September 13th,  2024  [6 min. read]

By Drew W. Boyer, CFP®

There are a few moments in one’s life that something happens so dramatically and publicly, that you remember it for the rest of your life. For my grandparents, the end of WWII. For my parents, it was JFK’s assassination. For me, it was 9/11.

I still remember it like it was yesterday. Cloudless, clear blue skies, and a radiant sun on a beautiful fall day. I had come downstairs around 8:30 to eat breakfast, before heading off to my college job, and turned on the TV. Within minutes, at 8:46am, there were reports that one of the twin towers was billowing smoke from an unknown reason. Then reports started coming in claiming a plane had caused it. Shortly after, live on TV, the second plane had struck at 9:03am. This was no accident.

Rushing off to work, equal parts confused and late, we turned on the regularly scheduled radio show, Howard Stern, to hear the shock jock in full professional news anchor mode. That’s the moment when I knew this was a serious moment greater than anything I had witnessed before. When he reported another plane had struck the Pentagon- the fear of being under attack took hold. By midday, the world we had known was forever changed with 2,996 innocent people losing their lives. Amongst them, 343 NYFD, 23 NYPD, and 37 NY Port Authority PD upholding their oaths and courageously serving their community to the death.

Life was torn apart for families, communities, and our nation.

Nine months later, I walked out of a highly secured OSU Horseshoe that featured President George W. Bush. It was a highly tense environment where the ‘War on Terror’ had just begun, but a glimpse into how we as a nation were going to fully embrace the domestic security state. In a moment of life achievement, my Dad took more pictures of the snipers on each corner of the Shoe than of me graduating. We all became side-tracked by the new enemy.

Fast forward a little over a year, I found myself pursuing my dream job: financial advisor extraordinaire. In 2003, the going was tough building a book of business post-dot com crash and 9/11. No one wanted to keep losing and most people were looking to just make something. Interest rates were around 5% back then at banks, so that’s what sold. Until I was welcomed into the first responder playground: the firehouse.

I’d love to tell you that I have a family connection to first responders and they were my natural market, but that’d be a lie. What really happened was a chance email blast to a fire chief who accidentally replied back ‘yes’. Free pizzas were offered, an ultimatum was issued that I’d get only one chance to speak to all three shifts, and if I sucked, then best o’ luck. The first day was five, the second day was ten, and the third was fifteen. My foot was in the proverbial door.

When I got permission to swing by stations and talk about planning and investments, I was greeted skeptically (thanks life insurance selling-only hacks), but I wanted them to know that:

1. Post-9/11, I respected their service and dedication to their communities,
2. I wasn’t there to sell more life insurance- I was a financial planner, and
3. I’d be honored to work with them and their families so they could work towards their goals, their dreams, and a retirement after they served out their duties.

I’d also love to think that approach was respected, but what really worked was being real with them. The humor, the wit, the self-depreciation, that my Dad had served as Marine, and that my Mom was also a public employee (a teacher)- that realness was perhaps what the brotherhood and sisterhood calls for. Trust that you build so everyone has each other’s backs when things go sideways. Just like on 9/11.

The Great Financial Crisis of 08’-09’ was one of those moments. It was a terrible time personally and professionally and I remember one of my clients calling me to “make sure I wasn’t the jumper on one of the calls they were responding too.”  My answer: “I don’t want to ever meet you guys unscheduled while you’re working. If I do though, it’ll be a first floor window.” That’s the honesty and caring I thrive on and think they do as well.

Many financial advisors hid under their desks, but I came around more often. My review sheet in October 2008 was titled, “The Good. The Bad. The Ugly.”  No sugar coating- it was a terrible time, but it passed. A valuable lesson only life teaches. I kept countless clients from selling by saying, “it’s not timing the markets, but time in the markets.” 

To me, the fire service starting transitioning into a professional business sometime after that. As public budgets got tightened and the tragedy of 9/11 faded into the annual ‘Patriots Day’, people started asking “what are my tax dollars going towards?” The fun was starting to wane. No one cared that they had to work one day on / one day off or that every third year, they miss Thanksgiving and Christmas. I had to give emergency talks to fire families when levies failed. Tougher times, but we all kept on.

Enter the explosion of the mobile internet and social media. Screens became smaller and so did attention spans. In a few years, you’d be physically in front of people, but not in front of their eyes. In 2019, I decided to create ‘Digital Drew’ to go along with physical Drew, your friendly neighborhood concierge firehouse financial advisor. That’s business: adapt or die.

Then… COVID. No access, no human connections, no joking, no laughing- only isolation and increased separation of you’re either ‘this’ or ‘that’. The fire table that welcomed all discussion was now partitioned-off, doors locked- only video conferencing and phone calls. Being human was taken away from human beings. Financial advice became difficult to give as the video or phone calls weren’t the same, but people realized for the first time in a while what they really wanted in life. Retirement yes, but respect more. By early 2021, my law enforcement clients had had enough. Why would you give your life to a career where you give an oath to protect and serve if you felt society and, in some cases, your own employer, was at odds with that?

My phone absolutely blew up.

I did my best to keep up with everyone wanting to retire, retire earlier, or simply find a different path forward. I was supportive and put on my unique problem-solver hat, but it wasn’t easy to keep up with double the demand and half of the supply. Growth sounds exciting, but at the end of the day, I just want my clients to be whatever version happy is to them. I also don’t want to become another half-ass, full-price professional that are all too common these days in every field.

In 2022, with a sound team in place, we formally opened ‘Boyer Financial Group’. The same everything as before, but a dedicated office where we would operate under our new mantra:

“We Serve Everyday Heroes.”

I couldn’t be more proud of our first responder clients and how I’ve helped them through the last 20+ years, but earning their trust and their family’s trust has been the greatest award I could ever display in said office.

During this time of year, around 9/11, is a special reminder to say thank you to all first responders for their service, but we do our best to serve everyday heroes, every day. That’s my promise and I expect you to hold me to it.