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Well, I'm actually, I'm kind of sad to see this end.

This is our four part miniseries with our senior VP of financial planning, Jeff Chase.

And we've been talking about old things, you know, financial planning really and the art of kind of running a financial planning team and evolution of a financial planner and how to know the difference between a so called financial planner and a the real deal.

And I hopefully we've shed a little bit of light there and I think we've been talking a little bit now about the company and about the importance of the financial planning company that you're working with and kind of how they're set up to foster the development of financial planners because you're really making a big commitment.

And I think one of the points that Jeff made last time too was that, you know, the every now and then the financial planner is going to be on vacation or not showing up for work for whatever reason and, and who's going to take care of you when they're not there.

And it really is important, we call it bench strength.

But to look at an organization and say, you know, I'm not just hiring the advisor, I'm hiring the company to take care of me.

How's the company going to take care of me?

You know, and I think that that's also important because Jeff mentioned silos.

When you go to a major wirehouse.

So wirehouses are like Morgan Stanley, Merrill Lynch, Wells Fargo, those types of companies.

What you have to understand is those are silos, those are individuals working in individual silos with their own little books of business.

So even though you hire one of them and you go, okay, I'm hiring, you know, Morgan Stanley or whatever, and this guy at Morgan Stanley you're hiring into that particular practice.

And so they are not working with another silo to say, hey, here's what's going on with that client and you can, can you come in and give me expertise and stuff that I need to know?

Think about it as medical practices, right?

You're working with a completely different practice that it has no incentive at all.

In fact, there's a disincentive to cross pollinate you with another practice.

And so what Jeff was talking about, when he's talking about organizations, he's really talking about like a medical practice, like a specialty practice.

I'm going to go in and I'm going to work with a, you know, an orthopedic, but depending on my issue, might depend on which doctor I see.

Right.

So that's there, there's some specialty to that and, and there's.

But within that unit, they can all look me up in the computer and they all know where I'm at with things.

They know what my treatments are, what my issues are and they know how to help me better.

So we're going to dive a little bit more into this art of running a financial planning team and what that actually looks like and some of the things that clients should be aware of.

And I think we're going to end with Jeff's non negotiables on things that you should be looking for when you're working with or hiring a financial planner or a wealth manager.

Yeah.

And welcome in to ditch the suits.

I'm Steve Campbell, one of your co hosts.

I serve as our senior marketing director at Seed Planning Group.

Travis is our chief executive officer.

And this show is all about us at Seed operating a fee only financial planning firm, talking about the things we get into every day.

And you heard a little bit about that in the last episode.

Travis and Jeff going back and forth which was a really fun listen, being a fly on the wall about the industry and products and how things work and things we talk about.

So it was a very enlightening episode that you don't know what you don't know.

And so in this series we're bringing Jeff on to share not only from a planner's perspective, but how teams function and how they should work.

So the show is all about us bringing the things we do every single day to help empower people like you really get the most from your money in life.

Let's take a quick break to hear.

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This episode is brought to you by Seed Planning Group.

If you're looking for a life giving experience working with a financial planner, then.

Seed is here for you.

Seed is a fee only financial planning firm with a fiduciary obligation to put your best interests first.

If your goal is financial freedom and independence without sales products or really glorified salespeople, then check out Seed Planning Group.

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When we first started financial planning as a company, so when, when the precursor to Seed Planning Group was Seed Financial Strategies.

When that was, when that first became what we would call a hybrid company, we, we were independent, but we were still relying on a broker dealer.

We still did insurance and all that kind of stuff.

We had our first versions of financial planning.

We literally charged $300 a year for the financial planning.

And our definition of financial planning at that time was pretty narrow.

And then that migrated into an a la carte menu.

And the a la carte menu allowed people to just kind of choose, well, I want to do financial projections, or I want two reviews a year, or I want, you know, an insurance review.

And you.

That was a little bit more, you know, maybe the average price for a client then was 6 or $650 a year.

But what we found was that people would make the decision with their wallets and not necessarily their needs.

So they would want certain pieces of planning and they would decline other pieces, but they would still come in really upset because their plan was incomplete.

And it was like.

Or they'd make decisions off of incomplete information because they didn't want to pay $200 to go through their estate plan, you know, type of stuff.

And so that migrated into our fixed fee financial planning model that we have now where somebody can sign up for just a fixed fee.

And it includes this whole library of things.

And you may or may not need the whole library, but it's what the planners are, are able to cover with you in that program.

Right.

And so it's not designed for.

Everybody's going to need every single thing on the menu it's designed for.

You know, you're going to use some of these things and some people are going to use other things type of thing.

So it's just to kind of put a box around it and say you get all this for that price.

But the reason why I'm bringing that up is we have developed our programs in, as a reflection of the demand for the size of the client that's growing.

When I first started in 2007, a big, like, I was really excited when somebody had a hundred thousand dollars.

You know, now we have clients literally tens of millions of dollars.

It's like, it doesn't even, I mean, I'm.

We're working on, we work on Consulting with $100 million plans.

I mean, there's all different types of things that we're doing now that, you know, somebody with a hundred thousand dollars trying to debate what to do with that hundred thousand dollars is very different than somebody with $4 million and two and a half million is extra.

You know, just the things that you're going to deal with in the discussions and the attentions that you're going to have to have.

There's not a lot of stuff that you can do for somebody at certain levels, but once you get a little bit more advanced, you got gifting that comes in, you got philanthropy that comes in.

You got major tax issues that come in.

Plus they have the money to do stuff.

They have the money to change the way that they're doing things or invest differently and stuff like that.

So it, it, it was quite.

It's quite interesting to see that evolution year over year over year over year.

And it.

It feels like two lifetimes ago, but it really wasn't that long.

That's the seed years issue.

But, Jeff, you are now in the role of seeing the evolution of clients.

And so with that comes a need to adjust how we're actually servicing them.

Do you want to talk about that at all?

Sure.

Yeah.

I would agree with you.

We've moved upstream pretty quickly, even in the time that I've been here.

Right.

So we're working with whole different group of clients at this point, for the most part, as far as new clients kind of calling us and wanting to come in for services.

But I think one of the big things that we did was, and I know, I noticed you didn't mention this, you mentioned kind of the standardized programs that we have for financial planning, but Wealth Management Family Enterprise, I think, was a big one that we introduced, what was it, maybe three years ago, Right.

About the time you started with us.

You were the first group, I think, that went through the training for that program.

I think it was right when you started.

Yep.

Yeah.

I remember you having us go through role plays with you for.

For a whole summer.

And I was brand new.

Oh, yeah.

Everybody thinks it's hazing.

No, it's just sharpening.

It's iron sharpens iron, baby.

That's right.

But I think that opened up a whole new avenue for us.

Right.

And it's one of the unique things about working with seed is we don't make you move your assets over to work with us.

Right.

Not that we do with any of the other financial planning programs, but specifically with Wealth Management Family Enterprise, that's a customized service Right.

Where you're coming in.

We're giving you a proposal that includes a scope of work of exactly what is going to happen for you, personalized for you.

Right.

And you're paying us a fee for those services for a contract for a period of time.

Right.

So I think that's been a big evolution for us as a company is.

I do see the industry moving more that way every year.

I mean, Steve, you know, Steve, you and I, we're on.

We do openers and onboarding and all that stuff.

You take all the calls that come in from new prospects.

A lot of them now are calling in saying, hey, I really like the way that you guys do business.

Or I'm looking for an opportunity to work with a firm where I don't need to necessarily move all of my assets over just to get advice.

Wealth management, family enterprise.

That program is allowing us to service those clients in that way.

And Travis, I don't know if I can speak to this, because I've been here with Travis since 2017.

And there.

There is no blueprint for what we're building.

It's just us being in it.

And when you hit a brick wall where you're not able to help a client, where they're at, you have two choices.

You either say, we're not going to work with clients like that, or how would we serve people like that?

And you evolve and you develop new programs.

And it's been neat to have that freedom and leadership from Travis and over the years to create an exceptional client experience where if people aren't getting this, how can SEED answer the call to do that?

And that.

That takes all of us, the teaming, the working together.

What are we hearing?

What are we seeing?

How would we do this?

How would we execute that?

So the evolution, if you put like a timestamp on.

On fast forward over the last decade, is incredible.

How fast we've grown, and that's just from being in it every day.

And Jeff, the team that you're leading and the people that we're putting together.

So I.

I think some of the things you're speaking about now have come from us just working with individuals of all different places, because none of us, as you guys have alluded to in the first three episodes, none of us were trained in this, in the places we came from.

And so you figure it out, you learn, you grow.

But when you're doing it collectively as a group of people, as a team, the synergy and the multiplication effect of us all sharpening each other is happening at such a rapid pace with quality that I think is helping us now kind of lead the next generation of people coming in.

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Yeah, yeah, it's innovation, right?

It's all, everything is forward thinking when you know, it could be from us making sure that we're scaling our team properly, you know, based on the number of planners we have, but also the expertise to meet the demand of the clients that are calling in keeping an eye on future growth.

Right.

Being ahead of the curve with most things, but you know, we're one to two years ahead out, right?

Planning wise with hiring, with what our team's going to look like, what our programs are going to look like, you know, how we plan to expand our services, our company, we're always thinking ahead.

And I think that just goes back to what you just said, Steve.

We, you know, the wealth management family enterprise program that you talked about was a result of listening to, to clients and prospects.

They were coming in and saying, you know, when the clients are smaller, we have a program for them if they want to manage their own investments or have a different manager.

But when the assets get bigger, it gets a little bit more dynamic and it's a little bit more challenging.

So we were like, okay, we want to give larger clients that opportunity to get the financial planning, but do whatever they want to do with their money.

Or sometimes larger clients don't have investments, but they're because they're asset rich and kind of, you know, cash poor.

But they are going to need a lot of time to figure out, you know, a business exit or some kind of really complicated planning topic, estate planning topic or something like that.

And one of the benefits you get from a firm that literally specializes in financial planning is we understand roughly how long it's going to take to service that client.

So then we can come in and say, look, this, this is based on our pricing model, what it's actually gonna take to help you.

You're not the typical client, but we can still help you because we understand what it's gonna take to kind of get you over the finish line.

So we've been able to evolve that way and we've been really blessed with clients who've been patient with us as we've evolved.

And as you know, the financial planning fee has gone up and you can't hire financial planners to serve Clients that need dynamic financial planning if you're only charging them $300 a year.

So we've had clients since it was 300.

I mean, some of them were paying $100 a year at one point because of the a la carte system.

You know, we've had clients that have migrated all the way up through all the pricing, and they're still with us, and they've sent tons of people to work with us, and we've been very blessed like that.

But because they have faith that we're trying to improve it so we can make sure that they're taken care of so the services get better and they let us try.

Let us try things.

You know, we don't.

Sometimes when you start a new program, you think it's going to go a certain way, and because of the staffing or the technology or something like that, it doesn't work out.

And you try to figure out, okay, now, you know, how do we make sure we get it back on track and stuff?

And we've.

We've had some very, very patient clients that I think have supported us through the years that really believe that and understand that we're trying to build a better service for them.

We.

Seed is unique compared to a lot of firms in that, you know, we have a very high staff count for the size of firm we are, and we recycle a lot of the money that.

Well, all the money that we make back into the company.

You know what I mean?

It's very focused on the values in the firm and developing the employees and developing the clients.

And a lot of firms, the owners are trying to suck out all the money that they can.

We go the other way.

So we are trying to innovate at a breakneck speed because we really believe in doing better and making it better.

And I think that that's coming out in the development of these services.

And we didn't talk about today, and we don't need to, but, you know, we have the Ignite service, which is an answer to some of the issues with the fire movement, you know, and how it's a little bit of overkill.

And so how do you tone that down but still give young professionals something to shoot at?

We have our consulting services and our spot pricing that we've created, so people, you know, depending on their needs, have an opportunity to engage and get help.

When we first started, you could not work with Seed if you did not do financial planning, so you could not be in our investment program.

We've opened up the investment program now to allow clients who are not financial planning clients get engaged with the investment program and have somebody to talk to.

So these are things that we've tried to do over the years to kind of enhance how many people we can help and how well we can actually help them.

So I want to come back though, to the people who are making this all possible.

And those are our teams.

We probably have four main teams.

We have the business team, which is everybody who's not a financial planner, investment planner, an admin person.

Right?

And then we have the.

And those are our other three teams.

Those are our four teams.

You're in charge of the financial planning team.

You're out there looking for people consistently to hire.

I mean, we have two new planners starting.

We have another spot open this year.

It seems like, you know, we grow as fast as we can hire people that, to handle the work.

What are you looking for when you're looking for a financial planner and you're thinking about, you know, this is going to help us make our company better?

Yeah, great question.

I would say I can tell you what it's not.

It's not the person that has the most experience, as we've kind of alluded to, right?

That is not the number one factor which probably surprises a lot of people.

We really prioritize character over experience, right.

Are you motivated?

Are you tough?

Are you willing to learn?

Are you willing to be vulnerable?

Are you not self centered?

Right.

A lot of those things they describe our framework from the ideal team player, right?

We, we really believe in that humble, hungry and smart framework.

That is what we're looking for.

We're looking for people who can put themselves out there and say, hey, you know what?

I don't know, but I'm willing to learn, right?

I want to, I want to understand this better.

We want people who are motivated and driven that want to, you know, they're in this for the right reasons, not just about money, right?

It's.

I really have a passion for what I'm doing and I want to continue to get better because that's, that's something that it's not just for us hiring people, right?

It's, this is not a place where you're going to be, let's say a wealth manager because we've been talking about that, right?

And you're a wealth manager and you've been here for 10 years and you've got a bunch of clients that you work with and now we just kind of leave you alone and you go do whatever you want, right?

That's that is not how it works here.

Right.

If you're going to be here at Seed, we're going to continue pushing the boundaries where to continue growing and focus on that professional development, not just at a technical skills way, but as people, right?

Like, how are we actually getting better individually?

How are we getting better as a company?

That's what we'd be looking for when we're hiring someone is do, does this person fit our culture?

Because if they don't, you risk imploding the whole thing.

Right.

If you're bringing someone in who's not going to fit the culture, not going to work.

Right.

So we go through, you alluded to this earlier, our hiring process very.

There's, there's a, there's reasoning why we go through it the way we go through it.

Right.

We have a meet and greet to kind of share about Seed a little bit, give them an idea of what we're all about, get to know them a little.

We get them into a round robin interview, right.

With let's say, three other people on our team.

Let's say it's three planners.

Those three planners are going in there trying to figure out one specific thing each, right?

Someone's focusing on their humility, someone's focusing on their drive or their hunger.

And someone's focusing on, is this person someone who can come in and actually provide value?

And then from that point we take them through a whole workshop process.

That's kind of the last step of our interview process.

But humble, hungry and smart, that's what we're looking for.

And it's been neat.

When we started to implement that for any clients that are listening who have been through the kind of, the history with us, there was a time we had a lot of turnover.

We had a bunch of advisors decided they wanted to go someplace else or they didn't want to be a part of this kind of framework and then they didn't understand it.

What's the big deal with this?

I just want to do what I want to do.

And then you've got, you know, other people that come in and because of that drive, they're, you know, it's.

You can have a 23 year old showing up, somebody who's been doing it for 20 years.

I mean, it's, that's, listen, like if I was paying somebody to work for me, and I know that no matter how long they've been there, they're still trying to get better.

I would like that.

You know, I don't want somebody who's peaked already.

And, and maybe is losing interest.

I want somebody who is yet, you know, who is just gonna continuously try to bring value to me by being better at their job.

And so, you know, the double edged sword of it is, is, you know, sometimes people are gonna leave because they don't or not come here in the first place because they don't want that type of environment.

But again, if I were a client, I wanna hire people who really want to do a good job, who are really driven to do a good job, not just make money.

Listen, if you do a great job and you make money great, I may even give you a tip.

But if you do a crappy job because you're just trying to make money, I'm going to make your life hell.

You know what I mean?

That's my mentality, that's how I look at it.

I'm going to be disappointed, I'm ashamed, I'm offended.

It's a check against my judgment.

I need to think about some things.

And so, and then the other side of it is too is you're going to have some of these young people that are just so dynamic, so awesome.

They're going to come and they're going to get that confidence and they're going to build some skills and they're going to want to move on too.

And that's one of the things that we've talked a lot about, is don't be sad when there's change.

Don't be sad when somebody comes and you unlock something.

We want to unlock this freedom in our clients and we want people to feel like, wow, I can go climb these mountains, I can do these things and I can live a great life and I don't need to worry about the news so much.

And look, life shouldn't be all about your money.

It should be about going and living the same thing with individuals.

We want to unlock that potential within them if they work for us.

And sometimes that means, I mean, we had somebody retire in her 20s and she did very well for herself, I mean, retire in a way that she doesn't have to go back to work ever again.

And I'm very, very proud of that.

But you're going to have that.

You're going to have people who go, yeah, you know what?

Financial independence.

I made it, I'm out, see ya.

And we need to celebrate those people.

We need to, you know, we talked about it with clients.

Sometimes a client comes in for a certain job, they need to see that they can do something.

We show them they can do something.

They're like, thank you.

I'm so happy I found what I need.

I don't need you anymore.

See you later.

Great.

We won.

Share it with everybody you can for us and tell them that you got what you needed here and it gave you the confidence.

We have to realize that, like, that you don't have to hound people till they say, no, they don't want to talk to you anymore.

Right.

And.

And in our industry, a lot of times it's the Fog Demir thing.

I was in recruiting in finance industry since 2004, and most of the time it was hire anybody who's willing to take a job here, you know, and I know there's some bigger firms with some more standards, but it's pretty close to that.

You know, you throw them in.

The dropout rate is like 95% in the industry for a reason.

You throw in crap against the wall, seeing if it sticks.

You know, what you've done with your team is you've started to become very, very selective, and you've got this dynamism now where these programs are developing very quickly because we can identify issues, and you can say, hey, whoa, we got to figure out a solution for that, because this group of people over here, they're chomping at the bits to have a better way to do this, you know, or here's an efficiency we can get.

You know, maybe we can improve our response times to clients by improving communication internally and what are the systems that need to be done for that?

And, you know, people don't realize there's a business behind us too, you know, and the business is trying to make sure that they're taken care of regardless of if somebody reaches financial freedom and decides to retire early or if, you know, obviously we want our people to be there forever, but it doesn't work that way.

I just want to follow up on one thing.

You mentioned the dynamism of the team, and I think that that's something really important.

We've had.

It's.

It's been so cool recently to have newer people on our team, right?

Not just financial planning, but in general, where they come in, and maybe they don't have all the skills right, at that point in time to take on however many clients they need to take on, but they're finding other ways to contribute to our company and to our team, and they're so motivated to do so.

It's not even.

We're not even asking, right?

They're.

They're coming to us saying, hey, I noticed X, Y, and Z, do you mind if I just kind of put some thoughts together and, you know, make a project out of it and run with it?

Absolutely.

Right.

That's great.

And that gives us the confidence that we're hiring the right people.

Right.

The people with that hunger.

I think, to me, when we talked about that humble, hungry and smart hunger is the biggest thing for me.

I'm going to be honest with you.

Like, that's, that's what I'm.

I'm keying in on.

If you're not hungry, it's, that's not a, it's not a good recipe.

Right.

You got to come in here wanting to, you know, really do a good job for yourself, for clients, for.

For whoever.

Right.

But there's gotta be some sort of motivation behind it.

And it's just been really awesome to get that, you know, validation that we're hiring the right people.

It's gotta be other than money, too.

Yeah.

You know, like I.

When somebody's hungry, but they're really just hungry for more money, the, the greed part, the, the things that come out.

If your desire is money.

I think that this is a hard industry to really be great at.

Like, like you, you can, you can make a lot of money in it.

You can go and you can sell all the products and sell the services and that kind of stuff.

But if you're about the purity of financial planning.

Right.

And being a fiduciary and giving advice that you can be proud of 20 years, when you look backwards, if your drive is money, that's going to be.

It's going to be really, really hard.

Like, we don't have anybody left in our company where.

That's the drive.

No.

Yeah.

You know what I mean?

It doesn't work.

It's not that money's not important, Right?

It is.

It's just important.

That's not the thing to focus on.

Right.

If you're doing all the other things correctly, the money's going to come.

Yeah.

So I think that that was a really interesting, like, inside look as to SEED and our filtering system for how we get the right people in the right positions.

But I'm thinking about the listener that's out there today that says, knowing this about Seed, like, why.

Why should I care about this?

So, Jeff, why should a client or prospect care about some of the things that we just talked about?

Yeah, I think that's a great question.

I think, you know, from the start, if you think about, you know, leadership wise, all of these things we're talking about kind of starts at the top.

Right.

That's going to bleed down through the organization.

But from a client's perspective, this is really important because as I put myself, and I always try to do this, put myself in the client's shoes, I'd want to know that I'm working with a firm that cares about being at the top of their game or making sure that there's a focus on growth to ensure that the highest quality service is happening and that that firm remains at the forefront of the industry.

Right?

So that's something I'm very confident saying.

We are always innovating.

Right.

And that's something I'm very proud of.

There's a commitment to continually improving, whether it's our expertise or our offerings to benefit clients.

And all of that is based in the passion that the people have.

It's all about the people at the end of the day, right?

We could have the best ideas out there.

If we don't have the right people, not going to work.

Right?

So we, we the people is where it starts.

We try to make sure we're bringing people into this organization that are going to serve our clients, serve our, you know, basically our purpose.

Right.

As a firm, which goes back to our just cause.

Right?

How do we help people to overcome challenges that are holding them back from personal fulfillment?

We do that through financial planning.

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