Outsourcing And Managing Client Headcount To Stay Lean As A Two-Founder, $150M Firm: #FASuccess Ep 511 With Ashlee deSteiger

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Resources Featured In This Episode:

• Ashlee deSteiger: LinkedIn
• Gunder Wealth Management
• Gunder Wealth Management Instagram
• Total Office
• Delegated Planning
• The One-Page Financial Plan: Focusing Advice On What Matters Most
• Canva

Full Transcript:

Michael: Welcome, Ashlee DeSteiger, to the "Financial Advisor Success Podcast".

Ashlee: Thanks, Michael. I'm pumped to be here.

Michael: I'm really excited to have you on today and get to talk about, I guess, virtues and opportunities of outsourcing administrative and paraplanner support as we grow our firms and try to keep them really lean and efficient. Because we've found over the years in our research studies that one of the biggest blocking points for firms growing and scaling is that you can just only get so much efficiency from tech alone. It only helps so much to get faster with tech before you just need staff support and someone to delegate to, so you just don't have to do the thing at all, fast with tech or otherwise. And that transition is hard for a lot of us, because most of us didn't get into the profession to be managers of staff members. We've gotten into this to serve clients, and give them advice, and help them achieve their goals, and it's a service profession. And so, I feel like over the years, this creates a binary outcome for a lot of firms. Either you expand the team and deal with the managing stuff to try to get more leveraged and productive, or you don't, and you end out with a ceiling on what you can earn and generate in the business before you could run out of time.

Ashlee: Agreed. Yes.

Michael: But the reality is, there is a third option, which is to outsource. And our industry has corporate RIA platforms and TAMPs [Turnkey Asset Management Platforms] for a long time now. We publish a services map that just has this growing number of fractional virtual admin, fractional paraplanner services, whose time you just purchase by the hour for whatever you need at your current stage of the business. And I know, Ashlee, you have gone down this third road, so keeping the firm lean, no in-house staff or support, leveraging outsourcing, scaling the business to more than a million dollars of revenue. And so, I'm excited today to get to talk about the path, how you've navigated these growth phases and balancing standing capacity but not necessarily wanting or needing to hire staff in-house that you then have to manage yourself, and, I guess, the lessons along the way as you've gone through this journey.

Ashlee: It's such a great question. In my prior experience, I really enjoyed managing a team. I loved it. I didn't feel as though bringing someone on to a husband-and-wife team, where we offered little to no trajectory, was a very compelling proposition for anyone, though. So, at that point, I felt like we really needed to think about outsourcing, to your point.

Michael: That's an interesting framing out of the gate. So, you're a firm, it's you and your husband, you are the advisors, founders, owners. I guess, just inferring from what you said, the goal is not necessarily to have a huge firm with lots and lots of people. It's you two doing your awesome thing for clients, which means any staff role doesn't necessarily have a lot of upside because you two aren't going anywhere anytime soon. So, your concern was, I just don't even want to hire into a firm that doesn't necessarily have the career growth trajectory.

Ashlee: Yes. Agreed. That would be hard to find that kind of a unicorn to really fit that role. I'm sure they exist. He or she exists. But I thought that outsourcing this would initially be our best option. And I think, as you go to uncover all the different options that are available to our space, they're all very different, whether they want to bill you for some of the training involved, or whether they're located onshore or offshore, or whether you're working with a dedicated person or a team of individuals where any one of those individuals might ultimately intercept your request that's in their queue. They all operate a little bit differently. So, it was eye-opening to us to see all those different types of working with a VA [Virtual Assistant] and ultimately landing on who we did.
<h2data-nav-title="Gunder Wealth Today [06:58]">What Gunder Wealth Management Looks Like Today [06:58]

Michael: So, I think to understand this journey, as a starting point, just share with us the advisory firm as it exists today. If you can paint the picture of, I guess, clients and assets and revenue and the structure of the firm, just so we have context of the business to then understand how has outsourcing support come into the picture?

Ashlee: Sure. That makes sense. So, as you mentioned, our firm, Gunder Wealth Management, is myself and my husband, Joe. We are both CFP professionals and CPAs, and I also have my CFA, charter holder, and when...

Michael: I love this, five designations, two people.

Ashlee: Well, it's hard to compete with all of the letters you have after your name. But, it seems as though, collectively, we're all just gluttons for punishment.

Michael: So now take me back. So, the firm is you and Joe as both advisors doing client things with all the cool education. So, what does the business look like in terms of clients, assets, revenue? Help us vision overall.

Ashlee: Sure, yeah, let me address that initial question. So, right now, we have just over 100 households. The average age of our demographic is in their mid-40s.

Michael: Okay. So, it's a younger clientele by industry standards.

Ashlee: It is. Yes. And we have about $150 million in assets under management at Schwab, and around $15 million in 401(k) plans. So, that's where we stand today.

Michael: And can I ask where revenue is for the business? Where is it gross overall?

Ashlee: Annualized this year, we're looking to be about $1.1 million.

Michael: Okay. Very cool. So, phenomenally healthy, great state of practice for you and Joe running, and, I guess, as noted earlier, no dedicated staff in-house because the unicorn is hard to find that wants the role with limited upside. So, it's you and Joe and outsourcers, there's no one else in between.

Ashlee: Correct.

Making The Decision To Add (Outsourced) Back-Office Support [09:22]

Michael: Okay. Okay. So, now help me understand how staff support works or how outsourcing support works. So, what have you done to fill in all the gaps of the things that need to be done when you've got 100 clients at, we can napkin-math, about $10,000 of revenue per client on average. So, they tend to have some stuff going on and reasonable expectations of good responsive service.

Ashlee: Yes, most definitely. It was interesting. I listened to your podcast recently where Adam was interviewing you, and I loved your analogy of the car. If you want to drive the car fast or get in big accidents, or drive it slow and maybe just get in a fender bender. I'm more of the mindset where I want to drive the car fast and clean up a big accident. And Joe's more the flip side of that, where he wants to be a little bit more cautious, and I'm not sure if you can infer, maybe a little bit slower to make a decision. So, I was very hot to trot on, we need support sooner, and it was harder for Joe to come around to that. And so, that was a tough conversation for us.

Michael: When was that conversation kicking in in practice? By revenue or by client count, when did it start to feel busy, where you're saying, "We need support. We need to get someone in here."?

Ashlee: Well, the ultimate hire date was almost exactly at Gunder's three-year mark. But as you can imagine, the conversation started before then. I was probably ready just shy of the two-year mark. And to be honest, I don't know that revenue-wise it would've made as much sense when I wanted to bring that team on, but my mental capacity really needed it.

Michael: So, do you recall, I guess, where client count or revenue, was at that point, that you're feeling mentally stressed already with the volume?

Ashlee: That's a good question. I would say it was probably closer to somewhere around the $60 million to $75 million mark. Because with the demographic we're working with, as you can imagine, they don't necessarily, generally speaking, have high net worth, but they have high income. And so, the account size, the household AUM, it doesn't start at a certain level necessarily that you would see at a lot of firms. So, I think you alluded to this a little bit with that demographic. You're still busy though. There's still quite a bit going on.

Michael: And I guess by your average, today, I think you said 100 households, $165 million, so $1.6 million-ish on average, if it was something similar then. So, you're 50-plus clients at this point, where there's...does it sound right?

Ashlee: Yes.

Michael: A volume of work, because they call. They need things.

Ashlee: Candidly, the ratio was probably even more extreme, where we had more households with less assets because...

Michael: Because you were still growing. We were a little more flexible in the early years to get revenue going.

Ashlee: A hundred percent. And working with mid-40s individuals, a lot of times, their careers are accelerating to a point where sometimes they don't even realize it. They may come across a liquidity event that they never thought was going to come to fruition, and candidly, we were never planning for, to be conservative. So, a lot of those households have grown organically in a way that I think was a surprise. We definitely had a lot of households, a high number of accounts, and probably a low asset ratio when we said we needed to bring the VA on. And I wanted to bring the VA…we were with TD Ameritrade, long before the transition to Schwab.

Michael: Okay. But specifically, because the Schwab deal had been announced, and you wanted the person to help with the transition long enough in advance to know the business and be able to help with the transition.

Ashlee: Yes. I came from a background where I thrived on data and being able to run reports on making sure beneficiaries were all coming over correctly and all of that type of thing. I wanted to make sure that we had someone that was really buttoning up all those details, and as much as I wanted to rely on that transition to be perfect, I just wanted to be prepared.

Michael: So then, it sounds like there were two forcing mechanisms here, climbing through 50, 60, 70 clients, and there's just a sheer volume of work that has to be done for that segment of clients. And I find that very commonly that somewhere in the 40 to 70 client range for most firms, the admin level work just starts to get really, really busy, and you want help or need help. And then somewhere in 80 to 100, the paraplanner work becomes busy, and you want to delegate that as well.

Ashlee: Yes.

Michael: So, you're feeling those pain points by client count, and the looming…we're on TD, they're being acquired by Schwab, there's going to be a transition, it'll be nice to have someone to help. And then the debate with Joe was, but do we have enough revenue to afford this?

Ashlee: Right. And to his point, it probably wasn't the best time.

Michael: Why is that?

Ashlee: I started Gunder in 2019, and Joe ended up coming over around two years later, and with him coming to join me, he brought over around $25 million from his prior firm. And I was still very much pounding on doors, trying to meet people very heavily, having a high volume of prospect meetings, really trying to build my own book as well at that time. So, I think the combination of all of those things, just having the extra support, I wanted to bring that on just to lighten our load, just to make sure we could focus on growing the business. And if we really were committed to that, then I knew the numbers would end up working out.

Michael: Okay. I guess I'm trying to put state of mind. So, Joe's just come over, probably slightly freaked out about whatever he's walked away from at his prior firm. "Hey, at least there's a stable base of revenue, let's just hold onto this and get oriented." But you're in growth mode and prospecting mode, and so, "I've got all these clients to service, and I'm still out there prospecting, and all this stuff's going on, and my brain is overloaded, and I need another human being to help."

Ashlee: Yeah, you just recreated that scenario. Yes.

Michael: Was the compromise when you hired, or was the compromise the fact that you decided to do a fractional VA service instead of hiring a full-time team member?

Ashlee: We were always in agreement to do the VA route. I think, to answer your question, it was the when. And so, we started out, as you can probably imagine, with a lower number of hours. We committed per month what we anticipated using. And that's grown over time, and we're very much so at a steady state now.

Crunching The Numbers On Outsourcing Versus Hiring [18:03]

Michael: Do you recall where that was, at least the time? Where did you start? Is this a 10 hours a month, 20 hours a month thing to get going?

Ashlee: Yeah, exactly. I believe, if I look back at our initial agreement, it was likely 20 hours a month.

Michael: Which is basically five hours a week to do some stuff.

Ashlee: Yes. And then anything over that, the per-hour increment would be slightly higher, which we knew. But we were locked into those minimum hours, and that has grown over time to we're now at 60 hours a month, and we've been at that fairly consistently.

Michael: And can I ask, what was the cost? What is the hourly rate?

Ashlee: Sure. We're paying our service provider around $75,000 a year currently. So, it's about $105 an hour.

Michael: So, then I've got to ask. At the point you're at $75,000 a year, you really start getting into the neighborhood of a little bit of variability by geographic cost of living. But for a lot of areas, I can hire a full-time person for $75,000. I might be able to hire a full-time admin for less than $75,000, and I get all their time, not only 15, 20 hours a week. So, just talk to us. You're here, and you seem very happy you're here and very confident you're here. That's awesome, but I know all my naysayers who are listening who are like, "Ashlee, $105 an hour for admin?"

Ashlee: I've probably heard it. Yeah.

Michael: So, just talk us through the logic. How do you process this? How do you arrive at this as the business decision?

Ashlee: Well, first off, we don't have to provide any benefits.

Michael: Okay. Which is fair. So, if I put payroll taxes and employee benefits and all the other stuff on top, even a slightly lower salary might actually be pretty close with all the benefits.

Ashlee: You could be true. Second of all, the team that we're working with is fully licensed, so in the odd chance where we're unable to execute a trade, they're allowed to with our discretion. So, they're fully licensed from that standpoint. The second thing is that they've had turnover on their side, but we've never had a break in service. We didn't have to retrain that individual or bring them up to speed on any of our processes, because all of the workflows on their end are built, and they remain in place. So, they can hand the baton off at any time, and it looks virtually seamless to us.

Michael: Right. And so, that's a function of not just outsourcing in general, but a provider who's large enough to have their own staff redundancies, and that's managed well enough that they have good workflows and processes in place that they can hand off. Because I'm sure that's not necessarily universally true, but there are providers that do this well.

Ashlee: Correct. And they have all of their own cybersecurity and other privacy policy protocols, where we don't have to provide any equipment. They have their own requirements on password protection and other things like that as well. So, that was equally important to us, just to make sure that we knew that someone working remotely had the same protocols in place that we would expect.

Michael: Because I was going to ask, how do you handle the compliance dynamics of outside people with access to your client data? So, the answer is they run the same cybersecurity protocols you would expect are run in your firm, so they're mirroring your policies?

Ashlee: Yes. And we'll get their updated policy each year. Occasionally, a client will have a couple additional questions along the same vein, and we'll inquire, and they'll come up with a thoughtful response, and we'll hop on the phone and get through that. But yeah, they have all of the policies and procedures in place without us having to really train that individual or set anything up.

Michael: And in that spirit, if you've had a client question, do clients know that you outsource this? Do they ask? Do they care? Do they notice?

Ashlee: So, the service we use, I would say 90% of what we utilize them for is Schwab paperwork. It breathes and lives in Schwab Alliance Center. So, oftentimes the client, to answer your question, they don't know that individual. They're very much so behind the scenes.

Michael: It's less, "Please talk to my client," and more, "Please don't make me call Schwab."

Ashlee: Right. Exactly. So, they are sometimes client-facing, and we do make sure clients know this is who you're going to be getting an email from, or if we do have an out-of-office up, we say, "Our response time may be delayed. If you need immediate assistance, please contact this individual at this email address or this number." So, that rarely happens, but they do know that that team of individuals is there.

Michael: And so, in the context of, "If we're out of office, our response time may be delayed. If you need immediate assistance, please contact," and out to the firm. And I know for many of us in solo stage, there's just the infamous, I can't take a vacation ever because I have to be around to answer the phone or the email if the client needs a trade, the client needs money, so I take it they are actually covering for you at this level because they are licensed, they can do that trade and free up cash if necessary, so you and Joe can go on a vacation.

Ashlee: Yes. Because that happens, right? Because the firm's the two of us. And we're known to, the last few vacations, to have clients make all cash offers on a house while we're gone. So, we need someone there.

Michael: Oh, bless those clients.

Ashlee: We can not have that break in service.

Michael: You could not have warned us a few weeks earlier before you need the money to settle?

Ashlee: Right. So, we need to make sure that that can be seamless for them. So, either we don't put up an out-of-office, and we get that email and we still relay it over to the VA team, or sometimes we will put up the out-of-office, and then that client will call the VA service. But regardless, we want to make sure, to your point, that we can go on vacation, and there is no break in service.

Michael: Right. And so, as you go down this path, what's the value prop relative to the dollars? It's this combo of, well, maybe it's not quite as expensive because I don't have the employee benefits I've otherwise got to pay internally. I don't have to deal with turnover. It's not my problem, it's their problem. They're up to speed on the licensing and the cyber protocols that I need, which just costs money to get someone at the level that can do that. And I don't have to call Schwab, and I can take vacations.

Ashlee: And let's be honest, without a trajectory for growth or a clear path to become an advisor, I don't know that this is that easy of a position to fill.

Michael: Ashlee, I think you have a really good point there. I do see a number of advisory firms out there that express frustration at how hard it is to hire, how hard it is to find good people. And if I ask, and we start having a conversation, it basically comes down to, I'm really happy in my practice, but there's just too much admin and stuff to do, and I really need someone to delegate to so that I can have a little more free time, get my time back, and get control of my schedule, and all the things that otherwise happen when we get buried in our practices. And there's just this underlying context to it that they don't necessarily acknowledge, which is, so you need someone who's just going to be there in your admin support role forever and never grow and move up. Because you're not trying to grow, you're trying to hire someone to get time back to take more vacations and spend more time with your kids and do lots of cool stuff. Totally appropriate you get to do that as the founder, but you've got to be clear that is a no-progression job for whoever you're hiring. So, either you find the magic person that is really just totally cool with the role exactly as it is, and they are out there, but they're harder to find, and a lot of really good people just want growth and upside, and that's not necessarily what you're offering in that position. So, at the least, be clear and own that, and then try to find the person anyways, or look for other solutions that don't require offering them a growth path, which, to me, is where you ended up.

Ashlee: Correct.

Michael: So, it's part of the benefit of, the role is, I have permission to not offer a growth path.

Ashlee: Yes.

Michael: And so, then can I ask, who did you use? Who do you use? I don't know if it's changed over the years.

Ashlee: Sure. It's been the same throughout the four years we've been utilizing a VA, and we use Total Office out of Akron, Ohio.

Michael: And so, are they specific to advisors, or are they one of the generalist VA provider to lots of industries?

Ashlee: They are specific to RIAs. And when we first onboarded with them, they were fairly exclusive to TD and Schwab. I believe they've since added Altruist, and may have a couple other RIAs that are dual custodian with a couple other firms. But I believe that they do the vast majority of their work on Schwab.

Michael: Well, by head count and firm counts, Schwab is literally the overwhelming majority of firms, and if you add Altruist, you get a lot of the new fast-growing ones, so they could go get Fidelity if they want, then they've got almost everyone. But probably enough market in Schwab and Altruist alone. I get it.

Ashlee: Yes.

Ashlee's Process For Selecting A Back-Office Outsourcing Provider [30:10]

Michael: So, how did you pick them? Because you mentioned earlier all these different factors you consider of, are they onshore, and are they offshore, and are they dedicated people or not? So, I'd love to hear more about the vetting, search, hiring process. How did you pick them? Who else did you look at? What were the criteria that mattered as you were trying to pick what was right for you?

Ashlee: Well, just like everything else, as we select our tech stacks collectively as financial advisors, you can have analysis by paralysis. You could just keep going, keep interviewing, keep asking other individuals, keep submitting questions on forums for feedback. And, like I said, I like to drive the car fast and clean it up later. So, it was one of those things where I got the best feeling based on what we had discussed. They were on the higher end of the price range, but I felt the most comfortable, and I was like, "Let's just dive in. We're not going to know until we do it." So, I think the service being onshore was important to us. I think the specialization at TD initially and then Schwab was also important to us. I think I would love to have a VA to say, "Hey, can you upload all of my CE from CFP to NAPFA?" But that's something they'll say no to. They stay in their lane.

Michael: Oh, interesting. So, it is not a generalized, whatever VA things you want to hand us, their focus and their lane, which is, as I would frame it, all the investment operations things?

Ashlee: Sure. Yeah.

Michael: Custodian and accounts and all the things that touch custodians and accounts. All that paperwork.

Ashlee: Sure. Yeah. So, we'll give them a couple other projects, and they'll say yes or no. So, they're really upfront, I think, about what's an appropriate ask and what isn't, and I like that about them.

Michael: Yeah, I can very much respect that. "Hey, that sounds like a great thing, but that's not really in our lane of specialization, so we're going to respectfully not take that on and make sure we keep doing well at what we do well." Full respect for that.

Ashlee: Sure. I like that, and the individuals that have been running it have been doing it for a long time. And so, it's just like doing due diligence on an investment. They had a lot of the criteria we were looking for, and I said, "Let's get the ball rolling."

Michael: And so, were there any other factors in the evaluation that drove you to them versus others? I heard being onshore was important, having real specialization in your then-current custodian of TD was really important. Were there other factors that drove?

Ashlee: Candidly, I think those were some of our top requests. I also was interested, I guess, to your point, to understand better how much training was necessary and what kind of workflows they build on their end to ultimately... Do they want us to build a workflow in our CRM for them to follow? How does all of that work? And they were very much of the mindset that either they can use one of our workflows, or they're happy to build it. I like that proactiveness of, "Well, if you know how to do it and you're doing this for other clients, then, by all means, this is part of the outsourcing I want you to do."

Michael: Yeah. "If I was really good at building my own workflows, I probably would've done that already and not be talking to you. Please figure this out for me."

Ashlee: Right. And I might have this perfect workflow built, but I'm too underwater to even follow it. So, yes, please, go ahead and do all of that. I was very much so... I think, too, on how to just communicate was another important thing that I probably take for granted. We submit all of our tasks through Wealthbox, so we have a Wealthbox license for them. And we have weekly calls, and even though the calls are sometimes only five minutes a week, I think it's great just to see the team in person over Zoom at least, and then talk about some of the outstanding tasks or talk about what's in the pipeline. I just think it creates more of a relationship and a little bit of rapport, and I like that about them. It makes me feel like they're truly an extension of our team.

Michael: As opposed to the providers that say, "Send us the tickets, we'll process the tickets and do the thing. But we've got a lot of these. We can't hop onto a lot of phone calls unless it's really necessary."

Ashlee: Right. And that counts towards our hours. I'm not naive to that, but I think it goes a long way.

Michael: And so, mechanically, they have a license to your Wealthbox so they can log in and access client info they need to do things for which they've got the cyber protocols about how they manage their access. They've got access to your Schwab Alliance because you give them permission through Schwab to be able to log in and do things. What else shows up from the compliance access end of how it works?

Ashlee: We live in a Microsoft Office environment, so we have an email address for them, and they access it through Outlook.

Michael: Okay. And so, from their end, they have to manage effectively the fact that they have multiple logins to multiple advisors with multiple different client segments, and have to keep their own protocols to keep all that separate.

Ashlee: Yes.

Michael: Okay. Which is why they send you their annual security packet, now connecting the dots to what you said earlier.

Ashlee: Yes.

Adding An Outsourced Paraplanning Service Alongside A Virtual Assistant  [37:03]

Michael: So, how has this evolved as you've used them over the years? I'm curious how this showed up or how it's changed as you get used to using them and all the ways that you can and cannot leverage them.

Ashlee: Yes. When Joe and I will sit down to have one of our Level 10 meetings, we're always looking into the future, and we're like, "We don't have that much for them this month, and what are some projects we can give them, or what can we front load?" And we're always finding that we're underestimating the amount of client activity that occurs during any given month, and we're never short on hours. If anything, we're over. We're never short. But we're almost always right at the 60-hour mark, even on the months where we look at each other and we're like, "What is the next month going to look like? How are we going to fully utilize them?" With the volume of client activity, and just the busy nature of the lives that everybody's currently in, like I gave that example of an all-cash offer on a house that wasn't anticipated, or right now we're repapering direct indexing providers, there's just never a shortage of ways to utilize them. I'm always finding that...one of our rocks might be to decrease their hours by 5% next year, but that's going to end up falling off, because we're utilizing them to that full capacity, and I find that we appreciate having them for the unexpected.

Michael: So, what expanded their time from 20 to 60 hours? Is that sheerly just client growth, there's more clients to service, so there's more hours that's needed? Or was there some progression? Do you give them more things now than you did then, so you had to expand their hours as you got deeper?

Ashlee: I think both, to answer your question. Since they live in Schwab Alliance, we're able to give them a couple more tasks that we collectively would need for compliance, whether that's running a monthly trade blotter or downloading all the invoices on a quarterly basis. We bill quarterly. We have been giving them a couple other of the admin-type roles that they can easily do from the logins that they already have.

Michael: Essentially fulfilling some of the compliance support tasks, the things you need to capture or output or record and have in the file to demonstrate your compliance.

Ashlee: Yes. Some of the more routine things that I didn't realize we were doing that really wouldn't be too much extra for them since it's all within the same universe that they're living in for us.

Michael: So, then, how has this evolved with other outsourcing solutions?

Ashlee: We do have an outsourced paraplanning service as well. I will say, we don't utilize them nearly as much as we utilize the VA. Right now we use Delegated Planning for around six to 12 hours a month. So, it's not a real meaningful amount, but we 100% see value in being able to send things to someone else, take a look at them, or even get a second set, or I guess in our case, what would be a third set of eyes on a certain scenario for a client. We still find a lot of value in that.

Michael: So, help us understand what Delegated Planning actually does for you. What stuff do they do? Which clients are they involved with?

Ashlee: Sure. So, they just have access to RightCapital and Holistiplan. So, it's just more delegation. It's just more things to get off of our plate and into someone else's queue so that we can take more of a review approach. Whether that means modeling some equity compensation that just came through for a client, or whether that's getting a couple additional items uploaded into Holistiplan for a tax scenario for year-end. We'll give them four or five things that we want changed this year compared to prior year's return, and they'll get that set up for us. Another situation would be, we'll take retirees on really a referral basis only. And so, a lot of times they don't want to get into the tech or into RightCapital as much, linking accounts or anything. So, we'll get a traditional data dump, and we'll put all of that into a shared folder for Delegated Planning, and they'll get all of that up to speed, although I know that RightCapital is also building out their own functionality to be able at some point to look at those docs as well from an AI perspective. But given that we're not totally there yet, I appreciate having Delegated Planning get in there and go through the details and highlight questions that maybe I wouldn't have seen.

Michael: So, how much of this is supporting planning for existing clients versus supporting planning for new clients?

Ashlee: Oh, that's a good question. I think it's probably a 50/50 split right now.

Michael: Between renewal clients and new clients where you have new planning to do?

Ashlee: Yes.

Pausing New Client Growth To Dig Deep Into KPIs [43:17]

Ashlee: I would say we're not bringing on as many new clients as we were. We brought on a coach in late 2024 and early 2025, and we made a commitment to the coach that we wouldn't bring on any new clients for nine months, just because of the growth we had and just taking a minute to step back and making sure we were staying really true to who we currently had.

Michael: Wow. All right. Tell me more about that. Why did you have to make a commitment for no new clients for nine months, and how did that feel when you'd been in growthy phase?

Ashlee: Well, one of the things our coach wanted us to do was come up with metrics and KPIs [Key Performance Indicators] and a more comprehensive tracking our revenue and EBOC [Earnings Before Owner's Compensation], and she wanted us to have better details, just more granular metrics than we were tracking ourselves. I felt as though... I knew she was right. I didn't want to do it, though. And I needed her to ultimately tell us, "You have to do this." Because I think, when you're starting a firm from scratch, you're so caught up in all the other things that I didn't really want to look at the metrics.

Michael: Because you were afraid it was going to tell you things you didn't want to hear?

Ashlee: I guess because I thought that I would continue operating at the same clip regardless of what it told me. I didn't think I was going to change my day-to-day or our pursuit of...well, it's more conservative growth now. I didn't think that was going to change. We grew quickly over... I guess, the market certainly helped, but, when you look at number of new households and AUM growth, the numbers were higher than I thought. And I think the coach highlighted to us, "Why don't we pause for a little bit and make sure that you're delivering the excellent service that you think you are, and are there other ways to get the feedback? Do clients like the tax letter you're preparing? Do the clients like the one-page plan you're preparing? You're doing all this work, but is the value perceived the same?"

Creating A Client Advisory Board To Determine Where The Firm Is Adding The Most Value [46:04]

Michael: So, how did you figure that out?

Ashlee: Well, we created an advisory board, although not in the very traditional sense. We've had just a handful of meetings so far. We've started doing them twice a year, but we're not asking the same clients to commit to every meeting. We've rotated the invitations a little bit, and I'm really interested and motivated to get that feedback, and it has been eye-opening. It's been helpful.

Michael: So, what have you heard surprising or otherwise?

Ashlee: I think a lot of our clients, at the end of the day, they're maybe not looking at everything we're delivering. They just want to know that there's someone there, if they can pick up the phone and we're going to answer it, and we're going to be there to help them through it. They're so fixated on life events and careers, and being in that messy middle of figuring out, maybe parents might be coming into the picture, or the career is taking a different direction, or just raising their families and building wealth. I think they're in this, what we say is this messy middle, and they may not have the time to necessarily devote to all of the outputs that we're delivering. They just want to know, when we touch base twice a year, we send meeting invites out in May and November. They just want to know that we're there, and they have the option to schedule with us, and if not, they can defer to the next meeting cycle, and that we're keeping everything organized for them.

Michael: So, have you actually changed any of the deliverables you produce or things that you create based on the feedback and the comments?

Ashlee: A lot of the feedback has been, just to keep things shorter, just more brief. Just highlight to me how this impacts me and tell me...we have. We changed, on our one-page plan, we used the template from someone that you had on a blog post, quite a few years ago. I think it was Jeremy Walter.

Michael: Yeah. Jeremy's one-page plan template of what...

Ashlee: Yes. So, we did, we changed one of the quadrants on there to be... I think, before we had like a pie chart that said something around, "Here's your percentage of live, grow, owe…where your dollars are going," and we changed that to be top three levers to highlight to you that would have the biggest impact on your future financial flexibility. So, it's still ongoing. I think it's a good practice for us to go through to get more feedback from clients, at least from those that are willing to participate in those meetings. I think slowing the growth or not accepting as many new clients has been a good thing for us.

Deciding To Let 5% Of Clients Go Each Year [49:42]

Ashlee: I think as part of that coaching process too, it solidified that each year we continue to look at, we created a revenue metric and I guess you would say an engagement metric, and we score all of our clients based on those two metrics, and the output will result in some sort of a four quadrants, if you will. Kind of like a SWOT [Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities, and Threats] analysis might look like.

Clients that fall into that lower left-hand quadrant where revenue's low and engagement's low, we take a look at those households and we try to figure out is our value no longer exceeding the cost. We will let around 5% of households go, and we've been doing that consistently now for the last three to four years.

Michael: So, how does that conversation work? What do you do when you have to break the news to someone, well, they didn't make the cut? Although I'm assuming you don't explain it to them that way.

Ashlee: Well, right. I think it's important for us just to be really honest, "This is what you're paying us, and our fee seems to be detracting from your ability to accumulate assets. And given where you are in your stage of life, that's a primary goal of ours to make sure that you can continue doing that." We don't necessarily find them a new home because, let's be honest, even if you're just starting out as a new advisor, you don't want a client that can't commit to some of the core things that would help improve their financial trajectory. So, we just say, "Let's put it on a pause."

Michael: Because you're tending to do the...so, low-engaged clients in your world are essentially people who aren't acting on the advice and implementing the recommendations?

Ashlee: Correct.

Michael: Which means they won't necessarily help them send to another advisor whose advice they won't take either...

Ashlee: Correct.

Michael: ...if they're not implementing.

Ashlee: So, we say, are we planning to the right set of goals first off? Because if execution and action is difficult, maybe the motivation is coming from the wrong place. If we are on the same page about where we're trying to go, then I think it's time to take a pause, and then often we'll sunset our AUM engagement and say, "Why don't we revisit this in a year or two, and we can work hourly until you're able to meet a couple of these thresholds that we think would improve your financial health. Let's just maintain the relationship if you want to from that perspective, but we're not going to reach out to you proactively unless..." Because with an hourly engagement, we're reliant on them to reach out to us. They're not going to be on our typical service calendar anymore. We don't want to leave them hanging either, because we do have a financial plan that we have worked together on. So, that's just an option that we'll give those individuals.

Michael: So, 5% of clients, I guess, is four to six clients a year for you?

Ashlee: Exactly,

Michael: So, how have clients reacted when you brought this conversation and news?

Ashlee: Well, I'm not sure if we'll actually know the answer to that, but when we're talking with them, I think the overall sense is that they're relieved. Because there's clearly a reason as to why, maybe behind the scenes it isn't visible to us as to why meeting some of the targets are a challenge, and us continuing to charge them every quarter is not helping. So, let's see if we can relinquish the relationship, or let go of that relationship and connect on a less frequent cadence so that when they're getting our surge meeting request, maybe there's a lot of stress behind that, or maybe there's a lot of apprehension behind that, and we want to let a lot of that go. We want them to feel more confident in where they're headed, and there must be something going on there that maybe it's just time for a break.

Michael: So, is it hard to part with clients after you're doing so much work to get them over the past five or six years?

Ashlee: Well, of course. But then it allows us to continue swimming upstream also.

Michael: So, talk to us a little bit more about how these metrics that you score actually work. What do you actually metric or measure? What's the process to get all the clients scored? Just mechanically, how do you actually do this across 100 clients with you and Joe?

Ashlee: Well, we'll come up with an average revenue. What's the revenue target per household that we would like to see? That score's more quantitative, as you can imagine, so if you're at the average or above, the score results in a higher number, but if you are below the average, it'll result in a lower number. Then the more qualitative...

Michael: Sorry, I'm just going to check. So, that's purely quantitative, at the end of the day, just where your revenue sits relative to average revenue per household?

Ashlee: Yes.

Michael: Okay. Are you ultimately translating these into some...it's like they get a one to five score or a one to ten score, something like that?

Ashlee: Exactly.

Michael: So, what point scale do you put it on? Like, how granular do you get here?

Ashlee: It's one to ten. It could be simplified. To your point, it could be short, go to one to five, but it's one to ten.

Michael: If it works for you, it works for you.

Ashlee: Yeah.

Michael: Don't change it if it's working. Okay. So, they get scored on revenue. That's essentially just quantitatively where does their revenue sit relative to the average.

Ashlee: Yes.

Michael: Then talk to us about the engagement metric.

Ashlee: That one's much grayer, as you can probably imagine. It's more so, is it hard to get a call returned, or is it hard to get a meeting on the calendar with that individual or that household? Is it challenging for them to restart some sort of a monthly investment program into their accounts? Is it hard to get them to implement a tax strategy or obtain their tax return? All the things that we feel like we would like to obtain to make sure we're doing our best work for that household. And that could be a multitude of reasons. So, that's how that scoring will play out also on a scale of one to ten.

Michael: Okay. So, now I follow the context you're going to end out with, if we want to... I chart this like there's 100 dots that each have a one to ten on revenue and a one to ten on engagement, and some subset of clients are going to show up in the lower left quadrant because they score very poorly on both of these.

Ashlee: Right.

Michael: And that becomes the group then that you have to have hard conversations about.

Ashlee: Yes.

Michael: So, is there still a subjective or qualitative at that point? Do you look at the list of names and then still consider each one, do we really want to let them go or not? Or is this a more quantitative, if your combination of scores is below a threshold of X, you just don't make the cut, and it could be slightly more or fewer each year because it's just a quantitative threshold?

Ashlee: It's more the former. If someone recently got laid off from a tech firm or whatever the reason may be, we definitely want to be sensitive to that. So, we'll take a look at it and be subjective.

Michael: Okay. So, I guess what pulls you from the other direction is the goal with the coach is 5% of clients go through this threshold, so we're eyeing roughly four to six at the bottom of this scoring, and we'll look at four or six or eight or ten, or however many it takes to reasonably find a segment that is getting the least value from the practice.

Ashlee: You got it.

Michael: Okay. And this is now an annual thing. You do it in Q4 and break the news at the end of the year kind of process?

Ashlee: Yes. Sometimes sooner. Year-end can get messy.

Michael: How so?

Ashlee: We do our surges in May and November. So, right before Halloween, and we want to make sure...right before Halloween and before Thanksgiving, we've met with all the clients we possibly can before year-end hits, just to make sure we've taken advantage of any tax planning opportunities that might be available or if there's anything else we should be aware of, before 12/31 actually hits. So, that's important to us to make sure we're able to vet through all of those client questions or anything that has come to light, or whether it's just looking at your quarterly tax estimates or whatever it may be, as we're trying to button up the year. So, I do feel like as much as you try to plan for year-end, clients will still wait until the 11th hour.

Michael: Bless their client-y souls. Yes.

Ashlee: Yes. So, I just want to make sure we're adequately time blocking for that.

Michael: So, knowing you've got an October, November seasonal surge and have a heavy end-of-year planning process, you may try to pull the client separations earlier.

Ashlee: Yes.

Michael: Are they separations? Are they terminations? Are they graduations? Do you have a label?

Ashlee: From a compliance perspective, they're terminations.

Michael: Fair enough.

Ashlee: From our perspective, we like to use one of the more softer terms that you mentioned, just because we genuinely do love working with the demographic that we work with. They're oftentimes a reflection of our own lives. A lot of times, when we think about where are our clients coming from, it's an interesting thing that we found when I first launched and then got my CFP and then COVID hit. I panicked, and I remember having a call with as many XY individuals as I possibly could as to what is their best source of prospects when you can't meet anyone. Although everyone seemed to be in the same boat, I'll never forget a call I had with... I'll probably say her last name wrong, Arielle Minicozzi, who since found Sphynx Automation. She told me to start posting on Instagram. I was terrified.

Generating New Clients Through Graphics Posted On Instagram [1:02:27]

Michael: So, what do you post on Instagram? Just awesome pictures of financial planning feels challenging in a very visual medium like Instagram.

Ashlee: So, I had no other real concrete item to action on except for what she mentioned. So, to your point, I started to learn Canva and posted infographics twice a week. One of the interesting things that I found is that I'm not necessarily smart enough or in tune enough to look at the engagement metrics, but it's interesting how individuals that we were professionally connected to, or even personally connected to in a prior life on these social channels, I'll post the same thing on three different channels. They're not really strangers. It might be former coworkers or college classmates or people we knew at different stages of our life that knew us before we had launched Gunder, but we're just passively appearing somehow in their feed. So, when something happens in their financial life, we end up being the phone call, which is amazing. But that's how we've really sourced a lot of our client base.

Michael: So, what kind of infographics? What are you sharing? What's a sample infographic that you would be putting out?

Ashlee: Well, my firm was approved in the State of Michigan. I was always told it was going to take ten to 12 weeks for all the documentation to go through. Well, when I was in the hospital delivering my third, it had been six weeks and my firm was approved. I was like, "Oh, great. I'm not ready for this."

Michael: Very literally not ready right now. Yes. Otherwise occupied.

Ashlee: Yes. So, I'll never forget that first year I was with XY, there was like a Start Your Firm cohort. I might've been the last class to do that, where we had met consistently every month.

Michael: Oh, the launcher groups that XYPN puts together?

Ashlee: Yes. And that had run into COVID. I remember Arlene telling us, "Nobody wants to see gray-haired, old individuals or lighthouses on your website or on social media. You don't want to look like what every other firm looks like." And I said, "Well, we're in the midst of expanding our family. I'm just going to post all infographics with kids." Not necessarily my kids, but stock photos of kids. So, on Canva, I would find a stock photo. I would search kids doing this or toddlers doing that, and then I would come up with some sort of a one-liner, and then I would include more information in the copy so that I wouldn't...my goal would not to be to overcrowd the graphic. I wanted it to be a quick read, a quick scroll, and move on. So, that's what I kept doing. I did it twice a week, and sometimes it's a thorn in my side, but I candidly also secretly really enjoy it. So, I'm still doing it today.

Michael: So, can you give just an example of one liners or tips? What kinds of things are you saying?

Ashlee: I'm certainly happy to include a link to our social feed. I think I post generally on Tuesdays and Thursdays. So, yesterday's feed would've been like two kids running on a beach with silly sunglasses on, with their hands up in the air doing peace signs. The concept was, "Overwhelmed by the concept of long-term returns?" It's just these two kids, carefree on a beach. Because that's really the demographic we're looking for, is those individuals that have families and the concept of retirement seems archaic to a lot of these individuals. So, how can I take a more technical topic or a very real concern or thought and lighten it, and if someone's interested in reading more, then they can click on it, but if not, they can move on.

Michael: So, for folks that want to see this further, just if you're listening, this is episode 511. So, if you go to kitces.com/511 and scroll down to the show note section, we'll have a link out to Ashlee's Instagram page if you want to see more of what the flow of infographics looks like.

Ashlee: We don't get a lot of likes or comments, and I would stop doing it if I saw the metrics because they're low.

Michael: Except you feel like you're getting clients.

Ashlee: I do. I do. Because someone that we would've never reconnected with, that Joe and I went to the same college, that we would've never come in contact with again, will say we're the next person when they have a liquidity event or some sort of a life event, or they need just financial advice. We get that phone call out of the blue, and it's always so shocking, and it's happened dozens and dozens of times. I would say 50% of our clients are sourced that way.

Michael: So, they knew you in the past and had some connection, but you're not necessarily actively engaged with them, but this is keeping you visible and showing up in their feeds so you're top of mind, and then when their life event happens, they "spontaneously" reach out and call because you stayed at top of mind because they've been following the infographics for years now.

Ashlee: Yes.

Michael: So, you do it twice a week indefinitely?

Ashlee: Yes.

Michael: How long does it take you? I'm assuming your process is fairly tight at this point.

Ashlee: I'll keep a OneNote... I can only imagine how you have to come up with content yourself, but I'll just keep a running list of what might even be an unrelatable concept. Whether I'm sitting out in the sleeting, sideways rain at a baseball game, and I'll just think about how miserable I am, and I'm like, "I need to turn this into an infographic about something financial related." So, I'll just keep a running list of ideas that I feel like I'm thinking about given our day-to-day. And to your point, I'll have the month fairly scheduled out in advance on Canva. For the longest time, though, I was too cheap to pay for the paid version, but I've gotten over that now.

Michael: Oh, as the business grows, we steadily make our reinvestments.

Ashlee: Yes.

The KPIs Ashlee Tracks And How They Impact Her Service Model [1:10:35]

Michael: So, I'm curious to go back to one of your earlier comments for a moment. Just you said the coach was pushing you to pause for a little while, in part because you were supposed to get some better metrics and KPIs in place and see what you learn and glean from it. You had said you didn't think it was going to change much in your day-to-day. I guess just in practice, did it, as you started seeing some of the metrics and business KPIs? How did it actually play out relative to expectations?

Ashlee: Honestly, I don't think it did change our day-to-day. I'm able to recite the numbers now for anyone who asks, which is no one.

Michael: Well, I love asking. What do you track? What do you track what numbers are meaningful for you?

Ashlee: We'll track revenue. We'll track EBOC. We'll look at AUM and new households. For clients…much of how I got started out with Gunder, especially given that 2020 timeframe being my first year, I offered a lot of one-time plans. So, that's something that we still track today, although I do only a fraction of what we used to. It's just a very brief, as it sounds, and as a lot of our peers do. It's just as of a point in time, we structure it as a four-meeting sequence. It typically takes two to three months to complete. I used to do a lot of those when I first started out. Living in the suburbs of Detroit, there is a plethora of auto engineers here. When I launched, it was so interesting. I had dozens of that avatar come to me, and as a newly minted CFP, it was amazing. I was able to get so in the weeds for these individuals who really wanted to retain full control of their assets, never had any intention of giving that up, and they just wanted advice. And that isn't something they could really get. So, I had a lot of reps doing that my first two years. So, if I look...

Michael: I guess practically, it gets revenue flowing.

Ashlee: Yes.

Michael: They may not be long-term clients by definition of the profile, but if we're trying to build our long-term client base and we also just need revenue to get the practice going. It's revenue.

Ashlee: Right. I just wanted to be able to break even. I didn't even break even that first year. The second year, it was much better just because of that. To your point, they're not necessarily clients you want to work with long-term. It was amazing experience, but a lot of times some of those individuals are best...they can execute. So, that's another metric we track because we just do a fraction of those now. Oftentimes it'll be a referral or a prospect that'll come to us that doesn't necessarily fit our niche. So, we'll offer that to them, and we price it much differently now, as you can imagine.

Michael: What changed in the pricing?

Ashlee: I started out doing my first one-time plans at $2,500, and we've now changed that. We have a more of a tiered schedule to try to measure some sort of complexity, and right now that'll range between $5,000 and $9,000. Then we do have a lot of small business owners, and as much as we don't really... We don't specialize in 401(k)s, but if we don't start the 401(k), then someone else will. So, we do that for our small business owner clients. So, we'll track that too.

Michael: Who do you do that with or through?

Ashlee: That's a great question. Some of our more established plans, we use Nationwide. Then some of our smaller startup plans, we'll do with American Funds or Capital Group.

Michael: Okay. So, any other metrics that have become anchor points for you? I'm hearing like revenue, EBOC, AUM, new households, one-time plans. Anything else that shows up that you like to keep eyes on?

Ashlee: Those are the core, I would say. Then we'll just measure year-over-year growth on all of those metrics. So, as much as I was resistant to creating such an Excel file, even though I do like the data, I felt like my head was going to be down. I was going to be still driving forward as much as I was before. We do predominantly work outside of our...we work in our home. So, our expenses are relatively low outside of our VA. I guess being from the Greater Detroit area, we have client meetings at a luxury car garage storage facility here that's local to us, and that's where we'll do client meetings.

Michael: Wait. At a luxury car garage storage space?

Ashlee: Yes, that's where we do client meetings if they want to meet in person.

Michael: I like the Detroit angle.

Ashlee: Yes.

What Surprised Ashlee The Most Building Her Advisory Business [1:16:35]

Michael: Very cool. So, what has surprised you the most on this journey of building an advisory business? You're seven years in now after multiple career steps previously.

Ashlee: Besides the whole thing working out? That's also been a surprise.

Michael: If that's the thing, that's the thing.

Ashlee: I would say, I'm surprised that after listening to so much of your content, Michael, that the three-year mark actually had weight. That actually was a good turning point. I think when I was first starting out, I'm like, "There's no way. Three years of doing this?" I think that actually came to some fruition. And then I think the other thing is that I'm surprised that social media... I'm surprised that individuals hire professionals on social media. Because what I mentioned about our individuals that we were connected with from some part of our prior lives, that's resulted in about 40% of our clients being out of state. So, there would've been no other way for us to connect to those people.

Michael: Right. They're not in your local circle anymore.

Ashlee: Right.

Michael: So, what changed for you at the three-year mark? What shifted for you? What started showing up differently?

Ashlee: Just there was revenue. There wasn't as much of a concern about, is this going to work? It felt more like a business. It didn't feel like there was as wild of a goose chase to have conversations and network. In that timeframe, I was also the president of our local CFA society, and that was also very eye-opening, too, just to realize that I wasn't part of that organization anymore to try to drum up business. I was just there to create relationships. And for so long, every single meeting I went to that I would've been with the family otherwise, it was to network. It was to try to get do business generation. It was to have some sort of a business purpose. And it just felt like a lot of that subsided at that three-year mark.

The Low Point On Ashlee's Journey [1:19:15]

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

Ashlee: COVID was pretty low. I wasn't even a year old yet into my firm. That was tough. Then I would say shortly thereafter, when then Joe ended up joining and me feeling the need to get the VA, I think that was low also.

Michael: What made that low?

Ashlee: I personally wanted the additional help. I wanted the ability to offload more. I think there just felt like there was a strong need for delegation, and just I needed more hours in my day, and that just wasn't going to happen any other way.

Michael: The tension was just, but this costs real money, and hiring is immediately a step backwards financially, so it hurts at that point?

Ashlee: Right. I had been solo for a couple of years prior to that, and I just said, "I'm going to make this work, and this is part of that trajectory to make this work." So, as you can imagine, our coach that we had last year was very much so a marriage counselor as much as she was a financial advisor coach.

Michael: Bless the coaches.

Ashlee: Yes.

Ashlee's Advice For Her Younger Self And For Newer Advisors [1:20:54]

Michael: So, any other just thing to like pearls of wisdom, things you know now from experience you wish you could go back and educate you five, ten years ago earlier in the process? What do you know now you wish you knew then or could go back and tell and teach you from then?

Ashlee: I think I was nervous to start Gunder without a real mentor. Every other stage of my career, I either had a mentor or I knew who I didn't want to model behavior off of, and I felt like I was missing that when I launched Gunder, and I was very much so nervous about it. I think if I were to tell my younger self that, I think that I had had so many other experiences in my career that I just don't think that was necessary. I shouldn't have sweat that so much, as much as I did. I think that so many of my prior experiences, even though they weren't directly the same, they were very much so relatable, and a lot of those non-technical skills ended up paying just as many dividends, if not more, that I had picked up along the way, and I think I didn't place enough weight on that.

Michael: So, what were the non-technical things that showed up more impactful than expected?

Ashlee: My prior life in the Big Four, so I was on the audit side. With that, even though you have to get into the weeds on all of those types of things, you still have to be able to talk to executives, and you have to be able to ascertain information from earnings calls and be able to read, come up with how to read a 10-K or a 10-Q. What are these types of things end up meaning when we're doing private or alternative fund due diligence? Even when I think about just interviewing someone about how a process is done and listening and that kind of thing...even before I graduated, I worked at my parents' restaurant, and I just think shouldn't everyone have to wait tables at some point in their life?

Michael: It is a powerful life experience to get some retail experience at some point in your life and see the wonderful array of human beings in the world.

Ashlee: Yeah. I just think all of that ends up...that's an example of a part of my non-professional career. I just think all of those separate experiences end up shaping an individual into a great advisor because people remember how you made them feel more so than a lot of the details. I think that in an AI world, I think that's really what we need to focus on.

Michael: So, any other advice you would give younger, newer advisors coming into the profession today?

Ashlee: I think just try to keep getting the reps in. As nervous as I was to do my first, oh gosh, dozen of one-time plans with very astute individuals that were very technical, that was an amazing experience. It got my feet wet. I got really into the details. It was amazing, honestly. And not waiting for that perfect client to come by, because those individuals weren't necessarily the perfect client for a long-term firm or what I was trying to grow. So, I think just keep getting the reps in and not being afraid of fumbling through the process because, to your point, on the iceberg analogy you frequently use, it may not look pretty behind the scenes, but the presentation to the client is what ultimately matters. So, I can take back a lot of the questions and be really upfront and say, "I need to look into this for you," and just not being afraid to do that.

Michael: Yeah, I spent some of my early school days in the theater world doing stage management and backstage work, and to me, it's another one of those ultimate...oh my lord, there is so much messy stuff that happens behind the scenes in making a show or production go off, and we're privy to all of it when you're stage managing. The audience only sees what they see through the proscenium arch. They only see the part that's right in front of them and the reality that's presented to them, and they just don't see the craziness that may be happening behind the scenes, nor does it really matter, nor do they care. Like, "Do what you've got to do."

Ashlee: So true

Michael: Behind the scenes, as long as what they see is a good experience for them, the rest is just interesting privy information about how messy it is to make the sausage.

Ashlee: So true.

What Success Means To Ashlee [1:26:10]

Michael: So, Ashlee, as we come to the end here, this is a podcast about success, and just one of the themes that comes up is that that word success means different things to different people. It can evolve for us as we go through stages of career, seasons of life. So, the business seems to be just objectively very successful in a wonderful place as you're crossing a million dollars of revenue and continuing to grow. So, the business seems to be in a good place now. How do you define success for yourself personally at this point?

Ashlee: That's such a great question. If you would've asked me this out of college, it would've been, "Okay, first I have to get my CPA, then I have to stay until I make audit manager, then I have to get my CFA," and so on. Every few years, if I think back, there's another mountain to climb because that's just what I thought I was supposed to do. Then when I started my firm, it shifted, "Okay, let's get Gunder off the ground. How do I get a new client? How do I keep the lights on?" It was so different. Now, reflecting on where we are today, it seems to me as though success is having the freedom to build work around my life instead of constantly asking my family to fit around my work.

Michael: That's an interesting juxtaposition. Having the freedom to be able to build work around my life instead of asking my family to build around my work.

Ashlee: Because as you mentioned too, having three kids schedules seem to change by the hour, and even if I try to have it perfectly planned to a T, it doesn't work that way.

Michael: Yeah, not with three. There's always something. Uh-huh.

Ashlee: I genuinely love what I do, but I also love being able to leave in the middle of the day to attend a sporting event or volunteer at school or whatever it may be, and then I can finish work later that evening. Is that a traditional schedule? No, but I'm okay with it, and I know I'm still delivering exceptional service to my clients. It's ironic that I feel like I worked hard to build a career where I have more flexibility, but I don't want less responsibility. I don't want to work less. I just want more ownership over how I do it. And to me, that is how I define success. I assume years from now, who knows, five to ten years from now, my answer will be different again, but I think that's healthy.

Michael: I agree. I agree. Well, thank you, Ashlee, for joining us on the "Financial Advisor Success Podcast".

Ashlee: Thank you, Michael.

Michael: Absolutely.