Podcast → Episode No. 60

Financial Life Coaching

With Garrett Philbin AFC®, CMC®

March 25, 2026

Featuring

Garrett Philbin AFC®, CMC®

Be Awesome, Not Broke

Can you build a sustainable business by working with clients who spend more than they earn?

That’s the question I put in front of Garrett Philbin, founder of Be Awesome Not Broke. He’s not chasing high-net-worth households. He’s working with clients who are in negative cash flow, people who spend more than they earn, and helping them rebuild from the ground up, with a focus on cash flow and debt management.

Garrett didn’t follow a traditional path. He spent five years in the music industry, acting as the go-between for artists and business teams. That experience shows up in how he runs his firm today: clear communication, strong relationship-building, and a deep understanding of how to meet people where they are.

In this conversation, we get into what it actually looks like to build a firm around this audience. Garrett shares how he quickly finds and connects with prospects, the role other advisors play in helping him build a steady pipeline, and how he thinks about pricing in a way that aligns with his clients’ financial realities.

If you’ve ever wondered whether you have to target high-income clients to make this work, this episode offers a different perspective, one that expands how we define opportunity, impact, and long-term client relationships.

Give it a listen and come ready to rethink who you can serve, how you serve them, and what building a meaningful, sustainable firm can actually look like.

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Listen to the Full Interview:

Watch the Full Interview:

What You'll Learn from This Episode:

How Garrett connects with other financial advisors to prospect for clients
The importance of building a mutually beneficial relationship with fellow professionals
Why did he decide against setting up an RIA
The educational credentials essential to running a level 1 planning firm
His approach to behavior management that facilitates client buy-in to values-based budgeting
How his current pricing structure has evolved over the past eight months
How to transition to a value-based pricing model in the planning world

Featured on the Show:

Garrett Philbin AFC®, CMC®: Website | LinkedIn | Facebook | YouTube
Be Awesome Not Broke | Blog | About Be Awesome Not Broke
How to Convert Prospects into Leads: A 5 Step Process for Financial Advisors

This Episode Is Sponsored By:

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 am your host Alan Moore thank you so much for joining me today today's

00:00:29

episode is an interview with with Garrett filin the owner of be awesome not broke a financial coaching business that works entirely virtually with clients Garrett has had an awesome career path because it had nothing to do with financial planning he's actually from the music business and made a career switch into planning because of the need he saw for financial coaching you'll notice I say coaching not planning because he's actually not a cfp and doesn't have an raia he doesn't do

00:00:54

comprehensive Financial Planning and completely steers clear of investment management Garrett is building his business business working with clients on what I would call Level One Financial Planning which is extremely valuable he's also building his business off referrals from other financial advisers most of all of which are in xypn working with a clients that aren't yet ready for their comprehensive financial planning services and they're referring those folks over to Garrett his main area of

00:01:22

focus is in cash flow and debt management and just overall getting your financial house in order and when you're done with his Services you'll be ready to hire a financial planner that offers more comprehensive Services I absolutely love his business model and think it's something that we need a lot more of because there are so many people out there that would benefit from working with a financial coach so if this is of interest to you definitely listen to this entire episode you can find all of

00:01:46

the resources we mentioned during the episode at XY planning network.com 60 also be sure to go to XY planning network.com viip to join our private group just for xypn radio listeners you can interact with with other listeners ask guest questions and more all right without further Ado here's my interview with Garrett hey gar welcome to show man thanks so much for being on of course thanks so much for having me Alan so we are very lucky to have gotten you scheduled because you actually had emailed me just a couple days before I

00:02:19

had emailed you regarding this so tell listeners about your exciting upcoming trip so in two days from now I'm going to be headed on a road trip around the western part of the us I'm actually in my hometown of St Louis abiso California right now over the next 7 weeks going to be going up north California then Oregon Washington Idaho Montana you'll no longer be there but I'll wave it where you used to be Wyoming Colorado Utah and then I think maybe the top of Arizona and then coming back and then ultimately

00:02:52

heading down to xypn conference in San Diego I love it so I have not actually mentioned on the show yet so for listeners out there what he is refering referring to is the fact that in two days time actually I will be loading up into a trailer and I'm making the move from Boseman Montana down to Nashville Tennessee going to get next to a airport that's a little bigger than our seven Gates here in Boseman literally I had an experience recently where one of the flight attendants I was boarding with my

00:03:19

girlfriend and she had a little bit it was a small roller bag but it was a really small plane she was like will this fit and the flight attendant looked at me as I was or the boarding agent looked at me and said you fly a lot do you know if this will fit up there like at what point the boarding agents know who you are it's probably time for a change then yeah I will hit Diamond status this year on Delta out of a seven gate airport so not ideal I'm moving to Nashville there's the big news

00:03:45

sorry for you know blowing up your spot with that one no I love it so yet we have so many awesome things I want to talk about particularly a blog post you wrote for the XY Planning Network blog that actually prompted me to reach out to you to have you on the show and some other things that you've been working on but let's just give kind of an overview I want to hear a little bit about kind of your career path and how you came to kind of own your own Financial coaching firm so I guess how did you get started

00:04:10

man this is a really circuitous path my background is actually music business so I am one of the career Changers that's what I went to school for went to the University of Miami down in Florida and that's what for you know 5 years before starting this company is what I did so that was my life and in the music business I guess how it kind of relates to me starting my own Financial coaching firm is I worked a lot in client services so I was kind of the liaison between the creatives and the business

00:04:48

people so kind of in The Firm that I've built now it's often dealing a lot with left and right brain where it's money but then also the emotions and the goals that people have so I think that kind of dealing between the creative and business side in the music business gave me a way to see how to have that conversations between two groups of people and now I simply have that with one person but kind of the both sides of their brain and looking at money and emotions and kind of how to bring those

00:05:18

two together and so was that kind of what led you to get interested in financial planning at that point you know in the music business I worked for Sony for a couple years which is a obviously a big company and then started two companies with a couple friends of mine from college and that was the first taste of Entrepreneurship in starting my own thing and kind of what it's like to be part of a really small team and all of the excitement yet stress and obligations that come with wearing so many different hats and

00:05:53

ultimately I realized that the music business was not the business that I wanted to be in it is is a really interesting and exciting business but it's not very well-run there's a lot of tension in between the people that create the music and the people that exploit it which is not a negative term that that's what it's called you take the music and you try to make money from it so there was just a lot of lack of trust between the people who are making the music and the people that had to

00:06:19

make money off of it and I didn't really like that so ultimately one of the businesses that we started hit a cash Crunch and so it gave me the opportunity to step back and say okay if the way we've been doing something isn't working and if I'm not really sure this is what I want to be doing let me take a step back and see what it is that I actually want to do one of the co-founders of the company he said you know you love to teach and to Mentor I actually volunteered for two years at a college

00:06:51

at a high school for low-income students and really loved that experience and that's where the teaching and and mentoring side I got to flex those muscles and realize how much I really love that and then he's also like dude you for some reason you nerd out in love personal finance like you've helped us with it I was doing the books and a lot of the accounting for the companies that we started he's like what would it look like to combine those things and it was funny because sometimes it takes people

00:07:19

from outside to give you perspective on what you're good at and what you actually want to focus on and so that's when I had the chance to say holy crap like why don't look into what that is and honestly I had no idea of what financial planning really was I knew what a financial advisor was but only on like the highest level of usually it's old rich white people helping old rich white people like and from there but it was just once that seed of an idea of okay I can help people I can teach them

00:07:49

and Mentor them around their money like what would that look like I'd never found an idea that I was so excited about that it was just like the moment he said that went home just mult multiple pages and pages and pages of Evernote on like what I could do to help people how I could help people what it would look like and just realize that if I get this fired up about something that I in that moment knew so little about like I really need to go after this and that's really where that seed started so

00:08:17

what year was this this was April so we hit the cash grunch in April of 2015 okay so just over a year ago now just over a year ago corre so did you decide to pursue the cfp or any other type of more formal education or was it mainly based on kind of self-taught off the internet and and resources that are available it was a conscious decision I did some research and saying okay what is the cfp connected with a lot of people who had their cfp and realized that while it's incredibly important for people to have

00:08:53

if they want to do comprehensive planning and I think that's definitely the route people should go if they want to do comprehensive planning that that actually isn't where my focus was and what I wanted to do where I had struggled in the past and where I saw a lot of my friends struggling and people that I knew was really around the basics of cash flow management of budgeting of not having a plan to pay down debt and ultimately where it all stemmed from was not having a really good idea of what

00:09:21

was important to them and why so this very kind of Kinder life planning as I'm discovering is really about when I realized that that's what I wanted to focus on I realized that the cfp wasn't necessarily the most important thing I had to do next in order to do that no I totally agree and it's kind of interesting just how little the cfp focuses on anything related to the everyday American and we get this question I think we answered it in a mailbag one time kitus and I did that I

00:09:48

don't remember what the exact question was but I remember the answer basically being that the cfp doesn't really teach you skills when it comes to cash flow debt management the word student loans is never mentioned in the cfp education yeah and so we use the cfp as the gold standard we think it's a fantastic designation but ultimately it's not actually the best formal education for working with younger clients and I know folks look at the AFC designation the accredited financial counselor which I'm

00:10:15

looking to learn more about it I think we're going to be at their conference this year just to learn more about it because that may be a better designation for this type of thing I mean have you found any other more formal designations that make sense for you in terms of kind of the work you're doing I've been looking into that one there are a couple others that people have turned me on to honestly at this point it's always as an entrepreneur looking it what is the next most important thing I can be doing and

00:10:41

right now it's in the okay get clients keep clients and kind of survive this first year and then after that it's going to be okay now that I'm a little bit more unstable footing what are some additional things I can do professionally so for professional development and then I think that's at the time where I'm going to be able to come up take a breath and say Yes I want to do some more formal programs like that right now it's just reading a ton of books talking to a bunch of people

00:11:09

and kind of the informal education side but definitely understanding that that more formal education process is going to be an important step as well I totally agree I I remember see I was on the PHD track at the University of Georgia and so I was getting my masters that was supposed to flow into a PhD program and I was had a situation where basically I was going to get delayed two years of my graduation because of some things that they did at the program that it was just going to take me longer than

00:11:32

I had expected and I was talking to my major professor and he asked the question what do you really want to do and I said I really do just want to own my own firm and I think the PHD is just amazing credentials I think it's going to bring in clients and he said it will I mean he's a PhD he owned his own firm he said the PHD will absolutely bring in more clients but if you and I are sitting here today and you have two paths one is go get your PhD and it takes an additional two years on top of

00:11:55

some other time so let's say 3 to four years and then you start your own firm or you start today start trying to bring in clients how much better off are you going to be in the next three or four years if you basically spend that time prospecting instead of studying for your PhD and that was when I kind of clued into exactly what you're talking about which is like okay yeah I could do something more or I could spend the next year you know actually going and getting clients and that way instead of having

00:12:20

my PhD I have 20 clients or 30 clients or whatever much better route as a business owner yeah and it's interesting because as I was trying to get into the profession and seeing what opportunities were out there you know I started talking to Kaleb Brown for example and new planner recruiting and seeing what opportunities there were for me to get experience in the industry but the more I looked into it I realized that okay I could get an associate job or I could get something like that where I would

00:12:52

maybe for two or 3 years be doing something that would kind of ancill be related to what I wanted to be doing but ultimately it would be two to three years that yeah I wouldn't be in the thick of it I wouldn't be out there talking to people prospecting or getting clients or being in front of clients and my experience from starting those two companies in the music business was that you just learn by doing and ultimately helping people with budgeting and cash flow and finding out what is important

00:13:25

to them and why it's not rocket science and I don't mean this in any way to diminish what that work is I think it's actually harder to deal with the emotions than any of the simply the numbers side but it's not rocket science in the sense that you have to have this whole bunch of schooling that can prepare you for it it's how do you listen well to people can you be an active listener can you tap into what is truly important to them can you create a safe space where they will open up to

00:13:54

you about that and then can you help them put together a plan basic cash flow and saying okay here's what is important to you and here's how we can align your values with your spending all right let's go work forward and do this yeah it really is it's the Art and Science of financial planning and listeners know that kitus and I have both pushed that you know if you're fresh out of school you're 22 go get a job in financial planning go learn more about the industry the cfp can only teach you so

00:14:22

much it teaches you the science it does not teach you the behavioral aspects which honestly like I'm not a big you know you need Ag and experience kind of guy but it was even helpful for me and I'm somebody who just likes to experiment I would rather dive into the deep end to learn if I know how to swim and it sounds like you're the same way yeah but the difference is you had some other experiences in terms of running a company some background I find career Changers have a much easier time

00:14:48

starting their own business than folks that have zero work experience and just you know have just come out of school but it really does come down to it's so challenging and I wish it wasn't the the truth but like people ask me you know how can I go learn how to do financial planning for Millennials then I have to say you have to go start your own firm cuz it's not like there's a plethora of jobs out there that will teach you the work that you're currently doing we just don't have those opportunities currently

00:15:12

so yeah hopefully at some point you're employing five or six people and everyone in the xay plan network is employing five or six people and I can say hey there's a thousand jobs available out there to go learn I guess the ropes but unfortunately we're several years away from that so okay so you decide to Launch your own firm now you made an interesting decision to not actually register as an Raa so tell me about kind of the decision process there kind of the route that you took from a

00:15:39

business entity standpoint so the decision to not register for an Raa was kind of from two angles one is that I had no interest in helping people with their Investments investing in that idea was not something just kind of when I was starting my own firm that I wanted to focus on I just said okay really the basics this is what we're going to look at budgeting cash flow what's important to you and the more that I learned about it and as I've been running my company I've realized that there are some

00:16:14

aspects where that could be helpful to have as a tool but then also from the compliance standpoint and the registration standpoint I just realize kind of the cost benefit analysis is for me that's if that's not where I want to be focusing on then I simply will not do that side and I will stay away from it and that's actually been a great way for me to have conversations with Comprehensive financial planners who have started their own raas you know start conversation of hey I work with

00:16:46

people in this very limited capacity you sometimes get people like that coming to you prospects who are a better fit for me than for comprehensive financial planning so how about I work with them first you refer them to me I work with them and then when they get to the point of having positive cash flow good spending habits and they know what goals they're working towards I can then hand them back to you and you can help them on this larger scope with estate planning College Planning tax planning

00:17:14

helping them with their Investments and you can pick up where my kind of expertise ends and so that's been a great conversation starter of this kind of back and forth referral relationship you know it reminds me of it reminds me the value of like a Dave Ramsey course what learnvest used to be where we kind of see I called it level one planning and that's not to to say that it's bad or less or anything like that it's just building the foundation that comprehensive financial planning is

00:17:40

built on and we are an industry that ultimately we have generally only worked with rich people after they've made their money we didn't do level one planning we didn't help them get there they just got there themselves and then hired us and this is an entirely new model where we're starting to see folks like yourself kind of build out this foundation for clients help them get their goals in line figure out what they want out of life you know figure out their spending in their cash flow start

00:18:05

saving money and get to a point to where then hiring a comprehensive financial planner makes sense and truth be told this service actually reaches exponentially more clients than comprehensive financial planning simply because it's very challenging it's impossible to do real Quality Financial Planning for someone that's an overs spender I mean you have to start there exactly and what's interesting is I came into this world with literally zero experience and understanding and history

00:18:35

of what I didn't know what a broker dealer was I didn't know what an RA was so for me I think what actually has been a huge asset and a benefit is not having any of this understanding of what has been or what quote unquote should be and that allowed me to come in and say what do I see people struggling with and that was I see people struggling with especially in New York City which is where I've lived for the past 5 years is they spend more money than they make or they're making a good amount of money

00:19:06

but they aren't spending it in a way that's making them happy they some of them have goals but aren't putting money towards it some of them have no idea what is even important to them or what their goals are so my Approach was how do I help people who are around me as you said there's so many more people who need that kind of help what can I create that will specifically address those needs that I'm seeing of the people around me and that was this mixture of you know first you have to figure out

00:19:36

what's important to you and why and then from that point you know we'll dive into the numbers help you figure out where you're starting from a lot of people have only kept numbers in their head and as we know mental accounting is so much different than actual real accounting when you see what your real budget is and so yeah I did have that benefit of coming in as a complete Outsider and not having any expectation of what quote unquote should be or how things should be done which is actually a really good

00:20:03

thing I like the fact that you haven't had the experience that many of us had which was you know we went to planning conferences said we wanted to work with younger clients and and we just got bashed by older advisers saying oh young people will never pay for financial planning you can't do Conference of financial planning for young people I don't even want to imagine a conversation when you say I'm not going to do financial planning I'm going to do more life coaching cash flow analysis

00:20:25

we're going to focus on that and they're going to say I imagine most advisor think that must be pro bono or some you know nonprofit financial literacy program and it's opening this entirely new door this entirely new business line that is can be wildly profitable and I'm super excited to see more companies like yours get started and be profitable to be able to show that we can do different types of financial planning for different people and create businesses that are real businesses that are not

00:20:52

just a hobby and not just a nonprofit yeah that's a big push back I got when I was Shi shifting into the industry you know July or so of 2015 I just reached out to as many people as possible that's originally how I got connected with you like I just shot you an email like hey your name came up this xypn is a thing like hey I want to talk to you and did that in New York and then on a national scale and I got a lot of push back of people saying the model that I had in mind even though it hadn't taken a

00:21:22

tangible form yet like you can't make money off of that and how are people who have negative cash flow going to pay for your services and this comes down to a larger question that I think doesn't just affect me but affects financial planners as well is by helping people identify that you can create value for them I have people pay an upfront fee that we can go into my fee structure later if you'd like but it is just saying look here is what you want here is what is possible and I can help you

00:21:56

by doing X Y and Z to get you there is that worth it to you and a is it worth this amount of money and also saying well also look at the alternative how much would it cost for you to not do these things to not achieve these goals to not make progress they're like that is worth $1,500 for me so that I am able to have this life Vision that we just painted so you haven't heard the episode yet because it's going to go live we're recording a couple weeks out so an episode that will go live before this

00:22:28

one that has been recorded already is actually kitus and I talking about pricing your services in one of the ways that we talk about is value based price so instead of saying like oh you make $11,000 so I'll charge you $10 it's that I can save you the value I'm providing you is however much and therefore you're going to pay me less than that so I'm going to you know make you $10,000 of value so therefore you can pay me $1,500 for that service yeah and I think it's just a phenomenal we actually said there

00:22:55

that you know it's basically like the Holy Grail of pricing because it's just you have to be a really good salesperson honestly to be able to sell that to a client and to explain it yeah I think that's the huge part is it's not just a selling thing you don't have to be a great salesperson you have to be an incredibly good listener and you have to be confident in the value that you can provide as well because if you don't believe in the value that you provide then you can't offer a value-based model

00:23:24

because you don't believe necessarily that maybe you can end up with a number that oh I can save someone $3,000 but you have to believe that what you're offering truly is worth that much and that's sometimes the impostor syndrome comes into play and starting a new firm like you have to get to that point as well so it's not just about salesmanship it's about listening and about believing in yourself that you are worth that as well at least for people you know who are starting their own firms and kind of

00:23:51

new that's what I found so not that I'm trying to bring too many competitors to your firm but I will say that you know and we we'll dig into a little bit about how you get referrals but you know when I look at the XY plan Network I think we're pushing 270 firms now and growing there are I don't know how many thousands of people in Napa what we have are a lot of folks that are doing level two and above you know comprehensive Financial Planning and it's almost in many ways creating this demand for a

00:24:21

service that you're meeting and I don't think you actually went out and realized this was demand coming from financial planners you saw it more from the consumer side but going out and seeing yeah you know how many advisers out there are generating interest in what we do as as financial planners and then now we're kind of creating demand for your services so talk a little bit about just kind of how you're positioning yourself with advisors to work with clients I mean how I guess what does that

00:24:48

conversation look like yeah and I think the smart move for the next 270 whatever planners that join xyp would be to look at this level one planning I subscribe to the blue ocean philosophy so that idea that there are more people out there than I could ever hope to help and if a lot of people are coming in at level two and creating demand for people that need level one help or people that I can serve then they should probably be looking at also creating a service for that level one but I maybe I'm just a little bit ahead

00:25:24

of the curve or that's something where again you're like you said I saw the need just around me and so I created a service towards that and honestly when starting out a business it's really important to have cash flow right that's what I work with people with and so I came from the perspective of okay if I need to be getting clients fairly quickly because I simply quit my job in one industry and had the huus or ignorance or stupidity to say all right I'm going to go into this industry that

00:25:54

I never worked in and start a career in a company here there needs needs to be a pipeline of prospects and potential clients coming through and I'd taken some coaching courses myself and realize that you know if you're looking for prospects they really need to have four different areas covered they need to be willing to pay for a help they need to be able to pay for help they need to know they need help and be actively looking for it as well so I think on the podcast that you had with Chris GB you

00:26:28

guys talked about how having a presence on social media and building an email list is important but it's much more of a long-term play and I totally agree that that's something that you need to focus on but in the short term it was okay I need prospects that fit these kind of four things where could I get those people from and I kind of realized through my conversations with people that financial planners were getting people coming to them that needed that level one help either they weren't able

00:26:57

to help them their business models weren't set up for it you know they didn't want to focus on the more emotional side of things and that's when I realized okay if I can just get my name out there to different financial planners and let them know that I exist then I can have a flow of because people are coming to them who are willing to pay able to pay and are looking for help they just don't know where to direct them to so that's when I realized that I just said okay I need to connect with as

00:27:25

many financial planners as I can let them know that I exist and also the benefit for the planners is that people will outgrow me like they will grow from level one to level two and when they're ready for level two I then need to know people to send them to so it's been great connecting with planners as well and learning about okay here is what Britney Castro does which is different than what Sophia Bara does which is different than what Trace tisler does and so I now have a network of people

00:27:56

who have their own Niche and again this is why having your own Niche is so important is that I know now where to send people to who go through my program based on what I think would be best for them and who would be the best fit as a comprehensive planner for them I love it so you know if we go back in history of financial planning we used to be just such a hyper competitive environment we would never refer between advisors that just never happened and then at some point you know financial planners

00:28:23

started realizing okay well I do planning and some of these other people do investment management so maybe we fur back and forth and then now what we're starting to see is I really built my raia practice and we always recommend that folks that are building financial planning practices go to the advisers that have established practices and get referrals from them of people they don't want to work with because they don't provide the service model to work with them so that was kind of my pitch was

00:28:47

hey look I'm you know providing comprehensive financial planning but I'm doing it for young people you don't so send those prospects to me right and by having 100 100 50 clients or whatever these advisers had they were basically creating you you know all of these people hearing about them because they have this big brand and people were coming in they don't have a million dollars so they refer them to Allen well what happens whenever I build my brand and I have all these clients that I'm

00:29:11

working with and suddenly I have folks that have cash flow needs you know really intense that maybe debt payoff needs or whatnot kind of this a level one planning that we're talking about that I don't necessarily focus on or have the capacity for now suddenly those are Hot Prospects for you and to the point that you're talking about I always believed in looking for clients in places that they were how do I say this appropriately be where prospects are looking for a financial planner don't go

00:29:38

out and try to convince people they need your help yes convincing someone they need financial planning is challenging it takes a lot of time energy effort it's really hard we all have those conversations with people that we meet and we go I do financial planning like oh tell me more I didn't want to have that conversation I wanted somebody to come in and go I'm looking for a financial planner would you please work with me so in this instance it's you're doing the same thing you're just doing

00:29:58

it kind of in your business line coming off of the advisers that are working with these younger clients so long rant to basically say I think it's brilliant that you're basically doing what I did you're just doing it for a different target market and doing it probably even more effectively than I did so and I think you need to focus at different stages on different approaches so right in the beginning when you need to get prospects who are willing to pay able to pay and are looking for help like in the

00:30:28

beginning doing what you did and what I'm doing right now I think is the most important thing to get people in the pipeline and not having to convince them that they need our help that's a losing short-term battle but then also saying you know right now I'm building up that pipeline but also looking to the Future and saying okay over the long term I am going to need to sell a vision of like what I can help it is going to need to focus a little bit more more on not convincing people that they need my help

00:31:00

but showing what is possible by working with me or by approaching life in this way and that's kind of where this road trip comes along the name of my company is called be awesome not broke so I try to help show people like what an awesome life would look like for them and then how to use money in a way that can actually move them towards that and so for me I think this trip is a way of testing okay if I'm telling people that they need to figure out what an awesome life looks like for them and I can help

00:31:31

them financially get there I need to figure out what an awesome life looks like for me and tell that story of how I'm trying to have more travel in my life more connection because those things are important to me and this is something that is not a short-term play but if I show people and tell the story of my road trip and why I'm going on it and what it's helping me discover then I'm not convincing people by beating them over aead with a club and saying you need my help but I'm saying look by

00:32:01

doing these things by practicing what I preach here's what I'm discovering about my own life here's what I'm finding out and it's not always going to be easy it's not always going to be pretty but this is the work that needs to be done and so this is kind of stage two on telling my story and helping Say by doing these things here is what can is possible and that's by opening up my life and and kind of living it so you know I think different things a different St ages and that's kind of

00:32:28

where the road trip is coming in and why I'm ultimately doing it yeah it's really hard to tell clients that you're going to help them live their great life and then be miserable yourself and have never actually you know figured out for yourself what that life is it just feels very inauthentic to me yeah as a parent I'm sure you know the problem with like do as I say not as I do yep people smell kids especially can sense that immediately and I think anyone can sense that immediately where there's this

00:32:56

disconnect between what you say and what you're actually living so yeah I think it's incredibly important to be authentic and to practice what you preach oh man there's nothing better than telling my two-year-old I'm your parent so you have to and he's like uh no I don't think so so no it's this interesting angle that I think advisers we've just missed out on as in just a whole for whatever reason is that we tend to not hire our own financial planners we tend to be

00:33:24

stuck in an office kind of doing the 9 to5 like we're supposed to and yet we encourage our clients to do something very different and and especially with the XY Planning Network in that you know we are pushing the boundaries in so many different ways in terms of the types of clients we want to work with our fee structure being able to work virtually I do think it's important that if we're going to do that we're going to embrace this new business model that our advisors Embrace a lifestyle that's

00:33:49

actually conducive to them now that doesn't mean you can't work at 9 to5 in an office if that's really what drives you but I don't think I've ever met anybody that that had a flexible lifestyle flexible work and said you know what I really want an office I have to go to 45 hours a week that sounds like fun like no one ever says that yeah never go to a networking event and people go oh your life sounds miserable I'd much rather have my office job that's just not the way it works so I am

00:34:13

thrilled that you're putting I guess in many ways you're putting your money where your mouth is in that you're actually going to show one that you have a virtual lifestyle that you can enjoy your own life and maybe you find traveling sucks and you hate it and you'll go do something else and that's fine but at least you tried and you're not going to be sitting around wondering like oh I really wish I had done this when I was in my 20s or early 30s I'm not sure how old you are how old are you

00:34:36

I guess we could tell listeners yeah I am 30 years old okay so 30s yeah you're not going to look back and go gosh I wish I had tried that whether you enjoy it and it's the best time of your life or it's you know not all that fun and kind of miserable on a macro level I think that idea is so important is that it's not about doing it perfectly it's about simply seeing what you may want think you want or know you want and then trying it and seeing what happens I already think that I'm going to struggle

00:35:07

on this road trip and it's going to be really hard to balance work and travel and life hash first world problems I get it but it's not going to be easy but you know I'm also going to have to Define what is work is it getting new clients in the pipeline connecting with financial planners is it simply telling my story I think what work is defined as will change but what's important is not getting it quote unquote right and I think this is what holds a lot of people back from tackling their finances

00:35:39

whether it's the basics of budgeting whether it's trying to find the quote unquote perfect investment is this paralysis that happens from wanting to get it right versus you know and this probably comes from me starting some businesses and then you know understanding that you just try something you figure out what works and what doesn't then you iterate and you change and you try it again like shoot for 80% and then pivot and try it again if you aim for Perfection you're always going to fail and you're never going to

00:36:10

be able to learn and so helping people understand and this is you know part of that road trip is yeah I don't know what's going to happen but I don't need to and just in the same sense like you don't know how retirement is going to look like you can plan for it but a client actually told me this great quote I think it's by Dwight de Eisenhower of planning is everything and the plan is nothing so it's about the process right of looking and where you are where you're at right now where you want to be

00:36:37

and what it might take to get there but really a plan is simply a prediction of the future and like unless people have powers I don't know about and can predict the future like that we just can't do it so there's no point in even trying for Perfection because that's never going to happen so simply just try something get some feedback and and then do it a little bit better next time so the argument that you're making I mean we all as financial planners we can preach the value of financial planning

00:37:05

right I mean we can come up with these great quotes to show the plan versus the planning and all of this stuff right but we so rarely make plans for ourselves and so what you're advocating for is that the advisers sit down and actually make a plan for themselves not just do it for their clients absolutely whether you want to say it's screw it just do it and like do it yourself you know since we love quotes there's a great one by Marie foro which says Clarity comes from action not thought where you know figure

00:37:32

out sit down and take some time to think about what is important to you and what you want to be working towards and then don't think about it too hard just literally go and do it and that's the approach that I am taking and I think that with the type of clients that I work with as well is something that they really resonate with yeah going into action is one of the hardest pieces honestly I mean you can sit around and plan all day and like you said you'll never actually come up with a final

00:37:56

answer and just like Financial plans are never done but what you're basically saying again is just like sit down and make a plan for yourself figure out what you want out of life and you know and building a business most of the time I would argue will support the life that you're trying to build but you can build businesses in so many different ways there's just so much you can do from the types of clients you work with and how you meet with those clients and where your your employees are and how you hire

00:38:20

them and if you ever hire employees what you Outsource what you keep in house the type of services you provide I mean all of these things will be dependent upon what you want to do with your life and so you've got to be able to answer that question because if you don't you end up doing what I did which is you build a business around this you know I guess more traditional Viewpoint and then suddenly you want to make a change and you actually kind of have to go through a process to do so instead of just doing

00:38:45

it from the start right you know that idea of you're climbing up the ladder and then you finally get there and you realize it's against the wrong wall and you're like crap maybe I should have taken some time in the to get some perspective and see whether I was actually headed in the direction or going up the right ladder in the first place I love it so I do want to Circle back on one thing that we specifically I guess skipped over a little bit which is your kind of overall service model so

00:39:12

you had this concept of I want to help people I want to help my peers I want to be able to do a little bit different type of planning than conference and financial planners are doing I don't want to do investment management so talk about your actual service model how you charge and the types of clients you're really trying to Target with this service model yeah so the clients who I'm looking to Target are people who generally make enough money to not be living month-to Monon but often times

00:39:39

feel like they are or so that's probably 50% and then the other half is people who make enough money to be able to be saving or to be putting money towards their goals but aren't because they just aren't aware of what those goals are they aren't being intentional about their spending or saving and so these are generally people who are in their late 20s or early to mid-30s on their second third job or so so they're making decent money I have clients who make anywhere from $50,000 to

00:40:12

$170,000 and it's saying okay again what they all have in common is just not putting enough money away having negative cash flow or having debts that they need to be able to pay back and so the the way that I work with them is over a more of a intense so I know with financial planners it's generally a couple upfront meetings maybe three or four and then a meeting every quarter is what I think it was or what I've heard a lot of people have it set up that way and what my model is is I work with

00:40:47

people I meet with them six times over the first three months and then three times over the subsequent three months so it's nine times in the first six months and then that's really our what is it kind of period of Engagement is is that six-month period and then at that point they're automatically as I like to call it enrolled in month-to-month kind of like the retainer model that you guys have that xypn has and but they can cancel it at any time so trying to say in this six-month period that here is

00:41:22

what I'm going to walk you through here is my process here's where I hope to get you kind of getting you to the point where ideally you know how to fish and you can do this on your own but people work at different speeds some people even though they get the basics down they say you know what I honestly still would love help and have some coaching because a lot of times it's not just about the money like I have a guy who we worked with together he went away for a couple months and then he came back and

00:41:50

said honestly I just know that I need a coach I want someone like I was helping him with nutrition I was helping him with a morning routine like yeah I was helping him with like setting up his budget and using yab you need a budget for the budgeting portion but because my Mantra is like it's not about the money money is just a tool that you use to live the life that you want he realized that he needed support in more of the quote unquote life coaching aspects of what I was doing and that that almost is more of a what I see

00:42:25

clients coming back for than just the help with like the cash flow management and budgeting and the numbers side yeah cuz I mean all of the information for anything that we do anything we learn about in the cfp you can find on Google right I mean we don't man we don't really although we have to be experts in all these various topics it's not necessarily about expertise in content it's about Behavioral Management with clients and there is no area greater and more challenging to do you know

00:42:52

Behavioral Management is around cash flow whenever you have to tell a client that okay we have have to stop spending money on things that you think are really enjoyable but they aren't right we've always had those conversations that they kind of suck which is why I honestly didn't work with clients that had cash flow needs because I hated the conversations that I had to do but I'm glad that there were people out there like you that actually enjoy those conversations and do them a lot more

00:43:15

effectively than I ever did it's honestly about framing it because even the language that you use there is hey you're spending money in here and you can't or you shouldn't the way I approach it is saying hey you know in the first couple of meetings we home in on what is important to them so is it is it family is it travel is it paying down this debt whatever it is really identifying what it is that they really want to work towards and then having them come up with it and so as long as

00:43:45

they are the it's almost like Inception as long as they're the one that comes up with the idea then moving forward it's not me telling them that they can or can't or should or shouldn't spend money on something all I simply do is hold a mirror up and say here is what you told me you told me that x y and z are really important to you and now that we look at your budget here's what I'm seeing is that you're spending money on ABC so I don't have to tell them that they should

00:44:13

or shouldn't or can or can't I just hold up that mirror and then they say oh yeah like what really is important to me are X Y and Z so I'm going to put money towards these things and it is more of an empower ing moment than a disempowering moment because a lot of times people see budgets as restrictive when if you do a like values based budgeting and build it around what is important to them and their goals then it's actually them proactively putting money towards the things that really

00:44:41

matter so it's shifting that conversation and that mindset which I think really has been helpful makes sense all right so how do you charge so this is a pretty intensive service if you're doing nine meetings over 6 months so what is your fee structure in order to actually get compensated for this service man this has changed so much over time and of course overtime is relative it's been eight months since I had my first client so there's been a lot of change in figuring that out but

00:45:09

you know I started when I started out it was like $500 and it was originally for six meetings over three months and that was CU I didn't trust in my value and I had impostor syndrome up the wazo and from there it was okay charging more and 500 became 750 and 750 became 1,000 and 1,000 became 1250 and and even as I got up to 1500 one thing that I realized was that people could 1500 was kind of what I I'd settled at for a while and that was a stretch for some but for those who were making a lot of money it was not enough

00:45:49

money oddly enough so what I found and I see this a lot in coaching is that people have to feel and I don't mean pain in a negative way but for me to take something seriously and I think for others to take things seriously is you have to feel some kind of like Financial hit to take it seriously this is why exchanging of services if you say oh hey web guy you can build my website and I'll help you with financial planning a lot of times that doesn't work or in my experience that also hasn't worked

00:46:19

because you aren't really valuing the other person's time until you put money down I saw this a lot in the music business where you know hey if you record my album I'll do X for you because musicians always quote unquote don't have money and the implicit acknowledgement in that conversation is that I don't value what you do because you can come up with money for rent you can come up with money for food but I can't come up with money for you to do my website at the end of the day it's

00:46:48

saying I don't value what you are doing as much as I do these other things it really is the perception of value in price and we know it exist it is a behavioral bias that people have but you know how much is something that's free worth not a lot and suddenly you have people pay for it and suddenly it feels like it's worth more I remember Carl Richards telling me that when he doubled his speaking fee to try to to get speaking engagements the number of it engagement offers that he got doubled so

00:47:14

he doubled the same presentation and suddenly the offer started rolling in and it really is because people see you and you're like oh he must be really good because he raised his fees you know again if you undercharge honestly if you charge too little then people are wondering like oh I guess he's may not be all that good if he's charging so little there is a perception that you know the more you charge the better you are at doing what you do so so you started at $500 where did you actually

00:47:39

end up then with that service so ended up at right now it is 1 and a half% of their income and that is for an individual gross income for an individual and then if it's for if they're married then it's for both of them for that 6-month period with a $1,500 floor minimum ,500 and then so do they pay it all up front or do they pay it over the six-month period it depends so some people pay it up front and there have been people that have paid $2,500 right up front and then there have been

00:48:11

some where they say I really really want this I just honestly can't afford to put that much money down up front so what can we do and that enables me to have a conversation of saying yeah I I really want to work with you too and if I truly do then saying okay how can we make it work for you like let's go through and let's look at what you can do and what will work and then if I want to work with that client it's absolutely then just not a conversation of if it's how and so anywhere from upfront to 3 months

00:48:40

to 6 months payment plan okay and so but then you said you do work with clients after that so how do you charge them after kind of that initial six-month period to work with you on an ongoing basis yes so the way that that works is it was a fixed number as well it was like $100 and then I just said okay you know what it's going to be 0.1% of your income every month so 0.1% so that's basically 1.2% over the course of the Year correct okay that makes sense so they're making $100,000 that's $1,200 for the year so

00:49:17

it's $100 a month do you have a floor on that yeah so the floor is $100 okay so you know basically 100,000 it sounds like it's kind of the off in terms of income on where you hit these floors that you've set in terms like one and half% of income $1,500 and all that sort of thing obviously somebody making 75,000 can still work with you they'll just hit that floor correct you know and honestly this actually works in kitus and I did a mailbag episode not too many episodes ago where we one of our members

00:49:45

Marcio had actually said that this 1 to 2% of income is his sweet spot as well where he just says you know over 2% people start getting really squirmy about the numbers just because it feels really expensive less than 1% is just super easy to sell so somewhere between one and two works for him and it sounds like that is where you're finding your kind of sweet spot as well yeah I totally agree and when we go over people's budgets and start looking at the numbers when they see what are the

00:50:13

things they're spending money on and how much of a percentage of their overall income those things are it does actually put it into perspective how little that costs for them again if I'm trying to teach them how to fish and is something they can take with them over the long term like how valuable and how actually cost effective it is over the long term if they get to the point where they can do this on their own makes sense so then I did notice that you also have a group option so one kind of what is the theory

00:50:43

behind doing group coaching and two have you had any actual success with that yet because I think it's a really interesting model that has a ton of potential yeah so that's something that's actually very very new I'm in the middle of my first group program actually on the fifth meeting out of six I have later today so it's something that's very new but I've done multiple group coaching programs outside of a financial capacity so I have paid for coaching programs that have happened in

00:51:12

a group setting and I found them to be incredibly helpful so I thought that it would be a great approach to try with money as well but also understanding that you know money people are very oftentimes hesitant to share their own figures and how much they're making and really dive into it because of all of the issues of like our selfworth is tied to our net worth and things like that so it's been really interesting and I've had some really some great experiences so far in the course and some things

00:51:45

I've really learned from it as well which is it's really important who you get into the course I'm kind of doing a beta this time so the the two people that I have in it keeping it really small already know each other so that was helpful from a level of trust I think the group it's really important to set and create the environment that you want so setting the expectation that hey we're here to learn from each other and that's I think the people that do best in a group setting are those who

00:52:15

understand that concept and are willing to share and understand the value of being in a group because they can learn from others experience and so really the biggest most important thing with the group is the people and setting a space where they feel that they can share and be heard and have this really comfortable space to be able to share something that is really really really intimate because again where how you spend your money is a reflection of what's important to you whether you're doing it consciously or

00:52:44

subconsciously so so creating a space where there's no judgment people feel free to to share and help others you know I think it's an example of just so many new possibilities that technology has has brought us that creative thinkers in terms of just having financial planners that are willing to do things just a little bit different you know just to think outside the box and it's not just oneon-one planning sitting across from your mahogany table inside your fancy office like just the

00:53:10

thought of meeting virtually has blown The Advisory world's mind uh collectively it seems much less this thought of like what if we do group coaching similar to how personal trainers you can go oneon-one you can go in groups I prefer working out in groups that's why I do CrossFit I love groups groups I don't go oneone I don't go by myself there are the diyers out there that go by themselves how do we serve them there're the people that like groups how do we serve them there's you

00:53:34

know there's courses there's group coaching there's models that we haven't even conceptualized yet that we're finally starting to experiment with and will it be mainstream I don't know but I don't see why not you know no one's looking at the exercise community and going I can't believe they don't all hire their own personal trainer like why is it okay there and not okay over here I don't know it's just interesting how long it's taking but I'm excited that it

00:53:56

is finally kind of becoming something that we're trying because somebody's going to figure out how to do this appropriately and it's going to be it's going to have such dramatic effect because it can reach so many more people than we can as advisers and that's a big thing also I know that people within the xypn community are figuring out and trying to answer the question of how do I scale right that there's a limit of how many people you can help when you're doing one-on-one coaching so whether

00:54:26

it's Mary Beth in writing a book or Sofia Bara starting her new class on retirement or right it's figuring out how do I leverage my time so that I can help more people and also like a group course yeah it's $750 and so it's half as much as what I would get for the floor of working with someone one in one but if I can create a structure where I can help four people or six people at a time then that's $3,000 or $4,500 and the more people I get into a group up until a certain amount of

00:55:00

course like they have a better experience cuz they're learning from more people's collective experience and then I'm just scaling how many people I can help I'm scaling it from the income perspective so it's actually a win-win if you're right it can be done correctly yeah and like I said I see huge potential with it I mean and we've seen some group coaching style programs like Dave Ramsey I mean you know they take th a thousand people through at one time so there's no reason to say it can't be

00:55:27

done that doesn't stop people from saying it can't be done but you know I I don't see any reason why we should be feeling that way I think it is just kind of figuring out the I think the challenge always comes back to marketing and distribution it's it's ultimately how do we get folks to sign on how do we let enough people know so that we can get 10 people into a group and take them through because it's been the nice part I guess about only needing 100 clients to be a successful practice is you only

00:55:53

had to go find 100 clients when you set up a model like the robo advisors or learnvest or some of these other systems that require a million clients well you got to go find a million clients yeah marketing and distribution has always been the challenge kind of that cost per client conversion is huge to consider so so as we're kind of closing this episode out I do want to I know I mentioned it earlier in the episode that you actually wrote an article for the XY plan Network blog which is kind of what prompted me

00:56:20

to reach out to you had been on my list I have a very long list of folks that want to chat with in this bu you to the top and that was actually on kind of your five-step process to convert prospects into leads which it's really your sales process so we'll link to it in the show notes but also you can go to xylan network.com convert prospects or just search Garrett on xyl network.com and it will pop up but you know it sounds like I guess folks can go here to actually read through all the various pieces that you

00:56:51

talk about but where did you kind of learn sales I mean where did you learn to implement a sales pipeline like this was it something you just came up with and it's been working is it something that you learned kind of where did I guess this education come from the School of Hard Knocks to be honest in addition to doing accounting for the two music business companies that I started with those friends I was the client services and Business Development guy so my job was to go out and build relationships with music Publishers with

00:57:22

record companies with managers and in our company with advertising agencies and with marketers and so what I was forced to do was kind of what I didn't want to do in my financial coaching business is convince people that they needed what we did and so that was kind of how I was approaching it and realize the limitation of that how it's not helpful to have to go out and try to convince people that they should work with you but that's where I really cut my teeth in how to build relationships

00:57:54

with people over the long term that's where I got a lot of my project management and CRM software so building in the structure kind of in the processes that's where I learned a lot of that and then also just how to present yourself in a way that is valuable to the person on the other end you know that is a really really important piece like you there's another quote remember because we love quotes you can have everything in life that you want if you just help other people get what they want and that's kind of the

00:58:24

underlying theme I I think that quote's by Zig Ziggler and that's an underlying theme in this article is to convert more prospects into clients it's not really about what you know or what you want you can have all of the expertise in the world but if you don't listen and understand what the person on the other end of the phone or the video line truly wants then it doesn't matter how good you are like you just aren't going to connect with that person in their needs and their wants and their deepest

00:58:55

desires of what they want out of life and then there's no way you're going to convert them no matter how much expertise how many years you've been in the business or how many fancy tools that you can use isn't it amazing that we actually work in jobs that allow us to say that we get to help people discover their deepest and like their most intimate desires out of life and then actually help them achieve it it's what makes our profession so amazing and I'm not sure that very many people still

00:59:23

understand just how powerful of relationships and that we have with our clients and just how much amazing work we really do get to do and how rewarding it is it's why I got out of the music business and why I decided to start this one and you know it's why I wrote that post of yeah it comes across that idea of hey you should convert more prospects into clients it comes across it's kind of s and but I think what's great about financial planning or financial coaching whatever stage you're working at is that

00:59:55

truly is our end goal it is to help more people so if you truly believe that what you are doing is helping someone then you deserve to figure out how you can do something like convert more prospects into clients because then you're ultimately helping more people that's what it is so the greater a reach that I can have greater of the conversions that I can have then I'm ultimately helping more people discover what an awesome life for them looks like and then helping them live and that's one of the

01:00:26

honestly the greatest things that I I found about this job in this profession is connecting with people who truly believe that and I think that's why I got I was so drawn into you know connecting with people in xypn is just that that's where people come from it's not about the sales portion actually they're so worried about selling almost to a fault that they won't talk about all the goodness that they can provide and the transformation they can help create it's just that it's so client

01:00:53

focused and focused on helping people like that's why I think this is one of the coolest professions out there obviously I'm preaching to the choir but that is our end goal like how cool is that I love it and why it's so important to be really good at this stuff so that you can whether it's through group coaching whether it's through courses you can expand your reach help more people you know and change the world nothing big but just that you know that's what we're shooting for just

01:01:18

change a few hundred lives out there no and this is honestly we're bringing in Nancy Blakey my sales coach who we've had on the show she's actually going to be at the conference oh yeah that was a great episode awesome because she's going to be at the conference she has two back-to-back sessions so she's on like stage for two and a half hours I think in our sales and marketing track talking about this kind of relationship sales of you know how do you sell what you do really I mean it doesn't have to

01:01:45

be Sleazy and it doesn't have to be you know Northwestern Mutual style we don't have kill rates in our business like they do in in other dark alleys of our industry we don't have to talk about those sorts of things but how do we sell what we do in an effective way so so I guess as we're closing out I'll ask you my famous ending question to famous to all you know a few thousand listeners that we have on a regular basis and that is you know if you could go back and tell a younger Garrett maybe this is

01:02:12

Garrett that was thinking about starting his own firm or was maybe even in the music industry kind of looking at the various career paths that you had if you could go back and tell yourself one thing kind of the one thing you wish you had known then that you know now what do you think that one thing would be I would go about nine months ago so before my first client but after I'd started be awesome not broke and I would simply remind myself at all times that it is not about me it's about the client or

01:02:41

the prospect about what they need so when we're starting when I was starting out as I still am pretty new I'm often worried okay am I going to get enough clients this month am I going to make enough money to cover my expenses this month month am I am I am I and it's very self-focused and I find that whenever I get out of that conversation and just say okay how can I help my existing clients what can I do for them if I'm on a prospect call what exactly can I do that will help this person whether or

01:03:13

not it directly means money in my pocket if I convert them at this moment like it always seems to work out if I put my attention onto them so I think what I would do is either like print up a lot of t-shirts that say think about them not yourself I would like you know get that tattooed on my forehead or pay someone on Fiverr to text me at every hour of the day just that idea of like you know think of others and think about what they need again you can have everything in life that you want if you

01:03:41

just help other people get what they want so stay focused on other people on what they need and helping them and being of service and then in the end it may take a little longer than I want but it will all come back to me and it'll work out well thank you thank you so much for taking the time to come on this was an awesome conversation I just love hearing about new business models and new ways of helping clients cuz honestly I think this is the future of you know how the direction financial planning is

01:04:06

going so it's so awesome to be able to chat with you kind of early on in the process and we may look back in five or 10 years and go yep I had Garrett on as this was being created and here we are today so thank you for taking the time of course and thank you so much for having me on and I can only hope in 5 10 years that yeah we get to be laughing and looking back and as you know I have helped change the world again looking at it just aiming small hopefully so well thanks again of course take care Alan I

01:04:33

truly believe Garrett's on to something here and it will become so much more common place to see Financial coaching and financial coaches just kind of getting in this level one planning area that he's really working in and I think it's going to create a lot of amazing clients for cfps looking to do more comprehensive work Garrett's model stands to help a lot of people and I'm really excited exed to see what his future looks like be sure to join our VIP community at xyn network.com viip to

01:05:01

hang out with other xypn radio listeners ask questions for future mailbag episodes with myself and kitus and to finally find a community of like-minded financial advisors 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 private Community just for you because Edge financial planner go to XY planning network.com slvp or text xypn radio to

01:05:33

33344 and join a network of thousands ready to change the lives of Gen X and geny [Music] clients

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Garrett Philbin AFC®, CMC®

Be Awesome, Not Broke

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