Episode title: EP#8 Navigating Stressful Markets with Eileen Kelly, Wealth Advisor & Professional Athlete
Hosted by: Chris Raper and Brittany Pilgrim (Boomer and Gen Z)
Guest: Eileen Kelly, PPN (Millennial), Cross Border Wealth Advisor and Associate Partner of Aspira Wealth
Description:
As the Trump tariffs have caused a lot of angst recently, Aspira’s two wealth advisors bound together to talk about what we can control in stressful markets: how we think and how we act. Our guest, Cross Border Wealth Advisor Eileen Kelly (Millennial), speaks to “how we think” from her training as a professional golfer with top sports psychologist, Jim Murphy (you may recognize him as the author of New York Time's Bestseller Inner Excellence, the book A.J. Brown was reading on the Eagles football field). Having consistently executed a high level of performance amongst fierce competition in PGA tournaments around the world, she shares the secrets of her training and how it can help us navigate stressful markets. Cross Border Wealth Advisor and co-host, Chris (Boomer), shares his veteran wisdom on “how we act” from his investment career and as a student of history. Plus, we all discuss how each of our generations receives and processes the news – TikTok anyone?
As always, if you have any questions or feedback, we would love to hear from you: brittany.pilgrim@raymondjames.ca & chris.raper@raymondjames.ca. Or you can find us at www.aspirawealth.com.
Thank you to Nathan Clark for composing our podcast music! He can be reached at nathancaclark@gmail.com.
Episode:
Eileen: [00:00:00] Because I couldn't control the fact that I didn't start golfing and competing at the age of five, I could control how much time and effort I was putting in. I could also control my reaction to when I hit bad shots…That really sat with me… if I can learn to control my feelings on the golf course and my reactions, that's something that I can take away in life in general.
Brittany: Welcome to From Generation to Generation. I'm Brittany, a Gen Z daughter, here questioning her financial advisor, boomer dad, for financial guidance that can help families today.
Chris: And I'm Chris, the dad, and a wealth advisor with the Aspira Wealth. If this is your first time listening, we think about family wealth in three distinct ways: Character, intellect, and finally, the money. And our belief is if we don't spend time trying to pass the character and the intellect traits to the next generation, the money will never last.
Brittany: Today we are discussing how to [00:01:00] navigate uncertain times in the market. We've been noticing with the Trump tariffs recently, it's a great example of uncertain or volatile times in the market and the world. It's something that has happened throughout history. It's something that will happen again. So we've brought two wealth advisors to the show today with different generational perspectives and we're going to talk about two different aspects of what we can control in an uncertain time in the market. There's how we think, and there's how we act.
To discuss how we think we're bringing in millennial cross border advisor, Eileen Kelly, who we're very lucky to have at Aspira Wealth. And then, Chris, wealth advisor Boomer Dad will be discussing how we act. So, some of the practical investment insights based on history and his career experience. The reason we're bringing in Eileen to talk about how we think is because before she made this wonderful reputation for herself as a very tenacious and level-headed [00:02:00] advisor, she was actually a professional golfer.
And as a professional athlete, she received training from a sports psychologist that really translates into her practice today. If anyone knows how to get their head right in a high pressure scenario, it's Eileen. we're lucky to learn from her today. So, without further ado, welcome Eileen!
Eileen: Well, thank you for having me. It's great to be here.
Brittany: So, you have a super fun kind of career transition story that I'd love for you to share for our listeners as you were a professional athlete and now, you're a wealth advisor. Can you just kind of share how that transition happened?
Eileen: Yeah, I'd love to. So, I'll take it a little bit back just to give a little bit more context. So effectively didn't have a quite the straight line to a professional golf career as one might think. I really didn't enjoy golf growing up and it was my dad who encouraged me to get a university golf scholarship.
I finally did listen and from there I just, I just fell in love with the game [00:03:00] after high school, and I was very fortunate to have some incredible coaching, which I feel like we're going to be talking about today. And from there, and after graduating university, I continued my golf training, and I moved to the U.S. and from there I was very fortunate to qualify for the Australian women's tour.
Didn't quite happen as quickly as I'm explaining, a lot of hours, a lot of dedication, but really, ultimately, the transition into wealth advising happened at a charity golf event. Something that was really important to me, it was helping trying to give back… when you're playing golf, it's very selfish because it's all about your schedule. You’re practicing hours upon hours, you're traveling all around the world and just focused on yourself. And I began helping raise money at different charity golf events. I was raising money at a charity golf event and I had raised $5,000. And on another hole, there was another person [00:04:00] raising money and they raised $500.
Long story short, they were an owner of a wealth management firm in Los Angeles, and they wanted to sit down and talk to me and before I knew it, I realized that there was so much more to the industry than I had ever imagined. And it was based on a foundation of connecting with people getting to help people. And yeah, the rest is history, they say.
Brittany: Yeah, and you took a year off of university, right?
Eileen: Yes. So, effectively, I had done ballet competitively growing up. And of the reasons I didn't like golf was because I didn't find it that exciting. No offense now, obviously my opinion has changed tremendously. So, when I realized that my dad was right, university is expensive, and a golf scholarship would be very helpful.
After I completed my first year of university, I said, okay, well, in order to maybe achieve this goal, I'm going to have to practice full time. So, I've [00:05:00] effectively took it on as a full-time job. So, I was practicing. Well over 40 hours a week, at least 60 hours a week. And I would just sit and chip and putt and work on my golf swing.
And that was a very, very exciting year. Just seeing my golf game really take off. It was fun to be able to measure the progress. And then I played in my first proper provincial amateur and I broke 80 and yeah, I was fortunate to be offered a scholarship to the University of British Columbia. They definitely took a chance with me.
Brittany: Yeah and, my understanding, part of this early career, you received a lot of specific training and so you were trained on your performance, obviously, but then you mentioned that you were trained mentally as well. Can you kind of get into what that meant?
Eileen: Yeah, when I went to UBC, we had a performance coach named Jim Murphy. And it was an interesting time to really learn how much the mental [00:06:00] aspect when it came to golf impacted our performance.
So, the way Jim effectively was sharing and helping us with our performance was to help think better around the golf course. But really having a holistic approach, looking at the bigger picture. How do I want to live my life? Sometimes golf can be incredibly frustrating.
It can be a huge hit to the ego and you work so hard and can still have an awful, awful day. And ultimately it was, how do you want to live your life? Do you want to go on the golf course and be angry for five hours? Or do you want to be grateful that you are on a beautiful golf course? We're very fortunate to get to play a beautiful golf course in Vancouver.
And you know, acknowledge that and be grateful and rather than focusing on the fact that you just hit a shank into the woods, focus on the positive. So that was a huge foundation and actually had a wonderful conversation with Jim this morning. So, it was really nice to just have a full circle moment with [00:07:00] him.
Chris: Eileen, curious, can you tell our audience a little bit more about who Jim Murphy is?
Eileen: His official title is sports psychologist, and he wrote a book called Inner Excellence. So, while we were working together now, this was quite some time ago, pre-2010, he was in the early stages of putting his book together and really effectively I don't want to say we were guinea pigs, but he was practicing effectively what he wanted to preach in his book. And his book came out in 2020 and it, talks about so many different facets and it's really kind of cool because, you know, a conversation we had today was January 12th, his whole life really changed this year. The book came out in 2020 and it was 547,000 on the Amazon purchase list. And. After January 12th, it was number one.
Chris: Wow!
Eileen: That was because, yeah, A.J. Brown on the Eagles was reading his book on the sidelines because he's been working with the [00:08:00] team. And again, it just helps them recenter and refocus and so yeah, somebody caught it on social media, so it's super cool. It was just such a fun moment for him and I'm so proud of him.
Chris: I feel like we're not doing Jim justice because we don't have a picture of his book here.
Brittany: We actually, we were watching that game. Well, my husband was and I…
Eileen: Oh really?
Brittany: The commentators were like, oh, that's the best way to get promoted. Just get someone on the field to read your book. And that's so funny. I had no idea. That's the same person.
I'm sure you learned lots of amazing things from him and from your time studying this, but is there like two or three highlights or takeaways that you still use today even as a wealth advisor in your new practice?
Eileen: Yes. So, focusing on what you can control is a big one. With Golf, for example, you can do all the training imaginable, and you can still wake [00:09:00] up for your 7 a. m. Tea time and it's pouring rain. There's a blowing a gale and you are competing against people who might in the afternoon get perfectly sunny weather.
So, you have a decision at that point to be frustrated and angry, or you just say, hey, it is what it is. You know, I've trained the best I can for the day and that was a huge thing when I was working with Jim is that we're looking at, okay, what can you control?
You can control your emotions, your reactions. You know, he shared with me at one point in time where with golf, you want to stay relatively level. And so that was something that was really important to me because I couldn't control the fact that I didn't start golfing and competing at the age of five, I could control how much time and effort I was putting in.
And I could also control my reaction to when I hit bad shots. He had shared with me was they did a study and they found that, okay, when you get angry, in general, your cortisol is released and it can take as long as five hours for that [00:10:00] to come back down to neutral. With golf, your timing and everything can be really impacted by that.
So that really sat with me and said, okay, well, if I can learn to control my feelings on the golf course and my reactions that's something that I can take away in life in general, because there's so many things and so many times where things will happen that we just can't control. Yeah. Something that we spoke about, Jim and I spoke about today, but something else that he had also shared that I've tried to carry on throughout the years is it's focusing on the process. And think when you're an athlete, you're so focused on the end destination. I want to make it; I want to win the masters or be on the LPGA or whatever that might be that you really miss out on the process. You know, after I talked to Jim this morning, I sent a voice note to my friend and we had gone through the grind, we were on a golf channel show together. So, there's a lot of like different moments that we've had that have been, you know, very special.
[00:11:00] But in the midst of that, it was just like, there's lots of tears because you put so much effort into something and to still go out. And if you're a golfer, you'll know, you don't want to shoot an 85 and you'd still shoot an 85 after all that hard work. But it's… enjoying those moments in between. It was a parable that Jim always said: you really don't know what's good or bad, so you have to just take it as a lesson and what you're going to learn from it. And true joy and happiness is not gonna come from that score you make on the golf course or becoming an LPGA superstar. It's gonna start within. It's one of those things, you know, when those moments of adversity are happening from an athlete's perspective, I look at it now to just have helped me have so many years of training. Obviously, it's wonderful when the market's just going up, it can't be happier, but the reality is there's a lot of things going on in the world that we can't control, and it will impact the markets. And so really helping, you know, [00:12:00] be able to center myself and remind my clients and myself that we just can only focus on what we can control, focus on one day at a time, and really just have that perspective can be invaluable. And really help us enjoy our lives a lot better because if we get too caught up on the day to day and the noise that we hear every time we turn on the media, you know, what's that going to do for our own happiness?
Chris: I just see so much parallel between, what Eileen's sharing in terms of how we navigate markets. If we take the example of focus on what you can control... I have pounded the table for years and years and years that investor behavior is the number one determinant of lifetime returns.
Brittany: Will that be written on your gravestone?
Chris: Probably. Yeah. And the one thing we can control is our behavior, as hard as it might be. And it is [00:13:00] hard during stressful times. We're in Trump tariff era right now where there's a lot of angst in Canadian households. But we can't control what Mr. Trump does and we won't serve ourselves well by just getting mad at Mr. Trump as tempting as that might be. We need to recognize there has been a shift in policy, that some industries are going to be impacted negatively, some industries are going to be impacted positively, we need to adjust accordingly.
Eileen: Yeah. And it's, you know, to the point of working with great coaches and something that had such tremendous impact on my golf training. It's the same with why people should have an advisor because that's for us to work with and sort through all the information for you, to keep in front of all that information so that you can go on and spend time with their kids, your grandkids. It's a pretty common phrase, I think it's Tony Robbins, where your attention goes, your energy flows or where your attention goes, your focus goes. The [00:14:00] reason you have professionals in your corner is you build a trusting relationship with them. You build a plan, you build a strategy, you know what your long-term, your short-term, your medium-term goals are. And then the best thing you can do is try to just tune that noise out and really focus on enjoying your day-to-day life. Because although it doesn't feel like it's temporary, this is going to pass, and you don't want to look back on the last four years being an emotional wreck because you were so stressed every time you turned on the news and heard a different headline. And so, really, you know, coming back down and going back to, okay, what can I control? Do I have a good advisor that I can trust? Are they making sure that they're staying on in the forefront of all this information? And trusting that they'll make smart decisions. Because if we're panicking and making emotional decisions, that's where in four years when we do get through this, you might have some [00:15:00] bigger financial concerns because you let your emotions get the best of you.
Chris: You know, Eileen was speaking about earlier on about focusing on the process and enjoying the process and that has so much applicability to what we do here investment is one side of what we do. There's a whole aspect of saving, planning, tax efficiency, right down to when we start drawing resources or passing them to the next generation. And if we get overly focused on the investment during a stressful time in the market, we're going to upset that process and the apple cart spills over. So, stepping back and seeing the bigger picture. When I think through of my career, I can remember the long-term capital collapse. I can remember 9 11. I can remember the 2007, 2008, 2009 bear market era where it looked like the end of the world and [00:16:00] I thought that was the worst one that I would ever see in my generation. And then we had Covid! Down markets are going to happen for as long as I live, and as long as you two live, and long, long after that. The one thing that's consistent throughout all of this is that markets are higher today than they were even at their previous tops. We need to plan to make sure we can survive the downturn, both emotionally and financially, to get to the other side. It's the price we pay for the outsized returns of the markets. Because these things are not going to go away.
Brittany: So speaking of, Chris, do you want to hop in what have you learned from these up and down markets over the years?
Chris: I think the biggest thing that I've learned over the years is these are normal. One of the things I share with many clients or anybody else that will listen to me, is that. the [00:17:00] claim that it's different this time is a really expensive claim. Because every circumstance is different, but the way that humans react to it doesn't differ. People sell way too cheap when they're worried, and they pay way too much when they're super optimistic. That doesn't change, but we need to, to be successful, we need to recognize that pattern. And to the extent possible, we have to fight it. We need to prepare ourselves financially to make sure we can survive them. So that might mean keeping three years’ worth of spending in front of us. If we're retired individual or acquiring really great skill and being a really great worker. So, you make sure you're not the guy that gets laid off if you're a younger person trying to save.
Brittany: I'm curious, Chris, what are the top three things you would want clients to keep in mind right now about how we act during these uncertain times in the markets?
Chris: What I would encourage any client to [00:18:00] ask themselves is, can I control our present situation? The answer is an obvious no. But do I have enough resources to get me through this period if we have a tough market for the next three or four years? And in all likelihood, most clients are gonna say, yeah, yeah, I actually do, you know, I've got that much secure and if you're in doubt, you know, maybe time to reach out to your advisor. So, once we're past that one, yeah, okay, we've got cash and we've got income, it’s really, do I have confidence in the people that are making the investment decisions to make the appropriate decisions? And if the answer is yes, then I heavily lean on Eileen's take like, shut the news off and go enjoy your life. and if the answer to that's not yes, then, maybe it's time you called for a meeting.
Brittany: For the clients who have kids maybe my age or around my age, how would you counsel them to counsel their kids through a time like this?
Chris: Great question. Because we can [00:19:00] see this as a problem or an opportunity. And I will sell it all day long as an opportunity - there's no sense letting a great recession go to waste. This is where things get cheap.
Brittany: So how do you capitalize on an opportunity like that?
Chris: I'll give you an example. Here, here's a real-life story, okay? In 2008, we were in an extreme bear market. The market was in an absolute panic. We had the great debt crisis. And in November of that year, I had one client that sent me a significant check with a note, Chris, try and buy me some good stocks. That took real courage on the part of that client because everything in your bones was saying we got the end of the world coming. But his attitude was if it's the end of the world, doesn't matter. And if it's not, this is going to be fantastic. And to this day, that gentleman has the [00:20:00] highest returns of all my clients.
Brittany: Wow. So, I'm also curious about generational perspectives, with how we receive news, process news. I assume even between Eileen and you, Chris, there's different ways that you. I know you're advisors, so I'm assuming you look at news differently than maybe us common folk out here… Eileen, you're millennial, how do you access news?
Eileen: Well, as you alluded to just a second ago, being professionals, we are in a positive way inundated with a lot of great information from a lot of experts. And so, I really am grateful for that because it's a lot of factual information. The challenge is, is that, yes, as a millennial, as some of the apps that I might use -TikTok, Instagram - I myself try to find unbiased news sources and I try to really always hear both [00:21:00] sides to try to really get an accurate representation. And then I take that and then I go to the experts that we are fortunate to have access to at Raymond James and see if there's a crossover.
Brittany: Yeah. In your age and stage of life, do you find social media to be really overwhelming? Because I do. And I, I'm just a mere Gen-Z-er.
Eileen: It is overwhelming. And I, it's just another channel to be inundated with information and to get confused by, you know, you open your phone, and you have 42 apps that are going to tell you that the world's ending. But yeah, and you know, from a professional standpoint, when I do open, say TikTok there's lots of people giving advice and a lot of people who aren't necessarily supposed to, shouldn’t be giving that advice. There's just so many. So many different platforms now.
Brittany: I always think it's crazy that, I mean, how old were you when social media came out? What transition was that?
Eileen: I was around when Facebook was created. I feel like that was probably between high school to university that Facebook came out.
Brittany: It's such a normal part of our lives now. And it blows my mind that like Chris, you had none of this growing up. For me, it was in middle school ish was when it was common to start having Facebook and didn't really know how to regulate it and all that kind of stuff. We didn't know if it was dangerous or bad for us. We just did it anyways. And now I feel like my generation is more careful when we think about… when we have kids, how we want to raise them in it. What about you, Chris, as a boomer?
Chris: So, in the news as a boomer, going back to let's call it university era, at that time, the news sources were [00:23:00] basically CBC, CTV, National Post and the Global Mail. And that was it. And at that time, things were fairly balanced in terms of reporting because most of the revenue that received by those companies was from advertising, but when Facebook came, social media came, that changed the whole game because now the advertising dollars went to Facebook And these guys had to invent a new platform, a new way to get paid or go out of business. The way they did it is they chose a tribe. And the more you went to those extremes, the more echo chamber we became. So, when Alex and I sit down, you know, we're trying to get rid of all that stuff and focus on the actual data. And if we can get to the data, we can get closer to the truth.
Brittany: You have more content than [00:24:00] I'm sure when you started in the industry available to you.
Chris: Unbelievable.
Brittany: Is it harder to get to the data now than it used to be?
Chris: Oh, yeah, it's much harder.
Brittany: Even though you have more data available to you?
Chris: The challenge is getting to the data that's salient for the question you're trying to answer because it's endless. Alex and I's job really is, is this massive filter that we're trying to get stuff through and get something, that's helpful coming out the end.
Brittany: It's interesting because growing up with you, I remember the news being on every night and I don't know if you remember this, but I had a lot of nightmares and stuff growing up and it was always because of the scary things on the news. I actually…
Eileen: Oh no.
Brittany: I'm actually quite averse to watching the news or reading the news. Zech is super up on things. He loves that stuff, but I, I really struggled digesting it.
Eileen: It's true. The news [00:25:00] is generally all negative. Yeah, one thing I try to do, and I think I was mentioning this to you the other day, is with the platforms, if it's something that comes up that I disagree with because there is that logarithm and it's something that we thankfully recognize now. If something comes up that I generally might not agree with, I still take it in. I want to make sure that I confuse the logarithm so that it shows me content on both sides, because I want to be able to see different perspectives and understand different viewpoints.
Brittany: I think it's hard for all of our generations now it's so much content and there's so much polarization and hard to get to the data as we've been saying. And so yeah, I guess the question is how do we enjoy our lives through all of this as you've been touching on? So, having said that, is there one piece of advice you would just leave our listeners with today for each of you?
Eileen: [00:26:00] At the end of the day. This will pass. This is temporary. need to focus on enjoying our lives, enjoying the process with our families, enjoying whatever you're doing, because in four years when this is over, you don't want to look back and regret that you spent the entire time on whichever news platform that you follow worrying. Because whatever your political stance is you don't want somebody to be taking your joy from you and you don't want to let that happen. So, focus on what you can control. Make sure you have a good team of people looking after you. Make sure that you have, you know, some emergency money set aside as Chris mentioned. And I don't, hopefully I'm not taking away from what he's going to say, but you know, make sure you have a plan and then feel confident that that plan is going to get you through it and go out and enjoy fresh air. Enjoy your life. Enjoy. We will get through this.
Brittany: Go to a golf green.
Eileen: Yeah, go practice your golf swing. [00:27:00] And take those skills there.
Brittany: Chris.
Chris: I guess for our clients, you know, you have a plan. And if you're questioning that plan, well then reach out to us. That's what we're here for. But recognize that, you know, we're taking in the world. We're making the appropriate adjustments. we're investing right alongside you. Same time, same price. That's the way it works here. So, we'll get to the other side. And hopefully, we, come to a world that is a little less polarized. And I think we all need to work on that. Because we all can get pretty polarized. So that would be my, my wish and my dream for you and your family because I know that this polarization can, can happen within families as well.
Brittany: Okay. That's our episode for today. Thank you so much for tuning in and listening. it was great to have you, [00:28:00] Eileen. Thank you for joining and we'll see you next time.
Chris: For our audience feedback is solicited. So, send me an email be it positive or negative, including any topics you'd like us to cover in the future. And you can connect with us at AspiraWealth.com.
Brittany: Thank you to Nathan Clark for composing our podcast music.
Disclaimer:
This podcast has been prepared by and expressed the opinions of Aspira Wealth of Raymond James Limited and are not necessarily the opinions of Raymond James Limited or Raymond James USA. Statistics, data and other information presented are from sources RJL, RJLU believes to be reliable, but their accuracy cannot be guaranteed.
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