February 19, 2025 • 14 mins
Discover the secrets behind building Markowski Investments over 30 years in this insightful video with Christopher Markowski. Learn about the grind, the sacrifices, and the unique strategies like focusing on a niche and providing top-tier service to all clients, not just the wealthy. Markowski shares lessons on avoiding common business pitfalls, the importance of understanding your business's core strengths, and managing work-life balance. Whether you're an aspiring entrepreneur or interested in financial services, this episode offers valuable advice from real-world experience. www.watchdogonwallstreet.com
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Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:00):
The Watchdog on Wall Street podcast explaining the news coming
out of the complex worlds of finance, economics, and politics
and the impact that we'll have on everyday Americans. Author,
investment banker, consumer advocate, analyst, and trader, Chris Markowski.
Speaker 2 (00:16):
It's like sharing day today here, you know, we're sharing.
I'm going to tell you some secrets how we built
Markowski Investments. I spend you know, I feel like I
have to. My wife. I used to feel like I
have to. It's the right thing to do. In particularly,
many of the kids that I used to mentor I
(00:37):
used to coach in lacrosse, some of them want to
come back. They come back as work as interns for us.
They come in they want to, you know, learn about
how I run my business and how everything works. Many
of them are, you know, taking business classes finance in college,
(00:57):
and they want no part. More often than not, they
want little to know part of what we do. Why
it's really really hard. How was Markowski Investments built over
thirty years, brick by brick, little by little, every single
(01:24):
day what we do managing people's money, having a national
firm being run by my brothers and I. The three
of us started the firm, my nephew working for us
as well now and now we have some twenty five
(01:45):
offices around the country. How do we do it well?
First and foremost bit of an advantage in the fact
that the three of us brothers and I were each different,
and we each have our own talents and abilities. And
(02:06):
Matt does his thing, Michael does his thing, and I
do my thing, and we bust our hump every single day,
utilizing our God given talents to build our business and
help people some of the things that people need to
(02:28):
understand in regards to this industry. We started it and
we decided that, you know what, we were going to
build a niche for stuff. We're going to do things differently.
We weren't going to put a velvet rope. I've talked
about this velvet rope outside the door saying hey, oh
(02:50):
we can only work with us if you've got five
million dollars. No, we opened it up to everyone. Basically,
we wanted to provide the highest level of service a
family off the experience and offer it to everyone. And again, ridiculed, ridiculed,
you can't do that. That's dumb. You're wasting your time
on all of it. You know, they would tell you
(03:10):
those piker clients, why would you waste your time on them?
That's stupid. You need to be spending your money on
the big ticket guys and selling all these things. And
I'm like, no, no again. My brothers and I have
a similar way of thinking and wanting to basically build
(03:31):
our lives. I and you know, my brothers, we we
want to spend time uh with our family. We wanted
to coach our kids. We didn't want to go sniffing
around golf clubs and country clubs. I don't go. People
are amazed I don't golf. I don't you know. Now
all the kids are out, but I'm still you know,
(03:52):
they're all in college and I'm still going to ball games.
I still don't have the time to learn how to play.
That's just not my bag. And I'd say, hey, oh Chris,
you got to go out and entertain. You got to
go do this. No, I don't have to do that.
All I need to do is to provide the highest
level of service for my clients. I'm not there. I'm
(04:13):
not there to entertain. I'm not there to be their
golfing buddy or dinner buddy. If I have the time
to do it, We had the time to do it,
We're gonna do it. But again in the clients that
we have, they understand that because they have a similar mentality,
family oriented people. It's a great way to build your
(04:36):
business if you have people that think and feel the
same way that you do. Anyway, thirty years, you know,
a lot of failures, a lot of falling on one's face,
things that we've tried, things that haven't worked out again.
Por Prior to having the radio show, I did guests,
(04:59):
appear yearances on radio shows, which I still do. I
was a lot more prolific in my writing back in
the nineteen nineties with my newsletter and did a lot
more of that. Now it's you know, media has changed,
the medium has changed. I don't do as much writing
I do these podcasts. I still doing the radio show,
(05:20):
still making appearances, and it does take up, you know,
quite a bit of my time. Quite frankly, that's just
the reality of the situation. And by doing that and
grinding away again. We started out with allows the two
radio stations. Yeah, I was actually you know, had to
mix up on my own thing. You know, have the
computer automatically fire when songs would come on, all this
(05:43):
stuff and again just plug in, plugging away before that,
you know, plugin away, sending out mass faxes to radio
station producers, producers of talk radio shows around the hunt
you with various different ideas that I had. There was
a software program back then it was called win Facts,
(06:06):
where I would just constantly be sending stuff out all
the time. Again grinding, because that's what it is. It's
a grind. Yeah, I wrote. I wrote a story about
this years ago. It was called to Win. The boss shrugs.
So oftentimes, you know, after you know, you spend years,
certain people and you know they'll again it's unfortunate people
(06:29):
have to be this way. You know, they'll they'll see
sometimes the fruits of what you've built and they automatically
assume that boom, it just fell in your lap. They
don't see the backstory. They don't see the second jobs
that you were taking when you first started out, you know,
trying to build up your business. The sacrifices they make
(06:51):
that they don't they don't understand when you get up
in the morning, the hours that you put in. Let's
just be perfectly frank here, okay, and again I make
this clear I make this clear to the you know,
the kids are coming in and asking about what I
do and how I do it. I said, I'm lucky.
I can you know, I could handle and I've been
able to handle my schedule. I can not miss my
(07:13):
kids things and coach their teams and do all that.
But that also means I'm getting up pretty darn early
in the morning every single day. And the reality is,
you know, you own your own business, it is you're
never on vacation. You're never truly on vacation. That's that's
part of it. You just can't you go on vacation.
(07:34):
But work is still there. Work is always there. It's
ever going to go away. You can do it. You've
got you've got people that you're responsible for, not just
your clients, but your employees that have to put food
on the table. And that's something to consider and oftentimes
people quite frankly, don't really appreciate some of the other
(07:54):
bit of advice I would give to people that would
be looking to start out any any type of a
start up or a new business, be careful, be careful
of taking money. I know it's easy sometimes, especially in
today's day and age with venture capital throwing money around
all over the place. Be careful with that, you know,
be careful with you know, thinking that you need to make.
(08:18):
We're ridiculous expenditures on things. I'm gonna tell you a
real dumb one, a real dumb one that we did
when we first So we had plenty of dumb ones
that we start. We first started Markowski investments. A photo copier.
I don't know, I must have been weak that day
or something like that. We got sold on a you know,
(08:41):
having a photo copier that we barely use. You know,
he used it was my father. He was a bit
o c D with his paperwork and loved photo copy
and things. I think it was almost like a toy
to him. He'd come into the office and use that
stupid thing. Anyway. Another thing, like I mentioned before, is
understand your niche. Okay, you can't be all things to
(09:05):
all people. If you want to be good at what
you do, you don't find many put it so, you
don't find many Italian sushi, uh steak house. You just
you're combining too much nonsense. Find out who you want
(09:27):
to be doing, and find out what your niche is,
and guess what, go at it and be the best
at that. Another thing again, This is again I'm telling
you the things that I have been guilty of, where
quite honestly, you know, I'm again I'm learning to be
a little bit better in taking more time off. Again,
(09:49):
my wife yells at me when we're away, when we
take time off. Yeah, I still do the podcasts, and
you know, I'm ready to go if I need to,
if I have to do an inter you there, but
you need to get away, okay. The reality of the situation.
When you're busting your butt, you do get your mind
gets mushy. Your mind gets mushy, and sometimes you just
(10:10):
need to stop for a little bit and then you
start having a bit of a different perspective. You need
to go on vacation, You need to take holidays. Another one,
don't waste your time on stupid conferences. Again. We used
to do that. We used to do that. We used
(10:31):
to go there are clearing banks used to hold these
big conferences and we'd go. Again. It was okay in
the sense that I again, I bring my entire family along, kids,
sometimes I bring my parents. My in laws would be there.
I didn't care. So like, if you know, we're all going, okay,
so Marc Housi claims. But you know, more often than not,
(10:52):
I'm you know, I'm you know, just trying to get
out of these ridiculous meetings. And then sometimes these people
offer some of the worst advice out there, and they're
all they have their little rooms there where they're always
trying to pitch and sell you on stuff you don't need.
It's more often that it's a waste of time. Here's
(11:14):
another one. Okay, your office. Okay, if you don't need
an office, don't spend money on one. Don't spend money
on mine. Again, people are still amazed at the fact
(11:34):
that we have, you know, one small little office space
and Tampa. I'm in my house right now. Yeah, I'm
in my house right now. I don't. Well, again, I
live in a city in Tampa's not a big commute,
but I don't waste time on commuting. I don't have
(11:55):
to do that. Again, every business is different to be
handled as such. But again, I am not going to
get a fancy office with fancy artwork and all this stuff.
And you know, people ever have a question. I'm like, well,
who's paying for that fancy artwork, Who's paying for that
(12:18):
fancy office? My clients are, and I don't want them
to pay for it. I'd rather run a you know,
do Acksburger Lean mean fighting machine and keep the costs
down for my clients. It makes more sense, and it
makes me a hell of a lot more efficient. Yeah, sometimes,
(12:40):
you know what, you can't hold on to losers. Same
thing when it comes to investments. You try something out,
you see how long it works, and if it doesn't,
you cut it loose. Any type of marketing endeavor that
we've get into. I make it perfectly clear, okay that
you know it's gonna we're going to try it, test
(13:01):
the waters for a couple you know months. If it
doesn't work, we're done. So you better make sure that
it works again. I've got great fishing captains down here
in Florida. Well sometimes, but we're out fishing out there offshore.
The captain will know. We'll be on a spot for
less than a couple of minutes, no bites, we're out boom.
He knows. You know, I don't have to know when to,
(13:24):
you know, basically, get out of dodge. Here's another one
you cannot again, and it's it's hard sometimes and I'm
not very good at getting rid of people. But you
got lazy people. They have to go. And you have
to give honest and sometimes harsh feedback to your employees
(13:45):
in the same way that I can be, you know,
a bit harsh here on the program when it comes
to finances and decisions that people make, or I might
be harsh with the kids that I coach. I got
to be honest with them. Where do you want me
to lie? No, I'm gonna be honest. And that's something
that you have to do as a boss. It is
(14:06):
the few things we like to separate ourselves from everybody else,
and we like the way things run here. And you
know what, God willing will continue to do this moving forward. Again.
I know a lot of younger people, a lot of
college kids listening to this program. I get feedback from
(14:28):
them all the time, Questions, countlets, whatever it may be.
On startups, this industry, feel free reach out watch dog
on Wall street dot com.
The Watchdog on Wall Street podcast explaining the news coming
out of the complex worlds of finance, economics, and politics
and the impact that we'll have on everyday Americans. Author,
investment banker, consumer advocate, analyst, and trader, Chris Markowski.
Speaker 2 (00:16):
It's like sharing day today here, you know, we're sharing.
I'm going to tell you some secrets how we built
Markowski Investments. I spend you know, I feel like I
have to. My wife. I used to feel like I
have to. It's the right thing to do. In particularly,
many of the kids that I used to mentor I
(00:37):
used to coach in lacrosse, some of them want to
come back. They come back as work as interns for us.
They come in they want to, you know, learn about
how I run my business and how everything works. Many
of them are, you know, taking business classes finance in college,
(00:57):
and they want no part. More often than not, they
want little to know part of what we do. Why
it's really really hard. How was Markowski Investments built over
thirty years, brick by brick, little by little, every single
(01:24):
day what we do managing people's money, having a national
firm being run by my brothers and I. The three
of us started the firm, my nephew working for us
as well now and now we have some twenty five
(01:45):
offices around the country. How do we do it well?
First and foremost bit of an advantage in the fact
that the three of us brothers and I were each different,
and we each have our own talents and abilities. And
(02:06):
Matt does his thing, Michael does his thing, and I
do my thing, and we bust our hump every single day,
utilizing our God given talents to build our business and
help people some of the things that people need to
(02:28):
understand in regards to this industry. We started it and
we decided that, you know what, we were going to
build a niche for stuff. We're going to do things differently.
We weren't going to put a velvet rope. I've talked
about this velvet rope outside the door saying hey, oh
(02:50):
we can only work with us if you've got five
million dollars. No, we opened it up to everyone. Basically,
we wanted to provide the highest level of service a
family off the experience and offer it to everyone. And again, ridiculed, ridiculed,
you can't do that. That's dumb. You're wasting your time
on all of it. You know, they would tell you
(03:10):
those piker clients, why would you waste your time on them?
That's stupid. You need to be spending your money on
the big ticket guys and selling all these things. And
I'm like, no, no again. My brothers and I have
a similar way of thinking and wanting to basically build
(03:31):
our lives. I and you know, my brothers, we we
want to spend time uh with our family. We wanted
to coach our kids. We didn't want to go sniffing
around golf clubs and country clubs. I don't go. People
are amazed I don't golf. I don't you know. Now
all the kids are out, but I'm still you know,
(03:52):
they're all in college and I'm still going to ball games.
I still don't have the time to learn how to play.
That's just not my bag. And I'd say, hey, oh Chris,
you got to go out and entertain. You got to
go do this. No, I don't have to do that.
All I need to do is to provide the highest
level of service for my clients. I'm not there. I'm
(04:13):
not there to entertain. I'm not there to be their
golfing buddy or dinner buddy. If I have the time
to do it, We had the time to do it,
We're gonna do it. But again in the clients that
we have, they understand that because they have a similar mentality,
family oriented people. It's a great way to build your
(04:36):
business if you have people that think and feel the
same way that you do. Anyway, thirty years, you know,
a lot of failures, a lot of falling on one's face,
things that we've tried, things that haven't worked out again.
Por Prior to having the radio show, I did guests,
(04:59):
appear yearances on radio shows, which I still do. I
was a lot more prolific in my writing back in
the nineteen nineties with my newsletter and did a lot
more of that. Now it's you know, media has changed,
the medium has changed. I don't do as much writing
I do these podcasts. I still doing the radio show,
(05:20):
still making appearances, and it does take up, you know,
quite a bit of my time. Quite frankly, that's just
the reality of the situation. And by doing that and
grinding away again. We started out with allows the two
radio stations. Yeah, I was actually you know, had to
mix up on my own thing. You know, have the
computer automatically fire when songs would come on, all this
(05:43):
stuff and again just plug in, plugging away before that,
you know, plugin away, sending out mass faxes to radio
station producers, producers of talk radio shows around the hunt
you with various different ideas that I had. There was
a software program back then it was called win Facts,
(06:06):
where I would just constantly be sending stuff out all
the time. Again grinding, because that's what it is. It's
a grind. Yeah, I wrote. I wrote a story about
this years ago. It was called to Win. The boss shrugs.
So oftentimes, you know, after you know, you spend years,
certain people and you know they'll again it's unfortunate people
(06:29):
have to be this way. You know, they'll they'll see
sometimes the fruits of what you've built and they automatically
assume that boom, it just fell in your lap. They
don't see the backstory. They don't see the second jobs
that you were taking when you first started out, you know,
trying to build up your business. The sacrifices they make
(06:51):
that they don't they don't understand when you get up
in the morning, the hours that you put in. Let's
just be perfectly frank here, okay, and again I make
this clear I make this clear to the you know,
the kids are coming in and asking about what I
do and how I do it. I said, I'm lucky.
I can you know, I could handle and I've been
able to handle my schedule. I can not miss my
(07:13):
kids things and coach their teams and do all that.
But that also means I'm getting up pretty darn early
in the morning every single day. And the reality is,
you know, you own your own business, it is you're
never on vacation. You're never truly on vacation. That's that's
part of it. You just can't you go on vacation.
(07:34):
But work is still there. Work is always there. It's
ever going to go away. You can do it. You've
got you've got people that you're responsible for, not just
your clients, but your employees that have to put food
on the table. And that's something to consider and oftentimes
people quite frankly, don't really appreciate some of the other
(07:54):
bit of advice I would give to people that would
be looking to start out any any type of a
start up or a new business, be careful, be careful
of taking money. I know it's easy sometimes, especially in
today's day and age with venture capital throwing money around
all over the place. Be careful with that, you know,
be careful with you know, thinking that you need to make.
(08:18):
We're ridiculous expenditures on things. I'm gonna tell you a
real dumb one, a real dumb one that we did
when we first So we had plenty of dumb ones
that we start. We first started Markowski investments. A photo copier.
I don't know, I must have been weak that day
or something like that. We got sold on a you know,
(08:41):
having a photo copier that we barely use. You know,
he used it was my father. He was a bit
o c D with his paperwork and loved photo copy
and things. I think it was almost like a toy
to him. He'd come into the office and use that
stupid thing. Anyway. Another thing, like I mentioned before, is
understand your niche. Okay, you can't be all things to
(09:05):
all people. If you want to be good at what
you do, you don't find many put it so, you
don't find many Italian sushi, uh steak house. You just
you're combining too much nonsense. Find out who you want
(09:27):
to be doing, and find out what your niche is,
and guess what, go at it and be the best
at that. Another thing again, This is again I'm telling
you the things that I have been guilty of, where
quite honestly, you know, I'm again I'm learning to be
a little bit better in taking more time off. Again,
(09:49):
my wife yells at me when we're away, when we
take time off. Yeah, I still do the podcasts, and
you know, I'm ready to go if I need to,
if I have to do an inter you there, but
you need to get away, okay. The reality of the situation.
When you're busting your butt, you do get your mind
gets mushy. Your mind gets mushy, and sometimes you just
(10:10):
need to stop for a little bit and then you
start having a bit of a different perspective. You need
to go on vacation, You need to take holidays. Another one,
don't waste your time on stupid conferences. Again. We used
to do that. We used to do that. We used
(10:31):
to go there are clearing banks used to hold these
big conferences and we'd go. Again. It was okay in
the sense that I again, I bring my entire family along, kids,
sometimes I bring my parents. My in laws would be there.
I didn't care. So like, if you know, we're all going, okay,
so Marc Housi claims. But you know, more often than not,
(10:52):
I'm you know, I'm you know, just trying to get
out of these ridiculous meetings. And then sometimes these people
offer some of the worst advice out there, and they're
all they have their little rooms there where they're always
trying to pitch and sell you on stuff you don't need.
It's more often that it's a waste of time. Here's
(11:14):
another one. Okay, your office. Okay, if you don't need
an office, don't spend money on one. Don't spend money
on mine. Again, people are still amazed at the fact
(11:34):
that we have, you know, one small little office space
and Tampa. I'm in my house right now. Yeah, I'm
in my house right now. I don't. Well, again, I
live in a city in Tampa's not a big commute,
but I don't waste time on commuting. I don't have
(11:55):
to do that. Again, every business is different to be
handled as such. But again, I am not going to
get a fancy office with fancy artwork and all this stuff.
And you know, people ever have a question. I'm like, well,
who's paying for that fancy artwork, Who's paying for that
(12:18):
fancy office? My clients are, and I don't want them
to pay for it. I'd rather run a you know,
do Acksburger Lean mean fighting machine and keep the costs
down for my clients. It makes more sense, and it
makes me a hell of a lot more efficient. Yeah, sometimes,
(12:40):
you know what, you can't hold on to losers. Same
thing when it comes to investments. You try something out,
you see how long it works, and if it doesn't,
you cut it loose. Any type of marketing endeavor that
we've get into. I make it perfectly clear, okay that
you know it's gonna we're going to try it, test
(13:01):
the waters for a couple you know months. If it
doesn't work, we're done. So you better make sure that
it works again. I've got great fishing captains down here
in Florida. Well sometimes, but we're out fishing out there offshore.
The captain will know. We'll be on a spot for
less than a couple of minutes, no bites, we're out boom.
He knows. You know, I don't have to know when to,
(13:24):
you know, basically, get out of dodge. Here's another one
you cannot again, and it's it's hard sometimes and I'm
not very good at getting rid of people. But you
got lazy people. They have to go. And you have
to give honest and sometimes harsh feedback to your employees
(13:45):
in the same way that I can be, you know,
a bit harsh here on the program when it comes
to finances and decisions that people make, or I might
be harsh with the kids that I coach. I got
to be honest with them. Where do you want me
to lie? No, I'm gonna be honest. And that's something
that you have to do as a boss. It is
(14:06):
the few things we like to separate ourselves from everybody else,
and we like the way things run here. And you
know what, God willing will continue to do this moving forward. Again.
I know a lot of younger people, a lot of
college kids listening to this program. I get feedback from
(14:28):
them all the time, Questions, countlets, whatever it may be.
On startups, this industry, feel free reach out watch dog
on Wall street dot com.
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