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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: 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. Hello, everyone. Welcome
to the 36th episode of the IFG Podcast, What Works, and our guest today is
going to be a very great conversation. I know because I've known Gary quite
a while. Gary Alpert of Gary Alpert Financial Strategies in Atlanta,
Georgia. Welcome, Gary.
Gary Alpert: Hey, thank you very much, Don. I'm excited to be here.
Don Patrick: Yeah, it's going to be fun. So let's just talk about you a
little bit. Tell us about your family, where you're from, how you ended up
in the South, because I know you're not a Southerner.
Gary Alpert: What made you think that? No, absolutely. I grew up in
Brooklyn, New York. Small family. I have a sister, my two parents; South
Brooklyn, near Coney Island. The famous amusement park is there in Brighton
Beach. So a lot of history there. I spent a lot of time in Brooklyn, but
periodically traveled out a little bit.
I went to high school in Manhattan for a little while, and then back in
Brooklyn: Stuyvesant High School, and then Midwood High School back in
Brooklyn. I always tried to work hard at school and was always interested in
learning and trying new stuff and the like, so it was a good childhood. I
was always excited about going to college and advancing my education. So,
ultimately, I made my way to State University of New York at Binghamton,
which is in upstate New York.
Don Patrick: It's pretty up there.
Gary Alpert: It's pretty up there. Beautiful mountains. It's actually really
scenic. It was cold up there, like I always tell people it made Brooklyn
feel like the Bahamas, so it was cold. And I loved my time there. I studied
economics. I actually started out as pre-med because my sister is a doctor
and she was very successful in that space. And then I just realized that
wasn't for me; there were certain things I couldn't do well.
I happened to just take a class in economics, really loved it, and decided
to change my major and my focus to economics, finance, and investments. So
anyway, that was a really good pivot. You want to go with what you're
passionate about and what you enjoy learning, and I think that helped, in
part at least, lead me to the career I'm in today.
But, going back to the Binghamton cold weather, it was a beautiful place,
but I realized I wasn't a cold-weather person. Here in the Atlanta area, if
it snows an inch, everything shuts down, but things won't shut down in
Binghamton unless you’ve got a solid three to four feet of snow. So things
kind of kept moving along, but I wanted to go to graduate school and get my
MBA and just go down for warmer weather, as warm weather as I possibly
could.
And so I applied to three programs, but I only applied to one program in the
South: University of Georgia. I applied to a few programs up north. The
programs up north did accept me; the MBA program in Georgia waitlisted me.
So then I just asked myself whether I want to spend my time up north or do I
want to get down to warmer weather. I decided I want to get down to warmer
weather, so I started a systematic calling campaign to the Dean of
Admissions at University of Georgia’s MBA program.
I wouldn't say begging him to take me in, but just trying very hard to
convince him that I was the right guy for the program. And I guess he
eventually relented because University of Georgia took me off the waiting
list and took me into the program, and it was there that I got my MBA
concentration in finance. It was a great experience just being at University
of Georgia and learning there. I'm a big sports fan, so seeing a huge
football stadium in the middle of campus was very, very exciting to me. I
met some of my best friends there. One of my closest friends is from Latvia,
but I've met a lot of friends both internationally and domestically.
And then from University of Georgia, I basically looked for my first
full-time job. That part was a challenge. I had a good friend and mentor
toward the tail end that just taught me some good work ethic and a good way
to approach my career. Although the interview process was tough because I
didn't have any work experience. So I think I went through about 12 or 13
interviews unsuccessfully. And so, I was just waiting for somebody to give
me a job. And when somebody offered me a job, I accepted it.
Don Patrick: So you are persistent, calling the dean. You don't give up.
Gary Alpert: I don't give up. I just try to be persistent, unrelenting. But
you know, not to push people away, but to let people know that I'm very
serious. And my friend, the job was a starting job; it was actually as an
assistant financial planner. So I guess you could say I found this industry
really by accident. I was interested in finance, but I never thought of
myself as people-facing. I thought of myself more as an analyst in the
background. But based on the advice of my friend, I just dedicated myself to
learning as much as possible, working as hard as possible, and seeing if the
situation worked, just making the best of it as I could. And as I got into
it more, I really enjoyed speaking with the clients, helping them with their
issues, and talking with them. And then I realized, this actually may end up
being the thing for me, and I pressed forward with it.
Don Patrick: So from there, what was next? So you're basically a
paraplanner, right?
Gary Alpert: Yeah, basically a paraplanner. And I was also the admin person.
So, there were no electronic files at the time. I spent half my day filing
and then half my day doing some planning and speaking with the clients. I
think the owner of the business at first was hesitant about that. But then I
think she felt like I was doing a good job at it, so she let me engage in it
more fully.
I didn't—my parents were supportive financially for college, but they wanted
me to figure things out on my own as I got into the workforce. So, when I
came to Atlanta to work, I didn't have a driver's license. I didn't have a
car. My friend lent me a couple hundred bucks to get started, but other than
that, it was just starting to get my paycheck; that was my source of funds.
So, I had a few episodes where my bank account might have been down to 20
cents. It was a really—I mean, getting down there, but I would walk to work
or I would take the MARTA bus to work depending on where I was living at the
time, and just make it work and make it happen.
I think as a really young person, I was just taught to just work as hard as
you can and don't expect great things to come to you immediately. Everything
that's meaningful in life takes a lot of time and hard work. It's very rare
for you to suddenly start making a lot of money. But if you work hard and
you listen to people, you take stuff in, your opportunity will come.
Don Patrick: It's great advice. It's true advice. Work hard, be patient.
Gary Alpert: Work hard, be patient. Something I would advise younger folks
today. There'll be some things that you don't think you should be doing at
the time. I mean, I had my MBA; I thought filing—I wasn't crazy about doing
filing, but it was just part of the deal.
Don Patrick: So how long were you in this position at this firm?
Gary Alpert: I was at the firm for 16 years.
Don Patrick: Oh my gosh.
Gary Alpert: So I—rightly or wrongly, well, I think rightly—I felt like if I
can give it all to a company and make a significant contribution, and they
would reward me for that. And I would love to just find the company and just
succeed along with them. So that was always my mindset. And so within the
company, I just took on a bigger and bigger role, interfacing with clients,
doing more in a lead advisor role where I would be their primary point of
contact.
And so my responsibilities grew, and as long as my responsibilities were
growing, that was fine for me. As long as I was learning, that was fine for
me. And I always felt like I should give my all to a company and dedicate
it. I think it's necessary in some cases, but I always resisted using a
company as a stepping stone to something else. I wanted to just give them my
all and see what I could do to make them better and also make myself better.
Don Patrick: So you're loyal.
Gary Alpert: I think so. Yes. Yeah, for a long time, definitely so. And they
were treating me well as well.
Don Patrick: Good. So 16 years. So what was your progression like? You were
paraplanning, filing, cleaning the toilets?
Gary Alpert: That's right. Cleaning the toilets—that would've even—I feel
like I have a strong work ethic, but that might've even pushed me a little
too far, given the job description at least.
It's funny because my title never really changed significantly, really just
my roles and responsibilities. So I started in filing, handling new account
applications, and just being an assistant to the owner of the company who
was the lead advisor for folks. But I felt like she was wanting to take more
of a limited role. In other words, she had been working hard for a while, so
she just wanted to work a little less. So more and more, as I was open to
speaking with clients, she was just allowing me to do it.
In that sense, I really appreciated that because she was outsourcing a lot,
but I was really anxious to take stuff in. So before I knew it, two or three
years down the line, I had lead advisor responsibility with the entire
client base and she would jump in and get involved as needed. But she leaned
more and more on me as the primary liaison. And I really enjoyed that
because that's really where I wanted to be. It allowed me to really
accelerate my development, in my opinion.
Don Patrick: That's very impressive. Three years. Typically I say it's about
five years before you get to being a lead advisor or client-facing, that
sort of thing. So three years is impressive.
Gary Alpert: No, I never would've anticipated, A, that I would've enjoyed it
as much as I did, and B, that I even had the aptitude for it. I always
considered myself an introvert, and this was a very extroverted position. So
it was really interesting to me.
Don Patrick: So what did you do with this firm? Was it financial planning,
investment management? What did that look like? And what kind of tools and
that sort of thing?
Gary Alpert: You know, I tried to definitely develop out the financial
planning, but a lot of it was investment management. We had the interface
with the brokerage firm we dealt with, which eventually ended up being
National Financial Services, but originally started as JW Charles and JW
Genesis. But it was mainly investments. As I went on, I just took on the
learning of more financial planning topics like projections and taxes, and
just started learning those on my own and made an endeavor to weave in more
financial planning topics and client conversations. But it was primarily
investments.
The tools: we were a very small firm and we were an independent
broker-dealer is a small firm. Without getting into definitions of a broker
dealer, a broker-dealer is usually a firm with potentially thousands of
employees, and we were a broker-dealer with four employees, and that was
very unusual. So we didn't really have that many tools. My financial
planning was done on an Excel spreadsheet and on Word documents and through
conversations. We just, you know, weren't, as a firm, rolling in cash, so we
just made do with what we had.
The firm was supportive of me studying for the Certified Financial Planner
(CFP) practitioner designation. So I took them up on that offer and really
any other offer for continuing education that allowed me to learn and expand
my financial planning skills. And then I just gradually weave that more and
more into client conversations. But the tools were not terribly advanced, to
be honest, but I just led with work ethic and just an unrelenting desire to
solve client problems. And I think clients appreciated that. So they worked
with me as I learned and grew, which I really appreciated.
Don Patrick: So I'm guessing that you created these tools in Word and Excel
yourself, and you're also self-taught as a financial planner, it seems like.
Is that fair to say?
Gary Alpert: I'd say partly. I will say the owner of my company—she had
knowledge of a lot of financial planning concepts as well. So I would say it
was a mixture. And sometimes I would also learn from her conversations with
clients, too. It was a mixture of that and being self-taught and getting
into topics that I felt we needed to cover as a firm that were very, very
relevant to clients in terms of what they needed to know. So a mixture, but
a lot of self-teaching and then a lot of taking advantage of developmental
programs that my company offered me.
Don Patrick: That's great. So 16 years and you're not there anymore. Tell us
about this transition to becoming a business owner and you being the
business owner and that sort of thing.
Gary Alpert: Absolutely. So I think I got to a point with my firm where I
didn't know if it was going to be possible to go any further. And as a firm,
I didn't know if the direction they were going was the direction I wanted to
go. So I reached an inflection point. I mean, 16 years. So I was 40 years
old and I wanted to figure out or have a vision for what I was going to do
for the next 10 to 15 years of my career.
And the thing I had the biggest desire for was to create my own direction.
In other words, if I wanted certain financial planning tools, I could pay
for them and I could buy them. I could diagnose what I felt my clients
needed and then make sure I'm providing that stuff for them and not rely on
somebody else's pocketbook, or that my strategic goals are aligned with
theirs. So I felt that that was a really necessary step to go out and start
my own business and to make sure that whatever I wanted to do from a
financial planning standpoint to help folks was within my domain and my
control.
I thought that was basically the only way to go at that point. And it was
just thinking through, "Okay, I'm 40, what do I want the next 20 years of my
career to look like?" And I really just wanted to take it to the next level
with folks and just push on the accelerator and go as far as I could. And I
was ready to spend the money on it and do some of those things.
Don Patrick: Well, I've been watching you since you joined, and actually,
what year did you join? I think I know, but I'll ask.
Gary Alpert: Very late in 2014. December 1st, 2014.
Don Patrick: Yep. So I've watched you and you've invested in software,
you’ve really become a great financial planner, and you're taking care of
your clients. So I want to hear some of the—so that's one of the great
things about being an independent financial planner is you said it exactly:
you customize it, you created the way you wanted it. It's such a joy. And so
that's what you did. I mean, 16 years and now, "I'm going to go do this
myself and I'm going to do it my way."
Gary Alpert: Oh, absolutely. And I mean, I think the biggest—and I think a
lot of great things in life happen by chance, but then I think also in life
you just have a handful of amazing opportunities. There's probably during
your whole life only a few of them, and you need to know the right time to
just go for it and take those opportunities.
And joining the consortium—the Integrated Financial Group Consortium—for me,
was just a huge step in starting my own business. I do not feel my business
would've been quite as successful in any other venue other than going with
IFG. I spent my whole career on an island. A lot of financial planner
practitioners or companies, they're on an island and they're just trying to
figure it out on their own in terms of what to do. And suddenly I started my
own business, but I was, I don’t know the best way to describe it, but I was
in a village, basically, if that's a good analogy.
I was surrounded by a lot of highly skilled financial planners and just a
highly skilled consortium that just helped me along the way with everything.
And I feel like our success is, of course, partly due to our hard work, but
it's also partly due to the community that we surround ourselves with. I was
just very fortunate to come across IFG really semi-accidentally. And then
all of a sudden when I started my own business, I was already part of this
very advanced community and that really helped me get going. It would've
been so much harder without that.
I just think about that and I was fortunate enough to just go with it, and
it felt good and it worked and it really helped kickstart my practice. It
helped me determine the initial technologies I would need to really
kickstart the financial planning process. And that whole process with the
consortium has never ended until today. Every year there's some process,
practice, or software that we're implementing to expand that service to
clients.
And it's something that's just brought up through the consortium, either
through events from the consortium or through just having dinner with an
advisor at a consortium at some event where an advisor asks, "Hey, are you
using this or are you doing this?" And I'll say, "No." And it's like, then
they'll say, "Well, why not?" And then we start talking about it and I say,
"Gosh, why not? I should be doing this. I could see where the value is to my
clients. I just need to push forward with this thing." So being part of the
consortium and associating with the advisors has just been a wonderful part
of the "running my own business" aspect because it made running my own
business much easier than somebody might think if they were just going it on
their own.
Don Patrick: Yeah, Land coined this about a year or two after he started
with us. One of our chief goals at IFG is to, as he calls it, "scrape all
the junk of running a business off your desk." So we're constantly trying to
figure out where we can help you more, get rid of the stuff you don't like
doing as much as possible. But I want to hear your journey of technology. So
from the time you start your business—one of the problems with technology is
if it's the right technology, it's going to help you be more productive and
get better solutions to clients, but it's also "shiny objects." It's 50
bucks here a month, it's a hundred bucks here a month; pretty soon you've
got a lot of technology. So let's start with what you started with. What
kind of technology did you start with and how did that evolve?
Gary Alpert: Absolutely. So I would say the primary financial planning
technology I started with was called WealthVision. WealthVision is the
LPL-branded name of that technology, although in general financial planning
terms, it's referred to as eMoney. And that is general financial planning
software, really the baseline where you collect client data, assets, even
estate data, insurance, and you put it in their system.
You basically put it in the system and the system then builds out or helps
you build out a financial plan. It'll show projections, it'll make tax
estimates, it'll show you the design of the estate, and then you could take
those tools, present them to a client, and then based on those, present your
observations and recommendations. So I look at WealthVision as having been
the central building block of really morphing into a true financial planner.
So we used that primarily. And then from there, we needed tools to properly
help clients with the different aspects of the financial plans. WealthVision
is kind of like, I would say, like the generalist, but then below the
generalist, you needed several specialists. So from WealthVision, we
realized we needed tools to properly structure investment portfolios and
properly measure the risk and performance of those investment portfolios.
From there, we obtained a software called—at the time it was called
Riskalyze, now it's called Nitrogen. I never know for sure what the
reasoning is for changing branding. I still call it, Evan and I still call
it Riskalyze.
Don Patrick: I do too.
Gary Alpert: But that helps us manage the risk of the portfolio, making sure
the risk of the portfolio is in line with the client's risk tolerance. We
use Morningstar very heavily for portfolio design and also, to a lesser
extent, I guess some of our mutual fund sponsors have their own tools that
are also very valuable for that as well. And that's part—so we use that for
the portfolio aspect.
But then there was a need to do tax planning. And so we knew—we know general
rules of tax law, but we couldn't, for example, tell a client, "Okay, we're
going to make this recommendation to you. What does this look like
tax-wise?" or "When you're in retirement, which accounts do you draw your
money from and in what order and why?" So once again, WealthVision had this
general thing you could show where you can switch through a few
possibilities and it would show alternatives. But we really wanted to
understand the client's tax picture. So when we talk with the client, we can
say specifically, "These are the issues you're facing and these are the
pitfalls you want to potentially avoid. And this is the reason why we would
recommend this order of retirement distributions."
So we obtained a software called Holistiplan where you can import a client's
tax return into the software, analyze the data, understand exactly where
they are from a tax perspective, and then figure out how different changes
will change both, or adjust both their long-term and short-term tax picture.
So once again, it's kind of like a generalist, and then we're getting these
specialists in there. So we're not trying to guess, "Hey, we're going to
sell this stock and recognize a capital gain," or "Hey, we're going to draw
from this portfolio,” and say, “Well, we think this is what it's going to
look like tax-wise, but talk with your accountant." Obviously, the
accountants still play a primary role in providing final tax advice, but we
would rather say, "This is what's going to happen. And oh, by the way, tax
law is really complex. So by doing this, you may have accidentally triggered
this, this, and this.” And it's important for us to know these things. We
don't want to find out after the fact when the client does their tax return.
So that was really important software to develop as well. And then, past
there, I took a long course on Social Security claiming and strategies
around that. And I think it's perceived that, well, Social Security's
claiming is very simple: you just wait till age 70 or whatever and you
claim. And it was so much more complicated than that, especially with
spouses. And there are so many questions to ask around that. So I took a
course and then I got software, or web-based software, called Savvy Social
Security, which we used to run Social Security projections.
So once again, just layering on these different specialists to really help
us hone in on each of the different strategies. We most recently added a
software called Wealthbox. So it used to be that, you know, we would always
ask for clients' estate documents, 'cause we really felt we had some
expertise to at least point 'em in the right direction. But then it became
an exercise of saying, “Okay, here are some observations we have now. Go to
your estate planner and do what they tell you to do.”
Don Patrick: Are you talking about Wealth.com? Not Wealthbox?
Gary Alpert: Oh, did I say—I apologize. It's Wealth.com.
Don Patrick: There's so many. I mean, it's getting very confusing out there,
because I do the same thing.
Gary Alpert: Yeah. You know we have three software pieces with the word
"Wealth" in its name, and so sometimes that's like WealthVision, Wealth.com,
and Wealthbox. I guess I understand why they have "Wealth" in their name;
they're trying to market to financial planners.
But with Wealth.com, and that is estate planning software, so it used to be,
we get estate plan, which would be 20, 30 or 40 pages of documents, which we
would have to look through ourselves and make sure we're catching things or
just at least trying to properly explain their estate plan to the clients.
And Wealth.com has now helped us streamline the review of these estate
documents, and it's helped us go very far down the learning curve in terms
of truly understanding the estate and making sure what the client worked
with their estate planner on is properly structured to truly reflect their
needs. Because the estate planning—I mean, we accumulate assets and we grow
huge estates over time. That can get very complicated. And the last thing
somebody wants is for things to go totally different than what they
expected. And it's so much, it's not even after you die, it's while you're
living. Things that you can do to protect yourself, your spouse, or children
while you're living. It's just very serious stuff. Huge stuff.
So we developed those specialists. Now I mentioned how we got to the
endgame, but with software, what I found is it's a lot of trial and error.
There have been different pieces of software. We try it out, it's not quite
doing what we're wanting it to do, or more advanced software comes out that
then trumps the capabilities of that software. So there are a lot of shiny
objects. We just try to figure out what are the key services we're trying to
provide clients and getting software that can make us more adept and
productive in terms of providing that service.
And with the estate software, we actually went through other estate
software, which was good, great software. It just didn't work out. And so we
unsubscribed from that. And then soon after that, Wealth.com came out and
redefined what productive estate plan management looks like. And you just
never know. We're not completely married to any software. We want to be very
open-minded so that we're always taking on the software that can best help
us serve our clients. It's not even about the most advanced software or the
most technologically savvy software; there's tons of software there that
you'll look at demos and say, "Wow, this is cool. I can't believe software
does this." But then at the end of the day, is it truly helping your clients
advance their goals?
I would go to conferences and I would say, "This software is phenomenal." I
would come back to my team and my team would ask me questions about it that
would then make me realize that maybe this is not what we need at this time.
So part of the software process is also making sure that the software is
something your team is comfortable with, and that you always run by your
ideas by your team and collaborate with them to just make sure you're making
the right decisions in terms of proper software as well.
And then outside of the financial planning process and software that's
helping us with financial planning, we have software that helps us with our
productivity. So we have note-taking software called Jump, where basically
client meetings are recorded, but just for note-taking purposes, and it
isolates the financial planning notes. And that has saved us a ton of time
in terms of having multiple people at our meetings. And also it allows us to
be fully engaged with our clients during the whole meeting, rather than
saying, "Oh, that's a key point, let me just write that down." And then when
you're writing that down, the client is talking about some other stuff that
you may not be taking in all of that.
So the software allows us to truly stay engaged and listen to our clients
and produce excellent notes and do it productively. So that's an example of
productivity improvement. Wealthbox—the other one I accidentally said
before, the other part of the triumvirate, I guess—is our Contact
Relationship Management software, where we have our data about our clients,
all of our notes about our clients, and our contact records about our
clients so we know where we stand with them and we know what's going on. We
don't ever want to be in a situation with a client where we're unfamiliar
with anything that they've told us in the past. We want to have that
accessible at our fingertips.
And Wealth.com has also helped us with business processes. So we try to
develop processes that enable us to be quicker and more productive so that
we can spend more time with our clients and properly scale. So clients never
notice, you know, we've been a growing practice, but clients always see the
same level of service from us.
So there's the productivity software, there's the financial planning
software. We have certain items of software. There's thousands of pieces of
software out there, and there's some trial and error. It's just running
things by your team. Listening to the consortium to see what other advisors
are using successfully also has helped tremendously. I would say that's how
I really got enamored with Wealth.com, and then just taking those all into
consideration and developing out your tech stack so you can provide as
detailed and expansive a financial planning service as possible, and also be
productive as a firm and engage with your clients in the most productive way
possible that makes the best use of their time.
Don Patrick: That’s absolutely what these tools are for. But here’s the
interesting observation: AI is hot right now, and it should be, and it’s not
going away. But you, you’re already using three tools that are AI:
Holistiplan, Wealth.com, and Jump, which integrates with Wealthbox, correct?
So it’ll do to-dos for you. The notes will all integrate with Wealthbox,
correct?
Gary Alpert: Yes. And we’ll make some modifications, but it’s very easy to
translate that into our database. Yes.
Don Patrick: Yeah. And you can create your own templates for the note-taking
and that sort of thing?
Gary Alpert: Yep.
Don Patrick: And in terms of Wealthbox, the CRM, in terms of productivity,
does that mean automated workflows? Is that kind of what you’re talking
about there?
Gary Alpert: Yeah. Workflows just to, as best we can, try to keep everybody
in their lane. And that’s always a work in progress even with us, but to
just make sure that everybody’s on the tasks for them and that we try to
have as little double duty as we possibly can. And that’s always a work in
progress, by the way.
Don Patrick: Never stops.
Gary Alpert: But we have several templates in Wealthbox as well for our
client meetings and various tasks, and Wealthbox helps us create all of
those. It also is like a newsfeed. So whenever I get on Wealthbox, I can see
the product of every other member of my team’s conversation with a client,
because they’re putting in notes, and then those notes come in as a
newsfeed.
So sometimes, for example, a member of my team, they’ll talk with a client,
Patty or Evan will talk with a client and I’ll see something that’s come out
of that conversation and I’ll just call them and ask them. I’ll say, "Wow,
could we talk a little bit more about that, or how that can help us take
things to the next level with that client and help them out a bit more?"
That’s a key piece of information. So I like the newsfeed aspect of it as
well. I know automatically, on a real-time basis, the conversations that not
only I'm having with my clients, but obviously my team members as well.
Don Patrick: So it actually helps make your team more cohesive and
everybody’s on the same page, and it sort of automates that process. But
it’s all right there. You’re communicating with each other. Everybody knows
what’s going on, on the same page.
Gary Alpert: Exactly. And it’s something to learn, but we just all need to
check Wealthbox. And if we check Wealthbox and let it work for us, you know
it will. I would say my team is actually fantastic at doing it. I’m the one
that probably took a little bit more time to learn it; my team has already
been very skilled at that.
Don Patrick: Yeah, that’s typical. So, any other technologies you’re using,
like RepChat or MyRepChat or anything like that?
Gary Alpert: Yes. So, we have—it’s interesting how things evolve, but
sometimes you kind of think, "Oh, this is not going to be something I need."
But RepChat is something that has become a huge part of our practice. A lot
of people get, or most of us, our email boxes are filled to capacity. I
mean, we can’t even keep track of the emails we get throughout the day. And
folks need a way to communicate that’s easy and streamlined.
So, RepChat is an LPL-approved texting interface. In other words, compliance
can monitor the texts. And so we have basically tried to initiate that
connection with every single client that is willing to do so, and most have
been. And then, when something important needs to be done, we’ll just send
them a text.
And we have found on average that folks are much more responsive to texts
than to emails, phone calls, or in many cases, any other type of
communication. And so sometimes something needs to be sent in an email
format, but we’ll be working with a busy executive who may get 200 emails
during the day. So, we will send a RepChat text to them saying, "Hey, we
sent you an email at this time. When you get a chance, can you take a look
at it?" Almost always, they’ll go and look at the email and so things don’t
get missed.
So, RepChat was huge. I have to admit, when it first came out, I thought to
myself, "Clients are not going to want us to be texting them all the time.
They’re not going to want any of this." But then, I think in this industry
you just have to be humble. You just have to have humility and just always
be open-minded and never say never with something.
So then I tried it with a few folks and I was like, "Gosh, this makes things
much better." And we’re not going to hound clients with texts; we’re not
going to do these little messages with emojis to them or anything like that.
We’re going to just do it when something’s very relevant or we just want to
check in with them. Or sometimes it’s like a birthday wish or something. And
we found that the folks we started using it were really utilizing it and
were really appreciative of it. So then we just expanded it out to just
about our entire client base. And that’s been a hugely valuable productivity
tool.
And then internal to our office, we have software called Slack. So the way
we communicate with each other, I mean, sometimes phone calls are best,
right? Texts can be a thin line of communication. But sometimes we just want
to send a note to a team member: "Hey, just checking on this." And so we
have our own texting interface, once again, LPL-approved, with Slack. That
has made us very productive in doing that.
I think with these texting applications, you just want to also not handle
everything through them. It’s a thin line of communication. So a lot of
times it’s just short, quick things, or it’s something that says, "Hey, I’m
going to send you this email," or "I’m going to give you this call." But we
try to make sure we use it as a way to open things up into something else.
So, there may be something detailed we want to communicate with a client,
and a text is a very inappropriate way to do that. So we’ll send a text:
"Hey, are you available right now for a phone call?" And then the text will
lead into the phone call rather than just calling somebody hoping they’re
not doing anything at that time and are prepared to take your phone call.
Usually, that’s not as well-received.
Don Patrick: That’s great. I like that.
Gary Alpert: Yeah. The text helps point to emails: "Hey, I’m going to send
you this email with an attachment," or "Hey, we need your signature here."
And then maybe an email someone normally would not have paid any attention
to, suddenly they’re paying attention to it. So, yeah, the texting apps have
been hugely valuable.
One other thing I would add, I guess since the COVID period, Zoom video
meetings have also been very valuable for us and very productive for our
clients. We seek out to meet our clients in person and are always available
to do so when clients ask us to do it, but a lot of times folks want to
meet, you wanna share information on the screen, and somebody may not want
to meet in person at that time, or they may not want to drive to your office
and go through traffic.
So the video meetings, of course, have been hugely productive and very
efficient for our clients. We’re kind of, I guess there’s an old saying,
"meeting them where they are," so to speak, and then we can integrate Jump
into that. So during a Zoom meeting, we get the notes automatically taken
and we can remain fully engaged with our clients. So that’s been another
great productivity tool as well.
Don Patrick: Are you using a scheduling tool or not? And if not, how do you
set up meetings and such?
Gary Alpert: So at this point, our Director of Client Services has been
scheduling meetings, and a lot of that has been because we just want the
high personal touch in the scheduling process. However, we have subscribed
to a service called ScheduleOnce. And what we are working on, it’s a project
over the next, I would say, five to six months or so, is using that in
conjunction with a higher-touch process to both give the client that
touchpoint but also schedule in a way that’s most time-efficient for them.
So, no software immediately right now, but we’ve subscribed to ScheduleOnce
as a way to create an easier interface for clients, especially if they’re
just on their own, want to go in and schedule with us and they don’t have
time for the back-and-forth communication of scheduling. So one negative, of
course, of personal touch scheduling is you give somebody a few dates, they
come back to you and say, "I can’t do this date, but I can do that," and
then it’s a lot of work on their part. Some folks don’t mind, but some folks
do,and I can definitely understand that; I’m that way as well.
So we’re going to be implementing ScheduleOnce, particularly for those that
want to make scheduling just an easy one-step process and not need to have
the back-and-forth of "when are you available?" and "what time?" and "oh no,
this time is not good for me." And then also provide proper reminders so
that folks are aware that the meeting is coming up. It’s definitely on their
calendar and there’s no "oh, I didn’t see the meeting" or anything like
that. That's certainly not intentional on the client’s side, and then it
potentially uses up more of their time than necessary. And we certainly
don’t want to do that.
Don Patrick: So I’ll share my experience with ScheduleOnce. So the idea of
back-and-forth emails and dates and all that, I hate that too. And so I
theoretically understood the value of it, but I was afraid of it. I was
like, "Is this thing going to control my life?" So I took my time, blocked
out certain days or hours or whatever it was, and finally went live. I had
six meetings back to back. I didn’t even have time to go to the men's room.
That was my worst nightmare. It happened.
Gary Alpert: That is a nightmare.
Don Patrick: Yes, you can actually put breaks in there. There’s a whole
bunch of ways to use it. So, you’ve scheduled a client. Do you send
reminders out like the dentist does, or how does that work?
Gary Alpert: So we send reminders out. The reminders are not automated
though, so unlike the dentist, it’s literally an email or it could be a
RepChat text reminder, but it’s been very manual. Part of the ScheduleOnce
is to pivot to something that’s a little more automated. And it’s not to say
we can’t toss the higher-touch personal reminder in there—we probably
would—but just to make sure there’s a process for that.
So when you’re one week out or a few days out, somebody knows. Because we
deal with a lot of really busy clients, executives, just people with really
busy lives. So maybe a week out they’re like, "Oh, everything is good," and
then three days out, all of a sudden they’re suddenly called to take a
flight to Singapore or something like that because they have this important
meeting. And so things can be dynamic and things can change, and you want to
have that reliable “okay, remember this.” And it seems to me it can help
avert last-second cancellations, which are bad for everybody, of course.
In your case, no, I would definitely want to be able to have those bathroom
breaks and food breaks; most certainly those are valuable. So we are
working, and we, of course, is always open to feedback from other advisors
who are using it, or from you, Don—on setting it up so that the cadence is
acceptable. Because people need breaks from meetings. When you have a
meeting with a client, it’s not only dedicating the proper amount of time
during that meeting with the client, but it’s dedicating about 30 minutes
after the meeting to really think through and absorb what just went on in
that meeting and make sure you’re thoughtful on that and sending the client
proper follow-ups. If you have a meeting with a client and then, like, hey,
one minute later you’re in another meeting, that’s usually not the
healthiest thing for you. So we definitely would want to set it up to space
things out and to allow us to reflect, not only have the client meeting, but
then reflect on the client meeting afterwards.
Don Patrick: No, I agree. That’s really important. And I see this
particularly with younger advisors. They’ll book meetings back to back as
opposed to blocking 30 minutes following the meeting to do exactly what you
said. It’s hugely important.
Gary Alpert: Yeah. And you just never know. Meetings, obviously you want to
budget proper times, but meetings sometimes go a little over schedule.
Sometimes there's something that is discovered during the meeting that’s
totally unanticipated and some time needs to be dedicated to that matter.
You never want meetings running twice as long as you expect, but every once
in a while things just—I mean, that’s just life.
Don Patrick: Yeah. All right, so tell us a little bit about your team and
who does what and how that’s set up.
Gary Alpert: Absolutely. One thing I wanted to start with, though, is the
importance of a team cannot be understated. I’ve been very lucky to have
team members that are extremely talented and complementary in their
skillsets and what they do. I’m thankful for them because they’ve helped
advance the practice and generate a lot of good ideas. Patty has helped
significantly in terms of just general practice management ideas and client
relationship ideas. Evan, in terms of processes, financial planning.
Technology has been phenomenal.
I just can’t understate that it’s not just creating roles and
responsibilities and throwing just anybody in there; it’s throwing the right
people in there that have very unique talents and skillsets and different
perspectives than yours. That can be very valuable. Everybody always needs
to look outside of their perspective.
Currently, we have two financial advisors, basically: myself and Evan
Beards. At this point, Evan is in what could be called an Associate
Financial Advisor role, but even though it’s called an Associate Financial
Advisor role, Evan is an extremely talented and capable financial advisor.
On his own, on a standalone basis, he’d be a wonderful financial advisor for
just about anyone. I’m extremely lucky to have him. He serves as a financial
advisor; he can help clients with issues when I’m not available. He also has
his own clients that he directly works with, and he also helps me
significantly with the financial planning process in terms of gathering data
from clients and plays an instrumental role in putting the financial plans
together. So Evan and I work completely within the financial planning
spectrum, helping clients and making sure on financial planning matters
they're responded to in a very timely way.
We have Patty O'Toole, and Patty O'Toole is our Director of Client Services.
She’s really the front person, the communicator with clients on all client
service needs and client service questions. She’s also been tremendously
helpful just in terms of overall practice management and ideas to make our
practice better. But she’s the front person for clients. When clients just
have a general question or need help with something and it’s not
specifically within a financial planning topic, Patty will be able to help
them.
We have a fourth—so there are three full-time roles, and then we have a
fourth role: what’s called a virtual assistant, or virtual—I never like the
word "assistant" because everybody—I’d say Virtual Associate. Kim Powers.
Don Patrick: I like that.
Gary Alpert: And Kim works actually with multiple advisors, but she helps us
significantly in all administrative tasks like setting up new accounts,
address changes, just some things that, they’re administrative and complex
and we’re not as versed in. She has tons of experience and expertise in
terms of helping us handle those items. So, I don't want to say—I don't know
how to best say it—we don't have three and a half; we have three employees
plus a hugely valuable Virtual Associate.
Don Patrick: Yeah. So you’ve outsourced that, essentially.
Gary Alpert: Yes. We’ve outsourced it, outsource to an expert. We want all
the members of our team doing what they do best. Even though just by default
I’m a workaholic, I have to admit it happens occasionally, you don’t want me
making address changes. You want the person that knows how to best make the
address change making the address change. So yes, outsourcing and trying our
best to have the best person doing a task.
Don Patrick: You create your own portfolios and manage your own portfolios,
correct?
Gary Alpert: Yes. So we have our own internal investment committee, an
internal investment committee, which is between us and another practice. And
together we developed an investment philosophy. I always believe every
financial advisor should have an investment philosophy, which is: what is
the style in which you invest? Is there…philosophy where it's just random
what you like in a given day? There should be a philosophy. So we have a
developed philosophy and then when we put together portfolios, we wanna
make, we test the portfolios to make sure there's the appropriate risk
balance and risk structure.
But also, we make sure that portfolio loyally adheres to our philosophy and
sticks with it. And that philosophy is just good diversification. It’s a big
belief that things tend to revert to their meaning. And it’s also a
philosophy that nobody knows what the world’s going to look like in 10
years; nobody knows what the world’s going to look like in five years, so we
shouldn't be the ones trying to make that guess for you, because if nobody
knows, why are we suddenly the expert? People on TV don’t know.
So trying to create portfolios that best handle an environment of "known
unknowns". We don’t know what the world’s going to look like. So how can we
effectively diversify ourselves so that no matter what happens, you’re still
in a good position to meet your long and short-term goals and trajectory?
And se feel very strongly about that philosophy. I think it’s always
important to have a philosophy and stick to that, and then underneath that,
you get into the details and use the software to actually make the
construction and then evolve also, meeting and evolving the overall
strategy, but never change the philosophy.
Don Patrick: So you’re basically strategic, correct?
Gary Alpert: Yes.
Don Patrick: Because you’re not making tactical moves because your crystal
ball is all foggy, is what you just said.
Gary Alpert: Yes. It’s strategic all the way. It is not tactical, you know,
it's like even with the, obviously current, everybody's familiar with
current circumstances going on with Iran, and you have folks in the media,
people on the street, you talk. Everybody has a different viewpoint on how
things are gonna go, how long things are gonna take, how things are gonna
end. And you have brilliant people on all sides of the argument. So if you
have brilliant people on all sides of the argument, how are you tactically
gonna jump in there and say, “Wait a second. I think I've got it figured
out.”
Don Patrick: Mm-hmm.
Gary Alpert: You can't. And so I think in investing in general, humility in
that sense is extremely important. So we do live by that. Very strategic,
not tactical.
Don Patrick: That’s a great word: humility. Yeah. I've always said to
people: if all your investments are going in the same direction, you’re
probably not properly diversified. There’s always got to be something in
there that’s not performing well, and then that says, "I’m diversified."
Gary Alpert: It's one of the hardest things to do is to say, "Listen,
there’s always going to be something in your portfolio at a given time
that’s disappointing." But that’s an indication of–-it’s an indication
you’re diversified. Like you said, Don, when everything is not moving in the
same direction.
A lot of times we’ll see portfolios that have 30 holdings, but if you ran an
overlap of those 30 holdings, they all hold the same stuff. So even though
it seems like through the number of holdings you can be diversified, you
could have a hundred holdings and not be diversified. So that’s a really
important thing to work on is figuring out, statistically, putting together
assets that have historically had a low correlation with one another.
It’s not to say those correlations can't change over time, but let’s not
hold things that, you know, if things go bad, they all go in the same
direction. If we could put that together, we’ll be a long-term success, and
stuff like current conflict will come along, economics, things will come
along, and it’s just riding those through and staying patient, because when
certain assets are out of favor, it’s so tempting to say, "Why am I sitting
around with this when I’ve got this other thing doing really, really well?"
And wanting to shift everything in that where you're kind of underversifying
yourself and just staying patient saying, “Listen, this is an asset class.”
Asset classes ebb and flow; maybe we’re in an ebb at this time, but it’s not
like the asset class is going to stay out of favor indefinitely. And
sometimes patience can be a few years. I mean, it’s not day-to-day. I don’t
think anything can be gleaned from investing on a day-to-day lens. It’s
gleaned from a longer-term lens of years.
Don Patrick: Well, I happen to agree. So who does the trading? How do you
implement these, your portfolios?
Gary Alpert: No, absolutely. So more and more, we’re moving in the direction
of the IFG trading team implementing the portfolios. So we put together our
allocations, we hand it to the trading team, and the trading team implements
those allocations. They help us rebalance those allocations. When we make
adjustments to our investment allocations, we let them know about those
changes, and then they update our investment allocations and move it through
our clients.
We’re not a hundred percent of the way there. I think we’re about 50% of the
way there in terms of them handling everything. My goal in the next two
years is to be at least 80 to 90% there. We have clients that want to take a
role, which is fine, in terms of managing their portfolio, so for those,
it’s more manual, which is okay.
But the trading team has also been really helpful in terms of us determining
trading strategies that help the clients most and don't create outcomes that
are unanticipated. At its face, trading seems simple. You sell this and you
buy this, but sometimes we’ll throw things out to the trading team and
they’ll say, "Hey, we can do this, but did you consider that this and this
might be the outcome?" And then we suddenly take a step back and think about
it and say, "You know what? Given that, let’s make these adjustments." Or we
could say, "Yeah, we knew that was going to be an outcome and we’d still
like to proceed." But they're great because it’s not just like this
amorphous team, or whatever. It’s actually another team that interacts with
us and provides feedback.
So, more and more, more and more of our portfolios are being handled by the
trading team, and they’re helping us implement our strategic allocations
with clients. And also, they allow us to put pieces in a portfolio that we
feel are needed for different stages in clients' lives. Like, if clients are
in a retirement phase and they’re needing income from the portfolio, we need
to add sleeves to the investments that help facilitate the implementation of
that, and they help us do that as well.
Don Patrick: That’s great. Which gives you more time to focus on building
the portfolios, which is most important.
Gary Alpert: Yeah, it’s one of those things where you say, "Gosh, why wasn't
I always doing something like this?"
Don Patrick: All right, I’m gonna change it up. Where do your new clients
come from? Referrals? Marketing? What does that look like?
Gary Alpert: It’s mostly referrals. We, as a firm, our culture is to work
extremely hard and to be unrelenting problem-solvers for clients. In other
words: never letting things go until we create a level of satisfaction with
our client where they need to be.
So we’ve been very fortunate. First of all, we have a lot of great clients,
a lot of great people, obviously a whole mess of super successful people.
They’re here for a reason. But what happens is some of our clients become
advocates and we have clients that just provide us multiple referrals. And
we hope it’s because we make them feel like they got a service and other
people deserve to get that service too, and they want to let other people
know about this. I hope that’s what they’re thinking. I think that's what a
lot of them are.
So we get a lot of good referrals, and that’s the primary way we grow our
business. Now, we do do marketing. We’ve actually started to do more work in
social media—Business Facebook, LinkedIn—and we always send our newsletters.
And so part of that is to make sure we’re keeping clients informed and
giving them content that they can regularly get good takeaways from, but
also just a reminder: "Hey, we’re here, and if you know anybody else that
you feel could benefit from our services, let us know." We think there are a
lot of folks we can do a really good job for.
So our marketing is not necessarily geared towards finding clients that we
don't know, they don't know who we are and we don't know where they are.
It’s more geared towards people we’ve already communicated with and just
saying, "Hey, we want to make sure we continue to give you good educational
content," and just to let them know we’re here, and just a reminder, these
are the types of things we do for people. And even sometimes, "Hey, we just
expanded this service and we just want to let you know about this because
this is something else we’re going to be doing for you, and maybe we could
do it for somebody else as well." We do educational events, too. We try to
do two to three of those a year where we have an audience, clients and
friends of clients, where we talk about a topic and specifically the types
of case studies we work on with folks, too.
So there's marketing, but probably marketing more geared towards helping our
clients even more and generating referrals essentially.
Don Patrick: So you’ve got an introduction from a client. What are the next
steps? What does that look like? Is it an email? Is it a phone call? What
does that process look like?
Gary Alpert: Yeah, absolutely. Firstly, the first thing we want to do is
thank our client for thinking of us and even considering us in terms of a
referral. That’s hugely important, that’s something the client didn’t have
to do.
Then we establish what we like to call just a "getting to know you" meeting.
It usually takes 15 to 20 minutes, and it’s basically a meeting to determine
if we’re a good fit. We’ll have that most of the time via phone call,
sometimes via Zoom video meeting. And it’s just really a conversation to
say, "Hey, are our services appropriate for you, and are your needs
something that we can help with?" I guess you’ve coined this term, Don, the
"mutual selection process."
Don Patrick: Actually, I think that came from Pareto.
Gary Alpert: Okay.
Don Patrick: We don’t steal everything, no. Nothing’s original.
Gary Alpert: No. And listen, it's brilliant, Don, and I don't think anybody
could say it as well as you do. I've heard it a lot, and it's very
impactful. So with the mutual selection process, it's saying, "Listen, we
may not be best for you, and you may not be best for us."
It's important in a relationship that we're in a position to help you with
the important things that you need, and that you also feel comfortable with
us. You have chemistry with us, and you feel like we're the folks that
you're comfortable collaborating with. It's like any relationship. If it's
not going to work, it's not good for either party.
So we have that initial meeting to determine from our side, "Can we help
this person?" Then from their side, just making sure they understand exactly
who we are as a firm and that we're very open and honest with them. So they
can say, "Okay, is this the type of group that I'd want to work with?"
I'll give you an example. This is not a specific example, but just something
that could happen. We will get on the phone with somebody and they'll say,
"Hey, I don't want to deal with—I don't want to give you any of my financial
information or any of that. I'm not concerned with any of that. I've got
this portfolio and I'm trying to make as much money on it as possible."
Well, we're financial planners. Investment management is a huge part of the
financial planning process that we work with folks on, but we can't make
recommendations on your portfolio without understanding your tax picture,
your goals, and your risk tolerance.
So we don't think it would be a service to somebody to just say, "Hey, we're
going to just help you with these investment recommendations." And so that
wouldn't be a good fit, right? That person—if we engaged with them—that
person would be unhappy with the engagement. And we never want to see
engagements where people don't get the maximum out of it.
So, once we get past that meeting, if we're feeling like it could possibly
be a good fit, and we feel like the prospect is feeling similarly, we ask
for a 60-minute meeting. And that is where we get into a little more detail
about what their short and long-term objectives are, what their biggest
concerns are, and maybe some high-level aspects of how their assets are
structured.
We set up a 60-minute Zoom meeting. We create an agenda of potential talking
points to just make sure we're fleshing out all their concerns, goals,
fears, desires, things they want to do for themselves, their spouses, and
their family. And then based on that understanding, we work collaboratively
with the prospect to say, "Okay, we think we could possibly work with you
and help you on those things," and then see if they're in the same place.
And then we have a discussion: "Okay, if we're both there, here's what it
would look like to operate with us." And we would show them a sample
financial plan so they could see just a general example of the type of
output they would potentially be looking at if they were a client. And then
we work with cost and how things would be arranged and the like as well. So
that would be the second stage.
So they're still not a client, but by that time we've already fleshed out a
lot of their short and long-term objectives. In some cases, their risk
tolerance and what they want to accomplish out of the engagement. So if they
become a client, we kind of already have a head start on some of that. Then
our team will gather their data to set up any necessary accounts to
consolidate assets. In some cases, we work with some folks on a flat-cost
basis, in which case we would have them complete a financial planning and
retirement planning consulting agreement.
And then the discovery process in detail truly begins in earnest. We send
them a document request, which basically is a list of all of the documents
needed for the financial planning process. We have a generic list, but once
we have that meeting, getting a better understanding of who they are, the
60-minute meeting, a lot of times we can modify that list based on their
unique circumstances. Like there might be an item or two we add to the list
because they have a certain executive compensation plan that we want to see
more details on, or something similar to that.
And then we work iteratively with them. Usually, it's Evan or Patty. As we
get documents, we have another software we use where people can send us
documents securely; Box is something that has really been helpful for us and
our clients. They send us the documents, and we periodically contact them to
ask questions about the documents or potentially make a request for items
that might be missing.
And then we bring that all the way in, two, two and a half weeks later, to a
financial planning meeting where we have our meeting of initial
observations, recommendations, thoughts, and questions. And then what we've
done is kickstarted that financial planning process with them, which is just
an iterative process where we make recommendations, clients attempt to
implement, they have questions, and we help them with those questions.
Life changes happen, we adjust the plan based on those life changes. And
that process—if it's a flat-cost arrangement—sometimes could last as little
as a year. But with many of our clients, it's literally, I don’t know, their
whole life probably, but a large part of their life, basically. It's from
accumulating assets and working on their employee benefits when they're
younger to when they're near retirement, making decisions on Social Security
claim strategies, Medicare, estate, they grow a family, making decisions
around that, managing the investments throughout and just help them over
their entire life cycle, basically.
There are different financial planning decisions that need to be made at
multiple stages of your life cycle. It's just a constantly changing and
evolving process. So our average client relationship length is probably in
the 15-year vicinity, and my longest client relationships have gone as far
as 27 years for several clients, where, basically, I started working with
them when I was 23 or 24 years old, and now I'm 51. I don't know if it was
the best idea to disclose my age. I'm 51, and so basically they were working
with me when I was a little pup, and now I'm a much older pup. So it really
could be just a really lengthy relationship. A large number of my clients
I've known for more than half of my life.
Don Patrick: That's what's so great about this profession. You're able to...
Gary Alpert: Yeah.
Don Patrick: Do wonderful things for people, and you get compensated for it.
So, let me ask: how do you charge for your financial planning? You mentioned
you have a flat fee for financial planning alone. Do you always have a fee
for the financial plan and then asset management, or do you incorporate
that? I mean, how does that work?
Gary Alpert: So we have two arrangements we can make, and occasionally we
have a hybrid of the two arrangements. It is, you know, where arrangement is
where we get a percentage of assets under management for investment
accounts, is one arrangement. And then the other arrangement is a flat cost
for financial planning services on an annual basis.
And in general, we make those mutually exclusive of one another. So for
example, if a client consolidates accounts and they give us, you know, their
liquid assets are $1.5 million, everything else is included in that. The
financial planning is included in that, everything comprehensive, including
active investment management, is included in that as well, and we don't
separately charge them for the financial planning.
And then on the other side, for flat-cost financial planning, they pay a
flat cost on an annual renewable basis, and we do the same comprehensive
financial planning. Probably the main difference is we're not going to
actively, holding-by-holding, manage their investments. We'll make
observations on the investments, but ultimately it's a choice by the client
that they want to keep that asset management themselves.
Occasionally we'll have a hybrid of the two, and where that'll come into
play is maybe the liquid assets available for us to manage is below our
normal thresholds. And so they will invest a certain level of assets and
then we will charge them a little bit of a financial planning fee because we
have, basically, a minimum cost that we need to charge across all clients.
It is generally $5,000. And then that'll fluctuate up depending on how
complex their relationship is, whether they're married, have children, and
the complexity of the financial situation.
Don Patrick: Okay. Now, I want to circle all the way back to the referral
process, because here's what happens without a good process typically: the
client says, "Hey, I gave your name to Joe," and that's the last you hear
about it. So do you train your clients to kind of copy you on an email with
Joe? How does that handoff happen so that it doesn't get lost?
Gary Alpert: That's a good question, and I would say we have not perfected
this, but a lot of times folks will say, "Hey, I spoke to this person and
gave them your name." And the other person will follow through on that
usually about 20% to 30% of the time, I would say. So we'll ask them, when
they mention that, "Hey, could we reach out to them? Would that be okay?
What is their phone number or their email? We'll be happy to contact them
and see if we can set up this initial mutual engagement meeting." That's
something that wouldn't be any more than 15 to 20 minutes of their time.
We'd love to do that, and in many cases, we'll get a favorable response to
that. In some cases it's like, "I'd rather them just reach out to you,"
which is okay as well. So when clients provide us a referral, we definitely
indicate that we want to engage with them, and if the other person is open,
we'd love to get their contact to engage with them.
I have to admit that doesn't always happen, though. Sometimes people feel
like they're burdening somebody with who they do business with. It's like,
"Well, I like this person, but I don't want to shove it in their face,"
especially if somebody else has another financial planner or advisor. So we
try to push to get that contact information and then they can not worry,
they can take a step back and let us take over from there and work with the
prospect to see if they're a good fit with us. So we push that, but
sometimes, there’s just situations where they just, we don't get that
information. That's actually still a work in progress for us.
Don Patrick: Yeah, I think everybody—well, not everybody—struggles. Some
people have very defined processes to help plug that gap, but it sounds like
you're doing well with it. So, I'm an existing client, what does the cadence
look like in terms of progress review meetings and things of that nature? Do
I have to have 10 meetings with you a year or one a year? What does that
look like?
Gary Alpert: Usually, and different clients, depending on their
circumstances. Like in some cases, the circumstances are not highly evolving
and we will have one meeting a year with that client. But in general, our
financial planning clients, we prefer to have at least two to three meetings
a year. And that's just formal meetings where we kind of do a deep review of
their financial picture and make sure that we're keeping track of
appropriate changes in life events.
So we'll generally have two to three meetings, and then we also like to have
just one to two phone check-ins just to see, "Okay, hey, it's not a formal
meeting, but is there anything we could help with?" or there may have been
something that came up in the last meeting and we just want to make sure
that they took care of that item. So we'll have phone check-ins and usually
two to three client meetings a year.
Now, if somebody doesn't want to meet with us, we don't force the issue. In
a lot of cases, we mention, "Hey, listen, just so we stay on top of things,
it would be really good if we had these two to three meetings," but we don't
force the issue. Sometimes with some folks it's harder to get meetings than
with others, but then also, during that time, every meeting we have will
have follow-up items. So we really try hard to keep track of those follow-up
items and make sure if there's a deliverable that we have, we turn that
deliverable around very soon after that meeting.
And if there's a potential deliverable that they have, we just periodically
check in with them and say, "Hey, we're just trying to advance the process.
Could you provide us with this?" So there's stuff that goes on outside of
the meetings, too, just a couple of check-ins on our end just to see how
life is going. Maybe there was a difficult stage or something difficult
somebody was dealing with, just to see how they're doing. And other times
it's just follow-up items from meetings just so we keep pushing the ball
forward and keep advancing the financial planning process, uncovering new
ground, and closing the loop on things that need to be taken care of.
Don Patrick: I'm going to go back to the beginning. Somehow we got onto the
professional track, we never finish your personal track. When you joined us,
you were a bachelor, I think, living in the Buckhead area maybe. So give us
a little background on your personal life since you were age 23, or
actually, since you joined IFG. How's that?
Gary Alpert: Yeah, absolutely. So, obviously in all of our lives, for people
that are married, we have our spouses, but then before our spouses, we have
different relationships and engagements with folks, and some really good and
valuable ones. When I joined IFG, I wasn't married. I had a partner that
actually was hugely helpful in terms of me settling into this role, so I'm
always very thankful to her for that. But it took me a while to get married.
And, you know, various relationships in the past, of course, along the way.I
always feel like everything leads you to your final destination, right?
There's a lot of good interactions, but everything kind of shapes the person
you finally meet. So I got married—gosh, five and a half years ago. I got
married when I was 46. And so the message I would give to folks is it's
never too late. Sometimes you kind of, and this happened in my case too, you
start giving up hope that you'll find the right person for you, and I feel
like it's never too late in life to find that right person. A lot of times
that right person will come when you least expect it. I always admire people
that met their significant other in college because then I say, "Well, you
didn't have to go through dating."
Dating is hard. And throughout most of my financial planning career, I was
dating. My clients didn't know, these things were going on in the
background. Dating is hard. I would've loved to have met my wife—my current
wife—when we were in college. I would've loved to have met her then because
she's been wonderful. But dating is hard and you go through the school of
hard knocks. Everybody that dates goes through the school of hard knocks and
disappointments.
But what happened is I thought I was looking for a certain type of person. I
don't know how to describe myself—I'm a little Type A; I'm very intense
about my profession and the things I do for people. And so I thought, and
also just advancing my career, getting ahead, growing. And I thought I
wanted somebody exactly that way. And I dated people that were like me, I
guess, and I found out I really don't want to be with somebody like myself.
I really don't. And so there were some disappointments along the way, and
they probably didn't want to be with somebody like me either!
So, a lot of disappointments. So what I did—I remember back to that old
Seinfeld episode where George is there, George Costanza, and he's like,
"Everything I do on the dating front doesn't work, so from now moving
forward, I'm going to do the exact opposite of what I've been doing." And so
I created a list for myself of the most important characteristics I would
want in a partner and just went out of my way to seek that out.
I realized I didn't want a hard-driving executive as my partner; I wanted
somebody that was humble, just kind. Not to say I haven't dated a lot of
kind people, but just that it was an important characteristic. Humble, kind,
hardworking, good family, and somebody that could take my imperfections, and
I wouldn't ever have to feel like I'm not good enough for them. That was an
issue I had sometimes in relationships. So, somebody that I could feel
comfortable in my own skin, that "Hey, I'm not perfect, nobody's perfect,
but I'm open and you're okay with that."
And so then I got off a rough situation with somebody I was on a couple of
dates with, and I went on a date through Match.com with my current wife. And
I was sitting there with her at dinner. She'd actually, I didn't realize
she'd actually, I don't want to say set me up, but she was scared. She
didn't know me or anything like that. So she invited a couple of her friends
from work to the date unbeknownst to me. All of a sudden we're sitting at a
table and then she pretended she was surprised: "Hey, I see these guys from
work! Hey, I can't believe you guys are here!" But it was planned. And she
told me afterwards it was planned. That's okay—I mean, you're meeting a
stranger in a different place and everything like that.
But I always brought my list with me and put it in my pocket for these
dates. And she just checked off all the boxes. She was, well, obviously an
attractive lady, super attractive, super cute, but she had that humility and
just that general kind nature. And I just felt that right away. And I think
that her fears going into a first date were the same as mine, which is that
somebody would just think, "I'm not good enough for them," or that I'm kind
of below their standard. And we both kind of had similar perspectives on
some of that, but she was so humble and so kind.
And I just said, "I need to just continue my relationship with this person
and keep things going, and hopefully she'll feel the same about me." And it
just worked out. And I put this in articles to clients so clients can kind
of see our interactions with each other through those stories, because
they're all real and they go in our newsletter every month.
She's from South Georgia; she's grown up from a rural background. South
Georgia, she has a Southern accent. I grew up from a complete—and she's
always lived in a house with land, a yard, and pets. I grew up in Brooklyn,
New York. I think I still have a very strong Brooklyn accent—that'll vary,
but some people say it's super strong. My wife says it's extremely strong.
But city high-rises, I always just lived in high-rises my whole life. We had
pets, but that wasn't really a big part of my life. I always lived on the
fourth floor of an apartment building where I lived underneath... like, the
first four floors didn't have terraces and only five and up had terraces.
And as a kid I was like, "Gosh, I'm just below the cut point to have a
terrace. I would really like to have a terrace." And my goal was to be on
the highest floor possible in the building I lived in. And so I was always
just living in buildings and condos and everything like that on higher
floors with nice views.
And so mixing the two of us together was really interesting, and it led to
just some funny interactions. I mean, Wendy would ask if I could just get
out the lawnmower and mow the lawn, and I was like, "Well, how do you start
one of these things? What do you do?" She asked me to—she had a shed with a
hoe in it—and she asked me to get out the hoe, and I didn't know what a hoe
was, so I just brought out like a rake. And she just started laughing at me.
She's like, "Gary, you don’t know what a hoe… Where are you from?" I was
like, "I'm from Brooklyn, New York!"
Don Patrick: City meets country.
Gary Alpert: Yeah. And so it's been a wonderful experience just learning and
interacting with her and learning about each other because it's truly two
different cultures kind of coming together. And it's funny because she said
when she first talked to me, she was uncertain if we could proceed on a
dating process because my voice was loud and harsh. And she said she didn't
know if she could deal with that because that wasn't what she was used to.
And so it was just kind of a funny development. But definitely the right
person at the right time, later in life for both of us. And I think that
should just give hope to folks that it's never too late to find that right
person. Never get too down about it and just write down your top five things
and be honest with yourself. Sometimes our emotions get the best of us, and
so maybe we like somebody who's a little dangerous or we like somebody who's
intense; maybe it's somebody that just likes to go out and party and have a
few drinks, and that's the emotional side sometimes.
But just in the most pragmatic sense, writing a list of the characteristics
of a person that are most important to you for long-term compatibility,
because a lot of times excitement is something that we're always drawn to,
and I certainly was. And my wife is exciting. But you've got to look past
that excitement too and just look for these characteristics. I'm not an
expert in any of this; this was just my experience and I'm so fortunate to
have found my wife Wendy, who I love dearly.
But it was a tough road. Dating is not for the weak at heart. Some people
master the dating process. I could say I'm much, much more confident as a...
I'm extremely confident as a financial planner, and my confidence in the
dating world drops significantly from there.
Don Patrick: That's great. All right, we're going to wrap it up here a
little bit. I'm going to ask you to use three words to describe your talents
and strengths.
Gary Alpert: Unrelenting, hardworking, and articulate. Articulate, just
being with clients in the financial planning process, maybe taking some
really complex things and making them digestible, and just really intense
and hardworking and just unrelenting to find solutions for folks. And
continuing to, in that vein, grow both in my knowledge base and my skillset
over the years.
Don Patrick: I agree. Fantastic. Gary, this has been awesome. Great advice.
I always learn something new. I think I know all of you pretty well, but I
always learn something new. This is wonderful and I think everybody's going
to enjoy this. And I want to thank you so much for taking the time.
Gary Alpert: My pleasure. Thank you for your time and just all your help
over the years as a mentor and just helping me. It's just been amazing.
Thank you, Don.
Don Patrick: My pleasure. I love it.
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.