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Commercial (00:52):

Hey, there podcast listeners. How confident are you that you understand tax strategies that help your clients save money? After all, next to medical expenses, taxes stand to be the biggest expense over an individual’s lifetime. Ready to learn what elite advisors are doing to help their clients. Join us at the summit where we will be focused on upcoming tax law changes, optimization of tax strategies, and streamlining your practice. Jump over to retirementtaxservices.com/summit to register to attend.

Steven (01:22):

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 joining me this week is a returning guest, the one and only Libby Greiwe, who is my go-to person when it comes to anything systems and processes related. And as this episode comes out a few weeks before the tax filing deadline, I’m sure many of you are acutely feeling the pain of wishing you had a better process around helping your clients through the tax season. So I invited Libby to come on so that we’re planting the seeds now for the things we need to be working on, so next year goes better. Libby, welcome to the show.

Libby (02:01):

Oh, thanks so much for having me back.

Steven (02:02):

Yeah, I’m always excited to have these conversations. I’m clearly the tax nerd, but I tell my team all the time that taxes are my strength field to communicate on tax topics is a strength for me. One of the things that is not a strength for me is documenting detailed processes, which might sound counterintuitive since I’m very detail oriented on the tax side, but it’s a different skillset. And so I love having people I can go to who are experts in particular areas and you are certainly that for me when it comes to processes. So for listeners who might not have been around the last time you were on the show, just give us a little bit of background as to who you are and why it is that you’re the one who talks about processes.

Libby (02:40):

Yeah, absolutely. So I started from scratch, built and sold by age 37, a financial planning firm that I scaled to seven figures as a solo advisor all while just working three days a week. So I’ll take you back to 2008. So 2008 was a very scary year for me as an advisor, but not because of the market, it was because I found out I was pregnant and this was great news because we wanted a baby, but this was scary news because for the previous four years as I was building my business, I was working 70, 80 hours a week and I knew that wasn’t, that wasn’t going to cut it and I wasn’t going to be able to be the kind of mom that I wanted to be. So I had to get really serious with myself around that time and okay, I was really happy with the amount of money I was making. I didn’t want to sacrifice the success that I saw for my practice, but at the same time, I knew I really wanted to get down to 24 hours a week in a three day work week. So for me, I had to step out of the advisor role and really embrace that role as the CEO of my business. And the logical solution was to figure out how to scale and create more systems and processes. I realized I had built a very busy Libby, but not necessarily a true business

Steven (03:52):

That’s so insightful and this is why I love talking to people who have been through this themselves. So even though you spend your time now working with advisors, coaching them, showing them how they can implement these things, that for you, it all comes from real world experience of here’s what I know works. There’s probably a few mistakes along the way that we all make the pain really drives that home of okay, that’s the thing I’ll never forget. I love that perspective of going through your own experience of, Hey, it’s not that I want to stop making good money, no one should have to do that, but if I want to put first things first and prioritize my family, something’s got to give. And so for you it was okay, how do I make processes that make a difference?

Libby (04:30):

Yeah, and I’ll say this, I went to school for engineering, so I am a nerd and I love to start with the end in mind and reverse engineer everything, but I hate building processes. I am not a detail oriented person. So if I can do this, literally anybody else can, right? So I feel like I’m really great at seeing a process and how to root it in client experience so that it makes it a very experiential process, really sets you apart as a remarkable advisor. But in all fairness, I had to hire people to actually do the implementation and follow through just so for people listening that are like, Ugh, I can’t build processes. I feel that me neither, but actually you can.

Steven (05:10):

Libby, that’s such great insight. Again, clearly speaks to you’ve done this for yourself before because when we look at a process, we look at tax preparation, which I know for a lot of advisors listening, they might say, hold on a second, Steven, we don’t want to be tax preparers. I get that. I’m not trying to convince you you should be, but you’re helping clients make money decisions. Money decisions have tax impacts and your clients need their tax return to get prepared. So you are going to play a vital role in that, whether you want to or not. The difference is are you going to be intentional? Are you going to have a process around it and create a good experience? And again, as this comes out in March, there might be some really recent pain for some people listening or hopefully some recent highlights of it’s going to be one of two things. It’s the client calling to complain because their preparers complaining because it wasn’t clear that that was a back to Roth contribution or a Roth conversion, or why did money move from one account to the next? Or it might be that your client reached out to say, Hey, Libby, thank you so much for making it so easy for me to get my taxes filed. This is the simplest it’s ever been. You get to drive the outcome of what that’s going to look like.

Libby (06:13):

Oh yeah, absolutely. The choice is yours. It’s setting aside time to actually step out of that advisor role for a minute into the role of CEO and to be intentional about how you approach things with a runway and a plan, the actual execution, and then follow up. You are 100% in control of your client’s experience.

Steven (06:34):

Yeah, I completely agree with that. And as we look at taxes specifically, and this is where I love getting your insight, Libby, because it can be easy to just kind of grab the shiniest object and run in that direction. So we talk about taxes, oh, my clients are complaining because they weren’t sure where their 1099s are. And so okay, now let’s mechanically look at how do we get 1099s to the CPA easier, or we can look at the communication piece or there’s always our areas of it, Libby, so that we don’t just get shiny object syndrome. How do you help someone start dissecting where they should look to improve a process?

Libby (07:07):

Yeah, well, so the way that I look at it is there’s two lenses. We want to look at it through the lens of our business of how do we operate more efficiently, how do we reduce friction? How do we make things go better, faster, smarter, cheaper, easier from our end? And then we also want to look at it through the lens of the client experience because with their experiencing, they’re on their own journey. We’re over here doing our thing, they’re on their own journey, and we want to look at their experience and look for opportunities to reduce pain points, friction. We want to think of it kind of like the Ritz-Carlton concierge concept. We want to anticipate their needs before they even know that they have them, so that they never actually become a need. We’ve already kind of co-facilitated all of it. So to describe that, to make it come to life, I always use the example when I’m out speaking at a conference of Uber.

(08:01):

If you picture yourself standing in the rain and New York City needing to get somewhere inhaling a cap, you remember you’d stand there, it’d be pouring rain, you’re waving your arms, taxis are going by, some have their lights on, some have their lights off, and you’re like, okay, wait, I need one with my light on. But that one with the light on just went by. Finally, you get one, it finally comes over, it picks you up. You’re trying to explain to your driver where you’re trying to go, and then you’re not a hundred percent sure if they’re taking the most direct route there, right? You’re going, well, that seems like a direct, I don’t know. We’re off track. Are they charging me more? And then, I don’t know if this has ever happened to you, Steven, but you get to the end and the little meter says $13 and 80 says, and they’re like, you owe me $40 cash.

(08:44):

We don’t take credit card. And you’re like, but the thing says credit card right there. So enter Uber now. You can stand inside the lobby of your hotel. You know exactly what car is coming when it’s coming. You walk out just at the right moment, you hop in, the driver already knows your destination. It’s a preset price. It alerts you if you get off track and it automatically charges your card on the way out, and you get to give immediate feedback to the person who’s coming behind you through giving a rating. It doesn’t necessarily get you there any faster. It doesn’t necessarily make the ride any smoother. It doesn’t avoid detours or accidents. The risks and all of the things are the same, but the user experience is so important. So whenever I’m at a conference, I’ll ask people, how many of you actually took a real yellow taxi from the airport and that they even facilitate, right?

(09:36):

You didn’t align. It’s not even hard. And it’s maybe one or two hands. And then I ask, well, how many of you took Uber or Lyft? And it’s everybody else. It’s everybody else because the user experience is so much easier. So that’s how we want to think about our processes and our business is both through the ends of what’s helpful for us as the advisory team to make this faster, but how do we actually improve that client experience? And taxes is the perfect example of how you can look for these teeny tiny pain points and then develop a process to completely alleviate them.

Steven (10:10):

I really like that example of Uber because I’ve definitely taken taxis before, but it’s been years. And not only have I not taken a taxi in years, I haven’t even stopped to compare Uber to a taxi in years. I have no, at this point, Uber could be costing me more than taking a taxi, and I still don’t care because to your point, there’s a consistent experience that I’ve come to expect and I know I can rely on. And yeah, I think that’s a great analogy for advisors helping their clients through the tax process. And again, this isn’t about turning advisors into tax preparers. That’s a whole different conversation, but as a financial advisor, you are having an impact on your client’s tax return. And so it’s up to you, do you want to create a consistent experience that sets clear expectations and gives clients the chance to know what’s coming and not be surprised and cut off guard and wondering if they’re getting scammed on the price or the payment methods? You have to be intentional. And so again, why I’m really excited to be having this conversation in March because this gives us time to do something about it before we get to the next year.

Libby (11:12):

Yes, absolutely. Yeah, and tax planning and preparing for it or preparing our clients for that journey doesn’t start in February when they start getting their tax documents in the mail. It’s something from the moment we onboard clients is really when, or really even before that when we’re doing their first initial financial plan, that’s really when we want to start setting the stage for how things are going to go, setting expectations, and that includes tax planning as well.

Steven (11:40):

And just to really drive home the importance and the value of setting clear expectations. When I meet with clients to go over their tax return, their first question every single time without exception is, am I getting a refund or do I owe they to know what the outcome is? They’ve skipped over, oh, my advisor did capital gains harvesting for me. They did a Roth version. They’re not remotely interested out of the gate in any of that other tax planning. They just want to know what the outcome was. And they’re always comparing it to what was their expectation. And so if we didn’t set good expectations, back to your example of sitting in the taxi wondering, should I trust the meter or what they’re telling me? That’s such a simple starting point for doing better tax planning, and people skip right over. They want to get to, oh, well, I want to do this flashy thing I saw online. No, no, no. Take care of the basics and then move on. Because if you set those clear expectations, now you’re going to start getting credit for the more advanced tax planning you’re doing.

Libby (12:35):

Yeah. Oh, 100%.

Steven (12:36):

Libby, around the topic of tax planning and processes, I mean, there’s a couple of different directions we can go with this because taxes come back around every single year. That’s one of the values of being involved in it as an advisor. But in my experience, there’s some additional, especially when we talk about setting expectations, there’s some additional considerations. The first year you work with a client, and I know that you’re really big on talking to advisors about what’s that first 90 days look like? How do we come out of the gate really creating an incredible experience for our clients? We’ll talk a bit about your full 90 day process, but let’s talk for just a second about how do we help advisors, just thinking about new clients coming on board, relating to getting that client through their first tax season with the advisor.

Commercial (13:16):

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Libby (13:51):

So I love to relate this always to dating and marriage. So for me, I always think of the moment you meet a prospect to the point that they become a client. So whatever that prospect a client process you have is for most advisor that looks something like some sort of discovery call, determining if you’re a right fit gathering of information and goals, synthesizing that into some sort of software and coming up with recommendations and then presenting recommendations and saying, do you want to be with me long-term or not, right? So kind of the same thing is dating. It’s very high touch.

(14:22):

You typically have a pretty well-oiled process. I mean, you should have a well oiled process. You are wowing them. You’re talking all the time. It’s kind of like you’re dating and you’re taking ’em on lots of dates and you’re giving them lots of gifts and deliverables and it’s very, very high touch. And then once a client says yes, then it turns into this drop off a cliff where they fall into your client service model where it might make sense that you’re only going to see them once a year. That might be, or twice a year. That might be part of your process or your ongoing client service model, and it might be appropriate, but we need to slowly let them down into it. We don’t want it to feel like, wow, we were dating and like, wow, when we were dating, he brought me flowers and he took me out all the time. Now I go out on my birthday and anniversary

(15:08):

Like W. And so we want to think about that experience in the lens of how do we continue to date our spouse once we’re technically in this together for the long term? How do we think about it still? How do we deliver this remarkable experience? And a big piece of that is this tax plan, or really this whole first year needs to be this slow let down into the client service model with proper expectations. Because while this might be your 4000th tax season with 300 clients, this will be their very first tax season with you. And we need to make sure that everybody’s on the same page and that it’s truly remarkable.

Steven (15:47):

Not only is it their first tax season with you, but in my experience, most taxpayers have never worked with an advisor who takes tax pain seriously. They’ve never worked with an advisor who reviews their tax return with them, who talks about what tax documents to expect at tax time, particularly when you bring on a new client. We’ve got documents related to rollover, to changing custodians, and whatever those things that you’re doing with them out of the gate from a financial planning standpoint, from a money movement standpoint, that’s all going to create tax documents at tax time. And again, that’s one of the beauties of being involved in tax plan as the advisors. This comes back around every single year. For people who listen to this podcast, you might be thinking, well, Steven, it’s really not the exception. Everybody has tax planning now, first of all, that they don’t. You’re in this little bubble, which I appreciate you being in the bubble of people who talk about tax planning all the time. And if you go online, sure, you can find a high percentage of advisor websites that talk about tax planning, but I meet with the end clients. Most advisors still are not taking taxes seriously. This is still a huge opportunity.

Libby (16:48):

For sure. Yeah, no, it’s funny. Anyone listening to this podcast, I guarantee your B minus work is other advisors, the general population of advisors tax work on their a plus plus work on their absolute best day. Yeah, it’s not a thing.

Steven (17:05):

No, no, it’s not. So Libby, there’s so many things that advisors can be doing around taxes from a process standpoint. The reason we want to turn this into processes is so that it’s consistent, it’s repeatable. You can get to your point before, if the executing on a detailed process isn’t your strong suit, great. We’ve got to be able to articulate a process so team members can get involved. And then our clients have the same experience every year. But if we divert from taxes for just a second, because even though I’m the tax expert, I know there’s more to life than taxes, I have to reassure my family that all the time. I do know there’s more to life than taxes. So Libby, what are some other things that stand out to you in that first 90 days that an advisor’s working with a new client that helps them feel like they’re continuing to be wowed by their new financial advisor?

Libby (17:51):

So we’ll weave some tax talk into it. We’ll definitely do that because it is critically important. And we’ll give some really concrete examples. So we talked earlier about the two lenses, right? There’s the lens of our office doing business, and then there’s the client journey. So for most advisors, if we’re talking about onboarding this first 90 days, we think about onboarding as the paperwork. So getting the money from Schwab to Fidelity and taking the life insurance application and getting them underwritten and getting the client set up on our portal, and it’s the kind of that nuts and bolts, and that’s really just the first layer. And an advisor who is documenting that, creating SOPs, scaling that, having other team members doing it, that’s a good advisor. The next layer of a process, and this is true of onboarding or any process, is setting proper expectations.

(18:40):

So this is setting expectations with your clients. This is setting expectations with your team. There’s a great saying that expectations are the death of gratitude. So when we have expectations that are completely misaligned, then our clients, so kind of like the whole dishwasher rule, when you’re just expecting things to happen, you don’t even see it going on. We want to get credit for all of the good stuff that we’re doing for our clients. And if our client’s expectation is way up here and they’re expecting us to, we tell them we do tax planning, come tax these, and they’re like, Hey, have you filed my taxes yet? And you’re like, wait, now you’re backpedaling. And there was just because there was a misalignment. Now if they’d known upfront that we absolutely don’t do filing, but we’ll definitely help facilitate it, and here’s exactly what that can look like, then they’re going to have a more realistic expectation, and then they’re going to be super impressed and wowed, which is that third layer of creating a remarkable experience. They’re going to be impressed and wowed and super grateful for the work that you’re doing because it feels over the top. So we want to make sure that we’re setting proper expectations with our clients so they know what’s in scope and what’s out of scope, and then over-delivering on those expectations.

Steven (19:54):

Olivia, I love how you frame that for everyone. Again, it just speaks to how much time you spend going through this yourself and working with other advisors on it. For someone who’s listening to this podcast who might be thinking, well, Libby, I’ve already got some processes in place, I’m probably pretty good. How do you help people evaluate where they already are at to know if this is something you need to spend more time on?

Libby (20:15):

So the answer is, we all need to spend more time on this because most of us, we nail that bottom layer and we’re like, I have a very good onboarding. I have this conversation all the time. And then we talk about, well, what makes a remarkable onboarding? And people are always like, oh, I get it. I see the gap. And what the problem is, is we look at it just through our lens. So this would be the exercise I would have your listeners do, is to experience your process as the client. So let me give you an example. So I close a $2 million client and I’m like, oh, what a great day. They’re excited to work with me. They loved our financial plan. They’re going to be such a good fit. What a fun couple. You know what? I think I’m going to take the rest of the day off.

(20:55):

I’m going to go home and do some self-care, right? So maybe I’ll hit the golf course or I’ll go home and go for a run or take a bubble bath and we’re excited. We closed a big case and we know the clients are excited. And if we’re then just building our process as to, okay, great new client, send them the paperwork, get it processed, get the money over here, get ’em in the portal, get ’em set up with their account. We’re missing the experience that our clients have, so our clients are excited to work with us, right? They’re like, yep. What she says is gBreat, hope this is true. And then as soon as they commit to something, there is buyer’s remorse. It’s a chemical reaction in our brains. We cannot control it. It happens every time. And their brains immediately go, oh my gosh, I hope we’re making the right decision.

(21:38):

Oh God, how much paperwork is this really going to be? Is this really going to be a nightmare on our taxes? Is our accountant going to charge us more? Because there’s going to be so many tax forms? Shoot, we have to break up with Bill. Bill was a fine advisor, but oh gosh, we’re going to have to email him or should I call him or just say nothing at all? Will he even know, right? They’re going through this whole journey. And if our process isn’t designed to facilitate that part of the journey, if it’s just over here doing the paperwork, we’re creating a ton of opportunity for friction in the process. And so friction being anything that feels uncomfortable slows the process down, takes too long or is awkward. So in that example, one of the things we can do to grease the wheels for our clients is say, Hey, we know what we know.

(22:22):

You have to break up with Bill. So we have an email that we’ve already prepared. This is a great email that we find works really, really well for our clients. Feel free to modify it, add to it, use it, don’t use it. But this is something that you can send to Bill that will hopefully explain how grateful you are for his years of service and how you’re going in a new direction. So your client’s not having to sit down at the computer and feeling that anxiety of having to email Bill who really was a fine person. So now they have a copy and paste template, they can pop that in and oh, guess what we have? If Bill responds, here’s the response prepped ready to go for you as well. And what we’re trying to avoid is that friction of, okay, Bill got the transfer paper. We know exactly what Bill’s going to do. Bill’s going to pick up the phone, he’s going to call your clients, and he’s going to start to try to conserve that business and he’s going to plant seeds of doubt in their mind or beg them to come in for a meeting. All of that slowing down the process, creating friction in the process. So it’s little stuff like that that we want to consider the journey that our clients are psychologically going through in addition to, well, how do we build better SOPs?

Steven (23:30):

Libby, I love that example because I think a lot of people skip over what they see as simple things. Because for an advisor who sends emails all the time, who has these communications all the time, it might seem like a really simple thing to draft an email. Come on, my client doesn’t need help with that, but I’m with you. Doing those things changes the experience dramatically. And it’s the same when we talk about the tax side of it. If you’re an advisor thinking, oh, well, I gave the clients everything they need, they’ll share it with their tax preparer. It’s no big deal. It’s so simple to write an email. It’s really not.

(24:00):

Especially if it’s on something that the client feels like is a complicated thing. We got to remember that when it comes to taxes, when it comes to changing advisors, I mean, this isn’t something that people do all the time themselves. As an advisor, you help people change advisors all the time. As a tax preparer, I look at taxes all the time. But for that client, this is the rare exception. And by the way, you want them to never do it again anyways. That’s why you brought them on as a client. And so you’re trying, I like how you talk about making a remarkable experience, wowing them what might seem like little things will make all the difference. And then, Libby, I’m a hundred percent with you when your immediate response was, well, we should all be working more on our processes. That is solid advice every single time, because things change. We need to train and develop our team. We need to remind ourselves how these things work. I have yet to meet the advisor who created processes 10 years ago who is using the exact same processes and having the same outcomes. That’s just not how life works. You have to continually refine these things.

Libby (24:57):

Yeah, I, and there’s definitely something about getting a process to a point where you can memorialize it for a little while, but

(25:05):

AI and just everything changes so quickly that we need to be pushing ourselves to get incrementally better and to make our processes incrementally more experiential because people are seeking, especially in this AI world, people are seeking human connection. And if we’re not being intentional about the client, the human side of their experience, then we’re going to completely miss the boat. AnCPAd to your point earlier with processes, so let’s take Roth conversions for example. We tell our clients to convert Roth all the time. We look at tax returns all the time, whether that’s occurred correctly or incorrectly, we have to think through everything that this might be the first time the client is experiencing this, right? So there are things that to us feel like second nature, but if we approach a process through the lens of our clients have maybe never done a Roth conversion before, what are all of the potential friction points that could occur with a Roth conversion?

(26:02):

It could be that they filed their taxes, they filed, and they didn’t realize that they even had to explain this to their CPA. It could be done correctly, incorrectly. Maybe they’re doing it themselves on TurboTax and maybe their CPA is going to freak out because, oh my gosh, you just created taxable income for our clients. Shame on them. So we look for what are all of those potential friction points, and then how do we build a process that lays the foundation for that? So even if it’s coming to your clients and saying, Hey, your CPA will probably hate this, but here’s why. If we’re looking long term, this is short term. Here’s what it is. How about you sign this form so that I could talk to your CPA ahead of time and then part of the process, right? Okay, let’s make sure that it was actually executed correctly. And I know you have great resources to help advisors double check the work on the 1040 to make sure that it was actually all of the hard work of planning that we’re doing with these conversions was actually done correctly, or a backdoor Roth. This might be the first time that they’re doing it, and we need to over communicate and make sure that the wheels are greased. So those friction points are completely eliminated,

Steven (27:11):

Thereby so many great reminders in there. And before we wrap up here, I want to specifically call out something that you mentioned in there. That’s a really great action item that anyone listening can take, and that’s to go through your processes yourself or have your team go through your processes as if they were a client. That is a great way to really see what this experience looks like and if it still is actually providing the experience that you think it is, that’s really important from how clients experience. It’s also important just from a compliance and liability standpoint to say, Hey, are we really still dotting our i’s and crossing our T’s the way we thought we were?

(27:45):

Because unfortunately, I’m aware of a few advisors right now who didn’t take the time to make sure their processes were addressing every edge case, and now they’re trying to unwind mistakes that had happened. And when you go back and look at the situation, you can see, oh, here’s where the mistake got made. And it wasn’t by the advisor, it was by a team member who was sort of following the process, but not quite all the way. Most of those horror stories start with, well, we didn’t really follow our process, but there was this really good reason for it. As soon as you stop following the process, you invite a lot of risk.

Libby (28:16):

You bring in what I call wisdom risk. When you do something so many times and you feel like, well, I don’t need to follow the workflow or the template or the checklist because I do it all the time, you do. You start skipping over little pieces that your brain starts to go, well, that’s not that important because I already know what I’m supposed to do here. I don’t need to upload that to the such and such because I know it’s done properly or I don’t need someone to double check it, right? So yeah, wisdom risk is a real thing.

Steven (28:41):

Yeah, absolutely. Now, Libby, I know that you get so much, not just questions on this topic, but so much positive feedback when you’re discussing these topics. You’ve actually taken the step to write a book all about this first 90 days and how people can take processes and make them remarkable. So tell us more about the book and what we can expect there.

Libby (29:00):

Oh, yeah. Well, I’m super excited about it. So it’s a little shorty, it’s designed to be read in two hours or less. So let’s lean into the efficiency concept here. And so I have those eight processes that every financial advisory practice needs to have, and I picked onboarding as one of the easiest ones for people to start. It’s the one where you can make a significant amount of impact with very little resources, very little capacity changes, very little budget. And it’s so impactful. And advisors who have done this and have followed the onboarding process that we’ve laid out have come back. In fact, someone stopped me at the RTS summit when I was speaking. They stopped me in the lobby and they said, Libby, we’ve been doing it for two years now, and I cannot tell you how many referrals we have gotten in that first 90 days. It’s mind blowing where we used to have to prove ourselves and deliver value for years before we got this level of referrals. In fact, he is going to write a blurb for the back of the book about his results with it.

Steven (29:58):

That’s awesome.

Libby (29:59):

But yeah, it’s such an easy thing to get in and modify. So the book is broken down into the first 90 days. So what are some stakeholders things that you can do in days one to 30 to deliver professionalism? So how can we get those SOPs created? What are some cheat codes for creating SOPs? How do we make sure that we don’t bone up the paperwork? How do we make sure we get clients set up to work properly with us? The second chunk of the book is dedicated to that middle month days of 31 through 60, and how do we actually use this window to surprise and delight our clients? How do we deliver above and beyond in ways that they have never experienced with a financial advisor before? How do we make the difference of working with us So starkly different right there in the beginning that it’s so obvious and so noticeable that they can’t help but share it with their friends and family.

(30:50):

And then days 61 through 90, the third chunk of the book is all dedicated around, okay, well, how do we surprise and delight, but now how do we actually take that level to shock and awe? And so really it stays 61 plus, including first year. There’s going to be some stuff about different things we need to be preparing with them for tax season and getting them organized and ready to go, and setting expectations properly of what we need, and then how to actually set up systems and processes so that you can follow through and implement it. When advisors do this, when they actually carve out the two hours to read the book and then 90 minutes to two hours to actually work on some of the, put one thing in place to incrementally make their process better, they’ll start to see those results and get that feeling. So a lot of advisors will come to me and they’ll say, my clients don’t leave, right? No one’s mad, but I know I can do better. I know I can deliver a more exceptional, I know we can make fewer mistakes. And that’s really kind of what the spirit of this book is. So it’s called The First 90 Days, the Advisors Blueprint for a Remarkable Client Experience.

Steven (31:53):

Well, Libby, congratulations on getting the book done. That’s super exciting. I’m excited to get a copy myself, tell listeners how they can learn more and get their own copy.

Libby (32:01):

Yeah, absolutely. Well, so you can always check me out on LinkedIn. I’m sure I’ll be blabbing about it like crazy. As we get closer to the release state, we also have the Efficient Advisor community on Facebook. It’s a free community of about 3000 plus advisors and ops people. And we’ll be blobbing about it on there. And then of course, over at the Efficient Advisor Podcast and on the efficient advisor.com.

Steven (32:21):

Super exciting. Unless you’re that one person who says, all of my processes are perfect, in which case I’m calling bs, and I don’t want you in my conference anyways.

Libby (32:28):

No one ever.

Steven (32:29):

If you have processes that you’d like to improve, this is something to check out. And Libby, since you mentioned it, just a reminder, we are coming up on the end of our early bird pricing for the Summit 2025. So go to retirementtaxservices.com, get signed up for the summit. It’s going to be even bigger and better again this year because we keep getting such great feedback and have the opportunity to bring great messages, including around processes to so many advisors. So Libby, thank you for all the work that you do around this, and thanks for coming on the show and talking about this.

Libby (32:55):

Oh, thanks so much for having me back.

Steven (32:56):

Yeah, of course. And to everyone listening, until next time, good luck out there. And remember to tip your server, not the IRS.