Transcript

Steven Jarvis:

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 in this show I teach financial advisors how to deliver massive value to their clients through retirement tax planning.

On today’s show I have the pleasure of introducing Sten Morgan who is here with me today. Who in addition to being the founding member of Legacy Investment Planning – where he is a very successful financial advisor – also works with other advisors to help them build successful planning practices through his Elite Advisor Networks. So, Sten welcome, it’s great to have you!

Sten Morgan:

Steven, thanks buddy! Happy to be here.

SJ:

Did I get that intro right, is that a pretty good description of the things you have got going in life?

SM:

I have a few things, I have a couple other things going on but, yeah try to keep up with it. But those are the main things.

Your Prospect Has Approached You Looking For Value. Do Not Hold Back [1:21]

SJ:

Perfect! We’ll have to come back to some of the other things you have going on. So, Sten today we want to cover a couple of things. But, really we want to focus on this idea that you promote to advisors of – you know what, just go ahead and give it all away for free. Maybe not all of it but why don’t you provide a little better nuance of what I’m saying here?

SM:

You bet, yeah. I think I look back at my journey, entering the business, 22 years old. Jumped around different broker dealers, kind of my path to independence, kind of the RIA model. But the industry told me early on, give a client just enough, but don’t give them too much until they pay you or until they buy something from you. It took me a while to realize that if I was a consumer, I wasn’t giving them enough to say, ‘yes’. I wasn’t helping them build their confidence to a point that the ‘yes’ was really easy. I was hoping that they would make this leap. I wasn’t really bridging that for them. It was really a lot of relying on relationship and “hey I hope you like me.” And therefore, “let’s do business together” and then “maybe I’ll do something good for you, just trust me.” Over time I realized there’s a great book called Getting Naked – Patrick Lencioni, it talks about – just start giving great ideas right away. Like if you’re a consultant – start consulting somebody in the first meeting. Instead of talking about your firm and your independence and all this stuff to the client, we’re all saying the same thing. Give them a different experience. So our team now, we all get into a meeting and I ask as many questions as I can, I get as much data as I can, in a very conversational manner but as soon as I can I jump up to the whiteboard and I start giving them great ideas and the fear, the obstacle years ago for me is what if I give them all this stuff and they just do it on their own or what if they have this other advisor and they’ve secretly come into my office and they’re trying to get all my best ideas and they’re going to run over to their other advisor and have their other advisor do it. It took me doing it enough to realize that no one is going to do that. I have three kids, a wife, a couple companies, I’m not going to meet with an advisor to interview other advisors or have somebody else do what this advisor is telling me is good. So I think it really is just limiting beliefs and the lies we tell ourselves that is stopping advisors from doing that.

SJ:

Yeah… Really appreciate you sharing your backstory there. I think all of us struggle at some point with trying to get over some internal hurdles of hey I can’t do it this way. But you called that out there that your original approach somewhere in the process there was this: ‘Hey trust me’. And no consumer likes that, right? It doesn’t matter what service or product you’re buying, if there’s a ‘hey trust me in there’ you’re probably running away scared, right? Especially if you’re asking me to invest my money or trust your recommendations on what I should do with my money. Whatever services you’re offering me if it’s just, hey trust me, especially if you started in your early twenties, right or wrong or otherwise. I mean you’re in your twenties and there’s going to be a lot of people thinking – this guy doesn’t know what he’s talking about.

SM:

Yup.

SJ:

And so you took a different approach of, “why don’t I just tell you what I’m going to do and then we’ll implement it together.”

Remind Yourself That You May Not Be The Right Fit For Everyone [4:12]

SM:

Yeah and there’s always more to do, I look back at it and I laugh at it now. When I was in my mid-twenties, I would meet a client and they wouldn’t call me back or they’d say no to working with me and I was like offended…

SJ:

Hahaha (laughing)

SM:

I had to humble myself to realize that I must have done something wrong. Like I either didn’t create a sense of urgency or I didn’t illustrate to them how big of a problem they actually have. Because clients are all busy, they solve big problems not small problems and so after meeting with they leave thinking, ‘Oh that was neat but I have other things so to do, I have to get my kids to soccer practice,’ that’s my fault. But if they leave a meeting with me thinking, ‘Wow that’s a big..those are big problems that need to be solved and I need him to help me solve it.’ I did something right.

SJ:

Yeah if in your process your whole sales pitch, is hey trust me and they never call you back. Oh man! How personal is that to you, oh they don’t trust me!

SM:

Yep.

SJ:

Whereas if you lead with – Hey, here’s how I’m going to add value, if they don’t call you back and you’re confident of the value added… Great, it wasn’t the right fit and they don’t see the value, lets move on!

SM:

Yeah, I remind myself, I have it written down on my mindset sheet that I look at. It says I’m not the right fit for everyone and I’m also not the solution to everyone’s problem. Which means if I have a great approach and I say this is what we do and here’s how we do it and here’s how much it costs and somebody says, no. Hey, best of luck, take the free advice I gave you but I’m going to find a person that is. And I think that’s how advisors… you either build a practice that someday you regret having. Because you accepted everybody…

SJ:

[Laughs] yeah.

SM:

…and then you start telling people no and start firing them and I said I want to build a practice with the people I want and someday I’m not giving away half of my book to new advisors and have frustrated clients. So it’s the intentionality and really it’s an abundance mentality of there’s enough people out there, I just have to go find the right ones.

SJ:

Yeah, I love that abundance mentality, I mean how many clients does an average advisor serve, I mean 100-200 maybe and there’s 350 million people in the United States, even if we say only a third are adults that’s probably terrible math but uh you only need a hundred to two hundred, let’s not worry about the advisor across the street stealing from you, let’s worry about how you’re providing value.

SM:

Yeah and I put a little video out to my list of advisors that said relationships doesn’t matter at all. That’s a little edgy but I believe so many advisors rely on – I go to church with this person, I play golf with this person and that’s why they’re going to do business with me. Our approach at Legacy is I don’t care if you don’t like me I’m just going to save you a bunch of money. Our clients love us and we become good friends but if my focus is results, which means my clients work with me because we do really good work then the relationship will follow. Because when I moved to Nashville and I didn’t know anybody and I started a new business. If a relationship was the goal my business would have failed. Then I had to pivot and think what are the strategies that’ll get people’s attention and a big part of that was tax planning. People hate taxes, creative tax strategies I would give a majority of the credit of why my business grew as fast as it did.

The Client Is Going To Remember Your Idea [7:07]

SJ:

Well, then you’re definitely on the right podcast Sten. We really try to focus on taxes here and especially on how do advisors take these different tax topics we talk about and really provide value to their clients. So in the spirit of, you know, giving most of it away, Sten go ahead and give away for my listeners some of these tax strategies you use with your clients or some of the things you tell prospects before they’ve even paid you.

SM:

Yeah, I think, first I would tell advisors, there’s that fear of I’m not a tax advisor so I can’t give professional tax advice. If you’ve ever told anybody to fund an IRA, you’ve given tax advice. You just have to quantify it differently. So if I tell a client, hey you’re currently not funding a 401(k) or you’re a business owner and you don’t have a CEF IRA, hey you should fund your CEF IRA with $40,000 ‘cause it will save you $10,000 a year. Well I don’t stop there I say well over the next 10 years funding your CEF will save you $100,000. So I took what maybe perceived as a small problem and I stretched it out and told them that actually not doing this is really costing you this. Now, a small problem became a big problem to them. That’s kind of like the white belt version of it. You take something simple that most advisors know and you quantify the value from a tax perspective and then over time you get more complicated whether you talk about tax credits, you think about QBI. A recent one I did with a client, they were doing a lot of guaranteed payments to their owners so those guaranteed payments were not following under the QBI calculation so we worked with their CPA and we said you need to go in and reposition that, you have to pay a reasonable wage. But if we can get a lot of that moved out into more of a dividend or a distribution, we can now take 20% off the top of that and for that client, four owners and they’re making a lot of money, that saved them about 75 to 80 grand of taxes, just by changing the way they coded, the way their owners were being paid. Now, I take that over 10 years and that’s an $800,0000 idea. By the way they pay me $3000 dollars a month to help them. I just paid for myself for the next twenty years.

SJ:

Yeah perfect, so now you can sit back and not do anything for them, right?

SM:

Yeah exactly, but the nice thing about that is that it’s the CPA that did the lift but the idea was mine. So if you think about it, who is the client going to think about when they think about getting the higher QBI deduction? It’s the one who gave them the idea, not the one that executed it. So what’s amazing about tax ideas is that tax credit… another great story: I was working with a company and they called me two months before they were selling their company to a larger healthcare company and I was in there asking questions and they developed all their own technology. I said, “okay I know now because I’ve interviewed CPAs and got these nuggets that if you improve upon or build your own technology, there’s a good chance that an R&D tax credit could be available to you.”
So I said, “hey let’s set up a call with this tax department that does R&D credit and let’s just see what it looks like.” Literally, the month that they sold their company, they got a $250,000 tax credit. If they would’ve done it three months later they wouldn’t have qualified for it, potentially. Oh, by the way the company that bought them heard about it went through the same process and they found a $500,000 tax credit they didn’t even know existed.

SJ:

Wow.

SM:

And that was a billion-dollar company that’s going public and they didn’t know about it. But again, I just knew enough to kind of ask the right questions to identify it, and now that’s forever my idea.

SJ:

That’s so awesome, I want to go back just for a minute so that we make sure we hit on some of the really important things in here. The fist example, you started giving was just talking about funding your 401(k) all the way and the potential tax savings there. So you started throwing around some dollar amounts, I don’t know if those were just off the top of your head or specific situations you were thinking of but you’re telling me that you do this with a prospect right? So, if I come to you and I saw, hey Sten I’m looking for a financial advisor, umm, how do you get that information out of me to be able to throw out those numbers, are you really giving me numbers in that first meeting, so I can walk out and fund my 401(k) myself?

SM:

Yeah it’s up to us to give them examples and ideas. So even if I get a couple of data points I can fill in the blanks with a story to illustrate to them the importance of just knowing about this. So, if I’m with a technology company and I haven’t even seen their tax return yet. But I can say I worked with a client a couple years ago, similar industry, but here’s some of the things we discovered by working together. I’m not even saying I’m going to find out the same things with you, but I’m just telling this is the kind of work we do and the potential results we can have. We work with clients in similar situations and they have partners and their QBI benefit were not being maximized and we did it for them, here’s the results. Get away baseless points, get away from percentages and if we can put dollar amounts and extend it out and say here’s the true benefit. Cause if I were the client and I can help reduce their fees by half on a $1 million account and instead of paying 20 grand they’re paying 10 grand… technically I just saved that for the life of the account assuming they didn’t do anything else. So we’re not deceiving, we’re not telling them hey here’s our magic ball, we’re setting the stage really well but we’re quantifying the value of some of these things to make sure it gets their attention.

SJ:

Wow that’s that’s really powerful that you’re quantifying as you go. That’s really cool.

SM:

And it takes practise and time. And as I coach other advisors I tell them to borrow some of my stories. Because again you’re not saying this is for you, you’re just saying here’s an example of why I think this is important and I use this line a lot for prospects, I say, ‘whether you work with me or somebody else.’ Something about that phrase, they’re like no I want to work with you! It’s like – I know but whether you work with me or somebody else you should do this because that means, I don’t care if it benefits me this is just good advice.

SJ:

Yeah.

SM:

This is a good idea regardless of if you do it with me or somebody else. That just continues to create that rapport and that early for that first meeting.

SJ:

I like that you pointed that out of giving them that option that they had all along. This isn’t a trick this isn’t like a secret you’re trying to pull past them. All you’re doing is trying to highlight that you as the financial advisor are not going to pressure them or force them into working with you. That you’re also going into this as – they have a choice, so you’re taking the time rather than telling them how you’re a fiduciary and you provide comprehensive financial planning to blah blah blah blah blah blah blah! You’re spending that time with them quantifying that value for them. That’s so cool that you take the… and so you mentioned that you get up and go to the whiteboard. So, you’re writing down numbers and charting this down and showing them here’s what it’ll look like.

SM:

Yeah whoever can kind of visualize. It’s also nice to stand up because you’re also in teaching posture, you’re coaching them right away versus being at a table. And there’s something about where clients lean forward: it’s a little more engaging. But I think another great story that talks about human nature is: I have a good friend that does kind of click funnel stuff, online courses and he told me once that – we were golfing – and he was like you know what I do? I build a course, I break it up in like 10-15 different sections and I give all those sections away for free online. And I was like why would you do that? He’s like because nobody’s going to go out there and collect all the videos and put them together to build a course, so they’ll view one of it and they’ll come buy my course. Even though they could if they wanted to, go get it all for free and spend that time. Your clients, most prospects are not gonna take the time to take your ideas, research them further, figure out how to do it. The idea of just giving them stuff and for them to say ‘that’s amazing’ like, ‘that’s what you’re giving me for free, what would it look like to work with you for the next year?’ And I think that’s where we have to kind of internalize like that’s the reality. Not the fear we have that I got to hold back and not give it all away because I’ll miss out.

SJ:

That’s such a great way to look at it because Sten you seem like a really smart guy but I’d be willing to bet a lot of money you don’t know more than Google.

SM:

Hahaha that’s right!

“Become A Vendor Of Ideas” [14:34]

SJ:

Correct me if I’m wrong and I love the things you’re sharing but again and I’m not trying to diminish anything you’re doing, most of these ideas they aren’t things that you came up with on your own as far as the strategies right, you didn’t come up with a qualified business income deduction, you didn’t you didn’t come up with the R&D credit. I mean that that’s out there, people can go find that information. But people want someone who’s gonna walk alongside them and help them with the process.

SM:

That’s right and I think that’s where you know my model of being able to charge for my time and advice. I think the industry is heading that way to where advisors are realizing, if I only can get compensated by selling a product, on day one the water is muddied a little bit. It doesn’t mean the product is not needed, it just means that’s kind of my motivation or if I have a client come in and they may never buy anything from us and I still get paid a good fee and I get happy when they call me because I’m getting paid well. All of a sudden the defences are down and then you can really become a vendor of ideas. Because then they’ll be like, ‘I need Sten to sit on my Board of Directors because I know if he’s on the team we’re better off.’ And once somebody gets that feeling I don’t know going into this year if the biggest win is gonna be tax planning or if it’s going to be structuring an LLC with your CPA, but you just become this pillar of their planning because you’ve added so much value over time.

SJ:

Yeah.

SM:

So it doesn’t have to be about the insurance, doesn’t just have to be about the AUM. The ideas that I give clients to help them the most sometimes are about a self-directed IRA that pays me nothing. But now that idea allowed them to buy that rental house they wanted for 10 years and now every time they think about that rental house they think about Sten. It’s amazing how an idea can travel and what it does for a client relationship.

SJ:

Yeah, Sten the way you’re describing it, it’s clear that your focus is on value to the client. This isn’t about how does it benefit me – Sten, this is a hey… even though you you said earlier that it’s not about the relationships – I completely support that – that you can’t rely on relationships to build the company, but you’re spending your time making sure those relationships are maintained throughout the time you’re serving them. Which is awesome!

SM:

Yes. For advisors out there, even the ones I coach, I tell them the bar is not set that high, unfortunately. I think most advisors, there are a lot of us out there and this was true for me when I started the business, it was: who do you know? Here’s your five products, go get those people to buy the product and do the best you can. I don’t believe advisors are out there doing harm but I do believe there’s a lack of awareness of all of the value we can add and what position we can take in the client’s life. The products are great, but they should come next. The products should be the bricks to build a plan; they shouldn’t be the thing steering the ship. My hope is more advisors realize like I’m just valuable, my time, my ideas. Even from an accountability and coaching standpoint, I’m helping my client get from point A to point B, that’s valuable. Even if I’m not a tax expert, I’m not the insurance expert, I’m not the investment expert. Again like you said that information is out there and you can go get it. What people want is: a straight talk, great ideas, unbiased feedback and people just gravitate to that.

SJ:

For sure.

Find Your Niche. Make That Your Superpower. [7:41]

SM:

I do think advisors are the product so I think every advisor should have some super power. You know, maybe it’s like their tax thing is kind of their thing or hey, I manage money, I managed money for Raymond James for a year so that’s kind of my superpower. Or hey, I have a lot of insurance experience or group benefits. You should technically be sound in something. But it’s a weight off to realize I don’t have to be the expert at everything.

SJ:

Yeah what I like to tell advisors is that clients don’t expect you to know everything, they expect you to help with anything.

SM:

Here you go, yeah, I like that.

SJ:

And you mention in there that your superpower is not taxes but you gave us these examples of great value adds for your clients through taxes and you made a comment about learning about this through interviewing CPAs, I think is what I took out of that. How did you start that process? I mean, back when you weren’t confident saying hey let’s talk about R&D credits, what led you to that route of learning more?

SM:

So when I moved to Nashville I didn’t know anybody didn’t have a natural market. The industry or the coaches I had at different larger firms back in Oregon where I grew up was: go meet CPAs, attorneys, real estate people and ask them to send people to you.

SJ:

(chuckles).

SM:

You and every other advisor in the state are doing that and so when I moved to Nashville I said, I just want to have access to really good professional so I’m going to go interview them. Which means I’m going to ask them what’s their ideal client and I’m going to start using them to send my clients to, when my clients have a need. But, I’m going to set an expectation that if I have questions I can call them and if they have questions they can call me. So it’s really like a professional reciprocity. Which is like, hey, let’s just help each and what that built over time is now I have probably five of the top CPA firms in Nashville, that I could get on the phone in 30 minutes and they would give me an hour for free for a client if we were thinking about an idea. Where I called last week, one of the top tax attorneys in Nashville, I got a meeting schedule in a week for one of my clients, just to go through and brainstorm some business opportunities for them. So for me building that up is, now I have this bench of great professional and if I’m like hey this is a weird tax situation, what do you think? I got them right there. So I’m not googling, I’m not researching and I can go straight to the source. So I coach advisors to say, build that bench. The good news is referrals will come from that but you should set up in such a way that they are just valuable to have on the team.

SJ:

Yeah, love that approach. We had some episodes a couple weeks ago talking about working with centres of influence and talking about some similar strategy. I just love how you describe that and correct me if I’m wrong but my take away there is that when you first went to these attorneys or CPAs this wasn’t ‘hey I’m Sten and I’m so smart this is why you should learn about my firm,’ I am assuming you went very humbly and said hey I need to learn about this stuff to serve my clients, can you help me? Or something to that effect. That’s pretty accurate?

SM:

Yeah I mean I said, what’s your ideal client? what’s your price point? You know I needed to know who is out there to help a client when they’re in need. I did that by adding to my factfinder, who are all the professionals involved in your life? So I meet with a new client and I say, hey I’ve never heard of that CPA, I’m going to call him and say we have a mutual client love to grab coffee or a quick phone call with you because that’s just valuable. When I have a planning client that’s paying me great money… to be able to fold these people in. I have a P&C shop locally that’s independent. I got them to agree if I ever have deck pages for a client that I can email it to them and at no cost they’re going to return all the information back to me, in a format that I suggested so that I can take it and just put it into my financial plan. Every once in a while clients say this is great, I have a need will they help me? And I’m like, sure they’re great use them. But again it was just this just professionals helping professionals. You’re going to call me and say, het Sten this client has an issue and I’ll say yeah, here’s an idea. It’s a longer game you know but as you do it now some of my best referrals come from these people now who have also become clients.

SJ:

Wow. That sounds like that’s back to that abundance mentality you talked about that this doesn’t have to be a competition between all these different professionals. Ultimately if your focus is providing value to the client, working together is the right answer.

“You’re Going To Get Better At It By Trying” [21:35]

SM:

Yep and then for me, the advisors we coach, we talk about the 10-year versus the 3-year route in everything you do. If someone tells you can become a financial advisor and be successful in one or two years they’re lying.

SJ:

Hahaha!

SM:

It’s a grind, but you can do it in three, I did. Or you can do the 10+ year route which is kind of keep your head down, prospect your friends and family and if you stay in that long enough and make enough money, just to pay your bills someday you’ll be successful. I couldn’t wait that long, and so there’s a path of – what will get you somewhere in three years. Like I want to take my CFP, it’s going to take me two years, why can’t it take you eight months? Well, I don’t know. Well you could, I self studied and took it in 8 months. It’s possible to do that hard stuff. So we think about COIs it’s like build that aggressively, you’re not going to magically get a bunch of wave of referrals in 1 year, but if you do it consistently I bet you in 3 years, you will have 5 to 10 CY partners that really like you and you’re getting consistent business from them.

SJ:

Yeah, yeah I love all that makes me think of Steven Pressfield’s book, The War of Art. It’s a fantastic book, really really highly recommended. The War of Art by Steven Pressfield. He talks a lot about just needing to spend the time doing the work. It’s focused more on creative things but really anything then we kind of have that feeling of procrastination or that scary feeling that I don’t really want to go try that, whether it’s an exam or prospecting whatever it is. You’re going to get better at it, by trying, by doing the work, by doing that grind. Definitely have a similar experience with the CPA background of oh how long have you studied for? I know people who have studied for it for years. I usually don’t talk about how long I studied for it because people either tell me I’m lying or just kind of walk away. But, what if it works? Why not try? Why not try it in three years?

SM:

Yeah, there’s the things the industry tells us and then there’s the truth. You know I use the comparison a lot, here’s what the industry is telling us and here’s the reality. You don’t need to wait that long to do stuff like. Maybe that’s what the machine is telling you because the machine is big and the machine is slow but there’s so many stories. When you think about mindset there’s awareness, understanding, belief. The first thing you need to do is realize like wow there’s advisors in their 20s and 30s making $1 million, that’s freaky. Okay, now I need to understand how they did it. Oh wow now I need to believe that I can do it too. And so that’s kind of process we take advisors through. Don’t wait 10 years let’s do it in 3. Oh but, by the way it’s going to be really hard and you’ve got to get really creative. That’s why I love the content you guys have because taxes are just such a painful point. Like you can get peoples’ attention all the time by saying I hope business owners pay less taxes. They’ll take that meeting all day long but if it’s like let’s talk about your insurance, you rolled your 401(k) over, that’s just white noise.

SJ:

Yeah, completely agreed. Sten, we really like to focus on action and what would advisors can do based on these conversations we’re having, so before we get to action items you mentioned if there’s some other things you have going on that I didn’t bring up at the beginning, if advisors are excited about what you’re talking about beyond taxes where should they go, what else you got coming out.

SM:

Yes, so we put together stenmorgan.com and there’s an advisor side of that website, and we actually spent quite a bit of time putting together the financial planning course. Which is “How do you charge for your advice?” ‘Cause that’s scary and we were charging zero fees five years ago. I just didn’t even think it was worth or I didn’t even know how to have a conversation and now we’re doing over half a million of financial planning and consulting fees alone, on top of investment management on top of occasional insurance when it makes sense. And most advisors like I was, I was giving that away for free. But there’s a process that’s needed, there’s a confidence that is needed, what’s the deliverable? How does compliance deal with that? So that course has been a great success and then the Elite Advisor Network is essentially hey I want to be in community with the elite advisors that think bigger, that motivate me to take action. ‘Cause I jumped around in different offices in the past. I remember sitting there looking around realizing I don’t want to be like anybody else here, but I don’t know anybody else so I just had to grind on my own. So, if I could’ve been surrounded at 25-30-35 with just the lead advisors it ust kind of raises all ships. So that’s been really fun project as well.

SJ:

That’s awesome, so stenmorgan.com

SM:

Yeah yeah go check it out.

SJ:

Yeah that’s really cool, all right so Sten beyond having advisor go out to stenmorgan.com and learning more about this course that you have to answer this question it always gets asked in this industry of how much should I charge? What are some actions you would you recommend my listeners based on what we’ve been talking about today?

Action Items Recommended By Sten Morgan [26:05]

SM:

You need to find a few key ideas, again they don’t have to be complicated, I gave you a few that are pointed out or not. Novel tax ideas but that you were really confident illustrating to a client. Whether that’s hey if you fund this IRA, look here’s what it does and here’s what it does over time. So, you need to start, you need to learn to quantify your ideas. Don’t use percentages, use dollar amounts whenever possible and don’t be scared to kind of stretch that value over time. Because, if they take action on something today and they do the same thing for 10 years you’re not saying it to be true, you’re saying, if this is all true, here’s what can happen. So, I help advisors come up with a 3 to 4 whiteboard ideas that they’re really good at jumping up and illustrating. Tax harvesting is a great one, whenever I illustrate tax harvesting to a client they’re like oh that’s amazing. Unfortunately, most people just hold it the whole time. What if you just stepped in and you were a little proactive and all of a sudden you made 100 grand in your investment account but you showed $50,000 loss on your taxes, [clients say] oh that’s amazing I didn’t know you could do that. I can illustrate that in five minutes and the client who has never heard it, understands it, because I practice doing it. So I come up with whether it’s tax harvesting or whether it’s here the three buckets you can invest in: tax free, tax-relax and taxable. Come up with two or three or even four ideas that you can just go to (snaps fingers) in your meetings to give the client the feeling of like ‘wow that’s amazing I’ve never heard that before’ because that’s where you hook ‘em.

SJ:

Yeah I love that so so you’re actually, number one we make sure you have 3 to 4 whiteboard ideas – I like that description – of that you are comfortable explaining in crayon or in white board marker, in a way that people can understand. The action item that has to come right with that and you mentioned it was, practice. Even though you know we talked earlier about you don’t have to be an expert in all things, let’s talk about how we define expert because really expert is just knowing more than the other people in the room, and you should definitely know more than your clients about this to be able to be comfortable explaining it. So make sure you’re practicing. Practice in front of the mirror, practice with your team members who aren’t advisors so you know you’re not getting hung up on jargon.

SM:

Yeah you need to get them to the 40-yard line, the expert: the CPA, the attorney is going to run him over the finish line.

SJ:

Yeah.

SM:

But you become the scalp, you know the person that’s like I’m on the lookout and is like hey, that’s interesting, let’s think about that. So, you need to know enough about ideas that you can recognize when they may be valuable and then like an attorney, trying a big case, the attorney doesn’t go to somebody and say, ‘hey I’ve already solved your problem completely now pay me.’ They say ‘hey, I think I can help you, here’s some ideas, here’s some stories.’ The part of you paying me is me doing all this research. So an advisor should be okay saying that’s a great question. Let me take some time on that. You don’t need to have the answer on the spot every time a client doesn’t want you to, they don’t think you should because then at some point you’re faking.

SJ:

Totally agreed, the other action item I’d recommend is that you make sure that you are proactively learning from other people. Sten talked about going to interview other professionals in his area. In addition to being a great way of building relationships with centres of influence, this is a so much more powerful way to learn, how do these things actually work in practice? Even if Google has the information go out and find people you can interview so you know how it works in the trenches.

SM:

Yeah find good resources. You want to move remove as much friction between executing something. So if creating a new habit for me means I have to sit down and read a book for 30 minutes or a search on Google, like there’s a good chance I’m not going to be consistent with that. But like when I partner with you guys and I get an email once or twice a month thas a great idea and I just have to click and open it… You need to put systems in place and find these partners where that stuff is just coming to you. ‘Cause it’s not the best use your time, you need to meet with more clients and serve your clients better but you still need all that information.

SJ:

Totally agree. system, you can’t take these action items I’m recommending and just say hey I’m going to do them next week. Put it to a step in place. Alright the last action item I’m going to recommend is that you go to whatever platform you use to listen to podcasts and go ahead and leave us a review and hopefully a five-star review at that. So that we can continue to grow our community and provide these valuable tax planning recommendations to advisors. So Sten, thanks for being here. Thanks for listening, good luck out there and remember to tip your server not the IRS!