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Tune in to "What Works" hosted by Don Patrick where we tap into 2,500+ years of experience in running financial advisory practices. In each episode, Don sits down with an experienced financial planner, uncovering the unique insights and experiences that have shaped their careers. From navigating market fluctuations to building successful client relationships, Don and his guests share invaluable business tips and strategies for financial planners looking to thrive in the industry.
Join us every other Thursday, as we explore the wealth of knowledge accumulated from over 2500+ years of combined experience in financial planning.
Hi, everyone. Welcome to What Works. This is a show for consortium advisors
that taps into over 1,000 years of experience shared by our consortium
advisors.
I'm your host, Don Patrick, and I'm here to guide the conversation with
guest advisors and lift the hood on what works for them in business and
life. It's all about learning and growing.
So let's go.
Don Patrick: Hey, everyone. Welcome to the IFG podcast, What works? Episode
number 32 today, our special guest is Temp Davis. He's a financial planner
at Integrated Financial Partners in McDonough, Georgia. Hey, Temp, welcome.
Temp Davis: Hey, thanks, Don.
Don Patrick: Looking forward to this. We're gonna learn a lot, I know. I
know you too well. So let's kind of start off your personal professional
background. Tell us a little bit about your personal background, your family
growing up, and that sort of thing, get this thing.
Temp Davis: I'm a Georgia boy. Born in Macon, moved down to Albany, went to
school in Athens. First job in Columbus, then moved up to Newnan, Georgia,
where I am now.
I didn't know it at the time, had an old family cemetery here. Had always
heard them talk about ‘Big Mama’. Well, that was my
great-great-great-great-grandmother. And that's where my name came from.
Temp is short, the Temperance. And I was named after my
great-great-great-great grandmother who moved to Newnan in 1832, long before
the war in Northern Aggression. Her husband, Jet, they had 14 kids. She died
in childbirth. He had five more with another one.
Don Patrick: Oh my god.
Temp Davis: It was days when people died a lot, so had to make a lot of
kids. But one of her sons was a mama's boy, named his first son after his
mama, and that's how that 18th-century female name got on the guy's side.
And I'm the fourth and my son's the fifth. And raised up in South Georgia,
hunting, fishing. Dad worked for Georgia Power, my granddad worked with
Georgia Power. I got out of school. I went to work with them as well,
managing timber in the land department. I had a forestry degree
Don Patrick: That was from UGA?
Temp Davis: Yeah. And, that was a great job getting out of school, just
being out on the road roving.
Don Patrick: Plus you had probably good-paying benefits and all that stuff
and you're out doing what you love.
Temp Davis: Yep.
Don Patrick: Good pay, benefits.
Temp Davis: Got a wife, got a couple of kids. So I got a son and a daughter.
That lasted about 10 years and we got divorced. I married another girl,
Margaret. We just celebrated our 20th wedding anniversary on a cruise two
weeks ago.
Don Patrick: Fantastic. Congratulations.
Temp Davis: Yeah, so she'd been with me all through my career change, which
is, which was a really tough time in my life. I got two kids from her
marriage. and so, my two haven't gotten married yet. Her two are married and
both have four kids.
Don Patrick: Oh my God.
Temp Davis: I've had three boys and a girl. Well, the girl, the eighth one,
we're expecting any moment now. Margaret's heading to Nashville today and
I'll be up there later in the week, I suppose, for baby number eight. So
we'll have eight grandkids under the age of seven.
Don Patrick: Oh my God, that's great.
Temp Davis: Yep. It's like being a little form of bees when they all get
together.
Don Patrick: I love it.
Temp Davis: So that's kind of my background.
Don Patrick: So, you mentioned change of careers. Tell us about all that
transition and how and why and how you got in this profession and–
Temp Davis: Okay. Well, that probably went as bad as it could go for
anybody. It was probably the darkest time of my life because it wasn't
planned and when I was at Georgia Power, I did a lot of things and I was,
I've always thought, I wish I had started this career, which I love the most
of anything I've ever done. I wish I'd just started this right out of school
and just plowed through and never done anything else. And as I was
reflecting on that wish, I realized that if I hadn't have done all those
other things, I wouldn't have the skills that I have to do what I do now or
I just wouldn't even be the same person. So maybe I would reverse that wish.
Don Patrick: So what kind of skills did you acquire that you wouldn't have
had if he went right out of school? First of all, you're a forestry major.
You didn't even know about this profession, I don't think.
Temp Davis: Right. And I got a friend that's a young man that turkey hunts
with me and he went in the military and he's getting out and he's doing
college and all stuff and all that.
And he wanted a financial planning professional college degree, such that he
could do what I do, help people with financial planning. So I inspired him
to do that. And back when I was in college, I don't even think was a degree
for personal financial planning, but–
Don Patrick: Probably not.
Temp Davis: Anyway, yeah, when I went to work for Georgia Power after the
land management stuff and I moved into operations, so I was working, keeping
power lines cleared and you take it for granted, but it's a lot of work and
it has to be done or the lights would never stay on.
And I had about 45,000 miles of power lines, being one other guy. We hired
contractors. We had a 3 million budget 40 years ago. That was just one
seventh of the state; there were seven other regions. Trimmed a lot of
trees, had dozens of crews going all day long, every day. And they were all
contractors, so we just kind of watched the money and looked after
productivity and that sort of stuff.
Every crew had a foreman and they all had, the contractors had their own
bosses, but sometimes things would get out of hand and we'd have to get
involved. Those were conflict resolutions. There's a lot of people that
don't want their trees trimmed, but they want the lights to come on, and
it's the perfect gold programming model.
Always constraints. Had one guy threaten to shoot my foreman out of the
bucket, like a squirrel, so you gotta talk them down and bring some reason
to the table. The worst was this old World War, this old Vietnam veteran
down in America's Georgia, and he didn't like the tractors mowing across his
property.
So he took his M16 out there, shot the tires out while they were driving the
tractors. So we had the sheriff go get him and every three years when they'd
go through there, I'd call the sheriff and the sheriff would go out there
and pick him up and take him down to the station and drink coffee with him
for an hour.
And then I'd call the sheriff back and say, “Okay, we're through there. You
can take him home.”
Don Patrick: Can't make this stuff up.
Temp Davis: No, that's the way we did it back then. The day, there'd be a
news chopper and there'd be hundred reporters out there and we'd lock him up
and there'd be a trial. But conflict resolution, nobody wanted a right of
way on their property and nobody wanted it cut every three years. And that's
all I did was talk people down and bring some logic to the picture.
Don Patrick: So you're an amateur psychologist.
Temp Davis: Yeah. Yeah, and what was interesting is I learned, because I had
a budget and it was, it was real problem when money got involved 'cause you
had to get a whole nother department involved and lawyers and all that and
easements.
And so I was always looking for the least thing I could offer somebody that
would make them happy. And it didn't take a lot. And I really learned this
old man one time, my boss went out to solve a problem and he said, “You get
back in your car and get out of here, Sonny, and send somebody back with a
coat and tie.”
And I thought through that and in the end what the man wanted was some
respect. And in his eyes, somebody with a coat and tie had a higher profile
and were more important and he was getting more respect because a more
important person was dealing with his issue. And so after that, I started
going out to everybody that had a complaint in the COVID time and a lot
bigger smile on my face and just acting like I was the president of the
company and it seemed to smooth things out a lot better.
And I might offer to grind a stump or plant a bush or whatever, little
things, and I got a lot further when those revolving conflicts. I moved
through that company and swapped jobs with people. They let us do that
after, I was there maybe six or eight years. And changed careers inside that
same company, swapped with a guy in marketing and started selling
energy-efficient construction.
They had a program called Good Sense. You built a house that had basically
what today's energy code is. But back then, we didn't have an energy code.
That only came around 2000 and something. So I would go to builders, heating
and air dealers, realtors work with them and it was consulted selling and I
didn't even know it.
And the idea was, “Hey, Mr. Builder, you make your house a little bit better
with these things and your customers like it. You'll sell more houses. It'll
be easier for the realtors to sell. Everybody wins. Customers have a home
with less drafts, less bugs, lower energy bills, the utility can manage
their load better, manage their capital better.” Win-win, and did that and
loved it.
Don Patrick: So you just explained something to me I never understood. It
seemed like such a conflict for the power companies to sell efficiency when
they're trying to sell power. It is regulated. So I guess it doesn't matter,
but I think the key thing you just said is it stabilizes the load. And so
that was the motivation primarily.
Temp Davis: That was it. Primarily a hundred percent. In fact, in the 90s,
an entity called the Southface Energy Institute, that was, started by Dennis
Creech and two other guys. He was from, well, I think one of them was from
Tech, one of them was from Emory. They were into solar energy. They started
the Southface Energy Institute, and then they were advocates at the–I don’t
know if you realize, you said it wasn't regulated, but Georgia Power is
regulated by the Public Service Commission, the…and the municipal cities
aren't. But so Southface Energy Institute intervened in a hearing for rate
increases and their agenda was they wanted more energy efficiency. Even
then, Georgia Power was pushing at the time and everybody got their heads
together, agreed.
And so, instead of building, taking capital and putting it towards building
a new gas turbine, they took capital and put it towards energy efficiency
programs, even beyond Good Sense. They called it Super Good Sense and then
they would curb that peak load, so they didn't have to put in more gas
turbines.
And if you use a heat pump, for example, that heats in the wintertime of
electricity and cools in summertime of electricity, then you build a power
plant and, you know, it's the same size power plant for all 12 months.
Otherwise, that power plant's just sitting idle in the wintertime when
somebody's burning gas.
So for an electric utility, it kind of stabilizes things. And the problem,
so heat pumps are great for the electric utility and stabilize and load. But
back in the day, in the sixties, they were terrible. They didn't work well
and they didn't work well because homes weren't built well. They can only do
so much.
It doesn't make heat, it moves it, and it's more efficient to move heat than
it is to make heat. So that's why the Good Sense Program was built so that
heat pumps would work in houses and then the Super Good Sense program was
just even over the top on that. And I excelled at that and sold a builder on
a whole subdivision, whole community.
He built it with geothermal heat pumps, which were ground-coupled to the
earth. And I put it in for an Edison Electric Institute challenge and won
second place on that, that was back in the mid-nineties. And learned a lot
and did a lot with that. So selling heat pumps then was like selling ice to
Eskimos.
It was tough 'cause everybody wanted gas and Atlanta Natural Gas had gas
lines everywhere and everybody thought heat ought to be hot. And that's what
everybody wanted. Things have changed over the years. Even a high-efficiency
furnace doesn't make real hot air and heat pumps have gotten even better and
they make hotter air than they used to.
Don Patrick: Technology.
Temp Davis: Technology. Now, after that, I moved into a CRM program. I was
in marketing at corporate and Georgia Power and Southern Company was scared.
Enron was gonna wheel power through us and Florida and take markets and
markets. we were trying to get stickier with the customers and we
implemented a customer relationship management software project.
And I was the program project manager for that and it was like herding cats
because I had Georgia Power, Savannah Power, Gulf Power, Mississippi Power,
Alabama Power, a little outlet in the Caribbean…and in Great Britain, it was
like a 2000-seat deployment and all those different little companies,
southern companies, a holding company.
So I had to get all those people together to agree to build a system that
met everybody's needs. It was like herding cats. It was really hard, but we
did it. Won some big awards in the CRM industry and everybody was happy. And
then Enron got busted. They were cooking their books. They went out of
business and they didn't really want the CRM program anymore, and they were
doing budget cuts and they offered a package.
And I heard the president of the marketing department at Southern Company
say, “We don't really need a marketing staff. We just need more hot days in
August.”
And I said, I'm in the, “I'm working in marketing for the wrong company.” So
I took the buyout and it was about a year's salary, and this is when things
really got ugly.
Don Patrick: So you ended up being an amateur psychologist, a negotiator.
You ended up learning how to do consultative selling, and then you got
technology with CRMs.
I don't even know if that was Doss or Windows-based, which is fascinating.
So you, yeah, you do some credible skills you would not have gotten in
undergrad. Not to that extent.
Temp Davis: Right. Yeah. I just walked out of school and been taught the
financial. And
Don Patrick: I also wanna do another aside, and I want continue with your
career change and that's your hunting and fishing, because I know you hunt
wild turkey with bow and arrow, which is supposed to be one of the hardest
things anybody can do.
So tell us a little bit about that, because you're one of the experts, I
understand.
Temp Davis: It all started with duck hunting and actually quail hunting. We
had a family farm in Worth County, right below Lake Blackshear on the Flint
River. And if you look at a map, you'll see a big horseshoe shape in the
river right below Lake Blackshear, near Cordele.
Go to Cordele, look Southwest. You see the lake, look south of the lake, you
see a big horseshoe. The whole north half of that horseshoe was our family
farm. My great-grandfather bought an old plantation called…Plantation in
1911. He was a shoe salesman. He had a shoe store in Putney, Georgia. And
Putney, Georgia, is a crossroad.
There's nothing there now. And he and his partner had this shoe store, he
fancied himself as a gentleman farmer. He never farm. So they bought this
plantation and then granddad bought that other guy out after some years,
moved his family out there and actually started farming. So long story
short, when I was a kid, my dad never farmed.
My great uncle was running the farm and we would always go out there and
quail hunt. My dad was super passionate about quail hunting, and we didn't
have any turkeys in Georgia at the time. They had all been shocked and eaten
by the European invaders. And in fact, at 1900, we didn't have any deer.
They'd shot all them out, too. So deer and turkey were all restocked back
into the…used to have elk too. Smaller elk, yeah, west, but they all got
eaten too. So, humans are a nasty species, messed things up. My dad was
crazy about quail hunting. I grew up taking care of six or eight bird dogs
at a time, shoveling up after them, and running them, feeding them. We had
jeeps and when there weren't four wheelers and he hunted three days a week.
We leased another 2000 acres of land quail hunting. And he just walked my
butt into the ground my whole life. I mean, I was quail hunting when I had
stocking foot pajamas on. They would throw us in the back of the car. My
brother and me and my mom and dad both hunted, and we'd be riding around.
We'd be fighting in the backseat.
Dad say, “Hush, I'll give you a quarter if you see a quail.” So nose would
be glued to the glass looking for quail birds on the ground. And the dogs
were trained to work like field trial dogs out in front of the car because
we hunt out a car because they couldn't walk and carry both of us. So I'm
probably 12, 13 years old and we're hunting cold one.
We're really cold, windy morning. We go to this field where there's some
cover along the edge and the sun's shining. Those birds are always gonna be
out of the wind and the sun. And we find them on the edge and shoot the
covey rise, and then the sky just explodes, just like the woods behind the
field.
Water from all the rain we had, this was one of those big rains you have in
the winter and the arctic comes through. It was one of those Bluebird days
right after that. All that rain had flooded the woods and all these ducks
had migrated through and we're in there eating the acres and the flooded
woods and there's probably a thousand wood ducks and mallard erupted out of
that.
And I was like, “Holy cow, that's what I wanna hunt.” And so I started
trying to hunt ducks and I couldn't really do it till I was 16 and could
drive. And then that's all I was about for the next 30 years was probably
duck hunting. And I duck hunted everywhere I could go. And it's really a bad
place to live because Georgia's a duck desert compared to other places.
And I got really tired of it by early 2000s and I said, “I'm gonna hunt a
bird that doesn't migrate.” So I started hunting turkeys. Originally, we
didn't have any turkeys here, but they started bringing them back in about
‘84 and sticking 'em around different places. And they had a real high…rate
for a few years and filled the place up.
So started hunting turkeys with a gun, kind of got bored with that. And I
said, “I'm gonna start trying to hunt along with a bow.” And it took me a
few years to figure that out. Figured it out. Then I said, “I'm gonna get an
archery grand slam.” So what, there's four subspecies of turkeys. The…only
lives in South Florida.
The eastern turkey lives around here. The Rio Grande, Texas, Oklahoma,
Kansas, and some other places. The Miriam's turkeys, more of a grassy plains
and mountain turkey. You find it up in South Dakota, Wyoming, Montana. And
they all have different attributes. They act a little different, look a
little different.
That's why they call them a subspecies. And the National Wild Turkey
Federation has the database, they've had it since the sixties, where members
can log their birds. And a grand slam is when you get all four of those and
there's some other slams. There's a international super slam because there's
two turkeys that live in Mexico and I haven't hunted those just ‘cause I was
afraid the cartel would take me as a hostage, but I'm really wanting to and
just trying to decide on that, whether I should do that or not. I just got
my archery grand slam witness certified and registered this summer. I killed
my last bird on April in the Black Hills of South Dakota. So I got my first
archery grand slam and probably my last.
I'm kind of bored with that. To give you some scope of how few people do
that, there's 8 billion people on the planet. 340 million in the US,
probably 16 million hunters, probably 3 million turkey hunters since the
sixties. There's 2,229 people with a grand slam with a gun and I was 257 to…
Don Patrick: That’s extraordinary. Oh my gosh. That's amazing.
Temp Davis: It took a lot of patience and I don't have any patience and
sometimes I wonder if God just put it on my heart to do this, just to
develop the skill of having patience.
Don Patrick: Fascinating.
Temp Davis: I said, nah. He don't want me to have patience. I don't have any
patience.
Don Patrick: So I guess that says discipline, willpower.
Temp Davis: Yeah. A lot of willpower and discipline. You gotta, I mean, I've
sat there all day long at times just sitting in a chair waiting. I hate
that.
Don Patrick: So, man with no patience.
Temp Davis: Absolutely hate it. The toughest one I ever did was when you're
hunting with a boat, it's really hard to draw on a boat, you gotta move so
much so you out a blind to get that done, a ground blind.
And so what's really impossible is drawing on one out of line. and that's
one thing I wanted to do because that's like the pinnacle. So I took, I
bought a leafy suit, which is like a Gilly suit and I modified it to look
more like the woods that I hunted in with more artificial silk leaves and
sewed them all.
And I patterned some birds. I had these birds that wouldn't come into my
decoys and I found where they roost every night for a couple of nights in a
row at times, a tree they liked. I went down there and I sat in a chair
under that leafy suit, pulled all the woods in around me. And I had been out
in Texas where you can actually shoot hen turkeys. Everywhere else you
can't.
And I'd shot a hen and I froze her in the freezer and I put her in a pillow
case and brought her back on the airplane like she was my pillow to sleep on
in the seat. So I'm carrying this frozen Turkey and a pillow case on the
airplane and get her home, and I skinned her out and stuffed her like my own
taxidermy, right?
And put her in like a breeding position. And so I got her out on the ground
in front of me at 10 steps, 10 steps, that's how close I need to be. And I'm
all camouflaged, my bows’ camouflaged, I'm sitting still on the ground for
two hours. You can't even move. You don't know if the turkey's behind you or
to your left or your right.
You can't turn your head to look because if you turn your head, he might be
behind you and he's gone. Or if he's in front of you and you're blinking
your eyes and he sees you blinking your eyes, he's gone. So finally, Ms.
Bird comes in and comes in from the front, where I could see, which was
lucky, but he flies up into the tree from a long way out.
And I wasn't doing any calling. I'm just letting the hand do her job. He
screwed me. He flew from 200 yards out, up into the roof tree, and I'm
thinking, what am I gonna do now? He's over my head, looking down on me. So
of course I don't move, and I didn't take any calls, so I just did a yelp
with my mouth, my throat, one little clock.
That gets him looking down and he just floats off that branch right down by
that end and starts strutting for her. And he gets on her and starts to
breed her. And I shoot him right off her back because he was so obsessed
with breeding her and he wasn't paying attention to me. And that's how I
killed him.
Don Patrick: Oh my God.
Temp Davis: You gotta find your weak spot of your adversary.
Don Patrick: Extraordinary. That's extraordinary. Oh my gosh. Well, I'm glad
you shared so much of that. I knew a little bit about it now. I learned a
lot. So, let's transition back to your career change and the kind of
hellhole you got yourself into.
Temp Davis: While I was doing all that corporate stuff at Georgia Power, I
was never really happy for my–my inside entrepreneurial self, I wanted some
other kind of little business. And really, probably what I should have done
was save money and bought a house and remodeled it and flipped it, because I
later learned all like doing that and you make a lot of money.
But I tried a landscape business, so I had like a weekend landscape business
and did okay with that, but eh, just cutting grass and I tried a nursery. I
bought 400 little trees and potted them up in big pots and grew them for a
year. And I kind of liked that, but I really didn't have the capital to
expand that like I needed to.
But I would've loved to have done a tree farm and grow trees. We try to sell
those insulation business, my wife and I together. And she was running it,
and I was working on equipment at night and keeping that running. We did
that for about a year and that didn't work out. Just had too many labor
problems.
Just, we didn't have any, hardly any Latin labor here at the time, either
legal or illegal. They just weren't here back then. Then I started a tree
service after the Olympics, on the weekends, just cutting trees. I had a
bunch of buddies that did that and I got some equipment and made a pretty
good bit of money and just cutting trees on the weekends.
So I had shut that down. I wasn't doing anything but just family stuff and
working at Georgia Power and took that buyout and thought everything was
going to be fine, and came home one day and the locks were different. So,
got served, was getting a divorce. Oh boy. Looked at the bank account and
didn't have any money. So my wife had moved all that year's pay from that
buyout into another account and I was getting divorced and had no job and no
money.
So I had a car and I still had my equipment: tree truck, bucket truck lift,
loader, shipper, that kind of job, about $350. And that was 2000, I think.
So, I started over from that and I was gonna buy another tree service in
Newnan and crank mine back up and buy his service. And he was retiring,
well, Newnan Tree Service, and I just couldn't come up with the capital, the
credit and the finance and all that was a mess because of the divorce.
And so that wasn't an option. So I just crewed the little tree service I had
and was living off of that. And my plan when I took the buyout and left
Georgia Power was to get into the CRM industry for a consultant like
Anderson or Deloitte or whoever. And a little recession hit, I think it was
the ‘99, 2001 double bump, or the dot com bubble or something.
All the consultants had everybody on the bench, so there wasn't any jobs in
that. And so I was looking back in the utility industry, I had a buddy that
wanted me to go in business with him in line clearing, which is what I had a
lot of experience in, but it was over in Mississippi and I didn't wanna go
over there because I'd have to drive six hours to see my kids.
And I had a line-clearing job in South Carolina. I didn't wanna drive over
there because my kids were here. That whole divorce kind of wrecked those
remote jobs. And so I just cranked up my free service and worked it hard and
made money that way. And I wanted to do something different in Georgia Power
in that, it was actually Southern Company, in that buyout package.
They had an engagement with outplacement counselors, Lee Hecht Harrison, in
Atlanta. And I said, “Well, I'll go to that.” And so it's the retooling, you
learn what you might wanna do, what you're good at, where you fit right, and
all that sort of stuff. And that's where I started thinking about financial
planning. Joan Tillett was a lady that used to be affiliated with the
consortium and–
Don Patrick: She's now retired.
Temp Davis: Yep. And before that, she had worked for an insurance company
and one of her little niches, she'd come around to Georgia Power and do
lunch and learns and teach about financial planning. And she did a plan for
me and I liked the process and that's what made me think about that. I went
through that.
And I reached out to the group that she worked for, and went in and talked
to them. I said, “Well, I'm gonna do that.” So I jumped into their training
program. I think they called it tier one and tier two or something like
that. And I didn't even talk to anybody else. Look back on that. I probably
shoulda have.
But so it was, I think February 2002, I went on contract with All America.
Started getting out, beating the bushes and looking for clients and doing
all that stuff. And then they went under, I think we were some other
broker-dealer for a while, like…or something, and then Securities America.
It seems like I had three broker-dealers my first year.
Don Patrick: I think that's about right.
Temp Davis: Yeah. So every time I'd get some business cards approved, I'd
have to rerun them with a new pd and that was very confusing for me and a
lot of turmoil and a big pain in the butt. Anyway, I starved to death for
about five years, but I had the tree business to fund my lifestyle, which
was very austere.
Very austere. I don't know that I could have done this if I was still
married. I don't think my wife would've supported me in it. And but being
divorced and having fixed amount of annually budget, you know, you pay your
child support and you’re done. They were little kids; they didn’t have a lot
of expenses. So I was able to really control my budget and survive.
And when I worked for Georgia Power, I could never go on hurricanes, in the
tree-clearing capacity. And if I did it was taking crews to help the utility
there, clean things up. So I knew a little bit about storms and with the
tree service that I owned, I started chasing hurricanes. The first one we
went on was in Virginia, a big storm, was a level five, came in, and then
went down to a one real quick and hit Norfolk, Virginia.
I think that was 2002. That really helped. Good infusion of cash and I've
been doing that ever since. I sold the tree service, I think in 2005 after
that storm to the guy, my buddy, that was running it, then I've gone with
him since then on hurricanes, go all over the country, take trees off
houses.
He closed it, that business down and went into a crane service and my son
went into the tree service. So now the three of us get together and go
around and do hurricanes, and I do the paperwork and they do the tree work
and it's fun. We were in Asheville when that mess happened. We were up there
for like eight days taking big oak trees off houses, like really ugly jobs.
Far as this business goes, I struggled. Pat was my mentor.
Don Patrick: Pat Henchey.
Temp Davis: Pat Henchey. Yeah. And, I only picked him for geography, not
because I liked him. He was the only guy in the group that was on the south
side, and I didn't want drive to the north side, but it turns out I liked
him. And he's got a good moral compass and he's very intelligent and he was
a good mentor and he taught me the business by probably the 10th year, I was
okay. I wasn't where I wanted to be, but I was surviving pretty well.
I just, Pat said, “Just throw the spaghetti on the wall.” I literally turned
every stone over and he was doing some dinner seminars and I was in on that.
And those kind of got where they didn't work. I guess the number one thing
that helped me was all the people I knew at Georgia Power.
So I just did what Joan did. I would go back in there and do lunch and
learns. I'd call all the managers I knew and say, “Hey, can I bring a pizza
or some barbecue? Do a lunch and learn?” And I knew all the geography, all
the offices, a lot of people. It would've been really tough for me to make
it in this business if I didn't have that way to leverage in there because
Southern Company has an in-service rollover.
So, I survived rolling over $50,000 into a mutual fund portfolio, building a
client base. I still got a lot of those guys and they're million and $2
million clients, since I've had them all those years. And you know how it
goes.
Don Patrick: They're great clients. They trust you, they delegate and yeah,
they've been hardworking and saving in a great 401(k) program and
financially they're in great shape. They got pension plans and they're just
the perfect clients.
Temp Davis: Yeah, the pensions really helped. So, that was one place I beat
the bushes a lot. And I tried to get out and do some other things. I had a
couple of banks, a couple of small banks over the years, early years that I
thought were gonna do some things, but they never did.
I got a long way with a credit year and even had a desk set up and then it
just fell apart and just poor communications between the staffers and their
board. They didn't let their board know they were doing this, and the board
found out, they just said, “We don't wanna make money that way.” And pulled
the plug on it.
I did Fox College funding. That was a big waste of time. I taught a lot of
classes in high schools about college funding. I guess that helped my
presentation skills. I probably had a good enough reputation skills prior to
that, but I just found that to be a tough handoff to financial planning and
converting people to clients and they're at a place where they don't yet
have a lot of money and they're fixing to spend a lot of money.
It wasn't a good crossroads. I never did the golf, or Chamber of Commerce,
or any of that. I did BNI for a long time. I think I got one client out of
that. And I really built the group up and like crippled it, made it real
successful for everybody else but me. Like, forest niches or niches, the
Georgia Power, that eventually got full of a lot of competition.
I had a couple other guys, Rich Lombardi was one of them, had some
relationships with the union and try to build something with them and that
worked pretty good for a while but then fell apart when they got a new
president. Oh, I did Wiser Advisor way back 20 years ago. I got one client
from that. And I went back to that a few years ago and tried it again.
I tried SmartAsset. That didn't work for me. I tried Wiser Advisor. I did
that for a couple years. I've got a few clients from that and surprising
clients, good clients, good assets, just surprising they move here from
somewhere else. They don't know anybody to get a referral from. They go
looking online. A couple years ago I did a big marketing reset
electronically and built a little landing page.
Don Patrick: You did that with Jason, right?
Temp Davis: Yeah. And I hadn't pushed it hard as you could. I mean, I could
do a lot more, but I got two leads, a hundred percent organic this year and
closed one of them.
Don Patrick: From the landing page?
Temp Davis: Yeah.
Don Patrick: So let me just kind of paint the picture so everybody
understands. So you've been working with Pat from way back when, part of his
branding, and then you set up a landing page is really Temp Davis branding.
Correct?
Temp Davis: Yep. And I did that. I wanted to make it easier for my clients
to refer me because I serve them as well as they'd like to be served and
they're all happy. And I've just gotten lax about asking for referrals. So I
don't get a lot of referrals and I don't get a lot of clients for referrals.
And I hear a lot of other guys say, “Hey, this is where I get my new
clients.” So I'll try to build that up. So now that I've got all that done,
I'm gonna start asking clients for referrals.
Don Patrick: It's amazing how that works, right? Ask and you shall receive.
Temp Davis: Yeah, and it's easy, I think just say go to
tempdavis.com
. I wanted some testimonials. I got those out on the website. That was a lot
of work. I wanted some videos. I got those out there so it’s all come
together. But, so I was strolling through Facebook one night and I saw an ad
about these education classes. And this was 2017, I think, and it was a
company called FMT and it was expensive.
And I talked to you about it and you said just do it. And I did. And looking
back, I wish I had done this, you know, everything I was doing was low
capital stuff because I didn't have a lot of capital. And I wish I had come
up with some capital, borrowed some money, not spent some money somewhere
else, and spent it there. I should have spent more money on marketing
earlier in my career. And now that's probably my number one regret.
Don Patrick: As long as it's smart marketing.
Temp Davis: Yeah. Yeah. And that's the hard thing. What's smart? You don't,
you never know what's gonna work. And I was doing a lot of stuff, but it was
stuff that just took sweat and not money. But anyway, in 2018, I did my
first classes.
Don Patrick: So kinda lay the groundwork for this. So you're doing, like
retirement planning classes and local community colleges, that sort of
thing? Is that the idea? And how do you get them there?
Temp Davis: Well, number one was, there's two ways to do it. One way is like
a unsponsored. Or you have like an event at a hotel or a library, and I did
not wanna do that. That was too close to those dinner seminars. I didn't
want a bunch of…and so if I was gonna do it, I wanted some kind of school to
sponsor me. So I went around and found schools first before I ever signed up
for the program to spend a dime, and went to Clayton State because they have
a campus in Peachtree City.
And the lady said, “Well, we had a father and son do that financial planning
a few years ago, but they only got six people and they did it once and
didn't wanna do it again.” And I said, “Well, how'd they get the word out?”
And they said, “Oh, they put the class in our catalog.” And I said, “How
does the catalog get out?”
I said, “Oh, we mail them out to a hundred thousand people.” Okay, well,
who, what 60-year-old picks up a Clayton State College course catalog? It
goes right in the trash. So I knew why they didn't fill the class, and I
knew what FMT did. And what FMT does is they have a brochure that's like a
syllabus of a class that if you were interested in retirement planning, you
would look at it twice.
And then they have data lists where you query the age of people and the
income range and the geographic area and all that sort of stuff. And you
mail a bunch of those out to those demographics and then you get people
registering. And to me, it looks a whole lot better to have a student
calling college for information about the class, going to the college
website to register the class, pay the college.
Don Patrick: Yeah. They have to pay for this, right?
Temp Davis: That's right. Versus calling my office to register for my class,
right? People are smart. They know one is a sales program and the other is a
class.
And so the deal is it's not a sales program. You don't talk about selling
anybody anything. You're just teaching them. And I like it. It just kind of
fits in with the whole consultative selling approach that I grew up with.
And you might only have 10 or 20% of the people in the class even thinking
they need a financial planner and you've got a bunch of people in the class
that don't have any money, but you're helping them out, teaching them
concepts they never knew. And so I enjoy it. So, first class I think I did
was 2018 and I went around, I got Southern Crescent Technical College to let
me teach at their campus in McDonough, and Clayton State.
I was teaching in campus in Peachtree City and I got University of West
Georgia and I was teaching the campus in Newnan, not over in Carton. And it
was great. I got about two clients from each class, I think. Did that again
in 2019. And that worked great and did it again in 2020. Probably had my
biggest class I had in noon and I had like 85 people in the auditorium.
Don Patrick: Oh my gosh.
Temp Davis: And first night of the class and then that pandemic crap rolled
out and everything shut down. And the second night of the class was
canceled. I didn't get any class out of those classes that year. Everything
was kind of shut down and messed up.
Don Patrick: Just kind of back up and set this up for everybody, how this
works. So you pay for the mailings, correct?
Temp Davis: Yeah, I signed a contract with FMT and I'm fixing to do that
next week for my classes that I'll have in February. You gotta have two
months ahead on your contract, get all ducks in a row and I'll talk to my
consultant and I'll look at what my results last year and I'll adjust my zip
codes because I had one class that was overbooked and one class that I had
room in.
So I'm gonna put more people in one area and less people in another. And we
call that, sign the contracts, pay for it. They do the list, they pull the
list that I tell them how I want it called. I'll know the numbers of people
I'm mailing to in each area. I'll know what I'm mailing them. It's all
scripted.
I put my stuff on it, get it approved. LPL’s seen all this FMT stuff.
There's a lot of other LPL guys doing it, so I just upload it all and I
don't get any kickback on it.
Don Patrick: So this is, it's kind of like a franchise where your
territory's protected?
Temp Davis: Well, it can and can't be. They used to threaten me with that.
If you've got to do two or three classes a year to have your territory
protected. And I'm not doing that many because I just don't think that the
demand is there. And so at one point I paid a fee to protect my territory
where they wouldn't sell it to somebody else, and then the pandemic came and
they just kind of backed off on all of that. They hadn't threatened me with
selling my territory to somebody else.
Don Patrick: So give us an idea what this costs.
Temp Davis: about 10,000 a class. it might be nine, it might be 12. It just
kind of depends on–
Don Patrick: So you get a million in assets, it's paid for itself, but
you've gained a client for the next 10, 20 years.
Temp Davis: Yeah. Yeah. I've had a one-year payback on–
Don Patrick: So the ROI is tremendous.
Temp Davis: It's tremendous. Yeah.
Don Patrick: It sounds scary, but it–
Temp Davis: It sounds scary, but yeah, so I really tuned it over the years.
I took all of their content and they provide the content. That's really why
I use them. I could have done the mailouts on my own, but they have the
books and they keep them up to date every year.
So there's two books, and I cover one in the first class in three hours. So
I've changed this all up to get it to where it works the best. I think you
could have it work. So I do my smaller room on a Monday and that way if that
class at Clayton State fills up, I can send the overflow to the West Georgia
class.
And that's a much bigger room. And they have even bigger rooms I can scale
up to. The Clayton State facility has limited room size, and that way if I
get a bunch of extra people, I can send them over to another school. On the
next night, I'll do another school. That'd be a Tuesday night, the Newton,
and I dropped the stuff over in McDonough. They did some changeups with that
technical college.
Don Patrick: So how do you get these people in? Do you operate for free
consultation? What does that look like? How do they make that next thing?
Temp Davis: Yeah, I'm real soft on that. but so I tell people, well, let me
finish telling you what, so the first class is three hours and we go through
a book that's a half inch thick and probably 4, 5, but–
Don Patrick: They take on, that’s theirs to keep, right? It's like a test.
Temp Davis: That's theirs to keep. Yep. And then I'm gonna give them a
homework assignment. They're gonna work on that over the weekend. And then
the following week, they come back and we cover the second book. And I
explained all that upfront and I said, “This is like an old-timey
schoolhouse where the first graders and the sixth graders and the 12th
graders are all mixed together, but I gotta teach it to the first graders.”
So you guys that are trading options and writing covered calls, don't be
rolling your eyes, just sit tight. You'll probably learn one or two things
out of six hours of me blabbing. And then everybody else is pretty much
gonna be right here where I'm teaching. And it's not an investment class. I
mean, we'll cover every facet of financial planning and it's a good textbook
that they got set up.
So I have to buy the books from them. I'll spend a couple thousand dollars
on that. I charge enough for the class and I split that with the colleges.
So I get enough to cover the books and all the copying and BS like that. But
that mail out is really expensive and I have to cover that with the sales
rep.
So upfront in the class, I say, “Look, don't not come next week. You're
gonna be blown away. You're gonna hear a lot of stuff you don't understand.
Just keep pushing through. Do the best you can, and you've got all these
questions that you can't figure out what applies to you and what doesn't.
That's when you're gonna sign up for your lab and you're gonna come in for a
lab meeting and we're gonna run your personal numbers and you answer any,
you have any question you want, and your lab is up to 2 hours…”
And I found I can do a case, you know, even the most complicated in about an
hour. And some people like to talk a lot. And so I walk out two hours and I
usually end up spending an hour and a half, put them in back-to-back and
gives me a little time to do some filing and paperwork and organizing in
between.
So like last year, I got all this set up. I did two classes back-to-back on
Monday and Tuesday night. Second week, they came in. Some of them had done
their homework, some of them hadn't, do the class. They sign up for the lab.
I got a sheet where, it's all booked out. Everybody just signs up for a
block and then I put all those together.
I don't have a secretary to do that. I do my own schedule. I put all that
together on a master list, email everybody what their time is. And I did, so
this was in February of this year. I did, I think it was 37 financial plans
and 14 days.
Don Patrick: Wow.
Temp Davis: Yeah, it was tough. And they were, some days there were four of
them back to back.
Don Patrick: That's a good problem.
Temp Davis: Yeah. And I met a lot of nice people and got some nice clients
and got some nice prospects and I send the classes emails, drip on them with
updates, taxes–
Don Patrick: Yeah. I was gonna ask if you do that, if you set 'em up on a
drip and newsletters and things.
Temp Davis: Yeah, they get a newsletter, but moreover, I send them stuff on
estate planning, stuff on the Secure Act changes. Don't forget to file for
your changes in your homestead exemption if when you turn 65, just whatever.
I get probably one or two come back every year from years ago now.
Temp Davis: At first, I didn't, but now I do.
Don Patrick: Because now you're in front of them and there's some event that
happened in their life. “Oh yeah. Temp Davis, I remember that class.”
Temp Davis: Yeah. Yeah. It's just works good. I probably get 2 million, 1
million, 2 million every year.
Don Patrick: Wow.
Temp Davis: Yeah. And then I usually get about three new clients from it
every year.
Don Patrick: Fantastic. Yeah. That's a great investment. So interestingly
enough, I always learn something on these. And you've been our guru on
Redtail. I mean, you were amazing, so I had no idea you created a CRM with
Georgia Power. It all makes sense now.
Temp Davis: Yeah.
Don Patrick: So what, so let's, tell us about your tech stack. I mean, so
this is amazing in terms of marketing, the ROI and what that means, and the
dripping and five years later, somebody pops up. That's fantastic. And it's
repeatable. I mean, that's such a game-changer. So tell us a little bit
about your tech stack. So you're using, you used to use Redtail, I think you
still do what's in your tech stack?
Temp Davis: Yeah. Yeah. Still on Redtail. We didn't move over like everybody
else. It just didn't, we don't work that way. So, Pat and Haley do their
thing. I do my thing. We don't need to share back and forth. So we just
stayed with Redtail. If it ain’t broke, don't fix it. They use WealthVision.
I do not. I use Income Conductor.
Don Patrick: And it's a bucketizing system.
Temp Davis: It is. And I teach that in my class. And so people that like
that, their eyes, the lights go off. They're like, “Oh,” they're like drawn
to it like a bug light. It's a good way to get psychological protection
without buying an indexed annuity.
And that's how I talk about it. I explain annuities to people and then I
explain buckets as an alternative to get a smooth drive with your own
insurance and I kind of just got stuck on that because that's what I first
used. When I was at All America, they had financial profiles.
Don Patrick: Financial profiles. Yeah. And Phil Lebinski is the one that
did the buckets.
Temp Davis: Yeah. And it had, post-retirement navigator was a little segment
that broke everything into buckets. And when All America sold that
off…bought it and they had to, they were working a lot with Merrill Lynch at
that time.
Merrill Lynch didn't care about buckets. And so…just dropped the post
retirement navigator, and Phil Lebinski went over to insurance FMO, I think,
and built an illustrative tool for buckets, and then he went out and did it
on his own. So that's Wealth Conductor. And they've really made a lot of
good changes in that lately.
And I need to upgrade to the pro version. So I'm gonna do that soon. And I
use Holistiplan, you know, when people start making complicated decisions or
need to, that are gonna impact taxes, I use the Holistiplan and that's
pretty much it. I'm not probably the most tech-savvy guy in the group for
sure.
Don Patrick: I would've said the opposite.
Temp Davis: No, no. There's other guys that use a whole lot more stuff than
I do. I don't do any investment, technical analysis, or any of that. I've
outsourced all that to the IFG team.
Don Patrick: So your investment management is outsourced doing–
Temp Davis: It's so liberating. Oh my gosh. I can't imagine being burdened
with that. What a yoke to carry. I've carried enough heavy stuff owning a
tree service. I don't need to carry all that.
Don Patrick: That's a great analogy.
Temp Davis: Yeah.
Don Patrick: So you've been with the consortium from the beginning, and I
guess what I'd ask is, what impact has the Brain Trust had on your practice,
collaboration, idea sharing, support, things like that?
Temp Davis: Yeah. Well, I haven't changed broker-dealers when I've been
frustrated with broker-dealers because of the consortium. I never got
frustrated with Securities America. They were pretty small, flexible, and
helpful, but, and I wasn't frustrated with LPL in the beginning, except that
their branch net was a piece of junk and it took them forever to get client.
But lately, they've gotten so big. I'm having trouble getting them to do
some things they need to do and that's frustrating. But I haven't left them
and I never will unless the consortium does, just along for the ride.
Don Patrick: Do you use Andrews and Ace, that team, to help you with some of
the challenges at LPL?
Temp Davis: Yeah. Yeah. It just it is what it is, you know. I love having
the mastermind group. I kind of…free coaching. When I was at Securities
America, I did a coaching program that was really a big how to build a
business program. It was a good program and it cost money. Five grand. Just
didn't do enough of it. Should have done more.
And I recently did Aaron Botsford's program through LPL. I got some good
stuff out of that. But really, that's for somebody that really wants to
build a business that other people work and they just own it. And that
would've been me when I was 40, but it's not me when I'm 64. I'm kind of
done building the business, I think. I'm just, I'm where I'm at. Not gonna
sign up for any more coaching play plans.
Don Patrick: So you're in a good spot. A lot of blood, sweat, and tears over
many, many years, but it's all paid off.
Temp Davis: Yeah, I think I'm on track to have a 30% increase in revenue
this year.
Don Patrick: That's extraordinary. That's amazing time. Well, let's move
into some personal insights and rapid fire. So use three words to describe
your talents and strengths. I think you already have, but maybe there's
something you wanna add to it.
Temp Davis: Well, I took a different slant on this. I looked at this list.
Don Patrick: Love it.
Temp Davis: I couldn't decide because I have a little bit of everything at
different times. But not a lot of anything, I thought. And so I've got a
colored pen. I'm building a house right now, so I'm using a lot of different
colors of pens. And I got one pen that's four colors inside of one pen. You
remember those?
Don Patrick: I remember those, yes. Oh my gosh.
Temp Davis: Green, red, blue, and black. Yeah. I pulled that big out and I
handed it to my wife. I said, “Baby, circle the top three of these for me.”
And her color was red and she circled detail orientation, leadership,
problem solving, and troubleshooting.
Don Patrick: Yeah, absolutely.
Temp Davis: And I circled empathy, encouragement, and fairness. And she
laughed and said, “Bullshit.”
Don Patrick: The truth hurts.
Temp Davis: The truth hurts. The truth hurts. Then I had my daughter-in-law
circle some and she circled stuff like persistent self-motivation, technical
competency, creativity, confidence, that kind of stuff.
Don Patrick: I mean, they're all right on.
Temp Davis: Well, you gotta have thick skin to survive starting up in this
business.
Don Patrick: That's what I know. Yes, you do. Yes, you do. I was gonna ask
you to share something surprising that others don't know about you, but I
think you've shared quite a bit, unless there's something else you wanna add
to it.
Temp Davis: I can't think of anything. Oh, I do have a question for
everybody. My favorite group is The Doobie Brothers, and I love the guitar
solo in Dark Eyed Cajun Woman. Go listen to that. It's beautiful, but I
can't figure out the lyrics. I've never understood how cold, dark eyes can
warm the cold night sky. I want somebody to explain that to me.
Don Patrick: Run through ChatGPT, it'd be interesting.
Temp Davis: I haven't asked ChatGPT. I just don't think I would get a good
response.
Don Patrick: Well, that's a great question for the audience, Tim. I love it.
That's a great way to wrap this thing up. Amazing career. Just your whole
history, all your interests, and how much you know, you're like a walking
encyclopedia.
I used to say encyclopedia. I don't even know what that is anymore, but
let's call it a walking Google. Maybe not quite a AI tool yet, but you're
amazing. Can't thank you enough for taking this time. These things are
fantastic. We all learn so much and get to know each other. I just wanna
thank you and this has been great.
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.