Closing (More Affluent) Clients in The First Meeting with an "Approach Talk" Method to Create Urgency with Erin Botsford

Welcome to the Financial Advisor Success Podcast, where you go behind the scenes with financial planner, speaker, and consultant Michael Kitzis to hear stories of how leading financial advisors navigated the inevitable challenges that arise on the path to success and get insight from leading industry consultants about how to break through to the next level in your advisory business. And now here's your host, Michael Kitzis. Welcome everyone. Welcome to the 480th episode of the Financial Advisor Success Podcast. My guess on today's podcast is Aaron Botsford. Aaron is the founder of the advisor authority, a coaching platform that trains advisors on attracting more and wealthier clients while also scaling their businesses by building a successful team around them. What's unique about Aaron, though, is how over the course of her career as an advisory firm owner herself, she developed what she calls the approach talk method to closing affluent clients in the first meeting by focusing on risk management exposures that create urgency to act. In this episode, we talk in depth about how Aaron's approach talk method centers largely on making prospects aware of up to 26 risk management exposures, including potential estate planning and insurance items. They face that can create a strong incentive to act, though it often only takes reviewing two or three of them to get prospects to want to become clients. Why Aaron thinks it's important to meet with both members of a prospect couple and to recognize that different factors that might spur each of them to want to take action. And how Aaron, before entering the room for a prospect meeting, showed them a founder's video that introduced her and her story to the prospects efficiently, removing the temptation for her to talk extensively about herself during the meeting itself. We also talk about how Aaron used a fee structure that includes both a flat planning fee to orchestrate implementation of the risk management plan and an AUM fee on the client's assets to compensate for the advisor's work managing their portfolio and the risk exposures they take in doing so. How Aaron finds that advisors often need to quote a higher planning fee than they might expect when meeting with a high net worth prospect as doing so will help the prospect associate the advisor with the attorneys and other highly paid professionals they already work with. And how Aaron found that while some prospects might have initially resisted moving all of their investable assets to her firm from their current advisor, they typically eventually would once they understood that she was raising planning issues that their current advisor never addressed and would therefore likely provide a deeper level of service in the process. And be certain to listen to the end where Aaron shares why it's important for founders to be able to eventually remove themselves from every client case in their firm, both to better scale and to ultimately increase the value of their business, why Aaron encourages founders to think about what they want their last day in the business to look like and then work backwards to inform how to structure their firm today and how working as an advisor coach has ultimately allowed Aaron to give back to the profession and expand her own philanthropic goals. And so with that introduction, I hope you enjoy this episode of the Financial Advisor Success Podcast with Aaron Botsford. Welcome Aaron Botsford to the Financial Advisor Success Podcast. Well, thank you for having me. I'm excited to have you join us or I should really say, have you have you join us again? You actually with us about six years ago, having talked about sort of growth journey of building a what at the time was a nearly a billion dollar advisory firm, he would since retired made some transitions into consulting back to the advisor community. And now I'm kind of excited that you're you're back and we get to talk more about growing the business and it's really like lessons learned from your building over the years that we can bring back to the advisor community. And and to me, the part that really sticks out is like the the challenge that we go through when we want to attract and actually get higher dollar higher net worth clients to agree to work with us, then then we're wherever we started originally in the business, right? The I think that industry label we have for this now is like moving up market. And and we find from our productivity research on the kids' platform that that is actually one of the biggest predictors of high productivity advisors. You most of us try to get more productive by working faster and more efficiently with the clients we've got who at the end of the day just are are still only willing to pay us so much for the value of our time in the first place. And in the end, you know, if you if you do $250 an hour work faster and better with technology, it's still $250 an hour work. And most of us don't get paid on an hourly basis. But you know, if you take your AOM fees and divide by how many hours you spend servicing clients, you're still going to get to a number of how your clients value an hour of your time. And it turns out one of the biggest looks at productivity is work with clients who value your time more, which usually means clients who are more affluent, greater complexity and you know, and have the financial capability to pay you $500 an hour for your time. And it's have $250 an hour of your time, which which doesn't necessarily mean working with the ultra high net worth like decadmillionaires and and up. For most of us, it's it simply means going from working with $300,000 clients to $500,000 clients to million clients to two million dollar clients. And that can be world changing in the revenue economics for a business with the caveat that working with millionaires and getting them comfortable enough to entrust you with their life savings is is different is more challenging. And is the point where I see a lot of advisors struggle to get those clients to actually say yes. So I would say just I'm I'm excited to get to dive in today about what it takes to evolve your practice from working with is called the massive fluent to actually working with million plus dollar clients. And when it when it comes like a sales process and approach talk with with prospects like how do you actually get to the point of having them say yes to work with you? That's a really good question. And I and I I feel like I'm an expert in this area because I started I mean a long, long time ago and I perfected the art and you know, the nice thing is now I've trained over 2,000 advisors and they're able to do exactly what I was doing. So the so Michael, the good news is it is a formula. And when you use the formula, it's kind of like baking a cake, you know, as long as you put this the the ingredients in at the right time, you get the cake that you want, you get the outcome that you want. If you miss the eggs, okay, it's you get a flop, you get a mess, right? So that's the really cool thing about this is is you know, when I was doing it in practice, I I was unconsciously competent. I didn't know that I had created a formula. It wasn't until I decided to start training advisors and I had an advisor follow me around for two years and he documented the process because other, you know, before that I was just I was just doing that, right? So now it is a documented process and if you follow the process, you get a yes at the end of the meeting, which is awesome. I love that that framework like I was doing it. It was working. I didn't necessarily know how to translate it to others. So I just had someone follow me for two years and documented all and it was their job to figure out how to take the thing that I'm just doing naturally is working well for me and help me turn it into something that that is like teachable and trainable to others. Yeah, it really is a recipe. And so I think, you know, if you want me to start, I think the one thing that advisors kind of don't neither don't know, don't learn is there's so much psychology in the sales process and I think, you know, there's a lot of training on behavioral psychology, behavioral finance, etc. But it really is real and that's where I always start because you know, and a lot of people, you know, they come to me and they say, "Hey, Aaron, you know, can you help me find those 10, 20, 30 million dollar prospects?" And I'm like, of course I can, but I'll always say to them, what if I put you in a room? It's a tiger 21 room. A full of prospects where 20 million dollars or more, the question is, would you have any idea what to say to them to get a meeting? And then once in the meeting, would you have any idea what to say to them to get a yes? And most advisors, if they're honest, they'll go, "I'm not sure," right? And so that's why I think it's so important what I teach in my training is let's learn how to close a prospect of any size in the first meeting. And I'm here to tell you, it's no more, it's no harder to close a 30 million dollar prospect than it is a 500,000 dollar prospect. It's no harder because you're dealing with human psychology and that never changes. And so, but the problem I think in our industry is advisors don't deal and don't recognize human psychology. So they start with product where they start with data or they start with information and that just puts people to sleep. And so there's, I thought I'd share with you a couple of things that advisors really should know. And once they know this, it makes it so darn easy. And so, first of all, you know, you typically were planning for, let's call it a couple. And you know, it really doesn't matter whether it's male, female, it's gay, it doesn't matter. It's when two people are together, they typically, they are opposites attract. And so let's just say in a general heterosexual couple male female, you know, the female is always way more risk averse than her male counterpart. And you know, I don't know if you remember, Oliance did that study back in 2012. And I was shocked and people should really Google that search or that study that it's at 57% of college educated working women. Their biggest fear is not only running out of money but becoming a bag lady. Now Michael, think about that. I mean, there's a long trajectory from I'm a college educated working woman. Now I lose all my money and I end up a bag lady. That's a long trajectory, but that is so real. And I saw that in my practice, I know it personally, you know, from my personal background. Yes, I can relate to that. But a lot of advisors, they they may even know that information, but what they don't know is they don't know what to do with that information. Now her male counterpart, I always say, you know, man, it's just a DNA thing. Like my husband, if somebody said, well, you know, if you do this, you might run out of money and he'd be like, you know, as long as I had a big screen, 85 inch TV and a futon, I'd be good. Okay. You know, that's how my husband would feel. And I tell advisors, a woman will never, ever feel that way she wants to protect her money for herself, her children and her grandchildren and she will move mountains to make that happen. And I think it really goes back, it's not a cultural thing. It's not a 2025-06 thing. It goes back to the dawn of civilization where he went out with his buddies and he, you know, and got, you know, killed the animal, brought it home, she fried up the pan, she fried up the bacon and took care of the kids, right? And so I think it goes back that deep in that DNA. And so what I teach advisors is let's understand what the DNA is and then let's use it to our advantage. So, you know, that's the first thing is how different, you know, men and women feel about money and especially the fear of loss of money and the fear of loss of lifestyle. That's one thing. The second thing that I always, go ahead. Well, but I, I want to understand this further for a moment. So what am I, like, what am I doing with this in a meeting? Like, what am I, what am I saying? And doing differently because I'm envisioning a lot of things I could say they're probably going to sound patronizing to a spouse if I try, if I don't open this conversation appropriately. Well, you will see. Okay. That is to be determined because there's only one other thing I want to point out and then we'll go into what do you do with that information? Okay. So the second piece of information that's really valuable is again, in a couple and you know, the big thing is all advisors would say, yeah, if I'm going to be working with a couple, if that both of them need to be there at that first meeting, right? But how many advisors, Michael, do you think they've scheduled an appointment, husband and wife are coming in, but the guy shows up. Do they do the meeting? Most of us usually, yeah, you don't want to blow it up on the spot. And the problem with that is if you do the meeting, like, I'm going to teach these people how to do the meeting in just a second. Remember, you're going to, as you know, I use things called disturbing tracks. I disturb them out of their slumber about things. And he can't be disturbed. So she sends him, hey, go meet with that financial advisor. He goes in. The advisor does exactly what I'm going to share today. And then he goes home and she says, how does that meeting go? What did he say? He goes, we're fine. So, so, you know, again, I always tell people, if you want to use my technique, which ends up in a yes at the end of the meeting, they both have to be there because each one of them, and we're going to talk today about using quote, disturbing tracks, each one of these will impact her or him or both, but they both have to be there for it to be effective. And I think it's unfair, really. I mean, I would be upset with my husband if he showed up with a financial advisor. And I'm, I'm not there. I don't, I think that's, I want my interests spoken, you know, at the same time, right? So I wouldn't, I wouldn't appreciate that at all. But so anyway, the other thing about that is now you get her to show up. They're both there. The couples there. There's a very specific greeting and seating system that is part of this formula. And the reason for that is, first of all, people need to be greeted within two minutes of arrival. And, you know, we had very, we had a television screen in our lobby. And the television screen said, welcome, Mr. Mrs. Smith. So as soon as the prospect walks in, they know that we are ready. We're expecting them, right? And the reason this is important, Michael, I don't know if you kind of delved into this at all, but what I found was that a prospect coming in to see a financial advisor is probably one of the most scary meetings they've ever had in their life, even if it's from a strong referral. I think it's worse than going to a dentist for people. Because think about it, they know they walk in, they know at the end of the meeting, the advisor is going to essentially ask them for their business, ask them to trust them with their life savings. And prospects are like, oh my gosh, you know, this guy seems really nice, but what if he's the next Bernie made off? So prospects are always looking from the very get go. They're looking for excuses not to do business with you. So the kids don't give them any excuses. So that's why when you they walk in the door and you know, there's a television screen that says, welcome Mr. Smith, they're like, okay, they're prepared. They're ready. They got their act together, right? Within a couple of minutes, somebody comes out and they greet them. And then they ask them for their drink of preference. And so while you they leave them in the lobby, and by the way, this also translate into a Zoom call because a lot of people are working remotely, but I'm just going to do a traditional and they go get the drink and you want to place the drinks where you want these people to sit. And so in my case, I knowing what I know about women and men and DNA and all that, I always set the woman at the head of the table. And the man on the side of the table, when he's looking at me, there was nothing behind me to distract him. And Michael, you have to realize I had two offices and seven conference rooms. And so everybody on the team needed to know in every single conference room, where did I want the woman and the man to be seated for the most effective outcome. So, you know, a lot of times two, the reason I want to sit here at the head of the table is, you know, a lot of 80% of our advisor population are men. Is that still correct? Yeah, about that 75 to 80-ish. It hasn't, it hasn't moved much in about 30 years. Yeah. Yeah, I was a unicorn back in the day. Yes. But anyway, you know, what happens, and this is just naturally the male advisor or even me, you know, will you go in and you find out he's the CFO for Toyota and she's a stay-at-home mom or whatever. And we tend to bond with the breadwinner. Hey, so-and-so, how about, you know, the hockey team scoring the gold medal, how about the cowboys, how about this, how about that. And she kind of sits there and she's not included in the conversation. This is so, so normal, so traditional. So, the biggest thing we want to do is we want to make sure we include her because Michael, what the other piece of psychology that is huge, and everybody listening to this podcast is going to understand what I say. And that is, at the end of the day, she has a super power that she can use at will. I call it absolute veto power. And if she doesn't like you, she feels ignored, she feels marginalized in any way. By the time she gets to the car in the parking lot and shuts the door, you're going to be history. So knowing that, it's like, I want to make every attempt to make sure that doesn't happen. I don't want her to, because I ignored her, I didn't get her input, I didn't get her feedback, et cetera. So I'm going to place her in a position of honor as much as anything. So I don't leave her out of the conversation. And I make sure that her inputs, because at the end of the day, in a couple situation like that, it's, this is a broad statement, but she's your buyer. She is your buyer. And if she's not the, again, the, you know, CFO for a big company, she's a stay-at-home person. At the end of the day, she gets to nix the deal if she wants to. And so a lot of, you know, if there's only one thing an advisor that's listening to this podcast, gets out of today is always see her at the head of the table and make sure you, you know, bring her into the conversation immediately. And her inputs are valued. And not, you know, be condescending toward her or, you know, patronize her. It's just make sure she's heard, because she's a big part of the equation. Now the other thing, you know, we talk about is, why do you want to close a prospect in the first meeting? Why is that so important? Well, first of all, you know, when you have two, three discovery meetings, all that really does, it gives your prospects more opportunities to say no to you. And also, if you can close, you know, a two, three, ten million dollar prospect in the first meeting, man, that creates a lot of efficiency, right? You don't have to wait for the money to come. So it just makes sense. So, so what about all the advisors who, I guess who, who fear who worry like, I don't, I don't want to be pushy. I don't want to be seen as salesy like, a lot of folks I find struggle with. I guess as they would probably ferment like pushing for a close on the first meeting and not giving clients time to digesting, think it over, come back with more information questions, etc. Yes, we're going to take care of that problem right now. So, okay, so here's the way that I approached it. And again, I'm just giving the real-life stuff. And that is, I would, I would make sure that they were greeted and seated appropriately. Now, one thing that I think is super important is I encourage all of my advisors to get what we call a founders video. Because at some point in a meeting, you're going to have to tell a little bit about yourself. And so what I would say, you know, when I didn't have a founders video and what I teach advisors just say is you want to, you know, of course, have the niceties and get a little information. And by the way, write this down for anybody listening. There was only a few pieces of information that I needed to close a prospect. I needed their names, the names and ages of their children. And hopefully an approximate net worth. But I really didn't need the approximate net worth. I could, I'll show you how I overcame that. So really, I mean, that's all I needed to know to close this prospect. So I would, you know, make the niceties and then when it came, it was appropriate, I would say, you may be wondering how I got into this business and why I'm uniquely qualified to help you with your financial planning. And then I would tell my personal story and you know we got into my personal story on the last podcast. But the thing about it is is sometimes when you an advisor needs to do this, they need to tell their personal story and what they want to do is tell maybe something kind of crappy that happened along the way, but then how the advisor overcame that because in our culture, overcoming adversity is still very much appreciated and applauded. The problem is, advisors tend to, they're nervous, especially it's a higher net worth prospect than they're used to having. Like it's an $8 million prospect and they're used to 500,000. So they get really nervous and then talk, talk, talk, talk, talk, talk. They talk about themselves. They do talk about this adversity, but by the time they've talked about their third divorce, okay? What they forget to do is they for you, you want to tell something that happened and that you want to show how you overcame it and in their nervousness, all they don't, they leave themselves in the proverbial mud puddle and all they ended up doing was demonstrating that they showed bad judgment. And that happens all the time. And so I'm like, people, you only get one chance to make a first impression. So get a founder's video done, have a script and we have a, you know, we have a script writer on our team. It's professionally written script. And it's only about a minute and a half or two minutes, but have that founder's video played before you even walk in the room or played before you get on the zoom call. Where do I put this or distribute this or share this? It's going to be played. We had a, you know, in our conference rooms, we had a TV. So it would be streamed on the TV or it could be on a zoom call. Your assistant opens up the zoom call. Hey, Michael, be here in just a second in the meantime. I like to show you this two minute video, right? That's how you do it. So not this isn't a like I'm sending them an email with a video link in advance or putting it on the website or something. You're doing this like to kick off the meeting. Hey, before you as the advisor come in the room, my team will say, Hey, Aaron, you know, Aaron will be here. Michael will be here in a moment while you're waiting. Here's a brief video. You may find helpful. Just understand a little bit more. Totally. And in my case, again, I would have my team member tee up the video. The big thing is remember they've greeted the people. They got their drink of choice and they put they put her drink. She wanted coffee. They put it at the head of the table. His drink was a diet coke. They stated it were so those people would gravitate to where the drink was. I mean, this is all very scripted. They're sitting there. My team member would stay in the room with them and then tee up the video. And so when the video was done, I might be standing outside the door listening. You know, I could hear the end of the video and then I'd walk in. Then here I am. Right. So again, that's got it. That got it out of the way. My telling my story because it's important because at the end of this meeting, I'm going to be asking them a lot of personal questions about themselves. It's kind of like how dare I ask them about themselves if I haven't revealed anything about me. Right. So. But the point of doing it in recorded video is if I make it as a recording that I've scripted and delivered well, I can't go off the rails and accidentally talk for 17 minutes about my entire life history. Like is that the point? 100% I'm borrowing myself to tell the right amount and not too much because I'm taking out of my own hands. 100%. Okay. I mean, the funny thing is we have advisors like they'll write their own script and they'll send it to us and I'm like, oh my gosh, this is terrible. We've got a narrow down because yeah, you want to have one challenge you overcame, but you don't want to tell your entire life story and accidentally forget how you overcame. It can be a disaster otherwise. So it doesn't cost very much to have a video done. Trust me. And it's worth it because you're again, every step counts and you don't want to, that's not the place where you want to screw up with. They're sitting looking like, like, this guy's a moron. You know, you don't want that. So okay. So now you've told your, your, the story has been told. And so then you begin what I called the approach talk. And Michael, I only used two slides where I drew, basically I would draw it out on a white board or I would draw it out on a yellow legal pad in front of them. And what I would say is I would draw a box and it had four quadrants in it. In the middle, there was the letters F.D. Financial Director. On the top of the box, if anybody wants to write it out just for their own fun, the top was investments and retirement planning. On the right hand side of the box was RM for risk management. And the bottom of the box was a state planning. And on the other side of the box, the right hand side was, I guess it would be the left hand side was family office services. So that's the box that I would draw out. And I'd say, you know, Mr. Mrs. Smith, you know, thank you for coming here. And I would say in our practice, I know a lot of you, you know, you probably met with other advisors and most advisors start up here. I would point to the top in the area of investments and retirement planning. I said in our practice, we always start over here in this quadrant. We call risk management. You may be asking why? Well, it's my belief that whether you have a million dollars or 10 million dollars or anywhere in between, if an event happened and let me assure you those events happen in a split second of time, that would cause you to lose all your money. I don't really care how well your money is being managed. It's just that much more for you to lose. Now I want to pause here for just a second, Michael. I want to point out something that I did. In this case, I said, whether you have a million or 10 million or anywhere in between, I'm making the assumption, I either know or making the assumption that these people have one million dollars. And what I've done is I've said, whether you have a million or 10 million or anywhere in between, it gives the illusion that not only am I very comfortable working with somebody with a million dollars, what they have, I'm actually comfortable working with people with 10 times the amount of money that they have. So do you see the psychology of how that sets the stage? And so that range gets re-anchored to whatever you know of their financial worth. That's why you said earlier. That's correct. And either names their kids and their approximate worth because I'm going to re-anchor that to wherever they are. Correct. So if I know they have two million, my number is whether you have two million or 20 million. What's really fun is when you have a guy that comes in, he just sold his business for 10 million and he thinks he's all that. He's kind of got his arms folded and he's kind of like, well, listen, but I don't really want to be here. And you go, well, you know, whether you have 10 million or 100 million or anywhere in between, it is amazing when you watch his reaction. He's like, oh, okay. Now I haven't said I work with 100 million other people, but just by positioning it that way, he kind of like unfolds his arms, kind of leans forward like, well, maybe she's credible. Maybe I should listen to her. It's just such an amazing, just that little, these little nuances that drive the outcome. So again, I said, you may be wondering, you know, anyway, I said, we operate in the area of risk management, whether you have a million, 10 million event happen. And so I'll say, then my next chart, so that's all I've said at this point, we start in the area of risk management. And I'll have another drawing. If people want to draw it out, I draw a circle, very simple, with an L in it. And on the side of the circle, I have all these arrows kind of pointing into the circle. And I'll look at them on some Mr. Mrs. Prospect. Here's your life, that circle with the L. And by virtue of the fact that you're sitting, you're sitting here with me, it probably means that you're well on your way to having a nice, comfortable, wonderful retimer, whatever your goals may be. But life has a way of throwing little barbs at us. I call those risks. And in our process of starting an area of risk management, should we decide to work together? Okay, we would take you through a conversation. We call it our visions and values conversation. Because essentially what I'm going to be looking for is I'm looking for potential train wrecks. What could come along and disrupt your plans for this nice, comfortable, wonderful retirement or either opportunities, either in lifetime or death to take care of the people in the cause that you care about? That's why I'm going to have in our process should we decide to work together this visions and values conversation. Because here's the thing that we have found with risk, Mr. and Mrs. Prospect, and that is this, we want to be able to identify any potential risk, any vulnerabilities that might be out there, sort of lurking in the shadows that maybe you're not even aware of. And then because when we find a risk, what we want to do is quantify that risk and say, what would it take to make that risk go away? Because really, and truly there's only two things that you can do. Once you identify a risk, you can either transfer the risk through some means. Maybe that's buying a term life insurance policy on your 40-year-old son who has four kids in no life insurance. I don't know. Or maybe it's buying 529 plans and all your nieces and nephews because you want to make sure they can go to car. I don't know what those risks are going to be and how we resolve it. Because the only other thing you can do with a risk is just assume it and pray that that thing doesn't happen to you. So one of the risks we all have to assume is the risk of our health. So we eat well, we exercise, we do whatever. So in the spirit of that, Mr. Mrs. Smith, would you mind if I ask you a couple of questions? Now I stopped there and get their permission to start asking these questions that I call disturbing tracks. Now remember, this should start bringing things together. What I know about her is she's very risk averse, right? So if she thinks there's anything out there that could come along and disrupt her plans, force her to change her lifestyle. Remember, she's the one that thinks she's going to end up a bad lady. I want to, I want to make sure she will say yes, I want to know. Yes, ask any question that you want. She wants to know if there's any risks out there. So Michael, in my career, I've found there's 26 potential, let's say risks that might be out there, that might affect her lifestyle, her children's lifestyle. And so I teach these 26 different risks, but in the conversation, I'll end up doing two, three, or four. And if I do this, and I'm going to have him happy to share with you your audience right now or today, after two or three, he's going to be sweating and she's going to be pounding him in the side going, okay, we need to get this stuff fixed. So again, these are called disturbing tracks because a lot of times, what you're trying to do is create a triggering event in their head to say, oh my gosh, I have some unfinished business out there. Nobody's ever talked to me about this stuff. And we need to get, we need to work with this person because they've identified potential threats to our financial security that nobody ever talked to us about before. Does that make sense? Yep. So what I do is I always start with her. There's, again, going back to, she's either, she's my buyer. She has absolute veto power. She is risk averse. She wants to protect her money for her, her children, her grandchildren, and she'll do anything to make that happen. I know that about her. So I'm going to start with her. I'm going to start a disturbing track and literally about their, a super, super simple conversation about the distribution of their assets to their children, their estate plan. Now, I do want to caveat something and say, you never, ever, ever want to ask these people to send in their estate planning documents. And I know a lot of advisors, they, they'll say that, oh, we'll do a free review of your estate planning documents. So they put it in a wealth.com or vanilla or something. If you did that, that would completely nullify the effectiveness of what, what I'm going to do next. So don't ever ask them because if you ask for their estate planning documents, they would expect that you've already read. I mean, you would know what's in the estate planning documents. So I don't want to do that. So basically, I'm going to say to her, so Mr. Mrs. Smith, you know, can I assume that if the first of you dies, the majority of the money is there, you know, for the lifestyle of the survivor, the two of you, yeah, yeah. You know, if I die, she gets it all. They'll say, so let me ask you a question. When the money then goes to your children, does, how does it go to them? Does it go to them outright? Like they get it all at once at the second death. Or does it go to them? It's some kind of an out or graduated distribution. Like they get some at 30, some at 35, some at 40. How does them? How is the money distributed? And then I just wait. It's kind of like I always think it's like, you know, those TV shows, it's like, da, na, na, na, na, na. I wait for them to answer, right? And they'll look at each other and they typically don't know. They don't remember their estate planning documents are 14 years old. Right. But they have to guess. And you notice, Michael, what I gave them was, is it A or is it B? So they have to answer me outright or graduated. Those were the two choices. And it really doesn't matter how they answer me. But a lot of times they'll say, if they think it's more sophisticated, oh, yeah, it's graduated. That's right. Yeah, I think they get some at 30, some at 35, some at 40. And I always answer, huh. I find that interesting. And you're like, why? I'm going, okay, well, let's just play this out. And I will actually draw it out on a whiteboard or on the my piece of paper. I'll say, so let's say you just told me you have three kids. And let's say when the second of you dies, your youngest child is age 42. And so if it's, if this is graduated distribution, do you see that he would have gotten some at 30, 35, 40. He's blown through all those graduations. And now at age 42, he gets all the money outright. Do you, do you see that? They're like, yeah. Well, what if, you know, at the time of your death or two years later, what if he happens to be going through a divorce? Would you really want your soon to be ex-daughter-in-law to get half of the money that you intended to leave to your son? Was that an outcome you'd be happy with? And she'll be like, no, no, no, I wouldn't want that. And I'll say, or let's say your middle child, she ends up being a medical doctor. She's now 45. She's being sued for malpractice. Would you really want the money you were leaving to your now doctor-daughter to be available to satisfy a malpractice lawsuit? Is that an outcome you'd be happy with? So the bottom line, there's four different scenarios that I can take them down, none of which is ideal. And I was just saying, they're like, well, no, we don't want that. I'm like, not too worried. If we work together, we can get that fixed. And then I'll go on and I'll say, most of our clients that we work with, they would rather have them any money that is, you know, inherited by their children, they would like to have it protected. We call it bulletproofing. We want to make sure it's protected from things like their future divorce, liability suit, creditor, bankruptcy action. Is that something that you'd be interested? Oh, yes. She's going to say, are you kidding? Yes. I want my money protected for my children. How soon can we get this done? I can stop right there, Michael. I can stop right there. She's made the decision. And she will make that decision every single time. So, but, you know, in case I don't see that body language, I'll go on to another one for her. And then I go on to one that addresses his. And I don't know how deep you want me to go into this. But it's just like taking candy from babies. It seriously is. And so there's 26 places I can go. But there's three that I do in sequential order. And I will get a yes after the third. I'll usually get a yes after the first one. But I always get a yes after the third. So what are the second and third in this sequence? So the second second one is has to do with, okay, this is kind of funny. And again, I know my, I know my buyer. I know my female. And she's my decision maker. So this is a fun one. And it involves, I'll ask them. I said, okay, so let me ask you this. Okay, you've already told me how your assets are distributed to your children. But let's say this. So Mrs. Smith, let's pretend you die first. Is there a provision in your current estate planning documents that, that if your husband gets remarried. That he has to sign a valid prenuptial agreement with his next spouse. Or he loses access to your, your half of the money is, does that provision exist in your current estate planning documents? Well, first of all, they're not going to understand what I'm saying at all. They just like, what? What I don't understand. So I'm like, okay, let me just give an example. Let's say I die first. And my husband, Bob, let's say he's now 86 years old. And he starts dating a 20 year old Dallas cowboy cheerleader. And I'll say, so my son Kevin knows there is a provision in my estate planning documents that if Bob, you know, is so delusional and he marries this gold digger. Okay. And I think that he must sign a valid prenuptial agreement with this gold digger. Otherwise, he loses all access to my half of the money because I want my money to go to my son, Kevin and my three grandsons. Does that provision exist in your documents? What do you think she's going to say? First of all, it never exists. Never. Okay. And she's going to say, I want that. I don't want her to get my money. She, she can already picture her. And the funny thing is, you know, I can bring out the statistic. And I don't know if you've done this that the average male, if his spouse dies, if he's a 60 year old male, his spouse dies, he will be remarried within two to five years. A woman, on the other hand, if her husband dies, it's 10 to 15 years, but more often than she never gets remarried. So again, we can go into the details of all this. The nice thing is I was given the language about this from a California attorney. And we give this language that would be put into the documents to our advisors and they go to the attorney and say, we put this in the intern is like, yeah, sure, I'll put it in. But it's super effective because she doesn't want to think that her money after she's dead is going to go to some gold digger. She wants that money to go to her kids and her grandkids. So we just have a nice little discussion about that. She goes, how do we, you know, how do we make sure that that happens? Well, if we work together, we can get that fixed. Right. So that's those are her two she has to have she sold. I'm done with her. Okay. Now I can move on to the guy. And what's interesting about the male again, he's kind of sitting there, he's, he's impacted by the stuff that we've talked about because now his side hurts, she's digging into his side going, we got to get this stuff fixed. And then I say to him, so, you know, he's worth however much money is worth $20 million, $5 million, whatever he's worth, I go, so let me ask you this, how much umbrella liability insurance do you have? And it'd be like, oh, we got a million, we got a million ago, well, you're worth like $10 million. Is that what you just told me? He goes, yeah, we're worth, we got a million dollars. I go, so, you also told me that you have an 18 year old son driving a car down a Texas A&M. Did you mention that? Yeah, we sent him off with a brand new Corvette, you know, I said, um, so what happens one night if he ends up, he's sleepy tired of it. He's been studying all night. He goes, he's driving home and he hits a plastic surgeon and now you're being sued for $25 million. Like, what's your plan around that? I'm sorry, what's your plan around that? He's like, what's interesting, Michael? He's these guys, men, he is not worried about a 10, 20, 30% decline in his in the stock market is portfolio. He is mentally prepared for that, but what he's not prepared for is a catastrophic loss as a result of a $25 million lawsuit. And, you know, I've done some research on this and to hire network at the $10 million, no, I'm sorry, $5 million level or above. Um, lawsuits as a result of accidents are the third most damaging thing. In other words, they cause catastrophic failure lawsuits. Now, it doesn't impact the lower the lower end as much. I mean. It's just when you when you have 10 million or 20 million you're you're visible and anything that happens to you You are now a prime target for a lawsuit that is the third most prevalent threat to a higher net worth person So let's deal with it, right? And so he should be like what do you mean we only have a million dollars? We need to get this fixed He's like, okay, okay, well we'll get it. What okay? What do we do now like where do we go from here? That's your buying signal. He's what he's really asking is you know, how do we work together? What's your financial planning fee? You know, et cetera, et cetera, and I've got a new client. It's just so easy So so how do I ultimately relate this back to my my recollection I mean you were predominantly on a AUM model so like when when do when or how do I ultimately route this conversation? The portfolio management side of it as well. Well, the really funny thing about it is I Probably closed 90 to 95% of my my my cases without ever talking about investments never were never said the word investment portfolio management debted it at us. So what I would do once I know there. I've got a potential buyer. I'm gonna say okay, so Would it be helpful if you showed you I showed you our plan? So we have I have a the steps of our process and so the next thing I do is I go through we do comprehensive Financial planning and I'd like to show you the steps of my process So the steps of my process are two pages long now again, I can get the steps I can get everything done in 30 days, right? But I want them I'm gonna ask I charge financial planning fees separate and apart from a product sale So I want them to see the exhaustive comprehensive nature of our planning process So I go through each step each step is named and I kind of give them a brief description of the two pages And then we'll do this and then we do this and then we do this sometimes we do these two meetings together Then after I show them a comprehensive nature of my planning process then I quote I quote them a fee and I'll say we get paid in Three ways one we get paid a financial planning fee for the work we're going to do and in your case you would You know based on what you've told me today you would qualify for our minimum financial planning fee, which is X So and X really is whatever X is, you know, and you can you make it up on the fly when I sold my firm in 2017 my minimum financial planning fee was $7,500, but then I charge many multiples of that based on the complexity their net worth Etc. But minimum of 7,500 and then I always added a thousand dollars if they had out of state property for any out of state property I would add an additional thousand dollars if they were a blended couple, you know From a divorce. I always added another thousand dollars because the estate planning especially if they're yours mine and ours children That was more complex took more time Second way I get paid is through assets under management and you know, it's potentially product revenue and again way back in the day We did things like reads we got commissionable products whatever, you know, but we did mostly and so You know if we as we manage your money and if they never even asked about it We would expect you to place that money with us. We're not interested in in training our or helping our competitors The fourth the third way we get paid is through personal instructions No money exchanges hands there, but it's the most important part of our compensation if you're exceedingly happy with the process that we're going to take you We would expect you to introduce this to other people just like you who could benefit from this process Do you understand the three ways I get paid? So they have to understand I get paid a fee I get paid revenue from assets that I manage and I get paid In a personal introductions on a favorable basis do understand the three ways I get paid and we don't go any further until they acknowledge the three ways we get paid So that's it And then no objections come up crop up what yes, sometimes Yeah, let's let's talk about some of these objections. So yeah, well, I have all my money managed Um, and this is this can be an objection that comes up early So let's just say I've got a husband and wife there I met her at a networking event. I got her to come in and bring her husband. He doesn't want to be there Because he plays golf with his mirror Lynch broker every Wednesday Okay, and I he's got his arms folded he doesn't want to listen and he'll say well, you know Yeah, I'm here to listen, but I've got an advisor. I don't really need you to manage my money So here's what I'll say and not only in this instance while I say this here's the deal mr. Mrs Smith, you know in order to do business with my firm. It's not necessary that we manage all of your money It is necessary that we know where all the money is and how it's being managed And he can go he goes oh Okay, so now he that gives him permission to listen to what I have to say because What he's worried about is having that awkward conversation with his advisor at the golf course Now here's the thing so in practice I say I say that I'd only say it in that situation where I can read the room At the end of the day, I'm going to get every dime of that money because remember he has given me the subjection early in the conversation right Or early in the meeting now. I've just disturbed the heck out of him and and by the way I can keep going and going and going you know like I find out that they have they have a lake house In their personal names And I'll say because that's another disturbing track. Okay, so did you realize and they're they're brag about it Yeah, we got us a garbo we got this Lakehouse in our personal name and it's paid for And I'm like so did you realize that if you have a boating axe and somebody gets hurt on your property Not only can you be sued for the value of that beautiful lake house But because it's in your personal name now you've opened up you can be sued for every Every other asset in your personal name. Were you aware of that? No, no and a lot of times I go how come our current advisor never told us that So so I'm overcoming this objection for him early in the meeting like I don't want to be here By the time I'm down with two three four five disturbing tracks. He's like My advisor never mentioned in this to me like what is he advising me on like he's left me completely vulnerable to all these things that could happen How come he's never talked to us about that? So I'm gonna end up with all the money. I can tell you that right now. So and again, it's a it's a It's a different way to get there but but and then in my process at least they're gonna pay me I get to look over the entire portfolio. I get to pick it apart Right as part of my planning process and when I go in I'm gonna say you know, this is what you're doing right now with your money But this is not an all what I would do. I would do X or I would do Y right? So I get the opportunity to see the entire portfolio and then disturb when I get there Does that make sense? It does it it does so And so does that mean like So I guess I'm trying to piece together do Prospects have to make a decision in a commitment about whether they're they're proceeding with assets and our management moving assets Oh sort of like up front in this initial meeting and closing process or is it enough for you to Start with the financial planning fee and a planning engagement because you know the planning engagement will take you deep enough to earn the rest of the business later anyways Both okay, so Okay, I know and I would say let's say 70% of the time I just went I went straight straight to the planning process knowing the money is gonna come I've got their buy-in they're questioning their current advisor because he left them vulnerable I mean, I don't have to even go to the now. Let's say I've got a guy's an engineer and he goes well So tell me about your investment philosophy so I can go right into my investment philosophy I mean I wrote a book about it. I'll give him my book You know, I do lifestyle driven investing and here's how we think about money. So I can go into that And I did it. Let's call it 30% of the time maybe But it's just interesting um And let me just give you a little of visual so When a prospect comes in to see an advisor they have a hierarchy of expertise in their head They see their attorney at the very top Then they see their CPA next in line below the attorney then they have their Mercedes dealer and then they have us Okay, and the Purpose of the way I My approach I call my approach talk was I wanted to catapult myself from where they saw me walking in the door to on par With their most highly regarded advisor their attorney So I'm talking about a state planning. I'm talking about risk management like you know the titling of their account or their their their lake house I'm talking about stuff like that up there So I can put any advisor I can catapult them right up there to top and a lot of times they'll say how come my attorney Drafted these documents that didn't include this how come my attorney never talked to me about this my answer always was I don't know but if we can you know if we work together we can get that fixed no here's the problem Because I don't know how many of your advisors actually charge a financial planning fee that's separate in apart from a product I mean a you M fee but once I've got once you're way up there on top You know with their highest value um advisor And they say okay, what's you know how do we work together what they're if they say what's the next step? How do we work together if you say oh yeah, I do all this work for free What you've done is now catapult yourself way back down to where you they started where you started off in their heads I'm gonna give you an example of this So an advisor that came to my program was about two years ago and His he's been in business 15 years and his average client had two to three million dollars with him But he decided to join my program and five weeks into it He had the opportunity to get in front of a 40 million dollar business owner And he told me goes Aaron he goes before I started your product your program I wouldn't have any idea what to say to a 40 million dollar prospect of any kind And he said so I stay home all weekend I binge watch what we call the secret sauce Because I wanted to be uber I wanted to know those disturbing tracks. I wanted to be uber prepared I listen to it over and over and over and over he gets there on Monday and he goes through exactly what I just went through with your audience. At the end, the guy goes, "Oh my gosh, Justin, what's it going to take to fix these problems?" What he was saying is, "What's your financial planning fee?" It just entails me, goes, "Erin, I could hear your voice running through my head." And saying, "When you get in that situation with a $40 million prospect, you have to say the biggest number that can come out of your mouth." So I go, "My annual financial planning fee will be $44,500 and the guy goes done." Now, Justin said he was shaking in his boots when he said it. The guy goes, "Done, that one client has referred, I mean, Justin's business just changed overnight. His minimum account, his minimum in case size now is $10 million. And his minimum financial planning fee is $10,500 per year because here's the deal. If Justin would have said, "Oh, Mr. Prospect, I do all this planning for free," he would have been the catapult down to move him all the way to the bottom. Because this guy's used to paying his attorney hundreds of thousands of dollars. His CPA, thousands of dollars. I was going to say, the one thing I never, ever, ever, ever hear from a really good attorney is, "Oh, just do a couple hours work for you for free." Right? I mean, very seriously, that you never hear that. Right? The good attorneys, the numbers, the number, and it's a big number. And if you don't want it, that's cool because there's plenty of other people who appreciate their expertise and are willing to pay them that number. Yeah, you know, the other thing too is I tell people, let's say, Justin had said, "My fee is $7,500." That's just not relevant to his network. He can't comprehend that. And if you say something like that, what's going to happen is when he actually does the work and presents the plan, now this guy's going to go, "Well, let me check with my CPA," or "Let me check with my attorney." So when you don't charge upfront and they don't see you as equal to these other people, so you get relegated to this less than class, and yeah, maybe they'll take some of your little vice over here, but they're going to check with these other people who they respect. And it's just a terrible, terrible feeling. In essence, because you're actually, I guess sorry, Lura, your fee is so low that it doesn't seem like you could be as credible as their other professionals because you charge $7,500 for a plan that took you 20 or 30 hours of work, and their attorney charges $1,200 an hour. Yeah, it's just, it's, you, it's like, yeah, you just, you can't do that. I mean, you can't, you can do whatever you want to, but I'm just saying you're not credible. And the result of not being credible is being, your advice being less than their other advisors. And so I never wanted to be less than I wanted to be. That's why I call myself the financial director. I wanted to be almost like a concierge service like, like if there's, there's a decision that's going to involve a dollar, I want it to be run through my firm. I want to know about every single thing that happened. And you know, even I even had people like my, my sister almost died of chemotherapy. And so we had to get her like alternative cancer treatment. And so I know a ton about alternative cancer treatment. And my clients for some reason would know that I knew about that. And I get a call, hey, someone's been diagnosed like, where was that clinic? You know, and every single thing, because that would also impact their finances too, right? So I wanted to be the first call for everybody. So I wanted to be right in the middle. I, you know, it's like, I want to give you another illustration because a lot of advisors, they're right now, they're kind of, they're squeamy. They're like, oh my god, like, I don't know enough about a state planning or I don't have a CFP or whatever. I had advisors early in my, you know, going through my program that had that sort of objection, like, I wouldn't know how to fix those problems. I don't know anything. I don't know enough about it. So here's what I tell people. So right now, you and I were talking earlier, I'm in my home in Park City, Utah, but I split my time between here and Dallas. And when I'm not here in Park City, I have a property manager's name is Harry. And he comes every week every Friday and he goes into my house. And he looks around, you know, he flushes all the toilets. He looks under the sink. He looks for leaks. He looks, he goes around the perimeter of my home. And about two years ago, Harry called me up and goes, Aaron, I'm in Dallas. He goes, we got a couple of problems at your house. I'm like, what? Harry, what? He goes, well, one of your downstairs toilets got a little small leak. He said, if we don't get that fix, you get a flood in your basement. I'm like, oh my gosh, Harry, you know, how quickly can we get this done? Because I really had two neighbors that had floods in their basement. And was a half a million dollar process, you know. So this was very top of mind for me. And then he goes, risk. This is what I'm talking about vulnerabilities, right? And he said, you also, he goes, you've got some heat tape on the top of your roof that's not working. If we have another big snowstorm, like we did the year before, my gosh, you know, your roof could collapse. I'm like, oh my gosh, Harry, you know, thank you. Let's get that fix. Now, I tell advisors, think of yourself like a property manager like Harry. Now, do you think for a moment, Michael, that Harry went in, got on his hands and knees and fixed my toilet? No, he hired a guy, an expert called a plumber that came in and fixed my toilet. Neither did Harry. He didn't get on the ladder and fixed my heat tape on my roof. He hired, he hired a, what is an electrician that specializes in heat tape that got up on my roof and fix that. So Harry brought an outside expert to fix the problems that he found in my home. And that's what I teach advisors to do. You don't have to be an expert in anything. Stay planning to explaining, you know, title insurance company, whatever, but you do need to be able to identify a weakness, identify a problem that may exist. Okay. And then be prepared to bring in the experts to fix those problems. In fact, we're not a turn, I'm not an attorney. I'm not allowed to give legal advice, but I am allowed to hire an attorney and say, I think there's a problem here. You know, should we get this fixed or let's get this fixed and they're like, yeah, we need to get this fixed and of course they love the work. Right. So, um, so that's, that's, that's the alleviate any concern for an advisor that you have to know anything. You don't have to know anything. You just ask questions. You got to know I ask questions. And a giving example, another situation that happened. So, Michael, I ended up like walking into like incredible opportunities. Like I fell into them for one. I ended up working with a lot of Dallas Cowboys and I started with one. And that's what I also tell advisors. You only have to get one of these high net worth people. One. And, but you have to be prepared for that one. Because then birds of a feather flock together. They, you know, I live in a very wealthy neighborhood here in Park City. And I mean, I got a billionaire next door to me, right? He flies in private jets. People birds of a feather, they, they go on vacation together. They drink fine wine together. They go to dinner and they refer people. But you have to be prepared for the one. So, about five years, now about 10 years before I sold my firm, I did have seminar and there was a woman there. She was the bookkeeper for I'll say the most famous Dallas Cowboy out there. I signed an NDA so I can't say the name, but everybody would know his name. So, after this seminar, she attended, she invited me to lunch. And we went to lunch and I have this technique that I use at lunch. I call it compliment and ask questions and I asked her all about her. I never mentioned her boss. Ever. Because I was assuming, I made the assumption that everybody probably used her to get to this famous cowboy. So I just asked about her. And where does she like to, you know, where does she like to vacation? What does she do for fun? And at the end of the meeting, and it's a gift that you can give people. This is a prospecting to is when you take somebody to lunch to talk about them, ask them all kinds of questions about themselves. If they ask anything about you, say, answer the question quickly and then take it back to them. And at the end, she goes, oh my gosh, you know, she said, Erin, this has been the most amazing conversation. Of course it is because we talked all about you, right? She goes, I really think, and this is not their name. I think Joe and Pat could use your advice. Could use your help. She goes, I'd like to set up a meeting with this very famous Dallas cowboy. And I'm thinking, I'm like, okay, yeah, set up the meeting. And I knew this person. He, I knew he was just completely covered with advisors. He had unbelievable business interests, dedicated it. I'm like, oh my gosh. And I told my husband, I'm like, it's so the meeting set up for next week. And I told my husband, I'm going to get to meet with someone. So in my husband, like, oh my god, that's cool. I said, honey, you know, he's covered up with advisors. And, you know, I figured it's going to be cool. I'll probably be going to his office in 15 minutes later. I'll be back in my car. So I want to point something out, Michael. At the time I did this, I was a very, very experienced advisor. I had people with a hundred million dollars, but just his celebrity, I was really nervous, right? But I know, I knew my stuff. I knew my approach to, I knew my disturbing track. I walked in there. And two and a half hours later, I walked out with a new client. And what was interesting was even I wasn't prepared. And he goes, oh my gosh, Aaron, again, I just cast doubt in what might be in there. Stay planning documents or might not. It's happened to be a second marriage for the both of them. And what happens if one of you dies? You know, I mean, we just went through scenarios. And at the end, he said, oh my gosh, what's it going to take to fix these problems? What he was asking me? What's his, what's the financial planning fee? And in the moment, I wasn't prepared. I wasn't ready for it because I didn't walk in and I didn't think I'd, he'd ask that question. And so I looked, I looked on the wall and there was his jersey. And I just added three zeros to the number. And I said, my annual financial planning fee is going to be whatever $47,000 a year. He's like, okay, done. And so now we're talking. And he's asking me about my husband and my son, and he looks up and he goes, he sees his jersey goes, oh, I get it. He knew what I did. I'm like, whatever, you know, and he became a wonderful client. He referred lots of gal boys to me. And again, like All I did was use the exact words that I teach advisors and even in the midst of he had tons of advisors tons of attorneys working tons of you know he became like my great client so Anyway, because I was not at this point then I'm directing these people and it was really fun. So, so I guess some my my take away from all this and in sort of processing through is that as as the clients get more affluent the conversation shifts from I mean the simplest sense I guess from from how do I how do we grow the wealth right how do we grow the dollars and invest them and all the things that we do that are growth and you're fundamentally shifting into you've got wealth now we're much more in preservation survival mode so the conversation shifts to how do we preserve it how do we protect it what are the risks that can that can come at the dollars and to plead the dollars not in an investment way but in a catastrophic way and we're and we're focusing there. Well, you know it's not just higher network people everybody everybody's you know here's thing they view us financial advisors they think they're going to walk in and they're going to talk about investments right everybody that's what you think you're right what I want to do is I want to differentiate myself from everybody out there I want to flip the switch I don't want to sound just like this guy or this guy this guy and by the way you know I ended up I ended up working with some very large corporate executives and I was always in a competitive situation. There was they were always interviewing three people and I'm like, that's fine. Let me go last. I want to just go last. I knew exactly what my, my competitors were going to do. They're going to pull out their pitch deck and their challenge chart and talk about their firm's philosophy, et cetera, et cetera. And so they come in and they're kind of exhausted and they're like, okay, we got to go through yet another one. And I approach it completely different. I won the business every single time. And because here's another thing, because I know that your advisors listening are probably having this hard time putting together, but how do I get to the money? Like, how do, how do I translate this and get the AUM dollars? And I failed to answer that question. So I'll answer it this way. When you flip the switch and you have these conversations, they're not expecting. And you just stir them that there may be things or write in their life. And you know what? The million dollar guys, just as worried about his money as a 10 million dollar guy. Nobody wants to think, you know, something could come along and, you know, he's worked his entire life. And this is what he's put away. And something could come along and take that away from him. Nobody wants that feeling. Nobody. Okay. So, but what ends up happening is when you leave them through this conversation, you've changed the, it's like you've changed the entire environment. The atmosphere has shifted. And they, for whatever reason, now, again, remember, I've put myself up on par with their most trusted advisor. And they make this mental leap. Oh my God. If she could point this stuff out, she must be really good at managing money. I swear to God, that's the impression that they're left with. They make, it's this mental leap that they make because I, all these other people have missed this stuff. Nobody's brought this to attention. And I must be super good at managing money. That I, I don't know any other way to say it. They do make that mental leap. And I guess the other. Take away I draw from this is, is not to, not to underestimate how much the way we price ourselves becomes a, a credibility marker of how good or credible we are must be, how capable we must be compared to other advisors. They might be talking to, that this shows up, like price shows up here because, yeah, there's, there's a right or wrong. I'm getting compared. I'm getting compared to others. Yeah, I mean, think about it, you know, especially as you move up market, like higher network people don't shop for the cheapest cardiologist. You know, a woman having a facelift doesn't shop the cheapest surgeon, right? I mean, they just people in our culture, we associate value in price, right? And so, and you know, and as you move up market, I mean, I've got friends in my neighbor, they buy like $10,000 perses and they associate the value of that purse or whatever this perceived value with the cost of it. And so that's the same thing in our business. So as the advisor, how do I get comfortable with this when these are different numbers, then what I'm used to charging and what I charge other clients, I know a lot of advisors really struggle with, like, but I, you know, it's not going to take me that much more time. It's not going to take me that much more time than some of my other clients that I've already got. How do I, how do I charge a different much bigger number to this client? Just just because they have more. Well, again, your fee has to be based on the complexity of the case. The time again, but the biggest thing is it's really got to, you're pulling, sometimes you're pulling it out of thin air to have it be relative to what they pay other people who they value. So again, that $44,500 quote that's my, by Justin made again, if he would have said, yeah, and my, you know, it's this, again, you're like, you're saying, Oh, this is easy for me. I do this all the time. Your situation is any, isn't any more complex than my, you know, my $2 million case. And so I was going to charge you $7,500. Well, you're just not credible in his world, in his world. So you're really kind of doing it for his benefit. So he will, he, so he will associate value with what you do. $7,500, he pays that, you know, for a nice dinner with his friends. So it's got to be relative. If you want him to take your advice, value his, your advice, the cost of your advice, the price is got to be relative to the other people that he pays in his life. Now again, your, most advisors on this call, listening, they're not going to get, they might not be working with $40 million people. So they're working with, and I, I try to teach it. Just going, I think about just going from half million dollar clients to million dollar clients to two million dollar clients. Yeah. That's, that's, that's, that's changing for most practices. Yeah. And that's what I teach the goal when somebody comes to my program is in the next 12 months to double the average client size. So if you're working with $500,000, let's, you know, by the end of the year, I want to, it to be your minimum count size is a million dollars. If it's two million dollars, your minimum is two million. And that is, like you said, it's unbelievable what that will do for your practice. So let's give an example. So a two million dollar person, you know, your fee on a million dollars, I tell everybody, everybody can charge $2500. Come on. I mean, it's really just almost, that's ridiculous. It's not to charge something. And people say, well, I'm getting paid my assets under management. Can we, can we talk about that for just a second, Michael? Like, why would I charge this fee? So you're saying $200, $200, our planning fee on top of an, on top of, yeah. Okay. Because here's how I see things. So if you raise your two hands and you look at them, again, there's two sides to a balance sheet. There's the investment side and there's the risk side. Okay. And on the investment side, the 1% whatever you charge, that's paying you adequately for when your expertise in that area for choosing the investments. But also it's compensating you for the risk you as the advisor take in, in advising on that money. Because let me tell you something, if you have a million dollars and the market goes down 50% and now your people have $500,000, you're probably going to get sued. So the 1% fee you get on that, on that side is adequate compensation for the risk you personally are taking by managing money. There is a risk to that as a business owner. So, so 1% is adequate compensation on the other side, dealing with the risk side of the balance sheet. You know what? Again, there's no money for me to be made over here. I'm not going to, I'm not going to place the umbrella liability insurance that they need. But I'm going to bring in Joe insurance agent to do that. I'm not going to, they have a property tight, they have a property in Colorado that needs to be titled. I'm going to bring in a title insurance company from Denver to re title that property. I got to get paid for that. There's work to be done on that side of the balance sheet. Okay. So that's how I see it. And so, so the planning fee is to orchestrate implementation of the risk management and the advisory fee is to manage the asset side. Correct. Correct. I like that. That's any framing. I like that framing. Yeah. That's what we do. So, so now let Aaron, let me then take a step back and just understand. So what, what do you, what do you do at, at this point? What is your business today? I know when you, when you joined the six years ago, you were with the advisory firm. You were actually talking about the transition and sale process of, of, exiting a billion dollar firm. That was episode 168. So for us, say any folks, I want to go back and listen, kids is.com/168 and you can hear sort of Aaron's full advisor story. But Aaron, help us understand like what, what is your business? You do now. Yeah. Well, so what happened, Michael was that, you know, when I started getting to the barren's top 100 level and as a female, I always, I started getting asked to give industry speeches and, you know, I used to, and they were at the time, I think they were paying $10,000 for a speech or whatever. And I used to think it was never $10,000 for a speech. It's, it was a data travel someplace, a data to do the speech, a data, you know, come fly home. And I was like, I was like, no, I don't think so. I, I could call a client make $10,000. I don't need to get on plan to do it. Well, in just all transparency, my husband and I at the time since 2009, we've been supporting an orphanage in Africa. with 500 children. And I remember waking up in the middle of the night because somebody asked me to give six speeches and You know like in a row or something and so I woke up in the middle of the night. I thought, you know, I'm I said to my husband. What if every time I got an applying we gave 50% of that money to this orphanage that we support and he's like, oh my god That's a great idea. So suddenly I had purpose to get on a plane. So my first thing to speak to speak yeah Okay, and so my first speech I woke up in the middle of the night and I said um I said I put up a slide and I said Come spend the day with me and my team and I was gonna charge three thousand dollars I literally made this up on the fly and I gave the speech and I had 18 advisers sign up to come spend the day with me and my team I was like, oh my gosh, we have 18 people coming. I didn't have a program. I had nothing but I've from then on so the 18 came and after that about every two months we had between 50 and 20 advisers come spend the day with us And so literally all I did Michael was I just kind of paraded my team through this is what I do for the firm This is what I do for the firm and then I gave each of the advisers It gave them two hours of time afterwards with any member of my staff But they had to submit their questions in advance. Well, after doing this for two years I realized they all had the same questions and It was like, oh my gosh does every advisor is this like the right of passage that you all have to make the same mistakes? So at the time I was actually taking an online course about crypto believe it or not way back in the day and I called this guy that was doing this online course and I said hey, can you teach me how to do an online course? And he goes well, I happened to have a training on how to do an online course. Sorry. I did this on I took this training because I decided you know what what if I could You know do and do some kind of a course and went through all of these questions etc So that's what I ended up doing it took me two years to write and film this course and then in 2019 I went live with it and the truth of the matter Michael was that It's one thing to create this product this course. It's another entire thing to market it because think about it for 31 years I had my head down in my first business. I didn't have access to an advisor database I didn't know the head of any broker dealer I mean I didn't so anyway we went live in 2019 and We had 40 or 50 guys. I said I gave them I said I want you to go through this program in an accelerated way Tell me if I have anything and the feedback was just astounding and so we in the last since 2019 We've been training financial advisors in everything from you know How do you have to think about this business the big thing? I try and train I start off with okay guys The number one question you have to ask yourself is what do you want to have happened on the last day? And you know the last day you're in business. I want you to really picture it You walk in your office you turn on the lights you make the coffee then what happens? Are you gonna do want to get a big check like I got do you want to leave your Your firm to your son your daughter like what happens and then once you know What's what you think about what do you want to happen on that last day now you have to back into okay? What is your business need to look like in order for that to happen and you probably know the story that the day that I sold my firm the firm that by my about my firm They bought another woman's practice and I'm told she had about the same amount of assets under management as me But she ended up she had two big things going against her once she had a massive stroke and To you so she had to sell but the second thing was all of her clients Were used to independent on her for all their reviews. She was she was the person. She was the guy. She was it She ended up getting 25 cents on the dollar compared to me Same amount of money because the buyer had to price in all those costs all those clients going away So you know, I teach advisors like begin with the end of mine. What do you want to happen? Okay? Now let's let's construct things so we know what we want to happen So the first thing that we have to do and so my my system has four different courses in it And then we have a fifth course we actually trained the Assistance or the team members of our advisor so once an advisor has gone through the program then they can Buy purchase the team member training that aligns with everything they've learned so you know So what are the main four? The main four is this mindset is what do we want to have happened? We got to get real clarity on that second one is We used to have prospecting second like we thought that made sense You know how to find these people but now we have this secret sauce which is how to close a prospect of any size in the first meeting And again back going back to the question is like yeah, can you help me find those 20 million dollar process? Of course I can but would you have any idea what to say to them? So let's learn to close anything that we're in front of And then the set the third course is prospect. Okay, let's go find them and so it's a very robust course and then Again with the my expectation is at the end of the course actually last six months You can take you can get it all done and you know, it's about 40 hours of learning But we've spread it out over six months so that people never get lost and then My expectation is you're going to double your average client size within within 12 months So six plus six within the first year and then After that once you've moved up market you can close anything in front of What happens is you create a new problem? You create a capacity problem and so then I my last course is called the machine. It's how to build out your team Who to hire first second third how to compensate them so they'll jump through fire hoops for you and eventually how to transition All of your clients from you to licensed people in your team you want to have in my case I had two offices seven conference rooms filled with clients of my firm and I wasn't in any one of them and that is the absolute hardest Place for these advisors to go They're scared to death, but again, I think the credibility I have is I did it. I was just as scared as you So let me tell you how I got through that you know and got it done so so are these all like virtual like virtual self-directed just I can go through on my own time I can do it fast if I want to do it fast I can take my time if I want to take my time Yes, so you get on you log on you be by a login you log on you're given access to all of the material But it's very we we and you can actually there's an app on your phone and what I want advisors to do is I really don't want them sitting in front of a laptop learning this stuff And I want them on the treadmill at the gym because you if you're sitting in front of your laptop There's a lot of distractions you see emails popping up. You know, I don't want that I want you at the gym getting the gist of all this get off the treadmill and go implement something So every Monday I will send the advisor every advisor gets An email from me saying this week at a minimum you should be setting x module seven of secret sauce But you can move you know, I tell I always tell them because I mostly work with fast starters these guys are they they want to grow Right they're committed to growing and I say get through the material as fast as you can go go go Take a long walk every single night listen to the material because then there's so much Then they can narrow down. Okay, I want to work on this first and then I'll work on this and then I'll work on that right so they get the material and then You know, it is an online course But you can everything the transcripts you can print every transcript out. So if you're I'm a visual learner I like to print things and highlight it under there's power points. There's every media. There's your voice You can listen to the material you can print you can highlight underline and then I get on a live call. It's a group setting um and I have two different tracks So the first track when you're done with the course If you know you're you have an option to continue on and what that gives you is live access to me So the first track is we called deep dive we want to get really good at this approach talk and all the disturbing tracks We they want to learn how do I fix this problem? They they do want to know So I'm gonna show okay, this is how you fix this problem. This is how you fix this one So that's the first track. It's called deep dive once they get through that We have a second track that can go it's elite advanced mastery and and that one so I have two different calls a month Like I have won this afternoon might Elite advanced mastery people are coming in there's you know many many hundreds of advisors that will be on this call And we go through a concept sometimes I'll bring in an outside Like an outside speaker. I've got you know speakers coming in and they have businesses where they will find assistance License people they'll so I bring resources to these people And then in addition was this is really cool Michael About four years ago there was two or three of my advisors who had gone through the program and they started meeting on a Facebook group like a group me or something like that And they call themselves I'm not even gonna say the name because Lots of people end up asking to be a part of that group and they don't want the only way you can get a part of the group is If you've gone through my program They have like 500 people that are members of this group and they meet every Friday at 10 o'clock And they go through you know they they just commit this community I didn't even start it. It's a group organically And I remember last year about this time they call me and go hey Aaron we we love each other We've you know we went we've been with you for four years or five years or whatever and we want to meet each other So we're gonna do a retreat would you like to come to your to our Would you like to come on retreat for your program? I'm like I'm like well considering my name is on your group. Um yeah, so it ended up I said why don't you host it in park city? Let's do it here and there was about 40 advisors that came and I hosted them all for a catered dinner at my home And then we did three days of in the mornings we met from eight to two and You know to really cool things in the afternoon. I took them to the Olympic Park. I took them on a hike and it was amazing, right? So It was really fun for me is these guys um I love them and they love me and I've made You know, it's I've made a huge difference in their life and that That is so meaningful for me because you know, I decided you know my backstory, you know being coming in life of poverty and Having nothing and starting with nothing that I said if I ever made it I made a promise that I would give back to the industry that allowed me to become successful. And the really cool part about it, Michael, is that Bob and I, when we started this, we had 500 orphans. Now we have 5,500 orphans that we support. And my next goal is 50,000. So, um, so it's kind of like, I'm giving back to an industry that allowed me to be successful and I'm feeding kids. And it's, it's pretty amazing. It's very purposeful. And, and in that context, just can I ask like, what do you charge? Like, how does, how does that work? Yeah. No, I, I'll tell you right now, we have two different programs that advisors can buy. And I, I made it purposefully inexpensive because you know what? I started with nothing. I would have given anything to have the training that I am. And I never wanted cost or price to be an indicator. So the first, um, course that you can go through is we called the accelerator. And simply it's the, it's 12 weeks and it's, um, it's the secret sauce. Okay. Let's go find, let's learn how to close a pros way any size in the first meeting immediately. 12 weeks, you're done. And what happens was really interesting is about the five week part, five week moment. Like I said, this Justin had a 40 million dollar prospect. Another woman named Katrina had a 20 million dollar. For some reason, this five week has this magical, they become this, this prospect magnet. They have like this new aura because they know exactly what to say in any given situation. Bottom line is I charge $3,000 for that 12 weeks. Okay. And they can, they can upgrade if they want to buy the full package. It's a whopping $5,000 literally for everything I know. And I know that's, I know that's really inexpensive, but I never wanted a decision had to be made. It's, I wanted everything to be, yes, I want this. I want to know, I want to do. And then of course I charge monthly once they've gone through either the programs. If they want to continue to have access to me, they pay a whopping $100 a month. But I got a lot of people paying $100 a month. So, um, so it works for me. And I, I never wanted, again, it's almost like my philanthropy, like to an industry that helped me become successful. And I'm, you know, I'm not going to charge zero because again, people value what they pay for. But I also don't want it to be, and again, they're not getting me one on one. I do charge $1,000 an hour if somebody wants me to do some private training, private coaching. And I, I do that, but not a lot. So, um, yeah, that's what I charge. So having gone down this path now, what, what is surprised you the most about building a, a second business in this vein of advisor coaching and consulting after having built the advisory business? I think the biggest thing that has surprised me is that, um, I think that I'm kind of surprised that it feels like advisors, they get to a level of personal comfort. And they don't want to, they don't want to move beyond that. They think there's this extra cost in time terms of time or money. So that let's say they're at $500,000 and they've got, you know, they have a house, they have two cars, they put their kids through college. It's surprised me that they don't, they don't want more like they don't want to take it to a million, two million, five million, whatever they don't. That has surprised me because I always felt like, and I will say this, I believe that if the only reason you do anything is about your own personal comfort. I don't believe that'll ever be a big enough driver to become a superstar, right? I think that you have to have something, you have to care about something other than yourself to do the work that's necessary to do it. So I always, in my mindset course, I really do try and say, okay, if you had $10 million in the bank today, what would you do with the money? Like, I do try and inspire them to greater things like, you know, for Bob and I, in your, starting in your 2000, we made a commitment because we're the, I'm one of six, he's one of five, we're the only ones that made it financially. Since 2000, every five years, we've taken both of our families on a trip. Turns out we've taken them on a lot of cruises because that's just easy. You just get them on the boat and they're good. But we took 66 people in 2000. We took 77 people in, you know, 2005. I mean, we, we care about our families. And so the money is a conduit. It's a resource for us to help the people in the causes that we care about. And so that's meant the surprising thing is, and I try and inspire advisors like, let's take a little bit of time and say, if you had surplus, think, I mean, I think about my orphans. I mean, there's 1.7 million orphans in the country of Zambia alone. There's a lot of people, I tell people, until advisors, there's so many people out there that are rooting for your success. You know, and think about our industry. What other industry can we be in where we have unlimited potential? Nobody's writing us a paycheck. So we are only limited by our imaginations. And I always think, and I've traveled the world extensively. And 90% of the world's population lives in abject poverty. And they could use a little help. So find a cause, find something yet you care about. And that will be, that will be the thing that will propel you to do, you know, to do what it takes to make more money. Because the world revolves around money. And there's a lot of people who could do this little help. So I mean, that was the surprising thing is that the other thing is, I'm a lifelong learner. I'm always learning, last week I learned magiang. I did over the weekend. I did a marathon. I probably played 16 hours of magiang because I want to learn it. Because a lot of my friends are playing magiang. But I was asking a friend of mine, Hey, is your sister, is she learning magiang? She's a widow. She said, she goes, no, she says she never wants to learn another thing in her life. I'm like, oh my God, that's so sad, you know? So I just encourage people to become lifelong learners. So what else then do you know that you know now that you wish you knew seven or eight years ago, like when you were starting down this path of, how do I take my expertise and communicate it back to the advisor community? You know, I mean, of course the technology piece kicked my binder because I didn't know it. But we even, we're very lucky. I flew to Chicago and I hired a woman there who would work with Tony Robbins. And she really gave me the, the platform that I should use and I hired a tech guy that would do that. So I feel like I did my research and I looked for mentors and I didn't want to reinvent the wheel. I would have, I didn't want to make a lot of mistakes. So I paid for, I paid for advice. So I would say that to every advisor, I think find a mentor and get training and get coaching or whatever it is, quit reinventing the wheel, like spend the money so that you don't have to make all the mistakes. Yeah, just it, it reminds me like that felt very damn Sullivan, who not how a part like I, I, you know, I need to make courses. So I found a mentor made courses and I need to find the system. So I flew Chicago. I'm at the woman that did Tony Robbins thing and like then I had some of the platforms. So I hired a tech guy to, to build the platforms. I'm, I'm, I'm struck. It just seems to flow naturally for you. But, you know, I did, I spent 15 years with Dan Sullivan. So it would flow naturally. But the funny thing about it is we are actually my, my whole group. We're reading the book, who not how for the second time. And next month, one of my advisors is going to do like the book review because it's such a great book. And so as we wrap up, this is a podcast about success and look, one of the themes that comes up is that, that word success means different things to different people. Some time to changes for us as we go through stages, seasons of life. And so you, you know, you built one very successful business and so what an exited. You're now building another successful business. So the, the business parts seem to be in a really good place. How do you define success for yourself personally at this point? That's very easy for me. So, my husband, I actually just talking about this the other day. And that is success to me is being able to provide for your own needs and help having margin. So you can help the people in the causes you care about to me. That is absolute success. So that's like a, it's like a very like intentionally crafted statements were like, where did, where did that come from? Well, in 2000, I wrote, I wrote, I just call my statement of purpose. And on the bottom, I wrote that out. So that's super easy for me. My statement of purpose is how I live every single day. I read my statement of purpose every single day. And it's really cool. It reminds me, you know, God's given me this day to do with whatever I want to. But at the end of the day, you know, that, that day will be gone forever. I never get to redo it. So make sure whatever you're doing is meaningful and purposeful because you don't get that day back. So, so I try and live my life with a lot of purpose. And it's in like, so that's how I define success years and years ago. Amen. Amen. I love it. Well, thank you so much, Aaron, for rejoining us on the kind of advisor success podcast. Well, it's been a joy being here. And I hope the advisors that are listening will gain, you know, some benefit. And if nothing else, just be a lifelong learner, find somebody who's done, who's done what you want to do and just copy. You know, it's, be a learner. It's my best advice. I love it. Thank you. One even more ideas, tools and resources on how to break through to the next level of success as a financial advisor. Check out the leading financial planning industry blog nerds. I view at W.W. W dot kitsus.com where Michael covers the latest practice management trends and financial planning strategies. And by joining the member section, you can earn in C F P continuing education credits along with exclusive member content. Get it all now at W W dot kitsus.com. [BLANK_AUDIO]