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Tune in to "What Works" hosted by Don Patrick where we tap into 2,500+ years of experience in running financial advisory practices. In each episode, Don sits down with an experienced financial planner, uncovering the unique insights and experiences that have shaped their careers. From navigating market fluctuations to building successful client relationships, Don and his guests share invaluable business tips and strategies for financial planners looking to thrive in the industry.
Join us every other Thursday, as we explore the wealth of knowledge accumulated from over 2500+ years of combined experience in financial planning.
Hi, everyone. Welcome to What Works. This is a show for consortium advisors
that taps into over 1,000 years of experience shared by our consortium
advisors.
I'm your host, Don Patrick, and I'm here to guide the conversation with
guest advisors and lift the hood on what works for them in business and
life. It's all about learning and growing.
So let's go.
Don Patrick: Welcome everybody to the IFG podcast, What Works, and this is
episode number 18. Our guest today is Gerald Craig. He's managing partner at
Carolina Planning Consultants up in Concord, North Carolina. Welcome,
Gerald.
Gerald Craig: Good morning, Don. How are you?
Don Patrick: I'm great. Looking forward to this. You got a lot to share with
us.
Gerald Craig: This should be fun. We'll see.
Don Patrick: So, let's just start off learning a little bit about you and
your family and a little background there, kids, grandkids, whatever you got
going on.
Gerald Craig: Sure. Well, so, I have two grown children. Both of them
married. My daughter and son in law have twin, grandboys or, well, they're
twin sons, my grandboys, and they'll turn five years old in a couple of
weeks, which is kind of fun.
They're at a neat age. Fortunately, they only live about 10 minutes away
from us, so we get to see them pretty regularly. My son and his wife,
unfortunately, they don't live quite as close, but they live near Raleigh,
North Carolina. And so we get to see them not quite as frequently, but
still, on enough, we still can have a great relationship.
Sherry, my wife and I just this week celebrated 41 years of marriage, which
is quite a milestone, I think. And there's nobody I'd rather spend time
with. She acts as sort of our trip planner. She does the bookkeeping for our
business, for extended family. She acts as taxi service for doctor's
appointments.
She acts as our family event planner and sometimes peacemaker. When I was
thinking about this, I probably should carry some key person insurance on
her. But, anyway.
Don Patrick: That's a good idea. Well, congratulations. 41 years and you two
are like lovebirds. It seems like you just met.
Gerald Craig: Yeah. Well, we enjoy each other's time together for sure.
Don Patrick: That's fantastic. So let's just talk about how you kind of got
started in this profession and how long you've been doing financial
planning, but really kind of the beginnings and how you, I don't know if you
stumbled into it or you were very deliberate about getting in this
profession.
Gerald Craig: Well, I don't know that I was deliberate about it necessarily,
but so, when I was in high school, I thought I wanted to be an attorney, and
so my guidance counselor suggested that I attend Campbell University, which
is a small liberal arts school down below Raleigh, North Carolina.
Campbell, for those that don't know, actually has a really good law program,
so if you're going to practice law, especially in the state of North
Carolina, Campbell's a really great place to go. However, when I got to
campus, instead of majoring in pre-law, I started a major in accounting. And
then as I progressed through that, I found out that Campbell actually had a
program that prepares folks to be a trust officer in a bank.
And at the time, of course, the trust departments were sort of the precursor
for what's now these wealth management arms of banks. And so we study things
like, investments, insurance, real estate, fiduciary law, tax, all that kind
of stuff. So again, it kind of prepares you to be a trust officer.
Out of college, I was hired by BB&T, which now is Truist, and my initial
job, I tell people that I paid bills for little blue-haired ladies and did a
state administration, which is exactly what I did. They later transfer me to
Charlotte, which we'll talk about more in just a little bit. But they
transferred to Charlotte back at the end of ‘86 to do pension and profit
sharing plan administration.
So that's really how I got started in the financial services business was
through being a trust officer with BB&T.
Don Patrick: That's amazing training. Oh my goodness.
Gerald Craig: Yeah, it was quite fun.
Don Patrick: So, obviously you left the trust world. How did that occur and
where'd you go next?
Gerald Craig: So I was going to say this to the end, but that's okay. I can
tell this now, but this is kind of one of those things that most people
don't know. So I guess, not long after I had moved to Charlotte and part of
the reason I wanted to move to Charlotte was because we had a young family
and I felt like, certainly Wilson, which was my hometown, and that's where I
started out with BB&T.
That actually was BB&T's headquarters back in that day. I just felt like
I wanted more opportunity. Again, we had a young family. I knew the bank
would have a great path for me, but I felt like that path was going to be
slow. So at the ripe young age of 23, having had my second child and closed
on our first house, I decided I wanted to become a New York life insurance
agent because I felt like I could be more in control of my destiny.
Now, unfortunately, I didn't have many mentors or I should say any mentors
back in that day. So, if I'd had a mentor, I probably would have been a
little bit more successful, but I think I lasted as an insurance agent for
about three years. At which time, I needed to find another job because
things were just kind of a challenge for me.
But anyway, so I spent a number of years, I changed roles, spent a number of
years on the insurance side doing wholesaling, and then later re-entered the
business back at 31 years of age, 30 years ago this week.
Don Patrick: Oh my gosh, well congratulations, it's 30 years. So you were
wholesaling, so you were an employee again, and then you left that and
started your business.
Gerald Craig: So I did very well as a wholesaler. I started out with Paul
Revere Insurance Company. Ended up Rookie of the Year, which was a big boost
because as you can imagine, sort of flaming out as an insurance agent,
having the confidence and kind of stability to kind of rebuild and have some
success was very helpful.
My last job as a wholesaler was doing health insurance sales for a division
of New York Life Insurance Company, so I kind of ended up back at New York
Life and then had an opportunity to start working with an older New York
Life agent who basically had kind of semi retired, but I started that in
January of ‘95.
He was not able to kind of get out and meet people anymore. He was sort of
just kind of bound to his home. But we started doing some joint work
together and that kind of led me ultimately to, I had some, a lot of success
then because I kind of knew what to expect when I came back in. But anyway,
that kind of led me ultimately to go independent back in 1999.
Don Patrick: So you were primarily insurance at the time?
Gerald Craig: Primarily insurance. Back in that day, we were incentivized to
sell insurance products, annuities, life insurance. I did a lot of employee
benefit work because of the wholesaling stuff that I had done previously.
But doing financial planning and investments, we didn't get compensated at
that time for that kind of work.
So again, it was probably not in the best interest of the client. I could
not always offer the best solution. And really Sherry for several years
before I actually went independent, she said, “You just need to, I mean, you
want to do what's right for the client. You just need to go independent so
that you have more flexibility to do that.” So she was really kind of the
push that I needed to go independent.
Don Patrick: So that was a big step. But it's great that she was actually
not only behind you, but pushing you. So where'd you end up going? How'd you
affiliate with a broker dealer? What did you do then?
Gerald Craig: So I had an opportunity. There was another New York life
insurance fellow that I knew. We had similar practices. We both did a lot of
employee benefit work. He had an opportunity to start doing some work with
accountants back in 1999. I guess in North Carolina, the North Carolina
board of AICPA said, “We're going to start allowing you to offer financial
services to your clients.” But of course, no accountant knows how to do
that.
So he had an opportunity to pull away and start partnering with some
accounting firms to help them build their financial services practices. And
he said, “Gerald, you should come over and help do the same thing.” And so I
left. We've joined a broker dealer called First Global Capital Corp, which
actually catered pretty much to CPA firms, helped them build financial
services practices.
Ultimately, I think they sold and sold out to a firm called Avantax, which
exists now. So First Global no longer exists. But so that's what we did for
a few years. We started having some back office issues with First Global. I
had worked with probably three different CPA firms, the back office issues
in that we weren't getting accounts transferred over in time, folks weren't
getting distributions in time, obviously our clients weren't happy.
So I started looking at different broker dealers and settled on LPL
Financial and that happened in 2001. So I moved from First Global to LPL in
2001. I had a CPA firm that we had developed a good relationship with and so
they actually moved over with me and we continued to help them build a
financial services practice. But landing at LPL was probably a really good
thing for us at that time.
Don Patrick: So you, in the early days, building the business was primarily
through the CPA relationships.
Gerald Craig: Yeah, I had a fairly good sized book of group insurance
business, and I had some investment clients, but quite honestly, when I came
over and started doing work with the CPA firms, I barely knew what asset
allocation was all about.
So we kind of stumbled around for a little bit. That was a trial by fire
experience, if you want to call it that. But yeah, so that's how we kind of
got started.
Don Patrick: So how have you grown the business and how do you grow it now?
Is it referrals? Is it networking? I know you still have a CPA relationship
or maybe more than one.
Gerald Craig: No, we just have one primary CPA relationship. I mean,
obviously we've developed some other CPAs, but we don't share revenues with
anybody else. The one CPA that I kind of have, I share a small amount of
revenue with that person. But honestly, that relationship, we have a lot of
clients that are still in common with each other, but we're not getting a
lot of new business from that firm, from that relationship.
So, I would say primarily our new business comes from existing clients who
are bringing new money to us and referring us great clients. So, primarily
through referrals, we have engaged Jason Bikini's team to do some online
marketing and things of that nature, but that's really just pushing out
social media stuff. So again, over the years, we did a lot of networking.
Now it's primarily referrals.
Don Patrick: Do you proactively ask for introductions, or are they more
passive?
Gerald Craig: It depends on the cycle. When I'm thinking about it, we use
that cataclytic conversation that I think Andrew's introduced to us a few
years ago.
But it's like anything, you start doing it, it starts working, you get
sidetracked, and we get away from it. So, everything runs in cycles in this
business, as usual.
Don Patrick: Yeah, if it works, stop doing it.
Gerald Craig: Exactly.
Don Patrick: That's great. So how did you start learning financial planning
and asset allocation and the investment management process? Because you do
an incredible job and you're extremely knowledgeable. So how did you start
learning all that?
Gerald Craig: Well, I think the base of my knowledge came from my
undergraduate degree in trust management from Campbell University. And
actually that program now at Campbell, you can go for, instead of a four
year degree, you can go an extra year.
And once you're done, you're actually ready to sit for the CFP exam. You
just need the experience to be able to do that. So that kind of gave me a
base. So I had a fair amount of knowledge already, when I started after I
had failed the first time and then came back in the second time, I had
already achieved my Certified Life Lender or Chartered Life Lender Rider
designation, I pursued the Chartered Financial Consultant designation, and
then it's interesting, I sort of put off getting the CFP only because I felt
like with all the other education, I had everything that I needed, but I
decided, “Okay, from a maybe a credibility or marketing standpoint, let's go
ahead and get the CFP.”
So I never really took the CFP courses. I did challenge the exam and
unfortunately was able to pass it the first time, but that took a lot of
study, but it was good. So those things kind of gave me a base, I guess,
just learning, studying, being a student of the industry, which I think is
so important, really kind of helped me get to the point where I felt
confident doing a financial plan for folks and it felt like I was offering
them good advice.
Don Patrick: So, do you recall what your first financial planning tools
were, by any chance?
Gerald Craig: Oh, yes. We used a program called Financial Profiles, which I
don't even think exists any longer.
Don Patrick: It doesn't. But it was great.
Gerald Craig: Yeah, it was good. It was relatively easy to do the data
input. It was easy to understand. The reports were understandable for
clients. So that was probably the first financial planning tool that we
used.
Don Patrick: And we'll get into the tech stack a little bit later. I know
you spent quite a bit of time, quite a few years coaching with Dan Sullivan,
I think. How many years were you with that coaching program?
Gerald Craig: Gosh. I don't know. All together, maybe like 15 years. I
started out, I think in 2004 with that program, when the credit crisis hit,
we had a relatively successful practice at that point, but we were much
smaller then than we are now.
I had, did I have two full time people at the moment? I think I did. I had
two full time people. We were still doing a lot of group insurance.
Obviously, our revenues took a pretty substantial hit. So, I took one of
those folks part time, which was fine. She was happy doing that because she
wanted to spend more time with her kids.
And then I cut a lot of expenses and Strategic Coach was actually one of
those expenses that I cut, which, looking back, I probably should have
remained in that because any kind of a coaching tool, whether you're hiring
an individual coach or participating in a program like that, it's really
more of an investment than an expense.
But, once again, I was sort of in survival mode at that point. So I cut that
out. But then I reengaged a couple years later. So altogether, probably
about 15 years.
Don Patrick: Amazing. And it's, you meet four times a year. Is that correct?
For a couple of days? Is that how it works? If I recall?
Gerald Craig: You pay your money up front. You meet four times a year.
During COVID, of course, everything was virtual, but you know, you would, if
it was not during that period of time, we traveled to a workshop. At the
time before COVID, my workshops were in Atlanta. So I would drive to
Atlanta, spend the night, have the program the next morning and then drive
home at the end of the day.
So it's great to kind of get with other people who are going through similar
challenges as you. Maybe they're all not in the same profession, but they're
all dealing with the same issues. And of course, since everyone's trying to
grow, it's just kind of a good supportive network.
Don Patrick: So you have peer to peer, which is always powerful. And of
course, Dan Sullivan and his programs are amazing. What kinds of things did
you implement from it? Because you have implemented, not everybody does
that.
Gerald Craig: So, gosh, a lot, all kinds of tools. Probably the first, well,
I won't say the first one, but just managing your schedule, the personal
economic time system, creating buffer days.
We actually just start out first with free days and then buffer days and
focus days. So like a free day, of course, for those who've been in the
program, that's a day where you just don't do anything related to the work.
You use that time to rejuvenate. You go for a hike. You take a vacation day.
You and your wife go watch a movie, but you don't do any work on that day. A
focus day is a day where you can technically spend roughly 80% of your day
doing revenue generating activities. Maybe it's a networking event. Maybe
it's meeting with clients. Maybe it's presenting a plan or making phone
calls to clients trying to get appointments.
And then the buffer day is designed to do all those things to prepare you
for your focus day. So maybe you're spending time on a buffer day preparing
for the rest of the week, putting all your plans together. Running all your
reports, learning new technologies, maybe you're like, one of the things
we're looking at right now is whether or not we should move from Redtail to
Wealthbox.
So, taking the day to analyze how is Wealthbox going to help us. Those are
buffer day activities, but the idea is if you schedule these things out
between free focus and buffer days, you're much more effective and efficient
on those different days than if you mix all those things together because
everything kind of becomes a mush if you're mixing them all together. You
don't really do anything well on those particular days.
Don Patrick: You're distracted, multitasking. Now, do you still follow that?
Gerald Craig: I still do follow that. Not to the same degree. But I, like on
Mondays, for example, we never schedule client meetings. We use that as a
big buffer day. Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday is generally when we'll have
client meetings.
But we don't have as many meetings as we once had because we're, at this
point, we're not trying to grow quite as rapidly as we once did. And then
Fridays is generally kind of a buffer day as well. We kind of wrap up the
week and look forward to the following week.
Don Patrick: That's impressive. One of the challenges I've seen with folks
over the years is they try to implement some sort of calendaring system and
then they just get away from it. And they find it almost more difficult to
stick with it.
Gerald Craig: Well, one of the things that's helped us, and this one of the
tools in the strategic coach program, is to complete what's called an
activity inventory. And you just write down all the activities that you
spend your time doing. You have your assistant or office manager do the same
thing, and then you look at your activity and say, “All right, what's my
highest and best use of my time and my abilities? And what should I be
delegating to somebody else?” And that's been a big time saver for us as
well. Just figuring out what those things that we should be, that I should
be doing, and that somebody else should be doing.
Don Patrick: Yeah, that's huge. Was it difficult for you to start delegating
and letting go of some of those things?
Gerald Craig: I think it's always difficult because you feel like, “Well, I
can get this done. It won't take me but a minute or two to do that.” But
then you realize, okay, well, that's a minute or two I could be spending
doing something of higher caliber. And then someone else who's really good
at this thing that I'm spending my time on, they really enjoy that and they
get energy from that.
So let them do that and let me focus on helping clients make decisions about
things. So yeah, once you kind of get past the ownership of that or the,
it's probably ownership's not the right word, but once you get past the idea
that, “Hey, I need to be doing this,” but there's actually somebody else
that can do it better. Once you get past that idea, it's much easier.
Don Patrick: It's liberating.
Gerald Craig: It is very liberating
Don Patrick: That's impressive. That's, so many people have challenges,
delegating, and we have some tools like that help. I think it's a hundred
things to consider delegating. So it's already a made out list and just go
through and start checking them off, what you need to get off your plate.
Gerald Craig: Well, and when you've delegated stuff, part of the beauty of
this business is that you've got a lot of flexibility with your time. And if
you've got people that enjoy doing the things that you're just kind of
halfway good at, let them do that and then find something else fun to do.
Don Patrick: Get the right people in the right seat on the bus.
Gerald Craig: Exactly. Jim Collins.
Don Patrick: That's correct. And you are an avid reader and really are a
great student of the profession. When you first joined us, I knew you
were–had worked with Sullivan because your website is trademarked
everywhere. That's one of his key things. You trade, you come up with
processes and names and trademark.
Gerald Craig: Yeah. We, when we created the Life voice navigator process as
a result of that, yes.
Don Patrick: Yeah. It's powerful. When people see that you actually have a
process, it's very comforting.
Gerald Craig: Well, and everybody has a process, just not everyone has gone
through and named it.
Don Patrick: And communicated.
Gerald Craig: Exactly.
Don Patrick: Is it verbal? Or, I know on your website it's visual. So if you
bring a new client in, do you have some sort of visual that shows them what
the process is going to be like?
Gerald Craig: We kind of walk them through the steps and kind of define what
these steps are and what's going to happen and I'll tell clients that, or
potential clients, that not every client is going to engage us on every step
of this process, but this is the filter through which we attempt to manage
our client relationships.
Don Patrick: So since we kind of jumped to that, what does this look like?
So you have a new client. What does it look like? Do you have a introductory
telephone call, they come to the office? Walk us through kind of how the
steps work and what that looks like.
Gerald Craig: So, I will meet with, I'll give anybody an hour of my time.
So, generally, if a new client calls in or potential client calls in, we try
to have a phone conversation and so say, “What is it you're looking for?”
Kind of get a feel and then if they think that we can take the next step,
then we'll schedule a time, we'll have an introductory meeting.
We'll go through, I'll answer questions, ask them a bunch of questions. If
they decide to take the next step and engage us, then of course we'll go
through, gather the data, create the financial plan, prepare an investment
management proposal for them, and just kind of, again, walk them through
step by step.
After that, if they decide that we're still a right fit for each other and
they've engaged us or they paid us a fee, whichever we're going to do, then
when we onboard them, Talisa has a sort of a data intake form that we'll
complete. Obviously, we've already captured a lot of that information to
begin with, but there's more information that we'll need.
So we'll capture that information. We'll use that information to create
various accounts and things. Talisa will make all that happen once
everything kind of comes over. And then we have all the assets, we have the
plan completed, everything's in place, we'll schedule another meeting to
kind of show them how to view their statements, how to access things online.
We'll talk about this maybe in tech stack, but we use WealthVision, which is
LPL's version of eMoney. So, we'll show them how to access eMoney, how to
store documents in their portal on eMoney, how to look at reports. And
what's really interesting about this, the WealthVision thing, and I use this
a lot, and we have a lot of clients that will take advantage of this.
With WealthVision, you can store all kinds of documents in there, and I know
folks listening to this probably are aware of this already. But I'll use the
example, if you're traveling somewhere, I'll say, “John, if you're
traveling, it's doubtful that you pack your health care power of attorney in
your suitcase when you go.”
And they'll say, “Well, no, I don't have, I don't pack that.” And I'll say,
“Well, if you've got a copy of that stored in your portal within
WealthVision, and you happen to need it while you're traveling, as long as
you have their portable device, you can pull up a copy of it and share that
with anybody that you need to share it with.”
So it's a really, WealthVision can be a very powerful tool and a very useful
tool for clients that choose to engage that. So that's maybe more
information than you wanted at that point, this point, but that's how we do
that.
Don Patrick: What percent of your clients you think actually use the portal?
Gerald Craig: Of the ones that we have done financial plans for, maybe about
half.
Don Patrick: That's high. That's impressive.
Gerald Craig: And maybe that's too much. I don't know, but I'd say a fair
number.
Don Patrick: The healthcare power, that's a huge purpose for that, it's a
big deal. We had a speaker a number of years ago at the retreat, and very
powerful.
Anyway, long story short, her husband had a health issue, went to the
hospital, she was an hour away from the hospital, she gets to the hospital.
“Do you have a healthcare power?” “Yes.” “Where is it?” Well, it's at their
home, another hour away. So, three or four hours later, she finally got the
healthcare power to the hospital. Had a situation where clients were in
France and the passport got stolen.
Gerald Craig: Oh my.
Don Patrick: So they had a copy of the passport in the portal. And now they
missed the flight, but they were able to go to the embassy and get it. So
yeah, very powerful and practical.
Gerald Craig: Sherry and I have copies of our passports in the portal. We
have copies of credit card information in there. So, if we lost a credit
card, I mean, it's just such a valuable, good tool. So, hopefully others
listening can maybe implement that.
Don Patrick: Yeah. So, you have the introductory phone call or face to face
meeting, then you have another kind of introductory meeting. Then, is it
another meeting to gather the information? Is that what I'm understanding?
Gerald Craig: No, we'll generally do that during that discovery meeting. If
we've had a phone call and clients decide it's a yes, we want to take the
next step and have a meeting, then we'll gather most of the data during that
next meeting, that first face to face meeting.
Don Patrick: And what does that look like? Do they bring in a shoebox full
of paper or do you have them fill out a back finder? How does that look
like?
Gerald Craig: So Talisa will send them an email with information that's
helpful for them to bring as kind of a checklist, tax returns, insurance
documents, investment statements, several other things are on that list.
But generally, they'll come with all that information to that next meeting.
We'll kind of review it, make sure we understand everything. And of course,
also during that discovery meeting, we're asking a lot of questions about
what's important to them, goals and objectives, etc.
Don Patrick: So for them, the next step is when you start putting the plan
together and doing the analysis, is that my understanding?
Gerald Craig: That's correct. And then our next meeting will be to present
our findings. Certainly, when we use WealthVision, we never prepare a
printed report for them during that meeting, only because we're going to
change so many things on the fly. We're going to verify information. They're
going to say, “Oh, I forgot about this.”
Or that. And so we'll update everything in the conference room. We have it
all pulled up on the screen. And so we're making changes as we go. And then
we'll share the reports and the data that we have prepared for them.
Don Patrick: That's what I love about technology today. When I started, we
came 100-page report.
We just call it selling by the pound. And the analogy I use is, I mean, if
you go to your doctor's office and he or she gives you a hundred pages to go
home and read, I couldn't do that. That's not, and with the technology
today, the clients see the impact of everything. They're literally making
the decisions. They see the impact of the choices.
Gerald Craig: Well, one of the cool things that we have been doing for quite
a while now is, first of all, with regards to long term care insurance,
nobody likes to buy long term care. It's a hassle to go through
underwriting. It's just a big, it's a challenge. Now, that's not to say we
shouldn't have long term care, and we should, but with some of the planning
tools in WealthVision, you can illustrate the impact of a long term care
event on right there on the screen while the client's sitting in the
conference room, and then you can say, “Okay, well, you have enough assets
that this long term care event, even if both of you have an event, you'll be
okay, or you won't be okay, and then we need to talk about some insurance or
some other solution.”
But those tools are really impactful and you haven't gone through and given
them 15 pages of data on what a long term care event would look like. You've
shown it to them on the screen and they can visually see it.
Don Patrick: Exactly. Yeah, it's amazing. It's such a game changer. So, now
they're, they're on board and then three months later you kind of go
through, show them how to get online and go through the various statements
and reports and now what? How often do you do progress review meetings with
clients typically?
Gerald Craig: So we attempt to meet with clients at least annually,
obviously. Not every client wants to get together that frequently, but we
make an attempt to do that. Some clients just feel so comfortable with how
things are going, others want to get together more, more often, which is
okay. So we kind of work our cadence to what they feel comfortable doing.
When we get together with a client for a review meeting, we have an agenda.
One of the things we ask them is, “All right, tell us two positive things
that have occurred in your life since we last met.”
So it kind of gets them thinking about, and this kind of goes back to the
strategic coach, one of the things that we, they teach you is, well, let's
have a positive focus. Let's think about the good things that are happening
and sometimes clients will come in, they've got all this concern about
headlines or maybe they've had some kind of a health event or something or
other, but when we ask them the question about positive things, it kind of
helps them say, “All right, life's not so bad. Things are going pretty
well.”
And they'll share those kinds of things with us. We obviously update their
personal information. We review their investment allocation, is the risk
tolerance, is the allocation still appropriate for where we are right now?
We'll review their financial planning, updates, update everything on wealth
vision that we need to update, look at their progress toward retirement or
college funding goals. We'll kind of go through all that information in a
client review meeting.
Don Patrick: And do you have that pre prepared for the meeting or do you
update it live when they're in the meeting?
Gerald Craig: So we encourage our clients, so prior to a review meeting,
Talisa will send them an email to confirm the meeting and ask them to go
into their portal, if they're using WealthVision, and just update any
information that needs to be updated.
And most of our clients that are using WealthVision will do that. Some of
that information we do update on the fly in the meeting. It doesn't
typically take very long to update that. For clients to have their accounts
connected, obviously everything's updated pretty much real time. And when I
say accounts connected, I'm talking about accounts outside of LPL, like
their, maybe their company 401k plan, or maybe they have a Schwab account
that they're doing day trading in or something like that.
But anyway, so we'll update some of those things on the fly. But generally
I've gone through beforehand and looked at the reports and looked at the
projections. So really the tweaks that we make during the mid year are
typically kind of minor.
Don Patrick: Do you have any challenges with these links breaking, say to a
Schwab or their bank or their 401k?
Gerald Craig: Yeah, that can be a little frustrating because if a client
hasn't gone in and refreshed their connections, you know, recently then
yeah, there's a break in that so I don't not sure what the solution is I
actually haven't really talked to anybody at LPL or eMoney about that But
those connections can get stale, and I guess I understand why they can get
stale or why they want you to update them on a regular basis, but that can
be a little frustrating.
Don Patrick: Yeah, I think that's the biggest challenge is, I mean, in
theory, it sounds wonderful and everything's being updated live, but
administratively, from our perspective, it's the biggest challenge, I think.
So let's talk a little bit about your tech stack. We know you're using
WealthVision. Do you use WealthVision, or do you use anything else?
Gerald Craig: So we have used Riskalyze to kind of help us with that. And
that's a great tool with Riskalyze as you can look at a client's existing
portfolio, if they're working with another advisor or they're doing their
own thing, and kind of they've gone through and answered the questionnaire.
We can say, “Hey, look, your existing allocation isn't exactly matching up
with what you say your comfort level is. So let's look at some options for
that.” We use Redtail for our CRM. We do have some clients for whom we do
tax planning. And we're not trying to get in the weeds with that.
I think that's our CPA's deal. But there are certainly some things that we
can help guide them on and give them some ideas on. So we use Holistiplan
for that. For online scheduling, we're using Schedule Once, which is a great
tool, keeps you from going back and forth, trying to say, “Well, I got this
time,” or, “I've got that time.”
a client can look at their own calendar. They can schedule it when it fits
with them. For voiceover IP, we're using GoToConnect. And what's really
interesting about that, as well as tools like Zoom, is we've had a lot of
these tools in place for a long time, but COVID really forced us to start
utilizing these tools.
So with our voiceover IP, we could all be working from home and clients call
the office number and we're sitting in our bonus room or wherever and we can
help them do what they need to do. So that's really kind of cool. Zoom of
course is helpful for virtual meetings and it's also helped us to serve a
lot of our out of state clients much more effectively. Maybe the last thing
I'll mention is we use Ycharts for our research, investment research.
Don Patrick: Okay. Do you use anything for texting?
Gerald Craig: We do not do anything for texting. I do have a couple clients
that have my cell phone number. I had one the other day, for example, I
probably shouldn't say this over the air, but she texted me and said, “Hey,
I've gone back to work. Stop my monthly distribution,stuff like that.” But
as far as investment advice or anything like that, of course, we'll just
pick up the phone and say, “Hey, we need to have a conversation about this.”
Don Patrick: Few years post COVID now, what percent of the meetings are live
in the office versus say Zoom.
Gerald Craig: I'd say still probably 90% of our meetings are in the office.
Occasionally we'll do a phone meeting. I actually have a meeting scheduled
this afternoon. It's a brand new client or potential client. This is going
to be a virtual meeting, so we'll see how that works out. I know nothing
about this person.
He just called in. He saw, got us from our website. But I'd say probably 90%
still are virtual. We have some clients that just enjoy the freedom or the
time saving of hopping on a virtual meeting, even if they live across town.
They might live 20 minutes away, but they don't want to spend 20 minutes in
the car. But most of our clients are still, most of our meetings are still,
in fact, in person.
Don Patrick: Okay. Yeah. I mean, in the big cities like Atlanta, for
example, I mean, I was doing Webex as an option. They could come in the
office or we could do a virtual. This is way before COVID because it could
take them 40 minutes to come for an hour meeting, basically three hours out
of their day. And so I've always offered that as an option pre-COVID. And
then COVID, everybody got trained on how to do a Zoom, so.
Gerald Craig: Yeah, it kind of forced a lot of efficiency.
Don Patrick: It did.
Gerald Craig: Well, it's interesting. Another thing that happened is
wholesalers started doing more virtual meetings. And so, now we don't get
invitations for lunch quite as much. Not that I want to go to lunch all the
time, but the big firms figured out how to save money, and use Zoom.
Don Patrick: That's correct. It's really changed the world without a doubt.
I'm just going to ask, what year did you join IFG?
Gerald Craig: In January of 2016. That was hard to believe that was nine
years ago.
Don Patrick: I know.
Gerald Craig: That was crazy. So originally I was at some LPL conference
toward the end of 2014. I ran into another LPL advisor who had just recently
joined IFG and we were having a conversation about all that. And he said,
“Well, you need to talk to Land and talk to Don.”
And so I think you and I, or Land and I don't remember who I talked to
first, but we had an initial conversation probably in January of 2015. But
because of some significant commitments and responsibilities that I had at
our church at the time, I didn't have the bandwidth to make a move. So it
took me a year to be able to come over.
Don Patrick: And why did you join the consortium?
Gerald Craig: Yeah, I think I joined probably for a lot of the same reasons
that others have joined. Camaraderie, the sharing of ideas. I think the
sense that each person in the consortium really cares about others in the
group, even though we might not have regular contact with each other.
It's really kind of a sharing atmosphere, which I think is really cool. And
what's I think is also interesting is while going through the vetting
process, you vetting me, me vetting you guys, I saw a lot of the same, a lot
of the qualities that I thought were very attractive with the individuals
and also with the group as a whole.
I don't know that I really understood the full impact that being a member of
IFG would have. I mean, I look at our practice today and there's so many
ideas and tools and processes that we've implemented that came from others
in the consortium. So again, I think looking back, I would say that the
benefit of being an IFG member has probably been much greater than I could
have anticipated.
Don Patrick: It's hard to communicate all that. It really is. But it is
real. What are your biggest challenges running your business?
Gerald Craig: I think for me, as a, I'll call myself a solo practitioner,
the biggest challenge for me has been attempting to find the right junior
advisor. Over the last several years, we've had two individuals that have
joined our firm and then we ended up parting ways for various reasons.
And I think this just seems to be a challenge industry wide for solo
advisors to try to find that right fit number two person. I mean, we realize
we need to have some kind of a succession in place. I don't know the answer
to that. I'm still searching for that. I do have a couple of individuals
that we've been having some conversations with, so we'll see what happens
with that.
But that's probably been my biggest challenge in running our business. Other
than that, I think the systems and processes that we put in place over the
years have just helped make things smooth and things sort of, I won't say
run on autopilot, but they pretty much run on autopilot.
Don Patrick: Yeah, you run a very, I call it frictionless business and it is
the processes that you put in place and the intent, the intentional aspect
of that. And it takes work to do that, but once it's in place, boy, it makes
life so much better.
Gerald Craig: It really does.
Don Patrick: So, you have, when you joined us, you were, well just tell us a
little bit what the business was like then, and staffing, I think you were
running the money, doing the trading, and where it is today, you've really
simplified your business in a big way.The business is that much bigger than
when you joined us nine years ago. And, kind of walk us through that journey
a little bit.
Gerald Craig: We've run, we've had models and before that, we would do this
fund or that fund for this client or that client. It was just cumbersome.
And so we decided we're going to implement models in our portfolios.
We're going to move to advisory. We started actually our first advisory
account I think we opened in 2004. I think when we joined with IFG, we had a
decent amount of advisory, but we were doing all of our own trading. So we
had built models, and I had an associate advisor at the time who was using
LPL's enhanced trading platform.
And anytime we would do a rebalance or change a manager, it was just a big
process. And because this wasn't something we did on a regular basis, we had
to be very careful about not making mistakes and making sure that we were
doing everything correctly. So when he and I parted ways, well now all of a
sudden that trading fell on me. So I had to learn the enhanced trading
program.
Don Patrick: Ouch.
Gerald Craig: Yeah, ouch is correct. Which I did. I tried not to do a lot of
trading, but you know, we use the program. When our second associate advisor
joined us, I made it her responsibility to learn that program. But as you
can imagine, again, not doing this on a regular basis, it was just a
daunting kind of a thing.
So we actually had a conversation with IFG's investment solutions team,
chatted with them. Ultimately, we ended up engaging them. We gave them our
models to trade. And gosh, this has been such a huge benefit for us. It
frees up so much time. I mean, and since they focus solely on trading,
they're excellent at it.
They make very few mistakes. They might be, I mean, they might be like a
99.9% success ratio or maybe 100% error free. Wherever they are, they make a
lot fewer mistakes than we would make. So anytime we need to implement a
rebalance, which we did when last year, we're in the matter, actually in the
process this week of making a manager change, they just make the process so
easy.
And it frees up so much of our time. Now we still have a few clients that we
have, I mean a few accounts that we have to trade on our own, but just
offloading that trading to them is worth every basis point that we pay for
that.
Don Patrick: Yeah, it's actually relatively inexpensive if you look at the
cost of salary and everything else.
Gerald Craig: Oh, absolutely. It's like, why wasn't I doing this before?
Don Patrick: I think their goal is 1% or less error rate. And when they hit
that, once a quarter they get a big steak dinner at a nice restaurant.
Gerald Craig: Yeah.
Don Patrick: And they love it.
Gerald Craig: That's been a big thing to help us systematize and streamline
our business.
Don Patrick: So you had the second associate advisor who left. So now this
person is gone and it's just the two of you in the office now, correct?
Gerald Craig: Yeah, it really pretty much is the two of us, Talisa and
myself. Now, Sherry does our books, but she doesn't count because she
doesn't have any client interaction. So she doesn't really know how to do
anything except make sure the bills get paid and the checks get deposited.
So I guess, some of the other things that we have done to help simplify
things, when I tell you this one, you're going to realize how much of a slow
learner I am. But a few years ago at one of the IFG retreats, I think it was
Matt Carpinelli, gave a presentation on workflows. And I said, “We need to
do that. We need to implement workflows in our practice.” And so we did. And
again, it sounds so simple and hopefully everyone else listening to this
podcast has, has already done that. But implementing workflows makes sure
that tasks get assigned to the correct person and that nothing falls through
the cracks.
We're not trying to figure out, oh, did this get done or did that get done?
You can look at the steps that have been checked off and you can see what's
been done and what hasn't been done. So that's been a big thing for us.
Another big thing that we have done over the last couple of years, LPL has
this RMD service.
So if you have clients that are receiving RMDs, you can get them signed up
in this RMD service. Once a year, their check's going to go out, you'll get
a notification that, “Hey, money needs to be raised for this thing,” and it
just happens automatically. So effectively, all we have to do when we see
that money needs to be raised and we send it a trade request to the
investment solutions team.
They raise the money, Talisa sets up the distribution and off it goes. One
other thing I'll mention, two that's really helped us a lot. We started
using the ASAP team a couple of years ago. This past year, they have been
very instrumental in helping us out, but going back to the whole RMD thing,
when we see that money needs to be raised, now that trade request, I don't
submit that.
That goes to the ASAP team, they submit it to the Investment Solutions team,
and again, that's another way that I keep my hands off of that whole
process. I would say right now, Talisa and I were looking at this the other
day, we have roughly 70% of our RMD clients set up on this service. We still
have a few, obviously some others that are going to be more of a situational
thing with regards to doing their RMD, but our goal this year is to reach an
85% adoption rate for this service for our RMD clients.
Another thing, well, I'll come back to the ASAP team. As I mentioned that
they were able, we've been utilizing them for a couple of years. This past
year, Talisa had a medical procedure and unfortunately her husband ended up
passing away. So she was out for several weeks between those two things.
Kind of all happened at the same time. But because we had been utilizing the
ASAP team, we were able to push a lot of stuff off to them, and they were
very helpful in getting things processed. Obviously, I kind of had to make
sure things were delegated to them. But certainly my workload was increased
a little bit, but I was not overwhelmed by Talisa's absence.
And I can tell you, there was not a single day that I worked past 5 o'clock
during a whole period of time. So, that's been a big help for us.
Don Patrick: And that's really one of the big reasons for that. I mean, IFG,
we'll probably always subsidize that, but it's for exactly those kinds of
situations as a biggie, you lose an assistant, somebody gets sick, whatever
it is, and they can step in and take that over. Now on an ongoing basis, how
do you use them primarily for paperwork and move money and things of that
nature?
Gerald Craig: So Talisa generally will set up the move money, the
distributions, but the ASAP team will implement, they will submit the trade
request as part of the workflow task. We have some other things that we'll
engage them for, like for example, this is kind of a–so we had a situation
where we were trying to do a backdoor Roth IRA.
Funds got deposited directly to the Roth IRA versus the regular IRA, and
this was like a couple years ago. We had to try to correct all that. So
that's something that obviously is a little bit more time-consuming, so we
engage them for things of that nature to correct things like that. They
certainly have helped us to open new accounts to set up solo 401k plans, but
they are, again, they are great.
They're highly trained, very highly skilled, and carry out any kind of
responsibility or task in pretty much a timely and efficient manner. So,
again, I would, if anyone's thinking about engaging them, I would say don't
think about it, just do it.
Don Patrick: So you're down two people, you've outsourced the training,
you've outsourced part of the back office to the virtual assistant program,
you put in workflows, processes and procedures, and because of all these
things, and you're utilizing technology very smartly, you've got a large
business and it runs so smoothly. It's impressive.
Gerald Craig: Yeah, and it's interesting in spite of having lost an
associate at the beginning of this past year, and then, of course, with
Talisa having been out quite a bit toward the last quarter, we've actually
had one of our best years ever. Not just because of the market, but we
brought on a significant number of new assets and new clients, and yeah, I
feel very fortunate.
Don Patrick: That's impressive. So yeah, the challenge with bringing on an
associate advisor or possible successor is a big, it's a big issue in the
industry. And we're very much focused on that. We're implementing some new
areas in business development, focusing on trying to find those people for
folks like you because it's a big deal.
And it's a challenge. It just is. Took me two years to find Land. And there
was no guarantee that was going to work either.
Gerald Craig: Right. Well, he obviously was very committed to making it work
and certainly a great leader.
Don Patrick: He was and he is. It's been amazing. Well, it's very
impressive. So, I'm going to wrap it up with asking you to use three words
to describe your talents and strengths.
Gerald Craig: So, I'm actually going to give you four because there was one
word that wasn't on the list, but I'm going to say encouragement, optimism,
resilience, and I'm going to add gratitude.
Don Patrick: Perfect. That's you. Absolutely. That's great. Well, Gerald,
this has been fantastic. It's amazing what you've done. It's very
intentional. The key, you make it sound easy. But even workflows, once
they're running, they're great, but man, it hurts trying to build those
things out.
Gerald Craig: Yes, it was painful, but if you think about all the time that
we've saved on the back end, it was certainly worth it.
Don Patrick: It is. Everything you've implemented through the coaching
program, I mean, these, you have to be very intentional.
It just didn't happen. And that's how you are. And you're also a lifelong
learner. You're constantly engaged in reading and getting better. It's very
impressive. And you build a great business. You are a great guy and you do
have a lot of gratitude and you are an optimist.
Gerald Craig: Well, thank you for that. It's certainly a privilege to be
affiliated with the group and to learn from others. I feel very grateful for
everyone else's knowledge because it helps me, helps us all become better
advisors.
Don Patrick: It's the brain trust. That's the whole point. All right, I'll
let you go. Thanks so much for taking your time to do this. It's very
helpful for all of us.
Gerald Craig: Well, thank you, Don. And I will look forward to seeing you
next week.
Don Patrick: Next week, the retreat. This is going to be a big one. Bye.
Gerald Craig: Take care. Bye bye.
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.