Ep 6: 6. Rethink: Are You a Star Player or Team Coach?

Episode 6 of Rethink Financial Advice, co-hosted by Derek Notman, CFP® (Founder & CEO, Couplr AI) and H. Adam Holt, CFP® (Founder & CEO, Asset-Map). (42:07)

Episode 6 of Rethink Financial Advice, co-hosted by Derek Notman, CFP® (Founder & CEO, Couplr AI) and H. Adam Holt, CFP® (Founder & CEO, Asset-Map). Listen on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, YouTube, or Acast.

Episode Summary

Adam Holt and Derek Notman use a team sports analogy to work through a role question most advisors never answer explicitly: are you your client’s star player, or are you the coach assembling the roster? The hosts argue the coach role is the more durable one, because a household’s financial life requires specialists across estate planning, tax, insurance, and investments, and no single practitioner covers all of it well. Recruiting and coordinating those specialists is the work, rather than personally playing every position. They acknowledge the anxiety this creates for newer advisors, who tend to hear it as an instruction to go hire a large team, and reframe it as a question of which position you play and who you bring in for the rest. The practical close is about making that role legible to clients instead of leaving them to infer it.

What this episode covers

• The star player, player coach, and coach roles, and what each one signals to a client
• Why a household’s financial life requires specialists, and what coordinating them actually involves
• How a newer advisor can apply the model without building a large team
• Aligning your title with the role you actually intend to play
• Making the service menu explicit, including the one-page format the hosts suggest

Full Transcript

Machine-generated transcript of this episode.

Welcome to Rethink, the financial advisor podcast. My name is Adam Holt. And this is Derek Notman. We are your hosts, both veteran advisors and FinTech CEOs who challenge the status quo, question everything and have fun doing it. Hear honest commentary on the challenges facing advisors today and be part of a community where we can all rethink the profession. Now on to our episode. Are you your client’s coach? Are you a player coach or are you a player? Hmm, I’m not sure. And I don’t mean player as in the play. Oh, gosh, that just depends on what time of my life we go back to looking at.

Were you the guy? I’m sorry, but I have to ask now, were you the guy that had the gold chain with the big clock around his neck? Well, I did grow up in Brooklyn. So Flava Flav was, you know, an icon, but not so much in Brooklyn Heights. But I can’t say I wasn’t ignorant. No, I can’t say I was that player. It’s an interesting question, Derek, because this has come up several times in our conversations about identity and role. And it really ties back to several of the other podcasts that we’ve done around the importance of having an identity that’s clearly defined for our customers going forward so they know what they’re getting and they know what they’re paying for.

Right. I think, I mean, what’s your thought, what’s your thoughts on this? Cause you’re thinking of something that’s, that’s driving this question. Well, it is an identity question. I don’t know if it’s just an identity question. Like there’s like, cause from identity, what does that mean? I mean, it’s like, how are we serving our clients? How are we marketing ourselves to our clients? What are they getting from us? What do they want from us? Um, because these roles, like this is role definition here, I guess, really is like, wait, what are our roles for our clients? And if we haven’t defined that, why not? And once we do, like, what is that?

Cause I think that there can, man, I could, we could really go spiral out of control on this one, but I think this is super important. And I, I love the, the, the team sports analogy that we can draw here. And I know you’ve used this before. So I guess unpack that a little bit. Maybe that’ll help give our listeners some, some context on like what the heck we’re talking about. Well, it’s interesting because when you think about the analogy of sports, right, sports works so many different ways in life in general. And when you think about the role that a financial professional has inside of a household to be that competent, credible, helpful decision maker to ideally put the client in a better scenario, one of the things that you can’t get away from is the fact that we actually have to package that concept, sell the concept to several clients, manage it, run it, execute it over long periods of time.

And it creates an opportunity for us to say, well, what other, what other businesses, what other known entities can we examine to try to figure out whether we’re attacking this, this challenge correctly. And it, and because sports is so easy, the way that I’ve tended to describe it to clients is like, well, think of it like I’m your financial coach and you own a team, Derek, you are bringing to me the assets, the incomes, the existing players that you’ve accumulated over the years, walking into your clubhouse, regardless of the sport. And I’m going to now be your manager. I’m not coming in to be a player.

I don’t want to just do investment management, or if I do, I’m just going to, I’m just coming in to be that person, that point guard, that running back, and I’m going to be the best I can at doing that. But we have seen more often that a client is looking at you as a overall financial coach and a lot of advisors are just playing their one position and instead they need to take this broader view of being either the manager coach, right, to help the team win, okay, across disciplines, or being a player coach. If you’re still going to be actively on the field, right.

I’m actually going to still manage your money, but I’m not going to do the insurance, or I’m going to manage the tax, but I’m not going to handle the investment in the insurance and let’s say the legal, right, but I’m going to coordinate everybody. So there has to be someone who takes the position in financial advice with the household of taking charge. And I think you’re going to see Derek more and more pressure for financial advisors to take a leadership role in being that overall advocate with accountability for wins and losses, effectively, to get their owners to the playoffs, if not every year, more often than not, right.

And that’s the real key. You don’t have most, I don’t think most clients are looking to make it to the championship every single year, right, except maybe some clubs, you know, but they want their teams to get to the playoffs. I love the analogy and it makes so much sense. And what’s cool is here is you’re not saying, well, you have to be a coach because coaches are better, or you have to be a player coach or just a player, like they all serve a specific function. That’s one of the beautiful pieces of team sports, right. Maybe you just want to be the insurance player.

Maybe you just want to be the investment person, whatever, but it sounds like what you’re saying, Adam, is that the client, the team owner, right. Is going to get a manager, an overall team coach manager, whatever you want to call it from somebody. They’re looking for that position. They need that person. So then the opportunity is, is like, do you, as the advisor want that position or are you content to just being one of the players? Cause you, and if you don’t define that, then that’s going to get defined for you very quickly. So that’s interesting. Cause you just made me rethink actually how you position this, which is a good reason why I think we talk it out.

There are some in professional sports that some of us follow some more than others, there are some owners of teams that sit down on the field with their, with their team. They actually come down front row and they’re sitting on the front row. Or they’re actually sitting on, they’re standing on the field, depending on the sport. Right. There’s some that sit up high in a box and they, they don’t show up for practices, they don’t watch practices. They just show up for the games. There, there are clients in financial advice that, that are very involved. They want to play an active role. In fact, they’re actually doing stuff on the side that’s promoting or supporting the agenda of their financial well-being.

Or let’s face it, messing it up sometimes. Or right, right. Meddling, we’ll call it. Yeah. Who’s in charge here? Um, right. Which can of course cause issues. It’s important for, I think us as financial professionals to decide what kind of owner we want to work. Do we, do we want somebody who’s going to be adding to the, you know, the overall team culture, being involved, uh, or detracting from it? Or do we want somebody who’s going to be hands off and say, okay, let me make my decisions and I’ll, I’ll live and die by those, uh, let me be involved with the entire team. There’s a lot of, uh, individuals we know that have some means that have to move to family offices because they want that full concierge, full team.

Uh, they’ve got all the bells and whistles because they want to literally delegate all things that are under their pay grade. Uh, and of course they’re still going to need a manager. And of course the question is, are we a player on that team or are we literally going to take a leadership role? The beautiful thing is, is that we get to choose. That’s what’s kind of cool. My guess is most of us probably start off as players in the industry. And that’s okay. You got to cut your teeth. I mean, look, look at all the great sports. They were great players first. Right. And then they’re like, okay, I’m a little older now.

Can’t, you know, jump as high, run as fast. So I’m going to start coaching everybody. Cause I know more and that’s okay. That’s great. Right. But that’s, but that’s a choice. Like, do you want to be the player turned coach or do you want to just stay that player that maybe now you’re sitting the bench a little bit more often? I don’t know. That’s a good question. It really is interesting. And then, you know, it’s almost like individual sports versus team sports, and I don’t know many, gosh, you could almost equate this to individual sports, like people looking for just a transaction. Like transaction versus planning.

Right. You know, we’ve had chats about this before and team sports is more about planning or transaction is more about, about siloed sports. And I think we can all agree that team sports were on the same team. We’re helping each other silos where there’s, there’s more competition. And I don’t know if as a team manager or an owner, I mean, do I want my advisors competing against each other for my wellbeing? No, I want you all working together. Well, you know, that’s a great point because if there is nobody who owns the bigger, you know, gameplay strategy, right? Nobody, it just, the buck has to stop someplace that means either with a team manager or a coach or a head coach, then you’re right.

A lot of these players are going to be running off, you know, hoarding the ball, not passing a wait. I didn’t know the play they didn’t, you didn’t communicate. I mean, there’s a hundred different analogies. You can probably think about in your own mind, you know, football, you know, works so well, American football, even, even obviously European is, is just, there’s, there’s so many aspects to coordinating a potential win and it, it even the basic question. So if you’re, if you’re still kind of lost on this one, the way that we tend to think about is, you know, most teams have to have an offensive team.

I tend to think of that as investment management, predominantly. Now there’s no question. There are some people on the offensive team that play a defensive posture, right? We have blockers, we have linemen in American force, right? We have guards. We have there’s in all the different team sports, there’s, there’s some role of someone who’s going to, while we’re on attack, we need to stop people from scoring against us. There’s a goal, right? Even though we’re playing a position. So in the investment side, we tend to be looking for growth and or income, right? But we need to have some defensive components. We can’t be ignorant to it.

So if you look at your portfolio of investment choices, as example, for diversification, these are your players. Do you have the right players on that team at any one point in time? It’s never perfect, right? We have to accept the fact that I don’t have the exact right player in every position, in every place on the field at exactly the right time. Otherwise it would just be, you know, like this wouldn’t be a game. It would just be like, pop, pop, pop, ping, you’re scoring. But the same thing is true on the defensive side. And I found a lot of advisors tend to ignore this one.

I tend to think of the insurances and the protections as, as defense because, you know, inevitably the game goes against you, right? The tide changes. It really does. And, you know, insurance, estate planning, tax, you know, all of those things. Like we have, it has to be, you need an A team, right? There’s like, there’s, there’s a reason that we want to get the best players to fill the different roles. That’s not the owner’s job. That if they wanted that job, they wouldn’t hire us as the manager. It’s the manager’s job, right? So it’s just like running a team. And as you said, yeah, you’ve got offense, defense, but then even operational, like you’ve got your offensive defensive players, but then you have like these, these trainers or specialists that, that help the players do this or do that.

Right. So they’ve got these ancillary things. So there’s, there’s a lot of that. That’s there as well. You know what, though, I I’m just actually thinking this right now, Adam. I wonder if some of the advisors hearing this might be getting a little anxious or nervous because this is a lot like, like, like, all right, I’m, I’m Joe Schmo advisor. I’ve been doing this for two years. I just got my securities license. You’re telling me I got to hire all of these people. You’re telling me I got to like, I got to be a, I got to, I’m, you know, I’ve been a player for a couple of years and I, okay, I buy the idea, I got to be a manager at some point, but, but what, let’s help them a little bit, like, Hey, it’s not as bad as it sounds.

No, it’s, it’s certainly not. I mean, our grandiose ideas are as a result of having, you know, looking back, you know, 40 some years at the business collectively. Uh, and, and seeing it from a light that is now clearer, having lived it no different than the coach who was a player, right? Once you’ve done it, you’re kind of like, okay, I know what to do. What not to do. I wish I believe I know never perfect. Yeah, right. I think the, the, the relevance to this for you listening is. There is an identity that is a tie to how we charge to the expectations we create for our customers.

Um, and to the levels of accountability, we hold ourselves to with those clients of whether we’re delivering value for which we deserve to be paid in the first place. And what we’re really saying is that more than ever customers are looking for, are willing to pay for, and of course, are going to want more for the money they’re paying just from a value proposition aligned with helping them. Uh, we’ll call this holistically. We’re helping them make better financial decisions. From a, from a stickiness standpoint, if you think about the longevity of our business, our hope is that we’re going to have these clients for 10, 20 years.

And that’s how we monetize it from a strict business perspective. It’s lifetime value of us working together over 20 years where, where it’s actually productive financially to the advisor. Um, if you don’t have retention in your business, that’s not good. Turnovers hurts your business and forces you to constantly look for new clients. So we want to have long-term relationships. How do we argue to the client? How do we make a position that we are worthy of being, uh, in charge of this team, uh, because there are, what’s going to happen is if you have some level of success and your clients have success, their needs are going to get more complicated over time.

They’re going to, they’re going to need that special teams every once in a while on the field. They need tax, they got a business. They got to exit. They need an attorney because they’re dealing with an estate or maybe a divorce, and if you’re not part of that process, then you’re not creating this invaluable, uh, we’ll call it life coach guide of here’s how it relates back to your finances and what, and how I’m making investment decisions and how I’ve ensured this or how I’ve promoted this tax strategy. Working with your accountant. So if, if you’re not in charge, uh, and taking a leadership role, it gets very easy to remove you because then you’re just a player on the team.

Okay. And, and I’m going to say, I’m not saying this is strictly self-serving. I think the overall long-term effectiveness of a financial plan works because there’s consistency in the leadership. Cause sometimes it takes years for these, you know, these plans to play out. Right. And I think that’s, that’s the way to think about it. So are we telling our listeners that they all need to become coaches? Because if they all become coaches and who’s, who’s on defense, who’s on offense, who are, who did the players become, right? That’s a tough one. So chewing that for a second. As, as a, as a former player, right.

And I, you know, to answer the question at the beginning of this, I probably would define myself as a, as a manager, a coach with, as a player sometimes, um, but I also look for consistency from my players, right. I’m only going to trade you if you start to really do a bad job, right. You know, otherwise I’m not going to get rid of you. So I, I think it comes back to this identity. If, if I just want to be that life insurance agent, okay, cool. But then I need to own that. And I need to find a coach that wants me on their team and that I can be there consistently and vice versa.

Cause I think there’s a challenge here, Adam, like for telling everybody to be a player for a while and then be a coach, I don’t know if there’s enough, is there, do we hit market saturation then do we have too many coaches and not enough players? I don’t know. Oh, we don’t have enough of either one. I mean, the reason that you’ve shared in prior that, that, that the market opportunity is massive. It is massive. And the number of people that need advice and haven’t gotten it or haven’t even been approached about it establishes the fact why there can be 300,000 life insurance agents in the U S where the average person, 70% of the population is still underinsured.

How is that possible? Right. How could you have this much capacity and this many agents that are talking about a single solution, a definable, easy to solve issue. And people are still drastically under-insured. You know, it’s interesting. That’s really good point to go with this team thing. Then how many players actually talk to the team owner on a regular basis? They usually go through the coach, the manager, and then the manager compiles it all into a plan. Right. And then they, they review that with the owner. But if you don’t have a coach, we’ve got something missing here. So now either, I’m not going to hire you as a player at all, or I’m going to do it reluctantly, but I still don’t really want to deal with you.

I want, I want my, I want my coach to deal with this and tell me what to do. The reason it’s not a perfect analogy is, is to w let’s forgive ourselves here. There’s, there’s two assumptions that I think in generally we’re making. Number one, that a, a single financial advisor can’t play the game on behalf of the, of the owner, right? We, we might be coming from the standpoint of we’re dealing with a high net worth client with lots of challenges and complications, but what about the varsity game? Can we play high school ball where we actually have a two person team? Like, okay, your offense, Hey, turn your helmet sideways.

Now your defense, right? Like the reality is that sometimes we have enough capability to handle a client on our own. Yes, we do. The question is, are we positioning to the client as their financial advocate that is going to either I’ll manage to my best skill, given the resources we have and the game we’re playing on both offense, defense, and special teams. But once this gets beyond my either capacity to I have enough time to play this game or my skillset is lessened, I need to bring in another party or work with your accountant is I’m going to work with your player. I’m going to your orphan player.

I’m going to, I’m sorry. I’m going to adopt them on my team, but I’m in charge. Okay. So the question is who has accountability to the plan of the client and executing it and then making sure it’s getting done. That’s the real question. I think this touches on is who’s responsible and are we communicating to the client that we’re taking that responsibility? We’re going to be their financial advocate and help them make good decisions, even when I’m not the person on the, on the, we’re going to judge them and I’m, if I have to fire them, I’m firing them. The other pro the other assumption we’re making Derek is that the team players are human.

Is there a possibility, right? Is the possibility that if I can’t find a really good running back, that I’m going to add a robotic running back. What am I talking about in a situation where I’m playing offense? I might choose a manager for my large cap growth strategy. That’s indexed and maybe even algorithmic because there’s just no efficiency there. Okay. The best choice there for my offensive positioning might, in fact, one might argue that all of the team members could be robotic and I’m just pressing buttons. The key is accountability. You follow? I like that. Yeah. And that goes back to that earlier, like kind of issue we raised with like, how am I supposed to do this as a newer advisor?

Well, here’s how you do it, right? There are tools we can do to leverage this and we doesn’t have to all be human and, and to our other conversation by doing this, it enhances the importance, maybe are in, I don’t know, enhances spotlights, whatever you want to call it, the importance of our relationship as that team manager or coach now, the human element, it brings it back to that, that they need that that much more. Yeah. Yeah. So that’s why I say it’s, it’s a challenging analogy, but here, here’s the takeaway for this, I think, and we’re forming this as we actually talk about it is there is a role for a financial advocate who can make leadership decisions and be accountable for making sure that all the team members are working towards the plan.

Some of those team members might be inherited, as I said, right? You already have an accountant. Let me work with them. You don’t have an accountant. I got one, right? It’s, it’s building that team. As you talked about before, that makes sense. And, and I think we’re going to be pressed as an industry for financial advisors to differentiate themselves as basically either being I’m the coach. I’m looking at the bigger picture. Team goals, culture, vision, impact buck stops with me. I’m going to coordinate everybody. You’re going to pay me commensurately, or I’m going to be the best player on the field in my vein. I’m going to be the best estate planning insurance advisor, and I’ll join the team, tell me who’s in charge, right?

Or I’m the best investment advisor to this even niche, and I’m going to work with the rest of your team. But the key is to play what? Team. Customers are looking for team coordination, collaboration, efficiency. And you got to either decide I’m running the team or I’m with the team. Right. And that’s what I think customers are going to be looking for in the next couple of years or more. Um, no question. They’re, they’re looking for a team. Yep. Yep. And then let me just talk to one person, the majority of the time on the team, cause I don’t want to get bogged down in all the details.

You know, I don’t want to show up to Saturday morning practice. I don’t need to do that. That’s why I have a coach. Right, right, right. I mean, like if you have a gardener, if you’re lucky enough to have a gardener, do you, you go out and talk to the guy who’s like literally pruning the, the, the, the, the flowers or mowing the lawn to try to say, listen, I was thinking about planting some trees or maybe if that’s a one person shop and they do everything, or you talk to the, the person who runs a company, say, listen, I’m thinking about this. I’m thinking bigger.

I’m not thinking about getting into detail. So, so Derek, let’s, it’s, this is time to talk about the takeaways. What can, what can an advisor’s who are listening, take away from the side or delegate or do in their practice right now? Yeah, we got to get tactical. That’s one of the things we do here, right. As we’re rethinking all this stuff. So I think to what you said, just briefly, a little bit ago, your title really should be a reflection of the identity you want to portray. So using a nice sports analogy, are you Michael Jordan, the star player, or are you the head coach of the bulls and I’m messing up on it.

Phil Jackson, Bill Jackson. Yeah. Who are you now? Maybe you don’t need to get as granular and say on your business I am the CEO or I am the head coach or whatever, but you think you get the idea here is like the story you’re telling a new client or even a client may be questioning the work you’re doing, like who are you? Well, here’s who I am. Right. And I think it’s really important that you just, and this should even, you know, help drive your marketing efforts a little bit. You could have a page on your website literally that says, Hey, here’s how we operate.

We are your head coach. You own the team, we’re your head coach. This is how we help you. I, you can do a beautiful infographic in three minutes. You know, so I think there’s something there. So I think that that’s one of the most, that would be one of my first things to say, like, is your title reflection of the identity you’re portraying? Who are you? Are you the coach? You start player? What are you? Yeah, that’s, oh, sorry. I was going to jump in there. I was going to say, that’s a great point. By the way, those two players sometimes are paid drastically different amounts and have different roles and responsibilities, right?

They live and die by different metrics. A place, a star player has different metrics in a coach. Okay. The key there is about accountability to what you’re going to focus on day to day. If you can’t be the star player, hire a bunch of star players or manage a bunch of star players to do this. But I think the key takeaway to that, that that action is decide how you’re playing on the team, right? Cause it’s a team sport and I think customers are asking for their professionals to work together and collaborate. That means they got to pass the ball. They got to work in the best interest of the owner.

Okay. Which is get them to the playoffs. Okay. Help them be financially better off because of you and your team. A hundred percent. And to further this fun analogy we’re playing on here, like, so the Bulls dream team, right? So what’s something else you can do? Maybe you are that two year star player and you’re still figuring things out, or maybe you’re 15, 20 years in, you’re looking to do things differently proactively build your dream team. Who are the people that you need to come in? If you’re just going to be a star player, then, then get yourself drafted by the right dream team. If you’re going to, if you’re going to be the, the head coach or what, what silos, if you will, what players, what key players are you missing that you need to have on your team and go build those, go find those.

And part of this is going to be driven by the type of ideal clients you serve. If you serve physicians, for example, their needs are going to be unique and different from those that may be high net worth business owners or teachers. It doesn’t really matter. So know that you might have to adjust the type of star players you’re hiring based upon the type of business owner clients that you are serving, right? They’re going to have different needs and so forth. So I think that’s really important. And then we kind of already reflect, you know, talked about this, but tell clients this stuff, right? Put it on your website.

Have this wonderful conversation where you can share this example. Like this is how we do things here. I am your head coach. If you hire me, this is what you get. This is how I operate here. My players, or if you’re a star player, Hey, this is my specialty. I am the star player on this team and you’re hiring me for this, but I can bring in other people or introduce you to the coach if we need to, you know, there’s all these other pieces, but tell them how it works instead of asking them how they want it to work. Uh, cause if you’re asking them how to do this, it’s like, it’s like, you know, the head coach saying, Hey, um, uh, you know, team owner, can you come down here and, uh, run these plays for my, my, my players?

Cause I don’t know what I’m doing. Yeah. It doesn’t work. Well, Hey boss, what do you want? Do you want more assists? You want more rebounds? What do you think you should be going for here? I’m not sure. You want to come motivate the team? Cause I’m struggling with it. Exactly. Don’t ask Cuban to do it. He’ll do it. I mean, that’s the kind of, that’s a great point because, you know, do you want a, you know, an owner like Mark Kudin, who’s going to, you know, be very involved and passionate and have, you know, different types of standards, or do you want someone who’s, you know, literally just showing up, you know, for the big games?

Um, that’s really, you know, yeah, sure. Adam, you know, I want to throw this out there long, total long shot, but that’s, you know, some team sports are dead last and they end up winning the season. I think we need to get Mark Cuban’s opinion on this directly. Can we do it? I don’t know. I think we need to ask him to rethink things a little bit and come on here. So we’ll see. I don’t know, man. We’re going to throw it out there. Right? We’ll see. Right. If he gives us more than seven minutes, that would be amazing. I’ll take seven minutes. That’s fine.

We will all take seven minutes. Pretty cool. So Mark, if you’re listening or someone knows Mark, uh, tell him to, to hit us up on LinkedIn. I think Mark, did Mark interact with your son though on something? Wasn’t there a story behind it? He sure did. Yeah. Um, he’s, he sent a text back after I sent him a video of a small little business, my, my son started. So maybe I need to work that angle a little bit more. That’s true. Well, even, even from a course, we’ve got to turn everything into a learning opportunity, but that’s, that just goes to show that, uh, some owners are accessible.

There are a lot of financial advisors that are not approaching high net worth, high profile people who need help and they’re willing to interact, they just, you got to reach out and you got to start that it’s another conversation. I got that lesson a couple of times in my, in my business thinking that I was just too small to approach bigger clients and, and boy, they wanted help and they needed it by the way. That’s great. So my takeaways are the following. One of the things that you probably heard here is you got to know your strengths, right? We got to know when to be a player and when to be a coach, right?

Some clients need to coach. They don’t even know how to ask for it. Uh, sometimes you need to just take charge, but sometimes you also need to know when to say, you know what, I need to bring in another expert here, uh, and not feel embarrassed about it. I think customers in general are not expecting you to know everything about everything, but they do want to buy into your process of making decisions that serve them. And if they think you have a good process and they trust you and that you’re aligned in your teams and their interests, um, they’re going to, they’re going to trust your judgment and that’s going to be valuable long-term to keeping them as, as your, uh, you, as their advocate.

So that’s the first thing. The second thing is that I know many people have moved to this idea of investment policy statements. It was done in order to create accountability and of course, show that there is a plan here. It’s not just random asset allocation. Um, but, but nothing stops us from creating what I think is going to be something, a new, a new process, which is called a relationship policy statement. Some advisors I know have done this for years. It’s part of their ADV. It’s part of their engagement. Uh, it’s kind of, here’s what you can expect from me, but here’s what I need to expect from you, not just timely payment, not just you’ll show up to the annual review meeting or quarterly, whatever you’re doing, but I need you to commit to the goals that we’re going to find.

Some of these meetings are going to be painful. Some of them are going to, we’re going to be ahead of the game. Sometimes we’re going to be on defense. We’re going to have a lot of, of losses in our column and we’re going to need to make some tough decisions. Some of them are going to have to require you spending more money to get a better player on the team. And that means maybe I need to make more investments. Maybe I got to invest in the field, even though you feel like the field doesn’t need, you know, the pitch is fine. So we’re going to need to make decisions.

And I think having an understanding and saying that upfront could be really valuable to the long-term game of showing why you need to be managing this team for not just the next two seasons, but maybe for the next decade. And I think that’s where you really create value. Explore this. I mean, is there a possibility of really kind of setting expectations upfront with a relationship policy statement or document? And number three is, can I interject Adam? Sorry to interrupt you. I really love what you just said there. I think this is so important. This is more human investment policy statements kind of eh, like it’s there, but it’s like, this is more human.

And like, if I’m sitting down with a new client, whether it’s brand new or we’re reviewing or whatever, and I can have this one pager, like an asset map that says, Hey, baby, dude, maybe this is an idea for asset map. You guys could read something like this, but like that says like, here are the different roles. Here’s what we’re doing. Here’s our responsibilities. Oh, and by the way, you have responsibilities too. And here are the things that can go wrong. Here are the things that can go right. Like if I, if I have that a one piece of paper, even if you show it to me, once you’re just to remind me, like, that’s awesome.

Like I get it now. 3% this last year, you know, or whatever. And that’s anyway, sorry. I just, well, no, this isn’t, but this is when we figured out, right? It’s in these moments when we actually kind of, we actually rethink it ourselves, right? So the, the, the add-on to that, and I appreciate you saying it is we need to, what’s the big theme here? We need to promote the value that we provide from the marketing standpoint. If we’re not making it clear why a client should engage and, or pay us to do a certain job, then we’ve missed the moment. So we need to explicitly tell them, here’s all the stuff that you get when you, when you sign in here, let me, here’s the menu, all the great stuff you get.

Here’s what I’m going to do for you and so forth. So that’s really what I’m talking about. But the tactic, a tactic with that, like you could do this on a one page infographic. com for free and create this infographic in 10 minutes, get a compliance approved. Yes, but yeah, it’s, it’s that easy to do as needed. Yeah. Yeah, exactly. But, and I think so that’s, that’s the whole point, but I, I love the idea and I’ve been trying to say this for many years, tell the clients what you expect of them, right? Yes, right. I know you’re expecting maybe returns or performance from me, I’m expecting savings and flexibility from you because it ain’t going to work on a straight line.

And, and there’s going to be moments when I’m, we’re going to need to catch up and start and pick up the pace, even though you may not be comfortable. Okay. So, because this is the time to make tough decisions and we, and you can imagine what those things are because you’ve lived through financial advice and they tend to be, you know, so I think you get it. Number three, I think that there’s something interesting from the reading I’ve done around being a CEO or being a leader. Your compensation is directly tied to the importance of your decisions and how that outcome is going to affect, in this case, the team owner.

Okay. So if you’re making really big decisions that are really important, you should be able to charge appropriately. And the reason why this is important is because we will be facing a decreasing margin business simply because the efficiency of technology will make it cheaper for us to deliver that for which we typically have made high compensation relative to where it’s going. And I mean that that’s, that’s, I believe in my heart that we will see a more efficient investment management marketplace and fee marketplace. I believe we will see a lower compensation structure in the distribution arms of insurance and annuities. I think we’ll see this in banking.

I think we’ll also see this eventually in some legal outlets, as we see, you know, companies like Trust and Will, right? These are examples of how they’re going to disintermediate the legal marketplace. So to charge two, $3,000 to do a will, they’re going to do it for a couple hundred bucks and it’s going to be good enough and it’ll get done. And I think they’re going to really put a lot of pressure on the professional marketplace to, to either show why they’re adding value and worth two, three, $4,000 spends or find another job or, or we retool yourself. I think that’s a great example. Like I’ve, I’m a user of Trust and Will.

I read it all my estate planning docs. I paid them instead of an attorney, but I still have an attorney, right? That I pay for more advanced conversations things that we need to do to get it done. And that’s where that really, it just supports what you’re saying right there. It comes in anyways. Yeah, go do those things folks. Yeah, sure. Go do it. Execute all that by next podcast. Um, so, but seriously think about one of them that you can actually do. Now this, um, this is a, uh, this is a question because the question came into you, I’ll read it to you. Um, this question came into, uh, to us from Evan in New York city via LinkedIn.

And here’s the quote. Can I read it to you, Derek? Yeah, go for it. He said, when considering marketing yourself virtually, do you think you need to have a CFP certified financial planner designation? What do you think? There’s so there’s a lot in, in this question. So Evan, first, thank you. We’ll have to get a t-shirt over to you. I really, really appreciate this. So one, this goes back. So the CFP, we could tie that back to this full episode, right? Like what is your role? What is your title? How are you marketing? So I think that’s important, but do you need to have a CFP?

Do you need to have like this professional designation to market yourself virtually? I don’t think so, right? This comes back to your identity and just being able to market yourself and that identity, whether you’re a star player or a coach or whatever, that’s fine. So Evan, no, I don’t think you need to have a CFP, you know, I mean, there’s a long road to get one, right? A lot of these, these designations take time and whatnot. So no, I don’t think so, but I think you open up another interesting conversation about marketing, prospecting it and so forth, because I think that this is a very important topic we have to look at here is like whether you have a professional designation or not, how are you marketing yourself virtually?

Or as my friend Adam says remotely, like we’re not virtual, we’re remote, but I think we need to rethink that too. So like in short, Evan, no, don’t worry about it. I think the bigger question in conversation is here, what are you marketing? How are you marketing all of those things? Or are you just prospecting, right? Like there’s a difference here. So I, yeah, I think this is interesting. I think there’s, I mean, let’s face it, the majority of advisors do not have a CFP. So I don’t, I wouldn’t use that as the barrier to entry to marketing. The barrier to entry to marketing is just knowing, I think your identity as well as your client’s identity.

The real question for me is that I think Evan is asking is do I need the CFP for credibility to earn the audience with potential clients? In other words, is it going to be a leverage point on the marketing side for me to prove that? And I would say, ask the antithesis of it is if you don’t have the CFP, what is the, what are the questions that the CFP would have that designation would have answered to potential clients. In other words, is it addressing the objection before the question is asked by claiming that you’re a CFP? I happen to be a CFP who actually got it, you know, 15, 16 years ago or more, and then dropped it when I had enough credibility in my business that I said, I don’t feel like doing the CE anymore.

And it was getting aggravating to me. So I was like, ah, this is, I’m too busy. I’m going to let it drop. It didn’t, didn’t affect my business at all. Ironically, I went back and did all the CE and got it again, because in the role I was in, it lent itself to the credibility I was trying to portray. So no different than a CEO has an MBA. It gives them a little different panache. That helps. So it’s, it’s a question of how you use the marketing of it. I would argue in many cases, unfortunately, actually, that the CFP become has become more of a marketing moniker than a intellectual one.

In other words, people use it because it does open the door. It answers questions on, let’s say ethical alignment or otherwise. And that doesn’t mean they really have done the CE, right? They have really learned it and live the credo or the ethos of the certified financial planner as it’s intended. So, but that’s it. That happens in CPA too. I know plenty CPAs that count. Okay. But they got a CPA, so arguably they can count. I don’t know. It’s an interesting question, but it’s a great lead in because one of the things that we, we have both been, get a lot of requests to address in this is marketing.

All right. Oh, this is such a big one to unpack is a marketing is the opening of, you know, the funnel to bring in new clients, uh, to service existing clients, to, to talk about our team or our star player, you know, or whatever. So this is a big one. Um, I fell into this by accident and actually become halfway decent at it, uh, through a lot of, you know, hard work and failures and mistakes, but, um, that’s what we’re going to come onto it. We’re not going to get into it now folks, but like we’re going to unpack prospecting versus marketing and even paid versus organic marketing.

Uh, there’s a lot to it and there’s a lot of people trying to get our business to do this. Um, I don’t know about you, but I get pitched almost daily. Hey, I can get you X leads per month. Hey, I can do your social media for you. Um, so I think this is a hot topic for all of us. So we will unpack that and we will start doing that in our next episode. Yeah, I’m looking forward to this. This probably is going to be more than one episode because marketing is so big and there’s so many topics around it. I’ve been finding a lot of advisors are just, we’ve never been given the training on what is organic or inbound or outbound or digital or what the heck is the social or what does it mean for me?

Uh, it’s, it’s very obscure and we’d never, most of us that have been in the business for any length of time never got, we never got taught this stuff. Um, we were given phones. Yeah. Go to his charity event and meet some people. Yeah. Go golf and talk to the people that you’re golfing. So, um, yeah, I agree. So this is, this will be hopefully a good education. Uh, and we’ll give some resources. I think we’re going to actually interview some people, uh, in this one. So there’ll be some great opportunity over the next series. Derek, as always, I appreciate you and what you do for our community.

Thank you. Likewise, Adam, my man. Thank you. Uh, it’s been a pleasure and, uh, to everyone out there listening. Thank you. We appreciate, uh, it as well and, uh, just keep rethinking it. You got it, man. See you in the next one. All the best. Cheers. Thank you for listening to rethink the financial advisor podcast with Holt and Notman. Be sure to subscribe now and join the ongoing conversation. The information covered and posted represents the views and opinions of the guest and does not necessarily represent the views or opinions of asset map or connector. The content has been made available for informational and educational purposes only.