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Institutional Portfolio Management with Michael Bellody | Financial Planner Search · Financial Planner Search

• Gregory Wilnau: All right, Michael, thank you so much for coming on the podcast. How are you doing today? Michael Bellody: I'm great. Thanks for having me. Gregory Wilnau: Yeah, my pleasure. To get started, why don't you take a moment and tell us about your practice and what you specialize in? Michael Bellody: Yeah, so I'm the founder and CEO of Imperial Wealth Management here just south of Boston in Braintree, Massachusetts. I would say what we primarily specialize in is is institutional level portfolio management. although we also do comprehensive financial planning, we have a strategic partnership with a state planning firm where we can coordinate estate plans for folks at the same time. so we do get involved in holistic planning. But I'd say that most of our clients come to us for institutional level portfolio management. Gregory Wilnau: Interesting. Okay, so let's talk a little bit more about that in a moment. But first could you maybe tell us a little bit more about what inspired you to do this? W why did you choose to the to choose to do this? Michael Bellody: Yeah, so I'll I'll give you the reader's digest version because it's a long story. But I grew up in Hartford, Connecticut. I don't know if you've ever been to Hartford, Connecticut, but it's not the Connecticut that the rest of the country thinks is Connecticut, you know, where all the mansions are and stuff. Hartford's kind of a rough city. I grew up there pretty meagerly and really wanted to make sure that I wanted to get into this business first to help my parents out and make sure they got Gregory Wilnau: I have not. Michael Bellody: taken care of, but also to make sure people like them could get institutional level, white glove level service and advice. And so I got out of college and joined the industry right away at twenty two. and then fast forward to now I'm and I'm running my own firm. Gregory Wilnau: Okay. I really like that. Maybe you could take a moment to just explain more about you started this because you wanted to to help out your parents. We maybe we could talk a little bit about that for a moment. Michael Bellody: Yeah, so I I'm to elaborate on that, it's a there's a lot I could say about that. But but essentially my father was a wood refinisher. My mother pretty much stayed home. I mean, wood refinished doesn't even really exist anymore, right? And because now th this is going back to the days where if you did a renovation in your house or you were building a house or you were putting new cabinets and somebody actually showed up and made the cabinets the color you wanted them on site, right? That was my dad. Yeah, it's over. Those days ended. and so Gregory Wilnau: Yeah. Mm days long gone. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Michael Bellody: It never made a lot of money, but and also never really got the type of guidance and education from a financial standpoint that they needed to in order to plan for the future. So that's sort of what inspired me to get into the financial industry is I think that that's that's been missing for a lot of folks still today. Like I just don't think that everybody has access to really high level advice and white glove service. And so I got into the industry first. Gregory Wilnau: Mm-hmm. Michael Bellody: as an inspiration to help them, but also help people like them to to have access to the type of advice that I think everyone should have access to. Gregory Wilnau: Okay, I love that. And we'll talk about I wanna learn more about your clients and the people you serve in a second, but I wanted to to to Learn a little bit more first about you said you specialize in institutional portfolio management. Is that right? Is that what it was? Michael Bellody: Yeah, I think yeah, exactly right. Gregory Wilnau: Okay. what what does that what does that mean exactly? Help us understand. Michael Bellody: So early in my career, when I was really still young, when back when I had dark hair and a small forehead and thicker hair and yeah, yeah. So when I had hair that looked like yours, it's you know Yeah. But so very early in my career, amazingly I was Gregory Wilnau: Hey man. It's there's pros and cons to having this hair. I'm just Michael Bellody: made a portfolio manager at what was a very large investment firm at the time that no longer exists because they got swallowed up through all the mergers and acquisitions that have occurred in it technically they're part of Wells Fargo now. but so I've been doing portfolio management since I was 25 years old. And so in different capacities, but I've started my portfolio management career at 25 years old. And because of that experience Gregory Wilnau: Mm-hmm. Michael Bellody: the type of portfolio management we can deliver to our clients is very hard to find. if you were to ask yourself what percentage of financial advisors actually have any training on portfolio management at all, or capital markets research or proper data analytics or anything like that, it's going to be a very small percentage. but I've been in that arena for almost 30 years now. Gregory Wilnau: Awesome. Love it. All right, let's talk a little bit more about the types of people you work with. So maybe you could take a second to describe the typical person who comes to you. What's a situation that they're usually in that they need you to lead them through? Michael Bellody: So we have, I would say it's three main types of clients. The vast majority of our clients tend to be people at the beginning of or within, say, seven to ten years of retirement, and they need to get things in order. Like you would imagine, a lot of folks wait too long to start planning for their retirement years and then they kind of scramble for the last five or ten years, right? Gregory Wilnau: Mm-hmm. Michael Bellody: To make sure everything's in order. So I would say pre-retirees are very newly retired folks is a large part of the clients that we have because they just want to make sure that their money is going to be handled properly and it's going to last for the rest of their lives and provide them with the retirement that they dreamt about years earlier. Second part of it, a large percentage of our client base is going to be business owners. Small to medium-sized business owners typically, although we do have a couple of larger business owners. we really We have a specialty in terms of helping them to make sure they they they plan properly and not just from an investing standpoint or a retirement planning standpoint, but also from an exit strategy standpoint and how to transfer their business and or lick or and or sell it and get the most for it. So exit planning is something that we specialize in with the with business owners. And then the third one is kind of a unique one, and I kind of fell into that one because I got involved very early on in my career. Gregory Wilnau: Mm-hmm. Michael Bellody: volunteering for nonprofit organizations. And I sit on a couple of boards now of nonprofit organizations. And so we really make a concerted effort to help nonprofit organizations out. Because what I found in that arena, sitting on boards and volunteering for them for years, is that they're really good at making sure they're they deliver on their mission, whatever that mission is, but they're not typically very adept at running their nonprofit like a business. Gregory Wilnau: Nice. Mm-hmm. Michael Bellody: and getting the most out of their finances. So we can guide them on all of that stuff. And we have a substantial number of non profits as clients as well. Gregory Wilnau: Okay, so you help the non profits be more biz more structured like a business. Help them manage more of the money. I was about to say be more profitable, but you know. Michael Bellody: Well. Yeah. Yeah, well it you know, it's it's actually fun it's not that's a not a misnomer. I actually tell nonprofits all the time, Yes, you're a nonprofit, but you have to run your organization like it's for profit. So that you can then take those profits and use them to better deliver your mission for longer in a better way, more robust, etcetera. Gregory Wilnau: Mm. Okay. so let's all right, so I want to learn a little bit more about the typical situations that you lead your one of these three clients through. We won't have enough time to go through all of them. Maybe we focus on one. what w which of these three do you think would be best have the best example of a typical situation that you'd lead them through that would be good for us to talk about? Michael Bellody: Probably the pre re pre I think most of the people that are would be listening to this are probably interested in what we would do with pre retirees or retirees. Gregory Wilnau: All right, let's do that. What's a typical situation that they come to you with that they need your help leading through leading them through? Michael Bellody: Yeah, so so the the most common question, I'm sure you hear this a lot as you talk to advisors, is do I have enough money to retire? Can I retire? I want to retire in this much time in this many years, or I want to retire next year. How do I know I'm I'm ready to do that? and so a typical situation for us is to take a look at how they're currently invested, you know, how are they allocated? What's their portfolio right now look like? how is What's the ownership structure of their invested assets, right? And non-investment assets. Like are they going to be tax efficient or able to be tax efficient during the distribution phase of the their retirement years, which by the way, the vast majority of investors are not. They're not set up actually well for retirement in terms of a tax standpoint. And so we really spend a lot of time with them making sure we do whatever we can in the time they have before retirement. Gregory Wilnau: Mm. Michael Bellody: getting them set up better from an ownership standpoint and the types of accounts they have in a very and setting them up to be very tax efficient. But I'd say the most important thing that I see is I rarely see an investment portfolio that's properly allocated when it comes into my office. Like it's actually pretty scary some of the things that I see. And so where we really add a lot of value is being able to look at how they're currently invested. Put together a structure from a strategy standpoint, from a from a from where we are currently in the market cycle and the economic cycle, and setting them up really to be far better off from a return standpoint and a risk standpoint within their portfolio management. Because the vast majority of the portfolios I see, I would describe as pulling off, they were pulled off a shelf. They're pre pre-made models that somebody pulled off a shelf and just threw into a portfolio. But there hasn't been a lot of thought given to is that the right approach given what's happening out there in the real world right now? Where what makes us really different is we are very dynamic and tactical in how we build portfolios. We're style agnostic and we will make changes to portfolio weightings based on what's happening out there to make sure that the portfolios remain consistently allocated in the proper fashion for where we are in the market cycle. Gregory Wilnau: Mm. Okay. So I love that. You take things that are typically find your clients come to you, they have some sort of like plug and play kind of package thing that's just thrown in there, but you really dive deep and offer that white glove service that you mentioned to make sure that their allocations are unique to them and specialized to them. I do I wanna visit a little bit for a second about so you mentioned some of the questions that your pre-retirees or newly retired clients have when they first meet with you. What are some of the questions that they ask you as they ca as you guys continue to work with together? Maybe you've had a client for five years or more. what are some of the questions that come up day to day? Well, obviously not not day to day, but just a after as you continue to work with them? Are those questions do you find those questions are different than what you typically get when they first come to you? Michael Bellody: Yes. Yeah, for sure. I think I think one, we do a really good job of communicating with our clients regularly. So they they shouldn't really have any questions about why we're investing their portfolio the way we're investing it. the they if they have questions about that, then something something was missed in terms of communication and then we've got to figure out what was missed and then fix it, right? But We rarely get questions about why do we own these investments? Why do we own those? Because we communicate that regularly. And when we make strategy adjustments, we tell them we're making a strategy adjustment. Here's why. So you're going to see trades happening in your account. The question that normally comes up at once their clients for a long time is they s they hear something on financial media or there's something that happens like tariffs last year. Gregory Wilnau: Mm-hmm. Michael Bellody: the Iran conflict this year, and they get freaked out and they they say, well, what's your take on this? And the one thing that they find comfort in with us is we always have a take on it. We've analyzed it. And we're going to tell them this is our take on what's happening. This is likely what's going to occur from, you know, it could be an inflation standpoint or it could be a market standpoint. And so we we never really just give them the cookie cutter sort of, you just got to stay the course, you just got to do you know all the the cliches. We actually tell them what our research tells us is happening. And the reason we can do that is because of the portfolio management background that we have. Gregory Wilnau: Interesting. Okay. So you also go into the why. Sounds like there's a little bit of education piece. You explain and so they understand why you're doing what you're doing instead of just so the okay, well that's great. I love that. where do you typically find your clients? What are some of the way yeah, what are some of the ways that they they find you? How do they how do they typically come into your world? Where they come where do they come from? Michael Bellody: Mm-hmm. so referrals. We get a we get a fair amount of referrals. we also do educational workshops around the area. And a lot of those folks that go there, if if if somebody attends our educational workshops, I can guarantee I can't guarantee a lot of things in my business, as you know, but I can guarantee they're gonna hear things they've never heard anywhere else before. They're gonna hear information that they have not been told before about how things really work. Whether that be from an investment standpoint or if we're doing an estate planning workshop or whatever the topic matter might be. and so they a large percentage of the folks that attend our workshops actually ask for meetings. And they're and we and we fill the room pretty consistently. About every six weeks we'll do a workshop and there'll be forty to sixty people in it. Gregory Wilnau: Wow, that's awesome. Congratulations. That sounds it sounds like you really those workshops are very valuable to the people who attend and they're getting it they're getting information or insights that they haven't gotten anywhere else or or heard before. That might explain why you're getting such good getting getting good meetings booked after that. I'd ask you for I'd ask I was gonna say I was I'd gonna ask you what you go over there, maybe one or two things that you that you share, but Michael Bellody: Yeah. Thanks. Yeah, and then the third the one other spot. Go ahead, I'm sorry. Gregory Wilnau: Maybe we'll just say they would need to attend your one of your workshops. Michael Bellody: I it would actually be hard to explain in an interview like this, like especially if we're doing a workshop on investment management. because I literally will tell the forty to sixty people that are in the room, I'll say, Listen, I'll take a poll. How many people consider themselves students of the market? How many people consider themselves novices? Whatever what level of of insight it is in the room. And then I'll tell them, even for those of you that think that you know a lot about the market, I want to for I want you to forget. Gregory Wilnau: Yeah. Michael Bellody: everything you think you know about the market right now we're gonna start from scratch. And then I walk through how the market actually works. Cause it's not the way most people think. so that's that's it that's that's a really interesting conversation because I promise they've never heard anything like what what we go over in in in that presentation. Gregory Wilnau: Interesting. I I want to move forward, but where on your make sure before we before we end this interview where people can go to get more information on on your next workshop. okay, so I want to make sure that we we we get through the interview and I can ask all the questions, but I want to understand more about like your practice and your vision for it. Cause you know, nothing's static, right? business is dynamic, you're always changing, you're learning new things, you're trying new things. And I'm sure the goal is to add more value to your clients. when it comes to your practice, where do you see it in the next one to three years? What's what's your vision? What what goals are you working on? Michael Bellody: Great question. There's I have so many in my head because ultimately what I really want to have is I want to have a firm that no matter what a client needs, they can come here. That means we need to have in-house CPAs. That means we have to have in-house attorneys probably for business planning and things like that. so that's where the vision is going. I don't know if all of that happens in the next one or three years, but it we're gonna Gregory Wilnau: Mm-hmm. Michael Bellody: 'Cause we have to do that plan fly. You can't just do it all at once. It it won't work. So like one of the big steps we exactly right. One of the things we did recently was was this was the strategic partnership with an estate planning firm that we can now have draft estate planning documents for clients. and so that we that seems to be going very smoothly. So I think the next thing, frankly, would be trying to find a relationship with a CPA or a CPA firm so that we could have a strategic partnership there and Gregory Wilnau: One one thing at a time, right? Yeah. Yeah. Nice. Nice. Michael Bellody: we can offer quote unquote in house tax planning and tax advice from an income tax standpoint. Gregory Wilnau: Okay. what is the benefit to your clients of having with of you having reached that goal, bringing in an in house CPAs and house attorneys and those strategic partnerships? What's the benefit to your to your clients? Or the targeted benefit, right? Michael Bellody: Yeah. Yeah. I I think I think the benefit is the more you can have coordination between those different areas of advice between portfolio management, you know, retirement planning, tax planning, estate planning, the less separated those advisors are, the better the overall plan will come together. I kind of describe it like you're trying to put together this well-designed puzzle, but you know, one person has a a third of the puzzle, another person has another third of the puzzle, another person has another third of the puzzle, and it's never going to come together to make the overall picture that you're trying to make within the within the the you know on the bo on the cover of the box. And so if we can coordinate all of that and work with the same people and ideally have them working as in our firm, I think that all of that advice coordinates a lot better and then less things fall through the cracks. Gregory Wilnau: I love it. Yeah, that makes a lot of sense. I can see you being able to add more value, more coordination, being more thorough, more comprehensive. 'cause it's when you have different things differ different pieces of the puzzle, it's easy for stuff to fall through the cracks and you don't want those details missing. So I could see how that would be more valuable to your your your clients. 'Cause it's quite frankly, you're able to have more control, it sounds like, over the over the the situation. But let's talk a little Michael Bellody: Yeah, and the c it's easier on our clients. They can just call it they can call our firm and we can have it we can we can talk with them about it all and or have the attorney right there to talk to them, the accountant right there to talk to them. So it's it that's that's ultimately where Gregory Wilnau: Go ahead. Yeah, I love that. any challenges standing in your way, from that? Any current challenges? anything standing in your way? Michael Bellody: Yeah, I need more time. I need more time. I need I need like fourteen days in a week and forty eight hours a day. And then I think we can get it done a lot quicker. Now in all seriousness, time is is you know, it we're pretty busy. You know, we're we're we're we're we're we work really hard for our clients. So even when we're not in meetings, we're doing stuff, we're doing research, we're looking at data and and trying to figure out trends and so forth and And so it's almost like it never ends and then all of a sudden you say, I meant to get to that today and I didn't get to it. Right. So so it's just more time, but but we're gonna get there for sure. Gregory Wilnau: Sure. Yeah. Yeah. It's one of those things where you just ch those imp important but not necessarily urgent things that you have to make time for. yeah, I get it. all right, so let me let me ask this one and then I wanna talk a little bit more i in a moment I wanna talk more about, you know, your process, how you s work with your clients, what it looks like to work with you. but first I wanna understand more about you know, your growth and your learning and how you approach these things. So as your practice has grown, are there any programs or trainings that Michael Bellody: For sure. Gregory Wilnau: Have kind of shaped your approach and positively impacted how you serve your clients. Is there anyone that you'd like to give a shout out to who has been influential or helpful? Michael Bellody: that's this. Yeah, I can for sure. I've had numerous business coaches that I work with. I meet with one who's actually in works for my broker dealer. that's that I work I meet with at least once a month. and so his name's John Rodriguez. He's great. but I I was in this program called the Business School of Growth, run by Gregory Wilnau: Interesting. Michael Bellody: Believe it or not, the actual background of the person who runs this program is he's a sports psychologist. Works with mostly female professional golfers and female tennis players, professional tennis players. But he started that he took his sports psychology sort of mindset and transformed it to apply to our business. And his business school of growth was just I I mean, it I can't say enough good things about it. his name's Dr. Rick Jensen. Gregory Wilnau: Interesting. Michael Bellody: and he is spectacular. So any advisors out there that might be might catch this thing, if someone ever offers you to get into a program with him or you or you have an opportunity to, I don't you should just do it. Gregory Wilnau: Love it. Doctor Rick Jensen. Cool. I mean they're all there's all these different ways to explore how you know you can grow in learning and that's something that I think your c our your clients can relate to as well is you know the importance of training, getting help, and those sorts of things. So I always like to ask this question if I get a chance to, whenever I interview anybody. Okay. Now what I'd like to do is let's take a moment to talk about your actual process. Maybe you could walk us through when somebody if somebody were to to become a client today, what happens the first few weeks? What does onboarding look like? Michael Bellody: So we have we we have a pretty well streamlined organized process, right? So we get through the the pre-client meetings and so forth, and they determine they'd like to hire us for whatever they hire us for. And from there, we have an operations specialist and we have a director of client relations, two different people. the director of client relations works right here in our offices here in Braintree. The operations specialist actually works for our broker dealer. And so, but But she does all of our account opening, all of the administration, everything. and so in the very first thing that happens is we let them know this is what we're doing for these clients. And then Tara, who's our director of client relations, sends out we'll reach out to them, introduce herself, we'll send out an email that has here's the next steps, here's what you're gonna see happen over the coming week. and in there is also a client interest form that we ask each new client to fill out, which tells us what do they like to do? What are their hobbies? Do they own pets? We want to literally know everything we can about our clients. and so that helps us when we do client events to determine which events we invite which clients to, right? Things like that. Gregory Wilnau: yeah, you wouldn't want a dog lover meeting with a cat lover 'cause there might be trouble. Just kidding. Just kidding. Could be trouble. Michael Bellody: Right. Could be. Yeah. But you know, so it it actually helps us to bring them content and events that we know that they're gonna really enjoy and get a lot out of, rather than just sending everyone the same stuff and inviting everyone to the same things. So so that that's but really we make there's no heavy lifting necessary on the on the new clients side. We take care of all of the paperwork for them and they get an e signature sent to them in their email. They just Gregory Wilnau: Sure. Michael Bellody: They sign it and then we get it all set up and it's d it's done pretty smoothly and quickly. It is. It's very important to me. Gregory Wilnau: Sounds like a white glove process to me. Yeah. All right. So what are some of the questions that you typically get during onboarding from your clients? What are what are the things that they that you find that your clients come to you with or does any any anything consistently come up? Michael Bellody: I assume you're talking about when we're meeting with them to see if they're gonna be a client or during the onboarding. Gregory Wilnau: I think after they're already a client they're onboarding I'm just trying to understand more about where your client's head head is at, what kind of occupies their mind as they're going through the process and if you've noticed any patterns around questions or th or maybe maybe concerns isn't the right word, but just maybe what your clients are thinking and and going through as they as you're they're being onboarded. Does that question make sense? Michael Bellody: So it does. We don't really get a lot of questions during the onboarding session. I think it's because of the way we interact with them to the point that they hire us. Like one of the questions I get, I do a fair amount of public speaking at conferences and so forth. And one of the questions I always get is like what's what do you say to clients to get them to hire you? Like in other words, which is this is somebody looking for a sales y idea. We don't do any of that. Like we we lead our clients Gregory Wilnau: Mm. Michael Bellody: ac across this process, our prospect prospective clients through this process. And by the time they get to the end of the process, they're gonna know for sure if they want to hire us or not. And most of them do. And so they've we've answered all of their questions. We've ex they know exactly what to expect. And then Tara reinforces that with her reach reaching out to them right away, welcoming them to the firm, letting them know here's the next steps, you're gonna receive an email, things like that. But by the time they're on boarding, there's really we don't really get a lot of we I I can't even think of the last time that I've had a question from a new client while they were on board. Gregory Wilnau: Yeah. Do you so I f found, and let me know if you think that this is why, this is just a theory, but when you lay out a process, you show them exactly what you show them exactly w somebody exactly what you're going to do and what to expect, what the timeline will be, what you're what you're going to do for them and what if anything you need from them. when that needs to be there, what the expectations are. You lay that out very clearly. Michael Bellody: Mm-hmm. Gregory Wilnau: You tell them what you're gonna do and then you do it, and you show what you're doing there, what you're doing next, you give them a clear process. It's really something that feels like a great experience for somebody else to go through because they don't have to think about anything. They don't have to worry about anything. You know, you're showing them here's exactly what we're gonna do, and then you execute. And that gives them a lot of confidence and it it's it's a great trust builder. Do you think that's probably why you don't get a lot of questions? Yeah. Michael Bellody: Hundred percent. And the the key to that is it that only works if you actually deliver what you tell them you're gonna deliver. Right. If you say we're gonna do X, Y, and Z and X is gonna happen, I'm making this up in two days, and w Y is gonna happen in three days, and then four days, Z is gonna happen, and then it's day seven and none of it's happened, now you got a problem. So you have to be ready you gotta have a white glove system in place, but you also have to execute it. You can't Gregory Wilnau: Yeah. Michael Bellody: It's really critically important that the clients receive exactly what we promise them, not just during the onboarding phase, but while they're clients forever. and so we have a system for how we interact with clients from a review standpoint, how many reviews they get a year, how they get scheduled. It's everything is systemized so that nothing falls through the cracks. Because if our clients call us asking for a review, that and it does happen once in a while. Gregory Wilnau: Nice. Michael Bellody: where like they're not yet due for another review. They just want one because they saw something on the news or something like that. My initial reaction is, are we behind schedule on their reviews? And I go right in and I figure it out because if we are, I've now got to have a sit down and figure out what happened. and so we we're very hyper focused on delivering everything we promise them when they become clients from a service standpoint. Gregory Wilnau: Mm-hmm. Sure, yeah. Yeah, yeah. On that note on on that note, what does it look like to work with you during the course of a calendar year? Talking about like meeting structure, cadence, what can somebody expect? Obviously I think it sounds like if somebody needs anything, you know, they they they're they can always call. But that's kinda ad hoc. But how about your structure? How have you structured the year from your client's perspective? What is it? Michael Bellody: So it depends on it depends on the client to a degree, right? Like some clients quite literally say, I don't want to do review meetings. Like I just you're doing your own thing and if and if there unless it's something really important, like I don't care about a regular review, it just tell me something important's happening and we'll meet. Or if I have a question, I'll reach out to you. We have other clients that say, I I'd like to do a review meeting every month. Now that's a little bit overkill. I think review doing a review meeting every month is Gregory Wilnau: Interesting. Michael Bellody: A little too much. But the way our system is set up is each client gets somewhere between one and three review meetings a year. And that's where we reach out to them on a specific schedule. And when they're on when it's their time to have a review meeting, we're contacting them. They don't to contact us. We're scheduling it. Tara is the one that does that reach out and schedules it for me or one of the other advisors who might be handling. the reviews for that client. And so they never have to worry about if we're going to reach out to them. We have it all system, it's it's all planned. Like if it's, if it's every, if it's three reviews a year, every four months, they're going to get a phone call saying it's time for your next review. If it's two, every six months. If it's one, every 12 months, right? and again, if the client who's getting one review a year wants to meet before their one year is up, We're we're not we don't say no. They we can meet we will meet with them, but even if they don't wanna meet it, there's no need for them to meet. We're gonna have at least one review a year with every single client. Gregory Wilnau: Yeah. I've seen that a consistent consistently in the advisors I've interviewed when they explain how they work with with their clients. Minimum of one year. and ad hoc if you have any questions. And then there's other structures that are in place. But did you come to this structure just by kind of doing it over a period of time and figuring out what works? Did you or did you follow kind of somebody else's model? Before we end here, just help me understand help us understand a little bit more about kind of the inspiration and how you kind of settled on this process because it sounds very white glove, which is a consistent theme that I'm hearing from you. so did you engineer this yourself or did you model somebody else? Michael Bellody: Mm-hmm. Yeah. I I I engineered it myself, but from my experience in the industry, right? So I I think that most clients don't need more than three reviews a year. I think three's a lot, actually. Unless something big is happening out there in the real world or to markets or with the economy. Three I mean, four months goes by like that in this industry. So it's like you get done with a review and all of a sudden you're meeting with them again and it seems like you just met with them. Gregory Wilnau: Mm-hmm. Michael Bellody: and there's not a typically a whole lot more to say in four months. you know, the the but we we do them. one, we have we have to meet with them at least once a year from a regulatory standpoint, because if we're if we're charging an advisory fee, they're in they have to be met with. So they're going to meet with us at least once a year. that's bare minimum. but for those clients that have more complex situations, maybe they have Gregory Wilnau: Yeah. Michael Bellody: tax situations and we're doing regular Roth conversions with them and things like that. We may have to meet them more often, right? To to do things like that, which is perfectly fine. But they're going to meet at least once a year. A lot of people did used to do quarterly meetings. And I thought, you know, no one's gonna notice the difference between every three months and every four months. And just from a capacity standpoint, if you have, you know, two or three hundred clients or households, You've got to be able to do all the stuff behind the scenes that allows you to manage their money properly and also meet with them and give them all the information they need. But if you're doing too many reviews, one, it does they don't really add a lot of value because they're too frequent. And two, you're just gonna run out of time. You're gonna run out of time. Yeah. It sure is. Sure is. Gregory Wilnau: Yeah. It's inefficient use of time, yeah. Yeah. Which you said is your scarcest resource right now anyway, so you know, gotta be efficient. Michael. Well let's let's land this plane. for someone listening who is interested in getting in touch with you or learning more, what should they do next? Where should they go? Michael Bellody: I they can you can go to imperiawealth dot com. It's Imperia No L I P E R I A Wealth dot com. there are several places on that website you can request information. There's a lot of free resources on that website. there's nothing paid for on the website. And you can request a meeting, you can request to be added to our newsletter list where we send out a monthly newsletter with lots of valuable information. We're happy to do that. but that's the best place to go, I think, to to to gather more information about us. Gregory Wilnau: Okay. So if you're interested, go to ImperialWealth dot com. If you want to schedule a call, click on contact. And since we're gonna circle back here, click on events if you wanna learn about the events that Michael is hosting over the next coming month or two. All right. Michael, thank you so much for your time. Really appreciate you sharing your insights with us today. Michael Bellody: Yeah, thank you. Appreciate it. All righty. Gregory Wilnau: My pleasure.