#FA Success Ep 370: Leveraging Google Reviews To Generate Inbound Local Prospects, With Tim Goodwin

Resources Featured In This Episode:

• Tim Goodwin
• Goodwin Investment Advisory
• Kitces Marketing Study
• AdvicePay
• Angie Herbers' Diamond Model
• Kitces Webinars
• CFP Board Career Path
• Fidelity
• Officevibe
• Dave Ramsey's SmartVestor Pro Program
• SmartAsset
• Goodwin Investment Advisory Downloadable Guides
• Goodwin Investment Advisory Blog
• Google Screened
• Marketing Rule of 7s
• Calendly
• Evanced
• Strategic Coach
• FLDSMDFR
• 12-Step Fireproof Hiring Method
• BambooHR
• Kolbe Workplace Assessment

Looking for sample client service calendars, marketing plans, and more? Check out our FAS resource page!

Are you a successful financial advisor, or do you know of one that would be a great fit for the Financial Advisor Success podcast? Fill out this form to be considered!

Full Transcript:

Michael: Welcome, Tim Goodwin, to the "Financial Advisor Success" Podcast.

Tim: Thanks for having me. Excited to be here.

Michael: I really appreciate you joining us today, and the opportunity to get to talk about growing a firm with, as I kindly put it, good old Uncle Google just sending us some referrals, as it were, from search engines. The internet's version of referral traffic, not the classic advisor version of client center of influence referrals. And I find there's this phenomenon that on the one hand, a lot of firms seem to have really struggled to figure out how to grow online, grow digitally, sort of the proverbial get clients to just find you on the internet and engage your services. I feel like it's the digital version of 20 years ago when we used to say, "Yeah, it would be really cool if clients would just make my phone ring instead of I cold call them." But it was this pipe dream punchline to the joke that the client would call you or the prospect would call you and your phone would ring because the whole point was you had to pick up the phone and call them.

But as we do our advisor marketing studies from the Kitces' platform, we've seen this trend in recent years that firms that start investing into search engine optimization, and the ways that you get Google to come find you actually are one of the single best financial ROIs of any marketing spends that we see. And so, as a firm that's been putting some effort this direction of, how do we generate some activity from Google? I'm just excited to talk about what you guys are doing that has actually worked. That means people find your firm on the internet and actually have money, are good clients, come on the internet and find you.

Tim: It's amazing. It's so incredible.

How Goodwin Investment Advisory Manages Client Fees And Staff Capacity [5:10]

Michael: So, I think to dive in, I'd love to get started by just understanding a little the context of your advisory firm in and of itself. Just who you guys are and what you do. And then talking a little bit about where growth has been coming from this year, how the digital realm is playing a role. And then I think we'll talk a little bit more about the history and evolution of this over time. So, to kick off, just tell us, Tim, a little bit about the advisory firm.

Tim: Yeah. So, we're just north of Atlanta in Woodstock, Georgia. I started the firm almost 20 years ago. So, that's pretty incredible. We're going to hit 20 years here in a few months and have a big 1920s roaring social party. So, that's exciting. We've got a team of 13 W-2s, but there's really only about 9 full-time equivalents. It's pretty cool. And one of the things that's unique about our firm is that a lot of my staff were clients before they were employees. So, 8 of the 13 were actually clients beforehand. That's been really great for us. We're currently serving about 370 households. We're at about $275 million.

Michael: Okay. So, I do my rough napkin math here. $275 million, 370 households. So, average client is $600,000 or $700,000 in investible assets. That's a good way to think about you guys?

Tim: Yes. Absolutely. Yeah, I think we're pretty darn close to $700,000 right now. And it's almost all AUM fees. We do some hourly work, but that's not a substantial part of the revenue. So, we're right at about two and a half million this year.

Michael: About $2.5M of revenue?

Tim: Yes.

Michael: Okay. And so then I think relative to about 9 full-time equivalent employees, so your revenue per employee metrics is just over $250,000 of revenue per employee, which just fits right in for where advisory firms tend to be as they're growing. That $250,000 to $300,000 revenue per employee tends to sit pretty well once we've got a million or few dollars of revenue.

Tim: Yeah. And we've worked hard to right the ship. We had a little more staff earlier this year than we have now. And we didn't have the assets either. So, the ratios maybe didn't look as good before, but they're starting to look better, and that's a lot of hard work on the leadership team, for sure.

Michael: So, now that we've got context around this, I guess just can you tell us a little bit more around types of clientele you serve? We said average client is $700,000, but is this $700,000 of typical retirees? Is this $700,000 of typically like young executives at Coca-Cola? I know that they're in the area. What does a typical client look for your firm?

Tim: Yeah. So, we're a bit younger. That probably has to do mostly with me being younger, starting the firm at 22 years old. There's only so many people that are going to trust you to manage their IRA in the stock market at that point. But yeah, the average age of our clients is probably closer to 50 to 53, 54. So, I know that's maybe roughly 5 to 10 years younger than some other averages I've seen.

Michael: So, nominally, the pre-retiree folks within 5 to 10 years of retirement, have accumulated some dollars and need some financial advisor help is your clientele?

Tim: Yeah. If folks are looking to get started with us, we're communicating that. We're looking for folks with a growing portfolio of $300,000 or more. And so we have $1,000 quarterly minimum, so $4,000 a year. We don't love to charge that minimum very long. So, if they've come in and they're essentially being applied the minimum, we want to plan to get them out. So, we have a lot more contributors than we have distributors, so that's a nice thing. Even if we stopped adding new clients even without market growth, the current contribution rate exceeds the distribution rate. So, yeah, we are certainly tilted more towards pre-retirees.

Michael: So, out of curiosity, you said nominally, you're looking for clients with a $300,000 asset threshold, but your fee structure is $1,000 a quarter minimum fee. So, I guess I'm just curious, where did minimum fee come from as opposed to minimum assets?

Tim: Yeah. And essentially, when they start getting much below $300,000, that minimum applies. So, we like, hopefully, a lot of advisors and RIAs, were growing pretty substantially over the COVID-19 years, and we were adding 2 clients a week for about 2.5 years. And there was a much smaller minimum then, maybe $100,000. And so, it was last year in March where we were like, "Man, we just feel we're a firm that's just onboarding people," and we started to feel the client experience was being sacrificed, and advisors were starting to stress out. So, we actually tripled the minimum from $100,000 to $300,000 last year in March just to actually intentionally slow the growth down.

Michael: But I guess I'm just trying to understand fee minimums versus asset minimums, and I guess how you set or define each. Is it literally like if I have $100 grand, and I think you guys are awesome, can I pay you $1,000 a quarter, or do I have to come to you with $300,000 and your fee schedule just adds up such that it ends up being $1,000?

Tim: Yeah. That's a great question. And we will take somebody who ends up paying $1,000 a quarter because there's this really great company out there called AdvicePay that you can use. Are you familiar with that? Yeah.

Michael: I'm familiar.

Tim: You're familiar with it. Yeah. So, we can set them up on a fixed payment schedule. And we do try to do that for our minimum clients so they're not actually paying the fee out of the account, but out of pocket so that their assets can grow faster. So, in your example, if somebody came to us with $100,000, we would just want that relationship to grow pretty fast. If they weren't related to another household vertically, if it wasn't the kind of a Tier 1 client, we would want that growth to be substantial.

But what we're generally encouraging them is just to meet with us hourly until their assets hit a level where they're not paying a minimum. So, it's more of, "Don't hire us yet for management, but we'd love to meet with you hourly." We can even tell you exactly what to buy and give you advice without you necessarily having to pay $4,000 a year. They're going to end up paying a lot less just for the hourly coaching to get there.

Michael: Okay. And then if they want to, you'll take them on board, but then you try to charge them externally just because if they really have a materially lower than $300,000-account and you've got $1,000-minimum quarterly fee that they're otherwise willing to pay, it still gets to be a pretty tough drag on the investment account if they're paying for what ultimately is a lot of non-investment financial advice that's then dragging down the investment account.

Tim: Yeah. It's probably their first time hiring a professional money manager. So, it's probably pretty discouraging. They pull up Fidelity.com, they go to their performance and nett of fees, it's pretty dismal. And so, we want them to be encouraged and see that return without that larger fee hampering it. And we want to see that account grow. But I will say that right now, each advisor can only sign up to 1 minimum client a quarter. So, there is a limit there. So, we'll take them, but we'd rather they be hourly clients, but we do make 1 exception per advisor per quarter.

Tim: The advisors have big hearts, and as soon as they meet those people, they want to just...or at least our team, they're awesome. So they would want to really help. But sometimes that's when helping hurts. And you're adding too many clients that probably not super profitable on. And their limit on the number of relationships they can have as well, so it's an exclusive set of seats. And our billing team will actually follow up with that advisor if that client has paid the minimum fee for too long. We want to know when they're going to get out of that. And then that's built into the CRM. And if they didn't get out of it as initially planned, then there's a conversation.

Michael: So, how long is "too long?" How long are you comfortable seeing that before you're coming in to say...

Tim: I would want it to be 2 years or less. And again, that's more of a conversation than a policy. It just depend on the client and what's happening, or, "Well, you know what, they're going to retire next year and they're going to roll over their 401k." Okay, we can wait a little bit longer. We don't want to just keep seeing this person. Yeah.

Michael: And you said as well, you set a threshold for how many clients they can have in total. So, where do you draw that line?

Tim: 150.

Michael: 150 clients. And that's an individual advisor on their own. Is that an advisor team that has some support people?

Tim: Yeah. So, we're right in the middle of a little gray area there because we were working on Angie Herber's diamond model, but now we're looking at a little bit of a different one with some staff shifting. So, we do have a full-time client service associate, we have a full-time operations manager. So, there is some good support. But right now, the advisors, even though we operate as a team and we meet as an advanced planning team on a regular basis, the client right now is typically just meeting with 1 advisor. And so, that 1 advisor is limited to 150. We call it non-related households. So, like if their kids come in that doesn't account against their 150, but we're also tracking that to make sure that's not overwhelming because they still have to get their annual meeting in even with the kids or the grandparents, or parents, that kind of thing.

Michael: And what's ongoing service for you in that context? Are you a one meeting a year, multiple meetings a year, full-service calendar ongoing? Where does that scale for you guys when you're doing 150 clients per advisor?

Tim: Yeah. So, we want them to certify at least 1 annual meeting a year. And then it's really up to the client after that. So, a client might express, "Hey, I really want to meet twice a year" – or maybe more, that's not typical, but most of them are 1 meeting a year, some of them are twice. Then it just depends too, on the need of the client. We're really relying on the client to... we're available for you, and we're responsive, and we're quick. But if we haven't heard from you for a while, we're going to reach out and get at least one annual meeting checked off for the year.

Michael: And you said you were working towards Herber-style diamond model teams. Now, it sounds like you're shifting away for that or in other directions. So, can you talk a little bit more about what's evolving, what was working or now not working that you're finding you need to do it differently in your firm?

Tim: Yeah, we actually had 2 advisor associates that we were hoping would work into that team that left earlier this year. And when we were growing at 2 clients a week, so we were seeing that growth coming in for so long and at the time had a bigger team, we really saw how these diamond models could come about. But when we realized, "Gosh, we're growing too fast," and we slowed it down, and then we lost 2 potential team members, and our ratios were kind of also off, we were just like, "Let's wait on this whole diamond model team thing." And now we're looking at maybe more of a para-situation where... because we've got really great lead advisors that really probably need some paraplanner roles.

And so, I think that that might be a better role for the firm. So, I've been on the Kitces' premium site rewatching webinars, and we've been on the CFP board site looking at those career paths. And so, we're just trying to gather a lot more information about what's out there and what's a best fit for the firm. So, right now, we're in a little bit of a holding period, but the growth is consistent, the advisors are great. They're not maxed out yet at 150. 2 of them are really, really close. So, we can still add capacity, but we're trying to get ahead of where they're going to be maxed out pretty soon.

Michael: So, help me understand more just what was going on that you lost associates or that associates left. You talk about associates shifting and this, "We were in this really fast-growth mode, and then we deliberately moved up minimums a bit and tried to slow the pace." Were those directly related, like, we slowed the growth down and then the associates weren't as excited to be on the team anymore? Are those connected or am I over-extrapolating?

Tim: Oh, yeah. Well, that's a good question. No, no, that's a good question. So, when we looked back at 2021, we had added 100 clients that year, 2 a week. And we realized that half of those clients were between $100,000 and $300,000. And we really felt that in our full-service model, as a lot of folks have, we were not profitable on those folks. It may not be profitable for a long, long time, if ever. And that was really tying up our capacity as well. So, we're like, "Hey, if we just move that minimum up to $300,000, then maybe we'll just slow down to 1 a week and these will be better-fit clients for us."

So, no, it was 2 advisors that had started, they both did an internship, they're just phenomenal in that internship. So we thought we were just going to hire one, we ended up hiring them both. And then as they were moving, they both had to get their Series 65 first and then work on their CFP. And I think while one of them was working on the CFP, she was like, "I don't know that this is the direction I want to head." So, she moved more into operations and client service. And then the other gentleman, we were moving him more up into sales. I think he was maybe looking for different opportunities in the career path of advisors and our small firm just didn't seem to have what was probably the best fit for him as he was just getting out of college and getting his feet wet and seeing what was out there. I think he wanted to try out some other career paths that we just didn't have the capacity to scale for yet.

'Graduating' Clients By Presenting Them With Options As Minimums Shift [19:06]

Michael: So, I understand that that shift then for why they were moving on. So, just help me relate back in the context of diamond models. Was it, "We don't feel diamond models are working for us, we need to shift," or, "Hey, we've had some turnover and changes, so let's take a fresh look at what's going on anyways because that's usually what we do when there's some turnover," and decided, "I just don't know if these are what we need right now?"

Tim: That's a great question. With the current growth rate and the capacity of the advisors we have, we just felt like we didn't need to go hire more advisors right now so that we could split 1 diamond into 2. So, I think it was just like, "Hey, we're at a slower growth rate." One of the big shifts too, that I'm leaving out that probably will help this make more sense is that we have actually started, we've called it "the great graduation," we have started graduating some clients to self-management that are small in nature. And so, even though we would apply the new minimum to new clients, we're slowly starting to apply that to those existing clients that fall underneath the new minimum. So, we're having conversations with them. So, what that's doing is it's starting to build capacity in our advisors' books that they didn't have before.

Michael: All right. So now I got to ask, how does "the great graduation" work? I love the label and framing. But for so many of us, this is a really hard conversation for clients who've been with us for potentially a very long time to be going back and saying, "You're graduating," which is a kind way to put it. We're...

Tim: Isn't it? I feel that's the best 2 words we could come up with.

Michael: It is about the best way I feel like we can do it, but it's a hard conversation. So, how are you doing this with clients? How do you break the news to them, and how are you actually explaining it to them?

Tim: Yeah. We can get into this more, but like you mentioned at the beginning of the conversation, we're big into Google and leads and our website and reviews. And so, our online reputation is very important. We don't want to break ties with a client and them have a negative experience and just let us have it on a 1-star Google review. So, we're being very, very careful with our language and making sure everybody feels really well taken care of. So, we leave the option up to the client. It's either, do you want to sign the new agreement to stay a management client at $1,000 a quarter, or would you to convert to an hourly client and pay $275? Or would you to just take it over yourself, find someone else, move to a retail client?

We use Fidelity, Fidelity's our preferred custodian. You could just stay a retail client at Fidelity, that kind of thing. So, we really do leave it up to the client. And so, a few of them have...

Michael: So, it's not, "We're letting you go, we can't serve you anymore." It's simply, "Hey, we're updating our fee structure. Going forward, it is $1,000 per quarter minimum fee. If you don't like that, we'd happy to serve you on an hourly basis. If you don't like that either, we're happy to help you just convert yourself to a retail client at Fidelity, your call?"

Tim: That's exactly what it is. And we started with a smaller group. We're having conversations with other firms this year for the next group up that is still under our minimum but a little bit closer. There may be some other firms that could keep them in management that have a different model and not as high as a minimum as we do, but essentially, they'll still have those same options. We're trying to maybe find one or two more.

Michael: So, how did you decide who to sort of target and roll this out to first? Because it sounds you're doing it in waves, not just literally every client in the book and not just axing at…

Tim: I'm really great at just bringing in the axe and just like, let's just cut all this off. But I'm learning over time that the scalpel approach over time is slow down the velocity to change for the staff. So, it was just everybody under $100,000 this year. So, next year, we'll work on the management clients between $100,000 and $300,000.

Michael: Now, I got to imagine for clients under $100,000, notably, they're the ones with the biggest jump to get the minimums that you're talking about. At least if they were at $277,000, they're under $300,000 but the $1,000-a-quarter minimum fee isn't that big of a move. Clients who are under a $100,000, your quarterly fee might be more than their old annual fee. It's like there's more sticker shock, I presume, that comes from those.

Tim: Yeah. So, these next ones might be a little harder. So, yeah, it's just about the direction that they're headed and the value that they need. And sometimes the conversations lead to, "Oh yeah, I've got this old employer-sponsored plan that I haven't rolled over. I've got this cash I want to invest." We're like, "Great. All right. We're good. You don't have to worry about a minimum fee." And some of them they appreciate it. They're like, "Wow, I'm going to save the fee that I'm already paying you, and then I can just pay you hourly as I need you." And they may only come in for an hour or 2 a year. And that's already started happening. Some of those clients that 'graduated,' I'm doing air quotes here, that graduated earlier this year have already come back and done some hourly work with their advisor.

Michael: And so, how do you explain it to them? Because I'm assuming, or at least from what you're saying, it sounds like the 'graduation-style' language is not literally the words and approach you're using to explain to them what's going on.

Tim: Well, we say graduate to self-management. The goal is really that the advisor is reaching out to the client and calling them. That's what we're trying to do. Trying to call them, either get them on the phone or get something scheduled to have the conversation. So, after a few calls and a text message and an email, if they ignore us, then they send the email that gives them their options. And if they still don't reply back to us, then they get a termination letter from us. So, there was 13 of them that got the 30-day notice termination letter a couple of weeks ago right before December that literally just weren't calling us back, weren't texting us back, and weren't emailing us back. And that's what's happening with a lot of these clients we've had for a long time. They haven't really been great fits because they're unresponsive clients.

Michael: Right. So, on the one end, I feel you can sort of rationalize, "Well, they weren't very expensive to serve because we can't even meet with them when we're trying to."

Tim: Yeah. And it's all about the model that you want. And I think some of my colleagues are like, "What are you talking about? They never want to meet with you and you still get to pull a management fee? What's really your cost there?" But there's a cost of time, there's a cost of liability, and responsibility, and experience. And when something crazy happens in the stock market of the world, all the clients call that advisor at once regardless of size. So, there's just something about, we've had to learn as a staff this year, be good to yourself. Keep your meetings short. Let go of some of these small clients that aren't great fits. You really want clients that are going to reply to you, and respond to you, and show up for their annual meetings. And those ones that do have better experiences, they have better outcomes too.

So, we ultimately want them to all have better experiences and better outcomes, and we know that clients will have better experiences and outcomes if they have an annual meeting with their advisor.

Michael: Right. At least if they're in some way, shape or form engaged with the process.

Tim: Just engaged. Please just be engaged. So, Yeah. Sometimes I'll meet with my buddies who are clients are like, "Oh yeah, I'm a great client. I'm not calling and meeting all the time." Actually, it would be better for you if you did at least once a year meet with your advisor with my firm.

Michael: So, then I've got to ask just overarching on this shift. I know you like to help people. I know just part of your background in coming to the industry was very much from a place of helping and service. So, how do you get comfortable with this dynamic or even shift of, we were trying to serve all these clients, which I'm sure is why you set the minimums as low as you did originally, and now coming back to saying maybe we can't?

Tim: I think what I really had to wrestle with this year is I care... This is tough. This is tough to get here, but this is where I got to. I care more about my advisor's well-being than my clients'. So, when there's no limit to the number of clients they have, there's no requirement on pre-existing clients having a minimum applied. There's not really holding any advisor or client accountable to having annual meetings. It seems to present chaos and a lot more stress and not a great experience.

So, eventually, you get to that point where your book's getting full and you've got to move that minimum up, otherwise, you're not going to scale. And also, it can be frustrating for an advisor. They come out of a meeting with $100,000 client that argues with them for an hour about everything they say. They leave that meeting, they walk right into their client meeting who has multiple million dollars who writes down everything they said and did everything that they said from the last meeting. So, that can weigh on everybody as well. I think we've just realized that taking these smaller clients that are not profitable or hanging onto these ones that aren't profitable is ultimately, it's eating away at us. I called it cannibalism. You can only do so much of that. We had to start shifting to having a more profitable practice. And that's one of the things that's doing it, is letting go of these smaller clients.

Michael: And it sounds like part of the driver in that context is when the business got to the point that you were multiple advisors, and this wasn't just sort of literally, how does it impact you? How does it impact Tim in serving Tim's clients? It was, well, now I've got this team and I want this team to be doing well, and I've got all these advisors on the team, and now I'm getting much more concerned about whether the team is burying themselves in these clients by trying to help too many.

Tim: Yeah, absolutely. And we try to really pride ourselves on having an irresistible work environment and great benefits. We're measuring our net promoter score and all that stuff with our team, our e-net promoter score. And so, we use this really great tool, it's called Officevibe. I actually heard that they were changing the name soon. But we're constantly capturing the well-being of our team. And once we got to this point where these books were getting full and we're adding so many people per week, and small clients and big clients, it was impacting those scores. And those are the hard decisions that I think the leadership team has made throughout the year to let go of some of these smaller clients so we could free up the bandwidth for the team to get excited about new clients and to restore this profit and to feel we can be very responsive to our clients.

Not that we eliminate stress, but if I have the right amount of stress on my advisors and not too much, not too little, just right, and they're able to get back to their emails in a timely fashion and their calls and their text messages, and they can do the follow-ups from their meetings in a timely fashion, they're happier. And if they're happier, then they're going to create a better experience for our clients. And that's certainly what happened. We're somewhere around 153 5-star Google reviews. We've been getting Google reviews for a long, long time. So I think that really helps in our efforts with generating clients that have just searched financial advisor near me, or best advisor near me, and they see those Google reviews.

And a lot of clients are not just leaving a rating, they're leaving a review that's like a paragraph long. It's incredible. But I think in order for us to continue to have that great experience and that great outcome for the clients, the advisors need to not feel so overwhelmed with having too many clients.

Using SEO Tactics (Local, Search, and Remarketing Ads) To Drive Prospect Growth [30:56]

Michael: Right. So now, help us understand more about where all these clients are coming from. You've talked about some pretty eye-popping numbers like 2 clients per week ongoing for years. Those are big numbers. So, help us understand now the marketing sales funnel, whatever it is. Where is all this business coming from?

Tim: Yeah, yeah, yeah. We want to come from multiple places. We'd really love for it to come from 4 or 5 different sources ultimately with client referrals being very consistent because if you're not getting referrals from your clients, you're doing something wrong. So you got to really pay attention to that. But I didn't want to just rely on client referrals for growth. And we are intentional about having some great COI relationships as well. There was a period of time that we were paying for leads. We were part of Dave Ramsey's SmartVestor Pro program for 6 years. If I went back in time, I would do it all over again. But we actually stopped doing that earlier this year. We fired Dave Ramsey at the end of March just partly because of increasing our minimums, we were just getting some smaller leads there, and it's getting more competitive for lead gen online.

And then we were also getting leads through Dave that we were getting through our own online marketing efforts. So, I'm like, "Okay, now I'm paying twice for this lead." So, I would say to advisors that are listening, if you don't have large minimums or you have a smaller minimum, that might be something to look at. We also were doing SmartAsset and some other stuff. But we don't do those lead gen anymore because our own online efforts are really continuing to bring us high-quality leads. Like this year we signed 13 new clients that just found us on Google, and they averaged $909,000, those 13.

Michael: Wow. So, effectively about $12 million in assets...

Tim: That's right.

Michael: ...13 clients that just came from, they found you on Google. What were they looking for on Google...

Tim: Yeah, we tried to ask. Someone on our team, we call her the GI consultant. She does the intro call and that's our call-to-action online or anything that we're doing is schedule an intro call. And so she will ask them how they find us. Because even a client referral has to do an intro call. So, yeah, they'll say Google. And she'll try to ask them if they remember what they were searching for. But we started doing downloadable guides this year, and we're starting to hear some feedback about, "Oh, I downloaded your guide," or, "I saw an ad." But it's still mostly they're searching for "financial advisor," "financial planner," "best financial advisor," "best financial planner near me". But we're starting to try to get into some of these pain points and some of these other areas that are starting to generate more leads.

So, we're starting to get a little more sophisticated and not just spending ad revenue with Google on their searches, but also on targeted ads and remarketing, and then doing some social media ads too. So, that's a lot of effort. And there's some new things going on, but I think the results we've had over the past couple of years have been a result of just having a consistent blog. So, we've been blogging for, I need to go back and add it up, it's probably 7 or 8 years. We sent 2 blogs a month. Not 2 blogs a day like you, Michael, but it's something.

Michael: Well, we only put 1 a day. No one could read...

Tim: Oh, 1 a day. Okay.

Michael: No one could read 2 a day from us...

Tim: I got to catch up on my unread emails. I'm like, "Oh, I got to read this stuff from Michael. It's so good."

Michael: You can read 1 a day from us.

Tim: So, I think those blogs have helped on the SEO. Having the Google ratings has helped a lot. And now we're doing the guides, and then the remarketing and the targeted ads.

Michael: All right. So, there's a lot of stuff there. So, I want to break this down and understand it a little bit further. And so, first, I want to come back to, as you said, what are they searching for. It sounds like the biggest is just some version of financial advisor near me, financial planner near me, best advisor near me, best planner near me, or some combination of those. So, reorient us again about where exactly you are when people are now doing near-me level searches. So, I think you'd said earlier, Atlanta metropolitan area, north of Atlanta, but reorient us a little bit further now of where exactly are you? What is this town neighborhood? How does the 'near me' environment actually work? So, what near me?

Tim: We just started getting some hits from right across the Carolina line, like North or South Carolina reaching out. But for the most part, we're just ... You got Atlanta right there in Georgia and then our marketing efforts are pretty much just north of Atlanta all the way to the state line. So, it's that kind of...the way Georgia's shaped, I don't know, it's kind of northwest or whatever. But I don't know, the top third of the state or so. And we can define those service areas with Google as well. And also define ages and things like that. So, we're not doing a national ad campaign or anything like that. We are trying to stay focused in that North Georgia, Metro Atlanta, even up into the hills and the mountains as well.

Michael: So, in the context of they're searching financial advisor near me and you're trying to drive results from that. So, what are you doing that actually drives results from it? Are they finding you purely organically? Are you serving ads that are geo-targeted based on this search? What are you doing that makes you appear when they're searching this way?

Tim: Yeah. That's an awesome question. And I used to say I wanted to take over two-thirds of the first page before you scroll down because we're screened with Google. So, you can be screened, that's going to come up at the very, very top. That's going to say screened. And then a sponsored ad. So, we are paying for ads. And then I want to be there organically just because our own content creation. And then a lot of times, there'll be a maps part of the result with Google that'll show you local advisors or they're rated by Google rating or something like that. So, we're also in the top 10. Yelp, a lot of times Yelp will pop up, and some other search engines, and those have changed over time. So, it's just something to keep up with. It's kind of nerdy, but when I travel, I always open an incognito window and I say best financial advisor near me, and I just look at the results that it's showing and see how we compare to those things. But ultimately, we're doing a lot of things, but it's being screened, it's paying for ads, creating that organic content, and then those reviews.

Michael: So, for folks who aren't familiar, what is Google Screened? What is that and how do you do it?

Tim: Yeah. So, it's where you are actually paying, it's called Google Local Services. And you can basically pay Google for leads. That happens for us, but it's not a huge lead source we convert, but it's a huge authority score, I guess, is the way I look at it. To see at the very top that we're "screened" by Google. Just psychologically it's like, "Wow. Okay, they're screened. All right, look at there. Now they're paying for ads. Oh, there they are organically. Oh, they're over here on Maps and they've got 150-plus Google reviews." So, all those things add together with, "Hey, maybe please give us a chance." Get to the website. And that's all we're trying to do is drive them to the website. And then once we're at the website, we're trying to get them to schedule a call.

Michael: So, what did you pay and what did you have to do to get Google screened in this context?

Tim: You have to do a couple of things. You've got to provide your insurance policies, and so we have to do that every year. So, they're going to do a pretty thorough screening. It's the most thorough screening I've ever had compared to any other lead generation that I've paid for in the past. By far, Google screening took way more time and they asked for way more stuff.

Michael: Interesting.

Tim: So, once you're screened, you're screened and then...

Michael: Pro-consumerism is actually very happy to hear that.

Tim: I know. I think so too. I expected there to be more with Dave Ramsey and SmartAssets and some of these others that they really vetted you, but...

Michael: Interesting.

Tim: I don't know. They didn't...

Michael: It turns out Google is the one that...

Tim: Google's the master vetter. And again, I'm sure that's not perfect, and maybe we would think there should be more that they're looking under the hood. But that's one aspect of it. And then you're able to control the budget with them too. So, we actually keep a pretty limited budget there, just because it's not a great conversion lead source for us, but it is nice to have that screened.

Michael: And when you talk about a limited budget there, what kind of numbers are we talking about? I don't know if that's only $50 a month or only $50,000 a year?

Tim: It's probably $850 a month, I think is the minimum you can set. And I think that's what we have set.

Michael: $850 dollars a month, so about $10-grand a year?

Tim: Yeah.

Michael: Okay. And that keeps you with your screened badge and Googleresult. So, then you said you also sponsor ads. So, then what are the Google ads?

Tim: Yeah. So, it's 3 parts. It's search ads, it's targeted ads, and it's remarketing ads.

Michael: Okay. So, can you talk us a little bit through what you're doing in each here?

Tim: Yeah. So, the search ads are probably what you're familiar with. You're picking an ad word like best financial advisor near me, or maybe you're picking a competitor and if somebody searches that competitor, you want to show up as a sponsored ad, or maybe you're trying to solve a pain point if they're searching, "Can I retire?" "Will my 401k recover?" Maybe you're paying for those adwords. So, that's part of that search ad. The targeted ads, you're targeting somebody who buys a specific perfume, or is a golfer, or buys a certain product, or follows this particular influencer, or something. The remarketing is that whole like accept cookies, blah, blah, blah. You go to the website and they're on your website in the afternoon, they're pulling up Facebook that evening, and then you see an ad for Goodwin Investment Advisory on your feed. And you pull up Instagram and it's over there too.

That doesn't last too long, but it's like, "Hey, you were thinking about us, keep thinking about us again." Because the research says they've got to see you 6 or 7 times before they might actually engage and share their information with you. Yeah.

Michael: So, what kinds of ads are you running in each? What kinds of search ads are you going after that's working, or I guess that didn't work and crashed and burned? So, what kinds of targeted ads? Is there a magic perfume of...?

Tim: Yeah, and I've got a really great partner that helps me run those campaigns.

Michael: Okay. Is that internal to the firm or an external vendor?

Tim: It's an external vendor, Evanced.net. God, they've been incredible. And they work with a lot of advisors. But I also had two internal marketing folks. So, there's a partnership there where they handle their campaigns on Google and Bing, and then we handle the campaigns on social media right now. So, right now, there's some of the ad words, and we're always looking at the SEO with Evanced on certain phrases and words, and where the traffic's coming from, how long they're on the website, whether they came there organically on their own or whether it was a paid-for lead. So, we're adjusting those ad word campaigns. And then I mentioned before, we're starting to write a lot more guides. So, we have 12 guides now. We'll actually advertise those guides.

So, we have a guide for, "What do I do with an inheritance?" And that's a pretty popular guide. So, if anybody's searching about that, our search guide will show that ad. And if they want that ad and they decide to give us some information, that subscribes them to the blog. We start dripping on them. And a lot of times, our consultant will reach out to them and say, "Hey, did you get the guide? Did you have any questions? Was it helpful?" And see if they would like to schedule an intro call. But if not, we're just dripping on them on our blog over time.

How Tim Cultivates A Healthy Client Referral Pipeline [42:32]

Michael: So, I guess I'm just trying to visualize what's working for you between, as you're framing now, search ads, targeted ads, remarketing ads. Are some of these channels working better for you than others in terms of what actually drives results?

Tim: The search ads is what's worked. So, having a beautiful, fast website and Google reviews. Google reviews is really all you need to convert business. You don't even need the website because essentially... I mean, you should have the website, but if somebody just didn't have a website, but they claim their Google listing and clients started leaving Google reviews for them, you'd convert business, that would be enough. But obviously, having that website is a big, big deal. So, most of the time when we're talking to someone and we say, "How'd you find us?" And they say, "Google," they basically convey that they're giving us a chance because of our reviews and our website.

Michael: Okay. So, then talk to us more about the reviews.

Tim: You know, the SEC marketing role keeps changing. I've generally tried to keep up with that and we are independent RIA. So, there's different regulations there versus maybe some folks that are listening be like, "That's great, Tim, but we can't do that." I'm sorry. But at the end of any meeting, we ask for, "Hey, if there's other folks trying to find us like you did, and if you don't mind, would you mind leaving a review on Google?" So, we try to be able to show an SEC examiner that we ask everybody. We don't cherry-pick who we ask. We can't control what reviews are displayed or not. And then we always try to reply to all those reviews as well.

Sometimes we even reply with SEO words in our reply. I don't know if that works or not, but I'm just like, "I'll give it a shot." So, that's just been part of the culture. We do some competitions and incentivize the staff sometimes. So, that's been really important to us because it's continued to be expressed that folks are at least giving us a chance because of those Google reviews on the website. They might get to the website because they downloaded a guide or a search engine or an ad, but to give us a chance is a big deal. So, that whole schedule and intro call generally comes about because they've read some reviews and they've gone through the website a good bit.

Michael: So, your ask process is...Help me understand a little more how it works. It's a verbal ask? It's every client meeting?

Tim: There's more success if you ask verbally, but part of our workflow, we do everything with Calendly and we have a workflow on Calendly. And so, their follow-up email says, "Hey, hope the meeting went great. If you got any feedback, let us know. And if you got a little extra time and you wouldn't mind leaving us a Google review, here's the link."

Michael: Okay. And that's how you can validate to the SEC, "Look, it's literally in our workflow for every client. We meet with all our clients at least once a year, which means all of our clients are getting this at least once a year. So, we're not cherry-picking."

Tim: That's right. And we'll put it in our "Insider," that's what we call our monthly newsletter, every once in a while. So, that goes to everybody. So, I think there's a couple of places that we could show we don't cherry-pick who we ask, everybody gets asked.

Michael: Okay. And there's not once they've left a review, you mark it in your system to stop asking, it's just –

Tim: We do mark it in the CRM just so we're not verbally asking. We're okay if the system automates it after their annual meeting once a year, but no, we do keep track of it because we...

Michael: Okay. So, you don't totally subtract them out of the sequence, but at least you don't keep asking them in review meetings, like, "By the way, we'd love it if you give a review." They're like, "I did last year. It was good."

Tim: Yeah. Like, "Can you update it? We'd like a better one. Can you add these SEO words?" No, we don't do those things. But we tend to ask for reviews more than we ask for client referrals. And maybe that's not a best practice, but it's we're like, "Hey, if your outcomes are great and you feel compelled to refer us, great." Or we do try to make it easy, "Hey, send them this email," or, "Send them this guide." We just rolled out, the nickname is, well, we call it the Free Second Opinion Retirement Plan Assessment. And so, it's FSORPA, is the acronym. So, that's what we call it.

Michael: That's a little rough for an acronym, I have to admit.

Tim: Like the FLDSMDFR cloudy with a chance of meatballs. So, it's the FSORPA. So, that's something like, "Hey, clients, if you've got a family member or friend or coworker, you could send them this opportunity to do this assessment with us for free." But we aren't very direct to client referrals.

Michael: Clients can pass that along to others, that's the idea of it?

Tim: That's right. That's right. Just trying to make it easy for them to refer. I was listening to one of your podcasts on a run earlier this year, and she was saying, they don't know what the next step is. Tell them the next step, "Hey, here's how. We would love for you to refer us. Here is how." But we're not usually directly asking for that. But I feel we're generally asking more for a Google review than a client referral. But we're trying to get better at asking for client referrals.

Michael: So, now I'm stuck on FSORPA. So, what's the actual ask or flow? I'm just trying to visualize. You send them a document, say, "Please forward this to people who are interested." You send them a URL and say, "If you know anyone who would want a second opinion review, click here and they can engage with us." What's the actual mechanic that you're using?

Tim: So, what the clients are getting is an image of the team and an explanation of FSORPA without saying FSORPA, Free Second Opinion Retirement Plan Assessment with a QR code that they can scan to get started.

Michael: Okay. And so, in theory, they're forwarding this email...is it literally in the email or an attached email?

Tim: Yeah, it's in the email. But we have print versions too. Some of our COIs use those with our clients, a non-threatening way to introduce them to us. So, that's physical. And so, they'll scan that QR code that will take them to the website to schedule an intro call. And so, when they use that link, then our GI consultant will know, "Oh, this isn't just a general intro call that came from a different source." They actually want the FSORPA. So, we design this assessment. She will actually ask them the questions over the phone. They will get an email of the answer, and then they will get a call scheduled with one of our CFP advisors who will go over it with them. We'll try to give them some top three priorities and a follow-up email, and there's a good fit, and there's some good value alignment, and the timing's good, maybe they're interested in our services, but if not, at least they walked away with a good experience and probably some things to think about work on.

Michael: And so, Google reviews overall, I'm just trying to visualize. You said earlier at about 370 households, 150-plus Google reviews. So, it sounds like something in the neighborhood of 40% to 50% of clients may leave reviews if you're asking systematically enough, ongoing enough. And I'm sure there's a few of...

Tim: Yeah. I've never even done that math before, but that's incredible. That's right. That's pretty accurate.

How Marketing Budget Allocations Have Shifted With Firm Growth [50:04]

Michael: So, I'm just trying to visualize, what is your spend overall on all the different Google things? So, you've got Google Screened, you've got the various types of ads. I'm presuming there's also something you have to spend on Evanced to manage the ads for you if they're a typical agency model. So, help us understand.

Tim: Right. So, we have a monthly nut with Evanced that covers so much campaigns. And then when we go above that, there's a percentage. And again, it all depends on the practice and how big the practice is, but right now, we're spending $75 a day with Google and Bing. So, that's about $2,300 or something like that.

Michael: Yeah. So, $2,300 a month, you're a little shy of $30 grand a year.

Tim: Right. And then there's a nominal fee there that Evanced is paying for what they're managing above that amount we're spending. I'd mentioned before about, what did I say? 800? I actually pulled up the number, it's $874 on Google Local Services. And then we spend about 40 bucks a day on social media ads. So, it comes out to, I don't know, $4,600, $4,700 a month. So, just shy of $5,000 a month right now.

Michael: Okay. Which puts you at about $50–$60 grand a year on all the different advertising activity. And your track back to that at the end of the day is $12 million in assets that you're tracking back to this? Or is there even other dollars? I don't know if the $12 million was just local Google search or all the different Google, Bing, social media ad system in the aggregate for you.

Tim: Yeah. And it's hard because the marketing gurus are like, "Well, 50% of my marketing budget works, but I don't know what 50% it is." It's really hard for me to know, like, "Well, which ad did you click on? Or what exactly drove you here or what ultimately helped you decide to do it?" It's the culmination of a lot of things. But for that, what did we look at before, was the total for the year about $12 million? And our effective rate is about 1.1%. So, it's paying for itself.

Michael: Yeah. So, if you're at $12 million in assets that's coming in, you're doing, you said 1.1 average field on that. So, you're at $130,000 in change of revenue for $50,000 or $60,000.

Tim: And we've been ramping up. We didn't spend that much on ads this year. We spent less than that. So, we've been continuing to ramp it up.

Michael: Oh, you mean your run rate now might be $5K a month, but it wasn't $5K a month at the beginning of the year?

Tim: No, it's probably closer to 2 or 3 average monthly this past year.

Michael: So, you're picking up just because it's working?

Tim: Working.

Michael: I mean, 50K spend for $130,000 of revenue is a pretty good ROI itself, never mind annually recurring revenue.

Tim: Right. The lifetime value of the client. It's pretty substantial. When you stop the lead gen on Dave or SmartAsset or whatever, that just stops, it's over. I can stop my ad spend, but I still have my website, I still have the Google reviews, I still have the SEO from the blogs. So, that part just seems a really good investment to me because you're just building, building, building, building. That blog that we wrote 5 years ago is still on our website and it still has an SEO value that makes our website more searchable.

Michael: So, now help us understand though, and I know, well, this is hard for all the comments around the difficulties of tracking marketing spend exactly. But if you're doing all this blog content and the rest as well, how are you evaluating the value of making the blog content versus the value of just doing the Google reviews versus the value of just leaning into the ads that are converting? Because usually, at least you can measure those pretty directly. Google's pretty good at giving you that data because they want your money. So, how do you think about doing a whole bunch of these different prongs versus, "This one's working. We clearly have the metrics that this one's working, let's lean in on this one that's working."

Tim: We're getting better on that, Michael. So, I think we'll have more. Since we've got multiple things going and we can track those better. Up to this point, we were leaning more on search ads, just starting to do remarketing, just starting to do targeted ads, and really just starting to advertise guides. So, those are the newer areas for us. Having a really great website, whether you're releasing a blog every week, or day, or month, just having that good website that's fast and clean, and it's easy to understand. Obviously, our clientele's a bit older, go for larger font size. They're going to go to the About Us page second, and then they're going to try to figure out how to work with you. Have a really clear call to action. So, just those are some of the critical components of having a good website.

And then in addition to that, just be aware of your Google listing and claim it. And just think about how we make decisions. We get online, we search, we read reviews, that's how folks are making decisions even when they're spending a lot of money hiring a professional services company. So, just having those 2 things works. That blog we write, like I said, it's going to be on the website forever. I always want to be doing that, building that organic search. Because if we turn off the ads and drop this almost $5,000 spend a month we have, we still have the website. We still have all the blogs and the content we created that will still keep generating leads for us. So, I've got a friend whose kids are famous YouTubers and he said, if we stop making content, we would still be able to make X, Y, Z. A substantial amount of income because of all the content we've already made.

Michael: Yeah. People will keep coming to those YouTube videos for a long time before they drop off the engagement.

Tim: Right. Exactly. But we all know, Google is really, really smart. If somebody throws up a website as good as mine, but they did it overnight around a week, Google still knows that my website's been there for decades and been building over time. If somebody goes and gets 150 Google reviews in 1 day, Google knows that I've still built that over the years. So, it's hard to trick Google. And that's why we've not really adopted the whole use of AI to generate content. We use AI in different ways too in our practice, but not to generate content. We still keep that original and organic.

Michael: So, what was driving all the growth 2 and 3 years ago when you said you were getting 2 clients per week flow for a long time? Was it the early nascent versions of the same thing? Or was there something different going on for you there?

Tim: No. I've got the numbers right here. We signed 15 clients from Google last year. We signed 17 the year before that. We didn't have the minimum, so they were smaller, we were getting more. But outside of that, we were converting a lot through Dave Ramsey there for a couple of years. A few from SmartAsset. But Dave Ramsey was pretty substantial for us. We started in, was it 2017, I think, when he rebranded from an endorsed local provider. And we don't sell mutual funds, we're not brokers, so, we couldn't be a part of that ELP program. So, when he rebranded as some SmartVestor Pro and we could be a part of that, we started being a part and being considered a SmartVestor Pro within a few months of that launch. So, that doubled our growth for about 4 or 5 years.

Michael: So, that was actually the volume growth for you with the caveat that the volume tended to be smaller average clients than where you're trying to focus now.

Tim: Exactly. And that's why I said, if I went back in a time machine, I would still do it over again. It provided a lot of growth. We found some really, really great clients. But now over time, it's like... well, it seemed easier to convert the smaller ones. The cost was going up. They had more competition.

Michael: And what was your cost in that program? Do you recall?

Tim: Yeah. So, last year we spent $60 grand with them, in '22.

Michael: Okay. And so, this ramp-up of the Google spend, it's not new dollars for you on client acquisition, it's different dollars for you...

Tim: We shifted.

Michael: ...for what you're getting relative to where you were, fewer clients, but higher dollar clients. Because I presume when you were at 2 or 3 a week and getting $100,000 a year, but you were getting a lot of the clients that were $100,000 to $300,000, you may have still been getting $10 million of flows from Ramsey for $60 grand, where now you're getting $12 million of flows from Google for $60 grand. The difference is now you're getting it with 12 larger clients instead of 50 to 100 really small ones.

Tim: Yeah, absolutely. You're right. So, there's really been the shift of maybe outgrowing away some of the other lead gen that we had, and maybe some folks can still convert that and that works for them. And I think if we didn't have the marketing arm and the partner that we have and the results that we were having, and I was like, I think I'd rather just stay in control of these leads and not to worry about my territories getting more expensive, or now they're adding more advisors, or there's a lot of competition for lead gen out there. And it's gotten a lot noisier there as far as lots of lead gen options that they're trying to get all of these folks searching and they just want that local person who's the real website, who's got the real reviews, and they just want to get right to it and get it done. So, that seemed to be just a natural shift for us.

Michael: So, I'm going to presume as well then, if you had this much sort of client flow and growth over the past couple of years that a lot of the staff headcount has really grown over the past few years as these marketing channels picked up for you. Is that a fair reflection?

Tim: Yeah, absolutely. Absolutely. So, it was really maybe 2010 before I started thinking about hiring a team and growing and that kind of thing. So, the team has certainly grown over time. I think like you were talking about with the ratios at the beginning, I think the ratios look pretty good now. So, we're just going to try to fill the capacity and fit the right size clients in and maybe continue to graduate some of the smaller ones and see if we can get that profit margin to our goals. But we would love to get back to hiring more, for sure.

Developing Aptitude-Focused Planning Firm Hiring Practices [1:00:54]

Michael: So, now talk to us a little bit more about hiring. You had mentioned earlier that a significant number of your team members are former clients who got hired. So, just tell me more about this. I'm wondering everything from, how do you broach that conversation? And is that weird? Just how that works and come to...?

Tim: So, I worked out of my house when I started the company, was 22, very soon turned 23, but worked out my house for about 3 years, and then I moved to one of those shared office locations and I was starting to get to the point where I needed help. I was talking to a client, she was like, "Yeah, I'm looking for some extra work. I'm going to go to Home Depot and they're going to... "I was like, "How much is Home Depot going to pay you?" We're in Atlanta, so a lot of Home Depots around here. She was like, "9 bucks an hour." I'm like, "Dang, would you come work for me for that?" She said yes. So, that was my hiring process back there. It was very, very, very limited.

And unfortunately, that relationship did not work out really well. She's just a contractor there. And I had to fire her. I had to let her go. And that was not a great experience. And I definitely empathize for anybody listening that's had to fire anybody. I related to having to decide to put my dog down. It was so bad. And so, I really committed to developing... What's that?

Michael: What happened with the first hire? What was the miss or what wasn't working that you had to get to the point of actually firing her after bringing her on?

Tim: I think when I really started learning more about these assessments and people's unique abilities and things like that, I realized that I had hired her for exactly the opposite of her role. The role I had was very opposite to her internal wirings. She actually is a professional organizer. So, she brings order out of chaos and I had hired her like any good entrepreneur to start helping with the books, which there was no chaos there. It didn't need to be simplified. Actually, you need to be more detail-oriented. You get this number, you say, "Well, where's the receipt and what category does that go to? And is there a class that's assigned, etc., etc." And her natural instincts were to simplify it. And it seemed to really drain her to do it. So, it would take her 2 to 3 times as long as it did for the person that eventually took over those roles.

Michael: Interesting.

Tim: And I just didn't have the scale.

Michael: She was very organized because she was a professional organizer, but the key is that's because she likes diving in the chaos and making it organized. Once it is organized like your books is not actually fun and enjoyable anymore, now it's just boring.

Tim: Yep. Exactly. And then I just was like, "I don't want to have this experience again. I need to better understand the role I have and make sure I find the best candidate to fit that role." I have been a big fan of Dave Ramsey. His program personally helped me and my wife get out of debt many years ago. So, I was like, "Well, how does Dave do it?" And then I've been involved in Strategic Coach. How does Strategic Coach hire people? And so, I learned their hiring processes, and then just made my own. And for a little while there, I called it the 12-Step Fireproof Hiring Method.

Michael: 12-Step Fireproof Hiring Method. So, tell us about the 12-Step Fireproof Hiring. Hope it's not another an acronym...

Tim: I know. There's not like a FSORPA thing, and that's kind of the fireproof hiring method, like, "Well, that's a big claim." And now it's all built into, we use BambooHR. Have you heard of that before?

Michael: Yeah.

Tim: Yeah, they're great. My HR person loves them. So, a lot of it's built into steps there now, but it was steps like assessing your needs to defining the key results, announcing the job offering. I always think that it's really powerful to use some assessment as part of the hiring process. We use the Kolbe because as I mentioned before, I was involved in Strategic Coach and that's one they like. I actually don't think it matters as much which assessment you use, I just think it's important to have one that you feel is one you understand and is helpful to you. I had different questions about their cover letter and their resume, but I did adopt that thing from Dave Ramsey where he... and I obviously can't do this now with a scale, but I think initially, him and his wife would do a spousal interview. They would take the best candidate before they offered them the job out to dinner with their spouse. So, I started doing that, and that was really insightful to get my wife involved in the hiring.

Michael: So, bring the candidate out with you and your spouse?

Tim: Yeah. So, I'm bringing my spouse, if they have a spouse or significant other, they're bringing that person. So, it's a double date.

Michael: So, do you still do this in virtual world now or are you only hiring locally?

Tim: We're pretty much only hiring locally. We've got a beautiful office building, so we've got a little bit of a different strategy there. I know a lot of folks go national or do virtual, but we're old school where we've got an office. Folks can work remotely on Fridays, but for the most part, they work out of the office for the bigger part of the week. So, we are hiring locally. So, we generally are doing that spousal interview in person.

Michael: Okay. And so, what do you find just as working the most to actually figure out who's a good fit or who's not a good fit?

Tim: I actually love this spousal dinner interview because you get them out of the normal... People start getting really good at what to say on a cover letter or an application or an interview. So, just to get them out of that normal mode, like, "Let's just go out to dinner." They're often bringing their spouse, and I'm bringing my spouse. I'm seeing how they treat each other. I'm seeing how they treat the servers. I'm seeing how they order. I'm seeing how they treat my wife. So, it's been interesting. Most of the time it's been really successful and built on our hopes in what we thought as a candidate. And there was 1 time where it was completely different.

Michael: So, now, how did this work? You said the majority of the team came from clients. So, is this conscious that you ask clients? Do you go after particular clients? Is it like you're email announcing it to clients with a push? Just how do you end out with the majority of your team as former clients? I get, "Oh yeah, this one time we had this cool scenario where we hired a position and it turned out a former client took it." That's really different than the majority of our team were former clients.

Tim: Yeah. Including me, there's 13 W-2s. So, take me out, there's 12, and 8 of those 12 were clients before they were employees. So, that's pretty substantial. I'll tell you, 1 case was one of my clients and she was just referring me just tons of business and I was converting this business. She just kept referring. And I was talking to her and she was working for a bank, so she was already financially inclined and she had had a really frustrating day at the bank. And she said she was thinking about quitting. And I was like, "Well, go for it. Why don't you come work for me? You already do. You just don't get paid yet." So, that worked out. She just recently retired, but she was a very successful advisor for me for years.

And in another case, one of my clients, he was doing mortgages, and after '08, that became a real struggle. And this particular client had asked me really great questions about my business model. He was a really great client. And I was like, "What do you think about being a financial advisor?" And he was like, "My degree was in finance, and I think I'll give it a shot." And Joe's been with me for 12 years, and he is one of our senior wealth advisors. The most recent hire, Kimberly... We didn't send an email out to the clients and said, "We're hiring. Do any of you want the job?" But we did post it on our social media sites and she saw it on Instagram the day after her annual meeting with Joe actually, and said, "Hey, I actually used to be a client service associate, and then I came home to raise kids and now they're older and I was starting to look for a new job." We were like, "No way. That's crazy." And she just started working for us a couple of months ago.

Michael: Well, I guess I feel like you're framing very – I don't want to say it, but – normal, straightforward examples. Okay, I get it. It all makes sense, yet most of us don't have that many team members who are former clients. What are you doing differently from what the rest of us do that you're ending up with such a different outcome?

Tim: I guess I really don't know, other than I just keep it in mind. If I meet with a client, I'm like, "Hmm, I wonder if they would be good at this role." And if I ever had that need in the future, I'm going to remember that, and I'll make a note of that.

Michael: And so, do you ever worry about the dynamic of, they're a client, if this doesn't work out, I lose a team member and a client? Is there an awkward line being crossed when you invite them to do this? Are there social dynamics when you open this conversation up?

Tim: What we just did here recently was allowed all of those to... I'm not the financial advisor for any employee anymore. But I don't know, I just think it's worked out really well for me. They're phenomenal team members. They understood the business. They were already eating it, so why not start selling what they eat? Eat what you sell. So, it's like they're already fans because they're already clients, they're already paying you. So, to come to work and be a part of that... And we do events and we like to have fun. So, some of those clients will get to know other team members from other events we have, and they're like, "Hey, maybe I could work with these people." So, that's the other thing I guess that I'm probably not super conscious about, but now that I think about it, there's a value alignment and I'm like, "Oh, I think those folks might really work well within the culture that we already have."

Michael: And I think it's an interesting point, you do some client events, they've already met the team, they know who they might be working with. So, it connects for them.

Tim: Yeah, absolutely.

The Surprises Tim Encountered On His Journey[1:11:09]

Michael: So, as you reflect back on this journey, what's surprised you the most about building your own advisory business?

Tim: I guess what's surprised me the most is how much I have enjoyed building a team, and a culture, and a place to work. My personal mission is to create careers people love. And so, if I can create a really great job for my team member and they are the best version of themselves in that job, then that experience for the client that they interact with and any different thing, whether it's marketing-related or CSA-related or advisor-related is hopefully a really, really great experience. So, I don't think when I started, really, it was a couple of years of just working by myself and I asked my wife, Maureen, I was like, "Hey, I can start outsourcing and contracting or do you think I should actually try to hire employees?" She said, "I think you might be a good boss. I think you'd be a good boss. I think you should give it a shot." I was like, "Hmm."

And that's hard because you build that because you've got all the clients and you're building that, and then you start trying to be a good manager and a good leader, and cast vision and be a good boss and create culture. So, it ends up, like you said, it gets crowded, there's a lot of hats. So, it's nice that I've been able to transition off a good bit of my clients and start to lean more towards the CEO and more of the leader role. But I think that's probably one of the bigger things that surprised me, is just enjoying that aspect of the job. And I know a lot of advisors don't, and I get that, and they're like, "We're going to sell," or, "We're going to bring in a partner to handle that," because they don't love the 1-on-1s and the compensation and the conversations and all those things, but I've really enjoyed the challenge of it.

Michael: So, when did you start shifting your client load in this context?

Tim: It's probably been about 3 years now. Just 3 years ago. So, I still have clients, but was able to shift the majority to Joe and Justin, some great advisors we have. And they're doing a phenomenal job. I haven't done an engagement meeting I think in a year and a half.

Michael: Was there a threshold or a moment of, "I think this is the time I need to stop taking them and start moving them off?"

Tim: Yeah. And it was getting back to trying to figure out how we were going to build teams and that conversation we had before. So, as we were putting that team together, I could unload that to my team members, and then I could start to shift some of my focus on leading and growing the company, business development, marketing, took back over the compliance role for a little while.

The Low Point Tim Encountered On His Journey [1:13:44]

Michael: So, what was the low point on this journey for you?

Tim: There's a couple of them. As we've talked about, it's hard when you're really young, 22, 23, to try to convince people to sign a client advisor agreement and let you manage their retirement assets that they've worked hard for in the stock market. So, that can be really tough. But I'm just grateful. Some clients I've had since the very beginning and that's just super grateful for that. That's incredible. And I also, think, I don't really know who coined this, I don't know if it's John Maxwell, but it's lonely at the top, especially during COVID-19 when at least for a little while there before the market turned around, the concern for the wellbeing of your staff, the wellbeing of your clients and being that kind of founder who is also in charge and leading the firm, there's a lot of weight there. And I think all the team members have a weight, but I think that the founder has the weight, and that's something that's hard to share unless you have other partners.

And we're starting to do that. We've got a succession plan where the employees are buying stock from the overtime. And so, hoping to maybe share some of that weight, but ultimately, it being my company and me founding it, and being the majority owner, there's certainly a substantial weight there.

Michael: So, what were you doing in the early years to actually survive and get through when you're trying to get people to sign retirement assets with you and you're 23 years old?

Tim: I mowed lawns and cleaned pools on the nights and weekends.

Michael: Was there a lot of side hustles and...

Tim: A lot of side hustles. Yeah. Wore a suit for a couple of hours and then switched out to outdoor landscaping or mowing or whatever. So, doing that. And then there's only so many people you could call and there was only so many clients I had starting at 0. That's my dad and a college buddy that were the first clients. I think I started with $105,000. But really, I think what helped me through all of that was just to really lean on mentors and just to value being intentional, to surround myself with people who I wanted to be like, who I aspired to be like, who were maybe already successful in the field that I wanted to go into. And so, I've continued to do that and be very intentional about meeting mentors.

And then as you are in the industry and you meet other advisors, forming little mastermind. Think tank groups has been great and I've got two of those going and that's been very valuable. Something I highly encourage my advisors as well to do is as you meet other advisors say, "Hey, let's get together once a month for a call and just connect and share." So, that's been very helpful.

Michael: So, how long were you doing lawns and pools on the side? How long did that go before you got the...?

Tim: I'm still doing it, Michael. I'm still mowing lawns, still cleaning pools. No – I was maybe a year or 2. No more than 2 years. That was my whole plan, was, "I've got to get this thing to pay for itself inside of 2 years or I'm shutting down, selling my house, and going into ministry full-time or something." I don't know. I was going to pursue something else.

Advice Tim Would Give New Financial Advisors (And His Younger Self) [1:16:52]

Michael: So, what else do you know now you wish you could go back and tell early you in the first 5 years?

Tim: It's a good question. I think goal setting has been really critical. So, sometimes you're just in the hustle of nose to the grindstone and you're not looking up. And so, I think it took me a while to start working on the business instead of in the business. So, just that importance of strategic planning, setting goals. Obviously, I've had the mentor thing for a long, long time, but getting them to speak into that plan. So, definitely been on that strategic and intentional written goals and plan path for a while now, but for the first couple years, it took me a little while to figure out how important it was to work on the business and not just in the business. So, I guess I'd probably start there.

Michael: How did you get started in that direction? Was there, "I read a book, I took a program"? I find for some people there's some sort of trigger event or experience they have that starts them down that road.

Tim: Right. And I've always been growth-oriented, So, I love reading books and listening to podcasts, but it actually was really getting into Strategic Coach that I mentioned earlier. And I know some of your guests have mentioned that and you're familiar with Dan Sullivan and Strategic Coach. So, that really forced me to have time away to actually go to that quarterly and sit down and plan. And that was really, really powerful.

Michael: Okay. So, at what stage did you start Strategic Coach?

Tim: In 2010 when I had $10 million under management, that's when I started in Strategic Coach.

Michael: And that was the whole business, so roughly a hundred-something thousand dollars of revenue at that point?

Tim: Right. Yep.

Michael: Okay. So, I'm just visualizing...

Tim: I guess, I lowered my fee. I think I started, it was a fixed 1.5% for those first couple of years. I think maybe it was technically $150 grand, but yeah.

Michael: We usually had a little bit higher fee schedules on the low end back then than a lot of us do now. And I guess that's worth reflecting as well. So, just you started in 2004 because you're coming up on 20 years, so it was 6 years to get to $10 million?

Tim: Yeah. Maybe that's one of the other low parts is that now in a quarter, the assets for our firm changes more than I had been able to get on my own in the first 6 years.

Michael: Yeah, it's a humbling thing when you put it in that context. So, your quarter is now better than the first 6 years.

Tim: Yeah. When you put that in perspective, that's true. And I was super pumped to sign anybody, 1 client a month. And as I shared, until we increased the minimum, we were signing 2 clients a week. That just blew my mind. So, it's incredible how the numbers really compound.

Michael: So, what advice would you give younger, newer advisors coming in and getting started today?

Tim: So, a bit of that advice and what's helped me out is just finding those mentors early on. Finding those folks that are where you want to be and being intentional about meeting with them and expressing gratitude to them. I think that's super-duper important. What I would tell to younger advisors is that this industry is incredible. It can be very meaningful. There's a lot of different ways to do it, but we need more good people. So, I was excited to hear that more and more people are taking the CFP exam than ever before and we're getting more and more of a diverse group, more and more younger group, and I'm very excited about that because I think we need all the good people we can get in this industry. There's a big need out there.

Michael: Yeah. Did you have a tactic for just how you find them and reach out to them and actually connect with them?

Tim: So, I was really fortunate, my dad had connected me when I started with a friend of his who had actually started an RIA and already sold it, and was a professor, Marcus Ingram at the local university. So, he was my initial mentor. And then I've just met other mentors really for me through involvement in my church, other business mentors that I admired their marriage and their relationship with their kids and they had successful businesses. And so, I was like, "That's what I want to do. So, can I buy you lunch every once in a while, and we can hang out?" And maybe it's going to other professional networking events or conferences. And so, I've met other advisors who I really admire, and in that case, I just added them to a mastermind group or a monthly think tank. So, I think both of those have been good sources.

What Success Means To Tim [1:21:34]

Michael: So, as we wrap up, this is a podcast about success and even just one of the themes that comes up is that word success means very different things to different people. And so, as you're on this wonderful track of growth with the business, as you said, you're now growing more in a quarter than you did in the first 6 years cumulatively. So, the business is in a wonderful success place and the metrics are going well. How do you define success for yourself at this point?

Tim: I think it's looking back on how I viewed the mentors that I wanted to work with. To me, it's about health more than anything. Health in my marriage, health in my relationship with my kids, certainly health in my finances. We're financial advisors, but also just my own physical fitness and health. And also, just in my faith too, just being intentional about my relationship with God and volunteering, giving back and being generous, intentional with my time and my money. Those are the things that really bring about the most joy for me is the ways that I'm able to be generous or my family's able to be generous. So, I think it's multifaceted to me. I think if somebody's got a lot of wealth but not a healthy marriage, not a healthy relationship with your kids, that's not the success I'm looking for. I want success in all those main areas, and it would be seen as healthy from someone on the outside looking in.

Michael: Very cool. Very cool. Well, thank you so much, Tim, for joining us on the "Financial Advisor Success" Podcast.

Tim: Yeah. Thank you.