Revolutionizing Financial Planning with Sam Flatten

[MUSIC] Hello everyone and welcome to another episode of the TPR podcast. I'm your host Matthew Jarvis and as many of you know, one of my guilty pleasures in life is LinkedIn, some of it sharing value, some of it looking for fights to pick. And several weeks or months ago, I came across an advisor's post who was claiming to do hundreds of financial plans a year, like two to three hundred financial plans a year. I said, "Do that's not really possible. There's no way that one advisor is doing that." And he messaged back and said, "In fact, I am doing it, and here's how I'm doing it." And so with that introduction, I'm really excited to have Sam flatten on the call. And if you're not following Sam on LinkedIn, you definitely need to. We'll get him converted on AUM fees. We'll talk about that today. But the volume of plans that Sam is doing gives him a perspective that most advisors, like Sam's probably doing more plans a year than most advisors might even do in their lifetime. And so Sam's super excited to have you on the call. Why don't you kick us off by telling people a little bit of background how you got into doing this many plans and then we're going to dive into some cool stuff. Yeah, so I'll keep my background short because like most advisors, you get tired of, there's so many rough prospects to get tired of talking about it. That's right. So I think like half the people in the industry, I had a parent, that was a financial advisor. So my dad was with Lutheran Brotherhood, which became, which became thriving. Driving, yeah. He broke free and went with LPL back when a broker-dealer relationship was still considered freedom. You know, now we know that with the RAs base and the accessibility there, there's another degree of freedom. But I basically structured my whole education and early life around wanting to be a financial planner because I saw the impact he had in our small community, everybody knew Steve's. And I basically wanted to be important like that. I mean, that was my motivation. Working with families really tough, though. I don't know if you've tried to do it. That did not work out the way that I wanted it to, but that's okay. And then I latched on to an RAA Boulder Colorado virtually, which really accelerated and shaped how I work and how I view the industry now. So I got introduced to El Churist. Of course, the tools are producing now. Oh, sure. Yeah. Jason Wings group. Yeah. That's the first time I had ever engaged with a financial planning tool. I came into the industry doing, you know, napkin financial plans, pen and paper back then after financial plans. You know, I did a sit with North Luster Mutual, selling life insurance like everybody's house when they get in the industry. I went from there to trying to save whole life policies or UL policies. Actually, that people stopped paying premiums on because they were quoted higher crediting rates than was reality. So, you know, that's how I cut my teeth. That's all to say when I got into the RAA space, my mind was open and my eyes were open to technology, believe it or not. So I was brought up super old school probably closer to a 50 or 60 year olds experience than what a 28, 29 year olds experience should be. But that gave me the context to understand what's actually valuable, which is the relationship. So that's how my dad operated in one business by highlighting the value of the relationship. And he had niche down very specifically into Excel energy, blue collar employees and teachers. Okay. And both of them had very specific benefits. Both of them had a very high leverage decision to make, which is take a pension as a lump sum, which when the gap rates were very low, those pensioned lump sums were very high. Yeah, they were. So that became obviously a huge opportunity to vacuum your assets basically, put them under management. And then with a firm and builder, that's where I get introduced to their advice price model. And they work primarily with the ultra high net worth segment and physicians, so Henry, so the high ironers not rich yet. So that's my background. I've worn the ownership hat. I've worn the management hat. I've made tech stack decisions. I've had to reprise an entire book for me. I'm over to flat fees. So having all those very uncomfortable conversations. I've migrated $270 million book of business from Fidelity to Alchrist. Like I've done everything I've sat in every seat. And that's the viewpoint I now bring to what I do today. And that's why I am. Where I am is I just I thought I could leverage that experience into something more profitable for myself. Super interesting. So a handful of questions. It's interesting the background on the insurance side. Because you're right, the old school insurance guys. And back then they were all guys, but it's also insurance people. They draw in pictures. I mean, literally drawing buckets on pieces of paper. That's how they were illustrating. I remember seeing those illustrations of how a U.O. policy works and these types of things. Do you feel like that gave you an understanding of how these things work? Sometimes it's lost in the technology. Sometimes I see people that only use the technology. They don't actually understand how these assumptions work. Like just changing the inflation assumption by a point and all the numbers turn out differently. Right. Well, and that's exactly right. And that's why I say like the best advisors come to their financial planning tool with the outcome or the recommendation that they already know pretty much. And it's just demonstrating that recommendation, the value of it. And so it's exactly what you're saying. Like some advisors let the tool think for them. And you're exactly right in that to explain the concepts and having to write it down in front of the person alive. You really have to understand the concept more than not understanding the impact of changing that inflation assumption is a big problem. You can change your recommendation whether that's at 3, 4, 5% and you should understand. You should understand what variables to manipulate within a financial plan to get the client to move in the direction they need to move. Yeah. But I remember through the wedding of the clock on my self-rest, so I got in the industry in the early 2000s as some of the software was really getting up and going. I mean, it had been around for a long time, but it was really kind of getting cool and interactive. And I remember getting caught up in the technology and presenting these elaborate financial plans from the software and then realizing that I wasn't at all clear what it was telling the client to do. It's like, well, you have an 86% probability success and the client would say, well, can I buy this RV? Well, I don't know. It moves me to an 82. Was that good or bad? Gosh, I really don't even know. Like, it was in those moments where I realized, wait, wait a second. Like, I don't actually know what's going on here. Like, I'm giving this recommendation, this prescription. I have no idea how it works or what I'm telling this client. And they're trusting me with their life, like, their life savings, their ability not running out of money. And I'm just hoping that 86 is the right number. So what middle ground did you come to this? And so you saw both extremes. Like, all tourists is definitely on the cutting edge of technology. Right. Jason is team doing incredible things. You've seen the draw buckets on a piece of paper. Where did you land in all of that? Yeah. So I bring the mentality of pen and paper to technology. And that's where the biggest efficiency gains are. Right. So most advisors start with the tech stack. And they think that's the solution. When in reality, it's the paradigm shift of viewing how financial planning should be done on a pen and a paper. And I think that's why I value the work that some firms are doing in AI is because they're getting us back to that pen and paper, where it really should just be a seamless experience for yourself. And in your example, like, "GMI, am I making this right recommendation based on a Monte Carlo simulation that's moving 4 percent?" Well, if you're not clear on it, the client isn't clear on it either. And I think that AI is providing clarity for the advisor as well. And that's providing clarity for the end user. Sam, can you think of an example that I want to make sure we're not getting too high level on this? So you advise your things. So I'm going to decide between MoneyGud Pro or E-Money or whatever. And you're saying, "We've got to look more, what are we trying to solve for?" Like, what are examples of that? Where do you see that come up in your work? Right now, I shouldn't say right now, there isn't AI native financial planning, but I'll just use specifically, like, right capital because I love the dashboard, even though it runs on a Monte Carlo simulation. Like, it should be based around the client outcome and what they're seeking and the trade-offs involved in that. And so when I go to give you a specific example, like retirement dates, right, those are always-- Yeah, those are great ones. Those are security decisions, right? You frame it in a way that is understandable to the client. Where the Monte Carlo simulation doesn't give us an absolute right-around decision, but allows you to view the trade-offs between the different outcomes they're seeking and put it all together at one time. Is that answer the question? Or-- Yeah, well, let's use that such a good example. If we pull that one a little bit further, right? So we could run the Monte Carlo or try to find the optimizing. But how are you translating that? Or how are you looking at it and saying, "Hey, here's what I recommend." This is a great example. Actually, let's use retirement date. If you come to me and I look at your pay stuff and you've got a gross line item and you've got a net line item, typically that net line item, what you're taking home in what's hitting your bank account is roughly 70% give or take-- Check out what your gross is, right? After contributions and whatnot. So if I'm just doing pen and paper math, I'm going to look at your portfolio and I'm going to see if a five, six percent draw covers 70% of what your current paycheck is. Right? That's like a really-- I can look at a few data points and go, "Can you retire? Can't you retire?" So when I go to financial planning, obviously you can get more specific. You can get more detailed. So when I go in financial plan, that's going to be my overwriting objective. It's how do I model that to show the client to trust what I'm saying based on like, three or four data points? Interesting. Yeah, so like it was very templated. And you can disagree with the safe withdrawal rates. Four percent has been maybe two conservative over the last 20 or 40 years. Who knows? But like if you've got enough of an estate to draw five percent on it and it covers your current spending, you're going to be successful in retirement for the most part. At least with that niche, that gives you a specific framework about, you know, you can't apply that to somebody with RSUs. I mean, you really got a complex income. You got to dig deeper. But that is the framework. So it's almost like you're still modeling it on your career progression. Like, "Hey, does this make sense on a back of a napkin?" And then let's optimize from there versus sort of starting like, "Let's make this as complex as possible and try to pull the clarity out of it." You're like, "Hey, what if we can get five percent off your portfolio and it gets close to your income? We're pretty close. All right, let's optimize from there." Or we're not. And no amount of optimization is going to get us there. You know, into good conceptual again. And I know we wanted to stay specific. Yeah, you're good. Every client's going to have, say, three to six desired outcomes when they come to you with complexities and burning issues that you have to help them navigate along the way. But focusing on those outcomes, I find that advisors do the scatter shot. We're going to be back. talking about like the shotgun, like let's see all the different possible things that we could possibly do and then and then try to match it to the client and the resources. Whereas if you just asked the client what they want, it narrows that spread and allows you to do that napkin type financial planning. Okay, what are the three things we're going to and this is your framework, right? For advisors and improving, you do the same thing with a client. It's like let's narrow the client on these few things they actually want and then the couple things that we can reverse engineer to maximize the probability of them getting there totally makes sense. Now let's let's take a step to the side here in that the work that you're doing currently is that you're doing, I apologize if I misword this, but you're doing financial planning on behalf of other firms. So you're you're not meeting with the client, but you're also not just like a paraplanar who is just got a CFP and you're sitting in the back office getting because he said earlier you've done kind of this whole spectrum and you settled where advisors and other firms are meeting with clients gathering all the information having the meeting sending it all over to you into some format. You're creating the financial plan, the recommendations will talk about what that looks like in a second and then sending it back to them to to implement. Is that is that about right? Like I feel like there's not a lot of people doing that right now, not it not at your level of expertise. No, not at my level and I've been doing this for less than a year. So I'm a topic I just to jump in into things and start doing it. I love it. And again, that's where I think I provide the most value is I think a lot of advisors are overwhelmed when they get any given case. And it's hard to focus when especially when you're a small R.A. or even a solo. To have somebody with confidence come in a voice and to be able to look at your transcripts. Right. And this is this is a high leverage use of AI is past the last 12 meetings you've had through AI to give me a sense of who the client is, what they value. And then I do the same thing that I'm recommending your listeners do is like a narrow down instead of the value according to use the advisor, the value according to your client and focus in on those strategies. And that's what I do with my advisors and that creates the clarity for them to feel good about actually leveraging that CFP level work with me. And then yeah, I just I come in and I live in their systems and their document repositories and their software. And I just it's basically they get a clone of themselves. That's the kind of level of interest. And then you specialize right. We all know that specialization is valuable. What's kind of the profile of the advisors that are that are working with you. So it sounds like they've got some kind of constraint in their practice. In this case, happens to be the financial planning, whether it's because they don't have efficient systems or they just don't have the bandwidth or it's just not their area of genius. Or I really did like this part of like, maybe I just want somebody else to look at this. Like we work in such an isolated industry. We never until recently we never cite others word. There's never a way to know that you're doing it right or wrong. You're moving levers that you want to the impact forum in for decades. If you even see them in your lifetime, I'm really curious to see how this works. Yeah, yeah. So advisors usually find me once it's too late to put methodical work into finding a full time hired. When I work with clients, I have the same discussions with my advisors that I did with my clients, which is what outcomes are you seeking from from the leverage that I'm going to provide. Right. So for some of them, they really they start a lifestyle practice and it's got out of control. They wanted to work 20 and other working 50. Like, okay, so how do we get you back down to that 28 to 25 range? For some people, they're wanting just to know how to serve their clients better. Like you said, take a take a extra look at this. But yeah, most advisors are coming to me out of necessity. And that's why I kind of built my whole value proposition around that. And then once they find me out of necessity, it allows me to sell them down a little bit, prove that I can actually be trusted to take over this work. And then I price just based on value, right. The same way that I would they would price clients. So what value are you driving for me? Some it's they're not seeking a ton of value for me, right? For some it's just spot checking their plans for others. It's taking over their planning workflow entirely. Sometimes they even have me create their planning workflow because they're they just they're new to the RAs phase and they don't know how to leverage right capital or e-money or whatever. And they just say, Hey, document what you've done. So it's almost like a, I mean, the insurance will at least call like the advanced markets desk, right? Like there was a new advanced markets team. But it's like a fractional, it's almost like we're adding a fractional CFP in this case. You see somebody who's actually generating results versus just has a has a designation. Curiously, you said right capital is one of your go to is that is that like a prerequisite? You're like, Hey, listen, if you like right, right capital, not your guy or you were kind of couple different ones. I'm just curious. So I work on all of them and I will learn anything just because you get enough reps in enough different software where like they're all pretty much the same. Yeah, they're all pretty similar at the end of the day. Yeah. Yeah. There's some different nuances and tweaks. The bigger complexity is learning how the advisor actually uses the tool. So one right capital user to another is radically different from assumptions to what pages they like to look at. Is their deliverable printed or their notes taken on the page? There's there's also different complexes. But again, I've seen every iteration. And typically what happens is I'll make little suggestions along the way. And I'll say, Hey, here's how I think you can do this a little bit better, a little bit more efficiently or I try and migrate them to what I've just talked about, which is the overriding objective of the plan should be to demonstrate the value you're providing in the client pursuing their outcomes. So like I'll make those suggestions along a way no matter what tool they're using. And that's how I provide value not so much on the planning piece, but actually as a CFP how do you maximize these client outcomes? Yeah. Totally makes sense. How are you measuring success or value? Samarick? So it's because most advisors, you know, if you're doing your own work, you'd be like, well, the client agreed to it or not. I guess we just call that success. That's that's kind of a short look at it. But I think that's probably like the shortest cycle. As you're looking like you get all this information from an advisor and you're handing them back a plan for them to go then present to the client. Like how are you thinking like this is total value here versus like maybe maybe I do some more work. Yeah. So I meet with my like I'll put together my recommendations, my report, whenever I'll hand it be advisor. Typically I just record a loom because advisors are busy, right? So they yeah, I'll just give a loom rundown and they provide feedback either meet with them or they say, you know, oftentimes they're the ones meeting with the client, right? So a great example of this last tax clienting season is like mathematically a raw conversion makes sense for this client. I can demonstrate how the clients like they will not be able to stomach that tax bill. I would have no way of knowing that because I don't have the relationship. Actually, I would measure that as a successful plan and a successful collaboration because now, you know, the advisor is aware of what a good recommendation for the client would be. I think that's the plants them as more valuable again on the relationships side understanding what the clients actually do. Yeah, but that's usually valuable. And I think advisors miss this all the time. You seem to get it just fine, which is there maybe what's the optimal on paper and the Roth conversions are great example of that. Like hey, on paper, it makes sense to do this $83,000 Roth conversion except the client has just no fortitude for paying a $30,000 tax bill. They're just not going to do that. So you've got to like, all right, how do we bridge that gap? How do we educate them through? That's why I like to live in. I'm not, while I am concerned about this piece, the behavioral piece, when you have me as a fair plan or I am in the paper value of the recommendation, right? If you tell me you want an outcome, I am going to give you the precise paper answer to get to that outcome and then it's up to the advisor to navigate that. And that's ultimately, I know this is in the side. Part of the reason I quit the client facing world is because I don't have the personality to tell a client this is what you need to do and then not have them do that. That makes me mad. Okay, well, that makes sense. So that was going to be my next one of my next questions. All right. Well, why? Why are you in that spot? But that is, that is interesting. Like, hey, this is obviously the right answer, you know, three or whatever, and the client, like, I'm going to do 37. Yeah, that wouldn't be super frustrating. Or it is super, not would be it is super frustrating. It's quite a challenge. That's where the, you can highlight the value of complexity management and the behavioral management piece that I just don't have the skill for, just plain straight up. And I'm very clear. I love the self awareness on that. That's wild. Yeah. Yeah. I also, hey, another self awareness, I have no idea how to build a lead fall. So that's the other reason I don't have an RA is because I don't have the patience to wait around three years to build that. I don't have the know. It's like, screw, why waste my time trying to learn these things? Why night leverage my highest and best use so people who do know how to do those things can focus on them. Yeah, which conversely, like you said, the people who do know how to do those things, like, our industry is so dependent on being able to do all of these things well enough. It's super unique in just any professional services. But yeah, you've got to go to market and behavioral management and cell and prospect and have technical knowledge. Like, for all of that to be contained in one person is incredibly rare. Versus like you said, boy, you've got this great planning ability, but don't necessarily enjoy these other parts. You could try to like, slog through that or more likely, you just suffer in all of them. Like, all of it would suffer and it would just be a mediocre life. At the same time, like, obviously, I've had to be okay at phones and marketing to build lever to what it is within a year. But advisors type a individuals are much more attentive and responsive to coaching than your average client is. So when I have a advisor, if I say, hey, I think we need to make this change. You're like, do it. You know, I don't have to, I don't have to argue with them about if it's the correct change. If I have the proof, they've got no problem implementing. Yeah. Yeah. Sometimes business owners can be like just general business owners as a niche, but planners that's that's interesting. I just want to make sure our listeners are kind of following this like knowing what you're really good at. And then what you're not good at and they making decision. Though I guess I want to draw a distinction in San Baby Curious. This isn't like you're like, well, there's 10 things I hate and I hate this one the least bad. Like you are super passionate about this planning side and you develop, I'm a strumple of smoke, but you develop this skill set and it's how do I leverage this skill set versus like, how do I get out of work? I don't want to do. Yeah. Sort of. So again, complete self awareness. I also hate the planning work. I don't know if there's anybody that likes the planning work. I want okay. When I like is being important to advisors and innovating. And so those are my desired outcomes as I want to be important to a certain select number of advisors that I really value. Super interesting. And I want to provide I want my wife not to work anymore. Those are my two those are the two outcomes I'm seeking. And so I'm reverse engineering comparing those two things, everything that I need to do and be tweened for basically those two things at this point. - No, that's super cool, 'cause this ties back to our whole planning discussion. Like, what is it that we're solving for? We're not solving for, people get this wrong about some of my stuff. Like, I'm not solving for one page financial plans. Like, I like that forcing mechanism, like I'm really passionate about it, 'cause it gives me a forcing mechanism. But similar to you, I'm passionate about delivering value to clients as concisely as I can. Like, I wanna make this as concise as I can. One page is my framework that I go off of, but that's like, that's not the magic. The magic is not one page. The magic is that I'm delivering concise advice. - Very cool. All right, let's shift gears dramatically, 'cause I'm really excited. We don't have a whole lot of time, but I wanna chat about this. You are a big advocate of flat fee financial planning, which often gets lumped into discount financial planning. This is sort of like, when I paint a broad brush, I'm like, all right, we're talking about discount advisors. They're charging a flat fee, but it's $100. So talk to us about your thoughts here. And then I think we're probably more the same than we are different on this, but I'm really curious. Give us kind of your stick on flat fees, and let's go from there. - So we're a complete in alignment with what's wrong with flat fee, and we're a complete in alignment with what the requisite should be for collecting a fee, which is demonstrating value. - Yeah. - I just happen to think, and I have experience in, they're being better alignment, personally, what I've experienced for me in AUM, and advice price or flat fee advisor. There's better alignment in client outcomes when the price directly reflects the value of client is seeking. And the structure is set up to capture that value. Not only the complexity management or driving towards client outcomes, but actually the value delivering the client, I don't think you can't do that under AUM. I'm trying to draw a better R-square, right? There's a, I think there's a higher correlation with developing a pricing matrix that you can use and educate your team on. So they also understand the value they're providing, capturing under a flat fee model. However, what I see and what we've agreed on, I think a lot of advisors just want to avoid the value conversation if you're comfortable with it. So they just discount the price to a low flat fee. - Yes, the discounting the value is ultimately the thing. A lot of advisors, myself included earlier, my career just dodged that conversation by having hidden fees, right? That's like one of my big, let's take the far end of the spectrum which would be like, oh, and fixed annuities have no fees. All right, well, that's just bullshit. They just, they don't have a line out of fee. Everyone's still gonna pay their, this is not by the way an anti annuity rent. Just like the idea like, hey, there's, I'm so adverse to talking about my value that women completely bury it and pretend like it doesn't exist. Okay, so that would be one extreme. The other is like, hey, actually, here's the value kind of what you're proposing is, here's the value I provide and here's the fee and dollars in cents and you have to write a check for it or a CH or whatever, but it all comes back to kind of that value conversation, I think. - Yeah, and to bring the conversation full circle, when I sold an insurance policy, - Yeah. - $500,000 term life, 20 year term life, to a 30 year old with a new family. Okay, I had to be able to clearly articulate the value of that policy for the individual not only, and this is what North Western which will does a great job of whether you like them or not, because they do a really good job of getting you to articulate what the value of that is, that I'm not in terms of the coverage or all the technical analysis, but in terms of if you pass, your wife is going to have peace. Okay, that's the outcome you're seeking and that's the significance to you. So it becomes a lot easier to give up that whatever, 250, that's 350,000 dollars, 350 dollars a year premium to buy that policy. - To buy the peace. - Yeah. - Just the same way you sell an insurance policy for a flat dollar commission, the same thing selling a year's worth of service for financial planning, which is where the value is for the vast majority of people out there, they place their value in planning. - Yeah. - So I don't know why you would not correlate those two channels and compensate yourself adequately for that, but it requires you to basically take that concept of value demonstration and map that over an entire financial plan and not just an insurance policy. - Are you worried or have you run into this that adds a lot of complexity for the advisors? So the AOM model is a very easy model. Like I always have a very transparent experience. I've got some clients about it here's how I'm compensated. Here's the line to item on your statement. Like here's how you're going to see it. Here's how you're going to rate the value, et cetera. But I only have to make that decision one time. Like our fees one and a half percent. I don't have to think like, well, it's this way. I worry that I would burn a lot of brain power up trying to come up with some kind of pricing model. - And that's where I step in, I can make it easy. So just to plug my own. - Okay, yeah. - Please do, please plug away that. I'm still very fascinated by what you're doing. Like I love this. - Yeah, it creates complexity on the upfront. And I can only speak for me. And there's a certain type of advisor that this is fit for. So I'm not saying this is a general appeal mass market. I think that's AOM. For me and my experience, what I experienced on the AOM side and what changed when I started doing this type of pricing is yes, it's more upfront complexity. But the client is more at ease throughout the year. Because now you focus them on the things they can control. You're not getting market calls. Very rarely was I dealing with a fee objection throughout the year or one of my paying for or having to explain the value because we set the stage for that at the beginning of the relationship. And so it just, you could focus on that relationship throughout the rest of the year. That's what I found. - Interesting. - While I was working for my dad, it was people calling constantly, what's this piece of mail? Why is the market doing that? - Oh, sure. - Well, he trained his clients to do that, granted. You don't have to do that underneath my model. It's just I saw alignment along with all these other things under a flat fee. And I think the important piece is getting compensated for what's worth. So the complexity is required under that model. Because if you don't do that on an annual basis or a semi-annual basis, it'll be 10 years down the road and your $10,000 planning fee is not worth, or $7,000 or $6,000. - Yeah, correct, correct. Yeah, no inflation adjustment on that. - Yeah. Yeah, I think let's see, let's come back to, are you being intentional about it? Whether it's a AIMF or a flat fee or a commission or anything like, are it am I intentional about this? Am I communicating the value? Or am I doing this because I feel like it's the easiest way? I think that's kind of a mistake. Like what's the easiest way? I think of an advisor that I know that crushes on the flat fee model. You know Thomas Copeland, you know Thomas? - I don't know what you're looking for. - I'm looking for Thomas Copeland. Dude, he's a rock star advisor. Charge is very substantial. I don't want to quote him, but they're like the tens of thousands of dollars flat fees. So he's definitely getting the same kind of compensation as an AIM visor. But his focus is on the people with RSUs and stock options and stuff like that. So he's similar to your point. He's probably the pinnacle of that sum of like, here's this complexity you have in your life. Here's how I solve this complexity and here's how I charge for that complexity. There's definitely a place for it for sure. - I believe in it because I've run it, right? So our average client fee is about 20 grand when I was client facing. So I mean, you can do it. It just takes a little bit of learning and alignment and figuring out how to. And I have to say publicly with you on this list for everybody that thinks I'm anti-AIM. I'm not, I am pro-flat fee. Yeah, I don't care how you do business. That's, I always get attacked for like, you're one of those holier than that I'll flat fee guys. I'm not. It's just, I know I get lumped in there, but I mean, I'm happy to get the traffic either way, but I'm not. - Yeah, well that's why I was excited to have this conversation. It's like, oh, this guy's actually like weighing out the cost benefit of this versus like you said, the like, well, the commissions are the devil, but it's our AIM. So is everything except for what I'm charging. So yeah. (laughing) - It's super interesting. Well, Sam, I really enjoyed this conversation. How can people learn more about your work? Well, having the show notes as well, but whether they want to reach out to you for doing financial planning or to help build a flat fee model or just to get your expertise on things, what's the best way to find you? - Yeah, so you can check out my website. It's a leverplanning.com. Lever is spelled L-E-V-R planning.com. My booking calendar is there. I've left it wide open. I'm in a season of life where I'm trying to have as many conversations as possible because I want to stay current and I'll stay relevant and I want to be a conduit of ideas. So no restrictions there, come fly me, come book. And I'm also building out, I don't know if you saw my post on this, but I'm also trying to franchise that side of the business, the pair of planning side. - Yeah, it's gonna be super interesting. - A lot of pair of planners that feel the same way that I did when I was in that seat where it's like I can do this better on my own and serve as more advisors. And so I'm trying to create a place where they can come leverage my knowledge, leverage my ability to generate lead from them, leverage all the back office stuff and support to go and build their own books. I want to create an environment where it makes no sense to do all sorts of pair of planning anywhere else. So that being said, I also have a calendar open just onboard at someone and she's looking to felt for care calendar as well. So we've got plenty of capacity. - Yeah, do you have excited to have another podcast on this as this develops because there's so many unique spots. So we talked earlier about like if you're good at meeting with clients, I'll use some broad generalizations. Like if you're really good at meeting with clients and marketing, you may not have a strong of planning side, which also means you're not gonna be good at managing someone who's just a planner, right? And this is not to speak to Sam to use specifically, but I run to that. Like I'm a sales marketing meet with clients, kind of outgoing person. And so the people that are more planning focused, like I can't even hardly relate to them 'cause they're just their mind works differently, think about different things. I've tried to set like audacious goals and sales things and whatnot and it's a misalignment. And so trying to bring those people in house one, it's really hard to find them as you know, but even just manage, you know, not that they need a lot of management, but it's just, it's like speaking a different language. - Yeah, if your experience is different. - Yeah, no, 100% my experience. And that's why I still never have an employee that's how I'm gonna scale lover. So it is really a franchisee model. You buy the gold marches and you go have Adder. And so I include people and I allow people into that vote, which I qualified based just on their individual qualities. Like I can tell pretty quickly if you're gonna survive doing this or not. Yeah, so I'll hire qualitative and I'll train. I mean, my heart is a coach. That's what I would do. I think we've talked about. I do that all day is coach if I could. - It's right, yeah. - And so I find it easy to teach in coach. So I'm not worried about that piece, but yeah, I don't want employees. I never do super cool. - That's my other outcome I'm seeking is never having an employee. (laughing) - We'll work on that. That'll be a future episode, man. We'll get on that. - Yeah, yeah. - So again, for our listeners, you can go to leverplanning.levvr. So just want to elevrplanning.com. The people I think I would definitely recommend. Obviously if you're in the planning space and you want to, I just like, hey, I'd love to just plan and not build a practice, not do those things. And if you're an advisor who's like, boy, I really need to be spending more time growing and more time meeting with clients and less time on right capital or wherever software. I would definitely look Sam up and be sure to follow him on LinkedIn. Sam, thank you so much for your time and for everyone until next time, happy planning. 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