Executive Summary
In the time between review meetings, advisors are often busy doing work for clients (such as portfolio analysis or reviewing insurance needs). This cadence of work is crucial, but it’s also often invisible, especially when no action is needed. The antidote for many advisors is some sort of communication between meetings – from birthday cards to phone calls to email newsletters. Yet this may be met with a lukewarm-at-best reception from clients, leaving advisors to wonder… what sort of communication touchpoints (if any) actually make a difference to clients?
In this 195th episode of Kitces & Carl, Michael Kitces and client communication expert Carl Richards discuss how to choose the method and frequency of client touchpoints. There is a balance to be struck: if an advisor under-communicates, then clients may not know if or how to contact an advisor between meetings. On the other hand, overcommunication can quickly drown an advisory team’s capacity as a client base grows.
The latest Kitces Research on Advisor Productivity suggests that successful advisors had frequent contact with their clients, but it was almost all standardized, such as newsletters and webinars, that allowed efforts to amplify on a one-to-many basis. This allows touchpoints to scale with the client base… and can provide an organic place for an advisor to both provide guidance and commentary to their client base. Similarly, sending brief messages that affirm that a component of a client’s plan was reviewed (even if no action is needed) can reassure the client that their plan is being monitored.
This approach has two benefits: first, it can illuminate the otherwise invisible work of the advisor. Second, it can free up the advisor’s time so that when the client does reach out, the advisory team can provide a thorough and timely response. The latter is particularly important as the capacity to automate all communication continues to grow – in other words, the advisor will need to carefully determine where it is important to have human, one-to-one availability. Advisors may be surprised by just how differentiating it is to have a blend of consistent communication that accumulates in fast, human-centered interaction.
On the other hand, these scheduled communications may receive relatively low engagement. Clients may not open emails or log into their portals as frequently as advisors would like, which can make advisors wonder if the effort to continually provide some level of communication is worthwhile. This is where discernment is crucial for what types of communication really make difference… yet it can be helpful to remind clients that the advisory team is actively monitoring the situation and is available.
Ultimately, the key point is that an advisor has many avenues through which they could communicate with clients, but it may be more effective to do a few things consistently than many things infrequently. A cornerstone of communication, combined with great, accessible service, is the key to delivering exceptional advice that scales with the firm!
Authors:
***Editor's Note: Can't get enough of Kitces & Carl? Neither can we, which is why we've released it as a podcast as well! Check it out on all the usual podcast platforms, including Apple Podcasts (iTunes), Spotify, and YouTube Music.
Show Notes
- 4 Ways To Increase Your Credibility And Referability — Fast, by Shannon Waller (The Strategic Coach Team's referral formula)
- Hill Investment Group:
- Kitces Report: How Financial Planners Actually Do Financial Planning:
- Identifying The 'Right' Balance Of Personalization And (Time) Cost Of Client Touchpoints To Boost ROI
- 9 Discovery Meeting Questions To Find Out What Clients Really Want From You And Align Relationship Expectations
Kitces & Carl Transcript
Michael: Well, good afternoon, Carl.
Carl: Hello, Michael Kitces. How are you?
Michael: I'm doing well. I'm doing well. I'm enjoying this pending summer season as of our discussion. It will be summer by the time this episode is live. Do you have exciting summer plans? What do you do in beautiful Utah in the summer?
Carl: Yeah, really. Yeah. Summer is awesome. We have a bunch of cool kids going to graduate school or in between school. They're going to be around, and that always makes things super busy. So I love summer. So yeah, it's super fun. It's fun. We had all these plans four weeks ago. We talked a lot about this, like the old saying, "Men make plans, and God laughs." We had all these plans, literally, probably six weeks ago. I had my summer calendar scheduled out, and then a bunch of awesome things happened with kids getting into grad school. Maybe some relationships that are getting serious, those sorts of things. Suddenly, the whole summer has changed in very good ways. But just a reminder that planning should be done with a pencil, not carved in stone.
Michael: I thought you were going to give us a whole, this is why planning is a verb and not a noun.
Carl: It's exactly right. It's exactly right. So anyway, it's going to be a really remarkable summer.
What Is The Best Number Of Client Touchpoints For Financial Advisors? [01:40]
Michael: Cool. Well, I wanted to kick off today's episode with an interesting question that came from an advisor. I think this conversation is actually going to go a number of different directions. So I'm just going to set the context out because I'm curious where this goes from you. So this is from a advisor, we'll call him Jacob, to have a name – not real name. So Jacob reached out and said, "I'm thinking a lot about the balance between proactive care and reactive care of clients between meetings." So we've got proactive touch points, right? Reach out to the clients and do periodic check-ins, and maybe it's a call or an email. There's the warm touch things, the birthday card, the how was the vacation? How was little Johnny's graduation?
There's the meeting cadence. How often are we supposed to meet with them? How often do we really need to meet with them, and how often do we meet with them because apparently it's good service to meet with them more often? Then there's the how often do you reach out? Because you're nagging the clients. Because we're trying to help them push forward on getting the estate documents done or getting that insurance policy in place, so whatever it is. And we're trying to help them in that regard.
And I think, as Jacob put it, it's getting hard to figure out where the balance is, or should be. Should I be more proactive? Is it okay to be more reactive? That sounds bad, but I have a lot of clients, and they've always got things going on. So frankly, I end up being pretty reactive anyways. So am I supposed to be more proactive? Does that mean I'm doing it wrong, or is this just the business and how it's supposed to work?
Carl: Right. So many good things. It's so interesting.
Michael: Yeah. So how do you think about this?
Carl: I have, well, one quick story. There's actually two competing stories, which sets up the tension for me. One was, and we've talked a bit about this before, are we over-servicing people? Did anybody ask for birthday cards? And I remember one of my favorite advisors ever, named Kevin, who we've talked about on this show before. Kevin didn't do any of that stuff. No anniversary cards, no birthday cards, nothing, just rapid response to client inquiries. So they took all that time that we'd spend on all those.
And I remember him even saying most of us just don't even return phone calls. Maybe we should take that time we're spending writing birthday cards and make sure we return phone calls. That's his take. So a consistent experience and rapid response to any client inquiry. That was it. No birthday cards, no anniversary cards, no monthly planning topic. That was his view. And he's built one of the more successful businesses I've ever seen.
Pretty cool. That was Kevin's. Let me just set up the competing one. I'll just call him Dr. Terry. That was not his name. But Dr. Terry came to me, and he was...again, we may have mentioned this before, but he was the one that when I said, in an ideal world, "How often would you hear from me?" And he said, "In an ideal world?" And I said, "Yeah." And he said, "Never." He was like, "You just take care of everything. I wouldn't think about it." And I took him at his word. And so I didn't send out active stuff. I didn't bother him. I didn't send him all the research reports or whatever.
And I got transfer paperwork to Fisher, which is what I was like... I called him and said, "I'm not going to allow you to do this." We had this whole thing. He's like, "Are you allowed to not allow me?" I'm like, "I know, but I'm not going to allow you. If you need a new advisor, I'll help you find one." But anyway. So I was like, "Wait, you told me never." And he was like, "I know. We weren't there yet." So that was when I decided to never believe Terrys, never to believe them.
And that was when I came up with the idea in my head that it doesn't matter what they say. Some of this is just theater. Some of this, they just need to know that you're thinking of them. Even if the answer is, "Hey, I've reviewed everything. There's nothing to do here. I want you to know I'm thinking of you." There was some element of just showing up and knowing that there was activity taking place, because we're certainly billing them, even when we're doing nothing, because nothing's the right thing to do, right? We're not taking any action. Getting to the spot where we can confidently tell people to do nothing actually takes a lot of work.
Michael: Yes.
Carl: And if we don't tell people about it, they don't know what happened. So those are my... That's the tension.
The Power Of Rapid (And Human) Responses To Client Inquiries [06:47]
Michael: Well, I think you captured the tension well. I actually want to understand some of the nuances of these tensions more. So let me start on the Kevin side. I think you said consistent experience, rapid response to client inquiries. So I think the second is more straightforward than the first. So what does rapid response to client inquiries mean?
Carl: If a client sent any... Let me just think carefully about the date. Were we using email? I guess we were using email. If the client called or sent in an email, they were reactively... They responded to that. They got a response quickly. And I don't know. And I'm hesitant to put a number on that. Was it the same day? Was it the next day? Whatever it was, clients knew that when they reached out, they would get a response. And that sounds so basic, but it is... Think, everybody listening, try calling... If you have an insurance agent that handles your auto, or maybe even your dentist.
Michael: Or your CPA for a lot of firms these days.
Carl: That's a good idea. Maybe an attorney that's done some trust work for you. Try calling and seeing how long it takes to get back. So it turns out... Yeah.
Michael: Well, look, even in an advisory firm context, right? Can we collectively own this for a moment? Right? Client calls with a question or emails with a question out of the clear blue sky, how fast are you really getting an answer back to them? And I don't mean your top clients, because you do that fast. Your slightly below average clients.
Carl: Yeah, everybody.
Michael: That is not the one that you have the impulsive hop to response to. How long is it really taking to get a response? Assuming they said something that actually needs you, and you're not forwarding it on to a team member because it wasn't really that important...
Carl: But even that, when do they get a response from the team member? This is like nuts and bolts, boring, blocking and tackling stuff. It's not uber fun. It's not creative. It's not like writing a new blog post. It's like just getting stuff done and keeping... And Kevin, I think, was the first person who introduced me to the concept of closed loops.
He was just like, "I didn't ever want a client having an open loop. If they asked a question, they got an answer. They knew that the investment process, our review process, was consistent. If I said we were going to get a quarterly review to them, I got a quarterly review."
Basically, Dan Sullivan. It's like, "I did what I said. I said, 'Please and thank you.' I finished what I started. I said, 'Please and thank you.' And I showed up on time." His laws of referability.
Michael: Right. But I was struck with part of what you said. I don't know if this was just being facetious or Kevin's actually stated attitude, and like, "But I'm not doing all the birthday cards and the rest. And I'm taking all the time that I'm not spending on that to be readily available for rapid response to clients." So there's a trade-off there that I'm not sure all of us think of as a trade-off.
Carl: Yeah. Yeah. It's funny...
Michael: Like, "How long does it take to create the birthday card service or whatever the thing is?" I'm like, "Yeah, until you have seven of those different things that you do across the firm." And some week there's always something going on with some client or something for one of your common touch points to clients that collectively leaves you and the whole firm a little busier than maybe you meant to be. And is that really what mattered more than, yeah, there's not a lot going on around here because we just want to be extremely available for rapid response whenever the requests come in?
Carl: Yeah. It's interesting. You know who does this? It's interesting. I just noticed it. Let me just take a second and grab this example, because I think it was very intentional. And before I say the name...
Michael: Make sure the person...
Carl: Just make sure that it was actually true. Because what I saw was at the bottom of their email that they send out regularly. And I'm actually now there scrolling. Yeah. It's super interesting. So there's a great advisor in St. Louis advisory firm named Hill Investment Group. So Matt Hall is the friend, and they've got this great firm in St. Louis, and they just instituted on all their emails. Now it says, "New Live Phone Coverage." It's effective February 16th, from 8 a.m. to 8 p.m. Eastern, somebody will answer the phone, and 5 a.m. to 5 p.m. Pacific, somebody answers the phone live if you call.
Michael: Which they're literally promoting as a service, as a feature.
Carl: Rapid response. Like we're here. I just thought that was... I haven't had a chance to ask Matt about that, but it's the thing Matt does.
Michael: Well, in a world where...right? What's the counter dynamic right now? Anybody called into a large firm environment, financial services or otherwise, and just hung out with some combination of voice-activated phone trees and AI avatars trying to kindly, gently help you get to whoever is you need, and you're just going, "Can I just get to a human being that could solve my problem, please?"
Carl: I can't do it anymore. It's just so... Some of them are actually getting quite good. I've been actually impressed with a few of them, but mostly I'm just like...I just end up saying, "Representative, representative, representative."
Michael: Agent, agent, agent, agent.
Carl: Yeah. And I thought seeing this, it's interesting to me. All I really need to know about this is that I noticed this. I've been getting Matt's emails for years, and I noticed this on his email. Somebody answers live. So that's just an example of being available.
Last little point. This reminds me a little bit of my doctor friend who used to have clients who'd come in and want to argue all the time about which high blood pressure medicine to take. And he would then remind them gently or not so gently, "You still smoke." And sometimes I think that's the same, like, "Hey, how fancy can we get with this extra stuff we're doing?" But wait, we're not returning emails, and I'm not pointing any fingers. I'm just saying I have the tendency to do that.
The basics are hard to do. So that would be that one tension. And I'm not sure it's right, to be honest, in today's environment. I don't know. I haven't talked to Kevin in ten years, but I did like Matt's deeply human touch of rapid response.
Michael: So what was the consistent experience part of Kevin?
Carl: It was early on. That was early on when we had... It always surprises the youngs listening to this, that there was a time in which consistent portfolio design was a really deeply novel concept. Instead of have a hunch, buy a bunch stock brokerage, they had built really nice model portfolios that were consistent over time. And the reporting was quarterly, and you knew what your fee was. These were early days when this was novel. And he did the same. I remember always saying, "Are you doing the new thing?" He's like, "I've been doing this for ten years." No, my clients love it. It's boring too.
Michael: So in this context, consistent experience is not like we consistently give you a high-quality touchpoint experience in the form of a e-newsletter, or a birthday card, or dah, dah, dah, every month, all year long. We're not talking about that consistent experience. We're talking about every client is in a consistent portfolio, and it's consistently rebalanced, and you always get your reports. Like that kind of consistency.
Carl: It was just consistent with the planning and investment work, right? Like, "We're going to meet this often. When you show up, we're going to be prepared." It was just very consistent with the work. There was no extra stuff.
When Clients Request No Communication... Do They Mean It? [15:53]
Michael: So now, again, I think you contrast this so well with Kevin, rapid response to client inquiries, and Dr. Terry, who basically fired you for Kevin-ing him.
Carl: That's right. That's right. That's right.
Michael: So now take us to the other end. So what, right, Dr. Terry said, "My ideal contact frequency is never, because I just want you to handle all the things, that's why I'm hiring you."
Carl: I did it.
Michael: You did it, and he fired you for it.
Carl: Yeah.
Michael: So it sounds like there was at least some conversation with him in the aftermath and/or trying to keep him from going to his new home. So in retrospect, at least, what did he want and need that was missing?
Carl: Yeah, I think this points to, we said a little bit about it earlier, that there's a lot of work that goes on behind... I did have a conversation with him, and he said, "Well, I just talked to this advisor about international markets and emerging markets, and you're not doing any of that." And I was like, "Yes, yes, we are." And he's like, "I didn't know that."
And so I think there... And that expanded. I had another very similar experience we started after that. We started implementing a thing where we would review, and you and I have talked about this, and please don't send emails, we get emails every time it gets brought up. But the 17-point...
Michael: I know what you're going to say. Say it. Tell us about the checklist, Carl.
Carl: The 17-point wealth management audit, we know...it doesn't matter if it's 17 or 12 or 72, make your own... don't send me an email. But the 17... That's when we started doing that. We were like, "Let's put together everything we do for every client every month. Let's have a checklist, like when you walk into the bathroom at McDonald's, you see that checklist on the wall." At least you used to. Now they just scan it. But you used to seeing it, it was initialed, that somebody did it at one, and somebody did it at two, and somebody... You didn't know that somebody was doing that. When you saw that checklist, you were like, "Wow, they keep the bathroom clean."
So we created something like that, and every month we'd call, and we'd get the same response. Every month, it was almost always the message I would leave on the phone, on the voicemail answering machine, was, "Hey, we've looked at everything," and we'd say, "We've looked at everything in the 17-point or 12-point or 18-point wealth management audit. Everything's fine. If anything's changed in your life, let me know," and I'd leave that message.
And after a year of that, I had a group of clients where I said, "Hey, we always leave the same message. Do we need to keep doing this?" And they were all like, "Yes. Yes." And I was like, "Why?" And he said, "It's just so great to know somebody was looking. It's great to know that you're on top of it."
So even though we were doing "nothing" to the client's plan or portfolio, rebalancing, of course, but we were doing... Getting yourself in the position where you can confidently tell them, "There's not much to do here," is a lot of work, and nobody sees that work.
So I think part of this is what I referred to earlier, is Terry just needed a little theater, and I don't mean that in a negative way. I just mean Terry needed us to put on a show to help him understand what we were actually doing. We have thought about emerging markets, and this even comes to timely market stuff. Sometimes it's like clients need to know that you're on top of certain things, right? So anyway, that's the tension there.
How To Create A Sustainable, Consistent Touchpoint Plan [19:36]
Michael: So I hear you on I guess just the tension, the balance. My head goes to a similar place. Clients need to know that you're watching it, you're on top of it, right? To me, just that's why there is some level of proactive communication and engagement that helps.
As you said, even if they don't respond, it's actually really nice to have gotten the message and know that you're thinking about the things. There's a part where they need room to ask questions, right? To me, I think that's part of what the Dr. Terry gap ended up with. He didn't have a space to say, "By the way, Carl, I just saw an advisor that does this stuff. Do you do international things? I heard that's a thing." So you can say, "Yes. Yes, we do."
Carl: Yes. Turns out.
Michael: Turns out we hold those, too. And then I do still feel like the responsiveness when they have a need becomes a driver.
Carl: And by the way, actually, this just occurred to me, Michael. I think because the world feels... We've already touched on less human with every interaction, but a secondary thing that's really important is the world feels less uncertain today than it's ever felt. I actually think that's because it is less uncertain than it has been in the past. But that aside, it certainly feels that way.
One thing that's becoming increasingly important is for us to create containers or experiences that are reliable, that are consistent, because then people can feel a sense of relief and a sense of safety. That sense of relief and safety allow them to ask the types of questions they may not ask if they felt like they were under threat because of the uncertainty.
Well, one way that shows up is you showing up consistently. And it's a form of what Kevin said, but there's another form of that, which is every week we send an email on Tuesdays. They know it's going to... They'll get the drift after a couple of Tuesdays, like, "Oh, every Tuesday, every month I get an email report, every quarter I get a more depth one, every year we meet." And those containers become really important senses of anchoring. But if you're going to do it, do it really consistently.
Michael: Well, it's interesting you frame it that way. This reminds me back to the productivity study we did on our platform a year or two ago, and we were looking at firms that had different versions of how many touch points do you have out to clients, and what are they? And what we found was the lowest productivity firms were the ones that had a high volume of highly personalized touch points. They were actually the lowest... We do lots of really unique things for every client, low productivity. Not just like, well, yeah, because they're doing a lot of things for their clients, low revenue productivity, which essentially means they're doing things that their clients are not paying up for at the end of the day. They're doing things that are just dragging down their capacity without increasing the revenue of the clients that they're serving.
Carl: Smart.
Michael: Whereas...
Carl: Sorry, thinking about that is smart.
Michael: Yes. Not a good outcome. Whereas the folks that were higher productivity also had a lot of touch points, but theirs were all very standardized. The newsletter that goes out, the twice-a-year webinars, the once-a-year client educational event. In fact, a lot of them only actually had one meeting a year, but they might have had one in-person meeting, three quarterly phone calls, one educational event for clients, one appreciation event for clients, one or two webinars, a monthly newsletter.
So the total list of things, they might have had 20-plus touch points with the clients, but only one was a meeting. And they were...I guess, to Kevin's framing, they were consistent about them. You knew what you were going to get and when you were going to get it, including the check.
Carl: I really found it... One of the things that... There was some data to back this up back in the day, all this number of touch points data that was done, I really found it useful. And I think I would still do this if I were to start a firm again. And it was 12-4-1. So it was a monthly touch point. And I just turned that into a monthly email. Actually, no, I turned that into the monthly wealth management audit. Every month we pulled it out, we checked things like, no, we don't need to get into it, but beneficiary designations, dividends reinvesting, everything you did, you did it, and we sent out an email.
The email was template, and then it was customized. The template started, and just, "Hey, we checked everything." That happened every month, 12 times a year, every month. Four times a year, that was more in-depth. So four times a year, that was probably a phone call where we just said, "Hey, anything going on? We did your quarterly review." So it was quarterly, that was more in-depth. One, 12-4-1, one of those quarterly things was in person. One of those in-depth things was in person. So 12 quote "reviews," 4 in-depth, 1 in person. I just found that to be useful. If you did nothing else, that would be my, like, "But you still smoke." If you did nothing else and replied rapidly, you would be massively on a competitive level. So anyway, that's a thought.
Is A Lack Of "Visible" Engagement The Point? [26:08]
Michael: Part of what strikes me around this, I think the comment you'd made earlier, forget how you framed, but you're sending out the reviews and the messages, and clients are happy that you're doing it because they know it means you're watching it, and on top of it, even including if they don't actually read the whole thing. It's not there because they want to read it. It's there because they want to know you wrote it.
Carl: That's right.
Michael: And you frame this at points as some version of the theater of financial planning. It's like the things we have to do because it's part of the show experience. I find myself coming to it now from a different direction because that starts to connect back to me to things like all the firms that roll out a client portal so their clients can log in and check all their stuff anytime they want. And they get really frustrated that maybe 10% to 15% of their clients log into the portal in any particular month. That this becomes a slippery slope, the other direction, so you'll have to bring me back in... but what if the point of the portal is that it's there, not that they use it? What if the point of the newsletter is that you sent it and showed that you're thinking actively about markets, not because they actually wanted to read it?
Are we getting stuck in some engagement trap where if we don't get the open rate or the click rate or the portal login rate or the scheduling rate, because we keep reaching out to clients that won't schedule the meeting or won't do the phone call...? Are we failing if we keep doing the things and the engagement rate is low, or is the whole point that the fact that we're consistently showing we're doing the things is making clients comfortable enough that they don't actually need to read the newsletter, or log into the portal, or schedule the call?
I just need to know that you're there because if I do have questions, I want to be able to engage. And if I do have something I need, I want you to respond quickly. But I didn't actually need you the rest of the time. At the end of the day, my financial planning life is not actually changing every month, such that I need to engage with you about it every month.
Carl: Yeah, it's interesting. What came to mind there is yes, and then I was like... I remember another doctor client of mine, Dr. Dave. I invited him to an event where we were going to have a CPA. It was October or November, and it was for things you could do around tax. And he called me, and he said, "Hey, I have an idea. I'm really busy. Could you go to the event?" And I was like, "I'm already going." He's like, "And then will you just send me an email if any of it applies to me?" I was like, "Well, that's really smart." So I was like, "What if instead of the...?"
Right now...and again, I don't know, but there's something interesting about your monthly newsletter email that goes to everyone. Something interesting about that. There's also something interesting about it just being... I'm a big fan of those emails looking like emails rather than super-formatted. What if that email was written, but then every single one of them there was just a little customization? What if people got a note, like the wealth management audit? What if people got a note every month that just said, "Hey, this is what we've been thinking about. I've looked at your thing. It doesn't really apply that much to you." Or, "Hey, we've already taken this to account."
I just wonder if it's going to get more important. Because have you noticed, Michael, even now my text messages have been invaded by spam. And I just wonder if it's going to get more important to be... Because now I have somebody who reads my emails, clears my email box before I see it. And we've been spending a lot of time trying to get the sniff test on what's a trick and what's not. And people are getting more treat, and I was like, "Look, if a PR place actually took the time to know..." Like for Behavior Gap Radio, if you pitch me a guest for Behavior Gap Radio, delete without a second thought because I've never had a guest.
Michael: You don't have guests. Yes.
Carl: But it...
Michael: The number of pitches we get to the Kitces inbox is like, "We have the most perfect guest to appear on your Kitces & Carl podcast." Like, "So you've never listened to it."
Carl: Yeah. But if somebody did say, "I know you don't have guests, but I'm going to make this pitch anyway, because I think you should make an exception," we would reply to that.
Michael: Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Carl: And probably say no. But we would say, "Hey, man, thanks so much for taking the time. That was so considerate of you." I just wonder if there's something there too, in terms of what if it was every month I got an email from my advisor, and I knew that they had thought about my situation specifically? It felt relevant to me. It felt personalized and relevant. That's interesting to me.
Michael: To me, hearing this, it comes down to a fairly thin set of things we're solving for at the end of the day. I feel like I'm basically trying to communicate three things, like, "I'm watching your stuff. Do you have anything you want to talk about?"
Carl: That's right.
Michael: "And here's how to contact me when you do need something."
Carl: Yeah, I love it. It's funny. As soon as you said three things, I had this. I just think so deeply of the work real advisors do that I was like, "It's actually one thing, right? It's love." And I don't mean to get too feely about it. But yeah, and the best way to demonstrate that is what you just outlined, right? Like, "We've been thinking about you. Here's what's relevant. Do you have anything we need to know about? And here's how you can get in touch with us with anything you need ever."
Michael: So I guess for all folks listening, take all the miscellaneous things you do and run them through that lens. What do you come up with that still fits? What do you come up with that maybe you could get rid of? And are there any ways to do or demonstrate that, that you're not, that maybe you want to add in?
Carl: Yeah. Yeah. And if you find yourself like me, debating which blood pressure medication to take, and you're still smoking, let's fix those holes first.
Michael: So meaning don't get too focused on what's the ideal touchpoint if your firm is so busy that it still takes you three to five days to respond to a client?
Carl: Yeah, or just maybe I don't need to write a book if I haven't sent a consistent email for a while or whatever. These are easy for me because I make this mistake all the time. So anyway, I think that's really helpful. Thanks, Michael.
Michael: Awesome. Thank you, Carl.
Carl: Hey, cheers.
Michael: Cheers.
