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Why Advisors Lose Clients · The Perfect RIA

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Jamie Shilanski:
0:22
The Rule of Two. If you have lost a client, or if you feel
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disconnected from your clients, then you're probably not
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practicing the rule of two. So if you stay with me through this
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podcast, we are going to talk about why the Rule of Two is so
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important and how you can set yourself up and your team for
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continual habitual home runs. Welcome back to UPR nation. This
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is Jamie Shilanski an episode of Worlds to Conquer, and today, I
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am going to talk to you about how we avoid losing clients, and
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how we set ourselves, our team and our protege, financial
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advisors, who are coming up and building their book of business
0:58
at Shilanski and Associates our RIA in Anchorage Alaska,
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ultimate success, old school basics, because how you do
1:04
anything is how you do everything that is so important
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to understand and to always teach, especially if you are
1:10
involved in young adolescents people's lives today, you need
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to be driving this lesson home with everything that They touch,
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every endeavor that they do, because often it is really easy
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to excuse youth and laziness, because you can look at a person
1:25
and say, Well, of course they didn't really want to do the
1:28
dishes, or, of course they really didn't want to help with
1:31
the lawn. It's not their lawn. They don't understand the pride
1:35
of homeownership, but that is because you have ingrained in
1:39
them it's okay to be sloppy. And I don't care if they have a
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career in finance. I don't care what they do. In fact, just last
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night, I got a call from my spouse out in Bristol Bay,
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Alaska, and they got suckered back into being the head guide
1:52
at the fishing lodge, even though, after 12 years, they had
1:56
a little bit of a retirement, but the protege that was being
1:59
trained to take over the head guide role became pregnant and
2:03
was having their first child. So anyhow, my spouse gets hooked
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winked into going back out there and running the lodge for about,
2:10
you know, five weeks of time. And when they go out there,
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there's a lot of new rules that have been implemented that are
2:17
just bogus. Now, the problem is, the protege and her husband are
2:21
in their mid to late 20s, and so they have all of the confidence
2:25
that undermines all of the expertise some of the people in
2:28
the lodge have. Otherwise, what does that mean? Exactly,
2:31
confidence always interrupts expertise. So in their supreme
2:35
intelligence, they have decided that what they want to have all
2:38
of the personnel that they employ, because they employ
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about 20 different people at this lodge. It's a pretty big
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Fisher so this is housekeeping. These are guides. These are, you
2:49
know, managers, maintenance people, boat hands, the whole
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the whole food works. And you're in remote Alaska, so when you're
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on this fishing lodge compound, it's, you know, five acres, and
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that's it. That's the only place to be or where to go. And
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they're open seven days a week. They have people constantly
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coming in, out of the lodge, checking in, checking out for a
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three day package, five day package, week long package,
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whatever people have purchased. So they decided, in their
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infinite wisdom, that they are going to institute having
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everyone be in the lodge at 5:45am every single day to
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arrive before the first guests show up for breakfast because
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they normally have a 6:30am departure, and then nobody is
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allowed to leave until 9:45pm when everyone comes back from
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their adventure and the last guest leaves the lodge after
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having dined and dessert and after drinks and playing pool
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and doing all of those things Now seven days a week, 5:45am to
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9:45pm and by the time you leave the lodge, you still have to go
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get all your gear set up. So you got to figure out what you're
3:50
fishing for the next day, what fly out you're going to go to,
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and then you got to go rig up for a completely different
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experience. And especially a lot of these guides, you know, you
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have people come out there and they say, Oh yeah, I'm an avid
4:04
fisherman. That's why I wanted to book this trip. It's my dream
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Alaska trip, etc. Trip, etc. But they can cast maybe 20 feet in
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front of them, and you got to get that out 40 to 60 feet
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across a fast moving river. So they'll rig up for two
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scenarios. One, if you end up being a supreme caster and
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you're able to spay that thing clear across the river and not
4:25
get held up, fantastic for you. But if you're not, and they've
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got to make a quick switch to another type of gear so that you
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still have a positive outcome for that day, they got to be
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able to do that too. So they leave at 9:45pm and they got
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maybe two hours of additional work, rigging up and getting
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things ready, lunches packed, gear packed, emergency stuff
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packed for the very next day. That's exhausting to do for six
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months. In fact, it's really, really challenging. And so
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they're 30 days into instituting this new policy with a crew. And
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then, you know the husband and wife, they leave the lodge, they
5:00
come into Anchorage, because you can't have a baby in the
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village, I guess you could, but you'd have no medical support.
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And they want my spouse to enforce this rule of making sure
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everyone shows up at 5:45am but here's the problem, my spouse
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thinks it's a bogeys rule. It's absolutely insane, and you can't
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work people to this level and expect high performing
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individuals seven days a week to show up with the best attitudes
5:24
possible. And so now they're having to institute a policy
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they don't agree with, and they're not going to be around
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for the outcome, and they already know the mutant is
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coming. They already know because it's really, really
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early in the season, they already feel the disgruntlement
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of employees. And when employees walk out, it's not like you have
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this massive job pool to get to remote villages in Alaska. You
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could start just plucking people and having them fill roles. So
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my spouse is out there, and they're trying to work with the
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people that are in town, talking on the phone and stuff, and
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saying, Hey, listen. And I respectfully disagree with this
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policy. I think that, forget the labor law infringements, but
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you're going to have, you know, real Muni here once we get into
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August, because you're not giving people time off to refill
6:12
their cup. You're not giving them an opportunity to really
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refresh, regroup and come back in a positive spirit, because
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your recovery is just as important. If you ever see
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occupation, a hotel, a spa, or excursion, rafting, any kind of
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these scenarios, you know, you're having the same
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conversation every single day. Hey, did you grow up around
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here? You know, are you married? Do you have kids? What do you
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like to do? You're having the same conversation all the time.
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So now you're putting this group of people and asking them to
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have the same conversation with this with different groups of
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people, three times a day. You're having it for breakfast,
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and you're having it on the excursion, and then you're
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having it for dinner, because everyone's going to rotate
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around these groups. And it gets exhausting, you know, it gets
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really laborious to have to do, and that's why you've got to be
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able to recover. You got to blow off steam, you got to come out,
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you got to decompress, and you get it's just like being in
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surge. For us, you cannot be in surge 365, days out of the year,
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you will burn out. You will burn out. It's just impossible for us
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to show up every single day being our absolute best, because
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our recovery is just as important as the grind. It
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really is. The people that show up absolutely on fire, they're
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not like that 365, days out of the year. Instead, they've
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learned how to balance and how to refuel for the show up on
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game day when they are ready. Do you want to see somebody that
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just burns out and fizzles is because they have no idea what
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refills their cup, and they're so confused why they feel so
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tired, so unenergetic, and why they just really don't feel the
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drive and passion for things that they used to well, because
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what you did six weeks ago is impacting who you are today, and
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you're not showing a mastery of that schedule. And so when my
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spouse is relating this to the new management team, they're
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like, No, absolutely not. They have nowhere else to be. We're
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paying them a salary, and they should be working, you know,
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those hours, blah, blah, blah. And so their confidence is
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really interrupting my spouse's expertise of saying, Hey,
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listen, I ran this launch, you know, very successfully for 12
8:20
years. I put this entire crew together, and here's what you're
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missing. Here's the important part of being able to recover,
8:27
so that they can show up and grind but that confidence factor
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that, no I know wordly this that's so, so cruel to be able
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to overcome. So about a month into this new policy and trying
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to implement it, trying to listen to, you know, the the
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young proteges and management try to really not rock the boat,
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because it's their idea, and at the end of the day, it's their
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lodge to have to run. And so they're given the best advice
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possible. And you know, it was like, Listen, I'm running into,
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like, roadblock after roadblock with our team. They're not
8:58
showing up. They're they're like, I don't care. Then fire
9:02
me. Kind of attitudes about this. And then so they said,
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What do I do? How do I talk to them about this? I need kind of
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professional advice here. And I said, the only thing that you
9:12
could do right now, because if this is the policy that you're
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going to institute and enforce, then here's what you could do.
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You could go back to the why basics. And you could go back to
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telling them why it matters that they show up and give their
9:26
absolute best. You could talk to them about how you do anything
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is how you do everything. And so you go up to these young men and
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you say, Listen, I know that you guys don't want to be, you know,
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we whacking out here. There are a million bugs. That is an
9:41
actual number, if not more. And, you know, it's hot and you're
9:45
already tired, you already have all these other things that
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you'd rather go do, and it seems stupid to have to weed whack out
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and, you know, burst away Alaska when you're inside of villecom.
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And you don't think it matters, but here's why it matters. And
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talk to them about the prestige, talk to them about the 10s of
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1000s of 1000s of dollars that people pay to go out there for
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the opportunity to have this excursion, and then also tell
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them about how much it matters for their social reputation,
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because what they don't see at the tender age of the regaining
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20s is how the people that they are interacting with that come
10:20
out to the lodge. And if you're going to pay 10s of 1000s of
10:24
dollars go fishing. You're pretty big wig. Either you've
10:27
scraped and saved every penny, and this is your retirement
10:31
dream, and sometimes that happens, or you're showing up in
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your private jet because you got a tickle that said, let's go to
10:38
Alaska and go fly fishing. So they've got really prominent
10:41
people that come out there. And so when you're around those
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prominent people, you're giving them a showcase to see who you
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are. I cannot tell you how many jobs my spouse has been offered
10:52
because they are absolutely exemplary at their job. They're
10:55
fun, they're social, they handle problems. You know, they're not
10:59
always composed. I think you know what best describes our
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lives together is beautiful chaos. We're both super clumsy,
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we're both really fun. We just like to we just like to have a
11:09
good time, and we never try to take anything too serious,
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especially ourselves. And that conveys to other people. People
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want to be around other positive people. And so the best piece of
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advice I could give was go back to them and talk to them about
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the why. Talk to them about why it matters to show up and how
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many connections they could possibly be making, but not if
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they show up and they're the lazy person, they're
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disgruntled, you know, they've got kind of an attitude, a chip
11:37
on their shoulder. People will be super dismissive and not hire
11:41
you in a heartbeat. You want to always put yourself in a
11:44
position where people are attracted to you and want to
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work with you. They want to see you. They want to be a part of
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your life. Do you have to be perfect in every single
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endeavor? Do you always have to be, quote, unquote on No, that's
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not what this is saying. But this is saying that if you
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verbally committed to do something, then you show up and
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you give it your absolute best. And we allow our youth, we allow
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young professionals to be kind of sloppy sometime, because we
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think that time alone will give them experience to change in the
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future. That's not how this works. In fact, I credit a lot
12:18
of my success to my biggest mistakes that we ever made, and
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my baby brother, Micah shilanski And I, you know, at the tender
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age, just like these two trying to step in and run the lodge.
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You know, we began to have more and more authority at our ra up
12:32
in Anchorage, Alaska, and my god, the liturgy of mistakes
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that I could sit here and tell you that we made over and over
12:39
again because we were young. And yes, the expression exists for a
12:43
reason. You're young and dumb, but our confidence wouldn't
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allow us to listen to anyone else's expertise on the subject.
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And that had it, they're good, they're really, really good, and
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they allowed us to take enough hits to prove a lesson. And when
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we took those hits, they'd come to us and say, Great, now how
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are you going to fix it at any time? As I look at any time,
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they could have stepped in and fixed most, if not all, of the
13:08
problems that we had self created in trying to become
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young professionals, but they didn't. They allowed us to fail
13:15
and then to know how we were going to get back up after we
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failed. They were there as a sounding board. They were there
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to listen, but they didn't tell us what we had to go and do.
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They said, great, how are you going to fix it? And you can see
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this a lot in little adolescents. In fact, I was just
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having to remind my mom and dad this weekend, because, by the
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way, if you have parents that are not grandparents, yet, enjoy
13:39
your time with them, because when they have grandparents,
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they will become completely different, new people that you
13:45
have to go learn who they are. I watched my dad hand feed a
13:49
pancake to a two year old this weekend who could clearly use a
13:52
fork and had absolutely no problem I was flat casted. He
13:56
made them waffles and pancakes because they couldn't decide
13:59
which one they wanted, and they got both. Do you know what would
14:03
have happened if I asked my dad growing up for to make me two
14:06
breakfasts? I would have had zero. That's how that math
14:10
works. So who your parents become once they are
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grandparents, is completely opposite. But how fun is it to
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meet the brand new people that show up, and they're really just
14:19
hoping that you get to do all the hard stuff. You get to do
14:23
all the disciplining. And so we see this a lot of times where,
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you know, my mom cut the two year old, and there were two
14:30
four year olds, and the two four year olds were trying to show
14:33
the two year old how to use skin work. And my mom is a nervous
14:37
wreck. She is just out, and she's watching. She's like, Oh,
14:40
I don't know. I don't know. I don't know, you know. And she's
14:44
just fretting over them potentially getting hurt. And I
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had to stop her. I said, Stop, let them kind of figure it out.
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They're not in life threatening danger, they're in skin your
14:54
knee danger, and they're not going down a hill. They're going
14:58
four or five feet, they need to kind of problem solve this
15:01
together. And when they did fall a couple of times. Do you know
15:05
what they taught the two year old? They taught the two year
15:08
old to sit on his knees on the skateboard and use his hands
15:12
instead of his feet, until he learned the balance, and then he
15:15
got on his knees and rose up a little bit, and then as the day
15:19
progressed, he ended up being on his feet. But we don't allow
15:23
ourselves to explore and to fail and to learn. Now I'm not saying
15:26
put your kids in life threatening situations, but I am
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saying, for the young people in your life, give them the gosh
15:33
darn opportunity to figure things out for themselves. It
15:36
doesn't have to be the right answer. You could come in later
15:40
and give them different information, but give them the
15:43
opportunity to exercise that brain and become problem solvers
15:46
and become people that help other people. Because you
15:50
recognize a problem and you want to collaboratively solve it
15:53
together, that's what should happen. So now you're probably
15:57
asking yourself, Jamie, how does this correlate to mean losing
16:00
clients or not losing clients. All right, let me tie it back.
16:04
We got to have those foundational basics. We have to
16:07
have the knowledge that how we show up to do anything is how we
16:10
will go on in life. To do everything, we have to be
16:13
collaborative problem solvers. We have to get our group
16:17
together, and then also we have to check our freaking ghost. We
16:20
cannot allow our confidence to interrupt somebody else's
16:23
expertise on subject. So in our office of two, and I used to
16:27
lament doing this. I dreaded doing this when I was a young
16:30
professional. Is every morning because, you know, this is the
16:34
internet's around, but it's not as robust as everything is
16:37
today. And so every single morning, we would have an
16:40
8:15am, meeting, and every employee at my parents firm
16:43
would gather in the conference room, and we would have to go
16:47
through a list of who called in to the office and what came in
16:51
the mail and what interaction happened with the client from
16:54
the day before. And I couldn't stand these meetings. I found
16:57
them incredibly dull. Of why? Why do we need to know who
17:01
called in? Why do we have to know what came in the mail every
17:04
single opportunity? If so and so is doing their job and they're
17:08
taking care of it, but my dad was religious. He wanted to hear
17:12
the pulse. He wanted to hear the tick of who was contacting the
17:15
office. Now, why did he want to know that well, because clients
17:19
are how we make a living, and how we make a living is how we
17:22
afford our personnel paychecks. And he was the sole steward in
17:26
the office of that we had multiple reps, but he was the
17:29
biggest income earner. He was a lion share. It was his income
17:33
that was providing payroll for everybody else at that firm. And
17:36
so he needed to always know if we were on the verge of a client
17:40
leaving, or if we just settle up and do something differently
17:44
with a client. And as you become a financial advisors, if you
17:47
have been in the business for 15 or more years, you know, you
17:51
know that when a client calls in with a certain type of question,
17:55
where that question is leading to, and it's only so many
17:58
categories. And so, for example, today, you know, we had an
18:01
advisor end up losing a client, and it was based on in, you
18:05
know, six months ago, and they asked about the wrap fees. What
18:08
does this include? What does it not include? What are the
18:12
trading fees? Where does this go to etc. And so they asked all of
18:15
those type of questions. So if you're an advisor out there,
18:19
you've been around 15 or more years, you know that when a
18:22
client is asking about wrap fees, what are they really
18:25
saying to themselves, am I getting what I'm paying for. Am
18:29
I getting what I am paying for? Because our fees are expensive,
18:32
but our value is unprecedented. And so they said, you know, the
18:36
protege advisor says, Hey, could you help me out? I'm not sure
18:40
how to respond. How do I navigate this situation? You
18:43
know? Etc. I said, Yeah, absolutely. So I start digging
18:46
through the file, and I start looking at this, and I see, in
18:49
October, they emailed into a service person in our
18:52
organization asking about fees, and then I see that the advisor
18:56
recorded a video and answered their questions and sent it to
18:59
them. Should you ever record a video and send it to somebody
19:03
who's asking about fees, or should you pick up the bloody
19:06
phone and call the client? You should pick up the bloody phone
19:10
and call the client, because then you're live, you're
19:13
responsive, you're going over, and you're addressing any of the
19:17
other questions that they might have at the time. And then as it
19:20
progressed, I'm seeing that the client called in a couple of
19:24
other times regarding their RMDs, and they had a little bit
19:27
of a tax withholding situation. The client was confused. They
19:31
had a big tax bill the year before, prior to working with
19:34
us, they wanted to avoid doing that again this year, and the
19:38
financial plan was set up beautifully so that they
19:41
wouldn't, you know at the end of the season, that's great. But as
19:44
I'm reviewing the communication between email and phone calls, I
19:48
see the two phone calls coming into the office. I see the two
19:52
emails going back and forth with the operations person answering
19:55
the client's questions. But here's where I think it broke
19:59
down is the advisor is thinking, Oh, this is handled. The client
20:02
had a question, and our operations team handled it,
20:05
answered the question, and we move on. Now, is that always the
20:09
case with the clients? No, no, it is not. Sometimes there's
20:12
some fundamental concept that they are missing and not
20:16
connecting the dots. And so sometimes, even though every
20:19
normal operations person gave the client was 100% polite, it
20:22
was accurate, it was concise, it was exactly what the client
20:26
needed, but it's not what the client wanted. What the client
20:29
was wanting was to understand the concept of RMDs and why we
20:33
were making the decisions that we made on the withholdings.
20:36
This is where the financial advisor should have picked up
20:40
the phone and had a 10 minute conversation, because it would
20:43
have given them an instant home run, an instant home run. This
20:47
is the rule of two if a client asks two times we pick up the
20:50
phone and we call them, something is not connecting. And
20:53
so often I see an email volume back and forth between clients
20:57
asking questions, us giving answers. And then it may be
21:00
maybe weeks or months go by, and then the client finds the thread
21:04
and asks that a question, and they're like, oh, no, probably,
21:07
you probably forgot the answer here. And then we just this back
21:11
and forth, copy paste of I already asked that, or did I
21:14
already answer the question? But did you really question the
21:18
underlying question that the client has? Seldom are questions
21:21
black and white. They are far more complex. They are far more
21:25
complex, and we have to really practice and utilize the art of
21:29
getting clients to extract what they're really concerned about.
21:32
Was it really a concern about wrap these? No, no, it was not.
21:36
It was I'm paying for this, but I'm not getting the level of
21:39
service that I thought I was going to get, and client type
21:43
financial advisors, it is for our knowledge, our expertise,
21:46
and also our ability to offer concierge level service. Because
21:50
guess what? Most people all of this by themselves. They can
21:53
This isn't rocket science. It's not surgery. Most people buy a
21:57
home, get an automobile, get their jobs, negotiate, pay their
22:00
regular bills, and they do it all without a financial advisor,
22:04
so they are competent in the way money moves, but what they are
22:08
looking for is somebody in their corner giving them expert advice
22:11
about the things they know about the complex topics they don't
22:15
understand, Social Security, Medicare, tax any how do I move
22:18
my shy 1k once I retire? How do I do Roth conversions. These are
22:22
the things that intimidate them. It is their fears we are for. We
22:26
are solving to eliminate their fears eventually success by
22:29
providing them with expert advice. That is what we are
22:32
doing. It speaks nothing to the fact that the person can or
22:36
cannot figure this stuff out for themselves. We assume everybody
22:40
possibly could, but they have come to us for some concierge
22:43
level of service. I can stay at a Motel Six and get the very
22:46
same tangible items, a bed, a shower and a toilet, but my God,
22:50
if I don't love a Ritz Carlton, if I don't love that, the
22:53
Bellman makes conversation with me, and by the time he gets down
22:57
to do his reporting, a concierge person is saying, Michelle
23:01
Lansky, understand that you're only in Boston for two nights.
23:04
The wicked is completely sold out. But did you know Kevin Hart
23:08
was here? Can I orchestrate getting some tickets for you? If
23:11
that appeals to your sense of humor? Those are the experiences
23:15
I'm paying for somebody else anticipating my needs and making
23:18
sure that I'm taken care of. And when it comes to financial
23:22
planning, that is what we are doing. That is what we are
23:25
doing. We are taking care of our clients and making sure that
23:29
they have somebody advocating for their financial success and
23:32
pointing out potential pitfalls and perils that might appear in
23:36
their future. That is what we must be committed to doing. And
23:39
so if we are so detached from our clients, and we are so
23:43
dependent on other people operating and taking care of
23:46
what is considered, you know, the the administrative task,
23:49
quote, unquote, of that client relationship, then we are
23:52
missing the bigger connection. And so we go right on back to
23:56
the 8:15am, meeting. There's a reason my father wanted that
23:59
meeting. There's a reason he would pick up the phone and he
24:03
would call the client randomly if he noticed there was a volley
24:06
back and forth. And it's kind of like when you call at your
24:10
doctor's office, that nurse practitioner is probably the one
24:13
running the show. Might be the doctor's name on the door, but
24:17
you, you and I both know there's a practice administrator or
24:20
nurse practitioner that is running every faucet of that
24:24
business, but you know what? Who do we feel more gratified by the
24:27
doctor calling us or the nurse practitioner? It just is what it
24:31
is. There's a hierarchy in an organization, in our operations
24:35
team, our relationship management team, they did
24:37
everything right. They did everything right. They called
24:41
the client back immediately. They got the client all of the
24:44
information, but the advisor was never made aware. That's not
24:48
true. They were made aware they didn't understand the underlying
24:51
question, and they didn't know how to turn it into a home run
24:55
for themselves. And at sometimes that's just about picking up the
24:59
bloody phone. And that doesn't mean that we're doing a full
25:02
client appointment. That doesn't mean we're deviating from our
25:06
search schedule. That doesn't mean we're breaking processes,
25:09
but it does mean that we are becoming acutely attuned to what
25:13
the real questions are, how to answer them, and how to make
25:16
sure we continue to deliver massive value to people. TPR
25:20
nation, when we preach about this, we talk about, you know,
25:23
The Perfect RIA and what we are. This is the pursuit of
25:26
perfection. This is about us getting better and better and
25:30
better and going back and looking at the lessons that we
25:33
shrugged off because our confidence outweighed somebody
25:36
else's expertise, the 8:15am meeting, and looking about why
25:39
it worked and what we needed to change. Now. Do I think we need
25:43
to go back to a daily 815, meeting. No, not at all.
25:46
Absolutely not. In fact, my baby brother, Micah and I, we
25:49
designed the Infinity CRM. So this is our CRM. That is the
25:53
brain trust of our organization. And one of the very first things
25:57
is, when you log in, you have your dashboard, and your
26:00
dashboard has all these widgets. And my dad, you know, as he's
26:03
coming around, adapting to this new technology, he just couldn't
26:07
quickly see what clients had called in. So what was the very
26:11
first widget we put on his dashboard? We put in on all the
26:14
incoming calls. And guess what? He loves to check. He'll just
26:17
log in and see who called, and if something kind of pops up
26:21
like, oh, that client doesn't normally call in between
26:24
meetings, then he'll go check the notes, and he can kind of
26:27
sniff around and see what's happening. What's happening. And
26:31
that is the level of, you know, trust but verify that we should
26:35
be attending with our clients. That doesn't mean habitually,
26:38
we're calling every single client every single day, but it
26:42
does mean we're asking curious questions, how is this handled?
26:45
What happened? What is the Rule of Two? Did it go back and
26:49
forth? And the reason that I don't you know this is kind of
26:52
hard, because the advisor I was working with, he said, shows
26:55
this has become a running agenda with the RM and the ops team.
26:59
And I said, No, I think she meet with them one time a week, and
27:03
you should get these pulse points for these different
27:06
clients, because you're going to hear two different things, and
27:09
when they're together, those things are going to correlate
27:13
the RMS in our office, our relationship managers are
27:16
responsible for the relationship with the client. For the most
27:19
part of the year, they have the most interactions with the
27:23
client. They do not offer financial advice. They cannot do
27:26
that part. But this is book appointments, change of address.
27:30
Can you help me get this form? Follow up with the state
27:33
planning attorneys, get my taxes over to you. They do all of
27:36
these logistical, administrative things with the client, and
27:40
therefore are on the phone more often with the client than
27:43
anyone else in the office. Now operations team, they are
27:47
responsible for the movement of money, so they will have those
27:50
meeting clients go logistics. They cannot offer advice in our
27:54
office. Some we're not. But as a whole, they don't offer the
27:57
financial advisors responsibility, and they will go
28:00
over six of paperwork. Financial Advisors in our office don't
28:04
fill out paperwork. Why bad at it? People bad at filling out
28:07
paperwork? Because you got 100 sheets of paper in front of you,
28:11
you've gathered four signatures, and you're like, yeah, it's
28:14
enough. It's enough. You sign to Let's go. And so we put our
28:18
service team members with them, so that way the service team
28:21
member can go through every single part of it and make sure
28:25
and make sure that we get every i dotted and every T crossed, I
28:28
will get bored filling out paperwork. I'm not capable of
28:32
doing it. Just know that I'm gonna get bored doing it. I'm
28:35
gonna want to rush along Pro Tip one that at first I thought was
28:39
being chauvinistic, and then when I ran and really built my
28:42
mind to it is freaking genius. But my brother said, hey, you
28:46
know, I want all of the women's paperwork find in pink, and all
28:49
the men's paperwork fogged in blue. And when we do this with
28:53
clients, and it doesn't really care about what kind of gender
28:56
organization is their relationship, it works
28:59
beautifully. And pink client B is blue Next, because people
29:02
identify people. Our office, if you're not doing it, do it. Do
29:06
it immediately. It is genius. Now you can do like I did and
29:10
try to fight. Why do we do yellow and green? Why don't we
29:13
do non gender specific? That's just a stupid argument over it.
29:16
That's just your confidence interrupt the pink and blue
29:20
thing works. People identify it, and you move on next. And as I
29:23
learned from one of my clients, she said that it wasn't until
29:27
the late 1950s that pink became a girl's color. It was always a
29:31
boy's color. It was always the color of young men. And so a lot
29:34
of times in royal paintings and things, anything that is rose
29:38
color or purple or pinks were given to the males in the family
29:41
because they were the most sought after and uncommon colors
29:45
and dyes that you could find. So there you go. There's gender
29:48
equality for you. So we have a lot of people in our office that
29:52
interact and talk with the client, but it's not always the
29:55
financial advisor, and for the most part, that works. That
29:59
works 98% of the time. But then you get into this 2% category,
30:02
and you really have to pay attention to what's happening
30:06
with your clients. Now, if somebody's going to leave over
30:09
fees? Are they going to leave no matter what you do? Maybe,
30:12
probably, that's really hard to say. But you know what would
30:16
have happened had the financial advisor picked up the phone and
30:20
just called and say, Hey, listen, I know RMDs are new for
30:23
you guys. You know, it's kind of a weird concept, especially over
30:27
the last couple of years. And laws have changed. And so, you
30:30
know, it used to be 70 and a half. And a half and 72 and 73
30:34
and who knows, pretty soon it could be 8578 and you have this
30:37
kind of conversation, have, you know, meeting, but say, hey, I
30:41
really wanted to address the main problem that we were
30:44
solving for, which was the tax liabilities that you had in the
30:47
last year. So here's how we're going to structure things, and
30:51
had they had the opportunity, this would have been a 10 minute
30:55
conversation, and would have set them up for an absolute home
30:58
run, because seldom about the fees, sometimes it is, but it's
31:02
about value and connection. And when you don't show value and
31:05
when you're not connecting with your clients, you're going to
31:09
lose them, because there's always going to be somebody else
31:12
who's willing to do those things at a cheaper cost. Now, how did
31:16
we send this client off? We thank them for the opportunity
31:19
of working with them. We pointed out a couple of things that were
31:23
not done in the financial plan. And by the way, the client said,
31:27
You guys have done an exceptional job the best
31:30
financial planning that we ever had. The expenses are too high.
31:33
We're just going to move on. And they already found another
31:37
advisor. They already went through this process. And so
31:40
when we talk to them about it, we say, great, you know what?
31:43
This last year, we spent a lot of time kind of cleaning up a
31:47
lot of the beneficiaries. Please make sure when your accounts
31:50
transfer, that we don't disinherit your two children,
31:53
because there's a little oddity happening in the way that
31:57
they're disbursing funds upon their death, and we want to make
32:00
sure it ties into your estate planning. And then please keep
32:04
us in mind in the future, if you find that Mr. Financial Advisor
32:08
over here does not provide the same value later and you need
32:11
some additional advice, we will be here for you. And then we
32:15
exit graciously. We thank them for the opportunity. We point
32:18
out things so we can deliver value one more time that they
32:21
didn't have completed, or that we were worried about when they
32:25
transferred accounts, and then we poised ourselves so that in
32:29
the future, if they ever need somebody else to work with, we
32:32
would be honored to work with them again. Not all goodbyes
32:36
have to be bad goodbyes. It doesn't have to be a fu, well, I
32:39
didn't want to work with you anyway, but could this have been
32:43
avoided? Probably, I really think so. Had we escalated
32:46
things using that rule of two, had we had those weekly check
32:49
ins with our team, and had we had the courage to pick up the
32:53
phone and have that conversation with the client instead of
32:56
recording a video and thinking that we're addressing things?
33:00
Yeah, I think it could have been avoided. I think we could have
33:03
salvaged that relationship. Now, here's what I do know. After I
33:07
had the debrief with the protege, and we went through the
33:10
entire file, and I said, here's what's happening, here's what's
33:14
going on, here's how I would have done something different.
33:17
Here are the things that you need to learn about. Guess what?
33:21
I think they're going to adapt that. I think that this person
33:24
is, though confident, will listen to expert advice, and
33:28
they will say, You know what, I want to do things differently.
33:31
I'm going to embrace that strategy. Thank you very much.
33:35
This is what I'm going to look at doing if you feel your
33:38
similar situations, if you feel that you're losing for clients
33:41
to go find a new advisor that they like, renegotiate fees, re
33:45
transfer accounts. I mean, this is why everyone is so
33:48
unsatisfied with their CPA, but stay for years, because they
33:52
don't want that pain of having to go find somebody else to do
33:55
it. And so if a client is going to take those steps, there were
33:59
probably moments that you could establish a relationship before
34:02
it came to that and so escalating, using that role of
34:06
two, not allowing your confidence to interrupt somebody
34:09
else's expertise, learning from your mistakes, because how you
34:12
do anything is how you will be perceived as doing everything.
34:16
Those are core values that we could take away and really,
34:19
really really change a bunch of people's lives. TPR nation. This
34:23
is Jamie Shilanski in an episode of World to Conquer. Go find
34:26
people who share your values and change the world.
34:40
Unknown: