The views expressed herein are those of the participants and not those of Touchstone Investments.
Steve Seid:
And welcome everybody to The Whole Truth from the Bay Area, California. I am Steve Seid.
Kurt Dupuis:
And from Atlanta, Georgia. I'm Kurt Dupuis. So we've gotten a bit of a backlog of questions from the audience. So we're going to do a mailbag episode today. And this can't be overstated how integral this feedback is to and these questions are to our vision, what we want from this. So thank you in advance for all the questions. But before we get into that, Steve, you've done a little research, been doing some surveys. So why don't you tell us about that?
Steve Seid:
Yeah. I jumped into a team huddle survey and I encourage you if there's any topics that you guys want to know about, say, "Hey, I want to see what other financial professionals are doing?" Tell us, and we'll survey it. So I sent it out to a few hundred members of our Community. And the question was this, do you use team huddles? And if so, are they important to you? The way it broke down is the vast, vast, vast majority of people use team huddles, 87%. The frequency of those huddles, most people are doing it weekly, 46%, 23% are doing it multiple times a week, which is kind of interesting. Another 23 do it daily, and 8% do it less. So what we can conclude from that is most people are doing it and most people are doing it often, which I guess is probably not too surprising. Would you have guessed that? How do those numbers hit you Kurt?
Kurt Dupuis:
I wouldn't have guessed that distribution of frequency. I mean, I think everyone's going to have a huddle if they're part of a team, but yeah, I guess the next iteration is how you structure that. And what do you actually talk about? What's covered in huddle versus kind of on the fly?
Steve Seid:
We asked, do you have either no agenda where you come in and just everyone starts talking or just go through outstanding items or do you have something that's much more robust than that? And 62% said they had a more robust agenda. It was only 38 that came in and either just talked, or just talk about outstanding items. And I'll share a couple of other things Kurt, while we have a few minutes here before the mailbag. Just some things I found interesting. One was absolutely came shining through is how important these team huddles are.
Kurt Dupuis:
Yeah.
Steve Seid:
In terms of efficiency and execution and all those things. I know I personally thought that, think that they're really important, but certainly the folks that are doing it feel that way as well. The second thing I think was interesting, was very few people mentioned within their team huddles, that they use a pipeline. I cannot encourage everyone listening enough to incorporate a pipeline in your team huddles. That doesn't mean-
Kurt Dupuis:
What kind of pipeline are you talking about?
Steve Seid:
Business development pipeline. And we have a template for that, that you can reach out to us. I mean, there's nothing magical about a pipeline. The key point is that it keeps you focused on business development and who you're supposed to be in front of.
Kurt Dupuis:
And how you're shepherding people through the funnel.
Steve Seid:
That's right. What's the life cycle of your prospects. And if it's empty by the way, and you have nothing in your pipeline that also tells you something too. So I don't think this is something you bring in daily. This is probably a weekly thing.
Kurt Dupuis:
Interesting. I got to give you some props too, because I saw some of the results of this. And I think folks that participated, you might've already shared, but for folks that did not participate, you put together some really cool ... What are they called? Word clouds.
Steve Seid:
Yeah.
Kurt Dupuis:
And the details of it.
Steve Seid:
That's right. Yeah. I've been playing around with word clouds.
Kurt Dupuis:
You're getting next level on me, man.
Steve Seid:
Yeah. Turns out for those who have never built a word cloud. And I should describe it just in case anyone doesn't know. A word cloud takes a bunch of text and the more something is mentioned, the bigger that word shows up, but it turns out it's pretty easy to create a word cloud, kind of cool stuff.
Kurt Dupuis:
Yeah, interesting.
Steve Seid:
Yeah.
Kurt Dupuis:
I was just going to say, if you want to see the word cloud and kind of get some insights, feel free to reach out to us, thewholetruth@touchstonefunds.com.
Steve Seid:
All right. Cool. Excellent. We'll be right back with the next segment with the mailbag, which I am really excited about. This is The Whole Truth, stick with us.
Steve Seid:
All right. We are back. Thank you, everyone for your questions. Mailbags might be my second favorite thing that we do on this show. My first being, if we have some kind of real ... Which I think all of our guests so far have been. We've got a really excellent guest that I get to interact with and ask questions. I love that, but yeah mailbags, mailbags are not far below that. I really enjoy them. But we want to keep this lively. This is not going to be all serious. Kurt, and I wanted to just come with maybe one question each that's a little bit, just sort of loosen it up.
Kurt Dupuis:
Yeah. I want to take other side of the coin with something we did recently. Talking about really bad meetings that we've all had. I want to flip that around though. Do you remember ... I've got several that come to mind, but first meeting that you walked in and it could not have gone better, whether they end up doing business or not, you can use whatever criteria you'd like. Do you have a story about having an awesome first meeting.
Steve Seid:
Yes. There's a bunch of them that come to mind. Actually, why don't you lead the way here. And I want to hear what you have to say, and then I'll go after that.
Kurt Dupuis:
Okay. I walked in this guy's office, he's independent, so kind of had his own house office, which was pretty cool. It was decorated like a house, big leather chairs and it was in Birmingham, Alabama. Could not have been nicer. We sat down on his big leather chairs. And you know when you just start talking to someone and you're just like, "I just like this person."
Steve Seid:
Yeah.
Kurt Dupuis:
Just on a basic human level, like this person, he's interesting. He's articulate. I could probably learn a ton from this guy. So it was going great. Talking about no business at all so that's always a good start. But then we concluded with him telling me that he had just gone on like a rum journeymen trip through the Caribbean.
Steve Seid:
Is that right?
Kurt Dupuis:
And going to all these rum distilleries.
Steve Seid:
Wow.
Kurt Dupuis:
So then of course we had to partake and he had to explain the different types of rums, where they came from and just the differences between them.
Steve Seid:
Just had to. There was no choice.
Kurt Dupuis:
It's my obligation to partake.
Steve Seid:
It's your obligation. Yeah. It would've just been rude if you didn't. Yeah.
Kurt Dupuis:
Correct. And I'm a nice guy. So really interesting guy does a little bit of business that's always good. Learned a ton about rum, learned a ton about life. It was a great meeting and that's a really fun part of the job. You never know what you're walking into, but when you walk into one of those, you walk out being like, "Man, this is great."
Steve Seid:
That just made my day. Yeah. I think for me, the meetings that come to mind as you go in and say, "Okay, the person that I'm going to see is a legit financial professional." Like really you know that this person is…
Kurt Dupuis:
High functioning.
Steve Seid:
…somebody you want to know, and it's your first meeting and you go in there and we don't lead with product. We know when we get to that point, we're usually able to help people, but we come with this consulting practice management stuff.
Steve Seid:
And when that clicks, when someone says, "Hey, I'm working through this." Then all of a sudden, you know that you can add a boatload of value. There's that rush that comes into it where you're just like, "I can't wait to help this guy do what he just said he wants to do." And that's what gets me. That's what keeps me going in this industry, because I'll tell you if it was just walking in and sort of reviewing investments and fact sheets. I couldn't do this job for that long. I could do it for five years, but it's those engagements that really kind of get me up in the morning.
Kurt Dupuis:
I'm with you. Well, I'm a personable person. I'm a textbook extrovert, I love people. And so like being able to pivot from product to a more consultative discovery, it's a whole other avenue. And then when it works well to your point, that helps the relationship, which is what it's all about. It builds this, it's this ecosystem, it's this matrix of just everything clicking and working well together beautifully.
Steve Seid:
That's awesome. All right. I got one for you. And I didn't prepare an answer for myself because I just said, I was going to throw this question at you.
Kurt Dupuis:
Hit me.
Steve Seid:
I would like for you to share, you can either choose something about yourself or an embarrassing story or something that when about you, that would give us a chuckle if we knew it. How if, people knew they would laugh or chuckle a little bit. Any of that come to mind? You got to have an embarrassing story.
Kurt Dupuis:
I'll just tell you the first thing that comes to my mind.
Steve Seid:
Yeah.
Kurt Dupuis:
This is actually from my childhood, teenager. I was probably like mid-teens. And I was with youth group at a church thing. And the girl that I was crushing on at the time was sitting right next to me, this little red-headed number. And there was this guy who we're buddies with, there's actually a ...
Kurt Dupuis:
There was this guy who we're buddies with. It was actually a very love/hate relationship with this guy who also had a thing for her, was sitting behind me. And at some point during the service, it's like we're teenagers. There's no rhyme or reason why this would happen or someone would think to do this. He pantsed me.
Steve Seid:
Oh my God.
Kurt Dupuis:
Right in the middle of the service.
Steve Seid:
Oh my God.
Kurt Dupuis:
And I was petrified. I mean, I tend to roll with the punches and pretty smooth and even keeled guy. I was so freaking embarrassed.
Steve Seid:
Was it the kind of thing where it was just you and the people around you saw it or did the whole place turn around to see this pantsing?
Kurt Dupuis:
I mean, there's probably 50 people in there and over half realized what was going on.
Steve Seid:
Oh, that's awesome.
Kurt Dupuis:
Yeah. I mean, I'm sure I can think of many more recent, but when you just say embarrassing moment, like top five of my life, that's up there.
Steve Seid:
That's it, yeah. Yeah. Okay. Well, this is good. I'll have to prepare my embarrassing story for next time because-
Kurt Dupuis:
Oh, you're just going to make me share and you're just going to ride off in the sunset?
Steve Seid:
I don't know. Yeah, I've got to think about this one because some of the ones that are coming to mind right now are not podcast friendly. So, maybe I'll come the next time we do a mail bag. I'll commit to you and the audience that I will lead with an embarrassing story or something about myself.
Kurt Dupuis:
Perfect.
Steve Seid:
So stay tuned.
Kurt Dupuis:
I'm going to hold you to that.
Steve Seid:
All right, guys. Let's get into the mail bag. So what Kurt and I are going to do, we're going to share these questions. I'll share some, have Kurt answer, vice versa. There's some of these questions that we're going to want your feedback on as well because we've done the research, but there is no substitute from getting feedback from our Community. If you're on our distribution list, you'll see these questions come to you and we look forward to you answering as well. But we'll start one, Kurt, from Keenan up in Eureka. He is struggling with time management. And the thing that I always recommend to people and I recommend to him is time blocking, but he says it's really not working. As much as he tries to time block, that always gets violated. He's always working on a bunch of things. He always gets interrupted. So what do you do when time blocking doesn't seem to work?
Kurt Dupuis:
This is a great question because big time blocking guy here. I am not well equipped for deep things on a regular basis, if there are distractions around. So I have to time block, I have to lock my office door. If it doesn't work though, I'm trying to think of what must be so important that you let the time block fail. So if an immediate client thing comes up with, it's just difficult for me to imagine that it can't wait an hour or two, whatever the time block is, even if you articulate to your clients, your type of service, like we'll be within you within 24 hours. Well if you blocked off a couple of hours, you've still got 22 hours. If you're time blocking for something that's important, it's tough to imagine something that's more important coming through and breaking that up.
Steve Seid:
Yeah. What I was going to say about it is I would not abandon the time block. I'd do a better job of protecting the time block. So that means ...
Kurt Dupuis:
A much shorter way to say than my long-winded answer.
Steve Seid:
I mean, what does that mean? That means turn your email off, have your phone sent to voicemail, tell your assistants, "Do not disturb me during this time." And I think you've just got to, to Kurt's point, most things can wait. And your assistant could tell you if an emergency comes through, but most things are not emergencies. So, yeah, Keenan, I would say protect the-
Kurt Dupuis:
Stick with the time block
Steve Seid:
just protect it.
Kurt Dupuis:
Just protect it. Yep, cool.
Kurt Dupuis:
All right. I've got one for you. It's a two-parter from Rick. So implementing a service model, what do CSAs as part of this? And following up to that, how many touches do you think about for a tiered service model, A, B, and C?
Steve Seid:
Yeah, so commercial, if you have not listened to our first couple of episodes on building a service model and that's of interest, go listen to that. I want to say that upfront. What I would say to this question is the CSAs may be more critical to this process than even you are.
Kurt Dupuis:
Absolutely.
Steve Seid:
You've designed the model, which is you segmented, you've determined the types of what you basically want your client experience to be, and that's broken by the types of touches and number of touches. But then you've got to do the implementation and the processes of how these get done, and your CSA should be the quarterback for that, whatever that process is, bring it to me a month in advance so I can do it. And they own that process and ensure that it gets done.
Steve Seid:
The other thing about it is some of those contacts, they're going to be doing. There's also the inbound client experience that you've got to think about as well. Anything you want to add on that, Kurt?
Kurt Dupuis:
Yeah. Well, the analogy that we talk about is the pyramid or going to the dentist office. You see the dentist for three out of the 45 minutes, because they're that point person, they're the highly specialized person. It's the scheduler and then it's the dental hygienist. You see other support characters. And I think that's a helpful way to think about a well-executed service model for a financial professional's practice.
Steve Seid:
Yep. Yeah. The dentist analogy is just so perfect.So the second part of the question is how many touches for A, B, C, D clients. You can get some generic feedback, like the Supernova book will say 12-4-2, which is monthly contacts, four client reviews, two in person. You should think about this another way, which is, what do you want your client experience to look like when you think about those A clients and you think about the best way to interact with them in a year? And design that. Then back into the number of contacts. I start with the client experience and I work backwards.
Steve Seid:
All right, let's get to the next question, which is from Doug F. in Oakland. And I must say, I don't know if we can use last names or not in this, Kurt, in this pocket.
Kurt Dupuis:
Probably better to not.
Steve Seid:
I won't, but anyone who's around Oakland will know my friend Doug F. And I don't think it's possible that we can have a mail bag without him. Right?
Kurt Dupuis:
No. Douggie Doug's, he's going to be up in there.
Steve Seid:
Yeah. We love the interaction, Doug, please keep it coming. He's got a two-parter here. The first one is at what point do we need to recruit another team member to manage a growing practice? We talked about this a little bit in a prior episode, in terms of how to think about adding folks. But Kurt, you can share your latest thoughts there. The second part of the question is how can each team member maintain a reasonable work-life balance?
Kurt Dupuis:
Well, so the first one is easier because we've built a calculator to help figure this out. So what the calculator does is it assumes how much time it takes to service clients. From our analysis, that's about 61% of an advisor's time. The other 39 is prospecting, trading, meetings. So we break down all of those different elements, how much time they take and how much time is in a year, or 1625 market hours in a year. And we spit out a number. Do you have capacity? Do you have time? Or do you not? So if you can't tinker with any of those numbers and I don't know, change how you service clients, change how you trade, change how you prospect, but once you figure out all those inputs, you can figure it out pretty quickly, how much time is left over.
Kurt Dupuis:
And if you have time, then great. If you don't, you either need to change your systems or you need to hire someone. It's a pretty clear black and white approach to think through that.
Steve Seid:
Yeah. And I'll share, people do overthink this. There's always a hesitancy, especially if it's coming out of your own pocket, to hire people and to create that extra cost. But I will tell you this, in most cases, you get the right person, you're not going to regret doing it. And the other way that you can think about it is just do a time log of your day-to-day. And if you find yourself doing stuff -- this is a quote from someone in our Community, Eleezabeth out in Walnut Creek -- if you find that you're doing stuff that you are not uniquely qualified to do, then maybe you should hire someone, so you can free up your time to do the things that you are uniquely qualified to do.
Kurt Dupuis:
Man. The second part about how can each team member have reasonable work-life balance, that's a tough one. I mean, I would defer back to the calculator and you can kind of figure out where-
Steve Seid:
That's what I would say that. Yeah.
Kurt Dupuis:
But yeah, you've got log because you got to know how you are spending your time, so you can have that conversation. And then you just got to talk about it and you have to communicate well.
Steve Seid:
The other thing I would say is, there's two types of cultures when it comes to unplugging. And I bring vacations into this too, when I think about work life, is vacations.
Kurt Dupuis:
Yeah.
Steve Seid:
There are the type of cultures where vacations are almost, I'm not going to say frowned upon because at this day and age, it's not that. But, where it's not really highly encouraged and when the person is on vacation, no one is stepping up to backfill them and they're still getting their emails from other members of their team. That's not, that's what erodes work-life balance. On the other end, if we say, "Hey, as a team, vacations are important to us, our time off is important to us. So when this happens, here's how the team supports and steps up and fills that gap.
Kurt Dupuis:
Another question from Mr. Darien. They're just looking for advisors’ experience with running their practice during a pandemic. I think it's, unless someone's been around a hundred years, it's everyone's first pandemic to work through.
Maybe just some thoughts, successes, failures, mistakes, lessons learned. What are people doing differently? You got any thoughts there? What are you hearing from folks?
Steve Seid:
Yeah. And this is the one when we started talking about this segment, we said, we're going to pose it to the Community. I want to do a broad study of our Community. You'll hear from Kurt and I. We want to get your feedback on how, reflecting back on what you've done from the pandemic, the successes and failures.
But let me share a couple of my observations. What the best teams are doing right now are not treating this like it's temporary. In other words, there are some teams that come and they're like, okay, we're just going to string this together until we get back in the office. And there are some teams that are saying, okay, this is a really good opportunity for us to be able to solidify our processes digitally. And I think that's just a wonderful way to look at it.
The second thing I would say is they're taking advantage of the situation in terms of understanding that this is a dislocation event. And what happens in dislocation events is it is a catalyst for change, i.e. there's business to be had right now. We're seeing it in our business with money in motion. There are clients to be had right now, so don't use this as an excuse to say, "Oh we're not in this frame of mind. I can't do prospecting and business development." Absolutely not. This is an ideal time, and the best teams are doing that right now.
And the last thing I would say is they're still servicing their clients. And this goes back to the processes thing. They're figuring out how to do these touches, even though some of them may not be in person. And I'm sure there's going to be some challenges and some learnings from that. But I suspect that the teams that are doing the three things that I just described are going to have some things that they bring back that's going to better their practice, even when things normalize.
Kurt Dupuis:
I think that's great. Yeah. And just anecdotally, to that first point, I've had conversations with folks that never would have expected them to embrace the work from home. But yet even when their offices have opened up or partially opened up, they've got their home office set up and they're going in sparingly, if at all.
Kurt Dupuis:
Yeah, I think people that are taking this as a long-term view, and this is kind of here to stay and there's going to be permanent changes here, I think that's an awesome point.
Steve Seid:
Yeah. There's a reason that a lot of these tech companies are doing so well right now is because it basically, it accelerated the momentum towards some of those technologies. And I got good news for everybody. Some of those technologies are pretty cool and they can make your life better.
Okay. Let's keep moving along. This is from Scott S, and this is regarding the podcast as a whole. This is going to, he's asking us to self reflect a little bit here, Kurt. Okay?
Kurt Dupuis:
In public?
Steve Seid:
In public. Yeah.
Kurt Dupuis:
Man.
Steve Seid:
Lay it all out there. We're not allowed to edit this part of our response.
Kurt Dupuis:
Okay.
Steve Seid:
He says, "Regarding the podcast, has it been successful thus far? Reflecting, would you give it a grade? What would you do differently and what has surprised you?"
Steve Seid:
And I'm very interested in your responses on this Kurt, because we have not talked about this.
Kurt Dupuis:
Man. Okay. Out the gates, I'd give us a grade of, fairly strong. I, probably a solid B.
Steve Seid:
Yeah. A B? That's not that strong, but.
Kurt Dupuis:
Well, I was a B student. For me, B is pretty strong.
Steve Seid:
It's as high as it gets? Yeah. Fair enough.
Kurt Dupuis:
B is A. No, but when you consider our metrics for grading, which is really in engagement with our Community, then I'd give us really good marks there. I think the numbers, and I know you don't like to look at the numbers, but the numbers have also surprised to the upside.
Steve Seid:
That's been amazing.
Kurt Dupuis:
That's a fringe benefit. But the fact that last night, just last night, I was talking to someone and they were saying, "Hey, love the podcast. I don't know anybody else that's doing this. What you guys are putting out there is fantastic." Those comments keep me going with it. So, yeah. Maybe an A minus. Okay. I'll bump it up to A minus. There we go.
Steve Seid:
Yeah. We're going to do some grade inflation. I think that's what they do in schools now. When I was going to school, I think they didn't mind, they had no issue about giving you C's and D's, but I guess with kids today, it's all A's and B's. There is no, it's everyone. Everyone gets a trophy.
Kurt Dupuis:
Yeah. Well, I'll give you that. What would you do differently, though? What about that question?
Steve Seid:
Yeah, I'm going to address that. Let me first make one more comment. I do think that it's been successful thus far, but I think what happens over the next six months to a year is going to determine the success level, because we've got this incredible foundation that we've got to build off of. And I really want to see that acceleration.
Steve Seid:
So happy to be building this show with you all. And just really, I don't know, I'm just really excited about what we're doing here. It feels good to innovate. It feels good to think outside the box. And the best comment that I get happened last night. My friend out in Grass Valley, Dylan sent me an email. I think I forwarded it to you, Kurt. But he's like, "Yeah, you guys just sound like real podcasters. You sound like."
That's the, "You sound like you're not just two idiots trying to figure this out. You sound legit like podcasters." And that gets me all fired up, when someone says that. You must love that, right?
Kurt Dupuis:
I do. I love the innovation thing. I love the collaboration that you and I have had just because we have different yet complimentary personalities and viewpoints, I think.
Steve Seid:
Yeah.
Kurt Dupuis:
And seeing that grow a long way, and then seeing other people enjoy that too. Even internally, we get a lot of good feedback. It's been a lot of fun, man.
Steve Seid:
Yeah. You almost wonder if there's got to be something bad because of all the good. That's my pessimism coming.
Kurt Dupuis:
I've got to say, that's, I don't think that at all.
Steve Seid:
What would you do differently? I think if I listen to our earliest episodes, I think they were good, but I would, I always appreciate the episodes more when Kurt and I are doing something fun, when we let our personalities come out, when we're joking around.
Kurt Dupuis:
Yeah.
Steve Seid:
We sort of, around episode three, four, said after we did kind of a fun segment, we kind of said, "Hey, that felt good." And then when you listen back to it, "Hey, that sounded good." Yeah. We want to help you with your client service model, but you're not going to listen to us for an hour talk about segmentation. We want you to get some enjoyment out of this.
I think that's my immediate response. There's certainly other things I'm sure that we could do differently and would do differently, but that's top of mind. How would you respond?
Kurt Dupuis:
Well, yeah. We were treating this as an educational kind of podcast at the beginning, which is kind of arrogant to begin with. And I think we just realized we have more fun and it seems like we get better feedback when it's less rigid. We've embraced that, and you might've also noticed that episodes are longer because of it.
We're not just trying to compact into 15 minutes, in and out. Boom, boom, boom. Just pure business. We think it's important to have some banter and the sacrifice is episodes are a little bit longer, which from the feedback that I've heard is a trade-off most people are okay with.
Steve Seid:
Yeah. Originally we said under 30 minutes and we just cannot do that.
Kurt Dupuis:
Yeah. We keep blowing that away.
Steve Seid:
We just cannot. The last part of that question is what has surprised you? Have you covered that? Or is there anything else that you would say that's surprising?
Kurt Dupuis:
Yeah. All of it is. I mean, when you have a new idea and you're doing something that you don't really know, you don't, none of our peers are doing something like this. You don't have anything to benchmark yourself against. What surprised me is that people are giving us really good feedback regularly. And what surprises me is that people listen to this and they think we actually know what we're talking about.
Steve Seid:
Yeah. We fooled them all. We fooled them all.
Kurt Dupuis:
Well, that's thanks to the editing team for that. But.
Steve Seid:
Yeah, it's so funny when someone comes, and they're like, "Man, you guys sound like you just have everything worked out perfectly before." I'm like, "Yeah, you can make it sound pretty good when you record an hour and a half of audio and strip it down to 40 minutes.”
Kurt Dupuis:
I'd get into a lot less trouble with my wife if I could do that.
Moving on. This was a question from Mr. Rick B. If you had someone doing marketing for you, what would you have them do? LinkedIn, mailers, et cetera. What would you have them do?
Steve Seid:
Yeah, there's two kinds of ways that you can approach that. The first is, think about it, it's a little bit of an older school way of just doing the things that you don't want to do anymore. So cold calls and filling seminars and doing LinkedIn. I mean, that's one way to think about it. I don't want to be overly negative to that because I have seen it work, but I think what's more important to me is that you think about, "Okay, what are the strategies, the specific strategies that I want to do for business development? What are those things?" And then from there, figure out where someone could come in to fill a gap for you within those strategies.
Okay. And let's just cover one more question. There's a bunch we didn't get to, but we'll do the mailbag again. This is another one from our friend, Doug F. "How do you deliver a truly thoughtful educational experience for your clients?"
Kurt Dupuis:
The word that is emphasized here is thoughtful. And so then the next question that I ask myself is, "What's thoughtful about it? Is the content thoughtful or is it thoughtful to the client? Meaning is it catered to the client? Does the client have a feeling that you are catering to them? You are curating this for them? And I think that's what I would emphasize is that clients will know something's thoughtful when they feel like it's tailored to them. When it's presented in a slow manner, when you show them something, not just telling them something, when you help them separate the signal and the noise. All these things that you're probably doing intuitively with the net effect of making them feel as though you're really thinking about their education and care about your education. Is that a crazy way to think about it?
Steve Seid:
No. And I think the way that I was thinking about it is pretty complimentary to that. So, the way that I see a lot of financial professionals do it today is say, "Okay, our firm puts out all this material. We've got these external partners. Let's just get a list of everything that we could potentially use and then pick the ones that we like." You can do it that way. I would flip that on its head. Again, this is a theme with me, but I would design the end first. What do our clients really want to know? What would they benefit from? And then figuring out a way to get there. And maybe not all of that as pre-approved slides, but there's ways that you can present and have discussions that don't have to be pre-approved slides.
So think about the end in mind, think about what your clients want, survey them. So that's the kind of the way that I would think about it.
We've run out of time on this segment. We are going to come back with our Costanza Corner. This is The Whole Truth. Stick with us.
And welcome back everybody. We are in our George Costanza Corner, our uplifting segment. Kurt, do you want to remind people because we told people why we called this the Costanza Corner. I think every once in a while it's reasonable to say why we call our uplifting segment because Costanza Corner. So why don't you refresh the memories?
Kurt Dupuis:
Fair point. So if you remember that episode where George figures out when he tells a joke, people laugh. If he leaves, people think of him more fondly. We're really just trying to do the same thing with you guys is that you think of us more fondly because we're going to end on a high note versus a Frank Costanza sort of angle, which we actually we've sort of done as well.
Steve Seid:
Yeah.
Kurt Dupuis:
which is a more hyper-negative, very dark and gloomy kind of persona which we're trying to avoid here.
Steve Seid:
Well, to be fair though, that reminds me, we got to get another Just Stop It going soon.
Kurt Dupuis:
That may be my favorite segment.
Steve Seid:
Yeah.
Kurt Dupuis:
Getting you ranting.
Steve Seid:
Look forward to that soon. But yes, George Costanza, Kruger Enterprises conference room, leaving on a high note. That's what this segment's about. Kurt, you are up my friend.
Kurt Dupuis:
Yeah, I am. So I'm going to tell you what I'm going to do is I'm going to break your heart, and then I'm going to melt your heart.
Steve Seid:
Wow.
Kurt Dupuis:
Now, you ready?
Steve Seid:
I feel like I need Prozac or something. Go ahead.
Kurt Dupuis:
Yeah. So, I found this story of this kid, and it's a seven year old kid who apparently got bullied a bunch. And listen to this quote, this is where I'm going to break your heart. "After I was bullied, I felt a darkness inside of me. I knew I didn't want other kids to feel the same way. So I asked my mom if she could help me spread love and positivity. And the more I gave back to my community, the more I wanted to keep doing it."
Steve Seid:
Wow.
Kurt Dupuis:
So what this kid did was, first of all he used his own money to buy things for people in need. He put together little packages for elderly folks in his community. Then his mom helped him set up a GoFundMe page. It went crazy, and now they have sent not one, but two, 53 foot trailers to people in need in their community. A warehouse gave them a little space to store all the stuff. And they've just been collecting money. People are sending them stuff from his Amazon wishlist, all of these non-perishables for people in need, particularly, I think they're up North for the winter.
So seven year old kid took a bad situation, turned it positive, said, "You know what? I'm not going to do what other people are doing to me. I'm going to leave the world a better place." And he's sending literally truckloads of goods to people in need. How cool is that?
Steve Seid:
That is really cool. I thought they were better these days. When I say they, I don't even know, my wife's a school teacher, so I probably should ask her this question.
Kurt Dupuis:
Who's they?
Steve Seid:
But I thought they were, they, undefined they, are better these days about bullying in terms of stopping it and understanding the psychological implications of it. But I guess you just can't you can't stop it.
Kurt Dupuis:
Well, better doesn't mean eradication.
Steve Seid:
That's right.
Kurt Dupuis:
And then you have like all the social media stuff.
Steve Seid:
Yeah.
Kurt Dupuis:
My kids are young still. I'm not dealing with this, but I'm scared to death about that.
Steve Seid:
Can you imagine if your kid's in pain because someone's picking on him? That's a stake through the heart right there. I mean, that's brutal.
Kurt Dupuis:
Yeah.
Steve Seid:
But it is an uplifting thing. I think at this point it's proven scientifically, I think that's true, I don't know if this is true, but I think this is true.
Kurt Dupuis:
I think I know where you're going. And I think you're right.
Steve Seid:
That putting positivity out there makes your life better.
Kurt Dupuis:
And helping people, giving back to other people is proven to increase happiness.
Steve Seid:
Yeah.
Kurt Dupuis:
Measurable. Measurably.
Steve Seid:
It's a reminder. And you got to keep reminding yourself of these things because for some people, including myself, it's just not natural to just go out and be like super Mr. Happy, but you can choose that path.
Kurt Dupuis:
Every day.
Steve Seid:
Awesome.
Kurt Dupuis:
Yeah. So this kid his Twitter handle, if you want some positivity in your social media feed as well, is Cool Dope Living, which I also thought was fun.
Steve Seid:
Pretty epic.
Kurt Dupuis:
So @cooldopeliving. Follow him there. You can see some of the other campaigns that he's working on and the good he's doing in the world.
Steve Seid:
Awesome. Great one, Kurt. We will see you next time.
Kurt Dupuis:
You can find The Whole Truth and subscribe for free on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or your favorite podcast app. We'd love it if you took the time to rate and review the show on Apple Podcasts, it helps others find the show. And for more episodes of The Whole Truth, go to www.touchstoneinvestments.com/thewholetruth. That's such touchstoneinvestments.com/thewholetruth, all one word.
