Foreign.

Welcome to Ditch the Suits podcast where we share insights nobody in the financial services industry wants you to know about.

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In our last episode, we did a status check on the status of the financial services industry.

We gave you a ton of information to help you understand is it really worth hiring a financial advisor?

And we kind of were so bold.

Travis, was to tell you that the word financial advisor is really a meaningless term that anybody in our industry can use.

And how you may want to be looking more along the lines of financial planner, especially a fee only one.

And so we wanted to have a conversation around our experiences helping people find real value through financial planning.

And Travis, I know this is something you're really passionate about.

Yeah.

And I thought it'd be really nice to revisit or maybe update because I think people, people change over time.

The where the real passion comes from and the difference that we actually see in people.

So somebody's thinking, okay, guys, I kind of, you know, hear what you're saying about the planning and stuff.

I've been maybe working with somebody for a long time or I haven't been working with somebody for a long time, and I'm trying to figure out what it should feel or look like.

I.

I really wanted to be able to paint that picture for people.

And so the best way I could think about that is just being personal about Steve, you know, why?

Let's say you're doing what you're doing and what the impact that you've seen on real people, if you could share a story with that.

So I'm excited to get into this today because I think it's a really personal episode.

Yeah.

And if we're going to say we're going to talk about experiences, it might be good to know who in the world you're listening to.

This is the Ditch the Suits podcast.

I'm Steve Campbell, senior marketing director at Seed Planning Group.

Travis, my co host, is our CEO.

Seed is a fee only financial planning firm.

Right.

Fiduciary obligation to help our clients.

And this show is all about us bringing our years of experience, financial planning to really help you as a listener get the most from your money in life.

So when we share about these things, these are things we do on a day to day, you know, experience working with real human beings to help empower them.

And so I think you, as you said, wanted to talk about maybe where some of our passions come from.

Yeah.

And so like to start out we wanted to, I just want to revisit the last episode a little bit.

We talked a lot about financial advisor and, and I even think I get confused or tongue tied a little bit and interchange financial advisor, financial planner.

Because it's just lazy and it's easy to be lazy but remember there's a big difference between the term at least to us.

So when you're listening to us, when we say financial planner we mean somebody who actually does financial planning for you.

Even if we're referencing financial advisor and we're talking about it in the context of what we do, what we have a very high standard for what we think a financial planner is or what a financial advisor should, how they should represent themselves in the work that they do.

We talked about, you know, the different registrations in the last episode.

We talked about, you know, the number of them that are out there.

It sounds like there's a lot.

I think we, we mentioned there's 66,000 registered investment advisors or investment advisor representatives.

So those are the individual representatives of the, the advisory firms.

But a lot of them work for mutual fund companies.

A lot of them work in like the back offices.

I think, I think the client facing number is probably much lower.

The vast majority of people out there I think are working with people who have some type of a hybrid relationship where they've got relationship with an insurance agency and or a broker dealer.

At the same time they're holding themselves out as an investment advisor representative.

So I think the trend is moving towards kind of where we want to see the trend move for the industry but it's moving at like molasses speed.

And I think it's because there's a stop between them.

We're all the way, we're very extreme in it.

We really do believe that you should work with a fee only advisor and you should have a scope of work that outlines what you're paying for.

Right.

That's just how we feel.

And that advisor should only get paid.

Would you agree to pay them?

No kickbacks, no leveraging your assets to go get more money for themselves or anything like that.

No self dealing.

That's.

We are extreme in that.

The other end is why do you need all that?

Just pay commissions and buy what you need.

Well then you got to know what you need.

And I've never met anybody who really knows what their neat they need unless they've, they've put you know, 10,000 hours or more in.

Right.

I mean it's just not.

If it was that easy.

Everybody could do it.

And sometimes people say, well, what I've done is worked out well for me.

I'm looking at, I'm like, yeah.

And you've averaged 6% return when the market over that time period average 10.

Like, what's wrong?

Like, those two things don't line up.

So you did good enough.

But you, you know, for the amount of risk or for what you gave up, maybe you didn't do as good as you were.

And that's just because you didn't know.

Right.

So it's not knocking it.

So you just didn't know.

But then there's the middle guy who says, look, you know, sometimes people just need to buy stuff and sometimes people just need advice.

So I'm going to live in the middle.

The problem is, is that people still come to them thinking I'm paying for the advice.

You're not.

Not when it.

Not when there's that.

I can also make an extra 20 grand on the commission.

Right.

It's just you telling you from somebody who tried to do it, I do not know how you manage that conf in.

Let me go back on that.

I know how you manage the conflict, but I don't know how you deliver a service respectfully to a client.

And sometimes what I mean by respectfully.

At the end of last episode, I said your financial advisor, you know, you have to be very careful with friendships and family members who are financial advisors.

It is very hard when the advisor is worried about other things like, am I going to get the commission?

Is this person going to still be my friend?

What am I going to do at Thanksgiving dinner if I give them this advice?

Right.

Sometimes you need to hear stuff that you don't want to hear.

And that's their job.

Right.

So we got into that deep.

I don't want to belabel that or what's the right word?

Belabor.

Belabor that at anymore.

But there's a big difference between what a lot of people think of financial planner or advisors and what we do.

So with that, I want to talk more about why we see it this way and what we see our kind of, you know, impact is or why we're doing what we're doing.

So, Steve, I want to throw this the.

The back to you now and say, what is a story that you have that could paint a picture about why you do what you do?

Yeah, I think, I think from my world we've kind of shared over the years at Ditch the Suits that I came from the broker dealer world and was trained in a certain Culture for story based selling and selling of commissions.

And I remember sitting at the dinner table or talking to people and hearing what they really needed help with versus what we did and that there was a huge disconnect.

And so when I made the big jump and joined you at, you know, all those years ago, it feels great being on this side now where it really is just about doing the right thing and helping people solve the big life questions, but also having the innovation and the backing from you and our other team members that, hey, if we come across situations where people need help and are acknowledging, I don't know anybody that can do this, is there something that we can do as a team to empower people to get that level of help?

And if I think about the stories over the year that have been most impactful, you know, we as a company have been able to innovate alongside the life situations that we're coming across in real time because we started as a small business.

And anybody who's ever been in business, when you're presented with situations you've never come across, you have a choice to make.

Do you just keep driving the hammer into situations and say, well, we do it this way, or do you pause and reflect and say, man, this is a real thing that people are struggling with, so how can we position ourselves to be an advocate and be on their side?

And I just, you know, we were leading up to this conversation we made.

You had talked about in the last episode, the decision in, you know, 2016 to stop selling life insurance because we wanted to remove that conflict.

Well, a few years ago, we were meeting with individuals who had accumulated a lot of money in assets and we would have these free discovery meetings as fiduciaries to understand what's important to them.

They've accumulated money.

But there were still, are we doing the right things and what should we be doing along these lines?

And at that time, we didn't.

The only model that we had to serve this group of people was what would be considered an assets under management model, where, hey, you move your investments to us and you'll get all the benefit of financial planning.

And there was nothing wrong with that.

That's just the way that we operated.

And we had a couple of people, right, that just raised their hand and they were like, I really like what you have to say on the planning side, but I don't really feel comfortable moving my assets because I don't want to pay a percentage under assets for this type of arrangement.

And they were absolutely right.

And we had, you know, Maybe four or five of these situations where we liked the people, we felt we could help them, but the arrangement or the way that you would pay for this type of service wasn't ideal for their situation.

And so you myself, others of us got involved and said, hey, how could reimagine what this planning could look like for the sub, you know, subset group of people?

And what we found is that there was a way to offer financial planning where individuals could maintain their assets, still receive guidance from us as a fiduciary, but it would not require them moving accounts to us in order to receive financial planning.

And we could set up, like you always said, an agreement that has very confined amount of time, 12 months, so many set of meetings, so much scope of work, and then here is your out of pocket expense that's really based on the number of meetings, the, the scope of work and the time.

And all of a sudden people were like, oh my goodness, this is exactly what I've been looking for.

It's transparent.

I know what I'm getting, I know when I can get out and I know exactly what this arrangement is.

And all of a sudden you sit back and you go, we kind of figured it out.

There was a group of people that needed this level of help.

And at the old firms we would have been told, shut up young man, go back to your office, you don't know what you're talking about.

And so it's very cool to be a part of a company that yes, does financial planning, but I would say more so is humble enough and innovative enough to say if there is a need that's arising out there, how can we maybe answer the call and help people that clearly aren't getting the help that they're wanting?

Well, I think we've had the right from the beginning, the concept of don't burn the bridge, you know, like, so we are structured to be around a long time with, you know, our development, our recruiting and development and our training programs and the way that we have been building a business.

And you know, I, I, we've told clients, go, go ahead or go home and think about it, go talk to other advisors, go do whatever you want to do.

We'll be around, you know, we'll be here when you're, when you, when you are ready to make the decision.

And also, so most firms, if you don't move the assets, you can't do that.

They don't give you the planning, right?

Yep.

Or they give you the planning in hopes that you're going to move the assets and you're going to feel pretty darn obligated to move the assets after the planning.

Right?

It's, it's pretty hard to say, well, you know, how'd you get paid?

I didn't get paid yet, I'll get paid if you bring the assets over or something like that.

So the issue with that is then you burn the bridge.

Basically, I'm going to force you by hard selling you.

A lot of times you don't even know it's a hard sell, but it's if you survive the financial.

Remember you talked about 90% of people fail within the first seven years.

If you survive seven years.

In the financial industry, you are really, really, really good at helping people make decisions.

Call it sales, call it whatever you want, but you are really good at helping make people make decisions.

So what happens there is you get an enormous amount of pressure to move your assets over to them because that's how they get paid.

And what we figured out is, is that people who just don't want to go there, basically they'll get pushed until say no, and then they're sour on the entire industry, the entire, entire experience, and they can't get the planning.

And what we said is don't burn the bridge.

If you want to keep your assets, we're there, fine.

We'll just charge you what we would charge you anyway that we need to make to spend the time that we need to spend the time on you.

And you just pay it out of pocket.

Who cares?

I don't care if your assets are here or not.

You know, there's a way to work around that and there's a way to work with you.

And, and so that's.

That was incredible.

I'm so glad that you shared that with us.

Is there anything else that you wanted to.

Any other experiences that you wanted to kind of throw out there that come to mind?

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Yeah, I would just say it's probably listeners, ditch the suits.

You.

You are closer to doing the right thing than you realize.

It's just you need a little bit more information or guidance to kind of get it over the hump.

Right.

And so I do come in, right?

Yeah, I do a lot of social listening.

I pay attention to Facebook chatter and what people are posting to other, you know, users.

Here's my situation.

What can I do?

No one is a professional, but everyone's sharing kind of their best practices and what they've done, or they're sharing blogs that can help.

And it's alarming to me how many people that have really put away good amounts of money that still don't know exactly what to do or how to make it all work.

And it's very cool to, like, secretly know in the background, like, you're somebody that has something that can help them.

But I think it's very cool then when you take that somebody from being an unnamed face to now actually meeting with a team member of ours and they're.

They're confessing, you know, I don't know what's the best option for this or that.

And you have somebody who's not, you know, compensated on sales or commission, say, hey, here's some things we can do.

And it's this aha moment that people have in real time.

And it's the coolest thing.

I wish I could have a videotape to experience the.

The ease or, you know, the.

The stress relief that people have of, oh, my goodness, I didn't even know.

I didn't even know that we had the capacity to do that.

And so this could be across a number of different things in the planning aspect.

But to me, that's always the coolest thing.

When you said, hey, we put ourselves out there as somebody that does this really, really well and transparency, and you have somebody actually come in and say, even if it's.

They felt that they were going to go in one direction, and you showed them through planning and through projections, there might be a better way of doing this.

The gratitude that they have of, oh, my goodness, we didn't know that we were one decision away from maybe going down a path that we couldn't undo.

And this was super helpful.

And so for me, that's the joy of man.

Let's keep this thing going.

Let's emp, empower people.

Let's educate, because you're maybe one small decision away from having breakthrough.

But, Travis, I also know in your World, Obviously, you're a co host.

You've been doing this with me, but you've also been leading the helmet seed and casting vision for us.

I think it's also fun to throw the question back to you, which is, you know, why do you do what you do?

Why did you make the jump from where you are and bring all of us into this thing?

What is it that keeps you going?

I think that I would have a very different.

I.

We've talked about this in different episodes before, and.

And I was thinking about.

I've changed a lot over the last couple of years.

As far as.

There was a.

There was a time when we started to see that I just wanted to fight the industry and fight everybody, and.

And we're just going to go out there and everybody's a competition and everybody's hurting clients, and.

And, you know, it was.

It was all kind of aggressive, competitive type of reason behind it.

We just wanted to do it better, and we want to show everybody else we could do it better.

And I've changed.

And the reason why I've changed, I think you just change as you get older and you reflect on things.

But as we've gotten bigger and as I've realized that I can help more people by bringing inspiration to young planners and other people within the industry that got here for the right reasons and have survived that for seven years, but aren't in a situation where they feel that they're really giving value.

They're just stuck in the hamster wheel.

I figured out that I.

I can build that vision, you know, that boat to allow people to come and live that vision.

Right?

And you have to build a bigger boat, because if you want to help more clients, if you really want to change the industry, you got to have a place that's more inclusive.

And it can't be about me, and it can't be narrow and small.

It's got to, you know, be able to bring other people into it.

And I just love to build things now.

You know, the.

The most enjoyment that I get is working with our people and seeing these massive breakthroughs that they have.

And, you know, when I think about my client work, that when you unlock a freedom in somebody and I'll give you examples of that, but when you help somebody, you know, figure out that it's okay and it's going to be okay and that they can do it, when you help them empower themselves, there's.

There's nothing better than that.

You know, like, you have made a change in the world that could that.

That is permanent and has a ripple effect.

And so whether you're doing that with a colleague or whether you're doing that with a client, that's really a profound thing to me.

And I think that most of the.

If I think about seed, and I think about how we can't even came up with the name seed, you know, part of the acronym of seed, and the idea behind that is you can plant an idea in the community, you can change your community.

And I really.

I really believe in that.

And it was really focused on financial stewardship.

But as we've.

We started this podcast, we were talking about the definition of wealth, right?

We were talking about what wealth really means and all that kind of stuff.

And I think as we've gone on this journey, we've figured out that really most people are just.

They're.

They need to.

They need help overcoming challenges, whatever those challenges might be.

And money seems to be at the heart of a lot of it.

And.

And how do you make better decisions around that money?

But it's also how we see the world around us and how those influences are getting us to react.

And if we can get better control over that, we'll make better financial decisions.

We'll have less stress.

I mean, everything feeds into itself, but almost all of it ends up in the finances.

And.

And we can have the results that we're hoping.

You know, people who want to see the world be a better place.

It starts.

I think it starts here, and I think it starts with us, you know, showing the example of basically how to.

How to, you know, unlock people and set them free.

And what I mean by that is, you know, we.

We just went through a very contentious, you know, political campaign or, you know, presidential election, and we work with people on both extremes and everywhere in between, right?

I've got.

I've had clients across the entire spectrum.

And across the entire spectrum, there's fear of the news, there's fear of politics, there's fear of the markets, there's fear of the economy, there's fear of the weather.

And you know what?

It's been like that since I started my career.

It's the same stuff over and over and over again, yet we're all still here, right?

And as much as people think it's getting worse, there's so many people who have it so much better now, right?

So I'm not saying that it's fair to everybody or anything like that, but when we take somebody who is being driven by fear and they're being held back and they can't get on to the next check.

They can't retire because they're afraid of something that has nothing to do with them.

And normally we get that.

Here's the financial decision that you need to make.

I can't do that.

Why?

I've had somebody tell me the economy's bad.

I'm like, what's the economy got to do with you retiring?

Like, seriously?

Well, I feel bad if I retire and other people are losing their jobs.

Why?

If you retire, that means there's a job for somebody else to fill.

These things aren't connected, but yet they're driving us to make decisions that really impact our stress and happiness and finances.

And I mean, that's just a microcosm of one clients suffering from tragedy.

You know, we just did a whole series at the end of last year on death.

Multiple episodes.

Not really a whole series.

But how do you rebuild after you lose a loved one and knowing that you're okay and walking somebody through that.

Right?

Not the, you know, insurance agents do this all the time.

We've been bashing on so called financial advisors.

Might as well keep it up.

Oh, I'll be the one who actually shows up to your house with a check.

That's exactly how they sound.

And you know what?

Put in an envelope and put it in my mailbox.

I don't need to talk to you when I just lost somebody I care about.

Yeah, right.

Like, I don't need to have somebody's death be all about money.

I need to know how to put my life back together.

I need to know, like, you know what?

I need to take some time before I make decisions that I can't undo.

You know, there's a lot of things that I need to do before I need to talk to an insurance agent or somebody trying to sell me an annuity or, or some kind of BS like that.

There's almost nothing financially that has to happen immediately unless you're in really dire straits.

When somebody passes away, you got some time there to like, okay, let's catch our breath, let's talk through this.

Let's figure out what we need to do.

And when you walk somebody through that and they come out the other side and they, nobody ever gets stronger because they lose a loved one, but they learn how to take strength from the fact that that loved one is part of their, their life and will always be.

You come out on that other end.

That is really rewarding.

And then we've had clients who have been misled from the financial industry marketing machine you know, clients who come in thinking that they need really expensive products or that nobody can make money.

You know, the whole, you know, active managers can't make any money.

You only have to go to index investing and don't pick any stocks, only pick mutual funds.

What do you think a mutual fund is full.

Full of?

It's made up of individual stocks that somebody's picking.

And then they, well, you know, but they don't even do well.

You got to pick the index funds.

That's really, really misleading.

We've had episodes where we really dug into that.

Like, that is just, it's sloppy, lazy statistics.

It's misapplied and it holds people back.

Because if you follow the conventional industry advice, there's a whole lot of things that you can't enjoy in life and you shouldn't be doing, or there's a whole lot of gambles that you should be taking that you don't need to, that will prevent you, if they don't work out, from doing the things that you want to do right.

So how do we chop through the BS and make sure that, you know, you're not just being sold what somebody is selling?

So I love it when we get to work clients through and they're like, this is.

This is what I think this is supposed to be doing.

You're like, that's not what that does at all.

And here's how you put that into perspective and have context with that.

You could still make the decision you want.

Maybe you still want to do that, but at least making an informed decision.

Hey guys, Steve Campbell with Ditchesuits.

Want to take one quick moment to make a big ask.

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Well, and I think this has been a fun journey for you.

We alluded to in the last episode.

This, this is episode 150, right?

When I think you and I started four years ago, we knew we'd have a podcast, but it just seems surreal to have 150 and it's.

I think part of the reason the vision behind why we started Ditch the Suits was prior to that, we wanted to be able to talk to our clients in the middle of COVID that couldn't go anywhere.

And so you and I started recording videos and we were bringing things that were important to them.

Money, relationships, the stock market news.

How do you make sense of all this stuff?

And clients said is really good information.

And so you and I just thought, what if we turn this into a podcast?

And I think it's been shocking to me now, four years into this thing, we.

It's great when you guys call and reach out to us from the show and tell us how much you appreciate us and you ask us questions or you post questions online.

That's so much fun to know that people listen to what we're talking about and ditch the suits.

Is education based.

We're bringing to you experience, we're bringing to you concepts, we're explaining through series how these things work.

But it can never be as personalized because we're not with you every day.

We don't know your unique situation.

And so I think it's very cool to then see like in your world and through financial planning that it is so much more than investments.

And when it's people that have real life questions about what do I do with these things based on my situation.

And it can be met with real ideas that empower them and bring joy to their life and help them.

I mean, to me that's the exciting part because I don't do the planning, but to see what you've been able to do with clients and then to also see how you've empowered, you know, staff that we've brought into this thing and teach them and mold them and create a place where they want to work.

I think financial planning, as I always tell people, should be a life giving experience.

And I just wonder how many people out there today that have been burned or dupe and they feel they can never trust somebody.

They don't know whether they should make a change or they're maybe bold enough now to raise a hand and say, maybe it's worth hiring somebody.

If you're not having a life giving experience where, you know, somebody is really showing you what you can do in explaining it and not making you feel small or it's not met with a transaction.

That is a very incredible experience to try to help somebody understand of what if we did this, this is what happens?

Or what if we could leave more money to your kids?

What would that look like?

Or what if we could give more money to charities or make sure your estate was, you know, down path the way that you wanted to so when that inevitable death doesn't happen, there aren't family members left picking up the pieces.

This is financial planning.

Well, that concludes another episode of Ditch the Suits.

We got one more episode in this series.

Again, this is episode 150.

Huge hallmark for any podcasters.

Travis and I have been at this for four years and love communicating with all of you.

So if you more content like this as always you can head over to ditchthesuits.com that's ditchthesuits.com you can find previous seasons episodes.

Get in contact with Travis and I reach out with any questions you might have.

But if you're also a fan of podcasts, you can head over to nqrmedia.com that's NQR Media.

Travis hosts his own show called Unleashing Leadership.

I have my own show called the One Big Thing which is an interview style show.

But we also help produce other podcasts that are near and dear to some of our colleagues hearts.

And so at NQR Media you're going to get authentic truth that can help you from everything from money, finance, parenting, leadership.

So go check those resources out.

And as always, thanks for being our guest on Ditch the Suits.