Kurt Dupuis:
Welcome to The Whole Truth, where two wholesalers help financial professionals build great practices and thrive in a rapidly changing industry. We'll bring you the stories and voices from those on the front lines of this change. And we'll have some fun along the way.
Steve Seid:
We're building a community of financial professionals who are growing, forward thinking and want to get better. Thanks for listening and contributing to the discussion.
Disclosure:
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.
Steve Seid:
So we've got our best of 2022. What are we going to do? A top five here today, Kurt, is that what we decided?
Kurt Dupuis:
Yeah, there abouts. That works. Well, we had what? We had about a dozen, little more than a dozen episodes, so we're going to talk about top five. And you know what I found that is very useful for having a podcast is, you forget what you did 10, 12 months ago, so this documents conversations you've had, learnings you've had over a year.
Steve Seid:
And it's been an incredible year. We crossed 50 episodes, which was an incredible milestone. We've also crossed 10,000 downloads, which was mindblowing because I think many of you who listen to the show regularly knows we didn't start this thing to compete with Joe Rogan. We wanted people who we knew, audience members that we knew that would listen, that would engage with the show, that would be a part of it. So, I don't know. 10,000 downloads, that's nice. And it's across a lot of thousands of different people, which is, I don't know, very cool from where I'm sitting.
Kurt Dupuis:
It is. It is. We don't look at the numbers very often, but we're having kind of an annual review internally, and cool to see.
Steve Seid:
Yeah. And I told you this story, there was... Usually, Kurt and I release an episode every three weeks. And we missed one because it got held up in our approval process. And I had a whole bunch of people that week, Kurt, I remember telling you this, "Hey, you guys haven't released an episode." And, that's cool to hear that people are not only listening to this show, but also making it part of their routine.
Kurt Dupuis:
It was also cool that people were asking you that why you were trying to take incognito photos of Larry David out in LA, so that was fun too.
Steve Seid:
Are you already giving off the Costanza Corner for today? Hold off on that one.
Kurt Dupuis:
Oh, is that it?
Steve Seid:
Come on. That's not going to be the Costanza Corner. So preview, there's a Larry David story coming if you wait until the end of the episode. That's worth waiting around for.
Kurt Dupuis:
So apropos.
Steve Seid:
So I'm going to do a curve ball up front if you don't mind. So, there's an episode that's probably, actually definitely, on both of our lists, which is Liz Lenz from Raymond James. She was both on our top five list. But we're also, in addition to doing top five, we want to pick our episode of the year. So, we're going to take Liz out of that because Liz actually crossed a milestone for us and became our number one most listened episode, which our friend Ben Alge, who…
Kurt Dupuis:
Love it.
Steve Seid:
…as all many of you know well…
Kurt Dupuis:
He’s fuming.
Steve Seid:
…who's hosting an episode. Yeah, you'll see him do more episodes in the future. And he held the record for his “Challenger Sale” episode of being the most listened to, and Liz knocked him off of his perch.
Kurt Dupuis:
Dethroned.
Steve Seid:
He will say it's because we put all this marketing effort behind Liz's episode, which is true, but nevertheless, we have a new champion. So I feel like, being number one, she's already number one, so maybe we'll pick out of the other four. Is that fair?
Kurt Dupuis:
The people have spoken, but also that's not to speak of all of Ben's family and friends downloading the episode and boosting his artificial numbers, so to be fair.
Steve Seid:
He's got that going on right now.
Kurt Dupuis:
Call a spade a spade.
Steve Seid:
Right now, he's got his iPad. He's got his phone. He's got his wife's phone. They're all just clicking over.
Kurt Dupuis:
He's buying burner phones left and right just to download that episode.
Steve Seid:
All right. So maybe let's talk about Liz, and then we can talk about the other four and vote for episode of the year. Just hearing Liz, her expertise, she runs practice management at Raymond James. Very well-known in that system. Been doing practice management for a long time. It was powerful stuff. I'd be interested in your thoughts on that episode and some of your key takeaways.
Kurt Dupuis:
Well, three big ones, and the first one was just understanding how deep and thorough their analysis was when it comes to helping advisors. So they call it gap analysis, and they have, I think, a 70-question questionnaire that they ask financial professionals just to get a sense of how they think about their business, understanding some of the ins and outs of how they think about assessing. I mean, it's tough to coach or consult folks if you don't have a baseline, so how do you get that baseline and understanding their process for doing that, and kind of comparing notes against how we do it.
Steve Seid:
We're asking a bunch of open-ended questions, and then what we receive back, we're looking for challenges and opportunities. And if we can help with one of those, boom, we'd go and do it. But, if you could fill all this out in advance, it'll save us a bunch of time, and you won't miss anything. Did you have any other points on the episode you wanted to mention?
Kurt Dupuis:
I've long been interested about how people think about valuation, and because that is a part of Liz's past is M&A and financial professional retention. We also had her describe how they think about that. And, there's two main sides. One is the obvious one, which is kind of the quantitative numerical metrics. What's AUM? What's revenue, average age of client, average accounts per household? You could go on and on about the quantitative metrics. But the second aspect that she layered in was this idea of transferability. So when they talk about a practice, and they say, "Well, okay, so you get most of your growth from referrals. How do you do that?" And in a lot of cases, it's just because someone is really well-known and well-liked in the community. And, that might bode well from a quantitative standpoint, but from a transferability standpoint, that might be challenging, so it affects the valuation for a business.
And then my last one was the name of the episode, because it's something that I think we run into a lot in these coaching consulting engagements is, the hardest thing to learn is the unlearning, how to get people to think in a different way.
Steve Seid:
Absolutely.
Kurt Dupuis:
How to get people that are often stagnant and okay with it to loosen up the gears a little bit. How do you get a million dollar producer to want to be a $2 million producer? And then, every segment in between. And, I'm not sure we have an answer for that, but it's identifying people that just sort of have that gear, have that gear, which we talk about this in the podcast, this is in our intro every episode, people that want to grow and get better. That's why we do this. That's the audience that we're looking to connect with. It's those folks that kind of raise their hand and say, "Look, I don't have it all together, but I want to get better."
Steve Seid:
Let's just tee up some clips. Here's a couple of excerpts from our episode with Liz Lenz, our number one most listened to episode ever.
Liz Lenz:
We call it our gap analysis process here at Raymond James. And we have a great partner with Actify that we're able to run our diagnostic process through. But essentially, it's a 70-question assessment that advisors take. So it's thorough. And at the time, there was another coach here, her name's Eileen Carpenter. She's still with us. She's brilliant, been working with advisors for years, and we were able to work together to create this assessment. And essentially, what it does is it looks at 20+ different practice management category areas through the 70 questions. And then we bucket it up into four different practice intelligence zones.
So practice intelligence is what we call the Raymond James practice management thought leadership and content. So the four different practice intelligence zones are market and connect, plan and invest, review and delight, and refine your practice. And, in layman's terms, that's business development, your service offering, your client management and sort of the foundation of your team. So all those 20 different topics gets funneled into those areas. And what an advisor will do is they'll take the assessment and immediately, based on the question, they'll kind of read how they're running their practice and make suggestions of what areas of the business that they should be focusing on. It's at that point in time where they get an automated report back, thanks to the Actify system, kind of a scorecard of how they're performing. And then a coach comes in and has a follow-up conversation where we're able to dig deeper.
Well, the first things first in any coaching engagement, you got to have people on board willing to change. It's a prerequisite to making sure that the engagement is going to be effective. So, one of the things we talk about, even before we engage with everyone, is how coachable the team is. In fact, we build in how coachable they are into that assessment that I was talking about, the gap analysis assessment.
Steve Seid:
Interesting.
Liz Lenz:
You have to be willing to change, or at least, be willing to challenge the status quo. I have a colleague, his name is Matt Ransom, very smart guy, and he told me something that has always stuck with me, and I don't know if he came up with it or not, so kudos, Matt, if you did. But he said, "The hardest type of learning is unlearning." And, when you look at behavior change, that's really what it is. You're kind of unlearning certain habits.
So, we talk about how sustainable the business is. Obviously, first thing, you have to look at the types of accounts that there are, which leads to type of revenue that it's generating. Do you have an ongoing advisory relationship with these clients, which is likely resulting in recurring fees? Or, is it a one-time commission? But the other things that are a little bit harder to quantify but you want to look at is competitive value proposition. So what is the service offering? You see a lot of times that buyers like to have an opportunity where the service offering isn't quite where it could be, and they know that their team has extra expertise or value they can bring to the table to enhance the client's existing experience or services that they're getting.
Client demographics is a big one if they're taking distributions. When we don't have a relationship with the next generation, should something happen to that client, we want to make sure that we continue to serve that family and those assets. And, if we don't have next gen planning, and we have an aging client base, that could be another risk factor to consider. So, that multi-gen planning, although hard to do, paired with competitive value proposition, how recurring the revenue is, is where I start to think about, how sustainable is this business?
Now, there's another piece of sustainability that really drifts over into transferability of the practice. It's how you're running the business. And if I said, "Hey, describe the way you manage your clients," and you can't describe it, and you're more reacting in the practice than having a business model or system that's running how you're managing those relationships, it's going to be really hard for me as a buyer to make sure I'm delivering an equal, if not better, experience than you had before. So, the transferability of the business is based on your ability to take things like client management, investment management, the planning processes, and deliver an equal, if not better, experience.
And so in order to be able to do that, describe it to somebody else, you have to make sure, first, your backstage process, so that's the tasks, the workflows, the things that you're doing to make sure it runs. Efficiency can be run by somebody else, that's why systems need to run the business, not people who run the systems, because you can take the system and they can be ran by new people. And then additionally, you have to make sure things like the products and services are available for that client should they transfer to a new owner.
Steve Seid:
That was some clips from Liz Lenz. Let's talk about our other four. You want to just kind of go back and forth on this?
Kurt Dupuis:
Yeah.
Steve Seid:
In no particular order at all. At all.
Kurt Dupuis:
And we haven't shared notes, so we don't know who's going to say what.
Steve Seid:
We don't know. Yeah. And, we'll have to debate and come up with our number one episode at the end. The first one I'll mention is Dr. Rick. Do you remember Dr. Rick? He's a professional golf coach. He's also been in our industry for a really long time. He's a psychologist. There's so many things about that episode I liked a lot. It's one of those episodes I listened to multiple times.
Kurt Dupuis:
Yeah.
Steve Seid:
One thing I'd point out is, he was talking about just the psychology of needs and experience. So we all talk about client experience, and we want to make that exceptional. It's something we throw out all the time. But what if you could align that client experience to people's psychological needs? And he breaks down all that, and we'll share a clip of that in a little bit. Did you have Dr. Rick on your list or no?
Kurt Dupuis:
I did. My favorite part of the conversation was him recounting the conversation with a client, or a potential client, who was like 50th in the world in golf. And he was like, "Ok. So, what are we trying to accomplish? Do you want to be top five, top 10?" He's like, "No. I just want to stay top 50."
Steve Seid:
"I'm 50. I don't want to be 60. But I don't need to be one."
Kurt Dupuis:
"I don't want to be a hundred either."
Steve Seid:
Yeah.
Kurt Dupuis:
"Just because I make millions of dollars a year. I can go to eat with my family and not everyone knows who I am. I can have a life." It's like you don't have to be the top corner office guy in every office, but just kind of being aware of where your blind spots are.
Steve Seid:
Let's listen to some clips from Dr. Rick.
Rick Jensen:
I tell a lot of stories in that book about the Tiger Woods of the world, the Greg Normans of the world, the people who have been number one, but I don't think that everyone's striving to be that. So the first part of that, I talk about five essentials, and the first essential in that is define your goal. I'll share a story with you that is kind of humorous as I worked with a professional golfer years ago. I worked out of a place called PGA National in South Florida, I just moved to California, but for years, I've worked out of this location. So this golfer flew in there. I met with him. I start right away with, I gather all their stats and I kind of do my due diligence in terms of who am I going to meet with. But once I meet with them, I would do what advisors would do with a prospect is sit down and do a discovery interview about where you're at.
Well, the first part of that is, what are you trying to do? And I asked this player at the time, I can remember sitting in there and going, "So what is it that you're trying to do?" Now he was top 50. I think he was ranked 50, 51st in the world at the time. So, I asked him the question, I said, "What's our goal here? Are we trying to get into the top 20?" And he looks at me and he goes, "No." And I said, "Top 10?" And he goes, "No." And I went, "Oh okay, so you're looking to be number one, and you really feel like that's doable?" And he goes, "No. Certainly no." And he went a completely different direction. And I went, "No?" And he goes, "No." I said, "You don't want to be top 20, top 10 or number one?" He goes, "Not really." And I said, "What's your goal?" And he goes, "I kind of like 50."
Steve Seid:
Interesting.
Rick Jensen:
I said, "But you're already 50." And he said, he goes, "Yeah, I like it here." And I said, "What do you mean?" And he went on to explain, "Hey, if I take off my sunglasses and my hat, I can go in an airport. I can fly with my family. I can eat at a restaurant." He goes, "I have no interest in being one of these top players." He goes, "They have no life." He goes, "I make a couple of million dollars a year playing the game I love. Don't disrupt that." And I said, "Well, what are you seeing me for?" He goes, "I can't become 150."
They're used to using MoneyGuidePro or eMoney to walk through needs, wishes and wants. If anyone on this call that's taken like Psych 101 would've taken Maslow's hierarchy of needs when they went through Psych 101 and learned about there's a hierarchy of those needs. Do you start to explore people's work values and what they value most as well? So when you take values and needs and put them together, I actually build a hierarchy for advisors. I'm like, "Look, the first thing you have to do when you work with clients is you start in that kind of, let's call it just the security." I think of it as a pyramid. Again, the base is security.
So if you work with retirees that don't have a lot of money, what keeps them up at night are things like longevity risk and will you outlive your money in securing a paycheck in income? That's part of it. Now if you work with ultra high net worth people, they get right out of that security bucket right away. They haven't had security issues forever. They've been able to take care of all those needs and you'd migrate away from that.
So once you look at... You work with a business owner through COVID. Now they might not have income needs or they haven't for years, but they might have business security needs, because when COVID happened, was it going to shut down their small business? At first, you're looking at a level of just security, the base needs that someone would have either in their personal life or their business. From there, if that's okay, you would move to more relationships. So I teach advisors, "Hey, if that doesn't seem to be any early pain points in security, now start talking about relationship. Do they have kids preparing for college? Do they have a spouse that they're going to retire with? Do they have family members that they care for? Are they in that sandwich generations that they have elderly parents that they're dealing with healthcare concern?" So, you're looking at relationship issues, and then there's a number of discovery questions you would ask there.
From there, you kind of move to the next level, which is kind of business goals, personal goals, what are your goals? When you ask about goals in retirement, "What are you looking to do in retirement? Where do you tend to go with that? What are you doing with your business? Are you on the way out? Are you looking to grow? Do you need lending and finance?" So you could go to that achievement area, the goal area.
And then, the last bucket is more... Again, Maslow has referred to that as self-actualization. I think, in our world in financial services, it's more like legacy planning.
Kurt Dupuis:
Legacy.
Rick Jensen:
Philanthropy. So, I teach advisors, "You should be thinking through, there's a hierarchy in which you do discovery. To start asking legacy questions of someone who's fearful that their business may not make it through the year is kind of silly."
The first one is that you actually have become more of a, I call it business specialization. Just as I speak to you, I'm a psychologist by training, but I work specifically with financial advisors, pro golf and tennis. That's my market. Being more specialized allows my advice to be so much higher level than if I just was a life coach coaching everybody about being better at life. When you're that, you come across as like, "Well, I'll help you with any pain point that you have. What do you got going on?" And teaching advisors, just going after anyone with a dollar and a pulse is what you did when you started. But if you're going to truly be a valued advisor moving forward, you've got to become more specialized. And those that are, frankly, I always say, they attract gold, and they don't have to pan for gold anymore, because they've built a brand and a reputation that attracts business to them that way. So that's discipline number one.
Number two for me would be that, you have to, I call it exceptional service. You have to be able to deliver on that value prop. So if I say, "Hey, I'm an incredible advisor for business owners," I better be able to have exceptional services in lending, in financing, in cash flow management, in succession planning, in tax plan. I'd better be able to do those things that an advisor within that space could do. I could say it on a website, but it doesn't mean that people experience it.
Third, capacity management. You have to have capacity to grow. So advisors who have 600 households and not enough staff and no simple processes to organize that and don't know how to do client segmentation and book management, they're frankly so busy servicing, they stop growing, because they're not able to continue to manage their client acquisition systems well. That leads into, the fourth area for me is referral or prospect generation, meaning, do you have very clear processes on how to build advocacy among clients and among centers of influence, so that you are generating a pipeline of qualified, unsolicited referrals?
Steve Seid:
Okay. So we are down to our final three. So I feel like we're going to start to get to some disagreement, but I'm curious if we ended up in the same place. Because our first two, we both agreed on. What was another one from you?
Kurt Dupuis:
Another one that I had on the list was Dan Catone. You have him on your list too?
Steve Seid:
I did not, but I love this episode and I love Dan, so. It's hard. You got to draw the line somewhere.
Kurt Dupuis:
I know. It's like all your babies. But, my recap of him, so I literally wrote in my note, the most interesting guy in the universe.
Steve Seid:
He is. He's absolutely amazing.
Kurt Dupuis:
And here's a great through line for this recap episode is, he's that embodiment of just refusing to be stagnant and to not grow. So if you remember his background, he started working for the UN High Commission for Refugees. He did work in Geneva, Switzerland with the UN, came back to the U.S. not long after 9/11, knew nothing but knew that he needed some sort of job. Stocks seemed interesting to him, so he got into the business. One of his coaches told him very early on, he's like, "You're probably not cut out for this." To which he replied, "You don't understand. I don't have any other options." So, kind of in for a penny, in for a pound sort of thing, and ended up teaching finance lessons with this same coach a couple of years later, just because he put his nose down and worked hard. He's an amateur... Was it archeologist?
Steve Seid:
Correct.
Kurt Dupuis:
And, he's the CEO and founder of several different business units, and he's also getting into podcasting when we first spoke. So, my recap of that conversation is kind of going back to this learning/unlearning comment. He just really talked about constant momentum. George Washington, crossing the river, just keep fighting and never stay still.
Steve Seid:
I totally agree with all that. And, as I'm doing more Kolbe interpretations, I'm seeing an interesting dynamic, which is, one of the pieces is called Quick Start, which is, there's no high or low, remember, but if you're initiating Quick Start to those higher numbers, you tend to be an innovative person, someone who is always thinking about different ways of doing it. And I've come across these situations where, there's just no one on a particular financial professional team that's a high in Quick Start, which means in general, they're defensive of the status quo. Not a lot of innovation. And it's interesting because you'll get the question of, "Well, in this industry, do we need to have innovation? Should we be innovating?" That's what was so exciting about the Dan Catone episode is there's a guy who's like, he's just always looking at, what does the next phase of financial planning and advising look like? So it was really great. Let's listen to a couple of clips of Dan Catone.
Daniel Catone:
It's funny because I didn't know if I'd be good at it or not, but I'm a hard worker and I had a trainer at Ed Jones. And, at the end of the week of training, which didn't go great for me, we were doing this interview, a kind of exit interview of sorts, and she said, "You know, Dan, I don't think financial services is the right-"
Steve Seid:
Is that right? Oh my God.
Kurt Dupuis:
After you already ended.
Daniel Catone:
Yeah. But the funny thing is, I told her, I said, "I'm going to be honest with you, Linda." I said, "I have no other choice here, so I'm in for a penny, in for a pound." I said, "I might not be very good at it, but I will work very, very hard, and harder than anybody maybe." And she says, "Oh, I hope it works out for you." Two years later, I was teaching a class with her in finance, so it did work out and we became dear friends. But, you don't always know what you're going to be good at until you try it.
Kurt Dupuis:
Sure.
Daniel Catone:
Right now, I am focused like a laser on emergent investor classes. So it's my position that the industry is largely broken. And I say this to my financial advisor friends and our partners, there is a timer on your business. And the reality is, every single client that a financial advisor has is going to leave them. It's just a matter of time. Either they're going to fire them, or they're going to, quite frankly, pass away. Or you're going to sell that book to someone else who's going to manage that client. So that's the future for every single client. And that means that we have to find replacements for those clients. And if you're not engaging, the largest percentage of the U.S. workforce right now is millennials, if you're not engaging millennials, you don't have longevity in your practice.
Kurt Dupuis:
Sure.
Daniel Catone:
You have a 10 to 20 year timeframe until it's worthless.
And with the majority of the workforce being a millennial, and most people don't even know that, and what percentage of your book is under the age of 40? I mean, most people, it's 2%, 3%. But these are folks that want to invest. These are people that have money. This is an emergent investor class. And the entire industry says, "We don't care because I want 58 year olds with $2 million." That's what the industry says. And so, my focus is helping financial advisors create value in their practice. And the way you create value in that practice is sustainability.
Sustainability is not just recurring revenue. It's the type of client. It's the age of client. It's the way in which you engage your client. And another mantra that we have is we want to create products and services that, not only are great for customers and clients, but are delivered in the way the client prefers. Look at Amazon. What is Amazon's product? Is Amazon’s product books and the Kindle? I mean, kind of, but not really. Their product is the delivery method, because they've created a way in which people wish to consume, and now everyone uses them. And my question to you might be, has financial services created a delivery method that people under 40 want?
There's really two types of knowledge, both in medicine and finance and general professions. There's technical knowledge and behavioral knowledge. So on the technical side, you have portfolio construction, Roth versus traditional, all that kind of stuff. And that's my job. On the other side is behavioral knowledge. How do I respond? How do I interact? What question types should I ask? That type of stuff. Finance is largely dominated by math folks, and we're really good at the technical side. But we aren't so good-
Kurt Dupuis:
Ain't so good.
Daniel Catone:
On the behavioral finance side. I mean, we all know, the do... I can't remember who did the study, but the study about the Vanguard funds, where you look at the index actual performance versus the experience of the actual client. And they're night and day. The index performance did 11.2% a year for 30 years, and the average client got 3.1%. Okay. What's the differential there? Is it a technical knowledge question? No, it's a behavioral finance question.
Kurt Dupuis:
Prenatal cortex, that's what it is.
Daniel Catone:
Yeah. Yeah, that's right. And so, in a digital advice experience, you have to deliver whatever you need to deliver, in order to help the person walk down the knowledge of behavioral finance to make the right decisions, and just to be able to raise their hand and have someone with the technical knowledge step in and help them.
Our platform, which I can't get into details on, actually has that hand raising concept built into it. So a person can choose, as always should be the case, consumer choice, consumer choice, consumer choice. Alvin Toffler wrote about this in Future Shift and all of his books in the 1990s, where he predicted the rise of customization of cars and stuff like that. But it's true in finance. We want to push that choice back to the consumer. They do not have to have the technical knowledge. They just have to be able to raise their hand and have access to the technical knowledge.
And it comes from general questions. For example, if someone gets married and they buy a new house, a system should be able to prompt them to say, "You might need life insurance, and here's why."
Kurt Dupuis:
So I can pick my own path and start at a certain level. Or you could have no foundation and you can start from scratch, and accelerate or decelerate as you see fit. That's what you're describing?
Daniel Catone:
Yeah. I mean, one, you pick the language, based upon your own preference. You pick the learning style that you're going to choose to walk down. You're going to choose how often you engage with the platform. But, it's the opposite in financial services right now. We set the meeting schedule. We tell them how many times they're going to meet with us before we open an account. We tell them which accounts they're going to open and then which investments they're going to use and why. That prescriptive process is not modern. It's 1975 everywhere in finance right now. I mean, it's a pre-internet financial system. The most advanced financial system that we're using that's internet-based, that's commonly used, is just online account access. I mean, that is 1999 stuff.
Steve Seid:
Okay. So, I did not have Dan on, although I love that episode, so let me give you one of mine. And that was of Annalee Kruger.
Kurt Dupuis:
Oh, yeah.
Steve Seid:
Was she on your list or no?
Kurt Dupuis:
Annalee was definitely on my list for mostly of these selfish reasons. But yes.
Steve Seid:
Annalee was one of the more recent episodes we put out. She's an advisor, a coach on aging. She also has created a certificate or certification with the CFP board for financial professionals. The reason I found that episode so compelling is like you're going to say, Kurt, it hits home. I'm going to sign my parents up for a session with her so you know that I bought into that. But also, I love those things that we could just grab onto something that can give financial professionals an edge that no one else is doing. And it just doesn't seem like, even though we do long-term care and we do financial planning, there's just this huge gap there that if you just kind of step out and just do a little bit more, I mean, you're going to offer something that nobody else does.
Kurt Dupuis:
And connecting next generations. I mean, everyone's looking for ways to do that because we do a very poor job of that as an industry. Yeah. There's second and third order benefits from engaging with someone like her as well. I summarized it. It's calling it decoding the caregiver crisis, right?
Steve Seid:
Yeah.
Kurt Dupuis:
It's a big problem. I think she said there's 67 million caregivers out there. But just giving people a roadmap for what questions to ask, what to be looking for, how to answer them, how to have those conversations. And if you need a third party to help facilitate, that's where she comes in. So, she talked about her book, The Invisible Patient, so I think anybody that kind of wants a foray into how she thinks and the process that she runs through with her clients, it's a great place to start. 92% of the people that come to her come to her in crisis…
Steve Seid:
In crisis, right.
Kurt Dupuis:
…which, again, if you're giving the gift to your clients, give them the gift of talking about an aging plan where they're not in crisis. What a great conversation to have with clients.
Steve Seid:
Let's listen to a couple of clips from the Annalee Kruger episode.
Annalee Kruger:
Because you're a caregiver, if you are doing anything for an aging loved one or a vulnerable adult, and you're not getting paid or compensated for it. So we're talking, even if you go over and drop off groceries or drop off milk or have to run errands or go shopping or go to the pharmacy and set up their medications for them, if you're coordinating doctor's appointments, if you're paying their bills because you're the financial power of attorney, if you are obviously helping with physical care, those are all caregivers. And families don't realize that until they're really, really overwhelmed by what I call the caregiver snowball. Because it starts out manageable, but then, when you start taking time off work or having to burn through your PTO or your FMLA benefits, because you're like, "Oh my gosh, when is this? What is happening here? All I'm doing, I'm totally consumed by Mom and Dad's needs."
Kurt Dupuis:
Yeah.
Annalee Kruger:
So, pillars are, what is working well right now? What is not working well right now? What red flags or what concerns are you seeing? Another pillar is, what conversations have you already had as a family about the what/whens of aging? It's not rocket science to know that, as we get older, we will need care. We are not going to get healthier as we age. So no one should be surprised by this whole aging thing, when Mom and Dad need more care. So that's a pillar is, how do you communicate as a family, and what kind of conversations have you had already?
Another pillar is, we know that Mom and Dad want to age in place at home, but assisted livings and nursing homes are full of also people who wanted to age in place at home. So, what's our plan as a family when Mom and Dad cannot stay at home anymore, because either they can't afford the home care costs? And Medicare does not pay for that. So, what's the plan when Mom and Dad can't afford to stay at home, but what's the plan when they either can't afford to stay at home, or they can't find quality care workers that are consistent, dependable, reliable, compassionate and properly trained? That's a tall order. You wouldn't think that it is, but it's a tall order. So that's another pillar.
Another pillar is end of life discussions. Do you know what your parents already have in place? Do they have a power of attorney, and is it you? Because you need to know if you are, because that can become a full-time job. What do they have in place already for plans and paperwork?
As an advisor, do you know how good that makes you look when you're not just focused on portfolio and assets under management, when you're like, "You know what? I care about you as a person.
Kurt Dupuis:
Right.
Annalee Kruger:
Not just about the portfolio, but I care about you as a person." The advisors that go through that elder planning specialist program, those advisors have that mindset of, "You know what? We see that the needs of our clients are changing. We want to stay on top of that and help support them through that journey," because they also know that that's going to help them be more successful as an advisor as well.
Steve Seid:
Okay. So we've gone through a bunch. So, should I go, because I got two left and you have one?
Kurt Dupuis:
All right. Go for it.
Steve Seid:
The next on my list was Dan Sullivan. And, if you remember back, for anybody who listened to the episode, that was a crossover episode. It was going to be released under his podcast, which is “Internal Use Only”, check it out if you haven't seen that, and ours. And, the reason that it's on my list is really simple. I enjoyed the heck out of that experience. I liked the cross promotion. We had a really cool discussion about insights from wholesalers and funny stories from wholesaling. And, I just found the whole experience incredibly enjoyable.
Kurt Dupuis:
Well, it's a different audience. I've been following his podcast, and he gets only more and more interesting folks on his podcast. But it's more for people that are in financial services, or maybe our side of financial services is better put. But if you want to understand more of the inner workings of wholesaling, distribution, asset management, he's got banger interviews in that vein. Whereas ours is more for end user financial professionals that have end clients. But my favorite part of it was helping financial professionals ask better questions to wholesalers. Because so many times, at initial meetings, when people are just getting to know you, they just think... I don't know, they think we all come from the same factory or something.
Steve Seid:
So many financial professionals love to hear about stories from our side more than I thought would be the case. Was that on your list or was that just on mine?
Kurt Dupuis:
It was on my list.
Steve Seid:
It was on your list too. I was like, okay, so-
Kurt Dupuis:
I think we got a lot of overlap here.
Steve Seid:
Let's listen to the episode with Dan Sullivan.
Dan Sullivan:
That almost ties into another thread, a sub thread of some of the comments that I got back from folks when I asked what they would want professional financial advisors to know. And a lot of it has to do with their own business. The more that a wholesaler understands the growth and ambitions of the advisor's firm, then you can, as a wholesaler, truly serve them, then you know when it's relevant to possibly give them product information if it makes sense. You also know, how can you support their marketing goals? Or, "Did your past events work out for you? And if not, is there anything that I can offer that would get you more traction from your prospective clients?" All of those types of things where you could really actually serve them.
So, a simple question like, "What are the trends, tools, or technology out there that you're seeing the most successful advisors use?" Again, I don't think that's novel. I'm sure they do. But, for any advisors that might just want to find a new source of information, a wholesaler is a really, really good person to ask that question to.
Steve Seid:
I'll throw one other question out there, and it's kind of starts with a premise. If you start a conversation talking about your business and what you’re looking to achieve, so if I said, for example, just right up front, just, "I'm looking to onboard this new employee. I'm looking to grow 15% this year by these means. I'm trying to get better here. What can you potentially bring to the table to help me achieve that?" Man, does that cut through a lot of back and forth. Because that's all we're listening for too. We're looking for, is there something that we can do to help you?
Kurt Dupuis:
I probably tend to ask more maybe just open-ended question, but my take on that Seid was, just ask, "What are your firm's best value-add resources?" I mean, every asset management company is coming out with all these value-add things to get in front of financial professionals to help financial professionals. So ask, what are people using? What works? What's new? What's exciting?
Steve Seid:
The same way that there's noise around value-adds, there's also, of course, noise about investments. It's asking the question, what is your firm truly exceptional at?
Kurt Dupuis:
Ok. So, so far, Dan Catone has been the only one that we haven't both had on the list. But all the other ones I've had on my list.
Steve Seid:
Correct. So then I'll give you the one that differed. And, I could see how this didn't show up on your list, Kurt, because this is a one that you were sick for and I felt bad about it, because I would've loved to have you on that episode. But that was episode-
Kurt Dupuis:
I had a feeling this was going to be on your list too.
Steve Seid:
Yeah. It had to be, with coach and friend Richard Weylman, who is just a terrific personality. He's really, really good in the areas of client experience. And I know this is something that we talk about over and over and over again, but that's because it matters. And when you listen to that episode, there's just so many examples of how you can actually stand out from a client experience perspective. And he told the story about Chewy, which is the pet food company online. And the story goes like this.
This person shared the story with him whose pet had passed away. They were on the subscription service to have the dog or the cat food, I forget if it was a dog or cat, that was coming every month. So they called Chewy up and then said, "I'm so sorry, I'm going to have to cancel my service. I just got one that came in the mail. My dog already passed away. I'm happy to pay for the one that already arrived." And so the Chewy representatives goes, "You will absolutely not pay that. I want you to take that, and I want you to take it to your local animal shelter and donate it. We will credit you for that account." And then, within a week later, they received-
Kurt Dupuis:
Oh wait, there's more.
Steve Seid:
Oh wait, there's more. A week later, they received this card, the sympathy card with a few other things. But what's built into that process is to do something that is just an experience that they're not going to get any place else. And imagine if you're in that situation, you had that experience. I mean, you're a client for life, right?
Kurt Dupuis:
That's it. And in a world where we think about cost of client acquisition and the cost of service and all, to have a client for life... You basically sent a credit and a card. And there might have been one other thing, I don't remember the story, but those few little touch points, create client for life, which is worth a lot of money. This stuff makes business sense too.
Steve Seid:
Totally.
Kurt Dupuis:
It's not just a good business practice, it makes financial sense too.
Steve Seid:
It's just something you got to get right because it means everything. So let's listen to a clip from the episode with Richard Weylman.
Richard Weylman:
Here's the common challenges, and we'll call these the biggest. Number one, roles and responsibilities aren't clearly defined in most teams. And I'm talking about a team of two, where you got the advisory and the assistant. Roles are not clearly defined.
Awful lot of time is spent on duplication, et cetera. So one is not clear roles and responsibility. Second, the time value of service. We've developed a process where we actually help an advisor analyze the cost of servicing a client. You'd be shocked if I told you that people have C clients, people with less assets or small life insurance or whatever, and I got a team right now, they're spending over $7,000 a year servicing C clients.
Steve Seid:
Wow.
Richard Weylman:
You can't get there from here. And so we do a full analysis of what it really costs to run that practice, let's call it that. So, one is roles and responsibilities. Two is efficiency of the practice and what are you really investing in, in terms of client service, and I use that as a loose term. It's really client experience. So that's two big ones.
The third one is, that's pretty common is, most firms are, and most teams and even most advisors, they are, shall we say, they're speaking and writing and communicating at people, not with people.
Steve Seid:
Interesting.
Richard Weylman:
So what happens is, somebody says, "Well, so why should I do business with you?" And they get a, people used to call them elevator speeches. I don't know anybody who closed anybody from the first floor to the fourth floor, but maybe that's why they call it elevator speech. But the important thing is, it's usually all about them. And, I have an RIA right now. We just looked at their... If you send in a note, "I'd like to have an engagement with you" in the inquiry form, "You ought to see the email and you get back." Holy moly cannoli. Who would read it? Let's start off. "Our base fee is," that's like, okay, that's good. Let's start off on price. That's always a good start.
So, the roles and responsibilities, efficiency in the practice in terms of what you're really spending in marketing and service to service a household. The fourth piece of the puzzle is really communicating at people, not with them, and the industry is rife with this. I can give you many stories and I won't, but suffice to say, it's a real problem, and the consumer is really turned off by it.
And I think the other thing that we see now, a major challenge is, there's really no organized sense of giving the client an elevated experience. Most advisors that we see in teams, they think that good service is good enough. And that is a real problem. Because 2022 is an example by the major marketing firms that we have the privilege of interfacing with. I'm talking about Fortune 50 companies, all those CMOs, chief marketing officers, had declared 2022 as the year of the customer or client experience. Because the truth of the matter is, people today, one bad experience, they could leave you.
And it used to be, Steve, if somebody was upset about what you did, they'd call your boss. Now they're going to go online and basically, how shall we say, vilify you in every possible way as a keyboard warrior. So reputation really matters today. And what people say really matters, and the experience that people have is really critical.
Well, we're going to send Mother's Day cards, and I'm like, "Why would you do that?" "Well, it's Mother's Day." I said, "Yeah, but they're going to get lots of Mother's Day cards. Why don't you just pick up your phone and record this? 'I just want to say Happy Mother's Day to you. Thank you for all you do for your family. Thank you so much for what you do for the community. Mothers really make the world go round, and we're just so grateful to have you as a client,' and send it to all of your clients." And guess what? They did. They got hundreds of thousands of dollars worth of new assets. Why? Because she got it and forwarded it on to somebody else, saying, "Look what my advisor did."
So now, I mean, these are all little things, but they're a big deal. People want to send, we want to swag with our company name on it. That's a good thing. We'll send it, our name on it. Really? Why don't you just... Look, 4th of July's coming. Why don't you send them all ball caps with their name on it? If their name is Schwartz, send them 15 ball caps that says Schwartz on the front, so when they have the 4th of July, everybody gets together, "Where'd you get those?" "My advisor."
Why should you focus on niche markets? Well, let's just look at the research. Forget all the rest of it. Let's just look at the consumer. Pre-pandemic, 67% of consumers said they belonged to something that supported what they did for a living or recreation or special interest. That could be ethnic, charitable church, synagogue, whatever, mosque. So 67%, a pretty high number. And about 30, depending on which ones we poll, it ran right into 31-32% was the average number of people in that group. So we got 67% said that they belonged to something, and about, we'll say a third of them said, it was important to work with an advisor in their network. So, a good number, but not critical crazy.
However, since the pandemic, 87% of a thousand people we surveyed said they belong to some organization that support what they do for a living, recreation especially. Now the pandemic drove that because that was a safety net for a lot of people. Those networks, they can do virtually. 87%, Steve. I mean, that's a 20-point jump. But here's the big number.
Steve Seid:
Yeah.
Richard Weylman:
71% now said that they want to work with an advisor that's working with people in their network. 71%. That's a 40-point bump. Now again, why? Number one, people think their situation is unique. They want to work with somebody that knows them and knows about them. So this has been a massive shift. What's important is, the consumer said, "I want to work with an advisor that's in my network and knows and understands me." And it's really important for advisors to carve out their niche.
I was speaking to a large audience, doing a keynote on elevating the client experience to stand apart from the competition. I told a story that I saw on LinkedIn that morning. And I just said, "I saw on LinkedIn this morning, this young lady posted about her cat. And she had placed an order with Chewy. And it was a standing order. The cat food came every month. And it was great. Except it came in October, and she called Chewy and said, 'I can't take this order because my cat's died.'" I said, "What did Chewy's customer service rep said? 'Absolutely no way you're returning that order. No way. You donate it to the shelter. We're going to give you a hundred percent credit on your bill. We're so sorry for your loss.'" And so what does the audience do? "Oh my God." All right.
Then I said, "But that's not the rest of the story. Two days later, she got a bouquet of flowers and a condolence card from Chewy customer service rep." I finished it, and this woman stood up in the middle of the audience. She yelled, "That was my cat." I said, "Ladies and gentlemen, I had no idea she was here," and it was amazing. And she said yes. And I said, "You saw how many people shared that?" She said, "Yes. It was incredible." I said, "Ladies and gentlemen, what does this tell us?" And the whole audience, I mean we're talking about a ballroom full, starts chanting, "We're switching to Chewy."
Steve Seid:
We're going to pick our other episode of the year, because remember, our good friend Liz Lenz is already sitting on top of the mountain of number one. For all the other episodes that didn’t make the list, because Kurt and I were talking about this, there are so many that, of the others that we wanted to put up there that were fantastic, but we had to draw the line somewhere. How do you want to figure out this episode of the year?
Kurt Dupuis:
Well, I think my main criteria was learning something new. So, learning something new, challenging my belief system, those are the kind of conversations I really gravitate towards.
Steve Seid:
Although we love them, let's pull the ones we didn't both have on our list. And we're going to pull Dan Catone out of there, and we're going to pull Richard Weylman out there. And the three that we had was Dan Sullivan, Dr. Rick and Annalee as being the top three.
Kurt Dupuis:
I'll just put it out there. I'm going with Annalee, because I think, personally, I learned a lot. I mean, as soon as this episode dropped, I sent it to my mom and my dad, said, "You need to listen to this and we need to have a conversation about this." I have ordered a couple of her books to start having those conversations. So, I think, personally, I benefited a lot from that conversation. But I also think, for our clients, the clients that we serve, I think it's a great... You used the word edge. I think it's a great differentiator, as another way to just love on clients and care about them.
Steve Seid:
I put the top two being Dr. Rick and Annalee. And in my mind, I was leaning towards Dr. Rick, just because Dr. Rick was a little bit more broad. So Annalee was a specific topic, where I think Dr. Rick got into a lot of different stuff. But, since I also had Annalee and you're choosing Annalee, I think we just answered the question.
Kurt Dupuis:
But, I know why you were drawn to Dr. Rick, and it's one word.
Steve Seid:
What's that?
Kurt Dupuis:
Framework. Everything he talked about, he had a tool that kind of followed up with the idea. So, it wasn't just like this academic way to talk about psychology and sports and high performance folks. It's like he had specific tools to help people work and think through the learning. So, he had a framework and I think that's probably why you were so drawn to him.
Steve Seid:
Yeah, and he's just a great guy. I've worked with so many financial professionals that work with him and actively are coached by him, and they just love the guy. So I think he's a great guy. I thought it was a great episode. But, Annalee, congratulations. Round of applause. You're going to take home the crown, so we'll have to tell her that. And also, I think what we'll probably have to do is buy a bunch of her books and hand it out and say this was ranked number one. So, we got Liz and we got Annalee Kruger. I guess that was 2022, Kurt. Anything else you want to add before we get to our Costanza Corner and I tell you my Larry David story?
Kurt Dupuis:
No. Hell of a year, buddy. Happy to be doing this with you.
Steve Seid:
We'll be right back. This is The Whole Truth. Stick with us.
Kurt Dupuis:
And, welcome back to the Costanza Corner, where we like to end the show on a high note. What you got, Seid?
Steve Seid:
We had our due diligence in Los Angeles, in Century City, for those who know the city. I walked by somebody and I see some cameras. This is just going to the elevator. I see some cameras. Somebody's filming something. But the filming-
Kurt Dupuis:
Common in LA, right?
Steve Seid:
Didn't think much of it. Don't really care. Truthfully, I'm not like somebody who sees stars and freaks out. I don't really care that much. But then somebody comes walking by me and like... Larry David. Larry David. Now, I'm sorry. That's a cool celebrity sighting. And he's so Larry David. Think about the walk, the mannerisms, he is who he is. That may be an exaggerated version of him on Curb Your Enthusiasm, but that's still unequivocally him.
Kurt Dupuis:
And Jason Alexander's character was based off of Larry David.
Steve Seid:
Right. That's what I mean. Yeah. I probably-
Kurt Dupuis:
This is like the OG Costanza. Larry David is Costanza.
Steve Seid:
He is the core Costanza. Thank you for clarifying. I assume everyone in the world knows everything about Seinfeld.
Kurt Dupuis:
Seinfeld's on Netflix right now. I don't know for how much longer because those things kind of can come in waves. But all, I think, nine seasons of Seinfeld are on Netflix right now.
Steve Seid:
It was such an amazing sighting, and I watched them film something. I assume it's another Curb, but who knows? Anyway. That's my Costanza Corner. That was as joyful of a sighting as anything, any person, I've ever seen live and come across. There's nobody better than Larry David. Well, thanks, everyone, for listening. Thank you for a great, great 2022, and we'll see you next time.
Kurt Dupuis:
You can find The Whole Truth and subscribe for free on Apple Podcast, Spotify, or your favorite podcast app. We'd love it if you took the time to rate and review the show on Apple Podcast, it helps others find the show. And for more episodes of The Whole Truth, go to www.touchstoneinvestments.com/thewholetruth. That's touchstoneinvestments.com/thewholetruth, all one word.
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