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We cover the sport of CrossFit from all angles. We talk with athletes, coaches and celebrities that compete and surround in the sport of CrossFit at all levels. We also bring you Breaking News, Human Interest Stories and report on the Methodology of CrossFit. We also use the methodology to make ourselves the fittest we can be.
I was born to kill it.
I was meant to win.
I am down and willing so I
will find a way.
It took a minute and I
didn't have to ride away.
When it get hot in the kitchen,
you decide to stay.
That's how a winner's made.
What's going on, everybody?
Welcome to the Clydesdale Media Podcast.
My name is Scott Schweitzer.
I'm the Clydesdale.
He is Ben Beck,
and he is the Managing
Partner and Chief
Information Officer at Beck Bode.
Ben, how are you doing?
I'm doing well.
How are you, Scott?
I'm good.
I'm good.
This is a little bit
different than what we normally do.
We usually have CrossFit athletes on here,
coaches, people in the space.
And you're in the space,
but in a very different way.
Yeah,
but I'm happy to talk about CrossFit
all day long.
Yeah.
That's for sure.
Not different probably from
most people involved in CrossFit,
willing to talk about CrossFit all day.
Right.
It's funny.
I was reading your profile,
and you talked about when
you are passionate about something,
you like to talk about it
as much as you possibly can.
And that goes for CrossFit
and for the investment
world that you live in.
finance everything you know
it's a joke around my house
like you know I'm actually
happy my wife's not on with
me because she has a long
list of things that I just
get relentless about it's
like when remember when
like when greek yogurt like
first you know started to
become popular it's like oh
wow it's a lot more high
protein you know that's one
thing I would just tell
everybody about right it's
like oh my god have you
tried greek yogurt it's
amazing yeah it's part of my personality
Yeah, I'm kind of the same way that,
you know,
my friends used to say I could sell,
you know,
an ice cube to an Eskimo because
if I like something,
I talked about it until
they at least tried it.
Yeah, got to be passionate about stuff,
right?
I mean,
stuff that that that the stuff that
gets you out of bed in the
morning and you're excited.
It's like,
why would you keep that a secret?
So we're going to get into
finance and investments and
all of that kind of thing.
But we're going to first do
a little bit of an origin
story from you because
you're a high-level athlete.
And we're going to get into that.
But I want to start with
your wife and kids because
something you seem very
passionate about if you go
to your Instagram is your wife and kids.
So how did you and your wife meet?
Oh, yeah.
So we both went to school at
Northeastern University in Boston.
We didn't know each other
until literally three or
four weeks before graduation.
So, you know, as you say in life,
timing is everything.
So I played baseball.
at Northeastern, um,
like any collegiate athlete,
you spend some amount of time in the, uh,
athletic training room, right.
For various injuries or what have you, or,
and she was a athletic training major.
So she would do clinicals in
there with the athletes, uh, you know,
of course,
learning her craft and everything.
I was always, you know, when,
when I saw her for the
first time was like, Oh my gosh,
I was just,
absolutely blown away and uh
but really didn't have any
words with her um until I
don't know three or four
weeks before graduation and
a friend of a friend said
hey you should really talk
to danielle and so we ended
up I ended up starting a
conversation with her we
went to they had this like
senior night at fenway park
one of the red sox games and
we went out and just I
don't know everything just
clicked with us and it's
one of those things where I
know it's cliche but it's
like when you meet somebody
and you're like when you
know you know I'm not
saying that the first
moment I met her I knew we
were gonna get married and
have children but I had
that feeling like oh my
gosh this is just totally
unexpected and and uh we
were engaged within
within a year and married the next year.
Nice.
That's pretty fast.
Pretty fast.
Way, way faster than me.
Yeah.
So it took me like almost
five years to get engaged.
And then, uh,
then we got married about a year after,
but yeah, it took, took a while.
Yeah.
I'm a, I'm a slow learner.
Yeah.
Um, so you also have four kids.
Hmm.
That's no small talk.
It's hard to keep the roof
on here sometimes, but it's something.
I grew up in Portland, Maine.
I just have an older brother.
My wife has two younger brothers.
It was just always a conversation of ours.
We both wanted a bigger family.
And so I think in her mind,
based on her experience,
she wanted three kids.
And in my mind, I was like,
I would have 10 kids at the time.
And, and though, you know,
one of the things and you know, they are,
you're absolutely right.
I mean, my, my,
my family is my passion for sure.
And changed my life, you know,
in so many ways.
I will say, though, my perspective changed,
though, because once had the third,
and then Nolan, our fourth,
he's five years old now.
There is legitimacy to the
amount of time that you can
spend individually with each child.
And that's something that going in,
I'm like, oh, you know, you know,
I'd have a lot of kids and
life would be great.
It'd be busy.
It'd be hectic, but it'd be awesome.
And I've got friends of mine.
I've got a good friend of
mine that has seven kids
and it's fantastic.
We've spent some time with them before.
um with us it was like we
came to that realization
like all right four is
great and four we're
getting at that point where
we're in a really good spot
and and able to you know
spend of course we spend
all of our time together
but we also you know make
an effort to spend time
individually with with each
of our kids and and give
them that in terms of our
full attention because you
know you get pulled away by
a lot of stuff right family-wise
And when you're with a group,
some kids don't get as much
attention than others.
But I came to that realization that, okay,
yeah, you know what?
I think four is good for us
because we start having
more than you lose a bit of that.
I felt that way.
So we do everything.
We travel a lot.
When I go away...
on one of the nice parts
about my business and my
career is that it is a lifestyle business,
right?
I mean, you alluded to,
I'm involved in CrossFit,
but in the financial world,
I'm also involved in CrossFit.
So the types of things that I travel to
um you know I often bring
the family um you know we
own uh uh we have a
location out in michigan
and more recently when the
kids go to school this
summer I went out there in
business but we turned it
into like a little mini
vacation so we could spend
time together even though I
was I was working half the
time so it makes it really
nice to be able to um I
suppose integrate your
family life and your
business life but not a lot
of folks get to do that
which is which I don't take lightly
So, you know,
stalking around your
Instagram a little bit,
I noticed that there's an
affinity for Dave Matthews.
Indeed.
And did you take your kids
to a concert recently?
I did.
I did.
We were so right before school started.
So it was end of August last summer.
We took the kids out to San Diego.
And then the plan was to do San Diego,
go to the zoo.
Not that we're Padres fans,
but one of my favorite
players right now and my
son's all time favorite
player is a guy named Xander Bogarts.
And he used to be with the
Red Sox for a number of years.
Now he's with the Padres.
And so we said, all right,
we're going to go to the
Padres game and watch him.
He's also a Aruban,
one of the few Aruban players.
And we frequent,
if you've been on my Instagram,
you've undoubtedly seen a
lot of pictures from Aruba as well,
Scott.
So he's also one of the few
Aruban players in the major leagues.
So yeah, we went out to San Diego.
The plan was to drive up to
and then spend a day or two
at Disneyland.
and then you know while
we're in san diego I just
happened to see that dave
matthews was playing in
orange county and so I got
on google maps I'm like all
right we're staying in
anaheim at the resort and
like it looked like oh it's
a 30-minute drive to um the
venue so I'm like I want to
pick up six tickets we're
gonna go see dave so that's
what we did it was
fantastic how many times
have you seen him oh um
Boxing,
in comparison to some of my friends,
it's not that much,
but I've probably seen, I don't know,
20 shows, 25 shows, right in that range?
When you have to just estimate,
you know it's been a lot.
Right, right.
And it's my, and it's our,
I don't know how old you are.
I'm 45.
I mean,
Dave Matthews was right smack dab in like,
I think, you know,
he came out really mainstream in like 91,
92.
I graduated high school in 97.
So it was like junior high, high school.
And then college wise,
anytime he would come play at the, um,
the TD bank guard in Boston
or at a local venue,
we would go and still, you know,
every year I at least go to one show.
But yeah, he's, he's writing that,
you know,
the 40 and 50 year olds that's
prime Dave Matthews demographic, I think.
Yeah.
I'm a big fan.
I'm a little bit older than
you maybe by about 10 years.
So my band like that is you too.
So I go see that when I can.
But yeah, I love Dave Matthews.
My one big regret,
and I used to go to a ton of concerts,
is I've not seen Dave.
I actually had tickets to see him.
And it was a vacation that
went totally awry.
We had to change locations.
And I would have to have
driven all the way back to
the initial location to see him.
And I just scrapped it.
And I should have just done it.
Yeah, well, I mean,
they're still touring like
crazy and hopefully not
letting up anytime soon.
It's incredible.
Yeah, I've, you know,
there's the Dave Matthews
Band shows that obviously
folks know about.
And then there's him.
He doesn't do very many of them,
but it's him and his lead guitarist,
Tim Reynolds.
Yep.
and they do some dave and
tim shows yeah some
acoustic shows that I
actually I wouldn't say I
necessarily prefer those
but those are such great
intimate um experiences to
the extent that I've been
to four of those and one of
them I almost went by myself
So they released it like
three or four weeks before.
And I said, all right, I'm going to,
you know, Danielle, my wife, like,
we'll go.
And, you know, she's kind of fed up with,
you know,
she's seen so many Dave Matthews shows.
She's like, all right,
it's time to like diversify your,
you know, the folks that you go with.
I don't necessarily need to
go to all of them now.
So I couldn't find anybody to go with me.
It was in Rochester, New York.
And I'm like, screw it.
I'm like, I looked on JetBlue.
JetBlue had a direct flight
from Boston to Rochester.
So I said,
I couldn't find anybody in the moment.
So I just booked the trip.
And then luckily at the 11th hour,
my brother,
who was in Atlanta at the time,
he flew up and went to the show with me.
We had a great time.
But I love those shows.
They're just incredible.
Yeah,
I had a ticket for a Dave and Tim show.
And that's what I regret
because those aren't as easy to come by.
Yeah, for sure.
Yeah, for sure.
So let's finish up the music with this.
I also noticed you like to play guitar.
Yeah.
Is that a decompression
mechanism or just something
you've always done or?
I think that's a fair assessment of it,
decompression.
It's a release.
It's something that I started.
So my uncle is classically trained.
He's an unbelievable studio level.
He's older now,
but he's a studio level guitarist,
not a studio level
guitarist for those that
don't know a lot about music.
They are such incredible musicians.
They're not necessarily the
musicians that go on the
road with various bands.
They're the ones that lay
down the tracks in the
studio that are just incredibly talented.
He's that level.
And so I used to see him
when I was younger play,
and I was just enthralled with it.
So I picked up the guitar
young but never really –
committed to it.
And then really it was,
it was Dave Matthews really where his,
his style just hit me as being so unique.
Uh,
when I was younger that I started
picking it up and, you know,
it's around the time the internet was,
you know, coming more mainstream.
So you could go online and
you could actually see the
printed out guitar tabs.
So, and, and,
Then, you know, years later,
YouTube came along, right?
And so you could watch other
folks playing.
And so that kind of spurred
my involvement with the guitar.
And, you know,
you flash forward to now or
just having kids.
It is a huge, huge...
escape, release.
It's very common when I put
my five-year-old in the bathtub.
I give him a bath and I've
got 15 or 20 minutes while
he's in the bathtub to sit
in the bathroom and play
the guitar while he's in the bath.
It's very common when I used to
put the kids down to sleep
at night just to sit in their bed and,
and, and strum the guitar.
And, and I think they liked that too.
And so, yeah, that's,
that's what it is for me.
I just love to play and, and,
and music is for sure a release.
So growing up, you,
you played a lot of baseball.
Yes.
What was that?
Your,
was that your only sport or just your
main sport?
Um, no, it wasn't, it wasn't my only sport,
um,
played football and basketball all the
way up through my dad, um,
is big into sports and he
was a college basketball player.
And, um, yeah, me and my brother, um, yeah,
a standard, a typical upbringing and,
you know, um, neighborhood USA, right.
You know, you're, you're,
you're out in the street in
the summertime doing
something playing touch football or,
or wiffle ball.
And that, that was my upbringing.
Um,
We didn't grow up really
with a lot of money at all.
My folks are both school
teachers and I think they
struggled along the way.
I know they struggled along the way,
but I didn't feel it.
My brother didn't feel it.
When you think of wealth,
the industry that I'm in,
I think of wealth a little
bit differently than most people.
And when I think about my upbringing,
I even though the money wasn't there,
I had an incredibly wealthy
upbringing because I had a
really supportive and caring family,
a mom and dad that was together,
an older brother, coaches,
great teachers along the way.
I never really wanted for
much and then sports was
always there for me too.
So it was always, you know,
throwing the football.
I do that with my son almost
every day of the week.
My 11-year-old son,
we're always tossing the
baseball or the football around.
So, yeah,
so baseball certainly was big growing up,
football and basketball.
It just so happened that I, ironically,
baseball was probably my weakest sport,
yet I went the farthest in it.
You can't really figure that out,
but that's just how it happened.
So it's funny you say that.
I was a four-sport athlete myself.
And baseball was my love.
Like, well,
baseball and football were pretty close.
And that neither one of
those are the things I went further in.
Um, but I mean,
I practice baseball every single day.
Was there a moment where you said,
this is the one that I'm
going to like ride, ride the horse and,
and put all your, your effort into.
Yeah.
Yeah.
And, and, um,
It was really after high school.
So my story in playing
college baseball was I
actually went to
Northeastern University to
play football predominantly.
And I was going to walk onto
the baseball team.
And it was actually,
I hadn't selected a school,
or probably better said a
school hadn't selected me yet, you know,
well into my senior year of high school.
And so a buddy of mine from high school,
we jumped in my dad's Ford
Ranger and took a trip down
to Boston from Portland,
Maine to visit BU and a few
other local schools down there,
Northeastern included.
and so um we stopped off to
see um football coaches and
talk to them and everything
and and if you're familiar
with with boston but you
know when you're coming
from the north you
typically will go over the
tobin bridge or the mystic
river bridge huge
contraption and you're
overlooking the city and it
was probably march or so or april
It was before the season started,
but you look over and you
can see like the Sitco sign,
the legendary Sitco sign at Fenway Park.
And you looked over and I
looked over and said, oh,
the lights are on at Fenway Park.
I wonder why that is.
And then I thought to myself,
being a lifelong Red Sox
fan and just enthralled
with Fenway Park and all of that, I said,
geez,
what schools are like really close
by to Fenway?
and so happened to be you
was close by but you didn't
have a baseball team or at
that point a football team
I don't think um they had
they dropped those programs
and so I said well what's
the next one northeastern
so went to talk to um the
football coach had a great
interview had a great talk
with them and then just
stopped by the baseball
coach's office when I was
there and as I was talking
to the baseball coach I was looking
in his office on the wall,
and it was the schedule for next year.
And smack dab in the middle
of the schedule was this
thing called the Beanpot.
And he was describing to me that, well,
the Beanpot is legendary for hockey.
The top hockey teams in that area,
I think it's UMass, BC, Harvard,
and Northeastern play.
But there's also a Beanpot
tournament for baseball,
and that's played at Fenway Park.
And so right in that moment,
I can remember standing
there and being like,
anything else he said, I didn't hear.
All I heard was,
if I go to Northeastern and
I make the baseball team,
I get the opportunity to
play on the field at Fenway
Park twice a year.
So from that point forward,
I basically said, look, can I walk on?
And he said, yeah, it's open walk-ons.
And so I went to school the
other next year and in the
fall walked on and made the team.
And that was that.
It was really around that
time where I really, you know,
it was that switch for me.
I mean, the summer in my senior year,
I was of high school after graduating.
My typical days was I was
working on the back of a
garbage truck of all things.
And, you know,
we'd work from like seven in
the morning until like two.
And then at two o'clock,
I'd drive up to Westerly Winds,
which was this outdoor mini
golf batting cage place up
in Westbrook or Wyndham, Maine,
and just pump tokens into
the batting cage.
And I would hit and hit and
hit until it was too dark to hit.
And that was just that, you know,
it's one of those things I think back on,
like when you asked about
turning points or the light switch,
you know, going on, it was like,
you kind of fall in love with a craft,
right?
You fall in like,
you're trying to perfect this craft,
but like anything else,
like it's not work.
It's like this drive to just
incrementally get better and better.
And that was it for me.
And I started to develop as
a hitter and was able to
just carry that throughout
college and then play a few
years of professional baseball as well,
which was a great experience.
What position?
I'm a lefty,
so I played first base and a
lot of outfield as well.
Couldn't really break a pane
of glass with my fastball.
So the pitching man was off
limits after my youth.
What team did you end up
with professionally?
I played mostly in the
independent leagues or
entirely in the independent leagues.
So there are a few teams I played for.
The Brockton Rocks was a
local team that came on.
They're not any longer.
I think they're a college summer team now.
And then a few other teams,
the Atlantic City Surf in Atlantic City,
New Jersey.
And then there's another
team in the league called
the Northeast Aces that
were based out of Elmira,
New York that I played for too.
Yeah, I absolutely love baseball,
and that's so cool you got to do that.
I was a pitcher in high school.
I got a look from the St.
Louis Cardinals,
then got a tear in my rotator cuff,
and that ended all that.
But it was fun while it lasted, right?
Yeah, yeah.
And did you grow up in Ohio,
or where did you grow up?
I actually grew up a
Pittsburgh Pirates fan.
Oh, okay.
Yeah?
Yeah.
Just north of Pittsburgh.
So you're a little bit older than me.
So was that like the Andy Van Slyke era?
Like the early Barry Bonds era?
Or was that a little bit further?
So that would have been my
high school years.
Bobby Bonilla was my guy.
Oh, Bobby Bo.
Yeah.
Yeah.
But yeah, that outfield of Bonds,
Van Slyke,
and Bonilla was pretty stacked back then.
i remember that I remember
those teams yeah yeah
incredible yeah we we I we
would go down there in high
school my buddies and I
would drive down go to
games all the time we loved
it I love that yeah it's
just uh my my most cherished
Some of my most cherished
childhood memories are my
parents getting my brother
and I in the car,
driving down to Boston once
a year in the summer,
parking in the north end,
which is the Italian section.
The big dig, the whole highway system,
it's kind of like disrupted
all that and actually improved that.
But there used to be just
the big green bridge
expressway that we used to
weave through the city.
And so we would park underneath
via that highway.
And on one side near the
water is the north end.
So we'd eat in the north end,
the Italian section.
And then we'd walk.
We'd walk across the city
all the way to Fenway Park
and go to a game.
And my memories, just as a youngster,
of you know there's a part
right before you get to the
stadium where you're
walking um down
commonwealth ave you take a
left and it goes up and
over the turnpike and once
you're up and over the
other side you basically
run into lansdowne street
which is the green monster
and back then it was like
the netting above the green
monster and it's like I
mean for me and probably
you have a similar story of
growing up but but for me
that was my call my
graceland or my you know that that was
it was a religious experience, right?
Every time that we would go, uh,
cause it just Fenway was
such is to this day,
such a mythical place.
And I remember that like it was yesterday.
It was just such a, such a great memory.
I wish we had, I mean,
my dad took me all the time
and those were the Willie Stargell years,
the Dave Parker,
like way back in the day.
And, uh,
it was the cookie cutter
stadium we didn't have
runway right we had three
of our stadium piece a
block of concrete that was
round yeah you know just it
so and it was just a hole
when you went in it nothing
aesthetic about it at all
now pittsburgh has one of
the nicest baseballs
beautiful right right yeah
my daughter loves going
And my daughter,
today is her 23rd birthday.
She just moved to Pittsburgh a year ago.
And so, and she,
she's not very far from the stadium.
So the hope is that we get
to do that some more.
We did a lot when she was a little girl,
but go to some games now
that she lives there.
Oh, that's so fun.
It's awesome.
You'll get to do that.
You get to do that.
We were just actually this past weekend,
we took the kids back up to
Portland where the AA
affiliate for the Red Sox is,
the Portland Seadogs.
And that was just a lot of fun.
That was just a lot of fun
to watch the up-and-comers play.
But I hear you when you talk about...
like the old school
ballparks I mean what you
described pittsburgh I mean
that was outside of a small
handful of parks that that
was the description of a
lot of parks I remember the
astrodome and and toronto
and philadelphia I mean
they weren't ballparks with
a lot of personality right
no and I think it was I
don't know if you agree but
I think it was like when
camden yards was built
that kind of ushered in the
new era of ballparks, right?
And now, how old is Camden Yards now?
Probably like 20, I don't know, 20,
25 years old or 30.
But I remember,
and I've been to Camden
Yards a handful of times,
and I still believe that
it's one of the nicest ballparks ever.
It's just,
I don't know if you've been there before,
but it's just a wonderful
place to watch a game.
I mean,
it's the only ballpark I've been to
I can get lobster on my hot dog.
There you go.
Yeah, absolutely.
Right in the ocean.
Yeah.
So, what's cool about the baseball?
Let's get into some CrossFit
and some finance.
Yeah.
So, you retire from professional baseball.
You find CrossFit.
How does that happen?
Um, yeah, it was, it was actually, um,
that was that there was a
period there between
retiring from baseball.
Um,
and then I had the opportunity to enter
the financial world,
something I was always enthralled with,
but really knew nothing about.
And there was that period of, let's see,
that was probably like, um, yeah, um,
you know,
five or six years in that
period before I found CrossFit,
where even though I was
sort of working out,
I really lost touch with fitness,
if that makes any sense at all.
But yeah, I really,
I was at toward the end of
my baseball career.
I don't think I either knew
it or had acknowledged it, but it,
there's something pop up in the screen.
Um, and, um, my wife,
actually one of her clients,
she was a physical therapist at the time.
He said, he, he mentioned to her, he says,
Oh, I understand your, your husband's a,
uh, a ball player.
And, uh, he was, uh, uh, uh, high up at,
at, uh, a large wall street firm.
He said, well, look, you know,
if he's ever interested in talking,
if he's, you know, thinking about,
you know, the, you know,
the next part of his career, we hire, uh,
um folks that more often
than not tend to come from
athletic backgrounds to
become financial advisors
because a big part of being
a financial advisor at
least at that time at the
bigger wall street firms it
was a very entrepreneurial
culture so it wasn't so
much about you know you
know so much about managing
money is that do you have
the mentality to um start a business
within the walls of a major institution.
And so when she shared that with me,
you know, it was, you know,
my mind went right back to
maybe what other folks that
are intrigued with finance
would be at that time.
It's like, okay,
I remember the movies like
The Boiler Room and Wall
Street and all these things.
And, you know,
all illegality aside with those movies,
you know,
that culture of like working as
a team and cold calling and
all these things that I end
up doing and doing a lot of
to really try to grow and
build a business was very intriguing.
And then you, you know, on top of that,
you're learning about the
financial markets.
And lucky for me,
I crossed paths with a
veteran advisor out of
Philadelphia a few years
into my business where he
taught me more than anything else,
the right path to take when
it comes to finance.
And right then that changed my life.
And it's a process,
it's a philosophy that I've
carried forward from that
point and then built my own
independent company based
upon those principles and
something that I share with everybody.
That was my intro into finance.
And then a few years after that,
I got a call from a college
friend of mine, Josh Plosker.
And, you know, him and my business partner,
he said, hey,
I just opened this gym in Boston.
You guys got to come down and work out.
And it was at the time it
was Reebok CrossFit Back Bay.
think he put us through dt
or something crazy like
that the first time it went
down there but like a lot
of folks I'm sure that
would res you know this
story resonates with I went
once and we were hooked
just like that and that set
set us off on set me off on
my crossfit journey that
was probably 2011 2012
right in that time frame so
I pulled up a picture I'll
pull it up here again I saw
the I saw um where
You're climbing a rope.
It looks like that rig is outside,
maybe in your backyard.
It is, yeah.
Yeah, it is.
So you take this CrossFit thing serious?
You know, I take the CrossFit,
I take the fitness aspect
really seriously.
I mean, I'm sure like a lot of listeners,
obviously –
know you're into crossfit
you're into finding ways to
just get a little bit
better every day and so
when I bought the house
that I'm in today about
nine years ago nine years
ago ten years ago um we
were redoing the backyard
and and um you know there
was a spot in the backyard
behind the shed that hey is
There's a retaining wall next to it.
And it's like, oh,
this could be a good spot
for a workout area.
And then going under Rogue.com,
you can go down that rabbit hole.
And then all of a sudden, hey,
this rig would fit over there.
And not much convincing needed to my wife.
So she was like, all right,
let's put something in there.
And I spend at least some part of my day,
almost every day, there.
This picture has a little
bit of special me.
Number one,
my kids like to spend time in the rig.
We have static hang contests
and everything.
But six months ago,
I got fed up with me being 6'4",
and pound for pound, inch for inch,
being the worst rope
climber you could ever imagine.
For some reason,
I just couldn't figure it out.
I could climb a rope,
but you get me in the
middle of a workout,
and a little fatigued.
And it's like taking me four
poles at one point.
I'm like, this is ridiculous,
embarrassing.
So, you know,
I started committing to
getting out there every
single day and saying, you know,
I'm going to go outside.
I want to do five.
And I'm not going to stress
about so much about technique.
I'm not stressed about if I
do every single one correct.
I'm just going to force
myself every day to go out
there and do five.
And if anybody's ever read,
I got the idea.
from a book by James Clear
called Atomic Habits,
which if you haven't read that,
it's a phenomenal, phenomenal book.
And he talks that book about
the two minute drill.
And his point is,
I won't articulate it as
clearly as he does,
but you can do basically
anything for two minutes.
You pick the thing you hate the worst.
You can still do it for two minutes.
And you know what?
If you commit two minutes
and you quit after that, fine.
And so that was my mentality
with rope climbs is that in
some other things CrossFit related,
it's like, all right,
I'm going to commit to
doing a small amount every day.
And his point is you commit to two minutes,
you'll end up doing more.
You know, the analogy that I love,
I heard just the other day,
which I thought was a great one,
is that the heaviest weight
at the gym is the front door.
I love that analogy.
And so it's to me, it's the same as that.
It's like if you could just start,
commit to something small,
it can really snowball.
And so this this picture is
just a random morning, I guess,
a few weeks ago where I was
out there in the morning
and knocking out those five
plus rope climbs.
So I find it interesting
that like life and CrossFit
can parallel so much, right?
And you mentioned the guy
that you met that gave you
the guiding principles in
which you run your business today.
And before that,
and something I read that
was out there about you,
you were kind of just going
through the motions of
finance before that.
Mm-hmm.
And I watch a podcast called
The Pivot with Ryan Clark
and Fred Taylor.
And they always talk about
that moment in life where
you hit that moment where
you have to pivot and it
changes everything.
And it sounds to me like you
meeting this person who
explained to you what
finance can be was the
pivot moment of your life.
Incredibly so.
I cannot overstate.
I can't do it justice saying
that that chance meeting
with him changed the
trajectory of my life in so many ways.
And you started talking
about the parallels, I think,
to CrossFit too.
And
Even though I didn't even
know about CrossFit at the
time that I met him,
I've come to understand how
there are incredible amount
of parallels between
finance done properly,
personal finance done properly,
and the principles of CrossFit.
Reading those older Greg
Glassman principles from back in the day,
and you read them today and
you're like all that all
that still applies and it's
the same with finance um
you know um you know one
you know when I talk to
folks um you know for folks
that I know that are in
crossfit that are clients
of mine or become clients
of mine you know I always
have to apologize I'm like
I know we're both in
crossfit you're going to
hear a lot of analogies you
know that you've heard from
crossfit but things like
the unknown and the unknowable
right,
embracing the unknown and the unknowable.
Now, I initially heard CrossFit,
but that is smack dab
correct when it comes to
finance and personal finance as well.
When you're investing your
hard-earned money,
you're going out there into the unknown.
You're going out there into the future.
And nothing determines the
outcome other than what
happens in the future, which is
at this point in time,
unknown and unknowable.
So there's a lot of things that we embrace,
me and as a company in finance,
that are very attributable
to a lot of the things in
CrossFit and committing to fitness.
And that's one of the big
things that my mentor,
his name is David Malik,
he taught me right off the bat, is like,
you've got to release and get rid of
all these things you hear
about actually on a daily
basis from the financial industry,
about the focus on
performance and historical
information and what's
happening on CNBC or what
you're reading about in the newspaper,
all these things that
really have no impact on
your ability or your client's ability
to improve their financial
lives over time it's just
noise and that amongst
others but that big
realization actually lifted
an incredible amount of
stress off of me because
that was about two years into my career
And I was, I mean,
doing well as a subjective term.
I was doing well because I'd
cold call Scott and somehow
convince Scott to have a
cup of coffee with me and
where we could talk about
finance and what he's doing and so on.
But I mean, two years into my career,
not knowing much about
stocks and bonds and all those things,
who knows what that
conversation went like.
And it wasn't so much that
that was stressful for me.
But, you know,
you do things a little while
and you're like,
I want to create or I want
to be valuable to somebody.
And I'm working hard.
I'm cold calling every day,
sometimes four or five
hundred people a day and a
meeting with them.
But I can't quite bridge the
business aspect of it with
am I creating a significant
value for this person, their families,
financial lives?
And that got to the point
for me where I was about
two years into my career and doing well,
getting clients to come aboard,
but internally feeling like,
what the hell am I doing
other than bringing them
back to the firm that I was
working with and we're
investing in them in
something that I really had
very little idea how
beneficial it was for them or not.
And that chance meeting with
David Malik and his
principles and what I
learned about how to
properly invest money and
how to guide people through
the obstacles of their financial lives,
that was just life-changing for me.
And that was a point where
the trajectory of my career
really really took off and
um and I'm incredibly
thankful for that
experience and he's a good
friend of mine now to this
day so we met through
mutual friends that are in
the crossfit space um and I
know that you have clients
in the crossfit space
Salaries for, I say salaries,
income for a CrossFit
athlete is not a static number, right?
Depending on what
competition they win or
what sponsor they have this
month or whatever, it's going to change.
How hard is it to look at
finances on the long term
when that's totally unknown
and unknowable?
You don't even know what the
income is going to be.
Yeah.
Yeah.
On one hand, in the moment,
it can be like any athlete.
Let's see if we're talking about athletes.
Any athlete, I guess said differently,
you don't know when or if
that next paycheck is going to come,
right?
Whether it's a sponsor or
whether you win an event or
whether you're a major
league baseball player and
this just happens to be the
last season you play.
There's a few things that
are unique about CrossFit
athletes I've found,
which I think why we work
so well together with
CrossFit athletes and folks
that are connected to CrossFit.
But one of the things that
is unique about them is the
fact that they are, by their nature,
tremendously disciplined athletes.
not folks that necessarily
go out there and are living
lifestyles at all above their means,
whatever those means are at
this particular point.
And by and large,
I have not and we've
managed money and do
provide advice for a number
of athletes and people connected.
I've never come across an
athlete in the CrossFit
space at least that wasn't
tremendously coachable when
it came to finance.
uh which is which is really
unique um you know in in my
experience at least
considering all the
different people we
actually work with as a
company from you know
entrepreneurs corporate
executives business owners
uh families um and it is
pretty incredible so with
someone that um you know
let's call their income is
lumpy I suppose you know
you don't you know there's
not a lot of predictability to it
Really,
the idea is trying to carve out
with them from a planning perspective.
Okay, we're making money now.
Where do we want to get to
in terms of taking
advantage as best we can these years,
however many years we have
of accumulating capital,
so that by the time you're, in some cases,
just 40 or 45 years old,
the combination of the
money that you're able to save
And the accumulation,
the compounding that's
created by investing it in
the right spots works out
to be a figure at that point in time, 40,
45, 50 years old,
where you have accumulated
enough money to provide
yourself enough income,
at least a certain amount
of income for the rest of your life.
And so it really begins with, all right,
well,
what does it cost to run your household,
right?
And for the average athlete,
at least in the CrossFit space,
they don't live
high profile,
they're so committed to training,
they're so committed to a regiment, right,
as you know, you know,
they're not out there
spending money left and right, you know,
and they're really disciplined with it.
So it's been great.
And it is,
it's not necessarily challenging
in the sense of, you know,
um um whether or not the
income's coming in it's
just a matter of crafting a
plan and having a
reasonable and workable
plan say all right we're
going to save this much
money every month that
comes in and this is how
we're going to invest that
money and if we can do
those parts reasonably well
um we should get to this
figure in x amount of years
and just I suppose just like a
training plan that they
follow um that's something
that they really gravitate
like people like them and
people like them and myself
gravitate towards hey I
want to see the roadmap I
want to see I'm really it
should yeah not so much
what's this high the
highest returning
investment or so on because
again what may return great
one year could be at the
bottom of the list the next
year so you can't go off of
that um what you can go off
of and what is tangible is
assuming a reasonable rate
of return over time,
what do we have to do
together to really save
that money and accumulate?
And athletes by and large,
at least the CrossFit space,
are poster children for the
right ways to do things
with their finances.
it's funny you say that
because there were all
these shows on for a long
time about NBA players or
NFL players who got the big
rookie deal and then had
nothing five years later because,
you know, they bought all the stuff.
And that,
And I don't want to dive too
far in the rabbit hole,
but the CrossFitters do
follow their training plan.
And it's not a sport that is
the NBA or NFL yet, right?
And nowhere near that.
And so most of them had to
work a job until they got
to a certain level anyway and did both.
So they're used to like
budgeting and all that
stuff to get through.
So I find that really fascinating.
As an employer and a person
working yourself who does CrossFit,
do you see that CrossFit
instilling those same
values into you as an
employer looking at who you
want to hire or in yourself
and the rate of return of
your own work ethic and
what you put into it?
Sure.
I think absolutely.
When you think about that, well,
when you ask that,
the first thing that comes to mind,
the phrase big picture, right?
So the mentality and the
teachings of CrossFit, right,
amongst many,
many other things are such that, you know,
and very similar to finance,
the phrase or the sentence
that I use in finance when
it comes to investing is
rarely does a company go
from obscurity to prominence overnight.
It requires discipline, execution,
patience.
And then I look at, okay,
who are the types of people
that align with those types of values?
And when it comes to,
you asked about being a business owner,
an entrepreneur and hiring people,
it's that we look for folks that...
share those same core values
that see the big picture
that aren't looking to come
in whether it's a client or
an employee that are coming
in for well you know you
know I heard we're gonna get you know
18% return, so that's why I'm here.
No,
you're here and we're here together to
look at the big picture and
to make sure we execute so
that your life financially
20 years from now is in the
most optimal financial
position that we possibly can be.
What happens over the next year,
whether it's in the markets, the economy,
or who gets elected or who
doesn't get elected,
all these distractions that
the media focuses on,
really have no bearing and
really no impact even
though it's talked a lot
about in the on the
financial um news programs
when it comes to um
optimizing somebody's
financial life or in my
case being a business owner
And employees,
it's really about the big picture and,
yes,
doing the right things for the right
reasons and such.
But finding people that
align with those same core
values is so incredibly important.
And I'm lucky, I'm blessed to, over time,
built a team of people that
embody those values.
I'm going to ask a weird question here.
You've been in this business a long time.
You serve not just athletes.
You serve everyday Americans
and make sure that their
finances are set for many years.
You have a big team.
Do you have specialists that
work with certain people or
do you have well-rounded
employees that can work with anybody?
The latter.
And, you know,
your question makes me think
of perhaps maybe intentionally so,
like what's thought of of
the financial industry, right?
What does the average person think of,
they don't know me,
But they hear Ben Beck, financial advisor.
I wonder what they think
that Ben does every day.
Do I sit in front of a computer?
Am I trading in and out of stocks all day?
Am I in the know about
something coming down the
pipe that is privy to
information that not a lot
of other people have?
And for myself and for the
financial advisors out there,
that couldn't be farther from the truth.
What we're doing every day and what,
in particular,
our company every day is
really looking to optimize
our clients' financial situations.
I lost track of your question, though.
Can you repeat the question one more time?
Well,
it was more about... I was trying to
make the analogy with CrossFit.
The all-around athlete is
usually going to do better
than someone who
specializes in one thing or another.
Right.
And then... So how do you work that?
Because when you watch movies like...
And that's the reference
point I know is that the
financial person that runs
the company has all the big fish.
And then people below him,
maybe they specialize in the athletes.
And then this group
specializes in Joe Average,
like me and my wife, right?
It sounds like it's not how
you run your company.
Well, if you look at where our,
it's a great question.
So thank you for repeating it too.
When you look at the cross
section of who we have as
employees who are financial
advisors or regardless of their position,
they're just well-rounded people.
great um human beings first
and foremost that that care
about other human beings um
the financial side is
taught and and it's it's
not something that's
insurmountable and we run
when we actually when when
it comes to the investing
part of the equation for our firm um
we run our strategies that
we run for everyone.
We don't have something
tremendously different
going on for Scott that we do for Bob,
that we do for Jill or anybody like that.
So the principles are, as they should be,
the same for everyone in
terms of what are the
principles of the economy of investing.
The principles of successful
investing aren't different
for me than they are for
you or anybody else for that matter.
Now,
everybody's financial situation and
circumstances are a little bit different,
but the role of the
financial advisor is not
investment specialists.
It's human being.
And ultimately,
how our clients are going
to perform or how they're
going to do over the next
20 or 30 years has a lot
less to do with the
particular investment strategy.
And it has a lot more to do
with ultimately their
behavior and how they
operate over good times and
bad times and whether
they're able to execute.
that's the role of us as the
front end to be human
beings to understand hey
saving money now but hey
there's going to be things
that are going to happen in
life that um whether
they're personally related
or their market or economy
related where they going to
be prone to make a decision
that may not probably not
be in their best interests
from a financial
perspective our role as
financial advisors is not
to stand up here and say
you shouldn't do that is to
empathize with folks and to
use our experience to
understand and to
continually guide them on
that path of life obviously
is not a straight line for everybody up.
We go through our ups and downs.
That's the role of my team, at least,
is human beings first to
really understand what a
client and their family is
really trying to achieve
and know that there are
going to be multiple
occasions along that 20 or
30 year plus period where
they're going to have an
opportunity to veer off course.
and it's us continually
communicating and building
the relationship and trust
over time so that when we
do say hey look like let's
let's reconnect let's
reassess what we put
together as a plan and and
make sure we continue to
move forward you know on
the path that we set that
doesn't take an investment
specialist that takes an
employee an advisor that really um
knows how to connect with
other human beings and
that's ultimately how we
built our firm not with
investment specialists but
with with folks that
certainly understand
finance and understand
planning and understand the
principles of successful investing but um
much,
much more important than that is
understanding how human
beings react under stress
and to know that that's
going to happen and to make
sure that we do our duty
and guide them back to the right path.
So we're coming up on the hour.
I want in the last question for you,
and then we'll tell people
how they can get in touch
with you is if you had to
give people one advice,
one piece of advice about
financial planning, what would you,
what would that one piece of advice be?
Just one.
Just what?
And maybe the answer is
there isn't one piece.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Um,
Do your best to remove
emotion from the equation.
And the best thing that you
can do to help yourself do
that or with the assistance
of a financial advisor like
us or somebody else is
write out the plan with someone's help.
Write out not returns or
necessarily the amount of
money that you feel is
going to achieve what you need to achieve,
but understand first and
foremost what you're
actually trying to achieve.
So like compared to a
CrossFit training plan, it's like, okay,
I wanna be a CrossFit Games athlete.
I wanna go to the CrossFit Games.
okay well what are the
things what what's the plan
that you have to put in
place that that will help
you actually do that and
then to understand what are
the things that are gonna
cause me potentially to
veer off course um injuries
you know plateaus and what
happens to the plateau
jesus the training program
that I'm on is wait wait
I'm starting to second
guess this maybe I should
switch to something else
you know the same things
happen in finance so
establishing a plan first
and foremost a relevant
plan to achieve your goal
and sticking to it um is
the best piece of at least
broad advice that I can
give um you know to an
audience that you know is
in tune with crossfit and
in tune with training plans
that's the most important
from my perspective
I know I said that was the last question,
but we actually have one for the chat.
Jody Lynn, my husband says,
put all your money in NVIDIA.
I'm starting to hear that.
I told him he can't put all
his eggs in one basket.
Any comments on that?
What a great story that NVIDIA has been.
And my response to that is
it's kind of ironic that
NVIDIA has certainly been
in the news and certainly
had meteoric growth
There are a lot of companies
that not every day are
experiencing the exact same
type of growth that Nvidia has,
but there are plenty of
companies out there that
experience significant
growth that can and do have
a significant impact or can
have a significant impact
on your financial life as an investor.
But the rub here or the
trick here as well to
Jody's question is that, well,
how do you do that without
putting yourself at undue
risk for your future finances?
And certainly, even though it's age old,
saying uh don't put your all
your eggs in one basket
it's absolutely um true um
and that's the that's one
thing that that you want to
be really really careful of
and a lot of people fall
victim of is they fall for
fads or or they react to
negative news in the wrong
way um you know
hate to sound like cliche
but yes it is it is
appropriate and necessary
for most investors to be
well diversified not all
your eggs in one basket but
there's also a risk of
being over diversified
which is what we talk to a
lot of clients about you
know when you look inside
your 401k and you're
picking seven different
mutual funds or you're in a
model portfolio that can
work to your disadvantage
too over long periods of
time but um yeah nvidia has
been an exciting
exciting run and yeah it it
is a great company and and
um I'm not here to give
recommendations on on the
show and everything like
that but um if it's part of
the portfolio for most
investors it should be one
piece of a diversified
diversified portfolio not
all the eggs in one basket
yeah I know you're not
giving him but jody says
that's what I told him too risky I think
Yeah.
And don't listen to me.
I mean, you know,
you listen to Warren
Buffett and anybody else out there that,
you know,
has some things to say about
what individual investors should do.
And it's the same.
So as we finish up here,
if people are interested in
working with you and Beck
Bode to help them with their finances,
what's the best way to
reach out to you guys?
Um, there's, there's a,
there's a couple of ways.
I think the best way first
is to go to our website.
So it's, um, pretty easy.
Beck Bodie.com, um, is our website.
Um, and then, you know,
once you get in the website, there's,
there's, uh,
there's a couple of ways to
get directly in touch.
First and foremost,
you're going to get a pop-up.
uh when you get on the
website of a book that was
actually written by my
mentor so the the gentleman
that I um mentioned before
david malik he wrote a
novel called dancing with
the analysts and while it
is a novel so it's a
fictional story uh how he
talks about the philosophy
and the principles behind
investing and and how you
should approach your financial lives
is exactly what was taught
to me in the foundation of
how we run our firm.
So number one,
I would say check out that book.
Number two,
pretty easy just to go to Ben
or email ben at
beckbode.com for anybody
else that's looking to learn more.
So the website address is in
the description of this podcast.
So you can click on that and
get right there.
And I'll put in your email
address there too as well.
Awesome.
And then I guess just to finish up,
now the questions are rolling in.
Jeffrey Birchfield asks,
is Vanguard a good set of funds?
Oh, Vanguard.
Sure.
Yeah.
Again,
I'll always preface things by saying
it's not necessarily about
the investment.
So much it is about what are
you shooting for?
And then so what are you shooting for?
When you're talking about a
dollar of your money or
dollars of your money,
your capital that you worked hard,
what exactly is that money for?
Building a plan first to say,
what do I need to do to get there?
And then the next question comes,
how do I fund that plan?
And that's where that
question is answered.
Is it, all right, do I go to Vanguard?
Do I go to Fidelity?
Do I go to a firm like mine?
What do you do then?
But by and large, Vanguard is,
like other big firms out there,
they definitely have plenty
of resources in order to
achieve whatever it is that
a particular investor would
want to achieve.
So to wrap that up for my
head is there's a lot of funds out there,
but if you don't have the
right training plan,
just like in CrossFit,
you're not going to get to
that end result you want
without the plan first.
Yeah.
You may not.
You may not, right?
Because without the plan…
one thing I can guarantee
right you know it's funny
you use the word guarantee
when it comes to financial
world one thing that I
guarantee is um what we
think today we're going to
think differently tomorrow
right the the economy the
world is in a constant
state of change so whether
it's nvidia whether it's
vanguard whether it's
whoever it is there are
going to be things that happen
in the future that could
cause us to pivot our
previous way of thinking, right?
And so without a plan, a sound,
I'm not talking about a a
book this thick but a sound
written set of principles
that are going to guide how
you're going to operate as
an investor um into the
future without something
like that and you comparing
it to the like but as you
said scott the uh the cro
without the crossfit
training plan you just show
up at the gym every day
yeah I want to I want to
make the crossfit games I'm
just doing random stuff
every day oh I hurt my arm or
oh,
I don't seem to be increasing my squat PR,
so I'm going to do something different.
You know,
you're kind of out there just
kind of swimming in the
middle of the ocean with no
real direction.
The plan itself is the magic.
That's where it is.
As boring as that sounds,
establishing the plan first,
and then you put yourself in front of,
as a funding mechanism,
the NVIDIAs and the other
types of companies that in the future,
there are companies that
are going to change the way
the world works and
ultimately do unbelievable
things in the markets that
we've never even heard of before.
that are going to pop up a
year from now or five years
from now or 10 years from now,
the Amazons of yesterday,
or they're going to become
the Amazons and the NVIDIAs of today.
And so understanding that
and understanding, hey,
how do I put myself in front of that
efficiently as possible I
kind of have to know where
I'm going first so
establishing the plan and
then and then funding it
with the relevant types of
investments that can
reasonably get me there
that's that's that's the
that's the boring magic
that that we do just like
earlier earlier in the show
you mentioned you wanted to
be better at rope climbs so
every day you did five rope
climbs out in your backyard
That was a plan to make you
a better rope climber.
Finance works the same way.
Same way.
Same way.
It's boring, but it works.
Yeah.
Well, Ben,
thank you so much for being here.
Thank you to everybody in
the chat for your questions.
It's been an enlightening
conversation for me,
and I hope it is for you as well.
With that,
we'll see you all next time on
the Clydesdale Media Podcast.
Bye, guys.
Thanks, Scott.