Featuring
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Gabriel Anderson
Crafted Wealth Management
Scott Bell
GDP, Inc.
Ever thought about teaming up with another advisor, but unsure what it really takes? In this episode, I sit down with Gabe Anderson and Scott Bell, two financial planners who started out solo and decided to merge their practices into one powerhouse advisory firm.
They open up about the highs and lows of joining forces—from balancing their different strengths to navigating the tricky parts like hiring and building systems that actually work. These guys get real about the mistakes they made and the lessons that helped them create a better experience for their clients.
If you’re an advisor curious about partnerships, firm mergers, or just looking for inspiration on growing a successful financial planning business, this conversation is packed with insights you won’t want to miss.
Tune in to learn what it really takes to merge two practices and build something stronger together!
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Featured on the Show:
- GDP, Inc. - Email
- Crafted Wealth Management: Blog | Twitter | LinkedIn | Email
- Michigan Tech
- UW Milwaukee
- Northwestern Mutual
- MetLife
- Setting Up an RIA and Starting a New Financial Planning Practice on Less Than 10,000 with Sophia Bera
- The 4 Hour Work Week by Tim Ferriss
- FPA
- NAPFA
- CLU
- ChFC
- American College
- Trading Places
- Family Ties
- Morgan Stanley
- Jerry Maguire
- Emoney
- USAA
- Zapier
- Wealth Box
- Accuity
- YNAB
- Mint
- First Step Cash Management
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Read the Transcript Below:
00:00:01 welcome to xypn radio where your host Alan Moore brings you into a community of Fe only financial planners who want to profitably and successfully serve Gen X and geny clients if you're ready to get the knowledge you need from leaders in your field learn from Forward Thinking advisors and take action on your own goals xypn radio is the show for you here's your host hello and welcome to this episode of xypn radio I'm your host Alan Moore and I'm excited to have Gabe Anderson and Scott Bell on the show today so Gabe started his firm
00:00:30 crafted wealth management with xite Planning Network a couple of years ago and he was immediately contacted by Scott who is the founder of gross domestic product a financial advisory firm after a year of dating they ultimately decided to join forces and now run a GDP or gross domestic product with crafted wealth as a subsidiary Scott has a strong background in Investments while gay really focuses on financial planning which makes them a great pair the crafted wealth brand has been attracting a lot of clients from
00:00:59 the entertainment industry which is sort of becoming their Niche client base gab's decision to merge in with Scott was certainly a big one and has become a great move for both parties they're growing like crazy and are looking to hire two to three more people in the next few months to better support the business one important thing to them is that they really do want to focus on having a lifestyle practice so we talked about the decision to grow versus not in order to maintain their ideal lives
00:01:24 while also building their ideal business if you've ever wondered about teaming up with another adviser this episode is for you did you know that 72% of callers who reach an automated answer will hang up without leaving a message and often call another adviser a missed call can cost you a new client or chance to grow wallet share with existing ones that's why Finance professionals rely on Ruby's live receptionists to answer calls transfer only the calls they want take messages collect new client intake make
00:01:52 follow-up calls and more allowing them to accomplish more and grow let Ruby help you increase productivity and give outstanding client service with every call for a special offer visit call ruby.com xypn and use promo code xypn or better yet call them at 844 85378 29 you can find any of the additional resources that we mentioned during the episode at xylan network.com 153 also be sure to go to xylan network.com viip to join our private group just for xyp and radio listeners it's the community of advisers we've all
00:02:28 been looking for that's there to provide support when we need it the most best of all it's free I encourage you to check it out again that's xyl network.com without further Ado here's my interview with Gabe and Scott hey Scott and Gabe welcome to the show thanks so much for being on well thanks for having us thanks for having us so uh y'all have had a a pretty interesting path from my understanding of of launching firm you know launching your own firms end up teaming up sort of you know going at this together so uh
00:02:59 could one if you sort of give me sort of a highle overview of the firm sort of where it stands today where are y'all located how many clients do you have do you sort of have a niche and then we'll dig into you know all the various details as we go sure who wants to go first Scott well sure uh so our our paths or bab and I are it's very similar we both came from you know bigger firms saw the stuff that you see when you work for the bigger firms where it's you bounce between salesman and fiduciary
00:03:29 and in the end we both just decided you know going independent was the better route how Gabe and I actually met was is I've uh had our firm now GDP for uh almost 10 years now um this summer will be 10 years and we' always been investment H heavy and kind of planning light which was kind of like you know I I know there's a lot of planners out there but coming from kind of the Bulge bracket firms that kind of was always you know how we were running things was you added value by being so awesome and
00:04:00 Investments and obviously you know that that can be a farce it's a lot more about behavioral you know changing behavioral aspects with your relationship with money and so as we were doing Financial plans I was finding that I could do it but it wasn't where really kind of my heart and passion was and I knew that I was not maybe the best that I could be in planning and so I wanted somebody to look over kind of my own plans and just you know making sure that I'm not letting anything slip for me and reached out to a bunch of
00:04:35 financial planners uh like any normal investor would and that's when I found Gabe and everything on his website spoke to me as far as how he builds his plans and the planning process the power of planning and so I engaged him just like any other client would that I wanted him to you know look over our financial plan make sure everything was in order and the more we started working together the more we started to realize that we had had you know a really good situation where we have an established practice um
00:05:04 that he could help with we have infrastructure that could help him and so you know over the course of what has it been now Gabe two years well yeah I mean it's kind of interesting because we've been going through a lot of our data over like the last two weeks just to kind of look at this and Scott was the second person that reached out to me through xypn portal and that was in March of 2016 oh funny yeah okay so early on sort of where where is the The Firm headquartered and are because y'all are both in the office together right
00:05:35 yep so we're in Los Angeles California our office is in Manhattan Beach and we work out of a we work location so sort of what's the structure of the overall firm like how many clients do you have and how many advisers are there so we really run it kind of like a partnership Gabe and I are you know very much Partners on new business new efforts marketing making decision business decisions together um we have now I think about 95 different hous households and we're at about 76 million so we're still small by you know industry
00:06:05 standards but for us it's been this last year has really been kind of looking at our processes and where we want to go with things you know it's really I think for both of us at different stages in our career it was like oh you know we want to be a billion doll firm and what I think we both realiz is that at the end of the day we just want to affect positive change for a number of people who we consider almost like family and Hope they feel the same way about us and so it's not quite lifestyle business but we're also
00:06:36 not looking to you know be the next billion dollar firm here so Gabe can you tell me a little bit about your sort of career path how how did you discover Financial Planning and you know I guess what what got you interested in this career in the first place it's been a long road so I mean I'm 32 I just turned 32 yesterday so it's been I've been reflecting quite a bit know right so ridiculous thinking about my career path it kind of like starts off with college I think I went to school in upper Michigan at Michigan Tech for mechanical
00:07:09 engineering and I did that for two years kind of recognized that's not really my thing so at that point in time I moved back down to Milwaukee Wisconsin which is where I'm from I went to ww Milwaukee and I ended up going there for my finance degree so Northwestern Mutual is huge that's like a huge Milwaukee company my dad has worked there for 15 years just retired last year and that's kind of where I got my roote started so when I first graduated uh I started in the college financial rep program at Northwestern Mutual I did
00:07:38 that for six months went full-time for six months realized I hated selling life insurance never thought that was something that I would have ever wanted to do but I knew that I wanted to get into do Investments so that's when I partnered up with a wealth management adviser in Milwaukee and all the guys that you saw doing well all have the cfp they were taking a financial planning approach they seemed they were doing well in the business are doing well for their clients so I I set my sites for the cfp at that point in time so two
00:08:04 years at northwester Mutual you say this all the time alen but I was working with a 63y old wealth management adviser that told me that he wanted to get out of the business he wanted me to be a succession plan and the further we went along he's like you know what I work 10 to 15 hours a week I make over six figures a year I don't know why I would really give this up I'm like I totally don't disagree with you I would love to be there too but that kind of leaves me in the dark and like I don't necessarily know where
00:08:28 like what am I supposed to do in the where does that lead me and that was really uncomfortable so it was at that point about two years in I started reevaluating my life and career I totally went through a quarter life crisis at that point in time because I was about 25 years old um but that's when I interviewed with a whole bunch of other Northwestern Mutual firms out in the LA area I got offers at the two that I was most interested in and went with the one that was in West LA so that firm was I would say about 75 million in
00:08:56 assets under management it already had two cfps and I was going to be the third associate that was a part of it so to me it felt like a really great place to be that they were supportive of me getting my designations supportive of me uh like learning and it gave me an opportunity to learn from all those people that have been doing this for a while so it was a really great fit but going through the cfp process in general that I would say I was totally drinking the Northwest Mutual Kool-Aid that was the only thing
00:09:20 that I knew going to those annual meetings everybody's all jazzed up and you you oh you really enjoy it it's a lot of fun it's a lot of energy but at the same point in time when I started going to this to the cfp classes and doing my cfp education I started realizing that this world is way bigger than I thought it would thought it was I met people at raas as I met people at MetLife I met people at other broker dealers and it just opened that can of worms so I got my cfp in September 2013 so now that's kind of crazy I'm almost
00:09:48 at the fiveyear Mark with it but it wasn't long after that that Sophia's Bears article came out about starting an RA for under $10,000 and that started to get the wheels turning in my head that maybe I could do this on my own in a completely different capacity than I've always been taught to do these things and at the same point in time when I was living in La my roommate worked at the like a Lighting Union in the entertainment industry and he essentially worked on a job for a month two months three months and then could
00:10:19 take as much time off as he wanted and then when he was back like he could get on another job so that lifestyle seemed amazing to me and then at some point in time with all the books I was reading all these articles that I was going through I realized huh as a financial adviser I could actually do this too so that's when the idea of starting my own firm really worked itself out and October of 2015 is when I started crafted off management so October 2015 so that's about two and a half years ago now is when that that really got kicked
00:10:51 off yeah I I think it's a great Point uh and something we emphasize particularly with women that are getting into the field because uh we hear a lot of folks say oh I can't you know and this generally comes from women where we hear like I can't start a firm because you know we're going to start a family you know going to have kids so it's not not a good time or you know this is a you know 80 hour a week grind kind of job I don't want to do that and and we're you know try to put it out there that like
00:11:14 you really can build your ideal Lifestyle by building a business in financial planning and and no it's never going to be perfect right and it doesn't mean you only get to work four hours a week as much as we wish we were Tim Ferris and we're somehow fulfilled by only working four hours a week but like you really can build this to match that sort of vision of an ideal lifestyle which I think is what makes his career awesome and and what makes starting a business in this career a lot of fun yeah it's like starting a business in
00:11:41 general you can you can really build it any way you want to especially with the internet and like The Internet of Things there's so many things that you can do with your life and don't have to it doesn't have to be your life so how do you and you know you don't have to be rude about it but like how do you compare you know for the folks that are out there that are still drinking the Northwestern Mutual Kool-Aid that's the only World they've known I guess what would you share with them about the world now as you know it having sort of
00:12:03 come out from underneath that umbrella number one I think I would say to get involved in a professional organization coming out of getting my cfp going to FPA meetings being a member of Napa being a member of xypn it's like this whole community of people that you didn't necessarily surround yourself when you were at Northwestern Mutual you were only around other Northwestern Mutual advisers so you're taking advice from them but the industry is so much bigger than that and that's that was what really sparked
00:12:30 my journey is meeting other cfps that were the same age that were all going through this together we still have meetings we have one next week that I'm really excited to go to because it's been like six months since I've seen a lot of these people um but it's really having that Community is what really starts you down the path and I don't I don't have any ill will towards the advisers that I was working with at Northwestern Mutual they taught me a lot I was able to get my cfp clu and chfc within a 13-month period of moving out
00:12:55 to Los Angeles because I didn't really know that many people so it was totally okay for me to just put my head in the book sure yeah real quick since you mentioned you have the c chfc um what are those designations and and do you recommend that you know advisers maybe that have the cfp do you recommend that they look uh and possibly get those designations that's a good question so clu is a chartered life underwriter chfc is a chartered Financial Consultant and obviously the cfp is a certified financial planner that's like the big
00:13:24 one of the industry but with when I was working at Northwestern Mutual they reimburse you for the courses and it's to the American college so you can figure out this combination of courses to take that it's essentially studying for as long as you want taking an exam and then just keep going and repeating so you could figure out which of these courses could I do to get all of these designations in the shortest amount of time possible um but the clu specifically since that's not something that's I think all that common in the F
00:13:52 only industry because it's specifically a life insurance designation really sets me apart from other Fon advisers because I have this deep bench of life insurance disability insurance long-term care insurance knowledge so cou big on the insurance side which you feel like you've helped has helped and then chfc is very similar coursework to the cfp so do you feel like getting that designation was beneficial in addition to the cfp or do you feel like it was just sort of letters after your name I think it's just letters after my name at
00:14:20 this point fair enough but it was I got the clu first and then the chfc I think it was only two or three other courses so it was really kind of an brainer and those two or three other courses also went for the cfp okay and it's wor I mean it's a legit educational program it just has a lot of overlap with the cfp I feel like I I I don't have my chfc I I just looked into it at one point awesome so Scott can you talk to me about sort of your career path up until uh you and Gabe met sort of what was your you know
00:14:51 path to you know getting into the industry well yeah so um my parents uh so it goes way back uh my parent parents actually made pretty much every bad decision that you could make with money and so as a kid I saw the ramifications of that and you know I love them they're great uh they still make terrible decisions with money and I decided that I did not want to do that and uh mine's I guess probably a little bit of an unusual Story the very first rated R movie I saw was uh Trading Places and uh I thought you know like
00:15:27 those guys they're reading the paper they know stuff I mean obviously you know hilarity ensues but you know it was the idea that these people knew something that this information was power and that they were you know going to be successful and uh so I started it was that was also right around the time of Family Ties which Michael J fox played this character Alex P Keaton who was like this you know Nixon loving Republican capitalist little guy and I just thought that's I I I want to know how to make money and make lots of money
00:15:58 and um you know taking it from there I found a a love for economics which really to me helped make sense of all of this you know what it is that affects us in our daily lives how to convey that to clients and was just persistent after college and knocking on the same exact door at Morgan Stanley and just asking for you know when they would have an opening and it was right around the time that the Dean Witter merger was going on so they were going full-blown retail and ended up um you know working
00:16:28 with for about eight years and um learned a ton apologized for a ton of stuff that I had nothing to do with and in the end got tired of that right like the the final puzzle piece clicked into me in in two places so when I first joined Morgan Stanley my manager he was great and he said you know the reality is is that over the course of your career you're probably going to make two moves so you need to make those wisely and you know he was course talking about jumping firms and I had seen enough of those Friday you know the
00:17:05 broker's quitting and then you know it's the the Jerry Maguire esque kind of race on the phones to get in front of clients I had been through enough of that to know that the argument was always that hey you know we left you know this firm to go to this other firm because it's so much better over here and uh kind of like in year four or five Morgan Stanley started um really encouraging Partnerships uh teams and so they had matched me with somebody in the office and he was great at golf and handshakes
00:17:37 and I was great at generating reports and and you know working technology and so it was a great fit subsequently like two years after we had been working together we were up to like 125 million so we were doing well and he decided this is right around the time that the first big kind of payouts were coming I think it was like 110% of your trailer trailing 12 gross and so we did due diligence on all these firms and this was the first time that ID actually really kind of gone through that process and and saw for
00:18:08 myself and almost like Gabe where you start where he read the article from Susan Bara about Soph excuse me Sophia sorry Sophia about um you know how inexpensive it was I realized that every single one of these firms whether it was at the time wacovia or UBS or Merill um Smith Barney when it wasn't part of Morgan s every single firm was using basically the same software from the same providers right like e-money was doing the financial planning for pretty much all these firms and so at the end of the day I really could not like I had
00:18:43 a a crisis of conscience I I knew that we were going to get this big payday to move everybody but I couldn't really look them in the eyes and say it was going to be so much better at this other firm and so uh my my business partner and I we actually parted ways at that moment he took half the practice and I kept half the practice and my old firm thought that I was like really loyal and this should be something that you know like this guy's bleeding Morgan Stanley blue he's amazing and uh started working
00:19:13 as a sales manager and that's the last puzzle P was where I started to realize you know these private money managers and all of these different things that were supposed to be fancier and better somehow they really just weren't so I started moving clients more and more to indexing and when I did that that's when you know you kind of become person persona non gr right like there's all those due diligence meetings in Florida and New York uh to go meet with all the private money managers and of course I
00:19:42 stopped getting invited to those and so you know we did that dance for about two years where I just started moving people more and more away from products and more and more toward just index based portfolios and at that point just we were going through 2007 it was really vol again I had gone through that in 2000 and just did not want to be stuck there doing this anymore and so I left um in July of 2008 perfect time to be leaving yeah Market was just yeah just on the way out 42 days later like yeah the the market
00:20:20 was you know going down in a big big way so that's amazing excellent timing did you end up starting your own firm after that I did which was GDP and the whole idea behind it was we took like just a a handful of friends and family we were not looking to to get any any sort of litigious thing with the old firm and really it was just about offering real advice you know for a reasonable fee and having it be something to where neither they nor I are going to have to be looking over our shoulders about what it
00:20:56 is that we're doing you know can I trust this you know strong buy report or whatever it is you know more times than that I didn't so it seemed to me you know if I'm taking all of this career and reputation Risk by just you know giving people the best advice I can I might as well you know control the destiny of where the firm's going as well so yeah because a lot of firms have you know certain payout rates that are you know it's much lower payout rates on index funds or you know I've heard some that that have come over to XY that you
00:21:26 know you have to sell number of dollars of annuities before you're allowed to do financial planning you know that's sort of like you you graduate into being able to do planning once you have this base of annuity Revenue so every firm's a little different but you know it's not always it's certainly not encouraged because the money is not the same right like parent companies not making nearly as much money when you're out selling you know Vanguard funds and helping you out and set of proprietary products with
00:21:50 you know fancy you know reports that the Y you know that the parent company's generating to help you sell it so so Gabe you you said you launched about what two and a half years ago now and so but but Scott reached out to you pretty early on uh in that process so how talk to me about sort of the process of launching a firm through sort of when you two uh got connected and and started to have some conversations yeah so I joined xypn in October I think that was October 1st 2015 I left North russan
00:22:21 Mutual on October 30th is like Halloween of 2015 and then I spent the next three months putting everything together together so I think at that time uh we were working with at xypn it was a different compliance firm what Jim Colin so I had them helping me out I think we had a huge influx of members to xypn at that point in time so it took a little bit longer than I was hoping but I had enough money set aside and I had a side job at that point in time so it was it worked out fine yeah you came in during
00:22:51 the worst possible time to get registered through xypn because we were transitioning from sort of that contract relationship to inhouse yeah yeah for sure so that was a bit of a transition but uh yeah I think everyone took a little longer than than we expected but yeah and then I'm like Let's Jam this in before the end of the year I really want uh Cal the state of California to get me through and it ended up happening that uh they had it only took two weeks once we put everything in that all my paperwork went
00:23:19 in through the state they reached out to me to see if I had a couple questions like right before Christmas answer them right after Christmas and then the beginning of January was when my firm was officially approved okay that's actually really fast we uh every State's a little different but 12 weeks for anybody who's curious 12 weeks is about normal for to go through the the entire process just because States take the time that they take yeah so so at what point did you two start having conversations yeah so that was skyt
00:23:45 reached out to me March of 2016 so between January my firm actually being officially launched or approved by the state of California and the beginning of March I was on boarding a couple existing clients and they making sure a lot of The Kinks were taken care of so that my official launch date for crafter wol was I think March 7th of 2016 and let me just look at this real quick but I think Scott reached out to me on 3:21 so March 21st so it only took him two weeks to find me wow nice job Scott I mean I don't get a lot of
00:24:19 referrals through xypn specifically like everything kind of funnels into my website but just meeting Scott right off the bat 3x ypn was probably one of the biggest value relationships have received out of it for sure yeah I mean and you know we we've always wondered like especially early on we knew there were a lot of advisors using the fin an advisor portal obviously I think it shifted now to to more consumer based because we're actually you know seeing those leads get driven through but um you never know where relationship's
00:24:46 going to form right you just never really know how that's going to work out so what was when did y'all actually join forces when did that happened right so obviously with Scott reaching out to me like two weeks after I officially launched my firm he's we're just getting to know each other we're kind of going off trust that I know what I'm doing so he wanted me to work with a couple of his existing clients so that he could get a a feel and a read on how I went through the process they felt that I was a good guy
00:25:11 um so that was towards the end of 2016 and then at the beginning of 2017 they gave me glowing reviews obviously just because I'm so good at what I do of course and I just went through things a different way and I think they appreciated my Approach um but at the beginning of 2017 was when we started to be like all right are we going to is this going to become something that's official and we had a lot of back and forth conversation because I felt like I am so new to doing this I haven't hit even remotely a part of my capacity so I
00:25:43 was not super crazy about getting rid of a lot of potential Revenue if we were supposed to do supposedly going to do some sort of Revenue split so we we had a lot of conversations around that so that we could figure out what would work but we made an agreement figured it all out and then I think it was July 1st of 2017 is when we became official so I was duly registered with crafted wealth the and with gross domestic product the Raa for a couple months while we were transitioning all my clients over you
00:26:09 know it's really interesting because I have seen a lot of younger advisers that will launch their own firm and get solicitations from existing firms now usually it's like super established firm that's coming out and they're like oh we need young talent to come in or you know basically we need our next succession plan so they're they're having those conversations and so often they end up being more of a distraction than a benefit in this case it actually ended up working out so I guess how did you
00:26:35 evaluate like you're starting a business you're swamped right like there's so much to do just in terms of running the business go out getting clients like there's a lot of priorities like I guess how did you balance you know wanting to continue to build a business with also with this sort of like you know concept that was out there like oh well I could join forces but maybe maybe not you know like I guess how did you manage all that yeah that's kind of a good question I think at some point in time I realized
00:26:59 that this is kind of overwhelming rianka is in my Mastermind group and I think she put it the best way that I've heard it so far is that I was in a bad relationship before and when we broke up I had to be single for a while to figure out who I am as a yep as a person as a professional as a planner and then once I was single for a while I realized I actually liked being on a team that just might not have been the right team for me like we didn't As I Grew as a professional I realized that my thoughts and feelings around planning
00:27:26 were kind of diverging from what we were doing so when I met Scott and Erica who's our director of operations it was kind of breath it was a breath of fresh air to know that there are other people out there in the area that I live that were doing planning in a way that I felt like I wanted to do as well so in that sense that was a really good fit and I like working on a team there's things that Scott likes to do that I don't like to do and vice versa and the way that I always put it with a lot of our new
00:27:51 clients or existing clients is that Scott is investment heavy and financial planning light where I'm at financial planning heavy and investment light so merging us together you kind of get the best of both worlds does that help answer the question yeah it it makes perfect sense like I said they you know there's sort of this Allure whenever you first launch of like oh well I could just get a job like I could just take a salary but then there's also this like but I started a business I want to be
00:28:15 independent and so I know a lot of advisers deal with the solicitation of of other opportunities early on whether it's partnering or also I see a lot of advisers get pulled into the advisor facing space where they're like hey you have a great brand that you just could you train advisers on how to do marketing you know it's like oh well sure I could use some side income and then that sort of takes away from the business so it's awesome to see that you know sort of get balanced out uh so you said you have a a director of operations
00:28:42 so was she part of Scots firm already or did y'all find her after you sort of teamed up yep she was a part of Scott's firm already okay so Scott how did you find her yeah well so actually we had we were friends we met just in the real world at a dog park of all plac and she was in the industry as well and uh was working for another independent firm that was pretty sizable but was very old school was doing like you know mutual funds and you know still in like B shares and calling them no loads things like that and just you know was
00:29:15 not thrilled about was phoning and it at that point and so when we started our firm um you know probably about two three years after we' started our firm and I could actually afford to pay somebody cuz was just me in the beginning we brought her on and so part of the what we were hoping to achieve with Gabe and I getting together was like he was saying is filling in each other's gaps and so what we were able to bring him was infrastructure um so he could take all that time that is you know on the business or excuse me in the
00:29:47 business and start to be more on the business and dealing with clients and you know not reviewing emails and not you know dealing with the bookkeeper so we gave him bandwidth to be who he is which is awesome and doing awesome plans um we also then could add more value to our existing client base by deepening the relationship with better plans um and then for Gabe you know having all that extra time allows him to go find uh extra clients and then of course when we work together on cases it's it's a
00:30:19 beautiful thing because it's it's like two for the price of one for these clients and I think they do see that when they walk through the door so you got I mean you hired operation much earlier than a lot of advisers do which I actually I think is a good thing that that you know to bring in operations early so uh talk to me about the decision to hire Ops first as opposed to another advisor or a salesperson I mean how did you evaluate you know the the skill set that you needed on your team first yeah I mean so
00:30:49 you know what I what I am good at is making really complex things simple and asking the right questions when it comes to clients um I now have a experience too anything that was taking away from that I felt like was you know an area where we could definitely improve things I I didn't need more business I just needed the business to be more manageable and better and you know I we're big Believers in in customer service and so like we try very hard to like for especially for like our you know our higher net worth clients to
00:31:23 reply to them you know pretty much any day of the week within the hour um certainly everybody you know we try to get back to him within 24 hours and so you know I just found that I was starting to have to wear so many hats right like today I'm compliance then I'm trading then I'm research then I'm writing you know back to compliance I just I couldn't do it all I wanted to focus on all the things that were you know really advisory based being an advisor so for me it seemed like a no-brainer if if you can take care of
00:31:57 Ops and compliance it's so much of like the daily checklists and monthly checklists that uh yeah I I could not wait to get rid of that yeah I mean that that was my experience as well like that was the first thing I wanted to hand off was was operations and it is a difficult decision when you're hiring that first employee of like which what's the right team member and usually it's you know taking things off your plate that either you're not good at or you just a bad use of your time and there are just other
00:32:23 people out there that are gifted at managing the business or managing the operation or maybe there's you know someone who's gifted at compliance and trading and and that would be a good hire so uh it's always interesting to hear how folks make that evaluation but sometimes it's just you know you just come across someone where you say like I want you on the team and you're going to be on my team and I'm going to put you in a position to succeed and I'm going to do a bunch of other stuff you know
00:32:46 like sometimes that's okay too which sounds you know in a way some of what you ran into whenever you meet the right person yeah so I we've also I've also made two bad hires which were advisers and and so what we got right what I got right with Erica was it just was coincidental in this case but I really knew her well and for all the three of us we've really in this last year and a half started to develop a lexicon of like how we speak to people and what what I found most amazing and comfortable comforting about Gabe was is
00:33:19 when I did introduce him to those first two clients is just kind of a trial run they kept commenting on like how similar you know we are different but that we speak the same language and that we um were you know using analogies in kind of the same way and have the same principles and so for Erica I knew I had that out of the gate on the personal level that she's as honest as the day is long she cares and it shows and now together um it's it's a pretty wonderful thing when you when you have a team like Gabe said it's it's nice to be
00:33:51 able to point to somebody and delegate and know that that's their strength yeah and as far as joining forces it's pry pretty amazing to at a year and a half into the business to be able to have somebody rely on that's an Ops person that's been doing this for 20 years that I know has got all the paperwork and sounds exactly like me and loves their clients as much as I do yeah and like and I know I've said it on here before on the show but just to reiterate uh kitus and I have both talked about this
00:34:17 a lot where it's something we dealt with but you know typically whenever we handoff tasks that we don't enjoy uh it can feel like a punishment to someone where you're like I don't I hate doing the compliance I'm going to hand off compliance to someone else and it feels like you're punishing them because you're giving them something you don't enjoy just because it gives us a low level low level of anxiety all the time right but like in reality there are people out there if you're assigning it to the right person there are people out
00:34:42 there who enjoy and are good or great at doing the things that you don't enjoy doing and that's okay there are a lot of things that you do as a business owner as a financial adviser that other people what your firm do not want to have to do and so it's not a punishment it's that you know everything's got to get done and you want the PE the right people handling it so handing off a task that you don't enjoy is not a punishment think of it as a uh the opportunity for someone else to do things they enjoy
00:35:06 doing potentially now if you hire a bunch of mini mes right you have five people at the firm that are all the same that doesn't work so you have to hire hire well so I guess talk to me about how y'all break up duties so it sounds like Gabe you're more on the you know D financial planning side which you know your your title now as director of financial planning Scott's more it sounds like more on the investment side is that really the delineation or is there more Nuance than that I don't know I mean we have so many titles thrown
00:35:31 around it's like hard to know co-founding CEO a lot of inbound leads come through crafted wealth and we have a lot of existing clients through the GDP side that we're beginning to work on together so with the GDP client specifically that we are kind of bringing into the financial planning or total wealth management fold we have a conversation with them Scott and I together and this is kind of maybe more on a broader process in general but we then we do a get organized meeting to get them on e-money we discuss Vision Values and
00:36:04 goals and a lot of the times Scott and I are on these calls together sometimes we're not then we have a series of rough draft planning meetings that might be going through all the various topics of Investments risk management estate planning anything under the sun that they want to talk about employee benefits and then we have a final draft meeting and then then we're done um once we have that list of action steps when we're kind of done is like when we want to move the relationship to the next
00:36:26 step so some of these things I'll do with the client some of those things Scott will do and I think we're definitely very much still figuring all this out even though we're a year deep um but we're I think we're getting closer to something that's starting to work really really well we do collaborate you know in the office on all the plans so you know he'll walk me through the scenario as he sees it I'll offer any insights and vice versa you know like it's there's a lot of dialogue that goes into each one of these plans
00:36:53 before we actually present them well I don't have my cfp you know I've been in the industry now for well gosh since 2000 so you know almost 20 years so I have a lot of perspective that um not only just as a professional but then also you know I'm I have two kids so I'm a father I have been remarried so I know what divorce is about you know those life experiences for some of uh some of the clients who we do meet who do skew older and maybe do have some different experiences it's a really great combination very cool so then so I guess
00:37:27 does that then fit in with well is is U your opice manager your only other team member or do you have some others so we we just said goodbye to uh Jordan who was our intern and we actually um learned a lot from having him here for this last year um and now have developed kind of our our next list of hires um that we're looking at so some paraplanners that we're looking for um maybe some spreadsheet ninjas that we can do kind of like on a gig economy type of basis we've just just actually now started formulating what's the next
00:38:00 phase in our growth because we do have good deal flow and we probably just close enough to where if we had another like a perah planner or Junior planner to kind of help us with some of the streamlining of the data entry and just first looks we could probably afford that right now yeah and I think we should probably talk about Jordan too because he's a big fan of the podcast as well and I know he's going to listen to this but when you put yourself out there and you have your own website and like
00:38:27 you said there's a lot of people that reach out to you uh it's people that might be other advisers obviously prospects and then other people that might want to be interested in or are interested in the industry in some way and that was how Jordan met me like he messaged me on LinkedIn this is probably and at the end of 2016 and we kept it he was he was in the Air Force he just got out of the Air Force um but he was also getting his Masters at USC so he recognized that he wanted to be in the financial industry in some
00:38:57 capacity like he's always been on budgeting big on budgeting he has his own website and like has his own blog that's around Finance so when this opportunity came up towards the end of 2017 that he could take an unpaid internship and continue to be paid by the military we were the first people that he thought of and I don't think Scott and I really had the capacity to take on an internet at that point we were working on our website rebranding it doing a whole bunch of other things but he was such a selfstarter that that
00:39:24 made it okay like he could find things to do being that he was an NBA he had a whole host of things that he was really proficient on and I'm really thankful that he came into our lives especially for us to realize like we need more of a process when we hire somebody whe whether it be if for onboarding a new team member like what is this person going to do or how are they going to learn about all these different things that we have so he just got hired at USAA which is one of his that was the place he wanted to work at
00:39:51 I think he in like the um executive Management program or like the undergrad whatever program yeah that's awesome yeah so we're really looking forward to seeing where that career takes them and hopefully maybe five years in the future they'll come full circle yeah so you mentioned that you have a few hires that you're going to be making so what or or that you're thinking about what are your next say three hires that you have top of mind since you have you know sort of two advisors now you have operations
00:40:15 what are the next couple of hires that you're planning on on bringing in it's kind of funny because we had a conversation with Maddie a month ago and she was the one that kind of put this in her head so we started making a list of the potential things that we want out of hire and then Scott went through that list yesterday and broke it out into four different people perfect so have you ordered them or you you're just going to hire all four at once we want one person that does it all oh of course if only right
00:40:41 yeah well so one thing that we kind of learned is is um experience is great but with that also comes maybe some a lot of bad habits and so we are very much looking for we think probably um people who are just getting started Ed maybe they're even in their undergrad doing like personal finance they're major and so I think kind of the two places that we're looking right now is like spreadsheet ninjas so we we now are starting to have more and more data that if if we just um looked at it in a slightly different lens using some
00:41:20 ninja skills from somebody who knows how to work spreadsheets but uh that would be really useful for us metrics on our business as well as we're big fans of like zapier um so we're looking for somebody who basically likes data likes processes and I think for that we're probably looking at somebody who's you know it's more like a gig economy job and then for us I think probably the next logical hire is probably like a par planner who can do some of the data entry and research uh and is probably uh
00:41:57 somebody who's really great notetaker so we've been trying to record our meetings more and more and getting transcripts and putting more and more into wealth box which is what we use but we did find with Jordan who was an excellent notetaker that when we have meetings when we have meetings with clients internally or with clients uh having somebody there who was like kind of actively thinking about what we were saying and capturing the essence of that has been a really that's been huge for us in this last year
00:42:27 so I think really it's still kind of internal slash you know moving a little bit more external on in the focus yeah that that makes perfect sense and you're Pro and with the spreadsheet ninja job uh you're probably going to get some XY members emailing you here so we'll see so for anyone listening to this podcast if you want a uh if you're a spreadsheet ninja want a part-time job you know who to call so Switching gears a little bit you know Scott you mentioned that that y'all have some pretty significant deal
00:42:56 flow coming in right now so like where are these clients coming from do you all have a really specified uh Niche that you're working with that you're really bringing in or is it you know just sort of overall generic like marketing efforts that are bringing folks to the table uh you know I I probably would let Gabe answer this one um because I'll be honest like you know our business is a bit more mature and so we're working referrals inside ours is about servicing our existing clients and that service is expanding
00:43:23 through referral right word of mouth so we're most most of our deal flow is coming from is through gab's brand which that's important to remember here we actually kept two separate Brands crafted wealth crafted wealth exists today as it is and GDP exists as it is um and they do speak we think to two different sets of clients and that was really important for Gabe and that was something that I wanted too is like I loved his brand like right I was attracted to his website and so where a lot of our deal flow is coming from is
00:43:55 is the internet Gabe has done a really good job with SEO our location is good and his website it is just I think the right combination of personal and professional right so this is a really personal decision somebody's looking for a financial planner and you have to have a good fit I mean this is like you know it's your health your family and your money those are the big three so you're really becoming an important part of these people's lives and so I found that gab's website struck that balance really
00:44:27 well that it um speaks to his experience and his care and his craftsmanship but also kind of let you know who he is which is you know passionate about doing the right thing um and helping you get to you know the next level so Gabe do you want to add anything to that yeah sure I can kind of dive into more of the numbers because we just put together this crazy spreadsheet along with zapier and Acuity and like all this cool stuff that we've been doing so this is directly on top of my mind but crafted
00:44:57 wealth brand I think it kind of primarily speaks to well I'm on the west side of Los Angeles in Venice California so if you look up Venice California financial planner fiduciary whatever I'm one of the first things that comes up so there's a lot of people that reach out to me that way but as far as the niche focus goes I primarily work with entertainment industry folks tech industry so like Silicon Beach and I actually have ended up working with quite a few teachers as well and that's just I don't know maybe I speak to that
00:45:25 I'm not sure um but that's where specifically all my prospects kind of come from and as far as numbers go so this is from the beginning of 2016 we've had 161 prospects come in through my website so so in two years you've had 161 prospects come through yeah like two and a halfish years and wow okay or like I don't know two years and five months if we want to get technical on it but it's just I don't know what I did that makes people comfortable with it but at the same point in time I don't know I did all the lwh
00:46:00 hanging fruit that I could so now I'm a Napa member obviously so their find an advisor tool is how a lot of people find me I'm also on F only Network so if you look up F only financial adviser in Venice that's another thing that pops up and like all these things funnel back into my website so you do a Google search do an app for search go to the cfp board FY Network xypn all those things funnel into my website or our website and it just makes it so easy to schedule a meeting with me we have a 30
00:46:30 minute get to know you call we use Acuity for scheduling ask a whole bunch of questions there and then now with zappier we've been able to automatically have all those questions go into this Prospect spreadsheet that we just created which is pretty amazing very cool okay so so you are finding a niche but it doesn't sound like you started out saying like I'm going to focus on entertainers it sounds more like that's the Natural Market for sort of where you're located and that's where you're sort of developing a niche is is that
00:46:56 fair kind of it's a little bit of both my fiance she also works in the entertainment industry I know a lot of people that work in the entertainment industry so that was kind of a natural market in a way um but at the same point in time like she's at the lower rung of the ladder she's still on the assistant working her way up so I happen to work with a lot of other assistants that are out there and I'm now starting to work with some more staff writers and some more producer level individuals I also
00:47:20 work with editors and people in lighting unions and electricians and it's just amazing that's being from Wisconsin had no idea that this whole entertainment industry existed of pretty much every professional or trade that is out there and it's amazing because they're all part of some sort of Union they have pensions they have amazing health benefits they have things that are complicated compared to traditional a salaried employe somewhere so it's they have unique planning needs and I find that's why they're reaching out to me
00:47:47 yeah I have found there there's sort of I maybe more than two types of niches on this specific side but there's some niches where people just say like this is my area of expertise but the plan planning is not that much different than than for other clients whereas sometimes the planning is hyper specific in entertainment industry I I worked with a couple folks in the entertainment industry and like if that's not your full-time Focus or like a big part of what you do you will screw something up because I remember you know like cat
00:48:12 like oh yeah I forgot about the fact that there maybe I didn't know there was pensions with the writer Guild so you got to go to the writer Guild and go you know download all the information like if you don't know that stuff you're probably going to make a big mistake well the entertainment industry is a weird thing I have clients that are part of three unions and have worked on they're they're an actor they're a writer they're a producer they've directed things so they're all part of these all random unions and you have to
00:48:35 kind of coordinate consolidate like where are the benefits going to come from and how much are they going to be that's the I think that's the crazy part and the more difficult part of doing it yeah and I remember just looking at like agent contracts and and it just like blowing my mind because I'd never again had never worked in that area that you know to understand how that world works you know you make a ton of money for a couple of years and you don't make any money for for three years and just you
00:48:57 know all of the I I don't know is cash flow a big part of your planning process because of the the types of clients that you're working with yeah it definitely is we're big fans of wab wab so um you need a budget so some people love wabs some people hate wpp so why are you a fan of it I think when I started using it personally that was when my mind really changed so I've been using mint for the last six and a half years and mint's great for categorizing transactions and seeing how how you're doing against your different budgeting
00:49:29 categories and e-money function is pretty similar the cool thing with e-money is that it can import 12 months worth of past data so when we're first starting to work with somebody we normally put them on e-money so that we can categorize several past months to see where their money has been going so that we can start of start figuring out what their budget could be um but then at that point when we kind of figure out what their budget could be is when we like moving them on to wab and I mean both Scott and I have just recently
00:49:56 started using it I started using it like eight months ago it's Scott more recently two or three months ago um but the big thing that it gave for me was the view of budgeting is freedom so I cut my expenses so drastically when I first started crafted wealth because I wanted my Runway to be as long as possible so I'm big into cars that's kind of my hobby and my passion so I almost had zero dollars in my budget for car stuff and that was hard that's like my hobby and my passion and it took until the end of 2017 I wasn't
00:50:27 paying myself very much at the beginning of 2018 was when I started to be able to pay myself more and I had to change my mindset around money or wab started allowed me to do that so if I put $500 a month for car stuff I have that there and I can spend that on car stuff it's it's specifically for that purpose and since I have all my other goals and savings built in it's not going to mess that up and that alone made it great um the other thing that people find weird about wab is how credit cards are used
00:50:55 but I kind of look at it as like once you get it set up and running the way it needs to be it's amazing so I don't really look at my checking account balance anymore I don't really look at what I have on credit cards anymore because wab has all the categories broken out and also it tells you right at the top of the screen how much money is available that's not categorized for something and to me that's the number that's important I don't have to do mental math anymore like in the past maybe three or four years ago using mint
00:51:21 it was always kind of still like okay I'm GNA have this huge pain point when I have to pay off my credit card bill even though it was stuff that I spent money on that was otherwise in my budget anyways and I don't have that pain point with wab anymore I mean there's so many benefits using it it's a huge hurdle to get over it but I think we've created a process to get people on it that starts to make sense yeah my understanding and I I've never used weab but my understanding of it is it's all about
00:51:42 budgeting the money allocating the money that's in your bank account today whereas mint is more about next month I will spend no more than $500 a month on groceries um so there are a few different they're just two different philosophies yeah so mint and e-money are kind of accounting whereas wab is planning that's interesting that's kind of the way to look at those yeah and that's why I always liked um oh my goodness I just blanked uh First Step I'm sorry First Step cash management out of CT's firm and now money quo has the
00:52:14 licensing rights to it and distribute it but it's a cool it's it's a similar concept with sort of planning it's not a budgeting it's not a it's not a cash management tool it's a a budgeting tool so for folks that are about getting in this area there are a few different tools first Up's the only one that has an advisor portal we actually I emailed the folks at wab uh to try to get them to create an advisor portal and uh they felt like the advisor Marketplace wasn't big enough so which they're I hope we
00:52:40 convin at some point yeah they're probably right uh it's just not there's just so few advisers out there doing this work right that it it doesn't seem attractive to them there should be more of us because that's what fuels the financial plan is your cash flow budget well if you're working with clients that aren't yet rich right and that's where I I think I see this so often with advisers that that the a big rub or or difference in terms of working with sort of our the client base we've always worked with versus uh
00:53:06 working with younger clients is that we never had doe cash flow planning with clients because they always came to us like with those habits in place they already made plenty of money they didn't spend more than they made and they you know had everything in place whereas you're working with clients where you're helping them build these foundational uh habits in order to be successful and one of those is understanding how you know how money flows particularly in the the the field that a lot of your clients are
00:53:29 in because the money it does not flow consistently it's not a W2 yeah I mean I would say you know as far as the the one gift that cash flow has afforded us even for for our high net worth clients is is um it's it's an exercise in kind of getting you reacquainted with your money so we actually went through uh doing this with uh a client who you know their net worth is probably 4 million they have two million with us and uh you know they have a ridiculously high uh monthly spending amount and so going through
00:54:04 that same process using YNAB we actually hooked them up to e-money and looking at just tracking the expenses and just getting them reacquainted what we had found was is if he had shifted his electricity bill um he was playing paying flat rate and if he had just switch that to time you know uh rate where so it's cheaper at night and and more expensive than during the day he ended up saving something Gabe what was it it was almost like $1,000 a month whoa yeah yeah and he has a house with like four different AC zones and stuff
00:54:37 like this so I mean this is a bit a bit of the ridiculous right but just like going through everything and just you know same with like his phone like he he was paying way too much for like his mobile phone just little silly things like that where like there were all these nickels and dimes that because he just assume you know he's he's good like you know I make enough money we're good I'm you know just going through that exercise was still really worthwhile yeah I was about the first step to cash
00:55:04 flow and budgeting is always about building awareness and where your money has been going then we kind of go through and once we're tracking everything we can start trimming the fat and then at some point in time we're going to have to have a conversation about like okay what are your goals we're going to have to make some hard decisions to accomplish these goals so what's more important this goal or spending money on this sweater or whatever or $ th000 doll a month on electricity I don't know it's really
00:55:26 interesting at the same point in time with our younger clients they're really interested in investing but at the same point in time if we find, dollars a month or $500 a month in their budget that's going to make a d a drastic impact compared to them getting an extra percent return on their portfolio especially when you're young yeah for sure right yeah control the stuff you can control yeah and I'm interested I mean one of the experiences that I had working with clients is you know trimming the fat you know you switch
00:55:52 over the electricity from one to the other super easy you tell someone that has a hobby uh in cars that they can't spend any money on anything to do with cars like that's going to hurt really bad and quite honestly isn't going to last long so one of the big pushes I always had was you know how do we have the conversation about income you know and I feel like with a especially in that the field that you're in like I feel like income is such an awesome conversation that there's so much flexibility there that you know many
00:56:20 Industries don't naturally come with you know these like inherent you know abilities to able to more money in different ways well it's kind of interesting because I a lot of the assistants that I'm working with are super Frugal and they know they're always trying to find the next job that might pay a little bit more get them the next rung of the ladder and I have clients that are staff writers that once they make two to three times as much money their habits start to change and they they're spending Rises with their
00:56:48 income and we want to avoid that as much as possible I think it's okay to reward yourself a little bit but if you're aware of what your goals are ahead of time then you can we can help mitigate a little bit of that but I don't know it all goes back to the cash flow conversation in my mind and making sure we're mindful yeah no I I totally agree and like I said I would venture to say like on the fiduciary side of the world uh well really probably all financial advisors probably in the singled digit
00:57:14 percentage of advisers that ever actually talk about cash flow I mean and you know 9% on the top end is probably high uh it's probably only a couple percentage points of of advisers ever actually talk cash flow with their clients and yet it really is so core You Know Carl Richard always says that you know that that's how you can tell who someone is and what they value is how they spend their money and yet most advisers never look at that because we think like oh they you know they're fine they make enough money we don't need to
00:57:39 pay attention to it and yet that's how you can actually understand who a person is is based on where they spend their money yeah I mean when I was at Northwestern Mutual I did over 800 Financial plans and there's one client that I did budgeting with it's kind of crazy yeah all right one out of 800 that there's some there's a percentage for you I made an impact there we go well I mean you helped a lot of people it's just a different it's just a different service model and a and a different relationship right I mean you in the
00:58:05 type of work that you do now it's much more important for you to really understand your clients's values because if you if their values and their goals and their spending and all of those things are mismatched there's clearly going to be a problem you know getting that all in alignment is huge and I mean gotta keep in mind I was an associate at a firm so like I wasn't able to make the decisions to say like let's go through cash flow because they weren't earning Revenue that way so it didn't seem like
00:58:27 something that was important for us to do with them even though I felt it was so so what are y'all's priorities over the next one to two years you mentioned potentially hiring some folks uh you know as you continue to grow but what are some of your uh each of your priorities both uh professionally maybe even personally that that you've got on the roadmap that you're going to be working on so we're still small there's three of us here obviously and I was having this conversation with a prospect the other day that we kind of we don't
00:58:54 necessarily have a vision for the firm per se but we each have our personal visions and since we kind of focus at things on things as a lifestyle practice we the firm's goals are a reflection of what our goals are for ourselves Scott do you think that's kind of an accurate way to put it yeah I I would say that's pretty accurate yeah so we recognize that we can do more and help more people and grow I think we're kind of looking at it on two angles one through crafted wealth it's about helping people craft
00:59:29 their life to become wealthy um and with GDP we're working with a set set of clients where their needs are changing and their service needs are actually becoming I think higher touch still so we've started uh and I don't I don't want to speak out of turn Gabe you know we're starting to talk about doing some like family service light types of services for you know our higher net worth clients so things like bookkeeping and you know tax planning things like that sure some of the more hands on Services yeah yeah and so uh you know
01:00:06 right now we're focusing I think on just getting all of our systems in place looking for the right talent to kind of give us more time still because that's the one thing that we're still really need and you know we did the numbers to figure out what we need to do to double from here and they're not completely in surmountable so now we're really just kind of looking at the data we have and saying like Okay if we do this then you know with now with the data we have we say if this then we know we'll get this
01:00:36 so if we advertise here we know we'll get this many clients if we spend this much money and so we've just started going through that exercise and capturing all this data to see what our next best move is yeah it'll be really interesting to see you know Gabe you mentioned you know you lifestyle practice you want to maintain that balance but but grow grow isn't always the is not necessarily the antithesis of staying lifestyle but it is a conflict or an obstacle that you have to deal with that um sometimes growth leads to
01:01:05 you know just focusing on the business and not necessarily maintaining that lifestyle it'll be interesting to see how you both sort of figure out how to balance those two around hiring and growing while also maintaining lifestyle yeah something we're constantly aware of and I think as like our weekly structure is kind of important to talk about too so Tuesdays and Wednesdays is are the days that we're in the office together and I think that's really important because we get to sit down around each
01:01:29 other feel each other's energy draw some things out on the Whiteboard if we want to work on the business a little bit and that's that's totally different than us all being in the same office five days a week making sure that we're there or being completely out of the office so it's I think we've got that Balan down pretty well um so that leaves Monday Wednesdays and Fridays for us to either work from home or from a coffee shop or do whatever we want to do and that's kind of the lifestyle aspect I'm will to
01:01:55 give up two my days to drive a little bit to go to the office to be with some people I enjoy being around and then the rest of the time I can be working with clients or going to the gym or doing all these other things and I we really want to keep that sort of balance as we as we grow so it makes the hires that we have or like want to make it's a conversation that we keep having like how do we want to structure this what kind of time do you want to spend together do we want them to be in the office can they be
01:02:19 remote there's all these decisions that we have to have to make and I think it's built off a big part of it is absolutely and and it really comes down to what kind of business you want to build and that'll change you know I mean it changed for us at XY we used to all be work from home and we just outgrew that concept I'm thrilled that we had that you know people ask me all the time like do you wish you started with an office I'm like no because if we had started with that office I never would have found Maddie
01:02:43 and Stacy and Jen and Scott you know our our directors and sort of that core team that that helped us get started but it I mean find people that really fit into your tribe absolutely and there may come a day where you say okay it's time to have everybody in person that was the call we made and we're in that transition phase and and it happens but uh you don't know where the future you know you don't necessarily know what the future's going to look like but I know the mistake we made that I always
01:03:09 encourage advisers and business owners to really focus on is really Define the business you want to build because if not you run a very high risk of building the wrong business uh and and building one that doesn't support the life that you want to live and therefore you know makes you not excited to show up in the morning so uh you got to stay really focused on that that's what we always want to avoid well thank you both I as we're sort of coming to a close I'll ask you both uh the final question and so Scott
01:03:38 we'll start with you if there is one piece of advice that you would go back and give your younger self that one thing that you wish you had known then that you know now what do you think that one piece of advice would be you know I think it's so much of my youth was spent trying to grow up and I I don't think Millennials necessarily have this this problem I but it was you know get married get a job get a house you know have kids and realizing that experience and you know connections and relationships that's going to be the
01:04:13 thing that really carries you through with gratitude and opportunity and so I think I I would you know tell people who are just starting off you know whether it's want to start their own firm or maybe join or just kind of explore around is take that time to really uh have some experiences so you get that point of view and perspective before you start pushing for you know all the trappings of Life yeah and I think there's something too about I had someone comment to me one time if you go to a financial planning conference most
01:04:47 of the young advisers there are married it's I I don't know if there's any statistics to back this up but it just it seems like like we tend to get married a little younger maybe get our life in order a little faster uh could be the fact that you know here we are helping other people plan their lives so we plan ours uh but it is easy to try to want to grow up too fast and like you don't have to you know be a dirt bag for your whole 20s like but you can enjoy yourself while learning and gaining that
01:05:11 experience that's right yep so Gabe uh how about you what what would that one piece of advice be I think I have four notes but awesome go through all knock them all out I'm sure there's way more than that but be curious I think honestly when I graduated high school I thought I would be a auto mechanic and here I am and that was in the midwest here I am 10 years later in California running a financial planning fir like you never know where life is going to take you and where your passions are going to take
01:05:44 you but if you're always curious you're going to find something that you're going to be happy with uh number two is like find a community that was one of the biggest changes that I had was when I took the cfp or like took did the courses to get my cfp meeting new people being a part of FPA and Napa joining xypn I found a lot of people that have similar Vibes with me and I'm so thankful for that always keep learning I think getting your designations is a really important thing to do I did that as quickly as I could so like right at
01:06:11 the three-year experience Mark I've had my cfp for the most part and just ask questions I ask Scott questions all the time I ask my old adviser questions all the time because we can always learn the more you learn the more you'll realize you don't know and you'll be humbled by that and you won't be I don't know I think that just really helps as uh you're growing as a professional to keep keep yourself humble and recognize that there's always a lot more to learn absolutely well thank you both so much
01:06:37 for taking the time to come on and and share your story I think you have uh it's it's really interesting to see sort of the the teaming up I think we have more and more XY members that have sort of met each other through the forums and study groups and are starting to team up which is really exciting to see because it allows folks to play off each other strings and and to be able to really you know grow the business into what what it is they want to do so I congratulate you both on uh on finding that and being
01:07:02 willing to make the leap and not just you know trying to trying to be the sole owner of of your own financial planning firm if that's if that really wasn't the path that you were passionate about but agreed it was scary but we made it work yeah that that it is so again thank you both for taking the time to be on the show Al thank you man yeah thank you so much Alan appreciate the time support for today's episode comes from Ruby receptionist let Ruby help you turn callers into customers for a special offer visit call ruby.com xypn
01:07:31 and use promo code xypn or better yet call them at 844 853 7829 be sure to join our VIP community at xylan network.com viip to hang out with other xyp and radio listeners ask questions for future mailbag episodes with myself and kitus and to finally find a community of like-minded financial advisers thanks so much for joining me today we'll see you next time you're not alone and you're not crazy it's scary starting building and growing your own financial planning firm and that's why we put together a free
01:08:02 private Community just for you the cuttingedge financial planner go to XY planning network.com slvp or text xypn radio to 33344 and join a network of thousands ready to change the lives of Gen X and geny clients
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Featuring
Gabriel Anderson
Crafted Wealth Management
Scott Bell
GDP, Inc.
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