Making Financial Planning Less Scary For New Clients By Focusing First On What Brings Them Joy: #FASuccess Ep 457 With Larry Sprung

Podcast Player:

Resources Featured In This Episode:

• Larry Sprung: Website | LinkedIn | YouTube
• Checklists For Life Events: New Baby, Engaged Couple, Name Change, Estate Planning, Survivor's Checklist – Downlolad (PDFs)
• Financial Plan Guides And Discovery Meeting Process – Downlolad (PDFs)
• Mitlin Money Mindset Podcast
• Financial Planning Made Personal: How to Create Joy And The Mindset for Success by Lawrence Sprung
• Joyful Advisor
• Carson Group
• FinServ Foundation

Are you a successful financial advisor, or do you know of one that would be a great fit for the Financial Advisor Success podcast? Fill out this form to be considered!

Full Transcript:

Michael: Welcome, Larry Sprung, to the "Financial Advisor Success" podcast.

Larry: Thanks for having me, Michael. Pleasure to be here.

Michael: I'm excited to have the conversation today and to get to, I think, delve into what I would at least frame as making financial planning a little bit less scary for clients. And this was something that, I guess, really just had surprised me earlier in my career. At the beginning, I was so excited to get new clients. I'm still excited, but I was so excited to get new clients. "I'm going to learn their situation. I'm going to fire at their goals. We're going to give awesome recommendations. We're going to do cool financial planning analyses. We're going to give all this helpful stuff so they can move forward to their goals." And I only realized probably a few years later because I'm a little slow on the uptake on these things, I just missed how scared and uncomfortable a lot of new clients were in those early years.

Money is so personal for so many of us, and then we, as advisors, basically ask clients to get really financially vulnerable with us pretty quickly, which, for a lot of clients, leads to a lot of discomfort, a lot of fear, I think, a lot of fear of judgment, in particular. From there on, they're like, "Well, how am I doing? Larry sees a lot of people. Michael sees a lot of people. What's he going to think of me and how I'm doing? I can be an above-average client because I want to feel good. I know I made some financial mistakes. I hope this isn't going to be humiliating when he sees what I did to myself a few years ago with my portfolio." Truly, I think this is part of why it's so hard to get new clients is that, for a lot of people, the easiest way to avoid fear of financial judgments is, well, if you just don't hire an advisor, then you won't have those conversations. You don't need to deal with that.

And so, to me, it raises this question, how do you turn those conversations around? And I know you spent time exploring this, not only, sort of as I framed it, how do you make financial planning less scary, but how do you make the whole conversation more positive, or as I think you put it, how do you make it joyful? How do you bring joy to this conversation instead of fear to these discovery conversations? So just for today's episode, I'm excited to talk about how we turn financial planning conversations into more positive experiences when so many seem to be really afraid of being judged for what they've done or how they're financially doing.

Larry: That's right, and I think your experience early on in your career is something that I experienced as well. That's one of the primary reasons of why we are leaning into this joyful impact conversation with families.

Leading Prospect "Fit" Meetings With Open-Ended Questions Rather Than Data [05:12]

Michael: So, can you just describe that a little bit more? What does that mean to be leaning into joyful impact?

Larry: So I think what we've done as a firm is we've changed and really taken a 180 in the conversations that we're having with families. Instead of being very number-focused and very financially focused, especially early on, we're not focusing in on any of that. We're really focusing in on with the families that are exploring working with us…first and foremost, our first meeting is called an "Is there a fit?" meeting. And really what we want to determine is, is this family a good fit for us? And equally important for them is, do they think we're a good fit for them as well? And we ask the family pretty much to show up as they are, no financial documents, no financial information. If there are certain things that they want to discuss, they can bring that with them.

Going back to that challenge that you had earlier on in your career in terms of people feeling kind of intimidated and uneasy, we want to make it as disarming as possible and as open and honest as possible. And what we've found is, at the end of the day, it's not really about the money, right? Everybody needs to, and as advisors, we need to be proficient in figuring out how much money somebody needs for retirement or how much money somebody needs to send their kid to college. But when that family is walking through the door, they're pretty much convinced at that point that we have at least that skillset. We're good at that.

So instead of focusing on that, we focus on the things that are most important to them. We want to understand, "Well, what do you want this money to do for you? What is your game plan for the money? Before we even get into how much do you need, what do you want to do? Do you want to send your daughter to medical school debt-free? Is that what makes and brings joy to your life? Do you want to walk through the doors of a community center that you and your family had a hand in constructing or building? Or is it just simply you want to go down to your beach house and sit on that deck and overlook the ocean and drink a cup of coffee?" Whatever that looks like for you, we spend probably 80% to 90% of that first meeting talking about what that looks like to them, what that means to them, and what that would feel like if they were able to accomplish and/or do those things. And that's really where we spend the lion's share of that initial meeting with that family.

Michael: So, can you walk me through a little bit more just the questions you use, the way you set the meeting with the client to do this? I'm envisioning this is not necessarily what they thought they were going to be getting as a conversation in coming in with an advisor. So I'd love to hear more of how you actually get this conversation going with clients and if there are go-to questions that you typically ask to open this thread.

Larry: Sure. We do prepare them for the meeting because, ultimately, I think most people who've worked with an advisor before are conditioned that if they're looking or searching for a new advisor that they want them to bring these financial documents with them. So we try to prepare them as much as possible in advance and share with them that, really, this meeting is simply a fit meeting. We've had the luxury of working with second and third and now approaching some fourth generations of families that we've worked with from when I started in the business. And we say the primary basis for that type of long-term relationship really comes in the outset to making sure that there's a fit.

So we outline it very proactively at the beginning. We tell them that there's no need to bring documents. Just bring an idea and be ready to discuss kind of what their goals and objectives are and what brings them joy. And I would also preface this by saying, Michael, that a lot of the inbound traffic that we get are from either referrals, COIs [Centers Of Influence], social media. So they already have an idea of what we talk about and this joyful slant or joyful conversation that we bring to the conversation. So I would say, for many of the people, it's not too surprising. But with that being said, we tell them upfront, "We're going to spend the majority of the first meeting learning about you, learning about what brings you and your family the most joy and what you're striving to continue that joyful nature in your life. And we're also going to spend some time telling you about us and our practice and how we're compensated, all the important stuff, if you will, that you would need to know to make a decision whether you feel we're a good fit for you. And through the conversation, we're going to be looking and evaluating whether or not you're a good fit for us and you have challenges and issues that we've successfully worked families through and helped solve."

So that's how we get them there. So it's not too surprising when they walk through the door. And then some of those things that we have conversations with once we're in the meeting are really just asking some general open-ended questions and letting them talk and seeing where the conversation goes. So some of those, we might start out just as simply as saying, "So, listen, we know you're here. You have some challenges. Before we go into those, if you could create your ideal life filled with joy, what would that look like?" And let them talk. And then, usually, there's something out of that conversation that we'll drill down a little bit further to uncover what's really important to them, why they want to have that joy in their life. If they say, as my example earlier, that they want their daughter to go to medical school debt-free, typically, there's some type of issue or challenge that happened in either the husband or wife's life that they were either riddled with debt coming out of school or their family, their mom and dad couldn't afford to send them to school, and they want to have the pride and joy of being able to do that for their kid.

So it's asking those open-ended questions, not necessarily about the money, but about those things that the money could help that family accomplish that's just going to allow them to beam with pride and joy. And that's really at the heart of that initial meeting and that conversation to really understand what that family is all about and what really drives that joy factor for them.

How Larry Found The Value Of "Joy" In Client Conversations [12:04]

Michael: There's something striking to me. As you framed that question, if you could create your life filled with joy, what would that look like? I don't even know what it is or how to articulate it. There's something strange to me that catches when you add that part in the middle, filled with joy. I think a lot of us have some version of "Tell me about your goals. Tell me about your ideal life. Tell me about your objectives." But we don't use the word joy. That's a unique one. And I don't know. Even just hearing it, I feel some kind of strange, slightly visceral reaction when you say filled with joy that I'm trying to figure out. Does that hone the question? And this may be entirely me projecting. There's almost a small piece that feels a little bit, I was going to say, over the top. Joy is a big word. Joy is a big level. It's not even like, "If you could create your ideal life that makes you happy, what would it look like?" It's like, "No, no, no, we're going to create your ideal life filled with joy."

But I'm sure it's very intentional for you and probably something that you've tried or experimented or explored with over time. I love to hear a little bit more, why joy? Where did joy come from? Am I the only one who ever voices anything back to you, wondering about that word?

Larry: No. It's something that has resonated with those that know me, follow me, and have known me for a while. Let's take a step back for a second on how this concept of joy really iterated, and really it first started five years ago when I launched my podcast, the "Mitlin Money Mindset." And my wife, who's our chief marketing officer, said, "You need to have a question, this closing question that ties together each of the episodes." And I was like, "Great. You're the marketing person, figure it out." And what ended up happening was she came back two days later or so with the question, "What did you do today that brought you joy?" And that was going to be the question. And we started using that question, and it resonated with guests. They lit up when we started asking them that final question. It was like, "Wow, what a great question."

And then we started putting that question on t-shirts. And I tell the story of being down in Disney World, and we were waiting, my family and I were waiting on Rise of the Resistance. And I'm wearing one of those shirts. And the Disney cast member who's at Rise of the Resistance, they're very character-driven, so they normally don't break out of character, but this gal that day broke out of character, looked me in the eye, and said, "I ate a bag of Hershey Kisses." And I was like, "What?" I looked at her so strangely, looked back at my family.

Michael: Is this like a Star Wars-themed thing I'm not realizing? Did I miss a Hershey thing?

Larry: Yeah. I'm like, "What's going on here?" And my older son looks at me, he goes, "She's answering your question." I was like, "Wow." So then she started asking my question. And then I started paying attention. And as I went through airports, as I went on my daily walks, as I went to conferences, people started coming up to me, taking pictures of that question. They started blurting out. I had one woman, I'm sitting in the front row of the plane, she goes, "Oh, I ran a marathon yesterday." And I was like, "What?" She goes, "Oh, that's what brought me joy this weekend." I was like, "Wow, that's great." And we started a conversation. And I've seen countless people, walking past people in airports, their eyes glued to my shirt.

So we knew we were on to something with that question. And when we started leaning into it in social media and we started capitalizing the word joy, and then when we wrote to people, "Happy birthday. Hope you have a great day and even more enJOYable year ahead," and we capitalized the word joy, what ultimately ended up happening is people that I knew, people that were clients, people that I didn't know started responding back to me with that same verbiage, capitalizing joy and writing, "EnJOY the trip," with joy capitalized. And I started realizing this is something that we are really leaning into. And I think one of the issues that we're experiencing today is the world is somewhat divisive, if you haven't seen, right? There's so much division out there that I think that this concept of joy kind of brings people together.

So we knew we were there. And like I said, when people are coming in to meet with us, a lot of them already see that and that tactic, those words that we're using, and it's something that they feel attracted to. I had a client just a couple of weeks ago, he was on a hike. His wife took a picture of him from behind and sent it, "Our joy for today." So it's resonated with the families we serve and those others. And just to kind of go back to what you said about happiness and joy, my view, and this is my vision, not everybody may share this, I think happiness is a state that we all strive to attain, but it's unattainable. Because happiness is a constant state. I think it's almost unattainable for us to be completely happy all the time. Joy is something that gives us joy on a consistent basis, and it's something that we can attain. And we do know what gives us joy. I don't think many of us understand, because it's unattainable, what we can do to strive for happiness. But joy is something that is so attainable and tangible. That, we do know.

So I have not seen any type of negative response to that question. I have had some responses in terms of, "Well, I've never really thought about that." And I'm like, "Well, let's spend a few minutes and think about it. What are you looking to do over the next 5, 10, 20 years that would bring joy to your life?" And then we start driving down there. The only time we had a negative response, which we ended up cutting bait on the conversation in that moment and tabling it, is we had a newer family that we were working with, and the mom was meeting with us, and she unfortunately had just recently lost her daughter. And our presentation popped up, and it said the first question on our first slide when we're having these conversations, "What did you do today that brought you joy?"

And I looked across the table at her, and I could see her eyes starting to well up, and I go, "You're not feeling very joyful today, are you?" And she looked at me, and she goes, "No." She goes, "It comes and goes, and I don't think I can talk about anything joyful today." And I said, "Okay." I said, "Then we're going to table this for today, and we're going to talk about other things." We'll talk about more numerical things at that point, and we cut bait, and we said, "When you're in a position that you feel that you can talk about these joyful things, we'll revisit this conversation. Because, ultimately, we want to help you restore some joy to your life and work with you on that." So that was the only instance that we had that situation, but it really resonates with most people.

Michael: And, look, even for the client who has the kind of challenge that you had expressed, for better or worse, "Okay, well, I know exactly where this client is now. I know what's going on. I didn't have to ask the question of, 'Tell me what's going on in your life,' or, 'Did anybody die recently? Has there been any significant change or circumstances that we should be planning for?'" You put a question up about what brought you joy today, and they had an authentic response. And you could then respond in turn to say, "Okay, let's just table that conversation for now, but thank you. I understand now more of what's going on in your life," and can respond to that appropriately.

Larry: Right.

Michael: Just in this theme around joy, there is something that really resonated to me on what you said, that happiness seems to be this thing that we try to attain as a state of being. Ideally, I would just be happy all the time. I could have happiness. I could have work-life balance and be happy. And then that gets very difficult for lots of reasons that philosophers have asked, poetically, about for a few millennia. But I highlight it because it struck me the way that you framed it. Happiness is a state, or at least one that we strive for, but joy is fleeting. Just by its nature, we talk about moments of joy, is where it naturally occurs. Even in your question, it's not, "Are you joyful today?" It's not, "Are you in a state of joy? Are you happy today? Are you happy with your life?" It's, "What brought you joy today? Did you have a moment? What was the moment? What was the thing?"

Marathon runner's high. Bag of Hershey Kisses. To each their own. And in that vein, it does feel more attainable. I can have moments of joy even in some challenging times of life. I don't know how I'm getting a full state of happiness, but moments of joy, we can work on that.

Larry: It's like a gratitude, almost, right?

Michael: Yeah. I can think of some of those and how I want more of those moments.

Larry: Right, right. And I think joyful is the same way. There are moments. And I think, as we go through our lives, we use that word, gauge happiness, if you will, and we're, "Oh, well, I'm not really happy all the time, so how am I in this state of happiness?" But as you mentioned, I can pinpoint a couple of things that I did each day that brought me joy." And rather than focusing on this constant state of happiness, I'm going to concentrate on these two or three moments of joy that I've experienced, and that's where my focus is going to be.

Michael: And so, now, I can have some moments of gratitude for my moments of joy, which there is a lot of interesting research out there about how taking pause to reflect on moments of gratitude can materially impact our mood and our mental state in very positive ways.

Mitlin Financial's Two-Meeting Sales Process [23:07]

Michael: So now, take me back to this meeting, because I'm still just trying to visualize further the questions or the series of questions that you ask. You just mentioned, I think, a presentation as well. I'm not sure if that's a presentation of slides you have in your fit meeting or if that's a separate presentation thing that you do. Walk me through a little bit more. How literally are you doing this, are you staging this, are you executing this with clients?

Larry: Yeah. So, in the meeting, we use a PowerPoint just to keep the flow of the meeting and to make sure that we're hitting. We call it our value proposition. Probably the beginning 60% to 70% of it is focused on the family and what brings them joy. And there's not a lot of slides. There's really one or two, where we talk about what brings them joy. In terms of specific questions during that 60% to 70%, we don't have, necessarily, "These are the questions that we're going to go through," because, as you've mentioned, I think planning and thinking about life in this way is very personal. Financial planning is personal. Joy is very personal. So we start out with that, "What did you do today that brought you joy?" as a framework and then what they're looking to accomplish that brings joy to their lives. And depending upon what they say and what is important to them, that will drive the conversation, and we'll drill down to find out a little bit more in terms of, "Why are they going to derive joy? Why is that important to them? What makes that so joyful to them and their family?"

And I think the important thing to remember here for the other advisors listening is you have to be very mindful, especially when you're sitting with a couple, that if one is answering the questions, if the husband's answering or the wife, whoever is answering it, you want to make sure that you're addressing the other person in the room because they may have different viewpoints on what brings them joy. One person may say right off the rip, "Hey, you know what's going to bring me joy? Sixty-five, I'm retiring, I'm done. Sixty, I'm retiring, I'm done." And they may say, "That will bring me a lot of joy." And then it's matter of, "Why is that important to you? What do you expect to do that will bring you joy following, winding down work?" And the other spouse may be sitting there and may be like, "I'm not interested in necessarily going a conventional retirement route."

So having a set group of questions for us is not something that we typically do. We start out with that opener, and then we really want to drive those open-ended questions to learn more. And we're very intentional about making sure that everybody who's in that room that's coming to that meeting that they're being heard. And we have an idea if some of these things that bring them joy individually, we know what those are, and maybe there are some of those things that bring them joy together, and they are on the same page. But we want to make sure that everybody's in the conversation.

And then the remaining 30% of the meeting is really about us, how we work with families, how we organize their financial life. Probably the one visualization that we use that resonates so well with families is we show them this slide where they're at the center and they have all these financial planning, business, personal things that they have to address to, and they're all disconnected and kind of all over the place. And then we show them the next kind of picture where we're at the center, they're at the top, and all these things are organized around us. And we say that we work to make sure that these things are addressed, attended to, and reviewed on a regular basis, organizing that chaos of their life. And that right there kind of resonates super well with them because most of them are in some kind of state of chaos at that point. And that's something that really can resonate with them and they attend to.

And then the rest is really about how we work with families, how we're compensated, etc. And then we close out that first meeting, typically.

Michael: So two questions. One, just wondering, is this something you'd be willing to share with folks who are listening? I know it's very specific to your process, but I'm hearing all these visualizations and slides, I'm curious just to see what it looks like. Is that something you're comfortable to share?

Larry: Yeah. So one of the things that we are doing is we are going to be sharing how we've basically created this joyful impact within our practice, and we are planning on sharing this with other advisors through a webinar. We have a web URL, joyfuladvisor.com, where people are signing up now to get on the waiting list. And once we have the webinar ready to go, we will be sharing all of the secrets and behind-the-scenes of how we've integrated joyfulness to our practice and how it's led to record growth as a result.

Michael: So I guess then, in that vein, so for folks who are listening, this is episode 457. So if you go to kitces.com/457, we'll have links out on the show notes for, I guess, the fit meeting presentation deck that Larry uses and then the Joyful Advisor website if you want to actually go and sign up for the waiting list and get to participate in the webinar when it's available.

Larry: Yeah, thank you.

Michael: Thank you. So then my second question now, I guess I'm dialing slightly back into the fit meeting and the flow. So I guess, what question or which questions are the ones you actually use when you kick off the meeting? Because you mentioned earlier, if you could create your ideal life filled with joy, what would that look like? But I think you also have your "What did you do today that brought you joy?" question. So, which questions actually appear in this meeting as you're trying to get clients into this "Let's talk a little more about joy" mindset?

Larry: Yeah. So we kick it off the first slide showing, "What did you do today that brought you joy?" And most people who come in understand that we already talk about joy quite a bit. And then we lead into what brings them the most joy. We'll show them the agenda, kind of our goals to the meeting in terms of talking about their joy, going over how we work with families and how we serve them, and then what the next steps would be. And then we dive into what their joyful life looks like and what brings them joy in their own personal situation. And then, depending on how their answers there go, we may have to delve a little bit deeper because maybe they're not in a position that they've ever thought about that. We try to spur some conversation around that and say, "What is most important to you? What do you value the most? What do you do on a weekend that brings you a lot of joy? What do you do during the week?"

But we really want to dive into and hopefully get them talking right off the bat about their joyful life and what that looks like. And then be very mindful about the questions that we go through from there to make sure we're drilling down and we have an understanding of what that means to them. So we understand what that means to them and we're on the same page as what that means to them, and it means to us the same thing.

Michael: Okay. And so, how does this meeting wrap up?

Larry: So typically, we'll wrap up as to we will ask them, we will tell them, as far as next steps, as far as we're concerned, we will reach out to them or they can reach out to us with any questions. And we'll circle back to see if it's a good fit, if they believe it's a good fit for them, and we'll let them know if it's a good fit for us based on the conversations. If it is a good fit, then the next step would be to get some of their financial information. Because ultimately, they want to have an idea, from a financial aspect, how we may be able to help them. We don't want to do that in the first meeting, as we've discussed kind of what our process is. But in that second meeting, we would have a little bit more of a deep dive, taking a look at how their assets are positioned and then having them come in for a second meeting where we would talk about a little bit more in-depth how their assets today work towards their joy and how we may see things differently, the same as they're currently doing, and what their financial situation would or could look like if they were to move their assets over to our firm, and what their cost of investing with us would be. So we outline all of that in the second meeting.

And then really, at the end of that meeting, meeting two, which is more of the nuts and bolts, the financial stuff, at that point, we're looking for commitment to either move forward or if they feel it's not a good fit at that point for some reason, we want to have a conversation.

Michael: Okay. And so, nominally, it's kind of a two-meeting sales process, an initial fit meeting and then a deeper dive into their finances and numbers, and then we decide if we're going to work together.

Larry: Correct.

Michael: So, do you create or build any kind of deliverable? Is there an initial plan or preliminary recommendations or anything along those lines? Or are you still mostly in data gathering phase and just verbalizing some directions of things that you might do and inviting them to work together if they're interested?

Larry: Yeah. So we do not do any sort of financial plan or direct deliverable, recommendation-wise.

Michael: Okay.

Larry: Because, again, I think, as we move forward through the process, we're just talking in generalities. We want to learn more in terms of when we actually execute, because things can sometimes change along that route. And we feel that, again, every advisor does things differently, as you know. I feel like giving a financial plan right off the bat sometimes is...well, it is a lot of work, and I don't feel like we are in a position that we want to give that away. We want to make sure that we have a commitment from the family that we're going to move forward and work together. And then, simultaneously, if we gain that commitment, we're working simultaneously on constructing that financial plan, which obviously, at this point, we have a lot of information for, and also start working with them to consolidate their assets and start working towards a game plan on how to best direct those investments going forward, whether it's making changes, keeping things the same, whatever that means for them.

How Leading With Joy Can Speed The Prospect-To-Client Conversion Process [34:17]

Michael: So I guess I'm just curious. When the initial process is so focused around this joy conversation, "What did you do today that brought you joy? What are you looking to accomplish that brings joy in your life?" Because I know you've done this for a long time, Larry, I'm just wondering, how do the client responses change when you started having joy questions instead of the traditional, "Tell me about your financial planning goals?" Do, ultimately, you still get to the same place, or is there actually something different in how it shows up for you?

Larry: Michael, I think, at the end of the day, we end up in the same place. I think it's just a little bit later down the road. But I think what happens is, upfront, they understand, and they're like, "I understand a little bit better about what your goals are and how you're going to help me because you're not necessarily concentrating on the assets. You're not concentrating on the money." And the response we're getting is, "I feel like you have a real good sense of who I am, where I want to go, and what I want to do. And I already know, and that's why I'm here, that you have the capabilities and the ability to do the number stuff and the financial stuff. But I feel like nobody's really asked me these questions before. In many cases, we're just adding money to various accounts so we can say we're saving towards a 529 plan for college or we're saving to a retirement account. I don't really ever know. My advisor really hasn't talked to me about what brings me joy or what this money is really going to invoke in me."

So the response has been a lot better. It's been eye-opening. I think we've gotten people to talk a lot more and open up a lot more since we've made this transition from, as you mentioned, the traditional-type questions to more of this joy focus in those initial meetings.

Michael: It strikes me as well, you've mentioned it twice now, that by the time prospects show up with you in your office or they've gone through whatever process they are to decide that you're the one that they want to talk to and spend some time with, they have likely already decided that you're good enough at the financial and number stuff or they probably wouldn't have come in. And therefore, you're not spending much of any time on the financial and number side of things, I guess, proving your competency and capability to do technical financial planning analysis and recommendations. Not that it's not there and doesn't come later, but it resonates to me how you framed it. I just don't need to do that stuff in the first meeting or two, because they've already decided I'm good at that or they probably wouldn't have taken this meeting with me. That's not the thing I need to prove here. I'm going for connection and understanding them. Just making sure they understand our pricing, our scope of services, and how we work with people, but not, are we good enough to do a financial planning analysis?

Larry: That's right, Michael. People do business with people they know, like, and trust, as you've spoken about on many occasions. I'll give you a quote from an existing family that we work with. She said this out in the open during an advisory council meeting that we had back in May, and she said, "I was following Larry and his family for seven years." She wasn't a client. We didn't work with her and her family. "Seven years, I followed him, and I decided to finally... I had an event to my life that I had to make a decision about using an advisor." And she's like, "I've watched him. I watched his family. I watched his boys grow up." And she said, "If he can be a father and raise the boys that he's raised the way he raised them, then he's got to be good enough to manage my money and help me through my financial life." And that, to me, tells it all.

I think that's the important thing. People want to know that they can trust you, they can like you, you're somebody that's out for their best interest. And I think, by leading with that joy piece and not focusing on the money, because of the folks already, as you've mentioned, feel comfortable that we're able to do that, we really want to dive deep and learn about them and understand them. I think the world has changed quite a bit. I know the world has changed quite a bit since when I started in this profession. I talk about it a lot all the time. When I started in this profession, it would take four, five, six meetings to even get a commitment from a family because you needed that six hours for them to get to know, like, and trust you. Whereas now, through social media, platforms like this, podcasting, YouTube, etc., we've shrunk that down that that's not even necessary.

We have people that come in for "Is there a fit?" meeting. And before we even get started, they're like, "We know we want to work with you." And I'm like, "Okay. But we're going to go through this process anyway because we want to make sure that it's a good fit for us and for you, and we want to make sure that you are armed with all the information, and we're armed with all the information we need." So I know the world has changed quite a bit.

Gaining Resonance With Clients By Matching His Business Values To His Personal Values [40:09]

Michael: So now, tell us about your advisory firm. Help us understand the broader context of the business that you have built around these conversations of leading with joy and just more broadly the firm that you've built, because I know you've been doing this for many years now.

Larry: Yeah. So we've had a couple of...just to kind of bring it back to the beginning and bring it forward, we've had explosive growth in roughly the last four and a half to five years. So I started in the business back in 1997. If you saw Wolf of Wall Street, I was at a firm just like that. And if you think the movie was over the top, I will tell, in real life, it was worse. That's the way it was. But I started my independent practice in 2004, was affiliated with Securities America for about seven years, through 2011. Then shifted to my own RIA. We were SEC-registered from '11 to '20. And really, during that time, from 2004 to 2020, my practice was a very good lifestyle practice. We had a very small team, me and one other person. And that was really by design. I am a family guy through and through.

I lost my mom, she was at the age of 47. It was the day after my 23rd birthday. So because of that, and she battled cancer for many years while I was young as well, family has always been important to me. And then, a month before I launched my firm in 2004, unfortunately, I lost my brother-in-law to suicide, and many people know that I'm very active in the mental health community and with mental health charities, etc. So that reinforced that family importance for me.

My oldest was born in 2003, my youngest in 2006. So I wanted to be there for all their hockey games, all their life events, etc. So we had a lifestyle practice for that reason. And then, in 2020, my older son started college. My younger son, at the age of 15, decided that he wanted to continue to pursue his dream of playing hockey at a very high level and moved away from home and went to Minnesota and moved out there to boarding school. And my wife and I were looking at each other and basically had all this newfound time. And I was like, "We're empty nesters earlier than we expected." And I said, "Now is the time for us to really grow this from a lifestyle practice to more of an enterprise practice." And at that time, I was an SEC-registered investment advisory firm, an RIA, and I was doing a lot of things that were bogging down my time. So I had to make a decision, and that was an inflection point in my career. And we could talk about the options that I looked at.

But ultimately, I decided, at that time, to affiliate with Carson Group, which we're still affiliated with. When we did that, we had about $54 million under management at that time. And over the last 4.5, 5 years, we're now at about $200 million in assets. So we've grown significantly in that timeframe that we started focusing in on moving from a lifestyle practice to an enterprise. It also coincides with the launch of the podcast, that question, and this shift to joyfulness and talking about the Joyful Advisor, as well as becoming very active on social media. So we've grown the practice significantly as a result of having the support of Carson Group, that's been tremendously helpful, coinciding with the fact that we made this shift in mindset from wanting to be a lifestyle and moving more towards an enterprise practice.

Michael: Look, it kind of feels to me like a very "seasons of life" kind of transition. I wanted to run the firm one way when the kids were home, and I wanted to be present while they were growing up. And then we got past that stage of life, and now I've got more time and other ways to focus. And so we go a different direction in practice.

Larry: I think that's one of the greatest things about this business and this profession, is just that. You can have the ability to go as hard and fast as you want or as slow. And I still, today, spend a lot of time with my family. Yesterday, I took the day, and my wife and my two boys, we went down to the New York Stock Exchange, had lunch at the 1792 restaurant there, did a tour of the exchange, and then was there for the closing bell. So I think I still take that time off, but yeah, I think that's one of the great things about this profession. It allows us to do that.

And I would also say I took a lot of flak in those early years because I didn't go to many conferences. There are people that, in the last four years, five years, they're like, "Larry, how have you been in the business? I have only seen you the last four or five years." And I was like, "Yeah, because I was at my kid's hockey games. I couldn't bolt out to go to a conference. I was spending that family time." And people were like, "Oh, why didn't you just grow this thing pedal to the metal from the start?" And I said, "Well, that was 18 years, or in my younger son's case, 15 years that I had to be with him. I don't get those back, and I wanted to be very intentional about making sure that I was there and involved in all those aspects of their lives."

Michael: So I'm trying to figure out how to frame this question in a not negative way that it's going to sound, but I just take it, you don't have concerns of, "Did I miss out on something because I hadn't been growing and compounding this business since 20 years ago? I only 'put the pedal to the metal' over the past five years."

Larry: No regret whatsoever, because, I guess, from my perspective, which may be different for others, I have the perspective of seeing my mom pass away at 47, not making it to retirement. So my brother-in-law passed away at 27. And there was no contract, no guarantee to say that I was going to be there throughout my boys' life. So, the fact that I've been there all along the way, I have no regrets whatsoever. And we've created a culture at the firm, with our stakeholders, as well as the families we serve, when my kids were young, I'd take off June, July, and August every Friday. And there are clients still today that think I'm not in the office on Friday during the summer because they got used to that.

And I would say that actually has been a great magnet for families that we're serving because they see, just like that family, that woman I mentioned earlier, who said, "I saw how you've raised these boys," I find that a lot of the families we serve are also very family-oriented. They feel very aligned with kind of our goals and our values. So I have no regrets whatsoever about that at all. I cherish every one of those moments that I got to spend with them and my wife over those years.

Michael: I think there's something powerful to reflect there, even from the client perspective. You spent time taking Fridays off in the summer to have flexibility with the family. And I think, for a lot of us, there would be this fear of, "Well, our client is going to be upset that you're not available on Fridays. Why are you taking off?" "I'm paying you all this money, and you don't work on Fridays. What's going on?" And yet, for your clients that are family-aligned as well and find resonance to that, it's literally the opposite. It's, "Larry seems to have good priorities about family. Those align to my priorities about family. Therefore, I like and trust Larry, so I actually want to work with Larry more because he's willing to say, 'I'm not coming in on Fridays during the summer to be with my kids.' And that's a plus."

Larry: Yeah. And I would say this, keep in mind, at that point, it was me and one other person at our firm. I had myself and one other support person. That was it. And to your point, I can't say that I wasn't concerned about it back then, and I just did it. I was concerned. So year one, I only did Fridays during the month of June. And then the next year, I did June and July. And what I started seeing from a business standpoint was my business was actually increasing during the summer when a lot of advisors say that their businesses aren't. Mine was increasing. And I think, to some degree, it was because I was taking that time off. I don't know if it was just because I was a little more refreshed. I don't know if it was because I now had to cram basically five days of work into four. But it's that vacation mentality, you get more work done before and right after the vacation, because you know that's coming. So I created that for myself.

And I can't say that I wasn't concerned about it from the start. I was. And it turned out to be the complete opposite for those reasons and the reason I just spoke about earlier, which is people started really feeling aligned to me doing that. And I think the important thing there was that I wasn't just taking Fridays off for the heck of taking Fridays off and not communicating that to the families we serve. I was taking Fridays off to spend that time with my family, and I was communicating that to the families we serve. So they knew exactly why I wasn't in. It wasn't, "Oh, Larry must be out playing golf," or, "Larry must be on his boat." No, Larry was out with his boys, doing something fun that day or going to a hockey game, or something along those lines, and they were aware of it, which I think is a very important piece to that part for other advisors out there. I think, a lot of times, we don't want to share that because we don't want them knowing. But as long as it's things that you're comfortable with, I think it's worth sharing, because if they know, then they're less likely to have an issue, challenge, or concern.

Michael: I'm glad you said that because, to me, the next thing that's even more awkward, I think for most advisors, than telling clients you're not working Fridays in the summer is telling them why you're not working Fridays in the summer. So I'm struck by your point of, "No, no, no, I told them exactly why." Not even just to be with my family, "I'm doing this thing with my boys." And that just makes it even more resonant because we mostly end up attracting clients who have values similar to ours, because that's who we end up creating resonance with, with clients. So if that's what you're leaning into, you're much less likely to get clients to say, "What the heck are you doing, taking Friday off with your boys?" You're going to get clients saying, "That's awesome. I have to figure out how to adjust my work because I want to do that on Fridays with my boys, the way that you do. Help me with my financial plan so we can do that, too."

Larry: Right. Yeah, we have a family who we've worked with for the last several years…he came up to me at an event that we had for the families we work with, and he said to me point-blank, "I don't go on Facebook really at all," but he goes, "I log in once a week just to see what's going on with you and your family and the firm." And that's powerful. So I think that's the important stuff. And we could talk about it if you want. 2019, there was a big shift for me, right before we made this big move. I was not sharing a lot on social media. I was not sharing a lot of personal stuff. And there were a couple of things that really significantly changed, and we ended up taking a 180. And that's been hugely beneficial to the growth of our practice as well.

Sharing More On Social Media To Boost Engagement With Prospects And Clients [52:19]

Michael: So I think I'd love to hear more about what changed for you in 2019, especially reflecting, as you said earlier, you're 20-plus years in the business at that point, you're 15 years with your own firm. You've been doing this a long time at that point with some very established patterns of what you do that we all get into in our behaviors after some period of time. So, what changed that shook all this up and created a transition?

Larry: Yeah. So, for me, I was not very open to sharing. And as I mentioned, my wife's in the practice on the marketing side, and she was like, "You've got to share this stuff. People want to know where you're going, what you're doing." And I'm like, "I don't think so." So my youngest son was bar-mitzvah-ed in 2019, and instead of throwing a big party, we ended up taking a family trip to South Africa, going on Safari. So my wife said, "Listen, let's use this as a test case. We're going to share this trip with your social connections, and let's see what happens."

Michael: Okay.

Larry: So I said, "Okay, let's do it." So what we did was basically put out a video or some kind of commentary once a day of our trip and our adventure throughout South Africa. And what I came back to was an email from one of the families we serve, and she unfortunately had COPD. So she couldn't leave the house because she had an oxygen tank, couldn't leave the house very much. Definitely couldn't go to South Africa. And she sent me an email and said, "I really appreciate you sharing your journey on social media. I log in every day to see what was going on because South Africa was a bucket list trip for me, and it's a place I know that I'm never going to get to. But I felt like I went on Safari with you and your family for sharing every day." And it was in that moment that I was awe-struck, Michael. I was like, "Oh, wow." I was like, "That's powerful." And I'm like, "I get it."

And it was from that point on that we got very active on social media, and it was really from there that we've created this following and really has created a lot of opportunities for new families that we're working with who are following us through those channels. And it was our big inflection point. It was in that moment that, like you said, once you're doing this for a long time, sometimes you get into those routines that you feel comfortable with. You're kind of maybe skeptical about changing. But I think, from time to time, you have to really listen to those around you, and in this case, it happened to be my wife, who really had a sense of what was going on. And it's really been a game-changer ever since that date and making that mindset shift that I made back in early 2019.

Joining A Corporate RIA To Facilitate The Expansion From Lifestyle Practice To Business Enterprise [55:20]

Michael: So now, I'd love to come to the subsequent year transition, the 2020 transition. As your oldest goes to college, your younger goes to Minnesota, you decide you want to grow more. And there's a lot of stuff you're doing to the entire firm that you don't want to do, so you started looking for partners. So I guess just before we literally get to that process of going out there and figuring out what you wanted and how to make the transition, can you paint the picture of what the firm looked like at that point of assets or revenue or client count? Give us some context for where you were?

Larry: Yeah. At that point, when I started looking at this process, we were probably in the mid-to-upper $40 million range. I had myself and one support person at that time. As we entered the beginning...because I started exploring this a little bit towards the end of 2019 because we had to deal that my son was going to go away. Also, we started kind of exploring this then. So we were probably in the upper $40 million range.

Michael: And did you say earlier, though, that you were SEC-registered?

Larry: We were because we were in this unique place where New York was $25 million and under. So we're in that donut hole, and our compliance attorney at the time said, because I had known other advisors in New York who were getting letters from New York saying, "Hey, you're over $25 million. We're not going to supervise you. You have to go SEC." So, in anticipation of that possibly happening, my attorney just suggested that we go SEC. So that's what we did. And that was an easy enough transition.

Michael: So state specific, the joy of New York, not playing the same $100-million threshold game as every other state.

Larry: Correct. And I was getting calls from other advisors that I knew who were in similar state to me, who were getting proactive letters from New York, saying, "Hey, we're kicking you out. You got to go to the SEC." So we didn't want to get that letter, so we're a little proactive on that. So we were quite small. And then I started looking at things and looking at what I was doing on a day-to-day basis. And there was a lot of stuff, compliance, tech stack review. I was in the process of reviewing our CRM and our website. And I'm like, "This is all stuff that's keeping me back from growing the practice" as I started thinking about my boys leaving and having this newfound time. So I started thinking about, what are my options? My options were to really remain independent, a lifestyle practice. I could also go to potentially one of these larger firms, potentially sell my practice, what I built up until this point, and possibly be an employee, or I can team up and maybe shoulder-to-shoulder with somebody else, a corporate RIA like Carson Group.

And really what ended up happening as I looked at all those options, I didn't want to stay small and a lifestyle practice. I didn't want to necessarily sell at that point and be an employee. I, to some degree, say, "I'm unemployeeable," but that's a whole different story.

Michael: I'm very "unemployeeable." I understand that dynamic.

Larry: I didn't want to build it myself because, number one, it was going to cost a lot of money to build it initially. And then technology, as you know, is changing so quickly. It was going to cost a lot of money to continue and maintain. And going back, I don't know if you remember the last TD LINC Conference that they had.

Michael: Yes, absolutely.

Larry: Yeah. So I was there, and at that time, Teri Shepherd was on stage. And she was talking about Carson Group, because she was leading them at that point, and she was talking about how data was so important and vital to our profession and that the way Carson Group was building, they were owning all their data. So they didn't have to worry if they changed from one provider to another. They could plug and play. And I was like, "That is really interesting." So my wife came back to me, and she's like, "You should really book a meeting" because they had been talking to me or reaching out to me. So I booked a meeting with somebody from Carson Group who had to be on a 7 a.m. flight out the next morning, and we met at 5 a.m. for coffee, had a quick conversation. And then that's kind of when I went, ended up going down the path with Carson Group, because I felt like they were going to be a good partner. I talked to others at that time, and I felt like they were going to be the best fit for what we were looking for and how we were looking to grow at that time. And it's been a great partnership ever since.

Michael: I guess I'm just curious, what made Carson, in particular, feel like the best fit, or what or who else were you looking at but didn't feel like a good fit? I'm just fascinated to hear which things resonated with you or not that shaped the decision about who you chose.

Larry: Yeah. There were a couple others that I talked to. I'm not sure why. I can't recall at this very moment who those other two were. But they were rather short-lived conversations. The thing that I really felt compelled with with Carson Group was really the people. Everybody that I encountered there, everybody I talked to felt very much in alignment with what I was looking to accomplish and what we're looking to do. I also felt like they had one of the best tech stacks that was out there, which was extremely important to me at that time and continues to be. But really it was the people and what they had in their process and their offering. And I just felt super compelled about it. And even to this day, I feel like the people there are really what...and the culture really makes it an excellent place. And we felt very comfortable. We felt like it was a home for us from the very beginning.

And keep in mind, I made this decision in the midst of COVID. I didn't have the opportunity to go out to Omaha and meet with people face-to-face. I did everything via Zoom. And the big concern for me was, as I mentioned, I started this real push in terms of social media engagement and putting a lot of content out there at that point. The biggest thing for me and I guess the last hurdle was, as an independent SEC-registered RIA, I was the compliance person. I had a compliance attorney. I kind of knew what I could say, what I couldn't say, that process. And we've all heard that terminology, the business prevention department, when it comes to compliance. I do not feel that way at Carson Group.

Obviously, I took a little bit of a leap of faith initially because I told them that this was a major concern for me and a challenge for me. And I remember one of the last conversations I had before I ended up signing the agreement was I got on a Zoom with Omani [Carson] at that time and I said, "Listen, my one concern is this compliance aspect. I want to make sure that I'm not going to be stifled, that if I want to put out content, it's not going to be I create it today and it's going to be out three months from now." I know the horror stories. I don't want to be that. And he looked over Zoom, looked at me in the eye, and said, "Listen," he goes, "I have to get what I put out compliance-approved." And he goes, "I don't have any issues." He goes, "I also have been following you for quite some time as well. And he goes, "I don't see any issue with what you're putting out. I think you're going to be more than fine here." And I said, "All right," I said, "I'm going to take your word or it." And then, basically, that was the last hurdle to sign.

And I will tell you, our office has built a partnership with compliance. Just to give you an example, because I know you've probably heard horror stories. 2023, I put out a book, "Financial Planning Made Personal," submitted to compliance, and I got the book back in four days, approved with probably three or four, what I would consider, minor edits. And what I say, even those minor edits that they asked for were things that improved the book, didn't detract from it. It wasn't stuff that I had to X out because it was like, "Oh, this is no good." It was stuff that really improved, I think made the book a little bit better. And that's really an encapsulation of the relationship that we have with them and we've had with them from the start and we still have today.

Michael: So, how many clients was it that you had to transition as you went into this change?

Larry: That's a good question. I would say we were probably less than half of where we are now. I would say we were probably about 80 families or so at that point. You want to talk about easy transition? It was easy, Michael. I know a lot of people have a lot of rounds. Because we predominantly had our families at TD at that time, Carson, TD was a custodian of theirs, because we didn't have any privacy issues or non-competes in our agreement, we just did a negative consent to move the families over from TD under Mitlin to TD under Carson. And we had to have the families sign a new investment advisory agreement. So we had everybody over…I think it was in five or six days. We had the whole practice transitioned in that period of time.

Michael: And everybody came. No one objected or had issues.

Larry: We did part ways with two folks. One felt that our newfound partnership with Carson that we were too big for their purposes, and they felt like, "I don't understand." I guess they felt it wasn't going to be the same.

Michael: I liked being a big fish in your small pond.

Larry: I guess.

Michael: I'm not as excited that you want to grow, Larry. That doesn't do it for me.

Larry: I guess. I didn't see it that way, and I didn't feel like that was going to change in the least. And I don't think it did for anybody. But we did part ways with them. And then we had one other family from a pricing standpoint. Because we did have to increase fees a bit when we made the shift, and one of the reasons why was we used quite a bit of mutual funds on the other side. And under Carson, we weren't going to do that anymore. We're going to use ETFs and individual stocks and bonds. And there was a challenge with seeing our fee versus what their actual all-in fee was, which it was going to be maybe five or ten basis points different when you compare fee-to-fee. But they had a challenge with that, so they decided to move on.

And the way I look at it, we all look at things differently. I try to look at things with the glass-half-full approach always. And I always find, if families feel like it's not a good fit, what we found in our practice is, when we separate from them, usually, it just makes room for a number of different families to come in, and we usually fulfill those needs very, very quickly.

Changing The Firm's Fee Structure Alongside The Transition To Carson Group [1:07:09]

Michael: So, if you can, I'd love to hear more about just, I guess, what the cost of Carson was and how you were handling it in terms of what's your fee, what's Carson's fee, what fees do you change for clients because you have to make the math work as a business. Can you give us more detail on just how that broke down, how that math worked for you?

Larry: Yeah. So, just at a high level, again, this is almost five years ago, we had a tiered fee structure initially under Mitlin RIA, if you will. So we had a tiered fee structure. So, as families had more assets with us, that fee went down. So, essentially, what we did was we looked at each family and calculated what their blended rate was. And then, on Carson's side, we went more to a flat fee structure because we wanted to make things more simple. I think that what we ended up doing with the tiered fee structure for all those years is we made things probably far more complicated than we had to. So we wanted to make things easier, so we went more to a flat fee structure. We incorporated, obviously, we knew what revenue was being driven by the firm under the tiered fee structure.

We wanted to have that more or less aligned on the Carson side as well. We didn't want our fee necessarily to go down because we were essentially going to be creating and providing more services as a result of this partnership. So we then calculated that in. And also, on the Mitlin side, as I said, we had the mutual fund expenses in a lot of cases. So we took what our fee was, the mutual fund expense. And typically, that was within 5, 10, maybe on the high side, 15 basis points of what the new fee was going to be under the Carson side. And we just explained that to the families. We're like, "Your fee blended is X. It's now going to be Y. Just understand that even though your fee to us was X, you were also paying this expense ratio, which is now going to go away." So we compared and contrasted those.

And when all was said and done, we had one family that was a little bit unsure about how this was going to work. And I said to her, and I said, "Listen, you're going to be and we're going to be in a position to provide you a lot more services and deliverables," and we talked about what those were under this new partnership. I said, "Give it 12 months, and if you don't feel like we're delivering enough value for the fee, then you call me up, you let me know before or at the 12-month mark, and I'd be happy to talk to you about where a good place for your assets would be, if you don't feel so." And about six months in, she called me, we're on a call, and she was like, "I remember our conversation before you made this move." And she said, "Thank you." She goes, "You were absolutely right." She goes, "You're delivering exactly what you said. And the five, ten basis points, it's a non-event. But thank you for giving me that out if I needed it." And she really appreciated it.

Michael: So, when you talk about shifting to flat fee structures, I'm presuming you don't mean flat dollar amount, clients pay X dollars a year. You just mean the tiers are flatter, so we're not going to have 1.3 and then 1.1 and then 0.9, 0.7, 0.5.

Larry: Correct.

Michael: We charge 1%. It goes up to several million. Peace be with you.

Larry: Correct, yeah. So our average fee is about 1.55 [percent], and that's all in.

Michael: So all in, meaning your fees, Carson fees, underlying ETF expense ratio, all in.

Larry: Correct, yeah. We're averaging about that 1.55% mark up to about $3 million, and then there's a break in pricing from 3 million to 10 million because we get some relief also from Carson at that point in terms of them being participatory in that fee arrangement with us. So it goes down from a flat to a share. And then $10 million and up, we also have a separate pricing structure, another private client tier at that level.

Michael: Okay. And so, is the idea of all of these adjustments at the end of the day that you were trying to keep your net largely similar, and so the pricing changes to clients are essentially, how do we embed the cost of the Carson layer in addition to yours into one total fee without making your revenue go backwards?

Larry: That's right, yeah. We wanted to make sure that the revenue of the firm in this transition did not retreat. We wanted to make sure that it was at the same level, if not higher, because we were confident. Obviously, at that time, it was new. So you go into it with eyes wide open, but also, I think a healthy dose of skepticism is also okay to have. We were fairly confident that, in this transition, we were going to be adding a lot more value because of the resources and support we would be receiving to the families that we serve, and we were confident that we were going to deliver on that. So we didn't want to see our fees retrace as a result of that.

Michael: And so then you get 5- to 15-basis-point increase for the client, some portion of cost savings of lower-cost ETFs and direct stocks that displace the mutual funds. And so those buckets together let you cover the Carson fee, while you try to hold yours relatively even.

Larry: Correct. And then I would just add, from a business standpoint, overall business standpoint, we were able to release some of our costs at the time from an overhead standpoint because we were on Orion at that point. We had a direct relationship with Orion. And I think my annual cost for Orion was somewhere in the $20,000 to $30,000 a year range. That went away because now that was picked up under the Carson tech stack. And there were other technologies that we were using and paying for that was revenue that dropped to the bottom line now instead of going out the door in an expense either.

Michael: Did you try to hold your revenue even and you actually got a little bit more net profitable when the costs consolidated to Carson, or were you trying to also work that into the fee adjustment?

Larry: No, I think the former. We were looking to keep the revenue the same and have the profitability increase at the same time.

Michael: So benefit of working with a partner that supports you well.

Larry: Correct.

Michael: I just love to hear a little bit more of how you communicated the change to clients at the end of the day. You've got a platform change. You've got a pricing change. Basically, everyone stayed. How did you communicate?

Larry: Yeah. It was over a three-, four-month period, reaching out. If we had a meeting with them already scheduled, we would incorporate that into that meeting. And if we needed to schedule something off-cycle, we did that as well. And it was a matter of telling the story behind the why. It's going back to, I guess, that conversation we had earlier about sharing the why with the families. Why was I taking Fridays off? I think arming people with all the information, especially in a situation like this, is helpful, not hurtful. So we shared the why behind why we were doing it because we wanted to add more value. We wanted to be able to spend more time with them and working with them and their family. We also shared the why around having now a portfolio strategy team, which we did not have. We were managing the assets ourselves. Having the advanced solutions team and having accountants, attorneys, and trust professionals to help us navigate those areas.

So we went through all those areas that are super helpful that we were going to add value in our why from a tech standpoint, how their experience was going to increase also from a technology standpoint, and basically then communicated that these added services are potentially going to have added costs associated with it or at a time that we're going to be spending with them and that we're going to be making the adjustment. And we made it very clear. We tried as best as we can in most cases to keep it relatively flat, meaning their cost in terms of what they were paying us and adding in those internal expenses versus what they were going to be paying us now and with those internal expenses, trying to keep that on par as much as possible. And we felt like we'd be delivering a lot more value as a result.

Michael: Thus, being able to say, "We're giving you all these additional things, and your total net fee may go up five basis points."

Larry: Right. Right. There you go.

What Mitlin Financial Looks Like Today [1:16:29]

Michael: So now, where is the business today? Just help us understand where the business stands now in terms of assets, revenue, clients, team.

Larry: Yeah. So right now, we're about $200 million in assets.

Michael: Okay.

Larry: We'll do somewhere between probably $1.7 million or $1.8 million in revenue for this year. And we're at about 200 households currently. Our team, we have a team of six. So I'm the founder and lead advisor. We then have Jorrell Bland, who is our associate wealth advisor, who I know you know, Michael. He credits his shift from insurance broker-dealer world to RIA model because of you and this podcast. So it works, and he's been a valuable member of my team for five years-plus. He joined us the year that we made this transition, probably about ten months before. And then we have Carmen Abustan, who's our relationship manager. We have Josh Rubel, who is our director of first impressions. He basically handles our operations. My wife, Denise, is our chief marketing officer. That group is located here on Long Island. And then we have one stakeholder that works remotely from Texas, and she acts in an administrative capacity. She does a lot of the stuff that you wouldn't need to be in our office to do, like scheduling annual reviews, confirming annual reviews, doing onboardings to get information, and working on our podcast and some other social media things for us as well.

Key Inflection Points And The Low Point On Larry's Advisor Journey [1:18:17]

Michael: So, as you reflect on this journey now, what surprised you the most about the path of building your advisory business?

Larry: I think there's things along the way that we have to pay attention to, and I think a couple of those inflection moments for me were starting out in the brokerage side of the business and then taking five, six, seven years understanding what the RIA world was. I will say there, you talked about regrets, about building the business faster. I don't have any regrets there, but I do, to some degree, have a little bit of regret not learning about the RIA model sooner, because I feel like I would have made that transition a little bit earlier. Whether I could have afforded to do that earlier, I don't know. But hindsight to 2020, I think that was an inflection for me, is dropping that Series 7 and dropping the FINRA affiliations. That was hugely beneficial to the growth.

Michael: What was so significant about it for you?

Larry: I always felt weird about the broker-dealer side. I always felt weird about being compensated in a commission fashion. The thing that really sealed the deal for me was having to talk with the manager before I launched my firm, and I was with Bank of America, which was just merging into Merrill Lynch at the time, and the manager was like, "Hey, what can we do to make the team more successful?" And I was like, "Well, my compensation's not really derived by the team." This is where I become unemployeeable, Michael, like we talked earlier. And she was like, "Well, okay, what would make you be more successful and drive more revenue?" And I said, "Well, last month, we had 40 hours of meetings. I guarantee, if you cut those out, I'll be more successful." It was that mentality and the mentality that they would talk about doing the right things for people, but when all is said and done, I found a lot of the actions didn't really support that because it was very revenue-driven.

So I didn't know about the RIA model back then until I started getting into late 2005, 2006, and then figuring that out. So that was an inflection point, and I felt a lot more comfortable, I think, in my own skin, doing business that way with families, because I think had I found that earlier, it probably would have been an easier transition for me. And then, again, moving and finding that right partnership has been hugely helpful to me, and I guess one step before that would have been...and leaning into social media has been hugely beneficial, and then finding that partnership. So I highlight those three events. And then most recently, really leaning into this joy is really now accelerating, and having the team that I have in place to help support that, it's really set us up for a lot of success, which I'm pretty excited for.

Michael: So, what was the low point on this journey for you?

Larry: Yeah, that's a good question. And I know you ask people that, so I was kind of thinking about that. To be completely transparent, I don't feel like there was any real low point in the business, per se. I will say, from a mental standpoint and really caring about families that we work with, probably one of the most challenging times was that '07, '08, '09 period of time, and it was a struggle. It wasn't a struggle from a standpoint of being concerned about the business, per se. It was more of a struggle of you work with these families shoulder-to-shoulder, you care about them, you want to help them work towards whatever their goals and dreams are, and just seeing a market kind of implode at that point in time where you could not really do much about it. That was a tough period of time to be in this profession. Depending on how you look at it, it was also a good period because there was a lot of opportunity in terms of families who experienced what your families were feeling, but they weren't hearing from their advisor at that point. But I would say, if I had to pick out a point in time, that was probably it. It was a challenging time during that period.

Larry's Advice For His Younger Self And For Newer Advisors [1:22:50]

Michael: So, what else do you know now you wish you could go back and tell you from 15, 20 years ago about building the business, building your practice?

Larry: I think two things. I think one is I probably wouldn't ever have gotten my [Series] 7 and gone down that route. I would have gone down the RIA route. I think that's definitely something I would have changed. And then I probably would have given my wife credit a lot earlier and leaned into social media a lot earlier, because it's been hugely beneficial and led to a lot of growth. You might want to say, "Hey, you might have wanted to lean into this joyful concept a little bit earlier." But I don't know that we would have gotten there without having the podcast and moving down that direction. Maybe we would have because I think behavioral finance and that kind of conceptual idea is really the way the business is going today, but that wasn't available. And when I started in the business, social media wasn't available the way it is today.

So just being maybe a little bit more progressive in those areas and being a little bit more comfortable to being uncomfortable, because that's what stopped me from the social media piece. I think, as business owners, we get into that routine, and I think we don't have to try everything. But if somebody's making a good case for something, I think we have to be more open to trying it and seeing what happens and actually putting in a decent enough effort to realize if it worked or didn't work, not just trying it for a month and saying, "Oh, I didn't hear from anybody." I think this has been really a three-, four-, five-year iteration. It's an investment. It's compounding each and every year and becoming bigger and more important.

Michael: So, what advice would you give younger, newer advisors getting started today and looking to their career over the next 20-plus years?

Larry: So I talk with newer advisors all the time because I'm part of the FinServ Foundation. So I typically mentor a FinServ fellow every three to six months. And that's a question we talk about very often. And I try to save some of these folks from what's going on in the world out there and going down the wrong path. And what I mean by that is I don't think any new advisor can or should or would benefit from the brokerage model. I think that there's a clear wave moving into the RIA side. I think it's going to continue growing in that direction. So I try to encourage them as much as possible to investigate RIAs and try to go down that route in terms of finding internships and opportunities there. And I think that that's an avenue that I try to encourage all young people to go down, because I think the organizations that are more on the brokerage side and on the selling side, they have deep pockets, and they have a loud voice, and they capture a lot of these young people, and they're enamored by it.

And I think, as a community of RIAs, we have to do an even louder job of getting out there and drowning that out a little bit to show them a different path. Now, I'm not saying one is right or wrong. I think one is better than the other. But at the same time, they're not all created equal. I think young people will and could have a better experience, have more longevity, and get more experience that's going to be helpful to the people that need the help through that RIA channel. So I try to have a lot of conversations around that with young folks.

What Success Means To Larry [1:26:45]

Michael: So, as we wrap up, this is a podcast about success, and just one of the themes that often comes up, that word success means different things to different people. Sometimes it changes for us as we go through different stages, different seasons of life. And so you have this wonderfully successful advisory firm now, as you're not just crossing 200 million, 4x-ing in 5 years. So the business is on a wonderful path right now. How do you define success for yourself at this point?

Larry: Yeah, that's a great question. So I look at success from two standpoints. I look at it from a standpoint of personal success, and then I also look at it from business success. So for me, personal success is being the best dad and the best husband I can be and being there for my family whenever they need me and be there for all the important milestones or events in their lives and being there for and with them. So, from a personal standpoint, that's very important to me. From a business standpoint, I know a lot of people talk about a revenue goal or an asset under management goal. For me, from a business standpoint, I'm looking to grow this business and grow it in a way where the business success is going to be determined by how many families can we impact in a positive way, how many generations of those families can we impact, and kind of try to measure that, I guess, as best as we can. And then I think as important is those stakeholders that are dedicating their 40-plus hours a week here that are really enveloped into the mission and the core values of Mitlin Financial, is helping them reach their personal success. And I think, if we do that, if we help the families we serve reach their success, and I think, just as importantly, we help our stakeholders reach their ideal personal success, because if they're doing that, they're going to be better serving those families and helping them. To me, that is creating a successful business and a successful life for a lot of people that we're surrounding ourselves with.

Michael: Very cool. I love it. I love it. Well, thank you so much, Larry, for joining us on the "Financial Advisor Success" podcast.

Larry: Thank you, Michael. It's been a pleasure, and always enjoy your show.

Michael: Thank you.