Julie [00:00:07]

So, John, I don’t know about you, but if I had a dollar for every time I heard an adviser share with me that they don’t find the CPA partnership to be an effective or referral source or partnership in their practice, I probably would have collected quite a few dollars. How about you?

John [00:00:26]

It reminds me of first dates, right? Where no party trusts the other one, trying to figure out what they’re all about. And Julie, I don’t know how many CPA meetings you’ve done over time, but it’s sometimes I feel like advisors are just going through the motions versus actually seeking to build those longer term relationships.

Julie [00:00:48]

I wholeheartedly agree, and I think sometimes emotions are very quickly run through and there really isn’t that opportunity to get to know each other and truly develop a trusted relationship.

John [00:01:01]

But on today’s podcast, Jon Kuttin is going to share with us how not only did he successfully kind of engage CPAs as part of his everyday practice, but he actually made CPA relationships kind of a foundational element of growing his very successful practice. And I think our listeners will really enjoy hearing what John has to say about his approach to engaging the CPA community in building that kind of center of influence network. So Julie, why don’t you share with our listeners a little bit about who Jon Kuttin is?

Julie [00:01:38]

Jon Kuttin is a Baron’s Hall of Fame advisor with nearly 30 years of experience leading and growing a financial advisory practice to over 65 million in gross revenues, driven by a mission to develop leaders and give back to the financial services industry. John also provides training and consulting services for seasoned practitioners through his consulting entity Kuttin Consulting group. He regularly speaks and contributes articles and has been featured in a number of publications, including Financial Advisor Magazine, Barron’s Magazine and Forbes.

John [00:02:10]

So let’s listen in on John’s tips and techniques for furthering our relationships as CPAs.

John [00:02:18]

Hi, I’m John.

Julie [00:02:20]

And I’m Julie.

John [00:02:21]

We’re the hosts of the Hartford Funds Human-centric Investing Podcast.

Julie [00:02:26]

Every other week we’re talking with inspiring thought leaders to hear their best ideas for how you can transform your relationships with your clients.

John [00:02:36]

Let’s go.

Julie [00:02:38]

Jon, welcome to the Human-centric Investing Podcast. Thank you so much for being here with us today.

Jon [00:02:43]

Excited to be here Julie looking forward to today.

John [00:02:47]

So, Jon, today’s topic that we want to discuss with you is on partnering with CPAs. And I got to tell you, in my 35 years of experience in our industry, it seems to be either hit or miss. There are some practices that are just like, Hey, our our COIs are especially our CPA partners, are a key and vital part of our business. And other teams are like, Man, I could care less if we ever work with another CPA again. It seems like a one way street. We would send people to them. We’d never have anything coming back. But I know, Jon, that in your practice, CPAs have been a really an important, very important component and that you have a kind of a process, maybe a little bit of a roadmap about how to successfully partner with CPA practices. So maybe just start us off with why CPAs were so important to the development of your practice.

Jon [00:03:46]

Yeah, no, great question, John. It’s it’s one of my favorite subjects to talk about. So I love the way you opened it up. I’ve been training advisors on how to partner with CPAs. I’m trying to think of the exact year, but it’s been 14 or 15 years, literally have trained over 1000 financial advisors on how to partner with CPAs, and I wish I had a dollar for every advisor that said It doesn’t work, These CPAs don’t get it and they never refer and I give them referrals and they don’t reciprocate. And you know, if you don’t have the right skill set and processes, process and system, that is absolutely right. So, you know, I’ll give you a little background because, you know, I think it will help people look at COIs, maybe slightly different. So from a career perspective, I’ll go backwards the go forward, I’ll go real quick. I started in the industry in 94, built my business the traditional way, cold calling and seminars and sitting at a lot of kitchen tables, all of those things with, you know, dogs eating my shoe and all that stuff that many of us have lived through and ultimately had a brief stint in leadership for about seven or eight years and then went back to become an independent adviser back in 2001. And in as a leader in getting inside of a lot of advisors, businesses and supporting them to grow. What I found is what you shared is it was hit or miss and some of these advisers were really reliant and the best advisers that were growing quickest figured out a different mousetrap of how to attract lots of clients on an ongoing basis. So when I went back into private practice full time, I thought CPAs, COIs in general, but I focused on CPAs was actually the way to go. And to make a very long story short, I built my first CPA partnership in 2001 with the CPA, who’s a dear friend today and still a partner of our firm. His name is Ken Cirrani. Ken, Ken and I now coach together from a how to help advisors build these partnerships. And what I realized was, one, I got lucky with Ken. So Ken was already a certified financial planner. He was already tinkering with financial planning internally, although he wasn’t licensed yet, he was well beyond his years. Because to our listeners in 2001, right, it was frowned upon by the AICPA and the CPA community at large for a CPA to also be involved in financial planning. It was not the norm. And I could tell you I had probably 100 plus doors slammed in my face by CPAs as I started to try to build this business. But I got lucky, right? By doing the activity, you make your own luck. And I stumbled on Ken and I learned a ton from Ken and how he thought right as a CPA practitioner, maybe more importantly, how other CPAs thought, which will hit hopefully throughout our conversation here today. But that was what it was for me, was thinking, how can I go B2B as opposed to B2C? Right. B2C is how back in the day can I use a telephone or a direct mail list to go get new clients? And what I discovered is Ken, in his example, had about 1000 tax clients, that he was their trusted, knowledgeable advisor. Let’s face it, folks, the CPA is the most trusted, knowledgeable advisor. And if I was able to get what I now call I didn’t call it this in 2001, but his borrowed trust from the relationships that he had to transition them to me, what I realized was if he had 1000 clients and 20 or 30 percent, which statistically is what we find happens, done right over a period of time of his clients can become my clients. Well, if I could go find three, Ken Cirrani’s is while my client acquisition can be completely done and I never have to worry about that dreaded marketing word again, if I could have a bunch of CPA partnerships that refer clients for my career, right? So I coined, you know, John and Julie, this phrase, at least I think I coined it. I could have stole it from somebody I forget by now, but I think it’s mine now. It’s either eat now or eat later marketing eat now or eat later marketing. Most advisors focus on eat now, which is what activity can I do today that can bring a client in in a week or two? I can ask a client for a referral, which is a good idea. I could do a client event. I could do a seminar. I can go to the Rotary Club, I could be in a networking meeting and I can try to get that today. Right? With CPAs you need to delay gratification. It takes a while to build trust. It takes a while to build a relationship. But once you have a real partnership, is what I call it right? Or alliance might be a better word that I call it. With a CPA, it’s for a life. And if they could refer five or ten or 20 new clients per year in perpetuity, you get to eat forever, right? So it’s a little bit of a different, you know, way of thinking. And I think it’s a ten X way of thinking, right? How do you 10x a business as opposed to a 2x way of thinking, which is more how do I get a client next week?

Julie [00:09:52]

It’s interesting, Jon, and I love the way you’re thinking about this, sort of the longer term approach and really building that partnership. Do you think maybe I’ll ask, how did you start to really articulate or show CPAs in your network what you really do? Because I sometimes wonder, you know, I’ll hear advisors say, you know, I dropped off my card or I sent them an email or I dropped them off a gift basket at tax time and on their card it says Financial Advisor. But how does that CPA really know what your process is and how is the referral to you you know more than, Oh, you should go meet Jon Kuttin he’s a great guy or he’s an advisor in the area. How did you take that from your title to really indoctrinating them into what you do, how you do it, and how their clients will be well taken care of once that referral process happens?

Jon [00:10:51]

Yeah. So I’m going to tell a quick story that I think will, will, will resonate with your audience. So back in 2003 or four, don’t quote me on the date I was hired by Ameriprise. Right. To actually go out and kind of train the train the leaders around the organization, because Ken and I had so much success. Ameriprise had launched this professional alliance program internally inside of the broker dealer. And I was kind of the the guy who went around and spoke to advisors all around the country on how to do this and how to actually build a system and process around it. And Ken and I actually did it together. So it was amazing because I brought a real live example, which is kind of how we built our whole consulting business together to illustrate here’s what a partnership looks like and here’s the perspective of a CPA. So I’ll never forget, you know, we’re in a hotel, there’s about 50, maybe 60 successful advisors in the audience, and the host, who is a local leader, introduced Ken and I, and I kind of stepped forward first on stage and introduced myself. And I don’t remember exactly what I said. I said something like, I am Jon Kuttin, I’m an advisor, I partner with CPA is and I’m really delighted to be here. Okay, then Ken, stepped forward on stage and I’ll never forget And I’m like I said, Ken’s a different type of guy ok. Little, little bit of a pioneer, visionary, really cool dude. He took a step forward guy and he didn’t speak for a minute, and here was his true opening line. CPAs view all of you as a small step above a used car salesperson. Then he took another step forward. He said, Let me say it again. CPAs view all of you as a small step above a used car salesperson. And I could tell you there were oohs and ahs, and I didn’t know how everybody was going to react. But, you know, Julie, you ask a great question, which is when you think about a CPAs perspective, here is what he or she believes to be true about a financial advisor. What they believe to be true is you’re the person that when they need cost basis information, doesn’t return their call. You are the person when their client’s Mr. and Mrs. Golackawitz, which is the favorite, my favorite fake name for a client. I don’t use to you, Smith. Now it’s Mr. or Mrs. Golackawitz. It’s a Mr. and Mrs. Golackawitz, um when when they come into the office and a security was sold or a distribution was taken from an IRA. And the client says, I didn’t know there was going to be any taxes. Whether true or not, the CPA’s lens is how did Bob, the financial advisor, not tell you that when you take money out of your IRA, you should have withhold held taxes or when you sold your security that there was going to be a long or short term capital gain. So righteously for many CPAs, there are a lot of financial advisors out there that don’t do as good of a job as our listeners probably do, and sometimes leave CPAs wondering what exactly our industry does. They get to see tons of transactions which the industry would would say is churning. They see products that might be used for the wrong reasons. There’s a lot lot of things that sometimes CPAs get to see. So their opinion is bad, right? So, you know, Julie, when you think about how do you actually differentiate, the first thing is to define reality. The reality is the reason it’s so hard for a financial advisor to build a partnership with the CPA is based on what my friend Ken Sirianni taught me, which is they actually don’t have a high opinion of any of us. So when I think about the process that we built, the process we built is basically based on that premise that our job is to go from an unknown commodity that lacks trust right through a series of meetings and very deliberate, intentional conversations to build that level of trust so that the CPA starts to view you as the true professional that you are that deeply cares about your client, that has an amazing client experience, and that gives top quality advice that we can enhance that client’s life and the experience and overall value proposition that the tax planning and wealth management together integrated is actually a stronger value proposition to the client than us both living in our own silos. Right? So a big part of our business today, John and Julie, is we work with over 100 CPA firms in professional alliances. And really what we build is what I call a multi-disciplinary practice, which is thinking ahead for the future. By the way, this isn’t new. The industry’s been saying forever that tax estate, wealth and insurance all belong together, right? One of our differentiators in our practice is the process that we deliver to our clients actually puts all of those things together. Although I don’t do it all in-house, much of it I do. I have trusted resources like the CPA firms that we work with that help for us to deliver on that overall client experience. So I’ll go on for a minute as I think about the process. Julie and John, I’ll just quickly say our process is generally a four step process. Okay. So the first step of the process is what I call getting belly to belly. Today you could say screen to screen. I’m dating myself with the CPA. It could be virtual, it could be in-person. I’m old school. I think the more you do in-person, the better it is. But the purpose of the first meeting is really, really simple, right? It’s to get the second meeting to make it really simple. What we do is we we reach out to our CPAs. I’m going to go on for a minute here. Make your job easy, but I’m going to hit a whole bunch of points that maybe we delve into. So when you think about any form of prospecting, the hardest thing to do is to get belly to belly. Well, you the financial advisor listening, you probably have 100 clients, 200 clients, 300 clients, whatever it may be. It is a law that if you earn income of any sort, you need to file a tax return, isn’t it, here in our country? So that tells me if you have 250 clients, my guess is there are probably 150 to 200 different tax professionals preparing a tax return for your individual or business client. The easiest way to meet a CPA is through a mutual client. And I would say something like this, guys, if John and Julie, if you were my clients, I say John and Julie, as you know, part of our process is I want to make sure that my advice is aligned with the best tax planning advice. If you wouldn’t mind, I’d love to reach out to say hello to your CPA, with your permission for 15 minutes to introduce myself to just make sure that we’re on the same page and we’re taking the best opportunity to have you pay as little in taxes as possible. Would it be okay if I reached out to your CPA? In fact, would you mind putting us on an email thread just saying it’s okay so that we can get a couple of minutes together? Really simple. If you have 250 clients, there’s 200 CPAs. Get 150 of your 200 clients to send that email. And I promise you 100 of those CPAs will reply probably 100% because they have to. It’s a mutual client. Okay. Now, when you take that meeting, get into the process. Step one is I would talk about John and Julie, my clients, and say, Hey, John and Julie have been mutual clients of mine. They they talk. They think the world of you. I wanted to ask you a couple of questions. We’ve got some unrealized losses. We’re withholding 20% on distributions. We’re thinking about a Roth conversion. You get the idea. I would just like your opinion. Now, ask yourself the question to the listeners. How many times have you made that call proactively without a client asking you to do a CPA? I could tell you from talking to and helping advisors speak to thousands of CPAs. CPAs will tell you they never get that call. Okay, so you’ve already made yourself better and different than the competition because a step above a used car salesperson doesn’t care that much about their client and do that level of proactive tax planning. Right. So that’s one. Somewhere at the end of that meeting, after I talked about my clients, John and Julie, I’m going to say something to the CPA, like Mr. or Mrs. CPA. I could see why John and Julie speak so highly of you. We we are always looking for great resources for our clients. I’d love to get together at some other point to learn more about you and your practice to see if you might be able to be a resource for some of my other clients. I always like to have three or four resources from time to time when the need arises. If you say that 100 times. My guess is 80% or more of those CPAs would say, sure, I’d love to meet again. Okay, assuming you were professional in that meeting, would you? You would likely be you get the second meeting. That second meeting where in step two of the process. Right, is to learn about their practice. We have a series of questions of how did you get started? What kind of client do you best serve, what’s your service model, so on, etc. How do you charge fees? What what would be the best way to introduce you to a client? Where do you work best? What’s your what’s your niche? Do you have a niche? Do you work better with small business owners? Right. To show a little bit of your knowledge somewhere at the end of that meeting? Right. You got you got the second meeting. You’ve accomplished the mission. You’re going to say something like, and we’ve scripted all this. You’re going to say something like Mr. or Mrs. CPA. It was really great to get to know you a little bit today. I think you might be able to be a resource together. I would love to figure out if there’s a way for us to build a mutually beneficial relationship together. I realize, although John and Julie are mutual clients of ours, you’ve never really seen exactly what we do and how we deliver advice in our practice. Next time, maybe you can come to my office and I’d love to take you through what we do, how we work. So you can see my operation. Now that I know more about yours, I feel like we might be able to help each other grow our businesses if that might be something you’re interested in. In fact, if you take a ride out to my office, I’d love to take you out to lunch afterwards, just to get to know each other a little bit. And I’d love to get your feedback because I always am interested in feedback on what smart professionals like you think about my practice. About 60% of CPAs will follow through on that statistically. Not all of them. okay, because now it becomes a little bit more real. Right. And where we’ve switched it on them a little bit. Right. We’re kind of moving into what they thought we were trying to do, which was get referrals from them. They know that they’re smart. They come to my office, Julie and John, and we do exactly what I said. I call it a show and tell meeting. they come in. My receptionist knows they’re coming in. They greet them. Hello, Mr. and Mrs. CPA. We’ve been waiting for you. I give them a tour of the office. I introduce them to my team, if I have one. We sit in the conference room. I show them how we do planning. I show them how we do client experience. I show them more CRM system. I talk about our asset allocation. I talk about all of the things that we do that shows our profession. We send our clients birthday cards, we send summary letters, we do client events, we do all of these amazing things for our clients, just like you, Mr. and Mrs. CPA. And by the way, to our listeners, usually better than their process, right? They think we’re a small step above, right, John. But we’re actually usually better at delivery. We just can’t tell them that.

John [00:23:35]

Right.

Jon [00:23:35]

And then I say things like, As you see in this portfolio, the client was more aggressive than the intent intended to be. As you can see, their beta was 1.2, which indicates 20% more volatility and there was no alpha. I don’t, even if I’m joking, know what all that means anymore myself. Right. But at the end of the day, what is the CPA thinking? Man. This guy or this guy really knows their stuff. I don’t know that because CPAs believe they know everything. What I know is they know very little about what we do as financial advisors. So we do the show and tell meeting. We go to lunch. Lunch, by the way, is Applebee’s. It’s TGI Fridays. It’s not the best steakhouse in town, remember, your CPA is going to show up in a Camry, not a Ferrari. You’re going to be dressed in khaki pants. I’m being you know, a you know facetious here. A little bit or a little stereotypical, Right? But they’re not looking for they want a conservative advisor. That’s a good pillar of their community that’s going to do a great job for their client, that fees aren’t exorbitant, that cares about the value that they provide. So I always say, go to Applebee’s, right? Go have a burger and go sit down. Here’s exactly the question that you ask. I’m dying to know, what did you think of our process? After you show them your process, what do you think they will do? Are they going to say it was terrible? I knew that. No, Most CPAs will say, I was really impressed. I love that you see your clients three or four times a year. I love that you do financial planning. I love that you have a CFA on your team. Whatever it is, that is your differentiator. And now what am most advisors thinking, now I got them. I’m going to go in for the kill right.

John [00:25:20]

Yeah.

Jon [00:25:20]

Now. It’s not what we’re going to do. John. Julie, we’re going to I call push the check back, right? We’re going to say something. Wow, that’s amazing. Thank you for the feedback. Anything we can do better. We’re going to enjoy lunch. We’re going to talk about whatever it is you’d like, talk about small talk, community sports, whatever it is that you would normally talk, small talk. And as you wrap the meeting, can we have a script for this, you’re going to say something like, “you know, it was really great to meet you today and I feel like we’re on to something. I really loved your process. I love that our joint client, John and Julie, both seem to see value in what we do. I feel like we could be on to something together. I was wondering if maybe you’d be interested in meeting again. I want to just do a little more due diligence. I’d like to get to know you a little bit better, have some additional questions, because obviously my client relationships, just like yours, are the lifeblood of my business. And although I think we can be on to something, I just I’d like to spend more time together and get to know each other, but I am excited.” Okay, now why do I do that one? This is where the CPA and I learned this from mistakes audience cuts bait and says, You know what? Now I’m going to get sold something. If John comes in now and says, Hey, we should work together, how about we build a formal alliance and you know how much money you can make by getting licensed and being all that? That is what they’re afraid of and what they expected, right? So when I push the check back and say I want to do more due diligence, I’m like them. That makes sense.

John [00:26:52]

Yeah.

Jon [00:26:52]

All of a sudden, they’re going, wow, I thought he was going to go for the kill. He wants to do more due diligence. I was ready to move forward. And what I say in a joking way is until the CPA is saying, will you please stop saying we need to meet again, I want to work with you. Right? Or sometimes at that lunch they’ll say, I’ve got a perfect client for you, Mr. or Mrs. Smith just retired. They just asked me, What have we been trained to do? Let’s call the Smiths now. What do I say before you introduce the Smiths? I’d love to meet them at some point. I’m flattered. Let’s meet again. I want to make sure you really think about it. And that we do this in a way that you understand everything. I’d rather overcommunicate now. So there’s no misunderstanding then have you have a misunderstanding if that’s okay. Okay. And then the last part of the process is ultimately, when you meet again to ask those questions, it’s about getting it to a point where you share with the CPA, Hey, if we’re going to do something together, once you get there, there’s more to it than I don’t have time to go to detail. My only one thing that I say we have to do is we have to both commit to meet on a regular basis, no less than every other week. It could be virtually, it could be in-person. I’ll come to your office with your favorite cup of coffee, but at the end of the day, I know that if we just today leave saying, yes, let’s do some business together and help our clients and we don’t meet consistently in 90 days, your business card is going to be in my top drawer and mine will be in yours and we’ll forget about each other. And if we think playing golf once or twice a year or grabbing a dinner once or twice a year, if we’re going to really form something, let’s spend time together and invest that in building the right partnership. So I know that was way more than you probably were bargaining for. I don’t even remember which of you ask the question, but if you think about that whole process soup to nuts, that’s as succinctly as I could say it. There are a thousand details right in between that I think are really important. But big picture, that’s kind of like procedurally how that would work.

John [00:29:00]

So, Jon, it sounds to me like the key is really making the investment of time to learn a little bit more about that professional just than whether or not they’re a referral machine for you. Right. It’s actually and I call that and it’s an investment of time. And as a transition here, Jon, we’re going to ask a little bit more investment of your time. We have a portion of our podcast, which for Julie and I is one of our favorite things to ask of our guest. We call these our lightning round of questions, where we get to learn a little bit more aside from John Kuttin , financial Services guru, leadership, you know, leadership leader in the industry. We want to learn a little bit more about Jon Kuttin personally. And so if it’s okay with you, we’re going to ask a series of questions. We kind of want top of mind answers just to maybe learn a little bit more about you. Jon And I’ll turn it over to Julie to maybe fire the first one.

Jon [00:29:57]

Oh, boy, this seems stressful, but yes, I will do the best I can.

Julie [00:30:01]

We’ll go easy on you. We promise.

Jon [00:30:03]

Okay.

Julie [00:30:03]

Okay. So on a scale of 1 to 10, how good of a driver are you?

Jon [00:30:08]

I think I’m a nine. I think. Yeah, I think I’m a good driver. I don’t want to jinx myself, but I’ve been a very safe driver. I will share as an aside, I’m a very slow driver. I like to podcast. So we talked on a previous podcast around me spending 15, maybe 20 hours a week consuming podcast content. So little unknown thing is I drive around my area for about 90 minutes from around 5 a.m. to 6:30 a.m. in a loop, literally in a loop, and that’s how I consume most of my listening.

John [00:30:49]

Wow. All right, Jon, I know how busy you are. So two years of paper to do list. Are you a digital guy?

Jon [00:30:57]

Well, I’ll give you neither of the above.

John [00:30:59]

Really?

Jon [00:31:00]

Yeah. So um I have a memory. Like an elephant. I literally barely use a computer. I don’t have a pad. I keep almost everything in my brain,.

John [00:31:14]

Wow.

Jon [00:31:15]

Which is not ideal. I will say over the last couple of years, what I’ve done is I don’t do any meetings alone, and I always have someone with me. So I’ve got a chief of staff whose name is Scott Lackey, who captures every single thing that I do now, and he is my instant reminder and memory.

John [00:31:36]

There you go.

Julie [00:31:38]

I think I know the answer to this, given the fact that you drive around from 5 to 6:30 a.m., but are you a morning person or a night owl?

Jon [00:31:45]

Both. No, I’m kidding. I do. I do. I do sleep. No, I. I’m up early, you know, 430 to 5. Naturally. Not always, but over the last number of years. And my wife would tell you that by about 915, I’m a zombie. And she tells our friends that I generally fall asleep what she calls mid roll. So as I say goodnight to her and roll over I’m snoring by the time I actually rolled over, which is true story.

John [00:32:15]

Jon What’s your favorite city in the United States?

Jon [00:32:18]

Favorite city in the United States. In the United States, I would say. I’m going to go with. Hmm. It’s one or two. I’m going to either say Miami or La Hoya in California. I’ll go with Miami. I’m going to have a place in Miami soon. And not that I am the hustle bustle, Miami nightlife guy, but I do like the vibe of Miami and the water and obviously the weather and great dining, etc. in Miami. Also, Vegas is up there too. So I like I like a lot of different places.

Julie [00:32:55]

Well, Jon, thank you again for joining us here today on the Human-centric Investing podcast. We so enjoyed all of your insights. And for our listeners that are interested in learning more about Kuttin wealth management, the independent practice of Ameriprise Financial Services LLC, please visit Kuttin Wealth Management dot com And for more information on Jon’s CPA Alliance’s coaching program, please visit John’s Coaching and Training Organization website at Kuttin Consulting Group dot com. Thank you again for being here with us today.

Jon [00:33:24]

Thanks for having me, guys.

Julie [00:33:27]

Thanks for listening to the Hartford Funds Human-centric Investing podcast. If you’d like to tune in for more episodes, don’t forget to subscribe wherever you get your podcasts and follow us on LinkedIn, Twitter, or YouTube.

John [00:33:42]

And if you’d like to be a guest and share your best ideas for transforming client relationships, email us at guest booking at Hartford Funds dot com. We’d love to hear from you.

Julie [00:33:52]

Talk to you soon.

John [00:33:55]

The views and opinions expressed herein are those of the guest who is not affiliated with Hartford Funds.