Episode Takeaways
Success can feel like the finish line, but it’s often where the real risk begins. When everything is going right, it’s easy to lose focus on what actually matters most.
In this episode, Danton Troyer and Kyle Luetters explore what happens when life and career are going well, and why that’s exactly when intentional planning matters most. Using real-life client experiences and relatable analogies, they unpack how success can lead to complacency, distraction, and missed opportunities if left unchecked. They also share how thoughtful reflection, clear priorities, and flexible planning can help executives stay aligned with their long-term goals, even as life evolves.
Key Takeaways:
- Success can create new opportunities, but not all opportunities are worth pursuing
- Complacency is one of the biggest risks when things are going well
- Regular reflection helps you stay aligned with your values and long-term goals
- Financial planning should prioritize flexibility to adapt to life’s unexpected changes
- Intentional living requires filtering out distractions and focusing on what truly matters most to you
And more!
Connect With Danton Troyer:
- Moneta Group
- LinkedIn: Danton Troyer
- dtroyer@monetagroup.com
- (314) 735-9087
Connect with Kyle Luetters:
- Moneta Group
- LinkedIn: Kyle Luetters
- kluetters@monetagroup.com
- (314) 536-8297
Transcript
[00:00:00] Intro: Welcome to Wit, Wisdom, and What Matters Most with Danton Troyer and Kyle Luetters from Moneta Wealth Management. In this podcast, we help corporate executives and business leaders navigate the real-life uncertainty around new financial life stages from complex benefits and career changes to retirement and legacy planning.
Join us as we explore these career and life shaping moments with our guests, helping listeners find clarity so they can focus on what matters most to them.
[00:00:32] RJ Malyk: Hello and welcome to Wit, Wisdom, and What Matters Most podcast with your hosts, Danton Troyer, and Kyle Luetters. I’m your podcast producer, RJ Malick. Danton, and Kyle, as always, good to see you and I hope you’re both doing well.
So on this edition of Wit, Wisdom, and What Matters Most podcast, we’re gonna take a look at what happens when everything is going well or how you should prepare when everything is going well. [00:01:00] And when I first saw this, I was like, this is gonna be short, because if everything’s going well, what do you have to worry about?
Or is that the time that you should really be paying attention? When things are,
[00:01:13] Danton Troyer: I have the same thought as we were going through these questions, I was like, what am I gonna talk about today? But when you really start to think about it, that’s the hardest time, when things are going really well, to stay focused and really start to realize what is actually important.
The more successful you become, I found with a lot of the executive clients we’re working with, it opens up more opportunities, which is great, but an opportunity you might have been excited for in your earlier career makes absolutely no sense for you now. So you can’t just keep it in the same lens, just you have to also sometimes realize the level you’re at and the success that you’ve achieved does open these opportunities for you.
But those same things that were opportunities maybe five years ago, for you now, they might actually set you back. The same opportunity you would’ve been so [00:02:00] excited for just five years back.
[00:02:03] Kyle Luetters: My kids and I watch NASCAR races on TV every Sunday. There was a very astute observation made by the commentators about three-quarters of the way through the event where they mentioned that the leader of the race who had led, like at that point, like over half the laps, like he was just waxing the field.
The guy that was the crew chief on the telecast said, actually, this is not good for him, but he’s having so much success right now, he’s falling behind on adjustments with the track. That guy ended up getting caught by the guy running in second place and passed. That guy had more of a carrot out in front of him. His team was working harder because they weren’t in first place.
So it was a very important lesson, like in sitting there and talking with your kids and whatnot, of going, you might reach success, but you can’t get complacent when you get there. Like you constantly [00:03:00] have to be iterating and going back to, and evolving, and keeping up with the conditions.
The driver that had led most of the race, him and his team didn’t do that. They were afraid to mess with what was working versus constantly improving, constantly enhancing it.
When we talk about what does success look like and what do we do when things are going really well? Number one, acknowledge it. That’s awesome. Two, benefit from it if you can. But also three, know that this is not just a level plain; there will continue to have to be effort and input put into this to stay at this level, not just think that you’ve arrived.
[00:03:36] RJ Malyk: Yeah, I just saw a video of Michael Jordan and how, even after winning all those championships, how intense he was. In practice, he would get on people, he would dog them big time if they weren’t practicing as hard as he was, and this is after they won three championships in a row. So , I guess you [00:04:00] have to be even more intentional, more focused when things are going well,
[00:04:06] Kyle Luetters: t really is because you get into the false sense of security like, Hey, we’ve won three NBA titles. Well, it’s worked so far, should just continue to work. We just have to keep going.
[00:04:17] RJ Malyk: Right, and I think we’re gonna use, continue with sports. It goes to show you how difficult it is to repeat winning championships because it’s so hard to stay focused, because boy, things went well, everything fell into place, and what do I have to worry about?
And it’s, I think it’s just human nature to take the foot off the pedal.
[00:04:40] Danton Troyer: I think in general, if we’re not stopping, at least from time to time, and that’s part of our job in working with executives, for example, is taking the time out, and it can be very difficult to think about all these fires you’ve got as an executive level and
stopping to plan out your retirement or future or the things that , we think, [00:05:00] and when you stop to think about it, are more important. But in that moment, it’s not, because the thing that’s right in front of you is always the most important. We encourage all of our clients to least take a step back once a year, sit down with us, go through your goals. Make sure they’re still the goals that are important to you, ’cause a lot of times they’ll come back and say, yeah, I was thinking of that. Things have changed. Maybe I want to adjust this. And there’s absolutely nothing wrong with that, obviously that needs to happen. But if you don’t take the time, you’re just putting out fires all the time and never stepping back to say, what is actually, why am I doing this? Why is this so important?
[00:05:33] Kyle Luetters: If we don’t take time to measure and reflect upon progress, to Danton’s point, you will burn out because your mind just continuously makes this process go, go, go, go… without some reflection to see how far we’ve come. But also too, what were the lessons learned? And reflection is a great time for that to occur.
How are we gonna work smarter? Going back to the sports analogies that RJ mentioned, if you win three [00:06:00] championships, you have a very, very codified set of lessons that you learned and different teams that you face. And if you don’t put any thought into reflecting back on how we got here, what we did to get here, you’re doomed to repeat silly little things that can trip you up really well.
I like what we do a lot. Putting on the other side of this thing, I love what we get to do for a profession because to Danton’s point, when we speak with an executive, you speak with clients, you speak with families. This is almost like a lifetime’s worth of work. You bring someone in their 80s and honestly, they keep telling you stories about how they could barely afford to have the family go to McDonald’s, and now we have all of this wealth.
Reflection puts that into perspective. And in a way that’s really important, too, for the next generation. We’ve already started telling our kids as young as they are, is, [00:07:00] look, we were broker than a joke when we were first married. And now ’cause of reflection and things that we’ve learned, we don’t have to do that anymore.
So you guys get your own chicken nuggets; you don’t have to share when we go out to eat. So, yeah, there’s a little bit of jest in there, but I think it’s important to see where you’ve come, but also extrapolate out the lessons that you learned through the reflection.
[00:07:20] RJ Malyk: Is one of your biggest challenges when dealing with a client,
especially a client who’s in the middle of their career to look ahead? Because when you’re in the middle of your career, you’re focusing not 10 and 15 years down the road, you’re focusing on six months, maybe 12 months down the road, maybe two years out. But you’re talking to people and trying to get them ready for after that is all over.
So how much of a challenge is that to get them to focus on down the road?
[00:07:53] Danton Troyer: It’s certainly the younger the client, the more difficult it is, especially when it comes to the retirement. But [00:08:00] there’s other things that are important, so that might not be what matters most to them in that moment, and that may be all right.
So when we’re having those conversations, we use an airplane taking off analogy where, if retirement’s so far away from you, we need to make sure if we’re taking off from the airport, we’re going west if we’re headed to LA. We’re in St. Louis right now, just so everybody knows. I got my directions correct.
We can
[00:08:23] Kyle Luetters: go east or west.
[00:08:24] Danton Troyer: Yeah, I guess. But the shortest path would definitely be not going east. We talk about, but as you’re getting closer and closer to that LAX airport, we need to really start fine-tuning things. So right now, it’s fine if you don’t have it all figured out. Just generally speaking, are we headed in the right direction?
But also there’s other goals and that’s become some of the difficulty, too, is at that age you’re probably juggling college planning for these kids, you’ve got retirement, you want to do family vacations… just the day-to-day stuff that you want to do as well. And then how do you juggle all those things?
And so there’s no right answer to this, it’s which do you wanna prioritize? And that’s one of the questions or conversations we want to have is, [00:09:00] which one do you wanna do? Because we can’t all do everything. Most of us are not, have unlimited wealth. So there are some limits too, and everybody’s different, but really prioritizing what is gonna be that thing for the 18 months, what’s the three–year goal? And so prioritizing those in such a way that makes sense to the client.
[00:09:17] Kyle Luetters: In our job, oftentimes, RJ, it really comes down to pointing out the things and seeing the 30,000 foot view. I’m reading a book about Dwight D. Eisenhower right now and how he planned D-Day. You didn’t ask the guy in the boat to plan the entire operation. He had his hands full with surviving hand-to-hand what was right in front of him. A lot of our clients right now are dealing with the day-to-day of life. They’ve got families, they’ve got careers, they’ve got a lot of things vying for their attention. Our job is to sit there and go, okay, using all of the folks that we’ve worked [00:10:00] with, and the wisdom and the knowledge that we have, is to come in here and provide some perspective. And also remind you, too, that yes, your kids right now possibly are annoying. You might be driving to a lot of practices, and so on and so forth. But this season shall pass. Life is nothing more than a series of seasons, and we must be prepared uniquely to meet the challenges and the opportunities of each season. So once the kids are gone, then you move into, hey, we’ve got kids in college. What does that look like? And then we’re empty nesters, and then we’re retired, and then, oh my goodness, we might be moving to a different place. That is not our home of 40 or 50 years.
Our job is constant preparation and looking forward.
In my men’s group, F3, we call it looking 43 feet ahead. As a leader, you need to be looking 43 feet ahead of where everybody else is,
cutting the trail or illuminating the trail forward for [00:11:00] everybody else.
[00:11:01] RJ Malyk: And you’re looking ahead for different people. The look ahead is different for everybody.
[00:11:09] RJ Malyk: How do you keep track of that?
[00:11:09] Danton Troyer: Personally, we just limit our relationships with clients. There’s only so many people you can serve in a meaningful way like we’re talking about.
And so I think that’s the biggest piece just from us and our team personally, is we wanna limit so we can go in depth in that way. So, for us,. I don’t think it is possible for someone to have 400 relationships that are that meaningful, so that certainly is part of it.
[00:11:33] Kyle Luetters: I agree with Danton in there, in that our service model is unique in that we intentionally work with a select few number of families so that we can go that deep, so that we can remember all those details, so that we can remember the seasons and how those seasons are gonna hit, and what the goals are. It’s a very different approach, but it yields a lot better result in our opinion [00:12:00] because we can tailor it a lot more than having it be more of a rubber-stamped, cookie-cutter type of an approach.
Anytime we’re doing personal finance I have yet to see any plan, any two plans be even remotely similar.
[00:12:16] Kyle Luetters: They’re all different because they all involve people, and they all involve a different data set. Now there’s some commonality, spoiler alert, a lot of people are gonna own the S&P 500, just spoiler alert.
But how that’s applied, where it’s applied, how much – it’s all different. And that’s the cool thing about keeping this relatively smaller. Being able to just keep copious amounts of notes and really understand and go forward and have the deeper meanings. We’re not trying to do meetings in 30 minutes. Most of our meetings are an hour, an hour and a half, hour and 45 minutes cause that’s how deep we’re going.
[00:12:50] RJ Malyk: That planning, all that planning, that ties into having your clients or, maybe encouraging your clients, for [00:13:00] intentional living and planning. Is that how that works?
[00:13:04] Danton Troyer: Yeah, I think that’s a great way to put it. Living intentional to me is very meaningful and there’s so many distractions, especially now with social media and there’s all kinds of great stuff that looks great, but you have to step back. And I think having some values that are important to you, and if you don’t do that, you can get pulled all over the place and you just, you start to forget what was actually important to you.
From a simple thing, we talk about investing, we get clients that are bringing us all these different types of investments from time to time and they’re like, I wanna do this, I wanna do this. And they’re individually, none of them are bad necessarily, but you step back, you’re like, why? Why are you wanting to over complicate things just because?
A lot of times, the answer is we can do it, but I just don’t see the additional value that’s gonna provide to you.
So keeping clients focused, and that’s just one example with the investments. We get clients looking at different jobs, all these different decisions, and really being able to step back and anchor back to that [00:14:00] financial plan where we already had this conversation of what was important to you. And that may have changed because this came up. But are we willing to change everything because this came up? And a lot of times the answer is probably not. It was the shiny thing that was in front of us at that moment. So we have to have something to bring us back to an anchor so we can live with that intentionality of things that are truly important and not just the shiny thing that came up.
[00:14:23] Kyle Luetters: We take a lot of time going through values and goals with the families that we work with, and that drives a lot of the decision making that goes into the way that the financial plan is constructed.
Mark Zuckerberg is pretty famous for wearing the same clothes every day. He values simplicity, and so he has removed a daily decision out of all of the other decisions that he has to make.
It’s very similar when we work with clients, if they, I’m thinking of some clients that we had in just a couple of days ago, for the longest time, had wanted to just be extremely conservative. They wanted to [00:15:00] have a nice retirement, and now they’re the newest, shiny thing comes along…
And at a certain point, like I think Jeff Foxworthy at one point said, there’s a little redneck in everybody because if we see a shiny bass boat, we watch it. And that can happen to all of us because it’s our own personal financial plan, we see something that we want, we think, man, that looks cool.
Having though the perspective of, hey, wait a minute. That sounds awesome, by the way. Sounds great. Cool. What you said from the very beginning is these are the things that matter the most to you. These are the goals that you wanna make sure, and help me understand how that’s going to fit. We can do it, but I’m gonna remind you of the values and the goals that you laid out and how are we going to get there and how is this shiny thing gonna help us get there? so that we don’t get distracted because it’s so easy to do anymore.
Like Danton said, there’s so many things out there to distract us to the point we’re like, I’m like Zuckerberg, getting very close to just picking the same clothes and wearing them every day because it’s one less decision, or even the things we eat.
[00:15:59] RJ Malyk: You [00:16:00] talk about distractions; now, you were talking about distractions that are, could be classified, as not necessary. But there are other distractions that are out there that can change things on a dime, like a personal injury, or something like that.
[00:16:19] Kyle Luetters: Yeah.
[00:16:19] RJ Malyk: How do you handle a curve ball for another sports analogy? A person’s life is going very nice and things are great and just like that, things change because of an accident or something. Do you scramble or do you guys sort of prepare for worst case scenarios?
[00:16:38] Danton Troyer: Depending on the severity, certainly the, something to that extreme, there’s some sort of scrambling. Something had to happen because everything’s jolted off. But that being said, especially now, kinda later in my career, flexibility in this planning is one of the things I try to prioritize more than anything.
Early on, I probably didn’t understand it as [00:17:00] much, and we used annuities back then. They would have long surrender charges. And the thought today of someone locking up their money for – some of these things are 10 plus years makes zero sense to me. I can’t think of any client that hasn’t had a somewhat of a significant change in the last 10 years that they didn’t see coming, and some more severe than others. But there’s always something that has pretty dramatically changed in almost everybody’s life. You just think back over the last 10 years… so in that example, the annuity is gonna lock up your money for 10 years and you’re gonna make that decision now based on,
[00:17:32] RJ Malyk: right.
[00:17:33] Danton Troyer: You now. But you in 10 years, you just have to know it’s going to be different. You can’t always tell what that’s going to be. So to me, yeah, having flexibility with these plans to certainly take on what comes up in life because life happens. And so that’s what we’re talking with clients, we will run the scenarios and then at the end we have what we call what if scenarios, and it’s the client’s turn just to what’s keeping you up at night? Let’s see how this works out. If that were to happen and we could [00:18:00] step back and hopefully sleep a little bit better at night. But we also know that whatever we’re thinking in our head is probably not gonna happen. It’s gonna be something that we couldn’t see that was out there, and that’s what we wanna prepare for to the best that we can. And flexibility is the biggest key to that, in my opinion.
[00:18:14] Kyle Luetters: I couldn’t agree with Danton more. And that flexibility is the biggest thing that a financial planner can provide to their clients. Here by the time this podcast comes out, it’ll be a little while, but we just launched astronauts to the moon for the first time in 40 years.
In honor of that, I watched Apollo 13. You wanna talk about a curve ball? And some people were thrown. And what was amazing to me, in that instance, was just how mission control comes together. Number one, they have prepared and looked at a litany of contingencies that could be applicable to this one that nobody had on their Bingo card.
Two, they gathered as many facts as possible.[00:19:00] before they started taking what I would say beyond-triage action. Triage action is the things we have to get done right away to keep the crew alive. But before we really start working the long-term solution, gather all of the data, sim it out, and then as Gene Kranz eloquently put it, work the problem.
Figure out our data set. Let’s work the problem. Let’s come up with all the different solutions, and then let’s pick the one that has the highest likelihood of achieving our desired outcome. Which by the way, in that movie, if you go back and look at it, and in real life, the shortest way home was not the way they picked.
Because that would’ve involved flipping the spacecraft around firing an engine they had no idea whether it was gonna light, or if it did, blow the whole thing up. They actually took the longer route home because it was gonna stretch the crew a little bit on consumables, but it was actually the safest. They wouldn’t have figured that out if they wouldn’t have calculated out all of the data and the numbers. [00:20:00]
[00:20:00] RJ Malyk: So I guess it’s safe to say as we’re starting to wind down here, that planning and flexibility go together. It really is important to have both as you’re looking into the future.
[00:20:14] Kyle Luetters: Mike Tyson has a very good saying. He goes, everybody has a plan until you get punched in the mouth.
[00:20:20] RJ Malyk: That’s a classic line,
[00:20:21] Kyle Luetters: And it is true, too, in your financial planning, as well, because all these fighters go in there, they have a plan. They know round by round how they’re gonna go through this.
That is a lot of what financial planning is. We’re gonna have a plan in place, but then when the proverbial punch comes, we’re also gonna have some reaction. We’re also gonna have some backup. We’re gonna then figure out, reassess, reset, and go forward from there. Because the goal hasn’t changed – the mode, the method that we use to get there may have changed because of external force, but the end goal didn’t change. and if we get caught flatfooted, we’re for [00:21:00] sure gonna lose. Nine years in now, Danton’s done this longer, more often than not, I do find myself advising clients to really take a look at the option that’s gonna provide them the most flexibility while still reminding them of what their goals and their values are.
[00:21:18] Kyle Luetters: Because anything longer than five or six years anymore seems like an eternity. I was talking to somebody the other day. They said, yeah, we’re buying a house; we’re gonna have this interest rate for 30 years. I almost laughed. You’re not gonna have an interest rate or anything hardly for 30 years.
Lord willing, you’ll have your spouse and kids.
[00:21:38] RJ Malyk: Yep. Yeah. Yeah, that is the truth. The things you’re talking about, I can relate to it. And our financial advisor had set up an account for us that allowed us to be flexible in case of an emergency. And we recently had an emergency and,
not that we’ve dipped into it yet, but when we talked to him last, he [00:22:00] was like, okay guys, if you have an issue or your money gets tight, we can dip into here and you’re gonna be fine. And it’s not gonna affect the other accounts that you have. So his planning made our life a little bit easier to deal with because of the situation that popped up for us.
[00:22:22] Kyle Luetters: And so to ask you the question then, how much peace did that provide, knowing you had some flexibility in the back of your mind?
[00:22:32] RJ Malyk: Tremendous because it allowed me to focus on the important issue that was right in front of me, and still is right in front of me. So yeah, that peace of mind is, you can’t put a number on that. You can’t put any type of measurement on it because when you don’t have to worry about certain things and you can focus on the problem at hand, it makes life a lot easier.
[00:22:58] Danton Troyer: Usually the money is the [00:23:00] secondary part of the problem. In most cases, whatever it is that has come up, you need to focus on that problem and know that the finances can be there to solve the problem if needed.
And then also what we try to provide is, okay, so if this happens, we can figure out which direction we can go, and then try to just have a path forward. We all know that we might need to again, make some adjustments along the way, but at least we have a path forward and relieve at least a little bit of that stress, because if you just get blindsided, you have no plan, you have nobody to even talk to about coming up with a plan…
Then it’s really hard to even deal with that problem because your judgment is so clouded by all these other kind of ancillary decisions you have to make, so it can be tough.
[00:23:39] RJ Malyk: and I’m gonna give a little kudos to you guys and your industry because you can look at things and be clearheaded about it.
When you’re in the middle of a situation and it involves you personally, it’s harder. And you need that person, we need Danton and Kyle to say, [00:24:00] okay, this is how this should play out for you, or here’s what we can do and this should ease some issues for you and you can, you don’t have to worry about this.
It’s very important.
[00:24:12] Danton Troyer: I agree.
[00:24:13] Kyle Luetters: And I think too, I’ve alluded to in the past, like that’s why my wife and I have a one of me, because it’s a deeply personal thing and if I’m going through something with the wife or the kids,
[00:24:23] RJ Malyk: sure.
[00:24:23] Kyle Luetters: I’m not above busting out the glass for the emergency handle when maybe I didn’t need to.
[00:24:30] RJ Malyk: Right.
[00:24:31] Kyle Luetters: That person being there though, playing the ME role, which is why this is getting confusing, but that person is there for that exact same purpose. So again, it’s not that we have some superpower, some secret sauce here. It’s human nature to feel some of the things, and like to what RJ alluded to what his family went through, it’s human nature. That’s why it’s so important for that outside perspective to say, Hey, breathe.
[00:24:58] Kyle Luetters: Let’s take a look at [00:25:00] this. Yeah, it’s gonna be okay. We have options; we’ve planned for something like this.
[00:25:07] RJ Malyk: Planning and flexibility. I think those are the two words we should take from this podcast.
[00:25:12] Danton Troyer: Exactly,
[00:25:13] RJ Malyk: Alright gentlemen, how about some contact information?
[00:25:16] Danton Troyer: Yeah, of course. The easiest way is through our website witwisdomandwhatmattersmost.com. Obviously, you can find all of our episodes there, but then you can link back to our business page if you do have any questions for us from that standpoint, as well. It’s pretty easy to contact us and hopefully we can hear from some of you.
Yeah.
[00:25:32] RJ Malyk: Excellent. All right, thanks again, Danton and Kyle. Looking forward to your next podcast. And thank you for listening to today’s Wit, Wisdom, and What Matters Most podcast. Please follow and share this podcast with friends and family and until our next Wit, Wisdom, and What Matters Most podcast, I’m RJ Malyk.
[00:25:51] Outro: Thank you for listening to the Wit, Wisdom, and What Matters Most podcast. Click the Follow button to be notified when new episodes become available. Visit our website at witwisdomandwhatmattersmost.com to learn more and find additional ways to connect with us in the show notes.
The opinions voiced in this podcast are for general information only and are not intended to provide specific advice or recommendations for any individual to determine which strategies or investments may be suitable for you.
Consult the appropriate qualified professional before making a decision. Investment advisory services offered by Moneta Group Investment Advisors, LLC, an investment advisor registered with the Securities and Exchange Commission. Registration does not imply a certain level of skill or training. The information [00:27:00] discussed in this podcast is for informational and educational purposes only, and represents the views and opinions of the guest and or host, and does not necessarily represent the views and opinions of Moneta.
You should consult with an appropriately credentialed professional before making any financial investment. Tax or legal decision. Past performance is not indicative of future returns. All investments are subject to risk of loss. Please see disclosure for additional information.
© 2026 Advisory services offered by Moneta Group Investment Advisors, LLC, 190 Carondelet Plaza, Suite 1200, St. Louis, MO 63105 (“MGIA”), an investment adviser registered with the Securities and Exchange Commission (“SEC”). MGIA is a wholly owned subsidiary of Moneta Group, LLC. Registration as an investment adviser does not imply a certain level of skill or training. This is an advertisement. The information
contained herein is for informational purposes only, is not intended to be comprehensive or exclusive, and is based on materials deemed reliable, but the accuracy of which has not been verified. Examples contained herein are for illustrative purposes only based on generic assumptions. Given the dynamic nature of the subject matter and the environment in which this communication was written, the information contained herein is subject to change. This is not an offer to sell or buy securities, nor does it represent any specific recommendation. You should consult with an appropriately credentialed professional before making any financial, investment, tax, or legal decision. Past performance is not indicative of future returns. You cannot invest directly in an index. All investments are subject to a risk of loss. Diversification and strategic asset allocation do not assure profit or protect against loss in declining markets. These materials do not take into consideration your personal circumstances, financial or otherwise. Trademarks and copyrights of materials linked herein are the property of their respective owners.
