From Zero to Traction: Launching a Lean, Fast-Moving Firm

Alan Moore: Welcome to Behind the Advisor with XYPN. Your behind-the-scenes look at the challenges and victories fee-only advisors encounter as they launch, run, and grow their independent firms. Join us for a deep dive into the real life stories, frontline insights and actionable strategies it takes to build a thriving, purpose-driven firm on your terms.

Today we're joined by Ryan Johnson, founding partner of Hundred Financial Planning, a firm built to serve busy professionals in their thirties and forties. Ryan knew early on that he wanted to build something of his own, but felt unsure about launching without the experience he thought he needed. That all changed when he found XYPN's Sapphire Model, a platform that gave him the freedom of firm ownership without the overwhelming weight of compliance tech or back office logistics.

In this episode, we talk about launching a hundred from scratch, overcoming regulatory barriers in Minnesota, and why having support in the right areas helped him go all in on what he does best, growing a practice fast. With that, Ryan, welcome to the show.

Ryan Johnson: Hey Alan, thanks for having me on.

Alan Moore: So super excited. I believe you are our first XYPN Sapphire advisor who has joined us on the show.

We are not here to do a sales pitch. Stuff about Sapphire may come up, but your journey is a little different because of the platform that you're using versus many of our guests. I'm excited to dig in, to kick things off, can you give us just a quick background on what led you into financial planning based on your LinkedIn, looks like you were in the nonprofit space, like what sort of brought you over into financial planning?

Ryan Johnson: Certainly I started out in marketing and advertising actually. So I worked at an ad agency for three years and then I worked on the corporate side at a hotel company for three years. And I had a friend ask me once are you gonna be in marketing forever? And I was like, oh, definitely not. And that was kinda like an eye-opening moment where I was like, I knew I wasn't gonna do this, but why am I still doing it?

And I started getting raises and I was like, Ooh, the pain of leaving is really bad. And so it was actually my wife's idea that I consider the finance world at all, because she's really come alive when your friends and family ask financial questions or coworkers like, Hey, do you have any idea what's going on with my 401k?

And I got really excited about that kind of stuff and. I read a lot of personal finance books and it's actually in my family history. Like my older brother is an advisor, my dad was, and he sold a firm to his employees. And I avoided it 'cause I was like, eh, I don't know. I just wanna do what my family does.

But in the end it felt like a natural shift for me. So COVID was actually the catalyst. So the hotel industry wasn't really booming in 2020.

So I was furloughed as an employee and had a chance to really reconsider my – What do I wanna do with my life? Which is not a new story. I think a lot of people in that time were like, wow, life is different.

Life is short. Maybe I should think about doing something differently. And while I was networking, I got an opportunity to do some nonprofit consulting. And so that's kinda what you brought up where I'd worked primarily in a planned giving space. It was kinda like my first step into the financial world.

Help people with estate planning from a charitable pers charitable perspective. And I actually saw someone implement a charitable remainder trust. 'cause everyone only talks about those in theory and how they could work.

Alan Moore: The GRTs. Yeah, that's –

Ryan Johnson: Yeah. It's oh yeah, I had a test about that once, seven years ago.

And that's the last time I ever saw it. And I was like, no, it was legit. That actually created a hunger for this. 'cause I saw people who had a lot of areas that I could help with, but I didn't have the ability to do it because I wasn't an advisor. And to that end, I switched into exploring what it would look like to actually become a financial planner.

I got advice from one of the OG XYPN guys, Ben Wassick in Minnesota.

Alan Moore: Yeah, shout out to Ben.

Ryan Johnson: He and his team at Guide are really great. Right off the bat, he's oh, dude, you should launch your own. You should launch your own firm. And I was like, I have zero experience. I wouldn't hire me. Why would I try and go ask other people to do it?

So I had this idea of going and working at another place for a couple years which ultimately I did do that. And so I worked at another company for a couple years as a relationship manager, like a junior advisor, that kind of a thing. It was a great experience. I learned a lot about the industry.

The firm I was at was much more investment focused. And I just found the questions we were answering for clients were not the ones I wanted to answer. Sometimes it felt like it wasn't the ones that they were asking either. And so I was really interested in planning focused and ultimately yeah, my life circumstances are what caused me to actually make the change and to believe that I could actually launch my own firm.

Alan Moore: If someone asks me to give me the recipe the individual ingredients that when combined give you a really great chance of success as a firm owner I think your background could be that ingredient list. Marketing and having a skillset and just understanding of marketing and the tools and the techniques and what works.

Hospitality and learning just how to have hard conversations, how to deal with difficult people, rejection, all of those things. And then working in philanthropy and like actually getting to work with people who have loads of money and are trying to give and, goal setting and all of that capped off with experience in a financial planning firm.

That's, that is while not a straight line, looking back, it looks like a straight line of. So I'm saying that I'm putting words in your mouth. Do you feel like that has been the case, that the tools learned in those earlier careers, in those different careers, different industries, have led to some of your early success?

Ryan Johnson: I really appreciate you putting that together. I hadn't necessarily thought of it in the context of my career. I typically thought of it in the context of the skills that I've developed over time being in project management and then relationship management and all these things. And when I was in the marketing world, a lot of what I was doing was client service.

So that art really hasn't changed, like creating expectations and then trying to overdeliver on what you're providing, whether that was an external client or an internal client from the corporate world. So yeah, I think that makes a lot of sense. I've always felt like my success has come down to solving problems.

I always say I don't have the answer, but I'm really good at going and finding it. I just gotta decide what kind of problems I wanna solve. And so this has been beautiful because not only running the numbers, that can be fun, but to me it's all about outcomes. And that's where my conviction as a planner is. It's not just about good advice, it's about actually getting the change implemented.

And so I've tried to orient my entire process, my business, and just the way I think about you could have a, here's how we're gonna make some changes to your 401k, but let's put 30 minutes of context into this and then ask if you want to do it at the end of the meeting so it's not on a to-do list for six weeks.

That kind of thing where they're like, oh yeah, I feel really good. I like working with Ryan 'cause I don't get homework. It's like you do, you just do it, before we're done with the call, so it feels really good.

Alan Moore: Yeah. I always felt like my training and education and certifications and all that basically just led me to the skillset of being able to spot bs. So when a client said, oh, can't you do this with, from a tax perspective, it's I don't know, but I doubt it just based on what I know about the IRC.

And, but I will go figure it out. So I love the problem solving. So talk to me a little bit about the decision to launch. So you're working in a firm. Maybe there's some misalignment in terms of investment focus, first planning focus what ultimately happened that made you decide to go out on your own?

Ryan Johnson: Yeah, I think I had a great boss. He was a great guy and he just didn't have a huge growth perspective and the way that my structure with my contract was concerned was I. I would not be able, they were the firm's clients, right? And so I had this idea of launching something for people in their thirties and forties with an asset ga not gathering, but they're growing their assets right now.

They're not trying to live off of them. Accumulation. There you go.

Alan Moore: Yep.

Ryan Johnson: And a lot of that for me that I found to be interesting was reviewing cash flow. How can we optimize what's going on? I built this framework and the firm at the time was much more retirement focused. And there was just like a misalignment of who they served and what I wanted to do.

And on the flip side, I felt like I had the potential to do something really cool and I wanted to give myself the opportunity to fail so that I can say I gave it a shot, not wondering down the road. And a lot of Michael Kitces podcasts, a lot of the old XYPN podcast, before it became Behind the Advisor, was really helpful in creating expectations.

But honestly, like one of the very first ones that you were interviewed on totally changed my paradigm, where the idea of, when you are only an employee, you can get fired and. You lose all of your income, but when you have a bunch of different clients, the odds of them all firing at you at once, is pretty low.

And so if you lose a client, you know it might have a marginal impact on your income as a business owner, but it's not a huge risk. And so I was like, whoa, that's actually more risky. And I lived through that, right? I had a decent paying job at a corporate position and it all went to nothing.

just because of something that was outta my control. And so I was like, oh geez. And that actually was helpful for me too, that was before I became that was before I worked for someone else. But all that to say my wife and I were planning on moving to Michigan. So we were in Minnesota at the time.

I was thinking really seriously about launching in Minnesota. And it was just a natural pathway. If I'm gonna move, it's an easier way for me to let my team know that I was gonna be moving on. But the problem was a lot of my prospects were in Minnesota. So I had this big compliance hurdle where Minnesota has a specific rule where you need three years of securities industry related experience in order to register as an investment advisor.

Alan Moore: Is it still securities related? 'cause at one point it was, you had to have three years of supervisory experience and no one qualified for it.

Ryan Johnson: Yeah, it was like very few people could actually do that, and it was like, I just thought this was standard, and then I talked to you guys, you were like, no, Minnesota is actually really tough.

And I was like, oh, that stinks. So then I was like, oh, cool, I'll go move to Michigan and then serve Minnesota clients.

They're like, doesn't matter, once you get five you still have to register. I was like, oh, but I, literally the line I kept telling myself is, it's fine. It'll get figured out. And it'll just be, a lesson I share down the road on some success podcast about how I figured it out. And that was going through my head in fall of 2023 when I went to go to the XYPN Live.

Like I had been in 2021 as a guest with Ben Wassick. I was like, oh, this is really cool, but I'm not interested in watching my own thing. Flash forward to 2023. I was so excited. I think that was in Atlanta. I was like, oh man, this is gonna be amazing. I was soaking up everything. I can do this. Still not sure how I'm gonna launch a business when the only people I know are in Minnesota and I can't open there.

And that's when you're like, Hey, we're announcing this new thing. It's called corporate RIA. I don't think I had a name at the time. And this was a solution to do it for me. And there was this one little anecdote, I don't think you really thought much of it, but it was like, oh, and it'll be SEC registered, and I was like, ah, there we go.

The Golden Gates opened, the angels in the background. I was like, this could be the solution to the thing for me. And so I think I emailed you like the next day and I kept emailing you. I was like, Alan, I know you don't have a business yet, but please let me join the pilot group.

Alan Moore: No, I, yeah, I remember your pitch was I don't have any clients. So you can learn what it's like to have an advisor with no clients start on Sapphire.

Ryan Johnson: Yeah, exactly.

Alan Moore: So I may be misremembering this, but Ben Wassick actually paid for you to come to that conference in 2021, is that correct?

Ryan Johnson: He did. Yeah. I think I shared that with you last year,

Alan Moore: Yeah, at this conference last year and.

Ryan Johnson: he was like, I really love this industry. We need more good planners. And if you can get yourself there, I'll cover the cost, which was hugely generous. And now I've got the same perspective. Like I want to be that kind of a person for the industry who's helped put other people forward.

And just a huge shout out to Ben and Cal and just a lot of the guys over at the team, they're just really solid guys and and girls.

Alan Moore: Yeah, and I, advisors will ask me like, how, like, how do I give back? Do I go speak at universities or do client facing stuff? And all of those things are awesome, but this is one way whether it's XYPN Live or a NAPFA conference or an FPA event. To your point, like when you find somebody who, you know, 'cause we can all, we all have a gut of this person could be a really good planner.

Yeah. See if you are willing to put a little bit of money on the table and get 'em to a conference so that they can really be surrounded by people and really see. Because I remember when I went to my first NAFA conference just being like, this is financial planning. This is so cool. I thought it was just a bunch of investment quantitative folks.

Like I was

Ryan Johnson: Right.

Alan Moore: I found my people so you decide to launch, leveraging the Sapphire RIA and you hit the ground running really fast. And I'm just curious, you mentioned earlier you had this mental block of I wouldn't hire me. So how can you talk about getting through the I wouldn't hire me and onboarding those early clients?

'cause that's a mental block a lot of us deal with.

Ryan Johnson: Yeah, I think a lot of them, I wouldn't hire me, was being on the outside in. I had this perspective of advisors and planners as being a lot better than me and just knowing more and just being able to get people to trust them. And being, working in it for a while and getting to know other planners, so much of it came down to people hiring people they trust, like that's it.

And there are different ways to build that. You can build it over coffee down the road. You can build it by building a solid marketing or social profile on how you communicate. There are people who do it over YouTube where it's oh, the way this guy presents ideas, I trust him. I wanna work with him.

And so for me, I started to realize that, 'cause I had people reaching out to me, like towards the end of my time at the first one maybe like the two months before I was getting ready to pack up and move. I had a couple people who were like, Hey, Ryan, I saw you're a financial advisor. I trust you.

Would you be willing to, I'd love to work with you. What would that look like? And I was like, oh, I'm actually about to start my own thing. And so that was one of my first clients, who waited like four months for me to kept emailing me, are you live yet? And so I'm like, yes, you can work with me, even before my website was up.

So I always give a shout out to them different functions, but that was the thing when someone reached out to me just 'cause they knew me and I was like, oh wow. All I have to do is give more people the opportunity to get to know me and I could have a successful business. And that would be my one thing to anyone.

I would put that line out there for anyone who's looking at launching a firm, giving more people the opportunity to get to know you. Because if you're a halfway decent person, enough people will trust you and like you and when they're ready to hire a professional guide, you'll be who comes to mind.

Alan Moore: I love that advice because, advisors would say should I be playing more golf? Should I be joining the board of the local charity or a nonprofit? And I've heard advisors get clients from all of those. And yes, you can call it in the quote unquote, networking. but I much prefer the way that you're framing that, which is just to get to know people because that's how they can sort of see the value of the trust relationship. and then later on you can explain the value of financial planning.

Ryan Johnson: Certainly

Alan Moore: in my notes it shows that you went from zero to 14 clients or I guess zero to nine over your first year and now have 14 clients. Is that, are those numbers still accurate?

Ryan Johnson: Yes, as of today. Yep.

Alan Moore: So can you talk about those sort of early clients and where they came from? Were these all like. Part of your network? Was there anything you were doing from a marketing standpoint in order to get in front of the right people?

Ryan Johnson: Yeah, so the first four, I had a list of 90 people in Minnesota and only four ended up signing up with me right away. So all of my fears about not being able to register didn't end up really mattering. I did eventually hit five like six months in. I think I met six in Minnesota now.

So it does matter now, but all the same. I just remember the classic underwhelm of. Wow. Not as many people were excited about this as I was, which I've heard a hundred times on different podcasts. So I was like, okay, I'm gonna have 90 and nine will sign up, I'll have really low expectations.

But I was like, nah, my expectations were still too high. All the same. I was like, I had very aggressive goals that I was like, oh, I'm gonna get two clients a month, every month for four years. And it didn't work that way, which I thought was, it was pretty funny. But it was like the first four months.

Two months, one, two months, two, two months, three, two months, four. And then there was like one later in the year. And so I was discouraged until I went to XYPN live last fall. And so I was like six months in at the conference and I was chatting with a bunch of other people who had launched in 2024.

And I was like, yeah, I only have seven clients. Oh, you already have seven clients. What are you doing? How is that working for you? And I was like, what do you mean? And oh, that's actually pretty good. That's interesting. Like I didn't, I guess I didn't think of it that way.

And once the research on revenue for the first five years of firms came out, it was like the average year one revenue is $9,000, just revenue. And I was like, whoa, I've already doubled that and I'm six months in. I feel really good now. So there is a lot of value in having the data, not that it didn't change my financial circumstances. It wasn't like all of a sudden I was doing a lot better. But even for this year two, if I don't get any more clients, I'm on pays for somewhere around $52,000 in revenue for year two,

Alan Moore: Wow, you're gonna hopefully continue to outpace the benchmarking study results.

Ryan Johnson: That's what I hope. And so that's been the question for me from the very beginning with Sapphire, right? Was. It did not fit into my business plan because of the 1500 bucks a month and the 20% cut. And so I had to work probably, it probably took me like nine months before all of those costs were covered.

And so now I'm in a place where it's oh, I'm getting some more payout on top of that. But I spend virtually no time on investment management compliance, backend admin stuff, opening a Roth IRA for a new client was like. Hey, XY Sapphire team, open Roth IRA for this client. And they're like, all right, we're on it.

They signed it, it's open, all right, sweet. Here's the investment allocation I want. Great. It's implemented. That was probably a total of four minutes of my time. And so it's amazing. And so what that's done for me is like I'm serving clients or building business.

And when you're this early on. I'm like, what do I do? 'cause that's a lot of time to go try and, like I've started YouTube channels, short form videos, monthly newsletter, probably too many different things, getting coffee with as many people as I can. But what I found is that a lot of those seeds I'm starting to plant are coming back around six months later.

And that's been helpful. I guess to answer one of the questions you had earlier about where my clients are coming from? The majority of them are like people who I've gotten to know. So I actually, I rent an office space out of a coworking office in downtown Grand Rapids, Michigan. So I got a logo on my door and I've gotten probably five clients just from people like, Hey, what's your company?

Oh, that sounds like something I could use. I'd love to work with you. And it's been great. It's just like

Alan Moore: That's really

Ryan Johnson: being out in a space and there's like another coworking space opening up down the road and I wanna get an office there just.

Alan Moore: The old trick is to get coworking spaces in a bunch of cities. So you show up on like the local search for and f

Ryan Johnson: Yeah, exactly.

Alan Moore: That is even more boots on the.

Ryan Johnson: Yeah. Who knows? It is funny 'cause things are continuing to grow and I was hoping I gave myself like one client a month goals, and then I got five in January, so I was like, whoa, this is gonna be an amazing year. And then it's like I slowed down because I took two months off to study for and passed to get my CFP in March.

But since then I've gotten my first lead through the XYPN, finding an advisor portal. Which was great, which I couldn't have gotten without getting the CFP. So I was like, aha, it did, it was worth something for me. Which has been great. And yeah, I'm really like, when I'm thinking about it from the right perspective, I'm really excited.

And then the other thing I think about is I'm not even a year and a half in, and as long as I am, I don't run outta money. Like this is gonna be sweet. Like I just imagined four years holy cow. But it is hard. I'll tell you what. There's a lot of two ams where it's like, what am I doing?

Like maybe I should just quit and work for someone else so I don't have to try to build my own thing. But I've gotten a lot of good advice from people that say, the moment you sign the client agreement, your heart will sink. And you'll be like, oh, man, why did I do that?

Alan Moore: No, and I appreciate you sharing all that because it is the reality, like I don't wanna paint this rosy picture that launching a firm is all rainbows and unicorns. 'cause it's not, there's a five second rainbow and unicorn moment, and then the reality hits that, to your point I'd have to pull up our last benchmarking data.

We're working on the analysis for this year's now, but, it's yeah. 7,000, $8,000 of gross revenue in your first year. Hopefully advisors have heard Michael and I say that it just, it takes three years before we can have a real conversation on if it's working or not. Now to your point, you can't run outta money in between there, which is why we recommend folks have some savings or a partner with income to be able to support.

But yeah, those feelings of. Should I just go get a job? Don't go away. I did that at XY when we had a hundred members. I applied for a job and Michael was like, what are you doing? And I'm like, I'm just drowning. I don't know what to do. And, that ultimately led us to hiring a COO because what was weighing me down was day-to-day operations.

It does happen.

Ryan Johnson: Yeah.

Alan Moore: So in the pre-call we were talking we were hitting on a topic that I wanna be sure we cover, and that is finding ways to balance the business and personal. And you shared, you've got two young kids and you're trying to build this business and you also wanna spend time with your wife, and you also want some alone time.

Like, how are you approaching time management with a young family and a young business and making it work for you and your wife?

Ryan Johnson: Oh man, I am not approaching it well. I think I'm using my time well, but not with intentionality. I ultimately want to, I'd rather be a successful father and a successful husband in my own context of being present and being a good listener and loving than a successful business owner.

Because I didn't really know what my dad did for work until I was like a junior in high school. All I knew is I wanted him to hang out with me and play with me. Maybe not when I was a junior in high school, but growing up. And he did. And so if I can give my kids that and I can continue to date my wife and invest in our marriage, like it'll work out.

But basically my thing is I'll spend three days a week home with the kids eating breakfast so my wife can get ready and I'm just sitting in the living room playing Hot Wheels for hours with my 2-year-old. Sitting there and I feel guilty 'cause I'm thinking, oh man, I should be at work because, if I do this too much, I'm not gonna get enough clients.

And then I'll have to like, I don't know I'll ruin this, I'm not gonna be able to provide for my family, or maybe I'll have to go get a job somewhere else and I'll be a failure, rather than just being present with my kids. And then I'll leave at seven 30 the next morning, go to work and be like, oh man, I should really be spending time with my kids.

Geez. It's like I can't win with my own mental rules. So the more often the time I can take, last fall I went on a retreat at Carl Richards house. And he shared a beautiful poem with me. I think it was wife, but it was called fire by Judy Storm Brown, I think.

But the whole concept was if you wanna build a really good fire, it's not just the logs. It's the space between the logs. You need the fuel, the oxygen in there to allow the fire to burn its most hot. And if there's no fuel, it won't burn. But if there's too many logs it'll get choked out.

And so all that you really need to do is have a nice amount of space and maybe put a log on there from time to time. And so the thing that really helps me.

Alan Moore: I pulled this poem up. I have never, I have not heard Carl mention this one, but this is really great. So folks yeah, go we will link to it in the show notes, but it's called Fire by Judy Brown. And this really is by, it's exactly what you're talking about, but a really powerful poem.

Ryan Johnson: Yeah, it was his wife Corey, who shared it actually. But all the same. When I like that, sometimes I'll ha I won't have a meeting until one o'clock and I'll go to a coffee shop for two hours, leave my phone in the car, grab my journal. Or sometimes I'll just stare out a window. Like I haven't done that since I was a kid.

And it's amazing, it's almost like hiking. If you ever went on a hike, you spend the first 30, 45 minutes thinking through the things you normally do. Oh yeah, I should do this next week. You're like, oh, I gotta make sure I sign my kid up for this. Or, oh, I forgot to, to call the person about the car.

And then 45 minutes in, you're like, oh, this is what a clear mind feels like. I don't spend a lot of time in this space. And so just creating that space for me is the only time I'm looking at my life with an accurate perspective. If I'm going, even if I'm constantly with my kids, they can be just as tiring if I'm more tiring than trying to build a business in a beautiful way.

But for me it's if I can create this time for myself to have a clear mind, like I'm less negative, I'm less stressed. I no longer believe that this frantic activity is going to be the thing that gives my business success. It's really just spending time with people and giving them an opportunity to get to know me.

And I'm more content. It's you know what, actually purely objectively, this is actually going really well. So take a chill pill. But like last week I was, this will be a, it's a little more v vulnerable, but I was trying to. Describe what it felt like. And it felt like I was rowing as hard as I could, and I noticed that my feet were wet and there was a hole in the boat and I needed to grab a bucket and bail water out.

And it worked. There was no water anymore, but I wasn't moving forward and every new client wasn't like, yay. It was a relief. It's oh, sweet. They're just plugging a hole. And I was like, I remember writing my journal like, this is not a helpful metaphor. And so I changed it. I was like, what if instead it was like, it's an old metaphor, but the idea of planting seeds where.

There's potential and it can produce fruit. And sometimes they go on to throw, they get referrals and they have their own seeds and it grows. And the next relationship could completely change your life. And, it could even change the community that you're a part of or even what, like what's important to you because of someone that you meet.

There's just so much potential each day. But the reality of farming is that you can't work harder to make the harvest come.

And you can't over water it either. So you just gotta give it a little water and then trust that the season will be there. And the most important thing, this is my conclusion, make it to the harvest.

The farmers burn out because he is working too hard. It doesn't matter, right? It's all over. So that's my soap box.

Alan Moore: I love that. Yeah. In tech we have a saying that nine women can't make one baby in one month. Like it, some of these things just take time. But, I appreciate you sharing them, and being vulnerable there. 'cause, this is something that I certainly empathize with as a parent with young kids that the other day I, so I've got four kids and the joke in our house is there's, just because we have four, there's always one crying.

But the other day there were three crying for different reasons. And I just remember thinking like, I'm really good at being a CEO. I'm really good at my job and I am really not good at this dad thing. And that's a hard place for me. 'cause what do we do? We tend to do more of the things we're good at, which I think is why many of us go to work.

But I also have to recognize like the last 10 books I read we're about business. And now I'm like, okay, I need to read some parenting books to get better at parenting. And those are just realities that we all face. So I appreciate you being willing to share that.

Ryan Johnson: Absolutely.

Alan Moore: So as we're coming to conclusion I'm just curious, if you have one piece of practical advice, one tip that you would give advisors that you know, who are thinking about launching a firm, maybe you're worried about not having enough experience.

Like what would you recommend to them that would've been helpful for you?

Ryan Johnson: Oh man. It can be hard to trust this if you haven't seen it,

but my conviction. That for people who wanna start a firm, there's a lot of things that we can assume that are true about them, including they're passionate about this, they have a vision, they're excited about serving people in a specific way.

The worst version of your business is going to be dramatically better than what a lot of people are getting out there. your first iteration that you look back on and say, that was bad. When you had a two and a half hour meeting with a client and you're like, oh my gosh, I can't believe I did that.

And you'll feel bad about what you did. Will still be better service than what a lot of people are getting out there when they're paying way too much for one meeting every two years. And they're like, oh, I can't ask my advisor about my insurance 'cause he's an investment guy. I can't ask my advisor about saving for my kids' college 'cause he doesn't do that kind of stuff.

I can't ask my advisor about whether it's okay for us to spend more money on a vacation. 'cause that's like a really personal thing. Just by creating space for those conversations, you have the opportunity to create so much meaning for people and benefit from it. Like for me, like every now and then I'll get discouraged and then I have my stoke folder like email I've gotten from people where it's like I go back and read it and it's like a client who's a voicemail that I forwarded or this one client who said this. Looking back, I was probably looking for validation. I basically just wanted you to say that I was doing everything that was right. But because of your approach, our conversations have had far more value, far more value than simply checking a box. And I'm just like, okay, thank you very much.

Alan Moore: That's awesome.

Ryan Johnson: And so that's my encouragement to you. If you're thinking about it, the worst version of the idea you have is gonna be so much better than what people are getting right now. So go do it.

Alan Moore: It's so true. It truly is a helping profession. With that where can listeners connect with you? What, which social platforms are best to stay in touch with you if they wanna learn more and follow your journey?

Ryan Johnson: Sure. So I'm pretty active on LinkedIn. I love to connect. I've got a lot of people who've reached out to me. Since I've been on the Sapphire platform, because I gave you guys a great testimonial that you

Alan Moore: You did

Ryan Johnson: on there. And so people are always asking me for my inside scoop. So there's four or five people who are thinking about it right now that you might not even know.

Alan Moore: all

Ryan Johnson: I only give them the honest, unvarnished truth as opposed to just trying to pitch them into something. But yeah, LinkedIn is a great place to find me. My website is hundredfp.com. So there you go.

Alan Moore: Fantastic. And for folks who are interested, you can go to xyplanningnetwork.com/sapphire if the conversation related to Sapphire is something that is of interest. So Ryan, thank you so much for taking the time to come on the show and share your journey and and just expertise and wisdom and looking forward to seeing the next phase of your journey.

So thank you.

Ryan Johnson: Awesome, Alan. Thank you for having me. Appreciate it.

Alan Moore: Alright listeners, thanks for hanging out with us on Behind the Advisor. Want more bonus content from this episode and future episodes? Subscribe to our email list at joinxypn.com/bta. Remember, it's all about helping people live their great lives here at XYPN. We'll catch you in the next episode.