Latest / Only Fee-Only / #68 - The Man Redefining Retirement and Transforming CRM - Steve Drost

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#68 - The Man Redefining Retirement and Transforming CRM - Steve Drost · Only Fee-Only

• 0:05
  Speaker 1: How's it going everyone?
• 0:06
  Speaker 1: Welcome back to the only fee only podcast and, as always, thank you so much for being here.
• 0:11
  Speaker 1: This is a great episode.
• 0:13
  Speaker 1: We got to talk to Steve Drost with Drost Financial and it was a fantastic conversation because he had a lot of great things to say about serving his particular niche, which is pre-retirees, and the gratitude and fulfillment that they have when he's able to tell them hey, you're actually okay, way before you thought you were.
• 0:35
  Speaker 1: And he had a lot of great tips and tricks that he uses throughout, you know, talking to clients and shared a lot of great things throughout the episode and, interesting fact, he has one admin person who is his mom.
• 0:49
  Speaker 1: So who better to help you out with stuff than your mom, who's known you since you were a little kid and has had to watch you and help you multitask your entire life?
• 1:00
  Speaker 1: So I really thought that was a fun piece.
• 1:01
  Speaker 1: The story is well.
• 1:03
  Speaker 1: So, without further ado, here is Steve Drost on the only fee only podcast.
• 1:09
  Speaker 2: What's up everyone.
• 1:10
  Speaker 2: Welcome to another episode of the fee only podcast.
• 1:14
  Speaker 2: I'm Peter Travelo.
• 1:16
  Speaker 2: I'm here with my business partner, Brock Fresh from Bali.
• 1:19
  Speaker 2: How's it going?
• 1:20
  Speaker 1: It is great, peter.
• 1:22
  Speaker 1: I'm feeling refreshed, I'm feeling great, I'm ready to be back working, excited to be here, man.
• 1:27
  Speaker 2: Love it.
• 1:27
  Speaker 2: And today we have Steve Drost on his co-founder of two different businesses, one being financial planning at Drost Financial and the other Quiver CRM.
• 1:39
  Speaker 2: So, steve, looking so forward to sharing your story today and pumping out some knowledge.
• 1:45
  Speaker 3: Hey, thanks for having me, guys and Brock, before I forget, congrats I saw the wedding.
• 1:49
  Speaker 3: What was it Two weeks ago?
• 1:50
  Speaker 3: Three weeks ago?
• 1:51
  Speaker 1: Yeah, it was the 23rd of September.
• 1:53
  Speaker 1: Man, it was a blast.
• 1:54
  Speaker 1: We had so much fun.
• 1:56
  Speaker 3: Welcome to the married life.
• 1:57
  Speaker 1: Thank you, it's good to be here.
• 2:01
  Speaker 2: Love it.
• 2:01
  Speaker 2: So, for those who don't know who you are, steve, you want to give a quick 30, 60, a second overview of who you're currently serving and how you spend your time.
• 2:09
  Speaker 3: Sure, so I spend most of my time chasing my two little ones around, but my firm, though, we launched back in 2021.
• 2:17
  Speaker 3: At this moment, we have about 55, 60 clients, mainly working with those free retirees and retirees.
• 2:23
  Speaker 3: A really cool sort of subnich that we've ran into is almost every single one of our new clients come to us and they say they want to retire at 65.
• 2:32
  Speaker 3: Maybe they're 55 to 60.
• 2:33
  Speaker 3: And we get to be the ones that tell them that, yeah, you can, but you're also financially independent today, so we really like that early retiree and help them transition to and through retirement.
• 2:44
  Speaker 3: The firm is me and I have one support staff.
• 2:47
  Speaker 3: It's my mom, so that's really cool.
• 2:49
  Speaker 3: She's been with me for almost two years now.
• 2:51
  Speaker 3: Also, shout out, mom.
• 2:53
  Speaker 3: If you feel like to go this but no, yeah, I'm 100% virtual right now and looking to grow a little bit, but not too much more.
• 3:00
  Speaker 1: Yeah, no, I love it.
• 3:01
  Speaker 1: So how did you, how did you get to work with your mom?
• 3:04
  Speaker 1: That's cool.
• 3:05
  Speaker 1: That's the first rush on the podcast, so how?
• 3:07
  Speaker 3: did that come about.
• 3:09
  Speaker 3: So my mom was a stay at home mom.
• 3:11
  Speaker 3: I'm one of four and when my youngest brother graduated college, she re-entered the workforce, worked like, managed a little office manager job at their church and I needed to hire.
• 3:21
  Speaker 3: And it's an interesting like hiring an admin is an interesting fit because if you hire somebody with maybe the CFP background, it's often that they after two or three years, they want to be client facing or they want to start their own firm, and I knew that I wasn't going to have the opportunities for that person, so that was hard.
• 3:37
  Speaker 3: Then the other option is you hire somebody that maybe has a like a strict admin focus.
• 3:42
  Speaker 3: But if I did that, like what's the loyalty like?
• 3:44
  Speaker 3: What's the turnover like?
• 3:46
  Speaker 3: And then we were happy and it was me and my wife and my mom and my dad.
• 3:49
  Speaker 3: We were eating dinner one night and my wife and my dad just go hire her and point at my mom and I looked at her.
• 3:55
  Speaker 3: I was like, hold on, like mom, this, this actually might make sense.
• 3:58
  Speaker 3: So we we spent maybe two or three months working through the the details and I think it was November 1st of 2021.
• 4:06
  Speaker 3: It's almost been two years, yeah, but it's been pretty cool.
• 4:08
  Speaker 3: Like she basically runs my firm and the best part is actually I don't have full-time work for her, so she's also gets to be grandma.
• 4:15
  Speaker 3: So every Thursday that's the only day my wife works she comes over and watches our kids, so it's pretty cool.
• 4:20
  Speaker 2: You've got this figured out, man.
• 4:24
  Speaker 3: I'm really lucky it's working out.
• 4:26
  Speaker 3: She says she's happy, so that's cool.
• 4:28
  Speaker 2: So like what is the position?
• 4:30
  Speaker 2: Like how many hours?
• 4:31
  Speaker 2: Like is she, like I, like I mean so you use quiver, obviously.
• 4:35
  Speaker 2: Like is she inputting stuff into the CRM?
• 4:38
  Speaker 2: Like how deep in the process is she?
• 4:40
  Speaker 2: I mean, this is so cool.
• 4:42
  Speaker 3: So it depends on who you ask.
• 4:43
  Speaker 3: If you ask my dad, he will say that she runs my life.
• 4:46
  Speaker 3: If you ask my siblings, they'll say, like you know different things, of course, give me a hard time.
• 4:50
  Speaker 3: But no, I mean my mom, yeah, she's.
• 4:53
  Speaker 3: I would say she's a really, really advanced Admin and then she also does maybe light pair of planning work.
• 4:58
  Speaker 3: But yeah, with leveraging quiver, the CRM, I mean she's able to do.
• 5:03
  Speaker 3: I would argue she can do anything in my firm that doesn't involve giving or making Financial planning or investment management advice.
• 5:11
  Speaker 3: So emails come in.
• 5:12
  Speaker 3: She can handle most of those Most follow-up tasks to me and done by her.
• 5:16
  Speaker 3: We practice surge, so we start up surge the first full or first like half week of November.
• 5:22
  Speaker 3: She's gonna do most of the prep for that.
• 5:25
  Speaker 3: Yeah, she can pretty much do Anything.
• 5:28
  Speaker 3: It's awesome.
• 5:29
  Speaker 1: The thing that I love about that man Is that, like if there's one person that you know can multitask and be a great admin, it's your mom, who you have, three others who you share, three sibling quick right, right.
• 5:42
  Speaker 3: There are two women that I know can put up with me my wife and my mom.
• 5:45
  Speaker 1: So yeah, perfect, yeah, same.
• 5:47
  Speaker 1: No, that's fantastic.
• 5:49
  Speaker 1: So take us back like how'd you get into the industry, how to kind of all start for you?
• 5:53
  Speaker 1: And then, ultimately, how did you start to make that transition to saying, hey, I think I want to start my own firm, and then, you know, we'll dive into CRM and stuff in a little bit.
• 6:02
  Speaker 3: Sure, so I I actually didn't know the fee only world existed until I had started a job in the industry.
• 6:08
  Speaker 3: I always had that entrepreneurial spirit in my background but coming out of college I mean, if you wanted to go into financial planning and I'm not saying this is bad or anything, but it was it was mainly the, the Northwestern mutuals of the world, where you were selling insurance and I had no interest in doing that.
• 6:24
  Speaker 3: So I took a job out of college, worked there for buddy.
• 6:27
  Speaker 3: Well, I was there for two years, but the first two weeks pretty much told me this wasn't for me.
• 6:32
  Speaker 3: I thought I would actually end up like working at a hedge fund, pe, mutual fund company, something like that.
• 6:38
  Speaker 3: I love numbers.
• 6:39
  Speaker 3: So I started, started the CFA program and and when I finished that the objective was okay, let's go start applying for jobs.
• 6:46
  Speaker 3: But the place I landed Was actually an amazing, not fee only but very, very heavy planning Financial planning firm where it was just the owner I was gonna be the first hire and that woman, echo Wong, was her name.
• 7:00
  Speaker 3: She was on the kids sees podcast like that's how lucky I got.
• 7:04
  Speaker 3: I landed right in that world and I remember in the interview process she was asking me questions about my planning and I had no idea what she actually.
• 7:12
  Speaker 3: One of the questions that, ironically, was what CRM's are you familiar with?
• 7:16
  Speaker 3: And I didn't know what a CRM was, so I had to, kind of you know, throw questions back at her.
• 7:21
  Speaker 3: And now you know, we come full circle maybe eight to ten years later but, super, super lucky, landed there, was there for a couple of years and sort of like what I alluded to earlier about how If you hire a young person who is maybe ambitious, you might out.
• 7:34
  Speaker 3: You know they might outgrow your firm, and that's what happened.
• 7:36
  Speaker 3: So I got in there, jump ship to a billion dollar RIA, where I was more client facing, had more room to grow.
• 7:42
  Speaker 3: I was there for a couple years and then, back in March of 2021.
• 7:47
  Speaker 3: We, we jumped ship and started firm.
• 7:51
  Speaker 2: Love it, man.
• 7:52
  Speaker 2: What a great story.
• 7:53
  Speaker 2: So I mean you started like who did you set up Dross Financial with?
• 7:57
  Speaker 2: So are you an XYPN member?
• 7:59
  Speaker 2: And like what was the setup and how long did it take you to really put that business plan and let the rubber hit the road?
• 8:07
  Speaker 3: I've been working on my business plan probably like since two weeks after getting in the industry.
• 8:11
  Speaker 3: I have like 15 versions of it.
• 8:13
  Speaker 3: I did, I went through XY.
• 8:16
  Speaker 3: I officially applied for registration right after Thanksgiving of 2020.
• 8:22
  Speaker 3: And Minnesota I'm in.
• 8:24
  Speaker 3: Minneapolis is a pretty neat state with registrations where you can get approval contingent upon filing your U4.
• 8:32
  Speaker 3: So I could go through the entire registration process without having a compliance issue or, you know, breaking any duties to my existing firm at the time, and then, when I got that approval contingent on my U4, I could then resign and then officially like do that last part.
• 8:48
  Speaker 3: So I remember dates I quit on February 18th of 2021 and my firm was like full blown going.
• 8:54
  Speaker 3: I was on Schwab on March 11th, so I was only, you know, maybe in kind of like purgatory for two weeks, but went through XY.
• 9:01
  Speaker 3: It was a great experience, of course, that do everything for you when you don't know anything.
• 9:07
  Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah.
• 9:08
  Speaker 1: So how's the ongoing experience been?
• 9:10
  Speaker 1: You're still with XY, you're still loving it.
• 9:12
  Speaker 1: Is everything still great?
• 9:15
  Speaker 3: I love XY but I'm no longer a member.
• 9:17
  Speaker 3: I hit a point where I wasn't using the tech anymore.
• 9:20
  Speaker 3: It just it.
• 9:21
  Speaker 3: No longer was that in the value.
• 9:23
  Speaker 3: Again, I love the organization.
• 9:24
  Speaker 3: What they're doing is phenomenal.
• 9:25
  Speaker 3: I still read everything Kitsies puts out, still listen to XY again radio.
• 9:29
  Speaker 3: But I am no longer a member of XY.
• 9:32
  Speaker 1: Got it.
• 9:32
  Speaker 1: So just kind of moved on, gradually figured out your systems, decided you want to use some different stuff and just kind of made more sense.
• 9:38
  Speaker 1: I don't think you're alone there.
• 9:39
  Speaker 1: I think that you know there's a lot of people that are kind of in that boat.
• 9:43
  Speaker 3: That's what I'm hearing.
• 9:44
  Speaker 3: Yeah, Once revenue gets to a certain point, I feel like a lot of people have that decision to make.
• 9:47
  Speaker 3: You know, what do you?
• 9:48
  Speaker 3: Is it worth that?
• 9:49
  Speaker 3: It's not.
• 9:49
  Speaker 3: And again, I don't know.
• 9:52
  Speaker 1: Now, speaking of getting to that point right, obviously part of you know being an RIA, being successful, being a business owner, is getting that client base right and starting to get those clients.
• 10:02
  Speaker 1: So what were the routes, kind of avenues, that you took to you know, start building the business, start getting in front of clients where there are clients that you took from your previous firm, what did all of that look like for you?
• 10:48
  Speaker 3: I got lucky, really lucky, super lucky.
• 10:50
  Speaker 3: I don't know if I I mean, I guess I kind of had the courage to do it, but I don't know how some people can start from literally scratch and build firms.
• 10:59
  Speaker 3: That, to me, is one of the most impressive things out there.
• 11:01
  Speaker 3: Yeah, I don't know I had from conversations I've had with others I probably had the most amicable separation from my prior firm of anybody I know.
• 11:09
  Speaker 3: I didn't start with, you know, millions and millions of AUM, but I had enough to.
• 11:14
  Speaker 3: I wasn't losing money every month.
• 11:16
  Speaker 3: So I had a couple million of AUM follow me, a little bit of revenue and then from that point I noticed a really interesting thing was, once I launched, all of these people came out of the shadows and called me and emailed me and reached out and it was almost like, okay, we knew you were in the industry.
• 11:35
  Speaker 3: We knew you knew what you were doing.
• 11:36
  Speaker 3: You had a lot of letters after your name but we didn't know if you were going to stay.
• 11:39
  Speaker 3: We didn't know if you were going to move different companies.
• 11:41
  Speaker 3: We didn't know what your kind of game plan was.
• 11:42
  Speaker 3: But as soon as I went on my own, probably 15 to 25 legit prospects called within the first three months and, like you said, it was almost like that staying power where I don't know if it was show maturity when you leave or what I mean.
• 11:54
  Speaker 3: I look like I'm 12, I'm 32.
• 11:56
  Speaker 3: So I don't know if like that weighs into it at all, but I don't know.
• 11:59
  Speaker 3: It was really interesting, so I got lucky, like really really lucky, did basically no marketing other than letting people know that I started my company.
• 12:06
  Speaker 1: So genetics are going to pay off, man.
• 12:08
  Speaker 2: Yeah, right.
• 12:09
  Speaker 2: So like, how did you put that message out there, right?
• 12:14
  Speaker 2: Like people are going to say, okay, steve got 15.
• 12:16
  Speaker 2: But like we're four or five of them, like aunts and uncles, like a few that people you knew from college, or were they just people that were just following you from cold and just hey, reached out, need a planner.
• 12:29
  Speaker 2: You know what was that breakdown like?
• 12:31
  Speaker 2: Just out of curiosity.
• 12:33
  Speaker 3: My father-in-law was my biggest advocate.
• 12:35
  Speaker 3: He was one of those people who thought he wanted to retire at 65, but didn't realize he could at 55.
• 12:42
  Speaker 3: And I started working with them, maybe six to 12 months before I launched my firm and he's a blue collar guy you know, hardest worker I know.
• 12:51
  Speaker 3: And when he retired and he'd been working with you know the other people at his company for 30 years right, he was he's like legit, he'd worked there.
• 12:59
  Speaker 3: I think he had worked at the same company if you include the acquisitions for 35, 30, 35 years.
• 13:05
  Speaker 1: Dang.
• 13:06
  Speaker 3: And when he left at 56, 55, everybody asked him like how, how did you do this?
• 13:12
  Speaker 3: And after I launched, probably five to 10 of his coworkers called and every single one of them were in a very comparable situation.
• 13:21
  Speaker 3: So that was huge.
• 13:22
  Speaker 3: That was huge for me.
• 13:24
  Speaker 2: That's great.
• 13:25
  Speaker 2: I mean, that's a COI, as they would say a sales center of influence.
• 13:30
  Speaker 3: Right yeah.
• 13:32
  Speaker 2: So how much sales training have you had, man, in previous positions?
• 13:36
  Speaker 2: And then I also know you just mentioned limits list.
• 13:39
  Speaker 2: How have you learned client acquisition?
• 13:41
  Speaker 2: I know people hear the word sales and they feel like bugs start crawling up their legs.
• 13:47
  Speaker 2: But we'll call it client acquisition, the language getting through the process.
• 13:52
  Speaker 2: You mind getting into that?
• 13:56
  Speaker 3: Yeah, it was one of the recent podcasts that you guys put on.
• 13:59
  Speaker 3: It might have been with Alan Mueller.
• 14:00
  Speaker 3: One of you made a comment that most people that start their firm they're either really good at the front end sales or they're really good at the back end planning.
• 14:08
  Speaker 3: I'm in the back end planning part for sure, but I knew I don't love sales either.
• 14:15
  Speaker 3: I mean it's fun but I don't love it.
• 14:18
  Speaker 3: I don't wake up wanting to do marketing.
• 14:20
  Speaker 3: So I just digested every piece of content that I could.
• 14:23
  Speaker 3: This is not an exaggeration.
• 14:25
  Speaker 3: I've literally listened to every single episode of the Kids as Financial Advisors Success podcast, every episode of XYPN radio, every episode of TPR.
• 14:33
  Speaker 3: I've listened to every episode of pretty much everything I can and digested every piece of content I could.
• 14:39
  Speaker 3: Through that, I figured out a process that I felt comfortable with and did that.
• 14:45
  Speaker 3: But I have zero professional sales.
• 14:47
  Speaker 3: I never worked at the wirehouses or anything like that.
• 14:50
  Speaker 1: Yeah, that's pretty impressive, though I mean, obviously, we came from a big firm, northwestern Mutual Reasoning, so there were a lot of sales training there.
• 14:58
  Speaker 1: I think it can be invaluable to have some of that.
• 15:00
  Speaker 1: But one of the things that I really like is when we get the chance to talk to people who have been able to build a business being their authentic selves, because that can be such a missing piece.
• 15:10
  Speaker 1: When you have all that sales training and these preconceived notions about what it means to be in sales or be successful or get out there and hunt or whatever they want to say, it's like great.
• 15:21
  Speaker 1: Maybe you can use some of that.
• 15:22
  Speaker 1: Maybe knowing when to ask for the client to actually become your client is important, but at the same time, if you're out there trying to be somebody else, that's not who you actually are.
• 15:32
  Speaker 1: People are going to see right through that, read right through that.
• 15:35
  Speaker 1: It seems like you've been able to find a way to be yourself but also have people want to work with you, just based on who you are and the knowledge that you have in your profession, which I applaud you for, man.
• 15:45
  Speaker 1: I think that's really cool.
• 15:47
  Speaker 3: Yeah, probably myself too.
• 15:49
  Speaker 3: Almost too big of a fault, yeah.
• 15:51
  Speaker 2: Yeah, it's all right.
• 15:53
  Speaker 3: Not everybody, right, we don't need everybody.
• 15:54
  Speaker 3: We need 50 to 75 good clients.
• 15:56
  Speaker 3: And if you don't like who I am, then hey, that's OK.
• 15:59
  Speaker 1: Someone else, will you save yourself a lot of headache in the long term, man, by being who you are.
• 16:04
  Speaker 3: Well, I learned that at the bigger RAA right At that place I was more of a service advisor and you just get handed, just turned over.
• 16:11
  Speaker 3: I mean I think I had 225 clients and I had to deal with a ton of personalities that I didn't resonate with.
• 16:17
  Speaker 3: It's challenging when the phone rings, you want to talk to that person, and if you are with people that you don't want to talk with them, it's not really fun.
• 16:28
  Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah.
• 16:28
  Speaker 2: You gotta love what you do.
• 16:30
  Speaker 2: So, steve, when you first started, what systems were you using?
• 16:36
  Speaker 2: I know you're a huge systems guy, like what is your evolution of that has been?
• 16:41
  Speaker 2: And then also getting into Quiver, like when that started originating.
• 16:46
  Speaker 3: Yes, I would say Quiver actually started the first day Well, maybe three months actually, before it launched.
• 16:51
  Speaker 3: Yeah, I'm a huge operations nerd.
• 16:54
  Speaker 3: My objective when starting the firm wasn't necessarily make as much money as possible.
• 16:59
  Speaker 3: It was to make enough to do what me and my wife and our kids wants to do, while having the freedom to do what we want when we want.
• 17:07
  Speaker 3: Like, I don't want to be that over involved dad, but I don't want to miss a T-ball game.
• 17:10
  Speaker 3: I don't ever want to miss any of that.
• 17:13
  Speaker 1: Yeah.
• 17:14
  Speaker 3: So when I launched, I actually got my Salesforce subscription.
• 17:17
  Speaker 3: A few months before I launched.
• 17:20
  Speaker 3: I started building it out and I'm a CFA and a CFP, which, of course, every CFA has to tell you they're a CFA.
• 17:26
  Speaker 3: So I apologize for hitting that, but I spent more time learning Salesforce than I did on either of those combined, because it was how can I be as efficient as possible?
• 17:36
  Speaker 3: And the struggle that I faced was, when you look at the systems out there to build and run RIAs right now, it's sort of a barbelled approach where, on one end, you have and I'm not bashing any of these products, but on one end you might have the maybe more inexpensive, simpler, yet maybe more basic options, and then the other end, you have the Salesforce's of the world, and Salesforce is quite complex and it often involves a huge investment in either time or money.
• 18:03
  Speaker 3: Fortunately, when I launched, I had time.
• 18:06
  Speaker 3: I didn't have the revenue, but I had the time to learn it.
• 18:08
  Speaker 3: But then you fast forward until maybe a year ago, maybe summer, early fall of 2022.
• 18:15
  Speaker 3: And I mean I've spent thousands and thousands of dollars hiring developers on Upwork to help me create a system to implement my service calendar as efficiently as possible, and then I started sharing it with people because they were wondering how I was preparing for meeting people you're doing things so efficiently and I had a group of maybe 10 to 12 people who wanted to buy it for me.
• 18:35
  Speaker 3: I have no idea how this would work.
• 18:38
  Speaker 3: So really lucky, right.
• 18:40
  Speaker 3: The family connection is big for me.
• 18:41
  Speaker 3: I think I've mentioned my wife 10 times.
• 18:43
  Speaker 3: My father-in-law, my dad, my older brother is a software developer and he runs his own consulting firm.
• 18:48
  Speaker 3: So I went to him and I'm like hey, ryan's his name.
• 18:50
  Speaker 3: I'm like hey, ryan, you want to build this with me, man.
• 18:53
  Speaker 3: And after a couple of weeks he met with a few of the study group members to see if I was lying to him or actually being honest.
• 18:59
  Speaker 3: We started building Quiver for Real.
• 19:03
  Speaker 3: So that was about a year ago now and it's been super fun.
• 19:05
  Speaker 3: But the whole objective right, is how can I deliver that service calendar, that quality of service?
• 19:10
  Speaker 3: I want to deliver as efficiently as possible without the quality dropping even an inch.
• 19:15
  Speaker 3: Because if the quality starts to drop an inch, then what are you accomplishing?
• 19:18
  Speaker 3: You're hurting your client.
• 19:19
  Speaker 3: Keep that client in the center of everything, but the client doesn't care how quickly it takes us to produce something, or how quickly it takes us to review something, just as long as the process is solid and the outcome is good.
• 19:31
  Speaker 3: That's the entire focus of it.
• 19:34
  Speaker 3: It's been super fun building it with my brother.
• 19:38
  Speaker 1: Yeah, that's amazing to be able to work with your brother.
• 19:40
  Speaker 1: What are some of the things that advisors that have decided to use Quiber have said about what it's like compared to other CRMs and the benefits that they're getting from it?
• 19:52
  Speaker 3: The biggest thing we've gotten well, two biggest things we've gotten is one is everything's in one place.
• 19:56
  Speaker 3: What we're finding and I was writing into this as well.
• 20:01
  Speaker 3: I just had to throw money at developers to solve these problems early when I was going on what we would find is, as you have 20 or 25 or 30 clients, it's tough to keep everything in your head.
• 20:10
  Speaker 3: Also, at the same time, things that take 10 minutes per client are now taking a day or two days or three days because you have to do it 20, 30, 40 times.
• 20:21
  Speaker 3: The biggest advantage with Quiber is it gets everything in one place, which makes everything more efficient.
• 20:26
  Speaker 3: You can do things in mass significantly quicker.
• 20:29
  Speaker 3: The second biggest thing is the ability to delegate quickly.
• 20:33
  Speaker 3: My mom again a super intelligent woman dealt with me and my siblings for most of her life raising us.
• 20:38
  Speaker 3: Incredibly patient, very intelligent, but she has no industry experience at all the first real, I mean.
• 20:44
  Speaker 3: Sure she worked at a church for a few years, but the first real desk job she had was working with me.
• 20:49
  Speaker 3: Through Quiver.
• 20:51
  Speaker 3: She can do almost everything you want to talk about.
• 20:55
  Speaker 3: She does a lot of our investment management work.
• 20:57
  Speaker 3: Now she's not picking the funds and placing the trades, but she's doing drift reporting and just analysis on stuff for me all the time, quiver.
• 21:06
  Speaker 3: It's because of that.
• 21:07
  Speaker 3: It gives me that platform to delegate almost anything I want.
• 21:13
  Speaker 2: It truly is a CRM and you mentioned delegating.
• 21:18
  Speaker 2: I'm guessing like let's get a.
• 21:22
  Speaker 2: Does it do workflows?
• 21:23
  Speaker 2: What exactly is it doing for the advisor?
• 21:25
  Speaker 2: I'm just interested because even Brock and I on the insurance side I remember CRMs in the beginning.
• 21:31
  Speaker 2: I'd be curious to know how much you paid for Salesforce in the beginning.
• 21:35
  Speaker 2: Right, with some of these CRMs, like you said, you could do a free HubSpot or you could do a somewhat paid HubSpot, or you could go all in and start paying two grand a seat for HubSpot.
• 21:46
  Speaker 2: Where do you fit between all these system systems?
• 21:52
  Speaker 2: What makes Quiver Quiver?
• 21:54
  Speaker 3: Initially I probably spent 30 grand on developers building out my DIY Quiver Now Quiver.
• 22:03
  Speaker 3: The objective is to get you maybe 80 to 90% of the way to where you need to go.
• 22:09
  Speaker 3: Now my business is different than, like Alan we mentioned him earlier Nick and all these other people.
• 22:14
  Speaker 3: My business is different but the operational side is really similar.
• 22:19
  Speaker 3: Right, it's really comparable.
• 22:20
  Speaker 3: So Quiver is specifically built to get that one to five, one to 10 person firm efficient in implementing their service calendar, regardless of what their service calendar is, with the understanding that if you wanted to build something like that, you would have done what I did.
• 22:34
  Speaker 3: You'd have to spend 30 grand, 50 grand, I mean.
• 22:36
  Speaker 3: I know firms that have spent 250 to $500,000 building out their CRM.
• 22:41
  Speaker 3: So with Quiver, the idea is you don't have that initial build out and then you also don't have that super steep learning curve.
• 22:49
  Speaker 3: Salesforce can be confusing, right.
• 22:51
  Speaker 3: So the idea is, if we can get rid of those two things, we do have to charge a little bit more every month.
• 22:56
  Speaker 3: So our monthly cost for a solo is $250 a month.
• 23:00
  Speaker 3: So it's a little bit more, but at that time, right, if we can give you one or two or hopefully five to seven hours a week back right.
• 23:06
  Speaker 3: That's well worth it for you.
• 23:08
  Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, at the end of the day, time is money and efficiency matters.
• 23:11
  Speaker 1: So 100%, yeah, I love that you're saying that, man.
• 23:15
  Speaker 1: So back to kind of you, your planning practice, what you guys are doing.
• 23:19
  Speaker 1: Obviously it seems like you kind of want a lifestyle practice, right?
• 23:23
  Speaker 1: You want something that you said is going to enable you to be able to watch your kids t-ball games and always be present and be a good dad.
• 23:29
  Speaker 1: If you're talking to yourself in five years, man, where do you have to be personally and professionally to really feel like you're in a good spot and you've made a huge impact in your where you want to be?
• 23:43
  Speaker 3: That's a great question.
• 23:43
  Speaker 3: Professionally, truthfully, I feel like I'm kind of there with the firm.
• 23:50
  Speaker 3: My wife and I are about to build our dream house.
• 23:52
  Speaker 3: We got that going.
• 23:53
  Speaker 3: The firm can support that we're blessed.
• 23:57
  Speaker 3: We don't have to think about money when we go hang out with our friends.
• 23:59
  Speaker 3: I feel like we're there.
• 24:01
  Speaker 3: Professionally, quiver is a I mean I love operations.
• 24:06
  Speaker 3: So Quiver professionally is to continue to grow.
• 24:09
  Speaker 3: That that's more of a passion project, as weird as that is If it turns into something financial grade.
• 24:14
  Speaker 3: If it doesn't, that's also just fine.
• 24:16
  Speaker 3: I love what I'm doing and the floor outcome for that is I get to use it, so I have my dream system.
• 24:23
  Speaker 3: So that's a pretty good floor.
• 24:24
  Speaker 3: If you'd ask me, the next five years for me are really going to be on the personal side.
• 24:29
  Speaker 3: My boys are three and a half and one and a half.
• 24:31
  Speaker 3: I feel like most entrepreneurs struggle with this.
• 24:36
  Speaker 3: How do you balance that personal drive to accomplish cool stuff and things that excite you and energize you with remembering to stay patient and focused and present in the home life?
• 24:47
  Speaker 3: So it's like Ben Hardy's got a lot of good stuff out there, cal Newport, all these authors I devour that stuff.
• 24:53
  Speaker 3: But that's definitely the biggest thing for me over the next five years is how do you keep the important stuff?
• 24:59
  Speaker 3: The number one priority.
• 25:01
  Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, yeah, I mean that matters so much.
• 25:05
  Speaker 1: I would say that one of the biggest things, that one of the easiest traps to fall into is like how do you keep first things first and how do you make sure that you're thinking about what's actually important to you and then not dwelling on the past, not thinking too much about the future, because at the end of the day you do that, you blink, it is five years from now and then all of a sudden it's like how much time did you lose focusing on what could have been or what has been.
• 25:28
  Speaker 1: So I love that man and it's so cool to hear that you're in a spot where you feel good professionally, feel solid there.
• 25:36
  Speaker 1: The floor is literally that you get to use your dream CRM, which, for a guy like you, matters, right, oh yeah.
• 25:42
  Speaker 1: And then personally, you get to focus on that more because you're already kind of there professionally.
• 25:48
  Speaker 1: So that's really cool.
• 25:50
  Speaker 1: But for the people that aren't right, so for the people that are just starting out, for the people that want to be where Steve's at right now professionally, really feeling good about that, what advice would you give to a planner that's out there in the first year?
• 26:02
  Speaker 1: That's really grinding away listening to this podcast, saying, man, that sounds like a cool life.
• 26:09
  Speaker 1: What are some pieces of advice that you'd give to that person?
• 26:14
  Speaker 3: Oh man, this is what I did and it worked for me.
• 26:17
  Speaker 3: I would consume as much content as possible.
• 26:20
  Speaker 3: So if you're listening to this awesome, if you're not listening to the Kitsis podcast and XYPN and Neil's other podcasts consume as much content as you can and then don't be afraid to put yourself out there.
• 26:31
  Speaker 3: I remember when I mean I've been listening to these podcasts for years.
• 26:35
  Speaker 3: I remember at Ashby Daniels he rings the bell right now I listened to his episode of the Kitsis podcast maybe a year ago and I shot him a random LinkedIn message and 15 email exchanges later and he just gave me all this information and confidence and it helped me think like I'm not crazy for starting my own thing, but as I would listen to these podcasts and read this content, I would probably shot 100 to 150 just cold DMs to people and with that I'm getting access to them.
• 27:03
  Speaker 3: And the craziest part was the number of people that responded.
• 27:07
  Speaker 3: I would say half, at least half did.
• 27:09
  Speaker 3: It got to the point where my wife told me, after I had successfully launched, that if anybody ever reaches out to you, you have to take their call, you have to take their Zoom, you have to respond to the email because you did not do this on your own.
• 27:21
  Speaker 3: So, getting back to the answer of your question, if you're just in the grind, I think the best thing you can do is just learn from others that are two or five or seven or 10 years ahead of where you want to be, and learn from their failures.
• 27:34
  Speaker 3: Learn from their successes, because that'll save you years of time.
• 27:39
  Speaker 2: Yeah, and that's a great thing straight up about the fee only community and XY.
• 27:43
  Speaker 2: It's just a great network.
• 27:45
  Speaker 2: A lot of people they've been in those shoes before.
• 27:48
  Speaker 2: They've probably had the same thoughts, if not more.
• 27:51
  Speaker 2: It's just so interesting to see how everyone's path they're all curvy, but the destinations or the goals are very much alike.
• 28:02
  Speaker 3: And that includes me.
• 28:03
  Speaker 3: I didn't take the straightest route and if you've got questions or something I'm saying that's resonating, my DMs are open on Twitter.
• 28:10
  Speaker 3: They're open on LinkedIn.
• 28:11
  Speaker 3: Reach out, ask questions and, with worst case scenario, if someone doesn't respond, oh, well, right, yeah, exactly.
• 28:19
  Speaker 1: And so many people are so afraid of that right, fear of rejection.
• 28:22
  Speaker 1: It's like if you can get over the fear of rejection, you can just be okay asking.
• 28:25
  Speaker 1: Well, at least you don't live with the thought of like, well, should I ask or should I not?
• 28:30
  Speaker 1: It's like you asked, some people are going to say yes, some people might not respond.
• 28:34
  Speaker 1: The worst thing that can happen is you get left on red right, so it's not that bad of an outcome.
• 28:39
  Speaker 1: This has been fantastic.
• 28:42
  Speaker 1: Anything else that you wanted to make sure that we touched on when we asked you to come on?
• 28:47
  Speaker 3: No, this has been great.
• 28:48
  Speaker 3: My first podcast has been pretty cool.
• 28:50
  Speaker 3: You guys have been good.
• 28:51
  Speaker 3: I had no idea what we were going to talk about.
• 28:53
  Speaker 3: I'm happy.
• 28:54
  Speaker 3: I hopefully didn't say anything too dumb.
• 28:56
  Speaker 1: No, not at all, man.
• 28:57
  Speaker 1: It was fantastic.
• 28:59
  Speaker 2: We love it.
• 28:59
  Speaker 2: So for those who want to follow along, the best way to reach out would be Twitter, LinkedIn.
• 29:06
  Speaker 3: Yeah, twitter LinkedIn.
• 29:07
  Speaker 3: I hide my email pretty, pretty well, so if you get that, you're probably not going to find me.
• 29:12
  Speaker 3: Yeah, twitter LinkedIn.
• 29:13
  Speaker 3: I've been trying to reduce my screen time, so if I don't respond right away, it's not that I don't like you.
• 29:17
  Speaker 3: I just haven't been trying to limit how much I check it.
• 29:19
  Speaker 3: But for sure, reach out.
• 29:20
  Speaker 3: If you have any interesting Quiver, check us out too.
• 29:22
  Speaker 3: Quiver without an EQ UIVR, crmio, that is pretty cool, but yeah, that's the easiest way to catch me.
• 29:30
  Speaker 2: Sweet man, Thank you so much for your time today.
• 29:33
  Speaker 3: Yeah, thanks, guys, Thanks man.