Latest / Only Fee-Only / #85 - Cultivating Growth and Unity at XY Planning Network - Vince Hockett

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#85 - Cultivating Growth and Unity at XY Planning Network - Vince Hockett · Only Fee-Only

• 0:05
  Speaker 1: How's it going everyone?
• 0:06
  Speaker 1: Welcome back to the only feeling podcast and, as always, thank you for being here.
• 0:10
  Speaker 1: In this episode, we got to talk to Vince Hocken, who is the president of XY planning network, and it was a phenomenal conversation.
• 0:20
  Speaker 1: Vince has a long career in other industries, doing some other things before he found XYPN through talking to Alan Moore, and it's a really cool story from there and one that I'm going to let him share.
• 0:32
  Speaker 1: I'm not going to spoil it, but Vince is just an incredible person.
• 0:36
  Speaker 1: He was one of the first people that we actually met the first time that we went to an XYPN live a few years ago and you know, we did not know very many people there and he went out of his way to make an effort to come say hi to us and talk to us and ask us how we were enjoying the conference, and every year since then he's made sure to do the same thing.
• 0:57
  Speaker 1: So we really appreciate Vince.
• 0:58
  Speaker 1: He's an awesome person and he has a lot of great things to say in this episode about XY and why they have such an amazing value offering and the things that they're bringing to the industry.
• 1:09
  Speaker 1: So enjoy this episode of the only fee only podcast with Vince Hocken.
• 1:15
  Speaker 3: What's up everyone.
• 1:16
  Speaker 3: Welcome to another episode of the only fee only podcast.
• 1:20
  Speaker 3: I am Peter Travelo.
• 1:21
  Speaker 3: I'm here with my co-host, brock Buckles.
• 1:23
  Speaker 3: How's it going today, brock?
• 1:24
  Speaker 3: It's always great to be here.
• 1:26
  Speaker 1: Pete, how are you today?
• 1:28
  Speaker 3: Doing great man.
• 1:29
  Speaker 3: Very excited to have Vince Hocken on from XY Planning Network.
• 1:33
  Speaker 3: We've had the ability to see him at multiple conferences and I've loved staying in touch.
• 1:39
  Speaker 3: So, Vince, welcome to the show.
• 1:41
  Speaker 2: Now.
• 1:41
  Speaker 2: We're really glad to be here, guys.
• 1:43
  Speaker 2: I'm looking forward to it.
• 1:44
  Speaker 3: Likewise.
• 1:45
  Speaker 3: So we know who Vince is.
• 1:46
  Speaker 3: But for those who don't know who Vince is, you want to give a quick overview of who you are and what you're currently doing.
• 1:54
  Speaker 2: Absolutely.
• 1:56
  Speaker 2: I'm the president of XY Planning Network.
• 1:58
  Speaker 2: I've been in this role just about two years been with XY.
• 2:03
  Speaker 2: Just well, the four years this month actually, believe it or not, right in the middle of-.
• 2:08
  Speaker 3: Congrats.
• 2:11
  Speaker 2: And we run the EOS operating system around here and my role as president, really the meaningful piece of it is.
• 2:18
  Speaker 2: They call it an integrator.
• 2:19
  Speaker 2: Alan Moore remains the visionary of XYPN, but the integrator relative to really keeping the trains on the tracks and the wheels on the bus here, providing value to our members is the best way to describe kind of my overall accountabilities.
• 2:35
  Speaker 1: Yeah.
• 2:35
  Speaker 1: So for the people that don't know who Vince was before XY, kind of what did your journey look like?
• 2:43
  Speaker 1: And then what was your kind of introduction to XY?
• 2:47
  Speaker 1: And then, before you were president, el Presidente, what were you doing?
• 2:53
  Speaker 2: Oh goodness, I've had one of the most fortunate lives I can imagine professionally.
• 2:59
  Speaker 2: So it's a wild story of change in multiple industries that kind of make me who I am today at XYPN, and so I'll try and be as brief as I can about it.
• 3:13
  Speaker 2: But I started out in the manufacturing sector Small, it was a publicly traded company and back then it was even a 4,500 company but about a billion dollars in sales Chesapeake Corporation and I had a mentor there that actually made my life, continues to have an impact on what I do today because of the opportunity that I got to move through multiple different divisions of that organization and through different disciplines from manufacturing operations to sales and marketing, into leadership.
• 3:45
  Speaker 2: And I was really fortunate to get my first leadership role when I was 31 years old, I think, president of one of their divisions up in Wisconsin.
• 3:55
  Speaker 2: And just that experience to get exposed to what it takes to be in a leadership role, what it takes to motivate folks In that case we had a 250 person workforce and we had a union environment.
• 4:09
  Speaker 2: First thing I had to do was negotiate a new union contract.
• 4:12
  Speaker 2: So just really interesting things that I've been exposed to.
• 4:16
  Speaker 2: That kind of make me who I am and give me perspectives.
• 4:21
  Speaker 2: Chesapeake ultimately moved me overseas and I led one of their international operations in France for a couple of years, and then I had this moment, like all expatriates actually.
• 4:33
  Speaker 2: You come back and I think the number is 68% of expatriates leave the company within a year because they can't find people who have the perspective that they have, which is a really interesting thing to think about and it happened to me and we had just had our second child and we did little insight into I seem conservative, sometimes, I'm seem older than most, but we will take risks.
• 4:56
  Speaker 2: On a Wednesday afternoon my wife and I sat down and said you know what?
• 5:01
  Speaker 2: We're going to move to New Mexico and we put the house on the market on Saturday, it's sold on Sunday and in 45 days we had a truck in the door and we did not have jobs and New Mexico because that's where my wife was from.
• 5:16
  Speaker 2: So we moved to Santa Fe and we did that for five years and in that time I also was able to help out a young organization called Bios Group that was led by this guy named Stu Kaufman who was a lead kind of theorist in complexity science and complex adaptive systems, and they were applying that to business situations way ahead of their time.
• 5:40
  Speaker 2: So when you think about Amazon web services today, they were doing the theoretical work around kind of distributed memory and how you might be able to democratize the memory that exists on everybody's laptop and just use it and pay for it if you use it, and so it was really interesting stuff back in the 2000s and kind of opened my mind to technology and the role of managing that environment Making a really long story short got back into manufacturing in a couple of different places.
• 6:11
  Speaker 2: Chesapeake Corporation actually brought me back to be their head of strategy and lead their plastic packaging business, which I had facilities in China, in Northern Ireland, in France, in Hungary, in South Africa and places like that.
• 6:25
  Speaker 2: So I was able to travel the world and again, just some more perspective that is a piece of who I am now and be able to see different cultures and the way they operate.
• 6:35
  Speaker 2: When we'd moved back to Virginia told the kids we wouldn't move again until they got out of high school.
• 6:42
  Speaker 2: So when my son went off to college, my wife and I we said we're going to go back west she being from New Mexico, I was from South Dakota originally and so when my son went off, I started looking and over a three-year period of time just spending a lot of time over for young people looking for jobs.
• 7:02
  Speaker 2: I counted it up over 330 letters and communications went out over a three-year period of time to find the right place.
• 7:10
  Speaker 2: Wow, it's a numbers game.
• 7:12
  Speaker 2: It's like sales guys.
• 7:13
  Speaker 2: It is a numbers game, it's tough.
• 7:15
  Speaker 2: So you find that right thing, and every now and again I would throw places like Montana and Wyoming into my search, if you will.
• 7:24
  Speaker 2: And in doing that I came across XY planning network one day.
• 7:30
  Speaker 1: Wow.
• 7:31
  Speaker 2: And they had a job that I was totally inappropriate for and I applied anyway and they did it and they didn't even contact me.
• 7:36
  Speaker 2: But another thing you got to get creative.
• 7:40
  Speaker 2: I found a way to get to Alan Moore, who didn't know me.
• 7:43
  Speaker 2: I said, alan, I'm going to be out in Montana fishing.
• 7:45
  Speaker 2: Can I have lunch with you one day?
• 7:47
  Speaker 2: And he said, absolutely.
• 7:49
  Speaker 2: So we sat down, made a connection and then, the way Alan works, he says listen, if you watch our website and there's a job that comes up that you think you might be interested in, let me know.
• 8:00
  Speaker 2: He wasn't going to contact me.
• 8:02
  Speaker 3: Yeah.
• 8:03
  Speaker 2: Right, right, right.
• 8:04
  Speaker 2: And there was this job for chief engagement officer, which is when they were really trying to think about, as they got bigger, how do we engage our members and continue to kind of evolve the organization, and ultimately reached out and got that job and that's how it got started in March of 2020.
• 8:25
  Speaker 1: So what was the title of that?
• 8:27
  Speaker 1: What was the title of that job then?
• 8:30
  Speaker 2: Chief engagement officer.
• 8:32
  Speaker 1: Chief engagement officer Okay.
• 8:36
  Speaker 2: So and it was funny, we have this problem in these young organizations all the time.
• 8:39
  Speaker 2: So that was a CEO job and Alan was the CEO because chief engagement officer nobody could understand that either.
• 8:46
  Speaker 2: So it was kind of a fun time to explain what the hell I was doing.
• 8:51
  Speaker 3: Yeah, I'm pretty sure.
• 8:53
  Speaker 3: Just to lay some groundwork for the conversation about XYPN from here on out.
• 8:58
  Speaker 3: When you first joined, what was the membership size?
• 9:02
  Speaker 3: And then also you joined this little thing, covid was starting slash around the corner.
• 9:08
  Speaker 3: So what were the original plans compared to?
• 9:12
  Speaker 3: Like hey, we're just getting smacked in the face by COVID.
• 9:16
  Speaker 3: How do we pivot?
• 9:17
  Speaker 3: Yeah?
• 9:19
  Speaker 2: Well, it's really interesting and I go back to my days at BIOS Group and Distributed Systems.
• 9:25
  Speaker 2: We have a distributed membership of independent businesses that operate and do their own thing, not reliant on us for their business.
• 9:33
  Speaker 2: So kind of inherently built in that was a really powerful mechanism to keep this place and our membership rolling through COVID.
• 9:41
  Speaker 2: So just keep that in mind.
• 9:44
  Speaker 2: There was a structure that was really resilient, if you will, for something like that.
• 9:51
  Speaker 2: When I came, there were just it was right around 1200 members.
• 9:57
  Speaker 2: We're at 1800 now.
• 9:59
  Speaker 2: I think I was employing at number 42, we're about 90 right now and COVID.
• 10:09
  Speaker 2: I resigned from my big corporate job in Virginia on March 13th, which is the day they declared a national emergency, started, got in a car and drove out here and as I drove across the country, hotels were shutting down.
• 10:21
  Speaker 2: It was a really amazing thing.
• 10:24
  Speaker 2: And I get here and the office is closed.
• 10:27
  Speaker 2: So I've made this drive and I'm working from home in an apartment by myself in Bozeman, montana.
• 10:35
  Speaker 2: But because of that distributed nature of our members, it kind of gave us a model to continue to work remotely, to continue to be able to do what we do just as our members do, and I have to say, it clicked really quickly for us and never had the feeling like we're missing a beat, like a retail organization that had brick and mortar stores or something like that.
• 10:59
  Speaker 2: We didn't have those issues and at that point all of our members even typically very few of them have a large majority of their clients in their hometown.
• 11:12
  Speaker 2: They were working remotely, they were doing remote meetings already.
• 11:15
  Speaker 2: So to say we didn't have any issues or perturbations, if you will, because of COVID would be stretching the truth, but it was actually, I think, easier than most businesses, right.
• 11:32
  Speaker 1: Yeah, you guys were one of the businesses where you were able to actually continue to function, just based on the way the business is kind of made up.
• 11:43
  Speaker 1: I mean, had it been one of the other companies that you were a part of before XYPN?
• 11:47
  Speaker 2: right, there's a bunch of different problems right In manufacturing.
• 11:51
  Speaker 1: Covid definitely affected the manufacturing industry, no doubt.
• 11:56
  Speaker 2: Yeah, you can read about that still today.
• 11:58
  Speaker 2: Even the stuff like the meatpacking plants and all that where you needed people to be in place in their positions and we didn't.
• 12:07
  Speaker 1: Yeah, so when you were kind of starting out right, you come from this background you had met with Alan Moore.
• 12:13
  Speaker 1: He says if this job ever comes up, right, reach out to me.
• 12:17
  Speaker 1: You see the chief engagement officer, right job, you reach out to him, right.
• 12:22
  Speaker 1: So how did that kind of conversation go?
• 12:25
  Speaker 1: Because you said it was kind of confusing to people at first.
• 12:27
  Speaker 1: What was the job description and kind of what were you expected to do in that role?
• 12:32
  Speaker 2: Well, it was really to bring together everything that we were doing for our members from the relationship side of it to our partnership side of it, to just thinking about what needed to come next and actually having a little bit more disciplined approach to understanding what is the value we provide anyway.
• 12:54
  Speaker 2: And that is sometimes you don't think about that till you have to.
• 12:58
  Speaker 2: And at that point, in 2020, the organization was six years old and we're starting to get this sense of members who'd been with us longer than a year or 18 months, been with us two years, three years, five years.
• 13:11
  Speaker 2: They had a little different set of needs and a little different view on value from XYPN.
• 13:18
  Speaker 2: And so how do you bring all that together and understand what creates value and then what keeps members a member and those are some issues we still work with every day today about someone who's maybe scaling their firm as opposed to just starting it up and getting it registered and very different needs.
• 13:39
  Speaker 2: We grew up and we built our reputation on helping people who wanted to start their own firm from scratch, who wanted to break away from a broker dealer and do their own thing, in all that that takes and what it takes then to keep that person happy five years into their business is very different.
• 13:59
  Speaker 1: Yep, yeah, nope, did you have something, pete?
• 14:04
  Speaker 3: Oh no, I was just going to say, like, you know, what are some of those main things that you've been seeing?
• 14:07
  Speaker 3: You know, with the evolution of the business, because, xypn, it has grown exponentially.
• 14:12
  Speaker 3: I'm sure that Alan and Michael, they look at the business and they're like holy cow, look at this.
• 14:18
  Speaker 3: You know awesome, living, breathing.
• 14:21
  Speaker 3: You know organization.
• 14:23
  Speaker 3: But, like, what are some of those things that you've been seeing so that you guys still maintain that value, still maintain that stickiness?
• 14:31
  Speaker 2: Yeah, well, there's a couple of things.
• 14:33
  Speaker 2: Number one, you know, first of all, we do a lot of work with our partners to negotiate deals where the tech stack maybe doesn't pay for all the membership, but there is just an ongoing level of value there.
• 14:45
  Speaker 2: What?
• 14:46
  Speaker 2: happens when someone gets four and five and six years into their business, that becomes a much smaller piece of what they worry about, because they built a revenue base.
• 14:55
  Speaker 2: So they worry about growth and they worry about okay, do I have the right mix of customers?
• 15:00
  Speaker 2: Do I have the right skills to go out and maybe think about?
• 15:04
  Speaker 2: Do I want to change out some of my clients and move to a more focused approach of what I want to do?
• 15:10
  Speaker 2: You know how do I operate and run this business.
• 15:14
  Speaker 2: Is it time to hire someone new?
• 15:15
  Speaker 2: Do I need to bring on a staff member?
• 15:17
  Speaker 2: I've been an entrepreneur for five years doing my own thing with nobody pulling at my sleeve.
• 15:22
  Speaker 2: Yeah, and then do I want to hire someone?
• 15:24
  Speaker 2: How do I navigate that discussion in that decision making process?
• 15:30
  Speaker 2: And so you get into some of those kinds of issues with members that have been here longer, and helping them solve those is a much different problem than helping them.
• 15:40
  Speaker 2: Okay, what financial planning software do I need access to?
• 15:43
  Speaker 2: What CRM do I need to use?
• 15:45
  Speaker 2: So it's a harder problem, I will admit, and it can manifest itself differently from member to member to member in terms of what we're looking for.
• 15:56
  Speaker 2: So I'd be lying if I tell you we have got this all figured out, because it really is a multi-dimensional problem with so many members.
• 16:05
  Speaker 2: But we work on it all the time, and sometimes it is educational resources, sometimes it is coaching resources, sometimes it is there may be a unique piece of technology that will help some members, but it may not help others, and so we have to think about all of those things today.
• 16:23
  Speaker 1: Yeah, and I think one of the things that I've heard that I really think is cool about XYPN as well is a lot of people absolutely love the sense of community and the focus groups within XYPN and being a part of something in a group with people that they literally started with at XYPN, right, like they kind of got put in the same group and now they've been doing it for five or six or seven or eight years together now, which is really cool.
• 16:48
  Speaker 1: I mean we've had people in the podcast that were with XYPN, I mean a year, within a year or two of the organization starting, and they have said you know, that's been one of my favorite parts about the organization is the sense of community, because, realistically, a lot of people whether you're, you know, michael Kessler talks about solopreneur, boutique or enterprise it can get, it can get lonely out there when you're a business owner, right, and so I think that's such an underrated part of what you guys do is that sense of community.
• 17:16
  Speaker 2: Absolutely, and, Brock, I appreciate you bringing that up because it's it is one of those things that we have, this saying that nobody joins XYPN because of the community, but people stay because of the community.
• 17:27
  Speaker 2: Once you're in and you understand that support network and the real sense of I'm not alone I'm independent but not alone becomes really, really clear.
• 17:38
  Speaker 2: You know, we have a system where we line early members up in what we call mastermind groups so they get these.
• 17:47
  Speaker 2: They're almost like teams, I have to say, because they work so closely together, they care about each other.
• 17:53
  Speaker 2: You would be surprised at the number of people who arrive a day early at XYPN live in order to have time to sit down with their mastermind group or a study group that they may have formed, because it's the only time they get to see one another and it's a really powerful thing that gives them a sense of being something much larger.
• 18:13
  Speaker 3: Yeah, I mean so, as the business continues to grow and you know you guys said that you're continuing to define your value add.
• 18:21
  Speaker 3: Like what is your main value add?
• 18:23
  Speaker 3: Like, at the end of the day, it sounds like you know, not only the community and you guys are RIA consultants and kind of doing the coaching, and I know you have advice, pay and all the softwares, but like in one short phrase like what are you guys really trying to build towards?
• 18:38
  Speaker 3: What's the five, 10, 20 year goal?
• 18:40
  Speaker 3: Look like.
• 19:15
  Speaker 2: No, I appreciate you asking the question.
• 19:17
  Speaker 2: Our differentiator are what we call our three uniques, and they stand out and they're simple.
• 19:23
  Speaker 2: It's real independence for financial planners, it's real financial planning and real support.
• 19:30
  Speaker 2: I'm going to say that again Real independence, real financial planning and real support, that's what you get when you join XYPN.
• 19:38
  Speaker 2: You can find the fit for yourself.
• 19:42
  Speaker 2: That's how we were successful.
• 19:44
  Speaker 2: Having 1,800 members that they all can feel that in running their own business and building this business of their dreams, that when they were sitting in the wire house with a broker dealer and they thought I could do this on my own, well, the reality is you can.
• 19:59
  Speaker 2: That's what makes XYPN different.
• 20:01
  Speaker 2: I was just going to the competitive section.
• 20:04
  Speaker 2: We have to do an annual evaluation of the business for our ESOP that we have for our team members.
• 20:10
  Speaker 2: You go through that and it just becomes so clear and poignant that those things are unique and different that they can't find anyplace else.
• 20:19
  Speaker 2: That's the source of all the value.
• 20:22
  Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah.
• 20:23
  Speaker 1: Another thing is just what XYPN is doing for the industry too.
• 20:28
  Speaker 1: When we've been in XYPN lives and we've had the chance to hear Michael Kitts's speak, or even when we just had Travis Johnson, who's the director of compliance on, his episode just came out is how much you all advocate for true and real financial planning.
• 20:46
  Speaker 1: He was talking about the fact that a lot of these regulators and state legislators are kind of talking about how well we're not really used to this like the planning first mentality, and then some people are at advice only and some people do investment management.
• 21:01
  Speaker 1: It's been the investment management first for so long that so many of these people across the country that regulate these things are having a hard time even understanding sometimes, like how massive this is.
• 21:14
  Speaker 1: As a person who has an XYPN advisor personally as my financial advisor, it's like I can't speak enough about how incredible the actual value at is of having the true financial planning that XYPN firms offer.
• 21:28
  Speaker 2: No, it's so true, bracken.
• 21:30
  Speaker 2: I'm just going to tell you guys a little anecdotal story about how, when I meet young people and they say, what does XY planning network actually do, I look at them and I said do you have a financial planner?
• 21:40
  Speaker 2: Well, no, I said well, why not?
• 21:42
  Speaker 2: Why don't I have any money?
• 21:45
  Speaker 2: That is the start of the story of real financial planning, because, going back to and it's one of the mission-driven nature things that really was so compelling for me when I talked to Alan in terms of joining this organization was this idea that Michael and Alan believed we could bring real financial planning to those who need it most.
• 22:06
  Speaker 2: And those who need it most aren't those that have a million dollars.
• 22:09
  Speaker 2: Sometimes it's that young person who just is coming out of school and maybe has a mountain at debt or has a new mortgage payment and they're trying to figure out how to plan their life from a financial perspective.
• 22:21
  Speaker 2: That's what XYPN financial planners are doing across the country.
• 22:27
  Speaker 2: When we think about it 1,800 planners if they each have 100 clients think about the exponential nature of the impact we can bring to this industry and to people who need real financial planning.
• 22:44
  Speaker 3: Yeah, absolutely.
• 22:45
  Speaker 3: That's awesome.
• 22:46
  Speaker 3: So what's the kind of long-term goal right now?
• 22:51
  Speaker 3: With XYPN, I mean, you guys have a good, solid business, definitely on the fee-only space.
• 22:57
  Speaker 3: I mean definitely one of the larger groups and organizations.
• 23:00
  Speaker 3: But when you start looking at the other side, like on the broker-dealer side and LPL and the amount of advisors they have there, that looks like Everest.
• 23:08
  Speaker 3: So what's the future look like and what are you guys hoping for?
• 23:14
  Speaker 2: Yeah, one of the things that I think is really important to understand about XYPN we don't look out to the world and say we want to be them, we want to have what they have.
• 23:23
  Speaker 2: This is creating something new.
• 23:25
  Speaker 2: This is doing it a different way.
• 23:27
  Speaker 2: And so, yeah, we have a goal that by 2030, we'd like to have 5,000 members.
• 23:34
  Speaker 2: How meaningful is that?
• 23:37
  Speaker 2: That's just a that gives our team a marker out there.
• 23:41
  Speaker 2: That doesn't mean we have to hit it, because the important thing is we do this the right way and we continue to attract people to the financial planning industry who understand the mission of really this whole.
• 23:53
  Speaker 2: All these terms that we talk about, from fee-only financial planner or fee-for-service or being a real fiduciary or real financial planning all that together is the important piece.
• 24:04
  Speaker 2: And how do we do that?
• 24:06
  Speaker 2: In a way that allows independence, so you can have the firm of your dreams.
• 24:11
  Speaker 2: And if we get to 5,000, great, and all indications are we will.
• 24:18
  Speaker 2: But it isn't about the 5,000.
• 24:20
  Speaker 2: It is about this core mission of what we're doing to bring real financial planning to those who need it most, and that's what we keep our eye on.
• 24:27
  Speaker 2: So it isn't that we want to be somebody else or to be like someone else.
• 24:31
  Speaker 2: We're going to be ourselves, we're going to be unique, and those three uniques that I talked to you about are going to drive that growth.
• 24:39
  Speaker 1: Yeah, no, that's fantastic and I mean it definitely shows in the quality of what you guys do and the things that people have to say about the organization.
• 24:47
  Speaker 1: One of the things that I'm curious about and I think a lot of people probably wonder about it too is like when you're talking about the leadership, right, you're obviously the president of the company, you've got Michael Kitts, you've got Alan Moore but when you guys are all in our room and whoever else is in that room and you guys are kind of talking about you know the way that things are doing, is it like a, is it a vision board strategy?
• 25:08
  Speaker 1: Is it?
• 25:08
  Speaker 1: Somebody says something, then they kind of saluted off and everybody else kind of voices their opinion, or I know that you kind of mentioned Alan's kind of the visionary.
• 25:16
  Speaker 1: So what is the dynamic?
• 25:18
  Speaker 1: And obviously share what you're comfortable with.
• 25:21
  Speaker 2: No, actually it's kind of like get yourself this vision of an old stage coach out there, right, and I'm the guy sitting up there holding the reins.
• 25:29
  Speaker 2: Okay, we got Michael and Alan pulling us forward and they have a ton of ideas, and how do you then guide this organization?
• 25:37
  Speaker 2: This big lumbering?
• 25:38
  Speaker 2: I mean we're not lumbering, but we're 1,800 members now and we're 90 employees.
• 25:43
  Speaker 2: You've got to think about that.
• 25:44
  Speaker 2: All matters today, when you manage a business.
• 25:47
  Speaker 2: So how do you pull those reins in a way that keeps you moving forward, keeps you on the path you want to be on, at the speed you want to be on, while taking care of what you have today?
• 25:55
  Speaker 2: And that's how I would describe those meetings.
• 25:58
  Speaker 2: In my role, I have a really wonderful relationship with both Alan and Michael, and you know, when Alan asked me to take on this role, he was really clear, not just with me but with the organization that one of Vince's most prominent accountabilities is he can say no to me anytime, and that's what an integrator is supposed to do, and he's lived up to that.
• 26:28
  Speaker 2: He has truly, truly lived up to that.
• 26:31
  Speaker 2: And you're probably gonna say, okay, give me an example of saying no to Alan Moore.
• 26:35
  Speaker 2: So let me just answer that question, please.
• 26:38
  Speaker 3: Or you ask him okay.
• 26:40
  Speaker 2: So let's talk a little bit about our newest venture, which is XYPN, sapphire, our corporate RIA, that we're in the middle of a pilot on.
• 26:47
  Speaker 2: I think if you look back at XYPN you would see that Alan is such a visionary.
• 26:54
  Speaker 2: He gets so close to what he thinks is right and what's coming next, and he has these conversations with Michael and then they go, then they go make it happen.
• 27:03
  Speaker 2: And we've learned, with a larger organization with a more diverse member base, we have to be have a little bit more planning and a little bit more discipline in doing that.
• 27:14
  Speaker 2: So the conversation was no, we're not just gonna launch Sapphire, we are gonna, as an organization, run.
• 27:21
  Speaker 2: Is it gonna be eight months or a year pilot of?
• 27:25
  Speaker 2: We're gonna invite five to eight of our members on.
• 27:29
  Speaker 2: So we start to understand how do you operate a corporate RIA with the right processes in place, with the right discipline.
• 27:35
  Speaker 2: So the goal is every single member who joins that corporate RIA is delighted.
• 27:43
  Speaker 3: How do you?
• 27:43
  Speaker 2: make that happen.
• 27:43
  Speaker 2: And so, like I had to say, no, alan, we're not just gonna launch the whole thing, we're gonna treat this like a real business startup and do it well and we're gonna delight the people who use this offering from us.
• 27:55
  Speaker 2: And he has been just so good and disciplined about letting me play that role and I gave him a ton of credit for it, because I think it's hard for him, but it's what we need today.
• 28:09
  Speaker 3: Yeah, I think it's always interesting when the business grows and the visionary needs to step away a little bit from the operations, because I mean, you're definitely an operations guy.
• 28:19
  Speaker 3: Just talking to you I can tell you're a great listener, looking at your resume, things like that.
• 28:26
  Speaker 3: So I mean and also I mean you're an order to undergrad and you have your MBA.
• 28:31
  Speaker 3: So I mean, with the leadership skills, what are just some main kind of tips, like for those who they might be thinking they might be a small RIA or a boutique and they might wanna grow the company maybe one day to a little bit bigger.
• 28:44
  Speaker 3: What are just some main leadership things and culture and just main concepts that just to pump some knowledge into the listeners here.
• 28:54
  Speaker 2: Sure, no, I appreciate that and I will tell you one of the early conversations with Alan one of the thing I love most is helping young leaders develop, and it's one of the conversations we had about coming into XYPN, and so I get to exercise that muscle often here, which is great.
• 29:12
  Speaker 2: And I think that some of the things that are important, and maybe the one that is the most important that I've found through the years, is that even as I'm sitting here talking to you, Peter, and to you, brock, I try and get myself not just into your shoes, but I have to look at this conversation from the point of view of in your mind Not my mind in your shoes, but in your mind and try and think about the things that will either help you make this a podcast that's worth listening to or fulfill the needs that you have.
• 29:43
  Speaker 2: And just putting a podcast on the air and I think when you're working with other people, it's really, really important to do that and do it in a way that they can actually see that happening, they can see that empathy coming through, because you still have to make hard decisions, you still have to disappoint that person that you're talking to from time to time.
• 30:07
  Speaker 2: If they can see that you're doing that from the perspective of understanding and knowing where they are, it's a much more powerful conversation and it's one that they can get their mind around and accept much quicker.
• 30:20
  Speaker 2: They may not in the moment and this isn't telling you that when you have these conversations with people in the moment they're gonna leave the room happy.
• 30:27
  Speaker 2: They're right on the knot, tough love.
• 30:33
  Speaker 2: But if you've done that and you give them the chance to go away and think about either it could be a strategic decision they don't agree with, it could be a performance decision or a situation that they're having, or it could be a management problem they're having.
• 30:46
  Speaker 2: If you've done that and you can give them a chance to go and think about how and why you approach that, it takes away kind of the personal nature of either disagreeing or not wanting to do that and puts it in a place that's much, much more powerful.
• 31:02
  Speaker 2: And I've been in manufacturing, I've been in technology, I've been in service industries.
• 31:08
  Speaker 2: The dynamic of leading people and helping get an organization down a path you wanna go is the same industry to industry.
• 31:19
  Speaker 2: Because, guess what, we're all messy humans, we all have our big old problems and our big old warts and it doesn't matter what industry we're in and we just have to deal with that and in those.
• 31:31
  Speaker 2: So I've learned that it is that people dynamic is the single most important piece in every single business I've been in.
• 31:39
  Speaker 1: Yep, yeah, I mean it just goes back to the kind of human side and the psychological side, right, and it's like so many people in the beginning it's like you said are thinking about the financial planning software and the numbers and they look at a financial plan and they're like all right, I know exactly what this person's needs, what they need, but then it comes down to literally like a psychological or mental obstacle that you actually have to help them get over.
• 32:03
  Speaker 2: It's not just the numbers right.
• 32:04
  Speaker 2: No question about it no question about it.
• 32:08
  Speaker 1: And in my mind.
• 32:09
  Speaker 2: That makes it fun.
• 32:10
  Speaker 2: That's the stuff I love, because when you're successful and you see another human being react in the way that you'd like them to react, it's just so rewarding.
• 32:23
  Speaker 2: It's so rewarding.
• 32:25
  Speaker 3: Absolutely.
• 32:25
  Speaker 3: I love that.
• 32:26
  Speaker 3: Was there anything before you came on the podcast that you just were thinking, hey, I wanna share it, or there might be some golden nugget that you wanna leave for potential X, y, pn, future members or current members?
• 32:42
  Speaker 2: No, I mean is I thought about this.
• 32:45
  Speaker 2: The thing that I wanted to make sure that I did communicate so I guess there is is that you know I'm.
• 32:50
  Speaker 2: I joined XYPN because the mission driven nature of this organization.
• 32:54
  Speaker 2: I'm still totally bought into and sold on why we're here and what we're doing and it's such an incredible, incredibly powerful thing to be part of an organization like that, because I don't.
• 33:09
  Speaker 2: There's no day I wake up and wonder what the hell am I doing?
• 33:13
  Speaker 3: Right.
• 33:14
  Speaker 2: And not one.
• 33:15
  Speaker 2: And I know it's about our members and yeah, with 1800 members, we have some members who put a little bit of pressure on us.
• 33:23
  Speaker 2: That I like sometimes.
• 33:24
  Speaker 2: Yeah.
• 33:25
  Speaker 3: Really, of course.
• 33:26
  Speaker 2: Yeah.
• 33:29
  Speaker 3: We get it.
• 33:33
  Speaker 2: But that's a good thing too.
• 33:35
  Speaker 2: That is, you know, I one of the things I learned in all the work I was doing at BIOS group and kind of bringing scientific methodology and stuff to businesses.
• 33:43
  Speaker 2: This is more of a portfolio and that, this efficient frontier, this portfolio idea of that if you're out there operating on the efficient frontier, that's when ideas happen, that's when creativity happens, that's when you find the gems.
• 33:57
  Speaker 2: And so an organization like XYPN, where we're not trying to be someone else, we're trying to be something new, I feel like that's on this efficient frontier.
• 34:07
  Speaker 2: And when it's a mission driven strategy and purpose, you're going to find good things on that frontier and you're going to find opportunity and that is just incredibly fun.
• 34:19
  Speaker 2: I hope our members feel that energy every day from us.
• 34:23
  Speaker 2: I hope they feel that support, because I know I do.
• 34:27
  Speaker 2: I wake up every morning with it thinking this is so cool, I love what I do and like I'm old, okay, and I still love what I do and so that part of it is really cool.
• 34:41
  Speaker 2: You know we're here for the right reason.
• 34:43
  Speaker 2: We're here to try and help independent financial planners have this business of their dream, and what more fun could I have?
• 34:51
  Speaker 3: Yeah.
• 34:51
  Speaker 3: And you're in Bozeman, so you know, look them by Secondary, yeah, absolutely.
• 34:57
  Speaker 3: Love it Well.
• 34:59
  Speaker 3: Thank you so much, vince, for coming on today.
• 35:01
  Speaker 3: For those who you know they might want to follow along or maybe contact you, what's the best way that they can follow you?
• 35:08
  Speaker 2: Vince at xyplanningnetworkcom or they.
• 35:12
  Speaker 2: You know I'm not as active as I should be in social media but I get out there on LinkedIn quite often in my profiles there and you know you contact me directly if you want to.
• 35:23
  Speaker 2: If you're an xypn member, get into our forums.
• 35:27
  Speaker 2: You'll see that, not only the community but from time to time the things that we're doing and I'm doing, and if there's anything that we're not doing, whether you be a prospect or a member, let me know directly.
• 35:40
  Speaker 2: I'd love to hear from you.
• 35:42
  Speaker 3: Love it, man, and we'll see you in Minneapolis this fall for xypnlive 2024.
• 35:48
  Speaker 2: Can't wait, guys.
• 35:48
  Speaker 2: I appreciate the opportunity to be with you.
• 35:51
  Speaker 3: Thanks, Vince.
• 35:51
  Speaker 3: Thank you so much.
• 35:53
  Speaker 2: All right bye.