#FASuccess Ep 090: Scaling An Advisory Firm Beyond Yourself By Systematizing The Soft Skills With Julie Murphy

What You’ll Learn In This Podcast Episode

• JMC Wealth’s fee structure. [11:04]
• Her three-meeting planning process. [12:28]
• How Julie has structured her unique advisory firm practice. [28:30]
• Her unusual strategic alliances. [41:40]
• How she is systematizing the soft skills of her financial planning process to train new advisors. [46:16]
• How she found her publisher [51:05]
• How Julie has been able to generate a steady flow of new clients. [53:23]
• How Julie managed compliance concerns by separating her writing activities into an outside business activity. [1:02:08]
• The kinds of social media posts she’s found to be most successful. [1:13:07]
• Low points in her career journey during major transitions. [1:25:34]

Resources Featured In This Episode:

• Julie Murphy
• JMC Wealth Management
• Julie's Book Website
• The Emotion Behind Money
• Awaken With Julie Facebook Page
• Tapping Technique
• FinancialDNA
• AssetMark
• LPL
• Hay House Publishing
• Morgan James Publishing
• Business Ghost
• ProfNet
• HARO (Help A Reporter Out)

Full Transcript:

Michael: Welcome, everyone. Welcome to the 90th episode of the "Financial Advisor Success" podcast. My guest on today's podcast is Julie Murphy. Julie is the founder and chief visionary officer of JMC Wealth Management, a dual-registered advisory firm in Chicago with a team of 7 that serves more than 200 active clients with $200 million of AUM, on top of generating nearly $300,000 a year in recurring financial planning fees. What's unique about Julie, though, is her focus on what she calls "financial healing," with financial planning conversations that are heavily focused around the intersections of money and our emotions and our energy flow to the point that Julie is not only traditional strategic alliances with attorneys and CPAs, but also has what she calls more esoteric strategic alliances with psychologists and meditation specialists as well.

In this episode, we talk about how Julie has structured her unique advisory firm practice with a combination of quarterly retainer fees that clients pay for ongoing financial planning, separate implementation revenue that clients pay to have their portfolios managed as well, Julie's three-meeting planning process and how she charges for each, and the software tools that Julie uses to implement her process.

We also talk about how she's been able to generate a steady flow of new clients. How Julie authored a book to establish and demonstrate her expertise, the way that she separated her writing activities into an outside business activity to manage the compliance concerns, the way she built up 50,000 followers on Facebook and the kinds of posts that she's found to be most successful, and how Julie was able to accelerate her success and growth by doing what she calls "letting her freak flag fly," by simply being her authentic self and allowing clients who are interested in what she has to offer to be drawn to her rather than trying to advertise out to them, because in the end, most advisors attract and develop best rapport with clients who are a reflection of themselves anyways.

And be certain to listen to the end, where Julie discusses how she's systematizing the soft skills of her financial planning process to train new advisors. How she aims to transition all of her clients to other advisors so she can do the part of the process that she enjoys most, which is meeting with and working with the challenges of new clients, and why she decided to write another book not just for marketing purposes, but also because the process of writing about her planning approach is actually helping her to figure out how best to systematize it.

And so with that introduction, I hope you enjoy this episode of the "Financial Advisor Success" podcast with Julie Murphy.

Welcome, Julie Murphy, to the "Financial Advisor Success" podcast.

Julie: Hi, Michael. Thanks for having me today.

Michael: I'm excited for the podcast today and to talk about what I think has been a unique journey and pathway for where you've taken your advisory business. That, you know, a lot of us, I guess virtually all of us kind of start out in what I'll call traditional advising world of focusing on investments or insurance, whichever channel we've come up through, but you've now gone in this fascinating direction of publishing a book around emotional connections between our dollars and our wealth and I know are talking a lot about things like financial healing and have built a huge Facebook following presence around this and just are coming at this I think from a very different approach and perspective from a lot of other advisors.

And so I'm excited to talk about that evolution and journey of how you've ended out in this place of doing what you're doing, and frankly, and doing it in a broker-dealer environment, which, you know, a lot of BDs don't exactly have the best reputation for being supportive of advisors who want to build Facebook presences to do their marketing. And you're getting it done and getting clients from it and having success with it. So I'm excited to talk about the journey.

Julie: Yes, absolutely.

Michael: So as a starting point to kick off, just tell us a little bit about your advisory firm as it exists today so we can get oriented in just who are you and what do you do as it exists today?

Julie: Absolutely. So we're located in the West Loop of Chicago. So it's just the West Side of the city. And my brother Mark has worked with me for over 12 years now. I'm one of 12 children, and I'm number 2 and he's number 8, so he's a little bit younger. And pretty much Mark runs the operations and I do the vision strategy and seeing the clients. And we have another financial planner who's a millennial, who has been with us now for a total of...as a planner for three years, was a college intern with us for three years while he was in college as well. We have another college graduate who is a financial planner in training, not seeing her own clients yet, but she is well on that path to do so. And then we have administrative staff that we have two full-timers, and they process all the paperwork and do the client service. As well as we have a really good relationship with DePaul University here in Chicago in their CFP training program to where we get a lot of their interns. So we'll have anywhere from one to three interns at any one particular time.

Michael: Okay. And from the client end, how many people are you serving? I don't know if you measure by client count or AUM or revenue. How do we wrap our heads around how many people you're working with through the firm?

Julie: Yeah. So going...it kind of fits into the uniqueness that you were talking about. The way I would split my clients up, I would say that those who are an active retainer-paying clients - because our clients write us a check to do the financial planning - and they can either do that on an hourly consulting basis or a full planning fee. And then we also have clients that are still dormant. Let's just say that they implemented stuff but they don't want to do the maintenance planning, so they kind of go off retainer and they just plug and play like an à la carte menu. So I have 206 households that I see regularly, so they're at least minimally coming in for an annual review, but we have well over 1,000 clients that have assets on the book.

Michael: Okay. And is part of that just the typical way that so many of us end out building businesses when you come up on the brokerage side? Just 800 people that at some point we met, we did some business with, we implemented something with, they're on the books, there's still an account or a product tied to them but they're just not active in the business, they're not engaging us, we're not engaging them, but we're shepherding and stewarding whatever we implement with them in the past.

Julie: Yeah. And they've lied dormant for a long time, but as I've been training new financial planners, they're great people to train the new advisors on. Just to reach out and say, "We know we haven't talked to you in a long time, you know, we now do these consulting appointments, if you wanted to pay and then come in to see a planner." But then if there's anything...we are proactive that if there's anything that we think of a product that we implemented for somebody and for some reason if something has, you know, gone wrong, you know, that a client should be aware of, we're proactive. And I have those financial planners in training handle all that stuff in our book of business.

So even though they're dormant, we still proactively reach out to them. And that also ties in to then the social media stuff. It's been really interesting. Some of those people will come back four or five years later and they'll just be like, "I know I haven't met with Julie in a long time." And we just give them menu going, "Well, if you want an associate planner, you can pay $250 for a meeting. If you meet Julie, it's $450 for the meeting." And a lot of those that are lying dormant will just choose the associate planner because they're less expensive and they're still getting help and they're still part of the firm.

Michael: Interesting. And so you're very straightforward with that fee differential. It's $250 an hour for an associate, it's, you said $400 an hour or $450 an hour for...

Julie: Four hundred and fifty for me.

Michael: For Julie, and they can pick.

Julie: Correct.

Michael: I am struck with this idea of using existing clients that are now dormant as... call it a “training ground” for new advisors. That, you know, if you've built your practice this way over time, as so many advisors have, you just end out with this giant base of people that you had a good relationship with at some point, good enough that you got to do business with them, you're not actively doing work with them. They still usually have goodwill towards the firm. Like, you know, yep, worked with you, did a thing, will take your phone calls.

Julie: There's still dollar-cost averaging into their accounts, you know.

Michael: You know, but for a lot of them, you grow to a point where it's hard to be cost-effective for you to go on calling all of them and either searching for opportunities or doing planning work for them, which may be valuable for them but just it's hard for some of them to pay what your time is now worth as the business has grown, but when you're hiring new advisors that have a lot of time and not a lot of clients yet, it's a fantastic opportunity for them to have warm calls, warm connections, people that they can go out and see. It's more service than the client was currently getting since they were otherwise in dormant status. And sometimes good business opportunities arise, and at worst, some good experience opportunities arise for advisors that want and need more client face time just to build their own skill sets.

Julie: Absolutely. Like an easy one is, you know, old annuity products that we sold seven, eight years ago. There are still people in our book that have them and there's newer ones that are just more cost-effective. And so, all of those clients appreciate that we're being proactive, even though I haven't talked to them in seven, eight years. They're so appreciative that somebody is reaching out to them.

And usually, because of the way our business is set up with the financial planning fees that we have, that people write a check for, they usually self-select out. They usually say, "You know what Julie? We're just going to skip this year, and reconnect with us next year." "Okay, great." We really hold the position of being agnostic as to whether or not they do or they don't because we still have assets under management and they're still being proactive in terms of their savings goals. And if three to five years goes by, there's usually always opportunities because people will be out in pay raises or there's more tax planning that needs to be done. And that's what I'm training these new advisors to bring up as buzz points, and it opens the door. And again, they're just like, "Oh, that's a great idea. I didn't know you guys did that now. That would be very helpful. Thank you."

JMC Wealth’s Fee Structure [11:04]

Michael: So you've mentioned a couple of times this structure of doing planning fees, having a retainer fee that people can pay and decide whether they're going to re-up from year to year. So talk to us about what that fee structure looks like. What are you doing? How are you charging it?

Julie: Yeah. So the first meeting I have with somebody is Discovery Meeting. They're going to come in and they're going to pay $450 for that meeting, whether it's consulting or if it's going to turn into a larger planning fee for the first year.

Michael: I've got to ask, do you still do the classic, you know, "We'll do an initial 30-minute complimentary consultation and then if you want to do stuff," or you're just...

Julie: No way. No way.

Michael: ...if someone wants a piece of your time, even if it's just to get to know you, that is a $450 meeting?

Julie: I finally decided to listen to all those speakers all those years in the industry where they're like, "The doctors get paid the minute they see you." And it's like, "You're right, the doctors and lawyers do, a CFP needs to as well." And it was really just about me caring enough about myself that I wasn't giving away the ranch and apologizing for being in this industry that I do provide a lot of value. And if you get in front of me, yes, this is the cost.

Michael: And out of curiosity, how has that gone? I mean, if you said you just rolled this out and started...

Julie: We bill over $300,000 a year.

Michael: In planning fees.

Julie: Yes. And that's usually reoccurring.

Julie's Three-Meeting Planning Process [12:28]

Michael: Okay. So keep walking us through this. The first meeting is just, even as a Discovery Meeting, it's $450 if you want my time and to meet with me. I guess the good news, at least, is, you know, when we're in complimentary consulting mode, that first meeting tends to be a lot of getting to know the client and trying to spot and point out some issues they have, but you don't really want to give too much advice yet or be too helpful because then you're giving the advice out, right? They may want to come back. When you're getting paid for meeting one, you can just be fully engaged meeting one, you don't have to hold back. In fact, if you create some value in meeting one, it makes them want to come back and pay more to do more with you.

Julie: Well, and I will tell people, I'll always give this example. We started doing consulting appointments because I had this woman come in here and she said, "Julie, I just think the full planning..." Because I only used to do the full plans and those cost about on average $3,000 to $3,500. And then she said, "I know I'm really, really far behind in my retirement planning, I don't need you to tell me how far I'm behind, I just need to get going." And she goes, "Can I just pay you for your time and then I'll come in for an annual checkup?" Well, she's been coming in for annual checkups for seven years. And she comes every January and she pays me for my time. And she's doing the best she can with what she's got. And honestly, that then helps her save more for retirement because I didn't have to produce all these pieces of paper to tell her how far she's behind, which just creates more shame, blame, guilt, and judgment around money, right? And so she's totally fine with it.

So then I'm like, "Wow, there's really a need out in the marketplace that people just need to get started or get going on their lack of planning. And why would we not offer this consulting fee?" And it's actually been a transition that I know is going to fit very nicely as my next book comes out here in September. And with this online coursework we're developing, those consulting fees are going to really support more of the social media stuff and that other side that we're developing more and more. So it's really interesting how it developed internally.

Michael: Well, and you make a fascinating point that for clients who are really behind and know they're behind, creating the full comprehensive plan doesn't give them a plan really, they kind of get it. The plan is, "I need to spend less and save more." The full plan just creates, and you said, shame, blame, guilt, and judgment because you're just crystallizing for them, "Hey, in case you weren't clear how far behind and how screwed up your financial life is, let me give you a 37-page document to illustrate how..."

Julie: "Tell you how bad you really are."

Michael: "Yeah, how screwed up you are." Which at some point, I mean, I get it, I think we have a tendency to do some of that because we're trying to motivate people to action, like, "You've got to do something different than what you're doing. Let me show you how far off-track you are and how much better on track you could be, you know, if I helped you and you took my advice and you changed the trajectory." But there comes a point where people are so far behind, it's more likely to be demoralizing than motivating.

And for a lot of people, you don't really have to give them a planning projection to tell them they're behind on their retirement savings, most people know. They may not know quite how far behind they are but they know they need to do some things different, that may be why they're showing up in your office for help, so it's okay to get more quickly to the help and not spend so much time on, "Let's do the full comprehensive plan upfront just to make the point that you actually already have figured out for yourself."

Julie: Right.

Michael: So you're doing some of this hourly work, but how do we ultimately get to additional planning fees or retainer fees? So you've got a first meeting, that's Discovery, and it's $450.

Julie: And then if we decide at the end of that meeting that they do want the full plan, you know, I'll tell them what the cost of that is. And based on all the discussion that we've had, I'll map out going, "Okay, we'll do retirement analysis and educational analysis. We'll look at your estate planning docs and your tax returns." You know, and I would say typically, the cost is right around...today it's right around $3,500 to $4 grand. That's probably typical for me these days.

Michael: And are you pricing this, like, is there a standard planning fee for every client or you truly, like, you're going through this Discovery Meeting and saying, "Oh gee, so you've got a whole bunch of other stuff?" Like, "I'm quoting this person $5,000," or I'm going through and saying, "Yeah, this person's scenario is actually pretty easy, there's just one or two areas we're going to focus in on, I'm going to offer it for $2,500 for this client because their scenario is simpler." So, are you really pricing it that dynamically based on the conversation?

Julie: Correct, yes.

Michael: Okay.

Julie: And we ask for the balance of that fee in the second meeting because we'll be doing a lot of the analysis between the first and the second meeting. And we call that our Planning Appointment, the second meeting. The third meeting, and this all happens within 60 to 90 days, we call it the Implementation Meeting. Because part of the plan is we will give them an action plan of things to consider, but it's covering things that we can help them with internally, and it's also things that we expect them to do outside, like update your legal documents, you know, have these conversations with your CPA because this is what we're seeing, get online savings accounts because most people don't have them and they pay higher interest, but here would be the three we recommend, and so forth and so on.

And some of the action plan I will have referrals to some of my, what I like to call my “esoteric strategic alliances” that help people on the emotional side. Because what I've learned in the work that I've done with Deepak Chopra through the years is that we either work things out or we act them out, and we typically do that through our money or through our health. And so if people are fiscally fine, typically it's starting to show up in their health when they're not processing buried emotions from the life that they lived up to this point, whether it's...

You know, we talk a lot in our world about retirement planning and how many...you know, the statistics are off the charts. You know within three to five years of retirement, people die and/or have a major illness. And I've come to learn, in working with Deepak on the health side, that if they've got a couple million dollars and financially they've been really good and they've saved, I am talking to them about, "Well, if you don't find your compelling reason to live post-retirement and be happy, guess what? Disease is going to develop in your body, and this money is not going to be worth anything." And so if I start to see some of those patterns with people, I'll refer them to some experts that can help them in that processing that I've developed through the years.

Michael: Who do you refer them to? Are you literally referring clients out to psychologist to saying, "You've got some issues here you've got to work on?"

Julie: Yeah. And I would say that, so a lot has to do with energy work, so it's a psychologist that would make sure that they tap into their subconscious mind, because 92% of our response to the external world comes from our subconscious mind, not our conscious mind. And so a lot of times you have to have a professional that works in that aspect. And psychologists do do that, but Harvard scientists have now proven that something that could take you 10 years with a traditional therapist, if you have somebody that does some of the energy work along with the therapy, you can get things done that would have taken 10 years in like 30 seconds. And I believe that this is the cutting edge in the psychotherapy section because I've seen quantum leaps with clients that have been absolutely amazing. And I've also used it in my own life. Many people are familiar with Reiki or tapping, you know, that all goes after the subconscious mind, or hypnotherapy.

Michael: So you're referring people out to psychologists who have this particular style of training or is there… are these not on the psychologists anymore, they're in a different grouping?

Julie: No, some of them are psychologists. The psychologists typically will use tapping. That's a very common one that psychotherapists...

Michael: So I'm not familiar with tapping.

Julie: So tapping is where you would literally tap acupressure point on your body to start to shift some of your natural response system to things. And you'll now see the next time you're on an airplane, there's going to be somebody who's tapping their forehead, tapping their chin because they're nervous about flying, and you'll see them do the tapping. It's actually becoming more common and people just don't know it and recognize it.

Michael: Okay. So I'm just trying to imagine this from the client perspective. I came to you because I'm concerned I'm not saving enough for retirement, and two or three meetings later I'm ending out in a tapping session with a psychologist. Is this a big left turn for a lot of clients or is the reality just because of the marketing and what you do, people get that these are the sorts of financial healing techniques and focus that you have so it's just natural for your client base because these are the people who seek you out?

Julie: I don't think anybody walks in my office thinking that that's what's going to be part of the package, but what clients do know is that...because what I will do is I will call them on their stuff of what's blocking them from saving more or what's making it so that they're staying in a miserable marriage... because it acts out financially or in your health. Because I'll talk about all aspects of your life: your financial life, your personal life, work life, and family life, and dig down into these questions that I actually in my new book coming out called "Awaken Your Wealth," I've actually spent a lot of time digging into,  what's every possible question in those four areas of a person's life that one could possibly ask themselves? Because, after 23 years of doing this, there's patterns that start repeating themselves.

And what I find is that most people, they have the desire that they want to be fiscally sound. They have the desire to be in happy marriages and jobs that they love, they just don't know how to get themselves out of a lifestyle because they pigeonhole themselves based on the cash that's coming in the door from their paycheck, and they've forgotten to be happy. And so many people, you know, particularly men, they have sold their soul to provide for their families, and they've forgotten about themselves. And in my first book, I talk about how 50% of my male clients between 55 and 65 develop cancer around their hip area, whether it was colon cancer or prostate cancer. And I started looking going, "What the heck? That's a pretty high percentage. Why is this happening?"

And then I was working with Deepak Chopra, and he said, "A cancer cell develops because of a lack of sense of purpose." And I'm like, "How did these guys lose their sense of purpose?" Because they all wound up with cancer. And when I did the analysis and I went through my list of my clients, every single one of those guys was let go of their job not by their choice, every one of them. And so here when they're later in life and the kids are grown, they don't need him as much, wife is on to her next career, whatever she wants to do, and then your employer drops you like a hot potato. And they're trying to figure out, "Well, what does life mean to me now?" And Deepak is certainly the expert on the health side of the equation, but it was a pattern that I noticed that actually caused me to dive deeper into, "Okay, there is something very real here about the emotions and money, as well the emotions and how we process it through our health."

And there's a huge correlation because that same client that I was telling you about on the consulting side, after her first year of working with me, she came in and she had gotten her credit card debt from like $30,000 down to like $5,000, she was being very proactive, but she walked in the door and she was 30 pounds heavier? And I was like, "How're you doing?" She's like, "My credit card debt down," I'm like, "How are you feeling." And she's like, "I don't know, I've put this weight on," blah, blah. And I'm like, I said, "Okay, well, personally, well, where are you not happy?" And she's like, "Oh, I'm happy," blah, blah, blah.

And then the next year she came in, her credit card debt was back up to $25,000, but she had lost all the weight. So I watched her over a few years do this back and forth between acting out her emotions from her health to her money. And then I finally said, I go, "What is the underlying...?" The third time she racked up her credit card debt I said, "What is it that you are not acknowledging that's making you sad and you're acting it out through your money and through your health?" Then I started digging, I go, "Are you sad that..." Because she was a single woman, I'm like, "Are you sad because you're not married? Are you sad that, you're not dating? What is it?"

And we kept peeling the onion and I kept asking questions. And what it boiled down to, and she just started crying in the middle of the meeting and she said, "I'm 47 and I married the wrong guy. I've been divorced for a decade now and I never met anyone else and I always wanted children." I'm like, "Great, well, let's adopt some kids." And she goes, "What?" I go, "You know what? Life is too damn short that if you really want to be a mom that bad that it's vacillating between your health and your money, do you want to spend your whole life keep doing this with your money and your health or do you want to actually explore the fact that if you really truly want to be a mom, well then get busy doing it?" And I go, "Let's brainstorm ideas." Because one of my strategic alliances is a fertility clinic that also has surrogacy for women because I've learned, with single, older women, that's a really good strategic alliance to have because they have a lot of emotional hang-ups about that if they've given their life to their career and they've ignored having a family.

So we talked about surrogacy, we talked about her adopting, we talked about having foster children, blah, blah. So she comes in the next year and her credit card debt was down, she didn't gain any weight, and I said, "Okay, what's happening?" And she goes...she pulls out a picture of her first foster child that now lived with her. And you would have thought this woman won the lottery. Now five years later after her first foster child, she's now adopted two young children, African American children. And not only did she adopt the children, but her income went from $110,000, she wound up getting a new job that's $235,000, because, of course, she was being underpaid for running a $2 billion fundraiser, you know. So she was beating herself up in every area of her life. She wasn't getting paid what she deserved. And so we were having all those conversations. And so her career took off right after she then decided to foster the kids. It was amazing.

And I find that to be the case with everybody that I work with. Different circumstances. Some people say they're in a job that they hate and they want to figure out how to transition to one that they love today in their life. Sometimes it's about family planning, sometimes it's about getting divorced because they know they're in a miserable marriage and they're slowly killing themselves. But it's being willing to have those emotional conversations with people, which is why I think clients' assets stick on my book even if they're not paying the retainer because I've really touched their lives.

How Julie Has Structured Her Unique Advisory Firm Practice [28:30]

Michael: So come back again to how you charge for these kinds of conversations. So you've got a Discovery Meeting, you charge them for the hour at $450 an hour, you get to the end, you get some sense of the kind of complexity they have, the planning fee you want to quote, they get a number that averages something around $3,500 to $4,000. You've got two subsequent meetings, Planning Appointment or I guess you're presenting the plan that you've done the analysis work for between the first and the second meeting, and then there's the third meeting for implementation. So what happens next? How do they become ongoing clients and how are they paying you on an ongoing basis?

Julie: Right. So then for the next 9 months, which will be their year contract with me, they will sit down with me typically every 60 to 90 days. And we always set up the next appointment before they leave my office. And that's included in that planning fee because I want to see, "How does it feel? How is it working? We've changed some things, and how are you feeling about everything?" And I want to keep a pulse on that in the first year. And then what happens in the second year, and I always communicate this upfront with people, I said, "We've gone through a lot of the heavy lifting in the first year, so the second year, I expect your planning fee to go down by 30%. And so just in a year from now, just expect a bill." We send out bills quarterly. So it would be in that quarter a year later we send out their bill, and it'll be 30% lower. And typically, then we're meeting every four months.

Michael: So $3,500 fee comes down to roughly $2,500, so you're billing $600 per quarter on an ongoing basis for the ongoing relationship.

Julie: Right. And then for the beginning of the third full year, it goes down another 30%. And then that's what we consider maintenance mode. And so that's what they would pay every year moving forward with a cost-of-living increase if they decide to continue to see me regularly and consistently. And then some people fall off and decide to just do consulting appointments and some people stay on. I've had people on that system for,  15 years and then they're still just paying the maintenance retainer.

Michael: So I'm just trying to sort of think through rough math here. I'm $3,500 in year 1, I go down to roughly $2,500 in year 2, another 30% off brings me down to roughly $1,800 by year 3 so then I'm paying essentially about $450 a quarter to meet with you on an ongoing basis. And when you're in years two and three and maintenance mode thereafter, how often are you meeting with clients to go through this?

Julie: So I let the clients dictate that but I would say typically it's two to four times in the second year, and then it's going to be one to three times the third year. And then in the fourth year moving on it's usually semi-annually, at least for a couple years, and then it eventually goes to annual. But they're getting other communication. They're getting more confident that they don't necessarily have to see us in person because they're talking to the junior planners or my office regularly and consistently. Because we're proactive in our system. If we know somebody's got a life event going on, the junior planner who's assigned to the book will give them a call going, "Hey, how did taking so-and-so to college go? Did they wind up at Indiana?" Blah, blah. Just to have those personal conversations with them. And I assign that. So it's helping the financial planner in training actually start to communicate to them as human beings, but it's also not then on my plate.

Michael: Yes, yes, at some point there's only so many folks you can serve. And with, you said 200-plus households that are active, I mean, that alone would be a whole lot of meetings and a whole lot of activity if you've got to meet and interact with all of them.

Julie: Yeah. And our new marketing materials now show that I'm out of the equation in the maintenance mode. So the clients don't have the expectation that long run, and I always say like, "You can always pull me in, but in essence, it's like building books of business for the future planners that are coming in." Because I'm only going to have so many hours in a day, and my unique gift is doing all that upfront stuff and digging in on what's really blocking them from living the life that they desire to live, and when it comes to maintenance, that's not so much my forte.

Michael: Well, and it's an interesting way to frame it, that, if your unique gift is all of that heavy lift stuff that happens up front of helping clients have these breakthroughs around their money, not just the stuff you implement and the recommendations you give, but some of the emotional connections and the behavior changes that drive from, "Did you realize you could double your income if you just went and got a foster child?" is not usually in the financial planning textbooks.

Julie: Very true.

Michael: But that's not only life-changing literally because she was very unhappy not having kids and then solved that problem by having kids, but I would imagine kind of drastically changed the trajectory of her actual financial plan when she went and nearly doubled her income after she solved this non-financial thing that was part of her life and was rippling through the rest. But it's an interesting framing to say, "Hey, if that's the part I'm good at, none of these clients are going to stick with me in the long run. They'll stick with the firm, but I'm going to do the upfront stuff I'm good at and then we're going to transition clients into maintenance mode. And the maintenance mode can be done by the other advisors in our firm who may not be skilled at business development and are happy just to have clients transition to them so they can get paid an ongoing income to serve clients that are being handed to them." And it's a lot easier from the business end to make that profitable if you're handing them clients that have recurring revenue because you're charging these ongoing quarterly maintenance fees.

Julie: And what starts to happen over time on the maintenance side since the junior advisor is calling them and establishing relationship with them, I'm out of the loop and they're actually better to service them over time than I am. And I'm okay with that because I've got plenty of business coming in.

Michael: It's a fascinating model. And then you have mentioned AUM a few places, and I know you have a broker-dealer affiliation as well. So what else is part of the revenue mix in how you run the business as a business? I'm taking that it's not only the planning fees that you're using to power revenue for the business.

Julie: Yeah. So our marketing materials show that we have the planning side of the house that has the planning fees, the retainers, and then there's the other side where we're compensated if we help them implement their plan, which we are as fee-based from a product perspective as we possibly can. But of course, if you're doing life insurance disability, obviously that doesn't come fee-based these days. As well as, we now do non-traded alternatives, but we do them on a fee-based platform.

Michael: Can I ask, what's that platform? Is that something through your broker-dealer or?

Julie: Yeah. So my broker-dealer is LPL, and I just use one of their open architecture. It's their SWM account, it's their proprietary platform. And we just put the non-traded vehicles in that bucket. And then private equity is the other one that I can't really do fee-based yet, but I think that's coming. But otherwise, we've transitioned everything over to fee-based.

Michael: And so, what's the AUM base of the firm then? Or I guess even wondering just, how many clients do AUM stuff with you versus the ones that are coming for the planning and paying for the planning and saying, "No, no, no, I don't need you to do all this other stuff, I just need these planning meetings?"

Julie: Yeah, I only have two clients that we don't manage the money for, and all the rest we do. Because if I'm aligning... So I always talk about that money as energy, and you want to energize what you want to create in your life. And most people's asset allocation is definitely not aligned with who they are as an individual, it's based on the buckets that our industry has put them into. So we have clients fill out, in the Discovery Meeting, two different risk questionnaires. One is the traditional left brain logical risk questionnaire, and then the second one is a behavioral risk questionnaire that tells us what happens to them on an emotional standpoint with their asset allocation.

Michael: Can you give me an example? I mean, is this like emotional, "If the market tanked 25%, what would you do? Freak out, remain calm or buy more?"

Julie: Yeah. So the resource we use is Financial DNA, and it just measures the right brain. And so what you'll find, in most cases, is that they'll be very different answers from the two risk questionnaires. And this is why we have compliance problems.

Michael: Can you give me an example? Yeah. What kinds of gaps do you see between what Financial DNA says versus...?

Julie: Yeah. So your left brain will say, "I'm in my mid-40s, I should still be growth mode. I'm starting to add some bonds in there because I'm an 80/20 portfolio now," but my right brain is going, "I'm ultra-conservative and I want 80% in conservative investments." And so I point that out to people and I go...and I communicate to them going, "Okay, the market is up, you're like, 'Why am I not getting more returns? My left brain is saying I should get more,'" blah, blah. I say, "And over here when the market pulls back, you're going, 'Why did you not manage my money better because it's falling?'" And they always laugh because they're like, "You're so right, I have this dual personality."

Michael: So you give them a traditional risk tolerance questionnaire about where they would be allocated and then you give them Financial DNA to prove why the first one was wrong.

Julie: I don't think either one of them is wrong because they are both exactly who they are and you have to find a blend between those two sides. So it's about like if somebody is ultra-conservative, the way that you can do it from a planning perspective is that you just know that you're going to have to build more in cash to make them feel more comfortable to work their way through a recession. And highlight and speak to them going, "You have to manage your expectations that this money is not going to make a high rate return, but your emotions are going to be balanced. And is that okay with you?" It's like actually calling it out as opposed to finding it out from the client after the market has tanked and they're complaining to you and everybody else.

Michael: Interesting. And how did you come to Financial DNA as the tool for this? I know they've been around for a while and Hugh Massie has been doing his thing for a long time, but...

Julie: Yeah. So I work...my third-party platform that I use for fee-based asset management is AssetMark out in San Francisco, in the Bay Area, and they had brought Hugh in. I was on their Field Advisory Board years ago, and they had brought Hugh in. And as I started to go through it and I had my staff do it, and I was like, "Wow, this is really a different...it really helps you to understand the psychology of a client." And it's also...the reports have helped me also train other financial planners as well.

Michael: Okay. So for folks who are listening and curious, this is episode 90, so if you go to kitces.com/90, we'll have links in the show notes out to Financial DNA and you can go take a look there if you're curious to check out more of it given the discussion here.

So what does the business look like from an AUM perspective? Are you still charging I'll call traditional AUM fees? So you're at a 1% fee, so you just completely separate out like, "You're paying a 1% AUM fee, here's the AUM services we provide," and then, "You're paying planning fee and here's the planning services that we provide."

Julie: You got it. Yep.

Michael: Okay. And what does your typical client look like or what does the asset base look like for the firm?

Julie: Yeah, we're just under $200 million currently and growing.

Michael: So kind of 200ish active households, $200 million, it's like the typical client has roughly $1 million of assets? I know you've probably got some of the dormant client legacy assets mixed in there as well, but...

Julie: Yep, yep, absolutely.

Michael: ...is that a good sense of who at least the typical client is? Obviously, there's some lower and some higher.

Julie: These days I don't take too many people on that have less than $1 million, just from a time perspective. Or I shouldn't really even say that. What it is is that I'll do the consulting appointment with them, but it's not a Planning Appointment, and then I introduce them to one of the junior planners and then the junior planners will typically take over if they've only got $250,000 or $500,000. So that way they can still be serviced and do it at a more effective cost based on their net worth.

Michael: Right, right, right.

Julie’s Unusual Strategic Alliances [41:40]

So I want to circle back for a moment to some of the discussion you had about strategic alliances. You've mentioned a few times how you've formed these strategic alliances and you're referring clients out. And I think when most of us in the industry think of strategic alliances, it's pretty much estate planning attorneys and accountants and, maybe the particularly diligent local mortgage broker, and you're talking about energy psychologists and fertility clinics.

Julie: Yes. I have what I call three layers of strategic alliances. I have the normal, which is your CPAs, estate planning attorneys, and mortgage brokers, then I have what I call the tweeners, which are people who are nutritionists or fitness experts, ones that are more digestible to the traditional psychologist or a family psychologist, and then the third layer is what I call my esoteric strategic alliances. And those are the people who do energy work that really help to go after the subconscious mind to help with emotional patterning.

Michael: Okay. So I guess I've got a few questions there. One, you just sort of feel out with the client conversation and what's going on, like you're talking something about energy and problems with misplaced energy, and the client is kind of looking at you really skeptically. Like, they're not quite on board yet, and so it's like, "Okay, we're going to just give them a standard tweener referral." And then some other clients are just really on board and are engaging with it and so you're thinking, "Okay, these might actually be a good referral out to one of my esoteric strategic alliances that does energy work."

Julie: Yeah. And I would say that clients probably don't get the esoteric strategic alliances until they've known me for a year, right? That's part of the reason for the first year of getting to know them because I need to see where they stub their toe in that first year. Like, where are they not recognizing their emotional patterning? Because they're not going to tell you about it in the first meeting.

Michael: Right. It's a little personal on the first meeting. Like, "Get to know me a little more first please."

Julie: Well, but what I do do in the first meeting is I'm like, "Tell me what money was like in your family growing up. Like, did your parents fight about it? Was there enough? Was there not enough?"

Michael: It's a powerful question, "Tell me what money was like in your family growing up."

Julie: Yeah. And when there's a couple in front of me, I start to point out, like, I pull out both of their childhoods. I'm like, "Now do you see why you two have conflict right now? Because of the difference of how you guys grew up. And neither way is wrong, it's just that we have to find where the blend is so that you don't wind up in one of those stats where money is the biggest reason people get divorced." And then they go, "Oh, thank God." Like, people are relieved when you start to shine light on their stuff that they just didn't even know to recognize.

And depending on, you know, and people, like, I'll also ask like, "What do you love to do?" Like if they're telling me they do yoga and they go to other things that they would be exposed to energy work, I know I can go there faster because they've been exposed to it. If it's somebody who's one of my clients that works at a hedge fund here in town, well, guess what? We're probably not going to go there because he's a little left brain logical. He's not going to be in the esoteric too much. But I have some of those energy people who work...they really tap into somebody's, like, their mental state and they're coaches. And I'm like, "You need to talk to this person."

Like, it's almost like energy work in drag. It's like they don't realize it and then they start to realize it over time. Because really, people want to be freed of their pain points and they don't know why they're repeating the patterns they're repeating. They want to be free of them, and it's really just about us recognizing the patterning and then shining light out and say, "Hey, there are people out there that can help you with this."

And what's been fun for me is, I had some gentleman in the industry, bless his heart, he doesn't realize he was such a catalyst for me, saying to me, "Yeah, you're just like a one-hit wonder, and it's just like the Julie show. It's not a repeatable process." And I have two financial planners now that sound like me on a regular basis and we've made it a repeatable process. And that is so fun for me because there's a lot of people that need this help.

How Julie Is Systematizing The Soft Skills Of Her Financial Planning Process To Train New Advisors [46:16]

Michael: So what was it like transitioning this stuff that's in your head. And obviously, you're very passionate about it and you've figured out how to talk about it. Like, how do you transition something like this to be a repeatable process with other advisors in the firm?

Julie: Yeah. So that was the whole process of writing my book that's coming out next month. I'm very grateful with some really good editors that I worked with that helped to just, like, pull it out of my system. Because I did naturally just know how to do it, I didn't necessarily know how to put it into words to teach somebody else. And the process, we call it the PACT process, P-A-C-T, and it's the process that we walk every client through. And it's about picturing the life that you want to create. The second step is accepting the reality that you've created and awakened your authentic self. Third step is choosing to change, and then the T is taking action.

And the problem in our industry, I believe, is that so many advisors just want to take action and implement, but there's this whole basis beforehand. And I've come to learn that people have stopped dreaming. People have stopped thinking that they can live a life that they love because we've pigeonholed ourselves into lifestyles. And so now that I was able to articulate exactly what is this process, what are the questions that I ask, and I've used that manuscript as the template in the training grounds for the new advisors over the last three years. And it's worked.

Michael: Interesting. So in essence, like, going through the journey and process of writing the book and having editors that helped with it was essentially the thing that forced you to systematize it. Because if you have to figure out how to explain it in the book, you are also creating the structure that lets you systematize it in your practice, teach it to others, train others in doing it, and move forward from there.

Julie: Correct.

Michael: Like, are you just someone who's naturally inclined towards book writing and doing this stuff? How does a book come forward?

Julie: My mom is an English teacher, and when I told her I was writing my first book, she's like, "You're going to write a book?" Because I was her hell child in English class because I was very left brain logical. But, I just knew that… my first book came out three weeks before the '08 and '09 crash. And then that's when I found myself on CNBC for the next year and a half. Because when the numbers weren't working, they wanted to know about the emotion behind money. And that's the title of the book. And then I did local TV as I was having children. I had four kids in five and a half years. The first one was born in '09.

And then I just always knew there was going to be a second book, so what I started doing is I just started...I kept a file folder. And any time something would pop in, I'm like, "Oh, that's a good one, I went through that with a client," I would just put it on a piece of paper and I'd stick in the file folder. When the file folder got about two and a half inches thick, I was like, "Okay, I think it's time to write this book." And that's when I started working with some editors to organize all the material and start to go through the process. And it was a three-year journey writing the book.

Michael: Three years of actually writing or three years of just, "All right, I've decided I want to do this, now I've got to find the editors, now I've got to pull the files together, now we're going to go back and forth," then there's a couple months of writing, then more editing prep stuff and all the rest, or were you literally like, "It just took three years to grind out a manuscript?"

Julie: So the manuscript was grinded out in about a year, but then it's all the editing, right? I mean, if you've never written a book before, there's line editors, content editors, and proofreaders, and you're like, "Oh my God." And they all look at the manuscript differently. And you need to let it incubate, and you need to let it… I mean, I'm very proud of the version that it is today. And thank God it took that time because it really marinated and shifted for me… because, remember, as I was writing this with the editors and everything, I'm going through trying to teach this process to other financial planners while applying the process to my own clients. And it was like this Petri dish of putting it all together to its current form that we now know is tweaked to the point where not only can the general public apply the process for themselves, which we'll be building some...we're actually in the process of building some online courses for them to do that, but also the financial planners using that as their template as they learn to become planners.

How Julie Found Her Publisher [51:05]

Michael: And how did you find, like, the editors, people to actually publish the book? Like, I know for some advisors that have at least some interest in trying this out, like, we get stuck on stage one, which is, "Okay, like, how do you find a publisher that does your book and helps you with all this stuff?"

Julie: Yeah. So after my first book, I actually wound up getting a book contract with Hay House for my second book, which that is who I was originally publishing my book through. I actually canceled that contract after Wayne Dyer died. Hay House was having some challenges. And because I was a new author, I was kind of getting lost in the shuffle. So I opted to actually find another publisher. So I did use a Hay House...I had an editor before Hay House, then I had the two editors that I had to hire outside per Hay House's recommendation, then I had a third one outside that...so it's Morgan James is my current publisher. So they had somebody else that they wanted me to run it through.

Michael: And, like, how do you find these folks and pick between them? Like, why do you pick Morgan James for this one and Hay House for the prior?

Julie: Yeah. So a really good resource out there for editing, there's a vendor out there called BusinessGhost that I actually heard them speak at one of our industry conferences. And that's a really good resource to go to because they have all the relationships with editors across the country.

Michael: BusinessGhost. Okay.

Julie: Because they ghost write.

Michael: Okay. So, like, they ghostwrite business books. So, you come to them with your topic and your thing and they'll help you figure out how to create and execute it.

Julie: Yep.

Michael: Okay.

Julie: And one of the editors that I had hired along the way came from them. I just didn't need somebody to do the whole ghostwriting thing.

Michael: Because you had some stuff you could jot down, you just needed someone to help at it.

Julie: Yeah.

Michael: Okay. Again, for those who're listening, this is episode 90, so if you go to kitces.com/90 and you go down to the show notes, the resources in the section, we'll have some links out to the publishing houses as well as BusinessGhost. So if you want to check this out for yourself because you've been curious, you can see what it takes to publish a book.

How Julie Has Been Able To Generate A Steady Flow Of New Clients [53:23]

So I want to shift a little and talk about marketing. And you'd mentioned earlier you're doing these planning fees and you have this vision now that what you're good at is the upfront lift over the first few years, but then you're not excited about the maintenance mode, so awesome, hire advisors who love maintenance mode, get the clients to them, go get the new clients. And I think for a lot of advisors, there's probably a shared resonance with that. Like, I think a lot of us get drawn into this because we like helping people, we like problem-solving, we like doing that work. It's very engaging.

And I know a lot of advisors that they don't relish the maintenance mode stuff. It potentially just becomes boring sometimes. Like, "Same conversations with same clients that do the same knuckleheaded things. Kind of wish I could get a new challenge but I can't because I've already got too many clients. I don't have any time to take on any more." And you found this transition strategy of, "Well, I'm going to rotate the clients out to the other advisors because we've got this steady flow of new clients coming in." And that's all well and great, except most advisors don't have that steady flow of new clients coming in to fill the top of the funnel to make that system work. So where are all these planning clients coming from that you can do these kinds of conversations and do this sort of planning work and be charging thousands of dollars for every planning fee and have a steady stream of clients to be able to do this?

Julie: Yeah. So I have built my entire business off of referrals since 23 years ago. And I had a mentor who I think was my boss at the time said, "You're fired if you don't go out next Thursday, which is the day, it's going to be your referral 100 day, if you don't get 100 referrals, just pack your stuff up and go work somewhere else." And I was like, "Oh." So I actually got 127 referrals that day. I went to friends and family and just said, "I just need to tell my story of what I do to good people, who do you think would sit down and listen to it?" And I got 127 people and I've never looked back. That being said, I think there's two different ways to market. There's the push method, which I think is the traditional way to market, and that's putting all your stuff out there in the marketplace. Like, send out mailers, come to my seminar, do this. You're shoving things in people's faces.

And there's a second method, it's where...it's the pull method where it's a little softer and it's more about, like, be exactly who you are as an advisor. Like, let your freak flag fly. Like mine is the emotional side of money. And I found out that I was really good at that, so that's my unique proposition in the marketplace. And I started responding to requests. I don't know if you're familiar with ProfNet or HARO, but those are two resources that are out there that people in the media or journalists are looking to write an article and they're looking for somebody to interview and you just respond to them. And so it's like, "Oh, okay, this is who I am. I'll spring it out there." And that got me a lot of exposure because I am unique. I mean, I've been picked up by Reuters, "Wall Street Journal", because of talking about the subconscious mind with clients. So that's more of the pull because you let your freak flag fly and you just be who you are. And then whoever is meant to find your work, they do and then they come to you.

And I get, at a minimum, three referrals a month, and it's ramping up even more so now because what's been happening over the last, like, year and a half, because I have an author page on Facebook, and I now have about 50,000 followers, that I'm now getting people who have been following me on my social media that are now sending inquiries to our website going, "Hey, I would like a consultation with you." And a lot of them I'm actually sending to my new advisors because I don't have the time. So like this month alone, I personally have five new clients that I saw this month.

Michael: So there are a couple things there that I want to understand further.  I love this phrasing of just, "Let your freak flag fly." I think we do get trained and taught in the industry that you always have to be careful what you say because you don't want to potentially offend anyone or piss off any clients. And so, compliance departments tend to push us even further towards the middle of the road. And so we get very neutral and very measured in our statements of anything we talk about financially or otherwise because we don't want to offend someone on either side of whatever the issue is. And in the process, we I think just...we just become really bland human beings that aren't very exciting for anybody to engage with.

When you just start talking authentically about whatever stuff it is you focus on and believe in, yeah, there will be some people who are not into that and are going to walk away pretty quickly, but there are also some people who are going to find resonance with that and they're going to gravitate to it, and they're going to flock into it. And because we're all different than everybody else, just being your authentic self who's already different than everybody else is an amazingly effective way to differentiate, in many cases, because we're all different.

So when you talk about building your business with referrals, are you still in a realm of asking for referrals of having the infamous like, "We get paid two ways, the first way is with the business you do with us and the second is through the referrals that you provide us?" Like, are you tackling it from that proactive, "Let's solicit referrals" end or...?

Julie: It's just coming. I used to do that. I used to say, "Hey, we're compensated in two ways." That's exactly how I did. That's how I train the new advisors to do it until the phone stopped ringing. But what I've realized is once you flip the switch and you become the expert in your freak flag then all of a sudden you're sought out, like, the table switches. And I haven't asked for a referral probably gosh, 10 years. And 23 years, I've never had a year of revenue that was lower than the prior year.

Michael: I like that. Once you become the expert in your freak flag, the switch flips. We usually don't do sound bites on the "Financial Advisor Success" podcast, but that one might have to get commemorated at some point.

But it's a powerful thing, right? That it is, in the truest sense, the kind of differentiation that makes you more referable, right? Like when you're talking to your friend who's going through some financial woes tied to their divorce or the even more abstract scenarios like, "I'm just unhappy in my life because I didn't have kids when I wanted to and now it's too late and that's rippling throughout my life," that woman is going to provide referrals when she sees other people in the similar circumstances. That looks nothing like, "Hey, you should work with my financial advisor, he or she is great and I'm really happy with my investment results." This is, "I transformed my life and my financial life, and my advisor helped me figure all of it out, that's why I adopted these two kids." And I would imagine just at the moment you say, "My advisor helped me figure my life out that's why I adopted these two kids and doubled my income," that would pique most people's curiosity. Like, "I need to meet your advisor."

Julie: The client who has referred me the most over the years, she's been a client for 18 years, and the way she does it, she goes...people always say to her, she goes, "Well, they told me they have a financial planner and I tell them, 'You don't have this financial planner. She is nothing like nobody else. I'm just saying go see her. She will make an impact in your life. And you'll know what I'm talking about after you go see her.'" And I have heard that multiple times from people that she's referred me to. And I finally asked her about it. I'm like, "Why do you say like that?" She goes, "Julie, you're not like anybody else. And you just...people think that you're just a financial planner that everyone wants to walk away from at a networking event, and you're not."

Michael: Like, you don't get a lot of networking, unfortunately, these days by probably standing up and saying, "I'm a financial advisor." Like, it doesn't bring the crowd.

Julie: Definitely not. Nope, the turn off for sure.

How Julie Managed Compliance Concerns By Separating Her Writing Activities Into An Outside Business Activity [1:02:08]

Michael: So talk to us about Facebook page and 50,000 followers and social media followers who are now into the website. I'm curious both for just, like, how do you get that many followers, what are you doing that's making people show up, and how the heck do you do this when you work for a broker-dealer, who, unfortunately, not to bash any broker-dealer in particular, but most of them do not have the best track record or perception of being supportive of advisors doing social media marketing. So how did this Facebook page come about and evolve?

Julie: Well, back in the day when my first book came out, I was with a small broker-dealer called Associated Securities out in California that was purchased in 2007 by LPL. But the compliance department at Associated Securities had recommended to me that I create an author outside business activity. And so what it did is it put the China wall up between recommending investments and being an author based on financial planning strategy. And so, as long as all my writing sticks to strategy, then it's an approved outside business activity.

And even LPL today has been super helpful, which I know a lot of people might not agree with that statement. But they've been helpful in the fact that they're like, "Julie, if you're doing author stuff, your marketing promotion stuff needs to say, "Author," and, "Oh, by the way, I'm a CFP." If you're being JMC Wealth Management, "Hey, I'm a CFP, and oh, by the way, I'm an author." It's like one has to be in the shadow of the other, depending on what I'm doing. And compliance doesn't have a problem with it then.

And so how that leads to social media is that my LinkedIn is the only one that is set up to where it's the JMC Wealth Management side because that's a professional site. So this is my author Facebook page. It took me forever to get to 10,000 followers, and that happened in December of '17 when I hit 10,000, and now I'm at 50,000. And I give full credit to that, the more I stay in my lane and allow my freak flag to fly, the more followers I'm getting. And social media takes off. Like, I'm getting these waves of like, "Oh my God, I was just at 30,000, now I'm at 50,000." And I understand there's another big turning point once I hit 100,000. So with my...it'll be interesting to see.

We've been testing all kinds of marketing aspects on social media to see “like audiences.” One of the things that I find extremely interesting is that...so we did this marketing test about a year ago where it's like, "Who has like audiences like I do? Let's check people in the health..." Because I always talk about your health and your wealth. So I have this one column of people, Deepak Chopra, Dr. Mark Hyman, Dr. Oz. You know, "Let's send my messages on social media to their audiences and see how many people like it." And we had really good success there. Then we tried actually like Suze Orman and Jean Chatzky and Robert Kiyosaki and we had very little success there. I also tried the Kardashians, wanted to see, but that didn't have good conversion either.

Michael: Okay. Yeah, you've got to test these things. You've got to test these things.

Julie: We tested, like, 10 different categories. I tested other holistic modalities. I did Hay House authors because, "Well, it's self-help, let's see if that works." And so we've been able to tweak our audiences based on our results from that. And that all came about because the layer before that, what we did was we tested across social media types, whether it was LinkedIn, Facebook, Instagram, Pinterest, YouTube. We wanted to see, like Twitter, who responded the best to our messages. And it was interesting, the reason Facebook has taken off is I think the emotional side resonates more with more women, and more women in my target age bracket are on Facebook. And YouTube is our second runner-up, and then Twitter is after that. And we just had to test it and we just had to see like, "What works? What doesn't work?" But the more, like I said, the more I just stayed to what my freak flag is and stick in my lane, the more we're getting.

And I'm excited because we're going to launch this new book here in September, and then in October, we have online courses that I've developed. I was at a seminar the other day, and the one guy was up there going, "Well, you can be replaced by a robo-advisor but no one is going to be able to replace electronically you doing the personal touch that you did." And I was sitting on the next panel and I said, "I have just developed the online personal touch that will replace you." I said, "So don't think it's not coming because I'm working with a TV producer who used to work for public television." And I have spent so much time really going through every possible response I've ever heard from a client and how they respond, and this is a highly interactive online course that if you press this button, it's going to be like, "Come on,  that's not true." blah, blah. And it's me and my voice doing it all. And we're going to do it with different life stages and life events in 2019. This is going to be the first general run… it'll be a six-part course that people can take.

Michael: And what's the vision for like...is this your, "Here's the thing for all the people I can't help?" Is this a marketing channel? Like, they're going to do this and then they'll say, "Oh, this is awesome, I want more," and hire you? Is this a revenue model itself like, "People are going to pay 100 bucks or $1,000 to go through this course and we can make a bunch of dollars from the course for the people who don't want to hire us in full?" Like, what's the...?

Julie: So I'm 45, and so I've got a longer runway in the business. And with the average advisor, depending on what you look at, late 50s, early 60s, they're older, close to retirement. We have a real issue of, "Who's going to service all these clients?" And I was like, "My business model has got to scale, and it's not going to only scale by training new younger advisors. That's not the only way." And I'm watching millennials who are my clients' kids, where they're like, "You know, I found a cheaper way." Like, they're going electronically to the robos. And so we're going to align with a robo to where all the marketing stuff will be like, "Okay, you're ready to take action. If you want to work with a personal advisor, click here and someone from JMC Wealth Management will be in touch with you shortly. If you want to just get started because you just need to get started, click here and you can just set up an account."

So it'll be that process where I will be walking them through the planning stuff so that they can really journal and write down, like, what clients would be doing if they were sitting in front of me, and then we're also going to give them the chance to implement. And my guess is, with all the marketing stuff that we'll put out there… if they're going to start thinking about tax issues and stuff like that when they're somewhere between $250,000 to $500,000 in assets then we'll start dripping stuff to them going, “Hey, have you thought about your tax issues? Here's the most common things when you're this age." And I'll teach them that via this highly interactive system.

And I would guess that somewhere between a half a million to $1 million, that those people on that robo will probably have a pretty good percentage that will convert over to be planning clients. And I figured that's my best guess right now of how this industry can scale. And that's what I'm building. And then it'll be a feeder system. Because what's the hardest part of a new financial planner? There's really smart finance people out there, but they don't know how to market for anything. And that's my gift. I'm a really good marketer.

Michael: So you're not necessarily envisioning that this is a course you're going to be charging dollars for...

Julie: Yes, I will.

Michael: Oh, so you will as well. That there will be some that flow through to implementation but you also just plan to charge for the course and make dollars for the course.

Julie: Yeah, we've put all that pricing models and all that. We just did that. Yep.

Michael: Do you have a sense as to what it's going to be? I'm just curious,you've spent a lot of time looking at this, like, what do you think people will buy an online course about their finances for when there is a bunch of free stuff out there? If only because other people give it away free to get the implementation business.

Julie: Yeah. So there will be different packaging, right? There'll be like if you want to...so the first part is going to be six chapters, if you will, or courses. So you can either buy the whole thing, and that'll be less expensive, where you get like a 20% discount if you do the whole thing, if you only do one component because that's all you want. I just got that pro forma. I don't have the actual numbers in front of me. I haven't internalized them because I hired a team that's doing all that market research and everything.

Michael: Okay. And so is that how you do a lot of this? Like, I've noticed you had hired out for help in the book and you hired a team for this, were you hiring for all these Facebook tests that you said you were doing as well? Like, you just go out and get experts to help implement these pieces?

Julie: Yeah, that's not how I started, but as it started to get bigger and I was running into roadblocks, that's when I started seeking out people who could help. So I do now work with a social media consutant. And then I brought in a gentleman who, when I knew I needed to rebrand the company because it was...needed to be set up for multiple advisors, not just myself as a solo practitioner, we needed a rebrand. And so he is now that branding expert that I met actually at a conference. He is now my project manager, and he's helping to manage the TV production crew, the online marketing funnel, web guys. And we also have an instructional designer who's a professor at a university, who's designing the high interactive courses. So we've put a team together now who's handling the components to launch the "Awaken Your Wealth" book as well as the online courses.

Michael: Okay. And the idea is ultimately this growing...well, the book presence, as well as the growing social media presence, is going to be the marketing that powers and funnels all of this?

Julie: Yes, going viral baby.

Michael: Going viral. No, with the compounding that seems to be underway with the page, it sounds like it really is going viral.

Julie: Yeah, it will. Yeah.

The Kinds Of Social Media Posts Julie’s Found To Be Most Successful [1:13:07]

Michael: I do want to go back to, like, the social media and Facebook discussion a little bit more, though, and just like, I mean, what do you do? Like, what are you literally posting and putting out that makes people with money show up and contact you or just that picks up tens of thousands of followers?

Julie: Sure. Well, one of my gifts is the fact that I will talk about stuff that a lot of people won't. So with being the expert on the emotional side of money, I see enough pain points with people, and I'm like, "You know what? We need to talk about these pain points because it's not just the person who's sitting in front of me that they're going through, there's 100,000 other people that are going through the same darn thing." And so I will write...like we tested it out. I was writing blogs and putting that on there. I was doing vlogs, video logs, putting some of those out there, and we tested what works and what doesn't work. And it certainly changes over time.

So I've learned that long blogs don't work as well. People are liking the shorter snippets. But then they can click somewhere if they want to get more resources on things like that. And so we put content out there every day. And it wasn't every day before, that's more ramped up recently... in the last year. At first, it was like, "Okay, I only have enough time to put something up once every two weeks," because that's the only amount of time I had. Then it was like, "Okay, let's put something up once a week."

And you just look at some of the trends of, well, like the TV producer who's helping me do these courses, she had pointed out to me yesterday, she said, "Julie, you know what I found really interesting, the ones that got shared the most and liked the most of your posts over the last year, I spent some time analyzing that, and it was all the ones that had an underlying spirituality component to it." I was like, "Really?" And it has to do, like, with the energy stuff. And go just saying, "Hey." I certainly don't put spirituality in people's faces, but it's about, you know, there's an underlying thing here that, "How do you want to live your life? What's your soul's purpose?" And get busy doing it, because that's your freak flag, right?

And I'm just saying it in different ways and just seeing what resonates. And that's where I'm getting more traction. Which then makes sense to me now why Suze Orman's followers, Jean Chatzky's, and Robert Kiyosaki's aren't necessarily resonating but yet that's where I'm getting the most traction. And that's why Deepak Chopra and Dr. Mark Hyman and Dr. Oz, those are resonating, so are Hay House. And that's why the Kardashians are not resonating.

Michael: It is a fascinating thing that, again, I talk about this a lot as, like, the biggest advisor marketing trap. That if we're not happy with the results we're getting, the amount of business we're getting and the amount of prospects we're talking to, the natural inclination is to widen the net and try to catch more people. And,  I always think of it like,  if you imagine an actual net that you're holding in your two hands and you say,, "There's not enough fish hitting this net, I need to capture more fish." If you just actually grab the edges of the net and you pull the net wider, you stretch the net out and the holes get bigger. Which means more fish may swim into the net, but they're just going to swim right through the holes. If you want to actually catch, you need to narrow the net. You need to strengthen the net down so the holes are really small and no one is going to swim through, and then find a place to put your small net that's right in the stream where they are. And suddenly, all of it hits it.

My favorite version of this, there's a Twitter account out there called EverythingGoats, and all it is is pictures of goats. There's cute little baby goats, there was one recently where the baby goats are climbing on the back of a pig and then riding a piggyback very literally. Adorable pictures of goats. That's all they do. It's literally called EverythingGoats. And it sounds ridiculous... they have 300,000 followers on Twitter.

Julie: Because they're the goat experts. See, it goes back to the expert and your freak flag.

Michael: If once a day you just find you smile a little bit more because you happen to log into Twitter and see an adorable picture of a baby goat and that brings you enjoyment for your day, it works. And if that's what works, everybody knows what they're getting when you sign up to follow EverythingGoats. And as long as you enjoy your occasional cute goat picture to brighten your day, what you're getting, it makes it really easy for people to sign up, and they have 300,000 Twitter followers by just posting cute pictures of goats. And to me, it's the epitome of the point that when you get really focused at something and you just are really good at that thing, as you've said, like, you just let your freak flag fly, whoever it is out there that likes that thing, it's amazing how quickly they gravitate to it once it's clear that you do or offer or are the thing that they want to see or follow.

Julie: And sometimes people don't know why they resonate, they just know that they do. I had a client remind me, she's one of those clients that was on retainer and she decided to just do consulting appointments. And it's been two years since I've seen her. And she sent me an email saying, "Hey, I need to take some money on my accounts, here's the reasons why. And I just wanted to tell you that the stuff you said to me really has stuck. I have decided I'm only going to live my life with what you told me." And I'm like, "Oh my God, what did I tell her?"

Michael: You're, like, dialing back through all the process like, "What did I say in a prior meeting…?"

Julie: I'm, like, reading this email going, "Oh, God, what am I going to say?"

Michael: "Please let her see something I meant and not a bad joke she took literally. Oh, God."

Julie: Right. And she said, she goes, "You told me that I should never do anything for my career that doesn't make me giggle." And she goes, "I have found that I absolutely giggle being an actress." And she said, "Who thought being fat and overweight," because she's like 350 pounds, she's like, "Who would have thought that being fat and funny would be what is giving me the giggles and I'm getting jobs out here doing that? And it's the thing I was the most shameful about." And it just reminds me that even us as advisors, I realized I didn't enjoy actually the maintenance mode with people. Like, I was, like, falling asleep practically in client meetings because it was, like, the mundane part of the job. Because I get excited about somebody who's really screwed up and I want to untangle their stuff, put them on the right track, and spank him on the butt and let him go, you know.

And that's what I get a kick out of and that's what makes me giggle. And it's like, "You've got to do what makes you giggle or makes you laugh." It's a higher energetic vibration. It makes you feel better then you'll have health and vitality and it won't be drudgery. Like, it's time for us all to be happy, and so many of us are not.

Michael: And I think there's a powerful message to that around just the idea that it's okay to not like every part of the financial planning process or the financial advisor job, just the stuff we do in the full lifecycle with the client and the full span of the firm. You don't have to like all of it and you don't have to be good at all of it, just do the parts you're good at and then build a team or hire the people or do what it takes as a business to make sure the rest of the stuff gets done that has to get done. But somewhere out there for every advisor that just really enjoys the problem-solving and diving in with new clients and then gets really bored with the maintenance mode, somewhere out there, there's an advisor who is completely terrified of meeting new people and doing all that other stuff and just wishes that they could have a comfortable, ongoing relationship with a bunch of clients in maintenance mode where they just get to check in on a regular basis and it's all consistent and happens the way that they like it. And their dream job is the part you hate the most about your business.

Julie: And if they live in Chicago, tell them to call me because I love that person. But you're right, it's a great complement, right? And you find those people, it's like a good marriage in business because your strengths are the other person's weaknesses. And that's perfect.

Michael: So what does a typical week look like for you in the business at this point? It seems like you're juggling a lot between lots of new clients, you've got multiple staff members to run, you're finishing a book, you're doing all this Facebook marketing, like, lots of different stuff. Is there a pattern or structure for the week? And you have four children.

Julie: And I have four children.

Michael: So is there a pattern or structure to the week? Like, how do you just manage all this stuff?

Julie: Yeah. So I've had to do some shuffling there recently. I used to not work Fridays. That was...I followed the Dan Sullivan, where you have three days and focus days. And my free day was Friday to do all my writing and my own coaching sessions and things of that nature. That has shifted a little bit post-divorce. So now Thursdays is my free day because that's the day that I have my kids. But so Monday and Tuesday and half of Wednesday, I have appointment slots. So I see four or five clients at predetermined time. So it's 9:30. Because one of the things that's important to me is to drive my kids to school. It's kind of my thing.

So I finally stopped giving in to clients who wanted to see me at 7:30 or 8:00 in the morning before they went to work. I finally said, "No, I'm important too." And I said, "I want to take my kids to school." And so my first appointment is at 9:30, then I have an 11:00, and then I have...I usually meet with staff at lunchtime because I'll be like, "Hey, let's go grab something to eat and let's talk about what we've got to talk about." And then I'll have a 1:30 and then a 3:00, and then sometimes I'll stick in a 4:30 as well.

Michael: So just a rigorous set like, "Here are my structured meeting times. If we need to meet, like, here are the time slots." Your staff can offer them up. You'll do four or five meetings in a day on Mondays and Tuesdays, that's the deal.

Julie: Yep. And then I do a half a day on Wednesdays because then I can pick my son up at...he's only three, so I pick him up at preschool halfway through the day. So I see two clients in the morning on Wednesdays. Thursdays I have off. And then I have my kids every other Friday. So I work every other Friday with clients. And it's that 4 to 5, again, on Fridays. So I'm still seeing the same amount of clients every week that I was before, and it works. Right now I'm to a point where I don't have to be in the staff meetings. My team has weekly status meetings, and we have another meeting called a Case Review where we go over all the clients that are coming in the following week. I am now out of that process because I've taught them everything, and so now one of the team members runs those meetings.

Michael: And there's not a problem with clients when they're like, "Hey, can we meet a week from Thursday," and you say like, "Oh, sorry, I don't meet with clients on Thursdays?"

Julie: Yeah, I tell them. "You know what? That's my day with my kids post-divorce." And they're like, "Okay, I get it." I'm just very honest with my clients, and I put it right out there so that they can seek to understand before they decide to crucify me. And I'm just honest going, "You know what? My Michael will be in kindergarten in a year and a half. And in a year and a half, I'll go back to my old calendar schedule that I had for the last 15 years," you know.

But I'm very...I took to heart what Dan Sullivan taught me years ago, and that was, "Have your focus days and your free days." And it's like, "When I'm at work, I'm at work, and when I'm at home, I'm at home." Because people always say to me like, "How are you writing books and building courses and seeing clients and raising four kids?" And I'm like, "Because I don't do anything that I don't love, and I've hired everybody to do everything else." Including in my household. I have a housekeeper and I have someone who...a nanny that'll cook and do laundry, you know. So I've just pulled in support on both sides of the equation so that I only do what I love in all aspects of my life.

Low Points In Julie’s Career Journey During Major Transitions [1:25:34]

Michael: So what was the low point for you in this business building and career journey?

Julie: My low point, wow that's interesting. There were three big transition points that I had, and one was in 2004 when I changed broker-dealers for the first time. That was not fun. But it was my first step in letting my freak flag fly. What was sad to me is that the broker-dealer that I had, and I was one of their top reps across the country, went after me with their legal team just to jam me up because I decided to leave. And I was like, "I gave you eight years of my life and this is how you're treating me?" I was like, "You're just reinforcing why I'm leaving." That was really challenging because they literally put somebody in the compliance department in a hotel in Chicago to knock on my door every day for about three months. And I found out they were just trying to get stuff on my boss, but paid thousands of dollars to defend myself from doing nothing wrong. That's frustrating. But it reiterated why I went independent.

Michael: I was going to say and why did you...because you were in a captive broker-dealer and went to the independent side?

Julie: Yes. And because I was realizing that I wasn't able to help clients as much as I could if I were independent. And to me, I had always sworn that I was going to be the client advocate, and that's what motivated me. That I didn't care about the big financial firm, I just wanted to really represent the general public. I come from a blue-collar family, and lots of those people need help. And you can't really help those people if you've got an employment contract that doesn't allow you to help them in the most efficient way possible. And I just decided I had a moral conflict with that.

And then another big turning point was 2012. 2012 was when I realized going, "Wow, we really service a lot of clients that resonate with financial scarcity." So, like, we were helping a lot of people get started or help them get out of debt and help them build their assets. And then I realized we were transitioning to like...so there's financial scarcity and then there's clients that are financially abundant, and then there's this whole pot in between of people who are in the hybrid bottle. And those are people who vacillate between financial abundance and scarcity. And a lot of that is how they manage their cash flows and their debt levels. And I don't care if you're making $600 grand a year, you could have an awful lot of debt.

And so I realized at that time, "Wow, we're really dealing with a lot of people..." In 2004, we really transitioned from the scarcity to the hybrid, and then 2012 was about really shifting to servicing people in the hybrid but then now going to the abundance side. And when I had the communication with my staff at the time, I had my brother Mark here and one other key pillar who worked here at that time, worked there for years, and then I had four other employees at the time, and I took them all out and I go, "Okay, I've figured this out. This is the vision. We're going to start opening out to work with these other clients while we're still maintaining our base."

And the gentleman who was with me for a long time at that point came up to me and wanted to talk to me in my office. And he said, "How dare you give me an ultimatum?" And I said to him, I go, "What are you talking about?" He goes, "You gave me an ultimatum that I need to get my financial life in order or I can no longer work here." And I said, "We are energy, money is energy, and you clearly..." Because you can only attract who you are, right? It's like, I got a lot more million-dollar clients after I became a millionaire. And that'll vacillate a little bit, but you have to identify with those people on some level to be able to work with them. And this gentleman just really wasn't ready to go to the financial abundant.

And within five weeks of me having that meeting, it was me, my brother, and my bookkeeper, who was my aunt, were the only employees left at the firm after five weeks. And I was like, "Oh my God, that is not what I expected as a consequence." I literally would walk in my office every day and go, "All right, just tell me what I'm supposed to do next because there's a really big to-do list." And that actually led me to building this next book and the staff that I currently have. And we're actually in another one of those periods right now. We had 13 employees a year ago and we're down to 7 because we're going to this next place and people just didn't resonate with where we're going. And oh, it's just another shift.

Michael: So talk about that. I mean, that's nearly having your staff in the span of a year, like, that is massively disruptive for most people, most advisors, most business owners. Like, did you go and fire a bunch of people? Did you say just like, "Hey, we're going in a new direction with the business, y'all are on board or not," and half your staff left and said, "Sorry, not going with you on this journey?" Like, what happened and how do you handle losing 6 out of 13 and not having the wheels come off?

Julie: Well, I will say that what happened was...the catalyst was, I was choosing to no longer put up with certain behaviors in my life. I'm a huge giver, and I had decided that I really only wanted to resonate with people in balanced relationships. And it started with my marriage. That was actually the catalyst. So I had...after years of trying to work it out, I finally had decided that he just wasn't going with me the rest of the journey, and I literally filed for divorce September 6th last year. And within eight weeks of that, five of those employees quit. And it was like, "What?"

And what I realize now as I observe that looking back is that it was another turning point where I made a choice that I wasn't going put up with certain things in my life anymore, and then all of a sudden they didn't resonate, and for various reasons. And yes, it could have crippled me. It absolutely. It was not a fun divorce process. He was an at-home dad and I was the breadwinner, and then I had 50% of my staff leave in a very short period of time. And then in January, I thought it was enough, and then all of a sudden, my right-hand person at the office quit then in January of this year, and I was like, "Okay, when I make it through this, I'm going to have a hell of a story to tell." Because I was having those, “oh ____,” moments, (pardon my French).

Michael: So how do you work through...I mean, like, what do you do to just get through and make sure that wheels don't fall off?

Julie: So you get really clear really fast as to what you need to pay attention to and what you don't have to pay attention to. So one of the things my brother and I, because he works here, we discussed was that clients...we have expectations of what we want to fill for clients, but they don't necessarily know those or do they track them or do they hold us accountable to them. It's like it's our own bar that we put there. And I said to him, I go, "You know what? In this time period, we just have to go down to 60% of the clients I used to see every week so we reduce the volume that we're creating, but it's enough for us to get through the transition."

And then what happened was we just got really efficient. And like currently, we've been interviewing because now we know exactly who we want to attract, and what's going to happen is we're going to wind up with more efficient employees that have more expertise, that we'll be able to do things in half the time. And so we've spent a lot of time the last few months really zoning in on what exactly it is that we want that will complement the team players who are here right now that are staying, and I know, now gone through this cycle, this is my third time in my career, that what will happen is, within 24 to 36 months, we're going to have a huge quantum leap in revenue. Like, we're sitting at around $2 million in revenue right now, and we'll be in that $4 million to $5 million range within 3 to 5 years. No problem. Because I've seen that quantum leap happen in both of the other instances that I've had.

Michael: So where do you see the business going from here overall? Like, what are you building towards at this point?

Julie: I feel like it's more about a legacy that I'm building now, even though I'm only 45, building this to be a repeatable process that other planners can follow. Our country needs financial healing and they need it like air. And I really believe the systems and everything that I'm creating with my team is what's going to help hundreds of thousands of people. And that's my driver today. And this new online curriculum that I'm building is really what makes me tick. Like, that's what I giggle about today. And I'm very clear that I still need to see clients one-on-one. Like, I've had people say to me, "Well, Julie, you're going to have to pick one or the other, either be that personal finance media expert or be a financial planner." And I'm like, "You know what? Deepak Chopra still sees clients. He still sees patients." He doesn't see a lot of them, but I believe it helps one to stay grounded in their profession to still stay in there.

And I've had enough people in our industry going, "Yeah, I heard this great radio show, blah, blah, blah, and I just had to make a decision one side or the other." And I'm going, "Oh, you're just telling me that because you didn't figure it out how to do both." And I know I can do both. I have an enormous capacity to be able to do things because I'm uber-efficient, and I stay in my lane. I stay in what I love and I hire everybody else to do everything. That is a critical component, I think, for people to be successful moving forward. Stay in your lane. Stay at what you're great at. We need to do something in this industry because we need scale because there are an awful lot of people retiring in the next 5 to 10 years, and I want to be part of that solution.

Michael: So, as we wrap up, this is a podcast about success, and one of the things that I've always observed is just even the word success means different things to different people, sometimes it changes for us as we go through, our own stages in life. So, you've built what I think anyone would objectively call a very successful advisory business, but I'm wondering for you at the personal level, how do you define success for yourself?

Julie: It's if I've changed lives and if I've touched people's hearts. And I know I do that every day. That to me is ultimately...you don't ever hear anyone on their deathbed saying that they wish they made more money or worked more, but it's about, "How did you impact people's lives?" And to me, that's the ultimate definition of success.

Michael: Well, and I think, I hope you may have impacted a few listeners in going through the discussion today. I have a feeling a few people may be inspired to do something different in their own advisory businesses as well about what they're doing, either get better at staying in your lane or just don't be afraid to fly your own freak flag.

Julie: Well, then it was time well spent.

Michael: Fantastic. Well, thank you, Julie, for joining us on the "Financial Advisor Success" podcast.

Julie: Absolutely. Thanks for having me.