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Featuring
Shawn Tydlaska, CFP®, MBA
Ballast Point Financial Planning
It's no secret that the first year of running your own RIA is no walk in the park. But this week's guest and XYPN member, Shawn Tydlaska, has had some unique and impressive success in his first year as an independent advisor.
Shawn talks about how his long and winding path through the financial services industry led him to practice true financial planning. He walks through the obstacles he's overcome and the many false starts he experienced before establishing his firm.
We also discuss how Shawn went from having zero clients to 38, with 26 on retainer, in just one year of practicing. He shares some of the techniques he has used to find clients, how he has employed niching to some extent in his work, and how he determines fees for each client.
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Listen to the Full Interview:
Watch the Full Interview:
What You'll Learn from This Episode:
- Shawn had numerous internships before entering the field of financial planning.
- How he went from wanting to start a fintech company to starting his own advisory firm.
- The succession plan situation Shawn experienced at his final job.
- He hustled to gain clients and launch as soon as he was ready.
- What Shawn did to boost his conversion rate when he was disappointed with the low number of clients staying on board.
- Unique ways he's found and retained clients from XYPN, Yelp, and his informal network.
- Read the blog post about this episode.
Featured on the Show:
- Shawn Tydlaska, CFP®, MBA | LinkedIn | Website
- Ballast Point Financial Planning
- XYPN Radio VIP Community
- RightCapital
- GMO
- Blankinship & Foster
- LearnVest
- MyVest
- Bill Harris
- Meeting the Requirements to Start Your Own RIA Without Breaking the Bank by Sophia Bera
- Dave Grant
- Calendly
- Squarespace
This Episode Is Sponsored By:
Read the Transcript Below:
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 today I'm so excited to have sha Taska founder
of Ballast Point financial planning a fee only firm based in San Francisco on the show today I heard from several xypn members and team members that Shawn had a killer first year in business so I wanted to have him on to talk through his journey into Financial Planning and find out how his first year had really gone after starting a firm with no clients or previous book of business to rely on he closed out his first year having worked with 38 paying clients and 26 of those being ongoing clients paying
a monthly fee for financial planning we talked through how he finding his clients or better yet how his clients are finding him his process for closing clients that increased his Prospect conversions from 33% to 75% and his tips for newer advisers looking to start their own financial planning firm this episode is choked full of awesome information you're not going to want to miss a minute of it this month's episodes are brought to you by WR Capital WR Capital provides Innovative financial planning software
that digitizes and redefines the financial planning experience right Capital was ranked as the highest user rated financial planning software in the 2017 annual software survey conducted by T3 Tech Hub and inside information and was recently added as part of XY pn's technology package making it free for xypn members sign up for a demo today at re capital.com and mention the xypn Radio podcast to be eligible for 10% off retail pricing you can find any of the additional resources that we mentioned
during the episode at XY planning network.com 103 also be sure to go to XY planning network.com viip to join our private group just for xyp and radio listeners it's the community of advisers we've all 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 XY plany network.com viip without further Ado here is my interview with Shawn hey Shan welcome to the show man thanks so much for being on hi alen
thanks for having me on it's it's really an honor I've been a long time listener I'm excited it's always fun to dig to sort of talk with people after their first year in business cuz when did you actually launch your firm I launched May 2nd 2016 so just we are 13 months in yeah yeah to the day yeah so and it's always cool because you know three or five years in super valuable insight to share but it's a little harder to really talk about the struggles I guess as well
as the successes of the first year I feel like three and five years in we we just start to remember the successes and sort of like forget the forget the the trials and tribulations that we all went through so I'm excited to hear sort of how things have been going so per our typical format I'll I'll take a step back with your career and I guess how did you get started I mean was this your long-term plan coming going into or coming out of college to be a financial adviser uh yeah you know
I think I've always been fascinated with money it kind of has this this Mystique about it you know we didn't really talk about it as a family too much and I didn't really know any like I didn't really have very strong financial literacy skills coming out of college I did do one internship at at meril Lynch when I was I went to UCLA and I grad and I I studied economics and I had a minor in education and I I thought about going into teaching for a little bit but I I knew I wanted to do something in
business I just didn't know what it was and so I interviewed a lot my senior year at a bunch of different different firms even like the New England Financial and AA and all those firms and I just I'm a little risk averse and you know I was a you know 22-year-old kid and didn't want to have like that pressure of meeting like sales quotas and so I actually ended up working for the capital group companies in in Los Angeles they managed the American Funds a lot of people know them from their
401ks they're really big Institutional Investor and I was doing corporate actions for them kind of working in the back office you know we would we had this big database of all the stocks we owned and whenever there was a stock split we'd have to get that set up into our system and I worked there for four years and it was a really good way for me to learn about finance and one of the guys in our group studied to become a cfp and I started to learn about the profession that way I love it it's like a job that no one knows exists
right like it's it's so necessary for for the folks you're working for but like I'm going to be the guy that like manages corporate decision making like and and inputting that into our system like again and listeners have heard me say this probably every episode but that is it's always fascinating to me the jobs that people have and we sort of all had them but not the job that you expect to get out of college but a necessary job to to sort of get your foot in the door yeah I I learned a lot in that job
like about just how how companies are are are managed like from a know Capital Management standpoint like with rights issues and cash dividends and and returns of capitals and that's that's when I started to study to become a cfp I started the classes I think around like 2007 or so um taking them at night through UCLA extension and did you do that on your own like did you pay for that or was that a a benefit that your employer was offering at the time a benefit they they offered and I kind of
had to spin it to make it apply to our group because we were more like you know corporate finance and not really personal finance like our our group's Focus but another guy had done it ahead of me so I kind of had you know there was a precedent for it and I really liked it and you know at the time I was trying to decide if I wanted to get my cfp or or go get my MBA and so I looked into it and I I I talked with a lot of people and and one academic adviser was like you know the the cfp is really for
people that want to help others and then the the NBA that's if you want to be like a middle manager at GM or something and I was like well I don't I don't want that I want to help people and so with that explanation no one will get their inba yeah I studied I studied I I started taking classes to take the the I started the cfp curriculum and then my wife she actually took the the GMAT and she got in to business school and and so then we moved to Boston and so then I this is in 2008 so we moved to Boston
and I I was trying to find a job at a financial planning firm like as like a you know par planner Junior adviser or something like that but it was hard to to get my foot in the door with not a good timing I mean if anything like 2008 you know not not a good time to try to get a job in financial planning or in finance at all and I reached out I think a recruiter reached out to me or I reached out to him and and he's like you know based on your background I think you'd be a really good fit for this firm
called GMO I've never heard of them before is um grant them Mayo van ottero and Jeremy a lot of people know Jeremy Grantham he writes these quarterly letters that are pretty widely followed in the industry and I did a similar job there we we did corporate actions and then we also voted proxies for our company so it was a little a little bit different that's when I finished up the the cfp courses and and took the exam and and and pass the exam 2009 and then my wife she she graduated from business
school and then got a job offer out in San Diego that was really good you know because I'm from San Diego so it was kind of cool to be coming back home cuz I've been away from home for like 11 years away from San Diego for like 11 years so it's cool to come back as an adult and experience it as an adult and that's that's when I got my first real entry into into Financial Planning and like I said it was it was really hard for me to get in to the career and so my first job I was actually an intern at a
company called blinkin ship and Foster and they're they're real they do real financial planning you know and in the sense that like they're fee only and uh financial planning is definitely a core of their business but it was an internship and I you know was working like maybe three days a week and so I was like networking around the area and I got my first real offer from a company called uh wfp Securities and it was positioned to me as I'd be working for the the CEO of the broker dealer they
had about like 40 advisers and he had a book of business and then he had a guy that was going to be retiring soon and so I would kind of he'd be my mentor and I'd learn about know they used e-money and how to do the retirement projections that was just like a really horrible horrible setup uh just as a company and I'm glad you say that because it's so hard that sometimes when I especially lately I've been getting kitus says I'm getting a little uh rough in my old age and and even less
politically correct than I used to be but like I'm so sick of the this like failed succession plan lie that we were all sold on and and it comes in different forms and it's always well-intentioned I don't mean for it to be that you know people are trying to take advantage of young folks but like how many times on this show alone have have we heard the same story of like you know this cool opportunity you come in you learn from a mentor they're going to phase out over time and for one reason
or another and really a plethora of reasons that have really contributed to the fact that we don't have a solid succession plan in place industrywide it they just fail they just don't work yeah it's not like that typical one like that that you kind of are painting the picture for this one just had other issues just as like a business and so you know kind of the backstory on this company was so I worked for the CEO of the firm and then his dad was actually the one that kind of got him into the
business and his dad he made money by buying raw pieces of land and then dividing them up into like smaller chunks and then selling those pieces out and so that was like the dad's business and so the sons kind of took over the business but what they found was like you can only load people up with so much raw land right like you can't put all their assets of their Ira in a in a piece of land and so they started this broker dealer like an independent broker dealer so that they could sell other
things and so what they filled up those other buckets with are non-traded reat uh oil and gas exploration Partnerships and all these illiquid Investments and so this is what 2010 yeah like kind of 2010 beginning of 2011 and it was my job to like service these clients honestly it was like one of the hardest things I had to do because I these people would want like updates on their portfolios and uh they weren't being serviced very well pretty much they would only get calls when when they wanted to you know someone was going to
sell them something else and so I had to kind of come up with these statements about how each investment is doing so I would call up these like oil and gas Partnerships and be like okay so how many how many Wells are in production and you know are you wild catting or you know or like I learned like so much about like all these different and like with non-traded reads I'm like okay you know you say you have the 7% dividend or 8% dividend which is you know people wanted some like security they just
didn't want to see their accounts going down after this after the the crash and so you know they're getting eight or nine% but then you look at like funds from operations so like how much is actually like your own return of capital versus like how much is the investment producing and you know I just learned so much and so I'd create these summaries and send them to our to our clients and and pretty and like one of the one of the guys I was doing these for he was like oh thanks for doing these summaries
like after you send them out to our clients like they they they kind of they kind of shut up and stop asking questions you know and and and I got on the phone with a few of the clients and they're like they were just so upset you know and like you don't give me any service and you know you sell me this crap and I'm like listen I I didn't like I really wanted to be like I didn't sell you this crap I think it is crap like you know but I had to like really bite my tongue and you know they didn't do
very good uh due diligence on these Like Chief compliance officer he was like 70 years old like retired Navy vet and he was supposed to be vetting all these these like non-traded reats and and some of them were really they were actually like fraudulent like there was like fraud involved in like the managing of these Partnerships that that wasn't uncovered in our due diligence and some of them went completely bust and so people lost tens of thousands of dollars of their retirement monies and you know
like just seeing that happen to people and you know I kind of like made a promise to myself that I would I would never want to have a call like that with a client that like that like I'd have to be like look your your investment went bust and you know there was fraud and we're going to try and get your money back but it's but like you know it's all gone and these are things that like there's no liquid Market you know it's you don't really know what the value is unless they tell you on your statement
they're just High fees opaque and not transparent and so that really was like a really solid strong I guess memory and and kind of burn burned in my I don't know ethos I guess yeah so and and again like this is typically best way to say this these stories are all too common and unfortunately I think it's what happens with a lot of our young talent and why we've really struggled to recruit into financial planning is because those folks probably called themselves financial planners and we're
and we're doing that and then here we are calling ourselves financial planners and doing what we do and the the service models couldn't be more different I mean the true offering couldn't be more different and yet we sort of all get lumped together so a very hard lesson and learned but probably valuable like you said to to Really shape the way that you're handling Investments and recommendations with clients now and and just overall client service to be sure that you know you're you're doing for
them what you would want being done for you so so you've got the cfp at this point you've been working at this firm things obviously not going well so what was the next transition then for you yeah so like I said they sell a lot of like these raw land deals and uh my boss like called me into his office and he's like we we' got this really good raw land it was called Stead Nevada so like up by up by Reno and there he was like he was so excited he's like you know you and your wife you should really think
about you know taking 10 or $20,000 and putting it into it and I was like okay that's yes I was like really you know a lot of red flags going off in my head and I'm like okay so like your so his brother so my so there's my boss that runs the broker dealer his brother runs the raw land deals and he like kind of sources them and buys them and you know does all the permitting and all that stuff and so brother is the one that found this raw land and I was like so how much did your brother you know pay
for pay for it cuz they were trying to sell it for like four or5 a square foot and I was like well how much you know what's his basis right just want to know kind of like what he paid for it and he's like I don't I don't know and I was like don't you think it's like a little weird you don't know what your brother paid for it and and you're trying to sell it you know for four or five dollars and what don't you think my brother shouldn't make money on it and
I'm like no like he's taking on a lot of risk like you know he's got to like find buyers and all that I just like as an investor I want to know what my basis is right it's like a legit you know question and he was like Sean you know if you're having questions like these maybe this isn't the best fit for you like this isn't the best you know place for you I was like kind of stunned I think and then like I went back to my desk and then like I went back in a little bit later and I'm like so does
this mean like I'm fired like I like I look for other and so yeah I started looking around at other places I wasn't like fired or or let go at that point but I started looking around for places and then and then like since some of these deals like went bad like the the company uh got investigated I can't remember if it was like the SEC or fin or who whoever it was but like there was like a lawsuit brought against the firm and they ended up filing for bankruptcy I was like this this is kind of bringing
up a lot of like old memories but like I remember there was a day when I came into the office and there was a bunch of checks laid out on the the table and these are like settlement checks that the insurance carrier like for errors and Emissions or whatever it was like he was signing like hundreds of thousands of dollars worth of checks from the insurance company like that was and So eventually like company goes the company goes bankrupt and then uh again I'm I'm out looking for for a job in San Diego I
interview around I end up working for a really short time at this place called Frank Financial you know one principal and he had an assistant and he managed about $40,000 or $40 million and it was mostly Investment Management not really much Financial Planning and I worked there for about 3 months and then another place that I had interviewed at was hog Associates Neil hogenson was the principal there and or one of the principles and uh he started the firm like 25 years ago and and so my job was
to come in and be the pair of planner help set up accounts we used Money Tree I think for financial planning and I worked there probably like my longest job in financial planning to date and it was about like 18 months or so and I would sit down on client meetings take notes run the projections ask as ask follow-up questions set up the account and all that uh and that was like real financial planning you know but like most of our clients were like between like 55 65 I think Neil was like you know early 60s at that time and you know
we're helping them with like Medicare and Social Security strategies and we just raised our minimum from $1 million of AUM to $2 million and you know I I just had this like inner calling I guess that I wanted to serve a wider audience so like low to Middle income families so I started studying for the GMAT and I took the GMAT and I remember going in like with the when you apply to business school you have to get letters of recommendation and I I went into Neil's office and I was like hey I'm thinking
about going to business school and you know I'd love to have like a letter of recommendation and he's like oh you're you're thinking about going to business school all right well you know let's start whining you down here and started removing responsibilities from me which was which was tough because I hadn't even applied to business school yet so maybe I mean and also I wanted to be like upfront about like my intentions but you know that was that was tough because like I wasn't going to go to
business school for like another I ended up leaving there around may I thinkc I started applications in like August so like for the next six months like they were slowly taking away responsibilities and that was tough you know what I what I saw so my wife she actually went to HBS and she was there at the same time Alexa vono was like they were in the same starting class and so I saw her go on to start learn vest and you know I was like wow like that business school like you it just you can do so many
great things through business and such have like such like a a profound impact and so I decided to to go to business school cuz I wanted to start my own fintech my idea in my head and like what I wrote on my applications was like I want to start a financial technology company that leverages the best aspects of people and then the you know efficiency of technology and my goal is to positively touch the lives of a million people through through personal finance and like I was like yeah this is what I'm going to do in business school
I didn't even know about like personal capital or betterment this is like 2012 I guess I didn't really know about them like they they were just kind of coming onto the scene and then you know kind of get into business school and learn about these companies and they're they've got like a hundred million dollars of venture capital like personal Capital was started by Bill Harris the former CEO of PayPal and into it and I'm like holy smokes how am I going to compete uh with these people and so during business
school I I was really networking hard at with all these different companies and I had an internship out in San Francisco at a company called myvest and they do the technology they actually just got acquired by Tia C so they do all the technology for like rebalancing and separately managed accounts and you know tax loss harvesting and so they were like kind of a technology provider and I I did marketing for them and they were actually owned by Bill Harris who own you know who was like the CEO of
personal capital and that that was like my ideal dream job was was personal Capital was working there so when I graduate from business school I'm I'm really I'm still like really struggling to find find a job so yeah I went to to the University of Michigan for business school so I should mention that so from San Diego we moved to to Michigan and then from Michigan we wanted to get back out to California actually we were pretty open I was interviewing at even in better at betterman got to like the
final stages of interviewing there like sat sat across the table from John Stein and you know things didn't work out there and I eventually you know kind of talked my way into personal capital and I had a contact there and I was like Hey like let me like come up with like a proposal of something I can do for you guys and what we ended up doing was a post MBA internship so it wasn't a full-time gig and at this point this is about like four months five months after business school and I'm getting really
antsy right like I'm getting really antsy of like what am I going to do I'm a failure I haven't I haven't found a job and I've got my cfp and an MBA and I actually started looking into starting my own raia and I I remember reading Sophia's you know blog post about how to start an Raa I started looking into like the steps I to take and then the uh post MBA internship opportunity came about and I was like okay I'm going to bust my ass like work as hard as I can at this
and and really so like the commitment was for like three months you know like we're going to try this out for three months and then go from there and I was like I'm going to work as hard as I can to get a full-time opportunity and that was a really cool opportunity there so what my role was was they were trying to get personal capital in front of more people so their idea was to sell personal Capital they have this dashboard it's like a mint.com where you can aggregate all your accounts but it's
more like on the investment side so you can like really drill down into like okay what's my large cap exposure you know kind of like a lot more a lot more tools there and so my job was to work on this financial literacy program and we call it like a financial fitness program to see if we could sell personal Capital as like a benefit to companies so you know you have your health Vision dental and then you'd have personal Capital where you could do like a free 1hour consultation I went around to like maybe
10 or 12 companies in the Bay Area like doing lunch and learns just kind of explaining how to use personal capital and like the the basics of personal finance and how to build an emergency fund and after you know kind of three months in you know I kind of had a conversation with my boss and he's like you know there's no guarantee that there's going to be a job for you at the end of this so you might want to start looking around and I ended up working there for about about four months and at
the end of the four months I've been looking around and actually one of the advisers there who is now an xypn member he turned me on to xypn and I I started doing my research about it so I worked there until about March of last year so like March 11th was my last day and you know kind of during that last month I was like I did my my Prospect call with Stacy and you know kind of like I was like still unsure I remember it so vividly I was I was actually literally in the the back of an RV on the way down
to La we were going to watch a friend run the Olympic trials and so we did this big road trip and I did my call on February 13th with with Stacy and one of my hesitations was like I wasn't sure if I like wanted to join xypn CU I still had this goal of like building like a fintech or having this one million person reach and she's like well you know with xypn you're part of this movement right you're part of like the next generation of advisers and you know together we're all serving like the Next
Generation and that really stuck with me like that really like hit a nerve and I was like yeah you know like we are part of this movement and so that was on the 13th and then on the 14th on Valentine's Day I'm in the back of this RV and I'm like on my iPhone and like the guys are like what are you what are you doing back there and I was like I just joined xypn I'm I'm gonna start my own financial planning firm and they're like oh man we're sleeping off our hangover and you're starting companies in the
back of our RV one day you can go back and buy that RV so you so you have it that is awesome what a road to travel I mean it and it's interesting cuz like you had all the credentials and all the experience and all of that and just like just could not find the right fit you know but like probably ended up where you needed to be in the long run it just took you know a few steps to get there yeah yeah and like kind of thinking back I think you know for anyone kind of getting started in the industry like you
know I really recommend like working at a place like hokenson Associates or fee only like doing like the like real good financial planning that are not commission based or you know that are really kind of digging into like the financial plan and learn like what an aat is learn with like how to do like account setups and you know what an IPS statement and kind of like really cut your teeth at one of those firms cuz I think by the time that I launched I was I think I was 34 by the time I launched
and so I had had like you know additional life experience and then like also like the real world experience of working in a firm and you know it all just kind of ties in really nicely with the fact that I that I do want to serve my peer group and help people get on the the right track financially so yeah that would be like kind of one of my one of my tips for for someone kind of starting out and and like I say get the cfp you know I I I can't emphasize that enough I know we have a lot of folks that ask you
know can you start a firm without a cfp and the answer is yes we've had people do it but the success rate of folks with a cfp is so much higher and I think it's not just about the marketing side of the designation being able to say hey I have this designation it really is about just about learning your stuff it's hard to sell a service model you know if if it involves you not actually knowing all the information so it is amazing that the just the differences that we see and we're in the middle of doing a
benchmarking survey of XY plan network members and I'll be curious to know if there's any correlation between cfp at least having gone through the cfp education whether you've passed the test yet or not or or you know have the three years of experience just how all those pieces are correlated with overall success but it really is sort of for me at step one like you said get get a job you know step one B if you can do them both at the same time do it and go get a job doing real financial planning which
as you saw from your experience is not the easiest route Mo I think the average cfps in Napa firms is two if I'm not mistaken so you know if you look at the F only firms across the country the ones doing you know if Napa's probably Naf is probably the best proxy for for real financial planners they only have two cfps on average you're going to increase capacity by 33% so uh that that's a big leap but you got to find those opportunities like you said like you can internships you can be an associate
adviser we've had folks on here Dave Grant's a good example I mean he started out as an admin you know and he said fine I'll be a receptionist for you just so I can learn you're going to quickly move out of that position that's not a long-term career Prospect but if that's what gets you in that that's what gets you in so so you decided in in sort of February March time frame you're going to launch your own firm and you said you launched in May so you moved really fast
to be able to get it off the ground yeah I don't think I I don't know if I really even knew any better I was just like I just had like a like a fire underneath me to like get moving as quick as I could I think I was the one that kind of reached out and started our launcher group like before Arlene or you know Maddie even like reached out to me I was like so how do we get going I signed up like when's when do we when do we meet like what do we do you know I reached out to guys like Scott Frank and Chris
GP and like you know like the local XY people in San Francisco like okay what what do I need to do next I moved really quickly to get my ADV filed I can't remember the dates that that I I got it filed but like I it it was like about six weeks to get through uh for California and I like looked at like other people's websites kind of use them as templates I I just used Squarespace I took I took two days I think was it Andrew yeah and Michael Michael Posner was like you know when you when you
comes time to like write the content for your website just go somewhere like picturesque or like inspirational just take two days just write all the content and just like bang it out and so that's what I did I just like took two days banged it out like put it up on a Squarespace found this Marriott right by the airport in San Francisco and you can see the the airplanes landing like kind of over the San Francisco Bay there like just from their Lobby and there's a Starbucks there as well so like I feel
like I'm not like you know too freeloading just like going to their Lobby and and to be honest that's actually where I meet some prospects like it's just like in the lobby there most of the time I meet my prospects at the library uh B I live in burlin game and they have a really nice library with study rooms that you can reserve you can even reserve the rooms online and they have a whiteboard and a flat screen TV and yeah that's where I kind of run my business out of there so it keeps my my
overhead low that's awesome I have not heard that recommendation before but that that's so good advice for Michael so we we'll give Michael palner the uh the credit on that one but so go somewhere picturesque calm like sort of get you in the in the zone and then you know hammer out content for your uh for your website I like it yeah and I think I got my ADV approval the end of April and then Eric abore he's xypn as well and he's he was in my launchers group and he's like so you got you know you
got approved when are you going to launch are you going to launch next week and I was like yeah I guess I'm gonna launch yeah I'm gonna launch next week and so then I was like all right so like what do I do to what do I do to launch and so I kind of came up with like a like a launch Playbook of what I was going to do when I launched and like an email blast and I was like pulling all my contacts off of LinkedIn and all my friends on like I I created like this huge huge email distribution list I
think it might have been like a thousand you you can download all your contacts from your historical Gmail emails like so all of your contacts from there you can download it and dump it into Excel I mean I filtered it like appropriately just to like announce the the launch and then the next day or like the day that I launched I was in the library on my Facebook page like my company Facebook page and I went through all of my friends and invited them to like my page so I think I had like 200 likes on my on
my my page there so is that sort of where your initial clients came from or I guess how how did you get started in getting those first few clients on board where did they come from yeah so I really started I started with zero I didn't have you know a book to bring over I did get like you know so like my very first client like I I launched May 2nd and he signed up uh May 4th and this was like an old friend that I used to play soccer with in high school and he just saw my post and he started messaging me on on Facebook and we set
up a meeting like the very next day and then he's like I was like look you're like he he was married he had a kid and I was like look you're like exactly who I want to serve so initially it was kind of the the friends family I think I got my first I I met you I met you in person at Napa May what may middle of May and I signed my first non you know I signed my first person that was not like for my Natural Market she lives in Michigan uh she just found me on xypn and we we set up a meeting and I and and I signed her
like May 16th or so so initially you know it was it it was tilted more towards my natural market and then as the year progressed it was more towards xypn leads and and now lately it's kind of shifted more back towards my natural market and I'm starting to get referrals from my my my current clients but yeah over that first year I got 99 leads like 99 initial discovery meetings where we had like an hourong conversation and 40% of those were from were from xypn so I had 40 conversations from from people
who found me on xypn 40 oh man we're gonna have to put a quote about that we try to do some work around consumer lead gen and that sort of thing for our members but I have never I I've never heard someone say we they got 40 conversations off of our website yeah so I so what happens I think i' I've tried to I mean just kind of anecdotal evidence but I I try to ask people like how they find me and they Google like how to find a financial adviser right and then there's a San Francisco
Chronicle or SFGate like our local papers here they have some articles and it says you know make sure they're fee only make sure they're cfp make sure they're fiduciary and check out Napa or xypn and like specifically if you're like looking for for younger advisers and where I'm located is down in in Berling game which is right next to the airport so it's about 20 minutes south of the city and like 20 minutes north of Palo Alto so I'm on the peninsula there and I what I think happens is they put
in their zip code and then I pop up I do get some people from the city as well and I don't look like your traditional financial adviser and you know when I went I think some of it I tribute to like the content I have on my website is just I just really spoke from the heart about like what I want to do for my clients and I wrote I have like this frequently asked questions page about like who do I work well with and who do I not work well with so when I meet with my clients I'm like so do you have any
you know questions about me or you know and they're like you know a lot of your stuff I is already on the website so I don't really have any questions you know uh like my my fee my services and fees are on there so they have an idea of like what my pricing model looks like yeah I think that all attributes and like I said I think it's part of like just like my life experience too and then also I use cenly for scheduling on my website and I would I would recommend like having a lot of open slots for like
the evenings and the weekends because my target market is Young professionals and they're they're both usually it's like couples and they're both working full-time jobs and so they can only meet me on on nights and weekends and pretty much you know I I do I I do like my work during the day and then I meet with my clients in the evenings and then Saturdays and and Sundays and then also I'm on Yelp I think not a lot of advisers are on Yelp and I had two initial early clients right or two uh
just prospects actually we just had a prospect meeting they wrote reviews on Yelp and you know just here in the Bay Area and I think just our generation likes to see like that social proof or you know just kind of see an endorsement right and like since I don't have any control over Yelp like that's totally fine and I got three clients off of Yelp in my first year three clients off of Yelp which as you said like not an area most advisers have gotten into which kitus will love this cuz he wrote an
article one time about why you know ADV there will never be a Yelp for financial planner so he can uh you can duke it out with him and what he was referring to was the fact that just Yelp usually survives because you have thousands of people coming through your restaurant and as a financial adviser we just don't have many just we just don't have that many people but you can you know for for folks concerned about the compliance because I know that's the big question that comes up like how do you manage
compliance as long as you if you're going to ask anyone to review you you need to ask every client so don't just cherry-pick the ones that are happy with you and ask them to go review as long as you ask all of them and you don't try to take down negative reviews and and you just let them as long as they're real and they're authentic then that's okay you know you can have yel so it's awesome that you got three prospects coming from Yelp it's just an incredible flow of of people and I pulled up your
website while we're sitting here talking so for folks that want to know we'll link to it in the show notes but uh do you want to give give everyone the uh the website URL so they can go check it out uh yeah it's Ballast Point financial planning so ballast like ballast of a ship Financial planning.com so ballast Point f.com so yeah go check it out I mean you know your your site looks great it's not something that you had to spend 10,000 or $15,000 on did did you actually Design This yourself or did you hire
someone to help you with it yeah I just designed it myself I forget what theme I used but yeah it was just a Squarespace theme and I designed like so back when I was trying to find a job you know when I first graduated business school I created like a a small little blog and I used Squarespace uh there so I kind of had a little bit of experience with like how the website worked and I mean you do have to like there are some like kind of I guess quirks to the website and they their customer support is pretty good
where you can just like ask questions and they have a pretty good Library yeah but for just getting started it's a great way to to get started yeah I also did there's like those free whiteboarding apps I have like a little whiteboarding video on there and then I also have like a I just like kind of stood up in like in front of a camera and did like maybe a million takes just kind of trying to introduce myself that like I am a live person and I can hear me talk and so I have that on my I think
about me page that's awesome yeah yeah this is is really impressive so you said you had initially tapped sort of your your natural market is that sort of what you were talking about with Facebook and and you know pulling your email addresses that and contacts and that sort of thing or did you do more targeted Outreach trying to you know reaching out to specific folks I guess how did you tap your natural market as you were getting started I I so initially like when I was like trying to even think if I should even launch a
company um I just I listed out like who I thought would be my ideal target market it and I just kind of reached out to them and asked them I think you guys recommend this as well like you know what are the financial challenges that you're facing like this is what I'm thinking about doing is that something that you would be interested in or your friends would be interested in to be honest I'm not like pushy about you know like oh you know refer me to your friends or anything I I think like just
like kind of positioning yourself as a resource and like keep me in mind if you're like over here someone saying like I'm struggling with my credit card debt or I don't know what to do with my student loans I I definitely be happy to have a conversation and I don't yeah I'm not like a pushy sales guy and then oh yeah the other thing about xypn I don't know if it's still true is like people said that when they search you can do a filtered search on xypn like only two people said they were specializing in
student loans and I was one of the two which I thought was kind of surprising because I thought like more people specialized in this and maybe it's changed recently but like I think that's how how people found me as well yeah so for any for listeners that don't know I mean one of the things when we launched our advisor profile search was that we didn't just want to be a location based I mean that that is a piece of it but we also wanted to say who do you actually serve and some of the search engines out
there I mean you can check like all 400 check boxes or or it's just sort of generic like I specialize in retirement planning and and every cfp is like well of course I do retirement planning so I'll check that box and you end up it it's not helpful and so to your point you picked a niche that that was actually your Niche and not a lot of other people had it and so you know when folks are coming to the website they're saying well this is my problem I have a problem with my student loans and I want
to be able to talk to somebody about it and they're finding you to be able to have that conversation which I think is phenomenal I me that that's the our search engine was built with that in mind and there's definitely some quirks and and things were always refining there but it's fun to see the niche work you know and I know everyone here here's us hammering on the word Niche and having a niche and all of that but just being specific around like this is what I do this is who I serve and this is a
specific problem that I help solve people are not out there like I'm just looking for generic fin planner they're like I have a question about my student loans and I need someone who can answer that question and you know come to find out I'm not sure consumers realize that the vast majority of financial planners can't answer questions about student loans because they're used to working with older advisor or older clients instead of younger but you know still a great example of you know how clients
are going to find you I I'm not I I that kind of like I don't know I always have like a knee-jerk reaction when you say like you have to nich nich Niche you know or like you know I I I I personally don't believe in that because like I really like serving a wide audience my youngest client is 22 and then my oldest is 67 but I do kind of have Michael Kus has this term center of gravity like my center of gravity is like 25 to 45 year olds so my initial year I really liked having conversations with all these
different people because like at one hand I'd be talking to someone who's like who just graduated college who's got like credit card debt that they need to figure out and then like a little bit later talking about someone who's like thinking about retiring so I don't think like that's how I got my success or you know or had that lead flow you know I wasn't like targeting dentists or or doctors or anything like that I don't think you necessarily have to like I I didn't but I am finding that like now
that I kind of have had like you know a decent amount of success I'm I'm starting to to to consider like okay maybe I shouldn't start taking these pre-retirees because I don't want to do like a complete like retirement projection and like I I don't do very many like retirement projections for someone who's under 40 right like and it's kind of like okay got to I use right Capital so I got to like okay kind of remember how to plug in all the assumptions again and it is kind of so I
do charge them a little bit more just because it is a little more work but yeah so I think I I I'm starting to become like a little bit more I guess selective in who I'll take on I mean I haven't like turned away anyone like you know it's still my first just over a year um but it's like kind of in my mind that maybe I should like be a little bit more focused and intentional yeah and we certainly see that uh over time where as you grow and and and I you know we've talked about this a lot that ultimately
I understand the pressure in your first year like you're not going to turn away someone that would speak or or would spend a couple thousand dollars for your financial planning services and just tell them like oh no sorry go away some folks do and they've been successful some folks don't and they've been successful uh there there are many contributing factors obviously just one that that we hit on but we do see over time that you know as you get as you can relax a little bit and as you feel like
all right well I'm making money and I see the light at the end of the tunnel of how I'm going to make money and and have success so that if I lose a couple of clients I don't have to shut down my firm that that things are feeling good that you can be more selective not even necessarily around the niche but but just around sort of the the folks you really enjoy working with which I think is what leads to the niche is you just sort of find those conversations you really enjoy having like like K says
that center of gravity just the the ones that are really fun and and inviting and sometimes you just have those clients that for whatever reason they're just sort of a drain on you and and it's not as fun and so uh you're you're going to do things a little differently there but so you're you're 13 months in uh how many I guess out of that first year obviously you have talked to a ton of prospects so how many clients I guess did you work with in your first 12 months and how many sort of ongoing
retainer clients either you know doing financial planning or just investment man or Investment Management as well sort of those ongoing relationships do you have at this point yeah so I was really pushing the ongoing financial planning like like from the beginning like painting it as like a you know long-term relationship and and so yeah so at the end of my first year I had 38 total clients that I had worked and worked with and had paid me and then 26 are ongoing retainer clients wow that's incredible I'm just I'm a
little bit in shock I mean you sound like Chris GP in terms of first year success so I'm not even sure how to ask you like what I guess what are you contributing or crediting the success to is it just hitting the ground running and and really just pushing hard I mean I guess what how do you def I guess where do you give the credit for that level of success in that level of clients coming in in your first year yeah I was like talking with Chris G about this and he put it like oh it's great you're getting a lot of at bats
right like I got a lot of those like Prospect meetings and they're like legit Prospect meetings I think part of it is I think you know honestly like life experience and I think it's I'm a little bit fortunate to be located in a densely populated area with good jobs like you know right in the Bay Area but then in turn I mean just because I got the leads doesn't mean like you know I can convert them and what I attribute that to is I really invested a lot in like you know in myself that first year so it was
about July I was getting really frustrated because i' I'd have these great conversations with people I'd love to work with them at the end of the meeting I'd be like all right I'm going to send you a proposal you guys think about it and let me know if you want to work together my conversion rate was like it I was just really frustrated it was like 30% like only like three out of 10 would would sign up and so I didn't know what was good what was bad or you know I had no idea some people were like
oh that sounds pretty good I mean one and three basically pick you and I'm like I don't know just I just feel like these people I could help them you know I just feel like I could help them so what I did was I reached out to Nancy Blakey and I did a couple of like one-on-one sessions with her and and kind of like the the key takeaway there was like don't just give them the proposal at the end like because then it's like yeah sure send me a proposal I'll think about it and it doesn't
require any action or commitment from them sometimes I never even hear back from them and so what I changed it to to is like okay this first meeting is all about to get to know you and like if we like each other we're going to set up a second meeting and I'll go over a proposal with two or three different options for how we can work together so like just relax like this just going to be a conversation kind of takes a pressure off that first meeting and then in the second meeting you know it
requires them to commit some time so that's kind of a filtering mechanism so all of my so about 57% of like my my prospects set up that second meeting and then from that second meeting my conversion rate's about 70 75% now wow that is two and a half times higher where you were before yeah yeah so I I consider my conversion rate like of the people that I want to work with and that I give a proposal to it's 70 to 75% and I did go through her sales training course but like this like little nugget
like kind of came out in like our like one-on-one trainings and I did go through her like I think it was like 10 10 courses and I'd recommend that for for any new adviser as well you really learn like really good questions to ask your your proc and that's like I think really key is like knowing good questions to ask like just shutting up and listening like I really try to listen 80% of the time in that first meeting and she gives you like a structure for how to run that first meeting yeah which is just great okay so
so just so I'm clear on the structure that the big shift that you made which I guess small shift that had big results was instead of hey I'll email you you know at the end or after the meeting a proposal it's you actually schedule time with them and then go over the proposal together and that's that has been that big of a shift in terms of signing up new clients yeah and I think it's a combination of things too like I also went to money quotients three-day training and that's all about I'm really
big on values based Financial Planning and so I think a part of it is like echoing back what they say to you so they can feel heard and so in that plan deliver or that that proposal delivery meeting I'm saying okay you want to save for a home I'm going to do how much home can you buy analysis so I map it to like the deliverable and like I want to say have a Secure Retirement okay so let's do a financial Independence projection you know I want to like say for my kids education okay let's do a education
projection you know so it's like mapping what they said so that's like the very first part of the The Proposal meeting is kind of mapping out what they said and kind of echoing back to them and then and then the next step is so yeah I have like that 60-minute initial meeting and then the second one is 30 minutes and then this and then I I I I have them do a net worth statement and so I say I'll do a quick you know check in I'll do a quick overview of your net worth and kind of like okay where can you
improve things and you know what do I think you know what do what do I think about I kind a lot of people just want to know like how do I stack up given my age and income and stuff and then I kind of never seen their net worth before yeah a lot of them have it and I'm really big on tracking the net worth and using that as a measure of success like how are we doing together you know strengthening the assets getting the liabilities down so then I kind of go over their net worth and then I go into
the proposal of like okay these are all the things we're going to cover and yeah Nancy does a good job of like reviewing your proposal with you and like how can you improve it you know really making it about the the client and like this is how it'll help you like don't you want this like you know it's like using that word you right a lot like this will help you get the home of your dreams and and then and then I I have my fees at the bottom of like okay this is the this is the I think I frame it as like an
investment right this is the investment and then this is what you get out of it and then I reiterate like after I drop the number I reiterate and this will help you achieve these two top goals that I know are like the reason you set up this initial meeting to begin with that's such an awesome structure and it's what I love about nany's course so we've had Nancy on the the show a couple of times now to talk through sort of some of her sales training philosophies and and her her course and it really is
just about creating that structured process so that you can refine it you know so that you can say all right well I've been saying this and it's kind of it's kind of awkward here it's kind of an odd ordering so what if I what if I tweak it or or what if I try going over the the net worth in in this 30 minute meeting just for a quick overview and and seeing how that works because uh the cool thing is for your prospect it's the first time they've ever gone through that meeting with you and so they don't
know that it's different they you're the only one that knows that it's different but you get to sort of continue to refine but but like you said it's awesome when you can create a lot of bats for yourself so that uh so you just keep on swinging and and getting those hits and just improving yeah and the other thing about like emailing him the proposal is like they have like lots of question even when you go through it in person right and so like you're leaving it up to them to digest it to understand
it and then to commit or like to to have the time to come back and to to write the I don't know just to like respond to your email and I just love how Nancy frames it as like you know sales is just about helping people come to it like make a decision and people want they they they want Financial advice they just you know have a hard time coming up I think there's a little bit of sticker shock too right I can also like go over like what I charge if you want but like I you know kind of framing it as like an
investment and like this is something you'll get uh money back or that'll pay dividends for the rest of your life you know that's kind of how I frame it and so yeah so when my range for the upfront fee is between like $500 I just raised it for retirees to like 25 or pre-retirees to like $2,500 my average fee like kind of after like my first after my first seven months my average upfront fee was like $875 but now it's it's it's just over $1,000 for like that upfront fee and the
way I frame that to the to the client is like okay you pay half up front as a deposit and then you pay half at at plan delivery or after our second meeting and that way it kind of just makes it easier for them to stomach and then and then the ongoing fee so yeah my average fee like usually for like someone who just graduated college you know someone who's like there's also some people that come to me that just have like just really tough stories like they're first generation American and like I you know
I just really want to help them but I I can't I just don't feel right charging them like a, bucks so I might you know charge them like5 $500 and like kind of limit the scope of the the engagement but typically I should send you this I have a services and fee PowerPoint presentation it's basically like two slides and I got this from Anna sanina I want to definitely attribute it to her and it is awesome like this is I go over at the end of every initial meeting and it basically outlines okay this is my
workflow we're here at the discovery meetings if you become a client this is what we do and then we'll meet you know three times and then we'll meet every six months and then on the back side like imagine it's like a hard card stock uh a little bit bigger than a postcard and then on the back side is a uh this is your fees and so it kind of says you know single person or like college grad is 500 single no children a thousand young families 1500 and pre-retirees is500 and then ongoing fee is $150 to
$350 and then for Asset Management uh you know I use betterment and this is something I've I've really struggled with but I I don't charge anything for asset management and I just if if they if they use betterment like they need need an account open I I don't charge any fees on top of that and to be honest like I I try and have all my clients move their IAS into their 401ks so that way we can do back door Ross I just feel like there's much more value in that than me getting like I don't know 70
basis points on on their investment so you're not charging anything on AUM other than they're paying the the better institutional you know 20 basis points yeah that's correct I I I I just I just can't I like one of the tenants of like investing for me is like keeping your fees as low as possible and so I say that it's like what my investment philosophy is and then I'm like oh yeah by the way I'm going to like add this little layer of fee on top of betterment and you know I yeah it betterman it's
just so easy like you send your client a link and it just like walks the clients through it and they kind of do the followup about okay how do I actually like move my account from my old 401K and they kind of do it on their own it's kind of like empowering them to do it on their own so you said you have a monthly fee of 150 to 350 so how do you determine what that fee is going to be for each client yeah oh yeah so yeah I think I didn't quite finish the that part so yeah my average upfront fee is
about a th000 bucks a client or yeah per client and then for the monthly fee I I say it's determined based on complexity right my my lowest is about 150 and then right now for like it's kind of like where they what stage they are in their life and then also you know if it's like you know there's kind of like four criteria right like do I like this person would they be like a good center of influence or like a referral source how are they organized it's on some hand you got to like kind
of do that calculation in your head like I've heard on the podcast before like if you charge uh you know kind of in that one to 2% of income range you you should be okay so for like for single like there's I've been finding like a lot of success with like single young professional women who like they might be in a relationship but they're doing it on their own they just want to get like financially stable and like their their fee might be like 200 bucks a month but if it's like a couple like I
I've had a couple couples that are like about to get married they haven't combined finances yet so it's almost like I'm doing two financial planning engagements for them and so for them I charge 250 bucks a month and then for like a pre- retiree that might be $299 a month okay so it's a gauging complexity with with a little bit of flexibility for you just based on I I've never heard anyone say you know their their level of organization but you know that the truth is that may be one of the biggest
determinant of how many hours you have to spend with a client just because if if they're hyper organized and and I've had those clients before where you get everything with these like nicely labeled PDFs and and everything's exactly where it needs to be those folks are rare but they were much easier to work with than the folks that sort of come in with the you know the proverbial shoe box of random documents and sort of say here's my life figured out for me but yeah it it really gives you the
flexibility which you know I will caution some folks out there that some State Regulators don't allow for complexity based retainers or complexity based pricing they want to know exactly what you're doing to determine that fee but Most states will allow some some flexibility there so the beauty of of having 50 state regulators and the SEC to to each have their own sets of rules and yes like my like so right now my average fee is about like 185 bucks a month for my average retainer client and
I you know it's it's hard to like put a value on your service it's like an invisible service I I forget where I heard it but like someone said like just set your prices just outside of what you feel comfortable with right and so I've kind of used that as like a gauge right and then in terms of like justifying your fees like a lot of people are like what are you going to do for me for a you know 200 bucks a month actually what I kind of want to do like May I'll talk with you offline about this but do like
a breakout session at xypn about like what are all your great financial hacks like how can you get more cash to your clients and so for every piece of advice I give to my clients I have a tab on my I do a lot of my planning in Excel I have a tab in Excel called results this far and it's like okay we got you a Chase Slate card so your credit card debts gone away so that'll save you you know 50 bucks in mon month we adjusted your insurance deductible you know so we got your emergency fund set up so now we
can adjust your insurance deductible we increased that deductible so now that saves you this much a month you know refinancing student loans like if they have private student loans you can refinance those with common Bond Earnest and Sofi and each time you do that you get four or $500 so like they can get $1,200 just by refinancing their student loans those are my fav those are some of my favorite oh yeah and then like applying for like the Chase Sapphire Preferred Card is a great one like that's that's like $500 of free money
like you add all these up and you divide by 12 and it's almost like a game how can I more than make up for my fees and so I think I need to do a better job of like sharing that with my clients of like look this is all the stuff we did together and so I don't know kind of like shows the value in addition to showing like improvements and their net worth and progress towards goals you know and that's something I'm hoping maybe Shan with right Capital can will hear us talking about this I I'd love to
see this integrated into financial planning software but the tracking of progress you know in tracking of what we've done because it's sort of like once you do something like that and you transition them to a new credit card it's it's almost like forgotten you know it's sort of what have you done for me lately I remember getting very frustrated I had a client that I talked out of one disability insurance policy that was Rising premium and and got them into a level fee premium Disability
Policy and that one switch saved them like $60,000 just in terms of premiums over the next 20 or 30 years because uh they were sort of a a young professional doctor and and I remember you know like a year later they're like all right well what are we going to pay you for the next year and I was like are you kidding me you have paid me for your entire lifetime of fees because of this one recommendation like and but I didn't have a good way of tracking it and showing it so it'd be awesome to see
that the the way you're doing that because I do think it's important because clients forget you know and and they are asking okay well I'm going to continue to pay you what are you doing for me and just to have that sort of list of the these are the types of things we've been doing and this is how we're earning our fees in in very tangible real ways in addition to all of the sort of more qualitative intangibles like digging in and really helping them understand what it is that that they
want to do with their career and their life and and helping them sort of find you know Financial Health you know and helping them develop that yeah I plan it I I use I do I use PowerPoint for my financial planning and like just the presentations and I think I'll just make it like one of the last slides to kind of end on a good note like look at all the the money we're saving you but then on the other hand I have lost three clients in the last month or so and I I always hear Will Kaplan saying like
think of your practice as like a bus right you only want 60 ideal clients to to fill it up and I think it's fine if people like I I view it as like you know I get my my clients on the right track and then you know automate things as much as we can and then and then they graduate and they my my bus you know it's got bus stops right people can get off they can come back on later if they have another question and since I I charge I charge a fair price for my upfront fee I feel compensated for my
time so you know and like the people that have left it's there been no hard feelings like they've even like one of them even left like a Yelp review after he left I think people are like scared that like you know your clients are going to see this monthly bill every month and it's like what are you going to do for me on every every month and like I don't I don't promise them that but what I do say is like I'm G to work really hard to earn that that fee every month you know to to be delivering that
value to you and if you're not getting like the $1 of value you know I'm a professional like I understand if like you you can move on and like graduate and like you know there you're not you're not Contracting for life and so I think that kind of gives them Comfort too because like I think people see this $200 a month and they're like oh man I'm committing this for the rest of my life so I think that kind of helps helps it helps the client you know wrap their head around it because there is like a
little bit of sticker shock they're dealing with absolutely so one more quick question I have for you so you mentioned going through money quotients course and and I I know some of the folks over at money quotient and have heard they have just an amazing course I have never been through it myself though so can you tell me just a little bit about sort of what it is and what you learned there and how that was valuable for for you in your practice Yeah so I I really think the future financial planning is going to be more around
helping people align their values with like their money with their values like aligning like what like what their core values are with with how they spend their money money quent has just a huge library of these tools that are like kind of the softer side of financial planning and and so over the three days they introduce you to these tools and you're buddied up with another person and you go through each tool with the other person and so you're listening on one hand you're the the planner kind of
listening taking notes and then uh repeating back what you heard and on the other side you're you're kind of the one that's the client and so you you you're you're role playing for three days and then afterwards you you get the choice to license some of the material so there's four different tiers of licensing I think I'm licensed level two and to be honest I haven't really used a ton of their templates and things I use this financial satisfaction survey and it's about 20 questions it's really good
for update meetings so you can kind of see where your client's heads are at like I'm satisfied with my level of Insurance I'm satisfied with my uh and it's like high medium or low and it's kind of a way for you to like kind of say like okay maybe they're they they want to relook at their estate plan right now or you know kind of gives you some ideas to to think about but there are so many I guess I'm not like completely 100% bought into all of their things and I don't really use a ton I do
for my values based stuff I I use this values card deck from think to perform I think it was Cory percat showed it to me at Napo when I when I met him and it's really cool it's like 52 cards and you give them to your client and it takes about like 40 minutes during a client FaceTime where they're kind of sorting the cards and then you have a conversation about it and they take the 52 cards and Whittle it down to their top five favorite and a lot of times it's like Independence Family
relationships maybe wealth and then it's just a really good tool to get to know your clients and so from that information I make my financial planning recommendations like if it's adventur is like their Top Value then like okay let's give them more of a travel budget you know so I think that the values spaced theme is going to be a big I guess like really important going forward and I think money question also is really really good for giving you good questions to ask your your clients
like like a good one is like what did You observe about money growing up that like I don't know you can learn so much and then you say okay well how did how does that impact your relationship with money today and like that is so great of a question and then like also I like do you have any fears about working with a financial adviser and then a lot of times they're like I've never worked with a financial adviser I don't even know what to expect and then I've got good piece of collateral U it's like 12
tough questions to ask your financial adviser I think that was from an Napa post as well and it's like ask how they're compensated ask are they a fiduciary how are they going to help you and so I kind of walk them through the questions they should be asking advisers so I think just kind of having that 12 tough questions and then having like a services and fees you know hand out I think th like with those two things I would move on like instead of like trying to build like a bunch of marketing collateral like just have
those two that you like at your fingertips when you're meeting with clients yeah know I I love all of those tools I think it's awesome like you said to to be able to learn how to ask good questions I think that ultimately that's what financial planning is all about and I I I know I harp on it a little bit too much but uh you know the cfp board teaches us how to do the the science of financial planning but they never really teach us the art they don't teach us the art of communication and and how to
uncover those issues because you know a client may say that there's something that they want and and you can spend a lot of hours you know using your science training in order to develop the answer uh when in reality what they really wanted was something else a awesome to know that that some of those training programs are out there to to help folks with that and and with the money quoti and with Nancy Blakey like especially with the money quotient one you really get to experience what it's like from
the client's shoes and so to have someone listen to you like spill your guts and then like and then like repeat it back to you like just having that that sense of being heard and like that was really powerful and that that's like kind of how it kind of like cemented like yeah like just shut up and listen like just ask your clients what they want and they'll tell you you know and then and and like that's why I like try and get out of my own way like if I catch myself talking too much or client
meeting I'm like okay let's pump the brakes here no I love it so as we're sort of coming to the the close of this show I'll ask you the the question that I know you've been thinking a little bit about you know if if you could go back and give yourself one piece of advice or that one thing that you wish you had known then that you know now what do you think that piece of advice would be you know I think you know I struggle with like you know kind of like the confidence of like am I like really
delivering real value right I you know I don't know I don't know if it's like the impostor syndrome but like when I was you know I just had my cfp I was helping Kathy Resto down in San Diego she is amazing and like she was putting on this Workshop about how to accomplish your financial mission to military families there's about 150 military families and I was just there helping like put the notebooks on the tables and stuff like that and she's like hey do you want to do one of these next time or you know or
like what do you know like and like I was like man I don't I I just have my cfp like I don't I don't know if I can do this you know like I don't know if people will listen to me right and she's like no you're a cfp you've accomplished that like KN one can take that away you're like you're qualified you know that kind of that really like I don't know you have like these like kind of like inflection points in your life and that like really like turned a switch
for me and I think as I've kind of learned and gotten more experience you know it's okay to not know things clients don't expect you to know things like You're bright you're smart you can figure it out like write down their question and then do the research and figure it out like like and so I think if I maybe like yeah I think I would tell myself to just have like that that Bel in belief in self and belief in like value I guess earlier on so that way maybe I started this journey a little
sooner I don't know just like yeah that's what I would tell myself yeah it's amazing I think all of us have struggled with that at one point or another and some continue to strugg with it struggle with it and really you know being able to to own the value that we provide you know whether it's a financial planner service provider or whatnot something times it can it really is the impostor syndrome it just creeps up on you and you know one day they're going to figure out that this is all one
big sham or some competitor is going to come into it you know provide twice the value for half the price and they're going to find out that I'm making too much money and in reality like we do really really good work if anything we charge way too little for the value that we provide so awesome words of wisdom for our for our newer you know financial planners just one quick thing I don't want it to come off as like everything's been like just just great this first year it's it's really hard you know it's
really hard especially like being out on your own like I don't have anyone to to to talk with right on a day-to-day basis and I think that's something I'm struggling with uh right now is just kind of like having a a strong support group you know my wife is great and like some of the XY people I talk with I don't but I don't have like strong steady groups and you know I think that's I just like kind of the I guess like that's one thing that I'm currently struggling with is kind of like the the
lon loneliness piece so I started to like try and form like other study groups and actually just hir hired like a business coach help with just like the just like I don't know like the mental side of things right so I don't want it to come across like uh it's been like an you know it's been a great 12 months but like it's definitely been a struggle as well not all rainbows and unicorns as we like to say I mean and and it is I appreciate you saying that because you know you are
a great success story and just absolutely killing it but uh it is a struggle it is a grind entrepreneurship is not easy and anyone who says it is I don't know maybe independently wealthy I'm not sure but it is never easy it is always uh it's always going to be a tough road but you know many of us are willing to take that tough road in order to you know create the life for ourselves that we want to live so thank you for for injecting that because I do think that's extremely important for
folks to hear especially as they're looking to to start their own firm but Sean thank you so very much for taking the time to be on the show we really do appreciate it no it's a pleasure I really enjoyed it thank you Alan a big shout out to our this month's sponsor right capital sign up for a demo of right capital's Innovative financial planning software at WR capital.com and mention the xypn Radio podcast to be eligible for 10% off retail pricing be sure to join our VIP community at XY
planning 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 private Community Just For You The Cutting Edge financial planner go to XY
planning network.com svip or text xypn radio to 33344 and join a network of thousands ready to change the lives of Gen X and geny [Music] clients
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Featuring
Shawn Tydlaska, CFP®, MBA
Ballast Point Financial Planning
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