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230: The Client New Year's Letter You Need to Write Now! · The Efficient Advisor: Tactical Business Advice for Financial Planners

• 0:00
  Speaker 1: Today we're diving into an easy, powerful but often overlooked way to elevate your client relationships and set the tone for a successful new year Enter the New Year's letter.
• 0:13
  Speaker 1: It's so easy for clients to lose sight of all of the work that you're doing behind the scenes, but a well-crafted New Year's letter can totally change that.
• 0:22
  Speaker 1: So in this episode, I'm going to guide you through exactly what to include in the letter that not only recaps the services and support that you provided over the last year, but also shows the clients the value that you bring to their lives.
• 0:35
  Speaker 1: Plus, we'll cover how to preview upcoming changes and improvements in a way that builds excitement and trust.
• 0:43
  Speaker 1: And if you follow the concept that I teach of theme-based financial planning, here is where you get clients prepped and all fired up for your 2025 theme.
• 0:52
  Speaker 1: And whether you've been doing a new year's letter for years or are just considering your new year's letter for the very first time, stick around, because I'll share some tips, examples and very actionable steps to help you connect with your clients on a deeper level and ensure that they head into the new year with just renewed confidence and excitement about you as their financial advisor.
• 1:12
  Speaker 1: And I know what you're thinking, libby it's October and I'm just heads down trying to finish the year.
• 1:19
  Speaker 1: You know I want to get all my business processed and, trust me, I get it.
• 1:22
  Speaker 1: But we're talking about it now so that you can work in advance.
• 1:26
  Speaker 1: I know it's this crazy concept.
• 1:28
  Speaker 1: Working in advance is actually pretty amazing, especially if you need to get a letter approved through compliance and if that's a hoop that you need to jump through.
• 1:37
  Speaker 1: We need to start working on it now.
• 1:39
  Speaker 1: And if you work with me, I've got samples, examples and templates of these letters for you to shoot me an email.
• 1:44
  Speaker 1: Work with me.
• 1:45
  Speaker 1: I've got samples, examples and templates of these letters for you to shoot me an email.
• 1:46
  Speaker 1: If you don't work with me number one what's up with that?
• 1:48
  Speaker 1: Number two check out the next round of group coaching that starts on January 9th.
• 1:52
  Speaker 1: Open enrollment happens here really soon.
• 1:55
  Speaker 1: And if you don't work with me, fine, okay, but at least use a good chat GPT prompt to get your outline down.
• 2:03
  Speaker 1: Make it easy on yourself.
• 2:04
  Speaker 1: There's nothing worse than staring at a blank piece of paper.
• 2:07
  Speaker 1: So I'm going to walk you through what should be in here, what to include, what not to include, and we're going to make sure that if you do it.
• 2:15
  Speaker 1: You're going to make it easy, but we're going to make it matter, and you're just going to have to deal.
• 2:19
  Speaker 1: Today with me, I had strep throat that turned into pneumonia, so I sound terrible but I feel okay.
• 2:28
  Speaker 1: So we're going to do this together.
• 2:29
  Speaker 1: And if this is the first time you're listening to my podcast, I promise this is not usually what I sound like All right, let's dive in and look, I know you're here and you're listening to this podcast because you know it's possible to have energy leftover for your family and still have your dream business the business that you are running instead of it running you.
• 3:01
  Speaker 1: If you're new to the Efficient Advisor, welcome.
• 3:03
  Speaker 1: I'm Libby Grywe.
• 3:04
  Speaker 1: I started from scratch, built and sold by age 37, a 100% referral-only planning practice that I grew to seven figures as a solo advisor, all while working out just three days a week and taking off 14 weeks a year.
• 3:18
  Speaker 1: And I'm here to walk alongside you and just to show you how to do the exact same thing, or really just to help you take immediate action on the most important strategies for scaling, organizing and creating less stress and overwhelm in your business.
• 3:30
  Speaker 1: And a big way of doing that is deepening your client relationships, rooting all of your systems and processes in client experience.
• 3:40
  Speaker 1: So we are about to transform your practice.
• 3:42
  Speaker 1: So move over exhaustion and get out of the way.
• 3:45
  Speaker 1: Advisor ADHD.
• 3:46
  Speaker 1: It is time to take that one right next step to build a business and a life that you love.
• 3:52
  Speaker 1: And right now, that one right next step could or should be a new year's letter.
• 3:59
  Speaker 1: And before we dive into what to put in this letter, let me once again just kind of talk about the impact value scale.
• 4:10
  Speaker 1: And if you were at any of my keynotes in the last year, you probably have heard me talk about this and I'm sure I've mentioned it on podcast episodes and I know we dig into this and our client coaching relationships, especially the group coaching program.
• 4:24
  Speaker 1: We dig into this in our client coaching relationships, especially the group coaching program.
• 4:27
  Speaker 1: But what this is is we want to think about the amount of impact that we're having on our clients and what are the things that we are doing inside of our client service model and really going through.
• 4:37
  Speaker 1: So this would be kind of just a good year end activity for you anyway, and dig into your impact score In fact, maybe I'll do a whole episode on this but really walking through your client service model and saying, okay, what am I doing and how impactful is it for clients?
• 4:53
  Speaker 1: And then, how difficult is it?
• 4:54
  Speaker 1: Right?
• 4:55
  Speaker 1: And so what we're looking is to establish a baseline KPI of here's how much impact we feel, and it's a subjective right.
• 5:03
  Speaker 1: You're looking at things on a scale of, I suggest, one to four.
• 5:06
  Speaker 1: How impactful is this, right?
• 5:08
  Speaker 1: So birthday cards probably a one right, great idea.
• 5:11
  Speaker 1: Clients love them, but they're not over the top impactful when it comes to client relationships.
• 5:17
  Speaker 1: A phone call for a birthday slightly more impactful.
• 5:20
  Speaker 1: Sending a present even more impactful right.
• 5:23
  Speaker 1: So you can rate your interactions or what you're doing from a client service perspective.
• 5:27
  Speaker 1: Right, and this includes your meetings.
• 5:29
  Speaker 1: How impactful are your meetings?
• 5:30
  Speaker 1: Are they just kind of your ho-hum annual review or are they this really involved, highly educational strategy session?
• 5:38
  Speaker 1: Are you doing just kind of a year-end recap meeting with maybe an investment analysis, or are you doing theme-based planning where you dig really deep into a particular topic?
• 5:48
  Speaker 1: Right, so you get to be your own worst enemy or best friend in this scenario and objectively try to think about the impact that you're having on your clients.
• 5:58
  Speaker 1: So then you want to compare that to how difficult is it to execute.
• 6:02
  Speaker 1: So I see a lot of advisors coming in with really involved client service models that are just a huge amount of low impact activities, which there's nothing wrong with, right, even low value is adding value.
• 6:17
  Speaker 1: If you're doing 20 of them, right, you might give them each a one, but your impact score can still be 20.
• 6:23
  Speaker 1: So sometimes we want to look at well how difficult are they to execute.
• 6:28
  Speaker 1: So an example that I gave at XYPN was beneficiary audits, and beneficiary audits can be extremely impactful for clients, right?
• 6:38
  Speaker 1: If they've never had a beneficiary audit or they're new to working with you and maybe they had a gazillion IRAs that you consolidated for them.
• 6:46
  Speaker 1: And doing a beneficiary audit can be and I promise I'm going to get to the new year's letter, but I want to make sure I make this, this part, really, really clear, cause this is part of your impact.
• 6:55
  Speaker 1: So right, doing a beneficiary audit, creating a Excel spreadsheet for all of your clients, takes a lot of time and energy.
• 7:01
  Speaker 1: The first time you do it, it's pretty impactful.
• 7:04
  Speaker 1: If it's something you're doing for clients year over year and you're just showing them like the same thing, like hey, nothing has changed, it starts to lose its impact over time.
• 7:13
  Speaker 1: So you want to get ruthless with yourself and really get serious about what is the impact.
• 7:18
  Speaker 1: And then how difficult is it for me to do so if, every single year, I'm having to have you send me screenshots of all of your different accounts so that I can verify your beneficiaries and my team can put it into an Excel spreadsheet and then we have to put it into a letter and mail it to you, right?
• 7:35
  Speaker 1: Does it have the same impact in year two, three, four, especially if there's no changes to beneficiaries?
• 7:40
  Speaker 1: So you want to get ruthless with yourself and really say, like, how impactful is this activity?
• 7:46
  Speaker 1: Is it impactful if it's done once every?
• 7:49
  Speaker 1: Is it more impactful if it's done once every five years?
• 7:51
  Speaker 1: Or is it losing its impact if I'm doing it year over year?
• 7:54
  Speaker 1: And then what we want to look for are things that are high impact for clients but low difficulty or high impact, high difficulty, right.
• 8:03
  Speaker 1: What we want to avoid is low impact, high difficulty.
• 8:08
  Speaker 1: Those are the things that we're trying to avoid.
• 8:10
  Speaker 1: So putting a new year's letter into your client service model is, I'm going to say, an impact score for me.
• 8:19
  Speaker 1: I would objectively look at it as a two or a three and from a difficulty perspective, I would say it's one.
• 8:27
  Speaker 1: It's really easy.
• 8:28
  Speaker 1: We put together the letter.
• 8:29
  Speaker 1: You can, of course, customize it to like, so maybe you want to take your top 10 or your top 25 clients, your A clients, and customize the letter to them.
• 8:38
  Speaker 1: If you want to include some specifics, I'll give you some examples throughout this podcast.
• 8:42
  Speaker 1: I'll give you some examples throughout this podcast.
• 8:48
  Speaker 1: Or perhaps you want to make it a one and done same letter.
• 8:49
  Speaker 1: Get it through compliance, send it to every single person in your book.
• 8:52
  Speaker 1: Right, it's low difficulty and medium impact is how I would rate a new year's letter.
• 8:58
  Speaker 1: And again, it's what goes in the letter.
• 9:01
  Speaker 1: Actually, it depends, you know, actually impacts the value that you're delivering to your clients.
• 9:08
  Speaker 1: But really, the other thing I want to talk about here, when I mentioned the beneficiary audit, there's a difference too, impact-wise, and we want to get really clear and honest with ourselves about this too.
• 9:16
  Speaker 1: If I'm just popping something in the mail to my clients, they open it up, peruse it for 37 seconds and then put it in their file cabinet or shred it or whatever, is that as impactful as doing the beneficiary audit in an actual meeting where you're giving them tangible outcomes Like, hey, if you were to die today, johnny would get X number of dollars and Betty would get.
• 9:44
  Speaker 1: How do you feel about that?
• 9:46
  Speaker 1: We're going to talk about feelings and what are we going to do about that and do you have recommendations related to that?
• 9:51
  Speaker 1: I would argue that that's higher impact and doesn't necessarily change the difficulty too much if you're already meeting with those clients anyway.
• 10:01
  Speaker 1: So that's a couple of random sidebar comments, but I want you to start thinking through your client service model, through the lens of impact to difficulty and establishing this KPI.
• 10:13
  Speaker 1: So in my keynote, we talked about going through all the things that you're doing for your clients, including your agendas, and giving them an impact score, and then working year over year to increase that impact score.
• 10:24
  Speaker 1: So you might do one value add in 2025 to try to improve that score.
• 10:33
  Speaker 1: Or maybe you restructure the quality of your meetings so that you're adding more value right, and so like, let's say, you gave yourself a 20 for 2024, your goal might just be to bring that up to a 21 or a 22 in 2025.
• 10:45
  Speaker 1: And then next year, the goal might be to bring that to a 23 or a 24.
• 10:49
  Speaker 1: And there's a gazillion different ways to do this, so one of them being the New Year's letter, and the reason and I'm doing a lot of starting and stopping today with the recording guys.
• 10:58
  Speaker 1: You're just going to have to bear with me because there's so much coffee happening for my throat and lots of I'm sparing you the coughing into the microphone, at least to my best of my abilities.
• 11:10
  Speaker 1: But the reason we want to do a new year's letter for is a couple of things right.
• 11:14
  Speaker 1: One we want it to come after the craziness of the holiday season and regardless of what faith you are or what holiday you participate in, or none at all, right you do you this time of the year, year end is usually just bananas for everybody.
• 11:34
  Speaker 1: So I love the idea of a new year's letter coming after the craziness of the holidays is over, when the new year has actually started.
• 11:43
  Speaker 1: The kids are maybe back in school, if that's your ideal client avatar.
• 11:45
  Speaker 1: If your ICA has school-aged children that are home, yep.
• 11:49
  Speaker 1: Anything that comes during that window of time is only going to get a glance right.
• 11:54
  Speaker 1: We want that to have more impactful.
• 11:56
  Speaker 1: We don't want it to get lost in the shuffle.
• 11:59
  Speaker 1: The other thing I would suggest is doing a communications audit.
• 12:02
  Speaker 1: So the next question is can I email this?
• 12:04
  Speaker 1: Should I do a video?
• 12:06
  Speaker 1: Should this be sent out via snail mail?
• 12:09
  Speaker 1: Again, I would say that depends on your ideal client avatar and how they like to receive information.
• 12:16
  Speaker 1: So one of the things in our group coaching program we talk about this a lot is doing a communications audit.
• 12:23
  Speaker 1: And every time we build out a process especially that from the first moment prospect walks through your door all the way to the point that you do your entire financial planning process on them and they say, yes, I want to become a long-term client, and then you start to formally onboard that process.
• 12:38
  Speaker 1: We want to look at that and look at it through the lens of a communications audit, cause not everybody, just like Gary Chapman's, love languages right.
• 12:45
  Speaker 1: Everybody gives and receives loves in a slightly different way.
• 12:48
  Speaker 1: Same thing with communications audits.
• 12:50
  Speaker 1: So clients give and receive communication best in a variety of different ways.
• 12:56
  Speaker 1: So we want to vary our communication styles to make sure that we're hitting everybody kind of how they prefer to be hit and just to mix it up a little bit.
• 13:05
  Speaker 1: Right, sometimes it's just nice to get snail mail and if you're going to send maybe a little gift along with this letter to your top 10 clients.
• 13:12
  Speaker 1: Great.
• 13:13
  Speaker 1: Then you're hitting a gift and the snail mail.
• 13:16
  Speaker 1: Maybe you want to do this as a video.
• 13:19
  Speaker 1: That's great too.
• 13:21
  Speaker 1: Really, it's whatever fits into your model.
• 13:24
  Speaker 1: And again, paying attention to that difficulty scale, right, the more difficult we make something, the more impactful.
• 13:32
  Speaker 1: We want to make sure that it is, and you have the right to say well, I think a video is more impactful than a letter in the mail, or I think a email is more efficient than, and just as impactful as, me doing X, y or Z.
• 13:48
  Speaker 1: So this is totally up to you, but I do want you to consider the medium in which you deliver it and how that compares to other mediums that you typically do with your clients.
• 13:58
  Speaker 1: Right, because we want this letter or this video to stand out, because it's got some important details in it that will enhance the client relationship.
• 14:08
  Speaker 1: Okay, so let's just dig into the content of what a new year's letter should be.
• 14:13
  Speaker 1: So the objective here is really that it's more than just like a year end recap, right?
• 14:18
  Speaker 1: I personally you've heard me say this before I don't love the concept.
• 14:23
  Speaker 1: And we did them for years and years and years.
• 14:24
  Speaker 1: Right, we did annual reviews where we literally just reviewed.
• 14:27
  Speaker 1: Here's what happened over the last 12 months, and we made that switch.
• 14:31
  Speaker 1: You've heard me talk about it to them being more strategy sessions of yeah, yeah, cool, cool, cool.
• 14:36
  Speaker 1: Here's what happened, but here's what we're doing over the next 12 to 24 months for you guys.
• 14:40
  Speaker 1: Here's where our value is.
• 14:41
  Speaker 1: Here's what we're going to be.
• 14:42
  Speaker 1: We wanted to be proactive and forward thinking versus just reactive and recapping whatever happened to us over the last 12 months.
• 14:51
  Speaker 1: So this is more than just a year end recap.
• 14:53
  Speaker 1: It's a way to connect with your clients.
• 14:55
  Speaker 1: It's a way to remind them of all of the things that you've been doing for them all year long, right, articulating our value, reinforcing that trust.
• 15:03
  Speaker 1: And then you've heard me say this a million times the human brain loves to know what to expect moving forward, and this is a big piece of this.
• 15:11
  Speaker 1: We want to let our clients know what they can expect from us in the year ahead.
• 15:14
  Speaker 1: So, especially if you are charging your clients ongoing fees of any kind whether it's AUM or financial planning, I don't care, I don't care how you get paid, right, everybody needs processes.
• 15:29
  Speaker 1: We want to let our clients know and we want to get them excited about what's coming for them in 2025, right?
• 15:32
  Speaker 1: So, as they're maybe reassessing their budget or thinking through the relationship, right, we want them to be like yes, this is why we pay him, this is why we pay her.
• 15:41
  Speaker 1: They are on the ball, they're proactive and here's what we can expect coming from them in 2025.
• 15:48
  Speaker 1: The other byproduct of laying out what you're going to do for somebody is that you have a stronger likelihood to commit to actually doing it right.
• 15:56
  Speaker 1: So it's fine to you know, like, lay it all out on paper and be like here's what we want to do for our clients in 2025.
• 16:01
  Speaker 1: And then articulating it to your clients and putting it in writing actually makes you follow through on it.
• 16:08
  Speaker 1: Right, there's a difference.
• 16:09
  Speaker 1: So we want to let them know what to expect.
• 16:12
  Speaker 1: And then, of course, building in those safeguards for ourselves like, okay, libby, you said it, now you got to do it and you want to obviously not write this letter just kind of willy nilly.
• 16:23
  Speaker 1: You actually do need to have a proactive strategy, a client service model that you can articulate to your clients of what is going to happen.
• 16:33
  Speaker 1: Right, so we can't just make up a bunch of random stuff.
• 16:35
  Speaker 1: You actually do want to again be working in advance and have a clear game plan.
• 16:40
  Speaker 1: The other nice thing about working in advance is when you know like, hey, here's what we're going to be doing for our clients, let's say each quarter.
• 16:48
  Speaker 1: Let's say we're going to do meetings first, three months of the year, then we're going to do a webinar the second part of the year and maybe you do theme-based planning.
• 16:57
  Speaker 1: You've got some theme ideas that you're going to sketch out when you know those things.
• 17:02
  Speaker 1: So let's say you are going to do a beneficiary audit, you've determined hey, this is the year, this is going to be super impactful, we're going to deliver it in our meetings.
• 17:08
  Speaker 1: If that's going to happen in your second quarter and third quarter meetings, then you need to know months in advance, like, okay, we have to have a letter about our beneficiary audit going out to all of our clients on this date.
• 17:21
  Speaker 1: We need their details back by this date.
• 17:24
  Speaker 1: Here's the buffer that we're going to give them, because most of them aren't going to get it back to us by that first date.
• 17:29
  Speaker 1: Here's the amount of time that my team needs to take all that information and put it into the spreadsheets so that I have time to look at it and be prepared for the meetings with ideas and tactical recommendations.
• 17:39
  Speaker 1: So I love working in advance and mapping out your calendar so that you give your team adequate time and it's not scramble scramble Oops.
• 17:47
  Speaker 1: We said we were going to do that, holy crap.
• 17:48
  Speaker 1: Now everybody's overwhelmed and super stressed out because we have to get all of this stuff from our clients in like a week and a half right.
• 17:55
  Speaker 1: So working in advance alone makes a ton of sense from a teaming perspective, but then also to be able to let your clients know what to expect and to incorporate that into this new year's letter.
• 18:06
  Speaker 1: So you've heard me talk about behind the scenes stuff before and having a behind the scenes checklist.
• 18:11
  Speaker 1: So my friend Steven Jarvis when he was on, I think it was episode number 40.
• 18:15
  Speaker 1: And I know this is really funny when I was at XYP and we did a podcast listener meetup and people were asking me questions and I was like, oh, I think that's actually an episode number 64.
• 18:25
  Speaker 1: And I don't.
• 18:26
  Speaker 1: I don't know why I have over 250 episodes now recorded and for some reason some of them stick out to me and I can remember the numbers like a total weirdo.
• 18:34
  Speaker 1: But I believe Stevens was episode number 40.
• 18:37
  Speaker 1: And he shared this idea of the dishwasher rule and this is exactly what I'm talking about with this behind the scenes checklist is that the dishwasher rule is that if you do all of the dishes, if your sink is just piled up with dirty dishes and you do the dishes and put them like, clean them up and put them all away, there's a good chance that your spouse or significant other might not even notice that you did them.
• 19:03
  Speaker 1: They might forget that those dishes were in the sink and you don't get credit for it.
• 19:07
  Speaker 1: So you tend to do that thing where you pile up all of the dishes on the side and let them dry, right, like you make that pyramid of pots and pans at least this is what I do so that someone can say oh, you did the dishes.
• 19:22
  Speaker 1: Oh, my gosh, thank you so much.
• 19:23
  Speaker 1: Right, and it's all about getting credit for the work that you've done.
• 19:28
  Speaker 1: And this is important not just because you want credit for the work that you've done, but we want to remind our clients of all of the hours we spend doing all of the things behind the scenes, right?
• 19:42
  Speaker 1: So portfolio rebalancing, tax planning, research um, you know, gosh, we have the whole behind the scenes, right?
• 19:45
  Speaker 1: So, portfolio rebalancing, tax planning, research um, you know, gosh, we have the whole behind the scenes checklist that our group coaching program that's wrapping up right now.
• 19:52
  Speaker 1: You guys are getting all of the all of that stuff this week, um, and if you work with me, same thing, email me, I'll send you the behind the scenes checklist, um, but we want them to know, like hey, this is all of the stuff that we're doing and this is the ongoing work that we are committed to, right?
• 20:07
  Speaker 1: We want you to get credit for the work that you've done and we want to make sure that our clients are aware, like hey, don't forget, like, this is all of the steps, cause sometimes, right, if we're only meeting them twice a year, they can tend to forget that most of the work that we do actually comes between meetings.
• 20:25
  Speaker 1: Now, and let's keep in mind, this is a high level recap we're not giving them a behind the scenes checklist.
• 20:31
  Speaker 1: We're not giving them a 37 page document highlighting everything that we've done for them weekly and all of the exact trades that we've made.
• 20:37
  Speaker 1: Right, we want to keep it a little bit more high level, um, but we want to articulate that we help them navigate a volatile market or adjust to new tax laws or updated estate planning strategies, just recapping the achievements or highlights of your expertise and staying committed to their goals.
• 20:57
  Speaker 1: We also want to set the stage for any change.
• 20:59
  Speaker 1: A new year's letter is a great right.
• 21:01
  Speaker 1: Everybody, new year, new.
• 21:03
  Speaker 1: You like, new excitement.
• 21:05
  Speaker 1: If we're going to be changing anything inside of our practice, this is a great opportunity to introduce it.
• 21:09
  Speaker 1: So, if you're adding new technology or you're restructuring your client service model to better serve your clients or more appropriately serve your clients, or, let's say, you're introducing theme-based planning, a new year's letter is just a perfect opportunity to give clients a heads up on how these changes will enhance their experience.
• 21:27
  Speaker 1: Right, like?
• 21:28
  Speaker 1: The goal of this letter is to get people excited about what's coming down the pike.
• 21:33
  Speaker 1: Now, if you do have a really clear client service model, you can absolutely articulate hey, here are some highlights for what we're going to be covering in 2025.
• 21:43
  Speaker 1: Maybe some webinars, client events, activities, anything that you've got going on.
• 21:48
  Speaker 1: I mean you don't want to put in here like and we'll be sending a birthday card or that doesn't need to be in here, but just kind of highlighting some of the big things that are going to be happening or coming, any changes that you're making and how these will improve everything for them, why these are good things for them, and getting them excited Again, especially if you're charging an annual planning fee or an AUM, right, we want to remind people of this is why you work with us.
• 22:13
  Speaker 1: Right, we want to continue to sell them on the relationship that they have with us.
• 22:18
  Speaker 1: Not the recommendations, not the MoneyGuide Pro output, not the portfolio management right, and especially not the returns.
• 22:26
  Speaker 1: We want to highlight what their relationship with us includes.
• 22:30
  Speaker 1: Okay, so we want to just kind of have a high level.
• 22:34
  Speaker 1: Let's recap here.
• 22:35
  Speaker 1: A high level like hey, here's what we helped you navigate this year.
• 22:39
  Speaker 1: Here's all of the great things.
• 22:40
  Speaker 1: We want to set the stage for some change that might be coming.
• 22:43
  Speaker 1: And then we really want to recap this year.
• 22:44
  Speaker 1: Here's all of the great things.
• 22:44
  Speaker 1: We want to set the stage for some change that might be coming.
• 22:46
  Speaker 1: And then we really want to recap this year's highlights.
• 22:47
  Speaker 1: Right, all of your behind the scenes efforts, so explaining the effort that you even put into maybe attending an industry conference or getting a new designation right, like you can include all of these things in here.
• 22:57
  Speaker 1: Maybe you integrated this past year a technology for better portfolio tracking.
• 23:02
  Speaker 1: You know, we want to share those improvements and those things.
• 23:06
  Speaker 1: We want to highlight your team's dedication by sharing their stories about what they've been doing to improve their own education.
• 23:13
  Speaker 1: And then we want to highlight the key services that we provided.
• 23:17
  Speaker 1: Right, we want to summarize significant services that we have done for them.
• 23:22
  Speaker 1: So perhaps we conducted a 47 point tax analysis on everybody's return this year to just ensure that we maximized deductions and we minimized your liabilities.
• 23:36
  Speaker 1: Or if there were major events, right, like an economic downturn, how you navigated that, if you did theme-based planning, you could recap like we started the year with a deep dive education on X, y and Z, then we did your personal planning around that topic and implemented all of the strategies at the end of the year.
• 23:59
  Speaker 1: Or this is where you put all of the things that you're patting yourself on the back, for I mean, our behind the scenes checklist has like 50 things on it, right, like we did tax loss harvesting, we did, uh, roth conversions, like all of the stuff that you are doing and you know what you're doing and making sure then that you're articulating that to your clients.
• 24:19
  Speaker 1: Now we also want to highlight successes and wins, right.
• 24:25
  Speaker 1: So this is where you could highlight like a collective success, right?
• 24:29
  Speaker 1: So maybe, if you're allowed and this will vary, you know what you're allowed to do person to person.
• 24:35
  Speaker 1: But you might say, like you know, we conducted this 47 point, you know tax analysis and collectively saved our clients $360,000 plus in taxes Thank you to this proactive tax strategy planning that we did this year.
• 24:51
  Speaker 1: So you might quantify a collective win or maybe it's.
• 24:57
  Speaker 1: We did an entity-wide or every client went through a beneficiary audit this year and we realigned everybody's beneficiaries to make sure that all your I's were dotted and T's were crossed and lowercase J's, if you know what I'm talking about and that we realigned everybody to make sure everybody's beneficiaries matched their wills and blah, blah, blah.
• 25:25
  Speaker 1: Like you could go through you know something a little bit more high level that's maybe not as quantified or, if you want, you could use a little customization.
• 25:33
  Speaker 1: So maybe for your best clients, you could customize the letter a little bit and if they reached a big milestone this year, such as buying their dream home or starting your business or retiring or sending a kid off to college, right, you could share a couple of specific highlights to your existing clients or to your best clients in this letter or you could celebrate.
• 25:59
  Speaker 1: You know, you could anonymize it and celebrate some milestones like, hey, we had clients achieve these things this year and it was just such a joy for us to celebrate those with them.
• 26:10
  Speaker 1: So those are just a couple of the things that you could definitely include inside of this letter.
• 26:16
  Speaker 1: So I'm just going to start rambling a bunch of ideas at you, cause I know this is this is the part that I always like, and I know you guys always tend to say, oh, that was really helpful, just to hear a bunch of random ideas.
• 26:26
  Speaker 1: But again, when we're talking about preparing clients for the new year and what to expect and getting them excited about changes or improvements, or at least positioning them in a way of like, here's why this is exciting.
• 26:37
  Speaker 1: So, introducing new services, expanding your tax offerings Maybe you're bringing in a CPA into the office or you've established a new relationship with another professional in an adjacent business that's going to be able to help your clients.
• 26:53
  Speaker 1: Maybe you enhanced your portal or your dashboard for clients or their interactive space.
• 27:00
  Speaker 1: Maybe you've upgraded some technology in a certain area and you're now going to be offering holistic plan or something that you weren't doing previously.
• 27:07
  Speaker 1: We can let clients know about new educational webinars, or if you're launching a referral program or something like that.
• 27:15
  Speaker 1: If you're letting them know that you're going to be doing quarterly workshops on financial literacy and retirement planning or whatever, letting them know what additional touch points are coming.
• 27:24
  Speaker 1: Maybe you're offering now mid-year strategy calls or you're switching from and I don't know if a letter is always the best way to do this, but probably if you can't reach all of your clients.
• 27:35
  Speaker 1: If you're making a shift from like hey, we were doing two two-hour meetings a year and we're making a shift to two one-hour meetings a year and we're making a shift to two one hour meetings a year and quarterly touch bases in between, right, like so if you're articulating these things to your clients, especially if you've heard any feedback from clients along the way, like, hey, you know, we've heard you loud and clear that we you want a better appointment scheduling system.
• 28:00
  Speaker 1: Here's what we're doing now.
• 28:03
  Speaker 1: We're using this software.
• 28:05
  Speaker 1: We're excited to introduce you to it this year.
• 28:07
  Speaker 1: We know we'll have a few mishaps and we appreciate your flexibility with that, but we're excited to take your feedback and make that a reality for you in 2025.
• 28:16
  Speaker 1: So, just a bunch of random little stuff like that.
• 28:19
  Speaker 1: This is such a great time to include.
• 28:21
  Speaker 1: And if you aren't doing theme-based planning, you guys, this is one of those things where it makes these New Year's letters, it makes execution, it makes everything so easy when all of your clients are going through roughly the same process every single year.
• 28:35
  Speaker 1: So, across the board, all of your clients are doing an estate planning theme, or all of your clients are doing a income distribution theme, or all of your clients are doing a deep dive on their estate plan.
• 28:47
  Speaker 1: It just makes it so much easier to do this.
• 28:50
  Speaker 1: And to recap, and, of course, then we always want to close it with some sort of gratitude about being able to guide them, for the opportunity to be part of their journey.
• 29:00
  Speaker 1: You're so grateful that they work with you.
• 29:02
  Speaker 1: You're excited about the new year, right?
• 29:08
  Speaker 1: We want the tone.
• 29:09
  Speaker 1: So if you're going to use chat GPT and I can give you a prompt for that Um, we want you to use a tone that is warm, conversational and optimistic, and that's what exactly what I would um include.
• 29:20
  Speaker 1: I were prompting chat GBT so you can make it customized.
• 29:26
  Speaker 1: You cannot.
• 29:26
  Speaker 1: You can make it a blanket one to all of your clients.
• 29:28
  Speaker 1: Um, you know, the goal is really, by sharing these updates, that you're helping clients see you as more than just like a service provider, right that you're their trusted partner in their overall financial wellbeing.
• 29:44
  Speaker 1: So, as I mentioned at the top of the episode, if you are an active coaching client with me, personal or in the group, if you want a copy of a new year's letter or you want the behind the scenes checklist, if you don't have that already, or either of those already, or if you want the chat GPT prompt, let me know and I will email those to you guys.
• 30:03
  Speaker 1: Otherwise, here is a chat GPT prompt that I would recommend Again, because there's nothing worse than staring at a blank piece of paper and because, you guys, I'm like really getting really deep on this chat GPT thing.
• 30:18
  Speaker 1: I have been taking course after course and really learning how to use chatGPT at a high level.
• 30:26
  Speaker 1: You guys, it's bananas town.
• 30:29
  Speaker 1: So what I have learned that I would love to share with you is that you want to give ChatGPT a role.
• 30:37
  Speaker 1: So you want to start off with saying something to the effect of you are a so like.
• 30:42
  Speaker 1: In this instance I would say you are a copywriter and I am a financial advisor.
• 30:49
  Speaker 1: I want to write a new year's letter for my clients that I can send, and here are the goals of the letter.
• 30:55
  Speaker 1: Number one I want to reflect on the past year by summarizing the key services I provided and then list them out.
• 31:02
  Speaker 1: You could say, like portfolio management or tax planning or proactive market monitoring, right, like?
• 31:08
  Speaker 1: List the things that you want included.
• 31:10
  Speaker 1: Number two I want to explain the behind the scenes work that I do to serve clients, such as attending conferences, getting additional designation, integrating new tools and technology, performing these beneficiary audits whatever it is that you do, right, um, you could say.
• 31:28
  Speaker 1: Number three I want to include any value ads that we did this year for our clients, including.
• 31:35
  Speaker 1: List them out.
• 31:36
  Speaker 1: Number four I want to preview what clients can expect in the new year, including and then here's where you list any new tools, expanded services, additional meetings, whatever it is a theme for the year, whatever you're a theme for the year, whatever you're intending to do next year.
• 31:49
  Speaker 1: And then, number five, I want to close with a note of gratitude expressing appreciation for their trust and partnership.
• 31:55
  Speaker 1: I'd like the tone to be warm, professional and optimistic, and I'd like you to list specific examples for each section.
• 32:04
  Speaker 1: And then let it do its thing.
• 32:06
  Speaker 1: And you guys.
• 32:07
  Speaker 1: Then you can go in and just edit it and then you're going to submit it to compliance.
• 32:11
  Speaker 1: You're going to identify the clients that you're wanting to send it to.
• 32:14
  Speaker 1: If there's any, you want to customize it, for that had big milestones this year that you wanted to celebrate and get this puppy approved and then have it all ready to go.
• 32:23
  Speaker 1: If you want to make a video, you know you can have chat, gpt, create the script for you using a very similar prompt, but get it all done now so that it's ready to go.
• 32:35
  Speaker 1: And then, when the new year hits and you're on fire for all of your new goals and excitement, and you're, you know, getting ready to roll out your surge meetings or your cluster meetings, or your normal model week or your new and improved model week or whatever it is that you're excited about in the new year and all your new goals.
• 32:52
  Speaker 1: This is already done.
• 32:54
  Speaker 1: This goes out and you can start off January 2025 with an impact score.
• 33:00
  Speaker 1: So I hope you can see what I mean by low effort or low difficulty, but medium impact, like being able to recap for our clients, remind them why we're such great advisors, why they're in relationship with us, all of the stuff that we're doing for them throughout the year and that we're thinking proactively about the upcoming year and getting them excited about what's coming next.
• 33:24
  Speaker 1: This and getting them excited about what's coming next.
• 33:27
  Speaker 1: This, this hands down, this adds value.
• 33:30
  Speaker 1: It might not be as valuable as saving them $37,000 in their tax return right, that would be a very high impact score.
• 33:38
  Speaker 1: But this is valuable stuff.
• 33:38
  Speaker 1: And don't sleep on this exercise.
• 33:39
  Speaker 1: You will get amazing feedback about it.
• 33:41
  Speaker 1: And again, do the communications audit.
• 33:43
  Speaker 1: Think through how this would best go out to your clients.
• 33:46
  Speaker 1: Is it worth doing a snail mail?
• 33:48
  Speaker 1: I do love a good snail mail because for me in my household when I was married, if I opened up a letter and I wanted my husband to see it, I would leave it on the counter and then he would read it and it had this staying power in our home where we'd see it more than once because I was touching it, he was touching it.
• 34:06
  Speaker 1: We were saving it for each other.
• 34:07
  Speaker 1: I could sit down with my cup of coffee in the morning and actually read through it.
• 34:12
  Speaker 1: That was a better experience for me.
• 34:14
  Speaker 1: So snail mail was like oh, that might be a great option.
• 34:17
  Speaker 1: Now, of course, that cost postage and it cost time stuffing envelopes and all of those things you might do.
• 34:24
  Speaker 1: A video, right?
• 34:25
  Speaker 1: And again, if you're doing email campaigns or you're doing videos, pay attention to the data.
• 34:30
  Speaker 1: Are they being opened?
• 34:31
  Speaker 1: What is the open rate?
• 34:32
  Speaker 1: Is it going out to both spouses?
• 34:35
  Speaker 1: Right, it loses its impact if you've only got one email in the system and you send it to one of the spouses but not the other.
• 34:44
  Speaker 1: Right?
• 34:45
  Speaker 1: We want to make sure that it's getting touched by everybody.
• 34:47
  Speaker 1: But pay attention to those open rates.
• 34:49
  Speaker 1: If you make a video, try to keep it to three minutes or less and then pay attention to how long people watch.
• 34:56
  Speaker 1: Right, we want to make sure that you're setting up If you're going to set up a video I would set it up slightly differently that you're going to lay out Like we're super, I would.
• 35:04
  Speaker 1: I would almost go backwards, like we're super excited about next year.
• 35:07
  Speaker 1: Here's what you can expect from us.
• 35:08
  Speaker 1: Here's what we did this year.
• 35:09
  Speaker 1: I would kind of almost go in a backwards order, right, cause with video, you have an even shorter period of time to capture their attention and you know what.
• 35:17
  Speaker 1: That might not be a bad strategy for a letter either.
• 35:19
  Speaker 1: Right?
• 35:19
  Speaker 1: You know your ideal client avatar best and how they best receive information.
• 35:25
  Speaker 1: Anyways, I hope this episode was helpful for you guys.
• 35:28
  Speaker 1: Again, we're gonna be launching the next round of group coaching here in just a few weeks, so go ahead and grab a spot on the wait list if you're interested in just learning more.
• 35:38
  Speaker 1: It's not a commitment.
• 35:39
  Speaker 1: The link for that will be in the show notes.
• 35:42
  Speaker 1: You can also go out to theefficientadvisorcom, go to the coaching page, look at the systems to scale group coaching portion and, of course, there's options to get on the wait list there as well.
• 35:52
  Speaker 1: As always.
• 35:53
  Speaker 1: Thank you guys, so much for your time and attention every week.
• 35:56
  Speaker 1: If you would do me a solid and share this episode with another advisor, friend of yours or someone on your team, it would mean the world to me.
• 36:05
  Speaker 1: When you guys share the podcast with new advisors, I am forever grateful.
• 36:13
  Speaker 1: And if this podcast has helped you in any way, shape or form, implement or change anything in your business, I'd love to hear more about it over in the Efficient Advisor community on Facebook.
• 36:23
  Speaker 1: It's a free Facebook group that we've got for financial advisors and operations people within their business.
• 36:28
  Speaker 1: You feel free to come join us, where we have lots of fun and interesting conversations and I've got some really fun content plans.
• 36:36
  Speaker 1: We're working on a couple of different ideas to really enhance that community.
• 36:40
  Speaker 1: It's already pretty bomb, but I'd like to make it even cooler.
• 36:43
  Speaker 1: And, of course, you can connect with me over on LinkedIn.
• 36:45
  Speaker 1: We're going to have some really fun LinkedIn stuff coming out and we are so close to 10,000 followers over on LinkedIn, so I would love and I know it doesn't mean anything, it's a total vanity metric, but there's just something about hitting that five digits.
• 36:59
  Speaker 1: That's getting me kind of excited.
• 37:01
  Speaker 1: So if you want to jump over to LinkedIn and follow me there under Libby Grywey, I would love it, love it, love it.
• 37:08
  Speaker 1: Thank you guys so much and I hope you have an amazing rest of your week and I am off to drink boatloads of water and rest my voice.
• 37:16
  Speaker 1: Thanks so much.
• 37:17
  Speaker 1: You guys are awesome and I will talk to you next time time.