Latest / Only Fee-Only / #93 - Planning, Partnerships, and the Evolution of XY Planning Network - Dave Bowman

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#93 - Planning, Partnerships, and the Evolution of XY Planning Network - Dave Bowman · Only Fee-Only

• 0:05
  Speaker 1: What's up everybody?
• 0:06
  Speaker 1: Welcome back to the Only Fee Only podcast.
• 0:08
  Speaker 1: I hope everyone had an awesome week this past week.
• 0:12
  Speaker 1: We're talking to David Bowman today, who is the Director of Partnerships at XY Planning Network.
• 0:17
  Speaker 1: He was also the co-founder at College Aid Pro and founder and practice management coach at Outsourced Planning LLC.
• 0:28
  Speaker 1: I actually got the chance to meet David last year on the way to XY Planning Live or XYPN Live at the airport and he was there and I said, hey, where are you headed?
• 0:39
  Speaker 1: And he told me he was headed through the conference as well, and so we actually caught an Uber together.
• 0:44
  Speaker 1: It was Peter.
• 0:45
  Speaker 1: Dave and I Got to learn a little bit about what they're doing and have gotten to know David more through talking to him about sponsoring XY and exhibiting at XY, and we're gonna be excited to be doing that this year.
• 0:57
  Speaker 1: Dave is awesome and has a lot of great insight and just a really cool perspective on the industry, having gotten to know Michael Kitsis and Alan Moore pretty early on into the XY journey, so he has an awesome story.
• 1:13
  Speaker 1: We're excited to be sharing this episode with you.
• 1:15
  Speaker 1: Here is David Bowman on the Only Fee Only podcast.
• 1:20
  Speaker 2: What's up everyone?
• 1:21
  Speaker 2: Welcome to another episode of the Only Fee Only podcast.
• 1:24
  Speaker 2: I'm Peter Travalo.
• 1:26
  Speaker 2: I'm here with my co-host, brock Buckles.
• 1:28
  Speaker 2: How's it going today, brock?
• 1:30
  Speaker 1: It's going well, man Coming off a long weekend Excited to be here and, yeah, I'm pumped.
• 1:36
  Speaker 2: Yes, fresh off Memorial Day and here we are, dave Bowman, really excited to have him on the show.
• 1:42
  Speaker 2: He's a director of partnerships at xypn, um.
• 1:45
  Speaker 2: We've had the pleasure of hanging out in person and I look forward to sharing his story today.
• 1:50
  Speaker 2: So, dave, welcome to the show man thank you so much, pierre.
• 1:53
  Speaker 3: Good to have you, man, good to be here perfect, so we've met in person.
• 1:57
  Speaker 2: Um, but for those who do not know who dave bowman is, you want to give a quick overview of who you are and where you currently live?
• 2:04
  Speaker 3: Sure, yeah, I'm in Joshua Tree, california, in the desert, really small, weird towns like 11,000 people.
• 2:11
  Speaker 3: We love it out here.
• 2:12
  Speaker 3: Coming from San Diego most recently and, yeah, right now, I'm director of partnerships at XY Play Network, so kind of run all of our third party solutions, tech stack, education platforms, things like that, custodian relationships for XYPN.
• 2:28
  Speaker 3: As I think you guys are well aware, we're pretty open architecture and all of our advisors who are members are independent.
• 2:35
  Speaker 3: They can choose whatever they want, but we offer some technology included and some recommended solutions, and that's kind of where I live.
• 2:43
  Speaker 1: That's cool, man.
• 2:44
  Speaker 1: It's a unique space, right, Like that's.
• 2:46
  Speaker 1: That's cool that you get to kind of help with that before we get into all that, because I'm excited to talk about a lot of that stuff, and it's been cool to watch XY grow even before we started.
• 2:55
  Speaker 1: You know our brokerage.
• 2:56
  Speaker 1: They were doing it for five years or whatever it was, or six years, Um, but now they've been around for close to 10, or maybe it is 10.
• 3:04
  Speaker 1: But what's what's your history, man?
• 3:06
  Speaker 1: Like what were you doing before X, Y, kind of?
• 3:09
  Speaker 1: You know, what was your introduction to the industry and what were you doing before this?
• 3:14
  Speaker 3: Yeah.
• 3:15
  Speaker 3: So I I started out as a pre-business major at Ohio state and really just had no idea why I was doing that.
• 3:23
  Speaker 3: Before I went to Ohio State I thought I was going to go to Full Sail and do like music engineering.
• 3:29
  Speaker 3: Before that I thought I was going to do music performance.
• 3:31
  Speaker 3: I played drums, so kind of you know.
• 3:34
  Speaker 3: my parents sort of ushered me like why, don't you go ahead and get a bachelor's degree and then maybe you can do that later if you want to?
• 3:40
  Speaker 3: But you know, coming from a really small town in Northeast Ohio, moving to Columbus, columbus was like Manhattan to me, it was just like it was like the city.
• 3:49
  Speaker 3: And so I was, you know, I was going to school, but I was just more, I think, interested in just kind of the adventure of being, you know, 18 and on your own and that type of thing.
• 3:57
  Speaker 3: So after a while I think 2008, I dropped out of school and I was playing in bands and valet and cars and, uh, you know, just thinking like I don't really know why I need this education, I can make my own way, sort of thing.
• 4:12
  Speaker 3: But after a while that that wore off and I just kind of came to the realization that oh yeah, there's value in this and like maybe I should try to pursue something, um, my, uh, my, my dad and and a lot of guys in my sort of family or attorneys, and so there's like this idea of having some letters next to your name and having some education and being part of a profession.
• 4:35
  Speaker 3: That that did appeal to me like, um, you know, just wanting to do something that I think requires some dedication from an academic perspective.
• 4:44
  Speaker 3: But really I just when I went back to school I flashed back to like a 3 am conversation at some party that I was at, where someone was like I dropped out of the business school and I found this little personal finance program at Ohio State and it literally was like a broom closet in the basement of you know, it's 44,000 undergradsads but this is a program of like 50 people, um, and so I took the intro class and kind of was getting myself back into the the swing of things with school and I went to the student fpa meeting and learned about the cfp and was like these, these people like really care about what they're doing.
• 5:20
  Speaker 3: They're helping people, individuals but they're also kind of using that math side of their brain and crunching numbers.
• 5:27
  Speaker 3: There's a whole body of knowledge around this.
• 5:28
  Speaker 3: Like that sounds super appealing to me and just practical.
• 5:32
  Speaker 3: So anyways, that was the genesis of it.
• 5:35
  Speaker 3: I started working in an RIA in central Ohio as pretty large fee only practice and was a first associate advisor, sort of like.
• 5:44
  Speaker 3: They created a new level of advisor at this place where there are about 20 folks, 20 advisors working um, became the e-money expert and was getting folks ready for meetings and was in those meetings and, uh, was on my way to being a lead advisor, um, and honestly, just kind of looked around and saw that the folks who were in that role were not super like, just felt like their wellness was not off the charts.
• 6:09
  Speaker 3: They weren't really excited about you know where their careers were going.
• 6:14
  Speaker 3: I felt, and I think part of that was that that shop was trying to really kind of push teams of two advisors and two associate advisors to 250 relationships each.
• 6:25
  Speaker 3: Actually, I think that's not correct.
• 6:28
  Speaker 3: I think it was 250 per advisor, so 500 on those sort of semi-diamond teams Spread thin.
• 6:35
  Speaker 3: No kidding, yeah, and like thank God for my mentors there, the advisors I was working under.
• 6:41
  Speaker 3: They wanted to do really comprehensive planning and get deep in the estate planning and all these things and we just couldn't keep up.
• 6:47
  Speaker 3: So we've spent a lot of our days saying sorry, we forgot to do that and it was just sort of a bummer.
• 6:52
  Speaker 3: Great practice really, really smart people some of the smartest advisors I've ever met were at that place.
• 6:59
  Speaker 3: But I just thought maybe I can do this on my own what I'm doing here.
• 7:03
  Speaker 3: Maybe I can get advisors ready for their meetings and do the analysis and stuff as a consultant.
• 7:09
  Speaker 3: And I was at a conference Nas Rudin Conference in Nashville and I looked at the XYPN website and saw that they had announced a job board for outsourced paraplanners, which I've always kind of shirked that name.
• 7:20
  Speaker 3: I think what we were doing was outsourced financial planning.
• 7:22
  Speaker 3: So I was like like this is a real thing, so I'm gonna put in my notice and and sort of jump from there.
• 7:28
  Speaker 3: And that was the beginning of being an entrepreneur for eight years well, go ahead, pete oh, I love that.
• 7:36
  Speaker 2: So I mean, what was that like?
• 7:38
  Speaker 2: I mean, did you ever see yourself being like a business owner, like growing up?
• 7:41
  Speaker 2: I mean, were these like or were you just kind of thrown into it?
• 7:46
  Speaker 3: I have to be totally honest.
• 7:47
  Speaker 3: I think it's born of like just wanting to hack the system.
• 7:51
  Speaker 3: I just want it.
• 7:52
  Speaker 3: I just want how can I put in the least amount of work and I have to worry about money anymore.
• 7:56
  Speaker 3: That sounds terrible, like I think I don't think it sounds terrible.
• 8:00
  Speaker 1: I think I mean that's, that's the end goal for a lot of people.
• 8:03
  Speaker 1: Man, I don't, I don't want to do anything unethical, and I think I mean seriously that's, that's the end goal for a lot of people.
• 8:06
  Speaker 3: Man, I don't, I don't want to do anything unethical and I think if I had all of the you know sort of treasure and time, uh, that I would definitely spend that trying to to give back and help people and be a part of a community and do the right thing, change the world.
• 8:18
  Speaker 3: But at the same time, I just didn't like the idea that, um, you know, I had to give my time for money.
• 8:23
  Speaker 3: That never really resonated with me, so I'm just trying to figure out the fastest way to not have to do that anymore.
• 8:29
  Speaker 3: Um and uh, and I think I've kind of I've swum pretty far on that pendulum and I've come back to like, oh no, I can be a part of something that means something and be financially stable and and, um, it doesn't, you know, I don't have to like invent the next you know unicorn company or something to to meet my goals well it's.
• 8:50
  Speaker 1: It's also different when you love what you do too right like I know, I've not met anybody at this point.
• 8:55
  Speaker 1: We've talked events, all kinds of people at xy that doesn't love xy and what they're doing and what they're about, um, but yeah, no, I don't see anything wrong with that statement, because I think one of the best things that you can do is buy back your time and figure out ways to do that and kind of hack life in that way, cause otherwise, especially with entrepreneurs and people that are listening, it's like otherwise you spend a lot of time doing tasks you don't want to do, which makes you less efficient at the things that are actually important, like growing the business.
• 9:19
  Speaker 1: Um, but man, as you got introduced to xy and you're kind of coming into this, I would imagine you had an idea of being at a fee-only ria previously and then doing your own thing as the kind of what they were about.
• 9:31
  Speaker 1: What was your introduction to xy and and kind of.
• 9:35
  Speaker 1: Then you know what were the initial meetings like for you there?
• 9:39
  Speaker 3: yeah, honestly, I got really, really lucky right out of college.
• 9:44
  Speaker 3: I had finished the CFP program and I was like I don't know if I really want to do this CFP thing.
• 9:50
  Speaker 3: I don't know if this is my calling or not.
• 9:52
  Speaker 3: Let me just go to a conference and I'm just going to totally espionage, I'm just going to hide in the background and just figure these people out.
• 10:03
  Speaker 3: What is this community all about?
• 10:05
  Speaker 3: Be anonymous?
• 10:06
  Speaker 3: So it was like my birthday.
• 10:09
  Speaker 3: I got in my car and drove to St Louis and went to an FBA NextGen conference, again expecting to just kind of like go unnoticed.
• 10:16
  Speaker 3: And I got there and there was a circle of 45 chairs and it was like current and past presidents of the FBA.
• 10:23
  Speaker 3: Caleb Brown was there.
• 10:25
  Speaker 3: It was like this really cool, like condensed community of folks who are really trying to push the profession forward and the first thing we did was watch like a video on vulnerability and there was, like you know, group meditation.
• 10:35
  Speaker 3: It was heavy.
• 10:36
  Speaker 3: Yeah, right, wow, I'm part of this for sure.
• 10:40
  Speaker 3: So I met um both michael and alan, I think probably weeks after they launched xypn about 10 years ago another next gen conference, um and had just been following ever since.
• 10:53
  Speaker 3: I think you know I'd followed michael before that.
• 10:55
  Speaker 3: I saw alan's guest post about like the forget what it was like 40 techs under 40 bucks or something like that was one of his early guest posts and so was aware of them both.
• 11:04
  Speaker 3: But to me next gen and gathering was such a special and cool community.
• 11:10
  Speaker 3: Um, I was never part of nap the genesis but I I assume it was very, very similar.
• 11:15
  Speaker 3: And to just see xypn evolve out of what michael and alan had built in those two communities, I just kind of always knew that that was like my tribe, even though I wasn't a part of xipa and I was this close to launching a firm back in like 2015.
• 11:28
  Speaker 3: But yeah it's been following ever since.
• 11:32
  Speaker 2: I love it.
• 11:33
  Speaker 2: So I mean you have experience with the outsource planning, but I also know that you also kind of co-founded um the college age pro too, right.
• 11:44
  Speaker 3: Oh, I lost you there for just a second, Peter.
• 11:46
  Speaker 3: What was that?
• 11:47
  Speaker 2: I was going to say I know that.
• 11:48
  Speaker 2: So you were there and you're building outsource planning, but also at the same time, I know that you had some experience with College Aid Pro as well, and then that's kind of how you segued into the partnership at XYPN and so you want to touch in on, like your experience at College Aid Pro at xypn.
• 12:10
  Speaker 3: So you want to touch in on, like, your experience at college aid pro.
• 12:12
  Speaker 3: Yeah, for sure that that was born out of.
• 12:13
  Speaker 3: Um, you know, outsourced planning was like feast or famine, uh, for the first few years and really kind of has it's just been very rollercoastery uh the entire time that that consultancy has been around.
• 12:25
  Speaker 3: So I was doing all kinds of odd jobs, everything from delivering pizzas to working on my buddy's farm.
• 12:34
  Speaker 3: So I moonlighted at new plan of recruiting and I was running the All Ohio Next Gen Conference and organized that and I got to invite the speaker.
• 12:44
  Speaker 3: So I invited Alan and Joe Messinger messenger, who's a local planner who's had this kind of cool college planning angle that he was, that he was working, he had spoken at fpa locally before to like raving reviews so I invited him to speak.
• 12:58
  Speaker 3: Um, him and alan kind of got hooked up from that and he got an invitation to be on alan's podcast on the xypn podcast.
• 13:06
  Speaker 3: Uh, and joe and I just kind of got to talking and he's like you know, I think we have something here.
• 13:11
  Speaker 3: He got a bunch of phone calls from advisors after that saying how do I do this late stage college funding thing?
• 13:15
  Speaker 3: And we said why don't we just create an education company?
• 13:18
  Speaker 3: We'll create a course.
• 13:19
  Speaker 3: So it started with like a Thinkific Academy and we were training advisors how to do the nuts and bolts of real college planning.
• 13:27
  Speaker 3: And then all the questions that they you know, 90% of the questions we got were like what do I charge?
• 13:33
  Speaker 3: What type of technology do I use?
• 13:36
  Speaker 3: It was really practice management stuff.
• 13:38
  Speaker 3: So we built a second course around that.
• 13:40
  Speaker 3: That was in 2016.
• 13:44
  Speaker 3: And then summer of 2017, we got connected with two guys who were they were not financial planners, but they were doing the same late stage college funding thing.
• 13:54
  Speaker 3: It's very it's it's really complex.
• 13:56
  Speaker 3: Trying to project what financial aid and scholarship packages you're going to get at every school in the country is like a difficult thing to do.
• 14:02
  Speaker 3: Um, and and there's this whole cottage industry of folks using that to sell products to hide assets and insurance products.
• 14:11
  Speaker 3: So there just aren't a lot of ethical folks that knew what they were talking about and anyway.
• 14:17
  Speaker 3: So these two guys are building an app for their clients, like a consumer-facing app, and we said you know, we're serving this group of financial advisors.
• 14:25
  Speaker 3: Almost all of them were XYPN members.
• 14:27
  Speaker 3: We launched, you know, that company with XYPN as a partnership.
• 14:30
  Speaker 3: Would you be interested in pivoting and making this an advisor app?
• 14:35
  Speaker 3: And so that started a really long road of learning what it takes to build a tech company, which we made every mistake possible along the way.
• 14:45
  Speaker 3: But yeah, so six years of building college pro and building a really cool community of advisors.
• 14:52
  Speaker 3: We always kind of looked at xypn as like a bigger sibling and try to follow what they, what they did.
• 14:58
  Speaker 3: Let's create an academy and a community and let's have in-person events and just make it a tribe.
• 15:04
  Speaker 1: Um but yeah, it's.
• 15:06
  Speaker 1: It's definitely a uh good role model to have xyp and if you can look around, it really is man.
• 15:14
  Speaker 1: I mean the growth has been explosive.
• 15:16
  Speaker 1: So since you've been in your role, I mean what has it been like to kind of see you know how quickly it's growing and and like the multiple that it continues to grow at, because even since, since we started BC Brokerage in early 2020, it's crazy to see how many more advisors there are every year at XYPN Live.
• 15:34
  Speaker 1: So what has that kind of been like from your perspective as the director of partnerships?
• 15:40
  Speaker 3: It's really cool.
• 15:41
  Speaker 3: Of course, it's interesting to see XYPN grow up.
• 15:45
  Speaker 3: I remember first booking Alan to speak at central ohio fpa and he was like I was in a suit, you know, and I was like uh 25 and he was in a t-shirt and shorts in a room of 100 advisors, all in suits, and he's just like you guys are all going away, the dinosaur like I mean.
• 16:03
  Speaker 3: He was just like.
• 16:03
  Speaker 3: He was so in your face about it, like I love that.
• 16:06
  Speaker 3: It was very rebellious, very cutting edge and I think, as we've grown and the firms that we serve have grown, we've needed to mature as a company and really grow into how do we serve, you know, multi-advisor firms, firms that you know manage a billion, or have you know 400 clients and, uh, you know three, three full-time staff people, um, so that's, that's been an interesting evolution and honestly, it's a uh, it's a daily challenge.
• 16:37
  Speaker 3: It's something we talk about and think about every single day.
• 16:39
  Speaker 3: How can we, how can we continue to evolve with our members and serve firms that I mean we?
• 16:45
  Speaker 3: I think that XYPN has pretty much written the book on how to launch a state registered RIA and nail the first like three, four years of your practice, and so we're just continuing to evolve into um you know where, where our members are going and and kind of you know the more traditional financial advisor.
• 17:03
  Speaker 3: How can we make a home for them?
• 17:04
  Speaker 3: Um, not just like the, the super early adopter, like innovative upstart.
• 17:09
  Speaker 3: We want to be a place where really anyone can run a really successful RIA.
• 17:17
  Speaker 2: So, when it comes down to partnerships, like what are some main things that you're looking for?
• 17:21
  Speaker 2: Like in, like you know you don't have to name any names or anything, but like when are some times that like your guys is?
• 17:27
  Speaker 2: Like you know a flag might go off and you're like, hey, you know what.
• 17:30
  Speaker 2: Like this isn't right.
• 17:31
  Speaker 2: Or you know this doesn't align with what we're trying to do.
• 17:35
  Speaker 3: Yeah, yeah, thanks for asking that it starts with member demand.
• 17:40
  Speaker 3: Um it, we really do care so much what our members are actually asking for.
• 17:46
  Speaker 3: That's kind of like the first clue of like oh, we need to chase this down, and whether that's the individual solution of the category.
• 17:55
  Speaker 3: If we hear a lot of advisors even saying you know one solution in a category, we want to understand that whole category.
• 17:59
  Speaker 3: I try to take the approach of like what is going to impact most of our members, sort of top-down jobs-to-be-done analysis what does everyone need to get done and are we providing a solution in each of those categories?
• 18:13
  Speaker 3: And then there are the more ancillary, specialization-type things like, for example, college planning.
• 18:20
  Speaker 3: Like not everyone is going to specialize in college planning, but like there's a subset that wants to do that.
• 18:25
  Speaker 3: So those things are important.
• 18:28
  Speaker 3: Obviously, impact and utilization and satisfaction.
• 18:31
  Speaker 3: If we do adopt a new partnership, I think that values are just alignment, are really critical.
• 18:39
  Speaker 3: There are really established and like serious technologies that are just that, are just awesome, that would be cool to incorporate into the network.
• 18:49
  Speaker 3: But at the end of the day, they just don't think about the average XYPN advisor as like who they're serving they.
• 18:56
  Speaker 3: They just kind of come from a world that is.
• 18:58
  Speaker 3: It just doesn't have the abundance mindset that I think that you know XYPN is really about and our members are really about.
• 19:05
  Speaker 3: So I tend to want to work with teams that really get what we're doing and they're they're actually trying to do the same thing or maybe even, like you know, leading the charge in some ways, like we want to associate ourselves with the companies, that that are their hearts in the right place and they're doing it right.
• 19:22
  Speaker 3: Honestly.
• 19:22
  Speaker 3: We want to work with teams that have control of their company.
• 19:25
  Speaker 3: That's a that can be an issue.
• 19:29
  Speaker 3: I think you know if you're working with the, you know the quote-unquote leadership team.
• 19:33
  Speaker 3: But if you know if the home office or whatever decides this financial advisor thing is going nowhere and we're going to, you know we're going to pivot to do something else.
• 19:41
  Speaker 3: That can be really detrimental.
• 19:44
  Speaker 3: We don't launch a lot of partnerships very quickly.
• 19:46
  Speaker 3: When we do, we really put our weight behind them.
• 19:48
  Speaker 3: So to spend that kind of effort on a partnership, for it to pivot or just kind of shift out from under the network, is a risk that we always have to watch out for.
• 20:00
  Speaker 1: Yeah, and so your role is like official partnerships right, people on the website as well as kind of like vendors at the conferences and stuff.
• 20:08
  Speaker 1: So how do you split your time?
• 20:09
  Speaker 1: That's kind of a big job description, right.
• 20:12
  Speaker 1: It gives you a lot of responsibility.
• 20:13
  Speaker 1: So how do you kind of split your time as we get closer to conference time?
• 20:17
  Speaker 1: That's where more of my focus kind of goes to, and outside of that we do kind of the official partnership thing or like.
• 20:23
  Speaker 1: What does that look like for you, dave?
• 20:25
  Speaker 1: What does that look?
• 20:25
  Speaker 3: like for you, dave.
• 20:26
  Speaker 3: I think that luckily, the two can kind of be one in the same.
• 20:29
  Speaker 3: So I tried to make the call early on that we're not too big to meet with any team.
• 20:35
  Speaker 3: So anyone who reaches out who is a vendor, who's trying to work with financial advisors, I'll take their call and sit down with them and talk about what they're doing and is it a fit?
• 20:44
  Speaker 3: Again, we don't launch a bunch, so the vast majority of the time it's not right now, which is, you know, those aren't always easy conversations to have, but but there are other ways to get in front of the network and to engage with our members.
• 20:58
  Speaker 3: We really do think that live is like it's the place for innovative technology and solutions for real fee for service financial advisors, um, and I I've, I've uh, exhibited there like seven years and so I can, I can kind of say with confidence that like it is the place to be, uh, if you want to engage that that type of advisor.
• 21:18
  Speaker 3: So I feel really good telling folks hey, man, this is a, this is a, an awesome value, it's a ton of fun.
• 21:24
  Speaker 3: I mean, y'all have been there, it's a cool thing, yeah, it's awesome, yeah, by far my favorite conference, by far.
• 21:30
  Speaker 1: I mean, I've been to a lot of them.
• 21:31
  Speaker 1: I'm not going to name drop any for anybody that's out there listening.
• 21:34
  Speaker 1: But every year we feel like when we go to XY, it's like a rejuvenating feeling and to be able to see so many advisors that we work with, but also just the overall vibe.
• 21:51
  Speaker 1: Like some of them can feel a little stuffy, you know, and and xy does not feel like that one bit.
• 21:54
  Speaker 3: So you guys do a great job.
• 21:54
  Speaker 3: Yeah, it's really.
• 21:55
  Speaker 3: I mean tori and cory, the membership team.
• 21:56
  Speaker 3: Lots of hats off to tori, man, she does so much.
• 22:00
  Speaker 3: I can't believe she's able to do that job yeah, for sure it takes a lot.
• 22:05
  Speaker 2: So, um, I mean, one of the big value ads for xypn, of course, is like the peck stack and discounts and things like that.
• 22:14
  Speaker 2: So kind of like what's the like experience?
• 22:21
  Speaker 2: Or like what do you guys try to make it work so that the price is still aligned but you can work with the vendors?
• 22:29
  Speaker 2: Like, how do you find a happy medium, um, when you're doing kind of like the group partnerships?
• 22:35
  Speaker 2: Um, because, like you know, I envision, like, as you want to add more technology, um, you know it can increase the cost for the membership, um, but that's also an external cost too.
• 22:46
  Speaker 2: But kind of, what are the discounts look like usually?
• 22:49
  Speaker 2: And like what are the main benefits of some of these partnerships?
• 23:26
  Speaker 3: Yeah, that's a complex one to unpack.
• 23:29
  Speaker 3: I think I'm keeping a really close eye on what the average member financial benefit of our partnerships is, but that's on the macro level and we do that calculation with individual members often.
• 23:44
  Speaker 3: I think I don't know if I should tease this, but we're going to be putting out sort of a calculator on the website where you can really just like build your firm.
• 23:52
  Speaker 3: When we were when the team who was working on it had started that project, I pulled up the Jeep website, which is like look, you just add the packages and features you want, you choose your color, it's all right there.
• 24:03
  Speaker 3: Cool, just like, you know how many people are in my firm, what type of roles do they have, and what of these things will I use?
• 24:10
  Speaker 3: And what's the financial of work that xypn members are doing, which is just real comprehensive financial planning?
• 24:22
  Speaker 3: Um, it's.
• 24:24
  Speaker 3: I think it's rare that you're not going to get an roi on that.
• 24:27
  Speaker 3: Um, I know that when I was looking at joining xypn as a member, um, to me that was part of it.
• 24:34
  Speaker 3: It was, but a huge part of it was just like being part of that tribe and like knowing that you have a community that's gonna, that's gonna support you.
• 24:42
  Speaker 3: So I'm getting away from your question, um, but but yeah, so we again, those core things that we think everyone's going to use, that we, you know, basically 70, 80 percent of the network is likely to adopt, because everyone needs a solution, can we go out and get the best one and can we pay for it for members, um, and I think that we've.
• 25:02
  Speaker 3: We've done pretty well at that.
• 25:04
  Speaker 3: Um, you know right, capital wealth box.
• 25:07
  Speaker 3: Those are companies that have have done well partnering with the network and I think we've done you know well, partnering with them.
• 25:12
  Speaker 3: It's kind of the chassis of the tech stack.
• 25:14
  Speaker 3: Um, you know, building xy archive, I think, was uh, I wasn't there for that decision, uh, but I think that was a really, really great call.
• 25:22
  Speaker 3: We just did a survey of members First time in a while, got a lot of responses about value of benefits and number one value benefit was XY Archive, which I think honestly, for me was a little bit of a surprise.
• 25:35
  Speaker 3: It's not the sexiest thing on the tech stack, but it's how it works.
• 25:38
  Speaker 3: Yeah.
• 25:39
  Speaker 1: Yeah, no, that man.
• 25:42
  Speaker 1: That kind of leads me into my next question.
• 25:44
  Speaker 1: So it's like we're obviously in the XY Facebook group, right, so sometimes we'll get tagged or people like who do you know that's an insurance guy, who do you know that's this?
• 25:53
  Speaker 1: Or do you know that's that, and it's such a cool group message.
• 25:56
  Speaker 1: Also, side note, the fact that people refer each other clients is something that does not happen in other parts of the industry.
• 26:01
  Speaker 1: So that is so cool.
• 26:02
  Speaker 1: But what have you guys seen as some of the kind of highest demand partnerships or things that membership is asking for, just for a lot of the financial planners that listen to the podcast so that they can see if they're kind of aligning with the general consensus and what most people are asking for as far as vendors?
• 26:21
  Speaker 3: Yeah, that's a good question.
• 26:24
  Speaker 3: I'll say that when I joined the team there were like three companies that I wanted to create partnerships like absolutely and slowly unpack like some of the challenges with those things and why maybe they hadn't gotten done yet and I don't want to get into necessarily like names and the details of that no, no not at all, but I think what I think it's important for I think our members could probably guess what the number one requested technology is, and it it's important, I think, for us to to share and communicate that we don't like try to get that partnership and then it doesn't work out and we're like, oh well, I guess it didn't work, like I've gone back to some of these teams every two months, every three months, every four months and just continually.
• 27:07
  Speaker 3: You know, get kind of a no thanks or or whatever.
• 27:10
  Speaker 3: For whatever reason.
• 27:11
  Speaker 3: There's just not alignment, um, and some of those doors are starting to open up slowly, and so I think I've had the benefit of being able to come in it's just like the nice new guy and say like, oh, why can't we, you know, can't we just like look nice new guy and say like, oh, why can't we, you know, can't we just like, look at it again.
• 27:24
  Speaker 3: Come on, dave.
• 27:25
  Speaker 1: I just want to talk.
• 27:26
  Speaker 1: Yeah, I love it man.
• 27:28
  Speaker 3: But Elements is one of those where it's like everyone was really asking for Elements.
• 27:32
  Speaker 3: This is really cool and Carl's involved and Reese is a member and it's like basically the whole team is financial advisors, financial planners, folks from our tribe, like it's.
• 27:45
  Speaker 3: It's really really cool and it's sort of changing the way folks do planning.
• 27:46
  Speaker 3: Can we get this done and so that that we're we're really excited to get that one over the line?
• 27:50
  Speaker 1: that's cool, that's really cool.
• 27:52
  Speaker 1: Yeah, I think that, um, a lot of people ask for different things, but one of the things that I really noticed is it kind of moves in waves, right, so it's like as different things are kind of coming along, or as element announced or something, or where are you custodian, where's your custodian?
• 28:07
  Speaker 1: And it kind of a lot of people start having the same questions around the same time because different things are changing in the industry all the time.
• 28:13
  Speaker 1: Right Is kind of the answer.
• 28:15
  Speaker 1: But that's cool, man.
• 28:17
  Speaker 1: What advice or what information would you give to someone that is interested in checking out, partnering or sponsoring XYPN, as we're going to do this year?
• 28:28
  Speaker 1: I want to make sure that you get the chance to throw that out there too.
• 28:31
  Speaker 3: Oh, thanks, and yeah, peter Brock just kind of told me the news before we all jumped on that you all are going to be sponsoring this year, which is so cool.
• 28:38
  Speaker 3: We really appreciate you all supporting the network and I think it really does mean something.
• 28:42
  Speaker 3: We have actual partners, that kind of a couple, that don't come to the conference and I always just feel like, man, I can't believe that, uh, that you wouldn't want to be there.
• 28:53
  Speaker 3: It's so cost effective and it's such a cool time and, uh, it's such a great group of people.
• 28:56
  Speaker 3: So, anyway, thank you so much for doing that.
• 28:58
  Speaker 3: Um, yeah, what, what to share with folks.
• 29:01
  Speaker 3: Again, my, my calendar is open to anyone who wants to jump on and, I think, anything that I possibly can do.
• 29:07
  Speaker 3: I've been in that seat, I've been an XYPN partner and someone who's trying to create an XYPN partnership, and it's really meaningful.
• 29:15
  Speaker 3: I think, you know, capstone College Partners and College Aid Pro would not be anywhere that they, you know, eventually got to without the support of Alan and michael, the network, and so, um, I know that that's meaningful.
• 29:27
  Speaker 3: I think that the the key is engage.
• 29:31
  Speaker 3: Know who your xypn members are, engage them and just try to talk to them, understand what are their needs and and serve them really well.
• 29:39
  Speaker 3: That, to me, that's what you two have done so well is you just take such great care of your people and you're very accessible and you are very like you're on top of it.
• 29:49
  Speaker 3: You want to help and you're doing it the right way.
• 29:51
  Speaker 3: You speak their language.
• 29:53
  Speaker 3: You really do care.
• 29:54
  Speaker 3: That really comes through.
• 29:56
  Speaker 3: I've got buddies who are members who are like come on, like, when are we going to get VC brokerage?
• 30:00
  Speaker 3: You know, know, people really really respond to the way that you, that you take care of them and and care and show up like you are live, so thanks man yeah, even if you're a brand new company.
• 30:13
  Speaker 3: This year we're rolling out for the first time a scholarship for pre-revenue companies, uh, where you can come at cost, and I don't know exactly what the final dollar amount is, but it's probably like 600 bucks.
• 30:24
  Speaker 3: I mean just the cheapest conference uh appearance possible in our industry.
• 30:29
  Speaker 3: We have the newcomer um package, which is 3 000 bucks, and it's for companies that have less than 500 000 in revenue or have or have started within the last year.
• 30:39
  Speaker 3: And we have the advice tech competition.
• 30:43
  Speaker 3: We rebranded this thing like six times this year.
• 30:44
  Speaker 3: It's the advice tech competition.
• 30:45
  Speaker 3: We've rebranded this thing like six times this year.
• 30:46
  Speaker 3: It's the advice tech competition.
• 30:47
  Speaker 3: As far as I'm concerned, it's there that way.
• 30:49
  Speaker 3: But companies that again, I think it's less than 500,000 revenue or have started in the last year, if you think you're doing something that's going to change the way that real financial planners do their jobs, then please apply to that.
• 31:02
  Speaker 3: We want to hear from you and it's a really cool event.
• 31:08
  Speaker 3: I mean, just even becoming a finalist is like a lot of bragging rights, and we've seen some of the companies that have just skyrocketed out of that.
• 31:14
  Speaker 3: So, yeah, live is a big one, but really just get in front of members in any way you can.
• 31:19
  Speaker 3: If there's a local meetup, go show up and talk to folks and tell them what you're doing and try to, more than anything, listen to them and what are their needs.
• 31:27
  Speaker 3: How can you serve them better?
• 31:29
  Speaker 3: I think that's always going to help.
• 31:32
  Speaker 2: Yeah, great tips.
• 31:33
  Speaker 2: Yeah, building it backwards definitely helps, and I have to imagine that one of the coolest parts of your job actually must be seeing some of these companies, the partnerships that they.
• 31:43
  Speaker 2: You know, they've been there for a few years and it's awesome to see the growth very much, just like XYPN and the members there too, so it's just very cool to see.
• 31:52
  Speaker 2: But, dave, thank you so much for coming on.
• 31:54
  Speaker 2: For those who want to maybe connect with you, what's the best way to actually reach out?
• 31:58
  Speaker 2: Linkedin, twitter.
• 32:00
  Speaker 3: Yeah, linkedin would be great.
• 32:01
  Speaker 3: Or just go to xyplaynetworkcom, scroll down and find partnerships and just book a call.
• 32:05
  Speaker 3: Reach out to us.
• 32:08
  Speaker 1: awesome man well, we always love talking to you, dave.
• 32:10
  Speaker 1: You're an awesome guy and it was awesome to meet you last year.
• 32:12
  Speaker 1: We'll look forward to seeing you this year and talk to you soon, man yeah, thanks so much for having me on.
• 32:18
  Speaker 3: Great to see you guys.
• 32:19
  Speaker 3: See you in many chapters.