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Steven Jarvis, CPA (00:54.84)
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’m really looking forward to this conversation we’re gonna have this week because, like I so often do, we’re gonna get super tactical on how do we really take action. This week, we’re not gonna get so much into technical tax things or really even tax planning specifically. I’ve invited a special guest to talk about like how do we put these things into action? Because I get on here every week. I give you all so many things that you should be doing, that you need to be doing, that you need to go out and do, most of which require you to delegate to some degree or another if you really want to take this stuff seriously and do all the other things you do to deliver value to your clients. So this week we’re gonna talk a lot about not just how we delegate, but how do we find people to delegate to, that the traits we look for, like how how do we get through this process of finding a good resource to add to the team? And to help me have that conversation, very special guest from our friends at Belay. Stephen Delaney, who is a client success consultant, a senior client success consultant, and and has been integral in helping actually continue to elevate the service offering that Belayt has. So Steven, welcome to the show.

Stephen Delaney (02:04.59)
Thanks, Steven. I’m happy to be here. I appreciate you having me on today. Yeah.

Steven Jarvis, CPA (02:07.232)
Absolutely. I love it when we can have conversations that go beyond just like here’s how a thing works in concept to here’s how the thing really works. So a lot of our listeners are probably very familiar with Belay. We’ve had other of your compatriots on talking about different elements of what belay does, but just give us a just a really high level recap of kind of what belay’s core offering is.

Stephen Delaney (02:27.842)
Yeah. So Belay really is built kind of on two sides. One side is the side that most people are familiar with, which is we help out busy executives and business leaders in various industries across the country reclaim their time, get their time back to focus on what matters most. Whatever that looks like for them on an individual basis, there, the vast majority way we do that is providing them with just excellent service in the form of an executive assistant who can handle the administrative and more repetitive task for them. So that way they can focus on whatever matters most. And that definition obviously changes for each individual. The second side of the house is we help our contractors find clients to support. So we’ve got thousands of amazing contractors with just incredible skill sets that are looking to work in either a fractional or full-time capacity, supporting clients in various ways. And so… We serve as a little bit of the middleman and try to fit the puzzle pieces together. And, you know, every couple of weeks there’s just a hundred new puzzle pieces on each side and we’re just constantly trying to rearrange and reshuffle to make sure that everyone’s kind of got a good fit and everyone’s like seeing seeing the outcomes that they’re hoping for.

Steven Jarvis, CPA (03:32.908)
Yeah, I appreciate that overview. I mean, we got originally got connected with Belay because advisors I know are using Belay services. I’ve personally used Belay services. Actually, Belay has been a partner at each and every one of our summits because it’s been such a a great partnership, whether it’s the podcast or the summit or whatever it is that we’re talking at RTS. Like there there is some element of, yeah, but where do we find the time to get this done? Even if we just take something as simple as getting tax returns from every single client, reviewing those tax returns, communicating about those tax returns. When I make that recommendation to advisors, especially ones who haven’t done that before, understandably one of the things they come back with is, yeah, but Steven, who on my team is going to do that or how do I free up other time so I can do that? And that’s where Belay’s been such a great partner to help people find those resources. But Stephen, for today’s conversation, we we really wanted to, and some of this is gonna be maybe you pulling back the curtain a little bit on how your guys’ process works to to partner those contractors with clients. But…Hiring and finding somebody for your team, I think it’s one of those things that as business owners, as leaders, as team leaders, we’re all for some reason just expected to know how to evaluate who’s gonna be a good fit or what traits are important. But a lot of us never really get that training. So that’s a really kind of broad way to start. But Stephen, how do you help people understand this or how do you help start narrowing down from your thousands of contractors who’s gonna be a good fit?

Stephen Delaney (04:56.642)
Yeah, that’s a great question. I I do think it’s a common trap that people fall into. They’re successful, they they are hiring positions that they used to work in and yeah, you know, sometimes it they’re like, I was I was really good at doing this job, so I should be good at hiring somebody to do such a job. And that’s not always the case. So Belay gets thousands of applications every single month. And of those thousands, we have an entire department called a talent team that reviews all the applications, does a huge deep dive on all their backgrounds and resumes and stuff. And we only wind up hiring a very small percent, less than… Less than 10, sometimes even less than 5% of all applicants that come through Belay’s doors get hired as a contractor. So that’s kind of like that first filter process. Well, then you’re in the doors. Okay, great. Well, then you can see all the jobs that Belay has available and then you can apply for those. Well, then the CSCs like myself will then do another round of filtering and vetting and stuff to see if you kind of get to the next level, which is doing a face-to-face over Zoom interview for those jobs. And then you have to go interview with the CSE. And so from the client standpoint, by the time the contractor’s selected,that person who’s been selected has been through two, three, four X amount of rounds of filtering and vetting by multiple people and multiple departments within the back end of our company. So when you’ve got that large of a sample size kind of getting diluted down to, you know, one or two finalists, I tell my clients all the time, look, I have the easiest job in the world and the hardest job in the world. It’s the easiest job because everybody who makes it to that finalist level, they’re all amazing. You’re talking about the number one, two, and three ranked person out of a an applicant pool that started off at 3,000 a couple of weeks ago. Right. So it’s really great to be a person who’s in charge of hiring when you’ve got nothing but amazing all stars to hire. Right. It’s the hardest job in the world because there’s only one seat, right? The analogy I used to, I love to get of is like I’ve got one spot on my basketball team and I’ve got Michael Jordan and LeBron James both wanting to play. And I’m like, no matter who I pick, the person in the stands is gonna be like, man, that guy’s good at picking basketball players. But I also have to have the conversation with LeBron James and be like, hey, I know you’re LeBron James, but I don’t want you on my basketball team today, you know? And he’s like, but I’m LeBron James. So that’s a little bit of the background of like how the filtering happens and how we can build processes and and systems in the back end that I don’t want to say guarantee results, but stack the odds in our favor insurmountably.

Steven Jarvis, CPA (07:12.566)
Yeah. There’s so many things in life that that’s what it’s all about. It’s stacking the odds in our favor. I like that you put it that way because we can’t guarantee outcomes, but we can certainly improve our system so that we increase that likelihood. So, Stephen, let’s talk a little bit more about that because regardless of the topic, there’s always going to be those adamant DIYs of, okay, like, well, I’ll build the system, I’ll do this myself. And so whether, whether we give them some kind of just bits of wisdom that they can use the next time that they’re they’re hiring someone or probably more realistically, so that we can help people who are considering a service like Belay really understand what that’s that process looks like. Like as you start at three thousand and come down to two or three, like what are some of the steps that you’re going through to eliminate people? Like that this can’t be arbitrary. You’ve got to have a pretty dialed in system of here’s who we’re kicking out.

Stephen Delaney (07:56.526)
Sure. Yeah, great. So it starts off at the beginning with the application, the resumes, the face-to-face interviews. So for example, somebody submits an application, they have to submit video applications, recordings of themselves answering some of our pre-worded questions. So from there you can see how well do they show up on camera? Are they dressed professional? Do they have a clean background? Are they articulate? You know, all these other things. And so that’s a great filtering. Then when it comes to the actual job application itself. They have to write two separate sections of justifications for why they specifically want this job. It’s not just an easy apply. They’ve got to actually like reference their skills and why they’re a good fit. And then ultimately, then they meet with the CSC. They have another face-to-face conversation. We talk for 30 minutes just about this client. All of our clients, when they come in, they interview with the CSC to learn about the their needs and stuff. That call is recorded. And so our applicants get to watch that call. So they can now learn about the client themselves and they can address our questions directly in regards to what that what the client’s needs are. And on top of all of that, information is power and we’ve got so much information on all of our contractors. We’re very fortunate to be a place that thousands of contractors want to work at each month. And, you know, I’m not kidding Steven, I can I can tell you what my contractor’s favorite cookie is, what their favorite book is. I we literally have just mountains of data. And then obviously, you know, their Enneagram types and their Myers Briggs and all that stuff. Helps to make the best decision possible. And at the end of the day, like I mentioned earlier, when you get down to the nitty-gritty, when you get down to those final few decisions, everybody can do the job. There’s three people, the three finalists, from your standpoint as the client, any of those three people, if I match them with you from a technical standpoint, you’d be like, my gosh, this person’s perfect. They have the skills and the education and the experience. This is exactly what I was looking for. You would say that about any of the three. The real kind of like secret sauce behind it is how we were able to have so much face to face time and kind of build these relationships and get to know people on a personal level. And we really try to match for chemistry as much as possible as well.

Steven Jarvis, CPA (09:54.434)
Yeah, I love that. It’s interesting hearing you describe the detail behind it because I’ve been through that process on the client side. And like now it’s just kind of this like eye-opening moment of, that’s all the things that were going on. Because for anybody listening who’s been through a hiring process of any kind, like it it is such a challenging thing to do as a leader, as a business owner, is to to expand your team. Like if you want to expand the value, whether that’s into tax planning, it’s a tax plan you’re not currently doing. Whatever area that is, I mean, at some point you’ve got to have more people on the team than just you. And maybe you got lucky the first time you hired somebody, maybe you already knew somebody. But like when when you go out to just, hey, I’ve got to find somebody off a job board, like as you listen to what Steven’s describing, if if you’re not going to that level of detail, like if you want to do this right to your point, Stephen, if you want to give yourself the highest chance of success, not guaranteed, the highest chance of success, you really need a detailed in-depth system. And for me that’s where it starts to become very appealing to find the right resources at try as opposed to trying to figure this out on my own.

Stephen Delaney (10:58.964)
I ask clients who are kind of on the fence sometimes, like, when you’re making these hiring decisions, what do you know about the person? Like, well, I saw their resume, I found their LinkedIn, and I had a 15 minute phone conversation with them one time. And I’m like, Okay, well, compare that to what Belay knows about these people, right? And all the data and stuff. And then also, you know, as respectful as possible, like a lot of our clients, I’m like, how many people have you hired total? You know? And they might say eight, which is great. I don’t know if it’s a big number, a small number, whatever. It’s like, okay, so this is your eighth time hiring somebody. You get better at something the more you practice it. Your CSC, for me, I’ve been at Ballet for five years. I’ve hired seven hundred people, whatever the number is, right? And so more data, more specialized skill set, more experience, more repetition. You just like go back to what we’re coming earlier. You’re just stacking the odds in your favor, you know.

Steven Jarvis, CPA (11:46.04)
I love that you point that out because I’m a huge fan of getting the reps in. Like I talk about it all the time when we’re talking about tax planning. That like, hey, if you want to get better at a particular area of tax planning, if you want to get better reviewing tax returns, you just need to pick up tax returns. Now, with tax returns, you can go find politicians’ tax returns online. You can like you can look through your clients’ tax returns, like you can find lots of ways to get meaningful reps in, to get those tax returns to get those meaningful reps in. It’s kind of hard to just arbitrarily go out and get reps in on hiring people. Yeah. Like that’s that’s not the thing that I can just decide. Well, next week I’m gonna practice this 30 times. Well, no, you’re not. Not in a real way. Like you can pretend. And so this is a really hard one to accelerate the number of reps unless you’re in a situation like you are where that’s all you do.

Stephen Delaney (12:28.718)
do. That’s a great point. That’s a great point. Yeah. And role playing and stuff in those situations only gets you so far. It’s not the real thing until you’re really talking to somebody who you truly don’t know. Because like you said, if you’re going to be practicing hiring somebody, you’re probably going to pick somebody to help you practice that you already know fairly well, right?

Steven Jarvis, CPA (12:45.56)
Yeah. Well, and then at the at the end of that practice session, you don’t have to make a real decision because at the end of every hiring decision, like there’s this there’s this very real risk you have to take of, okay, am I gonna pay this person money and trust that they’re gonna take care of my client’s data, that they’re gonna come in and deliver, like all of these different things. Like I’ve probably been involved in dozens of hiring decisions at this point in my career, certainly not hundreds, definitely not seven hundred, but it’s it’s taken me just taken me a very long time to even get to dozens of of times I’ve done that.

Stephen Delaney (13:13.282)
And hopefully you feel that you are better at doing that now than you were at rep three or rep four or whatever.

Steven Jarvis, CPA (13:21.678)
Definitely. But there was some there’s some very painful experience along the way. Yeah. Yeah. You see, when we kind of dove into this conversation, just just taking for granted that that everyone listening would see the value in hiring an EA. so let’s let’s backtrack just a little bit. Because for me, I I had my I got my first EA, I think three years ago now. And it was through belay. and I’ll be honest, I’ve talked about on the podcast before. I was super skeptical of doing that, not of belay specifically, but of getting an EA in general because I I had I had a really pretty vague idea of what an EA may or may not do. I think the harder thing for me though, Steven, was that since it was a little bit less defined. I mean, normally I’m hiring like CPAs and and accountants. Like I have a very like, this is the job you’re going to do for me that drives the revenue of my company. So here’s how I evaluate whether I’m getting a return on my investment for having hired this person. With hiring an EA, it felt a little bit squishier to me at first. So how do you help your clients? Kind of do that mental math on, yeah, this is how I’m gonna know that six months in, a year in, eighteen months in, that this was totally worth it.

Stephen Delaney (14:26.476)
Yeah, it’s interesting because a lot of clients have that question and it’s it’s ironic because, you know, I had that conversation with clients over and over. And it’s just so funny because six months later, they basically all say the same thing to me after we kind of get through it all, which is maybe what your f feelings were, which was like, Why the heck did I not do this five years ago? Like who was who were I trying to oppress or whatever by doing my own whatever calendar, inbox, whatever CRM management, whatever the case is. The EAs that Belay has are amazing. They’ve got, you know, a wide variety of skills. And the thing about it is when we’ve got thousands of VAs, I always use the analogy of like there’s a bunch of different pieces of puzzle in this box. And so like you might be looking for one really kind of unique looking piece. And it’s like, well, we’ve got that piece in this box because this box is just overflowing with puzzle pieces. And so I try to tell people like, what are you currently doing on a weekly basis? Just write it down, look at it, and then circle…. all of the things that are happening every single hour, all five days of the week, whatever it may be, that you are the only human on this planet who is capable of doing that task. Right. And I’m like, and then let me know how few circles you have, because I bet there’s not going to be a whole lot. Right. And so that’s where we really start the ROI conversation. It’s just like, how much time are you spending on the business versus how much time are spending in the business? If you had an extra 15 hours a week.
And you had had the extra 15 hours a week for the last three years, imagine where you’d be today as opposed to, you know, where you could be. And then, you know, it’s a little bit kind of braggadocious or too much on the nose or whatever. But I like to tell people that, you know, Coca-Cola sells soft drinks, Toyota sells cars, belay sells the most valuable resource in the history of the universe. And it’s the one thing that everybody wants. And it’s what belay sells. And it’s time, right? It’s the one thing that everybody wants more of.
And utilizing the Belay services, utilizing our executive assistants and the CSCs here at Belay, that’s what we give you. We give you time. W yes, we give it to you in the form of an organized inbox or an organized calendar or CRMs that are, you know, running smoothly. Like those are the like tactical things that you can kind of touch and feel and like point to. But at the end of the day, it’s really the time and then what you choose to do with the time that’s kind of the real ROI for all of our clients.

Steven Jarvis, CPA (16:45.74)
There’s so so much value in being able to delegate things so that that time comes back to you. The other thing that to me that’s great about having an EA is it’s a forcing mechanism to actually write out and prove that you have systems for things. It’s amazing what an eye opener is when you’ve told yourself, well, yeah, I have a system for getting tax returns. I have a system for evaluating or for reminding my clients that I need, you know, a pay stub so I can do an updated withholding assessment for them. When you have to hand that on to somebody and then you all of a sudden realize… No, I just kind of relying on I just did this this way. Even if we are doing it ourselves, if we don’t have a written out process, it almost guaranteed it’s not the most effective way to get it done. Like we have to take the time to write things out, to adjust them, to update them, to evaluate them. So so so much good can come out of that. Yeah. Steven, I know fairly recently you’ve rolled out a newer resource. You you’ll be able to articulate this better than than me, but we we talk about getting an EA, an executive assistant, someone who may maybe we more traditionally think of as kind of working in the background of… My calendar, my travel, organize my inbox. I I’ve got a whole list of things my EA does, but it’s not typically especially certainly not initially a lot of like client interaction. there, it’s it’s more in the background. And I think in somewhat to address that specifically for financial advisors, financial professionals, you’ve rolled out relatively recently within the la certainly this year, a different program. So so talk talk a little bit more about that of kind of what the motivation was for it and what that looks like.

Stephen Delaney (18:11.79)
So they’re called CSAs, stands for client services assistance. we’ve rolled them out, you know, February, March of 2026 is when they really started kind of getting sold and placed here through Belay. These are specialized assistants. So if you come to Belay and you want an executive assistant, you’re gonna get somebody great. They’re gonna professional, they’re gonna be organized, they’re gonna do a great job. But if you’re coming to Belay and you’re in the investment banking or wealth management industries and you need somebody who’s got this specific skill set, specific background in this industry, understands, you know, those specific CRMs, whether it be Wealth Box or the Schwab Advisory Center or what’s an RIA or, you know, whatever all these things are, right? That we have a specialized service line. It’s called the CSA role. And that one has been immensely popular. It has just really taken off. And it’s kind of our way of of coming to market and basically talking to clients who are saying like, yes, we we can do all of that. And more, right? So onboarding paperwork for your new clients, talking to clients about specific questions they have about their investments. Now, at the end of the day, we’re not the ones providing the advice. We’re not the ones actually doing the financial transactions or anything like that. But I think a lot of the wealth management clients that we have here at Blay really have appreciated having somebody who from day one speaks the lingo, just gets it, you know, and comes in with five, ten, fifteen, twenty years of experience working for Charles Schwab or Merrill Lynch or whoever it may be.

Steven Jarvis, CPA (19:41.214)
That’s super exciting. I mean, at the end of the day, we talk about it here all the time. Like the only thing that really counts is what actually gets done. Like information’s neat and all, but like what we care about is what gets executed. And having people on your team who can help that execution is just critical to truly delivering massive value to your clients. So love to hear that anytime we can find more specialized resources, people, like you said, even even just that they speak the language, that they understand the terminology, that obviously the advisor is still going to fill that role as the advisor. But having people around them, being able to, I mean, essentially jump the line. Like instead of spending the next ten years trying to figure out yourself and go through all the painful reps of hiring and training and getting it wrong and then having to reevaluate, be able to just kind of skip ahead to, all right, Belay, you helped me find the right person. Like that’s an incredible opportunity.

Stephen Delaney (20:28.534)
It’s the example I gave you earlier of the amount of clients I talked to once they’ve been with Belay for three months or six months who are just kicking themselves for why they didn’t do this five years earlier. Or, you know, internally we we’ll even have kind of like conversations where there’ll be a person on the fence of like, I’m not sure if I’m gonna do this, maybe, maybe not. And you know, internally we’ll be like, Okay, you know, I’m gonna go try this on my own. Like, all right, see you in thirty days, you know, ’cause we know how it goes. And thirty days later they send an email and they’re like, Okay, I’m ready now. And we’re like, you know, that’s fine. Let’s rock and roll.

Steven Jarvis, CPA (20:55.628)
Yep. I be that that was definitely my experience. I came in skeptical. I engaged with Belay in the middle of my tax filing season. And so like I thought there was all these things stacked against Belay to be successful. And that’s of course I like with my own ego, that’s how I was coming in. Was like, this is your guys’ obligation to prove that you know what you’re doing. and the CST that I worked with was calm, cool, and collected and delivered phenomenally. and it was in a yeah, a few months later was, geez, how how did I not do this before and I’m never going back?

Stephen Delaney (21:25.272)
Yeah. Yeah. It’s and and the thing, especially for tax clients that I have and that we all have here at Belay is that is also another benefit is the fact that in most hiring situations you hire somebody and it’s kind of a a flat line of, hey, you’re working this many hours a month or this w this many hours a year, whatever the case is. And for Belay it’s nice because We have increases and decreases. So we’ve got clients who you know are tax clients, they’ll increase their EA’s hours or their CSA’s hours in February, March, April, May, because they’ve got a whole lot of work to do. And then they don’t necessarily need somebody working 35 hours a week for in October because they’re in the tax industry or whatever the case may be. And so we can kind of come back down to a more reasonable package for them. And so at the end of the day, we’re trying to like check as many boxes as possible of like, here’s this person with specific set of skills who’s been vetted. Multiple times by multiple departments who’s kind of custom selected just for you. And they kind of ride that wave with you as your busy seasons come and go on a yearly basis.

Steven Jarvis, CPA (22:21.944)
Love that. Love that. Well, Steven, we’ve mentioned a couple of times on the episode like what matters the most is people being to take action. So let’s talk about that in terms of belay as well. And to make sure that our audience gets connected with the great people at Belay and that they know they’re coming from the RTS podcast. Anyone listening can text RTS to 55123. You’ll get connected with one of the great people on the Belay team to be able answer your specific questions and to get connected with this incredible process. So Steven, really appreciate your time and be willing to come on and share your expertise and perspective.

Stephen Delaney (22:57.058)
Yeah, thanks so much for the invite. Like I said, well, we’re happy to serve and looking forward to it for a long, long time. if you have any questions, please reach out. We’re we’re happy to talk.

Steven Jarvis, CPA (23:05.698)
Absolutely. And for anyone coming to the summit, be sure and stop by and see the Blade team when you’re at the summit. And if you haven’t signed up for the summit yet, you can go to retirementtaxservices.com. There are still seats available. We are looking forward to another year of an incredible event. Steven, thanks so much for being here. And to everyone listening, until next time, good luck out there. And remember to tip your server, not the IRS.