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STAY ON TOP  OF YOUR TAXES

  • Why Buckingham is investing in ensuring advisors work with taxes. (2:01)
  • How common it is (or isn’t) that advisors lean into comprehensive tax services. (5:16)
  • The importance of conscious tax planning and why not doing tax planning is irresponsible. (7:12)
  • Why making your CPA’s job easier will make your job easier. (10:15)
  • How to encourage better advisor-CPA partnerships. (14:30)
  • Why to refer and how reciprocation actually works with CPAs. (18:13)
  • Steve’s mission to get people more holistic planning. (22:00)
  • The tax planning value-add and how to communicate it well. (24:32)

Summary:

Today we have a two-Steve’s show because Steve Atkinson from Buckingham Strategic Partners joins us to share his perspective on why taxes are such an important topic for financial advisors. He sheds light on the reasons why a big firm like Buckingham would be spending money and investing in ensuring that their advisors are doing things with taxes.

Listen in to hear about the history of tax planning at Buckingham and why the tax part of financial advising started as such an important thing to them. You’ll learn how investment philosophy, retirement goals, and all kinds of elements weave together to help create a better financial strategy, as well as the importance of consciously and intentionally adding these services.

Ideas Worth Sharing:

There are a lot of planning elements that intersect together, but our industry hasn’t always weaved those components or disciplines together to think holistically about how it helps with planning. - Steven Atkinson Click To Tweet Everything you do with money has a tax impact, so if you’re not consciously doing tax planning for your clients, in my view, that’s kind of irresponsible.” - Steven Jarvis Click To Tweet There was no reason to make the referral other than 'my clients needed help.' A good advisor will do that every time, and not only when there’s something coming back to them from a business standpoint. - Steven Atkinson Click To Tweet

About Retirement Tax Services:

Steven and his guests share more tax-planning insights in today’s Retirement Tax Services Podcast. Feedback, unusual tax-planning stories, and suggestions for future guests can be sent to advisors@rts.tax.

Are you interested in content that provides you with action steps that you can take to deliver massive tax value to your clients? Then you are going to love our powerful training sessions online. Click on the link below to get started on your journey:

Retirementtaxservices.com/welcome

Thank you for listening.

Read The Transcript Below:

We’re not overpaying. No, we’re not overpaying. We’re not overpaying anymore. The tax code’s complicated, boring, and overrated. You don’t want that, you want a pro. One thing that you should know: this is a radio show. It’s not tax advice, don’t take it that way.

Steven Jarvis:     Hello everyone, and welcome to the next episode of the Retirement Tax Services podcast, financial professionals’ edition. I am your host, Steven Jarvis, CPA. And with me today, I have another Steve; Steve Atkinson, from Buckingham Strategic Partners. Steve, thanks for joining me.

Steve Atkinson:   Steven, thanks for having me on. It’s great having … you rarely meet another Steve. So, it is pretty cool that not only did I meet you a couple years ago, but we’re doing this podcast together, so thanks for having me on.

Steven Jarvis:     Yeah, I’m excited for this conversation today. This might be just slightly different than some of the other conversations we have, but really love to hear your perspective on why taxes is such an important topic for financial advisors.

I’m singing that message all the time, so maybe selfishly, I just want someone to affirm that this is in fact a good idea. But I think a lot of advisors are familiar with the Buckingham name. You probably get way too many questions, way more questions than you want about Kitces and his relationship there. But hey, that’s great publicity.

So, talk about why a big firm like Buckingham, who works with so many different advisors would spend time and invest money in making sure that their advisors are doing something around taxes.

Steve Atkinson:   Yeah, great question. Yeah, I would say the natural answer is our company’s founded by a bunch of CPAs. So, and therefore, we work with a lot of CPAs. So, you can’t avoid the tax question. I think we just look at investing through the lens of tax.

And I think tax is one of the components. There’s a lot of planning elements that all intersect together. But our industry, the financial advisory industry, hasn’t always weaved all those other components or disciplines together to think holistically about how you invest, how you make estate planning, how you do investment planning, how you do risk planning, all these things, and how it complements the investment.

So, other firms, which started in the 1990s by these CPAs, just approached the investment question from a completely different angle. It was a different paradigm than maybe a lot of advisors that grew up in the investment world approach it by.

So, when you’re doing tax planning, you’re seeing how other advisors invest your client’s money and the tax implications and maybe the lack of planning, and in hindsight, you’re like, “Gosh, we were involved in that conversation, we could have saved the client a lot of money in their tax this year, et cetera.”

So, I think when we think it’s so important for advisors to be considering tax planning because that’s where we come from. But it’s also what led Buckingham in the early days to have a clear investment philosophy, because investment philosophy can impact your taxes.

Do you have one that’s actively trading a lot? Is it based on forecasting? Is it based on more of the conventional ways to invest? And obviously, Buckingham landed on things that are — we want to find a prudent strategy that has little turnover, highly diversified, low costs, all these things.

But all those tenants of our investment philosophy were a result of what we were looking for to make sure tax planning, tax preparation all didn’t get blown up by an investment philosophy. So, that’s kind of how we led there.

And we just work with so many advisors today and share that message that are you open to hearing a different paradigm of solving the client problem and how investments tax, and all these other disciplines of planning can come together to ultimately serve the client in maybe a different way than you have in the past.

Steven Jarvis:     Definitely. I mean, the transition was happening in the nineties, so Buckingham was on the forefront of CPAs making that transition.

It seems like you’re starting to see that more though of CPAs who, for a variety of reasons, I think, some of which is seeing where they can add value to clients and honestly, seeing where they can grow their business.

You see CPAs making this transition to including advisory, including financial planning, or just leaving tax preparation behind altogether. So, that’s interesting that trend started originally so long ago.

Steve, as you work with so many different advisors, I guess, what’s your impression of how common it is for advisors to really lean into the tax aspect of their client life? I get mixed reactions from advisors when I bring this up.

Some advisors who do it themselves think this is really prolific now, and other advisors think that this is still cutting edge that you’re really differentiating yourself by doing really comprehensive tax planning. Where do you see that from your perspective?

Steve Atkinson:   Yeah, I would say by and large, a general population of advisors aren’t doing it consciously. What I mean by that is it’s not part of their process across the board with their clients.

It may happen with certain clients who demand it, or maybe a client has a tax preparer that wants to get involved, and it kind of forces those meetings. But by and large, we talked to a lot of advisors at Buckingham. So, we obviously, work with about 400 or 500 RIAs today, but we get inquiries from a lot of firms.

I mean, I think here to date, we’ve had 510 firms that we don’t work with reach out and say, “Hey, I’ve heard about you guys and what do you do? And how can I leverage your resources? Does it make sense for me to work together with you guys?”

And we go through a kind of a dual vetting process to know is this the type of firm that makes sense for our services. Can we add enough value to make it a rewarding relationship on both sides?

And to answer your question, or part of your question, we see a lot of different firms and in that viewpoint of looking at those firms, by and large, most firms, they haven’t thought about it, and they’re not thinking about this. They all say they’re planners, they’re holistic planners. They’re comprehensive.

Steven Jarvis:              Yep. All those fun words.

Steve Atkinson:   We all know how to make our website say the right thing based on what’s flashy. But when the rubber meets the road, say, “Let me see your process. Walk me through your client experience,” it’s very ad hoc. A lot of it actually is driven by the client before the advisor actually will bring something.

So, I think there’s a long, long way to go. We’re a little jaded because we spend a lot of time working with our advisors that we work with today, and they’re very active in doing this. And this is the way everybody should do it. But there’s a cast in between, helping an advisor jump over that cast and actually truly do it.

And it usually involves you got to kind of rip up your current client experience process and see that there’s a better way. But you got to break it down into small chunks to actually see that transition happen.

Steven Jarvis:     I want to really draw out something you said right at the beginning of that explanation because I think it’s really important. You said that by and large, they’re not doing it consciously.

I think that consciously, that is really important because I meet advisors who will tell me that they don’t do tax planning. On the one hand, I’m glad they at least acknowledge that they don’t do it well. But everything you do with money has a tax impact.

And so, if you’re not consciously doing tax planning for your clients, in my view, that’s somewhat irresponsible. And we could have a debate about how aggressively we want to say that, but there is a tax impact to what you’re doing.

So, if it’s not conscious, it’s happening to your clients and you are not helping them with it. But whether it’s investments or estate planning or whatever it might be, there is a tax impact.

And so, I love that you highlight that, of let’s get it to the point where it is conscious that we’re including this in our process because it can feel like that big chasm. It’s still just a huge opportunity for advisors who are willing to lean into it.

Sometimes, I’ll have advisors, somewhat tongue in cheek tell me that I need to stop putting out content so that they can still keep this differentiation of doing tax plan. And I say, “Don’t worry, it’s still such a small percentage of the industry that’s doing it. You’ve still got plenty of room ahead of you.”

Steve Atkinson:   Yeah, I agree. And you said something that just jogged an idea — or not idea, but the conversation we had a lot. So, the advisor unconsciously impacting the tax planning process. So, their client is a CPA preparer, some tax preparer somewhere else.

And you got to keep mind, a lot of the people we talk to are those CPA firms that have not added wealth management. They’re seeing the trend, they’re talking to their peers at conferences, like, “Oh, this advisor or this CPA friend of mine built out a very successful wealth management practice. He’s very happy or she’s very happy.”

And there’s raving about the experience that they’ve created for the clients they’ve had for years on the CPA side. But when you talk about it unconsciously impacting the client from a tax playing standpoint for the advisor does, it just reminded me a lot of times we’ll talk to these CPA that talk to us and we will say, “Well, why are you hesitating about rolling out a wealth management firm?”

And a lot of times they’ll say, “Well, we work with a lot of advisors and they give us referrals.” And I think about that, like there might be CPAs out there that have clients and this CPA is going, “Gosh darn it, if that advisor would’ve not done that and unconsciously impacted their taxes, the client could have a better outcome from their tax standpoint.”

It frustrates me at times because like that CPA sees it, but they may not want to actually build a business to help the client because it might mean three or four less referrals to their firm, which is a small revenue source of comparison to actually helping the client taking on their assets too.

Steven Jarvis:     Yeah, I think we’re all guilty to some degree of getting comfortable with the way things are and feeling hard to change. But yeah, very often the reason — as I work with advisors, I mean, I’ll get questions about how do I work better with CPAs? How do I get more referrals from CPAs?

And one of the core things that comes down to is how can you make that CPA’s life easier? And they’ll immediately push back and say, “Well, it’s not my job to make their life easier” and say that’s fair.

But by making their life easier, you’re going to add value to your client because your client’s life is going to be easier, and you’re going to set yourself apart in this CPA’s mind of, “Oh, I know dozens of advisors, but I only know one who’s making my life easier. I only know one who’s telling me in October or November, ‘Here’s something we did this year.” Instead of waiting until March and saying, ‘Oh, by the way, we did that thing last year and forgot to tell you.’”

Because CPAs just end up being the bearer of bad news. And that’s not a fun situation to be in. When you weren’t involved in the planning and then you have to tell a client, “Oh, actually you have this big bill due to the IRS …” those aren’t fun conversations. And it makes it hard for CPAs to want to work with advisors at times, unless the advisor is doing something to set themselves apart.

Steve Atkinson:   Yeah, I think you’re spot on. And it brought back a memory of something we did. About 10 years ago, we actually hired a firm that what they do is they bring like a focus group, your kind of your target audience.

Then you have your message relayed to them, and you’ve probably seen this like during political years, where you’ll have like a candidate speak and you’ll have like 10 people in a room with all these dials. And when the message is resonating, they’re dialing up like, “Okay, this is resonating with me.”

And then when they’re saying something that’s turning them off, they turn the other way. You’ve probably seen these. Frank Lance is kind of the guy behind that, but we hired his firm at 10 years ago to help advisors with better connecting with CPAs, centers of influence, other experts.

So, we had a panel of about 15 CPAs, estate planning attorneys, and other professionals that advisors work with. Then we tested messages about advisors’ role and how they work with other professionals. And these people have those dials. And it was a professionally done control group.

And some of the things you just mentioned there is what they talked about. So, the topic of getting referrals, what that control group told us was, “I’m not going to work with you to get referrals or to give you referrals.” That isn’t helping anyone.

But what they ultimately distilled it down to was, if you can understand who I help and how I help, and I can understand who you help and how you help, and then as we find people that need our expertise and our services and just make those introductions and say, you know what, don’t say, “Hey, here is Steve, who’s a CPA, he can do your taxes.” That’s so general.

You find this specific to make my life easier. Don’t put me in a general list and I got to find the diamond in the rough problem for the client, uncover that, and then make the introduction, so we’re all solving problems for a client.

And by the way, the other thing they said was … a lot of times advisors are like, “Hey, I’m quarterbacking this for my clients.” And which did not go over well, by the way.

The other professionals are like … I think someone said “Who anointed you king? We’re all the quarterback. We all have a seat at the table here working on the client’s behalf, and we got to learn to play well amongst each other.”

Even though someone may lead the charge. But no one is anointed the quarterback or the king of the table.

Steven Jarvis:     There’s so much interesting tidbits that come out of there. One, I love the fact that there’s a more scientific study that reinforces what I’ve experienced personally. That’s always nice to hear.

Because I’m right there with you. We constantly preach to advisors because my experience, the experience of CPAs I know, is that the advisors who just ask for referrals are never going to get them. Because why would I give you a referral?

I mean, think about who you actually give referrals to in your personal life. And it comes back to what you said there of do I really understand who you are and how you serve and vice versa. Because if I know what my client’s experience is going to be working with you, I’m more likely to send them your way.

So, that’s definitely fascinating right there. And then it’s also interesting that you talk about that quarterbacking language not resonating because that totally makes sense to me. But there’s also part of me that’s like, “Well, how does that fit with how I talk to advisors?”

Because that’s often how I’ll tell advisors that RTS works, is that, hey, the advisor’s still in the driver’s seat. Taxes are a passenger on the bus, not the driver. But I think the key difference there is that as I work with advisors, I have a strategic partnership with them.

We’ve agreed, hey, we’re going to work together for the benefit of the client. But if it’s an outside advisor who I just happen to share a client with, Yeah, the advisor coming to me and saying, “Hey Steven, I’m the quarterback here, I’m in charge. You just do what I tell you,” yeah, that’s not going to work for me.

Steve Atkinson:   By the way, it’s okay for you to say they’re the quarterback. It’s like let other people put you in that position versus declaring it.

Steven Jarvis:     That’s a great point.

Steve Atkinson:   So yeah, there’s a lot in there. And we can all learn better. One neat story as a result of that, we had an advisor who took it to heart. I think he was one of the advisors that was sharing the message of how he explained it, and he changed.

And about year and a half afterwards, he had referred close to a dozen potential clients to a CPA. Because this CPA, he had a specific area. I mean, he had a niche market kind of deal.

And this advisor kept uncovering these needs from his clients that he knew that this had CPA focused on. After about the eighth or ninth referral over, the CPA goes, “How do you keep uncovering these people that have this problem that you knew that I specialize in?” And the advisor said, “Well, I walk every one of my clients through a thorough discovery process.”

In the end, the CPA goes, “Well, can you show me what that looks like? Because there’s something you’re doing that’s uncovering stuff that other people aren’t uncovering.” So, the advisor kind of walked him through this light-based discovery process.

To the point where the CPA says, “That is so awesome. I’ve got about 20 of my clients that need to walk through that same discovery process because there’s things I’m clearly missing or maybe I’m missing.”

So, it actually opened up this multiplier effect of helping that advisor not focus on what they do, focus on discovery. Again, through discovery, you’re going to find problems that maybe the advisor is best suited to fit or the CPA, or some other professional.

But it all starts discovery, which is again, putting the bullseye right on the client. What is it that makes you tick? What keeps you up at night? What are you optimistic about? What excites you?

All those things have all these different ripple effects of planning resources and expertise that CPAs may solve one, maybe a tax plan for the other, maybe an estate plan for the other, maybe an investment-related problem. There’s so many different things that it truly takes a village just to truly solve the client in totality.

Steven Jarvis:     Steve, that’s such a perfect example of how relationships should get built with centers of influence with CPAs. Because what I like about that, and please push back on me if I understood any of this wrong, but you have an advisor who someone helped him realize that maybe his current approach wasn’t working. So, that’s always a helpful step.

But then he got really intentional about really — he was just intentional about serving his own clients. He didn’t enter into some kind of contract with the CPA. There needed to be reciprocal referrals or anything like that. He understood what the CPA did and then as clients needed that service, he sent those referrals because he knew his clients would be better off.

And then through that, the CPA started seeing that, “Wait, here’s an advisor doing something different.” And he got a chance to clearly understand what the advisor was doing that was unique and different and adding value.

And that’s where we see the most productive referral relationships come about for advisors and CPAs. And we have a couple of templates we use with advisors of, “Hey, here’s some good questions that you can ask CPAs to kind of prompt some of these discussions.” By the way, none of those questions are, “Hey can you send me a referral?”

But it’s all about how do you find opportunities to demonstrate to a CPA the value you add to your clients so that when those opportunities come up of, “Oh wait, my clients do need this help — oh, that’s right, Steven does this differently. I better call him.”

Steve Atkinson:   Yeah, a hundred percent. I mean, as long as that CPA in this example kept delivering great value and solving the problem that the advisor identified, he would’ve kept referring those for as long as he found those needs.

It wasn’t because there was some reciprocity of business coming back that was just a natural byproduct of just doing the right thing. We’ve all heard this saying “What truly only matters is what are you doing when no one’s watching.”

And that’s an example of that. There was no reason to make the referral other than my clients needed help. And a good advisor will do that every single time, not only when there’s something coming back to them from a business standpoint.

Steven Jarvis:     And to kind of flip that around for a second because there might be some advisors listening who say, “Okay, well, then why doesn’t that work in reverse? Why aren’t CPAs just sending me referrals because I can help their clients?” And it’s because they don’t understand how you can help their clients.

Financial advisor, financial planner, these are such ambiguous terms and for the most part, to CPAs, what that means is you’re going to sell insurance.

In their mind, because they’ve had bad experiences at some point, they think if I refer my client to you, you’re going to bombard them, this is going to turn into a timeshare sale.

Until you educate them differently as to the value you provide to your clients, that CPA’s just going to lump you in with the 30 other advisors they know and they’re never going to send you a referral.

Steve Atkinson:   I think you’re spot on. I played golf this summer with somebody very successful business owner, just an acquaintance, referral — not a referral, but a friend of a friend type of deal. And he learned I was coming from the defense services industry and he’s like, “Oh yeah, I work with a very large firm here in town.”

And like, “Oh cool.” And I asked him, I said “Do you mind me asking, what do you roughly pay?” He goes, “Yeah, I pay about 1%.” And I said, “So, I assume they’re doing your tax planning for you in your investments.”

And he goes, “They’re not, but based on your question, it sounds like I should be getting tax planning for that type of fee.” I go, “Yeah, probably.”

So, it is like clients don’t know what to expect until someone asks them a question that puts that advisor on defense. Like, “Well why aren’t you doing tax planning too? Because there’s other firms that do it.” Yeah, spot on.

Steven Jarvis:     Yeah, it’s really interesting that you bring up fees there. That’s obviously a hot topic in our industry. Since I’m kind of industry outsider, I don’t wade into that fray too often, other than to say in my experience, clients care about getting value that exceeds the fee they pay.

And so, as far as I’m concerned, there is no magic right number as far as whether you charge flat fee or percentage or what those percentages are. As long as you are providing value that exceeds the fee.

And I love the way you asked that question of you’re not accusing someone else of doing something wrong or improper or whatever you want to call it. It’s just curiosity of, “Oh, well if they’re charging an average or premium fee, are they at least providing an average or premium service?”

And I’ve met advisors who, for some of our listeners, it would probably blow their mind, the fees that the advisor charges; but I also get to see the services they provide, the value they provide. And I say, “Yep, I would pay that too.” As long as the service is there.

Steve Atkinson:   I learned a while back that clients don’t know how to describe what their advisor does. So, I don’t ask the question, “So, tell me what they do for you?” So, I could ask this person, “Oh, so great. So, tell me what they do for you.”

And they probably would’ve said, “Oh, they’re great. They take care of our finances. They’re just great.” That’s the typical response. So, I’ve learned not to ask that question.

And instead I ask other types of questions like, “So, I assume they probably doing your tax plan for you as well.” Or things like that in that kind of way leading the client to … I’m kind of on this pursuit of getting as many clients matched up with true holistic planners.

Because investment advising should not be done in a silo. Tax planning should not be done in a silo. Estate planning should never be done in a silo. There should be some cohesive viewpoint on make sure the client is being taken care of.

And the average client, you look at a typical advisor and I get this from when I work with advisors and ask these questions, is “How many different things can you probably help your client with?” And by the list is in twenties or thirties if not more.

And asset allocation, by the way, is one of those. Tax laws harvesting might be a second one. And okay, so then if you have 20 different services, that means there’s 18 more things you can do for your clients.

And typically, a client has engaged with their advisor for two or three things. So, that becomes their definition of an advisor. So, clients don’t know how to describe their advisor because they don’t know all the things the advisor does.

And all these other things usually require other areas of expertise or resources that either you don’t have today, so you’re avoiding those conversations because you don’t want them to come up because you can’t solve them.

But the best advisors have found a way to provide resources, provide services that are maybe outside of their scope. Because they know if they have those conversations, the client needs them. And a happy client truly is somebody that isn’t waking up in the middle of the night thinking about anything.

But most people are waking up thinking about something. It could be their parents, aging parents. It could be their kids in college, could be switching careers. All those impact money that need some sort of planning expertise.

Steven Jarvis:     The other thing I’ll run into is that for those handful of advisors that not only have that list of service but are doing something on all of those services, there’s still a disconnect on the client understanding that.

So, maybe we have an advisor who is doing 15 different things for their client. But when you ask the client, it’s, “Oh, here’s these two or three things.” And so, our friends over at the Perfect RIA, they’ve coined this as the, “dishwasher rule.”

To your point about helping people sleep better at night, clients need to know about the value you’re providing. And so, we call it the dishwasher rule because you only get credit for doing dishes if your significant other knows that you’ve done that. And so, you need to find productive ways.

This isn’t about patting yourself on the back. It’s productive ways to let your clients know, here are the things we’ve taken care of for you. And sometimes it’s going to be, “Hey, we did this analysis and great news, you’re all set for this year. We’ll come back to it next year.”

But that’s where that peace of mind is going to come from. Because that’s certainly true on tax planning in some years; we look at tax planning for all of our clients. That’s what we do, we’re in the business of taxes.

But that doesn’t mean we’re making massive changes every year or we’re receiving them millions of dollars every year. There are some years where part of our value added, and we do feel like there’s a lot of value in it, of going through the steps, going through the analysis.

And then letting them know, “Hey, here’s the 37-point checklist we went through. You are all set this year. We’re going to look at it again for you next year.”

Steve Atkinson:   You’re spot on. We don’t have anything as clever as the dishwasher rule. We’re not marketers, but it’s just we call it, just cross education. You need to show your clients all things you can do. And we’ve been at Buckingham, rolled out what we call wealth planning conversations.

We’ll have about 50 of those by the end of this year that we put into a format for advisors that here’s the frequency of how often you should have this conversation and so on, and so forth.

Here are the resources to actually deliver this wealth planning conversation. But it’s all, to your point, meant to document and have a history trail of here are all the things we reviewed, here’s the last time we reviewed them.

Because to your point, clients, if they haven’t had a conversation in 18 months, they’re probably not able to recall that right now; here’s what you do, here’s how the value provided.

But if on an ongoing basis, which we call them a feed forward meetings — not feedback, you’re always looking forward; “Hey, here’s what we’ve done, but here’s what we still have yet to do.” And it’s a great way to get feedback on how you can improve your services.

A big part of that feed forward meeting is cross education and reviewing all the wealth planning conversations that you’re taking your clients through along their journey.

Steven Jarvis:     Yeah, I love that. Such a great description. Steve, we like to make sure that we’re taking all the great information we share with our listeners and turning it into value, which for us means that we can take action.

And so, we’ve covered a lot of different things here today, but we want to make sure we give our listeners specific action items. So, as you think about our conversation or just about things that clients can do or that advisors can do to add more value to their clients, specifically around tax planning, what’s an action item you would recommend to people listening to this episode?

Steve Atkinson:   Well, I mean, as simple as take action. So, I believe that the financial advisor is sitting in one of the most important roles in their clients’ lives. And every advisor out there is a leader, whether they have thought about that constantly or not, but you are a leader in your clients’ lives. Your clients look at you as a leader.

And here’s a specific action that I would recommend everybody does. And that is ask yourself, what would a fan do? Because a great leader is a huge fan of their clients. So, as you think about your clients and some actions you can do, what would a fan do if they were a fan of your clients?

Would they reach out to the client during a market price? Would they be the first one there to reach out and say, “How are you doing?” Would a fan have a deeper, more comprehensive conversation that uncovers things that maybe you can’t help with?

So, would a fan make sure that you have capacity in your day so that you can spend more time with your clients? Are you striving for efficiency and scale? So, it is as simple as just taking an action step and doing something that gives you more time with your clients.

And I’ve found that this framework of what would a fan do? A fan would not hide, a fan would not be so busy they can’t help with their clients more. Fans are always rooting for their clients and finding ways to add value and cheer on their success.

Steven Jarvis:     I love that. That’s such a great framework, to take a step back and ask that question, “What would a fan do?” A couple of other things that stand out to me from our conversation that fit right under that of maybe specific things you can drill down on.

I’m going to go back to what you said early on of this has to be a conscious effort. So, next action step I would recommend is that as you look at those values that you proclaim to offer on your website, make sure that those are all conscious parts of your process.

If you have taxes written anywhere on your website, you need to consciously have this as a step in your process. And one of those steps absolutely has to be getting tax returns for your clients every single year for every single client.

Steve, thanks so much for your time today. I really appreciate you coming on and sharing your insight. If people want to follow up and have a conversation with you or learn more about what you’re doing at Buckingham, how can they learn more?

Steve Atkinson:   Yeah, at buckinghamstrategicpartners.com, a lot of information on there, on what we do, how we help advisors. I also am the host of the Admired Advisor Podcast, which, Steven, you’ll be on there soon. So, excited about that.

So, great way to get an idea of some of the advisors that work with us and kind of how they’re thinking about their client relationships. But those are the two areas I’d start with, is our website and the podcast.

Steven Jarvis:     Perfect. Thanks again for your time, Steve. For everyone listening, until next time, good luck out there. And remember to tip your server, not the IRS.

We’re not overpaying. No, we’re not overpaying. We’re not overpaying anymore. The tax code’s complicated, boring, and overrated. You don’t want that, you want a pro. One thing that you should know: this is a radio show. It’s not tax advice, don’t take it that way.

The information on this site is for education only and should not be considered tax advice. Retirement Tax Services is not affiliated with Shilanski & Associates, Jarvis Financial Services or any other financial services firms.

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