Latest / Only Fee-Only / #147 - Renting Your Brain: The Business of Advice-Only Planning with Kelly Nilsson

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#147 - Renting Your Brain: The Business of Advice-Only Planning with Kelly Nilsson · Only Fee-Only

• 0:04
  SPEAKER_00: How's it going, everyone?
• 0:06
  SPEAKER_00: Welcome back to the OnlyFe Only Podcast.
• 0:08
  SPEAKER_00: And as always, thanks for being here.
• 0:10
  SPEAKER_00: We have an exciting episode today.
• 0:12
  SPEAKER_00: We talked to Kelly Nilsen from Brava Financial, based out of San Diego, California, which is one of my favorite places in the entire country.
• 0:23
  SPEAKER_00: This was a phenomenal conversation.
• 0:25
  SPEAKER_00: Kelly has a really cool background.
• 0:27
  SPEAKER_00: She actually started her career on the life insurance side and realized that she learned a lot from there.
• 0:33
  SPEAKER_00: And that's one of the things that we talked about a lot is kind of her lessons early on in her career, to moving to more of a family office, and then eventually going out and saying, hey, it's about time that I started my own financial planning business and how fulfilling that's been for her.
• 0:50
  SPEAKER_00: We also talk about what she thinks about her services.
• 0:54
  SPEAKER_00: One of the things that really stuck out as far as that goes is she said, I don't discount my services.
• 0:59
  SPEAKER_00: She knows what she's worth and she charges for it.
• 1:02
  SPEAKER_00: And she says, basically, you're paying me for what's in my mind.
• 1:06
  SPEAKER_00: And so such a great conversation packed into less than 30 minutes here.
• 1:11
  SPEAKER_00: So really great.
• 1:12
  SPEAKER_00: Enjoy this episode with Kelly Nielsen on the Only Fee Only podcast.
• 1:18
  SPEAKER_01: How's it going, everyone?
• 1:19
  SPEAKER_01: Welcome to another episode of the Only Fee Only Podcast.
• 1:24
  SPEAKER_01: I'm Peter Travolo.
• 1:25
  SPEAKER_01: I'm here with my co-host Brock Buckles.
• 1:27
  SPEAKER_01: And today we're so excited to have Kelly Nielsen on.
• 1:31
  SPEAKER_01: Really excited to have her share her story and hear what she's building at Bravo Financial.
• 1:35
  SPEAKER_01: So, Kelly, welcome to the show.
• 1:37
  SPEAKER_02: Thank you.
• 1:38
  SPEAKER_02: Thank you, Peter.
• 1:39
  SPEAKER_02: Thank you, Brock.
• 1:39
  SPEAKER_02: I'm delighted to be here.
• 1:43
  SPEAKER_01: Yes, we've been looking forward to this.
• 1:45
  SPEAKER_01: So for those who don't know who you are, do you want to give a little bit of a background of who you are and who you're currently serving?
• 1:51
  SPEAKER_02: Absolutely.
• 1:52
  SPEAKER_02: So I am the founder of Brava Financial.
• 1:56
  SPEAKER_02: I launched in July of 2022.
• 1:59
  SPEAKER_02: Actually got my based in San Diego, got my California RAA approval in early July and signed my first client August 1st of 2022.
• 2:11
  SPEAKER_02: So I've been doing this for now over three years.
• 2:16
  SPEAKER_02: And like a lot of planners, uh scratch my head and say, why didn't I do this?
• 2:21
  SPEAKER_02: Like 10 or 15 or 20 years earlier.
• 2:25
  SPEAKER_02: And I actually started in the industry in 1992.
• 2:28
  SPEAKER_02: So you can tell I'm a little bit of a late bloomer in terms of starting my own firm.
• 2:34
  SPEAKER_02: But the first 17 years of my career, I was actually on the business-to-business side of the industry.
• 2:40
  SPEAKER_02: So I was working for a small marketing company distributing annuities and mutual funds.
• 2:47
  SPEAKER_02: And then we were acquired by a Canadian insurance company.
• 2:52
  SPEAKER_02: And so I like to tell people that I had an interesting perspective of really understanding what advisors do.
• 3:02
  SPEAKER_02: I was kind of on the on the uh wholesaling distribution side through the advisor community.
• 3:10
  SPEAKER_02: And I got a chance to see advisors who were really transformational in the work that they were doing with clients.
• 3:16
  SPEAKER_02: And I saw advisors that, in all candor, should have been behind bars.
• 3:19
  SPEAKER_02: You know, it was like that spectrum of business.
• 3:25
  SPEAKER_02: Um and that really informed what I wanted to focus on and how I wanted to work with clients.
• 3:31
  SPEAKER_02: And so when I pivoted out of the business-to-business side to working directly with clients, I knew that no matter what I did, planning was going to be central to the work.
• 3:42
  SPEAKER_02: Um then I so I started with um MetLife, uh the financial planning division of MetLife.
• 3:48
  SPEAKER_02: That was a good experience.
• 3:49
  SPEAKER_02: I was there for about a year.
• 3:51
  SPEAKER_02: Um, you know, but when you work for a big life insurance company, you know, kind of all roads end up toward life insurance, which is which is fine.
• 4:00
  SPEAKER_02: Um, and then I spent the better part of a decade.
• 4:02
  SPEAKER_02: I know, wow, how about that?
• 4:04
  SPEAKER_02: Uh uh better part of a decade here in San Diego with a multifamily office.
• 4:10
  SPEAKER_02: And so uh we were working with high net worth clients, a small uh cadre of clients, and working on kind of all sorts of issues, um, basic planning is issues around cash flow and investment allocation, but also really um complex things like uh intergenerational wealth transfer, estate planning, um holding those family meetings where things can get a little bit um, you know, interesting, shall we say.
• 4:40
  SPEAKER_02: Um, you know, when the emotions around money start to start to surface.
• 4:44
  SPEAKER_02: So um, yeah, that's and then again, the path just kind of took me to that do-it-yourself independence, and that prompted me to start Brava in 2022.
• 4:58
  SPEAKER_00: So that's really cool.
• 5:00
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, your journey is really cool to hear about because a lot of people want to, I think, kind of poo-poo the, you know, starting on the life insurance side or that side of the industry.
• 5:13
  SPEAKER_00: And I like that you said it was actually kind of really foundational to you and you had good experiences that those companies, although you needed to move on eventually and you understood that.
• 5:25
  SPEAKER_00: What were some of the things that you did learn early on?
• 5:29
  SPEAKER_00: Because I think for a lot of the listeners, one thing that I like to communicate and have them hear is that no matter where you're at right now, you can go wherever you want to go, and you can still learn things at the places that you're currently at.
• 5:42
  SPEAKER_00: So as you were kind of going through those different careers, what were some of the things that you learned along the way, Kelly?
• 5:51
  SPEAKER_02: So there are two things that that I'll comment on.
• 5:53
  SPEAKER_02: I mean, I geez, we don't have all day, but I mean, I probably have about 80 things that I could share.
• 5:58
  SPEAKER_02: But the two things that I'll share that I think are really important are um coming up from the kind of insurance-centric side of the business, um, and just having the experience that I have, I really believe that a lot of advisors get super focused on the investments as sort of the the the linchpin of the plan.
• 6:23
  SPEAKER_02: And I think investments are important.
• 6:26
  SPEAKER_02: Um however, guess what?
• 6:30
  SPEAKER_02: What really matters in a time where a client's um suffering from like a death in the family, a divorce, a disability, those are the things that will uh take a plan down.
• 6:45
  SPEAKER_02: Those are the things that will devastate a person financially.
• 6:48
  SPEAKER_02: And guess what you use to mitigate that?
• 6:50
  SPEAKER_02: You use insurance, right?
• 6:53
  SPEAKER_02: So I have worked with clients who um the husband has passed away and the wife is where she is now because of a three million dollar term policy.
• 7:05
  SPEAKER_02: Um, I've worked with people who have had to go on claim for long-term care or disability.
• 7:12
  SPEAKER_02: Um, and that that is the difference between being able to keep living the life that they have been living with a lot of trauma and a lot of grief.
• 7:22
  SPEAKER_02: I mean, let's not, it's not all just sort of rainbows and unicorns, but it's it's the financial underpinning.
• 7:30
  SPEAKER_02: So that is one of the reasons why I didn't want to asset manage.
• 7:36
  SPEAKER_02: You know, I didn't want to be selling product directly or managing assets because from my perspective, uh being able to just be that that objective uh kind of um you know expert where I tell clients, you can rent my brain for as long as you need it.
• 7:54
  SPEAKER_02: If you need it for an hour, if you need it for a project, if you need it ongoing, I'm here for you.
• 8:00
  SPEAKER_02: But you're essentially hiring me to um to help you answer those questions.
• 8:07
  SPEAKER_02: Um so that has sort of informed how I do my business and my perspective.
• 8:15
  SPEAKER_02: And then the other thing too, I think is um often, quite frankly, the best kind of teacher in life is kind of doing something that you don't want to do, right?
• 8:29
  SPEAKER_02: It's like you know, you get into a role, you get into an experience, you're like, well, that's not for me.
• 8:35
  SPEAKER_02: That narrows the the opportunity set.
• 8:38
  SPEAKER_02: That really, I think helps people focus.
• 8:40
  SPEAKER_02: And so when people say, particularly on the younger side, you know, they'll say to me, Well, you know, I could go work for a traditional RIA, but they do a lot of like, you know, they they they target high net worth clients, they um do a lot of asset management.
• 8:56
  SPEAKER_02: That's not really where my heart is.
• 8:58
  SPEAKER_02: And my feeling is, look, if you if you like the people and you think it would be a good experience, like do it for a couple of years, right?
• 9:07
  SPEAKER_02: And figure out what it is that you really love about that, what it is that you that you aren't so keen on.
• 9:14
  SPEAKER_02: Um, but try it out.
• 9:16
  SPEAKER_02: Again, I I got into this business in 1992 because there was a recession and I needed a job.
• 9:22
  SPEAKER_02: Like that was it.
• 9:23
  SPEAKER_02: I wasn't reading the Wall Street Journal at the age of eight, like going, oh, financial services.
• 9:29
  SPEAKER_02: Um and it just turned out, it turned out to be phenomenal.
• 9:35
  SPEAKER_02: It's so fascinating.
• 9:37
  SPEAKER_02: You know, every day is different, and it really is like helping people put their financial jigsaw puzzle together.
• 9:44
  SPEAKER_02: So yeah.
• 9:47
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, no, I love that.
• 9:49
  SPEAKER_01: That's a whole sound bite within itself.
• 9:51
  SPEAKER_01: Because, you know, I think the experience with it too, right?
• 9:54
  SPEAKER_01: And um, you know, like we're obviously working with a lot of younger planners, and you know, some of these lessons they only come with experience, right?
• 10:03
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, we're in the insurance business, so Brock and I, we always kind of heard like, hey, you don't really understand this business until you pay out a claim, right?
• 10:13
  SPEAKER_01: Um, because before that, everyone's just worried about, you know, whatever, the medical exam price, whatever it might be.
• 10:20
  SPEAKER_01: Um but yeah, I mean that's just such great advice.
• 10:24
  SPEAKER_01: Um, you know, and hence why you're a financial planner.
• 10:27
  SPEAKER_01: Um but let's dive into building your own RIA.
• 10:31
  SPEAKER_01: Um, you know, I'd love to hear just even Brava, you know, how did you come up with a name?
• 10:36
  SPEAKER_01: How did you decide to start with XYPN and we can go from there?
• 10:41
  SPEAKER_02: Oh, so I heard about XYPN, and again, I I because the whole kind of fee-only, advice only model um was not something that I was aware of probably until, oh goodness, like probably right around COVID again, because I was um I started with a firm here in San Diego in 2010 and a multifamily office.
• 11:09
  SPEAKER_02: We had our own proprietary software, we did retainer-based planning.
• 11:14
  SPEAKER_02: And it was kind of like, you know, I was in a bubble.
• 11:17
  SPEAKER_02: Uh, you know, I was the um uh planning officer at the firm.
• 11:22
  SPEAKER_02: And so I was doing uh all of the comprehensive planning for clients, but um, you know, wasn't really going to conferences, wasn't really paying much attention to what was happening in the industry as a whole um until COVID uh happened.
• 11:40
  SPEAKER_02: And then like every business, I don't care how you were doing business if you were virtual before um COVID, but COVID just made every business owner rethink, how are we gonna do this?
• 11:53
  SPEAKER_02: And the firm that I was with, we really focused on um in-person meetings.
• 11:59
  SPEAKER_02: And so we had to flip a switch and we were went to Zoom and conference calls, and um, you know, we were able to do that really efficiently.
• 12:07
  SPEAKER_02: But that was really the time I think where I started to kind of like put my head up and say, wow, you know, you can you can literally do this business virtually.
• 12:19
  SPEAKER_02: And so I had heard about Michael Kitsis, knew about Kitsis um nerd's eye view.
• 12:25
  SPEAKER_02: And so that was, I think, my entree into understanding that oh, there's this platform, and you know, it's it's as turnkey as it gets in terms of being able to set up a firm.
• 12:39
  SPEAKER_02: Um, and then I left the uh multifamily office and I spent a year at Facet Wealth, which was um which is a uh you know kind of nationwide RIA.
• 12:51
  SPEAKER_02: They do a lot of it's all virtual, I don't know, they have probably about a hundred and hundred CFPs.
• 12:56
  SPEAKER_02: And that was really where I was like, oh wow, like basic tech stack, website, uh get yourself registered.
• 13:07
  SPEAKER_02: This is there's there is not a super high barrier to entry.
• 13:11
  SPEAKER_02: And it was at that point where I just felt like I should be working for myself, you know.
• 13:17
  SPEAKER_02: I I I do think that people get to a point in their career where they're essentially unmanageable by anyone else other than than themselves.
• 13:24
  SPEAKER_02: And that was certainly true for me, um, where I was just like, you know what, let's just do this.
• 13:32
  SPEAKER_02: And so um I did not do a lot of marketing the way other advisors do.
• 13:40
  SPEAKER_02: And again, I think that that is a function of the fact that if you're in an industry for essentially 30 years, you have connections, you have a network.
• 13:51
  SPEAKER_02: Um, and so you know, I kind of put my website out, made a couple of announcements on LinkedIn.
• 13:58
  SPEAKER_02: I don't do any other social media.
• 14:00
  SPEAKER_02: LinkedIn is the only one that I do.
• 14:02
  SPEAKER_02: Um and uh I made sure that I was actually on all of the different, like what do you call them, billboards, you know, so CFP website, NAPFA, uh fee only network, um, advice only.
• 14:19
  SPEAKER_02: And those have been a really good um referral system for people who are looking for an advice only planner.
• 14:29
  SPEAKER_02: So I've had a really a kind of steady stream.
• 14:32
  SPEAKER_02: And I would say that probably about nine months after I started, um the client referrals started coming in.
• 14:41
  SPEAKER_02: And so um I would say most of my business now probably comes from uh client referrals and also from advice-only network.
• 14:50
  SPEAKER_02: I get a pretty steady stream of inquiries.
• 14:54
  SPEAKER_02: Um yeah.
• 14:55
  SPEAKER_02: And I also make it really easy for people to do business with me.
• 14:59
  SPEAKER_02: So my model is I can I will do hourly consults for people who want hourly.
• 15:06
  SPEAKER_02: I also do flat fee project work.
• 15:09
  SPEAKER_02: I do ongoing, but I don't do a lot of it.
• 15:12
  SPEAKER_02: Uh I actually thought when I launched that ongoing was gonna be the primary source of my revenue.
• 15:18
  SPEAKER_02: And within about eight weeks of launching, I realized uh nobody knows what a financial planner does, like especially for somebody who's never worked with an advisor before.
• 15:28
  SPEAKER_02: And so for me to say, hey, let's get married, and I'm just gonna be in your life forever and ever, and you're gonna pay me a quarterly fee.
• 15:35
  SPEAKER_02: And I could see people being like, what, what?
• 15:40
  SPEAKER_02: And so uh I started to talk about project work, and people's eyes would light up.
• 15:46
  SPEAKER_02: They would go, oh, start date, end date, scope of work, flat fee.
• 15:51
  SPEAKER_02: Everybody knows what a project is, either through work or they've remodeled a bathroom or whatever.
• 15:57
  SPEAKER_02: And quite frankly, from my perspective, I love it.
• 16:01
  SPEAKER_02: I love it for a couple of reasons.
• 16:02
  SPEAKER_02: Number one, I get paid for the work that I do when I do it.
• 16:06
  SPEAKER_02: So all the young planners out there don't work for free.
• 16:10
  SPEAKER_02: Like, listen, Auntie Kelly is telling you, do not work for free.
• 16:15
  SPEAKER_02: None of this, oh, I'm gonna get paid, you know, it'll the money will come in on the back end after we've been together for three years as client planner.
• 16:23
  SPEAKER_02: No, no, no, no.
• 16:25
  SPEAKER_02: The other thing is I'm not everybody's cup of tea.
• 16:28
  SPEAKER_02: And so I can do great work, but people may be like, you know what, let me try to do this on my own.
• 16:36
  SPEAKER_02: Or, you know, maybe I need to find somebody who's who's you know, got a different style or what have you.
• 16:42
  SPEAKER_02: Or maybe I'm looking at this person and being like, mm-mm.
• 16:47
  SPEAKER_02: So the the end of the project is a natural and very elegant way for me to say bye.
• 16:54
  SPEAKER_02: Bye.
• 16:55
  SPEAKER_02: Um, so it is a little bit of a selection process in terms of people who I want to continue to work with.
• 17:03
  SPEAKER_00: I want to I want to dive into that for a second because I think that that's a really healthy mentality to have.
• 17:10
  SPEAKER_00: And a lot of times it's the other way, right?
• 17:12
  SPEAKER_00: Like I have to keep all these clients because I don't know where the next one's coming from.
• 17:16
  SPEAKER_00: And it sounds like, I mean, from the beginning basically, you kind of had this abundance mentality, but what are kind of the parameters that you set forth uh from the get-go of like, this is who I am.
• 17:31
  SPEAKER_00: If you are cool with that, then we can work together.
• 17:34
  SPEAKER_00: You have to be doing this on your end.
• 17:37
  SPEAKER_00: And then obviously you don't have to get into specifics, but what are some ways in which you look at a situation and you just say, there's no way this is gonna work, right?
• 17:46
  SPEAKER_00: I'm either not gonna take you on as a client from the get-go, or we're probably not going to continue to work together in the future, because I think that would really be helpful for some advisors to be able to hear.
• 18:33
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
• 18:34
  SPEAKER_02: So uh first thing that I'll say, and and some of the other planners that I hang out with have heard me say this before, but do not offer a friends and family discount.
• 18:42
  SPEAKER_02: Friends and family are the worst, they are the biggest pains in the asses.
• 18:47
  SPEAKER_02: If I can say that on your podcast.
• 18:49
  SPEAKER_02: Um, so it should be a friends and family premium.
• 18:52
  SPEAKER_02: Do not cut them any slack, right?
• 18:54
  SPEAKER_02: If you're gonna do that.
• 18:55
  SPEAKER_02: And and I don't discount, period.
• 18:58
  SPEAKER_02: Um, if so, I don't I I think when you start your business, price, price where you need to be.
• 19:07
  SPEAKER_02: I know a lot of people underprice.
• 19:09
  SPEAKER_02: That's a really bad place to start because then you're playing catch up, right?
• 19:14
  SPEAKER_02: So if you if you're like, uh, you know, I have imposter syndrome, whatever, I don't think I should be charging X number of dollars an hour.
• 19:24
  SPEAKER_02: Um that puts a lot of stress on the planner to ultimately get to that point of profitability.
• 19:32
  SPEAKER_02: So figure out your profitability from the get-go.
• 19:35
  SPEAKER_02: And if you're gonna charge, you know, if you feel like, well, I could probably change charge$200 an hour, probably it should be$300.
• 19:42
  SPEAKER_02: Like just embrace that and start from a place of um it's gonna work from the start.
• 19:50
  SPEAKER_02: And then, you know, once it starts rolling, you're you're off to the races.
• 19:56
  SPEAKER_02: Um the other the one thing that I would say is if the the people that work best with me are what I call doers, are the people who are um willing to uh do the stuff that they need to do, right?
• 20:10
  SPEAKER_02: Because I don't, because I don't place insurance, like the people that I work with, they need to write reach out to you for insurance when it comes time.
• 20:19
  SPEAKER_02: Like I'll tell them, okay, you need term, you need disability, whatever.
• 20:23
  SPEAKER_02: They've got to be willing to do that.
• 20:25
  SPEAKER_02: And so if there was a way for me to screen for people who are kind of that, that like intrinsically motivated.
• 20:34
  SPEAKER_02: And so I have some questions when I do my 30-minute prospective client meeting that try to tease where I try to tease that out, but it's it's not perfect.
• 20:46
  SPEAKER_02: And the other thing, too, that I'll say is that there is just a an astonishing lack of creativity, I think, in terms of like business models when it comes to this industry.
• 20:58
  SPEAKER_02: Like everybody thinks, okay, well, I can either do AUM or I can do like this type of planning.
• 21:07
  SPEAKER_02: And there's you can do a lot more, right?
• 21:11
  SPEAKER_02: And so, for instance, um, I stole this from another planner, um, Ross Dugas out of Houston, where he he just showed up one day, he goes, I do 90-minute consults.
• 21:23
  SPEAKER_02: People just show up and I do a 90-minute consult.
• 21:27
  SPEAKER_02: I don't do any follow-up notes, you know, the it's just a one-off thing.
• 21:31
  SPEAKER_02: And I was like, that sounds really cool.
• 21:35
  SPEAKER_02: And so I started doing that, and I've tweaked it a little bit.
• 21:40
  SPEAKER_02: Like I'm I'm too OCD not to send follow-up notes, and but I but it's a two-hour uh program.
• 21:49
  SPEAKER_02: And what it is now leading to, quite frankly, is it is the it's a way to kickstart an hourly relationship because people show up and they're like, okay, well, this is these are this was what I'm really super concerned about.
• 22:05
  SPEAKER_02: Can you help me with this?
• 22:06
  SPEAKER_02: And we kind of triage their financial situation.
• 22:10
  SPEAKER_02: And it's a way to get paid for discovery, right?
• 22:13
  SPEAKER_02: Because in that session, as I'm kind of bringing my expert eye, I'm also going through the process and kind of prioritizing, okay, here's what I see, here's what we you need.
• 22:23
  SPEAKER_02: And then um I've had a lot of clients use that as a way to then start an hourly on-demand relationship.
• 22:31
  SPEAKER_02: Um, so what I try to do, I try to pay a lot of attention, uh a lot of attention to um consultants who are outside of the financial services space, right?
• 22:42
  SPEAKER_02: I try not to get into the echo chamber where it's just all financial services because, like I said, they're just a lot of the same ideas ping-ponging around.
• 22:53
  SPEAKER_02: So find a consultant outside, find somebody who is not doing work in our specific industry.
• 23:01
  SPEAKER_02: Um, I like Alan Weiss.
• 23:03
  SPEAKER_02: He's a consultant that's been around for, you know, since the flood, and he's got just an incredible amount of content.
• 23:12
  SPEAKER_02: And you want to talk about somebody who does not have imposter syndrome, whoa, uh Alan Weiss will knock your socks off in terms of, you know, sort of his self-worth and and what he's doing.
• 23:25
  SPEAKER_02: So uh make sure for new planners, what I would say is build the business that you want to build, build it for yourself, first and foremost.
• 23:35
  SPEAKER_02: Um, that's another thing that I hear people say is like, oh, well, my clients are gonna want me to do asset management.
• 23:40
  SPEAKER_02: And like, how do you know that?
• 23:42
  SPEAKER_02: You know, have 50 people told you that they need you to manage their assets?
• 23:47
  SPEAKER_02: Well, you know, I think they just will.
• 23:49
  SPEAKER_02: It's like, do you want to manage assets?
• 23:53
  SPEAKER_02: If you want to manage assets, then do it.
• 23:55
  SPEAKER_02: But you know, build the business that you want to build first and foremost, and then just be amazing, do great work, and the business will show up.
• 24:08
  SPEAKER_00: That yeah, that's did you have something, Pete?
• 24:10
  SPEAKER_00: I was just gonna say that's phenomenal advice.
• 24:12
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, yeah, it's absolutely amazing.
• 24:16
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, what other advice would you give um to new planners who are just starting out?
• 24:21
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, you have such great experience, but you know, what are maybe looking back now, like maybe some items that you're still like, man, I wish I knew that from the beginning.
• 24:29
  SPEAKER_01: Like, what are just some quick tidbits that you would give to a new planner?
• 24:33
  SPEAKER_02: Um, so uh what I would say is don't try to have everything locked in right from the get-go.
• 24:39
  SPEAKER_02: I think a lot of people are like, well, this is gonna be my process for this, and this is how I'm gonna do this.
• 24:45
  SPEAKER_02: And um it's not gonna be the way you think it is.
• 24:50
  SPEAKER_02: So, you know, get it to the point where you have like functionality as far as running a business, and then um you can refine once you've started to work with clients.
• 25:03
  SPEAKER_02: Um and so, you know, I I I thought in all candor, like I said, I thought I was gonna have a great business where all of my clients were ongoing.
• 25:15
  SPEAKER_02: And I threw hourly and project work into my my first ADV as kind of a you know back pocket.
• 25:22
  SPEAKER_02: Well, let me just have it available in case.
• 25:25
  SPEAKER_02: And like I said, once I started meeting with prospective clients, it was a real wake-up call.
• 25:32
  SPEAKER_02: Like, oh, this is what people want.
• 25:34
  SPEAKER_02: People actually want a more flexible way to work with a planner.
• 25:41
  SPEAKER_02: Um, you know, it's kind of like dating first.
• 25:43
  SPEAKER_02: Let's date for a while, help me out, figure out my stuff.
• 25:46
  SPEAKER_02: And then if I want to continue, I offer that as an option.
• 25:50
  SPEAKER_02: Um so just be open.
• 25:54
  SPEAKER_02: And again, the other thing too is if a client wants your help and they're willing to pay you, like figure out how you can help them.
• 26:01
  SPEAKER_02: This is a weird industry in which a client will show up and will say, Hey, I really need your help and I'm willing to pay you money for the help that you're willing to give me.
• 26:10
  SPEAKER_02: And people are like, no, thanks.
• 26:14
  unknown: What?
• 26:14
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 26:15
  SPEAKER_02: Um, and again, a lot of that is like, well, they don't they don't fit into my box.
• 26:19
  SPEAKER_02: And so again, if you want to specialize, if you if you're developing that niche approach where you only want to work with dentists who own cocker spaniels, well, like more power to you.
• 26:31
  SPEAKER_02: Um but again, like it's a business.
• 26:36
  SPEAKER_02: You're trying to run a business.
• 26:37
  SPEAKER_02: And so, you know, I have amazing clients who are all over the map in terms of age and profession.
• 26:45
  SPEAKER_02: And and the one thing that they all have in common is like they're really cool people.
• 26:51
  SPEAKER_02: I really like them.
• 26:53
  SPEAKER_02: And we just vibe.
• 26:55
  SPEAKER_02: We love to hang out.
• 26:57
  SPEAKER_02: And so, you know, that's that's sort of my people ask me if I have a niche, and my niche is that I work with people that I like, love, and respect.
• 27:05
  SPEAKER_00: So wow, what phenomenal insight! And you know what?
• 27:10
  SPEAKER_00: Thanks so much for being here.
• 27:11
  SPEAKER_00: This is a great episode.
• 27:12
  SPEAKER_00: If you guys enjoyed this episode, please give us five stars on whatever app you're listening to, and we will see you in future episodes.