Latest / Financial Planner Search / Why Business and Personal Money Can't Stay Separate with Ryan Staton | Financial Planner Search

Transcript

Why Business and Personal Money Can't Stay Separate with Ryan Staton | Financial Planner Search · Financial Planner Search

• Gregory Wilnau: Ryan, thank you so much for coming on the podcast today. How are you doing? Ryan Staton: Good. Thank you for having me. Excited to be here. Gregory Wilnau: Yeah. Yeah, I'm looking forward to it. to get started, why don't you just take a moment to introduce us and tell introduce your practice to us and and what you specialize in. Ryan Staton: Sure. So my name is Ryan Staten. I'm one of the managing partners and co-founders here at our firm Staten Walsh. So our firm, we like to tell people we are a business and wealth solutions firm. It's really kind of how we market ourselves to the business world. And so a lot of our work is in the business and corporate space, focusing in our realm of being a financial advisor, focusing on corporate retirement plans. retention strategies for key employees, compensation packages, things of that nature. but we also serve individuals and families and what we call our private wealth capacity as well. And so we really like to approach this idea of being an advisor to business owners and to the corporate space, but doing it in a more well-rounded fashion. And one of the things we like to say is building the bridge between the business life and personal life and helping them be, you know, as cohesive and comprehensive as possible. Gregory Wilnau: Interesting. I like that. Building the bridge between the two. Do you find that with your clients often the two are kind of related? Ryan Staton: Yeah, the business and personal are almost always intertwined in some way, shape, or form. Financially, personally, there's family relationships. that could be part of their succession plan. And so it covers a pretty wide range. And I think a lot of businesses, you know, the old adage is you you keep your work and personal separate. So an employee tend Gregory Wilnau: Mm-hmm. Ryan Staton: you tend to go to work, you do your job, you come home. Work life is work life, home life is home life. When you own a business or you're an executive of an enterprise, it just doesn't. And that clear line of separation gets blurred pretty easily. And and especially from a financial perspective and all the other things that go along with those, those responsibilities. And so a lot of times they're the two aren't separate, but they get treated as separate. And so part of our job really is to work with these these owners and try to bring bring those things back together and have them part of one one, like I said, one comprehensive or cohesive conversation so that we can keep things on track and also give them. them a little bit of peace of mind that that everything is is where it needs to be, sort of a sanity check for them. so they can focus on the stuff that they're they're really good at. Gregory Wilnau: Awesome. I we'll talk more about and dive deeper into kind of how you approach that, doing that with your clients in a little bit. But I wanna ask you a little bit more about kind of how you got started and what inspired you to do this and a little bit about your journey. and you also have yeah, well I let let's let's start there. Tell me tell me a little bit about what inspired you to do this. Ryan Staton: Yeah, I I think it's important to understand that my origin story in this world was sort of by accident. I had some people in my life, some neighbors that that lived close to me growing up that were kind of in the industry, not as advisors, but in the world of wealth management and investments and One of them approached me shortly after college and kind of gave me this, what are you doing with your life talk? And the long story short was it got me some interviews, which in really introduced me to the world of wealth management. And to be totally honest, I was drawn to it initially because I thought it was a really cool way to do unique stuff and make a lot of money, just to being being perfectly honest Gregory Wilnau: Wha Ryan Staton: and Gregory Wilnau: what what do you mean by unique unique stuff? Ryan Staton: Yeah, yeah, I think working with people in a capacity using things like you know, I I had a a background in finance from an educational perspective. And so a lot of it was corporate finance, which is a lot of number crunching spreadsheets, financial planning and analysis, but it didn't really have, in my opinion, the same level of interaction or connection with the people that you were working with. It was sort of numbers on a page. And so the draw to me was we have the numbers on the page, but what's the person, you know, who are the people behind the numbers? Like how are we digging into that? And and and there are many roles in the corporate finance world that that do address some of those things, but I just wasn't seeing those opportunities. And wealth management to me was kind of a draw of this is a really good way to quickly get into a an industry that I think can massage like kind of both sides of your brain, so to speak. You know, you could do the you could do the technical stuff, you can have Gregory Wilnau: interesting. Yeah. Ryan Staton: the the the people interaction and and kind of merge those two together. And so that was a huge draw. I didn't really fully understand the work that the folks were doing or what this was going to be when I started my training, but I I figured that out over time. And and I think the it what's kept me around and what's kind of motivated us and ultimately led to us starting State and Walsh was I loved the way There I love the impact I should say that we could make on people's lives. I just didn't feel like the places that I was working or the people that I w I was working with truly believed in the mission the same way that we did. didn't believe Gregory Wilnau: Mm-hmm. Ryan Staton: in the level of transparency and honesty and integrity that was required. it's no secret that people have varying opinions about the financial services world and advisors and who's good, who's bad. and and who's ethical and not and and and so for us we just wanted to take that to another level. We wanted to be truly be different and different differentiate ourselves and be disruptors in the marketplace. And so Gregory Wilnau: Nice. I love it. Ryan Staton: yeah the only way for us to really truly do that, we tried at other organizations and with red tape and bureaucracy and kind of the corporate side of it. we realized that the only way we were gonna really be able to do this was to do it ourselves. And so that's sort of how State Walsh was born. Very condensed timeline on that. I mean, that a lot of this happened over a period of, you know, ten plus years being in the business already and then forming it into what our vision was. And then my partner Devin and I actually acting on it and, you know, kind of getting the courage to go out and do it and Gregory Wilnau: Yeah. Ryan Staton: Be been the best thing that we've ever done and I think has really taken our Gregory Wilnau: It's awesome. Ryan Staton: message and the way we do things to another level too, because you know, it's our branding behind it and it's it's very much tied to who we are as advisors Gregory Wilnau: Yeah. Ryan Staton: and as people. Gregory Wilnau: Yeah. I'm noticing the theme. I'm something that inspired you is you know, the bridge, the bridge between b business and personal and and bringing those two together, thinking of them and and streamlining them, connecting them. And also, you know, you mentioned the bridge between I think you said the left brain and the right brain, the bridge between the numbers and the spreadsheet side and also the human side, the people that you're working with. and connecting those two with transparency and advocating the client's best interest. So and I love you you guys went on your own, man. the best way that you could disrupt was to to do it yourselves and free yourselves from some of the bureaucracy of of of and I and I love that. I think that's really cool. it's always a scary thing to do too. So congrats on taking that leap. How many clients do you guys have now? Ryan Staton: Yeah, so our our practice is split between, like I said, institutional and private client and family. Some of those are are merged together, but on the institutional side, we have about seventy-five companies that we serve in in those capacities. And then on the private wealth, private client side, it's about another hundred and fifty households, families that we work with. and so we we are very much built and we've always been built to be a a more boutique, high touch shop. And so So a lot of times we are you know we are spending more time with people, we're more in the weeds, we're we're there with them every step of the way. we we really try to position ourselves as a primary trusted advisor for most of our clients. And and so because of that, we like to keep our our bench small, so to speak, and our client base smaller and higher touch and and it's worked really well for us. I think we we have some niches, niche markets that we're in that also help with that. and that helped keep us lean and small, but still be a a very good profitable organization as a result of that. Gregory Wilnau: Yeah, I love you intentionally ch are choosing to be small so you could offer that boutique, white glove, high touch service. I could see how that would be really important, considering the theme of kind of being a bridge builder. I know you use your own terms for that, but that's just kind of what I'm what I'm sticking with. Ryan Staton: Yeah, yeah. The the the thing with the bridge is is very much ingrained in our marketing too on our website if you go on it front page. Building a bridge between wealth and purpose. Like that's a big part of our messaging as well. And you know, we live in Maryland. The Chesapeake Bay Bridge is the one of the more iconic bridges around and I know in Baltimore there's been some bad news about other bridges, but But that that is, you know, there's a picture of the Bay Bridge. That that theme of building bridges is really a big part of our founding and what we what we do and how we do it. So I'm here. Gregory Wilnau: Love it. All right. Let's talk a little bit about your clients. You mentioned some specific niche markets. And for those who aren't familiar, a niche is just a segment of a market that's that's kind of specific. So what are some of the the niches or the specific markets or the the types of people that that you're working with? Ryan Staton: Yeah, so our our primary is really in the world of construction. So contractors, both trades contractors as well as government contractors. So in our, you know, in our geography, proximity to DC, there's a lot of federal work, there's a lot of state work. there are some specific things we do in those retirement plans related to some of the contracts that these companies have. It it gets a little more technical for so for the sake of the viewer, maybe this time I'll I'll spare everyone all. All the the the crazy technical details, but ultimately what happens is in that market there are specialized ways that we can use things like retirement and benefit programs that companies sponsor to help utilize dollars from those contracts to save companies money, provide better benefits for employees, and then ultimately that trickles down to a healthier, more engaged, and more profitable company. And so that's a huge niche for us in the 401k space. that is Gregory Wilnau: Mm-hmm. Ryan Staton: Really the fastest growing part of our business. but another part of that world is really planning with those companies for exit and succession at ultimate sale. Gregory Wilnau: Mm-hmm. Ryan Staton: it's no secret that private equity has been targeting many different industries for for acquisitions, for portfolio companies, Gregory Wilnau: Right. Ryan Staton: construction and and a lot of different elements of construction have been on that list for a while. we have a lot of clients that are a little bit more paternalistic with their employee base and they like they want to take care of their people. They don't want their company to become an asset on someone's balance sheet. And so knowing Gregory Wilnau: Yeah, definitely. Ryan Staton: that niche and knowing how those companies work and you know their value and how they can be sold is really another part of that. So construction is huge for us. That's really where we're we're kind of nationally recognized in terms of some of our relationships with trade associations and others, but that's a really Really, that's a place where we spend, I'd say about 80% of our time. That's where 80% of our client base is. and then others, you know, on the private client, the family side of the house, just because of my background and in exit succession planning from my previous life, that that has served as a big growth vehicle for us as anyone who's been through an exit or is preparing for one. working with us in that capacity in any type of business. so that's another area where we we spend a lot of time, not niche to an industry, but kind of niche to a specific need or type of transaction. Gregory Wilnau: Interesting. Okay. So construction trades. I actually have a blue collar background before we started our our our business. I was a I was a construction worker. I wasn't like, you know, a a contract. I was a a worker. So I was like digging ditches, crawling through attics, that sort of thing. So I definitely know what it's like to be. That's a big inspiration for me to start our business because I w man doing construction in Florida is brutal in this in the summertime. But like that. Also government contractors, you're close to Washington, DC, so that makes a lot of sense. and families and and business owners preparing to exit. so these are very specific yet very different niches. And one of the things I like to do in episodes is I like to dive deeper into w what those people are thinking about when they when they come to you. So we probably should only pick one. We'd only have one niche to explore. in more depth. any preference on which one you think we should explore about? I wanna understand more about the questions, the concerns, the situations that one of these niches, somebody from one of these niches would have when they when they that prompts them to to reach out to you. Ryan Staton: Yeah. Gregory Wilnau: any preference for which one you think would be we should talk about? Ryan Staton: I think if we if we generally talk about business owners, especially especially ones that are potentially preparing for some kind of transition, that dovetails with a lot of the other things that we do, and there are some connections there. So I think that's probably the easiest one to. Gregory Wilnau: All right, how about the the construction businesses? That specific niche. Ryan Staton: Yeah, so you know, in the construction business world, it th a lot of that there are some some of the same considerations as there are in our business transition or our exit planning conversation. as far as the four one Ks are concerned and the qualified plan space that we're serving. that really is centered around what's called prevailing wage or scale work. So a company has a job that is, let's say they're building a school, for example. And so you mentioned you were a laborer on a construction site. you have a a wage rate that you are paid that's stipulated by a contract. There's a base component of that. So say it's 30 bucks an hour. And then the contract on public sector work. So anything sponsored by a government agency also has what's called a fringe component, which could be let's say $10 an hour in this example. And so you have the option as an employer to pay your person 30 and then use the other 10 to help subsidize benefits for those employees. So think health insurance, group life insurance, 401k, retirement, all of those things kind of get PTO, all that gets lumped into that. Or you had the option where you can just pay it in cash. So you can pay your people 40 bucks an hour. And then if you still want to sponsor benefits on top of that, it's just an additional cost to the to the company. And so these are conversations that a lot of businesses in that realm struggle with because when every dollar you pay in cash, for any business owner out there, know you know this. Every dollar you pay in cash comes with an additional payroll burden. You have to pay half of the payroll tax. You have to pay workers' comp. It influences the cost of your insurances. And so the general math on that is for every dollar I pay in cash payroll carries another 20 to 35 cents of payroll burden for the company. So I pay a dollar plus, I gotta come. That's the dollar that my employee gets. I also have to come up with another 25 cents, call it, to cover some of my other burdens as a business. business owner. So when you're trying to run a profitable business, especially in construction, it's a thin margin world. It's hard to be really, really profitable. That 25 cents Gregory Wilnau: Yeah. Yeah. Ryan Staton: matters a ton. And it could be the difference between being profitable and not. It could be the difference between being able to offer your employees benefits or not. It is the difference in terms of you being able to competitively bid on your next contract because you have to bid at a higher rate because you have to cover more cost. And so the strategy that we talk about is how do we use that $10? Some of it could be for cash payment, some of it could be for benefits. the things that we directly implement are those 401k plans. And so by taking the money instead of paying it in cash and paying it into a bona fide, what's called a bona fide benefit plan. You, as Gregory Wilnau: Mm-hmm. Ryan Staton: the employer, save on that payroll burden because it goes into a benefit plan, it doesn't get paid as payroll. And so that means every dollar I put in the 401k avoids that 25 cents of additional burden. What does that mean to me as a company? And how do how does this really play out? Let's just get to like the real world application. That 25 cents of savings is money that adds to profitability. It allows business owners to take better care of their employees, it gives them savings for the future in the form. Of retirement account. It helps subsidize benefits. It helps them set up other programs. It helps them give back or cash bonuses or other things that they can do. It just gives them a lot more Gregory Wilnau: Mm-hmm. Ryan Staton: flexibility, is really what we kind of say. And ultimately we feel like it does serve the benefit of the individual employee as well. Gregory Wilnau: Sure. Ryan Staton: it's no secret that that industry is generally underserved by our industry. And so I like to tell the companies that we work with, we're we're not just by by implementing these strategies, we're not just serving you as the business owner and your bottom line. We're also here to serve the interest of the employees on the job site to make sure that they can save for their future, that they can talk to someone and get advice, but more importantly, that they can eventually retire with dignity at some point in the future. But Gregory Wilnau: Yeah. Ryan Staton: the the worst thing we hear from employee employees is like, I'm gonna do this as long as I physically can. Which you know, I I grew up in in a blue collar household and a background, neither one of my parents went to college and I Gregory Wilnau: Yeah. Ryan Staton: saw the toll that that takes on people physically when you have to work physically demanding jobs well into your sixties and not have the Yeah. So Gregory Wilnau: Yeah, it's it's brutal, man. You can't can't do it. I remember I I'd work with guys who'd be in their, you know, forties and fifties, you know, still climbing ladders and they'd be popping pain pills 'cause they just couldn't do it anymore, you know? it's brutal. Yeah, you gotta think about that stuff. So it sounds like you're a real strategic partner in helping construction companies who deeply care about their their team, take care of them, guide them on that. and I love that. I could see how that'd be would be really valuable for a contracting company, a construction company who cares deeply about that. what I wanna talk more about is I wanna understand more how your your clients find you. So where do you where do you typically find your clients? How do how do they find you? Ryan Staton: So a a large majority because of the niche of construction, we belong to some national associations that are construction focused. so we are the national financial wellness partner for one, it's called the Associated Builders and Contractors or ABC for short. So we we're we're very big in in that arena. I think a lot of it is brand recognition. As I mentioned earlier, we have some national recognition as a result of some of those partnerships. In the area that we live in, you know, I'd say most of our client base is in this mid mid-Atlantic region. a lot of it is word of mouth. I think, you know, a lot of times our clients come to us and say, I was talking to someone about a job and they were saying, You gotta talk to these guys or your name came up. That's a lot of what what our our our inbound client client opportunity. That's where it comes from. and it that's just a result of years of Devin and I putting in a lot of groundwork to Build trust, build good relationships, and and I think more importantly, build a reputation of being transparent, having integrity, and always looking out for people's best interests. And the construction community is one of those where they all work together in some capacity and they all talk. And so not not in I'd say not unlike other industries and other communities, but in this area it's just one. Where it takes a high level of trust for them to want to recommend people that are in outside industries like financial services, accounting, tax, legal, they have to really like you and they have to really trust you. And so, you know, it took us a long time to develop that, but now a lot of Gregory Wilnau: No. Ryan Staton: our client base comes from just our reputation, referrals, and then some marketing that we do in some of those associations as well. Gregory Wilnau: Excellent. I love it. I love how you're building your firm and the reputation you're cultivating. the word of mouth is the best marketing so or best advertising rather. I wanna dive a little bit into how you work with your with your with your clients and what it looks like to work with you in an ongoing capacity. But first I wanna understand more about kind of where you're taking your your firm and what your vision is for it. So when it comes to your your practice, where do you see in the next couple of years, one to three years. What's your vision? Are there any goals you're working on? Ryan Staton: Yeah, a lot of a lot of our goals and our targets are centered around the people that we serve and the size of impact that we're making. And so there's a couple parts of our business where we really measure that pretty closely. One of them is in the retirement plan space, we measure number of participants served. And so we don't look at the size of the plans based on assets under management. We want to see the number of people. That's really how we feel like we measure impact and the impact that we're making is the more people that we can we can impact that we can educate, that's ultimately where we want to be. you know, over time in in we have kind of one year, three year, five year, 10 year targets. And our goal in the next 10 years is to have 20,000 participants in all of our retirement plans. That's twenty thousand people that Gregory Wilnau: That's awesome. Ryan Staton: we have a touch point with that we can move the needle, make sure that they're getting what they need to to to save for their future, to retire with dignity. we wanna serve in in that same ten year capacity. These are just numbers. We just went over these, so these are top right off the top of my head, but 500 Gregory Wilnau: Mm-hmm. Ryan Staton: families that we want to serve in terms of our growth. And so even over the the next 10 years, that's really not a huge jump in the grand scheme of things. I think our intention is always to be big enough to serve the clients that we're working with, but small enough to care. and so Gregory Wilnau: Yeah. Ryan Staton: You know, a big part of our growth cycle is making sure that no one advisor on our team has more than a certain number of relationships that they're serving. So that you can really get to know people, you can really get to understand them. you know, the other part, the other things that we look at, successful business exits. How many families have we helped exit their business? You know, I I I've been a part of over a billion dollars of transactions, meaning and these are all small, closely held family businesses. Gregory Wilnau: Wow, that's awesome. Ryan Staton: Yeah, so and and and some larger than others, some really big ones, some you know, a couple of million bucks in a family business getting sold to a third party. our goal was not to increase the size of that transaction, but to increase the size of the impact. And so a lot of our numbers and goals Gregory Wilnau: Nice. Ryan Staton: are really based around impact. So 20,000 retirement plan participants, one billion dollars. So we do have a life insurance practice as well. So we do sell life insurance to Gregory Wilnau: huh. Ryan Staton: businesses and and families. We want to have one billion dollars of death benefit. So that's future dollars that will be paid out and to families as a result of some of the planning. the work that we've done, 500 individual families served, and we want to be part of at least 50 successful business exits. And so that's all over a 10 year period. I could say we're you know we're well on our way to doing that. and part of it just, Gregory Wilnau: Awesome. Ryan Staton: you know, having conversations with people and them understand who we are and what we do, some of kind of what we're doing here today. So Gregory Wilnau: I love it, man. I love how clear that is. I love how the numbers are super specific. I think that's one of the challenges, you know, personally or professionally, when you set a goal, it can be kind of vague. And you really want to get specific so that you can measure how close you are to it. And you certainly got that down, man. Five hundred families. I I love that. anything standing in your way of that? Any any challenges? Anything you anticipate? Ryan Staton: Yeah, I think ultimately one of our biggest challenges that we've seen is that we have we've started to grow our brand on a national basis. And so like I mentioned, a lot of our clients are between Philadelphia and Northern Virginia. Probably about 80% are between those two cities and and everywhere in between. because of our niche and because of our our relationships with some national organizations, we now have clients in 17 different states around the country. And so that, you know, g geographically and in the world of t you know, with technology and Zoom and Teams and all these other mediums that we have at our disposal, it's made it really easy for us. But I do think that, you know, growing in manpower too and people, hiring good people that kind of share the same mission that we have, I think that's really our only our our roadblock is not finding the people to work with. It's ultimately being able to serve at at that capacity and to continue to grow that. So I wouldn't say it's a roadblock for us yet. What I do think is that we are very intentional. The team that we built today was very intentionally Built and we are highly selective about the people we choose to work with. And so I think over time just making sure that we can continue to find people who have similar values, that their vision aligns with ours, and they really care about people at the same level that we do beyond some of the numbers and metrics. And unfortunately, our our industry has been taught to measure success by assets under management or revenue and some of these other things, which are important, don't get me wrong. But y as you could probably tell by some of the goals that we set for our firm, we look at more about impact and the money. We view it in in Gregory Wilnau: Yeah. Ryan Staton: the in the through the lens of we want to make an impact and the money takes care of itself. and so we need to find Gregory Wilnau: Right. Yeah. Ryan Staton: other professionals that also align with that vision. And so it could be a challenge. Gregory Wilnau: Intr interesting. So your your your ch your y your challenge isn't necessarily you you feel like you're good about you're building Ryan Staton: Yeah, yeah. Gregory Wilnau: up national brand recognition, you're you're you're finding a good good inflow of of new clients, but you're highly selective with who you work with and your your biggest focus, the challenge that you see is actually finding the best advisors to help serve these people in a way that allows you to retain your white glove service and your commitment to transparency and the quality of the service you want to be known for. That that sounds like that's your biggest challenge and that's your mission is finding great advisors to bring on the team too as you scale Ryan Staton: Yeah. Yeah, that Gregory Wilnau: and grow. Ryan Staton: that's our that's our challenge today. I mean we have I think our to your point our other challenge is right now, because we like to be boutique and we like to be selective, you know, we do institute things like waiting lists or or not being able to take on client we're very intentional about that part of our process. We don't want to we could have 10 new clients tomorrow, but we don't want to take on 10 new onboarding projects at the same time because can we give that Gregory Wilnau: Sure. Ryan Staton: level of care to those people or are we just going to cycle them through and so that, you know, that becomes a challenge with that model. We really like that model. I don't think I wouldn't view it as a negative. I just think it is challenging in the sense that, you know, to intentionally grow a practice that way can be a little methodical and not always Gregory Wilnau: Yeah. Ryan Staton: ideal, but it's what we've chosen Gregory Wilnau: Sure. Ryan Staton: to do and it's what we're committed to. Gregory Wilnau: Sure. Well, you know, I think there's merit in being methodical. I think sometimes you know, often we're t people are encouraged to move fast and break things, but you know, I think it's important for someone to follow their own convictions and their own beliefs. And that's the cool thing about owning your own business is you can approach it in the in in in your own way. And you have to choose to follow your own values and what you want to be known for and what you're passionate about. And that offering that quality service is definitely something that you're you're passionate about. And too much growth without enough infrastructure can really compromise that. So it's good that you're being super intentional. All right. Now what I want to do, if you're cool with it, is I want to move into talking a little bit about your actual process. Ryan Staton: Yeah. Gregory Wilnau: So I think we're going to go a couple minutes over our our time if you're cool with that. Ryan Staton: Yeah. Gregory Wilnau: typically we end at 30, but we'll probably go another couple of minutes because I really want to talk about what it looks like to when you start working with your clients, what that process is. So maybe you could take a moment to kind of explain and walk through your actual process. So if somebody were to become a client today, you know, what does onboarding look like? What happens the first couple of weeks? What does it look like to work with you during the course of a calendar year? I'm loading three questions into one, Ryan. Ryan Staton: Yeah. Yeah. So interestingly enough, our process we we've we've been intentional about breaking it out into three separate stages. And so within those stages, there's different steps, but the three stages are discovery, strategy and planning, and then implementation. And so those are just kind of general buckets where we place different engagements, different ways we work with people. and the reason why is the discovery process could just be figuring out if we're even a good fit for one another. Can we help you? Is there a problem that we're actually going to need to solve? Or are we identifying a pro a future problem that we can address down the line and we can kind of table these conversations. In our discovery process, it's really important to us to get to know the people that we're working with and for them to get to know us. Who are we? What are our values? Why are they important to us? Who do we choose to work with? And why should you choose to work with us? and so we ask about not just goals, financials, but you know, some of their dreams, some of their aspirations. I'm also really big on this concept of tailoring the process to the individual. And so we actually Gregory Wilnau: Mm-hmm. Ryan Staton: it's it's it's a little unique and a little outside the box, but we have a brief behavioral questionnaire. That we give to clients, that tells us Gregory Wilnau: snap. That's awesome. Ryan Staton: what type of person they are. How do they communicate? How do they like to be communicated to, so that we can build our Gregory Wilnau: Nice. Ryan Staton: process around that. So if I have someone who's highly analytical and wants spreadsheets and numbers and want and needs that level of detail to really get to a place where they have understanding, they feel educated, they feel empowered. I want to know that in advance so that I can tailor my process to make sure too, not only that they feel comfortable and they absorb the information that we're giving them, but more importantly, so we can match members of our team to them to make sure they have the best possible experience. And so, you know, if someone is a little bit more conceptual in nature, then we'll build a process around that. And so that's something that we've built, that we built at our founding that we felt like has been a big differentiator in our. process because it gives us the ability to say we understand you at a deeper level, we understand how you want to be communicated with what's important to you. and then they're really easy questions for the client. It's like six or seven behavioral questions and we have some scoring Gregory Wilnau: Nice. Ryan Staton: that we do and that's how we we align our process with that individual. So that's that's kind of the discovery phase strategy implementation, strategy and planning and then implementation. look very different based on the client and the engagement, but a lot of times we can be we can be the strategist and give ideas and someone else, some other professional may be involved in implementation. Sometimes we're doing everything for that client. So we've split up that process and built it in a way that we can customize it and piece it out. So if someone comes to us and says, you know, I have someone that I'm working with, I'll get I'll give you a perfect example in an exit planning scenario. We had a client who needed a strategy on how to most efficiently get out. Sell their business to a third party. They had a financial advisor that they worked with for 20 years and they liked the guy. They had a personal relationship. There was no opportunity for us to get any assets from the sale, but they needed that, Gregory Wilnau: Mm. Ryan Staton: they needed that strategy. And so we we charge them a fee, we put it together for them. They successfully sold the business. That other advisor came in and helped with their wealth management on the ongoing basis post transaction. You know, for us, we're perfectly okay with that. We're always looking out for clients' best interest for. First, as long as we get paid for the work and the value that we provide, you know, client. It's ultimately the co client's choice and we don't force anyone's hand on that. I think that's a little unique and atypical too for people in our business. But again, those are just some of the positions that we've taken that I think make our process unique in that we can we're consultative in nature always. That's where we start. But how we actually end up implementing will be based on the clients' existing relationships, comfort with us, or what their needs are. And we can be a part of that or we don't have to. And and we've built Models that Gregory Wilnau: Absolutely. Ryan Staton: can serve that. Gregory Wilnau: I love that you are you have you've built out models and you can match the model to the individual's needs. but you do that in a way that reflects that white glove service. I love the behavior analysis because that's so true, man. People learn different ways. People need information communicated to them in different ways. Otherwise they're just gonna glaze over and Be polite and say, yeah, sure, that sounds great, but have no idea what you said. So I love that. You it also helps you pair them with the right team members. I think that's that's that's awesome. what I want to dive into really quick is I want to better understand what it looks like to work with you during the course of a calendar year. what does that interaction look like? Do you like do regular check ins every quarter? I know it depends on what service you're providing. But maybe you could just help us understand quickly if somebody's working with you over a longer period of time, you know, it's a longer engagement. What does that ongoing relationship look like? What how's it just kind of structured? Ryan Staton: Sure. So from Our perspective, the first year that we spend together with every client, we spend a lot of time with them, which is why we stage onboarding and kind of spread those out over the course of the year. but we will we will work with someone the first 90 days post-engagement, whatever regardless of what the engagement is, we spend a lot of time with them. We get we get an opportunity to get everything organized, make sure we're getting on the right path, start building out planning, start talking about strategy, implementing. future implementation. and then typically at minimum we're meeting the clients that we work with at minimum on a quarterly basis once we leave the onboarding cycle. And so typical onboarding is about 90 days. Once we leave that cycle, we have regularly cadenced quarterly meetings. A lot of our clients we tell them we make ourselves available to them as much as they want to use us. But we will proactively make sure that we're reaching out on that regularly scheduled quarterly check-in or progress meeting is what we call them. We check in. If you want to if you want that meeting, we'll get together and do it. If not, we can kick the can down the road another quarter. Totally up to you. but if anything changes or you have any material change in your life or what we're doing together, let's get on the calendar as quickly as possible. And so We have everything structured in a way that we we we like to do regular check-ins. I I used to work in a world where we did the once a year let's do a portfolio review. I personally hated it. I didn't think it was of any value Gregory Wilnau: Yeah. Ryan Staton: to the clients we served. And so I think having those things scheduled and us being proactive about that is something that's really important to us. And so over the course of the year, the the first year that we work together, people see us a lot. But part of our onboarding process going back to kind of how we bring people in. We also ask them those questions. How do you prefer to meet and how frequently do you want to meet? So that we can understand that. I don't want Gregory Wilnau: Wow. Ryan Staton: to, I don't want to force you to meet with me quarterly if you absolutely don't want to. but Gregory Wilnau: Mm-hmm. Ryan Staton: I'll meet with you as much as you want. And so we we have part of our onboarding questionnaire that we give outlines those things. So if someone wants to meet in person, we make sure that we're absolutely available, meet in the office or at their business. If they prefer, you know, one in person, one virtual, we kind of build all that out. And it's a lot of work. That's also why we you know we have to be structured the way that we are so that we can make sure that we can meet those needs of the people that we're we're working with. So first year a lot of interaction year two and beyond it's really client driven but we mandate for most of our clients that we meet at least twice a year and I'd say a large majority of them we meet more frequently than that. Gregory Wilnau: Okay, I love it. So I love how you you ask the clients what their preference would be for communication and how often to meet. So you tailor that meeting cadence around that. But at a minimum, you said three per year or two per year? Ryan Staton: two per year on on yeah, ongoing yeah. Ongoing is two, yeah. Gregory Wilnau: You you require two per year. And then go ahead, sorry. Okay, ongoing is two. So minimum is two, but you are also available. You tell them that you expect set the expectation. I'm available. You can contact us at any time in in between that, but the minimum's two. And on top of that, you also custom tailor the meeting cadence based on their preferences. And I I love that. I love it. All right, well, let's land this plane, buddy. I think you've given us a lot of great information. You've painted a clear picture of what it likes to work what it's like to work with you and the custom nature of your approach. So for somebody who's for someone listening who wants to get in touch with you, what should they do next? Where should they go? Ryan Staton: So we we always send folks, especially new to us, go to our website www.state and walsh.com. that will there's some more information about who we are, what we do. It's very clear everything is transparent, our pricing models, everything is all on that site. So I just like to pe like to tell people if you're just doing some research and want to find out more about who we are. We love we we love putting all that information out there on our site. There's also information on how to get in contact with us and and and best ways to schedule for any meetings. So go to the website. We're and you know we're always happy to connect with people as well and and have these types of conversations to figure out how we can we can help. Gregory Wilnau: All right, Ryan. Thank you so much for coming on and and sharing sharing your practice with us. We appreciate you. Ryan Staton: Yeah, you too. Thank you. Gregory Wilnau: My pleasure.