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#91 - Balancing Lifestyle and Financial Security for Attorneys with Eric Scruggs · Only Fee-Only

• 0:05
  Speaker 1: I hope everybody had a wonderful Memorial Day weekend.
• 0:08
  Speaker 1: Welcome back to the work week, the short work week.
• 0:11
  Speaker 1: Let's chug along, have a great time and do some podcasting.
• 0:16
  Speaker 1: In this episode we talked to Eric Scruggs, who's an advisor we've worked with for a few years now.
• 0:22
  Speaker 1: Awesome guy specializes in working with attorneys and really prioritizes and cares about freedom, the ability to be a family man, and has a really cool story.
• 0:35
  Speaker 1: He's been in some different places and got to learn kind of unique things like many from each of them, but is really enjoying what he's getting to do at Hark Financial Planning, the financial planning firm that he founded.
• 0:48
  Speaker 1: He has a lot of great points in this episode where he talks about how he's growing the business, how he's doing a five-course series to help educate people on what they need to be doing with their finances, and he also shares his plans about how he's going to grow in the future.
• 1:05
  Speaker 1: This is a great episode.
• 1:07
  Speaker 1: He's a great guy.
• 1:08
  Speaker 1: So here is Eric Scruggs on the Only Fee Only podcast.
• 1:14
  Speaker 2: What's up everyone?
• 1:15
  Speaker 2: Welcome to another episode of the Only Fee Only podcast.
• 1:18
  Speaker 2: I'm Peter Travlo.
• 1:19
  Speaker 2: I'm here with my co-host, brock Buckles.
• 1:21
  Speaker 2: How's it going today, brock?
• 1:22
  Speaker 1: It is going well, pete.
• 1:24
  Speaker 1: How are you sir?
• 1:25
  Speaker 2: Doing great.
• 1:26
  Speaker 2: And today we have Eric Scruggs on from Hark Financial Planning, really excited to hear his story about how he got into the industry and now how he's running his own firm.
• 1:35
  Speaker 2: So, eric, welcome to the show man.
• 1:38
  Speaker 3: Thanks, Thanks for having me on.
• 1:39
  Speaker 3: Guys Really appreciate it.
• 1:40
  Speaker 2: I'm excited, you bet, man.
• 1:42
  Speaker 2: So we've had the privilege of being able to work with you for a couple of years now at different firms.
• 1:48
  Speaker 2: But for those who don't know who you are, do you want to give a quick overview of who you are and who you're currently serving?
• 1:54
  Speaker 3: Absolutely so.
• 1:55
  Speaker 3: I'm Eric Scruggs.
• 1:57
  Speaker 3: I run Hark Financial Planning.
• 1:58
  Speaker 3: It's a fee-only firm focused on attorneys in their mid-career phase.
• 2:02
  Speaker 3: So people in their 30s and 40s generally are in big law, a lot of complexity going on and trying to balance building their families with running a busy legal practice.
• 2:14
  Speaker 3: So those are my clients.
• 2:18
  Speaker 1: Yeah, that's something that we don't actually see a lot of.
• 2:21
  Speaker 1: I mean, I think we obviously work with planners that work with attorneys, but it seems to be less people working with attorneys in the niche.
• 2:27
  Speaker 1: So I feel like you chose a good one man.
• 2:30
  Speaker 1: Is there a reason that you chose it in particular, or are you just like it's an underserved market, or how'd you kind of start that?
• 2:36
  Speaker 3: We'll go with a little bit of luck.
• 2:37
  Speaker 3: A little bit of personal experience and a little bit of luck.
• 2:39
  Speaker 3: A firm I worked at previously got its start in private wealth by actually managing 401ks for some of the largest law firms in the country and then they launched a private wealth practice to help the partners of those law firms with their personal money.
• 2:54
  Speaker 3: So I worked there for three years so had a good deal of experience.
• 2:58
  Speaker 3: But also my wife is an attorney at a large law firm, so it's a life I live.
• 3:02
  Speaker 3: So most of our friends, our network, our attorneys.
• 3:12
  Speaker 3: So when I decided to launch my own firm, it helps launch to have some clients if you can lean on your natural network.
• 3:14
  Speaker 3: So I chose attorneys one because I have a lot of professional experience, but also it's just a life I live.
• 3:18
  Speaker 3: My friends are attorneys, my wife's an attorney, so I understand the challenges and was able to get some clients just from people my wife's worked with and I went to law school with.
• 3:27
  Speaker 3: It's a little bit easier at the start.
• 3:29
  Speaker 2: So are you set up on XY Planning Network?
• 3:31
  Speaker 2: I am Yep Cool.
• 3:34
  Speaker 2: So when was kind of the beginning of your fee only journey, if you will?
• 3:38
  Speaker 2: I mean, your previous firm was fee only, but when did you kind of start hearing about Michael Kitsis and Alan Moore and this little organization called XY Planning Network?
• 3:47
  Speaker 3: I've been aware of it since it started.
• 3:49
  Speaker 3: It's hard to believe it's been 10 years, but the firm I started at.
• 3:53
  Speaker 3: So I started as a financial advisor in 2012 at a hybrid firm down in the DC area and the managing partner there was a big fan of Nerds Eye View blog, so we all read it in the office and so right, we saw the announcements, saw this come out.
• 4:07
  Speaker 3: We were a hybrid firm, so there was a lot of debate around whether this fee-only thing could possibly work and like whether you could do the subscription model.
• 4:16
  Speaker 3: So sort of watched it in the periphery since it launched, obviously saw a lot of firms be really successful with it.
• 4:23
  Speaker 3: So when it came time to launch my own firm, it felt really natural to use XY as a partner to help me launch, help me get over some of those initial hurdles.
• 4:30
  Speaker 3: They've been an awesome partner so far.
• 4:33
  Speaker 1: Yeah, that's one of the things that I always hear about them is you know, not only the tech stack, but just the assistance and the sense of community that advisors feel like they have.
• 4:43
  Speaker 1: There is a huge asset.
• 4:44
  Speaker 1: Then you're currently using their tech stack as well.
• 4:46
  Speaker 1: In terms of all of that, have you gone rogue a little bit and been like I'm going to use a different planning software, or does it just stick to the?
• 4:54
  Speaker 3: I stick mostly to the tech stack.
• 4:55
  Speaker 3: I've added a few things here and there to be really helpful.
• 5:00
  Speaker 3: Nudge has been a great tool to help remind clients to get things done, like hey, you need to follow up on that insurance recommendation.
• 5:06
  Speaker 3: So there's a couple other tools I've added to help supplement, but mostly use their tech stack.
• 5:13
  Speaker 3: I mean the biggest benefit for me of XY was my launch group.
• 5:16
  Speaker 3: So four other advisors launched their firm at the same time, all also solos.
• 5:22
  Speaker 3: And launching your firm can be I mean you guys know you did it can be really lonely.
• 5:25
  Speaker 3: I mean you had each other but it's still a lonely sort of experience.
• 5:29
  Speaker 3: So, we've met basically every week for a little over a year now.
• 5:32
  Speaker 3: They actually the other four of them all just flew to Boston.
• 5:34
  Speaker 3: We hosted our own little conference.
• 5:37
  Speaker 1: That's cool.
• 5:37
  Speaker 3: Here in Boston, where we gave talks to each other and focused on our businesses and took some time away, took him to a Red Sox game, showed him the proper Boston experience.
• 5:46
  Speaker 1: Proper Boston time.
• 5:47
  Speaker 3: Gotta go see the Green Monster.
• 5:48
  Speaker 3: Some breweries, some Red Sox what else is there?
• 5:51
  Speaker 3: I love?
• 5:52
  Speaker 2: it.
• 5:52
  Speaker 2: So you saw XY from the very beginning and you just recently started your firm.
• 5:56
  Speaker 2: I think you just crossed over the one year mark, right, if I saw.
• 5:59
  Speaker 3: Yeah, I had my anniversary, so March 30th was was the one year mark.
• 6:03
  Speaker 3: Congratulations, so it's been good.
• 6:05
  Speaker 2: So you know, you saw other firms building for eight or nine years like what were kind of some things that you were getting prepared for, like when did you kind of know that it was your time to make the leap, the jump of faith?
• 6:21
  Speaker 3: and then, kind of you know, we can get into that a little bit.
• 6:24
  Speaker 3: Yeah, I was obviously like a big decision to go out on my own.
• 6:27
  Speaker 3: So I'd been at firms and part of teams for my entire career as an advisor, always worked as an ensemble practice.
• 6:34
  Speaker 3: But when I was evaluating sort of what I wanted next, when it was deciding whether to launch my own firm or not, a couple of things were happening.
• 6:41
  Speaker 3: One, I had a pretty strong vision for what I thought I wanted the work to look like, and obviously you can go somewhere and try and change the way that they do work.
• 6:52
  Speaker 3: But it's easier to start your own to be able to do the work the way you want to do it, partner with who you want to partner with.
• 6:57
  Speaker 3: And also just had my first child, telling Brock earlier, having baby number two, another son later this summer and, as I mentioned, my wife's an attorney at a large law firm.
• 7:10
  Speaker 3: So flexibility is important.
• 7:12
  Speaker 3: So to me family is more important than the business and so starting my own firm allowed me to set up the structure of my life the way that I wanted it to.
• 7:21
  Speaker 3: So there's no accountability except to my clients and to myself.
• 7:24
  Speaker 3: So I'm free to leave at four to make sure I can pick my son up from daycare and hang out and play with him until bedtime.
• 7:30
  Speaker 3: Now that means I do 8 pm meetings, I do weekend meetings, but it works well with my lifestyle, it works well for my client's lifestyle.
• 7:38
  Speaker 3: But having that flexibility the ultimate flexibility that comes with running your own firm was really important now that you've got kids.
• 7:45
  Speaker 1: Yeah, I feel like the freedom aspect is in no like that's the best thing about owning your own business.
• 7:50
  Speaker 1: Obviously it's yeah, it's yeah, right.
• 7:53
  Speaker 1: Obviously it's busy in different ways and you're responsible and like you're the one that has to go out there and make it happen.
• 7:59
  Speaker 1: Or, if you have a partner, you guys are the ones that have to go out there and make it happen.
• 8:02
  Speaker 1: But the ability to do that, especially when you know you can control different aspects of your life 8pm meetings not always going to be the most fun thing to do, but the fact that you can even say like this is what I have to get done today.
• 8:14
  Speaker 1: So I'm going to have an 8pm meeting instead of someone saying, hey, you're going to be in the office at nine o'clock and you're going to leave at five, if we let you um is a lot more gratifying.
• 8:24
  Speaker 1: Uh what?
• 8:26
  Speaker 3: what go ahead?
• 8:26
  Speaker 3: Were you gonna say something?
• 8:27
  Speaker 3: I was gonna say, I mean, freedom's the the best and worst part, right, yeah, you, you can make your own schedule, but it also means you know you, uh, you can get nothing done and there's no one around.
• 8:37
  Speaker 3: I mean, again, you have each other to sort of give each other a hard time.
• 8:40
  Speaker 3: You've got a lot of self-reliance here to make sure you're doing the things you need to do, especially when you have to do it, all the types of work you don't enjoy doing.
• 8:51
  Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah.
• 8:51
  Speaker 1: So what do you?
• 8:52
  Speaker 1: I mean, what is it that you think it's going to?
• 8:54
  Speaker 1: What are your plans to evolve the firm?
• 8:56
  Speaker 1: Right Cause, ultimate freedom.
• 8:58
  Speaker 1: They say, quote unquote, with the Kitsis and Alan Moore on stage.
• 9:02
  Speaker 1: They say, kind of being a solopreneur is ultimate freedom, or being a solopreneur and then maybe having one type of admin or VA or something like that, is kind of the idea of the most freedom that you can get.
• 9:16
  Speaker 1: But some people want to grow into a boutique firm, or maybe they want to bring you into your wife's law firm and you have to talk to everybody and 20 people want to sign up tomorrow.
• 9:26
  Speaker 1: Wife's law firm and you, you have to talk to everybody and you know 20 people want to sign up tomorrow.
• 9:29
  Speaker 3: Like what is uh what's the the plan for you?
• 9:30
  Speaker 3: Well, I look forward to that problem.
• 9:31
  Speaker 3: Uh, look forward to it.
• 9:33
  Speaker 3: I'll be right by my phone.
• 9:35
  Speaker 3: Uh, if a law firm would like to call and have me meet with all their clients, all their attorneys, all at once, I'm here for you.
• 9:40
  Speaker 3: Yeah, um, I mean the goal will be to to grow into a boutique One of the downsides of being solo.
• 9:48
  Speaker 3: Right, I mean expecting a child here in June.
• 9:50
  Speaker 3: I can't really close, I can't really take time off.
• 9:53
  Speaker 3: Right, you've got to make sure you're monitoring clients' investment portfolios got to be there when they have their own emergency.
• 10:00
  Speaker 3: So certainly I'll be scaling back hours and I've done some things to set the business up, but taking time actually away from the business is not something I feel like I can do when it's just me.
• 10:09
  Speaker 1: Yeah.
• 10:09
  Speaker 3: Or even just me in a virtual admin or something like that.
• 10:12
  Speaker 3: So growing to a boutique to give me a little bit more even more lifestyle flexibility, as long as hopefully find the right partner, but also I think it can provide better service to my clients.
• 10:21
  Speaker 3: You know, working with attorneys, what you see is they all have subspecialties, right?
• 10:26
  Speaker 3: Like my wife's, a financial services litigator.
• 10:28
  Speaker 3: If you need to negotiate a contract, you don't go to Alyssa.
• 10:31
  Speaker 3: She could do it, but it's not her specialty.
• 10:33
  Speaker 3: I think the same thing exists here.
• 10:34
  Speaker 3: Right, that's part of what I like.
• 10:36
  Speaker 3: Partnering with the two of you is right.
• 10:38
  Speaker 3: I know about insurance.
• 10:39
  Speaker 3: I used to have an insurance license.
• 10:41
  Speaker 3: I know enough to be, you know, let's say, dangerous.
• 10:43
  Speaker 3: But bringing in actual experts to help get this, that work done and make sure that we're getting the right outcome for our clients is important.
• 10:49
  Speaker 3: So bringing in partners who may have a different skill set than me to make sure we're covering just the vast area that kind of comprehensive planning can encompass, I think is really beneficial to the clients.
• 11:01
  Speaker 3: So, ideally, grow into a boutique at some point we'll see.
• 11:04
  Speaker 3: I mean, obviously, finding the right partner is a long challenge.
• 11:08
  Speaker 3: I'm sure that you guys have had your struggles between yourselves over time.
• 11:13
  Speaker 3: Right, Even if you're the greatest partners in the world, you're not going to make sure you see eye to eye on every decision, so there'll be some trade-offs with that, but I think that's the path for me, if you're not having hard conversations, pete I think you would agree then you probably don't have a business.
• 11:26
  Speaker 1: I mean, there's times, certainly, where I say things to Pete or he says things to me where it's like yo, what's going on here?
• 11:32
  Speaker 1: Or he says you know what are you doing over there and you know it's the ability to have those hard conversations that keep the thing going.
• 11:39
  Speaker 1: So it's important Absolutely.
• 11:50
  Speaker 2: It's important.
• 11:50
  Speaker 2: Go ahead, pete.
• 11:50
  Speaker 2: So I was going to ask, like kind of you know specializing with attorneys, and attorneys are also very conscious of their fees and how they charge, how have you structured your business to align with, like, their needs?
• 11:58
  Speaker 2: Right, because a big thing with a lot of financial planners and kind of like what you said is hey, a lot of the reason why people go out on their own is because they want to be able to service clients the way that they want to.
• 12:07
  Speaker 2: So, kind of like, how have you matched what these attorneys need and then your services and then how do you kind of charge for it as well?
• 12:19
  Speaker 3: Yeah, so I have three ways that I work with clients.
• 12:21
  Speaker 3: Because I work with attorneys, hourly is available.
• 12:24
  Speaker 3: Although, interestingly, most of my attorney clients aren't interested in hourly, they understand what the pitfalls can be behind an hourly model.
• 12:31
  Speaker 3: Then there's like a one-time, project-based plan.
• 12:35
  Speaker 3: Lasts for a couple months, answers some discrete questions, but most of my clients are on an ongoing subscription.
• 12:40
  Speaker 3: So you pay a fixed monthly fee.
• 12:42
  Speaker 3: It covers a range of services, including tax prep, tax planning, investments, all the kind of components of financial planning all for one fee.
• 12:52
  Speaker 3: And what I tell my clients is I want to be involved in any decision in your life.
• 12:55
  Speaker 3: With a dollar sign.
• 12:56
  Speaker 3: They're on the side of picking up the phone and calling me, and that tends to work well for my clients.
• 13:03
  Speaker 3: They don't feel like it's going to cost them extra to ask questions and what I encourage them to do is to reach out more often so they feel like they're getting value for the fee.
• 13:10
  Speaker 3: So kind of put some of the pressure on the client, like if you're not feeling the value, maybe you should be using me more, because you can email me or call me, kind of as much as you want within reason.
• 13:22
  Speaker 3: But so that's.
• 13:26
  Speaker 3: That's worked well, I think the clients have have resonated with doesn't cost extra to reach out, doesn't cost extra to use investment management or not use investment management, so we can feel like as much as possible.
• 13:36
  Speaker 3: We're sort of sitting on the same side of the table with each other and again try to structure things so that it meets their lifestyle right.
• 13:43
  Speaker 3: Most of my clients are relatively high income earning but have very little time.
• 13:47
  Speaker 3: Flexibility and time is one of their most important things that they have.
• 13:50
  Speaker 3: So meeting when it's convenient for them, just know, you know, cancel and move meetings around, but also doing as much as we can in house.
• 14:00
  Speaker 3: So doing tax prep in house to help save them some time coordinating with experts on their behalf right, so bringing the two of you in but being part of that conversation, so my clients don't have to spend a bunch of time getting up to speed with insurance or getting an insurance agent up to speed.
• 14:14
  Speaker 3: They can kind of have someone that's already ready to go just to help maximize their time.
• 14:19
  Speaker 3: Right, because most of my clients don't have a time between their kids and their legal practice.
• 14:25
  Speaker 3: You know just like probably most of us in our 30s and 40s like time is precious.
• 14:30
  Speaker 1: Yes, it is of the essence, for sure, but there is something really powerful in being that guy that they can call when something comes up.
• 14:39
  Speaker 1: You know, like personally, I know with my financial planner that I use who's also fee only.
• 14:43
  Speaker 1: It's like before I bought my house, before I made a lot of big financial decisions, we call him and then it immediately, like you can feel the way it come off of your chest and knowing like okay, you're fine, you're making a good decision here, everything's lined up the way that you want it to be.
• 14:58
  Speaker 1: So there's something that's very freeing about that and it's definitely worth having an advisor that you know allows you to call them.
• 15:05
  Speaker 1: I know different advisors have different philosophies and you know you can contact me this many times, or you know, but I really liked that about what you're doing in your service model, man, what is kind of, what are some of the things that you don't enjoy doing?
• 15:20
  Speaker 1: Like everybody has things in the business that they don't like as much as others.
• 15:23
  Speaker 1: So what are the things that you don't like doing in the business?
• 15:28
  Speaker 3: Marketing, for sure.
• 15:28
  Speaker 3: Not not my favorite activity.
• 15:32
  Speaker 3: You know I well, I'm a financial planning nerd.
• 15:36
  Speaker 3: I love the client facing time.
• 15:38
  Speaker 3: I love the problem solving components and anything.
• 15:40
  Speaker 3: That's not those things I don't.
• 15:41
  Speaker 3: I don't love the back office and administrative work you got to throw in compliance.
• 15:46
  Speaker 3: Oddly enough, the bookkeeping is fine, but chasing down paperwork and making sure that that's all done, interacting with the custodian, but mostly it's the marketing.
• 16:03
  Speaker 3: Again, part of the reason I chose the clients I did is that so far I haven't had to do a ton of marketing because it's people that know me and have known me for a long time.
• 16:10
  Speaker 3: So I've been able to have some business success without having to think too much about how to market.
• 16:16
  Speaker 3: That's this year's goal is figuring out how to market.
• 16:20
  Speaker 3: So I'm going to have to force myself to do the work I don't want to do.
• 16:21
  Speaker 3: Again, one of the downsides of being a business by yourself.
• 16:25
  Speaker 1: You got to do it so, piggybacking off that real quick.
• 16:35
  Speaker 1: Like within marketing, everybody has things and ways of marketing that they do like and that they don't like.
• 16:37
  Speaker 1: So if you had to say like this is the way I think I'm going to market more you know, is it going to be copywriting, like written blog posts?
• 16:43
  Speaker 1: Is it going to be getting on video?
• 16:45
  Speaker 1: What are your plans there?
• 16:48
  Speaker 3: Short form video.
• 16:48
  Speaker 3: So I've recorded a like a five part video series called you made partner.
• 16:53
  Speaker 3: Now what For people navigating the change from associate to partner?
• 16:57
  Speaker 1: I love it.
• 16:57
  Speaker 3: So so video courses and content, short video.
• 17:01
  Speaker 3: You know YouTube videos and things like that.
• 17:03
  Speaker 3: Instagram Reels Most of my clients.
• 17:06
  Speaker 3: They read for a living.
• 17:06
  Speaker 3: They don't want to sit down and read a 2,000-word blog post in their free time.
• 17:12
  Speaker 3: They don't have a ton of free time and when they do, they don't want to read about something that they probably think is pretty boring, like disability insurance.
• 17:21
  Speaker 3: No offense, guys.
• 17:22
  Speaker 3: None taken we can make it short and digestible so they can watch quickly, maybe on on social media, and follow up on a longer YouTube video or on a course.
• 17:33
  Speaker 3: That's going to be the goal.
• 17:36
  Speaker 2: I love that.
• 17:37
  Speaker 2: I think that there's also something to be said there, cause I feel like a lot of you know things that you see with advisor marketing.
• 17:45
  Speaker 2: It's social media, social media, social media and it's important, right, and it's a slow burn, but there's so many other ways to do it as well too.
• 17:51
  Speaker 2: You know, one of the best advisors we work with has lots of, lots of advisors underneath him.
• 18:00
  Speaker 2: Doesn't even have a LinkedIn.
• 18:01
  Speaker 2: I know there's one of my buddy's dads who's a very successful attorney.
• 18:07
  Speaker 2: You know he's a whatever managing partner at a huge firm with 500 lawyers not on linkedin.
• 18:14
  Speaker 2: So you can still do it the old school way, you know.
• 18:17
  Speaker 2: I mean, the sexy thing is is to grow a huge following and newsletter and stuff, but it is a very small percentage of people who can get to that level yeah, I mean it's.
• 19:00
  Speaker 3: I pulled my friends about where they you know my target clientele like, where do they spend their time?
• 19:05
  Speaker 3: Um, they don't.
• 19:06
  Speaker 3: I mean, they're on linkedin but they don't spend a ton of time there.
• 19:08
  Speaker 3: They're on instagram, but mostly to look at pictures of cats and dogs and parents.
• 19:13
  Speaker 3: Um, right, so, um, you know it, it's, it's going to be hard to find them.
• 19:18
  Speaker 3: So the hope is you can put out the content so when people search for me, you know you can, you can go out there and find me.
• 19:24
  Speaker 3: But you know, peter, I would love love the introduction to your, to your friend, as a managing partner.
• 19:29
  Speaker 2: 500, you know, 500 person firm, you know that that would be a lot more effective't ask, don't get pity, hey, you never know put yourself out there but yeah, I mean, but it's a great example.
• 19:42
  Speaker 2: I mean, brock and I, a funny story about marketing 101 for rock and I is that you know, we've always been on the linkedin grind, um, and when covid was boring, we like went around like realtors dropping off little goodies at local fee-only offices and we remember chatting to the only planner at the time and he's like, oh, that's cute and stuff, but I don't even.
• 20:05
  Speaker 2: I have a LinkedIn but it's not even on my phone and I haven't logged in in a year.
• 20:11
  Speaker 2: And I, you know, and right then, and there I could be like, oh, that's stupid.
• 20:15
  Speaker 2: But I was like, holy cow, it's not just you, there's, you know many of you.
• 20:20
  Speaker 2: So that's where Brock and I have just started.
• 20:23
  Speaker 2: You know, we got to attack from all different fronts and figure out how to be the most efficient with it.
• 20:28
  Speaker 2: Um, and yeah, that's always been a big lesson is like you know, hey, it works for you know some, but it doesn't work for all.
• 20:35
  Speaker 3: Yeah, yeah, we think you know some of where can you be authentic, and then also where where are your target clients right?
• 20:41
  Speaker 1: right, it sounds like your, your target clients, might be at a huge attorney conference.
• 20:46
  Speaker 1: I don't know, I bet that's it.
• 20:48
  Speaker 1: I mean, yeah, I, I don't know.
• 20:49
  Speaker 1: Can you do that?
• 20:51
  Speaker 1: Like we go to xypa, do we sponsor?
• 20:53
  Speaker 1: Do we set up a booth?
• 20:53
  Speaker 1: Is there like places where you can go sponsor as a financial planner?
• 21:00
  Speaker 3: there are events, uh that you can go to.
• 21:02
  Speaker 3: I mean like, so you can go join the massachusetts, but you can go to a massachusetts bar event or the boston bar or some regional bar event, um, and they'll all host conferences, um.
• 21:11
  Speaker 3: But you know, it's sort of one of those things like, do you want to walk in the room?
• 21:15
  Speaker 3: Be like like, hi, I'm not a lawyer, I'm a financial advisor to lawyers, um, so they're not expecting it to to be that kind of event, whereas at X, y, p, n, when you register for a booth and people go to the vendor hall, they're expecting to see vendors, uh, whereas like at a, at a, if there are vendors, they're looking at people to help them do e-discovery platforms and different billing platforms and those sorts of types of vendors, as opposed to someone to help them with their business.
• 21:43
  Speaker 3: But it's something I'm investigating Also looking into, most of my clients, their law firms, sponsor wellness events.
• 21:53
  Speaker 3: So can there be some wellness events around financial wellness, student loan repayment and those sorts of things?
• 21:58
  Speaker 3: So coming to the office giving a talk to some of the associates and younger partners as part of their wellness benefit, um, so hopefully that's that'll be some of the what, what comes out this fall for me, yeah.
• 22:11
  Speaker 2: A lot of it's word of mouth, right.
• 22:13
  Speaker 2: I mean even in law, very private matter.
• 22:16
  Speaker 2: You know, like in personal injury, right, you see all these attorneys, like in Indianapolis there's this guy called the hammer, right, if I had a personal injury problem I would never call this lawyer.
• 22:26
  Speaker 2: I would network and see if someone in my network has had success and it would be word of mouth or like I have had a few friends, like in the last month, like with taxes, like hey, who do you know who's an accountant?
• 22:38
  Speaker 2: You know, and like they're kind of shy about it, right, like embarrassed, but like you know, they don't just want to call someone off Google.
• 22:45
  Speaker 2: So there's so many different ways to understand how people buy and you know, like there's so many different types of buyers who are out there and clients.
• 22:58
  Speaker 2: The hammer is not going to be happy to hear you say that.
• 23:00
  Speaker 2: Peter the hammer is going to be so mad.
• 23:01
  Speaker 2: It's the nails.
• 23:02
  Speaker 2: You can kick rocks.
• 23:04
  Speaker 1: Oh my gosh, that's hilarious.
• 23:07
  Speaker 3: Go ahead, Eric, I was going to say.
• 23:09
  Speaker 3: I mean, my biggest competition is the cold calling firms that we all know and can name off the top of our heads.
• 23:16
  Speaker 3: Some of them are insurance-based firms.
• 23:18
  Speaker 1: The modern mutuals of the world.
• 23:20
  Speaker 3: Yes, yes, my wife probably gets 10 or 12 calls a year.
• 23:24
  Speaker 3: She has the easiest time getting off the phone because she just tells them her husband's a financial planner.
• 23:28
  Speaker 3: Although one person was like are you sure you don't need a second opinion?
• 23:31
  Speaker 3: Can you really trust your husband?
• 23:32
  Speaker 3: Oh, that's just quick.
• 23:35
  Speaker 3: Good for him for for pushing back.
• 23:42
  Speaker 3: That's a rubble.
• 23:44
  Speaker 3: But so I mean, that's my.
• 23:44
  Speaker 3: My biggest competition is cold callers.
• 23:46
  Speaker 3: But to your point, right, it's there, it's a it's a generally word of mouth private thing.
• 23:51
  Speaker 3: Walk around the law firm, right.
• 23:52
  Speaker 3: Like when you, for example, when you make partner at a law firm, you tend to get an email that says congratulations, you made partner, your taxes are about.
• 23:57
  Speaker 3: You tend to get an email that says congratulations, you made partner, your taxes are about to be a lot more complicated.
• 24:00
  Speaker 3: There's this thing called the K-1.
• 24:01
  Speaker 3: You know here's three accounting firms that basically all the partners at the law firm use.
• 24:07
  Speaker 3: So you know that's how most law firm partners are going to find their accountants is go work with one of those firms and then they're going to ask around for the partners that they work for their mentors, right?
• 24:20
  Speaker 3: So the senior partners where are they going to get their investment advice.
• 24:25
  Speaker 3: Where are they going to get their?
• 24:26
  Speaker 1: financial planning.
• 24:27
  Speaker 1: I feel like at large firms like that there's a lot of what's everybody else doing buying of services right, if everybody else is using them, and it's almost just like a plug and play kind of turnkey solution.
• 24:38
  Speaker 1: They already know what your packages are, they already work with everybody at the law firm.
• 24:42
  Speaker 1: It just makes sense.
• 24:44
  Speaker 3: So we just yeah, yeah, it's like those advisors that specialize in, like Microsoft employees.
• 24:48
  Speaker 3: Oh, I already know everything about your benefits package.
• 24:51
  Speaker 3: I know everything about how promotions work and when your stock options are going to vest and when your trading window is right like all of these things that I would have to go research for a microsoft employee right that they don't have to do right.
• 25:02
  Speaker 3: So again, part of the benefit of focusing on attorneys.
• 25:05
  Speaker 3: Every firm is different, but generally speaking, the sets of benefits are the same.
• 25:08
  Speaker 3: In big law for associates there's actually a scale, but all law firms pay the same.
• 25:14
  Speaker 3: The bonuses are the same.
• 25:15
  Speaker 3: There's websites you can go to and just know what they're making.
• 25:18
  Speaker 3: Yeah, so you know, you can get a leg up.
• 25:21
  Speaker 3: They don't have to explain much.
• 25:22
  Speaker 3: You can just say I'm a.
• 25:23
  Speaker 3: You know, I graduated law school in 2017.
• 25:27
  Speaker 3: I know exactly what you make.
• 25:28
  Speaker 3: I know when you'll be up for partner.
• 25:30
  Speaker 3: Um, we can skip a bunch of stuff.
• 25:33
  Speaker 2: Yeah.
• 25:33
  Speaker 2: So a question that just came to mind like when they get this email that they're now partner and they have these three accountants that pop up like what do you usually see like is their experience, like like big firm to big firm accounting?
• 25:49
  Speaker 2: Like where does hark planning come in and where's the differentiator?
• 25:53
  Speaker 2: Because I gotta imagine that you know sometimes, like some of these huge partners like they do want a more personal relationship.
• 25:59
  Speaker 2: Like as great as some of these accounting firms are with all these huge teams and stuff like there is just being able to pick up the phone and calling your person, like kind of what are your thoughts around that and where are your services coming in?
• 26:13
  Speaker 3: Yeah.
• 26:13
  Speaker 3: So I mean, while I do my clients taxes, I'm certainly not like I don't lead with tax, let's just put it that way.
• 26:20
  Speaker 3: So for me, I mean the tax firms that they're getting in these emails.
• 26:24
  Speaker 3: I mean they're just your classic tax prep backwards looking let's jam out your return.
• 26:28
  Speaker 3: You're one of a thousand people we're doing returns for yeah, you know, you're at, you're at law firm X and we do 80 partners plus 900 other returns this season and we charge a bunch.
• 26:38
  Speaker 3: We're just jamming through, whereas for my clients, we're doing proactive tax planning throughout the course of the year.
• 26:44
  Speaker 3: We're also looking at their investments, their insurance, obviously, their insurance retirement plan.
• 26:51
  Speaker 3: What do they actually want to do?
• 26:52
  Speaker 3: So, unlike sort of the accounting firm which is literally just going to care care about their taxes, we're going to care about their complete financial picture, um, and unlike most of the other people sort of gold calling them right we're going to care about their, their long-term goals.
• 27:06
  Speaker 3: Most people aren't going to stay in big law, either because it's their choice or it's the firm's.
• 27:10
  Speaker 3: The model is such that very few people will make partner and very few people will make equity partner, um, and so most of the planning is around what happens when it's time to go and your income goes from 450 to $200,000 a year, kind of overnight whether it's your choice or the law firm's choice and so it's a lot of planning for, hey, you have these years of really high income.
• 27:34
  Speaker 3: How do we maximize those years before the income trails off?
• 27:38
  Speaker 3: So how do we make sure that you're not in golden handcuffs, trapped, kind of feeling like you need to make half a million dollars a year and how we're making the most of that half a million dollars a year for the three, four or five years you're making it before you go in-house or go to the government, or burn out and leave the legal practice altogether, or burnout and leave the legal practice altogether.
• 27:57
  Speaker 2: And those have to be interesting conversations there too.
• 28:00
  Speaker 2: Like what are some?
• 28:01
  Speaker 2: Like you know, because I feel like lawyers and doctors, you know you're always like, oh, like, from an outside they have their stuff together and, yeah, they can be making all this great money.
• 28:11
  Speaker 2: But like what are some of these conversations that maybe you're having, where you know these people they get to that position and you know they reach the summit if you will, and it's like you know they're looking around, like you know what else, like I thought it was going to be cooler than this.
• 28:25
  Speaker 2: You know why is it so stressful?
• 28:28
  Speaker 3: yeah, I mean, most of these people are working in big cities, right, like I'm in the Boston area, so they're in Boston, new York, chicago, like LA, like big, expensive cities.
• 28:42
  Speaker 3: So as a first year associate, you're making like a quarter of a million dollars a year.
• 28:45
  Speaker 3: That feels great on paper, but then you realize you're living in an expensive place.
• 28:50
  Speaker 3: You went to one of probably the top 14 law schools and, unless you've got a scholarship, you're graduating with somewhere in the neighborhood of two to $500,000 of student loan debt that you now have to service.
• 29:02
  Speaker 3: And because you work in big law, there's no forgiveness.
• 29:05
  Speaker 3: There's no.
• 29:06
  Speaker 3: You know, the the save plan doesn't really help you.
• 29:09
  Speaker 3: So how do you manage the cashflow crunch of living somewhere expensive while having to pay back your debts, while saving for the future to be able to eventually buy a house in this expensive place and eventually have kids where childcare is obscenely expensive, right?
• 29:22
  Speaker 3: Massachusetts is the most expensive state for childcare.
• 29:24
  Speaker 3: County I live in is the most expensive county in Massachusetts for childcare, right?
• 29:28
  Speaker 3: So how do you plan for all of these things, balance paying back your debts, living for today because you're billing a ton of hours, right, and so when you have free time, you want to be able to feel like you, that work was worth something, while also still saving for the future, so that you don't wake up two years from now, open all your statements and be like what just?
• 29:47
  Speaker 1: I feel like the.
• 29:48
  Speaker 1: I feel like the person's life that you just described was if bud fox from the movie wall street was an attorney, like all the expensive stuff, all the stuff going on living in the penthouse, doing all the stuff.
• 30:00
  Speaker 1: It is so true, though, and that's a great question, pete, because it's like, yeah, you realize you get to the summit and it's like what are what else is there?
• 30:09
  Speaker 1: What else is out there, or is this actually what I wanted?
• 30:11
  Speaker 1: Or like, now that I'm here, it's different.
• 30:13
  Speaker 1: And oh, by the way, you know, I've I've got an ex-wife or an ex-husband and I'm paying alimony.
• 30:19
  Speaker 1: Like life gets complicated.
• 30:20
  Speaker 1: That's just the bottom line, so it's interesting to hear your take on that.
• 30:25
  Speaker 1: Are there any like super common?
• 30:27
  Speaker 1: Just like everybody thinks this pretty much about money, that's an attorney.
• 30:35
  Speaker 3: I mean they're pretty diverse group.
• 30:36
  Speaker 3: I mean attorneys.
• 30:37
  Speaker 3: By and large.
• 30:38
  Speaker 3: Their job and their training is to look at something and imagine all the ways it goes wrong.
• 30:42
  Speaker 3: Right, whether you're drafting a contract, or you are in litigation or an intellectual property, wherever your practice area is, your job by and like boils down to either things did go wrong and now we've got to like sue somebody, or we're being sued, or we're being investigated by the government, or write contracts so that when things go bad, our side is protected.
• 31:02
  Speaker 3: So they tend to view the world from a lens of like what can go wrong, who's out to get me and how can I stay protected?
• 31:09
  Speaker 3: That's why I like insurance, for example.
• 31:10
  Speaker 3: Right, is it one of the first things we work on with our clients?
• 31:13
  Speaker 3: Because let's talk about the ways things can go bad.
• 31:16
  Speaker 3: How do you lose this income?
• 31:19
  Speaker 3: Disability insurance, you know, term life, those sorts of types of coverage we work on very early with our clients because they tend to be more risk adverse because of the lens and the way they view the world, so their issues are very diverse.
• 31:30
  Speaker 3: But by the people who generally want to go to law school, the training that law school puts them through, and then what legal practice does to your mind about the way you look at the world, um, you know we spend a lot of time talking about what can go wrong and how do we prepare for it, or can we prepare for it effectively?
• 31:48
  Speaker 2: yeah, and getting in the mind of your clients very important.
• 31:50
  Speaker 2: Like both, my parents are attorneys and they've always said you know law school, it'll teach you how to think like a lawyer, but it won't teach you how to run a practice.
• 31:57
  Speaker 2: Um, you know, and a lot of these lawyers kind of like how you said, you love the being in the financial planning nerd, a lot of these doctors they like, or doctors, a lot of these lawyers you know they like being the law professional.
• 32:09
  Speaker 2: Um, they don't like being, you know, the business owner, the accountant, the financial planner and all these different hats.
• 32:16
  Speaker 2: Um, so, yeah, it is all about specialization and knowing where you fit into the ecosystem.
• 32:23
  Speaker 3: Yeah, I mean, the law school does not prepare you to practice law.
• 32:26
  Speaker 3: It also doesn't prepare you to be a business owner or how to do sales marketing.
• 32:29
  Speaker 3: There's no finance course in the middle of law school, right?
• 32:33
  Speaker 3: So if you're thinking about two clients right now who are leaving sort of their law firms and starting their own legal practice so we do a lot of this is what accounting is.
• 32:41
  Speaker 3: Welcome to bookkeeping 101.
• 32:45
  Speaker 2: How do?
• 32:46
  Speaker 3: you say it, it's not something they've ever been exposed to.
• 32:49
  Speaker 3: They've never had to think like a business owner, even if they were pretty senior at their law firm, just because that's just.
• 32:56
  Speaker 3: The law firm model is different than being like someone small in legal practice on your own, or even with a couple partners.
• 33:02
  Speaker 3: Yeah, the challenges are totally different.
• 33:04
  Speaker 3: Um, so it's, it's an interesting transition and something we're helping a couple clients navigate right now.
• 33:09
  Speaker 1: So I love it, it's been interesting.
• 33:12
  Speaker 3: I love it now, did your parents want you to go to law school or not?
• 33:16
  Speaker 2: um, you know, they didn't really care.
• 33:18
  Speaker 2: There wasn't much pressure.
• 33:20
  Speaker 2: Um, and I would say from other friends whose parents were lawyers that also none of them followed into law.
• 33:27
  Speaker 2: Um, it's kind of interesting how that goes when you see it like that or how you grew up with it um yeah, most of my clients do not want their kids to be attorneys yeah, it's.
• 33:38
  Speaker 2: Uh, it's funny how that works, isn't it yeah?
• 33:42
  Speaker 3: yeah, once you're in it, you see that you see the pitfalls of the industry and you're like god, I don't know yeah, it can be go be a financial planner yeah, go build a lifestyle practice go
• 33:51
  Speaker 2: out there, raise a family, take your time back school.
• 33:55
  Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, exactly out there.
• 33:58
  Speaker 1: I just can't wait until a month from now.
• 34:00
  Speaker 1: We're watching Eric with a baby strapped on his chest doing like videos, typing around the keyboard.
• 34:06
  Speaker 3: I mean that's what I did when when, uh, I now almost three-year-old was born Uh, I was at a different firm, and when we first met each other, I guess, uh, I definitely did some meetings where, like I had the baby strapped on and we're just we're just, you're rocking here, yeah, just keeping him napping doing some, doing some client calls, if I've done you're gonna have to, you're gonna have to get out the old baby bjorn man.
• 34:28
  Speaker 1: Is that what they're called, baby bjorn?
• 34:30
  Speaker 1: Oh yeah, the baby bjorn.
• 34:32
  Speaker 3: If you, if you want to get into the types of ways to wear a baby, baby bjorn's my favorite.
• 34:36
  Speaker 3: I'm 6'1".
• 34:37
  Speaker 3: Baby Bjorn has great lower back support.
• 34:39
  Speaker 3: Now my wife is 5'3".
• 34:41
  Speaker 3: Baby Bjorn does not work for her Not great.
• 34:43
  Speaker 1: She's got three different carriers.
• 34:45
  Speaker 3: She prefers what's called the wrap carrier Brock you didn't know, but you've stumbled into something here.
• 34:50
  Speaker 3: You can spend way too much time talking about baby Bjorn.
• 35:04
  Speaker 1: Looks like Brock's been reading up on it too.
• 35:05
  Speaker 1: I don't know no news to announce, but uh, yeah, we're gonna get into strollers here in a second.
• 35:07
  Speaker 1: No, no, man.
• 35:07
  Speaker 1: It's been awesome, eric.
• 35:08
  Speaker 1: We love everything that you're doing, man, and the opportunity to work with you and and uh, watching your practice grow and everything that you're doing.
• 35:13
  Speaker 1: Uh, before we get off here, where can people follow?
• 35:15
  Speaker 1: Follow along with the marketing blitz and the you Just Made Partner.
• 35:20
  Speaker 1: What's Next videos that you're doing?
• 35:22
  Speaker 3: Yeah, well, you can go to harkfpcom and you can sign up for the video series.
• 35:26
  Speaker 3: There'll be a pop-up on the homepage there for you Made Partner and then you can.
• 35:31
  Speaker 3: Also there's a link to the YouTube channel with its current, I think, three videos Just be on the lookout over the next year.
• 35:36
  Speaker 3: Dropping those three with its current I think three videos just be on the lookout over the next year those three.
• 35:39
  Speaker 3: There'll be more, I won't say how many more but there will be more.
• 35:41
  Speaker 1: Master these three first.
• 35:43
  Speaker 3: Yeah, yes, I love it.
• 35:45
  Speaker 3: Yes, they're classic, classic.
• 35:47
  Speaker 3: Thanks for having me on, guys.
• 35:49
  Speaker 3: I really appreciate it.
• 35:49
  Speaker 3: This was a lot of fun.
• 35:50
  Speaker 1: Yep, appreciate it, man, take it.