Driving More Client Referrals In The First 100 Days By Crafting An Exceptional Onboarding Experience: #FASuccess Ep 444 With Libby Greiwe

Resources Featured In This Episode:

• Libby Greiwe: Website | LinkedIn
• Libby's First 100 Days Resources For Advisors
• #FA Success Ep 302: Structuring Your Ideal Week To Become A Highly-Leveraged Individual Advisor, With Libby Greiwe
• Joey Coleman Group
• The First 100 Days
• #FASuccess Ep 009: Carolyn McClanahan On Using A Complexity-Based Retainer Model To Deliver Holistic Financial Planning
• Loom
• The Efficient Advisor Podcast Episode 184: Tactical Business Advice for Financial Advisors
• The Amy Porterfield Show

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Full Transcript:

Michael: Welcome, Libby Greiwe, to the "Financial Advisor Success" podcast.

Libby: Thank you for having me. I'm super excited to be here again.

Michael: I'm really excited to have you back and to get to talk about the fascinating topic of onboarding new clients. And I guess, at its core, what it takes to onboard clients efficiently. And I feel like you're the queen of being an efficient advisor. That's literally your "Efficient Advisor" podcast platform, incredibly popular episode that we had you out for a couple of years ago on how to run your practice more efficiently. So kitces.com/302 for anybody that wants to go back and listen to the prior. But today we're going to dive even more deeply into that particular process, I think often in need of efficiency, which is onboarding. On the one hand, we've got the big old list of paperwork, at least digital usually these days, but there's agreements to sign, there's accounts to open, there's transfers to complete. But then there's also the "I've got to more deeply establish the relationships, set some expectations about how we're going to be working together."

And as I always think of it, just crossing that moment that all clients go through right after they sign and agree to come on board where they have this potential moment of panic where they start wondering like, "Oh, wait, was this really the right decision or am I going to regret this? Maybe I should change my mind. I only just only just signed the paperwork," which to me is really perhaps one of the most important parts of good onboarding that clients get to reinforce this was a good decision as they start actually onboarding and not that they start feeling those moments of regret. And just in addition to just doing it efficiently as a firm. So I feel like with all that, I put a whole lot on your shoulders about what we're hoping to get out of a discussion of better onboarding processes and what you're going to share with us today.

Reducing Friction Points To Create A Better Experience For An Advisory Firm And Its Clients [05:10]

Libby: Yeah, no, no, I'm here for it. I love talking about onboarding because it's one of the perfect examples. And this is really true for every process, right? So I feel like over the last 20-something years in this industry, I've identified that most practices have about the seven or eight same core processes and all of them really do need to be looked at through two lenses, which is exactly what you just brought up, right? We have the lens of our side of the business and how do we do things efficiently and effectively from a business processing standpoint? But there's this other side of the coin that we need to be looking at and it's looking through the lens of, what is the client psychology? What are they experiencing during this process? And then how do we actually build our process to move our clients through it very intentionally? We want to understand what is it that they're thinking and feeling when they're coming into this process? What are they experiencing during this process and where do we want them to end up? And then we actually need to build our systems to move them across that invisible bridge. And there's some great examples that I can give of how we neglect to do this and the catastrophic consequences that can come from that. But really, we want to use process to build relationship in addition to just pushing paper around.

Michael: So I think just following right into that, can you give us an example a little bit more concretely of what it looks like when it's bad, what it looks like when it's good? Because I feel like you're now putting even more on the shoulders of what is a good process. And a lot of us are still in the like, "Yeah, I just hate how many forms there are and I have to keep switching between apps to get all the data in there." So help us understand a little more maybe with an example of the kinds of differences you're talking about or the kind of process you're trying to get us to.

Libby: Absolutely. So let me peel it back even further. So when I look at building a process, whether it was in my own advisory business or whether I'm helping an advisor build a process for their business, there's really three distinct layers that make a good process regardless of the process. So this true for onboarding. This true for client service model. This true for a process for when a client's spouse dies, is there's three core layers. So the first layer, and this is what makes a good process, is having a documented, what we call the paperwork layer. So this the SOPs [Standard Operating Procedures]. This how to take an application and get business issued without NIGOs [Not In Good Order] and mistakes and errors. This is setting clients up in a portal. This is the CRM work. This kind of the basic paperwork-y functional layer. And a good process has a good documented paperwork layer.

The next layer we want to consider, so this is what makes a great process, is what I call the expectations layer. So this is where we are using our process to appropriately set expectations for our clients, for our team, and for ourselves. And then the third layer...so a good process has a paperwork layer, a great process has an expectations layer, and an exceptional process has what we call the remarkable layer, where we are using process to develop human-to-human connections, where we are using this process to make our clients feel seen, known, and heard. So that's kind of the core basis. Like when we're thinking about building out a process, we want to have these three components in order to take it from kind of like a ho-hum, like just business processing, all the way up to this very experiential process that our clients will notice a remarkable difference between you and any other advisor that they had worked with previously.

Michael: So can you now start taking me into an example of this?

Libby: Absolutely. So let me...can I share a story first?

Michael: Sure.

Libby: And then I'll give you a very, very specific concrete example. So I love to think about building process and looking through that lens of client experience as a way of reducing friction, right? We want to think about every potential friction point that exists for our side of the business and for the clients in the process. So I love to share this story about, I can remember being in New York City, I was probably in my late 20s, and I was standing on the curb trying to hail a taxi and it was pouring rain. So I was just getting soaked. I was standing there waving my arms around like a crazy person. The cabs were zooming by, some had lights on, some had lights off. And I'm like, well, that's weird because the cabs with the lights on are still passing me. Okay, well, maybe I'm standing in the wrong spot. So I moved to another spot and I'm waving my arms around and they're not stopping. And I'm like, oh, well, maybe I'm doing it wrong and I look like a tourist. Maybe I should use one arm. Yeah.

So finally I get a taxi to pull over and I hop in and I can remember holding my Nokia phone up to the glass with the address, trying to explain to the driver my destination. And finally, okay, we made this connection. He got it and we started to take off. And in my mind, when I looked at a map, the destination was on the same road that I was on just however many blocks away. So we start taking these weird turns. And I remember sitting there thinking, as I watched the meter continue to grow, right, is this the most direct route? Are we going off route because he's trying to charge me more?

Michael: Yeah. Why can't you just take me 20 blocks down this avenue? Why are we turning and taking what seems to be a longer route?

Libby: Right. Absolutely. I'm like, it feels like it's taking longer and we're going to these obscure places. Maybe he knows something that I don't know, which is great, but I'm watching the meter continue to tick up and the price continue to increase. So we finally get to the destination. And when we arrive, he looks at me and he's like, "Okay, that'll be $40 cash only." And I was like, "Well, that's weird because you literally have a sign in your cab that says you take Visa, MasterCard, and American Express, and the meter says $28." And he's like, "Nope, $40 cash. If you don't have it, I'm going to take you back to where I picked you up from and drop you." It was like, oh my goodness gracious. And I just remember like, okay, I got there and it was fine, but it wasn't a great experience. I mean, I'm 43 and I still remember how I felt, how the cab smelled, all of the details.

So enter Uber. Right, now, if I travel to New York, I can stand in the lobby of my hotel where it's nice and dry. The car, I know exactly what car is coming, when it's pulling up, they know exactly where to pick me up. We've got that pin dropped, right? We're both on the same page. I can walk out at the perfect moment, slide into the cab. They know exactly where I'm going before I even get in for a set price. When we arrive at the destination, I can slide out. There's no transaction. It's already been taken care of and I can give immediate feedback to the next user. And what I love about this illustration or this example is that Uber doesn't necessarily get me there any faster or any cheaper than a taxi. But every time I'm speaking at a conference and I'm sharing the story or giving this example, I'm like, "Okay, how many of you took a cab from the airport to the conference hotel?" And there's always one or two hands that go up. And I'm like, "I'm even going to cut you some slack because they make it as easy as humanly possible at an airport because you literally just get in line. And then how many of you took Uber?" And it's literally Uber or Lyft. It's everybody else's hands.

And the answer is because it's so much easier. Uber, all they did was come in and reduce all of the friction points that a consumer experiences in that process. They didn't get me there faster. They didn't get me there any cheaper, but it was smoother. It was easier. I felt safer. And the human brain is wired to want to know what to expect next. So when you know it's going to be the same process every single time and it's going to be easy, you're more inclined to use that service. And I know every single person, the first time they took an Uber, totally told three or four people about it because it was so different and so interesting.

And so I like to think of process through this exact same lens. So if we are looking at just on how to make our business operate smoother, that doesn't necessarily address all of the psychology that is happening for our clients. So the actual example that I'll give you is, so I can remember closing a huge case and a big client coming in and being like, "Libby, we love your recommendations and we can't wait to work with you." And if my response was, "Okay, great, I'm going to have Lori send over the paperwork," and the client leaves and I am like, hey, I did a good job. I think I'm going to take the rest of the day off and go golfing, or go get a massage, or go get in the tub and read some sort of period romance novel. If that's my process and I leave the office and I'm going and doing my thing, what I'm neglecting is that while my client just said, "Hey, we're super excited to work with you," they have now started their own emotional journey that is onboarding.

So they immediately have a spike in cortisol where...and it's a chemical response when we make big decisions, whether they're emotional big decisions, physical big decisions, or financial big decisions, we get flooded with cortisol, and we all know that term as buyer's remorse, where immediately we have this chemical reaction where we're like, okay, wait, did I interview enough people? Did I do enough research? What's this really going to look like at tax season? Am I going to get hammered? How much paperwork is it going to be? Oh, Lord, I have to set up a new portal and have a new login. I wonder how many characters and special numbers and letters that's going to be and where am I going to store that? And okay, who do I need to tell? What bank accounts do I need to get on file? And oh man, we have to break up with Dave. Dave wasn't a bad advisor. He was a fine advisor, but that's going to be really hard. What do we even say to him? So our client is going through all of this stuff. And if we're just laying in the bathtub with "Bridgerton" having our best life and our process is...

Michael: Thrilled, closed the client, got the yes, riding high. What is it? They're running on cortisol and we're running on dopamine.

Libby: Absolutely. Yes, that's absolutely what's happening. And so if our process isn't designed to help them move through that, then we're completely missing this opportunity to reduce all of the friction points and to be the Uber of financial services. So we want to think through that lens of what are they experiencing and how can I actually build a process that helps them move through that? So how do I address all of these concerns that they're having knowing that this a scientific thing that is going to happen to them?

Michael: Okay. That's very helpful as context around it. So we're now really trying to navigate, okay, you were excited because we just got a new client that said yes, and they're just starting to freak out about the amount of change and the things that they actually have to do and move in old relationships. They have to terminate new logins. They have to set up and all the things that they're going to have to do to be our client now that reality is setting in for them.

Libby: Yes. In addition to that fear of, did we make the right decision? Did we do the right thing? Is this really going to be better than where I'm currently at? Is it worth all of this effort? Is he or she all that they're cracked up to be?

Creating An Onboarding Experience That Wows Clients [16:22]

Michael: Okay. So now with that, start to help us understand what a different kind of onboarding process might look like really. So what do we start doing to change our onboarding to better align to what you're talking about here?

Libby: Right. So I have this one teeny tiny piece of onboarding. So I love to use sort of the illustration of dating to getting married. So I think about onboarding, when I talk about onboarding, the window of time that I'm talking about. So when we talk about how important this first 100 days for a client experience is, I'm talking about the moment from when they say yes to you long term. So I like to think of it as sort of your prospect-to-client process is a lot like dating. So for most advisors, this looks like some sort of discovery meeting. Then we're gathering data about their goals. We're having conversations that are deep and meaningful. What's your first memory of money? All of the behavioral stuff. We're gathering their intimate financial information. We're plugging it into some sort of software program typically, and we're coming up with some sort of recommendation. So this window of time, in our group coaching program, some advisors have eight, nine, ten steps in this part. Some have two or three, so it looks a little different for everybody. But typically, even if there's only a few steps, there's still a lot of communication, a lot of contact, a lot of deep conversation. So I think about it through the lens of dating.

So if you were dating somebody and they're taking you out on lots of dates and you're going for long walks and having these meaningful connections and all these conversations, and then you get married and your new spouse looks at you and says, "Okay, great. Well, now that we're married, we're going to go out on our anniversary and that's it." The feeling would be like, well, hold on, wait a minute, wait a minute. That was not what our experience was. It's kind of, wah, wah, wah. Nobody wants that. And so in the same vein, if we are dating our clients, if we're high contact, high touch, on our best behavior, we're trying to razzle-dazzle and impress everybody during this prospect-to-client window. And then if once they say yes to us, we're just like, "Okay, great, we'll do a bunch of paperwork and we'll see you on your one-year anniversary for our annual strategy session," it's going to feel a little like, "Oh, oh, once they got our money, then they only want to call us once a year." Or we have all this high touch and then we don't really communicate with them for six months. If you're on a semi-annual review, it can feel a little bit like they dropped off a cliff.

And so there's a lot of research by the Joey Coleman Group around what this first 100 days looks like. And when the Coleman Group went out and did all of their studies, they found that it didn't matter if it was a first-world country, a second-world country, Eastern culture, Western culture, if it was a service or if it was a product, that the consumer's experience of an organization within the first 100 days directly impacted the lifetime value of the customer. It directly impacted the longevity of the relationship of the customer, meaning that if we do a really exceptional job creating an experience within this first 100 days, that makes the clients feel cared for, seen, known, heard, like this going to be an experience that's very vastly different than anything they've experienced before, then we're going to be able to have lifetime customers.

And the byproduct, what we experienced in my practice and what I've seen happen over and over again for advisors that I work with, is that when they tweak their onboarding and they break it down into these kind of three time segments we'll talk about and were really intentional with how we build this process, you actually start to get more referrals within the first 100 days than any other point in the relationship, which to me, growing up at a broker-dealer, I was raised in the old adage of you have to prove your value and demonstrate all of your value for years and years and years, and then at that point only does it make sense to do something to try to generate referrals from your existing clients. And when we started to see people who we hadn't really even done much for at this point, other them a really solid financial plan, start to refer their friends and family or really ideal clients for us, we were like, whoa, what's going on here? And what we realized is because their experience was so vastly different, it was so friction-free, they felt like, whoa, this going to be so different than anything we've experienced before, they were already, without us really even doing a whole lot, starting to tell their friends and family.

Michael: Interesting. I do think it's an interesting contrast that, yeah, I started in, I guess, "traditional" channels as well. And yeah, the whole nature of referrals was after you complete the business, after you complete the thing, then you open up the conversation about referrals. I actually got trained at one point in a version of when you deliver the insurance policy they bought, that's also the right time that you pull out the piece of paper and said, "Do you know some other people that might benefit from the work that we just did together? Please put their names and contact information on this piece of paper." So very cringy to reflect back on. But it was entirely built around the referrals come after you complete the service, the thing, get them through, give them the output, or outcome, or product, or deliverable, and then say, "If you liked this, please tell your friends about it." So the idea that referrals can come when they're in the onboarding phase is, like you said, "We haven't actually done that much for them yet," is an interesting contrast, is a really interesting contrast to me.

Libby: It is, right? And it's crazy to me because normally when I'm building processes for people, I'm typically out there going, "Don't do that, slash that, you're doing too much, make that faster, make it easier." But onboarding is actually one of the processes that it usually surprises people when I'm like, "I want you to slow down and I want you to do a little more. There's a few extra things that I want you to do in here that don't seem necessary." And obviously I'm a big, big believer in it has to be efficient and it has to be effective. And this one of those processes that the ROI [Return On Investment] is huge when we slow down and we add a couple intentional touch points and we do things that seem like, wow, that feels a little extra, or man, do I have the time, capacity, and energy for that?

But when we're able to get ahead of client concerns, client issues, when clients feel so good and they're starting to refer people, that alleviates marketing budget, that alleviates that feeling of where's my next paycheck going to come from, or how am I going to grow this thing? When you start to get ideal referrals within that first 100 days and your service team, or you if you're a solo advisor, when you're seeing less client concerns, questions, less errors, less mishaps...because I don't care how good of a financial planner you are and how amazing your recommendations are, that if you mess up too many times during this onboarding and you give too many little windows of, oops, did I make the right call, and too many opportunities for the client to second guess their decision, you can lose the business still. It's not a done deal just because the client said yes.

Conducting A Curated "Paperwork Party" To Get Documents Signed Efficiently And Effectively [23:48]

Michael: So now can you start taking us a little bit further into, okay, how should we be designing our onboarding process? How should this work? What does Libby's idealized onboarding process look like that starts to address all of these gaps that we have around really making it more friction-free and comfortable for the client themselves?

Libby: Yes, absolutely. So it all starts with kind of the paperwork. So there's kind of three distinct phases as I see it. And do they work out perfectly in these windows every time? No, because onboarding is a little chaotic and it can be unique to every client. But for kind of all intents and purposes, we have three distinct chunks. The first section of onboarding. So when we think about all of the data surrounding this first 100 days, and this is why products have a 90-day return policy, right? They know once you're past that 90-day window, you're good and you're going to love it. So we have this kind of window of time. So days zero through days 30. That to me, I call it kind of the window of professionalism. This is where we want to exhibit to our clients that this not our first rodeo, that we know what we're doing, even if we make mistakes, which we're going to work really hard to have processes and procedures in place so that we don't. But we're going to set the stage. We're going to set their expectations. We're going to show them from day one that this going to be very, very different.

Days 31 through 60, I like to call the surprise and delight window. This where we're going to take things to that next level and show that extra layer of commitment and get the client set up to work super functionally with us, again, to set ourselves apart from any experience that they've had previously and to...I almost said the word selfishly, but it's not selfish, but to properly set expectations with our clients of what the relationship is going to look like and what the expectations are on both sides of the table. What can they expect from us and what are our expectations of them?

Then this third window of time, so kind of days 60-plus, we want to shock and awe. We want to show them that we're going to continue. We're going to do something for them that feels personal, custom, something that makes them feel known. We want them to think, "Oh my gosh, I don't even remember saying that to her. How did she know?" Or, "Wow, I thought once we signed the paperwork, things were going to peel off, but look, they actually doubled down on the experience in this window."

Michael: Okay. Then take me into, I guess, the first window. I'm assuming we progress through these linearly as time goes. What should this look like in, I think you called the first one, the window of professionalism of the first 30 days?

Libby: Yeah, absolutely. In this window of professionalism, we want to be thinking about...so anytime we build this process, we want to think about, what is our client feeling in this moment and what do we want them to be feeling on day 30? We know people coming into this, once they've signed, they're feeling excited, but they're also feeling there's a little trepidation. There's a little like, oof, did I make the right call? Did I do enough research? There's a little, I don't want to use the word concern, but there's some sort of, okay, let's see how this plays out and I hope we made the right call. Even if they're super fired up and pumped up about your recommendations. We know at the end of this 30 days, we want them to be like, "Oh, thank goodness, this was the right call."

What do we need to do to build our process? There's obviously a lot of things, which is why we wrote a book and did a course, but there's a couple table stakes that I love to see happen in this window to help alleviate this cortisol. There's lots of little things like, yep, a handwritten thank you card, kind of reiterating their goals and how you're excited to work with them, like those little things, yes, of course.

But if I had to pick two things in this first 30 days, the first one would be what we call a paperwork party or a signing party. When a client says yes to us...So back in the day, when I started my practice back in 2004, we had these crazy things called printers.

Michael: Oh, God.

Libby: Remember those? It was nuts. We would print off reams of paper to get all these applications complete and we would pop them in the mail to our clients with all of these sticky notes. It would have sign here, initial here. We put a really great cover letter in. And inevitably, clients would miss a signature, or miss a date, or the contract owner would sign on the insured line, and vice versa. There are always mistakes that happened. Finally we were like, forget that business. Now we're just sending documents back and forth and these are friction points. This takes longer, it's longer to process, it's longer to start the transfers, it's kind of irritating to our clients and it looks like we made a mistake even if they missed the signature. We were like, okay, enough of that nonsense. We're going to bring them into our office to do these. This was before Zoom or whatever.

We would bring people into our office and we found that it was a really connecting experience. A, we made sure that we didn't miss anything. I would look at it, my director of operations would double-check the paperwork while I chatted with the clients about what to expect and she would make sure there were no mistakes or errors. Great. We would do that and we found we could sit there and explain each thing to the client. "Hey, here's what this is. Here's what you're signing. Look right here. That's the death benefit amount, or that's the IRA that we're transferring from wherever." And we would go through it all with them and as we were doing it, we'd explained what they could expect next for each one. We kind of set the stage that onboarding is pretty chaotic and there's usually a lot of things going on and you'll get a ton of crap in the mail. You'll get prospectuses, and you'll get all these transfer notices, and forms, and emails, and ADVs, and there was just a lot of stuff.

Then came DocuSign and we were like, thank you, this a gift from God. Now we can just zap these off to our clients and they're going to be able to sign them no problem. We don't even need to do this paperwork party anymore. We can eliminate that in its entirety. And so we thought this was the greatest thing ever. What we found in practice was that it didn't necessarily work like we had thought. Even if clients could open it and sign it...so again, this is pre-pandemic, so even if clients could open and sign a DocuSign, they often would open it and have a bunch of questions, and then they'd email us a bunch of questions and we'd either have to set up a time to answer them or email them back if it was easy enough. Then sometimes the DocuSign would expire and there'd be all these little things. We realized that, two, we were missing this opportunity to connect with them within this first 100 days and it felt, again, just a little regular or a little typical or a little basic, whatever. I don't know, I have teenagers so I feel like basic is the word. It felt a little mid to send just a bunch of DocuSigns and say, "Okay, let's get started."

So what we started doing...and the interesting thing I want to call out about onboarding for me personally is that once a client said yes to us, I completely stepped out of the process. This whole process was now carried forward by my team, which is how you scale. To be able to have the advisor step out of the process and have somebody else take over is how we achieved scale in this process without losing client experience. I just wanted to call that out there.

So the minute a client said yes to us, what we didn't want to do was give them a to-do list. There's nothing worse than basically assigning homework. We worked with a lot of corporate executives. They were really busy. Most of them would just blankly sign the DocuSign if we sent it to them. But the ones that did want to go through it, it was a to-do item for them. So what we would do instead is we would schedule a signing party. This signing party was done virtually over Zoom. My director of operations would get them on Zoom, have them pull up their screen and she'd say, okay, I'm going to send you a whole bunch of emails right now. We're going to go through each one and I'm going to explain to you what it is, have you sign it, make sure if you have any questions. If you do, I'm right here and available to answer them for you. What it did, the byproduct was we gave them a scheduled time and most of our clients were like me, if it's on the calendar and I need to show up, I'm just going to go ahead and do it and knock it out in that 20 minutes and it's way better, faster, and easier than for me to do it sometime on a Saturday.

We'd set it up like, "Hey, we want this to be a different experience so we don't just send paperwork. We want to walk you through it and we want to explain what's going to happen next." It was a great opportunity for her to [say], "We're so excited to work with you." We had a great script. "We're super excited to work with you. Here's the purpose of this meeting. Here's what you need to bring. We're going to send you these emails. If you get them before the meeting, don't sign them. We're going to go through each thing with you so that you fully feel like you understand what it is and then you have an opportunity to ask questions." It would take her 20 minutes. She'd go through it all with them and then articulate what they could expect next.

We'd set the stage for a very chaotic onboarding. We'd say there's going to be so many moving parts. We're rolling over seven IRAs and transferring a 401(k) and we're taking this application and that application and doing some conversions and applying for some insurance or whatever. It was a lot of stuff. We'd set the bar really high that this was going to be chaotic because if it was and mistakes were made, the client was somewhat expecting that. Most of the time, it wasn't as chaotic as we said. Then it felt to the client like, oh, that wasn't as bad as we were expecting. It made us just look like, wow, they must have done a really good job because that was not what I was expecting. I was expecting it to be significantly worse. The purpose of this paperwork party was again just this extra concierge level touch point where we got it on the calendar, we took care of everything right there and then, and we weren't giving the client to-dos and homework.

Michael: Was this still at the level of, it's not you, like you personally Libby, the lead advisor. My team can still do this. My operations manager, client service administrator, whoever the role is, can be the one that gets with the client on Zoom to do the signing party where we send out one document at a time and talk through it and they sign. Am I right?

Libby: Yeah, 5000%. I didn't do any of it. Yeah, I maybe did these in the very beginning just to make sure I got the script down, that we got the agenda right, that we got the email, the pre-paperwork-party email, the post-paperwork-party email. I wanted to have the script down, so I did do them initially, but then the minute I felt like my team could take it, they'd see me do it enough times, they had participated in enough of them that I could pass it off, I absolutely did. The other part of this paperwork party, when we're talking about the expectations layer, so this the paperwork layer, this the expectations layer, is not only are we telling them what to expect with onboarding and how this all going to work, we'd set them up for, "Here's how this going to go. One of the things we need to address is that you need to break up with Dave, your previous advisor." We bring all of these things into the room that were going to be potential friction points and say, "Hey, we know you're going to break up with Dave, and that can be really difficult." Even if your client's like, "I'm over Dave, I actually can't wait to break up with him," fine, we need to tell you, "Hey, this happening, and here's some potential friction points that happen."

Michael: Yeah, because I know Dave is going to call you and try to win you back, because that's what I would do if I'm on the other end of this happening.

Libby: 5000%, right? We want to look at this through, okay, what could slow down our process? Nothing slows down the process more than having Dave call the clients and say, "Well, I'd love to meet with you first, and I want to make sure you understand what it is that you have, and I want to attack Libby's recommendations," right? We would prep the client and say, "We know that you have to break up with Dave, and we've gone ahead and crafted a short email or a short script. You can call, you can email. We've gone ahead and crafted this on your behalf," and we've fine-tuned this over the years. "It's short, sweet, it thanks him for his service, and it lets him know that you're moving on." We would try to mentally prep. Even if we gave the client the script, we'd say, "Of course, you can change it, and you do you, it's your deal, but we need you to do this within the next 24 hours so that Dave just doesn't get the transfer notices and feel blindsided because we find that that typically causes some potential friction. Don't worry if Dave emails you back. We've also included in this document for you a bunch of pre-written responses based on what he could potentially say. The most common ones that we see are, oh, he wants to get together and meet with you, so we've got a response in there for you. Another one that we see is him starting to attack our company or us personally, and we've got one in there for you for that too."

Kind of just giving them the heads up, so that way if Dave does respond poorly and be like, 'Oh, you're moving your money to such and such, they're a bunch of blah, blah, blah, and I heard they...'" They kind of know this coming and that they have a prepped response ready to go. Really it's about too like, "Hey, we need you to do this in the next 24 hours so that we can kind of get this part out the way, and we've gone ahead and taken care of the heavy lifting." Because a friction point for your client is, "What am I going to say? What am I going to do? What if he responds?" So how can we get ahead of that? How can we preemptively address that? If our client hasn't thought about it, we want to bring it into the room and say, "Hey, this going to happen, but don't worry, we've got you."

Michael: Do you actually have sample scripts that you share out with advisors that you can share out for listeners?

Libby: Yeah, absolutely. I've created a landing page and it's theefficientadvisor.com/first100days, but 100 is written like the number, not the word 100. So, first 100 days, and I've got a couple samples and examples. Of course, in the book, I have some examples. In the course, we have tons and tons of templates and examples, but I will have one available for listeners if they want to go ahead and download it.

Michael: For folks that can't grab the whole URL, this is episode 444. If you go to kitces.com/444, we'll have a link in the show notes area out to the resources that Libby has been so kind as to share as well.

Sending A Weekly Email To Keep New Clients Updated On The Onboarding Process [37:44]

Libby: Amazing, yes. So then we'd close out the paperwork party. Lori would send our follow-up email, which is also in the resources. Just again, thank them, let them know that we appreciated their time. Here's exactly what you can expect next. If we have to do a rollover phone call to a 401(k) company together, here's literally the steps, and we'd let them know that they're going to be receiving a weekly update. This the next table stake for me in this first 30 days is we're going to send you a weekly email letting you know exactly where we stand on all of these moving parts. We affectionately call it the "Domino's Pizza Tracker" in my business. I don't know what else to call it. In our business, we called it the weekly concierge-level email, our business update email. The goal is...The human brain is wired to want to know what to expect next.

Most of the processes that I've built in my business were out of me looking like a bonehead at some point. So like a client emailing me and saying, "Hey, where's my money? What's going on with that insurance application?" I can remember we did long-term care [insurance] in my business and we would underwrite long-term care. I remember it took, I don't know, anywhere from three months to what felt like three years to get a policy issued. There would be times that we would reach out to the clients four, five, six months later and be like, "Hey, great news. You've been approved." They're like, "For what?"

Michael: "Oh, was that still happening? I forgot I agreed to do that."

Libby: Yeah. I noticed my kids, when we would order pizza from Domino's, my little boys would sit there and be like, "Mom, Ramon has received our order, and Ramon has put the toppings on, and it's in the oven, and now it's out for delivery, and it's been delivered." They loved watching that pizza tracker. While we didn't have the technology to be able to give a visual pizza tracker like that so everyone knew if their IRA was in the oven or whatever, but we came up with a super simple email and we'd tell our clients, "Hey, we're going to send this to you every Tuesday. And in it, it will tell you what are all of the items that have been completed, what are currently outstanding that we're working on, what do we need from you, if anything, and what can you expect next?"

And I can remember we had one client who we had made a few errors in his paperwork. We had done some of this back and forth stuff, enough that we could smooth it over. We sent a humble pie. You know, we could get over it. And he received his check in the mail from Fidelity. And so we had done a 401(k) rollover and they send it to the client's address. And Lori had missed whatever step in our process where we send a UPS envelope to the client with a letter of instruction and a note saying, "Hey, when you get the check from Fidelity, don't freak out. This is exactly what's supposed to happen. Pop it in this envelope and drop it off at UPS and ship it directly to our corporate office." So she had forgotten this step. So my client gets this check in the mail for several million dollars. And he's freaking, right? He has that freak out moment, which again, this a friction point, whether right or wrong. He was like, "They sent it to me. Am I going to pay tax on this? What's happening?"

Michael: "What does this mean?"

Libby: Right. Like, oh my gosh.

Michael: "Am I supposed to cash this?"

Libby: Yes. "Am I supposed to take this...? What am I supposed to do?" And of course, "Oh, no, no, no, no, no, that's okay." And he's like, "I'm going to drive it over to you right now." So again, we feel bad because this now effort on his part that he shouldn't have to do, right? This not concierge-level experience. So he gets on the highway and he has his windows down and his check flies out the window. Like, you can't make this stuff up. So his check flies out the window.

Michael: This is like a comedy movie with Will Ferrell and Ben Stiller.

Libby: Yeah, it was terrible. He's like on the side of the road and he never finds it. Then of course, we have to go through this whole, Fidelity canceling the check, and the market's moving like massively during this window.

Michael: Of course.

Libby: It was an absolute nightmare and needless to say, he did not complete the business with us. It was too many things. So no matter how great of a job we did, a couple mistakes and a couple boo-boos, it's enough friction to make them go, "You know what? Never mind."

Michael: Yeah, at some point, when you're reordering the Fidelity checks, like, "I'm just going to leave the money in Fidelity after all." As I pull the pants out of the laundry with the dirt stains on the knees because of the crawling on the ground looking for the check, "I'm done."

Libby: Right, right. And I have no problem sharing, we made lots of mistakes, right? That's where most of these processes came from was, oh my goodness, okay, how do we make sure that...I hope that would never happen again. That feels like a once in a lifetime thing, but how do we make sure people know exactly what to expect next? So had we been sending a weekly email saying, "Okay, here's where we're at. Fidelity is going to send the check to you. Don't forget you have the envelope, put the check in there, send it directly to our corporate office." And this kind of where that pizza tracker was born. I can remember he was following up all the time being like, "Okay, I saw the money left. Now what? Okay, now what?" And it was like, he shouldn't be asking that. Our clients should not be wondering where we are at on that thing, what's going on? That's a basic advisor, right?

And if we're wanting to be exceptional and highly referable, we want to think through the lens of how do we reduce friction for our clients? And a big piece of that, again, it was just exhibiting this professionalism. And the byproduct of it too was that it made sure that my team was hyper-organized on the back end so that we could send this email every Tuesday. Right? We had to know where we were at in the process, what was going on. So it forced the team to stay on top of everything as well.

Michael: Right. Just the fact that you're accountable to send the email to the client every Tuesday means the team will have to be checking in on every line item of every client in motion right now, because you just have to do that to update the email. And now you're also actually just putting more eyes on the clients more consistently.

Libby: Right. Absolutely.

Michael: I've got a list of my clients of what they're doing. I make a little template of the email update and I just fill in the line items for however many clients it is. I mean, most of us, at the end of the day, don't have the most massive growth rates for any particular advisor. Like what, even if we're actively growing, we have a couple of new clients in motion at any time. Most of us probably have one to three. Maybe you've got a few more if you're growing faster in earlier stages. I'm just thinking out loud, it's not a huge number. It's not like my team has to prep 47 emails every week. It's three emails to the new clients that are currently going through the growth process in the first 30 days.

Libby: Yes, and amen. So that's funny because when we go through this, like in our group coaching, that's one of the first things people look at is like, "Wait a minute, you want me to do a 20-minute paperwork party with everybody I'm onboarding?" And I'm like, "Yes, once a month, you should do a 20-minute paper party and you should send the three emails," right? The volume for most of us isn't that high. And if your volume's that high, then you should have a bigger support team that can handle that level of growth.

Michael: I was actually going to ask in this context as well. Granted some of us are pure solo, so everything that has to happen in the firm is me. But I feel like a lot of what you're describing, the moment I literally have any administrative team besides me, most of this isn't me. The paperwork party can be my client service administrator getting on and just say, "And now we're going to send you this form, here's what it's about. Now we're going to send you this form, here's what it's about." I guess once in a blue moon, if a client has a more complex question, they can always say, "Hey, that's a little bit more involved. Let me schedule a quick follow up with Michael and you two can talk through it." But 95% of the questions are probably more basic and perfunctory that the team can answer. The pizza tracker comes from the team. I guess maybe I'm giving the client the breakup email template and preparing them for the fact that Dave's going to try to retain the business. But just as you're describing it, a lot of this actually shouldn't be me, it should be my team, and the team tends to have some capacity for this. Their job is to support the administrative aspects of what clients need. So this is just the job for them.

Libby: Yeah. In my perfect world, once the client says yes to the advisor...so we were just really clear with them. My director of operations participated in our prospect-to-client process. So they did get to know her. It was part of our process that she came in at certain points and the clients got to know her. They built confidence in her competency. And so when we made the handoff, it didn't feel like this weird bait and switch and like, "Who's this person?" And even if you did it that way, that's okay. I think it's all in how you frame it and how you set up with the client and set the expectation. But in our case, Lori had gotten to know them. She had specific questions that she was designed to ask them along the way. They were building rapport. So it felt very natural once they understood, well, this Libby's job, and here's what she does, and here's what Lori does, and here's her job, and here's what Amy does, and here's her job, and here's what Lisa does. And then it was her job to carry that forward.

And it wasn't like I disappeared. I always kind of joke and I call it the Applebee's manager approach. Once a night, the manager would come over and be like, "Hey, how's everything going over here?" They just kind of popped in for that hot second. And that's kind of how I viewed my role during onboarding, was just to pop in and kind of check in and see how things were going over here at this table, like the Applebee's manager.

Michael: So is this kind of the core aspects of first 30 days? I now want to ask about the next 30 and the next 30, but I don't want to cut you off if there's more that we should be talking through in the first 30.

Libby: No, well, there's definitely more, but those are probably the two table stakes that...so as an advisor, it's like, whoa, I can't add all of these things. These would be the two...if I could only add two things, these would be the two that I would add during this window.

Michael: Is the signing party and the pizza tracker weekly update?

Libby: Correct.

Holding A "Formal Onboarding Meeting" To Preempt Client Questions And Tasks Down The Line [47:29]

Michael: Okay. So then what shifts in the next 30 days now?

Libby: So the average advisor, right...and no one listening to this podcast is average because anyone who invests this kind of time in their business is clearly wanting to grow, do better, be better. So no one listening is average, but the average advisor, even if you were doing those extra touches during that first 30 days, once the money's here, they'd kind of just let the client know, place the trades, and be like, "Okay, great, we'll see you in July," or whatever. So this window is we want to carry it forward and we want to now surprise and delight our clients, meaning we want to, again, do something that the average advisor isn't willing to do. And again, this part was all carried out by my team at some point, right? Maybe not initially, but at some point it was carried out by my team. And there's kind of two table stakes and they're kind of all in one here that I would suggest during this window.

So once the money has arrived and everything has...the chaos has cleared up a little bit...and the coordinator of chaos was my director of operations, and she would kind of say, "Okay, most of the stuff is here, everything has landed, maybe there's a few outstanding policies or something that's going to take a while." We would hold what we called our formal onboarding meeting. And the purpose of this meeting was, again, to be another brief touch point. This, again, was maybe a 20- to 30-minute meeting, not some wild and crazy hour-long face to face. So the time commitment is low here, mostly were done virtually over Zoom, maybe a handful of people in person, but that would be very, very rare even for our office. So we would host our formal onboarding meeting. The goal is to have this touch point and also to get the client set up to work super functionally with us and to get ahead on any potential friction points in the future.

So, again, we had a great email that would go out beforehand. We, of course, let them know in the paperwork party that, "Hey, once everything arrives, this is what's going to happen next. And we would tell them or we'd sit them down, and the goal would be to go through our...we had a formal onboarding agenda and it was to take care of all of the little to-dos. Again, never, ever giving our client this big giant to-do list like, "Hey, get your login. Okay, download the app, log into that, set up your portal, go find the tax statements, create your nicknames, double-check your beneficiaries, make sure the right banking is on file, set up your e-delivery." We didn't want to give our client this big giant to-do list or our client be sitting at home and getting a giant thing in the mail and they're like, "Whoa, paper statements. Okay, how do I get on and make this a digital statement?"

So we would do this meeting and she'd sit down and we had this big to-do list and she's like, "I'm going to help you do everything right now. Go ahead, let's create your login so that you can get into your account and let me show you around the portal. Here's where you find this, here's where you find that, here's how you access your tax statements. Let's double-check that all of the beneficiaries are the way that you want them. Let us double-check that the banking that we have on file is the one that you would want. Were there other accounts that you would want linked to this?" Because what we don't want to have happen is you're at the car dealership, you've negotiated the perfect price and now you need $25,000 to put down on a car and you need us to wire you the money and we're like, "Oh, we don't have that bank on file so now we have to send you some form to fill out and you have to send it back to us, and then we have to get that on file, and then we can wire you the money."

So all of these little things, let's make sure we've got the right authorization so that we can speak freely with both spouses if they were married. Let's get the authorization to speak to the accountant done. Let's make sure we've got the authorization for the lawyer. So we did a lot of housekeeping in this meeting to make sure that we didn't ever have to say no to a client in the future or get that email from a client saying, "I tried Saturday to log into my account and we couldn't get in." So my broker-dealer, we had this thing called a member ID number and even though we'd give it to the client, we'd email it to them, they'd always sit down to create their log and it'd be like...and you needed this member ID, "I don't have it.

Michael: Sure. "I forgot what the number is. What's the number?"

Libby: "I deleted the email." So they'd email us, Monday we'd email them back and again, who knows? Or even worse, the market would do what it's been doing the last several months and they'd want to get on and see their account and they can't, and that's frustrating. So how do we help facilitate all of this? So Lori would get on with them and she'd be like, "Okay, let's..." and all of this stuff that you want your clients to do. "Do you want to follow us on social media? Do you want to be notified when we release a new blog? Do you want to create nicknames for your accounts? Do you want...?" She would just go through this list of all of these little things.

Michael: So it's like just a big old to-do list checklist thing for the team of just here's all the things we're going to ask them about and navigate through.

Libby: Yeah. And same thing, it was creating space on their calendar to get it all done. So that way it was done. There wasn't that friction of them having to do it later or there being a problem. And the byproduct from this one that we saw is we didn't get nearly as many issues down the road of oops, wrong banking on file, or, oh, we don't have permission to tell Jim if Jan paid her life insurance premium or not. We need to have a form signed by Jan in order to be able to release that information to Jim, but Jim wants to know right now. So it was just this culmination, or accumulation really, of all of these little things that had been annoyances over the years and us saying, let's just create this meeting to get ahead of it.

And so this kind of formal onboarding meeting, again, it's another touch point where they don't feel like they've dropped off the cliff. We're still showing them this dating style mentality, right? Like we're still here to impress you. We're still here to open your car door and give you our jacket, right? We're doing this at a level that you haven't seen before. And, again, it doesn't take much time. We're talking 20, 30 minutes to do this. And the impact that it had on people was profound. Our clients would be like, "Oh my gosh, thank you so much. I hate setting up portals." Or, "Ugh, I was dreading this part of it. Wow. You made this so easy for us. Thank you." And it was a simple gesture. I didn't think it would have that big of an impact on people. I thought it was more work for us from a housekeeping standpoint so that we could work functionally with them, but we found it did have a profound impact on our clients.

Setting The Expectations Of The Engagement For Both The Firm And The Client [53:27]

Michael: So then what else in this second stage besides onboarding meeting?

Libby: Yeah. The other table stake, it also occurs during this formal onboarding meeting. And this is what we called our expectations of our engagement. So in my practice, this was an actual physical document. Some advisors just do it verbally. Some have a physical document that the client can initial and sign. But we wanted to lay out for our client how we could best work together to get the most out of the relationship on both sides. What they could expect from us and then also what we could expect from them. And this, again, was a great way to make sure that we were aligning expectations. One of my favorite sayings is that expectations are the death of gratitude. And so if our clients are expecting something way up here, and I have my hand above my head, and we're delivering what we think is a phenomenal client service model, and it's down here, there's going to be this gap. So we want to be able to explain...

Michael: Expectations are the death of gratitude. I really like that. Okay.

Libby: Yes. I didn't make that up. I don't know where I heard it, but it has stuck with me for years. And so this idea of like, okay, we want you to understand what's the best way to communicate with us. Who is your point of contact? So in our office, we used a team email and we would be really clear like, "Hey, the best way to communicate with our office is this team email. It gets checked at the top of every hour. If you email Libby directly or Lori directly..." And I didn't have a lot of control over the fact that my email was on our website, it was a broker-dealer website. "If you email Libby directly or Lori directly, they often don't check their email until the very end of the day. And we can get your problem solved better, faster, quicker if you use this team email." And in my email, I had an auto direct...anytime someone emailed me, it automatically redirected them and said, "Please send an email to our team email." And so we just wanted to be clear that you're not going to call Libby on her cell phone, you're not going to email her directly. This the best way.

And then for our office, because I only worked three days a week and my team only worked four days a week, we were completely closed on Fridays. So we wanted to be clear, like, "Here are our hours of operation. Here's when we're open and here's what happens on a Friday if you have an emergency. So we're closed on Fridays and here's why. And this how you get ahold of...this what's considered emergency," right? Like most things, the beautiful thing about financial planning is nobody's going to die if we don't get something done. So it's a really small chance that you're actually having a true financial emergency. So here's what an emergency is. And here's who you can call to get that trade placed. Or here's what you can do on a Friday should we not be able to take care of what you need on a Monday.

And we also laid out the expectation that we expected our clients to meet with us at least once a year. Well, all advisors are like, "Oh my gosh, the best clients in the whole world are the ones that don't want to meet, right, because our ROI on them is huge. Our revenue per hour on them goes way up if we don't have to meet with them and do stuff for them." But we also found that we did our best job planning when we actually saw our clients and were able to put them through our themes and make sure that we were dotting all of the Is and crossing all of the Ts and all of the different tenants of financial planning. And we certainly didn't want that client that a few years later would be like, "Oh, I never even hear from them. I can't remember the last time we saw them," even though we called them multiple times a year and they're the ones that always declined the meeting, right?

So we lay out the expectation that in order for us to do a great job doing their financial planning and investment planning, that they actually had to show up for at least one real meeting a year. And so there's ten different things...and I've got that in the resources. There's ten different things that you could think about being in this document, reiterating how you get compensated, how you handle privacy. There's certain things that you could definitely make sure you engage clients in, but it's just a way of setting expectations. Here's the frequency at which we meet. Here's all the different types of things that we do for you behind the scenes throughout the year. Letting them know the mode of operation of how you're going to do business.

Michael: Interesting. It reminds me, we had years ago a guest on the podcast, Carolyn McClanahan, who had a version of this. I think she called them her "client engagement standards," but it was kind of similar. It was an actual document that she gave to clients at the beginning of the relationship that just laid out, here's what you can expect from us, fairly similar to what you said, our time, our service hours, they have a very casual office environment. So I think part of it is even like, and if you come in on a Friday, we will not be wearing suits. Just setting those expectations. Then had some for the client. We expect that when we send you paperwork to sign that you will get it back to us in a week so that we can actually do the work for you that we're supposed to be doing. I guess in a similar vein, it was a printed document. It was two or three pages, if memory serves, that clients would go through at the beginning of the process.

Libby: Yeah. It doesn't have to be this like, "Oh, here's all the rules." It doesn't have to be this intense experience. We'd always do it through the lens of, why is this good for you? For us, we had an expectation for our clients that, "Hey, when you call, regardless of who answers the phone, please give them as much detail as humanly possible." Because there's nothing worse than playing phone tag with a client. "Oh, I have to talk to Libby." We play phone tag back and forth. I finally get ahold of them and they're like, "Oh, I need to change my beneficiary." You're like, "Oh my goodness, Lisa could have done that for you eight hours ago. You didn't need to call me." Or you finally get ahold of each other and you realize, well, I wish I would have known what I was calling about because I could have done all of the research and actually called you with information and now we have to play phone tag for a second time.

So we would just articulate like, "Hey, here's what we expect. When you call, it's important that you give as much detail to whomever answers the phone because often they can take care of it for you. But if they can't, we want to make sure that when we call you back, that we have an answer for you or we have something we can do for you." It was just letting people know that was an expectation, and not in a mean, aggressive, like, "Our expectations..." But like, "This how we can work together most effectively."

Michael: Yeah. Let's just make this a productive, mutually beneficial working relationship and set some expectations.

Libby: Yeah. And most of it was about what we're going to do for them. Here's the frequency at which we do strategy sessions. Here's what that looks like. Here's what our theme-based planning in our office looked like. Here's what we're doing behind the scenes between all of our meetings. So it was mostly about what we're doing for them. But, "Hey, this relationship does swing both ways and we need to make sure that we're on the same page of what that looks like." And just doing that at the beginning and then maybe having reminders periodically in a re-onboarding, which we did probably every, I don't know, four or five years, but just kind of re-articulate like, "Hey, here's how we work together. Here's how we work best with our clients."

Walking Clients Through Their First Investment Statement [1:00:06]

Michael: Very cool. So then other things in this phase or should we talk about the third time window now?

Libby: Yeah. I mean, again, there's tons of different things that you can do during this window that I just love. But I think the formal onboarding for me with the expectations of our engagement would be kind of the table stake in this surprise and delight, right? And showing them...again, the surprise and delight is, "Hey, we're going to help you with all of the things. You're not going to be left to your own devices. We truly are your sherpa in this process. So we're going to guide you through everything versus leaving you to fend for yourself."

So the third phase, this kind of shock and awe, is where we really again...it's designed to be another touch point within this first 100 days. And again, I know people are listening going, "Oh my gosh, now you're asking me to do 40 minutes worth of meetings with clients." And I promise this saves you from so many oopsies down the road.

And this third window, we want to, again, how do we shock and awe? How do we show these clients that once we receive your money, we're not just going to forget about you. You're not an account number to us. How do we make them feel seen, known, and heard? And there's definitely a lot of little things that I love to see in this last window. A couple more professional or more business-oriented ones, I'll give you first. And then I have a few kind of warm, fuzzy things. So the business-y one is, I love in this window doing a first investment statement review, or if we issue insurance policies, actually walking them through. The vast majority of advisors, right, you get the insurance policy in the mail, you send it directly to the client. So we like to do, about the third month in, "Hey, we just want to go through your first investment statement." And this was, again, born out of friction points.

So the broker-dealer I was with...and I always joke that I went to school for engineering and physics. I have an engineering degree and I could not even read our first statement. Our clients would open it up and the first page was all the money movements. They'd see all these negatives because it was just money being dispersed into the portfolios. And we got so many phone calls from clients going, "Oh my gosh, did you lose all my...? Like, what's going on? Is the market taking...I moved my money to you and it looks like you lost a bunch of it." And it's like, "No, no, no, let me walk you through it." And we realized, that actually needs to be a table stake in our process because clearly the first statement is really upsetting for somebody. And again, if they're opening it up on a Sunday afternoon after church and they're going, "Oh no," they're going to be sitting in that until they can get ahold of us. And we don't want that.

So we like to do like a, "Hey, here's your first investment statement. We just want to walk you through everything. Yep. That's the account where we consolidated all of Jill's IRAs and there's Dave's 401(k) that's now an IRA. And this the fund for your upcoming trip to Italy. And we're putting $200 a month in there." And just, again, this was like a five-minute, ten-minute phone call. That's it. It was not much. It was phone calls, Zoom. I think Lori mostly did these over Zoom too. Sometimes it would just be a phone call like, "Hey, we just want to go through. It looks a little crazy. Let me walk you through page one, page two."

And then if they did an insurance policy, we'd walk them through that page three that had all the details. Like, "Here's the policy you got. Here's the term. Here's the dollar amount. Here's the riders you accepted. Here's the riders you declined. Again, we just want to make sure you understand what it is that you have and that we got it all right. And I will tell you, there's a couple of times that we did that, especially with long-term care, and someone would go, "Oh, I thought we actually did do that rider." And we'd say, "No, no, we thought you decided not to." Well, luckily we're still in the window where we can get that added versus us finding out three years from now under a crisis circumstance that we missed something or that there was a misalignment of some type.

Michael: And again, this is like a 15, 20-minute Zoom meeting or even phone call level. We're not adding more in-person meetings to the calendar. This is just, "Hey, you got your first statement. Let's pull it up together and just talk through and make sure everything's lined up, and I'm happy to answer any questions you've got."

Libby: Yep. You got it. And it's not that we made it optional or we were like, "No, you have to do this." But if a client was like, "Oh, I don't really think that's necessary," we'd say, "Oh, we really would like to do this. We just want to take that five to ten minutes to make sure that you understand. And our clients we're at this point kind of used to like, oh, they just want to walk us through everything, that's great. And it was very clear on the expectations that this a five-minute call. This not a big deal, not a huge thing. And a one to many solution or a simpler solution, if you are listening and you're like, "Oh my gosh." I liked it because, again, it was FaceTime with a client, like live interactions. So again, in that dating-to-marriage analogy, I liked it that way. Now, of course, now you can do things like Loom videos. So you could do a Loom video, walking a client through it and send it to them. There's some tech that you could add, but kind of going back to that story that I used when DocuSign came out, tech isn't always...yes, it's more efficient. And obviously, I'm here for that. I love me a good efficiency piece and I'm all about the tech and AI for your client service model. But there's something about these personal touches, these touch points that do matter.

Michael: A Loom video is neat. I can record on my own time and send it, but a Zoom meeting, I can actually interact and answer questions, not give them the Loom video and make them type an email if they have questions as a follow-up, right? Just different kind of touch points.

Incorporating Thoughtful Gestures To Demonstrate The Advisor's Attention And Care [1:05:26]

Libby: Right. And then the second thing, kind of the more warm fuzzies... I love to see some sort of, whether it's a gift or a thoughtful gesture, but something that lets the clients know that you heard them. So every advisor needs, in my opinion, what we call a client intel process, where from the moment before they even meet the prospect for the first time, they're gathering intel about their personal preferences, what they like, what kind of dog they have, the charities they're involved in, their hobbies, their sports teams, their coffee preferences, like all of this ancillary information. And we want to collect it organically throughout your process with intentionality, but we want it to be organic, not like, "Here's a checklist, please tell us your favorite coffee at Starbucks and write that down on this sheet," or whatever. And we want to use that information in this third window. So it can be a small gesture. It can be something...what I hate, though, I do not like when advisors give a gift. And I very rarely am like, no, this wrong for everybody. I'm very much one of those people like, it's your business. You have to do what works for you. And everybody's built different and everybody wants a different business. And that's great.

Michael: Except gift giving.

Libby: Except giving a gift at the moment they signed the contracts. At the paperwork party, I am an absolute no-no. Do not send right after they sign. I don't love it because it feels like I'm thanking you for...I'm making money off of you and I'm grateful for that. And especially when it's a generic gift basket. Don't get me wrong. I love a good Yeti mug with a logo on it. That's great. But anytime an advisor gives something with their logo on it, it's marketing. It's not a gift. It is, I'm giving this to you because I know you like Yetis, but I'm also hoping you'll be drinking it and someone will go, "Oh, 'The Efficient Advisor,' what's that?" "Oh, she's really amazing." It's not a gift for them. And so I love in this third window for you to do something that feels personal. I want your client to be sitting there going, "I don't even remember telling her that. Or how does she even know that we have golden retrievers?"

And so I love to see something personal and it doesn't have to be expensive. It can literally be like, if your clients are saving up for this big trip to Italy and they shared this information with you during the prospect-to-client process, that you send them a, "Hey, you know what? I was at Barnes & Nobles. I saw this 'Rick Steves Guide to Italy.' I highlighted a couple of my favorite places in here. I thought you might like it," right? And something that feels like you saw it, you thought of them, something personal for them. So if you're going to get the Yeti mug, get it for the university that they went to, not your logo-branded gift basket that feels generic. Because there's something about getting something that you're like, "Oh, everybody gets this," versus "Wow, they thought of me, Libby specifically, my likes, my preferences, things I care about." And for advisors who are like, "Oh my gosh, yeah, okay, I hear you, but that sounds kind of expensive or kind of time consuming," there's all kinds of simple little things you can do in that first year to surprise and delight and shock and awe your clients.

So one concept that I love is getting your client's anniversary...if they're a married couple, getting their wedding anniversary and figuring out where their favorite restaurant in town is. And this done really easily, right? When you're gathering information, "Oh, when did you guys get married? Oh my gosh. Are you big celebrators? Do you do like trips? Do you go out to dinner?" And finding out what kind of restaurant they like. So you could then hop on Open Table, it takes about 30 seconds to book a reservation at their favorite restaurant on their anniversary. And then you email or call them a couple months prior and say, "Hey, if you're anything like me, we wait until the last minute when it comes to scheduling things for our anniversary and all the good reservations are gone. So we went ahead and took the liberty of making a reservation for the two of you at Boca on June 13th at 7 p.m. You can keep it. You can get rid of it. We just wanted you to know that we were thinking about you and we'd love for you to be able to celebrate in that way if you want to. And it costs zero dollars. It takes less than a few minutes. And the clients are like, "Wow, thank you."

Michael: So you're not buying them dinner. You're just booking a reservation for it.

Libby: It literally can be that simple. And yes, if you have the budget and you have the compliance limits that allow you to buy the dinner, great. Or send a bottle of wine to their table, amazing. If you know that they're wine drinkers and they like wine, right? That's the only way it's going to have impact is like, oh, they told me they love Oregon pinots. I'm going to send a bottle of pinot to the table. Great. But you don't even have to do that. It's just the thought at a bare minimum level. This where it's...again, we did this a few times for clients and they were like, "Oh..." and I hate to stereotype, but usually it was the husband was like, "Oh, thank God. I totally dropped the ball and I'm so glad we have a reservation." Or, "I got online to look and all of them were gone. What the heck?" Or, "Hey, we actually have something else planned, but that was so incredibly sweet of you guys to do that." Or even better, they go out, they do the dinner and they tag us in their Facebook post to their friends.

Michael: So then if you talk about all of this, I've got to ask. So you highlighted before the challenge that can crop up for firms where you get one experience when you're dating and then you get a different experience when you're married. There's a little piece of me that's hearing this. I'm like, well, okay, am I still creating some expectation challenges for myself in the future? I'm like, okay, now the hard part went from dating to marriage. It's like we went from dating to a honeymoon period, but eventually we're going to be out of this onboarding honeymoon period and we're going to be into married phase. Am I creating some expectations, challenges for myself in the future or are there other things I have to be thinking about to carry this forward in the future?

Libby: Yeah. And when we look at those kind of eight core processes that exist for every practice, if we're looking at all of them through the lens of client experience and we're thinking about how our clients are thinking and feeling, it's easy to weave this in. So if you know, let's say you've got a whole bunch of clients that are Michigan fans. Well, when Michigan wins the Rose Bowl, right, it's easy to send them all a link to an article like, "Oh my gosh, I bet you guys are celebrating and going crazy right now." You can do that in your client service model. You can find ways…so I love this client intel process. So our team was challenged, when you send an email, don't just say, "Dear Mr. and Mrs. Smith, you have an upcoming appointment, blah, blah, blah, blah." It would be, "Hey, Jim and Jan (and Rover). We're super excited for your next round of strategy sessions are coming up. As you recall, here's what we need from you. Oh my gosh, and I wanted to tell you, I went to that restaurant that you guys recommended and had that sandwich and you weren't wrong, it blew my mind." Just weaving these little things in. Or, "When you come in, make sure you bring it updated picture of grandson Johnny. Haven't seen him in a while and I'm sure he's growing like a weed."

Michael: So how do you keep track of all this? I mean, I know the short answer is you record it in your CRM, yes, but I meet with a lot of people and I cannot count the number of times that I've been like, oh, I'm pretty sure they told me about a thing that would have been cool to record yesterday, and now I don't remember the detail because I've had three other meetings since then. How do you capture all this...?

Libby: Are you talking about the intel?

Michael: Yeah, all the intel.

Libby: Great. So we actually have a document, like a fillable PDF that we called our client intel sheet, and it was our job...and it's not like you want to get it all at once, right? We don't want it to feel like they're interviewing like, What kind of soda do you drink? What team do you root for? Where did you grow up? What's the best vacation you've ever been on?" You don't want to interview them, but the goal would be every time you interact with the client. I'm talking clients were in year two, year three, year five of the relationship continuing to double-click on things that we see. So if a client walks into your office with an Ohio State sweatshirt on, instead of just like, "Oh, cool," being like, "Oh, Ohio State, did you go there? Oh no, your grandson's goes there and he's in medical school. That's really cool."

So it's just training your team to try to gather one piece of intel every time you're interacting with a client. You don't want it to be weird. Like if they call in on the phone, you're not going to be like, "Hey, okay, before I let you go, what's your favorite drink at Starbucks?" It doesn't have to be weird. It's just like, how do you naturally observe? So if they walk into the office, if you have a physical office, and they have a Starbucks cup in their hand, saying, "Oh, what's your drink of choice? Oh, that's so interesting." "Oh, that'll put hair on your chest. No cream. Are you crazy?" You know, like just asking those kinds of questions in a way that feels natural and fun.

And so then we had in each client file on our...whether you use Share 360 or Dropbox or a shared drive, whatever storage system you're using, we had in each client file a fillable PDF that as we gather that information, we'd plop it in there. So I did a whole episode on how to gather the information, where to store it, and then how to actually use it as the part that matters. So the goal would be when we're interacting with the client to try to bring something up. So when they walked in the front door, Lisa would look at their intel sheet and be like, "Oh, how are Callie and Lacey?", the dogs. "Oh, they're so cute. Do you have any pictures?" It was just a matter of making that part of the DNA of how we did business and the DNA of the people that I hired to help me facilitate it when they understood the goal.

So it doesn't have to be...when we think about onboarding, you're like, "Wow, this sounds like a lot." It's only 100 days and you're only doing it for so many people. On an ongoing basis, so if we were to get into like client service model and looking at that through the lens of client experience, it's going to look different for your different segments of clients. So we would have reminders in for our top-tier clients to try to send them something in email or something. I'm not a big fan of calling your clients just to see what's up. I don't personally think anybody has time for that. I know if my dentist picked up the phone and called me and was just like, "Hey, I just wanted to check in and see how you're doing." I mean, I'd talk to him, then I'd get off the phone and be like, "Well, that was weird. That had nothing to do with..."

Michael: My teeth are fine. I'll call you if my teeth are not fine.

Libby: Right. That had nothing to do with my teeth. So I think there needs to be a business intention like, "Hey, I was in your accounts today. I just want to let you know I was looking at everything. Everything looks great. I made a couple of changes. And oh, by the way, saw the Wolverines won the Rose Bowl." Just weaving that stuff in periodically. So it's not like you have to send your clients gifts every year, but maybe if they're top-tier clients, maybe every now and then a little surprise and delight. And again, a 'Rick Steves Guide to Italy' costs $17. So it doesn't have to be these big, elaborate, over-the-top kind of things. But like we had a candle in our office that smelled particularly amazing and people would compliment us on it. And so every now and then if a client had mentioned that, Lisa would document it. And maybe one time when they showed up to our office, we'd have one for them. Just sporadically, not every meeting, not every year, but just every now and then just a little something. And it was just part of our process, but to our clients, it felt random and like a surprise.

What Libby's Advisor Coaching Business Looks Like Today [1:16:20]

Michael: So now help us understand, for folks that are listening, what you do, what does Libby do? How does Libby get paid for her expertise on onboarding?

Libby: So The Efficient Advisor, kind of the spirit for me was how do I...so I had the business since 2014 and I've been coaching financial advisors on systems and processes for over a decade. Sold my practice in 2019, took a two-year sabbatical, moved to Hawaii, came back, restarted the business. And it really feels like in the last 12 months that I've gotten a lot of clarity around what I want to do long term. So I've always been committed to, how do I help people like me who...I am not naturally organized. And it's funny because I talk about process so much and I want to be really transparent that I was great at seeing a process and thinking about it through the lens of the business and thinking about it through the lens of the client, but I was total garbage at following it. I had to hire people. I'm not an implementer. So I had to hire people who could implement and follow the process for me. So I'm really good at seeing a process and looking at advisors' businesses and saying, "Here's where you can do it better, faster, smarter, cheaper, easier." And I'm very into giving the tactical like, "Here's the template, here's the thing."

So that's always been kind of the spirit of "The Efficient Advisor." And we used to do this two-day workshop years ago where advisors from all over the country would fly in and my team and I would train them on all of our processes. And what it lacked for me was seeing it through the implementation. So when I came back to the business, we started a group coaching cohort. So we do every August and every January, we start a new round of group coaching and it's a ten-month long...so it has a finite start and a finite finish. And we build out some of the most important processes inside of an advisor's practice, looking at it through the lens of the business, and then also looking at it through the lens of how do we make this really experiential and referable for our clients? So the main thing that I do is our group coaching program. We also do...we're releasing our first full digital course on a process. So ironically, based on our conversation, we're talking about onboarding, my first book is coming out on onboarding, which you have been kind enough to offer to do the foreward for me, and I'm super grateful for that.

Michael: All the things we just talked about. I'm excited.

Libby: Yes. And then a full digital course on, here's literally all of the pieces, the parts. Here's an example SOP workflow for the whole thing. Here's examples of the pizza tracker in action. Here's the emails we use. I'm a big fan of giving the thing because there's nothing worse to me than hearing...as an advisor, I can remember going to conferences and regional meetings and getting all these amazing ideas and then sitting at my desk and saying, okay, but I'm staring at a blank piece of paper, and how do I actually do this? So my goal is always to try to help people get over the hump because everyone knows they want to build processes. It's hard to take the time to do it. And when you're starting from scratch, it's really difficult. And a lot of the resources out there are like the tactical thing, but it doesn't include the actual practicality of it and the client experience side. So we do the group coaching. We've got the digital courses that we'll be building out more and more over the next couple of years. And I do a lot of speaking to different organizations and different groups. And I love doing that.

What Surprised Libby The Most Building Her Business [1:19:24]

Michael: So as you've spent the past ten years building a coaching consulting business, big ramp-up over the past four or five in particular, I guess I'm just curious, what surprised you about building a consulting coaching business as contrasted with the fact that you also successfully built and sold an advisory business?

Libby: Yeah, the hardest part is...so I've built multiple businesses, right? So I had my advisory business. I've built other businesses, kind of side hustles, if you will, with real estate and other things. And doing this business over, what I find, it's super exciting, but also super humbling, is it puts me back in that seat where a lot of advisors are right now, right? Where you're like, okay, I've got this thing. It's super successful. How do I systematize it? How do I process it? How do I grow it without adding more time? I'm going through a lot of the same challenges that my advisors are going through in their financial advisory businesses. And it's like, I know how to do this and I've done it before, but I have that same challenge of, well, I have to make the time for it. I have to step into a CEO role and out of that role as an operator and actually carve out the time to build it.

And the biggest exciting thing, but also challenge is, whoa, look at all this AI. How do I start integrating that? How do I use that? I feel we had it all figured out. Like our group coaching program, I was like, yes, we're good. We're going to memorialize it. And then AI hit the scene. I'm like, well, now we need to do an AI overlay of the whole program. So it's that constant, how do I make it better? How do I iterate with the balance of, well, how do I also memorialize so that I can free up time and space to do other things? So all of the stuff that's exciting is also the challenge. And even though I've done it before, it's still...it's not the doing of the thing. Even for most advisors, it's not the doing of the thing. It's making the time and having somebody push you through that. So even my own business coach, it's funny because we have the same conversations about my business that I'm having with financial advisors.

The Low Point On Libby's Journey [1:21:26]

Michael: So what was the low point on this journey of trying to build out coaching and consulting for advisors?

Libby: The low point for me was I felt like, in my financial advisory role, I had these amazing masterminds and peers and a lot of other advisors who had similar businesses that we could share and have ideas. So when I started what I would call a digital business, I was in a silo and I didn't really know people who were at or above the level that I was at. And I came in with a following and people who had already been through some of my programs. So it wasn't like I was starting from scratch and I needed other people who were starting from scratch. I needed to find a peer group of people who were way above where I was at that I could poke and ask for resources and ideas, and how did you do that, and look under the hoods. And it took a long time for me to find a coach and a peer group that was doing what I was doing and had a vision like I had.

Michael: And where did you ultimately find them?

Libby: Yeah. So it was kind of fun because I landed outside of the financial services industry, right, and more in this digital online industry. And so I ultimately ended up coaching with Amy Porterfield, who I've listened to her podcast for like a bazillion years, right? And I love the way she thinks and feels, and joined her mastermind, and have found this amazing network of people who are doing what I'm doing in a variety of industries, which I find super exciting and fun because I can take what they're doing in healthcare and what they're doing and bring that and kind of translate it into the life of a financial advisor. And so really it was finding someone that I liked through a podcast, taking in their content, feeling in alignment with what they talked about, what their vision was, and then I had to make that big investment in myself to go find that people because it wasn't going to happen organically or for free. And I have no problems spending money on personal development. It was just a matter of taking in a ton of content and finding a mentor whose vision and values align with mine.

Libby's Advice To Her Younger Self And For Advisors Considering Getting Into Coaching [1:23:28]

Michael: So then given that, what do you know now that you wish you knew years ago as you were starting this?

Libby: It's interesting. Number one, I feel like I know that I can always reinvent myself. And if I go in a direction and things start to feel out of alignment, that I can always stop and recalibrate. The other thing I wish, three years ago Libby, I would have told...I kind of re-approached this as a palms up, I'm just going to say yes to lots of things. I didn't have this very clear vision of what I wanted for this business and a very clear, here's what I'm aiming for, and this my revenue goal, and this exactly what I want to deliver to the world. I gave myself a ton of space to just try lots of things and figure it out as I went along versus feeling like I had to have all of the answers in the beginning. And I remember doing that with my advisory practice. I remember doing that with some of my real estate businesses. Like, I can figure it out. Everything is figureoutable.

But reminding myself if I could go back, I'd remind myself that you don't have to have a very clear vision and end goal, all of it figured out from the beginning. Just keep making that one right next step for your business and stay in alignment with who you are and what you value. And there's going to be lots of other people doing similar things to you that are super cool and interesting and can make you feel less than or maybe you should go in that direction because that's what that successful person is doing. But the more I stay in alignment with who I am and what my values are, the more everything continues to come together.

Michael: So any other advice you would give to perhaps other advisors out there who have been doing the advisor thing and are also feeling the call to start doing consulting and teaching other advisors about the things that they've done?

Libby: Yeah. So if you're in that position, number one, reach out to me because I love talking about this stuff. It's so cool to watch people who have a unique way of doing something share their gift with the world. And the space is not too crowded for you. I think what I've really learned over the last several years too is that there is somebody out there praying for you to teach them what you do in the way that you do it. So if it doesn't look like everybody else, if it doesn't smell like everybody else, if it doesn't feel like everybody else, if it feels kind of weird or wonky, and really lean into this stuff that if it feels like this so easy, nobody is going to care, that's your sweet spot because it's really easy for you, but it might be really, really hard and challenging for other people.

And so I would say make sure that your advisory business is in a place where you can step out of it and take three weeks off to a month off. And I love...so in my practice, we built up over time the ability for me to take a full month, completely disconnected, not checking email, etc. so that we could get the business to a place where it could function, for the most part, without me, even though I was the primary advisor, right, for at least a month. And once I got there, then I felt like, okay, we had all of those systems in place. We had all of the right people and the right roles so that business didn't suffer because of my side hobby, right? I had this side quest, started it in 2014. I didn't sell my practice until 2019, but ultimately I found that I loved doing this so much more than my advisory business that I knew that this was what I was called to do long term. So if you have that feeling, follow it.

What Success Means To Libby [1:26:41]

Michael: So as we come to the end here, this a podcast about success and one of the themes comes up, that word success means different things to different people. Sometimes it changes for us as we go through a life journey. And so you're on this path now of building a successful consulting business, having built and sold a successful advisory business. So it seems the businesses are in a wonderful place. How do you define success for yourself at this point?

Libby: Yeah, it's a really tough question. And I'm a big fan of doing quarterly reflections. And this something that I ask myself all the time is, what is success? Because I do feel like I'm one of those people that I'm wired to always want to do more and do it bigger. And even my advisory practice, I had to constantly keep that in check and say, is this the season of my life where...I have small children. I'm working part time. Could I grow it bigger? Could I hire more people? Could I do the thing? Is this the right time? And what I've really come to realize, and especially have leaned into in the last three years, is that success for me is about how I feel about my life as a whole person. How do I feel about my mental health? How do I feel about my spiritual health? How do I feel about my friendships, my relationship with my children? And so for me, success is just feeling like I'm growing as a person and I'm growing in alignment with my values. And I feel really good about how I show up in the world in each of those facets and trying to stay...and there's no perfect balance. The work-life balance thing is a total myth. I always look at it more of a work-life blend.

But if I'm happy...if I'm upright, I'm happy, and I'm healthy, that is the true definition of success for me now. And the dollars and the cents, I have continued to find that more money doesn't necessarily...don't get me wrong, I like it, but it doesn't necessarily mean more happiness or more fulfilling relationships and really realigning what success looks like to you, like am I living fully in every area of my life? And I don't know, I've been through a lot of personal stuff in the last three or four years. So I feel like that's really informed that for me. And is this business serving the life that I want? Am I building a business that I love? But even more importantly, am I building a life that I love and being intentional about adventure and fun and relationship outside of my career?

Michael: I love it. I love it. Thank you so much, Libby, for joining us on the "Financial Advisor Success" podcast again.

Libby: Well, thank you so much for having me back.