Steven (00:53)
Hello, everyone, and welcome to the next episode of the Retirement Tax Services Podcast Financial Professionals Edition. I’m your host, Stephen Jarvis, CPA. And this week I’m really excited for the episode because we’re gonna go deeper on a somewhat casual recommendation I make quite often that makes it seem like it’s an easy thing to do, but really there’s a lot of work behind it. And specifically what I’m talking about is we have discussions around tax planning. I’m always talking about delegating and have people on your team help you with this process as if hiring, recruiting, managing, promoting, compensating employees is this simple thing. So thankfully, I have Amy Kizer joining me this week from TalentLink Solutions to give us some real perspective on this whole world of building and managing teams. Amy, welcome to the show.

Amy (01:40)
Thank you. I’m happy to be here. I appreciate it. And yes, the easiest thing to do in the hard thing of running a business, right?

Steven (01:49)
Yeah, it’s fun to, I mean, I’ve got so many great people on my team that I’m so grateful for and they allow me to do so much more than I would be able to do on my own. But especially as a business owner or anybody managing a team, it is this constant challenge of understanding how do I find the right people to hire? How do I know when to hire someone? What the heck do I pay them when I do hire them? What other benefits are people actually interested in versus they just look nice on a piece of paper? And so these are things that are so critical to be able to navigate if we want to add to our team and level up the service we deliver to clients.

Amy (02:21)
That’s exactly right. Such an important piece.

Steven (02:25)
So Amy, before we dive in and I just start bombarding you with questions, give us a little bit of background on you, on TalentLink Solutions and why you’ve decided to focus really on working with financial advisors.

Amy (02:36)
Yeah, sure. So I have actually been in and around the business for about 20 years. I actually started on the home office side with TD Ameritrade and then had a small stint with independent broker dealer also on the home office side. And I would go to conferences and I would talk to practice management people, business consultants. And it really became apparent to me that most advisors don’t go independent and build their businesses because they love HR or know anything about it. Right.

(03:05)
And so we created TalentLink Solutions to solve for that exact problem. And so since day one, have been exclusive to working with independent advisors on all things human resources. So certainly have some relationships where we’re brought in, say, for a hiring effort, have some firms that loop us in on, you know, project work, compliance work, right? Writing that employee handbook, things like that. And then we have some retained clients that is essentially, we are their HR manager on an ongoing basis as well.

Steven (03:36)
I’ve got so many questions about the HR and recruiting and hiring side but the tax nerd in me has to ask a tax question before we get distracted with all of the really important things that you do. Talk to me about the distinction between someone being a 1099 contractor and being a w-2 employee because I think this is an area that people can oversimplify and at times get wrong and maybe don’t even realize they’re doing it wrong.

Amy (03:58)
Well, and it’s such a hot topic right now. And interestingly, I think we’re getting support from both sides of the aisle on this matter. So I don’t think that it’s anything that’s gonna go away. There seems to be a real interest in defining what a W-2 employee should be. There is an actual definition out there. And I understand, right? I’m a small business owner too, sort of the simplicity of having a 1099, versus a W-2, but there are a lot of reasons, legal and otherwise, that you should be educated around what those requirements are and make sure that you’re making that good choice.

Steven (04:38)
I think especially for business owners and in particular who are new to this conversation, almost, the way I hear it described to me sometimes, they almost look at it as if it’s just a choice they can make of, well, it just sounds easier to have contractors, so I’m only gonna have contractors. Or they heard a story about someone who has 20 contractors they work with and zero employees. And I’ve heard those stories, I haven’t talked to those people directly, I don’t know if they’re doing it correctly or not.

(05:01)
What I do know to your point is that there seems to be more and more emphasis for slating the description or the definition more towards people being employees unless you have a persuasive argument otherwise. It is very much, these aren’t just tax rules, these are Department of Labor rules of who qualifies as an employee. And at least from my perspective, it’s not something you wanna play around with. Like let’s not just guess and hope we got this right.

Amy (05:24)
I mean, the risk comes in if anyone is ever disgruntled, right? And they go talk to an attorney, that’s going to be one of the first things that they look at. It’s one of the first things that they look for. It is actually pretty simple. I mean, if you are directing someone, if you are training them to do their job, if you are giving them their computer or their workspace or direction really of any kind, that is more than likely an employee, a W-2 employee. It is, like I said, be educated, get educated, make sure that you understand what those definitions look like through a consultant or an attorney, but just don’t wing it and hope for the best.

Steven (06:06)
Well, and similar to other tax topics that I talk about all the time on the show, this is certainly an area where, yes, Google has all the answers, it has all the technical definitions, if you want to take the time to sort through it. So very much an area where I would not play around, there is potential liability involved, whether you’re working with Amy and her team at TalentLink Solutions or some other resource, this is an area where, unless you have really explored this and are confident in your answer, you want to work with someone, make sure you get this one right.

Amy (06:32)
That’s exactly right.

Steven (06:33)
Okay, so let’s talk more about the recruiting work you do for advisors, because that’s how I originally became familiar with your work, and that’s probably the thing I hear most often just from the advisors in my network is as, I worked with Amy to hire this person, it was a fantastic experience, which I love people bringing people on the show who can speak from firsthand experience. So yeah, talk to me about what an advisor should be thinking about when they go to do this wonderful thing called recruiting a new team member.

Amy (06:58)
So I think from a high level, just sort of having an awareness of what our industry is doing as a whole. I mean, I tell everyone that will listen to me, we are in a talent abyss. I honestly don’t see any way out of it in the short term. So particularly when you think that you are looking for experienced talent, it really is important to know what the marketplace looks like and what it’s doing. I think we’re hovering probably around a half percent unemployment as an industry. that’s ridiculously low. So again, kind of going back to, know, what was that process look like? I tell all the firms I work with, they should be posting a job out there. They should have a posting out there, whether it’s through me or on their own or another resource, because you might get lucky. But you know, eight times out of 10 firms are having to be more proactive, right in the hiring effort. So directly sourcing talent or leveraging their network or others. It’s an interesting time out there for sure.

Steven (08:00)
Well, and as a business owner myself, I’ve hired lots of people, I’ve worked with recruiters. I’ll be totally honest, the first time I worked with a recruiter, I had sticker shock on what it was gonna cost me. And I was very resistant to it, and I thought, you know what, I can do this myself. First part of my career I worked at big firms, and I was always involved in the recruiting process. I can do recruiting on my own. But really what I was involved in was like some group interviews, and maybe a few one-on-one interviews. I had no idea how the recruiting process worked.

(08:27)
And I unfortunately learned through some painful experience of, this didn’t go at all the way I wanted to doing it on my own. And then I just started looking at it just like any other service, let’s look at it the same way we look at taxes. Sure, you could DIY your taxes, TurboTax exists. You can do that. And maybe you’ll get lucky and that will be fine for a while. But at the end of the day, if you want a high quality outcome, you need to pay for that service. And the other tax comparison I would make for advisors who have not, gone down this route before, think about the first time you’re explaining to a new client the idea of paying an extra tax bill on a Roth conversion and you’re having this conversation about the long-term benefit of an upfront cost. And when we talk about hiring people on our team, that is such a critical investment in your company that can really have a huge impact on how much of your time you can spend on the things that you really want to do. And so it’s not something you want to play around with and get wrong.

Amy (09:18)
And there’s so many avenues to not execute well through the hiring process, right? All the way from the beginning of actually having a meaningful job description to, you know, what you’re putting out into the world. I talk to advisors all the time about creating a compelling story, right? Give the employees a reason to want to work for you. And then, you know, through sort of the interview process, you know, that’s a tough thing for advisors, which I don’t think anyone would generally associate with advisors, their talkers, their people people, right? So you wouldn’t necessarily think interviewing would be tough for them, but it is. And they don’t drill down, right, enough to really gain knowledge about who the other person is. So it’s a real challenging point.

(10:05)
And then, you know, lastly, even on sort of the onboarding side of things, I’d say most firms that I know of don’t have a good plan for that. And so there’s just a lot to it, more than you would think. And to your point, you know, investing early and investing ahead of time makes sense because you’re going to have the investment one way or another, right? So it’s very costly for someone to come into your firm and work for six or nine or 12 months and then not work out.

Steven (10:31)
It’s very, very costly. Well, since you mentioned interviewing, that definitely is an area, and especially for advisors who are people people, it can feel like, no, I’ve got this. And you were generous enough that you sent us your list of interview questions that you like to ask. And so for listeners, if you go to retirementtaxservices.com/talent, you can download Amy’s list of interview questions that you should be asking.

(10:50)
Amy, one of the things I wanted to ask you about as you’re describing that process is, helping advisors identify when they need to add somebody to their team whether it’s their first employee or their fifth employee especially with kind of the proliferation of software tools for everything I’m thinking specifically of tax planning because that’s the topic I focus on so much, but I see a lot of advisors who probably wait longer than they should to hire someone because they have this idea in their mind that well, hey AI can do it for me. Like I’ll just I’ll just buy this new tool and
then I don’t need to hire someone and I can pay a hundred bucks a month for the software, I don’t need to hire people. And while there are some really cool tools out there, including on the topic of taxes, the advisors I see doing the best work for their clients are the ones who have team members who are helping them along the way. I don’t know advisors who it’s just them all by themselves who are doing the top tier work.

Amy (11:43)
I would say majority of the phone calls that I get are from firms or owners or management teams that are overwhelmed. Right? And so I think the first time you have that feeling or thought that there’s too much to do, it’s already too late. So I think as soon as all cylinders are firing and you feel like you guys are rocking and rolling, that’s when you should begin doing your SWOT analysis to figure out, okay, what’s be getting pushed off just a little bit, right? What are we procrastinating on and how do we sort of fill that space? So it should be it should be early rather than late.

Steven (12:22)
Yeah. So Amy, another way to look at this that I think would be helpful for the listeners, whether you’re talking about somebody who’s just starting their firm, somebody who’s building a team, maybe somebody who’s had a turnover on their team, when you look at an advisor, what are those first couple of roles? And if you have a particular order that you like to see them in, who should an advisor have on their team if they’re serious about doing great client service work?

Commercial (12:42)
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Amy (13:29)
So I saw an article just this morning that came out that talked about the technology usage versus having a support staff team. And actually having the support staff team was more heavily weighted for success and firm growth. So I try to be as tech forward as possible. Personally, I know this is a huge initiative in our industry as a whole, right? Think about the technology that existed just 10 years ago compared to today and it’s just overwhelming the amount of options that you have. But I loved this article, obviously, you know, in my best interest, but I do believe in the people that you have supporting you. So anytime I get sort of a blank slate and I see this most often when somebody’s thinking about their very first hire. To me, it’s always about either, you know, what’s not getting done or

(14:22)
What is that person doing that is not in the best interest of their clients? What’s dragging you away from taking care of your clients or doing more meaningful work or building further relationships or whatever it is that sort of fills your soul or makes things better for your business or your clients? That’s kind of the starting point for me.

Steven (14:42)
It makes a lot of sense. I like that kind of like that self-reflection piece of, okay, based on who I’ve got on the team, whether that’s me or I’ve already got a team, what’s not getting done specifically with a lens of what’s not getting done from a client service role. Amy, you started touching on it earlier, but let’s go a little bit deeper on this because I think this can be especially challenging for business owners hiring operational and support people who are not going to have necessarily inherently incentive-driven compensation.

(15:09)
I don’t know if it’s just natural to be a business owner if you think everyone else should be paid as little as possible and still do a fantastic job because I’m the business owner, I’m taking all the risk. So talk a little bit more about how you help people change their mindset on compensation and how you even learn what you should offer for a position.

Amy (15:25)
Yeah, so I think it’s interesting, maybe because as entrepreneurs, as business owners, as advisors first, you know, a lot of people grew up in this industry kind of, you know, building out their business for the revenue for the profit that they would receive. Right. And so it’s hard for us and them to wrap their mind around someone who’s just more like a steady Eddie and wants to receive that consistent paycheck and not have that volatility and fluctuation. And so I think it’s just education first that that’s the case. Most employees want stability, right? They want comfort. They want to know that they can count on being able to take care of their families and their needs. And so most often where this comes up is in bonus structure, right? Everybody is, I think, paying a salary for the most part, at least the firms that I work with.

(16:18)
And then it’s them wanting to make the bonus really variable and have it be a significant portion of their compensation and that employees just aren’t built that way. They really sort of crave that stability factor and so I think having that awareness is really important and one that I counsel to quite a bit. And then again just kind of going back to what is the market doing as an example the Pacific Northwest is the tightest market in the country has been for at least five years, maybe longer. I do not know why. It’s really interesting to me, maybe because it’s so wonderful to get out and be outside and everybody’s more worried about those things as opposed to their business lives, but it has been historically the tightest market in the country and I don’t think people would suspect those types of things. So just getting to know your marketplace as well I think can be really helpful.

Steven (17:08)
Interesting… having current context for what we’re doing. And you mentioned it earlier that this has rapidly changed over the last couple of years. So if your last hire was two years ago and you haven’t really looked at the market since then, you’re probably in for some surprises. So on that topic, what other trends have you seen over the last couple of years that have shifted in hiring that might surprise advisors getting ready to do their next hire?

Amy (17:30)
Well, to that point, I will say plan for sticker shock. Like you say, even if it was only a couple of years ago, I don’t have the hard and fast numbers in front of me, but my guess is we’re 1.3, 1.4 over five years ago. I mean, it’s intense. I also have found recently, let’s call it maybe the last 24 months, that benefits are becoming increasingly built out.

(17:55)
So where I think a lot of firms have always sort of had paid time off, generally closed with the stock market, maybe there’s some sort of stipend or health benefit offset. We have full packages now, even with small firms. Let’s call it 200 to 500 revenue size even. And so being aware that that’s also a competitive piece, whether that’s a hiring effort or even to keep your people. That’s something that I think a lot of people don’t think about is how do I keep my people when the rest of the marketplace is trying to hire them away from me. So all of this is relevant even if you’re not hiring and you have a team.

Steven (18:42)
Yeah, that’s a great reminder. And you led with that in your intro that this isn’t just about recruiting, it’s about retention, it’s about how we treat our team and how we keep them, retain them, train them, all those really important things. Amy, for people listening to this who are thinking, yeah, I need to hire, maybe I wanna work with a recruiter, maybe that’s Amy, maybe that’s another resource, what should they be thinking about from a timing standpoint? Like ideally, if you could wave a magic wand and someone was gonna work with you, when would they come to you in their process for you to ensure the highest likelihood of a great outcome?

Amy (19:09)
As soon as it crosses their mind. I think we’re built uniquely because we are an HR consulting firm first. So I do a lot of discovery work with the firms that I work with to figure out who do we even need to hire and what does that look like and how do we define it and how do we write an effective job description? I know a lot of other recruiting firms that exist out there. Some are fantastic at what they do, but I don’t think they do it quite to that depth.

(19:36)
The earlier I can get my hands on them, the better. And I think the higher likelihood of success. On timing though, I will add, I think a lot of people that we speak with call us and they expect a higher 30 days out. That’s just not how it works. So make sure that you are planning in advance if it is becoming critical especially because you’re probably looking at 90 to 120 days.

Steven (20:01)
Yeah, well that’s really good perspective to share. think that’s something that, there’s the sticker shock of the compensation. There’s also the sticker shock of how long this can take. So I appreciate you sharing both of those things. This is probably a somewhat self-serving question, but particularly when someone is looking for a particular skillset. So let’s say an advisor listens to a great podcast about tax planning and they’re thinking like really for me to be able to deliver on this tax planning topic, I’ve got to have somebody else in my team who can support me.

(20:27)
And in their minds, this is somebody who maybe has experience at least reviewing a tax return or they’ve got some knowledge of technical terms or whatever that might look like. When you go to help someone hire, how broad or narrow do you start? Like is there a point where you say, know what, if we try to add those bullet points in, like we’re just gonna limit our field too much.

Amy (20:47)
I am sort of on the let’s be as specific as possible. Because you’re gonna get people that have zero experience and no relevant skill set, right? All the way to the other end of the spectrum where people are clearly overqualified. Particularly if you are going out like on a job posting Maybe a little bit different if say you’re you know sourcing directly or you know tapping into your network or you know some of those other avenues but I think…you want to be specific because you have the best chance of finding the person that you’re looking for if you are specific and that’s relevant to the job that they’re going to be doing but then also, you know, I talk a lot about sort of creating that compelling story I’m a firm believer that there is someone out there for every firm every opportunity and I’ve seen some interesting opportunities over the course of my experience, right? So the more clear you are about you know who you are as a firm what’s important to you, what’s important to your clients, and just really getting into sort of the weeds on that stuff, that’s also going to help identify the right person or attract them.

Steven (22:00)
You commented on interviewing earlier and to me at least, I love your thoughts on this, that is a really important part of the interview process. And even when I’ve worked with recruiters in the past, I always look forward to that point where I get to be part of the process as well, because we get it narrowed down to some really quality candidates, but then I get to have a chance to answer questions for that potential team member. Again, you offered a great resource at retirementtaxservices.com/ talent Of interview questions that people should be asking. But part of what comes to mind for me is the same thing we do with clients of the clearer we set expectations, the better we can deliver on those expectations. And that carries through to team members as well. So I like the way you’re talking about as far as specificity because then you’re creating a clear expectation for this team member coming in. Because I would imagine, would love your perspective on this, where I see team placement go wrong is where you had the pretty AI generated job description that everyone has that didn’t actually reflect what their life would be like when they started working for your firm.

Amy (23:00)
Yeah, and then you also didn’t ask any specific questions through the interview process. So neither of you knows the other any better than you did when looking at a piece of paper. That’s what I’m trying to protect against. That’s what I’m trying to help people not have happen to them, right? I do think that it’s a very fluid process and there’s a very clear starting point. And then you have to move through all the steps similarly and thoroughly.

(23:28)
And that’s how you end up effectively hiring someone that’s going to stick with your firm. That includes the softballs, but it’s also going to include the hardballs. I have firms that they expect people to work 60, 70 hours a week, which is unusual for our industry. And then they want to bury it through the recruiting process. And it’s like, how do you expect to find the person that’s going to be happy if you’re not honest with them. So yeah, think it’s everything from building out the description and the requirements and the interview process and even double backing through the offer process and making sure that they see the highlights and the important parts to make sure they’re aligned so important.

Steven (24:10)
So much great insight in there, Amy. I really appreciate you sharing that. One of the questions I like to ask, especially when someone’s joining the conversation outside of the tax roll I normally talk about, where do advisors get this wrong? Like where does a recruiter relationship go wrong from the advisor side? What can they do to make sure they’re setting themselves up and setting the recruiter they’re working with up for success?

Amy (24:30)
I think that when there are challenges…It generally stems from either inflexibility, right? So I want the purple unicorn and I want them to be working 80 hours a week and I want like all of these things and I’m just not gonna be flexible at all. That’s a real challenge for anyone that’s trying to help someone through a hiring process. And that’s just not the nature of how the marketplace works. You need to come out with the ideal and hopefully you hit on that, right? I hope you can hire that person. But if you can’t, we need to have some flexibility.

(25:13)
You need to be able to sort of shift from there. So I’d say that’s number one. And then number two, kind of going back to what we’ve already been talking about is, you know, not being honest and I think a lot of times it’s them not even being honest with themselves about you know what they’re like, what their culture is like, what the rest of their team is like, whatever the case may be, any downfalls or you know I have some firms that are just incredibly flexible and for some people they need structure and so that’s not going to be a fit for them right so it could be even on the positive side but I think just this not understanding who they are therefore not being able to communicate it forward can be challenging as well.

Steven (25:52)
Amy, again, like everything else, it’s been such great perspective. Really appreciate you sharing it. But before we wrap up, I do want to highlight that you’re going to be joining us at The Summit this year and doing a session really getting into this with advisors specifically. How do we recruit and hire? How do we retain and train great talent? And I want to highlight really quickly that the reason we invited you to come do this is because at an event we were hosting recently where you were not on the agenda, your name was nowhere to be found. Multiple advisors that were there brought you up specifically and talked about the success that they had had with you. And that’s so important to us when we do anything that we’re working with people who have that track record and who can speak from what really works. And so super excited that you’re gonna be joining us at The Summit that’s September 30th through October 3rd, just outside of Phoenix, Arizona. You can go to retirementtaxservices.com to get signed up for the summit and Amy’s session will be one of many great sessions. But Amy, we’re so excited that you’re gonna come and be a part of that with us.

Amy Kizer (26:43)
Cannot wait. I’m so excited.

Steven (26:47)
Amy, any other thoughts for advisors as they look at whether it’s recruiting, it’s working with a recruiter, this general topic, any parting words of wisdom?

Amy Kizer (26:54)
I will just add this one thing on the HR side, which is, any time you have an employee, even one, there’s this whole other side of human resources, which is your compliance side, right? It’s your employee handbook, it’s your policies, it’s, you know, all of that also needs to be handled, whether, you know, you want to deal with it or not. So just make sure that you’re thinking about that too, whether it’s one employee or 10, it’s incredibly important.

Steven (27:24)
Such a great reminder. Well, Amy, with that again, thank you for being here and to everyone listening until next time, good luck out there and remember to tip your server, not the IRS.