Latest / The Efficient Advisor: Tactical Business Advice for Financial Planners / 147: Ideas to Implement - How to Use a Family Tree Template to Stay Organized and Deepen the Client Relationship

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147: Ideas to Implement - How to Use a Family Tree Template to Stay Organized and Deepen the Client Relationship · The Efficient Advisor: Tactical Business Advice for Financial Planners

• 0:00
  Speaker 1: Welcome back, gang.
• 0:01
  Speaker 1: I am so glad you guys are here.
• 0:03
  Speaker 1: I am excited for this week's Action Steps.
• 0:06
  Speaker 1: This one this week was so easy, right.
• 0:08
  Speaker 1: As you know, every week on Tuesday we release a long format episode that's a deep dive into a particular process, template, tool or interview with somebody that I think will help make your practice more effective, more efficient or more enjoyable.
• 0:23
  Speaker 1: And then on Thursdays I try to come out with a short, sweet episode that's all about the action steps from the longer podcast.
• 0:29
  Speaker 1: So my objective is really every week just to take the long format episode and distill it down into a couple of bullet points that we can take action on immediately.
• 0:40
  Speaker 1: So I love getting into the nitty gritty detail on Tuesdays and then really just formulating a plan of action to actually go implement the thing.
• 0:49
  Speaker 1: And this week's, I think, is a really impactful but super easy, very easy to implement template.
• 0:57
  Speaker 1: So if you're new to the Efficient Advisor, welcome.
• 0:59
  Speaker 1: I'm Libby Graywee.
• 1:00
  Speaker 1: I started, built and sold by 37, a 100% referral-only planning practice that I grew to seven figures as a solo advisor, all while working just three days a week and taking off 14 weeks a year to lean into being a mom, a wife, a friend, a sister, a daughter and, frankly, a travel obsessed human who just loved taking time off with her kids and traveling the world with her family.
• 1:22
  Speaker 1: And I'm here to walk alongside you and to show you how to do the exact same thing, and not necessarily that you wanna travel a whole bunch, but to really just make your practice more effective, more efficient and more enjoyable.
• 1:33
  Speaker 1: And I'm here to help you take immediate actions on the most important strategies to scale, organize and really just create less stress and overwhelm in your business.
• 1:43
  Speaker 1: I do not want advisors roaming this planet feeling overwhelmed, playing catch-ups, sneaking in emails and being tethered to their phone all week and long.
• 1:53
  Speaker 1: It is time to transform your practice into the one that you are running instead of it running you.
• 1:59
  Speaker 1: It is time to take that one right next step to build a business and a life that you love.
• 2:06
  Speaker 1: So let's dive into the action items from this week's podcast.
• 2:09
  Speaker 1: So this week's episode was titled how to Use a Family Tree Template to Stay Organized and Deepen the Client Relationship, and where I wanna lead here today is I don't want you to overthink this one at all.
• 2:23
  Speaker 1: I said it in the episode and I say it all the time.
• 2:25
  Speaker 1: I just want you to start messy and you can always come back and make it fancy later.
• 2:29
  Speaker 1: But the idea behind this family tree was really and I go into this in a little bit more detail in the longer format episode this week is really to help you stay organized, to keep those important details about your clients and their families somewhere simple to access and just to keep you up to speed and informed, and then also to give your team an overview of your client pretty quickly and who's where, who's doing what and all the things.
• 2:57
  Speaker 1: So I shared in the episode that I made the mistake one time of asking a client how her mom was doing, only to have forgotten that she had passed away not that long ago.
• 3:05
  Speaker 1: And I felt like such an idiot.
• 3:07
  Speaker 1: And I was like you know, when I started off my business and I only had a handful of really good clients, it was so easy to keep track of all of those details.
• 3:15
  Speaker 1: And then my clients.
• 3:16
  Speaker 1: You know our relationships continued.
• 3:18
  Speaker 1: The tenure of their relationships got longer.
• 3:20
  Speaker 1: We added more clients.
• 3:21
  Speaker 1: We added more clients their kids starting getting married and they started having grandbabies and they were losing parents and they had siblings and siblings pass away and all these complicated things and I realized it would be really helpful for me to have a family tree for every client in my book.
• 3:36
  Speaker 1: And this did a couple of things.
• 3:38
  Speaker 1: One, this kept me super, super organized on who was doing what and where.
• 3:43
  Speaker 1: Two, it helped me be really intentional about deepening that human to human connection with our clients.
• 3:50
  Speaker 1: So before that they would come in, I could peek at the template and just kind of refresh myself on names, who was married to who, where they lived, what they did professionally, you know, the number of grandkids, all the details.
• 4:02
  Speaker 1: It also was a living, breathing document that my team utilized.
• 4:07
  Speaker 1: And I talk in the longer episode about having a process around updating your family tree and how.
• 4:13
  Speaker 1: It's actually kind of a delight to do it with your clients.
• 4:15
  Speaker 1: It's really, you know, one of those things that it doesn't feel mechanical, it doesn't feel, you know, everyone loves talking about themselves and everyone loves even more talking about themselves.
• 4:24
  Speaker 1: They love talking about their family, especially their children or grandchildren.
• 4:28
  Speaker 1: Oh my gosh.
• 4:29
  Speaker 1: And you and I both know that's completely true.
• 4:30
  Speaker 1: So providing an opportunity for your clients to just get you up to speed If you're implementing a family tree for the first time, it's actually an enjoyable experience.
• 4:39
  Speaker 1: It's one of those, those process updates that isn't quite as painful because, let's be honest, systems and processes isn't always the sexiest of topics or the most you know fun or connecting activity.
• 4:53
  Speaker 1: But this one actually is a really connecting activity with your clients and helps you kind of keep the scope of who's who and who's what and from a planning perspective it also helps you kind of mentally map out as you're doing estate planning for your clients parents and you're talking about inheritance and they've got siblings and we know who's in what tax bracket and what this looks like and what are they up to.
• 5:14
  Speaker 1: And as your clients start doing their own estate planning, you know thinking through like well, how many grandkids do they have and who's what and where are their spouses, are their ex spouses, like what are all of the details?
• 5:25
  Speaker 1: So I loved having a family tree to give me that kind of bird's eye view of our clients and everything that they've got kind of going on in their family structure.
• 5:35
  Speaker 1: And up until the family tree I had had a difficult time figuring out, kind of like, how do I organize that information?
• 5:41
  Speaker 1: It was buried in my notes, like either in the handwritten notes or my verbally dictated notes, depending on whatever meeting note process I was using at the time, and it just there was no good way to extract that information quickly and effectively, and I'm a very visual person, so I loved having this family tree, and in the longer format episode I talk about sort of some of the pitfalls or the complications of like when we started our family tree process and kind of how it evolved into a really really super stupid simple process.
• 6:14
  Speaker 1: So the action step for this week is really just to add it to your agenda.
• 6:19
  Speaker 1: Add family tree to your agenda whether you're working in theme meetings or you just do reviews, or maybe adding it to your client Intel process when you're bringing on new clients, and it's something that you're going to update over time.
• 6:33
  Speaker 1: So you're going to want to then a second action step introduce your team to the concept and explain to them why you're doing it, what goes on the sheet, what are important details that you're looking for and remember again, living, breathing documents.
• 6:46
  Speaker 1: This is going to change for you over time.
• 6:48
  Speaker 1: You're going to want your family tree to do more and more so initially we started off with just dates of birth and I was like, oh you know, it actually be kind of nice to know where they live.
• 6:55
  Speaker 1: And then, oh you know, it actually would also be kind of nice to know what they do professionally, and just kind of some of those details, maybe interesting facts of where they went to school or just whatever, would make a lot of sense for your clients.
• 7:07
  Speaker 1: Oh, and something I didn't mention in the long format episode is don't forget the family pets.
• 7:12
  Speaker 1: Make sure we've got family pets on the tree, because for some people their pets are just as important, if not slightly more important, than other members of their families.
• 7:23
  Speaker 1: And so, when we talk about deepening that client relationship and building that human to human connection and being intentional, being able to mention a client's grandchild by name, or mentioning their family dog by name, instead of saying like, oh, how's your sweet puppy doing, being able to say, you know how is spot, Is he still, um, you know a fun little puppy, or do you feel like he's starting to slow down more, or whatever, whatever your conversations are, being able to name them by name.
• 7:52
  Speaker 1: And you know I mentioned in the long format episode that our goal was always for our clients to walk in and think, oh, my gosh, we must be her only clients.
• 8:01
  Speaker 1: Or wow, she has the most amazing memory, or you know, she really and all of this is true Like she really cares about us.
• 8:08
  Speaker 1: And maybe I don't have the best memory and I have to have a process, but I have that process because I care.
• 8:14
  Speaker 1: I care to know those details, I care to um want to remember where their grandkids are and what universities they're at, and I do, and I don't wanna say I don't care enough to commit them to memory.
• 8:27
  Speaker 1: That's not true, I just can't.
• 8:28
  Speaker 1: The sheer volume of details and information is just too too high.
• 8:32
  Speaker 1: So it's an act of caring to create a process, because I've had people push back and say, well, if you really cared, you just remember.
• 8:39
  Speaker 1: And yeah, I hear you, and maybe you're not a mom or a person or a human, I don't know about you, but I don't know many people that have that amazing of memories that they're not gonna get those details mixed up over time.
• 8:52
  Speaker 1: So your action items create a template, add it to the agenda, educate your team on how you're gonna use it and just start implementing it and work out the details, the kinks, the how you're gonna save information, the when you're all that can come down the pike.
• 9:09
  Speaker 1: Just go ahead and create that template and get started.
• 9:12
  Speaker 1: Hope you guys enjoyed this week's episode and I look forward to chatting with you more over in the Efficient Advisor community on Facebook or over on LinkedIn.
• 9:20
  Speaker 1: Those are the two places that I hang out online.
• 9:23
  Speaker 1: Thank you guys so much and I hope you have an amazing rest of your week.
• 9:26
  Speaker 1: I'll see you guys next week.