Enterprenuer
Joe Lucey a Certified Financial Planner and Tax Expert with 30 years of experience advising clients on their financial needs.
For the past ten years, Joe has hosted his radio show, Secured Retirement Radio.
He realized early in his career that almost no one offered long-term tax planning advice to everyday people.
Many Americans need help reducing taxes and increasing their retirement income.
Lucey’s goal is to educate people about the importance of investing in lowering future taxes to ensure that they can live comfortably and have a secure retirement.
What is the story of Secured Retirement Radio get its idea?
Growing up, I wanted to be a financial advisor. I became a Certified Financial Planner (r).
In 1994, I began my career at a brokerage company.
After working in this field for ten years, it became clear that there was a gap between traditional financial planning, which focuses only on investments, and proactive, comprehensive planning/advising for all types of American households.
Secured Retirements was born in 2005 after I founded my financial advisory firm.
How do you stay productive?
My weeks are divided between “buffer” days and “focus” days (which are Tuesdays or Thursdays) for the company.
I will meet with clients and join other advisors to meet clients.
Friday is also a day of focus, but I don’t just spend my time focusing on Secured Retirement.
My buffer days are then. Mondays are spent primarily strategizing how to manage the business.
Wednesdays are often spent on business relations and not client-related logistics, such as vendors or general overhead.
This schedule is productive because I prioritize time management coaching.
For many years, I have been following Dan Sullivan’s Strategic Coach program (which is what brought me to “focus day” and “buffer day”).
Sullivan also teaches the importance of having “free days,” which are days that you can reserve for needed time off.
My company has a strong management team, which keeps us all productive in leadership and departmental meetings to discuss company structures.
How do you bring ideas to life?
I have the worst ADD. Even the smallest ideas can take a lot of time to process.
Although I can start many projects, I cannot finish them all.
This has been a blessing in a way. It has taught me how important it is to rely on my team for help.
Collaboration and delegation are crucial to growing your business, especially in service industries.
My team can help me bring any idea to life.
What’s your favorite trend?
Working with others makes me feel more energetic.
It has been hard for me to cope with the past twelve months of work that involved everything happening virtually.
It is hard to see my clients and coworkers in real life.
It’s hard to work in remote settings.
I hope we can return to some sense of normalcy soon.
What habits make you productive?
My ADD makes it easier for me to delegate work to my staff.
This is a massive benefit to me. This was a difficult task for me when I started my business.
But it has now become my standard practice. I keep track of everything.
I keep a detailed day planner in which I list three things I need to accomplish each day.
I do this to get them done in the earliest day hours.
This gives me a sense of accomplishment no matter how busy my day gets.
What’s your advice for the Noob?
I would advise myself to build my credit and establish a trusting relationship with a banker early, even though it may seem like I don’t need them.
This will ensure that you have a good credit history and are ready for when you eventually need them.
It was a considerable challenge to switch from being a solo worker to working in an office.
We ended up with a lot of debt because we didn’t have a strong banking relationship when we expanded.
This could have been avoided if I had had a strong banking relationship.
What is one thing we can all agree on?
Although most people agree that taxes will continue rising, I frequently say that they can be controlled and prepared for.
This is something that many people disagree with.
They claim there is nothing they can do about it.
To support my clients and prove my point, I show you how to prevent future tax increases.
This stress can be avoided by paying taxes early to reduce taxes in the future.
What do you recommend as an entrepreneur?
It would help if you took risks and never stopped learning.
It’s okay to fail. But it would help if you weren’t afraid to fail.
If you don’t fall, it’s not because you’re trying hard enough.
What’s your rich strategy?
Know that you can only do so much. To help our clients feel more confident, I encourage other advisers to get involved in the work.
I have been slowly shifting to working in groups rather than one-on-one.
This has allowed me to manage my time better and help me get more done every day.
How do you overcome Failure?
I didn’t consider how costly it would be to move out of shared space when I planned to expand my office.
I was left with a lot of debt due to the expansion. This was my first mistake.
I had not established a strong banking relationship with good credit.
My business grew slowly, and I had to incur additional expenses to compensate.
Through this experience, I realized the importance of having financial goals and banking relationships in place before entering these situations.
Our office expansion was funded with credit cards.
We had to put our efforts into paying down that debt, not increasing our marketing budget.
Although it took a while, I could eventually make my way out of this situation and get the money back. I learned.
Can you share a business idea?
Your company should have people who are skilled in their field and can complement your skills.
You’ll be the hardest worker in the company if you don’t hire people with the same skill level as you or lower.
It’s been easy for me to see new ideas and begin new projects.
However, I am not very good at following through.
I also hire people who can easily carry out these tasks to complement my abilities.
This relieves me of a lot of the pressure.
I can focus on the bigger picture and trust the team I have built to execute these ideas.
What’s your recent best buy?
My wife and I were recently on a Nashville business trip.
We went to a bar and saw a band. My wife requested her favorite song.
I knew it would smile on my wife’s face if they played her favorite song.
I approached them and gave them a $100 tip. It was worth it to see my wife smile.
What are your favorite Softwares or Apps?
Since the pandemic outbreak, we have switched from desktop computers to laptops.
I have seen firsthand how vital services like OneDrive and Microsoft Sharepoint are.
Before COVID-19, we had lots of data stored on our office server.
We needed additional resources when people began working remotely, so we invested in OneDrive and Sharepoint.
It was difficult for us to make significant changes to our IT.
This has made my work more productive over the past year.
Which book would you recommend?
Delivering Happiness is one of my favorite books.
He speaks about the importance and value of customer culture and company culture.
His business model and advice were the inspiration for Secured Retirement.
He stresses the importance of living life one day at a while and doing one thing each day that improves your life (and others’ lives).
It’s an encouraging book that will help you to rethink your business model and how you live your daily life.
It’s a book I would recommend to anyone!
What’s your favorite quote?
“Don’t dig if you’re stuck in a hole.” This is an excellent saying that sometimes what you do (or how you do it) may not be helping you get to the place you want.
This can be hard to see and even harder to change.
However, it is essential to recognize when your current path isn’t working.
TL;DR by Joseph Lucey
You will achieve more when you work in a group than independently.
You must take risks because you will not grow your business or yourself as a person.
Establish strong relationships with your bank early so that they can help you when you most need them.
