Brian Montes

Apologies to anyone who got that stupid DM from me asking for you to vote for me on some podcast contest. My account definitely got hacked. No more cat videos for me!

@vxylily You forgot the mood of “Sell everything, move to the middle of nowhere and live off the grid.”

Men only have 5 moods: 1. Constantly horny 2. how we gonna get rich 3. Random 2 am motivation 4. Intense loneliness 5. My family needs me

@MikeUmbro @SullyCNBC Yep, that’s what I meant!

@brianm2 @SullyCNBC Barrels!

Live from a gas station in San Diego, where I paid $5.99 per gallon to fill up with foreign gasoline. @SullyCNBC While we wait for the gasoline pipeline(s), we should spend the next 3 years discussing Sacramento’s degrowth campaign.

@jasonmpearl @irentdumpsters 7 minutes through Boston Logan last week.

@irentdumpsters Same

Just took me 3 minutes to get through TSA in Fort Lauderdale All you Internet doomers make me sick

@skylarromines Flew home from Boston last week. Arrived at the airport 3 hours early as a precaution. Spent 2 hours and 45 minutes waiting at my gate.

@jasonmpearl No thank you email…no job offer. Everything in the hiring process is a test.

Question for my peeps here: You fly a candidate in for a final interview and pick up the bill for everything (obvi) and there isn’t a thank you email that comes back in 3 business days after interview. 1️⃣ No fly zone (move on, basic decorum is necessary) Or 2️⃣ Keep moving forward (stop being old and stodgy) Comment your answer

Technology is amazing. Flying home from Boston today and it’s been a day of delays. There was no way I was going to make my connecting flights. I rebooked my connecting flights on my Delta app, at 35,000 feet. Home by midnight is better than a hotel room.

Tonight’s stop: The Union Bar at Union Oyster House, America’s oldest continuously operating restaurant. Old wood, crowded bar, and the feeling that a few Founding Fathers might still be arguing in the corner. This restaurant in Boston has been serving guests since 1826.

@TS_Secrets Looks like Chicken Mole?

Who knows what dish this is? I can’t believe I found this in’s hole in a wall in the middle of nowhere Colorado.

@TS_Secrets Good for you for taking the time to visit her. You’re right about how few families are engaged in their families lives. It does make the feel of these places very depressing.

Visited my mom at rehab today. Grateful she’s getting help, but man… those places can feel heavy. What struck me the most wasn’t the equipment or the therapy rooms. It was how few families were there visiting. Lots of people sitting alone. One thing is also clear though… those places print money. Makes you think why people get into these as investments.

One thing becomes abundantly clear as you get older. You cannot outrun your past. If you have stuff to deal with, deal with it and be done with it. Otherwise it rears its ugly head 20 years later.

@TS_Secrets I wasn’t aware of this option. One of my clients is a seafood processor and I’m working build a technical team of people to maintain German made processing equipment. Going to look deeper into this tomorrow!

Employers keep telling me they can't find qualified tradespeople. I keep asking the same thing. What are you doing to build them? Here's what most don't know. The federal government will actually pay you to train your own workforce. WIOA grants fund the training. OJT reimbursements pay back up to 50% to 75% of a new hire's wages while they're still learning on the job. IWT funds help you upskill the people you already have before you lose them to someone paying more. You build the academy. The grants offset the cost. You get the first pick of every graduate. Everyone else who completes it still gets certified and lands somewhere else. You lose nothing. You gain everything. The pipeline problem has a funded solution. Most employers just haven't gone looking for it.

@skylarromines You seem to attract all the negativity with posts that should not stir up that much controversy. 🤦‍♂️

Make a post about how insurance is a reliable, durable industry with a ton of opportunity for young people. Angry [mostly older] people sending a bunch of nasty DMs & comments about how they hope the industry gets destroyed. Whilst I understand having some, often reasonable / logical, frustrations with the current state of the insurance industry [esp areas like health insurance], hoping that a ~10 trillion dollar annual revenue global industry fails is asinine. 30%+ of the US economy is directly or indirectly linked to insurance. Second order effects of an industry failure would be catastrophic for ~everyone. So, people can rightly be frustrated about their premiums. I am frustrated about mine too! I see more opportunity to improve the industry & ‘the way we’ve always done things’ than most people do, having been a part of it for so long. That’s precisely why companies like ATW exist - to make the insurance industry better. But I don’t hope that better means wiping out a ton of job opportunities for young people in America. I got licensed as an insurance broker in 2008. I wanted to pay for my own college & graduate with little or no debt. I did just that. I bought my first home & several investment properties before I turned 30. They didn’t all turn out to be great investments & I learned a lot of lessons in the process, but that’s a post for a different day. Point is: even graduating into a recession & dealing with the financial headwinds that we all did as millennials, I’m sharing about an industry that has given me & my family a pretty nice life. I’m sharing because that industry still exists, with more opportunity than ever, and it could give lots of young people today a pretty nice life too. And if your genuine response to that is that you hope the entire thing gets destroyed so you can save a few bucks, well - you’re probably not the kind of person I want to be around.

@hippojuicefilm Now we need to expand this to every public place.

United is now requiring passengers to wear headphones. Passengers found to be listening to music or videos without headphones can receive a lifetime ban. United's CEO quote: "Take that ratchet behavior to Spirit."

@SuccessWithJake At the start of my career, yes, I’d be somewhat apologetic. Until I realized the reason I was firing them is because of their actions, not mine. As long as I’d done everything in my power to help them succeed, the termination is on them.

Do you tend to apologize when you’re firing someone?

@RobertMSterling Prayers sent your dad’s way.

Friends, I am humbly requesting your prayers. Two weeks ago, during GI surgery, my dad’s doctors discovered lymphoma tumors. They have been spreading aggressively. Today, he started chemotherapy. He’s right next to me, currently getting his first dose of R-CHOP. If you would pray for him, my mom, and his doctors, my family and I would be grateful. His name is Brian and he’s the greatest man I’ve ever known. By the grace of God and with the support of a wonderful medical team, I’m confident he will beat this. Thank you 🙏

@adrienne_lain We also hire people for they can do in the future. Untapped potential is a massive win if you can find it.

Most management headaches start at the hiring stage. Experience tells you what someone has done. Character tells you how they’ll show up. Emotional regulation. Conscientiousness. Low drama. Healthy relationship skills. You don’t just hire skills. You hire the operating system behind them.

@skylarromines Keep the inner circle tight.

A difficult truth: if you are authentic & transparent, there will be a not insignificant number of people who will learn you well enough to pretend to fit into your life in some capacity. Some of them are v good at this. They may say all the right things. It’s so important to watch what people do instead of listening to what they say.

A big lesson for Fintech founders: Every company takes on some compliance debt. Playing it too safe won’t get you to the top. Push boundaries. Build better products. Disrupt. But keep in mind: if you push the wrong boundaries, you could sink the whole ship. Compliance should be a core function for your team. Lending. Banking. Payments. It doesn’t matter. Make compliance a top priority if you want to scale and survive.