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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.
Hi, everyone. Welcome to What Works. This is a show for consortium advisors
that taps into over 1,000 years of experience shared by our consortium
advisors.
I'm your host, Don Patrick, and I'm here to guide the conversation with
guest advisors and lift the hood on what works for them in business and
life. It's all about learning and growing.
So let's go.
Don Patrick: Welcome, everybody. This is episode number 35 of the IFG
podcast, What Works. And today our guest, it's gonna be a great conversation
because I've known them pretty well, Terell Boone, partner at Highlands
Wealth in Greer, South Carolina. Welcome, Terell.
Terell Boone: Thanks for having me. Appreciate it.
Don Patrick: Well, first of all, this podcast has been rescheduled a number
of times. You, have a, had a, well, explain to us the voice issue, and you
were supposed to have some surgery. It got postponed. I don't think you've
had it yet, but you sound great.
Terell Boone: Well, I appreciate it. Yeah, we have a polyp on my vocal cord.
And so that was discovered September last year. And we'll get into it here
in a little bit, but we do our meetings and blocks and so our strategy
meetings, or excuse me, our secondary meetings that we had at the latter
part of the year ended up identifying my voice was hoarse, really towards
Wednesday, Thursday, Friday at the end of each week.
And so I went into an ENT and they stuck one of the scopes down my nose and
came out with the picture that I have a big polyp on my vocal cord so they
don't think it's cancerous. And so the speed of which wasn't, to take care
of it, wasn't as important as just taking care of it, but it require me,
requires me not to essentially use my voice for a little over a week and
softly for about three weeks.
And so it's hard to fit that in when you're trying to do reviews. And so,
again, we were heavy in progress meeting reviews and I just didn't wanna
shut things down. And as you know, Allison, our client relations manager, is
out on maternity leave. And so just the timing wasn't great. So I postponed
that till she returns.
Don Patrick: That makes sense.
Terell Boone: Yeah.
Don Patrick: So, that just gave me an idea, man, with AI. Which one do you
use? Or do you use any of them? I assume you, I know you, you're using one
or more.
Terell Boone: I use it through software, so I don't use it independently,
like I know Brad uses probably ChatGPT and, but I don't, I haven't jumped
right in on it yet.
I'm a little hesitant, but we use it through Jump software and I know
Wealthbox is gonna be coming out with theirs pretty soon, or if they already
have it out. I think that LPL hasn't greenlighted it yet, but yeah, I'm sure
we'll use that when it comes out.
Don Patrick: Well, actually, my idea was this, is that you train your
favorite AI with your voice and you can just type things out and it'll have
a conversation with your clients. They won't even know.
Terell Boone: I've read an article about that. Brad actually sent me
something the other day about how AI's really gonna change the financial
planning pool space moving forward. And so I started watching and it
actually is pretty, pretty crazy. So I'll have to get through that before I
have an opinion on it, but I know big changes are coming with regards to AI
and I think that's cool
Don Patrick: It is. I mean, that's a whole nother conversation, which I
could go down a rabbit hole there. So let's find out and learn a little bit
about you, tell us about your family, where you grew up and those kinds of
things.
Terell Boone: So, I grew up down in Florida, southwest Florida. I'm from
Naples, Florida originally.
So, my parents got divorced when I was really young, when I was two years
old, and grew up with a lot of different stepparents between stepmothers and
stepfathers. Spent a lot of time in the, during the summers with my dad. And
so my parents are very different. My mother's a kind of a city beach girl,
so she lives on the coast in Naples, and my dad lives on the inside of
Florida. And so had two different upbringings there. Ate at nice restaurants
and tucked in my button down shirts every day to go to school. And on the
weekends and during the summer, I was gutting hogs and hiding in blinds, so
very diverse background.
But I grew up fishing and diving on the weekends and summers. My dad's just
an ultimate outdoors man. He's been in Florida Sportsman like five times. We
have a hunting lease down in Florida that I grew up hunting on and got boats
and like I said, deep sea fishing, intercoastal fishing, diving, sling
fishing.
I've done almost everything you can do in Florida. So I guess I'm probably
the reflection of Florida man in some stores. My dad definitely is.
Don Patrick: I love it. Any alligator wrestling?
Terell Boone: Funny story, I did do that when I was younger. We–no. It was a
one-off. So I'm not gonna sit here and preach like that's stuff that I grew
up doing. But my dad has Indian…and where our hunting lease is, it is right
next to Indian tribe land, which most of Florida and most of America has
Indian tribe in it, but this is at least observed. And so they do, one of
the things they do down there off Alligator Alley is alligator wrestle.
And so I was probably seven or eight years old. I think that's probably
eight. And the guy got in there and, of course, I did it with a little
three-footer that had the mouth taped. But, and that wasn't that big of a
deal, honestly, 'cause I'd been on and wrestled other animals. When you're
hunting, when something's dying, you kind of gotta take that all the way to
the end. But he gave me a bigger alligator, and that's when I realized what
real power was, when a six- or seven-foot gator doesn't want you on it. So,
it was interesting, but the mouth was taped the whole time, so it wasn't an
authentic wrestle. And I saw the guy that was helping me out was missing
three fingers, and so I didn't want to be with him as a cautionary tale. So,
I let him keep the tape on.
Don Patrick: Oh my gosh.
Terell Boone: Mm-hmm.
Don Patrick: Creepy.
Terell Boone: Yeah. So, yeah, I did that, growing up I was, I played a lot
of sports growing up. I swam competitively until I was in eighth grade. I
played travel soccer. I was a goalkeeper, so I played on multiple traveling
teams and made it to the state level multiple times as well. I played
football growing up from a very young age. And so I was always doing sports;
I played baseball until eighth grade and then you kind of, when you get into
high school, you gotta hone in and pick things. And so I stuck with soccer
and football and lettered in those multiple times.
So I enjoyed that aspect of growing up. I grew up on the beach, so I was
there skipping school a lot, going to the beach, doing the things that my
mother's probably not proud of if I talk about. But overall, I just had a
really fun childhood. I know on paper it probably wasn't great with regards
to the other things I don't want to get into, but the multiple divorces, and
they weren't great relationships for my parents, but they both found steady
relationships when I was in late middle school. And that helped shape me as
far as the relationships that I wanted to build with my friends and my
eventual spouse down the road , 'cause it taught me what I didn't want out
of a relationship. Once I got to see when they found people that they loved
and that respected them, what that looked like. And so that helped me do a
lot of things there at that time.
Don Patrick: Fantastic. So you're Greer, South Carolina. How did you end up
there? Do you miss the beach? I mean, it's beautiful up there
Terell Boone: They’re two different perspectives, for sure. So I skipped
over a bunch of stuff there in the middle. But, yeah, I went to college at
USF in Tampa from '98 to 2001. And I lived–people who think Tampa Bay is "by
the beach," but you're like an hour away from the beach, or maybe even
further depending on where you live. And traffic's horrible there. So that
was kind of my first bite of not really being near the beach, even though I
was in Florida and by the beach and by the water. I'd drive over it almost
every day. But I never got to go to the beach anymore. Then I realized that
I actually hate sand in my toes, so.
Don Patrick: What? Are you kidding me?
Terell Boone: Yeah. No, well, I also played beach volleyball all the way
through high school. So I really enjoyed beach volleyball, and it was
something that I enjoyed doing with my brother when he would come back once
in a while. But no, as I got older, I just, I really didn't like it,
especially because the west coast of Florida has white sand, right? It's
that beautiful sand that everybody loves traveling for. Well, I didn't care
for that. When I started going to the east coast and going to the beach over
there, I liked that a lot better. It's harder; it's easier for me to walk on
and all that type of stuff.
So I started rekindling my love for the beach as we moved up here to South
Carolina. But yeah, so I lived in Tampa for 14 years. I stayed there after
college and met my wife right after college. She graduated from the
University of Miami. And then we met down in Florida, dated long-distance
for about two-hour drive. We dated for about two years, long-distance. And
then we lived there, worked, kept our heads down, and both picked our heads
up in our thirties and said, "Is this what we wanna do with the rest of our
lives?"
And I had begged her to move to the Western Carolinas for many years because
I've hiked up here a lot and I really enjoyed it. It was either here or
Colorado, and Colorado was too far. So we looked at Charlotte, we looked at
Winston-Salem, we looked at Northern Georgia. And someone had informed my
wife about an opportunity in Greenville, South Carolina. And we're like,
"Oh, let's go check it out." And we did, and fell in love with it and
haven't looked back. We were here four hours and decided this is where we
wanna move. So we've been here since 2014.
Don Patrick: Oh my gosh.
Terell Boone: Yeah.
Don Patrick: That's amazing.
Terell Boone: So the short answer, I miss the beach, but I get to see it
two, three times a year. And then the rest of the time I get to live in a
drier climate up here towards the foothills and be able to raise my family
in a much smaller environment that's not beach driven, which is good.
Don Patrick: I love it. Yeah. And so kids,
Terell Boone: I have two children, three if you count my dog, but–
Don Patrick: Of course.
Terell Boone: My son, he'll be 14 actually this Saturday. So big
transitional years for him. He's got the world in front of him. He is
accomplishing a lot between band and sports and academics. And so I'm very,
very proud of him. My daughter is seven and she has been a fun adventure up
until now, so far. But she's been great the last couple months. She's really
turned a corner; she's very smart, very bright, and I look forward to seeing
her blossom into a young lady.
Don Patrick: Oh, can't wait. Until she’s a teenager, right?
Terell Boone: Yeah. Yeah. Well, yeah. I always joke with my wife that my
golf handicap will probably go down by seven or eight, but when she's a
teenager and she doesn't get the joke yet, but she will. But, and then I
have a 4-year-old lab named Bella.
Don Patrick: Black lab or
Terell Boone: She is a yellow lab.
Don Patrick: Yellow lab.
Terell Boone: Yeah.
Don Patrick: Love it. They're great. Great dogs.
Terell Boone: Great dogs. Super needy, but love 'em to death. Yeah.
Don Patrick: So you've been up there, so it was a great decision. You guys
are super happy with the–
Terell Boone: Don't regret it. Yeah. I mean the only thing I miss are
certainly is my friends and then the opportunities to be able to go do
things like go out on the boat easily if I want to. We have lakes around
here.
Don Patrick: I was gonna say, you got lakes.
Terell Boone: It's different. Yeah. But it's different. I'm definitely–I
don't miss the beach; I miss the water. I'm a water guy, so I do miss that.
I miss diving. I miss fishing, and I definitely just miss just feeling the
wind through the air and rolling 50 miles an hour with a beer in my hand,
you know.
Don Patrick: I love it.
Terell Boone: Yeah.
Don Patrick: So you, well, I guess next question is, how did you two meet?
She was in Miami. You were in Tampa?
Terell Boone: Yeah. So, my wife is also in our industry. So she's a CFA,
she's a portfolio manager. She was with Northern Trust at the time as just
an associate, down in Naples. So, when she graduated in 2002, she moved over
to the Fort Myers/Naples area. And it was very serendipitous that we met. I
brought a friend down there to go play golf and get him over his breakup
with his girlfriend. And I had been broken up from my college girlfriend for
seven or eight months. And so, I wasn't in any hurry to get back into a
relationship, and went out and met her at a restaurant. And she was with her
friend, and I had a friend and said, "Why don't we get to know each other?"
And I mean, it was a little bit more suave than that, I'm sure. But that's
it.
Don Patrick: Well, I'll ask her.
Terell Boone: Yeah. Maybe not, but whatever it was, it worked, and we ended
up hanging out. And we hung out all the way until the sun came up, man.
Nothing crazy. Just played board games, got to know each other, and really,
yeah. I mean, it was magic. I knew it right from the beginning that this was
the person I wanted to marry.
Don Patrick: She's a CFA, man.
Terell Boone: She is, yeah. So she got her CFA, I think in 2006. And, so sat
there with her many nights and helping her study and that was a lot of
sacrifice on her part, at that part, but I'm happy that she did it because,
obviously, as you get older and have kids and like the stuff I'm doing now,
it's very difficult to study and to take time to do that.
Don Patrick: Yeah.
Terell Boone: So yeah, now, she works at Bank of America in their private
bank department.
Don Patrick: Amazing. I love it.
Terell Boone: Yep.
Don Patrick: So you get out of school.
Terell Boone: Yep.
Don Patrick: In Tampa.
Terell Boone: Yep.
Don Patrick: What's next?
Terell Boone: So I interned at PaineWebber, which is now UBS, for almost two
years when I was at USF. So I would go in on Tuesday and Thursday nights and
on Saturdays, and I would call. Back then you could cold call.
Don Patrick: Oh, I remember that.
Terell Boone: We hammered, man. All I'd do is call and then transfer calls
over to my FA and he would take them. So I'd get people on the phone. On
Saturdays, I would call long-term care, assisted living facilities, not
long-term care like nursing home, but assisted living facilities and places
along those lines, that he was targeting to set up for seminars for him to
go in and be able to speak about asset management and asset protection. Cool
stuff like that.
So I did that for a couple of years. I also caddied when I was in college,
so that's where I picked up golf. I'd never golfed before then. So, I got an
opportunity to go caddy at Old Memorial, which is a very nice golf course
down in Tampa. It’s private. It's where all the people that founded Outback,
that's their golf course. It's kind of funny just because I interviewed to
be a caddy. And the guy goes, he looks at me with a big dip in his mouth,
and he's like, "What kind of golfer are you?" And I said, "I'm not a
golfer." And he goes, "Well, how do you expect to caddy people?" And I was
like, "Well, don't you just carry bags?" And he goes, "No, there's a lot
more to it than that." He said these members pay, I think at the time, maybe
80 or 100 grand to join , and he's like, "Their expectation is that you know
this course front and back." And I said, "Well, is there a book or something
I can read?" I felt like I could probably get there. And he said, "Yeah,
there's a book."
And I said, "Well, what is it?" And he told me it was the USGA book and then
the local course book of all the knowledge of the course and the different
greens and slopes and the grains. And so, I told him, I said, "Give me two
weeks. I'll go get all this and I'll bring it back." And I said, "I'll
answer any question better than anybody else you have here." And the guy's
like, "Whatever. Okay." And I shook his hand and I nailed the time and the
date down, and I did. I went and read every inch of those books and came
back.
And I even, probably shouldn't say this, as it's gonna go out in public, but
I snuck into the course and read the greens after I was reading some of the
slopes and everything that it was telling me as far as the breaks, because I
just didn't know. I needed some context. So I put my hands on it and rolled
balls down it and understood it. So that's how I got my caddy job in
college. And I really enjoyed it. I loved it. And then I pitched the fact
that all the caddies got to play on Monday 'cause the course was closed, and
I said, "Well, I'm not even gonna beat up your course. I don't play." And
so, I think he liked that too. So that was my, and I did that even probably
two years after school, too. I enjoyed it. I would go on the weekends and do
it. So to this day, if–that might be a retirement job for me if they still
have caddies around when I retire.
Don Patrick: That's a great story. It also says so much about you and your
focus and commitment.
Terell Boone: Yeah. Pre-kids, I had a lot of focus and commitment. After
that, it's been a different, very different story, that's for sure. But I
had a lot, I had a lot of gumption and gusto back in the day, for sure.
Don Patrick: So your internship at Payne Weber, was that just trying to get
an internship or did you have an interest in
Terell Boone: Both, yeah, both. I mean, I watched, gosh, I was probably in
middle school, probably too young to be watching the movie Wall Street, but
I watched Wall Street and just kind of, and I was always on the mathlete
math teams and stuff in middle school. I was very lucky. I got, I was in,
they call it "Challenge" now, but I was in "Gifted" from the time I was in
second grade. So numbers were always easy, and solving problems. We did a
lot of that stuff in those classes and I just liked thinking about things in
a different way and deconstructing something and putting it back together. I
always took watches apart, everything apart, when I was a kid to be able to
understand how things worked.
Don Patrick: Let me just jump in very quick. So you'd take him apart, a
watch apart, and you actually got it packed together?
Terell Boone: Well, no. That would be, yeah, I didn't finish that. I would
take other things apart. I learned about computer boards and all that kind
of stuff, so I did learn all that. But yeah, watches, that's why I have nice
watches now, because I can respect the game that goes into making these
things. They're pretty cool. But no, I took basic watches apart, not nice
watches. But I did enjoy, I bought a book and enjoyed things about the
sprockets and the springs and everything that were in the watches. I thought
it was neat. I bought a big, not a monocle, but a magnifying glass. And I
thought that was cool.
So, getting back to Paine Webber. I had an interest for sure, and I knew I
needed an internship in school. I was in business school, and so I talked to
the different people and they had said that if you wanna go this route, this
is what you do. If you want to go like my wife's route, you go work for a
bank. And I didn't want to do that. So, yeah, I mean, it went through
working there, it was almost two years.
And then, one of the things, I don't know if you know this about me, but I
actually left school early. So I was in my junior year in business school at
USF and just didn't think I needed to do it anymore. I wasn't learning that
much. I'm a "read the book" guy, I go do it. I don't like sitting behind a
desk and listening to a professor talk; I've never enjoyed that. And so one
of the–I guess it ended up being a regret later on in my career, but one of
the motivating factors was I just was tired of accumulating debt and just
wanted to go make money. So I talked to my boss at the time, my senior, and
he greenlighted me to get my Series 7 and start being a financial advisor.
So this was in 2001. Poor timing.
Don Patrick: Actually, no, you become a hero because all your new clients
are buying it at the bottom.
Terell Boone: Yeah. No. It was, yeah, when I had that conversation,it was
essentially at the end of my junior year. So I was, was May '21, that wasn't
great timing. So I went through that process, got my, got my licenses and
went in. Anybody that's watched any of the movies or that's worked in our
business understands you go into a bullpen and you're sitting there and your
phone, you're smiling and dialing and that's, we had an auto-dialer back
then, headsets.
I talked to you about that off channel, about how much I enjoyed headsets.
And went through the process of trying to get into this business, very hard.
I made money, but again, bad timing in the business and I didn't have the–I
don't wanna call it the acumen at the time because I had a fair amount. I
didn't have the stick-to-itiveness that it took to get through the first
couple years of this business at that time. And that becomes a theme later
on in my life, but part of that is difficult to look back on and go, "I wish
I just could have stuck with that."
Everything at that age when you're 21 years old is easy money, right? You're
just looking for how do I make the next dollar? I wasn't thinking about my
wife or my kids or my career at the point, really. It was "What do I do to
make sure I can acquire the material things that I think are important?"
And I took that to heart. I had a lot of friends that I went to school with.
I worked there for about a year, a little over a year, after I got my
licenses, eight months. And I had friends that were graduating now and they
were going into the mortgage industry. That was in 2002. Right. So that was
hot, man. I mean, rates were down and–
Don Patrick: Yeah.
Terell Boone: I had a friend of mine that pulled up in a Lexus and I was
like, "Man, you didn't have two nickels six months ago. Now all of a sudden
you got this going on." And he told me he worked at a brokerage, a mortgage
brokerage house. And I said, "What are you doing for the money?"
And I mean, like I said, it's just kind of out of a movie almost. And he
told me what he did and I said, "I wanna come in and do what you're doing."
And so I went in there because, like I said, I was still caddying on the
weekends. I mean, this is like, making whatever, $45,000, $50,000. I mean, I
wasn't making the kind of money that I wanted to be making.
I went in and sat with him. I took off for three days from work. I went in
and sat with him at what he did every day, and I was like, "This is easy. I
can do that." And I went in and he–that was back in the day where you would
literally go to somebody's house and consult mortgages with them right there
at their dinner table at night.
So during the day, he would go in from 12 to 4 and do all of his
applications and whatever he had to do. And then from 4 to 8 he was driving
out and going to people's homes, printing docs, and collecting checks for
appraisals. And I mean, like, it was the real deal part of the mortgage
industry back then.
Later on you see that it led to some bad things as far as collapsing and
underestimated notes and things that were out there, but liabilities. But,
so I did, I quit my job and went over and started doing that in 2002. And so
I did that for the next three years.
Made a lot of money, helped a lot of people because I did, again, have the
investment and business acumen so I could at least go in and talk to people
about if they were refining their note, this is their net effective rate,
what they could do with the difference in the cash as far as investing that
in these other areas. I didn't have my licenses at the time, and so, that
probably should, yeah, I wasn't soliciting or giving advice, I was just
saying in general.
Don Patrick: Right.
Terell Boone: And I enjoyed it. I mean, that was, because I hate sitting
behind a computer, I hate sitting behind in an office. And so it was good
for me. I was in the office for two or three hours a day, ended up hiring
somebody to do an appointment setting for me. And at the end of the day, all
I did was go and sit in the house and close, like I said. So it was great. I
really enjoyed it for about two and a half years, almost three years.
And then an opportunity came up for me to be a wholesaler, so to go work.
And most people on this call know about how mortgages are sold to secondary
units and then package stuff and then sold on Wall Street. And so, my job
was to work for that secondary group and to go package up and talk to all
these people I've been working with, right, and their bosses about these
direct line credits and how to access the money and then how to get the
money to Wall Street. And so, I really enjoyed that, too.
A lot of perks in that job. And again, at the time, I mean, there was way
more money flowing around than needed to be in those days, '04, '05. And I
kind of looked at it. I remember my dad having a conversation with me one
day and my dad does nothing about our business, but he's a smart worldly
guy. And he goes, "How does somebody your age make that kind of money?" And
I was like, "This is where, we're doing this." He goes, "No." He goes, "None
of that lines up. Houses don't go up 20% a year." He goes, "All this is
gonna fall." And I was like, "You don't know what you're talking about, old
man," joking around. Right?
And yeah, I remember going back down there four or five months after he told
me that because I started looking at it through different eyes. Like, what
if this doesn't just keep going on forever? Right? And I remember I was in a
broker's office and I saw them falsify a signature.
Don Patrick: Oh my gosh.
Terell Boone: And it hit me. I was like, "This is not good." Like, if this
is happening and I just see it as somebody that's in the office, I did the
math and I'm like, "This is not gonna end well." So this was in end of '05,
early '06. I went home, I talked to my wife and I said, "I think I need to
get out of this business. I think this business is not gonna be around for
very much longer."
And so I reached back out to people that I went to school with. At this
point, they had pushed through and done the four or five years of hard work
in the beginning of this business. And some had worked at Merrill, Mother
Merrill, some had worked at Smith Barney, which became Morgan Stanley, back
in the day. Some had worked at John Hancock, MassMutual, right? Because
there's different routes that we go in this business.
And so I really, I sat down with all of 'em and just said, "I think I want
to get into the personal planning side and really enjoy what you guys are
talking about." What's crazy is, you would think that the people at Merrill
and Smith Barney were the ones that were doing the planning and they
weren't. I mean, they were doing what I was doing, but they were doing it
five years later. Well, the business had moved, right? Things had moved
really, really rapidly into the advisory side of the space. They were still
doing a lot of brokerage, but the guys that were doing the planning were the
insurance guys. Right? So it was like the mortgage state?
I mean, it was the John Hancocks, the MassMutuals, the New York Lifes. I
mean, these guys were actually doing planning. Most of them had their CFPs.
I mean, they were sitting down and really getting down with the client in
the weeds and doing cash flow planning and doing insurance planning and a
lot of the foundational things at the bottom of the pyramid. And I was like,
"Man, this is, that's what I wanna do. That's making a difference.” Right?
Not just telling people about the alpha and the TIO ratio, you know what I
mean? This is really moving the needle for somebody. And that met that itch
for me.
And so one thing I didn't tell you: I mean, when I went to school
originally, I went to school for Fire Science because I wanted to be a
firefighter. And then I found, and then, yeah. And then I sat down with the
fire marshal one day, because that's the route I was gonna go, is be a fire
marshal. And he goes, he goes, "Let me ask you a question." I was like,
"What's that?" He goes, "Why do you come in here with all this enthusiasm
every day to–" and I was like, "Does that bother you?" He goes, "No." He
goes, "You're a pretty bright kid. I'm wondering why you're working in
a–wanna be a fireman?" And I was like, and I was like, "Well, I think it's–"
Don Patrick: “Maybe you’re not so bright after all.”
Terell Boone: Yeah. I was like, "I think it's an admirable thing or
whatever." And he goes, "What kind of car do you wanna drive?" And I was
like, "What kind of question is that?" And he goes, "What kind of car?" I
said, "I wanna drive a Porsche," like every 19-year-old says, right? I was
like, "I want a Porsche, man. 911. Right? Stick, twin turbo."
And he goes, he goes, "Well, let me–" and he flipped around the salary. He
showed me what, all their stuff's laid out like a grid, and time served and
as far as your rank, and this is what you make. I was like, "There ain't no
Porsche happening on that one." And he goes, "That's exactly what I was
trying to tell you." And he goes, "Go back to school and change to a
business degree." I was like, "Okay." And so that's what kind of got me in
the route. So you look at those when back at where you end up in life,
there's always these big pivot points, right?
Don Patrick: Yeah.
Terell Boone: And you gotta acknowledge those because everybody ultimately
forgets those and they think it was done on their own effort and
bootstrapping it, and it's not. You get breaks and you get opportunities,
and you get people that push you in the right direction and wherever you
wanna look as far as the solution for what that is. And that's too heady to
get in this conversation for today, but I feel like that you have to know
those things because those are the things that moved you. And then you have
to take the stewardship and the responsibility of what comes with that and
go do it for other people.
Don Patrick: Absolutely.
Terell Boone: Anyway, we were, what we were talking, oh, John Hancock. So I
had some friends that were at John Hancock. So I went over there and I
didn't have, and I didn't really understand insurance, right? I mean,
because I'd never, I didn't have an insurance license because we didn't deal
with annuities at PaineWebber and UBS. And so got my insurance license, got
my long-term care, my CLTC, because I didn't know anything about that as
well. Understood a fair amount about investments and retirement planning was
a different beast. So I got to learn about that as well over there. So I was
there for almost two years.
Really enjoyed it. Tried to go get my 7 and the broker in charge
essentially, that's a different name, but I'm just using that for now, but
he's like, "Nah, you're not gonna get your 7," because he knew since I got
my 7, I would leave.
Don Patrick: General agent, right?
Terell Boone: General agent, that's right. GA
Don Patrick: GA.
Terell Boone: And he was nice. And he gave me one of those conversations
too. He goes, "You just gotta decide what you wanna be. You wanna be an
insurance agent, just planning, or do you wanna be an asset gatherer or
asset manager?" And I was like, "Well, I don't want my living to depend on
selling insurance for a living." And he was honest and he goes, "This
probably isn't the spot for you." I said, "I appreciate you being honest. I
don't think it is." So I got down and I literally looked through the phone
book, remember what that is, Don? I looked through the phone book. I did
look online
Don Patrick: By the way, even I were coming through Miami. This is maybe 10
years ago. And there was a public telephone in the terminal. I had to take a
photo of the damn thing because I haven't seen one of those forever.
Terell Boone: That's–yeah. I mean, you don't–those are dinosaurs, man. Yeah.
You gotta admire the fossil. Was it working?
Don Patrick: Yes, it was real.
Terell Boone: Like you picked it up and
Don Patrick: No, I don't how you used it. I mean, I don't even carry coins,
so I don't know how you used it, but–
Terell Boone: Yeah. Interesting. Yeah, whenever I see those once in a while,
I giggle. Just because my kids see 'em in books and stuff, and that's
probably as much as they're ever gonna see them.
But, yeah, I pulled out a phone book. I got online. I went to the CFP
website, which wasn't very good back then. I went–a lot of guys at John
Hancock had their Chartered Financial Consultant and Chartered Life
Underwriter. And so that also was a good lesson because I got to understand
that most of the people that I dealt with at the time–because CFP was
different than a CFP today. The amount of information that's in a CFP or
charter education curriculum is a lot more in depth. I know that because I
ended up working for a CFP that told me that, the stuff that he passed was
little–mainly investments and retirement planning, and there wasn't really
anything else on there back in the day, because he was back in the nineties
or whatever when he took it.
But I had a lot of respect for the people that had their ChFCs and CLUs.
They knew a lot. They knew a lot about a lot, where I didn't feel like every
CFP I came across did. But part of that was my experience, because most of
those people were in wirehouses or worked for insurance firms. I didn't
really have exposure to the independent world at that time. Right?
And so by calling all these different–I was looking for a Registered
Investment Advisor. I didn't want someone that was beholden to a
broker-dealer or insurance agent, because I didn't wanna have to sling a
product to make a living.
Don Patrick: How old were you at this time? Like 26, 27?
Terell Boone: Yeah, so this was in 2006. So, or 2007, sorry, when I started
calling as an ‘08. I'm doing the math now in my head. So.
Don Patrick: Well, I mean, just so perceptive. I mean, we talked to people
in their 40s that don't have that kind of awareness sometimes.
Terell Boone: Well, I think, Don, I mean, you and I've talked about this in
the past, and passing on this call. I mean, when I was younger, all I wanted
to do was make money. And then I realized that there had to be some value to
that, because I didn't–I felt hollow on the inside just making money.
And so, not everybody's altruistic, not everyone is led by that same
marching feeling and to go out and pursue those things. And so for me it
was–I knew I think how I wanted to practice, and I just didn't know where
that was gonna be. I knew it wasn't a wirehouse. I knew it wasn't an
insurance firm. So reached out to 10 CFPs that had their own RIAs or were
tucked under an RIA like y'all, and then sat with six of 'em. I mean, just
go through the normal mathematical, took three at-bats, took six at-bats and
got three offers to come work as a junior for them.
And that was a little humbling to go, because I know I could produce and go
do stuff, but I needed to understand our business. I didn't understand it
yet. I knew I liked it, but I didn't understand it. Because every time that
I had a conversation with someone that did what we do for a living and
really got their hands dirty with financial planning, and did still do some
of the asset management, did some of the insurance planning, I loved the
conversations with 'em. It was intriguing. They were solving problems for
people, they were changing lives. And for me, that was absolutely alluring
to go after. Because at that point, the only life I was changing was mine
with money I was making, right?
Don Patrick: Yeah. I have always, for decades, stated with clients, with
anybody, that as a financial planner, we have more impact on people's lives
than their physician until they get older. I mean, it's an amazing impact we
have.
Terell Boone: Yeah. If listened to, and met often enough with, yeah. Those
impacts can be huge. So, like I said, spoke with five or six, I think six,
got three different offers from three guys that had smaller practices about
my size, maybe a little bit bigger, and were looking for, looking to scale,
looking for–they were looking to add a puzzle piece that they didn't have,
right?
And the commonality that I saw was I could go out and hustle and go do
external marketing where I, because I didn't have kids at the time, and they
were entrenched with the business, as we know, once you get a certain size,
you have to go out and either hire that which you guys created at IFG, which
is amazing, go take things off the shelf that you don't have time to do
that, that limit your amount to scale. Right? And they wanted to get bigger.
They wanted to have more money, right? They wanted to grow their practice,
diversify their client base.
And the guy I ended up working with, John Boyer down in Tampa, a great guy,
he ended up hiring me and bringing me in. He had an internal operations
person and kind of a front desk person. And he had tried my role several
times without positive result. Everybody kind of worked there for a year to
two years and then moved on. And so, John and I have talked about this for
many years because we're still friends. He actually came up and met with
Brad and I brought his son up here. We may even have his son come do an
internship up here this summer, so.
Don Patrick: That's amazing.
Terell Boone: Yeah. Yeah. Pretty cool. But he just didn't have a lot of
systems in place. Like, he had almost no systems in place. Everything was
relying on him. Like, he was doing asset allocation, like, with his hand and
calculator. I was like, "Oh, wow." I was like, "Hey man, I don't know a lot
about your business, but I do know investments." And I was like, and that's
not, and he had Schwab as a custodian. I was like, "They have a rebalancing
software." I was like, "Let's get you, let's get models." And like, so we
really worked on that in the beginning, which was really cool, and worked on
some systems as far as bringing on clients and how that looked.
I asked him for a marketing budget. He didn't have one, so then we put one
together. And so we did stuff as far as signing up for the hills down in
Tampa as Hillsborough County Bar Association. So we went and gave
complimentary planning to them, to be able to try to start creating a
pipeline for attorneys. We got CPE certified to be able to, so CLE as far as
the legal, CPE as far as the accountants, and then went to, I went into the
Florida Institute of CPAs (FICPA) and we gave retirement planning CPE. I
couldn't do it because I didn't have a designation at the time, but John
could do it because he was a CFP. And so I did create the hustle and got the
material and all that kind of stuff and put all that together.
And then John went and gave it and we followed up and we created a couple
relationships with some accountants afterwards. So all in all, I worked
there almost four years with John. I thought it was great and good learning
experience, learned the business, learned the operational side of this. And
the whole point was for me to step in and take over one day. That didn't
work out. Like I said, John and I are good friends to this da still, more
of a mentor-mentee type of relationship, but ultimately, it was time for me
to go grow my own book because I was just working on his, and our goals did
not come in alignment, as far as at the pace that it needed to. And that's
fine, but that's a learning lesson that I've learned twice in my career as
far as no one's gonna do it but you, ultimately, at the end of the day.
Now, you gotta bring in teamwork and collaborate and do everything that it
takes to be successful. But ultimately, at the end of the day, especially in
our industry, the only person that's gonna do it is you. So if you're
looking for a handout, those come in those terms of opportunities, like I
just discussed with you. You gotta spot 'em when they're there, but you
gotta go create some too. And so that was a very eye-opening experience for
me.
So I went from, we had, I think we showed up and he had, I don't know, 60
million maybe at the time. And when I left he had 110. So part of that was
market because of the timing that I went over there in '08, '09. But part of
that was hustle. And ultimately, he had a lot more systems in place, which
was great. The person that he worked with is awesome and she did a really
good job of ensuring that those things continued to grow. Because I had a
conversation with her recently. He calls me now for all the different stuff
as far as, like, technology and everything. And so it's pretty neat. We have
a call about every three, four months and we talk about stuff.
So, and I reached out to wholesalers that we dealt with and I said, "Do you
know any other RIAs that are selling or that need, that are closer to
retiring than John was?" Because John wasn't close to retiring at the time
and he wanted to pursue ministry, but he chose not to. And they ended up
plugging me into SunTrust. So SunTrust had SunTrust Investment Services and
SunTrust Private Wealth. And I interviewed and they hired me. So I went over
there and became an FA and started working with retail locations. And then
also, I developed relationships in the commercial bank.
And so that was great. Did it for a couple years with SunTrust before we
decided to move up here to Greenville. And so I moved up here with SunTrust
and then eventually moved over to Wells Fargo Advisors. So spent 2012 to
2021 inside retail bank and private bank between Wells Fargo Advisors and
SunTrust. And so that was tough, moving up here. I didn't have much of a
practice and so, and then saying, "Hey, I'm gonna, still gonna fly down and
see you." That didn't play quite that well. We didn't have Zoom back then.
We ended up, I ended up keeping, I probably brought like maybe 18 million or
something with me up here, which was good. And started building in 2016 when
I went over to–I brought 10 million then. And then brought 20 million with
me to Wells Fargo, all advisory for the most part. And then built up just
under, I think it was like 90 million or something at Wells Fargo when I
left. And then we brought 35 over here to start Highlands, so.
Don Patrick: That's impressive.
Terell Boone: That took you to modern day right there, man.
Don Patrick: So you're W-2 at Wells Fargo and SunTrust.
Terell Boone: Yep.
Don Patrick: That, I mean, that's an amazing journey. I'm gonna go way back.
So you're at PaineWebber, you had your Series 7, correct?
Terell Boone: Mm-hmm. Yes.
Don Patrick: And then when you went to the mortgage world, did you drop that
or you–
Terell Boone: Yeah. Oh yeah. Yeah. No. Yeah, because you had to. Back then,
it was like a two-year rule, so.
Don Patrick: Yeah. So you had to do it again?
Terell Boone: I did, yeah. At the time I only had my 7 and my 63, no life
insurance license. It was kind of funny. I went and looked up all my stuff
and I didn't see that that was on there. So I kind of thought that weird.
Maybe that drops off after a certain amount of time, but, so I did, yeah, I
had to go back and get all my licenses when I went to work. So I got a
Series 6 when I was at John Hancock and a 63. Because that's all they,
because they wanted…they did not want you to have that.
So I got that and my life insurance license. So when I went over and worked
for the RIA, I just had my 6, 63, and my life insurance. And then he
sponsored me because he did have a, he was very much like us. He was an RIA
first with a very tiny relationship with a BD, because he had, I think he
had 40 million RIA and like maybe 15 million that was on some type of
50-basis-point trail with VAs. And so, he sponsored me through that BD to
get my 7 and my 66 or 65. I don't remember which one it was. I think I,
since I had the 63, I got the 65 and they convert it into 66 these days.
Yep.
Don Patrick: Cool. So what was it like at Wells Fargo? Were you doing
planning? Was it, were you a wealth manager? I mean, what did that look
like?
Terell Boone: Yeah. No, I mean, like, I was a retail bank FA. So I mean–
Don Patrick: Which means? I don't know what that means.
Terell Boone: Yeah. What that means is, I mean, you have people that are,
you're working with the mortgage brokers, the business bankers, and the
retail banks to cultivate leads and opportunities. And so you're not given a
book. I mean, you just, you show up in there and you're like, "Hey, I got
Wells Fargo behind me."
Don Patrick: Yep.
Terell Boone: And essentially go sell. Right? Go sell yourself. Go sell your
services. You can manage money on which, what's nice, and I liked about
SunTrust and Wells Fargo, you could still manage money, which I enjoyed
doing. Not as much today, but I did then. And, but you're really selling a
lot more product, which I hated, but I knew that it was a good way to build
up a client book, right? Because it gave me at-bats.
And so every day I would go in and sit at a bank location or downtown with
the private bankers and try to educate them on what we do, help them
partner, help setting up seminars. So I very quickly learned that I was
different than almost every other bank FA slash private bank FA that I
worked with because I worked like a guy that was in the wirehouse, like,
"I'm gonna go get business." I didn't just sit in the seat and wait for it
to come to, and the managers
Don Patrick: The concept.
Terell Boone: Yeah. And the managers knew that, and they, because I'd go to
them and say like, "Hey, can I have some, can I have matching dollars to do
some seminars and this?" And they're like, "We don't do that." And I was
like, "You're telling me that this is Wells Fargo Advisors? You don't do
that?" And he laughed and he's like, he goes, "Most of the business comes in
the door." And I was like, "Well. I don't know if you saw your CEO on CNBC
getting grilled by Congress, but it ain't walking in the door like it used
to, man." And he acknowledged that.
So, yeah, over half of my business that I built at Wells Fargo Advisors came
from outside, came from my network, came from clients. And that was like
unheard of even today over there with the people in my small circle that I
worked with, not so much across the board. I'm sure there's great FAs that
are out there that do in-depth financial planning, but I was doing a lot of
financial planning then and sitting down with people and really trying to
understand everything from the bottom up and then trying to help them fill
that in. That's where I met Brad, by the way, at Wells Fargo Advisor.
So Brad worked at the private bank with my wife, who also worked at Wells
Fargo Private Bank. That's who she worked with up here before going to Bank
of America. And we ended up just meeting and understanding each other and
passing. Brad's nine years younger than me, so we probably didn't hit it off
from that perspective, but he and I knew each other. And then in 2017, they
were gonna change Brad's role at Wells Fargo, and so they kind of limited
him scope on the kind of size deals he could work at. He was a private
banker, if I didn't mention that.
But, and I think it upset him, because he also knew the writing was on the
wall there, that they were probably eliminating his position here locally
and they were gonna move him to a national role. And so, where he would be
working primarily over the phone. And that's not what he has for, as far as
his aspirations for his career. And I know you've already done a podcast
with Brad. Brad worked under a Morgan Stanley group and in Columbia when he
was in college. And so I think he kind of had the itch to be an FA, a
financial advisor at the time, but didn't really understand all the paths.
And so he started figuring those out. And when he did, he didn't like them,
right? 'Cause kind of like me, 'cause it was like you just, you see the
writing on the wall of like, "I'm gonna be selling a product" or "I'm gonna
be doing this." I mean, it's not, no one really pays you to do financial
planning except for the clients. And then all the banks and the insurance
companies are standing in the way of that because they gotta mitigate risk,
right?
And so we sat down and he kind of described to me what he was looking for
and it was really just he wanted a path to become a junior, then to become
his own FA. And I said, "Well here, how about this? I'm looking at becoming
a financial planner and getting the hell out of the broker, the wirehouses,
and going independent." And so we sat and talked about it multiple times and
he got on board with it and he's like, "I think we could do that." And I was
like, "All right."
So he came and worked with me as my banker. He left the private bank and
went into retail to be a private bank. I don't need to get into the details
of that, but he took a pay cut to come do it. But he worked side by side
with me every day on clients. And we went to lunch and for three-plus years,
we spent, I would assume, four out of five days right next to each other,
because sometimes I was at different locations and seeing clients.
But we were just talking about how to build Highlands, right? And we didn't
have the name yet. We didn't know you guys yet, and we didn't know any of
that stuff. But we both knew that we wanted to work with clients and do
planning, because we were writing up outlines for estate plans and giving
'em to clients to take to attorneys. And then we were doing the tax analysis
and then giving that to the client, the bullet points. So we were doing all
this stuff that we weren't able to monetize, one, and then two, we were
probably breaking some rules, you know what I mean? On maybe not SEC laws or
anything, but we were definitely not doing the things that Wells Fargo
Advisors wanted us doing. They just wanted us gathering assets.
And so we knew that the time COVID hit and kind of pulled things forward,
maybe another year faster than was gonna, but I think in 2020 is when I
started reaching out and I got in touch with Land because I started doing
some research on different places. We looked at several different RIAs out
there to talk under and because LPL was not my first choice as you know, as
I've said that to you several times, but that's your, that y'all's main
custodian. And we got on board with that because we liked IFG and everything
that you represented was what we internally represent and we aligned with
your passion, your vision, and your goals. And we feel the same way. We
tweak 'em a little bit for clients 'cause yours are towards advisors. But
yeah. So very happy that we crossed paths.
Don Patrick: Well, it's really impressive that you grew to a $90 million
book. I mean, that's amazing and hat says everything. So you got the 90
million. I mean, I love the fact, so you guys spent three years absolutely
honing and reinforcing your vision and passion and which you wanted to
before you broke away.
Terell Boone: Yeah. And I mean, and again, the time is probably misleading
because it might have been two lunches that week, right? It might've been
whatever. But we were definitely talking about it and really trying to say,
"We don't wanna do this, we don't wanna do this," and making sure that, one,
we were dating too, right? Making sure that we wanted to be together. As far
as that goes. I mean, he may be regretting that now, especially if he used
this, but I mean, but ultimately, we wanted to make sure that we had our
visions and values aligned because we can deal with a lot of stuff.
We disagree in a lot of things, and we run our lives in different ways. And
we even run meetings in different ways. We don't run meetings the same way.
And Brad's a lot more granular and prepared, right? Where I'm a little bit
more flexible and off the cuff and we'll just go right into something that
I'm not prepared to talk about. And so, but we ultimately have the same
passion for making sure the client leaves here with things that, action
items that they could do and follow through with. And then our job is to
ensure that gets done right as much as we can without being professionally
persistent is the word that we like to use. So, rephrase.
Don Patrick: I like that. Professionally persistent. Perfect.
Terell Boone: Yeah.
Don Patrick: So you guys break away and you said you were able to bring 38
million across, so–
Terell Boone: No, I don't even know if it was that. It might've been just
over 30. It was, I think it was 35. Okay. So let's call it 25, I mean,
advisory and probably 10 million in–
Don Patrick: So you're starting a business from scratch?
Terell Boone: Pretty much. Yep.
Don Patrick: And did you have, did Highlands Wealth, was that already
thought of, or I mean, how, just tell us.
Terell Boone: Yeah, no. I still have the–
Don Patrick: That’s kind of scary.
Terell Boone: It's super scary, man. We had, I still have the pen and paper
where we were scratching names out and sending names back and forth to each
other on text and saying, "What do you think about this? What do you think
about that?" And I don't know. And then we'd look it up. Somebody already
had it, and we're like, "Oh, that sucks."
And so, yeah. I think we originally wanted not Highlands Wealth Group. We
wanted, I don't know, I think it was like Highlands, maybe it was Highlands
Wealth Partners or something. It sounded too much like a virus or something.
And so, or like an STD or something. So we had to move away from that one.
And then I think that we ended up, Brad's from the mountains. I loved the
mountains growing up. It's one of the reasons why I moved up here. And so we
definitely got on board with that.
And then in my, it's funny 'cause I had three names there, and we were still
kind of gnawing on 'em and my son comes out and I'm drinking a glass of wine
on my back deck. And he's young. I mean, Tanner's, well he's, so, he's 13,
he'll be 14. This was back in probably 2020. So, 2019, 2020. And he comes
out and he looks at 'em, he goes, "I think you should do Highlands Wealth
Group, Dad." And I was like, "Oh, yeah?" He's like, "Yeah, it just sounds
cool." So that was the final push. I came to Brad and I said, "What do you
think? I think we're gonna narrow in on this one." He agreed. So we, like I
said, we had this list that we built together and then we narrowed it down
to that. So it was pretty funny. And yeah. Yeah, go ahead.
Don Patrick: Yeah, no, I'm just, walk us through building this business. So
you've got the name
Terell Boone: Mm-hmm.
Don Patrick: But there's everything else in terms of starting a business. I
mean, you have no P&L, you have no
Terell Boone: Nothing.
Don Patrick: History of expenses, none of that stuff.
Terell Boone: I mean, as an FA, even though you're W-2, I mean, they don't
pay you a salary, right? I mean, they take revenue from you. And so
technically I've been functioning off of P&L since 2012, and so I always
looked at it and said, "Well, if I wasn't paying this, I wasn't paying
this." So I was trying to be realistic. You and I had calls about it. Land
and I had calls about it, and I'm like, "I just don't know if I can, if we
can afford this, man." And ultimately, I looked at what my net paycheck was
at Wells Fargo Advisors, and I said, "I don't think I can afford not to do
it" The amount of money I was giving back to 'em. And so
Don Patrick: Worked for the name.
Terell Boone: For the name and honestly, that didn't do anything for me. I
mean, it lost me people when I first went over there because of, they had a
horrible headline risk right in the beginning. Yeah. So, looked at it,
walked through the rough numbers with Brad, and we kind of came to an
arrangement of what would make sense. 'Cause he was leaving a salary, so
it's scary for him. I mean, I at least had a little bit of a book. He didn't
have anything. Right?
He had belief in himself and he had a good network. Brad went to college in
Columbia and honors college, went to school with a lot of people that are
mid-level, acceptable, excelling, and a lot of 'em were the HENRYs, right? I
mean, they're making good money, but it's all their retirement plans. And so
when we talked about it, because of my background in asset management and
his background, he really wanted to focus more on the fee-for-service
planning.
And so I said, "I think we could probably, you could probably make about
this much in your first year and then maybe this much in your second year to
get some assets built up." And then he looked at those numbers and felt
confident in himself and did his own numbers, of course. I'm not acting like
I did at all, but, but he did his own soul-searching and talked with his
wife and he had saved up a good amount. So he had a nice backboard to bounce
off of if something hadn't worked out for him. He's a very responsible guy
in that manner. And so kind of drew a line in the sand and said, "I gotta
make this by this much," and as far as for his personal goals, and I did
what I could to try to help that with some of our joint clients and things
along those lines.
And so, yeah, man. We took the leap, started looking at real estate. That
was scary as hell, signing a lease. 'Cause I don't know how much…I don't
know anything, right? This is all, I mean, he took a big leap. I took a big
leap. And so I'll give you a funny story and a side story.
I had a friend of mine that was the manager of a mortgage company here, but
for a national bank, a regional bank that, you know, in the Southeast, and
I'll leave the bank out and the name out for lawsuit purposes. But they had
like 6,000 square feet of space. This is like, this is during COVID. We
started January 2021. So this is right after, we're still in the aftermath
of COVID. So all of these people are not in the building and they don't even
use all the space anyway, right? They may use 3,000 square feet of this
space.
And I told 'em, it's a nice commercial building here outside of Greenville.
And I said, "I am looking at real estate. I'm like, man, this cost is just
so expensive." And Brad and I didn't need a lot of space. We needed like a
thousand square feet, 800, right? Two offices and a conference room. That's
all we needed because we didn't, we used ASAP. So we didn't have an
assistant at the time, an associate, internal associate. And we ended up
looking at all this different real estate. Nothing really worked out. And
we'd already made the decision to go with IFG at this point.
So we can talk about that if you want to. But we ended up subletting from my
buddy's bank, mortgage banking space. 'Cause we went in and literally, like,
we tucked ourselves back where there was, like, three offices. We made one
into a conference room and two in different deals. And we had to get it
approved with LPL 'cause LPL was wanting to know, "Where's our stuff gonna
be? What's our signage gonna be?"
Don Patrick: Office sharing.
Terell Boone: Office sharing. Right. Had to fill out the form, had to get
the diagram of the 6,000 square feet. Where our offices were in coordination
of that. Do we have access to printers? The whole deal, right? So like, I
mean, we're running through a lot of stuff with LPL and I keep emailing my
friend, I'm like, "Hey, is your bank not asking you for anything like this?"
And he's like, "No." And I'm like, "I don't understand that." I'm like, "I
just don't, I don't see that at all. I don't understand why that's not on
their radar." And he goes, "Yeah, it's fine." He's pretty nonchalant. I was
like, "Alright, man."
So Brad and I, we get the clearance from LPL. I don't think we gave the
address. I mean, we did, but we—I don't think we put the address on anything
that we had. And 'cause we weren't meeting clients at the time, right? We
were just trying to get in and get set up. So we get set up, we get our
offices set up. Brad didn't like officially move in 'cause I think he
thought it was doomed from the very beginning. But we got a, we had a
printer, we had a conference room. We bought a TV. Brad went online and
found us, like, a CPA that was upsizing their business. And so they had a
con–it's our conference room today and the TV that we have today. And so we
moved all that to this office space.
And then we're getting ready to start seeing clients. Like, "I gotta get
signage up, man." I'm like, I'm beating on this guy to get me signage. And I
was like, "I gotta put the LPL stuff up," which we had some stuff up, but we
didn't have the Highland stuff up. And I was like, "I gotta do a bunch of
stuff." And I'm like, "I need to get this done." And we're about, like, six
weeks into us moving over, right? I've moved accounts over at this point,
I'm starting to do new business with existing clients. Like, we're
operating, man, right?
And I run into somebody one day when I'm in there and I hadn't seen her
before. She goes, "Hey." Then she goes, "Who are you?" And I was like, "Oh,
we're Highlands Wealth Group. We're sublet from you. We're over here" and
whatever. Well, that threw the world into a tizzy, right? Like to the point
where I told Brad and he's like, "I don't have a good feeling about this." I
was like, "I don't either." I get a phone call from my buddy that night and
he goes, "Hey." He goes, "Apparently she ran up the flagpole. My corporate's
calling me. You guys gonna get your stuff out of there tonight?"
This is at dinner. I'm sitting there at dinner with my family. Tonight? Not
tomorrow, tonight. I felt so bad for Brad. I mean, like, I grew up in a very
disruptive family, all across the board. So, not that we had to do any
midnight moves, but everything else, right? And Brad's like, I call him up.
I felt so bad to tell him that. I was like, "Man, we gotta move all of our
stuff out." And he goes, "Well, where are we going?" I'm like, "I think
we're just moving back into our houses for right now until I find some real
estate."
And so his wife came down and we were having to move our stuff out, man,
moving the TV out, all of our stuff, like literally in, like, two hours. So,
needless to say, it was not a confidence-inspiring move. I felt like very
much a poor leader in that scenario, because I didn't secure the space the
way I needed to. And so that taught me a lesson for sure. So, we did that,
we worked out of our house for the next two months. Almost two months.
'Cause it took a while to find our spot that we're in today. And then we
finally found our spot, signed the lease in April, and then moved in, in
May, so in 2021.
Don Patrick: Amazing. I love it.
Terell Boone: Yeah.
Don Patrick: We constantly learn. I mean, you can map everything out
perfectly, but life is, it just, it happens.
Terell Boone: Yeah. It ain't a financial plan on paper, that's for sure,
man. Yeah, there's a lot of stuff in between the bullet points that we don't
talk about, right? So.
Don Patrick: So both of you had socked away some money, correct?
Terell Boone: Yeah. Correct.
Don Patrick: Yeah. And that's the key. So what is the relationship with you
and Brad? Are you actually partners? Are you sharing branding? What does
that look like, and are you doing different things or pretty much the same
things, financial planning and asset management, that sort of thing?
Terell Boone: So we share branding. Brad and I look at Highlands as a brand
that we've grown together, right? Locally with current clients and then
obviously, within our community, we do share clients. So I would say maybe
20% of my clients, Brad is on there as a relationship as well. Maybe not
20%, maybe 15 or 20%, somewhere in that range. He has his own clients and I
have my own clients.
We run things differently. We're trying to bring things in and my goal is
for us to do 80% of the same things, right? And so we're doing that now,
which is we're having our, in the spring, we have our strategy meetings, and
then in the fall we have our progress meetings, and then we do a summer
meeting to touchpoint with them, and that may be taxes or employee benefits
or something along those lines.
I got the progress and the strategy from you, right? Because I'd sent you
something saying I was frustrated with the LPL reporting, and then you'd
sent me, I was like, "Why you do this," you're like, "Oh, I do this for my–"
I was like, "Oh, that sounds good." So we put together an agenda that now we
go over, which is consistent with the clients in each one of those meetings.
And so it's really more investment review, right? Focused in the strategy
meeting, income planning for that year, or in the next 12 months, anything
that’s gonna change. We kind of stay away from the in-depth financial
planning until the progress meeting. And so that's where we talk about
insurance, estate, and financial planning, and everything else is kind of
taxes, investments on the front end, in the first part of the year.
Don Patrick: So three pretty in-depth touches per year?
Terell Boone: Well, no, two definitely in-depth and the lighter one in the
summer.
Don Patrick: Got it.
Terell Boone: So, yeah, and then obviously we're talking to 'em all
throughout the year. We do client events, multiple client events a year.
Don Patrick: What kind?
Terell Boone: So we're actually getting ready to, post this call, we'll be
sitting down and going over our annual baseball game. It's something that I
used to do down in Florida. I've done it since I've lived here, where we've
grown a lot, obviously, since then, since we started here at Highlands for
sure. We rent out the big double suite that they have over at the Greenville
Drive. So we have a small baseball team downtown, Single-A, Boston
affiliate. And so then they have the replica of the Green Monster. It's a
great little baseball stadium.
So, we rent that out usually for opening day, e're not doing opening day
this year, and provide food and beverage for the clients, and it holds like
48, I think. And so a lot of 'em will bring their grandkids and stuff to it.
And we try to find our A-clients for that.
We just did a tour in the fall of BMW. So BMW has their plant here, so they
offered the tours. We did tour and lunch, so I think we had 14, 15 people
for that, which was great. We have beautiful lakes here, so Lake Jocassee is
one of our little gems that we have that's got the mountains all in the
background and the water's crystal blue. It's beautiful. So there's a lot of
history and things about nature that people don't understand with the
landscape around there.
And so, we've done that twice now where we've rented a boat and had a guide
that's skilled in the South Carolina Department of Natural Resources that
goes out there and talks about all the different things that are around the
lake. And so they've really enjoyed that. And we followed that up with a
book, we signed a little note in there that's about Lake Jocassee and stuff.
And so we've done hikes. We do the Alzheimer's walk every year, so we try to
encourage clients to come out with that. Every dollar that they donate,
Highlands will match that up to $2,500, which we've done over the last
three, four years.
Don Patrick: That's great.
Terell Boone: So just, yeah, multiple things. I mean, we're trying to plan
like a skeet and clay shooting event. So we'll start to do that in the fall.
So we're planning that right now. So we try to do fun events throughout the
year.
Don Patrick: That's fun. I love it.
Terell Boone: Yep.
Don Patrick: I'm gonna get into your tech stack only because when you
joined, man, you went down a rabbit hole. You're like our expert in
technology with the consortium, I think
Terell Boone: Yeah. Yeah. Well, we talk about making mistakes and learning,
huh? Go ahead, I'll let you–
Don Patrick: Well, no, I mean–
Terell Boone: Yeah.
Don Patrick: We don't need to spend a ton of time. But you went through a
lot of technology for about a year or two, I think.
Terell Boone: We did. We did. I think 'cause you come from this world of,
where everything's curated for you, right?
Don Patrick: Mm-hmm.
Terell Boone: And you know it's not best in class. Right? Especially when
you come from wirehouse world. They keep, they're owned by banks. And banks
don't like to spend money on technology. They just don't. And so they like
to do it all in-house for security reasons and cost and I mean, the
marketplace is gonna be the best for anything. Unless we're talking about
health insurance marketplace, that's a different story. But I mean, but the
overall marketplace for technology or anything is gonna be the best and the
latest. Because you're gonna get feedback from the market if you're not
successful, it doesn't stay in business, right?
So, when we came over here to IFG, I mean, the world was our oyster, right?
I mean, it was like, "Oh, wow," we could do this and pull that off the
shelf. And we could do that. We could do this, we could do, I mean, it was
really cool. The problem was I wasn't focused on growing the practice at
all. I was so excited about just focusing on all these other things and
signing up for all these different programs that I definitely got
overloaded.
And I made the mistake of introducing clients to technology too soon. So, we
now run that on the back burner if we're gonna bring on something new and be
able to introduce that to people. But I think technology's amazing. It
allows you just to scale in a lot of different areas.
Don Patrick: Oh, it does.
Terell Boone: And bring in expertise in different areas that maybe you
don't, that you don't have a background in. But what I would say, like
anything else, is there's no point, and I look at this like a guy that, or a
person that has a lot of collector cars, right? Let's say you got a 12-car
collector car garage. How often do you drive all those, ultimately, at the
end of the day? And so it means you gotta go in and crank 'em all up and go
take 'em for a drive once a week. Well, if you got nothing else to do, then
you got that kind of time.
But if you're running a practice, or if you're a family person, or if you're
involved in the community, which all of us are at least one of those things,
you don't have time to go crank 'em up every week and go take 'em for a
drive, let alone get under the hood and really get in there and understand
how they work and what's the best use for those cars and things along those
lines.
And so, my advice to anybody that would be listening to this would be: be
wary on how frequently you bring on something, and then, overall, the cost
of time, not the cost of the software that it would take for you to be able
to master it and implement it in your practice. Because we have stuff still
that's just falling off that I'm not gonna renew just because we don't use
it. And ultimately that's just because not everything does everything you
want to do, right? Not one source does it.
Don Patrick: Never.
Terell Boone: Yeah. And it's a lesson that I had to learn over the last
three or four years of time suck and money wasted. But there's a lot of
great things out there, and I know the marketplace is gonna continue to come
out with really cool stuff. But I think ultimately at the end of the day,
you need to pick how you practice, whether that's if you're an
investment-focused person or a financial planning-focused person, and
surround yourself with the tools that allow you to do that better. And
everything else just needs to sit on the sidelines.
Don Patrick: Well, I love your analogy about car collectors and really the
point of how much are you really gonna use this thing? And it's really good
advice. So let's talk about, so where have you landed thus far? What does
your tech stack look like?
Terell Boone: So we came on board with Wealthbox about a year ago, with the
enterprise agreement that IFG has. And we're extremely happy that we did
that and wish we would've honestly done that sooner. 'Cause Redtail, I
think, was great from an aspect that you guys had a lot of stuff built out
on it. But I used Redtail when I worked for that RIA back in 2009.
Don Patrick: Oh my gosh.
Terell Boone: And there wasn't much that had changed in it, man. All right.
So I'm just saying that to say that I remember not liking it back then. And
the reason is because Redtail, when you come from a–Redtail's built for, it
actually was built on an insurance chassis, I believe, because everything in
it points towards insurance.
Don Patrick: Yep.
Terell Boone: And so, it wasn't built for our RIA industry in my opinion.
And so we were constantly trying to retool and rename things to make it work
for us, versus where I felt like Wealthbox, 'cause it's newer, and it was
built with, I believe, our industry at the center of it. So, we're very
happy with Wealthbox, how it integrates with everything. And look forward to
leveraging that even more with some of the internal metrics and graphs and
stuff for Allison.
Don Patrick: Wealthbox is an example of what you said about marketplace and
competition. They came from nowhere and now they're crushing it.
Terell Boone: Yeah. And there's gonna be something that comes out that beats
them. But right now, Wealthbox is everything that we need them to do, and
they're investing internally. And I think that's probably the biggest thing,
that Redtail didn't invest internally.
Don Patrick: Nope.
Terell Boone: Right, because there's, because things are evolving and
changing and you have to recognize that and be able to capture that wind,
right, that's coming over the horizon.
Don Patrick: Commonality to that and every time Orion buys something.
Terell Boone: Yeah, because we used to use Hidden Levers, speaking of
technology, which that fell by the wayside. Looked the same way it looked 10
years ago. So it was a great software though back then.
Don Patrick: Yep.
Terell Boone: But yeah, so Wealthbox on the CRM, we use Holistiplan at the
suggestion of Mark–no, Magnolia Financial Group. So you had me sit with Mark
and Trent and for our first year that we were there in person. So this is
what? 2021? No. 2022. 2021 I was bringing everybody on. So that's when we
came over, right? The week before the retreat?
Don Patrick: Retreat.
Terell Boone: So we use, I remember somebody brought it up, and it might
have been Debbie or somebody, and then Mark's like, "Oh, we use that. It's
really cool." I was like, "Okay." Like, obviously, you know I'm easy when it
comes to technology. So I logged on there and I started looking at it and I
went, I ran to Brad. I'm like, "Have you guys seen this?" I think they
started talking about it in maybe one of his groups and we looked at it and
we're like, "Sold." And honestly, between Wealthbox and Holistiplan, until
Jump came out, those are definitely our two favorite and most used
softwares.
Don Patrick: Yeah. Well, CRM is the hub–
Terell Boone: Yeah, for sure. For sure. And by the way, when it was Redtail,
it wasn't. And that's when we knew something was wrong, if that makes sense.
Right.
Don Patrick: Interesting.
Terell Boone: Yeah. Yeah, because it was just so hard for us to get on board
with and use in the way that we wanted to use it. We use eMoney for our
financial planning software and our portal, and we're very happy with that.
Again, eMoney is one of those things. I mean, that's a Ferrari if you know
how to use it, know how to work on it, but if you don't, it's like, it can
be overwhelming, right?
Don Patrick: It's like Excel. I mean, you get deeper and deeper and deeper.
You’ll never learn it all.
Terell Boone: Yeah, no, for sure. But Brad's really dug in deep on that
'cause he, obviously he does our fee-for-service financial planning and he
uses that daily. So he uses Holistiplan and eMoney daily, where I'm in
Holistiplan maybe once a week and I'm in eMoney once, sure, twice a week.
So, but I do use it for the portal. It's not in there for the all the other
stuff as far as the projections and planning. And then, we onboarded Jump
right after Wealthbox last year. And that has been a game changer for us,
right? Because if we look at the inefficiencies within, you know, if we go
back to that watch analogy, right? Thinking about the cogs that are all
moving around, if you look at the inefficiencies within there, I felt like
big wheel, like on a bike, you don't have to, it doesn't have to go around
to give you the kind of output, right, as much as, like, a smaller wheel
does. Right?
So if we're going back to those cogs, well, the, yeah, Jump is one of those
things that accelerates a lot based off of what your input is on that. So
you don't have to put a lot of energy into it to get a ton out of it. I felt
like we instantly recognized it from the first time that we had the meeting,
'cause we looked at where the holes were in our practice.
Asset management, we use ASAP, which we didn't talk about, but we use, or
not ASAP, we use the training team
Don Patrick: Investment Solutions. Yeah.
Terell Boone: Investment Solutions. And they do an amazing job. So they
allow us then to focus on serving current clients and looking for other
ones. Right? I mean, honestly, at the end of the day, that's what they do.
And then they give us all the documentation of that as well, which is great
for compliance.
But Jump, when we were meeting with all these clients, we set up these
two-meeting processes and three in most cases, well, we were coming out of
here with just streams of to-dos and that required Brad and I to sit in and
either do them or put 'em in there for somebody else to do. And you know
like every other financial planner or advisor that's out there, we like
giving advice, we just don't like doing it. Right? I mean, it's a different
animal.
And so what's great about this is we can leverage this for organization
within Wealthbox, that's so much easier and integrates in there, which is
awesome. And then we're able to gain people dragging these tasks across the
finish line, which is really what our clients pay us to do at the end of the
day. They pay us for advice, but then they pay us to finish that advice.
Don Patrick: Yeah.
Terell Boone: Because we, obviously we can't go file their taxes for them,
but if we can get 'em 90% of the way there, it's super helpful. And so,
that's where we've seen the multiplier for us. The efficiency that we're
getting out of our software is the CRM and Jump for sure. And then when you
add in the multiple parts of Holistiplan and eMoney, we've really enjoyed
that.
Don Patrick: Do you guys use MyRepChat or is that an issue for you guys?
Terell Boone: No. So Allison, our client relations manager, does, and Brad
uses it. I am on it, but I don't use it as much as, like, Allison uses it
every day to communicate with clients because she's scheduling all of our
meetings and along those lines
Don Patrick: They prefer the text
Terell Boone: Or she gets a higher hit rate. Yeah. Brad's mastermind group
came back and said how much better they were getting responses from clients
when they were proactively trying to schedule these meetings, and when we
moved over to that, we got a much higher hit rate coming back. So yes,
MyRepChat is being used a lot.
Don Patrick: Anything else? Well, I know you guys pushed us to wealth.com
Terell Boone: So yeah, so the other two softwares that—that we use, which
would be YCharts, and so, IFG is, I believe, just signed an enterprise
agreement with them, which dropped my price down, so thank you. And I did
push that to Price and brought 'em in. I said, "Look, I think the Investment
Solutions can really benefit from this as far as pushing out your model
information."
And then for us, we're running IPOs for people. On top of the investment
geeks like myself and others that are out there that like to get into the
weeds. I loved Kwanti. It just never integrated with anything. But I loved
Kwanti and I wish that Kwanti would've integrated with either LPL or other
softwares that fed in the accounts into that. Because I feel like Kwanti is
the only thing that anybody needs.
Don Patrick: I love Kwanti.
Terell Boone: I think Kwanti is amazing. I regret not paying the hundred and
whatever it is a month just to have it to go in there once in a while, but
Don Patrick: Well, so I have a subscription to Riskalyze or Nitrogen.
Terell Boone: Yeah.
Don Patrick: And the only reason is it pulls everything from LPL.
Terell Boone: I know.
Don Patrick: And then we integrate it with Kwanti.
Terell Boone: And that's what I did too for a while. I honestly, and I hate
the interface of Nitrogen. I'm glad I'm not there anymore. And I'm very
happy with YCharts. But Kwanti, for anybody else that doesn't want to go as
in-depth as YCharts, Kwanti is amazing. So, and I really can't push that
enough to people.
Wealth.com, we're just onboarding. We just
went through our first two deliveries for the estate plans. So the clients
put everything in, we give them the website, we use it for the Esther to be
able to extract the data of the current client's wills and health
directives, and then be able to run that through the software to give 'em
kind of a one, two, layman's terms, bullet-point-driven output. We like it.
It's a great software. It's a lot of work. It's been a lot more work than I
thought it was gonna be, and part of that is because half of my clients are
tech-savvy and so, you gotta kind of hold their hands when they're doing a
Zoom call with them about walking through the website and all that type of
stuff.
But overall wealth.com's an amazing thing. I think they need to bring the
price down a little bit on it, but I think it's a huge tool to have. Time
will tell. We've only had it for less than six months. We gotta, we have to
be able to efficiently monetize it. And for the amount of time I'm putting
into it, I don't see that output today, but it's a huge benefit for our
A-clients and that we're not charging for to do.
Don Patrick: And you said you had one other tool, or is that it?
Terell Boone: Those are the only ones I'm gonna admit to having. How about
that?
Don Patrick: You know what's really interesting, so AI is everything now.
It's hot.
Terell Boone: Yeah.
Don Patrick: So Jump, that's AI.
Terell Boone: Mm-hmm.
Don Patrick: YCharts, it will, you can upload people's brokerage accounts,
everything else.
Terell Boone: It’s great. Just did it.
Don Patrick: Holistiplan. I mean, there's three or four tools just about
everybody's using now in the consortium. It's AI. It's amazing.
Terell Boone: It's gonna touch everything for sure. Everything outside of,
and I'd say this too on Jump. I haven't hooked it up yet, but I bought a
speaker to put in the office so our phones aren't sitting in there. And that
way you can just hit the button, kind of like a lot of people have in their
conference rooms. Ours isn't that high-tech or our conference room, but I
feel like when we have the conversation up front with people, especially the
first, like, maybe 10 conversations I had with people, I'm like, "There's
gonna be a device in here listening to everything that we say. It's really
meant for efficiencies."
Like I told you, half my clients are great, tech-efficient. I would say
eight out of 10 of those clients have called and thanked me for how much
more efficient I am with following up the emails, with our staff getting
things done, and then us being able to call up stuff with the help of
Wealthbox from our prior meetings, right, to bring up and address.
And I'm putting a process in place with Allison when she gets back to where
a month prior to kind of like the letters that you send out to clients
saying, "Hey, here's gonna be your agenda," a month prior to our strategy
meeting or it depends on which one we had first. But if we had the strategy
meeting, then it'd be the progress. But if we had the progress, then it'd
carry over the next year. But these are gonna be the outstanding items that
weren't completed. Right? And this is, we're putting it back in their lap to
get that done. Or we're gonna really, that's gonna be the top of our agenda
in the next meeting. And so again, holding the hands, getting things done. I
think clients are paying a fraction, right? Advice in action. I think they
have to be in tandem.
Don Patrick: Well, what's really impressive is that your clients actually
noticed the difference.
Terell Boone: Yeah. Big difference.
Don Patrick: Since you implemented Jump.
Terell Boone: Yeah. Yeah. We knew it was a hole. We knew it was a hole in
our, and yeah. And what we do here at Highlands, and it's something that,
and maybe larger firms that have been around longer or that have more scale
with employees, but that was a big hole for us was getting the other stuff.
I mean, I would've stacks of papers from reviews on my desk that I would put
away every day for compliance purposes. But that I would have on my desk
that, that were just review sheets. Right? Organized review sheets.
But, and I would look at it on Friday and go, "Ugh." Like, I just knew I
didn't want to do it. And but I knew I had to, so I'd have to do, I'd have
to come in on Saturdays or, I mean, so it is just given us so much time back
and won a lot of remarks from our clients and our referrals, between our
processes and the client events and other stuff that we do that they've
really stepped up over the last two years.
Don Patrick: Amazing.
Terell Boone: Yep.
Don Patrick: So we have a really good idea of the cadence you have with an
existing client.
Terell Boone: Mm-hmm.
Don Patrick: Walk us through, you have a prospective client, and actually,
where do your clients come from? Is it referrals? I mean, what does that
look like? And then once you have a prospective client, what does that
cadence like in terms of meetings and such?
Terell Boone: Sure. Yeah, I mean, when we first started Highlands, we needed
to get our name out there. So we spent a bunch of money on marketing in
different areas, and none of that paid off. Ultimately at the end of the
day, the two things that have paid off for us, for me, the way I have had
almost all of my clients have come from either referrals or within my
community. Whether it's a church community or the altruistic community that
I'm involved in, different areas, but mainly current clients. And then Brad
is a combination of current clients, COIs, and then online, because Brad
does a lot online. I know you guys talked about that. He does–
Don Patrick: Yeah.
Terell Boone: I don't know. I don't know how much he does today relative to
what he was doing before, but he created an immense amount of action online
and got a ton of referrals from that, and still gets referrals. We had one,
again, one last week or two last week, so.
Don Patrick: It's amazing. Well done.
Terell Boone: Yeah. It really has. But I mean, we've been doing great and we
had a great year the last two years, and I think this year's gonna be even
better than the last two. So we're, but mainly referrals.
Don Patrick: Fab.
Terell Boone: So when we bring somebody on, it's a bugaboo for me. We're
starting to, I want to nail that down more as we bring people on, because
part of that is just having scale, right, Don? You know that, with having
processes are important, but you gotta have people to do them. And so as
we've had a little bit of change in the ASAP group that we're working with,
and then with Allison being out, our onboarding, because we're onboarding a
client, a nice-sized A-client right now, and it's not going as smooth as I
would like it to be, honest with you.
But we try to meet with the client to do a discovery meeting, or a prospect
to do a discovery meeting, whether it's over Zoom, a phone call. Really like
it to be at minimum over Zoom or in person so we can get eyes on them and
really kind of find out what makes sense, right? This is a mutual decision
meeting. Obviously, the people that came from Wells Fargo or the, have gone
through any of the Pareto training, it's a fit meeting, right? You're making
sure that you're a fit and they're a fit. They leave that meeting, they
typically know what you do, who you do it for, and what you charge, right?
And then you know what their knockouts are, what they're looking for, why
they left their other advisor, and ultimately, they understand the timeline,
right, of them coming on. And that's what that looks like to them.
And, usually, we'll follow up within three to four business days and just
say, "This is the phone call that we had," or "This is the meeting that we
had on Zoom," and then "Do you have any outstanding questions?" And then we
also follow up with an email on that. Just say, "It was great to talk to
you. Now that we have Jump, we put the things that we spoke about, the
highlights, and then we'll be in touch if we don't hear from you within a
week or whatever." And so, that's helped.
We've had a very high rate of when someone comes in the office. When we meet
with 'em on Zoom, I would say probably north of 80% of the people that we
meet with, we end up working with. And I think these are good people. Our
judgment, what can only happen over time when they're putting, we haven't
gone through a bear market with everybody yet, so you really see what people
are made of, regardless of what softwares they use.
But they're being introduced through our group. Allison's kind of the front
of that because she's so sweet and upfront and diligent following up with
people. So she really handles a lot of the first touch and all that kind of
stuff. And then after that, we bring in ASAP to open up the accounts and
then start the onboarding process once we have an agreement.
Now that's the way that I do it. Brad does it differently 'cause Brad meets
with everybody and pretty much does a financial plan on everybody. I do a
financial plan on maybe a third of the people. Most people that are referred
to me are coming over for their assets because they're referred from
somebody else because "This is what our guy does for us," right? He helped
out with our taxes or helped out with their Medicare. Those are ancillary
things, as far as planning goes.
But most of the people are coming 'cause they have a pile of cash and they
want us to manage it, right? They're paying too much in taxes or they're
getting ready to inherit a bunch of money, or they're getting read, they're
gonna go through the financial planning process because of their retirement.
They're leaving a company and they gotta roll out a pension or do a pension
analysis, right? And so, but we're trying to integrate the financial
planning with everyone. It's just not always the easiest to do that right up
front with everybody. But I know Brad is very strict on that and really
tries to walk everybody through that in the beginning. And then I try to do
the financial planning once the assets are over.
Don Patrick: Got it. So I'm gonna ask you one question about IFG. It's very
clear that we're helping scrape a lot of the chores off your desk. That's
our big goal. Did we under-promise and over-deliver?
Terell Boone: I think so. No. I mean, I wasn't on my prepared sheet here,
Don. I'm sorry. No. I'm kidding. No. I think, so I'm thinking back through
the different things that we went through, we're lifers with IFG. I mean, as
long as you guys don't make a traumatic move in one direction or other. But
like I told you, our values and purpose and vision are very similar. So, for
us, it's a great fit. We feel like there's a lot of value for what we pay
for our relationship. We feel like you guys are constantly striving to make
things better.
Like we kind of went back with that analogy of Redtail versus Wealthbox,
right? They're spending the money, you guys are spending the time to be
better, to make things better. We love the community, we love the Investment
Solutions. We love ASAP, the ability that we are able to bring on employees
and tuck them under a different payroll so we can still run our Solo
401(k)s. I mean, that's just genius, right?
And so those are the type of things that we are very, very proud to be
aligned with you guys on. And that you're truly sticking to your mission,
which is to make our lives easier so we can go out and do more, right? And
everybody wins in that equation. And so we're very happy and we feel like
you did under-promise and over-deliver.
Don Patrick: Yay. That's our goal anyway. I'm gonna ask a few quick fun
questions okay? Before we wrap it up. And so, we're gonna ask you to use
three words, describe your talents and strengths. And you shared with me
that you had your wife circle the ones, so we don't know if she's absolutely
unbiased or not on this, but let's hear.
Terell Boone: Well, she's definitely biased, but, yeah.
Don Patrick: But she knows you.
Don Patrick: She does.
Terell Boone: Yeah. But like I said, I mentioned earlier on, I mean, my wife
and I have been together for, we celebrate our 20-year wedding anniversary
this year.
Don Patrick: Oh my gosh.
Terell Boone: We've been together since 2002, so we've been in here for a
long time. So she's very honest with me and, which is good. So, let's see.
She put: "building trust with clients and colleagues" as an area that I
per–let's see, professionally, "listening" and "patience" and
"personalization." So those are the areas that she circled for me. She
circled a bunch of other things and that's what she narrowed it down to.
Don Patrick: I would agree. Absolutely. So I think we're gonna wrap it up.
This has been fantastic. Learned a whole lot. You've given us a lot of
advice and just gonna wrap it up. And I want to thank you for taking the
time for this, Terell. I mean, this is, these things are fantastic and I
love the fact that you all are willing to sit down and have a conversation
and share with your peers.
Terell Boone: Yeah.
Don Patrick: And to our listeners, I just wanna thank you all for tuning in
these things, they're fantastic. What a great journey.
Terell Boone: Thank you, Don. Appreciate it.
Don Patrick: All right, I'll talk to you later.
Terell Boone: Alright, thanks, Don.
Well, that's it for today's show. Thanks for listening.
If you've got something to share, send an email to
dpatrick@thebraintrust.net. We want to know what works.
Until next time. See ya.