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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: Hey, everyone. Welcome to the 41st episode of the IFG podcast,
What Works, and our guest today is Steve Reents. He's Senior Financial
Advisor with Gaynes Financial Services in Atlanta, Georgia. Welcome, Steve.
Steve Reents: Thank you. Welcome. I appreciate it. Appreciate you having me
on.
Don Patrick: Oh, yeah.
Steve Reents: Great to be here.
Don Patrick: It’ll be great. So let's just start off dig in and just learn a
little about you, your family, kids, hobbies, things like that.
Steve Reents: Yeah, great. So I grew up in Illinois, went to a small school
in the western suburbs of Chicago called North Central College, and when I
was done with that, I moved down to Atlanta because I wanted to see another
part of the country.
I wanted to get warmer. The Olympics were on the way, so Atlanta was in the
news frequently, and my dad asked me if I was willing to take on any job in
order to get the bills paid, and I said yes, but I didn't tell him that was
exactly the plan. I'm very happy that I had a pretty structured life in my
childhood and was ready to have less structure.
So I started working at a grocery store on the overnight shift so I could go
on interviews during the day and eventually got promoted to the produce
department. And then after a few months, I went on to something else. I
eventually about around age 24, 25, I was working for Arthur Andersen, which
is important because at that time my wife would have been a senior in
college, and she was interning there, and she was strikingly good-looking,
well-spoken, and I spent most of my time trying not to do work so I could
talk to her.
And my joke is I've only harassed one person in my life, but she married me,
so I'm off the hook. From there I went to, that really starts my financial
planning journey. And so at that time, I was spinning my wheels and felt
like I needed to just generally improve my life.
So I enrolled at Georgia State to start their MBA program. At about the same
time, I started reading some books about investing just for my own
knowledge. Started with a Motley Fool book and then read another couple of
books from them and a few others, realized it made sense. I thought it was
the type of thing that people needed, so it was a service that was useful or
that people would be able to use.
Georgia State had a major within the MBA, personal financial planning, so I
did that. Got a job at SunTrust Securities working in their accounting
department. And since I was at SunTrust they were able to sponsor me for the
Series 7. My boss at the time pulled me into his office, said, "Yeah, we'll
do that, but, they really don't like sponsoring people who aren't on the
sales side. And if you don't pass the 7, you might screw it up for everybody
who comes behind you.”
Now SunTrust is a huge bank. They paying $100 to sponsor someone for the—7
is no big deal to them, but he wanted to motivate me at work. I was scared.
So I did the proper studying, and I got my 7 in '66 and kept my eye open for
jobs on the sales side.
Eventually became a sales assistant down the street, which was great. We
were in an old branch. It was about 12 of us, all about the same age, doing
the same job, going through the same things, and all together every day. So
that was really good experience. Let's see. From there, I went to a small
financial company.
Don Patrick: When did you get married?
Steve Reents: So we got married in January of 2003. So I met her when I was
about 24, 25. Got married when I was 29. I'm trying to think about where I
was working. So I was working at SunTrust at the time when I got married.
From SunTrust, I went to a small financial planning firm, which wasn't too
far from my house, which was a great experience because it's a...
That firm, similar to where I am now, is totally different than working in a
bank environment. From there, I went to a company that specialized in
403(b)s for school systems. The idea being when people retired, I would do
their financial planning. These schools were scattered all over the
state—middle Georgia, South Georgia, Arkansas, Tennessee.
I was really not getting any face time. They were signing up a lot of school
systems, and they needed all hands on deck to implement these 403(b)s. And
while I'm an advocate for saving in your employer plan, implementing them is
not financial planning. So around the same time, David Gaynes was looking on
LinkedIn for resumes. I put mine on there and saw his job opening and got a
call from him, and probably four or five interviews a couple months later.
That was 2013. Started at Gaynes Financial.
And my wife was pregnant at the time, so shortly thereafter, we had our
daughter. And I was a paraplanner and did that for over 10 years for David.
When I tell my story, I'd be leaving a big part of it out if I didn't
mention the most important event in our family's history in 2016.
That was when my son was diagnosed with leukemia. So that was a three-year
journey. Really hard first year. Second and third year, more stable, but
still a lot of appointments, a lot of infusions, still a lot of... You
almost feel like you're out of the woods, but it's still a lot to do, even
though you don't have the same dramatic events as the first year.
Don Patrick: Yeah.
Steve Reents: Yeah, so that was 10 years ago now. That's great. Hard to
believe that is, that much time has passed, and he's no signs of anything
coming back. So we're really, really happy about that.
Don Patrick: That's fantastic. Yeah, I remember that was... I can't imagine
how hard that was.
Steve Reents: Yeah. It's something because all of a sudden your life is—when
I say your life, I'm talking about even when, where, and what you eat for
dinner, where you're gonna sleep, and how much sleep you're going to get.
Even the basic things are now determined by something you have no experience
with. And there's anxiety and nervousness, and there's fear involved, and
you learn to be in the present moment, not look towards the future because
you find that looking towards the future could set off thinking about bad
things happening.
And it's funny, in one way, eventually that anxiety subsides and you
concentrate on one thing, which is the task at hand. It's almost in some
ways calming to be sitting in a hospital room.
You're not thinking about anything else. There are no superfluous things
taking up your mind space about other appointments that don't have to do
with this or other social engagements, or really anything else. You can just
concentrate on that task at hand. And there are a lot of things to do.
It's not just sitting around. It is a lot of meetings with doctors, a lot of
cleaning up, a lot of disinfecting of things, so there's reduce the
potential of infection. It's a whole story in and of itself. And it's also a
time when you reinforce your belief in society.
The way everybody rallies around and helps. I was, let's see, at the
Maggiano's dinner, David brought some food to me for our Christmas dinner.
After Thanksgiving, his wife Meredith brought some stuff over to the
hospital to visit and so we could have Thanksgiving food.
So yeah, and then, I, you guys, you and me, had a couple of meals delivered
to our front door. And for that, we're eternally grateful to everyone. And
when we even got meals made for us, I don't know who they came from. They
were just someone from church would just bring them over, and we had these
casserole dishes we didn't know who to give them back to.
It's it's a terrible experience, but on the other hand, it's also, you find
out some amazing things.
Don Patrick: It reminds you what's important in life, doesn't it?
Steve Reents: Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. It really does. It's not a topic that comes
up very often anymore 'cause it's been 10 years, so I'm not used to talking
about it.
But I'm glad to say he's doing great. He's doing great. He has special needs
as well and probably not a widely known thing and has epilepsy, so he still
has some constant medical issues that are always happening. That's our life.
Don Patrick: Amazing. I don't know the timeline. I think I met you before
you were at Gaynes Financial.
Steve Reents: I met you... I was at a Georgia State Financial Planning
alumni meeting, and you were the guest speaker to tell everyone what is IFG,
and I think it was relatively new at the time. That's the first time I had
seen you.
And maybe we had met up at FPA or something like that.
Don Patrick: Yeah. I needed my CFP ethics and FPA sponsoring, and oh, guess
who the instructor was? It was you.
Steve Reents: I did. It was surprisingly hard to get that presentation
signed off on by the CFP board. But yeah, I did that for a year, so that
was—
Don Patrick: That's right. You did great. It was a great class.
Steve Reents: Thank you. Thank you.
Don Patrick: You're a paraplanner. Being a paraplanner at Gaynes Financial,
what does that look like?
Steve Reents: Yeah, I consider it three different things. One is preparing
for reviews. So you're running performance reports, and you're entering data
into software.
ClearPATH eMoney is what we used then, what we still use today. Calling
clients or, and emailing about a week ahead of time just to get updates on
their Social Security or their outside accounts, things like that. And then
meeting with David to give him the rundown of everything that I've found
out.
After, let's see, that was 2013. So after a couple years, and I'm putting in
my opinion on, I think what problems I see that need to be solved,
opportunities that are there. The next thing would be when a new client
comes in, putting together the puzzle pieces of the plan, and that is again,
after a couple years, I'm giving my opinion about what I think needs to be
done and what the priorities are.
Occasionally sat in with him on those meetings. Not real often because I had
my own work to do, but when it was possible, I would do that. And that led
to a lot of client contact, especially new clients who had talked to me from
the beginning. Eventually, they would just continue to talk to me because
they knew me, and they knew it's hard, it's hard to get a hold of an advisor
because they're doing their thing.
They're in meetings. But I'm sitting at my desk every day, Monday through
Friday. So being a part of the new client process gave me a lot of great
experience talking to clients. And then the third thing, once you get to
October, it is just one RMD after another. So that's organizing all that and
making sure those are done.
Those are the—And certainly there's fires that always need to be put out
throughout the year. But those are the three things that I think took up
most of my time.
Don Patrick: So explain ClearPATH that used to be called BetaVest. And it's
a bucket type system. Do you actually use this in front of clients or is
that more behind the scenes?
Steve Reents: Yeah. I pull it up in front of them. You can see behind me,
I've got a big screen TV in the office, and I pull that up in front of them.
Here's why we like it. It's not using Monte Carlo. It's assuming it's the
late 1920s today and runs a scenario using real historical data. And so I
always remind them, if you're plan works using ClearPATH, we feel confident
it's going to work because it takes into account the Great Depression, World
War II, anything.
Republicans or Democrats in the White House or in Congress, whatever
scenario you can dream up, this includes that because it includes the worst
of times and the best of times. And if it works, we feel great about it. And
so I'm doing it in front of clients because we'll adjust it on the fly. If
we ask ourselves, we've got this number put in for the potential of moving
to a retirement community in the last four years of your life.
Should we add a year to that? Should we increase the amount that we're going
to assume for that? So that's why I'll do it in front of them, and then they
can see the real-time results. That is what we use almost exclusively for
reviews. Now, when money comes into play with a new client, it covers more
ground.
It gives us two systems that run a scenario, ClearPATH and then eMoney using
Monte Carlo. So we like to just show that we've got two things that show the
plan's gonna work or the plan may not work. So eMoney becomes more involved
with the new client, whereas with reviews, it's ClearPATH.
And ClearPATH also has a very easy-to-understand output. It's not as robust
as eMoney by any means, but it gets to the point being, are you gonna run
out of money by age 95? It's very easy to understand, and it's very easy to
see the output, so.
Don Patrick: And with eMoney, you're getting the estate planning modules and
the risk management and all that.
Steve Reents: Yes. Yeah. So to build a plan, eMoney is great to... when the
plan is in place and we're doing reviews, we go back to ClearPATH. Yeah.
Don Patrick: Yeah. Yeah, it's a fantastic tool. It's one of my favorites.
And it's a local advisor who from the same neighborhood.
Steve Reents: Yeah. Yeah, it's great. Yeah, he did, which is fantastic
because when they have educational sessions, they're here in town, and the
guy who invented it is the guy who's teaching you.
So he knows all the ins and outs. So if you pick up ClearPATH and you need
to learn how to do it, it's the training is fantastic.
Don Patrick: Yeah. And he's like a numbers nerd engineer with a great
personality, great enthusiasm. He lives and breathes ClearPATH constantly.
Steve Reents: Yeah, he does. He really does. That is his life. Yeah.
Don Patrick: I think So BetaVest was the first version, and I believe I was
actually the first user of BetaVest.
Steve Reents: Oh, really? Oh, okay.
Don Patrick: I don't know. Way back. Yeah. So now you're a financial
planner. You're out of paraplanning and face-to-face with clients.
And have you guys backfilled the paraplanning slot?
Steve Reents: Yeah. Yeah. So we've got Garrett and Andrew, who have come on.
Andrew really is more like three to four years ago. Garrett has come on
board a couple of years ago. Andrew took over a lot of the paraplanning, and
in the past couple of years, Andrew has moved a lot of the paraplanning to
Garrett.
So we have got two people who are working on review prep and new client
preparation. And as time goes by, I think Andrew picks up more and more of
the operations, or excuse me, has picked up more and more of the operations
piece, and Garrett has picked up more and more of the paraplanning piece,
which is great to have two people to know how to do those things because as—
Going back to my—I spent three months when I was only in the office two days
a week. So life happens and to have two people who are capable of doing that
is fantastic. And then we also just hired a gentleman named Jeff who works
on the administrative side. He works directly with Hope, who a lot of people
at IFG know because she's been around for 10 or 11 years, something like
that.
She really is—I consider her to be the boss, and she knows all the ins and
outs. She knows everything. She knows how to get things done. She is also a
great resource to talk to before I start some process to know that I don't
take a wrong turn and make more work for her.
And she's been getting Jeff up to speed for the past few months
administratively. So the way it works right now is she runs the operation
administratively. Andrew does a lot of the operational aspects of, maybe
not—Hope is doing new applications, transfer paperwork, things like that.
Andrew's doing more operational things, and then Garrett is doing a lot of
the care planning, and then Jeff is very quickly coming up to speed on the
administrative stuff. And David is at the top of the pyramid.
Don Patrick: So David, Rich, and Marty were instrumental in creating New
Dimensions, which is using the Dimensional funds, and still super involved.
The investment committee meets, I think, every other month. It's been going
on for over twenty years. It used to be monthly. And you were extremely
involved in trading and a lot of things, if you wanna share some of that
with us.
Steve Reents: Yeah. I think that I'm glad that we have models. I'm glad that
we have New Dimensions.
I think that the value we provide is the planning, whereas being able to
outsource the investing to, to, to Dimensional is in the investment
committee is a great aspect of being part of IFG. I can't speak highly
enough about how Bryce has built up the trading.
Don Patrick: It's amazing.
Steve Reents: The trading team, and it's really fill out an electronic form,
and it's all done.
But yeah but way back when I was the backup planner, or excuse me, not the
backup planner. I meant to say the backup trader. So if the trader was
unable, sick or something or out, they would come to me. And so I kinda had
a good idea of... I got a real good idea of what the models were and how to
trade them most efficiently and was able to translate that to doing things
more efficiently with David.
So yeah, and I attended, my, my share of those investment committee
meetings, which are fantastic. You can really see... I wanna see how the
sausage is made because it's not ugly and it's not dirty. It's it's really a
collaborative effort to come to, reasonable decisions on things.
Don Patrick: Yeah. Dimensional really helps us, and they have great tools to
do deep dives into the portfolios.
Steve Reents: They do. People love the story of Dimensional. They love the
academic background. They love the fact that the prices or the expense
ratios are low. They love the fact that there's Nobel Prizes involved with
the people involved at Dimensional.
It's a great story. Clients love it.
Don Patrick: I call them propeller heads.
Steve Reents: Yeah.
Don Patrick: I think the co-CEO was PhD aerospace engineer who’s running the
company.
Steve Reents: Yeah. Yeah. Smart guys. I'd rather them do the investing piece
than me.
Don Patrick: Yeah. Yeah.
Steve Reents: I trust them more than myself, right?
Don Patrick: It's amazing. So your life now, client-facing?
Steve Reents: Yeah.
Don Patrick: Roughly how many households are you managing?
Steve Reents: Yeah. So we've got about total AUM, about one thirty, 130
million, 130 households. We did sell about 100 accounts to to LPL with their
program at the end of last year, which was really helpful.
And Garrett has done a great job handling those calls when they call in
explaining what's happening. I don't think that we have had anybody who has
been upset with it. I don't think we've had anybody who really questioned
it. It’s been great. My predecessor, Vickie Pond, she took a lot of calls
about things like RMDs or beneficiaries for accounts that were quite small,
and it was simply much better for those people to be able to call LPL and
give them the service they need instead of having to try to call Vickie
who's got 10 other tasks that are more important that need to be done.
And so those things could, you could very easily feel as though you're not
important. I'm sure they're happier being with LPL.
Don Patrick: That's good.
Steve Reents: And it's made my job easier too.
Don Patrick: Yeah. So how many households are you spec—are you assigned
certain households or is it more of a group or?
Steve Reents: Yeah. Yeah.
So just a little bit of background. I guess it was seven or eight years ago,
Jack and Joan—Joan Tillett and Jack Francisco—retired. David bought their
practice. They were still involved for a couple years, Jack doing a lot of
reviews with David and then with Vickie to make that introduction, which I
think was great because it gave an idea of how to do it successfully.
So when Vickie was planning to retire, and I moved into her space, she spent
about a year bringing me along with her to reviews and meetings with clients
so they could meet me. But yeah, so we just refer to that as its own book of
business which is what I'm responsible for. Now, there were some people who
hit it off with David when Jack and David were doing those meetings to make
the transition.
So there's some that he still sits in on meetings with, and David knows what
he's doing, and he really probably takes charge of those meetings, and I
know my role, but that works great. And we also have a group of clients who
are in South Georgia because they all work, some of them still, but most of
them retired now, work at nuclear plants for Georgia Power, which is now
Southern Company.
And Joan, many years ago, had a lot of great inroads with Georgia Power. So
that is primarily what I'm working on. People who used to work for Georgia
Power, now called Southern Company. They have got company stock that they
started buying in the early '80s when it was probably $6 or $7 a share, and
now it's in the 90s.
And they're very loyal, and so there are a lot of conversations about, the
plan worked. You bought this stock, it's now in the 90s. You have more money
than you ever expected. Let’s sell some of this Southern stock. And some
people get it. They don't believe Southern stock or Southern Company is
going to go out of business, but it could certainly go back to the '60s or
the '50s in terms of share price.
But some, they like the dividend and there is no convincing them. And so I
have a lot of conversations about concentrated stock.
Don Patrick: Yeah. That's pretty typical. You mentioned they're very loyal.
They got where they were because of a great job with a great company.
However, put all your eggs in one basket. I remember, actually, I think it
was Jack Francisco. They had a number of clients had GE stock, and GE was
just like, it was impenetrable. Nothing's gonna happen to GE. Well, guess
what?
Steve Reents: But we remind them. We talk to them about the power company in
California who went under because of all things, because there were fires
that were started around their towers.
Who would've guessed that? And the bigger example is Enron. Not into exactly
what Southern Company does, but they were an energy company. Fraud ran
rampant with them and they met their demise. So that's what we talk about.
We've made a lot of good money.
There are a lot of people whose opinion is, "Yes, this has done great. I
have more money than I ever expected. Let's let's take the win on this," and
maybe they're in a plan for selling 10% a year rather than doing one big...
one big chunk could be six or $700,000. They're not ready for that, which I
understand.
It's an emotional decision. But we try to get them on a plan, maybe $100,000
a year over a few years to where sell out of there, keep some of it in cash
'cause they're gonna have the required distribution, and the rest is put in
the model.
Don Patrick: David just bought within the last year, Cindy Skaggs. Now, is
she still working the clients currently?
Steve Reents: Yeah. So one of the great things I mentioned about Jack is him
continuing to work to make those introductions, and Cindy is still here as
well, and she's making introductions with David. And I believe David is
actively recruiting and interviewing people to find an advisor to work that
book of business, get them involved now while Cindy is still here and can
give them the details and making face-to-face introductions so they can hit
the ground running when she—I don't know if it's a year from now or if it's
18 months from now, but eventually she will fully retire.
So that's where we are on that. And to tell you the truth, I don't have a
lot of insight into that other than what I just said because it's I almost
see my book of business as a silo and then Cindy's as another silo. They
don't involve me with that. Fine, I've got enough work to do, right?
Don Patrick: Two very successful acquisitions and succession plan.
Steve Reents: Yeah. That speaks to IFG and the trust that, that is formed
between advisors, which is just facilitated by Seeing each other day to day,
having the same principles, but really deepening those relationships at
retreat. And, I think that's a testament to what IFG is.
Don Patrick: So technology-wise, you got eMoney, ClearPATH.
Steve Reents: Yeah.
Don Patrick: What else you, what do you use for CRM?
Steve Reents: Oh, we're we're using Redtail now, and we have for several
years. However, we are in the process of moving over to Wealthbox. I think
in about a month or two, we expect to make that change. Redtail has been
good to us.
I just think that Wealthbox is another step in the right direction. We're
also using OnceHub for scheduling. We're using Jump for Zoom meetings. I
hear a lot of people talking about Jump and the way they use it and what a
time saver it is. I'm a slower... I've been slower to rely upon it.
I use it and I review it. I just feel as though I have to review it with
such a fine-tooth comb, because if we get one thing wrong on there, like
maybe the RMD, and 99% of it can be right. I guess I'm just skeptical. As
time goes by, I'll rely upon it more and more. So that's a lot of those,
that's the technology we're using.
Don Patrick: So I think one of the negatives with Jump, I love it. Just
about everybody I talk to is using it and loves it, but it, sometimes it's
just a little wordy. So I think it was Jessica Callahan, when I was visiting
her mastermind group, she takes the Jump, copies it, and runs it through
ChatGPT to clean it up more bullet points and quicker and easier to read.
Okay. Which I thought was pretty interesting.
Steve Reents: Yeah. She's in my mastermind group, and then she gave a
presentation on that. I think she gave a presentation on Wealthbox as well,
which got me on board with Wealthbox. Mastermind's been great. I think it
was, I think it was Rich who recommended the original start of our
mastermind group, 'cause he had he had thought so highly of the mastermind
group that he and David are in.
And so I think it's been about three to four years now that I've been in
there.
Don Patrick: And your group is fantastic. Every person in your Mastermind
group is really good, sharp, and contribute. It's an excellent mastermind
group.
Steve Reents: It is. It is. Everyone is contributing. And, as much as
anything, as much as the information is shared, it does give me a chance to
meet people and become friends.
You see them at mastermind, and then you see them at retreat when you're
having dinner and having a couple drinks and get to know them a little bit
better. That's as valuable as anything, I think, about the mastermind group.
Don Patrick: And you get to learn how other people are running their
business.
Steve Reents: Yeah. Yeah.
Don Patrick: Pick up ideas?
Steve Reents: It's fantastic. I've taken many ideas, and that's what, twice
a year for three or four years now, I've gotten plenty of ideas.
Don Patrick: Do you use MyRepChat by any chance?
Steve Reents: I don't. David does. I don't think he uses it a lot. It’s more
a matter of when MyRepChat had started, I heard a lot of critiques of it
and—
Don Patrick: Oh it was not good when it first started.
Steve Reents: Yeah. And so I just didn't consider it, and time has gone by,
and I spent all of last year, that was really the first time I'm working
this book of business on my own and spending all my time trying to get in
front of the entire book of business in a year. I ended up getting about
80%, conducting reviews of about 80% of them.
And so the idea of adding something, even something that's easy like
MyRepChat just was not on my radar. But it will be. People like to text. It
would be ignoring something obvious to use if I didn't get on it. So it's
on... No experience yet, but it's on the radar screen.
Don Patrick: All right. Besides acquisition, where do most of the new
clients come from?
Steve Reents: They're coming from referrals from current clients. As I said,
I spent all of last year trying to get in front of everybody in the book of
business. New clients, referrals, or really family members of current
clients.
Because in some months felt like I was chasing my tail with trying to get
all the reviews scheduled and get all the post-review events done. I did not
get into networking, which is the plan for this year. So all new clients
really are coming from reviews from current clients.
Don Patrick: So you got a referral, an introduction from a client.
What is the next step with the referral? How do you make that happen?
Because people, "Oh, yeah, I'm gonna give them your name." Of course,
nothing ever happens. So how do you handle that?
Steve Reents: Yeah. I'm telling everybody, of course, that they've spoken
with Garrett on the phone, and now that he's on board, we've got extra
capacity.
So if there's somebody that you know that needs a second opinion, we've got
the time to do it, and I'd be more than happy. And let them know that I'm
not gonna pester them and they're not under any obligation to talk to me for
an hour. I'm happy to do it. But the ones that have worked really, it was
not...
It was less me asking them and more of them saying, "My son needs you. He's
going to be at our next meeting." And then it takes off from there with
filling out a fact finder and then scheduling an individual meeting with
them. During the meeting with current client and their son and the son's
spouse, they're getting a real good idea of what we do because we're doing
their review.
But since there's somebody new there. Really the impetus of them coming is
finding out who we are and what we do. 'Cause you're talking about a client
who's probably in their late 70s and saying the next generation needs to
know what's happening. I'm not going to last forever."
So they get a good idea of what we do when they come to that first meeting.
But then after the fact finder, we can drill down into what they've got,
what problems need to be solved, get a meeting with just us and them, put
together the plan, which a lot of it is the mechanics. These are the emails
you're going to get.
This is what e-signature looks like. These are the accounts that are going
to be opened up. This is how the money is gonna move from one to another.
That, that sort of thing. So I think one of the things I didn't expect is
how much time we need to put into preparing them for the mechanics of how
money moves and how accounts are opened up.
And for maybe the second or third time, this is your Roth IRA, this is your
traditional IRA, this is how they differ, this is why they're in different
accounts, and that type of thing. But to kinda summarize, we'll get the
referral, we'll get a fact finder done, we'll have an individual meeting
where we understand what their concerns are, and we'll bring problems that
we can solve for them.
And then we'll meet again, but it may be electronically. It may be a Zoom
meeting, and a lot of it is spent talking about the practical steps. "This
is what we're doing first, second, and third. These are the emails you're
going to get. This is what e-signature looks like, and this is how it's
going to look in the end."
Don Patrick: So you have basically two meetings or three with a new client?
Steve Reents: It's gonna be three. By the time we get to the operational
aspect of telling them, “This is how we're going to execute the plan that
we've got in place," that's gonna be a third meeting.
Don Patrick: So now I'm a client, I've been a client. On an annual basis,
what does it look like in terms of meetings and such?
Steve Reents: Yeah. We tell people that we're gonna meet every year. If
something comes up, we can meet more frequently, or if you just wanna meet
more frequently, we can. But a vast majority meets once a year. Garrett or
Andrew, mostly Garrett these days, is gonna call them a week ahead of time,
get updates on their Social Security income, on their outside accounts, find
out if there's anything they wanna talk about to put at the top of the
agenda.
And have there been any events in their life? Did someone die and get
inheritance? Did they sell some property? Things like that. And then
ideally, they'll come into the office, but more and more, people don't love
driving on 285 once they hit 70 years old. But they're more than capable
of—Zoom is easy to use, and they're happy to do it. I think it's really only
our much older clients who would just prefer a phone call. I think there's a
little bit of frustration level when a link doesn't work properly. Yeah,
it's once a year. ClearPATH is a big part of it, running through that, and
mostly it's putting their mind at ease that they've got plenty of money to
last them to 95.
We're going over performance. We're going over some differences in 2023 and
2024, big years for the US market. Why are we diversifying? Because in 2025,
big year for the international markets. And in the past few months I've told
them it's not going to last forever. We've had three great years in a row.
Common sense tells me we're gonna have a down year at some point, but
everything you need is gonna come out of your fixed income. We're not gonna,
we're not gonna touch your stocks if it's a down year, and the market moves
on unforeseen things. Nobody foresaw a war starting a month ago in a part of
the world that affects oil prices.
It's not gonna affect your day-to-day life. The plan is in place. And, I
repeat the same things to people every time. The money that you need is
gonna come from your cash, and then it's gonna come from your fixed income.
Your day-to-day life isn't gonna change even if we have another 2008.
We've got plenty of money in those buckets to last five years and wait for
the market to come back. And when they hear it over and over again, they're
not bored by it. They're happy to hear it. They're reassured by it. We do
not get frantic calls about what's happening with my account.
Most people tell me, "Yep, I've heard it before. I'm on board with it. It's
the same thing that Jack and Joan told me 15 years ago." So that really
made... It's a hidden thing that made for a good transition. David was
telling them what Jack and Joan told him. Vickie was telling them what Jack
and Joan told him.
I'm telling them what they heard in a seminar from Joan Tillett 20 years
ago, probably in the cafeteria at the Georgia Power building, right?
Don Patrick: Yep. They do wanna hear it again. People do forget, and it
makes them feel good.
Steve Reents: It's one of the things I like about financial planning, the
principles I learned when I read those Motley Fool books many years ago.
They still hold true. Get invested, stay invested, don't jump in and out. As
much as possible, keep your expenses down. And it works. It's worked for...
it is rare that we have a client who things are going great because they
inherited a bunch of money. It's mostly because they started saving when
they were young, and they don't live beyond what they make.
Don Patrick: And my clients will thank me, and I remind them that I'm the
coach, they're the player.
They're the ones that have lived within their means, saved, and had that
kind of discipline. There's only so much we can do.
Steve Reents: Yeah, especially people who have a pension and a good pension.
If they, in addition to that, save in their 401(k), I remind them that they
have done a great job, and they are now reaping the rewards of all that
saving and doing diligent work for 20, 30, 35 years at Southern Company,
whether they're an electrical engineer or a nuclear auditor or one guy who
worked in aviation.
He kept up the helicopters, which didn't occur to me, but they have to have
a way to check their power lines, so they have a fleet of helicopters to
travel over the lines to see if there's damage. And he did that for years,
and he has a great pension, but in addition to that, they were also diligent
savers and now they don't want to take their RMD because they're paying
taxes on money they don't need.
Don Patrick: I know.
Steve Reents: I tell them the old CPA joke, "Congratulations on your own
taxes. It means at some point you did something right. You made some money."
Don Patrick: That's exactly right. They made money. So following a review
meeting, do you send anything out as a kind of a summary follow-up via email
or in writing or anything?
Steve Reents: Yeah. Within a day or two, I'm sending a summary email, and
directly after the meeting, I am entering everything that we need for the
workflow in Redtail, and that gets dispersed to Hope, and then she disperses
the actual to-do list of the actual tasks, whether she's doing it or or Jeff
is doing it.
So everything is just gonna show up electronically in her Redtail and as an
email message as well. While we are moving to Wealthbox, I can't talk highly
enough about how the workflows have made things efficient in Redtail. When
we first started the workflows, I would additionally send her an email as a
backup, say I started a workflow, but this is really what I want done.
But eventually, Hope and I joke that we're friends, but we barely speak to
each other because the workflows that she built are so good and they're so
efficient that we just use those, and she knows exactly what is trying to be
accomplished because the workflows are built so well at the start, and she
built them.
Don Patrick: Yeah, workflows, they constantly require attention, but what a
game changer. And in terms of servicing the clients, things don't fall
through the cracks. They get done.
Steve Reents: Yeah. It's one of the great efficiencies, along with… it's
been 13, 14 years now, but the invention of e-signature is the other great
efficiency that just really makes life easier.
Workflows, e-signature, and the ability to click on a client's name in
ClientWorks, click on forms, and whatever form you need, that account number
is filled in, the name is filled in. I'm amazed by that because I grew up at
a time when I was filling all that stuff in field by field.
So maybe I'm amazed at the simple things, but I'm old enough to appreciate
how nice that is.
Don Patrick: Absolutely. So I think most everybody knows I started in the
profession before computers. It was a typewriter.
Steve Reents: Yeah. I remember the retreat when you brought in your
typewriter. What a great bridge from then to now, right? We're doing the
same thing, but the tools have changed so drastically.
Don Patrick: The word processor was a game-changer. All of a sudden the
typewriter went out the window, no more whiteout, and you could have forms,
basically templated Word documents. That in itself was amazing.
And then the CRMs come out, and then we finally started getting the
financial planning tools and just... Yeah.
Steve Reents: Yeah. My, my daughter doesn't believe me, but when I was a
sophomore in high school, I took a typing class on a typewriter, and by my
senior year of high school, I think typewriters were gone, and we were using
word processors.
Don Patrick: Yeah. So I just remind people, when you get frustrated with
technology just take a deep breath because…
Steve Reents: Yeah, that's true. That's true.
Don Patrick: … it helps so much in service world. Do your clients ever ask
for a hard copy of, say, the ClearPATH or the eMoney, or just basically do
it once in a while?
Steve Reents: Occasionally, but it's rarely a hard copy. It's more a PDF
that's attached to the email. So not often, but sometimes.
Don Patrick: Yeah, that's what I found is it's... I think I have one client
that wants a PDF. They just wanna know they're okay. They get to see it.
Steve Reents: Yeah. I know, but most of my meetings are spent reassuring
them that everything's fine, just like we reassured them the previous year
and the year before that.
But it's a big part of their life. They want to be reassured.
Don Patrick: Absolutely.
Steve Reents: I'm happy to do it.
Don Patrick: That's what we're here for.
Steve Reents: Yeah. Yeah.
Don Patrick: I'm gonna ask you a couple of fun fact questions. Use three
words to describe your talents and strengths.
Steve Reents: I know my role, I think is one of the things that was really
important when I was a paraplanner.
Understanding that I'm gonna embrace this role, which is a role I liked. I
did enjoy being a paraplanner for... I remember when I was at Georgia State
going through financial planning classes, I had a guest speaker who said,
"Look, if you're in the low levels of the financial planning industry, that
is a lot better than the low levels of a lot of other industries."
And maybe paraplanner isn't planner, but I embraced it, and I think knowing
my role and how to assist David was important, and I think it's important me
understanding Garrett's role and Andrew's role and Jeff's role. I think
second word is empathy. I feel like the older I get, the more and more… When
something goes wrong or somebody makes a mistake, I'm much more inclined to
think, "I don't know what they've got going on at home. Maybe they got in a
fight with their wife. Maybe their kid has the flu. I'm not gonna get upset
about this.”
I feel like I've been through the wringer enough that the hard days happen,
and I think empathy is something that's really increased over the past 10
years. And finally, adaptability, changeability, flexibility, whatever you
wanna call it.
When you have a son with special needs, there are emergencies that pop up.
One of his issues is he has epilepsy, and just a week ago, he spent a night
in the hospital, and that happens about once a year, once every year and a
half. And you learn that you don't have to live a different life.
Live your life. Make the appointments that need to be made, and when an
emergency comes, you'll figure it out, and we've had vacations where our kid
had to go to the emergency room. We just figured it out. We've had vacations
where there was other emergencies. We have client appointments that need to
be rescheduled.
We're not gonna lose sleep over that anymore. We're just gonna figure out
how to survive and advance.
Don Patrick: That's great advice. Really.
Steve Reents: Yeah. Yeah. As I said, when you're in that hospital room, you
learn to live in the moment. It's a cliché, but it helps get through life.
You start think about the future too much.
You think about a lot of the good things that can happen. You inevitably
settle on some of the bad things that can happen. Worrying about things that
you don't have to worry about is a load off your mind when you stop doing
it.
Don Patrick: Prioritizing, right? And not worrying about things you can't
control.
Steve Reents: Yeah. Okay, LPL can be frustrating, but you can't control it,
so don't lay in bed at night gritting your teeth over something that LPL
did, right? Or, I love e-signature, as I said. Occasionally, a person has a
phone that hasn't been updated in a while and it doesn't work. We'll figure
it out.
I'll FedEx some paper. There's no reason to to get worked up over that kind
of thing.
Don Patrick: I like that.
Steve Reents: That's not necessarily everyone's attitude when they're young,
but I think everyone as they get older that the scale tips towards that
understanding and empathy that life happens.
Don Patrick: I like it. So tell us something maybe surprising about yourself
that others don't know.
Steve Reents: Sure. I have a the thing that people didn't know, because it
was so long ago, so it never comes up, was that I played football in
college. Although Anne mentioned that in a monthly meeting a few months ago,
so prior to that, nobody knew about that.
Don Patrick: What position?
Steve Reents: I played linebacker. It’s Division III. It's small college
football, so it's not the same as Georgia and Alabama, but it was a
fantastic time in my life. And what I didn't realize was what it was gonna
mean later because I have some pennants in my office that advertise the fact
that we've won three national championships in the last six years.
And which has prompted a lot of the guys getting in a text group, meeting up
for some of the big games, and just picking up where we left off with having
a lot of fun, a lot of sort of good-natured poking fun at each other. It's
been great. It's been great, keeping those relationships now for 30 years.
And then the other thing that people don't know, it's just a silly, small
thing, but I always get a great reaction from it, is when it comes out that
I have this unofficial record amongst college friends for one time taking
down 63 chicken wings. And people love it. They laugh every time I mention
it.
I can tell you, you don't eat 63 chicken wings without having a history of
being a big eater, and I did. I was in college at the time, and as I
mentioned I played football, so we lifted weights a lot too. So I was in
pretty good shape even though I ate a lot, and it was, it was in spring
break where you put your body through the ringer for a few days in a row,
and you're really hungry, and it's 63, but the legend has grown.
I mentioned I see those guys at big games, and as far as they're concerned
it's more like 75 or 80 now, but that's always a fun thing that people like
to learn. My wife thinks it's funny, to be fair.
Don Patrick: That's hilarious. I love it. What's the best piece of advice
you have received?
Steve Reents: My dad used to… He would say this so often that eventually he
would say it with a smirk and a kind of tongue-in-cheek. He'd say, "Plan
your work and work your plan. Plan your work and work your plan." And
eventually, sometime when I was probably in my 20s, realizing I gotta get
something done. If I put a plan in place, it is more likely to get done, and
so that has just stuck with me for—I heard it when I was a kid.
I probably put it in place when I was in my 20s. I'm 52 now, and I still
think plan your work and work your plan. I am trying to get my daughter to
understand. Maybe if I say it enough times, she will because she's starting
to get it. She's much more diligent on doing her homework because now she
knows there is a plan to do it at a certain time of night.
And hopefully I'm passing that on to her. That's, no doubt about it, that is
the best, that's the best thing I've heard.
Don Patrick: That is great advice. I'm gonna wrap it up, Steve. I wanna
thank you so much for taking the time. These things are fantastic. I always
learn something from every one of these interviews.
And again, I wanna thank you for taking the time to do this and sharing.
Steve Reents: No, I appreciate it too. I've gotten a lot from it as well,
and I thank you for asking me to be on. Thanks. Thank you, and thanks for
starting IFG. Thanks for everything. Look, I've spent time at a bank, and
there are a lot of big egos there, and there are not at IFG, and it is a
different world here. No doubt about it.
Don Patrick: On purpose.
Steve Reents: Yeah.
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.