Rich Schuette is the Founder and CEO of Avalan Wealth Management, a firm based in Santa Barbara that specializes in personalized financial, business, and investment planning for entrepreneurs and affluent individuals. Rich brings over 25 years of experience in the financial industry and is known for his relationship-first, truth-over-tact approach to advising. He also hosts The Road Already Traveled podcast, where he explores the entrepreneurial journeys of his peers and shares practical financial insights.
Here’s a Glimpse of What You’ll Hear:
- [2:29] Rich Schuette recounts his early entrepreneurial lessons at his grandfather’s golf driving range
- [7:58] Why poor financial advice led Rich’s grandfather to lose the majority of his wealth
- [12:13] How a detour into copier sales shaped Rich’s future as an advisor
- [15:40] The emotional challenges of managing other people’s money, especially at a young age
- [17:09] Starting Avalan Wealth with a commitment to prioritizing clients over profits
- [21:53] The importance of maintaining integrity and standing up to clients
- [23:54] Rich’s humorous yet firm pushback when a client wanted to invest heavily in physical gold
- [26:35] How media sensationalism misleads investors and the concept of investment pornography
- [30:44] Why Avalan grows by partnering with like-minded advisors rather than acquiring firms
In this episode…
Many entrepreneurs build their wealth through grit, innovation, and risk-taking, only to risk losing it due to poor financial decisions or advisors who won’t tell them the hard truths. Without trustworthy guidance, even the most successful business owners can see their fortunes dwindle — sometimes within a generation. So, how do you ensure your hard-earned wealth lasts?
Rich Schuette shares how personal experiences, especially his grandfather’s financial journey, influenced his approach to wealth advising. Rich explains why standing firm in the face of wealthy, strong-willed clients is essential, even if it costs you business. From avoiding trendy investments to building a resilient, value-aligned firm, Rich offers actionable strategies that blend empathy, accountability, and expert financial planning.
Tune in to this episode of the Smart Business Revolution Podcast as John Corcoran interviews Rich Schuette, Founder and CEO of Avalan Wealth Management, about how to build and protect entrepreneurial wealth with integrity. Rich shares lessons from his grandfather’s investing mistakes, explains why emotional intelligence is key in financial advising, and discusses how to combat investment fads and misinformation.
Resources mentioned in this episode:
- John Corcoran on LinkedIn
- Rise25
- Rich Schuette on LinkedIn
- Avalan Wealth Management
- Entrepreneurs’ Organization
- The Road Already Traveled
Quotable Moments:
- “He was paying someone to take advice, not give it — that’s where the real loss began.”
- “You can’t be a true advisor if you’re too afraid to lose the client by telling the truth.”
- “I built Avalan for entrepreneurs, by an entrepreneur — because I know what it’s like.”
- “When your gardener gives you stock tips, you know we’ve gone too far.”
- “Our industry needs fewer yes-men and more people willing to say what needs to be said.”
Action Steps:
- Find a financial advisor who challenges you: Entrepreneurs often need advisors who can speak candidly rather than validate their ideas. This type of partnership ensures better long-term decision-making and reduces the risk of emotional, impulsive investments.
- Avoid trendy investment fads: Investing in assets like gold or crypto just because they’re hot can lead to poor timing and major losses. Build a diversified portfolio based on purpose, not panic.
- Don’t equate sales with advisory: Many financial professionals start in sales without the experience or integrity to advise properly. Vet your advisors carefully to ensure they’re offering more than just transactions.
- Preserve wealth through education and planning: Understanding money management should start early, as Rich Schuette learned from reading The Wall Street Journal at age 10. Educate your family to avoid repeating mistakes across generations.
- Grow your business without sacrificing culture: Rich scales Avalan by aligning with like-minded advisors rather than acquiring firms. This ensures the client-first culture remains intact while expanding reach and impact.
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Episode Transcript
John Corcoran: 00:00
Today, we’re talking about smart and savvy wealth building strategies in today’s uncertain economy. And my guest today is Rich. I’ll tell you more about him in a second, so stay tuned.
Intro: 00:13
Welcome to the Smart Business Revolution Podcast, where we feature top entrepreneurs, business leaders, and thought leaders and ask them how they built key relationships to get where they are today. Now let’s get started with the show.
John Corcoran: 00:30
All right. Welcome, everyone. John Corcoran here I am, the host of this show. And you know, every week we have smart CEOs, founders and entrepreneurs from all kinds of companies. And we’ve had, you know, Netflix and Grubhub and Redfin, Gusto, Kinko’s.
So check out the archives. Lots of great episodes for you to check out there. And of course, before we get into this interview, this episode is brought to you by our company, Rise25, where we help businesses to give to and connect to their dream relationships and partnerships. How do we do that? We do that by helping you to run your podcast.
We are the easy button for a company to launch and run a podcast. We do strategy, accountability and full execution. In fact, we invented what some are calling the Wix of B2B podcasting. It’s our platform Podcast Co-Pilot, and so you can learn more about this by going to our website, Rise25.com or emailing us at [email protected]. All right. Let’s get into today’s guest. His name is Rich Schuette. He’s the Founder and CEO of Avalan Wealth Management based out of Santa Barbara.
Beautiful Santa Barbara, my former hometown, home of my alma mater. It’s a firm that specializes in personalized financial, business and investment planning for entrepreneurs and other affluent individuals. He’s been in space for over 25 years, and he has got a lot of experience even before that in sales. So we’re going to talk about that experience as well. And he’s also the host of TheRoad Already Traveled podcast, where he shares insights from his entrepreneurial journey and interviews with other industry leaders.
Rich. Such a pleasure to have you here today, and you’ve got such varied interests in a lot of different things. So I’m sure we’re going to cover a lot, but I’d love to start by getting to know my guests and what they were like as a kid. And your grandfather owned some of your grandfather was this kind of larger than life character, and he owned a golf course and taught you at a young age to go out to gather balls, which I love the fact that he owned the course and he was teaching you this, like fundamental school, fundamental tool of going out and finding diamonds in the rough, literally. So tell us a little bit about what that was like.
Rich Schuette: 02:29
Yeah. John, thanks for having me. By the way, This is what I’m looking forward to. It’s gonna be a lot of fun.
It was actually kind of cool, you know, small correction. My grandfather actually owned a couple of different golf ranges, not courses, but one of them was actually the largest range from the Chicagoland area all the way to the West coast in the country at the time. So it was kind of a neat thing for him. That’s huge. It literally was wow.
I got pictures in my office of the T line. He was definitely my mentor, my hero, my inspiration, and honestly my best friend as a kid. Super cool guy. So yeah, he had retired. It was his, his, his range was in the Chicagoland area and he had retired because he wanted to move out to California and be close to my dad and, and and me, which was a pretty cool deal.
And so from the time that I was really little, he was always a guy that was around. But he wasn’t just he just wasn’t all those things that I explained, but he was also somebody that was always trying to teach me how to do things that would set me up for my future success. So.
John Corcoran: 03:40
And was he a financially savvy guy in the traditional sense? Has he learned a lot about finances? It sounds like he made a lot of money, but where was he in terms of knowledge of wealth building strategies?
Rich Schuette: 03:52
Yeah, he was probably at a one out of 100, you know, in terms of mindset around money.
John Corcoran: 03:58
He was so good at making money but didn’t have the right mindset around it.
Rich Schuette: 04:03
No, he just didn’t. He was a depressed baby right. You know, he just knew that he needed to make enough to be able to to keep going. And then when he got it, he really didn’t know what to do with it. So he just kind of relied on other people to try and help him figure that out. Not necessarily always in his best interest.
John Corcoran: 04:21
So he actually gave you a subscription to the Wall Street Journal when you’re like ten years old.
Rich Schuette: 04:27
He did that’s how he had a house in Malibu. I grew up in Ventura County. And so, you know, it was a 45 minute drive. And so his way of staying in touch with me, you know, as a kid, you know, obviously pre-internet and all that kind of stuff is he bought me a subscription to Wall Street Journal, and he would call me every day after school and ask me to read him stock quotes.
John Corcoran: 04:51
I love this. Did you ever occur to you that like, wait, grandpa, why don’t you get your own subscription? Or did you, like, play along?
Rich Schuette: 04:58
No, I didn’t understand it. Right. I mean, obviously the rear view mirror makes a whole lot of sense. Definitely created an interest for me. And it also created a whole set of knowledge.
Something I didn’t mention about my grandfather. You know, as a kid, I was chasing these golf balls down. We would pack. We’d literally have these enormous gunny sacks full of balls that that, you know, would weigh down a car. Just a couple of them, you know, the car was riding on its rails.
We’d get them from various different greenskeepers of golf courses around, and then we’d sort through them and clean them up, and we’d repackage the ones that were good. And then I would go out and sell those golf balls to, like, my dad’s friends, neighbors, you know, anyone that would, you know, play golf for, you know, not a lot of money for like, barely used balls that were all cleaned and, and set up. And then the ones that didn’t make the cut got put back into gunny bags. And we sent them back to Chicago, where the range that he had sold to his brother would buy him, and they’d stripe them and use them on the golf range. So that’s kind of my first, you know, my first entry into that.
But something I didn’t tell you about my grandfather is that, you know, as he was having some amount of success and he was in a people business, he, he, he was around a lot of people. He told me he never worked a day in his life. Right. He said his job wasn’t, you know, the golf range was actually giving coffee to friends. And so he talked to a lot of people that are doing a lot of different things.
And at one point, one of his customers had convinced him to make an investment in a small startup company that he knew nothing about. But he trusted the guy. And the startup company was called Teletape. It went on to become various different things and eventually became CBS Viacom. It was bought by CBS Viacom, the company that he was the single largest investor in, you know, not knowing as he did this went on.
They produced the first Sesame Street. They did the first live broadcast, live sports broadcasts in the country. So here’s my grandfather, who never got out of the eighth grade. His father was murdered in 1929, three months before the depression hit. Wow.
And he was in eighth grade or going into eighth grade, and he got pulled out and had to go to work and support a family of five brothers and sisters and his mom. So he had no knowledge of anything other than just how to make a buck. And now here’s this dude that’s sitting literally in, in in a Manhattan boardroom, you know, at board meetings for, for this publicly traded company that, that he had me reading, you know, the stock quote on the Wall Street Journal to him and, hey, grandpa, it’s at four and 3/8 today. It’s like, oh my God, it’s up to five and a 16th. You know, back in the days of fractions and it was pretty cool. And there was meaning behind it to him. And it was a wonderful, incredible lesson for me.
John Corcoran: 07:37
So did he have it? Is this what inspired you to go into helping others with managing their money? Because there’s also a flip side to this story. There was kind of a negative element to it as well, in that he didn’t really have someone who he trusted and who gave him good guidance. You want to talk about that side of it?
Rich Schuette: 07:58
Yeah. So well, the good side of it is what got me interested in the business and why I’m doing it. And the bad side of it is why I’m doing it the way I am doing it. The good side. I was in seventh grade.
He took me down. He’s like, you got to meet my broker. You got to meet my broker. You understand? My grandfather was like, the biggest personality in the room, right? He was that guy that you walk into a room and everyone will gravitate towards, right?
John Corcoran: 08:18
They want all the oxygen to go towards him. Yeah.
Rich Schuette: 08:21
Oh my God, I wish that I had an ounce of that. It was incredible. Yeah. And I’d never seen my grandfather in my entire life up to that point in seventh grade ever look up to anybody. But when he introduced me to his stock broker at Dean Witter, it’s like I could see the admiration that he had for this man.
And just in how he addressed him and how he interacted with them and how he introduced me. And I looked at that as a seventh grade kid going, I want to do that right. I want to do something that gets his attention the way this guy gets it, as opposed to everyone giving him theirs.
John Corcoran: 08:55
Yeah. And talk a little bit about also the fact that this money wasn’t all that invested all that well and why that happened.
Rich Schuette: 09:04
So yeah, that’s the downside of it. And it’s why I do my business the way I do it today, and it’s why I work only with entrepreneurs is because I have an understanding of what that’s actually like from living it firsthand. You know, as an entrepreneur, you know full well that and I can say this too, because I am, you know, we’re we’re big personalities, we’re Type-A people. We’re driven. We know everything about everything, right?
Because we’re forced to just to simply stay in business. And that was my grandfather, right? It’s like, you know, so it was really hard to tell him what was right. He had preconceived ideas of what he needed to do, what he needed to sell, what he needed to buy. How much of it you know.
And so he was basically paying a guy to take his advice as opposed to the guy giving him advice. And again, you know, while he was savvy in terms of, you know, stumbling into this incredible business deal that made him a lot of money, you know, running two businesses he didn’t know, you know, anything about actually investing that money. Right. Even that investment that he made in that little startup company wasn’t made as an investment. It was made to help a guy that he believed in.
Right. So my grandfather would, you know, tell him, well, we’re going to do this whether it makes sense or not, and we’re going to do that. And whether it made sense or not, he would sell at the wrong times, buy the wrong things at the wrong time, and not put his portfolio in a way that was really working for him. And I saw that more so after I got in the business. The remnants of what this guy had done over the course of time, and not so much of what he did, it’s what he didn’t do.
It’s what he let my grandfather do. But when my grandfather retired, you know, he was worth in today’s dollars, you know, north of $30 million. Not a small net worth. When my grandmother drew her last breath at 94, we were inside of six months before I was going to have to start paying her monthly expenses. Wow.
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