Welcome to the first episode of a four-part series on investing! Matt focuses on building wealth the right way, through solid principles, discipline, and long-term strategy, not chasing trends or media hype. Learn what makes an investment truly “quality” and how it can help secure your financial future.

Welcome to the Live well podcast where we explore how to navigate life's biggest changes, overcome challenges and build a future that aligns with your values and your goals. Hi, I'm Matt Wilson, financial advisor, coach and business owner of my practice here at Cornerstone Wealth Services in South Bend, Indiana.

And I am so glad that you are here today. Today we're going to start a four part series on something that affects nearly every person listening investing.

And it's not predictions, not stock tips. We're not trying to guess what the market is going to do next.

But I think this really fits in line with the overall theme of our podcast here and what I really want to try to communicate and that is, look, we need values, we need discipline and we need long term thinking. We don't want to listen to the market noise. And the media that's out there is not designed to help you with your interests in mind.

So it's not really there to build you up. And obviously bad news sells. We'll get into that a little bit.

There's some statistics on it, but overall we're just going to start a series here today that I think will resonate because everybody's going to be affected at some point. And when you look at investing, what does it really take to be a successful investor?

There's timeless principles that every successor follows year after year.

And if you start listening to just what your neighbor does, if you listen to the hot stock tips or anything like that, that could be a recipe for disaster. And I think people overall generally don't do well with investing because of those things.

Because number one, they don't know who to trust, they don't know what to believe, and then they just kind of do what their neighbor does and that usually spells out disaster for them. So want to give a special thanks to truthworks Media for hosting the Live well podcast here in the Momentum Studios in South Bend.

They do an incredible job here helping people bring meaningful conversations and stories to life.

Over my almost two decades working with investors, I've noticed something the people that succeed long term rarely succeed because they predicted the market correctly. They succeeded because they followed a few very simple principles, but they did it consistently.

So in this series we're just going to talk about what I believe are the four non negotiable pillars of successful investing. The first pillar, and I'll run through these very quickly and we'll talk mainly about the first one today on this episode.

But the first one is own Quality Buy Quality. What does that mean? What is quality? The second one is be properly balanced. The third is diversify correctly.

And the fourth is like a shoelace in the boot of any soldier. He's worthless without his shoes being tied. And that's having a long term perspective. You can't be successful if you don't have those four pillars.

And again, I'll repeat that. Number one, own quality. Number two, be balanced properly. Number three, be diversified correctly. Number four, maintain a long term perspective.

And I think if you do those things, you will be successful. So before we talk about investing, let's talk about success. What is success? Because success in investing is not the same for everybody.

So let's just talk a few minutes about what success really means. I don't believe success is beating the S&P 500. I don't believe that success is doubling your money in a year.

I don't think success is picking the hottest stock and riding that wave and that momentum. Success really is this. It's just investing so that you achieve your goals without running out of money.

For most people, that's the main goal is how do we make sure that we just don't run out of money? So the questions that you want to answer are can you retire and maintain the lifestyle that you're used to?

Maybe with the income that you're used to, you don't want to become dependent on others financially. So are you depending on others to guarantee your success? Then there's things that you want to do in life.

So maybe there's a goal that you've had since you were a kid. Might sound silly, but maybe you haven't talked to anybody about this and we'll get into that a little bit.

But you can't necessarily have success if you don't define what that is, first of all. So what are the goals that you have in mind with respect to your money? So here's something important and that is that it's very.

Investing is deeply personal. So I always ask clients these two questions. The first question that you need to ask yourself is it would be nice if what.

What is it in your life that it would be so nice to either have or do or be. It would be nice if what? Just fill in the blank. And the second question is, what do you want to do before you die?

And I've had several people in the office and as we sit down together, and sometimes you have a husband and a wife that sits down and I ask him that question and somebody will say something and the spouse will just look at them like what? And I had somebody in this week and it was the same thing where we sat down and I said, what do you want to do before you die?

What do you want your retirement to look like? It would be nice if what? And he goes, you know, we really haven't talked about it, I really haven't thought about it.

This is a guy who has worked for 40 years looking to get out of his career to a life that he doesn't have to travel every day, he doesn't have to, you know, give so much of his time and he can focus on his life, but he doesn't necessarily know what that means.

So I think some of it's just unpacking what success means and unpacking exactly what that looks like for you in retirement or what is it that you want to do before you pass and leave this world. You want to travel somewhere? Do you want to buy a lake cottage? Leave money to your kids? Give to a charity?

Look, some people, they make it, they make it so successfully that they just have more money than they need.

And I know that might sound crazy, but you know, it's really about legacy and what's important to you in your life and what do you want to support when you're gone? You can have tremendous influence in your life. So once we understand that, the investments actually begin to make sense.

So let me just tell you a quick story. I once had a client that got, got extremely angry in a meeting, I mean, red faced, I was taken aback. I really didn't understand why he was so mad.

I had mentioned, look, we're going to talk through some ideas and I see some things.

And they came in together, husband and wife and they sat down and I was recommending a particular option because they had some extra cash, they had some extra non retirement money. But what I didn't know was this. I didn't know he had a plan.

This guy, his whole life, since he was a kid, wanted to buy a lake house for his family, but he never told me. So to him I was suggesting risking the money that represented something so important to him. And I had no idea.

And maybe it was that I just didn't ask him. So I learned very valuable lesson at that point that everybody needs to be asked those questions.

That reinforced something extremely important, that if your advisor doesn't know your purpose, then they can't design the right strategy for you. It's not about just picking the best investments, it's about knowing you, understanding what's important to you.

And like that one guy that came in, red faced, seething, angry, we Patched it up. But I learned that valuable lesson that day. So pillar number one, buy quality and own quality.

So once you define what success looks like, the first pillar becomes extremely clear. So buy quality. Let me explain it this way. When you go to the bank for a loan, for instance, what do they do?

So they're going to ask you questions like, what's your income? Do you pay your bills? In other words, what's your credit history? Do you have a lot of debt? Is your job stable? How long have you been there?

What's your history? So what they're trying to determine is, are you a good borrower? As investors, we flip the script. Now we're the bank.

And the questions every investor needs to ask is, does the company that I'm going to invest in or the investment, does it make money? Does it have a proven product? Does it have a long history? What does its debt look like? Are their earnings growing? Is there, their income growing?

Is management competent? In other words, is this a high quality business? Is this worth the investment?

Just like the bank's going to ask you, is it worth lending you money, you need to be asking the same questions about the investments that you're owning. So investing to me means expecting more money back in the future than what you put in. You know, some say the stock market is gambling, right?

But I have irrefutable evidence to say that is just the opposite. Okay, so let me explain. With gambling, the more you gamble, the longer you gamble, what happens to the chances of you making money? They go down.

Your chances actually lessen. So with the market, the longer you invest, the more you invest, the greater your chances are of actually making money.

But you can't invest into things without a history or invest in things that are losing money hand over fist in their business structure. That doesn't make any sense. So you want to evaluate, do these companies make money? What kind of quality is it?

Statistically, many studies show that high quality companies outperform low quality companies by roughly 3 to 4% over long, long periods. If you take that over 20 years, just think of what that compounding is going to do. That's enormous.

So there's other studies, and I believe that a company called Vanguard, which many of you probably know, they did a study years ago. And you can look this up, it's called the Advisor Alpha.

So the study concluded that if you work with an advisor who can understand what quality is and what it isn't, then that person that works with the advisor actually makes about 4% more over time on Average than somebody who doesn't work with an advisor. So you have to look for companies that have consistent earnings growth, strong balance sheets, low debt.

And then you have to look and see who's dramatically outperformed the weak companies over long periods. But look again, it's not, it's not predictions, it's principles.

So I can't tell you how many times somebody's called me and said, matt, I think I should sell everything and I'm going to get back in when it's better. So I always ask the same question. When is that? What does it look like to. Or what exactly does it look like when it's better?

When exactly does it get better? So we have to ask those questions when you feel like, hey, look, I need to sit this out. It's not timing the market, it's time in the market.

You cannot time the market because here's, here's an amazing stat. Did you know that if you lose 10 days, the 10 best days out of the market in the last 20 years, your return is cut in half?

That's why strategy can't beat predictions. It has to be principles. I had a gentleman that, you know, we had the tariff issues last year and a gentleman was just really distraught.

I'll spare you all the details, but bottom line was he didn't know. He thought he should get out. And my question again was, when do we get back in? You know, what does that look like?

I just, I didn't know what to say at that point. And I've had people that have gotten out of the market.

I remember one guy years ago, and I think this was right around the pandemic, called and said, I want to get out. And I said, well, I don't advise that. Long story short, we did not get out. And weeks later everything had come back.

You just can't time things you just don't know in the very short term. But come to find out he had moved a third of his retirement and he had north of a million dollars.

He had moved his retirement to cash when it was down. And to my knowledge, he never recovered.

And everybody that's ever done that, I don't know any, anybody that's actually recovered and been able to time it right. A lot of times what happens is you just don't get back in. So we'll try to make that available maybe in the show notes.

But if you miss the 10 best days, half the return is gone. So let's look at why people make bad investment decisions really quickly.

So in my experience, Investors struggle for those three main reasons that I asked or that I mentioned earlier, and that is they listen to their neighbor, they listen to the news, and they abandon principles. They don't know who to trust, they don't know what to believe, and they kind of do what their neighbor does.

But to unpack that a little further, again, they listen to their neighbor. Everybody suddenly becomes an expert during a really good market, right? And then they listen to the news. And here's the dirty secret.

The news is not designed to help you. The news is designed to keep you what it's designed to keep you watching. So negative headlines get far more engagement than positive ones.

I believe it's six to seven times more views than than good news. So fear sells. They abandon principles during market volatility.

And we're seeing this now, and I'm not trying to date the podcast, but at the timing of recording here. We're in the middle of a Middle east conflict and you're seeing the market go up 200, down 200, up 400, down 400.

The markets move consistently, but wealth is built through discipline. If you're listening to this and realizing that you'd like help designing a disciplined investment strategy, then that's exactly what we do.

At Cornerstone Wealth Services, we work with individuals with families and business owners to create a financial plan that aligns with your goals, their values and their long term vision. And if you'd like to start that conversation, you can reach out directly through our website@mattwilsonfinancial.com or contact our office.

I'd love to help you build a strategy that's based on on principles and not predictions. And you might say, hey, Matt, that's great, I've got an advisor. Well, different isn't always better, but better is always different.

You know, reach out. I'd love to help unlock your purpose and your goals and to see how we can affirm your plan or improve it. And that's the worst that can happen.

Either I affirm your plan is good or we improve it. This is something that you can honestly say can't hurt, but could help you.

Again, I just want to thank truthworks Media for hosting the Live well podcast here in their studio and the Momentum Studios. Again, they do an incredible job helping people, like I said, bring those meaningful conversations and stories to life.

So we'll be happy to connect you with them as well, but just appreciate their willingness to host us here. The next episode. In this series, we're going to talk about the second pillar of successful investing and that is balance.

We're going to discuss the bucket strategy, how to structure money for income versus growth, and why proper balance can keep investors from making emotional decisions during the volatility that the market presents. So until next time, remember, money is just a tool. Use it or it's going to use you.

Use it wisely so you can build a life that truly allows you to live well.