Mike Reflects on 25 Years

Table of Contents

• Introduction
• 25 Years as a Financial Advisor
  • Getting Started in the Industry
  • Significant Breakthroughs
  • Influences and Inspirations
  • Changes in the Industry Over 25 Years
  • Advice for the Younger Generation
• 5 Years Since Completing IRONMAN Maryland
  • Deciding to Do the IRONMAN
  • Experience During the Event
  • Lessons Learned from the Experience
  • Advice for Aspiring IRONMAN Participants
• Conclusion

Introduction

Mike: Hi, listeners. This is Mike. I just wanted to say Maddie and I are reflecting on two anniversaries I’ve had this week. One is five years since I did IRONMAN, Maryland, and the other is 25 years of being in this industry. Many of you have probably heard these stories and maybe heard them more times than you care to. So please don’t feel bad, like, not listening all the way through this or to all, or to any of this, if you’ve heard this before. But it just seemed to be the right time to reflect on these anniversaries. And I thought a lot about it during a recent business trip, and I thought it’d be a good idea for people who haven’t been bored to death by these stories. Thanks.

Madison: Hello, everyone, and welcome to the 12th episode of Not Just Numbers, Honest Conversations with a Financial Advisor and Lawyer. I am Madison Demora, and I am here with Mike Garry. Mike is a financial advisor and CFP and the founder and CEO of Yardley Wealth Management. He is also an estate planning lawyer, and his law firm is Yardley Estate Planning, LLC. Hey, Mike.

Mike: Hey, Maddie. How are you on this dreary fall day?

Madison: Oh, I’m good. I’m good. The past few days have been pretty crappy.

Mike: They really have been. I’d say though, Penn State is undefeated, the Eagles are undefeated, and our fantasy football team is undefeated. So that made the weekend a little bit more palatable as it was being washed out.

Madison: There you go. So, Mike, I hear you have two anniversaries this week. Would you like to talk about them today?

Mike: Yes. They’re unrelated to my anniversary with my wife. We shared our 29th anniversary in August, and hopefully I’ll be a good enough husband to make it at 30 years and beyond next year. But there’s two other things I wanted to talk about. One is, the much more important one is I’ve now been in this industry for 25 years. I started with Merrill Lynch back on September 28, 1998. And then on the 29th, it’ll be five years since I did IRONMAN Maryland. So far, my only full IRONMAN. And it was really a life changing event. And you can see me. Most people listening to this will not know, but I’ve spent most of my life, adult life, between 235 and 250 pounds, a couple episodes higher than that. I am not what you would think is a typical IRONMAN or iron distance triathlete. But I learned a lot, and it really was an unbelievable experience, even if it was a very, very painful one.

Madison: Yes, yes. Lots of anniversaries around the same time.

Mike: There are.

25 Years as a Financial Advisor

Getting Started in the Industry

Madison: Let’s start with the 25 years anniversary as being a financial advisor. So let’s start with, how did you get started in this industry and what motivated you to pursue a career in this particular field?

Mike: Sure. So, I went to school locally. I went to St. Joe’s. I got my undergrad and my MBA, both in finance. So, I was very interested in, like, the stock market and investments. But then I went to law school, and I went to a law school at Widener in Wilmington, Delaware. And I got out of law school, and I had a hard time finding a job. The jobs I did find didn’t pay well. First job really wasn’t great. Then I went to second job. Friend of mine got me the interview, and I really didn’t start off well either. In both cases, I really didn’t feel like I knew what I was doing so much. And, you know, it was different time. You know, like, bosses are all baby boomers, and they just expected me to know everything, and I didn’t and felt kind of uncomfortable. And then, you know, the second job, you know, that they let me go. They said, you know, we’ll give you some time to find something. You know, you could stay here, get some work done, and start looking. And I met a recruiter for Merrill. Her name is Cindy Payne. I still remember all these times, all these years ago, and Cindy said that my MBA and law degrees would be very marketable as a financial advisor. And my wife and I took a long walk on the beach in Cape May and talked about the pros and cons. And, you know, being either a lawyer or a financial advisor, you can make a nice living, or you could become rich. Right. And really what it came down to was that I’d worked for a couple of years as a lawyer, and I really didn’t like it. It’s very possible that I could have started at a different firm and loved my career, but I started two different firms where I didn’t really like it. The second firm, every day I got on the elevator, and I could feel, like, the stress. I could feel, like, my heart clench up. It’s not a way to go through life. And at the first job, they were a law firm that really worked with a company that did tax collection. And so they would have contracts, and they would get contracts and then lose contracts because it was mostly a political process, and so they would have big expansion and then have big cutbacks. And at one point, early in that job, I was told that I was going to get let go. And, you know, I told that my boss, like, if I’m let go, there’s nobody. You’re going on vacation next week. There’s nobody to report to court next week because the other two hadn’t passed their. Somebody else was on vacation, and somebody else hadn’t passed the bar exam yet. And he said, oh, okay, so, well keep you for a couple weeks. And so that went off for six months where I didn’t know if it was going to be my last day. And then I got this other job where it was hard. I wasn’t there for very long. I didn’t know anything. I was told pretty soon on that I would have to handle workers compensation, which I didn’t know anything about, and it’s own little specialty. And that, um, you know, kind of, it was hard. Like, I didn’t know what to do. You know, they gave me a couple books and said, read these over the weekend to learn about it. Um, so, yeah, I just never felt comfortable. And then I went to, you know, I went and interviewed with Merrill. I went to the branch in Wayne, and, um, it was so different. I graduated from law school, and everybody had crushing legal debt. And most people, you hear the stories about what the top students at the top schools get when they get out of law school, but most people are not in that boat, and most people made an okay living when they got out of law school and took a little while to find a job. I couldn’t find a job till I passed the bar exam. And so you take the bar exam in July. I found out in November and December that I passed the PA and New Jersey, and nobody responded to my resumes until then. And then I started the first one in February of 97. So, you know, I was out of school nine months, ten months, and we had, our oldest was born in June of 96. So there’s a little bit of financial stress on me then. That experience, I guess, would serve me well later when I started this place. But, you know, I went to interview at Merrill, and people were my age and hadn’t gone to law school and spent that time there and didn’t spend that money there. And they were making good money, and they were happy. They were enthusiastic and excited. It was very different from law school grads at the time. And so Rachel and I took the plunge, and it was the right decision, for sure. It took a long time to confirm that was the right decision, but it was the right decision.

Madison: Yeah, absolutely. No one’s there to tell you, you know, this is what you’re supposed to do. You’re kind of just testing the waters and seeing.

Mike: We’re all trying to figure stuff out, Maddie. I joke that my professional life, my career got successful when I was about 45.

Madison: And there’s nothing wrong with that. And I know you’re not the only one, either. Takes time.

Significant Breakthroughs

Madison: So, can you share a significant breakthrough or success story in your career which had a great impact?

Mike: There were a couple of big things. One is, you know, when I started at Merrill, they, you know, you’d have you go through something called Professional Development Program, and PDP, as it was called then, was a two-year program where you would start, you would spend some time getting your licensing exams done and, like, learning about the industry a little bit. And then you would get your number, they would call it. And then you have two years, and you had milestones to reach, and you had to, I think it was every three months, we had to create something, or four months. I forget, but we were tested, and we had to have a certain amount of financial plans sold, revenues from clients and assets under management. And we were measuring each of those, and you either got far exceeds, exceeds, doesn’t meet expectations. So far exceeds expectations meets expectations. I don’t know. I forget it now. I was always far exceeds. So I was always at the highest of that grading. But still, even with that, as I was closing in, and I didn’t get my number, so to speak, until about ten or eleven months in, because I worked for a manager of one of the branches. But even at that point, what happened was they changed how they did their pricing and their salary and stuff, and so they built a big call center over in Hopewell, and they said, if accounts under a certain size didn’t go to Hopewell, hypothetically, you’d bring in a client, say, oh, Miss Demora, would you like to do this? And you sign up that client. But if Miss Demora doesn’t have a certain amount of assets, I could either still retain her as my client or send her to the call center, where she would talk to somebody at the call center, I would either get paid at a reduced amount or not get paid at all for keeping her. And having just started, all those relationships are new. It’s not like somebody’s been a Merrill client for 20 years and you don’t know them. And then you say, okay, well, I’m going to send this person to the call center. Might be a little bit cheaper for the client, and we have no interactions with them anyway. These are all people that I just sat down with and signed up. So you’re sitting across the table from somebody and they sign up, and then it’s like, wait, I just met this person, I told them I would take care of them, and now my choice is I’m either not going to take care of them or I’m going to take care of them and not make any money doing it. So that was a big moment, and it led me to look for other opportunities that led me to finding my next employment. So I worked for somebody else who is also an independent, fee only registered investment advisor, and I worked for him for four and a half years. I didn’t know what being a fiduciary advisor was. I didn’t know that was a thing or that it existed. And the other big thing at the time is at that time, there were very, very few advisors who could make a living without having to bring in clients. So I actually got a salary, and my job was not to bring in clients. It was to make sure that the clients that he had, we did the financial planning for and that their investments made sense and all that stuff, like actually being an advisor instead of being a salesperson. The other big thing then was four years later, we had talked about me being his succession plan. Hes slowly buying into his business, and then he had a change of heart, and he decided to sell the company to a big Indian bank. And once I found out that he was on that path, I realized that I needed to go. Because it was him then me, three guys who reported to me who made half of what I made. And so if they were going to be profitable, I would have the bullseye, right? There would be no need for Mike. The guys who got paid less than me would do better than half as well. So not that great. I mean, I think I’m good, but, yeah, so that was a big thing. And then that was hard. So we decided in January of 2005, and Yardley Wealth Management was founded January 25th 2005. I worked for him, and my last day was February 10, 2006. So it was a year of trying to figure out how we’re going to work, how to get ready, and what we’re going to do. Where would clients be custody? How would we work with clients? The name of the company was pretty easy. Rachel came up with that, but then after that, everything else, you just had to figure it out. And there were some technology tools, but there were a lot less. And so that wound up being the best thing that I could have done. It was really, really hard, though, because there were no clients, there were no revenues, and since we’re fee only, there’s no big commission checks. So hypothetically, somebody at one of those brokerage firms could start in business couple of days, weeks later, sell somebody annuity and make $20,000, $50,000. When we start with a client, if somebody signs up, today is towards the end of September, somebody says, hey, let’s proceed. It takes a couple of weeks to get on the calendar. We do the financial planning first. Once the planning is done, we start with account transfers, where sometimes there’s variability in the way that works. But generally, from the time somebody signs on until we bill them, it’s like a quarter goes by. If somebody were today, we have people coming in today who are thinking about becoming clients. If they do, they are unlikely to be billed in the fourth quarter of 2023. So you do that work upfront and don’t get paid for it for a while. So when I left in February, there were no revenues in April for the March quarter, and then the revenues in July were about $7,000. My mortgage is about $3,500 a month at the time. So, yeah, that was not enough money. So it took three years for our revenues to meet the needs of our household. And in the meantime, we took on a lot of debt. And then the credit crisis happened, the Great Recession, or whatever people call it, 2007, 2008, beginning of 2009. And so the debt that we took out at zero or 1% became 30%. And so it was pretty hard, not going to lie about that. And so if people ask me if I would recommend it, I would say I’m not sure because it works great for me. But Rachel and I were on the same page. We knew, and we could both look at the long term, and we had to figure out what we need to do, you know, on the daily, because our kids were still young ish, right. So in 98, my oldest would have turned twelve, and the others are four and five years younger than her. And so, yeah, it was really trying to figure out, like, what do we have to do? We felt lucky that we could always have them do sports and their activities, dance for the oldest and every sport under the sun for the other two. Felt grateful for that. But it was really close for a long time. And so, yeah, wound up being a good investment. I feel very lucky with what I do today. I have personal autonomy that most people in their jobs probably don’t have as much of, and I really like it. I’m still pretty much addicted to this business. There aren’t days that I don’t check in, even if we’re on vacation. That probably be a good thing to change for me to get that 30 year and beyond anniversary. But yeah, I mean, that’s the way it goes. So that’s like a high level kind of quick recap, but yeah, I mean, those are the big inflection points to get us to where we’re at now.

Madison: Yeah, yeah. Yep. You had to do what you had to do and you took chances.

Influences and Inspirations

Madison: Yeah. So who or what has been your biggest influence or inspiration throughout your career?

Mike: You know, that, that’s a really good question, and I don’t know that I have a good answer for that. I think that one source of inspiration is actually a trade organization. I belong to NAPFA, National Association of Personal Financial Advisors. It’s about a 40 year old organization that is comprised of other fee only advisors. And it’s probably only about 4,000 members or so. Right. So it’s a pretty small group. You know, of the 300,000 advisors out there, there’s probably many who are fee only who are not members. But maybe there’s ten or 20,000 fee only people who are not members. But it’s really looking at a lot of the members and leaders of that organization whose names I’m drawing a blank on right now, who have been inspirational to me. At the time. When a lot of those people took the leap, it was a big unknown. It was a new thing and it’s very different. Um, you know, when in 2001, when I started working for my last fee only boss, nobody knew what that was. A lot of people still don’t understand it. You know, in the last ten years or so, NAPFA has got people to understand, you know, what fee only and fiduciary mean. But if you ask the person on the street if their advisor is a fiduciary, they think that he or she is, and it’s very likely that he or she isn’t. I think most people think like, oh, if I go to somebody for investment or financial planning advice, they need to put my interest first. And the sad fact is that most of them don’t. And I think most people try to do a good job. Most advisors try to do a good job. But I’m going to say that there’s a reason you want to avoid or eliminate conflicts of interest, because that person who thinks they’re doing a good job and really thinks they’re doing the right thing is also conflicted by their interests. And sometimes those conflicts you’re really aware of them and you know what they are, and you take them into consideration, and maybe you’ll make the same decision, but a lot of times they just kind of creep up. You know, you work for a place, and it has a certain culture. Every workplace has a culture, right? You work there, and the culture is you do a certain thing in a certain situation, and, you know, after a short time, it seems to be the right thing to do. And maybe if you step back or if you ask somebody else, they would, they would look at maybe why it’s not the right thing to do. You know, it’s those conflicts of interest that, that often get in the way. I mean, that’s one of the things, too. You know, I’m happy and a little bit disappointed in the, the way the industry has changed in the 25 years. When I started, there was a guy at the Merrill branch, and I remember him clearly saying to me, Mike, you have to know, this is a sales job. This is not a finance job. And he was right. When I went there, people outside of there talked about, oh, they have this really great training. But the training was sales training, how to get people to come in, how to get people to, like, listen to you. Some of the training was not just sales training. Like, there was Dale Carnegie training to get to influence people, but it’s done because it was also sales training. And one of the things that I’m happy about is that there are now degree programs at colleges where you could get a degree in financial planning, and you can learn to be a financial planner or financial advisor who has, like, a broad range of knowledge. You know, when I started in 98, to start at Merrill, I needed to pass the series 7 and the series 66 and then the life accident health insurance, and, you know, the series 7 is the stockbroker test. But at the time, it was really like how to broker a stock, like how the market works and how all the things that are important, if what your job is is to buy or sell a stock. And so it makes sense in that way. But even then, people weren’t saying they’re a stock brokers. They were saying they’re financial advisors or financial planners. Uh, and no one, well, not, not nearly as many people, thought you could make a living doing that or that clients would want that. Right? And so, and then the other, the series 66 is to be an investment advisor. So its the 65 and the 63 combined becomes a 66. I don’t know exactly what those different numbers signify anymore, but that was like a 50 question test that maybe took an hour. Series 7 was a hard test. Took a while, took a couple hours. You know, there’s a lot to study for, but most of it at the time was meaningless to what my day to day job was. In series 66, I don’t remember what was on it. I just remember that it was much, much easier. The series 7, we studied for weeks. The series 66 studied for like a couple days, maybe a week, and it wasn’t hard. And then you really didn’t know that much. And when I asked my sales manager, what’s the difference between the different classes of mutual funds, between a share, b share, c share? And his response was, don’t worry about that, just bring people in, we’ll tell you what to do. And I had gone to law school and had worked as a lawyer. Don’t worry about that. I don’t worry about a lot of stuff, but even I couldn’t take that answer at face value. So I think it’s great now that many more people entering this industry have some base of knowledge and don’t have to go out without that knowledge and go and become, you know, get clients and then decide what to do with those clients life savings. Like that is crazy in retrospect. You know, and having had the finance undergrad and MBA and all the courses I took in law school related to tax and estate planning and securities regulation and other things, like, I was way better equipped than most people who at the time were going into that line of work. And that wasn’t intentional. It just came out that way, just came about. That wasn’t like a big grand plan I had. Would be nice to think that it was, but it was not. So it’s good that people are coming in with more knowledge and that there are more jobs that don’t require sales right away. But there are still so many advisors who think like that their job is sales. And there’s so many people in the country who think if they go to an advisor, their job is primarily to sell them something. I don’t like that. I don’t like that thought. I don’t like when it’s referred to by other people in the industry, my client base, when people refer to it as like a book of business, it’s not a book of business. These people are my clients. They are clients of our firm. And we have a relationship where we provide financial planning and investment advice and manage accounts for them. It is not a book of business. Other terms that just really rubbed me the wrong way. Like when I said at Merrill and I got my number, so to speak. Yeah. That just means, like, you go live and you could start earning commissions, you know, probably it’s a lot better than it was then and now with the bank owning it, it probably is a lot better than it was. But so many things, Maddie. I went to a conference a week or two ago, and I felt, I mean, it’s the reason I thought about having this podcast episode where I’d reflect on things, because on the one hand, I feel like I’ve had such a good career with this. It’s really a fulfilling way to make a living, and I really like it. But then I felt, I don’t know, it’s a little bit disappointed in some of the sessions at the conference and some of the other advisors, you know, I just hope we would be better by now.

Madison: Yeah. Yeah. It sounds like you’ve learned a lot over all of these years to get to where you’re at.

Changes in the Industry Over 25 Years

Mike: One of the great things about this job as a career is I learn stuff all the time still, you know, so it’s 25 years in, and, you know, I would do pretty well in those tests now or any kind of test of industry knowledge, but I still learn a lot, like learning how to communicate better with people. A lot of it is to do with figuring out how to do things to save clients, like taxes and money. And that always changes. Like. Right. Our tax code changes all the time. So it keeps the hurdles. Um, the goalposts are always moving further. Um, but I like that. I couldn’t imagine going and doing something every day that was just the same thing. That’s just not how I’m wired.

Advice for the Younger Generation

Madison: Yeah. So after everything you learned in all these lessons, um, is there any important lessons from your experience that you’d like to share with the younger generation entering this field?

Mike: Thats a great question, Maddie. I would say the hard thing to do, but would be really important is to take the long view. Don’t think about where am I going to work right now? How much money am I going to make right now? Think what kind of knowledge base and experience and qualifications would it be good for me to have ten or 20 years from now? Right. Don’t think so much, you know, I know you have to pay your bills, and so you’re going to need to take jobs or work part time on the side. I did that. But look at the long view. Don’t be afraid to step outside your comfort zone, right? I mean, that’s where, like, learning and growth and change happen. And sometimes that’s a hard lesson and that’s a hard thing to do, but it’s important. I don’t know if I would have left my last employer if I didn’t feel like I kind of had to. We were at that spot where my choice was to stay there and hope it worked out, knowing that there weren’t a lot of other jobs like I had where I could earn a salary and be a financial planner and not have to get clients, because my other options, that seemed to come up where I could go back to practicing law. But I only had two years of experience doing that, and it had been seven years since I practiced law. Between Merrill and the last guy I worked for. So I would be someone that no one would hire as a lawyer, I don’t think. And, you know, the other thing would be like another professional development program at one of the other wirehouses. But, you know, that would have been a big cut in pay and a miserable life. So I really felt like my best option was to start this business and, you know, and I felt like I didn’t have other options. You know, I felt like, well, I would get let go any day after he sold to the bank and then start. And so I guess that’s kind of why I took that long time to make that move, right? Figuring, well, haven’t been let go yet, and I’m still earning and working and saving towards this and getting prepped and getting my wife and the girls ready for it. Yeah, it’s a great, great question. Take the long view. Like, what can you do in your twenties and thirties to make you have a career in your forties and fifties and beyond that you’ll be really happy with. And that will work for you and your loved ones. Yeah, I think that’s the way I’d go. And it’s hard, but it’s important and it’s a real good lesson.

Madison: Yeah, well, that’s awesome. Think that’s very informational to the people because like we said in the beginning, no one really tells you, you know, get your degree, do this, do this, do that, and you’ll be on the road to being the richest man in the world. You know, no one really tells you what to do. So it’s all about kind of finding, like you said, just look at the long view, not what’s going on right now.

Mike: Right, right. And sometimes when people do tell you what to do, it’s a nonsense.

Madison: Exactly.

Mike: Yeah. Oh, right. I should be a professional pitcher. Except for I’m not that good.

Madison: Yep. All right. So do you want to switch gears to IRONMAN?

5 Years Since Completing IRONMAN Maryland

Deciding to Do the IRONMAN

Madison: The IRONMAN anniversary.

Mike: Yeah. I should have a couch for this episode. You could explore the inner workings of my mind. So the IRONMAN is… Rachel says that, like, the first time we really spent, like, getting to know each other back in 1990, one of the things I told her was that I wanted to do an IRONMAN. IRONMAN triathlon is a 2.4 miles swim, 112 miles, bike, and then a full marathon, 26.2 miles. You have 17 hours to do the whole thing, and you have to do the swim in a certain amount of time and the bike in a certain amount of time. And if you’re not on pace, you can get pulled out of the race. And then a lot of races will have, like, additional cutoff times in there where they will pull you from the race if you’re not making it. And if it takes you 17 hours and 1 second to cross the finish line, you get a DNF or did not finish, so it doesn’t count.

Madison: Pretty intense.

Mike: Pretty intense. You know, and the swim is always in a body of water, like a lake or a river or an ocean. It’s not in a pool, and so there’s no line marker. And, you know, you can’t sometimes, you know, swimming in the Schuylkill, you couldn’t see much past your hand. Anyway. I had done shorter triathlons. I did one in 1995, and then did a couple Philly triathlons, maybe in the late 2000, like 2007, 08, 09, 10. And I did a 70.3 in Quakertown about eleven or twelve years ago. But then, you know, had no plans to do one. It was just working out, working, normal stuff. And then, you know, in 2018, I don’t know, it was maybe February, and my feet had problems. Like any person who’s done sports after high school and college, you know, I had all kinds of problems with my feet. I’ve had plantar fasciitis, achilles tendonitis. I have an extra bone in at least my right foot, an accessory in the navicular that sometimes gets inflamed, you know, all kinds of fun stuff. And at the time, my feet were bothering me, and my wife said, hey, why don’t you go swim? Because your feet never bothered with that. I said, okay. And I did 20 lengths of the pool, and I was huffing and puffing. It was miserable. But I felt like a sense of accomplishment. And I got in a workout, and so I did that for a couple weeks and, you know, it got a little bit better and better. And then in May, you know, I started to ratchet it up. And outside of that, I was also biking, because every year in July, usually the last Sunday in July, we do a charity bike ride. And we were doing that for like ten or twelve years. And so we also will ride our bikes. And so come May, we were riding our bikes, I’m guessing, I don’t know, 70 to 90 miles a week, like one long one on Saturday or Sunday, and then two shorter ones during the week. But then also I got to swimming, you know, 8000 lengths of the pool. And at one point I said to my wife, like, if I can do 160 lengths in 2 hours, I think I might… what I said at the time was, after IRONMAN in Lake Placid in July, I’ll sign up for next year’s Lake Placid. And she’s like, well, that’s great, how can you do that? I said, well, if I can get the swim in in the time, you have 2 hours and ten minutes to do the swim or 2 hours and 20 minutes to do the swim. And then, like, I’ve never ridden 100 or 112 miles, but I had ridden 65 dozens of times by then. I thought, well, it’s just riding a bike, it’s just doing more of. I figured if I could do the swim and the bike within the allotted times, then I have six and a half hours to run and walk a marathon. And I thought, well, I could probably do that. And so I did the swim in 2 hours, and I did it a couple times and didn’t sign up for it. And then in July we were at the beach and was looking at it, and I could have signed up then for the following year’s Lake Placid. But I was looking at other things and I thought, you know, I’ve gotten a couple of months now where I feel pretty good. There’s no injuries I’m dealing with. And, you know, at the time I was in my fifties and, you know, I would joke and say I was a 52 or 51 year old fat guy. Like, what are the odds of me being able to train for a year without any kind of injury? And I saw videos for IRONMAN Maryland. It’s going to be September 29th. It’s flat, and it is flat. The swim is in the Choptank River, which kind of runs into the Chesapeake, and then the bike and run are essentially flat. I thought, well, that’s a good thing. And so I signed up for it and then kept training. And then day of, it played out that I made the swim in just enough time and got changed for the bike. And I did the bike in just enough time and it left me only like 6 hours and 40 minutes to do the marathon. And I did a lot of walking and my wife and kids would say, you know, you have to run more. And I would jog for a little bit but my legs really hurt. You know, I joke, I wasn’t being recalcitrant, like just like, no, I’m not going to do it. It really hurt. And it got down to being pretty emotional because you know, it took me 16:53:09. So I did not have much time to spare. At the time, I wasn’t sure if it was actually going to end at midnight or it would go because I didn’t actually get in the water till like 07:08 and so I did have until 12:08 or 12:07, or whatever, but I didn’t know that at the time. I was a little afraid I only have till midnight because it was always, well, it starts at seven, you have till midnight. And it was really close, you know, like at the end I realized and I kept thinking, it’ll be okay, it’ll be okay. And then I realized I had 2 miles left with a half hour. So okay, well that’s a little bit faster than I’ve been going and I’ve been up since 04:00 a.m. and it’s 11:30 and then yeah, it worked out. Did it. You know, couldn’t have done it without the love and support of my wife and my three daughters who were there. Rachel was there the whole day. The girls got there. They were there for half the day, which I mean of the 24 hours, half the day, right. Because Rachel and I got up at 04:00 on that Saturday morning. And they were there cheering. And if they weren’t there, I don’t know that I would have continued. I couldn’t imagine though, not doing it in front of them. I couldn’t imagine like failing or not being able to do it. And it got to be pretty close that I would get a DNF and I’d say, oh well, I kind of did it and it took 17 hours and five minutes or something. But DNF would be hard. So I could talk about that for days and days and days. But I’ll stop here. I think we all thought enough of mining the depths of my emotions.

Lessons Learned from the Experience

Madison: No, I think that’s, that’s what comes with it. You know, it’s not just a marathon. Like, there’s a lot more to it. Which kind of leads me into my next question. How did you, or, I’m sorry, what have you learned from this experience and has it changed you in any ways?

Mike: Yeah, so, you know, I’ve learned, I think that really fits in with my career. Right. Like, if you set goals and have a plan for achieving them, it makes it more likely that you can achieve those goals. And then when you do, it’ll make you happy. You’ll be glad that you did, and you can look back and say, oh, I did it. And, you know, in financial planning, that could be anything, you know, paying for college or retiring at a certain time or setting, you know, saving a certain amount, any kind of goals they could relate to. But then it also, you know, finishing the IRONMAN, you know, that’s something that’s not going to come away. You know, nobody can take that from me. And, you know, I think it shows a certain amount of perseverance and grit and, you know, I think it’s a good thing to be associated with. And one of the things that I didn’t know coming into it is five years ago now on some of the IRONMAN and IRONMAN Maryland Facebook pages, I found a wonderful community. There are so many nice people who are so helpful because there’s a lot to figure out. This is not like doing the neighborhood 5K where you walk to the starting line. You run for however long it takes you and you’re done. You need to plan for a long time to figure out, like, how you’re going to eat and drink on the course, how you’re going to change, what materials you need, what to bring. There are long checklists of the different items that you go through. And even now, having done that one and four other 70.3’s, I lay everything out on my desk at home. Go through the checklist. Go through the checklist again. Have Rachel go with me because it’s hard. There’s a lot of stuff to remember and the order in which you’re going to need it and where it has to be. It’s challenging, but people were so helpful on those Facebook pages and it was great. They don’t have to be helpful. I’m sure they have other busy lives and a lot of training to do. But it was a nice thing to see. And for every, like, one person who might be a jerk on there and be dismissive of somebody’s question, there’s a hundred people that will take the time to, like, fully explain, like, why you would want to do something or what has worked in their experience or what they’ve seen other people do. And it’s a nice thing. And so I like being part of that community. And I told Rachel I wouldn’t do another full IRONMAN until I was much better, if that ever happens. But I probably will do a 70.3 most years and to stay involved. And I think it’s probably a good thing for my overall health and fitness. By swim, bike, run, lift, walk, stretch, and walk the golf course. Hopefully, I can keep doing those things for a long time.

Madison: Yeah. It’s definitely, like, a lot that goes into it, you know, it’s not just show up. Because I was thinking that, too, I mean, 17 hours. I mean, you have to eat, you have to drink. You know, there’s a lot of preparation that comes with it.

Mike: Yeah. Yeah. So we brought food and drinks down with us, and, you know, I love that, you know, that the people in the community get out and are very supportive. It is really a great day or race weekend. And the one thing, it’s been a couple of years I’ve done Eagle man, which is, like, the 70.3 there, the same course. But when I did Maryland and Eagleman, there was nothing for spectators, so we didn’t know that. And so Rachel’s there that whole time. She didn’t have, like, a water. Like, there was nothing to drink. She would have to leave the course and walk away. And it’s not that easy because a lot of stuff is roped off, and she’d have to walk. Maybe she could have walked a couple miles to get something. So it would have been nice to have a couple of food trucks or vendors for the participants, I mean, for the spectators. But, yes, it is a logistical challenge, and maybe that’s part of why I like it, too, because I like planning things out and trying to figure stuff out. I’ll show you the checklist sometime, it’s crazy.

Madison: Yeah, I would love to see that.

Advice for Aspiring IRONMAN Participants

Madison: So what advice would you give to someone who’s aspiring to complete the IRONMAN?

Mike: Um, you know what I’d say? If you’re in relatively good health and you and your doctor think you can do it, I’d say sign up for a race. Um, you know, you could sign up for a race almost a year in advance. My cousin Johnny did the Augusta 70.3 over the weekend, that registration for next year opens up on October 1st, so like the very next week. Sign up for it and then come up with a plan. There are plenty of people you could reach out to to help make a plan. You could read all the stuff on Facebook. There are trainers and coaches that help you come up with a plan. Because I think that if you don’t put it on the calendar, it’s way less likely to happen. But if you sign up and it’s not cheap, you sign up and book, like, the hotel rooms, you’re kind of committed. Now, that said, I think there are hundreds of people who don’t show up routinely for races because they sign up and then either get injured or decide that they don’t want to do it or can’t do it. I think that’s a pretty common thing. But what I’d say is, sign up and then come up quickly with a plan and then start to build, like, your base of your swim, bike, and run. And then after that, talk to a coach or a trainer or all those, like, triathlete magazine always has suggested training for those kinds of things. It’s easy to find the information, harder to find the time to do it, you know, with your job and family and other things that might get, you know, occupy your time also that are also more important than the race. You know, I did less training for the full IRONMAN than most people would do. I mean, probably less training for the 70.3. But, you know, when I did the full IRONMAN I was like, look, I have three kids, two businesses, and a wife. Like, I can’t just do this training. You know, other things have to get done and can’t wait, so.

Conclusion

Madison: All right, well, that was very fun, taking us back 25 years and reflecting on everything. For more information on Yardley Wealth Management or Yardley Estate Planning, you could visit our website at yardleywealth.net and yardleyestate.net. You can also follow us on socials at Yardley Wealth Management. This podcast has been produced by Madison Demora and Mike Garry with the technical and artistic help from Poe Productions.