Welcome to small business breakthrough series where each week we're going to be interviewing a number of guests from the financial industry, or we'll discuss financial planning pitfalls and benefits that will help your business thrive. Our mission is to help businesses break through the caps and problems that are holding your holding them back from its full potential while all staying focused on the things that matter most.
To you if you had if you'd like to add today's guest to your network You can find all of their contact information in the show notes below and so without further ado i'd like to introduce Peyton hopps Financial advisor with parallel financial and great to meet you peyton. How are you doing today?
Jason, great to meet you doing good man doing great peyton one of the things in that working with businesses that i've found is They always like to know a little bit about who they're working with, especially when it comes down to money. So from a high level overview, can you give us what does your business do and why did you decide to get into financial planning?
Yeah. Great question. I, you know, I, I searched pretty, pretty far and wide to trying to find a company within, Um, well, I'm in upstate of South Carolina, so Greenville, Spartanburg, if you're familiar with that, uh, geography. But, uh, search for a while I was in this industry for a few years and wanted to find an independent firm that could serve business owners, but could serve a, a large group of people anyway that I saw fit right, the people I wanted to work with.
And so getting into this industry, just cutting your teeth, figuring it out, and that was. Eight years ago, over eight years ago or something like that. And so now working towards parallel where I'm at now, the idea was to find who can I work with that would allow me and put the opportunities in front of me from a relationship standpoint to be able to help people, right?
What is our offering? What do we, what do we do? What are we about? And so. Going through that parallel is focused on letting the advisor build their own business. So I build my own clientele who I want to work with, but they're focused on kind of three main areas. We have retirees as, as everybody does, they work with, you're going to retire or sell your business.
So you could be considered a retiree, but, um, uh, the other one is going to be business owners. So that's probably a third or makes up the majority of our clientele. And the other clientele is going to be, um, athletes or professionals. And so we have a, a kind of a segment there. Um, and so, um, Through interviewing with them, they kind of laid out, this is who we work with, this is where we're at, so it's a good fit.
So since then, that's been, that's been a big part of who I work with now, and my focus in the business. And so Parallel's kind of given me a great platform the past five years to work on that. So, that's who we are. Again, we're in Greenville, South Carolina, and then, you know, I work kind of between the two counties.
And, uh, Between Spartanburg and Greenville and just work with business owners as probably a big niche of who I work with. And then another, another niche is medical professionals. And a lot of times they overlap. So it's been a great fit as far as what I was looking for. That's amazing. So you're talking about business owners being some of your ideal client.
Is there any specific you talked a little bit about medical professions, but, um, you know, if you're working with a business owner, what are the major outcomes that they can expect when they're working with you as they're trying to set up for their financial future? Yeah, so a lot of times business owners, first off, my dad's an entrepreneur.
So love business owners, like just we grew up in the household. So I understand the mindset. And, you know, Uh, they're bright, hardworking individuals. They usually run their business and work in their business. Sometimes that's to their own fault where they don't work on the business. They work in it, and that's a challenge.
Um, but a lot of business owners want to exit realize they have to take a step back. And so With that, you've got to have your financials kind of in a row, right? You got to have audits or, uh, you've got to have, um, revenue for the past three or five years and returns and audits. You got to have all that tracker showing where we're going, right?
And so a part of that, that business owners where I work with them on the business side, So I'll say the business as a whole, but it's usually the owner we're dealing with is the benefit side of that. So as, as our, our firm is unique and we work a lot in that space with the owner individually or the C suite, but then with the business and we can, we can win there, right.
We can help with, with a lot of benefits packages. So you're looking at things like payroll tax credit. It's a program since 2009 and the government's been running and a lot of business owners don't know about it. Now, it's not going to free up any of their time, but it gives them more dollars to use in their business to grow and gives their employees a raise without them having to raise.
So you get a savings and a raise and nobody, it costs anybody anything. That's, that's the net, net idea. But so you have that, then you have benefits packaging of, well, how's your 401k structured, your health insurance, because if you're at 30 people, You're getting hammered because you're not quite at a package of 50, right?
If you're 50, you're not at 100, right? So there's these little bitty hurdles, but we work with a company that, uh, is a PEO and we help implement that into their system and to their company. And if they're going to sell and it's to a PE firm or something, and they see they've got all this package together and it's all in one spot, it's integrated and it's not somebody in the business running it, but they have to hire and fire or outsource.
That's just a stronger point of selling, right? It's, it's simplified. So, 401k with a P. O., payroll with P. O., health insurance with P. O., working with P. O., we've got it all bundled together, and there's usually pretty big savings there. And then, the other way we do that, obviously, is sometimes it's a one off, and we don't need all the things packaged together, but we have pieces that we don't have, and so we have relationships at the firm level and individual level that we will bring in partners to help these companies.
So that's from the company side. So when we get those packaged together, they're in a position where everybody's winning, the employees and the employer, and when we sell off, everything's still. Still in a good spot, so we don't have to have these pieces be put in later. There's a PEO or a private equity firm wants to see certain pieces overlaid first before we do that, right?
Finish this, clean up that, we try and get that done ahead of time. But the companies that we're working with, because of our geographical area, we are a huge manufacturing hub here. We have BMW right down the road. Um, The Greenville Spartanburg airport is here. That's a huge hub. The inland port is here in Spartanburg.
So we have a lot of industry here. So that's kind of who we work with in the general area. And we've got business owners. throughout the southeast, but as a whole around the area, that's who we're working with. Um, again, I have medical groups that are in different parts of the country and state, and they need help with the benefits.
So 401k, what's the right financial avenue to go down? And so regardless of what the companies are, most of the time, the business, wants to spend their million dollars to grow, but they, they, they neglect to take care of themselves and employees are trying to grow the business. And so strategically, we want to put in a retirement plan that makes sense for the company that keeps your key employees there.
That's not, they're not churning them because it's a good company, but just not enough package there. Right. So there's ways you can craft it around that to give a sweetener to your high compensated employees. So, We kind of have a couple, couple areas we work around here and in my practice in my business, but as a whole, we're just trying to get them, you know, to the finish line of a few things of savings and good implementation so they can retain the employee.
So if they do sell off, they've got a good staff along the way and they're not struggling to keep the employee retention high that's, you know, again, that goes straight to the bottom line that they can be profitable or successful year over year instead of taking a step back every couple years. Yeah, I know that's one of the big challenges then coaching and working with businesses and It was a challenge.
I had to work through myself and grow my own companies was how to position it so that the business didn't rely on you as the right To operate because it, it's amazing. It's a huge multiple difference between a company that has to have somebody put in to do that, or it's already running and it's kind of seamless can be making money day one.
So those great, you actually answered the third question in here, which was kind of what makes you unique and, uh, in, in how you solve that. So that's, uh, that's amazing. Um, What do you see is the biggest problem in your industry and how are you solving? Um, so there's two thoughts there in that we talk a lot about this at the firm level that we've built our firm to be simple.
We, we don't want it to be complicated. Life's complicated. Raising kids is complicated. Especially if you're not, you know, if you're on, if you're on the new side of kids, if, if you've had them for a while, you maybe can see some things coming, but for me, I'm, I'm on the four, four year old and one and a half year old side of it.
So I'm learning and if I can make it simple parenting, I would write, but I don't, there's not a physician out there that's giving me a playbook or a pediatrician yet, but you know, when it comes to your finances, there, there are some playbooks, there are some things, best practices. And so from a, from a firm level, but specifically my, my focus is trying to help people have simplicity.
You are great at making a widget or doing a service as a business owner, but you may not know all the options out there. I mentioned the payroll tax credit earlier. People don't know that exists. So bringing things to the table for you to make your life better, or you spend 20 hours going to research and things that could save you money, but you may not find it.
So for us, it's having things at our disposal that we can help. The business owner want to make sense for the business and just keeping it simple. We do not want to make things complicated. That's probably the number one thing in our industry that is lacking as a whole is keeping it simple. Now I say that and then here's, here's the other thought is some things are just cookie cutter.
Now we're talking about the investment side on, on the individual side, even with the business, like we have some businesses that have surplus of capital and they want to open up an investment account through the business. And when we do that, but I mean, it may be the thing of a construction company that's sitting on a large piece of money.
A piece of land or something that offload they get they don't need the money. There's nowhere they're going to put that money into business. So we'll let it sit money markets or do something with it, whatever they'd like to see. So we want to keep it simple again, but the more you try and get a little bit more customizable to each individual or businesses need, sometimes more complex it gets.
So I say that kind of with a caveat, we want to not be cookie cutter and we're not. And we do things a little bit differently. Our investment theology is a little different, but we're active in it. And so we want to keep it simple, but we also want to give you some customization that fits you, right?
Something that would be a better fit for you than if you went down the street. Um, I'm not going to name any firms, but the point is a lot of them out. They're just very simple, very big firms and across the nation. And they just, and the one that fits in this box, it'll work really well. And sometimes it does, but people we work with and we don't work with everyone.
Is that's the big thing we're looking what i'm seeing is that keep it simple And people want to have a little bit of flexibility or customization towards what they're doing Not that their friends have to do it with them But that what they want to see happen we can we can have happen So those are the two probably main points.
I would say stand out most to us. That's really interesting because the what I find in business is and I ran into this problem myself too was um These business owners are going to want that flexibility because they've always offered that flexibility to their customer You Right. So, and what they didn't necessarily understand was system systematization system, trying to get the word right there, systematization, right?
It's not even a real word, but creating systems and processes that made things more cookie cutter actually is a huge benefit to their efficiencies in business and not allowing for a bunch of one off things, but it's, it takes a lot of extra effort and a lot of extra nuance to have systems. But have that little bit of flexibility.
It's kind of like, um, you're not micromanaging it. You're just managing it and allowing for a little bit of. That one off thing. I, I've, uh, read a book. Um, Will Gordera does unreasonable hospitality. It's his book. And it's a great book. If you're ever interested in reading it about, um, how to run really well in the, in the services industry and the hospitality industry.
And he taught, he gave a little story inside of that. around, um, how, uh, these food critics were visiting one of his restaurants in New York City and they hadn't experienced a New York stand hot dog. Just real simple. But this guy is a Michelin star restaurant, like high end stuff. And he, they heard that ran outside, spent two bucks on a hot dog, came in, made it fancy and get, and then those critics got to experience A hot dog, which is something that was that he gave the flexibility to his staff to create an experience for the customer.
And that is, I think, hugely important. And it's such a, uh, an interesting nuance. Right. And that's the same thing I'll say on that. Like we take on the complexity. We take that on. We don't need you to understand. All the complexity, kind of a right way. And I really like that example of the hot dog. Uh, I kind of asked this, my clients, when I meet with them, um, or prospects or just friends in general, I'll say, let me ask you, especially between a married couple, um, which one of you want to, which one of you wants to know how the clock works and which one of you just want to know, What time it is and usually the wife says I just want to know what time the husband By and large wants to know how the clock works.
He's usually a little more invested in that That's usually a male trait, but not always And and it's the same thing like some people just want it simple Some people want to know a little bit and it's like we can go deep as you want But at some point I might lose you and so I let people tell me how simple do you want it?
I'll make it simple, but for you, I would tell you keep your life simple But if you want to get complex and get the explanation That's fine. You can just go get the hot dog and eat it or I can make it a little dressed up for you Right the experience of that so we want the experience at parallel. I want it to be very simple Call me i'll get you an answer.
We'll work on it. No stress We're just going to work through it time and time again not not to panic over it, right? Yeah, so the the next question here is a little bit two part So it's where do you see your industry going in the next five to ten years? Is kind of the the first part of it and then Everybody's AI is a huge thing, right?
AI is all over the place. So is AI playing a part in any of the changes in your industry? And how are you guys staying on top of it if it is? Yeah, um, so I'll hit AI first, because I think that leads into it. But The, our, one of our founders at Parallel, um, Brian Bogner is his name. He does a lot with AI.
He's been putting a lot of content out on that and it's useful. If you know how to use it, it's very useful. Um, there's a bot that's going to record our conversation and maybe transcript it. There's going to be something like that and it's available now, but those things make your life easier to do in our industry.
So AI is changing. How we do it, still take notes, but just a little differently than we used to. And, you know, you can have AI do a lot of other stuff, clean up all your blog posts, you can have it, you know, there's a lot of power in it to help you be more efficient. It's not going to take my position. I'm not worried about that.
Some people are concerned with that, but I'm not. The human connection will always be there. It's just, well, how does it look? It looks different. It eventually will change, but not, not, not Terminator style. Um. And so, yeah, I think that's, I think AI is going to change the industry. Now the how AI changes the industry in five years, I have no idea, right.
It just, it's just how I'm looking at it now. What makes sense now, but it's, you know, 10 percent of what we're using. So it's not everything. And maybe it's more integrated into what I think it is, but it's 10 to 20 percent of what I'm using day to day notes, tracking things, you know, um, putting, putting.
I'm not a great writer. So helping me write better being the English teacher for me on demand, things like that are just helping, right. And my weaknesses are, are strengthened a little bit through it, where I see our industry changing, kind of going to that is we, there are robo advisors out there, right?
It's just a software system or something. And while they have their place in the marketplace and they have their. Their utility for somebody, you know, where we see the industry going, it's been this way for the past seven or eight years I've been in this industry is people are gonna invest as always, and their bots may help out with that and I may help out with that may look different, but you're never going to have a philosophy created by a bot that's not human driven, and so that's never going to leave.
But where I see the industry changing for us is more. So we do a lot of financial planning. That's our, our focus. We're trying to shift a little bit more to be heavier on that for the individual. Um, and so you're always going to call me James or Jason. You're going to call me and say, uh, Peyton, should, what kind of car should I buy based on my budget?
Like, let's talk through it. Right. So that's not something a bot's going to help you with, or, Hey, I want to renovate in three years. And here's my options. What do you see as the best return on equity? Hey, here's an option for real estate. Payton, help me understand, should I be buying this or this, right? I have two options.
Um, the bot's not really going to be able to keep up with that, because it's my experience in real estate with my other investors. I know what works for them. Here's, I can guide you that way. You can read all you want on Google, but you still talk to your best friends about what they're doing, right? So, that's how I see our industry changing, is it's going to be very much a more advice based, and it should be.
Because again, anybody can do investments, whether they're good or bad at it. I mean, let's say they're average. Anybody can do that. However, I'm not really trying to make My living just saying I had the better return. I'm trying to make it based on your whole entire life, right? Make all your financial areas better, stronger, or simpler.
Yeah, that's amazing. AI is just that it's such an amazing tool to use. It's another tool for the toolbox. I don't think it's actually going to replace, um, a whole lot of stuff. Even it's just going to make the positions or the jobs a little bit more advanced. Right. So, um, cause even in car manufacturing, when they came out with robots on how to do stuff became much more consistent.
reliable, you didn't have to worry about buying a car on Monday that was made on Monday versus Wednesday, Friday. Like that's what I was taught growing up in high school was like, pay attention to the stamp on the door. But the, uh, you have to be, those machines all have to be programmed. AI has to be able to have an input into it.
It's not going to just an output on its own. So, uh, it's just great. And if those that are not, Paying attention to it or utilizing it, uh, starting to at least learn about it. Uh, they're, they're following further and further behind every day. Well, Peyton, it's, it has been great to talk to you. Let's have a little fun and go through the lightning round.
So I won't rattle off. There's about 10 questions here and I want you to just quick, quick response, like right from your gut, as quick as you're in as quick as you can. You ready? All right. Okay. Here we go. Coffee or tea? Tea. Okay, cats or dogs? Dogs. Favorite city you've ever visited? Uh, San Antonio, Texas.
Okay, cool. Last song you were listening to on repeat? Too Sweet by, uh, Is it Hozier? I'm forgetting the name of the artist. Too Sweet by Hozier. Let's call it. That's okay. Okay. If you could grab one weapon during the zombie apocalypse, what would it be?
Um, this isn't fast cause now I'm not thought about this. Uh, let's just say shotgun, 12 gauge. Yeah, that's fine. The, uh, if you look back at past experiences that you have had that have led to your success today, what's the first one that comes to mind? Oh, this one you're not going to expect. Uh, oh gosh, buddy of mine, uh.
Charles and Southern, uh, where I went to college my first year, befriended him, took him to church. He was able to get involved with church and, um, accept Christ. And then from that, he led me to cheerleading. Cheerleading led me to Clemson. Clemson led me to my wife. My wife led me, obviously, to my father in law.
My father in law went hunting, which introduced me to out in Wyoming. Which introduced me to some advisors at Ameriprise, which kicked me off in this industry. Wow, that is an amazing chain of events. I love it, uh, especially starting with the Lord. So what, what's your favorite failure that you have had? Oh my gosh, favorite failure.
Uh, buddies and I, okay, a buddy and I started a, um, yeah, it's a pretty big failure. Well, it's not a giant failure, but it wasn't great. Uh, started a A vending machine company in 2020 because everybody was sitting on their tail. I said let's buy some machines Let's find somebody in a manufacturing hub because there's plenty of guys here eat stuff out of the machine because the restaurants are closed down Um, and let's throw them in some facilities and do it It was great for a period of time and then both of our careers picked up Obviously, as everything did after after covid and and we ended up like being just so worn out from having to chase these machines around.
It just wasn't something we could do day to day. So we sold them. So it was, it was a, it was a break even, but it was a failure of a wasted time. A lot of lessons learned though. Yeah, there you go. See, I said, I love the thing where everybody that's a kind of a double edged question because you end up getting those that are like, okay, what's a failure?
And then there's goes, I didn't fail. I just learned. Right, right, right, right. Uh, what's your favorite, favorite quote or phrase that you think about often? Um,
well, probably it's probably more scripture based, but you know, I'm, I'm going to butcher it, but, uh, you know, a fool is quick to speak. A wise man's quick to think it's based off scripture, but it's not obviously directly from the Bible, but yeah, I can be quick to speak. Uh, not cause I'm a fool, but I just have thoughts quickly.
And my wife informs me, I should probably think about them first. So. Our wives are typically, um, a little bit better at those things. Yeah, that's good. Uh, what's your no miss morning ritual with kids? There's a lot of misses because you don't know what the night holds for you. But let's say that it was, let's say the kids slept every time for a month and no, no questions asked.
Um, it would have to be just getting up and working out early and in reading. Uh, Reading, reading, quiet time. We got, I, those two things set my day up for success. I've already had a good day, no matter what happens beyond that. I totally am with you there. Coffee and a book is my morning every morning. I try to, uh, 5 30 in the morning is a lot easier and look forward to a good book.
Uh, and I read mostly business and self help books, but what's your favorite moving, moving, uh, favorite movie or streaming series that you love? Well, um, I'm not a big TV guy. I'm not a big, let's watch it. Now, if we're talking about movies, oh my gosh, I, that's probably more, I want to lean, um, my household's full of Disney movies right now.
But if we had to take one of my favorites, Blue is a pretty good TV series for kids, but, um, probably Oh Brother, Where Art Thou. That's, that's one of my top favorite movies. Okay. I, I, that is a one note that I've enjoyed over time. The, I don't watch it often. Um, the, uh, I've got. Kind of a two different part series for myself.
And interestingly enough, like, I'll, if I'm on a plane, I'm watching almost all military movies, like, right. Cause I like to watch them, but none of the rest of my family likes to watch them. And that's usually when I'm on the plane, I'm isolated to myself. So I got, uh, the, uh, But yeah, we're a Disney household here.
Uh, my kids, even my 17 year old still like we have Disney on a lot. Um, okay. What is one book that has influenced your life? The most wild at heart. It's a, it's a, again, going back to faith, but it's a faith based book, but helps them. The man is we get in our society. We, we choose comfort. We don't choose hard work.
We choose the easy path. We don't choose the path. Let's walk. And wild at heart is talking directly to the heart of the man to say, you need to wake up. part of it. You need to wake up, understand that you are designed in a way with testosterone, you're designed in a way for wilderness, for wonder, for adventure.
It looks different for everybody now in our modern society, but it does take you back to a primal ancestral feeling of understanding that you are built to have these emotions that are just like, let me go create something or conquer something or climb a mountain. And thus you have people who chase adrenaline rushes because it's a, it's a part of who we are in our society is kind of just made easy to just live life.
And sometimes deep down, a man needs to go have adventure. And so that's one of the, probably the best books I've ever read in my early twenties. Wow. I'm going to have to look that one up. I have not read it and, uh, that's going to be on my bucket list. So I recommend it. Amazing book. Uh, so Peyton, if any of our listeners would like to connect with you or collaborate with you, what is the best way to get in touch with you?
My email address super simple to real to remember it's payton p e y t o n payton at parallel financial dot com the idea is that the main company or the company named parallel is our interest run alongside of yours not ours ahead of yours so we want to run parallel to that so payton at parallel financial dot com you can remember excellent well everybody you guys heard it here first if you need Financial planning for your business or personal life, reach out and connect with Peyton.
We have all of his contact information in the show notes, uh, below, and thank you so much time for your time today, Peyton, and it's been a fantastic interview. Jason, thanks for reaching out. It's been a blast.
