talking to people who have been referred to us. And a lot of times they come and they're like, they're not really sure why they're even meeting with this. They just know, hey, I got millions of dollars coming and somebody told me I need to find a financial advisor or wealth manager or financial planner or wall the million names. And then they find us. And before we jump into talking just about that, we function as a team, right?
And it's great because all of us have this football background and sports background, and we work with men who are part of a team. If I had to just go around and say, okay, what was off the cuff best team you've ever been on and why? Best team you've ever played for. It could be youth football all the way to the Super Bowl championship you won, Zach. So Zach, what is your...
Zach, what's the best team you've ever been on?
Zach Miller (01:38): I mean, the Super Bowl team did the Legion of Boom and our defense and then our offense gets not as much love as the defense does, but we're a complete team.
Riccardo Stewart (01:48): I'm disappointed you didn't say the 9-3 third place 2004 Pac-10 team. Say our best team you've ever been on and why.
Sam Acho (01:59): Best team I've ever been on was my senior year in high school, our basketball team. And the reason why is that our junior year, we were a lot more talented. We had a dude who was 6 '9", went to go play at Colgate, or dude who was, no, no, 6 '6", played basketball at Colgate. A dude who was 6 '9", ended up going to go play at Air Force, but we lost the championship that year. Well, the next year, both those guys were gone, and I was one of the leaders of the team, a dude named Chris McClain, a bunch of other guys. But my point is we had a new coach who instilled a new sense of belief, not just in the team, but in me. That was a year that I realized, oh, wow, this game, football, basketball, track, whatever, it's mental. That's when I learned how to do those little things. I had a coach who said little things don't make big things happen. That was the first coach who really believed in me and showed me, hey, man, you can be the star. You are the star. And so, and I helped lead our team to the championship. And so that's why it was the best team because we had low, there were lower expectations from the outside, but the belief from the inside really rose.
Riccardo Stewart (02:55): Jeff, I'm hoping you give me like a soccer reference.
Jeff Locke (02:58): I'm really trying to think back. Like my time in the NFL, unfortunately, was me punning a lot, which means I wasn't on the best of the best of teams. We had one playoff game we didn't win. Yeah, I got to go back all the way to club soccer. We made it to state one year. And I guess that stinks guys. I played in the holiday ball at UCLA. So that was actually a really good year at UCLA, but didn't win the Pac-Fold championship. So like - I have not been on good teams and that kind of hurts hearing Zach's story and talking about the Super Bowl ring. It really hurts thinking back on my teams.
Zach Miller (03:34): I never won a championship until then, so I had to wait a long time.
Riccardo Stewart (03:38): I best team ever played for was my senior year in high school in California. We were, we were CF champions, but that was, that was good to win the championship. But like, we just had all the pieces. Like what you said about your basketball team, Sam, we had good coaches that, that believed in us, that cast good visions, that held us accountable. We had a good core of leaders.
We had been there for three or four years and like been knocked out of the playoffs that, you know, guys, they sacrifice certain things, you know, in California, it was like, let's go to the beach every day. Let's go to the beach. It's like, Hey, let's not go to the beach and let's throw it. Let's not go to the beach. Let's backpedal. And, you know, it all, it all came to, and we recruited players that were athletic soccer players or basketball players who had never played football to come play our senior year, guys that we knew that could help us.
And, and we, we, we pulled it off. And so a little uncle Rico story a little bit. And so, uh, that's good. And I say that to go as a team, because when we hear people like one, people come to us and go, Hey, I need a financial advisor, Sam. Usually when they're coming to us talking about an FA or financial advisor, what do you think they're asking?
Sam Acho (04:43): I think it's really this idea of, hey, when I go to the NFL, I hear that I need an agent and I hear that I need a financial advisor. The agent piece kind of makes sense. I hear that some of the rookie contracts are slotted, but it's really for my second contract. But the financial advisor piece, I don't know exactly what to look for or who's the right one or the wrong one. And so there's some people we're talking to now who have said, well, I kind of wanted to wait on that decision until...my rookie year is over. I've heard guys that say, well, let me just wait now that I've gotten drafted. And so I think they just want a person they can trust, but also a person who's competent and knows what they're doing.
Riccardo Stewart (05:24): True. Jeff, I mean, you're the professor. You give us these good definitions broadly. What the heck is a financial advisor?
Jeff Locke (05:33): That's a great question. And this is one where I can't give you a specific definition because there's so many types of financial advisors. It actually is hard to even wrap your head around to somebody in industry. But the easiest way to start is thinking back to the original financial advisors. So when financial advisory as a profession started, all it was was you give some person money, they open one account for you, and they start picking stocks and other things to try and make your money grow.
That was it. They didn't touch anything else. It was just their whole goal was to get more of your money into an account so they could pick stocks and they could charge more money and get paid more because you have more money in the account. Right. That is like the origination of financial advisor. And the upsetting thing is that a majority of the profession is still just that. Right. Which is just one person kind of loosely attached to some firm or some big name. And the whole goal is just to get more of your money in an account to be able to charge more on it. And they don't really care about offering more services that you actually do need as a pro athlete.
Riccardo Stewart (06:48): Yeah, we like to say that, you know, when it comes to that, there's the investments and the investments is like an engine to a car. Like it's massively important. Like you need the engine, but there's so many things that are to a car, right? And so if you just had an engine sitting in my driveway, people wouldn't be like, oh, you going anywhere? No, I'm not going anywhere. Cause all I have is an engine. And so with that Zach is we started talking about us as AWM, particularly as a family office.
There's so many more things we do and you use the word like comprehensive financial advice as opposed to just the investments in the engine. Like start to talk about just a week in the life of like us, like things that you've just gone through in the last maybe 10 days that you've done for our clients and that you do for our clients.
Zach Miller (07:31): Yeah, I think the biggest thing that I didn't understand as a player is like everyone says FAA, financial advisor. And really that's just guys doing your investments. But what I learned as a player is like, I would ask the question like, how come I don't have someone helping me with my income taxes and then eventually estate taxes.
And then how come they weren't coordinating my insurance? I didn't know what a family office was. So once I was like, okay, there are people that actually do everything, anything money touches, they can actually recommend or advise on. Like that was eye opening to me that of course it already exists. It's just only for the, for the ultra wealthy or for certain people who have complex situations. So when I found out like, AWM is a family office, I was like, Oh, makes perfect sense.
Why wouldn't any athlete want all of this? And so literally as we're doing, working with guys in this off season, we were - we're looking at contracts and their human capital. People don't think about like that unearned income for the next couple of years, even if it's guaranteed, like people aren't wrapping that into the investments and planning for like putting that money to work with that future money in mind, especially when it's like the younger the guy, but the potential is there to earn all that money. I mean, helping guys buy a house, multiple guys have bought houses in the last month here, coordinating all the, and - Unless you bought a house, you have no idea how much paperwork, just back and forth with realtors, the insurance you got to get in place, title company, state attorneys. I mean, there's just so much work that goes on behind the scenes that you just don't realize until you're in those situations. I mean, I didn't know all this until I was actually a player and then you just life happens and you have to you have to go get all these things done.
Jeff Locke (09:05): Don't forget the estate attorney, Zach. All right, we got the, yeah.
Zach Miller (09:25): When you have a team that actually helps you do all those things. I mean, it's massive. Just getting estimated tax payments out next week for guys that have a lot of off the field income. I mean, otherwise, if you don't do these things, you owe the IRS a tax penalty. So it's just all these little things that we do for our guys that I wish I had when I was a player, to be honest.
(09:47): I mean, I could just list off a bunch of things just in the last few days, right? Just in the last like week and a half. We go, all right, so someone like Sam would come in and talk to somebody and be like, oh, this guy wants to start this nonprofit or he wants to give to this. Oh, he doesn't have a donor advice fund, okay? Then all of a sudden Jeff starts kicking it in and we got to make sure there's a donor advice fund that's opened up. And some of you are listening to this going, what is that? Well, that was something we talked about in a previous episode. And then we go, okay, he is buying a house because we have several guys are buying a house.
Well, we don't want people just to find them. We don't want them just to Google and go, this is Sam Achos Hoffs. So we got to get an LLC set up. And then Jeff goes to an attorney, make sure that gets set up and the appropriate LLC that people can't find you. So, you know, your anonymity, it matters. And then we're, whoa, none of those are just necessarily thinking about investments. And yet that's just the couple. And so Jeff, give me some things that you go just behind the scenes. Here's some things that I do that I look at. other advisers and they don't even think about doing.
Jeff Locke (10:44): Yeah, well, let's stick with the home example because I think it's a great example kind of showing the comprehensive nature of what actually happens. So client literally texts us and says, hey, I'm looking at this house. I think I'm going to buy it. All right. First, we know the realtors that are going to keep your name private. Right. So we connect you with the right realtor from the start. We know the mortgage brokers, the people that are going to help get a bank to give you money to buy that home that can actually write a mortgage for a pro athlete because not every mortgage broker can write one for a pro athlete. Right.
And then we're talking to the insurance people directly on the new insurance you have to have for that house. We're doing the investment part, making sure that's all ready in time. And we're actually being the quarterback the entire time on the process. Whereas other advisory firms, and I know this from experience of being at other places and talking to other people in industry, all they care about is when do you need the first wire for earnest money? And when do you need the second wire to go out for when the home is closing? You handle everything else. You just let us know when the money's got to leave your account. And hopefully it's not coming from the accounts I manage.
Hopefully you're finding another way to pay for that stuff. Right. So that's like the difference in that anything that comes up along that way, we're trying to simplify it as much as possible for our clients. So they fully understand what's going on and ultimately they can focus on football. Cause we've got a client's buying houses in the middle of OTAs going into mandatory training camp. And the house is a big priority for you but we know you don't have the time during the day and we know when you're actually free to take care of stuff.
Sam Acho (12:19): And that goes back, Jeff, to your point of just that human centered approach, like the whole, we know when you're actually free. Sometimes let's say you're in the middle of organized team activities. You're in the middle of mandatory mini camp and somebody might be like, well, I need this, this, this, and that. It's like, hold on, you're a human first. What's your biggest priority right now? For some guys, the biggest priority might be trying to impress the coaches. Other guys might be trying to find a place to live. I remember last year, there was a guy who on a team that we worked with and it was like, man, I don't know where to live.
(12:46): Can you help me find places to live? Even just from a geographical standpoint, from a locational standpoint? Okay, the timing of it. Hey, maybe you don't need that house right now because it's June. Maybe you can find it in when you come back after OTAs and mini camps. So just that human centered approach of thinking about, hey, what's important to you right now and focusing on that while also us working behind the scenes on stuff that you need to get done. Not just the stuff you're like, well, I don't think about it. I don't need it. No, we'll get that done for you, but also we'll keep the main thing the main thing.
Riccardo Stewart (13:16): Really good and that we talked, we started by talking about teams and you know, with us in particular, there's a team. Oftentimes our clients, they come to us and they say, okay, Ricardo or Zach or Sam or Jeff, like who's my point person, right? And it usually starts with relationships. Sometimes it's Zach, like Zach's your point person or I'm your point person or Sam's your point person or Jeff, because we're a team. However, what we're very clear is, hey, all of the things that we promised you that we're going to do, no, not.
Like all four of us couldn't even do that. There's this whole other team that's not even on this podcast that's doing things for you that, that, you know, they're making sure bills are paid. Like they're making sure papers are signed. They're making sure that addresses are updated. They're making sure that residency is the way it's supposed to be. They're making sure that your quarterly tax estimated tax payments are not only getting paid, but there's a tax planning part. There's a tax projection because we're not, we're done with 2024.
We're thinking about 2025 because Zach says it all the time. It's not just about being a financial advisor. It's been a financial planner and it's thinking about your entire, your entire life. And so I just wanted to be able to hop on and just talk about the shoot fire and hear you guys talk about the many things in which we do. This is going to wrap up our time. And I think we're going to do this next, this next episode because Sam brings it up. People come to him and they ask him a lot about estate planning and trust.
And so forth. We're going to, we're going to start a new mini-series and take a few weeks to really talk about what does that mean? Even the phrase we've all heard it, a trust fund baby. The heck is that? You know what I mean? Where did that come from? And can NFL players create enough money that their babies could be trust fund babies. And so, um, if you have any questions about what it is that we do or anything that we said, please give us a call at 602-989-5022. Again, that's 602-989-5022.