Improving Efficiency By Turning Client Meetings Into Working Sessions So There Is Less Follow-Up To Manage: #FASuccess Ep 453 With Becky Walsh

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Resources Featured In This Episode:

• Becky Walsh: Website | LinkedIn |Instagram | Facebook
• Oak Maple Service Guide 2025 and New Client Process – Download (PDF)
• Oak Maple Finance Workflow For Initial Subscription Work – Download (Excel)
• Money Quotient
• Likert Scales
• Lisa Damour
• Elements
• #FASuccess Ep 184: Building A Premium Financial Planning Experience To Sustain A Premium Advisory Fee, with Reese Harper
• Kitces & Carl Ep 141: Creating The Space To Have More Meaningful Money Conversations With Clients
• YNAB
• Monarch
• AdvicePay
• Wheel of Life
• Jump
• Grable & Lytton Risk Assessment
• #FA Success Ep 234: Charging Advice Fees To Help Clients Change Their Money Script, With Yohance Harrison
• NAPFA
• Designing Your Work Life: How to Thrive and Change and Find Happiness at Work by Bill Burnett
• Trust Yourself: Stop Overthinking and Channel Your Emotions for Success at Work by Melody Wilding
• The Directors of Financial Planning Community

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Full Transcript:

Michael: Welcome, Becky Walsh, to the "Financial Advisor Success" podcast.

Becky: Thank you, Michael. So happy to be here.

Michael: I'm really excited to talk today about ideas of how we make financial planning and the work we do for clients more efficient, and particularly the follow-up work more efficient. Because the reality of the advice business is we actually really do spend a lot of time in prep and follow-up for client meetings. Our data has found pretty consistently over the years. If you add it all up, the average advisor spends an hour or a little bit more of prep and follow-up for every one hour that we actually spend in client meetings, which then limits capacity of how many clients we serve, how many meetings we can fit into a day.

Indirectly that impacts who we can serve because you have to earn money for all the hours that you're spending doing client work in your practice. Which means, basically, the cost of advice itself has embedded into it the time outside of meetings as well as the time in meetings. And so, the recent trend in the past few years now is we buy lots of tech, particularly the rise of all the AI notetakers to make the prep, follow-up process more efficient. And it just to me, it kind of raises this interesting question of, well, what if we just didn't have as much follow-up work because we did the work in the meeting with the clients in the first place?

Becky: Absolutely.

Michael: And it was, like, less of a client meeting and more of a working session. And I know you have been exploring this, you have been doing this in practice now with clients, and trying to start shift some, I guess, client meetings into working sessions. I don't know if you would use those as contrasting labels, but I actually think of them as contrasting labels. And so, I'm excited to talk about, like, what happens when you don't try to make the follow-up work more efficient, you just try to make no follow-up work because you get the work done in the meeting with the client in a working session in the first place.

Becky: That's the dream.

Finding Efficiencies To Profitably Serve "EWAN" Clients [04:55]

Michael: That's the dream. So, tell me about the dream.

Becky: So, my vision is a financial professional, more as doctor or primary care physician who has a client panel, like, a patient panel, and that we can efficiently diagnose and counsel clients in a way that does not require a ton of follow-up work. So, a PCP [Primary Care Physician] might, you know, send a quick referral after an appointment, but they're able to move quickly from patient to patient. Now, nobody likes the 15 minutes with their PCP. They want more time. So, I see it more as a concierge thing than the full, you know...

Michael: The full array.

Becky: ...the 1,000 patients, exactly.

Michael: Yeah, I was going to say what the traditional primary care physicians can have something, like, 1,000 to a 1,500 patients. Concierge doctors often might do, like, 100 to 300. So, we'll, as advisors, maybe right now we're a little more concierge medicine than general care. But I certainly get it directionally on what you're talking about. Like, what does it look like when we can just diagnose, prescribe, assign a referral, move on to the next client, next patient?

Becky: Correct. And I know that in the past when we've talked about the number of clients we can see, the Dunbar number comes up that about 50 to 100 is about where we cap out. I am definitely not in my doctor's Dunbar number, but she serves me well and I trust her and she gets my needs met. So, what I'm looking into is how we can leverage tech, including processes, to turn client experiences into more of a concierge doc-like experience rather than limiting the number of patients or clients we can see to less than 100. And I see this as really critical in being able to serve those Earners Wanting Advice Now, the EWAN clients. And that's really, the EWAN clients are what prompted me to get into this profession to begin with 20 years ago because I was one of them. I really wanted help and I couldn't find it. So, I've been passionately driving to find the answer to that question ever since.

Michael: And so, just for context here, I guess, EWANs, like, we're using acronyms, a lot of the industry now has adopted the HENRY label, High Earner, Not Rich Yet. Just that subset of people that have high income, a lot of financial wherewithal to pay for advice, maybe don't have significant assets yet, but probably will in a relatively foreseeable future because they're high earners, even though they're not rich, yet. Whereas EWANs, like, if we're going with the labels is more of a middle market, just, like, folks that earn a good reasonable income, they can put food on their table, and are steadily accumulating something towards retirement and hope to put kids through college. But they're not necessarily in the high earner bucket with lots of disposable dollars, which means they will be a little bit more price limited. Like we do have to figure out how to have a model and a price point that fits their financial reality.

Becky: Right. Absolutely. And what that price point is, is far lower than, say, the $10,000 a year minimum that traditional financial planning firms might have. So, we've got to find efficiencies and ways to serve more people. And one of the ways that we're doing that is through focusing our first six months of work with a client on really having working sessions with the client, rather than a prep, deliver, follow-up model. We're trying to minimize as much as possible, the prep and the follow-up.

Michael: It's like just a striking contrast to me, even just the way that you said it. Or, like, what does it look like when we go into meetings with clients to have working sessions instead of the prep, deliver, follow-up model, which just never even quite articulated that way. But you say it and it's, like, yeah, that is absolutely our thing. Like prep, deliver, follow-up. And like, that's a lot more steps than working session. Even when you just say it like that, it's literally more words. It feels more cumbersome even to describe it.

Becky: It feels more exhausting as I think about what it takes. Like, "Okay, I've got a block out time on my calendar to prep, got a block out time to follow-up." Whereas if we can shift that into working sessions, then we can have more time in our calendar to have more client meetings in a week.

Michael: Right. So, then talk to us a little bit more about these, like, working sessions themselves. Like, what are you doing? How does this work? What does it really mean to be doing a working session the way that you're describing it?

Becky: Well, all we're doing as financial planners is consistently seeing where we are now. So, getting really clear about what reality is, getting really clear about the direction we want to go. So, our point A, our point B. And then identifying that very next step to head in the direction of point B. So, our working sessions, what we're doing is spending, generally, the first half of the call getting really clear on the emotional aspects and the sort of qualitative data of client's point A. And then we spend the second half of our working sessions getting very clear on what the next step is and using quantitative data to drive us in that way. So, when I'm talking about qualitative data, I'm talking about people's perceptions, their hopes, their dreams, their fears, what background they have with finance. So, some people talk about their money archetypes or money personalities. I personally use Money Quotient to get at those tools.

And then the second half of the meeting, we're looking at, OK, what's your balance sheet like? What's your cash flow looking like? And where do we need to be focusing your attention to take that very next step towards your point B? Because a full on financial plan, as we all know, is irrelevant the second that it is printed. It's because we're planning for a future that's fully unknowable. So, all we can do is know our point A, know our point B, and figure out that next step. So, that's what our working sessions are getting at. Just figuring out that next step, maybe the next two or three steps. But not trying to map the whole course, just trying to get clients oriented to where they need to be going.

Exploring Clients’ Qualitative Reality Before Digging Into Quantitative Data [12:20]

Michael: So, it sounds like you have much more of a process flow of how this is going, literally, like, what you're covering in each meeting. So, maybe can you just, literally, walk us through the meeting flow, the process flow of just how this works? If I'm a client who's coming on board and I'm going to have my series of working sessions, what's the actual planning process and flow look, like, for you? What's the meeting flow.

Becky: Yeah, so we emphasize the clients that they're going to be doing a lot of work. We asked them to commit to doing work outside of meetings. So, rather than us doing the planning work, we're having the clients doing the work of data gathering. So, let me talk through what that process flow looks like. We have, our initial six months with the client is broken down into 52 steps of our workflow process. And it includes steps with automation, includes steps that our ops team can do, and then steps that our professional can do. And so, right now that's a Certified Financial Planner. I think there will be a time in the future where we have some equivalent of nurse practitioners in our world who maybe aren't fully certified, but they have the skills to do most of the, at least, EWAN planning.

So, you asked, what does the process look like? Client, or prospective client fills out an intake form, schedules a call, and then we have that 15-minute call. And then, if there's an alignment, if the client is intrigued and schedules a consult, we that's when we really kick off our working sessions. And our first working session is really qualitative data focused. We are using Money Quotient. We are Money Quotient partners. So, that's a paid partnership, where we are using tools for assessing clients in this first meeting, their satisfaction and financial satisfaction and what transitions they have coming up in life. So, what this looks like for the client is a 20-question questionnaire looking at all the areas of their financial life from insurance coverage to their investments, to how they feel emotionally about their money, and what they think about the relationships with their current financial practitioners.

Michael: Just to clarify there, again, we're still in the qualitative phase. So, when you say things like there's questions about insurance and investments, this is not data gathering. Please tell us how much insurance you've got and the balance of your investment accounts. This is qualitatively oriented. Like, I'm feeling comfortable with my level of insurance coverage and I'm happy with my level of investments. Like, that kind of orientation.

Becky: Yeah. So, I think the term is a Likert scale, where it's just measuring level of satisfaction 1 to 5 on each of these 20 areas of a financial life. What that does for prospective clients is it orients them to the tremendous complexity that they have in their financial life, and validates their sort of feeling of, "Oh, yeah, there's a lot here, and I don't know where to go next. So, it both validates their experience and helps them see the value in working with a planner. The second thing we do, we spend a lot less time on this, is look ahead to life transitions that they have coming up.

And this is a three page, four page questionnaire maybe that gets at what different life transitions there might be in the immediate future, mid-term, and long-term. And so, one of the questions that I love is, do you have children entering adolescence? Which before having children entering adolescence, I would not have thought about this, but that is a huge life transition.

Michael: Being on the cusp with kids who are 13, 11 and 9, I have an appreciation for that question.

Becky: Oh, good luck, Michael.

Michael: Thank you. We'll be back in ten years to let you know how that's helping.

Becky: Lisa Damore is a great resource for you. So, yeah, so entering adolescence, you know, there's shifts in expenses. There's planning for new levels of auto insurance, for example, or more expensive extracurricular activities. So, this second piece of qualitative data we're gathering in our first working session is, "All right, what are all the things that could possibly be at your point B?" So, we go through that worksheet, and then we move on to quantitative.

And the tool that we use for gathering quantitative data is Elements. So, I know you've talked to Reese Harper about the way that Elements can be used for coaching EWANs for going deep down market, where we can very quickly get a scorecard or I actually, like to think of it much more medical diagnosis. It's like that machine of vitals that you see in the ER, where we can very quickly assess financial health through...it's just financial ratios, like, we all learned in our CFP coursework. But where we're seeing how much people are spending in relation to their income, how much assets they have in relation to their expenses, and in what different buckets. So, what I find is, after we do that qualitative data gathering, clients open up so quickly about the quantitative. And so, where we might have been beating around the bush before of, "Well, how much money do you have?" It just comes spilling out of the client's mouth of "This is exactly what I have in all the different places."

Michael: Interesting. So, some aspect of the qualitative process is creating some level of buy-in for them to say, "All right, I'm now comfortable with these conversations. I'm convinced I'm going to have a meaningful advice experience because Becky's already opened up some things that we've recognized we need to talk about and understand we have complexity around. Okay, I guess she needs all my information, so here we go."

Becky: Yes, exactly. And it is buy in then it's also on the psychological level. I don't know if you've heard of this guy, Carl Richards. He talks about righteous tricks that we do as financial planners. And of course, I'm tongue in cheek. Of course, you know who Carl Richards is. So, he talks about righteous tricks. And that starting with qualitative conversation, is one of those righteous tricks that gets clients to do what we know is good for them, where they are comfortable enough with us. So, it's not just buy in, but it's also trust and comfort because we've asked questions that sort of crack them open very slowly and comfortably.

Using Elements Software To Get A Snapshot Of A New Client’s Financial Situation And Planning Areas To Target [19:51]

Michael: So, take me back one moment just as we're going through. I guess, this is basically our first two working sessions, our first two meetings. Like, the first is qualitatively focused, we've got Money Quotient tools. The second is quantitatively focused, we've got Elements as a tool. What's literally happening, I guess, in the meeting, versus what do clients, I guess, or you do, like, before the first meeting? What do you and clients do after the first before the second? Like, I'm still trying to visualize what happens in meetings, versus what happens before and after meetings for either party.

Becky: So, backing up there, actually, this is all the first consultation meeting. Both the qualitative and the quantitative are all happening in that first meeting. So, we spend half of the meeting on qualitative, and then we shift to quantitative. As I was training my colleague in this process, we'd hop on five minutes before our call and she'd say, "Okay, what are we going to do?" I said, "Well, first, we're going to start with Money Quotient, and then we're going to move on to Elements." That's just that is the overarching process that we have is screen sharing Money Quotient and screen sharing Elements.

So, prior to the meeting, the client has filled out the Money Quotient questionnaires. In the meeting, we're completing the Elements scorecard. We're just grabbing a pencil sketch of the client's net worth, primarily. And we're real time asking, what's the balance on your mortgage? Do you know the interest rate? What kind of accounts do you have? And we're just capturing that on the screen as we're talking. The secondary purpose of doing that net worth live with the clients is that we're doing a financial literacy assessment in real time. Because we're getting to know how much the client knows about their finances and how much they care to engage with their finances. So, that's the second half of that initial meeting.

Michael: So, just for folks who aren't familiar, can you explain a little bit more what Elements is?

Becky: Sure. So, Elements is a tool designed for coaching and engagement with clients on their financial vitals, the basics of their financial life. And at its core, it's a net worth report.

Becky: So, in the app, there's what's called a scorecard, which is, let's see, nine colorful blocks, bold colors that each represent a financial vital. So, what I focus the clients on first is their total term, which is, essentially their net worth divided by their annual spending. And a total term is a very quick way to assess how a client's doing. We want the clients to be moving in the direction of 30. Most EWAN clients are in one to five total term, which means that their net worth is somewhere between one times their annual spending and five times their annual spending.

Michael: Okay. So, it's just like a very quick and dirty rule of thumb. How many years of spending do you have in net worth when you get somewhere up in the 25 to 30 range? Great. If I flip that into a fraction the other way, if I'm at a total term of 30, I'm spending one thirtieth of my net worth every year, which means I have, like, a 3% to 4% withdrawal rates. Congratulations, you're fine.

Becky: Exactly.

Michael: So, then what else shows up in the scorecard here?

Becky: So, that total term is broken down between four different ways that people can accumulate wealth. There's liquid term, which is anything that doesn't have any special tax benefits to it, any financial asset that doesn't have special tax benefits to it. So, checking account, brokerage account. There's qualified term, which is those assets that are qualified for special tax benefits. So, Roth, traditional 401(k), etc. There's real estate term, which is the equity in any real estate that you own. And then there's business term, which is the value of your business. And so, from left to right, those go from most liquid to least liquid.

And what we're looking for with clients and what we're often seeing with EWAN clients is that we want to see a balance between liquid qualified and real estate term. And often, we see overemphasis in one of those areas. So, for those who haven't yet bitten the bullet and dived into investing in retirement accounts, they might be over weighted in liquid term. And so, what we're going to talk to them about is shifting some of their liquid term into their qualified term bucket. So, that's the bottom row of the Element scorecard, is liquid term, qualified term, real estate term, business term, all should add up to total term.

So, our first meeting is really focused deeply on that first row. We get to the end of that first working meeting and we are saying, "All right, what's really critical to this is that annual spending number." And so, that's the client's homework then for the next meeting. Is to figure out what their annual spending is. And we give them a couple of different tools to do that. If they're already using YNAB or Monarch, we just ask for outputs from that. If they're not, we have a spreadsheet that we send them asking for different categories of expenses. Or we also have created a form that they can fill out. So, if they want to tell us more narratively, they can tell us what they're spending money on.

Exploring Clients’ Levels Of Financial Satisfaction, Literacy, And Organization [26:16]

Michael: So, I want to pause you here just to make sure I'm understanding how this comes together. So, they've done their initial 15-minute call, fit call, decided they want to move forward. So, we queued up this first meeting. Leading into this meeting, they got their Money Quotient questionnaires. I think you said that the financial satisfaction questionnaire and transitions. So, we have some context of where they're feeling good and not good about their financial situation. So, the first part of this initial meeting is talking about their Money Quotient results and outcomes. So, I'm presuming you just kind of go down, "Hey, it looks like you're feeling good about these areas. Tell me more. It looks like you're not feeling good about these. Tell me a little more what's going on there," just to open up the conversation.

Becky: Yeah. And with some specific targeted questions that get the clients to realize that they have a locus of control. So...

Michael: So what kind of questions crop up?

Becky: So, we try to get them to focus first on where they have a high level of satisfaction. And we ask them what choices they have made to arrive at that high level of satisfaction. So, we are just planting a seed for them to start thinking, "Oh, I did make some choices. I do have some agency here."

Michael: Interesting. What choices? So, I see you are feeling really good about, like, level of debt that you have and your spending habits. What choices have you made that have given you such comfort with where your spending and debt are?

Becky: Yeah, exactly.

Michael: I'm sure you could word it slightly more eloquently than that. Like, that's the gist. Like, that's the kind of question you're trying to open up.

Becky: Yeah, yeah.

Michael: Okay. So, then what comes next as you're having the conversation?

Becky: And then we shift to what's more vulnerable for them of, "All right, where do you not feel satisfied?" And for some it's, you know, with the level of financial satisfaction or with the level of financial education, I have achieved. And for those, for when clients get into this area of places where they have lower satisfaction, we do notice there's embarrassment or shame as they're talking about that. And so, we're signaling to the client that it's safe to talk about things that they feel embarrassed about, and that we will meet them exactly where they are, that we don't have any expectations for them to achieve any level of financial education before meeting us. There are no prerequisites to meet with us.

Michael: So, are there questions again that you're, like, using to create or cue up that environment, or other talking points that you use to get them comfortable?

Becky: So, for that we just use the classic, "Tell me more." So, we will say, "All right, there's some areas here that you're less satisfied with. Can you tell me more about one or more of those areas?" And then most clients, some will say, "What do you mean, tell me more?" And then we'll ask some compassionate curiosity questions. But, primarily, people will just start talking about what's on their mind. And that will open up for us where we can deliver the greatest value to the client.

Michael: Because, I guess, almost by definition, when they come in with several areas they're less satisfied about, and you simply say, "Can you tell me more about the areas you're less satisfied with?" Whatever comes out of their mouth first is usually the area that they're most concerned to work on. Because they articulate it first in the less satisfied area that was on the questionnaire that they never get around to mentioning, it's like, "But probably not actually that important to you."

Becky: Right, probably not that much.

Michael: "It's not what surfaced." And so, that conversation around some of the Money Quotient responses is, I guess, like, 15 or 20 minutes, because we're trying to get through approximately the first half of the meeting. So, then, I guess, like, how do you transition or introduce Elements into this conversation?

Becky: I guess, I say, "Okay, great, that was really helpful. The reason we're asking you these questions is that we can't give you advice on your finances without knowing where you're coming from in these more qualitative areas. Now let's shift to the quantitative side. That's as simple as that. Express gratitude, and then point in the direction that we're heading in.

Michael: Okay. So, then in the spirit of, like, working sessions, so Money Quotient, you gave them homework to do the questionnaires in advance. The Elements input, it sounds like you're not giving it to them in advance. Please go through this and enter your numbers. Your screen sharing it, and asking them and plugging in some numbers on this on the spot. That's, like, the working session part.

Becky: Correct, and we do have the option of giving it to them on Elements ahead of time. And I have colleagues who use Elements outside of my firm who do have clients complete it ahead of time. The reason I like to complete it live is to orient the clients to the tool, and then also, as I noted, that sort of financial literacy assessment of, all right, what level of comfort are we dealing with here, and what level of knowledge do these clients have? So I might have someone who has a tremendous amount of financial literacy, but when put on the spot to talk about their assets, they don't know what they have or whether it's Roth or traditional. And so, that just gives great information of what level of engagement they want to have with their finances or have had with their finances.

Michael: Yeah, I'm almost thinking there's how financially literate are they? Do they literally even know and understand their finances, their numbers, their assets, and accounts, and there's some aspect of just how organized or engaged they are? Do they actually know where their stuff is and what they've got? And so, I can have clients who are highly literate, but not organized. I can have clients who are highly organized, but not actually that literate. They know exactly what they've got. They don't actually understand what a Roth is or why it's good, but they know they've got one and how much they've got in it, and various combinations thereof.

Becky: Yeah, I'm picturing this.

Michael: Like, they can be organized and literate or neither. It's, like, a two by two grid thing.

Becky: Exactly. I just jotted that down.

Michael: So, in a world where, for a lot of us, traditionally, I send a data or a gathering sheet and I do or don't get it back, and it is or is not correct, then it's going to take me a while again to know the client to actually figure out, did they not know what they have? Are they not organized to know what they have? Do they not understand how this works? It's easy if I get a perfect data gathering sheet back, but anything else, it's going to take me a while to figure out what's really going on with the client. And you get clarity on where they're going to be 30 minutes into the first meeting because outcomes, Elements, and you just start asking them questions of accounts they have, and they either know or don't probably pretty quickly. It gets evidence where their level of literacy and engagement is with their own finances.

Becky: Exactly.

Michael: So, I guess, the most point, how precise are you trying to get here? I mean, is the idea you're just going to ask them, "Do you know about how much you have in your checking account?" Or just going to plug that number in here? Or is there some like, "Okay, I've got Elements open here. So, Mr. and Mrs. Client, can you pop open a browser window and, go to your bank account and see what's in it and tell me the number, and I'm going to put in $11,321," or whatever my number is.

Becky: In this stage, it really depends on where they are on that two by two grid of literacy and engagement. So, if they have high literacy, high engagement, they can open YNAB and tell me to the dollar how much they have. I will absolutely take that level of detail. If I find, "Oh, they actually have low literacy and low engagement," I'm going to say, "Just guess. We don't need it to be specific here. We were just trying to get a general sense of where you are." Because in that format of where you are now, where you're trying to go, and what your next step is, there's going to be a very different next step for someone who's highly engaged and highly literate than there is for someone with low literacy and low engagement.

Michael: Right. Okay.

Becky: So, we'll know that the next step for someone with low literacy and low engagement is to increase literacy ever so slightly and increase engagement ever so slightly. And their homework is going to be, "Log in to all of your sites and get the data for us and update Elements." So, the clients can have an app on their phone, an Elements app on their phone that allows them to engage with their finances in that Elements framework every day.

Michael: Okay. So, we come to the end of the first meeting. I've gone through Money Quotient. I've gotten some initial numbers into Elements, either accurate or best guess. We, at least, have some neighborhood of understanding about what their terms are to use the Elements language, like my total term, my liquid term, my qualified term. So, I'm getting some sense of what they've got and what they've accumulated. And sounds like the homework then that goes back to the clients is, "Okay, if term is savings you've got divided by your spending, your homework now is to dial in on the spending side." So, use a tool if you've got a tool, Monarch, YNAB, etc. Otherwise, here's a spreadsheet so we can get a handle on where really is your spending."

Becky: Right. And what clients inevitably find is what they guess on their spending is tremendously lower than what their actual spending is.

Michael: Yes. No one gets it right if they're not actively tracking in the first place.

Becky: Right. And no one overestimates what they're spending. So, that's a huge eye-opening moment for clients in between meetings. And so, in that second meeting, we're normalizing for them, "That's okay. Nobody knows. And everybody guesses wrong."

Oak Maple’s Complexity-Based Fee Model For The Initial Six-Month Planning "Sprint" [37:37]

Becky: So, after that first meeting, stepping back to process, the advisor will use an Excel calculator we have to determine what the cost will be for the client moving forward.

So, we don't have a set cost, the cost is complexity-based. We've gone as low as $100 a month and as high as $500 a month for an initial six-month planning sprint. And that is based on the number of planning factors we're bringing into the picture, the level of complexity. Are we planning for retirement here, or are we planning to build up an emergency fund? Because those are just different levels of analysis that are going to be required. And we've not yet found a way to completely eliminate outside-of-meeting work. And so, we're factoring in a little bit of outside of meeting work into that price for people who might need a little bit of traditional planning.

Michael: Okay. So, your pricing, I think you said $100 to $500 a month, like, varying by complexity. And this is for a six-month planning sprint. So, is that literally, six meetings, six meetings over six months, one meeting a month kind of cadence, or just six months of, "We're going to be doing financial planning stuff with you and then we'll see where we stand after six months."

Becky: So, we started at one meeting a month for six months and what we're shifting to is still having six meetings, but front loading the first five. So, doing a meeting every couple of weeks for a couple of months, and then a follow-up meeting six months later, six months after the start of the process. Because we're finding clients sort of lose momentum when we spread it out by month by month.

Michael: Oh, interesting. So, for the folks that are engaged enough to do this, your biggest concern is not, it's too many meetings were overwhelming them. It's, they actually really kind of get into it and engage, and if you spread them out too much, they lose momentum.

Becky: Correct.

Michael: Okay. Because it's right from the client end. Okay, I've decided I'm finally going to get this financial stuff figured out. So, if that's where my head is mentally, like, I want to keep going until I win my finances and feel financially competent.

Becky: Right. Right.

Michael: Okay. Okay. And each meeting is an hour. So, I mean, like, nominally, you know, we're getting one to $500 an hour to do this work each month over the next six months as we price out the complexity here.

Becky: Right.

Michael: Okay. Plus a little bit of in between meeting time.

Becky: A little bit of in between meeting time, but as much as possible that is templated in emails and workflow tasks. So, as much as possible. So, between... So, meeting 1 is step 8 of our process, meeting 2 is step 24 of our process. So, in between we're using Docusign to send the client agreement. The ops team sends some of the templated emails and does some of the workflow tasks. The advisor sends some templated emails. Those templated emails will say, "Here's your homework," and it'll give the next Money Quotient worksheets and the request for cash flow spending numbers. And then we're setting up AdvicePay. So, I guess...

Michael: Because we've quoted a fee. So, now we know what the billing amount is going to be.

Becky: Right. And stepping aside for a second, AdvicePay was actually one of the places where I noticed that we had a proof of concept that this could work. Because when you look at our first maybe 18 months of AdvicePay number, it looks very much like the beginning of an exponential return graph. So, we are finding, "Oh, this is happening and there's a demand for this," and a little bit of "Field of Dreams" moment of, "Okay, if we build this, they will come." And so, we had that proof of concept in, I guess, it was 2023 when we had that.

Digging Deeper Into Clients’ Current Financial Situation And Goals [42:17]

Michael: Okay. So, now, take me into the second working session. Like, what are we doing here?

Becky: So, the second working session, we're going over questionnaires. So, we started clients with "Here, just check boxes about the qualitative side." Checking boxes is not very threatening, which then allows them to open up a little bit more about their qualitative side. What's going well in their life? What would they rather not do that huge, if money wasn't an obstacle, what would you do question? And so they're doing that questionnaire beforehand.

Then we're going over it in the meeting. We're also live asking them to complete the Wheel of Life tool. So, where there are nine different facets of life and we're ranking satisfaction on each of those. And then we're going over their spending. And at this point, we want to make sure that they're getting some of their financial questions answered. We don't want them to get through the second meeting feeling like, "Okay, where's this going?" We want them to have some sort of concrete answers to some of their questions. So, that will be the second half of the meeting where we're going over the numbers of spending, showing how that impacts their term scores, and then answering specific financial questions.

Michael: Okay. So, I can see how it's dialing in. We started very balance-sheet oriented. Now, we're getting deeper into spending so that we can back into it and figure out retirement savings and sustainability. So, what happens after meeting 2?

Becky: So, after meetings 2, 3, and 4, the same thing happens. And I'll just touch on briefly what we do in meetings 3 and 4. But client reviews notes, we're using Jump AI for note taking. If we have any tasks, we send those to Wealthbox. Then we send a templated follow-up email that has the Calendly link to schedule. We send them an invitation to Elements if we haven't already, so they can download the app and start using it on their own.

And then in that templated email, we'll send them questions in the direction of, "Okay, so we've established your point A, let's start thinking about your point B. So, how do you want to invest your time and energy? What do you think about planning? What do you think about goal setting?" So, that's prep for meeting 3. And we just go through the same meeting, review notes, send templated email with links to client homework. And then in the next meeting, we review the homework, starting qualitative, shifting quantitative, answering questions, rinse and repeat for a couple of meetings.

Michael: So, these middle meetings, like, 3, 4, 5, are just very oriented around, "Okay, now what questions do you have? And what are we doing next? Okay, now what questions do you have? And what are you doing next?" So, I guess, it's less process in that it's not like meeting number 1. We're covering Money Quotient and the term portion of Elements. And here's the talking points I need to cover for the meeting to get through the items. It sounds like by now you're into the more, dare I say, traditional planning of just whatever the client's bringing up and dealing with, we're analyzing and addressing and responding to.

Becky: Yes. And at the same time, going through a specific progression of qualitative content. So, meeting 3 is where you want to invest your time and energy? Meeting 4 is what are you daydreaming about? Meeting 5 then is, okay, what are we actually going to plan towards? So, the goal identification takes place over a few sessions.

Michael: Can you articulate those again, which is what? I'm liking those. I'm trying to scribble notes. So, just give me those again.

Becky: Thank you for slowing me down. And we're very much using the Money Quotient process. So, there are so many different ways to gather this qualitative data and whose tools you're using or if you're developing your own. But what we have is, meeting 3 is starting to think about how you want to invest time and energy, and starting to think about planning and goal setting. Meeting 4 then is a daydreaming meeting where it's just like, okay, there are no limitations, there are no time limitations, there are no money limitations, there's no energy limitations, what's your dream? And then meeting 5 is, all right, that was fun. Now, what's actually feasible for us to start working towards as a goal?

Michael: Okay. All of which culminates in some kind of recommendation around, "Okay, and your next actual planning steps are this and that."

Becky: And for a lot of clients in these phases, the next planning steps between meetings are just keep getting more familiar with your finances. And it does all culminate with a one-page financial plan where we're outlining a summary of the guide posts that they should be using in making their financial decisions. And for people, most of our clients have some amount of investments, whether it's 401(k) or elsewhere. And so, meeting 5, we're doing a risk tolerance questionnaire live with clients. And again, we do that live to assess their literacy and engagement level. How much do they actually care about this stuff? Or how much do they just want to outsource it and not think about it?

Michael: And what's your tool of choice around risk tolerance?

Becky: I forget who collaborated on this, but it was the one that Grable did.

Michael: Okay. Yep. That you just use the questionnaire directly, or do you use software tool to queue it up?

Becky: We queue it up through RightCapital.

Offering Different Planning Outputs Based On Client Complexity [49:21]

Michael: Okay. So, you said this still culminates in some financial plan with guidance on their decisions. So, help me understand what a financial plan is for you in this context or at this point. What are you producing? What's the output? You mentioned you're using RightCapital to generate it, what's a plan?

Becky: So, I'm going to say the most financial planner thing ever. It depends.

Michael: It depends.

Becky: It depends. So, with EWANs very often, the financial plan is a one-page financial plan, which is something that Elements is fantastic at creating, which states their statement of financial purpose, and then outlines what their goals and next steps are. So, the goal might be to someday be able to buy a vacation cabin, or as we call up here in Vermont, a camp. And the next step might be to research areas where you might want to have your camp, and to get an idea of what the level of cost might be. So, the one-page plan will show statement of financial purpose, goals, next steps, and then will show that scorecard of where they are with total term, liquid term, qualified term, and real estate term. And, say their goal is to buy a camp, we'll talk about increasing their liquid term to the point where they have enough for a down payment.

Michael: Okay. Because, again, the other context around planning particularly for EWAN clients is this is not a lot of let's do a retirement projection of where you'll be 32 years from now in your current trajectory of savings. It is much more short to intermediate term.

Becky: Even short-term.

Michael: Just, like, you want to camp over the next five years, and we're just trying to start moving the needle on your qualified term by beginning contributions to a Roth.

Becky: Correct, yep. So, areas where we want to move the needle, we want to set up as much as possible pre-commitment mechanisms, where they have automated savings for things. And we have clients who come in with their automated savings and we need to tell them to chill out and do less. And we have clients coming in without any automated savings and we're saying, "All right, let's set up just $100 a month. Let's just start there."

So, again, it depends dramatically on the client what that deliverable is going to look like. For some, it will be an Elements one-page plan. For some, it will be a fully built RightCapital. And so, that's where the $100 to $500 span comes in. If somebody's going to involve RightCapital, it's definitely going to be at least $400 a month, where we're having to do that data entry, Monte Carlo analysis, verifying data at a level that allows us to be comfortable to give the advice that they're seeking.

Michael: So, I missed that. So, the baseline, one-page plan, statement of financial purpose goals, next steps, that's an Elements-generated plan for you.

Becky: Correct, yep.

Okay. So, RightCapital is only the clients that need the, I guess, "The more complex plan," not to, like, paint Elements simple and RightCapital complex, but it sounds like that's the delineating factor for you. If I actually have to do the long-term 27-year retirement projection with Monte Carlo and the rest, then I'm in a full RightCapital plan. If I'm anchored more to short to intermediate term goals, building that worth, keeping control of spending, I can live in an Elements one-page plan.

Becky: That's right.

Michael: And part of the cost lever is, is this going to be an Elements one-page plan client, or is this going to be a full RightCapital projections plan client?

Becky: Yes. And I'm making a note to add that delineation into our pricing worksheet.

Creating Service Tiers For Clients Who Want To Continue After The Initial Six-Month "Sprint" [54:14]

Michael: Yeah. So, then how does this six-month engagement flow end for you?

Becky: That's what we've been working on for the last six to nine months. So, once we've done this with clients, once we've sat and held space for clients to get vulnerable about their finances and realize that we can answer their questions and help them feel confident and build clarity, many of them do want to keep working with us. Some of them don't either because they don't want that cost, or they feel confident to do it on their own. And we're indifferent to either choice, whether clients keep working with us or not.

If they decide to keep working with us, we then have two options for them. One is a continued subscription engagement, and we give them options there with various levels of engagement from, "We're just here for you if you need us and you'll pay extra for meetings, but we're maintaining your data in the background." To almost a full on traditional planning client, where they're paying us $500 a month and we're having three or four meetings a year. So, am I answering your question?

Michael: Yeah. I guess, I'm curious even more than to hear about the tiers if you go from... I guess, I'm just trying to visualize, what does it mean? We're here if you need us, but you pay for meetings. So, what do you do? What are they paying for in that tier?

Becky: Yeah. So, we do have a couple of clients who are paying us $42 a month. That's $500 a year, more or less. And with that, they're getting responsive email guidance. They have access to Elements. And we're focusing on their spending and going in the right direction, but we're not doing a whole lot more than that. And then one-on-one sessions are available for whatever the hourly rate is of the planner that they're working with.

Michael: Okay. So that in your framing here, like the $42 a month tier literally isn't even a tier with a meeting. It's, "Email us your questions and we'll reply in a timely manner," but you're not even at meeting tier yet.

Becky: Correct.

Michael: Okay. And then what's the... Like, is it that or your full financial planning client or are there, like, steps, are there layers?

Becky: No, there are a couple tiers in between where we might do...so, if they're paying up to $400 a month, we'll do two to three meetings throughout the year, and we'll keep rate capital updated as they need it. And then there's another tier of up to $800 a month. We've not run into any of these clients, yet. And I actually have to hat tip to Yohance Harrison on this. I followed his service model growth illustration when we were building this out. So, up to $800 a month, it's everybody. It's the same level that any million dollar AUM client would get of priority email and phone support, quarterly meetings, comprehensive planning, tax and investment strategy, the whole shebang.

Michael: Okay. Okay. And do you do any... Like, these are all subscription based models, so do you have any AUM component of your model from a business model perspective, or are you all subscription fees and tiered appropriately to clients?

Becky: So, we do have AUM, and that is seen. We see that as an add-on to the subscription model. So, whether a client has AUM or not, they'll be slotted into one of these tiers in terms of how much support they get. And then if they do have AUM, that's billed at a flat 50 basis points a year.

Michael: Okay. So, in your world, I guess, compared to a lot of firms where AUM is the baseline model, and if you need more extra planning, we may have a planning fee. You kind of flipped the other way around, the baseline is there's a subscription fee for ongoing advice and planning services. Oh, and if you need asset management, we'll do that for an AUM fee, but your AUM fee is a bit lower than others because the main overhead of the clients is covered by the subscription fee for planning and advice relationship.

Becky: That's right. And part of the reason for doing it that way is to actually simplify things on the operations side to find efficiencies because we have just one fee schedule. It's 50 basis points for all assets for all clients. And so, as we're running billing, it just takes a lot investment.

Michael: Okay. So, AUM billing is really simple.

Becky: AUM billing is so simple.

Michael: Balance, 50 bps, enter.

Becky: Plus that fixed fee. So, the fixed fee we can program into Orion once and never. I mean, we could adjust it, and probably will at some point, but we just bill it in once.

Michael: Okay. Well, and, I guess, so in that vein, it sounds like if they have investment accounts, you're billing the AUM fee and the advice fees to the investment accounts through Orion. I guess if they don't have investment accounts, then you're billing through AdvicePay because you need them to pay from bank accounts or other accounts.

Becky: Correct.

The Division Of In-Meeting Versus Out-Of-Meeting Work [1:00:29]

Michael: Okay. Okay. So, relative to our original discussion around working sessions and trying to keep this efficient for clients... I guess I'm just trying to visualize, like, how much in-meeting work, versus between-meeting work do you still end up with as you go through this six-meeting process.

Becky: So, the first four meetings is almost entirely in-meeting work. So, we are orienting the clients to their financial life. We are getting a sense of who they are personally, financially, what their history is, what they're dreaming of. All of that is in-meeting work. We're doing data entry in Elements in-meeting. As we get into meeting 5, we do pick up a little bit more of out-of-meeting work. So, in meeting 5, we'll do the risk tolerance questionnaire. We'll build the IPS [Investment Policy Statement], which we call investor intent. And we will use the meeting, the risk tolerance questionnaire, but then we are building out a three-dimensional risk tolerance. So, tolerance, appetite, and requirement. So, we gather risk tolerance, risk appetite through the questionnaire and conversation around it. And then requirement, we determine through our planning with, generally, if clients are RightCapital clients, we'll be modeling their plan in RightCapital. That RightCapital build-out, that does happen out-of-meeting.

Michael: Okay. And then what do clients have as homework or, like, where do their homework bits show up?

Becky: So, between every meeting, there's going to be some amount of Money Quotient work and some amount of data gathering work. So, between meetings, clients will be asked to upload things to our portal. We're in the process of switching what that is. We have been using ShareFile. We're switching over to Box.

Michael: Out of curiosity, just why? Always fascinated when we're dropping one provider for another, why leaving ShareFile for Box.

Becky: Our IT company does not support ShareFile. So, we don't have a great help desk for ShareFile. Box will integrate more with our tools and our IT company will support it, including supporting the backup process so that that's not manual. And so, it's mostly for simplicity, integration and security.

Becky: And ShareFile has been great and is feasible to stay with. And for those reasons I mentioned, we're shifting at this time.

Michael: So, I'm wondering as well, you mentioned a lot of steps overall. I think you said one point, like, by the time we're in meeting number 2, we're on, like, step 20-something of our process. So, is there, like, a whole process workflow thing built out in Wealthbox to do all of this?

Becky: Yeah. It's an automated...or not automated, but it is a workflow in Wealthbox. And so, once advisor has the initial meeting and clicks that I have sent the templated email, then it moves over to ops team to keep an eye out for the client to say yes, or no, or the prospect to say yes, or no. And then it triggers...most of these steps are five-to-ten minute steps, update CRM, prepare and send new client packet, set up tech platforms, things that ops can do relatively quickly. So, another part of our efficiencies are to be sure that ops is doing things that they can do that don't require the six or seven classes of CFP and the CFP exam to be able to do.

Michael: I'm curious, is there, like, a process document of this that you'd be willing to share out to folks who are listening? I know it's always fascinating to literally see, like, how others build their process.

Becky: Yeah. So, we'll share with you a spreadsheet that will show what the step of the process is, where the meetings are, what our qualitative and quantitative content are for each of those meetings.

Michael: Awesome. Awesome. So, I guess, for folks who are listening, this is episode 453. So, if you go to kitces.com/453. We'll have a link out to Becky's workflow around this of how it all comes together, hope with all of the glorious steps.

Becky: And we'll also share our service offering guide, which we built after your Advisor Value Summit in December.

Michael: Oh, very cool. Yeah.

Becky: So, there will be some pieces that are familiar to anybody who was in that summit.

Michael: I'm glad this was helpful to create a new deliverable. So, I guess, can you talk about for a moment just, like, in your world and nomenclature, like, what is a service offering guide?

Becky: So, the service offering guide is a way to orient the clients ahead of time to what our process will be. So, that's where you picked up on the term working sessions, where we are sitting down and talking to clients about...we're giving them the heads up on what this is going to look like, so that they have fewer questions in that initial meeting, and that their questions are better informed if they've read this. If they haven't read it, we go through it and share with them what does our ongoing financial planning approach look like, and that piece about investment management as an add on, we share that with them. And it also gives them that sense of what Money Quotient work is going to look like. So, it includes under our Money Quotient partnership agreement, we're able to share the financial satisfaction survey. So, these are...again, Money Quotient’s own copyrighted tools. So, we have the, we have the licensing agreement with Money Quotient, where we're sharing this financial satisfaction survey, just to give them a sense of the breadth of topics that we can cover.

Michael: Okay. Okay. And so, nominally, the service guide is for prospects before the meeting to get them oriented to what you do. What's the difference between the service guide and like, we have a website that, you know, tells us, talks about what we do on our website.

Becky: The service guide gets more into the nitty gritty of what to expect. So, the website is, "Here, get a feel for who we are as people and who we are as a firm," whereas the service guide says, "Okay, here's specifically what you can expect to have happen."

What Oak Maple Looks Like Today [1:08:19]

Michael: Okay. Okay. So, now, let's kind of zoom out for a moment bigger picture. So, now, help us understand the advisory firm overall as it exists today.

Becky: Okay. So, the advisory firm, I'm the founder. So, we launched in 2022. And we're currently a team of four full-time plus one…we now call her a remote assistant rather than a virtual assistant so that people can at least think that she's real, and she is, and she works.

Michael: So, that's an interesting point. Like, remote assistance are people on our office, virtual assistants are, like, AI because they're virtual, maybe.

Becky: Right, because they're virtual. And I have had people ask me if she's a real person. So, yeah, so a virtual assistant who does bookkeeping, payroll, file management, tasks like that. So, our full-time team is myself and Corrie Parker, who's a CFP. She's not the hundred thousandth CFP, but she's right around there.

Michael: Very cool.

Becky: And she's been the one primarily working with these EWAN clients as we're growing out the model. And then we have our ops team. Emily and Jacey, our client service operations, marketing, the back office functions.

Michael: Okay. And then client, like, how many clients does the firm serve?

Becky: So, we serve around 50 client households for AUM, and currently have about 20 to 25 active subscription clients.

Michael: Okay. Who are, like, subscription-only, no AUM.

Becky: Correct.

Michael: Okay. And then can I ask, like, what other AUM or revenue is for the firm overall?

Becky: So, firm revenue is in the neighborhood of $600,000, depending on what's going on in the market.

Michael: Tell me what happened in the market the week that you listened to this and I'll tell you where the area of revenue is. Okay. And, I guess, just curious how that revenue splits in practice between the subscription fee portion and the AUM portion, or just, like, what AUM is in total for the firm.

Becky: So, AUM in total is right around $80 million. Again, tell me the day and I'll tell you more specific, but we're around $80 million AUM. And that means that about two thirds of our revenue, and don't do the math, but you can correct me if I'm wrong, I suppose, about two thirds is that 50 basis points AUM and a third is subscription or financial planning.

Michael: Okay. So, is that all, like, these EWAN-style clients that grew to that level of AUM or do you have, like, non- EWAN, and I guess, like, "more traditional" clients that come on as well, or are you, like, starting from a prior firm and you had clients that come from a prior firm?

Becky: So I started from a prior firm. So, I started with, I think it was 45 legacy clients, traditional planning clients. And so, the EWAN clients comprise probably only about 5% for now at this point.

Michael: Okay. And so, then I guess, relative to the whole discussion around working sessions and this flow, like, is working sessions a thing you're doing with the new client segment because you're trying to serve them efficiently as you go quote "down market"? Or is this, like, a firm-wide thing? Like, the deal with Becky is we're a working session firm, not a client meeting firm.

Becky: Certainly moving in the direction of being a working session firm. And having clients get used to that, once that...you know, some of my clients I've been working with for 18 years, maybe, shifting their expectations has been part of the work of establishing the firm.

Michael: Yeah, I guess, it's a good point, you know, people accept the reality that they're presented. So, a new client who comes on board into a working session environment, just, like, "This is how it works with Becky." Clients that you've been serving where you come for the meeting and then we do all the work for you afterwards and tell you how it went. Like that prep, delivery, follow-up model, if that's what they're used to, that's ironically harder to shift. It's like, it's harder to change an existing client's expectations sometimes than it is just get a new client who comes with fresh expectations of whatever you're doing for them.

Becky: That's right.

Becky’s Path Through The Financial Planning Profession [1:13:43]

Becky: So, if I may talk a little bit about my origin story in the profession.

Michael: Yeah, yeah, please.

Becky: So, as a 25-year-old, I realized that there was some game here called personal finance that could be played in a way that would be supportive of a great life. And I wanted someone to teach me the rules. And reading the books sort of taught me the rules, but didn't help me apply them to my very specific situation. So, I talked to a CFP at a large brokerage, who gave me advice and told me that with the start of liquidity, I had the very most important thing for me to do was to buy a house. This was in 2003 in Southeast Michigan. And the planner told me that housing prices only go up, and that because I had the liquidity that purchasing a house was the right choice.

So, my husband and I went, we bought a house. And we then called the advisor back and said, "Okay, now, what's our next step?" And we were ghosted. And that's what planted the seed for me of, "Wait a second, I want a service and I want to pay for this service. Why can't I get the service that I want?" So, that's been the...

Michael: Because you put your money in your house instead of his investment account, Becky.

Becky: I'm going to call you in there, Michael. You made an assumption. it was her.

Michael: Oh, called me out for that.

Becky: Yeah. But, yeah. So, because we bought a house and we didn't buy insurance from her because she knew that that's not what we needed. Well, it turns out that the housing bubble burst in the rust belt before it burst everywhere else. And when my husband got his PhD in economics and we left Southeast Michigan, we ended up, fortunately selling our house before it burst to the extent that we were underwater. But we had just enough to pay off our car loan and nothing more. So, we lost any down payment, any home equity that we had, which is the best worst financial advice that I've ever received because it drove me even more to say, there's gotta be a better way.

So, at that point, I started exploring. I actually found NAPFA, and realized that there are people who give advice for a fee who aren't motivated by commissions. And so, I thought, "Aha, my problems are all solved. I'm going to become a certified financial planner and join NAPFA and I'll be able to serve," what I didn't know was called EWANs, but "I'll be able to serve EWANs right away." and then the world told me no, and told me that there's no efficient way to serve this population yet. So, it wasn't until I encountered Money Quotient in 2019 and Elements in 2021, that I had the tools that I needed to serve the clients in the way that I wanted to.

Michael: And so, then in 2022, you launched your own firm to start building in that direction while you maintain currently with the legacy clients that you had from traditional planning of the past.

Becky: That's right. And there was one step 2007 to 2009, where I actually started my first firm as a solo RIA. But because XYPN didn't exist, I didn't have the infrastructure I needed and the support I needed to be able to stick the landing there. So, I started my own firm, got pregnant with my second child.

Michael: Well, rough time to start just from a financial environment alone. Like, financial crisis, not the best time to launch an advisory firm from scratch, to which was not...

Becky: Exactly. So, very fortunately, there was a local advisor who invited me to join his firm. And I joined his firm. Became a minority partner in 2018. In 2022, I got COVID, and ended up having the short straw of COVID, which was that I had Long COVID. And so, I ended up spending March, April, May, 2022 incredibly sick. And so, that just gave me a lot of time to reflect. And the outcome of that reflection was, it's time to return to my origin in the profession, to serve the population that wasn't able to get served back when I was a EWAN.

What Surprised Becky The Most Building Her Advisory Business [1:18:51]

Michael: So, what surprised you the most on this journey then of building your own advisory business?

Becky: I think in the journey in the last three years, how much fun it could be, how exciting it could be to be imagining something new, and putting that imagination into practice and learning from it…is just a lot of fun. So, I think that that's probably what surprised me the most, recently.

Michael: So, I guess by nature of being a surprise, so you didn't expect that? You expected it to be a little more draggy and grindy?

Becky: I didn't. I didn't know it was possible for working this hard to be so much fun. And I guess the second thing that surprised me is that it's possible to reach a point in your career, and I know that you've told stories about this, where working more or sleeping less is not an option, that the responsibilities, opportunities, ideas are going to fill way more than 24 hours in a day, so you have to choose. So, it took me 20 years to get to that point, but that's another thing that surprised me.

Michael: And so, like, how do you frame the, the choice? Like, what did you choose, and what did you leave behind at that crossroads?

Becky: So, I chose to be unapologetically myself, and wanting to chase the things that I wanted to go after. And that's answering this question of how to serve EWANs. And I chose having the flexibility that allows me to support myself and my family. And then, as I've recovered from Long COVID, that's meant listening very carefully to my nervous system, what leads to a sense of safety rather than the uncomfortableness of traditional financial planning environments.

The Low Point On Becky’s Journey [1:21:16]

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

Becky: So, the low point was the 2018 to 2022 timeframe. That was the time when I had the most free cashflow, where there was a lot of saying yes to the fun things in life. And it was also...

Michael: It sounds terrible.

Becky: I know, it sounds terrible.

Michael: The cashflow stage. Yes to fun things in life.

Becky: Saying yes to the fun things in life.

Michael: Clearly the low point.

Becky: Clearly the low point when we could turn all of this money on, you know, let's go on vacation and let's do this and let's do that. And sure you can go to that camp and all of those things. But what I found was, and this was in reading the book, "Designing Your Work Life" while I had a high degree of satisfaction in the financial aspects, I had a really low degree of satisfaction in the impact that I was having and the expression of my passions and my creativity. So, I found over slowly burning, and then culminating with getting sick with Long COVID, there was not an alignment with the traditional firm I was at. And it was time for me to leave. And so, it was an amicable separation, and a lot of work to move the clients over. But that low point was really a moment of, "Okay, I just need to not to say yes to the fun things in life, but say yes to the things that would light me up and be fun in work, not just fun outside of work."

Michael: Okay. So, you had a like, "My work was the high income, low enjoyment thing that was enabling the lifestyle I wanted and I enjoyed." And the realization was, "But I actually liked the work part to be more enjoyable as well. Not the financial enabler for non-work things."

Becky: That's right.

Becky’s Advice For Her Younger Self And For Newer Advisors [1:23:29]

Michael: So, I guess, then in that vein, like, what else do you know now you wish that you could go back and tell you from 10 or 15 years ago as you were early in this journey?

Becky: That's hard because the world's so different now than it was 15 years ago. But I would tell my younger self to have more confidence than I did, that I know more than I think I do, and to trust myself. So, trust my intuition, trust my ideas, and to trust that what I know about what works for me for work is what I should be doing. Yeah, that's what I'd... And also, not to wait until I'm ready, just take the first step. If we wait until we're ready, we'll never be ready.

Michael: So, what helped you get over that leap, eventually? Because it sounds like you did take some time trying to wait to get ready, originally.

Becky: So, I had been doing some career coaching. My coach's name was Melody Wilding, and she wrote a book that was actually called "Trust Yourself." So, doing career coaching with her really helped. And then, having a month or two of reflection time, but not the capacity to work, also really helped me realize there's no time like right now. We're not guaranteed our health. We're not guaranteed the next 20 years of our careers. So, just do it.

Michael: So, what advice would you give younger, newer advisors, like, coming into the profession today and trying to build their path?

Becky: I would tell them to find their community within the profession, but outside of their firm and maybe their region as soon as possible. The feedback and support of peers is so incredibly valuable. And a shout out to my community outside of my firm. I have a study group I meet with monthly. We started in 2018 Clarissa Hobson, Susan Green, and I were at a conference and we said, hey, we need to have, and this will sound familiar, a director of financial planning study group.

Michael: Fantastic.

Becky: So, there's a group of seven of us. We meet monthly unless the world's falling apart with the pandemic, and then we meet weekly. We support each other. I had emails from all of them this morning cheering me on for this recording. And we often will joke that we get way more than $19 worth of value out of our meetings. So, the $19 director of financial planning study group fee that Kitces has, definitely worth it.

Michael: Excellent. Yeah. You know, my early career was as many years as director of financial planning as well, and just feeling very lonely not having anyone else to talk to, because most of us are, like, departments of one or very few and in mid- to large-size organizations. So, yeah, we very much launched a study group through Kitces for directors of financial planning. Because it was just another one of those, "I never had this when I was in the role. I really want to make it for the others in the future. We can make this better for those who come after us."

Becky: Exactly. So, we joke that we're the OG directors of financial planning study group. And...

Michael: Yeah, you really are.

Becky: Yeah, starting in 2018 at the Phoenix NAPFA conference. And, yeah, so the advice that I would give is to find your people, find your peers, because the feedback that people who have no skin in your game can give you is invaluable, and then the support as well.

What Success Means To Becky [1:27:41]

Michael: Very cool. So, as we wrap up, this is a podcast about success, and just one of the themes that comes up, literally that word success means very different things to different people. And so, you're on this wonderful path of building the advisory business as you're crossing $600,000 of revenue and it's growing, and you seem to have very good clarity about who you're serving and what you're doing for them. And so, the business seems in a wonderful place now. How do you define success for yourself at this point?

Becky: Going back to when I found financial planning as my calling, success looks like doing well while doing good. So, having that financial and time freedom to choose what's most important to me and my family, building meaningful and heartfelt relationships with colleagues, clients, friends, family, the people I meet on the street, my hot chocolate people around the corner, and serving my purpose, which is to help people build and find joy in lives that they love. So, success means really serving my purpose and doing it in a way that works for my unique strengths and my unique challenges.

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

Becky: Thank you so much, Michael. Thank you for having me.

Michael: Absolutely.