Mark B. Murphy is the CEO of Northeast Private Client Group, a national financial planning and wealth management firm serving entrepreneurs and business owners. He specializes in strategic financial planning and helping clients build multi-generational wealth. In 2025, Forbes ranked Mark #1 among Best-in-State Financial Security Professionals in New Jersey, #10 on its Best-in-State Wealth Advisors list, and #15 nationally among Top Financial Security Professionals.
Mark is also a bestselling author and speaker whose book, The Ultimate Investment: A Roadmap to Grow Your Business and Build Multigenerational Wealth, reached #1 on Amazon. He holds a B.S. in Finance from Indiana University and the CLU®, ChFC®, and NFLPA Registered Player Financial Advisor designations. He serves on several corporate boards and is a past president of the Association for Advanced Life Underwriting.
Insights from Mark Murphy on Entrepreneurial Growth and Wealth Creation
When Mark Murphy started in financial services, he was told that networking was the way to build a client base. He decided to take a different approach. Rather than attending events looking for his next client, he focused on making connections and adding value for others, sometimes for years before seeing anything in return. He calls it “net weaving,” an approach built around giving first and letting relationships develop over time.
More than 35 years ago, Mark decided he wanted to focus on serving entrepreneurs. He began collaborating with others who shared that goal, building a network where each relationship could contribute to a broader client experience. That model became a way to expand the business beyond what Mark could deliver on his own, and he credits it with helping Northeast Private Client Group grow geometrically rather than arithmetically.
In this episode of The Dealmakers’ Edge, Aaron Strauss and Mark Murphy discuss how Mark developed his approach to networking and collaboration over decades. They also explore the discipline behind entrepreneurial growth, how he evaluates business investments, and why maintaining liquidity matters when building multi-generational wealth.
1:23 – Mark’s early background and the foundation of Northeast Private Client Group
2:23 – Choosing net weaving over networking
3:19 – Building collaboration networks around serving entrepreneurs
7:05 – Focusing on unique ability and investing in yourself
9:12 – Northeast Private Client Group and Mark’s approach to work-life fulfillment
11:24 – Four questions Mark uses to evaluate new opportunities
12:20 – Learning from failure and recognizing opportunities in setbacks
14:51 – Emotional intelligence, social intelligence, and adversity quotient
16:50 – Why long-term relationships matter in business
20:08 – Using EOS to hire, develop talent, and build company culture
24:55 – Managing wealth through tax strategy and fact-based decisions
29:14 – Overcoming worry and building confidence in yourself and others
Mentioned In The Entrepreneurial Advantage: Building Businesses and Multi-Generational Wealth with Mark Murphy
Northeast Private Client Group | LinkedIn
Aaron Strauss: You're listening to The Dealmakers' Edge with A.Y. Strauss, diving deep into stories behind commercial real estate leaders. Hello, everyone. Welcome to The Dealmakers' Edge.
Today I'm joined by Mark Murphy, who's founder and CEO of Northeast Private Client Group, which is a national wealth management firm that works exclusively with entrepreneurs and business owners, navigating complex capital deployment and multi-generational wealth strategy. Mark's a best-selling author of several books. He's a public speaker. He also hosts his own extremely successful podcast in business and entrepreneurship. He's become a great friend. He's very wise after many decades guiding many, many people in their businesses, and he shares some really, really wonderful best practices in the day-to-day nuances of success. And I hope you really enjoy the conversation. It's a really great one.
Mark, I really, really appreciate the time because I know how super busy you are all the time juggling everything.
Mark Murphy: Aaron, I always have time for you. Thank you for including me on the podcast.
Aaron Strauss: Of course. I know you're a host as well. You're an author. You're a writer. You're always educating people. So just trying to follow your footsteps a little bit here.
So really appreciate it. Maybe we can start from the beginning, you know, where you grew up, kind of how you grew up, where you went to school, and then kind of how you got started in your business. And then, obviously, I want to educate people on what your business really is, truly.
Mark Murphy: I always say, Aaron, I grew up dumb and broke in Suffern, New York. And I was lucky enough to get in to the Kelly Business School at Indiana University. And in fact, I'm still involved with boards at IU just because I had such a great experience there a hundred years ago.
But graduated, came off the campus there. And you know, when I started Northeast Private Client Group, I always, you know, hoped we'd be successful. I thought we'd be successful. You know, I hoped we'd make money, or I thought we'd make money. But this was really always my vehicle to make other people's lives better. And that's sort of always been the foundation of what we built our company on.
Aaron Strauss: And maybe we could talk about how you broke into the industry. Your company today is much, much more significant than when you first started years and years ago. But kind of breaking into this industry is hard, like any other industry.
Maybe we could talk about how you broke in, and those early years of building. And we try to kind of gear the conversation towards, you know, that up-and-comer trying to make something out of themselves and learning from people who have built it.
Mark Murphy: Well, again, when I started, we started when I was offered a $1,000 a month draw. I took it because it was $1,000 a month more than I was making back in the day. But you know, the thing that was one of the first eye-openers for me, Aaron, was everybody said, you know, early on when I was in my early 20s, they go, you got to network.
You got to be networking, networking, networking. And what I mean by networking, Aaron, is I'm coming to an event or I'm doing something hoping you'll become my client, or I'm going there to go get something. And so I always thought, well, if everybody's taking the networking lane, why did I want to be just another person taking that networking lane?
So what I decided is I wanted to be a net weaver, and I wanted to lead with my giving arm first and adding value first, which sometimes even took people back. But what they realize is when you pour into people, not for weeks or months, but sometimes for years or decades, you've got an army of people that want to help you. That was sort of the epiphany.
And then as it's evolved, it's been, as I said, building collaboration networks is that I decided, you mentioned we work with a lot of entrepreneurs. You know, I decided 35 years ago I wanted to be a hero to entrepreneurs and entrepreneurial thinking people. And all I've done is collaborate with people that wanted to be a hero with the same group, where that client saw that they could only get that experience by working with that group.
And it's allowed us to just really expand and explode our business, not arithmetically, but geometrically.
Aaron Strauss: No, 100%. I know you've been consistently extremely top ranked in your profession. I've watched you network. It's really an incredible art form because it never feels contrived. It's really out of a very, very generosity of spirit mentality. You're an absolute go-giver. I think you've opened up doors for everybody I've met and for me personally, and you always pay it forward.
So what can you tell kind of a young up and comer in the industry, whether they're finance, real estate, corporate American entrepreneur, and it's a generation of immediate gratification. You know, you push a button, you push an app, building relationships, it sounds kind of trite and overused, but you are an absolute test case of the fact that over time, these relationships compound. And you've spent years and years giving, giving, giving, giving.
Maybe you can describe how that's paid off for you, how you've guided, I know you've mentored and coached tons of people, whether internally or organization or external.
Mark Murphy: I don't think there's any magic in the sense that you just want to be focused. You want to be disciplined and you want to fall in love with the mundane. And you know, one of my favorite words is obsession, and I think when some people think about obsession, they think about working all the time or they think about burning themselves out. And I don't think about that at all. What I think about obsession is waking up, not occasionally, but every day focusing and being obsessed on the three or four things I need to get done that day.
And so that's my definition of obsession, you know, moving forward. And I also, you know, always say to my young partners, what are you willing to do that you're not doing now to have what you don't have? What are you willing to do that you're not doing now to have what you don't have?
And ultimately, you know, ultimately when I talk to a lot of people, they'll always tell me their goals there and they'll say, I want to be a billionaire or I want to make a hundred million dollars or I want to earn 10 million a year or a million a year or whatever the number is. But very rarely, almost never will they tell me exactly what they're willing to do to go get that. And so the idea is that's, that's when you've got to put the real plan together.
Aaron Strauss: Having that discipline and that focus over many, many years, yeah, I think I read a quote along those lines. I think it was attributed to Jerry Rice. He said something really elegant along the lines of, I'll be willing to do the things today that others won't, so tomorrow I can achieve what others can't, something along those lines. I thought that was really cool. And again, it's delayed gratification. You also optimize your time.
I mean, I know the way you get around, you're always mobile, you have somebody helping you. You really just, for somebody who is ambitious, for somebody who's trying to leverage their resources, how do you decide on any given day who and where and what you're going to focus that time? Because I'm sure every day someone says, oh, Mark, let's meet, let's meet, let's meet.
And you have to allocate your precious resource time very carefully. And I know you're very generous, so you'll meet anybody at any time and you always meet with many. But how do you kind of look over your next 30, 60, 90 days?
You're an absolute legendary producer in your field. And I think people building their careers try to see what it's like at the top. So how do you figure out how to use your time most effectively at your level?
Mark Murphy: Well, let me start big picture and then I'll go small picture.
Aaron Strauss: Please.
Mark Murphy: I would start with saying, one of the things I would suggest that everybody do that's watching this is they get a piece of paper out and they put a line down the middle and a T at the top.
And I'd like them to write everything they hate about their business on the left-hand side. And on the right-hand side, I'd like them to write all the things they'd be doing in retirement that they're not doing now. So if you're a 45-year-old person watching this podcast, hypothetically, if you're getting rid of the stuff you don't like to do and you're starting to add things that you want to do in retirement, why wait till 65 to retire once you retire at 45 if that's what you are right now?
Why don't we have everybody retire today by being able to do that? And I would start that. The second thing is I think that I focus very heavily on unique ability in the sense that there's really only three things you can do.
There's things that you're crappy at and you want to delegate that stuff immediately. There's stuff you're either competent or even good at. And I think what you, over time, you want to delegate that so that you could focus most of your energy on unique ability.
And I think with myself, Aaron, as you start to create more wealth and more money and more business, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera, the best investments an entrepreneur can make is when they invest in themselves. So if you have only $1 to invest, I'd invest it in yourself. And so to me, that's been always investing in myself to bring on more capability into my firm, to bring in more people so that I could focus on my unique ability and still keep every promise I've made, meaning I make promises by the bushel full every day.
And it's important to me that every one of them is kept. I just am personally not going to keep it, but I'm going to take responsibility to make sure it gets done in both elegance and excellence.
Aaron Strauss: 100%. And maybe you could describe a little bit, for those who have not already heard of you, but Northeast Private Client Group, maybe you can describe the firm, what you've built. I know it's top ranked.
You always put any of the lists in the absolute top, top echelons of producers and dollars under management, et cetera. But maybe you can describe the firm, its unique attributes, its composition, and kind of its goals for its clients.
Mark Murphy: I would say this. I also believe, Aaron, when you start believing your own BS, the world has a way of telling you not all that. So I think you want to stay humble but confident. And I think the way I describe our firm is we're key business strategists, critical thinkers, and then financial advisors to entrepreneurs and entrepreneurial thinking people. We've got about 5,000 corporate clients as a firm. But I think I've written three bestselling books, and I've got a fourth bestseller coming out in February, and it's called How to Create Multi-Generational Wealth and a Life by Design.
And one of the phrases that I hate, Aaron, is the phrase work-life balance. What's your work-life balance? When people ask me that, I kind of cock my head like my dog looks at me when he doesn't understand what I'm saying. And I'm going, what are you talking about work-life balance? I want to have work-life fulfillment. And I love what I'm doing when I'm working, and I want to be in total fulfillment.
But then when I leave, my wife and I like to do a lot of things. I think we saw six concerts this year. We go to live sporting events. We spend time with our five kids. We travel a lot. We do the things we want to do. And so the idea is I want to be fulfilled in both places. And I think in this world, if you do it right, you can do it all, and you don't have to wait until you're old and decrepit to do it. You can do it today.
Aaron Strauss: I think that's brilliant. I think so many people, myself included, I'm guilty of it. You say, oh, when this, when this, when this, then I will.
But life is what happens when you're busy making plans. I read this quote, Marcus Aurelius, the famous writer, author, he said, just kind of pretend you're dead today, and you die, and then you come back tomorrow. What are you going to do?
Like, just get out of the things already that you're hoping to accomplish. I will accomplish. I will do. I will do. Just what is it you want to do? Just get right to it.
So maybe you could talk about how you're guiding some of these entrepreneurs. We've spent time together. You've done some coaching with me, just informally, we've spent some great conversations together.
How are you guiding entrepreneurs? Obviously there's so many nuances in businesses and people at different stages, but what are kind of those key themes that you think entrepreneurs and up-and-coming businesses sort of miss, you know, as they're trying to grow their businesses?
Mark Murphy: The first thing is, when I'm looking at a new opportunity for myself, or I'm looking for a new opportunity for one of my friends or clients, or even when I'm advising some of my friends, kids, and grandkids about their careers, I love the Japanese phrase, and people pronounce it differently, called ikigai or gaki, everybody has a little bit different pronunciation. But the essence of it is, you ask yourself four questions, and it's got to be not a yes, but hell yeah to all four questions. And they are, am I passionate about this?
The second is, am I good at it? The third is, does the world need that product or service? And the fourth is, can I get paid handsomely to do it? And so the idea is, I look at it through that prism, and generally if I don't hit all four of those things, I'm not going to get involved, nor am I going to advise our clients to get involved in those things. That's for starters for me.
Aaron Strauss: That's well said. What do you think of those critical ingredients you can't live without to be successful as an entrepreneur today?
Mark Murphy: You have to have the ability to understand two things. One is that there's no success or failure, there's success in learning. The best entrepreneurs use their failures not only to fuel them, but to learn from them so they don't make the same mistake twice. Where most people either don't have a stomach for it, or when they get punched in the gut or knocked down, they stay down. Entrepreneurs keep getting up. So I think that it's that thing.
I always say there's three or four things that I tried or I invested into marketing, let's say, to grow my business that failed. But had I not done that, I wouldn't have done a couple of other things that made us millions or tens of millions of dollars. And so I think part of that is you've got to be able to just kind of look at every challenge as an opportunity, and that there's always an opportunity to things.
Like as an example, let me use one of my kids breaking up with their boyfriend or girlfriend. I think that they should mourn that relationship. I don't know if it's a day, it's a week, it's a month, it's something, whatever the appropriate mourning is.
We're human beings first and foremost. But I also think, Aaron, your mind has to immediately go to, well, what's great about that? And so in that case, I would say to my kid, well, you know what?
This person obviously wasn't the right person for you. Now you'll have the time to meet somebody who will be the right person for you. Or maybe you weren't doing a lot of things you wanted to do in your life or spending time with your friends because you were spending so much time with them, and now you'll have the time to do that. So I'm not saying that the relationship shouldn't be mourned in an appropriate way, but entrepreneurs' minds go to what the possibilities are.
Aaron Strauss: Yeah, I think you're 100% right. Always keep moving and always maintain an optimistic outlook. There's always some positive, you know, one door closes, one opens type of thing. There's always a positive way to look at any situation. And one of the things you've talked about is, besides financial health, it's kind of this like emotional fitness concept. Like, you know, it's mindset.
It's really mindset. You need to do a ton of activity, you need to have the discipline, you're a classic example of showing up. I've never seen anybody who shows up like you, Mark. It's unbelievable. But you coach people to have the right headspace. And this podcast is called The Dealmakers' Edge for a reason, because anybody can put a spreadsheet together, raise capital, acquire something.
But you need to be in a headspace that's healthy, that's sustainable, that builds that resilience you need to navigate those ups and downs, that unpredictability. So maybe you could talk to that, how you've developed this sense of resilience and how you do it with people around you.
Mark Murphy: You know, scientists think, Aaron, there's four types of intelligence. And they talk about IQ, you know, just how raw, naturally smart are you. And I know a lot of those people, and we have a lot of them working here, as I know you do in your firm.
But the other three types of intelligence may be even more important. I'm not saying you can be dumb, but you don't have to be a genius. Because the second one is which people are familiar with is EQ. Can you read a room? You know, can you, is Aaron confused? Is Aaron angry? Is Aaron happy? Is there, you know, you gotta be able to read a room. Many people have very low EQ, but a high EQ is very important.
The third, which I think is important to success is intelligence is social quotient. Do people like you? Or you're the person they go to the party with and they go, let me meet you at John Smith and you do the Houdini to get away from that person because they're killing you. Do people like who you are? That's an important component to your success.
But the last one, which is I think very underappreciated is AQ, which is adversity quotient. Can you turn lemons into lemonade? You know, everybody's great when everything's going beautifully. Everything is calm, but when, you know, when stuff hits the fan, how do you react?
And can you be able to take that situation and as I said, turn chicken you know what into chicken salad?
Aaron Strauss: 100%. And by the way, I really appreciate the clean rating we have on this podcast. You're maintaining it perfectly, Mark.
So I really appreciate that G rating, which we're going for. But absolutely. You know, that, that constant ability to take punches and hits and, and navigating ups and downs and cycles and, and movement and change and client demands and technology.
It's endless, endless. So maybe we can talk about the growth you've seen in your business over the years, what you attributed to, what you're looking for in candidates that you hire, you know, who makes a firm successful, what kind of caliber talent that has a good combination of those different things, building teams around those different quotients. Those are all never ending themes in every growing business.
Mark Murphy: You know, Aaron, I don't think we're in the financial services business or in the private equity business or the real estate business. I always think we're in the people business and, you know, because you do business with people. And I think that, you know, for me, you know, the secret sauce has always been no, what's the expression?
They want to know how much you care before they know how much you know, or some variation of that. I may be mixing that up a little bit, but I think at the end of the day, I think one of the challenges our children have is that they're on devices all day and they're sending things out on text where they never have to look somebody in the eye and really build a relationship. And I also think in that immediate gratification world, you know, it's not like you and I are going to have a great relationship, Aaron, because we had lunch one time and we're there.
We're going to have a great relationship and we do because we both are investing in the relationship together. And by the way, it never happens as fast as you like. Sometimes in a unique way, sometimes it can happen, you know, instantaneously.
But most of the people that I know that are wildly, wildly successful are overnight successes after 10 years or 20 years or 30 years. You know, they're not, they don't come out of the gate. I can remember my first couple of years in the business where I was $20,000 in credit card debt and I, you know, I had, I had a seven year plan to pay it off and I was thinking I, I, you know, I needed to go bankrupt.
You know, I laughed because I got one of the first American Express black cards. And I think in 1986 they almost took my green card away. Not because I didn't want to pay it, because I didn't have the money to pay it.
Aaron Strauss: But you had the confidence though. You had the confidence that you were willing to borrow and bet on yourself. Even from back in the day when you were first starting out, you said, I'm not sure what's going to happen, but you were never going to fail for lack of hard work, discipline and focus.
And you had business philosophies that you've carried over decades that you've never veered from Mark. So I think you're living embodiment of the fact that if you do it the right way over a longer period of time, you're going to be successful. And I think you do it in your heart, I'm sure during those more scarier days.
Mark Murphy: Whoever is watching this podcast, Aaron, this is what I would say to them. As somebody who manages billions and billions of dollars, there's dozens of asset classes. But for our purpose, I'm going to call it expenses or investments.
So when I look at my budget, if you're an expense, you're always on the chopping block. And not because I want to take that money necessarily and put it in my pocket. I want to redeploy it in a place that's more advantageous.
And if you're an investment, I think you should have an unlimited appetite for investment as long as you can get a minimum of a four or five to one return on your money. So if you say to me, Mark, I want you to invest $100,000 in your business or in my business, I want to get at least a minimum of four or $500,000 return that I wouldn't have had, had I not made that investment.
Aaron Strauss: Makes sense. What else can you share about the best things you've seen as entrepreneurs you've built? I mean, you've managed billions of dollars, you currently do.
You really have a front seat to some really great stories of growth. And you've seen a lot of failures. What are some of those critical elements you see that really make people shine above others, that are kind of secret sauce ingredients you've seen in some of the best entrepreneurs you've been around or some of those success stories you've seen around?
Mark Murphy: Aaron, we run our business for about the last seven or eight years on Gino Wickman's EOS system, the Entrepreneurial Operating System. I think if you're a business owner, you should read his book, Traction, the first book, which was brilliant. And so for a long time, Aaron, I couldn't figure out how I was hiring people and some turned out to be great and others didn't turn out to be so great.
I couldn't figure the secret sauce. And then I read Gino's book and he breaks it down this way. And I'll tell you about our business. We talk about a hell yeah answer. He calls the first step is GWC. You must be not a yes, but a hell yeah to all three of these questions.
The G stands for, do they get what we're doing? Do they get what makes us different?
The W is, do they want to be with our organization or do they want to be there because they don't have a better offer or it's five minutes from their office or from their house rather?
And the C is with proper training, do they have the capability to do the job?
So the GWC has to be a hell yeah. But then what we did is we took my core values. It's not that they're the right values, Aaron. It's just my values. And what I'll do is I'll judge our prospective employees and current employees on what we call the people analyzer.
And I analyze them either plus, plus, minus, or minus with my six core values. And I'll give you an example. One of our core values is we not only want to create an experience for a client, we want to create a wow experience.
So if I was interviewing you today, I'd say, Aaron, if you don't wake up totally jazzed about that every single day, you are going to be miserable here. And everybody outside my office is going to hate your guts. So the idea is, and you can hide yourself in the interview and show up with your representative.
But when you get there, you're going to get crushed in my organization if you don't have our core values. Where the theory being, if you get it, want to have capability, have our core values, that's an unstoppable team. But I take it at one more level as I thought about that deeply is you have to win the war for talent too.
And so here's what we do in our office. When you hire somebody in the first year or two, we just want them to get great at their job. That's your goal. But around year two or year three, we want you to mentor the newbies, which does a few things. The first thing it does is it makes the newbies better. But I always say, if you want to learn something at a deep level, teach it to somebody else.
So obviously people who teach obviously get a lot more than the people they're teaching generally. So it helps our, let's call it our people that are there two or three years. But then after you're there for four or five years, we want you to own something in the firm. Could be something very technical, could be a soft skill. But people have to own something. And I would say that the success of that depends on two things.
One is you have to have great culture. And myself as the CEO, you as the CEO, we can't, we can delegate a lot. We can't delegate culture. We have to own that and make it a great culture. But the second is I always think if you've got to pay people competitively, not the most, but competitively. But I always say if they're learning and growing, nobody leaves when they're learning and growing.
So I constantly am looking for things for our people to continue to learn and grow so they don't get bored or stale. And so great culture and then learning and growing is sort of our secret once we find, once we get the right teammates in place.
Aaron Strauss: Mark, what you just shared I think is just absolutely on the money. It's perfect and embodies what you're doing. I think anybody listening to this really needs to think carefully about that as they're growing their firm. Because I always say culture is the only thing you actually can't take from an organization. You can have somebody poach a client. You can poach somebody from the team. It happens. But the way you make people feel every day, make the clients feel, make the team members feel, the psychological safety. Is this a good place?
Does this feel somewhere where I can just relax my mind so I can concentrate on doing the best work for the clients and for my colleagues? That's extraordinary, Mark. I think you just kind of nailed your secret sauce.
Giving, investing in relationships, building those relationships over many years, creating that special culture. We should talk some technical pieces a little bit too. It's a very interesting climate in the market. I'm sure clients are calling your team every day and different financial plans modeled for different people over many different years. And you're not timing markets, et cetera. But maybe you could talk about just somebody investing today.
Maybe they're an entrepreneur that had an exit and they want to diversify. How are you kind of talking to that client about managing their portfolio for a long term sustainability with upside or you have to manage geopolitical risk and inflation risk and kind of maybe like a little bit of a market snapshot of how you look at today's economy and potential upside?
Mark Murphy: Well, I think, first of all, we mentioned emotional fitness a few minutes ago. How many people have heard someone say, well, if Trump gets in, the world's going to go to hell or Joe Biden gets in, it's going to go to hell or just the craziness of this stuff. And I go back and I'd say, you know what, Joe?
You know what, Sally? You made money during Reagan and then with Bush and then with Clinton and then with Bush again and then with Obama and then with Trump and then Biden and then Trump again. I go, it didn't seem to matter where that thing is.
So let's focus on what we can control first. Let's be emotionally fit and make decisions based on not hearsay and opinion and insanity. Let's base it on facts. Let's run our money, not with emotion, but scientifically. And so then to me, it starts with, everything starts with tax. Whether you're having a liquidity event in your business, whether you're talking about income tax, capital gains tax, estate tax, sales tax.
Ultimately, what you want to do is you want to do things that are, what I'll call, create an alpha tax strategy. And so that you can pay legally, morally and ethically, where your tax attorney, the editor of the Wall Street Journal and an IRS agent could be at the table and say, some of these strategies are simple. Some of them are sophisticated, but they're mom and apple pie.
Nothing under the table, everything above the table, nothing on the dirty dozen list. You know, nothing that's got anything a whiff of impropriety because there's enough stuff if you know what you're doing to start there. The second thing is I never also let tax wag the dog.
It starts with what do you really want to do and what do you want? One of my criticisms of professionals, whether it be financial advisors, attorneys, accountants, et cetera, et cetera, is they work, for instance, say a perfect tax strategy, but don't listen to what the client wants and what their long-term goals are. You make their plan work around their goals, not their goals work around the plan because they want to have the life they want.
That's your job to do. It starts with tax. And then I think, you know, it starts with a lot of things. I like to have some SWAN money in the beginning. SWAN is the acronym for sleep well at night money. And so, you know, we start that with a base.
You know, one of the number one reasons why businesses fail, people fail, or at least they don't reach their full potential is they don't have true liquidity or cash confidence. So you need that SWAN money or that liquidity money, not only for emergencies, but also for opportunities because I've made a lot of my money when I had cash and somebody else needed cash. You know, clearly, you know, it was such a big practice in the real estate world.
You know, that's, you know, people don't make money selling real estate. They make money buying real estate. You always make it on the buy, not on the sell. And oftentimes that was opportunistic buys. And so I would sit down and one of the things we've created is I've trademarked our pyramid to create multi-generational wealth. But I also have our financial integrity scorecard and I rate them like red at a one, like a traffic light, five at like a yellow and 10 at green, optimal of the 10 areas that people need to focus on to create multi-generational wealth.
One of them being true liquidity or cash confidence. And as I move up the pyramid, you know, there's a lot of things that even some of the best entrepreneurs with the best advice have not really thought about in a deep way or certainly have not handled. But there is, you know, we want to create a playbook or a way that people can get there in an efficient way.
Aaron Strauss: Well said, Mark, as always. What's one thing I could have asked you but didn't? You know, you're sitting down with somebody for a cup of coffee. Everyone wants to get on your calendar. You're always giving your time very generously. But kind of long-term themes, career coach advisory, something I should have asked you but didn't.
Mark Murphy: Here's the thing that I would wish. If you asked me, you know, five or seven, five or seven, eight years ago, if you asked me, do I have any regrets in life? I would say I'd have two.
One was at that time. One is I wish I'd met the right woman early in my career. I have two sons. But my wife has three kids and now I have five kids. So the idea is I always wanted four or five kids and now I have four or five kids. So I checked that box that I got that one thing I was missing. And I'm now a girl dad. I thought I was only gonna be a boy dad. So I got to experience both and I hold on for dear life with all five of them every day. In fact, it's a light day today. We only had three crises. So it's an easy day so far. But I know you can, you relate to that.
But the other one that I would say to people is because I think the entrepreneurship and business, it's a very scary world. And I think the thing is in my twenties, in my thirties, maybe even into my mid forties or even late forties, I worried about things all the time. I worried about everything. I worried about money. People wouldn't tell me bad things on a Friday afternoon because I played over an endless loop in my brain all weekend.
And oftentimes the torture I put myself through was worse than if the worst thing happened, I was worried about. And so, so the idea is all of that productive time that I could have either used to enjoy myself or to be more productive went out the window. And it's, for some reason, something clicked in my mid to late forties and I stopped worrying and my life got better.
And so I would, you know, I find that there's, there's an awful lot of stress and a lot of awful lot of pressure on folks. And I think, you know, that that's one of the things I like to release. The other thing is, I think my, you know, one of my superpowers is Aaron, everybody's had somebody ruin their day, but everybody's probably also had someone made their day.
And I think with your support network, I think you're lucky if you have one or two or three people believe in you. And I think one of the things I try to do every day and I try to help people with is I want to, I want to, especially if it's true is I want to believe in their abilities to succeed so viscerally that they believe it themselves and that people, it's amazing how just helping people with their confidence and helping people think through those issues, allow them to achieve things they never thought were possible.
And by the way, when you get to it, when you get to a collaboration or an entrepreneurial group that all think that way, it's amazing the entrepreneurial synergy of what's possible and could be created. And one of the things I would also say is I'm keeping our podcast clean, but I would, I would, we'd check the jackasses out of our life. And I think the way I would do that by not letting them, the easiest way is not to let them in in the first place, because I think, you know, as you start to succeed, not everybody is so happy for you.
And I think even some friends and family don't, don't always see it, you know, when you start to succeed. So I think part of that is I think you have to be aware of it and you gotta, you know, not, you know, not, uh, not be less than, uh, just because maybe some folks in your, in your circle or your family or friends are, are not at the level that you're there. You should, you should have the power to, and not that you don't want to help lift them up and take them up with you, but you certainly don't want to let them drag you down.
Aaron Strauss: Well said, Mark. Honestly, I could talk to you all day and I really could listen to you all day even more. And like I said, you're incredibly inspiring. You're very generous with your time. You're running a first class organization. Your clients are lucky to have you. Your team is lucky to have you. Anybody I've interacted that has gotten to know you is just a raving fan for all the good you've done for them, whether it's, uh, you know, technical, monetary advice or introductions. So you really are in the embodiment of great values, being a go-giver, paying it forward.
Really you, you've helped so many people. You should be so thankful for building that reputation, which is extremely well-deserved. I'm thankful to be in your orbit. I really appreciate all the time we've ever spent together. I mean that very, very sincerely. And I guess with that, we'll wrap. I hope people get to know you listening to this. Check out your amazing firm, Northeast Private Client Group, get to know you. And I continue to admire you, respect you, and just hopefully we can continue to build our friendship for, for years to come.
And I guess, uh, we'll wrap it here, Mark.
Mark Murphy: Thank you, Aaron.
Aaron Strauss: Thank you for joining the Dealmakers' Edge. Don't forget to follow us on your favorite podcast platform. And please give us a five-star rating so more people can follow the conversation.
Mark Murphy: This material contains the current opinions of the presenter, but not necessarily those of Guardian or its subsidiaries, and such opinions are subject to change without notice. This podcast is for informational purposes only and is not to be construed as tax, legal, or investment advice. Although the information has been gathered from sources believed to be reliable, please note that the individual situations vary.
Therefore, the information should be relied upon only when coordinated with individual professional advice. Guardian, its subsidiaries, agents, and employees do not provide tax, legal, or accounting advice. Consult your tax, legal, or accounting professional regarding your individual situation.
Mark Murphy, Registered Representative and Financial Advisor of Park Avenue Securities, LLC, 200 Broad Hollow Road, Suite 405, Melville, New York, 11747. Security Products and Advisory Services offer through PASS, member of FINRA and CIPEC. Financial Representative of the Guardian Life Insurance Company of America, New York, New York.
PASS is a wholly owned subsidiary of Guardian. Northeast Private Client Group is not an affiliate or subsidiary of PASS or Guardian. California Insurance License Number OB36048 and Arkansas License Number 741545.
Submission Number 9188767.1. Expiration Date 10-28.
Aaron Strauss: You're listening to The Dealmakers' Edge with A.Y. Strauss, diving deep into stories behind commercial real estate leaders. Hello, everyone. Welcome to The Dealmakers' Edge.
Today I'm joined by Mark Murphy, who's founder and CEO of Northeast Private Client Group, which is a national wealth management firm that works exclusively with entrepreneurs and business owners, navigating complex capital deployment and multi-generational wealth strategy. Mark's a best-selling author of several books. He's a public speaker. He also hosts his own extremely successful podcast in business and entrepreneurship. He's become a great friend. He's very wise after many decades guiding many, many people in their businesses, and he shares some really, really wonderful best practices in the day-to-day nuances of success. And I hope you really enjoy the conversation. It's a really great one.
Mark, I really, really appreciate the time because I know how super busy you are all the time juggling everything.
Mark Murphy: Aaron, I always have time for you. Thank you for including me on the podcast.
Aaron Strauss: Of course. I know you're a host as well. You're an author. You're a writer. You're always educating people. So just trying to follow your footsteps a little bit here.
So really appreciate it. Maybe we can start from the beginning, you know, where you grew up, kind of how you grew up, where you went to school, and then kind of how you got started in your business. And then, obviously, I want to educate people on what your business really is, truly.
Mark Murphy: I always say, Aaron, I grew up dumb and broke in Suffern, New York. And I was lucky enough to get in to the Kelly Business School at Indiana University. And in fact, I'm still involved with boards at IU just because I had such a great experience there a hundred years ago.
But graduated, came off the campus there. And you know, when I started Northeast Private Client Group, I always, you know, hoped we'd be successful. I thought we'd be successful. You know, I hoped we'd make money, or I thought we'd make money. But this was really always my vehicle to make other people's lives better. And that's sort of always been the foundation of what we built our company on.
Aaron Strauss: And maybe we could talk about how you broke into the industry. Your company today is much, much more significant than when you first started years and years ago. But kind of breaking into this industry is hard, like any other industry.
Maybe we could talk about how you broke in, and those early years of building. And we try to kind of gear the conversation towards, you know, that up-and-comer trying to make something out of themselves and learning from people who have built it.
Mark Murphy: Well, again, when I started, we started when I was offered a $1,000 a month draw. I took it because it was $1,000 a month more than I was making back in the day. But you know, the thing that was one of the first eye-openers for me, Aaron, was everybody said, you know, early on when I was in my early 20s, they go, you got to network.
You got to be networking, networking, networking. And what I mean by networking, Aaron, is I'm coming to an event or I'm doing something hoping you'll become my client, or I'm going there to go get something. And so I always thought, well, if everybody's taking the networking lane, why did I want to be just another person taking that networking lane?
So what I decided is I wanted to be a net weaver, and I wanted to lead with my giving arm first and adding value first, which sometimes even took people back. But what they realize is when you pour into people, not for weeks or months, but sometimes for years or decades, you've got an army of people that want to help you. That was sort of the epiphany.
And then as it's evolved, it's been, as I said, building collaboration networks is that I decided, you mentioned we work with a lot of entrepreneurs. You know, I decided 35 years ago I wanted to be a hero to entrepreneurs and entrepreneurial thinking people. And all I've done is collaborate with people that wanted to be a hero with the same group, where that client saw that they could only get that experience by working with that group.
And it's allowed us to just really expand and explode our business, not arithmetically, but geometrically.
Aaron Strauss: No, 100%. I know you've been consistently extremely top ranked in your profession. I've watched you network. It's really an incredible art form because it never feels contrived. It's really out of a very, very generosity of spirit mentality. You're an absolute go-giver. I think you've opened up doors for everybody I've met and for me personally, and you always pay it forward.
So what can you tell kind of a young up and comer in the industry, whether they're finance, real estate, corporate American entrepreneur, and it's a generation of immediate gratification. You know, you push a button, you push an app, building relationships, it sounds kind of trite and overused, but you are an absolute test case of the fact that over time, these relationships compound. And you've spent years and years giving, giving, giving, giving.
Maybe you can describe how that's paid off for you, how you've guided, I know you've mentored and coached tons of people, whether internally or organization or external.
Mark Murphy: I don't think there's any magic in the sense that you just want to be focused. You want to be disciplined and you want to fall in love with the mundane. And you know, one of my favorite words is obsession, and I think when some people think about obsession, they think about working all the time or they think about burning themselves out. And I don't think about that at all. What I think about obsession is waking up, not occasionally, but every day focusing and being obsessed on the three or four things I need to get done that day.
And so that's my definition of obsession, you know, moving forward. And I also, you know, always say to my young partners, what are you willing to do that you're not doing now to have what you don't have? What are you willing to do that you're not doing now to have what you don't have?
And ultimately, you know, ultimately when I talk to a lot of people, they'll always tell me their goals there and they'll say, I want to be a billionaire or I want to make a hundred million dollars or I want to earn 10 million a year or a million a year or whatever the number is. But very rarely, almost never will they tell me exactly what they're willing to do to go get that. And so the idea is that's, that's when you've got to put the real plan together.
Aaron Strauss: Having that discipline and that focus over many, many years, yeah, I think I read a quote along those lines. I think it was attributed to Jerry Rice. He said something really elegant along the lines of, I'll be willing to do the things today that others won't, so tomorrow I can achieve what others can't, something along those lines. I thought that was really cool. And again, it's delayed gratification. You also optimize your time.
I mean, I know the way you get around, you're always mobile, you have somebody helping you. You really just, for somebody who is ambitious, for somebody who's trying to leverage their resources, how do you decide on any given day who and where and what you're going to focus that time? Because I'm sure every day someone says, oh, Mark, let's meet, let's meet, let's meet.
And you have to allocate your precious resource time very carefully. And I know you're very generous, so you'll meet anybody at any time and you always meet with many. But how do you kind of look over your next 30, 60, 90 days?
You're an absolute legendary producer in your field. And I think people building their careers try to see what it's like at the top. So how do you figure out how to use your time most effectively at your level?
Mark Murphy: Well, let me start big picture and then I'll go small picture.
Aaron Strauss: Please.
Mark Murphy: I would start with saying, one of the things I would suggest that everybody do that's watching this is they get a piece of paper out and they put a line down the middle and a T at the top.
And I'd like them to write everything they hate about their business on the left-hand side. And on the right-hand side, I'd like them to write all the things they'd be doing in retirement that they're not doing now. So if you're a 45-year-old person watching this podcast, hypothetically, if you're getting rid of the stuff you don't like to do and you're starting to add things that you want to do in retirement, why wait till 65 to retire once you retire at 45 if that's what you are right now?
Why don't we have everybody retire today by being able to do that? And I would start that. The second thing is I think that I focus very heavily on unique ability in the sense that there's really only three things you can do.
There's things that you're crappy at and you want to delegate that stuff immediately. There's stuff you're either competent or even good at. And I think what you, over time, you want to delegate that so that you could focus most of your energy on unique ability.
And I think with myself, Aaron, as you start to create more wealth and more money and more business, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera, the best investments an entrepreneur can make is when they invest in themselves. So if you have only $1 to invest, I'd invest it in yourself. And so to me, that's been always investing in myself to bring on more capability into my firm, to bring in more people so that I could focus on my unique ability and still keep every promise I've made, meaning I make promises by the bushel full every day.
And it's important to me that every one of them is kept. I just am personally not going to keep it, but I'm going to take responsibility to make sure it gets done in both elegance and excellence.
Aaron Strauss: 100%. And maybe you could describe a little bit, for those who have not already heard of you, but Northeast Private Client Group, maybe you can describe the firm, what you've built. I know it's top ranked.
You always put any of the lists in the absolute top, top echelons of producers and dollars under management, et cetera. But maybe you can describe the firm, its unique attributes, its composition, and kind of its goals for its clients.
Mark Murphy: I would say this. I also believe, Aaron, when you start believing your own BS, the world has a way of telling you not all that. So I think you want to stay humble but confident. And I think the way I describe our firm is we're key business strategists, critical thinkers, and then financial advisors to entrepreneurs and entrepreneurial thinking people. We've got about 5,000 corporate clients as a firm. But I think I've written three bestselling books, and I've got a fourth bestseller coming out in February, and it's called How to Create Multi-Generational Wealth and a Life by Design.
And one of the phrases that I hate, Aaron, is the phrase work-life balance. What's your work-life balance? When people ask me that, I kind of cock my head like my dog looks at me when he doesn't understand what I'm saying. And I'm going, what are you talking about work-life balance? I want to have work-life fulfillment. And I love what I'm doing when I'm working, and I want to be in total fulfillment.
But then when I leave, my wife and I like to do a lot of things. I think we saw six concerts this year. We go to live sporting events. We spend time with our five kids. We travel a lot. We do the things we want to do. And so the idea is I want to be fulfilled in both places. And I think in this world, if you do it right, you can do it all, and you don't have to wait until you're old and decrepit to do it. You can do it today.
Aaron Strauss: I think that's brilliant. I think so many people, myself included, I'm guilty of it. You say, oh, when this, when this, when this, then I will.
But life is what happens when you're busy making plans. I read this quote, Marcus Aurelius, the famous writer, author, he said, just kind of pretend you're dead today, and you die, and then you come back tomorrow. What are you going to do?
Like, just get out of the things already that you're hoping to accomplish. I will accomplish. I will do. I will do. Just what is it you want to do? Just get right to it.
So maybe you could talk about how you're guiding some of these entrepreneurs. We've spent time together. You've done some coaching with me, just informally, we've spent some great conversations together.
How are you guiding entrepreneurs? Obviously there's so many nuances in businesses and people at different stages, but what are kind of those key themes that you think entrepreneurs and up-and-coming businesses sort of miss, you know, as they're trying to grow their businesses?
Mark Murphy: The first thing is, when I'm looking at a new opportunity for myself, or I'm looking for a new opportunity for one of my friends or clients, or even when I'm advising some of my friends, kids, and grandkids about their careers, I love the Japanese phrase, and people pronounce it differently, called ikigai or gaki, everybody has a little bit different pronunciation. But the essence of it is, you ask yourself four questions, and it's got to be not a yes, but hell yeah to all four questions. And they are, am I passionate about this?
The second is, am I good at it? The third is, does the world need that product or service? And the fourth is, can I get paid handsomely to do it? And so the idea is, I look at it through that prism, and generally if I don't hit all four of those things, I'm not going to get involved, nor am I going to advise our clients to get involved in those things. That's for starters for me.
Aaron Strauss: That's well said. What do you think of those critical ingredients you can't live without to be successful as an entrepreneur today?
Mark Murphy: You have to have the ability to understand two things. One is that there's no success or failure, there's success in learning. The best entrepreneurs use their failures not only to fuel them, but to learn from them so they don't make the same mistake twice. Where most people either don't have a stomach for it, or when they get punched in the gut or knocked down, they stay down. Entrepreneurs keep getting up. So I think that it's that thing.
I always say there's three or four things that I tried or I invested into marketing, let's say, to grow my business that failed. But had I not done that, I wouldn't have done a couple of other things that made us millions or tens of millions of dollars. And so I think part of that is you've got to be able to just kind of look at every challenge as an opportunity, and that there's always an opportunity to things.
Like as an example, let me use one of my kids breaking up with their boyfriend or girlfriend. I think that they should mourn that relationship. I don't know if it's a day, it's a week, it's a month, it's something, whatever the appropriate mourning is.
We're human beings first and foremost. But I also think, Aaron, your mind has to immediately go to, well, what's great about that? And so in that case, I would say to my kid, well, you know what?
This person obviously wasn't the right person for you. Now you'll have the time to meet somebody who will be the right person for you. Or maybe you weren't doing a lot of things you wanted to do in your life or spending time with your friends because you were spending so much time with them, and now you'll have the time to do that. So I'm not saying that the relationship shouldn't be mourned in an appropriate way, but entrepreneurs' minds go to what the possibilities are.
Aaron Strauss: Yeah, I think you're 100% right. Always keep moving and always maintain an optimistic outlook. There's always some positive, you know, one door closes, one opens type of thing. There's always a positive way to look at any situation. And one of the things you've talked about is, besides financial health, it's kind of this like emotional fitness concept. Like, you know, it's mindset.
It's really mindset. You need to do a ton of activity, you need to have the discipline, you're a classic example of showing up. I've never seen anybody who shows up like you, Mark. It's unbelievable. But you coach people to have the right headspace. And this podcast is called The Dealmakers' Edge for a reason, because anybody can put a spreadsheet together, raise capital, acquire something.
But you need to be in a headspace that's healthy, that's sustainable, that builds that resilience you need to navigate those ups and downs, that unpredictability. So maybe you could talk to that, how you've developed this sense of resilience and how you do it with people around you.
Mark Murphy: You know, scientists think, Aaron, there's four types of intelligence. And they talk about IQ, you know, just how raw, naturally smart are you. And I know a lot of those people, and we have a lot of them working here, as I know you do in your firm.
But the other three types of intelligence may be even more important. I'm not saying you can be dumb, but you don't have to be a genius. Because the second one is which people are familiar with is EQ. Can you read a room? You know, can you, is Aaron confused? Is Aaron angry? Is Aaron happy? Is there, you know, you gotta be able to read a room. Many people have very low EQ, but a high EQ is very important.
The third, which I think is important to success is intelligence is social quotient. Do people like you? Or you're the person they go to the party with and they go, let me meet you at John Smith and you do the Houdini to get away from that person because they're killing you. Do people like who you are? That's an important component to your success.
But the last one, which is I think very underappreciated is AQ, which is adversity quotient. Can you turn lemons into lemonade? You know, everybody's great when everything's going beautifully. Everything is calm, but when, you know, when stuff hits the fan, how do you react?
And can you be able to take that situation and as I said, turn chicken you know what into chicken salad?
Aaron Strauss: 100%. And by the way, I really appreciate the clean rating we have on this podcast. You're maintaining it perfectly, Mark.
So I really appreciate that G rating, which we're going for. But absolutely. You know, that, that constant ability to take punches and hits and, and navigating ups and downs and cycles and, and movement and change and client demands and technology.
It's endless, endless. So maybe we can talk about the growth you've seen in your business over the years, what you attributed to, what you're looking for in candidates that you hire, you know, who makes a firm successful, what kind of caliber talent that has a good combination of those different things, building teams around those different quotients. Those are all never ending themes in every growing business.
Mark Murphy: You know, Aaron, I don't think we're in the financial services business or in the private equity business or the real estate business. I always think we're in the people business and, you know, because you do business with people. And I think that, you know, for me, you know, the secret sauce has always been no, what's the expression?
They want to know how much you care before they know how much you know, or some variation of that. I may be mixing that up a little bit, but I think at the end of the day, I think one of the challenges our children have is that they're on devices all day and they're sending things out on text where they never have to look somebody in the eye and really build a relationship. And I also think in that immediate gratification world, you know, it's not like you and I are going to have a great relationship, Aaron, because we had lunch one time and we're there.
We're going to have a great relationship and we do because we both are investing in the relationship together. And by the way, it never happens as fast as you like. Sometimes in a unique way, sometimes it can happen, you know, instantaneously.
But most of the people that I know that are wildly, wildly successful are overnight successes after 10 years or 20 years or 30 years. You know, they're not, they don't come out of the gate. I can remember my first couple of years in the business where I was $20,000 in credit card debt and I, you know, I had, I had a seven year plan to pay it off and I was thinking I, I, you know, I needed to go bankrupt.
You know, I laughed because I got one of the first American Express black cards. And I think in 1986 they almost took my green card away. Not because I didn't want to pay it, because I didn't have the money to pay it.
Aaron Strauss: But you had the confidence though. You had the confidence that you were willing to borrow and bet on yourself. Even from back in the day when you were first starting out, you said, I'm not sure what's going to happen, but you were never going to fail for lack of hard work, discipline and focus.
And you had business philosophies that you've carried over decades that you've never veered from Mark. So I think you're living embodiment of the fact that if you do it the right way over a longer period of time, you're going to be successful. And I think you do it in your heart, I'm sure during those more scarier days.
Mark Murphy: Whoever is watching this podcast, Aaron, this is what I would say to them. As somebody who manages billions and billions of dollars, there's dozens of asset classes. But for our purpose, I'm going to call it expenses or investments.
So when I look at my budget, if you're an expense, you're always on the chopping block. And not because I want to take that money necessarily and put it in my pocket. I want to redeploy it in a place that's more advantageous.
And if you're an investment, I think you should have an unlimited appetite for investment as long as you can get a minimum of a four or five to one return on your money. So if you say to me, Mark, I want you to invest $100,000 in your business or in my business, I want to get at least a minimum of four or $500,000 return that I wouldn't have had, had I not made that investment.
Aaron Strauss: Makes sense. What else can you share about the best things you've seen as entrepreneurs you've built? I mean, you've managed billions of dollars, you currently do.
You really have a front seat to some really great stories of growth. And you've seen a lot of failures. What are some of those critical elements you see that really make people shine above others, that are kind of secret sauce ingredients you've seen in some of the best entrepreneurs you've been around or some of those success stories you've seen around?
Mark Murphy: Aaron, we run our business for about the last seven or eight years on Gino Wickman's EOS system, the Entrepreneurial Operating System. I think if you're a business owner, you should read his book, Traction, the first book, which was brilliant. And so for a long time, Aaron, I couldn't figure out how I was hiring people and some turned out to be great and others didn't turn out to be so great.
I couldn't figure the secret sauce. And then I read Gino's book and he breaks it down this way. And I'll tell you about our business. We talk about a hell yeah answer. He calls the first step is GWC. You must be not a yes, but a hell yeah to all three of these questions.
The G stands for, do they get what we're doing? Do they get what makes us different?
The W is, do they want to be with our organization or do they want to be there because they don't have a better offer or it's five minutes from their office or from their house rather?
And the C is with proper training, do they have the capability to do the job?
So the GWC has to be a hell yeah. But then what we did is we took my core values. It's not that they're the right values, Aaron. It's just my values. And what I'll do is I'll judge our prospective employees and current employees on what we call the people analyzer.
And I analyze them either plus, plus, minus, or minus with my six core values. And I'll give you an example. One of our core values is we not only want to create an experience for a client, we want to create a wow experience.
So if I was interviewing you today, I'd say, Aaron, if you don't wake up totally jazzed about that every single day, you are going to be miserable here. And everybody outside my office is going to hate your guts. So the idea is, and you can hide yourself in the interview and show up with your representative.
But when you get there, you're going to get crushed in my organization if you don't have our core values. Where the theory being, if you get it, want to have capability, have our core values, that's an unstoppable team. But I take it at one more level as I thought about that deeply is you have to win the war for talent too.
And so here's what we do in our office. When you hire somebody in the first year or two, we just want them to get great at their job. That's your goal. But around year two or year three, we want you to mentor the newbies, which does a few things. The first thing it does is it makes the newbies better. But I always say, if you want to learn something at a deep level, teach it to somebody else.
So obviously people who teach obviously get a lot more than the people they're teaching generally. So it helps our, let's call it our people that are there two or three years. But then after you're there for four or five years, we want you to own something in the firm. Could be something very technical, could be a soft skill. But people have to own something. And I would say that the success of that depends on two things.
One is you have to have great culture. And myself as the CEO, you as the CEO, we can't, we can delegate a lot. We can't delegate culture. We have to own that and make it a great culture. But the second is I always think if you've got to pay people competitively, not the most, but competitively. But I always say if they're learning and growing, nobody leaves when they're learning and growing.
So I constantly am looking for things for our people to continue to learn and grow so they don't get bored or stale. And so great culture and then learning and growing is sort of our secret once we find, once we get the right teammates in place.
Aaron Strauss: Mark, what you just shared I think is just absolutely on the money. It's perfect and embodies what you're doing. I think anybody listening to this really needs to think carefully about that as they're growing their firm. Because I always say culture is the only thing you actually can't take from an organization. You can have somebody poach a client. You can poach somebody from the team. It happens. But the way you make people feel every day, make the clients feel, make the team members feel, the psychological safety. Is this a good place?
Does this feel somewhere where I can just relax my mind so I can concentrate on doing the best work for the clients and for my colleagues? That's extraordinary, Mark. I think you just kind of nailed your secret sauce.
Giving, investing in relationships, building those relationships over many years, creating that special culture. We should talk some technical pieces a little bit too. It's a very interesting climate in the market. I'm sure clients are calling your team every day and different financial plans modeled for different people over many different years. And you're not timing markets, et cetera. But maybe you could talk about just somebody investing today.
Maybe they're an entrepreneur that had an exit and they want to diversify. How are you kind of talking to that client about managing their portfolio for a long term sustainability with upside or you have to manage geopolitical risk and inflation risk and kind of maybe like a little bit of a market snapshot of how you look at today's economy and potential upside?
Mark Murphy: Well, I think, first of all, we mentioned emotional fitness a few minutes ago. How many people have heard someone say, well, if Trump gets in, the world's going to go to hell or Joe Biden gets in, it's going to go to hell or just the craziness of this stuff. And I go back and I'd say, you know what, Joe?
You know what, Sally? You made money during Reagan and then with Bush and then with Clinton and then with Bush again and then with Obama and then with Trump and then Biden and then Trump again. I go, it didn't seem to matter where that thing is.
So let's focus on what we can control first. Let's be emotionally fit and make decisions based on not hearsay and opinion and insanity. Let's base it on facts. Let's run our money, not with emotion, but scientifically. And so then to me, it starts with, everything starts with tax. Whether you're having a liquidity event in your business, whether you're talking about income tax, capital gains tax, estate tax, sales tax.
Ultimately, what you want to do is you want to do things that are, what I'll call, create an alpha tax strategy. And so that you can pay legally, morally and ethically, where your tax attorney, the editor of the Wall Street Journal and an IRS agent could be at the table and say, some of these strategies are simple. Some of them are sophisticated, but they're mom and apple pie.
Nothing under the table, everything above the table, nothing on the dirty dozen list. You know, nothing that's got anything a whiff of impropriety because there's enough stuff if you know what you're doing to start there. The second thing is I never also let tax wag the dog.
It starts with what do you really want to do and what do you want? One of my criticisms of professionals, whether it be financial advisors, attorneys, accountants, et cetera, et cetera, is they work, for instance, say a perfect tax strategy, but don't listen to what the client wants and what their long-term goals are. You make their plan work around their goals, not their goals work around the plan because they want to have the life they want.
That's your job to do. It starts with tax. And then I think, you know, it starts with a lot of things. I like to have some SWAN money in the beginning. SWAN is the acronym for sleep well at night money. And so, you know, we start that with a base.
You know, one of the number one reasons why businesses fail, people fail, or at least they don't reach their full potential is they don't have true liquidity or cash confidence. So you need that SWAN money or that liquidity money, not only for emergencies, but also for opportunities because I've made a lot of my money when I had cash and somebody else needed cash. You know, clearly, you know, it was such a big practice in the real estate world.
You know, that's, you know, people don't make money selling real estate. They make money buying real estate. You always make it on the buy, not on the sell. And oftentimes that was opportunistic buys. And so I would sit down and one of the things we've created is I've trademarked our pyramid to create multi-generational wealth. But I also have our financial integrity scorecard and I rate them like red at a one, like a traffic light, five at like a yellow and 10 at green, optimal of the 10 areas that people need to focus on to create multi-generational wealth.
One of them being true liquidity or cash confidence. And as I move up the pyramid, you know, there's a lot of things that even some of the best entrepreneurs with the best advice have not really thought about in a deep way or certainly have not handled. But there is, you know, we want to create a playbook or a way that people can get there in an efficient way.
Aaron Strauss: Well said, Mark, as always. What's one thing I could have asked you but didn't? You know, you're sitting down with somebody for a cup of coffee. Everyone wants to get on your calendar. You're always giving your time very generously. But kind of long-term themes, career coach advisory, something I should have asked you but didn't.
Mark Murphy: Here's the thing that I would wish. If you asked me, you know, five or seven, five or seven, eight years ago, if you asked me, do I have any regrets in life? I would say I'd have two.
One was at that time. One is I wish I'd met the right woman early in my career. I have two sons. But my wife has three kids and now I have five kids. So the idea is I always wanted four or five kids and now I have four or five kids. So I checked that box that I got that one thing I was missing. And I'm now a girl dad. I thought I was only gonna be a boy dad. So I got to experience both and I hold on for dear life with all five of them every day. In fact, it's a light day today. We only had three crises. So it's an easy day so far. But I know you can, you relate to that.
But the other one that I would say to people is because I think the entrepreneurship and business, it's a very scary world. And I think the thing is in my twenties, in my thirties, maybe even into my mid forties or even late forties, I worried about things all the time. I worried about everything. I worried about money. People wouldn't tell me bad things on a Friday afternoon because I played over an endless loop in my brain all weekend.
And oftentimes the torture I put myself through was worse than if the worst thing happened, I was worried about. And so, so the idea is all of that productive time that I could have either used to enjoy myself or to be more productive went out the window. And it's, for some reason, something clicked in my mid to late forties and I stopped worrying and my life got better.
And so I would, you know, I find that there's, there's an awful lot of stress and a lot of awful lot of pressure on folks. And I think, you know, that that's one of the things I like to release. The other thing is, I think my, you know, one of my superpowers is Aaron, everybody's had somebody ruin their day, but everybody's probably also had someone made their day.
And I think with your support network, I think you're lucky if you have one or two or three people believe in you. And I think one of the things I try to do every day and I try to help people with is I want to, I want to, especially if it's true is I want to believe in their abilities to succeed so viscerally that they believe it themselves and that people, it's amazing how just helping people with their confidence and helping people think through those issues, allow them to achieve things they never thought were possible.
And by the way, when you get to it, when you get to a collaboration or an entrepreneurial group that all think that way, it's amazing the entrepreneurial synergy of what's possible and could be created. And one of the things I would also say is I'm keeping our podcast clean, but I would, I would, we'd check the jackasses out of our life. And I think the way I would do that by not letting them, the easiest way is not to let them in in the first place, because I think, you know, as you start to succeed, not everybody is so happy for you.
And I think even some friends and family don't, don't always see it, you know, when you start to succeed. So I think part of that is I think you have to be aware of it and you gotta, you know, not, you know, not, uh, not be less than, uh, just because maybe some folks in your, in your circle or your family or friends are, are not at the level that you're there. You should, you should have the power to, and not that you don't want to help lift them up and take them up with you, but you certainly don't want to let them drag you down.
Aaron Strauss: Well said, Mark. Honestly, I could talk to you all day and I really could listen to you all day even more. And like I said, you're incredibly inspiring. You're very generous with your time. You're running a first class organization. Your clients are lucky to have you. Your team is lucky to have you. Anybody I've interacted that has gotten to know you is just a raving fan for all the good you've done for them, whether it's, uh, you know, technical, monetary advice or introductions. So you really are in the embodiment of great values, being a go-giver, paying it forward.
Really you, you've helped so many people. You should be so thankful for building that reputation, which is extremely well-deserved. I'm thankful to be in your orbit. I really appreciate all the time we've ever spent together. I mean that very, very sincerely. And I guess with that, we'll wrap. I hope people get to know you listening to this. Check out your amazing firm, Northeast Private Client Group, get to know you. And I continue to admire you, respect you, and just hopefully we can continue to build our friendship for, for years to come.
And I guess, uh, we'll wrap it here, Mark.
Mark Murphy: Thank you, Aaron.
Aaron Strauss: Thank you for joining the Dealmakers' Edge. Don't forget to follow us on your favorite podcast platform. And please give us a five-star rating so more people can follow the conversation.
Mark Murphy: This material contains the current opinions of the presenter, but not necessarily those of Guardian or its subsidiaries, and such opinions are subject to change without notice. This podcast is for informational purposes only and is not to be construed as tax, legal, or investment advice. Although the information has been gathered from sources believed to be reliable, please note that the individual situations vary.
Therefore, the information should be relied upon only when coordinated with individual professional advice. Guardian, its subsidiaries, agents, and employees do not provide tax, legal, or accounting advice. Consult your tax, legal, or accounting professional regarding your individual situation.
Mark Murphy, Registered Representative and Financial Advisor of Park Avenue Securities, LLC, 200 Broad Hollow Road, Suite 405, Melville, New York, 11747. Security Products and Advisory Services offer through PASS, member of FINRA and CIPEC. Financial Representative of the Guardian Life Insurance Company of America, New York, New York.
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The Dealmakers’ Edge with A.Y. Strauss highlights the stories, successes, and struggles behind major commercial real estate investors. Each episode offers a behind-the-scenes look at commercial real estate leaders and their unique edge.
Hosted by Aaron Y. Strauss, Managing Partner at A.Y. Strauss
Aaron Y. Strauss is one of the leading legal advisors in the commercial real estate industry, providing insight and guidance for billions worth of transactions during his career. As our firm’s founder and managing partner, he has positioned A.Y. Strauss as one of the region’s most respected law firms for commercial real estate owners, lenders and sponsors, serving the needs of our clients with the utmost in care, integrity and transparency.