Read The Transcript Here:

Steven Jarvis, CPA (00:51)
Hello everyone, and welcome to the next episode of the Retirement Tax Services Podcast, Financial Professionals Edition. I’m your host, Steven Jarvis, CPA, and I am excited to welcome back to the show this week, my good friend, Shelby Nicholl. Shelby, welcome back to the show.

Shelby Nicholl (01:04)
Thanks so much for having me. I love being here with you.

Steven Jarvis, CPA (01:07)
Yeah, super excited for our conversation, as we were getting ready for this and really in all of our interactions together, one of the things I love about what you do is you really focus on, it’s not just like, hey, here’s a big idea or how do we evaluate this big idea, but it’s helping people see the hard work, the messaging, the client interaction, all of these different things that go into ultimately delivering a better experience for clients. Because for people who have listened to the show before, you might think, well, wait a second, I remember Shelby, she’s the one who helps people find the right place to be and potentially make moves. What are you talking about, client deliverable? Shelby, I know we talked about it the last time you were on here. You definitely talked about it at the summit. But while people might try to summarize what you do as recruiting or transitions, there is a much deeper piece to this. I’ll let you describe, because you’re going do a much better job than I am. But talk about how you start these conversations with advisors to help them think about what it is they’re really trying to accomplish for themselves and their clients.

Shelby Nicholl (02:03)
Yeah, it’s a great question. And Steven, thank you again for having me on the show. You know, just for everybody’s background too, what Muriel Consulting does is we do three things for advisors and their teams. So we help you move firms, which is really what I’m probably most known for, which is helping people move from one firm to another, picking that future perfect fit firm. Secondly, we help them build RIAs. And when we build an RIA with a client, and really even with the move firms, we are talking about your operations. We’re talking about your marketing, we’re talking about how you do business today and how you want to do it in the future. And then the third thing that Muriel Consulting does is we help advisors hire staff. Often it’s licensed candidates, it’s servicing advisors, it’s para planners, some CSAs in there as well, but it’s hiring those kind of W-2 roles for your practice. So that’s a little bit kind of high level about Muriel Consulting.

Steven Jarvis, CPA (02:54)
Yeah, well, and for people listening who might already be in the RIA space and think, well, this one isn’t for me. Like, I don’t need to move anywhere. Like, really focus on what Shelby said in there of helping you understand where you are and where you’d like to be. Because anybody who is running a firm, anybody who’s serving clients should take time regularly to evaluate that. Where am I and where would I like to be? And for some people, that absolutely has nothing to do with changing firms or figuring out a new landing place that could just look like what you mentioned, hiring somebody to help with the process or maybe even just better defining a process, but it has to start with where am I and where would I like to be?

Shelby Nicholl (03:30)
Yeah, I think it always comes into it to vision and goal setting, right? And I think there’s there’s some kind of phrases out there that I like to say, is things like purpose precedes strategy and execution. So what is the purpose of what you’re trying to achieve with your clients? What’s the client experience you want to deliver? How are you leveling that up? You know, I was looking at some McKinsey data over the last couple of weeks and McKinsey has a new paper out that’s talking about the transformative decade ahead of us, right? Because of course we’ve got like a genetic AI… We have a looming advisor shortage. We have the changing role of the advisor, right? And I think this is one of the ones that’s really interesting, is that the role of the advisor is changing, especially in the age of AI. We’re going to be more less stock jockey and more life coach, right? And so that is a different vision for your practice. So to your point, Steven, like we’re always talking with advisors about what do you want this future to be? What is the value that you’re going to deliver to your clients and how are you going to differentiate yourself in the marketplace? And then how do we put that into practice? Once we know that vision, how do we actually go and build that with you?

Steven Jarvis, CPA (04:36)
Shelby, you can weigh in on this, but I would imagine one of the reasons that you love being part of the summit and partnering with us there is that we have this shared vision of what advisors really should be spending their time on, because I think you’re absolutely right that AI is forcing the issue, but we’ve said for years at the summit. I mean, Micah said it from stage just last year at the summit, I’m sure he’ll say it again this year, there really are only three things that an advisor should do, just three. You should be meeting with clients, you should be prospecting, and you should be vision casting, business planning, whatever you wanna call that piece. But that has not changed. That’s been the reality for decades. It’s just that most advisors, and this isn’t unique to financial advisors, it’s easy to get caught up in the whirlwind, the day-to-day things. And so that’s where I love what you do. I you really come in and help advisors spend the time on thinking about those things and identifying how they can spend more of their time on their highest and best use. And there are advisors along the way who have recognized that. There’s people that you’ve helped along the way. Some of this technology will kind of create a pressure cooker of, we need to go faster on those things, but it really isn’t new, it’s just accelerating.

Shelby Nicholl (05:42)
Yeah, and I think it’s a way to increase capacity because when we think about a looming advisor shortage, we also have to remember that the industry is growing at the same time in terms of AUM, in terms of clients to be served, in terms of just complexity in the world. And so how do we free you up? And tech isn’t something to be scared of. It’s something to help free you up so you can meet with clients and have that emotional sort of resonance and relationship with them. But everything comes back to your vision first. And what kind of advisor do you want to be?

Steven Jarvis, CPA (056:12)
Yeah, so Shelby, kind of along those lines, I hear advisors, whether it’s as I’m talking to them at conferences, I’m talking to the summit, I see things online, you kind of see this idea of, well, if only I was at a different place, then this other thing would magically happen. If only I had a different technology, this thing would magically happen. And so there’s this idea, there’s this clue, this gap of, I think I could be doing more for clients, but the conversation, tends to start just with this idea that it will magically happen if I just find the right patch of grass to end up in. And I think part of what you do is help advisors not just identify where that patch of grass is, but like the actual work that it takes to get there because no matter how magical that patch of grass is or how magical the technology is, if you want to deliver an incredible experience for clients, there is work that goes into it, both creating the system and executing the system. Like, do you see that when advisors are coming to you that maybe they have a little bit of like this fanciful idea of how easy it’s going to be once some big thing changes and how do you help them navigate what the actual transition looks like?

Shelby Nicholl (07:!2)
Well, I think it’s really interesting, right? Anybody who tells you a transition is easy is definitely, you know, they’re not in the midst of it. That being said, some parts of it are not as hard as you think they are, and other parts are underestimated to your exact point, Steven. So here’s what’s not as hard as you think. Account transition paperwork. It is much simpler today than it’s ever been. It’s all DocuSign or online system. It’s all digital signature start to finish easy actually. That is not as hard as it used to be. What people underestimate, and I think this is really the core of your question today Steven, what they’re underestimating is the work that happens after the account transition happens because at that point you have to rebuild your plans most often and you’re going to implement all of the new things that you just told your client you were going to do. Because during that transition process we painted a picture between the old world and the new world. I call it, we talked about the daylight in between those and we’re painting daylight and finding daylight between them. Because you have to tell your client at the time of a transition or any transformation how life is going to be better in the new world. Well now after you’ve transitioned the accounts over now is time to make that real and so when we’re going to go make that real we have to think about our process with our team and we’re probably rewiring some of those. It’s kind of like a home remodel right we’ve got a rewire a few things. We might need to change where the light fixtures are. And we also are probably implementing some new technologies. So if you’re going to bring in tax advice and tax planning, that’s something that I hear from a lot of broker dealer advisors. They want to do more tax advice and tax planning, right? That’s a big desire for them. Well, now we’ve got to talk about the process. You’ve got to grab the documents. You might need to implement some new technology, whether that’s Holistiplan or it’s going to be Hazel AI and their tax review capabilities. And then you’ve got to have new deliverables for those clients as well and maybe some new learning for yourself and for your staff in order to deliver that advice.

Steven Jarvis, CPA (09:23)
Yeah, Shelby, let’s talk about the tax piece. Obviously, I’m the tax guy. Of course, I have to talk about the tax piece. But I also think it’s relevant to everyone listening, whether regardless of channel that you’re in, or if you ever would need to or consider a move like this, I appreciate the reminder in there that some piece of this will actually be easier than you’re telling yourself that they’re going to be. We got to make sure we understand that the right mix of that. And personally, I think the best way to do that is to talk to people who have gone through it. So if we’re talking about transitions, you need to you need to talk to Shelby, you need to come to the summit, meet other people who have gone through these things. But even if we’re just talking about implementing tax planning within your RIA, I hear from a lot of advisors who are hesitant to start this, who say things like, well, what if my clients don’t provide tax returns? What if they think I’m threatening the relationship with their CPA? Like they have all of these preconceived notions about how it’s gonna go. And that part, the messaging part, the client reception part, that tends to go phenomenally as long as it’s messaged well. The piece that I think is more commonly missed is, okay, what does that consistent deliverable look like? You mentioned some great technologies that can help with that, but like, so we’ve got to find a way to like kind of get out of our own way on the expectation side of how hard we think certain pieces are going to be or how receptive we think clients are going to be. But we also can’t let that distract us from having a clear plan of, okay, if I’m to start asking clients for every single tax return, I better have a system for, how am I gonna acknowledge to the client I got their tax return? How am I gonna show them that I delivered value of some kind? How am gonna communicate the expectations on timing? And so we’ve gotta make sure that whatever that in client deliverable is, whether it’s tax planning, whether we’ve moved accounts, whatever that might look like, you gotta take the time to build out that roadmap. I like how you talk about it as creating that daylight of clearly illustrating. What’s our current state, and what’s it gonna be in the end and why should we all be excited to get to that other side?

Shelby Nicholl (11:11)
Yeah, absolutely. And to your point, you want to have a process around this because really what we’re trying to do is show that something is personalized for our client, but we’re really trying to do personalization at scale.That is the magic in the advisor experience. And so you’re absolutely right. You’ve got to have a process. You’re going to have your tech and you have to have that deliverable outlined. And I think to the degree that you mentioned of that hesitation of asking clients for their tax returns or wondering if clients will give them. You have to tell that story and I know you just hit on it but I just want to say one thing on that is that you have to tell the story in a way that provides utility for the end client. The client will give you the data if they know why and how it’s going to benefit their situation by you having it. If you just say hey hand me your your tax return they might be like whoa whoa. I don’t know why I’m giving you all this. If you say you know, something more fulsome, like here’s the things I’m going to do with it and how it’s going to implement, how it’s going to affect how we implement your strategies. They’re going to understand the utility. They’re going to hand it over willingly. We all do things when we know that there’s utility in it.

Steven Jarvis, CPA (12:24)
Yeah, absolutely. Shelby, I mean, you work with so many people across the industry and all sorts of shapes and sizes of firms and channels. I would love to get your thoughts on this because I wish I could make this go away. But there’s these never ending conversations in the advisor world about fees and fee compression and this kind of what I think is a complete myth. I’m very much on the side of let’s ignore fee compression and talk about value expansion. But regardless of how you see that dynamic, of why you think that dynamic is happening, there is, in every industry, there’s always this dynamic of clients wanting more and either we deliver more or we have to discount our prices. And so I bring all that up to say, I mean, we already hit on taxes. That’s one I hear a lot when advisors feel like they’re faced with, okay, I need to look for other ways to expand value. Taxes is certainly one of them. What are other things that advisors are coming to you and talking about as far as here are things I’m not, currently delivering to clients, I wish I could deliver to clients.

Shelby Nicholl (13:19)
Yeah, so I think there’s I think the other one that I hear all the time is estate planning, right? And there’s a reason that we’ve seen technology tools in these two categories expand, right? We’ve seen Holista plan that really changed the marketplace. Hazel AI is now into the game as well from a tax standpoint. And then on the estate side, we’ve got several competitors. We’ve got wealth.com. have vanilla. You know, there are great competitors in the in the state in the estate planning world. Encore estate is another one. All of these are filling a need and a gap that advisors are repeatedly coming forward with. So estate is the next one that I hear. The other ones that I hear are a little bit more niche. It might be things like real estate strategies. It might be financial planning for developments and many having many rental properties. That’s something I hear about. I hear about alternatives a lot. And what is the alternative set that I want to have access to for my clients? And how do I know that that’s an appropriate set of alternative investments. So those are some things that I hear. I also hear about behavioral kind of finance topics, of think about it as financial therapy. I don’t hear that as much from my male advisors as I do from my women advisors, but there is something there about the behavioral finance elements and bringing that into the practice.

Steven Jarvis, CPA (14:37)
Yeah, that’s all really interesting. Shelby, a question that comes to mind as you’re describing that is, I I talk to advisors at every shape and size of firm who are helping clients around tax planning, who are helping clients around estate planning. And I mean, I know advisors at firms that you probably frequently help people transition away from that are able to do these things, not the same way as in an independent RIA. There definitely are differences in compliance. But so the question that comes to mind is… How do you help advisors understand where the compliance environment they’re in is actually a roadblock and when they themselves are the roadblock? Because I think there are advisors who are telling themselves, well, I would do more if only compliance wasn’t in my way, but they’re not currently doing the hard work they could be doing. And then I have to imagine there’s advisors who then get to the other side of that and realize, well, crap, it’s still on me to do the hard work. It didn’t just magically become easy. So what’s that dynamic look like from your side?

Shelby Nicholl (15:28)
Yeah, so I think, know, one, first of all, I’m not here to convince anybody that they should all move firms, right? The whole industry does not need to move firms. There’s plenty of you that are very happy with where you are, and that is the way it should be. Now, what we do want to, though, say is what’s happening in the environment around us? We want to peek our head up, pick our head up from the grindstone and look around at what others are able to do and say, am I able to deliver the amount of value that I want to in this in this world? And then if you’re deciding that it’s a compliance problem, you’ve got to get on the horn and have a conversation. This is time to sort of take agency and remember that you’re negotiating not just for yourself and what you want to do, but because you believe that there is a value driver for your client that you want to deliver to them. And so you need to go negotiate on the behalf of your client and have that real conversation with your compliance team. Some of the things that I hear from compliance, I’d say there’s two elements on the compliance front. There’s one compliance headaches that are client facing. I can’t do X with my clients because compliance won’t let me or I have to provide this disclaimer on everything that I do because that’s what compliance tells me to do. Okay so that’s compliance headaches that impact the client. A different set of compliance headaches that I see is around things that maybe don’t impact the client, but they do impact your growth. And so this might be different technology tools that compliance hasn’t improved yet. If you’re in an environment that doesn’t have an AI note-taking capability and doesn’t have a meeting planner type of capability, you’re very behind at this point. So if you’re in one of those environments, just know that you’re very behind and can whether or not that’s an action that you need to action on. The other aspects are things like marketing. I can’t say ABC in my marketing and I want to be able to. I can’t put these letters behind my name even though I think they would be of value to my clients. So those are some of the things that are maybe a little bit more behind the scenes and you have to decide like is the hill big enough to die on?

Steven Jarvis, CPA (17:39)
Yeah, yeah, that’s good perspective. Shelby, one of the things that I think is interesting, and this might be getting a little far afield, but we’re curious your thoughts on it. Things I think is interesting in the RIA space, especially for people who are younger in it, there’s some things that are only a matter of time that maybe if you haven’t experienced yet, eventually you will. If you drive a car long enough, eventually you will get pulled over. If you are a business owner long enough, eventually you will have a client complaint, you’ll have an E&O claim, you will have one of these things happen that whatever your thoughts on large firms, like part of the reason that compliance departments are the way they are is because they see so much of that. So how do you help advisors who are moving into the RIA space or people who are in the RIA space who just haven’t experienced that yet understand the very real business risks that exists and how to be prepared for when that may eventually happen?

Shelby Nicholl (18:27)
Yeah, I think there’s a couple of things here. One is we bring in really good partners, right? So if you’re in the RIA space and running your own RIA, you need to have partners in your back pocket that really only work with RIAs. If you’re talking about a legal resource, it is not your buddy down the street. It is somebody trained in our industry. It has to be, right? If you’re talking about a compliance consultant, they need to have worked with other firms that are the size of yours and larger to understand where you’re coming from and where you’re trying to go, right? And you’ve got to be able to have those conversations upfront, but they should be a very well-trained compliance consultant. You know, when it comes to running a real business and growing your practice into that kind of real business category, we don’t want to shortchange the things that create risk for us. So when we’re building an RIA, we’re bringing in probably more expensive resources than some, but we’re bringing in trusted providers that know we’re going to protect our clients well, the advisors that we work with well. Another piece I would say is that from a compliance standpoint, just follow the rules really, really well, right? Like let’s follow them well, let’s know what they are and be careful about it. You want to do the right thing for your client and that’s what your compliance team wants to do as well. Another piece of this is E&O insurance. Don’t skimp on it. Go to an E&O provider that understands the RIA marketplace and make sure that that’s the type of person that you’re working with. Again, it’s not getting E&O from State Farm or something like that. It’s going to be going to a true company and expert that works with other RIAs just like you. The reality is though that the broker dealers have more risk than an RIA when it comes to tax planning and tax advice. I mentioned this on stage last year at Summit. I’m sure we’ll talk about it this time as well. But when you look at just the IRS code, there are some very distinct differences between how the SEC views tax advice and how FINRA views tax advice. And SEC says, which is, who’s primarily regulating the RIAs. If you’re 100 million or more, you’re gonna be regulated by the SEC. You’ll be an SEC registered RIA. The SEC looks at tax advice and tax planning as essentially part of the fiduciary standard in many ways FINRA does not look at it that way. And so as a result, there’s a very distinct and almost kind red line between the two.

Steven Jarvis, CPA (21:03)
Interesting. That’s such helpful perspective, Shelby. And to me, it really reinforces that regardless of the topic, if you want to know how this stuff works, you got to find people who are experienced in that area, which it is always interesting to me why as business owners, as financial advisors, we struggle with this concept because we already do this with our clients. That’s one of my favorite ways to talk to clients is, when we work with people just like you, here’s where we see value get delivered. And we can say that all day to clients and then ourselves in our own lives. Like, well, I don’t need the person who specializes in people like me. And it’s like, wait, that’s a complete contradiction to what you just told your clients. So sometimes we need to able to take that step back. So whether it’s at the summit or another in-person event, or you have peers in your local market where you can get in-person with other people who kind of call you on your nonsense to say, yeah, but Steven, why wouldn’t you work with someone who specializes in that area? Shelby, what else has been top of mind recently as you’ve been working with advisors?

Shelby Nicholl (221:56)
Yeah, I think one of the things that I see a lot, and we’ve kind of touched on it a little bit today, but I would just say that I continue to see the sort of wave of people moving towards the RIA side of the world, or at least being what I call RIA curious. And so we continue to see that pathway. know, often what we’ll see is if an advisor is moving or looking at leaving a firm like an Edward Jones or even like one of the W-2s, the Merrells, the Morgans, et cetera, even an insurance backed broker dealer, mostly we’re looking at the independent broker dealer space and then later they’re going to hop over to the RIA. Sometimes they’ll go all the way to the RIA. And it’s really interesting as you get more and more independence and you get closer to fully being independent, how much you want to lean into the RIA space. So that’s something that we see a lot. It’s something too, I know we’ve got a quiz that will push out to your site, Steven, about is your business RIA ready?

Steven Jarvis, CPA (23:53)
Yeah, yeah, Shelby, I think there’s another reason you love partnering with us. But as you know, we’re all about helping people take action. And so as I think about the conversation you and I are having today, there’s certainly that piece of there’s gonna be people listening who aren’t in the RIA space who are, as you put it, RIA curious, which I like that. So for those people, you can go out to retirementtaxservices.com/shelby, you can get the quiz that Shelby is talking about to give you some insight into, is this something I should look into more? If you’re already in the RIA space, or you’re happy where you are, which big fan of, like I come from a big accounting background, had a lot of great experiences there, not opposed to any channel. But what I love about how you approach this, Shelby, this is what I encourage listeners to think about, is you’ve got to be willing to take that time to take a step out of the day to day and say, what is it I want to be doing, whether it’s for myself, my team, my clients, and where I’m at today, and then how do I bridge that gap? And there are probably lots of people listening who bridging that gap looks like… Okay, setting aside dedicated time to create that system or modify that process or hire that team member, whatever that might look like. There’s so many great actions we can take to deliver more value to our clients, to create more value for ourselves. But if we don’t give dedicated time for it, if we don’t give time on our calendar for it, it’s not going to happen. And so there’s so many of you listening who have already signed up. If you haven’t, go to retirementtaxservices.com and sign up for the summit. Shelby will be there again this year. We have an incredible lineup of speakers once again. Well, there’ll be a little bit of a shift in kind of the overall themes. So if you were there last year, this isn’t a, it’s gonna be the same thing. So don’t come back there. You will leave once again with a list of actions you can take that are gonna transform your practice and the way you deliver value to clients. So absolutely get signed up. That more than anything, whether that is, hey, I need to go take the quiz and figure out where I’m at with considering that RIA move, or it’s just, hey, what do I wanna do next to improve my company, the value I’m delivering? Give yourself time to have that evaluation.

Shelby Nicholl (24:50)
Yeah, that’s right. One of the things I follow is, it’s kind of strategic coach. And so they talk about it as a buffer day, right? And so you need a day when you’re working on your business and not just in the business serving clients. And so that’s what those those days are. And it’s there’s nothing like the magic of in-person events like the retirement tax service summit, because we get to all talk to each other. It’s at the breaks. It’s a dinner. I host dinners and I hosted two last year and they were the best. They were so much fun.I think everybody learned from each other. Everybody had a great time. There’s just nothing like that in-person connection.

Steven Jarvis, CPA (25:25)
Absolutely. Shelby, how else can people follow up with you if they’re interested in what you’re doing?

Shelby Nicholl (26:16.923)
Yeah, so they can find me at murielconsulting.com. Muriel is M-U-R-I-E-L, consulting.com. And fun fact, we’re named after the first woman member of the New York Stock Exchange. Her name was Muriel Siebert, and she was a breakaway and a trailblazer. She started her own firm, and then she got her own seat on the New York Stock Exchange. So we love a breakaway story over here.

Steven Jarvis, CPA (25:52)
Love that. Love that. Well, Shelby, thank you so much for your time and expertise. Really appreciate you being here.

Shelby Nicholl (25:56)
Thank you, appreciate you having me.

Steven Jarvis, CPA (25:58)
And to everyone listening, until next time, good luck out there and remember to tip your server, not the IRS.