Marc Shaffer is the CFO of Searcy Financial, a firm that started in 1976 with one founder serving physicians and has spent 50 years turning itself into something more. He wrote a book called One For All built on an Irish proverb: hand it out in slices, it comes back in loaves. Sam sits down with Marc on the last day of 2025 to talk about why that philosophy works, where it breaks, and how a kid who almost became a youth minister ended up running business development for a financial planning firm.
What You'll Hear
- Why Marc systemized his business development process after realizing busy weeks kill follow-through
- The tension between being a giver and recognizing when you're pouring into takers
- How Searcy Financial spun up Aulos Investment Advisors so clients without a million dollars could still get planning
- Marc's journey from wanting to be a youth minister in Topeka to working the mall food court to landing at Edward Jones
- Why the firm ditched Culture Index for Predictive Index, and what changed when Marc hired an executive assistant built to complement his profile
- How Marc uses personality assessments in client meetings, including with spouses who think about money very differently
- His take on Dave Ramsey, Robert Kiyosaki, and the gap between headline financial advice and real planning
- Two quotes Marc keeps on his screen, including one about the version of yourself 10 years from now begging you to enjoy today
Hand it out in slices, it comes back in loaves
Marc opens with the Irish proverb that anchors his book, One For All. Hand it out in slices, it comes back in loaves. He's been practicing it at Searcy Financial for 20 years, and the book came out of a request from the firm's founder a decade ago to write down how Marc was developing new business. That process sat on a shelf until Marc had enough stories to make it readable.
The premise is simple and slow. You don't have to be an extrovert. You don't have to push. You just need to stay in front of people long enough that when they need what you do, they remember you're available. Marc systemized it because when things get busy, follow-through is the first thing to go. A repeatable process for staying top of mind, done authentically, produces results over a 10-year horizon, not a tomorrow horizon.
Sam pushes on a tension the book only hints at: what about the flip side. When do you stop giving. Marc names it directly. There are givers, takers, and matchers, and at some point you're pouring into people who will never reciprocate. The only commodity you can't get more of is time. So part of his 2026 planning is deciding where his time is best spent and, as he put it in the book, releasing the people who don't belong in the inner circle.
Topeka, K-State, and a 20,000 dollar motorcycle decision
Marc grew up in Topeka. His high school years swung hard. Deep into youth group on Wednesday nights, coloring his hair, thinking about being a youth minister and playing soccer at Manhattan Christian College. Then he took a job at the Westridge Mall food court, met a different crowd, and his priorities shifted. He describes it plainly. He was an extreme person with an addictive personality, which cut both ways.
He quit all of it when he got to K-State. He bleeds purple. His parents were KU people, which he says was probably part of the appeal. He thought he'd be an engineer until he realized he didn't want to do the studio time. He wrote for the high school newspaper. He settled into business because it seemed like where people who did well financially landed.
His parents handed him the money they had saved for college, somewhere around 20,000 dollars. He bought a motorcycle. He also met with their financial advisor, told the advisor he kind of wanted to do what the advisor did, and got mentored into a job at Edward Jones in Manhattan, Kansas, for two years while he was still in school. His degree, Family Studies and Human Services (now called Personal Financial Planning at K-State), shaped how he thinks about the work. It's the relationship and goals side of finance, not the stock-picking side.
From back office to face of the firm
Marc started his career at a time when financial planning was a sales profession. He didn't have the confidence for door-knocking at 22, so when he landed at Searcy Financial (founded in 1976), he leaned into back-office work while the founder handled business development. The firm tested the team with StrengthsFinder, then Culture Index. Marc's profile came back as technical expert. The takeaway at the time was that Marc would be great behind a computer.
He took that as a challenge. The rest of his career has been a slow case for proving the assessment wrong while still respecting what it got right. He's still detail-oriented. He still prefers a process for following up with five people after a networking event over making one big impression and walking away empty-handed. But he's now the one out in the community, and ten other people he rarely names are creating the capacity for him to do that.
The firm switched to Predictive Index a year ago. Marc's profile there is captain. He used it to hire Amy, his executive assistant, for how her profile complements his. The match is working. She helped plan the book launch. Marc's broader point is that personality assessments aren't about locking people into a box. They're about making sure people are playing to their talents so the firm isn't asking a technical-expert brain to do what a persuader brain would enjoy, and vice versa.
Bringing financial planning to people who couldn't afford it before
Searcy Financial started with founder Mike Searcy doing 100 percent disability insurance for physicians in the 1970s and 80s. Over time physicians needed investment management, then retirement planning, then long-term care, and the firm became a comprehensive financial planning practice. About a decade ago the firm dropped insurance sales to go fee-only and eliminate the conflict of interest.
Roughly 15 years ago, when Marc was 28, the firm faced a transition problem. The founder's brand was built around serving successful physicians with real wealth, and the minimum was a million dollars. None of Marc's friends had that. So the firm created a subsidiary called Aulos Investment Advisors, Latin for one and the same, with no minimums. Same investment philosophy, different door.
Aulos has grown into something the firm didn't fully anticipate. Clients who started there as 20-somethings with a rollover are now married, have more complicated needs, and some have graduated to Searcy Financial. Aulos itself has taken on light financial planning. Marc frames the vision for both companies as bringing financial planning to the masses. He points out that the people who need planning most are often young, and historically they're exactly the people who got turned away.
What the headlines miss about financial planning
Sam asks Marc to react to the Dave Ramsey and Robert Kiyosaki poles of financial advice, plus the current wave of social media personalities who berate people through their budgets on camera. Marc's answer is generous. He thinks personal finance should be a required class in high school and college, and he taught a couple hours of it in Missouri years ago. Short-form content is fine as far as it goes. The problem is that broad advice isn't built for any specific person.
Dave Ramsey gives great general guidance, Marc says, but you aren't everybody. Kiyosaki's comfort with debt is fine if you know what you're doing and disastrous if you don't. Marc himself wouldn't own a house without debt. The real value of financial planning is the ongoing relationship and the perspective an outside advisor brings, especially when your own instincts, like Marc's own pull toward always working and building more, need a second voice.
He lands on the fiduciary point and means it. A certified financial planner acting as a fiduciary is giving advice as if they were in your shoes with their knowledge, not selling you a product that pays them a commission. AI can gather facts. It cannot build the trust that matters when you're deciding how to take care of your family. And ignorance compounds. The longer someone goes down the wrong trail feeling fine about it, the harder the correction gets when the truth catches up.
Giants, regrets, and a note from the version of you 10 years out
Sam closes with the two questions he asks every guest. Marc's giant is Mike Searcy, the founder of the firm. Mike attracted Marc to a small company 20 years ago, told him there was an opportunity to own it, and stuck to every piece of advice he gave along the way. Mike retired last year and moved to Florida. Marc plans to drink a bourbon with him there, even if Mike doesn't drink anymore, just to keep thanking him.
For the pithy saying, Marc actually has three. The first is the one he returns to most often: don't let the things you want make you forget the things you have. The second is a book he keeps near his screen, Five Regrets of the Dying, written by a hospice nurse. He uses it as a decision filter. If you live to avoid those regrets, you'll make different choices today.
The third is the newest one. There is a version of yourself 10 years from now begging this version of yourself to enjoy where you currently are a little bit more. Marc says it plainly. His kids at two were great. He didn't enjoy it at the time because he wasn't sleeping. He doesn't want to look back at today the same way. It's a fitting close for a conversation about a man whose whole philosophy is handing things out in slices and trusting the loaves to show up later.
About Marc Shaffer
Marc Shaffer is the CFO of Searcy Financial, a fee-only financial planning firm approaching its 50th anniversary in Kansas City. He also leads business development and is a certified financial planner. About 15 years ago Marc helped launch Aulos Investment Advisors, a Searcy subsidiary that serves clients without the traditional minimums. He is the author of One For All, a short book on building business through generous, systemized relationships. Searcy Financial