give each of our panelists to give a brief introduction of who they are, what they do, and then we will jump right in. Kristen, let's start with you. Hi, I'm Kristen Luke. I am the founder of a marketing agency called Kaleido Creative Studio, and we help financial advisors market themselves to a niche. I'm also the author of the book, Uncomparable, The Financial Advisor's Guide to Standing Out Through Niche Marketing. Excellent. Julie? Hey, great to be here. My name is Julie Littlechild. I'm the founder and CEO of Absolute Engagement, and our focus is really on helping advisors to co-create a deeper and more engaging experience with both their prospects and their clients. Excellent. And last but not least, Colleen. Hi, I'm Colleen Bowler. I'm co-founder of C&J Innovations, where we help advisors expand the conversation through use of some online assessments, quick five-minute assessments that help bring a lot of value. I sold my planning firm in 2020, successful succession, I'm very excited about that one. We had about a half a billion of assets under management, life insurance, long-term care, disability. So we walked this walk that you're walking. Excellent. Excellent. So the goal today is that we just want to talk about how do we find out who our prospects are and what are we learning from our clients to really know what it is that they value and what it is that they want from us. So jumping right in, I wanted to go over this whole concept of niche, and people sometimes are afraid to say, well, I only serve this population. But I wanted to jump in, and maybe Colleen, you can kick us off and maybe walk us through how do we find out who our niche is and who is our target audience? Well, for me in the beginning of my career, my niche was whoever I could get to work with. So I think that's important in the beginning, because we are learning and we are really finding out, I like to say, who is it that we want to be a hero to? Who is it that we want to build a firm around and add value in their future? That takes having money in the bank to be able to do that and to build this side and this company where you really have this ability to add value in a certain marketplace with the people that you love to work with. Excellent. Kristen, I'd love to hear your thoughts when people are thinking about a niche and a target audience. What are your thoughts on that as well? I think you really have to define it, and it's a discovery process. You have to think about the type of clients that you'd like to work with, like what Colleen was saying, but also who you can serve in a way that might be different than other financial advisors can. Maybe you have something special, like a certain certification or aptitude or previous experience, that helps make you very appropriate for a specific niche. When you are defining your niche, though, I always think you should think about the types of people, the types of clients, but also the problem that they face. You can't just say women. You have to say women going through a divorce, or not just business owners, but business owners who are planning for an exit or a succession plan. Taking it to that level takes it to the next level of being able to define exactly who it is that you're trying to serve and the value that you're offering. Julie, I'd also want to hear your thoughts before we get a little deeper into defining a niche. What are your thoughts here? A couple of things come to mind. I was glad to hear the others talk about working with people that you just really want to work with, because often we're told, and sometimes this works, look at our top clients and see what's common. Often, that actually does tease out who that niche could be, but what if it doesn't? What if the top 10 clients aren't actually clients that energize and inspire you? It is a very introspective kind of process, and yeah, I also have to say that it's not just the words. It's not just, here's who I deal with, but are we actually willing to build an experience that is unique to that particular group, which we may get into, but I think that's part of this process as well. I love what both Colleen said in the beginning. In the beginning, we're just trying to keep the lights on. If someone has a pulse, that's our target, just to keep the lights on. I love the idea that as you get bigger, right, you start growing your practice, thinking about what it is that brings us joy. I joke here that I have a quarterly joy meeting with myself to think about which clients do bring me joy. I often find myself, when I'm in a prospect meeting, how's the energy here? Do I always see myself enjoying this conversation with this person? Maybe sometimes we look for people like us, right? How can I work with myself, because that's who I can relate to the most. I love those insights. I think one of the things that I'd love us to talk to is, so many of us in the beginning build our practice to be all things to all people, because as we said, we need to keep the lights on, but as Kristen and Julie and you have just said, as we go along further and further in our practice, it is that niche that really helps build our firm and build our reputation and hopefully bring us joy. I mean, if it's building our firm and building our reputation, and we don't want to go to work in the morning, that's its own set of problems. That's true. I say, I want to enjoy coming into the office, you know, and that includes not only working with an amazing team, but having clients that we enjoy working with, because that just makes the work that much more fun. I'd love to touch a little bit more, Kristen, on, you know, how do we narrow that target market? You know, what are some ways that we can try narrowing that down, right? We can't work with everyone. And if we're going to say women, how do we start kind of peeling back the layers of the onion to find out who at our core is that we should be targeting? Before I answer that question, I just wanted to add one last thing, which is even if you're just starting out, you know, focusing on a niche can help focus your marketing, and you can still accept any clients you want, and you should, because you need to keep those lights on. But marketing to everyone is very challenging, and servicing everyone is very challenging. So if you have that idea of who you're going to be from the beginning, that does provide a lot of focus, not only around your marketing, but how you're going to service them as well. So when I'm working with advisors on how they should narrow a niche, is we take them through a process where we help them think about, you know, what are they passionate about? What special aptitude do they have? And then who's going to be a profitable client, right? Like, you have to be able to get paid. And I think that's one of the problems that people make is they go after a niche that is something that they care so much about, but those people don't have money to actually pay for their services. So once we have a general idea of what those potential opportunities are, we start to look at like narrowing it down from there. As I mentioned before, you know, coming up with a general category, and then talking about what is the problem that they're facing? And then maybe even thinking beyond that, like, what solution are you offering, right? And then what outcome can they expect at the end? And so kind of narrowing it down from each of those four stages really helps for them to become more specialized in what the niche is. I would say if you're just thinking general numbers, if you want 100 clients, which I think is a kind of a general number of one advisor can handle 100 clients, then you should probably have about 10,000 people in your niche. If you have fewer than that, then that's going to probably be too small. If it's larger than that, you know, you can start there. And if you find that you're still too broad, like working with widows, then you may need to narrow down beyond that to stand out more. And that could be, you know, young widows, it could be widows who are inheriting a business. So in the beginning, I think staying a little bit broad in your niche is a good idea until you can kind of see exactly where you're going to be able to add more value and where your specialty can be and then narrow down from there. And I love that you said that, because sometimes it ends up being, you know, you know, broadly where you want to be. But sometimes it's a natural kind of progression into an example is, you know, because of our tax expertise, we kind of get brought in in a lot of divorce cases. So we always had women in transition as part of our niche. But now it's like more specific, those in the process of a divorce and us being brought in. So it kind of also, like you said, Kristen, you know, pick that kind of broad base of where your skill set aligns with the client. And then it may be like a natural progression. But I think as we think about our niche, right, sometimes what we may lose sight of is, okay, yeah, this is our niche, this is who I want to work with. But what do they want from us? Right? How do we what's a good way and maybe Julie can walk us through this, what's a good way for us to really understand what it is that that they're valuing, what do they want us to bring to the table? What are your thoughts on that, Julie, in terms of being able to filter that out? You know, I think a lot of my answers always come back to just ask people, because I think I think it's, it sounds trite, but it is at the core of what I believe. Now, having said that, in this case, I think there's, I think there's a benefit in starting with your own sort of self reflection and what you know about people, you know, it could be a visual map with your, you know, your niche in the middle, and then around the outside, you know, what are they concerned about? What do they need? What, you know, or create a persona. I mean, that is the other sort of approach to really try to narrow down. At the end of the day, there is a hefty dose of assumption built into that process, which is why we always say, you know, just just ask people, I think, you know, and so what does that mean? It could be asking them about what they actually want, the kind of services they want, it could be getting deeper to how they think about what they're concerned about, what they you know, what keeps them up at night, I think we tend when we're looking at what people value to think more about, you know, do they value that I do tax versus this? Or do they value that they have a partner to talk through their issues with right and, and so I think kind of leaning into to those things. So I think, you know, having a process, whereby whether it's as part of a review meeting, or it's in some other format, actually asking people to rate what they value, is really important. And, and, you know, we work with a lot of advisors who do this in surveys. And one of the one of the pitfalls, I guess, of that, is there's often this tendency to get a lot of this kind of data in and then assume that everyone's the same, because on average, this is what people want averages mean absolutely nothing to individuals, right? What do my younger clients want versus my older client? Or what does Mary want to versus the average, right? So look, this is all about just getting deeper data on our clients in some way, shape or form to so that we've got their voice telling us. I love that you brought that up, because we frequently do a client survey. And we ask them to rate what they value most. And when tax wasn't at the top, I was almost offended. I was like, we put so much thought into that, like, how is tax not your number one priority? But I love that. I also, Colleen, kind of you having, you know, obviously run your own practice, and now kind of here on a consulting role, what are your thoughts on trying to figure out that alignment and values? Yeah, I think, you know, what Julie and Kristen both said about adding value and asking questions, that is the one thing that I found in all the work with the advisors that I did and still do is, is a hard thing to do to wrap their arms around that. And so, like these assessments that we have, one of them is on partnership, you know, on a scale of one to 12, where are you now in partnership with your advisor? Where do you want to be? If somebody is a three in partnership, and they don't really, you know, they'd rather go to 1-800-NO-HELP, even though they all those other things fit, then it's not a right fit for any one of us on this call, right? So it is finding a way to ask the questions as quickly and as, you know, as open as you can, that they'll give you the answers back, because as an advisor, I'm thinking, oh, I know what they want, right? But that's not true. As Julie said, it really isn't. Tax planning, I've never had anybody come up and say, I want to, you know, reduce the state tax. I had people say, I really want my kids to have a legacy from us, right? We know that that's reducing tax or state tax, but that's not how they say it. So I think it's also asking the questions, and then, however, in a survey and an assessment in open-ended questions, and then being quiet and really listening. If I could add to that, the other challenge I think we have with questions in whatever form they're asked, is we still lean on the primary person in the relationship as if they are a proxy for their partner or their family members. And, you know, last time I checked, just because you got married doesn't mean you share a heart and mind. And so being able to, you know, draw out those insights, because sometimes understanding what he, she, or they value is going to be different, right? So... We call that the quieter voice in the conversation. The amount, what is the current percentage, 70% of partners or spouses will leave their current advisor. They're probably the quieter voice in the conversation. They're the one that's not being asked the questions, right? It does have to be both. Julie, you're so... That's so important. Julie, I love that comment. I'm going to start using that at home, too, with the husband, but... But you're so spot on. I met with a prospect probably a couple weeks ago, and, you know, the husband, who pretty much runs the finances, he was saying, this is what matters to us. And she's trying to say, hey, you know, I want to do art classes, and he didn't think that was important. I said, oh, I'd like to hear her interest, you know, it may not seem important to you, but it's important for my planning, because this way I know what she wants to do. But Kristen, I'd love to hear your thoughts coming from more on the market research and how... What are your thoughts on being able to really understand what clients are valuing? I would say I agree with Colleen and Julie, you just need to ask them. We... In the program I take our advisors through, we have them also do interviews very early on in the process to make sure that their idea of what their niche is and what they value is aligned with actually what they do value. And I was actually working with an advisor recently who wanted to work with business owners who were interested in philanthropic activities after their retirement or after they sold their business. And when he went through all these interviews, he came back and he said, all they really care about is being bored, you know, they feel like they've done enough philanthropy in their life, they don't feel that they need to do more, they just don't want to be bored when they retire. And so he had to go back and rethink about what his messaging was and what he was going to do to reach these people, because what he had in his mind was a mismatch for what people are actually feeling and thinking. So there really is no better way than just to ask people and you can do it more formally, I think the way that Colleen and Julie do it, or just asking the questions in a conversation. I mean, at a minimum, ask every new client why they started to work with you. I mean, just that alone will provide, you know, insights. Yeah, and I know when we had talked about kind of what things we wanted to address here, we, you know, how do we find out what service they want from our firm? And I think Julie hit the nail on the head is simply asking. And I think Colleen, you had talked about a passport package, and maybe you can educate us a little bit about what that is, and helping us determining what clients want, what service, not only do they value, what services they want from us. So in the sense of services, that's kind of a different question. The assessments that we're working with, I believe that as advisors, the qualitative side, there's so many different questions to ask those types of specific questions. But where are the questions on the quantitative side? So the assessments that we work with are really about mindset. Like, does somebody, a caring mindset, does someone know where the passwords are? You know, if something happened to you, would your husband, Nella, know where all the passwords are to everything? We normally just say, oh, where are the estate documents? Where are the wills, et cetera. The partnership one's really important. One of them that I found to be really important with women is the longevity mindset, which is if something happened, do you have a plan for being cared for? And all of us as advisors and who work with advisors know that's disability insurance, long-term care, a fund, et cetera. But it is in all of our data, because we have big data from all the people who've taken the assessments with all the advisors, longevity concerns for women are much more important to them than to men. That's something in the data that all of us talk about that's so important. So it is having those conversations quantitative as well as qualitative that are, I think, the way to open and really build those deep conversations. And, you know, they don't want the same thing. It happens to be one person in the relationship we have found really wants more of an emergency fund. One person may really want more of an opportunity fund so that if, you know, they have money available when things are quote unquote cheap. So it's finding all those things out when we talk about from the beginning in the sense of marketing and what our people value, how do we do that and how do we build that niche? You know, if I could just add on, because there's all these different things we want to understand. And I think we're touching on different ones. How are they feeling? What are they thinking? And then what services do they actually want? Like quite literally the services that are offered. And, you know, one of the mistakes I think it's easy to make is to, I say ask clients, but that comes with a caveat because it's not actually your client's job to define your offer. You know, ask them how they're challenged, how they're feeling, what keeps them up at night. And then it's your job to design an offer around that. And there are great ways to ask. I mean, we could take an example like insurance or something. I could ask a hundred people, should we offer insurance? Well, they don't know. I could ask, are you interested in learning about insurance? And no one would say yes, because literally they do not want. You could ask them when they last reviewed their insurance and protection requirements, that'll get a different kind of response. Or you could say, you know, rate your level of concern that your family will be okay when you pass away. All of those things actually support the need for a service. But this idea of asking that sounds so simple, actually, you know, carry some complexity with it as well. I love what you just said, because when I start a meeting, I will say, tell me about your goals, your vision for your life. Tell me what are the things that keep you up at night? And I think that open-ended question on, well, I worry, like you said, if something happens to me, then what? Where does everything go? Are my kids gonna be okay? That question is one of my favorite questions. You know, what keeps you up at night? And some people say, well, nothing keeps me up at night, but, you know, and what about Kristen, I'd love to hear from you as well, when we think about client service, what are your thoughts with respect to what they want from a client service perspective? Well, when you're working with a niche, it becomes much easier to understand what services they need because everyone has the same problem, right? So you keep hearing the same thing over and over again, and you just have to read between the lines. For example, if your niche is something around longevity planning, maybe people are really struggling to determine which facility they should, you know, sell their house and move into. So there's, you know, maybe you need real estate services, or maybe you need evaluation of all these different facilities. You know, maybe they need help with, you know, long-term care insurance and deciding what policies. So having a niche makes it so much easier because you just hear the problems over and over and over again. And when you get tired of referring out or trying to send them resources, you realize, okay, maybe that's a service that I need to offer. Yeah. And Julie, you had brought something up, and I don't think we've touched on it, but a couple of good points because service is not just doing an insurance review or running a tax plan, but do you want to touch on some things that could really differentiate an advisor when it comes to client service? Well, I think, you know, there's some big trends in the industry, and we're all being pushed in that direction. So when we think about experience, like broadly, first of all, I would differentiate quite clearly between good service and an outstanding experience. You know, good service being table stakes. Are we responsive? You know, we call them back. We're smart. We don't mess up too much. We, you know, we're pleasant. All of the, you know, that drives satisfaction. And we see this in the data all the time, of 93% or so of clients are satisfied, and it's directly correlated to the service level. We're kind of more interested in what happens above and beyond that, like what drives deeper engagement? And that's where we start talking about, like, do I have the right offer? Am I demonstrating leadership? Am I providing meaningful support to you and your family? That is, you know, that's more than I call you back or I meet you twice a year, as we know. So I think that's how we need to think about it. And increasingly, it strikes me that we need to move from an experience that is generic, right? I meet with all of my clients X number of times a year, and we send out an article that my BD is provider, whatever, you know, whatever it is, it's something that happens for everyone, and kind of move up the trajectory toward greater personalization. Technology's enabling this now, but that is the reality. You cannot send me content. You cannot have a conversation with me just because I'm female, right? What do I worry about? And so, you know, to Kristen's point, you know, what are the problems that you're trying to solve? So I think personalization of the experience is gonna be something that is sort of a dominant theme for us and a shift from satisfaction to much deeper, more profound engagement going forward. And I think with that, what I'm remembering from our previous conversation and things that maybe we forget, I think, Colleen, you had mentioned this, you know, that when it comes to experience, it starts from the minute they walk in your office. Do you wanna touch a little bit on that? Yeah, and I think it even starts before that, when they start getting introduced to you, that marketing that they see your website, all the touches that you have. I've said, I don't believe financial advisors other, that they have competition with each other. I think our competition, advisors' competition is with other experiences their clients are having. And so as you look at the niche, what experience are they having? Like, are they going to the Four Seasons? Then all of a sudden your experience level needs to be pretty similar. How are you touching them along those ways? We all can go to a Motel 6 or Four Seasons, those are different experiences. And so as we look at that whole thing from marketing, from designing, from asking the questions, and I think what Kristen was saying about what services, if longevity is one of the concerns, if you are working in the woman's market, as we did with widows or over the age 65, that longevity is very much a concern. Having people that you can collaborate. It is not that the advisor has to have all the answers, it's that they have to be willing to be in the question with the client. Kristen said about, looking at the different long-term care facilities or retirement places or things like that. You've got to be willing to be in the question of your niche market. I love that. And I think I'd love to get all of your thoughts on, you may start here because this is what you think your clients want right now, this is the niche that you're serving, but everything changes, life changes. Now we have AI, right? Things are always changing. What do you all think about, how can we stay in tune with the fact that things are changing? How do we keep evaluating what's still important to them or not? And even they're changing, right? Your kids are grown up, now they're in college. So what are all your thoughts on how do we, what's the best practices to be able to keep up with what's important to our clients? I don't know, Kristen, if you want to kick this off for us. I actually was going to steal something that Colleen always says, and I'm going to let her say it. What is it? No, go for it. Automate the, what is it? Systematize the predictable so you can humanize the experience. And that's actually a Four Seasons quote. Yeah, I love it. Because it's a process-driven practice that you can systematize. That's AI, right? We're not afraid of AI, none of us are, because it is the relationship that can never be, it can't be duplicated. It's your caring about your niche future and where they want to be. It can't be, it can't be duplicated. And then I'm going to throw it back to Kristen, but I'm going to say one more thing. Change has happened. Change happens. Change has happened in all of our careers, in all of our lives, in all of our clients' lives. The question is, are we in front of the change or are we behind the change? So continuing to ask those questions, there's that level of ego that comes into play when you are so good. But I was listening to a podcast on mastery that is like, you're always willing to grow and change. It is that never-ending learning piece. And I think that was what everyone on this call does so well. Yeah, I was going to say, you just have to continue to innovate and see what changes are coming and what are the things that you can use. Again, like I'm not afraid of AI. I try to talk to the advisors I work with not to be afraid of AI. Like how do you use that to provide better service? Or how can it save you time so that the human interaction is at a different level? I have to say, I've been seeing over the last few years that more and more advisors are kind of shifting that I've worked with at least that are shifting more towards like life planning or more like the therapeutic side of the financial advice or becoming so automated and commoditized. So they're trying to think about how to add more value. So continue to think about that and continue to innovate your service. I work with some people that have niches of like college planning. Well, that is a very specific point in time. You have to innovate some other offering to continue to service those people. So you just always have to be thinking about growing, putting your clients front and center and saying, what is it that they need now? How can we offer this? And how can we use all this new technology to make that easier for everybody? Yeah, we always... Well, what came to mind is as soon as we hear a particular phrase, we know there's an issue. And it usually starts with my clients never, my clients won't, my clients don't. Like we love to make these assumptions. They'd never do that. They don't want that. Well, that's you talking. It's, you know, so let's... So there's kind of a caution in our own cognitive bias that we have toward what we prefer. But a couple of things I think we can do sort of live examples just came to mind as you were talking of that. Like we have one client who does do a lot of data gathering and feedback from clients, but actually sent out a poll to the adult children of all of their clients, even if they weren't working with them to understand how do you consume content? What are you worried about? What do you... So use that. And most of us, if we looked behind us, have a group of employees who are younger. Ask them as well, right? So we've got these groups of people who have the answers. We just need to get out there and find a way to capture that. So I guess the opposite of... And I love that, Julie. I love the idea of getting insight from even their kids who are not clients today. Because that even says a lot. Like I'd like to understand my parents' financial situation. That keeps me... Maybe it keeps them up at night. And maybe that's a good conversation that we can have with the clients today. Like, hey, we heard from your children and here's some of the feedback. Like how open are you to family meeting? These are things that maybe you can make something that's really difficult for them to do on their own and make it more digestible. They love that. When we present the idea of doing a family meeting, it's like, oh, I didn't know you can do that. And we'll use like, hey, we just updated your estate plan. This might be a good opportunity without talking about numbers to engage your kids in some of the important decisions they'll have to make if this happens to you. So I love that. And I think, I guess the opposite of how do we find out what's important to them and how we can keep enhancing our service offering. At what point, like I think, Kristen, I was cracking up. You said, if all you do is college planning, well, at some point these kids are gonna grow up and then what? So I guess that's a good segue, right? At what point do we know, hey, we need to stop doing this and constantly doing that. What things should we start doing, continue doing and stop doing? But what's a good methodology, I guess, to figure out these things aren't working or it's no longer serving our clients? Is that for me? Yeah, go ahead. Yeah, I think you can add some insight there. Yeah, again, like when you have a niche, it's very easy to determine pretty quickly what people are using and not using because you're all working with one type of person, right? I think it's much more challenging when you have a broad base of clients because maybe a few people find that a service is useful, but 90% don't. And that gets a little bit more challenging because then do you take away the services that you have already been offering? So, again, we're probably a broken record here. You can ask them what is a value to them. That's probably the easiest way of going about it. But I think the more you can focus, the more it just becomes so clear on exactly which services are no longer serving your clients. Yeah. Colleen, I know you had a few thoughts on here and maybe based on some of the assumptions that we make, but why don't you kind of offer some of your thoughts here? Okay, I'm gonna use my thoughts from having the planning firm. If we are growing, our clients are also growing. You don't tend to keep ones that aren't, right? So like the example of the college planning, I would bring in a junior advisor and that could be their niche. So that we don't, we might abandon it, but that might be the way for them to grow new clients and also work with the adult children of our clients because wealth grows and wealth changes. And so those niches, as Kristen was saying, their needs change. And if we are going to continue to take care of multi-generations, we might need to have multiple niches, but for other advisors. If I started in the college area, I would be bored if somebody, if I had to do that, right? And when we're bored, we just create messes, whether we're working with financial advisors or we're working with clients. So having a way to, as Kristen said, ask those questions and or do services differently. One of our clients works with sports. He was a baseball player and guess what? He figured out that baseball players and football players and basketball players had similar needs, but they created three different niches in their firm and they had different people with those backgrounds in those niches. So it is a way, but they're, in the baseball world, they're known there as the baseball players, cheerleaders or they're not cheer, whatever that you call them, cheerleaders. I love what you said too, because like even here, right? We operate using a diamond team structure. And one of the things we try to do when a prospect comes in, right? I can't serve everyone. Like I just don't have the bandwidth to take on every new client. But I tell the prospect, I said, what I'm gonna do is kind of, as I'm understanding what your needs are and your goals and your vision and your values, I wanna better align you with the advisor that really fits in and is able to serve you in the best way possible, right? I wanna, what makes my eyes light up is if you tell me I have a $50 million taxable estate, how do I not pay taxes to Uncle Sam? I'm all over that. That's what I wanna do, right? But other advisors have other interests. They wanna help with debt, cashflow, right? So if I'm aligning the advisor to whatever that client need is, it's gonna be a better experience all around for the client and the advisor who's now doing what they love to do. So I think you're spot on, Colleen. And you must've met my kids that when they're bored, they make a big mess. I just wanna throw them out there. Well, we all do. We all do when we're bored, right? Absolutely. I just think it's so good what you said because A, it takes the ego out of the way. It says, we are gonna take care of you. It doesn't necessarily mean it's gonna be me. And whether you build out your firm that it is or you'd refer them to someone else, as Kristen said, doing that narrow and deep, we're talking about niche, that's so important. And how can you do that in multiple areas and or collaborate and refer? Julie, do you wanna add anything here on the discontinuing some services or offerings? Yeah, I mean, I think literally discontinuing means nobody's using it, nobody values it. And you can get at that information. It's sort of leading us down a slightly different path, which I think is important. There are things that we offer that will bring people in the door. College planning is probably one of those things, right? It's an intense phase of life. You need help, you need, you know. But no great advisor is gonna say, as soon as that's done, I'm out of here. You know, you're on your own. So we need to have that life cycle of services that we are offering to people. And that would include the sports people, right? They might have a lot of money at some point, and then they're gonna transition to a different phase of life. So, yeah, I mean, it's gotta be more than that. I guess, and I'm not even sure what words to use, Kristen, you probably do more than I. It's just like what attracts people versus what keeps them are often different, should be aligned, but are different. I also think when you have different life stages for your niche, that gives opportunity for your younger advisors or more senior advisors too, like Colleen was saying. I think if you are starting with college planning, well, specifically the advisor I'm working with, she has young children, she's in it right now, right? Like she's thinking about college planning even though her kids are still in elementary school. At some point, they're all gonna be, she's gonna be an empty nester, and that'll probably be a natural flow for her to expand her niche that way, but she could easily bring in another advisor who's in the thick of it with kids in these school systems. And that gives an opportunity to grow up the advisors behind you. I love that language, and grow up the advisors behind you. I love it. Excellent. So we also, we're gonna talk about, when we think about what to do, not do, and maybe this was Colleen or Julie, we had talked about building the business that also serves you. So that's also another angle to thinking about the service offerings you wanna have, what things do you wanna offer to the client? For instance, do you want to do tax preparation in-house? What does that do to your business model? Is that something you want to do to yourself? How much pain do you wanna cause yourself by bringing in house tax prep? But I wanna hear your thoughts on that too, kind of thinking about this from the other angle, right? What, how do you want your business to look so that it's serving you well? I think that was maybe the words that you all had used. You wanna touch on that a little bit? Sure, I'll go first on that. I think, yes, when we're getting our business started, it's just, we just need revenue coming in the door. But as Kristen was saying, yes, and keep thinking about the niche because that is important. And so as we grow and build our practices, and that is working with financial advisors or financial advisor working with a client, it is really focusing in on, I believe, I've said it in the beginning, who do I wanna be a hero to? Where do I wanna add value in their future? How can I best support them? If it was in tax planning, I think I'd have to shoot myself. I mean, there's just no way that would be anything I'd wanna do, right? But I had really good collaborators that loved it. I had people on our team that loved doing financial plans. I have financial advisors that we work with at C&J that love working with the younger market. I have ones that love working with the older market. Everybody is different and everybody is unique, but as advisors and as business owners, as we all are, what I know is if I can wake up in the morning and be excited that I'm going to the office, I've got something going right on finding that niche market, which I like to call the hero market. Who do I wanna be a hero to? Julie, I don't- Yeah, I wrote a book about 100 years ago called The Pursuit of Absolute Engagement, and I really should take Kristen's lead and write another one soon. Yay! But- We'll champion that. But part of what it was about and what I was trying to lean into with some of our research was this idea of why is it that people have, you know, a certain amount of joy in how they do business? And it all came down to alignment at the end of the day. And instead of jumping in with what's my business goals, we just tracked it back to personal vision, driving business vision, driving client experience, driving team experience. When they're all aligned, when they're all working together, then you create torque, then you really... So it's kind of back to that personal vision or even, you know, with niche in particular, we've often asked advisors to go through what we call the authenticity test. And the authenticity test was sort of just defining who you work with, but then answering another question. So I work with fill in the blank. The reason I work with is, and if you can't answer that question, so if you said, I work with pre-retirees with million dollars in total investable assets. The reason I work with those people is because, well, I don't know, they've got money. Like, you know, if you can't come up with some compelling, that's your test. Like, are you personally committed to that? But this idea of personal vision, I think is so critical to this process. It feels like a luxury when you start, as you pointed out, but ultimately it's what keeps us going when you get to as old as I am. And Julie, you touched on something that I think Kristen had mentioned, and maybe we didn't touch on it before when we were talking about what was important to the client. But when we think about building the business that's serving you, Kristen, I think you wanted to touch on, you know, what are we putting out there and how do we, let me not take words from you, but go ahead and touch on the business model and what we're saying versus what we're doing. Right, I think that's the thing, right? Is that your business model has to be built around the clients you're serving. And the best example I've seen of this is when people put out that they're doing a multifamily office. And I've been asked to actually market multifamily offices, but when I ask what's different than just normal wealth management services, I just can't get a clear answer. And that makes it very challenging. So you can't just market what you wanna offer. You have to back it up with your business model to really add that value because the words itself isn't gonna make a real difference in your client's life. And that will get around. People will talk about that. And you can take, you can audit your entire business on that basis, right? Here's who we work with. Therefore, why is, how does my client experience, how is that different because of that? How is our digital presence different because of that? How are our services different because of that, right? And if you can't, like you said, if you can't answer those questions and walk through the business, then it is just words. And unfortunately it doesn't get you too far. And I think it muddy, like from my perspective, like especially when I'm with prospects, it muddies it up. It looks like everyone does these things, but I know, like I know they don't, right? The shop down the block isn't really running projections because unlike Colleen, we are fueled by taxes. So you tell us we're gonna talk about taxes and we're all jumping in, but is someone really running projections? So if you put tax planning, what does that mean, right? Is it, oh, we just do lots harvesting. Is that tax planning? Is tax planning actually running projections and doing all these, you know, what if scenarios? So I agree. I think if we're gonna put something on the site, we need to back it up because then that's gonna lead to bad experience, right? I thought I was gonna get X and you're doing nothing different than what I was getting over there. So I think that's just setting expectations. I think Julie talked about that. We do have a question that I wanted to address and you all may have touched a little on this, but maybe we can give the audience and the question is, what kind of questions can you ask your clients about the services they feel has the highest value to them without just asking them or making assumptions? And I think Julie, you started touching on some of them, but maybe we can grab some examples of what those questions would look like. Yeah, I mean, they can be relatively simple. So it starts with what do you offer? Think about it yourself. What do you offer? And then before you do anything, change the language into client-facing language. I know you offer estate planning, but how would a client think about estate planning? Or whatever. So I'd go out with client-facing language. And then it's just a matter of, to what extent do you value, are you aware of, first of all, and then do you value? Those can lead to very different answers. One to five, very valuable, not at all valuable, not applicable, it gives you that kind of read. You can also drill down to different aspects of your business. We're noticing a lot more advisors really honing in on the review process and the different components. Do you value the 20-page report that we produce for you? Do you value the conversation? Do you value this? Do you value that? And really try to almost rip apart everything that you're doing. But it can be as simple as that, and you can get some really solid input back there. I have a question for you. Do you ask it open-ended? Like, what do you value? Or do you give them very specific things? Because I find that clients often don't realize that the advisor is doing certain things. Clients are terrible at open-ended questions, unless it's in the context of something. If you do, I generally, that's when I would go in with an awareness. Like, are you aware that your advisor, or that we provide the following could be yes, no? And then to what extent do you value the things that you're aware of? That's kind of a second question. I like closed-ended type questions, but then it can be followed up with, is there anything else? The only thing I would say is that's services, right? Let's not forget where we started this conversation, which is more mindset and like, what are you thinking and what are you feeling? Do you feel supported? Do you feel guided? Do you feel like, do you value those things? It's really easy to focus just on the services and forget that. And yet that, you know, we've been, for the last few years, we've been calculating this confidence index. And it's just four statements. It's around security, confidence in the plan, sense of control and clarity. And that alone tells you if the client is struggling and if they need support, right? So that's different than saying, do you value tax planning? Two very different things, both important. Yeah, I worked with an estate plan, an attorney once who we were kind of going back and forth. And I was explaining that, you know, this plan that he had put together wasn't gonna work for the client. And he said, Nela, if the client tells me to paint the room blue, I'm gonna paint it blue. And I thought to myself, that's all well and good, but we're the professionals. Like the client doesn't know that they need a power of appointment inside their trust. Like it's our job to explain what these things do for them. So I love that you touched on that because if you're, okay, what do you want? Well, they don't know because they don't know how the tax laws might work. So it's our job to really educate them. So I have another question here. Oh, sorry. Can I jump in on this question for one second? One of the things that we did every year in our annual review was a page that said, benefits realized from our work together. Yeah. And it could be, and it was more quantitative than qualitative. It might have been introducing you to so-and-so that we know is a counselor for one of their kids or having a conversation with your adult children, or not just the things that most advisors have in there. This is your internal rate of return. This is your insurance. This is how this works. So what is it? And that's why the assessments, we created the assessments because it's on mindsets, which Julie and I were talking about, that's so important to us. But you could take the benefits realized page and say, here are these things that we've done over the last years together. What things are most important to you and your family? And oh, by the way, whoever's the loudest in the conversation, have them be quiet first and ask the second, the one who's quieter, right? And then ask the other one. But I think you can, asking that open-ended what do you value is kind of hard, but here's these things we've been doing, or if it's a new client, here's these things we've done from other families. Are these anything that add value in your life or something? And for what it's worth, having them articulate that really drives referrals as well. The more you can get them to talk about the impact, the more likely they are to share those stories with others. Right, because if they say, I have a great financial advisor, well, everybody, what makes that? Why is that, right? I think Colleen, you touched on something, which I was gonna ask Kristen to add a little bit more color here, but obviously if you're gonna say you do something, do it, but maybe how do we talk more? So this is a question. How do we have our clients know what it is we're doing that they may not know we're doing? So maybe, I don't know, is that a marketing thing? Is that just having the proper deliverables? But how do we showcase maybe like the tax planning? If I'm not putting the tax plan in front of them, they don't know that I'm doing it. But what are your thoughts on that, on looking at that as value adds? One of the things I've seen advisors do is have like a scorecard that they show clients where it's like they list all the things that they could be doing. And then they either say, yes, we did it, no, we haven't done it yet, or this is not applicable to you. And so I think that's kind of the most straightforward way for to show like all the different things that you're doing because otherwise, yeah, it's really easy. There's so much going on in the backend that the client will never see and that's on purpose to make their life easier. So having something like a scorecard and showing them all the things that you've been doing behind the scenes can be helpful. I've also seen client service calendars be presented to clients saying, this is what we're doing each month behind the scenes and then presenting that at each of the meetings that they're having with their clients just to reinforce again, like it may seem like we're not talking for three months or six months, but here's what we're doing every month to stay on top of your finances. Yeah. Kristen, the scorecard thing is a great idea because especially as you're in that niche, they're gonna be very similar. So it just becomes really easy to create that. That's a great idea. And I think I'd love to see a sample scorecard. I mean, that one, we have a calendar, but I'd love to see what the scorecard looks like. So we have three minutes to go. What I'd like to do is maybe each of you think about some words of wisdom that we can provide the audience as they think about niches and our client service and the experience. Do we wanna start with Kristen? Well, I'm gonna do a little plug for my book, which the title of the book, at least, which is Uncomparable. Like think about how you could be uncomparable, which means how do you service clients that maybe are underserved or not served in the way they should be in a really unique way so that you are so different from other advisors that you can't be compared. So that's what I would say. Just always think about uncomparable as your goal and just differentiating yourself so much that there's so much value to your clients that no one else can offer. Julie? Yeah, I mean, I would sort of circle back to this idea that your clients and your prospects, in fact, hold all the answers that you need. We need to draw it out of them. And so let's let go of assumption and let's formalize the process. It's not enough to occasionally ask people what they value and what they like. We need to bake this into how we do business so that we can really track how those needs are evolving. So just ask, ask well, ask often, and ask consistently. And Colleen? Yeah, I would say it's all about value creation and creating value. If we're gonna talk about a niche, how are we creating value in their future and adding that collaboration and experience? And I would be remiss if I didn't talk about the quantitative side, because the qualitative side, that AI is gonna run over everybody. If you think that's gonna sell, it is that mindset, it is that conversation, it's that being in front of the change that's gonna make the difference. Excellent, well, I certainly took down a lot of notes myself. This was probably one of the best panels I've been on. You were all amazing. I took a lot from this and I hope the audience did as well. I'm gonna remind them to make sure they complete the survey and hopefully we will see you all next month. We'll have number three of the number two series for adding value. So thank you all for tuning in. And if you have any questions, feel free to email us and we can address them. Thank you, have a great afternoon. Thank you, ladies. Bye-bye. Thank you.

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