Announcer: 0:00

The following programming is sponsored by Mark J Bernstein. The views expressed do not necessarily reflect the views of this station, its management or Peasley Media Group. Entrepreneur, founder, author and financial advisor, Marc Bernstein helps high-performing business owners turn their visions into reality. Through his innovative work and the Forward Focus Forums, Marc connects entrepreneurs to resources that fuel their success. Founders Forum is a radio show and podcast where entrepreneurs share their journeys, revealing the lessons they've learned and the stories behind their success. Join Marc and his guests for a mix of inspiration, valuable insights and a little fun. Now let's dive in.

Marc Bernstein: 0:43

Good morning America. How are you? This is Marc Bernstein. This is Founders Forum, as you know, and we are broadcasting from Estero, florida, with Beasley Media Group, wxkb B103.9 on the FM dial, as well as many other stations down here, and we have our engineer, roger Marley, who I've loved working with and is doing a great job, and we have our guest today, alex, who I'll fully introduce in a moment, but I'm just excited to be here.

Marc Bernstein: 1:14

I always say it's always sunny in Philadelphia, but it's really not the case, but it is almost always sunny here. So, anyway, we joke about that with the weather, etc. A lot going on in the world right now, and our topic today is a little more serious than what we usually do, going to talk about the economy of the United States, because we've got a lot of things going on with the new administration and we've got tariffs and we've got significant federal workforce cuts and all kinds of other budget cuts and things like that. And Alex, as you'll hear, is in the field of the financial field. What he does is unique and we'll talk about that soon. But I just want to get your take on what you think is going on and where you think we're headed with all this.

Alex Pron, CFP®, CBDA: 2:00

Yeah, Marc, thank you so much for having me and yeah, it's very nice to get out of blustery March in Philadelphia and down to Southwest Florida. So thank you again. It can be blustery here too, but warm blustery, yeah, warm blustery. I think it was 65 degrees when we walked in the studio this morning.

Marc Bernstein: 2:19

We have the Gulf of America winds coming in, Of course of course, yeah, it's.

Alex Pron, CFP®, CBDA: 2:23

I mean, it's an interesting time to be an investor, it's an interesting time to be a financial advisor. Look, I saw some numbers this morning. You know, based on the February deficits that were run by our government, we're on pace for $2.75 trillion of deficits this fiscal year. After, you know, after running $2 trillion in deficits last year. It's hard to fathom those numbers. And look, I think it's good that the government is trying to attack the excess spending through Doge. The tariffs, I think, are a very controversial topic, but I do think that, um, I do think that we need some change in our economy. I do think that, um, you know, when you are the world reserve currency, um, it becomes, you know, it becomes hard when you're, when the dollar has been so strong for so long, um, it disadvantages us on the world stage from an economic standpoint from an export standpoint.

Alex Pron, CFP®, CBDA: 3:28

So I do think that they need to make some adjustments and I don't think it's going to be easy. Right, Change is hard, Uncertainty is hard for the market and I think you're seeing that over the last week or two, right in the thick of that right now.

Marc Bernstein: 3:40

Yeah, you may be listening to this later, but right now we're going through volatility index, which is one of the things I follow in our own financial planning practice. Let's see, it's about 30%, 40% higher than normal and on any given day it can be significantly higher than that or a little bit lower, but for a couple years we had it really much lower than normal. But for a couple years we had it really much lower than normal. So volatility has turned upside down on its head right now, which is kind of interesting. So with that, let me introduce Alex. So Alex is a financial advisor, but he broke away from it. Says the company here Should we say the company?

Alex Pron, CFP®, CBDA: 4:20

Yeah, it was Merrill Lynch.

Marc Bernstein: 4:22

It was Merrill Lynch, where he wasn't allowed to educate his clients on why they should own Bitcoin, and Alex, as you'll hear, believes that's an important thing to be looking at. And I want to give you my disclaimer that we're not promoting Bitcoin. We're not promoting crypto or any other product on the show, but Alex is an educator, as you'll find out, and we're going to get a little bit of an education. So Alex founded Crossover Capital, an SEC registered fee only firm to help advise clients on three things One, why you should own Bitcoin. Two, how do you properly secure your Bitcoin from loss or theft. And three, timing of buying Bitcoin when does it make sense to buy Bitcoin and when does it make sense to play some defense and take some chips off the table?

Marc Bernstein: 5:07

And again, I have to say March, my company, is MarchForwardcom. We're not endorsing this concept. I'm not endorsing it, but I am getting educated, along with you, about Bitcoin through Alex, and he's got a lot of great information about it which I think everybody should hear, which is why he's here today. So welcome officially, alex.

Alex Pron, CFP®, CBDA: 5:25

Nice to have you here, Marc. Thanks again. Hey, did you happen to see in the news the SEC fines that were levied to Wells Fargo and to Merrill? It was maybe a month ago.

Marc Bernstein: 5:40

Yes.

Alex Pron, CFP®, CBDA: 5:41

Yep, Yep, Around uh shorting clients on interest payments.

Marc Bernstein: 5:46

Yeah.

Alex Pron, CFP®, CBDA: 5:47

So, um, for investors who are unaware and I think this kind of goes back to you know, I spent 12 years on wall street uh, yeah, at, at a large firm like Merrill, I think there's, you know, there's really good advisors that all firms out there, um, there's really good advisors at all firms out there. Um, you know, for, for me, just the ability to um control the narrative and to, you know, teach our clients about something that we weren't allowed to teach them about at Merrill is, like, really important to me. But I think there were also a lot of things that you see, kind of behind the scenes, that many clients maybe don't see. So I think, for those investors who aren't aware Wells Merrill, a few other companies the SEC investigated them for shorting their clients and managed accounts on interest. They weren't allowing the financial advisors to you know if interest rates are 5% on cash they weren't offering any interest bearing options for clients that had cash in their investment accounts.

Alex Pron, CFP®, CBDA: 6:51

Q3 earnings call for Wells Fargo. They took a beating on earnings and their chief financial officer-.

Marc Bernstein: 7:01

Wells Fargo has been taking a beating the last few years in general, yeah, some other practices as well.

Alex Pron, CFP®, CBDA: 7:06

But yeah, perhaps, perhaps, um, their their chief financial officer cited that because they fixed the glitch, uh, prior to that Q3 earnings, call it cost the company $128 million right, that tells you how much they were making before they fixed it, which means they were profiting about $500 million a year off of not paying their clients the interest that they should have been paying them right.

Alex Pron, CFP®, CBDA: 7:35

And so I think, independent financial planning I you know, uh, independent you know financial planning firms like yours, um, and, and like mine, it's really just getting back to helping clients and not being influenced by these things that happen behind the scenes. By the way, I think, uh, I think it was, um, the total fines from the sec were $ we're $60 million total to Wells and Merrill, on, on, on that Um, which is not really enough.

Alex Pron, CFP®, CBDA: 8:03

It doesn't kind of seem that way, but you know, I think the ability to also educate clients about how wall street works, um, how the financial system works, is really important within the context of like, well, why Bitcoin, right? Um, so yeah, it's been, we're having fun context of like, well, why bitcoin?

Marc Bernstein: 8:21

right? Um. So yeah, it's been. We're having fun, no question about it, and, as you mentioned, we and I don't talk much about my company or financial planning on the show intentionally, but we did go to a much, a very small, independent broker dealer, to have a lot more freedom, um, that you don't have at the big brokerage houses in terms of other products. I don't think they're there yet with crypto, but I do think it's actually coming and I think that that's the trend is to be open to everything that's out there, not just traditional stocks, bonds and cash. Another thing I'll just comment on it used to be years ago that stocks and bonds were non-correlated assets, but, as we know, from 2008, 2009, the pandemic and actually kind of what's happening right now, they often move in the same direction together. So, if nothing else, you need diversifiers in your portfolio.

Marc Bernstein: 9:15

That are not correlated to those two types of assets. Would you agree with that?

Alex Pron, CFP®, CBDA: 9:21

Yeah, I mean. I think there's a lot of things that investors should be rethinking. I think there's a lot of different types of risk out there. People tend to focus on volatility risk. When I think about a 10-year treasury getting 4.3%, we have $10 trillion in treasuries coming due this year. How is the government going to refinance that? Are they going to have to print more money? There's some people that think they might have to print more money than they printed during COVID.

Marc Bernstein: 9:52

This goes back to the deficit issue.

Alex Pron, CFP®, CBDA: 9:55

It goes right back to it, and so I think having things in your portfolio that can help protect you against inflation risk, interest rate risk, is important. So I think we're in a 40-year bull market for bonds. I think we're in a totally different investment environment today. I think we're going to be in a totally different investment environment over the next five or 10 years and I don't think that just blindly saying well, this has worked for a really long time, I don't think that that's going to serve investors well.

Marc Bernstein: 10:32

So our show today is about the founder's story, so I want to get to that and appreciate your input on the economy, which is really an extended version of our topic of the day. Alex, tell me about how you started. You already mentioned how you went from the traditional financial advisor role to what you're doing today, but tell us a little bit about that journey. I want to hear what kind of challenges you had along the way in terms of building crossover capital.

Alex Pron, CFP®, CBDA: 10:58

Yeah, I think, backing up a little bit. I studied accounting in college, did a couple of years at Ernst Young, got my CPA 12 years at Merrill Lynch, certified financial planner and in 2020, I started investing in Bitcoin, started studying. I took an 80-hour course at Wharton on blockchain analytics and digital assets. I took an 80-hour course at Wharton on blockchain analytics and digital assets and it really struck me when I went to Merrill and wanted to send a letter to my clients letting them know that I had taken this course and that they have an advocate and we weren't allowed to buy Bitcoin for clients at the time but just to let them know that they had an advocate. I think there are tax planning considerations with something like Bitcoin estate planning considerations.

Alex Pron, CFP®, CBDA: 11:43

You want to educate them about the ins and outs of Bitcoin. Just to let them know that they have an advocate. And Merrill wouldn't let me send that letter. And my antennas really started going up and as I started doing more and more research on the industry which I had never really had to do, I was sort of content where I was. But as I started doing more and more research on the industry which I had never really had to, do.

Marc Bernstein: 12:02

I was sort of content where I was.

Alex Pron, CFP®, CBDA: 12:03

But as I started doing more and more research on the financial industry, I kind of realized if I was going to do this right and be able to really deliver specialized solutions around this really growing space, I was going to have to start my own firm. So that's kind of the, that's the genesis behind it how long ago was that. So we launched Crossover in May of 2023. So we're coming up on our two year anniversary. I would say there was probably a good 12 to 18 months of prep interviewing different custodians and financial planning tools and technology companies.

Alex Pron, CFP®, CBDA: 12:43

Um, we had a great firm, true independence. They're um half based in Philadelphia, half based in Oregon and they handle kind of all of our middle back office operations cybersecurity, compliance, hr, payroll, hr so that we can just really focus on what we do for clients, right. So there's just a lot of work and research and interviewing different firms like that to make sure we had the infrastructure in place to hit the ground running.

Marc Bernstein: 13:11

What challenges did you face in building that infrastructure? I'm sure it wasn't just a straight line to success.

Alex Pron, CFP®, CBDA: 13:18

Yeah, well, look, I mean, you're working two jobs. Right. You still have to be a financial advisor by day for your you know hundreds of clients. I know that one, yeah, yeah, yeah, there's all the other stuff behind the scenes, Exactly so, um, you're working two jobs at once and then you know, the transition itself is challenging, right? You're? You're, you're learning on the fly, You're building a plane while flying it.

Marc Bernstein: 13:39

You have some people around you helping with a lot of this stuff, I would imagine.

Alex Pron, CFP®, CBDA: 13:43

Well, yeah, I mean going back to True, independence, right, I mean they serve 30 firms that have made that same move. So not only did we have their deep expertise, we were able to talk to some other firms that had, that had made the move before us. You know, um what mistakes they made, what worked really well, um. So you know, we're really thankful to, um, to true and to some of those other firms that were really willing to share a little bit of staff as well, right People?

Alex Pron, CFP®, CBDA: 14:16

Yeah, I, my business partner Tasha uh, left Merrill with me as well. She's fantastic. She's a certified divorce financial analyst, so she does a little bit of work in the divorce designation yeah, um, and then we have, we've, we're on our second intern now, our first intern studying abroad, in italy right now. Both of them have been hugely helpful. Um, it's amazing. By the way, maybe we can talk a little bit about this like AI, right? You know what could an intern do for you. You know, five years ago, right Like basically nothing.

Alex Pron, CFP®, CBDA: 14:50

Right right, basically nothing. Now the answers to whatever questions they have are at their fingertips in seconds, right, so an intern, our interns are doing really impactful work.

Marc Bernstein: 15:01

We need to take a quick break, but I want to continue on that conversation because I can add some to that and we can have a nice conversation around that. We'll be back in a minute.

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Marc Bernstein: 15:53

We are back on Founders Forum with our guest today, alex Pron of Crossover Capital and Alex, just before the break we were talking about what you can.

Marc Bernstein: 16:03

it's a really a bigger issue, I think, but what you can do with interns today, because of the advent of, not the advent because it's been around, but I guess the you know the great accessibility to AI now Because listen, this whole show all the things I do. I have a virtual assistant who's great, shan Estevez. Every once in a while I give her credit she's behind the scenes putting all this together. I mean, you guys are both here.

Marc Bernstein: 16:26

Roger the engineer, I don't deal with any of this stuff. She deals with it all and she makes great use of AI in creating a lot of our marketing pieces and all the things we do and what she doesn't know. She finds out very quickly and she's a young person who's making her way in the world and it's really amazing. Everyone talks about the downsides of AI, but building a company is one of the reasons I was asking you about who you have, because you can outsource a lot of your back office operations, like you talked about. You have a partner that has some unique abilities that are different than yours, and then you can have interns who can do a lot of the work that might have used to cost you, you know whatever $100,000 a year person, but because of their access to information and tools, they can fill those roles for you and you want to talk more about that.

Alex Pron, CFP®, CBDA: 17:24

Yeah, look as a new company, whether it's social media marketing pieces, um, different um, you know, different um initiatives that we're trying to implement. Look, you know, uh, what did you have to do five years ago? You had to read a couple books, probably, right, maybe hire a consultant trying to implement some new process. That's totally foreign and outside of the scope of your expertise. Now you can have, you can have your intern build the playbook for you and for you to review and say, hey, yeah, we want to do this for sure, throw this out, let's do more of this. All right, now, run with the next phase of implementation, right, and they start to put it together. And then, you know, you give more feedback and, next thing, you know, you've got a new initiative underway in days, not months.

Marc Bernstein: 18:22

In our company, march, we just had to. We had one person leave and we had to replace her and we needed to hire someone else. And what I was? I was not that involved. My partners and our office manager were more involved in the hiring, but I kind of watched the process from a distance. And then I got to interview one of the people who's already started and I'll talk to the other one in about a week that we've hired.

Marc Bernstein: 18:45

But what people are bringing to the table is different. Today we were looking for people that could help us not so much with their knowledge and they both had industry experience. But we don't need the industry experience Because, like you said, all that information is readily available, readily trainable but they both had expertise on different areas or processes and how to create those and how to rethink them. And again, if you're a good business person, I think you're hiring people that are better than you are, you know, in different areas and smarter than you are in different areas and smarter than you are in different areas. And with these hires, I think not that it's the first time, but I think we've advanced ourselves in terms of these hires because if we could have done some of the new processes we needed to do. On our own before, we would have done them or we were too busy or it's just not really what we do but we found the people that can do it and they can implement it, and they certainly have many AI and other technological tools available for them to, you know, to accomplish that. So I think that's a great observation on your part.

Marc Bernstein: 19:52

I want to jump right to. We usually do it towards the end, but we are sort of approaching the end. But I think there's a lot of questions here I would like to ask you about. If this were so this is now March of 2025, if you and I are talking and I think we will be 10 years from now, march of 2035. And I asked you you know, alex, what would have to happen? What would? What would have to happen we're having that conversation for you to feel that that 10 year period was a success for you professionally, personally, in any other thing you want to comment, which is another way of asking your 10 year vision for your business and your life.

Alex Pron, CFP®, CBDA: 20:32

It's a great question. Look, I look at Bitcoin and, without getting into the nitty gritty, right, let's just look at 10 years for Bitcoin, right? 10 years ago, was the government going to ban it? What's adoption going to look like, whereas today you have the Bitcoin Act in Congress that calls for the United States to buy a million Bitcoin, there's only 21 million Bitcoin, right? That's quite a bit. You have nation states adopting it. You have institutions like BlackRock adopting it. You've got billionaire hedge fund managers like Bill Miller, paul Tudor Jones, ray dalio adopting it, right, and so I look at our business I mean, yeah, sailors.

Alex Pron, CFP®, CBDA: 21:29

I mean, well, that's a good point. I didn't touch on 70 public companies owned north of 600 000 bitcoin, right, right, um. And so I mean, what's that blackstone as well, now I I haven't seen their name associated with the space off the top of my head. I'll, I will definitely look that up well, they're starting.

Marc Bernstein: 21:50

They're starting to talk about it, whether they've acquired or not.

Alex Pron, CFP®, CBDA: 21:53

I mean you have um, uh, who, who else is getting into the space? Citadel um ken griffin's company getting into the space. Canter fitzgerald's been in the space right now you they're. You know former ceo howard lutnick um, you know secretary of commerce, so you know, I, I, I lead with all that to say that, like your average, high net worth retail investor still isn't in and doesn't have an advocate.

Alex Pron, CFP®, CBDA: 22:24

So success to me is continuing to scale our offering and our reach, partnering with other financial advisory firms family offices, cpa firms, to make sure that those firms can confidently educate their client bases and implement some sort of solution for their client bases to help people confidently and appropriately allocate to the space. And so it's hard for me to visualize what our team will exactly look like, because I think it's going to depend on a number of things, but I think it actually starts with sort of Bitcoin's adoption story and as that continues to evolve, I think that will actually really help us grow and scale our business.

Marc Bernstein: 23:22

What challenges do you see in getting to that point? If I were to interpret what you said, you'd like to be in the position of educating as many people as possible about Bitcoin and opening up their minds to the possibility of it. What kind of things, what kind of walls or challenges are facing you in regard to that?

Alex Pron, CFP®, CBDA: 23:42

you know, um Marc, I was at the forbes top teams conference last week and I happened to like randomly sit next to rich bernstein at dinner. Oh yeah, and rich spoke for no relation, I just yeah, yeah, although that my brother's name is rich bernstein okay, yeah, I don't think it's the same one.

Alex Pron, CFP®, CBDA: 24:01

Yeah, yeah, yeah, exactly. So Rich talked a little bit about the market and investment opportunities in the equity space that he looks for, and he said something to the effect of you want to look for the. Let me think about this you want to be the one bank in a town with a thousand bars, as opposed to a bank amongst a thousand banks in a town with one bar. And when I look at crossover capital right at Merrill Lynch, you still can't buy Bitcoin for your clients unless they have north of $10 million right. Your wire houses really don't allow their financial advisor base to do that, so there's a lot of people who are underserved. I kind of feel like we are that one bank in a town with a thousand bars and the challenge is really just you know, how do you continue to improve your educational materials to help people get comfortable with this really foreign asset class?

Alex Pron, CFP®, CBDA: 25:10

But it really only is foreign because most people don't have a financial advisor that can help them in the space. So that's probably the biggest challenge.

Marc Bernstein: 25:18

So we've had a couple of conversations about Bitcoin, so I know what skills you have, but how would you describe the skills you have to kind of overcome that, that obstacle of, of you know, getting it, getting your message out to as many people as possible?

Alex Pron, CFP®, CBDA: 25:35

Well, look, I mean, I think it is um, it's easier to sell to other financial advisory firms that have larger groups of clients so you can educate more people at once. But for us, I look at Tasha, who's a certified divorce financial analyst. She specializes in working with that non-CFO spouse that's never handled money, and so it's funny when I tell people our two main niches are divorce and Bitcoin. They don't actually sound that similar, but they actually really are similar, because you have to take really complex financial concepts and you have to get really good at at making them easier for your average person to understand, who's not a financial expert. So, um, yeah, hopefully that, hopefully that makes sense.

Marc Bernstein: 26:21

I think, so I know you're an avid reader. Tell me about your favorite books and what you like to read.

Alex Pron, CFP®, CBDA: 26:32

I know you like to read about Bitcoin. Yeah, it's usually finance or business-related books. My father-in-law just published a book Positivity Warrior by Jim Sorbo, so I'll give him a shout out. I did just read.

Alex Pron, CFP®, CBDA: 26:46

that's the most recent book I just read on the power of positivity, the empirical sort of evidence you know, suggesting sort of like their life and health benefits, mental benefits, from that, so that was interesting, but I would say on the Bitcoin front, there was a book that just came out, maybe six weeks ago, called the Big Print kind of a play on words from like the big short by Larry Leppard Lawrence Leppard and the book is divided into two halves. The problem, and it's really sort of the financial history of the United States and all the different bailouts and all the money printing that has just tanked the purchasing power of our dollars.

Marc Bernstein: 27:29

I think everyone is feeling that today right?

Alex Pron, CFP®, CBDA: 27:31

No question, I don't think they can put their finger on exactly what's wrong. I think that the big print does a great job of articulating exactly what is wrong in society today and with our money and our financial system in a way that's really easy for your average person to digest. And then part two is what's the solution? Teaching the ins and outs of sound money and Bitcoin and gold and why those things have value and why they're going to become potentially increasingly important in the future of our financial system.

Marc Bernstein: 28:12

So I would, I would, I would definitely recommend the big print.

Alex Pron, CFP®, CBDA: 28:15

It was a really good read, very interesting.

Marc Bernstein: 28:18

What do you do for fun, cause this all sounds very serious Economics, self-improvement, obviously, the future of finance of not only your clients but the country and the world. So what do you do for fun?

Alex Pron, CFP®, CBDA: 28:33

Well, I've got a wonderful wife at home who also works in finance but has been very supportive of uh, you know, the the founding of our business and all the work that has to go into that. I have a. I have an awesome son who's going to turn two in May.

Marc Bernstein: 28:48

Um, so family time is awesome.

Alex Pron, CFP®, CBDA: 28:50

I'm a I'm a very avid golfer, Uh so, uh, anytime I can sneak out on the golf course, uh, you know, hang out with friends there. That's a good day, we're going to do that.

Marc Bernstein: 29:03

Family and golf. Yeah, we got to get some golf on the calendar once that lustry March weather turns up in Philadelphia, absolutely. I think it's time to wrap up today. Any closing thoughts you have before we leave.

Alex Pron, CFP®, CBDA: 29:18

Look, I mean super important that people know like I'm not out like slinging Bitcoin and just trying to get people to buy it. I think it's just important, um that people educate themselves. So take the time, spend an hour or two on YouTube, right, read a book um educate yourself. I think it's so important and I think it's going to have the ability to change your life if you can take the time to do it.

Marc Bernstein: 29:42

Well, I'm a financial advisor who doesn't have access to a lot of that information, so you've already done a good job of helping me understand it with a lot of the materials that you have, and I love that. That's your position, because you're going to find people resistant, you're going to find institutions resistant, but people do need to understand it's going to be an important force. There's no question about it, so I appreciate you being here today. Alex Pron you will hear his commercial, if you haven't already heard it, in the middle of the show, and that's how you can reach him. We thank you for all of you for being here today on Founders Forum and we'll see you next week week.

Announcer: 30:25

We hope you enjoyed your time with Founders Forum and that you found value to take with you throughout your day. Join us again next week for another episode of Founders Forum on WXKB 1039 HD2.