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2024 Playbook Series #2, Session #1: What Kinds of ...
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My name is Marianela Camacho and I'm the CEO and co-owner of Tobias Financial Advisors based in Plantation, Florida. We have a team of 20 people and we manage over $800 million in assets and I'm so excited to be moderating this month's session on value-add services. I have an amazing panel with me here today. I'd like for our panelists to introduce themselves. If we can start with Lorenzo, give us a quick overview of your firm and your team. Yeah, hi everyone. My name is Lorenzo. I am a partner at Pathview Wealth Advisors. We're based out in sunny San Diego. We're a team of about 15 people as of today and our AUM's in the 500 to 600 range depending on the day of the week or what the market's doing. And David? Yeah, David Flores-Wilson. I have a field in the RIA in New York City, Sincere's Advisory, which we founded about four years ago. I have a business partner, a couple of junior CFPs. I work with about 140 households, 170 million under management. I'd say the average age of the client base is about 41 and we work primarily with business owners and people in tech. Hey everybody, I'm Lindsay Troxell. I am the founder and head coach of our coaching initiative. I'm based in Denver and we are a human-first value-add services platform for advisory firms that are looking to differentiate themselves. We work anywhere from startups to five, six billion is our largest firm that we're working with right now and we have three coaches. Excellent, thank you. Super excited to kick this off. So just for our audience, know that you can ask any questions in the Q&A. I'll be monitoring the Q&A and see what questions are relevant as we're going through the presentation. But, you know, kind of kicking this off, we all know we're in an environment where traditional asset allocation has become so commoditized that we really need to think outside the box on how we can really showcase the value that we bring to our clients' lives, right? So it's no longer just an asset allocation, set it and forget it. How are we looking at all of the clients' needs and what creative things can we think of bringing to the table? So with that said, what I think I'd like to start with maybe David and Lorenzo, maybe before we jump in into some creative value-add services and solutions, talk to us a little bit about what are your traditional type services that you offer and then we could layer in what you're adding on top of that. If maybe we start with David, kind of walk us through what is your traditional offering? Sure. You know, we try to meet with our clients four times a year. And of course, if something comes up, we're going to accelerate that. And we'll definitely have quarterly themes. And so, you know, like a lot of people, we're helping people get ready for tax season in the first quarter and reviewing tax returns. And in the second quarter, you know, kind of switching to financial planning projections, you know, taking a fresh look at people's coverages on the, you know, home auto and life insurance side in the summer. In the fall, we'll switch to sort of estate planning and then we'll sprint towards the end of the year with, you know, helping out with open enrollments, tax projections, charitable giving, things like that. I like that now we're calling these things, not the value add, but the traditional holistic offering. And Lorenzo, how about yourself? Because I know you're pretty unique in the fact that you have the tax prep in-house. Yeah. So Pathview, we are a second generation group of owners. So we transacted a buyout of our former owner back in 2020. She was a CPA. That's how the firm started 30 years ago, prepping tax returns, moved on to tax planning, moved on to financial planning, and then layered on the investment and wealth management portion of it. So that's kind of how our firm is operated, is we're going to plan around, we're going to do financial planning, and then we're going to do very in-depth tax planning as well. And then the investment piece we'll take care of kind of as a tool or some way to get to your financial goals. So we're not selling investment advice, we're selling comprehensive financial and wealth management. Traditionally, similar to David, we have, you know, things that we're trying to touch on throughout the year, but we call our relationship, we're here when we're, when you need us to our clients. Some people are now on quarterly or annual schedules based on where they want to meet in the calendar year. But really what we want is our clients to call us for anything related to money, whether it be they're selling an investment property or they need a new credit card, we want to be their go-to source. I always like telling people, we want to save you the hour, hour and a half on a Saturday of you Googling and trying to read through Reddit posts or blogs and trying to figure something out, making a mistake, and then me having to fix it. Please call us. We're here for you. This is what you're paying us for. This is why you have us on retainer. We want to be the experts kind of in your corner looking out for your best interests. Love it. Yeah. And so now, you know, we need to think outside the box because now you guys all kind of face my same frustrations, right? Every financial advisor is saying they do all these things that we do, but do they really? Right? So, and I think there's nothing worse than finding out that a client is looking to get more out of their advisory relationship than all the things that are super important, right? From the investment, the estate planning, the retirement planning, the tax planning, and the risk management, right? These have now become the traditional value-add services, but I'd like to hear a little bit more from each of you. What are things that you are doing today that are not fitting into these traditional value-add services? And how did you determine that these were the right things to add for your clients? I'd love to hear what those creative things are and how you reach the idea that this is what you wanted to do for your clients. So, you want to start with David? Sure. And yeah, I think taking a step back as well, right? I think that the way we view things is, at least as it currently stands, the dynamics of our, you know, sort of competitive landscape is pretty favorable. And, you know, we're in a business where there's recurring revenue, there's high retention, we have built-in escalators if you're doing AUM. And then on the supply side, there's, you know, one CFP for every 3,000 Americans, and the average age of the financial advisor in the U.S. is, I don't know, high 50s or early 60s, depending on the study. And not only that, I mean, you know, what other business can you have a relationship where you can have for 30 plus years or even have it go intergenerational? And so, and it's just endless in terms of the value I think we could be adding. And so, my perspective is, you know, there's just many different ways to be successful. And I don't think that, you know, I or anyone on this call has sort of all the answers, but the way we've, you know, our philosophy really is, let's just, let's play in our target market. And let's be authentic and have fun and, you know, find the solutions that are going to be helpful as we ask questions to clients. Because at the end of the day, like what we want to do is have happy clients and happy clients just means, you know, higher retention and referrals. And so, there's sort of three or four different areas that we definitely like to play in, in terms of, you know, one is in the business owner area where, you know, we want to have an answer and be helpful at sort of every stage of the business cycle, as well as, you know, every stage of the business itself, right from formation to exit and beyond. And I think exit planning in particular is something we focused on, even though many of our business owners won't sell their businesses for, you know, five, 10, 20 years. I think, you know, some of the process of doing exit planning for us, we believe is, it's just helpful. It creates better outcomes for the, at the personal level, at the business level and financially, as well, you know, we want to go pretty deep on philanthropy and planning around charitable giving with the theme of, let's go from sort of reactive to proactive giving. And so, you know, the framework we've developed is, you know, let's be helpful as, you know, not just, you know, determining, you know, what are the tax efficient structures and, you know, how can we say taxes on giving, but also let, you know, let's, let's go back to, you know, what causes are appropriate for them, given their values and let's help them narrow in on particular charities that are aligned with their, you know, what we call sort of their, you know, nonprofit risk tolerance, right. And then once we find these charities, you know, let's help them to do some due diligence on them, tell them some best practices, help them monitor that. And then of course, you know, and, you know, find out the, you know, sort of the best structure to implement. And so, you know, as well, given the kind of the life stage of the client base, we're really focusing on, on saving on the cost of college, right. You're developing a framework where your people, you know, can minimize the cost of college and sort of maximize their outcomes and not just say, Hey, you know, put your money into 529 and off you go. And so, you know, just having advice and strategies around that has been helpful. But I think also, you know, a big theme with the client base is that we're trying to develop sort of a sense of community. And so we'll have these sort of round table events. We'll have, you know, clients that are business owners, for example, or, you know, clients that are, you know, maybe their centers of influence themselves. And so we'll get them together. We'll throw regular happy hours and try to create some synergy between the client base as we kind of go all in on our sort of New York city community, you know, given the sort of the causes that we support and, and, you know, so for us, it's, you know, just, just keeping them happy and, and creating that sense of community and along with these sort of other, you know, one-off services that, you know, don't apply to everyone, but when, you know, when there's a need, we'll, we'll go deep on it. I love what you said, because sometimes, you know, these clients do struggle to find community, right? Especially when you're dealing with high net worth and folks with, with wealth, right? They're careful who they're developing relationships with. But I experienced a magical moment when we invited clients to a dinner and these two powerhouse women connected and they had so much in common and then they met for coffee. And so I heard, you know, amazing feedback from that connection. So I, I like that you're doing that. So just before we move to Lorenzo to learn a little bit more about his value add services. So are you using particular programs here for any of these or these kind of ad hoc as they come up as the conversations come up? Well, I think what, you know, we've sort of developed systems and checklists and consents around these sort of different topics. Right. And so, you know, for example, you know, if a business owner, you know, needs to set up a board of directors, right. And so like, oh, well, these are the sort of our 10 best practices when it comes to setting up your board of directors or, you know, a family succession issue, or this is the framework that we have. And so it's, you know, it's just constantly like, you know, just researching things and things we've learned over, you know, different certifications, you know, talking to partners, talking to centers of influence. And then, you know, on the philanthropy side as well, you know, there's just lots of different tools out there, you know, whether it's, you know, through Schwab charitable or Fidelity charitable or Stanford PACS has a lot of good resources. And so, you know, we've read all that, we've taken a couple of courses at American college and, you know, kind of put it all together and tweak it based on sort of our experiences and trial and error. And then we sort of have this framework kind of going forward. Love it. How about you, Lorenzo? Excited to hear about your creative value add. Yeah. So when my partners and I took over rolling associates on Pathview, you know, from one day to the next, we switched over everything, you know, we woke up as business owners and now needing to manage all these relationships that our firm had established. And we kind of went around, well, we started off as saying the messaging was nothing's changing. It's the same people, same faces. And that worked for a couple of months. And then we started seeing a little bit of discomfort from clients that were usually very quiet. You know, we get some, we started getting some odd questions here and there. Why does my invoice say this? You know, it's been saying the same thing for 25 years. So we started looking at these things and the bubbles that were coming to the surface. And you realize that, yes, the same CFPs were there. Yes, the same CPAs were there. The processes were the same. Our faces are the same. The email, the branding, everything was the same. But what we lost in that transition or that transaction was a little bit of a trust that our firm had established with these families or clients. So what we did is we kind of flipped it upside down and said, you know, how do we bring that back? What do we have to do to gain that trust back? And, you know, we didn't invest in more technical areas. You know, we didn't grab another CPA or another CFP and try and wow them with that. What we did is, you know, we started scheduling lunches, you know, meeting with people outside of the office, putting our faces in front of them and saying, you know, my name's Lorenzo. I'm married. I have a baby. This is what I do on a Saturday. Get to know me, get to trust me. And then they did the same thing. We started learning about their grandkids, started learning where they came from, where they maybe, you know, they've been retired for longer than we've been at the firm, learning what their careers were and how they got to where they're at now. So what we wanted to do is build back that trust so that then all of our professional tasks came back to being valued, understood and not questioned for little things. I think one of the things that we needed to build up was some equity with our clients, because when mistakes come and happen, we didn't have that equity bank built up that our former owner had after working with these people for 20 plus years. So, you know, very, very simple. We went back and just started meeting with them. And then it got to a point where we ran out of time in a week, right, because we still had to do all of our other functions. So at that point, we flipped over and said, how do we optimize this? You know, what do we need to do in terms of investing in solutions? One of the things that we did was beef up our CRM. We switched platforms. And then the other thing is we did hire a business consultant to help us organize our structure. And then those two things opened up a whole more, a whole lot of extra capacity. So now we have other advisors, not just us three owners meeting with people doing the same things that we were doing. And it just helped us move through that client list a lot faster. So I think, you know, what I'm hearing from you is that sometimes we're so focused on all these value add and the, you know, new shiny thing that we could bring to the firm to dazzle our clients with that maybe we need to focus that sometimes it's about the relationship. So maybe bringing that front and center and looking for opportunities to really connect with our client so that we become a person to them, a human being, right? This is, I know Lorenzo, I know his family, he's good people, right? So just kind of building that trust. That's good insight. That's really good insight. Yeah. I think, you know, what we're dealing with people day to day is very intimate and yes, you can be, you know, the next person up to an owner and they, you can be in the room, but when you're the person that they're dealing with day in, day out, you have to reset that relationship and make sure that they understand who they're dealing with, who you are, what your values are so that they can then open themselves up to you like they did before. Yeah. It's funny you bring that up because one of the exercises that we do as a team here, I don't know if you guys have heard of that, is this whole Jahari window as a method to build trust with clients, the more you share, the more they share. And so this is how the trust begins to build. This is great. So I think, you know, and I think this is where Lindsay is going to really shed some interesting light on what things we could be thinking about, Lindsay, because you having worked as a coach and in a consulting capacity for many advisors, I'm sure that you probably heard many of the challenges they were facing, which maybe was the catalyst for where you are today. So I'd love to hear a little bit more about what it is you learned working with these advisors and then what kind of where you are, how that led to where you are today in your business. Yeah, it's a great question. So I'm going to start with a little bit of backstory. I started in financial services in 2000. I became a financial advisor in 2005, and then I launched my coaching and consulting career in 2008. So I've coached thousands of advisors across the industry, all shapes, all sizes, all channels, bank, wire house, insurance, Indy, RIA, you name it, I've done it. So I have seen how different firms are putting different value adds into place in different ways, right? The challenge that I see across the board that advisors are facing is really this lack of commitment to differentiation. And what I mean by that is that they haven't committed to a niche market, or at minimum, they haven't done a deep dive into the psychographics of who their ideal client is. And I know that Chris and Luke's going to be talking on your next session, so I'm not going to go into all of the depth around creating a niche or diving in deep. But at minimum, what you really want to be doing is identifying what your clients need and what's unique to them. And so I listened to David and Lorenzo, and what I'm hearing is really finding what's unique to your clients, right? With David, with business owners, creating community, being able to solve some very sophisticated problems and needs, and Lorenzo really diving in and understanding who these people are at their core, right? So for a lot of teams, they haven't yet gone to that level. They haven't developed the culture where the team believes deeply in delivering some sort of differentiated, unique experience. And that also comes with continuing education. So it's the commitment behind what it takes to create a structure, deliver on your services, be consistent, solicit feedback. And I think the reason for that is that it just, it takes effort, right? Things have been pretty good to this point in time. Things are going well, but the problem is going forward, especially when we look at Gen Z and millennials, and even to some extent Gen X, what they're looking for is far different than what our Boomer clients have wanted up to this point in time, right? So these holistic services that we're talking about, what people are looking for are ways for their advisor, who is one of their most trusted confidants, right? You know more about your clients than anybody else knows about them typically. So they're looking for more holistic services that support their personal growth and development. We see this reflected in Fidelity's value stack research. We see it when we look at McKinsey's study about what advisors are going to look like over the next decade, right? They're turning more into holistic coaches. And so I've really been watching this shift take place for the last 10 years, but the industry wasn't ready for what I'm offering like 10 years ago. So I waited and I watched. And in about 2020, when we were all going through the pandemic and people were feeling overwhelmed and burnt out, and they're trying to find more fulfillment and purpose, what I started to experience was advisors coming to me and asking, how can I create community? How can I offer one-on-one coaching for my clients that are experiencing some really difficult things that I don't know how to deliver? So that's when I launched our coaching initiative. And really what we do is we help financial advisors that are looking to add those value ads to their team, but they don't necessarily know how. So we do consulting, we offer webinars, challenge groups, content, fractional one-on-one coaching, life, career, business, and retirement. So it really does help to dive into that idea of what do your clients want? Who are they at their deepest level? And then how do you provide additional resources that will help them grow into their best self? I love what you brought up because sometimes we're so focused on the numbers and running the models and the model says it's a go, go ahead, do it right. And we're not focusing on the coaching and prep for some transitions that our clients might be looking towards, right? I mean, if you're talking about a business owner who his whole life, all he's known is running this business and moving and shaking on a daily basis, how are we preparing him for that transition from a psychological perspective? And that's more important than the fact that maybe he's going to deposit $15 million and it looks great. You're not going to run out of money, but he's going to run out of purpose. So I think this is where that's truly value-add, I love that. And so that's more of like bringing on an outsider to kind of fill this void that maybe you're not offering today. And when we look at value-add, we're always looking at tech, right? And maybe not thinking of a Lindsay, the value-add doesn't have to be a tech stack, it could be a Lindsay. So speaking of tech stack, one of the things we're always looking for, right? It's really hard to hire good people and keep up with the work, right? Now, it feels like there's never downtime. I don't know if you guys are feeling it in the firm, but we get out of tax season and now it's a go, all the projects we put on the back burner. So we're always looking at tech stack and see what tech could we be using to make us a little bit more efficient. And I know a question came in, are we creating service calendars? So I'd love to hear your thoughts on, are we creating a service calendar to help us kind of break out the year into different themes, but also maybe touch on what are some technology that you're looking at that has helped you guys deliver what you're doing. And so maybe you could spend more time having one-on-ones and doing dinners because now you have some technology that's going to streamline what would have otherwise taken eight hours to produce. So curious to hear your thoughts on whether you do have a set service calendar and then maybe what technology are you using to help you bring those deliverables to clients? David, you want to take a few minutes? Sure. I think, you know, I mean, lucky for me, I mean, I'm a little bit of a boomer when it comes to technology, right? So I do have a business partner that, you know, spends a lot of time, you know, conducting due diligence on technology solutions and, you know, is very active. And so, you know, I'm definitely one of the later adopters in the company, right? And it's sort of like, you know, from my business partner to me and then from junior person sort of like getting me to use, you know, for example, we're implementing Practify, which is a Salesforce-based CRM system in the last few weeks now. And so, but for me, when it, you know, so I'm sort of the last person to make these decisions and kind of implement them. So, you know, my asset test is always like, is this better for the clients or is this better for us? And I think sometimes our tendency is to have a technology solution that's going to give the client another login, another, you know, and so for me that a lot of times I, you know, I have a lot of resistance against those type of uses of technologies. I think, you know, we do a lot of like real estate analysis, for example, when it comes to, you know, our clients, they have projects, we help them, you know, conduct cash flow projections and determine if it's a good investment in net present value. And, you know, that's just done in Google Sheets, right? And, you know, something customizable. And I think and it doesn't scale right. And so for me, I think we're really kind of focusing on developing that next generation and giving them the, you know, the skills and having them work through problems, because I think that's, you know, I think you can kind of there's multiple different kinds of leverage, right? You can leverage through technology, you can leverage through, you know, raising capital or leverage through your team. And I think that's where we tend to focus like, OK, well, let's let's get them up to speed where they can kind of make some of these decisions. And that'll take off some of my time where I can come in and be like, OK, well, now I'm just looking at the model and evaluating their first pass at it as well. You know, we can switch gears and give them the sort of the analytical skills that they don't just have to use the same spreadsheet over and over. They can, you know, if it's a different situation, we can start fresh with something else because we are, you know, marketing ourselves as providing customized solutions. And so for me to kind of give them something out of the box, it's going to hurt us more than it's going to help us. Interesting. Yeah, I know we can get lost in Excel here ourselves. And so sometimes I keep thinking, how can we be creative so that maybe we are not relying so much on Excel? But sometimes it's Excel is what you need to model something out for a client. And I have to say, we work with a lot of engineers and they really appreciate, you know, some good Excel work. It's like, well, it's done on Excel. It is, you know, this is money right here. What about you, Lorenzo, on the tax front? You know, what tech have you guys started toying with? I know, you know, we're hearing about Holista Plan kind of helping with a lot of the tax planning. Is that something you're using today? Have you looked at it? What did you like, not like? So tell us a little bit about your tech stack when it comes to value add. Yeah, so on the tax side, we're, you know, we have CPAs cranking out spreadsheets. They have looked at Holista Plan. What I've heard from them is that they would rather run the numbers themselves and try and dig into how the software is calculating it, which I, when I think about what we use on our planning side, e-money, kind of the same deal. Like I would, it would took a lot for us to use their cash flow versus the spreadsheets that we had in-house and trust that it was, you know, 99, 95 percent good enough versus our kind of perfect quote unquote spreadsheets that we were calculating. I think for us or for firms that are looking at adding on tax, I think you have to decide where you're going to be on that spectrum. Are you going to hire just a CPA in-house to assist your CFPs or your planners right when when they need a tax calculation? Are you going to hire a team of CPAs to do tax planning come year end, maybe for everyone? That's something that we do for all of our clients is we will pro forma 1040s or all their tax returns, all of our clients tax returns between November and December and make decisions before 1231. You don't have to be a tax client in terms of tax prep to go through tax planning. It's just part of our wealth management offering. And I think the furthest part of that spectrum is you're going to hire on a team of CPAs to do tax prep as well during tax season. I think you can lean somewhere and there would all be value adds for clients, right? Just having a CPA next to your door that you can ask a tax question is a good resource for your CFPs. Tax planning is more of an outward resource for clients where they can they feel like things got done before 1231. And I think the tax prep is more of a convenience factor where clients just like coming here to do an investment review in February and also drop off their tax documents. And then maybe their their advisor is the one that delivers their tax return come April. So it's just, you know, they like just knowing that one person is kind of leading their whole financial life. But I think you can pick and I think, you know, you have to pick your tools appropriately. I know we we haven't found one just yet that we like for tax planning, but we you know, we have different spreadsheets just like Dave and I'm sure all of you guys out there that are internal tools for us. Yeah, now I'll add a little bit to that because I always say, you know, it's that that that saying, right? If a tree falls in the forest and no one's there to see it, did it really happen? So I feel like tax planning is is really time consuming and it really is truly value add. But from a client perspective, it's only as good as how you're communicating it. Right. Because if you're behind the scenes and you save the client, you know, twenty five thousand dollars, that's all well and good. But how are we communicating that so that they're seeing that as a true value add? So we did start using holistic plan, even though originally I didn't think it was good enough and we were crunching numbers in BNA. So BNA, you have to be a CPA to be to be comfortable in BNA. So this is where we say, well, the plan might be a more advisor friendly platform and we could just run returns through there. And it does run really nice client reports. But when you're dangerous enough with tax, you almost want to redo all the comments that it's spitting out because you're like it missed all this and then pick up on passive losses. But that's the tax nerd in me. I digress. So, yeah, you know, I'd like to add on that as well. Right. We've been using holistic plan for a couple of years now. And, you know, it's it's very attractive to get you there quickly. But the danger is that, you know, we're almost developing a new generation of financial advisor that is doing this sort of tax planning without understanding some of the concepts behind that. Right. And so whether it's e-money or holistic plan, you know, I think it's sort of almost important to kind of run a parallel process to say, hey, like, do you really understand this? And let's let's kind of test those concepts and so that we don't get in a situation where, you know, it's similar. Like, you know, when you think about A.I. and all kind of what's out there and people like, oh, I was going to take this job and that job. And it's like, well, you know, it's wrong so much like we need to be able to train people to think critically, to spot those issues, even if, you know, even if one day it's going to give us all the answers. I love that you literally read my mind because I was going to say it's like using chat GPT. It's great. It might give you the hey, go this way, but it doesn't mean you just blindly say here's the answer, because and I often you'll hear me, they make fun of me here because I say we get paid to think, OK, we do not scan in a return and here are the answers. And then we regurgitate it without really understanding is this true? Is this how it works? And what's the value add in that point that holistic plan is making like, OK, where does that mean for the client? But I love that you said that, David. Thank you. So I wanted to kind of circle back with Lindsay a little bit. You know, we talk about tech, but I think that she offers something so unique and I wanted to get a little bit more of an understanding. Right. She says I'm available for the firm to use my services for the client. It could be on a consulting basis. I could be like a full handoff. But tell us just so that we can understand when we're thinking about holistic planning and we have the physical and emotional aspect of a person. But tell us a little bit what coaching would look like for a client. Right. What what's that service look like? How do we kind of we sometimes want to walk around with a pocket calculator in our pockets. But tell us, how do we even bring that up? Because you have some clients that just give me the numbers like this is irrelevant, but maybe not understanding that we have to look at them as a full person. So tell us a little bit about what that looks like from a client perspective. Yeah, so as I mentioned earlier, we've got a whole bunch of different services right that go beyond life coaching. And so my clients, when when we are getting together, advisory team and myself and we're sitting down, we're really diving first into understanding who your client is and what they need and then crafting a suite of services specifically for your firm. So life coaching is one of those components. I'd like to maybe use a case study. So one of my clients, I recently just got back from a trip to see them in person. And since we've been working together, they have experienced 18 percent year over year growth from just net new assets. They've experienced when I was there in person, they got a prospect to commit to them. It was a five point five million dollar client. And that was directly because of the work that we're doing and how we approach things more holistically and provide these additional coaching services and life planning services. They received their first two referrals from a client that they've been working with for 10 years. And these were ideal referrals. And then they also have a nine million dollar prospect that they started prospecting three years ago that came back out of the woodwork because we were doing a retirement challenge, a 30 day retirement challenge. And he had this massive identity shift between who he was as an executive and who he was going to be inside of retirement. So these these impacts that we're having at the business level are pretty significant. Now, what does that mean for the individual? So we really, again, go back to starting to understand who your ideal client is for this team in particular. That was individuals that care about their children, successful people in their careers that are nearing retirement, and then chief human resource officers that are helping other people retire. So those three things were super important for us to understand about who this team was going after for this, for us to then develop their suite of services. So we looked at drip content with videos and emails and social media and health and wellness webinars and a retirement challenge group and a future self challenge group career coaching for their kids and then coaching for their team. So I'll use the example of career coaching for the kids. So the individual that just gave the two referrals, I've been working with his daughter now for a couple of weeks. It's always individual type work when we sit down. I understand, you know, I get the referral from the team. I learn a little bit about who it is that I'm talking to, and then I do an assessment of what it is that we need. So sometimes it's a one off conversation. Other times we're having six sessions for this girl. She's 25 years old. She's making some career changes. She's trying to navigate some internal situations and figure out how she can get a promotion. And so we're diving deep into who she wants to show up as, like what is her personal brand? And then how does she approach conversations with her older manager so that she can come across as being somebody that they can put their trust into. So it's a very personalized experience. We talk about retirement transitions, we talk about business stuff. So, you know, these experiences are very personal and individual based on what the client actually needs. Well, Lindsay, and again, I think it's such a unique service and we often forget about, you know, the soft side of what we do, which, you know, again, the numbers are great, but it's really about the person. What other services and kind of working with advisors and learning what their challenges are and how to really stay, be able to differentiate themselves. What have you found that would be a good value add that maybe nobody is doing and that you would recommend? Do you have, you know, maybe wellness, but maybe different aspects of wellness. What are your thoughts on that? Yeah, I mean, across the board, wellness is always an amazing topic. We just did a webinar yesterday that was talking about how to create more quantity and quality of your energy through managing your physical dimension of energy, what you're eating, how you're moving your body, sleeping, hydration. For some people, I've been talking about this one for years, but for anybody that's working with women, especially if they're divorced or widowed or, you know, trying to get back out into the dating scene, you've got to keep yourself safe these days in terms of how you're dating and how you're putting yourself out there. There's a lot of financial crime that's going on. So I'm talking to people about creating events that are tailored to supporting the individual and their specific needs. Again, a little bit outside of the box. We're also starting to see things like retreats, right? Bringing people together, going on an extended retreat, lining up a suite of educational speakers for people to do longer deep dive development. So these are the types of things, financial therapy, you know, bringing in a financial therapist so that you have the ability to help people with their money stories, or maybe there is differences between the partners in terms of the way that they look at their money. So these are all additional services that really get to the root of who it is that your client is and what they need. But again, you want to spend a lot of time just sitting there thinking about your best clients, the problems that they experience, what they care most about, right? This client that I just told you about, they care so deeply. So many of their clients care so deeply about their kids. So when we start to talk about it, the first thing when they're in prospect meetings, they start bringing up the fact that we have career coaching services that are dedicated to help their kids make the most out of their careers. And what happens is they light up because they're like, that's all that I want is to take care of my kids and make sure that they know what to do next. Nobody has ever offered us these types of services before. It's life-changing. Yeah, I think, and so maybe we know what you're offering and we kind of go to you first and is this something you do, Lindsay? But would that be the best approach if we're looking to add something that's out of the box, maybe touch base with you first? Or how can an advisor know where to go to find these resources that are not traditional in any way? And in some way, one might say it's not even financial related. So it's the soft stuff. Yeah, well, I think you need to ask yourself the question, do you want to build this in-house or do you want to go outsourced? And so when I think about that, there's a couple of key questions that you want to be asking. Do you want to become the expert in the service that you are going to be offering? If you are working with dentists and part of your offering is specifically helping dentists negotiate their contracts, do you want to become the expert in negotiating dentist contracts? Maybe you do, but maybe you don't. Maybe you want to partner with somebody else. Do you want to create some distance between you and your client? A lot of the advisors that I work with don't necessarily want to have the types of conversations that I'm having. They want to create a little bit of distance between themselves and their client around these particular topics. Do you have the bandwidth to add the service and do it in-house? And then finally, can somebody else do it better and offer you more leverage? If you want to become the person, the go-to person, and that's something that you want to bring in-house, you can always work with somebody like us to determine what those services are going to look like and then go out and acquire the skills, or you can hand it off, right? But it's about who do you want to be in your business? Well, that's a perfect segue to what I was going to ask David and Lorenzo. You know, how do we determine what things we want to do in-house versus what things are better served by an outside provider? And maybe you can tell us, is there anything today that you're outsourcing and how did you determine that was a better service to be outsourced versus trying to pay for that talent in-house? Yeah, so for us, we took Lindsey's approach. You know, what do we want to be good at and what are we good at? So I think we start with, we look at our roster and ask around, is there anything that you want to specialize in, right? So good example, student loans. So not college funding, but actually taking on clients with student loans. We have a CFP that has specialized in that very specific market. So, you know, she will look at your student loans, help you download all the files, look at the payment plan. There's all these different ways to structure it and she will run numbers for you that give you the optimal scenario, right? So just like fits right into our financial planning program, but it's a very kind of niche specialized thing that we have in-house. Another one big here in Southern California, especially San Diego is solar. You know, solar panels, do you buy, do you lease them? Do you get a battery or not? And then we have a company called SDG&E, which is our local energy provider, has changed their pricing plans over and over again. There's companies out there that will do it for you. We have a guy here that did it for his house. He's a CFP, so he developed kind of a pamphlet for our clients to use. We now have an expert in-house. We did a webinar on it. He presented at an AFFA conference on it. He's become this like solar panel guru that we like. And it worked out. And a lot of our clients have used that kind of new service expertise, if you want to call it. Those are two good examples of things that we did later on. Two that we have not, that we've been asked are estate planning. We've never, you know, we've thought about it over and over. It doesn't make sense for us to hire an attorney. We would rather have a short list of people that we'd like to work with, work with personally and refer that out. We don't need referrals back. We just want our clients to be served the right way at a fair price. And then another one which we've been asked a lot are trustee services. So you think of someone that maybe has no heirs, no kids, no charities, or no one to look after their estate. They want us to take care of it after they pass away. That opens up a whole different compliance box that we don't want to uncover. So again, we would rather look for people that are here local and refer that out and just find people that are pricing it fairly and doing a good job being fiduciaries, et cetera. But it sounds like the solar panel expert was just something that just came to be because he dealt with it for himself. So how did you guys think, well, this is smart to start rolling this out. Does this become an agenda item or just see if it was something that was resonating with clients? How did that come to be? Yeah, I think internally we do a lot of things. We get one question from one client and then that same on a Tuesday and then on a Thursday, someone else has the same thing. And we started feeling that kind of heartbeat and we say, okay, this is something that we need to look into. So same with solar. We got a ton of emails in a couple of months saying we need help with this. And then from there, we just programmed a webinar and we had a big showing. And then from there, we got even more client questions. So we got a little better at it until we had a deliverable that we could show in our financial planning. We wrapped it into everything else that we do. So it was very organic in how it happened. I think the student loan one was a little bit more of a stretch because we don't get that many people with big student loans that they have to structure, but it did come. I believe it started with a client question where one of them was on track to have them be forgiven, but they needed to file a certain way for tax purposes. So there was tax planning and financial planning involved and there was this whole need to really understand the rules which really put it together for us. And follow that lead and see where it takes you. And now we've had two or three other people benefit from that expertise. I'm sure there will be more down the road as well. How about yourself, David? What are your thoughts on that, on what you determined was, is there anything outdoors that you're doing today? Yeah, I also just reiterate something Lindsey said on talking to the children of clients. It's been incredibly helpful. We've done that a lot in the last 12 months and the clients are just so grateful, right? Whether it's a career advice, college advice, talking through the college process, that's just had such a big impact. But I do think that we could debate endlessly the sort of the convenience, the one-stop shopping versus going out there and finding best in class providers. And so we're constantly just sort of just out there in the networking world, just trying to find people that are experts in fields that we're not experts in, never gonna be an expert in cybersecurity. I just had a call with a concierge medicine person earlier today. These are areas that I think our clients will need them at some point. It doesn't happen every day, but when it is fun, when we do have the skills or can learn the skills, I think it's sort of a parallel process essentially of continue just to learn new things, whether it's through courses, seminars, webinars, certifications, and then also just get that out there in the marketplace to see what people are doing. I'm definitely not a big fan of sort of the positioning around, oh, you should be sort of an outsourced family office. I think that sort of has strange connotations, especially in New York where we do have family offices. And so that's, people know people that work at family offices and we're not a family office, right? And so we're just gonna do the best we can, learn what we can and keep networking and then where we have the expertise, build it out. But I do think that some of this comes from the broker dealer insurance world where they're sort of always looking for another product or service. And they're encroaching into sort of our world of financial planning and the NAFTA advisors have been doing financial planning since day one. So I don't think we need to really worry about anything, right? It's kind of like we don't need to sort of just always offer the next thing if it's not appropriate. And that's why I think the networking can really help out as well. Yeah. Yeah, and I think Lindsey hit that nail on the head. It's just kind of evolving as new generations are looking for different things in advisors. It's not to try to offer the next new shiny thing but maybe millennials want to work with advisors that are addressing their specific concerns, maybe more of the soft skills things that Lindsey talked about. Yeah, I guess one other thing I think as we went from sort of like the five core CFP topics to we're kind of focused on eight or nine areas now, if that just keeps going to 15, 20, et cetera, even if we get twice as much as expertise in twice as many topics, we're only gonna have so many meetings. And so we'll have twice as much to cover in the same amount of time. And it could get diluted when they meet with us and we might not be able to advance the plot of their financial lives in the areas that matter most. And so that's why I think we have to be very judicious with their time, especially our client base, they're pretty young, they're busy with their careers and their families. And so we could have offer all this expertise and we wanna talk about all these different topics but there's unintended consequences as well. Very true. And I think it'd be nice to kind of wrap up with maybe some takeaways from each of you. What do you wanna make sure, like Dave is kind of touching on that, right? Let's not always try to offer the next new shiny thing but let's try to maybe give people a takeaway from our session, food for thought. And I know that we did put all the contact information there if anybody wants to reach out, kind of follow up on a few of the things that we may have touched. Lindsay, why don't we start with you? What are some things you wanna offer as a takeaway and maybe some practical applications? I think it's for everybody to start considering themselves as a coach, right? Most advisors get into the business because you wanna help people with their financial situation and you've really taken on this expert persona. The next iteration puts the client back into that driver's seat where they are the expert of themselves and you're really going to be there, yes, to provide your expertise but also to be a really great thought partner. So I would say the practical tip is get really great at asking deeper questions. Ask them, who are you becoming? What's getting in your way? What do you believe about your ability to create the life that you truly desire? Or just simple things like, how are you feeling? Everybody right now is scared for one reason or another. We're all scared. We're more disconnected than we've ever been while being more connected on a regular basis. So just ask them, how do you feel? And then let them tell you. And if they're feeling something that's a little bit uncomfortable, be there to be by their side, maybe not to be the coach for them but helping them to find the resources that they need in order to solve whatever problems coming up. Lorenzo, what words of wisdom and takeaways? Yeah, I think one thing that we've learned here since our transition is to always remember that, yes, we're providing technical expertise and the sense of financial planning, tax planning for us and investment advice but what our firm is really selling, what our clients are paying us for is comfort, right? And this feeling of everything is gonna be fine. These people are taking care of me, they understand what I need and I feel comfortable being with them and then convenience. So comfort, convenience is what they're paying you for. Expertise is just kind of a given at this point in our firm. We have smart people, we have nice people, we're not gonna make mistakes but if we do, we're gonna fix them. And then on a practical note, I'd say any little thing that you change will take a little bit longer and be a little bit more expensive than you planned it. So just know that as we talk about these things, pick and choose what you wanna change and then move on that slowly and know that it's gonna take on a little bit more time and be a little bit more stressful than your budgeting. Lindsay said this a little bit earlier, right? In terms of that we're in this unique perspective that they open up to us, we're asking questions that no one else is asking. And so we're able to identify some issues that we've been lucky enough sort of, they trust us, CPAs are a lot of times like very busy nowadays, right? And that financial planning, it used to be sort of 10 years ago that a lot of CPAs like, they find their CPA, then they find their financial advisor. And I think it's kind of reversed a little bit nowadays, depending on the market and the age. But, and so I did Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu for a number of years and I had a coach one time that he said like every day, try to get 1% better. And I don't think I can get 1% better as an advisor every day, but maybe 1% better every week or month through the continuing education and the network that we're doing. And then so we can spot those issues and ask those questions because we're in that unique position and then go from there. Excellent, well, I think we could talk for eight hours if they let us, but the time has by miracle just passed us by. We have two minutes to go. I just wanted to point out to all the attendees, you guys will get a survey. Please be sure to complete that. And I don't know if anybody has any questions before we wrap up in the next two minutes. We did have one in the Q&A, which was on the service calendar. I responded to him, but, you know, I don't know if you guys had any thoughts on service calendar before we wrap up to be able to give him- It's an absolute must. Yeah. You've gotta have something that's visual that shows your clients continuously what the value is that you are providing. It's just hands down. People forget what it is that you're doing for them. So you wanna constantly be reminding them of all of the wonderful ways that you're supporting them. Absolute must. Excellent, excellent. With that said, thank you all for attending. And we look forward to seeing you at the next workshop series, which will be end of July. You'll get an email with more information on that. Thank you all for attending and thank you panelists. You guys did an amazing job. Thank you.
Video Summary
The video featured a discussion among financial advisors on the topic of value-added services for clients. The panelists, including David, Lorenzo, and Lindsay, shared insights on incorporating non-traditional services like coaching, wellness, and niche specialization to enhance client relationships. They discussed the importance of understanding client needs, building trust, and offering tailored solutions beyond traditional financial planning. The advisors also touched on the balance between in-house expertise and outsourcing services based on client demand and firm capabilities. The key takeaways included the significance of acting as a coach, asking deeper questions, focusing on comfort and convenience for clients, and implementing a visual service calendar to showcase the value provided.
Keywords
financial advisors
value-added services
client relationships
non-traditional services
coaching
wellness
niche specialization
trust building
tailored solutions
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