← Financial Advisor Success
Financial Advisor Success
Ep 423: Expanding Across The Household By Helping (Affluent) Sandwich Generation Kids With Their Parents’ Financial Needs with Cristina Livadary
01:30:00
Supporting “sandwich generation” clients with personalized financial plans while addressing the financial challenges of their aging parents.
Loading summary
Transcript283 lines
- [00:02]
A
Welcome to the Financial Advisor Success Podcast where you go behind the scenes with financial planner, speaker and consultant Michael Kitces to hear stories of how leading financial advisors navigated the inevitable challenges that arise on the path to success and get insight from leading industry consultants about how to break through to the next level in your advisory business. And now, here's your host, Michael Kitces.
- [00:28]
B
Welcome everyone. Welcome to the 423rd episode of the Financial Advisor your Success Podcast. My guest on today's podcast is Christina Lavadieri. Christina is the CEO of Mana Financial Life Design, an RIA based in Los Angeles, California, but working virtually with clients nationwide that oversees approximately 70 million in assets under management for 119 client households. What's unique about Christina though is how her firm supports clients in the so called Sandwich Generation by both creating a financial plan for the client's personal financial needs and goals and and by addressing, often with a separately paid add on financial planning engagement, the financial issues facing their aging and frequently less secure parents who may someday need to be supported. In this episode we talk in depth about how Christina's personal experience dealing with challenging issues with her own aging parents while simultaneously caring for young children helped her recognize the challenges of those that the Sandwich Generation face. How Christina leveraged the research she did for her personal situation, including finding appropriate care for her mother after diagnosis with dementia, to create a blog and newsletter content that resonated with both prospects and her current clients and how this focus evolved into Christina now providing planning services for both working age clients as well as their parents, either as a add on service to the child's engagement or for those who can afford a firm's fees a separate client household. We also talk about how Christina started Monifinancial Life Design from scratch after working as an investment wholesaler earlier in career, teaming up with her best friend who brings complementary skills to the business how Christina used a convertible note to raise money from friends and family to get her business off the ground and how she was ultimately able to pay off the note with interest before it converted to equity and how Christina successfully transitioned from charging clients a $2,400 annual planning fee to a complexity based fee with a now $10,000 annual minimum. By linking the fee she charges, the specific service needs of each client and the amount of time it takes to deliver and be certain to listen to the end where Christina shares how she uses 20 minute fit meetings to determine whether prospective clients will be a good match for her firm service offering and fee model, thereby minimizing the number of bad fit clients. The firm takes on the key lessons that Christina learned from her earlier hiring mistakes, particularly about the importance of determining a truly defined role for each new hire in advance of putting out the job posting and how Christina leverages the artificial intelligence power note taking software fathom to not only turn around meeting notes and follow up tasks faster, but so that she and her team can be more present during client meetings without having the burden of simultaneously taking notes while trying to stay focused on what the client is really saying. And so, with that introduction, I hope you enjoyed this episode of the Financial Advisor Success Podcast with Christina Lavadieri. Welcome, Christina Lavedieri, to the Financial Advisor Success Podcast.
- [03:22]
A
Thank you for having me, Michael.
- [03:24]
B
I'm looking forward to today's discussion and what to me is an interesting dynamic of, I guess as I understand like how your firm has evolved in clients that it works with, I guess intergenerationally. There's a thing in our industry these days of I don't know what the number is. A bajillion trillion dollars of wealth is going to transfer from an older generation of folks to, to the next generation, to their children, to their heirs. So therefore, if you're working with retirees, you should work really hard to build relationships with their kids so that someday when the money passes down the family tree, you can continue to work with the folks that inherit the dollars. And it's just kind of out there as a, as a strategy is even dare say like a recommended practice for a lot of firms, particularly if you work with older clients. And to me there's always been a dynamic of it that's felt really kind of strange and off to me that, okay, I get it conceptually, like we're hoping to build relationships with the next generation. But if you're really good at working with older retirees and relating to them and the issues that they're dealing with, you really might not be the most relatable to what their kids or grandchildren are going through depending on how old the parents are and how far down the family tree you're, you're going because just we, we deal with different stuff at different stages of life. There's some generational dynamics as well of, of how it shows up that makes the, you know, the experience of your 20s or 30s today is not what it was 20 or 30 years ago. But, but if you work with folks that are at that middle stage right now, there's a whole other version of intergenerational dynamics which is yeah, the problem isn't like parents pass away and we're following the money down to the kids, it's no, I work with the kids and their parents. And for any of us that are in like our 30s, 40s, early 50s, often you get to live some version of that, like, proverbial sandwich generation experience firsthand. And so I know you have dealt with some of this, both personally directly and in the practice. And so I think, like, I'm just really interested and fascinated to talk about what it looks like when you're trying to help more members of the family. Not because you're working with the, you know, the parents and you're trying to follow the money down the family tree, but because you work with the kids and their parents have problems.
- [05:55]
A
Yeah. So again, great way to. Great way to put that, Michael. You know, before I worked as a financial planner, financial advisor, I was an investment wholesaler. And I heard a derivation of that, like, initial line that you stated, 20, $30 trillion will be passed down, I mean, two or three times a week, right? Yeah. And I also, at that time was in my late 20s and kind of had the same thought of, like, how does that work? And so through the evolution of our practice at Mana, this really came more naturally than then. It came as like a marketing tactic or a marketing strategy. It was really when we started Mana, we wanted to have and cultivate a life planning centric business. And I'm proud to say that six and a half years in that we have and we lead with life planning in our practice, which means that we are not afraid to have difficult conversations with our clients. And as a result, I would say that because we've opened up the doors in our hearts to have these emotional conversations about life and meaning and purpose. Our clients have, as they've grown older, have started opening up about their fears, about their concerns with their aging parents. And that's from the client side. That's really where this focus on the sandwich generation really comes from, is the ability and the willingness for us to have these conversations with our clients.
- [08:00]
B
So I'm struck that you said this evolution to focusing more into sandwich generation clients, what they're dealing with, it wasn't the. It wasn't the founding mission when the firm started years ago. It came about organically. So can you share a little bit more of organically how this came about? How did you end out going further in a direction to say, I think this is a thing we're going to really start doing more of and focusing in on more?
- [08:32]
A
Sure. I think, Michael, back to what you were talking about earlier, where you Know, when we started our firm, we realized we weren't going to go attract a bunch of retirees with tens of millions of dollars. Right. We just, we didn't know anyone in that demographic. And so we started working with people that were, frankly, a lot like us.
- [08:58]
B
Right.
- [08:59]
A
So we were in our 30s and we were, you know, we were starting families, we were getting married. A lot of our clients and our spouses were working technology, they had stock compensation. And so we really geared our main marketing messages around that demographic. You know, how to plan for maternity leave, how to budget for your wedding. And so a lot of our initial foray into getting clients was really attracting people just like us. And similarly, as we grew and evolved, so six and a half years after launching, you know, our lives changed. And so earlier this year, I personally became sandwiched where, you know, my.
- [09:49]
B
Doesn't sound good when you use it like a verb.
- [09:52]
A
Right. But I, you know, I faced it. Actually, it started in 2023 where my father got very ill and my mom stopped picking up the phone as much. They were up in Northern California and I'm down in Southern California. And so we started getting a little bit worried. And ultimately my. My father got very, very sick and passed away in January of this year. And then within a week of that, my. My mother was diagnosed with dementia.
- [10:31]
B
Oh. And so in retrospect. So in retrospect, that's why she wasn't answering the. The phone. Like, she wasn't. Dad was handling things and she was having challenges already.
- [10:46]
A
Exactly. Yeah. There was a lot of signals that I missed because I personally was not ready to handle it. I was two months postpartum at the time, so I had a lot going on personally, emotionally.
- [11:01]
B
So you had a baby a year ago?
- [11:02]
A
I had a baby a year ago. And so it was. Yeah, it was a time I just. I remember vividly last fall where things were too much, and so I knew there was something off with the communication with my parents. We used to talk at least once a week. And so some of those calls started dropping off and I was like, hmm. But I did have my hands full with our practice in addition to raising a three year old and a baby at that time.
- [11:36]
B
So what happens next?
- [11:38]
A
So January of this year was like the month where everything hit the fan. So I lost my father. Mother had a dementia diagnosis. My son, who was 4 months old at the time, was hospitalized with COVID and so was on ventilators. Couldn't breathe for. You know, it was, you know, even talking about it right now just brings Me back to a, you know, uncomfortable position.
- [12:06]
B
This is the newborn. So he's like he was four months old.
- [12:09]
A
Yeah, yeah. And it was a lot. It was a lot to handle. And I was expected because I was the financial planner among my, my siblings and half siblings. I had to take the lead on all of it. And so that's really where you know, I say, I say this now again with, with many months having passed. But, you know, I. I realized I had no idea what I was doing, Michael. I was responsible for being the co trustee of my parents trust. My parents, it turned out, had become hoarders in the time that I hadn't checked in on them. And so there was and continues to be a lot to clean out in the house. A restaurant need to be sold, and my mother was incapable of taking care of herself. So I had to figure out a plan for care and I had to do that all within a span of several weeks. And so this is where I realized I don't know what I'm doing. And I'm a financial planner.
- [13:23]
B
So at least you have the financial literacy and the context and the rest of it. And it's still horrifically overwhelming.
- [13:30]
A
Absolutely.
- [13:32]
B
So I guess I'm wondering now, how did this play out for you and when does this start to show up in the business?
- [13:39]
A
So I did not stop working because it turns out I process things. I process things slowly. I immediately went into therapy, but I also wanted to continue working because I had this feeling that there was something here. And again, like you just referenced, financial planning is so critical to a successful outcome in this situation. Right. Financial life planning in particular. And so one of the ways that I processed not only my grief, but my desire to learn how to actually do things correctly or do things in a way. Right. There's no right way to go about this, but to go about this in the way that I needed to go about this, I had to do a tremendous amount of research. But I also wanted to begin creating space for these conversations within our practice. And the way that I do that is through writing. And so we at Mana have a bi weekly blog that we publish along with a bi weekly newsletter. And for the first half of this year, I spent that time writing a lot of different on a number of different subjects in regards to the sandwich generation. So everything from what does assisted living look like in all its multiple iterations. I was recording social media videos on the same topics all the way to how to talk to your aging parents about money, about aging, about estate planning. And really through this Writing, our clients started reading it and saying, hey, I saw that you posted about this the other day. You know, first, I'm sorry that you're going through this. But second, my mom started exhibiting some of these signs. What do you recommend I do to really, like, address this right now? Right. And so as I started putting out these blog posts and our team at Mana started also internalizing this and opening up the space for conversations with our clients, we started realizing that a lot of our clients were in similar positions as I was.
- [16:12]
B
So I guess I'm just wondering the nature of this content you started creating. What was the. What was the style? What was the approach? Is this education style? Are you outright telling people you're going through this with your family right now as well?
- [16:27]
A
Well, I would say at Mana, our approach is always leading with the heart. So every one of our blogs starts with story, Right. And we always start with why this matters and in the context of the sandwich generation, why it mattered to me at that time. So I do, you know, I've gone to a lot of therapy. I work on myself, and for me, part of my processing is sharing. And so I felt very comfortable being able to. And again, just, you know, here's why we're writing about this and really a passion of mine and why I continue doing the work that I do is because I also don't want any of those mistakes that I made needlessly repeated.
- [17:16]
B
So then can you share a little bit more of the kinds of articles you were creating? I mean, what were you finding, learning, discovering, putting out there? I think you said some, like, different types of assisted living facilities. And yeah, so talking to aging parents.
- [17:35]
A
That was the first one, was the different kind of assisted living facilities. And that was certainly one where. Because I was trying to figure out what's the difference between memory care and facilities that say they do memory care but don't have lockdown. And so it was a very nuanced, like, here are the different categories of care facilities. The other we've written about, who are the types of aging specialists you can employ to help you when you don't have the time or you don't have the capacity to dedicate all of your time, attention, and resources to this. And so we talked about the network that we've built through this year of working with those in the sandwich generation. A lot of the work that we do is about the conversations and so writing it from different perspectives. So conversations to have with aging parents, conversations to have with your adult children. Because, you know, one thing that I don't think we've mentioned yet, Michael, is that as a result of the work that we've been doing with our Sandwich generation clients, we have found that it's not only parents, you know, quote unquote, you know, in trouble, but it's. It's parents who need planning themselves and maybe have worked with like a traditional financial advisor, AKA like, only does investments for them and have no financial plan. And so we've been introduced to these, you know, to this generation through their children. And so we've also, you know, done life planning work with them and unearthed some of the. Their reservations, some of their fears. And we want to continue to address those fears through our writing as well.
- [19:37]
B
And so I guess in the sort of the truest sense from this intergenerational framing, like, you effectively are ending up moving up the family tree and getting brought in to do planning work with. With the parents.
- [19:57]
A
Very much so.
- [20:01]
B
Help us now with a little more context of, I guess mana, the advisory firm, sort of like in the first place, I don't know, like as it existed 12 months ago before you started down this journey. Because then I want to understand how it's starting to change as you're doing more of this. But can you give us the. Is this the overall context on the advisory firm?
- [20:24]
A
Sure. So shorthand is mana, full name is Mana Financial Life Design. And I run it with my best friend and business partner, Stephanie Bucko. And we launched in 2018 with zero assets under management, zero clients. So we both had come from disparate areas of financial services. And as I mentioned, I worked as an investment wholesaler ahead of launching this. And we've talked about this before to the advisor community, but ahead of launching mana. And neither one of us had actually done a financial plan before. I had done the CFP coursework and I did the sample plan that you have to do as part of.
- [21:12]
B
Yeah, for the capstone class.
- [21:13]
A
Exactly. And that's as far as I went, Michael. So I had never actually done financial planning with clients until we launched our firm.
- [21:26]
B
And it sounds like. And Stephanie hadn't either. What was.
- [21:28]
A
Stephanie had not either. So Stephanie had worked right out of College at PwC during the Great financial crisis, auditing hedge funds. She is definitely the math brain behind mana. I'm giving her full credit for that. And then after PwC, she went to work for. For the world's largest hedge fund of funds. And so she was a risk officer and really understanding the underlying risk within the hedge fund to fund portfolios that they managed at man group. So, again, yeah, so we have.
- [22:03]
B
How do you end out saying, like, hey, let's get the wholesaler and the hedge fund risk manager together and launch a financial planning.
- [22:11]
A
Good question. So Stephanie had finished her CFA and CPA and had really kind of reached a point in her career where she wanted a shift. And so a year before that, in 2017, she actually went to work for a bank and was an investment manager. So was running like a, you know, a portfolio of, you know, a model of securities for private wealth clients of a bank.
- [22:43]
B
Okay.
- [22:44]
A
And so that's where she kind of started realizing, hey, you know, this is not too dissimilar to, you know, how we thought about building portfolios on the institutional side. This is interesting. And she found a great deal of satisfaction working with individual clients. And from my perspective, I had reached a point as a wholesaler where I felt like there was such a. There was a big difference. And you've talked about this before and, like, who can call themselves a financial advisor? And I worked with folks, frankly, that I, you know, I tell people I'd worked with, like, 10,000 financial advisors covering Southern California and Hawaii, and I'd recommend, like, maybe a handful of them to my parents. So it was at the point where I was like, okay, Christina, it's time to stop complaining and start doing. And so, you know, in 2016, I went to Hana and worked with George kinder on the registered life planning designation. After I read his book the Seven Stages of Money Maturity, it changed my life. And there, through the life planning process with that group, I realized that I had to go take the CFP coursework. And I worked while also continuing to be a wholesaler. And 2018 was the culmination where I got a sabbatical for working a decade at my previous firm. And I took those two months to really pause and first surf in San Sebastian, Spain. But while in San Sebastian, Stephanie came and we put together a business plan and we raised friends and family money to launch our firm and keep us housed. I'd say for the first year of our business, we had savings. But learning lesson, double whatever you think that you need to launch a business. So we did that, and we launched with an email to everyone in our network saying, we've launched a firm and that's how we got started. Michael. And it was up from there, but it was slower going than I had thought it was going to be in the acquisition of clients.
- [25:20]
B
I want to come back in a moment to acquisition of clients. More about who you're going after But I'm intrigued with raised friends and family money. So what did you do? How did that work? Like, are there friends and family who own some percentage of mana because they were capital investors in the startup phase?
- [25:39]
A
So, so what we did was we issued a convertible note.
- [25:43]
B
Okay.
- [25:43]
A
And that convertible note was, was going to convert into equity within three years, but thankfully we did well enough to pay them off. And our friends and family didn't truly want to own any share of our business. They wanted to see us successful. So ultimately we did the convertible note. We had, you know, it was really, really good experience for us. And how to a fundraise all the time.
- [26:18]
B
What were the terms of the node? Like, what were, how did you.
- [26:23]
A
We paid them an interest rate that was, you know, what private equity equivalent was paying at the time, which was great. I mean, much better than interest rates today.
- [26:33]
B
But yeah, so I mean, they're making double digit interest rates for a high risk startup loan.
- [26:38]
A
Exactly, yeah. And so we did that for like two and a half years.
- [26:45]
B
Okay.
- [26:46]
A
And then we paid them off fully and then Stephanie and I became the owners of our business.
- [26:51]
B
Was this tens of thousands, hundreds of thousands? Like, how much did you raise to get going?
- [26:57]
A
It was, it was about like 150,000.
- [27:04]
B
Okay.
- [27:05]
A
Yeah.
- [27:06]
B
And that was mostly to cover like salaries for you and Stephanie.
- [27:13]
A
That's right, yeah.
- [27:14]
B
Sounds like, I mean, just were, were not the most capital intensive businesses. It's not like you need to buy real estate and factory equipment and such. And it was just you and Stephanie to start. So you were like, you weren't hiring staff out of the gate.
- [27:29]
A
That's right, yeah.
- [27:30]
B
Okay. And so raised 150 of capital in a convertible note with a market rate of interest and personal savings. So. And so now you've let everyone know you knew and said, we launched an advisory firm. So, so what was the, so what was the original advisory firm? I mean, like what, what were you when you sent the announcement email? What did you tell everyone you were, you were doing and launching and trying to serve and accomplish.
- [28:03]
A
It was simple and I'm sure full of bravado, Michael, but it was, it was essentially, you know, you know, either Stephanie and I from, you know, friendship or our professional careers. We are extremely passionate about what we're building. We are focusing on financial life planning. And I'm sure I talked a little bit about what, you know, the difference between, you know, financial advice and financial life planning. And I think we just opened it up and said, you know, if you've ever thought, hey, do I Need a financial advisor, reach out to us. And so I had always been in my work as a wholesaler. I spent a lot of time, again like thousands of meetings, asking advisors how they brought clients on. And some of the best advisors that I met had a fit meeting. And so that's really the way that we position anytime. If you're interested in working with us, schedule a 20 minute fit meeting. And the fit meeting's purpose is to really evaluate if we at Mona are a good fit for what you're looking for. And so really kind of like releases the pressure of needing to close anything or us pitching anything. But it's really, we're really trying to evaluate if we're a good fit.
- [29:26]
B
So what was the, I guess just missing business model fee structure out of the gate? I mean, did you, did you have minimums? Were you just working with anybody who's willing to pay you is a good client when you're getting started?
- [29:41]
A
Anyone who can fog a mirror?
- [29:43]
B
No, I mean, say most of us as we launch.
- [29:47]
A
So we did launch with XY and so XY really, we used a lot of the thought leadership that you and Alan had cultivated through that group to design our first of many fee structures. As you know, that evolves quite a bit in the first few years we did so much.
- [30:07]
B
What was it for?
- [30:08]
A
So little.
- [30:08]
B
What was it originally? Because I, I always find it's fun to look back and fuck like, wow.
- [30:14]
A
Look, I mean the first was like 2400. 2400. So yeah, $200 a month. That was, that was the first one. Yeah.
- [30:27]
B
Or comprehensive financial planning and life planning with eight. Eight meetings or something.
- [30:32]
A
That's right, exactly. And then, and then. So we had always decided to charge two fees. So one was comprehensive financial planning and that's the process we call financial life design. And then the second piece is investment management. And so we started at 50 basis points and then, you know, very quickly, I think in the first year we went up to 75 basis points for the first million and then, you know, a graduated reduced fee from there. So.
- [31:05]
B
And then did the planning fee evolve as well? I'm assuming you're not spending $100 a month.
- [31:11]
A
Yes, it evolved. And I mean it was, it evolved through not only, you know, our realization but that, wow, like we're charging this much, we're working this hard. How many clients do we need to bring on to live the life that we want to live? But it was also, you know, we did a lot of evaluation on who we wanted to bring on. So, you know, I completely understand. You know, the. Anyone who will fog a mirror was like, you know, that's. We always joke, but that is what you kind of have to do in the very beginning. But I'd even say, like, in that first year, we started realizing, oh, okay, we need to start being a lot more nuanced in, like, how we're charging based on the need of the client.
- [32:00]
B
So was the issue if the fees on clients are this low, we're just going to need so many, it's too many, or was it more of.
- [32:10]
A
Absolutely.
- [32:11]
B
We're just doing a lot of work. And I'm realizing that I probably should have charged a higher fee, given all the stuff that I just did.
- [32:17]
A
I think it was both of those. It was both of those. I mean, I think, you know. Yeah. In the first. I'd say, like, the first three years, we created abundant processes that, looking back, were absolutely unnecessary.
- [32:34]
B
How so? Like, what processes that were unnecessary?
- [32:39]
A
So we use Emoney. We have all of our clients connect their accounts to Emoney so that they can have a portal to view everything, just like the old mint.com or the personal capital. And what we would do is we would export every. First we'd go and categorize every single expense, then for a specific amount of time. And I think at that time, we were doing this, Michael, weekly for clients. We were becoming bookkeepers without understanding. And so we'd categorize for the clients. We'd export them into an Excel spreadsheet. We made the Excel spreadsheets very pretty. We created a dashboard that synthesized the data from that spreadsheet and tell them, like, what areas they could work on, what areas have they improved upon? And we sent this report, and there was no zapier at the time. We had created these custom reports for every single one of our clients and manually sent them out to each one of them. I think it was once a week, and then it became twice a week. And then within the first. We took a team retreat after the first year and realized that we had spent about 70% of our time on this form of cash flow.
- [34:02]
B
Did the clients like it at least?
- [34:05]
A
Did the clients like it? Yes. Did it improve behavior? No. Did it, like. Yeah. Did it have the desired effect, the desired outcome? Absolutely not. And what we realized is that we were doing a lot of the work that you kind of have to do as an individual to be mindful of your own spending.
- [34:26]
B
Oh, beat.
- [34:28]
A
Right. So if you have someone doing all.
- [34:29]
B
That, you made it so easy for them.
- [34:32]
A
That's right. So where it is today is we do spend. You know, I've recorded videos. Stephanie and I both have this. And we have a client web website that shows people how to utilize the E. Money, like E. Money portal, and how to actually, like, reflect on their spending, how to best practices on how often to review it, how to have a money date with your spouse to discuss this if this is an area of focus for you. And so, again, you know, as we've evolved through the years, we've realized that, you know, if this is important to someone, they will do it. And so we will show you how to do it if it is important to you. Every one of our clients today still receives a mindful spending plan. So it's not a budget, but it's. Here's roughly how much we've projected you will be spending now into the age of 90 or 95, growing by 2.6% a year. And so if the numbers are vastly different every year, then it's really impossible to create any sort of financial plan. And so that's kind of the way that we frame it now. And we are life satisfaction as a financial planning professional, way higher now than it was back in those days.
- [36:03]
B
Because now the approach is if you're not willing to periodically go in, if you're not willing to maintain the connections, if you're not willing to glance at even the reports that E. Money makes by default, you're probably not bought in enough that it's worth spending more time anyways.
- [36:18]
A
Exactly.
- [36:20]
B
I mean, I like how you framed it. If it's important to them, they will spend time to do it. And then we can guide them and help them. But it starts with because it was important enough for them that they were spending time on it in the first place. Otherwise we're not going to try. We're not going to bother because they're not engaging anyways.
- [36:39]
A
Yes.
- [36:41]
B
So what else changed? What else launched in year one that looks a bit different now?
- [36:48]
A
I mean, I think. I mean, really, what looks the most different is the people that we work with.
- [36:53]
B
So how did that change?
- [36:55]
A
So we worked with a lot of our friends as a result of the email. Right. Is that, to me, that's like one of the most beautiful things that resulted. It's. A lot of people see that. Stephanie and I, who have been best friends since college, we get up every day and we love working with each other. It is a blast. And I think people see that and our friends are like, we love that and we want that in our lives. We want that team to Be our team. And so that's where it began, really was. Friends started reaching out as a result of the email, and we started bringing them on.
- [37:35]
B
So did that come relatively quickly for you? I know some advisors, like I told my friends, and then they basically waited like, three years to see if I was really going to stick with it, and then they started showing up.
- [37:45]
A
No, it came very quickly for us in that respect.
- [37:49]
B
Okay.
- [37:50]
A
The rate, the pace of onboarding, I'd say we launched in July, we took our first client in September, and we were bringing on like two to three a month throughout 2019. And then, yeah, I mean, we were looking back at some of the numbers as a reflection, end of the year reflection earlier this week, and, you know, 2020 and 2021, we were taking on a serious amount of clients. I mean, like three to four a month. I was like, no wonder I was so tired those days.
- [38:32]
B
And are you still mostly at like 2,000 to $3,000 annual fees for clients at this point? Did you start.
- [38:39]
A
I would say, yeah. I'd say like 2019. Absolutely. I think we started raising fees in about 2020 when we started working with our business coach, who was absolutely baffled at the prices we were charging.
- [38:53]
B
Okay. So sometimes helps to have a business coach. So where. Where. So I guess I'm wondering, there is like, where did you find the business coach? What. What did you pay them?
- [39:04]
A
Yeah.
- [39:04]
B
So, I mean, a lot of folks struggle with business coach in the first year or two. It's like, I know I need it, but if I, you know, if I had the money to afford the business coach, I wouldn't need the business coach.
- [39:14]
A
That's right. Right, right. Yeah. I mean, we did wait, you know, we waited until, like, mid-2020 to hire. And I. I always tell her, it's Elizabeth Chitan. She is a wonderful steward of the life planning community. And that's how we found her, was we. We wanted to decide. We were deciding, like, what kind of business coach do we want? Do we want someone that's gonna hold our feet to the fire in terms of, like, you know, the nitty gritty, the metrics. But I would say. Sorry, I would say that we want, like, or do we want someone who kind of is able to zoom out and, like, focus on what matters? And I, you know, sometimes you also don't know what kind of business coach you need until you, like, get into the meetings and you're like, oh, wow, I never thought about it like that. And we have found, as a. As a partnership that having a guide that also kind of challenges the way that we think is. Is so incredibly helpful.
- [40:14]
B
So that. That's the version that you have. Okay.
- [40:17]
A
Yeah.
- [40:19]
B
Okay. So. So 2020. 2021, you start raising fees on. On existing or just on new going forward?
- [40:30]
A
I think 2021 was just on new. And every year thereafter, we started gradually raising existing clients fees.
- [40:41]
B
And how did you go about doing that? Because I found that's a challenge for so many of us. You know, those early clients, they took a risk on us, kind of feel like we owe it to them, sometimes feel really bad about raising their fees. And that's when we get strangers as our first clients. Not when they're friends.
- [40:58]
A
Not when they're friends.
- [40:59]
B
Most of your first clients. So.
- [41:02]
A
And I'll tell you, I mean, the guilt and the pit in the stomach was there for us. The way that we did it was ahead of their annual update. So we do annual updates every year. We don't call them financial plans because we believe that commoditizes the deliverable. And so ahead of the annual update, ahead of the tremendous value we present, we talk about fees. And the way that we say it is that we've been working together now for three years, and these three years we've been doing, we've done XYZ for you. It has been a sincere pleasure to be guiding you through this journey. Three years ago, you joined in at this rate, and since then, we've increased fees to this rate, and costs go up. Right. And so we do want to propose a fee increase. We're not going to go as high as the, you know, the going rate because we want to honor and respect our relationship with you. And so we propose that we'll raise this over time so you can get to the, you know, the prevailing market rate in, like, you know, three years. And so we track that. And people appreciate it, that people have appreciated that.
- [42:26]
B
So did you. I was like, I was wondering in magnitude, how much were they actually moving at the end of the day? I mean, like, were they going from 2,400 to 2,700 to three grand? Or was this like two grand, three grand, four grand, five grand?
- [42:42]
A
Yeah, so I, you know, so we start at 2,400. Um, I, I believe it went like 2400 to. To 4500 and then to 6000.
- [42:54]
B
Okay, so that's a big. This isn't like you went back to 2400s and took them up 500 bucks?
- [43:00]
A
No, no, no, no, no. The.
- [43:01]
B
The gradual version was almost doubling.
- [43:04]
A
That's right.
- [43:05]
B
Like 2,400 to 4,500. So how many noped out the door?
- [43:11]
A
The first time we raised fees, I'd say we lost maybe we lost like 10% of our clients and again made up for it with the fee increases.
- [43:22]
B
Like, yeah, I mean, we raised fees by 80% and lost 10%. Like, that math's just fine. I mean, very Sad for the 10% that we lose, but that math's just fine. So were there blowback issues? Because these are like, friends and people. You have other relationships.
- [43:44]
A
We never lost, like, friends as a result of our fees.
- [43:49]
B
Meaning none of the friend clients terminated you or just you stayed friends even though you raised their.
- [43:55]
A
The, the. The. The former. They didn't leave.
- [43:57]
B
Okay.
- [43:58]
A
Yeah, they didn't leave.
- [44:02]
B
Interesting.
- [44:03]
A
We've had friend clients leave, but not because of our fees. It's because they lost a job. Their situation changed, but it wasn't directly as a result of our fees being too high.
- [44:16]
B
And you did this with in person conversation? Did you send a letter in advance? How did you actually communicate it out when it was time?
- [44:25]
A
So we've always been a virtual firm, 100% since the very beginning.
- [44:30]
B
Okay.
- [44:30]
A
And we did this during their annual update. So in the meeting. In the meeting, we found we felt it a bit too impersonal to just to send an email. I know some people have a lot of success doing that, but we just felt, given our really deep relationships with our clients, that we weren't comfortable having an email sent ahead or after any meeting. We really wanted to have that personal zoom conversation.
- [45:01]
B
So I guess I'm wondering just in evolution of the firm, so how long did it take before the dollars actually got to where you needed to cover family obligations, the ability to meet your household needs?
- [45:19]
A
Yeah, and then I had kids, Michael.
- [45:22]
B
Well, and then you complexified your household.
- [45:27]
A
I would say it was about three to four years in where we felt really comfortable with what we were able to be compensated. It took us about three to four years.
- [45:40]
B
And how much of a emergency savings Runway did you give yourself? Were you six months of expenses? 12 months of expenses? Two years.
- [45:52]
A
Personally or through our business?
- [45:54]
B
I guess either. Both. How did you do it?
- [45:57]
A
So for us, we were always looking from our business to have. I mean, ideally it's six months, but three months is kind of bare minimum, and that gets larger and larger over time. And then when we launched, I had a year and a half of expenses saved.
- [46:20]
B
And so did that actually hold? I know there's usually kind of a burn effect. Well, you got no revenue coming in the first few months, so it's all outflow, but then you get some revenue and now you're only burning at 75% of the rate and then 50% of the rate and 30% of the rate. So did it hold or did you know what actually needed to dip more than you thought?
- [46:42]
A
It dipped more than I thought. Not as a result of our business, but more because my husband transitioned into contracting work as well. Financial planning lessons learned all around don't do that simultaneously.
- [46:59]
B
So now help us understand how the business and offering is evolving and changing. Now that you're getting so much deeper into these sandwich generation dynamics.
- [47:14]
A
The artifice of the offering hasn't changed that much. Right? I mean, I think, you know, the deliverables that we, you know, present to our clients, the work that we do, you know, has, has stayed kind of constant. But there is like much more nuance to everything that we do. Right. It's like when we, when we have a FIT meeting, you know, we're also kind of like mentally and also through our various forms of trackers. You know, is this person a member of the sandwich generation? Is this person a business owner? Is this person going to belong to a company that will IPO in the next few years? And, you know, we have many clients that all of those boxes are checked, so complexity has certainly increased in the clients that we work with. And I think that's really what's evolved over time. To me, also, the conversations have become so much richer. Just really understanding what's at top of mind for our clients and what are some of the issues that they're struggling with today. And those evolved as life has gotten more complex for them. And then business wise, we've continued to increase fees as, again, these clients have become more complex. We know what we should be charging now for those, so we've developed a fee calculator. Stephanie and I do all of the FIT meetings still. And so it's become quite easy. When we meet with someone for 20 minutes, an individual or a couple, we kind of know, okay, this is what we're hearing. We know kind of what categories they're going to be fitting in. And this is the amount of work it's going to take. Thus, this is the. We're very confident in the fee that we deliver. So there's no, like, ranges. It's like, this is how much we're going to charge you. And that's helped us really kind of hone in on, like, on the prospecting side. So we don't have our prospecting meetings have become fewer since we've published our minimum on our website. But they're much higher quality and thus higher likelihood of conversion.
- [49:37]
B
So where do those fees stack add up to now? I mean, what's typical clientele engagement for you at this point?
- [49:45]
A
I would say that the vast majority of our clients are paying us for both. So we have meaning planning and investment management. Planning and investment management, yeah. So I mean I'm looking at some numbers right now. So we have 119 clients that either engage us for one or the other. And that's really a result of again like taking, you know, young kids, utmas, et cetera, that obviously we're not going to be doing financial life design for those.
- [50:17]
B
Right.
- [50:18]
A
So we have 119, you know, individual clients. The average fee there is like 8,400 versus about 80 clients who engage us for both. And that average fee is about 11,500.
- [50:36]
B
Okay. So out of some combination of AUM fees and planning fees, are there?
- [50:45]
A
That's right, yeah.
- [50:46]
B
Is there an asset minimum or is there like a firm fee minimum?
- [50:49]
A
Now it's a firm fee minimum of 10,000.
- [50:52]
B
Okay. And do you do a, is there any kind of. We'll, we'll waive one fee if the other one is big enough for at a certain threshold, you know, do you waive part of planning fees if assets are high enough or.
- [51:05]
A
We do at like at 4 million. Really is kind of that. At 4 million of assets? Yeah.
- [51:12]
B
Then you'll start waiving some of the planning fee.
- [51:14]
A
All the, some of the plan. Typically what we do is we'll, we'll charge like a, a one time planning fee for that case and then we will include the planning in the AUM fee every year thereafter.
- [51:32]
B
And so is Everybody a flat 10,000 or fees are still quoted specific to the client?
- [51:38]
A
Yeah, fees are quoted specific to the client.
- [51:41]
B
So how do you determine and set those, those planning fees?
- [51:44]
A
Sure. We started at a base fee. So if for an individual the base fee is 6,000.
- [51:51]
B
Okay.
- [51:52]
A
And then for a couple, that's where we start at 7,500 and then the complexity is added on from there. So we have complexity riders that we've used. And so some examples of that is if you have two plus rental properties, if you have cash flow issues. And so these clients are very few and far between. But we have clients who spend more than they make and really want kind of like that guidance. And they know that if they work with us, they'll be cognizant of it. So we have a Complexity rider for that because we know that we'll have to meet with them more often if you're a business owner, if your company's like fundraising or if there's an IPO in the next one to two years, if you have stock compensation and then ISOs, NSOs. And then the one that we kind of another complexity rider that we added this year was if you're going through a divorce, it's a one time complexity fee for the year because we've noticed that when our clients are going through a divorce, there's just a tremendous amount of work needed.
- [53:11]
B
So are all these riders as you frame them like flat fee add ons and you just add up all the ones there are?
- [53:22]
A
That's right.
- [53:23]
B
You've got two plus rentals, that's an extra X dollars. And you also have stock comps, that's X dollars more. And then it maths up to whatever it maths up to.
- [53:31]
A
Exactly.
- [53:32]
B
So how much do you add for these riders? Are they all different?
- [53:36]
A
They're all custom. Yeah, but I mean they range between like $500 and $5,000.
- [53:43]
B
Are you still pricing it to each client like you have Stop comp. We're going to need a rider but I actually have to get into how much stock comp. You have to figure out whether you need like the $500 version of the stock comp rider or the $5,000 version of the stock comprise.
- [53:55]
A
Yes.
- [53:56]
B
So you're really like every client is a very, I guess it's very custom complexity fee of if you have riders in these areas. We added for each rider and then we price each rider.
- [54:10]
A
Yes.
- [54:12]
B
And is there a rubric around those or just.
- [54:17]
A
There is that we have, I mean we have a calculator that really helps us do that quicker than most.
- [54:24]
B
So how does the cal. I'm intrigued then. So how does the calculator work?
- [54:27]
A
Yeah, so. So there is. So the client, you know, the client has, the client has its own, you know, has a calculator respective to their financial situation. And so if they have a rental property, I will like check the box and it will populate the total of the fee.
- [54:45]
B
Okay.
- [54:46]
A
As that. As I start checking off the box. Right. And so for example, if the client, if one of the, if it's a couple and only one of them receives restricted stock units, that's like, that's the $500 complexity. Right. So they go from 7,500 to 8,000.
- [55:02]
B
Yeah. Are you willing to share a copy or even just like a PDF visual of what it Looks like just, I think, you know, as more firms try to figure out to make sure the planning fees are like actually properly aligned to the client, I'm seeing more, more interest in this in the advisor community.
- [55:19]
A
Yeah. All right, we'll have Stephanie do it because she is the Excel wizard. Fantastic.
- [55:25]
B
So for folks who are listening, this is episode 423. So if you go to Kitas.com 423 we'll have a link in the show notes for a copy of the calculator so you can see what this looks like as it comes together. So Christina, I guess I'm also just trying to visualize it feels like fees in total and I don't mean this in a negative way, but fees in total can add up to a pretty good number for you if you're 75 basis points on the first million and a planning fee that has a $10,000 minimum or I guess a total planning total fee minimum. Like you're, you're going to end out with million dollar clients whose all in fee is a good bit higher than 1% by the time you put the like the two fees together for the two components. And so I guess I just got asked like, I mean, do you get, do you get fee pressure? Do you get fee pushback? Do you get, folks are like, why, why am I paying you two fees? The advisor up the street, we'll just charge 1% for all of it. And it's not as much as your stuff adds up to.
- [56:43]
A
I think that's a good question, Michael. I mean we don't get pushback, but I think it's because a, I think we've, through our website, through the onboarding process, we vetted folks enough that they know what they're coming to us for. I would say the other part of that is that we are so confident in the value that we provide. A glance at our website makes it pretty clear that you're not working with the advisor next door. Right. Our website is coral colored and we talk about feelings very early on in the website experience. And so I think really what we talk about is the idea of being the CFO for the family to dealing with the most complex and difficult conversations that you can be having in life. And we're here to hold space for that. And so the simple answer to your question is no, we don't get fee pressure. And our goal is not to be the largest RIA in the United States. We want to be a prominent life planning boutique firm.
- [57:59]
B
And how do you handle it when you then Start getting these situations where parents need help. I mean, are they full freight fee? Do they have their own complexity calculator? Is there some kind of grouping to the household thing that you do if you're kid?
- [58:13]
A
Yeah, that's a great question. The answer is it depends on the parents financial situation. So if the parents are, if our client who's in the Sandwich generation expects to support the parents in their life, then the way that we treat the relationship is we will charge a one time project based fee for the parents because again, it will provide clarity to the parents as well as to our client of what kind of support is needed and really kind of sets the boundaries and the guidelines around that financial support which our clients are more than happy to pay for.
- [58:58]
B
So effectively, it sounds like in many or most of these situations just the kids as clients are paying their parents planning fee for you to do planning work for mom and dad.
- [59:09]
A
I wouldn't say most of the situations, but I would say in the situation where the parents have really expect to be supported by their children. Okay, right.
- [59:20]
B
Where their finances may as well start at the planning fee.
- [59:23]
A
Exactly.
- [59:26]
B
We'll just practice this right now.
- [59:28]
A
And again, it's not only just the, you know, it sets expectations, it sets boundaries, but it also provides grounds for having this conversation. What we found is that a lot of the parents that expect support, expect like unlimited support and that's frankly not possible. Right. And so, you know, a lot of those conversations that we had early on with those with the folks in the sandwich generation were like, I don't know how to tell my parents that this isn't like, this is not like the infinite honeypot. Right. Like I don't have all the money in the world, so how do I do this the right way? And so we propose this solution and it's worked out well for those folks. And then the alternative to that would be where we have clients who say I don't really, we're not on the same page as the advisor that my parents work with. They've really just managed their investments and they've never really given them any insight into their financial future and how to retire, can they retire, et cetera. And so when that's the case, that's when we'll go again back to the fee calculator and really create a separate engagement and work with the parent or parents.
- [60:44]
B
How did this upmarket, for lack of a better term, this upmarket evolution come for you? I mean, I'm struck that just at the end of the day, you started at $2,400 for friends, family, and mirror foggers. And five or six years later were $10,000 minimum fee. And working with clients that are moving further up than that, like, how do you get. How do you. What moved the needle that far upmarket that quickly? How did you get to high dollar clients like that in the span of five years?
- [61:26]
A
Part of it is like, we always knew that's where we were gonna be, right? I mean, I think part of it is just Stephanie and I knew what we wanted this firm to look like from the very beginning, and we worked our butts off to get here. We've made a ton of mistakes. We've done a lot of things wrong, but the hard work, the perseverance, the attention to the nuances of this business, and most importantly, the care and the connection that we have with clients, it just like, this is such an amazingly gratifying career. And working with our clients is the reason why we show up every day.
- [62:15]
B
So what was the vision six years ago?
- [62:18]
A
The vision six years ago was we didn't have like any numbers to that vision. I would say that we wanted to grow. You know, we were like, we want to be, you know, 1 to 2 million dollars in revenue. We want to, like. And for that we were like, we want to manage 100 million in assets. Right. We want it like that. We kind of just. We're doing the kind of old school, back of the napkin, this is where.
- [62:42]
B
We want to be.
- [62:44]
A
And then we realized it was like, way harder to do that. And we realized that there again, through financial life planning, that there are a subset of clients who want to have deep conversations, strong relationships with their advisors, who they call their guides, rather than just their, like, investment guy, you know. And so our clients, you know, their belief and partnership in us has led to these higher fees because they believe in the value that we provide. And then these clients go out and tell not only like their parents, but they tell their friends. And, you know, I'd still say, I'd say now like 60% of our new incoming prospects come from referrals.
- [63:40]
B
So I get that a lot of this flows from referrals now, but you have to get good clients to get good referrals from good clients. So how did. I'm still just trying to understand, like, how that flywheel got going for you, that you were able to go up to $2,400 clients, $4,500 clients, $6,000 clients, $10,000 minimum clients over the span of four or five years.
- [64:05]
A
Sure. It was so starting January of 2019, we started our blog and our newsletter, and we were adamant. And so I'm effectively the head of marketing at mana, and I was adamant that we do that. I knew working with advisors for 12 years, that was one of the areas that I saw. No one was doing anything. I was like, why isn't anyone on social media? And obviously you and everyone at XYPN was really starting that in the early 2000 and tens. And I just remember, just see again, it was like such a blue ocean. So we started blogging. We, like, got into SEO. We started. We were on Instagram from the very beginning. We've tried so many different things on Instagram just because we're Instagram natives and it's just fun for us to do. We now. Yeah. Our latest version is we. We do weight training while talking personal finance. We call it Sweat Equity Saturdays. I'm glad that got a chance.
- [65:20]
B
I love it.
- [65:23]
A
But that's what we did. I mean, we spent a lot of time in the early days. We got on a lot of on brand podcasts. And what I mean by that is that we did not get on financial advisor centric podcast, but we got on podcasts that our future clients were listening to. And that really came through just like our network. Hey, my. My friend's cousin runs this, like, this podcast about pop culture. Money's kind of important. Do you want to be part of it? Sure. We're in. Right. And so we. The flywheel started that way where we. We kind of got on the blogs and podcasts of some brands and influencers that we really liked. And then all of a sudden, we started hearing from a lot more people.
- [66:17]
B
And by this time, you're already really clear about. We do financial life planning, financial life design.
- [66:24]
A
That's right.
- [66:24]
B
We know what these people are like. We know where they're showing up. So you know how to talk to them or connect with them when you're talking on a podcast that they might be listening to.
- [66:32]
A
Yeah.
- [66:34]
B
Okay, so what. So what does all this add up to for. I guess just state of the business today. I think you mentioned earlier, 119 clients. I guess like about 80. 80 kind of core planning and investments and a few on the edges. What is it for? It's like assets or revenue? I don't know how you.
- [66:56]
A
We crossed a million in assets about a month and a half ago. Million revenue. Sorry, A million in revenue.
- [67:03]
B
Okay.
- [67:04]
A
Yeah.
- [67:05]
B
Okay.
- [67:06]
A
And.
- [67:08]
B
And then what staff structure is staff?
- [67:10]
A
We're a team of five.
- [67:12]
B
Okay.
- [67:13]
A
And. And we're all full Time. We do have one part time. We call her our, our director of ux. She, she happens to have a full time job at Google, but she also just, she helps us design everything we put out and looks at everything from a user experience point of view. She has a PhD in data visualization, so she's our part time employee. But we have two full time financial planners, an operations associate, and then Stephanie and I are lead advisors.
- [67:53]
B
Okay. And is it kind of teamed that way? Like you have a planner support person, Stephanie as a planner support person, like two teams of two and then a shared operations associate?
- [68:05]
A
Actually, no. So we actually, we. The way that we structured it is that every client that comes in is a client of Mana's. The planners each get a subset of clients, but any of those clients can come to either Stephanie or I. So Stephanie.
- [68:23]
B
Interesting.
- [68:24]
A
So we are. Yeah, I tried to come up with a different idea of like a diamond team. Haven't come up with the right language yet. But really Stephanie and I, you know, we have different specialties. So she's really, you know, like very tax and investment heavy. I'm more planning focused with life planning, obviously, as something that I enjoy doing so much.
- [68:44]
B
Okay, interesting. So the planners, I mean, are they literally like the primary relationship manager to each client and you and Stephanie are like expert on call when they need to bring you in, or are you more immersed than that?
- [69:03]
A
I would say that we speak to the clients primarily, but the planner's job really is getting in the weed with the numbers. So as part of our service, we deliver annual updates to every one of our clients, meaning comprehensive financial life plans. And so they're in E Money and they're absorbing all the data that we receive from the client ahead of the annual update. And then the planner joins one of us to deliver the annual update to the client. Then Stephanie and I are responsible for bringing in clients and also bringing them through the onboarding process.
- [69:45]
B
Okay, and do you feel like you have capacity at kind of this size and team structure with the client base that you've got?
- [69:58]
A
We do. We do. So we just actually implemented the, I'd say four months ago, we split up that client base. So we had just hired our fifth teammate in September. And so ahead of that, our senior financial planner was doing all of the work of the planning with our help, of course, because there was capacity issue then. But now that we have our second planner that we've now split up the client base and we definitely have capacity now.
- [70:34]
B
Okay, so then as you reflect on this and how it's evolved. What surprised you the most about this path of building the advisory business?
- [70:46]
A
I mean, when I think about surprising, it's really the idea of the shift in how I thought it was going to be and when I thought I was going to launch this business. I was an employee of a company. I was an investment wholesaler. But I also got to see what employee financial advisors like how they worked. And the biggest surprise was the amount of time, the amount of attention required to being an excellent firm owner and how much code switching that really takes.
- [71:29]
B
Were there particular parts of it that were challenging or surprising?
- [71:36]
A
Yes. I mean, for me, my job prior to this was to sell, right? So I was only responsible for bringing in clients and keeping them happy and continuing to service them. But really, for me, I'd never really had experience on the actual operating of a business. And so getting, you know, reviewing our P and L monthly, right, that was super surprising to me. Like, oh, my gosh. All of the stuff, like, all this technology costs money. All of the decisions we're making, like, really weighs on the bottom line. And so, you know, dedicating time to business strategy was something that I, like, never was cognizant of. And I can thank Stephanie for really bringing me up to speed there when we launched this business.
- [72:27]
B
So what was the low point for you on the journey?
- [72:31]
A
To me, the low point had, if I look back on, like, the last, you know, six years, the low point really was knowing when to hire and who to hire. We, you know, very, like, admittedly, like, made mistakes. We hired too early, and we hired without really thinking about what role would this new employee take in this in our firm. Right. A lot of it was like, okay, we're just gonna. We're gonna. Everyone's gonna do everything, and it's just gonna. We're gonna, like, run at a thousand miles an hour. And, like, turns out that doesn't work very well. And so really coming up with true roles and responsibilities and getting that, you know, as we grow, the beauty of it is that we get to, like, become. Become experts in what we do. Right. And less. Like, less responsible for everything else. And so I'd say the low is like, the was. Was really like our hiring journey.
- [73:40]
B
So can you share more about that? Like, what. What was the. What was the hiring too early?
- [73:45]
A
Oh, I mean, okay, I'll tell you, like, the. In a. In a. In a succinct way, the. The low was in 2021, we had hired two people kind of at the same time without really a plan for like, how each one was really going to like, fit into the business.
- [74:06]
B
Okay.
- [74:07]
A
And we burnt them out, Michael. We burnt them out because Stephanie and I were still trying to figure out, like, how does this all work and how do we do everything? And we were still doing too much. And so as a result, both of those employees quit within like five days of each other at the end of that year. And that was a huge blow. I mean, like, that was all your.
- [74:33]
B
People at the time.
- [74:34]
A
That was literally our entire team.
- [74:36]
B
So, like you in the first part of 2021, you went from two to four, and within five days of New Year's you were back at two.
- [74:44]
A
That's right, yeah.
- [74:45]
B
After having grown and now having more.
- [74:47]
A
Clients to serve and bringing on. And that year we brought four to five clients on a month. So.
- [74:56]
B
All right, so now help me understand further. So, like, what, what had you done that didn't work or that so blew up on you?
- [75:05]
A
A number of things. I think the first one was, was doing too much for clients. You know, in that same vein of like cash flow, for example, we were still categorizing everyone's expenses. We were doing it like the last six months. We were trying to provide insights. We weren't doing as like, detailed as reports, but it was still too much for very little upside on the client side. And so again, like, one of those employees was really responsible for doing that. And that is a really lonely and also very, very tiring job. And so that would be one. And then I'd also say one of the best pieces of advice that I've received in the past couple of years is when you hire employees, you want to define a role so that their job is always replaceable or replicable versus hiring people and having them do a little bit of everything because should something happen to that person, you are screwed.
- [76:21]
B
Because it's really hard to train a new person to do a little bit.
- [76:23]
A
Of all those things. And I think we did that for both of those employees.
- [76:31]
B
So I've got to ask this. Well, so what do you do when you took on four to five clients a month and have been doing all this detailed cash flow planning work for clients, and then both of the people who literally do that work quit.
- [76:47]
A
A lot of soul searching.
- [76:51]
B
Like service delivery to client. Like, what, what happened when you had to do meetings the next few weeks?
- [76:57]
A
Yeah, I mean, it was the way that Stephanie and I. The way that Stephanie and I, like had to start thinking was, how do we do less better.
- [77:12]
B
Because you didn't have anyone to do it anyway, because.
- [77:14]
A
We had no one doing any of the busy work.
- [77:16]
B
So we have to start figuring. I mean, was that basically what show up? It's like, okay, we don't have these people. What can we start cutting?
- [77:21]
A
Exactly. We had to do it. We had to do it. And honestly, it was like, you know, now, again, looking back with hindsight, it was probably the greatest gift that we were, like, shocked into that existence because it was. We had to figure it out very quickly. And we just started, you know, if it's not a heck yes, if it's not like 90% or more conviction of a heck yes, it's a heck no, you know, like, we're not doing it. And that's. And we just. We just, like, cut so many things that next year and really focused on what was most important.
- [78:03]
B
Out of curiosity, what else got cut?
- [78:06]
A
Oh, besides, like, all the cash flow stuff?
- [78:08]
B
Yeah.
- [78:10]
A
There were the. I mean, I'd say, like, the promises to clients that we'd meet every quarter. You know, I mean, we really solidified our annual update process that year and our annual.
- [78:25]
B
Not four times a year, but once annual.
- [78:27]
A
Once annual, we're here for you throughout the year. But this is where our clients have received the most value, is by meeting with us comprehensively once a year, where we review everything that's most important, and that will enable us to guide you to make good decisions throughout the rest of the year.
- [78:52]
B
So cash flow, sort of like tracking and do it doing it so manually for clients stopped meeting cadence cut way back.
- [79:01]
A
And then we started relying or not relying. But we became more adept at utilizing technology and became very open. I think in 2018, when we were more cash strapped, it was kind of like, if it costs any money, it's too expensive. So we really needed to think about, is this a good investment? If so, how do we utilize it to the nth degree? And so we really. Zapier is an amazing piece of technology that we use daily for a lot of things. We love airtable, which is our client database, and then we use Redtail, and now we've integrated fathom, the AI NoteTaker, and that's created even greater efficiency.
- [79:53]
B
So I think a lot of folks are familiar with Redtail. I'm curious to hear more. How exactly are you using airtable?
- [80:03]
A
So airtable is really like a database, and so we utilize it in a whole slew of ways. It's a way that we keep track of. Of clients in different ways. So their net worth, growth, their specific characteristics about our clients. We use it as Compliance checklists for various things. We will look at client anniversaries. It's literally every data point about a client. You can slice and dice so many different ways.
- [80:42]
B
So what goes in Airtable vs Redtail then? A lot of firms will track things like anniversaries and characteristics of clients in their CRM.
- [80:52]
A
This is the perennial question among our team.
- [80:55]
B
Okay.
- [80:57]
A
But I would say that although Redtail will have some of those things, you can't find it as easily. So we have a table called client anniversaries where you can just control find client and you know where the anniversary is, is or if you want to find the engagement letter of the client, just to like double check something you. We have all of those engagement letters in airtable. If you want to find the IPS of a client, we've also have that in airtable. So it's a receptacle for documents, but also like, you know, qualitative and quantitative descriptors of our clients.
- [81:33]
B
Okay, and then how are you using Fathom in practice?
- [81:38]
A
Fathom is amazing. And shout out to Rebecca Connor for teaching us how to use that earlier this year. But we use it to record client conversations and we tell them ahead of time that we are using an AI notetaker to capture notes so that we can be more present in the client meetings.
- [82:00]
B
I like that framing. Does anyone push back on it?
- [82:03]
A
We have one client who has pushed back because she's a very private person and that's okay. And we also say that's okay. But the rest of our client 1.
- [82:13]
B
Out of 1 out of 119 ratio.
- [82:20]
A
And then what we also found because we integrated toggl time tracking earlier this year just to see. We have gut feelings about a lot of things, but really putting the numbers behind how much time do we spend doing X, Y and Z? And so one of our promises to our clients is you will get an in depth email that summarizes our meetings and your respective action steps as a result of the meeting the day after our meeting. And that's a promise. And every one of our clients receives that after a meeting. And we found that we were spending a lot of time summarizing the meeting in email despite one of us. There's always two people in a meeting. And we had like a note taker. And so that note taker was never present but was just taking notes.
- [83:08]
B
Right.
- [83:09]
A
And so now we have two people and the note taker. And so it allows both members of the team that are in the meeting to be very present. And Fathom takes Better notes than any of us. And, and we'll summarize that we've given Fathom a template of how we want it summarized and Fathom spits out the summary. And so all we have to do is really just review it for completeness and accuracy.
- [83:34]
B
Interesting. So you're not just using Fathom to capture the recording and like an internal summary. You're essentially using Fathom's summary output as what goes into the email, the post email to clients with an editing review with our template. Correct with your template and with a editing review for completeness and accuracy. Because sometimes it gets a little off.
- [83:59]
A
And so that, I mean that cut down meeting summaries from, you know, 30 to 45 minutes apiece down to like 10 to 15 minutes.
- [84:08]
B
So what else do you know? Now you wish you could go back and tell you six or seven years ago when you were starting down this journey.
- [84:17]
A
For me, when we launched, we talked a little bit about this, but we spent a lot of time creating processes. What happens if we do this? Oh, how do we do this? And part of me, yes, that was beneficial in some ways. But again, looking back six years, none of those processes are still around. So I think for my advice to earlier me is like, put a limit on getting ready to get ready and just sell. Like go bring on clients. Which is ironic because that's like all I did was. So I think, you know, when we were creating this business, I kind of. My sales, my passion for sales, my vision for sales kind of took a backseat because I wanted to like learn how to do the other things. But in reality, I think a lot of those early pains could have been solved by more revenue.
- [85:17]
B
When I do find there's a just sort of this awkward reality early on in any business. It's especially challenging when we're sort of system and process oriented people that until you have a certain volume of clients and revenue, it doesn't really matter if you're efficient because you already have spare time because there aren't enough clients to fill your time yet. So like you can be wildly inefficient with 10 clients. It just doesn't matter. Finish your inefficient process and then go get your 11th, 12th client.
- [85:52]
A
That's right.
- [85:53]
B
Does way more to move the needle than being more efficient about the 10 clients. So you can free up more time when you already had enough time. I mean, then you get more clients.
- [86:02]
A
Well said.
- [86:02]
B
Yeah, then you get more clients and changes and suddenly matters. But early on, like, if, if there's enough time to serve the clients and go do business development. More efficiency doesn't really matter at that point. So is there other advice? Just that you would give younger, newer advisors just getting, getting launched, getting started with their careers today?
- [86:26]
A
I mean, first off, I mean, I think if you are even considering being an advisor, the answer is yes. Like, that's like do it. What an incredible, what an incredible career this can be for people. And I especially, you know, our friend and colleague Meg Bartelt talks about this quite a bit. But as a female, there is such a need for more female financial planners, financial advisors that are doing the real work. And so if that's you, then do it because you will be successful. And there is truly an incredibly vast blue ocean of folks that need real financial advice.
- [87:21]
B
So as we wrap up, this is a podcast about success. And just one of the themes that comes up is the word success means different things to different people, sometimes different things to us as we go through the stages of our lives. So you have this business that's in the wonderfully successful place as you're cresting a million dollars just six years in. So the business seems to be doing very well and successfully. How do you define success for yourself at this point?
- [87:52]
A
I would say the word that first pops into my mind is spaciousness. And spaciousness in my days, spaciousness in my weeks, and spaciousness in my year. So I think about that spaciousness in my days being, do I have time to just check in with myself, do a quick meditation before I go into a meeting and not feel rushed every moment of every, every single minute of the day and then weeks, do I have time to pick my kids up and make dinner for my kids every night? Which is like for me, that is successful me right there. Other things being, having the ability to plan and strategize that to me is like, it's a result of success, right? Is the ability to plan. And another thing that success means to me is having the trust of my clients to shepherd them through this wild, wild ride of life.
- [89:07]
B
I love it. I love it. Christina, thank you so much for joining us on the Financial Advisor Success podcast.
- [89:14]
A
It was a pleasure. Thank you, Michael. Want even more ideas, tools and resources on how to break through to the next level of success as a financial advisor? Check out the leading financial planning industry blog, Nerd's eye view at www.kitchen, where Michael covers the latest practice management trends and financial planning strategies. And by joining the members section, you can earn IMCA and CFP continuing education credits along with exclusive member content. Get it all now at www.kitsis.com.