Latest / The Perfect RIA / Will I Ever Experience Freedom as a Business Owner?
Transcript
- 0:20Jamie Shilanski: The Price of Freedom: it's eternal vigilance
- 0:22- Thomas Jefferson and how true it is. TPR nation, how we must
- 0:26covet, protect, safeguard and deploy ways that allow us to
- 0:29remain free to do the things that we want to do. Welcome back
- 0:33TPR Nation. This is Jamie Shilanski in World to Conquer,
- 0:36and we are going to be talking about the second stage of an
- 0:39advisor's career path. So what we talked about last week was
- 0:43the growth stage. There are three different stages that an
- 0:46advisor is normally at when they're building their financial
- 0:49advisory career, and if you have around, and this is just kind of
- 0:53a WAG, but around less than $30 million of asset owner
- 0:56management, the only stage of your practice you should be in
- 1:00is growth. That's the only thing that you should be focusing on,
- 1:04is growing, growing, growing your practice. But what happens
- 1:07when you've grown your practice and now you're inching towards
- 1:11two things, either becoming really comfortable and
- 1:14complacent or really burnt out and afraid of what that might
- 1:17mean for all of your clients, your practice, your and your
- 1:20family. That's a huge part of this. And so now we enter into
- 1:24this freedom stage. And this freedom stage, gosh, it's it's
- 1:27really, really difficult to enter into. And my father
- 1:30struggled with it, and my mom because they started Shilanski
- 1:34and Associates, our advisory practice back in 1981 up in
- 1:37encourage Alaska, and they dreamed of the Freedom stage.
- 1:40But when you're grinding, when you are grinding and building a
- 1:44business from the scratch up. Regardless of what industry that
- 1:47you are in, it takes a lot of time and energy. I mean, we talk
- 1:51about, you know, these, these youngins, these youngins today,
- 1:55they talk about work, life balance. They have zero idea
- 1:58what they are talking about, unless they have started a
- 2:01business from zero and took it all the way up into into it,
- 2:04because one of the reasons, and I was telling my son, he was
- 2:08very confused by this Lane had said to me. He said, Yeah, you
- 2:11know, love the idea of being my own boss and not working for
- 2:15anyone. And I said, funny, because the second that I'm
- 2:18interviewing a prospect or a client and they say those words
- 2:21to me, I won't take them on as a business client. And he was
- 2:25like, Oh my gosh. Can I ask why? And I was like, yeah, like,
- 2:28yeah, because you are full of deception. You have no idea what
- 2:32it is like to actually be a business owner. Can I get an
- 2:35amen if you say you don't have a boss because you are the boss.
- 2:39You are so, so delusional. You have 10,000 bosses. You have all
- 2:42of the people that you have to answer to, a broker dealer, your
- 2:46clients, your employees. I mean, you are mentally working on that
- 2:50organization non stop, from the moment you wake up to the moment
- 2:54you go to sleep at night. And then you are weaving in parts of
- 2:57your like, like, family, vacations, holidays, etc. But as
- 3:00a financial advisor especially, we're taking on a lot of the
- 3:04burden and concerns that our clientele have. You know, in a
- 3:07once you get out of your growth stage. So your growth stage is
- 3:11anything less than 100 clients. And if you have less than 100
- 3:14clients, you're still growing your practice. You're still
- 3:18building out your book. I think the sweet spot, Bill Bachrach
- 3:21talked about this a lot in the 90s, was your ideal 100 clients.
- 3:25Maybe, you know, I'd like an ideal 50, and the other 50 maybe
- 3:28could be less ideal. But still, people I enjoy working with. One
- 3:32of the things that we're really good about in our practice is we
- 3:36don't allow any C's and Charlie or D's and delta clients. So
- 3:39there's a practice in which you can rate all of your clientele,
- 3:43A, B, C and D, and you set up measurements based on fees that
- 3:47they pay and money that they have and whether or not you like
- 3:50them. The problem is the people we like the most, generally
- 3:53aren't paying us the most. We just really like how much
- 3:57they're paying us and that they're pretty easy to work
- 4:00with. And so we'll do this exercise every now and then, and
- 4:03we will go through and list our clients, and then we will have
- 4:07our team list our clients too, because at Shilanski and
- 4:10Associates, we have an RIA in which we have three cogs in the
- 4:14wheel, if you will. And we have our financial advisors who give
- 4:17advice. Then we have our relationship managers who foster
- 4:20that relationship but do not give financial planning advice.
- 4:24And then we have our operations team who are responsible for the
- 4:28movement of money. And it takes every single one of us to keep
- 4:31this going down the road, and so sometimes I'll have a really
- 4:35good relationship with a client. I'll absolutely love working
- 4:38with them, but they're jerks to the rest of my team. The rest of
- 4:42my team thinks they're high maintenance and terrible. They
- 4:45dread sing their name on the phone. So we have to have a day
- 4:49of reconciliation and a day of saying, Okay, listen, is this
- 4:52somebody that we should graduate. Graduate is what we
- 4:55call firing clients, and that's when they no longer meet wide
- 4:59ideals, our ethos of who we work best with. And when I empower my
- 5:03team members, and I really let them look at that lens, they
- 5:06become very discerning about who they suggest as difficult,
- 5:09because they don't want to say somebody is difficult. And if
- 5:13they have the courage to tell me, Hey, this person's really
- 5:16obnoxious to deal with, they're very, you know, persnickety, all
- 5:20of these different things. Now, some of them being fussy and
- 5:24liking things a certain way, the Type A personality she will deal
- 5:27with that all day long. But somebody being rude or
- 5:30disrespectful to my team, then cool, go work with somebody
- 5:34else. I don't care about your account size, because at the end
- 5:37of the day, I'm going to have to be the one advocating for our
- 5:41relationship to remain in place, and my team is going to fight me
- 5:44every inch. And if you're to my team, I don't want to work with
- 5:48you, because we are in that enterprise stage. So we have
- 5:51that growth, that freedom and that enterprise. So the growth
- 5:55stage anything less than your ideal number of clients, 100
- 5:58that's what back rack recommends the most financial advisors that
- 6:02I meet with want about 150 clients, because that's going to
- 6:05equate to the revenue that they want to earn. So 100 150
- 6:09whatever your ideal number is, if you're less than that, you're
- 6:12still at your growth stage, and that is the only thing that you
- 6:16need to be focused on, all right. But once you've achieved
- 6:19that number, now you're entering into your freedom stage. Now
- 6:23you're getting the freedom of being discerning. And
- 6:26discernment is really important, because when we're in our growth
- 6:29stage, we have a habit of allowing any prospect fog a
- 6:33mirror willing to pay us to become a client. But when we
- 6:36enter in our freedom stage, we don't have to take on those
- 6:39relationships. We've built enough networks and connections
- 6:43we can graduate some relationships simply because we
- 6:46don't want to work with them. And so we used to practice this
- 6:49gorilla test that I was telling you about, the A, B, C and D
- 6:53level. People run through it, scrub it, and then put on the
- 6:56agendas every quarter. Who is there anyone we need to graduate
- 7:00that maybe is in the C and D level? Now we have a little bit
- 7:03of a different test, and that test is whether or not the
- 7:06financial advisor or the team dreads the client coming in. So
- 7:10if we have an appointment booked on our schedule and we are
- 7:13absolutely dreading meeting with that person, and the way that
- 7:17the senior advisor capacity look at things is we Friday night,
- 7:20we'll wrap up our appointments during surge, then Saturday or
- 7:24Sunday, we will look to the week ahead and make sure everything
- 7:28is done and ready for the next week. And what happens is, when
- 7:31we're looking a week ahead and we see that appointment, let's
- 7:35just say that I have a client I'm dreading on Thursday. What
- 7:38am I thinking about? Saturday, Sunday, Monday, Tuesday,
- 7:41Wednesday, and all day Thursday, I'm thinking about that one
- 7:45singular client I don't want to meet with, and now my mental
- 7:48energy is focused on that, instead of focusing on the 35
- 7:52people that are before him that I do want to meet with. So
- 7:55making sure that if we if we dread an appointment because
- 7:58we're going to have a hard conversation, maybe question
- 8:01fees, maybe a spouse died, that's okay. You could dread an
- 8:05appointment every now and then. If you dread every appointment
- 8:08with that client, what are you doing? You are setting yourself
- 8:12up for regulatory failure, because what's going to end up
- 8:15happening if you dread that relationship, that's going to
- 8:18become your is going to become a red flag, they're going to send
- 8:22in a complaint, and now you're going to have to defend that
- 8:26complaint or have that complaint on your record. I never once met
- 8:29with a financial advisor, never ever who had a regulatory
- 8:33complaint on their record and didn't feel they should have
- 8:36fired the client before it happened. They were like, You
- 8:39know what? I just I didn't trust my gut. I was uneasy. I knew
- 8:43something was going to come up with them. And hindsight might
- 8:46be 2020 but I'm a big believer in our instinct and intuition,
- 8:50especially as ladies out there, we are hard wired to assess. I'm
- 8:54going to use the word predator situations, but it end up just
- 8:57using that in a biological sense. And you know, we know
- 9:00something is not right. We know when the door rings, if we
- 9:04should answer it or not after we checked our ring camera and see
- 9:07who was not always. I mean, there are very there are people
- 9:11that are deceitful, but most of the time, what did I was
- 9:14listening to this one psychologist one time, and he
- 9:17said, in the animal kingdom, if you look at all the predators of
- 9:21prey that are out there, if the prey, and I'm just again using
- 9:24this animalistic, you know, thing, the prey sees a predator.
- 9:28It does not approach. It does not necessarily like, Hey, how
- 9:31you doing, buddy? I didn't want to judge you from afar, so I
- 9:35thought I'd come over here and see if you actually are that.
- 9:38Mean, oh, those teeth are shiny. I'm dying. So the prey and
- 9:42Predator don't have that scenario. But then think about
- 9:45it with the human side. So on the human side, imagine you're
- 9:48in a warehouse. You're in warehouse, and it's under
- 9:51construction, and you're trying to get to that top floor to meet
- 9:55a contractor, co worker, colleague, whatever, and the
- 9:58elevator opens and it has one single individual in there, and
- 10:01everything inside of you is like that person is a predator, that
- 10:05person is not safe, that person makes me feel uncomfortable. And
- 10:09what do most women do? They get any elevator anyways, the
- 10:12elevator anyway. And
- 10:15animal kingdom, this go, this person makes me feel unsafe, and
- 10:19I'm comfortable, and I throw some money to join them and see
- 10:22if that's really true. You can talk all day long about how we
- 10:25don't want to judge a book by the cover. We don't want to
- 10:29stereotype. We don't want to hurt people's feelings. Screw
- 10:32that. If I don't feel safe around you, I don't care if it
- 10:35hurts your feelings. I'm not going to be around you. I don't
- 10:38feel comfortable next. Just your gut on these things. Now,
- 10:41luckily, financial planning, it's not that life or death most
- 10:45of the time, but you still have these individuals you don't
- 10:48enjoy working with, and they will become your problems. They
- 10:51will become your complaints. So if you're dreading, if you get
- 10:55through a couple of search cycles and you're dreading those
- 10:58appointments that's on. You figure it out. Graduate them.
- 11:01Matthew Jarvis fires off a letter Shilanski and Associates.
- 11:04We pick up the phone or have a meeting and say, and we
- 11:07graduate. And we say, Hey, listen, we've taken you this
- 11:10far. You've done really great, blah, blah, blah, but now it's
- 11:14time to transition that relationship. And you know, I
- 11:16think you should go work with so and so. Don't keep clients on
- 11:20your books because you want the revenue that at the end of the
- 11:23day, is not worth the potential complaint misunderstanding or
- 11:27losing a good employee over the price is too high. Trust your
- 11:30gut. So in this freedom stage, you do get to have that
- 11:33discernment. You do get to decide who you want to work
- 11:36with. And then then this happens also, and this is, this is the
- 11:39thing that most people have a lot of problems with, especially
- 11:43if you're over the age of 50, you struggle with the shopkeeper
- 11:46mentality. And the shopkeeper mentality means I must be at my
- 11:49office to make sure the doors are open, the lights are on,
- 11:53things are refreshed, and client the doors answered when clients
- 11:56get there, and if we're not physically there to see those
- 11:59things happen, we automatically assume they're not happening and
- 12:03they cannot happen without our involvement. And it's not just
- 12:06the opening and closing of the office. It's getting what people
- 12:10scheduled. It's getting money transfers. It's accepting phone
- 12:13calls in the middle of the day that hijack the rest of your
- 12:16day. It's all of the things that come along with being a
- 12:19shopkeeper, because at the end of the day, every person you've
- 12:23employed is relying on you to give them a paycheck, and you
- 12:26can only give them a paycheck if you're still in business. And so
- 12:29it becomes this really big struggle, and this feeling of
- 12:32guilt of not being at the office all of the time, but when you
- 12:36enter this freedom stage, so you go, you're moving out of growth.
- 12:39You're transitioning towards the top end of your clients, or AUM,
- 12:43however you want to define that for yourself, and you're
- 12:46beginning to enter into freedom. Freedom is all about making sure
- 12:50that you have systems, policies and processes in place. That is
- 12:53the last stepping stone between growth and freedom. And once you
- 12:57have systems, policies and processes in place. And by the
- 13:00way, these are not policies and processes between your two ears.
- 13:03These are documented in a system in which other people can pick
- 13:07up and finalize without you. That is the biggest part of this
- 13:10element that most people neglect. They say, Well, we've
- 13:13always talked about it. Here's what we've always done. Well, if
- 13:16you've done what you've always done, you're going to get what
- 13:20you've always got. But now you're trying to grow. Now
- 13:23you're trying to accelerate into this freedom and territory, and
- 13:26it takes the time and the vigilance to sit down and put in
- 13:29the parameters of safeguarding that. Now, what does this mean?
- 13:33How can you take that and apply it? Here's the very first thing
- 13:36that you can work on. It's low IQ. What's the communication
- 13:40policy? Because when you enter this freedom stage, you're going
- 13:43to give yourself permission not to physically be at the office
- 13:46when the rest of your team is at the office. And when you have
- 13:50that policy in place, you're going to have a lot of guilt,
- 13:53and what you're going to feel is when you're physically away from
- 13:56the office, you have to answer the phone call every single time
- 14:00the office calls you. But guess what? You just put yourself in
- 14:03position of being the easy button they're calling you
- 14:06because it's easier to call you than it is to think how to
- 14:09problem solve most people that I meet, I mean, there are idiots
- 14:13out there. Lord knows, I don't suffer a fool well. I heard that
- 14:16quote once from my good friend Paul Harris, and I absolutely
- 14:20love it. I think about all the time. I can remember the exact
- 14:23moment at the FBA conference she said it to me. She said, I don't
- 14:27suffer fools well. And I took that with me, and I said same.
- 14:30That is me. That is I do not suffer a fool very well. I don't
- 14:33do it tactfully. I'm pretty blunt. You know, my baby
- 14:36brother, Micah Shilanski, he says, Do you have a brain? Are
- 14:39you using it? I think that's a horrific way of stating it, but
- 14:43it's the same application. But most of the time, people that I
- 14:46meet with, they do want to problem solve. They do want to
- 14:49think things through. They do want to be of asset. They put a
- 14:52lot of value in the work. And I find that most of the CEOs, most
- 14:56of the operation officers, most of the leaders, the however you
- 14:59want to define your role, not as the financial advisor, but as
- 15:03the practice owner. You're inhibiting that growth. You're
- 15:06crutching them, and they're allowing you to become their
- 15:09crutch because they don't want to fail you, they don't want to
- 15:12make a mistake, they don't want to let the client down. And
- 15:16ultimately, whether we want to admit this or not, the brain is
- 15:19lazy. I just talked to my son Lane about this. He was studying
- 15:22for an examination, and they set a deadline to take the test on
- 15:26it, and he was like, You know what? I'm probably going to fail
- 15:29anyways, because that deadline is a lot sooner than I think I'm
- 15:33prepared for, but I'm going to give it the best college try
- 15:36that I got. Now, when he concluded this, you know,
- 15:39process of studying for this and he ended up failing, what
- 15:42Victoria in our office would call a good fail, he was super,
- 15:45super close, five points off from doing a passing score. But
- 15:49when he talked to me about this, you know, and I let him digest,
- 15:52he took ownership over it. He said, You know what? Here's the
- 15:55things that I did wrong, blah, blah, blah. And I said, May I
- 15:59offer you, are you in a place for constructive feedback on
- 16:02this. And he was like, Yeah, I am, because that's an important
- 16:05element of providing criticism. Are you in a place for
- 16:08constructive feedback, and then you have to actually listen to
- 16:12the answer somebody gives you? No, I'm not in a good head space
- 16:15for this. What do you have to say? No, you know what? It
- 16:18really wasn't a life or death issue. We can table it and talk
- 16:21about it later. How can I be of service to you? How can I help
- 16:25you where you're at right now? But you can't have that
- 16:28conversation and somebody habitually say no, no, no, no to
- 16:31feedback. They have to just everyone has an off day,
- 16:34everyone's in a bad mood, everyone has things come up,
- 16:37personal life that maybe doesn't put them in the best frame of
- 16:40mind. Totally okay, but it cannot be habitual. It can't be
- 16:43every week on the calendar for 52 times you're telling me
- 16:47you're not in a good head space, we have a different kind of
- 16:50problem. And so he said, Yeah, I am. And I said, You gave your
- 16:53brain permission to quit. And he was like, I don't think so. Why
- 16:57do you think that? And I said, because the brain Lean is very,
- 17:00very lazy, and when you told it, I'm probably gonna fail.
- 17:03Anyways, it latched on to that idea, because the brain has a
- 17:07million things it is doing throughout the day that if you
- 17:10give it a way out, if you give it a way to not have to, not to
- 17:13have to process, not to be discerning, it will 100% take
- 17:16that route. It will take that route every single time you give
- 17:20it the opportunity to and I said, so you put in a lot of
- 17:23time, you did a lot of studying, but you still gave your brain
- 17:26permission to fail. You gave it a way out. You gave it this, you
- 17:29know, this crutch for you. And he said, Man, I can really see
- 17:33how, how that happened. Even though that wasn't my conscious
- 17:36thought, it became my subconscious thought. And I
- 17:39said, 100% and so whenever we look at organizing our team,
- 17:42whenever we look at how we give them instructions, we want to
- 17:45make sure that we're being very cognizant that they can't hit us
- 17:49as the easy button. And this was really hard for me at first,
- 17:52because when my baby brother Micah and I took over the
- 17:55practice at Shilanski and Associates, it was an
- 17:58opportunity for my parents to enter into their freedom stage.
- 18:01And their freedom stage meant they didn't have to show up at
- 18:04the office because we were there running the office. They didn't
- 18:08have to answer every client call, because we were there to
- 18:11answer every client call. And so as we were coming up in this
- 18:14this area, we built out Micah's book of business first, before
- 18:18concentrating on mine or other advisors. And so as we did that,
- 18:21Micah was entering this freedom stage, and I was still running
- 18:25the office and making sure that we were, you know, answering all
- 18:28the things. And so as he approached this freedom stage, I
- 18:31really, you know, could hear from my team members, and then
- 18:34being like, Micah is never available. Micah is never
- 18:37available. And then I had to start asking really intelligent
- 18:41questions. Hey, I heard Micah was never available. You've got
- 18:44this outstanding question from this client, you're really
- 18:47concerned about giving them an answer? Yes, that's true. I
- 18:50didn't answer for them. I said, Great, show me what steps you
- 18:54took to get on Micah's calendar. Well, I called his phone. Okay.
- 18:57Did you leave a message? No, I didn't. Did you text him and
- 19:00tell him he had an emergency? No, I didn't. Okay. Did you
- 19:03escalate this to a lead? No, I didn't. And then all sudden it
- 19:07became this. They said, Well, I didn't know what to do, and so
- 19:10in the absence of knowing what to do, they would pick up the
- 19:14phone and they would just call Micah, call Micah, call Micah.
- 19:17And when Micah would answer the phone and answer their question,
- 19:20it just accelerated the number of times he was being asked that
- 19:24question. What the heck is the point of being out of the office
- 19:27if you're just gonna be on your phone the entire freaking time?
- 19:31And so I'm not talking about the emergency calls. I'm talking
- 19:34about when the team didn't want to put all the information
- 19:37together, and they just wanted to hit the easy button and call
- 19:41you, and you answer the question, and then then relay
- 19:44the question. So the very first thing that we had to do, super
- 19:47low IQ, that you should be doing too, is put together
- 19:50communication policy. Great. Here's the steps you take in
- 19:53writing, here are the steps you take in order to elevate this
- 19:56towards a phone call to Micah. And when you do this, you'll
- 20:00notice, and I did, I noticed in a heartbeat, because I had one
- 20:03employee that habitually called me because I was the easy button
- 20:06and barely gave me any of the information, so much so that I
- 20:10was like, Oh my gosh, I hate answering the phone when you
- 20:13call. And I thought about it, and I was like, I hate answering
- 20:16the phone when you call. I hate answering the phone. I'm not
- 20:20going to answer the phone. I'm not going to answer the phone.
- 20:23I'm going to let you leave a message. I'm going to check my
- 20:26text make sure it's not 911 client issue. I'm going to give
- 20:29it one hour. I would set a timer on my phone for an hour, and
- 20:33then I would return the phone call, and guess what happened
- 20:36when I call back an hour later, they had already solved the
- 20:39problem. Hey, thanks for returning my call. Actually,
- 20:42don't need you anymore, because this is what I did. Oh, great,
- 20:45fantastic. And then that became the the go to process, because
- 20:49for the most part, we don't have a lot of 911, emergencies at our
- 20:52office, and you probably don't either. And if we give our team
- 20:56a process and a policy to follow, they were able to follow
- 20:59those steps. Now a couple of times, did I have to have
- 21:02corrective conversations with people like, yeah, okay, great.
- 21:05What did charnel, who is our Chief Operations Officer, what
- 21:09did she say when you brought this to her? Oh, I haven't
- 21:12brought her to her. I brought it to you. Okay, great. So hold on.
- 21:15I'm going to go back. Let's pull up this document together. Let's
- 21:19see where I failed in the process to articulate where we
- 21:22are at. And it's not done in a condescending way. It's done a
- 21:25way of saying, If you followed a process in our office, that is a
- 21:29Get Out of Jail Free card, if there was not a process in place
- 21:32for you to follow, that is a Get Out of Jail Free card, because
- 21:36that is an ownership responsibility to make sure it
- 21:38was in place so that you could follow that process. But if
- 21:42there was a process and you deviated from said process that
- 21:45was documented and you were aware of then I've got a really
- 21:48big problem, then I'm not going to be the fun, energized leader.
- 21:51I'm going to be the disciplinary leader that says, What are you
- 21:55doing? Right? Because you're not serving you, you're not serving
- 21:58our clients, and you're not serving me. So let's start
- 22:01looking in this capacity of how we can help ourselves. And so
- 22:05start with your communication policy, and then move on to the
- 22:08next thing. Now, the way that I would just like this, if you're
- 22:12if you're graduating from growth and entering into freedom, and
- 22:15maybe you're just already in your freedom stage, but you're
- 22:18not sure if it's working out successfully, and you feel a lot
- 22:22of guilt when you're not in the office. You feel the office
- 22:25calls you obnoxiously. You feel clients are being serviced, etc,
- 22:28whatever this is. Then here's how, what I would suggest when
- 22:32I'm out of the office, I still have check in meetings. So I
- 22:35still run a regular schedule in which I have check in meetings
- 22:38with my team so that they can tell me. Now the meetings aren't
- 22:42all day, but it's give me the high level stuff. I still
- 22:45monitor the calls that are coming in. I've created a widget
- 22:48inside of infinity that show us the call volume we have
- 22:51processes that are written out, so I can see if anyone is in a
- 22:54red zone, which means the process has lasted longer than
- 22:57it's supposed to. So I'm still listening to these polls points
- 23:01now, this is one of the things that few years ago, about seven
- 23:04years ago, our team was like, hey, you know, we're getting
- 23:07inundated with phone calls. And the operations team, who's not
- 23:11the first people that answer the phone in our office, is
- 23:14constantly having to pick up the phone. And so they were, you
- 23:17know, and operations people are the type of people that are just
- 23:21so annoyed by incoming phone calls. They think their customer
- 23:24service skills are top notch, but they're super introverted,
- 23:27and they're absolutely annoyed by incoming phone calls. And a
- 23:31relationship management person isn't they're like, oh my gosh,
- 23:34somebody's calling. I'd love to chat with you. And so they pick
- 23:37up that phone after they see the caller. D, they're like, oh my
- 23:41gosh, Bob, how was vacation? You know, they're energized by that
- 23:44interaction with another people. That's how they refill their
- 23:48cup. Is through energy with other people. But introverted
- 23:51people, the people that are really good at operations,
- 23:54because they're super detailed, do not get their cups revealed
- 23:57that way. They get their cups refilled by being alone in
- 24:00solitude and being able to focus deeply on the work that they're
- 24:04doing. So they said, Jimmy, you know, we're getting all of these
- 24:07phone calls, blah, blah. And I was like, okay, so I was just to
- 24:11the point of being like, we need to hire a new relationship
- 24:14manager to help with phones. And then I stopped, and I said, All
- 24:18right, this is getting in your client's checkbook. It's a lot
- 24:21of money. Well, how much is a lot of money? Because $1,000 to
- 24:24some people is a lot of money, and 100,000 is a lot of money to
- 24:28some other people. And so I pulled up our phone log, and I
- 24:31was like, Guys, we had four phone calls that the operation
- 24:34team had to make or how to take. And they were like, well, yeah,
- 24:38and I'm like, four, four in the entire week. So I'm going to
- 24:41hire somebody at 60 plus $1,000 a year for four phone calls and
- 24:44and it really made them validate. Okay, what kind of
- 24:47information am I giving my leader to see if that's
- 24:50legitimate? And I didn't just do the exercise by myself. I had,
- 24:53well, I did it first, I looked at first, then I had them do it
- 24:57with me. And I said, Great, let's pull up RingCentral. We
- 25:00went into RingCentral. I said, Bring up the call log for last
- 25:03week. Here's the extension that answered it. Here's the ones
- 25:06that didn't that the operations team, by their extension, had
- 25:10the answer, and then all sudden, it's a Guided Discovery. And we
- 25:13do that all the time with clients. It's a Guided
- 25:16Discovery. Oh my gosh, it really wasn't that big of a problem. So
- 25:20now I'm not throwing human capital at a process problem.
- 25:23Instead, I'm looking at it and saying, Great, let's set up
- 25:26relays that win because we have a hybrid office, where some
- 25:29people are in our local anchorage office, and then the
- 25:32other half there, you know, down through the lower 48 Well, let's
- 25:36set up a rings scenario, where it rings to these people first,
- 25:39so that by the third ring, if the operations team is having to
- 25:42answer it, they know that the other two relationship managers
- 25:46are engaged on the phone. Does that sound acceptable? Yes, it
- 25:49does great. So we put this process across the board, and we
- 25:52looped everyone in, and then we explained to our relationship
- 25:56managers, hey, when the operations team is doing the
- 25:58movement of money, it's really hard to interrupt because it's
- 26:02very easy to make a mistake. And if they make a mistake, here's
- 26:05what's going to happen. So what we want to do is we want to
- 26:08safeguard their focus, which means here's how I would like to
- 26:12set up the phone relay. Does that sound okay to you guys?
- 26:15Yeah, absolutely. Because relationship manager people,
- 26:18they want to be a service. They want to help other people. They
- 26:21are 100% about helping their teammates, and they were 100% on
- 26:25board with that. And then I came to the operations people, and I
- 26:28said, Listen, I know you've gotten Sue on the phone before.
- 26:31She's not a two minute phone call, she's a 10 minute phone
- 26:35call. And you know, sometimes when the relationship managers
- 26:38are tied up with that, it might trickle back. But here's all the
- 26:41steps we're going to take before the phone call gets to you. So
- 26:45if the phone call gets to you, will you acknowledge that these
- 26:48other two were super busy? And they said, Yeah, absolutely. We
- 26:52want to make sure the client's taken care of. If all these
- 26:55other resources are being utilized, of course, we could
- 26:58take that phone call. Great, wonderful. Thank you so much. So
- 27:01getting these policies, getting these processes, then doing this
- 27:05cross pollination, making sure everyone understands that
- 27:08they're all part of this dynamic wheel to keep this rolling is
- 27:11how you get to the level of freedom that allows you to get
- 27:14outside of the office. Because if I'm not doing financial
- 27:17planning work, which is working on the financial plans, if I'm
- 27:21not growing the practice, if I am not focused on business
- 27:24development or meeting with clients, I should not be hanging
- 27:27out at my office. I should be with my family, the people that
- 27:31I say I am doing all of this for the people that I say I work
- 27:34this hard for I should show up for so that they understand when
- 27:37I am in the office, I am deeply motivated and focused on the
- 27:41work that has to get done. So when I'm outside the office, I
- 27:44can really be present with them. But to get to that freedom stage
- 27:48systems, policies and processes. Now I gave you really good ideas
- 27:51of where to start, but this is where I see most people fail.
- 27:54Remind me what you listened to last week, and have you taken
- 27:58any actions based on what my conversation was with you on the
- 28:01growth stage of your practice? Because even if you're freedom
- 28:04or enterprise, there's still nuggets of truth inside of that
- 28:08growth that you should be able to go to either your practice,
- 28:11your team or your other financial advisors with, what
- 28:14was it? What action did you take? And if you're not taking
- 28:17action, this is when you need to shut up and put your money where
- 28:21your mouth is. You need to enroll in memberships. We sell
- 28:24them at The Perfect RIA. If we're not the right fit for you,
- 28:27cool, go find somebody else who is to hold you accountable to
- 28:30make sure you're getting the things done. Because when we
- 28:34exchange our money, we attribute value to it. This is free
- 28:37advice, and free advice is almost worthless because you
- 28:40never take action on it. And if you're not taking action, what
- 28:43is the point? You're never going to hit this freedom stage alone
- 28:47try to get to that enterprise stage, which is where most of us
- 28:50are really trying to head. Because once you hit freedom,
- 28:53and you really, really got that dialed in, you've got to decide
- 28:57if you're going to level up and take it to the next area, or if
- 29:00you're just going to say, You know what, I'm good, where I'm
- 29:03at, I'm fat and happy, and, you know, I've built a really good
- 29:07life, and I'm going to coast all the way to my death sitting at
- 29:10my desk. So if you're tiptoeing out of growth and into freedom,
- 29:14if that is your aspirational goal to get to in the next 123,
- 29:17or five years, great, we've got a membership for you, and you
- 29:20can take our systems, policies and processes as a framework,
- 29:24and that will show you how and where to get started. We will
- 29:27show you how you must put in the labor to get there. TPR nation,
- 29:30this is Jamie Shilanski in an episode of Worlds to Conquer. Go
- 29:34find people who share your values and change the world.