Latest / Only Fee-Only / #168 - From Broker-Dealer to Fee-Only RIA - Carmine Corino

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#168 - From Broker-Dealer to Fee-Only RIA - Carmine Corino · Only Fee-Only

• 0:04
  SPEAKER_00: How's it going, everyone?
• 0:06
  SPEAKER_00: Welcome back to the OnlyFeel Only Podcast.
• 0:08
  SPEAKER_00: And as always, thanks for being here.
• 0:10
  SPEAKER_00: Today we're joined by Carmine Carino, founder and CEO of Cornerstone Planning Group.
• 0:16
  SPEAKER_00: Carmine shares his journey from the traditional insurance world to launching an independent RAA, which has now grown to 17 advisors across the country.
• 0:25
  SPEAKER_00: We get into his book Broken Dealer, what pushes advisors to finally make the leap to independence, and why Carmine believes real growth often comes from eliminating more, not adding more.
• 0:37
  SPEAKER_00: We also talk about creating capacity, empowering your team, and why finding a firm that truly aligns with your vision matters so much.
• 0:45
  SPEAKER_00: It's a great conversation, and I think you guys are gonna enjoy this one.
• 0:49
  SPEAKER_00: So enjoy this episode with Carmine Carino on the OnlyFee Only Podcast.
• 0:55
  SPEAKER_02: Hey, how's it going, everyone?
• 0:56
  SPEAKER_02: Welcome to another episode of the Only Fee Only Podcast.
• 1:00
  SPEAKER_02: I'm Peter Travolo.
• 1:02
  SPEAKER_02: I'm here with my co-host Brock Buckles, and today we're very excited to have Carmine Carino on.
• 1:07
  SPEAKER_02: He's the founder and CEO of Cornerstone Planning Group.
• 1:10
  SPEAKER_02: Really excited to have him on and share how he's scaling his firm.
• 1:13
  SPEAKER_02: So, Carmine, welcome to the show, man.
• 1:16
  SPEAKER_01: Thanks so much for having me, guys.
• 1:17
  SPEAKER_01: Looking forward to this.
• 1:18
  SPEAKER_02: Yes, you bet.
• 1:19
  SPEAKER_02: So we've been able to connect.
• 1:21
  SPEAKER_02: Uh, but for those who don't know who you are, do you want to give a quick background before we really dive into everything?
• 1:26
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, so Cornerstone Planning Group is an RAA located uh based in New Jersey.
• 1:32
  SPEAKER_01: We have offices in six states now and growing.
• 1:34
  SPEAKER_01: And and uh our advisor population, the common thread I would say we all have is we are in these really constrained environments thriving for independence.
• 1:44
  SPEAKER_01: And then that is the one common thread where that has gravitated a lot of advisors to our ecosystem and our culture here, for sure.
• 1:52
  unknown: Yeah.
• 1:53
  SPEAKER_00: Good deal, man.
• 1:54
  SPEAKER_00: Well, let's get into kind of like your background, right?
• 1:56
  SPEAKER_00: Because I we're gonna get into like the the the all the stuff, the broken dealer book, everything that you've done, how you've built your practice.
• 2:03
  SPEAKER_00: But how did you get into the industry?
• 2:05
  SPEAKER_00: What was your first introduction?
• 2:06
  SPEAKER_00: Like, tell us a little bit about you, your introduction into like financial services, um, and kind of what the journeys looked like for you, man.
• 2:15
  SPEAKER_01: So very common.
• 2:18
  SPEAKER_01: Uh started the industry with one of the major insurance companies.
• 2:22
  SPEAKER_01: Um, you know, it was a pretty common entry level.
• 2:24
  SPEAKER_01: This was back in 2003.
• 2:26
  SPEAKER_01: I was working for the phone company at the time and uh wanted a change and knew some people in the industry and I shadowed.
• 2:34
  SPEAKER_01: I shadowed three different people, a stockbroker that worked in one of the brokerage houses.
• 2:38
  SPEAKER_01: Um and then I shadowed a financial, an independent uh financial advisor.
• 2:43
  SPEAKER_01: And he actually sat outside of his office and he had multiple client meetings that day, which was really nice of him to do.
• 2:49
  SPEAKER_01: And uh I saw what the stockbroker did during the day, and then I saw what the planner did, and I said, Well, I certainly don't want that, uh, the stockbroker side.
• 2:58
  SPEAKER_01: So I had a very good friend at uh at that insurance company, interview there, talked to some other firms, ended up there in 03.
• 3:05
  SPEAKER_01: And um through the many years of I would say increased friction and conflicts of interest, I launched um Cornerstone Planner Group in 2020 as an independent RA to the main reason is to remove the friction of the client advisor relationship, remove any type of blurred lines or conflicts.
• 3:27
  SPEAKER_01: Uh and uh today we're at 17 advisors around the country.
• 3:31
  SPEAKER_01: We have about 12, 13 South people here in New Jersey um and growing.
• 3:36
  SPEAKER_01: And uh we have uh we're on a really good growth trend.
• 3:39
  SPEAKER_01: And it's not because we have fancy technology or uh a good compliance uh backbone, it's because coaching the advisors to helping them grow is is is my dopamine release.
• 3:53
  SPEAKER_01: That's what that's my unique ability, what Dan Sullivan would say.
• 3:56
  SPEAKER_01: Sure.
• 3:57
  SPEAKER_01: And uh I take that to the next level and uh and uh that's really all I do at this point in my career.
• 4:03
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
• 4:04
  SPEAKER_02: So when was really the first time that you heard you know the term fee only?
• 4:10
  SPEAKER_01: I would probably say if I left in 2020, I think I got really turned on to this side of the because I would say the the the fee side and the and the traditional uh broker dealer insurance company, these are almost two different businesses.
• 4:25
  SPEAKER_01: There's a lot of overlap, but I I I would really I view them as two different businesses because um the focus is different, right?
• 4:32
  SPEAKER_01: The the vision is much different.
• 4:34
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, and I was not aligned with them.
• 4:37
  SPEAKER_01: I think I'd say like 2017, 2018 is when I said, Well, this exists, great, let's time look into it.
• 4:45
  SPEAKER_00: Right.
• 4:46
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 4:47
  SPEAKER_00: Um, and then obviously, like became a little bit disenfranchised with the other side and came out with the book Broken Dealer, right?
• 4:55
  SPEAKER_00: Which, which, as we were kind of talking about before we got on the podcast here, is like uh basically a guy an advisor's guide to how to go independent, right?
• 5:04
  SPEAKER_00: But like writing a book is not a small feat.
• 5:08
  SPEAKER_00: So, like what was the process?
• 5:09
  SPEAKER_00: When did you get the inspiration?
• 5:11
  SPEAKER_00: How did you know you wanted to do it?
• 5:12
  SPEAKER_00: And then like walk us through the journey of it.
• 5:15
  SPEAKER_01: So this is interesting.
• 5:16
  SPEAKER_01: So I co-wrote it with a good friend of mine, Darren Blonsky.
• 5:19
  SPEAKER_01: He's the owner of Sonoma Wealth uh in California.
• 5:22
  SPEAKER_01: Him and I met at a mastermind uh group meeting in Arizona that we're still members of today, through my uh one of my business coaches, Joe Lucas.
• 5:33
  SPEAKER_01: And we meet, we hit it off, and we're we're sharing our story with the group.
• 5:38
  SPEAKER_01: This was only the first or second time this group had met.
• 5:40
  SPEAKER_01: So we're meeting a lot of people for the first time.
• 5:42
  SPEAKER_01: And we're telling our story, and it was so aligned.
• 5:46
  SPEAKER_01: He was leaving the brokerage world, me leaving the insurance company world.
• 5:49
  SPEAKER_01: We kind of had the same experience.
• 5:51
  SPEAKER_01: Someone said, Hey, you should write a book.
• 5:54
  SPEAKER_01: I'm like, write a book.
• 5:56
  SPEAKER_00: Good luck, right?
• 5:57
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 5:58
  SPEAKER_01: So Darren and I connect after that meeting and we had several conversations, and it circled back to shoot, we should write a book.
• 6:04
  SPEAKER_01: So uh we talked to the people, the great people at Advantage Forbes, and they agreed to publish.
• 6:10
  SPEAKER_01: And that was a couple year process because you have to clear, you know, schedules and outlines, and and I don't know how many rounds of edits uh that were done.
• 6:20
  SPEAKER_01: We had to remove a chapter, we had to add a chapter.
• 6:22
  SPEAKER_01: So it was a it was a ride.
• 6:23
  SPEAKER_01: I learned a lot.
• 6:25
  SPEAKER_01: Um, but I look back now that the feedback we've gotten from the book, it went bestseller pretty quickly.
• 6:31
  SPEAKER_01: Um, but I've heard from advisors that didn't even join Cornerstone that said, Hey, I read your book.
• 6:36
  SPEAKER_01: I left such and such firm because of your book, and it really was a good guide.
• 6:41
  SPEAKER_01: Wow.
• 6:41
  SPEAKER_01: And that was the point of writing it.
• 6:42
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, great.
• 6:43
  SPEAKER_01: If we got an advisor to to raise their hand and want to talk to us and and they join the firm, fantastic.
• 6:48
  SPEAKER_01: But it was to arm those advisors in those constrained environments on, hey, here's my story.
• 6:54
  SPEAKER_01: I'm a lot like you, and here's here's a great guidebook on how to get started.
• 6:59
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
• 6:59
  SPEAKER_02: So what would you say some of the main bullet points are?
• 7:03
  SPEAKER_01: I think it's everyone that's been in, first of all, let's say what everyone had, right?
• 7:08
  SPEAKER_01: Everyone, anyone that leaves a constrained environment goes independent.
• 7:11
  SPEAKER_01: The one thing is in con is common is I wish I did it sooner.
• 7:15
  SPEAKER_01: That's everyone would say that, right?
• 7:17
  SPEAKER_00: And you guys would agree to that because what we hear.
• 7:20
  SPEAKER_00: Yep.
• 7:22
  SPEAKER_01: I think there's levels of an advisor has to get to a certain level of of disdain, right?
• 7:31
  SPEAKER_01: Say it's level one to five.
• 7:33
  SPEAKER_01: And I speak into I speak to advisors every week, and I could tell within the first 10-15 minutes are they a level one or a level five.
• 7:40
  SPEAKER_01: Five is they're past they're already out the door physically.
• 7:44
  SPEAKER_01: Four is they're out the door mentally charting their exit.
• 7:46
  SPEAKER_01: One is, hey, I heard this might be good, but I like that annual trip that they send me on.
• 7:51
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, that crappy food and and all that other stuff, right?
• 7:55
  SPEAKER_01: Um, let me give you an example.
• 7:57
  SPEAKER_01: We have a team that joined us, a three advisor team down in Austin, Texas, uh, last year.
• 8:02
  SPEAKER_01: Great team.
• 8:02
  SPEAKER_01: That took them three years.
• 8:04
  SPEAKER_01: Okay.
• 8:05
  SPEAKER_01: We spoke to an advisor three weeks ago from Midwest.
• 8:08
  SPEAKER_01: He's actually flying in Thursday, and he had the first call at my COO when I was on sabbatical and said, Can I start tomorrow?
• 8:14
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 8:15
  SPEAKER_01: So he was closing level five and a half.
• 8:18
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 8:18
  SPEAKER_00: He was level 10, man.
• 8:19
  SPEAKER_00: Mega.
• 8:20
  SPEAKER_01: He was level 10.
• 8:21
  SPEAKER_01: And but it's just, it's really, I think that is is understanding where you are in that hierarchy there, I think will will remove some frustration from the advisors that's looking to see what's out there.
• 8:34
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 8:34
  SPEAKER_01: You should do that assessment first.
• 8:36
  SPEAKER_01: Where am I?
• 8:36
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 8:37
  SPEAKER_01: And then go out and start shopping.
• 8:39
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 8:39
  SPEAKER_00: I that's so relatable.
• 8:41
  SPEAKER_00: I I remember when we were at a a point, um, Peter left before I did, but we started at a large insurance company.
• 8:48
  SPEAKER_00: And I remember all of those stages progressively coming along where it was like, I wasn't even at level one yet.
• 8:54
  SPEAKER_00: And then I was at level one, like, what are other people doing?
• 8:58
  SPEAKER_00: Right.
• 8:58
  SPEAKER_00: Like then I asked my managing director, like, what is fee only?
• 9:01
  SPEAKER_00: And he was like, Oh, those guys, you don't want to be those guys.
• 9:04
  SPEAKER_00: They're just charging people left and right for everything.
• 9:06
  SPEAKER_00: You know, we do a lot of work for free.
• 9:08
  SPEAKER_00: I'm like, no, but we don't.
• 9:10
  SPEAKER_00: We don't actually do a lot of work for free.
• 9:12
  SPEAKER_00: And then you get to like the level two, three, four.
• 9:14
  SPEAKER_00: Four's like, okay, like I'm literally going into work every day, pretty much hating my life.
• 9:19
  SPEAKER_00: And then five's like, it's time to get out of here.
• 9:22
  SPEAKER_00: So I myself, um, even though Peter and I obviously stayed in the insurance industry, we work with family advisors, um, as our as our day job outside of the podcast, what we were doing there was just never going to be able to be a long-term thing.
• 9:35
  SPEAKER_00: So it's it's interesting how your mind kind of cycles through those different levels to be able to reach the conclusion that time to time to get out of here.
• 9:43
  SPEAKER_01: And I would even say when you hit level four, the level four to level five is pretty quickly.
• 9:49
  SPEAKER_01: Because once you get to four, like, all right, I have to get out of here, then everything that was not a major problem before is the oh my god, I can't believe I have to do this and fill in the blank.
• 9:58
  SPEAKER_01: But yesterday that wasn't a problem.
• 10:00
  SPEAKER_01: Right.
• 10:00
  SPEAKER_01: So there is a kind of a quick progression once you go up that ladder.
• 10:04
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 10:06
  SPEAKER_01: Who you ask what else is out there.
• 10:09
  SPEAKER_01: I'm doing air quotes.
• 10:10
  SPEAKER_01: I don't know if we're on video, but I'm doing air quotes.
• 10:12
  SPEAKER_01: What else is out there?
• 10:13
  SPEAKER_01: Who you ask, so I went to my manager, my managing partner, and he said, No, no one ever got rich by charging fees.
• 10:21
  SPEAKER_01: Focus on commission.
• 10:23
  SPEAKER_01: Okay, all right.
• 10:23
  SPEAKER_01: So a little drip.
• 10:24
  SPEAKER_01: That was I started when I was 23 or 24 in this business.
• 10:28
  SPEAKER_01: I didn't know anybody, right?
• 10:29
  SPEAKER_00: Right, yeah.
• 10:30
  SPEAKER_01: And then I remember when they've they they changed the production requirements overnight.
• 10:35
  SPEAKER_01: They for X'd our core product production requirements to maintain our payout.
• 10:40
  SPEAKER_01: Um crazy it's overnight.
• 10:45
  SPEAKER_01: And uh two days before I was leaving for 19 days safari with my family.
• 10:49
  SPEAKER_01: So it gave me 19 days to think about what to do, which by the way, I wouldn't have and done any other way because that time that detachment gave me clarity.
• 10:59
  SPEAKER_01: And I called my managing partner who is my best friend since we were 15 years old.
• 11:04
  SPEAKER_01: Okay.
• 11:05
  SPEAKER_01: So someone I obviously blind trust at the moment at the time, put the asterisk there at the time.
• 11:10
  SPEAKER_01: And I said, What am I gonna do?
• 11:12
  SPEAKER_01: He says, Why don't you do what these other advisors are doing?
• 11:15
  SPEAKER_01: I said, Well, what's that?
• 11:16
  SPEAKER_01: He said, you know, you have a lot of money in investment accounts, right?
• 11:19
  SPEAKER_01: Manage accounts, yeah.
• 11:20
  SPEAKER_01: Sell some of their bond positions and buy whole life insurance with it.
• 11:23
  SPEAKER_01: It's better than owning a bond.
• 11:25
  SPEAKER_01: And you ever had that time when you heard something so ridiculous on the phone when you looked at your phone, you pulled it away from your ear and you looked at it?
• 11:32
  SPEAKER_01: That's what I did.
• 11:33
  SPEAKER_01: I go, wait, let me put this straight.
• 11:34
  SPEAKER_01: You want me to sell clients' bond positions and buy life insurance?
• 11:38
  SPEAKER_01: He said, Yeah, this is how these other advisors, and he named a few, are getting around the new production requirements.
• 11:44
  SPEAKER_00: Right.
• 11:44
  SPEAKER_01: I said, they should be fired.
• 11:47
  SPEAKER_01: Um, so it's who you ask.
• 11:48
  SPEAKER_01: Because then if you ask an independent person, hey, what's out there?
• 11:51
  SPEAKER_01: Completely different narrative.
• 11:53
  SPEAKER_00: Right.
• 11:54
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, in another way, screw the client for your own good because this this company's made a decision at the uh you knowposts at the highest level to move the goalposts, and everybody else is gonna suffer for it.
• 12:07
  SPEAKER_01: It is um it's it's astounding looking back now.
• 12:11
  SPEAKER_01: And actually, this this company I was at just moved the goalposts again last month.
• 12:17
  SPEAKER_01: And it's making it harder for the advisors to be truly true fiduciaries, right?
• 12:23
  SPEAKER_01: Uh it's not you just can't.
• 12:25
  SPEAKER_01: So I'm a CFP.
• 12:27
  SPEAKER_01: So I had a hand client's uh disclosure that said, hey, I have what most would consider a conflict of interest.
• 12:34
  SPEAKER_01: And let's just level the playing field here.
• 12:36
  SPEAKER_01: If you want to be an insurance company, sell product, fantastic.
• 12:38
  SPEAKER_01: We all need insurance.
• 12:40
  SPEAKER_01: I'm actually in an application process with my own, increasing my own.
• 12:43
  SPEAKER_01: I'm a believer in it.
• 12:45
  SPEAKER_01: Our clients own it, we recommend it.
• 12:46
  SPEAKER_01: They should get it.
• 12:49
  SPEAKER_01: It's um just do that.
• 12:53
  SPEAKER_01: Why don't these insurance companies double down and say, look, we're just gonna be insurance companies?
• 12:57
  SPEAKER_01: Fantastic.
• 12:58
  SPEAKER_01: Here's our pathway.
• 13:00
  SPEAKER_01: Or the other way is let's dabble in both and let's give these fancy disclosures to the people that worked hard to get their CFPs.
• 13:07
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, and let's put this question out there.
• 13:09
  SPEAKER_01: If you were shopping for a professional and they handed you a form that said, I have what most would consider a conflict of interest, is there any way on the planet you'd hire that person?
• 13:19
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, no, never, yeah, wouldn't happen.
• 13:23
  SPEAKER_02: No.
• 13:23
  SPEAKER_02: So I'm you broke off in 2020, right?
• 13:27
  SPEAKER_02: That's when you went fee only and started?
• 13:29
  SPEAKER_02: Yep.
• 13:29
  SPEAKER_01: Yes, sir.
• 13:30
  SPEAKER_02: Cool.
• 13:30
  SPEAKER_02: So what kind of what was the business plan like then?
• 13:33
  SPEAKER_02: Like right around COVID, and we can kind of discuss about you know how that's morphed to what it is today.
• 13:39
  SPEAKER_01: The business plan was changing every single day back then.
• 13:42
  SPEAKER_01: So I resigned in May, May 4th of 2020.
• 13:46
  SPEAKER_01: I'm a single de Mayo by a day, which would have been really cool to celebrate that.
• 13:50
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
• 13:50
  SPEAKER_01: So May 4th, um, and then for two weeks, we were dark because the SEC, they're all working from home.
• 13:57
  SPEAKER_01: This was all new to them, and my attorney couldn't get them on the phone.
• 14:00
  SPEAKER_01: So it was um, so for two weeks, I'd go to my office.
• 14:04
  SPEAKER_01: I work, I live maybe 15 minutes away from my office, and my staff was home.
• 14:08
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, everyone's working remotely because of COVID.
• 14:10
  SPEAKER_01: And I'd sit on my couch in my office, and I'd have nothing to do.
• 14:15
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, I'm active.
• 14:16
  SPEAKER_01: Um, I'm in this limbo.
• 14:19
  SPEAKER_01: And there were times where that it crept in, like, wow, did I make a mistake?
• 14:23
  SPEAKER_01: Because this is this is no bueno, because that's the extent of my Spanish.
• 14:26
  SPEAKER_01: That's all I got.
• 14:27
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, yeah.
• 14:28
  SPEAKER_01: This is no good.
• 14:29
  SPEAKER_01: Did I make a mistake?
• 14:30
  SPEAKER_01: And then I get a call.
• 14:32
  SPEAKER_01: Hey, your your your uh cornerstone is live.
• 14:35
  SPEAKER_01: Check broker check, you're good.
• 14:37
  SPEAKER_01: You know, call the custodian.
• 14:39
  SPEAKER_01: Okay, we have it, we're logged in.
• 14:41
  SPEAKER_01: First account comes over, client conversations, and then it just kept on snowballing from there.
• 14:47
  SPEAKER_01: That was an interesting, very interesting time, uh, challenging time, uh logistically because everyone was scattered, all sticks in the wind.
• 14:56
  SPEAKER_01: But I think friction, I think I believe friction creates growth.
• 15:02
  SPEAKER_01: And that friction that I had, mind you, that insurance company filed the finer action against me two days after I left.
• 15:07
  SPEAKER_01: I got that letter.
• 15:08
  SPEAKER_01: So 16 months of a legal battle with them, and I wouldn't change a thing because I could have avoided that whole legal issue, but I didn't because I wouldn't.
• 15:19
  SPEAKER_01: It's principal for me.
• 15:20
  SPEAKER_00: Sure.
• 15:21
  SPEAKER_01: And it was the best thing that ever happened to me.
• 15:22
  SPEAKER_01: That friction put us where we are today, for sure.
• 15:26
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, so I mean, it's it's gotta be nice too, like focusing on the you know, the financial planning side rather than like the minimum requirements on the insurance side and still having to do all of that.
• 15:36
  SPEAKER_00: Like it's a straight value prop.
• 15:38
  SPEAKER_00: Here's what we do, here's what we are.
• 15:40
  SPEAKER_00: Um, what what's that kind of change been like for you guys?
• 15:43
  SPEAKER_00: Like just mentally.
• 15:44
  SPEAKER_01: I think that every advisor here has a much more relaxed conversation with clients because I'll put it to you, I'll put one of our advisors, he ran our Philadelphia office.
• 15:54
  SPEAKER_01: He actually passed away last year, but he said something so great to me when he came over.
• 15:58
  SPEAKER_01: He came over and joined us a few months after we launched, and and he said, um, so you know, I have three masters in my life.
• 16:04
  SPEAKER_01: I have my family, my clients, and and the company.
• 16:08
  SPEAKER_01: Three's too many.
• 16:10
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 16:10
  SPEAKER_01: Can't get rid of my family, won't get rid of my clients.
• 16:14
  SPEAKER_01: What can I get rid of?
• 16:16
  SPEAKER_01: And when you shed that, it's like you're walking around with a 70-pound rucksack and you just decide one day to put it down.
• 16:22
  SPEAKER_01: And we had product requirement sales like you guys did at your insurance company from July 1st to June 30.
• 16:29
  SPEAKER_01: If you had to sell this amount of air core product, right?
• 16:32
  SPEAKER_00: Right.
• 16:32
  SPEAKER_01: I call that elevator music because no matter what you were doing, it was playing in the background, like hey, it's October 1st, where are you at?
• 16:39
  SPEAKER_01: January 1st, where are you at?
• 16:40
  SPEAKER_01: Uh February 15th, where are you at?
• 16:43
  SPEAKER_01: Elevator music, it's low, but it's never good.
• 16:46
  SPEAKER_01: I mean great elevator music ever.
• 16:48
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, yeah, yeah.
• 16:49
  SPEAKER_01: Um, and that just that stops.
• 16:51
  SPEAKER_01: So it's it's another advisor said this too.
• 16:53
  SPEAKER_01: I'm gonna steal this from him.
• 16:55
  SPEAKER_01: He was never able to grow and scale their the it's a team, they weren't able to scale their practice.
• 17:00
  SPEAKER_01: He said, Look, the first half of the hour worked on their business, and the second half of the year worked on my business.
• 17:05
  SPEAKER_01: Right.
• 17:06
  SPEAKER_01: So he was he goes, I was working part-time.
• 17:08
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, yeah.
• 17:09
  SPEAKER_00: Well, and there's it's always at the beginning of the year, right?
• 17:13
  SPEAKER_00: If you want to do the rolling year or whatever you want to call it, right?
• 17:15
  SPEAKER_00: The calendar year, uh, it's like, great, hey, you know what?
• 17:19
  SPEAKER_00: You did a great job.
• 17:20
  SPEAKER_00: You did MR MDRT or like there was form, like whatever it is, restart.
• 17:24
  SPEAKER_00: It's just like hitting the console restart button.
• 17:27
  SPEAKER_00: Nothing that you did before this matters.
• 17:29
  SPEAKER_00: Um, so that's hilarious.
• 17:30
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, we could talk about that all day.
• 17:32
  SPEAKER_00: What I want to get into though, uh, Carl mine is like you said, like kind of your gift is like you're a developer of people and talent and helping people kind of find um, you know, what's right for them.
• 17:44
  SPEAKER_00: So, what are some of the things that you do to help people kind of realize their own potential?
• 17:50
  SPEAKER_00: Because I think that's something that's really difficult for people.
• 17:53
  SPEAKER_00: And with people like you, and I've met a lot of people that have that gift.
• 17:57
  SPEAKER_00: Um, well, not a ton of people, but the people that do, you can really tell they have that gift and are able to develop people and help those people believe in themselves.
• 18:06
  SPEAKER_00: So, you know, how do you do that?
• 18:08
  SPEAKER_00: How do you see the potential and how do you get people to actually see what they can do to grow?
• 18:47
  SPEAKER_01: Getting people out of their own way is probably the hardest thing to do.
• 18:50
  SPEAKER_01: And in the advisory business, I don't know why.
• 18:53
  SPEAKER_01: Mindset and head trash is so prevalent, it's everywhere.
• 18:58
  SPEAKER_01: The things I do, and by the way, this isn't so I didn't read a book and I'm doing it.
• 19:03
  SPEAKER_01: I built my practice, um, my personal practice.
• 19:07
  SPEAKER_01: I have two servicing advisors that run, uh I manage about 25 households today, and and um I focus more on working with the advisors here at Cornerstone, is the decisions that we make and the mindset that we have is a choice.
• 19:21
  SPEAKER_01: Sure.
• 19:21
  SPEAKER_01: And I am a firm believer in growth by elimination.
• 19:25
  SPEAKER_01: Okay, because when we think of growth, immediately we think of let's just add more stuff.
• 19:32
  SPEAKER_01: That's not the key to growth.
• 19:33
  SPEAKER_01: The key to growth is eliminating and focusing on one or two pathways are the only ones that could get you to the only two pathways that can get you to an impossible goal.
• 19:42
  SPEAKER_01: So Dr.
• 19:43
  SPEAKER_01: Ben Hardy wrote some probably some of the best material in scaling a business.
• 19:47
  SPEAKER_01: So you're gonna hear a lot if you're read his books and you're gonna hear a lot of it now.
• 19:51
  SPEAKER_01: I took, uh I spoke at an event last year, about 60 or 70 advisors.
• 19:56
  SPEAKER_01: I took them through a standard business plan.
• 19:58
  SPEAKER_01: I take all of our advisors through.
• 19:59
  SPEAKER_01: It's 10-year vision, three-year milestone, one-year action plan, right?
• 20:03
  SPEAKER_01: 10-year vision, who's on your team?
• 20:05
  SPEAKER_01: What does your business look like?
• 20:07
  SPEAKER_01: What's top line rev?
• 20:08
  SPEAKER_01: How many days a year are you detaching?
• 20:11
  SPEAKER_01: Not working.
• 20:11
  SPEAKER_01: How many are you detaching?
• 20:12
  SPEAKER_01: And my definition of detachment is I don't get email on my phone.
• 20:16
  SPEAKER_01: I don't know, I'm not in email anymore.
• 20:17
  SPEAKER_01: So though the two sabbaticals I take, I don't have a single phone call or I don't read a single email.
• 20:23
  SPEAKER_01: Okay, I that's one of the things that I help the advisors uh establish here because you're not able to detach.
• 20:31
  SPEAKER_01: It's like you know, trying to work on a car with the engine running.
• 20:34
  SPEAKER_01: You're not trying to shut down.
• 20:35
  SPEAKER_01: You need that time to shut down and do strategic thinking.
• 20:39
  SPEAKER_01: Um, so I took these advisors through this exercise.
• 20:42
  SPEAKER_01: I said, let's do your ten-year vision, three-year milestone.
• 20:46
  SPEAKER_01: Notice I don't say goals because a goal is a is a destination, right?
• 20:50
  SPEAKER_01: We're just we're living series of milestones.
• 20:52
  SPEAKER_00: Right.
• 20:53
  SPEAKER_01: And I challenged them.
• 20:54
  SPEAKER_01: I said, Hey, look, now your three, your new three-year milestone is what your tenure vision was.
• 20:59
  SPEAKER_01: And the room was dead silent.
• 21:02
  SPEAKER_01: Half the room hated me, half the room loved me at that moment.
• 21:05
  SPEAKER_01: When I walk them through, this is an exercise of, hey, if I only gave you, if you only have three years hit your 10-year vision, how would you do it?
• 21:15
  SPEAKER_01: Now, it doesn't make it harder, it makes it different.
• 21:19
  SPEAKER_01: Because if the 10-year vision, and by the way, we do this whole thing of like, oh, I grew 10% last year, so I'm just gonna do future value, 10% for the next 10 years, and that's kind of where I'll be in top line.
• 21:29
  SPEAKER_01: Okay, if you want, if you're thinking of time as linear, great.
• 21:33
  SPEAKER_01: But if you really want to scale, that's not gonna do it.
• 21:36
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 21:37
  SPEAKER_01: So what would you have?
• 21:38
  SPEAKER_01: What are the things you're doing today that may get you that 10-year vision in 10 years, but not in three years?
• 21:45
  SPEAKER_01: Well, I I can't do that.
• 21:47
  SPEAKER_01: That won't work.
• 21:48
  SPEAKER_01: That won't work.
• 21:48
  SPEAKER_01: Hey, only this will work.
• 21:50
  SPEAKER_01: That's where you double down and you eliminate everything else.
• 21:54
  SPEAKER_01: So I'm doing a talk at MDRT Edge in November, and the the name of the uh the uh seminar is Time Is Your Alpha.
• 22:01
  SPEAKER_01: So I talk about growth by elimination, and this is in theory.
• 22:06
  SPEAKER_01: We have white papers now on four different advisors that have two to four X their business in three years by following these steps, not by working more.
• 22:16
  SPEAKER_01: In fact, the white paper I just did a webinar two weeks ago with one of the advisors that we did a white paper on.
• 22:20
  SPEAKER_01: He's working six hours less a week, and he's up 260% in less than three years in revenue.
• 22:26
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 22:27
  SPEAKER_01: With only two additional households.
• 22:30
  SPEAKER_01: So working less, not adding.
• 22:32
  SPEAKER_01: Adding more for the future, but he did it.
• 22:35
  SPEAKER_01: And by the way, this advisor had one of the worst scarce you mentalities.
• 22:39
  SPEAKER_01: And he gave me permission.
• 22:39
  SPEAKER_01: I won't say his name, but he gave me permission anyway.
• 22:42
  SPEAKER_01: You know how hard it was for him to give up revenue?
• 22:44
  SPEAKER_01: He sold his benefits practice.
• 22:46
  SPEAKER_01: He shed 35 households.
• 22:47
  SPEAKER_01: He dropped a lot of revenue and added cost.
• 22:50
  SPEAKER_01: I thought his head was going to explode.
• 22:51
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, right.
• 22:54
  SPEAKER_01: Now looking back, he's he's not he's tripled or quadrupled down on it because we're just we'll be three years in October.
• 23:02
  SPEAKER_01: We'll have the final three-year number.
• 23:04
  SPEAKER_01: He's continued to grow in in ways as a as an advisor, as a he's home more with his kids.
• 23:09
  SPEAKER_01: He's home more with their trap.
• 23:11
  SPEAKER_01: He's actually away this week.
• 23:12
  SPEAKER_01: He's doing more travel than he ever has.
• 23:14
  SPEAKER_01: That's the point.
• 23:15
  SPEAKER_01: Let's not free up time to go do more work.
• 23:17
  SPEAKER_01: Free up time to go do the things you want to do.
• 23:19
  SPEAKER_00: Right.
• 23:20
  SPEAKER_00: So what are some of those things you're slashing?
• 23:22
  SPEAKER_00: Because obviously you're thinking, like, you know, those are those are some of the those are some of the big points.
• 23:27
  SPEAKER_00: I think that's what we're getting to here.
• 23:28
  SPEAKER_01: Yes, sir.
• 23:29
  SPEAKER_01: So he when we analyze his business, he was getting a really good piece of revenue from his health insurance business.
• 23:35
  SPEAKER_01: Okay.
• 23:36
  SPEAKER_01: His goal, his vision was a certain amount of AUM, certain amount of revenue, and you know, typical, right?
• 23:41
  SPEAKER_01: Typical um KPIs.
• 23:43
  SPEAKER_01: And I said, Well, health insurance, huge time waster, right?
• 23:47
  SPEAKER_01: And he said something, he said the sentence that is the most expensive sentence an advisor will ever make.
• 23:53
  SPEAKER_01: It's like, well, it's okay.
• 23:54
  SPEAKER_01: I have time to do it.
• 23:56
  SPEAKER_01: Stop.
• 23:56
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, when I hear someone say that, number one, you're already recognizing you shouldn't be doing it.
• 24:01
  SPEAKER_01: Then why you then why yeah, you had the need to justify it because I had the time.
• 24:06
  SPEAKER_00: Sure.
• 24:07
  SPEAKER_01: When you realize time is the real currency in life, not money, everything changes.
• 24:12
  SPEAKER_01: If that's your filter, everything changes.
• 24:15
  SPEAKER_01: So he gave up his health insurance business.
• 24:17
  SPEAKER_01: He shed about 35 of his households.
• 24:20
  SPEAKER_01: And when I mean shed, he released them, he's not getting revenue from it, they're gone.
• 24:23
  SPEAKER_01: So you talk about someone with scarcity mindset that says, I need to have everyone here, everyone here, because there might be a this guy might retire and this woman's parents are wealthy.
• 24:33
  SPEAKER_01: And but that's what we were taught in the insurance world.
• 24:35
  SPEAKER_01: You go write the$25 a month in a$529 plan, lose money because heck, they're gonna buy a house one day, or their parents can need long-term care.
• 24:43
  SPEAKER_01: So he took that with him.
• 24:44
  SPEAKER_01: I don't blame him.
• 24:45
  SPEAKER_01: That was the environment we were in.
• 24:47
  SPEAKER_01: I just shed it a lot faster than he did.
• 24:49
  SPEAKER_00: True.
• 24:50
  SPEAKER_01: So by shedding clients, so he gave up revenue, he gave up control.
• 24:55
  SPEAKER_01: So he had a part-time staff person.
• 24:58
  SPEAKER_01: Okay.
• 24:58
  SPEAKER_01: I'm gonna get into at the MDRT edge the difference between delegation and empowering.
• 25:03
  SPEAKER_01: When you're delegating tasks, you're freeing up a bottleneck earlier on in the process, but they still have to come back to you with confirmation or status or whatever, right?
• 25:12
  SPEAKER_01: That's a traditional, you know, uh delegation matrix, right?
• 25:16
  SPEAKER_01: When you empower someone to do something, that person owns the process.
• 25:20
  SPEAKER_01: They own the outcome, they own everything.
• 25:22
  SPEAKER_01: There's no circling back.
• 25:23
  SPEAKER_01: There's no coming to you for guidance unless there's something wrong.
• 25:26
  SPEAKER_01: So he uses our internal service team now.
• 25:28
  SPEAKER_01: That's a team of five highly trained, licensed people that are handling all of his day-to-day, onboarding new clients, scheduling, all of his serum database work, everything.
• 25:38
  SPEAKER_01: Autopilot.
• 25:39
  SPEAKER_01: So again, scarcity mindset, giving up revenue, adding cost.
• 25:44
  SPEAKER_01: Again, his head was going to explode.
• 25:45
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 25:47
  SPEAKER_01: Calendar management.
• 25:48
  SPEAKER_01: This is something that has been, will be talked about forever about time management.
• 25:53
  SPEAKER_01: I believe it's a myth.
• 25:54
  SPEAKER_01: It doesn't exist.
• 25:55
  SPEAKER_01: You can't manage something that's completely out of your control.
• 25:58
  SPEAKER_01: Time prioritization.
• 26:00
  SPEAKER_01: What are you doing with your time?
• 26:01
  SPEAKER_01: So we segmented his book of business.
• 26:04
  SPEAKER_01: We established um surge windows for his A clients, B clients, C clients.
• 26:10
  SPEAKER_01: So he has blocks of reviews, three or four weeks at a block, whatever it is.
• 26:14
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 26:15
  SPEAKER_01: And very typical of an advisory practice.
• 26:19
  SPEAKER_01: But but and now that segmentation change, we do it every year in December.
• 26:22
  SPEAKER_01: So, and I do with all the advisors.
• 26:23
  SPEAKER_01: Let's run a new client list, who's been graduated, up, who's going down, give that to the team.
• 26:28
  SPEAKER_01: They know how to when to schedule.
• 26:30
  SPEAKER_01: But again, it's empowering, not delegating.
• 26:34
  SPEAKER_01: And that's freed up so much of his time.
• 26:37
  SPEAKER_01: He's brought on the biggest, and by the way, three years ago when he did this business plan, when this process started, his biggest problem was he one of his biggest roadblocks was I can't find clients that I can't find big clients, right?
• 26:51
  SPEAKER_01: So he's 260, as of last month, 260% increase in revenue NAUM with only two more households.
• 26:58
  SPEAKER_01: What do you think has happened with his average household size?
• 27:01
  SPEAKER_01: It's almost tripled.
• 27:02
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, right.
• 27:03
  SPEAKER_01: Why is he hanging out at a different country club?
• 27:06
  SPEAKER_01: Is he posting different stuff on LinkedIn?
• 27:08
  SPEAKER_01: No, he's created capacity.
• 27:11
  SPEAKER_01: The pressure's off.
• 27:13
  SPEAKER_00: Sure.
• 27:13
  SPEAKER_01: And what and I don't know how, I don't know why.
• 27:16
  SPEAKER_01: This has happened to three other people here, including him, that as soon as you create space, oh, we built an ideal client profile, client avatar as well as part of the segmentation process.
• 27:27
  SPEAKER_01: This is who you need.
• 27:28
  SPEAKER_01: Once you know who you want, for some odd reason, that's what comes.
• 27:32
  SPEAKER_01: And he is the again, this isn't this isn't me guessing.
• 27:35
  SPEAKER_01: This isn't me just saying it can work.
• 27:37
  SPEAKER_01: It is working today as we sit here.
• 27:40
  SPEAKER_00: Yep.
• 27:41
  SPEAKER_00: That's fantastic, man.
• 27:42
  SPEAKER_02: So, what's kind of been the recruiting strategy for you guys?
• 27:45
  SPEAKER_02: Because I know you are at 17 advisors now, you mentioned.
• 27:49
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, 17.
• 27:50
  SPEAKER_01: We have uh two coming on board in a few months, and we have one flying in from the Midwest uh Thursday.
• 27:57
  SPEAKER_01: We don't have recruiting strategy.
• 27:59
  SPEAKER_01: In fact, um everyone that's come to Cornerstone has been introduced to us or has reached out.
• 28:04
  SPEAKER_01: So we don't have an outbound kind of system.
• 28:07
  SPEAKER_01: Um I'm very thankful that I think it really has a lot to do with our culture.
• 28:11
  SPEAKER_01: Advisors talk to other advisors, and when they other advisors know of our culture, in fact, we got a couple of our biggest advisors from just vendors in our industry.
• 28:21
  SPEAKER_01: Um, one was a wholesaler that just knew of knew exactly how we operated, was approached by one of his other advisors and said, Hey, I'm looking to sell.
• 28:30
  SPEAKER_01: You know anyone, he goes, This is where I would go.
• 28:33
  SPEAKER_01: And uh yeah, it was a really good, uh, really good opportunity, and and that that deal closed this year.
• 28:39
  SPEAKER_01: Um, but recruiting has been, we're just answering the phone, which is great.
• 28:43
  SPEAKER_01: Um, we started doing some outbound uh, I do webinars every month of something of value, but that's been on a very small scale for us.
• 28:52
  SPEAKER_01: It's really been the introductions within the industry, which is which has always been strong.
• 28:56
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, that's fantastic, man.
• 28:58
  SPEAKER_00: Well, I have one more question for you, and that is if you could give an advisor that's just starting out one piece of advice that they could take away from this conversation, what would that be and why?
• 29:15
  SPEAKER_01: How did I know you're gonna ask me that?
• 29:17
  SPEAKER_01: I thought I'd be more prepared.
• 29:22
  SPEAKER_01: Gather as much before you make a decision on where you land, gather as much information as possible and create some kind of matrix where you can kind of rate each environment.
• 29:33
  SPEAKER_01: Because what I'm hearing a lot of more and more now in the last couple years is I went to this firm because they told me this.
• 29:42
  SPEAKER_01: Now I'm here for a year, two years, and it's not the case, and I need out.
• 29:46
  SPEAKER_01: You don't want to hop with clients.
• 29:47
  SPEAKER_01: Clients don't want that disruption of moving and moving and moving, and then your narrative's changing, and you can lose credibility with some clients if that becomes the norm.
• 29:57
  SPEAKER_01: Do as much due diligence as possible.
• 30:00
  SPEAKER_01: You want to stay one firm forever, ideally.
• 30:02
  SPEAKER_01: That's that's the goal.
• 30:03
  SPEAKER_00: Sure.
• 30:04
  SPEAKER_01: Make sure, and I talk about this a lot.
• 30:07
  SPEAKER_01: We can have alignment.
• 30:08
  SPEAKER_01: Like when I was at that insurance company, we had some alignment, right?
• 30:11
  SPEAKER_01: If you do this business, we'll pay you this and we'll give you these benefits, we'll send you on these crappy trips and all that.
• 30:15
  SPEAKER_01: Okay, great.
• 30:16
  SPEAKER_01: We have some alignment, right?
• 30:17
  SPEAKER_01: But true alignment is when your vision and the firm's vision overlap.
• 30:21
  SPEAKER_01: That's when you really grow in scale.
• 30:23
  SPEAKER_01: And if you can use that as your filter and say, look, I want to, I want to be a fee, I want to charge fees.
• 30:28
  SPEAKER_01: I don't want to charge whatever that, just whatever that vision is, make sure the firm you decide to join has the same vision because you'll find better support.
• 30:38
  SPEAKER_01: You'll find um a lot more coaching on that topic.
• 30:42
  SPEAKER_01: Because we bring advisors to an exercise on like, hey, does your what is your firm support?
• 30:47
  SPEAKER_01: Your firm can allow you to charge fees for financial planning, for example, but do they support it?
• 30:52
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, that's the difference.
• 30:53
  SPEAKER_01: When I was at the insurance company, they allowed it when I charged my first fee in 2005.
• 30:58
  SPEAKER_01: They didn't support it.
• 30:59
  SPEAKER_01: I had to figure it out on my own.
• 31:01
  SPEAKER_01: That is a big oh no, yeah, you could charge fees.
• 31:04
  SPEAKER_01: I'm like, okay, that's all I asked.
• 31:05
  SPEAKER_01: Okay, great.
• 31:06
  SPEAKER_01: I should have asked, what's the support system look like?
• 31:09
  SPEAKER_01: Like who's gonna work with me?
• 31:10
  SPEAKER_01: Like, what does that look what does that relationship look like?
• 31:13
  SPEAKER_01: Those are the questions you should be asking.
• 31:14
  SPEAKER_01: And then whenever you're done, ask another question.
• 31:17
  SPEAKER_01: Um, so let me encapsulate it.
• 31:20
  SPEAKER_01: Ask as many questions as you can.
• 31:22
  SPEAKER_01: Make sure the firm is you're truly aligned with them.
• 31:25
  SPEAKER_01: Uh, that's a mistake that just too many people make, and and it's just it's hard to unwind.
• 31:32
  SPEAKER_02: That's awesome.
• 31:33
  SPEAKER_02: Well, Carmine, thank you so much for coming on today.
• 31:36
  SPEAKER_02: Um, what's the best way if people want to maybe reach out or check out your firm?
• 31:40
  SPEAKER_01: Uh cornerstone play in the group.com is the firm.
• 31:42
  SPEAKER_01: Uh, CarmineCarino.com is my personal website for speaking, things like that in the book.
• 31:47
  SPEAKER_01: Uh LinkedIn, uh, that's about it.
• 31:50
  SPEAKER_02: Awesome, man.
• 31:51
  SPEAKER_02: Well, we appreciate your time today, and uh, we can't wait to put this out there for everyone.
• 31:55
  SPEAKER_01: Thanks, guys.
• 31:55
  SPEAKER_01: Appreciate you both.