As long as you're willing to work hard and stay focused, I think that minimizes your risk. You're not gonna fail because your focus and your determination and your faith is not going to let you fail.
Welcome to the Up Your Average podcast where Keith and Doug give no nonsense advice to level up your life. So buckle up and listen closely to Up Your Average.
Let's get this started, Sue.
Let's go.
Oh man, we were just talking about, LinkedIn. We were talking about posting stuff on LinkedIn, like maybe this video and, and, you know, I realized I wasn't sure if we had a LinkedIn or not, but Sue reminded me, yes, Doug, you do, and it's 100% compliance approved, which is a great thing because I want to introduce you to the newest member of our team.
I think so, yes.
Sue Mitchell. How long have you been with Gimbal Financial?
Over two years.
Okay. Brand new. Yep. Brand new Sue. And Sue is our compliance officer, compliance analyst. What do you call yourself?
Compliance officer. Yep. Yep. I handle all the regulatory requirements. I just want your viewers to please stay tuned. I promise not to make talking about regulatory compliance as boring as attending a two hour insurance seminar.
Yeah. I cannot imagine compliance officer seminar or luncheon. I don't know how you do it. They're riveting. Yeah. I don't know how you do it. Well, it's it's Memorial Day weekend, and I wanna take everybody back in the Doug Shrieve time machine for a second. This was 1986, okay, 1986. The year before Danny Sullivan had won the Indy five hundred and he did a three sixty spin in the Miller Lite? No, maybe it's Miller Genuine Draft.
It was the coolest race car, it's gold, white, He did a spin to win in 1985, but in 1986 I was still 10 years old, living in Muncie, and I was at the supermarket with my mom, and while she was shopping, I went ahead and filled out a little card near a big cardboard box that said, enter here to win tickets for the Indy five
And you won?
I filled my name out, address, put the home phone number in there, and my Uncle Bob gets this call, and they say, Hey, this is Marsh Supermarkets. We can't read the writing on this card, but it looks like Shreve, he owned a car dealership, Shreve Auto, and so they called him, small town stuff. And they said, Who is this guy? Well, that's my nephew. And so I won two tickets to the Indy five hundred.
That's great.
And my dad and I went, it was a rain delay, it was a rain washout, ended up getting the race in the next day, but it was an awesome time. We had to walk through the snake pit, and back then the snake pit was not just like a reason to go to a concert and party, it was a lifestyle. And on the way back to Muncie, the hour some odd drive back to Muncie, my dad lectured me about the appropriateness of good behavior and what that looks like because I probably saw 10 year old nurse and Doug saw some stuff at the snake pit that I probably couldn't see anywhere else. So Sue, you being the wild compliance officer that you are, have you ever been to the snake pit?
I've never been to the snake pit. Been to the race many, many times, but never the snake pit.
What was your first year? Do you remember?
It was 1998.
Oh, okay. Yeah.
Yeah, 1998.
I might have been there. I don't know who won in 'ninety eight. Do you remember?
No.
I'm trying to think who might have won then. 1998. Caleb, look that up for us. 1998, winner of the Indy five hundred. Who was Eddie Eddie Cheaper. And I think that would have been during the IndyCar IRL- Kart. Kart battle. Yeah, right around then. And so, yeah, 1998. But you've been several times?
Oh, many times.
Are you going this year?
I'm not going this year. I quit going a few years ago, but for a while we used to buy a block of tickets of about 15. Oh. And I have a big family that are scattered all over the country, and I would put it out there who would like to come in to Indianapolis and go to the race this year. So over a period of about five years, I think I was able to take all the sisters and their spouses and a lot of their children that are adults now, of course.
But yeah, we have many pictures of 12 or 15 of us at the race and they were fun times.
I think everybody should go to the race at least.
You do too. It's a lot of fun.
Just to all the pageantry and just to be there and hear the sounds, feel it, it's so awesome.
I still get chills for the first fifteen or twenty minutes at the start of the race, the flyover, the singing, and then of course the start of the race. There's The nothing running
race is the best. I love to listen to it on the radio because I like all the commentators in the different corners. Mhmm. You know? And turn two, we're sending it to you, Bob. And turn three, I just I love that. I love how the broadcast team is like a fine tuned orchestra. Got their own parts. But, yeah, so it's race weekend in Indianapolis, and, don't know what it's gonna be like, what the weather's gonna be like.
I know.
But if you're going to the race, have an absolute blast. I understand it's sold out, and so I'm excited.
Are you going to be there?
No, I will not be there, but I will be listening. I'll be tuning in. I'll probably be sitting on a pontoon and I'll have I my won't have my cold fried chicken with me, you know, like everybody else at the race, but yeah, it's a special time. And Sue, you're a huge sports fan. Yes. You're a sports fan of tennis and little league sports.
Yes. Football. And football.
That's all right. And so tell us about the sports side of Sue and what teams you like.
Okay. Well, I grew up in Pittsburgh, and you can't grow up in Pittsburgh and not be a sports fan. Probably the only professional team we don't have in Pittsburgh is a basketball team.
Right.
So we have Major League Baseball. We have a hockey team, and, of course, we have my Pittsburgh Steelers.
Are they all black and yellow?
Are the beads? Yes. There was a time when they weren't. They had different colors, but a couple decades ago, they all went to the black and gold.
Okay. Black and gold. My bad.
Yes. Okay. So I was fortunate enough to grow up and be part of the steel curtain. And we won four Super Bowls in a period of five years, late '70s, early '80s. Okay. So and we were one of the first well, we were the first team to win five Super Bowls, I believe. And then I think the Patriots caught up and other teams have since caught up. But I'm still a Steeler fan. Yeah. And I've learned that there's Steeler fans everywhere, Pittsburgh fans.
Just about everywhere I go, I see something related to Pittsburgh. Now there is a big difference between a lot of the other cities I've been to in Pittsburgh. A lot of cities wear their sports teams during the season or if they're going to the game.
You said
during? Is that a Pittsburgh? During. Yes. I have a lot of Pittsburgh slang. And I was just back in Pittsburgh a couple weeks ago, so I it'll take me a few weeks to talk normal again.
Okay. So you're saying a lot lot of cities.
Yes. They wear their sports teams during the season or only if they're going to the game.
Yeah.
Back in Pittsburgh, it's part of our everyday attire.
Okay.
I mean, everybody, either wearing their jerseys, you got a hat, you have something sports related on. Twelve months out of the year, twenty fourseven. I mean, you can't go anywhere without seeing somebody looking like they're about to go to a game. It's a lot of fun.
So I was telling you earlier about my lake friend, Tom, who just takes care of anything we need up at the lake. He's a peer dude. I mean, he's just a solid guy. He looks after stuff for us. He's a Pittsburgh fan.
Doctor. You were everywhere. We are everywhere.
Doctor. He is good people. He is good So now you're in the compliance world-
Yes.
But you're also fun. Oh, I'm lots of fun. Because you got the sports stuff you love. You love the little league stuff with your grandkids. Yep. And so how do you bring fun into compliance? How did you become a compliance officer? How did this even happen?
Well, I've been in the compliance part of the industry for close to thirty years. And just like a lot of other compliance officers, I drew the shortest straw.
Okay. Okay? Yep. That's right.
I started in the financial industry in a larger broker dealer on the East Coast. And there was a gentleman there that wanted to start his own CFP firm. And I decided to take the risk and leave a big firm and go with him, with five others, to start his own registered investment advisory firm.
So a firm kind of like ours? Yeah. Maybe a little bigger, but a firm like ours?
Yes, a firm like Got it. Okay. At the time I was a single mother with a young son. It Long son. Was probably five, six,
eight the Jerry Maguire movie. Oh, yeah. You went it.
I went with it. I took the risk, and much to my family's chagrin, I can remember my brother coming over. He said, We need to sit down and talk. He said, You can't leave a big firm, a secure job, and go with a start up. Are you crazy? And I said, well, I I'm looking at it this way. Maybe I wanna be a bigger fish in a small pond. Yeah. And I'll get experience in areas, and I'll get opportunities in a small firm that I would probably never get at a large firm. And that's how it started.
That's really good.
So the owner of that company looked at Barb, who was my counterpart that went with him, and said, Okay, you're HR and you're finance, and you're in charge of the secretaries. We called them secretaries back then. He looked at me and he said, You're compliance and you're in charge of implementation and trading and portfolio reviews. I'm like, Okay. So I learned a lot of other skills there.
Did you have any background?
No. Well, no.
Doctor. He just named it.
He just Doctor. He he just named it. Sure. Yeah.
Doctor. Yeah,
I really did. And so I gravitated towards that and I stayed with his firm for about ten years. And then I had an opportunity to join another startup firm. And they came to me and asked me if I'd be interested in partnering them. Because of my compliance background, they knew that I could help them set up the firm from a regulatory compliance standpoint.
Okay. So this is basically like a new company.
Yeah, another, yeah, startup.
And you're being invited in, and you're being given a new title again, an enhanced title.
All right. Then from there, going back to nineeleven, devastating event of course, the regulators realized that maybe we were a little loose on some policies on not knowing exactly who it is we're doing business with. Could we, in our industry, possibly be funding terrorists? So they put a lot more regulations in place and they mandated that every financial firm has to have a chief compliance officer. And so that's when I picked up that title.
And by then I had moved on to Fox here in Indianapolis, I picked up another opportunity at a larger Midwest firm.
Yeah.
And I was their chief compliance officer for close to twenty years. So I've had many SEC exams, Indiana State exams. We even had a trust company, so I had some regulatory experience with the Department of Financial Institutions. So I really got to enjoy working with compliance.
So when you go back and you think of little Sue, were you called Susie or anything like that?
Never called Susie. Well, my parents would call me Susan.
Susan.
Yes. Uncles would call me Susie Q.
Susie Q. Okay, I like that. When you were Susie Q,
what
built this take risk, go for it, don't be afraid? Who poured into that? How did that grow inside of you?
Probably- Was
it a teacher? Was it
didn't have to say it was my father.
Yeah. What did he teach you?
Well, to take risks and to have faith and to believe in God and turn your worries over to God.
And
he was very spiritual and he was always happy. And no matter what happened in his life, he always had a smile on his face and he knew, he just knew that things were going to be okay. And one of the examples I can give you is he was very deep into barbershop quartet.
Okay.
And for many, many years, his entire adult life, he loved music, he loved to sing. So he bounced around between different chapters and different barbershops quartets. And one of the barbershop quartets he joined towards the end of his singing was called the Circle W-four, which is the emblem for Westinghouse. I don't know if they sponsor it or not.
Okay.
Well, they won. That quartet won the opportunity to go overseas and entertained at the troops.
Man, like Bob Hope.
Exactly. And it was a month long tour. Well, he's married and he has six young children.
How old were you at the time? Do you remember?
I was probably eight, and I'm number five out of six.
Yeah.
So he goes into his boss and he said, I need a month off to tour overseas with the barbershop quartet. And his boss said, You can't do that. And he said, Well, like what? And he went over and it was the best experience of his life. And I'm sure my mother was a nervous wreck.
Yeah. They They have.
Quit your job, and you have six kids at home. Are you nuts?
Good. Kinda like people said to you.
Exactly. Exactly. So he, and I think I watched him not worry about taking a risk. And this is how I feel about taking risks.
And I love that.
As long as you're willing to work hard and stay focused, I think that minimizes your risk. You're not going to fail because your focus and your determination and your faith is not going to let you fail. And when my dad got back from that trip, he ended up getting a better job than he had when he left. So and he did not worry one minute about what he did. He had the time of his life that was rewarding.
He was a Navy man himself. So to get the opportunity to give back, to servicemen. So yeah, he would-
I did not know that about you. That is a really cool story. Yep. How old was your oldest sibling when your dad did that?
10 older than me, so she would have been about 18. So she was probably a senior in high school. So we were all little and still in school. Yeah, so it was a big risk on those things.
Imagine if he didn't do that.
I know.
He would have lost some of the zip in his life.
I know.
And so I can't imagine how that propelled him to be a better man and to be an inspiration for the rest of his life. Right. Just that four week period.
Right.
And yeah, love it when people are doing courageous things that are a little different. And if a guy's bringing a story like that, Hey, tell us about yourself. Well, I just got back on a tour. That's amazing. For you- It is amazing. Is my dad? What country is he in today?
He used to send us postcards and yeah, it was really a fun experience. But at age eight, I didn't realize the magnitude of the risk that he took. But to answer your question, I think I got that from him. I was fortunate enough to get my mother's, time management and organization skills.
Right on.
You put taking risks along with some other skill sets that I got from my mother, and, it was just a recipe to go.
So you spent twenty years at a big, powerful, fantastic firm here in Indianapolis, and you had some staying power because twenty years is a long time.
It is.
And twenty years at one place, you had an effect on the culture, on their processes. I'm sure you created several of their processes. Yes. And there comes an end date there. And what did you do next?
I took a year off. I had a lot of opportunities at that firm, But to be a chief compliance officer for a firm that's 150 employees, five different offices, a trust company, and private placements, I had a half of an assistant. I was also Good see you. Assistant?
That's an interesting person. We need to get that person on this. Okay. So you had to, you were sharing an assistant.
Yeah. Sharing an assistant. Yeah. That's, that's a lot, but it kind of grew, you know, you start out, I think I was employee number 60. We only had two offices at the time. And then over the course of the almost twenty years I was there, we just kept growing and adding on and adding on. So just little by little, you just keep picking up more. And towards the end of my tenure there, I was 20. Mean, Do I you
have a pager?
No. But at the beginning we had Blackberries and the firm bought them for us, of course. But we were, I mean-
So 10:00 at night you were doing stuff.
Oh yeah. Yeah. 10:00 at night I'm doing stuff. And then of course we went to the cell phones and yeah, I was on call pretty much all the time.
So you took a year off.
Yes. For mental health reasons. During that
time, what'd you do?
Travel. We just cleared my head. And again, it was early in my life to take retirement. I wasn't even 60 yet. Yeah. Yeah. Mid fifties probably. So from a financial standpoint, it may not have been the smartest decision for me.
So you were one of these people that said, Hey, I'm working myself to death. Right. This is it.
Yeah.
Yeah. And I think there's a lot of people out there who could relate to that. And at least I hear that is, I can't wait to get out of here. When I get out of here, I'm going to do X. It's normally, I'm going to travel. You did all that.
I did all that and just enjoyed life, went out for hikes and walking and did a lot of the things that I didn't have time to do while I was working all those hours.
You're a single mom for You several didn't have the time. Right. Yeah. Right. So at one year goes by and then you think what?
I think, I really love the compliance industry. I loved the work.
So you need a bumper sticker on the back of your car. I love compliance.
It's a lot of people think I'm sick for loving compliance, but I really do. I really do.
But you love compliance.
I know it's one of those jobs where you can tell the boss, no.
That's true. That's Might say why, but it's still annoying. Okay. So
I realized that, yeah, I needed another challenge. A year off was plenty. And like I said, I loved the work. I just didn't want to deal with the sixty, eighty hour weeks anymore. And so I connected with a guy that I worked with at my beginning years here in Indianapolis, and I connected with him on LinkedIn.
He invited me to lunch, what are you doing now? Because I started a LinkedIn page. Okay. What are you doing now? I said, well, I think I'm going to see if I can offer my regulatory compliance services to smaller firms.
Yeah. Because remember what I said earlier, the SEC mandated that every firm have a chief compliance officer. And then another thing that was happening in the industry was whoever drew that short straw probably did not know anything about regulatory compliance, so they worked hand in hand with an attorney that specialized in that field.
Yeah.
So in the early years, here, I did have an attorney that I worked with. But one by one law firm started shutting down that department. Okay. It's not a big moneymaker for law There aren't settlements there, you know, and they want the work where they can charge the 4 figure amounts per hour, and they just weren't getting that from the regulatory side. So I figured, okay, I'm on my own. Yeah. So I had been doing it long enough where I felt confident doing that.
Did you know anybody who had done compliance, like you're describing, like created a business?
No. Smaller? I would love to find someone that is interested in it. Viewers, if you know anyone that would like an opportunity working with me in regulatory compliance, As you can see, I try to make it fun.
That's right. That's right. So the way that you got introduced to us was really pretty miraculous. We had been working with a compliance officer who was a consultant. She was out of San Diego, fantastic person, really helped us get started in our own RIA and helped us understand that we can do so much more than we thought we could do.
Right. And she ultimately was retiring and I was somewhat scrambling. I was thinking, What are we going to do next? Are we going to have to hire a big firm? And it's going to be more, it's not going to be as personal.
We're not going to know our analyst as well. And life is all about relationships. And one of our friends calls me one day and says, Hey, Doug, if you ever need compliance analyst or a compliance officer, you should give my friend Sue a call. Well, she called me the same day that our compliance analyst had said she's going to retire. And so you talk about your dad having the faith.
Right. I can't necessarily say I had the faith in that moment that it was all going to work out, but there was behind the scenes stuff happening that was lining us up. Right. And, Sue, it's just been wonderful. Thank you.
For me as well. I love this.
And and and I think what you have to offer the financial services industry is so cutting edge. I mean, you created it out of nothing. You'd come out of your retirement and said, I think I can serve. I think I can help people. I think I can keep it fun, keep it light.
And for me, it's so huge knowing that you're there when we have a regulatory meeting or when there's a new regulatory update. It's so nice to have an adult in the room who's the expert who can be our go to person. So I'm grateful for that reason that you stepped back into the business. But the main reason I wanted to have you on this podcast is because your entrepreneurial heart. And that entrepreneurial startup, I want to make the world a better place, I want to serve humanity, that's the type of stuff that really speaks to me.
And I was really fortunate in my childhood to see that modeled out. My great grandmother started a business that was just awesome. My grandfather had his own business, my uncle had a business, my dad worked for a small business. And so I think these small businesses really make the world go around, And I just can't wait to see what your small business does.
I know. Yes. I would love to grow because I know there are so many people out there in the industry that need help. Know, smaller companies, they don't need a full time compliance officer, and they really can't afford to have a full time compliance officer. And with the attorneys getting out of the business, that either forces somebody in the office to learn it, or they can buy an off the shelf product, and there's many of them out there.
But what some firms don't realize is that if you buy an off the shelf product, it's a template that everybody starts with, and the regulators expect you to personalize that template to your business. And I've actually worked with some firms that I'll start looking at their Form ADV or their policy manual, and I know exactly what firm they're working with. Yeah. Because they pull things off the shelf, And the people that they're working with don't realize they have to tailor it to their business model. Now, you can pay those outside companies more money, and the more money you pay them, the more personalized services that you can get.
So yeah, I love what I'm doing, and I hope I can do it for another twenty years.
Well, don't doubt that you will, and I don't doubt that it'll make a big impact. But hey, want to wish everybody a happy Memorial Day weekend. And the best thing you could do on Memorial Day weekend is fire up your grill, have some burgers, hot dogs. But if you have a compliance question, or you want to know more about the compliance business, if you're an accountant, or if you're an attorney, or if you're like Sue and you just want to say yes to something, get ahold of me or get ahold of Sue. How do they track you down, Sue?
How do they find you? Do they find you through us? Yes. So just reach out here to Gimbal Financial.
And I do have a LinkedIn page.
And we'll connect you with Sue Mitchell. Okay. World's best compliance officer.
Did we run over our time allotment? No, we're good. Can I make one closing comment about Yeah? Okay.
Yes.
And what people do think regulatory compliance is boring. I started with a joke.
Yeah.
But what a lot of people don't realize and a lot of firms in the industry don't realize is that regulatory compliance is the foundation of your business. No doubt. If you don't have a strong compliance culture, you're setting yourself up for failure.
Yeah.
It only takes one bad act to ruin your reputation. A lot of things When I fill out the regulatory forms, there are three full pages of disclosures and disciplinary questions that you have to answer. And once you start marking Xs, then you have to explain what happened and that's out there.
Yeah.
You have to deliver that information to all your clients. Your competitors might lose it against you. And unfortunately, there are some firms out there that wait till it's too late to realize that they needed a stronger compliance department. Yeah. So I just wanted to close with those comments.
Well, build your foundation with Sue. All right, everybody. You have a Memorial Day weekend. Yeah, thanks Thanks
so much.
We'll do it again sometime.
I hope so.
Cheers everybody. Bye.