Do you want a wealthy retirement without worrying about money. Welcome to retire in Texas, where you will discover how to enjoy your faith, your family, and your freedom in the state of Texas. And now here's your host financial advisor, author, and all around good Texan Darrell Lyons.
(00:29): Hey, this is Dar Lyon CEO and co-founder of PAXs financial group. And you're listening to retire in Texas. I appreciate you showing up today. Retire in Texas is sponsored by P's financial group. So be sure to visit P's financial group.com for more information. And again, this information is general in nature only. It's not intended to provide specific tax or legal advice. So visit P's financial group.com for more details. So we have a really good guest today. I'm excited to have ed Arnold for the San Antonio business journal with us. And I actually was a guest on ed. What's the name of your show? The actual program? Sure. It's called Texas business minds, a statewide podcast with us and the Houston, Austin and Dallas business journals. We do it on a rotating base, Texas business minds. I couldn't remember the exact title, but I like the show and I like the format and I was honored to be a guest. So you were reciprocating that today. Oh, couldn't be happier to be with you Darrell. Thank you so much. Hey, so I wanna dive into a lot of different areas over the next 20 minutes or so let's start out knowing a little bit more about you. Are you from San Antonio? Are you from Texas? No, I'm not. I moved here from Memphis about five years ago. I lived in Memphis for about 15 years or so, but I originally grew up in north Georgia, right outside of Athens, Georgia. Okay. Um, I usually tell people that I'm genetically a Texan. My mother was a Tex. My mother taught at Texas a and M Kingsville for many years. Uh, she passed away a few years ago. She would've been Waco. She was from a tiny Texas town called mark Texas a little bit outside of Waco. But until I moved here, I had only visited Texas two times. And until I moved here, but my great grandparents are buried in south San Antonio. They, my, my mother's family pretty much goes all the way from Kingsville up to Dallas and back. So I I've got a lot of, of extended family in Texas, but me I'm a new one.
(02:16): Yeah. So ally, you were pulled here. Oh, it happens. It's got its own gravitational poll that's for sure. Yeah. And so what's the, some of the cultural differences between Memphis and here. Sure. There's a lot of things that are different about Texas and Tennessee, if you will, in Memphis and San Antonio specifically, there's a lot of similarities, but you know, being connected to the Mississippi river and having that be sort of part of the trend center, the tempo center for the culture in Memphis is a lot different. Uh, Memphis is a smaller city, has a different sort of cultural background has a different feel and flavor to it. But there is a lot of similarities too. I mean, I joke about this a lot when I meet people new, but you know, I pretty much traveled the same route. The David Crockett came, you know, when he made his speech about how he, he had lost his election and he was to Texas, that that speech actually took place on a bar in Memphis, Tennessee. He was a representative from the eighth district in Tennessee, which was the Memphis or the ninth district in Tennessee, which is, uh, the Memphis district was Davey. Crocketts the district when he was a, a Tennessee elected official. There's a lot of, of transportation sort of in the historic Texas and, and Tennessee over the years. But the flavor of, of San Antonio and Texas in general, it definitely has its own weather. If that Makes sense. Yeah. You know, Memphis, when I think I enjoy going to, to Nashville a couple times a year. Sure. And, uh, the Franklin Nashville, actually, I hear there's a different culture between Memphis and Nashville too, right?
(03:35): Yeah. No question, no question. You know, Nashville's got the country music hall of fame, right. It's it's the seat of the country music industry. Mm-hmm and Memphis was the seat of R and B for the seventies. Yeah. And rap music currently. So there's a lot of differences there, but they do share a lot of, sort of cross-cultural things with each other, but similar to Austin and San Antonio. Right. Where friendly neighbors, but culturally we do feel a lot different, Right? Yeah. Yeah. That's a good point. So what brought you to San Antonio? Well, I was with the Memphis business journal as a digital producer and writer before I came here for five years. So I've been with the company overall American city business journals for 10 years, five in Memphis and then five here. And it was twofold. Why I took the job as one, I wanted to move up. I wanted to go into management. I was sort of reporting on a regular basis. I wanted to do more editing. And at the time I wanted to be closer to my mother. He was living in Waco at the time. And so my wife and, and our children moved here in, uh, 2016. Yeah. 2016, December, 2016. And we've enjoyed it immensely, but it was about trying to get close to mom and trying to step up a little bit in my career. That makes sense. How old were your kids or how old are they now? I have two daughters. I have a 21 year old who is at UT S a and I have an 11 year old that is in middle school. So I, I really got quite a gap there. Yeah. Did they have any trouble with the transition just generally speaking or how did they adapt?
(04:53): No, in fact, they both adapted really well. You know, it was tough to make a transition when you're in high school. Uh, and she was in high school when we moved. That's a tough time to move, but she really embraced it. And, uh, she fell in with a great group in her high school and, and took off and, and has been very happy here. And she's been wor I always say, I joke about her, how much more of a Texan than she is in five years than I am. She goes to U T S a and she works at HEB. She is essentially, she is literally locked in. This is Texan at this point. You're in. Yeah, exactly. You just have to admit the barbecue's better than Tennessee. Oh, I can't do it. I can't do it. Tell it to my heartstrings, Dale. I can't do It. You know, I moved from, um, Harlingen in, um, 10th grade. I'm sorry. There was a couple different iterations of there. Harlingen actually they down in the valley, they split the school. So I had to go to a separate school in 10th grade and then my senior year I moved. So that was kind of a move cuz I had to leave a lot of my friends at the other campus, which was called south Haron. And then I, my senior year I had to move to Castroville Medina valley. And so I had a couple moves in high school and both of those were real challenging. I even had one in eighth grade where I moved from Bernie to Harlingen. So all about five years I had three different moves. So I can imagine the kids having to make those adjustments. Oh yeah, they did great. And they, they couldn't have been better received and have adapted beautifully for sure. Yeah. It's cool. So how are your work hours now? Are you all over the place? I mean being in the, in the business that you're in.
(06:15): Yeah. It's been a difficult transition back and forth where we're turning to the office and, and fits and starts. We had, you know, a lot of us all came rushing back into the office a few months ago and then sadly as has happens, a few of us got sick and we had to sort of, you know, take a few days off or a week off to not be in person again right now I'm working in the office about three days a week, working at home about two days a week. I like going to the office on Monday with us as a group and sort of getting us off on the rush foot, if that makes sense. Yeah. But otherwise I'm kind of flexible the way the paper and the news day goes, I could be working anywhere from, you know, nine to nine, depending on, you know, I'm a little lucky I don't have to do the same sort of, uh, schedule that our, our friends in the daily newspapers have to do. We don't have night cops. We don't cover crime. Yeah. We cover business. And so nine to five is when most of our news stories take place, but that's not always that way. But as far as the days, I I'm trying to keep the it loose and open and let events dictate it. But we're becoming more and more consistent with what days are coming back, what days we're asking everyone to come back, but it's still in a lot of flus.
(07:17): Yeah. That makes sense. Uh, now, since you made that contrast, I wanted to let the audience know the San Antonio business journal. And most, I assume most community business journals may be overlooked by the majority of the community, but for those that have any business interests, it is one of the most important, uh, resources to get information about what's going on in the business community. So when somebody says the San Antonio business journal, it's actually a pretty critical resource to know what's happening, where the growth happening, where the threats are happening. So I don't wanna understate that to the audience that may have not picked up a business journal before. And I think, you know that, but there's a lot of people that like my parents would never, they've never picked up the business journal, which is okay. Sure. For those that are just trying to understand and move dirt or start a business that's you gotta open that. Yeah. I mean, this is one of the things that is sort of part of our creed. We are of a different sort of modus opera at ACBJ. Like it's very clear in our mission statement that part of what our responsibility is, is to help grow your business. It's in fact, one of the first things that we say in our creed that we have as a corporation, which is our motivation as a media provider, is to give you information that will allow you to grow your business, simplify your professional life, meet the new people in town, meet the people that you want to do business with. Find out who's doing business, where we intend to create it, not just as a new source, which is very important, but as a resource tool for people trying to, you know, San Antonio along a lot of our other markets too, there's, there's 45 ACBJ markets across the country.
(08:51): Now part of the goal is to introduce new people to town, to who they should know and introduce readers to new people, coming to town who are having an impact in the business community. It's different than a lot of different daily newspaper and TV news operations that people are familiar with. We just have a different underlying theme with what we do. What we're supposed to do with every story is consider how it would impact someone's business and give them actionable information that they can actually use to grow their own and interface with a broader business community. Yeah, that makes sense. And I can see that, you know, I, one of the things that's recently troubled me and maybe we could speak to this a little bit is we're a financial services company, PS financial group. And you know, we're homegrown, we've just been grinding from the bottom up, not any outside capital or anything like that. You know, I would aspire to be able to have a greater impact in our community and beyond, and, you know, I couldn't help, but feel a little bit of pain when a company called self became the, I guess, the sponsor of the spurs and, you know, put the logo on the Jersey. And, and I would've been okay with it if self was from San Antonio, but they were from a little town north of us called Austin, Texas. Right. Those that don't know, Austin's really close to Texas. Uh, That's my little, Little punch at Austin. I, I love Austin obviously different, but the reality is, is that I wanted a San Antonio company to be here and be that sponsor. And I also, I would like to see a better financial representation in San Antonio, similar to what you see in Dallas. I mean, we do have the S a a and the frost, and that's a great start, but there's still some opportunities. Can I just speak on the financial services sector in general? Are you seeing any progress momentum there or are we taking a step back relative to Austin?
(10:36): I think it's tough to say at a, cause you looking at these things, it's almost like we're playing two different games. Sometimes the way I look at Austin in San Antonio, despite what you're talking about, which is these are companies that work for the same and the same mediums. But if you look at sort of the biggest heavyweights in San Antonio's financial sector, obviously for us in U S a a, they make their own weather. They're the biggest players around as far as goes, but secondarily some of the biggest players in our market are not banks, but credit unions, we have two of the largest 10 largest credit unions in town. They have their own sort of revenue, huge presence for Navy penned, huge presence for Randolph Brooks, Navy. Yeah, Randolph Brooks. There's just huge amounts of sort of institutional credit unions. That really awesome. Just doesn't have, I mean, they have credit unions, but not on their scale, not even close. Obviously this goes back to a lot of the military and public service history that we have here in San Antonio. But if we're drilling down a little deeper, if we're drilling down to actual financial advisors, wealth management firms, local entities that are doing less of broad banks stuff and more individual financial, I've seen a lot of well known names in the last two or three years, get snatched up by larger, broader. Uh, I'm trying to remember all of them, but I know south Texas money management was purchased earlier the late well during the pandemic, basically they kind of finished the deal afterwards, but you know, that was a well known, well respected local firm and still is the, the team there is excellent.
(12:00): I've know, you know, I think they're great, but it is showing that Santa's drawing more attention. They're more outside suitors now coming in to buy us up and to put money into us, which is a positive, but you run the risk of losing a little bit of the identity, which is, I think what you started this, you know, conversation with talking about. So I don't have anything against self either. And I understand why the spurs would want to try to make themselves into a regional player and try to get as many customers as they can. We all understand that, but there's something about losing that little piece of real estate to a company that is in the San Antonio company. But I do think wrinkles, locals, and it does speak to, um, a desire in the local services industry in the local business community to still remain independent and to remain San Antonio centric. But also doesn't seem to have that kind of problem. I, I feel like a lot of times they can outbid whoever is trying to come into them. And we often are, are sort of left, left, taking bids from bigger companies that are outside of town. Yeah. That makes Sense. I'd love to see more growth. Well, I guess I'll express it here. I've expressed it with my team. PAX has had it offers from very large outside companies enough that I would be in a position financially to just check out and enjoy my life. But I've declined those because I think there's a bigger mission here. And I think there's an opportunity for a company like ours to really be homegrown and make a staple in the community. So hopefully one day you'll see our name on those jerseys.
(13:24): I'd love to see that. That would be great. I wanna see it on the stadium. That's what I, yeah, there you go. See it on the, I want it on the arena. That's what I wanna See. Look, I'm 45. So I still have a good 20 years at least plenty of time. Yeah. Plenty of time. Yeah. Plenty of Time. So tell me a little bit about how the, uh, the San Antonio community, what are you seeing as you talk to your Padres or your compadres over at the other, the Austin, the Houston, Dallas, what do you see different there in business cultures and climates? Yeah, I think that's huge for us. I mean, San Antonio, despite all this growth still has its own authenticity inside. It's still a very core business community here in San Antonio, Austin, Dallas, and Houston, to them. A lot of times it feels like a free for all where suddenly they don't know who the players are. People are moving into those communities at such a rapid pace. People are moving to our communities too, but what we've found, and in fact this is gonna be the subject of the cover story. The next few weeks, what we found is that, and this is probably speaks to your client, telling customers as well. We found more Texans moving from other cities to San Antonio than we have people from out of state moving to San Antonio. Interesting. So it's almost as if Californians people from Colorado, Oklahoma, Louisiana are moving to Houston, Dallas, Austin, and people who had been living in Austin for a long time.
(14:40): Living in Houston for a long time, feeling themselves, squeezed out. Maybe they get an offer on their home. They're close to retirement. They get a great offer on their home. And they find San Antonio to be a really welcoming place where they can still get a pretty good deal on a home where the cost of living is still under control. And so the business community sort of reflects that there's lots and lots of people moving here. But unlike Austin and Dallas, particularly into a lesser extent, Houston, the people that are moving here are moving for opportunities, not necessarily for lower costs. If that makes some sense, we have people moving from Austin to Houston, maybe to save a little money around retirement. We're also having tons and tons of people still moving up from the valley. As you know, you are aware of, and from Corpus who are looking for better jobs in a better market and a, and a higher standard of living in cases. So those two things blend together for a remarkably healthy influx. As far as I'm concerned, as far as San Antonio is concerned, I think Austin is still struggling with how to handle their influx. We read about it all the time. Dallas is so big that it has no shortage of places to stick everyone for the influx. Whereas in San Antonio, we still seem to be sort of reflecting the character that San Antonio has traditionally, even though we have tons and tons of new people moving here. And I think that has a lot to do with who is choosing to live here.
(15:53): You know, I, I think I wanna leave on that note. You know, I think that sure, there's so much to talk about here and I wanted to get to all of it. I didn't even get to half of it, but I think that's worthy of consideration. San Antonio is a special place, not for the, just outside of the state, but also within the state. Although I'd love to, you know, sometime I, I might have to do this is bring on somebody from Houston and Dallas in your role and hear their story as well. But sure. But I think that they would all admit that San Antonio does have a special flavor. And as I end on that note, I definitely have to ask you about your special flavor. What is your favorite salsa? Okay. I'm a Verde man. I like a green salsa. I like a nice tomatillo salsa. I like it to be extra hot. But if you giving that, like I'm a, you know, people ask me what kind of is I like red or green. I'm a mole man. I'd much rather have mole in general. I'm a mole man. But if we're talking about salsa, nice green, a really hot spicy tomatillo, that's really fresh. You can't do better. That is good stuff. In fact, , we're recording this on Friday afternoon and you've got me hungry already. I love it. Let's get outta here and grab me taco. Thank You so much for being on today. I really appreciate it. No problem, Dar I enjoyed it. Thank you For those that, uh, have stayed to the end of the show. I do appreciate you, your listening to retire in Texas. And if you need to speak to an, an advisor text Texas to 7 48 68, and remember you think different when you think long term,
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