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#136 - Momentum Over Perfection: Fran Walsh on Growing a Business Step by Step · Only Fee-Only

• 0:05
  Speaker 1: What's up?
• 0:05
  Speaker 1: Everyone, welcome back.
• 0:06
  Speaker 1: This is, as you know, the OnlyFeeOnly podcast.
• 0:10
  Speaker 1: Thanks so much for being here.
• 0:12
  Speaker 1: In this episode, we are talking to Fran Walsh, who is a top 100 advisor by Investopedia and he is on a mission to help millennials achieve financial fitness.
• 0:24
  Speaker 1: He is based out of the greater Philadelphia area and, with his partner, ryan, they started Opulus LLC to help people with financial planning.
• 0:35
  Speaker 1: This is really cool because you get the feeling when you're talking to some people that they know exactly the type of mission that they're on and they know what they do want to be.
• 0:44
  Speaker 1: They know what they don't want to be and there was no question when Dev and I were talking to Fran, he knew exactly where they were headed.
• 0:53
  Speaker 1: So really appreciated this conversation and I think you guys are in for a treat with this one.
• 0:59
  Speaker 1: Enjoy this episode with Fran Walsh on the Only Fee Only podcast.
• 1:03
  Speaker 1: How's it going?
• 1:04
  Speaker 1: Everyone, welcome back to the Only Fee Only podcast.
• 1:06
  Speaker 1: How's it going?
• 1:06
  Speaker 1: Everyone, welcome back to the Only Fee Only podcast and, as always, thanks for being here.
• 1:09
  Speaker 1: I am joined by Dev Thompson and Fran Walsh, who is our guest today.
• 1:14
  Speaker 1: He's a top 100 advisor by Investopedia and is the founder and a financial planner at Opulus LLC.
• 1:21
  Speaker 1: So, fran, welcome to the show man.
• 1:23
  Speaker 2: Awesome.
• 1:23
  Speaker 2: Yeah, I appreciate you guys having me on, man.
• 1:26
  Speaker 2: I checked it out a little bit.
• 1:27
  Speaker 2: I saw you guys have had some great guests.
• 1:28
  Speaker 2: I'm honored and excited to be here tonight.
• 1:31
  Speaker 1: Yeah, we've been lucky over the years to get some awesome people on here and Justin Costelli was like our first ever guest that we had and then we kind of rolled from there.
• 1:40
  Speaker 1: So it's been fun and I think it's been good for the advisor community to kind of be able to learn from each other and some of the best.
• 1:46
  Speaker 1: So to get us started, man, love for you to just, you know, talk as long as you want about kind of yourself and a little bit of an overview of your planning practice and how you kind of got into this world.
• 1:57
  Speaker 2: Sure, so my name is Fran Walsh, 30 years old.
• 2:01
  Speaker 2: I'm from Doylestown, pennsylvania, warrensville, pennsylvania, bucks County, right outside of Philadelphia.
• 2:07
  Speaker 2: How I got into this space when I was a, it's kind of a long-winded story.
• 2:13
  Speaker 2: I'm going to go all the way back to when I was in high school.
• 2:15
  Speaker 2: When I was in high school I won a football award for a football group called the Maxwell Football Club.
• 2:20
  Speaker 2: It was an award called the Jim Henry Award and there was a guy I met there his name's Ryan Greiser, who had won the award like eight years before me.
• 2:27
  Speaker 2: He's my current business partner today.
• 2:29
  Speaker 2: So Ryan came up, introduced himself to me at that point.
• 2:32
  Speaker 2: He had just gotten into this business when I was in high school, I assume, because he's like eight years older than me.
• 2:38
  Speaker 2: So Ryan said hey, man, if you ever need an internship or anything, give me a call.
• 2:43
  Speaker 2: So flash forward, like four years later I'm playing football at Villanova.
• 2:47
  Speaker 2: I'm looking for an internship.
• 2:48
  Speaker 2: I give Ryan a call.
• 2:51
  Speaker 2: I go intern with him for the summer.
• 2:53
  Speaker 2: It was the typical life insurance-based company where it was like a subsidiary of one of the large mutual companies and we were doing some kind of planning.
• 3:04
  Speaker 2: But I'm sure you guys have heard many backstories of people starting in that world.
• 3:08
  Speaker 1: I'm one of them.
• 3:09
  Speaker 1: I'm one of them.
• 3:11
  Speaker 1: Yeah, for sure.
• 3:12
  Speaker 2: So I wasn't sure if that was a path I wanted to go down.
• 3:14
  Speaker 2: So I actually went to a company called SIG or Susquehanna International Group.
• 3:17
  Speaker 2: I was on a quant trading desk as an assistant trader for about six months.
• 3:22
  Speaker 2: Quickly realized everyone there way smarter than me, was not even close to being the kind of guy who could go do that for 30 years.
• 3:30
  Speaker 2: A lot of crazy stories, you know traders losing millions of dollars a day.
• 3:36
  Speaker 2: Just the stress was so insane and I was like all right, I think I'm more of like a relaxed kind of guy that is not going to be someone who is going to be okay with losing millions of dollars a day.
• 3:46
  Speaker 2: And, oddly enough, you know you get into the wealth management world.
• 3:49
  Speaker 2: That can happen too when you start dealing with people big enough.
• 3:52
  Speaker 2: So I go back to ended up starting work with Ryan at a company called Spire Wealth Planners, which doesn't exist anymore.
• 3:59
  Speaker 2: But we were there for roughly two and a half three years and we started kind of piecing together the idea of okay, would we be able to do this on our own?
• 4:07
  Speaker 2: So August of 2019, we officially launched Opulus, went on on our own, did not have a ton of business at the time, but we had just a belief that we could make it.
• 4:21
  Speaker 2: As I'm sure you guys have heard many stories I call it six months after COVID hit and I remember we didn't have an office yet or anything.
• 4:29
  Speaker 2: I'm sitting in Ryan's basement watching the stock market being down 30% at that point or something like that.
• 4:38
  Speaker 2: I think the specific day I have in mind was March 20th.
• 4:41
  Speaker 2: I remember the S&P was down like 9.99%.
• 4:45
  Speaker 2: I remember being like shit, we're not going to make it.
• 4:48
  Speaker 2: But we just kind of kept grinding at it.
• 4:52
  Speaker 2: And here we are.
• 4:53
  Speaker 2: We just officially passed the six-year mark.
• 4:56
  Speaker 2: So it's been an awesome run and we're excited about where we're at and what the future holds, but it's been a.
• 5:03
  Speaker 2: You know it's been a long journey to get to this point.
• 5:06
  Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, no doubt, man.
• 5:08
  Speaker 1: I mean it's crazy because we were about, we're, our companies are close to the same age.
• 5:12
  Speaker 1: We started January of 2020.
• 5:14
  Speaker 1: So I remember, like COVID hit and it was like adapt or die now, man, because, like you know, everybody's staying at home.
• 5:20
  Speaker 1: Everything switched to virtual and it was just one of those things to where, you know, you just had to figure it out and it wasn't going to be in the traditional sense.
• 5:28
  Speaker 1: Um, so what were some of those things that you guys were doing in the early days to kind of be like all right?
• 5:33
  Speaker 1: Well, you know, the world just kind of shut down and we still got to make this work, because I know that's relatable to a lot of, a lot of people that have been around for five, five or six years now.
• 5:42
  Speaker 2: For that have been around for five or six years now, for sure.
• 5:45
  Speaker 2: I mean for us.
• 5:46
  Speaker 2: I mean, obviously Ryan's a bit more established than me, so at the time we were really fortunate that a lot of the people in his base were young 30s.
• 5:55
  Speaker 2: That were the people that a lot of advisors nowadays want to work with right People that what do you call Henry's right High earners, not rich.
• 6:01
  Speaker 2: yet they're the demographic that you're seeing a lot of advisors, especially on social, starting to talk about how they want to work with them.
• 6:06
  Speaker 2: But you know, I think everyone in hindsight is always like, oh, you always want to have a niche.
• 6:13
  Speaker 2: But the reality is when you're getting started like you can't afford to have a niche, like, yeah, like we had.
• 6:18
  Speaker 2: We were fortunate because we both played football.
• 6:20
  Speaker 2: We had some college coaches, we had a couple NFL guys, a couple business owners, but the reality is like, hey, anyone in the beginning, you're like anyone that wants to work with us that'll possibly, you know, need any sort of assistance.
• 6:32
  Speaker 2: We're willing to help you with literally whatever it can be.
• 6:34
  Speaker 2: So you know, I think when you're getting started it's a much different story for them.
• 6:38
  Speaker 2: What you're looking at you know five years down the line, but you know five years down the line.
• 6:45
  Speaker 2: But you know the reality was.
• 6:46
  Speaker 2: You know we were doing all the traditional stuff trying to get connected with accounts, trying to get connected with, you know, commercial residential insurance guys, really anyone who had contact with a lot of individuals who could possibly be asking for some sort of, you know, financial need.
• 7:01
  Speaker 2: So I really got hooked up early in my career with a great insurance guy who luckily needed had a ton of people also who needed, you know, financial planning help and that was like to be honest.
• 7:12
  Speaker 2: If I never got connected with him, you know, I don't know how successful we might have been early on or have gotten through that COVID point, because you know, when you're at that point I was 24 years old when we launched Opulence there's not a lot of people that are dying to work with a 24-year-old advisor.
• 7:27
  Speaker 2: Yeah right.
• 7:28
  Speaker 2: I'm thankful and fortunate to have a ton of people that were willing to help me and listen.
• 7:33
  Speaker 2: I was able to lean on Ryan, who was extremely beneficial and helping grow me to where I'm at today.
• 7:40
  Speaker 2: A lot of the traditional stuff, but luckily it's evolved over time to where we've not kind of built our own niche now, and all that good stuff.
• 7:50
  Speaker 3: Fran, it's funny you talk about that, because I was actually the most recent guest on the Fee Only podcast and we talked about some mistakes I made when I actually had my own firm.
• 8:00
  Speaker 3: And that was the main thing I mentioned was, as a new advisor, being very narrowly niche focused.
• 8:06
  Speaker 3: And you just alluded to like, hey, when you're starting out, especially going through something like COVID, like we need clients from anywhere and everywhere, now that you guys are a bit more established, do you have more of a narrow focus on what clients you're trying to really work with?
• 8:18
  Speaker 3: Are you guys still fairly open?
• 8:19
  Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean I would say like we're fairly open, right, so we have, like you know, three demographics.
• 8:25
  Speaker 2: We still work with athletes, we still work with business owners.
• 8:28
  Speaker 2: You know, call it, 65% of our business probably comes from you know that Henry demographic People who are, you know, between 30 and 45, and obviously there's outliers, right, there's plenty of awesome people we've gotten connected with.
• 8:42
  Speaker 2: That don't fit that narrative, but like people that are like 30 to 45, they want to just know, okay, I'm making great money, how do I set myself up in order to accomplish all the things I want to accomplish?
• 8:53
  Speaker 2: And obviously you guys know that means a million different things to a million different people.
• 8:57
  Speaker 2: Whether that's okay.
• 8:58
  Speaker 2: I want to retire at 55.
• 9:00
  Speaker 2: I want to accumulate $5 million.
• 9:02
  Speaker 2: I want to be able to grow and scale and sell my business.
• 9:04
  Speaker 2: Right, everyone's got their own ideas.
• 9:06
  Speaker 2: So, you know, for us it's really that age demographic and you know we like that sweet spot because we think that there's a lot of things we can do from a planning perspective, from a tax perspective, you know, to help those individuals and make the biggest impact.
• 9:20
  Speaker 2: You know the reality is, if you're only working with pre-retirees, right, you know, they got a couple million bucks.
• 9:26
  Speaker 2: There's only so much you can do to help them.
• 9:28
  Speaker 2: Like they haven't.
• 9:28
  Speaker 2: They've kind of already they built the nest egg and now it's like okay, they just got to live on and last on.
• 9:38
  Speaker 2: So there's, of course, there's plenty of things you can do to help them, but in our opinion, the biggest impact you can makeification asset allocation, where the assets are being held, all the planning that goes into it.
• 9:48
  Speaker 2: So I wouldn't say a niche as far as how you see some people are like I only work with doctors or I only work with teachers or whatever that is.
• 9:56
  Speaker 2: It's more of like an income H demographic for us.
• 10:00
  Speaker 1: I think those are neat concepts, man, and I'm going to bring them up again.
• 10:03
  Speaker 1: I swear if Justin Costelli had a dollar for every time his name was mentioned on this podcast.
• 10:05
  Speaker 1: I think those are neat concepts, man, and I'm going to bring them up again.
• 10:06
  Speaker 1: I swear if Justin Costelli had a dollar for every time his name was mentioned on this podcast, I think he'd have a separate business model.
• 10:09
  Speaker 1: But he brought up the point years ago when we had him on about this concept around mindset niching, or niching right when it's like people that want to be successful or people that want to have freedom over their schedule, or people that love to travel, Like.
• 10:23
  Speaker 1: It doesn't necessarily mean that they have to be like doctors or attorneys or teachers or whatever, but the type of person that you want to work with like if they have that same mindset, it kind of meshes well with your firm.
• 10:35
  Speaker 1: I think a lot of times that's actually a way better way to go about it than to just say like I only work with doctors, yeah.
• 10:43
  Speaker 2: Yeah, the one line I always like to say is like I like winners.
• 10:45
  Speaker 2: I like people who are winners in life.
• 10:47
  Speaker 2: I like people who wake up, get her after it, go work out in the morning.
• 10:50
  Speaker 2: They spend a lot of time with their family, like my one mantra I would say is be the best you Like.
• 10:54
  Speaker 2: I like people who want to be the best person of themselves in their family, in their business, in their personal life.
• 10:59
  Speaker 2: Everything that encompasses like are you trying to be the best possible version of yourself?
• 11:10
  Speaker 2: And you know like it's inspiring when you see like clients who are doing that, like we like working with those kinds of people.
• 11:13
  Speaker 2: Um, so I totally agree.
• 11:14
  Speaker 2: You know, I I actually have not looked into Justin too much, but I would definitely like to hear more about what he has to say about that stuff.
• 11:18
  Speaker 2: I think that's an interesting concept for sure.
• 11:21
  Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, no doubt.
• 11:22
  Speaker 1: Um, what do you think, like, what's the dynamic at the firm?
• 11:25
  Speaker 1: Like, obviously there's a couple of you guys like within our firm, right, we're all kind of good at different things and we try to let that person that's really good at that specialize in that and kind of run that part of the business, Right.
• 11:37
  Speaker 1: Like, what does the dynamic look like for you guys?
• 11:40
  Speaker 1: And then how do you stay out of each other's ways but also collaborate in a way?
• 11:47
  Speaker 2: collaborate in a way where you can keep everything you know, having a lot of forward momentum.
• 11:49
  Speaker 2: Yeah, it's an interesting question.
• 11:52
  Speaker 2: No-transcript person, we do all that stuff, so it's really just a matter of like trying to divide out what our skill sets are.
• 12:17
  Speaker 2: Um, as far as like from a client facing standpoint, we both work with pretty much every single client.
• 12:25
  Speaker 2: It's just a matter of what that conversation is going to entail.
• 12:28
  Speaker 2: Naturally, conversations Ryan's much more analytical than I am, so conversations that involve a deep dive into stuff like that, ryan will handle a lot of the introduction conversations handling who we are, how we go about things, how we like to work with individuals, where do we think that we could help you.
• 12:46
  Speaker 2: But it's one of those things where the reality is we are both doing the same things.
• 12:53
  Speaker 2: It's just a matter of who knows the client rate, because a significant majority of our business comes from people we already know.
• 13:01
  Speaker 2: We've had some recent success on like X social media stuff, but that's been very new in the last six months.
• 13:09
  Speaker 2: So prior to that, you know, 99% of our business came from clients who knew us.
• 13:13
  Speaker 2: So it's kind of like, okay, whoever's going to take the lead on this individual or be like their primary contact, it's just about okay, who has the relationship with them already, whether that's through a family member, friends, something like that.
• 13:23
  Speaker 2: So we've, you know, we've been close for a long time.
• 13:30
  Speaker 2: You know Ryan was in my wedding, like you know.
• 13:31
  Speaker 2: So, like, we definitely can step on each other's toes at times over.
• 13:33
  Speaker 2: Just, you know different little things that I think you know.
• 13:36
  Speaker 2: Like any other business you get, for sure we do things the same way you do.
• 13:40
  Speaker 2: Um, ryan's much more detail oriented than I am, so, like, definitely, I could definitely get on his nerves a bit when I'm a bit more, uh, broad scope picture stuff, but he's like finding the details.
• 13:51
  Speaker 2: But yeah, you know, it's just about understanding, in our opinion, that like, hey, we're on the same team with the same goal in mind.
• 13:57
  Speaker 2: So, and we're both.
• 13:58
  Speaker 2: You know former athletes and I know you, you guys are like this, I'm not gonna tell you, but you know, like you, you have that drive, desire which I think in a lot of corporate structures isn't necessarily there when people know they're getting a paycheck, no matter what.
• 14:10
  Speaker 2: For us it's like, hey, we want to hit our goals, we want to make more money, provide for our families.
• 14:15
  Speaker 2: We know what we got to do to get there.
• 14:17
  Speaker 2: So it's all hands on deck, which makes things nice yeah yeah, no doubt dad did.
• 14:23
  Speaker 1: You have something.
• 14:23
  Speaker 1: I want to interrupt you.
• 14:24
  Speaker 3: You look like you're about to say something no, my off the cuff question for a friend.
• 14:30
  Speaker 3: I was talking about, like you know, us having similar, the three of us having similar interests and things like that, not to completely 180, but you playing ball at nova.
• 14:38
  Speaker 3: I'd love to hear and it can be anything what's your best or favorite memory from your time playing college ball oh, man, that's a tough one.
• 14:48
  Speaker 2: Um, I mean, my favorite, my favorite thing about, like, my villanova experience was definitely like, just like the friends you make right there, like, oh, you have a million different memories but as far as, like you know, just like camp life, there's a thousand different stories, whether that's related to, you know, coach tally or you know, some of the strength coaches we had that are all in bigger spots now.
• 15:12
  Speaker 2: But you know, like you know, you guys know this at villanova we were fortunate there's a lot of guys that, um, you know, ended up playing in the nfl.
• 15:21
  Speaker 2: So, like you remember, like certain days here, camp, where you know, you know, you do, like the tire pulls, I remember I had a story where me and one of my good buddies, matt, had did a tire pull against two guys who ended up playing a long time in the NFL, by one buddy, tano, who is entering year nine he actually just signed with the bears and my other buddy, austin Cleetro, played six years linebacker at a bunch of different spots and we beat them in a tire pull.
• 15:44
  Speaker 2: So I always linebacker at a bunch of different spots and, uh, we beat them in a tire pull.
• 15:52
  Speaker 2: So I always go back to that memory.
• 15:52
  Speaker 2: I like to text about it every now and then because I wasn't like, I wasn't a, you know, division one football talent.
• 15:54
  Speaker 2: You know I had a place.
• 15:55
  Speaker 2: It's like villanova you got, you have football guys, then you have like school guys that get brought in as like preferred walk-ons, where it's like, yeah, you, you know you can get some time on special teams and you know wait game reps, but you, but you're here to boost the team GPA.
• 16:05
  Speaker 2: And then there's the football guy.
• 16:06
  Speaker 2: I was one of the GPA guys, so that was a nice win I'll always have in my back pocket.
• 16:12
  Speaker 2: But yeah, there's just a lot of good memories, a lot of them weight room-based, not a ton like overweight football or school-based.
• 16:20
  Speaker 2: Obviously, I was there for the first national championship at Villanova, which was awesome 2016 in basketball.
• 16:27
  Speaker 2: That was like one of the craziest nights of my life, but I think like that night was fun but the party when they beat, when they beat the breaks off oklahoma like 96 to 40, was like a way more fun party night because like it's like halftime of the game and the streets were like flooded with people like second half oh man, I feel like I'm there right now, the way you're talking about getting me amped up remember.
• 16:52
  Speaker 2: I guess yesterday was already 10 years ago.
• 16:54
  Speaker 1: It's crazy yeah, that is crazy.
• 16:56
  Speaker 1: I, yeah I think about that stuff and it's like, well, that relates back to the business too, right, like when you're first starting.
• 17:02
  Speaker 1: It's like we're, we're here and you're man, like we got to figure all this stuff out, I don't know how we're ever going to.
• 17:07
  Speaker 1: And then, just like six years down the road, seven years down the road, you're like holy cow, like we've already done all of this.
• 17:13
  Speaker 1: We've already have, we already have a client base.
• 17:15
  Speaker 1: Like we have a podcast now talking about you guys, right when you.
• 17:30
  Speaker 1: It's really sexy and glamorous to look at somebody's life and like where they're at now and them having a successful business, but it doesn't start like that.
• 17:39
  Speaker 1: So I mean, my question to you, man, would be like for the people out there listening that are early on in their practice or are thinking about starting a practice Like we have a lot of people at like Schwab and stuff that will tune into the show, that are ambitious about starting their own practice one day, but they're just like I don't know if I want to do it Like what would your advice to those people be?
• 18:03
  Speaker 2: So I mean there's a couple things here that I would say it's like, depending on your age, it really does depend.
• 18:08
  Speaker 2: I hate the word it depends because that's like the joke in personal finance worlds Everything depends, it depends yeah.
• 18:26
  Speaker 2: If you're a really young guy, I think something that's extremely important is to try to attach yourself to someone that you can see a long-term vision with, especially from a firm perspective.
• 18:28
  Speaker 2: I've talked to a lot of firm owners who are extremely successful by themselves, but I think, like having just someone that you can piggyback off, that everything is not on you, because if you're by yourself, it's really hard to continue learning, advancing like keeping up with the newest stuff.
• 18:41
  Speaker 2: So I think, like for me, my growth I don't think would have been nearly what it was without having Ryan to kind of lean on to teach me all this stuff along the way.
• 18:48
  Speaker 2: Hey, how do we approach this conversation?
• 18:50
  Speaker 2: I think about the amount of stuff he's taught me relating to tax planning over the last year.
• 18:54
  Speaker 2: I'm like I don't know when I would have ever taken a deep dive in this stuff, because when you're working with clients, it's really hard to find time to learn this stuff.
• 19:01
  Speaker 2: So just working on plans and learning little tidbits here and there, learning from a senior guy is, you know, really advantageous.
• 19:09
  Speaker 2: But I think you know, kind of going back to what you said is like how it's one day at a time, it's just incremental improvements.
• 19:17
  Speaker 2: You know, I talk about this.
• 19:18
  Speaker 2: Whether it's fitness, whether it's like your social media presence, whether it's your business, like you're going to look if you just continue with that mindset of like, okay, I'm just going to get a little bit better today.
• 19:27
  Speaker 2: What can I get a little bit better on today?
• 19:29
  Speaker 2: Whether that's weights, you're running your social media videos, your you know, your Twitter threads, you know, whatever the case may be, when you look back one, three, five, 10 years from now, what you were doing, you're going to be like, holy shit, that sucked so bad.
• 19:44
  Speaker 2: You're going to be like I can't believe anyone hired us in our business.
• 19:48
  Speaker 2: I can't believe anyone liked that on social.
• 19:50
  Speaker 2: You're going to look back and be like, oh my God, that was awful.
• 19:52
  Speaker 2: But that's a testament that you don't see the changes, that you're making, the improvements in real time until you go look back over years, which I think is an awesome mindset and it's hard to see, hard to see in the moment, when you have like these big, lofty goals that like, okay, we're still so far from where we want to be and you're just keeping your head down.
• 20:10
  Speaker 2: I'm like, okay, I got to get the next client, I got to get this, I got to do this for this person I got to keep this person.
• 20:16
  Speaker 2: I keep trying to do all these little things, um, but like thinking in decades and just knowing hey, I just got to keep making that incremental process on a daily basis and you're going to get there, right?
• 20:26
  Speaker 2: The reality is, the people who never quit and just keep going, you're going to be inevitably successful, right, just without putting your head down and sticking to that.
• 21:13
  Speaker 1: Yeah, no doubt.
• 21:13
  Speaker 1: Yeah, it's the people that don't stop that make it work, man, at the end of the day.
• 21:15
  Speaker 1: And then that's such an underrated thing is a lot of people think it's going to come to you.
• 21:17
  Speaker 1: And then that's such an underrated thing is a lot of people think it's going to come to you, right, like it's some of it might, but not if you don't have momentum and you're not doing the things that you have to do in order for it to keep rolling Right.
• 21:29
  Speaker 1: And I think that's that's such a big thing.
• 21:35
  Speaker 1: Thinking about you guys and where Opulence is going to go obviously you're familiar with Michael Kitsis, right, and he does this talk.
• 21:38
  Speaker 1: Where he talks about there's a few different ways that, like a firm can go.
• 21:40
  Speaker 1: One is like solopreneur You're already past that because there's two of you, right but there's also like that boutique vision where we want to have like a really solid team of, maybe you know, four to 12 or four to 20 people one day and have some advisors.
• 21:54
  Speaker 1: And then there's that like what he calls like the crazy big enterprise thing, where you hire a ton of advisors.
• 21:59
  Speaker 1: Maybe it's got more of a corporate feel to it, um, but what do you guys want to do, like are you going to keep it as a lifestyle thing and have that freedom, or do you want to grow it and hire advisors down the road?
• 22:09
  Speaker 1: Like what are you guys thinking?
• 22:11
  Speaker 2: So we've always been of the mindset that you know, the freedom aspect is really important to us and I probably should have mentioned this earlier.
• 22:17
  Speaker 2: But the one thing we always talk about is we came up under a guy named Dave, who I'll always be appreciative of fantastic guy, but Dave was like a three-piece suit every day kind of guy and we were always like we got to get away from that.
• 22:30
  Speaker 2: It makes us uncomfortable, it makes the clients uncomfortable.
• 22:33
  Speaker 2: So we were always of the mindset like, hey, we're just going to be normal guys.
• 22:36
  Speaker 2: We.
• 22:37
  Speaker 2: So we were always of the mindset like, hey, we're just going to be normal guys.
• 22:39
  Speaker 2: We wear t-shirts every day to work.
• 22:40
  Speaker 2: We want that presentation of the clients that hey, we're normal people just like you.
• 22:44
  Speaker 2: But the one thing that we always feel is important is that we're always preaching enjoy your lifestyle, enjoy your money.
• 22:50
  Speaker 2: No one wants to be the guy that dies with all the money in the world.
• 22:53
  Speaker 2: So we practice what we preach.
• 23:00
  Speaker 2: Our goal isn't to be this monster conglomerate organization with a thousand advisors.
• 23:03
  Speaker 2: If people don't want to do that, awesome For us.
• 23:04
  Speaker 2: Our mindset's always been like hey, the goal of our business is to treat our clients well, help them accomplish their goals in life and build a lifestyle for ourselves that we can spend time with our family.
• 23:12
  Speaker 2: So do I see us possibly hiring a couple admin people over the next few years?
• 23:18
  Speaker 2: That's something that would be nice when you're in your 30s, which we both are.
• 23:24
  Speaker 2: Ryan's got three kids.
• 23:25
  Speaker 2: I'm looking to have family soon.
• 23:27
  Speaker 2: Me and my wife just celebrated our one-year anniversary, so hopefully, that's fine.
• 23:33
  Speaker 2: But when you have that coming, it's hard to think about hiring an admin person because you've got to take care of kids, you've got to save money, all this kind of stuff.
• 23:41
  Speaker 2: Yeah, no doubt Financial planning, but that would probably be the next step.
• 23:45
  Speaker 2: But as far as other advisors go, that's never been something that I think we've had a major desire for, because we do like having that personal touch and knowing all of our clients have come with us for a reason and knowing all of our clients have come with us for a reason, and we just never liked the notion of you bring someone on and all of a sudden they're not working with you and they hire you.
• 24:05
  Speaker 2: So nothing against guys who do that.
• 24:09
  Speaker 2: Every business model I'm sure you guys see all the fee model debates all over.
• 24:13
  Speaker 2: I'm not someone who likes to talk about how other people do business.
• 24:18
  Speaker 2: I think whatever is right for you and your firm is cool, but for us I think we just want that personal touch to stay that way and just try to keep providing the white glove service that we always feel we have yeah, no doubt yeah, if I keep looking at you, you keep looking like you're going to ask a question and then I don't know if you're going no man.
• 24:38
  Speaker 3: I love that because, honestly, I feel like it is.
• 24:40
  Speaker 3: And, of course, brock, I don't want to speak for you and Peter, but I feel like that's similar to how we view things with BC and honestly, I haven't been here a long time but, like, just like you alluded to your friend, like want to grow and continue to provide better, better service, connect with more and more advisors, but like I think that it's something a little bit truthfully not that everyone in our generation is the same, but a little bit due to our age, like you know the idea of building a successful business, but having the life you want to live is such a crucial part of it.
• 25:10
  Speaker 3: Like I'm planning a one-year-old's birthday party, which seems crazy, fran.
• 25:14
  Speaker 3: One day you wake up and Brittany and I'll be celebrating seven years here in a couple months, and it's wild.
• 25:21
  Speaker 3: It doesn't feel like that at all, but I just think that's, I think it's something that's so cool.
• 25:24
  Speaker 3: I don't want to say specifically about the fee-only community, but I would say people in our generation and a lot of the fee-only community, it's, it's.
• 25:32
  Speaker 3: Hey, how can I build a practice like you're talking about, fran, that lets me serve more and more clients and allows us to build a business the way we want to build it, but also allows me to live the life I want to live.
• 25:43
  Speaker 3: That you know.
• 25:43
  Speaker 3: Having a thousand clients where you're working 70 hours a week, like, is that really worth it?
• 25:48
  Speaker 3: And I think a lot of people included have the mindset, like you do, that no, it's not.
• 25:52
  Speaker 3: There's a way to to build a booming business but also live the life you want to live.
• 25:56
  Speaker 1: So I love you talking and touching on that yeah, yeah and and the culture aspect too, man, like if you don't have a good culture and people don't want to be a part of what you're building.
• 26:06
  Speaker 1: And even even with you guys it's like we're totally different but we both stand for the same things and at the end of the day we want the same thing and we can both agree to agree on that part, even if we don't necessarily agree or our minds don't work exactly the same.
• 26:19
  Speaker 1: So I admire that you guys have been able to find that delicate balance and charge forward with it, man.
• 26:26
  Speaker 2: Yeah for sure.
• 26:27
  Speaker 2: Yeah, I appreciate it.
• 26:28
  Speaker 2: I think people appreciate that too.
• 26:30
  Speaker 2: I think people appreciate authenticity.
• 26:32
  Speaker 2: So I know there's a lot of people out there that you know probably trying to convey an image that isn't exactly you know what they're like in day to day.
• 26:41
  Speaker 2: But you know, the one thing we always say is, like you know our clients, you know a lot of them are, you know, personal friends and family members.
• 26:47
  Speaker 2: So like you can't, you can't BS that.
• 26:49
  Speaker 2: You know there comes to a point where it's like, hey, we're going to be who we're going to be.
• 26:53
  Speaker 1: Um, you know, I think people appreciate that and you know that's a huge part of getting clients to know you know we promote transparency and you know we treat people the way we would want to be treated and you know all that good stuff.
• 27:11
  Speaker 1: But uh, yeah, of the people that we work with are people that we knew, like we know them, and that is a huge fear in the advisor community to work with people that you know or work with people that you develop relationships with personally or like friends or family.
• 27:27
  Speaker 1: What was it?
• 27:28
  Speaker 1: And maybe it was intimidating to you guys at first or maybe it just came naturally.
• 27:32
  Speaker 1: But like, how did you get through that barrier?
• 27:34
  Speaker 1: You know, I've heard people say in my mind you know, if we're not doing it for them, we're, we're afraid that maybe they're going to get bad advice elsewhere, or we just feel like we can do the best job.
• 27:45
  Speaker 1: Like, was there something that clicked for you guys that really made that work for you?
• 27:50
  Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean, you know what I would say is, you know, truthfully, you have, you always have imposter syndrome, right?
• 27:55
  Speaker 2: I think anyone who tells you they don't is, I mean, they must be a total stud in this world if they don't.
• 28:02
  Speaker 2: But, like for me, when you're 30 years old, you definitely have some level of imposter syndrome, right?
• 28:06
  Speaker 2: You see, you know all kinds of guys talking about stuff on social and we do a ton of that, right?
• 28:11
  Speaker 2: But you're always, like you know, am I up to par?
• 28:14
  Speaker 2: You know what are other advisors having conversations with clients.
• 28:16
  Speaker 2: So, you know, early on it was definitely a struggle, right, it felt really hard to talk to family members, talk to people like that.
• 28:24
  Speaker 2: But you know, the reality is, when we got into those conversations, you start to get more and more comfortable.
• 28:30
  Speaker 2: You never get overly comfortable with certain people, right?
• 28:34
  Speaker 2: Like you know, sure, there's some uncles who got you know a lot of money.
• 28:37
  Speaker 2: They think they know everything about everything and you know it's hard to have conversations with those guys because it's not the same, as you know, a client who doesn't know you right but, yeah, I think, like for us this past year we started writing on social in November it's gotten blown up to the point where we'll get three or four incoming leads a week from that, who are people that are almost always in our niche or sometimes even better than our niche.
• 29:05
  Speaker 2: For us that's been a huge confidence booster, specifically for me having those conversations, knowing, okay, if I can have these conversations with individuals that you know, have no idea who I am, nothing about me, and they want to work with us and there's a trust factor there, I can easily have a conversation with anyone who I already know already has a ton of trust and they know everything about me.
• 29:26
  Speaker 2: You know they already believe me.
• 29:28
  Speaker 2: It's just something that takes a lot of time and you're never going to feel awesome about it.
• 29:32
  Speaker 2: But in the beginning it was kind of like you need those people.
• 29:36
  Speaker 2: But now it gets to the point where you're like okay, now I really know I can actually do a lot better for this person than what they currently do.
• 29:42
  Speaker 2: Now, like I have an uncle who was just working with, like Wells Fargo, you know you go show him like hey, here's how much you're paying for XYZ.
• 29:48
  Speaker 2: They're doing no planning for you no taxes, none of that.
• 29:56
  Speaker 2: And then you feel really good during that conversation which you're like, whereas 25 year old me would have been like I had no idea if I'm better than this guy.
• 30:00
  Speaker 2: I mean, I hope so, but nowadays it's like you're just so much more ingrained through the thousands of conversations and client experiences you've had.
• 30:07
  Speaker 2: So, just like anything else, just like riding a bike, when you do it a thousand times you feel much better about it a thousand times.
• 30:14
  Speaker 2: But you know, unfortunately the nature of this business is that's how people kind of got to get started.
• 30:19
  Speaker 2: But eventually those conversations become much easier and then when you know there's a real value you're adding, you know it just really helps to know like, okay, I know I'm actually doing really good for you here and sure, yeah.
• 30:33
  Speaker 1: Yeah, you had a lot more refs.
• 30:35
  Speaker 1: When you're 25 and you're meeting with the uncle, you're like this is going to go really well or it's going to be a really weird Thanksgiving.
• 30:40
  Speaker 1: Right, there's not a lot of in between.
• 30:43
  Speaker 1: Um, so awesome man.
• 30:45
  Speaker 1: Well, thank you so much for coming on the show.
• 30:47
  Speaker 1: For those of you that want to follow along with what you guys have going on going on at Opulus I got it out how can they follow along on social media and what's the best place to do it?
• 30:59
  Speaker 2: We are on Instagram, just Opulous LLC.
• 31:02
  Speaker 2: Most of our stuff is much more on Twitter X.
• 31:06
  Speaker 2: Now I'm at Framewalk70cents.
• 31:08
  Speaker 2: It grinds at Ryan Opulous, but we write threads every single day on there, seven days a week, week.
• 31:16
  Speaker 2: That's kind of our primary growth platform right now.
• 31:18
  Speaker 2: But you know, podcast is on apple spotify.
• 31:21
  Speaker 2: You can just look up the opulus method pretty much anywhere you want to find us.
• 31:25
  Speaker 2: We're on all kinds of social but, yeah, x will be the best place to find us.
• 31:28
  Speaker 2: But now again, just want to say thank you to you guys.
• 31:30
  Speaker 2: Really appreciate you having me on uh, you know what you're doing for the community and you know it's been a pleasure to kind of get to know you guys.
• 31:34
  Speaker 2: Really appreciate you having me on uh, you know what we are doing for the community and you know it's been a pleasure to kind of get to know you guys and uh, thanks again.
• 31:40
  Speaker 1: Thanks a lot, Fran.
• 31:41
  Speaker 2: Thanks for having me on buddy.
• 31:42
  Speaker 3: See you guys.