Latest / Only Fee-Only / #145 - The Engineer’s Path to Fee-Only Planning with Andy Cole

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#145 - The Engineer’s Path to Fee-Only Planning with Andy Cole · Only Fee-Only

• 0:04
  SPEAKER_01: Hey everyone, welcome back to another episode of the Only Fee Only podcast.
• 0:09
  SPEAKER_01: Today, Peter and I are sitting down with someone whose story is a perfect example of what intentional career change looks like.
• 0:16
  SPEAKER_01: We're joined by Andy Cole, who started out as a civil engineer and eventually built a fee-only RAA from scratch, all while working full-time, raising a family, and trying to figure out how to build a business the right way.
• 0:30
  SPEAKER_01: And he talks about a simple spreadsheet he made for his dad ended up sparking an entirely new career path, what it was like running his own RAA in the early days, and why joining a larger firm ultimately gave him more freedom, not less.
• 0:44
  SPEAKER_01: He's incredibly transparent about the numbers, the challenges, and decisions that helped him go from side hustle advisor to practice bringing in around$200,000 a year with a model that actually fits the life he wants.
• 0:57
  SPEAKER_01: Whether you're thinking about becoming an advisor, launching your own RAA, or just curious about how someone makes a leap like this, Andy's story is going to resonate.
• 1:07
  SPEAKER_01: So let's jump into the conversation.
• 1:10
  SPEAKER_00: How's it going, everyone?
• 1:11
  SPEAKER_00: Welcome to another episode of the OnlyFee Only Podcast.
• 1:15
  SPEAKER_00: I'm Peter Travolo and I'm here with my co-host, Brock Buckles.
• 1:19
  SPEAKER_00: And today we're so excited to have Andy Kolon from Fiduciary Financial Advisors.
• 1:24
  SPEAKER_00: Really excited to have him on today, share his story.
• 1:27
  SPEAKER_00: He's a career changer, and also he's a previous owner and now is integrated into a huge, large firm, and really happy to have him on and share his story.
• 1:37
  SPEAKER_00: So, Andy, welcome to the show.
• 1:40
  SPEAKER_02: Great to be here.
• 1:40
  SPEAKER_02: Thank you so much for having me.
• 1:42
  SPEAKER_00: Yes, you bet.
• 1:43
  SPEAKER_00: So for those who don't know who you are, do you want to give a quick background of where you're currently at and who you're helping?
• 1:50
  SPEAKER_02: Sure.
• 1:50
  SPEAKER_02: Um I guess background first.
• 1:53
  SPEAKER_02: So um grew up in Florida, got a degree from University of Florida in civil engineering, got a job as a civil engineer in uh Dallas, Texas, and was doing a lot of water and wastewater type design work.
• 2:08
  SPEAKER_02: Um and then, I don't know, maybe five years into my career, started to get really passionate about investing and did a lot of uh investment research for my own, you know, personal assets.
• 2:23
  SPEAKER_02: And then somewhere along the way, my my dad started to notice my interest and started asking me questions about his finances and um kind of discovered this, I guess, combination of my passion for the subject matter and my passion for helping other people with their finances.
• 2:41
  SPEAKER_02: And so somewhere around maybe 2017, 2018, decided that I wanted to make a career switch and kind of looked at the landscape of the financial advisory world and determined that I wanted to go uh fee only and provide people with advice and not necessarily, you know, sell them anything, or specifically not sell them anything.
• 3:05
  SPEAKER_02: Um, and at the time I thought that the only option for me was to start my own RIA because my wife was home with our girls at the time.
• 3:14
  SPEAKER_02: We had two young daughters and she wasn't working.
• 3:17
  SPEAKER_02: And so it was just my income, which at that point as an engineer was a little north of$100,000.
• 3:23
  SPEAKER_02: And so it's like I don't want to step away from that and go start over from zero somewhere else.
• 3:27
  SPEAKER_02: So I want to, you know, become an engineer on the side at first and start to ramp it up, excuse me, become a financial advisor on the side at first to start ramp it up.
• 3:38
  SPEAKER_02: And then whenever it gets to the point of you know sustainment, pull back from engineering work or something to that effect.
• 3:48
  SPEAKER_02: And um I thought the only way I could do that was to start my own RIA.
• 3:53
  SPEAKER_02: So started my own RIA coming up on almost five years of when I got approved by the state of Alabama.
• 3:59
  SPEAKER_02: It was September of 2020.
• 4:01
  SPEAKER_02: So, you know, started it, started the process of doing all that during COVID.
• 4:05
  SPEAKER_02: Um, and then launched my own RIA, was doing that on the side while I was being an engineer full-time.
• 4:13
  SPEAKER_02: And I actually told my engineering company about it shortly after I launched the RIA because I never wanted to feel like I was having to lie to them about what I was doing.
• 4:24
  SPEAKER_02: And so I gave them a two-year window and said, okay, for two years, I'm going to still hold myself out publicly as an engineer.
• 4:33
  SPEAKER_02: I don't want to put you at a competitive disadvantage with our clients or competitors locally.
• 4:38
  SPEAKER_02: Um, but kind of in exchange for that, you know, if you could just let me start to ramp down my efforts as an engineer over time so that I can ramp up my efforts with, you know, the business.
• 4:49
  SPEAKER_02: And so they they agreed to that.
• 4:50
  SPEAKER_02: And I was in a position where I was the only water engineer in our local office.
• 4:55
  SPEAKER_02: And so I knew that I had some, for lack of a better term, leverage.
• 5:00
  SPEAKER_02: Like I knew that they needed me, but I needed them as well.
• 5:02
  SPEAKER_02: So it was a very mutually beneficial, I guess, uh relationship there.
• 5:09
  SPEAKER_02: I I yeah.
• 5:10
  SPEAKER_02: And then so after that two-year period, I was still working maybe halftime as an engineer, and my wife had gone back to teaching.
• 5:18
  SPEAKER_02: And I I'd started to realize that there were so many tasks associated with owning your own RIA, all this back office work that wasn't enjoyable.
• 5:31
  SPEAKER_02: It's like I left engineering to pursue this new career path out of a passion for the work, the financial planning, the investment management.
• 5:41
  SPEAKER_02: But so much of my time is spent doing paperwork or invoicing or compliance documentation, all these tasks that drag down this fulfillment.
• 5:52
  SPEAKER_02: And so um around that same time, I was getting ready to go to the XY Planning Network, or somewhere along that way, I joined XY Planning Network and I was going to their Denver conference, which I actually met you guys there for the first time in person.
• 6:07
  SPEAKER_02: Yep.
• 6:07
  SPEAKER_02: Um, and prior to the conference, uh fiduciary financial advisors had kind of let it be known that they were going to be there, and if anybody wanted to talk to them, to let them know.
• 6:18
  SPEAKER_02: And so I looked up what they were all about and discovered really for the first time that this corporate RIA model existed where I could plug into them for their back office support for them doing the paperwork, all the compliance documentation, but still retain all of my autonomy.
• 6:35
  SPEAKER_02: You know, as long as I'm doing compliant things, you know, they can't tell me who to work with, how to work with them, how fast I have to grow.
• 6:44
  SPEAKER_02: You can basically be your own business owner still, but get the support that you need.
• 6:49
  SPEAKER_02: Whereas, you know, as I was starting to realize that there were so many tasks I didn't enjoy doing, I started to price out like, well, what if I could outsource compliance or outsource admin?
• 7:00
  SPEAKER_02: What would that look like?
• 7:01
  SPEAKER_02: And the cost of doing it was especially like the compliance part of it, you can't really outsource being a chief investment officer unless you completely like you're still the chief, you can outsource some compliance tasks, but you can't outsource that entirely to where it's completely off your plate.
• 7:19
  SPEAKER_02: And so when I priced all of that out compared to just joining fiduciary, it was a no-brainer for me.
• 7:26
  SPEAKER_02: So after meeting them at the conference and talking to them about everything, I I quickly decided to join.
• 7:33
  SPEAKER_02: And this was right around the time where my two-year commitment to the engineering company was ending.
• 7:39
  SPEAKER_02: And so in like January of 2023 is when I flipped over to joining them and went public with being an advisor.
• 7:49
  SPEAKER_02: So I've been with uh fiduciary now for I guess two and a half years, um, and been holding myself out publicly as a financial advisor for two and a half years, even though I was doing it for a couple of years prior to that.
• 8:00
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, man.
• 8:01
  SPEAKER_01: Very cool.
• 8:02
  SPEAKER_01: And I see I know that you went to University of Florida and you were there at a pretty exciting time, man, weren't you?
• 8:10
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 8:12
  SPEAKER_02: Go ahead.
• 8:13
  SPEAKER_01: I was gonna say, do you know Kyle Newell?
• 8:17
  SPEAKER_02: Don't think so.
• 8:18
  SPEAKER_01: Okay.
• 8:19
  SPEAKER_01: You get he's another financial advisor that we work with, and he was there at the same time, and he was actually on the football team there.
• 8:24
  SPEAKER_01: So yeah, he's an XY advisor and everything.
• 8:28
  SPEAKER_01: So I was like, I wondered if you guys had the connection, but that was an exciting time to be at Florida for sure.
• 8:33
  SPEAKER_01: Absolutely.
• 8:35
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 8:35
  SPEAKER_01: So when you were there, man, so like you go to Florida, you know, you you get your master in engineering, like you're going down this path, right?
• 8:43
  SPEAKER_01: To kind of take us back a little bit.
• 8:45
  SPEAKER_01: And you decide, okay, I had this interest in finance.
• 8:49
  SPEAKER_01: What was it?
• 8:50
  SPEAKER_01: I know that you said you kind of like start helping your dad a little bit, but what was it where you're like, wait, I know I've gone down this engineering path for so long, but I think I want to do something else because that is a big commitment.
• 9:05
  SPEAKER_01: It's a big step, especially when you were as invested as you were in the engineering.
• 9:10
  SPEAKER_01: So, what was the final like flipping or tipping point for you to actually start pursuing being an advisor?
• 9:17
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
• 9:17
  SPEAKER_02: Um this will maybe get a little bit in the weeds, but um it was it was investing specifically, it wasn't the financial planning aspect.
• 9:28
  SPEAKER_02: So I think it was around 2017 I was doing a lot of research around efficiency of return.
• 9:35
  SPEAKER_02: And if I'm gonna put my money at risk over a certain amount of time, how can I get the most return for that amount of risk?
• 9:40
  SPEAKER_02: Or how can I improve the probability of a good outcome?
• 9:44
  SPEAKER_02: And so, like on one hand, you could just stick it in stocks and let it ride, and you have a certain, you know, potential return and variability of outcome based on standard deviation, and you can run like the Monte Carlo simulation to determine, you know, if I do this over over a 20-year period or 30-year period, if I do it a thousand times, what are the all all the different ranges of outcome I could have?
• 10:06
  SPEAKER_02: Um, and for me, or anyway, so I was kind of in the process of doing some of that research for my own investing.
• 10:14
  SPEAKER_02: And at the same time, my dad had me look at his 401k options.
• 10:17
  SPEAKER_02: I made the spreadsheet of you know all the funds that he had access to and just the annual return of every year for each fund.
• 10:26
  SPEAKER_02: And I only looked at the funds that went past like 2008 to see what it did during the great financial crisis.
• 10:31
  SPEAKER_02: And then I took an average return of each of those funds, and then I also looked at the standard deviation of each fund.
• 10:37
  SPEAKER_02: And this was before I even knew what Sharp ratio was.
• 10:41
  SPEAKER_02: I was just kind of thinking about it like an engineer.
• 10:43
  SPEAKER_02: Like if my investment vehicle is like an engine, and I want that engine to operate efficiently, then I'm basically putting in standard deviation, I'm putting in volatility and I'm getting out return.
• 10:55
  SPEAKER_02: And so I just did a simple uh ratio of return divided by standard deviation on each of these funds that he had access to.
• 11:03
  SPEAKER_02: Some of the funds were stock funds, some of the funds were bond funds, and then some of the funds were blended funds, you know, or balanced funds or whatever, stock and bond.
• 11:12
  SPEAKER_02: And what I noticed is that the balanced funds had a higher efficiency of return because of diversification, right?
• 11:20
  SPEAKER_02: Um, and so it got me thinking about like at the same time, I'm analyzing this for my dad, I'm also kind of analyzing this for my own personal life.
• 11:29
  SPEAKER_02: It's like, what if I could, I've got a 30-year time horizon personally, and I could just put it in stocks, but just putting it in stocks is less efficient because of the lack of diversification.
• 11:40
  SPEAKER_02: Well, what if I could take a more balanced approach and own stocks and bonds, but then lever it up somehow so that it has a similar risk as just being 100% stocks, but I've maybe captured some of that diversification benefit because I'm still diversified and levering it up.
• 11:58
  SPEAKER_02: So I started to do a lot of research around this idea of levering a balanced fund.
• 12:03
  SPEAKER_02: And I came across all these white papers about risk parity.
• 12:07
  SPEAKER_02: So, like Ray Dalio, for instance, the all-weather portfolio or Bridgewater, um, which is his hedge fund.
• 12:15
  SPEAKER_02: Um, and I I found this concept of risk parity, did a whole bunch of research on it, started implementing the concepts myself, and thought there are hedge funds out here doing risk parity type things, but I don't know of any fee-only RIA that exists to help uh you know a middle income family implement these types of concepts.
• 12:40
  SPEAKER_02: But what if I created an RIA that specifically did that for people?
• 12:44
  SPEAKER_02: And so that was kind of the maybe the Eureka moment or the aha moment of here's this business I could build that I don't think really exists yet.
• 12:53
  SPEAKER_02: Um, because there's plenty of RIAs out there.
• 12:56
  SPEAKER_02: There are, you know, uh advisors offering risk parity-style investing, but more for like ultra-high net worth or hedge fund space.
• 13:04
  SPEAKER_02: Like that's the thing I want to build.
• 13:05
  SPEAKER_02: And so that's when I decided I'm gonna launch an RIA.
• 13:08
  SPEAKER_02: And at this point in time, like if you knew me, if you were a coworker of mine, I probably talked your ear off about investing, you know, several times a week because like this was I I had discovered my true passion in life.
• 13:21
  SPEAKER_00: You were a man on you were a man on a mission.
• 13:24
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, passion is what you know guides it.
• 13:26
  SPEAKER_00: That's so cool.
• 13:28
  SPEAKER_00: So, you know, Brock and I, we started as Northwestern mutual interns.
• 13:32
  SPEAKER_00: So to hear that you just jumped right into fee-only space, two thumbs up for you.
• 13:37
  SPEAKER_00: Um when's the first time that you heard of even the term like fee only?
• 13:42
  SPEAKER_00: You know, for most people, they somehow stumbled upon kitsis once upon a time.
• 13:46
  SPEAKER_00: What's your story?
• 13:48
  SPEAKER_02: I really don't know.
• 13:50
  SPEAKER_02: Um I think a lot of engineers as customers or potential clients, like they're pretty savvy to the idea of not paying people fees that are unnecessary.
• 14:04
  SPEAKER_02: And so I I was never gonna be like a financial advisory client of somebody else.
• 14:09
  SPEAKER_02: I was a DIY person.
• 14:11
  SPEAKER_02: So a lot of DIY investors already know about you know commissions or you know, not paying fees.
• 14:20
  SPEAKER_02: And I was a part of like the Bogleheads community a bit as well.
• 14:24
  SPEAKER_02: And so I'm sure I got exposed to it at some point.
• 14:27
  SPEAKER_02: But then I would I started to become very aware of it when I set out to launch my business and said, okay, here's the here's the thing I'm wanting to offer the world.
• 14:36
  SPEAKER_02: What is the best vehicle to use to offer that service?
• 14:39
  SPEAKER_02: And so I quickly realized that you know, a fee-only RIA was the only logical step for me.
• 14:47
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, yeah, for sure.
• 14:49
  SPEAKER_01: So we jump into the fee-only world, right?
• 14:51
  SPEAKER_01: Like you're starting your RIA, and you how how was the how was the beginning of it?
• 14:57
  SPEAKER_01: Because obviously we know eventually you transitioned to fiduciary, but what was kind of like that ramp-up process like for you?
• 15:03
  SPEAKER_01: Because I think that's something that's interesting to a lot of people to hear about.
• 15:07
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, I mean, I I very much not shot myself in the foot, but I put a huge hurdle in my way by not holding myself out publicly as an advisor or committing to not do that.
• 15:20
  SPEAKER_02: And so early on, my marketing was very restrictive, but it was a self-restriction.
• 15:29
  SPEAKER_02: Um, and so talking to friends and family about what I was up to, seeing if they needed any help with anything.
• 15:36
  SPEAKER_02: Um, early on, I I really set out to help people manage their money and wasn't really planning on doing financial planning, but I quickly realized that people like how to invest dollars is like seventh or eighth on the priority list for most people.
• 15:53
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
• 15:54
  SPEAKER_02: You know, how should how much should I be saving?
• 15:56
  SPEAKER_02: Like, do I have the right insurance in place?
• 15:58
  SPEAKER_02: How can I reduce taxes?
• 15:59
  SPEAKER_02: Like, these are all the questions that are more important than my asset allocation.
• 16:04
  SPEAKER_02: I think a lot of people take asset allocation as um a given, like, or it's it's so uh commoditized at this point.
• 16:13
  SPEAKER_02: It's like, oh, I've got the 401k in the the target date fund and I'm holding you know low-cost index funds in my taxable account.
• 16:20
  SPEAKER_02: Like I don't need to do anything there.
• 16:22
  SPEAKER_02: I'm coming to you for financial planning advice, not really investment advice.
• 16:26
  SPEAKER_02: And so when I realized that, I pivoted pretty quickly to make sure that I knew what I was talking about with financial planning.
• 16:35
  SPEAKER_02: And that's when I joined XY Planning Network, because I said, okay, I need to make sure that I'm around other advisors that I can learn from, make sure that I know what I'm doing with all the financial planning stuff.
• 16:46
  SPEAKER_02: And so that's when I joined XY to you know make sure I had access to those resources and had a community of advisors I could tap into if I had financial planning questions.
• 16:57
  SPEAKER_02: Um and so uh yeah, sorry.
• 17:02
  SPEAKER_02: I don't know if that fully answered the question.
• 17:05
  SPEAKER_01: No, I thought that I thought that was good, man.
• 17:07
  SPEAKER_01: I thought it was good.
• 17:08
  SPEAKER_00: Pete, did you have something?
• 17:10
  SPEAKER_00: No, I was just gonna say, so like at what phase and like how many clients were you at where you realize, hey, this is unsustainable to be, you know, master of all uh trying to run everything in the RIA.
• 17:22
  SPEAKER_02: Yep.
• 17:23
  SPEAKER_02: So I think when I joined uh fiduciary, I probably had I don't know, 10 clients and 30,000 or 40,000 in revenue, maybe 15 clients.
• 17:34
  SPEAKER_02: Um maybe five of those clients were friends or family where I'm just managing an account for them, but they don't they didn't ask me to do like deeper financial planning.
• 17:42
  SPEAKER_02: And then I had another 10 or 12 clients where I was doing more comprehensive work.
• 17:47
  SPEAKER_02: Um and so uh so that's when I joined fiduciary, it was at that point.
• 18:27
  SPEAKER_01: Okay.
• 18:27
  SPEAKER_01: So when when you did that, man, what was like the you how did the was it like an immediate sense of relief?
• 18:34
  SPEAKER_01: Was it like, ah, I've got the yeah, I've got the monkey off my back in terms of like I would I felt like I was dazed and confused and like had all these things going on, and I didn't I wasn't sure how I was gonna move forward.
• 18:46
  SPEAKER_01: Did it feel like kind of like a saving grace in a way to find a solution that was gonna be all-encompassing as far as the back office goes and allow you to just be awesome at what you do?
• 18:57
  SPEAKER_02: It was definitely a huge monkey off my back.
• 19:00
  SPEAKER_02: I wouldn't say that it changed my trajectory.
• 19:03
  SPEAKER_02: Like my overall business plan is really still the same as what it was beforehand.
• 19:07
  SPEAKER_02: I always intended to try to offer a certain set of services and market it towards engineers.
• 19:15
  SPEAKER_02: Um, but then by joining fiduciary, it yeah, it took a lot of tasks off of my plate and allowed me to put so much more time into trying to get clients.
• 19:29
  SPEAKER_02: And I think early on you only have so long of a financial runway when you're starting up a business, right?
• 19:37
  SPEAKER_02: Now, if you have a spouse that works and like you can live off of just their income, then maybe your financial runway is much, much longer.
• 19:44
  SPEAKER_02: In our case, it was very finite.
• 19:46
  SPEAKER_02: Like either this is going to work or I need to go back to engineering.
• 19:50
  unknown: Sure.
• 19:50
  SPEAKER_02: Or I need to go join another firm and just be an employee.
• 19:54
  SPEAKER_02: Um, and so by being able to join fiduciary and then not have to worry about spending, you know, a certain number of 10 plus hours per week on running the business, I can take that time and put it into connecting with people on LinkedIn, putting out LinkedIn content, sending messages to people.
• 20:13
  SPEAKER_02: Um, I I think that that allowed me to grow at a faster clip than I otherwise would have if I had all this other stuff on my plate.
• 20:23
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
• 20:23
  unknown: Yeah.
• 20:24
  unknown: Yeah.
• 20:25
  SPEAKER_00: So where do we see it going from here?
• 20:26
  SPEAKER_00: What are some goals?
• 20:28
  SPEAKER_00: Um, you know, do you see, you know, and then also like what's kind of the Structure at fiduciary, right?
• 20:34
  SPEAKER_00: Like, do you eventually bring on an admin or you know, like what's your goal and what's the trajectory look like?
• 20:39
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
• 20:40
  SPEAKER_02: So at this point, I would say I have survived the startup phase.
• 20:44
  SPEAKER_02: My my income uh is back to a little bit north of what I was making as an engineer.
• 20:53
  SPEAKER_02: And so I can be, thank you.
• 20:56
  SPEAKER_02: Yes.
• 20:56
  SPEAKER_02: And that's that's my my payout, right?
• 20:59
  SPEAKER_02: Like I bring in a certain amount of revenue and then fiduciary pays me a percentage of that.
• 21:04
  SPEAKER_02: But once they pay me, I don't really have a whole lot of expenses.
• 21:07
  SPEAKER_02: I work from home.
• 21:08
  SPEAKER_02: I've got a couple of softwares that I like to use that maybe they don't cover.
• 21:12
  SPEAKER_02: The nice thing about them is they cover a lot of stuff, but they only cover the stuff that basically everybody's going to use.
• 21:17
  SPEAKER_02: And if there's some niche tool that you want to use, kind of a one-off thing, it's on you to cover that.
• 21:22
  SPEAKER_02: Um, but after that, like it's a pretty efficient business model.
• 21:27
  SPEAKER_02: And there, I think they keep it nice and lean, and they're able to keep their payouts sufficient as well.
• 21:35
  SPEAKER_02: Like, for instance, the the day that I joined, even though I had like only 30 or 40K in revenue, I had a 65% payout.
• 21:44
  SPEAKER_02: So I'm paying them 35% on let's say 40K in revenue.
• 21:49
  SPEAKER_02: So it's that$14,000, which is a lot.
• 21:53
  SPEAKER_02: But to get the level of support they're providing, like, where else could I get back off of support, admin support and compliance to where I don't have to do paperwork, I don't have to do invoicing, I don't have to do compliance.
• 22:03
  SPEAKER_02: Like it's well worth it, right?
• 22:05
  SPEAKER_02: And now it's at the point where now I'm um you know bumped up to 70% payout grid after you hit like$70,000, bump out to a 75% payout at um what was it, one$150, I think.
• 22:20
  SPEAKER_02: And so now I'm approaching about$200K in revenue at a 75% payout.
• 22:25
  SPEAKER_02: And so that's 150K of income for me.
• 22:29
  SPEAKER_02: Uh, and then I've got some expenses after that.
• 22:32
  SPEAKER_02: So I'm I'm kind of in and around that point at this point.
• 22:36
  SPEAKER_02: And also with fiduciary, like the payout grids continue to increase as you grow.
• 22:39
  SPEAKER_02: I think at 300 it goes up to uh 80%, and then maybe at 600, it's like 85.
• 22:45
  SPEAKER_02: So like all along the way, you can say, okay, at some point in the future, okay, if I'm at the top, I'm at 600 several years from now and I'm paying them 15%.
• 22:53
  SPEAKER_02: Well, I'm at that point, I probably have 100 plus clients and I'm fiduciary, like I'm paying fiduciary$90,000 a year for admin support for 100 clients plus compliance.
• 23:07
  SPEAKER_02: Like even at that point, if I were to consider launching my own RIA again, I would still have to pay probably more than that to outsource those things, right?
• 23:15
  SPEAKER_02: And so every step along the way still continues to make sense.
• 23:18
  SPEAKER_02: And so, Peter, to your question, if I were to hire somebody at some point in the future, I don't have to hire admin support because it's already provided.
• 23:26
  SPEAKER_02: So my first hire would be a junior advisor.
• 23:29
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
• 23:29
  SPEAKER_02: Um and, you know, I I can sustain with all the admin support I'm already getting, I could probably be at 100 clients on my own without needing a junior advisor.
• 23:40
  SPEAKER_02: Uh it's if I want to grow beyond that, that's when I need to consider hiring somebody.
• 23:45
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 23:45
  SPEAKER_00: No, that's interesting for sure.
• 23:47
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, especially when you're growing a business, right?
• 23:49
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, cash flows everything.
• 23:50
  SPEAKER_00: Um to be able to hire support, I mean, it takes overhead, it takes capital, right?
• 23:57
  SPEAKER_00: Um in all your software doubles, you know, whatever it might be.
• 24:01
  SPEAKER_00: So yeah, having a split um like that can definitely make it easier um in our types of business, no doubt.
• 24:09
  SPEAKER_00: Absolutely.
• 24:10
  SPEAKER_02: And I think early on, if I were to hire like an admin staff, how much of their time am I actually keeping them busy?
• 24:17
  SPEAKER_02: Like how much idle time do they have?
• 24:19
  SPEAKER_02: And I now if you have a lot of clients, you can keep them busy for a long time.
• 24:24
  SPEAKER_02: And I think the beauty of you know the fiduciary model is that you you're getting this benefit of scale where they hire admin support and I only need that admin for maybe 10 hours a week or whatever.
• 24:39
  SPEAKER_02: Um, and then they can take that person and use them with other advisors as well.
• 24:45
  SPEAKER_02: Um, so it's kind of like you're you're getting fractional admin support that you could otherwise maybe go hire out with some other companies that are out there, but doing it this way, you just plug in and you get it.
• 25:03
  SPEAKER_02: You don't have to manage it, I guess.
• 25:06
  SPEAKER_02: Yep.
• 25:07
  SPEAKER_00: And there's no need to recreate the wheel either, right?
• 25:10
  SPEAKER_00: Um have systems and things like that, but you can still market underneath you know, Andy Cole's personal brand.
• 25:17
  SPEAKER_00: Um, because at the end of the day, right?
• 25:18
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, your clients they're working with you, and they're working with you because they know, like, and trust you.
• 25:23
  SPEAKER_01: Um, sure.
• 25:25
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, cool.
• 25:26
  SPEAKER_01: That's good, man.
• 25:27
  SPEAKER_01: Well, hey, what's one tip that you would give to people out there listening, Andy, that are like, I think I want to be a financial planner.
• 25:35
  SPEAKER_01: I'm thinking about it.
• 25:36
  SPEAKER_01: Um, what would what's one thing that you wish you knew when you were getting into it?
• 25:40
  SPEAKER_01: As our last question for you today.
• 25:42
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
• 25:44
  SPEAKER_02: I think the one of the best pieces of advice that I got from was actually my XY Planning Network mastermind group.
• 25:51
  SPEAKER_02: So early on, I was trying to figure out how do I market my services?
• 25:55
  SPEAKER_02: Um, and they said, think about the the target client, like build this avatar for this target client and figure out what they need and what service model makes sense for them, and then build that and pursue those people like constantly, like and stick with it.
• 26:17
  SPEAKER_02: And I I think that thought process led me to build out my service model.
• 26:24
  SPEAKER_02: For instance, I have a hybrid fee schedule where I charge flat fees for financial planning and I charge like or I charge 35 basis points for investment management.
• 26:32
  SPEAKER_02: And for several engineering clients, they don't need investment management assistance.
• 26:36
  SPEAKER_02: Like I can give them recommendations on you know what asset allocation to have, and they'll go implement that.
• 26:43
  SPEAKER_02: And then therefore, they don't want to pay me AUM, they want to pay me flat fees.
• 26:48
  SPEAKER_02: And so I built that model with that target client in mind.
• 26:55
  SPEAKER_02: And then um, so yeah, that would be one thing is make sure that your offering is built around what your client needs, not built around what you think is best for you.
• 27:05
  SPEAKER_02: Um and then the other is I mean, this is really table stakes, but like you need to know your stuff, like the technical skills, right?
• 27:14
  SPEAKER_02: You need to be good at financial planning, good at investment management.
• 27:18
  SPEAKER_02: So that kind of goes without saying.
• 27:20
  SPEAKER_02: But then once you have those things in place, you have to just be incredibly consistent with whatever it is you're doing to get business.
• 27:29
  SPEAKER_02: Because if you are, you know, obviously if you're joining another firm, you don't have to worry about getting business.
• 27:35
  SPEAKER_02: But if you are either joining a corporate RA or launching your own, your success or failure isn't dependent upon you being a good advisor, it's dependent upon can you go out and win business?
• 27:47
  SPEAKER_02: And for that, there's so many different ways to go about it.
• 27:52
  SPEAKER_02: And there's no one right answer.
• 27:54
  SPEAKER_02: I think the key is to find something that works and just stick with it.
• 27:59
  SPEAKER_02: Like even if it's a marketing approach that isn't optimal, like it's not super efficient, just go up there and just keep getting the at bats.
• 28:10
  SPEAKER_02: And even if you let's say you have a marketing approach where you get in front of, you know, it gets you in front of I don't know, 50 people a week or 50 people a month, and one of those people per month wants to talk to you, and uh, or maybe two people a month want to talk to you, one becomes a client.
• 28:28
  SPEAKER_02: And then you've got another that gets you in front of a hundred people a week, and uh, you know, I don't know, five people want to talk to you and three become clients.
• 28:38
  SPEAKER_02: Like one of those is gonna maybe lead to better results than the other.
• 28:43
  SPEAKER_02: But if you haven't found that other one that's more efficient yet, and you've got something that's working on the front end, don't worry about increasing the efficiency of the marketing strategy.
• 28:52
  SPEAKER_02: Just worry about increasing the bats.
• 28:55
  SPEAKER_02: So instead of doing 50 a month, figure out a way to do 200 a month.
• 29:00
  SPEAKER_02: And it will still maybe result in you know more conversations, or excuse me, it might not result in as many conversations as a more efficient strategy, but it will result in more conversations than just you know, Twitter, you know, churning out a bunch of effort to try to optimize marketing when you could just be going to market with a less efficient marketing strategy.
• 29:26
  SPEAKER_02: I don't know if that all made sense.
• 29:29
  SPEAKER_01: No, that that all made sense, man.
• 29:31
  SPEAKER_01: And I think that's such a good point, is like more at bats equals more opportunities.
• 29:35
  SPEAKER_01: And uh, when you get more opportunities, that translates into more revenue and the and the opportunity to serve more people.
• 29:41
  SPEAKER_01: So I I think that made perfect sense.
• 29:44
  SPEAKER_01: And um really appreciate you coming on, man.
• 29:46
  SPEAKER_01: I think you have a great story, you're doing awesome things, and you push a lot of great stuff.
• 29:51
  SPEAKER_01: So for people that want to follow along with what you're doing, where's the best place to do that?
• 29:56
  SPEAKER_02: Uh yeah, LinkedIn.
• 29:58
  SPEAKER_02: Um, Andy Cole, P E, professional engineer, is like the title on my my LinkedIn.
• 30:03
  SPEAKER_02: So you should be able to find me fairly easily.
• 30:06
  SPEAKER_02: Um yeah.
• 30:08
  SPEAKER_02: Awesome, man.
• 30:09
  SPEAKER_00: Love it.
• 30:09
  SPEAKER_00: Andy, thank you so much for your time today.
• 30:11
  SPEAKER_00: We really appreciate it.
• 30:12
  SPEAKER_02: My pleasure, guys.
• 30:13
  SPEAKER_02: Thanks for having me.
• 30:14
  SPEAKER_02: Thanks, Ben.