John Hello, everyone. We are here today speaking with Steven, Jacob and Rachel, Podnos of Wealth Care LLC. Steven is the principal and founder of Wealth Care. Steven's a man of many talents, an M.D. who practiced pulmonary and critical care medicine but had a passion for personal finance and after a long career led him to found Wealth Care and earned a CFP was also named to the official CFP board as an ambassador in 2014 and wrote a book on Preserving and Building Your Wealth, which is available on Amazon. Welcome, Stephen. Jacob and Rachel.

Steve Podnos Thank you.

John Great. We are really excited to have you here today. The whole group, we're here to talk about how to serve clients remotely, which I know is a thing that you do as part of your everyday business. But before we get going, Steven, I'd love it if you can start us off by talking a little bit about how you got started in the business. And what drives you and Jacob and Rachel also for you. What drives you all to serve clients? So, Steven, let's start with you. How did you get started in the business?

Steven After for about almost 20 years, practicing pulmonary and critical care medicine in private practice in east central Florida here. I became interested in what's called the hospitalist program. So I set up a program with my group and I went and got a business degree so that I could speak with the financial side of the hospital. And one day in my reading, I saw an article about fee only financial planning, which I'd never heard of and inquired with a local fee only planner. And he kind of told me what he did. And I said, it's it sounds a lot like being a doctor, but for money instead of health. And it was intriguing. So he encouraged me to take the CFP course to see if I would like all the different aspects of financial planning. So I did and took the test. And then I let people know in the community, friends, family, that I was interested in doing a little bit of financial planning and wealth management on the side, this is probably around 2002 or 2003. And you know, first it was my brother in law and then a close friend and then somebody on a ski trip. And it took me several years to realize I really enjoyed the work and the intellectual challenge at that point. I've been practicing medicine for at least 20 years and it was becoming more, I guess, written, not as interesting and challenging. And I made the transition pretty much the whole time fee only financial planning around 2008, which was an auspicious year, because of the Great Recession but,  and I joined the Air Force Reserve to continue practicing medicine on a limited scale which I still do today. From about 2008 till about five or six years ago. I was practicing just by myself, kind of doing everything. I had no staff. So I did all the admin work. Everything. Dealt with clients. I built up Rachel, how many clients have we had when you joined me?

Rachel Yes, sorry. I had my background muted there. God, a lot less than we have now. Probably, 80, maybe?

Steven Okay. Sounds about right. So probably about 80 clients. I was fairly busy and there's probably a couple hundred million bucks of assets under management. At that point, Rachel had gone to law school and passed the bar and had moved to Washington, D.C., where she decided she didn't want to practice law and asked about joining me. So that was great. She was living in Washington, D.C. and wanted to stay there. So she worked for a firm fee only firm in Bethesda for a couple of years and then came on board with me. And that started a more intense, remote relationship with clients and with us. I had been dealing with remote clients because I pretty much on day one, the practice has grown directly through referrals. So I might have some clients here in central Florida, but they say, hey, my brother is in Arizona or Texas or in Washington state or wherever. Would you talk to them? And some of those people then became clients. So I would guess that at least a third of our entire practice, which is now about 160 families we'd never met. None of us. They live in other places and we just talk on the phone.

John So really referrals is what really drove the need to virtually serve it.

Steven So naturally, I correct 90 percent to the practice is via referrals, if not more. We don't advertise. If people find us from an article or a web search or something, they're much less likely to become a client. They're generally checking a bunch of other firms. But, you know, the referred clients are much more likely to be good, long standing clients. But we started working. I was working remotely with some families ready. And when Rachel came on board, we basically started the practice, which we continue today, which is all client meetings, when possible, have at least two CFPs on the phone. So there's two of us that know. So Rachel kind of came on board over the next few years and got to know most of the clients. There were a few legacy ones, especially older positions that, you know, that mostly just deal with me still. But as each new client came on board, they would deal with both Rachel and I. And it's an interesting thing for other firms with what I was told by a friend in the business was that clients would promote junior staff in the sense that, you know, if you would put junior staff out in front of the clients, helping them with questions and helping them with admin tasks and such, that a certain percentage of those those clients would then start to deal with the junior staff more and more and more taking some of the load off of me. And that's exactly what's been happening is very gratifying. And I think then that what leads to what we're seeing now is that clients are referring to the junior staff sometimes instead of me, which is great also, and to a desired outcome after Rachel had been with me a few years, our second daughter, who's not on the call. Lauren had been working in finance. She had a finance degree in college and a marketing degree. And she'd been working at various firms, Fidelity TIAA, a high tech financial planning startup. She was in Manhattan and she called up perhaps two years, two to three years ago and said she was now ready to join the family firm and wanted to stay in Manhattan. So we worked that out. And now she actually moved to Texas. She's in Austin and she's part of the firm. And she's actually been doing exactly the same thing as Rachel in the sense that as we get new clients, she becomes the second planner and I would anticipate she'll start to get referrals as well. And then this year, just last year, Jacob took the CFP course and passed it and became a full time employee of the firm. He's been working hard on operations and is learning the planning process. We anticipate him being able to use the CFP mark by the end of next year. Now, that's kind of the history.

John So a real family firm?

Steven All family, we have no other staff. We outsource, obviously, you know, including obviously Blueleaf. And we use a lot of online technology, though I think less than a lot of the other firms I talked to, we try to keep ourselves very efficient and only do deliverables that we think the clients value. And I think that if I could sum up what we think our clients ultimately value is, is they trust us and they know where we have their backs and we're doing all these things in their interest. And of course, the fee only has a lot to do with that being fiduciaries.

John And Steven, I think I heard you say about a third of your clients are fully remote that you've never met.

Steven Correct.

John And when you think about the service that you deliver, what proportion of the service that you deliver to clients is remote or virtual versus in an office somewhere?

Steven Well, depends where they live. You know, the ones that don't live close to me, for instance, are all remote, everything. It's gonna be e-mails, phone calls, text could be with, you know, one of the other staff could be with Rachel or Lauren or Jake, could be with me, could be with two of us at a time. So we have meetings. So a new client, a new client usually has a couple of meetings, which could be all on the phone if they don't live near one of us. Yes, they do live near us. They might come and meet with me in an hour, in our Florida office here and we'll sit down at the table and will, you know, do it. Information gathering. Determination of goals. Gather all the objective data. Account statements, insurance forms and everything to put together a full financial plan. And every client pretty much gets a written customized financial plan. In the beginning, and that plan has been updated to show years whenever there is substantial discussion, change and in light of an event, another meeting and then they get a new version of the plan. We don't use financial planning software. We use a word document that is customized for each family. Now we have a template that we can customize for the family several different ways. That's an interesting thing, is that all of us have used financial planning software at various times over our careers and none of us like it. And we all like you so far just doing what we do. So we will meet. I think I'm supposed to have a meeting later this week in person with the family, the smoko and Lauren is the second CFP in that family. And so she'll be on the phone during my meeting and be participating in a meeting with past demand service and follow.

John Great. Super helpful. When you think about conducting a fully virtual, you know, client meeting, maybe an onboarding or information gathering session or, you know, some sort of regular update, can you know, one of you describe how you typically organize that? What. What technologies do you use? And you know how that's going. And maybe if there are ways that you're thinking about improving.

Steven Rachel, why don't you answer that.

Rachel Yeah. So I was going to say one thing we have not been doing, obviously, is video conferencing. That is something that is very new to us. We've never really offered it to virtual relationship clients. Not sure why we've talked about it kind of here. And we just don't know. Never, never went ahead and did it. We were just we've always conducted almost all of our virtual client relationships just through email and phone. Very old, old fashioned and low tech in that way, although we're I'd say pretty high tech in almost every other way. This is just one thing that we haven't adapted. But I have noticed, especially in the last few months, it seems that more and more and more people are zooming and they're using video. And I actually think it's really cool. And I think going forward that we might start at least offering it as an option for our virtual relationships. Say, hey, how would you like to meet you on a zoom video or do you just want to have an old fashioned phone call? And I think if we do start offering Zoom video, we'll have to make sure that we have a nice corner of our home office setup, you know, looking like an appropriate background. Like, I'm like, oh, my God, this lighting is terrible. I don't know what I'm doing. So I think we would all need to figure out a nice set up for that. But I think going forward that this is a really something that we'll start to incorporate.

John It's great to hear. You know, we've lived on video, I'd say the past seven years at our company internally. It started internally. And so I mandated that all internal calls or video calls, part of it is because we're such a remote company. It was important to feel like you were generating some face to face dialog with colleagues and then that extended to customers and prospects and not all customers and prospects avail themselves of that. But many, many, many do. And I can certainly appreciate the trepidation around it. And in our case, we just sort of jumped in with both feet. We're doing maybe this will be helpful to you. We're going to do a series about remote work. And one of the pieces of that series is going to be that through the technical setup you weave, you can see I've got a setup that's pretty well lit backgrounds, not fantastic, but it's clean. And, you know, there's a high def camera here and a little better microphone. It's amazing because this is the entire setup that I've got, probably one hundred and fifty dollars on line. Maybe at the outside 200, and so it's easy to do so. We'd love to work with you on that. Coming off the technology, though, you would love to hear how you conduct an online client meeting, how you found maybe that's. It's a little different than conducting an in-person meeting. What you might do, even if you're using the phone, you know, it's certainly virtual. I'd love to hear how you prepare, how you prepare the client. You know, is the agenda any different than when you're in person? Maybe you could talk about that.

Steven You want me to talk or Rachel?

John Whoever would like too.

Steven I'll butt in here, I'll say that I think face to face meetings aren't the best in person. And go even further and say that from the very beginning, when we schedule a meeting, we give the clients a choice of where they want to meet. And it can be in their home, at their office, at a restaurant. They can come to our office and sometimes I bring them to my home. And those are all laid out. And most clients are delighted by that choice. And we end up meeting in their home. I won't go to their house. It's a great way to do it because you get to see how they live. They are usually at a high level of comfort in their own home. We not infrequently break out a bottle of wine during meetings if they're not in the morning and talk of food. And it's a very relaxed atmosphere. I would say a habit meeting like that runs around to adverse weather. So first one or a phone call and we'll start with it. If it's the first meeting, it's a lot of gold discovery. So I'll basically say you. But what made you want to talk to us? What are your goals? And you know, if you look back in 10 or 20 years and you were happy, you hired us and worked with us, what would it have accomplished for you? And then we'll ask you some other questions about how they feel about work and how they grow up and how they do money. What a discovery. Questions which I think surprises people. I think people are used to thinking of just going to talk about investments and money and how to do that and that that tends to be a very small part of the conversation. We will then start to discuss answers to questions they may have. Like, what can I say? What questions would you like to hear? Answer. Today, more will come up later. What in particular are you curious about or have anxiety about? And we'll talk about those things and then we'll start more on the objective part of the interview. And as an aside, what's very interesting is in medicine, when we eat, when we deal with a new patient or old patient, we do. It's called. So, no, that's a way, Pete. So it's subjective, objective assessment and plan. So the subjective survey, I was just talking about the same approach. And then the objective is, all right, let's look at your insurance patients. Let's look at having the title to your properties. Let's look at your investment statements. So let's look for estate planning documents. And then ultimately after that meeting, we do the assessment, which is the formal financial plan, and then the plan then is implemented. You know, we have to do sections depending on what the clients have the proclivity to do and motivation to do which part. And there are things that we think are very important and they're not doing it. We can nag them very effectively to get things done. And then we have an ongoing process. The follow up meeting and I would say our average meeting frequency is once a year. If it's even that often, we end up with a policy of complete accessibility. The email, phone or meeting, if they are local, we have no limits on any of that. And we find that we have a large cohort of clients that are just perfectly fine to hear from us. They get email and maybe talk to us who were on the phone or in person once a year. Rachel, have you ever felt differently about that?

Rachel No, I think that's a pretty good description of how we do things. I think something unique about us is that we don't really have set hours. Kind of like how you just alluded to. We talk to clients on the weekends after hours. You know, in the evenings. And a lot of times it's not scheduled in advance. Sometimes a client will just ring us at 7:00 p.m. on a Tuesday and we're happy to talk to them or 9:00 a.m. on a Sunday. And we're happy to talk to them. We don't have a lot of rigid scheduling or rules. We're pretty flexible. And I think that that's pretty unique. And I think we all think our clients appreciate that. And I think we all like it, too, since we're remote workers, we're not chained to our desk, you know, Monday to Friday, 9:00 to 6:00 or whatever. And. And so sometimes there is a Tuesday afternoon where there isn't work to do. And that's great. And I can't go run an errand or just relax. But Sunday morning, I have some work to do and I'll do it then. I think it's a great way to work with our clients.

John And when I heard that description, you know, I think I mean, it's clear you've thought long and hard about how to best service clients and that, you know, my my understanding of what I heard was that that was all in the context of that that meeting being face to face. I'm curious if you could describe if you know what the differences are, if any, when you wind up conducting those meetings virtually over a telephone?

Steven I would say there's not that much difference. You don't have the quality of being able to sit across on a couch in somebody's home and get that feel for them. But the questions and the discussions are very, very similar. Rachel, would you agree with that?

Rachel Yeah, I would. I would say. I mean, I don't. I do a lot for me because I'm in D.C. and we have a lot of clients in Florida. The percentage of relationships that are totally virtual for me is much higher than them for dad. But for me, I mean, I do know a lot of our clients personally, even from just personal relationships outside of work. Our Florida clients and I would say that for me, the quality of the relationship, there are virtual clients versus clients that I have met in person or know in person. It's in the scope of the financial planning relationship. I don't see a huge difference. Not for me. I don't feel that I have a better working relationship with clients who I've spoken with in person versus over the phone. Like one for me that I think my best or my favorite client relationship is the one I've never met in person. But it's a young client, you know, in my peer group who I speak with every single week on, you know, text, phone, email, just back and forth is so constant. And I feel very, very connected. That's just my two cents.

John So it sounds like there are some really there are some tradeoffs in building a relationship virtually versus in-person. But it sounds like through other technologies, maybe higher frequency. You feel, Rachel, like you can build a very strong relationship virtually even if you've never met the client. Oh, yeah, absolutely. Now, when you think about the way that you work in the transition from, you know, doing everything in face, face, face to virtually, you know, what would you say to other advisers? You're thinking about making a similar transition. What kinds of things should they do or think about at the outset?

Rachel Dad, you want to take this?

Steven Sure. So you're saying what would we advise? Other advisers who want to do more remote work.

John Yes, that's exactly right.

Steven Well, so I would tell them if it is possible with their lifestyle, I think that something Rachel alluded to is very valuable, that we are very flexible. And when we will talk to people, I probably had between five and 10 client calls this weekend, Saturday and Sunday. And that's normal. And I think it came out of the fact that I was a critical care physician for 20 years and I worked nights and weekends all the time and didn't bother me. And I know that a lot of our clients, you know, don't have time during the week from Monday to Friday, nine to five to meet or talk. And things come up. They're sitting around on Sunday and a question comes up and they know that we're very accessible. We do not get abuse at all. So we'll get no quick text. Got a minute to talk. Know question marks? Sure. If I'm not doing something right, then I'll just get on the phone. And I actually welcome the opportunity to connect because we lock in and we maybe never meet face to face or very rarely meet face to face. But here's an opportunity to connect, talk and catch up on maybe some other stuff besides the specific question or talk about it. There are some today. I've had a lot of talks about the code, that thing because of my medical background and with clients just kind of. But do you think what you are reading? What do you think? Back and forth. So sometimes just when I get an email during the day on email at night, if it's something that's not transferable and a few words with a definitive, I'll pick up the phone because again, it's an opportunity to touch that client in a way personally. And you check with them. And I think especially that it's just regular hours. It's highly, highly appreciated and received all the time. Thank you so much for talking to us on a Sunday or off on Tuesday night or whatever day such. You know, indic when they could do it. So I understand you. I'm in a peer group with eight other fee only planners and most of them don't want family time interrupted. They don't want to be bothered on weekends or at night. So it's very much a circumstance of, you know, both of your personal life. But as Rachel alluded to, we don't have regular office hours at all. None of this sits in an office all day Monday to Friday. We do whatever we want all day. And you know, the deal with. Rachel, Lauren and Jacob told them all that I just expect you to put in a roughly 40 hour work week every seven days that you're not on vacation and I don't care. I kept talking to clients or writing up staff or learning or reading or whatever, and they all kind of evolved to make that schedule look very well. And so that doesn't create a lot of afterhours time in working with clients or for clients.

John You know, it's fascinating. Well, what I'm hearing is that if you're willing to be flexible about how you think about your work and your life and maybe not think so rigidly about work life balance. But think about work life integration, that serving clients remotely is an opportunity to integrate your life better as an advisor. A. Well, that seems like a pretty good reason to start to think about doing this. And I'm curious, as you've done this. Are there any mistakes you've seen or were made, God forbid, that you did advise other firms to avoid as they get going on this journey?

Steven Well I'll pitch in. I think, again, personality has something to do with it. I know I'm thinking there's a couple of people in my peer group that just had a kind of very comfortable going into an office and working nine to five or eight to five or seven. The five or five days a week being offered might be off on the weekends and. That's their personality. And they really don't like the idea of being outside of those hours and they don't mind sitting in the office, whereas I would hate to sit in an office all day long. I'm just not. I like not having to do that. And I'm perfectly willing to trade off, you know, if I'm sitting outside reading and someone wants to call them late afternoon or evening, I'm not doing something else important. I'm happy to talk to them, you know? So it works very well with my personality. I'd hate to have to defer both to Rachel and Jake and see what they think about the lifestyle.

Jacob Hi, I think you definitely have to have, at least on the start for me, some sort of structure, whether or not you're gonna stick to it. And I I try to implement things like I'm not sure if you're familiar with Pomodoro Technique. Oh, you know, it's like, oh, okay. So yeah, I try to do things like that. And we used to start and then if something comes up and, you know, you have to go somewhere else, then so be it. But I try to be very structured, especially since I'm, you know, the newest member. And it really just kind of hit the ground running, even if, I mean, showering at 6:30 every day or anything. Right. Just try to kind of keep it very, very set in a schedule.

John And Jacob, just for our listeners of the Pomodoro technique is a technique of structuring blocks of work where you've got structured work time, but also structured break time. The most common break down is work for twenty five minutes, entirely focused, no distractions on the one thing you're intended to work on and then have a five minute break and then repeat. It's a great technique. We use it in and around Blueleaf and it's widely used, particularly in the engineering and development Soffer development community. So it's a great suggestion.

Rachel Yeah, I agree with Jake. I think structure is really important. I when I first started working from home in 2014, that was a mistake I made. I'd been used to going into an office and having set hours having someone my my direct supervisor sat next to me in the office and told me what to do all day long. And it was an adjustment for me. And I kind of had learned the hard way how to make working remote work for me. And I think, like Jake said, structure is the biggest thing for me. And I don't use the post pomodoro technique. But for me, it just lists I'm a big list person. I start every day by making a list work non-work and then prioritizing, you know, what's number one? What's number two, what's number three and making sure the list is as well prioritized. And for me, that's the key to be happy and productive and successful, working, working remotely. So and I think it's. Great. I think for me, I'm probably going to start a family soon, and I spend a lot of time thinking about how it will change things for me and how valuable it will be for me to be able to work from home and work remotely. As a parent, I think structure and prioritizing will become even more important, probably times 10 than it is now, and so I don't know. I think it's something I think a lot about and I think I just continued to hone that and learn each year on on what works even better than what I did the year before.

John So it sounds like working remotely and servicing clients virtually requires a bring your own structure approach.

Rachel Yeah, I think so. I don't think a cookie cutter approach would work for everybody.

John Well, I think that's all the time that we have. I'd like to say thank you to Stephen, Rachel and Jacob, Pornos of Wealth Care LLC for a fantastic wide ranging discussion about serving clients virtually and working remotely and really timely advice. And I appreciate it. And I'm sure our listeners will as well. So thank you very much.

Podnos Thank you, Bye bye.

John Thank you.

John All right. So, you know, Katie, thank you for being here today. I just want to introduce you to everyone. So for all of you who are listening and watching, this is Katie Stokes, financial analyst for Core Advisors. Katie holds a CFA and charter holder and she holds a CFP. She serves on the CFA board or CFA Society of South Carolina. She's been written about and quoted in publications like The Wall Street Journal, among others, and speaks on financial planning. So welcome, Katie, and thank you for joining us.

Katie Thank you.

John So we're here to talk about how to serve clients remotely or virtually or digitally or how you'd like to describe it. Before we get going on on that topic. Can you talk a little bit about how you got started in the business and really what drives you to serve clients?

Katie Well, I actually got started pretty young and I had a small RIAA that basically took a chance on me. And so I went through first the CFP program and I was on the planning side for lots and lots of years where I did mostly planning, which obviously involves investments, but I didn't focus specifically on investments. About five years ago, I moved into more of an investment centered role. And that's when I went in, started to do the CFA route that would be fun to do in my mid 30s. But so it's really. I didn't do planning directly at college. Part of the reason was, I had a real hard time with a lot of the complex associated with giving people advice and selling. So I wanted to be able to give advice. So when I had that opportunity, I took it. And that's basically where we are now. And I've always been on the side and always been on the advice side. And that's where I'm comfortable. So really, I think. I think being able to deliver not just advice that sounds good, but actually good advice that's going to help clients in the long run is I mean, that's why I'm here. I guess my role here.

John And you know, what is it about delivering advice to clients and helping them with their financial lives? It was the attractor for you. What? Know, what's that underlying thing that really gets you up in the morning?

Katie I think really times like this are when we earn our money and not just in terms of financial money, but where we earn our purpose, I guess, as advisors because as you know, a lot of people are pretty financially illiterate in this through no fault of their own. And really, it's unfortunately money that affects all of us. And we have to deal with it, but it's also just a means to something greater. So you can't people that come into us and they say, I just want I just want more money. We say, what are your goals? They say, I want more money. That is not a goal. We really don't know how to help those people. It's people that come in and they and they have specific goals or to not set specific goals. But even just I want to take care of my family. I want to do anything with their money. Just money by itself is just a tool. So really, the driver is trying to figure out how to use that tool to help them achieve something greater and bigger. And then when we hit times like this to not panic through them and hold their hand. Walk them through and make them realize that it's not the end of the world. And times like this have happened before, they are going to happen again.

John That's really helpful. And, you know, I think that aspect that you mention of money impacting us all. And it being something that a lot of folks don't want to deal with, I think is a common motivator for a lot of our customers. And that's why we've got such a great group of folks like you. I think. Can you talk a little bit about the services that you provide to clients? And then we'll transition into how you got started offering those services remotely.

Katie So we actually have a couple of different sides to our business model. We're an (RA?). We started during retirement planning like many started. We actually have expanded beyond that throughout the years. We have our typical what we call our retirement planning clients, which is the people that are coming up on retirement age. They have some money in their 401K or I.R.A. or they've amassed money throughout their lives and they need help figuring out how to navigate that retirement. That's very similar to a lot of our models out there. The other side of our business is we deal with a lot of small business owners that have a lot of cash flow issues. Maybe they don't have any money yet, but they have a lot of cash flow. She's a lot of debt issues. And so we help them personally and their businesses doing all their bookkeeping, accounting, payroll, tax, all that wonderful stuff as well. And then as the business model evolves, as people as our business grows, they sell those businesses. Then they have money which comes back to us and we can manage that money.

John And so you've been really somebody who has led in in delivering services remotely. And, you know, we certainly remember fondly the write up in The Wall Street Journal about eliminating the traditional quarterly report in favor of a more digital approach. So can you talk about what got you started on that journey? What was your realization that you wanted to start to do that? And how did you get started there?

Katie So one of the things we were doing was just trying to move everything remotely. We wanted to be able to work from anywhere, which is great in times like this when you need to be able to work from anywhere. That was one driver. The second driver was actually a consultant that came into our business. And at that point in time, we were still preparing quarterly reports and he was digging in and asking a lot of questions like how much time are you putting into this? Exactly through the process and as we started to talk to clients more, we realized that we were spending a whole lot of time on something that really delivered no value. By the time they received the reports, they were stale and the information was old. And this was probably, oh, gosh, I don't know, ten or fifteen years ago, ten years ago, I'm guessing maybe that we that we made that change. And then when we thought it would be very difficult to transition people away from a more paper model, and it turned out to not be difficult at all. Those people like they still get monthly statements from a custodian, they take him and they shred them or they throw them away or whatever, they don't they don't want to see it. So when they're looking at their own time, when they want to see it, they know it's available. And that's the real driver to it is they can get to it when they need it now.

John So what kind of services have you delivered, you know, remotely? I mean, obviously, we're talking about reporting, so digitized reporting. But there's all kinds of processes in your firm to talk about the things that you found that were really important and valuable and maybe added some leverage to the firm by doing remotely.

Katie So I said before we do accounting, tax, payroll, all those things on the business side, those are all delivered remotely through software that connects the business owner and us as well. So we can both access that information at the same time. There's no paper at all that changes hands ever. Also meetings, we use Skype or teams or something like that. It depends on really the client what we use and so we can talk to people just like you and I are now and deliver their information remotely. We also use other softwares where their financial planning is delivered remotely. We never, ever print a financial plan anymore. We actually there was a joke in our office that we're not even allowed to print color. We're not allowed to print at all. We're not allowed to print in color. Because they're no use for it. Our clients never see it. It's just not, it's not a necessity. People take paper and they take things and they throw it away. So even when we're meeting face to face with a client, we still have everything up on a screen. And then if they want an email version of it, we send it to them. But really, a lot of our clients. We have clients in Florida, in other parts of the country. And so we can have a relationship with them just like anybody else. But we do still try to have some human contact as necessary. Even clients that are far away. We try to see once every year or two just to have a face to face conversation. I do think it's important. But you can do a lot without it.

John And how did clients react to the switch? We've talked a little bit about how they reacted to the switch on the reporting side. But what about the meetings? I think many advisors feel like the regular meeting in person is a bedrock principle. But it sounds like you've had a different experience.

Katie I think I think there's both. I think you have to have some I guess some face to face meetings occasionally. I think also our process is not meeting centric. It's deliverable centric, I guess you could say. We have a process, so we're not necessarily scheduling meetings and only doing work when we have a meeting. So our work is being done all year long and we're communicating with our clients constantly about what needs to be done. So it negates the necessity for these big, long meetings all the time that most people don't really want to have. Some people that have been around a long time still want to have, they want to come in and talk to their visor because they're retired and they don't have anything else. And that's great. We absolutely. Come on in. It's like seeing people face to face. But I don't think there's a way to serve people that are busy, younger and don't have time for those kinds of meetings. There's a way to serve them remotely and make money doing it.

John So, you know, what would you recommend to advisors who are thinking about doing this? You know, whether it's the current, you know, pandemic issues, they've got an older client base and they figure I really need to not have to see them face to face to respect that or simply for other business reasons. What would you say to them?

Katie Well, I think, first of all, it's good to have a plan in place. So when you come to times like this, we can communicate. We have meetings scheduled all this week. Some people have chosen to come into the office. Some people have said, no, I don't want to come into the office. And now we can say, OK, let's have a meeting remotely and we'll still have our meeting. We don't have to cancel and push everything back. So I think it's good to have a process in place even if you don't plan to use it. A lot of ARIs, their clientele tends to be older. So I think that's something that may get a little bit of a pushback, is that there are some people that just don't like technology, we have a segment of our population that is like that. For those people, I don't think you can push them into the digital world. And you have to decide whether or not it is worth it to have those people as clients, I guess. But a shocking number of people we would think would care, don't. I mean, people have embraced DocuSign. I mean, everything. Everything that's digital. Because it's easier once they try. It's easier right now. Probably 90 percent of our clients are good with anything we want to do digitally. We have a we have about 10 percent. I would say that I still push back and prefer face to face meetings. Paper, things like that. And it's not always related to age. We have a, you know, a young couple that are in their early thirties and still want everything in paper. Which blew our minds. But there are some, but I'd say it's probably 90, 10. And of that 90 percent that are digital. I'd say maybe only 10 or 20 percent of them we really had to push. And I think a lot of that comes at the beginning of the process. Just developing the trust with a new client anyways. You're, as they're more likely to trust you. They're more likely to trust in your processes and things that you do. So as we go through those early steps, we see them more, we hold their hand more, we do those things more. And then as they start to trust us more, they say, OK, go ahead and send us a DocUsign instead. I don't have to sign it in person or let's have this meeting via Skype this time, because I don't need to see you, but I think it does take a little bit of time to move that needle for some folks.

John So let's say an advisor listening or watching has made the decision, I'm going to do what Katie did. Are there key things that they should do at the outset?

Katie I would say ease your clients into it. Don't make it a don't make it about you. I'll tell you a story of an advisor that was trying to raise fees one time. And this was a personal story with my parents. So they go to their advisor and he says, I'm sorry. I'm gonna have to raise your fee a little bit. Our technology has just gotten so expensive and our costs have gone up in all these back end things. And my mother, who has an interesting brain, says, well, I don't care about your costs. What's the value to me? Why would I pay you more for the same service? And so I think about that every time I'm trying to switch something for our client is, how is it going to help them? So when you're going to the digital world, it's a pretty easy answer. How it's going to help them. It's gonna save them a bucket of time every day, especially when we're dealt a lot of dentists. They're busy. They have to be chair side in order to make money. They don't have time to deal with us. So you address it from our perspective of we will be face to face with you. We will meet you. We will do it however you want it to be done. But if you try it this way, you might like it. And if you don't, that's fine. We'll do it the other way. We'll do it however you want to do it. And that's the service we offer. But most of the time, if they try, they end up liking it. They realize they don't have to see it so much. They can send us stuff remotely. We can talk to them on the phone or on Skype. And it saves everybody a lot of time. Everybody saves time, and everybody is happier.

John And are there any mistakes either that you've observed or that you made yourself that that advisors should be watchful for? Things to avoid?

Katie Pushing too hard. Just saying this is the way it's gonna be. And if you're willing to give up those clients, then you can do that, especially like I see clients, people who have been around a long time. If you want to get rid of them, maybe that's a way you get rid of. It's hard to fire clients. But if you want to keep those people around, it's got to be a gentle conversation. It's got to be a conversation about them, not about you. And ultimately, it is about them. It's not about us. It saves us time, too. But if we're delivering their services better than they're having a better experience. So I would say that's the biggest thing, is not trying to push it on them, but ease them into it.

John And I think I recall one of your particular solutions to that, at least when it came to reporting and I want to articulate it and make sure I've got it right for the folks who are going to listen to this. And what I recall is you made the universal choice to do digital reporting for everyone. And you simply said to everyone, OK, your reports are going to be digital. But if you'd like the traditional report that we provided, just ask and we'll make it happen. And as I recall from talking to you at the time, that was very effective. And from a behavioral economics standpoint, it changed the default behavior. So instead of default being get the report, the default was now get the digital experience. And so that alone seemed to have really helped the transition. You have got that right.

Katie Yes, you are absolutely right. Nudges are effective. And defaults are effective. You think about it. Canda 401K plans now. So many people have auto-enrollment or you have to have a qualified default investment alternative. You wanted to be good. You have to have all these things. And when you have auto-enrollment and people don't have to make a choice to do it, they're going to default to that choice more often or not. And that's just yeah, that's just behavioral economics and that's the science behind it, you make the default option what you want. What do you think is going to benefit them, but you have to give them that alternative.

John Wonderful. Well, listen, thank you so much for the time this morning and sharing what you've experienced in doing this. The last decade, really fantastic. And are there any other, you know, closing things that you'd like to to share before we wrap up?

Katie I don't think so. I mean, I don't think this is a real novel idea in the terms of going digital or not going digital. I think the hardest part is pulling the trigger and just saying we're gonna do it all the time. It probably already should have been done in most cases unless you're dealing with a whole lot of elderly people. But if you want to have access to younger clients, which I think most advisors struggle with, you have to have this capability. That's not really an option anymore.

John Fantastic. Thank you so much for the time. Katie Stokes.

Katie All right. Thank you.

John All right. Bye bye.

John: All right. So today I am speaking with Jason Park of Margo Park Financial in San Diego. Welcome, Jason.

Jason: Hi. Thank you.

John: So super glad to have you here. And you know, the topic of today's discussion, obviously, is how to serve clients remotely or virtually. And before we get into that, I would love to talk to you a little bit about what you got. You started in the business. What drives you? And why do you serve clients?

Jason: Sure. OK. So I started, I guess you'd say started by helping my dad, who was an advisor at Wells Fargo, and I was in high school. And then from there I went to college and then I interned at Goldman Sachs and their asset management division. And I just kind of saw that whole world, the broker world and how it worked, especially working at Goldman Sachs. I saw how the wholesale side worked where you got these guys just trying to sell their funds through brokers. And so I learned all this and I did college, did a job, and then I got into insurance sales and became a top producer. But that was all commission. And it was just a huge hustle every day. And even the top guys were just nonstop selling. And then there was an opportunity to add my securities license because an insurance company I worked for had an independent broker dealer they were affiliated with. So I got my series seven sixty six. And then I was the financial advisor for the whole branch. So I was the only one. So if other agents needed help with clients or prospects who had investments, they had to bring me along and then I could help advise. But like I was still stuck in this broker world. And even just I mean, I was selling funds making five point seven, five percent front load commissions like my dad did and like Goldman Sachs was trying to sell through people like my dad and I happened to come across this one page study and it was from dimensional funds who I'd never heard of. And it had this amazing, terrifying statistic of, you know, over 20 years. If you look at all the mutual funds that exist, a fraction of them are still around. And then a very, very small fraction of that fraction were still around and beat their benchmarks. And that was just an eye-opening pivotal day for me because I thought. So you're saying all this time, all these funds that I'm selling to my clients, I only have the slim, slim percentage chance that they're going to do better. And so I just delved into the whole dimensional, like, you know, all their papers and talked to them. And I discovered like, OK, there is a better way and evidence based way, you know, scientific way that I can give my clients the best chance. And that meant also going independent and becoming an RIAA and no commissions. So that's just kind of been my evolution, I think. I think a lot of insurance agents kind of go through the same thing or will eventually come to the same crossroads that I did. Is they're going to realize there's a better way than just selling for commission and they're gonna have to choose whether to go in the arm, a fee based or fee only model or stay where they're at. And I think it becomes then an ethical issue of I know what's best for the client is no conflicts and commissions are inherently conflict driven. I mean, I mean, they're just baked into the design. So, yeah, that's my evolution. And then since then, I just have been just doing that. You know, fees only and helping clients. I do insurance once in a while when necessary, just as part of the planning process, because insurance is almost always part of the deal. But I'll donate all of the commissions generated from commission sales so I can stay conflict free. And the clients know that. And so, you know, I don't have to choose between a more expensive product that might pay me more versus a cheaper one that pays me less because I'm not going to keep it anyway.

Justin You would say you donate the commissions from products. Do you donate them to the client? Or do you donate to a charity?

Jason Yeah. Yeah. An actual donation. Because I can't donate it to the client or its rebating, which is a no no. Like I want to. I looked into that and while I think like the place that I go through for my insurance sales, they told me that maybe technically in California it's rebating is OK. The insurance carriers themselves are very you know, no on it. It just I think the idea is that it gets an unfair advantage that if one agent touts hey oh, you'll I'll share my commission with you and therefore I'll make the sale. It's not fair to the other agents who're not going to share commissions. So I'll do it to charity. If the client wants a particular one. Great. Let's just do it there. Just because if I'm going to get ten ninety nine the commission, then at least I can help get the donation to help offset that income that I'm not keeping.

John That is fantastic. That's pretty dedicated to making that model that you've built pure. Well, fantastic. So. And that's what's interesting and powerful. But something is equally powerful about the way you service clients is that you are primarily virtual or remote when you serve as clients. Is that right?

Jason Yeah. And it wasn't by design. Definitely not in the beginning, because the way that I was taught how to service clients in the insurance business was just go drive to your client's kitchen and sit down at their kitchen table, meet with them one on one. We focused on retirees and it was a lot of driving and it was great. Like, I love the little one on one face to face, comfortable setting. They don't come to my office. We don't have to go to a restaurant or a Starbucks. So I've done that. It's just that really personal touch. I love that. But if the driving wasn't sustainable, it's exhausting. And so as I grew, I just didn't have time to just go drive to my clients. And so and then simultaneously, like these are all primarily retirees. They were getting comfortable with texting and emojis. And it was amazing. I'll never forget, like the first text I ever got from my retiree clients in their 80s sending me an emoji or a bitmoji, you know, like them themselves. That's actually the first time I ever saw a big mojie was up my 80 year old client and I thought it was fantastic. So they're getting more comfortable with it. I am not wanting to drive anymore. And it was just a natural progression of, well, the texting. And I'll text back an email and they'll email, you know. You know, oh, I should say Blueleaf has been mine rocksteady like foundation from the beginning of all this. Like when I was transitioning from being an independent broker dealer, you know, the insurance company I was working at, I knew that I needed something that would make the client feel like there's not much changing, even though there was a lot changing. So I had all of their current accounts sync up and I could see it all. And so when I transitioned over and I had said, you know, go to a custodian and move their accounts over. It didn't feel different to them. The experience was the same. And so, you know, the Sunday morning e-mails that they get every week, like it's like that also helped me become more and more virtual. Because they are used to all this virtual stuff anyway So, yeah. So now at this point, it's mostly just phone calls. I'll do a screen share and I'll have them like, you know, just join it and I can show them stuff and I'll talk to them on the phone and texting. A lot of texting.

John So a lot of texting. So. And I'll come back to texting. I think a lot of advisors are going to be interested to hear how you handle compliance on that end. But before we get there. So it sounds like the foundation of your communication with clients is this idea of having a digitally based reporting system. Can you talk a little bit about how you thought about that and how your usage of that evolved? It sounds like you also do virtual meetings now, so. So talk a little bit about.

Jason Yeah. So. OK. We'll see. So. OK. Clients are used to getting statements virtually like their bank statements. You know, like every time you log on, it's like it forces you basically to like opt in, opt in, opt in. So there are they're accustomed to things being virtual related to finance. And so having Blueleaf be this thing which is similar to like what they're already getting and experiencing was very helpful. So every Sunday they get their weekly emails like they might even reply to it. And it comes to me, which is fantastic how you set that up. And then I can see the reply and I can reply back. And if they call me up and I'm talking to them through it and they're referring to their weekly statement, I'll just pull up my email because I bcse myself on the settings that you can put for compliance. And I'll just pull up their most recent weekly statement from Blueleaf and then we'll just go down and then usually hit. It's just like, oh yeah. Look, if you just keep scrolling down, you'll see account by account the change and then that's usually all they want to see. Yeah, so Blueleaf being my foundation, it's like my client system. I mean, I think the value is OK, so the clients experience, they just see the weekly emails. I don't even know if they really know how to log in to see their Blueleaf stuff. I know that they already have a log on for one custodian and we use a different custodian for different accounts like they already have different accounts. Log on and they have different statements. I doubt that they're really, really using this for log. Another log on, but they get the weekly emails and that's key. The other thing is that I can look in Blueleaf and analyze their accounts in one place and I can tell them like, OK, look, your performance for the past seven days, 30 days, you're inception across all your accounts, across all the various custodians. It's just right there live. And so I don't have to manually go into each custodian and analyze things. It's all there in one place. And I have run those reports where, you know, it's like my little picture and all that stuff for them. It's not that frequent just because they're content with the Sunday emails and it's like the right amount of information that they need. And it's really simple.

John Got it. So it sounds like reporting for you is kind of evolved into something that instead of a static PDAF has become something that's much more interactive and even driven by push messaging. In the case of the weekly email.

Jason Yeah, precisely right.

John And that it sounds like how you handle some of the ad hoc requests and sort of the regular day to day. Can you talk about a process that you might have for regular meetings or regular reviews with clients? How do you do that remotely?

Jason I think that maybe I should do more regularly scheduled meetings than I am. Just because the interactions that I don't know if this is just different in how I talk to her serves my clients, but it's so informal and again, not official, and so like, you know, they might have a question that they text me and then that might necessitate me to go into Blueleaf and look analyze something, look at past performance or or the allocation or something. So then I'll call him back and then either I'll share my screen and show them when I'm looking at on Blueleaf or I'll just talk it through and then just getting the information. And it's like. There isn't really like an official quarterly meeting of look at this report that I create and look at me. And I'm gonna like it like a teacher or a lecturer. It's like really informal. And it's just what they want to talk about and what they're interested in. And I think that's part of why I'm their advisor, is they they just trust me to do right by them and take care of the stuff that they either don't want to do or they don't understand. And true, I don't know just that Sunday email is like, it's something so profoundly helpful and simple for me and the client. It's like a weekly meeting, they get virtually that I don't have to create a report for. It's already done for me. So I don't know if that's like maybe a poor answer, but.

John Well, if I could summarize, I mean, what I but I think I heard you say is by going digital and having on demand information and push information, the need for what was a much more traditional process. Just went away.

Jason Yeah basically. And that's I don't know if I'm out of compliance by that happening, but my clients are happy. They're still getting updated. I mean, yeah.

Justin Jason, I had a question. Imagine being virtual. We're moving whatever in virtual and then on demand sending out reports. You just being virtual in general can be kind of scary to some advisors because they grossly underestimate their clients. Have you gotten pushback from prospects or clients given your process?

Jason I mean, if anything, like my out-of-state clients who I wouldn't regularly go see anyway. Right. And I only saw them once ever. And, you know, they're like, I want you to come out again. They're in Oklahoma. And I say, okay, I really should make another trip out there. But no. Like all my local clients who I could easily go see and drive to. Nobody's begging me to come back to their, you know, their kitchen table. That said, I think because I don't know if it's like a front load. So much of the relationship in the beginning that it it it's already like a really warm, informal, friendly relationship that it has allowed me maybe to be virtual from here on out now, you know, like they already know me. They have a good sense of me. They get a good flavor of you. Okay. I know who this is. And I can be informed with this guy. And he knows my favorite flowers, tulips, and he knows about my cat and that no, no pushback at all, which I have been a little surprised about. But again, it's also Ben, like, you know, the texting that they originate to me and the emojis and bit more Jesus like they're doing it. So I'm just doing it back. And I and I just have realized that it's okay. And they like it. So.

John What is the mix for you of communicating with your clients via phone vs. video conferencing? How much do you use video? You know what? How do you use that tool?

Jason OK. So I think I read this somewhere about some other advisor that when he does virtual meetings, he doesn't actually use his webcam like this. It's just he'll do the screen share. And I thought, that's very smart because I can just be in my pajamas and then talk to my client and show them all the stuff on the screen then ever seen. And I'll just have him on the phone. Which is better quality, I think, for audio. I've kind of stuck with it. I mean, if you look here like this is my home office and it's like this messy non white whiteboard and like this old door, I don't know that this is the best place to do a video conference like I kind of I'd like to do or at least experiment with that. But have a national background, maybe set up a camera with like a gray backdrop with the light on it, the right lighting. And I'd like to see what that does. But nobody's really asked me to see my face like they're happy on the phone and seeing my screen or just phone.

John And it sounds like your client satisfaction is still remaining high.

Jason Yeah, I think so. I mean, this is just me as a person, I think. Yeah, I think in life, not just with clients or relationships or friendships, but I try to make things as informal as possible as quickly as possible. That's just me as a person because I think it's just more fun, natural. You know, since I approach my clients that way too, even if it's a first time meeting with a prospect. I will purposely try to interject comments or things to get it really informal and then just have everybody feel comfortable. Obviously, in addition to all the necessary things like helpful things and analysis and all that stuff, but it's kind of like a value of mine. So yeah, I even forgot what your question was. Sorry.

Justin And so you're using the screen cast instead of a lot of video. What tools are you using for that? Do you have multiple you have based on the client or is it really just you your staple go-to.

Jason OK. Good. So in addition to my foundational value of making things informal, another thing of mine is keeping things super simple for the end person. So I was just going to say client. But even like my mom. Right. Or like a friend. I want to make it as easy and enjoyable as possible for that end person. So any kind of software that would require a download on their side. I don't want to. So like I'd looked at zoom and go to meeting, I'm used to some other stuff. There's a free video screen and the screen share software called whereby. So where? Buy.com you can sign up for free and then have your own name. So whereby dot com slash your name re-affirming or whatever and it doesn't require any download that's free. I've actually purchased a few video screen software things. I just haven't really tested them out. I'm part of the subscriber list for app Sumo's app Sumo's like this great software tool thing and they like to promote software that's usually cheaper and a lot of times are lifetime deals. So you just purchase it once and then no subscription. So I think I've purchased two or three different screen share or video conferencing things and I just haven't really tested them out.

John And I'm curious about how you've extended this kind of virtual approach to prospecting in your earn your sales process. You know, I'm sure you've got digital marketing. But once someone becomes an actual prospect, they believe they are qualified. I'm curious, you know, how you apply some of this virtual approach during that process.

Jason OK. So if it's a prospect, if it's local, I will still meet face to face. You know, again, like I try to front load. I know if I try, but I just naturally frontload the relationship right in the beginning, just a lot of like good feelings and they're happy. So I will meet them. And then after that, the rest of it, like everything can be done over the computer now, so, you know, we can dock you signed documents, we can open accounts just online. Will you even need a wet signature anymore for anything? Maybe some old school insurance places might require that. But I came in, just sent them the document, they signed it and then like to take a picture of it and send it back or something. So anyway, if it's local, I will try to meet them in person like I do like that. If they're too far away. I mean the phone. I don't know if people just underestimate the phone because also if you think of the retiree clients that I have. Like they grew up with that first. Right. The phone was first and then whatever computer and other things. So they're very comfortable chatting. And I don't know if it's a skill. Maybe you can, like, get better at phone call communication and just also get really friendly and like to have things informal pretty quickly just over the phone. Texting is also I think texting is a skill, too, though, of like sending things that are professional or helpful and also like adding in a little bit of fun. Right. Like these emojis and stuff. So we think I had a younger client who first contacted me, I think via text he was younger. So he's used to texting and we didn't so much back and forth, just the attacks. And then later we met for the first time. And, you know, again, like I want to make sure the end person has a comfortable, easy and formal fun experience. So if they want to communicate that way, I will communicate via the same way.

John So it really sounds like I mean, there is a real theme here for me, listening to the way you think about how you communicate with clients and it's empathy. It feels like you start with what would be good for this person as well as me, but what would be good for them? And then you add a little bit of personality in there.

Jason Yeah, that's great. That's a great summary. And I didn't realize that myself.

John Yeah.

Jason Well, you're totally right.

John I'm curious, you know, for advisers who are listening, who are thinking about going virtual with their client service. Do you have any things that you recommend they may think about or things that they should be doing first?

Jason I'm sorry. The question was with people who were starting.

John Yeah. Yeah. How should an advisor who's interested in serving clients digitally get started?

Jason Oh, I see. OK. Well if they are using Blueleaf then they're ahead of the game because again, that was my foundation. If they're not, then use Blueleaf like it is a no brainer, especially if you use multiple custodians and if you like communications sent on your behalf that come from you. And if they were, if the client replies to that, it comes directly to you, then Blueleaf. What other things? Like I use another tool, but this is just part of. I don't know if this is more specific to my planning process. I don't know. OK. So if they feel if a client's sorry, if a new advisor wants to do more virtual meetings and use virtual tools. Practice talking on the phone a lot because you'll be doing that. Try a screen, a free screen, share a video conferencing software like whereby there's so many others. Just try one of them. Maybe practice with your friends or family first and make sure like, you know, the quality is good. And then also you come across well, like the way that you want to come across. Really in not much health, I don't think. And maybe just experiment like try it with your best client and make it not official, like, hey. I want to try this virtually just naturally start using these things and then notice the ways in which they're virtually communicating with you and just respond in the same medium.

John We encourage experimentation. That seems to be a very successful strategy to be flexible and I think a little less formal in experimenting. Seems to work well in your experience doing this now for several years. Are there any mistakes that you, you've seen others make or made yourself that you think that other advisors should try to avoid?

Jason Huh? Let me think. I mean, I can imagine that if you're not ready for a video conference and then your video screens up and then, you know, that could be awkward weather. Weather, like I'm just saying, like you're in your pajamas and they didn't know. But like, maybe I don't know if you have a kid running around in the back or the background looks like my background, you know. And then you don't want to come across like this guy is my advisor or is he working out of like above his garage? Maybe prep that. Like, I can imagine that being a mistake. Let me think. Oh, I mean, OK. So there have been times when I've tried to use the screen share software and it just didn't work for the end person. We just had to roll over that and just do it over the phone. Right. So just like be ready that the attack may not work at that time. But that was like something that I know, for me, I wanted him to have a good experience. I really didn't like it when I wanted it to work because I had stuff to show him and I told him he was going to see things. So I don't know, maybe just ahead of time pre debug the technology you're using. And that's why I like to try with your friends or family first. And you. Sure. Like it's super smooth. The link works. There's no question about it. Oh, yeah. I have an adviser under me who's younger and so he's even more savvy with this technology. Is Hild text the link to the client? And he'll text it with spaces so that it doesn't show up as a link on the phone to tap. But it's very clearly broken out. That's a tip, I think. So that there's no question on what the you are ELAs if you're sending them to a site.

John Fantastic. Well, Jason, thank you. It's been really educational speaking with you and learning about your business. You know, look forward to chatting with you again in the future.

Jason Thank you so much. Yeah, my pleasure.

John And everyone, that's Jason Park of Margo Park Financial in San Diego. And we're out. Wow, thanks a ton, Jason.

Jason Yeah. You're very welcome.