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Tune in to "What Works" hosted by Don Patrick where we tap into 2,500+ years of experience in running financial advisory practices. In each episode, Don sits down with an experienced financial planner, uncovering the unique insights and experiences that have shaped their careers. From navigating market fluctuations to building successful client relationships, Don and his guests share invaluable business tips and strategies for financial planners looking to thrive in the industry.
Join us every other Thursday, as we explore the wealth of knowledge accumulated from over 2500+ years of combined experience in financial planning.
Donald Patrick
Hey everybody. Welcome to the 45th episode of the IFG podcast, what works. And our guest today is Daniel Lee, of Karen lane associates in Atlanta, Georgia. Daniel welcome.
Daniel Lee
Hey Don, happy to be here.
Donald Patrick
Awesome. Well, tell us a little bit about yourself, your background, your family, things of that nature. Can you kick this off?
Daniel Lee
Sure, so I'm 33. I'm in my ninth year in the industry, eighth year as an advisor. Been with Karen Lee and Associates the whole time. My story there is that I graduated college and didn't really know what I wanted to do. So I got a job that taught me a lot about what I didn't want to do. And then...
Donald Patrick
What was that? What was that job?
Daniel Lee
That was a entry level operations job with a company that did direct mail and digital marketing for nonprofits.
Donald Patrick
interesting. So you learned you didn't want to be doing that.
Daniel Lee
Not really that interesting. Yeah, it was a lot of just stuff on spreadsheets and not a whole lot of relationship building. And while it felt good to be with a company that was serving a space that made me feel like they were having an impact, I didn't feel like I was having an impact.
Donald Patrick
Would you major in college? Where'd you go to college?
Daniel Lee
I went to the University of Tennessee Go Vols and I had a roundabout track through the business school, took a kind of a side track to get in-state tuition. If nobody knows about the academic common market, that needs to be a quiver in your college planning repertoire. And ultimately decided that I wanted to not be in school a whole lot longer.
and wanted to enjoy my time, I graduated with a psychology degree.
Donald Patrick
like your mom.
Daniel Lee
Yeah, her unofficial psychology degree.
Donald Patrick
So you figure out what you didn't want to do then what happened
Daniel Lee
while I was in that job, I basically just had a period of time where I was back to the drawing board. had gotten that job through, our personal network. and for the first time, I started asking my mother more about what she did because I kind of knew what she did like in general. And I.
had seen some of the effects that it had had in her life over time, but I really didn't know what all she did. So when I told her I was interested in exploring what she does, she said exactly that. You don't know what I do. And I don't want to spend the time to teach it to you at the moment. So why don't you go learn some about it? And that was how I got connected to the CFP class.
It was in the CFP class where I had kind of my light bulb moment, so to speak. It just checked all the boxes for me on what a career could be. And so I consider myself very fortunate to have kind of lucked into figuring out what I wanted to do very early on.
Donald Patrick
So you, so he enrolled in, or is that Oglethorpe? Is that where he went?
Daniel Lee
It was actually through the Terry College of Business at have a, no, University of Georgia. They have a satellite campus here in Buckhead, Lennox area. And yeah, and they have an CFP, like program degree that they offer. So this was a capstone course.
Donald Patrick
or to stay.
Donald Patrick
Huh, I didn't know that.
Daniel Lee
five areas of planning and a case study at the end. All in all, takes, I think, a little over a year. But they made me a sweetheart deal where I could just pay for the first module, which was the basics and insurance planning, and then decide from there if I wanted to sign up for the rest of it. Funny story, my first teacher in that class was Trent.
Donald Patrick
Adam
Daniel Lee
Yep, Trent Adams, and he was great.
Donald Patrick
That must have been enjoyable because he's funny as heck.
Daniel Lee
Yeah, I mean, I found the content extraordinarily interesting, so I wasn't falling asleep, but neither was anyone else. So he did a good job.
Donald Patrick
Yeah, he knows the stuff too, besides being funny. So, before I continue on this track, any hobbies or outside interests that you have personally?
Daniel Lee
Did I mention before that I like the University of Tennessee?
Donald Patrick
it sorta came across, but I know there's a little bit of passion there.
Daniel Lee
When I was born at the baby factory Northside Hospital, my grandmother drove down from Knoxville and had an orange UT onesie waiting when I came into the world. So I have always been a Tennessee fan and I ended up going to college there and I'm pretty passionate about that university and all things Tennessee sports. I realized a childhood dream two years ago and became a football season ticket holder.
Donald Patrick (05:55.85)
my gosh, wow.
Daniel Lee
Yep, so I spend a fair amount of my time consumed with all things Tennessee. Outside of that, I have a long-term girlfriend, a dog that most people have seen at some point. I think when he was a puppy, I actually brought him into the office. And then outside of that, I really like to travel and enjoy live music.
Daniel Lee
I like to say that live music is like water for the soul.
Donald Patrick
That's a great way of describing it. Nothing like live music. So, so you enrolled in the CFP course and then when were you allowed to join the Carolina Associates?
Daniel Lee
And I was allowed to. Well, it's funny. You know, I was interested in what she did, but I didn't actually want to work with her at first. And she didn't really want to work with me. So the plan was figure out if you want to do this and then figure out how you're going to get into the industry. If you do want to do it. I always thought that I would come at it from maybe the wholesaling side. Have someone teach me up.
Donald Patrick
interesting.
Daniel Lee
learn some important sales skills, get exposure to advisors. And then at some point, maybe I'd end up working with Karen, who knows? Because she's been looking for a succession plan for 15, 20 years. Third time's a charm. Third time's a charm. But yeah, it was.
Donald Patrick (07:38.35)
long time. It's hard to do.
Daniel Lee
through that process of basically informational interviewing that a lot of people said, hey, Daniel, I'll get your resume in front of someone if you want, but you're a fool if you don't get your mother to hire you. And I think if enough people tell you something, you should probably listen. So after getting told no by a couple places that didn't want to hire me because they just assumed that I would leave,
in a couple years to go into the family business and hearing enough people rave about Karen's business, we had a conversation together and just figured out, if my path was gonna eventually lead back to her business, why not start now? And what we know is above all else, this is a relationship business.
That would ultimately be the most important thing to me being able to continue a standard of care that she had had for her clients and have them stay and be comfortable with it. So we said, let's do it. know, worse comes to worse. I come out of it licensed and ready to go work somewhere else. And if it works out.
It could be a really beautiful thing. And in hindsight, it's probably the best decision I've ever made.
Donald Patrick
So mixing family and business is very sticky. What kind of rules did you guys come up with? And were there any with Karen? I'm sure there were. She's pretty careful.
Daniel Lee
Yeah.
Yeah, we did come up with some stuff at the beginning on both sides. You you get called honey in front of clients enough times and then you're like, know, Daniel works or Karen works instead of mom. But on the other side too, I mean, she was investing in me and we do have a really good close relationship. But anyone knows this with family, you know, the closer you are.
Donald Patrick
You
Daniel Lee
the more kind of stuff there can be between you. And it was really important that, one, we tried to keep the main thing the main thing, which was that me and my mother's relationship was always gonna come before anything business. Two, when we're in the office, it's about business. And when we're out of the office, we don't talk about business.
That line gets blurred a little bit sometimes, but you try as best as you can. And then ultimately for our clients, it was having the same North Star. So coming in and having the same set of goals, like we're different people. We're going to do things differently.
Donald Patrick
Chinese wall.
Daniel Lee
We're going to have different ways of interacting with clients, different ways of looking at technical things, but ultimately we're on the same team. And we want to provide a consistent service offering and relationship to our clients. So making sure that we had the same values in business, making sure that we had similar philosophies about how we would.
run the business and how we would offer our services to our clients. Beyond that, you can make things better and better, but we didn't want to reinvent the wheel for something that wasn't broken. In fact, I would say that Karen has built one of the more efficient and well-functioning advising practices I've come across. Things like that were really important to
make sure we didn't get too caught up in changing things.
Donald Patrick
Well, having an aligned vision is critical to success. So that's huge.
So I mean, Karen is super sharp. As you said, she's built a great business. It runs very efficiently. And I know she's a good educator. So how did she train you? Was it just following her around? Was it more formal, some combination? What was that like? So you've been with her, what, eight years now? You say eight years or nine?
Daniel Lee
Well, it's interesting. Yeah, I'm in my ninth year.
Daniel Lee
Karen is all those things that you said. But also, Karen's not a natural manager, nor did she ever want to be. She's really good at managing herself. And you can see that across her career. She's been a high performer. So it was kind of new and something that we both had to figure out.
as far as she knew, she was just going to train me the way that she was trained. But her business today is a lot different than the business that she came into. So.
Donald Patrick
Yes, you start off selling insurance. Totally different.
Daniel Lee
Yeah, and there were a lot of things that I learned in that first year that were important. Maybe one of the most important things was just being told no, getting rejected and becoming confident in how I presented myself and how I communicated the value of what we do to people. But it...
It didn't ultimately work for what we needed for our business and for our clients. And it's not the way that I suggest training a young advisor. In fact, if I had to do it and it was tied to my compensation, like keeping the lights on and putting food on the table, I would have washed out of this business. I would have been a statistic like.
so many others. So kudos to Karen for being able to survive in a male dominated and commission based role, you know, 36, 37 years ago.
but ultimately what we decided was after doing that and getting that experience that really the best way for me to be taught the business was one to learn the ins and outs from an administrative and operational side. so, you know, what most people would consider just earning your stripes and doing the, the, the grunt work and all that stuff, you know,
recognizing how the business actually operates, and then sitting in on meetings and getting live experience, seeing Karen at work, talking to clients, figuring out what it actually means to be an advisor and not just financial planning training.
Donald Patrick
So you start off, which is the proper way, learning how to do paperwork, what's a Roth, what's a non-qualify, all the language, all the acronyms, which is that in itself, it's another language. It literally is like learning another language. And that is, in my opinion, the best way to get started. You have to learn that stuff. so then, sitting in meetings is super valuable. I mean, just shadowing.
is so valuable. So when did you start learning how to do put financial plans together and using all the technology and all those tools? Was that gradual or that was that a very focused effort?
Daniel Lee
It was pretty soon. mean, within that, the first year for me was all training on the admin and operations and then studying for license exams and then ultimately learning those things too, in order to be of support. But within a year to a year and a half, somewhere in there, I would say that by that time I knew how to do everything that...
was required from me from a technical standpoint. And I was an advisor by that time.
Donald Patrick
Over your like like the second year Wow that is fast track
Daniel Lee
Yeah.
Daniel Lee
It was fast track. And again, I don't know that that's the best way to do it. know, seeing other people.
excel in a slower track, especially at my age. I always joke that I use a touch of gray in my beard to make myself appear older. Because I got told a couple times, Daniel, you're 25. What do you know about my money that I don't know about my money? And that's a hard question to answer when you're 25. But yeah, I think that
the right way to do this is there is a body of knowledge and experience that you need to really be an advisor along with a skill set. And that stuff doesn't happen overnight. So even though I was a financial advisor and title in my second year, I don't know that I was prepared to be who
the clients needed me to be.
Donald Patrick
Were you meeting clients one-on-one or with Karen at that second year?
Daniel Lee
I was not meeting her clients one-on-one, but I was meeting clients one-on-one. We did bring on, some, some younger people as clients, just, by way of nature, me and my network trying to get me experience. I was actually doing financial plans for free, because I would do it for anyone who would be committed to going through the process with me.
knowing that that alone is an ask, you know.
Donald Patrick
great.
Donald Patrick
Great. And more in the demographic of age of the clients is always important to you. So I'm going to do a quick deviation and get back on track. But my understanding is you are a master network.
Daniel Lee
I try to be. My networking really came out of that needing to get experience talking to people, but also, you know, if you've been to the IFG office, it looks a little bit different now, but when I came on eight years ago, nine years ago, and this is before COVID, there weren't any young people in the office.
There was Bryce. Bryce still had long hair and he was still doing all the trades himself. That was about it. But I didn't have much of a natural community in the office. And being on a small team at the time, was just Karen, Jessica and myself. I wasn't getting the social interaction through work that most people would get. So I would say that my networking was
twofold. One was, yeah, I needed experience getting out there talking to people, but also I have a personal need for human interaction that I really needed to figure out how to fill. And so I did a lot of networking.
Donald Patrick
So networking groups, events, where did you do your networking?
Daniel Lee
you name it, if it was something that I could go to an event that I could either go to for free or convince Karen to pay for me to go to, or even just in my personal life. I was 25, so I was still unencumbered and flexible and energized and whatnot to go out and talk to anyone anywhere.
Donald Patrick
Yeah, anything.
Daniel Lee
so my, my networking was if I can be around people in any fashion, that's what I'm going to spend my time doing.
Donald Patrick
I it. So you're at a networking event of some sort and you're having a conversation with someone. Walk us through or maybe role play just a little bit how you have the conversation with them and how it might turn into a possible meeting or something down the road.
Daniel Lee
It's an interesting concept. mean, don't be afraid to talk to people. First of all, like, everyone's just as afraid to talk to you as you are to talk to them, especially in an environment like networking where it's focused, inevitably someone's going to want something from you, right? So everyone's kind of on edge. You just have to be willing to put yourself out there. Like, be genuine, go talk to people.
just introduce yourself and you're not gonna get to know everyone really well and not every interaction that you have is gonna turn into anything. So, I mean, I got 500 business cards when I first started. I still probably have half of them.
Donald Patrick
500 some person
Daniel Lee
And out of the ones that I gave to people, I bet you 99.9 % of them ended up on the ground or in a trash can. So don't put that much pressure on it. Just get to know people and know who you need to meet. And then when you meet them, be really intentional. Most people know this business is just as much follow-up.
Donald Patrick
Mm-hmm.
Daniel Lee
as it is anything else. But if you can be reliable and make it easy for other people and take a real interest in them, that's really all that it takes to start forging a relationship.
Donald Patrick
Great advice. So, you're two, you're meeting with your clients individually, and then I assume you're meeting with Karen and her clients periodically.
Daniel Lee (23:31.57)
Yes.
Donald Patrick
So fast forward.
Are you meeting with any of her clients now? I think you are, correct?
Daniel Lee
Yeah, so we started a few years ago with transitioning some of her clients to me to be the lead on, to open up her time. And then we have a certain segment of her clients that we've actually identified each client that we call forever clients for her. And so I'll always be in a
support or co advising role for those clients. But yeah, there's a lot of them. I probably have 80 clients that I'm the lead on. Jessica's now in a short amount of time, probably 60 clients that she's lead on. And then Karen's got 50.
that she's lead on, and we'd like to get that number down to 40 by next year and then ultimately 25, with the idea that if she has a couple annual reviews a month, and these are all financial planning clients, so it's not like she can bang out the reviews like just doing investment performance. But if we can get her down to just a couple,
reviews a month, then between that and the other work that she needs to do for those clients or for our business, we feel like we'll get her to a really good spot as far as her goal, which was to be able to continue to work for as long as possible while working as much or as little as she wanted at any given time.
Donald Patrick
Fantastic. That's a great, great goal. So do you, do you guys present yourself as a team? In other words, you've got three advisors now. Correct.
Daniel Lee
We do.
Yeah, we do. And we're really intentional about that. When we have an introductory call with a prospect, all three of us advisors are on that call. So it's important from day one that they see us as a team. And we talk to them about how our team is cross-trained. We're not siloed. All the clients are clients of Karen Lee and Associates. So.
Donald Patrick
interesting.
Daniel Lee
You know, someone might be the lead on a relationship, but it's not like I don't know who those people are and any information that I need to get about their situation. If say Jessica or Karen was out of town and I'm the only one fielding calls, all that information is there and all of our clients should feel comfortable talking to whoever gets on the phone with them.
Donald Patrick
That's great. That makes it really strong, sticky.
Donald Patrick
So I think the way I'm ask this question, I wanna understand some about your technology and things that you do and how you do the planning, how you present it. I guess my first, I know most of your new clients come from referrals primarily, is that correct?
Daniel Lee
That is correct.
Donald Patrick
So you've got introduced to someone and then it sounds like you have an initial call with the three of you.
And what does that conversation like and how long do they laugh? It's a discovery. The very first calls of discovery.
Daniel Lee
So that's a disco... Yeah, it is. Because it's really, it's a discovery about not like their financial situation so much as like, are we a good fit? Do they wanna work with us and do we wanna work with them? Both of those are equally important questions.
So there's a little bit that's kind of scripted in the sense that we inevitably have an opportunity to tell them about us and who we are. But I like to spend some time at first just really asking questions, making them feel heard and like this is a place where they can feel comfortable talking to us, asking questions and getting down to the...
to the punchline, which is like, do we want to have another meeting after this? Do we want to talk after this? Do we want to try to work together?
Donald Patrick
So you've all agreed it was a mutual selection process. You agree to go forward. What happens next?
Daniel Lee
So we get a feel for them as a person. Are they a good fit? Are they not an a-hole for lack of better terms? Do they value advice? Is that what they're actually there for? Can they be invested in their own success?
Are they career oriented? Are they family oriented? All these things that lend themselves to planning, which is we lead with planning, we'll always be financial planners before anything else. telling them about our process.
At that point, if they say, yes, we want to work with you, you're the people we've been looking for, or follow up with us in a week, we have someone else we're interviewing too, whatever that is, they know that the next thing is they're going to get some homework.
Because we charge an upfront fee, a financial planning fee that we never charge again. Really what it is is a get in the door fee. So not only do you have to invest your time with us, you have to invest your money with us. You don't have to invest for the rest of your life with us, but you're going to invest in this financial planning process.
Donald Patrick
What's the fee range?
Daniel Lee
Our fee range is 2000 to 5000 and it's really just based on complexity. So that's what happens at that point is they get a list of everything we need from them. And based on what we get back, we have an idea of how complex the planning is going to be. Like, will we be able to present this financial plan to them in one meeting? Is there a lot of stuff after the fact that we're going to have to
to go through to execute the recommendations, how complex and multifaceted are all their goals and financial situations and accounts. We met with one guy who had 23 different accounts.
Donald Patrick
my god.
Daniel Lee
You know, so that wasn't complex in the sense that the planning itself was so complex, but just like the quantity of stuff there was to go through. So there's so many different things that could make a plan complex. we, most of the time, are giving someone the plan for on the lower end of that range.
Because it's really not about the plan that is the big moneymaker, right? That's if you can present a plan and an experience that's really good for them, that they enjoy and convinces them that they want to work with you for forever. So we never want cost to be an obstacle to that.
Donald Patrick
And how do you collect the documents electronically or they just bring a stack of paper in?
Daniel Lee
There are some clients who insist on coming to the office and bringing a shoe box full of paper. That's about one in all of them. And then most of it is electronic. We used to do it via secure email. Now we do it via secure upload. And we basically just give them the list of everything we need.
Tell them gather it all, don't piecemeal it to us. When you get it all together, let us know and get it back to us. And so the process itself really takes as long as they take.
Donald Patrick
So secure upload, I've never heard that before. that like Box? Similar?
Daniel Lee
Yeah. Yeah, so I've got now a little button in my email signature that says KLA secure upload, and it takes them to that box site or whatever. I'm not super technologically proficient despite being a youngster, so to speak.
Donald Patrick
Yeah.
Donald Patrick
It's a lot better than secure email. It's a pain. All right, so now you've gathered the data. What's the next meeting like? Is that more of a deep dive discovery meeting or you're pairing up? Okay.
Daniel Lee
Right. Yeah.
Daniel Lee
Exactly. And I do that meeting for right now. still, we revamped our, excuse me, we revamped our onboarding process a few years ago when we became more of a team and we were being really intentional about making sure that they visibility and communication with every single one of us through.
the planning process, but we continue to revamp that. So currently I'm running all the fact finding meetings, but we've toyed around with maybe it should be me or Jessica, maybe I sit in on the ones she does and she sits in on the ones I do. So we're still bouncing around some ideas like that. But basically our discovery meeting is a few main objectives. One, we want to educate the client.
about everything that they have to the extent that they aren't already. We want to fill in any gaps, both on education or just things that they didn't get us that we need, or identify those things that we need more information about. We want to pre-close to an extent. So we're
telling them what their options and alternative things are as we educate them. By the end of that meeting, they need to have a really good understanding of what they have. They need to not be surprised by anything that we're gonna say in our planned presentation.
And in an ideal world, they're almost all but bought in on those recommendations before we even give it to them. Yeah.
Donald Patrick
Yeah, and so then the next meeting is the plan presentation.
Daniel Lee
The next meeting is the planned presentation and that usually goes swimmingly. mean, another thing that just naturally happens in the fact finding meeting is you get to know each other really well, right? And part of just being conversational, comfortable, approachable, nothing's taboo, that all comes up, you know, being curious and engaging. I have been rightfully accused of spending too much time.
with the clients and running very long meetings, but I wouldn't have it any other way, to be honest. That's what I enjoy most. That's what I feel provides the most value. It's what really makes those relationships sticky. It's not the time, like the amount of time that I'm spending with them, but the quality of the time. if you have...
really high quality time. It's very easy to spend lots of time with people.
Donald Patrick
Very true, very true. So what I understood is, so you're charging for the plan and it sounds like they're not obligated to let you manage the money.
Daniel Lee
They are not.
Donald Patrick
So you have to plan presentation and then that's the next step. I assume. Yeah, you have that conversation.
Daniel Lee
Yeah, they have a decision to make at that point, which is, you want to continue this relationship? And that is the only way to do it. We're going to manage your money and we're going to do financial planning with you as a part of that overall service on an ongoing basis. Or you paid to go through the financial planning process. You take your knowledge.
and everything with you and best of luck to you.
Donald Patrick
By the time they go through that process, I what I've found historically, it's just stuff jumbled around their life and now it's all been put together. They get the big picture, the experience, several meetings, deep dive, getting to understand us. I would bet that the majority actually say yes. I want to stay a client of yours and manage my money.
Daniel Lee
Yeah, the majority say yes. We even get some converts, people who told us they absolutely would say no, and they had no intention of letting us manage the money, and then they end up going forward with us. But we always want to do what's
in the best interest of the client and it is their experience or whatever relationship they want with us. It's worth it for us to go through the planning process with them so that they know who we are, how we operate, the quality of our work. It's made us referable. Sometimes I've even gotten a referral from someone who didn't move forward.
with us managing their money, but referred someone to us who ended up becoming a client. So you never know what's going to come out of that.
Donald Patrick
Yeah. So I'm an existing client. What is the cadence look like throughout the year with it? And you've got them segmented. So I different segments get different types of service.
Daniel Lee
Yes, we do have a client segmentation and there is a service level based on that. I would say that it's not too much different, but really we have a good.
Daniel Lee
I like evenly distributed client base as far as our client segmentation goes. So we've got A, B, and C clients. And C clients are clients that we're just not really involved with. Maybe even they have like an old annuity. we don't really have much of a relationship with those people. Yeah, exactly. And then we have B clients are.
Donald Patrick
So they're a customer.
Daniel Lee
Typically, less than a million in AUM or less than 10,000 in revenue. Many of those clients are...
not planning clients because not on our end. mean, we want to do planning for as many people as possible, but some people just aren't super accessible in that manner. And we haven't chosen to get rid of those clients either because they're profitable and they're easy to work with. They just don't get our full value. But anyone who has
the level that makes them an A client is getting full financial planning from us, more consistent communication. It's really just a higher touch, more sophisticated planning based relationship.
Donald Patrick
So is it an annual meeting, quarterly meetings, these progress review meetings? What is that like with an A client?
Daniel Lee
Everyone gets an annual meeting, even if we have to email it to them for compliance reasons. Everyone's going to get one. But we hammer that home when we first meet them, setting expectations that holds us accountable, but also lets the client know what our expectations are.
Donald Patrick
And over.
Daniel Lee
And at the very least, we're doing a deep dive meeting with every one of our clients, with our eight clients, depending on what their needs are, whether, you know, if they're a business owner that could change things, if they are, you know, high or ultra high net worth, that can change things. If we're doing tax planning for them, that could change things really as often as they need to meet with us, as often as we want to meet with them.
And then a lot of our clients, the relationship has just been so deep and long standing that, you know, we're friends with many of our clients and we text our clients compliantly. Sure. But yeah, we have a close relationship with a lot of these people.
Donald Patrick
my Rep Chat.
Donald Patrick
So speaking of my RepChat technology, what kind of tools are you using? Sounds like you're using Holistic Blam.
Daniel Lee
Yeah, our tech stack is a mile long, I feel like. It's very overwhelming. I always said that I should have been born 30 years ago, and I relate that to my music preferences. But I think that stands true in some other ways, too. I'm completely overwhelmed by technology right now. So we're trying to add technology that
raises the bar for us from a competency and what we can do. But at the same time, we're trying to reduce how much technology we have for simplicity. And technology, the thing about technology is it's supposed to make your life easier usually, but in theory.
Donald Patrick
in theory.
Daniel Lee
but it can have the exact opposite effect. we're really focusing on how can we streamline our tech stack and reduce the headaches that we get from it. But I would say our core things that we use are Wealthbox, our CRM. We live in there. Wealthvision or e-money for planning.
We use Holista plan for tax planning. We want to have a technology platform for estate planning. We haven't found quite the right fit yet. We use jump for note taking.
Daniel Lee
making compliance to do is a little bit easier, things like that. And then we've got a handful or two of other technologies we use.
Donald Patrick
So what do think you want to eliminate?
Daniel Lee
if I if
Donald Patrick
I mean, the ones you share with me are pretty basic and important.
Daniel Lee
Yeah, no, I don't want to eliminate any of the planning ones. But if I had, I think the better that technologies can integrate and do many of the same functions, I would consider those opportunities to eliminate.
Donald Patrick
Yeah, mean, integration has been the holy grail since I've been in this profession. We're getting pretty close. I think AI is going to solve that for us. I think we're getting real close to that.
Daniel Lee
I think so too. And yeah, it'll be interesting at some point if I feel like I'm unencumbered, because I do feel pretty encumbered by technology sometimes. I mean, on the simplest way, just like getting into stuff sometimes from a password or functionality thing, you know, I have to reach out to...
emerald for IT services on a more regular basis than I want to, not because of them, like they're great, but it's just a, you know, if it takes a half hour out of my day, that's a significant disruption.
Donald Patrick
Yep.
Donald Patrick
shouldn't. Yeah, it shouldn't. Well, one thing I've found with Wealthbox is it's fully integrated with ClientWorks. You just click that little button, boom, ClientWorks opens up. You don't have to put a password in and that's the way it should be.
Daniel Lee
We had Wealthbox for a year before I found that out.
Donald Patrick
You
it's slick and that's the way it's supposed to
Daniel Lee
Yes. And Wealthbox is a beast in its own right. mean, we were in love with Redtail when we had it. But Wealthbox really brings that kind of Apple-like user experience to your CRM. And the fact that it can be integrated with just about anything we use is really good too.
Donald Patrick
Yeah, it is. And Jump integrates with a lot of things too.
Daniel Lee
And I'm hearing that there's a lot of positive changes coming to client work. Well, I guess I've been hearing that since it was branch net.
Donald Patrick
Actually what's interesting when we have a new advisor join that's come from somewhere else because you forget when you're you're in a Day in and day out and maybe there's a little hiccup and you get frustrated. They are enamored at client works. They just it's it's amazing to them and but Yeah, so let's talk about the team a little more. So Jessica
Daniel Lee
Yeah.
Donald Patrick
she used to be kind of operations and all those kinds of things. And then I guess she decided she wanted to be, get licensed, become an advisor and that sort of thing. And so, which is pretty amazing. I mean, she was very motivated. So she's been an advisor for a couple of years now, maybe.
Daniel Lee
Yeah, I think three years now. Jessica is the glue on our team. She's whatever analogy you want to use. She's what greases our wheels. She's really got a work ethic unlike anyone else. A service minded mentality, self starter. She gets things done and
Donald Patrick
three years.
Daniel Lee
process oriented brain, mean, all that stuff. She's, mean, I'm not afraid to say that I think she's the most important person on our team and we'd be lost without her. So if you ever find someone like that who helps everything in your business go better, you do everything in your power to retain and elevate.
that person and that's really been the story of Jessica's career.
Donald Patrick
amazing. Yeah, she is self-motivated. So you've got three advisors. Jessica, you, Karen, any other team members?
Daniel Lee
We have one full-time operations, Priscilla. We had a full-time client service gal, but she got offered a dream job that she thought the offer was never going to get made. So we lost her two months ago, which was unfortunate. She was kind of a hire that we thought would be the last hire we needed to do for the next five years. And I had kind of...
crafted a vision for our practice where everyone was cross-trained and everything and we had, you know, we weren't at or over capacity on any part of our business and she was the answer for that. So now we're kind of reorganizing and reassessing that model. We've started using the ASAP program and I have a feeling that that might change our perspective on.
whether the next person we hire needs to be full time or maybe even what exactly their functions need to be. But we're kind of taking the rest of this year to regroup there and figure out what that looks like. It's amazing how much we have spent of our time really just on the team ever since we
became more of a team. It's as much of a focus as our clients. Our clients will always have our first, third, number one priority, right? But outside of that, beyond any personal goals any of us have, it's the team.
Donald Patrick
That's great, that's the way it should be. So what's your investment philosophy? How do you guys manage money with your philosophy and that sort of thing?
Daniel Lee
We believe in diversification. Basically, we don't ever want to be wrong. We don't have to hit home runs, but we don't want to be wrong. So we want to own a little bit of everything and own the right amount of everything. And it's very easy to be wrong in this field without properly diversifying.
Diversification is big. We don't believe that we are the end all be all of investment knowledge. In fact, we believe that the world is full of people who are smarter than us, spend more time in that space than us, have more technology and resources available to them in that space than us. And quite frankly, we also don't think that it's the
most important thing to our clients, or at least for our clients, it's not. So yes, performance and returns is always important, but we don't believe that we need to be directly responsible for that. So we work with third party money managers to deliver sophisticated portfolios to our clients that are models based and fairly hands off for us.
Donald Patrick
Is it more strategic or is tactical?
Daniel Lee
I will say that we don't use just one model. So you can get fairly customized with how you do that. And that could make it a little harder operationally. But at least the investment part, never have to be the.
the decision maker. We don't have to be holding the bag if things go wrong. We can always fire that person.
Daniel Lee
Yeah, I do think it just depends on the client to an extent.
Donald Patrick
Okay, so in terms of challenges, obviously you're exploring whether the virtual assistant program with the part-time person, that's one that you're working on. Any other challenges that you're facing at this point in time?
Daniel Lee
Well, the challenges mostly have probably been around the team. Yeah, so I Think they say that small businesses biggest Issue is always hiring firing and retaining people and I think that's true for us as well We had some challenges with going from a sole proprietor single advisor to
a team of advisors and figuring out how that was going to change both operationally and collaboratively, things like that. North Star always staying the same, right?
challenges outside of that.
Daniel Lee
I think I experience some challenges around.
Daniel Lee
What does the business need in the sense of...
does it need to change or not? There's a lot of stuff coming at us from all different sources telling us what we need, what it's supposed to be, this, that, and the other. I would take a beat from something that came out of the retreat this year and say that, you I want this to be a hundred year business. And kind of projecting where our clients are going, what their needs.
are going to evolve to projecting what the industry, where it's headed, and projecting who we want to be working with, what they're going to from us. Those are probably some of the biggest challenges that in keeping up with technology.
Donald Patrick
Yeah, that's never ending.
Daniel Lee
Did I mention that I'm not big on technology? Okay, good.
Donald Patrick
really? No, I missed that.
Donald Patrick
so are you on track to, become a part owner?
Daniel Lee
Yeah, I don't know if I'm letting a secret out of the bag, but that's supposed to happen this year. So yeah, thank you. It's probably a little bit later than we both thought it would happen, but not upset about that in any way. It's time. And still trying to figure out exactly what that's going to look like. I think we've.
Donald Patrick
That's great.
Daniel Lee
In the interest of making the transition as smooth as possible on both of us, it will probably be an earn out structure. you know, lucky that it's a family business and lucky that Karen has a good financial standing that allows her to be able to.
know, owner finance and do it like that. But also looking into other things too, because I only plan on doing this once. Although I would be open to doing it more than once if it goes well, but I only plan on doing this once and so I want to make the most of that process. Both for...
the business and our family, but also for carrying that knowledge and experience forward to our clients. A lot of this business, there's so much information. When I was earlier in my career, I wanted to be an expert on things. And there's just so much, you cannot be an expert on everything.
You're lucky if you're dangerously good about most everything. But I really want to make the most of this experience and be able to take that advanced planning and business planning into the future for our business. that's what we're working out this year is how do we start? And then will it change along the way? I'm not sure, but.
At least we'll have a pathway to run on.
Donald Patrick
That's fantastic. So I'm going to ask a few quick fun questions. So use three words to describe your talents and strengths.
Daniel Lee
Okay.
Daniel Lee
engaging, thoughtful.
Daniel Lee
and comforting.
Donald Patrick
agree with that. All right. Now tell us something surprising that most people don't know about you. Besides Tennessee. We all know that.
Daniel Lee
that most people don't know about me. Well, I think a lot of people found out about me at the last focus that I have tattoos. So I have some tattoos. But now something that most people don't know about me.
Donald Patrick
So I didn't know that.
Daniel Lee
think that most people...
don't know how sensitive I actually am. And some people have seen it, but I think in the past, a lot of times I have come off.
more casual and joking and whatever than I actually am. I'm actually a really sensitive, emotional person. And anyone who really gets to know me knows that.
Donald Patrick
good to know. That's a big deal. Last question, what's the best piece of advice you've ever received?
Daniel Lee
That is such a hard question, Don. There's so many people in my life that have given me good advice. Every piece of advice that I've ever given to anyone was not something that I came up with myself. It was something that I learned from someone else. I mean, even you, I remember during a monthly consortium briefing.
Donald Patrick
you
Daniel Lee
I think there was a war going on or something like that and you talked about having no bad days. and, you know, I try to take that to heart as bad as it is. It could always be worse and whatever your problems are, like someone's got it worse than you do. my mother has been just a fountain of advice with how
focused she is on the inner work and on getting the most out of her experience and being really intentional with the life that she's leading.
I think there's a lot of influential people in the consortium, land, MAJ, senior advisors that have been there since forever. I guess we didn't mention it, but most of the advisors that were founding members of the consortium are almost oddly like extended relatives of mine.
Donald Patrick
before you were a kid. We watched you grow up.
Daniel Lee
Yeah, have memories on beaches and all types of things from insurance company trips way back in the day. I think maybe the best advice that I've ever gotten is probably something that multiple people have told me and it's just that near.
whatever you think about the world and what's going on in your life or outside of it and your place and things, you're exactly where you're supposed to be when you're supposed to be there.
So whatever's coming for you is, if you believe that, then whatever's coming for you is meant for you and whatever will be, or is meant for you will be for you. you know, just have that confidence, that patience and that contentment to be able to live in the moment and enjoy.
this experience. You only get it once, at least that's what I believe. So if you believe that, then you also, at least in my faith, believe that heaven is here on earth. So make the most of it.
Donald Patrick
Here now.
Donald Patrick
I love it. Daniel, this has been fantastic. I always learn something. I love these conversations. You have great, really great understanding of the business, the challenges, financial planning. You clearly love it and it is an incredible profession, but you have really, really excellent observations about things. This is a great conversation and I want to thank you for taking this time.
Daniel Lee
I really appreciate that coming from you. That means a lot, Don. So I'm happy to have done it. And if anyone listens to it and any part of it resonates with them, I hope that they reach out to me about it because this collective experience that we have is really what makes IFG so special. And like you said, there's a lot of people in IFG at this point. And you might not.
be able to get to know all of them really well if you only see them once a year but darn near all of them or if not all of them are worth knowing really well and so I don't take that for granted. So thanks for everyone also who listened and comes to the retreat and makes us all better.
Donald Patrick
Fantastic. Well, thanks, Daniel. I'll see you.
Daniel Lee
Thanks, Don. Take care.